Lagash

many thousands of years before the present day an arranged marriage results in a seemingly perfect match.

Chapter 2 �" The Kingdom of Lagash

January 2nd 2567BCE

“We know what Adam and Eve knew

And you know, I’m no

Angel tongued poet

And you know I don’t believe in love

But I believe in you, and you believe in love”

-Murder House

Love Note

          They walked in line, each in a gown that bore the simple adornments of her house and patron god. Each of the girls was veiled from her forehead to the top of her lips in fine gossamer. The gowns covered them in the presence of the gods.

          It would be assumed that the body of each was all but perfect. It would be assumed too, that the face of each was all but perfect. So each, then, was covered so that only her Zi was visible, her soul. Well, that was the idea, anyway. During the ceremony, each would take pains to move and posture in alluring ways beneath her cascading robes so as to obtain the favor of a certain young man.

          They climbed the steps of the ziggurat in a procession of veiled beauty. At the foot of the temple mountain, the people had strewn flower petals to cushion their steps. At the top, the King, the Queen and the lords of the great kingdom of Lagash waited.

          They could hear the royal herald reading the accomplishments of the supplicant, he who would seek the blessing of the gods on this day. The list was a long one but as they mounted the final flight of steps it seemed to be coming to an end.

          Each girl was excited and nervous and each clung to what she knew her part was to be in the ceremony to come. Each knew exactly what to do and had been trained for this her entire life. To be the daughter of a noble house was to marry a lord or a prince, this much was true and known to them. 

          To be presented to the future King was an honor, to be sure, but to be presented to this future king… that was a dream come true. Each one hoped beyond hope that he would choose her.

          The sound of the herald was cut off above and they heard a female voice start to speak. This presumably was the Queen, who was the only female permitted to speak at the ceremony beside these girls at their appointed times.

          Nergal was a young man, a warrior of renown and the crown prince of Lagash, the mightiest kingdom in the world. He stood now, as the girls topped the steps to the ziggurat, before his parents, King Enhengal and Queen Aisha, who were embroiled in a very public argument.

           To the left, before the throne was the royal herald, who stood, holding a clay tablet and looked very much as if he had been stopped in mid-speech. The Queen was incensed and flushed and was fixing all of her displeasure upon her husband.

          “He is our only child Enhengal, and you offer his life carelessly on the field of battle against any comer?” She spoke in the tones of oration and each time waited for her husband’s response as was proper, but her displeasure was palpable.

          Nergal crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back. He knew this would take a while. He cast a look back to the girls who had topped the rise and gave a broad white smile to them. Hearts fluttered among the six that had just made the long climb to the top of the temple mountain.

          He was tall, muscular, handsome and by all accounts charming. Standing there in the noon sun upon one of the supplicant dais plinths he looked like a bronze statue, a prize, in fact, for a lifetime of study and hard work. To each girl that is what the crown prince of Lagash represented.

          The King now started to defend his position.

          “My Lady Queen, had Nergal not defeated the champion of Ur in single combat thousands of our soldiers would have died…”

          She cut him off. “You told me you negotiated a peace!”

          He smiled and played to the gallery of Lords a little.

          “I did, my Lady Queen, I told the king of Ur before his people that if my son and heir were defeated by his champion the kingdom would be his but if he lost he would be my vassal.” Nergal cleared his throat at this. “I’m sorry my son, there were two champions my love.”

          “Two?! You sent him against two handpicked warriors?” She stood agape. The lords too gasped hearing this revelation which had hitherto been unknown.

          “He sent himself, he insisted. I needed to have faith in my son and heir. He is the man I am entrusting with this kingdom.” The king smiled down at his son under his wife’s glare.

          “You’re missing the point…” She was now cut off.

          “No, you are missing the point my lady queen.” Enhengal rose up to his full height, almost as tall as his son, who stood head and shoulders above the other men assembled at the temple heights. Upon the throne dais, set off to the side of the seat of the gods as it was here in the temple, he looked almost like a god himself.

          “What is the point, my husband?”

          He looked down at her then around at the gathered liegemen.

          “He won,” Enhengal said with a wry smile and the crowd whooped and cheered. Nergal for his part raised his arms and bathed in the adulation of the lords and ladies.

          “And he may now select his wife and be married in a time of peace!” Again the crowd cheered, making a huge ruckus across the manmade mountain. As soon as the cheers began, however, they faded. A few of the assembled lords coughed and shifted as a procession of blue-robed figures rounded the statue of Eah, the god of wisdom, which dominated the plaza atop the ziggurat.

          Each of the blue robed priests was young and beautiful in countenance. None of them was over the age of twenty-two. None, that is, except the figure at the head of the group. This man was rangy, and his bald head sat atop a crooked neck like that of a vulture. His hooked nose, sunken eyes and pale skin did nothing to assuage the image of a carrion bird. His robes slid across the stone of the plaza, completing the image of a large blue vulture sidling toward the Illuminati of the kingdom of Lagash.

          “I trust that it is in the adulation of the gods that you raise such a noise upon the holy mountain,” the vulture in blue said in a well-practiced timbre that carried across the whole plaza into what was now dead silence.

          “My lord High Priest I must beg your forgiveness, as we were upon the section of the ceremony that listed Nergal’s accolades and I allowed it to become overly raucous.” Said the king and the Priest nodded.

          “I’m sure my king will furnish the gods with a suitable penance. The ceremony has started then?” This last was said with a touch of annoyance, as this was obviously another affront to the high priest’s sense of propriety.

          “We started at the appointed time, we assumed you would attend at a time you saw fit, oh wise Shirrock.” The priest gave flourishing bow that signified simultaneously acquiescence, the patience of the gods and that it would be discussed later.

          “I must offer my own apology for the unannounced nature of my arrival; my acolytes and I were deep in prayer and so were unable to attend at the appointed time.” At this Shirrock gave away a leer and two or three of the acolytes shifted uncomfortably. “Still, I will assume we are ready to present the girls to your son?”

          The King cast forward his hand in his own royal gesture of consent.

          The priest raised his arms, extending hands festooned with liver spots and long yellow pitted nails into the air. The characteristic voice that belied his thin frame boomed across the plaza, some said this was proof that the gods themselves spoke through him.

          “Great Eah, god of wisdom, we stand here upon your mighty ziggurat that you might instill your endless insight into our great Prince and peerless champion Nergal. That he may select a bride and presumptive queen of the shining city and kingdom of Lagash who can support him as he leads this land and follows his father’s example of piety and charity.” He finished with a bow. Nergal had never seen a sarcastic bow before but somehow Shirrock managed to achieve it.

          The prince looked at the girls. All were exactly the same height and weight; their hips were the same width and their shoulders the same shape. As they were veiled, their breasts were the only thing that marked them apart, and even then the modest gowns went a long way to covering that detail also.

          His father’s advice had been to just pick the one with the biggest chest and have done with it. This was probably sound advice, not because there was any merit in following this tactic but because it was really the only criteria on display, physical or otherwise.

          Each girl would speak to him, of course; each would sing or dance or recite poetry perfectly; too perfectly. Each would be so perfect, in fact, that she would be bland and ordinary. It had happened that once or twice a girl had made a mistake. This, according to tradition and the law of the land, disqualified a girl from the selection process. Indeed, a mistake in any selection would assure a noble girl of spinsterhood unless it was obvious the mistake was made to dissuade a particularly foul and aged lord from selecting a particularly young, innocent and fearful bride.

          Nergal was neither foul nor aged. At nineteen he was already a legend among the men of the army, feared in battle and respected in command. Like the girls, he had been trained from birth to fit his role. He was a master of war and statecraft and a perfect disciple of the gods.

          Now he took to one knee before the effigy of Eah. He bowed his head and prayed. There was silence all across the plaza. He then rose and at the beckoning of Sirrock stepped down from the dais and stood before the first girl. She wore the colors of the eastern plains, closer to the Tigris than the holy Euphrates. Her people, however, were responsible for the protection of that river. Their patrols secured the eastern border of Lagash and as such were an important part of the Kingdom.

          Each of these girls’ families was important and each must be treated with respect. So the ceremony began. He looked around; his father and mother looked down, proud and relaxed, though his mother leaned back and away from the king, a signal that she was still deeply unhappy with him.

           To his left, closest to him in the crowd, General Nashan, Nergal’s instructor in the arts of war, stood alongside Marak, his tutor in the ways of the gods, of statecraft and of numbers and letters. Both men beamed with pride. Nergal drew in a deep breath and started the ritual with a statement.

          “Lady, I am Nergal, prince of Lagash. I humbly request your name.” The girl bowed deeply. He could see she quivered at the knees a little. He’d seen men do this in battle many times; he’d seen these men soil themselves too, some before and some after they fell victim to his spear.

          “I am Usharah of the Eastern Murik Clan. You may ask me one question Lord Nergal… and ask of me one action.” This was a pre-defined question and action, more or less.

          “Tell me of your land and your people in the east, lady,” Nergal said, his mind wandered as she rambled on about the fertile lands around the Tigris and their brave warriors who fought the eastern barbarian raiders and in so doing protected Lagash like a shield arm.

          “Show me one of your accomplishments Usharah,” he said as she finished. She recited for him a poem about rushes in the Tigris that he had heard many times before, a proper poem for accomplished young ladies to recite when they were from the lands of the Tigris.

          When all was done he bowed to her and moved on to the next girl and repeated the process. All the while his mind wandered back to his victory over the champions of Ur. He had not just insisted on the challenge: he had forced his father’s hand, spreading the rumor among the men that he would fight alone in their stead.

          He did this in order to win the adoration of the army. If he was to be King, support of the army would be vital. He could not have another power broker, like Shirrock, use the army against him. He needed men who would follow him into the underworld if necessary.

          The King had understood and consented reluctantly. He had ridden out on his chariot, spear in hand, and under the banner of parlay raced the Urish lines to the Urish King, Ekantor’s position. Ekantor had agreed after lengthy questioning of the terms.

          On foot between the two armies, Nergal had waited. As he expected, Ekantor, King of Ur, found two warriors who were both taller and broader than Nergal; mercenary giants from the slopes of Ararat. Nergal did not protest that he was to face mercenaries. He simply readied his spear. The men approached and squared off against him.

          When they had closed to an appropriate distance Nergal attacked. He jumped between the two men. The army of Lagash gasped, for this was always the worst thing one could do when fighting two opponents. Nergal’s spear butt found the spear of the man that he had his back to. The giant drew his spear back to strike while the one Nergal was now facing defended.

          Nergal thrust back with the butt of the spear straight into the throat of the man behind him. The muffled crunch was audible to both armies. Nergal then whirled around him, spinning his spear, came around to the back of the man, who had dropped to his knees clutching his throat, and slammed his spear into the back of his neck.

          The second man was charging now; seeing Nergal’s spear embedded in his sword brother’s head he used the opportunity to spring forward. He brought his spear down as Nergal dived forward over the body of the first man. The prince had let go of his spear, and the second man smiled as he rounded, tossing his spear up to catch it, ready to throw.

          THUD!

          A spear impacted in the man’s chest with enough force to knock him back several feet. Nergal had jumped over the body of the first man to retrieve that one’s spear. He had then risen and thrown in one fluid motion at the spot where the second man’s charge ended. The wound was a mortal one and Nergal drew his knife as he approached the man’s prostrate form.

          “End it,” the giant whispered. Nergal nodded and took the man’s head and shoulders into his arms.

          “I will see you again brother, beyond this life, perhaps we will fight together in the armies of the gods.” He looked down into the man’s eyes.

          “I would do well to fight alongside you next time, Nergal son of Enhengal.” He smiled, though blood now ran from his mouth.

          “Ashur, take this man into your ranks that he may do you honor,” Nergal said to the sky. He then slipped his blade into the back of the man’s neck.

          The cheer from his men had almost blown the Urish army away across the grasslands with its thunder.

          He returned to his tent where Marak was waiting to attend to the necessities of a prince returning from battle.

          “What say you, Marak? Have I not won a war without cost?” He was sinking into his bath to wash the dust of his short skirmish away.

          “I humbly beg to hold a differing opinion to that of my lord.” Nergal’s shoulders sank.

          “Speak then that I may be enlightened, teacher.”

          “You have won a war with two deaths. It may be possible to win a war with just a single death, with no deaths at all or without striking a single blow. True mastery of statecraft…

          “My lord?” The last of the girls stood before him. She stood with her feet planted firmly at shoulder width and eyes trained on him from behind her veil. There was no shake to her knees; he’d seen men stand before him in battle like this too, angry men. He looked around; he knew he’d allowed his mind to wander completely.

          As was proper it was not the girl who had spoken, it was Shirrock. He shook himself back to the present and regarded the girl.

          “High priest, forgive me, I have been these many days on the march and only returned hours ago as you know. I fear I have allowed the weariness of travel to get the better of me.” He said this for the benefit of the gathered crowd. Shirrock nodded, though he looked unconvinced.

          “Lady, I am Nergal, prince of the city and land of Lagash…” he faltered, noticing something else about the girl.

          The girl, this last girl, was wondering if there would be no end to her humiliation this day. She just wanted to get the whole bloody thing over with and go home without ruining her chances of ever being wed to any lord, ever. She had already been mortified and now the prince was ignoring her, lost in some memory or thought, muttering to himself and gesturing. Obviously, he’d been told about her encounter with the queen.

          She had been through inspection by the priests and was issued through to be looked over by the Queen and her handmaidens. This inspection was both gentler and more invasive than the others. First, an old midwife had inspected her intact virginity. Then the handmaids had interviewed and examined her like a piece of horse flesh.

          It had been then the scar was pointed out. A scar on her lip, only visible because the line where her lip met her skin formed a clear step; coming from the corner of her mouth, the line took a sharp left toward her chin, then straightened out. The feature was no more than a gadfly breadth in size; she had hurt it playing as a child.

          “You have a scar, young lady.” The girl had nodded.

          “I have made no attempt to hide it, my Queen.” She bowed less than was proper then, and the queen raised her eyebrow.

          “You still feel you should be presented to my son?” the Queen said.

          “My lady that is not my decision, my feelings on the matter were never consulted.” The corner of the Queen’s mouth turned up; she could not decide if this was a smile or a grimace.

          “I’m consulting them now young lady… what is your name?”

          The girl sighed a little.

          “My name is Irkhalla majesty.”

          The queen nodded at this.

          “From the South, the fisher lord’s daughter,” she declared.

          “I am,” Irkhalla said.

          “So what are your feelings on the matter, Irkhalla?” Irkhalla thought for a moment.

          “I have no right to expect to marry your son, but what I think I should expect is to get through this process without humiliation or dishonor to myself or my house. I have a scar on my lip, true. It is a small one, and the wound was stitched with the finest spider silk and poultice by a master chirurgie sage. I am before you as I am, Irkhalla of the south lands by the sea.” As was proper, now she fell to one knee before the queen.

          “Rise Irkhalla, you will be presented. Do you wish to have a longer veil to cover your lip?” Irkhalla looked back, eyes wide, and then she realized the queen, beneath a still mask of propriety, was joking. Irkhalla smiled back at her.

          “No majesty, I earned it chasing a dream and I am quite proud of it, truth be told.”

          Irkhalla thought that encounter had gone well; she thought that the queen had even liked her somewhat, but when the girls had gathered in the morning she had been placed last in the line of brides. Last to make an impression. The prince’s decision would already be made by the time she got to present herself. The other girls sneered back at her before the line started moving.

          Then yet another humiliation struck when her turn finally came to speak to the prince, before the gods. During what should have been the highpoint of her sixteen years he didn’t even pay attention to her; he was standing there muttering to himself and making little thrusting motions with his fist, a thousand leagues away in a world of his own.

          This should have made her break down, upset her. She should have been fighting tears there in front of the prince, but at this point, after all of the slights she had suffered, the thought of breaking down into piteous tears never even crossed her mind. She was bloody angry.

          Who were these girls that they were better than her? Who was this arrogant thug before her that he could just stand there ignoring her? Was she not accorded this time? Was this not the opportunity that they had declared was her right? Irkhalla always did what she said she was going to do, what made them so special that they didn’t have to do the same?

          This last insult was almost too much. He trailed off in mid-sentence and was about to call attention to her scar. She was livid; how could they be so cruel? The other girls whispered and giggled to each other.

          “Why is your lip like that?”

          Her heart sank but her rage built. Only the years of training in the manners of court and the rules of propriety stopped her from slapping him full in the face. He got one question. This was his question then.

          “I escaped my tutors and maids once as a child and found my way into my father’s gardens; there I tried to catch songbirds so that one of them could teach me to sing like the fishermen I could hear from my window. I chased one along with a wall and the wall gave way. I fell from the wall, about an arm span, and when I landed my chin hit the grass and I bit right through my lip. The wound was healed without a scar but the line of my lip is mismatched because of the wound.” There was a silence across the plaza. The wind whipped across the stone edifice and Irkhalla suddenly felt very alone.

          “What…”

          Shirrock now hissed; Nergal had had his question and skipped the asking of her name. There was one part left in the ceremony. Technically she had not yet made a mistake, but the prince had flouted the rules of the ceremony greatly. Shirrock was less than pleased. At that moment everyone involved in the ceremony would rather have been anywhere else. Everyone just wanted it to be over. The whole thing was teetering so close to the brink of disaster it was palpable in the air.

          Then the prince decided to give it another push.

          “Sing.”

          She looked blankly at him.

          “Excuse me, my lord, but I have been trained in Dance,” she said, as was her right to tell him her accomplishment if she so chose.

          “I hear you lady, and yet I request that you sing.”

          Shirrock looked like he wanted to brain Nergal with the nearest heavy, blunt object. Irkhalla could not believe exactly what was happening to her. Nergal, for his part, just wanted to see something different from this horrendous ceremony. Silence fell once again on the plaza.

          It was right and proper now for Irkhalla to sing; she was not trained to sing, though. She could only sing like a fisherwoman, but she sang every day, every chance she got. Locked away in her rooms, she learned every song sung in the gardens and courtyards of her father’s house. Songs were the only things that ever touched her there.

          So she sang a song called The Rivers. There had once been a king of all the Sumer tribes. The dark ones, the gods that inhabited the earth before the time of man, took his wife, as they were jealous of his people’s worship of the gods of light and life. They held her hostage to win his fealty, but he could not choose between his people and his love, so he roused all of his people and they wandered the earth for a hundred seasons. Eventually, on the slopes of Ararat, he found the dark gods and his wife.

          He marched forth with his sword, forged from the fingernail of Eah himself, and slew the dark ones. His wife was killed in the fight, and so he turned to his people and told them that he must follow her into the afterlife, and fell upon his sword. He told his people with his dying breath to walk between his blood and the blood of his queen.

          The blood of his queen formed the Tigris and the blood of the king formed the Mighty Euphrates, and between them, down the mountain and all the way to the sea, the tribes of Sumer settled in prosperity and in peace for all the years from that time till now.

          This was the song she sang, but more than that was how she sang it. She tore the music out of herself, long since having taught herself to put all of her breath behind her diaphragm, metering the air through her vocal chords. The sound touched not only every note but every emotion. She sang like a shaman’s prayer, she sang like the Uzbek and Amorite tribesmen. Irkhalla not only explored the music with her voice, she conquered it and she ruled it.

          There was no one that day in all the Fertile Crescent who sang like Irkhalla sang. It became apparent to all gathered that she had touched her very soul with her voice and upon their ears, she breathed fire. Around her, between the notes, all on the plaza was still. Shirrock himself was stunned. It was as if the gods themselves had stopped to listen to this sixteen-year-old girl who sang upon their ziggurat, raw and untrained and passionate and truly perfect.

          As she sang the last note she looked up and realized there were tears falling down Nergal’s face. She looked around and saw that several people were crying. It was as if she had discovered something lost; there was magic here among them, crackling in the air.

          “What is your name?” Nergal said.

          “Irkhalla of the south, daughter of the fisher lord.” The fisher lord himself was pale white in the audience, and a tear was making its way down his cheek.

          “Irkhalla, I’ve made my decision. Will you be my wife?” She was smiling now, the moment had stolen all the anger from her, and her tears welled in her eyes. She nodded, smiling beneath her veil. Nergal rose to kiss her, lifting her veil to gaze for the first time upon her face.

          A great cheer went up on the ziggurat from all assembled.

          “That boy will be the death of me; the cost of all of his penances for this debacle is going to be significant. I can tell from Shirrock’s face he’s just totaling up all the lovely offerings I’m going to have to bring him to appease the gods,” the King said.

          “Oh Enhengal, just be happy, your son just got betrothed,” the queen said, among cheering as Nergal and Irkhalla stood before them on the supplicant dais together. The King and Queen stood to salute the new couple.

          “Yes, and that girl, certainly there were better matches, of course, her singing was by far the best accomplishment but there were richer lords and lords with bigger armies. He could have brought far more interesting dowries.” The Queen laughed.

          “You’re missing the point, my Lord King,” she said.

          “And what pray-tell is that, my Lady Queen?” They were applauding now along with all the gathered lords. Queen Aisha’s answer, however, came clear above the din:

          “She won.”