They could flee through the desert on foot, but if they were spotted, they’d be no match for the Romans and their horses. They could look for somewhere to hide near the palace and hope that the Romans would be fooled into chasing an assumption through the desert — but what if they weren’t? It was here, in this moment of bleeding indecision, that a vision of waving reeds caught the fellowship’s attention, and their eyes descended the wet marble steps to the sea, where the masts of Roman warships bobbed up and down in the swell. All of them firmly moored against the dock…
… all of them left untended.
VII
A young girl came running out of Herod’s throne room, sobbing and soaked in blood. Some of it was hers. Most of it wasn’t. She pushed her way past the Roman and Judean soldiers who packed the hallways.
“The king!” she cried. “The king has gone mad!”
The soldiers had come running only moments before, summoned by the sounds of a melee. They’d expected to find the Antioch Ghost battling it out with their comrades, trying to get his hands on Herod. But on arriving, they’d been shocked to see that it was Herod himself wielding a blade, using it to dispose of his courtesans and advisors, his wise men and women. The soldiers could only stand and watch as he hacked them to pieces, screaming all the while. None of them dared defy the will of a king, madman or not.
It was something out of a nightmare. A grisly scene that forced even the most cast-iron of soldiers to look away, lest they be sick. The throne room was littered with headless and limbless victims. Shards of smashed pottery and splinters of broken furniture. And in the middle of it all, Herod himself, kneeling over one of the bodies, a sword by his side… his face almost completely obscured by blood.
Minutes before this madness began, Herod sat impatiently on his throne, awaiting an update on the escape. The magus sat next to him, meditating silently. Searching for the fugitives, Herod hoped. Hunting them with his mind.
Minutes after the first shouts of alarm echoed through the palace, Pontius Pilate appeared with his lieutenants, ready to give the king his report. It would be nearly an hour before the Romans discovered one of the smaller ships in their fleet was missing.
“It seems,” said Pilate, “that the Ghost and the other fugitives were able to slip out of the palace, Your Highness.”
Herod involuntarily balled his fists. The Hebrew God…
“At present,” Pilate continued, “we have no clue as to where they went, but I have some of my men searching the grounds in case they’ve hidden close by.”
“SOME of your men? Send ALL of them, you idiot! Send them all into the desert! Into the mountains! Send them up and down the coast!”
Pilate hesitated, sharing a look with some of his officers. “Your Highness,” he said, “in light of the admiral’s death, I’ve… decided to recall my men to Rome.”
It took Herod a moment to register this.
“What did you say?”
“The emperor has already sacrificed enough of his men for this folly. I won’t risk losing any more or endangering his magus. Not until I’m able to make a full report.”
Herod lifted his body off the throne, his anger rising to its full height.
“‘His’ magus?” He walked slowly down the steps, a smile spreading across his lips. “You can tell Augustus that his magus won’t be coming back to Rome.”
Pilate glared back at him. What is this?
“You can tell him,” Herod continued, “that his power belongs to Judea now. As you can see, he’s already used some of it to restore my health. Or did you think I’d miraculously healed on my own?”
Now it was the magus who rose, emerging from his trance and taking in what had just become a very tricky situation.
Pilate was confused. So were Herod’s courtesans and advisors, his wise men and women. All of them exchanged looks behind Herod’s back.
Is this some kind of joke?
“Tell Augustus,” Herod continued, “that I’m not his puppet any longer.”
“Are you mad?” asked Pilate. “Augustus is the master of the world! What are you but a sickly little joke of a king?”
“INSOLENCE! I should have you cut down where you stand!”
The mere suggestion made Pilate’s lieutenants draw their swords, which made Herod’s Judean guards draw theirs. Pilate raised a hand in the air — easy…
“Do you have any idea what he’ll do to you?” asked Pilate.
“Let him try!” said Herod with a laugh. “The magus has sworn his loyalty to me! His powers are my powers!”
Pilate looked past Herod and locked onto the magus’s black eyes. He wanted to know if any of this was true.
The magus, for his part, knew he had a decision to make.
Yes, Augustus didn’t appreciate him. Yes, the magus wanted to strike out on his own, use his powers to rebuild a lost faith. But he was also the last of his kind. And this made self-preservation all the more important. Herod had seemed like the perfect catalyst for his transformation — a powerful man who could be controlled, used up, and thrown away. But he was clearly coming unhinged. Declaring war on the empire in the blink of an eye. That wasn’t someone you wanted in your corner. One didn’t need to read the tea leaves to see how it would end. He would live to fight another day.
The magus indicated something to Pilate with a nod of his head. When Pilate saw what it was, he understood.
“Go ahead,” said Pilate to Herod, indicating the full-length mirror. “Look for yourself. Look at what the magus has done to you.”
Herod laughed and turned back to see if the magus was just as amused as he was. But instead of the slight smirk he’d hoped for, he found the magus stone-faced, and felt a sliver of dread scrape against the inside of his stomach.
“Very well,” said Herod, turning back to Pilate.
And so Herod approached the mirror, ready to admire the full cheeks and smooth skin that had greeted him these two glorious days. But when he looked this time…
“No… ,” he whispered.
The illusion was gone. His sickly pallor and yellowed eyes had returned. His sunken cheeks and lesions oozing their foul milk.
“NO! It can’t be!”
“You’re not a king,” said Pilate, looking over Herod’s shoulder. “You’re not even a man. You’re nothing.”
Looking back on it, the survivors would agree that this was the moment when Herod’s mind left him for good. The moment he realized that everything he believed was a lie. That his vision had finally and completely failed him. He’d gone mad before, but the clouds had always parted at the end of the storm. There would be no going back from this madness.
Herod screamed and grabbed a sword from the hand of one of his guards. Pilate’s men yanked their imperator back, convinced that Herod meant to strike at him. But Herod wasn’t interested in Pilate. He ran clear across the throne room, defying the weakness that was the reality of his body, raising the sword high in the air, screaming all the while, “TRAITOR!”
Herod ran up the steps to his throne and in one swing chopped off the magus’s head. It tumbled to the stone floor, followed by the magus’s body. Blood poured out of his neck and onto the stone floor in buckets — and with it, the last of man’s mastery over an ancient darkness.