The End of the Magi Read online

  He read a name from the scroll Myrad recognized as another of the satraps, but got no further. Chaos erupted in the hall as magi and satraps bolted for the doors. The king’s soldiers drew their swords and rushed into the assembly, weapons rising and falling with the rhythm of a sickle. Screams and blood filled the air. Daggers flashed everywhere, the magi fighting both the soldiers and one another.

  Feet thundered behind Myrad, and he spun to see more of the king’s men charging from the rear of the throne room.

  “Him!” a voice screamed as the soldiers drew near. The apprentice who’d mocked him stood five paces away, pointing. “I saw him with one of those who oppose the queen!”

  One of the soldiers veered toward them, his sword back but coming forward.

  The press of people kept Myrad from fleeing. He braced for the stroke that would kill him in an instant.

  The other apprentice stared in horror, watching as the sword swung for him instead. His eyes never closed, not even as his head flew from his body.

  One of the magi with four palms on his crown took the soldier through the neck with his dagger. Then he too was struck down.

  Myrad searched the chaos. “Father!”

  In front of him, three men fell to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs, kicking, punching, stabbing.

  There! “Father!”

  The soldiers were almost upon him.

  Gershom turned, and their gazes caught. Myrad tried to yell, to tell his father to run, to hide. Anything.

  His father’s mouth formed words Myrad never heard. Find me.

  Then a sword thrust into him. Crimson bloomed in his chest, and his father crumpled to the floor.

  On the king’s dais, Phraates, Musa, and their son looked on in triumph.

  Myrad waited, his mind as numb as if he’d already died. The cataphracts finished their butchery, slaughtering the remainder of those who had defied the king. When the soldiers returned to their places at the front and rear of the hall, their mail splattered with the blood of the magi, Myrad stood paralyzed. Around him, perhaps a dozen other apprentices still lived of the two score who’d entered.

  Phraates broke the silence into shards. “Be seated, magi.”

  It took Myrad a moment to force his knees to obey, a moment in which Musa’s eyes found him. At last his knees buckled and he collapsed onto the stone bench.

  “We have a vote before the council of the magi,” the king continued. “Any who wish to vote against Musa as my queen may stand now.”

  Myrad cowered, hating himself.

  “Excellent,” Phraates said. “Is not the wisdom of the magi legendary, my queen?”

  “Deservedly so.” Musa looked out across the bodies of the fallen magi and giggled like a child who’d just been given a present. “Your throne room needs cleaning, O king. A suggestion?”

  “Anything, my queen.”

  “Have the bodies dumped outside the palace. Let the beggars strip them for any items of value they may find.” She gave the king a coquettish smile. A spatter of blood marred one cheek. “Then confiscate the lands of these traitors and add them to your own. It will be a gift and a lesson.”

  When the soldiers opened the doors, the remaining magi rushed from the hall, their steps just short of running. Only Myrad’s clubfoot kept him from flight as his father’s last message whispered over and over again in his mind.

  Find me. Find me . . .

  CHAPTER 3

  Myrad crept through the halls of Ctesiphon, ignoring the blood spatters staining his tunic and the pain shooting through his ankle. Haste lengthened his stride, and his weight landed on the small part of his clubfoot. After two dozen paces he could feel the flesh beneath the callus beginning to bruise. After a hundred, pain flared in his calf.

  He ignored it, flaying himself with images of his father falling to the ground while he watched. Out of sight of the other magi and their cataphracts, he ripped his magi’s circlet from its lopsided perch. His face burned. He’d done nothing to help his father.

  And he’d waited until he was safe before he pulled the crown from his head.

  Tears gathered in his eyes, but he kept his head down, afraid his grief would give him away. Musa had looked at him. At him. He hurried past the administrators’ offices, his father’s workplace, and continued on until he came to their apartment.

  Inside, a single candle still burned, the scent of beeswax drifting to him. An unexpected sound sent his heart to racing. Hearing it again, he realized the sound was only noises from the next apartment over. Quickly he closed the door and threw the bolt, leaning against it before sliding down until the floor stopped him. He buried his face in his hands and wept, wracking sobs that left him gasping.

  After the worst of his sorrow had run its course, he stripped off his bloodstained clothes, poured water from a pitcher, and washed. The water flowed into the basin, red and smelling of metal. Drying himself with a clean cloth, he moved to his bedroom and dug through a cabinet until he found his most worn tunic and trousers, the only clothes he’d owned when Gershom adopted him. He strapped on his sandals and shuffled to the door, checking the candle. Midnight or close to it. Only an hour had passed since he’d come home.

  Out in the hallway, no one stirred. A hush had fallen over the city as word spread, shocking to silence men and women who thought themselves powerful. Myrad limped through the halls with his head down until he came to the broad square outside the imperial quarters. Skirting the entrance set aside for the magi, he worked his way around the perimeter to the southern portion of the courtyard. News of the queen’s largess brought beggars and scavengers flying to the plaza, a flock of crows and vultures eager to feed on the dead.

  When he stepped through the broad arches into the courtyard, his stomach twisted in revulsion. Dead magi lay heaped on the stones, and the city’s poor swarmed over the bodies, stripping them of clothes and belongings without regard. He watched as one man lifted a dead administrator to yank off his tunic, leaving the body to fall back to the stones with an audible impact. Myrad clenched his teeth but kept his head down as he entered the chaos in search of his father. With the crowns gone, there was no way to tell one magus from another. The satraps and high-ranking administrators had worn jewelry of great value. He watched as two men argued over a ring. Knives flashed in the torchlight, and they fell to the ground in a struggle for the prize, wrestling and slashing each other.

  Myrad turned away, intent on finding Gershom. Fifteen minutes later, he’d checked every face without finding his father. Pairs of servants were still bringing out bodies, carrying them by the arms and legs and flinging them into the pool of torchlight where the crowd pounced on them.

  When they dumped his father, a sob threatened to break free. Myrad squeezed his eyes shut to quell it and drew a deep breath. Limping forward, he pushed his way through the throng. Two women hovered over the body, searching his hands for rings, his neck for jewelry, but his father had never worn such baubles. Turning angry, the women clawed at his tunic and trousers, careless of the blood staining the silk. They flipped him over on his back, and one of them tore off the tunic while the other removed his trousers. A third woman darted forward to grab the sash that served as Gershom’s decorative belt.

  A small, folded piece of parchment fluttered to the ground. Myrad went to reach for it, but the third woman rushed over to snatch it up from the stones. He was close enough to catch her by the wrist. “I need that!”

  She bared her teeth at him. “It will cost you.”

  “Please. He was my father.”

  The woman snarled and kicked Gershom’s body, the blow rocking his father’s head so that his dead stare briefly caught the light. “What do I care?” the woman spat. “Dead is dead.”

  Grief exploded within him. With his other hand he struck the woman across the face. He slapped her again and again until she let go of the parchment. He grabbed it, held it close to his chest. The woman lay on the stones of the courtyard, curled around his fathe
r’s sash to keep him from taking that as well. Blood trickled from the split in her lip as she looked up at him.

  The woman leapt to her feet and pointed her finger in accusation. “He’s one of them that defied the queen!” she shouted.

  Afraid of being recognized by the guards, Myrad fled away into the city, taking the twists and turns of the streets without plan until he was sure no one followed him, clutching the parchment as if it were his birthright. When hints of gray lightened the horizon to the east, he made his way back to his father’s apartment.

  Lighting another candle from the first, he unfolded the parchment. Blood stained the outer layers, but Gershom had folded it often enough to protect the message. When Myrad opened the last fold he saw the script and its mirror image written in red. He swallowed, understanding. Without ink, his father had cut himself to write a final message in blood. With no time to blot it, the original and its mirror stained the innermost folds. There were but three lines, four words total, one in Greek and two in Hebrew.

  The first was Rhagae.

  This he recognized easily enough. The city of Rhagae sat at the southern end of the Hyrcanian Sea and served as a stop on the trade route running from the Qian Empire in the east to the Roman Empire in the west. Centrally located in the Parthian Empire, it served as a major distribution point for goods coming from the surrounding empires.

  The second word was Hebrew for calendar. There had been no time for his father to write an explanation, yet none was needed. Every day for the past two years, since Gershom brought Myrad into his household, his adoptive father had painstakingly marked the passing of each day at sunset on a stack of parchments. Every thirty days he would mark the end of another month in a different column in the center of the page. Only twice did he mark the completion of a year, a twelve-month span of three hundred and sixty days in a column on the far left of the page. Myrad often joked the calendar was Gershom’s life’s work.

  “Several lifetimes, in fact,” his father would say, smiling at his jest.

  Myrad shifted his attention back to the bloodstained message. The last line on it, also in Hebrew, was Amin Ben-Yirah.

  From the beginning, his father insisted Myrad add Hebrew to his studies of the more common languages of Greek and Aramaic. He displayed a gift for tongues from working in the market, and lately they had taken to speaking Hebrew to each other in halting phrases when they were alone. Ben-Yirah. He knew what the word meant, but he needed more. Was it a name, as it appeared, or was his father conveying one last message to his son?

  As soon as the thought occurred to him, he dismissed it. While not physically imposing, Gershom had been the bravest man Myrad knew, even more because of his gentleness. He’d taken a stand against Musa despite the threat, and when he realized what was coming, used his dagger on himself to provide the ink to get this message to Myrad.

  A flame came alight in his heart. Sitting there, knowing himself to be pitiful and powerless, he vowed to exact a price from Phraates and Musa. “Great or small,” he whispered to himself, “somehow I will make you pay.”

  Outside the window, a cock crowed. He jerked at the sound.

  Vengeance would have to wait, for now. The miracle of timing that kept his name off the list of those who had defied Phraates and Musa wouldn’t save him. One of the survivors was sure to recognize him as Gershom’s apprentice.

  He filled a bag with his clothes, wrapping a linen tunic around his apprentice’s circlet. The silver in it would buy food while on the road. He limped with haste to Gershom’s room and opened his father’s cabinet. Everything Gershom owned and held dear lay inside. Myrad gathered up his father’s parchments, a stack with his calendar on top, and his stylus. No mark showed on the topmost sheet for the previous day. He made the notation, then wrapped it all in a piece of oiled leather and stuffed it in his bag.

  Lastly, he opened a drawer and took out his father’s purse, surprised at the weight of it. Loosening the drawstring, he found a collection of silver denarii and a few gold coins, Roman or Egyptian. Winking at him from their midst were an emerald and a ruby, small but brilliantly cut.

  Gershom had lived a simple life, preferring the pleasures of conversation and food to the more exotic indulgences of the wealthy and powerful. What had he intended with such money? Myrad had no idea. This amount of money could easily buy his escape or get him killed.

  He took half the contents and rolled the coins into a pair of trousers, making sure the bundle was tightly wrapped to keep the coins from jingling. He tucked the now-lighter purse deep into his tunic and adjusted his belt so it couldn’t be seen.

  Noise in the hall stilled him. He’d taken too long. Throwing open the shutter to the window, he slipped out onto a small courtyard and into the dawn. Head down, he made his way across it to an arched walkway leading east toward the sprawling outdoor market of Ctesiphon and freedom. Once, Myrad heard strident voices behind him at the window, but he kept his head down and his pace steady.

  The walk across the city aggravated his foot even as the relative emptiness of the streets nagged at him. People were hiding, afraid to venture out. Distracted, he turned a corner and nearly ran into a pair of soldiers. A gasp escaped him and he quickly bowed, turning to shield his clubfoot from view.

  “Watch where you’re going.”

  “My apologies,” he said and kept bowing until they showed their backs to him and walked away.

  By the time Myrad entered the dusty grounds of the market, sweat drenched his tunic and was making headway through the bands of cloth that served as his belt. But the streets filled with people at last, and he took his first full breath of the day. He slowed, taking smaller steps and distributing his weight more evenly across the surface of his bad foot. The smell of roasting goat reminded him he hadn’t eaten since before the magi gathered.

  He bought enough meat and bread for the entire day. Wrapping the food in fig leaves, he placed half in his bag and ate the other half. He tucked the copper coins he got as change into his belt and continued east, searching the stalls.

  He found the water seller farther on, where the market ended and the livestock pens began. He purchased two full waterskins, judging either would keep him for the day. Squinting into the morning sun, a vast sea of tents, camels, and horses stretched before him toward the horizon.

  He didn’t realize the danger awaiting him until he’d found his way to the horse pens.

  CHAPTER 4

  Myrad circled around the first horse pen he came to, working to avoid the manure and ruts that countless animals had left in the dirt. The horse trader had pitched his tent by the gate of the pen, a patchwork of stained canvas six paces across. The merchant himself, short but thick as a stump, sat in the shade of the tent’s awning, observing the passersby. His beard stuck out in all directions in defiance, it appeared, of both gravity and grooming. Oddly the man reminded him of Gershom.

  A stab of grief caught Myrad by surprise, stealing his breath. He stopped in the middle of the market, people passing all around him, and struggled to regain his composure. It took him a minute of warring with himself before he felt confident enough to breathe without sobbing. Biting his lip to keep it from trembling, he put on a show of confidence and approached the merchant. “I’m looking for a horse.”

  A smile lit the merchant’s face, and he gestured to the seat next to him. “Then you have come to the right place, sir. Welcome to the pen of Eskander. Please, sit and tell me the tale of your travels.”

  Myrad moved toward the indicated seat, his mind working. Tale? He simply wanted to buy a horse and get away from here. Focused on his reply, he didn’t see the rut that caught his clubfoot and sent him tumbling. He pitched forward and by sheerest luck caught the bench next to the horse trader with his hands. Twisting, he seated himself.

  Eskander’s gaze slid from Myrad’s face down to his feet. When he caught sight of the twisted foot, he blinked and then focused again on Myrad’s face.

  It might have been not
hing. Over the course of his life, he’d seen every possible reaction to his deformity, from jeering to sympathy to amusement, to reactions similar to the merchant’s—a guilty look as if caught peeping into the master’s bedchamber.

  Their eyes locked, and the merchant smiled, keeping his attention resolutely on Myrad’s face, not even daring to look at Myrad’s clothing to gauge his wealth.

  “Tell me, young master, what sort of horse do you require?”

  Myrad pointed to his feet and wiggled his clubfoot. “One with an even temper and a steady gait. As you can see, I have little interest in becoming a tamer of horses.”

  Eskander relaxed but still avoided looking at Myrad’s foot. “Will you need a packhorse for your journey as well? Even with horses, prices drop with quantity.”

  Myrad forced a smile. “No, good merchant. The trip to Babylon hardly requires such.” Babylon lay some forty miles south of Ctesiphon, the opposite direction from where he was headed.

  “Why go to the trouble of buying a horse for such a trip? A boat would take you down the Euphrates just as quickly and be cheaper than buying and reselling a horse. For a denarius you could relax on the deck and drink wine all the way to the fabled city.”

  Had Myrad only imagined the merchant’s emphasis?

  He nodded, his mind racing. “Alas, Eskander, I have a fear of water no amount of wine can cure. I can’t swim, and there are creatures living in the river that make meals of the slow and infirm.” He laughed, using the opportunity to check to see if all the merchant’s guards remained at their posts.

  Eskander rose, leading Myrad to the pen. Following, Myrad glanced over his shoulder to see one of Eskander’s guards leaving his post, heading back toward the city at a jog.

  He drew a shaky breath. Foolish. Anyone looking for him would know he would try to leave the city. All they would have to do was put the word out to the horse traders to be on the lookout for a man with a clubfoot. How long did he have before Musa’s men came for him? It had taken him the better part of an hour to make his way from Gershom’s apartment to the market.