"I understand, we ditch the ox and . . . we stable the ox and cart, take the nuts and robes, and go back to the courtyard.'
"And hope that the dragon's allies have not already come and gone."
The stable was about a block to the south of the Hanging Gardens, and while Nidintulugal bartered with the stable master—settling on the other pair of Shilo's silver earrings—she scanned the edge of the garden, trying to find a way below it.
"It's not going to be so easy as looking for a manhole cover on a city street," she whispered. "No such things here, it seems."
The stable master inspected the earrings. "How long will you be in the city—"
"Ulbanu," Shilo cut in, fearful Nidintulugal would supply his name. She figured Ulbanu was a female name, since it belonged to a female dragon, and so would serve as hers.
"We will be here a few days at most, good sir. Those earrings should cover that."
"And if you are here longer, Ulbanu—"
"Then I will pay you more. But we should not be here long, I say."
"Visiting relatives'?"
Nosey, she thought. People are the same all over. "Yes, relatives. We are here for a wedding. It is the month for it, you know." One of the months anyway.
He nodded and smiled, accepting the answer and apparently pleased to have a tidbit of information.
When they left, they walked along the southern edge of the Hanging Gardens, both of them looking for a way beneath it, and Shilo avoiding Nidintulugal's gaze. She expected him to berate her for lying.
"The river," Shilo said finally, "as a last resort the river."
"I do not—"
"As a way to get below the Hanging Gardens. Whoever designed the machine that pulls water from the river did it by bringing the water under the ground. There are no pipes running on the surface. Not that I can see."
Nidintulugal smiled. "You are wise, Shilo."
And still terribly, terribly nervous, she thought. And wanting very much for Mission Impossible to be finished so she would be forced to come up with another excuse for missing Big Mick's fish boil.
"Remember that hotel I asked you about, Nidin? Babylon has places like that, right? Places for visitors to sleep?"
"An inn?"
She nodded. "We'll need one, near the Gardens if we can."
"To the north of it, yes, another near the courtyard, one near the Temple of Shamash and the Temple of—"
"North of the Hanging Gardens. We'll need a place to stay."
"My temple, I can—"
"Not a chance. Nidin, we don't want anyone to know you're here . . . just in case they're looking for you. The guards might be looking for you just so they can find me. And we need a place to think, to—"
"I will arrange a room, Shilo." He looked at her hands and pointed to one of her silver rings. Fortunately it was not her favorite. "The inn master would prefer food or drink for barter, but silver is acceptable."
"I'll bet it is." She tugged it off, then smudged some of the dye around her finger to even the color. "I will meet you in the courtyard, Nidin. Please don't be long."
"When I have gained our lodgings, I will carry the nuts and the garments to the courtyard." He cradled them in his arms, then turned down a side street by the Gardens, disappearing in the growing shadows cast by weeping willows.
Shilo felt her heart speed up. Alone again in Babylon shouldn't be so bad, especially since she looked like she fit in here. But the importance of her mission weighed her down and added to her edginess. "Don't hyperventilate again," she whispered. "Don't cry, don't—" Her father had survived his trip through the puzzle and lived to tell Meemaw about it. He was younger than her then.
"I can do this. I have to do this." She fixed her gaze forward, head tilted slightly down, grateful that it was nearing sunset and that the shadows cast by the taller buildings both cooled her and helped conceal her features.
The city's odors pleasantly surrounded her—the scents of evening meals being cooked, the fragrances of the flowers blooming in the Gardens, the sweat and perfumes of passersby. She tried to concentrate on those things to keep her mind off what was to come. The sounds were the same as before, music and laughter, and conversations that she could understand this time. Babylon was a lot like any big city in Georgia, or probably in Wisconsin, too.
Do the people here have the same concerns as in Slade's Corners? she wondered. Do mothers worry about the health of their children? Do men fret over their family's wealth or lack of it? Are they happy? Bored? Excited about an upcoming marriage? Angry over an unexpected death? Do they look forward to someone's birthday or visit? Are they planning a vacation? Do they love as fiercely? Do they get as depressed as often?
She passed a young man and woman engrossed in each other's company. They stood beneath a large balcony, leaning on one of the thick support columns. The woman was smiling and blushing, dipping her head and giggling softly. The man held a loaf of bread in one hand and reached up with his free hand to stroke the woman's face.
Shilo moved on, pleased that she recognized buildings and statues. She'd paid attention to their trip to the stables and the Hanging Gardens, and she'd remembered from the tapestry map in the Temple of Shamash that the roads were laid out like a grid—much the way roads in many American cities were. She wasn't lost.
So far no one had paid her more attention than a passing, polite nod. Of course, she'd not tarried anywhere to draw attention to herself. She recalled the advice her father gave her when they went to Atlanta two summers past: "In big cities, walk like you know where you're going, even if you don't know. Don't look like a stranger or a tourist, it makes you easy pickings." Shilo doubted there were many pickpockets or muggers in Babylon, not like in Atlanta. This city seemed simpler and cleaner, a place she thought she could live in if it had indoor plumbing and air-conditioning.
Minutes later, she saw walls and building trim displaying lions, suns, bulls, and the Ishtar dragon. She knew the courtyard was just around the corner, and the gate she'd appeared in front of days ago was near.
Don't hyperventilate, she thought. Keep it slow, relax.
There were more guards in the courtyard today than on her previous visit. She had spotted them when she and Nidintulugal came through with the ox and cart. She scanned the courtyard and the balconies on buildings to the south and west of the open area. There were thick columns she could stand behind, which supported railed balconies, and the shadows would help conceal her while she waited.
Waited for whom?
And waited for how long?
Would she have to stay in the courtyard all through the night and the next day before the two the dragon picked to help arrived?
Might the dragon's two other pairs of hands not arrive at all?
And would Nidintulugal find her if she hid herself behind a post where the shadows were the thickest?
Would . . .
She heard someone call for the guards. A horn blatted once, then again. She grasped her robe and held it up just high enough so her feet wouldn't become entangled in it. Then she ran toward the ruckus for all she was worth.
The dragon's helpers had indeed arrived.
19 Demon Bowls
ARSHAKA SAT IN HIS COMFORTABLE CHAIR, FEET PROPPED UP and a small, wheel-thrown earthenware bowl on his lap.
He was alone, having dismissed two of his attendants, who had brought him news that King Nebuchadnezzar was safely ensconced in his vacation palace.
The bowl he inspected was unique, not in its design, but in its inscription-—similar in form to the ones on the shelf in the den he'd visited the other night, and to a larger one in his own collection. By necessity, each inscription was different, the Old One had said.
Arshaka had already known that. An archaeologist by trade—at least in his previous occupation and residence— he'd studied bowls such as this. They were a good part of the reason he'd come to Babylon.
He ran his fingers around the edge. It was smooth and felt pleasant to his touch, but
there was a slight chip in it. Still, a marvelous specimen. Centuries from now, Arshaka knew such specimens would be found at digs in Iran and Iraq, and that his peers had dated them to sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries a.d.
Nowhere else in the world had such bowls been uncovered, and the ones that archaeologists had found in Iran and Iraq had inscriptions in Pahlavi, or Persian, and in three Aramaic dialects: Mandaean, Syriac, and Jewish-Aramaic. Like the bowl on his lap, and on most of those on the shelf in the den, the inscriptions were written in spirals that started at the rim and moved toward the center. Some bowls were also inscribed on the outside. He had only two of those.
Arshaka had been fascinated by the bowls in his other "life," as he liked to think of it. And now he had come to be obsessed with them. The bowls, the eggs, and the red-haired girl he was confident the guards would find, all would bring him inestimable power.
He had translated pieces of the most ancient script on some of the bowls he'd collected. Dark words of hope and hopelessness that rolled off his tongue as if he were a native speaker. With time he could translate anything; such was one of his gifts.
The bowl in his lap was achingly easy to decipher, though words were missing because the ink had smudged. It read: Gemekaa, daughter of Avuulluunideeszu, with her twin male sons, has heard the voice of the weak. Gemekaa has heard men fighting and women raging, women who are cursed and afflicted because their descendants are tainted. Gemekaa has become cursed herself, and this vessel offers a cure. Yazdun, Ruphael, Yaqrun, Sahtiel, Prael, Dudu, and Laquip have seized Gemekaa and the raging women by the tufts of their hair and broke off their hidden horns. Yazdun and Laquip tied Gemekaa and the raging women by their braids and shouted at the demons in their heads: "Leave these women and end the bitterness of the curse. In the names of Azdai and Prael and Sahtiel, we release you. End the curse, you idol demons, surrender now and embrace the sickness you have wrought. In the names of Denday and Negray we heal these women and annul the demons' work. Upon an unsplit stone, upon this new bowl of clay, we send back the evil."
The text was Mandaean, an Eastern Aramaic dialect, and had been composed on the bowl in three wedge-shaped panels. Arshaka recognized the ramblings as a spell and counterspell, both intended to protect the owners of the bowl, in this case Gemekaa and two nameless cursed women, against the demons being cast out.
The archaeologists Arshaka had associated with in his previous life did not believe in demons, but they recognized that the people who once lived in Babylon believed in them.
"They were fools, my so-called peers," Arshaka said, using the Aramaic language on the bowl. He liked the sounds of the words, and more than that, he liked the fact that he could speak it fluently. "Fools not to believe in demons. And fools to think these bowls had but one purpose."
Some of the bowls Arshaka and his colleagues had uncovered in the largest Iranian dig were decorated with names of Babylonian gods and symbols, called ouroboros, and magical motifs. A few of the bowls, the most intact that were removed from the site, had been discovered facedown, and in one case two bowls had been cemented together with pitch. They'd carefully pried them apart in a restoration room at the East Azerbaijan Archaeological Museum. Inside were fragments of a human skull and crushed eggshells. Arshaka's colleagues were confident that based on the positions of the bowls in the digs that they were intended as traps for demons.
"The one thing my so-called peers were correct about," he mused.
The bowls indeed were designed to protect individuals and places from the most malevolent of demons, and most often were put upside-down in the corner of a room. The Old One had told Arshaka that corners are the most vulnerable for demon intrusion, as where the floor, ceiling, and walls meet creates an opening to another plane of existence.
There, demons find it easier to enter this world.
So the bowls lured the demons to them, trapped them underneath, and held them there because of the protection spells. Trapped, the demons could not hurt the humans who lived in the home, nor could they damage anything else there.
Bowls with certain incantations inscribed on them were found in cemeteries—where the Babylonians believed demons were plentiful. Sometimes such bowls were placed near the intended victim's house. In almost all cases, these bowls were filled with eggshells. The archaeologists had no clue about the significance of the shells.
At the time, Arshaka hadn't either. But after spending a few decades in Babylon, he understood it well.
The egg was the beginning of life, a powerful and precious symbol that could also mean the beginning of a relationship between entities, the start of a new era.
"The beginning of the reign of Arshaka," he hushed.
Arshaka had four very special eggs that he would use in his bid to control first Babylon, and then a good chunk of the world.
20 A Dog and a Mustang
NEATO-KEENO!
Shilo heard the odd exclamation as she hurtled around the corner, nearly catching her robe on a wood post.
"Neato-keeno!" repeated an Asian boy. He was at the south end of the courtyard, where she'd appeared days before. She immediately recognized him as the boy from her dream who talked about courage. He was wearing cutoffs and a white T-shirt that was smudged with dirt. He wore a catcher's mitt on his left hand and held a softball in his right.
The horn blatted again, and she saw a pair of guards rush toward the boy.
"Oooops," she heard him say.
Her mind raced as her feet churned. She was closer to the boy than the guards, and so she grabbed him and rushed under one of the balconies in the south before they could do anything. With her free hand, she reached out and grabbed a thick pillar, slamming her eyes shut and concentrating.
If my gift is to manipulate material, then let me manipulate this, she thought. Please, please, please let this work. If it didn't, she and the boy would be caught, and who knew what would happen to dragonkind and mankind.
The post was wood and flowed like butter, and as a result the balcony above collapsed. Shilo tugged on the boy's arm and hurried around the corner just as the entire balcony came down. He fought against her, but she was strong in her desperation. She prayed there'd not been anyone standing on the balcony; she'd not had time to look.
"Hey! Who are you? What are you doing?" The boy's wide eyes were defiant, not frightened.
"Trying to save you," she said. "Shut up and run!"
She pulled him around the next corner, darting behind a wide, two-story building and into a narrow alley. There was no one here, and so she pulled down a curtain that served as someone's doorway, praying no one was inside. She wrapped it around the boy and pushed him to the end of the alley. It w7as dark here, the shadows from the buildings made long by the setting sun.
"Who are you?" he repeated, almond eyes narrowing.
"Shilo." She pressed him up against the building. He wasn't much shorter than she was, and she put him at ten or eleven. "Listen, I haven't the time to explain everything to you. I expected someone older to show up.' She let out an exasperated sigh. "The dragon had no right to ..."
"Dragon?" The boy brightened.
"Yes, the dragon. She had no right to pull someone so young into this."
"I'm not that young. I'm almost twelve."
Close, she'd guessed close.
"Listen . . ."
"Kim."
"Listen, Kim, there's a dragon that needs help. But before we can help her, we have to get you out of here. You're in danger, just cause you look different. I'm in danger for the same reason, I think. I don't understand all of it, but you'll just have to trust me."
"Okay." He nodded. "Where are we going?"
She didn't know. "I've a friend getting us a room in an inn. We'll hide there, I'll explain everything, and then . . . oh, the dragon had no right. You're too young."
"I'm almost—"
"Twelve. I know."
"What about my friend?"
"Friend?"
"He was in
the courtyard with me. Didn't you see him?"
She grabbed his shoulders and squeezed. "Kim, stay here. Stay hidden. Don't talk. Don't move. Understand?"
"Geez, lady. Cool down. I'll be here when you get back."
She couldn't see his expression; the curtain was over his head like a hood. "Don't... go ... anywhere." Then she sped away to the east, intending to circle the building and come into the courtyard from another direction. Hurry, she told herself. Don't get lost, don't draw attention . . . too much attention . . . to yourself. Cool down. Sheesh? What kind of an expression was that, cool down?
The horn had stopped blatting, and Shilo didn't hear a commotion coming from the courtyard by the time she'd found her way back to it. Maybe Kim's friend had been caught already. There were plenty of guards, however. Eight of them were picking through the rubble of the collapsed balcony, and there were plenty of onlookers. Another half-dozen guards were stationed at the main streets that led west from the courtyard—the direction she'd initially tugged Kim.
Kim. She recalled her dream more vividly now. Why was the name familiar?
"There are three kinds of courage," the boy had said in that dream. "Courage in the blood." A face appeared in the air above him, becoming red with anger. "Courage in the veins." The face turned blue and lost some of its ire. "And courage in the spirit." The face did not change color this time, but its eyes sparkled intensely, and the boy's voice became stronger. "I have the three kinds of courage, the virtues of a hero. You'll have to find them, too."
The boy had knelt and combed the sand around his feet with his fingers, drawing a curled foot with long claws.
"Empty is the clear path to Heaven, crowded the dark road to Hades. When the mantis hunts the locust he forgets the shrike hunts him. Take care what hunts you, Shilo."
She shivered again, as she had in her dream.
"My dragon was the First Minister and General in Chief to Emperor Liu Pei." The boy gestured and a sword appeared in his hands. "The Slumbering Dragon mine was called. Yours can never sleep, Shilo, at least not unless you help. And yet if you value your life and want to hold on to your father's memories—if you don't want to risk everything you know, you must never heed her call."