Creation (8 page)

Artystone wore a mantle of gold thread; carried an ivory wand. She had a high natural color, and looked always to be sulking.

Since Lais was Greek and I was half-Greek, Artystone commanded the boys to talk to us in Greek.

Lais cut her short. “We need no translator, Lady. My son is grandson of the true prophet.”

“Yes, I know.” Artystone pointed her ivory wand at me. “Can you eat fire?”

I was too shocked to answer.

Lais has a bad temper. “Fire is the son of the Wise Lord, Lady. It is not safe to make jokes about divinity.”

“Oh?” The pale-gray eyes opened very wide. She resembled her father, Cyrus the Great, who was a remarkably handsome man. I know. I have seen his wax-covered body at holy Pasargada. “Well, Bactria is so far away.”

“Bactria is the home of the Great King’s father, Lady.”

“It is not his home. He is simply satrap there. He is an Achaemenid, from holy Pasargada.”

Wearing a faded woollen robe and surrounded by chickens, Lais faced up not only to the daughter of Cyrus but to the best-loved wife of Darius. Lais has always been fearless. Witchcraft?

“It was from Bactria that Darius came to regain the empire of your father,” said Lais. “And it was in Bactria that Zoroaster first spoke with the voice of the Wise Lord, in whose name your husband the Great King rules over all the lands. Lady, beware that you do not bring down upon yourself the wrath of the One God.”

In answer, Artystone raised her right arm; the golden sleeve hid her face—an odd, protective gesture. Then she was gone.

Lais turned to me, eyes bright with anger. “Never forget who you are. Never renounce the Truth and follow the Lie. Never forget that we are stronger than all the devil-worshipers.”

I was deeply impressed. Particularly when I knew even then that Lais had not the slightest interest in religion of any kind. I do not count Thessalian witchcraft as religion. But Lais is a very shrewd and practical woman. In Bactra she had forced herself to learn a thousand hymns and rituals in order to convince Zoroaster that she was a follower of the Truth. Then she instilled in me the knowledge that I was not like others, that I had been especially chosen by the Wise Lord to bear constant witness to the Truth.

In youth, I never doubted Lais. But now as my life draws to a close, I have no idea whether or not I have fulfilled the mission set me by the Wise Lord, assuming that there was ever a mission. I must also confess that in the seventy years which have passed since the death of Zoroaster, I have looked upon so many faces of deity in so many parts of this huge world that I know for certain nothing.

Yes, Democritus, I know that I told you I would explain creation. And I shall—to the extent that it is knowable. As for the existence of evil, that is more easily answered. In fact, I am surprised that you have not guessed the genesis of the Lie, which defines—that’s a hint—the Truth.

SHORTLY AFTER ARTYSTONE’S APPEARANCE, all of the chickens in our courtyard were massacred. I missed their company. My mother did not.

It was early autumn when we received a visit from a minor chancellery official. He had come from the office of the chamberlain, where it had been decided that I was to attend the palace school. Apparently, there had been no place for me the previous spring when the court was in residence. But now he himself would escort me to class.

Lais pressed our mysterious advantage. She demanded new quarters. That was not possible, he said. There were no instructions. She asked for an audience with Queen Atossa. The eunuch tried not to laugh at the outrageous-ness of the request.

So while poor Lais continued to live as a prisoner, I at least attended school. I was delighted.

The palace school is divided into two parts. The first section contains the members of the imperial family—at that time some thirty princes, ranging in age from seven to twenty—as well as various sons of The Six.

In the second section are the sons of the minor nobility and the young guests of the Great King, as the hostages are called. When Lais learned that I was not in the first section, she was furious. Actually, she had no idea how lucky we both were not to be dead.

I enjoyed the school which was held in a large room that looked out upon a walled-in park where each day we were taught archery and riding.

Our teachers were all Magians of the old school; they hated Zoroaster and feared his influence. As a result, I was ignored as much by the teachers as by the Persian students. My only companions were the guests of the Great King because, in a sense, I was a guest too. I was also half-Greek.

I soon made friends with a boy my age named Milo whose father, Thessalus, was stepbrother to Hippias, the reigning tyrant of Athens. Although Hippias had continued the golden age of his father, the great Pisistratus, the Athenians had become bored with him and his family. But then, whenever the Athenians have too much of a good thing, they promptly seek something bad. This quest is not apt to be either arduous or unrewarded.

Also, in my class were the sons of Histiaeus, the tyrant of Miletus. Histiaeus himself had also been detained as a guest simply because he had become too rich and powerful. Yet Histiaeus had proven his loyalty—and practicality—at the time of Darius’ invasion of Scythia.

In order to transport the Persian army into Scythia, Darius built a bridge of boats across the Hellespont. When Darius was turned back at the Danube—where my father was wounded—many of the Ionian Greeks wanted to burn the bridge and leave Darius to be hacked to pieces by the Scythians. With Darius dead or captured, the Ionian Greek cities would then declare themselves independent of Persia.

But Histiaeus opposed the plan. “Darius is our Great King,” he told his fellow tyrants. “We have sworn fealty to him.” Privately he warned them that without Darius’ support, the Ionian nobility would ally itself with the rabble and overthrow the tyrants in much the same way that a similar alliance at Athens was in the process of expelling the last of the Pisistratids. The tyrants followed Histiaeus’ advice, and the bridge was left intact.

Darius returned home safely. In gratitude he gave Histiaeus some silver mines in Thrace. Suddenly, between the lordship of the city of Miletus and the rich Thracian holdings, Histiaeus was no longer just another city tyrant—he was a powerful king. Ever cautious, Darius invited Histiaeus and two of his sons up to Susa, where they became guests. A subtle, restless man, Histiaeus was not cut out to be a guest ... I mention all this in order to explain those wars which Herodotus refers to as Persian.

In school I spent most of my time with the Greek hostages. Although the Magians forbade us to speak Greek, we spoke nothing else whenever we were out of earshot of our teachers.

One cold winter day Milo and I were sitting on the frozen ground, watching our classmates throw the javelin. Dressed in the Persian manner—thick trousers and three sets of drawers—we did not feel the cold. I still dress properly, and often advise the Greeks to do the same. But you cannot convince any Greek that several layers of light cloth will make you not only warm in winter but cool in summer. When Greeks are not nude, they are wrapped in sweat-soaked wool.

From his father Milo had inherited a taste—as opposed to talent—for intrigue. He enjoyed explaining to me the divisions at court. “Everyone wants Artobazanes to succeed if Darius dies, because he’s the eldest son. Artobazanes is also the grandson of Gobryas, who still thinks that
he
should have been Great King instead of Darius. But the other five nobles picked Darius.”

“They had to. Darius is the Achaemenid. He’s the nephew of Cyrus the Great.”

Milo gave me a pitying look. Yes, even boys at Susa went in for such looks. At a court, even boys want to be thought to know secrets that others do not know.

“Darius,” said Milo, “is no more related to Cyrus than you are or I am. Of course, all Persian nobles are related. So he’s probably got some Achaemenid blood in him, just as I have through my Persian mother and you have through your father. Except
you
don’t, because the Spitamas aren’t really noble. In fact, they’re not even Persian, are they?”

“Our family is greater than any noble family. We are holy.” I became the prophet’s grandson. “We have been chosen by the Wise Lord, who spoke to me—”

“Can you really eat fire?”

“Yes,” I said. “And breathe it, too, when I’m divinely inspired or very angry. Anyway, if Darius isn’t related to Cyrus, how did he get to be Great King?”

“Because he personally killed the Magian chancellor who was pretending that he was Cyrus’ son and fooling everybody.”

“But maybe the Magian really was the son of Cyrus.” Even at an early age I had a sense of how the world is managed.

Mile’s face suddenly looked very Greek—Dorian Greek. The blue eyes became round; the rosy lips slipped ajar. “How could they tell such a lie?”

“People do.” It was my turn to be worldly. “
I
can’t lie, because I am the grandson of Zoroaster.” I was sublimely superior, and annoying. “But others can lie, and do.”

“Are you calling the Great King a liar?”

I saw the danger, and stepped neatly around it. “No. That’s why I was so surprised just now to hear
you
call him a liar. After all,
he
says that he is the Achaemenid and related to Cyrus, while you’re the one who says that he isn’t.”

Milo was thoroughly confused, and alarmed. “To tell a lie is not possible for any Persian noble, like my mother’s father. Or for an Athenian tyrant like me ...”

“You mean a tyrant like your uncle
was
.”

“He still is. Athens is still our city. Because Athens was nothing before my grandfather Pisistratus became tyrant and everyone knows it, no matter what the demagogues in the assembly say. Anyway, the Great King is the Achaemenid, if he says so. He can’t lie. All I meant was that we are all Achaemenids. Related to them, that is. Particularly Gobryas and his family and Otanes and his family and—”

“I guess I misunderstood you.” I let him escape. At Susa one must become a skilled courtier even before the first beard’s grown. The world of a court is a supremely dangerous place: one misstep—and death, or worse.

I had already heard a good deal about the way that Darius had overthrown the false son of Cyrus. But since no one had ever dared say aloud in my presence that Darius was not related to Cyrus, I had learned something of importance from the dull Milo.

The fact that Darius was as much a usurper as the Magian he replaced explained a good deal about the factions at court. I could now see why Darius’ father-in-law Gobryas had wanted to be Great King. He was Darius’ senior. He was one of The Six, and as noble as Darius. But Darius had outwitted him. Gobryas accepted Darius as Great King on condition that the succession go to his grandson Artobazanes. But Darius promptly took as second wife Cyrus’ daughter Atossa. Two years later, on the same day of the same year as myself, their son Xerxes was born. If Darius’ relationship to the Achaemenids was tenuous, there was no doubt about the ancestry of his son Xerxes.
He
was the grandson of Cyrus the Great; he was the Achaemenid.

At Xerxes’ birth, the court split between the factions of Queen Atossa and that of Gobryas’ daughter. The Six tended to support Gobryas, while the other nobles supported Atossa ... as did the Magians. My mother maintains that Darius deliberately encouraged everyone to connive against everyone else on the sensible ground that they would be too busy with one another ever to plot against him. This is somewhat simple, and whatever Darius was, he was not simple. Even so, it is a fact that Darius appeared to encourage first one faction; then the other.

Susa was also the scene of another significant struggle. Since the Magians who worshiped the devas were in the majority, they did their best to make suffer the handful of Magians who followed Zoroaster. Those who followed the Lie had the help of Queen Atossa. Those who followed the Truth ought to have had the support of the Great King. But Darius was evasive. He spoke lovingly of my grandfather; then gave money to the Jews to rebuild their temple at Jerusalem, to the Babylonians to repair the temple of Bel-Marduk, and so on.

Although I was too young to play an active part in this religious war, my presence at court was deeply offensive to the deva-worshipers. Because Queen Atossa was close to them, Lais and I had been confined to that dismal harem chicken yard—from which we were saved by Hystaspes. Apparently he wrote his son to ask about my progress in the palace school. As a result of that letter I was assigned to the second section. As a result of that letter Lais and I were saved from what is called the fever, a mysterious disease that invariably kills those with powerful enemies at court.

One bright spring morning my life was again changed, entirely by accident if one rules out fate—the only deity you Greeks appear to take seriously.

I was in class, sitting cross-legged at the back of the room. I always tried to appear invisible; and usually succeeded. A Magian instructor was boring us with a religious text. I forget what it was. Probably one of those endless hymns to the fertility of Anahita, whom the Greeks call Aphrodite. It was well known at court that Queen Atossa was a devotee of Anahita, and Magians always please the great

At a signal from the teacher, the class began to chant the praises of Anahita. All but me. Whenever called upon to sing the praises of this deva or that, I would remain silent and the Magian teachers would affect not to notice me. But this morning was different from all other mornings.

Suddenly the Magian stopped his wailing and moaning. The class fell silent The old man looked straight at me. Was this by accident, or through fate? I shall never know. I do know that I took his gaze to be a challenge. I stood up. I was ready for ... I don’t know what. Battle, I suppose.

“You did not join us in the hymn, Cyrus Spitama.”

“No, Magian. I did not.”

Astonished heads turned toward me. Milo’s mouth fell open and stayed open. My manner was supremely disrespectful.

“Why not?”

I struck an attitude that I had seen my grandfather assume a thousand times before the fire altar at Bactra. One leg is carefully placed in front of the other while the arms are held straight forward, palms turned upward.