The End of the Magi

by Patrick W. Carr

Myrad told himself not to speak, but this magus had promised him vengeance and then ensured he wouldn’t live to see it. He couldn’t remain quiet. “If I live, you’ll regret it.”

  “What will you do?” Masista smiled. “Run—my apologies, walk—back to the treasury and reveal us? You would be the first to die. A word of advice, young apprentice. Leave this part of Parthia as quickly as you can. Katanes is looking for you.” His smile grew. “If you make it out of the desert, you could return to a life of selling melons in the market. But I wouldn’t advise doing it in Ctesiphon or Hecatompylos.”

  Myrad turned his back to the magus, unwilling to look at Masista any longer, but the sea of scrub and sand in front of him was just as pitiless. His gaze fell across his crutch, still fastened to the side of his horse. Desperately, he hobbled toward it, his arm reaching. With a curt shout, Masista ordered his men to ride, and they thundered east across the desert, taking his crutch with them, a last insult.

  He stood and watched them go, bearing as much weight as he could on his good leg. “He’s killed me,” he said out loud. There was no one and nothing that might offer a rebuttal.

  Scattered around him on the sandy earth were bits of rope used to tie the camels together. A couple of the rough blankets that had padded their load littered the ground as well. The camels themselves had wandered away.

  His first thought was for his father, but on its heels came an image of Walagash. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, but whose forgiveness did he seek? His father’s? Walagash’s? Both?

  Soon the sun touched the horizon, and a chill breeze swept across the sand. Myrad shifted his feet on the hard-packed sand and peered northward. The city lay three or more hours distant by horse, a day by camel, and forever for a man with a bad foot. Even if he could walk there without his crutch, a lone man entering the city on foot would attract attention. Limping into Hecatompylos would be tantamount to waving a sign for those looking for a clubfooted man, and anyone who came upon him on the road could rob or kill him with ease. And away from the road, there was little chance of his encountering anyone.

  Not far away, an outcropping of rock thrust upward from the sandy earth around it. A pair of lizards sunning themselves scurried beneath it at his approach. He’d heard of men reduced to eating camel or lizards, but hunger wasn’t his most pressing need at the moment. His waterskin was gone with his horse. Thirst would kill him long before hunger. He pushed the thought aside. Thinking about water held no power to conjure it. If he could just get to the city, he still possessed enough money to buy a decent horse.

  But he had to return without attracting attention. Sadeq and any number of his men would recognize him. Passing through the city was out of the question. He would have to skirt its southern wall until he came to the trading grounds, but first he had to get there.

  His gaze drifted from his knife down to his deformed foot. Again. How many times in his life had his deformity betrayed him? Gershom’s adoption, that act of selfless love, forever changed Myrad’s vision of himself. His father had taught him that all men were blemished. Some were just fortunate enough to carry their infirmities on the inside. He tried to flex his right foot, but the bones and ligaments were frozen from birth into their blighted shape. “I would be happy to trade,” he whispered.

  His body yearned for sleep. He hobbled over to the discarded camel blankets and dragged them back to his rock. Lying on one and covered by another, he brought his bag of clothes up onto the hard stone, put it under his head, and slept.

  After a time, he plunged deeper into unconsciousness like a man falling from a great height into nothing. Images came to him without order or meaning. Gershom, Musa, Walagash . . . Without transition he found himself standing beneath a full moon, the dunes bathed in argent. The night sky had been a friend to him ever since Gershom adopted him, its familiar constellations named according to Greek beliefs or Hebrew. But that was before Musa murdered his father. Now they were nothing more than points of light, as cold and distant from his predicament as God. Unwilling to face their indifference, he looked down at his feet.

  Wonder stole his breath, stilled his heart. He stood beneath ten thousand points of light strewn across the heavens like shining bits of sand in the firmament, his bare feet flat on the rock beneath him. Both feet. Slowly—he dared not look away or even blink—he flexed his right foot. It moved as easily and surely as its companion.

  A voice whispered across his ears, a feathered touch against his skin. “Look.”

  He started. He scanned the firmament above, counting the twelve constellations Gershom had taught him represented the twelve tribes of Israel. He stopped, his restored foot momentarily forgotten. There in the western sky hung the light of his dream. As he watched, time sped and the stars of heaven spun around the mariner’s star creating concentric circles of light. But not the light hanging above the horizon to the west. It rested there, unmoving, in defiance of its brethren. He stood staring at it, unblinking, as the rest of the stars painted arcs in the sky.

  “You will go to the city of the dead,” the voice said.

  He awoke, still lying on the blanket he’d salvaged from the abandoned camels, still wearing the boot to disguise his deformity. He tried to flex his foot, but it didn’t move. It couldn’t, of course. Anguish and loss pierced him and he wept until sleep took him again.

  CHAPTER 11

  Myrad woke up in the gray light of predawn, a full moon still shining low in the west while hints of rose and orange showed in the east. Through the opening between a pair of low dunes he spotted one of the camels, its legs beneath it, its eyes closed. His first reaction was one of disgust. He needed a horse. Then he noticed the bits of rope Masista’s men left in their wake. Moving slowly, his blemished foot offering him no other choice, he gathered as many pieces of rope as he could find and approached the animal.

  To his surprise, the beast didn’t move. In fact, it hardly took notice of him as he tied one end of the rope around its neck and the other around a rock. Limping back, he pulled the blanket from the rock and approached the animal once more. This he fastened to the camel just behind the hump with two pieces of rope around its middle, a task made more difficult by the beast’s unmoving indifference. And it didn’t appear to care as Myrad went facedown on the sand to push the rope beneath its belly. With two shorter pieces of rope, he fastened a bridle and reins. Still the beast sat in placid contentment.

  “What shall I call you?”

  When the camel didn’t answer, Myrad realized sun or thirst might have gotten to him already. He’d half expected a response.

  His best hope for survival didn’t even look at him. He wasn’t fooled. He knew enough of these animals from his years working in the market to beware of their mercurial nature. Luck or fortune had managed to present him with a mount and a means to steer it, but he would still need a goad. Searching the ground, he selected and discarded a series of sticks, all of them too light or too short. Wandering farther away, he chanced upon a dead wayfaring tree, hardly more than a sapling before drought and wind killed it.

  For the second time, he considered the likelihood that he might still be dreaming. Wayfaring trees didn’t grow this far from the mountains. The sapling looked to have been a year old or more before it died. He tried to imagine the possibility of its seed taking root and receiving enough water here in the desert for it to grow for a year. After a moment, he gave up. Sitting on the ground, he hacked away at it with his knife until he’d fashioned a goad roughly four feet in length.

  Looking up, he saw another camel sitting in repose a few paces away. “They’re animals of association,” he said to himself. As before, he approached slowly, avoiding eye contact or quick movements, and tied the rope around its long neck, just beneath the head.

  Brandishing the goad but not striking the animal, he raised his arms. “Ha-yup!” To his surprise, the camel lurched its way to a standing position.

  In the end, the press of time and the lack of rope determined his ac
tions. Thirteen of the original twenty animals remained within a couple hundred paces of the spot where Masista abandoned him. He managed to tie them into a semblance of a train, although he’d yet to mount and ride the lead animal. Worse, the sun had risen and beat on him with the force of a hammer, yet for some reason he delayed to assign each animal a name. It seemed fitting somehow. Thirteen. In a moment of whimsy he attributed to the heat, he eyed the lead camel and bestowed upon its indifferent visage the name “Jacob.” Then he went down the train, naming each camel until he came to the thirteenth and last, a beast that appropriately appeared to be younger than the rest. “Benjamin,” his voice croaked with the effort.

  Already his tongue refused to wet his parched lips. Resigned to dying but too stubborn to surrender, he passed the tribes of Israel back to the lead camel.

  With Gershom’s adoption two years prior, he’d learned how to ride a horse. Never had he mounted or ridden a camel. The awkward, uncomfortable gait of the beasts was legendary, the very reason they were used for hauling goods while merchants accompanied them on horses. Only the most desperate and poorest of merchants rode camels.

  “That I am,” he whispered. He paused to change clothes, his mind conjuring images of guards recognizing him by his garb. Resting at the bottom of his pack, beneath his rolled-up tunic and trousers, was the last piece of parchment, the letter of transfer from the mint in Nisa. He stared at it, thinking. “With this I could be one of the richest men in the empire, and yet I’m probably going to die of thirst in the desert.” He wrapped Gershom’s legacy in his dirty trousers and put them both back in his bag. His spare tunic he fashioned into a turban to protect his head from the sun. Then he uttered a prayer to the Most High God and seated himself just behind the hump of the lead camel. But as soon as he brandished the goad, the animal grunted and shifted, throwing him to the ground. His head struck the hard-packed earth, and his vision dimmed to a pinpoint. When it cleared, his mount sat on the ground as before, daring him to ride.

  He actually got the animal to stand the next time, but then slipped off the back midway through the awkward rocking motion to land on his behind. The camel twisted its long neck around to look at him and grunt.

  After another hour, and after gaining a number of painful bruises, he finally emerged from between a pair of dunes and steered the camels north back toward the city of Hecatompylos.

  The sun, directly above and behind him, transformed the desert into a furnace, but every time he urged the camels to greater speed, they immediately slowed again. Defeated, he curled into himself and began counting the plodding strides of his mount. Each appeared to be a pace in length, perhaps a bit more. He tried to use the beat of his heart to estimate the strides per hour, but his mind refused to consider such diversions. His mouth was as dry as the sand.

  The sun was still up in the sky when he stopped sweating. He knew what would surely come next. Soon his head would begin to pound and his stomach would rebel, vomiting what little food and water it still held. Then he would lapse into unconsciousness and die.

  “I won’t make it to the city of the dead.” His voice came in a breathy croak he barely heard. “They were all just dreams.”

  Exhausted, he lay forward on his mount and kept watch for some sign of the city. Though he fought to stay awake, he slipped into a fevered dream of random images without context or meaning.

  “Hi-ya!”

  The sound slipped from him, but an instant later water wet his face and lips. He lifted his head to a world spinning in delirium. It was only after he surrendered to it that he realized he was lying on the ground with a rope wrapped around his wrist. Everything hurt.

  A guard leaned over him, blotting out the sun, and water splashed over him again. Water. The man stooping over him had water. The guard lifted his head, offering the waterskin. Myrad clutched at it, working to make his hands obey. It took two tries, and when he managed to drink, the water came so fast that he choked.

  “Careful,” the guard said. “You should know better than to try to cross the desert alone. What were you doing out there?”

  Myrad continued to drink until his stomach felt heavy. He struggled to a sitting position. In the distance behind the guard and his horse, a caravan was snaking its way toward a walled city. Hecatompylos. He’d made it.

  “Thieves,” he said at last. “They took our goods and left me for dead in the desert. I gathered as many of the camels as I could and made for the nearest city.”

  The guard nodded. “You’re lucky to be alive. Another hour and I’m not sure I could have revived you.” He straightened, glancing toward the caravan. “I have to get back. You can keep the skin.”

  The guard mounted up and headed back to his caravan. Myrad took another pull from the waterskin and tried to shake the effects of too much sun from his head. How long had he been unconscious? Prolonged exposure made it difficult to distinguish color, bleaching the hues from the landscape and the city in the distance.

  Once he’d regained his perch on Jacob, his camels caught sight or wind of the caravan in front of him and followed. Twice he looked up at the city wall to see soldiers peering at him, a lone man riding a camel and leading a short train without goods into the city. He kept his head down the rest of the way in.

  The trading grounds of Hecatompylos sprawled across the low hills on the south side of the city. Without reason to hope for it, he searched the encampments for a red-striped tent but saw not one belonging to Walagash. After questioning a few of the merchants, he found the pens of Morteza, a dealer of camels with a blue open tent whose furnishings, braziers, wooden chests, and tables gave it a look of permanence.

  After several moments trying to get Jacob to understand they’d arrived and he wanted it to kneel, Myrad finally dismounted. Thick rugs covered the ground within the merchant’s tent, and the smell of tea and honey filled the space.

  “Greetings, most favored one,” Morteza said, addressing the air just to Myrad’s left. Thin as a spear, with a beard shot with gray, he nonetheless exuded a boyish enthusiasm in defiance of his wrinkles.

  Myrad checked over each shoulder. There was no one else within earshot. “Why do you call me ‘most favored one’?”

  Morteza chuckled. “Are you not? You have emerged from the desert and the dangers of the road with no goods, no soldiers, and no injuries. Come. Sit.”

  Myrad tied Jacob to a stake and limped over to sit next to the merchant.

  “Ah,” Morteza said, “I see I was mistaken. You’ve hurt your foot.” He waved a hand in the air. “No matter. You are still most favored. Alone on the road with bandits about, you should be dead. How may this one serve you, young master?”

  A soldier walked by, and Myrad was quick to adjust his feet to hide the stitching on the inside of his right boot. “I wish to sell these fine animals, good merchant. Though they are more agreeable than most of their kind, their gait is a trial and I have a need for greater speed.”

  The man’s generous eyebrows climbed upward. “You as well? Two in as many days. Most come to buy, not to sell, but no matter.” He turned to call into the tent. “Yasmina, come. We have a customer.”

  A young woman emerged from the shadows into the afternoon light. A hand shorter than Myrad, she peered at him with startling green eyes in a heart-shaped face that gave her mouth a hint of amusement. Morteza stood, surrendering his seat. “He is favored,” he told her, “and young. Deal fairly, my daughter. I will get the tea.” He disappeared into the tent.

  “You run the negotiation?” Myrad asked before he could stop himself.

  Instead of taking offense, Yasmina laughed. “It’s not so unusual. Morteza saw early on that I negotiate more skillfully than he does.”

  The merchant emerged from the tent carrying a tray with a steaming pot and three cups. “The truth is, I could no longer abide your wretched tea. By the god of the shining fire, I’ve never met anyone who made a more bitter brew.”

  Yasmina lifted a cup and saluted Myrad with a
nod. “And his eyes grew too weak to spot the flaws in the animals we purchased.”

  “Humph, it can’t be denied,” Morteza said. “My daughter’s eye for animals, even the two-legged type, is quite discerning.”

  Myrad took a sip and nodded in appreciation. “This is quite good.”

  Morteza tapped his generous nose. “The skill lies here.”

  “Tell me about your camels,” Yasmina said. Her eyes flashed green like new grass. Myrad could think of more than one reason why she might be a better negotiator than her father.

  “They’re well-tempered,” he replied, “and not difficult to manage.”

  “Then why sell them? There are merchants here who would pay you to haul goods to Ctesiphon or Margiana. With luck and a little time, you could be a merchant in your own right.”

  He thought of Walagash. “I know too little of trade.”

  She cradled her cup to her chest and stood. “Let us see your animals then.”

  Myrad walked over to the first camel. Yasmina slowed her pace, allowing him to keep up.

  “This is Jacob,” Myrad said. “He carried me.”

  Her delicate brows rose in surprise. “You named them?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t want to call each of them ‘camel.’ They wouldn’t have known which of them I was talking to.”

  She laughed, and he found himself joining in. “Jacob seems a strange name, but nice enough. What would you have named him if he’d been bad-tempered?”

  “Esau,” he said without hesitating. She only nodded, missing the reference. He continued on, introducing Yasmina to the tribes of Israel.

  “With thirteen camels in your possession, you could apprentice yourself to a merchant who could teach you.”

  “Twice now you’ve encouraged me to make a decision that would deprive you of trade. Why?”

  “In truth, you’re the second man in as many days desiring to trade his camels for horses. We have more camels now than we can move in a month. We took hundreds from another merchant. I won’t be able to offer you what yours are worth.”