The Assyrian (56 page)

We proceeded down this line of valleys until
we found a pass in the mountains. Then we crossed the pass and
headed back toward the Upper Zab, for I wished to cross it before
the floodwaters had risen enough to make the pontoon bridges
unusable. It was the month of Nisan, on the day when the New Year’s
festival would be ending in Nineveh and the god’s idol returned to
his temple, when we entered the western part of the lands under my
authority.

These places are little cultivated by men,
and it was not unusual for us to go several days without finding a
village or a plowed field. But the weather was mild and there was
no shortage of game for hunting, so we felt no privation. Because I
was curious—and felt no desire to return to Amat before the time—I
led my little troop once more into the high country, into places
where only the caravans travel, where none are at home except
spirits. I would have felt content to wander there forever.

At last, in the middle of the day, after
cresting a line of hills, we saw before us a great mountain. It was
not part of any range but stood alone, like a proud king who will
endure no comparison. It seemed to confront us without warning. The
summit was lost in mist, secluded and holy.

We had been traveling more or less at random,
following no specific trail and with no goal in sight, and yet, as
I looked up at those rocky slopes, all might and grandeur, I could
not overcome the impression that somehow I had been brought to this
place, that I had found what, without knowing it, I had been
seeking all along.

There was one among my soldiers who, having
been born in a village not three days’ ride away, could make some
claim to knowing the country. I summoned him forward and
pointed.

“What is that ahead of us?” I asked him.

“That is Mount Epih, Rab Shaqe,” he answered,
smiling as if the sight of it filled him with pleasure. “It is the
dwelling place of Mighty Ashur, as old as the world.”

“Then you have been here before?”

“Oh, no, Rab Shaqe, for its precincts are
forbidden. But it could be no other. The god marks it as his
own—see?”

Yes, I could see. Even through the clouds a
dull yellow light was just visible, seeming to flicker slightly
like an oil lamp left by the window.

“The summit is never without its mantle of
clouds,” he went on, “but the god declares himself. They say that
when the light disappears it will mean that Ashur has deserted his
people and consigned them to destruction.”

“And the mountain is forbidden?”

“Yes, Rab Shaqe. None may venture there save
those whom the god summons—at least, none may return. They leave
their bones to bleach on the dead stone and their souls will wander
forever, with none to make them offerings of wine and food. It is a
place best left to itself.”

“I come from Mount Epih,” the maxxu had told
me, so long ago. “Do you know it?” And I had answered that I did
not, saying that few have been there. “Few have, yes. But you will
one day.” It seemed that the day had at last arrived.

“We will camp at the foot tonight,” I said,
watching his eyes grow wide with pious dread. “And tomorrow I will
climb the mountain. Do not fear—I believe that I have been
summoned.” I smiled at him, for he was afraid.

“We will know, will we not, if I come down
again.”

“Yes, Rab Shaqe. We will know then.”

My soldiers were not enthusiastic for this
latest of their commander’s freaks. My orders were met with a glum
silence, and when we had ridden within half a beru of the mountain
they all stopped their horses together and waited for me to turn
and face them. I could see from the expressions on their faces that
they meant to go no farther.

The ekalli, who had fought at the Bohtan
River and was a good man, not easily frightened, swept his hand
sidewise through the air in a gesture of apology.

“We would follow you into the jaws of death,”
he said, as if ashamed to admit it. “There is no enemy with whom we
would fear to do battle for your sake, Rab Shaqe. You know all
this. But we fear to offend the god, and now you would have us
profane the ground of his holy place with our footprints. We beg
you, Rab Shaqe. . .”

“Do not distress yourself, Sinduri,” I said,
touched by this appeal, which, if it fell just short of mutiny, I
could not bring myself to blame, for they were right to dread this
which I would do, and it was not my place to involve them in the
god’s wrath. “We will stop here, away from Ashur’s precinct, and
tomorrow I will go on alone. If I do wrong, none will suffer for it
save myself alone.”

This satisfied them, and we pitched our tents
by a spring that gushed from the bare rock like an omen of peace.
We set our cooking fires and ate and each man felt safe as he
prepared to close his eyes. I did not sleep that night. I was not
afraid but I felt a strange excitement, such as a man might feel on
his wedding day. Every man’s existence is a riddle to himself—I was
not unique in this. But I felt as if I had come to the verge of
that discovery for which each of us searches as long as the life is
quick within us. I was then still just young enough not to fear
that.

The hour before dawn brought a thunderstorm.
There was no rain and the sky was clear of lightning, but the
angry, rolling boom of the thunder was enough to shatter a man’s
skull. We sat around our dead fire, wrapped in our cloaks,
terrified, waiting for the light of morning.

“Do not do this thing which is in your heart,
Rab Shaqe,” they pleaded. “The god, who sees through our every
thought like water, is angry. No sedu, though yours is mighty, can
protect you from the wrath of Ashur.”

“I will go,” I said, for all that my courage
was shaken like a reed in the wind. “The god merely announces
himself. If I am afraid of a little noise I am not worthy to come
into his presence.”

But I was afraid. Even after the storm had
passed and the sun shone, I could not eat any breakfast. Yet this
seemed a thing I must do, although why I could not have said.

After performing the rituals of purification
and making offerings of bread and salt and the cuttings from my
beard, I said goodbye to my comrades, almost like one going to his
death, and put aside all my weapons, save only the sword, which is
Ashur’s special symbol.

“The day after tomorrow is an evil day,” the
ekalli Sinduri told me, looking like a man about to bury his
brother. “Thus you must be down from the mountain by tomorrow
night.”

“If I am not back by then, you may assume
that the god has taken my life.”

“We will wait, and offer prayers and
sacrifice that Ashur may forgive you this folly.”

Thus we parted, while the grass was still wet
with dew.

At the foot of the mountain I took off my
sandals, knelt, and laid them beside the path that the god might
see I wished not to profane his holy place and would not touch it
with any flesh but that of my own living body, that I submitted
myself to his will. Thus I began the climb that would bring I knew
not what.

I was soon out of sight of our camp, for the
trail I followed for the first six hours, until well after midday,
wound its way about the mountain like a coiled snake. Each step
took me only a little higher, and the way was narrow and covered in
places with loose rubble, sharp little stones on which I cut my
feet many times. It seemed to wander on and on, rising little by
little, slowly wearing me down like the wind smoothing a stone. Yet
it was still recognizably a trail. I was glad to have it, for it
did not last forever.

Eventually I left even that behind and found
myself scrambling over crumbled granite, where I held on to cracks
in the rock or the odd bush that always threatened to pull loose
with the first tug, or faces of smooth stone that had baked in the
pale sun until they were as hot as the walls of a potter’s kiln.
And always I seemed to be pulling myself straight up, a cubit at a
time. There was no end to it. Ashur, it seemed, meant to guard his
secrets well.

After the third hour past noon I threw myself
down to rest in the shade of an overhang, too weary to go on until
I could catch my breath. My legs and arms, even my chest, ached
with weariness. I could not remember ever having been so spent. And
I was still, it seemed, many hours of climbing from the summit.

I would never make it, I decided. So
exhausted, I would surely commit some clumsy blunder and scatter my
brains on the rocks below. And besides, it would soon be dark. To
climb in the dark is to invite death.

I could have turned back, stopping for the
night if the light failed me and climbing down the rest of the way
the next morning, but it never occurred to me to do so. There would
have been no point, since I had already come so far, for no man may
flee the god’s wrath. There was no possible way except up, where I
would live or die by Ashur’s will, since I had placed myself in his
hands.

After a while I decided it was time to go on
again and stood up. There was a narrow ledge of rock that seemed to
taper into nothing around the curve of the mountain slope—not a
very promising direction but the only one open to me. I pressed my
back against the smooth, featureless granite cliff and began making
my cautious way forward.

As soon as I was out of sight of my resting
place, I could see that the ledge widened into a path rising
steeply up the face of the mountain. It seemed to proceed without
hindrance, leading straight up. The god, after all, had delivered
me from death.

It was an easy path, and one which others had
used before me. For a thousand years the holy men of my race had
come here to be received into the god’s presence and to search his
designs for the men of Ashur.

Here and there I found bits of writing
scratched onto the rocks—the first lines of prayers, sometimes only
the god’s name. Sometimes the words were almost worn away.

I had been brought here for a purpose—brought
here, for I understood now that I had come not through my own will
but because it was the pleasure of one whose instrument I had
somehow become. He who had made the earth and sky from the corpse
of the slain Tiamat, who had made man from the river clay and
revealed to him all skill, all knowledge, all wisdom, this same had
set my foot upon this journey.

Even as I followed the rising path, the god
gave me notice of his presence. I saw two omens, one of evil and
one of good. In the dust at my feet I found spilled water tracing
the pattern of a snake, a sign that I would know evil in my life.
The water was still beaded upon the earth, as if it had just been
laid down. Perhaps a hundred paces farther on I startled a covey of
quail that flew away to the left. How water could have come to be
spilled there, where hardly even the rain visits, I do not know.
Why birds should nest in such a place, where there is not a blade
of grass to feed them, I do not know. I could understand these
things only as the will of Ashur, who meant me to grasp that I
would taste of both evil and good, first the one and then the
other.

Ashur’s sun was just turning red over the
western horizon when the trail ended in a path of level ground, as
bare as if it had been smoothed with a trowel. This was the
summit—there was nowhere else to go. I sat down, wrapping my cloak
around me, and watched the darkness gather.

I cannot account for the light by which it is
said the god declares his presence in that place. It is clearly
visible from the ground, seeming to bathe the mountain’s peak,
hidden by the clouds, in a divine radiance. Yet as I sat there, on
the very crown, I was alone in the cold black night. In his
sanctuary, Mighty Ashur hides himself. It remains a mystery.

There was a chill wind that blew in fits and
starts, like a teasing woman, but I hardly had the strength even to
shiver. I was more than weary, since I had eaten nothing that day
and felt giddy with weakness, but my cloak was my only protection
against the cold, and above a certain level of physical misery
sleep becomes impossible. I would keep a vigil through the night, I
thought, and perhaps the god would reveal himself to me.

I took my sword from its scabbard and thrust
it point first into the soft earth. It would be my altar in his
barren place.

I waited. The wind dropped, but the cold
hardened like ice. It sank through my cloak, into my flesh, into my
very bones. If the stars shone or the moon had risen, they were
hidden from my sight. I could hold a hand up in front of my face
and not distinguish the fingers. There was nothing to divide one
hour from the next. Even my brain seemed to have stopped.

It must have been a dream, although I was
never conscious of having slept. I never started awake—the dream
merely faded, leaving me blank, empty, and then the first glimmer
of dawn brought with it a return to life. But it could only have
been a dream, for the things which happen in dreams never come as a
shock, and what was shown to me that dead night, had I been awake
to see them with the sensible eye, would have broken my mind like a
dry reed. And yet the dream was no less true for having been a
dream, and what I saw was no more than what came to pass.

Ashur is the very light of truth. He is the
sun that shines everywhere, and he blinds men with his glory. He
blinded the maxxu that he might reveal to him the things which
would be. He blinds other men that they should pass through the
world seeing nothing else. If I saw him that night—and I will die
believing none else—then I saw him as light and fire.

I saw many things that night, and understood
none of them. I was not the maxxu, blind to the shadows of things,
seeing only the truth. I would return from the mountain still
blinded by the world, believing that the truth was a dream and the
dream truth.