Palace of Darkness by Tracy L. Higley Read Free Book Online

revealing not only the great skill of the Nabataean sculptors of Petra but also the religiosity of its people.
    Surely people this skilled and this religious could find a place for one young woman and her little boy.
    Alexander laughed.
    Cassia was so taken with the rare sound she nearly forgot to wonder what he had found humorous.
    “I like this one best.” He smiled and pointed.
    She followed his outstretched finger to the opposite wall of the passageway. A huge camel and driver had been cut into the rock wall. Cassia hugged Alex to herself. “Of course you would like one with an animal better than any other.”
    The crowd ahead seemed to slow. Was there some disturbance that would prevent them from entering the city? She still could see no farther than the next bend in the rock.
    And then they rounded the bend, and she and Alex slowed as well.
    For the Siq ended. The narrow split in the rock they had traveled concluded with a beautiful archway carved overhead. And there, through the slit, they got their first glimpse of the pride of Petra—another sandstone pink rock-cut facade, one that dwarfed all they had yet seen in both size and beauty. The central figure carved betweencolumns high above appeared to be a Nabataean goddess. But a mixture of Greek and Egyptian deities also graced its bays and recesses, and the stone columns with their elaborately carved capitals and intricate pediments astonished the onlooker.
    Cassia inhaled sharply, pierced by the surprise and fighting a wave of unexpected emotion.
    Petra!
    She looked down to Alexander, who raised wide eyes and a gap-toothed smile to her. “Are we here now?”
    Cassia blinked back tears of exhaustion and relief. “We are here.”
    The Siq birthed them into an open space before the beautiful carved facade, a large open plot that was perhaps the city’s agora, the marketplace destination of all the traders who traveled the Siq. Even at this late hour, the area teemed with merchants and their tables, townspeople, camels with drivers, and rich traders wandering among the merchants, hawking their merchandise and striking deals. Damascus had been a trade city, but nothing like this. Petra’s secure location at the crossroads of trade routes running both north-south and east-west brought goods from India and China, Egypt and Syria, and carried them east to the spreading Roman Empire. The great silk, spice, and slave routes all ran through Petra, increasing its wealth.
    Cassia held tightly to Alexander’s hand as they wandered the tables. The air hung heavy with the scents of spices, of frankincense and myrrh. Tables glittered with Chinese silk and pearls and gemstones. There were exotic animals, perfumes and unguents, rice and grain.
    But the market was breaking up. Clearly the night was soon upon them, and shoppers and merchants alike were preparing to head home.
    Cassia felt the sudden aloneness, the realization that they had nowhere to go in the darkness. It was time to begin her meager plan, the only idea she had contrived to make their way in Petra.
    She bent to Alexander, put her hands on his cheeks to turn his face to hers. “Listen, shekel, stay close to me. Don’t wander away when I’m speaking to people.”
    He nodded, his face sober.
    “If we should ever get separated”—she looked around the agora—“ask someone who looks like a mother to take you to the city fountain, to the Nymphaeum.”
    Alex surveyed their location. There was nothing of the city to be seen here but the one amazing rock sculpture. Impassable rock walls blocked one end of the canyon, and the other end bent away, out of sight. “I don’t see the fountain.”
    “But wherever it is, I will find you there.”
    His brow furrowed in concern.
    She kissed his cheek. “Stay close to me, and we won’t be separated.”
    He clutched her tunic in a small hand. “Promise?”
    “I promise.”
    A young woman passed them, arms filled with bulging sacks, and Cassia stepped to the left to