The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen - Hardcover

Lee, Tosca

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1451684045 ISBN 13: 9781451684049

Verlag: Howard Books, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

Her name is legend. Her story, the epic of nations. The Queen of Sheba. A powerful new novel of love, power, and the questions at the heart of existence by the author of the award-winning “brilliant” (Library Journal) and “masterful” (Publishers Weekly) Iscariot.

There is the story you know: A foreign queen, journeying north with a caravan of riches to pay tribute to a king favored by the One God. The tale of a queen conquered by a king and god both before returning to her own land laden with gifts.

That is the tale you were meant to believe.

Which means most of it is a lie.

The truth is far more than even the storytellers could conjure. The riches more priceless. The secrets more corrosive. The love and betrayal more passionate and devastating.

Across the Red Sea, the pillars of the great oval temple once bore my name: Bilqis, Daughter of the Moon. Here, to the west, the porticoes knew another: Makeda, Woman of Fire. To the Israelites, I was queen of the spice lands, which they called Sheba.

In the tenth century BC, the new Queen of Sheba has inherited her father’s throne and all its riches at great personal cost. Her realm stretches west across the Red Sea into land wealthy in gold, frankincense, and spices. But now new alliances to the North threaten the trade routes that are the lifeblood of her nation. Solomon, the brash new king of Israel famous for his wealth and wisdom, will not be denied the tribute of the world—or of Sheba’s queen. With tensions ready to erupt within her own borders and the future of her nation at stake, the one woman who can match wits with Solomon undertakes the journey of a lifetime in a daring bid to test and win the king. But neither ruler has anticipated the clash of agendas, gods, and passion that threatens to ignite—and ruin—them both. An explosive retelling of the legendary king and queen and the nations that shaped history.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tosca Lee is the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of The Progeny, Firstborn, Iscariot, The Legend of Sheba, Demon: A Memoir, Havah: The Story of Eve, and the Books of Mortals series with New York Times bestseller Ted Dekker. She received her BA in English and International Relations from Smith College. A lifelong adventure traveler, Tosca makes her home in the Midwest with her husband and children.

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The Legend of Sheba



ONE



My mother, Ismeni, was born under the glimmer of the Dog Star, when men become disoriented by its light. They said she enchanted my father, that he made her his consort with a clouded mind. No king would choose a wife from his own tribe when he could strengthen alliance with another.

But I saw the way their gazes followed her whenever she appeared in the palace porticoes, their conversations drifting to suspended silence until she passed from sight. On the rare occasion that she took her seat beside Father’s in the Hall of Judgment, the chamber swelled like a tide drawn by the darkened moon. Bronze-skinned with brows like dove’s wings and lips for whispering prayers, my mother was the most exquisite thing in all of Saba. The trickle of rain over the highland terraces couldn’t match the music of her beaded hems nor the best frankincense of Hadramawt compete with her perfume.

Drowsing on her sofa in the hot afternoon, I would twine my fingers with hers and admire the turquoise of her rings. I hoped my hands and feet would be as slender as hers. It was all I hoped; it never occurred to me that any other aspect of her beauty might be granted a mortal twice on this earth.

Many days we received gifts from my father: rare citrus imported from the north, sweet within their bitter rinds. Songbirds and ivory combs from across the narrow sea. Bolts of fine Egyptian linen, which my mother had made into gowns for me to match her own.

But my greatest treasures were the songs she sang like lullabies murmured against my ear. The ritual prayers she taught me as we knelt before her idols, the sweet waft of incense perfuming her hair. Never once did she chide me for clinging to her when she donned the robes of the thing called “queen.” Never once when she went to my father at night was she not curled around me again by morning. Beyond the palace, Saba sprawled from the sheer edge of the coastal range to the foot of the desert waste. But I was content that my world stretched no farther than my mother’s chamber.

In the evenings I sat before her jewelry chest and adorned my ears with lapis, my shoulders weighed down with necklaces as she reclined by her table. It was covered in gold, a glowing thing in the low light of the lamp that seemed to gild anything near it—the side of my mother’s face, the silver cup in her hand.

And then I would dance as she clapped her hands, bracelets chiming on my ankles—the dance of the monsoon rain running through the wadi ravines, and the gentle sprinkles of summer coaxing millet from the winter-brown earth. Of the highland ibex, my arms curved over my head like great crescent horns, and the lions that stalked them, which always made her laugh. And then she would leap to her feet and join me, the tiers of carnelian beads at her neck jingling with every stamp of her heels.

“You will be more beautiful than I,” she said one night after we had fallen onto the cushions.

“Never, Mamma!” The thought was impossible.

She held out her hand and I lay down against her.

“I was never so fair at your age,” she said, kissing the top of my head. “But beware, little Bilqis. Beauty is a weapon you can only wield once.”

Before I could ask what she meant she slid a heavy bangle off her wrist. It was as wide as my hand and crusted with rubies. “Do you see these stones? They are harder than quartz or emeralds. They do not break under pressure, or soften with age. Let this remind you, my dove, that wisdom is lasting and therefore more precious.” She slid the bracelet onto my arm.

“But—”

“Hush now. The Sister Stars are rising—a time for new things.” She touched the amulet at my throat, a bronze sun-face inscribed on the back for my protection. “How do you like the idea of a young prince brother?”

I nestled against her, toying with the bangle. My nurse made me burn incense before the alabaster idol of Shams, the sun goddess, every month since I could remember in prayer for this very thing.

“I would like that.”

I said it because I knew it would please her. What I did not say was that I would like it far better than a sister, who would vie with me for my mother’s attention. That I could share her with a boy knowing he would eventually leave us for my father’s side—and the throne.

I vowed to pray daily that my mother’s baby would indeed be a boy.

Ten days later my mother suffered a seizure and hit her head on the marble bench inside her bath. That night I was told she had abandoned me for the afterlife, taking my unborn brother with her.

I screamed until I collapsed against the edge of her table. I called them liars and begged to see her, flailing against anyone who tried to touch me. My mother would never leave me! When they took me to her at last, I threw myself over her, clutching her cold neck until they pried me away, strands of her long hair still tangled in my fingers.

After they closed up the royal mausoleum at the temple of the moon god, Almaqah, her face was before me constantly. Sometimes I could smell her, feel the softness of her cheek against mine as I slept. She had not deserted me. I stopped speaking for nearly a year after her death. Everyone thought I had gone mute with grief. But the truth is that I would speak only to her.

I whispered to her as I lay in bed every night until her voice faded the following summer, taking some vital part of me with it. I was six years old.

Hagarlat, my father’s second wife, was neither young nor beautiful. But her presence in the palace renewed ties with the tribes of Nashshan to the north, and control of the trade route through the immense Jawf valley. If the dams and canals that channeled the summer monsoons were the lifeblood of Saba, the incense route was her breath, every exhale of her roads profitably laden with frankincense, bdellium, balsam, and myrrh.

I was eight when my half-brother broke the peace of the women’s quarter with his angry wail just before the first rains of spring. Father offered gold figurines of Hagarlat and my brother at the temple feast that year, inscribed with the appropriate curses should anyone remove them. I felt betrayed by this blasphemy; my mother was interred on that sacred soil.

But even the appearance of an heir could not appease his council, for whom my father would never compare to his militant sire. My grandfather Agabos had been a killer of men. Thousands fell to the machine of his ambition as he campaigned to unite the four great kingdoms: Awsan, Qataban, Hadramawt, and Saba to rule them all. It was Agabos who had married the princess from across the narrow sea through whom his children received the royal darkness of their skin.

But my father, the only one of Agabos’ sons to survive his campaigns, was more interested in advancing the worship of the moon god Almaqah throughout the federated kingdom than the boundaries of Saba itself. That year, he appointed himself high priest and presided over temple banquets and ritual hunts until even my young ears could not help but hear the murmured discontent sweeping through the palace halls like a furtive swarm of bees.

I distrusted Hagarlat. Not because she encouraged his zeal, or because she had the face of a mottled camel—or even because she had brought the squalling thing that was my brother into the world—but...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Howard Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1451684045
• ISBN 13: 9781451684049
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 336
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar