Stealing Fire (8 page)

“That was Alexander.” Ptolemy smiled thinly. “I have known from the day of his birth what he was.”

Isis looked interested. “You would remember that, I suppose.”

“I was eight years old, Lady,” he said. “It was the day my mother told me that Queen Olympias wanted to kill me.” He cupped his hands around the water and lifted it to his mouth again. “There were rumors. My mother assured me they were not true, but there were rumors all the same that she had lain with the King, that I was his son, not the son of Lagos. I must never excel, my mother said, or Queen Olympias would kill me, seeing me as rival to Alexander. I must always blend into the background, fade into the crowd. I must never do anything that might draw her attention. And so that is what I did.” He drank deeply from the cup.

“Surely Alexander must have heard the rumors too,” She said.

“Of course he did. Olympias told him as soon as he could walk that he must stay away from me because I would try to kill him. He did not run from me the day I met him because he had too much pride to back down from a death fight.” Ptolemy put the cup aside and smiled. “He was six and I fourteen. Of course I did not try to kill him, and of course he did not run. We agreed that our mothers were stupid, and that we should not let any silly rumor rest between us. That was not, Alexander said, the way a king should behave.”

“And so neither of you should behave thus.” Isis looked pleased. She put Her feet up on the edge of the hearth, easing Her pregnant belly.

“I will not usurp his son's throne,” Ptolemy said. “I may not be able to preserve the empire, or even his son's life, but I will not be the man to begin it. I will not take what belonged to Alexander.” His eyes were bright. “I will keep faith with him.”

“Egypt needs a pharaoh,” She said. “We need you, Ptolemy of Egypt. You are a man who has the strength and the wisdom to rule, and somewhat more. You have the self-restraint. You can keep Egypt free from foreign overlords who will bleed her dry and crush all that she is.”

“Am I not a foreign overlord?” Ptolemy raised an eyebrow. “I am Macedonian, not Egyptian, Lady.”

“You will become Egyptian,” She said tranquilly.

“Alexander did not.”

“That was Alexander.” Isis smiled. “He is a wind through the world, and no land can contain him. But we will not see his like again soon.” She put Her feet down and leaned forward, Her face growing serious. “But Alexander still lies unburied in Babylon. He is not free to descend to Amenti, to rule in the West as Osiris, or to return to these lands if he wills. He must be released, Ptolemy. You cannot keep him with you by refusing him a funeral.”

“I know.” Ptolemy glanced sideways at me. “But the Council of Regents cannot agree. Roxane wants him buried in Babylon, in a great tomb that will be the foundation stone of a new dynasty begun by her son, and Perdiccas backs her. Queen Olympias and Antipatros, the Regent in Macedon, want him returned to Aigai to lie in the royal tombs beside his father. There's a story going around that he asked to be buried at the Temple of Amon at Siwah, though I have no idea how that could possibly be accomplished. Alexander cannot be buried. At least not now.”

Her eyebrows rose. “He has been dead eight months. Is it then the custom of the Greeks to leave dead bodies embalmed and lying about, denied proper burial and decent mourning, because the heirs must quarrel over the property left behind?”

“I did not say it was seemly, Lady. Just that it is.”

“Bring the King to Memphis,” I said, and then started. I was hardly aware I had spoken until the words poured forth and they were both staring at me. It was what the Sphinx had said in my dream.

Ptolemy laughed, though I thought there was a nervous sound in it. “And how would I do that? And why?”

Isis nodded. “Memphis is the center of the Black Land. If Alexander lay in Memphis in the tomb of a hero, it would be a powerful talisman for Khemet. And you, his heir, would reign in peace.”

“I am not his heir,” Ptolemy said, and his eyes met Hers unflinching.

“Are you not?” She asked.

“No. I will not usurp his son's throne.” He had a stubborn set to his jaw for such a mild tone.

It was the goddess who looked away first. “And if the child dies?”

Ptolemy glanced down at his hands. “If the child dies through no fault of mine, then I will consider what you say. Arrhidaeus cannot rule, and he will be only a front for powerful men behind him.”

“Cannot you at least act as a Regent and a kinsman should?” She asked. “Cannot you at least claim the power to bind all his death has unleashed in Khemet? Can you not bring him to Memphis and give him proper burial? Do you not at least owe his soul its freedom?”

Ptolemy closed his eyes. “You are saying the soul of Alexander itself is bound?”

“He was crowned as Pharaoh, and as Great King besides, a living god. He cannot put that aside without proper rites. Otherwise, yes, Alexander remains bound to the body that once he inhabited.” Isis tilted Her head back and the beads in Her hair rang again. “That is what the rites are for, Ptolemy of Egypt! That is what they do! Horus departs from the dead pharaoh so that he may pass into the West.”

“And if I bring him to Memphis?” Ptolemy opened his eyes and looked at Her. “Can he then be released?”

“If you do what is needful, yes.”

“Can I do that without usurping the throne?”

I remembered what the creatures outside had said. “Surely there is a way, when the heir is a minor. Surely Ptolemy could stand as proxy for the boy.” I looked at him. “Would that be suitable?”

Ptolemy nodded slowly. “I would be willing to stand as proxy.” His eyes met Isis’ again. “As long as it is understood that I am not seizing the throne.”

“That is understood,” She said gravely.

“Then I will consider all we have said, Lady,” he said. “How shall I tell you what my answer is?”

Isis smiled, and there was no anger in Her. “I am very easy to find. Rest here, and in the morning find your way home.”

It seemed to me that the fire grew dim, and that I curled somewhere safe and warm. With some still waking part of my mind, I wondered why that was, but then I slept.

I
WOKE LYING
beside Ptolemy on the floor of a peasant's hut of mud brick. I sat up slowly and heard him stir. The sun was not yet over the walls of the wadi, but above the sky was a clear and flawless blue. I felt rested, as though I had passed the night dreamlessly on the most comfortable mattress.

And yet.

I looked about. I could see the sky through the roof where it had fallen in, a tangle of broken birds’ nests in a corner. The hearth was empty except for long cold embers. No one had lit a fire here in years. This house must have been deserted for decades.

Ptolemy sat up, and I saw him thinking the same things.

I spread my hands. There was a long gash down my left arm, the mirror of the one on his face. They looked as though perhaps we had slipped on rocks in the night or cut ourselves on some sharp edge. Such things could happen easily enough, climbing about by fading moonlight.

Ptolemy blinked. For a moment I thought he would ask me something, but then he did not. He got up and brushed off his clothes, looking out the broken door of the house, down the ravine. I could not see his face.

“Look,” he said.

I came and stood where he was.

Below, the ravine opened out, and I could see green, the edge of the cultivated fields that lined the Nile. We could not be more than a mile from the river.

“So close,” I said. Of course we had not seen it in the night.

“Come on, Lydias,” Ptolemy said, clapping me on the shoulder. “Let's get back to Memphis. Bath, breakfast, and dealing with Cleomenes.”

“I shouldn't think he'd be glad to see us,” I said.

H
E WASN'T
. P
TOLEMY
sent for him before noon, freshly bathed and shaven. Cleomenes came in with many exclamations of relief.

Ptolemy cut him off. “I do not need to hear all this. Your plan has failed, and now you will bear the consequences.” He looked over at Glaukos, who stood with his hand on his sword by the door, senior soldier of the bodyguard.

“Execute him.”

COMPANION

T
he full extent of Cleomenes’ crimes did not become evident until later. Examination of his papers and dealings exposed them. Not only had he appropriated the taxes intended to pay for the fortifications at Alexandria, but he had skimmed off a tenth of the soldiers’ pay, and taken bribes up and down the Black Land from anyone who wanted their cases heard in court.

Ptolemy was more than annoyed. “How are we to convince people that we are just, when we have such as him for an example? What can Alexander have been thinking?”

I did not answer that, of course, knowing a rhetorical question when I heard one. But Cleomenes had been appointed in the last months of the King's life, upon the recommendation of Perdiccas, after the death of Hephaistion. He had been so consumed with his grief that no doubt he had agreed to whatever Perdiccas recommended. It did not matter to him.

Kings, I thought, cannot be men. Men are subject to grief and sadness and neglect their duties when life holds no luster for them. If I should die, or if I should simply lie down and not get up to attend my work, what should happen? I should inconvenience those who must take up my job, but I should do no real harm to the realm. Kings cannot be men. They must be gods.

And I, I was nothing but a soldier.

You may wonder how it was that I became a soldier when I had been nothing but a stable boy, how I came to stand so close to one who might be Pharaoh. It was, like most things in the world, something that happened a little at a time.

I have told you how I became groom to General Hephaistion, and yet I have said so far little of the man. I hardly know what to say. If I say he was the boldest and the best of Alexander's Companions, I illustrate nothing except my own devotion. Let me begin then with this—when I entered his service after years of harsh servitude to Tehwaz I worshipped him as a boy will a hero who has suddenly taken an interest in him. I was used to work, but I was not used to thanks, and his occasional words of praise for a job well done threw me into confusions of happiness. I had mucked out well! I had Ghost Dancer groomed for parade in a way that was pleasing!

I suppose I writhed under praise like a colt who wants to obey and be made much of but has never known anything besides harshness. I took common kindness for a gift from the heavens. I should have walked through fire for him if he had asked me.

Instead, what he asked of me was far more reasonable—to keep his horses well, even on the march, and to attend to them as I would my own children. When, a year later, he made me chief groom, I was filled with pride and threw myself into improving yet again, talking to the King's Master of Horse whenever I got the chance and absorbing any bit of horse lore I might learn.

I also learned to use a sword. Once, some other boys and I were practicing, whacking at each other with blunted old wrecks and laughing, when Hephaistion came along. Perhaps it was something in my stance, or just that I had always done a good job, but he stopped me very seriously.

“Lydias, come here,” he said, “and learn how to guard properly.”

I stood beside him and he corrected my grip on the hilt in my hand.

“Like that,” he said. “Lightly. The first thing a man does from nerves is clutch at the hilt as though he were going to cut grain. Lightly. Let the sword rest in your hand, an extension of your arm. The blade should be almost in line with your forearm, not off to the side like that.”

I tried to hold it as he said, and it seemed that the sword weighed less when I did.

“Don't squat.” He walked around me, looking at my stance. “Stand naturally with your knees bent, athletically.” Hephaistion put his hand on my back. “Straighten your back.” I felt his touch through my chiton and suddenly found it intensely distracting, though it meant nothing.

“Better,” he said. He came around my right side, frowning. “Like this.” He moved my elbow back closer to my body. His passing touch raised goosebumps all over me. “Don't wave your elbow around either. How does that feel?”

“Good,” I said. The stance was better, but I hardly knew how to name the blush that rose in my face.

Hephaistion nodded. “Looks better, too. Keep practicing! You've talent enough.” He smiled and sauntered off.

I hardly knew whether to flush with pride, or with something else entirely.

Of course I knew he was the King's lover. Everyone knew that. They'd been together since they were boys, sacrificed together at the tombs of Achilles and Patroclos at Troy when they'd crossed into Asia. It was not that I thought something might happen. How should it? When he had Alexander, why would he even look twice at a groom? My unease had nothing to do with that.

Truth to tell, when it came to love I was behindhand. When I had belonged to Tehwaz there was no one I could have wanted I could possibly have looked to. Now, with the army, there were chances aplenty, both with the other boys and with the camp followers and prostitutes that shadowed us, part of the living, vibrant thing that was the baggage train.

And yet I held back. I was shy, and to boldly hand over my pay and get it done behind a wagon seemed less than I wanted. I was shy, and the other boys my age seemed low creatures compared to the beauty of the Companions. I wanted beauty and love both.

It came to me, watching Hephaistion walk away down the picket line, stopping to have a word with this man and that, that to have beauty and love both I must be worthy. No man I could desire should want an untidy sloven of a groom, and an untidy sloven of a groom should not aspire to a good wife.

A wife. I did not want a dull-eyed woman tumbled by half the army behind a wagon, but a wife. In my mind's eye she was beautiful, her face clean and bright with delight to see me. I should feel her trembling hands in mine as she pledged herself to me, meet lovely eyes glowing with anticipation.

That night, as we camped beneath the stars on the long march into Persia, I looked up at the moon glowing serenely above the hills. I took the wine from my ration and walked out into the hills, away from the camp, away from the others, and poured it out in libation.

“I do not know what words to say,” I whispered. “I do not know even which name to call you by. Lady of Stars, make me worthy of love!”

The night wind brushed the hair back from my forehead like a gentle hand, like a mother's hand remembered from earliest childhood.
Sweet boy,
She whispered,
all you need is a chance.

I bent my head and prayed for a chance, for the opportunity to make myself all I could be.

I
HAD MY
chance, though not in the way I had imagined. It came in blood, not love.

We marched northward, into the heart of Persia. Somewhere soon the King would force a battle with Darius, the Great King. Sometime soon we would meet him.

When it came, it was not in a place of our choosing. The plain of Gaugamela was wide and flat, covered only with a little grass and scrub, without rivers or significant hills, perfect for the Great King's chariots. And he outnumbered us significantly. Talk in the camp made it five to one, which I mentally revised to two or three to one, long odds but not impossible. And yet there was no talk of defeat. We had defeated him before, at Issos, and watched Darius run away, leaving his family behind him, even his old mother. Two or three to one? What is that, when we have Alexander and they Darius?

Hephaistion did not ride Ghost Dancer in the morning. Ghost Dancer was the youngest of his warhorses, the one still being trained up. For a battle such as this, he wanted Zephyr, the most experienced horse that he had brought from Greece. I made Zephyr ready, checking his tack three times to make sure everything was sound. Then I cleaned his hooves again while we waited for Hephaistion. A stone in his foot today could be deadly.

It was just after dawn. The day would be scorchingly hot, but now there was a breeze and the sky was pale blue, streaked with high thin clouds, all the world gold and blue in the sunrise. Surely in some language there were hymns for this, for gold and blue, a battle day. But I did not know them.

The generals had gone to watch the omens read before the army. I stood with Zephyr in the picket lines. Ghost Dancer stomped restlessly. He did not like it that some other would seize the glory. I petted him and he tossed his head, looking at me as if to say, you and I, Lydias, we could be about this business too.

“We could not,” I whispered, holding his head against my chest. “It's not our time yet.”

He stamped as if to disagree. I was eighteen and he four. Four is too young for the best warhorses, but in a pinch he could have done.

Hephaistion was coming from the sacrifice, his red hair shining in the sun. He was grave, not cocky. “All right, Lydias?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Zephyr is as sound as any horse ever was.”

“Good lad.” He clapped me on the shoulder and swung up easily, gathering the rein in his left hand. He looked down at me. “Take good care of the others.”

“I will, sir,” I said. Just because it was a battle day did not mean the other horses wouldn't need to be groomed and exercised as always.

An hour after sunrise they were all gone, and a strange hush fell over the camp. Just us servants remained. The cooks were busy, for men coming from battle would be hungry. Somewhere a dog barked, sounding loud in the empty camp.

I groomed Ghost Dancer head to toe.

Out there on the plain the battle would be beginning. We could see nothing, except the birds gathering on the high currents of the air, circling the place where the slaughter had begun. My palms sweated. Ghost Dancer tossed his head.

I led him out for some exercise. Perhaps walking him a little would calm him.

We walked through the camp, stopping here and there to talk with someone, with a woman baking bread in the ashes of the fire, her children playing around her. Beside the hospital tents some men were digging pits to put the arms and legs in. Farther along, toward the King's tent, were the tents of some of the officers.

The bright sunlight glittered off the hair of a woman who stood before one tent, her hand shading her eyes as she looked off where they had gone, her blue veil around her shoulders, lifting on the breeze. Her face was as serene as a goddess carved in stone, but her eyes were sharp. Not entirely Aphrodite, I thought. Athena has touched her too. A general's woman, I thought. I did not know her name yet.

Her head lifted suddenly, and I looked where she did.

A long cloud of dust was rolling toward us. Yellow and roiling, it took me a moment to realize what it must be.

The Persian cavalry had broken through our left wing, between the squares of infantry where General Parmenio held desperately.

And now they thundered down on the camp.

Someone screamed. Not her. She had already vanished inside the tent.

I saw them coming out of the roiling yellow clouds of dust, lean Persian riders on fast horses, swords flashing with blood. They had already been through the infantry lines.

Ghost Dancer let out a loud call, a challenge, and his eyes were wide.

I swung up without a thought. Had not Hephaistion charged me to take care of all that was his?

Behind me, I heard the baking woman scream her child's name, sweeping him up. The doctor looked out of the hospital tent, a long knife in his hand. Everything seemed to happen incredibly slowly.

The forms in the dust resolved. A young man with a black beard, a tan horse rendered golden by the dust, riding straight for me, his sword pointing at my heart.

“Here!” There was a shriek beside me, and I looked down to see her, the woman in blue, holding out a sword to me. I wrapped my fingers around the hilt and ripped it from the scabbard, a dressy thing with an inlaid pommel, doubtless left by its owner in favor of a more serviceable blade.

And yet it was light in my hand, light as fire.

I did not thank her. I touched my heels to Ghost Dancer instead and at last let him go.

A goose fled from our hooves as we flew like an arrow from the bow. My man had marked me, and I had marked him.

We came together in a clean pass, right side to right side, my sword blocking his, the weight of the impact shuddering all along my arm. Ghost Dancer's shoulder was against his horse's shoulder, and he shoved. The Persian horse lost his footing, stumbling.

And with the stumble I disengaged. In the second he answered his horse I thrust my sword into his neck.

I wrenched the blade free, his blood fountaining over me. Another Persian was coming up, and I spun Ghost Dancer around. He met the Persian with raised hooves, half in the middle of the turn, just as Xenophon says a horse should do, his weight on his muscled haunches. With the strength of the horse behind me, I severed the Persian's sword arm.

Ghost Dancer leapt again, and for a moment I thought I would fall. He had gotten me out of the way of two riders who converged. One should have been on each side of me, but now one of them was between his fellow and me, rendering the far one useless.

I don't think he realized what had happened before I cut him down.