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The Roshites passed a bier with David's body outside of the city walls and through the lines to the jen named Jaalan who commanded the tenth of a legion besieging the city. There Jaalan hemself pierced David's body many times with a blade as surety that he was dead. Then Jaalan ordered the bier mounted on stakes, and commanded the bier to be set ablaze.

But while it burned David sat up, covered in flames, and he leaped down with the Golden Gift in hand to confront the soldiers who surrounded him. Kindling the relic, he took many of their heads before a blade from one of the warriors stuck his right arm and left the burning limb and the Golden Gift it still grasped lying on the ground. Yet somehow, quicker than anyone could see, David stood with his arm intact, as though he had grown another one as soon as the original had been severed. And the flames were no longer seen to feed upon his skin.

David reached down to retrieve the Golden Gift from his original charred arm and used it to cut in twain the nephil who struck him. Then, with none opposing him, David slipped the dark shaft of the Golden Gift through the heart of Captain Jaalan.

When he had done all these things David disappeared from the sight of the invaders with a loud report, leaving a crater on the beach. The surviving warriors of Captain Jaalan were affrighted beyond speech and took ship to disperse once more to their own lands. In the months and years that followed they spread tales of the terror that awaited any who sought to take the Ark of God from the Roshites.

After the attack Cheran sent men of arms south and east to the mouth of the River Sabik along the frontier with the kingdom of Alodra, and from there posted watch stations at intervals north and east along the border reaching the hills nigh to Mount Naratha, lest more paid soldiers from the Saiph League might come seeking to take the Ark of God. If his own forces could not turn them back, Cheran thought, at least warning of the invaders might pass in good time behind the lines to Suhar.

But after the debacle of the ships no enemy came for a generation. Peace reigned until Cheran saw he had drawn very near to his natural death. Then Charan gave his firstborn son Dathan the White Scroll of Leliel, and named him the high priest of God. Cheran slept with his fathers, and for all his days he did what was right in the sight of the LORD.

In the third year of the high priesthood of Dathan word came from the frontier that a force was marching from the south.