“Then they will murder you,” I said. “Within a day or so.”
“So be it,” said Philip. “Just don’t tell me who or when.” He grinned sardonically. “I like surprises.”
I shook my head in dismay and began to walk away from him.
“Wait,” he called, misinterpreting me. “Will it be you, Orion? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
Drawing myself up to my full height, I said, “Never! I’ll die myself before I let them kill you.”
That one good eye of his scanned me closely. “Yes, you would, wouldn’t you? I never believed you had deserted.”
He turned away from me and began to limp down the hillside toward the city. Before he had taken three steps he winked out, leaving me alone in that distant bubble of spacetime. I closed my eyes…
And opened them in the dungeon beneath the castle at Aigai. I was still chained hand and foot and the side of my head where Pausanias had kicked me throbbed with sullen pain.
There was no way for me to reckon time in that dark cell except for the beat of my own pulse. Impractical, yet for lack of anything better to do I counted beats the way an insomniac might count sheep. I could leave this cell and translate myself to the Creators’ abandoned city, but I would always return to this same place, in the same chains. Like Hera, I was trapped here until the cusp of this nexus was resolved, one way or the other.
I gave up counting pulse beats when I realized that there were rats in this cell, just as there had been in the one at Pella. My cell mates, my companions, ready to gnaw off my toes or fingers if I did not wiggle them every now and then. The manacles on my wrists were so tight that a normal man’s hands would have swollen painfully from lack of blood circulation. I consciously forced my deep-lying blood vessels to take over the work of the peripherals that were squeezed shut by the manacles. And I moved my fingers constantly to help keep the circulation going—and to discourage the beady-eyed hungry rats.
I heard footsteps shuffling along the corridor outside. They stopped at my door. The bolt squealed back and the door groaned open. My two jailers stood out there, one of them holding a torch.
Between them stood Ketu.
He pushed between the jailers and came into my cell. Kneeling beside me, he peered into my face.
“You are still alive?”
I made a smile for him. “I haven’t achieved Nirvana yet, my friend.”
“Thank the gods!” He straightened up and told the jailers to take me outside.
They had to drag me, grunting and struggling, to the big room at the end of the corridor. My heart thumped when I saw that the place was filled with instruments of torture.
“The king has ordered your release,” Ketu reassured me. “This smith here—” he pointed to a sweaty, hairy, totally bald man with a bulging pot belly—“will strike off your chains.”
He nearly struck off my arms, but after nearly half an hour of clanging and hammering I was free once again. My wrists and ankles were raw where the cuffs had chafed my skin, but I knew they would heal quickly enough. Ketu led me out of the dismal cellar and up into the fading sunlight of a dying day.
“The king’s daughter has been safely married to Alexandros of Epeiros,” Ketu told me. “Philip himself instructed me to set you free and give you all that you need to leave Macedonia. You may travel wherever you want to, Orion.”
“The wedding is over?” I asked.
He was leading me to the stables, I saw. Ketu answered, “The marriage ceremony was last night. The feasting will last another two days, of course.”
“Has anyone tried to assassinate the king?”
Ketu’s liquid eyes went wide. “Assassinate? No! Who would dare even try?”
“A traitor,” I said.
“Do you know this for certain?”
“I’ve heard it from the traitor’s own lips.”
“You must tell the captain of the king’s guard, Pausanias.”
“No, I must get to the king himself.”
Ketu grabbed at my arm. “That cannot be. Philip gave me specific instructions. He does not want to see you. He forbids it! You are to take as many horses as you need and leave Aigai, leave Macedonia, and never return.”
I stood there in the middle of the castle courtyard, near the dusty stables. They smelled of hay and manure and the warm strength of the animals. Flies buzzed lazily in the purpling shadows of dusk. From far behind me I could hear the faint music of flutes and tambourines, and the raucous laughter of drinking men. Pausanias was there with the king. And Philip wanted me out of the way just as much as Olympias did.
“No,” I said, as much to the gods as to little Ketu. “I won’t let them kill him. I don’t care what it does to their plans or to the fabric of the continuum. I won’t let it happen!”
Pulling free of Ketu’s restraining hand, I started toward the palace proper, where the wedding celebration was still going strong.
Ketu scampered beside me. “No, you must not! The guards have orders not to admit you. Philip does not want to see you. It will mean your death to try to force yourself upon his presence.”
I ignored him and strode toward the big doorway where four men in armor stood guard.
“Come with me, Orion,” Ketu begged. “We will travel the breadth of the Persian Empire and return to my land, to beautiful Hind. We will see the holy men and seek their wisdom…”
The only thing I sought was to save Philip, to shatter Hera’s murderous plan, to protect the king who had shown me his trust.
“Please, Orion!” Ketu’s eyes were filled with tears.
I left him standing there in the middle of the courtyard and approached the guards at the door. All four of them bore spears; two of them crossed their spears in front of the wooden double door.
“No one is allowed inside,” said their leader. I recognized him as a barracks mate.
“I must see the king.”
“I have my orders, Orion. No one means no one.”
“Yes,” I said softly. “I understand.”
Swifter than his eye could follow I snatched his sword from its scabbard with my right hand while I drove the heel of my left beneath his chin. His head snapped back and I heard the spinal cord crack. Before the others could react I smashed the next guard on his helmet, splitting the bronze and the bone beneath it.
They both fell in slow motion as I turned to face the two men who still stood with their spears crossed in front of the door. I could see their eyes widening, their mouths gulping air in surprised shock. I drove my sword through the nearer one’s chest so hard that it impaled him on the door. His companion was levelling his spear at me; a clumsy weapon when I was so close. I grabbed it with one hand while I kicked his kneecap out from under him. He went down with a yowl of pain and I pushed through the door, the dead guard still hanging from the sword through his chest.
I pulled it out and he dropped to the floor of packed earth. Bloody sword in hand, I went looking for Philip. And Pausanias.
Chapter 34
The castle of Aigai was old and grim, its ground floor nothing more than hard-packed dirt, the walls of the chamber I strode through made of rough-hewn stones, dark as the bloody sword I gripped.
I could hear the sounds of revelry coming from the main hall. The wedding had taken place the day before, from what Ketu told me, but the celebration roared on. Philip would be there, steeped in wine. Pausanias, as captain of the guard, would be in charge of protecting him. Olympias would be elsewhere in the castle, waiting to hear the wailing and cries of murder.
And Alexandros? Where would he be? Was he part of the murder plot? Did he know what his mother had set in motion?