B. Alexander Howerton Read Online Free

raised platform.  On the platform a large stone
altar sat, surrounded by blazing torches.  Behind the altar, against the far
wall, rose an immense statue of a kneeling woman, clad only in a long skirt.
The arms of the figure were upraised over the impressive, terrible visage of
the goddess, the hands coming together over her head, holding a brilliant,
dazzling, roughly oblong stone.  The stone had no definable color, yet when the
light of the torches struck it just right, it seemed to cast about the hall
rays of every hue imaginable.
    The prisoners were led to the base of the stairs that led to
the altar, and were halted forcibly.  Nothing happened for a moment, and they
stared around anxiously.  Then, from somewhere behind the large goddess statue,
a woman appeared.  She walked up in front of the stone altar and stared
imperiously down at the mob.  She wore a long pleated skirt of light cloth that
hung down to her bare feet, held up by a thick, ornately tooled gold belt.  An
elaborate headdress, which rested on her long, black hair, rose to an amazing
height above her head.  It seemed to the prisoners to resemble roughly the
horns of a bull, which they were so fond of hunting.  The woman was bedecked
with gold and jeweled ornaments of an amazing variety.  She wore a collar of
lapis lazuli, which left her breast bare, and she wore no shirt or other upper
body attire.  She stood with her fists on her hips and gazed down at her prey
with deep, dark, penetrating eyes, which seemed to hold great foreboding.  The
warriors all prostrated themselves before their high priestess.
    She barked out some sounds which the captives could not
understand, and the warriors leapt to their feet and arranged the prisoners
into a rough line before the steps.  The priestess walked slowly down the
steps, then haughtily back and forth before the red-haired captives,
scrutinizing them closely.  She stopped before one, who was a little taller
than the rest, and seemed to be much less awed by his surroundings that the
others.  He stood tall and straight, unafraid, awaiting his fate.  The
priestess narrowed her eyes and examined his face intently.  He stared back
stoically, unflinching.  She looked down the length of his body, past his
tattered yet intact loincloth to his legs, then back up to his face.  As they
stood staring at each other, a flash of reflected torchlight bounced off the
stone in the goddess statue’s hands and passed a colorful band of light across
the prisoner’s forehead.  The priestess suddenly turned to a warrior and
snapped out some command.  He seized the captive in question by the shackled
arms, while the others were herded away, back out of the temple, by the other
warriors. 
    The priestess regally turned and walked back up the stairs
to the altar, while a warrior roughly compelled the chosen prisoner to follow. 
She strode around behind the statue of the goddess, through a hidden door, and
into her private chamber.  The warrior dragged the captive in, threw him down
on the floor, then instantly hurried out, shutting the door behind him.  The
prisoner looked up and around, and found himself in a sumptuously decorated
room.  The walls were covered with elaborate frescoes, depicting what he
concluded was the story of the people of this city.  Torches lined the walls,
casting mysterious shadows about the room.  One corner contained an elaborate
array of pillows, fabricated mostly from rich red and yellow patterned cloth,
arranged to make what was obviously a bed.  There was a low, ornately carved
table in front of the pillows, and on it rested an urn and two cups, all
crafted from intricately decorated beige-on-black pottery.  The priestess
removed her headdress, placed it on the head of a bust of a woman that sat on a
low table next to the pillows, and reclined into her bed.
    “You must be frightened,” she said in the tongue of the city
of Uruk to the prisoner who crouched, panting, in the middle