Immortal by Glenn Beck Page B

of when he told us the shepherd’s story—”
    Balthasar broke in, overwhelmed with excitement: “I could have reached out and touched him! He shone, as the shepherd said, and he warned me—”
    And Caspar: “He said we can’t trust Herod. We have to make sure he doesn’t hear about Jesus.”
    Joseph added in a grief-stricken tone, “Herod will kill children to find our son! There is no safety in Bethlehem for us, or anywhere in Palestine.”
    In the sudden silence that followed, as Joseph and the three wise men stared at each other, Agios murmured softly, “I had no dream.” He tried to say it as a simple matter of fact, but his voice trembled. The truth was that he felt left out, deprived. If he could only see an angel, maybe he could find belief, comfort, whatever had left him when Philos died. The thing that soothed Melchior’s spirits and gave him a calm and peaceful serenity.
    Melchior said finally but warmly, “Agios, my friend, I ask you to leave us.”
    â€œTo leave you?” Now Agios felt as if he were being turned away from—from something wonderful. “Have I offended you, sir?”
    With a smile, Melchior patted his shoulder. “Not at all. And it isn’t that I don’t trust you, Agios, for I look on you as I would a brother. I feel in my heart that with Joseph’s help the three of us must make a difficult decision now. I promise we won’t leave you out, but those of us who had the same dream must take the burden on our own shoulders. We’ll make ourselves be calm as we discuss it and we’ll understand each other well enough.”
    Agios went back to his room and dressed and then stepped out into the inn yard. The night was beginning to wane. Soon dawn would come in like a slow tide, paling the stars. Standing in the open yard, looking straight up beyond the dark fronds of the date palms, Agios saw only ordinary stars there, and a pale sliver of waning moon. Only fading, distant, indifferent stars—not the star.
    â€œWhy did the dream not visit me?” he asked the darkness, startled by the sorrow he heard in his own voice.
    He sat on a bench and slumped against the wall of the inn, cool in the earliest morning hours. When my agreement with Caspar ends, I will go back into the mountains , he promised himself. I will build a hut, nothing like my old one, but a different one where I won’t look up and expect to see my wife and child . . . and I’ll live there alone by trapping and hunting, live there far from people, alone, alone .
    Alone. Agios thirsted for solitude.
    No. He couldn’t have that. There was Krampus. Maybe he could find some place where the big man could stay without becoming an object of torture and scorn. Or Krampus could come with him—he was loyal, and he seldom spoke. Being with Krampus was almost like being alone, Agios thought.
    He had known traders and kings, beggars and scholars, a tortured and twisted slave whose mind had been cracked by ill-treatment, and a shepherd boy who all seemed to have been given a great gift . . . and now a carpenter and his infant son. A carpenter who believed his child was actually the son of God.
    All babies are children of God .
    The thought had come into Agios’s head from nowhere. In an anguished voice, he asked aloud, “Then why did Philos have to die so young? Why did God not take care of him for me?”
    No answer came from the empty sky.
    Then Agios heard the murmur of voices and stood up. Melchior, Caspar, Balthasar, and Joseph came out into the courtyard, mere silhouettes in the darkness. In the dim predawn light of the sky, Melchior beckoned to Agios as they walked to a far corner, where no one was likely to overhear them. “This is important,” he said to Agios in a voice little louder than a whisper. “You must find the true words in the kind of Aramaic that Joseph speaks. There can be no