Ark(19)

Every street was lined with sellers hawking wares of all kinds, as well as scholars offering to inscribe the customer’s name in cuneiform on clay tablets as protection against evil spirits. Japheth had been to other cities around Bad-Tibira, of course, but never as far south as Ur, which was by far the largest city he’d ever seen. It dwarfed Bad-Tibira easily, the walls rising up nearly twice the height and easily twice as thick—making Ur’s walls some thirty feet high and ten feet thick—enclosing a population thrice that of his home city.

Japheth was jerked back to reality when Zidan smacked the back of his head, jolting his attention. “Pay attention, farm-boy,” he said. “We’ve got trouble.”

Ahead, a troop of temple guards had spread across the road, blocking the way, weapons drawn. Only the royal guards wielded more power and authority than temple guards, who did the bidding of the high priests of the various temples. Temple priests were known in most cities to be brutal and ruthless; most people kept their heads down and prayed hard when temple guards were around, hoping to remain unnoticed.

The lead guard, a massive Nephilim man with a long scar cutting through a thick beard, stepped forward when Urugan and the small band of humans halted.

“Ereshkigal demands a sacrifice,” he barked.

His golden glowing eyes scanned the knot of human mercenaries, flicking from one to the other, dismissing each in turn until his gaze settled on Japheth—on his pendant in particular. A cruel smirk twisted his features; he gestured with his spear, pointing at Japheth. “Him.”

Before he could even move, the guards rushed Japheth and grabbed his arms, pinioning him between them. Wrestling his spear away, they forced him to his knees. One or two guards Japheth would have fought, but more than a dozen? And more but a shout away?

“But sir, he is not—he is not a slave” Urugan protested, “He is a soldier, one of my loyal guards. Please, give me an hour, and I will personally bring a slave to the temple as sacrifice.”

The guard only laughed. “You may bring another, if you wish. Unless you’re volunteering to take his place?”

“No—no, sir. Please, take him,” Urugan wheedled.

Japheth struggled in vain against the vise-like grip of the guards, and Zidan watched helplessly, not daring to speak up.

His struggles only earned him a brutal blow to the kidney, which rendered Japheth limp and gasping, and from then on he quit struggling, and the guards let Japheth find his feet, guiding him none too gently toward the largest ziggurat in the city. Up a long ramp of stairs they marched him with rough spear-pricks to the back, and with every step the city fell farther away below him, and with it Japheth’s hope of getting away from Ur alive.

They brought him into the temple itself, a squat block of stones and sunbaked mud bricks perched at the very top of the ziggurat. Within the ceilings were low and the walls close, the air choking with incense. There were no windows and only the one entrance, which was now a distant rectangle of light.

Priests bustled to and fro within the temple, speaking and praying in low tones, swinging censers and murmuring and chanting; statues of the gods lined the walls, and at the farthest end of the temple stood a likeness of Enlil himself, standing some sixty feet tall and carved to look haughty and stern, one arm outstretched with the palm facing outward and down, as if gesturing for the worshippers to kneel down and pay obeisance. Indeed, when the priest caught Japheth staring, he struck him on the mouth with a fist, his ring ripping open Japheth’s lip.

“Avert your eyes from the Lord Enlil!” the priest hissed. “Do not look upon the Lord of Heaven. You are not worthy.”

Japheth cast his eyes down, as much to hide his rage as to obey the priest. He was led to a small doorway underneath the statue of Enlil and into a small room, barely more than a cell. There was a chair carved out of the stone of the floor itself. Japheth was thrust roughly into the chair, and chains were manacled to his wrists and appended to the walls so that his arms were stretched out wide, and another set bound his ankles to the legs of the chair.

The guards left and stood outside the doorway to wait. After a few minutes of waiting, a priest entered, an aging man some four cubits tall—short by Nephilim male standards—with the natural brawn of his race but with a wide belly sagging over his belt. He had small, dark eyes glittering with malice, and he wore a sleeveless crimson robe held closed by wide leather belt, upon which was hung a long, curved iron dagger. The priest drew a dagger from his belt and stalked in a circle around Japheth, sharpening the blade on a small whetstone. He halted, leaning close to Japheth, and lifted the pendant off of Japheth’s chest with the tip of his knife.

“You wear the name of the false god upon you, little human.” The priest spoke in a conversational tone, belying the dangerous zing of steel on stone, the threat of blood to be spilled.

Japheth was beginning to think the pendant his mother had given him was more trouble than it was worth—he’d only insisted upon wearing it out of fondness for his mother, rather than out of any love for Elohim, his father’s One God. A few Nephilim gave him trouble about it every now and again, but never anything like this. First Emmen, now this priest . . . all for a god in whom Japheth wasn’t even sure he believed in any more. His mother would be hurt deeply if she knew he had taken it off, but it wasn’t worth dying over.

“Take it,” Japheth said, offering it to him. “Take it, then.”