Reign Page 16

  The drought was worse for the thought of it ending, and the soft shade and sweet sharp smell of trees that were still green here made them believe mercy might come near. They trudged on with tired, thin bodies and wondered how they had left this path so willingly. The Lord would refresh the land at home, the mothers promised the children. The smaller ones cried, terrible visions of gods at war filling their minds and rooting their feet to the path so that the fathers had to carry them the rest of the way up. Battles the children had all seen; Ahab knew no child of Israel grew up without watching his father fight. These children knew what it was for men to brandish swords, for chariots to plow through lines of soldiers, knew what it was to see blood smeared across the land. But this thing, a war of gods, this was a thing that had never entered into their minds. It was a new age, some mothers whispered, when gods would fight and men would rest.

  Some were speaking of Mount Carmel in the old tongues. It had once been called the Holy Head, the highest of the mountains here, and in the world before that the Egyptians had named it the Nose of the Gazelle, a brilliant shining mount that rose from the hills leaping behind it. It was a rich place, ministered to by the breezes of the sea, offering grain, olives, and grapes to those who loved it. Mount Carmel was a generous place, too, that should have stood aloof above men but never ceased to give them comfort and food. To the poorest, it was a reflection of Yahweh, and they had worshipped here with awe, trembling that they were allowed so close and blessed so well.

  But when the people came to Mount Carmel they saw the stones that had once been the altar to Yahweh scattered along the mountain. The priests of Baal had thrown them down and greeted the people with firm nods and hard smiles. A priest kicked at one of the twelve stones to send it rolling away, as if the altar was rubbish that would be dealt with at last.

  Elijah parted the people and ascended, his eyes on the stone’s revolution before it came to rest near his feet. He lifted it, lifting it above his head, so that all below could see it, then carried it up the mountain, to the base of the altar’s intended home, the place destroyed by the priests of others. Elijah set the stone on the ground and lifted his hands in prayer as the people watched. The cornerstone was in place. Men moved from the crowd to collect the remaining eleven stones and heaved them, rolling them up to Elijah, who reordered them and placed them together, the altar taking shape before them all. At last it was done. The morning sun was high, and the limestone glared against the red soil at their feet. The altar, blazing white, rested in the red pool of earth, and the people felt the stir of fear.

  Elijah did not wait for Ahab to settle his thoughts. He stood at the altar, his weathered face unreadable. Only his eyes were alive, surveying the crowd with an emotion Ahab did not recognize. It seemed like compassion, but Ahab had never felt that when he had gone into a battle. Elijah was a strange man.

  Elijah stood before the altar and called out. His arms were relaxed at his sides. Ahab saw that whatever Elijah believed would happen today, it had already been decided in his mind. How could a man, even a prophet, have peace on the first moment of battle? Ahab ran his hand through his hair. He was not in control, and he had no idea if control was even possible now.

  Elijah began. “My people, how long are you going to sit on the fence? If God is the real God, follow Him; if it’s Baal, follow him. Today you must make up your minds!”

  No one said a word. Ahab felt he should say something, but Yahweh was not his god. Neither was Baal or Asherah or any other of the carved things men carried about. He was, however, the prince.

  “I will not be angry,” Ahab called. “You are loyal to me, to Israel, no matter which god you serve.”

  Elijah folded his arms, scowling at Ahab. The sun was bright on his face, and the people had to shield their eyes to look at him. He was illuminated in white light, a trick of the afternoon sun, Ahab knew, but it was a clever ploy to position himself there.

  “Isn’t it Baal who makes the rain, and Asherah who brings new life? Let us test them,” Elijah said.

  The priests of Baal spit in his direction and called down curses under their breath. They chuckled among themselves. Ahab knew the sound of that particular laughter, the sound of men anxious to see another man die.

  “Let the Baal prophets bring up two oxen,” Elijah yelled. “Let them pick one, butcher it, and lay it out on an altar of firewood—but don’t ignite it. I’ll take the other ox, cut it up, and lay it on the wood. But neither will I light the fire. Then you pray to your gods, and I’ll pray to God. The god who answers with fire will prove to be, in fact, God.”

  Ahab saw his people exhaling and clasping hands. They seem relieved, nodding and talking quietly. An elder from the city yelled back to Elijah.

  “A good plan—do it!”

  Ahab saw there was more power in Elijah’s scowl than in his scepter, but he didn’t feel offense, though he searched his spirit for it. What he found instead made him blush. Elijah seemed more a father than a cursed prophet. Ahab felt the red shame rising, that he should have secretly grown to admire a man who could take his kingdom from him.

  Elijah, as if hearing his thoughts, turned to look him in the eyes. A softness came over the old prophet’s hard face, a compassion that made Ahab’s shame worse. Elijah was doing what Ahab should have done as prince of Israel, and yet Elijah did not try to humiliate him for his weakness. Elijah just saw it and did what Ahab would not.

  Priests led two oxen through the crowd, placid creatures unaware that the fate of the nation would be written in their blood. Gods or men made no difference to them; they knew only how to be led and had no mind to see who held the leash. They picked their way up the mountain, their flanks sweating in the sun, another day without water for them, like every day before it.

  The Baal priests took their ox and slit its throat in a fast motion. The sun on the blade cast a sharp reflection that stung the people’s eyes, and they grimaced, covering their eyes as the blood boiled onto the ground. The smell, sweet and salty, mixed with the scent of the sea. Ahab felt his stomach turn as the beast was quartered and landed with a wet thump on the stone altar of Baal. He alone did not cover his eyes. He saw Elijah watching him, seeing him in his shame. Elijah’s face remained still, hearing but not adding to the devouring voices in his head.

  The priests prayed to Baal and Asherah, beginning with loud invocations, until their prayers became shouts.

  “O Baal, O husband of Asherah, answer us!”

  The priests held their thumbs and whispered the sacred incantations. “Virgin, dog, serpent! Eternal key, garlands of green, sorcerer’s wand! Grant us favor!”

  The morning remained resolved in its stillness, and the sun grew strong. The priests of Baal became desperate, stomping on the altar. The blood shot in all directions as the ox meat was pulped and beaten beneath their sandals. The blood flung up their legs, covering their robes, and they invoked the people to dance for rain. A few bold women played their tambourines and danced as the priests sang the songs of Baal’s lover, enticing him to appear and show his strength. The voices of the priests calling to this god filled the mountain as women began dancing, swinging their bodies, tempting the great god of pleasure to reveal himself. Their robes slipped off their shoulders sometimes, and they did not pull them up, nor did they blush as they lifted their robes and exposed their legs to the men. The priests moved through them, engaging some in deep kisses, pulling some to the ground.

  Elijah turned his face away.

  The morning burned on, and the priests seemed to have exhausted what songs they knew and whatever passion they possessed. Some of the older ones had to sit, too weak to lift hands in prayer. Some closed their eyes, and Ahab suspected they slept more than prayed. Still he stood, watching Elijah, watching the kingdom’s foundations shaking and splitting.

  At noon, Elijah began taunting them: “Call a little louder—Baal is a god, after all. Maybe he’s of
f meditating somewhere or other, or maybe he’s gotten involved in a project, or maybe he’s on vacation. You don’t suppose he’s overslept, do you, and needs to be woken up?”

  The people laughed, relieved, as the children imagined gods fumbling for their morning milk and waking too late, as they often did. A child suggested a swift rod to the backside would get Baal’s attention, and the children were lost to everyone, giggling uncontrollably. Mothers tried to shoo them out of the crowd to the edges, where they could be silenced with a stern look and threat of this same rod, but Elijah stayed them with one hand upraised.

  The priests of Baal, their faces red and pocked with sweat, prayed louder and louder, screaming their request, cutting themselves with swords and knives until they were covered in their own blood. The children stopped giggling and watched in horror. Now Elijah did not stop the mothers from shooing the children from the crowd.

  The bloody show continued for over an hour, until the blood of the oxen had turned dark and the blood of the men painted it bright red again. Every prayer, every incantation they knew was flung to the heavens, or called down as curses on the place. The morning had left them, but she was followed by the afternoon, and he proved as quiet. The priests staggered and clung to each other for support. No women danced now or played tambourines. Three years of drought leading to this, a day of draining blood and bleeding prayers, emptied them of all hope. Baal would not accept their sacrifices.

  The people murmured, and Ahab felt their disappointment like an accusation pointed at him. There could be no war between gods if none arrived. If Yahweh was reluctant to accept their sacrifice, they would have traveled for days only to die. And Ahab had allowed it, just like he had allowed the drought.

  Elijah did not yell. The people were eager to listen, eager for him to act.

  “Enough of that—it’s my turn,” Elijah called. “Gather around.”

  He laid firewood across the stone altar. Carmel was generous with dead, dry wood, and Ahab watched with sorrow as Elijah stacked the dead reminders of days when the spring had run fuller. Elijah dug next, a trench around the altar. The people watched in silence as Elijah’s back flinched and flexed, his burned shoulders shoving down as the shovel dug into the crumbling red dirt.

  The ox was silent as Elijah slit its throat, resting his hands again on the animal’s head, praying with quiet words. The beast fell to its knees, then its stomach, looking at the people in ignorance and awe as it heaved to one side and died. Elijah plunged his dagger deep into the thigh and began cutting, cutting each leg free, clearing away the entrails, laying each dripping piece on the firewood. Ahab was transfixed, and Elijah’s words did not register at once.

  “Fill four buckets with water, and drench both the ox and the firewood.”

  Elijah waited for a moment before a man to Ahab’s right understood and obeyed. No one else moved. Some of the priests of Baal sat, their stone faces cold and hard, while others laid in the shade of a few last trees that still fought the drought. No priest had the strength to move or curse.

  Then he said, “Do it again.”

  The man, still holding his side from his labors, exhaled and ran back to his buckets. Elijah counted each load off as it was poured in: one, two, three, four. Elijah was a man who picked his way through rocky paths because he took no pleasure in the softer ways. His faith was more like a taste, a preference bred for another place and time, and he had no patience for the confections men like Ahab lived on. Elijah wanted the hard and narrow path. He always had.

  Then Elijah said, “Do it a third time.”

  Ahab heard a woman gasp and the priests cluck their teeth, that he would waste a day and make his inevitable humiliation greater. Children licked their cracked lips, seeing so much water flow.

  Water brimmed to the very edge of the trench, and Ahab knew the horror showed on his face as water dripped, mixed with blood from the ox. He followed each drop with grim fascination, as if waiting for the one that would cause the trench to spill, and the spill to pick up speed, until they were all covered in blood and salted water.

  Elijah prayed loudly, “O God, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, make it known right now that You are God in Israel, that I am Your servant, and that I am under Your orders. Answer me, God: O answer me and reveal to this people that You are God, the true God, and that You are giving these people another chance at repentance.”

  A star of fire, burning and popping, exploded onto the altar, showering sparks among the screaming crowd. Ahab gripped the sides of his throne and willed his legs to move but could not feel them.

  The fire, white at the center but burning blue at its tips, ate it all: the offering, the wood, the stones, the dirt, and even the water in the trench. Hissing steam roiled out and down, enveloping the crowd. Mothers were screaming for their children, who had dropped their hands, and men cried out for wives bent in the mist, searching for missing children. The steam was gone at once, but the fire remained, and they felt it burning something away, something living among them, in them, not a dead thing sacrificed, but something resistant and spitting, pulled away like a gorged tick; and this thing the fire burned before them cauterized the wound before they could cry out in pain.

  All fell on their faces, Ahab first among them. He was not humiliated. He was convinced.

  “God is the true God! God is the true God!” The words were on all hearts, and their mouths freed the song with relish. Every fiber of their bodies sang, and their ears heard harmony in a world they knew not.

  14

  Ahab fell as a man and was raised as a king. He felt it in his blood. Elijah’s steady, unyielding face brought him pleasure now, and he knew it was true. The Lord reigned in Israel.

  Elijah yelled to the people: “Grab the Baal prophets! Don’t let one get away!”

  The priests of Baal had already begun to run, split into panicked flights. Some ran southeast toward Muragen, the name mothers spit, another place where these priests had coaxed children away and given them as burnt sacrifices. Some ran northeast to el-Qassis, an esteemed mound where priests gave offerings of grain and oil. These two places had been their sacred sites here on Carmel and they fled for them instinctively, but the people knew how to track frightened prey and found the unholy ones, dragging them back to the brook under Elijah’s command. The priests begged for mercy, but the crowd swung stones down on their heads without remorse and thrust daggers through robes dried with ox blood.

  Ahab walked up the mountain, picking his way through the people’s bloody business. The altar smoked though the flames were gone. The trench was empty and dry, and Ahab set one foot in it carefully as he reached to touch what remained of the sacrifice: tiny embers that shone brightly before their death. He touched the side of the altar, its twelve white stones. How had he come to this place, he wondered, a godless son of a foreign mercenary? How was it that God had called to him at last, in this season of his life, when his path was already decided? What would this God want from him?

  A priest screamed, the sound thick and stuttering as he choked on his own blood. Death was never as fast as the dying wished. Ahab shuddered with the memory, for he had been dying for years until today. The name of the Lord and the fire from heaven had sent new life through his veins. Israel was worth dying for, yes, but she was worth living for too. Ahab had never realized how afraid he had been of living.

  He was not a stone, he was not of the twelve, but he would sacrifice himself, just like the oxen, to serve them. Whatever it took, he would be the king they needed. He fell to his knees and tried to make praise to Yahweh, but he knew nothing to say and so offered his silence as what worship he had.

  A hand on his shoulder did not startle him. It was Elijah.

  “Up on your feet!” he said to Ahab. “Eat and drink—celebrate! Rain is on the way; I hear it coming.”

  Ahab smiled, his eyes closed, wishing he had always known what it
was to have comfort like Elijah’s hand on his shoulder. Yes, he thought, rain is coming, and wiped at the tears in his eyes so Elijah wouldn’t see.

  He stood and faced Elijah, who motioned for him to take up his seat. Ahab’s legs felt unsteady as he picked his way back down and saw the throne as if for the first time.

  Elijah commanded Ahab’s servants, who watched him with careful fear and scurried at once to obey.

  Ahab ate and drank, roasted grains and thick wine stewed with heavy spices, the last of his supply. It burned going down. He watched as Elijah climbed up the mountain, nimble and quick, his feet finding steady ground between the rocks, his face tilted up toward the top, not caring to see where his feet landed.

  At the top, Elijah bowed in prayer as Ahab watched. A boy approached Elijah—Ahab had seen him arrive with Elijah today. Elijah prayed for several minutes before the boy reached him. Elijah said something to the boy, and the boy went away to look to the west. He returned, shaking his head. Elijah sent him once more, and the scene was repeated again and again. Ahab sat up in his chair, wondering what was happening; what was this boy denying Elijah? The boy ran to the western edge again, than ran back shouting. Elijah stood, pointing down to Ahab.

  Ahab shoved his bowl back to the servants. He started up the mountain as the boy flew down, stumbling too many times for Ahab’s exhausted mind to bear.

  “My master Elijah says, ‘Saddle up and get down from the mountain before the rain stops you.’”

  Ahab bowed his head, trying to remember what water felt like when it fell from the skies.

  The sun dimmed quickly as a bird screamed, flying across the sky. Clouds veiled his vision, weaving and shuttling across the heavens until the sky was thatched in darkness, the clouds heavy and sagging.