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SAMPLE THE STORY BY READING CHAPTER ONE

THE MAN FLED through the narrow, twisted alleyways of the high market section of Jerusalem. It had been a mistake to come here. He should have bypassed this city that lay along the caravan routes from the Red Sea port of Ezion-Geber northward into Phoenicia, and gone on to Tyre. As he ran, his fingers tightened about the long slim object he carried wrapped in a dirty sheepskin—and he vowed no man would take it from him. 

His entire future lay in this curving stick he carried. For more than half his thirty years, Rhynthos the Cretan had traveled the far corners of the world, always searching for a personal philosopher's stone that would make his fortune. Other men chose to scribble on a papyrus roll or sail a river barge or marry some rich man's only daughter in order to fill their coffers. Such a course was not for Rhynthos, who was an islander with wandering blood in his veins. 

He had traveled to every corner of the known world. From the Pillars of Herakles, which faced upon the endless sea that poured its waters eternally over the rim of the world, he had sailed north to misty islands where hairy savages lived. He had been to Oea and the Tyrian colonies bordering the inland sea along the African coast. His eyes had seen the colossus that straddled the harbor of Rhodes. In Latium, his nose had smelled the hot lava and ashes that gushed redly from a great volcano close by a village of the Samnites. From the land of the Lotus Eaters, he had ventured to the black waters of the Thracian Sea, and beyond that, far to the east, until his sandals had trod the dusty cobbles of a city called Baktra. Here he had heard tales of a strange yellow race that lived across thousands of miles of desert land, but these he did not believe. 

In all those travels and during all those years, Rhynthos had hunted for the magical stone that would make him rich. He dealt in skins and perfumes, bronze swords from Paphos and Athenian glassware, but his eyes had searched the stalls and the open shops and the stinking holds of ships for the one precious thing that would cause, like the fabled touch of Midas, a golden shower for his coffers. 

Now he carried it, wrapped in a dirty sheepskin, and a man sought to take it away from him. He had found it only a month before, in a weapons shop in Saba. Rhynthos knew he had only himself to blame for going into the tavern at the wall gate, where travelers to Jerusalem in this ninth year of the reign of King Solomon gathered to wash the dusts of Israel from their parched throats. He had been extraordinarily thirsty, even for a man from Knossos. The red Thasian wine had been faintly tart, the way he always liked his wines. One leather jack called for another, and after that, just one more. 

It was while he was finishing his fifth jack that the Israelite captain had bumped into him and sent the sheep skin unwinding across the stone floor of the inn. The officer had been a big man, rather splendid in bronze corselet and greaves, with a long sword hanging from a belt studded with silver plates. He had carried a crested helmet under an arm, and walked with a swagger that swung his long red cloak arrogantly. 

The officer had been making some sort of apology he was more than a little drunk himself, Rhynthos noted with a strange sort of satisfaction—when he had gasped harshly and stared. 

The sheepskin had unwound itself; his treasure had lain there on the stone floor, for all eyes to see. Most of the visitors to the tavern, camel-men from Babylon and Kish just in from the long caravan trip across the red desert, had merely hiccuped and turned back to their taut wine-skins and leather noggins, but the captain had been too smart. 

"By the sacred scrolls!” he had whispered. “I've never seen anything like that!” 

Rhynthos had screamed and lunged forward, grabbing up the precious stick and wrapping it up in the loose woolly hide as he backed toward the open doorway. "You won't take it from me! I paid good money for it. Yes, and fifteen years of my life! I won't be cheated! No king's officer is going to take it from me while I'm alive and able to run!” 

The hostel owner had waddled from behind his barrel counter, shouting at him. The Cretan had put a hand into his leather purse and hurled a handful of silver coins across a nearby tabletop; then he was whirling, rushing up the stone slabs that were the steps of the tavern, and out into the clear spring night. Frantically his eyes searched this way and that. Overhead the great wall towered, its wooden gates barred and bolted for the night. No escape there, 

Rhynthos darted down the gateway street, whispering a prayer to Bel that he could escape the Israelite officer who was roaring so lustily and following at his heels. 

Solomon yawned. 

His hand moved out angrily, sweeping the papyrus rolls from the polished top of his ebony table, sending them bouncing and scattering across the tiled floor. His dark eyes studied them for a moment in their rolling course, then his foot lashed out and hit the table itself, driving it across the room. 

"Work! Always work! Plans for the Temple, plans for the Palace! Conferences with Nathan and with the architects from Tyre! I'm tired of it!" 

For a moment his mind toyed with the thought of entering the women's quarters and demanding that Anohbet amuse him with her body, but Anohbet was part of the restlessness that held him in thrall these days. She was the daughter of Siamon, who was pharoah of Egypt, and Solomon could never forget it. Or was it that she did not allow him to forget it? 

Israel stood in awe of Egypt. Solomon suspected it was because his people could not erase from their minds the fact that they had lived there once, within the shadows of the massive temples, and had heard the chanting to Amon-Ra, sun god, and seen the miracles of art and architecture that the peoples of the Nile had accomplished. Egyptian culture went back thousands of years. The Israelites were newcomers on the world stage, having been wanderers as far back as any of their scrolls recorded—a nomad tribe from Arabia, to the south. Abraham had brought them out of Ur, much later, and across the wastelands of Shinar and Aram. Joseph took them into Egypt, and Moses took them out. 

In the time of his own father, David, Saul had founded the kingdom. He was the ruler of a nation so young that some wrinkled graybeards in his realm could remember when the patriarchs, and not Saul, had ruled the people. Oh, they had made strides, Solomon knew; tremendous strides, with a fierce pride that enabled their smaller armies to smash those of Cana and Philistia. That pride almost bridged the gap between a hundred centuries of Egypt and a hundred years of Israel—but not quite. 

Anohbet was Egypt, to Solomon. Every time he saw her, he remembered the history of his people. While he loved her, he stood in awe of her. She was his wife, but she was also the symbol of her country. 

“She thinks she did me a favor by marrying me!” he exclaimed bitterly. "She forgets that my father and I made Israel a great nation—almost greater now than her precious Egypt!" 

He came to his feet and moved swiftly toward the outer stairway of the palace, where he could climb to the flat, railed roof. A tall man, with broad shoulders and a wide chest, he seemed more a soldier playing statesman than he did a king. From Bathsheba, who was his mother, he had inherited the fine profile and clear skin of the Hittites. David, his father, who had been king in Jerusalem before him, had left him the athletic body, lean and sinewy, that was the heritage of the shepherd people of Israel. His black hair was thick and curly, set now with a thin diadem of beaten gold. The tunic that draped his body was girdled by a chain of heavy golden links and edged with red Tyrian dye. A scarlet mantle fell in graceful folds from his wide shoulders. 

Solomon put his hands on the marble rooftop rail and stared off across the palace gardens toward the Temple. For almost a year now that magnificent structure had stood as a monument to his people's worship of Yahweh. From the gold and silver captured by David, his father, from the Amalekites and Ammonites, with hewn stones from the Valley of Cedron and with red cedars of Lebanon, Solomon had built the Temple. Foreigners came from Knossos and from Memphis in Egypt, and from as far away as Latium itself to stroll the outer court and marvel at its pillared gracefulness. They praised the Temple and the wisdom of its builder with equal fervor. 

His hand hit the balcony railing with savage fury. No man but himself knew that he had built that great edifice half out of a feeling of guilt. As David was his father, so Bathsheba was his mother, and it was from this same rooftop that David had stared eastward toward the house of Uriah the Hittite and seen Bathsheba at her bath. 

David and Bathsheba had sinned greatly. Of this fact Nathan the prophet never tired of reminding him, when he sought to bend him to his will. The inclination to the sins of the flesh that was his heritage from his brawny father was as much a part of his character as the strong body that the shepherd-king had given him. Thinking of that made him remember coppery Anohbet again. 

Solomon told himself he was a fool to stand in awe of her. But she was so lovely, with her fine Coptic profile and slender body! Her lips were as red as the rubies of Persis, and her eyes glittered in their setting of green malachite paste like the fabled jewels of Noh. Even as his palms itched to cradle her full, heavy breasts, so his spirit ached to bend her submissively to his will. 

Damn her pride! Damn the haughty languor of the woman, which held her so aloof and remote from him, with that scornful twist of her full lips! The gentle sway of her shapely body was like a sneer for these people of Israel, and its young king as well. Solomon made a big fist of his hand. Yahweh granting, he would tame that Egyptian pride, and bring it to its knees before his throne. 

Solomon hesitated. A look of anguish crossed his face, of anguish and yearning and inner frustration. He whispered to the night wind that came creeping up out of Cana and across the streets of Jerusalem to fan his cheeks, "Not to my throne, but to me. To me as a man, not as a king! On her knees, begging for my love!” 

Solomon was a rare king. He was in love with his queen. Bitterly he knew that this pride and this desire were a part of the restlessness that festered in him. If Anohbet loved him, as he loved her! Ah, then he would have been more than content to work over papyrus rolls by the light of the bronze oil lamps, night after night. 

Below him at the garden wall, a man cried out harshly. 

Curious, Solomon leaned forward, conscious that his heart was hammering. Any break in this monotony would be thrice welcome. His keen eyes searched the towering palm trees and the short tamarisk bushes that lay side by side with flowering oleanders and jasmines between the garden walks. Now he could hear the pound of feet, and the faint outcries of an angry man. 

Solomon stood straighter, unaware that a smile curved his lips, softening his features, making him look almost boyish. He could see the man now, beyond the palace gate, racing across the cobbles, carrying a dirty sheepskin. One hundred yards behind him, a man in bronze scales and helmet and a scarlet cloak was chasing him. 

The man turned in at the palace garden gate. An instant later the unbolted wooden door swung inward. A curly black head was thrust through, and Solomon could see the head swing back and forth rapidly as bright eyes searched the marble benches and flagstones of the grounds. 

Then the man was slipping through and running along a path. A moment later, he ducked down out of sight behind a flowering Egyptian privet hedge. 

Solomon laughed softly under his breath. "Come, Benajah! The man plays you for a fool!” he whispered. 

The man in the red cloak was out of sight now, hidden by the ten-foot palace wall. There was a moment of silence, in which Solomon could picture Benajah standing big and confident in his armor and red cloak, listening for a betraying sound. 

"Yahweh forgive me. I can't stand here and only play the spectator!” he cried. 

He whirled and ran across the flat palace rooftop, then down the stone staircase that was joined to the outer wall of the long building. Like most buildings of the city, this palace of David was fashioned of one story, fenced around with marble pillars, and flanked by a garden, a granary courtyard, and a long row of servant quarters. The cooking rooms, fitted with great brick ovens, flanked the chariot shelters, while beyond them were the stalls for the horses, covered over by wooden beams. It was the stable that Solomon had in sight as he came leaping from the stone steps and toward the gardens. 

In the palace armory, half a hundred swords and daggers hung in ornate scabbards, but he ignored this fact. The man who fled from Benajah was unarmed except for a short Cretan dirk at his girdle, and Solomon was confident that his young strength could deal with that. 

The gardens lay eastward from the palace buildings. He slowed his headlong run when he reached the privet bushes that hedged the flagstone paths. He sauntered now, humming faintly, eyeing the crescent moon which could be glimpsed between the leaves of a towering palm. Now he crouched below his elbow. 

Solomon whirled. His great hands went out and down, closing tightly on a woolen tunic of Saban weave. The man came lunging up at him. Solomon caught the silver flash of moonlight on bared bronze. His hands on the woolen tunic shifted. They stabbed out and sideways, catching the man by his wrists and bending them outward. 

The Cretan was strong. He was a stocky man, and his shoulders were almost a yard wide. Solomon grinned, and bent his own wide shoulders to the task before him. Silently he blessed the shepherd heritage of David, which had thewed his long legs and arms so heavily. Sweating, face to face with two glittering eyes that promised him death if his grip should weaken, he fought to bring those arms together. 

The night was silent all around them. It was cool, for it was early spring in Israel, and the warm shamsin winds that would come with summertime from the Syrian desert and the East were as yet unborn. A lyre thrummed faintly from the women's quarters, where Anohbet would be stretched languidly on her cushions, listening to her girl musicians, and being homesick for the Nile and the red cliffs of Thebes. 

The Cretan cursed hotly, writhing. Slowly this big dark man before him was bringing his wrists closer and closer. What startled Rhynthos most was the fact that the dark man was enjoying this. Intense pleasure showed in his feverish black eyes and smiling lips above the small, trimmed black beard. 

"Herakles was no stronger!” Rhynthos panted, and his strength gave way. 

He fell to his knees and the dagger dropped from his numb fingers. Instantly the dark man put out a sandaled foot to pin the bronze dirk to a flagstone. 

“Be easy, Knossian,” said Solomon. "Only tell me this: Why was Benajah chasing you?” 

“The army captain? The man in the red cloak?" 

Solomon nodded. "He is Benajah, the commander of Israel's army.” 

Rhynthos groaned. “That such a thing should happen to me now! Just when I was on the point of success, to run afoul of a man with influence!" 

Solomon grinned. “Perhaps I could help you. I have—ah—certain influence myself, with Benajah. What'd you do to him?" 

The Cretan considered this tall young man—a pampered fop, to judge by the perfumed black curls and expensive garments he wore—and shrugged. He could be no worse off by showing his treasure to this one. On hands and knees he crept back under the privet bush and brought out the sheepskin. 

Almost reverently, he unrolled it. Solomon paled, staring. 

His hand went out and closed over the bow and lifted it up into the moonlight. Never before had there been such a weapon in all Israel! It was not made as Philistine bows were made, out of pliant ash, or as Egyptian bows were made, of red cedar, but was contrived from ibex horn and wood fitted together cunningly and shaped in a double curve. Unstrung, it was long and slim, like a twisted stick. Solomon could see that it would need a strong man to set a string to its tips, but that springiness was the secret of its power. 

Rhynthos said softly, “I did nothing to the soldier, young man. I was drinking in a tavern close by the Gate of Foreigners. This Benajah passed by and jostled my table. The sheepskin unrolled and showed him the bow." 

"Yes, yes. He would know its worth, once his eyes be held it.” 

The Cretan was curious. Head cocked on a shoulder, he stared at the tall man. “Tell me, young master, how is it you can recognize its value? A soldier, yes. But a—" 

He hesitated and Solomon laughed. “You were about to say a fop, eh? A pampered fribble?” 

Rhynthos laughed boisterously in his nervousness. "Since you say so, I'll agree. How do you know what a miracle this thing is?” 

"The Philistines slaughtered my people years ago, when Saul was king, by their archery. Only when David came to the throne and hired Hittite archers and Phoenician slingers was he able to defeat them. This bow, though, can out-shoot anything the Philistines use. How far can it shoot?” 

"More than six hundred and fifty strides of a tall man, master.” 

“Over six hundred yards!" whistled Solomon, some what shocked. 

Solomon turned the bow over. He held the mastery of the world in his hands with this weapon. Trained archers could kill any opponent he sent them against by dropping them in their tracks long before they came close enough to use their own bows. Even the dreaded chariot charge would no longer be a fearsome weapon, against archers thus equipped. His breath grew short as his eyes grew brighter. 

"Six hundred yards," he whispered, awed. “Where did you get it, Cretan?" 

Rhynthos hooted. “That's my secret! All my life I've hunted this bow, without knowing what it was I sought. Somewhere in the world there was a treasure for me. My own personal treasure, just waiting to be found. Well, I've found it now. What would Hiram of Tyre give for that bow? Or mighty Pharoah of mighty Egypt? With this horn and wood thing, Simon could regain the old power of the Two Kingdoms when Thutmose the Third and Rameses the Second were alive!" 

The bowman was the artilleryman of his day. In ranks of twos or three, and protected by towering hide shields, bowmen were stationed on the nearest hillside above a battleground. Their whistling shafts could seat and unseat kings. Properly commanded, they could win a man the world. 

“What do you want for it?” 

Rhynthos chuckled and put out a hand for his weapon. “Nothing from you, gracious master. You could not afford the precious stones and the gold and the delicate women that are my price. Only a king like Hiram or Siamon, or perhaps Na bu-mukin-apli, who rules at Babylon, could pay." 

He leaned forward, growing more confidential. "How many nights have I shivered with cold, on the deck of a vessel caught in a storm on the Great Sea? Aye, and like to froze to death when the rain stopped and the cold set  in! How often has my skin bled when a desert sandstorm whipped up out of Parthia? Have you ever walked a hundred miles in the sun of Persia? Your sweat runs out like the waters of a wellspring from the rock! What price can pay for shivering spirits and bleeding flesh and sweating skin?” 

The garden gate slammed open. 

Benajah stood like a brazen image in his armor and helmet, framed by the draping folds of his scarlet cloak. His sword was naked in his right hand. The thick red folds of the cape were twisted about his left forearm. 

Rhynthos gasped and whirled on a heel. Solomon stabbed at him with a hand, gripping his wrist and holding him as its mooring chain holds a river boat. 

"Master! Gracious master, it is the army captain! The man you name commander of the Israelite armies! Let me go, I beg. I will send you the largest emerald Hiram or Siamon gives me, in exchange for—" 

"Be quiet!” said Solomon, and there was something in his voice that froze the Cretan. 

Benajah grinned and slipped his sword into its scabbard. Carefully he came across the walks of the garden and knelt before his king. 

The Cretan almost fainted as Benajah said, “Your Majesty, the man at your elbow has a bow—” 

“Oh, get up, Benajah,” said Solomon, and he tossed the bow into his hands. With a grin, Solomon released Rhynthos. “Well, Cretan? Now you know my name, name me your price.” 

Rhynthos cowered, shaking in his terror. What was it he had called this young ruler? Fop! Great Zeus, his skin would be flayed from his belly! And—and perfumed fribble? "Aphrodite of the hungry loins! Greek sister of Astarte! Help me!"

"Stop moaning," Solomon told him, and laughed. Benajah was young to be commander of the armies of  King Solomon. Only a decade older than his king, he had come out of the desert country of Kabzeel when little more than a boy to join the army of David. In the years between the first time he had put a bull-hide shield on his arm until now, when a cloak of red Tyrian weave sat his shoulders, he had built a reputation for ability that was matched only by his reputation for personal bravery. 

It had been Benajah that had performed prodigies with a bronze sword in the Moabite war, Benajah that had fought and killed a lion by himself. In hand-to-hand conflict he had slain an Egyptian spear-man by yanking his own spear from him and then running it into his chest. Not quite so tall as Solomon, he was thickset and heavily muscled. His love of fighting was equaled by his love for foreign wines, and by the frequency with which he took women. 

Benajah stared hard at the trembling Cretan. "Can you make more of these bows? How many can you turn out in a month?” 

Rhynthos shivered steadily. “Gracious masters, I did not make the bow. It was not my fingers that fashioned it so cunningly. I had it of—” He broke off and stood mute, staring at the flag-stoned walk beneath his rope sandals. 

Benajah looked at Solomon. “We could torture him," he suggested. 

“Benajah, you think with your sword arm. I've been speaking with my friend. All he wants is wealth. Wealth and ease and comfort, and a few women to make him happy of nights.” Solomon chuckled. "He's been burned by sea spray and desert sun and wind. Now he wants to rest. Well, why shouldn't he? Besides, I think I know where he got the bow, anyhow." 

Rhynthos gawked, his jaw dropping open. Tales had seeped out of Jerusalem about the wisdom of this young king. Men said he was in league with the jinn, and that his hands were more used to performing magical incantations than they were to offering sacrifice to Yahweh. That was a slander, Rhynthos guessed shrewdly. This tall young man was wise with an innate cleverness, not with magic. 

Solomon gestured at the rope sandals that Rhynthos wore. "See his foot-gear, Benajah. They are Greek by their styling, but the new ropes that strengthen them are of Saban cut. His girdle, too, is Greek, and old and worn. But his cloak is the kind the Saban traders wear when they come up the coast of the Red Sea in their caravans. Our friend has been in Saba recently. Perhaps it was in that country that he bought or stole the bow." 

Rhynthos babbled oaths to Zeus. 

Solomon swung on him. "I'll give you a casket of uncut diamonds for your secret, Cretan. And a house by the Gate of the Strong Stairs, with any ten women you pick from the slave mart in old Salem. I'll fill the house with furniture and commission you in charge of my arsenal, with a yearly stipend of a thousand silver shekels. Now tell me the name of the man who made the bow and where I can find him!” 

This was not the reward of which he had dreamed, but it would make Rhynthos the Cretan a very rich man, and Solomon had said he could pick out the ten women himself. He was secretly afraid that the new house would wear on his nerves after a year or two, for he was used to traveling, but he could always sell the house and the women slaves, and go back to his journeys. Besides, a coffer of uncut diamonds was a fabulous gift! 

And so Rhynthos stuttered in his eagerness to reveal his secret. "I had the bow from a weapon-maker in a little shop close by the Well of Arish in the city of Saba.” 

"In Sheba," breathed Benajah, giving the city its Israelitic name. 

Solomon drew a deep breath. His eyes ran over the white walls of the palace of David, which had been his home since he had been born, somewhat less than thirty-years before. Someday he would build himself a fine new palace, close by the great Temple, but that day was not yet come. Besides, he would need to have peace upon the land before he could begin building in comfort. That peace could be maintained by a thousand bows such as this, in the hands of trained archers. With such bowmen at his call, he need fear neither Tyre nor Egypt, Assyria to the northeast nor Babylon beyond the red desert. 

His hand opened slowly, then closed tightly into a fist. “Benajah, I must have bows like this one. Many bows!” 

“What man could we trust to go to Sheba and bring them back to you? What man would be loyal to Solomon when he had such a fortune in his hands?” 

"I would trust Benajah the Kabzeelite," said Solomon slowly, regarding his chief captain with bright eyes. “Especially would I trust him were I to ride at his elbow." 

Benajah started. “You would ride with your army to Sheba?” 

"Not with my army. By myself, with you to befriend me in case of trouble. Hai! Just the two of us, alone against the world. Do you realize I've hardly been out of Jerusalem in my life, except for a boyhood trip to Tyre, and when I visited Egypt to escort Anohbet to Israel?" He took to striding up and down the flag-stoned walk. “I grow sick with boredom in the palace. I'm a young man still. I need excitement to keep from going mad!” 

“Nathan would prevent it," growled Benajah, feeling excitement pulse in his own veins. "He would never let you go." 

"I will handle Nathan,” said Solomon softly. 

He did not add that he was not quite so confident as he sounded. Nathan the prophet was like an eagle in his predatory fierceness. It was Nathan that had dared to chide David for carrying on with Bathsheba and for ordering her husband, Uriah, to the battle van in the fight with the Arameans, so that he would be killed. Nathan forbade David to build the Temple, even though he had collected gold and silver and precious woods for that purpose, during the last years of his life. There was an intensity about Nathan that frightened a man, especially when one remembered that he was a prophet of Yahweh. 

Nathan would forbid him to leave the city, declaring him a fool and an incompetent. But he would find a way to deal with him. He must! Remembering his earlier restlessness and his sense of inner frustration, he told himself this, coldly and calmly. 

Aloud he said, “Take the Cretan to your home and make him welcome, as an honored guest. Take the bow, too, and put it in the armory that opens off the central hall of the palace. Bring horses to the palace gate at dawn. I will be ready then to ride with you." 

Turning to Rhynthos, he said, “Before I leave, I will instruct my treasurers to pay you everything I promised. Select a fitting home and the ten slave women. My coffers will pay for them. The diamonds will be delivered to you in the morning." 

Rhynthos bowed low, babbling his thanks, but Solomon was not listening. He was whirling on a heel and striding along the garden walk toward the pillared portico of the palace. Inside him, he was a maelstrom of emotions. He knew elation at this chance to leave Jerusalem and see something of the world with his own two eyes. Yet fear overlaid his joy with a cold, damp pall. Nathan would refuse permission, and Solomon did not know whether he was strong-willed enough to defy the old prophet. 

He told himself, as he walked, that he must think as a king first and as a man last. A proper king concerns himself with his subjects and their safety. While such a bow as that horn-and-wood thing existed, Jerusalem would never be safe unless a thousand of them rested in his own arsenals. The fact that he welcomed this chance to go traveling and see new sights and learn new things was secondary. But he could not smother that faint stirring of guilt inside him. This journey to far Sheba should be a distasteful chore, not a delight to be eagerly tasted, like a rare viand on the feasting table. 

The palace was quiet as he passed between the marble pillars and into the corridor that flanked the central hall. Faintly, from the women's quarters, he could hear the rhythmical twanging of a six-stringed lyre. 

He had intended seeking Nathan at once, but the music made him change his mind. He altered his walk so that he headed for the wide curtained doorway that gave entrance into the sleeping chambers of Anohbet, his Egyptian wife. 

The thrumming lyre grew louder as Solomon walked between the brazen urns that lined the cedar pillars of his audience hall. A dozen brass tripod lamps sputtered softly, throwing a yellowish radiance over the red cedar-wood ceiling beams and the white stone walls that were decorated with enameled brick and painted stucco. To the right were his own quarters, where he kept the precious papyrus rolls and clay tablets on which were recorded the details of his army and his wealth, and the matters that had to do with the building of the Temple. Ahead of him Anohbet would be lolling amid her cushions, listening to the girl harpist. 

Benajah would take the Greek with him, and return with two fast Egyptian riding stallions. He would fetch traveling clothes, as well: plain garments that would hide the identity of the two men traveling south and east to ward Ezion-Geber and the Red Sea. And Benajah would hide the bow in the armory. That was most important, hiding the bow. None must see it, none must speak of it, until he could distribute a thousand of them among his archers. 

Solomon came to the curtained entrance to the women's quarters. 

With a hand on the tasseled edge of the rich Assyrian drapery, he paused. A little flame of wanting burned in him tonight. His eyes hungered for the smooth coppery flesh of his wife. His palms itched to stroke her loins and caress the fullness of her bosom. He wanted nothing so much as to plunge himself into her beauty, and lose the cares that bestrode his every day as the colossus of Rhodes straddled its harbor. 

Am I a king in the bedchamber, as I am king in Jerusalem? he asked himself. I am like an impoverished beggar seeking alms along the street of potters, where my wife is concerned. 

There were women in Jerusalem who would consider it an honor to come to the royal couch. Plump Edomites with thighs that shook as they walked, lean Phrygians with skilled hands and fingers to make a man cry out with the pleasure of their strokings, harlots from Knossos and temple girls from Ephesus—all there were available to the King of Israel. He wanted none of them. It was this brown daughter of the pharoahs that he wanted this night, lovely Anohbet of the cold eyes and colder spirit, who treated him worse than he treated the meanest servant in his household. 

Angrily he swept back the hangings and went striding past the golden incense burners that flanked the stone doorway of the women's quarters. 

Anohbet cried out at sight of him. She was sprawled gracefully on thick cushions, one leg exposed from hip to golden anklet, where her sheer linen tunic was caught on a cushion tassel. Her brown eyes were enhanced by green malachite on her eyelids, and the natural redness of her ripe mouth was heavily stained with henna. The golden collar at her throat was her only ornament above the waist; except for that and the thin linen tunic, she was naked. For a moment she seemed to pose there for his hot eyes, as if to tempt him, he thought angrily, into some rashness. Then she lazily reached out a hand and drew a thin cloak of yellow wool from the low ebony table beside the divan and threw it over herself. 

“My husband comes to listen to Tiy and her lyre?" 

Mockery lay in her cultured voice. Anohbet never let him forget that he was king only of a petty kingdom between the Phoenician world to the north and the Arabian kingdoms of the south. She was the daughter of Pharoah, a royal Egyptian, descendant of the pyramid builders. Her people were the mightiest in the world. At one time, before Moses brought them out of Egypt and into this land of Canaan, his people had been slaves of her ancestors. 

She put her head back on the cushions and stared sightlessly up at the beamed ceiling. Her mouth smiled lazily, conveying to him her indifference. As his gaze slid from her bare shoulders to her naked little feet—she had put red henna on her toes and curving soles, he noticed—the thick anger in him slid away before the swollen hunger of his senses. 

His hand gestured at the staring lyre girl, but the girl only turned toward Anohbet, whispering, "Shall I leave, mistress?" 

Solomon was like the lightning in his rage. He leaped at the slave girl, bending and lifting her by a soft arm, shaking her angrily. “Am I king in my own palace?” he roared. “Do the slaves of my wife put on her airs and humors?" 

Anohbet lifted herself to a sitting position. “Go away, Tiy,” she said softly. 

The girl slid down before Solomon and rubbed her forehead against his sandals. Solomon flushed and drew his foot away. A little ashamed of his violent outburst, he said, "Leave us, girl!" 

When her bare-feet pattered into silence, Solomon came and seated himself on the low ebony stool. His grave eyes studied his queen, who sat facing him as if unaware that her yellow cloak had slipped down across her upper thighs, and that only the transparent byssus shielded her breasts from his gaze. 

“Why did you marry me, Anohbet?” Solomon asked softly. 

"My father told me to marry you,” she answered sweetly, smiling up at him. “He said you were an up-and-coming king, and that the wealth your father was storing up from his victories made you quite a catch." 

“Never before did any pharoah allow his daughter to marry with a stranger. Never before has an Israelite king taken a foreigner as chief wife. It would be different if we loved each other.” 

Anohbet sank back onto the cushions. The thick black wig she wore over her head, shaved in the Egyptian tradition, was set with flowers of thin gold and enamel-work, with fine gold filigree and slim golden wires. Its jet tresses framed a face whose cheeks were reddened now with something more than cosmetics. “Love isn't for kings and queens. They are above such things.” 

"I'm not above it, and I'm a king," Solomon said softly, leaning forward. 

"A king of a petty little nation like Israel,” she laughed scornfully. "There are more men in Pharoah's army than there are in all your land." 

"Not any more.” Solomon smiled. "Once, when Rameses was ruler along the Nile, yes. Not now. In a test of strength, who would win, Israel or Egypt?” 

Her fingers went to her wig hair, arranging it. "You talk foolishly. You buy your chariots and your horses from Egypt, don't you?" 

"Only because they make the best chariots and breed the finest horses in the world. Because Egypt is so impoverished by a hundred wastrel pharoahs that they need my gold and my silver, and so they sell me war weapons! In Thutmos' time, he would have come with his army and his chariots to trample a strange king and his city into bloody dust for daring to suggest marriage with his daughter. Egypt grows old. Israel is young!” 

Anohbet laughed softly, tauntingly. "You tell yourself this, but you don't believe it, Solomon. You are just a little king over a little country, and deep in your heart you know it.” 

He came off the ebony footstool to rest beside her body on a knee. His hands went down and under the light woolen tunic, sliding along her thighs and up over her soft hips. There was anger in Solomon and a strange, fierce yearning, but this Egyptian woman was an enigma to him. He could solve the riddles that Hiram of Tyre sent him, and frame word puzzles that Hiram could not decipher, but when it came to his own wife, he was as helpless as a babe. 

Anohbet writhed away from him easily, with a serpentine twist of her warm coppery body. Her laughter was like a blow in the face. 

“Go to the slave market in Salem if you want a woman, Solomon. The daughter of the pharoahs is not for you!" 

“I want only you, Anohbet.” He smiled coldly. 

She would not escape him now, he told himself. His large hands tightened on her waist, lifting her and swinging her sideways across his knees. Her thin black brows drew close in haughty pride. She will not even grow angry at me, he told himself sickly. She considers me less than the rugs on which she walks! 

With a spate of fury, he drew her up to him, holding her softness against his chest. She was warm under the thin byssus, as warm as her land of Egypt. Perfumes from Zoan and Sinai were in her thick black hair and on her flesh. In his wild desire to stir this woman, to make her forget her nationality and her heritage, he shook her. 

"I am your king, as I am king of every other living thing in Israel! I came here tonight because I am leaving Jerusalem for a little while. I thought I might find affection here, find a voice to tell me I'll be missed when I'm gone. Instead I discover coldness and mockery!” 

Staring down at her slumbrous eyes, he forgot his anger. His words trailed off into silence. That mouth so close to his own, so red and moist! These breasts that he could feel hard and swollen against his chest. The skin over which his hand slid, warm and smooth beneath the thin Egyptian linen! 

He swept her up into his arms and kissed her savagely, betraying his need in the convulsive strut of his muscles. He was like the sandstorm that swept out the red desert between the Sea of Chinneroth and Elam, powerful and raging. Just for an instant, he imagined he felt a response to that inner tempest. Her perfumed arms seemed to tighten convulsively about his neck, and her soft lips parted tenderly. 

Then she whispered to him, and his blood ran cold in his veins. “You forget that ours is a marriage of state, to join two kingdoms. There is no love between us. How can there be love between a man who worships one god and a woman who worships many?" 

His arms loosened and she twisted free of him, to stand ten feet away, clutching the yellow woolen cloak about her brown shoulders, brooding at him from under long black lashes. There was a fire in this woman that showed itself in her bright eyes and red mouth, and in the brown skin that was smooth satin to the touch, warm and vibrant with life. The terrible heat of the Egyptian sun was in her blood, mixed with the cool green water of the great Nile, and the stark beauty of a desert oasis at the first rising of the evening stars. 

“One god,” she said softly. "A god named Yahweh. A tiny little god belonging to a tiny people out of the desert lands to the south!” 

“There is only one God,” replied Solomon hoarsely, trying to fight the anger in him. “Even one of your own pharaohs—Akhenaten, who built a city in honor of this one God he knew as Aton—realized that." 

"And what happened to Akhenaten?" she inquired sweetly. "When he died, the priests of the true gods be came powerful once again. The priests of the great Osiris, lord of the Nile, lord of justice and truth and love! Of Set, the black god of evil and wickedness! Of Isis, goddess of love and all sweetness!" 

Solomon snorted. Always he tried to avoid these quarrels with Anohbet, for they left him filled with bitterness in his heart toward her, who could become as ruthless as an Assyrian conqueror with the scalpel of her tongue, cutting and gouging him with words. He had proof of his rightness: Every living man and woman among his people knew the blinding power of the Ark and the God Who spoke through its priests. They were familiar with the story of the man who touched it when it was about to fall, even though this was specifically forbidden, and how Yahweh avenged his transgression by death. With his own ears he had heard the voice of Yahweh speaking to him, offering him the gift of wisdom. But how did a man go about telling such things to his wife, in such a manner that she would believe? Anohbet only looked at him steadily and let her wide mouth curve gently into a smile—the sort of smile he'd seen more than one mother bestow on a mischievous but beloved child. 

Anohbet moved with swaying haunches toward a low cosmetic table that held a dozen clay jars and hematite vials of ointments and perfumes. Always she used her shapely body to taunt him in one way or another, as if calling her flesh to his attention in an unspoken promise that these loins and these slim legs would belong to him, once he came to his senses and acknowledged the sovereignty of Osiris and Isis. 

As she rubbed a depilatory into the curve of an armpit, Anohbet said lazily, “You do not deny what I say, Solomon. You are afraid to use reason against me. Is one man stronger than ten? Why should one god be stronger than ten gods?” 

Fists clenched against the fury that made the veins throb at his temples, he said, “Yahweh is the true God! Those others are only names invented by superstitious men in forgotten times. Your Set, god of the dead, murdered Osiris, and dismembered him. While Osiris lay dead, the world also died. No crops grew. No flowers bloomed. Your Isis, who found the scattered pieces of his body, put them together and hid them in a tomb. Then, suddenly, the world sprang into life again. Buds blossomed. Trees put forth leaves where they had been barren and the world was green again! 

"Can't you see? It's the sort of a story a priest in the long-ago times would have made up to explain the seasons. In those years when men depended so much on vegetables and vegetation, the coming of wintertime must have been a great hardship. They needed something to explain the dying crops in winter and their rebirth in the spring, and so their priests or shamans gave the story to them. With the centuries, it became a facet of your religion." 

Anohbet was staring at him with over-bright eyes. The woolen robe was forgotten, and lay pooled at her tiny brown feet. She's a goddess herself, Solomon thought helplessly, a goddess of beauty and love, dead as the world itself during the death of her Osiris. She needs someone to gather up the scattered pieces of her heart and restore them to her, so that she can be an entire woman, alive and warm and loving. She stood now breathing faster, so that the collarette of jewels that lay above her protruding breasts caught the lamplight in minute coruscations. 

“Indeed? As simple as that? And how does the wise Solomon explain the fact that Egypt has a hundred temples greater than the single temple he built? Does that seem to argue that your Yahweh is greater than Osiris or Amon-Ra or Anubis?” 

“The fact that Egypt is an older nation than Israel means nothing. That its people are numerous, that conquerors like Rameses and Thutmose gave them millions of human beings to use for slave labor only prove Egypt's greatness as a military power and as a nation of builders.” 

Anohbet brought the black diorite jar with which she had been pouring unguents in a cupped palm down hard on the tabletop. Angrily she moved her ointment-wet palms across her soft skin. It was as if she were trying to show him the excitement and the wonder of her flesh, which he denied himself by his senseless—in her eyes insistence on the single divinity, of Yahweh to the exclusion of the ancient gods of Egypt. 

For a moment Solomon watched her moving hands, aware that something deep within him yearned with a terrible strength toward this woman. But even stronger than this sensuality was the power of his will and spirit, which told him that Anohbet, for all her loveliness, was a temptress such as Hagar had been to Abraham. And Yahweh had made Abraham rid himself of Hagar, banishing her and her son, Ishmael, into the wilderness below Beersheba that was known as Paran. He did not want to lose Anohbet by surrendering his flesh and his spirit into her keeping. I want to keep her here with me, if only to feast my eyes on her satiny brown body, he thought, silently aware of a sick hunger inside him that made him angry at himself. 

In that anger he strode from the divan to the curtained doorway, ripping apart the hangings with a single movement of an arm. Anohbet stood frozen, staring at him. 

“Yahweh is the one true God," he cried fiercely. “Some day He will show me the way to open your eyes, so that you will believe in Him as I do!” 

"I will always believe in Osiris and Isis, Solomon. As you pray to your Yahweh, I shall pray to my gods for your conversion to the faith of my fathers—for the wisdom that will open your eyes to the truth of Osiris and Horus and Isis." 

For a moment Solomon glared at her. Then, with a shrug of his wide shoulders, he moved between the hangings and out through the stone doorway. He did not see the wide eyes of his Egyptian wife as they filled with tears, or the quiver of her ripe mouth. Her body seemed to shrink in upon itself. With a muffled moan she brought the woolen khalak to her eyes and wept softly. 

None but Anohbet knew how she felt about this tall husband or hers. If he would only be as fierce in his love toward her as he was in his worship of his God, she would have been happy. She was too proud to yield before that worship, for she was a daughter of the pharoahs, and had been trained since infancy to the belief in Anubis and Horus. In her own mind there were no gods but Egyptian gods. All the rest were foreign, as the people who worshiped them were foreign. Nightly she offered tiny grains of incense before the little ebony-and-gold statue of Hathor, goddess of love, to supplicate that Solomon should see and agree with this reasoning. 

And yet, despite all she did, he remained a stranger, loyal to his Yahweh. This thin byssus, through which his eyes could see the curves of her breasts and the pit of her navel, should have been enough to tempt him into surrendering. Aie, and the golden collar at her throat, and the musky perfumes her hands had worked into her skin before his gaze! Her eyes were bright, shaded heavily with green malachite on their lids. Her waist was slim, her legs were long and shapely. Couldn't he forget Yahweh for once and give in to her, worshiping Isis or Serapis or Ra, and so win this love she burned to feed him? 

“He's a stubborn, arrogant fool! Blind! And—strong!” 

Anohbet stumbled to the divan cushions and threw her self across them. In her injured pride she could not see that she was as blind and as proud as Solomon. If only Isis would whisper into her ears, and tell her what she should do to make this husband love her, and see things her way. 

Now he was going away from her, and ... 

She whimpered, sitting upright. “Suppose he's going to get himself another queen?" she wailed. 

A queen who would worship Yahweh, side by side with him in his new, lovely temple! Anohbet fell face down on the soft cushions, sobbing stormily. 

Anger was still heavy in Solomon as he came striding into his chambers. He walked swiftly, as was his habit when he was annoyed. He gave no thought to the sputtering oil lamps that threw black shadows across the painted walls and ebony and ivory furniture of his apartment, or to what might be waiting in those shadows. And so he did not see the man who stood still, leaning upon a staff of polished almond-wood close beside the low chest that held his garments. 

Nathan the prophet was an old man. His white beard was long and carefully tended below the wise eyes that had seen the hot winds of seventy summers come and go. Usually he wore only a goatskin that left his legs and shoulders bare, but now, in deference to the royalty of Solomon, he wore a long haluk and fringed amice. 

“Benajah found a foreigner in the garden, I understand," said Nathan softly. "He also tells me you mean to ride from Jerusalem." 

"He told you the truth, then." 

Nathan shook his head gloomily. “There is anger in you. I can sense it, though you are trying to hide the fact. You must not decide such things in heat, Solomon. You are a king." 

A clay amphora stood on the ebony table close to Solomon. He put a hand on it and lifted it and threw it across the chamber so that it crashed and shattered on the wall. 

"I am not a king. I am only a young man you've muttered prayers over, who has sacrificed and talked to Yahweh! Nobody obeys me, outside my soldiers. Not Anohbet. Not you. I am tired of playing at king to make you happy." 

The prophet frowned heavily in the shadows. His people were not used to kings. Less than one hundred years before, Saul, who had been the gifted son of a rich Benjamite, was set up as their ruler by the prophet Samuel. After Saul had come David, who was a shepherd boy who got himself a reputation by killing that Philistine giant, Goliath. And now Solomon. There was no tradition of kingship here in Israel as there was in Egypt and in Babylon. It made it hard for him to know what to do. 

Solomon was too tense. There was a flame in this one that Saul had never had. Even David had lacked this white inner heat that made Solomon stand out among men. He must go easily. It would not do to provoke Solomon to rashness. A little vacation might even be a good thing for him, if he conducted himself carefully. 

Nathan said soothingly, "Benajah mentioned a bow, and a man from Crete.” 

Anger slid from Solomon's eyes before a gathering excitement as he came a step nearer the old man. "Such a bow as you've never seen! It can shoot more than six hundred yards!” 

Nathan smiled. Young men were always so impetuous. David had been like this, many years ago. "Have you seen it shoot that far?” 

"Well, no. But the Cretan seemed honest." 

Nathan smiled faintly, and Solomon flushed. “You would travel south to Sheba, close to the watery rim of the world, to find a man who made a bow you have not tested?" 

Solomon drew himself up proudly. “I am a soldier. My people are soldiers. I know a good weapon!” 

"No, no. The bow must be tested. It's the only way I'll hear of your leaving Jerusalem. Only if the bow does what you say it will." 

Triumph bubbled inside Solomon, making him cry out harshly and strike his fist alongside the ebony table laden with the rolled scrolls that a servant had gathered up from the floor. He had been worried about Nathan. Since boyhood he had looked with awe upon the old prophet. Now in his young manhood, he still had not shaken that sense of dependence and remembered fear. For once, he would show Nathan that at least when it came to weapons, he was his superior. 

“Come!” said Solomon, and he led the way out of the chamber and across the lamp-lit central hall to the brass and-boxwood door of the armory. “Benajah put the bow safely away, before he took the Greek to his home." 

The brazen door clanged open. In the torchlight they stared into a long room fitted with racks that held swords and axes, and racks from which hung the chain-mail armor of Philistia and the ring-mail tunics of Assyria. Hittite axes, long-handled and two-headed, reclined beside the horned Shardana helmets of Egyptian mercenaries. Shields hung by their straps from wall pegs: round and curved, of hide and wood and metal. From every corner of the world, these weapons were brought and tested, for Solomon in his wisdom knew that a nation can grow in peace only as long as its armies are strong enough to maintain it. Assyrian short bows were hung beside the longer Phoenician bows. Straight swords from Babylon and Greece were arranged over the curved falchions of Egypt. 

Benajah had left the bow in its dirty sheepskin on a small table. 

Solomon caught it up, stripped away the covering, and held it aloft so that Nathan could see and admire it. But the prophet was no man of war. To him it was much the same as the other bows he could see in the shadows. 

Solomon glanced around. His eye lighted on a long Assyrian hauberk that was fashioned of interlocked metal plates sewn onto a leather tunic. He snatched it up and shook it. 

"If I put an arrow through this mail at two hundred yards, Nathan—Will you say I'm right, then?" 

Nathan blinked. Man of God he was, but he was not blind to the efficacy of such a weapon. He had seen Saul and David march out in their battles against Philistines and Moabites, Ammonites and the kings of Zobah. In order that the Temple remain beautiful and unharmed, his people must be able to protect it. Silently he nodded. 

They went out into the gardens. Nathan stood on the flaggings while Solomon went across the garden and set the hauberk up, hanging it on the branches of a frankincense tree. 

With a hand and a leg, Solomon strung the bow. He had brought a Persian quiver with him, an ornate thing of decorated leather and strips of silver. He selected an arrow from it and nocked it to the string. 

As Nathan watched, he drew the bow far back, until the arrow feathers brushed his ear. For an instant he held the bow like that, enjoying the tension in his muscles, feeling the wind touch his flushed face. Then he released the arrow. 

It flew straight, humming. It went through the hauberk at the other end of the garden and on, until it broke against the hard brick wall behind it. 

Nathan cried out hoarsely, staring. 

Solomon smiled, and bent for another arrow. "That may have been an accident,” he said softly. "I'll try again.” 

Three arrows he shot, as Nathan stared. Each of the three traveled through the metal hauberk as if those plates had been fashioned of leaves, rather than of brass, and broke in half on the wall behind it. 

"Such a weapon might kill two men with one arrow, upon occasions,” he pointed out to Nathan, and unstrung the bow. 

“The powers of darkness must have made it!” 

Solomon paused with the bow in one hand. “Why not say that Yahweh sent this Cretan to my palace tonight? It may be His will that we have many bows like this. If we had this bow, who would dare be so rash as to fight us?” 

That made sense, Nathan agreed. Yahweh was not a god of war, but He would want His people to defend themselves against attack. Nathan said as much, as he walked back into the palace with Solomon. It was true that he did not want Solomon to leave Jerusalem, but it was equally true that he knew no one they could trust completely for such a task. Benajah could be trusted, but he was a blunt soldier, unskilled in the arts of bargaining and statesmanship. It was best, after all, that Solomon ride with Benajah southward into Sheba. 

"I will pass along the news that you have gone to Tyre,” he said thoughtfully, leaning heavily on his almond-wood staff. "How soon can you be gone?” 

"Before dawn comes up over the Valley of Cedron. We'll go out the Gate of Strangers, clad as foreigners. No one will imagine Solomon in the mercenary soldier he will see beside Benajah." 

Jothab, who was an elder brother of King Solomon and the son of David and Ahinoam, let the ivory draughts piece fall from his fingers as he turned to stare at the servant who fawned before him, bowing low. Across the square sandalwood table that held the boxed draughts board, his friend Nerkal the Assyrian reached for a goblet of thin Sidon glassware that was filled with white Arsinoite wine. 

"Well, Nabal?” Jothab said to the servant. "What brings you through the night to my quarters? It must be some thing world-shattering for you so to visit Jothab the Unwanted." 

Nabal smiled slyly. His black eyes glittered greedily. More than once in the past this brother of the king had rewarded him with gold pieces or small jewels for some especially succulent tidbit of palace gossip. The fact that Jothab managed to make a thousandfold profit on his news in the form of gifts or privileges did not matter to Nabal. It was enough that Jothab was generous with him.