Orion and the Conqueror (9 page)

He gave me a troubled gaze.

"Your father," I said, "sent me with you to protect you. Is that logical, if he wishes to have you assassinated?"

Very calmly, he looked up into my eyes and said, "You might be part of the plot, Orion. My father may have instructed you to let the assassins have me."

I could see cold fury in his golden eyes, and felt my own rage boil up within me at his accusation. But I held my emotions in check and replied, "I was the one who warned you, Alexandros. And took a knife in the ribs for it."

"Barely a scratch, from the look of it."

"Your father instructed me to protect you," I said firmly. "He is not your enemy."

Alexandros turned away from me and resumed his walk up the sloping street. "Perhaps you are right, Orion," he said, so low that I barely heard him. "I hope so."

We stayed in Athens only a few days longer. The news from the Assembly was not good. The Athenians had decided to send delegations to Thebes and several other cities to arrange an alliance against Philip. Aristotle was especially downcast.

"This will mean war," he told me as we packed his ever-growing collection. "Real war. Not the marching and petty skirmishes and sham sieges of the past few years."

I had taken part in one of those petty skirmishes. The men who had been killed were just as dead as heroes of a great battle.

The night before we were to leave I had another dream—if it was a dream.

I was at the Acropolis once more. This time by myself. It was the closest I could be to the goddess I loved, to my past lives, to the memories that had somehow been locked away from me. The night was black and windswept, the stars blotted out by roiling clouds that seemed so low they nearly touched the upraised spear of the giant statue of Athena.

I walked through the warm wind to the gigantic statue. Lightning flashed and briefly lit her face, but it remained coldly indifferent ivory, not flesh. Rain began to pelt down, stinging cold hard drops, almost sleet. I rushed up the steps and into the shelter of the magnificent Parthenon.

The gold-clad statue stared at me with painted eyes.

"I will find you," I said aloud, amidst peals of thunder. "Wherever you are, whenever you are, I will find you."

And the statue stirred. The stiff gold-leafed robe softened. The eyes warmed. Her face smiled sadly at me. Twice life-size, standing on a pedestal of marble, my goddess breathed into life.

"Orion? Orion, is it you?"

"Yes!" I shouted over the earthshaking thunder. "I am here!"

"Orion, I want to be with you. Always and forever. But it cannot be."

"Where are you? Why can't we be together?"

"They decided . . . the forces . . ."

Her voice grew faint. Lightning flickered through the sky, throwing blue-white strobes of light through the temple. Thunder roared and boomed like the voices of the gods railing against us.

Still I shouted, "Where are you? Tell me and I'll find you!"

"No," she said, her voice fading, fading, "Not yet. The time is not right."

"Why am I here?" I begged. "Why have they put me here?"

I thought she did not hear me. I thought she had left me. The lightning stopped and suddenly the temple was in utter darkness. I could not see her statue, could not sense her presence.

"Why am I here?" I repeated, almost sobbing.

No reply. Only black silence.

"What do they expect of me?" I shouted.

"Obedience," said another voice. A woman's voice. Hera's.

"I expect you to obey me, Orion," her voice slashed coldly through my mind. "And obey me you shall."

Chapter 11

I returned to Pella unwillingly, filled with dread and the inner emptiness of a hopeless longing. The trip north was cold and miserable: rain in the hills, driving snow in the mountain passes. With each step along the way I felt the power of Olympias returning, settling over me like a sickness, sapping my strength and my will. In my dreams she was Hera, the haughty and demanding goddess. In my waking hours she was Philip's queen, the witch who had cast her spell upon me, the woman I was powerless to resist.

On the day we returned to Pella the king summoned me to his presence. I reported on the assassination attempt.

He scowled darkly. "What fool tried that?"

We were alone in his small work room. The afternoon sunlight slanted through the one window, but the air was cold. Philip sat next to the meager fire, a dark woolen cloak over his shoulders, his aching leg propped on a stool, his black beard bristling, his one good eye piercing like a hawk's.

I decided that he wanted the truth. And so did I.

"He thinks that perhaps you did," I blurted.

"Wha—" His face went white with sudden anger. He gripped the armrests of his chair as if he were going to leap to his feet.

But the fury drained out of him almost immediately. I watched him battle to control his emotions. I saw that he was shocked by the accusation, and not because his son had hit on the truth. Philip had not tried to kill his son. And now that his immediate wave of anger had passed he looked sorrowful to be falsely accused.

"That's his mother's doing," he grumbled. "She's always poisoning his mind against me."

I said nothing. But I realized that the assassination attempt might well have been Olympias' doing. The assassins had plenty of time to cut Alexandros down, and his Companions with him. Instead, all they did was to drive a wedge of suspicion between the prince and his father.

"She's a witch, Orion," he told me. "Entranced me when we first met. At the Dionysian rites on Samothrace. I was just about Alexandros' age and I fell completely mad for her. The most beautiful woman on earth, that was sure. And she seemed to love me just as wildly as I loved her. Once she had the boy, though, she wanted nothing more to do with me."

She is more than a witch
, I thought.
She is the avatar of a goddess, or perhaps the goddess herself in human guise, with powers that could destroy us all at a whim.

"She scorns me, Orion, and plots with her son to get him the throne."

"Alexandros wants to be a good son to you," I told him. "He wants to be worthy of your throne."

Philip smiled crookedly. "He wants to sit on my throne, and the only way he can do that is to kill me."

"No," I said. "I see nothing of that in him. He wants to show you that he's worthy. He wants your approval."

"Does he?"

"Despite all that his mother has poured into his ears, he admires you."

"Does he acknowledge that I'm his father?"

So he knows about Alexandros' personal mythology, I realized.

Aloud, I replied, "Boyish ego. He doesn't believe it himself."

Philip cast his good eye on me. "I wonder." He pulled the cloak tighter around him. "I wonder if maybe it's all true. Maybe Herakles or some god did beget him. Maybe he's not my true son, after all."

"No god begat him, sir," I said. "There are no gods. Only men and women."

"Sokrates was given hemlock on the accusation of not believing in the gods." He smiled again as he said it.

I smiled back. "If you poisoned everyone who did not believe in the gods, you would run out of hemlock long before the job was half finished."

He chuckled. "You jest, Orion. Yet it seems to me that you are serious, at the same time."

How could I tell him that the so-called gods and goddesses were as human as he was? The faint memory of them seethed in my mind: the deities were men and women from that city of my dreams, the city that existed in another time from this.

He mistook my silence. "You needn't fear, Orion. Your beliefs are safe with me."

"May I make a suggestion, sir?"

"What is it?"

"Keep the boy close to you. Don't allow him to see his mother—"

"That's easier said than done, unless I chain him up like a dog."

"The more he is with you the less his mother can influence him. Take him with you on campaign. Let him show his mettle before your eyes."

Philip cocked his head, as if giving my suggestion some thought. Then he tapped a forefinger against the cheekbone below his empty eye socket.

"I only have one eye, Orion. But perhaps you're right. I'll bring the lad come on campaign with me."

"Another campaign?"

His expression went grim. "The damned Athenians are negotiating with Thebes and several other cities to form a league against me. I've never wanted to fight Athens directly, and I certainly don't want to tangle with Thebes. But now it looks as if I'll have to face them both together."

"Your army has never lost a major battle," I encouraged him.

He shook his head. "Do you know why, Orion?" Before I could reply he answered his own question. "Because if I had lost a major battle, just one, my whole kingdom would collapse like a house of cards."

"No, that could not be."

"It would, Orion, and I know it. It gnaws at me every minute of the day. It keeps me awake when I try to sleep. Macedonia is strong and free only so long as we keep winning. If my army is ever defeated, all the tribes that owe me allegiance will go back to their rebel ways. Thrace and Illyria and even the goddamned Molossians will rise against me—or Alexandros, assuming he survives. I'll be dead on the battlefield, you can rest assured."

That was the vision that haunted Philip. He feared his kingdom would be torn apart if he lost a major battle. He had to keep on winning, always fighting, always victorious, or lose everything. That is why he avoided battle with Athens. One throw of the dice could destroy everything that he had worked his entire life to create.

That night I decided to see the queen on my own terms. But my duty as a guardsman came first. I was serving once again as one of the formal guards at Philip's royal dinner, posted this time behind the king's couch, to stand there like a statue in armor and spear while Philip and his guests ate and drank and caroused. His guests were mostly Macedonian, including the oily Attalos, who fawned on the king and praised even his belches. There were a few foreigners reclining on dinner couches near the king: I thought one a Persian and recognized another as the Athenian merchant whom I had seen in Pella before. They were spies, I knew. But for which side? Did they spy on Athens and the Great King in Persia for Philip? Or did they spy on Philip for the Great King and Athens?

Probably both, I concluded. They would take gold from either side and praise the winner.

Parmenio and Philip's other generals were present, of course, but there was no talk over dinner of matters military. Only politics. Would Demosthenes' representatives be able to talk Thebes into an alliance with Athens?

"After all the patience you've shown with both cities," said Antipatros, "this is the thanks they give you."

"I never expected their thanks," Philip said, holding his wine goblet out for the serving boy to fill it.

From my post at the king's couch I saw with satisfaction that Alexandros had been placed next to his father.

"We should march on them now," he said, almost shouting to make his light tenor voice heard over the buzz of background talk. "First Thebes and then Athens."

"If we march now," Philip replied, "it will give them the excuse they need to cement their alliance."

Alexandros looked at his father. "You will let them prepare for war against us while we sit here drinking?"

His own wine cup had not been refilled since the eating had ended. He drank little; he ate little, as well. His old teacher Leonidas, I had been told, raised the boy with Spartan values and discipline.

Philip grinned at his son. "I will give them plenty of time to argue over the terms of their alliance. With a bit of luck they'll fall out between themselves and there will be no alliance for us to worry about."

"But if the luck goes against us?" Alexandros asked. "What then?"

Philip took a long draft of his wine. "We'll just have to wait and see. Patience, my son. Patience. It's a virtue, I'm told."

"So is courage," Alexandros snapped.

The dining hall fell absolutely silent.

But Philip laughed. "I don't need to prove my courage, son. You can count my scars."

And Alexandros smiled back at his father. "Yes, that's true enough."

The tension eased. Men went back to talking with one another. Goblets were refilled. Philip fondled the thigh of the boy who was serving him. Alexandros bristled at that, but then looked across the room at the place where his Companions were reclining. Ptolemaios and the others were nuzzling the serving girls there. Except for Hephaistion. He stared back at Alexandros across the wide, noisy hall as if there were no one else in the room.

Then I noticed Pausanias, captain of the guard, standing at the doorway of the dining hall. His fists were planted on his hips, as if he were about to deliver one of his withering verbal blasts at the two guards posted there, his mouth set in its usual sour grimace. But his eyes were on Philip, and even from across the breadth of the dining hall I could see that Pausanias was burning with anger.

The hours toiled on, the wine goblets were refilled over and again, and the dinner guests became rowdier and bawdier. No one left until finally Philip pushed himself up from his couch, draped one arm heavily around the shoulders of the boy who had been serving him, and lurched off toward his bedchamber. Slowly the other guests struggled to their feet and staggered off, many of them with either girls or boys in their grip. Alexandros rose from his couch coldly sober. Hephaistion, equally restrained, crossed the hall to be with him.

As the kitchen slaves came in to clean the hall, Pausanias finally gave us leave to return to barracks. Clearly something had enraged him, but he gave no hint of what it was.

I pretended to go to sleep, but as soon as I heard the snores of my fellow guardsmen in the darkness, I got up and headed for the queen's rooms. I knew the layout of the palace well enough to get to her rooms on my own. But I did not want the guards or her serving women to get in my way.

So I went out onto the parade ground in the cold night, barefoot and wearing only my thin chiton. It was dark, 1 moonless. Clouds were scudding low across the stars. The l air felt damp, the wind cutting. Staying in the shadows of the barracks wall so that the sentries would not see me, I hurried the length of the parade ground and clambered softly up onto the roof of the stables. I had brought no weapon with me, nothing to clink in the night and alert a drowsy sentry. Nothing but the dagger that I always kept strapped to my thigh.

It was a good leap from the stable roof to the slightly higher roof next to it, but I made it almost silently and then climbed the rough stones of the wall to the still-higher roof of the palace proper. Then I made my way along the sloping timber beams of the roof until I figured I was above the queen's quarters. I lowered myself from the eave and swung my legs through the curtained window, landing with a soft thud.

"I have been waiting for you, Orion," said Olympias in the darkness.

I was in her bed chamber, crouched on the balls of my feet, my fingertips touching the polished wood of the floor, ready to fight if I had to.

"Don't be afraid," she said, reading my thoughts. "I want you here with me this night."

"You knew I was coming?" In the shadows I could make out her form reclining on the bed.

"I commanded you to come to me," she said, her voice taunting. "You don't think you did this of your own volition, do you?"

I did not want to believe her. "Then why didn't you send a servant, as before?"

I could sense her smiling in the darkness. "Why encourage palace gossip? The king likes you. He trusts you. Even Alexandros admires your fighting prowess. Why spoil all that by letting the servants know you are my lover?"

"I'm not—"

"But you are, Orion," she snapped. Her body seemed to glow faintly in the darkness, stretched out languidly on the bed, naked and warm and inviting.

"I don't want to be your lover," I said, although it cost me pain to force the words through my gritted teeth.

"What you want is of no consequence," Olympias replied. "You will do what I command. You will be what I desire you to be. Don't force me to be cruel to you, Orion. I can make you grovel in slime if I wish it. I can make you do things that would destroy your spirit utterly."

"Why are you doing this?" I demanded. But even as I asked it, I shuffled closer to her bed. "What are you trying to accomplish?"

"No questions, Orion," she said. "Tonight is for pleasure. Tomorrow you will learn what your new duties are to be. Perhaps."

I was helpless. I could not resist her. Even when I saw that the bed she lay upon was writhing with snakes I was unable to turn away, unable even to turn my eyes from her. She laughed as I slowly stripped off my chiton.

"Take off the dagger, too," she commanded me. "You won't need it. Your natural equipment will be quite enough."

I did as she instructed me. The snakes were dry and cold against my bare skin. I felt them biting me, sinking their fangs into my flesh and filling my bloodstream with strange venoms that melted my willpower and heightened my senses to an excruciating pitch. Then it was Olympias' teeth and nails penetrating me, tearing me apart, giving me pain while she took pleasure from me. She laughed while I wept. She exulted while I abased myself for her.