Orion and the Conqueror Read online

  That mocking laughter was one of their tricks, I told myself—trying to weaken my resolve, my self-confidence.

  I can bring Philip to me, I told them. I know how to do it. I have the power.

  And Philip, king of Macedonia, appeared before me.

  He seemed more annoyed than startled. He was wearing nothing but a thin cloth wrapped around his middle. His one good eye blinked in the sunlight, and I realized that I had taken him from his sleep.

  "Orion," he said, without surprise.

  "My lord."

  He looked around. "What place is this? What's that city down there?"

  "We are far from Macedonia. You might say that the city is the abode of the gods."

  He snorted. "Doesn't look much like Mount Olympus, does it?" His body was covered with scars, old puckered white lines across his chest and shoulders, a raw ugly knotted gash along the length of his left thigh. He bore the history of all the battles he had fought.

  "Pausanias told me that you're a deserter. Are you a witch, as well?"

  I started to answer, then suddenly realized that Olympias had shown him other domains of spacetime just as she had shown me. Philip was not startled to be plucked from his bed and drawn to a different part of the continuum because she had done this to him previously.

  "No, I'm not a witch," I replied. "Neither is your wife."

  "Ex-wife, Orion. And I guarantee you, she is a witch."

  "She's shown you other places?"

  He nodded. "More than once, when we were first married. She showed me how powerful Macedonia could become if I followed her advice." Then he aimed his one good eye at me. "You're in league with her, then?"

  "No. Quite the contrary."

  "You have the same powers she has."

  "Some of the same powers," I said. "I'm afraid she's much more powerful than I."

  "More powerful than anyone," he muttered.

  "She means to kill you."

  "I know. I've known it for years."

  "But this time—"

  He held up a hand to silence me. "Speak no more about it, Orion. I know what she plans. I've outlived my usefulness to her. Now it's time for Alexandros to fulfill her ambitions."

  "You want to die?"

  "No, not particularly. But every man dies, Orion, sooner or later. My work is finished. I've done what she wanted me to do. She's like a female spider that must devour her mate."

  "But it doesn't have to be that way," I objected.

  "What would you have me do?" he asked, his fierce beard bristling. "If I want to stay alive, stay on the throne, I'll have to kill her and I can't do that, else she'll goad Alexandros into civil war. Do you think I want to see my people torn apart like that? Do you think I want to kill my own son?"

  Before I could answer he went on, "If Macedonians make war on each other, what do you think the nations around us will do? What do you think Demosthenes and the rest of the Athenians will do? Or the Thebans? Or the Great King over in Persia?"

  "I see."

  "Do you? We'll be right back where we were before I made myself king." He pulled in a deep breath, then added, "And even if he's not my true son, that makes no difference. I won't murder him."

  "Then they will murder you," I said. "Within a day or so."

  "So be it," said Philip. "Just don't tell me who or when." He grinned sardonically. "I like surprises."

  I shook my head in dismay and began to walk away from him.

  "Wait," he called, misinterpreting me. "Will it be you, Orion? Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

  Drawing myself up to my full height, I said, "Never! I'll die myself before I let them kill you."

  That one good eye of his scanned me closely. "Yes, you would, wouldn't you? I never believed you had deserted."

  He turned away from me and began to limp down the hillside toward the city. Before he had taken three steps he winked out, leaving me alone in that distant bubble of spacetime. I closed my eyes . . .

  And opened them in the dungeon beneath the castle at Aigai. I was still chained hand and foot and the side of my head where Pausanias had kicked me throbbed with sullen pain.

  There was no way for me to reckon time in that dark cell except for the beat of my own pulse. Impractical, yet for lack of anything better to do I counted beats the way an insomniac might count sheep. I could leave this cell and translate myself to the Creators' abandoned city, but I would always return to this same place, in the same chains. Like Hera, I was trapped here until the cusp of this nexus was resolved, one way or the other.

  I gave up counting pulse beats when I realized that there were rats in this cell, just as there had been in the one at Pella. My cell mates, my companions, ready to gnaw off my toes or fingers if I did not wiggle them every now and then. The manacles on my wrists were so tight that a normal man's hands would have swollen painfully from lack of blood circulation. I consciously forced my deep-lying blood vessels to take over the work of the peripherals that were squeezed shut by the manacles. And I moved my fingers constantly to help keep the circulation going—and to discourage the beady-eyed hungry rats.

  I heard footsteps shuffling along the corridor outside. They stopped at my door. The bolt squealed back and the door groaned open. My two jailers stood out there, one of them holding a torch.

  Between them stood Ketu.

  He pushed between the jailers and came into my cell. Kneeling beside me, he peered into my face.

  "You are still alive?"

  I made a smile for him. "I haven't achieved Nirvana yet, my friend."

  "Thank the gods!" He straightened up and told the jailers to take me outside.

  They had to drag me, grunting and struggling, to the big room at the end of the corridor. My heart thumped when I saw that the place was filled with instruments of torture.

  "The king has ordered your release," Ketu reassured me. "This smith here—" he pointed to a sweaty, hairy, totally bald man with a bulging pot belly—"will strike off your chains."

  He nearly struck off my arms, but after nearly half an hour of clanging and hammering I was free once again. My wrists and ankles were raw where the cuffs had chafed my skin, but I knew they would heal quickly enough. Ketu led me out of the dismal cellar and up into the fading sunlight of a dying day.

  "The king's daughter has been safely married to Alexandros of Epeiros," Ketu told me. "Philip himself instructed me to set you free and give you all that you need to leave Macedonia. You may travel wherever you want to, Orion."

  "The wedding is over?" I asked.

  He was leading me to the stables, I saw. Ketu answered, "The marriage ceremony was last night. The feasting will last another two days, of course."

  "Has anyone tried to assassinate the king?"

  Ketu's liquid eyes went wide. "Assassinate? No! Who would dare even try?"

  "A traitor," I said.

  "Do you know this for certain?"

  "I've heard it from the traitor's own lips."

  "You must tell the captain of the king's guard, Pausanias."

  "No, I must get to the king himself."

  Ketu grabbed at my arm. "That cannot be. Philip gave me specific instructions. He does not want to see you. He forbids it! You are to take as many horses as you need and leave Aigai, leave Macedonia, and never return."

  I stood there in the middle of the castle courtyard, near the dusty stables. They smelled of hay and manure and the warm strength of the animals. Flies buzzed lazily in the purpling shadows of dusk. From far behind me I could hear the faint music of flutes and tambourines, and the raucous laughter of drinking men. Pausanias was there with the king. And Philip wanted me out of the way just as much as Olympias did.

  "No," I said, as much to the gods as to little Ketu. "I won't let them kill him. I don't care what it does to their plans or to the fabric of the continuum. I won't let it happen!"

  Pulling free of Ketu's restraining hand, I started toward the palace proper, where the wedding celebration was still going stro
ng.

  Ketu scampered beside me. "No, you must not! The guards have orders not to admit you. Philip does not want to see you. It will mean your death to try to force yourself upon his presence."

  I ignored him and strode toward the big doorway where four men in armor stood guard.

  "Come with me, Orion," Ketu begged. "We will travel the breadth of the Persian Empire and return to my land, to beautiful Hind. We will see the holy men and seek their wisdom . . ."

  The only thing I sought was to save Philip, to shatter Hera's murderous plan, to protect the king who had shown me his trust.

  "Please, Orion!" Ketu's eyes were filled with tears.

  I left him standing there in the middle of the courtyard and approached the guards at the door. All four of them bore spears; two of them crossed their spears in front of the wooden double door.

  "No one is allowed inside," said their leader. I recognized him as a barracks mate.

  "I must see the king."

  "I have my orders, Orion. No one means no one."

  "Yes," I said softly. "I understand."

  Swifter than his eye could follow I snatched his sword from its scabbard with my right hand while I drove the heel of my left beneath his chin. His head snapped back and I heard the spinal cord crack. Before the others could react I smashed the next guard on his helmet, splitting the bronze and the bone beneath it.

  They both fell in slow motion as I turned to face the two men who still stood with their spears crossed in front of the door. I could see their eyes widening, their mouths gulping air in surprised shock. I drove my sword through the nearer one's chest so hard that it impaled him on the door. His companion was leveling his spear at me; a clumsy weapon when I was so close. I grabbed it with one hand while I kicked his kneecap out from under him. He went down with a yowl of pain and I pushed through the door, the dead guard still hanging from the sword through his chest.

  I pulled it out and he dropped to the floor of packed earth. Bloody sword in hand, I went looking for Philip. And Pausanias.

  Chapter 34

  The castle of Aigai was old and grim, its ground floor nothing more than hard-packed dirt, the walls of the chamber I strode through made of rough-hewn stones, dark as the bloody sword I gripped.

  I could hear the sounds of revelry coming from the main hall. The wedding had taken place the day before, from what Ketu told me, but the celebration roared on. Philip would be there, steeped in wine. Pausanias, as captain of the guard, would be in charge of protecting him. Olympias would be elsewhere in the castle, waiting to hear the wailing and cries of murder.

  And Alexandros? Where would he be? Was he part of the murder plot? Did he know what his mother had set in motion?

  There was another quartet of guards at the door to the main hall, each of them aimed with spear and sword. Harkan and Batu were among them, I saw.

  Harkan's bearded face went red once he recognized who was approaching. Batu smiled as if he'd won a wager. The lieutenant in charge stared at my bloody sword.

  "Orion," he snapped, "what's going on?"

  "They're going to kill the king unless we stop them."

  "Kill the king? Who?"

  "Pausanias."

  "Are you crazy? Pausanias is captain of the—"

  He never finished the sentence. Screams and roars of rage broke out from the other side of the door. Harkan threw the door open and we saw that the hall was in turmoil. Men were leaping across couches, servants and slaves were scattering in every direction, screaming in terror.

  "The king! The king!"

  I bolted past Harkan and the others, through the wildly scrambling crowd, toward the king. A dozen men clustered around him. I pulled them away, forced my way to Philip's side. He lay back against his couch, wine goblet locked in one frozen hand, his other clutched against his middle, his gut ripped open, hot red blood soaking his robe and dripping onto the dirt floor. It was a painful way to die.

  "I trusted you," he muttered. "I trusted you."

  And I heard Hera's bitter laughter in my mind. The vision from my old dream had come true. I stood before the dying Philip with a bloody sword in my hand and watched the light fade from his eye.

  Harkan grabbed me by the shoulders. "This way," he said in a low voice. "Pausanias fled toward the stables."

  As I ran back toward the door with him and Batu, I saw Alexandros standing on one of the tables, white-faced with shock, guarded by Antipatros and Antigonos and a dozen of his Companions. None of them had weapons on them, but if an assassin meant to reach Alexandros he would have to go through them first. Armed guards were pouring into the hall, though, through the doors at its far end.

  "I swear by Almighty Zeus," Alexandros was shouting, his voice nearly cracking with emotion, "that I will find the assassins and deal with them as they've dealt with my father."

  So now he's your father again, I thought as we left the hall. And you are his son and heir to the throne. Hera and the Golden One will have their way; pity the Great King and his shaky empire.

  The three of us raced across the courtyard to the stables. A half-dozen armed men barred the gate, but we cut them down without an instant's hesitation.

  Pausanias was already on horseback when we broke in. Two other men were with him. Batu nailed one with his spear and Harkan knocked the other one off his horse, then drove his spear through the screaming traitor's chest.

  Wild-eyed, Pausanias drove his mount straight at us. Dropping my sword, I stepped to one side as the horse thundered by and grabbed him around the middle. The two of us thudded to the dirt floor of the stable. I planted a knee on Pausanias' chest and pulled his own sword from its scabbard.

  He stared up at me, gasping for breath. But his eyes became calm.

  "It's done," he said. "Now you can do what you must. I don't care anymore."

  I hesitated. Should I turn him over to Alexandros or give him a quick and painless death here and now? I thought of how he had slashed Philip and scalding anger boiled through me.

  Harkan and Batu were standing over us. Quite calmly Harkan drove the point of his spear through Pausanias' throat. Blood fountained hot and red, splashing over me, as he jerked convulsively and gave a single gargling groan.

  I looked up at Harkan.

  He yanked the spear from Pausanias' dead body and said grimly, "She instructed us that there were to be no witnesses left alive, Orion."

  I got to my feet. "That includes me, doesn't it?"

  "I'm afraid so." He leveled his spear at my heart.

  "Can you trust her?" I asked.

  "My children are already safely at a farm up in the hills. That's where I'm going when this is finished."

  "If she lets you live."

  He shrugged. "Even if she doesn't, I'll know that my children are free."

  I glanced at Batu. His dark face looked troubled, as if he could not decide which side he wanted to be on.

  "Orion," he said, "I am not part of this. I did not know until this moment—"

  "Then don't get involved now," I told him. "This is between Harkan and me. And the queen."

  "She is a witch of great power," said Batu.

  "Yes." I nodded.

  "She can steal a man's wits from him."

  "And his strength." I turned back to Harkan. His spear had not wavered a millimeter from my heart. "Go ahead, my friend. Do it and get it over with."

  He hesitated.

  "For your children," I told him.

  Harkan took a deep breath, then plunged the spear into my chest with all his might. I felt no pain at all. Just darkness engulfing me, welcome, blessed nothingness.

  I died.

  Epilogue

  This time death was like being in the center of a whirlpool, inside the heart of a roaring tornado. The universe spun madly, time and space whirling into a dizzying blur, planets and stars and atoms and electrons racing in wild orbits with me in the middle of it all, falling, falling endlessly into a cryogenically cold oblivion.

  Gr
adually all sensation left me. It might have taken moments or millennia; I had no way to gauge time, but all feeling of motion and cold seeped away from me, as if I were being numbed, frozen, turned into an immobile, insensate block of ice.

  Still my mind continued to function. I knew I was being translated across spacetime, from one cusp of the continuum to another. Yet for all I could see or touch or hear, I was in total oblivion. For a measureless time I almost felt glad to be free of the wheel of life at last, beyond pain, beyond desire, beyond the agonizing duty that the Creators forced upon me.

  Beyond love.

  That stirred me. Somewhere in the vast reaches of spacetime Anya was struggling against forces that I could not even comprehend, in danger despite her godlike powers, facing enemies that frightened even the Golden One and the other Creators.

  I reached out with my mind, seeking to penetrate the blank darkness that engulfed me. Nothing. It was if there were no universe, no continuum, neither time nor space. But I knew that somewhere, sometime, she existed. She had loved me as I had loved her. Nothing in all the universes of existence would keep us apart.

  A glimmer of light. So faint and distant that at first I thought it might be merely my imagination obeying my desire. But yes, it truly was there. A faintest, faintest glow. Light. Warmth.

  Whether I moved to it or it moved to me mattered not at all to me. The glow grew and brightened until I seemed to be hurtling toward it like a chip thrown into a furnace, like a meteor drawn to a star. The light blazed like the sun now and I threw my arms across my eyes to ease the pain, delighted that I had eyes and arms and could feel again.

  "Orion," came a voice from that blinding, overpowering radiance. "You have returned."

  It was Aten, of course, the Golden One. He resolved his presence into human form, a powerful godlike figure with thick golden mane, robed in shimmering gold, almost too bright for me to look upon.