Among the Gods (Chronicles of the Kings Book #5)

by Austin, Lynn

  Amariah exhaled. “All right. Let’s go inside.”

  The prince led the way to an empty guard room and sank onto a bench as if his legs wouldn’t hold him any longer. Joshua followed with Hadad. Although he knew Hadad wasn’t armed, it didn’t ease his distrust. He stayed alert, ready to defend himself or the prince. When Hadad refused a seat, pacing restlessly in the small room, Joshua also remained standing.

  “I’ll admit I was angry when I left,” Hadad began. “In many ways, I still am. But I’ve had a lot of time to think about everything these past few months, and there’s no way I can undo what’s already happened.” He halted in front of Amariah and their eyes met. “Are you and Dinah married?”

  Amariah looked at the floor. “Yes. We are.”

  “I thought so.” Hadad turned his back and crossed the room to stare out of the window, gripping the shutter latch so hard that Joshua saw his knuckles turn white. He waited, watching Hadad carefully. Finally Hadad turned to face them again.

  “I went back to Judah,” he said. “At first I intended to stay there, but everything’s changed. It’s a very dangerous place now. Entirely pagan. I can’t live there anymore among all that idolatry. And so I decided …” He paused, and Joshua saw him swallow hard. “I decided that if I have to give up Dinah, then I want my loss to count for something.”

  Joshua’s fingers gripped the leather sheath that held his dagger. “What does that mean, Hadad?”

  “I want to put Dinah’s son on Judah’s throne. I want to do that much for her. It would be a waste for her to live her life here in Egypt while Manasseh leads our country into ruin. I would have lost her for nothing. But if we got rid of Manasseh, and Amariah became king, Dinah could take her rightful place by his side. Her son would reign someday. I’m prepared to fight for that. And I’ve worked out a plan to do it.”

  Joshua didn’t believe him. Hadad was Amariah’s enemy, his rival; why would he help the prince recapture the throne? For Dinah’s sake? It didn’t ring true. Hadad wasn’t that noble. Joshua suspected he was lying, but he had no basis for his suspicion except his gut reaction.

  “What’s in it for you?” he asked.

  “I want my grandfather’s job as secretary of state when Amariah is king. I figured you would probably be palace administrator, right?”

  Hadad’s answer seemed too quick, too rehearsed. Joshua pulled out a chair and swung it around, straddling it. He rested his forearms on the back and laced his fingers together. “Tell us your plan.”

  “King Manasseh is building a shrine to the sun god at Beth Shemesh.”

  “What?” Amariah asked. “The sun god?”

  “That’s not unusual,” Hadad said. “He has pagan shrines all over Judah now. But I found out that he will be going to Beth Shemesh for the dedication ceremony during the New Moon Festival a few months from now.” Hadad paced, not looking at either of them as he talked. “That means he’ll have to take the Beth Shemesh Road from Jerusalem and go through the narrow mountain pass near there. If we lay an ambush—”

  “I saw one of Manasseh’s processions,” Joshua said. “He was very heavily guarded.”

  “True. But we could attack from well-entrenched positions above the road. His men would be in the open, without cover and with no way to escape. We’d also have the advantage of surprise.”

  Joshua’s pulse quickened with excitement, and for a moment he forgot his caution as he realized what Hadad was proposing. They could kill Manasseh! The ambush might work! Attacking the procession at that narrow pass was a brilliant strategy. The king’s guards would have no escape or protection. Once Joshua got close to Manasseh, he could finally get revenge.

  “How many men do you think we would need?” he asked.

  “If they’re excellent archers, not many. We could kill half the guards in the first round, before Manasseh’s men have a chance to string their bows.”

  “Won’t they be on the alert coming through that pass?”

  “Even if they are, it won’t do them any good. We’ll dig positions on the ridge above them the night before, then lie in wait.”

  “But doesn’t Manasseh have guards at all the borders, watching for me?”

  “I didn’t see any. Nobody stopped me. Besides, we wouldn’t enter the country as soldiers. We could use one of your brother’s caravans to smuggle our men and weapons into the country.”

  Joshua’s mind raced ahead, analyzing Hadad’s scheme. It was a simple plan, but it just might work. General Benjamin had once taught him that the simplest plans were often the best. Joshua couldn’t spot any obvious flaws, and the exhilarating prospect of revenge stole his breath from him.

  “Are you certain that Amariah is still Manasseh’s only heir?” he asked.

  “I’m positive. There has been no announcement of a royal heir. I checked.”

  “Good. Then once Manasseh is dead—”

  “No!” Amariah was on his feet. “I won’t let you do it. Manasseh is God’s anointed king. It’s wrong to kill him.”

  Joshua’s anger soared at the prince’s naïveté. “He would have killed you in an instant once his heir was born.”

  “That’s still no reason for us to kill him.”

  “We have a hundred reasons to kill him,” Joshua shouted. “Do you have any idea how much innocent blood he has shed, how much evil he has done?”

  “Yahweh is Manasseh’s judge, not us. We should wait for Him to bring justice.”

  “We’re Yahweh’s instruments of justice! That’s why He sent us here to be trained as soldiers. Remember your disbelief when Pharaoh first told us we’d all have to serve in his army? Can’t you see how God’s plan is finally coming together? I’ve waited a long time for this chance!”

  “No,” Amariah insisted, “this is wrong. I don’t want any part in Hadad’s plan. I’m the island’s leader, and I refuse to condone it.”

  The stubbornness in his voice surprised Joshua. He signaled to Amariah’s servant. “Go get me a Torah scroll,” Joshua told him. “I need to show Prince Amariah something.”

  They all waited uneasily while the servant went on his errand. When the man returned with the scroll, Joshua rolled through it until he found the passage he wanted. He read the words aloud: “‘If your very own brother … secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” … do not yield to him or listen to him.’”

  “I don’t care what it says, we can’t—”

  “‘Do not spare him or shield him,’” Joshua continued, cutting Amariah off. “‘You must certainly put him to death … and then the hands of all the people—’”

  “No! I won’t listen to this.” Amariah turned his back.

  Joshua raised his voice to a shout, drowning Amariah’s protests. “‘Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the Lord your God…. Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again.’” He shoved the scroll into Amariah’s hands. “Here. Read it yourself.”

  “He’s my brother. Could you kill Jerimoth if he—”

  “We’re not talking about Jerimoth, we’re talking about Manasseh—the man who murdered my father and my grandfather, the man who tortured God’s prophet to death, the man who raped your wife and murdered her child!”

  “I know, but—”

  “You told me yourself how Manasseh tried to force you to participate in his pagan rituals—Asherah poles, divination, witchcraft, sodomy. How much more will it take to convince you that he deserves to die? This is a God-given opportunity. How can we refuse it?”

  Amariah thrust the scroll back into Joshua’s hands. “I’m telling you I can’t do it. I won’t do it!”

  “You don’t have to,” Joshua said softly. “I’ll kill him myself.” He glared at the prince in silent confrontation while Hadad leaned against the window ledge, watching them.

  “So do we have a deal?” Hadad finally asked.

  Joshua nodded, his eyes still riveted on the prince, daring
him to contradict. “We’ll need a squad of commando fighters to draw the guards away from the king. Help me choose the best men, Hadad. Help me train them.”

  “Are you sure you trust me with a weapon?”

  When Joshua looked at Hadad and tried to read his face, he couldn’t. Once again Joshua felt the chill of uncertainty. He hesitated, carefully weighing his suspicions about Hadad’s motives against the opportunity for revenge against Manasseh. His hatred, his burning need for vengeance, won the battle.

  “I need your help, Hadad, so I’ll have to trust you. We’ll only have a few months to prepare.”

  “All right,” he said quietly. “But this island isn’t very big. It will be easier for me if I could live here without seeing your sister.”

  Joshua understood. He often saw Yael, the woman he had loved, with her husband and year-old son. Yael was pregnant again. “You can move into your old rooms in the barracks,” Joshua told him. “Dinah lives …” A whisper of doubt stopped him again. He shrugged it aside, remembering his goal to kill Manasseh. “Dinah lives on the other side of the island.”

  Hadad’s brief smile lacked emotion. “If everything goes according to plan, we’ll all be living in the palace in Jerusalem again, won’t we, my brothers?”

  6

  AMARIAH PACED ACROSS THE MAIN ROOM of his house, exasperation pushing his patience to the limit. “No, Joshua. I already told you. I don’t want any guards lurking around here. This is my home. Either you trust Hadad or you don’t. And since you’re going ahead with your assassination plans, that obviously means you’ve decided to trust him.”

  “The guards would be for Dinah’s sake,” Joshua began.

  “She’s my wife. It’s my job to protect her!”

  Joshua raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “All right, I didn’t mean to offend you. Sorry.”

  But Amariah knew by the cold expression on Joshua’s face that his refusal to order extra guards had angered Joshua. He might as well risk angering him further. “Before you leave, Joshua … I’ve been thinking. I’d feel better about this assassination business if you’d ask the priests to consult the Urim and Thummim about it.”

  Joshua took a step toward him. Amariah recognized the move as one Joshua always made when he wanted to intimidate an opponent. The maneuver didn’t surprise Amariah, but his pulse quickened all the same. Joshua was not as tall as Amariah was, but the barely controlled anger that had ruled his life these past two years frightened everyone who knew him. His dark eye patch and rugged scar gave him an added ferocity.

  “In the first place, we don’t have the Urim and Thummim,” Joshua said. “We left it behind when we fled Jerusalem. And in the second place, we wouldn’t need to consult it even if we did. The Torah makes it very clear that your brother deserves to die.”

  “Then why not trust God to deal with him instead of avenging him yourself? According to the king’s chronicles, David had two opportunities to kill King Saul, who was just as guilty of disobeying God as my brother is. But David refused to lay a hand on God’s anointed king. And in due time, God took Saul’s life and placed David on the throne.”

  “You’re right, Amariah,” Joshua said coldly. “David didn’t need to kill Saul. God sent his enemies, the Philistines, to do it.” His voice rose to a shout. “And I’m Manasseh’s enemy! God is sending me to kill him!”

  Amariah saw that it was no use. He couldn’t compete with Joshua’s agile mind and bitter tongue. “I have one more question, then,” Amariah said quietly. “How do you know that Hadad isn’t leading you into a trap?”

  The question seemed to take Joshua by surprise. He paused, stroking his ragged beard. “I suppose it’s something I ought to consider….” But before Joshua had time to weigh the possibility, Dinah interrupted, hurrying in from the courtyard to embrace her brother.

  “Joshua! I thought I heard your voice. What brings you here?” Amariah held his breath, silently hoping that Joshua wouldn’t tell her the truth or try to convince her to surround their house with guards. She already knew that Hadad had returned; he didn’t want her to live in fear of him.

  “Oh, nothing important,” Joshua said with a shrug. “But as long as I have you both together, we need to talk about your heir. Dinah, it’s vitally important for you to get pregnant within the next few months. Before our mission, if possible.”

  Dinah nodded her head, murmuring apologetically, but Amariah was too stunned to speak, outraged that Joshua would dare to interfere in his married life. As Joshua continued to explain the urgent need for an heir, Amariah finally found his voice.

  “Get out of my house!”

  “What?”

  Dinah laid her hand on his arm. “Amariah, please …”

  “I want him to leave. Now!”

  Joshua stared hard at him for a moment, his anger smoldering like banked coals. Amariah braced himself for an explosion, but it never came. Joshua simply shrugged. “Whatever you say, Your Majesty.” He kissed his sister’s cheek and strode away without another word.

  But Amariah couldn’t shrug it off that easily. Joshua’s demands had infuriated him. How dare he interfere in their married life, violating their intimacy, commanding them to produce a son? Amariah was so angry that it took him a moment to realize Dinah had been speaking to him. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “What did you say?”

  “I said the servants have your evening meal on the table.”

  But Amariah couldn’t eat, sickened by Joshua’s audacity. Was this the way the rest of his life would be, with Joshua giving all the orders, dictating his every move? Amariah had longed to escape from Manasseh’s authority and live his own life, make his own decisions. But he had merely exchanged one taskmaster for another.

  “I’m not hungry,” he told Dinah. “I need to get some air.” He left the house and started walking—anywhere, nowhere.

  The worst thing about living on an island, he quickly discovered, was that he couldn’t walk very far without coming to the end of it. And the worst thing about being that island’s leader was meeting people who wanted to talk when the last thing in the world he felt like doing was talking. After barely an hour, he gave up the search for solitude and returned home.

  As the evening wore on and the servants retired to their own homes for the night, Amariah found himself dreading the moment when he would have to go to bed with his wife. He sat in the main room of his house alone, watching as evening faded into night and the room’s familiar furnishings disappeared into the shadows, wishing he could disappear along with them. His life was not his own. He wondered if it ever would be.

  He wasn’t sure how long he had been sitting in the dark when a beam of light flickered in the gloom and Dinah entered, carrying a small lamp. He shaded his eyes with his hand, shielding them from the lamp’s glow and from her scrutiny.

  “Oh … I wondered if you’d fallen asleep out here,” she said.

  “No. I’m awake.”

  “Why don’t you come to bed?”

  Amariah sighed and rubbed his eyes. “All right.” He slowly pulled himself to his feet and started to follow her, then stopped. Joshua had demanded an heir and she was determined to obey him. The thought sickened Amariah.

  “Dinah, wait.”

  She turned to him. The light was between them, and she studied his face. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s supposed to be an act of love,” he said softly, “but it’s not. They’ve turned it into an act of vengeance.”

  She lowered her head, and her dark hair fell around her face, hiding her eyes. Amariah took the lamp from her and set it on a stand, then reached for her hand.

  “Come with me, Dinah.”

  “Where?”

  He led her through the door and out into the narrow street without answering. A transparent moon bathed the warm night with light and formed pale gray shadows beneath their feet. He walked with her toward the river, to a sandy stretch of shoreline where he knew there was little danger of crocodiles. An aband
oned rowboat lay upside down on the beach, and Amariah pulled Dinah down beside him on the warm sand so they could lean their backs against it.

  “Look,” he whispered, pointing. At the end of the beach where the marshlands began, a crane poked its head from among the reeds, then ventured cautiously forward. A moment later his mate followed, tottering on stick-legs almost too fragile to support her. Their gossamer feathers glowed in the moonlight.

  “They’re beautiful,” Dinah murmured.

  “I wish we were like them,” Amariah said. “They’re free.”

  They watched the cranes wade farther into the river, away from the marsh; then the birds suddenly took flight, soaring magnificently toward the mainland, wings outstretched. Amariah longed to do the same, to open his heart like wings, to freely soar.

  “What’s your favorite color, Dinah?” he asked when the birds were out of sight.

  “My favorite color? Why?”

  “Because I need to know.” He swallowed the lump in his throat and began again. “When we lived in my brother’s palace in Jerusalem, our lives weren’t our own. We belonged to Manasseh. He controlled where we went, who we saw, what we did … and I realized tonight that he still controls us. We married each other because of him. I’m supposed to rule this island because of him. You’re supposed to have a baby because of him. Our lives still aren’t our own, Dinah. No one ever asks us what we want.”

  He tossed the weathered piece of driftwood he had been toying with into the water. It washed toward him on the waves several times, bobbing in the moonlight, before floating out of sight.

  “I have my father’s blood in my veins—King David’s blood. According to Joshua, that means I’m obligated to stop Manasseh. Obligated to father your son. Obligated to be king. But I’m more than Hezekiah’s son, more than Manasseh’s brother, more than David’s heir. I’m a man—Amariah. I’m myself, separate from everyone’s obligations and expectations. Why do I have to define my life in terms of filling a need? Can’t I have a purpose of my own choosing?”

  He put his hand to his face, pressing his fingers against his closed eyes. Then he looked at Dinah again. She had unpinned her hair for the night before they’d left the house, and the breeze blew wisps of it across her face.