DELEGATION of the inhabitants of Akbar went to speak with the governor.

“We can build the Israelite a house outside the walls,” they said. “In that way we will not violate the law of hospitality but will still be protected from divine wrath. The gods are displeased with this man’s presence.”

“Leave him where he is,” replied the governor. “I do not wish political problems with Israel.”

“What?” the townspeople asked. “Jezebel is pursuing all the prophets who worship the One God, and would slay them.”

“Our princess is a courageous woman, and faithful to the gods of the Fifth Mountain. But, however much power she may have now, she is not an Israelite. Tomorrow she may fall into disfavor, and we shall have to face the anger of our neighbors; if we demonstrate that we have treated one of their prophets well, they will be kind to us.”

The delegation left unsatisfied, for the high priest had said that one day Elijah would be traded for gold and other rewards. Nevertheless, even if the governor were in error, they could do nothing. Custom said that the ruling family must be respected.

IN THE DISTANCE, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE VALLEY, THE tents of the Assyrian warriors began to multiply.

The commander was concerned, but he had the support of neither the governor nor the high priest. He attempted to keep his warriors constantly trained, though he knew that none of them—nor even their grandfathers—had experience in combat. War was a thing of the past for Akbar, and all the strategies he had learned had been superseded by the new techniques and new weapons that other countries used.

“Akbar has always negotiated its peace,” said the governor. “It will not be this time that we are invaded. Let the other countries fight among themselves: we have a weapon much more powerful than theirs—money. When they have finished destroying one another, we shall enter their cities—and sell our products.”

The governor succeeded in calming the population about the Assyrians. But rumors were rife that the Israelite had brought the curse of the gods to Akbar. Elijah was becoming an ever greater problem.

ONE AFTERNOON, the boy’s condition worsened severely; he could no longer stand, nor could he recognize those who came to visit him. Before the sun descended to the horizon, Elijah and the widow kneeled at the child’s bedside.

“Almighty Lord, who led the soldier’s arrow astray and who brought me here, make this child whole again. He has done nothing, he is innocent of my sins and the sins of his fathers; save him, O Lord.”

The boy barely moved; his lips were white, and his eyes were rapidly losing their glow.

“Pray to your One God,” the woman asked. “For only a mother can know when her son’s soul is departing.”

Elijah felt the desire to take her hand, to tell her she was not alone and that Almighty God would attend him. He was a prophet; he had accepted that truth on the banks of the Cherith, and now the angels were at his side.

“I have no more tears,” she continued. “If He has no compassion, if He needs a life, then ask Him to take me, and leave my son to walk through the valley and the streets of Akbar.”

Elijah did all in his power to concentrate on his prayer; but that mother’s suffering was so intense that it seemed to engulf the room, penetrating the walls, the door, everywhere.

He touched the boy’s body; his temperature was not as high as in earlier days, and that was a bad sign.

THE HIGH PRIEST had come by the house that morning and, as he had done for two weeks, applied herbal poultices to the boy’s face and chest. In the preceding days, the women of Akbar had brought recipes for remedies that had been handed down for generations and whose curative powers had been proved on numerous occasions. Every afternoon, they gathered at the foot of the Fifth Mountain and made sacrifices so the boy’s soul would not leave his body.

Moved by what was happening in the city, an Egyptian trader who was passing through Akbar gave, without charge, an extremely dear red powder to be mixed with the boy’s food. According to legend, the technique of manufacturing the powder had been granted to Egyptian doctors by the gods themselves.

Elijah had prayed unceasingly for all this time.

But nothing, nothing whatsoever, had availed.

 

“I KNOW WHY they have allowed you to remain here,” the woman said, her voice softer each time she spoke, for she had gone many days without sleep. “I know there is a price on your head, and that one day you will be handed over to Israel in exchange for gold. If you save my son, I swear by Baal and the gods of the Fifth Mountain that you will never be captured. I know escape routes that have been forgotten for generations, and I will teach you how to leave Akbar without being seen.”

Elijah did not reply.

“Pray to your One God,” the woman asked again. “If He saves my son, I swear I will renounce Baal and believe in Him. Explain to your Lord that I gave you shelter when you were in need; I did exactly as He had ordered.”

Elijah prayed again, imploring with all his strength. At that instant, the boy stirred.

“I want to leave here,” the boy said in a weak voice.

His mother’s eyes shone with happiness; tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Come, my son. We’ll go wherever you like, do whatever you wish.”

Elijah tried to pick him up, but the boy pushed his hand away.

“I want to do it by myself,” he said.

He rose slowly and began to walk toward the outer room. After a few steps, he dropped to the floor, as if felled by a bolt of lightning.

Elijah and the widow ran to him; the boy was dead.

For an instant, neither spoke. Suddenly, the woman began to scream with all her strength.

“Cursed be the gods, cursed be they who have taken away my son! Cursed be the man who brought such misfortune to my home! My only child!” she screamed. “Because I respected the will of heaven, because I was generous with a foreigner, my son is dead!”

The neighbors heard the widow’s lamentations and saw her son laid out on the floor of the house. The woman was still screaming, her fists pounding against the chest of the Israelite prophet beside her; he seemed to have lost any ability to react and did nothing to defend himself. While the women tried to comfort the widow, the men immediately seized Elijah by the arms and took him to the governor.

“This man has repaid generosity with hatred. He put a spell on the widow’s house and her son died. We are sheltering someone who is cursed by the gods.”

The Israelite wept, asking himself, “O my Lord and God, even this widow, who has been so generous to me, hast Thou chosen to afflict? If Thou hast slain her son, it can only be because I am failing the mission that has been entrusted to me, and it is I who deserve to die.”

That evening, the council of the city of Akbar was convened, under the direction of the high priest and the governor. Elijah was brought to judgment.

“You chose to return hatred for love. For that reason, I condemn you to death,” said the governor.

 

“EVEN THOUGH YOUR HEAD is worth a satchel of gold, we cannot invite the wrath of the gods of the Fifth Mountain,” the high priest said. “For later not all the gold in the world will bring peace back to this city.”

Elijah lowered his head. He deserved all the suffering he could bear, for the Lord had abandoned him.

“You shall climb the Fifth Mountain,” said the high priest. “You shall ask forgiveness from the gods you have offended. They will cause fire to descend from the heavens to slay you. If they do not, it is because they desire justice to be carried out at our hands; we shall be waiting for you at the descent from the mountain, and in accordance with ritual you will be executed the next morning.”

Elijah knew all too well about sacred executions: they tore the heart from the breast and cut off the head. According to ancient beliefs, a man without a heart could not enter paradise.

“Why hast Thou chosen me for this, Lord?” he cried out, knowing that the men about him knew nothing of the choice the Lord had made for him. “Dost Thou not see that I am incapable of carrying out what Thou hast demanded of me?”

He heard no reply.

SHOUTING INSULTS AND HURLING STONES, THE MEN and women of Akbar followed in procession the group of guards conducting the Israelite to the face of the Fifth Mountain. Only with great effort were the soldiers able to contain the crowd’s fury. After walking for half an hour, they came to the foot of the sacred mountain.

The group stopped before the stone altars, where people were wont to leave their offerings and sacrifices, their petitions and prayers. They all knew the stories of giants who lived in the area, and they remembered some who had challenged the prohibition only to be claimed by the fire from heaven. Travelers passing through the valley at night swore they could hear the laughter of the gods and goddesses amusing themselves from above.

Even if no one was certain of all this, none dared challenge the gods.

“Let’s go,” said a soldier, prodding Elijah with the tip of his spear. “Whoever kills a child deserves the worst punishment there is.”

ELIJAH STEPPED ONTO the forbidden terrain and began to climb the slope. After walking for some time, until he could no longer hear the shouts of the people of Akbar, he sat on a rock and wept; since that day in the carpentry shop when he saw the darkness dotted with brilliant points of light, he had succeeded only in bringing misfortune to others.

The Lord had lost His voices in Israel, and the worship of Phoenician gods must now be stronger than before. His first night beside the Cherith, Elijah had thought that God had chosen him to be a martyr, as He had done with so many others.

Instead, the Lord had sent a crow—a portentous bird—which had fed him until the Cherith ran dry. Why a crow and not a dove, or an angel? Could it all be merely the delirium of a man trying to hide his fear, or whose head has been too long exposed to the sun? Elijah was no longer certain of anything: perhaps Evil had found its instrument, and he was that instrument. Why had God sent him to Akbar, instead of returning him to put an end to the princess who had inflicted such evil on his people?

He had felt like a coward but had done as ordered. He had struggled to adapt to that strange, gracious people and their completely different way of life. Just when he thought he was fulfilling his destiny, the widow’s son had died.

“Why me?”

HE ROSE, walked a bit farther until he entered the mist covering the mountaintop. He could take advantage of the lack of visibility to flee from his persecutors, but what would it matter? He was weary of fleeing, and he knew that nowhere would he find his place in the world. Even if he succeeded in escaping now, he would bear the curse with him to another city, and other tragedies would come to pass. Wherever he went, he would take with him the shadow of those deaths. He preferred to have his heart ripped from his chest and his head cut off.

He sat down again, amid the fog. He had decided to wait a bit, so that those below would think he had climbed to the top of the mountain; then he would return to Akbar, surrendering to his captors.

“The fire of heaven.” Many before had been killed by it, though Elijah doubted that it was sent by the Lord. On moonless nights its glow crossed the firmament, appearing suddenly and disappearing just as abruptly. Perhaps it burned. Perhaps it killed instantly, with no suffering.

AS NIGHT FELL, the fog dissipated. He could see the valley below, the lights of Akbar, and the fires of the Assyrian encampment. He heard the barking of their dogs and the war chants of their soldiers.

“I am ready,” he said to himself. “I accepted that I was a prophet, and did everything I did as best I could. But I failed, and now God needs someone else.”

At that moment, a light descended upon him.

“The fire of heaven!”

The light, however, remained before him. And a voice said:

“I am an angel of the Lord.”

Elijah kneeled and placed his face against the ground.

“I have seen you at other times, and have obeyed the angel of the Lord,” replied Elijah, without raising his head. “And yet I have done nothing but sow misfortune wherever I go.”

But the angel continued:

“When thou returnest to the city, ask three times for the boy to come back to life. The third time, the Lord will hearken unto thee.”

“Why am I to do this?”

“For the grandeur of God.”

“Even if it comes to pass, I have doubted myself. I am no longer worthy of my task,” answered Elijah.

“Every man hath the right to doubt his task, and to forsake it from time to time; but what he must not do is forget it. Whoever doubteth not himself is unworthy—for in his unquestioning belief in his ability, he commiteth the sin of pride. Blessed are they who go through moments of indecision.”

“Moments ago, you saw I was not even sure you were an emissary of God.”

“Go, and obey what I have said.”

AFTER MUCH TIME HAD PASSED, ELIJAH DESCENDED THE mountain to the place of the altars of sacrifice. The guards were awaiting him, but the multitude had returned to Akbar.

“I am ready for death,” he said. “I have asked forgiveness from the gods of the Fifth Mountain, and now they command that, before my soul abandons my body, I go to the house of the widow who took me in, and ask her to take pity on my soul.”

The soldiers led him back, to the presence of the high priest, where they repeated what the Israelite had said.

“I shall do as you ask,” the high priest told the prisoner. “Since you have sought the forgiveness of the gods, you should also seek it of the widow. So that you do not flee, you will go accompanied by four armed soldiers. But harbor no illusion that you will convince her to ask clemency; when morning comes, we shall execute you in the middle of the square.”

The high priest wished to inquire what he had seen atop the mountain, but in the presence of the soldiers the answer might be awkward. He therefore decided to remain silent, but he approved of having Elijah ask for forgiveness in public; no one else could then doubt the power of the gods of the Fifth Mountain.

Elijah and the soldiers went to the poor, narrow street where he had dwelled for several months. The doors and windows of the widow’s house were open so that, following custom, her son’s soul could depart, to go to live with the gods. The body was in the center of the small room, with the entire neighborhood sitting in vigil.

When they noticed the presence of the Israelite, men and women alike were horrified.

“Out with him!” they screamed at the guards. “Isn’t the evil he has caused enough? He is so perverse that the gods of the Fifth Mountain refused to dirty their hands with his blood!”

“Leave to us the task of killing him!” shouted a man. “We’ll do it right now, without waiting for the ritual execution!”

Standing his ground against the shoves and blows, Elijah freed himself of the hands that grasped him and ran to the widow, who sat weeping in a corner.

“I can bring him back from the dead. Let me touch your son,” he said. “For just an instant.”

The widow did not even raise her head.

“Please,” he insisted. “Even if it be the last thing you do for me in this life, give me the chance to try to repay your generosity.”

Some men seized him to drag him away. But Elijah resisted, struggling with all his strength, imploring to be allowed to touch the dead child.

Although he was young and determined, he was finally pulled away to the door of the house. “Angel of the Lord, where are you?” he cried to the heavens.

At that moment, everyone stopped. The widow had risen and come toward him. Taking him by the hands, she led him to where the cadaver of her son lay, then removed the sheet that covered him.

“Behold the blood of my blood,” she said. “May it descend upon the heads of your line if you do not achieve what you desire.”

He drew near, to touch the boy.

“One moment,” said the widow. “First, ask your God to fulfill my curse.”

Elijah’s heart was racing. But he believed what the angel had told him.

“May the blood of this boy descend upon the heads of my father and mother and upon my brothers, and upon the sons and daughters of my brothers, if I do not do that which I have said.”

Then, despite all his doubts, his guilt, and his fears, “He took him out of her bosom, and carried him up into a loft, where he abode, and laid him upon his own bed.

“And he cried unto the Lord, and said, O Lord, my God, hast Thou also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by slaying her son?

“And he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the Lord, and said, O Lord, my God, I pray Thee, let this child’s soul come into him again.”

For long moments nothing happened. Elijah saw himself back in Gilead, standing before the soldier with an arrow pointing at his heart, aware that oftentimes a man’s fate has nothing to do with what he believes or fears. He felt calm and confident as he had that day, knowing that, whatever the outcome might be, there was a reason that all of this had come to pass. Atop the Fifth Mountain, the angel had called this reason the “grandeur of God”; he hoped one day to understand why the Creator needed His creatures to demonstrate this glory.

It was then that the boy opened his eyes.

“Where’s my mother?” he asked.

“Downstairs, waiting for you,” replied Elijah, smiling.

“I had a strange dream. I was traveling through a dark hole, at a speed faster than the swiftest horse in Akbar. I saw a man—I am sure he was my father, though I never knew him. Then I came to a beautiful place where I wanted to stay; but another man—one I don’t know but who seemed very good and brave—asked me kindly to turn away from there. I wanted to go on, but you awoke me.”

The boy seemed sad; the place he had almost entered must be lovely.

“Don’t leave me alone, for you made me come back from a place where I knew I’d be protected.”

“Let us go downstairs,” Elijah said. “Your mother wants to see you.”

The boy tried to rise, but he was too weak to walk. Elijah took him in his arms and descended the stairs.

The people downstairs appeared overwhelmed by profound terror.

“Why are all these people here?” the boy asked.

Before Elijah could respond, the widow took the boy in her arms and began kissing him, weeping.

“What did they do to you, Mother? Why are you so sad?”

“I’m not sad, my son,” she answered, drying her tears. “Never in my life have I been so happy.”

Saying this, the widow threw herself on her knees and said in a loud voice:

“By this act I know that you are a man of God! The truth of the Lord comes from your words!”

Elijah embraced her, asking her to rise.

“Let this man go!” she told the soldiers. “He has overcome the evil that had descended upon my house!”

The people gathered there could not believe what they saw. A young woman of twenty, who worked as a painter, kneeled beside the widow. One by one, others imitated her gesture, including the soldiers charged with taking Elijah into captivity.

“Rise,” he told them, “and worship the Lord. I am merely one of His servants, perhaps the least prepared.”

But they all remained on their knees, their heads bowed.

“You spoke with the gods of the Fifth Mountain,” he heard a voice say. “And now you can do miracles.”

“There are no gods there. I saw an angel of the Lord, who commanded me to do this.”

“You were with Baal and his brothers,” said another person.

Elijah opened a path, pushing aside the kneeling people, and went out into the street. His heart was still racing, as if he had erred and failed to carry out the task that the angel had taught him. “To what avail is it to restore the dead to life if none believe the source of such power?” The angel had asked him to call out the name of the Lord three times but had told him nothing about how to explain the miracle to the multitude in the room below. “Can it be, as with the prophets of old, that all I desired was to show my own vanity?” he wondered.

He heard the voice of his guardian angel, with whom he had spoken since childhood.

“Thou hast been today with an angel of the Lord.”

“Yes,” replied Elijah. “But the angels of the Lord do not converse with men; they only transmit the orders that come from God.”

“Use thy power,” said the guardian angel.

Elijah did not understand what was meant by that. “I have no power but that which comes from the Lord,” he said.

“Nor hath anyone. But all have the power of the Lord, and use it not.”

And the angel said moreover:

“From this day forward, and until the moment thou returnest to the land thou hast abandoned, no other miracle will be granted thee.”

“And when will that be?”

“The Lord needeth thee to rebuild Israel,” said the angel. “Thou wilt tread thy land when thou hast learned to rebuild.”

And he said nothing more.

THE HIGH PRIEST SAID THE PRAYERS TO THE RISING sun and asked the god of the storm and the goddess of animals to have mercy on the foolish. He had been told, that morning, that Elijah had brought the widow’s son back from the kingdom of the dead.

The city was both frightened and excited. Everyone believed the Israelite had received his powers from the gods of the Fifth Mountain, and now it would be much more difficult to be rid of him. “But the right moment will come,” he told himself.

The gods would bring about an opportunity to do away with him. But divine wrath had another purpose, and the Assyrians’ presence in the valley was a sign. Why were hundreds of years of peace about to end? He had the answer: the invention of Byblos. His country had developed a form of writing accessible to all, even to those who were unprepared to use it. Anyone could learn it in a short time, and that would mean the end of civilization.

The high priest knew that, of all the weapons of destruction that man could invent, the most terrible—and the most powerful—was the word. Daggers and spears left traces of blood; arrows could be seen at a distance. Poisons were detected in the end and avoided.

But the word managed to destroy without leaving clues. If the sacred rituals became widely known, many would be able to use them to attempt to change the Universe, and the gods would become confused. Till that moment, only the priestly caste knew the memory of the ancestors, which was transmitted orally, under oath that the information would be kept in secret. Or else years of study were needed to be able to decipher the characters that the Egyptians had spread throughout the world; thus only those who were highly trained—scribes and priests—could exchange written information.

Other peoples had their rudimentary forms of recording history, but these were so complicated that no one outside the regions where they were used would bother to learn them. The invention of Byblos, however, had one explosive aspect: it could be used in any country, independent of the language spoken. Even the Greeks, who generally rejected anything not born in their cities, had adopted the writing of Byblos as a common practice in their commercial transactions. As they were specialists in appropriating all that was novel, they had already baptized the invention of Byblos with a Greek name: alphabet.

Secrets guarded through centuries of civilization were at risk of being exposed to the light. Compared to this, Elijah’s sacrilege in bringing someone back from the other bank of the river of death, as was the practice of the Egyptians, meant nothing.

“We are being punished because we are no longer able to safeguard that which is sacred,” he thought. “The Assyrians are at our gates, they will cross the valley, and they will destroy the civilization of our ancestors.”

And they would do away with writing. The high priest knew the enemy’s presence was not mere happenstance.

It was the price to be paid. The gods had planned everything with great care so that none would perceive that they were responsible; they had placed in power a governor who was more concerned with trade than with the army, they had aroused the Assyrians’ greed, had made rainfall ever more infrequent, and had brought an infidel to divide the city. Soon the final battle would be waged.

AKBAR WOULD GO ON EXISTING EVEN AFTER ALL THAT, but the threat from the characters of Byblos would be expunged from the face of the earth forever. The high priest carefully cleaned the stone that marked the spot where, many generations before, the foreign pilgrim had come upon the place appointed by heaven and had founded the city. “How beautiful it is,” he thought. The stones were an image of the gods—hard, resistant, surviving under all conditions, and without the need to explain why they were there. The oral tradition held that the center of the world was marked by a stone, and in his childhood he had thought about searching out its location. He had nurtured the idea until this year. But when he saw the presence of the Assyrians in the depths of the valley, he understood he would never realize his dream.

“It’s not important. It fell to my generation to be offered in sacrifice for having offended the gods. There are unavoidable things in the history of the world, and we must accept them.”

He promised himself to obey the gods: he would make no attempt to forestall the war.

“Perhaps we have come to the end of days. There is no way around the crises that grow with each passing moment.”

The high priest took up his staff and left the small temple; he had a meeting with the commander of Akbar’s garrison.

HE WAS NEARLY to the southern wall when he was approached by Elijah.

“The Lord has brought a boy back from the dead,” the Israelite said. “The city believes in my power.”

“The boy must not have been dead,” replied the high priest. “It’s happened before; the heart stops and then starts beating again. Today the entire city is talking about it; tomorrow, they will recall that the gods are close at hand and can hear what they say. Their mouths will fall silent once more. I must go; the Assyrians are preparing for battle.”

“Hear what I have to say: after the miracle last night, I slept outside the walls because I needed a measure of calm. Then the same angel that I saw on the Fifth Mountain appeared to me again. And he told me: Akbar will be destroyed by the war.”

“Cities cannot be destroyed,” said the high priest. “They will be rebuilt seventy times seven because the gods know where they have placed them, and they have need of them there.”

THE GOVERNOR APPROACHED, with a group of courtiers, and asked, “What are you saying?”

“That you should seek peace,” Elijah repeated.

“If you are afraid, return to the place from which you came,” the high priest replied coldly.

“Jezebel and her king are waiting for fugitive prophets, to slay them,” said the governor. “But I should like you to tell me how you were able to climb the Fifth Mountain without being destroyed by the fire from heaven.”

The high priest felt the need to interrupt that conversation. The governor was thinking about negotiating with the Assyrians and might want to use Elijah for his purposes.

“Do not listen to him,” he said. “Yesterday, when he was brought into my presence to be judged, I saw him weep with fear.”

“My tears were for the evil I felt I had caused you, for I fear but two things: the Lord, and myself. I did not flee from Israel, and I am ready to return as soon as the Lord permits. I will put an end to your beautiful princess, and the faith of Israel shall survive this threat too.”

“One’s heart must be very hard to resist the charms of Jezebel,” the high priest said ironically. “However, even should that happen, we would send another woman even more beautiful, as we did long before Jezebel.”

The high priest was telling the truth. Two hundred years before, a princess of Sidon had seduced the wisest of all Israel’s rulers—King Solomon. She had bid him construct an altar to the goddess Astarte, and Solomon had obeyed. For that sacrilege, the Lord had raised up the neighboring armies and Solomon had nearly lost his throne.

“The same will happen with Ahab, Jezebel’s husband,” thought Elijah. The Lord would bring him to complete his task when the time came. But what did it avail him to try to convince these men who stood facing him? They were like those he had seen the night before, kneeling on the floor of the widow’s house, praising the gods of the Fifth Mountain. Custom would never allow them to think in any other way.

 

“A PITY that we must honor the law of hospitality,” said the governor, apparently already having forgotten Elijah’s words about peace. “If not for that, we could assist Jezebel in her labor of putting an end to the prophets.”

“That is not the reason for sparing my life. You know that I am a valuable commodity, and you want to give Jezebel the pleasure of killing me with her own hands. However, since yesterday, the people attribute miraculous powers to me. They think I met the gods on the Fifth Mountain. For your part, it would not upset you to offend the gods, but you have no desire to vex the inhabitants of the city.”

The governor and the high priest left Elijah talking to himself and walked toward the city walls. At that moment the high priest decided that he would kill the Israelite prophet at the first opportunity; what had till now been only merchandise had been transformed into a menace.

WHEN HE SAW them walk away, Elijah lost hope; what could he do to serve the Lord? He then began to shout in the middle of the square, “People of Akbar! Last night, I climbed the Fifth Mountain and spoke with the gods who dwell there. When I returned, I was able to reclaim a boy from the kingdom of the dead!”

The people gathered about him; the story was already known throughout the city. The governor and the high priest stopped and retraced their steps to see what was happening. The Israelite prophet was saying that he had seen the gods of the Fifth Mountain worshiping a superior God.

“I’ll have him slain,” said the high priest.

“And the population will rise up against us,” replied the governor, who had an interest in what the foreigner was saying. “It’s better to wait for him to commit an error.”

“Before I descended from the mountain,” continued Elijah, “the gods charged me with helping the governor against the threat from the Assyrians! I know he is an honorable man and wishes to hear me; but there are those whose interests lie with war and will not allow me to come near him.”

“The Israelite is a holy man,” said an old man to the governor. “No one can climb the Fifth Mountain without being struck dead by the fire of heaven, but this man did so—and now he raises the dead.”

“Sidon, Tyre, and all the cities of Phoenicia have a history of peace,” said another old man. “We have been through other threats worse than this and overcome them.”

Several sick and lame people began to approach, opening a path through the crowd, touching Elijah’s garments and asking to be cured of their afflictions.

“Before advising the governor, heal the sick,” said the high priest. “Then we shall believe the gods of the Fifth Mountain are with you.”

Elijah recalled what the angel had said the night before: only those powers given to ordinary people would be permitted him.

“The sick are asking for help,” insisted the high priest. “We are waiting.”

“First we must attend to avoiding war. There will be more sick, and more infirm, if we fail.”

The governor interrupted the conversation. “Elijah will come with us. He has been touched by divine inspiration.”

Though he did not believe any gods existed on the Fifth Mountain, the governor had need of an ally to help him to convince the people that peace with the Assyrians was the only solution.

AS THEY WALKED to their meeting with the commander, the high priest commented to Elijah, “You don’t believe anything you just said.”

“I believe that peace is the only way out. But I do not believe the top of the Fifth Mountain is inhabited by gods. I have been there.”

“And what did you see?”

“An angel of the Lord. I had seen this angel before, in several places I have been,” replied Elijah. “And there is but one God.”

The high priest laughed.

“You mean that, in your opinion, the same god who sends the storm also made the wheat, even though they are completely different things?”

“Do you see the Fifth Mountain?” Elijah asked. “From whichever side you look, it appears different, though it is the same mountain. Thus it is with all of Creation: many faces of the same God.”

THEY CAME TO THE TOP of the wall, from which they could see the enemy encampment in the distance. In the desert valley, the white tents sprang into sight.

Some time earlier, when the sentinels had first noted the presence of the Assyrians at one end of the valley, spies had said that they were there on a mission of reconnaissance; the commander had suggested taking them prisoner and selling them as slaves. The governor had decided in favor of another strategy: doing nothing. He was gambling that by establishing good relations with them, he could open up a new market for the glass manufactured in Akbar. In addition, even if they were there to prepare for war, the Assyrians knew that small cities will always side with the victor. In this case, all the Assyrian generals desired was to pass through without resistance on their way to Sidon and Tyre, the cities that held the treasure and knowledge of his people.

The patrol had encamped at the entrance to the valley, and little by little reinforcements had arrived. The high priest claimed to know the reason: the city had a well, the only well in several days’ travel in the desert. If the Assyrians planned to conquer Tyre or Sidon, they needed that water to supply their armies.

At the end of the first month, they could still be expelled. At the end of the second month, Akbar could still win easily and negotiate an honorable withdrawal of the Assyrian soldiers.

They waited for battle to break out, but there was no attack. At the end of the fifth month, they could still win the battle. “They’re going to attack very soon, because they must be suffering from thirst,” the governor told himself. He asked the commander to draw up defense strategies and to order his men into constant training to react to a surprise attack.

But he concentrated only on preparations for peace.

HALF A YEAR HAD PASSED, and the Assyrian army had made no move. Tension in Akbar, which had grown during the first weeks of occupation, had now diminished almost entirely. People went about their lives: farmers once again returned to their fields; artisans made wine, glass, and soap; tradesmen continued to buy and sell their merchandise. Everyone believed that, as Akbar had not attacked the enemy, the crisis would soon be settled through negotiations. Everyone knew the governor was chosen by the gods and that he always made the wisest decision.

When Elijah arrived in the city, the governor had ordered rumors spread of the curse the foreigner brought with him; in this way, if the threat of war became insurmountable, he could blame the presence of the foreigner as the principal cause of the disaster. The inhabitants of Akbar would be convinced that with the death of the Israelite the Universe would return to normal. The governor would then explain that it was too late to demand that the Assyrians withdraw; he would order Elijah killed and explain to his people that peace was the best solution. In his view, the merchants—who desired peace—would force the others to agree to this idea.

During these months, he had fought the pressure from the high priest and the commander demanding that he attack at once. The gods of the Fifth Mountain had never abandoned him; now, with the miracle of the resurrection last night, Elijah’s life was more important than his execution.

 

“WHY IS THIS foreigner with you?” asked the commander.

“He has been enlightened by the gods,” answered the governor. “And he will help us to find the best solution.” He quickly changed the subject. “The number of tents appears to have increased today.”

“And it will increase even more tomorrow,” said the commander. “If we had attacked when they were nothing but a patrol, they probably wouldn’t have returned.”

“You’re mistaken. Some of them would have escaped, and they would have returned to avenge themselves.”

“When we delay the harvest, the fruit rots,” insisted the commander. “But when we delay resolving problems, they continue to grow.”

The governor explained that peace, the great pride of his people, had reigned in Phoenicia for almost three centuries. What would the generations yet unborn say if he were to interrupt this era of prosperity?

“Send an emissary to negotiate with them,” said Elijah. “The best warrior is the one who succeeds in transforming an enemy into a friend.”

“We don’t know exactly what they want. We don’t even know if they desire to conquer our city. How can we negotiate?”