Libya
Jurian woke some hours later, disoriented and numb in mind and body. The sun was high overhead, and for a moment Jurian panicked. How long had he slept? Was it morning still, or already afternoon? Then the anxiety faded and he slumped back against the log. He didn’t even know what he meant to do, now. Go after Menas? Try to find Eva? Go and challenge a dragon destined to kill him?
He pressed his hands against his eyes and groaned. Obviously he couldn’t sit there against that log forever. His hands drifted over the length of the spear again, and suddenly he stopped and held it out in a pool of sunlight. Nikolaos had done something to the spiculum in Myra. Menas was supposed to give it to him “at the right time,” but Menas hadn’t had a chance.
“Now is as good a time as any, I suppose,” Jurian muttered.
He twisted the pole back and forth, but the wood was unbroken and smooth, weathered by constant handling and exposure to the elements. With a grimace he turned to the tarnished spearhead. Obviously Nikolaos hadn’t put the spearhead on—it was much too old and worn to be a gift for anyone. But as he examined it, he twisted it a little and the metal shifted in response. He frowned and twisted harder, and all at once the spearhead snapped off. Jurian cursed under his breath, afraid he’d broken the thing, but as he lifted the spearhead, something slipped out of its cavity. He caught it deftly and frowned.
It was a piece of delicate parchment, far finer than anything he had ever seen, and on the back it was sealed to something with a bit of white wax. He turned it over and peered at the object. It looked like a splinter of cedar wood, barely the length of his smallest knuckle and no thicker than his bowstring. One end was stained dark by something that looked suspiciously like blood. He frowned and flipped the paper over to read the tiny Latin text inscribed on it.
Jurian—hail! You stand at a crossroads. Your night of agony has passed, but the long journey is only beginning. Have faith. Victory is not won by great deeds or strength, but by quiet, immovable fortitude that never falters. This splinter of wood was carried to Cyrene embedded in the palm of a man named Simon, a Cyrenean who was forced to bear the Cross with ICHTHUS. Now it is for you to carry up the hill of sacrifice. I am praying for you, my son, at this very moment. Godspeed, and peace to you.
Jurian’s grip faltered on the parchment. He flipped it back over and stared at the splinter, his heart hammering painfully in his chest. Slowly, tentatively, he moved his finger to brush the fragment of wood. A shock tore through him, throwing him back blinded and winded. His blood raced with pain or power, and for a few long moments he just leaned against the log with his eyes closed, trying to calm the frantic pace of his heart.
When he could move again, he tucked the parchment back inside the spearhead, careful to avoid touching the wood again. He secured the spearhead to its shaft, hoping the blade wouldn’t fall off. But a spiculum wasn’t meant for multiple uses. He would carry it with him, and if he had the chance to use it, he would have only one chance to use it.
Jurian sat quietly for a long time once he’d fitted the spear back together. In his mind he remembered the story of the Christ, crucified by the Romans. It was the one story his mother had told him when he was quite small that he had never forgotten. The whips. The thorns. The spit. Women crying in the streets. The dusty road. The heavy cross. Simon the Cyrenean. Nails. The spear. Blood. Water. Love.
Love.
For love He had endured the impossible without complaint. And if Jurian was to be His eques, and if he was supposed to carry His Cross as his banner…could he expect to face anything other than this—to suffer, to face a bloody death, to die victorious?
He bent his head, whispering to the forest, “I don’t know what to do.”
You trust too much in yourself.
With Marcellinus’ words echoing in his thoughts, Jurian got to his feet and picked up the spear, tugging Menas’ sarcina free of the brambles. He concealed the spear tip under the bundle again, and, letting his breath out, set off into the forest.
He had walked for what felt like hours when he realized that he had assumed it was already afternoon. But as the sun finally began to creep lower in the sky, he discovered his mistake—it had still been late morning when he started out. He was headed northwest. With a muttered curse he swung around and tried to trace his way back the way he had come.
After losing sight of the sun altogether in the thickest part of the forest, Jurian finally caught a scent of char on the wind, the last faint evidence of the previous night’s campfire. His senses sharpened and he focused on the smell, ignoring the sun and everything else that tried to confuse him. He brushed his fingers over a broken twig, spotted a streak of mud where his shoe had slipped. All at once the trees gave way, and he found himself once more on the edge of the camp.
In the middle, kneeling over the cold ashes and weeping, was a man.
Jurian stared at him. The stranger couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than him, but his head was shaved and a slave’s collar around his thick neck glinted dully in the fractured light. But what puzzled Jurian more than anything was the feeling of familiarity. He recognized the man. Where had he seen him before?
The memory flashed over him at once—the bustling docks of Portus, Eva’s insistence on going with them…a man shouting from the crowds.
He stalked from the undergrowth, crossing the camp in two strides and grabbing the man’s shoulder to twist him around. The man gave a cry of surprise and fell back onto the ground, staring up at Jurian wide-eyed. Then his eyes darted over the clearing, panicked.
“Where is she?” he whispered in broken Latin.
“You’ve been following us, haven’t you?” Jurian asked, ignoring his question. “I saw you in Portus. And I think Eva saw you in Carthage too. What is your business with us?”
The slave straightened up, keeping a wary eye on Jurian. “Forgive me,” he said. “I don’t speak Latin.”
Jurian let his breath hiss out, then gestured emphatically between himself and the slave. “I saw you in Rome. Rome?”
“Yes.”
“You followed us here?”
“I go to Cyrene. You lost her. Where is she? Is she in Cyrene?”
He could only mean Eva, so Jurian shrugged and said, “I suppose that’s where she’s gone. She disappeared last night. I haven’t seen her since.”
The man seemed to have a hard time following that. He frowned and rubbed his jaw, eyeing Jurian with a look somewhere between suspicion and hope.
“I must save my mistress,” he whispered. “You go to Cyrene? Come with me.”
Jurian hesitated. He wondered if the slave and Eva served the same mistress; curiosity prickled in his mind, wondering what danger she was in. If she had something to do with the dragon in the hills…perhaps he could help the slave along the way. He nodded and held out his hand to the man, pulling him to his feet.
“All right, I’ll come with you. My name is Jurian, by the way.”
The man grinned. “I am Hanno.”
He turned and struck off into the woods, walking so quickly that Jurian had to jog to catch up with him. After a few miles, Jurian was grateful for the slave’s company—Hanno seemed to have an uncanny sense of direction and a keen awareness of the landscape. He led Jurian around the most treacherous stretches of land, through the sparsest parts of the forest, and finally, as the sun was starting to set, they stepped out of the trees to look down at the city of Cyrene.
Acenith brought Sabra’s ritual feast in the late afternoon, and for a while she stood and watched as Sabra slowly ate the food.
“That’s a feast, is it? Looks like fasting rations to me,” she remarked.
Sabra glanced up at her. She’d never spoken to anyone during the meal, and Acenith seemed to understand that, because she bobbed her head and retreated to the far end of the room. As soon as she had finished eating, Sabra stood and beckoned her.
“I need you to do two more things,” she said. “I need you to find a child who is willing to come with me. Boy or girl, but I would prefer a girl. She must be very brave and willing to face the unseeable. All right? And I need to send slaves out into the city to act as messengers. Tell all the people to come here to the palace instead of to the Temple of the god. I will address them from here.”
Acenith nodded and withdrew, looking so pale Sabra feared she would faint on the way. As soon as the woman had gone, Sabra pulled off the slave’s tunic and palla she’d been wearing, and washed herself as best she could with the jug of water Acenith had left for her. Then she slipped into her mother’s white wedding tunic.
It fell a little long; her mother must have been a few inches taller, but Sabra belted it as best she could with the plain corded belt and the white-woven girdle with its ornate knot. The tunic was beautifully made of white linen, embroidered and beaded all along the neckline and hem with pearls and cut glass that caught the light. She buckled her beaded priestess sandals on, her heart twisting strangely at the sound of the tinkling bells. Acenith had already styled her hair in the fashion of Roman brides, but Sabra didn’t drape the silk veil over her head just yet.
She studied herself in the bronze mirror, frowning. She’d always assumed that she would never wear a bride’s tunic. It certainly had never occurred to her that she would wear it on the night she went to die.
Her stomach curled. For so long now, the idea of dying had been so far away, so abstract. She dealt with death regularly, but never her own. Was this how all those children had felt, while she was dressing them up for their sacrifice? She couldn’t even comprehend the depth of the dread and revulsion she felt, every fiber of her being recoiling from the thought of death. In a few hours, it would all be over.
In a few hours, Sabra would no longer exist.
And she wouldn’t even have the satisfaction of knowing if her sacrifice had been effective. Perhaps she would die, and the god would turn and destroy the whole city anyway, and everything would have been for nothing.
Don’t think like that. Not now. You have to believe.
Believe what you like. The god does not bow to your whims and desires.
She shuddered and turned away from the mirror. Acenith returned a moment later, leading a young girl by the hand. The girl must have been at least thirteen, tall for her age with luminous dark eyes and a look on her face that the greatest Stoic philosophers would have admired.
“Mistress, this is Flavia,” Acenith said. “She is willing to serve you tonight.”
“Are you brave enough?” Sabra asked, putting an edge to her voice. This girl wasn’t one of her victims, and she wasn’t a child like Elissa. She didn’t need placating; she needed certitude.
Flavia, to her credit, met her gaze with equal intensity. “I’m willing to do what you need.”
“To walk up the hill of bones with me? To turn away and leave me to die?”
The girl swallowed. “Yes.”
“Very well. Acenith, is everyone here?”
“Many are. Some are still coming in.”
“I’ll go now. It’s getting late. Flavia, there on the bed are my veil and the wreath of flowers. Carry them for me.”
The girl went silently to pick them up, her fingers resting briefly on the white asphodel flowers. Sabra drew a deep breath and smiled at Acenith.
“Where is my father?”
“He’s in his tablinum, mistress. He stays there under guard most days.”
“Under guard?”
“For his own protection. People have sworn to kill him if he shows himself.”
Sabra swallowed. “Very well.”
She left the chamber and walked slowly across the peristyle. Her throat burned. Everywhere she looked she saw memories of her life; walking with Hanno, playing ball with Elissa, disappointing the Legion Tribune. So many hours she had spent in that courtyard, staring at the stars and listening to the fountain. And she would never see it again. She let her hand brush the tall pillars as she passed them one by one, her fingers touching the pedestals of the statues in between each of them.
As she came into the atrium, she heard the noise of the uneasy crowd gathering on the steps outside. They obviously didn’t know why they had been summoned away from the Temple. They probably assumed it was some new impiety concocted by her father. She would put it all aright. Her father wouldn’t need to live in fear any more. Her city wouldn’t need to live in fear any more.
“What in the name of all the gods is going on out there?” someone cried behind her, and Sabra froze.
“No,” she whispered. “Stay inside. Don’t come and see me now…”
But it was too late. The curtain door of the tablinum swung open, and Sabra’s father strode out, only to stop, paralyzed, as his gaze fell on her.
“Sabra…what…”
“Don’t blame Hanno,” she said. “He tried to stop me. I tried to get Rome to help us, but no one will come. No one will save us, but I can. And nothing you could say will stop me now.”
“Sabra…please.”
The grief in that one word stung Sabra to the core of her heart, and her eyes burned with tears. Her father stepped closer to her until he could reach out and take her hands.
“I wanted to save you from this,” he murmured.
“I know,” she said. “I know you love me. Now let me save them, because I love them.”
She could tell he was doing everything in his power not to break down in front of her. He kept his expression rigidly neutral, but it was a fragile thing. She knew that what she was about to do would crack that veneer, but she couldn’t go into the darkness if she didn’t.
She leaned in and kissed his cheek, and whispered, “Father, I love you more than anything. It’s you I want to save most of all.”
She turned away without looking at him, and tried not to hear the sound of his tears as she strode out of the palace. As soon as she appeared in the lamplight at the top of the steps, the crowd erupted. She couldn’t tell if the cries were of dismay or anger or joy. On one level, it didn’t even matter.
“People of Cyrene!” she called, her voice silencing the crowd at once. “I know that these have been dark days. They have been days of confusion, and bitter strife, of fear and suspicion. I know you have been bowed under the weight of so many innocent deaths, and bowed still further under the weight of so much fear of divine punishment.” She paused, then, lowering her voice, she said, “I am going to end it all tonight. You see me here in a bride’s raiment, in a victim’s mantle. I cannot bear to see you all suffer. If I can save you by my blood, I will willingly, gladly, shed every single drop of it.”
She took a breath and scanned the crowd that now stared in dumbfounded silence at her. Some of the women were weeping, and even some of the men.
“All of you who have suffered the loss of a child,” she said, “all of you who have suffered with them, suffer now with my father, and do not blame him for what he did. He did what he thought the god wanted. You know he would lay down his life for Cyrene. I’ve asked to have that privilege for myself. You came out tonight to honor a victim’s path into the hill. Please, if you are willing, be a light for mine.”
One of the men standing closest to the palace came up the steps, staring at Sabra long and hard. At the last moment he bowed, and handed his unlit torch to one of the slaves gathered on the porch. The slave lit it and handed it back to him, and one by one the torches and candles flickered to life until the whole city gleamed.
Sabra glanced over her shoulder at Flavia and nodded, and the girl reached up to lay the veil over her head and fix it in place with the wreath of flowers. Sabra tightened her hands in knots to keep them from trembling, but she was afraid to breathe too deeply. As soon as she was ready, she reached to her belt and removed the chain she had fastened there for the time being.
“Flavia, I need you to carry this for me,” she said, and handed it to the girl.
Flavia took it, her hands shaking just a little.
Smart girl, Sabra thought. Only a fool wouldn’t be afraid at a time like this.
Somewhere in the distance the musicians began to play, the shrill wail of the flutes echoing the terror in her mind, the frantic drums matching the beat of her heart.