We rode from one army station to the next, across Thrace and into Macedonia. Each night I could feel myself coming closer to Hera’s power. I tried not to sleep. I went for almost a week without closing my eyes for more than a few moments at a time. But at last the night came when I could stay awake no longer, and as I sat on a cot in an army barracks, my back against the rough logs of its wall, I finally drifted into a deep slumber.
She came to me in dream, as she had before, beautiful, haughty, demanding.
“You are returning at an auspicious time, Orion,” Olympias/Hera told me.
I was standing before her in that magnificent chamber that did not exist in Pella yet was connected to the palace by a gateway that spanned the dimensions of spacetime. Olympias reclined on a throne that was almost a couch, carved from green bloodstone veined with dark streaks like rivulets of dried blood. Snakes slithered at her feet, twined across the back of the throne, coiled around her bare legs.
I could not move, could not even speak. All I was able to do was to see her, decked in a gown of deepest black glittering with jeweled lights, like stars, her magnificent red hair tumbling past her shoulders, her yellow eyes fixed on mine. I could hear her words. I could breathe. My heart beat. But I know she could destroy me with a glance if she wished to.
“Philip has taken a new wife,” she said, with a smile that was pure malice. “He has put me aside. I no longer reside in Pella, but have returned to my kinfolk in Epeiros. What say you to that?”
I found that I could open my mouth. My voice was scratchy, coughing, as if I had not spoken in weeks.
“You are allowing him to do so?” I asked.
“I am allowing him to write his own death warrant,” Olympias answered. “And you, my obedient creature, will be the instrument of my vengeance.”
“I will not willingly harm Philip.”
She laughed. “Harm him unwillingly, then.”
And then the pain struck me, wave upon wave of agony pouring over me like breakers rolling up on a beach. Through teeth clenched with anguish I managed to utter, “No. I will not.”
The pain intensified as she watched, an amused smile flickering across her lips, her eyes smoldering with sadistic pleasure. I could not move, could not even cry out, but she seemed to sense every iota of the agony she was putting me through, and to relish each moment.
Normally I can control pain, shut off my brain’s pain receptors. But I was not in control of my own body, my own mind. After an interminable time, though, the pain began to ease. I could not tell if I was regaining control of my own senses or if my tortured nervous system was simply beginning to fail under the continued stress.
Hera’s face told me the answer. Her smile was fading, her pleasure waning. At length the pain ended altogether, although I still could neither speak nor move.
“This grows tiresome,” she said peevishly. “You are strong, Orion. Perhaps we built you too well.”
I wanted to answer her but could not.
“No matter. What must be done will be done. And you will play your role in it.”
Suddenly I was awake in the barracks, still sitting against the rough log wall. Every part of my body ached. Even my insides felt raw, inflamed, as if I had been roasted alive.
At dawn we resumed our trek toward Pella.
“You are quiet this morning,” said Batu as we rode along the inland road.
“You look as if you spent the night drinking,” Harkan said, peering at me with those flinty eyes.
“Or wenching.” Batu laughed.
I said nothing. But all that morning I was thinking that Olympias was biding her time, waiting for the proper moment to strike Philip down so that Alexandros could take the throne. That time was drawing near.
The stables were the best place to learn the latest gossip. Each village we came to was abuzz with the news from the capital. Philip had indeed married Kleopatra, niece of Attalos. Olympias, who had been his chief wife for twenty-five years, had truly been sent packing back to her brother in Epeiros.