by Judith Tarr
“Kheperesh.”
“Keperos.”
“Kheperesh.”
He could not say it. “It sounds Persian,” he said, “and a fine jaw-cracker that is.”
“It is not Persian,” she said stiffly. “It does not even begin to be Persian.”
He smiled his sweetest smile. “You know I never meant to insult you. But how you can say s—st—” He shook his head, as if with the movement he could shake the stumble from his tongue. “But then the Persians can’t say my name.”
“What, Alexander?” She said it easily enough. “So. Would you wear the Kheperesh, if the two crowns suit you so ill?”
“I thought about it,” he said. “I am a soldier, after all; and I come with an army. But it doesn’t feel right. This is an oddity, and this”—his finger brushed the false beard—”is ludicrous, but it’s not war I’d make in Egypt, nor war that Egypt has given me. It’s had enough of that. Peace is what I would wage here.”
“Egyptian peace? Or Macedonian?”
He paused, frowning again. She could almost see the turning of his mind. “My generals would say that there is no difference. That the peace should be my peace, and therefore Macedonian. So would Aristotle say. Only Greeks are made to be free, he taught me. Barbarians are by nature slaves. But as I come to know those barbarians—even Persians—I wonder. Aristotle is wise, but he hasn’t seen what I’ve seen.”
“We have never been slaves,” said Meriamon, “save under the Parsa. And that, we fought with all that was in us.”
“So,” said Alexander. He faced her fully now, crook and flail held lightly in his hands. There was a new light in his face. “There is the heart of it. That they took away your freedom. That they made you slaves.”
“It took you so long to understand?”
“I had to see. To be told—it’s not enough. You lost a war. More than one. The price was, is, high; but it’s the same price wherever war is. It’s justice, of its kind. But that you bore so deep a rancor for so long, against a race who ruled you well enough by any lights...”
“They ruled us.”
“Will you hate us, too? We’ll rule you.”
“You, we chose.”
“Yes.” He raised the crook. “Macedon is a land of shepherds. We understand this, I think.”
She inclined her head.
He looked at her. His eyes were steady. “Why do you allow it? Why don’t you simply set up your own king, and bid me go back where I came from?”
“You are the king who was given us.”
“That’s no reason.”
“It’s all you’ll have.”
His temper sparked. She waited for the flare; but he was master of himself. “Very well,” he said abruptly. “I’ll be crowned as an Egyptian, though I’ll look like twenty kinds of fool for doing it. I’ll do it for you, and for no one else. Because it will please you.”
If he had hoped to discomfit her, he was disappointed. She shrugged. “You do it for the gods, whether you admit it or no. If you please to serve them in my name, then who am I to quibble?”
“I’m still what I am,” he said. “I’m still Alexander of Macedon. Nothing that I do here will change it.”
“You were always what you are,” she said, “and always will be.”
o0o
Meriamon was very tired, walking back alone to her chambers. There should have been a guard, she supposed, or a servant. But someone had forgotten; or she had slipped away before anyone could see. She had not been taking notice.
There was someone waiting for her. A lamp was lit and set on the table. A figure sat in the best chair, the one with the carved and gilded back. It was a small figure, and thin, and for a moment she knew that it was dead: a tiny wizened mummy of a man. Then his eyes glittered, and she saw the life burning strong in them.
His robe was simple to starkness, the robe of a priest; the light gleamed on his shaven skull. He wore no ornament, carried no mark of honor. Of rank he had little, nor wanted any, nor needed it. What he was, was clear for any eye to see, if that eye was gifted with magic.
Her breath caught. Her heart stopped, then leaped. She bowed down to the floor. “Mage,” she said, all reverence. “Great priest. Lord Ay: I marvel to see you here.”
“Come,” he said. His voice was like his eyes, rich and vibrant. Was that laughter in it? Or impatience? “Up. It’s I who should be bowing to you, and these bones are too stiff for that.”
She rose to her knees. “You? Bow to me? What in the world for?”
He laughed. It caught on a cough. The shadow behind him stirred, became a young priest with the skin and the face of Nubia, as black almost as Meriamon’s own shadow. Lord Ay waved the boy away, never taking his eyes from Meriamon. Or from what stood behind her, as solid almost as the young priest, resting an air-light hand on her shoulder.
“Every living thing has a shadow,” the old man said. “None but you, in all the world that I know of, has such a shadow as this.”
“You were one of those who gave it to me,” she said.
“Not I,” he said, “nor any human creature. This is of the gods’ bestowing. We asked them to protect you. They answered in their own fashion.”
She sat on her heels. It was comfortable enough, and Ay did not seem to mind it. Now that she had time to think, she wondered to see him here, whom she had thought safe in Amon’s temple, far up the Nile in Thebes. “You’ve come a long way,” she said, “to see the king.”
“I came to see you.”
She frowned.
He smiled. “Come here, child.”
After a moment she obeyed. The young priest set a stool beside the chair. She thanked him gravely. He was a stranger: new since she left. He trembled when he looked at her, and shied from her shadow.
She wanted to tell him not to be ridiculous, but she would not shame him so in front of the mage. She sat on the stool and waited for Ay to speak.
“Well then,” he said, “I came to see the king; but first I came for you.”
“To take me back to Thebes?” She did not know what she felt. Joy? Relief? Reluctance so deep that it shook her body?
“That is with the gods,” he said. “Though some in the temple would be glad to have you back among them. No one has quite so pure a voice for the morning hymn, and the workings in the inner temple lack somewhat of savor without your presence. There may even be a broken heart or two among the younger priests—it seems that I heard word of such.”
That was mischief, and too much like him. She meant to fix him with a stern stare; but that lacked force, with her cheeks as hot as they were, and her mind darting not to a certain few young idiots, but to one whom Ay had never seen. Whom, gods grant, he would never see.
His smile was as innocent as a child’s. “No, I didn’t come to fetch you, though I would have been happy to do it. I came to talk to you.”
She breathed a sigh. Regret, maybe. Relief. “About Alexander?”
“About the Great House.”
“Alexander is pharaoh. In Memphis he will be so for the world to see.”
“Will he?”
Ay’s voice was soft, his face serene, but she stilled, within and without. “The gods have ordained it,” she said.
“Have they?”
“They have told me,” said Meriamon.
“Tell me.”
She took his hands. They were stick-thin, dry and withered, but there was strength in them. She gave him all that she had, not in empty rattling words but in the voice of the heart, tale and vision both: the king, his wars, her dreams from beginning to end. It was a world’s worth, passed between breath and breath, a single endless moment.
She let him go. If she had been tired before, she was exhausted now. Ay seemed more than ever a dead thing. His eyes were closed; his face was still. He hardly seemed to breathe.
He stirred. He opened his eyes. She met them, then looked away.
“So,” he said. It was a sigh. “That is how it is. We
guessed. We never would have dared to believe the whole of it.”
Meriamon knotted her fingers in her lap. Her gown was as tired as she was, the stiff linen softening, falling out of its pleats. The servants would have to wash it again, and stiffen it, and set the folds with stones, and spread it in the sun. So much labor for a few hours’ display.
She was avoiding what she should be thinking of. That Ay—Lord Ay who had taught her father what he knew of magic, who was a mage to match any that there was—was in awe of her. Of Meriamon. She had power enough, she could hardly deny that, but she was never as great as he. She was a child still, an infant in the ways of magic. She would never have his brilliance or his artistry, or his strength of will.
“The gods speak to you,” he said, following her thoughts as he could, for he was a master of mages. “And you answer them, and give them respect but no fear. Do you even know how rare that is?”
“Would fear be any use,” she asked, “except to make them impatient?”
“Who but you would think of that?” He sighed, and shook himself. “There. You are tired, and the hour grows late. Tell me why we should accept this king of yours.”
“The gods chose him.”
“That was hardly answer enough for Alexander. It is never enough for me.”
She frowned at him. The awe was gone, at least. He was pricking her with impossible questions, knowing full well what he did. It was almost comforting. “Isn’t it a little late to talk of rejecting him?”
“Maybe,” said Ay. “Tell me why we should not.”
“He has an army, thousands strong and devoted to him. The Parsa have surrendered to him. If we refuse him now, he can destroy us all.”
The old man seemed a little surprised to hear her speak so bluntly. “Would he destroy us?”
“Yes,” she said, not hesitating. “He can’t bear to be crossed. And he has never lost a battle.”
“Then he may indeed be worse than the Parsa. Worse even than the ones whose name is effaced from the earth.”
She shivered. They were the Hyksos, those nameless ones, the Shepherd Kings, and no more than that, no face, no shape, no memory, and any name that they had given themselves was lost for all of time. It was a sensation like pain, that namelessness, a void in the heart of her magic.
But she said, “He is the gods’ chosen. I know that for a certainty. As do you, or you would never have come here.”
“So well you know me,” said Ay. He was not smiling, though his words were light. “What if the gods have chosen that we suffer?”
“They haven’t,” said Meriamon. Too quickly; but she did not try to take it back.
“He is a foreigner,” said Ay. “A barbarian even to the Hellenes whom he rules. Once we have accepted him, there will never be another of our blood on the throne of the Two Lands. Is that what you wish?”
“Am I given a choice?”
“He calls you friend,” Ay said. “He trusts you. If you went to him tonight, with the arts which you command—”
“I am not an assassin!”
“Did I say that you should kill him? Dissuade him. Convince him to depart from Khemet. How you do it, and how thoroughly... that is for you to determine. Only be certain that he neither takes the throne of the Two Lands, nor seizes it, nor ever destroys it.”
Meriamon sat stiff on the stool. She would have risen, but her knees would not bear her. She searched the old man’s face, looking for a sign that he jested; that he did not mean what he was saying.
“I am not joking,” he said. “I am asking whether you would do this. For Khemet. For our freedom down all the long years.”
She could not breathe. She had forgotten how. This man had sent her out—had sung the words that made her more than simple woman, gave her a god-born shadow, weighed her down with the burden of the gods’ will. Now he bade her cast it all away. Because he saw what she saw. Alien blood in the Great House of Khemet. And no hope, no dream of restoration.
“Without Alexander,” she said, “we have nothing.”
“We have you.”
She closed her eyes. It was dark, dark as the land of the dead, and cold. And she was tired, so tired. To take the crowns, the crook and the flail, even the beard—other women had done it, other women ruled, through the long years—to be lord in the Great House—
She could do it. Her hands were small, but strong enough. Her will was firm to command, if command she must.
Her shadow stirred at her back. Her hackles rose. It was the gods’ creature, but it was also hers. If she defied them, even Mother Isis, took what Ay bade her take, ruled as her blood was meant to rule—it would stay. Would protect her.
And the Parsa would come. Or Alexander, disenchanted, with the world at his back. And she would resist them. And fall as her father had; but fall free.
She drew a shuddering breath. It stabbed her. She drew another, bitter-edged. “We have failed,” she said, “we of the Black Land, to rule ourselves and our kingdom. So in the end would I. What we do now... it saves us. Not as we were before, we can never be that, in so much you see true; but we shall endure and be strong—and more than we, our gods. That, I was shown. If Alexander takes the throne as pharaoh in Memphis, all the world shall know our gods, and Mother Isis shall be worshipped wherever men are. If he does not, we dwindle and fail, and our gods sink with us, down into the long night.”
There was a silence. Meriamon opened her eyes, but kept them downcast, fixed on her knotted fingers. She was aware of Ay’s presence, the rattle and catch of his breathing, the quick nervous breaths of the young priest behind him, the murmur of wind about the walls.
She had not known what she would say until she said it. Now that it was done she was emptied, lightened. That she could have been what her father was, done what he did, and died as he died—that was almost joy. So likewise that she would not do it.
“I love him, I think,” she said. “Not as a woman loves a man—that’s no part of it. But as a soldier loves a general; as a priest can love a king. There’s a light in him, even when he’s being mad, or maddening. He’s full of the god.”
“Ah, but which god?” asked Ay. “If it is Set, and not Horus, or Amon who begot him...”
“It can be all three. And Dionysos, too—and that is Osiris, who is lord of all that lives or is dead.”
Ay pondered that, sitting as still as Osiris himself, only the glitter of his eyes betraying that he lived. Not much longer, Meriamon knew, and that was grief. The rattle in his lungs was stronger by far than it had been when she left Thebes, and there was little of him left but will and magic. But he would see the end of this, for good or for ill: Alexander crowned and taken into the Great House, and Khemet made greater by it or diminished to nothing, a nation of slaves under a tyrant’s heel.
“This is the gamble,” she said. “The great throw. We began it long ago. Should we shrink from it now, when the end is so near?”
“That part is yours,” he said, “to accept or to cast away. I only tell you what can be.”
“You test me,” she said. She did not ask why, as perhaps she was meant to. She knew. Because the power was in her, here at the crux, to let it go on, or to stop it before it was unstoppable. And, more than that, because Ay was never one to go blindly where anyone led, even a god. He wanted her to think. To choose. To decide for herself.
It was terrifying, that freedom. Knowing that her shadow waited as Ay waited, and would not move to compel her. The gods in their majesty, the Mother herself who was queen of them all, would speak no word. What Meriamon said, what she did, were hers and hers alone.
“No,” she said. “I will not stop him. If that makes me a coward, then so be it. At least I am an honest coward.”
“Or as brave as any in the world,” said Ay. “To refuse power when it is offered, when you have blood-right to it—that’s no common cowardice.”
“No; it’s noble. Royal, for a fact.” She rose. Her knees wobbled. She stiffened them. “This is
only a beginning. That’s what you’re telling me. Making me see.”
The bright eyes hooded. The old man smiled. “Now you begin to understand.”
She almost hit him. She glared instead; then, all unwillingly, laughed. She embraced him, careful of his fragility, and set a kiss on his brow. “I’d forgotten how exasperating you can be. And—for all of that—how necessary.”
“What, like one of the priests’ purges?”
“Very like,” said Meriamon, shocking the poor young priest into immobility, and making Ay laugh. That too she had forgotten: what it was to share laughter with a kinsman. By that more than anything, she knew that she had come home.
Twenty-Three
Meriamon rose long before dawn on the morning of Alexander’s crowning in Memphis. Even at that, he would be up before her: the priests and the servants would have seen to it. They had been instructing him for much of the day before, and finding him, they said, a quick pupil. “If not,” Lord Ay had said, “precisely tractable.” He had been amused.
Meriamon smiled, thinking of Alexander and Ay together. Ay would not have compelled the king to do anything against his grain, but there was a strong magic of persuasion in the old priest’s presence.
She prepared herself carefully. It had been a long while since she walked as a priestess of Amon. The gown, the wig, the paint went on like armor, heavy, stiff with disuse.
She was to be nothing in this rite except eyes and a voice; she held no rank and accepted no honor but that of a singer of the god. On that she had been adamant.
Ay, wise man, had not pressed her. Alexander might have, but she had hardly seen him since they came to Memphis. He needed for this brief time to be in Khemet wholly, without her to stand between, distracting him with familiarity.
With dawn as yet the faintest glimmer on the horizon, she left the Great House and walked down to the temple of Min—Min and not Ptah of Memphis, because Min oversaw the fruits of the land, and hence the reign of the king. The streets were full of people, but they were quiet, their ebullience muted by the cool and the dimness. She slipped through them like a shadow.
