Shan Sa - Alexander and Alestria

The mountains drew nearer and grew taller. The forest-full of dark greens, oranges, and pinks-opened up to us and revealed Kristna's city, built vertically on a south-facing flank of the mountain. The ramparts wound their way through the trees, surrounding thatched houses on stilts and others made of beaten earth, while the track climbed and zigzagged to the very top, where a fortress rose into the skies, attracting clouds of birds.

In the gateway stood richly attired soldiers playing the flute and burning incense. They stepped aside to let Alexander and his queen pass, showering them with fragrant petals. To demonstrate his peaceful intentions, the King of Asia had stationed his army far from the town, and his only entourage was made up of the queen's thirty serving women, all of them veiled so that no one would suspect the daggers attached to their belts.

Prince Kristna's fortress was itself the size of a town, flaunting its countless palaces built one above the other. A long covered gallery linked their terraced gardens and ornamental ponds. Borne on sedan chairs, Alexander and Alestria made their way through this steeply raked labyrinth where the women wore dazzling, brightly colored cloth wound around them; they had rings in one nostril, a red spot drawn in the middle of their smooth foreheads, and a black line penciled in under their dark eyes. They greeted the visitors by bowing and joining their hands, which were embellished with red paint, then backed away to the clinking of their countless bangles and the tinkle of bells knotted round their ankles, leaving in their wake their perfume of white flowers.

Well-muscled young men came to greet us, some wearing turbans that were less dramatic than the Persians', others with their black curls falling freely. They wore fine cloth about their waists and knotted between their legs, where it floated in the wind. Some had scars, others not. Some wore bangles on their left forearms; others had diamonds embedded in their noses and earrings. As I saw more of these men, I realized that the number of bangles set with rubies and pearls was a mark of each warrior's courage, an honor granted by their prince.

Our procession passed a spiral of palaces and arrived in a banqueting hall. The high-vaulted ceiling, encrusted with gem-stones, was held up by columns of finely carved marble depicting fruit trees, waterfalls, and exotic birds. The walls were paneled with precious wood edged with gold, and against this background were bas-relief scenes carved in ivory: heroes on horseback, legendary cities, and fabulous animals. Kristna, the young prince, who wore a well-groomed mustache, came over to Alexander and welcomed him with his hands joined.

The two men sat down, one at each end of a very long table. With his painted eyebrows and lips and the red powder emphasizing his cheeks, our host looked like a statuette completely covered in precious stones. A dozen necklaces coiled round his neck, covering his chest, which was squeezed into a tight tunic of silver cloth with gold threads woven through it. There was an emerald the size of an egg at the front of his turban, which dripped with white and pink pearls. The narrow sleeves of his tunic gleamed, although they could not compete with the truly remarkable piece of jewelry the prince wore on his right forearm: a wide gold cuff engraved with gods and goddesses dancing in a forest where monkeys, peacocks, tigers, and elephants played with rubies, pearls, and emeralds. Around his narrow waist he wore a belt shaped like a lotus flower, every petal stitched with diamonds and hung with miniature figures. He sat with one leg folded beneath him and rested one arm nonchalantly on the other leg. His foot peeped out from beneath his tunic: there was a ring on every toe, and one of these rings had a tiny cage made of gold holding minute precious stones.

He clapped his hands, and beautiful young serving men filed in, distributed quantities of little silver dishes over the table, then withdrew. Male and female dancers accompanied by musicians appeared and twirled between the columns, jingling the bells on their ankles.

At the other end of the table Alexander pretended to eat and drink, but his lips barely touched his goblet, so afraid was he of being poisoned. That day he wore a scarlet tunic decorated down the front with three phoenixes in embossed gold thread; its wings had taken the most skilled Persian embroiderers three months to complete. His jewels conceded nothing in magnificence to those of the Indian prince, for it was important on this occasion to fight his opponent in wealth, not in power. That is why Alexander had put on ten rings, bearing fiery diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. His turban was wound round with gold thread hung with masses of dazzling precious stones from every corner of the world that Alexander the Great had conquered. Each countless sparkle of jewelry-tiger's eye, moonstone, coral, turquoise, agate, amethyst, pearl, onyx, not to mention the beautiful sapphires and still other stones as yet unknown to man-represented the countless territories he owned. On his feet he wore leather sandals embroidered with gold and stitched with myriad tiny pearls.

The Indian prince had seated his wives behind him, and each of them carried a small tray full of delicacies. These twenty young women-all of them beautiful and alluring-were of many different nationalities, and to counter them Alexander had only Alestria, who had also been given a small low table. She wore a white veil that covered her from head to foot, and one could see only her eyes emphasized with blue in the Persian style. On her head she wore a wreath adorned with the most beautiful diamonds in the world, the size of quail's eggs, and the most talented craftsmen had spent ten years cutting their glittering inner facets, smoothing their outer shapes. Alestria wore no other jewelry, but still she was radiant, making all the other women pale in comparison. Prince Kristna immediately recognized these legendary diamonds that no one but the Great Kings of Persia could ever own. He was besotted with jewelry and could not help constantly commenting on their purity.

The dishes had barely been put on the table before they were cleared away and replaced by other delicacies. A hundred or more plates graced the king's table that evening. As the night wore on the dancers wore fewer and fewer clothes: bare-breasted, they spun round the fountains, skipped down the alabaster steps, or strolled among peacocks and parrots. In the huge gardens torches and candles lit a flower bed of exotic blooms, their petals either ruffled or smooth, thick or thin, opaque or transparent. Each of them was shown off at its best by the ingenious lighting, thanks to which even the leaves competed in this pageant of beauty. Hundreds of different types of leaves-long and slender, short and notched, round and thick-stood out against the darkness and quivered as the dancers brushed past them.

Indian warriors brandishing swords erupted onto the steps. I, Ania, and the queen's Amazon guards ran to meet them with our daggers raised. They started dancing, and we danced with them by way of combat. Kristna's eyes shone; he was watching Alexander: the king, unruffled, smiled and clapped in time to the music.

The sun rose, and the banquet came to an end in feigned drunkenness and mutual mistrust. The two kings exchanged a good many polite niceties, bringing their hands together at chest height, touching their foreheads, and patting each other's shoulders with their left hands while keeping their right hands over their hearts. Kristna accompanied Alexander to the gates of the city, where Hephaestion was waiting for him impatiently. To thank him for such a sumptuous reception, Alexander called for two soldiers to offer his host a pair of gold-plated silver caskets. Inside them were two severed heads: astonishment turned to smiles when the Indian prince recognized them; then he knelt and swore loyalty to Alexander.