Books by Maggie Shayne (328 page)

“Perhaps you have,” Nidaba replied. “Perhaps once she perfected the glamourie, she crossed your path as often as she liked, with you never the wiser.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “That could very well be. Much as I hate to admit it. But I didn’t know. She wasn’t immortal when she came to Lagash to live in the palace as my queen,” he said, speaking slowly. “But you already know that part.”

“Tell me anyway. Perhaps, Natum, it’s time for us to relive the hell of our past together and come at last to the truth.”

He settled into a chair. “You’re right. It’s long past time we do that, in fact. And the way I see it...” he glanced at the clock, then at the darkness beyond the glassless window. He’d had to put the removable screen in to keep the insects out. The night breeze was light, but filled with the pungence of autumn. “The way I see it, we’re better off staying right here until dawn. So what better time? But mark me well, Nidaba, you’re going to hear the truth this time. All of it. And so am I.”

As he spoke, Nathan saw the past unfurling in his memory, clearly, vividly.

He could almost feel the heat of the desert sun beating mercilessly down on the lush oasis city. He could nearly smell the fishy aroma of the nearby Euphrates and feel the roughness of the bleached white stone that made waist-high walls on either side of the broad palace steps.

His bride of a little over a week, Puabi, stepped down from the litter that bore her, aided by two men-at-arms. Eannatum had known she would arrive in style, but he had not expected quite so much pomp. They’d wed in a formal ceremony only a day before, but tonight would be their first one living together as man and wife. She’d had affairs to get in order, belongings to pack and bring along to Lagash. As he stood at the bottom of the palace steps to greet her, massive stone lions on either side of him, he battled a grimace of distaste at her antics. She stepped from the litter onto a silken pillow, hastily placed beneath her feet by a young slave girl who seemed afraid to get too close. Two others, looking equally cowed, raced ahead, unrolling a carpet between them that lined the walk, then up the steps, all the way to the palace doors at the top. Eannatum had to step aside to get out of their way.

Two soldiers walked two steps behind Puabi as she started forward. The slave girls knelt and bowed. The woman—his queen—certainly looked the part. Her headdress was the most elaborate he had ever seen, made of enough gold and lapis to please a Goddess. Tiny bits of round hammered gold, like coins, layered around and around the piece, and they moved, shimmering, each time she took a step. Her gown, too, was golden, gleaming as brightly as the sun. It was made of some fabric that shimmered and shone almost as if it were metallic. Great amounts of paint enhanced her eyes—kohl lined them, and colored powders had been applied in a rainbow of stripes that covered the entire area below the brow, while tiny jewels dangled above it from the headpiece.

Behind her no less than twenty men and women awaited her word. They had all walked, while she rode upon the litter, borne by four of her strongest slaves. Across the desert they had borne her. She had refused to come by boat, as she claimed she suffered illness upon the waves. Water had to be hauled along on the journey, and she had portioned it by cruelly small amounts. Eannatum had reports that three of her slaves had not survived the journey. And he liked his new queen less than he ever had.

She reached Eannatum on the steps, inclined her head toward him, the husband she barely knew. And he bowed respectfully to her in return.

“Welcome to Lagash, Queen Puabi,” he said.

“I am glad to finally be here.” Smiling very slightly, she turned to face her entourage, and they all genuflected so automatically it was like a wave moving over them. “These are my people. My soldiers, slaves, and advisers. I trust accommodations can be found for all of them?”

“Of course. Had I known you would be bringing so many, I’d have had rooms prepared. They’ll need rest, and a solid meal after such an arduous journey.” He nodded to one of his own generals, his old friend Galor, who had been told in advance to see to it that the travelers were taken into the coolness of a nearby storage building and given plenty of fresh water to drink, beds of reeds upon which to rest, a solid meal when they were ready, and anything else they needed. Galor immediately stepped into the crowd and began speaking quietly to the exhausted men and women.

Puabi shrugged. “The soldiers are to serve alongside your own, and they will keep their rank. Except for these two—” she indicated the large men flanking her—“who are my personal guards. I want them housed in the palace.”

“As you wish,” Eannatum said, already disliking the thought of soldiers he did not know serving alongside his own trusted troops, much less taking up residence under his own roof.

“My astrologers, diviners, and soothsayers must be housed near the palace. I need them close to me, and they are to be given free access to my quarters as well.”

Eannatum lifted a brow. “And what use have you of magicians, my queen?”

She shot him a narrow glance. “I am Queen of all of Sumer,” she said. “They are my advisers.”

It did not truly answer his question, but he didn’t press it just then. “And the others?”

She looked down quickly, dismissively. “The slaves, you mean? Put them where you will. I’ve no care where, except that they be able to come quickly when I send for them.”

He drew a breath, exhaled deeply. “During his reign, my father outlawed slavery within Lagash,” he told her.

Her nostrils flared just a bit. “I do not come from Lagash.”

“But you’re here now.”

Her gaze clashed with his, and Eannatum decided to let the matter rest. He would not embarrass her publicly, but her slaves
would
be freed, either to remain as paid servants or to return to their homeland with whatever compensation he could give them. He would make that clear to his arrogant new bride—later—in private.

“Let me introduce you to my closest advisers,” he said at length. “My general, who is even now seeing to the comfort of your people, is Galor. The man on my right hand is my first soldier, Ris. And the woman on my left is the High Priestess of the temple, Nidaba.”

Puabi nodded politely at Ris, the large soldier who was already sizing up her own men-at-arms. But when her gaze touched Nidaba’s, Eannatum could almost feel the tension that crackled between them. The two women stared at each other for a long moment.

“I’ve heard of you,” Puabi said, her face almost a sneer. “Part woman, part goddess, they claim.” She blew air through her nostrils. “You look less goddess-like than my lowest slave girl.” Then Puabi looked at Eannatum again, having exchanged not one further word with Nidaba. “I would go inside now,” she said in a very low voice. And without waiting for him, she moved forward, up the steps to the palace doors. As he turned to follow, he saw her leaning close to one of her soldiers, speaking near his ear, even as she slanted a backward glance at Nidaba. A cold feeling crept through Eannatum when he saw that look, and when he quickly glanced Nidaba’s way, he knew she had felt it too.

A full moon cycle later, as Eannatum lay in the darkness of the desert, wrapped in blankets and in his beautiful priestess’s arms, Nidaba whispered, “She knows about us, Natum.”

“No. I’ve taken care, Nidaba. I never slip away until she is asleep. I’ve not once been followed. I don’t have to do these things. I have every right to be with you, as king. I take these precautions only because you ask it of me. But I do take them. She does not know.”

The stars sparkled overhead in a canopy wider than any in the world. And they sparkled in Nidaba’s dark eyes. Gods, how he loved her. He hated that she insisted they see each other only in the dead of night, that they hide their love from everyone in the kingdom. She deserved so much more.

“You have not been followed,” she whispered, leaning on his chest, staring into his eyes. “But I have.”

His frown was swift and deep, and he quickly looked around them, scanning the dunes for prying eyes but seeing only swirls of sand, nothing more.

“Not here, love,” Nidaba assured him quickly. “No one has managed to stay on my heels through the secret passages of the temple. But those men of hers ... they appear wherever I go. I look up from a table of cloths in the market square, or after blessing a boat before it journeys on with its load of fruits or sacred herbs, and they are there. Always. Just... watching me. Following me. Listening to my every word, and often talking to the people with whom I have had conversations.”

He searched her face, knowing her too well to think she would imagine such things as these. “Then she must suspect something. But she cannot know about us, Nidaba.”

Nidaba rolled off him, sitting up and drawing her knees to her chest, pulling the blanket more closely around her shoulders. “Those necromancers of hers, they frighten me more than her guards, Natum.”

He sat up beside her, startled. “What have they done to you?”

“Done? Nothing. But they—there is a darkness about them. They’ve been speaking to every priestess in the temple, asking questions about me. And to the villagers as well. It’s as if your queen has set out to learn all there is to know of me ... of us. Our past. What we have been to each other, and what we are to each other now.”

Eannatum felt his jaw go tight. “I’ll put a stop to it. Puabi has no right—”

“No, Natum. You are wrong. As your bride, your queen, she has every right.”

He looked at her sharply.

“She is your wife.”

“A political alliance and nothing more. She knew that from the start.”

“Nonetheless, you wed her.”

“I do not lie with her, Nidaba. Or kiss those cold lips of hers. I feel nothing for her. It’s you I love.”

Lifting her hands to his cheeks and pressing her palms there, she stared into his eyes in the desert night. “I know, Natum. And I love you as well. But. . . but it’s wrong, what we are doing.”

He frowned in utter confusion. “It is my right as king! It is the way of our very culture, Nidaba. It is only you who sees a need to keep it secret.”

“It’s wrong because it is hurtful. I serve the Goddess, Natum, I know what I feel, and that is what I feel. I fear the price we pay will be higher than either of us can bear.”

“I won’t
give you up,
Nidaba.”

She nodded slowly, then challenged him with her eyes. “Then give up the throne. Come away with me. We’ll run away to some foreign land. The lost paradise of Dilmun, perhaps. Where the rivers run with honey.”

“That’s not real.”

“It could be, for us. If you were with me, free to be with me... any place we were would be paradise, Natum.”

He gently pulled free of her hands, stared upward at the starry sky. “Are you saying I have to choose? Is that what this is, Nidaba? Are you forcing me to choose between the woman I love and the kingdom I rule? Between you and thousands of my subjects? Between you and the promise I made to my dying father, to my Goddess, to myself?”

She lowered her head, licked her lips. “Yes.”

“Even when it was you who made me see that I had to make this sacrifice for the good of Sumer?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “Even so. Circumstances have ... changed. The Ummamites have backed down.”

“They’ll begin again the moment they sense weakness!”

She lifted her gaze to his. “If it were only for me, I would never ask it, Eannatum. But it has become necessary now that I think of more than just myself. I must consider the greater good. And for me to remain here, playing the part of royal harlot, is no longer acceptable.”

“You know that is not how I think of you!” He shot to his feet, pacing away from her as his bare feet sank in the sand.

“It is how all of Lagash is coming to think of me, Eannatum.” She got to her feet as well and came to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Or do you still insist that no one knows about us? Because they do, you know. It’s obvious to any who care to wonder. When you look at me, Eannatum, there is fire in your eyes. When you speak to me, your voice deepens, softens. When you touch me ...”

He spun around to face her. “I
cannot
choose. Do not ask me to do this, Nidaba. I cannot.”

Her lashes lowered, and he thought they were damp. “All right, then, my love. I will not ask it of you again.”

He sighed in profound relief, pulling her close to him. “She will tire of Lagash soon enough,” he promised. “You’ll see. She’ll return home to Ur to take up residence there in her homeland, in her palace. And I’ll remain here. It will be better then.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I believe you.”

Tears threatened as she listened to Natum retelling the tale of their last night together, but she blinked them away when she realized he was staring hard into her eyes.

“But you didn’t believe me, did you, Nidaba? Instead, you ran away. That very night.”

Nidaba sniffled. “There were ... things you didn’t know, Eannatum. Things . .. that made it impossible for me to stay.”

He looked so pained, so hurt, even after all this time. “What things?” he asked gently.

“Puabi, for one.” Her face grew hard at the memory. “She had come to me earlier that evening. In the temple. Dressed in her full royal splendor, right to the headdress, she came to me. I was in the
cella,
burning incense and praying for guidance, for I was very troubled, about so many things. There was a young eunuch, a servant of the temple, an immortal, like me. He kept trying to tell me about the nature of what I was, but I thought him insane. And yet his words troubled me on some level I could not understand. I finally sent him away to serve at the palace to be rid of his constant far-fetched tales. And I felt horribly guilty about that. I sensed I had done something very wrong.

“So that was one of the things that troubled me. But there was another, an even greater worry on my mind that evening. So I went to the
cella
to pray. When I heard footsteps in the rushes, I turned and saw her there. Queen Puabi, her gold baubles gleaming in the torchlight. It was just after sundown. The room was alive with shadows that danced over her face, over the walls. The way the torchlight gleamed in the lapis eyes of the stone gods, I almost felt they had all come to life—and had gathered there to judge me for my sins.

“ ‘I know what you are,’ she told me. ‘My necromancers, my occultists, they have told me your vile secret.’

“I caught my breath, and felt my heart pounding in my chest. I was certain she meant that she knew about us, about our secret meetings, our lovemaking. But that wasn’t it at all.

“ ‘Daughter of the Goddess, indeed,’ Puabi all but spat, striding closer to me, kicking the fresh rushes aside without a care. ‘Daughter of demons, more likely. You’re no more divine than I am, Nidaba. You are a sorceress. A Witch!’

“When I heard the accusation, I nearly laughed, such was my relief.

“ ‘Do you deny it?’ the queen demanded. She stood very close to me now, and I rose, for I had still been kneeling. Standing upright, I was a good deal taller than she, and for a moment it gave me confidence.