The sun was warm on her face – but at her back she felt the blast of cold air and turned swiftly. A shadow was growing on the wall by the door, swelling like a winged demon. Derae prepared herself for the attack, but it did not come, the shadows swirling into a cloak around the spirit form of Aida.
‘What do you want here?’ Derae asked.
‘I wanted to thank you,’ said Aida. ‘Without your help, and that of your miserable predecessor, my dreams could not have been fulfilled.’ The hooded woman laughed, the sound chilling. ‘You can walk the paths of the past and the future. Walk them now – and weep, my dove!’
In an instant she was gone.
Derae sat back on the bed and closed her eyes, flying once
more to the palace on Samothrace, feeling her way back through the hours. She saw herself bringing the wine to Philip, pouring him a drink, watching him drain it. She saw her flight, and her battle with Aida.
Then with a sense of dread she returned to the palace, watching Parmenion’s attempts to rouse the King. She cried out when she saw the Spartan stand up and remove his clothes, donning the helm and cloak of the Chaos Spirit.
‘Oh, sweet Heaven!’ she whispered as he embraced the naked girl.
Derae fled the scene, opening her eyes back at the temple.
‘Without your help . . . my dreams could not have been fulfilled.’
She saw it all now, the arrogance and the stupidity.
Tamis had seen the vision of the Dark Birth and then the face of Parmenion. Believing him to be a human sword she could wield against the forces of darkness, Tamis had entered his life – moulding his future, forcing him along a path of bitterness and hatred. She had created in him the perfect warrior, the perfect killer of men . . .
The perfect human father for the Dark God.
Anger flared in Derae. The years of dedication, of healing; the years of hopes and dreams. All for nothing!
Now there would be no life with Parmenion, no journey to love in Macedonia.
She gazed out of the window, over the rolling hills and meadows and the cloud-shrouded mountains, seeing again the visions of bloodshed and horror that had haunted her for decades. Annies marching across bloody battlefields, widows and orphans, ruined cities, fallen empires. Sometimes the Dark God had been Greek, at other times Persian – a chief from Parthia, a young prince from the tribes to the far north. Once he had even been black, leading his troops from the lush jungles far to the south of Egypt. These myriad futures no longer existed in the same form. Derae allowed the Oceans of Time to lift and carry her into distant tomorrows, and there she saw a young man with golden hair, his face beautiful, his armour bright with the glow of gold.
In every future the armies of Macedon were marching, their long spears stained with blood.
She studied the golden figure through hundreds of possible – even probable – futures. All were the same – the Dark God triumphant, becoming immortal, a creature of blood and fire, the human flesh burning away, the full evil of the Horned One sitting on the thrones of the world. Despite her despair Derae searched on, finding at last a glimmer of hope like the fading spark of a winter fire.
The child had been conceived at the last stroke of the Unholy Hour, giving him at least a spark of humanity. The Dark God would be powerful within him, but at that moment Derae decided to spend her life fanning that spark, seeking to feed the human spirit within the devil who was to be.
‘At the last you were right, Tamis,’ she said sadly. ‘We cannot fight them with their own weapons. There can never be victory there.’ And like the old priestess before her, Derae prayed for guidance.
And she saw, as Tamis had seen, one man standing beside the Dark God, a strong man – a good man.
Parmenion – the Lion of Macedon.
Lake Prespa, Midwinter, 356 BC