David Gemmell: Lion of Macedon

Parmenion ran along the stone pathway towards his home, saw her and changed direction. Ducking under the outermost branches, he approached her and bowed.

'Not a safe place, my lady. Lightning may be drawn here. Let me cover you with my cloak and see you to your quarters.'

'Not yet, general. Sit a while,' she 'said, smiling up at him. Shaking his head he chuckled and sat down, stretching out his long legs and brushing raindrops from his shoulders and arms.

'Curious creatures, are women,' he remarked. 'You have beautiful rooms, warm and dry, yet you sit here in the cold and the wet.'

'There is a kind of peace here, do you not find?' she countered. 'All around us the storm, yet here we are safe and dry.'

The thunder came again, closer now, lightning forking the sky.

'The appearance of safety,' Parmenion replied, 'is not quite the same as being safe. You look sad,' he said suddenly, instinctively reaching out and taking her hand. She smiled then, holding back the tears with an effort of will.

'I am not really sad,' she lied. 'It is just… I am a stranger in a foreign land. I have no friends, my body has become lumpy and ugly, and I cannot find the right words to please Philip.

But I will, when our son is born.'

He nodded. 'The babe concerns you. Philip tells me you have dreams of its death. But I spoke to Bernios yesterday; he says you are strong and the child grows as it should. He is a good man and a fine surgeon. He would not lie to me.'

The thunder was now overhead, the wind screaming through the oak and shaking it violently.

Parmenion helped the Queen to her feet, covering her head and shoulders with his cloak, and together they returned to the palace.

Leading her to her rooms Parmenion turned to leave, but Olympias cried out and started to fall.

The Spartan leapt to her side, catching her by the arms and half carrying her to a couch.

Her hand seized the breast of his tunic. 'He's gone!' she screamed. 'My son! He's gone!'

'Calm yourself, lady,' urged Parmenion, stroking her hair.

'Oh, sweet mother Hera,' she moaned. 'He's dead!'

The Spartan moved swiftly into the outer rooms, sending in the Queen's three hand-maidens to comfort her, then ordered a messenger to fetch Bernios.

Within the hour the surgeon arrived, giving the Queen a sleeping draught before reporting back to Philip. The King sat in his throne-room with Parmenion standing beside him.

'There is no cause for concern,' the bald surgeon assured Philip. 'The child is strong, his heartbeat discernible. I do not know why the Queen should think him dead. But she is young and given, perhaps, to foolish fears.'

'She has never struck me as being easily frightened,' offered Parmenion. 'When the raiders attacked her, she killed one of them and faced down the rest.'

'I agree with the surgeon,' said Philip. 'She is like a spirited horse — fast, powerful, but highly-strung. How soon will she give birth?'

'No more than five days, sire, perhaps sooner,' the surgeon told him.

'She will be better then,' said the King, 'once the child is suckling at her breast.' Dismissing the surgeon, Philip turned to Parmenion. The Spartan was holding hard to the high back of the King's chair, his face ghostly pale and blood streaming from his nose and ears.

'Parmenion!' shouted Philip, rising and reaching out to his general. The Spartan tried to answer, but all that came from his mouth was a broken groan. Pitching forward into the King's arms, Parmenion felt a rolling sea of pain engulf his head.

Then he was falling. .

. . and the Pit beckoned.

Derae's spirit hovered above Parmenion's bed, feeling the unseen presence of Aristotle beside her.

'Now is the moment of greatest peril,' his voice whispered in her soul.

Derae did not answer. Beside the bed sat Mothac and Bernios, both men silent, unmoving. Parmenion was barely breathing. The seeress flowed her spirit into the dying man, avoiding his memories and holding to the central spark of his life, feeling the panic within the core as the growth reached out its dark tendrils in his brain. It had been an easy matter to block the power of the sylphium, but even Derae was amazed at the speed with which the cancer spread. Most growths, she knew, were obscene and ugly imitations of life, yet still they created their own blood supply — feeding from it, ensuring their own existence for as long as the host body would tolerate them. Not so this cancer: it multiplied with bewildering speed, spreading far beyond its own core. Unable to feed itself its longest tendrils merely rotted, corrupting the fatty tissues of the brain. Then another tendril would spring up, following the same pattern.

Parmenion was moments from death, gangrene and decay entering his bloodstream and carrying corruption to all parts of his body. Fresh cancers were flowering everywhere.

Derae hunted them down, destroying them where she found them.

'I cannot do it alone!' she realized, with sudden panic.

'You are not alone,' said Aristotle, his voice calm. 'I will hold the growth in the brain."

Calming herself, Derae moved to the heart. If Parmenion was to live through this ordeal his heart needed to be strong. All his life he had been a runner, and, as Derae expected, the muscles were strong. Even so the arteries and major veins were showing signs of wear, dull yellow fat clinging to the walls and constricting the blood flow. The heartbeat was weak and fluttering, the blood thin. Derae began her work here, strengthening the valves, stripping away the pale yellow wastes clogging the veins and restricting the flow of blood, breaking them down to be carried away to the bowels. His lungs were good and she did not tarry here, but swam on into the gall bladder where wastes had been extracted from the blood only to congeal into stones, sharp and jagged. These she smashed into powder.

On she moved, destroying the cancer cells lodging in his kidneys, stomach and bowel, finally returning to the central core where Aristotle waited.

The growth in the head was unmoving now, but covering still a vast amount of the brain, squatting within it like a huge spider.

'We have him now at the point of death,' said Aristotle. 'You must hold him here while I seek him out in the Void. Can you do it?'

'I do not know,' she admitted. 'I can feel his body trembling on the edge of the abyss. One error, or the onset of fatigue. I don't know, Aristotle.'

'Both our lives will be in your hands, woman. For he will be my link to the world of the living.

If he dies in the Void, then I will be trapped there. Be strong, Derae. Be Spartan!'

And then she was alone.

Parmenion's heartbeat remained weak and unsteady and she could feel the cancer pushing back against her power, the tendrils quivering, seeking to grow.

There was no sensation of waking, no drowsiness. One moment there was nothing, the next Parmenion was walking across a colourless landscape under a lifeless grey sky. He stopped, his mind hazy and confused.

As far as his eyes could see there was no life, no growth. There were long-dead trees, skeletal and bare, and jagged boulders, rearing hills and dark distant mountains. All was shadow.

Fear touched him, his hand moving to the sword at his side.

Sword?

Slowly he drew it from its scabbard, gazing down once more on the proudest memory of youth, the shining blade and lion-head pommel in gold. The Sword of Leonidas!

But from where had it come? How did he acquire it? And where in Hades was he?

The word echoed in his mind. Hades!

He swallowed hard, remembering the blinding pain, the sudden darkness.

'No,' he whispered. 'No, I can't be dead!'

'Happily that is true,' said a voice and Parmenion spun on his heel, the sword-blade extending.