The End of the Magi

by Patrick W. Carr

  CHAPTER 19

  The cursed bow wouldn’t move. Sweat beaded across Myrad’s forehead, which had nothing to do with the sun. He grasped the bowstring with the draw ring on his thumb, hooking around it as Aban had instructed, and pulled. Spots bloomed in his vision from the effort, but he kept pulling until the caravan in front of him narrowed to a pinpoint in a field of black.

  He took a pair of ragged breaths and bent to attempt the bow again.

  “Stop,” Aban said.

  “Why? I haven’t drawn it yet.”

  “And you won’t,” the guard said. “Not today and not for some time. You’re not strong enough.”

  “All the more reason to keep trying.”

  “If it hasn’t happened by now, it’s not going to happen today. Tomorrow, and even more on the next day, you’re going to wake so sore you will think you’ve been beaten in your sleep.” Aban pointed to the rise they’d just begun to ascend. “And we’ll be stopping soon. Our way station lies just beyond. Give me your bow.”

  With annoying ease, the guard slid the bow between his legs and slipped the string from the notched ends. The bow curled into its unstrung shape, though now it reminded Myrad less of a heart than it did the curled legs of a dead insect.

  “Here.” Aban handed bow and string back to him. “Keep them dry. Wet can destroy a year’s work in minutes.”

  Roshan guided her horse close enough to put her hand on Myrad’s arm. “It took me weeks to draw mine, and weeks more to do it without shaking. Be patient.”

  They turned their caravan to the south, where they dismounted and began unloading the horses before leading them to a long water trough. A man stood at the far end, turning a crank that rotated a tube sloping down into one of the many cisterns dotting the oasis. As the tube rotated, water was pushed upward through the spiral attached inside to spill into the trough.

  Someone tapped him on his shoulder. Turning, he saw Walagash standing there along with Aban, Storana, and Roshan. Aban held the reins of the horses holding the bodies of Delshan and Jahan. “You’re part of my tent,” Walagash said. “Come with us.”

  “Where are we going?”

  Aban led them away from the oasis to the desert. “To lay Delshan and Jahan to peace.”

  Myrad glanced at each man’s horse. “You don’t have a shovel.”

  Aban shook his head. “Our brother guards are Parthian. It’s not our way to bury our dead. Instead, we will strip them. The scent of death—”

  “And blood,” Storana added.

  “—will draw scavengers. After a few days, nothing will remain but their bones. We’ll pay the innkeeper at the oasis to bury those.”

  The idea of leaving men who’d been living and conversing just hours ago out in the dirt as carrion struck him as indecent. “You’re going to let the animals eat them?”

  Storana squinted at him. “Above the ground for animals or below the ground for worms, what’s the difference? This is our way. At the next city we will visit the temple where the shining fire burns without ceasing and offer prayers for them.”

  He followed, watching as Aban took the bodies and placed them in the shade of a stunted acacia tree. Roshan’s hand crept into his, and when they stripped the bodies bare, she sobbed, adding her breath to the wind.

  Memories of rage rushed to Myrad’s mind, but Aban and Storana held nothing in common with the beggars who’d taken his father’s clothes. Their movements were solemn, dignified, speaking of respect and ancient ritual. Walagash lumbered forward to close the eyes of the dead men and offer his prayers for their families. After they returned, the bottom edge of the sun kissed the horizon.

  Walagash stopped Myrad with one hand. “Bring the magi to my tent. I wish to speak with them about this attack.”

  Myrad moved to comply, but Walagash’s grip stopped him. “Bring Masista as well.”

  He found Yehudah and the other magi at the inn, sipping date wine in silence. “Come. Walagash desires to speak to us.”

  “What about?”

  “About the men who attacked us.”

  “The bandits?” Dov asked.

  “Aban said they weren’t bandits.” He held out his right hand to show Yehudah the draw ring he still wore. “All of the men who attacked us had one of these.”

  “Bandits don’t have them?”

  “Not made out of bone,” Myrad said. “Aban said bandits aren’t usually so well-equipped.”

  Yehudah pursed his lips. “That’s good to know.”

  They entered Walagash’s tent bathed in the ruddy light of the afternoon sun. Walagash was already there, sprawled on cushions around a low table that held a pitcher of wine and half a dozen goblets. Masista entered a moment later, accompanied by one of his cataphracts. “What do you want, Walagash?”

  “Please,” the merchant said, “be seated. Have some date wine. I wish to negotiate.” His gaze swept over the cataphract.

  The magus nodded and lowered himself on the cushions. He reached forward and filled his goblet, gulping it down and refilling it again. “What negotiation?”

  Walagash took a sip of wine. “The price for the lives of my guards.”

  Masista laughed. “I’m sure your guards knew the risks of their profession, merchant. I fail to see how their death is my concern.”

  Walagash’s eyes hardened until they were chips of obsidian. He extended a closed fist over the table. When he opened it, a half-dozen bone draw rings clattered onto it, the noise loud in the absence of voices. “Those men weren’t bandits. They were professional soldiers. I don’t think they were after my silk, and none of your cataphracts assisted with the defense of the caravan during the attack.”

  Masista didn’t reply. Instead, the two men stared at each other in silence, each waiting for the other to speak first.

  “You’ve yet to ask me a question, merchant,” Masista finally said. “The magi say all knowledge is useful, but I believe some is more useful than others. I have no interest in your speculations.”

  Crimson crept up Walagash’s neck. “I’ve two men dead, and the price to their families must be paid. Do you think I’m a fool? Those men were soldiers, magus, and I think they were yours.”

  “If you have a question, merchant, ask it,” Masista said, his words clipped. “A magus is not permitted to lie.”

  Walagash’s laughter crackled in the air. “But they’re allowed to steal a man’s horse and leave him for dead in the desert? No. I have no need for greasy answers.” Walagash clenched a fist twice the size of a normal man’s. “Know this, Masista. I have given orders to my men. If we are attacked by forces we cannot defeat, their first duty is to see you dead.”

  Masista’s eyes widened until the whites showed all around. “You would make me responsible for your safety? The desert is filled with bandits.”

  Walagash smiled, though it never reached his eyes. “This is so, and now it is in your best interests to ensure your cataphracts help with the defense. Consider it the price you must pay for abandoning Myrad in the desert.” He gestured to the tent flap. “You should go now. You have new orders for your men.”

  Masista rose to depart, forcing a laugh. “You’ve misinterpreted events, merchant. My cataphracts are present to protect me, not your silks. I kept them with me during the attack for that reason.” He turned to Yehudah. “Did I not say you left a trail in Margiana a blind man could follow? If I’d wanted your cargo, I could have taken it from you in Margiana. I had nothing to do with the attack.” He swept from the tent.

  With a sigh, Walagash took his cup of wine and drained it. “Perhaps,” he said to Yehudah, “I should have Masista and his men killed. Despite what he says, I believe he knew about the attack.”

  Yehudah shook his head. “No. As much as I might agree with your suspicion, we do not know those were his men.” He looked at Myrad. “It is not our way to condemn without proof.”

  Our way, Myrad noted. Did he mean the way of the magi or the way of the Hebrews, and did he mean to inc
lude him? He put the question aside. “What makes you think those were his men?” he asked Walagash.

  “Bandits are like jackals,” Walagash replied. “They attack when their numbers are great enough to ensure victory. There weren’t enough men for that.” He leaned forward. “But there would have been had you left Margiana on your own. Four cataphracts and six magi would have been no match for the bandits and Masista’s guards.”

  Realization flooded through him. “He was angry when he found out we’d joined with your caravan. He knew we were leaving this morning and had already arranged the attack. There was no way to call it off. He’d ordered the ambush the night before.”

  “It fits all we know,” Yehudah said, “but it’s not proof.”

  Walagash’s knuckles cracked as he clenched a fist. “Where the safety of my tent is concerned, I do not require proof.”

  “Leave him be,” Yehudah advised. “If it was his attack, it’s over now. While on the road, he has no opportunity to arrange another.”

  Walagash’s disagreement rumbled through the tent. “What do you say?” he asked Myrad.

  All eyes regarded him. Those of the magi held a speculative cast as though Walagash’s question posed a test. Could they afford Yehudah’s offer of mercy? Could he place the blood of five men on his hands?

  In the end, he strove to please both Walagash and Yehudah. “For now, keep eyes on Masista and his men,” Myrad answered. “Any attempt to arrange another attack will happen at the oases. If he is caught, he is killed.”

  Walagash took a deep breath, but his head lowered and Myrad couldn’t read the expression in his eyes. Yehudah set his wine cup on the table. “All decisions are difficult. The road to Judea is long. Perhaps by the time we arrive, Masista will think differently.”

  CHAPTER 20

  No attack came against the caravan the next day or the day after. Once a week had passed, Myrad felt a weight lift from his shoulders as though some threat had been averted. Masista and his men settled into the rhythm of the caravan, and if they were not friendly, at least they ceased to be combative. Surprisingly, Hakam became Masista’s companion of choice, their mutual hatred of all things Roman serving as the glue that bound them together.

  The relative calm that descended upon the caravan after the attack would have been even greater except for the reminder hanging in the western sky each night. As soon as the light from the sun fled, the King’s star appeared above the horizon where it hung without moving while the rest of the lights of heaven circled around the mariner’s star.

  “It unsettles me,” Dov said one night between Nisa and Hecatompylos.

  “Why?” Myrad asked.

  The magus chuckled, his features drawn in flickers by the torchlight within the oasis. “I’ve forgotten what it is to be young. I think when a man grows old, the routine of unnumbered days has a way of dulling his sense of wonder.” He pointed at the star. “Then, when he comes across the opportunity, he fears instead.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  Dov laughed again. “Well spoken. Consider, then, the evidence of your eyes each night. What is the center of the sky?”

  Myrad pointed to the sky. “The mariner’s star.”

  “And what about the rest of the lights?”

  He shrugged, though the gesture held little meaning in the darkness. “They revolve around the mariner’s star like bits of clay on a potter’s wheel.”

  Dov’s arm came up as he too pointed. “Fixed in the heavens and yet rotating around a central point. Now, consider what must be happening for the King’s star to remain fixed at a single point in the sky while all the other lights move along their appointed rounds.”

  Myrad raised his arms, his hands moving as he tried to visualize Dov’s explanation. Then it hit him. “It’s moving. All night long it moves against the current of the stars so that it appears to remain fixed in the sky.” He took a long, slow breath. “I still don’t understand why that would frighten you.”

  The magus laughed softly in the darkness, yet the sound seemed directed inward. “In the pride of my knowledge I thought I understood the ways of the Most High God, the rhythm and melody of His creation. Now I am reminded the stars are nothing more than grains of sand in His hand. It’s unsettling to know everything can be upended in a mere moment.”

  Myrad thought about that as he gazed at the light in the western sky, fixed yet moving while all of the surrounding lights followed their routes. “What will we find in Judea?”

  “The King,” Dov said. For a moment, Myrad thought the poet might leave his answer in those simple terms. “But I hope to find some greater truth. Just as the King’s star behaves differently from the rest of the stars, I hope that this King will be different as well.”

  “Different, how?”

  “I don’t know. It may be the King will frighten me even more than His star.” After a last look, he moved off into the darkness, but Myrad stayed, watching.

  Roshan joined him a moment later. She wore the fine linen of a noblewoman, appropriate for a daughter of a silk merchant, her hair thick and loose down her back. His fingers twitched at the sight of it. His gaze traced the arch of her neck. The physical traits he’d once taken for boyish immaturity were in fact feminine softness. The star and her acceptance of him both managed to fill him with a sense of wonder.

  “You and the rest of the magi come out of your tents every night to look at the sky,” she said. “What is it you see?”

  He laughed, surprised that she didn’t know of the Messiah’s star even after their weeks on the road together. He pointed to the beacon hanging low over the horizon with its steady light. “See that star there, the really bright one? Throughout the night it won’t move. While all the other lights of heaven spin in a circle around the mariner’s star, that one will stay fixed in the west.”

  She leaned in closer. “Which one?”

  “That one,” he said, pointing again. “You can’t miss it. It’s the brightest star in the west.”

  She shook her head. “They all look the same to me.”

  “Perhaps your eyes are too weak to see it.”

  She laughed and gave him an exaggerated blink. “My eyes are fine. I see at least as good as a magus who spends too much time reading.”

  Frustrated, he straightened his arm and tipped his head to sight along it, moving until it was aimed straight at the star. “Stand behind me and line up with my shoulder and finger. The star is bigger than any other light in the sky except the moon. If you can see the other stars, you can see this one.”

  Again she shook her head. “I’m telling you, I see nothing there. Have you been drinking poppy tea for your foot again? I think you’re seeing things.”

  A realization dawned on him then, and the flesh on his neck pebbled in the cool of the evening. “You’re sincere, you truly can’t see it?”

  “I truly can’t. Is something wrong?”

  He stared to the west, afraid the light linking him to Gershom might have winked out as suddenly as it appeared. While the star still burned, he trusted it less now.

  “Myrad?” Roshan’s voice brought him back to himself.

  “I . . . I don’t know.” He turned and started toward Yehudah’s tent. Days on horseback had restored his foot to normalcy, if not health. Even so, his steps back to the tents still carried the tentative cadence of a man who distrusted his own body.

  Inside a tent that rivaled Walagash’s for its size, he found Yehudah huddled close beside Dov, speaking in low tones, while Tomyris and the rest of his cataphracts relaxed a space apart. The two magi reclined around a low table. Yehudah shifted at his entrance. “Myrad, welcome. What brings you to our tent? I would have thought you would be using nights such as this to court your betrothed.” He gave a weak smile. “A wise man courts his wife for the length of his life.”

  The sadness in his smile reminded Myrad that Yehudah had lost his wife and child. “I was. We were looking at the King’s star. I mean, I wa
s. She can’t see it, yet her eyesight is better than mine.”

  The magi didn’t appear at all surprised. They both looked at him but remained quiet.

  “You knew?” Myrad asked.

  They nodded in unison. “Since we first came to Margiana,” Dov said.

  “How?”

  The poet shrugged where he reclined by the table. “Every people and nation watch the stars, and every religion has astrologers who map them and search the sky. We inquired of those in Margiana who follow the shining fire, and none of them knew anything of a new star hanging in the west. None. Then we went to the Greek temples, but it was the same response. No one had noticed anything different about the night sky.”

  Myrad shook his head. “How can they not see it? And if they can’t, how can we?”

  “Your question can be debated but not answered,” Dov said. “Therefore, the subject is of little use to us.”

  “Of little use? But what if the star isn’t real?”

  Yehudah and Dov exchanged a look Myrad couldn’t decipher. “He’s one of us,” Yehudah said. “We found him in Nisa and, if you recall, his dream predates ours. Is that not a sign of God’s favor?”

  Dov, the oldest of the magi with them, sighed. Sprinkles of gray marked his beard, though his gaze was sharp, even fierce. “Am I real?” he asked Myrad.

  Myrad laughed his discomfort. “Of course.”

  “How do you know?”

  He pointed at Dov’s chest, picking a point where a splash of wine created another stain on his tunic. “I can see you.”

  “You can see the star as well.”

  Myrad looked at Yehudah, and although the conversation seemed genuinely earnest, he showed no inclination to contribute. “But I could walk over and touch you as well.”

  “Not if I ran away,” Dov said. “Let’s assume for the moment that these ancient legs are swifter than yours. I grant you, the question is in doubt.”