Джеймс Миченер - The Source

When Urbaal reached home he received the ugly news that Timna had feared. The priests of Melak had returned to deliver their decision: “The stars indicate that we shall be attacked from the north. By a host larger than before. It is therefore essential to take steps and we shall have a burning of first sons tomorrow.” With a red dye obtained from the seashore they stained the wrists of Urbaal’s son and then directed the farmer to halt the screaming of his wife. Proving by their implacable detachment that there could be no appeal from their decision, they stalked from the house and proceeded to seven others, where they similarly stained the wrists of children from the leading families of Makor.

It was a moment when Urbaal wished to hear no lament from Timna, so he left the house and in the street encountered Amalek hurrying back to town, and when Urbaal saw the look of anguish on the herdsman’s face he knew that Amalek’s son had been selected, too. The two men did not speak, for if either had betrayed any dissatisfaction with the priests’ decision he could have brought disaster upon his household.

The priests of Makor were implacable but they were not cruel. They sponsored no unnecessary barbarity and ordered only what was required to protect the community. They were the only ones who could read, and to Mesopotamia they sent their clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform, while to Egypt they sent messages in hieroglyphic. They knew figuring and astronomy and how to manage the year so that crops flourished. Without their intelligence life in Makor would have been impossible, for they served also as doctors and judges. They supervised the king’s extensive lands, controlled his slaves and managed the warehouses in which food was stored against the day of famine. Only the priests understood the mystery of El rising silently from the earth and of Melak with the fiery throat, and if they now decided that the threat of war could be forestalled only by another burning, their judgment must be accepted. For they were judicious men, and when Makor was last destroyed a surviving priest had explained to the stragglers, “Disaster came because for the past years you have sacrificed to Melak only the sons of poor families, or boys defective.” They blamed the burning of the town on this slackening of dedication and reasoned, “If the respectable families of Makor refused Melak their first-born, why should he bother to protect them?” The logic was self-evident, so in the reconstructed town only the sons of leading families were offered to the god, and from the moment that Timna had borne her child, Urbaal had known that it must go to the fire.

Urbaal spent that night by himself in the room of the four Astartes, and there he entered upon the full conflict of death and life, for in a cradle in a corner slept his son with red-marked wrists, unaware of the ritual which he would sanctify next morning; and death was very close. But above the child stood the new Astarte smiling benevolently, and with her arrival the oil pits in the olive grove had produced their most copious run. Already she was bringing new life to the house, new fecundity, and it was possible that she would bring the tall slave girl, too. In that strange mixture of death and eroticism which marked so much of the thinking in that age, Urbaal lay on his couch listening first to his son’s even breathing, then dreaming of the slave girl whom he yearned for with such passion. Death and life pervaded his thinking, as they did the room and all of Makor.

Shortly after dawn a group of priests in red capes passed through the streets banging drums and sounding trumpets, and it was a mark of Urbaal’s confusion that in spite of the grief he felt over the impending loss of his son, he nevertheless hurried to the door to see if the tall slave girl was marching with the priests. She was not.

When the procession had made several circuits of the town, the drumming ceased, the priests separated, and mothers began to feel the ultimate terror. Finally a knock came on Urbaal’s door, and a priest appeared to claim Timna’s first-born son. Timna began to scream, but her husband placed his hand over her mouth and the priest nodded his approval, carrying the child from the house. After a while the drumming resumed and cymbals clashed. A trumpet blew and excited mutterings were heard in the town. “We must go,” Urbaal said, taking Timna’s hand, for if the mothers were not present it might be judged that they offered their sons with a grudging spirit.

But Timna, who was not of Makor, could not bring herself to attend the terrible rites. “Let me at least stay hidden,” she begged.

Patiently Urbaal took her to the room of the gods and showed her his smiling Astarte. “Last night,” he assured her, “Baal-of-the-Storm came and made sport with the goddess. I watched them. She’s pregnant now, and you shall be too, I promise you.” He dragged her to the door, pulled her hands away as she tried to hold herself to an entrance pillar. Then he lost his patience and slapped her sharply.

“What are sons for?” he asked. “Stop crying.” But when they were in the street he felt sorry for her and wiped away her tears. Matred, his first wife, who had known this day, said nothing but watched from behind. “Let her know sorrow,” she mumbled to herself.

With an aching pain in his chest Urbaal led his two wives along the twisting street to the temple square, but before he entered that sacred place he took a deep breath, set his shoulders and did his best to quell the panic in his guts. “Let us all be brave,” he whispered, “for many will be watching.” But as luck would have it, the first man he saw in the holy area was the herdsman Amalek, who was also trying to control his anguish, and the two men whose sons were to go that day stared at each other in mute pain. Neither betrayed his fears, and they marched together to the monoliths, lending strength and dignity to the ritual.

Between the palace and the four menhirs dedicated to the gentler gods had been erected a platform of movable stones, under which a huge fire already raged. On the platform stood a stone god of unusual construction: it had two extended arms raised so that from the stone fingertips to the body they formed a wide inclined plane; but above the spot where they joined the torso there was a huge gaping mouth, so that whatever was placed upon the arms was free to roll swiftly downward and plunge into the fire. This was the god Melak, the new protector of Makor.

Slaves heaped fresh fagots under the statue, and when the flames leaped from the god’s mouth two priests grabbed one of the eight boys—a roly-poly infant of nine months—and raised him high in the air. Muttering incantations they approached the outstretched arms, dashed the child upon them and gave him a dreadful shove downward, so that he scraped along the stony arms and plunged into the fire. As the god accepted him with a belch of fire there was a faint cry, then an anguished scream as the child’s mother protested. Urbaal looked quickly to see that the cry had come from one of the wives of Amalek, and with bitter satisfaction he smiled. The priests had noticed this breach of religious solemnity, and Urbaal thought: They will remember that Amalek couldn’t control his wife. This year they will choose me.

Seeking to prevent a similar disgrace in his family, which would bring him into disfavor with the priests and lose him whatever advantage he had gained from Amalek’s misfortune, he gripped Timna’s arm and whispered, “Silence.” But four other boys were consigned to the flames before Timna’s son was raised whimpering into the air and crushed down upon the voracious arms. With tumbling turns, as if he were a little ball, the infant dropped into the flames. Rancid smoke hissed from the red mouth and a cry started from Timna’s throat, but with his free hand Urbaal caught her by the neck and preserved the dignity of sacrifice. He saw that the priests had noticed his action and had smiled approval. More than ever he felt the omens were good that he would be declared the year’s winner.