Cyrene
Ayzebel found Sabra pacing in the peristyle what felt like hours later.
“Mistress,” she said. “Your father wants to speak with you.”
“Now?” Sabra asked. “But doesn’t he have guests?”
“They had business to attend to in the city before dinner.”
Sabra nodded and headed to her father’s small office, situated between the atrium and the peristyle. He was inside, poring over some parchments on a tall desk, his forehead creased with worry or concentration. The look vanished when she came in, and he smiled warmly at her.
“Ah, Sabra.”
“You wanted to speak to me?”
“Hanno hinted that you might have something you wanted to discuss with me. Is something troubling you?”
Sabra twisted her fingers together. She’d been contemplating what she would say to him while she’d waited in the peristyle, but now it had all vanished. When she didn’t speak, her father seated himself on the stone bench by the wall and patted the spot beside him. Holding her breath, Sabra sat down stiffly and folded her hands in her robe.
“What did the Legion officials want?” she asked.
Her father waved his hand. “Oh, you know. The Legion is returning to Numidia, so we have the pleasure of entertaining its officers tonight.” He gave her a serious look. “But that is no matter. What’s troubling you?”
“Father,” she said, her voice a bare whisper. “The Oracle…”
He straightened up, bracing one hand on his leg, but when he didn’t speak she swallowed hard and pressed on.
“I fear we might be wrong about the sacrifices. I fear that…perhaps the god doesn’t want children’s blood at all. Maybe the old priestess chose me—”
“Enough!” he barked, holding up a hand. “Have you been listening to slaves’ chatter? The Oracle’s message was clear. We were sacrificing goats and chickens. In that context, the meaning is evident. The god wanted human blood, not animal.” He pressed the bridge of his nose. “Honestly, Sabra, I’m more concerned that we might be feeding a monster and not the god at all. When our ancestors worshiped the god, he had no physical form. They made an idol of bronze and fire, and they offered him sacrifice by casting their offerings into the flames. But this? This is something new. We believe the god wants blood, but you’ve seen the altar up in the cliffs after the sacrifices.”
“Have you?” Sabra asked, stunned. She didn’t think he’d ever gone up there. She’d thought it was forbidden.
“Yes. There are no blood stains. No remains but bones, as if the flesh had been completely burned away. This creature that lives in the cave…it consumes them. But it consumes them in fire. What if this is not the work of the god at all? What if the beast is something else?” He hesitated for one awful moment, then added. “What if it is something we can destroy?”
“Father!” Sabra cried, casting the sign against evil. “You don’t mean that! I’m the priestess of the old god. Wouldn’t I know—”
Wouldn’t I know if the sacrifices were failing?
But they are failing. Isn’t that what this is all about?
Sabra shook her head and pressed her hands against her eyes. “Then did we ever offer sacrifice to the old god? Why did we start chaining children to the rocks in the cliffs, if not to appease Molech?”
This was a nightmare. Her world was dissolving around her.
Did her father not believe? Had she been fed lies all her life, and pressed into the service of some monster? And for what?
Had it all been for nothing?
Her father was speaking again, though Sabra could barely make sense of his words.
“This creature, that…dragon… By all accounts, it crawled out of the sea some fifteen years ago and terrorized the coastland. Then it came to settle in these cliffs. We’ve been trying to appease it with sacrifices ever since. We always believed it was a manifestation of the god, but part of me wonders now if we were wrong.”
“But what about the Oracle?” Sabra whispered, breathless.
“‘The Oracle spoke of ‘the hungry one.’ She never named him as the god, or the ‘divine hungry one.’ He is the ravager. The destroyer. But she did not name him Molech.”
Sabra clutched her hands inside her robe as if by sheer force she could hold the pieces of her world together.
“No,” she managed, “Molech is the hungry one, the fire that consumes. Why would he not manifest himself like some sort of dragon, if that was his wish?” She stood unsteadily. “I think you’re afraid of the Oracle, so you’re trying to explain away the sacrifices. You’ve never wanted to believe the truth. You know that my blood is required, so instead you blaspheme the god!”
Her father opened his mouth to answer, but she swept on, “And what of Elissa? Are you going to send her to feed a monster that you don’t even believe deserves the honor of due sacrifice? What should I think of that, Father?”
He tipped his head back to meet her gaze, his face etched with weariness. “I don’t know what to believe any longer. Everything is crumbling and all the things we used to believe are shaking in their foundations. What are we to do?” He sighed and bent his head. “Never mind my prattling. I’m only tired, and every child we offer to that beast breaks my heart.”
Sabra winced, hearing the pain in his voice that so perfectly echoed her own.
“Do you truly believe that we are placating the god when we offer these sacrifices?” he asked, his voice low.
Sabra hesitated. But the answer was quick in her mind: No.
Finally she said, “I believe…I believe it is the god we are trying to placate. But I don’t think he is happy with our efforts.”
“And now the auguries of Apollo are failing,” her father said. “Perhaps none of the gods are happy with us.” He sighed. “Don’t fret about the Oracle, cara. Your name is in the lottery too, Sabra. If the god really desired your blood, your name would be chosen.”
But you instituted the lottery, she thought. You started the lottery when you knew it was me he wanted all along!
“So Elissa must be offered?”
“The god chose her, didn’t he?” her father asked, but she stood, silent and still, waiting. “The god chose her this time, Sabra. Not you.”
She closed her eyes, everything she wanted to say catching in her throat.
“Now,” her father said, “would you like to take dinner with us this evening? I know you’re accustomed to eating alone, but you are always welcome.”
Sabra stared at him. Have I always been welcome? Was this just another scourge I punished myself with for no cause?
The thought of eating with the officers made her strangely nervous, but she caught herself murmuring, “Yes, thank you.”
“Then we will see you for dinner.” As she turned to leave, he said softly, “Take comfort, Sabra. It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
When evening came, Sabra made her way to the large triclinium. She was dressed formally in her Priestess regalia, all but the veil over her face that would have made eating impossible. Her father and the officers had arrived just before her, so she did her best to lift her chin and make a bold entrance. But no sooner had the Tribune caught her gaze than her self-confidence shattered. She ducked her head and cursed herself for accepting her father’s invitation, and longed for the concealing security of her veil.
A number of other government officials joined the party with their wives, and though some of the women were only a little older than Sabra, none of them so much as glanced at her. In fact, they all seemed intent on not looking at her. Sabra sat rigid and silent, nervous even when she spotted Hanno along the far wall. She watched the others feasting on lamb and pork, washing it back with bitter wine mixed with water and honey, and somehow she didn’t feel the slightest bit hungry.
“What’s the news from the rest of the Empire?” her father asked the officers.
“Nothing unusual,” the Legate said. “They’re finally concluding the Peace of Nisibis in Anatolia, so that will end the Persian campaigns once and for all. Then there’s all this business about Christians deserting the army, betraying Rome to serve their own king, or so they say. I don’t know why they’re so bothered about it. We’ve lost a few in our Legion in recent years—it’s not all that new. One a few years ago refused to serve at all. Maximilian, I think. How’s that for pietas?”
“What happened to him?” one of the wives asked.
“Executed, of course,” the Legate said smoothly, as if he couldn’t believe the question. “He was a traitor.”
Sabra forced herself to keep chewing her mouthful of almonds, but they stuck in her throat when she tried to swallow.
Did we always talk so freely about death? she wondered. But why should it bother me? Death is my domain.
“Surely you don’t think all those people are traitors?” another woman asked.
Sabra glanced at her curiously. Cyrene had its share of Christians, she knew. She’d even heard rumor once that someone important to that faith had come from the city, centuries ago. She didn’t know the full story, and she’d never bothered to study faiths that were not her own.
Is this woman one of that cult? It’s a dangerous question to ask so freely.
“Who can say?” one of the men said.
Another disagreed—Caius Dignianus, her father’s second-in-command. “I can. They refuse to honor the emperor. They prefer some other king to Diocletian Augustus? Then they aren’t truly Roman, and, what’s more, they support a foreign power.”
“It’s not a foreign power,” another man countered. “They serve a god. His kingdom—if he’s got one—isn’t of this world anyway. So what’s Rome so nervous about?”
“Now that the auguries are failing, I’d say we’ve got cause to be nervous,” the first man retorted. “And it means that this new cult is something more dangerous than we thought.”
“Rome must have unity if she is to survive and expand,” the Legate said, waving a hand to quiet the argument. “Once Alexander ruled the whole world, then Caesar surpassed him by going beyond the limits of the known world. We can only follow in his great footsteps if Rome is united. Gods, we’re inviting so many foreign cults and foreign cultures into Rome, it’s remarkable we have any sense of who we are any more. But at least most of them are willing to assimilate.” He shook his head, addressing Sabra’s father. “These Christians are dangerous because they stand apart. They seem to believe they’re somehow special, that their beliefs are the only ones that are true. You know, they remind me of the Jews. That’s where they got started, over there in Palestine.”
The men murmured in agreement, all of them hanging on the Legate’s words like they were dripping honey.
“And I will give you all a little prophecy of my own—the fate of Rome herself is tied to what happens to these people. I think as one grows, the other must diminish, and if we have to encourage that with a little force, then so be it.”
“But they aren’t dangerous, are they?” the first woman asked. “I’ve heard they mostly just keep to themselves.”
“Does it matter?” Dignianus asked with a snort. “Only the good of Rome matters.”
Sabra swallowed. She wondered what they would say if they knew about her sacrifices, her service to the old god. Would they say she should be serving Venus or Vesta instead of Molech? Was he too foreign a god for their tastes, with his dark and unquenchable thirst for blood?
As if he’d read her thoughts, the Legate suddenly said, “I’ve heard rumors that you have strange goings-on around here. What is this talk of some kind of creature up in the hills?”
Silence.
After a moment, Sabra realized that everyone was staring at her. She froze, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.
What do I tell them? If I tell the truth, will we be traitors too? Or do I lie and offend the god…and look like a fool?
She tried to swallow again and managed to meet the Legate’s gaze evenly. “A dragon, you mean?”
The Legate laughed. The Tribune studied her curiously, but he at least wasn’t mocking her.
“A…dragon?” the Legate echoed. He glanced at the Tribune as if to say, Gods, haven’t we civilized these people yet? “I’m sure you know that dragons are a myth, girl.”
And what is your faith but myth? she thought, her eyes boring into the Legate’s until he looked away.
“I am the sole priestess of the old god and the voice of his manifestation,” she said, the words burning through her. “I am not a child. You may mock me if you choose, but I know what I have seen.”
She didn’t dare look at the Tribune, but the Legate sat back, both brows arched in surprise.
“Many of us have seen the dragon,” one of the women murmured.
“A dragon?” the Tribune asked, softly, his gaze fixed on Sabra so steadily that she blushed. He was asking her. He dared to speak to her, and he wanted her to answer.
“I am the voice of his manifestation,” she repeated, “and I know what I have seen.”
When the meal finally ended, the guests withdrew to the peristyle where the coal braziers burned bright and a musician played a lyre quietly from the shadows. Several slaves stood scattered under the portico, holding trays of wine or sweets. The stone walls echoed the guests’ laughter and conversation, almost drowning out the music and the soft splash of the fountain. Sabra intended to walk straight through to her own chamber, but she’d only gotten halfway through the courtyard when someone stepped out in front of her. She groaned inwardly. It had to be the Tribune, with his kind eyes and striking looks.
She dipped her head and tried to move around him, but he held out a hand to stop her.
“Please, Priestess,” he said. “I’m sorry if I offended you earlier. I wasn’t trying to doubt you. Can you forgive me that, at least?”
She met his gaze briefly before turning away again, biting her lip. Tears burned in the back of her throat. Of course, the first time in her life that a man had seen her as anything more than a robe and an executioner, and she wasn’t even allowed to explain why she couldn’t speak in her own voice. And by her silence she would only offend him, and if he hated her for it? So much the better.
“The Priestess is not permitted to speak to men,” someone said in Punic, stepping up behind her.
Sabra let out all her breath, mentally whispering a thank you to Hanno.
“Not at all?” the Tribune asked, the Punic words heavily accented. Sabra wondered if she was imagining the disappointment in his voice. “But I saw you two speaking earlier, coming up the road.”
Hanno bowed his head and said simply, “I am a eunuch.”
The Tribune’s face registered brief surprise, but he only nodded and said, “I see. I envy you, though…at least in one way.”
He gave Sabra a slow bow, his gaze holding hers briefly, and strode away to join the Legate. Sabra pressed her knuckles against her lips.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Hanno, though she didn’t even know what she was apologizing for.
Hanno frowned. “No need to apologize, mistress. Are you all right? This was your first public dinner in years, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. “And I shouldn’t have come.” She slid a hand under her hair, feeling her neck damp with sweat. “I’m going to suffocate in here, Hanno. It’ll be a fitting end after offending everyone, I suppose.””
“You didn’t offend the Tribune,” he said gently. “Disappointed him, I would guess, but that’s to be expected.”
She closed her eyes. “I’m going out. Can you come with me? Please, Hanno.”
“You don’t ask me. I’m here at your command.”
But you’re my friend, can’t you see that? I want to ask you. I want you to come because you’re my friend…not because I command you.
It had been so long since she had had any friends, though, she wondered how she knew what the word meant any more.
With Hanno following at a respectful distance, she turned and fled the house. They wound back down through the streets, and Sabra realized with a jolt that her feet were carrying her straight toward the Temple of the god. She hadn’t meant to go that way. Was the god calling her in to punish her, for disgracing him in public?
She hesitated in the middle of the street, and at that same moment, a terrible scream shattered the night silence.
She met Hanno’s startled gaze, and they both took off running in the direction of the noise.
A small crowd had already gathered on the street when they arrived, clustering around the door of a senior official’s house. The door stood gaping open, filled with enough light from torches and oil lamps that everyone on the street could see inside the atrium. There, in the depression in the floor meant to catch the rain, the body of the official lay in a pool of his own blood.
Hanno turned away, muttering under his breath, but Sabra stood and stared, refusing to be repulsed. She should be used to death, after all, even though she never saw it like this.
She couldn’t see any other officials in the crowd, so that made her the highest ranking person present—and a religious figure besides. Taking on that office, she chose a random bystander and asked, “What happened?”
The man paled when he saw her, and bowed his head. “Who can say, Priestess? One of his slaves just discovered him.”
He pointed at a Numidian slave standing close by, wringing his hands. Sabra picked her way over to him.
“Did you find your master’s body?”
“Yes, oh—Priestess. Yes,” he said, lifting his hands and casting his head back to the night sky in supplication. “I heard someone running. Didn’t see who, but it sounded like bare feet.”
“So, another slave?”
He said nothing, just turned his head and stared at the body. Sabra sighed and went to Hanno.
“Summon the Guard, will you? I suppose I should go and tell my father.”