The Whore of Babylon

Prologue

She tore the darkness with a scream.

Her sister was there in an instant, calming her with a soft embrace. The night terrors were less frequent that they used to be, but Eliana still could not shake them off. Scenes from the deepest pits of the underworld flooded her mind, but they were no product of childish imagination. The pain was still fresh, despite the fact that almost two years had now passed since the conquest.

Kisha rocked her back and forth, stroking her hair and singing softly. The song was a favourite of theirs, one their mother had used to sing them to sleep as babies.

Her racing heart gradually returned to normal and she sank back into sleep, the arms and voice of her sister becoming their mother’s. In her dream, Eliana strained for a glimpse of her mother’s face. As always, all she saw was a pair of kind eyes in a shadowy face.

By the time the golden light of dawn washed across Eliana’s bed, Kisha was gone. Barely awake, tears welled in the younger girl’s eyes as she remembered that next time the nightmares came, her sister would not. Today was Kisha’s wedding day, and she would wed the man who had destroyed their city.

Forcefully blinking back the tears, Eliana sprang from the bed and went to the copper washbasin in the corner of the room. Splashing water on her face, she tried to banish the traces of the dream from her mind: the last time she saw her future brother-in-law, nearly two years ago, was as he cut down a pair of brothers, shepherd boys who had tried to hide their flocks from the invaders. Just twelve and fourteen years old, they had been Eliana’s playmates. Laughing and chasing through the dusty streets one day, and dead the next. Her last sight of them had been their corpses piled anonymously atop the mounds of others who had shared their fate, entrails dangling grotesquely from their slit bellies, glistening greenish in the heat of the day.

He had slain them personally. While his second-in-command, the one they called ‘the Brute’, slew the younger, he plunged his spear into the stomach of the other. The elder boy had pleaded for mercy, the words bubbling up in blood and dying on his lips. Those two boys haunted her dreams, and now her gentle sister was to marry the monster who killed them.

She would not cry, she had promised herself and sworn it to the great god Enlil. When the ceremonies were complete, the house emptied of guests and she was left alone with her father, then she would weep, but not before. There was not a man in Nippur who could claim to have ever seen her shed a public tear, even during the darkest hour of the conquest.

Eliana dried her face and slipped on the dress she had laid out the night before – an ochre-coloured silk that shimmered like gold and ran through her fingers like water. It clung to her body, a second skin, highlighting her newly blossomed woman’s curves. She clipped a belt of silver links around her slender waist, dusted some vermillion onto her lips and combed jasmine oil through her thick black curls until they gleamed like obsidian.

Sliding her feet into a pair of braided leather sandals, she was ready to face the day.

The reed mats rustled underfoot as she made her way down to the walled garden where the wedding would take place. Kisha would be preparing herself, so it fell to Eliana to see that everything was ready for when the guests arrived.

The little garden was a riot of colour – the date trees planted all around its edges were almost ripe, fruit hanging heavy in so many shades of vibrant red and orange that it would rival even Utu, the sun god himself, when he lowered his head to bed each night. On the ground, the mustard was in flower, dazzling yellow heads nodding in the breeze, interspersed with spidery green garlic and onion plants and the feathery leaves of chickpeas. Little fish leapt merrily in the decorative pool at the garden’s centre, creating a tinkling music.