Palace of Darkness Read online

  She bent to Alexander, put her hands on his cheeks to turn his face to hers. “Listen, shekel, stay close to me. Don’t wander away when I’m speaking to people.”

  He nodded, his face sober.

  “If we should ever get separated”—she looked around the agora—“ask someone who looks like a mother to take you to the city fountain, to the Nymphaeum.”

  Alex surveyed their location. There was nothing of the city to be seen here but the one amazing rock sculpture. Impassable rock walls blocked one end of the canyon, and the other end bent away, out of sight. “I don’t see the fountain.”

  “But wherever it is, I will find you there.”

  His brow furrowed in concern.

  She kissed his cheek. “Stay close to me, and we won’t be separated.”

  He clutched her tunic in a small hand. “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  A young woman passed them, arms filled with bulging sacks, and Cassia stepped to the left to intercept her. “Excuse me.” She smiled. “I am new to the city and looking for family.”

  The girl studied Cassia for a moment and shifted one bag to her hip. “Yes?”

  Cassia swallowed. “My late husband’s family, actually. His name was Aretas, but he left here some years ago. His mother’s name was Gamilath.”

  The girl snorted. “Gamilath and Aretas. Like every other child born in this city.” She pushed past them, but Cassia stayed her with a hand on the girl’s arm.

  “Please, we must find them. His mother liked to grow things. She had beautiful gardens, he once told me.”

  The girl’s mocking smile chilled Cassia. “Have you been into the city?”

  Cassia pointed to the end of the Siq. “We’ve just arrived from Damascus.”

  The girl inclined her head over her shoulder, toward the open end of the canyon. “We may live in the rock, but we have more gardens than sand.” She shifted her bags again and walked on, shaking her head.

  Cassia squeezed Alex’s hand and approached another woman, this one older and perhaps closer to Aretas’s mother’s age. She repeated her question, watching the woman’s eyes form narrow slits as she looked Cassia up and down.

  “People in this city have enough to take care of their own. They don’t need outsiders coming to live off them.”

  Cassia straightened and pulled her shoulders back. “We are family.”

  The woman shrugged. “I can’t help you.” She turned her back and called out to someone across the agora.

  “Mama, Petra people aren’t nice.” Alex’s words were too loud.

  “There are kind people everywhere, Alex. We must only find them.”

  “Where do we find them?”

  Cassia looked at the emptying market. Where indeed?

  She approached a merchant who was packing up his perfumes and unguents into satchels and loading them onto a tired-looking mule. He shook his head. “You will have trouble, I’m afraid, if that’s all you know. The names of Nabataean royalty are overused in every family.” He grinned and scratched his head. “They believe a royal name will bring wealth, I suppose.”

  Cassia thanked him and turned from his table.

  “You’d best get shelter for the night,” he called after them. “While it’s still safe.”

  With what money? I must find family.

  She pulled Alex from merchant to merchant, stopped townspeople, repeated her request so many times she lost count, always with the same answer or no answer at all. Alex’s hand grew heavy in hers, and it became an effort to pull him forward.

  And then night fell.

  It came suddenly, when the sun dropped behind the mountains, taking Cassia by surprise, for the market was not yet empty. But when she searched for another merchant or stranger to question, she realized the market was a caravan camp, and the crowd that remained were all traders, bedding down for the night under stick-propped woolen blankets or black goat-hair tents, against their camels for warmth and protection. They slept in small rings of fellow travelers, with one sitting watch to protect their merchandise.

  She turned a circle in the center of the canyon, now more like a nomadic settlement than an agora, and felt the isolation bear down upon them.

  They had no blanket, no stick, no camel. No one to watch over them.

  No one who cared.

  Cassia’s stomach clenched with loneliness and fear. Her eyes connected with a dark-skinned trader who lay stretched on a colorful blanket, propped on one elbow, beside his camel. He gave her a half smile, and she looked away, uncertain of his intent.

  “Come, Alex.” She led him toward the end of the market. Her sense of danger sparked, and she knew they were followed.

  “Where will we go now, Mama?”

  “Keep walking, Alex. Keep walking.”

  She knew no better than Alexander where they would go. The open area that had welcomed them from the narrow gorge led only in one direction, but ahead she could see a dark cliff outlined against the night sky. The valley must turn to the left, and the city lay beyond. They walked on, until the cliff face on their left curved and they turned. It was too dark to see much, though the ground rose slightly beneath their feet. Cassia sensed water on either side of a rise. Ahead, flickers of light here and there indicated homes, perhaps. But how could there be many houses in this narrow valley between high cliffs?

  Alexander’s pace slowed, and Cassia felt the usual stab of guilt at all the boy had endured. She pulled him toward the side of the road. They needed to find shelter.

  At the roadside they stepped onto a stone platform and Cassia studied the darkness, searching for any place to lay their heads. She realized with surprise they had stumbled upon the town’s amphitheatre, with stone seats rising above them into the cliff face. They stood on the orchestra platform, as though about to recite or perform.

  There must be halls behind the seats. And they would be deserted at this hour.

  A scrape of sandal on stone behind them caused Cassia to turn. It would be the first person they’d encountered since leaving the traders, and she hoped for a friendly face.

  But a shape flew toward her out of the darkness and rough arms shoved her. She stumbled backward, tried to keep her balance. Her left shoulder cracked against a column at the back of the scanae. The blow jolted her head forward and sent stinging needles of fire into her shoulder.

  The grubby face of a trader leaned into hers. “What have you got in your pouch there, woman?”

  Cassia turned her face away from his foul breath. Her shoulder burned with a white heat. She brought her knee up quickly, but he was too wary. He sidestepped her effort, then ripped the pouch from her neck. She had lost sight of Alex and prayed he hid in the shadows.

  Her attacker rifled through the pack, yanked out clothing, and tossed it aside. When his fist emerged with her money pouch, her heart sank.

  The trader tossed the pack to the ground and disappeared like black smoke rising into the night sky.

  “Alexander!” Cassia kept her voice low but urgent. The boy appeared at once and rushed into her outstretched arms. She bit back a cry of pain. Something was not right with her shoulder.

  “Everyone wants to hurt us.” His simple statement, as though it were a fact of his life, slashed at her heart.

  “We will be fine,” she promised, knowing it was foolish. “I need you to gather our belongings, Alex.” She pointed to the clothing strewn about the stage. “There is the pack.”

  He darted around obediently, snatching up all they had left in the world and stuffing it into the pack.

  She watched him circle the orchestra, and her head seemed to circle with him, a strange, spinning feeling, as though the stars above were silver leaves in a black eddying whirlpool. And then the blackness rushed down from the sky and scooped her up, and she felt herself falling . . .

  And then nothing as the blackness carried her away.

  SEVEN

  THE BLACKNESS WAVERED ABOVE CASSIA’S HEAD, NOW dark, now oran
ge and flickering, now ribbons of yellow and black in a reddish sky. She fought the heavy pull of her eyelids, fought the thickness that held her with a weighty hand.

  Beside her, behind her, there were murmurs. Tiny fragments of conversation, slivered into words and phrases she could not comprehend.

  Alex. Where are you?

  The pain in her shoulder intensified. She tried to swallow but her throat felt like the Nabataean desert, and the effort caught and choked her.

  She felt the rim of a cup at her lips, held by an unseen hand, and sipped warmed wine, gratitude filling her.

  The darkness came again, but when it lifted, she was able to open her eyes.

  She lay upon a bed, soft with layers of woven blankets. An oil lamp smaller than her hand burned in a niche in the wall. The room was small, though still mostly in shadows, unreached by the tiny flame.

  A man sat beside her. His soft brown eyes studied her, silent but kind, with deep lines like the rays of the sun extending from the corners. Cassia tried to raise herself. Pain, like none she’d ever felt from Aretas’s beatings, shot through her shoulder, down into her arm, across her back, and seemed to light her very being on fire.

  “Peace.” The old man touched her arm with a wrinkled hand. “Your shoulder is out of joint. Do not try to move.”

  Cassia licked dry lips. “My son.”

  The old man smiled and inclined his head toward the other side of the room. Two or three figures moved in the shadows.

  “He sleeps. Precious boy.”

  Cassia tried to read his eyes and heart. Was there danger here? She mustered a smile. “Thank you for helping us.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve done nothing yet. But we shall see.”

  “I have no money.”

  A quiet laugh sounded from the shadows. A woman, Cassia thought. His wife?

  The old man patted her arm again. “I have no need of your money.”

  Cassia’s eyes grew heavy again.

  “Sleep.” He pulled a blanket over her. “You will need strength for what is to come.”

  She felt herself slipping away, but not before his words chilled her. There had been a time, several years ago, when Aretas had been in a market brawl. The man he had cheated left him with his shoulder out of joint.

  Cassia knew what awaited her. Better to sleep.

  But sleep was not merciful enough to remain. She awoke to hushed words again, but this time believed there were more than two in the shadows. She took in the room, trying to remain unnoticed.

  Something was strange about the walls and roof. Smoother than any mud-brick home in Damascus had been, as though there were no cracks between the bricks. And the roof, no stray thatch poked from the mud. Instead, the walls and roof were subtly striped with color. Reddish orange, with blacks and yellow. It reminded her of something . . .

  The rock! Of course. The walls of the gorge that had led them to Petra were striped in this way.

  She was not in the front room of a mud-brick home in town. She lay entombed in the rock!

  The older man appeared at her side, cup in hand. She reached for the cup with her good arm, but he shook his head and held it for her. The wine was heavily watered, and she was thirsty.

  The room did not feel like a rock-cut tomb. It smelled of meat cooked with curry, and the warmth of it, compared to the last ten nights of desert cold, was like an embrace.

  Her benefactor set the empty cup on the floor and leaned over her. “I am Malik.”

  “Cassia.” She dipped her head. “And Alexander.”

  He smiled. “Yes, young Alexander is very proud of his namesake.”

  A flutter of anger touched Cassia’s nerves. It troubled her to think of Alexander talking with these people while she lay senseless. She knew nothing of them, nor what they might want. “How . . . how did we get here?”

  “We carried you.” The words were spoken simply, as though nothing strange had occurred. He smiled. “Alexander helped.”

  She studied Malik. He was quite old, though still upright and strong, with a lean frame. His hair had gone to gray and was only present in a fringe around his head, above his ears. His face was deeply lined, but when he smiled his eyes sparkled like those of a younger man. Cassia felt her heart drawn to him, but she could not say why.

  “We must take care of your shoulder.”

  She bit her lip. “Are you a physician?”

  He smiled sadly. “No.”

  She exhaled and closed her eyes. Were Aretas here, she would have insisted he find a physician, even if it meant opening the money pouch he kept only for emergencies. But Aretas was not here. And she had no money. None. Who was she to insist upon help that would cost?

  Inhaling strength, she opened her eyes and nodded.

  Malik brushed her hair back from her gaze, the gesture so gentle Cassia’s throat tightened. She would have fallen to tears, but she needed to be strong. Above all, she must not wake Alex with her cries. He had been frightened enough by the days of danger.

  Malik covered her shoulder with his bony hand, never taking his eyes from hers. He reached under her shoulder with his other hand. She bit her lip to keep from crying out, even at this lightest of touches. How was she ever to endure what was to come? She tried to gain strength from Malik’s eyes, but to her dismay, he closed them.

  Cassia’s heart pounded, and the fear tasted like a bitter thing in her mouth. Do it. Get it done.

  Malik was moving his lips silently. Did he pray to his gods? Cassia was unsure what gods ruled over this part of the Nabataean kingdom. Were they the same as her Damascus gods? Should she pray to Dagan as well? What if other gods were here and she angered them with her misplaced prayer? Her confusion and fear mingled until she thought she might cry out even before the great pain that was to come.

  Across the room, she heard the murmured voices again and realized the women, for it seemed most certainly to be women, were also chanting prayers softly.

  She waited, eyes closed.

  But the great pain did not come. Instead, a deep and penetrating warmth seemed to emanate from Malik’s hands above and below her shoulder. It burrowed deep into her body, not a hot tongue of fire like the pain when she had fallen against the stone wall. This was a warm blanket on a cold night. Like a heated cup of wine, going down with softness and filling her with a peace that leeched the fear from her muscles and made her sleepy.

  Malik’s lips still moved silently. His eyes remained closed. And Cassia realized the warmth was not surrounding the pain, it was replacing it.

  And as the pain receded, in its place washed in a deep and profound emotion Cassia could not name. Somewhere between terrible grief and sparkling joy, between black death and bright life, it welled up inside of her and overflowed. Tears streamed from her, flowed down her cheeks and dripped from her chin, and flowed even still, until she shook with a powerful sobbing she could not contain.

  “What . . . what is it?” she whispered.

  Only then did Malik open his eyes, slowly remove his hands, and smile.

  The emotion subsided, the warmth drifted away.

  The pain did not return.

  “A gift.” Malik’s voice was like warm oil. “You have been given a gift. You have been healed.”

  Cassia wiped at her face, first with one hand, then with the other. With the other!

  She lifted her arm above her head, rotated her shoulder. What did he do to me?

  The healing astonished her. The emotion it had drawn forth baffled her. She felt almost sadness as it subsided.

  She studied Malik’s eyes and could think of nothing more to say than “Thank you.”

  He patted her cheek and called over his shoulder, “She should eat.”

  Two women hurried to her bedside, as if they had been waiting for the summons. Each held a plate of steaming food, more than Cassia could possibly consume. She pulled herself to sitting, and one of the women handed her a plate of flat bread and seasoned beans, then pushed cushions behind her
back.

  She was much older than Cassia, but perhaps not so old as Malik. It took only a moment of watching them both for Cassia to sense the woman was not his wife. The other woman sat beside her on the bed, holding another plate. She was younger still, younger even than Cassia. Cassia knitted her brow, trying to make sense of this strange family that was not a family. She could easily read several emotions passing between them. Both women felt great love and respect for Malik. But there was also a tension between the two women.

  Cassia dug into the beans. They were spicy and warm on her tongue. She closed her eyes in delight. They had eaten nothing more than hard bread and dried meat during the long journey here.

  She pushed some of the beans aside on her plate. “For Alexander. He will be hungry when he wakes.”

  The three laughed together. The older woman shook her head. “I cannot believe that boy could eat anything more for three days!”

  They had fed Alexander while she slept? Cassia thought she should perhaps feel concern again, but there was nothing left but gratitude.

  “Thank you.” She studied her plate. She had uttered that phrase too many times. They must want something in return.

  Malik seemed to sense her concern. “It is a special joy of ours. To feed and to care for the sick and strangers, even for the least of them. A special joy.”

  Cassia looked into his eyes, and she believed him.

  “Finish your bread.” He smiled.

  While she ate, the women fussed around her, bringing damp cloths to wash her face and arms, and the older applying some kind of ointment from a tiny jar onto Cassia’s scrapes. Zeta and Talya, she discovered, were mother and daughter, though Talya must have been born late in Zeta’s childbearing years. This was their home, and Malik was their friend.

  Friend. The word made her think of Magdala back in Damascus, and she felt all the more bereft.

  Again, as though he could read her thoughts, Malik spoke. “You are alone here in Petra?”

  She shrugged one shoulder. Still no pain. “Alexander and I have come to find family. His father was born here.”