Inanna E-Book

Emily H. Wilson

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 623

Beschreibung

An enthralling and lyrical fantasy debut, and the first in an incredible new trilogy re-telling The Epic of Gilgamesh. Brimming full of warring gods, rebellious humans, and the goddess of love caught between them whose destiny has the power to transform the shape of the world, this is perfect for readers of Madeline Miller and Jennifer Saint. Stories are sly things…they can be hard to catch and kill. Inanna is an impossibility, the first full Anunnaki born on Earth in Ancient Mesopotamia. Crowned the goddess of love by the twelve immortal Anunnaki who are worshipped across Sumer, she is destined for greatness. But Inanna is born into a time of war. The Anunnaki have split into warring factions, threatening to tear the world apart. Forced into a marriage to negotiate a peace, she soon realises she has been placed in terrible danger. Gilgamesh, a mortal human son of the Anunnaki, and notorious womaniser, finds himself captured and imprisoned by King Akka who seeks to distance himself and his people from the gods. Arrogant and selfish, Gilgamesh is given one final chance to prove himself. Ninshubar, a powerful warrior woman, is cast out of her tribe after an act of kindness. Hunted by her own people, she escapes across the country, searching for acceptance and a new place in the world. As their journeys push them closer together, and their fates intertwine, they come to realise that together, they may have the power to change to face of the world forever. The first novel in the stunning Sumerians Trilogy, this is a gorgeous, epic retelling of one of the oldest surviving works of literature.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Part 1

Chapter One: Inanna

Chapter Two: Gilgamesh

Chapter Three: Ninshubar

Chapter Four: Inanna

Chapter Five: Gilgamesh

Chapter Six: Ninshubar

Chapter Seven: Inanna

Chapter Eight: Gilgamesh

Chapter Nine: Ninshubar

Chapter Ten: Inanna

Chapter Eleven: Gilgamesh

Part 2

Chapter One: Ninshubar

Chapter Two: Inanna

Chapter Three: Gilgamesh

Chapter Four: Ninshubar

Chapter Five: Inanna

Chapter Six: Gilgamesh

Chapter Seven: Inanna

Chapter Eight: Ninshubar

Chapter Nine: Gilgamesh

Chapter Ten: Inanna

Part 3

Chapter One: Ninshubar

Chapter Two: Gilgamesh

Chapter Three: Inanna

Chapter Four: Ninshubar

Chapter Five: Gilgamesh

Chapter Six: Inanna

Chapter Seven: Gilgamesh

Chapter Eight: Ninshubar

Chapter Nine: Inanna

Chapter Ten: Gilgamesh

Chapter Eleven: Ereshkigal

Part 4

Chapter One: Ninshubar

Chapter Two: Gilgamesh

Chapter Three: Ninshubar

Chapter Four: Gilgamesh

Chapter Five: Ninshubar

Chapter Six: Inanna

Chapter Seven: Gilgamesh

Chapter Eight: Ereshkigal

Chapter Nine: Inanna

Chapter Ten: Ninshubar

Chapter Eleven: Gilgamesh

Chapter Twelve: Inanna

Chapter Thirteen: Ereshkigal

Some Notes About the Book

Acknowledgements

Reading Group Discussion Guide

An Exclusive Preview of Book Two of The Sumerians Trilogy

Chapter One: Marduk

About the Author

“I love it! Spectacular storytelling, vibrant prose, wonderful handling of multiple narrators, and genuinely gripping. I haven’t read a historical novel this good for years: it’s reminiscent of Rosemary Sutcliff at her peak.”

JOANNE HARRIS, author of The Gospel of Loki

“Beautifully crafted and elegantly told, I was carried away to a world both familiar and unknown – Inanna has an enthralling magic all of its own.”

CLAIRE NORTH, World Fantasy Award winner and author of Ithaca

“Inanna is a deft, mesmerising novel, with a cadence true to its epic roots and an entrancing blend of historic depth, intoxicating imagination and sheer heart. Emily H. Wilson is an author to watch, and Inanna is a gorgeous myth retelling with a very timely message about power and empowerment, and who gets to set our cultural narratives.”

LORRAINE WILSON, British Fantasy Award winner, and author of This is Our Undoing

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Inanna

Print edition ISBN: 9781803364407

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803364414

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: August 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Emily H. Wilson 2023

Emily H. Wilson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Jon, Jack and Aldo

Ancient Sumer in 4001 BC

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

THE ANUNNAKI, HIGH GODS OF SUMER

An | king of the gods

Nammu | queen of the gods

Enki | lord of wisdom and water, son of An

Enlil | lord of the sky, son of An

Ninlil | child bride of Enlil

Ninhursag | former wife of Enki

Nanna | father of Inanna, god of the moon

Ningal | mother of Inanna, goddess of the moon

Ereshkigal | queen of the night, Inanna’s sister

Utu | god of the sun, Inanna’s brother

Lugalbanda | Gilgamesh’s father, and chief minister to An

Ninsun | Gilgamesh’s mother, goddess of cows

Inanna | goddess of love and war

THE HALF GODS

(Immortal children of Anunnaki and humans)

Dumuzi | god of sheep, son of Enki

Geshtinanna | daughter of Enki

Isimud | Enki’s chief minister

THE HUMANS

Gilgamesh | mortal son of Lugalbanda and Ninsun

Akka | king of Kish

Hedda | Akka’s sister

Enmebaragesi | son of Akka

Inush | Akka’s nephew

Enkidu | the wild man

Ninshubar | hero from the far south

The Potta | Ninshubar’s adopted son

Amnut | Inanna’s suitable friend

Harga | servant of Gilgamesh and Enlil

Della | mortal daughter of Enlil

Dulma | priestess at the Temple of the Waves

Shamhat | priestess in Shuruppak

Tomasin | elder of Marad

Lilith | priestess in Uruk

Uptu | leader of the scorpion men

Urshanabi | stone man

Shiduri | inn keeper

Uta-napishti | hero of the Great Flood, builder of arks

DEMONS AND OTHER CREATURES

Galatur | the black fly

Kurgurrah | the blue fly

The gallas | demon servants of Ereshkigal

Neti | gatekeeper to the underworld

CHAPTER ONE

INANNA

In Athens, they call me Aphrodite now. In Babylon, they call me Ishtar. But in the first days I had only one name: Inanna.

I was born in the city of Ur, in the springtime. In those days memories of the Great Flood were still raw, and everything was measured from it, so I can tell you that I was born six years after the deluge, when the land was dry and true again, but the dead were still every day missed.

It was in many ways an ordinary beginning. My mother screamed and raged, and then pushed me out, through bloodied thighs, onto linen sheets. She held me to her chest and wept. My father kneeled beside her all the while, his hands clenched tight before him.

The priestess laid me down in an ancient boxwood cradle. She counted my toes and fingers, and put her ear very gently to my heart. “She will live,” the priestess said, and she smiled, very warm, at my parents.

My parents could not smile back at her.

They were high gods. They were Anunnaki. And yet this realm almost killed them, when they first descended from Heaven. How could this child of their flesh, so very frail, survive Earth’s blinding light, and choking air?

*   *   *

Oh, but I did survive.

Indeed, I thrived, in the scouring Earthlight.

I grew plump, beneath Earth’s garish, cobalt sky.

In my first gasp I breathed in the cedars in the palace gardens and the salt coming in off the ocean. I breathed out for the first time to the music of the frogs upon the marsh. All of it was bliss to me. What had once been poison to my family was to me a strengthening balm.

*   *   *

The word went out from Ur to all the city states of Sumer. A new goddess was born: the thirteenth Anunnaki. The drums beat out from every temple.

My mother was exquisite when she was happy. She pressed the tiniest, softest kiss against the tip of my nose, and whispered: “All hail Inanna.”

There was talk of taking me north. The king of the gods must see me. But my mother paced back and forth. Six days on a barge; how could it be safe for me?

As they talked, I lay on my back in my cot, stretching out my feet, and looking up and out at a square of clean blue sky. Without warning, the square was full of swifts. I must have made a noise at this extraordinary sight, at this waxing and waning of what had only been flat colour. I was not upset: I was amazed. But at once my mother picked me up and cradled me against her. “She is too young to travel,” she said.

*   *   *

Seven days went by, and then a white-sailed boat appeared on the horizon, leaning over hard in the playful spring winds. It was a skiff from the White Temple. The punishment for delaying such a boat was death, and this one had come south down the river in two days and two nights, sweeping away all records before it.

Four men in black stepped off the skiff onto the marble quay at Ur, and a small object, wrapped in red velvet, was handed to my mother’s chief priestess. This package was carried up through the griffin gates, past the ponds and palms of the temple precinct, and down long palace corridors, to be handed to my father as he stood beside my cradle.

Inside the velvet was a small clay tablet, raw orange in colour and covered on both sides with neatly pressed text. My father read it slowly.

“He is coming south,” he said.

An, first amongst the Anunnaki, had not left his citadel since time out of mind. But now he was coming south to see me, with the lifegiving Euphrates surging beneath his helm.

The farmers stood in the fields, open-mouthed, to watch his oak-planked barge glide by.

It was an honour of the ages.

*   *   *

My mother said it was too windy for me to be taken outside, but I felt An’s sandalled foot meet the marble of the quay as he was helped from his barge. I felt him drawing closer as he was carried through the walls of Ur, and set down at the door of the Palace of Light. I felt his slow and heavy tread along the corridors.

A muted disturbance outside our rooms, and An was with us.

The king of the Anunnaki embraced my father, and kissed my mother’s round cheek, and then he came over to my cradle, blacking out my square of sky. As he put one heavy hand on my chest, I burst out with a noise, an animal bleat of fear.

My mother moved as if to pick me up, but my father touched her shoulder and she took a step back.

I lay quiet after that, with An’s hand upon me, and the two of us looking upon each other, him so old, and me so new. He pushed his hand down a little heavier, smiling as he did it, but he could not make me bleat again.

“She’s strong,” he said, his eyes on me, “but strange too.”

My father came closer. “I see the Earthlight working on her,” he said. “Changing her.”

“I cannot feed her,” my mother said. “But she is greedy for human milk.”

At this I stirred beneath An’s hand, turning my head in hope of my nurse.

“A child of two realms,” An said. “Two realms, and two peoples.” He paused a moment and then he said: “What did you do, to have her?”

He was looking at me, but behind him, my mother became entirely still, a statue carved from soft flesh.

“What do you mean, Grandfather?” she said, her voice very natural. “We only did the rites in temple, as we always do.”

“We have been in this realm for four hundred years, and produced no Anunnaki babies,” An said. “We make mortal babies, and half gods, and babies we cannot find names for. But never an Anunnaki. And now suddenly here one is.”

“We did nothing that we have not always done,” my father said, most earnest.

An turned to my mother. “Is that true, Granddaughter?”

“Yes,” she said. She looked very young in her plain white tunic, with her soft brown curls loose upon her back.

“Is that a promise?” An said. “The sacred promise of a goddess?”

“Yes,” she said. “It is my promise.”

An held her eye a moment, then turned back to my cradle. “Well, it is done now, whatever you did. And she is Anunnaki, there is no doubt of that. We will call her the goddess of love.”

He leaned down, his beard scratching my cheek. “Love and war,” he whispered. “Do not forget the second part.” The acrid smell of him filled my lungs: the stink of illness, and unimaginable old age.

“What does a goddess of love do?” my father asked.

An shrugged. “We will think of something.”

He sat down heavily in the chair next to my cradle. “There are stories about her already. They say she is going to be a great goddess. Queen of Heaven and Earth. Greater even than me.”

“Do we not control the stories?” my father said.

“Stories are sly things,” An said. “They can be hard to catch and kill.”

After that they let in the priestesses, and my parents’ chief ministers, everyone in white, the colour of Ur. And behind them, crowding my mother’s rooms, came the priests of An, sombre in their black.

“All hail Inanna, goddess of love,” An said, and they all bent their heads to me.

An rummaged in his black robes, and from the depths of a pocket produced a grey-metal bracelet, small in his palm. This he slipped onto my fat left wrist. I felt the bracelet close upon my skin, hard and cold.

“This is the mee of love,” An said, one huge finger resting on my bracelet. “This was once a great weapon of Heaven. And now it will be the mee of Inanna, goddess of love. Let her be entered onto the god lists, in every temple in Sumer.”

I looked at my mother’s face, at how smooth it was, and I could not tell if she was pleased.

*   *   *

My parents stood on the marble quay to watch An go, each with one palm raised. As the king of the gods slipped into the morning mist, my mother looked down at me as I lay in the crook of her arm. Her face was a brightness against the deep of the sky.

“My goddess of love,” she said, dropping a kiss upon my forehead.

“We are truly blessed,” my father said to her. He moved her curls aside, so that he could kiss her cheek.

It was only the smallest movement, but I felt my mother flinch.

My father seemed not to notice.

“My precious princess of Heaven,” he said, smiling down at me. “May only good things happen to you.”

CHAPTER TWO

GILGAMESH

I lay on my back on the muddy riverbank with two soldiers of Kish standing over me. One of them had a hard boot on my throat, and the other was prodding at the gaps in my armour with the nasty end of a spear. The warm rain fell, fat droplets of it, straight into my eyes and gasping mouth.

“I thought he’d be bigger,” throat man said, pressing down harder on my windpipe. He had to shout over the roaring of the river.

“Gill-garrr-mehsh,” the other man bellowed down at me, his spear piercing the skin on my belly. “Such a big name, for such a sorry creature.”

“We could kill him and keep his armour. He’s almost dead anyway.”

“The king did want him alive.”

“But who would ever know?”

At this they looked at each other, one hard and meaningful glance. And for the briefest moment, they did not have their eyes on me.

I immediately rolled with some violence to my left.

Straight into the raging Tigris.

*   *   *

For two or three long minutes I had cause to regret my decision.

First, it is hard to swim in bronze armour, and in a skirt sewn all over with pieces of thin-beaten copper. I hit the riverbed with force and was tumbled helpless along the rocky bottom.

Second, without the boot on my neck, I gulped for air, but found myself breathing water.

Moments into my newfound freedom, I was drowning.

My helmet hit something shatter-hard. Pain ricocheted through my skull. My neck was snapped backwards by my chin strap.

White bubbles, grey rock; a glimmer of heavy cloud through silver-capped water; rock again.

For a moment my face was in the air, but my lungs were full of water, and then I was hurtling along the river bottom face down and with my feet upriver.

Another moment, and I would have been lost to the Tigris, and no one would know the name Gilgamesh. But then I sensed something long and dark in the water and on a reflex, my left hand went out for it. My hand closed tight on rough, twisted wood, and at once every sinew in my body was working to keep a hold of it. In my panic I had inhuman strength, and as my body swung around with the river, I got my right hand onto the stick.

Legs, a man’s legs.

Harga.

Of course, Harga.

The next moment he had his hands upon me, and he was dragging me up onto rough, wet sand. There I vomited up river water with shocking force.

My heart was hammering so hard I thought it might break from my chest.

When the vomiting had finally subsided, and I was breathing air again, I looked up, my vision clearing, to Harga’s black curls, and creased, brown face.

“My lord Gilgamesh, we should hurry,” he said, his voice raised over the noise of the river. “They are close behind. We would be wise not to linger.”

I pushed myself onto all fours, but I had to stay there awhile, both hands flat on the sand, before I could find the strength to do more.

“How sorry I am to keep you waiting, Harga,” I began to say, only to be convulsed by a fit of coughing, with yet more water streaming from my mouth and nose.

Harga pulled me up to my feet, and although I swayed from side to side, I found I could stand.

The great Tigris was to my back, a league wide and wildly powerful. All around us in the rain and mist lay thick bush and the reek of rotting vegetation. It was impossible to see more than a few cords from where we stood, but to my immediate left stood our two mules, looking thoroughly wet and miserable. To my right, upriver, I thought I could hear voices over the noise of the river and the rain.

“We should leave, my lord,” Harga shouted.

“Let’s kill them first,” I tried to say, but my voice was not much more than a croak.

Harga tucked his wet hair behind his ears. “My lord, the whole of Akka’s army will soon be upon us. There are times when it is wise to stand and fight, but this is not one of them.”

I could happily have punched him at that moment, just for the pompousness of that small speech. But I was not sure I could lift my fists. “Very well,” I whispered.

As Harga helped me up onto my mule, my whole left side felt strangely numb, and I could not close my left hand upon the reins.

*   *   *

We headed west, as best we could with no sun to guide us. The bush seemed only to grow more dense, and the rain more torrential.

I gripped on to my damp mule as hard as I could with my knees and one good hand, but I was struggling to breathe. Was my throat swelling?

I will tell you, I have felt better. My left shoulder was a molten mass of pain. My gut was bleeding heavily where the soldier had been poking at me. Indeed, I could not tell, as I looked down at myself, what was only wet with rain and river water, and what was wet with blood. My hand, when I put it to my belly, came away a brilliant red.

“Harga, where were you, when they had me?” I said, as loud as I could. “Did you have a plan to save me, or were you planning only to watch them kill me?”

“I was assessing, my lord.” He did not bother to turn his head.

“Whether to save me or not?”

He rolled his shoulders. “I like to be sure of the outcome.”

I felt myself listing off to the right, and then with no warning I was vomiting clear liquid over the front of my saddle. How could there still be river water in me?

Harga turned to scowl at me. “I will tie you to your saddle,” he said. He seemed about to say more, but then his face changed, all expression dropping from it. At the same moment there was movement behind him: men in dark armour, on dark animals, coming at us through the scrub.

There must have been thirty of them thronging the bushes around us. Men of Akkadia, in their distinctive copper chainmail, and sitting upon the thick-headed wild asses that they like to ride to war on.

I pulled in my mule with my one good hand, and came to a stop against Harga and his mount, our wet thighs pressed hard together in the crush. He cast a glance at me, and then dropped his reins and lifted both his hands over his head. I would have done the same, but was not sure I could lift my hands without falling.

A flash of kingfisher azure through the rain and leaves, and a rider in brilliant blue came pushing through the press of dark riders. I had never seen King Akka before, but I did not need to be told that this was him. The azure he wore was of course famous everywhere, and he was as large and thickset as they said in the stories. His fabled black beard was immaculately crinkled, even in the heavy rain, and his long, wet hair was held back from his face by the thin gold band that the kings of the north have always worn.

“My lord Gilgamesh!” he roared. “Welcome to Akkadia!”

*   *   *

I woke up face down on what I knew immediately to be a good bed, and for a while I lay there luxuriating in the feel of clean sheets baked dry in sunshine.

How long had it been since I had woken up on a soft mattress? I counted backwards. Two weeks behind enemy lines, and before that three weeks sleeping rough in that wet field beside the Tigris. And before that the army camp, as our great leader agonised over whether to ride north against Akka. So, two months, probably, since I had lain face down and open-mouthed upon delicious softness.

The room was quiet, but for a while I lay and listened.

My breathing. The cat-like mewling of a buzzard, up high somewhere. Voices, cheerful, distant. Nothing threatening.

Then I turned my head to the right and opened my eyes: a white plastered wall.

With great caution, I eased myself over onto my back, but I was not cautious enough, and for a moment I was obliged to shut my eyes again. My head pounded most unpleasantly. My left shoulder: it felt like deep bruising. My neck was stiff with pain. Across my belly, a sharp agony.

My hands went to my gut. A wound, scabbed over, just beneath my navel. I realised I was naked.

I breathed in, breathed out.

My pain slowly settled into a bearable background throb.

I was in a small, simple room. My wooden bed, and a stool beside it. One small, high window, with a grid of wooden bars across. A pattern of sunshine upon the white wall opposite.

Nothing else. No sign of my clothes or armour, or Harga, for that matter. A plain white sheet had been tucked neatly over me.

I breathed in, breathed out.

Yes, it was good. After a while, I could not feel my shoulder; lying flat, my neck eased, and the rough and scraping feeling in my head began to fade away. It is my experience that the closer damage is to your head, the harder it is to ignore. Give me a foot injury, any day, over a head wound. But yes, it was good. I would survive.

A small scratch on the door, and a flare of hair appeared, then a pale face with two very bright eyes. “My lord, may I check on you?”

“Certainly,” I said, throwing the boy a smile. He was perhaps fifteen years old, thin but tall.

Of course, I was unarmed: never pleasant. I kept up the strength of my smile as the boy came towards me, a clay jug and small glass in his hands, but as I did so I cast my eyes around the room. Nothing. The bed I lay on was made of wood, but it was solid and well made. There was my sheet. I could strangle him with it, if need be. Or I could use the jug or the glass. I had my hands and feet too, of course, and my forehead. If I could get close enough.

“Do you know how I got here?” I said.

“You passed out entirely, my lord,” he said. “They had to carry you from your mule.”

Yes, my forehead might easily be enough, against this boy. But what lay outside the door? Indeed, where was I? I could be in any city in Akka’s empire. Should I act now, with maximum violence, or wait to know more?

The boy seemed to sense the general direction of my thoughts, and, instead of setting the jug and glass down next to me on my stool, took a step or two backwards.

“They thought you would be thirsty, my lord, after having slept so long,” he said, “and I am to bring you a robe and to tell you that as soon as you are recovered, the king hopes to see you at dinner.”

At this a vast hunger came upon me. How long was it since I had eaten? I could have eaten the jug. I could have eaten this beautiful boy for that matter.

“What does that mean, at dinner?”

“The king eats with all the court in the evenings, and you will join him there, sir.”

“Does he eat well, King Akka?”

“Yes, my lord. They eat a lot. There is always meat.”

“You can put the jug down,” I said. “I will not hurt you.”

“Very good, my lord,” he said, edging past me, and putting down the jug and glass.

“Where am I?” I said.

“Kish, my lord.” He was backing towards the door. “You are in the palace of King Akka.”

“And do you know where my man is? Harga?”

“He has ridden south, sir, with the news of your capture and the details of the ransom they are asking for you. They told your man to take the tablet to your father.”

“Ah, but of course,” I said. “My father.”

It seemed I would be in Kish for some time then.

*   *   *

That night I ate at King Akka’s table: a strange experience, although as time went on it would become most ordinary.

The banquet room in the palace at Kish was truly splendid. The walls were painted iridescent purple, at what great cost I could not imagine. Upon them were hung the heads of giant boars, and the chest plates and swords of defeated enemies. There was room enough for all the royal family and all of Akka’s generals, perhaps two hundred courtiers in all, and the royal table that the king sat at was carved whole from one giant huluppu tree. And the food and wine, it came and came.

I will tell you, I was not at my most splendid. I should have been in my bed, sipping thin soup, not sitting upon a hard wooden chair, trying to hide my injuries. And besides that, my grooming left something to be desired. I like to keep my hair and beard neatly trimmed, and I like good cloth against my skin. Now I sat in that splendid room in a plain robe of rough linen, and with hair and a beard that had not seen a barber in months.

All the same, the food, the wine and the company soon began to cheer me. The great table before me was made bright with enormous beeswax candles, and huge clay platters of roasted venison, baked radishes and dressed lettuce were passed between us as at a family feast. Indeed, all of Akka’s female relatives were dotted amongst the men on the royal table. These women lifted hands to me, and gave me wide and heartfelt smiles, and you would have thought I was a welcome guest, rather than an enemy held hostage.

“It is good to have a Sumerian at court with us,” Akka said, leaning over to pour me more of his sweet date wine. “I regret this war, Gilgamesh. To be fighting like peasants over scraps of fertile land… it should not have come to this.”

“I have been told there is more to it than that,” I said. “I have been told you have forgotten who the Anunnaki are, and what you owe them.”

That he laughed at. “Indeed, I do not know what I owe the Anunnaki. But you should know that my grandfather loved your father, before he rode north to found his own city. He told me that your father was a good man, Anunnaki or not.”

“I have not seen my father for four years,” I said, draining my wine down in one gulp. “I am told you have sent a ransom message to him, but I think you will be waiting many weeks before my father agrees to help me. I left home at the age of fourteen, and I have not seen him since.”

Akka smiled his generous smile, leaning back in his seat with his hands upon his silky beard. “I have told him we will execute you unless he sends me the prisoners of war I have asked for. If he does not do as I ask, I will send him one of your fingers, and then we will see whether he still loves you or not. My guess, Gilgamesh, is that gods love their children just as much as men do.”

I heaped a fresh serving of venison onto my plate. “We will see, my lord,” I said. It was hard to take Akka’s threats too seriously, as I sat so welcomed at his table.

The young woman on Akka’s left leaned forwards to me, and I took in the curve of her pink cheeks, and bright eyes, and the small, high breasts beneath her thin blue dress.

“This is my sister, Hedda,” Akka said.

“I am so pleased to meet you,” Hedda said. “I have grown up on the stories about you!”

“All heroic, I hope,” I said. “All glorious.”

She laughed, clapping her hands together. “I have so many questions for you!”

Akka looked at her fondly, and then said to me: “Gilgamesh, you will live with us as family while you are a hostage here, because of the love my grandfather had for your father, and I know no son of his will disrespect this house. Live with us gently and with honour and there is no reason why this cannot be a good and peaceful time for you, and a chance to get to know our ways here in Kish.”

“That is generous of you, my lord,” I said, my eyes on the shape of his sister’s nipples.

“Well,” he said. “I would like a prince of Sumer to see and understand how we live here. To understand that it is possible to live well, to rule fairly, without the Anunnaki in charge.”

“Who do the people worship here, if not the Anunnaki?”

“They worship the Anunnaki, just as they do in Sumer,” he said. “All the ceremonies are the same here, but the rites are done by humans. And you know, Gilgamesh, it all works. That is what you will see here. Distant gods are the best kind of gods.”

“I look forward to learning my lessons, my lord,” I said, most earnest, but I gave Hedda a little wink as I said it.

Hedda laughed again. “I will take you to temple tomorrow,” she said. “And show you the city.”

“I look forward to it,” I said, and then I left my eyes upon her just for one moment too long, so that she would blush. Akka leaned over and kissed his sister’s head, and looked back at me with what appeared to be great good humour.

It was astonishing to me, the idea that Akka might be planning to let me consort with his women. But then you meet fools everywhere, even in palaces, even seated upon thrones.

“To Gilgamesh,” Akka said, raising his cup to me. The whole table lifted their cups to me in turn, and drank back their good date wine, a long line of smiles and warmth.

“To Gilgamesh!” Hedda said, looking prettier to me by the moment.

“To the royals of Kish!” I said, raising my cup to them. “May the gods smile kindly on you.”

CHAPTER THREE

NINSHUBAR

There was no greater honour, in the tribe that I was raised in, than to run at the back of the hunt.

Normally it was a position that was only given out to boys. But sometimes there was a girl in the world who was faster, stronger, and more dangerous, and then she might be chosen, if the gods and the fates reached out to her.

Even when I was very young, I was marked out as a runner. My father would let me come out for the start of the long hunt, and then send me home with the old men.

“Only a little,” he said, “until your bones are set.”

From when I was ten, he let me run with them all day, only going back at the very end, while the final four runners went on. More and more, I was still strong at the end of the hunt. I was a runner, and one day soon I would be a great one.

Then one morning, I felt it. I felt it in the wind, and the way the branches moved in it. I felt it in the way my father looked back at me as we walked up onto the ridgeway in the early morning light.

I was dressed in my hunting strips, my small breasts bound down. My feet were bare: we run barefoot in my country. On my back I carried my bow and arrows; on one ankle my skinning knife; over one shoulder my waterskin. I felt strong and good, each toe sure upon the sandy path.

At the top of the ridge, we paused for a moment to scan the grass plains below. There were ten hunters there that morning, and with us four dogs, but we were one creature as we stood there, eyes sharp for distant movement.

My father turned to me and said: “Will you run at the back today, Ninshubar?”

I tipped my head to one side, careful to seem nonchalant.

“I will run at the back,” I said. “If the gods will run with me.”

It was the most glorious moment of my life.

*   *   *

We dropped down off the ridge onto the savannah as the sky above us lit up pink. The air was cool and sweet upon my face and in my lungs.

I was the first to see the kudu: dark shapes to the south. They like to stay close to bushland, but this group had wandered out onto the plain, greedy for the new grass.

I made a sign at my father and then all of us broke into a slow run, the dogs fanning out to the east and west.

For the first time in my life, I did not try to push to the front. Instead, I was careful to stay well back, running easy, soft and loose upon the earth.

It was my father who picked the animal. We would take the bull. He was magnificent, but in the last season of his life. The dogs carved him out from his herd, and he veered into a stand of acacia.

After that we were in thick bush, and dappled sunlight. We darted between trees and shrubs, thorns underfoot in the sandy earth.

For a long time, I lost sight of the hunting party, only following their tracks.

This was my job today: to stay back, to stay fresh.

When the sun had wheeled up into the sky, the two oldest hunters appeared before me; they were squatting under a tree, in a scrap of true shade. As I ran past, they handed me the last of their water, and small strips of dried meat. “One step and then the next!” they called to me.

One step and then the next.

I drank their water, tying the empty skins to my belt as I ran, and I ate their dried meat. I felt the gods in my belly and my bones, the ancient owners of this sandy path I ran upon, and the low green trees I ran through, and the blue above.

One by one, the men ahead fell out, and I would find them standing on the track before me, holding out to me the last of whatever supplies they had. I handed over the empty waterskins I was carrying, and took what they had, and ran on, never coming to a stop.

As the heat faded from the day, the leader of the dogs, a lean-boned female, dropped back to look at me, one hard eye upon me, and then ran on between the trees and out of my sight.

One step and then the next.

Not long after I saw my father standing ahead in the trees, with the last of the hunters beside him. “It is only you now,” he said. “We will follow on slowly.”

“I am strong,” I said, and ran straight past them without slowing.

*   *   *

Now it was only the hoof marks of the kudu: no human prints ahead on the path. His steps were shortening; he was slowing. The dogs were exhausted, after running their pincer movement upon the kudu for so many hours, and they began to drop back to run alongside me. Their leader kept her hard eye upon me, which made me smile.

“Have some faith in me!” I called to her.

For the first time, I thought I heard the kudu, a low rumbling sound in the gathering dusk. I slowed to a walk and made the sign to the dogs, to stay where they were. Then I walked on alone.

In a glade, upon spring grass, stood the kudu, his sides heaving.

He was a huge animal: as tall as me at the shoulder. His striped coat, up close, was of a grey that was almost blue, with flashes of deep black and a bright russet.

When he sensed me walking in on him, he lay down, first his forelegs, and then his hind. Finally, he put his snow-white chin down upon the grass.

I walked carefully around him, and kneeled. How huge and black his eyes were, and how brilliantly white the streak below them. We were so close, I could smell his musky scent.

We looked at each other a while, and then I laid down my bow and arrows, and said the death prayers to see him well in the heavens. He breathed very slowly, seeming to settle into the earth.

I stood then, fixing an arrow to my bow, and I shot him in the soft skin that hung from his neck. He seemed not to feel it.

As his blood flowed down into the earth, I said again the death prayers, for a life well lived, and well given. When the light went out of his gorgeous black eyes, I put my hand to his neck and dabbed blood onto my cheeks.

Then I sat there for a while as the light went out of the day, sad to my bones for the end of this beautiful creature’s life.

Only the dogs creeping up broke my meditation. Behind them came my father. He leaned down, and kissed me on the head.

“The runner at the back,” he said.

That was the second most glorious moment of my life.

*   *   *

There was a great feast the next day, at our dry season camp. My father drank the sacred sap, and afterwards, before all the tribe, he said to me: “Ninshubar, when I am gone, you will be leader here.”

I felt pride at the idea of this, but also sadness, at the idea of my father being gone. But then I caught my mother’s eyes upon me, and felt something else.

I had always been the strongest and most able of her daughters. I was exceptionally tall, which is valued highly in my country. I was clever, and kind. I was a superb linguist. And I was beautiful, too. All the boys liked to put their eyes on me, and then slowly slide them off. There was no girl with whiter teeth, or brighter eyes, or blacker skin, within four days’ walk.

My reward, for my beauty and wide-ranging excellence, had been the unremitting hatred of my mother and my sisters. They spat up feathers of jealousy as I grew more wonderful and powerful with age. But what was that to me? I learned to brush the feathers off me.

Now, by the light of the campfire, I saw something else in my mother’s eyes.

She wanted to hurt me.

There was no mistaking it.

I wondered for the first time what that might mean for me.

CHAPTER FOUR

INANNA

Ur is an oven in the summer, and on the hottest days I was allowed to go up onto the roof of the moon temple. They would set up a shade and chair ready for me, so that I could sit in what breeze there was and watch for dolphins. Sometimes there would be a ship coming in, and I would be eager to see what came off it, if only to tell my parents about it at dinner. But on this day, as soon as I came out on the roof I heard a strange noise, rising up from the gardens, and instead of sitting I went straight to the balustrade.

There they were, far below me, three children, laughing and running, in and out of the cedar trees. They were perhaps about my age, although I was too high up to see their faces. A moment later a woman emerged from the palace buildings, holding a wooden spoon up in one hand, and the children ran past her and out of sight.

“Oh,” I said, although I had not meant to speak.

My guard was standing in the narrow doorway behind me.

“Little goddess, are you well?” he said.

At first, I could only nod.

“I would like to see my mother,” I said.

*   *   *

As we climbed slowly down the twisting staircase, my guard kept glancing back at me in the gloom.

“What was it that you saw, Inanna?”

They were meant to call me Lady Inanna, but they dropped that when no one else was listening.

“I am quite well,” I said.

I made a show of concentrating on the steps, one hand on the cool wall.

*   *   *

I had seen children before. In pretty costumes, in temple, their faces plain, their eyes cast down. I had seen them lining the route into the holy precinct. I had seen them at table, when our chief ministers joined us for dinner, although even at table I had never heard one speak. And I knew of the concept of children playing, from temple stories, from things I had overheard. Yet I had not grasped what it would look like, or sound like, or how it would knock the insides out of me. The wildness of it, striking at my soul.

“Did you have too much sun, Princess?”

“I am quite well,” I said again. “I only need to see my mother.”

*   *   *

I knew where to find her; I felt the familiar pull. And there she was, in the long south-facing room at the back of her temple. The shutters onto the courtyard had been thrown open wide so that the scribes, sitting cross-legged upon dusty rugs, could see to do their work.

My mother had a taste for finery, but for the scribes she wore only a plain linen smock, because she was certain to come away with clay on her. She lifted her luminous face to me in greeting, but then went on with what she was saying to the scribes. “Read it all back to me,” she said.

A scribe stood, head bent, and read out a list of grains and other goods, and the amount of each, and the price paid.

When I saw that I must wait for my mother’s attention, I lifted up my skirts and sat down next to her. She patted my right knee with one hand as she listened with great intensity to the list of goods being read out.

“What is it, my love?” she said, when the scribe’s story of barley, and silver ore, and the best saffron, was finally over.

“Mother, I would like a friend,” I said.

She gave me her most playful smile. “Am I not your friend? Am I not the best friend anyone could hope for?”

I crinkled up my face. “I do not mean an adult friend.”

My mother’s smile faded. “My darling, we will talk about this at dinner.”

*   *   *

We three moon gods ate outside in the summer, on the terrace that looked out over the river. I saw at once, from my parents’ set faces, that they had been arguing.

My father took the lead. “Inanna, there is no one suitable to be the friend of the princess of the moon.”

“Who would be suitable, father?”

My mother leaned forwards. “An immortal, Inanna, would be suitable. Someone who will live a lifetime alongside you, not die in a handful of decades. But the only children in this city are mortal.”

“You cannot get attached to them,” my father said. “It will break your heart, over and over. I have told you this before, but I do not think you listen to me.”

“We have worked so hard to protect you from this,” my mother said. “You are so precious to us. We only want to keep you from the pain that this will cause you.”

I looked from one to the other of them, silent.

I had never been refused something before. But perhaps I had never asked for anything.

*   *   *

I began to see children everywhere. Four boys lying together on the grass in the palace gardens, throwing something between them. A little girl with her hand in her mother’s, walking with great seriousness along the street that traced the outer wall of the temple complex. I watched one small boy walk brave as an eagle along the top of the city walls, six cables high.

I went back to my mother, and I asked again. But she only grew firmer.

Then I stopped speaking to her.

“Inanna, this is beneath you,” my mother said. “We do this because we love you.”

I only lifted my eyes to her, and then looked back down at my lap.

After this, I began to push my food away at mealtimes, and I spent long hours with my chin upon the windowsill in my mother’s bedroom, looking north towards the marshes.

In the end they could not withstand me.

*   *   *

The moon gods met in council with their priests and chief ministers, and finally they settled upon Amnut.

She was not suitable. She was a mortal.

But she was the least unsuitable child in the city. She was after all a royal princess: her father had been king of Ur for forty years. And although her family served my family, as every family in Ur did, they were deemed fit to eat at our table, at least on feast days. I was by this time eleven; Amnut was twelve. It would have to do.

The great day finally came, and I was led into the smaller state room in my mother’s temple, the one with ochre-painted walls and a smooth granite floor. They had lit the fire and set out games there on a little ebony table, and sitting at this table, with her hands flat in front of her, was a small girl with long black hair.

“They will bring in some cakes,” my mother said. And then she left us.

My parents had never left me anywhere without a guard to stand over me. But now it was just me and the girl.

Amnut was wearing a crimson dress and matching cape, and white kidskin boots. She stood, and smoothed her cape. She held her chin high as she did so, and I saw how delicate her nose and mouth were, and how sulphurous yellow her eyes.

I found I could not think of one single thing to say to her.

This was nothing, though, to Amnut.

“I am collecting ants,” she said. “They fight each other.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I collect different kinds, and then watch what they do when I put them all in a box together.”

There was a pause.

“You can see them if you want,” she said. “But I was not allowed to bring them. We will have to go back to my palace.”

“I adore ants,” I said.

But then, feeling that only complete honesty would do on such an historic day, I said: “Although I am not sure perhaps that I have ever seen an ant.”

*   *   *

Attempts were made to keep some distance between us. But only one Inanna had conquered two moon gods, and now Amnut and I combined were too powerful for the gods and their priests and the heaving ranks of the royal family. Soon enough we girls lived a life where we were only separated at bedtime, and for official business in temple. Outside those bleak hours we were allowed to roam together as much as we saw fit.

Each morning, from daybreak, the two of us could be found outside the soaring clay-brick walls of the city, in the grasslands that led to the marshes. I had become a passionate collector of crawling things, not just ants but also beetles and spiders. We had grown also to love flowers and trees, but it was the creeping things that were our first shared love, and these we continued to insist upon entrapping, and bringing back with us into our palaces.

These excursions beyond the city walls had at first been flatly refused, then furiously refused, and then just one expedition had been allowed, as an exception.

Now we went out through the griffin gates of Ur each day as if by ancient right, and our guards, long-suffering, rambled out after us carrying with them with our collecting boxes and nets.

On the morning of my twelfth birthday, Amnut and I were out even before dawn.

My brother Utu, the god of the sun, was born in Heaven; he was centuries older than me, and had his own city in the north. But once a year, on my birthday, he would visit us in Ur. So today there would be a state dinner, much fuss, much bathing, and formal dressing, and Amnut and I were determined to enjoy some freedom early, while we could.

As the spring sun rose full above the marshes, we abandoned our observation of a funnel-web spider, and sat down upon a rock to eat our figs and cheese. Our guards made a camp on a sandy bank nearby and doled out their barley mash.

Careful to keep our voices low, Amnut and I turned to the grave and private subject of our shared bloodline.

My eyes were black, not yellow, but that one thing aside we two girls might have been twins. We had the same long, black hair, falling like water down our backs, and the same skin, sickly olive in winter, but already in the early spring a deep brown, and we were both fine-boned, and unusually short. The idea had come to us that my father might also be Amnut’s father.

It would not be so unusual if he was. It was my father’s sacred duty to spread the godseed in the people, to raise them up with his Anunnaki blood. Very often he would take a bride to temple, before she went to her husband.

Oh, how wonderful if we were sisters!

“So did you ask her?” I said.

“I felt awkward asking my mother,” Amnut said. “But I asked my grandmother.”

“And?”

“Your father did take my mother to his temple on her wedding morning, and they did the rites, but she cannot be sure whose child I am.”

I let this sink in. “I wonder how one can even tell.”

I stretched out my feet, to look at them next to Amnut’s. I have never been vain, but I have always liked the look of my feet. They are little triangles, wide at the toes and narrow at the ankle, and each toe neatly formed, and very evenly placed. I saw that Amnut’s feet were longer and thinner than mine, and her toes less neatly arranged. I tucked my feet back into my skirts.

I was about to say more about my father, but then the captain of my guard approached us, tugging briefly at his copper-covered cap. “They’ll be looking for you now,” he said, addressing himself to me. Behind him, the soldiers had finished their breakfasts and were preparing to go. “My lady,” he added.

I stood up and looked out north along the great river. I felt upon the horizon a point that was heavier than all the other points, that seemed to tip in on itself, and I knew it to be my brother.

“Yes, he’s coming,” I said. “Time to go in, Amnut.”

*   *   *

At midday, when the spring sun had real heat in it, and the rolling chorus of the cicadas had begun, I stood out on the dock in all my finery. On state occasions, we moon gods wore snow-white linen robes, embroidered with countless pearls, and over our smocks the bronze chest plates of Ur. On our backs we wore wings fashioned from white eagle feathers.

Oh, we were the vision of Heaven, we three, with all our priests and priestesses standing behind us, also in the white of Ur, and behind them, lining the walls of the docks, the people of the city.

A shadow amidst the reeds on the shimmering horizon, and then one barge came into focus, and then another, and another. Eight great barges in all, each with a vast sail of saffron yellow aloft, and each with a hundred rowers lining its decks. As they drew close, the oars rising and dipping in perfect unison, we saw that Utu’s fleet was decked in palm fronds and lotus flowers, as for a triumph. He had been in the far north, in the war against the barbarian king.

“I wonder that he thinks it a triumph, his progress in the north,” my father said. “He killed a few camp followers, and retreated, is how I heard it. Is that a triumph?”

My mother frowned at that, but said nothing.

Utu’s gleaming barge of state touched to, and after its coiled ropes had been strung around the bollards along the quay, and pulled taut, two hefty slaves helped my brother clamber up onto the marble, careful he did not stumble.

The sun god wore a dress in saffron yellow, the colour of his temple. Over this he wore many gold necklaces, and on his head, a gold crown in the shape of a rising sun. After he had kissed our mother, and nodded to our father, he tipped his face to me.

“Inanna.”

“Hello, brother,” I said, my smile wide.

“Twelve today.”

“Yes.”

“I’m told you spend your days grubbing around for insects.”

“Yes,” I said, my smile fixing in place.

“I do wonder that they allow it,” he said.

*   *   *

The big banquet table, carved from one enormous slice of a cedar tree, was carried out onto the terrace, and we four gods ate our dinner in a pool of candlelight, with a half-moon overhead. I was made to wear my leopard-skin cloak over my dinner dress, in case the spring evening grew too cold.

We were served lamb, roasted whole and carried into the light on a huge platter, and also buttered samphire, and little fish, fried and then tossed in salt. Afterwards, the first of the apricots, grown in the palace gardens.

In the first days, Utu lived with my parents in Ur. He helped them build the city, and dig out the canals. For a hundred years, its business had been his business. Yet now he seemed to have no interest at all in it. He spoke at length about his city, Sippur, and about the war, but had no questions for my parents.

I was seated upon his right at dinner, and to me he said: “Is the mee working yet?”

“No, brother.” My right hand moved to cover it.

“Why would An give you something that didn’t work?”

“I do not know, brother.”

After that he had no more questions for me, and I retreated into my own thoughts, very grim.

*   *   *

It was a constant source of worry and embarrassment to me, that my mee, the great weapon of my godhead, only sat upon my wrist, drinking in the light, good for nothing else. It was said that my father could strike down men dead with his mee. I knew that my mother could settle great disputes with hers, that people walked many leagues for her to end vendettas that had lasted generations.

Yet my mee did nothing. My mother’s priestesses had scratched at it, and pulled at it, hurting my wrist, but it could not be made to come alive. What sort of a goddess would I be, with no mee to give me power?

*   *   *

And then: a name.

Gilgamesh.

The name pulled me back into the flow of talk around the table.

I had never met my cousin Gilgamesh, but I loved to hear stories of him. As did everyone; he was famous up and down the land. Was there a table in Sumer where he would not be spoken of this night?

“Any news we get of him comes in scraps, from ordinary men,” my brother said.

“Gilgamesh?” I said. “Is he safe?”

“Undoubtedly not,” Utu said.

“Why do you sound so disapproving of him, brother,” I said, “when he bears arms against our enemy?”

My parents and Utu cast glances at each other but did not answer me.

“Time and time again, he breaks his father’s heart,” Utu said.

“It’s hard for Gilgamesh,” my mother said, taking an apricot.

“Why?” I said. “Why?”

“Because his parents are gods, and he is not.”

I looked at her, at how bright and young she was, with the sacred melam glittering through her veins. I tried to imagine how it would feel if I myself was soon to wither, while my mother went on, strong, glowing, constantly renewed by the magical blood of the Anunnaki.

“Everybody makes excuses for Gilgamesh,” Utu said. “But I for one have run out of patience with him.”

*   *   *

I had a moment alone with my brother as he was helped back onto his litter. “My brother,” I said. “I wish you were here more often. That we might know each other better.”

Utu’s men at that moment heaved him up to shoulder height, so I found myself looking up at his round face, framed by turquoise sky.

He frowned down at me. “They coddle you.”

“What do you mean, brother?”

He shook his head. “They do you no favours by it. This is a hard world to be a young girl in, and they ought to be better preparing you for it.”

After only the briefest pause, I said: “But I am not a girl, brother. I am a priestess of Heaven.”

Utu raised one finely arched eyebrow. “Do you think that will make a difference, Inanna?”