The eunuch had come to take him away. “Come,” he boomed, scowling.
“Who summons me?” Enkidu retorted with probative boldness.
White teeth flashed in a dark countenance. “I summon you. I, Dishon, torturemaster of this nameless temple.”
Suddenly Enkidu did not feel like antagonizing this creature. His bravado deserted him. His heart hammered. He was afraid of physical pain, so that he had left the slave-brand rather than endure the momentary physical agony of its expunction, and thus gotten himself into this fix. He could never stand up to torture.
“Aten protect me!” he implored in a whisper as he came forward.
Dishon heard him. “Better ask the protection of no god, since no god exists.”
Enkidu looked at him, surprised. “I—I had thought perhaps you worshiped Ishtar.” Some of the rites of Ishtar shocked outsiders; Enkidu was an outsider. Some men undertook public castration, dedicating themselves to her service. Goddess of love she was, and of fecundity—but also goddess of death. Mutilation and torture were as much a part of her worship as was the passion of her votive temple courtesans.
“Ishtar?” Dishon’s laughter barked. His huge hand shoved Enkidu forward. He wore heavy leather gloves, virtual gauntlets. That must be his business uniform, protection against spattering blood and flying teeth.
Enkidu clutched his bracelet, feeling nauseous. Ishtar was present here—but she was not his deity. She had no need of his worship, and would not protect him.
The passage was long and dim. He stumbled after the slack-jawed, narrow-headed lamp-bearer, past other cells, and finally up rough brick steps to a second gate. It was lighter here, but Enkidu had no glimpse of the outside. He was propelled down a wider hallway to a chamber at the end. Here there was a brighter light—but the moving shadows cast by the lamps in the niches only made the room more ominous. Enkidu fancied he saw gouges and knives and hot irons, but those were merely products of his fear.
The lamplight glinted on the wall, on the myriad fragments of some intricate mosaic. There seemed to be some pattern to it, yet when he tried to pick it out his mind balked, for the glints were like stars in the night sky.
Directly in front of the mosaic stood a table fashioned of aromatic imported cedarwood, and on this was—no, not a water-torture device, but a water-clock, a clepsydra. A suspended ceramic jar with a small opening in the bottom from which water steadily dripped. A slender copper tube caught the drops and a float gradually rose as the lower water level climbed. A thin rod passed from this through a fulcrum and marked the time of day against a panel.
To the right of the clepsydra sat a figure he recognized: Amalek. Now his face was clearly visible within the cowl. Before him was a papyrus scroll and a reed pen with a small pot of ink. Enkidu had investigated Egyptian writing as a matter of curiosity, but found it so far inferior to wedge-script as to be worthless. Papyrus would burn, and there could be no genuine protection from forgery since there was no hardened clay envelope. Strange that these people should prefer the foreign script to real writing!
At the other side of the table sat a taller figure, in white, also cowled, and this face was almost completely concealed. Only the eyes peered out malevolently.
Dishon heaved Enkidu forward into a red stone circle set into the dull tiles of the floor. “Stand!” the eunuch directed, but there was nowhere to sit. “Answer when addressed!” but no one addressed him. What was coming next?
Presently Amalek spoke. “Give your name and place of birth.”
Was this another trial? Enkidu started to protest, then remembered the torturemaster. “I am Enkidu, son of Hadru, of a village near Calah on the Tigris.”
“Your age?”
“I was born the year Nebuchadnezzar died.”
Amalek nodded, referring to the scroll. “He would be twenty-two, perhaps twenty-three.” The white man neither moved nor spoke in response. “Status and employment?”
“Free scribe of the Temple of Marduk. Prisoner of persons unknown, illegally.”
This was dangerous bait, but Amalek did not rise to it. “Why did you come to Babylon?”
“I thought my god was here.” Enkidu would not be silenced on this score, and he always preferred to speak the direct truth. “Aten.”
The white hood jerked up, its glistening eyes stabbing at him. Amalek lifted his pen, dipped it in ink, and made an entry on his scroll.
“Be advised,” Amalek said, “that you have spoken heresy. It is our intent to show you your error and return your attention to matters proper to the laity.”
“Because I worship Aten?” Enkidu demanded incredulously. He had hardly believed what Tamar had told him, before.
“Aten is a false god,” Amalek said evenly. “That to which you pretend is impossible.”
Enkidu looked at the grim figures beside the waterclock, then at the exotic frieze glinting behind them with its alien midnight sky. These must be formless genii, inchoate within their robes, and that must be their true home. Perhaps they had been sent to test his faith. To strip him spiritually naked.
But he was not naked. The cloak of his god was about him. No apparition could breach his defenses so long as his faith was strong. “Aten is my god,” Enkidu said firmly. “If you say he is false, you lie.”
He faced the table and waited, watching the measured falling of the water droplets. Both demon-figures were as pillars of salt. At last Amalek spoke again. “Where did you learn of Aten?”
“I always knew of him.”
“You can not have had authentic information. How can you pretend to knowledge of his nature?”
Here Enkidu found himself in difficulty. Amalek was not barraging him with blind abuse, he was asking penetrating questions that put Enkidu on the defensive. How could he present outward proof of what he only knew in his spleen to be true? What argument could convince a determined unbeliever?
“I know his nature because he has revealed it to me in ways I cannot doubt. Aten is good, Aten is merciful. I cannot conceive of him otherwise.” Yet that sounded weak.
“I proclaim Aten a false god,” Amalek said. “Aten is unjust and cruel. I curse his name.” He paused. “If I speak falsely, why does he not strike me down for blasphemy?”
“I don’t know,” Enkidu admitted, somewhat discomforted. He had never been forced to explore the matter of his worship in this fashion, and he was not well prepared. “I do not understand all of his ways. That is why I came to Babylon to seek out his following—so that I might come to comprehend the fullness of his nature. Perhaps it is not possible for an unbeliever to blaspheme. Or—Aten may, in his mercy, take pity upon the man who speaks against him, because that man is ignorant, he is spiritually ill, he is not responsible for his words. Perhaps he has compassion on the unjust as well as on the just. I cannot be sure.”
“Do you believe this god you pretend to worship can protect you from our torturemaster?”
That question terrified Enkidu, but he couldn’t deny Aten. “Perhaps it fits his purpose to leave me in your hands. Or your god may be stronger…”
“Do you then deny Aten’s omnipotence?”
Enkidu spread his hands in perplexity. “How can he be omnipotent? There are so many gods—”
Amalek nodded. “There are other gods. Many others. Why do you choose to worship a lesser god when you know there are greater ones available?”
Here he was on better ground. “Because he is my god. I suppose it is a matter of faith rather than power. The mighty gods—Shamash of the sun, Sin of the moon, Bel-Marduk—these have many temples, many devotees. My worship is not important to them. But Aten is not known, not famous. And not bloodthirsty.”