Ring of Fire III by Eric Flint Read Free Book Online Page B

that after all these years, he was still so easily conned. He should have seen it coming: O’Donnell would want to slip out of the camp as stealthily as he had come in. And he’d have—rightly—known that O’Rourke would have had none of that: two guards, at least, to escort one of the last two princes of Ireland. But O’Donnell had given him the slip.
    Again.
    O’Rourke went over to stand by the table they’d shared but two minutes earlier. He rested his hand on the back of his earl’s chair. And smiled:
    See you in Amiens, old friend.

Falser Messiah
     
    Tim Roesch
     
     
    Lost in Grantville, 24th of Av, 5394
    (T minus 5 hours and 43 minutes)
     
    “I am not the Son of God!” he screamed at the library.
    At least he thought he was screaming in the direction of the library.
    With eyes red with tears, Shabbethai Zebi ben Mordecai spun about, glaring at the world which was suddenly bright and out of focus, frightening and repulsive. The world he could not wait to see each morning and wept over as he closed his eyes every night was suddenly wrong.
    Or, maybe, he was wrong.
    Memories came; out of focus, silent, out of any order.
    He remembered his mother crying on the dock in Smyrna as he left on a ship, a real ship, with his father and elder brother.
    His mother had not waved at him.
    He remembered how eager he was to learn everything and show his father what he had learned and how hard it was, all of a sudden, to get his father to simply look at him.
    There was the trip to this magical place, Grantville. Here, he had forgotten how often his questions went unanswered, his small discoveries went unnoticed, how often his father and elder brother seemed to talk quietly to each other and occasionally looked at him as if he had done something wrong.
    Here was the town of Deborah and an entire community of Jews who lived and worked amongst non-Jews and not once, not even once, had he heard a single bad word or seen an evil look directed at any Jew, and how exciting it was and how he wanted to ask questions.
    No Sabbath had ever been so beautiful as his first in Deborah. Never had he sung the Torah so fervently, so fervently he did not remember, until now, how his singing caused so much silence.
    “Why, Abba?” he whispered, sniffing. Grantville had been a magical place and now it felt like it was burning and he was the fire. “Abba!”
    No answer. No one looked at him. They told him what to do and where to be and conversations stopped when he entered rooms and there was arguing but never did anyone look him in the eye or ask him how his day went or what new and magical thing had he learned today.
    Silence.
    Even the other children viewed him with suspicion. Games ended when he joined them. Meals were quiet and even during prayer he felt he prayed alone.
    So, as he had learned in the schools in Smyrna, the Jewish ones with dour old men who were quick with a harsh word to those who seemed inattentive, he went to answer his questions. He went to the library at Grantville.
    He listened and heard his father and his elder brother and rabbis, learned men, arguing about him, about little Shabbethai Zebi and how his name was in the library, the great library in Grantville.
    In a place where Jews could move about freely, it had been simple for him to go to the library.
    And now?
    Silence.
    He tried hard in the silence of the library to translate an entry in a book, an entry that had his name in English.
    A girl saw him and, miracle of miracles, she spoke Greek and this English that not even his own father could understand well, let alone read, and she had told him.
    “You are the Messiah? You are the son of God?”
    What was he to do? What could he do?
    The silence shouted at him as he ran from the library and out into the streets of Grantville.
    Shabbethai Sebi: Son of God. Messiah.
    “I am not the son of God!” Shabbethai shouted, though his voice had less strength. He spun about looking for something familiar, something to