To Ride the Gods’ Own Stallion

Copyright © 2001, 2010 by Diane Lee Wilson

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The characters and e
vents portrayed in this book are fictitious and used fictitiously. Apart from well-known historical figures, any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

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Source of Production: Webcom, Toronto, Canada

Date of Production: July 2010

Run Number: 12935

Dedicated to my parents,

who gave me love and

taught me confidence

Soulai's story takes place in 640
bc
, at the height of the Assyrian Empire. In 612
bc
, some fifteen years after Ashurbanipal's death, the Medes and Babylonians conquered the city of Nineveh.

The land surrounding that ancient city is now part of Iraq.

Zagros foothills, Assyria, 640
bc

Only the gods saw the mottled yellow snake slip through the thatched roof. It had been two months since she had eaten and her flickering tongue sensed the warmth of life inside the mud-brick home. She stretched downward through the darkness, found safety in a pile of long reins, and coiled, waiting.

At first there was no movement. Then a delicious rustling pulled her forward. Slithering through a maze of yokes and cruppers, she came to a corner of the room that was lighter, and warmer. An oil lamp cast its wavery glow over a grouping of clay horses. She raised up and stared at the sculptures—this one fixed in a voiceless whinny, that one in a suspended prance—and knew something among them was moving. She tasted the air. And lunged!

At the same instant that a rat quivered in her jaws, the lamp tipped and fell. Fire splashed across her back, sending her up the mud wall.

She wanted to rest, to wrap her coils around the rat and squeeze the life from it, but the heat was following her. Singed scales began to burn anew as rising flames licked at the dried thatch. Clenching her jaws, she glided to the ground, disappearing into the night just as the fire burst through the roof.

Dust and Ashes

B
etter that you'd never been born.

The words still burned in Soulai's ears. He hugged his knees and rocked back and forth. The other villagers joined in the evening's ceremonial wailing, but Soulai's throat was too dry to cry anymore.

For thirteen years he'd sat around the fire with everyone else on this first night of the month of Tammuz and mourned Nature's death. He knew that while the goddess made her summer-long journey through the underworld, his mountain would wither and die. Leaves were already starting to fall from parched tree limbs, in fact, and this day had certainly been the hottest of the year.

But tonight Soulai was mourning his own death.
Better that you'd never been born
, his father had said. They hadn't shared a word or glance since, and Soulai had begun to feel that his existence, in his father's eyes, had ended. Blinking back tears, he picked up the ball of damp clay at his side and tossed it into the air. With each smacking return to his hands, he punished himself. You should have been watching the bushes, he scolded. You should have readied a pile of rocks. When the lion attacked you should have…

The clay hit the ground with a thud. Quickly he picked it up and brushed away the dirt. He felt a shiver of fear. He knew what he
should
have done, but he'd searched to the core of his being and hadn't found the bravery. It just wasn't there.

Stroking the gritty weight with one thumb, he looked up at the sky. The brilliant constellations that normally came to life before his eyes seemed to hover at a distance. There was the magnificent scorpion, poised just above the southern horizon, its glittering tail curled over its back like a giant fishhook. At its center, the one star that usually flared from copper to red to gold shone without a flicker. And the serpent handler, who endlessly struggled to contain the giant snake, wasn't moving at all. Soulai had a dizzying sensation that the world was pulling away from him. Maybe I'm dead already, he thought.

“Soulai!”

He jumped. But it was only his older sister, Soulassa. He tossed his ball of clay into the air again.

“He'll see you,” she warned. “He's with Uncle in the hut right behind you.”

“He's drunk by now.”

“He's not blind.”

Bitterness engulfed him. “He might as well be. He doesn't see
me
. ”

“Soulai.” The voice was still chiding, though gentler. “If you'd look up from your clay once in a while, you'd see things better. Such as lions. You were fooling with it today, weren't you—your clay?”

Why not ask if I'd been breathing today? Soulai thought. As if I had some choice in reaching for the stuff each morning. As if I could stop my fingers from digging to find the form that lies hidden inside each lump. It was so much easier to hide in his clay, easier than facing life. Or death.

“You're getting too old for this,” his sister went on. “I'm not going to be around much longer to protect you—I'm getting married, remember? Who's going to chase away your lions then?”

The question went unanswered; Soulai hunched his shoulders and started slapping the ball of clay from palm to palm. When he did lift his head, Soulassa was gone.

“In a village not very far from this one,” the storyteller began, “there once lived a lazy man.”

The ritual was complete. The men from this, his uncle's village, and from nearby villages, now sprawled around the embers, bellies aching from the longest-day feast and the celebration of his sister's impending marriage. Their shoulders sagged as they fell under the magic of the soothing words. Children dozed in the laps of their mothers and sisters, who rocked back and forth in unconscious rhythm. Boys like Soulai who had grown past rocking slipped off into the silver-lit forest for their own celebrating.

Embarrassment over the day's events, and misery over his father's words, kept Soulai from joining them. They were all champing at the bit to become men. But he? He'd resigned himself to the role of coward, running to his clay each time he stumbled into trouble.

With a heavy sigh, he set to squeezing the clay into shape. Then, remembering Soulassa's warning, he hid it in his lap and glanced over his shoulder. His father and mother, along with his two younger sisters and an infant brother, remained in the hut behind him. So he flipped the clay into the air and pressed it between his palms again. Still thinking, he began molding it.

He'd tried to shape himself into the sort of son his father wanted. He'd sat at his father's side and attempted to learn the skills of the harness-maker. But where only a strap was needed, he'd found it necessary to add a decorative fringe. And a breast-collar couldn't leave his hands without some intricate pattern tooled into it. With great pride, he'd shown his work to his father. “You're wasting your time,” his father had growled. “An ass can't look in a mirror.”

Soulai studied the clay in his hands and frowned. For some reason it wasn't responding tonight. He bit his lip. There was also a nagging feeling that he had forgotten something. He shook his head, collapsed the lump between his hands, and started over.

After his failure as a harness-maker—at least in his father's eyes—he'd been banished to the hills as a goatherd. But even at this simplest of tasks, Soulai had disgraced himself—that very afternoon, in fact, when he hadn't seen the lion's approach. It had pounced so suddenly, bloodying one goat and killing another. Soulassa had appeared just as quickly, screaming at the top of her lungs. Her shouts had easily drowned his own cry, as he had scrambled behind a pistachio tree. Through its branches he'd marveled at how bravely his sister had run up to the startled creature, at how her wool tunic had strained across the muscles of her broad shoulders as she'd heaved clumps of dirt and sticks at it. And the lion had actually run away!

He shook his head again. My own sister…more of a man than me. She and her betrothed will marry and have many children, no doubt all strong boned and brave like her. Maybe they'll even name one after me. The smile melted from his face. What kind of fate would that be, to be named after a person so worthless that his own father would wish he'd never been born?

“And then I shall move to a big house in a big city, and I shall…”

The storyteller's words faded away as Soulai clenched his teeth and pummeled the clay with his fist. He slapped it loudly between his hands, then bent over it and worked furiously. Black curls fell across his lean cheeks. His breathing quickened. An unseen fire crept through his fingers, and, as if by the gods' own hands, a lifelike creature began to arise from the clay.

While animals of all kinds leaped from his fingers, horses were his favorite subject and a small herd of them lay hidden in the corner of his thatched-roof hut. He had taken them out this evening, in fact, after his family had left for his uncle's village, and he had admired them by the flame of the oil lamp. Soulassa's words returned to him and he blushed. Of course he was too old to actually play with them. But they still came to life in his dreams, and he could choose to hitch his chariot to a pair of powerful, feather-crowned chargers or throw a leg over the back of a restive stallion and gallop beneath starlit skies across the Assyrian flatlands. It was the only time he was truly happy.

He coaxed an arching neck from the clay and pinched a windblown mane along its ridge, then, dissatisfied, smashed the features and began again. Horses were the hardest to bring to life, for his village owned none, only a few donkeys. Trying to fashion this creature of the gods when he had only its long-eared, hairy-hided cousins for models frustrated him. But the trader Jahdunlim had a horse, and he might be climbing the trail to the village tomorrow. Soulai looked forward to watching the animal on its tether; he'd remember to note the shift of balance when it pawed the ground, the angles of the small ears cocked this way and that, and the exact arc of the head and neck as the horse reached around to nip at a fly. For weeks after Jahdunlim had come and gone, Soulai knew he'd sculpt in a frenzy.

There was one time when the trader had spied some of Soulai's creations, scooped them up—though none of the horses, Soulai wouldn't allow it—and carried them down the mountain. Months later, he had returned with a copper piece for Soulai. His father had hurrahed and wanted to trade it right back to Jahdunlim, who, with a greedy eye, just happened to have brought with him a new awl and a handful of needles. But Soulai had refused. The animals he had birthed were his and he would keep the offered compensation for their loss.

For a whole day he clutched the copper, squeezing nail marks into his palm for fear he would lose it. He savored its hammered hardness and smelled the tangy odor mingling with his sweat. The next day he had punched a hole in it, pierced it with a thong, and draped it around his neck.

At the time he'd thought he would keep it forever, but now he intended to give it to Soulassa to add to her meager dowry. He was ready, even, to trade some of his beloved horses to Jahdunlim. This he would do for his sister, the one who always outshone him, but the only one who tried to understand him.

Soulai lifted a hand and fingered the metal piece now. He again looked up at the scorpion in the sky, at its lovely copper-colored star. There was something unusual about the way it was glowing, brighter and brighter. Other stars seemed to unstick themselves from the sky and float with it. Then more and more, brilliant bits of fire that…

“Fire! Fire!”

The first shouts flew past Soulai's ears. He thought they were part of the story.

“Soulai!” Some boys came running into the circle, out of breath. “We can see your house burning! Where's your father?”

Before he could answer, his father bolted from his brother's hut. He wiped his hands on his tunic and, at the last instant, leaped over his son kneeling in the dirt. “How bad?” Soulai heard his father ask as they raced down the mountainside through the darkness. He heard no answer. But a thick drift of smoke suddenly wrinkled his nostrils. With his next heartbeat he was sprinting after them, vaguely aware that his mother was already moaning and gathering the youngsters into her arms.

Luminous orange sparks were bursting into the black sky ahead of him. By the time he'd careered down the winding footpath, jumped the stream, and entered the small clearing that separated their home from the others in the village, Soulai saw that it was fully ablaze. The walls pulsated red; the thatched roof—what wasn't floating away as weightless cinders—shivered in an ocean of ripping flames.

He felt his stomach tighten. The lamp—did I leave it burning? Is the fire
my
fault?

“Oh, Soulai.” His sister's fingers wrapped around his arm. The pity in her voice made him wonder if she knew. “Your horses.” The remains of the crackling roof collapsed with a loud crash, burying his creations along with the sound of her words.

Tears stung his eyes. He truly was worthless! His father was right; he should never have been born. Fearfully, he glanced over at his father, standing among the awestruck villagers. The orange glow couldn't hide the fact that his face had gone pale. But it took another loud snap and spray of sparks to bring the real horror to Soulai's attention.

With his stomach doubled in a painful knot, he looked back into the flames: Jahdunlim's tack! Every last bit of it was crumbling to ash: twin sets of fine harness, splendidly supple driving reins, and several silver-studded bridles, all repaired by Soulai's father and awaiting the trader's return. There was a whip, too, or there had been; a knob-handled one with a long tail that Soulai had helped rebraid into three clawlike tassels. Oxen would never again suffer its sting, Soulai thought, but Jahdunlim owned many more whips…and a fiercer temper than his father. His mind spun. For the first time, horse or no, he dreaded Jahdunlim's coming.