Orion and the Conqueror

Chapter 29

At last we came to Pella, on a fine summer morning under an azure sky, with a cool breeze from the mountains moderating the heat of the sun. Harkan, riding beside me, murmured, “That’s a sizeable city.”

I nodded, and noted that Pella had grown noticeably, even in the two years I had been away. New houses reached up into the hills, new arcades and markets spread along the high road. A cloud of gritty gray-brown dust hung over the city, kicked up by the many corrals where horses and mules stirred and whinnied, by the building work going on everywhere, by the traffic streaming along the high road and into the city’s streets.

As we rode into the city itself Batu laughingly complained, “Such noise! How can a man think in all this bustle?”

I had paid scant attention to the city’s constant din before, but once Batu had said it I realized that the cities in Asia were much quieter and more orderly than Pella. Certainly the marketplaces were noisy with the cries of sellers and arguments of buyers, but the other sections of those ancient cities were sleepy in the hot sun, orderly and quiet. Pella was more like a madhouse, with the constant din of construction hammering everywhere, chariots and wagons and horsemen clattering through the cobblestoned streets, people laughing and talking at the top of their lungs on almost every corner.

No one stopped us or even paid us much attention as we rode up the main street toward Philip’s palace. The people were accustomed to seeing soldiers; the army was the backbone of Macedonian society and these people did not fear their army, as the peoples of the Persian Empire’s cities did.

But at the palace gate we were stopped. I did not recognize any of the guards on duty there, so I identified myself and told their sergeant that I had brought Harkan and his men to join the army. The sergeant looked us over with a professional eye, then sent one of the boys lounging nearby to run for the captain of the guard.

We dismounted and the sergeant offered us water for ourselves and our horses. Two of his men went with us to the fountain just inside the gate. They were treating us with civility, but with great care, as well.

“What’s the news?” I asked the sergeant after slaking my thirst.

He leaned casually against the doorjamb of the guard house, in the shade of the doorway—within arm’s reach of the clutch of spears standing there.

“There’s to be a royal wedding within the month,” he said, his eyes on Harkan and the men by the fountain.

“Philip’s marrying again?”

That brought a laugh out of him. “No, no—he’s still content with his Eurydice, for the while. She’s presented him with a son, you know.”

“A son?”

“A truly legitimate heir,” the sergeant said. “No question about this babe being sired by a god.” He glanced around, then added, “Or whomever the Molossian witch bedded down with.”

“And what of Alexandros?”

The sergeant shrugged his heavy shoulders. “He had gone off to Epeiros with his mother when Philip married Eurydice, but the king called him back here to Pella.”

“And he came back?”

“You bet he did. He obeyed the king’s order, all right. He’d better, after all the trouble he stirred up.”

I was about to ask what trouble Alexandros had stirred when the captain of the guard came tramping up to us, flanked by four fully-armed men. It was not Pausanias, but the officer of the day, a man named Demetrios. I recognized him; like me, he had been quartered in the barracks by the palace.

“Orion,” he said, pronouncing my name like a heavy sigh.

“I’ve returned, Demetrios, with seven new recruits for the army.”

He looked at me sadly. “Orion, you’ll have to come with me. You’re under arrest.”

I was stunned. “Under arrest? What for?”

Harkan and Batu and the others came back toward us from the fountain. The sergeant stood up straighter and glanced at the spears resting by his side.

Demetrios said, “Those are my orders, Orion. From the king himself. You are charged with desertion.”

Before a fight broke out I said, “Very well. I’m willing to accept the king’s justice. But these men are volunteers for the army and they should be treated as such. They are professional soldiers, all of them.”

Demetrios looked at them. “I’ll see that they’re well taken care of, Orion. But you must come with me.”

“All right.”

“I have to take your sword.”

I unbuckled it and handed sword and belt to him.

Harkan asked, “What will they do to you?”

“It’s all right,” I told him. “Once I’ve had a chance to speak with the king this will all be cleared up.”

Demetrios looked utterly dubious, but he did not contradict me. To the sergeant he said, “Take these men to the army barracks and have the officer in charge look them over. If they meet his approval, see that they’re properly housed and equipped.”

“Yessir,” said the sergeant.

Then he turned back to me. “Come along, Orion.”

Escorted by Demetrios and his four fully-armed guards, I marched across the palace courtyard and into a prison cell.

The cell was underground, beneath the palace, dark and so small that I could touch the walls on both sides without even extending my arms to their full reach. No window, except a barred slot on the heavy locked door. No bed; just a straw pallet on the bare dirt floor. And an earthenware jug for a chamberpot.

“I really hate to do this to you, Orion,” Demetrios told me once we reached the cell. He came inside with me, while his men waited out in the dark corridor that was lit only by a weak shaft of dusty sunlight slanting in from an airshaft. “It’s the king’s standing order. The instant you showed up again in Pella you were to be arrested. For desertion.”

“The king himself gave you this order?” I asked.

“No!” Demetrios seemed shocked to think that the king would speak to him personally. “Pausanias gave me the order, months ago. But it’s from the king’s mouth; he told me so.”

“How many months ago?” I asked. “Was it when the Hindi ambassador from the Great King returned to Pella?”

“The Hindi…” Demetrios frowned with thought. “Oh, you mean the one with the name nobody can pronounce. No, I think it was before then. Yes, it had to be before then; I remember I was surprised that you’d be accused of desertion—of anything—because you were so far away in the Persian Empire. How’d the king know you’d deserted?”

Indeed, I said to myself. How could he know what I was doing in Parsa before Ketu or anyone else returned to tell him?

“I remember!” Demetrios said. “It was during all that hubbub when the king married Attalos’ niece and Olympias stormed off to Epeiros with Alexandros.”

“That’s when the order was given?”

He bobbed his head up and down. “Yes, I remember it clearly now.”

“And you received the order from Pausanias?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” I said, looking around at the stone walls of my cell, “please tell Pausanias I am back, and safely lodged in my new quarters.”

In the dim light of the cell I could not make out the expression on his face, but Demetrios’ voice sounded strained. “I will tell him, Orion. Believe me, I’m going to him right now.”

“Thank you.”

He left me alone in the cell. The thick wooden door, reinforced with iron strapping, swung shut. I heard the bolt shoot home. I was in almost total darkness, alone except for the dagger strapped to my thigh. Then I noticed a pair of red beady eyes glowering in the darkest corner of the cell. I would not be totally alone, I realized. There were the rats.

I had plenty of time to think. The hours dragged by slowly in that dark cell. I counted the days by the times that the jailor shuffled by and shoved a shallow metal bowl of thin gruel through the slot at the bottom of the door. It was decent enough. He took the chamberpot, too, when I left it by the slot. No one came in to change the straw, though.

I can go for many days without sleep, and I feared to lie down on that straw pallet and offer myself to the rats that chittered in the darkness. In the dim recesses of my memory I recalled Anya being killed by a pack of huge, fierce rats in the filth and slime of a city’s subterranean tunnels. Her name was Aretha in that lifetime and I had been powerless to save her.

I tried to focus my thoughts on Pella and Philip and Olympias, on this time and place, on the commands that Hera had given me—and others.

There was no doubt in my mind that Hera was manipulating all of us now: Alexandros, me, even Pausanias. She had taken on human form and become Olympias, Queen of Macedon, the witch of Pella. She had created a son, Alexandros. She and Aten.

Seeing Anya take on human form and fall in love with one of their creatures, Hera did the same. And so did Aten, the Golden One, the cynical self-styled progenitor of the human race, the one who had called himself Apollo at Troy. They created Alexandros, the godling, the golden-haired offspring of the Golden One. Now Hera/Olympias was scheming to make him King of Macedon and eventually conqueror of the whole world.

“Why?” I asked in the dark solitude of my prison cell. “Why are they doing this?”

I knew there was only one way to find out. I had to face them myself, in their own domain. But to do that I had to put this body of mine into sleep, and leave it at the mercy of those hungry, baleful eyes.

Or did I? If one can truly master time, then I could leave this place in the continuum, seek out the Creators in their city by the sea, and return to this cell with no real time elapsed.

If I could truly master time.

For long hours I paced my cell, wondering if I could do it, trying to remember those other times when the Creators had moved me through the continuum to do their bidding. Their blocks against my memory were strong but I had a powerful motivation to break through: Anya had told me, on Ararat, that she was in danger. I wanted to be with her, facing whatever it might be at her side, ready to fight for her as she had fought for me so many times. Hera and the Golden One and perhaps the other Creators as well were all trying to keep us apart. Raw anger flamed through me. I would break through their control. I would do it even if it cost me my body, my life, my existence.

As I laid myself down on the damp, smelly straw, I smiled inwardly at the thought of Ketu and his Eightfold Path. Perhaps this time the Creators would end me forever. Almost, I felt glad of that possibility. Almost. But in my deepest soul I had no desire for final oblivion. I wanted to find Anya and know her love again.

I closed my eyes and willed myself to sleep. The last thing I sensed was the squeaking jabber of the rats.

I ignored them and concentrated on translating myself through the continuum to the city of the Creators. What were the physical sensations that I had felt those other times? A wave of infinite cold, as if my body had been displaced into the deepest reaches of empty space, out beyond the farthest galaxies, out where no star had ever shone. A falling sensation, weightlessness, and then—

I felt the warmth of golden sunlight seeping into my flesh. My eyes were still closed, but instead of blackness I saw a red glow brightening my lids.

Opening my eyes, I sat up and found myself on a grassy hillside dotted with wildflowers. White puffs of cumulus clouds dotted a deeply blue sky. A warm breeze made the flowers nod their colorful heads, the distant trees sway and murmur.

But there was no city. No ocean. No Creators. Nothing but an empty land stretching out to a rolling hilly horizon.

Slowly I climbed to my feet, looking for some sign of them. The Creators had to be here. Otherwise why would I have come to this placetime?

“Because you’re something of a clod, Orion.”

I whirled and there stood the Golden One with the sun at his back. He wore a short-skirted robe that seemed to gleam with a radiance of its own. His handsome face was frowning with annoyance.

“Orion, what are you trying to do? Don’t you realize that every time you disturb the continuum like this we have to work to repair the damage you’ve done?”

“Where is Anya?” I asked.

“Far from here.”

“What’s going on? Why am I being held in Pella if there’s a crisis so grave—”

“Stop this chatter!” Aten snapped. “You’ve been told more than once, Orion: your task is in the placetime where you’ve been sent. Do as Hera commands. Is that clear?”

“Not clear enough. I want to know what you are trying to accomplish.”

His narrow nostrils flared angrily. “You want to know, do you? All right, I’ll tell you. You ruined my plans for Troy. Do you remember that?”

He had wanted Troy to beat the Achaian Greeks and go on to establish an empire that would link Asia and Europe. I had thwarted him out of spite.

“That little game of yours unravelled the continuum so badly that we had to exert all our efforts to bring things back together again.”

Good, I thought. Aten had gone insane then; he neglected to recall that little fact.

“We are still trying to repair the damage you’ve done. There must be an empire that unites Europe and Asia, even if it lasts only for a few generations. It is important. Vital!”

“So Alexandros—”

“Must succeed. If you ever expect to see Anya again, you must do as Hera commands. Do you understand that?”

I bowed my head and heard myself mutter, “I understand.”

Aten shook his head and grumbled, “I must say, Orion, that you’ve been more trouble than you’re worth. But you’re strong, I’ll grant you that much. I sent you to the Mesozoic again, back among the dinosaurs, just to get you out of our way until we needed you again. But somehow you showed up at Pella.”

“Anya did that,” I replied, with a certainty that surprised me.

He gave me a sharp look. “Perhaps she did,” he mused. “Perhaps she did. When I wanted to put you in suspension, she insisted that I let you live out a life somewhere in the continuum.”

“So I was to be stored away like a toy that you had grown tired of playing with.”

“Like a tool that I wanted to keep available until I needed it again,” the Golden One corrected.

“And now?” I asked.

“Now we face the gravest crisis of all, thanks in part to your infernal meddling.”

“That is what Anya is doing, fighting against this crisis?”

“Orion, that is what we all are doing. We have no energy to spare on your antics.”

“And Hera is manipulating the events in Macedonia?”

“That is her part of the crisis. Again, because of your stubborn resistance to our will.”

“So what am I to do?”

He smiled thinly. “Nothing at all, Orion. You should have been put in cryonic storage, but I think your cell in Pella will do almost as well. Enjoy your new playmates.”

He meant the rats, I knew.

Chapter 30

I opened my eyes in the darkness of my cell and saw the red hateful eyes of the rats surrounding me. Only a few heartbeats of time had elapsed since I had lain myself down on the moldy straw pallet, I reckoned. The rats were approaching me warily, sniffing at the odor of fresh meat but not yet excited into a feeding frenzy.

I sprang to my feet and they scattered to the corners of the cell, chittering with fear and disappointment.

Thus I spent my days, pacing the narrow confines of the cell, not daring to sleep. The only mark of elapsed time came when the jailor slid my gruel through the slot in the door and collected my chamberpot. Gradually I began to look on the rats as companions.

Using the skill I had learned long ago from the Neanderthals, I tried to put myself into the consciousness of the rats. Gradually I learned to see my cell through their eyes. I felt the gnawing hunger that drove them, so much so that I started to leave my miserable bowl of gruel unfinished and let them lap up the remains.

Day after day I perfected my rapport with them, to the degree that I could sit on the floor of my cell and go with them through the cracks between the cell walls, into their nests, along the tunnels that honeycombed the palace’s cellars. Through the eyes of the pack’s leader I visited the guard room and saw the giant humans lounging carelessly, dropping crumbs of bread and scraps of meat onto the floor—a feast for the pack, once the humans had left the chamber.

I even listened to the guards’ conversations, although their voices sounded strangely deep and booming in the ears of my rats. It took some while for me to learn how to transduce the tones they were capable of hearing into words of understandable human language.

Another royal wedding was drawing near, I learned. But the more they spoke, the more bawdy jokes they made about the impending nuptials, the more confused I became. Alexandros was marrying Kleopatra, they said. Those were two of the most common names among the Macedonians. Did they mean Alexandros, the king’s son? The Little King himself? And Kleopatra was the name of Philip’s most recent wife, although he called her Eurydice.

It was Pausanias who cleared up the puzzle for me.

He came to visit me in my cell. One day I heard footsteps coming down the hall, and recognized that there was someone accompanying the shuffle-footed old man who brought me my food. Someone wearing boots. One of the rats happened to be near a crack in the corridor wall and I looked up through its eyes. Pausanias loomed like a moving mountain, shaking the rat’s sensitive whiskers with each booted step.

The guard pulled the door open on its squeaking hinges and Pausanias ducked through the doorway into my cell. He carried a sputtering torch in his right hand. He had left his sword at the guard room, I saw.

“Leave us,” he told the old man. “I’ll call when I’m finished here.”

The old man wordlessly closed the door and shot its bolt home.

“You’ve lost weight,” Pausanias said, looking me over.

I saw his nose wrinkle. “And I must smell pretty bad, too,” I said.

“That can’t be helped.”

“Why am I here?” I asked. “Why haven’t I been allowed to see the king? Or to have a trial, at least.”

“It will be over soon,” he said. His face was grim, his eyes evasive.

“What do you mean?”

“After the wedding we can let you go.”

“The wedding?”

Pausanias’ lips turned down into a frown. “The king is giving his daughter to his brother-in-law.”

“His daughter Kleopatra? Olympias’ daughter?”

“She is to marry Alexandros, King of Epeiros.”

“Olympias’ brother?” I felt shocked.

He nodded sourly. “It smacks of incest, doesn’t it? Marrying off his fourteen-year-old daughter to her own uncle.”

“I thought that Olympias was living in Epeiros with her brother.”

“She was. She has been returned to Pella.”

Philip’s statecraft, I realized. He was binding the king of Epeiros to Macedonia by marrying his daughter to him. Alexandros of Epeiros would no longer side with Olympias in their marital squabbles because he was marrying a Macedonian princess. Olympias no longer had a brother to take her side, to give her shelter, to possibly go to war against Philip for her sake.

“The One-Eyed Fox has outsmarted her,” I muttered.

“Has he?” Pausanias made a bitter smile. “We’ll see.”

“And what of our Alexandros, the Little King? How is he reacting to all this?”

“He ran off to Epeiros with his mother when Philip married Eurydice. But the king called him back to Pella and he came, obedient to Philip’s command.”

“He’s chosen his father over his mother’s wishes,” I said.

“Don’t jump to conclusions, Orion,” said Pausanias. “Alexandros will be king one day. That’s why he returned to Pella, to reinforce his claim to the throne. You know that Eurydice has born Philip a son.”

“I heard.”

“The babe will never become king of Macedonia. Alexandros is determined to succeed his father, no matter what.”

I nodded my agreement. Then I asked again, “But what has this to do with me? Why am I being kept locked in this cell?”

“You deserted your duty,” Pausanias answered crisply. “You ran away from the Persian capital and disappeared into the desert. Do you deny that?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Deserters are usually hanged, Orion. I’m allowing you to live. You’ll even have your freedom, once the wedding is over.”

“What’s the wedding got to do with it?”

He looked away from me again, as if there was something in his eyes that he did not want me to see.

“What’s the wedding got to do with it?” I repeated.

“You’re loyal to Philip,” he muttered. “It’s best that you’re kept out of the way until it’s finished.”

I stared at him for a long, wordless moment. Kept out of the way, my mind echoed. Until it’s finished.

I grabbed Pausanias by the shoulders and stared into his eyes. “You’re going to assassinate the king!”

He did not deny it.

“Olympias has swayed you. The witch has you in her spell.”

Pausanias laughed bitterly. “Jealous, Orion? She’s thrown you aside for me. Does that bother you?”

“It frightens me. I’m frightened for your sake. And for Philip’s.”

“Philip.” He spat the word. “That man deserves to die a dozen times over.”

“You loved him once.”

“Yes, and look what he did to me! He knew what Attalos had done to me and he did nothing about it. Nothing! I went to him for justice and he ignored me.”

“He made you captain of his personal guard,” I said. “That is high honor.”

“Honor my ass! He didn’t punish Attalos. After what that stinking hyena did to me he didn’t lift a finger to punish him. Not even a harsh word.”

“The king must avoid blood feuds.”

But Pausanias did not want to hear reasonable words. “He threw a sop at me and let Attalos get away without a word. Then he marries the bastard’s niece and makes a new princeling with her. And all the while he’s laughing at me; him and Attalos, laughing at me every night, every time they see each other—”

His chest was heaving, his eyes wild with rage. His hands shook so badly that I feared he would drop the torch he was carrying and set my pallet afire. I knew he was speaking Olympias’ words now. She was filling his ears with poison even deadlier than the venom her snakes carried.

Pausanias slowly pulled himself together. “None of this is your affair, Orion. You’re not a Macedonian; perhaps you should be glad that you’re not. You are an honest man and you feel loyal to the king, so I’m keeping you locked safely here until it’s all over. Then you will be freed and you can go your own way.”

“Don’t do it,” I urged. “Don’t let her destroy you.”

His twisted, bitter smile returned. “I was destroyed a long time ago, Orion. I have nothing to lose.”

Weakened though I was by long days of imprisonment, I knew that I could overpower Pausanias. Perhaps I could force him to call for the guard to open my cell door. Perhaps I could overcome the other guards loitering in their chamber down the corridor. Perhaps I could reach the king and warn him.

Too many perhapses. There was no way I could protect Philip if I were cut down by the palace guard before I could reach his side.

Pausanias called for the jailer to open the door. I was tempted to try to force my way to freedom, but then I heard the tramp of a half-dozen men accompanying the old man. They were taking no chances.

I had learned to mark the passage of time through the rats. They were mostly nocturnal animals, although how they told the difference between night and day in the windowless cellar of the castle was beyond me. Still, when I peeked in at the guard chamber through their eyes, I could tell it was nighttime when the men there crawled into their bunks and slept. There were always at least six guards on duty, although they had little to do, even during the day.

I had no idea of when the royal wedding was to take place; only that it would happen soon. By listening to the guards’ conversations I learned that it would not be at Pella, but at the ancient capita up in the mountains, Aigai. Apparently Philip was to depart for the old citadel within a day or so.

I needed more information. And help. Tentatively, I tried to control a few of my rat pack. Not merely use their senses as extensions of my own, but actively control them, make them do my bidding. I needed to find Harkan. Of all the soldiers and guards in Pella, only Harkan and Batu could I trust to help me.

I sent my rats ranging through the palace and barracks. It was dangerous for them; other packs attacked strangers in their territory. But I sent one “scout” after another scurrying along the warren of tunnels and hollows that honeycombed the palace. At last I found Harkan and Batu, still quartered together in the main barracks that adjoined the palace proper.

Now that I knew where they were, I had to reach them. That meant breaking out of my cell. But stealthily, without rousing the palace against me. Somehow I had to release the iron bolt that held my cell door locked. But how?

I knew that I could probably release myself from this placetime and travel across the continuum to the realm of the Creators, but then I would undoubtedly return to the same point in time and space that I had left; I would return to my cell. It was bitingly ironic: I could travel through uncounted ages and even span the distances between stars, but that ability was useless to me now. All I wanted to do was to get past my cell door. My barely understood powers of moving through the continuum could not help me. I had to rely on my own strength and wits.

I still had my dagger strapped to my thigh, so much a part of me that I took it for granted. One small dagger was not much of a weapon against all the guards of the palace. But it might make an effective tool.

Using the point of the iron blade I chiselled away at the wooden door at the point where the bolt slid into its iron groove on its other side. The wood was tough and old. I wondered how long my iron blade would hold an effective edge. All through the night I worked, forcing the blade’s point into the iron-hard wood and working it back and forth until another splinter fell loose. From time to time I used the rats’ eyes to check on the guards. They were snoring away in their bunks; even the jailor sat with his head down on the table, his evening’s flagon of wine drained and empty.

After hours of unceasing effort, my blade scraped the hard iron of the door’s bolt. I jerked back, shocked by the noise. It sounded loud enough to wake the sleeping guards, to me. But that was only my own fear and surprise; the guards snored on, undisturbed. Now the trick was to worm the blade into the bolt’s slot and slide it open without snapping the dagger itself. My hands grew sweaty with the effort. Four or five times I felt the blade bending dangerously and withdrew it. The bolt remained stubbornly in place.

I stopped a while and tried to think of another way to get the stubborn door open. I tried using the edge of the blade to catch some surface roughness on the bolt and slide it out of its slot that way. But the blade merely scratched along the bolt without finding any real purchase, nothing but iron sliding across iron.

Finally I hacked at the wood to make a wider opening and then wormed my index finger into the rough opening. I felt the cool round iron of the bolt, pressed my finger against it and then slid my finger back a fraction of an inch.

The bolt moved. I pulled my finger out, moistened it slightly on my tongue, and tried again. Again the bolt slid back a bit. Slowly, slowly, I pulled it out until I felt the door give slightly under my pressing weight. Taking a deep breath, I pushed the door open. The hinges groaned and I froze. But none of the guards stirred, down the corridor. I placed my chamberpot in its usual spot, then opened the door only enough to squeeze through. I shut it and slid the bolt home again. From out here in the corridor it was impossible to tell that the door had been damaged. They would not know I had escaped until the jailor realized that I had not touched the next bowl of gruel he brought.

I was free! Almost.

Holding my dagger before me I tiptoed past the slumbering guards and up the stairway that led to the ground floor of the palace. Keeping to the shadows, I managed to avoid the few guards who stood sleepily on duty. I made my way to one of the courtyards and quickly decided that the safest and swiftest way to travel was across the rooftops.

It was difficult to recognize which part of the palace I was crossing, and where the troop barracks was, especially in the dark of night. But I saw that the sky to the east was turning milky gray; soon it would be too light for me to go scampering across the roof tiles without being seen. So I found a spot where a fig tree’s branches shaded the roof. I gobbled a dozen of the ripe green figs, then settled in the tree’s shade there on the hard tiles of the roof and had my first restful sleep in weeks.

Chapter 31

I slept without dreams, although when I awoke, late in the afternoon, I had the disturbing feeling that I had been discovered in my hiding place.

Peering over the roof’s eave I saw slaves and servants bustling in the courtyard below: nothing unusual. A squad of soldiers marched past the gate, heading away from me. The sun was almost touching the mountains in the west. I smelled cooking odors, and wondered if there would be enough scraps from the evening’s meals to keep the rats fed.

If my escape had been noticed I saw no evidence of it in the courtyard below. Probably my jailor had left my daily bowl of gruel at the locked cell door and taken my pot away with him. He would not suspect anything was amiss until he brought the next meal and saw that I had not touched the previous one.

Good. That gave me roughly twelve hours, more or less, to get to Philip. Then I smiled. If the rats in my cell ate the gruel I might have even more time. But I could not depend on that.

I needed help, and for that I had to reach Harkan. I spent the last few hours of daylight studying the layout of the palace from my rooftop hiding place. I located the troop barracks and plotted out a path across the roofs to get there. Then I waited until purple dusk had faded into the full darkness of night. The moon was rising as I scampered across the roof tiles toward the barracks, silent as a wraith. I hoped.

I waited several hours more, with growing impatience, to make certain that all the soldiers were asleep before I dared to enter the barracks. At last, with a nearly full moon lighting the parade ground almost brightly as day, I swung down from the eaves and through the blanket that hung across one of the barracks windows.

They were asleep, all right. Their snores and grunts and mumbles made the darkened barracks sound almost like a barnyard. I waited several moments while my eyes adjusted to the darkness, then began a tiptoe search for Harkan.

He found me.

As I tiptoed down the aisle between the rows of bunks, I sensed a presence behind me. I whirled and reached for the man’s throat, determined to cut off his air and prevent him from awakening the others, only to see that he had a sword pointed at me. It was Harkan, naked except for his unsheathed sword.

“Orion!” he said, surprised.

“Shh!”

One of the men nearest us stirred in his sleep, but did not wake.

“I thought you were a thief,” Harkan whispered.

“I was,” I joked softly, “when I rode with you.”

“Have they released you from prison?”

“I released myself.”

In the shadows of the darkened barracks I could not see the expression on his bearded face, but his silence told me that he did not know what to say. I gripped his shoulder and together we walked quietly to the end of the long room.

“I must get to the king,” I said as we stepped outside onto the landing of the stairs that ran down to the parade ground.

“He left for Aigai this morning.”

“Then I must go to Aigai.”

Now, in the moonlight, I could see Harkan’s face. He looked perplexed. “You’re a fugitive.”

“That was the queen’s doing. The king will pardon me when he hears what I have to tell him.”

“You think so?” another voice asked. A deep voice: Batu’s. He stepped out of the inky shadow cast by the overhanging roof. Like Harkan he was naked, and armed with a sword.

I clasped his outstretched hand as I asked, “What are you doing out here?”

With a broad smile Batu replied, “I heard you scrabbling across the roof tiles. Harkan went to one end of the barracks, I went to this end.”

“You two sleep very lightly.”

“It comes from the life we’ve led,” said Batu lightly. “Those others in there, they’ve been paid soldiers all their lives. Bandits don’t sleep as well as they do.”

I grinned back at him.

“But what makes you think the king will pardon you?” Batu asked again.

“Even if he doesn’t, I have to warn him. Pausanias plans to kill him at the wedding.”

Harkan scowled at me. “That’s a serious charge, Orion.”

“He told me himself.”

“And the queen is behind it?”

“Yes.”

“That means Alexandros is in it, too.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “He will certainly benefit from it—if we allow it to happen.”

“We?” Batu asked.

“I need your help,” I said. “I can’t get into Aigai by myself.”

They both fell silent for many moments. I could understand what was going through their minds. They had found employment, a roof over their heads, a place in the world here in Philip’s kingdom. They were no longer outlaws, hunted, living in the wild little better than the beasts. And I was asking them to throw all that away, to desert their positions and fling themselves into the midst of the machinations being hatched by the witch-queen Olympias.

They would be fools to agree. Yet they owed their comfortable positions to me and they knew it. I had brought them to Pella and Philip’s employ. If anyone had a right to ask them to give it up, it was I.

Before either of them could speak, my own mind hatched a plot of its own.

“Has Pausanias left for Aigai yet?”

“He departs tomorrow at first light,” said Harkan.

“Then listen to me,” I said, “Pausanias will send you scouring the countryside when he finds that I have broken out of confinement. He knows I will head for Aigai and he’ll send you and most of the guard searching for me. All I ask is that when you find me you bring me to the king, not to Pausanias or the queen.”

“How do you know Pausanias will send us?” Harkan asked.

“And even if he does, he will not send only the two of us,” added Batu. “How can you be certain that we will be the ones who will find you?”

I gave them a grim smile. “Pausanias will send almost the entire royal guard, never fear. And I will find you, my friends. In the hills outside Aigai.”

Harkan looked doubtful, Batu amused at my certainty.

“When does the wedding take place?” I asked.

“The night of the full moon.”

I looked up at the fat waxing moon. “Three nights from now, I judge.”

They agreed.

“Search the hills to the right side of the road before Aigai,” I said. “I’ll be waiting for you there.”

Before they could argue I reached up to the edge of the eave and, after lifting myself onto the roof, ran toward the section of the barracks where Pausanias and the other officers slept in individual rooms.

I had no way of knowing which window was his. I simply swung myself through the first one I came to. It was not Pausanias, but the man stirred in his sleep as I leaned over him close enough to see his face in the darkness. Four sleeping rooms I went through before I found Pausanias. There were no guards in the corridor that linked the rooms, although I knew there was a perfunctory pair of men drowsing on guard duty down in the yard, before the door to the barracks.

At last I found Pausanias’ room. He was tossing unhappily in his sleep, moaning slightly. The thin chiton he wore was soaked with perspiration.

I clamped my left hand over his mouth and pointed my dagger at his suddenly wide-open eyes.

“Dreaming of the queen?” I asked. “Waiting for her to invite you into her bed once again?”

His right hand moved slightly, but I touched the point of my dagger to the artery pulsing in his throat. He froze into immobility.

“Has she promised to make you regent here in Pella while her son goes off to conquer the Persians?”

I could see by his eyes that this idea was a surprise to him.

“Not even that?” I asked. “All she’s offered you is her body? She certainly has you entranced, then.”

He tried to say something but my hand muffled his words.

“Your cell wasn’t strong enough to hold me, Pausanias. Now I’m going to the king and tell him what you told me. The next time you see me, you’ll have a noose around your neck.”

I sheathed my dagger. He shoved my hand away from his mouth and reached for the sword hanging beside the bed. I punched him solidly on his temple and he went limp, unconscious.

Then I ducked through his window and back up onto the roof, heading for the stables and a fast horse and the hills before Aigai.

Pausanias reacted almost exactly as I had expected. By the time I had swung off the road to Aigai and nosed my horse up into the brown hills, couriers on lathered horses raced to the old city’s gates. Before the sun went down that day a troop of royal guards came up the road, riding almost as hard as the couriers, with Pausanias at their head. They made camp in front of the city wall, obviously to block my entry into Aigai.

Pausanias went inside. To the queen, I imagined, breathless to tell her of the danger to their plans that I represented. I smiled to myself as I made my own camp for the night. No fire for me. I was not ready to be caught just yet. I let my horse crop the scrawny grass pushing up through the rocky ground while I armed myself with a handful of small stones and went hunting. I killed a hare, skinned it and ate its meat raw. It was tough, but nourishing enough. Then both the horse and I drank at a shallow stream bubbling down the hillside.

She came to me in my dreams, of course.

Hera was furious. No sooner had I closed my eyes in sleep than I found myself standing before her in a chamber so vast that I could see neither its walls nor its ceiling. Enormous columns of gray-green marble rose like a forest, dwarfing even the many-columned hall of the Great King. Hera sat on a throne that glowed faintly, completely alone, magnificently beautiful in a flowing white robe that left her slim arms bare except for her jeweled bracelets and armlets, all in the shape of coiling snakes.

Staring down at me with fiery eyes, she snapped, “You are more trouble than you’re worth, Orion.”

I smiled at her. “I accept that as a compliment.”

Her eyes blazed. She leaned forward slightly, hands clenching into white-knuckled fists, body rigid with tension.

I felt the beginnings of the pain she had inflicted on me before, but I fought against it, strove to banish it from my consciousness. It faded away before it became anything more than an annoying tingling.

Hera’s face contorted into an even angrier frown.

“It’s not working,” I said. “You can’t punish me the way you once did.”

“You’re being protected!” The thought seemed to surprise her.

“Or perhaps I’ve learned to protect myself,” I said, not daring to hope that Anya was near. She was the only one who would protect me, I knew.

“Impossible. We wiped that capability from your mind before we sent you here.”

“We?” I asked. “You and the Golden One?”

She did not need to answer; I knew.

“You failed, then. My memories are returning. My abilities are growing.”

“We will destroy you, once and for all.”

I thought of Ketu. “And grant me the release of oblivion?”

Hera glowered at me.

“The Golden One fathered Alexandros, didn’t he? The two of you are playing at kings and empires. Does it amuse you? Is there some point to it beyond your own pitiful entertainment?”

“You don’t understand anything, Orion.”

“Don’t I? As far as I can see, you are serving the whims of Aten, the Golden One, whatever he’s calling himself now. He wanted to create a Trojan empire that spanned Europe and Asia. I stopped him then. Now he gets you to help him create the empire he’s wanted all along—by bearing his son, Alexandros, and allowing him to conquer the Persians.”

“Alexandros will conquer the whole world,” Hera said. “He must, or this nexus in the continuum will unravel disastrously.”

“But Philip stands in his way. He has a new son now, one that he is certain comes from his own seed.”

“Philip will die.”

“At Pausanias’ hand.”

“Of course.”

“Not if I can stop him.”

“You mustn’t!”

“Why not?”

Her anger had faded. Now she seemed alarmed, almost frightened. But she pulled herself together, regained her self-control. Hera leaned forward again and smiled coldly at me.

“Orion, consider: if this nexus unravels the fabric of spacetime, everything changes. You will be torn from Anya just as surely as the Earth will be destroyed in nuclear fire a few thousand years up the time-stream.”

“And if I obey you and allow Philip to be assassinated?”

She shrugged her slim shoulders. “At least we will be dealing with a continuum we understand and can control.”

“What is this great crisis that Anya spoke of? What is happening elsewhere in the continuum?”

Her face clouded over. “Problems so intricate that not even we Creators fully understand their implications. Anya is far from Earth, Orion, light-years off in interstellar space, attempting to deal with one aspect of the crisis.”

“Is she truly in danger?”

“We are all in danger, Orion. The forces ranged against us are beyond comprehension.”

Her usual haughty, taunting tone was gone. She was visibly fearful.

“How does this matter of Philip and Alexandros relate to Anya?”

I saw her draw back, a flicker of exasperation touching her face. “You are a stubborn mule, Orion!”

“Tell me,” I demanded.

She heaved an annoyed sigh. “We cannot get out of this nexus until its flow is resolved, one way or the other!” Hera blurted. “We are locked into this placetime, Aten and I, and will be until the decision is made! Either Philip dies or Alexandros. Until one of them is killed, we cannot return to the continuum to help Anya and the other Creators.”

“You’re stuck here?”

Very reluctantly she admitted, “Yes.”

I did not want to believe her, but suddenly much of what I had experienced made sense to me. When I had translated myself to the Creators’ city it was empty and abandoned. Whenever I had left this placetime I had returned precisely to the same time and place again. If what Hera was telling me was true, she and Aten were trapped here also. That was why Anya could not come to me; she was enmeshed in this snare just as they were.

Without meaning to, without even thinking about it, I burst out laughing.

Hera’s blazing anger returned. “You find this amusing?”

“Incredibly so,” I answered. “Your meddling with the continuum has finally caught up with you. You sent me here to be rid of me, and now you’re trapped here with me!”

I laughed until tears rolled down my cheeks.

Chapter 32

Hera disappeared so abruptly that I felt a jolt of physical alarm at finding myself back in the predawn cold of the hills near Aigai.

Pulling myself up to a sitting position, I waited and watched the dawn come up over the rugged eastern horizon. So Hera and Golden Aten are trapped in this nexus of the continuum, unable to get away from this placetime unless and until either Philip or Alexandros dies, I thought. Unable to reach Anya and the other Creators. Unable to help them in their battle out among the stars.

I got to my feet, wondering what I was to do. I could not let them kill Philip; he had been just and true to me. He was the one pillar on which the safety and prosperity of his people rested. Kill Philip and Alexandros would become king and immediately go chasing off for the glory of conquering the world. Years of wars and killing. To what end? Why should I help to make that come about?

Yet that is what Aten, the Golden One, had been scheming for all through the centuries since Troy. His vision of human destiny required an empire that brought together the wealth of Asia with the ideals of Europe. I remembered another time, another place, far to the east, when I was sent to assassinate the High Khan of the Mongols. Then my mission had been to prevent the Mongol empire from engulfing Europe.

Hera honestly seemed to believe that what we did here in this placetime had profound consequences for the space-time continuum as a whole. I had my doubts. I thought that Aten and the other Creators dabbled with the flow of the continuum, interfered with human history as a game among themselves, a pastime of the gods. They saw the human race as their creation, their playthings. Wars, empires, murder and human misery were simply amusements for them.

Yet Hera seemed frightened enough. And Anya was in danger, she said. Somewhere out among the stars Anya was fighting a battle for her life.

I shook my head. Maybe Hera was right: it was all beyond my comprehension. Yet I knew that what I was about to do would be pivotal. Aten and the other so-called gods had created me and a handful of other warriors to serve them, to be sent to specific critical points in the space-time continuum and alter the flow of events for the benefit of our Creators.

They created us, but we created them. I remembered it fully now. I remembered being sent back into the Ice Age to wipe out the Neanderthals. I remembered Anya taking human form to help me and the handful of creatures Aten had sent on that genocidal mission. I remembered how we survived the battles and the cold of centuries-long winter. How we peopled the earth. How we became the human race. How our descendants in the distant future became the Creators who made us and sent us back in time to start the chain of events that would ultimately lead to themselves.

All this I remembered as I stood in the chilly dawn of the worn, stony hills. But nothing in my newfound memories told me what I should do next. Nothing except the unshakable realization that Anya was the only one among the Creators to care enough about any of us to share our dangers, our pains, our fate.

I loved her. That much I knew without question. I thought she loved me. And she was in danger, far from this place and time.

The whinny of my horse snapped me out of my reverie. I had left the steed loosely tethered to a scraggly bush so that it could reach the sparse grass growing among the rocks without wandering off too far.

It had sensed someone approaching, I suspected. I crawled up atop one of the bigger boulders and, flat on my belly, scanned the slope of the rocky hill below.

Sure enough, there was Harkan in the armor of the royal guard, coming up the slope. He was alone. A pair of spears was tied to his mount’s side and his sword rested against his hip. His helmet was tipped back on his head. He was peering at the hard stony ground, looking for some sign of me. If I just remained where I was he would pass me by a hundred yards or so and never know I was near. As long as my horse kept silent.

I decided, though, to keep the bargain I had made with him. Scrambling to my feet I called out his name. His head jerked up and he raised one hand over his eyes. The sun was at my back.

“Orion,” he called back.

By the time I had climbed down from the boulder he had dismounted and was walking up to me, leading his horse with one hand.

We clasped forearms.

“I brought some biscuits and cheese,” Harkan said. “I thought you might be hungry.”

“Good. Let’s have breakfast. It might look suspicious if you brought me in too early in the day.”

He made a small smile and went to the pack his horse carried. There was a skin of wine in the pack, too. And a handful of figs. The sun was getting high in the morning sky by the time we finished. I stood up, wiping my hands on the hem of my chiton, and saw that rain clouds were building up in the east.

“Maybe we should get to the city before the storm arrives,” I said.

Harkan nodded glumly. Then he held out his hand. “Your dagger, Orion. Pausanias knows you have a dagger. I’d better take it.”

I felt a bit uneasy about that, but I slid my dagger from its sheath on my thigh and handed it to Harkan, hilt first.

“Thank you,” he said. And that was all he said as we mounted up and began the ride downhill to the road and then up the road to hilltop Aigai. Harkan’s silence bothered me; it was as if something was troubling him.

“What’s the news?” I asked as we rode side by side.

“Nothing much,” he said, not turning to look at me.

“Have you found your children?”

He gave me a sidelong glance. “They’re in Aigai; they belong to the king now.”

“Philip will give them back to you,” I said. “Or sell them to you, at least.”

“You think so?”

“Once you tell him that you’re their father, he’ll probably release them to you without payment.”

“He likes silver and gold, they say.”

“Even so, he knows what it is to be a father. He won’t keep them from you.”

Harkan nodded grimly, like a man heading toward battle.

“Pausanias was surprised that I broke out of my cell, was he?”

“Surprised is hardly the word, Orion. He’s been in a frenzy. He wants your head on a spear and he’s promised a great reward for whoever brings you to him.”

“You’re going to get the reward, then.”

“Yes,” he said, without enthusiasm.

We rode for a long, silent time. Something was obviously gnawing at Harkan. His children? The fact that he was turning me over to Pausanias?

I asked, “Where’s Batu? Why isn’t he with you?”

He did not reply at once. At length, though, Harkan said, “I thought it would look too obvious if the two of us brought you back. Too suspicious. Batu’s riding through the hills on the other side of the road, with a full company of the guard. Searching for you.”

I nodded and he fell back into silence once more.

Within a quarter-hour of our reaching the road, a whole contingent of guards galloped up to us.

“You’ve got him!” exclaimed their leader. “Good!”

He waved to a pair of riders at the end of his column and they trotted up to us. Chains jingled from the packs on their horses’ rumps.

The guard leader gave me a rueful look. “Sorry, Orion. Pausanias’ orders. You’re to be manacled and fettered. He’s taking no chances on your getting away again.”

Harkan would not look at me, and the other guards seemed shame-faced to see one of their erstwhile comrades chained by the wrists and ankles. Even the two smiths who fastened the cuffs to me were almost apologetic as they drove home the rivets.

So I arrived at Aigai with my hands cuffed behind my back, my ankles chained together, tossed across the back of my horse with my head dragging down in the dust, trussed like a sacrificial offering. Which, I realized, Pausanias meant me to be. My only hope was to see the king before Pausanias killed me.

I got an upside-down worm’s-eye view of Aigai’s massive main gate and its thick wall, its dirt streets winding upward to the citadel at the very crown of the hill, and the even sturdier wall and gate of the castle proper.

But they did not take me to the king. Despite my protests they dragged me from my horse and down into the ancient dungeons of the castle that had been since time immemorial the seat of the kings of Macedonia.

“Take me to the king!” I shouted again as they locked me into a cell. My throat was getting hoarse from my unheeded demands. “I must see the king and warn him!”

To no avail. They dumped me into the dirt-floored cell, still chained. The last one to leave me was Harkan. He waited until all the others had filed out, then knelt beside me.

Ah-hah! I thought. Now he’s going to tell me that he’ll return and get me out of this.

But instead he whispered swiftly, “I’m sorry, Orion. It was you or my children. She’s promised to give them back to me if I brought you in.”

She. The queen. Olympias. Hera.

“She means to kill me,” I said.

He nodded wordlessly and then left me lying there on the floor of the cell. The door clanged shut and I was alone in the darkness.

But not for long. My eyes were just adjusting to the gloom when I heard footsteps coming down the corridor outside. The door was unlocked and pushed open. Two jailers came in and, grunting, lifted me by my armpits to a sitting position and dragged me across the cell until my back was propped up against the rough stone wall.

They left and Olympias stepped into the cell. Pausanias came in behind her, holding a torch in his right hand.

“We should kill him now and get it over with,” Pausanias muttered.

“Not just yet,” said Olympias. “He may still be of value to us, once Philip is dead.”

I saw the ageless eyes of Hera in her beautiful, cruel face.

“What value?” Pausanias snapped.

“You question me?”

He immediately yielded to the iron in her voice. “I just wanted to know—that is, he’s dangerous. We should be rid of him.”

“After Philip is killed,” Olympias whispered. “Then you can have him.”

“Do you think I won’t go through with it?” Pausanias snapped. “Do you think I need a prize, a reward, to make me kill the king?”

“No, of course not,” she soothed. “But wait until afterward. It will be better afterward, I promise you.”

Pausanias stepped closer to me. “Very well. After.” Then he kicked me with all his might squarely on the side of my head. As I slid toward unconsciousness I heard him growl, “I owed you that.”

Chapter 33

I remained unconscious willingly, deliberately. My body lay in the musty cell, chained hand and foot, but my mind was aware and active. I sought out the city of the Creators once again, seeking the only refuge I could think of.

My eyes opened on that grassy hill above the empty and abandoned city. The sun glittered on the sea, the flowers nodded to the passing breeze, the trees sighed as they had sighed for a hundred million years. Yet I could not approach the city any closer than I had before. Once again that invisible barrier held me in its grip.

There was nowhere for me to go except back to Macedonia, back to that dark dungeon in Aigai, chained and helpless while Hera goaded Pausanias into murdering his king. There was no way I could get to Philip in time to warn him.

Or was there? If I could not get out of my cell to go to Philip, could I bring him here to this ageless bubble of spacetime to be with me? I paced along the soft grassy slope, thinking hard, noting absently that as long as I walked away from the city I was not hindered by the barrier.

How often had the Creators summoned me here? How many times had I made the transition from some place and time to this eternal city? I knew what it felt like so well that I could translate myself here without their aid, without their even knowing it. Could I stretch that power to pluck Philip from Aigai and bring him here, even briefly, to warn him?

As I pondered the problem I thought I heard the faintest, subtlest echo of laughter. Mocking, cynical laughter that seemed to say to me that I had never moved myself through the continuum unaided, that I did not have the power to translate a molecule from one placetime to another, that everything I thought I had done on my own was really done for me by one of the Creators.

No, I raged silently. I have achieved these things by myself. Anya told me so in a previous life. The Creators were even becoming wary of my increasing powers, fearful that I would one day equal them despite all they tried to do to stop me. That is why they wiped my memory and sent back to ancient Macedonia. But it didn’t work. I am learning again, growing, gaining strength despite their betrayals.

That mocking laughter was one of their tricks, I told myself—trying to weaken my resolve, my self-confidence.

I can bring Philip to me, I told them. I know how to do it. I have the power.

And Philip, king of Macedonia, appeared before me.

He seemed more annoyed than startled. He was wearing nothing but a thin cloth wrapped around his middle. His one good eye blinked in the sunlight, and I realized that I had taken him from his sleep.

“Orion,” he said, without surprise.

“My lord.”

He looked around. “What place is this? What’s that city down there?”

“We are far from Macedonia. You might say that the city is the abode of the gods.”

He snorted. “Doesn’t look much like Mount Olympus, does it?” His body was covered with scars, old puckered white lines across his chest and shoulders, a raw ugly knotted gash along the length of his left thigh. He bore the history of all the battles he had fought.

“Pausanias told me that you’re a deserter. Are you a witch, as well?”

I started to answer, then suddenly realized that Olympias had shown him other domains of spacetime just as she had shown me. Philip was not startled to be plucked from his bed and drawn to a different part of the continuum because she had done this to him previously.

“No, I’m not a witch,” I replied. “Neither is your wife.”

“Ex-wife, Orion. And I guarantee you, she is a witch.”

“She’s shown you other places?”

He nodded. “More than once, when we were first married. She showed me how powerful Macedonia could become if I followed her advice.” Then he aimed his one good eye at me. “You’re in league with her, then?”

“No. Quite the contrary.”

“You have the same powers she has.”

“Some of the same powers,” I said. “I’m afraid she’s much more powerful than I.”

“More powerful than anyone,” he muttered.

“She means to kill you.”

“I know. I’ve known it for years.”

“But this time—”

He held up a hand to silence me. “Speak no more about it, Orion. I know what she plans. I’ve outlived my usefulness to her. Now it’s time for Alexandros to fulfill her ambitions.”

“You want to die?”

“No, not particularly. But every man dies, Orion, sooner or later. My work is finished. I’ve done what she wanted me to do. She’s like a female spider that must devour her mate.”

“But it doesn’t have to be that way,” I objected.

“What would you have me do?” he asked, his fierce beard bristling. “If I want to stay alive, stay on the throne, I’ll have to kill her and I can’t do that, else she’ll goad Alexandros into civil war. Do you think I want to see my people torn apart like that? Do you think I want to kill my own son?”

Before I could answer he went on, “If Macedonians make war on each other, what do you think the nations around us will do? What do you think Demosthenes and the rest of the Athenians will do? Or the Thebans? Or the Great King over in Persia?”

“I see.”

“Do you? We’ll be right back where we were before I made myself king.” He pulled in a deep breath, then added, “And even if he’s not my true son, that makes no difference. I won’t murder him.”

“Then they will murder you,” I said. “Within a day or so.”

“So be it,” said Philip. “Just don’t tell me who or when.” He grinned sardonically. “I like surprises.”

I shook my head in dismay and began to walk away from him.

“Wait,” he called, misinterpreting me. “Will it be you, Orion? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

Drawing myself up to my full height, I said, “Never! I’ll die myself before I let them kill you.”

That one good eye of his scanned me closely. “Yes, you would, wouldn’t you? I never believed you had deserted.”

He turned away from me and began to limp down the hillside toward the city. Before he had taken three steps he winked out, leaving me alone in that distant bubble of spacetime. I closed my eyes…

And opened them in the dungeon beneath the castle at Aigai. I was still chained hand and foot and the side of my head where Pausanias had kicked me throbbed with sullen pain.

There was no way for me to reckon time in that dark cell except for the beat of my own pulse. Impractical, yet for lack of anything better to do I counted beats the way an insomniac might count sheep. I could leave this cell and translate myself to the Creators’ abandoned city, but I would always return to this same place, in the same chains. Like Hera, I was trapped here until the cusp of this nexus was resolved, one way or the other.

I gave up counting pulse beats when I realized that there were rats in this cell, just as there had been in the one at Pella. My cell mates, my companions, ready to gnaw off my toes or fingers if I did not wiggle them every now and then. The manacles on my wrists were so tight that a normal man’s hands would have swollen painfully from lack of blood circulation. I consciously forced my deep-lying blood vessels to take over the work of the peripherals that were squeezed shut by the manacles. And I moved my fingers constantly to help keep the circulation going—and to discourage the beady-eyed hungry rats.

I heard footsteps shuffling along the corridor outside. They stopped at my door. The bolt squealed back and the door groaned open. My two jailers stood out there, one of them holding a torch.

Between them stood Ketu.

He pushed between the jailers and came into my cell. Kneeling beside me, he peered into my face.

“You are still alive?”

I made a smile for him. “I haven’t achieved Nirvana yet, my friend.”

“Thank the gods!” He straightened up and told the jailers to take me outside.

They had to drag me, grunting and struggling, to the big room at the end of the corridor. My heart thumped when I saw that the place was filled with instruments of torture.

“The king has ordered your release,” Ketu reassured me. “This smith here—” he pointed to a sweaty, hairy, totally bald man with a bulging pot belly—“will strike off your chains.”

He nearly struck off my arms, but after nearly half an hour of clanging and hammering I was free once again. My wrists and ankles were raw where the cuffs had chafed my skin, but I knew they would heal quickly enough. Ketu led me out of the dismal cellar and up into the fading sunlight of a dying day.

“The king’s daughter has been safely married to Alexandros of Epeiros,” Ketu told me. “Philip himself instructed me to set you free and give you all that you need to leave Macedonia. You may travel wherever you want to, Orion.”

“The wedding is over?” I asked.

He was leading me to the stables, I saw. Ketu answered, “The marriage ceremony was last night. The feasting will last another two days, of course.”

“Has anyone tried to assassinate the king?”

Ketu’s liquid eyes went wide. “Assassinate? No! Who would dare even try?”

“A traitor,” I said.

“Do you know this for certain?”

“I’ve heard it from the traitor’s own lips.”

“You must tell the captain of the king’s guard, Pausanias.”

“No, I must get to the king himself.”

Ketu grabbed at my arm. “That cannot be. Philip gave me specific instructions. He does not want to see you. He forbids it! You are to take as many horses as you need and leave Aigai, leave Macedonia, and never return.”

I stood there in the middle of the castle courtyard, near the dusty stables. They smelled of hay and manure and the warm strength of the animals. Flies buzzed lazily in the purpling shadows of dusk. From far behind me I could hear the faint music of flutes and tambourines, and the raucous laughter of drinking men. Pausanias was there with the king. And Philip wanted me out of the way just as much as Olympias did.

“No,” I said, as much to the gods as to little Ketu. “I won’t let them kill him. I don’t care what it does to their plans or to the fabric of the continuum. I won’t let it happen!”

Pulling free of Ketu’s restraining hand, I started toward the palace proper, where the wedding celebration was still going strong.

Ketu scampered beside me. “No, you must not! The guards have orders not to admit you. Philip does not want to see you. It will mean your death to try to force yourself upon his presence.”

I ignored him and strode toward the big doorway where four men in armor stood guard.

“Come with me, Orion,” Ketu begged. “We will travel the breadth of the Persian Empire and return to my land, to beautiful Hind. We will see the holy men and seek their wisdom…”

The only thing I sought was to save Philip, to shatter Hera’s murderous plan, to protect the king who had shown me his trust.

“Please, Orion!” Ketu’s eyes were filled with tears.

I left him standing there in the middle of the courtyard and approached the guards at the door. All four of them bore spears; two of them crossed their spears in front of the wooden double door.

“No one is allowed inside,” said their leader. I recognized him as a barracks mate.

“I must see the king.”

“I have my orders, Orion. No one means no one.”

“Yes,” I said softly. “I understand.”

Swifter than his eye could follow I snatched his sword from its scabbard with my right hand while I drove the heel of my left beneath his chin. His head snapped back and I heard the spinal cord crack. Before the others could react I smashed the next guard on his helmet, splitting the bronze and the bone beneath it.

They both fell in slow motion as I turned to face the two men who still stood with their spears crossed in front of the door. I could see their eyes widening, their mouths gulping air in surprised shock. I drove my sword through the nearer one’s chest so hard that it impaled him on the door. His companion was levelling his spear at me; a clumsy weapon when I was so close. I grabbed it with one hand while I kicked his kneecap out from under him. He went down with a yowl of pain and I pushed through the door, the dead guard still hanging from the sword through his chest.

I pulled it out and he dropped to the floor of packed earth. Bloody sword in hand, I went looking for Philip. And Pausanias.

Chapter 34

The castle of Aigai was old and grim, its ground floor nothing more than hard-packed dirt, the walls of the chamber I strode through made of rough-hewn stones, dark as the bloody sword I gripped.

I could hear the sounds of revelry coming from the main hall. The wedding had taken place the day before, from what Ketu told me, but the celebration roared on. Philip would be there, steeped in wine. Pausanias, as captain of the guard, would be in charge of protecting him. Olympias would be elsewhere in the castle, waiting to hear the wailing and cries of murder.

And Alexandros? Where would he be? Was he part of the murder plot? Did he know what his mother had set in motion?

There was another quartet of guards at the door to the main hall, each of them aimed with spear and sword. Harkan and Batu were among them, I saw.

Harkan’s bearded face went red once he recognized who was approaching. Batu smiled as if he’d won a wager. The lieutenant in charge stared at my bloody sword.

“Orion,” he snapped, “what’s going on?”

“They’re going to kill the king unless we stop them.”

“Kill the king? Who?”

“Pausanias.”

“Are you crazy? Pausanias is captain of the—”

He never finished the sentence. Screams and roars of rage broke out from the other side of the door. Harkan threw the door open and we saw that the hall was in turmoil. Men were leaping across couches, servants and slaves were scattering in every direction, screaming in terror.

“The king! The king!”

I bolted past Harkan and the others, through the wildly scrambling crowd, toward the king. A dozen men clustered around him. I pulled them away, forced my way to Philip’s side. He lay back against his couch, wine goblet locked in one frozen hand, his other clutched against his middle, his gut ripped open, hot red blood soaking his robe and dripping onto the dirt floor. It was a painful way to die.

“I trusted you,” he muttered. “I trusted you.”

And I heard Hera’s bitter laughter in my mind. The vision from my old dream had come true. I stood before the dying Philip with a bloody sword in my hand and watched the light fade from his eye.

Harkan grabbed me by the shoulders. “This way,” he said in a low voice. “Pausanias fled toward the stables.”

As I ran back toward the door with him and Batu, I saw Alexandros standing on one of the tables, white-faced with shock, guarded by Antipatros and Antigonos and a dozen of his Companions. None of them had weapons on them, but if an assassin meant to reach Alexandros he would have to go through them first. Armed guards were pouring into the hall, though, through the doors at its far end.

“I swear by Almighty Zeus,” Alexandros was shouting, his voice nearly cracking with emotion, “that I will find the assassins and deal with them as they’ve dealt with my father.”

So now he’s your father again, I thought as we left the hall. And you are his son and heir to the throne. Hera and the Golden One will have their way; pity the Great King and his shaky empire.

The three of us raced across the courtyard to the stables. A half-dozen armed men barred the gate, but we cut them down without an instant’s hesitation.

Pausanias was already on horseback when we broke in. Two other men were with him. Batu nailed one with his spear and Harkan knocked the other one off his horse, then drove his spear through the screaming traitor’s chest.

Wild-eyed, Pausanias drove his mount straight at us. Dropping my sword, I stepped to one side as the horse thundered by and grabbed him around the middle. The two of us thudded to the dirt floor of the stable. I planted a knee on Pausanias’ chest and pulled his own sword from its scabbard.

He stared up at me, gasping for breath. But his eyes became calm.

“It’s done,” he said. “Now you can do what you must. I don’t care anymore.”

I hesitated. Should I turn him over to Alexandros or give him a quick and painless death here and now? I thought of how he had slashed Philip and scalding anger boiled through me.

Harkan and Batu were standing over us. Quite calmly Harkan drove the point of his spear through Pausanias’ throat. Blood fountained hot and red, splashing over me, as he jerked convulsively and gave a single gargling groan.

I looked up at Harkan.

He yanked the spear from Pausanias’ dead body and said grimly, “She instructed us that there were to be no witnesses left alive, Orion.”

I got to my feet. “That includes me, doesn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so.” He levelled his spear at my heart.

“Can you trust her?” I asked.

“My children are already safely at a farm up in the hills. That’s where I’m going when this is finished.”

“If she lets you live.”

He shrugged. “Even if she doesn’t, I’ll know that my children are free.”

I glanced at Batu. His dark face looked troubled, as if he could not decide which side he wanted to be on.

“Orion,” he said, “I am not part of this. I did not know until this moment—”

“Then don’t get involved now,” I told him. “This is between Harkan and me. And the queen.”

“She is a witch of great power,” said Batu.

“Yes.” I nodded.

“She can steal a man’s wits from him.”

“And his strength.” I turned back to Harkan. His spear had not wavered a millimeter from my heart. “Go ahead, my friend. Do it and get it over with.”

He hesitated.

“For your children,” I told him.

Harkan took a deep breath, then plunged the spear into my chest with all his might. I felt no pain at all. Just darkness engulfing me, welcome, blessed nothingness.

I died.