Among the Gods Read Online Free PDF Page A

his momentum. “Don’t do it, Hadad. That ring belonged to your grandfather.”
    He hesitated a moment, then slowly lowered his arm, gazing into the dark water as if his thoughts were far away. At last he slipped the ring onto his finger.
    “Thank you,” he whispered. He swiped at his tears with the heel of his hand. “You have a tender heart, Miriam. Don’t give it away to someone who doesn’t deserve it. Or worse, to someone who will poison it.”
    Miriam knew that he meant Joshua, and she wondered how he had guessed that she loved him. Was her love that transparent? But before she could speak again, Hadad walked away from her into the night.

2
    “T HIS IS THE WAY A FESTIVAL should be celebrated,” Manasseh said. He lounged on his throne in the Temple courtyard, presiding in splendor over the midnight orgy. His palace administrator, Zerah, sat at his side. Manasseh watched as frenzied worshipers spilled over the edges of the plaza and into the streets below the Temple Mount, dodging animal remains and spirit shrines as they whirled in ecstasy, mumbling spells and incantations. Many of them wore nothing but tattooed symbols and splattered blood, and he wondered how they kept warm on such a chilly spring night.
    “Behold our future,” Zerah said with his arms spread wide. “The ritual acts performed tonight will ensure plentiful crops and herds in the year to come.”
    Manasseh watched three young maidens chase a goat that had broken free from its tether. “This is much more to my liking than sitting at a dull dinner table,” he said, “eating roast lamb and dredging up stories of the past.”
    “Nothing will be denied you at this celebration, Your Majesty. Remember, you’re free to enjoy everything!”
    Manasseh had long grown accustomed to indulging in practices that his Torah instructors used to call perversions. He remembered feeling shocked when Zerah first proposed them a year ago, but now they seemed ordinary, almost boring, and he constantly sought greater thrills. How easy it all had been once he freed himself from the false guilt that the priests had imposed on him, once he recognized that no one had the right to tell him how to live. He alone was responsible for deciding what was right and wrong. “I can’t imagine why I ever let anyone tell me what to do,” he said.
    Zerah smiled. He sliced off another thick chunk of meat from the platter in front of them and fed it to Manasseh. The king sighed with delight. It was cooked the way he liked it, roasted in its own juices, still pink in the middle. He mopped up some of the blood from the platter with his bread.
    “It’s hard to believe a year has passed,” Zerah said, “since the Levites left and the Temple was restored to its rightful priests.”
    “I don’t miss the Levites in the least. Good riddance to them.” Manasseh raised his wine goblet in salute, then drained it to the bottom. “Besides, all the property and wealth they left behind has greatly increased my treasury accounts.”
    “Doesn’t it make more sense to worship God in all his many forms—Baal, Asherah, Molech?” Zerah asked.
    “I can scarcely recall doing it differently.”
    As he rose from his seat, Manasseh suddenly remembered that this was also the anniversary of the night Dinah had stabbed him. Horror at his own vulnerability still gripped him whenever he caught a glimpse of the ugly, jagged scar on his stomach. He felt a sudden chill at the thought that he might have died, and he strode across the courtyard to seek the warmth of the bonfire, holding out his hands to the flames. Above him, dark, hulking clouds hung suspended in the sky, blotting the constellations from sight.
    “That’s how I feel,” he mumbled.
    Zerah, who had followed him, bent his head closer to hear above the clamor of music and squeals of drunken laughter. “Pardon, Your Majesty?”
    “I feel like there’s a dark cloud hanging over my head. It’s been a year, you know. A full year of