Chapter Fifteen - Isolation

Sjerub opened his eyes but there was only darkness. He brought his hands to his face, ensuring his eyes were still there. Where am I? All was black.

He reached his hands around, his fingers feeling only cold moist stone.

His head bumped against the ceiling. The dark space was so low that he had to move around half-squatting with a bent neck.

He continued following the cold wall until he reached a corner, finding another wall. He turned and carefully took safe steps in the other direction, now encountering what seemed like hard rods of what he assumed to be metal prison bars.

He groaned. His throat was dry, pain emanated from the back of his head. He remembered a struggle with the priestesses. Then nothing.

The Hurrian sat down, leaning with his back against the wall and swallowed. ‘Curse my fate.’ Sjerub spoke into the darkness, but there was no reply.

He expected his eyes to adjust to the dark, but as the time passed he remained blind. Wherever he now was, there reigned a solid, heavy dark; an absolute absence of light.

He sat and waited. Time passed strangely there, only verifiable by increasing thirst and the onset of hunger. When his patience had run out the Hurrian jumped up and felt his way towards the prison bars.

‘Let me out of here!’ He screamed with violent demand. His voice disappeared into the vast dark nothingness.

‘Hello?’ He asked, grimacing to negate the onset of rapidly approaching panic. Sjerub sat back down again, pressed his head against his knees and waited.

He awoke, at least he thought he had awoken, at the arrival of a faint sound. A murmur at first, it gained in strength. A singing voice, soft and gentle, like the pure song of a nightingale. The singing echoed in the distance, gradually coming closer through the dark. Such fine tones, alternating between cheerful and sad, now accompanied by descending footsteps.

Sjerub gripped the bars of his cramped jail, pressed his face against the cold, moist metal.

He discerned something with his eyes; a glow. A glow!

Orange light descended with the onset of rapid feet and the fine soft voice. Feet became visible descending a suddenly visible staircase, then the naked flame of a torch. The flames surged loudly, consuming and pulling in the stale air.

The light of fire became too bright for the Hurrian’s eyes and he had to avert his gaze. He blinked rapidly. The figure closed in, driving away the darkness. In his averted position the Hurrian looked away from the fire, fixing his eyes on the space outside his cell. He saw more bars, other jails constructed of mossy stones that glistened with water.

‘Oh, my dear.’ The voice of heabani. Sjerub looked up with squinting eyes at the eunuch, and the painted flower man watched back with pity.

‘Why am I here? The Hurrian demanded.

Heabani bit his lip. ‘You failed the HIgh-Priestess.’

‘She sent me with her words out to Isin.’ Sjerub stated, trying his best to keep his calm. ‘How can I control the whims of an old northern King? The words he spoke were of importance, I chose to live and bring them back to my mistress. I deemed it valuable, now I wake in the darkness and the cold, like a damned animal in a cage. Get me out of here.’

Heabani shook his head, crystals hanging from his ears sparkling in the torchlight.

‘Eneduanna cannot afford failure. No matter how difficult the task. The men she commands are little better than wild beasts. Strict discipline and punishment is all they understand. The fact that you are still alive shows that she cares a great deal for you, Hurrian. Try to see your current condition as a positive. For now the High-Priestess has greater matters to attend to than an imprisoned mercenary. You are placed here until it is decided how to deal with you. Be glad you are not discarded and your blood drained in a sacrifice. Not yet at least.’

Heabani brought forward a large copper spoon, pushing it between the bars. Water flowed over the edges. ‘Drink my friend. It is not over yet.’

Pity for the one Enedduanna has taken an interest in. Isolated, the surrounding layers peeled away, until he was fully alone and helpless in her complete grasp, imprisoned in the dark.

Heabani provided a piece of bread for the prisoner and the Hurrian eagerly took it.

‘How long will I be here?’

‘Only Eneduanna knows.’

‘I swore an oath to her, and is this how she repays loyalty?’

The Hurrian grew angry in his tiny confines, his bent back already aching. Had they chosen the smallest cell they had for him?

‘You must wait to see how she will proceed.’ Heabani replied dryly.

Sjerub’s scarred arm lunged forward, slipping through the rusty jail bars and grabbing hold of the eunuch’s soft cloth near his little powdered throat. ‘Listen you little shit! Get me the hell out of here!’

Heabani remained calm, making no attempt to resist or free himself from the Hurrian grasp.

‘If you want to spend your remainder of days in a tiny airless box it can be arranged. I can have you chained and placed in a burial slit, with the ceiling against your nose.’ His voice was very soft. ‘Now let go of me.’

Sjerub did as he was told and Heabani’s expression lightened. ‘Have patience my friend. Now I must go.’

The eunuch looked around the miserable surroundings. ‘I will leave you the light.’ He jammed the torch in a hole in the stone wall. Then he left, while the Hurrian remained with the slowly decreasing light of a burning out torch. He saw the shadowy cells across the hallway. A fragment of bone lay on the floor in the jail across. The flame sputtered. The fire shrank, then extinguished. A soft glowing charred wood remained for him to keep his eyes on, before that too left him and he was back in the oppressive darkness.

He sat in the nothing, waiting, dozing, occasionally crawling around to seek a way out. He rattled the rusty jail door, he struck the stone walls, and then he sat down again.

Perpetual night covered him, aided with absolute silence. There was nothing, and he floated there on a bed of cold moist stone.

Hours or days, it all blended together into oblivion. He knew time had passed as his thirst had returned, a great thirst, tongue swollen and parched, his blind eyes not seeing but his fingers feeling his lips breaking up. His ears pricked up as he heard a sound in the distance; Heabani was returning, with food and water, and perhaps the word of his release. It was a mistake was it not? He served Eneduanna, he served her good he did. Send me out to war for the High-priestess, let me use my blade and spear and bow. I bring heads and ears and anything she desires. Send me to Isin to make amends in blood.

But there descended no singing, and there came no liberating light. He kept his blind eyes to the left, where somewhere in the darkness he knew the staircase was.

Then new sounds, soft and muffled, something rustling over the floor. Whoever it was, it was close, just outside his cell. Sjerub peered into darkness, desperately trying to discern something. He now knew there was something with him in the darkness, his hair rose and he took a step back from the jail-bars.

He felt watched. His mind filled with the image of an enormous spider standing in the corner of the hall, its many eyes fixed upon its hopelessly trapped prey, its hairy dark legs carefully creeping closer.

Again the soft sound, now directly before his cell. A rustling, or a clicking? His ears were imagining things alongside his troubled mind.

His body braced and his heart rate increased. He balled up his fists, moving backwards until he felt the wall pressing against his back. He stood there, knees slightly bent because the ceiling was too low, motionless, doused in an outpouring of fear. He smelled his own sweat.

He had endured many long nights in this forgotten pit. He had been angry, confused, but never fearful. Yet now his calm was broken. He was disturbed. Whatever was out there he sensed it’s predatory intent. He sensed it’s hunger. Tense moments passed. Then a sliding sound away from his cell and towards the staircase.

A long extended flow of time passed, the undernight ruling him until his mouth was parched and his swollen painful tongue so desperate for moisture he resorted to licking the damp walls.

Light came again, from far away, and he watched it the longest time to come closer, as if the light was crossing over a far extending desert to reach him.

Heabani returned again, torch in his hand snapping like an unruly dog. Even the fire seemed to detest being here.

The Hurrian barely raised his head from his slumped body resting against the prison bars. He reached through with his arms and held out his hand without looking up. He was asked something but Sjerub did not bother understanding the words. It did not matter anyway. A ragged coughing expunged from his lungs.

Heabani handed him over his regular bread. ‘You might not notice much down here, but outside the land is changing. The soil is dry and begging for rain, everything nearly dead to the point of their deepest, most desperate roots. Grey clouds have been forming overhead. Season of summer is coming at its end.’

The prisoner discarded the bread besides him. ‘Water.’ He grumbled. Heabani nodded. ‘Yes, water. Autumn comes, bringing with it’s many storms. Im talking rain, dear Hurrian; An outpour. When the city floods the grand canals will be washed clean, as will the sewers, the piping, the channels. The waters will rise, and at this time Uruk truly is at its best. More inaccessible, more appealing. The vast slums outside the walls become muddy and swamp-like, miserable even, for its occupants. Its a good time for recruiting. Within the great walls of our blessed city the lower wards are drowned away, and the highest estates will have their foundations submerged, rising from the waters clean and vital. Whole streets disappear. Boats navigate through the halls of clean-swept palaces.’ He sighed with a dreamy smile on his face.

‘What do you think will happen to these cells?’ Heabani continued. ‘You are situated quit deep, here, far below the city in fact. When the rain comes and the waterways swell from the previous confines of their streams, I expect it to flow down from those very stairs. And at the end of the storm-season when the clouds dry up, and blue shines through the clouds again, this entire chamber will be submerged.’

The Hurrian slowly pushed himself upwards to face the eunuch. ‘Let me out then you little bastard.’ He was dulled, the great flame in his heart reduced to a dozing ember, but anger still coursed easily through his veins.

‘You will get out when the High priestess decides you get out and no moment before that. If it is her will to let you drown you will drown. Your life was hers since the day she spared you on those awfully hot barrens. It is her right to take it away at any time. Your life is now one of servitude, either here, with your corpse floating in flooded prison, or outside, on the battlefield, or wherever she requires you. Anything else than absolute obedience will be a failure. You should be thankful for the opportunity of serving Eneduanna. Dont you understand? - She is a living Goddess. Worship her! Throw yourself at her feet!’

Heabani left, and the Hurrian was kept in the darkness.