Excerpt of The Garden of Souls by Cheri Vause

PROLOGUE

In a village outside Jerusalem, Israel, 135 A.C.E.

I am a dead man.

Akiva scratched the words across a torn piece of parchment, which was stretched over a table made from two clay wine jars and a large piece of wood from an abandoned ox-cart. A faint smell of wine drifted through the cracks in the wood, reminding him his old stomach was as empty as the wine jars. While dismissing the tempting perfume, he dipped his stylus again into the black ink and waited for the bead on the tip to plop back into the pot, for every drop was worth a fortune and he was quickly running out of money and time.

Shaping the letters in short, deliberate movements, his hand crept from right to left, aligning each letter to the one before it. For a long moment he stopped to stare at the words as though they were a primal truth and, try as he may to understand them, he knew he never would. The world had gone mad with violence and he seemed to be at the whirling core of it.

He felt a sharp pain scrabble inside his chest until it found his heart, making it rattle like a dried up bean in a clay jar. Age had come upon him suddenly in these last few weeks, hurtling itself over him until his bones creaked with the weight of it, or was it, rather, the harrowing millstone of responsibility for all of those deaths at Masada crushing him? He touched the point of his stylus to the parchment and began writing again.

I can hear the soldiers marching several streets away as they search for me and the others involved in the rebellion. They most certainly will find me, unless I am able to escape in the next few moments, leaving little time to explain anything to you, but I shall try.

A tear slid down his nose and dropped, drowning the letter it fell upon until it was nothing more than a black spot. He wiped his face with his sleeve and continued writing.

I am staying in a village somewhere on the outskirts of Be’er Karkom. My life here has been smothering me like an old wool blanket. All the hiding and the reliance upon others to fetch food and supplies has taken its toll on my spirit. I continue to teach, but the number of my students has dwindled to only those brave enough to defy the governor’s edict. General Vespasian will never give up the search for those who escaped Masada, and my name is on the top of the list. I believed in Bar Kokhba, I believed he was our Savior, but, as you know, hindsight has always had better vision.

My students each carry a letter to you through my graduates who are scattered about the countryside. I hope that by using this method, one letter will make it through to you.

He stopped suddenly, hearing a noise outside the door. He held his breath as his heart drummed in his chest. A dog’s nose peeked through a hole in the wall and snorted. Disinterested, the dog trotted down the mud-soaked alley, oblivious to the fright he caused. Akiva exhaled, placing his hand over his heart, still beating in a furious tattoo of fear. These terror-ridden moments were exhausting him, aging him a year for each moment as they increased in frequency. He knew he must move quickly, but how do you hasten expressing your love? Lowering the stylus to the parchment, he began to shape the letters in quick light strokes. I have made the decision to return to the Cave because there is safety from the Romans within its inaccessible walls. A map accompanies each letter, in the hope that you will be able to join me if it is possible for you to get away without being followed. You know the secrets and the symbols to find me.

I love you, my darling. You know I do not make this decision lightly. The worst part of it is that I may never see your beautiful face again, or lay my lips upon yours. How fortunate I am to be married to you. I still live in the fervent hope that you will find your way to me, unless God has other plans.

Here O Israel, the Lord our God is One.

Your loving husband,

Akiva ben Josef

He rolled the parchment and slid it inside a leather saddle bag beside another rolled parchment. He recognized the cadence of his students’ footsteps outside the door. This was it. The long journey lay ahead of him if the Romans didn’t capture him first.

“Goodbye.” He kissed his fingers and touched the small clay mezuzah on the lintel. Returning his fingers to his lips, he turned his face toward the approaching figures. “Were any of you seen?”

In the year of our Lord 1610, high in the Andes Mountains of Peru

A young Catholic Priest dodged a branch flying toward his anxious face. His black hair was tangled with dried leaves and twigs and his skull cap was threatening to fall off his head. He raised his arm as a shield from any further attacks by the dense jungle and stumbled forward.

“How much farther?” he asked his guide. “The sun is about to rise.”

“We will make it, Llactapata lies directly ahead,” the Mochen’s voice sounded reassuring, authoritative. “We are nearly there.”

He was ahead of the Priest, keeping his eyes fixed on the overgrown path before him, a torch in one hand and a machete in the other, never breaking his pace or the rhythm of his machete as it sliced through the underbrush.

It had taken a full year for the Priest to get this quiet Mochen to trust him, and another to convert the man’s heart from its pagan roots to Christianity, but the question the Priest never bothered to ask himself was whether or not he trusted this unassuming native of Peru. He certainly trusted the Mochen more than the soldiers who he sailed with from Spain. Instead, he placed all of his trust in the vision and the song that he knew he received from God. He could hear it now, pulsing in his ears along with his blood flying like a startled bird through his body.

Everyone, even his Bishop, thought he was mad. Only an insane man would dream such bizarre dreams, hear the otherworldly music dancing in his head, and possess such an unwavering desire to come to this wild place to convert these simple Mochen peoples to Christianity. But the Holy Father believed him, the Pontiff Paul V, listened intently to the descriptions of his dreams, and was fascinated by the mystical nature of his visions. After the meeting, the Pontiff immediately secured him a cuddy aboard one of the ships set to sail across the ocean, and presented him with the beautiful gold crucifix, which adorned his neck. He then blessed him and assured him that every priest in the Vatican would be praying for his safety and success, for he was on an incredible mission from God and the gates of Hell would be pressing against him.

Perhaps he was mad, for there were moments when even he believed he might be. The proof of that point was about to be tested. He could hear the muffled sounds of a large gathering, the cadence of a chant rising toward a full- throated hypnotic delirium. His heart leaped in his chest. They were too late.

“We must hurry.” He picked up his pace, nearly running past his Mochen companion.

They both pushed through the edge of the jungle into a clearing of terraced gardens and dashed toward the temple rising above them. Dozens of torches lit up the dawning sky and cast a soft, golden glow on the faces of the crowd of worshippers, each swaying as though they were bewitched, their arms raised above their heads with terrifying grimaces stretched across their faces. The Priest had never seen the ceremony before, but he had heard it described by his convert in horrifying detail. Nothing had prepared him for what he saw as they elbowed their way through the crowd.

The heads of two men with expressions of sheer terror mortised on their faces lay at the bottom of a trail of blood that led to the top of the small temple. He stared in horror at the bloody visage, feeling light-headed, and that he would faint dead away if someone merely touched him. His stomach churned and twisted while he desperately tried to steel himself against swooning, but his body doubled over and the contents of his hastily consumed last meal spewed over the bloody trail. He wiped his mouth and straightened his uncooperative body as he called upon God to give him strength and direction.

Words suddenly came roaring out in a robust, commanding voice that was not his, “Stop this evil! What kind of god demands you to murder your brothers, these innocents?”

It was as though someone had slapped each face in the crowd, their arms dropping limply to their sides, and the grisly sardonic expression metamorphosing into one of surprise and confusion. The pagan priest flashed from rapture to rage in an instant and began a deliberate descent from the top of the temple steps directly toward the young Catholic Priest, his sacrificial knife raised in his hand red from blood. He stared at the priest as he would a lamb he was about to slaughter, vulnerable and unarmed. His face twitched as his eyes grew into two, huge orbs, his mouth a black gash, and his body taut and consumed with mad hatred.

The Mochen Christian moved like lightening toward the pagan priest, grabbing his wrist which was holding a death grip on the knife.

“Enough,” the Mochen Christian announced. “There will be no more sacrifices.” His eyes toured the crowd. “It ends here.”

Heads swiveled toward their fellow Mochen and the crowd instantly fell to their knees, their faces showing that they knew who he was and that he was an imposing and important person. He hardened his grip on the witchy priest, who reluctantly bowed his head as he lowered his body to a kneeling position.

“Who,” the Catholic Priest swallowed hard, “who are you?”

“I am their King.”

The pagan priest seized the moment, wrested free from the King’s relaxing grip, and leaped from the steps onto the startled Catholic Priest who fell backward from the force. The pagan priest straddled him, raised the knife with both hands, and shrieked with a sound straight from Hell.

The determined Catholic Priest began, “Christ before me—” but he was unable to say the next words of Saint Patrick’s breastplate. At that moment, the sun peeked over the temple and with the precision of a focused beam, landed on the crucifix around his neck, the light exploding with the force of a bomb. The assemblage dropped to the ground and the pagan priest screamed.