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    Ismeni: An eShort Prelude to The Legend of Sheba
    Ismeni: An eShort Prelude to The Legend of Sheba
    Ismeni: An eShort Prelude to The Legend of Sheba
    Ebook63 pages47 minutes

    Ismeni: An eShort Prelude to The Legend of Sheba

    By Tosca Lee

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A mysterious beauty, a destiny set in the stars. Born under an inauspicious sign, young Ismeni is feared by her own people. The single thing she prays for: to live an invisible life. But that is not to be for the young woman who has captured the attention of the king’s youngest son. A story of love, passion, and twists of fate through the eyes of the woman who will one day give birth to the legendary Queen of Sheba.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHoward Books
    Release dateAug 26, 2014
    ISBN9781501103322
    Ismeni: An eShort Prelude to The Legend of Sheba
    Author

    Tosca Lee

    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.

    Read more from Tosca Lee

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    • 5/5
      She didn't desire to be seen. She certainly never aspired to be queen. But the position this stunning woman resigns herself to eventually brings her a daughter of destiny in Ismeni: Prelude to The Legend of Sheba by author Tosca Lee.Wow. Heartwrenching and intriguing in one fell swoop, with an aching kind of beauty to it.Yes, this short read is all the more significant if you're familiar with the biblical story of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Secondly, it makes all the more sense if you've heard of the renowned wisdom of Solomon. Thirdly, it's more than good to know that Ismeni is the coming Queen of Sheba's mother. And if I've ever read a compelling and ideal setup for a related novel, this is it.If I had any doubts before about whether I'd really read The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen sometime or not, its prequel here has eliminated those doubts.

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Ismeni - Tosca Lee

    Cover: Ismeni, by Tosca Lee

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    Ismeni, by Tosca Lee, Howard Books

    Saba (The biblical kingdom of Sheba in present-day Yemen)

    989 BC

    The hour of my birth, my mother burned incense to Shams, goddess of the sun, thinking in her innocence she, of any god, might understand a girl born under the brilliance of the Dog Star—a light so powerful that its first appearance just before sunrise in Saba invokes the floodwaters of the Nile in faraway Egypt.

    What they do not say is that in anything but the clearest sky, the Dog Star radiates confusion, muddling the minds of men at best—and portending ill omen at worst.

    The morning I was born it is said the midwife cried out at the double misfortune of the star’s hazy glow and my having been born a girl. That summer was the hottest in memory for a generation. Crops withered in the field and animals died of thirst.

    My mother argued my innocence against the tribal elders, who, I am told, craned to peer at my face even as she tried to shield it with her hands so they might not call such loveliness in a child unnatural. But men are easily swayed by fear. And so I grew up with the burden of a beauty that cannot be celebrated because of its potential, at any moment, to kill.

    I was five the first time I laid eyes on Prince Agaziah. He and his siblings had returned with their retinues to Sirwah, the old capital, to escape the summer heat of Marib on the edge of the desert.

    I didn’t think much of the runtling, as he was called within the tribe. He had screwed up his face upon entering the cool mud-brick of our home with his nurse and I was sure he had just been crying. He was two years older than I, or so they said, but I thought he acted like nothing so much as a baby.

    Ismeni, my mother said and pulled me forward by the wrist. This is your kinsman.

    I found this hard to believe. Firstly, he was not a man. Second, no male kin of mine would ever be seen recovering from tears.

    But he was the youngest son of the king, who was cousin to my father. And so I was made to bow before him as though he were the king himself. When my mother’s hand left the back of my neck and I was allowed to straighten at last, I found him staring, woe forgotten, at me.

    I shrank back as my older brother tried to lead him out to play now that the forced introduction was over. But the prince pulled away and ran back to peer, unblinking, into my face.

    At last his gaze fell to the carved camel in my hand. A gift from my father, who sold stock to the king’s traders for their caravans.

    Give it to him, my mother whispered, leaning over me.

    I clasped it tighter. I had all of two friends in this life, and the camel was one of them. The other was my brother. My mother pulled my arm but I would not yield and was rewarded with a sharp tug of my hair. But I would not cry in front of this boy. I hurled the camel at his feet and ran into the other room.

    The king kept a stable in the old capital of Sirwah, and in it, an Egyptian mare brought by way of Punt across the sea. I was awestruck by the animal with the great globe eyes I imagined to be more all-seeing than even a long-lashed camel’s. I trailed after my father and brother to the door of the stables to peek at her before they sent me back, and snuck off to gaze at her in secret when they

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