But they did not take me to the king. Despite my protests they dragged me from my horse and down into the ancient dungeons of the castle that had been since time immemorial the seat of the kings of Macedonia.
“Take me to the king!” I shouted again as they locked me into a cell. My throat was getting hoarse from my unheeded demands. “I must see the king and warn him!”
To no avail. They dumped me into the dirt-floored cell, still chained. The last one to leave me was Harkan. He waited until all the others had filed out, then knelt beside me.
Ah-hah! I thought. Now he’s going to tell me that he’ll return and get me out of this.
But instead he whispered swiftly, “I’m sorry, Orion. It was you or my children. She’s promised to give them back to me if I brought you in.”
She. The queen. Olympias. Hera.
“She means to kill me,” I said.
He nodded wordlessly and then left me lying there on the floor of the cell. The door clanged shut and I was alone in the darkness.
But not for long. My eyes were just adjusting to the gloom when I heard footsteps coming down the corridor outside. The door was unlocked and pushed open. Two jailers came in and, grunting, lifted me by my armpits to a sitting position and dragged me across the cell until my back was propped up against the rough stone wall.
They left and Olympias stepped into the cell. Pausanias came in behind her, holding a torch in his right hand.
“We should kill him now and get it over with,” Pausanias muttered.
“Not just yet,” said Olympias. “He may still be of value to us, once Philip is dead.”
I saw the ageless eyes of Hera in her beautiful, cruel face.
“What value?” Pausanias snapped.
“You question me?”
He immediately yielded to the iron in her voice. “I just wanted to know—that is, he’s dangerous. We should be rid of him.”
“After Philip is killed,” Olympias whispered. “Then you can have him.”
“Do you think I won’t go through with it?” Pausanias snapped. “Do you think I need a prize, a reward, to make me kill the king?”
“No, of course not,” she soothed. “But wait until afterward. It will be better afterward, I promise you.”
Pausanias stepped closer to me. “Very well. After.” Then he kicked me with all his might squarely on the side of my head. As I slid toward unconsciousness I heard him growl, “I owed you that.”
CHAPTER 33
I remained unconscious willingly, deliberately. My body lay in the musty cell, chained hand and foot, but my mind was aware and active. I sought out the city of the Creators once again, seeking the only refuge I could think of.
My eyes opened on that grassy hill above the empty and abandoned city. The sun glittered on the sea, the flowers nodded to the passing breeze, the trees sighed as they had sighed for a hundred million years. Yet I could not approach the city any closer than I had before. Once again that invisible barrier held me in its grip.
There was nowhere for me to go except back to Macedonia, back to that dark dungeon in Aigai, chained and helpless while Hera goaded Pausanias into murdering his king. There was no way I could get to Philip in time to warn him.
Or was there? If I could not get out of my cell to go to Philip, could I bring him here to this ageless bubble of spacetime to be with me? I paced along the soft grassy slope, thinking hard, noting absently that as long as I walked away from the city I was not hindered by the barrier.
How often had the Creators summoned me here? How many times had I made the transition from some place and time to this eternal city? I knew what it felt like so well that I could translate myself here without their aid, without their even knowing it. Could I stretch that power to pluck Philip from Aigai and bring him here, even briefly, to warn him?