Garden of Madness (17 page)

Tia sat wrapped in the spell of his story of the creation of the world, a story very different than the monstrous dragon Tiamat birthing the world in her death throes. After a while Pedaiah joined the story, his face lit with a joy Tia had not seen, and Daniel deferred to the younger man. Pedaiah spoke of the flood that purified the world, a story familiar to her in parts, but somehow different than the Babylonian Gilgamesh. His eyes danced over the story of the One God’s desire to redeem the world, to bring One who would someday save, and His defining of a people, through whom He would speak to and save the nations.

Daniel watched Pedaiah’s passionate telling with a strange amusement, but for her, all the coldness of their exchange on the bridge evaporated, and his words swept her into the history of his people. Somehow his teaching spoke to Tia’s heart rather than her mind. So different than her years of study under palace tutors. He was like a wise man himself, all knowledge and eagerness and brilliant intensity. Tia could have listened for hours.

Pedaiah seemed to have run out of air. Daniel laughed and patted his arm. “She is good for you, my boy. I have been waiting years to see in you more zeal than austerity, fervor rather than arrogance.”

But Daniel’s words only pushed Pedaiah back, away from both of them. Tia watched as the veil of the impersonal fell over his face once more, and she wished it had not returned.

Daniel saw it too and dropped his head for a moment before smiling again on her. “But none of this is why you came, Princess.”

She sighed. “No. But I thank you for the teaching.”

He patted her knee, a fatherly gesture that brought unexpected tears. How long had it been since anyone had touched her with affection?

“Your father is a proud man, my lady. The first time I came before him we were both young and newly returned from Judaea, he the conqueror and newly crowned king and me the captive, training to be a scholar.” Daniel smiled and lifted his head to peer into the past. “He was all rashness and youth then, demanding that his wise men not only interpret his dream but tell him the dream itself, for it had fled with the morning. Yelling that he would see them all executed as charlatans if they could not produce the dream.”

Tia had never heard this story and she drank it in, desperate for word of her father, even if it was stories of the past.

Daniel laughed again. “The commander of your father’s guard—Arioch, if I remember correctly, a good man—began rounding up all of us who studied in the palace. I asked him why we were to be put to death, and he told me of your father’s absurdity.”

Tia smiled. Only a man who had become a good friend would speak thus of her father.

“I went in to the king and asked for more time, then I and my companions spent a night in prayer. Before the night’s end, the One God had given me the dream and its interpretation in a vision.” He shrugged as if the matter were a simple one. “I returned to your father, gave him the truth, and young as I was, he made me chief of magi from that moment.”

“He always told me that the Jews’ God was one of the most powerful.”

At this, Daniel’s face fell. “I am afraid he still has not learned the full extent of truth. I had hoped, after that business with the monstrous statue, that he had changed. But that overweening pride of his—it has brought him low. Just as the prophecy said.” The longing in his voice, that of a man grieving sharply for a close friend, was like the warmth and weight of a woolen blanket on her heart.

She leaned forward and took the old man’s hand. “Tell me of the prophecy, Daniel. I fear for my father and must know if there is danger.”

“There is always danger, my dear”—he squeezed her fingers— “whenever there is power. But the day approaches when your father will lift his head to heaven and acknowledge what he has long refused. And his mind will be restored.”

Her heart leapt within her chest. Finally! News of the end of their long exile. Her hands convulsed around Daniel’s. “When? When will this happen?”

“Soon. That is all I know. The seven times have nearly passed over him now.” Daniel’s eyes narrowed. “But I cannot say if he will still be king when this comes to be, nor for how long he shall live after.”

She would not be satisfied—she must wring every drop of knowledge from the wise man. “This danger, it is from the other magi? Those in the palace? I have heard things.”

His eyes closed and Tia pressed on. “Do you know who killed Kaldu? Was my husband poisoned?”

Daniel released her hand and sat back against his chair heavily, with an air of fatigue. “This is why I no longer live at court. Always the scheming. But I know nothing of it, I am afraid.”

“Please, Daniel. I must keep my father safe.”

“We do not control our own lives, Princess.”

She recoiled at the words as if he had slapped her. “I will control my own.”

He studied her again, and she squirmed under his scrutiny. When he spoke, his words were soft and low, like a priest reading the signs. “You run on a narrow ledge, Princess. Clinging to security but longing for adventure. There is only one way to succeed in what you undertake.”

She waited, her breath suspended.

“You must learn how to risk everything.”

Too vague. She must have more. “Tell me how, then.”

He shook his head. “This you must learn on your own.” A smile at Pedaiah. “Perhaps with some help.”

“Someone seeks to overthrow my father’s throne. I must know who the usurper would be.”

“The palace is full of secrets, my lady. It has always been so. Secrets meant to protect but with the potential to destroy. You must be very careful.”

Pedaiah stood. “The hour is late, Princess. I must return you to the palace before an alarm is raised.”

Tia exhaled, unsure if anything she had heard could assist her efforts. She would have to think on all of this, but it did not seem that she had learned much tonight.

At least not about the danger to her father.

Daniel gripped her hands, and she kissed him on both cheeks and followed Pedaiah from the chamber. The courtyard lay in dusky solitude, no trace of its crowd among the dark green plants and sweet-scented white jasmine. Even Judith was gone. Tia suppressed a smile at the thought of her waiting for Pedaiah to emerge from their private meeting, then leaving unsatisfied.

They were silent for the short walk back to the palace. It had been a strange night. A run
through
the city rather than around it, one that had given her more pleasure than anything she could long remember. The sight of poverty and joy intermingled in the Jewish quarter. Pedaiah’s anger on the bridge. Daniel’s cryptic warnings. How was she to feel about all that had transpired?

Pedaiah slowed long before they reached the wide staircase that swept upward to the palace entrance. “I will leave you here, Princess.”

Tia understood, though the truth saddened her somehow. It would not be wise for either of them to be seen returning together. She looked into his unreadable face. “We learned little.”

His eyes looked pained. “No? I had hoped you saw something new.”

“That is not—I did not mean—” Tia folded her arms. “My eyes have been opened to many things this night, Pedaiah. I have much to ponder.” He blinked and looked away, so she touched his arm. “I am returning to the palace a different person than I left, and I thank you for that.” He would not look at her. “But I fear I am no closer to the truth about my father and the recent deaths. And this is what I must pursue.”

“Then I shall leave you to it.”

And he did leave, vanishing into the dark night. Tia made her weary way up the palace steps, under the arch, and then through the courtyard and hall to her chamber, anxious now for her ladies to settle her into bed.

She pushed open her chamber door and searched the gloom for Omarsa and Gula.

Instead, sitting straight-backed in a carved chair, one leg daintily crossed over the other, Tia’s mother waited.

CHAPTER 19

Her mother’s face lay half in shadow, but the sharp incline of her jaw, the dark-ringed eyes, betrayed sleeplessness, fretfulness.

Tia unwound the scarf and veil from her head and tossed her cloak across her bedding, then sat heavily to face her, to face whatever threats Amytis had come to deliver. Her ladies were absent.

Was it fatigue or was it fear that etched those lines around her mother’s mouth? Amytis plucked absently at her sleeve with one hand, worrying the fabric against her wrist.

“The hour is very late.” Her tone was flat, emotionless.

“Yes.”

Perfect eyebrows twitched upward, the only sign that she found Tia’s answer unsatisfactory. “You were running?”

“I ran. Yes.”

Her eyes strayed to Tia’s conventional clothing. She had dressed in one of her finest robes to meet Pedaiah.

“I do not like you outside the palace so late. You know this.”

Tia ducked her head. “I am often restless.”

“I know.”

Tia searched her mother’s sunken eyes for compassion married to understanding, but Amytis was darkness to her, one more mystery Tia could not penetrate.

Amytis lifted her chin, her drawn face wavering in the lamplight. “You must attend to your duties better.”

The words were ordinary, the same she uttered frequently. Yet tonight they held more portent, even threat, and they pressed on Tia, as though words could smother.

Amytis was gone a moment later, her perfume following her on the air like a wisp of smoke.

Tia stretched upon her bed, still dressed, and pulled the bed-coverings across her chest and legs, her eyes heavy with the adventure of the night, but her mind fractured into a thousand thoughts.

The night wore on, fragments of conversation and shards of images chafing her drowsy consciousness. Tia thrashed about on her bed, still feeling the pressure of her mother’s words.

Or was it the other? The strange heaviness that often assailed, especially at night. She lay unmoving, her eyes searching the darkness. She had thrown those fearsome amulets from her chamber, but were there others? Had someone left evil charms against her, hidden in her chamber to work their silent curse? Tia fingered Amel’s protective charm at her throat.

But the air grew thick and she toiled to breathe, pulling in great draughts through her nose, between whispers of ineffective prayers. Was that the smell of sacrifice? Of charred flesh?

She sat upright, searching for smoke, but the smell and the heavy air dizzied her, dropped her back against the cushions.

She fell at last into a disquiet sleep, and when morning came she stumbled through her ablutions without feeling cleansed. Indeed, the day weighed as heavily as the night, and she staggered through it as one still asleep.

Time was passing, she sensed, though she was making no progress in her quest, nor doing anything to protect her father or herself from what was to come. Instead she half listened to her tutors, picked at her meals, and fell into her bed as soon as darkness descended. Some kind of stupor had wrapped her in its clutches.

At night she often woke, shaking and beating at her own limbs to rid herself of the feathery touch of scorpions scuttling across her skin. At times she smelled the sacrifice again, even tasted the blood of it in her mouth. She awoke in the center of one night to see the demon Labartu hovering over her, her lion’s head looming and ass’s teeth gnashing. She could hear the distant chants of the kalû priests.

And though the nights were long and fearsome, the days were little better. Everywhere she felt on her body the eyes of the palace. The harem women, usually content to lounge the garden courtyards entertained by dancers and acrobats, all seemed to watch her. Their eyes followed her as she walked, their red lips sneered, their heads swiveled slowly to trace her steps. In the banquet hall the furtive glances of the black-bearded magi skittered away when she turned on them. Their dark curls, held by gold bands, hid their eyes.

Twice Tia found herself at the end of a day with no memory of time passing. Terrifying.

Day and night blended and swirled until she lost count. Was she ill? But no fever overtook her. To be certain, one night before falling into her bed she stood before her lady Gula and asked her to place a hand upon her skin, to search her eyes for fever. But while Gula examined her, Tia’s glance fell upon the amulet at the slave’s neck, the face of the demon Labartu nestled in the pulsating hollow of her throat, leering at her with that wicked grin.

She stumbled backward, caught herself against the wall, and raised a shaky finger to Gula’s neck. “Why do you wear Labartu?”

Gula reached for the amulet, her eyes fearful. “You know why, my lady. For protection. I have always worn it.”

Not true. Gula spoke lies to frighten her. She was part of all the watching, connected to all those who wished her harm and were forever whispering curses when she passed.

Gula took a step toward her, her hand outstretched, but Tia smacked it. “Get out!” She pointed at Omarsa. “And you. Both of you, get out of my chamber!”

They fled, but she did not truly wish to be alone. The heaviness was strongest here, in her chamber. She lurched into the hall, shut her chamber door, and moved along the corridor, her fingers tracing the length of the wall and her thoughts racing ahead.

Was it a spell? Had Gula placed a spell upon her? But no, why would she? Tia shook her head, trying to clear the stringy cobwebs of incoherence.

She must seek Shadir. Why, she did not know. Somehow this was part of him, part of her questions. Her steps led her to the Hall of Magi, but when she turned the final corner, Shadir emerged from the vaulted Hall entrance, veered away from her, and strode down the corridor, dark robes trailing.

She followed.

She wore only an ankle-length tunic, her feet were bare and soundless, and her breath controlled by months of running. Shadir moved with heavy tread through the corridors and she shadowed him easily, keeping to the wall, ready to disappear into a recessed doorway or darkened wing should he turn.

But he had no sense that Tia followed and twisted through one lengthy corridor after another, then down a narrow flight of steps without a backward glance. Where did he go at this hour?