The Ravens of Falkenau & Other Stories (13 page)

“I shall not fear that,” I said primly. “Let it not be said that Ilona Thorfinn's daughter fears any other witch.”

“Well then,” Erik said, and he laughed. “Let it not be said indeed.
The Seven Stars
stands at anchor in Scapa Flow. I suppose I will bear you to Scotland, my sister.”

Lydias of Miletus, the main character of my novel Stealing Fire, is one of my favorite characters in the Numinous World.
 
The end of the book leaves him beginning his life again, barely thirty years old, with the campaigns of Alexander behind him and the rest of his life before him.
 
I think there are several more stories about Lydias and his adventures that come before this one, when Alexander's body at last comes to the city he founded.

While we have no accounts of Alexander's actual funeral in Alexandria, it probably occurred at about this time.
 
The procession, however, is not made up.
 
It comes from an account of the Ptolemaia eight years later, over the top as it is!
 
Nobody did over the top like the Ptolemies!

The stars paled over Alexandria in anticipation of the glowing orb of the sun.
 
Already some noise filtered over the garden wall, people in the streets getting an early start to this day of days.
 
I stole a piece of bread from the kitchen as though I were no more than a boy again and went to eat it on the bench beneath the young peach tree, its branches in bud but not yet blooming, away from the bustle in the house.
 

Demetria found me there.
 
"Hello father," she said, plopping down on the bench beside me.
 
"I thought I'd find you out here."
 
She was already dressed, her white chiton spotless and her hair pinned up at the back of her neck in a dozen bronze pins which it was already escaping from.
 
There were no pins that could contain her energy, no dress that could survive her for long, no matter how hard she tried to be grave and solemn.

"Right here," I said, and put my arm about her waist.
 
"You look nice."

"Like a liberated city?" she asked with a smile.

"Not really," I said.
 
"But I'm not sure I get the point of that."
 
Demetria had a part in the parade which she was very proud of, marching with a dozen other girls of good family her age as Liberated Cities of Asia in the pageant.
 
Demetria was Miletus, a nice compliment, and one I was sure I should thank Bagoas for.
 
She had a very elaborate headdress with buildings made out of gilded cartonnage.
 
It made her look less like the city of Miletus and more like a fourteen year old girl in a funny hat, but she was very proud of it.
 
"You're prettier without it," I said.

Demetria gave me a dubious look.
 
Are a father's opinions of one's appearance to be trusted, particularly when he's an old man out of touch with modern fashion?
 
I thought so.
 
She had my dark hair, almost black as mine had been, and her mother's gray eyes.
 
Alexander's eyes.
 
She was the only one of the five children with Alexander's eyes, Demetria the youngest, the child of my old age.

"Don't you need to get going?" she asked.
 
"Mother's going to take me to the staging point at the gymnasium before she goes to the reviewing stand, but don't you need to go to the palace first so that you can do whatever you're doing?"

"I do," I said.
 
Of course I did, but I might savor another moment more with her.
 
On a morning like this it seemed that the years had passed so swiftly.
 
They were passing still.
 
In a few short years she'd be married and here no more.

"The boys have already left," she said.
 
Her older brothers both had places in the parade, Isidoros with his regiment and Hephaistion with the ephebes of the city.
 
"You're going to be late."

"You are as bad as Bagoas," I said, getting to my feet.
 
"Hurry, hurry, hurry.
 
I'll hurry to the palace and stand around a century waiting for your grandfather when I might have breakfast in comfort here."

Her eyes were grave.
 
"Does he really mean to do it then?"

"What better time?" I asked lightly, but I also wondered.
 
Could it be done?
 
I knew what Ptolemy contemplated was no mere ceremony.
 
I, of all people, knew that.

Demetria said nothing.
 
She got to her feet and leaned up to kiss my cheek.
 
"Good luck then," she said.
 
"I'll see you in the parade.
 
Well, I probably won't see you, because I can't actually lift my head wearing the city, but you'll see me!"

"I'll see you," I said.
 
"You'll be perfect."

My litter was ready with my arms inside.
 
They were too heavy to wear all day comfortably if I didn't have to, and for once I didn't have to.
 
I would put them on when the time came.
 
The bearers set off at a comfortable pace, and I opened the curtains to watch the sun rise over Alexandria.

The Canopic Way was cordoned off because of the parade, though thousands of people on foot hurried along with sun shades and baskets to stake out a choice spot to watch.
 
The street cleaners had been out, and the streets steamed from the water burning off in the first sun, cleaned in the night by their pumps so that the stones shone white in the dawn.
 
Every façade, every building shone.
 
The turquoise and gold of the House of Ptolemy hung from public buildings and private houses alike, but no bunting crossed the street.
 
The floats were too big.
 
They would foul in the banners if any across the street were allowed.

I had to go by back streets.
 
Even they were crowded.
 
As we neared the palace we came close to where the regiments were to assemble, lined up in procession order.
 
Hoplites stood about, sarissas in hand, gabbing and eating pockets of dough filled with fruit that an enterprising vendor was carrying about in a tray around her neck.
 
They parted to let me through.
 

Getting through the guardpost took a moment, mainly because the Indian envoys from Bindusara were ahead of me in half a dozen litters, the nearest occupied by a nobleman in scarlet silks and his companion whose bald head and saffron robes proclaimed him a priest.
 
I leaned out to call my greetings in their own tongue, and the priest replied in good Greek.
 
"Good morning to you as well, General Lydias.
 
A very auspicious day!"

"The gods grant it may be so," I replied before our bearers parted us.
 
They were going to the reviewing stands for ambassadors, and I to Ptolemy.

It was no longer easy to enter the palace.
 
Thirty five years had passed since I had first come here, thirty five years since Alexandria rose from stakes and string.
 
Then it had been a sad excuse for a palace, a great bleak building with little to recommend it.
 
Now it was a palace in truth.
 
There was a warren of fine colonnades opening on inner and outer courtyards, gardens and seaward vistas, promenades lined with fig trees and fountains with statues of deities Greek and Egyptian alike.
 
Isis stood beneath a pair of groomed apricot trees, a sistrum in her hand, while at her feet amid carven shells a great galley rose with a sterncastle like a cornucopia, Isis Pelagia, Queen of the Seas.

"Lydias!" Ptolemy said, coming across the colonnade, two attendants at his back.

"My lord."
 
I bent my head.
 

He wore a turquoise chiton bordered in gold, but his movements were stiff and slow, deliberate rather than decisive as they once had been.
 
How not?
 
The man was nearly eighty-two.
 

I straightened up.
 
"You truly mean to do this?" I asked.

"I do."
 

"It is not too late to simply honor the King," I said.

Ptolemy put one crabbed hand on my arm.
 
"All very well for you to say," he said.
 
"A strapping young man of sixty four!
 
But no.
 
I am certain."
 
His eyes met mine, dark and keen as ever.
 
"Don't you think I've earned some peace and quiet at my age?"

"Of course," I said.
 
I glanced at his two attendants who stepped back out of earshot respectfully, as though I were a man to be feared.
 
"But it's never been done, Manetho says.
 
It's never been done, to call Horus Indwelling out of a living Pharaoh and invite him into the body of his son.
 
It's supposed to be done with your body when life has left it.
 
What will happen if we try to do this while you live…"

"I've had eight decades and more," Ptolemy said.
 
"More than enough for any man.
 
And you know as well as I that the work of the state has become too much for me.
 
Would you have me linger on into my dotage, making chaos of the work of my life in senility?
 
Philadelphos is a man grown, a man of full years and trained to be king, not a child heir or an unworthy son.
 
It's time for him to be Pharaoh.
 
It's time for me to put it down and let him take it up."

I shook my head.
 
"I know that well enough," I said.
 
"But for any man to take off the crown…
 
How does one even do it?"

He smiled at me.
 
"The same way he took it up.
 
All improvisation."
 
He lifted his hand from my arm.
 
"Come, my friend.
 
Manetho and Bagoas are waiting."

I raised an eyebrow.
 
"Has not Bagoas enough to do with the procession and banquet?"

"He does."
 
Ptolemy looked amused.
 
"He's been driving us all for days.
 
But Manetho thought that if this were to work it would be best if the same companions stood with me as at the original ceremony all those years ago.
 
And that would be you and Bagoas."

We did not go to a tomb, but rather to an inner chamber.
 
Ptolemy was not a dead man.
 
Instead, it was his office, the clutter and work put carefully away to make room for us — Ptolemy and I, Manetho and his two assistants, and as I washed my hands and face, Bagoas entered with Philadelphos.
 
He caught my eye over the prince's head.

Philadelphos looked nervous, as well he might.
 
He was a plain young man, brown haired and clean shaven, with a slight tendency toward pudginess inherited from his mother, Berenice.
 
Later in life he might run to fat, but at present he looked ordinary and cheerful, like any young advocate or teacher.
 
Well, any who in an hour might be Pharaoh of Egypt.

"Ready?" Ptolemy asked warmly.

"As much as ever," Philadelphos said.
 
His brows knit.
 
"I suppose I would be no more ready if you were really dead.
 
But then the enormity would be eclipsed by grief.
 
To invite a god into one's self, to share one's body…"

Ptolemy patted his arm, veins standing out in the back of his hands.
 
"Horus isn't such a bad guest," he said.
 
"And I should know, having shared with him for thirty four years.
 
You'll get along.
 
You're not too young."

Young to us, I thought.
 
But we had been a decade younger when we conquered the world.
 

"No, Father," Philadelphos said dutifully with a doubtful expression that looked exactly like Demetria.
 
He was, after all, her mother's half brother.

Ptolemy smiled.
 
"I'll have a few years yet, I hope.
 
Time to raise cats and write my memoirs.
 
That's worth doing, I think."

"May we begin?" Bagoas asked sharply.
 
"There is still the procession and the banquet."
 
And the other ceremony besides.
 
No wonder Bagoas seemed a bit on edge.

Ptolemy took no offense.
 
He had had decades of being ordered about by his chamberlain.
 
"Let us," he said mildly.

The door opened to admit the two friends of Philadelphos who would stand as his companions, his trusted friends his own age who might walk through life with him if the gods allowed it, and the last priest who carried the ebony box containing the funerary tools.