Myrad woke each morning to a changing landscape. He spent his days in Roshan’s company, learning the trade of a merchant. But more important, he was becoming acquainted with the young woman who would one day be his wife.
“How long will we be betrothed?” he asked.
Roshan blinked at him in surprise. “You mean you don’t know?”
When he shook his head, she huffed. “That is just like Father, to assume you know as much as he does. Of course you don’t know. How could you? You’re Persian, not Parthian.” She shifted from her vantage point at the rail to face him head-on, her deep brown eyes luminous in the sun. He felt a sudden urge to remove her head covering and let the wealth of her thick, dark hair come tumbling loose.
“Once the details of the betrothal have been completed, the groom decides the date of the wedding,” she explained.
“You speak of our betrothal the same way you describe a negotiation.”
She looked at him as if this should have been the most obvious thing in the world. “It is.”
“Didn’t we already negotiate when I competed for your hand in Margiana?”
She smiled. “That simply means I chose you from among the others. Now we must negotiate the terms of our marriage.”
He fought a sinking feeling, like a man stepping unexpectedly from the shallows into deeper waters. “What do you want?”
She laughed a sound that should have been too rich and deep for her diminutive stature. “You’ve already given me most of what I want, Myrad.”
“Running the caravan?” he asked.
She nodded.
“What else do you want?”
She made a vague pointing gesture to the north. He wasn’t sure if she meant Parthia or Rome or Judea. In another day, they would round the hook of Arabia and begin their journey northward.
“I didn’t know until I saw Mary holding the child . . . the Messiah.”
Myrad’s heart shifted in tempo, trying to find its rhythm. “You want a child?”
Her face flushed, adding crimson to the tan of her skin. “No. I mean, I do want children, someday. But not yet.” She sighed. “The caravan is no place to raise a child.” Then her chin lowered and she looked away. “You would be within your rights to break our betrothal without loss, for having a wife who refused to bear you children right away.”
“What do you mean?”
“You would retain your rights to the silk trade as if you were my father’s son.” She swallowed, her eyes still fastened to the decking of the ship. “Father would side with you in this.”
He reached into his purse and pulled out the single remaining stone, the last of his inheritance from Gershom. He pressed it in Roshan’s hand and then gently lifted her chin until she looked him in the eyes. “Everything I have is yours. I don’t want anyone else. It will take me years to learn how to be a merchant, even with your lessons.” He smiled. “I’ll make sure of it. Once I’ve learned the trade, there will be children.”
Her eyes narrowed in disbelief. “Every man wants a son.”
Myrad could have laughed. For the rest of his life, the memory of her entering the tent in Margiana would be at the forefront of his thoughts. “You are worth more to me, Roshan, than many sons.”
She took his face in her hands and kissed him. “This may be what I love most about you,” she said. “Nobody surprises me. No one but you.”
They made port in Barbaricon forty-three days after they had set out, beating Sareshta’s estimate by a full week. With the aid of oars, their ship glided up alongside one of the huge stone quays that lined the harbor, and they tied off. Built into the rock of the pier were long, sloping ramps that permitted ships to load and unload with ease whether at high or low tide. At the stern, a set of steps had been carved into the rock to serve a similar purpose for passengers.
Myrad led Areion off the ship. The horse tossed his head and nickered like a colt, butting his nose into Myrad’s chest whenever he ventured too close. “I know,” Myrad said to his friend. “It’s good to be back on solid ground again.” Even as he said it, his legs wobbled, working to adjust to a surface that didn’t pitch or roll.
Masista rushed past him, making his way toward the city without a backward glance. Yehudah came up beside Myrad, his hand stroking Areion’s long neck. Myrad pointed at the retreating figure.
“Masista is aching to know what’s happening in Parthia,” Yehudah explained. “Any news he learns will be weeks old but still more recent than anything we know.” He placed a hand on Myrad’s arm. “What will you do now?”
“I will continue with Walagash and take Roshan to be my wife.”
Yehudah glanced in their direction. “God spoke to you. You have no wish to serve Him as one of the magi?”
“To what end?” Myrad asked. “Phraates and Musa killed my father. I’m not like you or Hakam. I have no wish to influence the course of empires. Can a man not serve God as a merchant?”
“What about the dreams?” Yehudah asked. “They’ve marked you as a true magus, a spiritual descendant of the prophet Daniel.”
Myrad thought back on his journey to Judea and shook his head. It all seemed so unreal to him now. “The ways of the Most High God are more than a little strange to me. He saved me from the desert, the floodwaters, even the rulers of empires. But why? I’m just a clubfooted Persian boy whom Gershom pitied. It’s almost as if God takes delight in accomplishing His ends in the most unlikely way possible.” A thought struck him then, and he made a gesture toward the western horizon. “The Messiah, the child who is to deliver Israel from the Romans, was born in a stable.”
Yehudah listened intently like a man preparing to argue before a judge. Then all expression fled from his face and shutters fell across his eyes, hiding his thoughts. “Will you continue to keep the calendar?”
He couldn’t stop the helpless laugh that prefaced his answer. “I will do my best. In the year since Gershom died, circumstances made it impossible.”
Yehudah nodded. “God understands, even if Hakam doesn’t. I will send messengers to you, so you can keep the count calibrated. Where should I send them?”
Myrad thought for a moment. “Have them seek me in Margiana. If I’m not there, they can leave word.” He then returned the question to Yehudah. “What will you and the rest of the magi who did not support Musa do now?”
“We will stay in the east for now. If the day comes that Musa and her son are overthrown, we’ll return to the seat of power and ensure Daniel’s prophecy is safeguarded.”
“Are you sure there’s still a prophecy?” Myrad asked. “Could the Messiah’s birth have fulfilled it?”
“No,” he said, his voice soft but resolute. “Did that look like the coming of a king to you? The prophecy is intact. If the Most High is willing, we will live to see its fulfillment.”
CHAPTER 34
MARGIANA—31 AD
Myrad waited for the moment all four of Areion’s hooves left the ground, a fraction of a second defined by hurtling free fall, and fired. His arrow leapt from the bow to streak across the intervening space toward the target, but like its kindred, the arrow flew wide. Myrad slowed his horse to a walk, both of them covered in sweat, and went to collect his arrows.
“You missed,” his son, Aban, said. “I’ve never seen you miss so often.”
They began the trek back to the earthworks of Margiana. Myrad’s gaze drifted over his son’s body, clean-limbed and perfect since the day he’d been born over twenty years ago. Together, father and son rode at a trot toward the house Myrad shared with Roshan and the rest of their children.
Utab, the youngest son of Myrad’s factor, rushed forward to take his horse. “Thank you, Utab,” Myrad said. The boy of nine or ten smiled and bobbed his head, his eyes never leaving the ground.
“You’re allowed to look at me, Utab.”
The boy ducked his head and almost fled with Areion in tow.
“I don’t understand,” he said after the boy’s retreatin
g figure.
“Father, you’re the richest merchant in Margiana,” Aban said. “And he’s just a boy. It’s natural for people to be a bit intimidated in your presence.”
Myrad sighed. “I just wish it didn’t take so long for them to speak.”
Stepping into the tiled entryway of the house, he moved onto a thick carpet in the hall with relief. His foot bothered him more with age, though that didn’t explain his performance today. He should have expected it. They found Roshan busy reading the latest reports from their factors in Antioch and Palmyra.
“There you are, my two favorite men in the world.” She rose and went to embrace both of them. “How was your shooting?”
Aban opened his mouth with a sidelong look at his father before smiling. “I’ll let Father tell you. I need to check the shipments to Barbaricon.”
Myrad watched him go. How could a doubt-riddled man like himself have raised such a confident son? “I missed,” he said, “almost every time.” There was no point in offering an explanation; she would know already. He pointed to the reports. “Is there any news of the Messiah?”
Roshan put a hand to his cheek. “It’s impossible to say. Our partners in Palmyra and Antioch paint the same picture: Judea is a cauldron about to boil over, and the Romans are clamping down to keep it in check. The news coming out of Jerusalem changes by the day.”
He chewed his lip. Less than a year remained on the calendar. Even after thirty years, he could see Gershom in his mind, marking the passage of each day one patient stroke at a time. Had he been wrong? Had all the magi been wrong?
“Father’s going with us.”
He sighed. “It would take death itself to keep me from making the trip. This is the culmination of Gershom’s work and our dream, but you and Walagash don’t have to go.”
She smiled. “Walagash and I have worshiped the Most High since that night in Bethlehem. Who wouldn’t want to witness the culmination of a prophecy?”
Her words carved an unexpected hole in his chest. “I haven’t had a true dream since then,” he said softly. “It’s been thirty years. Sometimes I can scarcely believe it all happened.”
She pulled him into another embrace and rested her head against his chest. “If your God hasn’t spoken to you since, perhaps it is because He doesn’t need to.”
They found Walagash in a courtyard near the gates of the city, talking with the other merchant leaders. He broke off in the middle of a conversation about the trade routes through Bactria, his gaze steady beneath hair gone gray to look to Myrad. “It’s time?”
“If we’re to meet up with Yehudah, we have to leave now.”
Walagash rose ponderously from his seat. “I have everything ready.” He patted his belly. “Including a pair of strong horses for me.”
“Who will oversee the caravans?”
Walagash shrugged his massive shoulders. “Aban.”
“Isn’t he a little young for such a task?”
Roshan and Walagash both laughed. “He’s older than you were when I brought you into my tent,” Walagash pointed out. “The caravans for the next year are all arranged. Any mistakes made will be small ones.”
They met up with Yehudah two days outside of Margiana on a morning that promised fair traveling weather. As before, he was flanked by four cataphracts, and with the exception of Tomyris, these men were young.
It would take them nearly four months to travel to Jerusalem, but this time there were no goods or silks to guard, only themselves. And Myrad counted himself nearly as skilled with the bow as their guards or the cataphracts Yehudah brought with him.
“What do you think we will find?” he asked the magus.
Yehudah shrugged, but in the depths of his eyes, Myrad saw a sudden discomfort. “Something unexpected.”
The silence after his response grew, and Yehudah seemed in no hurry to fill it. “I remember Dov saying the same thing,” Myrad said at last. “Artabanus is old, as is Tiberius in Rome. Will God’s Messiah rule the world? Will the Romans accept a Hebrew king?”
Yehudah’s discomfort seemed to double, his hand fluttering as he tried to wave the question away. “Who can say?”
When he said no more, Myrad let his horse drift back to ride at Roshan’s side. After nearly thirty years of marriage, coming into her presence no longer sent his heart racing but instead calmed him, bringing with it a sense of peace. They dropped back out of earshot of the rest of the caravan.
“Something troubles you,” Roshan said. “You’ve got that tightness around your eyes as though you are striving to see something in the distance.”
Ordinarily, he would have laughed at her teasing. “It’s Yehudah. There’s something about the appearance of the Messiah-King he’s afraid of, but he won’t say what it is. He won’t even admit his concern. You would think that the fulfillment of a prophecy over six hundred years old would fill him with joy, and yet it doesn’t.”
“What does the prophecy say?”
She’d watched him keep his calendar for decades and knew the prophecy as well as he did. “Gershom told me only the one. I have no idea what else the Hebrews know.”
“Then it does no good to worry about it,” Roshan said with a shrug.
“I’ll try not to,” he replied.
When they reached Hecatompylos, two men joined them, hailing Yehudah from the entrance of the inn where they’d chosen to spend the night. Their faces tugged at Myrad’s memory, like seeing his own writing in a letter that had become unfamiliar due to the passage of time. Then their names clicked into place from some obscure corner in his mind. “Eliar. Mikhael.”
They turned to him, and Myrad waited to see if they recognized him. Instead, they responded without hesitation.
“Myrad,” they said in unison.
He ran his hand along his jaw. “Have I changed?”
They both laughed. “You’re nearly fifty years old,” Eliar said. “Of course you’ve changed, but Yehudah sends us letters.”
He glanced at Yehudah on his right. “Letters?”
Eliar nodded. “The magi continue to keep their count. Our group will grow somewhat as we travel west. The Messiah is coming! Every magus who’s kept count is making the journey.”
“Have any of you had a dream about the Messiah since then?” Myrad asked. As they shook their heads, he felt both relief and disappointment. Had God forgotten about them?
Before they departed the next morning, Hakam, his face serious with expectation, and two younger men joined them. He took one hard look at the group in which Myrad rode with Roshan and Walagash and led his horse to the opposite side of their caravan next to Mikhael.
“I remember that one,” Walagash said, “and how he always looked at you with an expression of soured milk.”
“Much changes,” Yehudah said with a nod, “and much does not.”
They traveled west without incident, though Eliar, carrying more years than any of them, tired quickly each day until he required help to mount and dismount his horse. They slowed their pace from a trot to a walk, but by the time they reached Rhagae days later, even with the slower pace, the skin on Eliar’s face had become gray and slack, hanging from his bones like wet cloth. When they gathered the next morning in front of the inn, Eliar wasn’t among them.
After an hour, he came out of the inn with his arm draped across Yehudah’s shoulders. His gaze flickered from his horse to the ones waiting without appearing to see anything. Yehudah bore most of his companion’s weight, and the two men carried the burden of a running argument between them.
“You have to rest,” Yehudah insisted.
Eliar’s voice wheezed with the effort of speaking. “And will the Messiah wait for me to get better before He appears? I think not.”
Yehudah shook his head. “I can hear your breath whistling in your lungs. If you don’t stay here and rest, you’ll die.”
“And if I do rest, I won’t die? Everyone dies. No. I will make it to Jerusalem.”
The argument
continued until they arrived at Eliar’s horse. One of Yehudah’s cataphracts scooped Eliar up in a single, fluid motion and set him on the animal. The rest of their party stood by their horses, waiting for some signal no one seemed prepared to give.
“Are you waiting for me?” Eliar snapped. “The Messiah is coming, and we are wasting precious time.”
Yehudah sighed and grabbed a handful of his horse’s mane as he jumped and swung his leg over. Myrad, settled on Areion, leaned across to Roshan. “Do you remember how you helped me when we first met?”
Her brows dipped in mock anger. “Do you think I could forget? Father couldn’t have devised a better plan to make me fall in love with you if he’d tried.”
“Do you have anything that might help Eliar?”
“I can try, but he’s old, Myrad. No medicine in the world can cure that.”
They approached Yehudah with the suggestion, and the magus only confirmed Roshan’s suspicions. “Our bodies wear out. To tell you the truth, I don’t know Eliar’s age. But he seemed old to me when I met him over thirty years ago. There’s nothing wrong with him that I know of, yet he barely sleeps.”
Roshan pursed her lips, then nodded. “I will seek him out when we stop for the night. I have herbs that will help him rest peacefully.”
By the time they reached Ecbatana ten days later, Eliar appeared to have recovered some measure of strength. He sat on his horse like a shriveled lump of incarnate will and even managed to engage in their speculations.
“You’re wasting your time,” he grumbled after Hakam once again predicted the expulsion of the Romans. “We have no idea what He will be, nor what He will do.”
Hakam bristled. “You’ve spent too much time among foreigners.”
“Ha!” Eliar barked as if Hakam made his point for him. “I’ve spent all my time among them, as have you. The Most High God does not move in ways we expect. When you are old like me, you will learn the futility of your opinions.”
Most of the magi laughed, and even Hakam mustered a small smile. Yet a shadow passed across Yehudah’s expression.
The End of the Magi Page 27
