I’m going to find out what comes next.
Blood trickled down Balthazar’s wrists as he pulled down on the rope with all his strength, pulled down on the wooden beam that it was tied to. The beam began to groan under the stress, and the admiral turned. He looked up at the beam—sturdy as any beam had any right to be. He looked down at Balthazar, pulling with what limited strength he had left in his body. The math didn’t hold up. There was no way a man could free himself under these circumstance. Satisfied, he turned his thoughts back to the orange slice in his mouth.
The magus grabbed his head and bolted upright from his couch in the throne room, knocking over his cup in the process. Something was terribly wrong.
“What is it?” asked Herod, standing up from his throne. By the time Herod got the words out, the magus was on his feet, shoving courtesans and advisors aside, looking for something. Anything. When Herod realized what he was doing, he shouted, “Bring him something to write with, at once!”
A piece of parchment was hurried into the magus’s hands as advisors tried to make themselves look busy. Herod crossed the throne room and stood over the little priest’s shoulder, reading along with every letter:
Prisoner is free. Ghost fr—
“Impossible!” cried Herod. “He’s under guard!”
The magus hurriedly scribbled again, then shoved the paper so close to Herod’s face that he nearly broke the king’s nose.
Guards dead. Everyone dead.
Balthazar is born again. He’s Samson slaying an entire army with a jawbone. He’s Hercules killing the Nemean lion. David killing Goliath. He pulls his arms until they shake, pulls on the ropes that bind each of his wrists to the wooden beam above. And witness now the sound of cracking wood.
The admiral’s eyes nearly leap out of his head, because he doesn’t believe what he sees. The math doesn’t hold up. A man can’t be that powerful, especially one whose body has been so battered. Yet the beam splinters, then splits in two and falls to the stone floor with a crash, freeing Balthazar’s hands.
The guards draw their swords and come at him. Balthazar charges too. He goes for the table against the wall—the one filled with an assortment of scalpels and clamps and scissors. He grabs the first one his fingers touch, unaware that it’s the very scalpel that was used to cut away the missing flesh beneath both of his arms. With long ropes still attached to both wrists, Balthazar turns and swings the blade in front of his body just in time.
And as weak and battered as he is, he swings with more strength than he’s ever known. His blade cuts through the droplets of rainwater that fall from the stone ceiling, splitting the ones it touches as it strikes the side of the first guard’s face—flaying it open like his own flesh had been flayed. He pierces the other beneath the armpit, driving the blade deeper—deeper past his ribs and into his lungs. He withdraws it and the man falls to the wet floor, where he’ll either drown in his own blood in seconds or die from infection in weeks. It doesn’t matter, as long as he leaves the earth in pain.
But no time for these thoughts. Not yet. For the admiral has just realized that he’s next and begins his hasty retreat toward the closed cell door. Balthazar has to cover twice the distance to beat him there. It’s impossible. But not today. The world has bowed before him. Time has wrapped him in its arms. Balthazar moves with wings on his feet, sees with eyes in the back of his head. He takes a sword from one of the guards and moves across the wet floor with impossible speed, blocking the admiral’s escape. And the admiral is afraid. He backs away, for he can see the truth written on Balthazar’s face. He can see that this man will not fail, no matter what he aims to do. He’s afraid because he knows that these are his last moments on this earth and that they’re going to be terrible moments.
And he’s right.
Balthazar pushes his sword into the admiral’s belly. And the admiral cries out as his tender flesh gives way but doesn’t break. So Balthazar pushes harder, and the flesh tears—letting the blade in. Letting it through his belly and out the back. And it hurts, and he’s so afraid. Suddenly lying on the wet floor, where his blood mixes with rainwater. Pouring out of him, around the sides of the blade.
Every day is the last day, he thinks. Every light casts a shadow. And only the gods know when the darkness will find us.
But the admiral sees a light. A light coming for him. His breathing is labored, blood running from the corners of his mouth. He watches this warm, soothing orange light as it grows closer, dancing from side to side. And he knows it’s a merciful light, though he doesn’t know how he knows this.
But there’s a man with the light—carrying it with him. It’s the Ghost. And now the admiral is afraid again, because he knows. He knows what the light really is. The Ghost has gone and taken something out of the oven. Something metal. Hot enough to glow.
And the Ghost is above him now. He brings a bare foot down on the admiral’s hair and presses it hard against the wet stone floor. So hard that the admiral can’t move his head. And before he can scream, the light is forced into the admiral’s mouth, shattering his front teeth—and his scream disappears behind the sizzle and smoke. He can smell his lips burning away. Feel his saliva turning to steam and his tongue cooking as the poker moves past his mouth and down into his throat—the red-hot iron blackening his tonsils and vocal cords. He writhes with what little strength he has left as the Ghost pulls the light back out of his throat and pushes it up into the roof of his mouth, searing his palate before breaking through it and entering his nasal cavity. And the Ghost can see that glowing light beneath the skin of the admiral’s face now, and it’s a strange, almost beautiful sight—that warm orange light making a man’s face light up from the inside. But he keeps pushing, until the iron tip breaks through the bone at the top of his nasal cavity and sinks into his—
The admiral woke with a scream. Panicked at first, he examined his body, looking for blood, bruises, anything—but to his relief and amazement, he was unharmed. It had all been a strange, vivid dream. Something brought on by an illness, perhaps. The stress of being away from home for too long.
He stood on the bank of a river. It was a hot, clear day. The fishermen were out in droves, the boats drifting gently by. He could see a boy and a toddler resting in the shade of a scarred palm tree on the opposite bank.
The Orontes…Antioch.
He was back in Antioch, and for all its crime and rats, he’d never been happier to be anywhere in his life. The admiral turned, expecting to see the familiar desert behind him, the long, narrow mounds marking the shallow graves where the Romans tossed their dead trash. But the desert was gone. The graves were empty. And in their place was a wall of the dead—their eyes long since turned to dust but looking at him all the same.
They’d been waiting for him…waiting to welcome him into the wasteland they’d called home for so many years. A place where there were no years. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder—a semicircle that bent around him until it touched the river on both sides. Trapped, by all the unjustly dead of Antioch. And there, at the center of this mob of twisted, bloodless bodies, was a man unlike any of the others. A man unlike any the admiral had ever seen.
A Man With Wings.
He was good and beautiful. And the admiral began to sob, for he knew—somehow he knew exactly who this man was and what he’d come to do. He sobbed and shook, for he knew there was nothing he could do to stop it. And worst of all, he knew that he deserved it.
The Man With Wings walked forward and took the admiral gently in his arms, and off they went. Off into a sea of time and space—the whole of the universe reflected in its shimmering surface. Off to the place where the dead burned forever…
And Mary and Joseph instinctively press their backs to the wall of their pitch-black cell and shield the baby with their bodies as they hear the latch opening. Sela rises, determined to die fighting whatever comes through that door. Every inch of her is broken and bloodied; her hands are shackled. But they aren’t getting that ba
by without a fight. Not a chance. And the creak of the cell door opening, and the lone, impossible silhouette it reveals. And the joy and amazement of impossible reunion and the hurried tossing off of chains.
The reunited fellowship hurried down the corridor that twisted its way through the dungeon, trying to go as quietly as they could despite the two inches of rainwater on the floor. Trying to find a sliver of daylight to show them the way and running from the growing shouts in the dark behind them. A call of alarm had gone out, and every way in or out of the palace would soon be sealed off. They needed another miracle, and for a moment, Balthazar thought they’d gotten it: daylight. Up ahead, around the next corner.
He led the others quickly and quietly around the corner. But on rounding it, Balthazar froze. There was a Roman soldier blocking their path, his sword drawn. The promise of daylight behind him. The dungeon’s torchlight flickering off his meticulously polished helmet, breastplate, and sword. He’d been waiting for them.
Pontius Pilate.
Balthazar stood with his sword clutched tightly in his right hand, his left arm extended, shielding Mary and the baby behind him. The two men glared at each other. Both of them dark, driven men. Both of them killers. Their fingers shifted on the handles of their swords, each man waiting for the slightest twitch of the other. Waiting for attack. But none came.
Satisfied that Balthazar didn’t mean to cut him down on the spot, Pilate’s eyes shifted to the other fugitives: the baby’s parents. Terrified. The woman who harbored them. Who risked her life to save them and fought off at least two of my men by herself. And then there was the Antioch Ghost. Who risks his life to protect them even now, when he could have just as easily escaped on his own.
Pilate stood there a moment—his eyes fixed on Balthazar. On everything he’d ever wanted.
“Fifty paces,” he said. “And then I start yelling.”
With that, he lowered his sword, passed by them, and disappeared into the darkness of the corridor.
Until his dying breath, Pilate would never fully understand why he’d done it. All he’d had to do was call for help, and he would’ve been a hero. Had it been the sight of Balthazar being tortured? Was it the desire to see the puppet king of Judea humiliated? Or was it just that he didn’t like the idea of putting newborn babies to death?
Whatever the reason, he’d held the glory he sought right there, in his hands—and he’d let it slip away. Just like that. It was a decision that would shape his life in ways he couldn’t possibly understand, and it wouldn’t be the last time he faced it. Some three decades later, Pontius Pilate would encounter the infant again, in Jerusalem. Once again, he would feel a strange compulsion to spare his life. But the second time, he would fail.
The fellowship of five ran out of the palace’s seaward entrance and into the stormy gray of its terrace, where raindrops collided with marble, producing a ceaseless, almost soothing noise. With the rain falling and the alarm being raised inside, the terrace was momentarily free of guards. Balthazar had a decision to make, and it had to be made in the next few seconds, in spite of his exhaustion and the breathtaking pain radiating from the exposed muscle on his sides.
They could flee through the desert on foot, but if they were spotted, they’d be no match for the Romans and their horses. They could look for somewhere to hide near the palace and hope that the Romans would be fooled into chasing an assumption through the desert—but what if they weren’t? It was here, in this moment of bleeding indecision, that a vision of waving reeds caught the fellowship’s attention, and their eyes descended the wet marble steps to the sea, where the masts of Roman warships bobbed up and down in the swell. All of them firmly moored against the dock…
…all of them left untended.
VII
A young girl came running out of Herod’s throne room, sobbing and soaked in blood. Some of it was hers. Most of it wasn’t. She pushed her way past the Roman and Judean soldiers who packed the hallways.
“The king!” she cried. “The king has gone mad!”
The soldiers had come running only moments before, summoned by the sounds of a melee. They’d expected to find the Antioch Ghost battling it out with their comrades, trying to get his hands on Herod. But on arriving, they’d been shocked to see that it was Herod himself wielding a blade, using it to dispose of his courtesans and advisors, his wise men and women. The soldiers could only stand and watch as he hacked them to pieces, screaming all the while. None of them dared defy the will of a king, madman or not.
It was something out of a nightmare. A grisly scene that forced even the most cast-iron of soldiers to look away, lest they be sick. The throne room was littered with headless and limbless victims. Shards of smashed pottery and splinters of broken furniture. And in the middle of it all, Herod himself, kneeling over one of the bodies, a sword by his side…his face almost completely obscured by blood.
Minutes before this madness began, Herod sat impatiently on his throne, awaiting an update on the escape. The magus sat next to him, meditating silently. Searching for the fugitives, Herod hoped. Hunting them with his mind.
Minutes after the first shouts of alarm echoed through the palace, Pontius Pilate appeared with his lieutenants, ready to give the king his report. It would be nearly an hour before the Romans discovered one of the smaller ships in their fleet was missing.
“It seems,” said Pilate, “that the Ghost and the other fugitives were able to slip out of the palace, Your Highness.”
Herod involuntarily balled his fists. The Hebrew God…
“At present,” Pilate continued, “we have no clue as to where they went, but I have some of my men searching the grounds in case they’ve hidden close by.”
“SOME of your men? Send ALL of them, you idiot! Send them all into the desert! Into the mountains! Send them up and down the coast!”
Pilate hesitated, sharing a look with some of his officers. “Your Highness,” he said, “in light of the admiral’s death, I’ve…decided to recall my men to Rome.”
It took Herod a moment to register this.
“What did you say?”
“The emperor has already sacrificed enough of his men for this folly. I won’t risk losing any more or endangering his magus. Not until I’m able to make a full report.”
Herod lifted his body off the throne, his anger rising to its full height.
“‘His’ magus?” He walked slowly down the steps, a smile spreading across his lips. “You can tell Augustus that his magus won’t be coming back to Rome.”
Pilate glared back at him. What is this?
“You can tell him,” Herod continued, “that his power belongs to Judea now. As you can see, he’s already used some of it to restore my health. Or did you think I’d miraculously healed on my own?”
Now it was the magus who rose, emerging from his trance and taking in what had just become a very tricky situation.
Pilate was confused. So were Herod’s courtesans and advisors, his wise men and women. All of them exchanged looks behind Herod’s back.
Is this some kind of joke?
“Tell Augustus,” Herod continued, “that I’m not his puppet any longer.”
“Are you mad?” asked Pilate. “Augustus is the master of the world! What are you but a sickly little joke of a king?”
“INSOLENCE! I should have you cut down where you stand!”
The mere suggestion made Pilate’s lieutenants draw their swords, which made Herod’s Judean guards draw theirs. Pilate raised a hand in the air—easy…
“Do you have any idea what he’ll do to you?” asked Pilate.
“Let him try!” said Herod with a laugh. “The magus has sworn his loyalty to me! His powers are my powers!”
Pilate looked past Herod and locked onto the magus’s black eyes. He wanted to know if any of this was true.
The magus, for his part, knew he had a decision to make.
Yes, Augustus didn’t appreciate him. Yes, the magus wanted to strike out on his
own, use his powers to rebuild a lost faith. But he was also the last of his kind. And this made self-preservation all the more important. Herod had seemed like the perfect catalyst for his transformation—a powerful man who could be controlled, used up, and thrown away. But he was clearly coming unhinged. Declaring war on the empire in the blink of an eye. That wasn’t someone you wanted in your corner. One didn’t need to read the tea leaves to see how it would end. He would live to fight another day.
The magus indicated something to Pilate with a nod of his head. When Pilate saw what it was, he understood.
“Go ahead,” said Pilate to Herod, indicating the full-length mirror. “Look for yourself. Look at what the magus has done to you.”
Herod laughed and turned back to see if the magus was just as amused as he was. But instead of the slight smirk he’d hoped for, he found the magus stone-faced, and felt a sliver of dread scrape against the inside of his stomach.
“Very well,” said Herod, turning back to Pilate.
And so Herod approached the mirror, ready to admire the full cheeks and smooth skin that had greeted him these two glorious days. But when he looked this time…
“No…,” he whispered.
The illusion was gone. His sickly pallor and yellowed eyes had returned. His sunken cheeks and lesions oozing their foul milk.
“NO! It can’t be!”
“You’re not a king,” said Pilate, looking over Herod’s shoulder. “You’re not even a man. You’re nothing.”
Looking back on it, the survivors would agree that this was the moment when Herod’s mind left him for good. The moment he realized that everything he believed was a lie. That his vision had finally and completely failed him. He’d gone mad before, but the clouds had always parted at the end of the storm. There would be no going back from this madness.
Herod screamed and grabbed a sword from the hand of one of his guards. Pilate’s men yanked their imperator back, convinced that Herod meant to strike at him. But Herod wasn’t interested in Pilate. He ran clear across the throne room, defying the weakness that was the reality of his body, raising the sword high in the air, screaming all the while, “TRAITOR!”
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