TC31

One of the thieves Sarah judged to be the leader died with a neat hole punched through the middle of his body. Another thief lost his head, and the blade of a third was consumed. This convinced the surviving robbers to flee. It was not the purpose of the princess nor El herself to kill anyone.

“Irony of ironies,” said Imrael as she surveyed the bloody mess on the street that Sarah had created. “A year ago in Shalem we would have been the ones shaking down the customers and taking their gold.”

“I made common cause with the Fallen Angels only to get the attention of my father, I think,” Sarah told her. “He seemed so preoccupied at the time.”

“Well, obviously your plan worked, Your Highness, and here we are.”

Terah fell on his knees, confronted by what he took to be a living example of one of his own graven demigods. But Avram remained standing and moved closer to Sarah, paying no fearful obeisance. This only strengthened har opinion of him as a superb candidate for what El intended to do.

Sha said, “Avram of Enkaa, In the name of El I bid you to go forth from your land and your father’s kinfolk to a far country in the other world. There God Most High shall make of you a great nation. He shall bless you, and your name shall be great among men.”

Imrael took up the middle part of recitation. “El shall bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you, and all people everywhere shall find blessing in you. Such are the words of the one Lord of the Earth.”

Sarah finished with, “What say you to these things, Avram son of Terah?”

Avram looked directly into eyes to the princess and said, firmly, “No.”

It took Sarah a moment to comprehend what Avram said. It was so unexpected.

Avram lifted his father to his feet and took him gently in his arms. He undertook to explain his rejection of El’s calling. “My father is infirm of body, and he does not earn enough at his livelihood to support himself. We nearly always disagree, but as I love my life, I can never turn aside from my father for all the days he is a wayfarer in Kemen.”

Then Avram fulfilled the purpose of his visit. He called in a servant and delivered to his father two living lambs from his own flocks, one to kill and eat, and the other to sell for a little money to buy the things he needed until the next time Avram came in from the open range and visited him. Terah received the gifts of his son with sincere words of gratitude.

Sarah nodded in full understanding. Sha helped Imrael restow the gold in a satchel and quietly left the shop. The princess did not invoke the name of her own father or even reveal her true identity as a princess of the city of Shalem. Sha was careful not to tread on the fortress of human dignity that Avram had asserted with his thoroughly justified refusal.

In all har travels across the breadth of the land Ophan Sarah found no one even remotely like Avram. With a heavy heart Sha returned to Shalem. There sha told har father how very close sha had come to fulfilling the task El had laid upon the royal family. In love he lifted the heavy yoke of the quest from her, but it was not the last time Sarah and Avram would meet.

Terah, true to Avram’s word, was too frail to survive without the aid of his sons. Two years after the encounter in his Enkaa statuary shop he died. Avram and his brothers buried their father in a seaside tomb facing the island city of Shalem. After that Avram deeply pondered the words of the two yen, and the unmistakable sign of divine sanction that accompanied them. And he remembered a ridiculous tale his father once told.