The End of the Magi

by Patrick W. Carr

  They continued west for another ten days until they reached Ctesiphon. During their journey, winter lost most of its grip, and Emperor Artabanus no longer held court there. Still, Myrad eyed the city with suspicion. In thirty years of travel, he always bypassed this city. This was the first time he’d returned since Gershom’s death and his desperate flight.

  Arriving at their inn, one of the few that could house their growing company, they were soon joined by Harel and Ronen. Still in the service of the empire as administrators, the two magi took their places among them.

  “Where is Shimon?” Yehudah asked. “He said he would meet us here in Ctesiphon.”

  The two men bowed their heads as one. “Shimon has passed,” Harel said.

  “He won’t be seeing the Messiah,” Ronen added.

  “You think not?” Eliar said. “If that is true, then our belief in the resurrection stands refuted.”

  Awkward silence filled the room, broken by the sounds of the servants who brought them food and drink where they reclined next to low tables. “Such a gathering has not been seen in thirty years,” a voice said from the entrance.

  Before he turned, Myrad knew whom he would see.

  Masista stood limned in the doorway with a pair of cataphracts, his fists on his hips, surveying the assembled magi and former magi as though he’d called them there for his pleasure, but when his roving gaze fell on Myrad where he reclined with Walagash and Roshan, Masista bowed, and there was nothing of condescension or mockery in the gesture.

  Myrad stifled a decades-old distrust of the magus.

  CHAPTER 35

  Masista laughed. His beard, once as black as a starless night, now held streaks of gray. But he still had the poise and bearing of an athlete, all coiled muscle. “Pardon the intrusion. I merely wish to convey my respects to old friends and bid them a fair journey to the land of their fathers.” He paused to take in the room, but his movements carried too much artifice, as though they’d been rehearsed. “I would also speak to a few of you in private.”

  “That’s likely not good,” Roshan said beside him.

  Myrad sighed. “Is there anything we can do to avoid it?”

  Walagash shook his head. “Probably not. Masista has done well for himself. He’s the king’s chief advisor.”

  Yehudah, Myrad, Roshan, and Walagash followed Masista and his guards to a private room of the inn, where the king’s chief advisor dropped all pretense. “Artabanus is old.”

  “It happens to us all,” Yehudah said. “Even you bear the mark of the years you carry.”

  Masista nodded. “He is a different sort of man than we’ve had as king for a long time. He thinks.”

  Yehudah cocked his head to one side. “And what thought of his has sent you to us?”

  “That Tiberius in Rome is also old. Artabanus is a student of history. Empires grow, stagnate, and then fall. He sees within the Parthian and Roman Empires the signs of decay, which will lead to their destruction.”

  “What does this have to do with us?” Yehudah asked.

  Masista’s smile showed too many teeth. “You were more subtle once. Surely you surmised I’ve told Artabanus of your trip to Judea. While not convinced, he is . . . curious to see if your messiah could be a man to unite the empires and stave off their decline.”

  Myrad tried to reconcile Masista’s proposal with the memory of a simple man and his young wife holding a wide-eyed baby. That anyone would propose the idea shocked him. That it would come from Masista shocked him ten times over.

  Yehudah’s eyes narrowed. “What do you wish for us to do?”

  Masista held his palms up. “Nothing more than you would have done already. Watch and see if your messiah appears. If he can take control of Judea while the Romans occupy the land, then he demonstrates a power to be reckoned with.”

  “And will Artabanus and Tiberius consent to throw the kingdoms of the world at the Messiah’s feet?”

  Masista surprised them all when he agreed. “I can’t speak for Tiberius, but Artabanus was always a different kind of man.”

  Myrad’s surprise increased when Yehudah agreed as well. “We will watch, and if the opportunity warrants, we will speak to the Messiah on behalf of the king.”

  “I can ask no more.” With a smile and a parting bow, Masista left.

  Watching him leave, Yehudah turned to Myrad, Roshan, and Walagash. “Speak of this to no one, especially not Hakam.”

  They left Ctesiphon the next morning, thirty current and former magi, along with a dozen cataphracts. Twenty days later, they came to the bank of the Euphrates, where they looked across the mighty river toward the fortified walls of Dura Europos, the city defining the military boundary of the Parthian Empire. The mercantile edge of the kingdom lay somewhat farther west at Palmyra, where Parthian caravans surrendered their goods to Roman merchants who then transported them around the Great Sea. They dismounted near the gate on the west wall of the city, Yehudah helping Eliar down from his horse. The ancient magus looked like a man so used up, recovery was impossible. Yehudah didn’t so much help him into the inn as carry him, and grief etched itself across his face as though he anticipated mourning the loss of his friend.

  Myrad pulled his attention from watching Yehudah to Roshan at his side. “Would you be willing to accompany me on an errand?”

  “Of course,” she said, but her brows came together. “We have nothing to sell here, and there’s not much to buy.”

  “True, and I would rather do this in Palmyra, but I may not get the chance.”

  After Yehudah and Eliar disappeared into the inn, he gestured toward the heart of the city. “I made a mistake thirty years ago I need to correct. I’m hoping to find some information.”

  “What are you after?” Roshan asked.

  “The prophecy of Daniel.” His stomach twisted at the thought. “Gershom used to read it to me because my Hebrew was too weak. Have you noticed how a shadow passes over Yehudah’s expression every time we speak of the Messiah? And when Masista told us Artabanus would consider handing the kingdom to Him, Yehudah advised us to keep quiet about it.” Myrad shook his head. Too many questions needed answers. “It’s taken me thirty years to understand the hints Yehudah has dropped along the way. I suspect I’ve never heard the entire prophecy.”

  Roshan fell in step beside him. “What makes you think you’ll find it here?”

  “I may not, but the closer we come to Judea, the greater the concentration of Hebrews in each city.” They came to an intersection of streets where he turned a slow circle without finding his intended direction. “If their synagogue is large enough, they may have an entire Tanakh and not just a Torah.”

  They made their way to the market, a much smaller affair than Margiana, where they found a trader in jewels who gave them directions to the synagogue. The designers of Dura Europos had long ago laid out the city with military precision. Only a couple of streets farther on, Myrad and Roshan stood at the back of a stone rectangular building with a flat-topped roof. They made their way around to the entrance that faced southwest toward Jerusalem. It was the fourth day of the week and no one stood guard, but the open door revealed light within.

  They passed by a pool Myrad imagined immersing himself in and came to a second entrance that revealed columns with ascending rows of stone benches around a central court with a stone dais. A feeling of emptiness bordering on desertion pervaded the synagogue, but when they went forward to stand among the columns, a voice called out to them.

  “There’s no one here, of course.”

  Standing by a closet, a short man bent from age stared at him, his head continuously nodding assent to some unheard question. He fussed with a door that wouldn’t stay shut. When he opened it to examine the jamb, Myrad glimpsed a pair of heavy wooden dowels holding weathered scrolls.

  “If you’re looking to hear the teaching, you’ll have to wait until they come back,” the man said, then struck the stubborn door with the side of his fist.

  �
�I’m looking for Daniel, the prophet,” Myrad said.

  The old man stopped and turned to face them, his lips quivering. “You’re in the wrong place. He’s with God.” He wheezed with laughter at his own joke.

  Myrad smiled. “I apologize. I meant the prophecies of Daniel. Do you have them?”

  The old man pointed to the scrolls standing upright on their dowels. “We have the Torah and the Haftarah, but our Haftarah is the writings of Isaiah only.” He shrugged. “Our synagogue is rather small.”

  Disappointment settled over Myrad. “Do you know the prophecies of Daniel?”

  The man’s unending nod grew in strength before he managed to interrupt it. “Once. My memory isn’t what it was. My daughter tells me I talk to people who aren’t there.” He laughed. “For all I know you might be one of them.”

  “Is there anyone here who knows the prophet Daniel?”

  “No. They’ve left for Jerusalem, for Passover. More than usual this year.”

  “Thank you,” Myrad said.

  They retraced their steps past the pool of cleansing and back out into the streets. “We were so close.”

  Roshan squeezed his arm. “Be patient, Myrad. You can try again when we reach Palmyra.”

  He nodded. The city of Palmyra boasted a population nearly as large as Antioch, composed of a huge merchant class and all the people it took to support it. The synagogue there would likely be several times larger than this one, with a more complete set of Hebrew scrolls. Still, his chances at gaining access to them or to someone who would read the words to him weren’t good.

  They would make Palmyra in seven or eight days, and Jerusalem three weeks after that. This would give them two weeks to spare once in the Holy City before the appearance of the Messiah. Myrad tried to comfort himself with the knowledge that if he didn’t find success in Palmyra, he would seek the answers to his questions among the people of Jerusalem.

  Eight days passed, and Myrad stopped at the end of the Syrian Desert to gaze at the sprawling city of Palmyra, shrouded in palms and tucked between sand to the southeast and mountains to the north and southwest. He’d visited the city on numerous occasions over the past thirty years. A massive colonnade ran the length of the main road running east to west, and temples to Bel and a host of other gods vied with each other for size. Palmyra never failed to impress. Yet for all of its mercantile might, it made him homesick for the less polished environs of Margiana and its wild, unpredictable surroundings.

  They found a suitable inn at the edge of the city closest to the gate of their intended departure and stopped for the day. Myrad glanced at the half disk of a crimson sun vanishing into the horizon and sighed. There would be no answers until they arrived in Jerusalem.

  They entered the inn, Yehudah half carrying Eliar, who protested he didn’t need help even as his legs failed him. Myrad took his dinner with Roshan and retired to bed with his questions and disappointment. The air in the inn felt heavy, as if it couldn’t contain the expectations of the people assembled within it. He stared at a ceiling he couldn’t see. Whose expectations would be met? Hakam’s? Would the Messiah appear and amass an army to drive the Romans from Judea? Would He be a poet like Dov?

  What did Myrad expect? He almost laughed at himself. What could a man expect from two ordinary-looking people like Joseph and Mary? It occurred to him then that one’s expectations and hopes depended on what was wanted. What did he want?

  Myrad shook his head in the dark. He wasn’t sure.

  Eliar died in the night.

  Yehudah found him on the floor the next morning where he’d crawled from his bed as his heart gave out, his face toward Jerusalem. Without discussion or a vote, the magi elected to stay in Palmyra an extra day to prepare his body for burial.

  “We will need oil and spices to prepare him,” Yehudah said.

  “We?” Hakam asked. “But we’ll be unclean for a week.”

  Yehudah’s expression became flint. “We have two weeks or more to Jerusalem. Eliar was one of us who saw the dream of the Messiah’s star long ago.”

  Roshan interposed herself between the two men. “The markets of Palmyra are known to Myrad and me. Tell us what you need to prepare your friend and we will get it for you.”

  Yehudah smiled his thanks, and moments later Myrad rode next to his wife toward the market to purchase oil and myrrh. “Why would the Messiah need myrrh?” He wasn’t even sure he’d spoken until Roshan answered him.

  “It has other, less well-known uses, and now is your chance to find out.” She reached out to take his hand in hers. “As familiar as the markets are to me, it will take some time to gather the oil and spices we need.”

  She almost made him smile through his grief. “Is it any wonder I prize you above all others?”

  “You say that all the time.”

  “Is it not true?”

  She gave a small laugh. “It is. Go find your answers.”

  He left her at the next major intersection, where a vendor of cured meats gave him directions to the synagogue that lay deeper in the city.

  The layout of the building echoed that of the synagogue in Europos Dura, except that it was bigger. The benches where the people sat to hear the readings of the Torah and Haftarah stretched nearly twice as long to accommodate the Hebrews of Palmyra. Even so, the echoing of footsteps against the stone floor spoke of emptiness. Thinking his errand wasted, he turned to leave when a man emerged from the shadows near where Myrad stood by the synagogue’s entrance. After a brief silence during which he noted the man’s sleeveless vest, Myrad bowed. “Peace to you, Teacher.”

  The man dipped his head in greeting. “You know the correct form of address despite your having the appearance of a Persian. What brings you here?”

  “I have a question that my father, Gershom, left me . . . before he died. It concerns the Haftarah.”

  The teacher’s brows rose. “Your father was a Hebrew?”

  “Yes. Tell me, do you have a complete Haftarah?”

  “We do, but like most synagogues outside of Judea, we have only the one in Greek. If you desire the words in Hebrew, you will have to travel farther west.”

  “Is there much difference?” Myrad asked.

  “Sometimes. Concepts are like water, a certain volume but susceptible to influence by the language they are expressed in, the way a container molds the shape of the water.”

  Myrad thought about that. He’d heard men in the market switch from Greek to Parthian, noting subtle changes in their personality as they did so, assuming it was the merchants who influenced the language. Perhaps it also worked the other way around. “I think I understand. Do you have the writings of the prophet Daniel?”

  “In Greek, as I said. Follow me.”

  He led Myrad to the back of the synagogue where he took a key from within his vestment and unlocked a door to reveal myriad wooden dowels with scrolls on them of varying diameter, all arranged vertically. He lifted one and untied its ribbon holding in place a protective cloth, moving closer to the light cast by several tall candles. “It’s not very long,” the teacher said, “but if you want me to read the entire scroll, we’ll be here for some time.”

  “No,” Myrad said. “Can you read the portion that speaks of the sixty-nine weeks?”

  “Ah,” the teacher said. “I know the reference. You mean the seventy.”

  Myrad covered his surprise with a nod. “Yes.” Seventy?

  The teacher began reading aloud, and while Myrad was still more comfortable in Persian, many years of negotiating had sharpened his skill with the language to easy familiarity.

  “Seventy weeks are decreed . . .”

  Myrad listened, the words lulling him until the teacher read a phrase that never passed Gershom’s lips in his presence. “Stop!” At the look on the teacher’s face, he lowered his voice. “Please. I’m not sure what that word means.”

  “Which word?”

  “Kopto.”

  The teacher nodded. “It is nearly as flui
d in Greek as it is in Hebrew. It means cut off.”

  Myrad’s vision swam, and he gripped the edge of the table holding the scroll to steady himself. “What did you say?”

  “In this context it usually implies exile or execution.” The teacher’s voice never changed. It barely wavered from the cadence he used when reading from the scroll.

  “It says the Messiah will be exiled or killed?” Myrad asked. “How could that happen?”

  The teacher smiled. “The prophecies of God can be difficult to interpret, and Daniel has troubled more than one of us. When the Messiah comes, He will explain the books of God. He will interpret the words, the letters, and even the spaces between the letters. Until then—” he stopped and shrugged—“it’s no use trying to guess exactly what will happen. Now, do you want me to continue?” He lifted the scroll a fraction.

  Myrad nodded, but as the teacher read on, nothing else in the words of the long-dead prophet struck him.

  He stumbled out of the synagogue into too-bright sunlight and found his way back to the market where Roshan waited, her arms filled with the oils and spices for Eliar’s burial.

  “Did you find your answer, Myrad?” she asked.

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  CHAPTER 36

  A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. . . . When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?” The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”

  Matthew 21:8–11

  They left Palmyra by the southwest gate and journeyed eight days to Damascus, passing between a short range of mountains on their right and lower hills on their left bordering the desert. Then, still east of the Jordan River, they journeyed south for seven days along the King’s Highway until they were due east of Jerusalem. The closer they got, the more crowded the roads became. Myrad avoided Yehudah and discussions of the Messiah, instead searching the faces of the rest of their party for some hint of what was to come. For thirty years he’d honed his ability to read the expressions and mannerisms of others, training himself to interpret why someone might look away, scratch the neck, fold the arms, or make a hundred or more similar gestures.