I sheathed my dagger. He shoved my hand away from his mouth and reached for the sword hanging beside the bed. I punched him solidly on his temple and he went limp, unconscious.
Then I ducked through his window and back up onto the roof, heading for the stables and a fast horse and the hills before Aigai.
Pausanias reacted almost exactly as I had expected. By the time I had swung off the road to Aigai and nosed my horse up into the brown hills, couriers on lathered horses raced to the old city’s gates. Before the sun went down that day a troop of royal guards came up the road, riding almost as hard as the couriers, with Pausanias at their head. They made camp in front of the city wall, obviously to block my entry into Aigai.
Pausanias went inside. To the queen, I imagined, breathless to tell her of the danger to their plans that I represented. I smiled to myself as I made my own camp for the night. No fire for me. I was not ready to be caught just yet. I let my horse crop the scrawny grass pushing up through the rocky ground while I armed myself with a handful of small stones and went hunting. I killed a hare, skinned it and ate its meat raw. It was tough, but nourishing enough. Then both the horse and I drank at a shallow stream bubbling down the hillside.
She came to me in my dreams, of course.
Hera was furious. No sooner had I closed my eyes in sleep than I found myself standing before her in a chamber so vast that I could see neither its walls nor its ceiling. Enormous columns of gray-green marble rose like a forest, dwarfing even the many-columned hall of the Great King. Hera sat on a throne that glowed faintly, completely alone, magnificently beautiful in a flowing white robe that left her slim arms bare except for her jeweled bracelets and armlets, all in the shape of coiling snakes.
Staring down at me with fiery eyes, she snapped, “You are more trouble than you’re worth, Orion.”
I smiled at her. “I accept that as a compliment.”
Her eyes blazed. She leaned forward slightly, hands clenching into white-knuckled fists, body rigid with tension.
I felt the beginnings of the pain she had inflicted on me before, but I fought against it, strove to banish it from my consciousness. It faded away before it became anything more than an annoying tingling.
Hera’s face contorted into an even angrier frown.
“It’s not working,” I said. “You can’t punish me the way you once did.”
“You’re being protected!” The thought seemed to surprise her.
“Or perhaps I’ve learned to protect myself,” I said, not daring to hope that Anya was near. She was the only one who would protect me, I knew.
“Impossible. We wiped that capability from your mind before we sent you here.”
“We?” I asked. “You and the Golden One?”
She did not need to answer; I knew.
“You failed, then. My memories are returning. My abilities are growing.”
“We will destroy you, once and for all.”
I thought of Ketu. “And grant me the release of oblivion?”
Hera glowered at me.
“The Golden One fathered Alexandros, didn’t he? The two of you are playing at kings and empires. Does it amuse you? Is there some point to it beyond your own pitiful entertainment?”
“You don’t understand anything, Orion.”
“Don’t I? As far as I can see, you are serving the whims of Aten, the Golden One, whatever he’s calling himself now. He wanted to create a Trojan empire that spanned Europe and Asia. I stopped him then. Now he gets you to help him create the empire he’s wanted all along—by bearing his son, Alexandros, and allowing him to conquer the Persians.”
“Alexandros will conquer the whole world,” Hera said. “He must, or this nexus in the continuum will unravel disastrously.”
“But Philip stands in his way. He has a new son now, one that he is certain comes from his own seed.”
“Philip will die.”
“At Pausanias’ hand.”
“Of course.”
“Not if I can stop him.”
“You mustn’t!”
“Why not?”
Her anger had faded. Now she seemed alarmed, almost frightened. But she pulled herself together, regained her self-control. Hera leaned forward again and smiled coldly at me.
“Orion, consider: if this nexus unravels the fabric of spacetime, everything changes. You will be torn from Anya just as surely as the Earth will be destroyed in nuclear fire a few thousand years up the time-stream.”
“And if I obey you and allow Philip to be assassinated?”
She shrugged her slim shoulders. “At least we will be dealing with a continuum we understand and can control.”
“What is this great crisis that Anya spoke of? What is happening elsewhere in the continuum?”
Her face clouded over. “Problems so intricate that not even we Creators fully understand their implications. Anya is far from Earth, Orion, light-years off in interstellar space, attempting to deal with one aspect of the crisis.”
“Is she truly in danger?”
“We are all in danger, Orion. The forces ranged against us are beyond comprehension.”
Her usual haughty, taunting tone was gone. She was visibly fearful.
“How does this matter of Philip and Alexandros relate to Anya?”
I saw her draw back, a flicker of exasperation touching her face. “You are a stubborn mule, Orion!”
“Tell me,” I demanded.
She heaved an annoyed sigh. “We cannot get out of this nexus until its flow is resolved, one way or the other!” Hera blurted. “We are locked into this placetime, Aten and I, and will be until the decision is made! Either Philip dies or Alexandros. Until one of them is killed, we cannot return to the continuum to help Anya and the other Creators.”
“You’re stuck here?”
Very reluctantly she admitted, “Yes.”
I did not want to believe her, but suddenly much of what I had experienced made sense to me. When I had translated myself to the Creators’ city it was empty and abandoned. Whenever I had left this placetime I had returned precisely to the same time and place again. If what Hera was telling me was true, she and Aten were trapped here also. That was why Anya could not come to me; she was enmeshed in this snare just as they were.
Without meaning to, without even thinking about it, I burst out laughing.
Hera’s blazing anger returned. “You find this amusing?”
“Incredibly so,” I answered. “Your meddling with the continuum has finally caught up with you. You sent me here to be rid of me, and now you’re trapped here with me!”
I laughed until tears rolled down my cheeks.
CHAPTER 32
Hera disappeared so abruptly that I felt a jolt of physical alarm at finding myself back in the predawn cold of the hills near Aigai.
Pulling myself up to a sitting position, I waited and watched the dawn come up over the rugged eastern horizon. So Hera and Golden Aten are trapped in this nexus of the continuum, unable to get away from this placetime unless and until either Philip or Alexandros dies, I thought. Unable to reach Anya and the other Creators. Unable to help them in their battle out among the stars.
I got to my feet, wondering what I was to do. I could not let them kill Philip; he had been just and true to me. He was the one pillar on which the safety and prosperity of his people rested. Kill Philip and Alexandros would become king and immediately go chasing off for the glory of conquering the world. Years of wars and killing. To what end? Why should I help to make that come about?
Yet that is what Aten, the Golden One, had been scheming for all through the centuries since Troy. His vision of human destiny required an empire that brought together the wealth of Asia with the ideals of Europe. I remembered another time, another place, far to the east, when I was sent to assassinate the High Khan of the Mongols. Then my mission had been to prevent the Mongol empire from engulfing Europe.
Hera honestly seemed to believe that what we did here in this placetime had profound consequences for the space-time continuum as a whole. I had my doubts. I thought that Aten and the other Creators dabbled with the flow of the continuum, interfered with human history as a game among themselves, a pastime of the gods. They saw the human race as their creation, their playthings. Wars, empires, murder and human misery were simply amusements for them.
Yet Hera seemed frightened enough. And Anya was in danger, she said. Somewhere out among the stars Anya was fighting a battle for her life.
I shook my head. Maybe Hera was right: it was all beyond my comprehension. Yet I knew that what I was about to do would be pivotal. Aten and the other so-called gods had created me and a handful of other warriors to serve them, to be sent to specific critical points in the space-time continuum and alter the flow of events for the benefit of our Creators.