Cyrene
Jurian waited quietly as the people tried to make sense of what they saw. He could see their fear and confusion, the faint stirrings of hope that were too fragile to blossom.
“You defied Molech!” someone shouted suddenly. “You’ll bring his destruction on this city!”
Other cries shattered the silence, and the people stirred restlessly, staring at the group on the road with hostile suspicion. A woman pushed her way clear of the crowd, sobbing inconsolably. Jurian’s heart ached when she stretched out her hands to the girl in his arms. He carefully gave her the child’s body, sinking down to a crouch with her to clasp her around the shoulders as she wept.
“Father!” Sabra cried suddenly.
Jurian glanced up to see a man in a fine toga burst into the open street, running to meet her and folding her into a warm embrace.
“I was certain I’d lost you forever,” he murmured. “What happened?”
Sabra gestured to Jurian, and the man studied him curiously under lowered brows. Jurian gave him a few moments to gather his thoughts, but when he realized the man wasn’t going to speak, he turned to face the crowd.
“People of Cyrene!” he shouted, pointing at the dreaded hill. “Go and behold your god!”
They stared at him, stunned speechless. A few glanced up the hillside, but for one endless moment, no one dared to move. Then Sabra’s father straightened up and faced the path. Another man pushed free from the crowd and stepped up beside him with a hard challenging look.
“I’ll go with you so I can be sure you report the truth to the people,” he snapped.
The two men took torches and disappeared up the hill. The crowd waited in breathless, murmuring quiet, broken only by the sobs of the woman still weeping over her daughter. Hanno and Sabra both crouched beside her, trying in vain to comfort her.
He delights in death and laughs to see us suffer. Jurian shuddered, recalling Sabra’s words. What sort of being could be so capricious, so cruel? And how could anyone pay him the reverence owed to God? Thinking of that, Jurian turned back to the crowd, throat tight.
“Your Molech was no god,” he called. “You served a monster. You served a dark power, a being more powerful than you even imagined by calling him a god. But he was never worthy of your worship. He was never worthy of the innocent blood you shed in his name.”
A few moments later the two men reappeared, walking slowly and pale-faced back into the city. A murmur rippled through the crowd.
“It’s true,” Sabra’s father said, so quietly the people hushed of one accord to hear him.
“What did you see?” someone shouted.
“A lie,” the other man said.
“Dignianus—” Sabra’s father started, but the man held up his hand to cut him off.
“Don’t misunderstand me,” he said. “That god, that dragon…he was no more than a lie. False religion. No wonder Apollo was angry with us.”
Jurian saw Sabra bite her lip but she said nothing, and he only shook his head.
“How did you destroy him, stranger?” Sabra’s father asked. “He has plagued our city for over a decade, and you brought him down all by yourself? With just a sword?”
“Not with the sword,” Jurian said quietly.
“Then how—”
Jurian glanced at Sabra, giving her a little nod.
She tipped her head to regard him, and Jurian wondered briefly how she would explain it.
She said, “Not all the Legions of Rome could do what this man did on his own. Or…” She darted a quick look at him, smiling. “He would say he didn’t do it on his own, but he did it by the power of the signum he carried. The signum of a conqueror.”
“What conqueror? Was it the signum of the Emperor?”
“Diocletian has no power that wasn’t given him,” Jurian said. “I serve the One who gives power, not the one who borrows it.”
For a moment there was silence. Then, somewhere in the crowd, someone began to laugh…a laugh of pure relief. Then someone whooped and raised his hands over his head in a slow clap. The stunned stupor of the crowd dissolved into a sudden chaos of cheering, shouting, laughing. Even Hanno was standing with his head cast back to the sky and arms lifted, calling out something over and over again in Punic.
“What is he saying?” Jurian asked Sabra, who was watching the slave with faint amusement.
“He says, blessed the man.” When Jurian just frowned she laughed and laid a hand on his forearm. “It’s a prayer of praise,” she said. “He’s honoring you for your deed.”
“He’d do better not to praise me,” Jurian said quietly.
He folded his arms, watching the crowd dissolve before him. Nobody went back to their homes, though. They divided off into groups, some trickling up the hill in small clusters to see the dragon’s corpse for themselves, others lighting bonfires in the streets and bringing out food as if for a feast. The ritual musicians began to play again, but this time they left the harsh noise of their ritual songs and played a beautiful, haunting song that somehow caressed pain into joy.
Sabra’s father turned to her, taking her face in her hands. Jurian glanced away when he saw the tears streaming down his cheeks, but he couldn’t help overhearing his words.
“Can you ever forgive me, filia?” he asked. “I’ve done so much wrong by you. I’ve caused you so much pain…”
Sabra wrapped her arms around his neck and held him tight. “I forgive you,” she whispered. “And don’t blame yourself for sending me away. If I hadn’t gone to Rome, I wouldn’t have met Jurian, and we may never have been saved at all.”
He smiled and took her hands in his, kissing them fondly. Then he turned to Jurian, extending his arm to him. “I don’t know how to thank you, domine.”
“I’m no lord,” Jurian said, but he clasped the man’s arm warmly. “I’m not worthy of that title.”
“You delivered us from out of the mouth of our own destruction,” he said. “It may be we put ourselves there in the first place, but I’m sure none of us knew how to get back out again.”
“Just see that you don’t make the same mistake again,” Jurian said, his voice sterner than he expected.
He turned, walking away from the mayhem and all the noise. On the other side of the road, toward the city gates, everything was dark and quiet, and he found himself on the road leading out of the city. Near the gate he stopped and glanced back at the joyful chaos, then as he turned east again, he found himself face to face with Nikolaos.
“You!” he gasped. “But how…how can you be here?”
“You did well, Jurian,” Nikolaos said. “I’m only sad that you left the splinter of the Cross in that heart of darkness.”
Jurian didn’t bother to ask how Nikolaos knew that much, but he winced in regret. “I suppose I could dig it out again.”
“That heart is not its tomb,” Nikolaos said, regarding him keenly. “And life will rise from the ashes.”
“Nikolaos,” Jurian said, throat tight. “Menas…”
“Is far from you,” Nikolaos said. He clasped Jurian’s arm. “If you want to find him, you must be ready.”
“For what?”
“What you will face at the end.”
Jurian sighed and pressed his fingers against his forehead. “Why—” he started, but when he opened his eyes, the road was empty.
A moment later he heard a shuffle behind him and turned to find Sabra standing there, uncertain. She had taken off the garland and veil, and the wind had tugged some of her dark hair free of its ornate styling. Despite the cold night air she wasn’t shivering, but stood with one hand clasping the other’s upper arm, her head bowed to avoid his gaze. Jurian waited for her to speak, marveling at how anyone could look so impossibly strong and yet so vulnerable at the same time.
“And what about me, Jurian?” she asked finally.
He frowned. “What about you?”
“Can you forgive me for what I’ve done? Or do you despise me too much? I know you barely thought well of me before you discovered what I really was.” She lifted her eyes to his, holding him breathless for one long moment. “And now that you know…I could understand if you hated me.”
He took a step closer to her. “How can you think I would hate you?” he asked. “Do you think I don’t see what you’ve been through? What you’ve suffered? What you did, you did because you love your people.” He smiled down at her. “Somehow—impossibly—you served the darkness without losing yourself in it. And that is strength that I don’t think I’ll ever know.”
“I don’t understand it,” she said softly, shaking her head. “How can weakness be strength, and strength weakness?”
“Because,” Jurian said softly, taking her shoulders in his hands, “it’s when we’re weakest that love can be strongest. And it’s love that conquers, Sabra. Just love.”
She laughed softly, tipping her head back to study him. “Just love,” she repeated. “You’re an impossible man, do you know that? You and Menas. Just like Ayzebel was impossible. Your faith makes no sense, but it makes more sense than all the world.”