The End of the Magi

by Patrick W. Carr

  “A dream of the voice of God.” Hakam paused, but the lot was cast. There was no way to keep Herod from the whole truth now. Hakam’s voice sharpened until it cut the air like a Roman gladius. “We have come searching for the one who has been born king of the Hebrews. We have seen His star in the east and have followed it here that we may worship Him.”

  Myrad couldn’t breathe, and sudden spots swam in his vision. The fool had just sentenced them all to death.

  Herod’s laughter, caustic and tinged with physical distress, filled the courtyard. “And this is the truth you thought to keep from me? By the time the child is grown, I will be dead.” His laughter scaled upward until it echoed among the buildings. “I wish your god luck in finding one who can wrest Judea from the grip of Rome.” Then his mirth softened and he became dismissive, waving away the magi and Walagash’s company. “Come, my guests, let us eat and celebrate the peace, however temporary, between our kingdoms.”

  Myrad and the others were escorted to an area to one side, where servants brought them dishes of food and wineskins. After a few moments, the tension in Herod’s courtyard eased and Myrad was able to breathe freely again. The meal stretched for hours into the evening, the Romans showing no signs of retiring.

  At one point during the meal, Myrad glanced toward the dais only to find it empty. “He’s gone,” he said to Masista.

  The magus nodded. “The king left an hour ago.”

  Despite his dislike of the man, Myrad found himself seeking Masista’s reassurance. “Are we in danger?”

  The magus’s smile held none of its usual superiority. “We were always in danger, but your friend Hakam has made sure that Herod sees us as an enemy.”

  At the mention of Herod’s name, a centurion emerged from the crowd to address them at their table in Latin. The only word Myrad understood was Herod.

  Masista stood, signaling Yehudah, Hakam, and Myrad to follow him. “King Herod desires to speak with us privately.” When Walagash and the guards moved to rise, he held out a hand. “He bids the rest of you to finish enjoying your meal. He requires only the magi.”

  “My own astronomers have said nothing to me of this star,” Herod began. He was perched on a thickly padded throne, his body slanted forward. Braziers heated the room to a stifling degree. Already Myrad could feel the sweat rolling down his neck and into his tunic.

  “Only certain magi can see it,” Hakam said.

  “Ah. Of course,” Herod mocked. “Tell me, how long ago did you first receive this so-called vision?”

  Now, after the damage was done, Hakam demurred from answering. He turned to look at Myrad. Everyone else in the room did the same.

  “A bit over a year ago, Your Majesty,” Myrad said.

  “And do you know where the child is?”

  Myrad shook his head. “Not yet, Your Majesty. The star keeps moving.”

  “How inconvenient.” Herod held Myrad’s gaze for a long moment, taking his measure, then leaned back finally. “Take your report back to Queen Musa. Her goodwill is important to the Roman Empire. As for your child and his star, you may find that when you’re as close to riding with Charon as I am, your priorities change. I’ve taken steps to craft a certain reputation, but now I find myself with a different perspective.” He took a shuddering breath as another spasm of pain contorted his face. “When you have found the child, bring your report back to me so that I may worship him as well.”

  Even Hakam had sense enough to bow. With a clap of the king’s hands, their escort formed up around them and escorted them back to the courtyard where they were reunited with their party. They retraced their steps to mount their horses, and the Romans led them back outside the walls of the City of David. They headed west, descending toward the floor of the valley until they came to a fork in the road. There, the centurion issued orders to his men to disassemble. With a nod to the magi, he prepared to depart.

  “Centurion,” Masista called after him. When the Roman turned, Masista pointed toward the city. “Where might we find an inn to accommodate us?”

  “There’s an inn along the road to Lydda, at the northwest end of the valley.”

  “Will they have room for all of us?”

  The centurion nodded. “It’s large enough to hold you, and we’re in between holy days. There should be room enough for your party.”

  The soldiers and the centurion melted away into the darkness, taking the west fork of the road.

  “What do we do now?” Myrad asked Yehudah.

  Masista spoke first. “Exactly what the centurion said.”

  Hakam drew breath to object, but Masista interrupted, cutting the air with one hand. He lowered his voice and echoed, “Exactly what the centurion said.”

  When Walagash and Yehudah added their support to Masista, Hakam held back his objection.

  They rode until they found the inn, large as promised, and negotiated rooms for the night. The horses were unloaded, the gifts carried inside to rooms guarded collectively by the cataphracts. The magi, along with Walagash and Roshan, met in a room, with Aban and Storana posted outside the door to keep anyone from listening.

  Masista raged at Hakam as soon as the door closed behind them. “You fool! What insanity possessed you to cast your defiance into the king’s teeth?”

  Hakam refused to be cowed. “We have no need to answer to an Edomite. Herod’s a pig.”

  “You think everyone who’s not Hebrew is a pig,” Masista shot back. “He’s king.”

  “No,” Hakam said, “he’s a usurper. The true King has just been born.”

  “Your true king is but a babe, a child who doesn’t command a single soldier,” Masista said. “You’ve put the edge of the sword against our necks. Herod has no interest in worshiping your messiah. He’s going to follow our every move until he can find the child and kill him.”

  “If you were concerned about being watched, why did you bring us to the inn the centurion suggested?”

  Masista shook his head in disgust. “How simple are you? If we hadn’t taken the centurion’s suggestion, they would have doubled whatever watch they assigned to us.”

  “A word, if you please,” Walagash said. Neither Hakam nor Masista appeared ready to relinquish their argument, yet they paused long enough for the merchant to continue.

  “We need to know for certain if we’re being watched.” When everyone else in the room assented, he turned to Roshan. “Go. Take Aban and Storana with you.”

  Roshan slipped out of the room.

  Walagash sat and stared at Hakam. “When did Masista convince you to defy Herod?”

  Hakam bristled. “I don’t need Masista’s counsel. Herod sits on the throne that rightfully belongs to the descendant of David.”

  Myrad stepped forward from the edge of the room. “You took advantage of his hatred,” he said to Masista. “You stoked it with tales of Roman brutality until it was impossible for him to hold his tongue.”

  After a moment, Masista laughed, his anger gone. “Of course I did,” he said. “I’m trying to save Parthia, along with Judea, from the Romans. With the combined might of their legions and the cavalry of Parthia, they’d sweep across the world like a plague.”

  “All empires are an abomination,” Yehudah said.

  Masista laughed. “Strange words for a man who’s come to worship a king, but some empires are worse than others. What the Parthians and the Persians conquered, they left in peace, allowing people to worship their own gods and even serve their own kings. The Romans, on the other hand, take pride in what they can destroy.”

  “You’re playing with our lives, magus.” Yehudah’s hand tapped the hilt of his knife. “Herod could have just as easily killed us.”

  “A risk that had to be taken,” Masista said. “With any luck, Herod may decide to attack the western edge of Parthia, but at the very least he will keep his garrisons here in Jerusalem. Doubt about Musa’s intentions will eat at him as surely as his disease.”

  Yehudah’s voice hardened.
“You’ve placed the Messiah in danger.”

  “Herod is insane. Don’t you see? From the moment we were taken, your messiah was threatened. Herod would have ferreted out the truth eventually. As it is, he saw exactly what he expected to see from a Hebrew magus—a frothing zealot who can’t hold his tongue.”

  Hakam spewed Hebrew curses at Masista until the air dripped with vitriol.

  Masista dipped his head as if to acknowledge a compliment. “We need to slip away from whoever is watching us. Your messiah’s family must be warned. Herod will be looking for the child.”

  Myrad blinked, confused. “Why do you care what happens to the Messiah?”

  “If Herod finds and kills your messiah, the threat to his sovereignty has been eliminated,” Masista said. “He will be less likely to march on Parthia.” He glanced toward the door. “We must get away from the soldiers they’ve posted to watch this inn.”

  A light knock at the door prefaced Roshan’s entrance. “We have a pair of guards watching the inn,” she said. “If we’re going to leave, we’ll need a distraction.”

  “Can they be drugged?” Walagash asked.

  Masista shook his head. “They’re Romans. They won’t accept food or drink from a stranger while they’re on guard duty.”

  Roshan pointed back the way she’d come. “When I passed through the inn’s kitchen, I saw the innkeeper’s servant preparing food and drink to take outside. When I asked him about it, he said it was for the Romans keeping watch.”

  “It seems your God is with us,” Masista said. “We have lax guards standing watch.”

  “How long before they bring them the food and drink?” Yehudah asked.

  Roshan shrugged. “An hour perhaps.”

  “Do what you need to do,” Yehudah said, rising to his feet. “I’ll rejoin you as quickly as I can.”

  “Where are you going?” Masista demanded.

  “We need information of a different type, and we’re not going to get it from Herod or his Romans.” He looked at Roshan and Storana. “How long will the guards sleep?”

  “As long as we wish.”

  “Two hours then,” Yehudah said.

  “Shouldn’t someone go with you, magus?” Walagash asked.

  Yehudah shook his head. “The guards won’t follow one man, but they might split up to follow two.” He slipped out of the inn.

  Roshan and Storana left the room too but headed for the kitchen, leaving the rest of them to wait. An hour later, they returned. “It’s done,” Roshan said.

  Before long, Yehudah returned as well. Nothing in his expression provided a clue as to where he’d been or what, if anything, he accomplished there. Moving as quickly as the demand for silence permitted, they left the inn. To Myrad, the clatter of hooves as they rode away screamed for attention, but there remained enough traffic on the streets of Jerusalem to cover their noisy departure. After a brief conversation with Yehudah, Walagash ordered the caravan to go back the way they’d come, taking the road to Emmaus.

  “If we are seen or someone remembers our passing,” Yehudah said, “we don’t want to give Herod any idea which way we’ve gone.”

  Once outside the city, they stopped to muffle their horses’ hooves with strips of cloth. Twice after they departed from Jerusalem, they left the road in secret and hid, waiting for signs of being followed. None came.

  Next to Myrad, Roshan breathed a sigh that carried regret.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked her.

  “The men assigned to watch us will be put to death.”

  Hakam twisted to look at them, his mouth twisting. “They’re Romans.”

  Storana’s eyes narrowed to mere slits. “They were men doing their job—”

  “Look,” Yehudah interrupted. By the light of a gibbous moon, Myrad saw him pointing back toward Jerusalem.

  Hanging in the sky above Herod’s palace shone the King’s star. It bobbed once, moved southward, then stopped. The star stayed there in its new position as if waiting for them.

  “What do you see?” Roshan asked.

  Myrad pointed. “The star’s moved.”

  “What does it mean?” Walagash asked.

  “It means the Messiah’s not in Jerusalem,” Yehudah said.

  Hakam’s voice carried a note of justification. “And Herod’s place has been given to another.”

  The caravan took the southern road, with Aban and Storana riding ahead and behind to give them warning of approaching riders. They skirted the western edge of the Hinnom Valley.

  Myrad strained to hear the approach of soldiers, hardly daring to breathe. “Herod must know we’ve slipped away by now,” he whispered to Roshan.

  She shook her head. “It depends on how long our guards were supposed to keep watch and if they were discovered sleeping. If they wake on their own, they may hesitate to make a report, wanting to avoid Herod’s wrath.”

  That sounded to Myrad like wishful thinking, but he latched on to the idea nonetheless. Two hours before dawn, the star moved again, this time from in front of them to the east.

  Yehudah tugged at the merchant’s tunic. “That way.”

  “Ride forward and bring back Aban,” Walagash said to Roshan.

  She’d just pulled her horse out of the caravan’s formation when Walagash spoke again. “Wait. There’s no need.”

  Within seconds, Aban came riding back to them, manifesting himself in the spare moonlight. “The road forks, and I spotted lights to the east. I think there’s a village in that direction.”

  CHAPTER 32

  After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. . . . And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

  Matthew 2:9–12

  With his eyes fixed on the star moving ahead of them, Myrad urged his horse forward until he rode shoulder to shoulder with Yehudah and Hakam.

  Yehudah smiled, basking in the radiance of the light only the three of them could see. “That shouldn’t be possible.”

  “What?” Myrad asked.

  “The way the light moves. It shines like any other star, and yet the heavens are unimaginably distant.” He pointed at the King’s star. “Yet while this one appears the same as its kindred, it guides us as intimately as one of Walagash’s guards.”

  Myrad looked again and saw it was true. While they had been speaking, the light had settled in the sky directly over the town. As they trotted together toward the village, Myrad watched in amazement as the star moved in ever finer increments in response until it shone over a single house.

  “Walagash, Masista, I think we’re here,” Yehudah said. “Wait a moment while Myrad and Hakam accompany me.” He smiled as he twitched the reins and moved off to the left. Myrad followed, curious as to where the magus might be leading them, but Yehudah corrected him in the midst of his joy. “Not me. Keep your eyes on the star.”

  Nodding, Myrad saw it hovering over the same house. They turned right at each street they came to until they arrived back at the caravan. At every turn, the star appeared both impossibly far away even as it seemed to remain right over the top of the house.

  “This is the house of the Messiah,” Yehudah said as they rejoined the party.

  Masista grimaced as he regarded the simple dwelling. “That is the birthplace of a king?”

  “Our God is not your God,” Hakam said, though his expression mirrored Masista’s from only a moment before.

  Yehudah dismounted and strode back to the packhorses. With the help of his cataphracts, he began unloading a portion of the gifts they’d brought.

  Holding the reins of his horse, Hakam moved to Yehudah’s side. “How should it be done?”

  “The gifts?” Yehudah asked.

  Hakam nodded.

  For the first time, a bit of the joy faded from Yehudah’s countenance. “With the loss of Dov, we are three. Let each of us offer a
gift to the Messiah-King. My men can carry them.”

  Myrad expected Hakam to argue, but instead he stepped over to the horses laden with gold. “I will offer gold for our King, our deliverer from the Romans.”

  Yehudah’s expression said he expected no less. “I will bring the incense for our Priest, our intercessor with the Most High.” Even in the sparse light of the village and the moon overhead, Myrad thought he caught a hint of shadow falling across Yehudah’s eyes.

  Myrad recalled then the seller’s reaction on the day they’d purchased the myrrh. “Will it seem strange,” he asked, “that I’m offering a child embalming spices?”

  “Perhaps,” Yehudah said, “it’s meaning will become clear in time.” He looked as though he might say something else, but with a small shake of his head, he dismissed whatever it was.

  “Myrrh is the gift for a prophet,” Hakam said.

  “I would say it’s an interesting coincidence that your name has the same root,” Yehudah had said, “except I don’t believe in coincidence.”

  Gershom had told a younger Myrad of the prophets of Israel and Judah, the true prophets. “They kill them, don’t they?” he’d asked his father. “The prophets?”

  Gershom had sighed. “Many, yes, but not all. Truth has never been popular or well received.”

  Now the three magi approached the heavy wooden door of the house, the cataphracts just behind them, bearing the gifts. Yehudah knocked on the door. Below the door, light flared and guttered before it steadied. Then a man, perhaps in his thirties, appeared in the doorway. He had the hands of a laborer, his dark eyes showing concern as he beheld the number of men with weapons before him. A woman stood and came to his side, hardly more than a girl, of an age with Roshan, holding a child of a year, possibly a little more. The woman looked at each of them in turn, her expression grave.

  “May the favor of the Most High God rest on you and your house.” Yehudah bowed low to the ground. “Is there anyone else here?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed at the question before he shook his head. “No.”