Free Delilah: A Novel by India Edghill Page A

records told.
    The Bull Court had suffered the same fate; its king chose to deny its queen-goddess her desire, and her anger had moved Earth Herself. The Bull Court now lay buried in rock and ash; only those who had fled before the final cataclysm had survived. The Five Cities held all that remained of Knossos, Queen of the Seas. The Five Cities, the Bull Court’s children, wore new crowns of empire, unchallenged until the Hebrews took up arms against them. The Hebrews regarded Canaan as theirs, and would brook no opposition.
    For all the long years that the Hebrews had harried Canaan, the warriors of the Five Cities had restrained the worst excesses of these foreigners. And the Lords and Ladies of the Five Cities had chosen to turn veiled eyes to Hebrew settlers in Canaan, so long as the newcomers remained peaceful.
    Nor did the Five Cities care that the Hebrews had conquered cities beyond the high hills between the plains of Canaan and the lands to the east. The Five Cities looked to the sea, not to the land, for their wealth.
    We of the Five Cities should have looked to our mines, our metalworkers and swordsmiths
. Derceto wondered if it were too late for the Temple to claim thesame right to smelt iron and manufacture weapons that the City owned. Armed clashes between the Hebrews’ fighting men and the Five Cities’ warriors had suddenly become commonplace. The warriors of the Five Cities won, for the most part. The Hebrews still worked only in bronze, while the Five Cities owned the art of creating weapons from a new metal.
    Iron.
    Bronze blades and spearheads had taken men down the Dark Road to judgment for a thousand years. But bronze could not stand against cold iron.
    The gods had bestowed the secret of forging iron to the Five Cities, and that secret was cherished. Only the people of the Five Cities might possess or work iron. Once the rulers of the Five Cities and the Great Houses of the Gods had believed that holding the knowledge of this new, deadly metal for themselves alone would keep the world as it had been before the Hebrews came to Canaan. The Five Cities armed their warriors with iron-bladed swords and iron-tipped spears, and forbade any other people to work the dark hard metal. The only smiths who possessed the knowledge of forging iron were subjects of the Five Cities.
    But now there are more of these Hebrews, always more. I wonder if I dare claim that Our Lady’s House needs warriors of its own?
Warriors loyal to the Temple, not to the City . . .
    Derceto considered the matter, thought of the outcry if Atargatis, the Lady of Love and Light, suddenly demanded armed men to serve Her. Even for the High Priestess of Atargatis’s Great House in Ascalon, there were limits beyond which she must not venture—not if she were wise.
    Derceto considered herself wise.
Temple guards? No. Not yet. But I will ask Sandarin for aid—before witnesses, so he cannot deny me without risking accusations of impiety
. Yes, that might work. Derceto frowned, and then rubbed her forehead. Once it would have been to smooth away the lines left by discontent. Now it was to soothe her aching head.
    She leaned her head against her hand, then called softly for her waiting handmaiden. Mottara understood without need of words; she went silently away, soon returning with a linen bandage wet with cool water and a small clay bowl. Silently, Derceto reached for the bowl as Mottara held it out to her. From the liquid filling the bowl rose the sharp scent of willow, familiar and comforting.
    At least
, Derceto thought bitterly,
I can still have willow-bark tea
. Warriors for the Temple would have to wait.

 
Delilah
     
     
     
    “And men gave great treasures to see the dark priestess dance, the priestess named Delilah. To gaze upon her as she danced before all men’s eyes, wild and free as hot summer wind . . .”
     
    Our days were kept too full for introspection, and so I soon folded Aylah’s keen-edged words of seers and fires