Orion and the Conqueror (28 page)

"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 spacetime 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 leveling 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.