THE FIRST TIME Herodias held the sword, she was not taken by it because of the purity of its steel, or the ornate craftsmanship of its pommel, or the breadth of its tang or the trueness of its edge. She was impressed by its history: that its steel was made from a metal fallen from the sky which had claimed to it the powers of earth, air, wind and fire; that it was forged by a Philistine of great knowledge whose ancestry harked back to Tubal Cain himself, the master of all blacksmiths; and finally, but more importantly, that it was tempered in the blood of a dragon.
Thus had it come to Israel through a bloody act and it would continue to seek blood in the same way that like substances attract.
It was young King David who first came by the sword. Having killed the giant Goliath with a sling he had no weapon with which to cut off his head so he used the giant’s own sword. Later, fearing its magic, David had altered its hilt to depict not the dragon emblem of the Philistines but his own star – the Star of David, which became the insignia of the Hebrew people. After that it was given to his son, Solomon the wise, who did not kill with it, but made it speak the truth, for he brandished it against a child loved by two women - to know which one of them was the child’s true mother. Solomon, knowing its powers, sealed over his father’s star a pentagram, transforming the sword into an amulet of great power, able to harness good spirits and evil spirits alike.
The sword descended through the generations and came to rest in the hands of the brother of Judas Maccabbeus, Simon, the warrior who formed the Hasmonean dynasty. Quite naturally it was among the many treasures surrendered to Herod the Great when he took Simon’s daughter, Miriam, for a wife. But Herodias did not come by it through her grandparents but through her half uncle, Herod Antipas, who gave it to her as a gift, a promise of his undying love on the eve of their commitment to marry.
Herod had told her of its occult powers and Herodias’ natural propensity for all things mystical and magical had set her heart to unlocking its secrets with a mighty ambitious greed. But despite all her concentration on it, its secrets eluded her until a vision in the smoke led her to believe that the sword would not work in her hands until Solomon’s bewitchment was reversed, that is, until it shed blood again - not the blood of a Goliath, an evil man of great authority - but the blood of a pure man divested of power.
She waited long for such a man, and she found him at Ainon, preaching repentance.
From that time until now she had sought his death but only now, this night, did it seem as if her plans would finally fall into place.
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