"Pots, bowls, animal tokens, the gods themselves will be jealous of the quality!" called Ninri'a from behind her market stall, stacked high with the surplus goods made by Asaba'an, her husband.

All about her, the market thronged with sweaty people, jostling and shoving to get to the various stalls. As she did every week, Ninri'a, mother of three and one-time war hero, hawked her goods. This was the family's source of free income and she the best woman for the job. Her three sons could not do it, no, they lacked the character for sales. Her husband, Asaba'an, gentle soul, definitely lacked the gumption to negotiate trade. The job fell instead to Ninri'a, but that didn't mean she had to like it.

"Ingots! good ingots, get them here, hardest bronze in Gasa'edish!"

"There's always room for more barley, you never know when Shishio'a will send down her locusts!"

Each trader had their own one-liner, she was no exception to that rule. The honest truth was that ever since the births of the three sons, Asaba'an had never been as good at anything as he once had been. Something had left him, with each subsequent child. Once the two had stood with each other as young lovers in battle, he strong and virile, her firm and fierce. She had been his shield bearer, the front line of the formation and he had borne the long pike, the perfect pair in love and war. Now, though, he did none of either, and she had been required to pick up the slack. She could spy from where she stood three pottery stalls with superior products to her own, and all the market knew it.

Barging through the crowd, shoulders hunched forward and arms swinging loose, came Gagesh, her first son. Close behind him, permanently pouting and straight-backed, came Shashishio'a, her second. Nowhere could she spot Mo'abe.

"Have you sold anything today?" asked Gagesh, picking up a bowl and turning it around in his hands.

"No, of course not."

"Well, nevermind, we've come to help you pack up."

"But it's not even midday yet?"

Gagesh sighed loudly, rolling his big, brown eyes around their sunken sockets, "It's father, he's being odd. You need to come home."

Shashishio'a was already busy placing the pottery back into its straw-lined crates, the others lifted them onto their beaten old waggon. Before long, the two strapping sons of Ninri'a were dragging the waggon behind them like a pair of yoked oxen. They moved out of the market square, onto the street which followed the course of the ancient walls of Gasa'edish, moving always towards the gates of the lower city. Here, inside the walls, the houses were tightly packed, two or three storied, well plastered and decorated. Asaba'an, however, could not afford to move the family into the walls, instead they were forced to live outside, in the poorly planned and haphazard area of the outer town. That is where they pulled the cart now. Gasa'edish stood in a small bay on the delta of the three rivers, the hexagonal old town stood on the peak of a prominence looking Eastward out to the sea, the lower town built at its base and enclosed by a later set of walls. Furthest from the harbour and unprotected by fortifications, stood the outer town, on a second, lower rise. The house of Asaba'an was picked out from the other surrounding dwellings by the continuous plume of smoke rising from the potter's kiln, far from the walls. It stood amidst a jumble of streets and alleys, crawling with rodents and undesirable people.

"So, what's wrong with him this time, another attack of nerves?" asked Ninri'a, aiding her sons in their Labour.

"He claims that- I can hardly say it- that he has been visited by a god,'' replied Shashishio'a, shaking his sweaty head.

Gagesh grunted with the strain, Ninri'a could feel the hot temper brewing beneath his heavy brows.

''A god?"

"Yes, the king of the gods, actually."

"Asaba'an? the poorest Potter in Gasa'edish, visited by Enenshio'a, King of the gods?" even the question tasted ridiculous on her tongue.

"So he says."

"Unbelievable."

The hot sun made the trip difficult and the stench of the outer town was overpowering; human excrement fermented in open runnels and cess pits, producing a thick, acrid miasma. This was compounded by the muginess of the still day, the poorest part of the city seeming like some imagining of damnation. By the time they had reached the house, which crouched between tight-packed mud and reed huts, they were all drenched in sweat and stinking from hard work. Gagesh would not enter the building, instead heading promptly for the nearest public house. Shashishio'a went around to the kiln at the back, where he had spied Mo'abe working to rake out embers. Ninri'a entered the house cautiously, knocking the door post gently as she slunk in.

"Husband, where are you?"

No answer. She moved further into the house, looking about its reed-lined walls for anything out of place, peering through the gloom of the windowless space. Everything, what little of it there was, seemed to be in order. From the small crog-loft where the couple slept, suspended from the roof and reachable only by a hanging ladder, she could hear the shaky breath of her husband, laying hidden beneath a pile of coarse woolen blankets.

"Asaba'an, what's the matter? The boys tell me you saw a god," she cooed as soothingly as possible.

"Bright gold skin like the sun he had, eyes made of emeralds. He came to me as I laid out the moist pots to dry."

"He did? What did he tell you then?"

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"He came to me, from the fires of the kiln he spoke, then he appeared stood behind me, as tall as three men!"

The man was quivering with fright in his bed, copper skin washed pale with fear, his eyes stretched wide open. Ninri'a scaled the creaking ladder as carefully as she could, unwilling to startle Asaba'an with a sudden movement. Reaching out her left hand, she stroked the crown of his head gently.

"How do you know it was him, could it have been that you imagined it?"

"I imagined it? Do you think me that mad?"

"Mad never, darling, you know that. It's just that you get so worked up by little things these days, you may have seen something and taken it for another."

Asaba'an seemed to regain some small amount of composure and he sat bolt upright, looking straight into her eyes, "You think me completely insane, 'Asaba'an is seeing God's in the fire now, how foolish he is.'"

"No, not at all. Only, I've never met a god, nor has anyone else I know. It's hard to believe such things, no?"

"They exist though, don't they, they take an active role in all our lives?"

Ninri'a looked on, puzzled by the odd mutterings, worried that it was some new symptom of a long-running illness suffered by Asaba'an.

"Look, Ninri'a", he added, "I know what I saw, I heard his words too, it's what I heard which leaves me so stricken."

"What words?"

"I dare not repeat them."

He looked to be holding back tears, Ninri'a could see them welling behind his eyes, like a bloated canal lays pressure on its sleuces. She climbed fully into the bed now, throwing her arms about him and shushing him, as if he were her fourth child.

"What news did the King of the gods bring to you?"

Asaba'an took a long, rattling breath of the rooms stale air, exhaling hoarsely before speaking.

"He spoke of death."

Before she could respond, Mo'abe and Shashishio'a burst through the reed door of the house, standing below and looking up into the loft. Mo'abe's face was blackened by soot and his older brother still sweated from the heat outside.

"I looked through the embers, father, there was nothing unusual there, no signs of Enenshio'a,'' said Mo'abe in all honesty.

"You believe him?" asked Shashishio'a, raising his eyebrows, "You honestly believe that a god arrived to our father whilst we sat talking, only paces away, and we saw and heard nothing of it?"

Mo'abe scowled at his brother, "Of course I do, he is my father, you should always trust your parents."

"Mother, you too? You believe that a full-grown man, claiming to speak to Gods, tells the truth?"

"Must you always be so sure of yourself, son? Can you not see that something has scared your father half to death?"

Shashishio'a scoffed loudly, shaking his black-maned head side to side. He walked over to the hearth, where a stew hung above the fire in a copper cauldron, kept warm by the remaining coals. Taking a bowl, he scooped himself a portion, tearing a chunk of bread from a loaf on the nearby table and seating himself on the floor next to the fire.

"He takes fright at everything, it might as well have been a lamb to scare him,'' he said through a mouthful of claggy bread.

"Speak no more, you're disrespectful and rude, father does not spook at lambs!" shouted Mo'abe, causing the man in the loft to jump in fright. The two began to argue back and forth.

Ninri'a paid them no mind and looked at the familiar face of her husband, the man who had once been so brave in the face of death, wondering what had become of that forgotten hero. She studied the lines etched deep on his face, the grey streaks which had recently developed in his long hair and beard. His limbs seemed totally sapped of their former strength. She thought back to the young bull who had finally tamed her, the young lioness, the glories of their youth in the service of Enen Gaspashbi. Where had he gone? Try as she might, she could never stop loving the man, or perhaps the memories of him, no matter how wretched he had now become. When did it all start?

"Mother, tell him he shouldn't speak to father like that."

"Don't speak to your father like that. Shashishio'a, it's not becoming."

From his deep stupor, the potter suddenly came to his senses, back to his usual passive self again, he pushed away from his wife and looked at his two boys, tears again in his eyes,"I think we have something important to do,'' he said.

Asaba'an began to explain, in a shaky and broken manner, the words brought to him by the king of the gods. He told the three of them that Enenshio'a had spoken of some evil gathering in the Dawn mountains, an evil hidden away from the people of that land, a people known as the Bantish Enid. There was some place, as yet unknown to the gods, that harboured the beginnings of a plan set in motion by a power of madness, uncontrollable by the gods for fear of reprisals and escalation. Enenshio'a had been sparing with his words, and had failed to give the poor potter any information on the exact details of the task at hand, save that it would be difficult, and likely deadly. Mo'abe sat enthralled by his father, hanging on every word, head cradled in his coal-smeared hands. Shashishio'a tutted intermittently and shook his head, in pity and disbelief of the tale being told to him.

"Why you though, Asaba'an? Did the god tell you that?" asked Ninri'a.

"No, he said only that it was his decree that it should be myself and my family for the job, though in all things, the gods have a design, no?"

"The gods! There are no gods here in this town, and I shall not stoop to undergo this drivel, Father, you have taken leave of your senses!" said Shashishio'a.

Asaba'an stared back into his son's eyes, Ninri'a fancied she could spot some spark of the former fire behind them. She silently urged him to snap back at his over-proud child, but watched that spark sputter out and die as he turned his head away.

"Leave him alone!" snapped Mo'abe, lunging towards his brother.

She moved to put herself between them, keeping both at arm's reach as they swung at each other. Between the hurled curses and short-fallen fists, the reed door to the house swung open as Gagesh waded into the conflict, reeking of cheap barley-beer and smoked meats. He loped over to the scuffle and taking the head of a brother in each hand, he pushed them over sideways onto the ground.

"Leave it out, you morons,'' he slurred as he swayed above them, fists balled in readiness for a fight.

The two brothers rubbed their whip-lashed necks, sprawled out on the floor, neither daring to rise and face their bellicose sibling. Looking over at Asaba'an, Ninri'a saw that he hadn't moved, nor reacted in any way, staring blankly at the ground in some maze of thought. It dawned on her that her husband may well have been telling the truth, or at least he believed that he was.

"We have to go to the temple of Enenshio'a in the old town, we need to ask his statue there if what you say is true,'' she said.

Gagesh and Shashishio'a gawped at their mother, disbelief stretched over their faces.

"You cannot be serious, you are going to play along with this farce?"

"You can gloat if you are proven correct, Shashishio'a, until then, we must treat your father as if he speaks the truth."