Sarah: Women of Genesis: 1 (Women of Genesis (Forge)) Read Online Free PDF

with you, King of Ur.”
     
    In moments he was gone. Sarai was left gasping at all that she had heard. This man called into question all that she had been taught, all that she believed, and he did it with such authority that it was impossible not to listen to him. Even when Father glared at her and demanded what she did to allure this man, Sarai could only answer feebly, “I don’t know, I don’t know.” For as of this day, she was no longer sure of anything. Except this: Abram said he would be back to marry her, and somehow it would happen, for today she had seen for the first time in her life the true power of a king. It was the word of power: To speak, knowing that the thing spoken would come true.
     

Chapter 2
     
    The next few weeks were maddening for Sarai. Everything happening to Abram in Ur was important to her household—and certainly not least to her!—but no one thought to tell her each bit of news as it came into the house. Instead she had to quiz the slaves, who never quite got the story right, since they didn’t understand it themselves, and who also tended to change the details to make stories more interesting—which usually meant more awful.
     
    But the truth, when she finally learned it, was awful enough. Because Suwertu declared Abram to be the enemy of Pharaoh’s authority and therefore a danger to the authority of all kings, Abram was taken prisoner. Within a day, his father, Terah, came and camped in the grassland half a day’s run from Ur. His messengers passed back and forth, trying to win Abram’s release.
     
    Suwertu, though, was pulling strings behind the negotiations, and the choice became clear. Terah had to renounce his claim to the true priesthood, confess that Pharaoh was the only heir to the birthright of Noah, and swear never to make such a claim again. Otherwise, he could prove the power of his priesthood by raising his son Abram from the dead, after he was sacrificed to Ba’al—or to Horus, or to Pharaoh himself as a divinity, depending on who was telling the story.
     
    Until the gossip about Suwertu and Abram began, Sarai had never heard of offering a human being as a sacrifice. To her, worship was about incense and music, and now and then, from a distance, the ashy smell of burnt meat. But the meat was always an animal—a bullock, a he-lamb—and a year or so back, Qira had explained to her that only parts of the animal were burnt, while the rest of the meat was used by the priests. “What do you think they eat, silly?” asked Qira. But Sarai had never thought about it. She had only had some vague idea that the god they served provided for them. Instead it was the people.
     
    But when she realized that they were seriously planning to sacrifice Abram, her first terrible thought was that the priests would eat him. Qira quickly dispelled that notion—but provided her with information that was even more horrifying. “It’s not like anyone in Ur sacrifices babies to Molech.” If she intended to reassure Sarai with this information, she failed. It broke Sarai’s heart just to imagine that somewhere there were people who would kill their own baby—and that they would do it in service to a god. And now that Abram had raised in her mind the possibility that priests might be making up some of the stories about the gods, she was even more confused. For she could not believe in the existence of a god who wanted the murder of children. Yet she could also not believe that a priest could make up such a terrible thing.
     
    Sarai thought of all the babies that she had known—an infant suckling at a servant’s breast, a toddler playing beside his mother as she worked. She saw how mothers loved their children, even when they were annoyed with them, even when they were angry. Though she didn’t understand why the mothers got angry. Everything children did, at every age, fascinated and delighted Sarai. And somewhere, either a god or a priest decided that people should be