Unholy Night

armor. Trotted out only when Augustus needs protection from his enemies. But neither of us were ever allowed to test the limits of our powers, and certainly never allowed to use them for our own benefit. No, such a thing would be a threat to the emperor’s own power. Alone, a king and a conjurer are nothing compared to Rome. But together… ”

Here it comes… make him see it. Make him understand how glorious it could be.

“My kingdom? Your talents? Together, we could build something glorious. A force that could challenge Rome. Perhaps even become the new empire of the East. An empire ruled by two kings — you and I, side by side. Augustus might not appreciate you, but I do. He fears your power; I welcome it.”

He went on, flattering the magus’s mastery of the elements, promising him the things that all men wanted: power, wealth, sex. And above all, recognition. A chance to step out from the emperor’s shadow, from behind the veils of secrecy and piety. When he sensed the magus was thoroughly enticed — which was only a guess, really, for he gave no outward sign of enticement — Herod went for the close:

“Everything I have is yours, if you’ll take it. My crown, my army, my fortune, my palaces, and all the treasure and women in them.

“Rule with me. Rule with me, and we can both free ourselves from servitude. We can build something that will echo through the ages.”

The magus took this all in for what seemed an age. Then, his mind made up, he turned back to his dinner without so much as a shake of his head. For a moment, Herod felt it all slip away.

I’ve overreached…

Now, not only would Herod be denied what he’d come for, but he would also be branded a traitor to the emperor and exiled to the wasteland of death. Thankfully, it wasn’t cold lamb that the magus had turned back for — it was parchment. Herod watched anxiously as he scribbled something down, turned back, and passed the sheet to him.

And for you?

“All I desire is your partnership,” said Herod.

The magus pointed to each of the three words again, emphasizing each one with a tap of his finger on the parchment.

And. For. You?

Herod smiled. He liked this little priest. No bullshit; no games. Herod took a moment before he gave his real answer. He almost couldn’t bring himself to say it. They were only two little words, but there was so much attached to them. So much… hope. The wine of the weak. What if the magus was unable to do what he asked? What if he simply said no? Then the last of Herod’s options would be exhausted, and his vision would have failed him.

“My health,” he said at last. “In return, I ask for my health — that is, if you’re powerful enough to give it back to me.”

Now it was the magus’s turn to smile, for he’d known, of course. He’d known since the minute the puppet king of Judea had begun his pitch. He rose to his modest height, fixed his gown, closed his eyes, and muttered an incantation under his breath. A chain of indecipherable words in some long-dead language.

A moment later, Herod was hit with strange, invisible energy, a rush of warm air from a nearby fire that wasn’t there. It moved through him, circulating through his body along with the diseased blood that coursed in his veins. When the warmth reached his head, he was overcome by dizziness. A brief bit of nausea.

When it passed, he was born again.

Herod examined the backs of his hands, and though he couldn’t see any immediate change to their twisted shape or scabbed surfaces, something told him he would. Something told him he’d been cured. He felt his eyes well up with tears. It was all too much, too quickly. And despite whatever duplicitous schemes he’d brought into the magus’s tent, he couldn’t help but be truly touched at a moment like this.

“There are no accidents in this life,” he said as a tear escaped bondage and streaked down his wretched face. “The Fates have brought us together, you and I. And great things will come of it.”

The magus offered Herod the slightest hint of a smile in return.…

Herod was feeling much better indeed. Something like his old self. And so long as he had the magus by his side, he would only get better. Stronger. Who could say? Perhaps he needn’t hand over power to his son as soon as he’d thought. Perhaps he never needed to hand over power at all. If he kept getting better — if this warm, strange feeling continued to trickle through his veins — then who was to say how long he would live? How much more he could build?

One thing was certain: He wasn’t Caesar’s puppet anymore. Augustus would have to deal with him now. Respect him. Perhaps even fear him. And while the Judean Army was no match for Caesar’s, the Romans wouldn’t dare invade. Not as long as Herod had the magus by his side. And not as long as he played his Jewish subjects right.

They hate Augustus as much as I do. I’ll whip them into a frenzy of independence. I’ll call it “a revolt against Rome,” and they’ll eat it up.

These visions twirled around him, dancing and spinning beautifully. It was funny how so many years of misery and doubt could be completely washed away in the blink of an eye. Herod had resigned himself to wretchedness. Secretly, he’d hoped, of course. But hope was the wine of the weak, and he’d been ashamed to drink even the occasional sip. Yet here was his health — returned more spectacularly than he could have dreamed. He looked down at his hands. Felt his cheeks. The only thing Herod craved more than the sight of his own reflected face was the sight of this “Balthazar” dying in the most terrible way imaginable: his fingernails torn away one by one, his genitals cut off and burned in front of him, every one of his appendages shattered at the end of a club, and his skin cut into strips and peeled away from the muscle beneath it.

A new sound greeted Herod’s ears as the smell of the salt air grew stronger. It wasn’t the crashing of ocean waves — not yet. But it was wet. It’s beginning to rain outside. He peeled back the curtains of his traveling chair for confirmation and saw the first fat droplets falling from the gray sky to collide with the desert’s dusty floor. It was a rare but welcome sight in the south of Judea.

The world was alive again. Rain was a blessing. And another sign that God was powerless to stop him.

II

The words “summer palace” conjured quaint visions of a little villa by the shore. But all told, Herod’s seaside compound was nearly twice the size of his twin palace in Jerusalem, though this one was contained under one roof, not two. It was one of Herod’s newer projects, built with all the amenities the modern world could offer: chamber pots, glass windows, heated baths. It also contained a large silver mirror in the king’s bedchamber. Of all the amenities, this was the one Herod was most looking forward to using.

The palace rose from the rocky shores of the Mediterranean, a towering mass of beige bricks, with some walls reaching a height of 200 feet. Architecturally, it was a simple affair — an enormous central cube made of limestone, surrounded by a handful of smaller brick outbuildings. “A big, boring block on the beach” as Herod called it. There were no walls around its perimeter. No guard towers. The sea provided a natural barrier on one side and the flat, endless desert on the other three. There were virtually no locals to keep out. Just the Egyptians to the south, the sea to the west, and a few wandering Bedouins to the north and east. The sentries posted atop the palace’s roof would see any man, let alone an army or navy, coming miles off.

A marble terrace ran along the base of the cube’s seaside wall, where, in his healthier days, Herod had taken to sunning himself with select members of his harem. A wide marble staircase descended gracefully from this terrace all the way to the sea, where it met with a long wooden dock. Its planks were the first things to greet Herod and his guests when they arrived by boat from the north. Today, however, they were crowded with Roman warships, bobbing on the sizable waves that had been kicked up by the growing storm.

The Roman Navy had sailed south down Judea’s coast to join up with its army. The fleet was led by a