The Coming of the King

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The sun was a scorching ball of fire, roasting the desert and everything in it, even now, barely two hours after dawn. The harsh, grey sand took wings, ready to clog a man’s lungs within a dozen breaths if he didn’t keep his face covered. Underfoot, it was hot as live coals, fit to burn even the healthiest of feet.

Saulos Herodion, cousin to the king of Judaea, did not have the healthiest of feet. He had lost all the skin of his right sole and half the meat of the heel in Rome’s fire and for the first full year of his time in the desert, he had not been able to place his foot to the sand without screaming.

Then, sometime in the winter of the second year — such winters as they had here — news of Seneca’s death had reached him. He had few details; half a sentence passed on with no more value than a handful of dried dates, but even so, what should have heartened him had instead made plain the extent to which his world was passing him by, and he not at the heart of it.

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