The Ancient Witnesses

Chapter 1: A Journey to Nicaea • 27

shore. Finally, my gaze turned back inside the wall, where Nicaea looked like a beautiful garden decorated with ancient ruins. The lights of our motel shone in the distance. After a few moments I saw Joseph and Cesar coming my way, walking along the ground. Obviously, they’d found a place to climb down. Preacher was also making his way toward me, still atop the wall. I needed to climb down before it was too dark to see. First, however, I stood up and shouted to my friends to show that I, too, had scaled the walls of Nicaea. That’s when I heard a soft popping noise under my feet. The rubble beneath me gave way like a trap door, and I was sliding down the far side of the wall! I grabbed for anything to hold onto, pulling a small avalanche of rubble after me and feeling the impact of the huge stone blocks on my body as I slid over each one. At the bottom of the wall, my feet splashed into the cold water of the lake—a shock to my body, though the water was only waist-deep. Now on the other side of the wall, I was cut off from my friends and in darkness. The Rescue My eyes adapted to an eerie glow hovering over the lake as I took stock of my situation. Aside from a few scrapes, I was not injured. The cold water numbed my stinging shins and left me breathless. The wall I had slid down, I could now see, was rounded like a silo. I wondered if this could be one of the towers of Constantine’s palace. Clinging to the tower wall, I inched my way along its base, testing every step to avoid deeper water. This brought me to where the tower met the wall on one side. From here the wall stretched on as far as I could see; it was no use to go any farther. Looking up, I saw that the wall was damp and smooth with nothing to hold on to.