This Scarlet Cord by Joan Wolf

to stop this royal upstart.”
    The high priest sighed. “It is going to happen eventually. Makamaron is an aging man. With the festival of the New Year coming up, my great fear is that he will fail to complete the sacred marriage. I have asked him if he is adequate to the task, and he insists he is, but I have my doubts. If he should fail to consummate the union, and the hierodule tells the prince he has failed, then Tamur will have solid grounds for deposing his father.”
    No one disagreed. Belief was strong among the Canaanite people that the fertility and strength of the nation were bound up with the sexual and physical prowess of the king. If the king was impotent, then the land and the flocks and the people would wither. If the king could not make the sacred marriage, then it was time for him to step down and turn his sacral role over to his son.
    “Who is the hierodule this year?” the treasurer asked.
    “Arsay,” the high priest responded.
    Silence fell as they considered this comment. Arsay was one of the priestesses of the Temple of Asherah. It was her turn to be the hierodule, the stand-in for the goddess Asherah, who would be the king’s partner in the making of the sacred marriage. But Arsay’s brother also happened to be one of the prince’s closest friends. The chances that she would hold her tongue about any failure on the king’s part were next to none.
    “We need at least another year out of Makamaron,” Arazu said. “If we can make money from this deal with the Gaza merchants, we will be in a much better position when he must finally relinquish the kingship.”
    The high priest leaned forward as if he had just thought of something. “What if we get a new hierodule? Someone whose loyalty is to us? Someone who will keep quiet if the king proves incompetent.”
    The others looked at him with respect.
    “That is an excellent idea,” Arazu said. “But who can we get? I don’t believe we can trust any of the priestesses.”
    “I must think about it,” the high priest replied.
    Edri said, “We don’t have much time. We are within a week of the festival.”
    “I know, I know,” the high priest returned. “It is the only way we can assure Makamaron will keep his throne, however.”
    The three men agreed and they all decided to give some serious thought to finding a woman to take Arsay’s place as hierodule in the coming New Year festival.

    “What a collection of villains they are,” Sala said disgustedly as he and his father walked away from Lord Arazu’s house.
    “They are that. But their villainy may work in our favor. A divided city will fall more easily than one that is united.”
    “But, Father . . .” Sala fixed his eyes on the high wall that protected the Upper City, then moved beyond to the huge embankment and wall that surrounded the entire town. “What that ugly-looking treasurer said about Jericho withstanding a siege has some truth. Look at those walls. This city could hold out forever within walls like this—especially if they have water and food.”
    “That may be how it looks, Sala, but did it not look just as impossible for the Israelites to escape from Egypt? Yet they did it because it was Elohim’s will. We have heard of the terrible plagues Elohim sent upon the Egyptians to force Pharaoh to release our people. Why should He not also lift His hand at Jericho?”
    Sala walked beside his father and thought about what Lord Nahshon had said. His father had been on fire ever since he had first met with Joshua, the Israelite leader, and Lord Nahshon had passed his passion along to his son. Sala had no doubts that Canaan was the Promised Land that Elohim had given to Abraham for the Israelite people. When Joshua had asked Sala and his father to go to Jericho in order to discover the military weaknesses of the city, Sala had been both thrilled and honored to accept such an assignment.
    Thus far the army of the Israelites had been brilliantly successful, mowing down the