by Judith Tarr
She never went in. That would not be approved of. Nor did he ever come out when she was there, though that would have been a welcome thing. She schooled herself not to mind—and that was harder, the longer she went on.
Philip’s young men most surely were not afraid of her. Each day there were more of them. She exerted herself to be charming, with arts that were half learned from her sister and half born of instinct. A smile, she knew, could melt a man’s heart, and a well-placed word could make him her servant for as long as it pleased her to keep him.
Erynna thought she was a fool. “You have the knowledge and the spells,” she said. “You know what to do.”
But Myrtale refused. “I won’t cast a love spell on any man. If I can’t lure and hold him myself, without magic, it’s not love, and I don’t want it—or him.”
“Love is a spell,” Erynna said, “and he’s broken the one you laid on him. Now while you sleep alone, the destiny you came for is slipping away. Unless you take it now, it will be too late.”
Myrtale felt a pang at that, a quiver of deep-rooted fear for herself and her choices, but she drove it off with native stubbornness. “I will not trap him with magic.”
Erynna retreated, but Myrtale watched her warily. She had a look about her that said she had not given up.
Still, she left off pressing Myrtale, and as far as Myrtale could tell, she raised no powers either for or against Philip. Instead she went back to teaching the royal women and biding her time.
She had tempted Myrtale sorely, but Myrtale stood fast. The more magic she knew, the more securely she could maintain her place here—but not if she had to wield it against the king. There was deep wrongness in that, and no coaxing or cajoling from Erynna would shake her.
* * *
As autumn drew on toward winter, the sun’s warmth faded. One morning Myrtale woke shivering. Rain drummed on the roof. The mountains were shrouded in cloud, but when the clouds lifted, she knew the summits would be white with snow.
That day no one left the palace. The men crowded into their hall with wine and dice and willing women. The royal women had their own hall, but most gathered in the room that by now was wrapped in a thick mantle of magic.
It was so thick that the room seemed full of smoke. The lamps were lit as always, and Erynna was brewing a concoction of herbs over which she murmured words of power. It was meant, she said, to warm the spirit and make men brave in battle—a fine thing on this cold and cheerless day.
Myrtale found the smell cloying and the air too heavy to breathe. She took refuge in the women’s hall, where a lone servant wielded a desultory broom. Phila, who would have nothing to do with magic, was not there; she was still in bed, the servant said.
She was with child, rumor said, though she had not admitted to it. She often kept to herself of late. Myrtale wondered if all was not well; or maybe she simply did not carry easily.
That was not Myrtale’s trouble—as little as she liked to acknowledge it. For all the fire of their wedding celebration, in due time her courses had come to mock her. And Philip had not returned to her bed.
It was time to let go of patience. She stirred up the coals in the brazier that stood on its pedestal in the hall’s center, spreading her hands over the radiating warmth. There were shapes in the embers, visions both true and false. She rested her eyes on them idly, asking nothing and expecting nothing.
That was dangerous, but she was not afraid. She saw armies marching, bristling with long spears, the sarissai of Macedon. She saw Philip in a plain bronze helmet, then Philip again with his brows bound by a diadem. She saw a city burning—a lovely city of white columns and burgeoning gardens—and a chariot racing on a long course, running far ahead of its rivals.
The embers flared. The sun in splendor, the royal banner of Macedon, rippled in the wind over a golden helmet.
That was not Philip, though he had Philip’s foursquare build and slightly bowed legs, and the face had a hint of him: the full cheeks, the firmly rounded jaw. The hair beneath the helmet was ruddy gold; the eyes were grey-green, with such a light in them that Myrtale caught her breath. Either he was divine or he was mad, but he was not a simple mortal man.
He turned as if he had felt her eyes on him, and met her stare. A shiver ran down her spine. It was a pleasurable thrill, but it shook her more than a little.
This one was stronger than she, both for will and power. She had never met anyone of whom she could say as much. Even Philip was her match but not her superior.
The vision dissipated as the embers burst into flame. Myrtale straightened. Her eyes were full of light.
She called for a bath. She demanded perfumes and the finest chiton she had and the jewels she had worn at her wedding. She armed as if for battle, taking her time about it, while the rain drummed down and the wine went round the hall.
* * *
Philip hated the rain. It made all the scars ache—damn the things; he was still young, but when the rain kept everyone indoors, he creaked like an old man. The only thing that helped then was a salve he had had from an old witch in Thessaly, worked into the scars by strong young fingers.
He had had to preside in the hall for longer than he liked. He might have had to stay all day and most of the night if he had not managed to distract the horde of guests and petitioners with a troupe of actors from Corinth. Under cover of a roaring chorus from the Bacchae, he slipped away to the room where Demetrios and the pot of salve were waiting.
It was not Demetrios sitting naked on the bed with the pot in his hands. She was there, decorously dressed and veiled, cradling the clay pot in her lap.
From the moment he saw her in the crowd at the Mysteries, her face had haunted his every dream. Asleep and awake, he could think of little apart from her.
He had fought the spell to a standstill. It had compelled him to send Lagos for her—but after all he needed Epiros; he needed every ally he could muster, and marriages were a simple way to ensure them. The rest of his wives had brought him rich dowries, too, and kings bound to fight with him rather than against him. One had already given him a son, a fine and promising image of himself, who if the gods were kind, would be king when Philip had had enough of it.
Those were mortal women. This was something different. The mask of the Mother had not concealed her in the Mysteries, any more than the Bull’s face had concealed his. They had known one another.
She was—not his enemy. He would not call her that. But she was dangerous. She threatened the focus he needed badly, to stay on the throne and keep Macedon strong.
She was already under his skin. If he let himself think of her as anything but the fourth of what he had no doubt would be many royal and politic wives, he would lose his grip. He would care for nothing but her.
Now she was here in his bed, where he had not invited her. He knew better than to be taken in by that demure posture and those lowered eyelids. There was nothing self-effacing about this child of the Mother.
“What did you do to Demetrios?” he demanded.
It was a rough greeting, but she never flinched. Her voice was low and melodious, a pitch she must have studied as a singer will. It resonated in his bones. “I sent him away,” she said.
“It was not your place to do that.”
“He is not your wife,” she said.
She rose. Though he was braced for whatever she might do, his back stiffened. She was quick, and he well remembered her strength. If she had had a weapon, it would have been at his throat; he could not have stopped her.
Her veil slipped free. So did the pins that confined her hair: by accident or artifice, it tumbled down her back and shoulders to her hips. “Lie down,” she said.
He was helpless to disobey her. She was not using witchcraft; he knew the stink of that, and there was none about her, above or below the perfume that made him dizzy. This was her own potent magic, as much a part of her as her clear grey-green eyes.
Her hands were defter than Demetrios’ and nea
rly as strong. They worked the sharply herbal-scented salve into the knots and pits of scars. Philip groaned with pain that melted and flowed into blessed relief.
She had kilted up her chiton to kneel astride him. Her thighs were round and firm, her breasts full and high. They filled his hands.
Her face was as blank as the Mother’s mask, but her eyes were burning. They had burned that night, too, when she initiated him into the fullest of the Mysteries—or he initiated her. He too well remembered the moment of resistance, then the blood as he took her maidenhead.
He might have taken that, but he had never taken her. She was not for taking. She would never belong in heart and soul to any man, even the king of Macedon.
He had to take things—men, wives, kingdoms. He was a king. That was what he was for.
He must have spoken aloud, because she answered, “I am your equal. You can’t bear that, can you? Everyone is less than you. Except me.”
“Only the gods are greater,” he said—or gasped. She had slid onto his erect and aching shaft and begun the slow rhythm that was calculated to drive him mad.
When he took a woman or a boy, it was fast, hard, in, out, gone. Not with her. She lingered. She teased. She tormented. Every moment was exquisite and terrifying pleasure.
She kept him just short of climax, holding the moment until his whole body was like to burst. Then with a fierce cry she let him go, tumbling down and clasping him tight and driving him deep. She drained him dry.
He dropped beside her. She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around herself. “Do you feel it? Do you know what happened?”
Her voice was faint through the ringing in his ears. He had no words to answer.
Her breath gusted warm in his ear. “Never be afraid of this. Never run away from it. We are made for it, you and I. No one else is strong enough, or near enough to gods.”
“I’m not afraid,” he said. “It’s a distraction. I can’t afford distractions.”
“Nor need you. Are you so simple a man that you can’t keep your mind on two things at once?”
“There’s a whole world in you.”
She raked her nails down his chest, not quite breaking the skin. He grunted at the sharp, small pain and caught her wrist. She stilled. She was smiling. Damn her, was she afraid of nothing?
Foolish question. “Don’t ignore me again,” she said. “I’ll share you—that’s the way of the world. But you will be there to be shared.”
“Is that an order, madam?”
“If you like,” she said, “my king.”
She was laughing at him. He hated that. But gods, it made his body burn. He was rising already, impossibly, wanting her all over again.
No one else could do that to him. No one else ever would. He did not know if that was simple knowledge or his heart’s promise.
Twenty
It was like taming a wild bull. Philip was large and powerful and deeply dangerous, but more than anything he was afraid. Fear made him run rampant, or else he bolted for far pastures and would not come back.
Myrtale went to him, armed with her will and her smile. He neither drove her from his bed nor sought a bed elsewhere. He faced her on his own ground.
There was not supposed to be a victor or a vanquished. That was hard for him who thought of everything as succeed or fail, win or lose—and if he did not win, it must be a bitter loss. He struggled to see it as a dance of equals.
Very soon, far sooner than any signs might have indicated, Myrtale knew she had conceived. She felt it inside her, only a spark, but so very bright. It burned beneath her heart.
She kept it to herself. Soon enough there would be no hiding it, not among the women who watched and whispered and knew exactly what she did every night. They had wagers with the king’s guards as to when her belly would begin to swell. But for this little while, she cherished that most blessed of secrets.
Even Philip did not know. Especially Philip. He might stay away from her then in some Greek folly of protecting the child—as if the love of man and woman could do any harm to the life they had made.
He was less wild now, more willing to accept what was between them, now that he saw it would not shrivel his manhood or keep him from being king. He still had not come to her bed, but his was much more comfortable. She was content with matters as they were.
Not all of it was the body’s pleasure, either. He would talk with her afterward, if she encouraged him: telling tales of battles and hunts, during which she struggled to stay awake, but also musing over the plans he had for his kingdom.
“There’s so much to do,” he said one night, lying on his back with his arms behind his head, staring at the ceiling as if the words of his fate were written there. “So many allies to make, treaties to affirm, wars to win. Enemies to get rid of, too. Athens, now—whatever it can do to stop me, it will. With words alone, if it can.”
“That’s where all the rumors come from, isn’t it?” Myrtale said.
He glanced at her, a quick flash in the lamplight. “That we’re all born in barns, and given a choice between a woman and a sheep, we’d tup the sheep?”
“That I know to be false,” she said.
He grinned. “What, you won’t test it, to be sure?”
“I don’t need to,” said Myrtale. She sat up and clasped her knees, wrapping herself in blankets for the night was cold. “I should like to learn more of these things. Not war and tactics—those are unbelievably dull—but politics and the ruling of nations. Is there someone who can teach me?”
He did her the courtesy of not laughing at her and asking what a woman would want with such things. “War isn’t dull,” he said. “War is where it all begins and ends. Tactics in battle extend to the council chamber and the courts of the city or the kingdom.”
“Maybe that’s what’s wrong with them,” she said. “They’re all backwards.”
He seemed torn between laughter and outrage. “You can’t have kingdoms without war.”
“Not in these days,” she granted him. “And yet you all declare that peace is the proper and most desirable state of being. How do you reconcile that? Doesn’t it make your head ache?”
“You make my head ache,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “Men don’t do enough thinking. They’re all at the mercy of their basest impulses.”
“And women aren’t?”
“We can think of more than one thing at once,” she said.
He shook his head. “That’s not logic.”
“Logic is all the rage in Athens in these days, isn’t it? And yet so much of it is false.”
“You’ll drive me mad,” he said, with a growl in it. But he did not order her from his bed.
He did not go to sleep at once, either. He was thinking—of what she had said, she hoped. What he would do with it, she could not be sure, but she trusted that he would put it to good use.
* * *
Those were the nights. The days had changed little. No teacher came to instruct Myrtale in the ways of kings and councils.
She did not give away to disappointment—yet. Some things took time.
Although Myrtale had been keeping their husband to herself, her sister wives kept their jealousy in check, if they felt any. Phila might; the others had their children—present or to come—to distract them.
Philinna’s son was growing almost visibly. He had learned to run; he ran everywhere, and he talked incessantly, and not infant prattle, either. He asked questions. He wanted to know what things were and how they worked and why. His quick intelligence was a source of delight and frequent consternation to his mother and the servants.
Myrtale was not a woman to take great interest in other women’s children. This one was interesting mainly for what it told her about his father—and, maybe, about the child she was carrying. It would be a son, too. She knew that as she knew the rest, because it was the truth.
* * *
One cold raw morning, Arrhidaios had escaped his nurse ye
t again and run naked out of the women’s quarters. Myrtale happened to be on the outer portico, wrapped tightly in a mantle, watching the snow fly across the lake and the plain, when he shot past her, laughing.
She caught him without thinking. The force of his speed spun her completely about. When she stopped, she found Erynna staring at her. The rest of the pursuit had veered off toward the men’s hall—Erynna’s doing, she had no doubt.
“Let him go,” the witch said.
“Not unless he can fly,” said Myrtale. “He’ll pitch right off the cliff.”
“Yes,” Erynna said.
Arrhidaios was still, warm and heavy in Myrtale’s arms. He smelled of milk and clean child. She tucked her mantle around him and stared over his head at Erynna.
“Do think with more than your womb now,” Erynna said. “This is the firstborn son. In Macedon that need not mean he inherits, but he will be your son’s rival. Two bright stars cannot share this firmament. One of them will destroy the other. Do you want it to be your son who dies?”
Myrtale opened her mouth to deny that she was with child, but that was foolish. Of course the witch knew. Even if she could not see for herself, she could cast a spell or scry in a mirror and discover the truth.
Instead Myrtale said, “I’m capable of many things, but cold-blooded murder, no. My son will be king. This child is no threat to him.”
“No?” said Erynna. “True, his mother lacks ambition, but his father more than makes up for it. As, already, does he. He’s seduced you as he has everyone else.”
Myrtale resisted the urge to spit. “He’s a child. It’s his nature to seduce grown folk into letting him live. As you say, his mother is not ambitious. She won’t put him forward. Nor will his father, once he sees the son I’ll give him. This will be a loyal servant and a strong fighting man. He will serve my son. That I know.”
“So you fondly imagine,” Erynna said. “Cast the bones, lady. Look in the mirror. See what you see.”
“I know what I see,” said Myrtale. “I see the sun in splendor, and the world bowing before him.”
Erynna had an answer for that, too. Myrtale turned away from her, refusing to hear it; she carried the child back to his mother.
