Lion of Macedon (64 page)

“That’s enough, Mothac!”

“Indeed it is,” replied the Theban. “So, I ask again, what does he want?”

“I cannot answer you; I do not believe Philip himself could answer you. But think on it, my friend. An army needs to be fed. The soldiers require payment. Philip’s treasuries are not overly full; therefore, he must give his soldiers victories and plunder. But there is sense to it. A nation is strong only while it is growing. After that the decay begins. Why does this disturb you? You saw Sparta and Athens struggling for supremacy; you watched as Thebes battled to rule Greece. What difference now?”

“None whatever,” Mothac agreed, “save that I am older and, I hope, wiser. This is a land of great riches. If farmed with care, Macedonia could feed all of Greece. But now the farmers are being lured to Pella for fighting wages, and war-horses are being bred before cattle and sheep. All I see ahead is war and death. Not because the realm is in danger—merely to satisfy the glory quest of a barbarian king. You do not need to tell me what he desires. He will attempt to conquer Greece. I will see Thebes once more besieged. He will make slaves of us all.”

The Theban put down his wine cup and pushed himself wearily to his feet.

“He is not as dark as you believe,” countered Parmenion.

Mothac smiled. “Try not to see him as a reflection of yourself, Parmenion. You are a good man, but you are his sword blade. Good night, my friend. Tomorrow we shall speak of more pleasant things.”

Leaden clouds hung like a pall of smoke over Pella, distant thunder rumbling angrily in the sky as Olympias carefully made her way to the seat beneath the corner oak in the southern garden. She moved slowly, right hand supporting her belly, often stopping to stretch her back.

Her days with Philip were unsettling, alternating between the comfort of touching and sharing and the agonies of
stormy rows when his face would redden and his green eyes would blaze with anger.

Were I still slim, I would win him over, she told herself. And I will be slender again. It was irksome that her graceful walk had become more of a waddle and that she could no longer embrace her husband, moving in close, arousing him. For in the ability to arouse lay power. Without it Olympias felt lost, insecure.

There were cushions on the long seat beneath the oak, and she stretched herself out, feeling the relief from the deep ache at the base of her spine. Every morning for months, it seemed, she had vomited, every night her stomach heaving, leaving her mouth tasting of bile.

But these last few days had been the worst. Her dreams were troubled, and she could hear her baby crying as if from a great distance. And with the dawn, she would awake believing him dead in her belly.

She had tried to seek comfort in the company of Phaedra, but her friend was often missing from the palace—spending hours, days it seemed, in the company of Parmenion. It perplexed Olympias, knowing how strongly her companion loathed the touch of man.

The rain began, gentle at first, then stronger, splashing to the stone pathway and bending the blooms of the garden. Here beneath the towering oak Olympias felt safe; the branches above her were thick and shielding, almost impenetrable.

Parmenion ran along the stone pathway toward his home, saw her, and changed direction. Ducking under the outermost branches, he approached her and bowed.

“Not a safe place, my lady. Lightning may be drawn here. Let me cover you with my cloak and see you to your quarters.”

“Not yet, General. Sit awhile,” she said, smiling up at him. Shaking his head, he chuckled and sat down, stretching out his long legs and brushing raindrops from his shoulders and arms.

“Curious creatures are women,” he remarked. “You have
beautiful rooms, warm and dry, yet you sit here in the cold and the wet.”

“There is a kind of peace here, do you not find?” she countered. “All around us the storm, yet here we are safe and dry.”

The thunder came again, closer now, lightning forking the sky.

“The appearance of safety,” Parmenion replied, “is not quite the same as being safe. You look sad,” he said suddenly, instinctively reaching out and taking her hand. She smiled then, holding back the tears with an effort of will.

“I am not really sad,” she lied. “It is just … I am a stranger in a foreign land. I have no friends, my body has become lumpy and ugly, and I cannot find the right words to please Philip. But I will when our son is born.”

He nodded. “The babe concerns you. Philip tells me you have dreams of its death. But I spoke to Bernios yesterday; he says you are strong and the child grows as it should. He is a good man and a fine surgeon. He would not lie to me.”

The thunder was now overhead, the wind screaming through the oak and shaking it violently. Parmenion helped the queen to her feet, covering her head and shoulders with his cloak, and together they returned to the palace.

Leading her to her rooms, Parmenion turned to leave, but Olympias cried out and started to fall. The Spartan leapt to her side, catching her by the arms and half carrying her to a couch.

Her hand seized the breast of his tunic. “He’s gone!” she screamed. “My son! He’s gone!”

“Calm yourself, lady,” urged Parmenion, stroking her hair.

“Oh, sweet mother Hera,” she moaned. “He’s dead!”

The Spartan moved swiftly into the outer rooms, sending in the queen’s three handmaidens to comfort her, then ordered a messenger to fetch Bernios.

Within the hour the surgeon arrived, giving the queen a sleeping draught before reporting back to Philip. The king sat in his throne room with Parmenion standing beside him.

“There is no cause for concern,” the bald surgeon assured
Philip. “The child is strong, his heartbeat discernible. I do not know why the queen should think him dead. But she is young and given, perhaps, to foolish fears.”

“She has never struck me as being easily frightened,” offered Parmenion. “When the raiders attacked her, she killed one of them and faced down the rest.”

“I agree with the surgeon,” said Philip. “She is like a spirited horse—fast, powerful, but highly strung. How soon will she give birth?”

“No more than five days, sire, perhaps sooner,” the surgeon told him.

“She will be better then,” said the king, “once the child is suckling at her breast.” Dismissing the surgeon, Philip turned to Parmenion. The Spartan was holding hard to the high back of the king’s chair, his face ghostly pale and blood streaming from his nose and ears.

“Parmenion!” shouted Philip, rising and reaching out to his general. The Spartan tried to answer, but all that came from his mouth was a broken groan. Pitching forward into the king’s arms, Parmenion felt a rolling sea of pain engulf his head.

Then he was falling …

 … and the pit beckoned.

Derae’s spirit hovered above Parmenion’s bed, feeling the unseen presence of Aristotle beside her.

“Now is the moment of greatest peril,” his voice whispered in her soul.

Derae did not answer. Beside the bed sat Mothac and Bernios, both men silent, unmoving. Parmenion was barely breathing. The seeress flowed her spirit into the dying man, avoiding his memories and holding to the central spark of his life, feeling the panic within the core as the growth reached out its dark tendrils in his brain. It had been an easy matter to block the power of the sylphium, but even Derae was amazed at the speed with which the cancer had spread. Most growths, she knew, were obscene and ugly imitations of life, yet still they created their own blood supply, feeding from it,
ensuring their own existence for as long as the host body would tolerate them. Not so this cancer: it multiplied with bewildering speed, spreading far beyond its own core. It was unable to feed itself, and its longest tendrils merely rotted, corrupting the fatty tissues of the brain. Then another tendril would spring up, following the same pattern.

Parmenion was moments from death, gangrene and decay entering his bloodstream and carrying corruption to all parts of his body. Fresh cancers were flowering everywhere.

Derae hunted them down, destroying them where she found them.

“I cannot do it alone!” she realized with sudden panic.

“You are not alone,” said Aristotle, his voice calm. “I will hold the growth in the brain.”

Calming herself, Derae moved to the heart. If Parmenion was to live through this ordeal, his heart needed to be strong. All his life he had been a runner, and, as Derae expected, the muscles were strong. Even so, the arteries and major veins were showing signs of wear, dull yellow fat clinging to the walls and constricting the blood flow. The heartbeat was weak and fluttering, the blood thin. Derae began her work here, strengthening the valves, stripping away the pale yellow wastes clogging the veins and restricting the flow of blood, breaking them down to be carried away to the bowels. His lungs were good, and she did not tarry there but swam on into the gallbladder, where wastes had been extracted from the blood only to congeal into stones, sharp and jagged. These she smashed into powder.

On she moved, destroying the cancer cells lodging in his kidneys, stomach, and bowels, finally returning to the central core, where Aristotle waited.

The growth in the head was unmoving now but covering still a vast amount of the brain, squatting within it like a huge spider.

“We have him now at the point of death,” said Aristotle. “You must hold him here while I seek him out in the void. Can you do it?”

“I do not know,” she admitted. “I can feel his body trembling on the edge of the abyss. One error, or the onset of fatigue. I don’t know, Aristotle.”

“Both our lives will be in your hands, woman. For he will be my link to the world of the living. If he dies in the void, then I will be trapped there. Be strong, Derae. Be Spartan!”

And then she was alone.

Parmenion’s heartbeat remained weak and unsteady, and she could feel the cancer pushing back against her power, the tendrils quivering, seeking to grow.

There was no sensation of waking, no drowsiness. One moment there was nothing, the next Parmenion was walking across a colorless landscape under a lifeless gray sky. He stopped, his mind hazy and confused.

As far as his eyes could see there was no life, no growth. There were long-dead trees, skeletal and bare, and jagged boulders, rearing hills and dark distant mountains. All was shadow.

Fear touched him, his hand moving to the sword at his side.

Sword?

Slowly he drew it from its scabbard, gazing down once more on the proudest memory of youth, the shining blade and lion-head pommel in gold. The sword of Leonidas!

But from where had it come? How did he acquire it? And where in Hades was he?

The word echoed in his mind.
Hades!

He swallowed hard, remembering the blinding pain, the sudden darkness.

“No,” he whispered. “No, I can’t be dead!”

“Happily that is true,” said a voice, and Parmenion spun on his heel, the sword blade extending. Aristotle leapt back. “Please be careful, my friend. A man has only one soul.”

“What is this place?” Parmenion asked the
magus
.

“The land beyond the River Styx, the first cavern of Hades,” answered Aristotle.

“Then I must be dead. But I have no coin for the ferryman. How, then, shall I cross?”

Aristotle took him by the arm, leading him to a group of boulders where they sat beneath the soulless sky. “Listen to me, Spartan, for there is little time. You are not dead—a friend is holding you to life even now—but there is something you must do here.” Swiftly Aristotle told Parmenion of the child’s lost soul and the perils of the void.

The Spartan listened in silence, his pale eyes gazing over the twisted landscape that stretched for an eternity in every direction. In the far distance shapes could be seen, darker shadows flitting across the gray land.

“How could any man find one soul in such a place?” he asked at last.

“It will shine like a light, Parmenion. And it must be close, for you are linked to it.”

“What do you mean?” responded the Spartan, fear in his eyes.

“You understand full well what I am saying. You are the boy’s father.”

“How many know of this?”

“Myself and one other: the healer who holds your life back in the world of the flesh. Your secret is safe.”

“No secret is ever safe,” whispered Parmenion, “but this is not the time for debate. How do we find this light?”

“I do not know,” Aristotle admitted. “Nor do I know how to protect it when we do. Perhaps we cannot.”

Parmenion stood and stared hard in all directions. “Where is the Styx?”

“To the east,” answered Aristotle.

“And how do I tell which is east? There are no stars save one, no landmarks that I could recognize.”

“Why would you seek the river of the dead?”

“We must start somewhere, Aristotle. We cannot just wander this desolate plain.”

Aristotle stood. “To the best of my recollection it is beyond two jagged peaks, higher than the surrounding mountains. Let’s see …” Suddenly the
magus
swung on Parmenion. “Wait! What was that about stars?”

“There is but the one, flickering there,” answered the Spartan, pointing to a tiny glistening dot of light high in the dark sky.

“There are no stars in the void. That’s it! That is the soul flame.”

“How do we reach a star?”

“It is not a star! Look closely. It is a tall mountain; the light rests there. Come. Quickly, now. For it will draw evil upon itself, and we must reach it first.”

The two men began to run, their feet kicking up gray dust that hovered behind them before settling once more into place, undisturbed by any breeze.

“Look!” shouted Aristotle as they sped across the plain. Far to the left shadows were merging, huge, misshapen creatures lumbering toward the light. “It draws them with the power of pain. They must blot it out, destroy it.”

There was little sense of time passing as the two ran on, but the mountains loomed above them dark and threatening as they reached the lower slopes. Here there was a forest of dead trees, bleached white like old bones. Parmenion cut to the left, seeking a path.