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would die. But that he’d die before he found it. Before he finished what he’d set out to do. What he’d sworn to do.

II
     
    T he eastern approach to Jerusalem was the real jaw-dropper. The one that led you over the Mount of Olives and into the Kidron Valley, the whole city revealing itself at once, rising from the desert, with the Great Temple in the foreground. But even here, from the north, Jerusalem struck an impressive sight.
    Herod the Great may have been famous for his excessive cruelty and lavish lifestyle. He may have been decried for being a puppet of Rome and hated for his heavy taxation. But even his fiercest enemies had to admit—the man was one hell of a builder.
    As a young king, Herod had learned that there was no scandal, no discontent that a few shiny new buildings couldn’t hush away. And over his thirty-year reign, he’d used this philosophy to transform much of Judea—building temples and coliseums, improving roads, and building aqueducts to carry fresh water to his subjects. But while Judea was his kingdom, Jerusalem was his showroom. The place he’d transformed from the little city of Solomon into one of the Marvels of the East.
    Since he’d taken power, there’d seldom been a time when the city had fewer than three massive building projects under way. Many wouldn’t even be completed in his lifetime. It didn’t matter. Placating his Jewish subjects wasn’t Herod’s only priority. It wasn’t even his top priority. What Herod really wanted was Rome’s attention. He wanted to create a city so grand, so indispensable, that even the mighty Augustus would be proud to call it home. A city worthy of being called “the Rome of the East.” And he wanted his sons, his grandsons, and their grandsons to rule over it for all time, each generation praising the name of the visionary king who’d started it all.
    And who was to say? In time, maybe his descendants would build a whole empire of their own. Maybe the children of Augustus would find themselves kneeling before the children of Herod, instead of the other way around.
    Jerusalem was home to some 150,000 people. Still little more than a suburb when compared to Rome’s million-plus inhabitants, but it was on its way to becoming one of the grandest cities in the empire—right up there with Alexandria and Antioch. And with the census in full swing, its population had swelled to nearly twice its usual size.
    The hordes barely noticed as Balthazar was paraded through the packed streets—streets that had changed so drastically, even in his lifetime. Where Balthazar remembered nothing but dirt, Herod’s amphitheater now rose more than a hundred feet off the ground, its stage home to the newest works from Rome and Greece. There was the Antonia Fortress, which Herod had named in honor of his friend and patron Marc Antony; the monument to King David, who’d ruled from this very city a thousand years before Herod’s birth; and, of course, there was Herod’s Temple—the city’s biggest, most stunning feature.
    A city unto itself, the temple took up nearly half of Jerusalem’s eastern border. The outer walls measured 1,600 feet by 950 feet and rose 100 feet above the ground. Those walls supported a collection of inner courtyards and buildings, all of which surrounded the gleaming, white marble temple in the center. The biggest of these was the Court of the Gentiles, with its money changers and barbers; its priests scurrying about in their white robes; and merchants selling sacrificial animals, food, and souvenirs to the throngs of pilgrims.
    At the center of it all was the temple itself—a white marble tower, from which the smoke of burning sheep and doves never ceased to rise. Unlike the noise and activity of the complex around it, the temple and its walled-in courtyards were strictly for worship and sacrifice, and strictly for the faithful. Non-Jews were expressly forbidden, on punishment of death, from setting foot inside. Even Herod