Shan Sa - Alexander and Alestria

The Academy of Music inventoried fashionable tunes and composed official melodies. Wherever the king went, he heard music appropriate to the place and his activities.

Poetry and music are man's most beautiful adornments.

The center of Babylon was occupied by dignitaries and the rich; the poor lived around the outskirts of the city, in low-slung houses made of wood and beaten earth. They all had favorite taverns, be they luxurious or tumbledown, where men could meet and talk.

They drank infusions of leaves from the lands around the Indus, and they circulated a long pipe connected to a flask of water.

"Beyond Persian territories lie the lands of the Indus," announced the head of the Order of Merchants, who had invited me into a sumptuous tavern reserved for his personal use.

The merchants were not common stall keepers, I gathered from Mazee, Darius's former general who had become my most fervent servant. Throughout Persian lands, merchants were respected and stall keepers despised. The Persians considered that merchants transported the wonders of this world from one country to another, while stall keepers robbed their own neighbors in the market square.

I drank the infusion and pretended to enjoy his pipe. The smoke made me nauseous, and my head spun, but I decided to please Oibares, the most influential man in Babylon.

In this empire so avid for wealth and exoticism, merchants governed from behind the scenes, and extended their invisible power to the very limits of the earth. The richest of them owned as many as ten caravans, which came and went in rotation to ensure a constant stream of new goods. Supplying kings and satraps, selling weapons and working as spies, with an intimate knowledge of distant inaccessible lands, they knew how to manipulate tribal chiefs and corrupt armies. They brought messages of peace or delivered declarations of war. In order to protect their own best interests, they were affiliated with the Order of Merchants, which controlled the trading routes, set out the laws, and settled disagreements. Every ten lunar years the merchants held a great nocturnal ceremony during which they threw straws into a vase to elect a new leader.

Oibares was forty-five, with shining blue eyes, a fine proud nose, and thin lips. Like all rich Babylonians obsessed with their appearance, he wore a scarlet turban on his shaven head, and had a long beard in which his own hair was blended with extensions. He created magnificent arrangements with it, dying it chestnut brown, curling it with hot irons, and perfuming it with rosewater. Disappointed with such a weak, extravagant king, Oibares had plotted against Darius, who constantly raised taxes and closed his eyes when his troops plagued trading caravans.

The elegance of Oibares' appearance was a perfect camouflage for his thoughts. As it was impossible to guess what his intentions were, I disarmed him with my submissive-woman behavior. I let him talk without interrupting: encouraged by my complicit silence, intoxicated by my loving gaze, he took long drags on his pipe and exhaled lightheartedly. The smoke scrolled around us like drunken bacchantes dancing languidly to the rhythm of his voice.

"Have you heard tell, Great Alexander, of the lands of the Indus, lands of deepest valleys and darkest forests?" he asked. "The men who live there are wild and cruel. Their swamps are full of slithering snakes and birds that spit fetid venom. No one has conquered those kingdoms since time immemorial. But you, Alexander of Macedonia, son of Apollo, invincible warrior who was granted Ammon's benediction, you shall conquer the nine-headed monsters with tiger's teeth and serpent's tails. You, the man whom all the gods love, shall take the treasure defended by those tribes of men and apes."

Oibares clapped his hands, and a slave appeared, carrying a tray of raw gold, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and pearls. He put the tray down on a low table and left us. Oibares picked up a piece of emerald, rubbed it on his sleeve, and looked at it. He gave a sigh.

"Oka, Great Alexander, master of Babylon and Memphis! You alone deserve all the jewels of the Orient! Do you know that in the days when the earth was covered with snow and frost, there was an ocean where the Indus is now, in the land where the sun rises? There were dragons, huge aquatic snakes covered in scales, living in the eternal darkness of those abyssal depths. Every three moons they uncoiled their monstrous heavy bodies and came to the surface to wait for dawn. When the sun rose, they squirmed and writhed together, throwing themselves out of the water to draw in the light, their celestial sustenance. But time passed, and the land emerged from the depths. The dragons died, and their gigantic bodies turned into mines of precious stones in which the incandescent sun still burned. The seed borne by the females became a seam of diamonds holding the vital force of that long-gone world in its very heart."

Oibares stroked his beard, his eyes lost in thought, as if gazing at that distant land so dangerous it gave its riches a sensual glamour. All of a sudden he flipped the tray over with a disdainful swipe of his hand. The precious stones scattered and rolled across the carpet.

"The stones of the twenty satrapies of Persia are but pebbles! In the land of the Indus the gold is heavy and the gems dazzling! Oka, Great Alexander, the only man destined to be Master of Asia, the only king worthy of ascending to the throne in the heart of the sun, the only hero who will make a vast crown of glory from the treasures of the earth, I shall give you whatever gold you need to raise the greatest army in the world! In exchange for this humble service, you shall carve a route for us, we who transport the colors and savors of life, a route from here right to the sun!"

I found Oibares pleasing: his poetry, his fiery admiration for unknown lands, his passion for life, lent a certain grandeur to his mercenary calculations. I liked his intelligent mind, which had spotted an ally in me. I particularly appreciated the finesse with which he manipulated, offering and submitting before receiving or asking. He had just suggested a deal that would join his interests to my ambitions. Carried forward by Persian soldiers and supported by merchants, I could conquer the entire world.

I lay down my pipe and took off my rings, mounted with the most beautiful stones from the lands I had conquered; then I threw them in the air like trifles. They rolled over toward the Persian pebbles.

"Glaciers are melting, seas are drying out, dragons are turning into diamonds, and one day they will be dust. Worldly riches come and go. Alexander wants celestial riches, the ocean of gold pieces that belongs to whoever reaches the summit! In that place where Alexander is heading the earth trembles, citadels burn down, city walls are breached, roads appear. Alexander builds and destroys fortunes. Those who follow him ride with him toward all that is vast and magnificent."

Oibares looked me in the eye and then burst out laughing. Contaminated by this rush of exuberance, I laughed with him and concluded our unprecedented alliance between East and West, between the power of gold and the strength of the lance.

The merchants busied themselves putting together an army for me. To secure absolute loyalty toward me from Darius's former soldiers, they opened up the succession of heavy bronze doors leading to the fortified chamber suspended between the sky and the earth, where the princess, the hidden pearl, the daughter and granddaughter of Great Kings, was waiting for her liberator.

Her perfume reached me before she appeared; and the rustle of her tunic already filled the room in which I sat. Preceded by two eunuchs and followed by two governesses, she approached with all the confidence and majesty of an imperial daughter. She was tall and slender, with white skin. Her brown hair had been coiled around hot irons and now fell in floating curls about her heavily jeweled headdress. She gave a slight bow and knelt before me. With lowered eyes she waited for me to hold out my hand to her, thereby sealing the union between Persians and Macedonians.