Ben Bova - Orion and the Conqueror

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.