Lord of the Two Lands (6 page)

The room beyond looked like a council chamber. It was a moment before Meriamon realized that there were only a few people in it. Alexander, of course. Hephaistion, it seemed, inevitably. Ptolemy. One or two others whom she did not know, in what she had learned was the gold-and-purple cloak of the king’s Companions. And facing the king, grey beard bristling, in armor that had seen much use, a gnarled tree-trunk of a man whose age might have been anywhere from fifty to eighty. He was not more than a palm’s width taller than the king, but he took full advantage of it, bulking over the smaller, slighter man.

Alexander was angry, but controlling it. His lips were a thin line, his eyes as pale as water. They seized on Meriamon. She shivered: their touch was burning cold. “Ah, Mariamne. Will you sit down? I’ll be done in a bit.”

“You will not be done,” gritted the man in armor, “until you answer me. We’ve had enough of your evasion. Will you or will you not—”

“Parmenion,” said Alexander, light and deadly, “do you forget who I am?”

In the throbbing silence, Meriamon crept Sekhmet-quiet to a chair. There was someone else huddled near it, sitting on the floor, hugging knees to chest and staring with wide frightened eyes. Yet he was no child nor awed recruit; he was a man both tall and strong, bull-broad, bull-muscled, with a face that would have been handsome had not its features been so slack. As she stared at him, a trail of spittle found its way down his beard.

Addled, Meriamon thought. Someone took excellent care of him: his tunic was almost clean, his hair cut, his black brush of beard trimmed close to his jaw. He looked—she started. He looked like the portraits she had seen of Philip the king, Alexander’s father.

This would be Arrhidaios, then, Philip Arrhidaios, Alexander’s half-brother. She had not known that he would be here.

Something—maybe her shadow, maybe simple compassion—made her lay a hand on his shoulder. He started. “Hush,” she said softly. “I won’t hurt you.”

He stared at her. His attention was abrupt and complete. The fear began to fade from his eyes. They were round and brown and moist like a dog’s, with a dog’s eagerness to trust.

She smiled. She did not need to pretend to warmth. Big as he was, he was a gentle creature. The smile he gave her in return was remarkably like his brother’s. The same power, though dimmed and muddied. The same sweetness.

“Pretty lady,” he said. His voice was deep and rather muffled. “You come to see me?”

She could tell the strict truth, and confuse him. Or she could say what after all, at the moment, was true. “Yes, I came to see you. My name is Meriamon.”

“Meri,” he said. “Amon. Meri. That’s a funny name.”

“It’s my name. Don’t you like it?”

“Oh, I like it,” he said. He frowned. She could see how formidable his father must have been, in what that knotting of brows did to his face. “My brother and Parmenion are fighting again. I hate it when they fight.”

“Do you think they’d mind if you went somewhere else?” she asked.

He shook his head hard. “No. I want to stay. It’s nice here. Except when they fight.”

“You’re very brave.”

This smile lit up the whole of him. “That’s what Alexander says.”

Alexander was oblivious to him. The high voice had risen a notch or two higher. “I will do it when I am ready to do it!”

Parmenion slammed his fist into his palm. “And when will you be ready? You must beget sons. You should have begotten a pack of them before you left Macedon.”

“And had a war of succession raging behind my back?”

“You could die tomorrow. Then there would be a war because there is no succession. Look at your heir, by all the gods.
Look
at him!”

Arrhidaios shrank back. Meriamon reached without thinking, gathering him in, holding him. He was shaking.

“Alexander,” said Parmenion, gaining control of self and voice with visible effort. “Alexander, listen to me. Yes, you are young. Yes, by the span the gods allot a common man, you have years yet to sire your sons. But a king is not a common man. In that tent yonder are the daughters of a king. You need not marry one or all of them—Macedon should have a Macedonian queen. But for the gods’ sake, for the sake of your kingdom, at least consider taking a concubine. Even a half-Persian mongrel is better than no son at all.”

Alexander said nothing. His nostrils were pinched tight.

“Alexander,” said Hephaistion after a long moment. “I think he’s right.”

The king whirled. Hephaistion stood his ground.

Meriamon, looking at him, saw for a moment as through a glass. Love, this was. Love so deep, and so certain, that it could endure even this: to surrender its beloved for a kingdom’s sake. She blinked in the face of it. What she saw was not a man who loved a man. She saw a soul that loved a soul. Even beyond death. Even to the end of things.

Hephaistion’s voice brought her back into the world: light, cool, fearless. He did not use his height to tower over Alexander, but neither did he allow Alexander’s anger to diminish it. He set them on a level. “Think,” he said. “For a change. It’s only practical.”

Alexander spoke through clenched teeth. “I will not soil my bed with a coward’s get.”

“They may be Darius’ daughters,” said Hephaistion, “but they’re Sisygambis’ granddaughters.”

For a moment Alexander paused, taken out of his rage. “Sisygambis. Gods, what a woman!” Then his temper flooded back- “I won’t be someone’s heifer-tupping stud bull!”

“But, Alexander,” said Hephaistion, almost laughing: laughter that, to Meriamon’s ears, was half pain. “That’s what a king is.”

Alexander reared up. No one breathed. Hephaistion touched the king’s shoulder lightly, daring the lion’s claws. “Think about it,” he said.

“I am—” Alexander drew a sharp, furious breath. He spun back to face Parmenion. “And if I take one of them—if I do that—will that be enough? Will you let me be?”

Parmenion opened his mouth, closed it.

Alexander’s lip curled. “Look, Parmenion. Do you see that lady there? She’s a royal Egyptian, Parmenion. Her father was their king, the last before the Persians overran them. Will you demand that I marry her, too? It would give me Egypt, wouldn’t it? It would give me sons. Do you want that, Parmenion? Do you want me to take a foreign queen?”

“I want you,” said Parmenion slowly, deliberately, “to consider the wisdom of begetting sons.”

“I am considering it,” Alexander said. “I am also remembering my father. Do you want me to be like him, Parmenion? He was a king of men, was my father. He could no more resist a woman than a dog resists a bitch in heat.”

Parmenion went white.

Alexander smiled.

Meriamon was on her feet. She did not remember how she had got there. That was death, what was between those two: the old lord of warriors who had served the kings of Macedon since he was a boy, and the young king who could endure no master.

Her shadow wrapped long arms about her. Open, it bade her. Open to the god.

“My father was a rutting bull,” said Alexander, “and it killed him. I can learn from my elders, Parmenion. I can see which way lies disaster.”

“A king without an heir is disaster to end them all.”

“I will have one.” said Alexander, “when I am ready.”

“You young pup! You’ll never be ready!”

Meriamon dropped walls and guards and shields. Her shadow rounded into substance: slender black-skinned jackal-man with eyes the color of sulfur. His breath was hot on the crown of her head. His hands, blunt-clawed, settled on her shoulders.

“Alexander!”

Her voice, the full trained voice of a singer of Amon, and in it the power of mage and priestess, daughter of the Great House of Khemet, voice of the gods.

“Alexander! This is no war for you now. What you fear, you have no need to fear. You are not as the one who ruled before you.”

They stared, all of them: eyes like burning fingers on her flesh. She saw only Alexander.

“Alexander,” she said, “for what you have failed to do, your people will pay. That shall be mended, or not mended, as the gods decree. But a battle now will destroy you all.”

His eyes were wide, fixed. He saw what stood behind her. He was not afraid of it. He kept his fear for smaller things. “What are you, lady?”

“You yourself named me. I am Meriamon, daughter of Nectanebo, singer of Amon, blood of the Great House of Egypt.”

“Is it your Amon who speaks in you now?” he asked, shaping the words with care, as if before an oracle.

Gods knew, she was hardly that. Simply a reed through whom the winds blew. “He is not
my
Amon, Alexander.”

Alexander’s lips twitched. “And yet he speaks.”

“The gods speak. I am their instrument. That is why I came to you. Will you listen to them?”

His head bent. Reverence, and true, down to the heart of him.

“Make your peace now,” she said. “You are king, and your name will live as long as names are remembered. But you must live in this world, among these people whom the gods have given you. They ask that you be a man, and more than a man, for your kingdom’s sake.”

“Must I yield, then?” he demanded with a surge of temper.

“Your heart knows,” said Meriamon. “Listen to it.”

He drew a breath. Not as quick, not as sharp as before. His eyes shifted from her face to that of the one who stood above and behind her. For a moment they seemed to blur: grey as rain, grey as mist above cold stones. They blinked.

No anger in them, no longer. Only wonder, and dawning comprehension.

“I will make peace,” he said, “for the moment. I will think on what I have been told. Is that enough?”

Parmenion might have spoken. Neither Alexander nor Meriamon heard him. “Enough,” she said, “for a beginning.”

Suddenly he laughed. It was light, free, and completely fearless. “It’s all I’ll get from you, isn’t it?” He turned. “Very well, Parmenion. You heard the lady. You heard me. I’ll think about it.”

Parmenion did not look overjoyed. But when he would have spoken, his eye caught Meriamon’s shadow and rolled white. He snapped a salute. “As the king wishes,” he said.

After Parmenion had gone, there was a long silence. The king’s Companions stood like carven men, looking anywhere but at the king, or at Meriamon.

It was Arrhidaios who spoke, startlingly loud. “Meri, who is that? Where did he come from?”

Meriamon’s breath caught. She felt her shadow’s laughter, even as it shrank again into more-than-nothingness. Without its hands on her, its body against her, holding her up, she crumpled to the carpets.

The one who bent over her was the king. The one who brought wine was a blur, indistinct, but it was Alexander who held the cup to her lips. It was good wine, for once. Strong, only lightly watered. It steadied her.

He lifted her. He was strong, and not so slight after all: compact, all smooth muscle, like his little black horse. He laid her gently on one of the couches, though she would have resisted. “No,” he said. “Rest a little. I know what you did.”

She let her head sink back against the arm of the couch. He was dismissing the others, except for Arrhidaios, who came to peer worriedly down at her. “I’m all right,” she said to him. “The god left me, that’s all.”

“Oh,” said Arrhidaios. “It was a god. What was his name?”

“It’s not proper to say it,” she said.

He accepted that. He patted her clumsily. “He’s a very nice god. He smiled at me.”

She wondered what he had seen. The Anubis-face should have terrified him.

“Arrhidaios,” Alexander said. His voice was gentle. “Will you sit down while I talk to Mariamne?”

Arrhidaios obeyed gladly enough, sitting close by her. There was an odd comfort in his presence.

A stir at the door brought them all about. A very large dog lolloped through it, flinging itself on Alexander in a paroxysm of delight.

Alexander laughed, engulfed in the beast; though he looked as if he wanted to snarl. “Peritas! Where did you come from?”

Something tawny brown and hissingly furious streaked past man and dog and shot toward Meriamon. From the eminence of Meriamon’s middle, Sekhmet yowled challenge.

“Alexander!” It was a boy, hovering in the doorway, looking disheveled and rather scared. “I’m sorry, sir, he got away.”

“And what did he get away from?” Alexander wanted to know.

The boy swallowed. “He was on your bed, sir. Asleep. Then this... creature came in, and he went after it.”

Sekhmet spat. Meriamon tried to smooth her bristling fur; got a claw-rake for her pains.

“That,” said Alexander, “is a cat. Dogs chase cats. Didn’t you know enough to head her off?”

“Sir!” The boy caught himself before he committed an indiscretion. “Sir, I tried. They tore through the whole tent, sir, and outside, and back in. By that time Peritas was in front. Sir,” he said, “it was a very thorough chase.”

“I can see,” the king said dryly. He ruffled the great brindled ears, peering at the dog’s muzzle. “She got in a stroke or ten, too. Never mind, Amyntas, I’ll keep him with me. You can go.”

The boy was happy to oblige. Peritas dropped to all fours, panting happily, seeming not the least perturbed by his battle scars. Alexander inspected them, and shrugged. “He’s had worse from brambles on a hunt.”

“Don’t insult Sekhmet,” said Meriamon. The cat was subsiding slowly. She directed a final, contemptuous hiss at the dog and mounted to the back of the couch, arraying herself there with queenly disdain.

Alexander drew a chair close to Meriamon, but did not sit in it. He did not like to sit for long, she thought. He wanted to be up and doing. “Now,” he said. “Tell me the truth. Why did you come here?”

“To serve you,” she said as she had before. Her voice was steady. She was proud of that.

“How?”

“As you saw,” she said. “I know enough medicine to be useful in your hospital. I have... other skills as well.”

“Are you a sorceress?”

She considered the word. “Maybe,” she said slowly, “as you would think of it. As I think of it, I am a priestess, a speaker for the gods. My father was a great mage. It helped him little, in the end, except to know that he was finished.”

“That always seems to be the way with magic,” said Alexander.

“Yes,” said Meriamon. “It’s fickle. When you think you need it most, it deserts you. But the gods are always there.”

“They may choose to be silent.”

“But they are there.” She sat up, settling more comfortably. “They sent me to you. They, and my father’s wish.”

“I thought your father was dead.”

“He is. He died when I was small.”

“I’m sorry,” said Alexander. He seemed to mean it.

“I remember him,” said Meriamon. “He was very tired by then, and he knew what was coming, and he was completely unafraid. ‘Years will pass,’ he said, ‘but one will follow me. That one will avenge my bones.’”

Alexander leaned toward her, intent. “He saw me?”

“From the moment you were conceived.”

Alexander straightened. “What am I to Egypt?”

“Egypt is a Persian satrapy. It loathes the yoke. It longs to be free.”

“And you think I’ll free you?”

This was battle. It was heady, dizzying: face to face, force to force, and words flying swift and hard. “Haven’t you come to free everyone from the Parsa?”

“The Hellenes sent me to end their long quarrel against Persia. They said nothing of Egypt.”

“Egypt is part of Persia. Too large a part; far too unwillingly bound.”

“Why do you hate them?”

“Why do the Hellenes hate them?”

“That is a very old war,” Alexander said, “and a very long one.”

“Ours is older,” said Meriamon. “We were an empire before ever your people saw Hellas.”

“Maybe it was time you withdrew in favor of a younger power.”

“Maybe,” said Meriamon with a delicate show of teeth. “Maybe we prefer to choose that power.”

“Why would you choose me? I might be no better than Artaxerxes.”

She laughed, hurting-sharp. “No one can be worse than Artaxerxes. No, king of Macedon. My father asked who would free us from the Persian yoke. You know what the gods answered.”

“You would free yourselves.”

“We tried,” she said.

There was a pause. He began to prowl restlessly, like the lion he resembled. Abruptly he turned to face her. “You’re telling me that I was made—that I was shaped—to be your gods’ pawn.”

Perceptive, that one. “You didn’t know it?”

He raked back his hair, almost angry, almost laughing. “I thought I was my gods’ instrument.”

“Aren’t they all the same,” she asked, “in the end?”

“By the dog,” he said. “I’m afflicted with an oracle.”

“That’s a better word than sorceress,” said Meriamon.

He looked hard at her, almost glaring. She stared steadily back. He blinked. Tilted his head. “I suppose, if I told you to go away, you’d simply keep on following me.”

“You suppose rightly,” she said.

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Then I won’t subject myself to that. You’re well situated, I’ve been given to understand. Would you rather be somewhere else?”

“No,” said Meriamon, startled, and not a little for that it mattered. “No, I like sharing a tent with Thaïs.”

“Do you?” He looked bemused. “Well, then. And Philippos has you on his roster—I approved that yesterday. All that’s wanting is a proper attendant for you.”

“I have one,” she said.

His eyes slid toward her shadow, and slid away again. “I’m sure it—he—does very well. I was thinking of someone a little more conventional. How is Nikolaos coming along?”

She blinked. She hoped that that was a shift. “He’s doing well. He can get up tomorrow. I rather lied,” she confessed, “about how bad it was. To keep him from leaping up and heading straight back to the lines.”

“With Niko,” said Alexander, “that was a very wise thing to do.” He paused, head tilted, thinking. “Good. He won’t be able to do any fighting for a while, but he should be up for light duty. I’ll see that he’s assigned to you.”

She realized that her mouth was open. She closed it. “He may not be happy about that.”

Alexander laughed. “I know he won’t be. It will be good for him. He’s been spoiled, what with one thing and another. Time he learned to do something he doesn’t want to do.”

“I’m not sure I like being a punishment.”

“You won’t be,” said Alexander, “once he stops to think. I almost wish I didn’t have to be king. I wouldn’t mind playing guardsman myself.”

She stared at him. He was smiling at her. As if she were more than a voice. As if—of all things—he liked her.

That had not been in her reckoning, when she took this duty to which she had been bred. That he would regard her as a friend. That she, who was nothing and no one in the gods’ eyes, should be glad of it; should think of him, in her turn, with friendship.

Her tongue was in control of itself. It answered him coolly. It even managed, almost, to suppress the smile that rose from one of her more antic souls. “That would be interesting. The King of Macedon relegated to the post of lady’s maid.”

He grinned, unabashed “Why not? Herakles did it, didn’t he? And I’m his seed.” His grin faded to a grimace. “I’d better go and be king now, before my kingdom gets away from me. You’re welcome to stay here for as long as you like. My brother would like it,” he added, with a glance at Arrhidaios.

“Oh, yes!” Arrhidaios said. “Stay with me, please, Meri. Will you make your god come out again?”

“If he wants to,” said Meriamon.

Alexander smiled at them both, as proud as a matchmaker with a new match. “Good, then. I’ll leave you to it.”

Clever man. He gave her time to recover her strength, and kept his brother occupied into the bargain. Peritas, at least, went out with his master, to Sekhmet’s vast relief. She spat once more to send him on his way, and promptly went to sleep.

o0o

Nikolaos was not amused. Nikolaos was loudly and lengthily displeased.

He did not even notice that he was better. He had had one bad day and a wretched night; then, almost without transition, as such things sometimes did, his body decided to heal. He would be stiff for a while, and he would be in no condition to fight until his arm was knit, but he was mending. He could walk, with his ribs bound tight and his arm in a sling. He hurt, that was evident from the set of his jaw, but he did not speak of it. It was only pain. It was idleness that drove him wild.

Until he was informed of his new duties. The message came from his captain, no less. “King’s orders,” the man said. There was nothing that Niko could say to that.

After the man had left, Niko howled. Philippos himself cast him out of the hospital, roaring in his field-sergeant’s voice: “Out.
Out!
You’re making my sick sicker! Get out of my sight!”

That at least Niko was delighted to do. Meriamon did not pursue him. He would slow down soon enough, once his hurts caught up with him.

o0o

When she came back to her tent toward evening, he was sitting in front of it. He was white around the lips, but he was steady enough. He was in armor except for the corselet. That lay on the ground with his shield under it and a pack beside it. Sekhmet leaned against his thigh as if to give him comfort.

“Think of it this way,” Meriamon said. “You get to stay with the cat.”

He glared under his brows. “Did you put him up to this?”

“Who? The king?” She was ready to hit him, or Alexander, or both of them “Gods, no! Do you think I’d have asked for you?”

That stopped him. He snapped erect, outraged; and gasped. He was not ready yet to move that quickly.

“I’m no happier than you,’’ she said, “believe me.”

“How can you—how can you dare—you—”

“There. Look what you’ve done to yourself. That’s all you need to do, pop that rib and put yourself right back in the hospital. Philippos would not be happy at all.”

His teeth clicked together. His rage was so vast, his outrage so profound, that for a moment she honestly feared that he would take a fit.

Instead he went cold. For the first time that she could remember, he controlled himself. Slowly, carefully, he drew himself to his feet. He swayed. She did not offer to support him, although she watched him closely.

He steadied. He drew a very cautious breath. “Nikolaos Lagides of the Royal Squadron, Companion Cavalry, detached”—that was bitter—”reporting for duty.”

She would never let him see that he had surprised her. She inclined her head as a royal lady should. “I accept your service,” she said, though that was not what he had offered at all.

He might have objected. But something in him had broken; or perhaps it had mended. He saluted stiffly, and stood at attention as she walked past him into the tent.