Garden of Madness (19 page)

Her resignation sickened Tia. “Those things did little to endear me to Shealtiel. He seemed always to feel guilty for marrying me. As though he performed all his rituals, all his obligations to his God, simply to erase that one mistake.”

Amytis waved a hand. “You cannot take anything these Judaeans do as typical. I should think you had seen that by now. They are a bizarre race, with their One God.”

“Father didn’t think so. He once decreed no one could speak against Yahweh.”

Amytis’s eyebrows lifted at her use of their God’s name, but then she dropped her gaze and turned away. “Your father had a strange fascination with the Jews’ God, I will admit. He once told me”—her words grew soft as if in confession—“he once told me that he suspected our gods were nothing, that the Judaean One God was all there was. This was just after that great statue he built on the plain, after his insistence that everyone bow. He had seen something, something he did not wish to speak of later. But it—it affected him.”

“Then why do you dismiss the prophecies of Dan—of Belteshazzar, as though they are nothing?”

She whirled. “Because they
are
nothing! They must be nothing. We must be loyal to our own gods, Tiamat. They are our only protection.”

“Protection from what?”

“From the secrets.” Amytis’s face grew dark, removed from Tia somehow. “Secrets that were always meant to shield but can also destroy.”

Her words echoed Daniel’s so closely, it raised the hair on Tia’s arms. She crossed the room and took her mother’s hand in her own. “Tell me, Mother. Tell me. What did Kaldu have to do with these secrets? And Shadir? What do you fear?”

Amytis inhaled sharply and snatched her hand away. “I will send the slaves back to pack everything for you.”

She left Tia standing beside her robe-strewn bed, staring at the luxuries of a princess. How little had changed since the day of Shealtiel’s death.

Tia had vowed to keep her freedom and protect her father. But she had learned little. The Median prince was even now descending on her, and Pedaiah would never let her marry his younger brother. She was still little more than the palace pet, chasing circles around the city. Pedaiah had good reason for his disdain.

At the thought of him and his prayer over her, she swept her arms across the bed, seized the robes into a heap, and thrust them to the floor.

Whether he still hated her, Tia could not know. She only knew that when she should have been thinking of herself and her father, she could not stop thinking of this one angry Jew.

CHAPTER 21

The night again brought dreams, dark and fearsome.

In the way of dreams, I rise from my bed, not on two legs but as a solid piece, first hovering in gloom above the fabrics, then rising slowly, slowly, to glide across the chamber
.

The chamber door opens without my hands, for my hands are also solid, wed to the substance that is my body
.

The door closes heavily behind me, and I drift through the palace corridor, silent, not touching the floor beneath. Though my mother’s chamber is not in this wing, I pass it anyway. Amytis will surely be sleeping. Her guard seems not to notice me
.

I soar down the tiers of the Hanging Gardens, but my father is not to be seen. Or perhaps it is I who cannot be seen. At this thought my substance grows cold
.

I speed through the palace, across its three courtyards, down the wide palace steps, and out into the gray night. An unnatural fog snakes through streets and curls around huddled mud-brick homes, barely visible under the heavy, moonless sky
.

My solid body turns, as though I am a temple statue spun under the hands of a priest, and I face the palace. Its varying slashes of roofline cut against the limitless gray, and at one corner a torch blazes. Behind me the Platform of Etemenanki rises like a solid partner to the palace
.

But then along the roof I see a shadow move, quick and animal-like. Father? No, it is Shadir. He looks down over the ridge of the roof and shakes his fist. But here in the street I am a solid thing, far away. What harm can Shadir inflict? The wind kicks up. It chases the fog and whistles against the houses
.

Shadir is sliding something along the roof, something larger than himself. I watch, impassive, as he brings it nearer the torch
.

A wooden figure. Like myself. Carved as a man, with black cuts deep in its smoky-tan surface. Eyes, lips, mouth. A face I have not seen whole in many years. This is Father
.

And then Shadir is dragging another figure, smaller than the first, cut with the unmistakable likeness of my mother. Shadir sets her beside the first, peers over the roof again to scowl, then snatches the torch and with a smile at me, he touches the flame to my father’s face
.

A fluttering throb begins in my cold heart and races through all of me. I want to shout, to scream, but no sound comes from my wooden lips
.

The flames lick at my father’s face, then smother him greedily. Shadir shoves the torch at my mother and she, too, is consumed by the orange death
.

The sky opens and water pours down from the gods, but it does nothing to quench the flames. They crackle fiercely above the din of the downpour, turning it to an evil mist around my burning parents
.

I shiver in the cold wet, try to pull my eyes from the horror but cannot
.

And then they begin to call to me
.

“Tiiiaaaamaaattt . . .” My father’s agonized cry cuts through me. I try to reach out to him, but my arm is still part of my solid self
.

A great and terrible guilt shakes my core
.

More figures appear, all of them burning. My sisters. My nephews. Everyone I care for in the palace, burning, burning as I watch, helpless
.

“You must go back.”

I cannot turn to the whisper behind my ear, but I know the voice. Amel-Marduk. He touches my hand and it springs to life under his touch, becomes once again living flesh. I clutch at his warm hand and the life spreads up my arm, across my chest, through all of me. I look down at my humanity and see that I am dressed in beggar’s rags
.

Amel brings his face near my own. His flawless skin glows with the reflection of the flames, and he smells of age, of ancient things, as though he has always been. His full, red lips smile patiently. “If you love them, you will go back. You are the only one who can save them.”

This guilt is real, then. It is my fault they burn. I have not done enough to save my father, have never loved my mother like I should, nor my sisters. My wooden heart has let them come to this
.

The rain courses down my face in heavy rivulets like false tears. I turn from Amel to my burning family and feel the weight of decision on my shoulders of flesh
.

And I awake.

Still in her bed, Tia lifted a hand and turned it before her eyes in the dim light, then put it to her face and found her skin wet. Perhaps she was not without feeling, then, if her evil dream had drawn true tears. She lay unmoving, willing her heart to slow its frantic beat, her limbs to relax. She was still in the palace, her mother and father still alive, her family sleeping somewhere under palace protection.

A dream such as this held deep meaning. Meaning that was not to be ignored. Poor man or king would seek a diviner’s wisdom for a dream such as this.

There was only one diviner whom she trusted with her secrets.

She waited for dawn, and when its first rose-tipped petals bloomed at the horizon, she slid from her chamber, ran through the still-dark corridors, and escaped into the streets. The cloak she’d hastily donned beat against her legs as she ran.

Memories of the circuitous route she and Pedaiah had taken to Daniel’s house last week sped her feet. She would be there before the sun had fully risen.

She did not hail a doorkeeper, did not wait to be invited into Daniel’s home. Before she breached the courtyard, she heard voices. He had already begun his day.

Tia hesitated at the end of the passage from the street and searched the leafy courtyard for the old diviner. She found him standing in the center, facing her but with head bowed under a covering, a shawl of some sort. Another man’s back was to her, a shawl over his head as well, tasseled and striped in blue. The second man was speaking, and her breath caught at the recognition of Pedaiah’s voice.

He was praying. Again. This time the words were lost to her, spoken in his Judaean tongue. Daniel joined him, and they prayed the words in unison, their deep voices blending, old and young, kind and haughty, until she could not tell them apart.

She leaned a shoulder against the wall, and the anxiety of her rush to reach Daniel evaporated. The courtyard lay in early morning shadows, but a warm breeze blew across her face and chased away the night terrors.

Their prayers, though she did not understand the words, seemed to her to be prayers of praise and confession, not the temple priests’ demands and pleas. They rose like incense, with the scent of sweet sacrifice, from the lips of the two men.

He was a radical man, this Daniel. All these years in the upper strata of Babylonian power and still he retained the faith of his homeland. Risked everything to remain faithful to his One God. How much had he sacrificed?

Tia shifted on her feet, and the slight movement caught his attention. Prayers arrested, he lifted his eyes and smiled on her.

“Forgive me, Daniel.” Tia bowed her head. “I did not intend to intrude.” She did not look at Pedaiah as he turned.

“Come, child.” Daniel held out his arms. “There is no better place for you than in the center of our prayers.”

Her throat tightened at these words, and she crossed the courtyard on swift feet and fell into his grip. He smelled of oil and wine, as though he himself were the libation poured out to his God.

“I have had a dream, Daniel.” The words were a whisper against his ear but loud enough for Pedaiah to hear. Daniel led her to a bench and sat beside her. Pedaiah stood nearby. It would be senseless to ask him to leave.

Daniel lifted her chin. “This dream has troubled you greatly.”

She looked into his clear eyes, then noted how much dark hair he retained amidst the gray, his youthful physique. Odd. She had thought him old because he had always been this way even when she was a child. But this morning he seemed young to her, and she thought of her dream, of Amel and his smell of age. “How old are you, Daniel?”

He smiled and glanced at Pedaiah, as if to share his amusement. “It has been more than forty years since your father brought me to Babylon as a youth. We have aged together, he and I.”

At this mention of her father, the image of his burning face blazed against her memory.

“What is it, child? Tell me your dream.”

She poured it out to both of them, though she could not look at the man who stood apart, only at the one who held her hand through the telling.

When she was through, Pedaiah spoke for the first time. “And did you return to the palace with the young mage?”

She faced him finally and chewed her lip. “I—I do not know. I awoke before I made my decision.”

Daniel patted her hand. “
Decision
is a fitting word, child. For that is what you will soon face.”

“What does it mean, my dream? Does it signal madness?”

He closed his eyes and bent his head over her hand. He had no sheep’s liver nor oil-on-water. Did he yet seek his One God for an answer?

When he lifted his eyes, they were clear but guarded. “There is no interpretation of this dream for you yet, Tiamat. But it will come, in time. Know only this: The mage Amel-Marduk is not a friend to you. Even now there is a war for your soul in the heaven-lies. Do not let the darkness masked as light take you prisoner.”

“Amel has something to do with all of this, then? The danger to my family?”

Daniel’s fingers clenched around her own, uncomfortably tight. “Tiamat, a lie, no matter how beautiful, is still a lie.”

It was a warning. A warning to stay away from Amel. And yet even as Tia left Daniel’s home, left Pedaiah’s silent watching, her mind and heart went directly to where Daniel said they should not go.

She felt again the moment of her dream when Amel’s warm grasp had returned her to flesh. She wished again to feel that warmth.

She would seek out Amel.

In the night street, not far from Daniel’s house, Pedaiah knocked at the door of Samuel ben Hananiah. Samuel had proven himself a loyal servant of Yahweh, training his family in the ways of the Law, and had become a friend to Pedaiah, though twice his age.

The door swung open, sliding against the dirt-packed floor, to reveal the humble but tidy interior of the small home Samuel shared with his wife and still-unmarried daughter, Judith.

Samuel grinned from the doorway, the lamplight behind him making him look birdlike with his always-disheveled hair and angular build. “Pedaiah! We were not expecting you this night. Come in, come in.” He pulled the door wider.