Palace of Darkness

by Tracy L. Higley

  Alexander giggled. “Mama says it is rude to call people ugly.”

  He glanced downward, then winked at Alex. “Your mama sounds like a good person. Would you take me to meet her?”

  Alexander bit his lip and looked above him again.

  “I know much better places to climb.” The man edged closer and Cassia’s heart stopped. “I could show you sometime. What is your name?” Then he took a step nearer, and his arms braced on either side of Alex’s body like a net. If either of them lost their balance, they both would fall.

  Alexander looked over his shoulder, his attention roving over the silent crowd, his expression a mixture of shyness and embarrassment. “Alexander.”

  “Ah, good name for a strong boy like you. I am Julian. Let’s go and meet the mother who gave you such a name, shall we?”

  Alexander hesitated, then shrugged and took one foot from the rock. Cassia’s hand flew to her mouth, but she stayed silent. Alex’s sandaled foot scraped the rock in circles as he tried to find a hold.

  “There, to the right a tiny bit,” the other climber told him. “There, right there.”

  One step at a time, Alex lowered himself to the ledge.

  A smattering of applause bubbled up from the crowd, but the two were not down yet and no one was ready to walk away.

  The man turned his body and Alex followed, so the two of them faced outward on the ledge. “Put your hands behind you, like this”—he placed his palms on the rock—“and now we step together. Ready?”

  Alex nodded.

  “Now, left foot—step. Right foot—step.”

  Cassia snatched a look at the climber for the first time. He had the light skin of the West and the nose of a Roman. He seemed tall, but he was not skinny. With his arms braced against the wall, Cassia could see the muscles tensed.

  The two progressed across the ledge to the end, where another indentation in the wall housed yet another small figure. The man whispered something to Alexander, and the boy grinned and nodded, then climbed into the niche and straddled the shoulders of the nymph Cyrene as though he would ride her down to the courtyard.

  The man slipped past Alexander, did a neat turn, and dismounted from the ledge to the courtyard below. His knees flexed as he fell, and he landed in a crouch like a cat jumping from a stone wall. He took one step backward, lined himself up with the niche where Alex sat, then held up his arms.

  “Now is the best part, Alexander!” His voice was light, as though the two had come to the Nymphaeum for an afternoon of fun. “You get to jump!”

  Cassia inhaled sharply and drew close to the tall man. “It is too far,” she whispered.

  He did not take his gaze from Alex. His voice low, he said only two words: “Trust me.”

  Cassia watched, her heart swelling with fear as Alexander emerged from the niche and looked over the edge. The man beside her gave a quick nod and beckoned Alex with his upraised hands.

  Alexander grinned once more and jumped.

  The crowd’s gasp echoed from the walls of the Nymphaeum, then the tension released with a cheer.

  With Alexander safely in his arms, the man turned to the crowd, lifted Alex’s arm above the boy’s head, and yelled, “Alexander the Great!”

  Alex was laughing, his gap-toothed smile beaming across the courtyard.

  But a deep, inexplicable anger mixed with Cassia’s relief and surged from her chest. “Put him down!”

  The man turned a slow circle to her and smiled. “Ah, this must be your wise and beautiful mother.”

  “Mama!” Alex wiggled to be set down. “Were you watching? Did you see how high I climbed?”

  Alex’s rescuer lowered him to the courtyard and set him in front of Cassia. “Your son, my dear lady, restored to you.” He raised an arm to the fountain pool and lifted his voice. “And the water restored to all of you!”

  The crowd cheered then, as anyone who had seen such showmen before could have predicted.

  Cassia grabbed at Alexander’s hand and started to push past the man.

  He blocked her retreat, drawing up as though a royal prince himself. “No gratitude?”

  Cassia straightened in front of him, her head barely reaching his chest, for he was quite tall and clearly highborn in his arrogance. “Gratitude?” she said through clenched teeth. “You expect to be thanked? It is men like you who put little boys in danger. Why do you think he climbed up there?”

  The man’s lighthearted smile faded a bit, and he seemed to study Cassia. She felt suddenly aware of her dirty tunic, frayed from the many days of travel and now soaked through from the splashing water. His gaze traveled to her feet and back to her face, and Cassia felt a strong pull of attraction and then another surge of anger. She did not need her unique ability to know what he was. She’d already had a man like this.

  Never again.

  Alexander tugged on the man’s hand, drawing his attention away from Cassia. “Julian, when will you show me the better places to climb?” His face was alight with hero worship, and it pained Cassia to see it. “We are going to the palace now”—he grinned—“to see our family, but after that I can climb with you again.”

  The man’s eyebrows raised at Alexander’s declaration, and he turned inquisitive dark eyes back to Cassia.

  “Come, Alexander.” She pulled him toward the now-dispersing crowd. “It is time.”

  The boy called back over his shoulder to his new friend, “I like the striped rocks best!”

  “As do I, Alexander,” he answered.

  Cassia left the Nymphaeum behind and kept a tight grip on her son’s hand. They were quite near the palace now, but she could not announce herself to the king in a wet and dirty tunic. A line of shops bordered the limestone-paved street on the opposite side, and she led Alexander behind the strip and instructed him to keep watch as she changed into the only other article of clothing she had brought in her pouch—the yellow silk. It had suffered in the escape through the streets the day Aretas had been killed, but it was still finer than anything else she owned. She felt a little twinge of glee at donning it without Aretas’s permission. A new day had come.

  It was time to see the king.

  NINE

  JULIAN WATCHED THE STRIKING WOMAN AND HER LITTLE boy push through the crowd. Watched as people gave way to her, in spite of her petite build and peasant clothes. As she crossed the street, her head covering slipped down to reveal dark and unruly hair with unusual reddish streaks. She was like a bird—tiny, but quick and sharp. Strong, but still fragile. Smart enough not to shriek when her son was in danger. She had spoken to him like an equal.

  He was still watching her as the two ducked behind the shops across the street.

  Julian, you fool, you know better. And yet he was no longer nobility. Did he think a peasant woman beneath his new status?

  “She is special, I believe.” The voice at his shoulder surprised him.

  Julian turned. A lean old man, his hair nothing more than a white fringe above his ears, studied the shop where the woman had disappeared.

  Julian shrugged and put his back to the street. “She is pretty. Nothing more.”

  Townspeople streamed to the fountain pool now, filling unglazed water pots. Many nodded their smiling thanks to him as they returned to their homes or pressed his arm in gratitude. Crowds once again bustled through the shops selling merchandise that surrounded the Nymphaeum’s courtyard.

  It had pleased him, the climb to restore the water. Both the goodness of the deed and the attention of the people, the cheers when he brought down the boy.

  “There is work for someone with your skills here in Petra.”

  Julian looked sideways at the old man, whose gaze was still focused across the street, as though he waited for the woman to emerge.

  Had he met this man since he arrived in Petra? He should think that he would have remembered the deeply lined face. He forced a casual note into his voice, unwilling to let his interest show. “What kind of work?”

 
The old man shrugged. “The tomb sculptors are always in need of men who can climb.”

  Julian looked at the sculptured figures set into the Nymphaeum wall. You’ve no idea what I can do.

  “And yet I am given the feeling that you are meant for better things.” The man turned his eyes to Julian’s face.

  At the man’s look, a current of something ran through Julian, like the touch of lightning in a desert storm. The buzz of fountain-house conversation seemed to recede, leaving only the two of them in a hushed and private meeting.

  “Better things?” Julian repeated, his mouth suddenly dry.

  The old man was silent, but his eyes seemed to speak of their own accord. Every person Julian had met since arriving in Petra a few days prior had simply skimmed over him, including the woman with the boy, Alexander. They all saw only what they expected to see. But this old man, appearing from the crowd, had eyes that saw through him. A chill ran the length of his back.

  “You are not alone here.” The old man was still seeing through him.

  Julian swallowed and found his voice. “Yes, yes, I am alone. Just traveling through, really. In search of my fortune.” He had meant to sound casual, but the words sounded like grains of sand forced through a straining cloth.

  “There are others.” His hand grasped Julian’s forearm, and at his touch the chill fled, replaced with warmth. “Many of us.”

  Julian felt his strength evaporate. How does he know?

  “Will you come and meet with us?”

  Julian hesitated, emotion threatening far too close to the surface. It had been so long. Too long. He shook his head. “I . . . I have no time. I must find work.” He inhaled, filling his chest, and took a step backward, away from the man’s hand. “The tombs, you say? Where would I find those who are hiring?”

  The old man smiled slowly, those infuriating and wonderful eyes still burning through Julian’s bravado like the sun through a thin morning mist. “We will meet again.” He said it as though the promise should give comfort.

  Oddly, it did.

  And then he was gone, into the crowd of women carrying their water pots. Julian searched the street but saw instead the tiny woman and her son, though he nearly didn’t recognize her, wrapped in a fine yellow dress. She and the boy hurried toward the palace without a backward look. Julian took another deep breath and tried to shake off both disturbing encounters, to focus on the task at hand.

  If Petra was to be his new home, he needed to find work. And Petra was perfect.

  The perfect place for a Roman to hide.

  TEN

  HAGIRU WAS IN HER INCANTATION CHAMBER WITH BETHEA when a slave brought the news.

  The chamber had no windows, and the door had been closed when they entered, so the burning ring of oil lamps in the center of the floor failed to light the blackness with their tiny tongues of yellow. The room smelled of incense and tasted of blood.

  Just before the slave burst in with his unwelcome message, Hagiru had been watching Bethea’s stringy dark hair swing from side to side as the girl swayed over the lamps, trying to chant the prayer in the ancient language Hagiru had taught her.

  I should like to take a sharp knife to that hair.

  She hated Bethea, hated the whining, bored, pathetic, and useless girl as she hated everyone in this forsaken rock city. Her vision of hacking the hair from Bethea’s head faded, replaced by other thoughts of what was in her power to do, acts far more frightening than cutting hair. But that was why Bethea was here. To learn from the high priestess of Dushara how to call down power from the gods and use it against one’s enemies.

  When the door opened, the girl’s singsong chant left off abruptly. Hagiru spun to face the slave, her dark robes sweeping in a circle behind her and nearly catching the flame of the lamps.

  “What is it?” Her voice sounded sharp in the tiny chamber. The slave’s white tunic glowed with an unholy light in the darkness, and she had no patience for being interrupted with trivial palace business when she was in her special place.

  But the news was not trivial. No, not trivial at all.

  She turned on Bethea after hearing it, and the girl’s face paled. Hagiru shoved the slave aside. “Inform me at once when they are approaching. In the throne room.”

  The slave disappeared.

  “Come.” She beckoned to Bethea. “We will be rid of this annoyance quickly.”

  She swept from the incantation chamber, her purple robes trailing behind her like a dark stain. She had hired the best dyers in Petra to fashion her robes and instructed them to dye them black, but this deep purple was as close as they could come. Hagiru contented herself that she combined her darkness with her position as royalty.

  As the Nabataean king’s second wife, Hagiru had position, indeed. Perhaps once she had dreamed of love, but that was long ago, a faded memory, to be sure. She had replaced the childish fancy of love with the mature acquisition of power. Power from everywhere she could soak it up.

  It was power that filled her, that satisfied her, that gave her strength to live out her days in the middle of a desert, surrounded by rocks.

  Halfway to the throne room, a young boy appeared in the hall ahead. Hagiru slowed, and Bethea bumped her from behind. Hagiru half turned and slapped the girl across the face, then swung to the boy, arms outstretched.

  “Obadas! I have not seen my pet all morning!”

  The boy, ten years old and racing toward manhood, slowed and dropped his gaze.

  Hagiru pulled Obadas into a tight embrace, muffling his face against her chest. “You have no time for your mother anymore, do you, my sweet?” She smiled and took his face in her hands. “You are all exploration and conquering, eh?”

  He shrugged and his glance shifted to Bethea. Hagiru patted his cheek, reclaiming his attention. “I suppose it is what young princes do.”

  Obadas remained in her grasp, but Hagiru could see he wanted to be elsewhere. She released him, then bent to kiss him quickly. “Go on, then.” He ran past her, with a glance to Bethea, then on down the palace hall. Hagiru watched him run, her heart tight. He grew too fast. Almost a man, and her plan had not yet come to fruition.

  She resumed her march to the throne room, Bethea trailing like a trained pet.

  The throne room was like an inverted reflection of her incantation chamber. Spacious and bright, its lofty ceiling glowed as though it were lit from within, its white marble floors, fluted columns, and alabaster throne in contrast also to all that red rock outside. Colorful fabrics hung on the walls and canopied the raised throne, and the slaves that lined the walls also were kept in bright colors as Rabbel wished. Two of these slaves pushed away from the wall at her entrance and stepped to her side immediately.

  Thank the gods Rabbel is not here. The man could be such an annoyance. He was probably still in his bed. Rabbel had not been well of late. Hagiru’s lips twitched in a half smile. So much the better. This was an interview she wished to conduct alone.

  So Hagiru took to the throne, for she was the queen, after all. When she had settled there, with her head against its high back, she waved Bethea off and allowed her favorite slave to approach from behind and begin his ministrations against her perpetual headaches.

  She closed her eyes at his touch, inhaled the perfume of the room, and tried to let the tension flow out of her as he massaged her temples, then raked his fingers back through her long dark hair.

  The treatment did not last long enough. Running footsteps echoed into the throne room, and a slave appeared a moment later. He skidded into the room, then dropped to a knee some distance still from the throne.

  “Well?” Hagiru lifted her head from the alabaster headrest.

  “They approach, my queen. The woman and her boy.”

  Hagiru nodded to release the messenger, then waved away her attending slave. “Later,” she instructed him with a meaningful look. He bowed and backed away.

  She turned back to the entrance of the hall, spread her purple robes across the
lustrous throne, and smiled. “Bring them.”

  ELEVEN

  THE PALACE WAS INDEED IMPOSSIBLE TO MISS.

  The wide paved street that lay parallel to the Wadi Musa continued straight through the city, but the Temple of al-‘Uzza and the grand palace beside it seemed to Cassia to be the heart of the city. She led Alexander to the palace steps, her heart beating unevenly.

  The palace had been built on a slight rise above the street, making it appear even more impressive. Two sets of steps, with a platform between them, led up to a high-columned portico. The palace was faced in white limestone, and the late-morning sun seemed to set it afire with a white glow, a pure and holy light that calmed Cassia’s spirit and seemed to invite her to ascend the steps and find her family.

  She smiled down on Alexander, then laughed at his wide eyes. He grinned his gap-toothed smile at her. “It is very white!”

  Cassia laughed again. She used her fingers to comb his hair to the side. Thankfully, his climb had not dirtied his white tunic. She wished he had finer clothes to appear in the palace. “Are you ready?”

  He nodded, and she took a deep breath and started the upward journey to royalty.

  Halfway up, on the platform between the two sets of steps, Alexander ran ahead to lay a hand on one of two matching stone blocks that had been placed on either side of the platform. The squared blocks were all of one piece but twice Cassia’s height, and she marveled at the ability of the Petrans to move them to this spot.

  “What are they, Mama?”

  “They are djinn blocks, where gods reside.”

  Alex snatched his hand away and put it behind his back. Cassia reached him and hugged him. “Do not fear, Alexander. The gods are smiling on us today. Come.”

  They reached the portico, and Cassia steeled herself for her first encounter with the two slaves who stood on either side of the palace entrance. The lofty arch had an ornately carved lintel above it, more beautiful than any she had ever seen, and to pass under it seemed to her like it would be passing into another world.