But there was no city. No ocean. No Creators. Nothing but an empty land stretching out to a rolling hilly horizon.
Slowly I climbed to my feet, looking for some sign of them. The Creators had to be here. Otherwise why would I have come to this placetime?
“Because you’re something of a clod, Orion.”
I whirled and there stood the Golden One with the sun at his back. He wore a short-skirted robe that seemed to gleam with a radiance of its own. His handsome face was frowning with annoyance.
“Orion, what are you trying to do? Don’t you realize that every time you disturb the continuum like this we have to work to repair the damage you’ve done?”
“Where is Anya?” I asked.
“Far from here.”
“What’s going on? Why am I being held in Pella if there’s a crisis so grave—”
“Stop this chatter!” Aten snapped. “You’ve been told more than once, Orion: your task is in the placetime where you’ve been sent. Do as Hera commands. Is that clear?”
“Not clear enough. I want to know what you are trying to accomplish.”
His narrow nostrils flared angrily. “You want to know, do you? All right, I’ll tell you. You ruined my plans for Troy. Do you remember that?”
He had wanted Troy to beat the Achaian Greeks and go on to establish an empire that would link Asia and Europe. I had thwarted him out of spite.
“That little game of yours unravelled the continuum so badly that we had to exert all our efforts to bring things back together again.”
Good, I thought. Aten had gone insane then; he neglected to recall that little fact.
“We are still trying to repair the damage you’ve done. There must be an empire that unites Europe and Asia, even if it lasts only for a few generations. It is important. Vital!”
“So Alexandros—”
“Must succeed. If you ever expect to see Anya again, you must do as Hera commands. Do you understand that?”
I bowed my head and heard myself mutter, “I understand.”
Aten shook his head and grumbled, “I must say, Orion, that you’ve been more trouble than you’re worth. But you’re strong, I’ll grant you that much. I sent you to the Mesozoic again, back among the dinosaurs, just to get you out of our way until we needed you again. But somehow you showed up at Pella.”
“Anya did that,” I replied, with a certainty that surprised me.
He gave me a sharp look. “Perhaps she did,” he mused. “Perhaps she did. When I wanted to put you in suspension, she insisted that I let you live out a life somewhere in the continuum.”
“So I was to be stored away like a toy that you had grown tired of playing with.”
“Like a tool that I wanted to keep available until I needed it again,” the Golden One corrected.
“And now?” I asked.
“Now we face the gravest crisis of all, thanks in part to your infernal meddling.”
“That is what Anya is doing, fighting against this crisis?”
“Orion, that is what we all are doing. We have no energy to spare on your antics.”
“And Hera is manipulating the events in Macedonia?”
“That is her part of the crisis. Again, because of your stubborn resistance to our will.”
“So what am I to do?”
He smiled thinly. “Nothing at all, Orion. You should have been put in cryonic storage, but I think your cell in Pella will do almost as well. Enjoy your new playmates.”
He meant the rats, I knew.
CHAPTER 30
I opened my eyes in the darkness of my cell and saw the red hateful eyes of the rats surrounding me. Only a few heartbeats of time had elapsed since I had lain myself down on the moldy straw pallet, I reckoned. The rats were approaching me warily, sniffing at the odor of fresh meat but not yet excited into a feeding frenzy.
I sprang to my feet and they scattered to the corners of the cell, chittering with fear and disappointment.
Thus I spent my days, pacing the narrow confines of the cell, not daring to sleep. The only mark of elapsed time came when the jailor slid my gruel through the slot in the door and collected my chamberpot. Gradually I began to look on the rats as companions.
Using the skill I had learned long ago from the Neanderthals, I tried to put myself into the consciousness of the rats. Gradually I learned to see my cell through their eyes. I felt the gnawing hunger that drove them, so much so that I started to leave my miserable bowl of gruel unfinished and let them lap up the remains.
Day after day I perfected my rapport with them, to the degree that I could sit on the floor of my cell and go with them through the cracks between the cell walls, into their nests, along the tunnels that honeycombed the palace’s cellars. Through the eyes of the pack’s leader I visited the guard room and saw the giant humans lounging carelessly, dropping crumbs of bread and scraps of meat onto the floor—a feast for the pack, once the humans had left the chamber.
I even listened to the guards’ conversations, although their voices sounded strangely deep and booming in the ears of my rats. It took some while for me to learn how to transduce the tones they were capable of hearing into words of understandable human language.
Another royal wedding was drawing near, I learned. But the more they spoke, the more bawdy jokes they made about the impending nuptials, the more confused I became. Alexandros was marrying Kleopatra, they said. Those were two of the most common names among the Macedonians. Did they mean Alexandros, the king’s son? The Little King himself? And Kleopatra was the name of Philip’s most recent wife, although he called her Eurydice.
It was Pausanias who cleared up the puzzle for me.
He came to visit me in my cell. One day I heard footsteps coming down the hall, and recognized that there was someone accompanying the shuffle-footed old man who brought me my food. Someone wearing boots. One of the rats happened to be near a crack in the corridor wall and I looked up through its eyes. Pausanias loomed like a moving mountain, shaking the rat’s sensitive whiskers with each booted step.
The guard pulled the door open on its squeaking hinges and Pausanias ducked through the doorway into my cell. He carried a sputtering torch in his right hand. He had left his sword at the guard room, I saw.
“Leave us,” he told the old man. “I’ll call when I’m finished here.”
The old man wordlessly closed the door and shot its bolt home.
“You’ve lost weight,” Pausanias said, looking me over.
I saw his nose wrinkle. “And I must smell pretty bad, too,” I said.
“That can’t be helped.”
“Why am I here?” I asked. “Why haven’t I been allowed to see the king? Or to have a trial, at least.”
“It will be over soon,” he said. His face was grim, his eyes evasive.
“What do you mean?”
“After the wedding we can let you go.”
“The wedding?”
Pausanias’ lips turned down into a frown. “The king is giving his daughter to his brother-in-law.”
“His daughter Kleopatra? Olympias’ daughter?”
“She is to marry Alexandros, King of Epeiros.”
“Olympias’ brother?” I felt shocked.
He nodded sourly. “It smacks of incest, doesn’t it? Marrying off his fourteen-year-old daughter to her own uncle.”
“I thought that Olympias was living in Epeiros with her brother.”
“She was. She has been returned to Pella.”
Philip’s statecraft, I realized. He was binding the king of Epeiros to Macedonia by marrying his daughter to him. Alexandros of Epeiros would no longer side with Olympias in their marital squabbles because he was marrying a Macedonian princess. Olympias no longer had a brother to take her side, to give her shelter, to possibly go to war against Philip for her sake.
“The One-Eyed Fox has outsmarted her,” I muttered.
“Has he?” Pausanias made a bitter smile. “We’ll see.”
“And what of our Alexandros, the Little King? How is he reacting to all this?”
“He ran off to Epeiros with his mother when Philip married Eurydice. But the king called him back to Pella and he came, obedient to Philip’s command.”
“He’s chosen his father over his mother’s wishes,” I said.
“Don’t jump to conclusions, Orion,” said Pausanias. “Alexandros will be king one day. That’s why he returned to Pella, to reinforce his claim to the throne. You know that Eurydice has born Philip a son.”
“I heard.”
“The babe will never become king of Macedonia. Alexandros is determined to succeed his father, no matter what.”
I nodded my agreement. Then I asked again, “But what has this to do with me? Why am I being kept locked in this cell?”
“You deserted your duty,” Pausanias answered crisply. “You ran away from the Persian capital and disappeared into the desert. Do you deny that?”