Lord of the Two Lands (30 page)

Once Alexander had decided on something, he swept everyone else with him. In an entourage of engineers who had come up with him from Memphis, he paced the boundaries of the town and marked each point for the workmen who would come. He could have done it with pen and papyrus in decent privacy, and he had drafters there to do just that; but he had an audience to play to.

They were marking out the limits with powdered chalk, for the surveyors to follow with lines and stakes. As they came round to the midpoint of the western side, they wavered and halted.

“More chalk!” Alexander called out.

There was a pause. It stretched.

“Well?” said Alexander.

One of the engineers cleared his throat. “There isn’t any more,” he said.

“And why not?” the king demanded.

There was another pause. Feet shuffled. The spokesman said, “It didn’t get packed when it should have.”

“Oh?” said Alexander. Soft. Gentle.

“Well then,” said Ptolemy, brisk and practical. “We’ll have to make do, won’t we? What have we got?”

“There’s this,” Hephaistion said, shrugging out of the pack that he seemed to wear as easily as his chiton, and rummaging in it. He brought out a bag and untied it and poured its contents into his hand: the meal ration of the Macedonian soldier. He looked about at the men who crowded in, curious. “Well? Can you help?”

They trade glances. One grinned, then another. Packs dropped; sacks came out. In a moment the captains had their men in ranks, piling up sacks and keeping tally; and Hephaistion stood watchful, but smiling.

Alexander’s high light mood was back. He grinned at his friend. Hephaistion let his smile widen.

The small mound of grain grew. The engineers eyed it dubiously, but Diades the Thessalian laughed and dipped out a handful and began again where he had left off.

o0o

“That was an omen,” Meriamon said. “That Alexander’s city was marked out in barley meal.”

“A good omen,” said Niko.

They sat in the door of Thaïs’ tent. The sun had set a little while since, but the sky was full of light. The surveyors were out still, following the line Alexander had walked.

“Did you notice,” said Meriamon, “the birds only come down to feed where the line is marked already? They don’t touch the new line at all.”

“Aristandros says the city will be fruitful, and people will come to it from all over the world.”

“He sees with a clear eye.”

“As clear as yours?”

He was only half laughing at her. She watched the line of men as it moved slowly down to the lake’s edge, pacing and pausing, dipping and rising.

Ptolemy was with them. He had come to dinner, eaten a mouthful, gone away again. Alexander had laughed and called after him, “You’re even madder about this than I am. Will you be asking for the city when it’s built?”

Ptolemy had grinned over his shoulder. “Not as long as you’re using it,” he said. “If you get tired of it, now...”

“If I get tired of it,” Alexander said, “which the gods forbid, it’s yours.”

o0o

“Your brother has changed,” Meriamon said now.

Niko glanced sharply at her. “Why? Because he likes this place?”

“Yes. And not just this one town that will be a city. All of Egypt. As if... he was meant to be here.”

“Are you prophesying?”

“I hope not,” she said. And when he stared at her: “Alexander is enough. I don’t need to see signs and omens for every man in his army.”

“I didn’t think you had a choice.”

She rose with enormous dignity. “I am tired,” she said. “I am going to sleep.”

He let her go without protest. That was surprising. Until she heard him behind her. He was going to corner her, then. She swallowed a sigh.

He did not say anything as she lit the lamps, only stood by the door. He had Sekhmet in his arms, purring as she always did for him. If she could be anyone’s cat, Meriamon thought, she would be Niko’s.

The bed was made up long since, with a sprinkling of herbs to make it sweet. Phylinna’s hand, that. There was water for washing, and a jar of ointment for cleansing the paint from her face.

It would not be the first time she had done it under Niko’s eyes. She almost ordered him out. But she did not.

She opened the jar, began carefully to wipe away the kohl and the malachite and the dusting of lapis. She did not always use the bronze mirror. Tonight she did. It was a shield of sorts.

He took it from her hand and held it for her. She would not look at him over it. She fixed her eyes on her reflection, though she hardly saw it. Paint, here. Kohl, there. Gone, effaced, vanished.

If she could efface herself, make herself nothing, no gods, no fates, no prophecies...

“Meriamon!”

Her name. Her self. Grey eyes on her, and in them something like fear.

“Don’t go away like that,” he said.

The mirror was gone. She was holding his hands. Or he hers. “You have not a grain of magic in you,” she said.

“I think you have enough for both of us.”

“Too much,” she said. “It’s only going to get worse, the closer we come to Siwah.”

“Then you’re going to need me, aren’t you? To keep you from flying to pieces.”

“I’m not that fragile!”

He smiled his slow smile, the one that warmed his whole long homely face and made it beautiful. “Certainly you’re not fragile. That’s why you need me. The bow can’t be strung every moment of every day.”

“I’ll rest after Siwah.”

“So you will.” He let go her hands and touched a forefinger to her cheek, tracing the curve of it as if it were a lesson he would remember. “You can rest now. I’m here.”

“You are not restful,” she said.

His hand found its way to her shoulder. “Such a little woman,” he said, “to stand so high.”

“Such a great gawk of a man,” she said, “to fit me so well.” She stood as high as she could, and set her hands on his shoulders. She was dizzy, looking up at him. “Do you know how impossible we are?”

“What’s impossible? This is Alexander’s army. We’re what his empire will be. Not Macedonian or Egyptian or Greek or Persian, or anything but man and woman under the one king.”

“And I said you had no magic,” she said.

“I don’t.” He was sad, a little, but philosophical. “It’s logic, that’s all. And hope.”

“Hope and logic are very great magics.”

“Love, too?”

“Is that what this is?”

“You didn’t know?”

She narrowed her eyes to see him better. “I don’t suppose it can be anything else. Unless there’s another word for what makes you follow me about like a dog after a bone.”

“That’s habit. I can’t get out of the way of looking after you. Since no one else seems inclined to do it.”

“So,” she said much too lightly. “I’m a habit, am I?”

“A welcome one,” he said. “One I want to keep.”

He stooped. His face filled her vision. Not ugly, not beautiful. Not any longer. Itself purely.

She could stop him now. She knew it as she knew what the gods wanted. She could hold him back, push him off, win herself free of him. He would go; he would sulk for a while; he would come again, but later. After Siwah.

Her heart was cold. None of them knew what that road was. Oh, they thought they did, those soldiers and scouts, talking to travelers and desert tribesmen. They knew that it was desert, days without water, bitter marches in a season of wind and storm. They did not know what it would be with Alexander at the head of them, and the god waiting.

She wound her fists in Niko’s chiton. The wool was rough, reassuringly solid, and he beneath it, warm breathing man with no taint of magic. Only trust in her, and eyes to see the shadow that walked with her.

She pulled. He followed unresisting, only raising a brow when she halted by the bed. “Are you sure?” he asked her.

“No,” she said. “Yes.” She pushed him down. The bed creaked. She was going to laugh; and that would be fatal.

He wrapped long arms around her and pulled her into his lap. He was grinning like an idiot.

She began to laugh. No; that was too dignified a word. She began to giggle. There was nothing to laugh at, and everything. The two of them. This world they were in. This city that would be, a stretch of grass and sand between a lake and the sea.

He tumbled backward, and she on top of him. The bed rocked but held. Built for the trade, that. She sat on him, grinning as foolishly as he.

The plaits of her hair hung down. He caught a pair of them. “Now I have you,” he said.

“Not yet,” she said. Her gown had ridden up shockingly. One of her breasts had escaped the top of it. She felt his eyes on it; and the stillness.

Time yet, and still, to escape. If she would. He was trembling.

Poor boy, she thought. And almost laughed. Certainly he was a boy. Just as certainly he knew what a woman was for; had proved it often and gladly. He should be teaching her, not waiting for her to give him leave.

Her gown galled her. She rid herself of it. His eyes were enormous. “What,” she asked him, “you haven’t seen a woman before?”

“Not a woman who was you,” he said. His voice was faint, but his wits were keen enough, considering.

“Hellene,” she said, but tenderly. “You’ll talk your way through anything.”

“Not anything,” he said. He sat up, and she knew that he was going to leave her; then he had tossed aside his chiton.

She had seen it before. Been close to it, even. And yet this was not the same. Not in the least. This was frightening.

Exhilarating. Like being a hawk, and taking wing, and soaring into the sun.

“Meriamon,” he said. Calling her back.

“That’s twice,” she said.

His brows went up.

“You used my right name,” she said. “Twice. If you say it a third time, you will have claimed me.”

“So I shall,” he said. He touched the tip of her breast. It quivered and tautened. “Meriamon,” said Nikolaos.

o0o

It was not like flying. More like learning to fly. Awkward; laughable, sometimes. It hurt. Very much, at first. She her teeth and endured it, but he knew. He started to draw back. She locked arms about him, holding him.

“I’m too big for you,” he said miserably.

She bit her tongue. She must not laugh. “Bigger than a baby’s head?”

He went scarlet.

Her tongue was starting to ache where she had bitten it. “Be brave,” she said. “Try.”

Blessed courage; he tried. It did not hurt so much. After a while it did not hurt at all. A while after that, and even the memory of hurt was gone; then was only pleasure.

Alexander left the engineers behind in Rhakotis, and the Persians with them, sharing the townsfolk’s bemusement with the city that was taking shape already in stakes and string between the lake and sea. Maybe he would have liked to stay with them and watch the city grow, but the god was calling him. He took the Companions and the few pages and servants whom they needed to look after them and their horses, and turned his back resolutely on the newborn Alexandria.

One who was neither servant nor Companion nor voice of the gods made it abundantly clear that he was coming to Siwah. “I can ride,” said Arrhidaios. “I ride as well as anybody. I walk, too. I want to see the god in the sand.”

“I know you can ride,” Alexander said with remarkable patience; but he was always patient with Arrhidaios. “I want you to stay here and help with my city, and take care of Peritas. Mazaces is staying. He’s the best rider in the army.”

“Except you,” said Arrhidaios. His brows knotted. “Mazaces can take care of Peritas. I want to come to Siwah.”

“And what will you do when you get there?” his brother asked.

“See the god,” said Arrhidaios. “You said I didn’t have to stay with Parmenion. I don’t want to stay with Mazaces, either. I want to stay with you.”

Alexander sighed. “You always get your own way in the end. Maybe you should be king instead of me.”

Arrhidaios made a sign against evil. “Don’t talk like that, Alexander. You know it’s bad luck.”

“I know you’re not going to like this road we take. If you complain, even once, you have to come straight back. Promise?”

“Promise,” Arrhidaios said solemnly. Then he grinned and whooped and ran to fetch his horse.

“I hope I don’t live to regret that,” Alexander said.

“You haven’t yet,” said Hephaistion. “There now, it’s only his wits that are addled. He sticks like a burr to anything on four legs, and he’s as tough as an old soldier.”

“He sticks like a burr to me, too,” Alexander said. “Gods help me, I couldn’t leave him with Parmenion when he was so insistent that he wanted to come with me, and Mazaces is no kind of guardian for him. If I could have left him in Macedon...”

Hephaistion carefully did not say anything.

Alexander’s glance was wry. “No, he wouldn’t have lasted long there. Not Philip’s elder son, addled or no.”

“He won’t be any trouble. He never is.”

“No,” said Alexander. “One can almost forget him, can’t one?”

One could not. But Hephaistion did not say it. Alexander went like his brother to see to the horses. Hephaistion had duties of his own, but he lingered in the empty field that had been a camp, brushing sand over the embers of a fire.

When he looked up, the Egyptian woman was there, and Lagos’ son behind her. There was a sheen on them that he well knew. He smiled to himself. They had taken their time about it; well past any decent wager.

Whatever she had done to make herself and her guardsman glad, she was somber now. Her eyes were dark behind their mask of paint. “It’s going to be a harder road than even Alexander knows,” she said.

“A death-road?” asked Hephaistion.

When she was intent, her long eyes seemed to grow even longer, and to slant like a cat’s. She looked, in fact, very like the cat that rode on Niko’s shoulder, with her high-cheeked face and her slender supple body. “We will walk the road of coming forth by day. Whether we will walk out of it—that is with the gods.”

Hephaistion glanced at Nikolaos. Niko shrugged. He did not stand in her shadow, Hephaistion noticed. Few people did. Rumor had it that the thing had eyes, and that it freed itself from her at night and hunted in the dark.

She was only a small woman in Persian trousers—because, she had been heard to say, nothing else made sense for hard traveling—talking in that husky voice of hers, and staring straight through Hephaistion. Seeing gods, no doubt, and prophecies.

She blinked. Not a cat after all but a desert falcon, fierce and focused. “Stay with Alexander. Don’t leave him for anything, day or night.”

“Not even to make water?”

A line appeared between the painted brows. “Not even then.”

“He’s going to hate the sight of me,” said Hephaistion.

“Let him. He’ll be alive and sane to do the hating.”

Hephaistion thought about that. She waited. That was a virtue of hers. She never pressed for answers that needed thinking on.

Finally he said, “Is it going to be as bad as that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I only know that I could very easily be afraid.”

There were some who would have scoffed at her. Hephaistion was not one of them. She spoke for her gods. He knew that in his bones, as surely as he knew that Aristandros spoke for the gods of Hellas. If she could be afraid, then he could be cautious.

It was not so grim a prospect to be at Alexander’s side, night as well as day. So had they been when they were younger, eating from the same bowl, sleeping on one cloak and wrapped in another. There had been plenty in the world besides them; Alexander could never forget that he was Alexander, and Hephaistion had pride of his own. But in the middle of it, always, then as now, were they two.

The Egyptian knew. Neither she nor her guardsman had moved, but they were two, and together.

A woman and a man. He did not know if he liked that, or approved of it. It was not Greek, or properly philosophical. A woman could not be a true soul. That was for men.

This was not as other women. Nothing that she had ever done showed the least concern for propriety, or for anything but her gods and her lover and—yes—her king.

He bent his head to her. She bent her own in return. “I’ll look after my king,” he said.

o0o

Alexander’s company rode out of Rhakotis in a prancing, jingling procession, with the king at their head in his bright armor. But once they had left the town behind, they dismounted and freed the horses from their bits and sent all but a few of the beasts back to Rhakotis, packed away their gauds and put on marching gear and marched.

The Companions were inured to it: they shouldered their packs, pulled their hats down over their eyes, and fell into a long, swinging stride that made nothing of sand or stones. The handful of horses kept pace in a herd, some on leads, most sensible enough to follow their fellows. The servants held their own ranks just ahead of the rear guard, none loaded down more than the Companions themselves, carrying the pots and kettles, the extra foodstuffs, and the tents and poles.

They went light and they went fast. Meriamon felt the eyes on her—and not only Niko’s. They were waiting for her to give up, she was sure, and mount Phoenix and ride.

The mare would not have minded; she was desert-bred and she did not have to suffer the war-bridle. But Meriamon had her pride. She had softened somewhat in Memphis; still, she was no weakling. She could keep pace.

They followed the coast for a long while, keeping to the road that led to a town called Paraetonium, and thence to the village of Apis. The green and wet of the Delta sank away behind them; the Red Land claimed them. There was water in plenty, and provender: ships from Alexander’s fleet paced them, putting in in the evenings as they had on the road from Tyre.

It was not ill marching. The sea cooled them with its breezes, though it brought no rain. The road was broad and smooth, a traders’ road, with people on it now and then. Those looked with curiosity on the armed company, and told tales of raiders inland. “You’ll want your spears then,” they said, “and camels if you can get them—horses and mules aren’t much good for the deep desert.”

“Even horses that are desert-bred?” Alexander wanted to know.

“Horses can’t carry as much,” said the traveler, himself on a camel and speaking barbarous Greek, “or go as long. There will be camels in Paraetonium. If you have sense you’ll buy them.”

“We might, at that,” Hephaistion said. He eyed the man’s mount, somewhat dubiously to be sure, but with interest enough. “Would this one be for sale, by any chance?”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “She is a racing camel of a line of champions.”

“So are they all,” said Hephaistion sweetly. “We’ll buy our camels in Paraetonium, then. I don’t suppose you have cousins with camels to sell?”

“My uncle bred this beauty,” the man said. “Her sisters are almost as good as she. Her mother is better. But you won’t be wanting racing camels; you’ll be wanting good beasts of burden. Ask for the house of the rock. Anyone can tell you where that is.”

“The house of the rock,” said Alexander. “We’ll remember.”

The traveler went on his way, loping eastward. He vanished amazingly quickly. They continued on the westward road.

Meriamon set one foot in front of the other. And then again. And again. She had found the rhythm of it. She could leave her body to its walking and let her mind and her souls wander as they would, seeking out the powers in earth and air. Often at first her shadow left her to hunt, but as the days stretched, it clung closer.

This no longer was Khemet, though the power of the Nile was a memory in the earth, a quiver in the air. Stronger by far was the Great Green, the sea that surged and breathed beside them. Poseidon, the Hellenes called it, Poseidon Earthshaker, lord of horses.

It was no enemy to Alexander. It suffered his ships to ride on it, and murmured beside his camp in the nights, and held back the fierce heat of the desert.

That at night was no earthly heat: on the contrary, the nights could be cold, even bitter. But to Meriamon’s senses the Red Land was a flame in the dark. Old things were rising, strong things, enemies for long and long of the Black Land and the people who dwelt in it: devourers of flesh, drinkers of blood, eaters of souls.

No Parsa magic, this, feeble matter of fire and dogma that that was. This was sunk deep in the earth, woven with it, old and strong and black. The gods of the Two Lands had overcome it long ago. Now a king out of the Two Lands trespassed in its domain, and would lay claim to the oracle in the heart of it.

While they kept to the sea it had no power to do more than trouble their dreams. When they turned inland, then it would rise up against them.

Alexander had his guardsman as Meriamon had hers. Neither he nor she was about to turn back. Meriamon doubted that they could. This road was ordained for them. Each step had the inevitability of a prophecy.

That too was dangerous. It lulled the mind; it weakened the wits. She made herself ride, sometimes, and so separate herself from the earth. In camp she kept to the light and the company of men, and when she slept, she did not sleep alone. Everyone knew who kept her company—as far as she could see, the greatest scandal was that it had not happened sooner.

She found herself missing Thaïs, even with Niko to share her tent. The hetaira would have come, but Ptolemy would not let her. Even that would hardly have stopped her, if Meriamon had not bidden her remember the baby. “This is no road for an unborn child,” Meriamon had said.

Thaïs had not been happy at all, but in the end she yielded. Ptolemy had given her a host of errands to run and matters to see to, which she took on happily enough, once she had resigned herself to staying behind.

She had the Persian tent still, pitched in a field outside of Rhakotis. Meriamon had a smaller one for the march, and Phylinna to look after it.

Phylinna was a gift. She had given herself, nor would she be refused. For all her citified elegance, she had proved herself an able trooper. She marched without complaining, she kept up handily, and still she managed to look as if she had just come in from a morning in the agora.

She approved of Niko, though she would never be so crass as to admit it. She also approved of Arrhidaios, who spent most of his evenings near Meriamon, and most of the marches beside or behind her. Addled he might be, but he was large and he was strong, and he doted on Meriamon.

“You’re well guarded,” Phylinna said, “and thank the gods for it. This is no journey for a woman.”

“So?” Meriamon asked. “Then why did you make it?”

“Because you insist on doing it, and someone should be here to look after you.”

Meriamon could hardly argue with logic. They were a wall, all of them, and a shield, as the whole company was for Alexander.

She said so to Niko, the night before they came to Paraetonium, while the wind cluttered and flapped in the tentwall, and Phylinna snored on her mat. It had been disconcerting at first, having the servant next to them, and not even a blanket between for decency; but the woman could hardly sleep outside in the chill.

Niko was in comfort. He ignored her. Meriamon was learning to.

“I’m glad we’re good for something,” he said now. They were nested in the bed, she in the warm middle, he curved around her. He ran his hand over her breast and belly and let it come to rest between her thighs.

She laid her own over it. “I know it’s not your custom to share a bed all night long. You’re guarding me. Losing sleep for it, too.”

“Less than I was losing in my bed alone, wishing I were here,” he said.

She smiled, though he could not see it. “Did you really?”

“You doubt it?”

“I thought Macedonians were made of sterner stuff than that.”

“We are. Except when it comes to wicked-tongued Egyptian witches.”

“Wicked, am I?”

“Terribly.”

She turned in his arms. He was ready for her. She grinned at him. “Then let’s be wicked, and put the night to flight.”

They did their best to do just that. Her shadow came back in the middle of it, and laughed soundlessly at the spectacle they made. Niko laughed back. Bold child. If he did not learn prudence...

In a little while she stopped worrying. A little longer, and she stopped thinking at all.

o0o

There were indeed camels in Paraetonium. Every camel trader in that part of the world must have had word that a fool with an army needed transport to Siwah. The town reeked of camels. The air was full of their roaring and their flatulence. The herds had stripped every bit of green from the town, and given a day or two longer would strip it from every town within a day’s march.