Slaves of the Shinar , livre ebook

This edition first published in the United States in 2007 by The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.
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Copyright © 2007 by Justin Allen Map copyright © 2007 by Day Mitchell and Justin Allen
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
ISBN 978-1-4683-0765-8
Contents
Copyright
Book I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Book II
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Book III
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Book IV
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Book V
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
For You

Book I
A CONVERGENCE
V IOLENT FLOODS HAVE EVER SHAPED THE LIVES OF THOSE POOR farmers and goatherds who make their homes along the banks of the Tiger and Ibex rivers. Each year, just as the summer heat finally breaks over the desert, a season of torrential rain begins in the Karun Mountains to the north and east of the Shinar. The hotter the summer, the heavier the rains. That is the way it has always been.
In the beginning, the mountains soak up the raindrops. After months of hot, dry days, wherin nothing can grow, the downpours are a blessing. Plants and animals drink deep. During a particularly wet year, a man might see the dandywillows grow and blossom in a single afternoon. But as with all of nature, what starts as a blessing quickly turns destructive.
The waters rise. Tiny streams swell to become raging rivers. Lakes fill until they can hold no more. Rivers overflow their banks, uproot trees and carry them like the clubs of savages, crushing the life from everything in their path. Even the soil, the earth mother herself, is washed away. Nothing can stand against the torrent.
When the mountains can no longer contain the fury, the water gushes through the Withered Hills and onto the valley.
Fields are swallowed. Herds are drowned. Homes are set adrift or else battered to nothingness by the unstoppable weight of the water and the continual pummeling of the debris carried in one colossal rush to the sea.
As often as not, the floods come without warning, leaving the people woefully unprepared. Children are swept away, only to be discovered weeks later, caught in the remains of a fence or washed against a rock. Their tiny, sun-browned bodies turned white and bloated. Mothers and fathers are drowned, leaving orphans to live or die as they are able. Entire families disappear, so that there is no trace of their ever having been. Sometimes whole villages are run under by the deluge—the land wiped clean by the god of storms.
Days and weeks pass. The waters recede. Eventually, the Tiger and Ibex form two distinct rivers once more, snug in their beds, and those left alive begin the long season of rebuilding.
It is not so difficult. The gods demand sacrifices but leave gifts. With each flood, the farmers are delivered a thick layer of new soil. Soil so rich and dense that they need only cast their seeds upon the ground and plants will spring up. The once ravaged floodplain is soon brimming with new life.
After a season of growth, barley and dates will be ready to harvest. Goats, grown fat from the lush grass, are mated or slaughtered. In due time, brewers, tanners, and weavers will ply their trades. The more violent the flood, the more abundant the surplus. That is the law of the land.
Finally, summer rolls around once more and the farmers, goatherds, and tradesman alike will go to the temples to make sacrifice. Some will offer food. Others give precious baubles or bits of metal. But whether they come bearing riches or hands clasped on empty air, all will pray: “Gods bless us.”
Does this mean that they desire another crashing torrent? None can say.
The gods give and they take away. That is the way things are in the Shinar. That is the way it has always been.
CHAPTER 1
The Hunter
U RUK FLED ACROSS THE WASTES .
Desert extended over the entirety of the visible earth. Wave after slowly moving wave of glittering sand, devoid of life, marched on him from all sides. It flung itself into the air, mixed with wind and sky, and pelted him from every direction. It scorched in the sun and burned his feet. It was the grit in his mouth, ruining his food and muddying his water. He tore scraps from his clothes and tied them over his head and feet, but no matter how tightly he tied them, the sand got in.
He had been traveling east for a week straight. Of that he was certain. His sense of direction was perfect, and he had plenty of time to count, over and over, the passing of the days. He had come far. The weight of the water-sack hanging over his shoulder told him that he was beyond turning back. Three days beyond by his reckoning. And for those three agonizing days he had crested every ridge with a sense of hope. The city of Ur, and whatever treasure it held, was waiting for him somewhere ahead.
Though his sense of direction was perfect, his map reading seemed to be decidedly the opposite. Maps were worth more than gold in those days, and a good traders’ map was protected with life and limb. Maps were the life’s blood of the desert, showing canyons and streams, places for living and places for dying. Uruk had looked over a detailed chart of the land between the Bay of Beenar and Ur just before leaving the coastal cities, and it had seemed to him that he should reach Ur in no more than four days.
He’d measured off the distance on his thumbs. It was three thumb lengths between Ur and the coastal cities, and also three from the coastal cities to the Bay of Beenar. Not far. When he was still looting the treasuries of the Prince of Beenar, Uruk had traveled back and forth between the cities and the bay a half dozen times. If he hurried he could usually make the trip in two and a half days.
But there was no hurrying in the high desert. The faster Uruk walked, the more his feet slid in the sand. It took forever to climb one short dune, his feet slipping back nearly as fast as they pressed ahead. This was no place for human beings. Still, he ought to have traveled more than double the distance to Beenar.
It was a mindless sort of existence, out there on the sands. He found it difficult to focus on any one thought for more than a few moments. Bad habits cropped up with startling swiftness. For a while he’d been lifting his water-skin from his shoulder, feeling the weight of the liquid sloshing back and forth inside, and then dropping it back into place. He did this at least ten times an hour. Later, he’d found himself picking at his fingernails, peeling back the cuticles. As soon as he discovered these habits, Uruk set his mind to squashing them. He believed that a man ought to know exactly what he was doing, and why. Uncontrolled habits were the surest indication of a lazy mind, which a true hunter could not tolerate. Lately he’d been sucking on his front teeth. This had proved the most difficult habit to break. But conquer it, he would.
After a long climb, Uruk crested a medium-sized dune. There was still no sign of Ur—just sand as far as he could see. He coughed and rubbed his eyes. The wind was hitting him full in the face and his feet were starting to bleed. He needed rest and water. He glanced at the sun. It was almost noon. He let the water-skin fall at his feet and then sat down, turning his back to the wind. His knees were sore, his back throbbing from the strain of this seemingly endless trudge across the sand. But Uruk wasn’t ready to give up.
He tore the rags off his feet and cast them aside. His blood was thick and sticky and oozed out of cracks in the skin around his toes. The desert was drying him, turning his body fluids to powder. He pulled the rags away from his mouth and tried to spit. Nothing. He tried to whistle, but no sound would come.
Uruk tore strips of cloth from the hemline of his tunic and bound them around his feet. A dust devil swirled over a dune to the west of him. He watched it build strength until whole mounds were lifted from the landscape. It moved toward him, gaining speed as it ran downhill, its cone towering into the sky. Then, just as it reached the base of the dune where he was sitting, it was hit by a crosswind and dissipated. Nothing could last in the waste.
His last water-skin was more than half-empty. He shouldn’t drink. At his present rate, Uruk would be out of water by midnight. He stared at the water-skin, trying to will his thirst away. He couldn’t. His hands shook as he took a long sip. The water was warm and tasted like baked leather. He felt it creep all the way down to his stomach. Unfortunately, it did little for his thirst. He was about to take another drink, but mastered himself just in time. He needed something else to think about. Anything. Uruk looked over the sand he had just crossed and saw that his tracks were already gone—filled in by the wind. He wondered how long it took for the wind to cover a body. A day—maybe two? Uruk groaned. His desire for life and his energy, both seemingly limitless until then, were seeping out of him along with his blood. He needed a short rest, he reasoned. At least until he stopped bleeding. Then he would go on. Just a sh