Palace of Darkness

by Tracy L. Higley

  “Steady, Cassia,” he whispered. But her thoughts were not on herself.

  Alexander.

  She cared little what happened to her, but she could do nothing if she was imprisoned or worse. She had let herself grow weak. Cassia cursed her own foolish need to belong, that constant frailty that had brought her to these people, and now into bondage.

  The streets were dark, though crowded, as the soldiers dragged them in their single roped line. The amphitheatre performance always drew a large audience, and the street was still clogged with giddy townspeople on their way to the night’s entertainment.

  Cassia tried to look over her shoulder to Julian, but the twisting of her body threw off her balance and she tripped over her sandals. The rope dug into her wrists and burned. She barely noticed.

  It was Alexander who occupied her thoughts. Alexander, left alone in the palace, without anyone to fight for his rescue.

  Julian whispered words of reassurance to her, to anyone who could hear. She ignored him.

  Nearly oblivious to their direction, it came as a surprise when she realized how close they had come to the amphitheatre. The half circle cut into the red cliff blazed as bright as day with dozens of torches, and the smell of burning bitumen stung her nostrils.

  Their motley string of bound prisoners drew the stares and occasional kicks of townspeople. Cassia watched Nahor’s head in front of her. Was his son, Niv, somewhere in their line? Nahor plodded forward, head down. She could not read his emotions.

  Ahead, the amphitheatre roared to life with the laughter of thousands. The pantomimus must have begun his act.

  Was this where they were to be taken? For what purpose?

  They were pulled past a line of smoking cook fires, where opportunistic merchants heated shanks of seasoned boar meat and barley cakes for those without the foresight to bring their own evening’s food.

  Behind her, Julian was speaking too low for her to hear his words.

  Cassia’s legs and arms felt a heaviness borne of grief and terror more than fatigue. She forced her feet to follow Nahor’s and fought the urge to collapse onto the street and pull the whole line of believers down with her.

  Julian’s words grew louder, phrases strung together with a passion she had never heard in his voice.

  “Walk with us, Jesus. Show us how to suffer for Your sake, give us strength to stand when fear would strike us down, let Your peace flow into frightened hearts.”

  His words sent chills through Cassia and left her weak.

  And then his words were of her.

  “Show Yourself to Cassia, Jesus. Give her time to understand Your love. We are ready. She is not. Oh, Jesus, give her more time.” His voice broke and Cassia’s heart with it.

  He believes we go to our death.

  Was it true? Had she lost the opportunity to save her boy?

  She saw Alexander there in the palace, under the power of Hagiru. Tortured and hated. Alone. Waiting for death on an altar.

  The thought squeezed her chest with such force, she felt she might suffocate. The torches and people in the street blurred in her vision and spun and twisted into angry, hateful shapes that would reach out and strangle her. She heard herself cry out as though from a great distance.

  “Strength, Cassia.” Julian’s voice was confident and soothing. “We are nearly there.”

  Indeed, within moments they were hauled to the dim backstage corridors of the amphitheatre. She caught only a glimpse of the thousands of spectators massed in the stone seats, a rainbow of color in the night, before the rope was yanked and they were hurried down into the corridors she had come to know well.

  She half expected to see Yehosef, but tonight was a pantomime night, and the gladiators were not scheduled to fight. So it did not surprise her to be led to the cellar level, to the very cells where she had seen the fighters housed. The irony was a bitter one, and she pushed the thought from her.

  They were split into two groups and shoved into dirty cells, with the iron gates locked behind them. Their ropes were unbound, and those in Cassia’s cell at once huddled in a tight circle. She stood near the gate, looking out and fighting that suffocating feeling.

  She felt a warm hand on her back, knew it to be Julian, and stiffened. She had let him get too close already. All of them. It had led to this. She remembered her promise to herself back in Damascus. She would stand alone and provide a home for her son. Never again let a man control her.

  And now look at you.

  “Cassia, come back here.”

  Julian pulled her into their circle, and she saw no point in resisting. Malik was with them, along with Zeta and Nahor and his son, Niv. Cassia took a small bit of comfort from the realization that all of Julian’s people planted in the palace had escaped capture tonight. Perhaps Alexander still knew friends.

  But without her, without Julian to lead them, what hope did Alexander have?

  “Why are we here?”

  The group looked at her with some pity, as though she should know the answer but none of them wanted to tell her.

  “What?”

  Julian threaded his fingers through hers and held her hand at his side. “Some kind of entertainment, Cassia.”

  “What would be entertaining about us?”

  He swallowed. “Remember, there was talk of a panther being brought—”

  As if it were a performer responding on cue, from somewhere deeper in the underground halls, a terrifying growl echoed through the cells and chilled her blood. Her eyes widened and took in the expressions of each of the group. Their faces confirmed her fear yet did not reflect it. She remembered Julian’s prayer as they walked. Peace flowing into frightened hearts. She had none of this peace.

  The crowd above did not soon tire of their pantomime, however, and before many minutes had passed, the huddled group in the cell had found places in the straw-covered dirt and leaned against the brick walls to wait. They listened in silence to the laughter that crashed and surged, like thunder before a storm.

  Cassia collapsed into a darkened corner, wishing the two walls could close around her.

  Nearby, Julian stood with his back to her and spoke with Malik. The confident tone of the street had been replaced with anger.

  “Not like this!” He pounded a fist against the cell wall.

  Malik put a hand on Julian’s shoulder, but Julian shrugged it off. “I thought I could save those I loved from . . . from this”—he jabbed a finger toward the theatre—“when I left Rome. I thought if I ran, if I hid, those I loved would be safe.” He glanced down and behind, toward the place where Cassia listened. “But I have only brought it with me, and those I love are still in danger.”

  Malik sighed. “If you came here to hide from the Lord’s call on your life, Julian, then you have been foolish. But the Father has much to teach each of us, beginning with caring only for His acceptance and approval, and not that of man.”

  “Well, it would seem the time for my teaching has run out.” Julian’s voice grew bitter.

  Malik’s gaze found Cassia’s, and she looked away, embarrassed to be listening. “I do not know if this is when He calls us home or not, Julian, but there is one who is not ready.”

  Julian was on the floor beside her a moment later. “Cassia, I have things I must say.” His voice was changed yet again, back to the soothing tones of the street. She looked him over, reading the war being waged in his heart. Fear and courage, acceptance and denial. Love and anger. She could see, with the knowing eyes of her heart, that Julian was being called forth to a new place, and he did not go willingly. She had watched him over these weeks of friendship, seen him in study and in prayer, and she knew he sought to please his One God and learn of Him. But there was some part of Julian still resisting.

  “Julian,” she began, though she knew not what she would say.

  He touched her lips with his fingers, then shifted until they each sat cross-legged and facing each other, with knees touching and hands intertwined between them.


  “Cassia, I do not know what will happen here. But you must be prepared. If this is the night in which we pass into eternity, you must reach out to Jesus, with faith in His blood, for yourself.”

  She rubbed the back of her neck. Strange talk at such a time. “What difference does it make what god I call on—”

  “All the difference, Cassia! There is only One True God. He came to us as a man, to pay the price of our sin, once for all. No more sacrifice to please a god whom we can never please.” Julian’s fingers tightened around her own, with a fierceness that felt to Cassia almost like fear. “You must trust in His sacrifice on your behalf as the only way to be accepted by the One God, the only way to have eternal life in His presence.”

  She had listened to so many stories of this Jesus, He had grown familiar to her in some strange way. Malik had told her of his friend Paul’s vision of Jesus on his way to her own town of Damascus, and she had nearly wished for such a vision herself, to help her believe. But still she had doubts.

  Julian leaned forward until their foreheads touched. “Cassia, you must open your heart to this great love.”

  The cell seemed to fade away, leaving only the two of them. This closeness, this intimacy with Julian, it was like a banked fire that could warm her for years. She felt herself drawn to tell him what he wanted to hear, if only to make him happy.

  Never again.

  The words snapped her backward and she blinked.

  Would she never learn? Would she go to her death still trying to please men, to gain their love?

  She yanked her hands from Julian’s and shook her head. He must have felt the change in what was between them and pulled at her hands to regain it. “Cassia, you must know how much I care—”

  “No.” She held up her hands. “I do not want your affection. I do not need it. If we live past this night, I will be strong, and I will do it alone.”

  She saw the hurt in his eyes and steeled herself against it.

  Malik appeared at Julian’s back, and she looked up into the old man’s eyes, compassionate and warm on her. “Julian. Let me speak with Cassia.”

  Julian gave up his place reluctantly, went to the gate of the cell with obvious frustration, and leaned his head against the lashed wood of the outer cell wall. She heard the growl of that frightful beast once again, and then Malik was beside her, his back against the wall alongside hers.

  “I suspect I do not have much time, Cassia, so I am going to speak boldly.”

  Cassia smiled sadly. When did Malik not speak thus?

  “This is what the Spirit tells me of you.” His voice hollowed out, as though the words came from a place somewhere deep within. “You were abandoned as a child. Your parents did not love you as they should, did not cling to you the way a parent must, and you were lost to them.”

  Her breathing shallowed and she looked at Malik’s profile in the dim light. How can he know these things? Those days were long behind her, of parents who found her ability to see through their motives and greed to be odd and had moved on to richer takings without her.

  But Malik had not finished.

  “It is a fearful and grievous thing to be unloved, and you have sought to never allow yourself to be that child again. You have instead used your gift to see the hearts of people to mold yourself, to please a succession of men, of whom Aretas was the last. You let them control you, abuse you, trample the unique heart given to you by God. And you did all this believing they would love you in return.”

  The emotion closed off her throat and she plucked at her dress with tense fingers, wishing Malik would stop but unable to ask. Aretas had paid a trifling amount for her at sixteen, and though he never treated her as a slave, he never loved her as she wished.

  “You allowed this because you believed that being strong for yourself and your son would leave you unloved again, yes?”

  Cassia swiped at an unbidden tear and nodded once. “Yes,” she whispered.

  “But now you have believed another lie.” Malik’s hand found hers, as Julian’s had. But it was with the kind warmth of the father she had never known. “You believe that you cannot love and be loved and still be a woman of strength. This is not truth.”

  She looked into Malik’s eyes, the pounding of her heart a desperate plea for him to continue.

  “You can have both, my child. Love and strength. But only when the love of Jesus has taken your sin and filled your heart.”

  “How?” The word barely escaped her tight throat. “How can I have both?”

  “When you accept this great love the Father has for you, Cassia, this love that gave us Jesus as our substitute, you are free. Free from your desperate need to have people love you, because you are loved so fully by God. Then you can love others without concern for their response. You can love them from your strength.”

  Cassia swallowed and studied the cell around them. “If we survive this night, Malik, I shall give your words more thought.”

  He turned her to face him. “It will be more important to consider if we do not survive this night.”

  “Why do they seek our deaths?”

  “It has always been thus, child. In Jerusalem, in Rome, even here in Arabia. You remember I told you of my mentor, Paul of Tarsus?” She nodded. “Even he was not safe. Our own King Rabbel’s grandfather, Aretas”—he broke off as Cassia winced at the name—“Aretas tried to have Paul killed while he was in your Damascus.” Malik smiled, as though recalling a favorite tale. “We had to lower him from the city walls in a basket to get him past the gates.” He squeezed her hand. “The truth, my child, always has enemies.”

  A shuffling outside their cell seemed an answer to Malik’s dire statement. The believers scrambled to their feet around the cell, as if standing would make whatever was to come easier. Julian’s hands tightened on the bars of their cell.

  A face appeared in the gloom, peering through the bars at the inhabitants of the grimy chamber. Cassia recognized the long white-gray hair at once.

  “Yehosef!” She scrambled past Malik to the front of the cell.

  His eyes met hers. “I suspected. When they told me there was to be a group given to the beasts, a group disloyal to the royal house, I thought I might find you here.” He reached a hand through the bars, and Cassia grasped it and held it to her cheek. Yehosef pulled his hand away and fished at his belt. She saw a flash of bronze a moment later.

  “Come.” Yehosef inserted a key. “There is little time.” And then the cell door swung open and he was shoving them out, one after the next. “To the right, to the right.” His voice was harsh in the darkness. She heard him unlock the other cell.

  Cassia waited until only Julian remained, and he would not leave until she did. “Yehosef, what will happen to you?” She eyed the old gladiator as she passed him.

  He shook his head, hair swinging. “Have no care for me, child. I can take care of myself. Always have.”

  They were shooed through the underground chamber, down a dank hallway Cassia had never entered.

  “Keep going,” Yehosef called ahead to the start of the group. “It is only a little farther.”

  And then the hallway turned, and ahead and above the night sky showed brighter than the corridor that slanted up toward it.

  The pace of the group visibly increased, and Cassia believed for the first time that Yehosef had actually saved them.

  In the moonlit street, the group huddled together and Yehosef brought up the rear. “Do not stay together,” he whispered. “They will be searching for a large number. You must disperse.”

  Cassia gripped Yehosef’s hands, then kissed his cheek.

  He pulled her into an embrace. “I fear this must be good-bye, child.”

  “Thank you, Yehosef. Thank you for everything.”

  He pulled away. “Be safe, Cassia.”

  And then they were gone, melting into the night while the city still laughed and applauded the farce in the theatre.

  Julian held her hand as they ran
, none of them speaking. They reached the place where the steps to Zeta’s home ascended the cliff, and Cassia knew that others followed.

  Within minutes they had gained Zeta’s home, stumbling into the dark front room.

  Cassia stayed at the front blanket-wall. She swept aside one of the woven coverings and attached it to the hook driven into the rock, then stood in the opening, knowing the light behind her made her outline visible to the entire city. She imagined Hagiru down there in her palace, looking up at the cliff. Did she see Cassia? Did she even have a mother’s heart?

  Everything had changed this night.

  The believers could not meet openly anymore.

  She could not return to Yehosef in the amphitheatre, nor to her work on the tombs.

  And Julian—she would not think of Julian.

  But above all, Alexander’s life had become nothing more than a token for the dark gods of Petra. Cassia did not know if Malik’s words had been truth. If she could be a woman of both love and strength. But she would be strong. Of that she had no doubt.

  The Festival of Grain would take place in five days.

  But by then, she swore to the starry night sky, she and Alexander would be far from this evil place.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  IT TOOK ANOTHER THREE DAYS FOR JULIAN TO BE confident his plan was ready. For three days he hid in Malik’s and Zeta’s homes, slipping through the streets at night and early morning to see Cassia, to reassure her that although the Festival of Grain and its accompanying horrific sacrifice grew close, they must wait to be certain of success.

  The church, for the sake of safety, had split into several smaller groups and met in homes where detection would be less likely. Malik managed to circulate among these meetings, assuring his flock they would all be together again soon.

  Indeed, today in the early-morning hours, nearly all of their number were to assemble in Malik’s grand home to finalize their plan. Julian had left Malik in his still-dark courtyard, directing his servants in hushed tones in the preparation of an early meal for the believers. They covered cushions with clean fabrics and set out handsome dishes.