Word Fulfilled, The (26 page)

Lll

PART TWO

So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast,

and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them

even to the least of them.

For word came unto the king of Nineveh,

and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him,

and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

J
onah
3:5-6

Thirty-four

Nineveh, the Temple of Ishtar

Fourteenth Day of Du’ûzu, the Eleventh Hour

here is a visitor, High Priestess.” The
naditu
bowed from the doorway.

Ianna tucked Jonah’s gold amulet beneath her robe. The ornate
menorah
and the beauty of its workmanship had captivated her. She found herself unable to resist the urge to handle it.

“Who is it?”

“A woman. She would not say her name.” The priestess kept her eyes lowered and extended her hand. “She gave me this.”

“You bother me with an unknown—” Ianna’s voice caught.

In the priestess’s palm laid a small brooch of pure silver that framed a setting of lapis lazuli. Her eyes filmed, and she shuddered a short cough. She steeled her voice to reply.

“Leave it on the brazier stand. Bring my . . . the woman in.”

The
naditu
bowed and slipped back into the antechamber.

When the door closed, Ianna stepped down from the dais. She approached the waist-high stand on which a blackened charcoal brazier awaited the next cold season. The brooch perched on the corner of a slate surface that protruded from beneath the grate. It glimmered in the subdued light, the lapis seeming to emit its own ambiance. Ianna blinked away a tear at the childhood memories the jewel elicited. She reached a tentative hand out for the piece but withdrew it when the hasp on the chamber door clicked.

Hani stood by the doorway, her hands gripped at her waist. Even across the room Ianna could see her mother shiver as she beheld her daughter in the robes of the
Entu
of Ishtar. Ianna’s face began to flush, but she shook away the heat. She stepped back from the brazier and faced the door.

“Mother.” Her voice was flat. She would betray nothing.

“Ianna . . .”

Her mother’s frail tone sparked another wave of emotion, and this one nearly broke her. To deflect it, she turned and ascended the dais to the High Priestess’s seat. She eased herself onto the scarlet cushion and looked down at her mother.

“You wanted to see me?”

Hani took two tentative steps forward. “I’ve wanted to see you ever since you first came to this . . . place.”

Ianna frowned. She had heard of no attempted visits by her family. She had assumed they’d forgotten her—or, at least, she was certain her father had. “What stopped you?”

“I was never permitted. A woman, a priestess, I assume—she wore a blue tunic—told me it was not allowed.”

“A priestess?”

“Yes. She had a low voice. It sounded like . . . like it hurt her to talk.”

Hulalitu
. Ianna clenched her jaw. “I know of no such priestess,” she lied.

Her mother stared at the floor and said nothing.

Ianna cleared her throat. “Is there something you wish to speak to me about?”

Hani looked up, tears brimming in her eyes. “It’s your father. He died. I thought you should know.”

A pang of guilt-tinged anger pricked Ianna’s forehead. Guilt that she subjected her mother to such coolness in the face of her sorrow. Anger at her father for dying . . . for living . . . for everything. It was he who insisted she participate in the carnal ritual of Ishtar, despite her mother’s objections, and nothing had gone right since she’d stepped into this temple.

Now he was gone. Gone before he ever saw where his bull-headedness had led. Gone before he knew the humiliation she had suffered during her months as an unconsummated
ishtaritu
, her despair when she was sucked deeper into the Ishtar cult as a
naditu
, and now her fatalism as the very High Priestess of Ishtar.

She looked back down at her wounded mother—another of his legacies—who cringed at the foot of the dais. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“My
loss? Ianna, he was your father.”

Ianna’s cheeks burned at the rebuke. “And what kind of father was he? What kind of father was he
ever?”

She knew her words bit deeply into her mother’s sorrow, but they had been pent up far too long and now burst like a flashflood over a sand levee.

Her mother’s eyes hardened. “You will not speak ill of your father.”

Ianna bristled. Her few weeks as High Priestess had already accustomed her to universal subservience. She was to be feared, not resisted—and certainly not reprimanded. She leaned forward. “I will overlook your tone. My father meant nothing to me.”

She expected her mother to back down at the flash in her eyes.

But Hani returned her daughter’s glare. “And I will overlook yours.”

Before Ianna could reply, Hani reached over and snatched the brooch from the brazier stand. “This was a gift from your father. He made it with his own hands. He wanted only the best for you—”

“Hah!” Ianna jumped to her feet and strode down to her mother. “The best for me? Then tell me, Mother—” she lifted her arms and gestured about her chamber—“why am I here? I’m here because of him! You think a mere trinket atones for this?”

Hani flinched at her daughter’s tirade but did not back down. “You have—”

Ianna cut her mother short as a thought leaped into her mind. “This seems to be a week for jewelry, Mother.” She smirked as she yanked Jonah’s gold medallion from beneath her robe and held it in front of her mother’s face. “What do you think of this? Not silver, but real gold, do you see?”

The medallion twisted at the end of its thong. The
menorah
etched into its surface seemed to leap off the surface of the pendant.

Ianna glared at her mother.

Hani, face ashen, stared at the gold disk. The lapis brooch dropped from her fingers and clattered to the floor.

“Mother . . . what—?”

Her mother’s voice was barely audible. “Where . . . did you get that?”

Lll

Hulalitu paced the floor in her small quarters. Her heart sagged in her chest until she thought it would flatten under her fear and shame. Since Ianna became the High Priestess of Ishtar, the
naditu
rarely emerged from her chamber. The other priestesses grumbled at the duties left unattended in her absence. Knuckles rapped on the wall outside her room, but they went unanswered. Rebukes barked through the door met with no response.

Never known for her social acumen, the morose priestess retreated even further into herself since the
Entu
ceremony put Ianna out of reach forever. Not that it made any difference in the young girl’s attitude. She had all but ignored her mentor since her
naditu
ceremony, and that was only the beginning of a breach between the two that widened with each day.

Everything happened so quickly. Hulalitu’s head still spun over the course of events since Ianna first came to the temple. As hard as she tried to get close, her young charge never warmed to her as she had hoped, as she had intended. Ianna’s distance only served to prolong Hulalitu’s decision to use the camphor powder one more time, and then one more. She was sure she could win the maiden’s heart, given time. But time dwindled, and finally died, shrouded in the light blue tunic of the
naditu
. And all because of Issar-surrat’s interference.

Issar-surrat!
Hulalitu’s mind growled the name. Her own mentor
naditu
, even after becoming High Priestess, seemed intent to ruin Hulalitu’s life at every opportunity. Now, before her own untimely death, she’d named Ianna as her own successor and destroyed any chance of Hulalitu’s happiness. No High Priestess ever named her own successor! There were protocols for that, a process instituted by Mother Ishtar herself and endorsed by no one less than the king. But nobody protested at the pronouncement of Ianna’s advancement to the exalted office of High Priestess. Why? It was as though Issar-surrat still controlled the temple even from the underworld.

Now Hulalitu struggled with a notion that took seed in her mind one restless night and grew to an obsession over the past two days. She didn’t know what prompted the thought. It was certainly not a decision she would ever have reached on her own. But it was there, and it gave her no peace. The seed sprouted and took firm root in both her conscious and subconscious. It fed the guilt and the fear that now oppressed her. The notion told her to confess. Confess everything.

That she had something to confess in the first place birthed the guilt. The fear came from the sure retribution that her now all-powerful former charge would bring upon her head for such a vile transgression. Ianna could have her executed for what she’d done when she subverted the sacred rite of the
ishtaritu
. And if the attitude Ianna now displayed toward Hulalitu was any indication, execution was a certainty. But this new fearsome notion burrowed into her brain and would not let go.

Today it was worse than ever. The urge spawned a pain in her head, which in turn spawned a lump in her stomach. The discomfort drove her to pace her room. Finally, after hours of emotional turmoil, something broke.

It snapped like a cord stretched too tight, and the bolt of pain it fired through her head dropped her to her knees. She tipped forward until her forehead met the floor, and she grasped her arms around her stomach. She tried to cry out, but no sound escaped her throat. Another pain exploded in her forehead, and her eyes rolled back.

Hulalitu retched and passed out.

Lll

“She is ready.”

Lll

Hulalitu’s eyelids quavered. She opened her eyes to subdued light beneath her chamber door. She didn’t know how long she had lain there, but a sore abdomen hinted at cramps that lasted perhaps hours. She pushed herself up, and her hand smeared through the half-dried bile that stained the small rug. Her brain was too numb to react to the violation, and she settled both hands onto her lap where she slouched.

The debilitating pain that drove her to the floor lingered as an ominous throb in the back of her head. It threatened to burst again unless Hulalitu obeyed its impulse and did so quickly. It left her no choice. She didn’t think she could survive another onslaught like this. She would confess. It was time. Nothing else mattered anyway. Ianna had been her hope, her future. Now that future was gone. What did it matter that she would die? For all purposes, she had already died at the
Entu
ceremony.

Hulalitu pushed to her feet and stumbled toward the door. She didn’t stop to smooth her tunic, brush out her matted hair, or wash her fouled hand.

Lll

“Well, look who’s come back to life.” Shera pursed her lips as Hulalitu’s haggard figure approached. She glanced at her companion, who turned and surveyed the
naditu
.

Thura frowned at the delinquent priestess. “Well, are you ready to pick your duties back up, Hulalitu?” she huffed. “It’s been extra work for all of us while you’ve been doing . . . whatever you’ve been doing.”

Hulalitu ignored both the rebuff and the sarcasm. “I need to see Ian . . . the High Priestess.” Her hoarse voice cracked from the strain and the nauseous residue that coated her throat.