The Blood Star (99 page)

What was Naq’ia preparing?

“What should be done with the corpse, My
Lord?”

“Bury it,” I answered, my heart still cold
from the shock. “Bury it before it rots—what else, throw it to the
dogs? Bury the Lady Shaditu in the royal vault at Ashur, for she
was a king’s daughter, and her father, the Lord Sennacherib, loved
her.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

He bowed himself out of my presence and, one
assumes, took horse back to Nineveh with the surprising news that
there was to be no further investigation. No slaves were to be
questioned under torture, no old lovers need fear for their guilty
secrets, and the Lady Shaditu, who had been an evil woman and had
died such a death as stinks in the nostrils of the gods, was to be
laid to rest among her ancestors like some elderly virgin claimed
at last by the accumulated infirmities of a harmless life.

That night she came to me in my dreams. Yet I
hardly thought it a dream, for it remains in my mind as substantial
as the memory of a real event.

She looked as she had in the days of our
youth, clear-skinned and sleak, her breasts firm beneath her fine
linen tunic. She smiled with mischief as she sat down beside me on
a bench in our father’s garden in Nineveh—why there, I cannot begin
to guess.

“You raped me once,” she said, and the memory
brought with it a ripple of throaty laughter. “You beat me like a
tavern harlot and then forced yourself on me.”

“As I recall, you didn’t require very much
forcing.”

This made her laugh again, and she shook her
head so that I could hear the hair rustle like dry leaves.

“I would tease you into doing it again, but
there are no such embraces among the dead.” With her pink tongue
she licked her nether lip and brought her face close to mine. I
could feel her warm breath as she spoke. “Still, kiss me, Tiglath
my brother, if only to show you have forgiven me.”

“No, Shaditu. You are dead, remember? Even
now, you are lying in your casket somewhere. Try to behave with
appropriate dignity.”

“You are unkind,” she said, pulling away as
she dropped her eyes and pretended to pout. Then she looked up at
me again and grinned, showing lovely, even, white teeth.

“I will always love you, Tiglath, though you
are a brute and do not deserve it. Who else could I ever have
loved, for who else understood me as you did?”

“Understood that you were a wanton slut? Many
understood that.”

“Not as you did.” Another rich little throb
of laughter. “Still, it was sweet of you to let me be buried in the
royal vault. I should have missed being near the family. Esarhaddon
would probably have told them merely to dig a hole in the mud.”

“What do you want, Shaditu?”

“Only to warn you—and to be avenged.”

She sat there, turned slightly toward me, her
small hands resting on her thigh, and I could see a hardness come
into her eyes, as if the pupils had turned to iron. Yes, of course.
My sister would always insist on the final word, even in death.

“It was Naq’ia, wasn’t it,” I said at
last.

“Yes, of course.” She shrugged her fine
shoulders playfully. “Who else? My servants are all her spies, and
at last she had one of them poison me. In recent years I have taken
to drinking myself into a stupor amost every night, so I did not
even notice the taste of henbane in my wine. Everyone thought I had
killed myself, out of boredom I suppose. But not you, my clever
brother.”

The smile she turned on me was enough to
freeze the blood.

“I cannot have Naq’ia killed.”

“There are many things worse than death. You
will find a way to punish her.”

“And the warning?”

“Do not try to change things,” she said,
after a moment—it was almost as if she were delivering a message,
for the words did not seem to be hers. “There is no place for you
in a future which cannot be unwritten, and no labor of yours can
avail against the god’s will. Do not step into the trap that awaits
so many others.”

“Only that?”

“Only that.”

“Shaditu, what did Rimani Ashur see when he
examined the ginu?”

“Can a man read another’s destiny in the
entrails of a sacrificial goat?” She smiled her teasing smile, but
even as she spoke her image faded. “You will know all in good
time.”

And then, of course, I woke up to find the
sun streaming over my face. Yet the dream stayed in my mind.

Not an hour later a rider came from Harran
with news that the king had fallen ill.

“He has been ill almost since we left Calah.
At first he only complained of stomach pains, and even when he
could no longer travel it seemed to be nothing, yet now. . .

“He is very bad. Six days ago, he could not
even stand. His physicians do not know what is wrong, but the king
himself believes he is dying. He insisted you be sent for, My
Lord.”

“Then I must go to him.”

I did not trouble to appoint a deputy who
would govern in my absence, since I knew all such arrangements
would be in vain—if I left Calah, Naq’ia would rule, no matter what
I did. The king had known as much, which was why I had not
accompanied him on this campaign. He knew it now, lying on what
might be his deathbed. Thus, if he called me to him, it was for no
trivial reason.

I gave orders that Ghost was to be bridled
and waiting within the half hour. I sent no word to the royal
garrison. There was no time left to squander if I wanted to see my
brother alive, and I would travel faster without an escort. If
Esarhaddon thought he was dying, I had to believe him.

“Since I know you will not stop along the way
to eat, this will keep you from starving,” Selana told me, putting
a leather satchel into my arms. “It holds enough bread and dried
meat to last two men four days. There is even a small jar of
wine.”

“Two men?”

“Yes, two. You will take Enkidu with you, if
only for your wife’s peace of mind. Will you send word of the
king’s illness to the Lady Naq’ia?”

“No. She will hear quickly enough. It would
not surprise me if she knew already.”

When I came down to the courtyard Enkidu was
already waiting, mounted on his horse and ready. I kissed Selana
and our son good-bye, the future a blank wall before us. She only
smiled and said, “Take care.” She asked no questions because she
knew I had no answers for her.

The ride to Harran took six days. Horses must
be rested and fed and watered, but otherwise we never stopped. For
six days I hardly closed my eyes or looked at anything except the
road ahead of us. I tried to force myself not to think, since the
only idea my mind seemed able to contain was that Esarhaddon might
even then be dead—I could not even think as far as what the world
would hold for me and mine if Ashurbanipal became king. I simply
did not want my brother to die in the presence of strangers, with
no loving hand to close his eyes. It is therefore hardly surprising
that the journey has left hardly any trace on my memory.

We encountered outriders half a day from the
city walls, and they gave us fresh horses. Others met us at the
main gate, and I was taken directly to the provincial governor’s
house, which, in this emergency, had become both army headquarters
and royal palace. I had not even wiped the dust from my face when I
was shown into the king’s presence.

Esarhaddon was lying on a couch, asleep. His
face was wasted and gray. From the way his lips worked it was clear
his dreams tormented him. His officers and physicians stood about
in silence—and among these I saw Menuas watching me with his small,
frightened eyes.

Sha Nabushu, the king’s
turtanu
, came
up and touched me obsequiously on the arm, glancing down at his
master’s tortured rest.

“He is thus much of the time,” he said, this
in a voice that just missed being a whisper. “Presently he will
wake, and his mind will be clear enough. His strength is waning
fast, however. He asks for you constantly.”

I made no reply. I did not trust myself to
speak.

After perhaps an hour Esarhaddon woke up. His
eyes wandered about the room and then fastened on my face and then
widened with recognition. I believe he was too exhausted even to be
surprised.

Then he turned his gaze to Sha Nabushu.

“Get out,” he said, breathing out the words.
“Get out, all of you. I wish to speak to my brother alone.”

When they were gone, he motioned to me to
come and sit beside him.

“I haven’t come very far, have I,” he said.
“I suppose this means we will lose Egypt, and it will all have been
for nothing. Ah well.”

Yes—I could believe he was dying. If he could
give up his dearest wish so easily. . .

With what seemed a great effort, he closed
his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again they seemed almost
drained of life.

“I may not have much time.” Esarhaddon moved
his hand enough to lay it on my arm. “There is something I must
tell you.”

“It can wait, brother. You will recover and
can tell me then.”

He shook his head—he knew that I was merely
being a coward, that I did not want to hear whatever secret
burdened his heart.

“Sometimes the gods are merciful and give a
man warning,” he said. “I will not recover, Tiglath, and you must
know the truth or you will not be able to save yourself after I am
gone. I know you, and your conscience will paralyze you.”

His fingers slipped down and grasped my
wrist, turning my hand over. The mark I had carried there on the
palm all my life glowed like a drop of fresh blood.

“When Rimani Ashur read the omens to know if
it was the god’s will that I should be king, he found a blemish on
the
ginu
.” Even as he spoke, Esarhaddon’s eyes widened with
horror. “A hemorrhage, just under the surface, stained the goat’s
liver. It had the shape of a bloody star.”

He told me the whole story, some of which I
had already guessed. Shaditu had seduced Rimani Ashur, and Naq’ia,
who knew of it, had threatened to tell the king if her son was not
confirmed as
marsarru
. The chief priest feared for his
life—everyone knew of the doting love the Lord Sennacherib lavished
on his daughter, how he was blind to her wickedness—and so he
concealed the truth and proclaimed it the will of heaven that
Esarhaddon should rule as the next king. But Rimani Ashur was a
pious man, for all that he was weak in his flesh, and in the end
his remorse drove him to take his own life.

“There could be but one interpretation to so
fearful an omen, for the god had marked you in the same way, in the
hour of your birth, when our grandfather Sargon was finding his
simtu
at the hands of savages and heaven mourned the death
of so great a king by burning the night sky with a star the color
of blood. Once more, Tiglath my brother, you were favored over me.
It was the Lord Ashur’s will that you and not I should succeed our
father as king.”

I could guess what it cost Esarhaddon to tell
me these things.

“I knew nothing,” he told me. “I promise you
I had no inkling, not until I returned from the campaign against
Abdimilkutte. Naq’ia wanted to stop me from giving the order to
call you back from exile. That was the one thing she feared—not the
judgment of the gods, not my pitiful anger, only your return. She
had failed in her attempts to have you murdered, and she could no
longer harden my heart against you, so she told me the truth,
thinking it would tie me to her even more closely.”

“Yet you called me back.”

“Yes. You do not know how I missed you,
Tiglath, even from the moment I banished you. I would have called
you back when we met at Sidon, but you were so stiff-necked and
taunting. . . I was still too proud to humble myself, yet I knew,
even before I got back to Nineveh, that I had no one else in the
world to trust except you. Then Naq’ia told me about the omen, but
the story had the opposite effect from what she had intended—I was
terrified. By the grace of the Lord Shamash, I had never wanted to
be king, and I understood then why the gods had blighted my reign.
I needed you to save me from their vengeance, and my mother.”

“You could have abdicated.”

“No.” He shook his head slowly, like a man
resigned to fate. “I did not dare, for who would believe that I had
not been a party to Naq’ia’s plottings? So I thought to bring you
home and make it all up to you, heaping you with power and
honor—except that you seemed to have lost your taste for power and
honor. And I would make it up to the gods by conquering Egypt. I
would lay a kingdom at Ashur’s feet in atonement for my unwitting
sin against his will. The offering, it appears, has not been
accepted. Egypt is lost, and I remain unforgiven. Tiglath my
brother, do you, at least, forgive me?”

“I forgave you long ago. We have both
suffered through Naq’ia’s treachery—you, I think, more than I.
Esarhaddon my brother, you are not to blame because you have an
evil mother.”

We both wept and embraced each other, and it
seemed we had found once more the perfect love and trust we had
felt for each other as boys. Our long estrangement was at last at
an end.

“I am weary,” he said at last. “By the Sixty
Great Gods, I think I can sleep quietly now. Stay with me, brother,
and when I am awake again we will talk more.”

He drifted off, as easily as any child. And I
sat beside him, holding his hand.

I did not want my brother to die. Now less
than ever did I want him to be gathered into the Lady Ereshkigal’s
cruel arms. What was it that worked against his life with such slow
cruelty?

I thought perhaps I could guess. I had
guessed even in Egypt, but had allowed myself to dismiss the
suspicion when Esarhaddon seemed to recover. I had been a fool. .
.

“
You are a king’s son and live surrounded
by enemies,”
Kephalos had told me once.
“If your dreams of
greatness are to be fulfilled, and if you would survive to be
mighty and prosperous, you must learn to keep yourself out of
harm’s reach.”