“Are you mad?” I asked.
A strange smile came across the priest’s face, as if he had intended such a reaction. As if he had wanted such a question asked.
“I am a magus,” he said.
The magi were an ancient cult. Masters of a magic that had all but vanished from the earth. They’d come to power in the Age of the Scriptures, back when angels and mystical beasts had walked side by side with man, when the battles of heaven and hell had been waged on the plains of Galilee and in the hills of Hebron. The world had been different then. Time had barely begun, and the gods still mingled freely with man, whether they were the many gods of Mount Olympus or the lonely God of Abraham. And while most men lived in fear and reverence of their gods, a few sought to wield that power for themselves.
At their height, they’d numbered in the thousands, hidden away in monasteries, studying the higher forces that ordinary men feared. The dark forces. Learning how to control them, master them, exploit them. It was said that a magus could summon fire from thin air. Turn statues into living men, and living men into stone. It was said they could see things that had not yet come to pass, and influence the thoughts of men half a world away. For thousands of years, they were treated as living gods — revered, feared, and rarely seen outside their monastery walls.
But over the centuries, the Age of Miracles had given way to the Age of Man, and their numbers had dwindled, until — more than 10,000 years after the first man had called himself “magus” — only one remained, wandering a world ruled not by gods but by Romans. The last of his kind, the bearer of a forgotten gift that no longer had any use.
But Julius Caesar found a use for it.
With the last of the magi at his side, he’d turned his campaign in Gaul around. And when he was finished, he’d turned against his allies and taken all of Rome’s glory for himself.
As emperor, Julius learned to rely on the dark priest’s ability to see into the future. In his ability to uncover an enemy’s secrets through a kind of deep meditation and summon nature to Rome’s aid, conjuring wind and lightning to drive out surrounding armies, commanding beasts to betray their masters. Even invading the minds of senators and influencing their votes. With the magus at his side, Julius had been elevated from a general to a god. But over time, he’d begun to fear his secret weapon. In another letter to Pompey, he wrote:
There is a darkness about him that unnerves me. If he is able to read the thoughts of others, what is to stop him from reading mine? If he can summon bolts of lightning from the heavens, what is to stop him from using one to strike me down? What good is a weapon if one cannot command it without fear?
Paranoid, Caesar ordered his “weapon” sent away in 44 BC. But before his exile, the magus gave him one last piece of advice: “The Ides of March,” he’d said. “Beware the Ides of March.”
Caesar ignored the warning. And that very year, on the fifteenth day of the third month, he was stabbed to death on the senate floor. In the end, he’d been too afraid to wield the weapon that had sought him out. Too weak.
But this was a weakness Augustus didn’t share. On learning of his uncle’s murder, Augustus had summoned the magus at once and demanded his loyalty. Slowly, deliberately, he’d consolidated his power in the empire — using the magus’s insight and influence to battle his rival, Marc Antony, and the Egyptian whore, Cleopatra. Using the magus’s power to beat them back, until they had no choice but to take their own lives in shame. And to make sure that no further challenges to his supremacy emerged, Augustus had ordered their children put to death.
With vision and cunning, he’d succeeded where his uncle had failed. He’d taken all of Rome’s glory for himself. And so long as the magus remained sequestered in Rome, Augustus Caesar knew that the empire would never fall.
But that was all in the past now, and the past was where small minds dwelled.
The future had just walked into Augustus’s throne room. Here was Pontius Pilate, kneeling before him, his bowed head reflected in the polished marble of his floor.
Herod “the Great.” The name had always elicited a sneer from Augustus, even before he’d become master of the world. Who was this “great” man but a servant of Rome? A torturer of his own people and murderer of his own children? Yes, Augustus had ordered children put to death. But they were the children of his enemies. To murder one’s
He listened as Pilate relayed the message. Something about a baby. A prophecy. Someone called “the Antioch Ghost.” When Pilate was finished, Augustus considered it all for a moment, then said, “He wants me to send an army across the water… to kill a child?”
“The Antioch Ghost is the true prize, Caesar. He’s stolen untold riches from your provinces. Killed untold numbers of your men. If we — ”
Augustus held up a hand.
“You said the people of Judea think this ‘Ghost’ is already dead, did you not?”
“Yes, Caesar.”
“Pilate… what good is it to kill a man who is already dead? Where is the glory for Rome?”
Pilate couldn’t help but smile. He knew his emperor well. After pausing for effect, he uttered the sentence he’d carefully crafted on his way to the palace. The one he knew he’d have to utter after being challenged on this point:
“With all respect, Caesar, this is less about Rome’s glory and more about sending a message to Judea’s king.”
Augustus shifted on his throne, thinking. He didn’t like the idea of all this fuss over a thief and a baby.
“Very well,” said Augustus. “I will catch Herod’s infant and his thief. But not because Herod requests it, and not because they have wronged Rome. I will catch them because Herod cannot. And in doing so, I will remind our sickly friend how small he really is.”
An ordinary emperor would have sent troops and left it at that. But Augustus had no interest in being ordinary. He would do more than send troops. He would make a real show of his power. Put the fear of death in the puppet king of Judea.
He would send the magus.
IV
Melchyor and Joseph watered the camels and filled the canteens in the desert stream, while Mary sat on the sand with the child under her robes. Balthazar knelt a ways downstream, cupping handfuls of water — first to his mouth, then over his face and chest, washing away the blood that continued to seep through his stitches.
“This is madness,” said Gaspar, who’d come to kneel beside him. “We have the entire Judean Army after us, yet we play wet nurse to a baby. We could have been halfway to Egypt by now if we were not dragging them with us. It is too dangerous, Balthazar. We must think of ourselves.”
“I am thinking of myself. I was thirsty. We found water. I stopped.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I know,” he said, cupping another handful to his wound. “I also know what I saw in Bethlehem. What all of us saw. You want to leave them to Herod’s men?”
“Yes, I saw. And the same will happen to us if we are captured. I did not escape certain death to throw my life away for strangers.”
“I don’t like it either, okay? But I didn’t go back for that baby just to dump him in the desert to rot. Once we cross the border, we go our separate ways. Until then, we play wet nurse.”
