Books by Maggie Shayne (332 page)

She lowered her face. To hide a rush of tears, he thought.

Reaching for her hand, he pulled her to her feet. She’d put on the black dress again. She liked the old ways, he thought. Maybe he did too. Maybe he wished he could go back in time and live it all again. Gods, but he would do things so differently this time.

Side by side, they walked into the hall and down the stairs. “When Puabi lost her child, years before, part of me ...” He lowered his head, shaking it slowly. “Part of me was riddled with guilt—because I hadn’t fully wanted the child. I wanted a son with you, not with Puabi.”

She nodded slowly, her cheek brushing against his shoulder because she walked so closely beside him. If he thought for a moment that there was a chance she could ever forgive him for all his mistakes—mistakes that had cost her everything—But no. That was foolish thinking.

They stopped in the kitchen, both of them avoiding the back door. The memory of what they’d found out there, too fresh and too recent.

“It’s an honest emotion, Natum,” Nidaba said. “Your being less than thrilled about Puabi’s child had nothing to do with its death.”

“I know that. But knowing it did nothing to ease the guilt I felt.” Sighing, he went on, even as he pulled out a chair, and guided Nidaba into it. “Later, when they told me you were dead, I didn’t even want to live. I was glad I didn’t have a child to look after, to be responsible for. I was devastated when I learned that you’d had a son, and that he had died so young, and I tormented myself with wondering if he had been my own. And even then, I didn’t know it was murder. I was told it was an accidental fire.”

“It is good, perhaps, that you didn’t know the truth, then,” Nidaba said, staring into space now, her face grim.

Turning his head, he kept his eyes fixed on Nidaba’s face. “I’d have killed her if I had known. I swear to you, Nidaba, she would have paid with her life.”

She cast her eyes downward, neither accepting his words nor arguing with them.

“Puabi knew how I mourned you. She couldn’t help but know it. And she knew I mourned your son in a way I had never mourned hers. She thought, I suppose, that once you were gone, I would stop searching for you, stop longing for you. Perhaps turn to her, in your place. But losing you only made me realize the gravity of my mistakes. And I regretted having married her more than I ever had before. She tried to come to me, to make me love her. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it. And she hated me for that.”

“Being rejected by her own husband would not have set well with that one,” Nidaba said.

“No. No, it didn’t. But she struck back.” He reached into the refrigerator, and pulled out a covered dish, swallowing hard. “Chicken stew,” he said. “Left over from the last meal Sheila cooked us.”

“She’s at peace, Natum.”

“I know.” He turned to the counter, filled two dishes with the stew, then popped them into the microwave and pressed a button.

“You said Puabi struck back at you,” Nidaba said. “How did she do that?”

He watched the bowls revolve. “She began to speculate that I was cursed, under an enchantment. She whispered suggestions of black magick. Said these things even beyond the walls of the palace, and whispered accusations of all kinds against me. She thought to discredit me. But her plan reversed upon itself. The people began to talk, as people will do. But rather than condemning me, they compared my state to the madness of Gilgamesh, the legendary hero, after his best friend Enkidu was killed. I was loved more than ever before. The people said I ruled by the blessing of a real and true goddess who had for a time walked among them. They said that the mysterious High Priestess Nidaba wasn’t just named for a goddess, but actually had been one. One who blessed and favored their king. But that she had died horribly, and they feared that I would soon follow, wasting away in mourning for her, unless I could be shaken free of my heartache. Gifts were piled upon the palace steps, public prayers for me uttered in the city square, musicians played outside my chamber windows. And a statue was erected in the temple in your likeness, Nidaba ... in an effort to comfort me.”

“I did not know.”

“You were a true legend,” he said. “And when rumors persisted that you had been seen in foreign lands, long after your supposed ‘death,’ the people became even more convinced of your divinity.”

A look crossed her face, as if this tale pained her somehow. “Please, continue.”

He closed his eyes, shook his head, took the two steaming bowls of stew from the microwave and placed them on the table, along with utensils, bread and butter, and salt. Then, sitting down, he let himself fall into the memory as he told the tale of the night his queen had killed him.

Eannatum paced in his royal bedchamber. Just beyond the window, several of his most longtime advisers stood watching while a band of musicians played the lyre and harp and drums, and sang songs of the greatness of their king and the glory of the High Priestess Nidaba, who had rejoined her mother, the Goddess, and even now reigned from a heavenly throne and smiled down upon the people of Sumer.

It did nothing except etch the pain ever more deeply on his soul. Bad enough to have believed she had left him, bad enough to live without her... but this ... this was surely more punishment than any man deserved to bear. Knowing he would never see her again, never touch her, knowing she had a son who might have been his own—dead, just as she was. Dead.

He threw a goblet at the wall, and the sound rang in the hollowness of the room. It was followed by another sound. That of the large oak door creaking open, of the footfalls of small slippered feet. And then of the voice of the woman he’d been forced, by circumstances and vicious fate, to wed.

“It has been over a year, Eannatum.” Puabi said, her tone impatient and tinged by disgust. “Can you not let go of this mourning even now?”

He turned to look at her. She was beautiful, truly. Small and slight, with delicate features, a tiny waist, and round eyes of vivid lapis blue. Those eyes looked weary now. Nearly as weary as he felt. And yet they remained haughty, proud, and cruel.

“My mourning is no concern of yours.”

“To think I hoped you might turn to me, now that your whore is finally gone,” she said, bitterness overshadowing her beauty—making her seem ugly instead. “To think I had any hope at all you might do the honorable thing. The right thing for your country.”

He grated his teeth and clenched his hands into fists at his sides. “You are a political ally, Puabi. You knew that from the start. It is not my fault if it pains you, now, to see me mourning another woman.”

“Pains me? You think you have the power to hurt
me,
Puabi, Queen of all Sumer?” She tossed her head, stalking away from him in quick, angry strides. “It is not pain I feel, Eannatum, but humiliation. You may as well strip me naked, roll me in camel dung, and parade me through the streets. You’re making a fool of me before the entire kingdom! And a bigger fool of yourself. All over some nothing little priestess who’s dead and gone.”

He spun on her. “That little priestess was twice the woman you’ll ever be, Puabi. Speak ill of her again, and you’ll regret it, I vow.”

She sniffed indignantly. “Act like the king you are,” she cried. “Stop wallowing in your sorrow before all the world.”

He glared at her. “Perhaps you should consider returning to Ur, ruling from your palace there.”

“I am queen of Sumer, not merely of Ur. Lagash is the chief city of Sumer—thanks to our marriage. It is my right to sit on its throne, and you will
not
move me from it!”

They locked gazes, hatred flashing in her eyes more brightly than he’d yet seen it. A tap came at the chamber door, and she banked the emotion, turned and flung the door open. A servant stood there, bearing a tray with wine and chalices. Puabi took the tray and then turned back again.

“What’s this?” Eannatum asked, his tone sarcastic.

“Ah, but don’t you see it, your highness? This is your devoted wife, playing the role you asked her to play. Ordering up wine to soothe her husband’s misery.” She slammed the tray down onto a nearby stand, poured wine from the jug so clumsily that it slopped over her hand, then spun and held the chalice out to him. “Take it,” she snapped. “Accept a bit of comfort from the wife you never wanted. And choke on it, you bastard.”

He snatched the chalice from her, sneering at her as he did, and slugged back its contents in one long draft. Then he dragged the back of his hand across his mouth and let the chalice fall from his hand to the floor. “Happy?”

Her expression changed. It darkened. She smiled very slowly. “Yes. More than I have been since I agreed to this loathsome arrangement.”

No sooner did she say the words than dizziness struck Eannatum. He pressed a hand to his head. But the dizziness only grew worse. He blinked as her face swam before his eyes. “What is this, Puabi? What have you ... ?” He tried to lunge toward the door, but stumbled instead, and found himself sitting on his own bed.

Suddenly Puabi shoved him backward, so he was lying down, and she straddled him. She tore open his robe. And he stared up at her, shivering, ill, too weak to even ask what she was doing. He couldn’t fight her. The room seemed to spin around him. His hands, his arms, refused to obey his mind’s commands to move, to push her off. He couldn’t convince his voice to shout for help.

“I know what you are,” Puabi said, her voice almost a growl. “My sages and sorcerers have told me about your kind. But you don’t deserve immortality, Eannatum. You waste it, grieving over what you’ve lost instead of relishing what you have!” She drew a dagger from a sheath. “You don’t deserve eternal life,” she said. “But I do! I do!”

Eannatum blinked in shock, realizing she meant to kill him. He forced himself to move, lifted his arms weakly to fend off her attack, but his struggles were useless. “You ... what are you ... No!”

Puabi lifted the blade high, and drove it into his chest. It was like fire and ice all at once, splitting him. He felt the searing pain of his flesh being sliced wide, felt the blood bubbling forth like a hot scarlet geyser, and a cry was forced at last from his lips.

A cry that was heard, for even as he lay there, pain screaming through his mind, blood bubbling out of his body, the chamber door burst open, and two of Eannatum’s men lunged into the room. Galor was one of them, and it was he who tore Puabi off him, disarmed her, dragged her away. But it was too late, Natum thought as he lay there. He could feel the life ebbing from his body. He was dying.

“Take her to the dungeons,” Galor shouted.

“No!” Puabi cried. “He’s a demon, your king. Cursed by that demoness who pretended to be a priestess. He’s not human, I tell you! Mark me, you’ll see! You’ll see!”

Her voice faded. There was nothing more. Eannatum lay there, in a pool of his own royal blood ... and he died.

It took a long time for him to revive. And later, much later, when he would learn about such things, he would wonder why that was. Perhaps because of the damage Puabi’s blade had done to his body, his heart, or perhaps because of the sleeping powder she had put into his wine. But he truly thought that it was more likely because he had no will to live at that point. He’d been like a walking corpse ever since he’d been told of Nidaba’s death. So there was no vitality in him, no life. And he suspected that was the reason he remained in the throes of death for so many hours.

When he felt that first rush of breath splitting his lungs, arching his body, jolting him wide awake, he thought he was feeling Puabi’s blade driving into his heart all over again. But the pain, the shock, faded fast, and he blinked his vision clear and looked around him.

At first he saw only the earthen walls rising high on three sides, and the solid brick one at the fourth, completely finished. But he took little notice of the odd room, thinking instead of the mortal wound in his chest. He pressed his hand there, quickly, and sat up, looking down.

But there was no wound, no blood. He was dressed in his finest robes, his crown, his sword, and his dagger lying all around him. Quickly he tugged at the collar of his garment and looked inside at his chest. It was dark in this small room, but he could see, and he found that odd, disorienting. And even odder, there was no mark on his skin. No wound.

Had it been some kind of dream? A nightmare?

An aroma wafted toward his nose. He sniffed and realized it was the familiar smell of censers filled with burning herbs. Then he heard muffled chanting coming from beyond the solid brick wall.

All at once it hit him where he was, what had happened to him.

He was sealed in his own tomb, and even as he sat there, trying to understand, to make sense of what seemed impossible, he realized what was going on in the outer chamber.

Someone played a lyre. Others hummed or chanted or sang. Drummers beat a slow rhythm, a death beat. “Gods, no!”

He raced to the brick wall as the drumbeat and the chanting grew faster, louder, more and more frantic. He pounded on the bricks, clawed and kicked at them, cried out over and over, but it was all lost in the pounding beat. And when that drumming reached its crescendo, only to go silent all at once, he knew they were all out there, his advisers, his courtiers, priests and priestesses, and loyal followers ... all of them, lifting the golden chalices to their lips, and sipping the sacred Elixir of the Dead.

“The poisoned wine,” he whispered. “No! Stop, I’m not dead!”

He pounded and kicked at the wall even harder. Then he snatched the dagger from where it lay, and began attacking the mortar with its blade, fighting to loosen just one brick. Anything to get to them, to stop them in time.

Finally, he scraped and pried enough to loosen a brick. Freeing it, he managed to kick several others loose until there was a hole big enough for him to crawl through. But the moment his head emerged on the other side, he knew he was too late.

He dragged his body through the opening, but his pace was no longer rushed or frantic. Then he stood in the midst of them all, and death surrounded him. His friends, and soldiers, his priests and priestesses, and the very musicians who’d been playing outside his chamber windows such a short time ago. They lay there, all of them. Dead. Dying. Reclining on the dirt floor, looking peaceful, beautiful, serene. Some were still breathing, barely. Silver ribbons were twined in the hair of the young women. One priestess still clutched the lyre. Those golden goblets lay beside them. Toppled and empty.

God, one of the dead men was Galor!

He wanted to scream, to cry out loud and rail against the meaninglessness of it all. His attendants, his first soldier, Ris ... all of them had died, believing they were journeying with their king, to serve him in the other-world. Never had he known such a heavy silence. Such a weight of sadness.

But it would not last. At any moment, he knew, the procession would arrive from the temple, and they would begin throwing the first layer of earth into the pit, to cover the bodies. He had to force himself to move.

Weakly, he ran up the sloping earthen ramp that his loved ones had so recently used to walk into their own mass grave, and when he reached the surface, some thirty feet above, he ran through the night, away from the city. He vowed he would never look back.

Eannatum got to his feet, pacing the kitchen. His bowl of stew was barely touched. He filled a glass with water and sipped it slowly. “I heard what happened next only by rumor. But it seems that one of the priests, when he returned to begin covering the grave, noticed the missing bricks. And upon checking further, he realized that my body was gone. He declared that Puabi had been telling the truth when she claimed I was some kind of netherworld demon. She was restored to the throne at once.”

“What became of your bitch-queen then, Natum?”

He looked down at her bowl. “Eat your stew.”

“I have no appetite.”

“Eat. Be strong. Better to kill her when she comes, Nidaba.”

With a fierce look, Nidaba spooned some of the stew into her mouth.

Natum did as well. When he had swallowed it, he went on with his tale.

“I was confused. I did not know what it could mean, that I had somehow revived from death. I thought of going after her—had I known then that she was responsible for the attack on you and our son, I would have. But for my own personal vengeance ... it just wasn’t worth the effort. I’d had my fill of ruling as a king. I was still in mourning for you. I went away. Far, far away, to try to find the answers to what I was, what my existence meant. Shortly afterward, Puabi returned to Ur. And that was where she ruled for many years to come. She had our marriage record stricken, had every mention of any alliance between the two of us erased. Stone tablets were crushed and new ones engraved. History was changed. I was remembered as a king of Lagash and onetime ruler of all Sumer, she as the mystical Queen Puabi of Ur. But never was there mention of the two of us having so much as met. And there never will be. No tablet with our true history will ever be found.”

He paused, sipped his water.

“She took the heart of another immortal, made herself immortal for as long as its power lasted,” Nidaba said slowly. Then she gasped, and widened her eyes. “By the Gods, Natum, there was only one other High Witch in Lagash—Aahron! That sweet young man who tried to tell me what I was. But I wouldn’t believe him. I sent him to serve in the palace.” She drew a trembling hand to her lips. “I sent him to his death.”

He could feel the grief that rose up in her at the thought. He couldn’t bear to see her hurting so deeply. “You can’t know it was Aahron’s heart she took, Nidaba.”

“But he was the only—”

Nathan caught her hand in his, drew it toward him, and brushed his lips over her knuckles. “He was the only High Witch you knew of, in Lagash. There could’ve been others. How would you have known, then? You knew nothing of our kind.”

She lowered her head. “I pray it wasn’t Aahron.” Nathan squeezed her hand and wished he could assure her it hadn’t been her young friend who’d fallen victim to Puabi’s blade. But he feared that if he did, he’d be lying. “Regardless of whose heart she stole,” Nidaba went on, “she killed in order to preserve her own life. And when the heart of her victim weakened, she took another, and another, and another. Do you know how many innocents she must have murdered to keep her evil alive for over four thousand years, Natum?”

“I can only imagine,” he said. “But it will end. Because she will come here, in search of us. And I will kill her.”

“Unless she kills you.”

“That won’t happen, Nidaba.”

“She is clever. She even made you believe she was me.”

He winced, remembering what had happened, regretting it to his very soul. There was pain in her voice when she spoke of it. Pain he’d caused, this time. “It hurt you deeply, when you saw me with her.”