An Echo in the Darkness(53)

She struggled, crying out, and awakened.

Someone was in the shadows of her small cell, speaking to her in a low voice. She strained to see who it was, but her vision was distorted, her thoughts clouded.

“Marcus?”

The form did not answer. Disoriented, she closed her eyes. Where was she? She breathed deeply and slowly until her mind cleared slightly, and she remembered. The abaton. She had come for healing.

She started to cry. She should be happy. The snakes had crawled over her in her dream. It was a sign from the gods that she would get well. And yet she couldn’t still the voice of doubt that echoed in her mind. What if the dream meant nothing? What if the gods were mocking her? Her chest ached as she tried to stop sobbing.

Turning her head, she saw the shadowy figure still standing in the dark corner of the cell. Had Asklepios come to her? “Who are you?” she whispered hoarsely, afraid, yet hopeful.

He began to speak in a low, strange voice, and she realized he was chanting. The voice droned on, the words making no sense to her. She grew drowsy again and struggled against sleep, not wanting to dream of the snake pit. But she could not withstand the effects of the drugs she had been given, and she sank into darkness. . . .

She heard dogs barking and moaned. They were coming closer, closer, faster and faster. She was running across a hot, rocky plain. When she looked back, she saw the dogs coming in a pack, racing across the ground toward her. She stumbled and fell, clambered back to her feet, panting, her lungs burning as she tried to run faster. They came on, barking wildly, fangs bared.

“Someone help me! Someone help—!”

She stumbled again, and before she could get up, they were on her, not licking her diseased flesh but tearing at it with their sharp fangs. Screaming, she fought them.

She awakened with a cry and sat up on the narrow bed. It was a moment before her breathing slowed down and she fully realized it had only been a dream. No shadowy figure loomed in the dark corner. She covered her face and cried, afraid to go back to sleep again. And so she waited through the long, cold hours until darkness began lifting.

A temple warden came to her at daybreak and asked what she had dreamed. She told him in as much detail as she could remember and saw he looked troubled.

“What’s wrong? Is it a bad omen? Won’t I get well?” she asked breathlessly, near tears again. Her stomach quivered, warning of near hysteria. Clenching her hands, she fought against it.

“Asklepios has sent a good sign,” the warden assured her calmly, his face once again devoid of emotion. “Many snakes, many dogs. It is unusual. Your prayers have found great favor with our most high god.”

Julia felt vaguely uncomfortable with his interpretation. She had seen something in his eyes, something terrible and unsettling. She was certain that now he was telling her what she longed to hear. Still, she couldn’t help but ask, “Then I will be well again?”

He nodded. “In time, Asklepios will restore your health.”

“In time,” she said bleakly. “How much time?”

“You must show more faith, woman.”

And then she knew. “How do I show Asklepios that I have enough faith for him to heal me?” she said, trying to keep the bitter cynicism out of her voice. She knew what was coming. She had heard it often enough from the priests of half a dozen other gods whose favor she had sought and failed to secure.

The warden raised his head slightly, his eyes narrowing. “In vigils, in prayer, in meditation, and in votive offerings. And when you are well, you must show the proper gratitude in worthy gifts.”

She looked away from him and closed her eyes. She had no strength for lengthy vigils and no heart for prayer and meditation. The wealth she had once thought enough to keep her in luxury for a lifetime had dwindled to almost nothing, siphoned off by Primus. He had stripped her of most of her estate and then vanished from Ephesus. Perhaps, like Calabah, he had simply boarded a ship and sailed away to Rome, where he would find a far more exciting life than watching her die slowly of some unnamed illness.

She had learned only a few days ago that she had barely enough money left to live in simple comfort. She could spare little for the kind of votive offerings to which the warden alluded: gold replicas of the internal organs that pained her. It wasn’t pain as much as it was a spreading weakness . . . the constant fevers, the nausea and sweats, spells of trembling, and the oozing sores in her secret places all drained her to the point of exhaustion.

“Why don’t you kill yourself and have done with it?” Primus had said during what she later realized was their last conversation before he abandoned her. “Put yourself out of misery.”