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

by Lynn Austin

  Manasseh stood shivering with fear and shame as the soldiers clamped cold metal shackles around his wrists, then his ankles. “Please don’t do this to me … please … I beg you to believe me!” The bonds felt heavy on his limbs, as if they would never come off again.

  “Merciful mother Asherah, save me!” Zerah cried as the Assyrians tore off his clothes.

  One after the other, every nobleman in the room was being stripped and shackled as Manasseh had been. He stood frozen in terror, listening to their pitiful pleas for mercy, but he saw no way out of this nightmare for any of them.

  “I’m innocent! You’re making a mistake. I’ve never been part of a conspiracy. You’re arresting an innocent man!” Like words from a dream, Manasseh suddenly recalled how Isaiah and Eliakim had stood in this same throne room, repeating his very words. He understood the helpless outrage they must have felt at such a monstrous injustice.

  “Save your defense for the emperor’s ears,” the rabshekeh said. “You’ll get your day in court in Babylon.”

  “You’re not going to take me all the way to Babylon!” Terror filled Manasseh as he suddenly recalled Isaiah’s prophecy: one of Hezekiah’s descendants would be taken in chains to Babylon.

  “Get him ready to go,” the rabshekeh ordered.

  Manasseh cried out as four soldiers suddenly forced him down into his chair, clamping his head against the back of his throne. Then a burst of fiery pain ripped through him as the Assyrians pierced his nose with a barbed hook. Hot, wet blood streamed down his face. He tasted it, bitter and salty on his lips. As the limp paralysis of shock prickled through him, he moaned, struggling to stay conscious.

  How could this be happening? He wasn’t a traitor. He was the king of Judah, a loyal subject of the Assyrian emperor. He remembered how Isaiah and Eliakim had proclaimed their loyalty, too.

  Beside him, Zerah struggled against the soldiers holding him down. He was too old for this kind of treatment. He cried out in anguish as the Assyrians drove a hook through his nose, as well. Manasseh felt the helpless despair of being unable to save someone he loved.

  “Zerah, call down your gods!” he pleaded. “You have power!” But when the soldiers stepped aside, Manasseh looked at Zerah’s bloody face and saw that he was unconscious.

  Manasseh was certain that neither he nor Zerah would survive the long journey to Babylon. Many of his noblemen didn’t. The Assyrians gave them enough food and rest to keep them moving but not enough to prevent them from arriving weeks later in a horribly weakened condition. Manasseh’s skin blistered and peeled from hours beneath the burning sun, and his ankles chafed and bled after being rubbed raw by his shackles. He and his secretary had to support Zerah between them for the last leg of the journey after he became too weak to walk alone.

  Every moment that he was conscious, Manasseh beseeched the gods for help, reminding them of his zeal and devotion, enumerating the shrines and altars he had built, the countless sacrifices he had slain for them. “Have we slighted one of them?” he asked Zerah. “Angered one? Did the priests neglect one of the rituals to bring this disaster upon us? Surely the stars would have foretold a calamity such as this. Why didn’t the omens warn us?”

  Zerah’s laughter held a tinge of hysteria. “The minds of the gods are ever-changing and capricious. We have become pawns in their rivalries, Manasseh. Playthings for their amusement.”

  “What about your powers, Zerah? Use your powers!” But as Manasseh watched his friend grow weaker each day, his hope drained as steadily as his own strength. They were both going to die in chains. Rabbi Isaiah had once caused the sun to move, but even he had been powerless to save himself after Manasseh had shackled him as they now were.

  Manasseh saw Babylon, sprawled on a great plain, long before they reached it. A wide, shimmering moat surrounded the city, along with walls as high as two of Jerusalem’s walls piled one on top of the other. The great ziggurat towered higher still, crowned by a temple to Babylon’s gods. The Assyrians marched the prisoners through one of the city’s one hundred bronze gates, making examples of them as traitors, parading them through the streets of Babylon in chains, as they had paraded them through Jerusalem. Thousands of people thronged to watch. Too humiliated to lift his gaze, Manasseh saw little of the magnificent city except the ground beneath his aching feet. He had commanded Isaiah to tell his future; now he had fulfilled the very words of his prophecy.

  Manasseh was still supporting Zerah when the soldiers led them into a squat, mud-brick barracks, then down steep, narrow stairs to the jail, deep underground. At first Manasseh was grateful to be out from under the pitiless sun until he glimpsed the dank, airless dungeon that would be his prison. The door to his cell was a crude hole in the rock wall near the floor, barely two feet in diameter. He struggled in panic as the Assyrians forced him to the ground and made him crawl through it on his stomach. Inside, four barren, rock-hewn walls enclosed a windowless space barely eight feet square. There was no pallet, no bedding, only a hole in the corner for a toilet. High above his head, three holes no wider than his fist allowed light and air to filter in. The guards pushed Zerah into the cell behind Manasseh, then bolted a wide iron bar in place over the opening, leaving only a narrow slot at the bottom to pass food and water through. The sound of the great iron nails being driven into the rock, sealing him permanently inside, brought the terror of suffocation.

  “I can’t take this!” Manasseh wept. He curled into a tight ball, hugging himself, as he battled hysteria. “Do something, Zerah! Help us both, or I’m going to go insane in here!” But Zerah appeared to be in a stupor as he slumped in the corner, staring blindly at the wall. He rocked slightly, as if cradling a baby, and uttered a soft, keening sound.

  Manasseh crawled across the floor to him and took his face in his hands, forcing him to look at him. “Zerah, look at me! Say something! Talk to me!” Zerah’s glazed eyes were unseeing. Manasseh clung to him and wept until the cell grew dark and he finally fell into an exhausted sleep.

  He awoke to the dim light of dawn and the sound of their food being slid beneath the bar into the cell—a bowl of water and a plate of cold table scraps. Manasseh felt the fiery heat of Zerah’s body and realized that he was burning with fever. He scrambled across the floor on his hands and knees, hampered by the shackles that still chained him hand and foot, and pleaded with the guard through the narrow grate.

  “Please, my friend needs a physician. Have mercy, I beg you. Don’t let him die in this terrible place.” His voice echoed and died in the silent jail. As if in a dream, Manasseh suddenly recalled the night his soldiers had brought the badly beaten body of Joshua’s grandfather to him. Hilkiah had needed a physician, too, but Manasseh had condemned him to a prison cell to die. Were the gods playing games with his mind, reminding him of the past? Were they punishing him for his sins? But no, he wasn’t a sinner. Sin was an illusion.

  “I’m going crazy,” he murmured as he crawled back to where his friend lay. “You have to get well, Zerah. You can’t leave me all alone in this place. I’ll go mad.” He lifted Zerah’s head to give him a sip of water, but he couldn’t swallow. Water dribbled from the corners of his mouth into his beard. Manasseh held him in his arms, helpless to do more.

  As the cell grew lighter he noticed the huge, festering sores on Zerah’s ankles where the shackles had rubbed his flesh raw. They weren’t healing as Manasseh’s blisters were but had turned a sickly greenish color, with darker streaks radiating up his legs. The heavy bonds, still in place, bit deeply into Zerah’s wounds. During the night Zerah’s insides had turned to water, but there was no way to clean him or change his clothes. The stench killed any appetite Manasseh might have had, and he watched, uncaring, as rats brazenly carried away their food.

  For several days, Zerah was incoherent with fever. Manasseh hoped he was reciting incantations to bring healing or to get them out of this stinking prison, but he knew in his heart it was mindless babbling. He swatted the flies that swarmed around Zerah�
�s sores, but as time passed, he eventually gave up the impossible task.

  Their food came only once a day, and Manasseh soon learned to eat it before the rats did. Using the meager bowl of water to cool Zerah’s fever had proved futile; instead, Manasseh carefully rationed it between them. By the end of the week his friend’s body had grown so foul that Manasseh didn’t want to be near him anymore, let alone touch him. But the guard continued to ignore his pleas for help.

  As death approached, madness overpowered Zerah. His eyes rolled back in his twitching face, and his body convulsed the way a sorcerer’s did when a spirit took possession of him. He screamed obscenities, cursing the very gods he had once worshiped for not helping him. At times he howled and snarled like an animal, clawing at invisible assailants and lashing out with surprising strength. Manasseh huddled in a far corner in terror, waiting for the end.

  After what seemed a very long time, the babbling ceased. When the sun rose in the morning and the cell grew light, he saw that Zerah was dead. Manasseh was alone. He covered his own face and wept with hopeless grief.

  Joshua leaned against the half-finished wall of his latest project and stared into space as Nathan ordered the workers to their various tasks. His son had asked him to visit the site, insisting that he needed his advice, but Joshua recognized it as a ploy to try to reignite his interest in their work. He knew Nathan could easily complete the project without him.

  For months, ever since the viceroy’s rebellion had failed, Joshua had been unable to find joy or satisfaction in anything he did. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” the proverb said, and Joshua lived those words. He had successfully battled the flames of his anger and rage, but in the aftermath, Joshua’s life seemed dull and flat and gray, as barren as a charred landscape. Worse, he still couldn’t go to the temple or pray.

  As he watched his laborers erect the new scaffolding, he slowly became aware that Nathan was speaking to him. “Abba? You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?”

  “I’m sorry, son. I don’t have the energy for this. I’d better go home.” He turned to leave just as a boy came running up the path to the worksite. It was Jerimoth’s youngest son.

  “Uncle Joshua, wait,” he said breathlessly. “Abba sent me to get you. He says you need to come and talk to him and Prince Amariah right away.”

  “Do you know what he wants?”

  “One of Abba’s caravan drivers has brought news. Abba thinks you should hear it.”

  Joshua sighed in exasperation, certain it would prove to be another ruse to try to help him shake his apathy. Nevertheless, he followed his nephew to Amariah’s audience hall.

  “Sit down,” Jerimoth insisted, hovering nervously around him. “You need to be seated to hear this.” Joshua obeyed, too weary to argue. Jerimoth spoke slowly, hesitantly. “Listen, Joshua, the last thing in the world I want to do is raise your hopes, but my driver is a reliable man. He was an eyewitness. We can trust him to tell the truth.” He nodded to the man. “Go ahead. Tell him what you told us.”

  “My trading ventures took me to Jerusalem four months ago. While I was there, a battalion of Assyrians arrived one morning in full battle array. Everyone bolted for home at the sight, believe me, and I stayed holed up in my booth in the caravansary. But eventually they blew the shofars and ordered the entire city into the streets to watch a procession. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The Assyrians had King Manasseh and all his noblemen in chains and shackles, parading them through the streets with hooks in their noses.”

  “And you’re certain it was the king?” Jerimoth prompted.

  “Yes, my lord. I recognized King Manasseh even in his undergarments, without his crown and fancy robes and bodyguards. Besides, they announced his name all through the streets as they made him march, saying he was a traitor to the empire, telling us they had proof that Manasseh had conspired with the emperor’s brother to take part in a rebellion.”

  Joshua opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t utter a sound.

  “When they finished making an exhibition of him,” the driver continued, “they deported the king and all the nobility to prison in Babylon.”

  “All of his officials?” Jerimoth asked.

  “There weren’t that many, my lord. King Manasseh murdered all but a handful years ago when they opposed his treaty with Assyria.”

  “Who’s governing the nation?” Prince Amariah asked.

  “No one. Chaos reigns. Every man is doing as he sees fit.” Joshua didn’t realize that he had stopped breathing until his brother pounded him on the back, seconds before he would have fainted. Someone thrust a cup of water to his lips and made him drink. The room reeled as Joshua struggled to comprehend what he’d just heard. Manasseh has been imprisoned by the Assyrians! He’s been stripped and hauled away with hooks and chains!

  “O God, make him suffer!” Joshua cried out when he could finally speak. “So many have suffered by his evil hand! Pay him back double the pain he has inflicted on others!”

  Everyone stared at him. Joshua sat trembling in his seat, as stunned by the force of his hatred as they were. It pumped through every inch of him, darker than blood, more bitter than gall. After all these years, his desire for revenge had suddenly sprung to life again, from deep within his heart. He had starved it, held it down in shackles as he’d vowed, but it had remained alive, curling around his soul like a writhing serpent—inert but alive.

  Amariah’s astonishment made Joshua defensive. “Didn’t King David wish the same for his enemies? ‘Repay them for their deeds and for their evil work,’” he quoted. “‘Repay them for what their hands have done and bring back upon them what they deserve.’ That’s all I’m asking for—justice!”

  Amariah frowned. “I know, Joshua, but how can you wish for anyone to fall into the hands of the Assyrians?”

  He slowly realized what Amariah meant. God had placed Manasseh in the hands of the Assyrians—masters in the art of cruelty and torture. They would inflict far more pain than Joshua could ever imagine. Manasseh would die a slow, agonizing death.

  “Yes!” he shouted, fists clenched. “You have no idea just how much I’ve wished for this very thing!” Joshua slid his hand beneath his eye patch to wipe the tears of joy and triumph from his eyes.

  Prince Amariah turned away. The vehemence of Joshua’s hatred seemed to unnerve him. “I know this news has shaken all of us—especially me,” he said. “It seems that by joining the viceroy’s rebellion I unwittingly brought about my brother’s death.”

  “Wasn’t that the reason you joined?” Joshua said angrily. “To de-throne Manasseh? What’s the difference whether we went back and killed him or the Assyrians do it? Either way God is finally judging Manasseh’s wickedness.”

  “I know, I know,” the prince said with a heavy sigh. “But the Assyrians torture their prisoners horribly….” For a moment he couldn’t speak. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I think I should return to Judah as soon as possible and see what’s become of our homeland. If it’s truly without a leader, then perhaps God wants me to step in.”

  “What about the Assyrians?” Jerimoth asked.

  “I’ll need to see if they’re still there, of course. And if they’re still a threat. I’ll survey the situation, then wait for God to lead me.”

  “I’m going with you,” Joshua said.

  Amariah studied him. “All right,” he said after a moment. “I’d appreciate your help.”

  When Joshua finally left the throne room, he didn’t wait for Jerimoth or anyone else but hurried straight to the temple. He wanted to offer a thank offering, but when he reached the gate to the courtyard, shame and guilt stopped him short. He had turned his back on God in anger these past months, questioning His wisdom and goodness. He had refused to pray. But God had been in control all along. Manasseh was finally paying for his crimes. Joshua knew he wasn’t worthy to enter the temple courts, guilty as he was of doubt and unbelief.

  “I’m sorry, Lord,” he prayed, gazing wit
h longing at the altar. “Can you ever forgive my lack of faith?”

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to face Joel. “I haven’t seen you here in a while,” the high priest said gently. “Are you going in?”

  “I’ve been a fool, Joel. A stubborn, unbelieving fool.”

  “Well, as the psalmist has written, ‘There is no one who does good, not even one.’ But God provides forgiveness if we ask.” He gestured to the altar, then guided Joshua through the gate into the courtyard.

  As Joshua knelt before the fire that consumed his sin offering, renewed energy and zeal coursed through his veins. He remembered the proverb he’d been living and realized that the second half of the verse was also true: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”

  25

  MANASSEH NEVER KNEW THAT DAYS and nights could be so endless. He wasn’t sure which was worse: the long, tedious days spent pacing in the stifling cell or the never-ending nights, lying awake on the hard stone floor, waiting to hear his jailer’s footsteps at dawn. They were the only sounds of life that he ever heard, apart from the scurry of rodents and his own echoing cries.

  “Talk to me, please! Say something,” he pleaded with his captors through the slot beneath the door. “Let me hear another voice before I go insane!” But the owner of the dark hand that shoved food through the hole disappeared day after day without a word, leaving Manasseh with only a parting glimpse of sandal-shod feet. He remembered doing the same thing to Dinah—ordering the servants to give her the silent treatment to wear down her resistance. He studied the jagged wounds she’d made on his arm and stomach and knew that if there was such a thing as divine retribution, then he was paying for his crimes. He had not only left Dinah alone in silence like this during the day, but he’d returned each night to brutalize her. He could no longer remember why. Unable to face what he’d done, he closed his mind against all memories of the past, as if sealing the door to a part of a house he no longer wanted to use.