Chapter 9

After a fortnight’s diligent search for Fara, everyone but Voldi gave it up.

With tireless persistence, but waning hope, the loyal young fellow had continued his quest, investigating every square cubit of terrain which she might have covered in a reckless midnight ride.

He had even gone to the length of having himself lowered over precipices to the unexplored depths of bramble-choked chasms into which she might have fallen, and had vigorously queried shepherds in pasture-lands so far remote that the possibility of their having any information for him was inconceivable. He had pestered the grief-stricken Ione with questions until she fled at the sight of him.

The plight of the once so well-balanced and self-contained Ione was indeed pitiable. Upon the death of Arnon and the disappearance of Fara, King Zendi had taken their helpless servants into his own household where the older of them fitted at once into the well-remembered routines of a King’s establishment. But the inconsolable Greek slave seemed dazed. Everyone thought that she was going mad.

According to report, Ione sat all day alone in a far corner of the female servants’ quarters, occasionally breaking into hysterical weeping; and, when anyone approached her, would shrink back terrified as if expecting a blow. Advised of her appalling condition, Voldi had left off hoping that she might be able to furnish a clue.

Of course there were many who recalled the fantastic vow that Fara had taken when hardly more than a child, but it seemed beyond all reason that she would have set off alone on a mission so palpably impossible.

To clear the air of these speculations, and, more particularly, to dissuade the now frantic Voldi from his half-formed decision to seek for her in faraway Galilee, the King and his Councillors held a conference in which the matter was fully discussed. And when it was ready to adjourn, Voldi was invited in to learn the outcome of their parley.

Disheartened and ill, for his fatigue and sleepless anxiety had worn him thin, he listened dejectedly while King Zendi reported their unanimous opinion. It was their firm belief, solemnly declared Zendi, that no young woman in her right mind—as Fara had seemed to be—would attempt a solitary expedition into a hostile country with the intention of assassinating its well-fortified king. And it was the considered judgment of the Council that any effort to seek for her in that region would be an act of sheer lunacy.

Were the stronghold of Tetrarch Antipas situated twenty miles beyond the Jordan, continued Zendi, a thousand experienced cavalrymen might risk making an attack; but that a seventeen-year-old girl would travel, unattended, over seventy leagues of bandit-infested territory—to wreak vengeance upon a king in his fortress—was too preposterous to be believed even by a courageous young man whose loyalty and love and sorrow had driven him to desperation.

After Zendi had spoken there was a long silence which suggested that Voldi might defend his foolish idea if he desired, but he did not speak. Old Dumah cleared his throat to add a word.

‘Even if she had been mad enough to attempt it, she would have come to grief long before now.’