Alexander and Alestria (9 page)

I, Tania, did not know where my queen had been born. All the girls in our tribe had been abandoned as children. What did her mother and father matter, what did it matter which blood flowed in her veins? Talestria was betrothed to the God of Ice. She was the daughter of autumn and winter. She conversed with horses, sang with the birds, and read the stars. She held the secret of the spirits in the palm of her hand. She reigned over the seasons, over time as it sped past and fled, over eternity.

In the kingdom of the girls who love horses the sky was our timepiece and the trees our calendar. That is why the ancestors dictated that, wherever we went, we should plant trees for the girls who would pass there hundreds of moons later. They would cut their trunks and read the years that lay between us and them by the rings traced in the wood. Trees were an invisible river allowing us to go back in time or navigate the future.

Once a year we celebrated the queen's birthday, even though not one of us knew the date of her birth. Our ancestors decreed that the day of the previous queen's death marked the birth of the new queen. During that year's celebrations Talestria was sixteen.

She was decked in flowers, and her loose hair floated in the wind. She stood in the middle of a clearing, and we, the daughters of the steppe, danced around her. We threw flowers at her, and leaves and catkins. She smiled and accepted our homage without a word. Then we scattered in the long grass, where a great banquet had been prepared over several days. We ate, drank, sang, danced, and laughed. At nightfall we gathered around a huge fire. The eldest of our number narrated legends she had learned from those who were no longer. We fell asleep one by one beneath the starry sky.

We woke at dawn to the whinnying of horses. A new year was beginning for us, and with it came the great gallop to the market of the steppes.

In the market there were new faces: men in luxurious clothes selling off their jewels, and soldiers bartering over looted spoils. All around us people were talking in Persian, and this made me wary. This empire, which cultivated its taste for power, had been casting its covetous eye over the vast steppes for some time. Its military intrusions had been valiantly rebuffed by warriors from all the tribes working in unison. During our frenetic headlong gallops we sometimes crossed into its territory. From the rocky mountaintops we would watch caravans passing far below. Laden with worldly goods like ants toiling with pieces of food ten times their own size, they crawled laboriously over the arid land. The Persian Empire is the kingdom of men. We, the daughters of the steppe, are the birds of the glacier.

I lost no time finding the explanation for this pandemonium, and hurried to explain it to the queen. Alexander, the warrior who came from the West with his army of lancers and crossbow-men, had defeated Darius, the Great King of Persia. Babylon had fallen, and part of the Persian army had joined the ranks of the invading foreigner, setting off in pursuit of Darius, who had fled eastward. Alexander's name was on everyone's lips in every language. People said he was intelligent and beautiful as no man had ever been. They said that, decked in armor that flashed golden rays of light up to the very clouds, he had launched himself at the ramparts at the head of his army, and that no arrow could harm him. They also said this king liked only men; he was not drawn to a woman's flesh, had rejected Darius's three thousand concubines in Babylon, and declined the princess's proposal of marriage. They said he did not want to be the Great King of Persia, he wanted to be master of the world.

Talestria smiled. I asked why she was not worried like the chiefs of other tribes.

"Why worry?" she asked me.

"None of this bodes well. A powerful king has defeated an emperor. The Persian Empire that acted as our shield has fallen. The West will reach farther and farther into the East."

"Tania, we can wield weapons as well as any man. If the enemy appear on our horizon tomorrow, we shall fight them."

"Alexander, the son of a warrior and a sorceress, wants to be master of the world. His appetite knows no limits. He tortures and kills anyone who resists him. His army rapes the women in its path. Not satisfied with invading lands, they sow their seed and multiply using the wombs of the defeated. With such a strategy they will turn every free people into slaves!"

"The world is in decline," said Talestria. "The Persians were weakened by their wealth. Babylon was conquered because it had walls instead of wings. We, the daughters of Siberia, form attachments to nothing; we have no houses, no land, no fields, no gardens. We are invisible and invincible. We shall defend our freedom down to the last of our number. Death is nothing, you know that."

There was great agitation among the one hundred tribes of the steppes. Concerned about Darius's defeat and Alexander's advances, the chiefs wanted to find a common strategy to bar the way for the West. Some advocated a temporary tactical submission, citing those cities that had resisted and then perished in flames. Others sang the praises of courage and combat. Others suggested the possibility of sending men to infiltrate Alexander's army, to secure his trust and then put mortal poison in his food. Still others put forward the idea of a counterattack: We should invade Persia, they said.

The discussions went on for ten days. The debates were punctuated with banquets, when the men succumbed to alcohol, and sang and danced. The queen and I stood in our corner, watching impassively.

As usual, the kings reached no agreement, each afraid the others would steal his cattle while he was at war with Alexander. The men of the steppes had many, many discussions but never made any decisions. Tempers flared; they argued and then dispersed like a swarm of flies.

The tribes withdrew with their men, women, children, and flocks. Talestria, queen of the Amazons, ordered us to sharpen our weapons and stay vigilant on our homeward journey. She had spotted numerous Persian spies mingling in the Great Assembly. In her thoughts she had heard the inner murmurings of the tribal chiefs. These cunning ambitious men had decided to profit from the atmosphere of fear: they planned to devour the weaker tribes.

The wind made the white clouds billow. Green waves of vegetation reared up and crashed down toward us, then flattened to let us pass. A girl who had been sent ahead as a scout returned announcing that there were hundreds of horsemen in the hills. Talestria ordered us to slow our pace and form a line of attack.

A square formation of soldiers appeared, wearing magnificent clothes dulled by the dust. Their purebred horses looked exhausted; I had never seen such beautiful stallions, so tall and fine with long, thick manes. Ten men came forward from the ranks till they were one arrow's range from us. They called out to tell us that the Great King of Persia wanted to speak with our queen.

A quiver ran through the troops, and the soldiers stood aside as one man rode along the alley formed by the imperial guard. He had a long curly beard and wore a white coat muddied by wind and rain, and a white turban dripping with jewels. Talestria urged on her chestnut horse and went to meet him.

"By the power of He who holds the Mysteries of Creation and governs life from the highest spheres of heaven," cried the man, "I, Darius, king of the eternal fire, ask to speak with the queen of the Amazons."

"I am queen of the warriors of Siberia, of the white birds with red heads and of winged horses," Talestria replied in Persian. "Why, King Darius, have you ventured all the way to the steppes?"

"I have waited three days and three nights for you, oha, mistress of arrow-throwers, queen of soothsayers. I came to you because the world is at war, because the world is in flames. Only the magic ice of Siberia can put out the venomous flame of the setting sun."

"We, the daughters of freedom and speed, we cast aside evil spirits in the wake of our mares with their flaming red manes. We are not a mercenary army. We lend our strength only to the will of our God. If you follow the path of the stars for ten days' gallop from here, you will find the powerful warmongering kings of the Scythians. They will forget the rancor of the past and provide you with an army of archers."

"The kings of the Scythians do not know the secret of the glacier. Their fierce warriors were defeated by your weapons forged by the People of the Volcano. No one on earth has the power to make a man invincible. We, the men clothed in white light, we, the spirits with folded wings, we throw ourselves at your feet, oha, divine priestess of a vanished world. Your people and mine are branches of the same tree."

"We," replied Talestria, "the daughters of the ice, the indomitable birds who sing of our ancestors' pride, shall give your soldiers food and drink. We shall tend to your injured and to your horses. But you must set out again tomorrow morning when the sun returns to the steppe. Come, Darius, I offer you my tent and my hospitality tonight."

Darius and my queen dismounted, and on this signal, the two armies set up camp at the foot of the hill. The girls handed round remedies and shared out food among the Persian soldiers. Their colored eyes and curly beards were a source of great curiosity. The girls hovered around them cautiously like little birds not wanting to frighten away their prey. Suddenly, one of them grabbed hold of a beard, and the other pulled the man's hair. When the soldier cried out in pain, the girls ran away, unable to stifle their laughter.

The conversation between Talestria and Darius continued after the meal inside the queen's tent. Two scribes were called for-myself, Tania, who kept a wary eye on the defeated king, and a young Persian with no beard or turban.

Now clean and with his beard combed, Darius had put on a shimmering tunic and a less imposing turban. His exquisite perfume hung in the air. His hands rested on his knees, glittering-he had a jewel on every finger. I loathed his fine features, his haughty expression and slow, graceful movements. Flames from the animal-fat candles danced in the shadows. Talestria sat at the far end of the carpet from him. Although small, she somehow looked imposing. Without jewels and wearing a scarlet robe, she dominated the Great King with the sheer strength of her expression.

Without any further preliminaries, Darius proposed sharing his empire with my queen. My hand holding the reed trembled, and I looked up. That long face with blue lines around the eyes hid an impenetrable heart. Why was he offering his empire to a queen who owned nothing?

On the steppes women liked to speak ill of us, and men, though they cursed us, dreamed of capturing us and forcing us to bear their seed. Our queen was inaccessible and elusive; people compared her to a venomous flower that killed all those who wanted to pick it. Why was this man, Darius, Great King of Persia, apparently not afraid of my queen?

Darius spread a vast display of jewels before Talestria. He said he had another ten chests of precious stones of the same quality, and was prepared to offer them to the queen if she would become his wife. He said that in his kingdom they had dug into the heart of a mountain to create a stronghold housing millions of chests of precious items bequeathed by his ancestors, and that this mountain of treasures would bear the name Talestria if the queen agreed to join him. He told her that his empire had ten million horses, each more beautiful and more swift than the last.

He claimed he was master of a million white elephants, of a billion bees and birds, master of millions of men and women. If Talestria married him, he said, she would be mistress of the most extensive kingdom on earth. She would have a life of pleasure, dress in beautiful fabrics, and be served by the loveliest women. Agile acrobats would make her laugh, the very flowers would bow when she walked by; the whole universe would sing to the glory of Talestria, the mother of a new dynasty.

Darius became impassioned, reciting a poem he had just composed for Talestria:

Bearing children, that was Talestria's magic power to change fate, to turn the tide of time! That was Darius's immortality, the advent of his power! It was said that Alexander had killed all

Darius's heirs. That was why the defeated king had come to ask Talestria to be the womb and the wet nurse of his descendants.

He edged closer to my queen on his knees and said:

"Talestria, be my queen tonight. Your warrior-women will protect and raise my heirs. You will rally the peoples of the steppes and expand the Persian Empire. I, Darius, must do my honor's bidding: I must go back to war. My God tells me I must avenge myself and die. But my children, forged by the eternal fire and blessed by the glacier of Siberia, will be invincible. Darius will have lost an empire, but his blood will flow in the veins of his children. Although conquered, he will be master of the world for all eternity."

A great cooing of promises, praises, and declarations of love fell from Darius's lips. My queen let him speak and said not a word. She smiled. From time to time I saw her eyes twinkle. I was worried. Was she seduced by this liar who was in love with power and wealth? Talestria must not betray the oath she had made to our God that she would never form an attachment with a man. She could not have a child!