CONCLUSION OF THE STORY ABOUT MOT

Inshul had been served by a troop of large desert apes; I’d kept a few on, and they, along with the afrit cook, had made a pleasant dinner (If you’ve been wondering, the mere fact that one is the lord of the drought is not incompatible with an appreciation for a good glass of wine). Chubu put down his axe and his carpet bag and ate with us, and I learned that my pantheon was undergoing changes.

The odd thing was that our worshippers had won; they’d invaded and conquered quite a nice kingdom on the other side of the mountains. Now there was the problem of getting all those new subjects used to being subjects, which meant that places had to be found for at least a few of the gods of the defeated.

“You were their war god?” Merhut asked gently.

“Yes. I suppose all the weapons gave me away. But Marduk …!”

I knew my brother Marduk, though I’m not fond of him. “He beat you bare-handed, didn’t he?”

“Barehanded, with his eyes closed and while composing and reciting a poem about the battle. The thing scanned beautifully, too!”

As I said, some of the defeated folk’s gods had to be folded into the victor’s pantheon. It made things go easier, and smoothed the way towards two peoples becoming – more or less – one. However, Marduk wasn’t the sort to welcome a second war god into the family. Why not stick Chubu somewhere inconspicuous? Cities were all the rage then; and who, really, would care if the drought god was a young beweaponed fellow with a wondrous beard, rather than a well-polished skeleton?

“I believe all my weapons are supposed to symbolize the power of the drought. Something like that. It sounds very boring.”

“You’ll get used to it. The apes are good servants; I’ll miss them. If you’re fortunate, someone may remember that the drought god used to patronize lascivious nuns. That beard will go over well with them, if they’re anything like the nuns I knew.”

“You’re being very decent about being replaced.”

“No sense fighting it, and I’ve had a long run. Don’t be too hard on the priests; they’re an irritating lot, but they can’t help it.”

Merhut could have stayed, but she came away with me. “You’re too helpless a set of bones to be let out alone,” was how she put it, but I was grateful.

And how have we lived since? Well enough, all things considered. The Christians exorcised poor Chubu years ago, but he went down fighting, surrounded by the bones of scattered saints. How I look never changes; I’m not sure what mortals see, but probably not a skeleton since I don’t startle most of them. Merhut’s hair has grey in it. There’s a pension I get; there’s savings and we sell amulets at craft fairs sometimes. (Can I interest you in one? Keep you safe from drought, I promise).

And yes, I will accept a drink. All this talking has made me dry.

THE THIRD PART OF THE STORY ABOUT MOT

I went with her and stood outside. If I were a more pernickety sort, I’d have had acolytes and prophets and spearwomen and row upon row of servants for a visitor to negotiate before he got within distance of me, but I’d never seen much point to it. There was a dot far off on the horizon, which slowly grew nearer. Night had come before the dot turned into a burly god at our door; Merhut and I had had time to eat and freshen up and we had put on our full regalia. Merhut looked lovely in a well-cut gown which kept changing color and a chain of stars burning around her waist (some of her madmen had a nice sense of fashion). I looked like a skeleton on which someone had plonked bits of armor and a tall hat.

Our visitor was an impressive sort. He stood there for a moment or two, slightly glowing, so that I could drink him in. About 3 cubits and a half tall, I’d say, and quite wide. He looked young, but he had a long and magnificent beard, which he had curled and oiled. There was a dangerous looking battle-axe in his right hand, two swords in their scabbards slung over his back, and any number of daggers and throwing knives strapped about him. The effect was slightly spoiled – but only slightly – by the fact that his left hand was clutching the handles of a bulging carpet bag which looked sturdy but worn.

I would have been content to stand there admiring him, but Merhut came from a mannerly pantheon. “Welcome, stranger!” she said. “Long must have been the road which has led you here and gladly would we heard the stories you have learned along the way. But you must be tired and hungry; will you not eat with us, and bide the night?”

The stranger drew himself up. “I am Chubu! You have been expecting me!”

The correct answer, of course, was “Noble Lord and Lady of the castle, I am Chubu, a poor wayfarer, and right willing would I be to accept your gracious offer and rest here in the shadow of your hospitality.” Then everything would have gone as usual; we’d have eaten and drunk together for three days; I’d have heard what poor mortal was Ishtar’s lover at the moment, what Enki had invented lately and other bits and pieces of news from the greater world. Then – I didn’t take it personally, since  it was protocol – my visitor would try to kill me.

Men like their bits of theatre, and the death of the drought god is a crowd-pleaser. No one seemed bothered by the fact that no matter how many vegetation or rain or fertility gods killed me, drought always returned. Not that I was killed all that often; I don’t bleed, I’m fast, and Enlil himself taught me to use a sword. It’s preposterous to feel guilty about killing a fertility god, and I never did. They grew like weeds.

If this stranger wasn’t going to follow the script I knew, I’d have to improvise. “Chubu – would that be Great Chubu, Puissant Chubu or just Chubu?”

“Chubu of the Many Blades. Look, just call me Chubu.”

“Chubu, then. We haven’t been expecting you. I don’t know who you are or why you’re here.”

“Not that we aren’t glad to see you,” Merhut put in. “We don’t get a lot of visitors.”

“Typical,” Chubu said, “just typical. Can I come in?”

“Of course.”

(To Be Concluded Monday)

THE SECOND PART OF THE STORY ABOUT MOT

From time to time, I’d hitch a ride with one of the winds who spent their days roaring about the place, and descend upon this village or that, or sometimes a whole region. The water gods were generally glad to see me; it meant a rest for them. For a time, there’d be no rain; the rivers would shrink or vanish in the sands. The farmers would get to rest too, for there would be little or no crop for them to bring in. They’d spend much of the time lying about; sometimes they would lie down for days and not rise again. Those who had the energy would hunt up a priest of mine (well, of course I had priests; I was a god, wasn’t I?) who would point out the dangers inherent in not worshipping Mot and the even greater dangers in not treating his priests with respect. “Mot is a mighty god,” I heard one of 0them say, “and how do you think He feels when he sees someone spilling the contents of a slop bucket on the High Priest of His temple?”

There would be ceremonies and prayers, and the odd sacrifice (one town tried sacrificing frogs, but I sent some really awful dreams until they stopped; I like frogs). Some very flattering things were said about me, but I couldn’t overlook the fact that most of the prayers were that I would go away. Sooner or later, I would show my beneficence by leaving, and people would go back to pouring out their slop buckets on my priests. (This was all right with me, actually. You don’t get a really superior class of men aspiring to be priests of the drought god.)

Quite a lot of Time went by (whatever you’ve been told, Time is not a god; he’s more a sort of complicated machine. He once told me that he didn’t actually hate Gods; he just didn’t see much point to them and reflexively swatted them if they buzzed too loudly when he was trying to think.) For a while, after my uncle Enlil took emeritus status, some of his orgiastic nuns took me as their patron, and droughts were much more fun for a few centuries. My priests started wearing much better robes, growing mustaches, and walking about with unpleasant leers on their faces. I was sorry when the nuns decided that Ishtar was a more appropriate patron than I was, though I couldn’t refute the logic. My priests shaved and went back to looking glum.

I was sitting in my palace one late afternoon, not doing much. There was a priest in a small town near the desert who kept sending me frantic prayers that I destroy the crop of the town about three parasangs down the road, and I was trying to tactfully explain that his town, which had no silos, would starve long before its neighbor, which did. (It would be easier, of course, if I could simply have sent him a note saying “Listen up! A drought next door means a drought at home, so you’re actually praying that I starve or kill you and everyone you know. Is this what you want? Let me know. Love, Your God, Mot.” Protocol, though, demanded a symbolic dream, and preferably one that could be easily misinterpreted. I was never much good at these; the famous one of mine about the cows eating each other was actually crafted by my brother Enki.) My consort came in (I haven’t mentioned her? I had a consort. Her name was Merhut; she was a very nice sort and had something to do with heat-induced delirium and a kind of reddish jadeite) and said there was a god she didn’t recognize coming down the road.

(To Be Continued Tomorrow)

THE FIRST PART OF THE STORY ABOUT MOT

          Had I had much choice in the matter, I’d have been the god of small green frogs, or the mists that rise around twilight. I suppose my looks counted against me for such jobs; who would want a skeleton accepting his thanks for the relief the mist gave after the burning day? I was quick, though, and handy with a sword, so it was felt I would do well enough as the god of something bleak. There were any number of water gods in those days; three gods for the oceans and one each for lakes, rivers, ponds, streams and marshes. One of my sisters dispensed the rain, and a cousin looked after the ground water. Canals, wells, cisterns ... there was even an ambitious demon who called himself the lord of the water in the wash basin.

          But there hadn’t been a god for the dry things in quite some while. The desert rejected any god who tried to rule it, though it didn’t mind the large number or pretenders and aspirants who wandered about in it. The sand was willing enough, but the logistics defeated us there; each grain demanded its own god. I believe they wound up with each one worshipping its neighbor. Since their prayers were on the order of “O Lord, grant that I may remain a grain of sand!” this worked well enough.

My mother, though, remembered that when she had been very young there had been a god of drought. “He was quite handsome, in an austere sort of way – all basalt and hard lines to him. Not much sense of humor, sadly, and the only thing he seemed fond of was a stone lion that used to follow him about. No one’s seen him for ages, though I saw the lion a few years back, playing at being a statue in Nineveh. He had the most lovely palace, and the winds used to run about it howling and chucking stones at each other.”

“Why did a  lion have a palace?”

“Not the lion – the god, Inshul was his name, I think. Though I’m quite fond of you, Mot, no one would say you were swift on the uptake; it can be quite irritating.”

I don’t recall consenting, but I didn’t say no and found myself with a drafty palace in the most inaccessible part of the desert. There were few passersby – a djinn now and then, or an afrit who was hiding from the law. (Most gods won’t give an afrit the time of day, but I’ve always been fond of them. Apart from being thieves and their habit of leaving no survivors when they ambush a caravan, they are an engaging race, and they brought me news of the world, so I didn’t feel quite so alone).

(To Be Continued Tomorrow)

One thing about Mot

I had a mind to write something about Lancelot, grown restless in death, but instead I came up with a poem about one of the more dour gods of Babylonia. It’s an odd process, this writing business, at least for me:

Had you met me in my power

You would not have rejoiced.

God of the drought was I, of dry fields

Baking under uncaring suns

Mot I was called and Death

Was pleased enough to call me kin.

(Skeletons all look alike and who

To say we were not brothers?)

I had some priests – unpleasant men

Though my worshippers were worse

Praying that I would make fallow

The fields of others. (Many died; wheat,

For those with silos fill, sold high.)

After he killed great Tiamat, Marduk,

Who did not like the desert, came after me

Bellowing, waving his sword. Seven months I ran;

They built a shrine where he caught me.

What good to be a god when Marduk

Leaves you broken in the dust?

If year by year the sands creep towards the City

Do not curse Mot; the drought

Has found itself another god.

(Find, if you can, another Marduk).

          Mot turns up, so far as I know, only in stories about his being slain by Marduk or by Ba’al, though this may have happened more than once (some argue it was a yearly event; it probably wasn’t one Mot looked forward to with any eagerness). I’m still trying to figure out why he came when I was looking for Lancelot. Perhaps they room together in the afterworld.

I am oddly fond of Mot, who makes no pretenses about things. I have a story about him somewhere.