Bring Down the Sun (16 page)

“He is not your wife,” she said.

She rose. Though he was braced for whatever she might do, his back stiffened. She was quick, and he well remembered her strength. If she had had a weapon, it would have been at his throat; he could not have stopped her.

Her veil slipped free. So did the pins that confined her hair: by accident or artifice, it tumbled down her back and shoulders to her hips. “Lie down,” she said.

He was helpless to disobey her. She was not using witchcraft; he knew the stink of that, and there was none about her, above or below the perfume that made him dizzy. This was her own potent magic, as much a part of her as her clear grey-green eyes.

Her hands were defter than Demetrios' and nearly as strong. They worked the sharply herbal-scented salve into the knots and pits of scars. Philip groaned with pain that melted and flowed into blessed relief.

She had kilted up her chiton to kneel astride him. Her thighs were round and firm, her breasts full and high. They filled his hands.

Her face was as blank as the Mother's mask, but her eyes were burning. They had burned that night, too, when she initiated him into the fullest of the Mysteries—or he initiated her. He too well remembered the moment of resistance, then the blood as he took her maidenhead.

He might have taken that, but he had never taken her. She was not for taking. She would never belong in heart and soul to any man, even the king of Macedon.

He had to take things—men, wives, kingdoms. He was a king. That was what he was for.

He must have spoken aloud, because she answered, “I am your equal. You can't bear that, can you? Everyone is less than you. Except me.”

“Only the gods are greater,” he said—or gasped. She had slid onto his erect and aching shaft and begun the slow rhythm that was calculated to drive him mad.

When he took a woman or a boy, it was fast, hard, in, out, gone. Not with her. She lingered. She teased. She tormented. Every moment was exquisite and terrifying pleasure.

She kept him just short of climax, holding the moment until his whole body was like to burst. Then with a fierce cry she let him go, tumbling down and clasping him tight and driving him deep. She drained him dry.

He dropped beside her. She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around herself. “Do you feel it? Do you know what happened?”

Her voice was faint through the ringing in his ears. He had no words to answer.

Her breath gusted warm in his ear. “Never be afraid of this. Never run away from it. We are made for it, you and I. No one else is strong enough, or near enough to gods.”

“I'm not afraid,” he said. “It's a distraction. I can't afford distractions.”

“Nor need you. Are you so simple a man that you can't keep your mind on two things at once?”

“There's a whole world in you.”

She raked her nails down his chest, not quite breaking the skin. He grunted at the sharp, small pain and caught her wrist. She stilled. She was smiling. Damn her, was she afraid of nothing?

Foolish question. “Don't ignore me again,” she said. “I'll share you—that's the way of the world. But you will be there to be shared.”

“Is that an order, madam?”

“If you like,” she said, “my king.”

She was laughing at him. He hated that. But gods, it made his body burn. He was rising already, impossibly, wanting her all over again.

No one else could do that to him. No one else ever would. He did not know if that was simple knowledge or his heart's promise.

Twenty

It was like taming a wild bull. Philip was large and powerful and deeply dangerous, but more than anything he was afraid. Fear made him run rampant, or else he bolted for far pastures and would not come back.

Myrtale went to him, armed with her will and her smile. He neither drove her from his bed nor sought a bed elsewhere. He faced her on his own ground.

There was not supposed to be a victor or a vanquished. That was hard for him who thought of everything as succeed or fail, win or lose—and if he did not win, it must be a bitter loss. He struggled to see it as a dance of equals.

Very soon, far sooner than any signs might have indicated, Myrtale knew she had conceived. She felt it inside her, only a spark, but so very bright. It burned beneath her heart.

She kept it to herself. Soon enough there would be no hiding it, not among the women who watched and whispered and knew exactly what she did every night. They had wagers with the king's guards as to when her belly would begin to swell. But for this little while, she cherished that most blessed of secrets.

Even Philip did not know. Especially Philip. He might stay away from her then in some Greek folly of protecting the child—as if the love of man and woman could do any harm to the life they had made.

He was less wild now, more willing to accept what was between them, now that he saw it would not shrivel his manhood or keep him from being king. He still had not come to her bed, but his was much more comfortable. She was content with matters as they were.

Not all of it was the body's pleasure, either. He would talk with her afterward, if she encouraged him: telling tales of battles and hunts, during which she struggled to stay awake, but also musing over the plans he had for his kingdom.

“There's so much to do,” he said one night, lying on his back with his arms behind his head, staring at the ceiling as if the words of his fate were written there. “So many allies to make, treaties to affirm, wars to win. Enemies to get rid of, too. Athens, now—whatever it can do to stop me, it will. With words alone, if it can.”

“That's where all the rumors come from, isn't it?” Myrtale said.

He glanced at her, a quick flash in the lamplight. “That we're all born in barns, and given a choice between a woman and a sheep, we'd tup the sheep?”

“That I know to be false,” she said.

He grinned. “What, you won't test it, to be sure?”

“I don't need to,” said Myrtale. She sat up and clasped her knees, wrapping herself in blankets for the night was cold. “I should like to learn more of these things. Not war and tactics—those are unbelievably dull—but politics and the ruling of nations. Is there someone who can teach me?”

He did her the courtesy of not laughing at her and asking what a woman would want with such things. “War isn't dull,” he said. “War is where it all begins and ends. Tactics in battle extend to the council chamber and the courts of the city or the kingdom.”

“Maybe that's what's wrong with them,” she said. “They're all backwards.”

He seemed torn between laughter and outrage. “You can't have kingdoms without war.”

“Not in these days,” she granted him. “And yet you all declare that peace is the proper and most desirable state of being. How do you reconcile that? Doesn't it make your head ache?”

“
You
make my head ache,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “Men don't do enough thinking. They're all at the mercy of their basest impulses.”

“And women aren't?”

“We can think of more than one thing at once,” she said.

He shook his head. “That's not logic.”

“Logic is all the rage in Athens in these days, isn't it? And yet so much of it is false.”

“You'll drive me mad,” he said, with a growl in it. But he did not order her from his bed.

He did not go to sleep at once, either. He was thinking—of what she had said, she hoped. What he would do with it, she could not be sure, but she trusted that he would put it to good use.

*   *   *

Those were the nights. The days had changed little. No teacher came to instruct Myrtale in the ways of kings and councils.

She did not give away to disappointment—yet. Some things took time.

Although Myrtale had been keeping their husband to herself, her sister wives kept their jealousy in check, if they felt any. Phila might; the others had their children—present or to come—to distract them.

Philinna's son was growing almost visibly. He had learned to run; he ran everywhere, and he talked incessantly, and not infant prattle, either. He asked questions. He wanted to know what things were and how they worked and why. His quick intelligence was a source of delight and frequent consternation to his mother and the servants.

Myrtale was not a woman to take great interest in other women's children. This one was interesting mainly for what it told her about his father—and, maybe, about the child she was carrying. It would be a son, too. She knew that as she knew the rest, because it was the truth.

*   *   *

One cold raw morning, Arrhidaios had escaped his nurse yet again and run naked out of the women's quarters. Myrtale happened to be on the outer portico, wrapped tightly in a mantle, watching the snow fly across the lake and the plain, when he shot past her, laughing.

She caught him without thinking. The force of his speed spun her completely about. When she stopped, she found Erynna staring at her. The rest of the pursuit had veered off toward the men's hall—Erynna's doing, she had no doubt.

“Let him go,” the witch said.

“Not unless he can fly,” said Myrtale. “He'll pitch right off the cliff.”

“Yes,” Erynna said.

Arrhidaios was still, warm and heavy in Myrtale's arms. He smelled of milk and clean child. She tucked her mantle around him and stared over his head at Erynna.

“Do think with more than your womb now,” Erynna said. “This is the firstborn son. In Macedon that need not mean he inherits, but he will be your son's rival. Two bright stars cannot share this firmament. One of them will destroy the other. Do you want it to be your son who dies?”

Myrtale opened her mouth to deny that she was with child, but that was foolish. Of course the witch knew. Even if she could not see for herself, she could cast a spell or scry in a mirror and discover the truth.

Instead Myrtale said, “I'm capable of many things, but cold-blooded murder, no. My son will be king. This child is no threat to him.”

“No?” said Erynna. “True, his mother lacks ambition, but his father more than makes up for it. As, already, does he. He's seduced you as he has everyone else.”

Myrtale resisted the urge to spit. “He's a child. It's his nature to seduce grown folk into letting him live. As you say, his mother is not ambitious. She won't put him forward. Nor will his father, once he sees the son I'll give him. This will be a loyal servant and a strong fighting man. He will serve my son. That I know.”

“So you fondly imagine,” Erynna said. “Cast the bones, lady. Look in the mirror. See what you see.”

“I know what I see,” said Myrtale. “I see the sun in splendor, and the world bowing before him.”

Erynna had an answer for that, too. Myrtale turned away from her, refusing to hear it; she carried the child back to his mother.

Truly Philinna had no ambition. She thanked Myrtale profusely; there were tears. Myrtale escaped before she suffered worse embarrassment.

*   *   *

That night for the first time, Philip came to Myrtale's bed before she went to his. He was lying there when she came in somewhat late and warm with wine—Philinna had insisted on a celebration of her son's return to safety. Myrtale had meant to put on a clean chiton and wash the wine out of her mouth and cleanse it with herbs before she went to her husband, but he had chosen not to wait for her.

She did not need to feign gladness. When he held out his arms, she leaped into them, laughing; and some of that was wine, but most was not.

He was scowling, but she kissed that away, freeing the mirth that she had known was underneath. They were in close quarters there, which she did not mind, but he muttered about bringing in a wider bed. And that was an excellent thing.

*   *   *

She woke from a dream of sunlight and splendor. It was night still; the lamp was burning low. Philip lay motionless beside her, not even breathing.

What she felt was too stark for fear. He was anything but cold in death: it was like lying beside an open fire.

Between them, something moved.

She relaxed and almost laughed. The Mother's snake slid its head along her arm, tasting her scent. “Ah, you missed me,” she said softly. “Have I been gone so long?”

Philip went even more still, if that had been possible. When she touched him, he recoiled so violently the bed lurched across the floor. “What—” he tried to say. “What is—”

Myrtale sat up carefully, cradling both snakes in her lap: the hatchling had been coiled at her feet and came up now, drawn by the movement. “These are the Mother's children,” she said. “They won't harm you.”

He was breathing again—hard; his face was pale. “Gods. You
sleep
with them?”

For so brave a man, he had a remarkable number of fears. Myrtale soothed him as best she could. “They love the warmth.”

“I don't love them,” he said. His voice was thick.

“They bring the Mother's blessing,” she said, “and keep the vermin out, too. Shall I send them away?”

“No.”

He did not say it easily, but it was clear he meant it. “They guard you, don't they?” he said. “They let me in. Would they let in anyone else?”

“Not if I didn't wish it.”

He nodded. “Good. That's good. Some of the men you've been so friendly with … they don't always think with the parts above the waist.”

“Maybe not,” she said, “but they fear you more than they lust after me.”

“I'm nothing to a pair of snakes,” Philip said. “You don't mind, I'm sure, if that rumor gets out. They'll say Zeus visits you when I'm not there.”

“The only god I have ever shared my bed with, or ever intend to, is the one who lives in you.”

He met her eyes. His in that light were dark and deep. “What god is that?”