Stealing Fire (29 page)

The squat, stoalike building that had been serving for the palace was being expanded. Two stories with a colonnade faced the sea over a long terrace covered in sandstone pavers. It looked stark, but more elegant than previously. I thought that maybe some plants would help. And the view of harbor and sea was amazing.

Out on the breakwater a wooden watchtower had been built with a beacon to warn ships that they were coming into shallow water. I thought that was a good idea, though it was very vulnerable in wood alone. If it could be fortified and armed it would be a good way to put any unwelcome ship entering the harbor into a crossfire.

One more project, I thought. It would take a lifetime to get to them all. More than a lifetime.

I
HAD ONLY
been back a few days, staying in the palace for want of anywhere else to stay yet, when I came down to breakfast in the morning to meet Artashir on the stairs.

“Artashir! When did you get back? I thought you had escorted Roxane to Pelousion?” I asked.

“I did,” he said. “But she's away, so I came back to Alexandria as quickly as I could. I got in yesterday. And I was looking for you, actually.”

“You've found me,” I said.

“I've got something I want to show you. Are you busy, or can you come outside for a minute?”

“No, I'm not busy,” I said. I followed him downstairs. “What is it?”

He turned at the bottom under the colonnade at the terrace. “This,” Artashir said cheerfully.

A beautiful chestnut mare stood by one of the columns, her scarlet leather reins looped around it. She was small-boned and high-crested, so dark she was almost black, with a white star on her forehead. Her ears pricked forward and she looked at me with her intelligent dark eyes, lifting her head curiously.

I laughed. “Oh, she's a beauty!” I came out and walked around her to have a look at her, stopping in front of her. She snuffled at the front of my chiton hopefully, one delicate leg forward. Her coat shone with glossy health, and her mane was braided into tiny plaits, each decorated with red ribbon. She was built for speed.

“Her name is Desert Wind,” Artashir said, lounging back against the column with a grin on his face.

“She's gorgeous,” I said, letting her mouth at my palm and then raising my hand to her warm neck. Her coat was like silk. “Your new horse, Artashir?”

Artashir shook his head. “No, she belongs to the widow of one of my men who was killed at Memphis. I said I'd help her look for a buyer who would give her a fair price.”

“You ought not have trouble getting that,” I said, walking around her and admiring her again. “By all the gods, she's built to run! And young enough from the look of her to have several foals ahead of her, if a man wanted to breed her.”

Artashir nodded. “She's eight years old, an archer's horse, not one of those big stubborn stallions you cavalry ride. She's completely trained to knee commands. You don't have to touch her reins in battle.”

I looked up at him sharply. “What?”

“I said, she's completely trained to knee commands.” Artashir looked pleased with himself. “How do you think we do it, firing a bow from the saddle? They have to be trained not to need the reins. You can loop them over your arm, or lay them across her back. Makes no difference to her. She'll answer to your knees like an absolute professional. I put her through her paces this morning, and there's nothing I'd ask for except maybe a little more power in the jump.”

“Artashir,” I began, and was embarrassed that I was blinking back tears. I stood beside her, swallowing.

Desert Wind looked round at me, her beautiful ears pricked forward.

“Think she'll do for you, Lydias?” Artashir asked.

“I think she's wonderful,” I said.

I woke in the hour before dawn and knew I could rest no more. I left Bagoas sleeping, curled like a cat in his warm bed, while I stood and dressed.

No spirits, no nightmares moved, no creatures out of the Red Land troubled our dreams. Egypt had a Pharaoh, and the last hour of the night held no terror. I went down and walked out onto the terrace.

Before me the sea piled against the breakwater, sighing softly against the rocks we had placed there, dark and restless under the moonless sky. The harbor was a curve of white sand. Only a few lights showed here and there in the city, where some tradesman rose before dawn to begin his work, and along the harbor where three fishing boats were setting sail so that they would be well out to sea before the sun rose. On the island the beacon shone faintly, warning them away from the shallow water.

Above, the sky stretched clear and cloudless, more stars than there are numbers glittering in sooty darkness. On the eastern horizon Sothis rose pale and bright, following in the Hunter's track, heralding the dawn.

I took a long breath and let it out, pierced to the core.

I did not have a libation, and the words were hard to find. “Lady of Egypt, Gracious Ones. I am not a priest nor a healer nor a magician. But what I have, I place in Your hands. Help me to live, and living be Your instrument.”

I closed my eyes and heard Her voice, as though She stood behind me with Her hand on my back, as though it were my mother's voice, filled with pride and love.
My dear boy, you always have been.

I felt peace steal over me, not victory, not respite, but the bone-deep peace of the Black Land, still and sure as the bones of the earth. It filled me, and I rested upon it like a child at his mother's breast. Peace is not without, but within.

I do not know how long I had stood there when I heard footsteps on the terrace behind me and turned. Ptolemy came and stood beside me, his dark-colored chiton blending into the shadows. For a long time he said nothing, just stood beside me looking out at the waves. In the east there was the faintest flush of pink, the stars paling. The fishing boats were rounding the island, their sails glimmering against the dark water.

At last he spoke. “Lydias, have you thought about getting married?”

“Not really,” I said. “Bagoas thinks I should. But I haven't considered it much.”

“I'd like you to marry Chloe.”

I turned and looked at him. “What?”

“Marry Chloe,” he said. “You're an honorable man and a kind one. And you're strong enough to protect her. You know what kind of prize she would be for an ambitious man. He could marry Chloe, proclaim her Alexander's daughter, and go after a throne.”

“She's not Alexander's daughter,” I said. “That's ridiculous.”

Ptolemy sighed. “But we were all friendly in Persepolis. Yes, Thais sat on my couch and Bagoas on his. But Thais is a hetaira, and if Alexander had asked for her she would have gone. It didn't happen, but as Aristotle taught us, you can't prove a negative. I know Chloe is my daughter, and I know why she looks like Alexander, but a man with Chloe in his power, the father of her children, could make whatever claims he liked and there would be plenty who would believe him. Nor can I give her to some green boy her own age with powerful kin of his own who might do the same.”

“I have no kin,” I said slowly. “And I am the last man who would seek your throne, Ptolemy, much less Alexander's.”

“And I want her to be happy,” he said, his eyes straying again to the beacon, which winked out, the light extinguished as the dawn light grew. “I want her to marry someone who will cherish her, and who will love her children and treat her with respect and friendship. Of course she's still too young, and I wouldn't want you to bed her right away, but I trust that you will wait until the proper time.”

I blinked. “You would trust me with this? You would trust me with Chloe?”

Ptolemy shrugged, but there was something deeper in his eyes. “I trusted you with her before, didn't I?”

I closed my eyes. I remembered a wild flight from Babylon under Ishtar's moon, that fearless child held before me on my horse as we fled from death and chaos into the unknown, from Alexander's bier to a fortress that might be held by friend or foe. She was that child no longer, of course, but a girl on the edge of womanhood, with her father's quick wits and her mother's courage. A dynastic prize for a noble companion. A child of the baggage train. A hetaira's daughter now a princess of Egypt. She was herself, a story that was only begun.

Ptolemy put his hand on my arm. “Lydias,” he said, “this is as close as you will come to stealing fire.”

We had all sought it through these years, some remnant of the divine spark, some touch of grace, some breath of destiny from beyond the world, sought it like a man seeks a dream after he has awakened. We were building it here, in walls of stone, a city where none had been before, Ptolemy and I, and Thais too with her bower of transplanted roses. Fire had touched, like a purifying bolt from heaven, searing everything in its path. And in its wake, the flowers bloomed.

“Yes,” I said, and opened my eyes. “I will marry Chloe.”

I
t ends as
all the stories end.

Once there was a slave boy who became a soldier. He served an immortal hero and then a worthy king. He fought in epic battles from one end of the world to the other, through terror and pain and strife, through frozen mountains and haunted deserts. He became a general and he married a princess, twice royal. And in due course of time she bore him two sons and three daughters and they lived together in a white city by the sea.

All the stories end so.

PEOPLE, PLACES,
AND THINGS

Abydos
—a city in Egypt between Memphis and Thebes, site of many temples including the Osirion.

Adoratrice of Bastet
—the senior priestess of Bastet in Bubastis.

Alexander III of Macedon (the Great)
—born in 356
BCE
, and rising to the throne of Macedon at the age of twenty upon the assassination of his father, Phillip II. The son of Phillip's queen, Olympias, he embarked on the expedition against the Persian Empire that Phillip had planned. In 334 he fought a major battle at the Granicus River, which gave him control of most of present-day Turkey, and a year later defeated Darius III, Great King of Persia, at the Battle of Issos. Tyre fell before him by siege, and he entered Egypt as a liberator. In 331 he once again defeated Darius decisively at the Battle of Gaugamela, which essentially gave him the entire Persian Empire. Later campaigns included expeditions in Bactria and Sogdiana, present-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and into the Indian states now in Pakistan and Kashmir. He died in 323
BCE
, just short of his thirty-third birthday, leaving an empire thrown into chaos by his passing.

Alexander IV
—son of Alexander the Great and Roxane. He was born in the fall of 323
BCE
, a few months after his father's death. He reigned as Great King in name only.

Alexandria (in Egypt)
—the most successful of the many cities that Alexander founded in his name. It became one of the great metropolises of the ancient world and has continued to the present day as an important city on the Mediterranean. It was founded in 334
BCE
, though most of the actual construction took place a decade later, under Ptolemy I Soter.

Ambhi, Raja
—known in Greek as King Omphis, ruler of an Indian kingdom in the northern part of the Pakistani Punjab and the enemy of Raja Puru. He became an ally of Alexander the Great, and was still active as a player in the political scene several years after Alexander's death, though his ultimate fate is unknown.

Amenti
—the Egyptian Land of the Dead, ruled by Osiris and Isis.

Amina
—a Persian noblewoman who is the first wife of Artashir.

Antipatros
—a Macedonian noble and contemporary of Phillip II. He was one of Phillip's most trusted supporters. When Alexander left Macedon, he left Antipatros as Regent despite the constant friction between Antipatros and Alexander's mother, Olympias. He is the father of Cassander, one of the Companions, and Eurydice.

Artashir
—a Persian nobleman and Companion, commander of the troop of horse archers that are loyal to Ptolemy. He is the grandson of Artontes, the son of General Mardunaya and his wife Artazostre, the daughter of Darius the Great, and hence a royal kinsman. His wives are Amina and Rania.

Ashkelon
—a city under Persian rule in Alexander's time, now Migdol Ashquelon in Israel.

Babylon
—a city just south of present-day Baghdad, one of the great cities of the ancient world. Formerly the capital of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, in the fourth century
BCE
it was a seat of the Persian Empire, and home to perhaps as many as half a million people.

Bagoas
—a eunuch courtier of Alexander the Great. He appears to have been a royal favorite of Alexander's as he reputedly had been of Darius’.

Bastet
—an Egyptian goddess who often took the form of a cat, goddess of hearth, home, and childbirth.

Berenice
—Eurydice's maternal aunt who accompanied her to Alexandria to marry Ptolemy.

Black Land
—the part of Egypt touched by the Nile floods or by irrigation, the part that has rich soil deposits from the river and is fertile, also more generally Egypt as a whole.

Bubastis
—a medium-size city in the eastern Nile Delta.

Camel's Fort
—a small fort on the Bubasite branch of the Nile at a fordable river crossing.

Cassander
—one of Alexander's Companions, son of the Regent in Macedon, Antipatros, and brother of Eurydice.

Chiliarch
—the Grand Vizier of Alexander's empire, held in his lifetime by Hephaistion and then Perdiccas.

chiton
—a basic article of clothing worn by both men and women, like a tunic. Young men usually wore a short chiton, which came to mid-thigh and might be ornamented with embroidery or colored borders. Women and older men might wear a full-length chiton. For women this was usually gathered at the waist and bloused out over a belt. Chitons could be anything from a shift of coarse linen or wool to elaborately decorated silks, depending on the status of the wearer. Even with a short chiton, men did not wear trousers under it, as trousers were seen as effeminate and foreign.

Chloe
—Ptolemy and Thais’ oldest daughter, born in late 331
BCE
.

Cleomenes
—Alexander's governor in Memphis, a friend of Perdiccas.

Companion
—one of Alexander's personal friends who have binding oaths to him.

Companion Cavalry
—Alexander's elite cavalry units, originally made up entirely of Macedonians who had served with him there, but later including replacements from across the empire. The Companions did not use shields, but fought with spear and sword. Their armor consisted of a breastplate and helmet, and sometimes greaves for the lower legs. They did not use either saddles or stirrups, as neither had been invented yet.

Cyaxara
—the daughter of Artashir and Amina, born around 325
BCE
.

daimons
—spirits between gods and humans, such as minor deities or heroes who are worthy of worship, or guardian spirits of particular places.

Darius III (Great King of Persia)
—born circa 380
BCE
to a cadet line of the Achaemenid royal house, and rising to the throne in 336 in a period of crisis, after several heirs had been killed successively. After being defeated by Alexander twice, he was deposed by a group of his own nobles led by Bessos, Satrap of Bactria, and killed in 330.

Dead City
—the mound known today as Amarna, the city of Akhetaten built by the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten in the fourteenth century
BCE
. After Akhenaten's death the city was abandoned within a few years.

Drypetis
—the younger daughter of Darius III, married to Hephaistion.

Ecbatana
—a mountain city in what is now northern Iraq, site of the summer palace of the Persian kings.

eunuch
—a castrated man, particularly one castrated before puberty. Eunuchs served as courtiers, servants, priests, and prostitutes in much of the ancient world, in some places constituting a third gender distinct from both men and women.

Eurydice
—the daughter of Antipatros, sister of Cassander, later married to Ptolemy.

facing
—the direction that an infantry unit is pointing their sarissas. Because the sarissas are very long and heavy, it is a complicated series of drill maneuvers to change a phalanx's facing, i.e., which way they're going.

flying wedge
—a cavalry formation created by Phillip II of Macedon and used extensively by Alexander the Great in which cavalry charges in a formation like an arrowhead in order to break through lines of defenders. This classic tactic is still used today with tanks.

Gaugamela
—a site near Mosul in modern Iraq where Alexander defeated Darius III for the second and decisive time in 331
BCE
.

Gedrosia
—a desert in the Persian Empire, in what is now southern Iran.

Ghost Dancer
—the horse that Lydias raised, bought from Tehwaz by Hephaistion.

Glaukos
—an officer of Hephaistion's Ile in the Companion Cavalry.

Hephaistion (son of Amyntor)
—born around 356
BCE
and schooled with Alexander, and Alexander's closest friend and probable lover from an early date. A leader among the Companions who supported the pro-assimilation policies, he was also a gifted military commander and eventual Chiliarch, or Grand Vizier, of the empire. Married to Drypetis, the younger daughter of Darius III, he died at an early age in Ecbatana in 324. The cause of his death is unknown, and speculation ranges from poison to the more prosaic explanation of typhus.

hetaira
—a courtesan, literally “a companion.”

hetairos
—a Companion.

Hipparch
—the officer in command of an Ile, also later the title of a cavalry general.

Horus
—an Egyptian god often portrayed as a falcon or desert hawk, or as a man with a hawk's head. Horus is the son of Isis and Osiris, the prince who redeems Egypt from his uncle's evil rule and restores peace and justice. Pharaoh was often seen as Horus incarnate.

Ile
—a cavalry unit consisting of roughly 600–800 men, depending on unit strength.

Inundation
—the annual flooding of the Nile that fertilized Egypt and began the growing season.

Isis
—an Egyptian goddess, wife of Osiris and mother of Horus, queen of the heavens. Isis was one of the principal gods of the Egyptian pantheon, and in the Hellenistic period became a universal goddess.

Issos
—the site of Alexander's first major defeat of Darius III, in 333
BCE
, in present-day Turkey.

Jio
—Lydias of Miletus’ original boyhood name.

Kalanos
—an Indian sage who met Alexander in India and decided to return to Persia with him so that they could continue their conversations. He was advanced in years and died shortly after his arrival.

Khemet
—the realm of Egypt.

Krateros
—one of Alexander's Companions from schooldays, and a trusted soldier. It is speculated that Alexander intended to leave the Regency to him upon his death, but Krateros was instead ousted by Perdiccas. He died in battle in 321
BCE
.

Lagos (1)
—a Macedonian noble and adherent of Phillip II who married Arsinoe and was the purported father of Ptolemy.

Lagos (2)
—Ptolemy and Thais’ oldest son, born in early 325
BCE
and named for Ptolemy's father. Called Bunny by his older sister, he lived to adulthood and won a chariot race in the Arcadian festival in 307, a visit to Greece that coincides with Ptolemy's. It is likely his father came to see him race.

Lake Mareotis
—a brackish lake behind the city of Alexandria. Its position relative to Alexandria is very similar to that of Lake Ponchartrain to New Orleans.

Leontiscus
—Ptolemy and Thais’ younger son, born in 322
BCE
. In 306 he was taken as a prisoner of war during a naval engagement and ransomed by his father for a huge sum.

Lochias Peninsula
—a peninsula on the eastern side of the harbor of Alexandria that jutted far out into the sea. Its remains today are known as Silsileh.

Lydias of Miletus
—an officer of Hephaistion's Ile in the Companion Cavalry. Unlike many of the men he serves with, Lydias is not Macedonian but Carian.

Magi
—the Zoroastrian priests, augers, and astrologers of Persia.

Manetho
—an Egyptian priest of Thoth and supporter of Ptolemy. He is best known for his later history of Egypt, in which he provided an overview of three thousand years of history. Modern archaeologists are amazed at the accuracy of his dating, and it is likely that he had access to an unbroken line of documents.

Mardonias (Mardunaya)
—the son of Artashir and Amina, born around 330
BCE
and named for his great-great-grandfather, who was a general of Xerxes.

Memphis
—an Egyptian city at the base of the Nile Delta, near modern-day Cairo.

Miletus
—a city on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor, in Hittite times called Millawanda of the mighty walls, more recently under Persian rule.

Nectanebo II
—the last Pharaoh of Egypt before the second Persian occupation, reigning 360–343
BCE
.

Nisean
—an ancient breed of horses from Persia, renowned for their strength and fearlessness. Larger than most contemporary breeds, they were tall and strong enough to fight with a rider in armor. Known for their smooth gait and high-crested neck like a modern Arabian, they came in colors including black, bay, “red,” chestnut, a light palomino color, and white. Their closest modern equivalents may be the Andalusians and Lusitanians.