Orion and the Conqueror Page 6

  "Do you love me, Orion?"

  "No," I said. "I love—Athena."

  Her smile turned cold. "A mortal man cannot love a goddess, Orion. You need a woman of flesh and blood. You love me."

  "I mean no offense, but—"

  "You will love me!" she snapped. "And no other."

  I found that I was unable to speak. The python had coiled itself around my chest. Its head rose to my eye level and its flickering tongue touched my face. I stared into its slitted yellow eyes and saw nothing, no purpose, no reason. It was being controlled just as I was.

  "You will love me," Olympias repeated. "And you will do my bidding. Not merely here, but wherever and whenever I command you."

  It was if my body did not belong to me, as if it were a machine under someone else's control. I could think, I could feel the massive strength of the python's muscular coils gripping me tightly, feel the tingling jabs of its tongue on my face. I could hear Olympias' words and see her leaning forward on her throne, her eyes as glittery as the snakes'. But I could not move. I knew that if she willed it, my heart would stop.

  The cobra glided across her lap and down the leg of the throne. I saw that what I had at first thought to be a bright metal armband was actually a small snake that she now removed from her forearm and considered silently for a moment.

  Then she got up from her throne, holding the little coral snake in both hands, and came down the three steps of the dais to me.

  "You will love me," she repeated, "and do whatever I command you to do."

  She held the snake to my throat. I felt its tiny fangs penetrate my flesh and a hot surge of flaming agony raced along my veins with the speed of an electrical shock. I realized why Olympias had made the python coil around me. Without it I would have collapsed to the cold marble floor.

  I never lost consciousness. The pain passed and my body felt frozen, totally numb. Yet when Olympias commanded me to follow her, I found that the python had slid off me and I could walk almost normally. She led me to a bedchamber that seemed suspended in emptiness. I felt a solid floor beneath my feet, but when I looked down I saw nothing but tiny pinpoints of light winking in swirling clouds of cold mist that billowed pink and blue and golden yellow.

  We reclined on a bed as soft and yielding as the gentle swells of a becalmed sea, stars gleaming out of the darkness all around us. Olympias unfastened her robe; her body was magnificent, perfect skin glowing in the darkness, a form as divine as a goddess.

  "Do you like what you see, Orion?" she asked as she knelt beside me.

  I could not help but answer, "Yes."

  She took my clothes off me, clucking her tongue slightly at the dagger strapped to my thigh.

  "The gift of Odysseus," I explained. "At Troy."

  Wordlessly she unstrapped the dagger and tossed it off into the darkness surrounding our bed.

  "Now you are mine, Orion," she murmured.

  We made love, slowly at first but then with increasing ardor. Every time she climaxed she screamed, "You're mine! Mine!"

  In the lulls between times she asked, "Who do you love, Orion?"

  I could not answer. I could not say her name, and her control of my body would not permit me to speak the name of Athena. Then we would begin anew and the passion would surge in us both as we thrashed and tumbled and sweated wildly. "Did she ever do this for you?" Olympias would ask. "Did she ever make you do this?"

  How long we spent coupling was impossible for me to reckon. But at last we lay side by side, staring into the infinite sea of stars, panting like a pair of rutting animals.

  "Speak the name of the woman you love, Orion," she commanded me.

  "You will not like what you hear," I replied.

  I had expected anger. Instead, she laughed. "Her hold on you is deeper than I had expected."

  "We love each other."

  "That was a dream, Orion. Nothing more than a dream of yours. Forget it. Accept this reality."

  "She loves me. Athena. Anya."

  For long moments she was silent in the darkness.

  Then, "A goddess may take on human form and make love to a mortal. That is not love, Orion."

  "Who am I?" I asked while her control over me was relaxed. "Why am I here?"

  "Who are you? Why, Orion, you are nothing more than any other human creature—a plaything of the gods." And her laughter turned cruel once more.

  I closed my eyes and wondered how I could escape this evil woman's grasp. She had to be the goddess Hera that I had seen in my dream. Or was she merely the witch Olympias, controlling me, bewitching me, with the power of her dark magic? Were my memories of Athena and the other gods and goddesses merely vivid dreams hatched by my own longing for a knowledge of my origins, my own yearning for someone to love, for someone who could love me? Was Olympias' powerful magic truly witchcraft, or the superhuman abilities of an actual goddess? I fell asleep trying to fathom the mystery.

  When I opened my eyes again early morning sunlight was filtering through the beaded curtain of a window. I was lying beside a naked woman in a rumpled bed. The makeup smeared across her face told me that she was one of the hetairai who had attended Philip's dinner the night before.

  I sat up slowly, not wanting to wake her. In the milky early light she looked older, tired.

  Softly I rose from the bed and gathered my clothes, which had been neatly piled on a curved chair in the corner of the bedroom. Even my dagger was there, at the bottom of the pile. I dressed, ducked through the curtained doorway of the bedroom, and bumped right into Pausanias.

  "You've had a busy night of it," he growled.

  I had no idea of how I had gotten here, so I said nothing.

  "Damned Thais just picks out whoever she likes, like a man," said Pausanias as he led me down the corridor toward a flight of stairs. We went down to the ground floor and out into the street. It was still early, quiet outside.

  "How did you get there?" Pausanias asked grumpily, jerking a thumb back toward Thais' house. It was a modest two-story building, but well kept, with flower boxes blooming brightly beneath every window.

  With a shrug that I hoped was convincing, I replied, "I don't really know."

  "If you can't hold your wine you shouldn't drink."

  "Yes, you're right."

  We marched along the empty street, heading uphill toward the palace.

  "Trouble is," Pausanias said, "that young Ptolemaios has his eye on her. And she taps you on the shoulder instead."

  Ptolemaios was one of Alexandros' Companions, I knew. Rumored to be a bastard son of Philip, as well.

  "Perhaps she's merely trying to make him jealous," I half-joked, still wondering how I did get into Thais' house. And bed.

  "That kind of jealousy leads to murder, Orion. And blood feuds."

  I shrugged light-heartedly. "I have no family to carry on a blood feud after I'm gone."

  "Thank the gods for small favors," he muttered.

  As we neared the palace wall a question popped into my mind. "How did you know where I was?"

  Pausanias fixed me with a surly glance. "One of the queen's servants woke me before cock's crow and warned me of it. Said I'd better get you out of there before Ptolemaios finds out about it."

  "And how did this servant know?"

  "I told you she was one of the queen's servants. The witch knows everything that happens in the palace—sometimes before it even happens."

  Chapter 8

  The air of the palace seethed with intrigue. The king was conducting one military campaign after another along his borders while at the same time negotiating with delegations from regions as far-flung as the Peloponnesus and Syracuse in Sicily, as well as receiving ambassadors from the Great King of Persia.

  No one seemed to know what Philip was aiming at, what his goals were. There was no dearth of opinions on the subject, however. I heard as many different guesses as there were men speaking on the subject. Philip wanted to rule all of the Greeks, said one. He wanted to conquer the Persia
n Empire, said another. No, he wanted to be dictator of Thebes, the city where he had spent several of his younger years as a royal hostage. No, he wanted to humiliate Athens and hang Demosthenes by his scrawny neck. Nonsense, said still another, his real intention is to expand Macedonian colonies northward into the backward, bickering tribes of the Balkans, but to do that he must safeguard the kingdom's southern borders, where the great cities of Thebes and Athens and the others are waiting for him to turn his back.

  I was one of the guards standing behind Philip's throne the afternoon that the Persians were presented to the king. They were exotic in their long silk robes of many colors, bedecked with sparkling jewels. They brought magnificent gifts of spices and incense from their new king, Dareios III. Philip accepted them as if they were his due and gave in return a hundred cavalry horses: all geldings, I learned later. The other guardsmen laughed themselves sick over Philip's trick.

  The king himself was not even smiling after the Persians left his court.

  "Spies," he said grimly to Parmenio and Antipatros, after the Persians had left. "They're here to see how strong we are, how well we're getting along against Athens."

  "I'll bet they're heading straight for Athens now, to tell Demosthenes everything they learned here," said Antipatros.

  "And to pour more gold into his hands," added Parmenio.

  There were other intrigues, as well, much closer to the court. Attalos was pushing his young niece, Kleopatra, as a fitting bride for Philip. I knew that the king had taken several wives, mainly as diplomatic gestures, and he had a powerful sexual appetite: male or female did not much concern him as long as they were young and pretty.

  Kleopatra was such a common name among the Macedonians that many of the nobles at court referred to the fourteen-year-old niece of Attalos by an honorary name that Philip had bestowed on her: Eurydice, the name of the supernally beautiful wife of legendary Orpheos. Orpheos had voluntarily descended into Hades to recover his dead love. I thought that Olympias would rather see Philip in hell before she would accept his marriage to Kleopatra/Eurydice.

  Olympias was scheming constantly. She had driven all of Philip's other wives out of the court, although she resolutely refused to sleep with him, according to the palace gossip. She wanted to make certain that her son, Alexandros, would be the only possible heir to Philip's throne. That meant that there must be no new marriages and no new legitimate sons. I knew that all the tales about her powers of witchcraft were more than true, and that she could somehow command me at her whim. What she planned for me I did not know, and after that first wild night of lovemaking she did not so much as glance at me.

  For his part, Philip was also scheming. A marriage into the house of Attalos would benefit the throne. So would an advantageous marriage of his daughter by Olympias, who was also named Kleopatra. Even younger than Attalos' niece, and painfully shy, Philip's daughter was a very valuable pawn in the game of nations.

  And that game went on without cease. Ambassadors and couriers arrived at the court almost every day. From my post as one of the king's guards I saw that Philip could be tactful, generous, flexible, patient, a good host, a firm friend, a reasonable enemy ready to make peace even when he had the upper hand. Especially when he had the upper hand.

  But I began to see, also, that he was implacable in his pursuit of one goal. No matter how generous or flexible or reasonable he was, each agreement he made, each objective he sought, was aimed at making Macedonia supreme, not merely over the surrounding tribes and the port cities along the coast; Philip wanted supremacy over the major city-states to the south—Thebes, Corinth, Sparta, and especially Athens.

  "Demosthenes rouses the rabble down there against us time and again," Philip complained to a visiting Athenian merchant. "I have no reason to fight against Athens. I revere the city of Perikles and Sokrates; I honor its ancient traditions. But the Athenians think they are the lords of the earth; they are trying to strangle us by cutting us off from the sea."

  The merchant had been sent to negotiate for the year's grain harvest that we had seized. Philip wanted Athens to cede control of Perinthos and the other port cities along the Bosporus.

  "All the port cities?" gasped the Athenian. "But that, most honored king, would put your mighty hands at the throat of our people. Macedonia would be able to shut off the grain supply whenever you chose to."

  Leaning an elbow on the withered thigh of his crippled leg, Philip looked down at the white-robed merchant from his throne. "It would make us friends, Athenian," he said. "Friends trust one another. And they do not rouse their people to make war against one another."

  "You speak of Demosthenes."

  "None other."

  The merchant tugged at his beard for a moment, then smoothed the front of his robe. At last he replied, "Athens, sir, is a democracy. In the past, our city was ruled by an oligarchy. Even earlier, by tyrants. We prefer democracy."

  Patiently, Philip said, "I have no intention of ruling Athens. All I want is for Athens to stop making war on us."

  "I shall so inform the Assembly when I return."

  "Very well."

  Philip traded the grain for a promise that Athens would no longer support Perinthos against him. Nothing was said about Byzantion.

  Philip saw the merchant off with full diplomatic honors. The royal guard was lined up at the palace gate for him. Unfortunately, it was in the middle of an autumn storm, and cold driving rain made everything gray and miserable. Philip limped back to his rooms with me and three other picked guardsmen following close behind him. The cold raw weather must have bothered his bad leg intensely.

  His three chief generals were waiting for him in his work room, together with slaves bearing pitchers of strong red wine. It was a smallish room, dominated by a heavy trestle table on which a large map of the Aegean coast was held down by heavy iron paperweights.

  "The agreement means nothing," Parmenio grumbled as he put down his first goblet on the edge of the sheepskin map. "The Athenians will keep their word only as long as they choose to. In the meantime they get the grain."

  "And their navy can strike anywhere along the coast, unhindered," Antigonos pointed out.

  Antipatros agreed vigorously. "You should have held onto the grain. Let them feel hungry for a while. Then they'd be more reasonable."

  Philip took a deep grateful draught of the wine. Then he said, "They'd get hungry, all right. And blame us for it. Then we'd just be proving what Demosthenes has been telling them for years: that I'm a bloodthirsty tyrant intent on conquest."

  "Tyrant," spat Parmenio. "As if you rule all by yourself, without the Council or the elders to account to."

  But Philip was hardly listening. His mind was already spinning out the next move. I stood guard at the door until it was dark, when I was relieved. When I got to the barracks Pausanias told me that the queen had sent for me.

  He eyed me suspiciously. "Why is the queen interested in you?"

  I returned his gaze without blinking. "You will have to ask her, captain. She has summoned me; I didn't ask to see her."

  He looked away, then warned, "Be careful, Orion. She plays a dangerous game."

  "Do I have any choice?"

  "If she says a word against the king—even a hint of a thought against him—you must tell me."

  I admired his loyalty. "I will, captain. I am the king's man, not the queen's."

  Yet, as I made my way through the deepening shadows of night toward Olympias' rooms in the palace, I knew that she could control me whenever she chose to. I was hopelessly under her spell.

  To my surprise and relief, Alexandros was with her. A slave woman met me at the door to the queen's suite of rooms and guided me to a small chamber where she sat on a cushioned chair talking earnestly with her son. Even in an ordinary wool robe she looked magnificent, copper-red hair tumbling past her shoulders, slender arms bare, lithe body taut beneath the light-blue robe.

  Alexandros was pacing the small room like a caged panther.
He radiated energy, all golden impatience, pent-up emotion that made his smooth handsome face seem petulant, moody.

  "But I'm his only legitimate heir," Alexandros was saying when I was ushered into the room.

  Olympias acknowledged my presence with a glance and gestured for the servant who had brought me to depart. She closed the door softly behind me and I stood there, silent and immobile, waiting to be commanded.

  Alexandros was no taller than my shoulder, but he was solidly built, with wide shoulders and strong limbs. His golden hair curled down the back of his neck. His eyes glowed with restless passion.

  "There's no one else," he said to his mother. "Unless you count Arrhidaios, the idiot."

  Olympias gave him a pained smile. "You forget that the Council may elect whom it chooses. The throne does not automatically pass to you."

  "They wouldn't dare elect anyone else!"

  She shrugged. "You are still very young, in the eyes of many. They could elect Parmenio or—"

  "Parmenio! That fat old man! I'd kill him!"

  "—or they could appoint a regent," Olympias continued, unshaken in the slightest by her son's outburst, "until you are old enough to rule."

  "But I'm old enough now," Alexandros insisted, almost whining. "I've already served as regent while the king was off at his wars. What do they expect of me?"

  "Vision," said Olympias.

  "A vision? Like an oracle?"

  "No," she said, in a slightly disappointed tone. "The kind of vision that excites men's souls. A goal for the future that is so daring that men will flock to you and follow wherever you lead them."

  He stopped his pacing and stared at her. "What are you talking about?"

  "You must lead the Greeks against the Persian Empire."

  Alexandros frowned at his mother. "By the gods, Philip has been talking about fighting the Persians for ten years or more. There's nothing new or daring in that."

  Olympias gestured to the chair next to hers. I saw that her fingernails were long and lacquered blood-red.

  Alexandros sat.