by Judith Tarr
She was failing. She would crumple. She would fall. She would lie beneath the god’s power, and for Alexander in his bright splendor—for Alexander, nothing. Defeat, death, the end of his empire; and Persia would rule as its Truth ordained.
That too was the power’s doing. Alexander was never so weak as that, nor his defeat as certain. But if it came to the crux, and it was power against power, then truly he could fall.
She set her teeth, body and soul. She gathered every fading drop of strength. She shaped it into a word: No. She drove that word against the power out of Tyre.
It surged against her. She surged back. It held. She would fail, fall, crumble into dust.
For an endless while they hung in the balance. In the utmost instant, just as she knew that she could hold no longer, it fell.
It was broken. She knew that, there on the sea’s edge, with the darkness stooping over her. Tyre stood, and maybe would stand for all that Alexander could do. But his enemies would be flesh and blood, stone and steel. Magic would play no part in it.
o0o
“Lady. Lady Mariamne.”
Light stabbed her. She recoiled from it. Her head—gods, how much wine had she drunk?
Phylinna shook her none too gently. “Lady Mariamne. Will you wake up?”
Meriamon opened her aching eyes. Bed beneath her. Tent over her. Phylinna between, fairly dancing with impatience. “Lady! Lady Barsine is brought to bed. She’s calling for you.”
Phylinna would never understand why Meriamon laughed, or why she wept, sitting up and shaking sand out of her hair and groping for a robe that she did not remember taking off. The sand—she had not dreamed it, then. Nor the long stumble back to the tent, half blind, half mad, and worn to the bare bone, and her shadow, impossibly, holding her up.
Sekhmet, washing her paw with delicate strokes of a pink tongue, had a cat’s disregard for mortal frettings. Meriamon had been there, and she had fought a battle. Now she was here. A child had died. Now one undertook to be born. That was balance, such as was in everything.
Balance. Surely. Barsine’s child was a son, a handsome lusty man-child whose hair, when he shed the dark furze of birth, would perhaps be mouse-fair.
“His father cannot name him,” his mother said. “Therefore I take it on myself.” She looked down at the infant in her arms. Having shouted his presence in the world, he had subsided into a watchful calm. Almost Meriamon fancied that his newborn eyes could look into Barsine’s own, meet them and understand the light that caught in them.
“Herakles,” Barsine said. “I name you Herakles.”
Sixteen
Alexander was coming. Meriamon felt him in the earth. He came like the bark of Ra, the boat of a million years, that sails in the night in the land of the dead, and rises in the morning in the land of the living. A fleet came with him, but to the eyes of her power they were a host of candles about the fire of the sun.
Meriamon could hardly think for the power of it. It had brought her out of Amon’s temple, drawn like a moth to a flame, but in Alexander’s presence she had become inured to it. With Alexander’s absence and now his return, she remembered what great light and fire had called her up from Khemet.
Philippos would get no use out of her. She sent a boy with word that she would not be coming to the hospital, and went down to the sea.
The city was deceptively quiet. The siege-towers stood against the walls, but the catapults were motionless, the soldiers who manned them quiescent at their posts. No cloud of magic came out of Melqart’s temple. That was hardly destroyed; she was never such a fool as to think so. Quelled, only. Dealt a brief defeat. But there would be no blood rite for yet a while. She had made sure of that.
Alexander would assure it. Or fall, and take his people with him. That was not prescience, not exactly. It was clear sight and long thought and the training given the royal stock of the Two Lands.
After a while Meriamon sat on the sand, clasping her knees. Her shadow stretched lazily ahead of her, half on the earth, half in the water. It bared its teeth at Tyre.
“A fine partisan you are,” she said to it. It blinked lambent eyes at her and settled into a watchful doze.
As the sun rose higher, the day’s heat rose with it. She dropped her mantle gladly. The dress she wore beneath it had made Phylinna catch her breath and wonder aloud if Lady Mariamne was turning hetaira. It was Egyptian, that was all, and modest enough for any decent sense, good white linen cut close from breast to ankle and leaving her arms bare.
The air was delicious on skin that had been wrapped in wool too long, cool still for her taste, but pleasantly so. It played with the many braids of her hair, touched the sea in long light swaths, ran away toward the north. She fancied that she caught a breath of Khemet in it under the sea-smell.
Someone else came and sat beside her. She glanced without surprise at Thais. Phylinna was behind her, and a pair of the servants, carrying a Persian parasol.
“It is pleasant out here,” said Thaïs. “And still cool. Are you happy now that it’s become a furnace?”
“It’s not as warm as Egypt,” Meriamon said.
“No wonder you dress as you do.”
Meriamon’s cheeks were warm. She did not know why. Hellenes had no modesty at all.
Hellene men. Their women were as shamefast as Persians.
“I dress as all my people do,” she said a little stiffly. “Is there something wrong with it?”
“No,” said Thaïs. “It’s very practical.”
“And wanton.”
“Well,” the hetaira said. “Those straps over your shoulders—they’d drive a man wild, the way they slip and let your breast peep out. And the linen, as thin as it is...” Her eyes narrowed. She began to smile. “What a fashion you could set! It’s better than nakedness. It hides so little, but just enough. Does our Niko know what a beauty you are under all the coats and trousers?”
Meriamon’s cheeks flamed. Had she been a man, sun-dyed red-dark all over, maybe it would not have been obvious. But she was decently pale, as a woman should be.
Thaïs forbore to laugh at her. “The Great King has sent another embassy. Did you know that?”
“Yes,” said Meriamon, blessing Thaïs’ mercy. She had felt the embassy’s coming, too. Magi came with it with their sacred fire and their bone-deep certainty, carrying their mighty weight of Truth. They would be hoping to wield it against Alexander.
“He’s coming,” she said. “He’s close. Can you feel him?”
Thaïs did not need to ask whom she meant. There was only one He in Alexander’s camp. “Can you?” she asked.
“With all my souls.”
Thaïs blinked at her.
Meriamon shook herself. Clear-eyed, hard-headed Athenian: no magic for that one, no mystery outside of her philosophy. Meriamon smiled, tricking a smile out of Thaïs.
“I don’t think I understand you,” Thaïs said, but lightly.
“You aren’t supposed to,” said Meriamon.
“I’m Greek. I have to try.”
Meriamon laughed. The sun on her back was hardly less potent than the sun of Alexander’s coming on her face. “Look!” she said. “Ships.”
o0o
Tenscore and onescore and three. Two hundred ships and more under Phoenician and Cyprian crews, sailing down out of Sidon, with Alexander on the deck of the flagship. Its sails were purple blazoned in gold with the emblem of his house, the sunburst with its many rays.
Tyre saw him coming. Whatever shock his numbers were, it hardly blunted their cunning. Ships of their own sailed swiftly out, some to close in battle, some to come about and wall the harbors against him.
Outriders of his fleet lowered oars and drove straight for the narrow mouth of the northern harbor: iron-beaked war-galleys like great-winged arrows. The beat of their drums echoed over the water, and the shouts of their masters, driving them to stroke swifter, swifter, swifter.
No ship from Tyre was close enough, or fast enough, to
catch them. Bolts and arrows failed and fell short.
The ship in the lead seemed to leap from the water full into the center of the ship-wall. Even from the shore, through the shouts and cries of men and the pounding of drums, Meriamon heard the clash of iron-shod ram on iron-shod prow, and the heavy thud of wood behind, and the rending, rushing sound of the ship’s hull giving way, water pouring in, crew leaping into the sea.
But Tyre had not endured so long by giving way to a single assault. Alexander’s ships sank three of those that walled the harbor, but behind those three were thrice and four and ten times the number, and more on the open sea, harrying the edges of the fleet.
It was victory enough for a beginning. The signal went out, calling the ships to moor along the strand.
Alexander leaped from deck to shallow water and waded to the sand, first of all his men. Meriamon had not gone as far down as he was, or tried, with the whole army streaming from camp and mole and half-ruined town, shouting his name. It was a force, that passion of love, strong enough to shatter stone. But Alexander was stronger. He drank it in; he turned it all to light.
She could not see him, slender youthful figure that he was, even in a scarlet chiton; he was engulfed in taller, broader men. And yet he towered over them. Not one of them but knew where he was, and who he was, and what he was to them.
“Alexander.” She said it to herself, softly. Thaïs had not moved from beside her, but even that uncompromising face was rapt, seeing nothing but the king.
Meriamon stood, shaking sand from her dress. She held out her hand.
Thaïs took it, let it draw her to her feet. A little of the blind enchantment left her eyes. “Well,” she said. “Now we’ll see what Tyre says to that.” Her glance took in the fleet drawn up along the strand, the men swarming from the ships, horses rearing and calling as grooms led them from the holds.
Chaos; but chaos with a heart of law, and a smallish man in scarlet whose presence filled it everywhere.
o0o
Alexander went up from the shore to the camp, walking briskly. That was as much of a miracle as anything Meriamon had seen: going as he chose to go in so thick a crowd. Where he went, a path opened. He paused often to clasp a hand, to grip a shoulder, to exchange a word, but his progress was swift, and no one hindered him.
He took the throng with him, all but those who had to stay with the ships. Meriamon picked her way on the trampled sand, aware that she had left Thaïs behind. Her heart tugged her toward the king. Later, she told it.
She realized that she was cool, as if in shade, but neither mantle nor parasol covered her. She had left them both behind. Her shadow served for both. What men saw as she passed them, she did not know. Nothing, maybe. A cloud across the sun. A woman wrapped in a dark veil, walking slowly toward the mole. No one spoke to her or ventured to touch her.
Many of the ships had not come in with the others, but sailed around behind the bulk of Tyre. Now one by one they appeared on the southern tip of the isle, oars out, rowing toward me strand. The city made no move to stop them.
They backed oars a shiplength from the shore, men springing down, wading or swimming, or lowering boats from the larger galleys. The smaller ships ran full to land and beached there. They were in a fine high humor, all of them, Phoenicians here as those to the north had been of Cyprus. If it troubled them to be assaulting a city of their own nation, they showed no sign of it.
Sekhmet appeared from wherever a sensible cat went to escape sun and trampling feet, and padded at Meriamon’s heel. People saw no more of her than of Meriamon. There was quiet where they were, however sudden, and a path to walk in.
It was not the power Alexander had; people knew him and gave way before him. They did not know Meriamon or the power that was on her. It was a shadow-thing, a thing of art and stillness.
There were Macedonians among the Phoenicians, big fair-haired smooth-shaven men rising like trees above the little dark bearded sailors. They lent a hand with the hawsers as all the rest did, or stood in colloquy with the captains. One had charge of the horse-transports, seeming to be everywhere at once, now on deck, now in the hold, now on the ramp with one of the horses. New ones, Meriamon saw, and Nisaian from the look of them, fine blooded stock. The one on the ramp must have been well over fifteen hands: the man at its head was no great deal taller.
The horse was giving him no trouble. It paused as it came into the light, raised its head and drank deep of the air. He murmured in its ear. The ear flicked back, pricked forward again. Delicately for all its size, it picked its way down the ramp.
Nikolaos looked well. Wind and sun had darkened his skin to bronze and turned his hair flax-fair. His eyes were more startling than ever, like raw silver. He hardly favored his weak hand at all.
He handed the horse to one of those who waited on the sand, and turned to call out to someone. As he turned, his eyes’ path crossed Meriamon.
He checked for an instant. Perhaps perceiving a shadow where none should be. Perhaps...
He did not see her. His eyes did not return to her, nor did he approach. He went back to the ship and vanished below.
She left before he came out again. The touch of his eyes, however unwary, had shaken her to the root. To him she was nothing but aggravation. To her he was much too much.
He had his place now: a command under the king, in the fleet he had wanted, with the horses he loved. He would not want to be reminded of a hated duty, an even more hated incapacity.
The gods knew, she had troubles enough without adding this one to it. The Great Wife of Amon should be a maiden, but his singers could live the life of the body if they chose; but Meriamon had never so chosen. The gods took too much of her.
Now, when they should have all of her that was or could be, she skittered and scattered over this impossible foreigner. It was a test, surely. A judgment. A proving of her fitness.
Her heart, fickle thing, yearned now toward the man on the ship. She forced it toward the king, and her body after it.
Sekhmet suffered no such agonies. She streaked toward the ship and vanished in Niko’s wake.
Meriamon wished heavy hoofs on her; then hated herself for it. Sekhmet did as she pleased. If that was to play the harlot with an oaf of a Macedonian, then Meriamon could hardly stop her.
o0o
Alexander received the Persian embassy almost as soon as he came to his tent. Proper royalty would have kept them waiting for days upon his leisure, but Alexander had never been one to be proper when he could be unpredictable.
Certainly, Meriamon thought as she fitted herself into an accommodating shadow, the Persians were caught off balance. They should have expected something of the sort; but no Great King would ever have summoned them and then received them at once, as he was, with his chiton damp and stiff with sea-salt, and a cup of mountain water in his hand.
It was the same emissary as before, and the same white-robed priest-princes with him, father and sons. The hot dry fire-scent was strong on them, the wall of righteousness as broad and high as Tyre. There was an air of desperation in it as in the manner of the ambassador, for all his haughty dignity. He had come to beg on behalf of his king; and that sat ill with him, so ill that it was a sickness in Meriamon’s belly.
Blessed sickness, that it came from a Parsa nobleman in front of the Macedonian king. She drew herself up.
As she stood straight, the ambassador went down, prostrating himself before Alexander. Alexander’s body tensed as if to step forward, but he stood where he was, still holding his cup. The Persian rose. Alexander handed the cup to him and said, “Drink. You look as if you need it.”
The Great King’s ambassador looked nonplussed. He took the cup; it would have fallen else. He touched it to his lips. It rattled against his teeth. He lowered it, not hastily, but not slowly either.
“Well?” said Alexander.
“It is... very good water, your majesty,” the Persian said.
“It ought to be. It comes from springs i
n the Lebanon.” Alexander went to a camp stool and sat on it. There were chairs; some of them had been the Persian king’s. He took no notice of them. He looked up at the tall Persian, and it was the Persian who, all at once, seemed the smaller. “What does Darius want?”
“His family.”
The Persian’s directness made even Alexander blink. Then he smiled. “So. Even a Persian can come to the point if he has to. What will he give me if I let him have his family back?”
The back of his hand, the ambassador’s glance said. But his voice was level. “The Great King, the King of Kings, offers the King of Macedon ten thousand talents for the return of his mother and his wife and his children.”
“Ten thousand talents?” Alexander tilted his head. “That’s a fair handful of coppers.”
The ambassador drew a long breath. “In addition,” he said, pausing as if he expected Alexander to interrupt. Alexander simply sat and waited, limpid-eyed, half-smiling. “In addition, the Great King, the King of Kings, offers the King of Macedon the half of his kingdom, from the Euphrates to the sea, to be held by him in bond of friendship, in earnest of which, the Great King, the King of Kings, offers the hand of his daughter in marriage, to seal the alliance and to firm the bond of peace between king and king.”
Alexander’s smile was gone. Something else had taken its place; something to which Meriamon could put no name. Glee, she might have thought, except that there was anger in it too, and startlement, and a tinge of disbelief.
Focused, intent on the ambassador and the king, she had not noticed who else was there. There were always people; Alexander was never alone even in sleep. But she saw the one who came forward. He had not been there when she came, nor did she remember when he had come in. For all she knew, he had slipped in through the back of the tent.
Once she had seen him, she could hardly forget him. Parmenion was out of his armor for once, in a chiton that surprised her: it was rich enough for a prince’s. She would hardly have expected it of him.
