EPHER

The assault continued on the walls of Beth Eloh—furious, brutal, unrelenting. Beth Eloh was perhaps the most fortified city in the world. Millennia of invasions from every land around them had hardened Beth Eloh, each king fighting a war, each king adding new turrets and battlements and bricks to the walls. And yet in thousands of years, Zohar's capital had never faced an enemy like this—the legions of the greatest empire the world had ever seen, unleashing all their wrath.

Epher fought on the walls. For days and nights he fought. The enemy's catapults hurled boulders onto the battlements, cracked merlons, and scattered bricks and shards of stone. Their flaming arrows flew into the city, and homes burned. Their trebuchets threw rotten animal carcasses, spreading disease through the streets. Their siege towers kept coming, spilling legionaries onto the walls. Twice a handful of legionaries made it into the city, butchering women and children before the Zoharite warriors cut them down.

"We can't hold them back for much longer," Ramael said, firing arrow after arrow. Their supply was running low. Already men were rushing through the city, cutting down trees, collecting wooden furniture, and constructing more arrows. But wood was rare in this city, metal even rarer. Soon they would be reduced to firing mere sharpened sticks, then only sling stones, then simply tossing bricks.

"We'll hold them back for as long as we can," Epher said, firing arrows too.

Between his shifts on the wall, Epher had been visiting Avinasi in the palace, trying to glean knowledge from her Sight. But the old lumer kept fading, ravaged by age, her mind dwindling, her words babbling. She was only rarely lucid, and it had become nearly impossible for Epher to understand what she saw in the light. But he understood that war raged in Aelar, that barbarous tribes were attacking the walls, and that Prince Seneca and Princess Valentina were conducting their own wars of conquest. Already the legions in Cadom and Kalintia, Avinasi had said in a rare moment of lucidity, had been withdrawn to Aelar.

If we only harry them for longer, Epher thought, if we can bleed them, make them pay to take this city, Aelar will see Zohar as a war they cannot afford. Tirus will have to withdraw his men to fight the greater war at home.

The legions still covered the mountainsides, century by century of infantrymen, lines of archers, horses, siege towers, catapults. Here was an army like a nation with one purpose—to shatter Zohar. Epher looked behind him at the city of Beth Eloh. The buildings crowded together, so close they hid the streets that snaked between them, covering this plateau high upon the mountains. The Mount of Cedars rose in the city's center, its highest crest, overlooking the desert. The Temple shone there. Between this wall and that Temple's glory lay misery. Scattered fires, ignited by the enemy's flaming arrows, still burned. Houses, silos, and wells lay shattered, felled by boulders hurled over the walls. Everywhere, workers were digging graves; hundreds had already perished within the city.

But hundreds of thousands will die if these walls fall, Epher knew.

Along with his worry about the legions dwelled a deeper, colder fear.

And there is him. He who walks in the shadows of our city.

Epher stared at the courtyards and alleyways along the inner side of the walls. Pavilions had been raised to treat the ill. Many houses here, pressed up against the wall and once homes to families, had been repurposed as houses of healing. Hundreds across the city had contracted the Gray Death, the illness that raised ashen sores, hiding the skin and twisting the body. In the camps they spoke of him—the Bringer of Disease—a cursed man, wrapped in black robes, his skin gray and furrowed. In some stories, his fingers were tipped with red; in others he sprouted claws. In some stories, his eyes were pure black, no white around the iris; in others he had the yellow eyes of a snake. Epher had never seen the man. Those who claimed to have seen him spoke only of brief images, flickers, a figure hunched over a sleeping soldier or child, then vanishing into shadows. All he visited, they claimed, fell to the illness. Epher had offered a reward of a hundred golden coins to anyone who brought him this man. The prize was still unclaimed.

A repha, some called him. A demon from Ashael, the underground realm of evil that appeared in ancient lore.

Some gave him a different name.

The adversary. Epher shuddered. The antithesis of Eloh. A mythical figure said to be as mighty as Eloh himself, fully evil, fully corrupt, ever the enemy of God. Epher did not know if he believed those stories. In ancient lore, there were only a handful of references to the adversary, vague, brief, a few words in old scrolls. And yet here this man—ghostly, demonic—walked in his city, and the people feared him more than the legions outside.

Epher turned away from the city, shaking his head. Foolishness. The men were scared, and fear led to visions, to superstition. Epher would not concern himself with ghost stories. A very real enemy spread outside, hammering at his city. He would focus on fighting this enemy of flesh, not a ghost of shadows.

A boulder flew from the enemy catapults. Epher scurried aside along the wall, grimacing. The boulder slammed into a tower nearby, cracking bricks and sending shards of stone into the archer's nest. The man screamed and fell, limbs snapping. Another archer rose to replace him. Across the wall, Zoharites fired flaming arrows, trying to hit the catapult. A siege tower diverted their attention, rolling toward the walls. The city defenders ran, hurling clay jugs full of flame, trying to burn the wooden structure.

When night fell, Epher walked among his troops in the city. He spoke with the wounded, the weary, young men and women—some no older than boys—and elders with gray hair. Most were not professional soldiers. Most of Zohar's trained soldiers had perished in the wars between Yohanan and Shefael and the invasions of Seneca and Porcia. Here were shepherds and farmers from across the countryside. Bakers. Builders. Smiths. Scribes. They wore the armor of their fallen parents, siblings, and children. Their blades were chipped, their helmets wobbly, but their eyes were brave. They filled the courtyards and streets, waiting for their shifts on the walls, waiting for the enemy to break in.

"Stay strong, friends," Epher told them. "Your king fights with you."

Eloh fights with you, he wanted to add, but he could not. He could not believe the truth of that, not anymore. Many in the city claimed that God fought with Zohar, and perhaps that had been true centuries ago. It was hard for Epher to believe that God still blessed them, that he existed at all. No kind god would allow this to happen—allow Jerael, a noble man, to be crucified, allow Shiloh, a kind and pious woman, to suffer death in the Temple, allow myriads to perish across the kingdom. If there was any great, invisible force acting in this city, it was a cruel one, not a blessed god but a demon of vengeance.

Again Epher's mind strayed to the prophets he had heard in the Valley of Ashes.

The children of Zohar have sinned!

The daughters of Beth Eloh have prostituted themselves!

God shall punish this city with destruction and vengeance!

The words of madmen, perhaps. Yet words that would not leave Epher's mind.

He walked along the wall and down the alleyways, approaching one of the pavilions raised for the ill. Here, beneath the awnings, those stricken with the Gray Death lay on rugs. Healers moved among them, pouring water into parched mouths, placing damp cloths on oozing brows, praying for healing from a god that would not answer. Epher walked among them. His guards objected, calling for him to stay back from the disease, but Epher would not heed them. He clasped the bloated, scaly hands of the ill, praying with them.

It was here, in these houses of healing, that he found Maya.

His sister knelt above a child. The gray scabs and sores covered the child; Epher could not tell if it was boy or girl. Maya's head was lowered, her curly hair hiding her face. When Epher approached, she looked up at him, eyes sunken and damp.

"I could not save him," she whispered. "I tried to heal him, to cast back the darkness inside him, but . . . it destroyed him."

For an instant Epher was sure that Maya too was stricken with the illness; her skin was ashen, her cheeks gaunt. But no sores covered her. Deep weariness and grief were claiming her. She was only a child, only sixteen years old, barely old enough for marriage. When she had first left Gefen, heading east to find aid, she had looked even younger, a girl with plump cheeks elders loved to pinch, with round eyes full of hope, with a bounce to her step and light to her smile. Now Maya looked years older, too thin, skin peeling where the sun had burned her, the ghosts of the dead dancing in her brown eyes.

He took her hand and helped her stand up. "How long since you slept, Maya?"

She blinked. "I feel like I've been asleep for months. I feel like I'm trapped in a dream."

He held her hand. "You must get some real sleep. This war might last for weeks, even months. Find a chamber in the houses along the road. Rest."

"I'll heal a few more," she said. "Then I'll sleep."

He leaned down and peered into her eyes. "Promise me, Maya. Double promise." These were the words he would speak in their childhood back on Pine Hill, making silly requests—to save him a slice of fig cake or keep secret a planned prank on Ofeer.

Maya smiled wanly. She remembered. She crossed her fingers on both hands. "Double promise."

When Epher turned to leave, Maya tugged his arm, pulling him back toward her.

"Epher," she said, "will we ever see it again? The villa on Pine Hill? Do you think we'll ever live there again, you and me, Koren, Atalia, Ofeer? That we'll ever have Restday meals again under the painting of elephants, plant cyclamens in the garden, and run down to the sea?"

He held her close, stroking her hair. "I don't know, Maya. Let's focus on surviving here now. But I believe that our siblings are still alive. Let that give us hope in a city of so little hope."

She nodded, head lowered. Epher left her there, for he too needed rest. He had not slept all of last night, fighting a siege tower that had made its way to the wall. Walking back between the crowded houses, he saw Olive on the battlements, vacating her arrowslit for another soldier.

"Yeah, I back and kill more you cunts later!" Olive shouted over her shoulder toward the enemy. "I going shoot arrows into your fucking asses! Come on! Come into city and I chop off your balls and feed you them!"

Grumbling, sweat on her brow, Olive trudged down the stairs and off the wall. She had been up there firing arrows for hours. She saw Epher, a grin split her sooty face, and she waved. A gash bled on her arm, perhaps the wound of a shattered brick or a bold legionary's arrow.

"Hello, Epher," she said. "You look like shit. You not kill anyone in a while, that why."

He looked at her arm and winced. "That looks deep. Go see Maya. She'll heal you."

"Fuck that." Olive shook her head and spat. "Only scratch. Maya heal others." A yawn stretched her face. "Quick nap before we kill more eagles?"

He nodded and took her hand in his. They made their way along the street until they found a vacant chamber in the houses the army had taken over. As they unstrapped their armor, Olive kept babbling on and on about those she had killed.

"One siege tower come right up to me," she said. "I burn it. I burn the soldiers inside!" She snarled and whipped her sword around the chamber, forcing Epher to leap back. "I cut man open. He try stab me. I break his armor. I cut him!" She grinned widely, too widely, showing many teeth. "Then I shoot more arrows. Force them back. Another man climb, but I shove him off. Fuck eagles. Fuck them! They cannot beat us. We cut them, we—"

"Olive!" He grabbed her. She was weeping now, even as she grinned. Her tears rolled, and her body shook, but still she talked of her conquests.

"I kill them, Epher. I kill so many. I'm strong. I'm brave. I kill them. I . . ." Her words faded into sobs.

For a long time, he held her against him as she wept, stroking her hair, kissing her forehead.

"It'll be all right," he whispered.

She sniffed and looked up at him. "It won't. Nothing be all right. I scared, Epher. I so scared. I dream at night that . . . that we die. Not in battle, not brave, but in darkness. Cowering. Afraid. And I is so afraid."

"Hope is but a single candle in the night," he told her. "But that candle is still blessed, and its light still guides us onward. So long as there is light, we won't despair." He placed a finger under her chin and kissed her lips. "Will you still walk with me through these shadows?"

"Always!" She held her head high and clasped his hands. "Epher, marry me."

He nodded. "Of course I will."

"That not what I mean. I mean—marry me now. Tonight. Here in house. Marry me because I scared we die tomorrow. And if we die, I want die with my husband."

And so they found a priest, a broad man with somber eyes, a black beard, and dusty hands, a man who had spent all day burying the dead. And so in this home, wounded, afraid, the sounds of battle rising outside, Epher and Olive wed. No musicians played harps and lyres for the wedding of their king. No maidens tossed almond blossoms or wove flowers in their hair. No feasts were cooked, no dancers performed, no crowds spilled forth their adulation. They had no altar, no garden, no glittering hall of light. They had this chamber of shadows. They had these ragged tunics and bandages. They had each other, their love, their hands clasped together.

Countless worries raced through Epher's mind—about the legions outside the walls, about the demon in the city, about Maya's despair, about his other siblings, still lost in the world. But for here, now, just a few brief moments in a war—he focused on Olive alone, and she was all his world.

"If I forget you, Beth Eloh, may I forget my right arm," he uttered the ancient prayer. "If I forget you, city of gold and copper and light, may I forget all love and home. Hear, O Zohar! Ours is the light." He touched her cheek. "That is the prayer all Zoharites speak on their wedding days. I've always thought it strange that, when marrying, we should speak not of our spouse but of our holy city. Today this holy city is besieged, and all her walls threaten to fall. But here, for but a single moment, I forget Beth Eloh, and I love only you, my wife, my Olive."

They kissed in shadows, candles burning around them.

That night, the sounds of battle continued outside; this house stood just by the city wall. As arrows whistled, men shouted, and boulders slammed into battlements, Epher made love to his wife. She lay beneath him, moaning, eyes closed, limbs wrapped around him. It was a fierce, almost harsh lovemaking, not the luxurious love they knew from better days; tonight they fucked with an urgency they had never known, all sweat and blood, her teeth biting his shoulder, his hands nearly crushing hers, until they both climaxed.

He lay on his back on the bed, his bandages damp with sweat. He held her against him, and she cried softly.

"Why do you cry?" he whispered and kissed her cheek.

She held his hand. "Because I happy. Because I love you."

But those were not tears of joy, Epher saw. They were tears of grief—that this would end, that they would lose everything in the fire.

They slept for a few hours, holding each other, the shouts and din from outside waking them every few moments. Before dawn, they rose together, put on their armor, and returned to the war. They fought on. Husband and wife, king and queen, against the might of an empire.