Empire's End (18 page)

Tomorrow, when you return to the camp, you will set out for Damascus
.

Damascus, Lord?

He never repeated Himself. He never needed to. It wasn't as if I hadn't heard him, or that I would forget.

I trust You, Lord. But in Damascus I preached to Jews
.

There are Damascenes who need Me
.

Am I no longer sought there?

You will not be there long, and I will protect you
.

Yes, Lord. And how will I get there?

Take no purse and no provisions. When you return from the wilderness in the morning, make your way to the trade route. I will provide transport
.

In the morning. That meant I would not be on the plateau for long.

Yes, Lord
. I didn't really want to know, but I had to ask.
Will I travel alone?

His silence crushed me. So this was what it meant to be a bondservant of Christ's. At long last I was to fulfill the call for which He had been training me, but I would be denied my greatest earthly dream.

I approached the curtain, behind which lay Alastor's bed. “Are you sleeping, Rabbi?”

“No, Paul. What is it?” I heard him rise. “Are you weeping?”

“I'm sorry. The Lord has told me I am to leave tomorrow.”

He sighed heavily and came out to sit with me again, the lamp flickering dimly between us. “We knew this day would come. I will miss you.” He bowed his head. “Lord, thank You for Your hand of blessing on Your servant. Set a hedge of protection around him. Go before him. And assign a heavenly host as his rear guard.”

“I must write one more page to Taryn,” I said. “Would you deliver it while I am in the wilderness in the morning?”

“Of course.”

“It requires an answer.”

“Oh, Paul, I—”

“I will stop back here to see if she has responded. Then I will take my parchments and go.”

“Surely you don't expect her to uproot on such short notice and—”

“That is not the response I seek. Just knowing you will get my message to her will allow me to sleep.”

I ventured into the darkness carrying the lamp, found a length of hide with wool still attached to a portion of it, retrieved my awl, some thick thread and needles, and brought all this back inside. In about a half hour I fashioned a shoulder strap that fit over my head, the wool protecting my neck from the leather, and sewed it securely to the hide I'd used to wrap my parchments in the hole near my bed. It would serve as a snug satchel for them now.

Before reburying it, I retrieved a fresh page and a quill and sat to write to Taryn. I began by telling her what I had told her father, simply that by the time she read the message, I would be hearing from the Lord in the wilderness for the last time.

On my way to fulfill God's calling, I will stop by your father's tent to ask him whether you have found it within your heart to forgive me
.

Because I will never see you again, I want you to know that I love you with all that is in me and will until the day I die. My deepest desire would have been to ask him for your hand, but I am resigned to the reality that it is too late for that
.

With my last words to you forever, I plead only to be forgiven
.

Paul

I wish I could report that I slept soundly, given the season of travel that lay before me. God had not promised miraculous transport, so I did not expect the journey I had enjoyed three years before. That He had instructed me to get to the trade route implied He had arranged conventional transportation, and the journey to Damascus could take weeks. I took comfort in the fact that such matters were no longer my concern. I was a slave, and from now on I would merely do what I was told and go where I was directed.

At least an hour before I needed to rise, an unusual wind roused me from a fitful sleep. Had I not crafted the tent walls myself, based on the careful teaching of my father, I believe more of the desert floor would have found its way inside. I allowed myself another half hour before I tiptoed about, cobbling together a light breakfast while trying not to bother Alastor. There would be time for a proper farewell on my last pass through the camp. I prayed it would not be doubly sad. Certainly Taryn would take pity on a man she had once loved, knowing she would have no further obligation to him.

Alastor surprised me, however, when he rose as I was finishing eating.

“Sorry if I woke you,” I said.

“No. I just wanted to tell you what a precious few years these have been for me.”

“How kind of you to say. But we'll get a few more moments when I get back.”

“But in the event you don't hear what you wish to hear . . .”

“Well, thank you.”

We embraced and he lay his right hand atop my head.

“The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.”

I nodded as I pulled away, too overcome to speak.

As I made my way through the commons in the predawn blackness, I had to hold the hood of my mantle to keep it from blowing off my head. The sand stung my shins, calves, ankles, hands, and face. Had the way to the plateau not been so familiar, I would not have been able to traverse so far with my eyes shut against the piercing granules.

I realized I must have started out even earlier than I thought when I reached the outcropping and began climbing, only to see the sun still had not appeared on the horizon. When I removed my mantle to spread it over the rock, I had to hold one end with a foot while trying to smooth it with both hands. Finally anchoring it with my body but wishing for more protection from the chilling wind, I stretched out before the Lord.

Now He who established you in Me and has anointed you is God, who has also sealed you and put My Spirit in your heart as a guarantee. God will always lead you to victory in Me, and through you He disseminates the fragrance of His knowledge everywhere. For you are to Him My fragrance among both those who will be saved and among those who will not. To the one you will be the aroma of death, and to the other the aroma of life
.

Your sufficiency is from God, who is making you a minister of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter of the law kills, but the Spirit gives life. The ministry of death, engraved on stones, was so glorious that the children of Israel could not look at Moses because of the glory of his countenance, so the ministry of My Spirit will be even more glorious. For if the ministry of condemnation bore glory, the ministry of righteousness will bear
even more. When one turns to Me, there is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty
.

Do not preach yourself but Me, and make yourself My bondservant. For it is My Father who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in your heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in My face
.

You have your treasure in an earthen vessel so that the excellence of the power may be of My Father and not of you. You will be hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; you will be perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed, knowing that He who raised Me will also raise you with Me and will present you with Me
.

Therefore do not lose heart. Though your outward man is perishing, your inward man will be renewed. Do not look at things seen, but at things not seen. For things seen are temporary, but things not seen are eternal
.

If your earthly house is destroyed, you have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. He who has prepared you for this very thing is My Father, who also has given you the Spirit as a guarantee. So be confident, knowing that while you are in the body you are absent from the Lord. Walk by faith, not by sight. Be confident that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord
.

Therefore make it your aim, whether present or absent, to be pleasing to Him. If anyone is in Me, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new
.

Now all things are of My Father, who has reconciled you to Himself through Me. Go as My ambassador, as though My Father were pleading through you, imploring on My behalf that people be reconciled to God. For He made Me who knew no sin to be sin for you, that you might become the righteousness of God in Me
.

Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation
.

Now. Today.

Though the wind still blew, the sun had risen. I lay with my eyes closed, one cheek on the cloth covering the rock, the other exposed to the warming rays. My restless night caught up with me and I was loath to move.

I loved this place. It had been sacred since the first day, and I couldn't foresee ever returning. The Lord had faithfully met me here and had taught me so much. There was little one would describe as beauty here, but I would remember all of it, the desolate stretches of sand and rock and the occasional stunning sunrises.

Dared I doze? I knew God would prod me to go if He had arranged transport for me that was passing at a specific hour. My breathing grew even and deep and I enjoyed a few minutes of slumber. But that didn't last long, for something invaded. I started awake. What was it?

I slipped on my mantle and scampered down. As I headed back, a pungent bitterness in the air became stronger with each step. When I reached that point where the camp normally came into view, one mystery was solved but another born.

It was smoke that I smelled, black clouds billowing over the camp. But what had caused the colossal orange balls of flame that fueled it?

YANBU

I
N MY YOUTH
I
HAD
been an athlete. I had outrun friends and enemies in races short and long, even in contests longer than twenty-six miles, named after the legendary run from Marathon to Athens by the courier Pheidippides to announce the victory of the Greeks over the Persians five hundred years before I was born.

Life in the desert had hardened my body, and I did not feel age had affected me as it had others of my generation. But even had I grown soft over the years, panic propelled me that morning when I lit out for the campsite, my mantle flailing behind me and sand flying as I sprinted into the blinding sun.

Had there been an accident, an unattended oven allowed to over-heat? I'd seen a leg of lamb added to a stew for a special occasion and a trickle of grease drip into the flame, causing a flare-up. In the desert,
anything nearby served as parched kindling that could be especially dangerous.

Though I ran within a few feet of my daily path, the wind had blown the sand smooth, leaving no trace of my footsteps. The clearer the conflagration came into view, the more obvious it became that the entire compound was engulfed.
Lord God, spare my friends, spare my loved ones! We can start over, we can rebuild, but save the people!

As the wind rushed at me, the stench suffocating, I listened in vain for shouts, screams, anything that would tell me someone was still alive. Surely some had been able to flee. Or had this erupted before sunrise, catching all unawares?

What about the animals? No bleats, no shrieks, no cries. Had they been overcome, trapped in their pens?

My calves and thighs knotted and I drove harder with my arms to compensate, forcing myself to suck deeper gulps of air. But the smoke sickened me as I panted and strained to blink the sting from my eyes. Two hundred feet from what had been the ring of twenty-four tents, I wondered how long the blaze could keep building! How much more was left to extinguish?

The heat repelled me, but I forced myself to push ahead, desperate for any sign of life. Where was someone I recognized, anyone I could help? I heard nothing but the roar of flames and the crack of tent poles as they disintegrated.

Now a hundred feet from the inferno I peeled off my mantle and held it before me as a shield, fearing my hair would ignite. My limbs glowed red and I was forced to stop and wave the garment to keep the furnace blast from incinerating me. Finally I draped it over my head and peered through the heat and smoke and steam.

What I saw drove me to my knees among the embers.

This had been no accident.

No one was left.

I would have pleaded with God to make this a nightmare, but blisters rising on my skin were nothing I had ever felt in a dream. I wanted to cover my eyes, to turn away, but I could not. What came into focus so revolted me that I pitched forward onto my hands, squalling like a newborn.

Black vertical constructs scattered across the site, which I had mistaken for the charred last vestiges of tent poles and the larger remnants of hide walls. But they were not that at all. No, all but one of the tents I had built or repaired with my own hands over the last three years had been rendered ashes—mounds of chairs, tables, pottery, and, I feared, bodies, strewn within. Just one dwelling near the middle of the camp, the one decorated with crude dragons and lions, stood unscathed.

These ghastly ragged structures then, what were they?

Hastily erected Roman crosses with bodies hanging from them—every one, I was certain, a man I would recognize. As I knelt, wailing in the firestorm and fearing I would never be able to draw enough air for my next breath, I squinted through gushing tears to make sense of what lay in piles between the crosses in what remained of the makeshift village that had been my home for these few years.

Limbs, torsos. Singly and in bloody heaps. And not just horses, sheep, and goats.
Oh, Lord, no
. Women. Children. Families.

A massacre. Friends, loved ones, fellow believers with whom I had sung and prayed, read Scripture, fished, eaten, played and laughed, argued, wept.

I wished I'd been there. There was nothing I could have done, but I should have died with my brothers and sisters in Christ. Why had God spared me? Why had He sent me away and covered my tracks?