by Ted Dekker
Yeshua was dead? Talya blinked, not knowing what to think of this. But his mother would know. And Saba.
They were taking him to his mother and to Saba. He was suddenly overwhelmed by this knowledge. Tears sprang to his eyes, and seeing this, Arim quickly lifted him from the ground.
“You are safe now, Talya,” he whispered. “You are with Arim, protector of your mother and her son.”
And then, spinning with Talya on his hip, jabbing his finger at Kahil: “You see how you punish a blameless child? You shame all Thamud. We who love children! I find myself in the lair of a wolf who feeds on innocent lambs.”
“You speak boldly under the protection of your Nabataean escort,” Kahil said. “But even Petra has its price, my friend. You will all be dead before the moon is full, this I can promise you.”
“Do not call me friend!” Arim said, striding for his camel. “There will be no moon to light your darkness.”
“Enough, Arim!” Fahak said. “Maviah’s god will deal with him.”
“Oh?” Kahil said. “Is this god not dead?”
“Are not all gods dead?” Fahak croaked. “Yet Maviah, who flows with his power, will strike you down!”
“Enough of this!” one of the warriors from Petra snapped. “The queen awaits.”
Kahil lifted his hand toward the path. “By all means. Go.” He looked at Talya. “I’ll see you soon, little boy.”
Arim hoisted Talya up onto the couched camel, then mounted in front of him. Talya clung to his back as he prodded the beast to its feet. They were still talking, exchanging harsh words, but Arim’s comment about Kahil being a wolf who fed on lambs had returned his thoughts to the dream.
It was a serpent in Eden, not a wolf, but was there a difference? What did Kahil mean by saying they would be dead before the next full moon? It was just talk, of course—all men talked in such lofty ways. But in Talya’s dream the serpent had deceived the woman. The woman who looked like his mother.
“Pay him no mind,” Arim said. “You are safe with Arim, great warrior of the Nafud.”
Fahak raised his fist at Kahil. “May the gods curse you and all those who drink the blood of the Bedu! If not for Maviah’s mercy, you would be dead already.”
And then they were leaving, rocking on the backs of their camels.
Arim twisted in his saddle. “Do not worry, Talya. You will never see this creature again.” He lifted a finger. “Never!”
But I will see him, Talya thought. I will see the serpent in my dreams.
And when he fell asleep in their camp that night, he did.
Chapter Thirty
TWENTY DAYS. This is how long it would take them to bring Talya, I thought. Ten days to Dumah, and ten more to return unless they rode like the wind, collecting extra camels along the way to replace those that died from being pushed so hard.
But no…Twenty days. I wouldn’t allow myself to hope it would be less. I’d been in captivity here before, and I’d survived to encounter Yeshua’s power.
I hardly knew what awaited me this time. But for twenty days following my failure to raise Phasa, I occupied myself with one thing alone: hope.
Hope that Phasa’s illness wouldn’t worsen. Hope that Talya would come to find me alive. Hope that Saba had known the truth when he said a child would lead them.
They had placed me in a small room with a single window, one small bed, a stone table, and a narrow hall that led to a rudimentary bathing room. It wasn’t part of their dungeon, but here too I was utterly alone.
The servant who brought me food gave me no information about Saba other than to say he was in good health. Clearly, Shaquilath intended to punish me by separating me completely from the one soul who could offer me comfort.
I prayed without end, pacing and begging the silent room to speak to my heart. It never did. But what was twenty days? Only time to pass while I nursed my hope for salvation through my son.
And what if Talya couldn’t help Phasa? What other than his innocence and Saba’s word made me think he would succeed? But no…I couldn’t allow myself to think in those terms.
One day passed. Then five. Then ten. Then fifteen.
Then twenty without word from Shaquilath. Still, it might have taken longer to retrieve Talya. Saman might have objected or stalled. Trouble could have lengthened their journey. Maybe they’d been unable to find Arim. A dozen possibilities could have stretched the time.
I woke with a start on the twenty-third day to the sound of wailing from far beyond my walls. A chill washed down my spine and I hurried to the window that faced only desert, listening for the cause of that mourning.
Had Phasa died?
I could not think of it. This wailing might be for anyone of status. Or for a servant or a priest or even someone from afar. Anyone.
That night, guards came for me and ushered me from the room, offering no explanation. Hope swelled in my breast as we walked down the hall. I imagined Talya was finally here and in the very least I would see him. Once again I would hold my lamb in my arms, and if it was the last time, I would be satisfied to have those few moments with him.
But the guards didn’t take me into the inner chambers. Instead, they led me toward the back of the palace. Realizing that something was dreadfully wrong, I screamed out Shaquilath’s name and struggled against the strong hands that held my wrists.
A hard slap silenced me. Then they dragged me from the palace to the dungeons, where they dumped me in a small bleak cell with a straw floor.
For three days I paced, demanding to know something each time the guards came with food. They offered no words.
On the fourth day in that cell—twenty-seven days since I’d failed Phasa—the last of my hope drained from my bones and I sank to the floor, numb to the world.
It was the only way for me to cope.
And when that day became another, and another, and another week without a single word from Shaquilath or Saba or any of the guards, I gave up questioning and counting days and all of my imaginations either good or bad.
The brutal slaying of Yeshua haunted me always. Every detail was vividly etched upon my mind. But I could not allow myself to feel any more anger or anguish. Saba’s words called to me, but I pushed them away. If I hadn’t, my failure to follow the forgotten Way would crush me.
I could only survive. I ate, I washed with a pail of cold water, I slept, I stared at the wall and the ground and the torch flame outside my bars. I was alive and Talya might be as well, and that’s all I dared believe.
Every night was the same. I whispered a prayer for sight because I knew that I was blind, then I slowly fell into dreams of walking through the dark desert, calling for my son, who’d vanished into an invisible realm called Eden. Every night I had this same dream, which always ended the same way it started, without resolution or hope.
“Wake up…”
I opened my eyes one morning to a guard speaking to me. The latch on the barred door rattled, and I pushed myself up from the ground, still half-asleep.
Four guards stood outside my cell. One pushed the door wide and flung a clean tunic at me. “The queen calls for you.”
They were the first words I’d heard since being thrown in their dungeon. I stared at them, afraid to think.
The guard shoved his chin at the tunic.
“Dress yourself. They have brought your son.”
I DRESSED in the plain white tunic and tied the black sash hurriedly, uncaring that I was seen by the guards. I flew from the cell, demanding some water to wash my face, because I didn’t want Talya to see me in such a wretched condition. We stopped at a small bath on the way to the main chamber and I quickly splashed water on my face and tried to straighten my tangled hair. But I was overwhelmed with my need to see Talya. My appearance would have to do—I was his mother, not his queen.
The moment they opened the door to the king’s chamber of audience I rushed in, scanning the room for his small frame.
The queen stood on the pla
tform with arms crossed, pacing. Aretas was also there, seated on his throne, elbow on the chair’s arm, stroking his beard, watching me like a vulture.
And Saba, hurrying forward the moment he saw me. He was thinner perhaps, but clean and tall and dark. My heart leaped at the sight of him, watching me with longing eyes.
I turned, searched for my son, but I couldn’t see him.
“Where is he?” I croaked. Other than Aretas, Shaquilath, and Saba, only two others were in the room, both guards. The door behind me closed heavily, and I spun to face Shaquilath.
“Where is my son?”
“Stay back from her,” Shaquilath snapped, eyes on Saba.
He ignored her and reached me, dropping to one knee and taking my hand. Tears misted his eyes.
“You are safe.”
“Away from her!”
I knew by the intense bitterness in her voice that something was wrong. But I could not embrace more pain.
I looked into Saba’s eyes, grasping for his strength. “My tower.”
“My queen,” he said softly.
I nodded. “It will be all right.”
Only then did he stand, step to one side, and bow to Shaquilath.
I was accustomed to seeing the queen dressed in striking colors with sparkling jewelry, but today she wore only a gray tunic, and her feet were bare. The king was dressed in a plain white shirt and black trousers, though with boots.
It all came to me at once—the mourning I’d heard the day they’d moved me to the dungeon.
“Phasa…” I said.
“We burned her body on the mountain two weeks ago.”
I’d suspected, but my own torment had washed the thought from my mind. Hearing it now, my heart broke. Not only for Phasa and her mother, but for Talya, because I knew already that they would blame me for her death.
“I am so sorry for your loss. Any mother—”
“Silence!” Aretas thundered, rising. He glared at me. “Nasha, who was like a daughter to me, died in your father’s care two years ago. And now his daughter, whom I blessed, has killed Phasa, my only daughter…”
I was stunned by the harshness of his accusation.
“I did not make her ill, my king.”
“She was ill and now she is dead after your curse. What else am I to conclude? She was only ill! Now I am punished by Al-Uzza!”
I could have told him that his own priest might be the one to blame. I could have explained that all of his beliefs in gods who punished was false. I could have begged for understanding in the face of his absurd allegations. But his mind was too darkened by rage and mine too ravaged by sorrow.
“Talya…” I said.
Shaquilath bore down on me. “He was brought yesterday. The only reason both he and you are alive is because I gave my word to Kahil. I sent for your son over a month ago, as agreed, and Kahil came in person, offering to release him on the condition that he be the one to kill him should your son fail.”
Each word was a dagger.
My knees went weak. My mind was screaming with objection. But I could not falter now. The die was cast. Fate had struck its own course, even as it had with Yeshua.
“When?” I asked, voice thin and ragged.
“Kahil arrives in three days. Then, before all, you and I will watch your son die a horrible death.”
Saba stepped out, enraged. “She is a queen, he is the prince! The desert will not tolerate this!”
“The desert will embrace this, you fool!” Shaquilath shoved her finger at me. “She was the one to offer her son’s life if Phasa died! I only follow her own wish.”
Saba turned his head to me. “This is true?”
Not in so many words, but this was the result. It was me. I had sentenced my son to death!
Tears flooded my eyes.
Shaquilath lowered her arm, jaw firm, satisfied.
But now more came to me, like a fire from heaven itself. Yeshua had been betrayed to die in innocence, and now my lamb was to die by my betrayal of him. So then Yeshua’s words would come true. He had essentially said that my son’s fate would follow his own.
And Yeshua had been crucified. If he lived, it was not here, on this earth…So it would be with my son. My fingers trembled.
“Where is he?”
She turned her back to me and strode for the raised stage as her husband sank into his chair.
“He is bound and secured alone in a hole,” she said. “As are the slave and the old sheikh who came with him.”
Arim and Fahak? I stepped forward, tentative. “Let me see him. I beg you.”
“You will,” she snapped, turning back. “In three days’ time you may look into his eyes as Kahil takes his life.”
Shaquilath took a sharp breath, face twisted with hatred.
“You, on the other hand, are released to find your own misery. You will leave Petra and see the world that your son will never again see. Walk the desert he will never walk. Breathe the clean air knowing with each breath that he will never again breathe. And on the morning of the third day you will return of your own will, because no mother will abandon her son in his darkest hour.”
The thought of leaving Petra—this tomb that held my son—terrified me. She wanted me to come to his death of my own will, knowing it would torment me more than being forced to watch.
“And if you try to stop Kahil before he arrives,” she said, “I will authorize the immediate death of all the orphans still in Dumah. Then I will send an army to crush the rest of your people. Do you understand this?”
For a long time, I stared at her, unable to think straight.
“Answer me!”
“Yes,” I said.
She frowned. “Three days.”
Aretas spoke to the guards. “Take them both to the desert with a camel and bread. Spread word throughout the city—the one who killed Phasa, Petra’s beloved child, will see her own die before all in the arena in three days’ time.”
Chapter Thirty-One
FOR TWO DAYS Saba and I wasted in the desert east of Petra, where smooth, rolling sands met the base of a large red cliff. From the top of that cliff, we could see endless dunes south, in the direction of the deep deserts of Arabia. The massive rock face protected us from the wind and gave us shade from the high sun in the heat of the day. The cold nights showed us stars that twinkled high above, unmovable in all their distant glory, and then the sun rose to offer us warmth.
It was perfect.
It was death.
For two days, I wept on Saba’s shoulder and in his arms, overcome with the finality of our predicament.
He told me how he had been held in a cell also, but that cell meant nothing to him. His mind was only on me and on Talya, fearing for our safety. We were both alive, and for this, he was grateful.
He would not accept Talya’s fate, you see? Nor ours. Not for those first two days. He was too stubborn. He was like the cliff above us, always there for me and for Talya and for himself. His faith could not bend; his heart pumped certainty through his veins.
He spoke little because he knew that words could no longer console me. And he could offer me no power to see because his own sight was gone. He only clung rigidly to his belief that Yeshua could not have lied to us. When the time came, we would know what to do.
Of course, the time had already come and gone.
Yeshua himself had already come and gone.
The warrior I had once known in Saba was gone, replaced by this tower of rock at my side.
We both knew there was no way to save Talya, even with the sword.
I staggered up the dune east of us on the second day, and there I fell to my knees and wailed at the sky, demanding the Father’s mercy. When Saba came to comfort me I ignored him, because I already knew all of his answers. There was nothing new to say, nothing new to ask.
Neither the sun above nor the sands beneath were moved by my tears or my words. They, like the Law of Moses, only accused me. The world was set, as was fate.
/>
In the end we would all die. So then, let me die now.
I left that dune a shell of the woman I had once been, finally drained of my humanity. But truly, I had been drained at Golgotha, when Yeshua died.
That afternoon I kept to myself, silent and numb as Saba quietly tended to our needs, offering only his presence because I could not hear his words.
But on that last night, as I lay on my side, dumbly gazing into our small fire, I let myself hear him again.
“We have to wake before dawn to be in Petra by morning,” I said.
“I will wake us.”
I swallowed my bitterness. “We return to the very arena where I had power. Why must we always lose what we find in this life, Saba, round and round, returning to our own vomit, like dogs? Why did even Yeshua fail? Why, if now my son must share his fate?”
Saba was seated by my head, and his answer was what I expected of him, spoken in a low, sure tone.
“He did not fail. We only misunderstood his teaching that he would not die, but this does not mean that the sovereign realm is not real.”
“Then his kingdom is like all religions,” I said, staring at the flames. “They all offer escape from the suffering in the afterlife by appeasing a deity far away, but give us nothing for this life. This wasn’t his teaching.”
He wasn’t quick to respond.
“His power is still in the air, even now. I’ve seen too much of it. I’ve felt it and heard it. In seeing him, we have seen the Father.”
“Fine. So then we are saved in the afterlife. But there is no more power to see peace in the midst of the storms or to move the mountain now. Is there, Saba?”
It was an empty statement, not a question. But Saba was a rock.
“There is power, Maviah.”
“Then show me. Save Talya.”
“We show Yeshua’s power by loving the way he loved, without condition. By giving to those in need, because giving is receiving. By judging no man, because in judging we only judge ourselves—this is for God alone. By being light in the darkness lest we become blind. By—”
