Books by Maggie Shayne (329 page)

“ ‘Of course I deny it! I am a High Priestess of the Goddess!’

“ ‘You are a priestess of darkness, born of demons. No human parents ever claimed you. No. You were left on the steps of the temple by the forces of evil, who placed you there knowing you would take over one day. Taking the name of a Goddess! Learning the sacred script when it was forbidden to women! Can you deny any of those things?’

“I stared in shock, stunned that she could know so much about me. ‘No one knows who left me on the temple steps. But I can assure you, they were perfectly human.’

“ ‘Were they? And what of your powers? Hmm? Do you deny them, as well?’

“ ‘What powers?’ Shaking my head, I took a step backward.

“ ‘I know about them!’ she cried. ‘How you can make the earth seem to tremble and quake when you grow angry. How your rites and charms cause far greater effects than those of any other priestess in all of Sumer! And this!’ She reached out, striking with the speed of a viper, her clawlike hand clutching at my white ritual gown and tearing it down the right side.

“Gasping, jumping back, I fought my anger. If it got the best of me, if I lost control, I would reveal the powers she accused me of possessing. And that was something that Lia—and later the eunuch with all his wild tales—had warned me never to do.

“But Puabi pointed now, at my right flank. ‘There,’ she said. ‘It is just as my spiritualists said. You bear the mark on your thigh—the crescent moon! Demon!
Asakku!’

“ ‘No! I’m not!’ I cried, backing away from her. But it shook me to the core, because Aahron, the eunuch, had told me of the mark’s significance, and I had not believed him.

“ ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You are, and the mark is proof. If I choose to reveal your secret it will mean certain death, Nidaba.’

“I stood a little straighter, sure of myself. For I knew that my king, her own husband, bore the same mark I did. Yet something warned me not to mention that. If she had not learned of it on her own ... I had no wish to imply that you, too, were the demon she believed me to be. ‘You would not be believed!’ I told her instead. ‘You are a foreigner, and I, a High Priestess!’

“ ‘I am a queen, and you an enchantress. One who has bewitched the king, stolen his seed, and even now carries her demon spawn who could well lay claim to the throne of all Sumer!’

“I fell silent, my blood rushing from my head so quickly I grew dizzy with it. ‘How.... how could you know such a thing?’

“ ‘My diviners, I have told you. They are not pretenders like you, Nidaba. They see the truth in the bowels of birds and the livers of beasts. And even were there doubts about my claims in the minds of the people, do you truly think they would risk it? A child is not something you can hide, Nidaba. Not for long, that is. They would never risk Eannatum’s leaving the throne of Sumer to the son of the
Asakku
demon.’

“I had never believed in the divinatory powers of self-proclaimed occultists ... but I had no choice but to believe then, for it was the truth. I was carrying your child.”

Natum had sat in silence, listening to her speak until that point. But now, Nidaba stopped speaking, and looked at his face—the face she had so loved, once.

“You were pregnant. And you knew it. You were pregnant with my child.”

“Yes, Natum. Your son.”

He closed his eyes, and she could see his pain growing ever deeper. “I... I guess I knew, deep down. I just...”

“Puabi said she would see to it that my child was murdered at birth, unless I agreed to her terms.”

Natum knelt at her feet, gathering her hands in his, his head bowed. “What did she demand of you?”

“That I see you only once more—to tell you goodbye. To end what was between us firmly, and finally. That I go into hiding, in a place of her choosing, and remain there, under her guard, until the day I gave birth. And that I then surrender the child to her.”

Natum lifted his head slowly, staring into Nidaba’s eyes.

“She wanted, I believe, to claim our son as her own.”

“Damn her!” he spat. “I had only been with her once up to that point—to consummate the vows.”

“Once ... up to that point?” Nidaba asked, wondering if that meant he had been with the woman again later.

But Natum ignored her question and rose to pace away from her. “She likely felt that if she hadn’t conceived my child that night, she might never do so.” He pounded a fist onto a table. “But why? Why would she want to pretend to have borne my child?”

“She wanted a son. She wanted your love,” Nidaba said, deciding that perhaps she did not want to know the rest. “And perhaps more than either of those things, she wanted to secure her hold on the throne of Sumer. With her son as heir, her own power would have been irreversible.”

He nodded. “She craved power more than anything else. I knew that about her from the start.” He returned to where Nidaba sat. Lifting his hands, he stroked her hair, her cheek. “So that was why you asked me to run away with you that night? To choose between you and my throne?”

“Yes.”

“And when I couldn’t choose ...”

“I fled, by dead of night. I knew Puabi meant to kill me in the end, and I knew I wanted no child of mine being raised by that cold, evil woman. So I fled, to raise my son alone. You issued a proclamation far and wide that I was to be found and returned to Lagash. You sent your armies to pursue me into the wilderness.”

“Because I loved you. I didn’t think I could go on without you, and even if I could, I didn’t want to.”

“That was what I believed at first. That you sought me out of love. They hounded my every step, your soldiers. For years, my child and I knew no peace, settled in no home. And still I believed in you, in your honor, your love for me. Until they caught up to us at last.”

Natum stood perfectly still. “What happened that night, Nidaba?”

Rising to her feet, she strode to the window, and gazed out. unable to face him and recall the most horrible moments of her entire existence. “They placed us under house arrest, surrounded the small hut where we had been living, far in the northlands. They stood guard all the night through, telling us not to fear. That we would be escorted back to Lagash, but were in no danger of harm. That they were under strict orders to care for us as they would for the king himself.” She smiled a little bitterly as she let the curtain fall back in place. “And we believed them, my Nicky and I.”

“It was the truth. Those were the orders I issued to my men.”

She turned, facing him squarely. His hand was braced on the chair where she had been before. ‘Three of your soldiers crept into the house in the night, Eannatum. Assassins. Trained to kill and sent to do murder. Nothing less. Your son ... oh. you’d have been proud if you could have seen him. So brave. He stepped in front of me, tried to protect me. And they ran him through.“

Eannatum made a strangled sound, half cry, half shout, and dropped to his knees in front of that empty chair.

“And when I fell to the floor to cradle my dying child in my arms, they ran me through as well.”

Natum’s head fell forward, his eyes closed and yet a tear escaped to roll slowly down his cheek. “You ... were immortal, though you couldn’t have known it then.”

She nodded. “Yes. I still didn’t believe in the tales the eunuch Aahron had told me. But I would soon have all the proof I could ever need that they were true. I was immortal. But my boy was not.”

“Gods, Nidaba—” Natum got to his feet, came toward her, but she held up a hand to stop him.

“You said you wished to hear all of it. There is more.”

He stiffened. “Go on.”

“When I revived, the hut was engulfed in flames. I knew nothing about immortality, about High Witches, Dark or Light. I could not understand why my son lay dead, his precious body already cooling, while I lived. My wound miraculously, it seemed, had healed. But his remained. Somehow I managed to escape the flames. And all the while the eunuch’s tales were echoing in my mind. He had told me that the only way I could die, other than having my heart cut still beating from my chest, was by fire. And he had told me it was the most horrible death imaginable for an immortal—that the heart itself would burst into flames and burn within the body, blistering and searing the flesh from within. And even then, it was not by any sane method of calculation that I escaped. I merely stumbled out, blind and numb with grief, and half mad, I suppose. But not so mad that I was not aware that an illegitimate son would have been a threat to the throne of Sumer. Or that you finally had made that choice I had asked of you a decade before. Between me and your throne. And that you had chosen the throne.”

He did come to her then, striding forward and gripping her shoulders. “My men were under orders to care for you as they would a Goddess and to bring you back to me. Nothing more.” He shook her slightly. “Nidaba, by the Gods, you must believe me!”

Her own tears flowed now, slowly, like old, deep rivers. Not a ripple of a sob or a sound accompanied them. “I don’t
want
to believe you, can’t you see that? It nearly killed me, losing my precious Nicky. And when I finally made my way through the hell of that, there was another waiting. The knowledge of your betrayal. Because I believed in you so deeply. But I survived, Eannatum. I survived. It would be very foolish of me, don’t you think, to believe in you again? To give you the same weapon that I gave you before? One that would surely kill me this time, should you turn it on me once again?”

His hands dug into her shoulders, and the expression in his eyes was fierce. “You know I’m telling you the truth, Nidaba. Deny it all you want, but you already do believe me. You know me. You know I couldn’t harm my own son.”

She averted her face from his probing black eyes. One finger came up to her chin and lifted it, though, so she couldn’t look away and he stared deeply into her soul. “I should hate you for even pretending to believe such a thing of me. But... I can’t hate you, Nidaba. I never could.”

Then he kissed her. Long, and tenderly ... so tenderly that her tears flowed anew. And when he lifted his head away, she knew she wanted to believe in him again more than she had ever wanted anything. And even more certainly, she knew that she already did. And always had.

But she didn’t say so. Instead, she looked past him, through her veil of tears, to the orange glow painting the sky beyond the window screen, and she murmured, “It is dawn.”

“I don’t care.”

“Yes, you do. You care about your friends. And you know as well as I do that they are not safe in this house. We need to get Sheila and George and Queenie away from here. Someplace safe, Eannatum. And we need to do it now.”

Reluctantly, Nathan agreed. “This conversation is far from over.”

She only looked at him sadly as she got to her feet. “It’s beyond over, Natum. It’s long dead.”

“You know that’s a lie.” Taking her hand, he led her through the bedroom, into the hallway, and down it to Sheila’s room. Unlocking the door, he led Nidaba into the room where Sheila lay sleeping, but as he stared at her, relieved that she remained where he’d left her, Nidaba nudged him with her elbow.

“Don’t be a fool, Natum. The real Sheila could be lying dead in the basement right now for all you know. Go over there ... touch her. Make sure she isn’t...”

He hated to admit that she could be right, but there was no denying it. Slowly, he moved to the bedside, reached out a hand, and touched Sheila’s where it lay atop the sheets.

The older woman started and opened her eyes. Then she smiled at him. “Whatever are you doin‘ in my bedroom, Nathan?” But her smile died slowly, as memories of the day before, the night before, returned to her eyes. “What’s wrong? Has something else happened?”

“No. Everything’s fine. Nidaba and I simply feel it would be far safer if we took you and George ... away for a time.”

“Away? To where?”

“I’d rather not say just now.”

“Rather not say what?” George said from the hallway. When Nathan turned he saw George standing there in his big checkered bathrobe, his hair tousled and feathery, sticking up in places.

“Where you and Sheila are going to go and stay for a few days.”

“Oh,” George said. Then he frowned. “Oh! But what about Queenie? I mean, can she come too?” As he spoke he lowered a hand as if to scratch the dog’s head. But she wasn’t at his side as usual, and he glanced back down the hall with a frown.

“I thought about that, but no. It won’t work. You’re going to be traveling, George. The dog’s going to have to stay here, but I promise, I won’t let anything happen to her,” Nathan said.

“But... but...”

“It will only be for a couple of days, George. You know I’ll take very good care of her while you’re gone. Don’t you?”

“Well, I... I guess.”

“This will be like a vacation,” Nathan put in. “You’re going to have fun. I promise. All right?”

George smiled uncertainly. “All right.”

“Good. Now the only catch is, we have to stay together, all four of us, every minute, until we get out of this house. Okay?”

George’s smile died. “You think the killer’s gonna get us. Don’t you, Nathan?”

“I’m not going to let the killer get you,” Nathan said firmly. He slanted a glance toward Nidaba, who stood silently beside him. “Not any of you. And that’s why we’re going to stay together while we pack and get ready to leave. Understand?”

“I guess,” George said.

“It’s not necessary for all four of us to remain together,” Nidaba offered. “Remaining in pairs would do just as well, Natum, and speed may very well be of the essence here.”

He held her gaze, nodded slowly, and knew she must be feeling the same shivers up her spine that he was. A foreboding. A threat, lingering, looming. Clapping his hands together and forcing a smile he was far from feeling, Nathan said, “Great idea. Nidaba, you can help Sheila get her things together, and I’ll go with George and help him get packed. All right?”

George clapped his hands in exactly the same way. “All right. Let’s go, then!”

The bags packed, Nidaba and Sheila waited in the driveway for George and Natum to go and pull the car around. It gave Nidaba time to think. To wonder. This ability of Puabi’s, this astounding talent she had, just how advanced was it? What if, for example, Puabi tried to take on Natum’s form? How would Nidaba know?

And yet, she thought, she
would
know. She was certain of it, in fact. Surely Puabi couldn’t be
that
clever.

The question lingered though, what if she could?

Never. 1 know Eannatum far better than his so-called wife ever did,
Nidaba thought coldly.
She couldn ‘t fool me. Not for a moment.

Which begged another question—how had the clever Puabi managed to fool Natum last night into believing
she
was Nidaba? Surely he knew Nidaba far better than Puabi ever had.

Then again, he likely hadn’t been thinking with his mind just then.

It angered her. Infuriated her.

It shouldn’t.

Gods, she still loved the man.

He pulled the car around and got out, opened the trunk and came to take the suitcases that sat at Sheila’s feet.

“Do you suppose it’s safe now, to discuss where we’ll be going?” Sheila asked at length.

Already, Nidaba could feel the easing of the tension that had settled over them back inside the house. The gloom. The pall of death, holding them all in its grip. The tension between her and Natum, however, was still as powerful as ever. She didn’t want him to know what she felt for him. It made her far too vulnerable to him to feel this way. Gods forbid he should realize it.

“There’s nothing to discuss. Just get in the car and go. Don’t tell me where. Don’t even decide where, until you’re out of here,” Nathan ordered. “When you get somewhere safe, call me at home. Let me know you’re all right. I won’t ask you where you are, or a number where you can be reached. If I do, don’t give it to me. You understand?”

“But... how will you know how to reach us, Nathan?” Sheila asked.

“Jot a phone number on a postcard and send it to the gallery address. Don’t sign it, don’t put a return address on it, and mail it from some other place or send it to someone else and have them forward it for you. I’ll know what it is, and I’ll call you as soon as it’s safe to come home. Understand?”

“My heavens, Nathan, do you really think all this is necessary?” Sheila asked, her eyes widening.

It was Nidaba who answered the question. “You of all people, Sheila, should know that it is. This woman, this murderer, is smart. She’ll use anything she can to get to Nathan and me. Including you.”

Shutting her eyes, Sheila nodded. Then she opened them again and glanced at George. Nidaba did too. He looked so frightened, so pitiful. Smiling brokenly, Sheila stood on tiptoe and whispered something in his ear. His face split in an instant smile. “Can we? Can we really go
there?”
he asked, all but bouncing.

“Yes. Just remember, it’s a secret.” To Nathan she said, “We’ll call you by six this evening. No later. I don’t want you hanging about this house any longer than necessary waiting for us to call.”

It seemed very odd to Nidaba that she should feel like hugging the two of them before they got into the car. Even more odd to feel tears threatening at the thought of them leaving.

And yet that was exactly what happened. She hugged Sheila tight, and the woman patted her back and squeezed her in return. “Please be careful,” Sheila told her. “And don’t forget...” Then leaning closer, she whispered into Nidaba’s ear, “He
loves
you.”

Nidaba had to fight back tears as she kissed the woman’s cheek. Then she found herself wrapped in a powerful bear hug and picked up right off her feet. George swung her from side to side, squeezing her tight. Then he put her down and grinned at her. “Don’t cry, Nidaba. We’ll be back soon. Won’t we, Sheila?”

“Yes, we will,” she told him.

“You’ll take extra good care of my dog, won’t you, Nidaba?”

“You know I will,” she promised, sniffling, wondering vaguely where the lumbering beast had wandered this time.

It was worse yet when she had to watch George’s eyes tear up as he hugged Natum. “Please don’t make us stay away too long,” he said.

“I couldn’t get along without you for very long, my friend,” Natum replied, his voice tight.

Then Sheila hugged him, and Nidaba saw, even through her misty eyes, that she whispered something in Natum’s ear, too. She wondered if it was the same thing the woman had whispered to her.

Natum looked up, caught Nidaba’s eye, and said to Sheila, “Once, maybe that was true.”

“Once true, always true. Some things don’t die, Nathan. You remember that.” Sheila kissed Nathan’s cheek, and then she took George’s hand and led him to the passenger side.

Nathan turned away from the car as they got in and pulled away. He lowered his head and pressed his forefingers to his temples, rubbing small circles there as if his head ached.

“You’ll miss them terribly,” Nidaba murmured.

“They’re my family.”

“I know.” She lifted a hand, tentative, hesitant, and finally touched him. She stroked his hair, caressed the back of his neck in an effort to rub his pain away. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll make it safe for them, and then they’ll come back.”

He met her eyes, nodded twice, but didn’t look convinced that what she said was the truth. “Let’s go. We’ve got to pack our own things, close up the house, and collect that damned dog.”

“If we can find her,” Nidaba said, glancing to the left and right. “She’s nowhere around at the moment.”

“We’d
better
find her,” Natum said grimly. “George will never forgive us if we don’t.”

* * *

When Nidaba came down the stairs with her few possessions packed in the carpetbag Nathan had given her, he was sitting in a claw-legged armchair, staring into the burgeoning flames of a newly built fire. In one hand he held a crystal tumbler half filled with amber liquid that turned red in the firelight.

“I thought we were leaving.”

He didn’t look up. “I know.”

“Have you changed your mind?”

Drawing a breath, he seemed to gather himself. He turned his head slowly, faced her. The firelight painted one side of his face in orange and yellow, leaving the other side in dark shadow, so he looked like some demon prince sitting there. “I’ve been thinking.”

She sighed, set her bag on the floor, and came closer. “Thinking about what, Eannatum?”

His gave her a thoughtful, penetrating look. “It’s been so long since anyone has called me that. It almost feels like someone else’s name now.”

“I apologize if it makes you uncomfortable. It’s who you are to me. Who you’ll always be. To me, ‘Nathan’ is a stranger.”

“Nathan is the man I wanted to be. The man I’ve been pretending to be for years now. I’m comfortable being him. It’s safe. Peaceful. Predictable.”

“And fraudulent. You’re a ruler, a warrior, and an immortal High Witch, Eannatum. Not a gallery owner or an antique dealer. You’re no quaint New Englander, but a Sumerian king.” She drew a deep breath, sighed. “But you know all of that. Natum, you said we would stay here only long enough to gather a few things and George’s precious stray, and then we’d be off again. Go someplace safe.”

“I haven’t found the dog yet,” he said.

“Nor do you seem to be looking for her. Natum, you told me—”

“I know what I told you. It was a lie. What I told you was not what I intended to do. And it’s not what you intended either. Is it, Nidaba?”

He stared at her, brows raised, eyes so piercing that she finally had to look away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you do. You were going to go along with my plan, and slip away from me at the first opportunity, to come back here and wait for Puabi. To take her on by yourself.”

She made a face. “You think you know me so well, do you?”

He shrugged. “It’s what I was planning to do. We’ve always had certain things in common, Nidaba. Bull-headedness being one of them.”

Slowly she lifted her eyes to his. “You were planning to come back here without me?”

He nodded.

“Why? She could as easily kill you as the other way around.”

He smiled, very slightly, just one side of his mouth pulling upward. “Why were
you
going to do it?”

Nidaba narrowed her eyes. “I owe the bitch. Besides, I’m a warrior. It’s what I do.”

“I owe her as well, you know,” he said softly.

“Ahh, but
you’re
an ordinary antique dealer. Mild-mannered, model citizen. Boring as milk toast and content to remain that way.”

His eyes seared hers with a flash of anger before he banked it again and drew a calming breath. “Sit down, Nidaba. I think it’s time we finished our talk.”

“I’ve no wish to discuss the past any further.”

“You don’t need to do anything but listen. Sit down.”

Blinking in surprise, for he sounded just then more like the king she remembered than he had since she had seen him again, Nidaba met his eyes, searched them. “All right.” She took the rocking chair and pushed it closer to the fire, closer to him, then stepped around it and sat down. “I’m listening.”

He nodded, his face tight. “It pains me to think that you believe what you do of me.”

“And what is that?”

He looked at her. Just looked at her. His eyes, as dark as ever they had been, and so, so intense. She could see all the way into his soul, she thought, in the power of that look. And it was obvious that he could see clear to the core of her own. She couldn’t look away. Her heart seemed to shudder beneath the force of that gaze. To crack and split apart.

“You tell me,” he said, his tone deep, commanding, uncompromising.

“No.”

“Tell me, Nidaba. Say it.”

“Don’t do this to me,” she whispered.

“The hell I won’t. Nidaba, you
know.
You’ve always known. I need to hear you say it.”

She jumped to her feet, turning away, but he was up in a heartbeat, gripping her shoulders, forcing her to face him. “I didn’t know you were pregnant when you left Lagash, Nidaba. I didn’t know you’d had my son.”

“Stop.”

“But even so, I turned over every rock in Sumer, and beyond, searching for you. Trying to find you.”

Tears flowed down her face now. “To have me killed. To protect your throne,” she whispered, her throat so tight she could barely force the lies through it.

“To bring you back to me. Because I didn’t want to live without you. Because I loved you, Nidaba.”

“No!” She pulled free, turned her back, and fought not to break down in front of him. But the racking sobs tore at her, straining to escape.

“Is it easier to believe it was me, Nidaba? Is it easier somehow if you can blame me, hate me? Did that make all those years of loneliness go by any faster? Did it?”