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n the dusty street known as the “Way of Figs,” near the Trader’s gate of the smuggler’s city of Kutha, a Sumerian and an Akkadian argued beside a weary looking donkey. The two men’s noses nearly touched because in that city no one would be foolish enough to trust another doing business unless he was, as the saying goes, “close enough to smell his adversary’s breakfast.”
The Sumerian waved his hand at the sacks on the donkey’s back. “Two pots of beer, each a sila, and thirty gin of alkali but no more. These shreds of straw you are calling herbs are hardly fresh enough for kindling.” He hunched nearly in half to carry out negotiations. He was a towering four and one third cubits, and though the Sumerian was young, his head was bald and gleaming. He wore a reed stylus behind his ear which announced his profession, a dubsar, a scribe.
“Three sila of beer as they are counted in Lagash, not in Uruk, and a full sila of alkali would be only a token of gratitude for a gift such as this.” The other man was older and smaller, but the set of his jaw and the creases in his face suggested he had seen many things. From the tone of his Akkadian accented Sumerian, many of those things impressed him more than this giant from Uruk. “These herbs you yourself have sent for, and so my daughters and I have searched in far and dangerous places. You should offer me your services as a scribe for three seasons for a bounty like this.”
“One pot of beer, the alkali as I have offered and one Letter of Good Standing to be used in the market of Uruk.” The Sumerian opened a pouch at his belt and removed a cone of baked clay. “I will offer no more.”
The smaller man rubbed his chin in an gesture of calculation as old as humanity. “You are a notary of the market, scribe?” To a smuggler like Raas, a Letter of Good Standing could be his gate to the life of a legitimate merchant.
“I am Nergal, and this is my name on this seal.” Nergal replaced the seal in his pouch.
“I know your name, scribe. I would not have walked this far for someone who wasn’t known to me and vouched for by the market of Kutha.” The grudging compliment marked a turning point in the negotiation, and Nergal responded in kind.
“I would not have entrusted this task to anyone but Raas of the Quick Fingers.” Nergal made a small hook with his index finger to indicate that he was ready to seal the bargain.
After a moments hesitation, Raas returned the gesture, and they embraced formally. They walked to the temporary lodging Nergal had taken on the street of water birds. Nergal opened a pot of beer which they shared as he made good on his promise. Once the clay of the letter was dry enough, Nergal handed it to Raas with a thirty gin sack of alkali. Raas tied the sack to the donkey and made the letter, still hot from the fire, disappear through some sleight of hand. He then waited expectantly. Nergal said nothing, so finally Raas spoke.
“What about my pot of beer?”
“Was it so strong that you’ve already forgotten drinking it with me just now?” Nergal pointed to the empty pot on the ground by their feet.
Muttering, the old smuggler fingered the hilt of his dagger. Evening was coming on, and Nergel had also failed to offer Raas lodging. The old smuggler waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal and headed in the direction of the street of prostitutes where he could expect to find a room at a reasonable rate.
Nergal took an oil lamp and metal tripod up the mud brick steps to the flat roof of his apartment. It was Emesh, the dry season, and a comfortable night for sleeping under the stars. Most of the city’s thousands were out on their roofs for the night. The smells from their cook fires filled the air.
Nergal poured water from a jug into a small pot which he set atop the tripod. He placed the burning lamp so that it would warm the water. When the pot began to steam, Nergal took two sprigs of dried herbs from among the many different kinds in boxes and jars and sacks around him and crumbled a small amount into the water. Then he took an instrument of wood and leather and bronze and measured the stars. He opened a wooden box which held still more herbs already measured in small reed tubes and poured them into the mix.
He waited for the tea to darken and the steam to become fragrant, then he reached into the bag that Raas had brought him, and pulled out the small cutting for which any man would have given all of the land between the rivers. If Raas had known what he carried he would not have accepted any price. If the smuggler had known what happened to the last three adventurers sent to steal a cutting of this unique shrub, he would never have gone in the first place. But Raas had been lucky or smart or careful enough to return, and now it was in Nergal’s hands.
The plant looked very much like a boxthorn with its long brown thorns dusted white and small, oblong leaves. The leaves were dry and frail now, but the berries were still round and hard. They were blue and hazed with silver, like no other berries between the mountains and the seas of all the world. This plant grew in only one place, one tiny island open to the sun within a grotto which could only be reached by diving deep beneath the waves of the sea. This passage was reported to be protected by a horrible and ancient beast.
From the stars, Nergal saw that the moment had come, and he added the berries one, by one. He wondered how Raas had managed the theft and wished he had asked. Raas would never have another opportunity to tell him. Nergal knew that the smuggler would not wait in Kutha with a token as powerful as the letter, and he would even now be on the long road south to the great city of Uruk. Once Raas arrived, he would die. Nergal had added language which, though subtle, would insure that the first scribe who saw the letter in Uruk would have Raas beheaded in the market. A scribe’s word was greatly trusted.
The pot began to bubble and a purple mist rose in great puffs within which a silvery oil seemed to glimmer. Soon the puffs became a column and within the column a coiled vine of silver with berries bright as stars appeared. Like a snake striking, Nergal snatched a glowing berry from the vine then another. By the time he reached again, the vine vanished, and the smoke became a black stinking cloud. The water had boiled away to a charred residue in the bottom of the pot. He removed the pot from the flame.
The two berries still glowed brightly in his hand, he popped one into his mouth and swallowed it whole. It had no taste and felt cold all the way down to his stomach.
Something sharp touched his throat. “The other is mine, scribe, in place of the pot of beer you owe me.” Raas stepped around to where Nergal could see him, keeping the blade tip firmly against Nergal’s throat.
“It’s a poison, you mustn’t . . .”
Raas slapped Nergal’s hand from beneath and then snatched the bright berry from the air without moving the dagger at Nergal’s throat. “I know what it is, you perfumed idiot.” He chewed the berry slowly. “You really should have savored it. The flavor is sweet.”
Nergal sat back on his heels to gain some air between his throat and the dagger. “If you know what it is, then you know this knife will do you no good.”
“Oh, but how long does it take to work? Death is in the details.” Raas smiled. “You seem uncertain yourself, scribe. Why don’t you test it?”
Nergal reached into his pouch and pulled out a small flint knife he used to sharpen reeds for writing. He paused, but Raas nodded and motioned with his own knife. Nergal drew the sharp edge across the back of his own hand until blood flowed. By the flickering light of his lamp, he watched as the blood trickled then slowed and stopped. His skin burned, then ached, then tingled. When the tingling stopped, he wiped away the blood and saw that the flesh was whole. He put the knife back in the pouch as Raas watched him closely.
“My oldest daughter broke her back in a fall as we lowered her to the bush from the top of the grotto, I gave her one of the berries, but she died in agony.” Raas hunched down behind the dying fire. “Foolishly, I thought it was from her injuries, and so my youngest died also, from the unrefined berries of the immortality plant.”
“So you brought the plant to me, hoping I knew its secret.”
“Yes.” Raas sighed and put away the knife. “I had also hoped to have enough for my remaining two daughters.”
“Yet you took the last one for yourself?”
“How could I choose between them?” Raas rocked his head from side to side. “And maybe I’m a greedy old man. I’m a thief, a smuggler, not a priest. How long before you can make more?”
“A year. Once they have grown they cannot grow again until the rains have come and gone.” Nergal pulled the reed from behind his ear and unwrapped a parcel of bread, meat and vegetables. “Eat with me, we have business to discuss.”
“Now you offer me food?” Raas eyes narrowed, but he moved to Nergal’s side of the fire. “How much do you want for the secret of the plant?”
Nergal smiled. “Nothing you can offer could make me part with even one of the berries.”
“What? Then what business . . .” Raas looked down in shock at the sharp, hollow reed which sprouted from his heart.
“You should not have chewed the berry, nimble Raas. It looses much of its magic in the process.” Nergal stepped away from the spray of blood. “What advantage have I in immortality if there is another with the same power?”
“My daughters . . .” Raas gasped.
“Will mourn you.” Nergal laughed and turned just in time to step into thick ropes weighted with rocks swung with expert skill by two stick-thin girls. He was bound and gagged before he could even fall, face-first into the woven straw.
There was a muffled conversation behind him, he could hear the girls and the voice of Raas breathing his last words, but could not tell what they said. After a time, they threw a cloth over him and tied it shut and then began dragging him, blind and bound across the rooftop. He tried to struggle, but they only waited until he tired and then began again. He felt a hard edge and realized he was at the edge of the roof. He struggled even harder, but again the two girls only waited until he could not thrash anymore. Then he felt that a pole of some sort was beneath him, and it levered him over the edge to fall hard into the road below. It was the hardest blow he had ever felt, and his head rang like a temple gong. His shoulder made a crunching noise and flared in agonizing pain, then it burned, then it tingled and went numb. He was relieved to see that even such a serious injury healed so quickly. These monstrous children might be able to inconvenience him, but they could not harm him.
He might have told them so if he hadn’t been so well gagged, but he did stop resisting and even stood at their goads to allow them to strap him across the donkey. He wasn’t looking forward to whatever torture they planned to use to extract the secret of the plant, but they would have to free his mouth and words were his most powerful weapon. He would find a way to get them to free his hands and then, well then he would have to kill them both to protect his secret. Poor dead Raas would have no heirs at all. Nergal was just laughing at his own cleverness when the donkey stopped, and the girls loosed the ropes that lashed him like a pack to the beasts back. They tipped him back, and he slid to the ground until his feet touched, then he stood at their silent urging. “You, scribe,” one of them said in badly accented Sumerian. “You turn away.”
Only then did he notice that the girls had never spoken since talking to their father. An occasional sniffle or child’s grunt as they worked proved that these were the same small girls who captured him. He shuffled around until he faced away from the donkey.
“Father says, here you will stay a year in secret place. We go to Uruk. We will come back.” The girl’s voices came from behind him. The donkey’s hooves scuffed the dirt as they turned it away from him, back the way they had come. Then the beast bellowed, and a blow even harder than the earlier fall struck Nergal in the thighs tumbling him with a splash into deep water.
In a panic, he struggled at his bonds and tried to hold his breath, but he landed head down between two rocks with his neck bent at a difficult angle. The pressure of his lungs combined with the pressure on his neck was too much, and he gasped. Water hammered at his throat and seemed to tear his lungs apart inside. He gagged and choked, and with each spasm his neck hurt more, and it seemed to twist further. He felt his terrified heart beating in his ears, and he realized after a time that it was not stopping. He was not dying. He tried to ignore the terrible effort of inhaling and exhaling the water and moved his legs to right himself, but in every direction he struck something unyielding. He was not in a river but in a well, he realized, with only a few inches in any direction to the walls. He had never liked close places and now, truly suffocated but unable to even escape through death, his fear became a kind of madness. He prayed and cursed and pleaded for freedom with imagined visitors who each shook their heads and walked away leaving him to his doom.
Time passed, maybe days, maybe months but with it he began to notice a change. His bonds seemed looser and after still more time he could just move his wrists past each other. He sawed and struggled until finally with a burst of joy a hand slid free and then the other. With great difficulty he worked his arms around to his front and his hands closer and closer to his chin. For a terrifying moment he was stuck, but with a twist of his torso he managed to work free. Finally, he pulled the gag and blindfold from his face.
Complete darkness greeted his open eyes, and the water stung. He pushed on and was able to lift himself up by doing a handstand, but something was wrong. His cramped neck refused to straighten. As he reached back to massage it, he felt a sickening bulge where his broken spine had healed into a crooked knot. He might have to break it again to straighten his neck. His ankles and legs were still firmly bound, but he was able to use his hands to walk up the side of the well a little at a time. It was difficult work, and he slipped many times. He came to a place where the well widened enough that he was able to reach his feet. Hips wedged against the wall, he untied his ankles. He worked himself around until his legs were downward and began to climb in earnest for the top of the well.
He was enraged but not surprised to find the stone that blocked the well too heavy to lift. He couldn’t see, but he knew that he had grown thin, his body subsisting on itself with no other food. He wondered how long the girls had been gone. Could it be almost a year already? He had no way of knowing, but he began to plan how he would escape when they came. He would be weak it seemed, so they would have to feed him before he could show them how to work the magic. When he was stronger, he would kill them both and . . .
In the midst of his planning, he remembered something the girls had said. “We go to Uruk.” Did they mean to take the false Letter of Good Standing? Why else would they go? Could clever Raas have been fooled by the letter after all, or did he die before warning them?
Nergal let himself sink to the bottom of the well as the darkness pulled even closer around him like a mock shroud for a man who would never die. |
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