“I love her,” I said. “That’s the one advantage I have over you and your kind. I can love. So can she. But you can’t. Neither you nor the Golden One nor any of the other gods. But she can, and she has loved me. And she died because of that.”
“You are hopeless,” Hera snapped. She turned away from me in a swirl of golden robes and disappeared into the shining mist.
I stood alone for several moments, then remembered why I had come here. To find Ahriman. The one the Achaians called Poseidon, the earth-shaker.
Closing my eyes, I visualized his hulking dark form, his heavy gray face, his burning eyes. I called him mentally, telling myself that if he would not come to me, then I must seek and find him.
I remembered, dimly, a forest of giant trees where Ahriman and his kind lived, in a continuum that existed somewhere, somewhen. Did it still exist? Could I find it?
A dark shadow passed over me. I sensed it even with my eyes closed. I opened them and found myself in a dark, brooding forest. Not a drop of sunlight penetrated the canopy of almost-black leaves far above me. The boles of huge trees stood around me like gray marble columns rising toward infinity. The ground between their trunks was cropped grass, as smooth and even as a park.
“Why are you here?”
Out of the darkness a darker shape took form: Ahriman, solid and massive, decked in clothes the color of the forest. But his eyes glowed like red-hot coals.
“To find you,” I replied.
He stepped closer to me. In his harsh, labored whisper, he asked, “And why seek me?”
“I need your help.”
He glared at me. It was like a volcano threatening to pour out lava. “I will not shake down the walls of Jericho for you, Orion. I will not help your golden madman in his wild schemes.”
“It’s not for him,” I said.
“That makes no difference. It is enough for me to protect my own people in our own continuum. I will not become a party to the quarrels of the self-styled Creators. They did not create me or my kind. I owe them nothing.”
“The Golden One promised he would revive Athene if I helped him,” I said, ignoring his words. “He waits for me in the great pyramid in Egypt.”
“He waits there to destroy you, once you have finished your usefulness to him.”
“No,” I said. “I will destroy him — somehow.”
“And what of your dead goddess then?” he asked.
I had no answer.
Slowly Ahriman swung his massive head back and forth. “Orion, if you want an earthquake, you must make it for yourself.”
I started to ask him what he meant, but the forest and Ahriman’s dark, brooding presence slowly faded before my eyes, and I found myself sitting in the darkness of my tent, on the straw pallet next to Helen.
She was sitting up too, her eyes wide with terror.
“You were gone,” she whispered, in a voice constricted by awe. “You were gone, and then you appeared beside me.”
I put an arm around her bare shoulders and tried to calm her. “It’s all right…”
“It’s magic! Sorcery!” Her naked body was cold and trembling.
Pulling her close and wrapping both my arms around her, I said, “Helen, long ago I told you I was a servant of a god. That is the truth. Sometimes I must go to the gods, speak with them, ask them to help us.”
She looked up at me. Even in the predawn shadows I could see the fear and wonder in her face. “You actually go to Olympos?”
“I don’t know the name of the place, but — yes, I go to the home of the gods.”
Helen fell silent, as if there were no words to express the shock she felt.
“They are not gods,” I told her, “not in the sense that you believe. Certainly not in the sense that Joshua and his people believe. They care nothing for us, except to use us in their own schemes. They are not even immortal. The goddess that I once loved is dead, killed by one of her own kind.”
“You loved a goddess?”
“I loved a woman who was one of the group whom you call gods and goddesses,” I said. “Now she is dead, and I seek vengeance against the one who killed her.”
“You seek vengeance against a god?”
“I seek vengeance against a madman who murdered my love.”
Helen shook her lovely head. “This is all a dream, It must be a dream. Yet — dreams themselves are sent by the gods.”
“It is no dream, Helen.”
“I will try to understand the meaning of it,” she said, ignoring my words. “The gods have sent us a message, and I will try to find its meaning.”
It was her way of adjusting to what I had told her. I decided not to argue. Lying back on the pallet, I held her until she drifted back into sleep. My mind focused on Ahriman and his words to me: “Orion, if you want an earthquake, you must make it for yourself.”
I thought I understood what he meant. With a smile, I went back to sleep.
Chapter 29
“TUNNEL under the wall?” Lukka seemed more amused than skeptical.
We were facing the western side of Jericho, where the main city wall climbed along the brow of the low hill. There were two smaller retaining walls at the base of the hill, one terraced a few yards above the other, but no defensive trench in front of them.
“Is it possible?” I asked.
He scratched at his beard. The hill on which Jericho stood was made from the debris of earlier settlements. Untold generations of mud-brick buildings had collapsed over the ages, from time, from the winter rains, from fire and enemies’ destruction. Like all cities in this part of the world, Jericho rebuilt atop its own ruins, creating a growing mound that slowly elevated the city above the original plain.
“It would take a long time and a lot of workers,” said Lukka, finally.
“We have plenty of both.”
But he was still far from pleased. “Tunnels can be traps. Once they see that we are tunneling, they can come out from their walls and slaughter us. Or dig a counter tunnel and surprise us.”
“Then we’ll have to conceal it from them,” I said glibly.
Lukka remained unconvinced.
But Joshua’s eyes lit up when I explained my plan to him. “Once the tunnel is beneath the foundation of the main wall, we start a fire that will burn through the timbers and bring that section of the wall down.”
He paced back and forth in his tent, his back slightly bent, his hands locked behind his back. Joshua was a surprisingly small man, but what he lacked in height and girth he made up in intensity. And although the Israelites seemed to be ruled by their council of elders, twelve men who represented each of their tribes, it was Joshua alone who made the military decisions.
Finally he wheeled toward me and bobbed his head, making his dark beard and long locks bounce. “Yes! The Lord God has sent us the answer. We will bring Jericho’s wall down with a thundering crash! And all will see that the Lord God of Israel is mightier than any wall made by men!”
It was cosmically ironic. Joshua believed with every ounce of his being that I had been sent to him by his god. And truly, I had been. But I knew that if I tried to tell him that the god he adored was as human as he, merely a man from the distant future who had powers that made him appear godlike, Joshua would have blanched and accused me of blasphemy. If I told him that the god he worshiped was a murderer, a madman, a fugitive from his fellow “gods,” a man I intended to destroy one day — Joshua would have had me killed on the spot.
So I remained silent and let him believe what he believed. His world was far simpler than mine, and in his own way Joshua was right: his god had sent me to help bring down Jericho’s wall.
The secret of Jericho was its spring, a source of cool fresh water that bubbled out of the ground, from what Ben-Jameen had told me. That was why the city’s eastern wall came down to the bedrock leveclass="underline" it protected the spring. Most of the towers were on that side; so was the trench and the main city gates.