Stealing Fire

by Jo Graham

  We crested a rise, and I drew rein to look.

  Across the plain a city waited in the sun, gleaming walls and the high glittering domes of temples, shaped like onions and painted scarlet and gold. The city waited like doom in the sun, beneath the blue sky. I stopped, and I saw. In the shape of the walls I saw the shadow of Babylon, the shadow of the City of the Dead. Ahead, the column and the baggage train curled like a dark serpent.

  It was not Babylon, of course, but some other city still unbuilt. I dreamed, and I knew I dreamed the future.

  “What is this place?” I whispered. The plain, the city, the marching column wavered, as though a mist stood between me and them.

  I stood on the rise above the column, looking down at them.

  “That which may be,” She said, and I turned to see Isis standing beside me, Her dark hair plaited in many braids and covered with a veil of silver, like the moon in mourning. “Lydias,” She said.

  “Gracious Queen,” I said, and dropped to my knees.

  She raised me up with Her hand beneath my elbow—my own body, once again myself.

  I glanced over the rise and saw her from the outside, the woman on the brown horse, her hair the color of sunlight cut close as any Greek boy, her sunburned nose and sharp blue eyes, a body that moved like a boy or a eunuch, though she must be close to forty. “Is that me?” I asked.

  “It may be,” Isis said. “The future has many paths, and the gods cannot see which will come to pass. For that we must rely on oracles, who see straight the choices of men.”

  “You don't know what will happen?” I asked curiously.

  She shook Her head ruefully. “No. We may know what is likely, or know reasons that you do not yet understand, but we cannot see what the choices of men will be. This future is far from now, and many choices lie between now and then. I could not see this, if you did not open the way.” She lifted Her chin, gesturing toward the woman on the horse. “From you to you. From you to a woman who was once Lydias and is struck by something that reminds her of you.”

  “This is very deep water for me,” I said. “How can it be that I will be a woman?”

  Isis smiled. “Do you think the soul has gender? Or are men and women not both human?”

  “Some philosophers say not,” I said. “But I am not an educated man, and I do not know such things. I can only tell what I see. Men and women are human alike and suffer the same pains.” I remembered something then, something She had said when I dreamed in the desert with Ptolemy. “Gracious Queen, You hailed me as priest and priestess both. Is that what You mean?”

  Her smile grew broader. “The gods see the past clearly, as it is only a matter of remembering. Yes, you have been priest and priestess both to the Black Land in the past, wife of Amon and priest of Thoth, and more besides. You are not a stranger to us, Lydias, though you come with a foreign name and face. We know you, as your King did.”

  “Alexander,” I said. “Is it true that he is bound?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Is it not the belief of many peoples that the soul remains until the funeral is accomplished? How may he pass on when he is unburied? And while he is unburied, the spirits Pharaoh hold in check run rampant through the world.”

  “Is that why I saw the Dead City?” I asked.

  For a moment I thought She looked startled. “It may be. Chaos walks the land, and death and disease will follow. Ptolemy could bind it, if he wished.”

  “If he were Pharaoh,” I said flatly. “I cannot push him to that, and I will not. No man should be king who does not want to take up the burden.”

  Her eyes flashed. “And does that not happen always? What prince chooses that his father shall rule? A prince must take up the duty he is born to, just as every man must. When you are assigned to a duty, do you whine and say that it is too hard?”

  “No,” I said, “but I chose to give my oath as Companion, and I will keep it while my breath lasts. Ptolemy will not usurp a throne to which he has no right. He is not a man who will say, I want it and so it is just.”

  “Which is why he should be Pharaoh,” She said. “Do you think I should seek a despot for Egypt's throne? This land has known suffering enough.”

  She paced away from me, and beyond Her I could still see the column of horses and carts, the long line of the future baggage train winding its way down the hill toward the city, dark blue coats and strange short staves held to the shoulders of each soldier. The woman on the horse watched, her eyes as blue as the skies of the Black Land.

  Her back to me still, Isis spoke, and Her voice was low. “I wonder. Will you forget me, Lydias, when two thousand years have gone?”

  I looked back to the woman again, her seat on the strange leather pad on her horse's back, the way she held the reins easily in her left hand, as though she had done this two thousand years, for more campaigns than I could imagine. “I don't think so,” I said. “I don't think I'm good at forgetting.”

  I WOKE TO the sound of the boatmen's calls as we came into Abydos, their voices echoing over the water as we came alongside the dock.

  The sense of strangeness stayed with me all the way up the Nile, to Thebes and back.

  They had not loved Alexander in Upper Egypt. They had not known him. To them, he was just a name. A good name to be sure, as they had not liked the Persians, but the hand of the Persian Great King had rested lightly on Upper Egypt, and Persian law had never really been enforced. In Memphis and the Delta they hated the Persians, and welcomed Alexander with open arms. In Upper Egypt, they were cautious.

  I was well received, to be sure. Everyone was quite polite, though I felt that I often missed half of what was said, and resolved to learn Egyptian as fast as I might. Yes, of course everyone was glad to hear that the infant son of Alexander lived and was well. Yes, of course everyone was loyal to his satrap, Ptolemy. It was good to hear that Egypt should be governed by Egyptian law.

  And yet beneath it all was a current I did not like. Something was wrong.

  I did not get an idea until my fifth day in Thebes, when I woke before dawn to the sounds of servants outside in the courtyard, and the weeping of women. Peering from the window, it seemed that they were clustered around a body that had been brought in by two men carrying a sling, family and friends running to rend their clothes and lament over it.

  Later in the day I asked my host about it.

  The priest of Amon looked troubled, and he did not meet my eyes. “A peasant,” he said in Greek. “Nothing to be concerned about. Killed in a fall in the desert.”

  “Ah,” I said. It was certainly true that one might be. The wadis on the western side of the river had steep cliffs. A man might fall to his death easily enough. But why the secrecy, the fear I saw in his face?

  It was evening, and the lamps were lit when I retired to my chamber. One of the young servant women was standing on a stool hanging the freshly washed curtains at the window, though she begged my pardon when I came in.

  “I did not mean to be still at my work,” she said, clambering down. “Please excuse, Gracious Lord.” I thought her Greek was rather better than her master's, and her eyes were red from weeping.

  She stood about, as if waiting for direction. I wondered if she had been instructed to remain at my disposal, and if she found the thought of pleasing me so displeasing.

  “Why do you weep?” I asked carefully. “Is it that the man who died last night was kin to you?”

  Her dark eyes filled with tears. “My uncle,” she said. “Please, Gracious Lord, your pardon. I am unseemly.”

  “No, not in the least,” I said, taking care not to come too close to her so that she might mistake me. “We may be foreigners, but we hardly consider it unseemly to mourn your uncle's death. Surely that is understandable. How did he die?”

  “A lion,” she said, and dropped her face into her hands. “They say it was a lion.”

  “A lion?” That a peasant man of no doubt some years should be out in the desert with a lion in the night seem
ed unusual.

  “A lion,” she said, her voice choked. “We saw the claw marks where its talons had torn him.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  She looked up, and her young face was fierce and her voice low. “It wasn't a lion, Gracious Lord. It was the Night Spirits. They are back and they grow stronger! No one will go outside the walls at night now, unless they must. They come from the West, out of the Red Land, and they hate men! Already they haunt the other bank of the Nile. Take this as a warning, and do not go out at night or you will be like my poor uncle!” Sobbing, she ran from the room.

  I RETURNED TO Alexandria with the flood, the Nile rising as we journeyed down her broad breast. We left the river before we reached Alexandria, for it was not being built on the river but rather on Lake Mareotis, where there was a better harbor than in the shallows of the river mouths. I was shocked by the change in seven short months since Ptolemy and I had left for Memphis.

  When I had left, most of the streets were nothing but muddy tracks, stakes and rope marking out where houses and shops should go. Now it was a city.

  To be sure there were still streets unpaved, still lots with nothing on them but a stake and a number, but from the dirt rose houses of mud brick, some painted and decorated a bit, or walls half finished with tents pitched in the middle of them to make a roof. The streets rang with the sounds of carpenters’ hammers, with the shouts of children running and playing, with the sounds of barter in a dozen languages in the makeshift markets. It was as though the baggage train were given permanence, the volatile movement of the camp rendered in brick instead of canvas. The scents of cooking rose on the night air. I could have sworn I smelled curried lamb.

  I made my way to what was supposed to be the palace to report to Ptolemy, past awnings pitched on new paved courtyards, taverns serving wine to soldiers and townsmen alike. I even thought I saw a couple of Jews and wondered where they had come from. A vast building site stood empty, a sign on it proclaiming in Greek that it would soon be a gymnasium by subscription for the sons of the city, with tutors and coaches to be hired as soon as money permitted, please apply to Phaidon of Achillas’ Ile for prices and information, discounts to be given to fathers who enrolled more than one son at a time, and half price for the third.

  For the sons of the city, I thought. Not for young Greek gentlemen. And how should it be? There were hardly any Greek women here. Most of the sons would have mothers of other nations, Persian or Median, Egyptian or Indian. Unexpectedly, I felt my throat close.

  Here I should be nothing unusual, half Greek and half Carian. Here I would not have been a by-blow to sell off as a slave, but a son of the city. These boys would not be sold away as I had been, but go to school. They would read and write and see no difference between the son of a Carian and the son of an Indian. In course of time, they should marry one another's sisters, and we should be a new people altogether. Alexandrian.

  If we had time. That was the question. Would this fragile thing prevail, or be burned to ashes in the first war?

  Standing there in the night, beside a muddy lot that would one day be a gymnasium, I closed my eyes.

  Oh my city, I prayed, oh spirit of the city, Spirit of Alexandria, I do pledge myself to this, that I shall do as best I can to preserve you for all the sons of our sons. I will do my best.

  I felt the night wind curl around me, heavy with smells of raw wood and fresh fish, of cooking and horses and people. The city embraced me.

  Home, it whispered. Lydias, you are home.

  Home, I thought. I have a home, and it is here.

  And then I opened my eyes and went to report to Ptolemy.

  I DID NOT expect him to be still in his office and still about his work. He looked up when I came in. “Oh, good, Lydias. You're back in good time.”

  “I am?” I feared I had a mixed bag of news to tell him from Upper Egypt, and some of it could hardly be welcome.

  Ptolemy put down the paper he was holding and gestured to the stool on the other side of the table from him. “Have some wine,” he said. “I need to talk to you. I've just had a letter from the embalmers.”

  I poured some out from an amphora that stood near and added the water from the pitcher. “Embalmers?” I asked blankly. I could not think what embalmers he meant.

  “When Hephaistion died, Alexander sent for the finest embalmers to preserve his corpse until the funeral. Those of course came from Egypt, from the priests of Anubis who are entrusted with such things. Since the King died a few short months after Hephaistion, the embalmers were still in Babylon. That's who was sent to preserve his body.”

  “Oh,” I said. I had not given much thought to that, in the chaos of the palace in Babylon.

  “They're still there with it now, and Manetho is in contact with them, as I am in contact with others highly placed in the King's entourage.” Ptolemy put his painted cup down on the edge of the table. “And so I've learned something unwelcome. Olympias has made common cause with Perdiccas.”

  “Shit,” I said. “I thought they were deadly enemies, with Olympias wanting Alexander's body in Macedon and Perdiccas wanting it in Babylon.”

  “Olympias hates Antipatros, the Regent in Macedon, more than she does Perdiccas. And Perdiccas has Roxane, and the only thing that Olympias cares about: that her grandson gain the throne of Macedon over any other contender and rule as king in Pella. To that end, she's made Perdiccas an offer he'll take.” Ptolemy paused, meeting my eyes. “Perdiccas will send Alexander's body to Macedon, and Olympias will send Perdiccas the only thing more important—Cleopatra, Alexander's only full sister, as his bride.”

  I blew out a breath and took a sip of wine before I spoke. “We're screwed. What's the next move?”

  Ptolemy nodded. “I've opened correspondence with Antipatros. He liked me as a boy, and he's agreed to send me his daughter Eurydice as my wife.”

  “That helps some,” I said. Cassander's sister, I thought. I had never liked him at all, but perhaps his sister was not the same. Perhaps she wasn't a bloody-minded bully. She might be entirely different. There was no point in asking what Thais might think of this. It was a marriage of state, and had nothing to do with her. “Is that enough?”

  “No,” Ptolemy said, putting his elbows on the table. “And here's where we come to your job.”

  “I'm not much of an envoy for arranging marriages,” I said.

  “Not that,” Ptolemy said. “You're going to steal Alexander's body.”

  A CLEVER PLAN

  I'm going to what?” I asked dumbfoundedly. It does not do to ask your commanding officer if he has lost his mind.

  “Steal Alexander's body,” Ptolemy repeated.

  “How am I going to do that?” The picture it presented was simply grotesque. “Just pick it up and walk off with it? Surely there are guards, and it's not as though no one would notice him missing…” I could hardly imagine it. Alexander lay in Babylon, in the palace of the Great Kings, the greatest hero of the age. There must be attendants, servants, guards…

  Ptolemy poured more wine into my cup, making it stronger. He looked at me sideways with dark humor. “No, not just pick him up and walk off with him. A mummy is a heavy thing, anyhow. I don't know if you've ever picked one up.”

  “I can't say I have,” I said, wondering if he'd been lifting mummies for practice, or if it were merely his usual thoroughness.

  For good measure he added more of the wine to his own cup, sipped from it, and set it down. “Perdiccas agreed to send the King's body home, to Olympias in Macedon. To that end, he's had a huge hearse constructed. It's enormous, with gilded everything and a gold sarcophagus weighing about the same as an ox. It takes forty horses to pull it, or some absurd number like that. It's guarded by a good eight hundred men.”

  “That makes it so much easier!” I said, lifting my hands to my head. “Thank you so very much! Now it all seems clearer!”

  Ptolemy laughed and touched his cup to mine. “Lydias, I swear to you I am not mad! Lis
ten to what I have in mind, and then tell me if you think it's impossible. We will take it apart together.”

  “I'm listening,” I said, spreading my hands. “I've never known you to be mad before.”

  Ptolemy grinned and took a sip. “The plan is this: the hearse cannot travel quickly. It's too large and too heavy and can only go by Royal Roads. And it cannot travel the mountains in poor weather. It must cross Asia in summer, because even a little ice or mud will make the mountains impassible. It's too late in the year to leave Babylon and make the journey now.”

  “True,” I said, thinking of the mountains near Miletus and the uplands along the Royal Road to Gordion. We did not even travel the horse fair circuit except in spring and summer, and that was without heavy wagons. Summer was already ending in the uplands, and in a few weeks rains would come. It was not too long before they would wake to ice in the mornings in the high mountains. Here in Egypt it was easy to forget that winter was coming.

  “It will have to leave Babylon in the spring next year, so that the passes are clear. How would you go?”

  I closed my eyes a moment, seeing the maps in my mind. “From Babylon I'd take the Royal Road to the coast and then turn north onto the Royal Road to Gordion, the way the dispatch riders go. It's the smoothest road with the gentlest grades, which would matter dragging a huge hearse. Then from Gordion I'd turn north toward the Hellespont, instead of taking the route through the cities of Ionia. That would minimize my time within striking distance of the sea.”

  “And the closest point to us?”

  “Not very close,” I said. “There's no reason to go as far south as Tyre, or even Damascus. I suppose the closest would be near Issos, where the road comes down out of the mountains and turns north.” I could see that pass in memory, the road cutting cleanly between steep cliffs, then broadening as it breached the last rampart and descended to the plain. It was there that Darius had chosen to face Alexander all those years ago. It was a very good place for an ambush.