Judith Tarr
-
Lord Of The Two Lands


•PROLOGUE-

Neclanebo.

Nekhtharhab.

The power was in the name. The name was power.

Beloved of Amon, son of the Sun, Great House of
Egypt, Protected of Horus, Lord of the Two Lands.
Nekhtharhab. Nectanebo to the sea-peoples, the raw young
Hellenes who served so well on all sides of the world's
wars.

He stood on the horizon and looked down. It grew like
the lotus flower, his land, kingdom and empire and heart
of the world. Long slender stem of Black Land against the
pitiless red of desert, great dark flowering of Delta on the
edge of the Great Green that was the name and essence of
me sea. Lifeblood of the lotus was the stream of the Nile,
quiescent now, shrunk to its least extent, while its people
tilled the black earth that was its gift. Almost, like a god,
he could reach, touch. Almost, like a god, cup it in his
hand.

The air sighed about him, a whisper like wings, a glim-
mer as of falcon-eyes. Memory touched, passed; sunlight,
singing, the weight of the Two Crowns new and terrible
upon his brows; and names on him, new names, strong
names, god-names for a god-king.

Here in Amon's temple was silence and shadows, and
the basin on its four clawed feet, and Egypt in it, the rich
black land of Khemet, shadow-shaped in water of the Nile.
The walls were alive with painted gods and kings and
queens, beasts, birds, lotus, palm, papyrus, all the many-
colored splendor of Egypt. Barbarians had not touched
these. Not they, not the Parsa, though they had wrought
horrors enough in other temples than this of Amon in

2 Lord of the Two Lands

Thebes. They were gone. He had driven them out, he and
his people; and if there had been more than simple human
force in it, then that was no more than the enemy de-
served. Their names would die with their memory, and
they would be gone for all of eternity.

But they, being barbarians, did not understand what it
was for a name to die. They were coming back. It was in
the water: beyond the lotus that was Egypt, a red tide of
blood, a blackness of war. Persia had held the Two Lands
once. She would seize them again and grind them under
her booted heel.

Nectanebo bent over the basin. The lappets of his head-
dress swung forward, nearly brushing the water. He thrust
them back. One shoulder ached. A Persian mace had bro-
ken it in that last battle, just before he knew that he had
won- The bone had healed well, but the ache had never
wholly faded.

It was distracting him now, making the image waver, the
power drain away. He drew a sharp breath, and the image
steadied. It did not change. Persia was coming—not soon,
perhaps; not for years, it might be—but inevitable, and in-
escapable. There was no power in Pharaoh, even in a pha-
raoh who was a great mage and master of the hidden art,
to overcome an enemy so implacable. Their gods were
young and few and eager for empire. His were old beyond
telling and numerous beyond counting, and they had never
willingly been gods of war.

"I can hold," he said, soft in the silence, "with the gods'
help. But my body will die, and I become Osiris; and who
will be Horus to defend my lands? I had a son. He is dead;

the Parsa killed him. I have a wife. .She is with child; and
if it is a son, will his strength suffice for what I foresee?
Who will defend my kingdom? Who will wrest it from the
Persian's fist?"

The air sighed again, louder. The tamps flickered, cast-
ing long shadows. Painted kings seemed to stir, their eyes
to kindle. Painted gods drew breath like living things. The

PROLOGUE 3

ranks of hieroglyphs quickened, beasts and birds and styl-
ized men shifting, stretching, yearning toward freedom.

Nectanebo breathed a word. The lamps ceased their
swaying. The walls stilled. Something chittered away
overhead. Bat; or spirit blown from its course and flutter-
ing lost among the pillars. Nectanebo took no notice of it.
The water blurred and rippled. A new vision grew in it.

Almost, he laughed. He had asked the gods, and they
answered, from the very beginning. Lamplight limned it,
granted it more shadow than light, but there was no mis-
taking the name of that dance. The man was as eager as a
ram, and built like one, a heavy gleaming creature with
muscles that rolled like water. The woman was nigh as tall
as he, but if he was a ram, she was a tigress, turning sud-
denly in his clasp, locking legs about his middle and rak-
ing claws down his back. He grunted. She laughed,
arched, sank teeth into his shoulder. Her face through
streams of red-gold hair was wild, a little mad.

Her teeth had drawn blood. He took no notice of it,
though it ran in the lamplight in streams the color of wine,
or of the Tyrians' purple. Their shadows leaped and
danced, a mingled shape of dark and light upon the wall.
For a stretching moment it was a ram, a ram crowned with
the sun, and a serpent coiled about him, locked in passion
that was half war.

It broke, blurred, scattered. They dropped down in a
tangle of limbs and bodies and coppery hair.

There was a silence. Nectanebo, trapped in the scrying,
watched the wildness flow out of them. The man laid his
head on the woman's breast. His hair was black and thick,
cut as the Hellenes cut it, and he wore a beard like a Hel-
lene, and that was a Hellene's face, though ram-heavy,
ram-strong. She was slighter as befit a woman, but her
beauty was as Greek as his, the full rounding of her body
even in its slimness, the strong oval face and the long
broad nose and the wide low brow: to an Egyptian, heavy
and somewhat coarse, but striking for all of that. Her

4 Lord of the Two Lands

hands were long and strong, stroking the knotted muscles
of his back, smoothing them one by one.

"A god was in us tonight," she said. Greek indeed, but
not as it was spoken by envoys in the courts of the Two
Lands: broader and softer, with the hint of an antique lilt.

"Not one of your damned snakes again?" His voice was
deep, with the hint of a growl.

She laughed in her throat. "Not tonight, my jealous lord.
Didn't you feel it? Didn't you see the light that was on
us?"

"I saw you," he said.

"My lord." It was a purr. "My king. Were you Herakles
tonight? Or were you more? Were you even—"
His hand stopped the name. His scowl was terrible. "I
was myself. Or am I not enough for you?"

Over the heavy black-furred hand, her eyes danced with
mirth. A gasp escaped him. His hand snapped free. She
bared her sharp white teeth. "See, my lord, I prophesy.
We've made a king tonight, you and I and—who knows?
A god may pass where he will. I for one shall welcome
him."

"Raving madwoman." His body was reviving. He rose
above her. "We'll see if I need a god to do my rutting for
me."

She smiled long and slow, and pulled him down.

Nectanebo straightened slowly. There was his answer.
There, if he read it rightly, was his king: a spark in the
womb of this woman, this wild barbarian creature who
could not but be a queen. Her king was man enough, and
strong enough, but Nectanebo was a mage, and he knew
that this man was not what he was seeking-

Barbarians. Aliens. Foreigners. Had he wrested his lands
from the Parsa, only to surrender them to the Hellenes?

He rose to his full height. He was aware as he had not
been in a long while, that even in Khemet he was not tall;

that in the world without, he was a small man. A little thin

PROLOGUE 5

brown man with a scarred and stiffened shoulder, a sug-
gestion of Ethiopia in the fullness of his lips and the
broadness of his nose, but all Egypt in the long dark eyes
made longer still with kohl. He was greater than he
looked, and stronger. He was Lord of the Great House,
master of the Two Lands. He had conquered the Parsa and
freed his people, and restored the worship of his gods.

He did not kneel as even Pharaoh should before divin-
ity. The mood was not on him. The power was in him still,
though it had begun to ebb. "Why?" he demanded of the
air.

It whispered, but it spoke no word that he could under-
stand.

He stooped toward the chair that sat by the basin,
caught up what lay there: the crook and flail of the Great
House. He held them high. "Am I the last, then? Is the
Great House to fall? Shall no man again be Lord of the
Two Lands, but that he be the king of an alien people?"

Silence.

"Answer me'"

The echoes died unanswered. -

He sank down. The floor was stone, and cold under the
thin linen of his kilt- Crook and flail drooped on his knees.
"At least," he whispered, barely to be heard, "at least, if
ever you have loved me, let me know his name."

The stillness deepened. His shoulders sagged. The gods
had forsaken him. Even his power was gone, drained away
like water from a broken pot. He was mere man, and mor-
tal, and deaf to aught that the heart could hear.

Alexander.

It was a whisper, fainter even than his own. It could have
been the slap of bare feet on stone, the rustle of linen in a
priest's robe, the hiss of a cat as it warred with shadows.

Every muscle stretched taut. He strained to hear.

Yes- Yes, he had heard it. A name—alien name for an
alien king, but his king, his god, his hope.

Alexander.

PART ONE

ISSUS

•ONE*

"Alexander!"

The sea roared, crashing on stones. Louder by far were
men's voices, the ring of bronze and precious steel, the
neighing of horses, the mingled tumult of battle; and a
name over them alt, ringing up to heaven.

Meriamon had been walking since the world was made.
She had had a horse, but the Parsa had taken (hat, farther
back than she could remember. That they had not taken
more was a mark not of their restraint but of hers. They
would pay in their due time-
She crested the last, pitiless hill. The battle spread be-
low, a seethe and clash of men and beasts, shouts and cries
and the clangor of metal on metal. It sounded like nothing
so much as a cattle market beside a smithy. But the drov-
ers were Hellenes—Macedonians,- she must remember to
call them—and what they drove were Persians. Parsa. The
enemy.

Her mantle heaved, struggling. A narrow tawny head
thrust through the wrapping, opened eyes the color of
minted gold, uttered a single, emphatic mrrrrttt. Meriamon
gasped. Sekhmet's claws were wickedly sharp. The cat
sprang free hissing her displeasure, shook from head to
tail, and vanished behind a clump of scrub.

Meriamon drew the cloak tighter about her stinging
breast. The wind plucked at her, whipping the muddied
hem against her legs- She was wet with the unwontedness
of water that fell from the sky, she was colder than she had
ever been in her life, and there was a fire in her. The sun,
sinking toward the sea, freed itself from its prison of cloud
and thrust a long lance across the battlefield. It caught a
splendor of scarlet and gold- God or man, she could not

10 Lord of the Two Lands

tell, so bright as it was: blinding her through all the shields
of body and souls, down to the heart of her. Dimly in the
afterblaze she saw a shadow, a quenched and stumbling
thing that quailed before that shape of fire, and knew with
a fierce dark joy that she looked on the Persian king. He
turned, with his bodyguard all fallen and his enemies surg-
ing upon him; turned his glittering chariot and fled.

A roar followed him. The Macedonians surged in his
wake. His people, loyal even in their shock, died defend-
ing his cowardice. His enemies laughed. The one who led
them—flaming even in the last of the light, his little thick-
set black horse prancing and snorting and flagging its
tail—shouted something in a high fierce voice. The Mac-
edonians shouted back. "Alexander!"

Meriamon smiled. Sekhmet returned from her errand,
haughty and much displeased. "Walk with me, then," said
Meriamon, "if riding warm and dry-footed is beneath your
dignity."

The cat filliped her tail and started down the slope,
picking her way delicately through mud and stones and
scree. Meriamon sighed, half laughing, and followed her.
A shadow followed them, a shadow within the woman's
shadow, and its shape, if shape it truly had, was strange.

Meriamon knew about camps. She had lost her horse out-
side of one. This one was different, its people louder, dirt-
ier, and infinitely more shameless, but men were men
wherever they were. She kept her mantle wound tight and
drew down a little of the twilight on herself, putting a
twisting in it, willing eyes to slip aside. Macedonians were
not like the Parsa, who brought their whole households to
war as if it were a hunt for the court, though they had their
servants and their camp followers. She did not care to be
seen as she was: not only a woman but a stranger, and
alien, and perhaps an enemy.

This camp was quiet, as camps went. All the noise and
terror was in the other, among the Persians, as some

Issus 11

fought and most fled and the women, trapped in their tents
and their modesty, shrieked and wailed. Even over the
sounds of battle and camp, Meriamon could hear them.

They had laughed and chattered while their kings made
a mock of her gods- They had fluttered and cooed in the
Great House of Egypt, and simpered as their men called
themselves masters of the Two Lands. Now they would
know what it was to be conquered.

Meriamon*s jaw ached. She was grinding her teeth
again. Hate was a fine fierce thing, but it was little enough
to live on. And she had eaten the last of her bread yester-
day.

Water at least there was in plenty- She would eat later,
when she found what she had come for. People were be-
ginning to mill and throng about her, soldiers coming back
from the battle, the wounded limping or leaning on spears
or carried on their shields. Their curses were a long drone,
punctuated by cries of pain-

"You."

Meriamon drew still more shadow about her. The crowd
had thickened, the tumult risen, surging from the battle-
field. There was order in it, and purpose, however frantic
it might look.

"You!" Something caught her cloak. She wheeled. A
man stood over her. He seemed as high as the sky. He
reeked of sweat and blood. "Go to the surgeons' tent," he
said- "Tell them we've got one out here, and he's giving
trouble."

She could understand him. Just. Macedonian, her teach-
ers had told her, was Greek, but barely so. Her own Greek,
gods be thanked, was where she needed it. "Why don't
you tie him and drag him in?"
The man laughed: a sharp sound, with a catch in it. "Tie
him? Tie our Ajax? Take a look at him'"

She had thought mis man was huge. The one on the
ground, in what looked to be a convulsion, stretched as

12 Lord of the Two Lands

long as a tree. There were two men on him, holding him.
One fell away. The other rocked and swayed.

Her lips tightened. She stepped round the man who had
spoken—commanding her like a servant: how dared he?—
and approached the fallen giant. Even in dusk and fitful
torches, she could see enough. "He has fits?" she asked.

"He got hit over the head. He keeps trying to go back
and fight Persians." The lesser giant dodged a flying foot.
"We'd clip his ear to keep him quiet, but we'd kill him if

we tried."

"You had better not try," said Meriamon, evading flail-
ing limbs, closing in on the man's head. He had lost his
helmet; his hair was matted with something dark and glis-
tening. Blood. She knelt, took the tossing, thrashing head
in her hands. Lost it. Won it again, and held. She spoke a
word, an ancient word, a word with power in it. Peace.

Little by little he stilled. Her shadow bent over him, en-
folded him.

"Take him now," she said. Her voice sounded faint and

far away. "Gently; jostle him as little as you may."

The Macedonians obeyed her. She was a little surprised,
but dimly. So thin, her magic was, so far from the source
of its strength. It was all she could do to quiet the man, to
keep him so while his companions carried him to the sur-
geons.

Very likely he would die. She was no adept of

Imhotep's temple, to work miracles with healing magic.
She had only the one small gift of quiet, and knowledge
enough if she were given light and space to wield it.

The man who had stopped her was still beside her,
steadying the giant's shoulders with one long arm. The
other two men had the rest of him. They were all
wounded, she noticed. One limped. They all walked stiffly,
with now and then a catch of breath.
The surgeons' tent was an image from the Persians'
hell: dim lamps, leaping shadows, groans and shouts and
howls of agony. The stink caught at her throat. "Over

Issus 13

there," someone snapped, harried. 'There' being by the far
wall, in a space barely large enough for a man of normal
dimensions, and far from the nearest lamp. That at least
Meriamon could remedy. She pointed with her chin.
"Bring it here."

Two of the bearers were already gone, one at something
like a run. The third looked ready to bolt. He brought her
the lamp instead, and paused, swaying a little, frowning at
her.

She was under him when he went down, catching the
lamp before it fell, bracing the worst of his weight. But
she was small even in Khemet, and he was Macedonian-
They went down together, half on the giant, half in the
passage between rows of bodies.

Meriamon struggled from beneath him. The lamp was
safe. She used it to look at him. Not all the blood on him
was his friend's. And his right arm—the one that he had
kept out of her sight—did not look well at all.

The giant would keep. She attacked the smaller man's
armor. It came free more easily than she might have ex-
pected, though it jarred him. She was glad that he was not
awake to feel it.

There were no other wounds on him that mattered: cuts,
bruises, one that might have been bad if it had been a little
deeper. His arm was bound up roughly in strips torn from
someone's tunic, stained solid with blood both dried and
new-wet. With teeth-gritted care she peeled away the
wrappings.

It could have been worse. A wound ran down the length
of it, thin and not remarkably deep. Sword-cut, and a
glancing one at that. It was little enough. The worst was
what it ended in. The bone was broken at the wrist, the
hand dangling like a dead thing- It seemed a clean break,
no shards or splinters to foul the wound. But whatever had
done it had crushed the flesh and ground the muscle into
the tortured bone. A little more, and he would have lost
the hand.

14 Lord of the Two Lands
She could save it. Maybe. Care now, prayer, time and
the gods' protection against fever—he would not be a one-
armed man. Whether he could win back full use of arm

and hand. only the gods knew.

Her eyes found a man hovering—no, boy, though he
was bigger than most men in Khemet: wide curious eyes,
idle hands. "Splints," she said. "Bandages, thread, needles.
Water, as hot as you can get it. Herbs to wash a wound."

The boy was obedient, and quick about it. Maybe it was
the weight of her shadow with its gleam of eyes.

When she had done all she might for the wounded man,
she looked up. The tent stretched away in front of her. She
blinked hard. It shrank somewhat. It was mostly a roof and
poles, and sides that rolled up or down at need—all down
now, closing in the sight and scent and sound of pain. Too
much pain. She turned to the nearest man, awareness nar-
rowing again, to focus on this one, endurable center. Little
as she might know beside a healer-priest, she knew enough
for this; more maybe than the Greek surgeons did. She
could tell what needed stitching, what was broken and
what was strained, when a limb could stay and when it had
to come off; how to draw an arrow from a wound. People
tried to speak to her once or twice. They might be asking
what a woman was doing in the surgeons' tent. She did
not answer. They had eyes. They could see what she did.
None of them interfered. Her shadow took care of that.
News came in with new waves of wounded: remnants of
the fight, men returned from the pursuit, others who had
taken wounds and only now troubled to notice them. The
enemy was driven far away. The Persian camp was taken,
and the king had taken the Great King's tent.

"And the Great King's women," said a man who had
lost a hand. He had dropped his shield and used the strap
to bind the stump and gone on fighting, crazy-mad as men
could be when their blood was up. He was numbed now,
part with wine, pan with shock; and dizzy with victory. He
grinned. He had excellent teeth, Meriamon noticed.

Issus 15

"Would you believe it? They take their wives to war. And
their concubines. And all their slaves, and tfieir brats, too.
And a whole squalling pack of eunuchs."

He glanced at Meriamon and started, and fell suddenly
silent.

She almost laughed aloud. She had forgotten the coat
and trousers under her mantle. Parsa makeshifts, despica-
bly barbarian, but warm. Was that why no one had named
her female and cast her out?

The poor man was blushing. So was the one she was
tending, who had a sword-cut the length of his side, shal-
low but bloody. She bound off the bandage and patted his
shoulder. "Go on," she said, "and keep it clean. Come
back here in a day or two; I'll give you a salve to help it
heal."

He muttered what might have been thanks, and escaped
into the night. All of them did who could; the ones who
stayed were the helpless, the dying or the unconscious.

They were all being looked after. There was order in it,
a rhythm born of long practice, a precision diat should not
have startled her: she had seen how this army fought. No
magic here, no chanting of spells that had been old when
the gods were young, but they did not do so ill without it,
for barbarians.

She turned toward the door. She needed food and steep;

and Sekhmet was gone. Too much noise and stink here for
a cat. Too much for a woman, too, worn as she was from
the long road.

Something—maybe only the way the bodies lay, maybe
me need to evade a knot of surgeons struggling with a
writhing, screaming victim—sent her round the long way,
back to where she had begun.

The giant was unconscious, but his breathing was steady
and deep. The other was awake. Golden cat-eyes opened
in the hollow of his side. Sekhmet yawned and sat up and
'began to wash her tail.

Somehow the Macedonian had got himself clean. From

16 Lord of the Two Lands

the tautness about his lips, it had cost him more than he

expected.

After all the men she had tended, he did not look quite

so huge. He was taller than some but lighter in the bone,
lean and rangy rather than bull-solid. Like most of the
young ones she had seen, he wore no beard; the stubble on
his cheeks was the color of barley straw, a shade or two
lighter than his hair. His eyes even in the dimness were
light, a clear pale grey like the sky in earliest morning.
They shocked her a little. Light eyes—sky-eyes—were

alien in Khemet.

He glowered at her. "I can't get up," he said, as if it was

her fault that he had torn his arm to pieces.

"You won't, either," said Meriamon, "unless you want

to set the bones awry."

"But I have to get up," he said with an air of sweetest

reason. "I'm on guard duly."
"Not from here, you aren't."
He sat up. His face went grey. Meriamon lowered him

down again, gasping a little: he was heavy.

And furious. "I was just bringing Ajax to the surgeons,

damn it. You can't keep me here."

"I'm not," she said. "Your body is."

His good hand seized her coat. Sweat beaded on his
brow, but he kept his grip, twisting. "Let me out of here!"

'There now," said a sharp voice behind Meriamon.
"What's this—Nikolaos, is it? Let the boy go."

"Boy?" The soldier—Nikolaos—laughed, though he
choked on it. "What do you mean, *boy'?"

Meriamon looked over her shoulder- She had seen the
man here and there about the tent, commanding the others
when they seemed to need it. He was not young, but nei-
ther was he old; his hair was grizzled, his beard cut short.
He wore a robe, much stained but respectably rich, and a
mantle that had been crimson before it faded. He peered at
Meriamon, frowning.

Issus 17

His frown deepened to a scowl. "Young woman, is this
your idea of a prank?"

Meriamon drew herself up. Nikolaos' hand dropped.
She straightened her coat with a sharp gesture and lifted
her chin. "I come from Egypt," she said, "to serve your
king. That service, now, seems best performed here." She
paused. "Have I failed to provide satisfaction?"

"Egypt, you say?" The physician seemed interested in
spite of himself. "How did you get in? Who sent you
here?"

"I walked," she said. "These gentlemen brought me.
They seemed to think 1 was a servant. That," she said, "I
am not."

"So you say," the physician said. He rubbed his jaw.
"We can't have you here."

"Why not?"

"Does this took like a place for a woman?"

She considered it. "It's cleaner than a birthing, mostly.
Quieter, too. Have you looked at the man with the broken
thighbone yet? I set it, but I could have used another pair
of hands, to make sure the bones'are lined up properly."

"You're the one who did that?" The physician looked
' her up and down. "You're no bigger than a kitten."

She smiled thinly. "I'm stronger than I look."

"Well," the physician said, rubbing his jaw again.
"Well. If the men can keep their hands off you. and if you
know what you're doing . . . with Andronikos down with
the flux, and Thrasikles, the blasted fool, running off with
that boy from Pergamum .. . Well. I won't say we can't
use you. Egyptian, you say? Trained in a temple?"

"I was a singer in the temple of Amon in Thebes."

He eyed her narrowly. She did not look particularly au-
gust or terrible, she knew that, but she did not look like a
Hellene, either. "I didn't think," he said, "that there were
healer-priestesses."

"There aren't," said Meriamon. "I'm an oddity."
;.   "Very odd," said the Greek. And yet he sounded com-

18 Lord of the Two Lands

forted. A woman in his army—that was appalling. A
woman who was a priestess, and probably a witch: that, it
seemed, he could understand. It set her outside of normal
reckoning, but it named her, too, and gave her a place in
his world. Hellenes: they could endure anything, if only it
submitted to their categories.
"So then," he said. "You've earned a bed for the night
at least, if you don't mind a tentful of apprentices. Have

you eaten?"

The thought made her head swim. She held herself erect
by main force. "I ... would be glad of a bite or two."

"You look it," he said. He raised his voice a fraction.

"Kleomenes!"

A boy appeared at his elbow, owl-eyed but alert.

Meriamon remembered him: he was the one who had
brought her what she asked for, for Nikolaos. She admired
his discipline. "Yes, sir?"

"Take this—boy"—the Greek hardly choked on it—
"and see that he's fed. Give him a mat in the 'prentices'
tent. If anybody lays a hand on him, give the fool a thrash-
ing. I'll see you both in the morning."

That was a dismissal. Meriamon decided to accept it.
Nikolaos was asleep or feigning it. Sekhmet had van-
ished. The physician bent to examine the soldier. Satisfied,
Meriamon followed her guide into the startling quiet of the

night.

Somewhere in the hours of her field surgery, the camp
had settled to sleep. There was a little drunken singing
still, the odd wail that marked a mourner, a murmur of
men coming back late from pursuit or from securing the
enemy's camp. The king was over there, they said, sleep-
ing in the coward's bed. They did not leer at that as the
earlier man had. He was alone, they said. He was odd that
way, the night after a battle.

Her guide did not take her far. He roused a sleepy cook
in one of the mess-tents, got bread and cheese and a skin
of wine, and settled cheerfully to eat most of it. The bread

Issus 19

was barley bread, fresh from the baking; it was good. The
cheese was rank. The wine, even watered, gagged her with
its sweetness.

The boy chattered without regard for her silence; or
maybe it was his version of tact. It freed her from the need
to speak, let her slide, warm and sated, into a drowse- She
started awake when the boy lifted her in his arms. "You
Macedonians." she said distinctly, "are all so big."

"You Egyptians are tiny," said Kleomenes. He grinned
at her. They all had such splendid teeth. How did they do
it? "Go to sleep, little Egyptian. I'll look after you."

She would not have trusted him. But her shadow was
quiescent, and she so tired. She laid her head on his broad
bony shoulder and sighed, and slid down into sleep.

•TWO-

Meriamon was in the surgeons' tent before the sun was up,
with more of the good barley bread inside her, and a swal-
low or Ewe of the horrible wine. She was clean, too: as
clean as she could get without inviting rape. Hellenes did
not wash if water was in short supply. They rubbed them-
selves with oil instead, rancid oil all too often, and scraped
it off. She shuddered at the prospect, contemplated the
grey and restless sea, shuddered again. But it was water,
and she needed it, though it numbed her fingers and set
her teeth to chattering.

The tent was warm with crowded bodies. The stink was
worse, but she endured it. They were burning something
pungent and oddly sweet, perhaps to cleanse the air. It
made her think of incense and of temples, and an endless
blue vault of sky, and a sun that never wavered or went
out.

She swallowed past the ache in her throat. She had a

20 Lord of the Two Lands

purpose here. Had not the gods themselves ordained it? If
she must suffer this alien land, these barbarous people,
then that was no more than her duty.

She thrust through the stink, found what needed doing,
did it. Sekhmet, little harlot, was over by the wall again
with Nikolaos. He lay and glowered and stroked the sleek
tawny flanks. Sekhmet rolled coyly onto her back and

wriggled.
He took the bait. He stroked the downy softness of her

belly; and yelped.

After some considerable interval, Meriamon wandered
by. The cat slept placidly beside his hip. Her purring was
a distant thunder.

"Love-pats," said Meriamon, inspecting the wounds.
"Not even halfway to the bone."
"Bitch of a cat," he muttered.

Meriamon laughed aloud. He was not at all amused. She
folded back his blanket—it had the look and feel of a mil-
itary cloak, and no doubt was. He was not modest, not as
a Persian would be, but he was clearly unhappy that she
should have appointed herself his physician. She took note
Ehat he was well though somewhat loosely made, with
broad shoulders and big hands and feet. He did not have
the whole of his growth. What would that make him?
Eighteen? Twenty?

A child; and petulant at that. He bore pain well, to be
sure; the bandages did not come off easily, but he clamped
his jaw and moved when she told him and only then, and
the only sound that escaped him was a long slow sigh
when the wrappings were gone.

"You have a cracked rib," she said, "along with the rest.
But healing well, that I can see. I'll strap the rib, and make
you a sling for your arm."

"Then can I get up?"

"No," she said.

His glance was blistering.

Issus 21

"No," she said again, "you may not. Nol for a while. I
want to be sure I'm not missing anything vital."

"How long?"

She thought about it. "A day, maybe. Two. Then we'll
see."

"A whole day? All I've got is a broken wrist!"

"You've got a little more than that," she said. "And I
said two. Maybe. If the rib's not more than cracked. If the
arm doesn't mortify. What did you do to it?"

He glowered, and he snarled at her, but in the snarl was
an answer. "My horse took a fall and threw me- There was
a chariot coming- I couldn't roll fast enough. A wheel
went over my arm."

"Some god loves you, then," said Meriamon.

He shrugged, one-sided. "It had been raining. The
ground was soft. I was up and fighting as soon as it went
by."

. Not quite as soon as that, Meriamon thought. He must
have been in white agony.

It would be a red agony now, even with the dose she
had given him. He was not paying attention to it. He was
too busy being stubborn. "It's only my shield arm," he
said. "I can still do guard duty. I can sling my shield over
my shoulder."

"Not for a good while yet," said Meriamon.

He glared. "Tyrant."

She smiled. "I come by it honestly. My father was a
king."

That stopped him. She left him with it, and with the cat,
who seemed to have adopted him.

Meriamon was feeding gruel to a man who had got a
spearbutt in the jaw, wishing that she had a barley straw
and a boxful of medicaments from Imhotep's temple in
Memphis, when a stir brought her eyes to the lentflap.
People came and went often, soldiers coming in late with
minor hurts that had kept them awake, or looking for

22 Lord of the Two Lands

friends among the wounded, or, now and then, walking
away with the jaunty step of a man reprieved from the
hospital. These were more than one, and coming in: young
clean-shaven men in Macedonian cloaks, gold-bordered
purple, and purple tunics. They were not all big men as
Macedonians went, but they walked as if they were, with
a look about them like lions in a pride. Young lions com-
ing back from the hunt, glossy and sated, holding them-
selves like princes.

There was one whose cloak was different: purple
unbordered. But for that, at first, she would not have no-
ticed him. He was not as tall as the others. Not tall at all,
unless in Khemet. His hair was lion-colored, cut like a
lion's mane. He said something to the man nearest
him—as tall as the tallest, that one, and darker-haired than
most, like ruddy bronze. The tall one's face seemed carved
in marble, so fine was it for a Macedonian face, and so
quiet. Then he laughed, and he looked like a wild boy.

The other was more than wild. Even standing still, he
seemed to flicker like a flame in a windowless room. He
stepped away from the tall man into the light from the
open tentflap. The sun caught his hair and flamed in it.

A murmur ran through the tent, rising to a roar. "Alex-
ander!"

Meriamon had known in her bones, even before she
heard his name. His presence was a fire on her skin. It
drove out the pain that filled this place, lifted the shadows
on it, even as it cleared her sight and sharpened it, and
showed her the man beneath the king.

He raised a hand. The noise died down. "As you were,"
he said. Light, crisp, but laughing a little. His voice was
high and rather harsh. He would have to work at smooth-
ing it, Meriamon thought, but it would carry in a battle.

She went on with what she had been doing. The man
under her hands was oblivious. His eyes were on the king.
His king.

Issus 23

They were all like that- Even Nikolaos. They loved him.
They would die for him.

He knew what he was doing. Meriamon was trained to
see it; was bom to it. But in him the knowing came after
me doing. It was what he was. He was as hot as a fire in
the forge, damped and gentled now, schooled to infinite
patience as he held the hand of a man who would not last
the day, and heard how the man had killed a Persian who
would have killed his friend. He asked after another man's
lover, traded banter with a grizzled veteran, dried a boy's
too-easy tears with the hem of his cloak. He seemed to be
everywhere at once, to speak to everyone at once, but each
one reckoned that the king had spoken to him alone.

"He's something, isn't he?"

Kleomenes had been trailing after Meriamon for a
while, fetching and carrying and adding an extra pair of
hands when she needed them. He had no illusions as to her
sex, and apparently no disillusion with it. He handed her
the roll of bandage that she needed, without taking his
eyes from Alexander. "I remember his father," he said.
"Now that was a man! Best king Macedon ever had, or we
thought ever would, till we got a look at Alexander."

She looked sidelong at the boy. Big as he was, he could
not have been more than fourteen. "You remember
Philip?"
"Everyone remembers Philip. He was like a hero, peo-
ple said. Like Herakles, and a king. Alexander . . . Alexan-
der is like a god."

She shivered a little. The boy's tongue ran independent
of the rest of him, for all that she could see. But he was
no fool, and he had a clear eye. She bent over the man on
the pallet. "Be ready with the salve," she said.

Alexander was mortal enough. He was walking stiff; she
heard a man whisper that he had got a sword-thrust in the
thigh, and ridden right on through it, and got merry hell
from Philippos the surgeon for it afterward. "And he still

24 Lord of the Two Lands

half-staggering from the fever he got from swimming in
the Kydnos," the man said. "Cold as Hekate's dugs, that
was. But he doesn't stop for much, even for fever."

Meriamon suspected that he did not stop at all. Most of
his followers had left, bored or called to duties. The tall
man was there still, but as she watched, he said something
to Alexander. Alexander smiled: a startlingly sweet smile.
The tall man seemed dazzled by it. He turned away with-
out obeisance or any mark of respect, but he needed none;

it was in everything he did.

"That's Hephaistion," said Kleomenes. "His best friend
in the world. They call one another Achilles and Patroklos.
Gods know, they're as close as that. Closer." He sighed. "I
saw them at Troy, sacrificing at Achilles' tomb. We all
wept, it was so beautiful."

"I can imagine," Meriamon said. Her voice was dry.
Children, she thought. Dreamers and children. And they
wanted to conquer a world.

Did they know it yet? Even he, whose soul was fire—
did he know what it was that he wanted?

He came round to her in his course. She did not try to
avoid him. The man she tended was as besotted as any of
the others, and he got his reward: a clasp of the hand, a
word of praise for his bravery, a bit of banter to keep him
smiling. There was nothing false in any of it.

One could not quite call him beautiful, even if one were
a Greek. That full-lipped face with its flat cheeks and its
firm jaw; the long strong nose growing straight out of the
heavy brows; the broad forehead; the hair growing from a
peak, lion-like, and falling as it would: they were too odd
for beauty, too purely themselves. But the eyes were splen-
did. They were as restless as he was, and piercingly bright,
yet they could still utterly, fixed far and dreaming on a ho-
rizon that only he could see. What color they were, she
could not tell. Grey, blue, grey-blue, green, grey-green.

Issus 25

One was darker than the other. Or was that the angle of
the light?

He shifted, and his eyes were clear grey, looking her up
and down in curiosity and dawning mirth. "What in the
gods' name are you?"

He asked it as simply as a child, with a child's arro-
gance, and a child's certainty that he would not be pun-
ished for it. She could not help but smile. "My name is
Meriamon," she said, "and I was a singer in the temple of
Amon in Thebes."

He frowned a little. She could see the swift mind flick-
ing from thought to thought; his eyes changed with it, grey
to green to blue to grey. " 'Was'?" he asked.

"Now I am here," she said.

"Why?"

Direct as a child, too, but that was no child's mind,
weighing her, measuring her, taking in everything she was.
'To serve you," said Meriamon.

His head tossed a little, impatient. Of course she had
come to serve him, the gesture said. He was Alexander. He
said, "You came a long way to wait on a barbarian king."

"My gods brought me here," she said-

"Why—" He paused. Someone was calling him, urgent,
refusing to be ignored. He muttered something brief and
shockingly vulgar, and grinned at her expression.
"Mariamne"—his tongue did odd things to her name—"I
have an army to look after and dead to bury, and a victory
to celebrate. After that I'll talk with you. Will you come
and see the rites of the savage Hellenes?"

No savage, this one, barbarian or no. She grinned back.
"You Greeks are such children."

He laughed- "So we've been told. You'll come, then?"

"I'll come," said Meriamon.
- THREE •

Fool. Idiot. To forget this of all Hellene savageries.

They buried their dead. Oh, yes. But first they burned
them. They marched in a vast glittering procession, every
cuirass burnished, every spearpoint gleaming, horses in
their finest panoply, chariot teams snorting and prancing
and tossing their plumes. They circled the field of Issus;

they massed in formation, wheeled, swung down the long
broken level like one great shining creature, and halted in
their ranks before the face of the king. He wore his golden
corselet, his lion helmet- He sat on the back of his little
black horse that was as much a legend as he was, and took
their roar of acclamation and gave it back in the splendor
of his smile.

And then they massed themselves round the tower that
they had built of wood and flesh, and performed their sac-
rifices, and watched the priests pour oil over the pyre. The
king cast the first torch. It arced high against the grey
vault of heaven, crested and curved and fell, and caught on
the summit of the pyre. Others came after it like a fall of
stars. Then, so suddenly it singed the beards of those who
lingered closest, it erupted into flame.

Meriamon could not watch the bodies burning. The
wind carried the smoke away from her, or surely she
would have disgraced herself. What would their souls do
now? How would they cross the land of the dead, what
judgment could they hope for, with no earthly home to an-
chor them?

People were wailing. It was part of the rite. She
clamped her jaw on her own cry. So many bodies, so
many souls lost—gods, how could they do it?

There were people near her on the slope. Most of them

Issus 27

were silent. One spoke beside her. "Did you lose someone
in the battle?"

It was a woman's voice, and anything but Persian. Its
owner seemed calm, dressed as a Greek woman with a veil
over her hair and half-hiding her face. Meriamon took ref-
uge in the sight of her—a curl of bronze-gold hair, a
smooth ivory brow, a pair of great dark eyes- They were
level on her, with sympathy in them, and curiosity: a pe-
culiarly Greek expression. Her accent was as pure as any
Meriamon had heard.

"How can they do it?" Meriamon asked. "How can they
destroy me dead?"

"It sets their souls free," the Greek woman said. "Then
we bury the bones, and they can rest."

"Is that rest? To destroy them?"

The Greek's brows drew together. They were strong,
and elegantly arched. "If the soul is to be freed to cross
the River into Hades, the bones must lie under the earth."
She shivered in her fine blue mantle with its embroidered
hem. "How horrible, to be fettered to the rotting flesh and
forbidden passage to peace."

"Our faiths are very different," said Meriamon, thin and
tight.

"You're Egyptian, yes? I heard that there was an Egyp-
tian woman in the camp."

"I'm supposed to be a boy," Meriamon said.

"Someone has been chaffing you, then." said the Greek.
"Believe me, a woman is safer than a boy where Hellenes

.?   arc'"
'V    Meriamon looked at her. "Did some of the generals

bring their wives with them after all?"

The Greek laughed, sweet and high. That was art, that
swoop of mirthful notes; art worn to instinct. "Wife? I?
Aphrodite forbid! No, my lady of Egypt, I am a camp fol-
lower, a hetaira they call me, which is a courtesan.
Haven't you heard of That's?"

"No more than you have heard of Meriamon."

28 Lord of the Two Lands

Thai's let fall her veil. She was not the raving beauty
that Meriamon had expected. Her eyes were magnificent,
and her skin was flawless. But her nose was long even for
Greek taste, her mouth wide and somewhat overgenerous,
her chin a shade loo definite. Character. That was the
name of it.

Meriamon had never spoken with a hetaira before.
Concubines—men had those in Khemet. And there were
women who sold their bodies for men's pleasure. But
someone who seemed to glory in it, whose title meant
"companion"—that was a Greek thing, and strange.

"We're a necessity, you see," said Thais in that bright,
brittle voice. "For some men, boys are not enough, and
their wives are good for little but spinning wool and bear-
ing sons. We give them what their wives are hardly trained
to give, and what boys lack altogether. We earn the title
they give us."

"In Egypt," said Meriamon, "such women are called
wives."

"Happy Egypt," said Thais. She half-turned, half-raising
her veil, lowering her handsome eyes.

Meriamon had seen the man who came toward them. He
had been with the king this morning, and he had ridden in
procession with the men closest to the king. He was older
than some of them, probably nearer thirty than twenty,
with a strong bony face; long and loose-built, wide-
shouldered, big-handed, but graceful as a fighting man has
to be.

He greeted Thai's with courtesy, as if she had been a
lady. Thai's kept her eyes down like a modest woman and
returned his greeting in her pure Attic accent- "Ptolemy."
she said, "do you know the Lady Mariamne?"

He inclined his head to her: greeting, courtesy, a flicker
of—amusement? "The king has been talking about you,"
he said.

Meriamon raised a brow.

"He's fascinated," said Ptolemy. "Did Philippos really

Issus 29

let you walk right into his hospital and start working mir-
acles?"

"About the letting," said Meriamon, "I don't think he
had much choice. But I've worked no miracles. Plain field
surgery is all I know."

"It's more than most of us do." Ptolemy rocked back on
his heels. He grinned suddenly. "Herakles! I wish I'd seen
his face when he saw you were a woman."

"It takes a bit of seeing," Meriamon said dryly.

"It does not." He was definite about it. Indignant, she
might almost have said. "You've got a pup from the fam-
ily litter in your lot. All he can howl about is that he's
been cast into the hands of a female."

She narrowed her eyes. Loose bones, big hands, bony
face. 'That wouldn't be Nikolaos, would it?"

"Niko," said Ptolemy, "yes. Mind you now, he's a good
soldier. Could be better, he's spoiled rotten and has been
since he was a brat, but get him in a fight and he remem-
bers his manners."

"He's polite about killing people?"

Ptolemy laughed. "Alexander said you had a tongue on
you. So," he said, "did Niko." He sobered suddenly. "The
doctors say he ought to have lost the hand. Now they say
he'll likely keep it. If that's not a miracle, then what do
you call it?"

"It wasn't as bad as it could have been," said
Meriamon. "He lost a lot of blood to the rest of his
wounds—that's why we've kept him down. Besides the
pleasure of watching him sulk."

"Still," said Ptolemy. Then he grinned. "I like it, too,
seeing him rolled up in bed and the doctors sitting on him.
Time something slapped the nonsense out of him."

"I wouldn't care to wager on that," Meriamon said.

People had begun to scatter. The first fierce flame of
the pyre had died to a long smolder. A shift in the wind
brought the stink of it to her nostrils. Fire, burning, a

30 Lord of the Two Lands

sweet-savory roast-meat scent that brought the bile flood-
ing.

The hands on her were a woman's hands, deft and cool,
smoothing the hair out of her streaming face, holding her
while she retched into the grass. Thais spoke over her,
voice as cool as her hands. 'This is no sight for an Egyp-
tian. Whose fault is it?"

Meriamon gasped it out for herself, furious at her weak-
ness. "Mine. I should have remembered—I should have
known—"

"So should Alexander," said Ptolemy. And as her head
came up, eyes wide with shock: "Yes, I heard him. Some-
times he just doesn't think."
"He is the king!"

"Why, so he is," said Ptolemy. "But there—you don't
elect your kings, do you? You make them gods."

"They are gods," she said, "and sons of gods." Her
stomach had settled a little. She drew herself up from her
knees. She kept her eyes averted from the pyre; tried to
breathe shaliowly, though the wind had turned again and
was blowing off the sea. "No. It was I who didn't think.
I pay the price for it."

She looked up. He was looking down, frowning as if he
strained to understand. His eyes were blue, startling in the
bronzed and weathered face. For an instant her shadow
flexed. Seeing—wanting—

He looked away. The moment passed. He helped her up
with careful courtesy. "The king will want to see you later.
Will you be in the hospital?"

"She will be with the women," said Thais. They both
stared at her. "Lady Mariamne, I was going to speak with
the Persian women. They may be glad of a woman's voice,
even if it belongs to an enemy."

Meriamon stiffened. "I have no love for the Parsa," she
said.

"Who does?" Thais drew up her veil. "Still, they are
women, and probably they're terrified."

Issus 31

"I thought they were left alone," said Meriamon.

"That would make it worse." Thais slid a glance at Ptol-
emy. "Do we require a guard, my friend?"

Or, thought Meriamon, it might be my love. It was the
same word.

"I'll send a man over," Ptolemy said. "It's quiet enough
by now, I mink, but let's not take chances."'

One would never know that they were lovers. Or would
one? They did not touch and their eyes seldom met, but
mere was a subtle tension in them.

It stretched taut, snapped. Ptolemy went back to his sol-
diering. Thais turned to go down the hill, walking as a
dancer walks, erect and consciously graceful. It was a mo-
ment before Meriamon realized that she was speaking. "I
met him in Athens when Alexander was there on embassy
from his father, before he was king. I was a child then; my
breasts were barely budded. My guardian thought Ptolemy
a plausible prospect, Macedonian or no. I liked him my-
self: he was always pleasant, and he didn't either blush or
act the bravo. Then he left, and I became a woman, and
found patrons who would teach-me in return for what I
could give. Last year, when I heard that Alexander would
cross into Asia, I decided to go with him."

"Not with Ptolemy?" asked Meriamon, walking in her
wake.

"Certainly with Ptolemy. We met again, we were ame-
nable, we sealed a bargain."

"Did your .. . guardian have any say in it?"

"My guardian was dead. It's not allowed in Athens for
a woman to live for herself, free from a man's hand. My
guardian's heir and I were not congenial."

"So you left."

"So I applied judicious pressure in the proper places,
and was allowed to leave. I'll not go back soon, I don't
think. I like this, this wild hunt against the Persians."

She was no tame thing herself. Trained, trammeled,
shaped and pruned like a tree in a pharaoh's garden, still

32 Lord of the Two Lands

she was her own creature. She would not ride in battle like
a man, she would hardly find that fitting, but she would
watch with eager eyes and reckon every stroke. And when
her man came back she would be waiting, a crown for his
victory.

They walked wide round the funeral pyre. On the other
side a soldier met them with crisp deference and his com-
mander's compliments, and fell in behind them as they
crossed the battlefield. It was empty, the earth torn and
trampled but no body left to tempt the birds. The Greek
dead were bones on a pyre. The Persians were gone to the
care of their own people for rites that were no whit less
horrible than burning, which they reckoned a pollution of
sacred fire: set on high for the vultures to devour, then cast
into a pit of nameless bones.

Meriamon felt the change as they forded the river, the
guard walking ahead now and Thai's kilting up her fine
skirts and recking nothing of the water's bitter cold. The
water was a barrier. The other side was the Persians', even
in Macedonian hands. Their camp sprawled city-wide
across the plain and up into the hills, with no order or rea-
son in it that she could see, quite unlike the squares and
straightways of the Macedonians.

What her shadow felt, what her heart saw, was a world
both strange and bitterly familiar. The musk of their per-
fumes, the spice of their cookery, the hisses and gutturals
of their language had ruled for far too long in her country.
Even reft of its fighting men, reduced to slaves and the
sick and the royal women, this could never be anything
but a camp of Persians. Her nose wrinkled at a scent
which she knew above all others. Faint yet distinct, like
burning metal; a touch of heat on the shadow's skin, a sug-
gestion of fire in the heart's eye.

The Magi had fled with their coward of a king. But their
power lingered wherever they had been.

A sleek sand-brown shape sprang ahead of her, pounc-
ing on shadows. Sekhmet, wise cat, had stayed away from

Issus 33

the marching and the burning. She wove sinuous circles
around Meriamon, startling passersby, winning an excla-
mation from Thais. "What in Hades' name is that?"

"Sekhmet," said Meriamon. She held out her linked
arms. Sekhmet sprang into them and mounted to her
shoulder, nding there with practiced ease. She was purr-
ing. Her incantation, Meriamon called it; guarding them
both against the enemy's magic.

"Your cat?" Thais asked. She sounded bemused.

"Sekhmet belongs to herself," Meriamon said. "She
chooses to go where I go. Mostly. When she has nothing
better to do."

Sekhmet sank claws in her for that, but briefly, barely
drawing blood.

"Remarkable," said Thais. She recovered herself
quickly. 'That should give the Great King's women some-
thing to talk about."

"Do you speak Persian?"

"Not a word," Thai's said. "But we'll make do."
The Great King's tent was immense, a palace of silk and
gold, so wide and so high that a hill rose inside it. Its walls
were silk, and could be moved to make this room larger,
that one smaller, or to make the whole one vast hall. Its
floor was spread with carpets like meadows full of flow-
ers. Its furnishings were gold and silk and jeweled furbe-
lows, wagons' worth in every room, and none less than the
best to be had.

Darius would not have liked to see them now. No one
had looted them or damaged them unduly, once Alexander
claimed them. But there were Macedonian soldiers where
only princes had been allowed to come, lounging on the
priceless couches, threatening the fragile silk with their ar-
mor.

The women were not here, they said. That was another
tent behind this one. They offered, with much grinning and
nudging, to guide the seekers to it.

34 Lord of the Two Lands

Thai's withered them with a glance, and went where they
were pointing. That was out of the great tent across a
courtyard walled in silk. No one lingered there. There
were guards on the door, men who did not take their duty
as lightly as their fellows seemed to. It might have been
distaste, or it might have been the presence of another
guard in Persian dress. A giant, a Nubian; and by virtue of
his presence here, and his beardless face, a eunuch.

"We have come," That's said in her clear uncompromis-
ing voice, "to speak with the royal ladies."

'The king said no visitors," said one of the Macedonian
guards.

'The king wanted no men here." Thai's' impatience was
audible. "Come now, you know me. Would I rape or de-
spoil a king's daughter? Even a Persian?"

The guard wavered. No one offered to back him. He
shrugged. "All right. But if there's trouble, I'll say you
were the start of it."

"So you should," said Thai's. "Come, Mariamne."

Here still, unlike the Great King's tent, was Persia unsul-
lied. No Macedonian faces here; no male at all who was
not a eunuch. The silence lay heavy, punctuated at inter-
vals by a smothered sound; a woman's weeping, a child's
cry. The scent of mingled perfumes was overpowering,
a thick, trapped scent with no strength in it to mask the
stink of fear. The air did not move here, the light did not
change. Always the same air, the same lamplit half-gloom,
the same endless, monotonous sameness.

"Even a bird in the cage can see the sky," said
Meriamon.

That's made a sound. It might have been laughter. "It's
a richer prison than Athenian wives and daughters know.
These walls are silk, and the floor has carpets, whole king-
doms' worth. And they can travel with their man, though
they travel in curtained wagons."

"If a prison moves, is it any less a prison?"

Issus 35

"Philosophy," said Thai's, not quite mockingly, as a eu-
nuch approached them.

He was old, thin-limbed but heavy-bellied, in a coat so
rich it seemed to parody itself: deep crimson silk crusted
with embroidery. He made Meriamon think of the baboon
in Thoth's temple, irascible and holy, with his too-long
arms and his withered face. He bowed to them, a bow
carefully calculated, neither low enough to grant them sov-
ereignty nor slight enough to offer insult. His greeting was
faultless, and expressed in court Persian.

Meriamon did not speak it well, but she understood its
meaning. Too well. Conquerors these interlopers might be,
but they would speak the language of Cyrus and
Cambyses, or not speak at all.

She inclined her head a meticulous degree. "We return
your sentiments, 0 prince of servants. This lady who ac-
companies me is a friend of me king. Will the great royal
lady deign to grant her audience?"

His lip curled   the merest degree: at her accent, no
doubt, as much   as at her presumption. But he was a cour-
tier. His face   changed no line of-its expression. "Is such a
choice granted   a prisoner?"

"A queen may always choose," said Meriamon.

"I will ask," said the eunuch. And went away.

Meriamon sat on a couch, finding it too soft, but better
than nothing at all.

That's stayed where she was, standing by the opening in
the inner wall. "What did he say?"
"He's going to ask the queen if she will speak with
you." Meriamon sat back. Sekhmet left her shoulder and
walked along the back of the couch, prowling, relaxed but
wary. Once she sneezed. Meriamon smiled. Sekhmet did
not like Persian perfumes, either.

"He was rude," said That's, "to speak Persian."

"So he was," Meriamon said. "And ruder yet to leave
so abruptly, without a word of thanks or parting. He's not
happy at all to be where he is now."

36 Lord of the Two Lands

'*He should be." Thais left the door and sat beside
Meriamon. After a moment she tucked up her feet and re-
clined against the long curving arm. "In any war that ever
was, a conquering king would have taken his enemy's
women for his own. Alexander hasn't come here at all."

"Yet."

"When he comes," said Thais, "that's not what he'll
come for."

"So," said Meriamon. "He's Greek clear through."

Thais let fall her veil, baring her face. "Greek enough,
that's true- But he's Alexander. He won't ever take a lover
by force. He likes his pleasure willing, and he likes to
have love if he can get it."

"I can hardly see him wooing a Persian princess," said
Meriamon.

"I can," said Thais. "He'd like the challenge."

"Not that she'd be worth it once he won her," said
Meriamon. "Cage-birds seldom leam to fly."

"One with spirit, maybe," said Thais. "One who wants
to be free."

"Spirit goes sour fast in a harem. It goes to wine or it
goes to fat, or it takes to poisoning people."

"In Egypt, too?" asked Thais.

"Not in Egypt," said Meriamon, but softly. Sekhmet re-
turned from her quartering of the room and curled in
Meriamon's lap. She stroked the sleek fur, taking comfort
from it. "Not ... for a very long time."
Thais' eyes begged to differ, but she held her peace. She
was like a cat herself, relaxed and supple, but ready to
leap at a word.

They were not kept waiting long. Neither were they
brought the cups of wine and the sweets that would have
been proper.

The eunuch who came for them was another than the
one who had taken their message, younger though still no
youth, who looked as if he might have been beautiful
once. His eyes were lovely still, great frightened doe-eyes.

Issus 37

taking in the Greek woman and the Egyptian in Persian
dress without seeming to comprehend them. His voice was
strong and piercing-sweet as eunuchs' voices sometimes
were. Meriamon wondered if he was a singer. "You will
come with me, please," he said.

They followed him in silence. Sekhmet walked in
Meriamon's shadow, quiet as a shadow herself, all but in-
visible.

The inner rooms were full of women. Meriamon could
hear them through the walls like birds in an aviary, flutter-
ing, murmuring, and once a sharp cry, abruptly cut off.

The room to which the eunuch took them seemed to be
the centermost. A slender central pillar held up the roof,
and its furnishings were like those in the king's tent, im-
probably, almost garishly rich. There were a handful of eu-
nuchs huddled together as if for warmth, three or four
veiled women who sat by the wall and did not speak, and
in the center, the back of her chair set against the pole, a
woman. Another stood beside and a little behind her. Nei-
ther was veiled. The one who stood was young, though not
perhaps in Persian reckoning, arid her face was pure Per-
sian, beauty as flawless as a carving in ivory.

The other was old. Her bones were magnificent; she
would have been a great beauty in her day. She was still
handsome, with her haughty eagle's face and her deep
eyes. She was still straight, and still, even sitting, imperi-
ally tall.

Darius the king was a giant among his people. It was
clear to see where he had come by his height, if never his
cowardice. Sisygambis his mother, Queen Mother of Per-
sia, sat on what could only be a throne, and spoke a greet-
ing in a clear strong voice. The woman behind her
rendered it in Greek, speaking it well and with very little
accent.

That's inclined her head as if she herself had been a
queen. "I greet you in return, great lady. And you, Barsine.

38 Lord of the Two Lands

How is it that they left you here, and not in Damascus
with the rest of the noblewomen?"

The Queen Mother understood. Meriamon could see it
in her eyes. Barsine glanced at her, gained a flicker of per-
mission. "I chose to stay," she said.

"You know that your father is fled with the king," said
Thais. Calm, leve!. Not cruel. Not precisely.

"I know it," Barsine said-

"Barsine," said Thai's to Meriamon, "is a satrap's
daughter. Her father was a friend of Alexander in his
childhood, and a friend of Greeks lifelong. Her first hus-
band was a Greek. When he died she married his brother.
That one died last year in the siege of Mytilene; and she
went back to her father, and now she is here. She should
have gone with the rest to Damascus."

"Alexander would simply have found me there,"
Barsine said. Her calm was a splendid thing.

The Queen Mother spoke in Persian and Barsine in
Greek- "What does an Egyptian do in the following of the
Macedonian king? Does she know that the satrap of her
province is dead?"

"Is he, then?" asked Meriamon in Greek for Thais'
sake. "No doubt his women will mourn him."

"You do not answer my question," Sisygambis said.

Direct, she, for a Persian. "Egypt is no province of mine
or any other," said Meriamon. "I came here to serve Alex-
ander."

"Why?"

"My father was Nekhtharhab, Neclanebo of Egypt,"
Meriamon said.

The Queen Mother's eyes hooded. Meriamon thought of
cobras. And yet there was no enmity there. Necessity only,
and indissoluble division. "Ah," said Sisygambis. There
was a world of understanding in the syllable.

Meriamon almost smiled. "The rebel, yes. He died for
it. But I live. I speak for him."

"That is your duty," said Sisygambis.

Issus 39

Sekhmel flowed out of Meriamon's shadow, approach-
ing the Queen Mother. Sisygambis regarded her without
surprise but with considerable interest. "That is a sacred
cat?" she asked.

"Yes," said Meriamon.

Sekhmet considered the height of the silk-swathed knees
and sprang. Sisygambis did not move. The cat preened
against her, purring. Scent-marking her; seducing her.

She was proof against anything a human creature could
send against her. But Sekhmet was the image of a goddess.
Sisygambis yielded warily, touching a finger to the back
that arched against her breast. Sekhmet slid under her
hand, butting it with a hard round head.

Meriamon released a slow breath. One never knew with
Sekhmet. "Be wary," she said. "Be respectful. Her claws
are sharp."

"So they would be," said Sisygambis. She did not re-
treat. How unlike her son; how immeasurably more kingly.

A eunuch brought chairs at last, little silver cups filled
with sweet wine, a box of appallingly sweet Persian con-
fections. Thai's was amused: her eyes glinted as they met
Meriamon's. "Your cat is an excellent ambassador," she
said.

"She is not my cat." As if to contradict her, Sekhmet
abandoned the Queen Mother for Meriamon's lap and a
pose of watchful interest, erect like an image in a temple.
Meriamon smoothed the elegant gold-brown ear where it
was pierced for a ring. That was left behind in Amon's
temple, so much the less temptation for bandits on the
road.

She eyed the cup of wine that had been given her,
steeled herself to drink it. A flurry made her pause. A eu-
nuch ran in, green with terror, and flung himself on his
face before the Queen Mother. "Lady," he gasped. "Oh,
lady, they have come, they are here, they want—they
say—"
40 Lord of the Two Lands

The Queen Mother's eunuchs froze. Fear, yes; and hor-
ror, not only of the news, but of the way in which it came.

Sisygambis regarded the messenger with massive calm.
" 'They'?" she inquired.

"The enemy!" the eunuch cried. Then he seemed to
master himself. "Great lady, the king, the Hellenes' king."

Sisygambis drew even more rigidly erect- "The king
himself? He is here?"

"Yes, great lady. And—Ahuramazda protect us. Immor-
tals defend us—he asks to speak with you."

"To speak with me?" She seemed to be thinking aloud.
"But we are his. He won us. He can do whatever he
pleases."

"He is a barbarian," said the eunuch.

"He is king." Sisygambis' voice was cold. "Tell him
that he may speak with us."

The eunuch picked himself up and fled. Sisygambis sat
still. Her long hands flexed on the arms of her chair,
clenching, unclenching. Her voice was calm. Dismissing
her daughters and their women to the sanctuary of seclu-
sion, leaving herself and her companion and the eldest of
the eunuchs. Deliberately, steadily, she drew her veil over
her face. After a moment Barsine followed suit.

They could follow the king's coming in the sounds of the
tent: sudden stirring, sudden stillness. Thais sat at her ease,
not quite smiling. Meriamon was enjoying the moment
much too much. To see the Queen Mother of Persia afraid
and mastering her fear—that was sweet.

There were two of them who walked in behind the eu-
nuch, side by side and easy with one another, even in this
alien place. Hephaistion was a little ahead, on guard, scan-
ning the room with wary eyes. Alexander was half-lost in
his shadow. Walking so, he seemed smaller and much
slighter than he was, a bareheaded boy in a simple chiton,
keeping no ceremony.

Sisygambis rose. She was tall indeed, a fair hands-

Issus 41
breadth taller than Hephaistion. As he paused, hand drop-
ping to swordhilt, she went down in the prostration.

He stared, blank with astonishment. Then he flushed.
"Lady," he said. "Lady, I'm not the king."

Barsine's voice echoed his, trembling a little itself, but
clear, rendering the Persian of his Greek.

The Queen Mother rose. Her face was as calm as ever,
but her lips were white. She saw Alexander then, starting
slightly, then fixing on him. She began again to sink down.

He caught her. "No, mother. You don't have to do that
to me."

"You are the king," she said, Barsine's voice her echo,
a bare half-breath behind. "My error—your pardon—
whatever penalty your majesty will exact—"

"That's all right, mother," he said lightly, helping her
back to her chair. "He's Alexander, too."

She clutched his arm as if without it she would fall, and
looked hard into his face. He gazed back, as intent as she.

Her eyes dropped first- She let go his arm. The marks
of her fingers were scarlet on the fair skin; there would be
bruises later. He did not seem to notice. Slowly
Sisygambis lowered her veil.

Maybe Alexander understood what she was doing. He
looked about for a chair, found one, pulled it up beside
her. The eunuchs gasped. Not that he should dare, but that
he should do it so completely without ceremony. He took
Sisygambis' hand, direct as if no one stood between them,
no mind but his and hers, no wall of speech or understand-
ing. "There, mother. I'm afraid I've cost you no little anx-
iety, leaving you alone like this for so long. I'm sorry for
that. I had too much to do, it got a bit ahead of me. Will
you pardon me for it?"

"I do not think," said Sisygambis, "that anything gets
ahead of you."

He smiled his sudden smile. Her eyes flickered, dazzled.
"Oh, you'd be surprised. I do want you to know that

42 Lord of the Two Lands

you'll all be safe here; and the other ladies, too, when we
catch up with them."
Again she studied his face. Not as if she doubted him.
As if she needed to assure herself that he was real; that she
had not dreamed him. "Why do you do this?" she asked.

He shrugged, boylike, tilting his head at that angle
which was his and no one else's. "1 don't make war on
women."

"Then," she said with bitterness that was shocking,
coming out of so calm a face, "you will not be fighting
any longer against my son."

He did not seem surprised. "There are men in his
army," he said. "They deserve a chance at honor."

"Perhaps," said Sisygambis.

He patted her hand where it lay in his. "I have to go,
unfortunately. But I'll come back, if you'll receive me."

"I will always receive you," she said.

"Good'" said Alexander with every evidence of delight.
"I hope you'll be more at ease now. You're in no danger
as long as I have you in my keeping."

"I am no longer afraid," said Sisygambis, "now that I
know what you are."

Alexander rose, laying her hand in her lap as gently as
if it had been a new-hatched bird. "Good day, mother.
May the gods protect you."

"May Ahuramazda and the good gods defend you," said
Sisygambis, "my lord king."

•FOUR-

"That," said Thais, "was pure theater."

Meriamon was dizzy with her lungs full of clean air af-
ter the scented closeness of the harem, and silly with the
freedom of sky over her head and clean earth under her

Issus 43

feet. Sekhmet nipped her ear, bringing her back somewhat
to herself. She glanced at Thais. 'The king meant every
word he said."

"Of course he did." Thais stepped round a soldier who
had had a little more wine than was good for him. He
grabbed for Meriamon, got Sekhmet's lightning-swift rake
of claws for his pains. "That doesn't mean he didn't know
what it looked like. Or the old queen, either. Isn't she im-
pressive? She should have been king. Then we wouldn't
be here, celebrating a victory."

"I for one am glad that she is a woman."

Thais laughed. "I could tell, even when you were being
civil. Was it so bad in Egypt?"

"Yes." Meriamon wrapped herself tighter in her mantle.
She did not want to speak of it, to be compelled to remem-
ber. "I should go back to the hospital. There are things I
left undone."

"Not yet," said Thais. 'They've put you with Philippos'
boys, haven't they?"

"Yes."

"Not any longer. I've a bigger'tent than I need now:

Ptolemy gave me a present after me battle It even has
rooms, like the Great King's. You'll be quite comfortable
in one."

"But—" said Meriamon.

"You also   need clothes. And a place to keep them.
Philippos   should have you on the rolls and drawing ra-
tions; if   not, you'd best speak to him. We all earn our way
here, and   draw our pay for it."

Slow heat crawled up Meriamon's cheeks. Mercifully
Thais was not looking at her.

"I'll show you where my tent is," said That's. "Phylinna
is my maid, she'll look after you, too; she won't mind
She's always complaining that I don't give her enough to
do."

There was no stopping her once she had set her mind on
a thing. Meriamon found herself in a tent that was large

44 Lord of the Two Lands

enough for a tradesman's house in Thebes, divided into
rooms: one in front, one in the middle, three small ones in
the back. The furnishings must have belonged to a minor
lord. There was even a chest full of clothing, plain stuff
but beautifully made.

"His wives must have worked hard and long over
these," said Thais, running a hand over an embroidered

coat.

"Not his wives," said Meriamon. "Ladies of the Parsa
never spin and weave. That would be beneath them. His
slaves would have made these; or he bought them in the
market."

"How odd," said Thais. "You aren't going to wear

these, are you?"

Meriamon held a coat against her and laughed. "Hardly!
It's big enough for three of me. But I do need a change of
clothes."

"I can see to that," said the maid Phylinna. She was a
little older than her mistress, and she did not act at all as
one might have expected a slave to act. She said what she
thought, and seemed to fear no reprisal. "What can we put
you in? It's hardly proper for you to dress like a Persian,
and a male at that. But a woman's gown might bring you
trouble in the camp. Men," she said, "being what they
are."

"And I can't wear what I wore at home," Meriamon
said. "I'd freeze." She thought about it. "I suppose I'll
have to go on being improper. At least until it gets
warmer. Does it ever do that in this pan of the world?"

"It's a furnace in the summer," said Phylinna. "Trou-
sers, then. And a gown for when you want to dress up.
Shall I see to it, mistress?"

"Do," said Thais. And when she had gone: "I should
like to see you in a dress. I think you would be very
pretty." Her hand reached to touch Meriamon's hair. "Such
hair. And those eyes. Would you like a bath?"

Issus 45

Meriamon was growing used to Thais' quicksilver
shifts. "I would give one of my souls to be clean."
"Then you shall be," said Thais.

Phylinna was only the chief of the hetaira's servants, and
Thais seemed able to call on a fair few of soldiers as well.
She had a great bronze basin brought in—more of me Per-
sian plunder—and water for it, and everything else that
one could possibly want for a bath. For the first time since
she left Khemet, Meriamon shed her swathings of clothes
down to the last bit of linen, and sank into steaming water
scented with herbs and sweet oil, and felt deft servant-
hands scouring away the weeks of her journey. Sekhmet,
disgusted by the unnatural human obsession with water,
took herself away from it. Even Meriamon's shadow was
quiescent, sunk in the fragrant water.

It was cruelly hard to come out of it, even when it had
begun to cool. Harder still to face her reeking and dirt-
stiffened clothes with her skin singing clean, clean, clean.

Thais had gone out while Meriamon bathed. Now the
hetaira came back, and her arms were full. She spread her
booty on a table. "It's not perfect, of course. We'll need a
little time for that. But will this do?"

Some prince must have brought his son with him. No
grown Persian would be so small, and the quality of the
garments was better even than what lay in Thais' box. Un-
dergarments of linen so fine that it must have been woven
in Khemet, soft trousers of crimson wool to tuck into doe-
skin boots, coat of silk the color and sheen of lapis lazuli,
embroidered with a frieze of lions, its belt inlaid with sil-
ver and clasped with lapis. There was a cap with it, rich
green embroidered with silver. It all fit remarkably well,
and it was warmer than what she had had, even without a
cloak.

"Someday you'll have to tell me how you happened to
come here in Persian clothes, with no baggage to speak
of," said Thais.

46 Lord of the Two Lands

"That's simple enough," Meriamon said. "I had a horse
and a mute, and they carried me up from Egypt, and at
good speed, too, with me gods' help. Then I met a riding
of the Parsa, somewhere south of Tyre- They decided that
I owed them tribute. They took me by surprise, and they
were too many for me to fight. I gave them most of what
they wanted. They would have taken more, but something

scared them off."

Something, she did not say, had killed one of them as
they fled, the one who had wanted more; and gained her
her disguise. It was warmer than the thin linen she had
had, and somewhat safer.

"You came all this way alone?" Thails was incredulous.

"Not ... precisely alone," said Meriamon. She could
feel her shadow behind her, rousing from its somnolence.
"I'd call you rash, if you weren't so obviously here, and
no harm taken."

Meriamon shook her head a very little. Her shadow sub-
sided unwillingly, but she was stronger than its wariness.

The hospital was much as she had left it. Two of the worst
wounded had died. One was the giant whom they called
Ajax—his given name, she garnered, was something else
altogether. The prick of tears surprised her. She had never
known him, and yet he had, in his way, belonged to her.

Nikolaos was very much alive. They had moved him
from his solitary eminence and set him closer to the door.
He had a book balanced on his knees, and read from it by
the light of a lamp; some of the men near him listened.
She did not recognize the verses—for they had to be that,
melodious as they were, in a dialect that was not Attic, nor
yet Macedonian.

" 'Immortal Aphrodite of the elaborate throne,
•wile-weaving daughter of Zeus,
I beseech thee:

Issus 47

Vex not my soul, 0 lady,
with love's sweet torments.' "

He had a beautiful voice when he was not using it to
complain. A surprising taste in poetry, too. Meriamon
wondered whom he was thinking of as he dwelt on the iiq-
uid words.

Sekhmet's coming barely made him pause. He opened
his elbow for her to slip between, and finished out the
poem. Then he rolled the book and bound it, one-handed,
with impressive competence. For a moment his face
seemed almost pleasant, though his brows knit soon
enough.

"If you keep that up," Meriamon said, "you're going to
have a furrow deep enough to plant a row of barley."

"Then you can harvest it and make beer out of it," he
said. His tone was nasty. 'That is what you do with it.
isn't it? Make beer?"

"Bread first," she said, "then beer. What was it that you
were reading?"

"Sappho," he said- "She was a poet. She came from
Lesbos—from Mytilene."
Mytilene was where Barsine's husband had died.
Meriamon did not think that he would care to know that.
"She wrote beautiful verses."

"It's my brother's book. Thai's gave it to him. He lent it
to me, to give me something to do." Since, he made it
abundantly clear, he was not allowed to do anything else.

"He did well, then," said Meriamon. "I'm going to tell
the servants to let you have a little wine. I don't think it
will harm you; they'll put something in it to help the
pain."

"I don't need anything to help the pain."

"Of course you don't," said Meriamon. "But the others
might when you wake up screaming in the middle of the
night."

"It doesn't hurt," he said stubbornly.

48 Lord of the Two Lands

"Have you tried to walk about yet?"

He flushed. "No. They won't let me. Damn it, it's not
my leg that's broken!"

Tonight," she said, "for a little while, you may get up.
But not now. Drink the wine when they bring it, and eat
what they give you."

"Pap," he muttered.

"I shall be interested to see," she said, "what you are
like when you're not exerting yourself to be unpleasant."

"I'm not—"

She patted him on the head. "Hush, child. It's for your
own good, you know that very well."

If he could have bitten her, no doubt he would have.
She was still laughing when she left him.

In a Persian bed in a conquered Persian tent, with Thai's
entertaining her. patron at two rooms' remove and Sekhmet
purring on her middle, Meriamon rested as she had not
since she began her journey. She had her solitude, she- was
full of wine and meat and barley bread, in the morning she
would have duties that she was glad of. She would have
liked a proper headrest instead of these smothering cush-
ions, and the blankets smelled faintly of horses, but she
was comfortable, stroking the cat, half-dreaming in the
nightlamp's flicker.

Her shadow moved softly about the room, part in time
with the lamp, part in rhythm with her breathing. It wanted
to be freed, simply to go its own way, apart from her.
"No," she said to it, barely to be heard. "Not among

strangers."

It reared up, a tall slender shape, upright like a man but
longer-limbed, more sinuously supple. For an instant as it
turned its head toward her she saw a long muzzle with a
glint of fangs, sharp pointed ears, bright beast-eyes that

gleamed in the dark.

"If that is the shape you wish," she said, "then you cer-

Issus 49

tainly may not go out. The Hellenes have killed or con-
quered all the Parsa. There's nothing left to hunt."

Not hunt, the eyes said. Walk. Run. Fly. Be free. Sun's
rising would bring it back. That was its word. Would she
doubt it? y

"I don't doubt you," she said. "1 fear for you."
It would take care that no one caught it, or even saw it.
She was wavering. She firmed her will. "Tomorrow
night. Maybe. If ail is well."

It strained, resisting. After a moment, when she did not
yield, it subsided. Its mood was so much like Niko's that
she laughed, which pleased it not at all. Yet, like Niko, for
all its sulks and sullenness it was obedient. As she opened
her will to sleep, her shadow came and stood over her,
guarding her against the night.

On the third day after the battle, the king summoned
Meriamon. He gave her time to prepare; to finish what she
had been doing in the hospital, to run to the tent, even to
manage a hasty toilet. Thai's was there to help her, barely
awake after a late night but alert- enough to play lady's
maid. She insisted that Meriamon wear the peplos
Phylinna had just that morning finished, folds of soft
cream-colored wool with embroidery round the hem. The
mantle that went with it was purple—true Tyrian, and
where Thai's had got it, or how she had been able to pay
for it, Meriamon was afraid to ask. Not that she was given
time. ThaTs had paints in plenty for lips and face and eyes,
and she was determined that Meriamon use them.

It was strange to be a woman again, to look at herself
in the little bronze mirror and see the Meriamon who had
sung before the god in Thebes, but in the dress of a Greek
lady, in wool that no priest would wear because he reck-
oned it unclean.

She had lost that compunction on the road south of
Tyre. Still, she would have preferred a dress of fine Egyp-
tian linen, a wig to cover her hair, and jewels to make her

50 Lord of the Two Lands

splendid. They would have been armor and banner before

this alien king.

Thais could remedy that, somewhat. The earrings were
Persian booty, beryl and camelian set in soft pure gold.
The necklace was from Athens, a collar of golden flow-
ers. The bracelets were from somewhere far in the north,
heavy gold with a dance of horsemen round a fabulous
beast like a winged, eagle-headed sphinx.

"There," said Thais, stepping back to survey her hand-
iwork. "You look like a lady of quality."

"Will that shock the king, do you think?" Meriamon

asked.

Thais laughed. "Nothing shocks Alexander! Now go,
you're keeping him waiting."

Even before Meriamon came into the king's tent, she
could hear the raised voices. To her considerable surprise,
the guard not only admitted her, he sent a man along with
her, a dour Macedonian whose beard showed a sprinkling
of grey. The anteroom was full of people, not all Macedo-
nian by any means, and few of them soldiers. Their ex-
pressions ranged from squirming discomfort to unabashed
curiosity. Not that they could have understood much of
what went on within: the discussion was heated but the

words indistinct.

Her guide led her past them to exchange words with the
guard at the inner flap. The guard looked dubious, but he
said, "Alexander told us to send her straight in."

Her guide nodded with a touch of impatience, as if the
other was belaboring the obvious. "I'll take her, and an-
swer for her if I have to."

She bit her tongue. This was no time or place to object
to being discussed as if she were not there. Maybe it was
her gown. Not only did she look like a woman, she looked

respectable.

The king and his animated discussion—she would not
say quarrel, not quite—were not immediately within.

Issus 51

There was another antechamber, a table covered with what
looked like maps and dispatches and rolls of accounts,
men sitting at it, busy and apparently unperturbed by the
noise.

The room beyond looked like a council chamber. It was
a moment before Meriamon realized that there were only
a few people in it. Alexander, of course. Hephaislion, it
seemed, inevitably. Ptolemy. One or two others whom she
'did not know, in what she had learned was the gold-and-
purple cloak of the king's Companions. And facing the
long, grey beard bristling, in armor that had seen much
use, a gnarled tree-trunk of a man whose age might have
been anywhere from fifty to eighty. He was not more than
a palm's width taller than the king, but he took full advan-
tage of it, bulking over the smaller, slighter man.

Alexander was angry, but controlling it. His lips were a
thin line, his eyes as pale as water. They seized on
Meriamon. She shivered: their touch was burning cold.
"Ah, Mariamne. Will you sit down? I'll be done in a bit."

"You will not be done," gritted the man in armor, "until
you answer me. We've had enough of your evasion. Will
you or will you not—"

"Pannenion," said Alexander, light and deadly, "do you
forget who I am?"

In the throbbing silence, Meriamon crept Sekhmet-quiet
to a chair. There was someone else huddled near it, sitting
on the floor, hugging knees to chest and staring with wide
frightened eyes. Yet he was no child nor awed recruit; he
was a man both tall and strong, bull-broad, bull-muscled,
with a face that would have been handsome had not its
features been so slack. As she stared at him, a trail of spit-
tle found its way down his beard.

Addled, Meriamon thought. Someone took excellent
care of him: his tunic was almost clean, his hair cut, his
black brush of beard trimmed close to his jaw. He
looked—she started. He looked like the portraits she had
seen of Philip the king, Alexander's father.

52 Lord of the Two Lands

This would be Arrhidaios, then, Philip Arrhidaios, Alex-
ander's half-brother. She ,had not known that he would be

here.

Something—maybe her shadow, maybe simple
compassion—made her lay a hand on his shoulder. He
started. "Hush," she said softly. "I won't hurt you."

He stared at her. His attention was abrupt and complete.
The fear began to fade from his eyes. They were round
and brown and moist like a dog's, with a dog's eagerness

to trust.

She smiled- She did not need to pretend to warmth. Big
as he was, he was a gentle creature. The smile he gave her
in return was remarkably like his brother's. The same
power, though dimmed and muddied. The same sweetness.
"Pretty lady," he said. His voice was deep and rather muf-
fled. "You come to see me?"

She could tell the strict truth, and confuse him. Or she
could say what after all, at the moment, was true. "Yes, I
came to see you. My name is Meriamon."

"Men," he said. "Amon. Meri. That's a funny name."

"It's my name. Don't you like it?"

"Oh, I like it," he said. He frowned. She could see how
formidable his father must have been, in what that knot-
ting of brows did to his face. "My brother and Parmenion
are fighting again. I hate it when they fight."

"Do you think they'd mind if you went somewhere

else?" she asked.

He shook his head hard. "No. I want to stay. It's nice

here. Except when they fight."

"You're very brave."

This smile lit up the whole of him. "That's what Alex-
ander says."
Alexander was oblivious to him. The high voice had
risen a notch or two higher. "I will do it when I am ready

to do it!"

Parmenion slammed his fist into his palm. "And when

Issus 53

will you be ready? You must beget sons. You should have
begotten a pack of them before you left Macedon."

"And had a war of succession raging behind my back?"

"You could die tomorrow. Then there would be a war
because there is no succession. Look at your heir, by all
the gods. Look at him!"

Arrhidaios shrank back. Meriamon reached without
thinking, gathering him in, holding him. He was shaking.

"Alexander," said Parmenion, gaining control of self
and voice with visible effort. "Alexander, listen to me.
Yes, you are young. Yes, by the span the gods allot a com-
mon man, you have years yet to sire your sons. But a king
is not a common man. In that tent yonder are the daughters
of; a king. You need not marry one or all of them—
Macedon should have a Macedonian queen. But for the
gods' sake, for the sake of your kingdom, at least consider
taking a concubine. Even a half-Persian mongrel is better
than no son at all."

Alexander said nothing. "His nostrils were pinched tight.

"Alexander," said Hephaistion after a long moment. "I
think he's right."

The king whirled. Hephaistion stood his ground.
Meriamon, looking at him, saw for a moment as through
a glass. Love, this was. Love so deep, and so certain, that
it could endure even this: to surrender its beloved for a
kingdom's sake. She blinked in the face of it. What she
saw was not a man who loved a man. She saw a soul that
loved a soul. Even beyond death. Even to the end of
things.

Hephaistion's voice brought her back into the world:

light, cool, fearless. He did not use his height to tower
over Alexander, but neither did he allow Alexander's an-
ger to diminish it. He set them on a level. "Think," he
said. "For a change. It's only practical."
Alexander spoke through clenched teeth. "I will not soil
my bed with a coward's get."

54 Lord of the Two Lands

"They may be Darius' daughters," said Hephaistion,
"but they're Sisygambis' granddaughters."

For a moment Alexander paused, taken out of his rage.
"Sisygambis. Gods, what a woman!" Then his temper
flooded back- "I won't be someone's heifer-tupping stud
bull!"

"But, Alexander," said Hephaistion, almost laughing:

laughter that, to Meriamon's ears, was half pain. "That's
what a king is."

Alexander reared up. No one breathed. Hephaistion
touched the king's shoulder lightly, daring the lion's claws.
"Think about it," he said.

"I am—" Alexander drew a sharp, furious breath. He
spun back to face Parmenion. "And if I take one of
them—if I do that—will that be enough? Will you let me
be?"

Parmenion opened his mouth, closed it.

Alexander's lip curled. "Look, Parmenion. Do you see
that tady there? She's a royal Egyptian, Parmenion. Her fa-
ther was their king, the last before the Persians overran
them. Will you demand that I marry her, too? It would
give me Egypt, wouldn't it? It would give me sons. Do
you want that, Parmenion? Do you want me to take a for-
eign queen?"

"I want you," said Parmenion slowly, deliberately, "to
consider the wisdom of begetting sons."

"I am considering it," Alexander said. "I am also re-
membering my father. Do you want me to be like him,
Parmenion? He was a king of men, was my father. He
could no more resist a woman than a dog resists a bitch in
heat."

Parmenion went white.

Alexander smiled.

Meriamon was on her feet. She did not remember how
she had got there. That was death, what was between those
two: the old lord of warriors who had served the kings of

Issus 55

Macedon since he was a boy, and the young king who
could endure no master.

Her shadow wrapped long arms about her. Open, it bade
her. Open to the god.

"My father was a rutting bull," said Alexander, "and it
killed him. I can learn from my elders, Parmenion. I can
see which way lies disaster."

"A king without an heir is disaster to end them all."

"I will have one." said Alexander, "when I am ready."

"You young pup! You'll never be ready!"

Meriamon dropped walls and guards and shields. Her
shadow rounded into substance: slender black-skinned
jackal-man with eyes the color of sulfur. His breath was
hot on the crown of her head. His hands, blunt-clawed,
settled on her shoulders.

"Alexander!"

Her voice, the full trained voice of a singer of Amon,
and in it the power of mage and priestess, daughter of the
Great House of Khemet, voice of the gods.

"Alexander! This is no war for you now. What you fear,
you have no need to fear. You are not as the one who ruled
before you."

They stared, all of them: eyes like burning fingers on
her flesh. She saw only Alexander.

"Alexander," she said, "for what you have failed to do,
your people will pay. That shall be mended, or not
mended, as the gods decree. But a battle now will destroy
you all."

His eyes were wide, fixed. He saw what stood behind
her. He was not afraid of it. He kept his fear for smaller
things. "What are you, lady?"

"You yourself named me. I am Meriamon, daughter of
Nectanebo, singer of Amon, blood of the Great House of
Egypt."

"Is it your Amon who speaks in you now?" he asked,
shaping the words with care, as if before an oracle.

56 Lord of the Two Lands

Gods knew, she was hardly thai. Simply a reed through
whom the winds blew. "He is not my Amon, Alexander."

Alexander's ups twitched. "And yet he speaks."

'The god^ speak. 1 am their instrument. That is why I
came to you. Will you listen to them?"

His head bent. Reverence, and true, down to the heart of
him.

"Make your peace now," she said- "You are king, and
your name will live as long as names are remembered. But
you must live in this world, among these people whom the
gods have given you. They ask that you be a man, and
more than a man, for your kingdom's sake."

"Must I yield, then?" he demanded with a surge of tem-
per.                           „

"Your heart knows," said Menamon. "Listen to it."

He drew a breath- Not as quick, not as sharp as before.
His eyes shifted from her face to that of the one who stood
above and behind her. For a moment they seemed to blur:

grey as rain, grey as mist above cold stones. They blinked.
No anger in them, no longer. Only wonder, and dawning
comprehension.

"I will make peace," he said, "for the moment. I will
think on what I have been told. Is that enough?"

Parmenion might have spoken. Neither Alexander nor
Menamon heard him. "Enough," she said. "for a begin-
ning."

Suddenly he laughed. It was light, free, and completely
fearless. "It's all I'll get from you, isn't it?" He turned.
"Very well, Parmenion. You heard the lady. You heard me.
I'll think about it."

Parmenion did not look overjoyed. But when he would
have spoken, his eye caught Meriamon's shadow and
rolled white. He snapped a salute. "As the king wishes."
he said.

• FIVE •
After Parmenion had gone, there was a long silence. The
king's Companions stood like carven men, looking any-
where but at the king, or at Menamon.

It was Arrhidaios who spoke, startlingly loud. "Men,
who is that? Where did he come from?"

Meriamon's breath caught. She felt her shadow's laugh-
ter, even as it shrank again into more-than-nothingness.
Without its hands on her. its body against her, holding her
up, she crumpled to the carpets.

The one who bent over her was the king. The one who
brought wine was a blur, indistinct, but it was Alexander
who held the cup to her lips. It was good wine, for once.
Strong, only lightly watered. It steadied her.

He lifted her. He was strong, and not so slight after all:

compact, all smooth muscle, like his little black horse. He
laid her gently on one of the couches, though she would
have resisted. "No," he said. "Rest a little. I know what
you did."

She let her head sink back against the arm of the couch.
He was dismissing the others, except for Arrhidaios, who
came to peer worriedly down at her. "I'm all right," she
-said to him. "The god left me, that's all."

"Oh," said Arrhidaios. "It was a god. What was his
name?"

"It's not proper to say it," she said-
He accepted that. He patted her clumsily. "He's a very
nice god. He smiled at me."

She wondered what he had seen. The Anubis-face
should have terrified him.

"Arrhidaios," Alexander said. His voice was gentle.
"Will you sit down while I talk to Mariamne?"

58 Lord of the Two Lands

Arrhidaios obeyed gladly enough, sitting close by her.
There was an odd comfort in his presence.

A stir at the door brought them all about. A very large
dog lolloped through it. flinging itself on Alexander in a
paroxysm of delight.

Alexander laughed, engulfed in the beast; though he
looked as if he wanted to snarl. "Peritas! Where did you
come from?"

Something tawny-brown and hissingly furious streaked
past man and dog and shot toward Menamon. From the
eminence of Meriamon's middle, Sekhmet yowled chal-
lenge.

"Alexander!" It was a boy, hovering in the doorway,
looking disheveled and rather scared. "I'm sorry, sir, he
got away."

"And what did he get away from?" Alexander wanted to
know.

The boy swallowed. "He was on your bed, sir. Asleep.
Then this . .. creature came in, and he went after it."

Sekhmet spat. Menamon tried to smooth her bristling
fur; got a claw-rake for her pains.

"That," said Alexander, "is a cat. Dogs chase cats.
Didn't you know enough to head her off?"

"Sir!" The boy caught himself before he committed an
indiscretion. "Sir, I tried. They tore through the whole
tent, sir, and outside, and back in. By that time Peritas was
in front. Sir," he said, "it was a very thorough chase."

"I can see," the king said dryly. He ruffled the great
brindled ears, peering at the dog's muzzle. "She got in a
stroke or ten, too. Never mind, Amyntas, I'll keep him
with me. You can go."

The boy was happy to oblige. Peritas dropped to all
fours, panting happily, seeming not the least perturbed by
his battle-scars. Alexander inspected them, and shrugged.
"He's had worse from brambles on a hunt."

"Don't insult Sekhmet," said Menamon. The cat was
subsiding slowly. She directed a final, contemptuous hiss

Issus 59

at the dog and mounted to the back of the couch, arraying
herself there with queenly disdain.

Alexander drew a chair ciose to Menamon, but did not
sit in it. He did not like to sit for long, she thought. He
wanted to be up and doing. "Now," he said. "Tell me the
truth- Why did you come here?"

'To serve you," she said as she had before. Her voice
was steady. She was proud of that.
"How?"

"As you saw," she said. "I know enough medicine to be
useful in your hospital. I have . . . other skills as well."

"Are you a sorceress?"

She considered the word. "Maybe," she said slowly, "as
you would think of it. As I think of it, I am a priestess, a
speaker for the gods. My father was a great mage. It
helped him little, in the end, except to know that he was
finished."

"That always seems to be the way with magic," said Al-
exander.

"Yes," said Meriamon. "It's fickle. When you think you
need it most, it deserts you. But the gods are always
there."

"They may choose to be silent."

"But they are there." She sat up, settling more comfort-
ably. 'They sent me to you. They, and my father's wish."

"I thought your father was dead."

"He is. He died when I was small."

"I'm sorry," said Alexander. He seemed to mean it.

"I remember him," said Meriamon. "He was very tired
by then, and he knew what was coming, and he was com-
pletely unafraid. 'Years will pass,' he said, 'but one will
follow me. That one will avenge my bones.' "

Alexander leaned toward her, intent. "He saw me?"

"From the moment you were conceived."

Alexander straightened. "What am I to Egypt?"

"Egypt is a Persian satrapy. It loathes the yoke. It longs
to be free."

60 Lord of the Two Lands

"And you think I'll free you?"

This was battle. It was heady, dizzying: face to face,
force to force, and words flying swift and hard. "Haven't
you come to free everyone from the Parsa?"
"The Hellenes sent me to end their long quarrel against
Persia. They said nothing of Egypt."

"Egypt is part of Persia. Too large a part; far too unwill-
ingly bound."

"Why do you hate rfiem?"

"Why do the Hellenes hate them?"

"That is a very old war," Alexander said, "and a very
long one."

"Ours is older," said Meriamon. "We were an empire
before ever your people saw Hellas."

"Maybe it was time you withdrew in favor of a younger
power."

"Maybe," said Meriamon with a delicate show of teeth.
"Maybe we prefer to choose that power."

"Why would you choose me? I might be no better than
Artaxerxes."

She laughed, hurting-sharp. "No one can be worse than
Artaxerxes. No, king of Macedon. My father asked who
would free us from the Persian yoke. You know what the
gods answered."

"You would free yourselves."

"We tried," she said.

There was a pause. He began to prowl restlessly, like
the lion he resembled. Abruptly he turned to face her.
"You're telling me that I was made—that I was
shaped—to be your gods' pawn."

Perceptive, that one. "You didn't know it?"

He raked back his hair, almost angry, almost laughing.
"I thought I was my gods' instrument."

"Aren't they all the same," she asked, "in the end?"

"By the dog," he said. "I'm afflicted with an oracle."

"That's a better word than" sorceress," said Meriamon.

He looked hard at her, almost glaring. She stared stead-
Issus 61

ily back. He blinked. Tilted his head. "I suppose, if I told
you to go away, you'd simply keep on following me."

"You suppose rightly," she said.

The comer of his mouth twitched. "Then I won't sub-
ject myself to that. You're well situated, I've been given to
understand. Would you rather be somewhere else?"

"No," said Meriamon, startled, and not a little for that it
mattered. "No, I like sharing a tent with Thai's."

"Do you?" He looked bemused. "Well, then. And
Philippos has you on his roster—I approved that yesterday.
All that's wanting is a proper attendant for you."

"I have one," she said.

His eyes slid toward her shadow, and slid away again.
"I'm sure it—he—does very well. I was thinking of some-
one a little more conventional. How is Nikolaos coming
along?"

She blinked. She hoped that that was a shift. "He's
doing well. He can get up tomorrow. I rather tied," she
confessed, "about how bad it was. To keep him from leap-
ing up and heading straight back to the lines."

"With   Niko," said Alexander,- "that was a very wise
thing   to do." He paused, head tilted, thinking. "Good. He
won't   be able to do any fighting for a while, but he should
be up   for light duty. I'll see that he's assigned to you."

She realized that her mouth was open. She closed it.
"He may not be happy about that."

Alexander laughed. "I know he won't be. It will be
good for him. He's been spoiled, what with one thing and
another. Time he learned to do something he doesn't want
to do."

"I'm not sure I like being a punishment."

"You won't be," said Alexander, "once he stops to
think. I almost wish I didn't have to be king. I wouldn't
mind playing guardsman myself."

She stared at him. He was smiling at her. As if she were
more than a voice. As if—of all things—he liked her.

That had not been in her reckoning, when she took this
62 Lord of the Two Lands

duly to which she had been bred That he would regard her
as a friend That she, who was nothing and no one in the
gods' eyes, should be glad of it, should think of him, in
her turn, with friendship

Her tongue was in control of itself It answered him
coolly It even managed, almost, to suppress the smile that
rose from one of her more antic souls "That would be in-
teresting The King of Macedon relegated to the post of la-
dy's maid"

He grinned, unabashed "Why not7 Herakles did it,
didn't he7 And I'm his seed " His gnn faded to a gnmace
"I'd better go and be king now, before my kingdom gets
away from me You're welcome to stay here for as long as
you like My brother would like it," he added, with a
glance at Arrhidaios

"Oh, yes'" Arrhidaios said "Stay with me, please,
Men7 Will you make your god come out again9"

"If he wants to," said Menamon

Alexander smiled at them both, as proud as a match-
maker with a new match "Good, then I'll leave you to
it"

Clever man He gave her time to recover her strength,
and kept his brother occupied in the bargain Pentas, at
least, went out with his master, to Sekhmefs vast relief
She spat once more to send him on his way, and promptly
went to sleep

Nikolaos was not amused Nikolaos was loudly and
lengthily displeased He did not even notice that he was
better He had had one bad day and a wretched night,
then, almost without transition, as such things sometimes
did, his body decided to heal He would be stiff for a
while, and he would be in no condition to fight until his
arm was knit, but he was mending He could walk, with
his nbs bound tight and his arm in a sling He hurt, that
was evident from the set of his jaw, but he did not speak
of it It was only pain It was idleness that drove him wild

Issus 63

Until he was informed of his new duties The message
came from his captain, no less "King's orders," the man
said There was nothing that Niko could say to that
After the man had left, Niko howled Philippos himself
cast him out of the hospital, roanng in his field-sergeant's
voice "Out' Out' You're making my sick sicker' Get out
of my sight'"

That at least Niko was delighted to do Menamon did
not pursue him He would slow down soon enough, once
his hurts caught up with him

When she came back to her tent toward evening, he was
sitting in front of it He was white around the lips, but he
was steady enough He was in armor except for the corse-
let That lay on the ground with his shield under it and a
pack beside it Sekhmet leaned against his thigh as if to
give him comfort

"Think of it this way," Menamon said "You get to stay
with the cat"

He glared under his brows "Did you put him up to
this7"

"Who7 The king7" She was ready to hit him, or Alex-
ander, or both of them "Gods, no' Do you think I'd have
asked for you7"

That stopped him He snapped erect, outraged, and
gasped He was not ready yet to move that quickly

"I'm no happier than you,'' she said, "believe me"

"How can you—how can you dare—you—"

"There Look what you've done to yourself That's all
you need to do, pop that nb and put yourself nght back in
the hospital Philippos would not be happy at all"

His teeth clicked together His rage was so vast, his out-
rage so profound, that for a moment she honestly feared
that he would take a fit

Instead he went cold For the first time that she could
remember, he controlled himself Slowly, carefully, he
drew himself to his feet He swayed She did not offer to

64 Lord of the Two Lands

support him, although she watched him closely. He
steadied. He drew a very cautious breath. "Nikolaos
Lagides of the Royal Squadron. Companion Cavalry,
detached"—that was bitter—"reporting for duty."

She would never let him see that he had surprised her.
She inclined her head as a royal lady should. "I accept
your service," she said, though that was not what he had
offered at all.

He might have objected. But something in him had bro-
ken; or perhaps it had mended. He saluted stiffly, and
stood at attention as she walked past him into the tent.

•SIX-

Hellenes could do nothing without music. There was al-
ways someone singing or beating on a drum, or playing
one of their infinite varieties of flutes. There was no better
way to gather a crowd than to bring out a lyre and play it.

Meriamon, raised a singer before the god, had been
mute since she left Khemet. Her music, like her magic,
burned low in her, far from the land that was its source.
Sometimes in the night as she lay listening to the sounds
of the camp, voices of men and women, snorting of
horses, flute and lyre and wine-sodden song, she knew that
she was a flower cut from its root, withering slowly in this
alien air.

The night before they were to begin the march away
from Issus, Thais gave a dinner-party in the tent. Banquets
in Khemet could be extravagant, and it was fully expected
that every guest should give himself fully to the spell of
the wine, but Macedonians made Egyptians seem abstemi-
ous. They would be drinking and roaring till dawn, and up
with the sun, ready for a long day's march; if any of them

Issus 65

was the worse for his night's debauch, he would die rather
than show it,

She had been invited, of course. She had gone for a lit-
tle while. But she was feeling ill: too much strangeness,
too little sleep, and her courses were on her. stronger than
anything the doctors had in their pharmacopoeia.

She lay in her too-soft Persian bed, curled about her
aching middle. Sekhmet was warm against it, giving what
comfort a cat could. Meriamon squeezed her eyes against
the easy tears. She was always like that in the dark of the
moon.

Her shadow had gone hunting. She had had no will to
keep it back. It was a living thing, though magical. It
needed to feed. Blood if it could get it, and the essence
that was in blood. These hills were full of small wild
things; and it took joy in the chase, running under the sky,
silent ebon jackal-man with sulfur eyes.

A little of that joy came back to her now and almost
comforted her. She was close at last to sleep. The singing
nearest her had paused. There was a moment's silence;

then the notes of a lyre, and a lone voice. It was a very
good voice, with the marks of training in it: both depth
and clarity, and a range that even she could marvel at. She
let the words slide out of comprehension, blur into pure
song, wine-song, love-song, sleep-song. On the very edge
of the dark, the singer's name whispered itself to her.
Nikolaos.

A smile went with her into sleep. Not so sullen now
with wine in him and his unwelcome duty forgotten, and

oh, but he could sing.

<

She was her shadow, running the hills in the night. Warm
blood in her, a life taken with thanks and returned to the
gods with its gift of sustenance.

She was herself, her ka, her spirit that was Meriamon in
every line and essence. Meriamon as she was in Khemet:

lady of the temple, clothed in white linen, eyes made beau-

66 Lord of the Two Lands

tifui with kohl, intricate wig concealing her hair. A great
collar lay on her shoulders, gold and lapis, camehan and
crystal, beryl and malachite. Gold twined about her arms,
swung heavy from her ears. A fillet of gold bound the wig
about her brows.

The air rustled as with wings. Somewhere a serpent
hissed.

A shape rose up before her, terrible and beautiful: a co-
bra, hood spread wide, tongue flicking, swaying as it rose.
Meriamon regarded it without fear. This was dream, and
holy beyond holy, if that one showed itself to her; and the
other, dark wings spread wide, vulture-head raised, cold
eye fixed on its companion. Edjo of the Delta, uraeus ser-
pent, goddess of the Red Crown, enemy of the enemies of
Ra who was a face of Amon; Nekhbet of the White
Crown, vulture-goddess, guardian of Upper Egypt.

Meriamon bowed before them. They took no notice of
her. She was royal blood but not queen, nor would ever be.
That, she had known since she was small; she had never
been aught but glad of it.

High above her a hawk screamed. Horus-falcon, who
watched over the Great House, whose eyes were the sun
and the moon. His wings stretched from horizon to hori-
zon. His voice filled the sky.

And yet the heart of it was silence. And in that silence,
presence.

Very slowly, very carefully, Meriamon lifted her head.
Amon, she thought- Hidden one. Wind-god, sky-god. Lord
of the ram, king of the gods, whose face was the sun.

No. A whisper, softer than wind in the reeds, gender than
water lapping its banks. Nile water, Nile reeds, under a sky
that knew no cloud, and stars that never hid their faces.

No, child. Soft as a mother's voice, soft as sleep. It was
everywhere about her. It had no face, no mortal semblance
at alt. It was simply, purely presence. It wrapped her
about. It cleansed her of grief. It comforted her; it gave her

Issus 67

strength. All that sleep could give, it gave her, and more
than that. It made her, however briefly, whole.

Meriamon opened her eyes. The nightlamp had spent its
oil. The camp was not quiet, it was never that, but its
clamor had muted. Even in her walls of silk she could
sense the coming of dawn.

She lay on her back and stretched, arching against the
cushions. Sekhmet walked the length of her body, light-
footed, lambent-eyed- Meriamon swept her up and
laughed, and stopped, startled. She felt—by every god and
goddess, she felt as if she could sing.

The rags of her dream frayed and vanished. There had
been wings in it, serpent-eyes, a voice—

She sat up, shaking her hair out of her face. The air was
cold. She sprang shivering out of her warm blankets,
snatching boots and cloak. It was early for her bath, but she
was in no mood to wait for it. She pulled on trousers and
shirt, blowing on icy fingers to warm them, wrapping herself
tighdy in her mantle.

It was an hour yet till sunrise. Those who had to be up
were moving quickly, muttering at the cold. Those who
could afford to sleep were doing it, cherishing the last bit
of warm darkness before the trumpets called them to the
light.

At the door of the tent, Meriamon paused. The lump of
blankets just inside it was snoring in Niko's rhythm. Her
toe itched to dig into his side, to rouse him to his king-
given duty.

She took pity on him. She stepped over him into the
cold still air. Even the sea was as quiet as it could ever be,
the stars fading, the wind asleep.

A shadow filled her shadow. Jackal-teeth gleamed;

sulfur-eyes laughed. It was strong as she was, replete with
running and the hunt. It brushed her back with warm fin-
gers. She smiled over her shoulder.

68 Lord of the Two Lands

Something loomed behind it. She started. Her shadow
bared its teeth.

She quelled it, though her heart beat hard with shock.
Niko's eyes were huge, his voice a croak. "What—what in
the name of—"

It was all she could do not to burst out laughing. He
looked like a half-fledged bird: all limbs and eyes and
startlement, with his hair standing up in tufts and his blan-
ket trailing behind. He shivered convulsively, but never
thought to cover himself. She did it for him.

He shied, and stopped, eyes rolling white. She tucked in
the edges of his blanket, careful of his splinted arm.
"There," she said. "Now you won't freeze."

His teeth clicked together. "What in the name of Hades
was that?"

"What?" she asked.

Her eyes dared him to press her. He looked as if he was
going to; but he was stronger than that. Or more prudent.

"I'm going for a walk," she said. "You needn't come
with me. I'll be quite safe."

For answer he stepped out past her, picking up his spear
as he went by it, and stood waiting.

He stayed out of her shadow. Wise man. She did not
feel any better protected for that he was there, but neither
was she displeased. Her shadow, like Sekhmet, found him
fascinating. Great tawny-furred creature like a yearling
lion, with his odd light eyes and his rough-carved face. He
was not so ill to look at when he was not sulking; and he
had a long-limbed grace, even with his arm in splints.

There was no one by the privies, which was a mercy.
Niko did his business apart from her, and kept his eyes to
himself. When she was ready, he was waiting, expression-
less. Better than a scowl, she thought. She wondered if his
head was aching. He did not look it; but then Macedonians
all drank like sponges.

"I heard you singing," she said, "last night."

He did not say anything.

Issus 69

"You have a very good voice."

Nothing still. She slanted a glance at him. He had shoul-
dered his spear and drifted a little apart from her, keeping

to the outside as she skirted the camp's edge. Guarding

her.

Temper rose, subsided. He was only doing his duty.
"Someday you'll have to sing for me," she said.
"If my lady wishes," he said. His voice, like his face,

held no expression at all.

Her lips thinned. She did not speak to him again.

If Meriamon had not seen how swiftly Alexander's army
broke camp, she would have refused to believe it. Every
man knew his place and each had his task, meshed and
mingled like the great battle-beast of the phalanx. If there
was confusion, if horse ran loose or hound escaped its
tether, it confused only those whose duty it touched upon;

and they were quick to settle it.

They laughed as they did it, joked and sang, and some
of the young men danced. By full daylight the whole army
was formed in ranks and the march began, and at its center
the long train of the booty, horses and mules and the
shaggy Persian camels, and the lumbering wagons of the
women. The hospital had vanished early into its own
string of mules and its single light cart for the worst
wounded- Meriamon was satisfied to walk behind the cart.
Niko, of course, was not.

He had tried to retrieve his armor and his weapons and
carry them as his fellows did, even of the cavalry, who
kept their horses to ride in battle and marched like com-
mon soldiers. Meriamon had let him go. His commander
was no fool. He sent him back promptly. "I can carry my
own gear," Niko muttered loudly enough for her and any-
one else to hear. "I've got two arms, haven't I?"

"Not at the moment," Meriamon said. And when he
glared at her: "Would you prefer to play packhorse now,

70 Lord of the Two Lands

simply to prove that you can do it? Or would you like lo
have the use of that arm when the bone sets?"

"I won't anyway, will I?"

His bitterness was deep, and so honest that she stared.
"What ever makes you think that?"

He curled his lip. "Oh, come. You've all been jollying
me along so nicely—do you think I'm that stupid? I know
I'm lucky to have anything attached to my shoulder. I
could lose it yet. Couldn't I?"

"Not if you take care of it," said Meriamon.

"What for? So it can dangle prettily and give people
something to stare at?"

She blinked. That was real pain, and real fear, strong
enough to catch at her heart.

He spat in disgust. "Never mind. I'll shut up and play
invalid."

"You do that very badly," she said, sharper perhaps than
she had meant.

"Good," said Niko.

The column wound out of the valley and ascended the
hills, going down the way Meriamon had come: south-
ward, with the sea on their right hands. The Parsa were
driven far away. Inland, the scouts said, north and east, all
the way to Cappadocia. The king did not deign to follow
them. His eye for the moment was on the sea and its cities.

Parmenion was gone. Meriamon could imagine Alexan-
der's relief to be freed of that potent and censorious pres-
ence- The general had accepted the charge of securing
Damascus. It was a gate, and a great one, between Persia
and the sea; and the lords of the Parsa had sent their
women and their treasure there, a rich prize for
Parmenion's taking.

Meriamon climbed up onto the back of the cart. The
men in it were silent, drugged or unconscious. One of
them did not look to last the day. She did what she could
for them, and made her way carefully to the front. The

Issus 71

mules kept a brisk walk, pulling the rattling, rocking thing;

she could almost reach out and touch the thick-muscled
haunches. She thought about getting down again. The
mules would be happy to lose even her little weight, but
she was more comfortable than she might have expected,
and tired enough, for a moment, to indulge it.

As she braced herself to slide down, swift hoofs came up
behind. She glanced over her shoulder. The king had runners
going up and down the line, mounted and afoot. He was in
front himself, being a banner for me rest to follow.

This was not one of his white-chitoned pages. It was a
Persian in trousers on a Persian horse, a delicate beauty
like a gazelle, its rider matched to it with an artist's eye.
He brought his mare to a neat, prancing halt beside
Meriamon's wagon and bowed in the saddle. "If your
highness will be so gracious," he said in excellent Greek,
"my lady would speak with her."

Meriamon raised a brow. "Your lady?"

The eunuch flushed; or perhaps it was only the wind on
his cheeks. "My lady Barsine."

Meriamon inclined her head. He offered a hand. She
swung lightly from wagon-front to horseback. The eunuch
wheeled his mare about and sent her cantering back down
the line.

A horse, thought Meriamon. She would have to ask for
one, or find a way to buy one. It would drive Niko wild
to see her mounted and himself forbidden it. She almost
laughed at the prospect; then hated herself. He was hurt,
that was all, and afraid. Some men bore it in silence. Some
screamed without shame. A few, like that one. grew angry
at it, and hated their weakness, and were conspicuously
nasty to everyone who saw them in it.
She settled to the mare's stride. It was smooth, its rider
as skillful as all the Parsa seemed to be, as if bom to a
horse's back. She was not as good as that. She had come
to it later, though young still, and she had not ridden
enough while she was in the temple. Horses were not a

72 Lord of the Two Lands

common thing in Khemei. Boats for the Nile, feet for the
land, those her people knew. But she was royal, and her
father had wanted her trained in that as a prince was;

knowing, or foreseeing, what need she would have of it.

She wondered what Barsine could want with her. Maybe
it was the Queen Mother who asked, and Barsine but a
pretext. No danger threatened: her shadow was quiet, glid-
ing at the horse's heels, making it skitter and fret.

The Persian women's wagons were as magnificent as
their tents, great wheeled land-ships brilliant with paint
and gilding, hung with leather as supple as cloth, and silk
within in the rich deep colors the Parsa loved. Dark to
Meriamon's eyes; ornate and overwrought, too many
curves and folds and no clean angles.

She was sorry to leave the horse's back and the bright
air, cold though it was with the wind blowing, but clean.
Perfumed dimness reached out for her and sucked her in.

Not the Queen Mother, then. Her wagon was larger by
a good measure, and all gold. This one was not quite
bursting with women and eunuchs; was, Meriamon sus-
pected, all but empty compared with the others. The one
who was their focus sat propped with cushions. She was
wearing Persian mantle and veil, but the gown under it
was Greek, and -her hair was knotted in a fashion Tha'fs too
was fond of, caught with a silken fillet.

She was still, for all of that, pure high-nosed Persian.
Her beauty seemed the more brilliant for its presence in
this rocking, swaying box; her eyes were almost hungry,
watching Meriamon as she clambered in.

Meriamon narrowly avoided falling into the lap of a
huge-bellied eunuch, lurched forward, dropped down in
front of Barsine with nothing resembling grace. No one
laughed. Meriamon took a moment to get her breath back.
Her hair was in her eyes. She shook it away, pulling off
her Persian cap, not troubling to put it on again.

"Lady Mariamne," Barsine said gravely.
"Lady," said Meriamon, not too breathlessly. "Barsine."

Issus 73

There was a pause. Meriamon was not in a mood to fill
it. So many ears; so many eyes. It was worse than the nov-
ices' court in the temple, when a new one came in and ev-
eryone watched and whispered and wondered if she could
sing, or would she be a dancer, and how long would it be
before she learned to do either?

Meriamon could sing. She was not an ill dancer, though
there were better before the god. She did not intend to do
either here. She sat and let her breathing slow, and waited.

Barsine smiled slightly. "You are welcome in my palace,"
she said. "I had hoped that you would bring your cat."

"If I had known," Meriamon said, "I would have asked
her if she would come."

"She accepts no command?"

"She is a cat," said Meriamon.

Barsine's smile widened. "We had cats in our house
when I was small. I never managed to tame one."

"Cats aren't tame creatures," said Meriamon.

"So my father said." Barsine leaned back against the
cushions, propped on her elbow. She was slender, slim-
hipped and high-breasted like a young girl, though she
could hardly be less than five-and-twenty. Boyish,
Meriamon thought. Even her face—in a cap, over a man's
coat, it could have been a young man's, with its arched
nose and its firm chin. Persian youths could be as beautiful
as this, and often were; they prized their beards the more,
perhaps, for that they made it clear who was a man and
who was not.

"Your Greek is very good," said Meriamon. "Better
than mine."

The lids lowered over the great eyes. "My thanks,"
Barsine said. "I had good teaching. I was a child when I was
mamed to Mentor the Rhodian, who served the Great King
but who never forgot that he was a Hellene; and when he
died, I was given to his brother. They wished me to speak
their language. I was a good wife: I obeyed them."

There seemed to be no mockery in her tone. Her eyes
74 Lord of the Two Lands

were lowered, and unreadable. "Did you take no pleasure
in it for yourself?" Meriamon asked her.

She shrugged minutely. "Obedience is pleasure."

"Not," said Meriamon, "in Egypt."

Barsine looked up then. "Not even for a wife9"

"I've never been a wife," Meriamon said.

"No?" Barsine looked down again. Parsa manners: they
thought it the height of rudeness to stare. "How interesting."

"Shocking." Meriamon tucked her feet under her. The
wagon was not swaying so much now. They had come
down from the hills to a brief level. If she listened over the
manifold sounds of the army on the march she could hear
the sea, more distant now but clear. "Did you summon me
to ask if I had ever been married?"

Barsme's cheeks flushed, delicate as a Damascene rose.
"You must think me unpardonably rude."

"Only foreign," said Meriamon, "and interesting. Is
there something I can do for you?"

Her briskness calmed the Parsa woman a little. "You
talk like a man," Barsine said.

"I dress like one, too. It's warmer."

Barsine smiled as if she could not help it. "Everyone
says that you are . . unique. Now I believe it."

"You may also believe that I have duties waiting. Pleas-
ant as this is," Meriamon said, "it's keeping me from my
work."

She heard the hiss of breath caught. More than one; and
that was anger, tainting the air. Her shadow drew closer
about her.

Barsine's smile did not waver. "They say," she said,
"that the king reckons you a friend."

"Not to me," said Meriamon.

"They do," Barsine said. "And they say that you could
have been more than a friend."
"They say much too much."

"Only if it is a lie."

Meriamon's eyes narrowed. That word, that sin, was the

Issus 75

worst of any the Parsa knew. To ride, to shoot, to abhor
the Lie—that was all the learning a Persian lord expected
to need; and if it was simpler in the saying than in the
doing, then that was only the way of the world.

She spoke very carefully. "What I could have been, the
gods know. What I am, you see before you. The king is
not a lover of women."

"The king—" Barsine paused. "The king has asked
me ... to be - -."

Meriamon bit her lip. That, coiling in her—that was
jealousy. And laughter: at herself, at the king, at Bar-
sine. Who surely was not devious enough to do this to
wound, Parsa though she was- Meriamon kept her eyes
half-lidded, lest they betray her. "And you ask my ad-
vice?"

"I ask the one who could—who should—have been the
one he chose."

"Why do you think that?"

"It should have been one of the Great King's daughters-
We know that, all of us. But he refuses, of his courtesy,
and because he dreams of a kingly gesture. You are as
royal as they, as he would think of it, and worthy of him."

"And you're not?"

"I am old," said Barsine, who could not have been more
than a handful of years older than Meriamon; and
Meriamon was a bare season older than Alexander. "And
I am no maiden, and no princess royal."

"Maybe that's why he wants you."

Barsine looked up, startled.

Meriamon smiled. It was not difficult, once she began.
"'And you're very beautiful, but it's a beauty he can ap-
proach. He likes to talk to people, you know. That could
be hard when the lamps are out, to have an interpreter ly-
ing between you."
Barsine pressed her palms to her cheeks. She looked as
if she could not decide whether to laugh or to be outraged.

"And of course," said Menamon, "there's Parmemon.

76 Lord of the Two Lands

He has all Macedon behind him, and Macedon wants its
king to get heirs. Its king will get them when, and only
when, he chooses. Was he always so stubborn about hav-
ing his own way?"

"Always," murmured Barsine. She lowered her hands
from her cheeks. "How did you know that 1 knew him?"

"I guessed. Your father took you with him, then, when
he went to exile in Macedon."

"He took us all. The Great King would have killed us

else."

"So," said Meriamon, "you knew Alexander when he
was small."

Barsine smiled. "Small he may have been, but his will
was a giant's. He was into everything. They had me run-
ning after him, because I was quick, and small enough to
go where he went, but strong enough to pull him out if
coaxing failed. It usually did. He could never bear to be
told what to do."

"I can believe it," Meriamon said dryly. "Now you see
why he asked for you. You know him, and maybe he re-
members you; and it's his choosing. Since he must choose at
all."

Barsine smoothed a fold of her gown, refolded it,
pressed it into a pleat. "He came to me himself. He was
very abrupt. 'I should like you to be my mistress.' he said.
'If it suits you.' "

"Does it?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Yes." Barsine smoothed another fold, refolded it,
pressed another pleat. Meriamon spoke more softly. "Did
he insult you? Not asking you to be queen?"

"No!" Barsine seemed shocked at the thought. "Oh, no.
I never wanted to be a queen; nor expected it. But for him
to pretend that I can choose . . . it's cruel."

"Not cruel," said Meriamon. "Simply Alexander. He's
better at wooing armies than women, I think. And he's
used to men, who can say no."

Issus 77

"If I did," said Barsine, "what would he do?"

She was frightened. Meriamon could see it clearly. But
brave, and trying hard to understand.

"What would he have done," asked Meriamon, "when
you were children?"

"He's no child now," Barsine said. "He is the king."

"He's still Alexander."

Barsine pondered that. A faint line deepened between
her brows. "Probably," she said at last, slowly, "he would
do nothing." Her voice grew stronger, her words more cer-
tain. "He might try to persuade me, but he'd never force
me. That's not his way."

Meriamon waited, listening.

"I've known him so long," murmured Barsine, "yet you
know him so well."

"There's nothing here that isn't known to everybody."

"But you understand."

"My gods understand," said Meriamon.

Barsine sat up. She could hardly be shocked at alien
faith, she who had been wife to Hellenes- "I shall think on
what you have said. They were right, who called you wise,
and friend to the king."

Meriamon's gods were wise. As for friendship, that was
part of it. She did not say it. The woman had needed some-
one to talk to, that was all, so that she could decide what she
would do. There were greater ironies than a Parsa woman
seeking wisdom from an Egyptian and an enemy, but at the
moment Meriamon could not think of any-

The gods were wise, and incalculable in their wisdom.
Her shadow only laughed. It saw nothing strange in that
she should want to like a Persian, even a Persian who was
half a Hellene.
She would like the Hellene, then, and hate the Parsa.
Since the gods wished it. No matter what it did to mind
and wits and sanity, or to good clean hate.

• SEVEN •

Alexander's army came down into Phoenicia with the sea
on the sunset side and the mountains of the Lebanon
against the morning sky; and snow on them when cloud
did not veil them, blinding white and alien to eyes that
were born in Khemet.

This was a strange narrow country, mountain-walled,
sea-bound: deep ravines and gorges, sudden rivers, brief
levels where they could rest themselves and their wearied
animals. Hellas was like this, they said, if never so narrow.
Macedon was wider, but its men knew mountains and
called them home. They laughed at the steepest ascents,
went bare-armed, bare-legged, even bare-bodied in the

cold.

There were people here, clinging to the sea-cliffs, mak-
ing their living out of the little land and the greater sea.
They fled in their boats when the army came, and left their
villages unguarded but for the dogs and the frantic fowl.

Alexander would not let his army plunder the villages.
They took the fowl, those who were quick enough, but left
the dogs alone. The more antic of them danced on the
sea's edge and sang to the boats, mocking or comforting,
or sometimes both together.

Marathos was different. Marathos was a city, and not a
small one, perched on its rock with its ships in harbor be-
low. Alexander took it without a blow struck. The prince
of that country surrendered to the rumor of his army, and
crowned him with gold in token of it.

Alexander took it as his due. His army—wild boys, the
lot of them, even those who should have known better—
celebrated the bloodless conquest with a festival, and

Issus 79

Straton the king's son gritted his teeth and paid for it.
Marathos was prosperous, a traders' city, and could win
back its losses; and his own city was safe, Arados on its
lofty island where Alexander's army could not go.

"Not without ships," Niko said. He was not talking to
Meriamon. She had gone to look at the market and maybe
buy a frippery, and one or two of the king's Companions
had fallen in with her and her guardsman. She was well
guarded, walled in by big ruddy Macedonians, and Niko
for once seemed almost happy.

Not that he had been at first. She had seen how he
braced himself for mockery of his ignominious new duty.
But his friends were like every other Hellene with sense:

they looked at Meriamon and saw a woman and a for-
eigner, and that was worth a frown, but beyond that they
saw the priestess and the oracle. They accorded her careful
respect, because it was safest, and greeted Niko with hon-
est pleasure. He eased quickly after that, and now he was
talking about ships.

"If we had a fleet," he said, "we'd be twice as danger-
ous as we are now. The Persians are strong on the sea; as
long as we're not, we're vulnerable to a fleet at our
backs."

"Well, but when have we ever been a sea power?" one
of the others wanted to know.

"We've never needed to be," Niko said. "Our grandfa-
thers were shepherds and hunters. They dressed in skins
and counted themselves lucky to have a stoup of wine at
festival time. Philip changed all that. He raised us up: he
made us a power. He built the best army in the world.
Now Alexander's using that army. But if it's going to do
him any good at all, it has to have a fleet to go with it."

"What for, if he's just out to get Greek cities back from
the Persians? They've got their own ships if he needs
them."

"But they're not his" Niko said. "What did the gods

80 Lord of the Two Lands

give you eyes for, if you can't see what's right in front of

your face?"

"I see a wineshop," the other said, "and a potboy I'd
give a fleet for. Hai! Sweetcheeks! Wait for me!"

He was gone, with the others galloping after. Niko
watched them go. "Infants," he muttered.

"You make perfect sense to me," said Meriamon.

He started. He had forgotten all about her. His face
closed in; he stiffened to attention.

She sighed. He would never let her forget that she was
duty, and no pleasure. "I don't suppose you know where I
can find a goldsmith."

"That way," he said. "We passed it as we came."

She had been too busy listening to notice. "Show me,"
she said.

She bought a ring for Sekhmefs ear, and wavered over
something for Thai's. Gods knew, the hetaira had gauds
enough, and for her they were wages. Something else for
her, then: something different.

Meriamon's mood when she came out had been bright
enough, but it had darkened to storm-color by the time she
left me goldsmith. He was an Egyptian, and he had offered
her beer of his wife's own brewing. The sight of his thin
brown face, the taste of his thin brown beer, struck her
heart with longing for home. She hated to leave him. but
hated worse to stay, and remember that she had cast in her

lot with barbarians.

She did not go back to the market after that. She went
straight to the camp outside the city's walls and took refuge
with the surgeons. The hospital was all but empty of
wounded now, the last and worst either dead or recovered
enough to escape. There were a few men too sick with ordi-
nary mortal ills to walk about, a malingerer or two being
dosed with preparations as horrible as they were harmless, a
horseboy who had got kicked, a servant who had burned
himself in a cookfire. There was nothing for her to do. She

Issus 81

could have made herself useful by combing the market for
herbs and healing drugs, but she did not want to go back.
She went to her tent instead and thought about sulking in it.

Thai's was there with Ptolemy and a whole army of rev-
ellers. They could not even wait for a decent hour; or had
they stopped at all since last night? Someone had got hold
of a barrel of apples, and someone else said Alexander
would come when he was done with kinging it in the
Great King's tent, because Alexander loved apples with a
rare passion. "Remember when we had boats on that
river—was it the Kydnos? And we had an apple war, Al-
exander's boat against Nearchos', and Alexander won by a
core?"
Nearchos himself, slender-waisted Cretan with his long
iovelocks and his clever eyes, laughed with the rest of
them. "Right to the heart, it went, and slew me fair. That
was a rare sea-battle!"

Meriamon had no laughter in her. She was as cross-
grained as Niko at his worst, and for no reason that she
could think of. She escaped under cover of their merri-
ment, little caring where she went, if only it was quiet.

She went clear to the horselines, in the end. Hellenes
thought it the height of indignity to ride a gelding or a
mare. Their stallions were fierce creatures, kept muzzled
on strong leads and well separated from the captured Per-
sian mares. But stallion-noise was beast-noise, comforting
in its way; most of them were sensible enough, for stal-
lions, standing nipshot and slack-eared and amenable to a
moment's tribute.

Alexander's own horse had a tent of his own and an
army of servants like a king, and like a king he ruled them
with a fine and haughty air. He had guardsmen too, royal
pages who did turn and turn here as with Alexander.

The two on guard did not seem to mind that Meriamon
walked past them to the stallion's run. Maybe it was the
sight of Niko in his Companion's cloak, which they had

82 Lord of the Two Lands

yet to earn. Maybe they welcomed the diversion. One even
ventured to smile at her. She smiled back, discreetly.

The king's horse was hobbled but not muzzled, with a
long enough tether that he could almost roam free- He was
nothing remarkable to look at compared with the Persians'
slender beauties, though he was said to be of Nisaian
blood himself: not quite fifteen hands, Meriamon judged,
a bit bow-nosed, heavy-necked and short-coupled. But
even in a hobble he moved well, and the eye he turned on
her was bright and wicked.

She approached him with respect. He watched her, ears
up, nostrils flaring to catch her scent. She could see the
brand on his shoulder, the oxhead that had given him his
name.

"Boukephalas," she said. He snorted- She smiled. She
was close enough to touch. She laid her hand on his neck,
cupped the velvet of his muzzle. He lipped her palm del-
icately, as if to belie every tale of warhorses that she had
ever heard.
He was not a young horse. The hollows were sunk deep
above his eyes; the flesh clung tightly to his skull. But he
moved like a youngling, and rolled his eyes like one, in-
forming her that yes, he was quiet for courtesy's sake, for
after all he was a king; but that was purely of his choos-
ing.

He was the king's age almost exactly—her own within
a season. Her shadow felt the power in him. He was part
of Alexander, pan of the legend that had been building
since the king was bom. The king still rode him in battle,
still chose him above younger and finer mounts, because
he was Boukephalas.

He threw up his head and neighed. Meriamon clapped
her hands over her ears. He tossed his head and sidled,
snorting.

Mares. New mares coming in in a herd, with grooms
and servants and hangers-on, and Persian trappings on ev-
ery one of them.

Issus 83

Her shadow reared up. It knew the hot-iron scent of
Parsa magic. Magi setting wards, guarding—who knew
what. Doing gods knew what behind the walls, closing in
on the king.

Meriamon did not remember bidding farewell to
Boukephalas. Her shadow was all but gone; but for the sun
knitting it to her, it would have sprung free. When she ran,
it spread wings and flew.

A small supple person in Persian trousers could go where
an obvious woman or a Macedonian soldier could not.
Straight through the crowd that had gathered to watch the
Persian embassy ride in, under arm and spear of the guards
who held them back from the king seated under a canopy
that had been the Great King's, in an elaborate gilded chair
that had belonged to Darius. Alexander had had warning,
and he had taken advantage of it. He was in his golden
corselet, and he wore the heavy golden fillet of a king-
The ends of its purple nbbon stirred in a restless wind, but
he was perfectly still.

Meriamon stopped on the inner rim of   watchers, be-
tween a great ox of a Macedonian and   a slender nervous
Persian. The highest of the Persians   stood in front of the
king—stood erect; did Alexander know   what an insult that
was?

She did not need eyes to find the Magi. There were
three of them in white from head to foot, one white-
bearded but the others younger, perhaps his sons.

They were not aware of her. She was a shadow with
eyes, a power outside of their power, and maybe their gods
did not speak to hers. They claimed the one and only
Truth, which had served them very ill in Khemet.

The wind boomed in the gold-woven canopy. There was
silence under it: a pause, in which the king's voice was
soft but very clear. "So. Darius has a message for me.
What is it?"

One of the glittering personages crooked a finger. An-

84 Lord of the Two Lands

other produced a roll hung and clashing with seals. Yet an-
other presented it, bowing, to the king's interpreter.

That dignitary could not be troubled to break the seals
with his own hand. Another did it for him, with ceremony.
"It is written," the interpreter said, "in Greek."

Alexander was amused. Maybe. "Read it, Thyrsippos,"
he said. It was polite, but it was an order.

The interpreter drew a breath and began. " 'Philip of
Macedon rejoiced in the friendship of the Great King
Artaxerxes; yet when Artaxerxes' son succeeded him,
Philip the king assaulted him without cause, and made war
against him. Now Alexander rules in Philip's place, and
yet he has sent no word of alliance or of friendship.
Rather, he has led his army into Asia, and wrought much
harm to the king and the people of Persia. Thus Darius the
king has ridden to war to defend his realm and the throne
of his ancestors. A god willed diat the battle end as it
ended. Now Darius the king asks of Alexander the king
that he free from captivity his lady wife and his mother
and his children, and grant friendship and alliance. Thus
he beseeches Alexander to send to him an embassy in the
company of these his trusted servants, Arsimas and
Meniskos, that they may exchange pledges of honor and of
friendship.' "

The interpreter lowered the letter. The silence was
deeper even than before.

Alexander sat under all their eyes, as still as if cast in
bronze. When he moved it was startling, like a mountain
shifting. He leaned forward, held out his hand. Thyrsippos
set the letter in it- He read it quickly, his lips barely mov-
ing; Meriamon could not hear the whisper of the words.
He rolled the letter and held it so, tapping it lightly
against his palm. His eyes were dark, liquid, almost
drowsy.

"Thyrsippos," he said. "Get your pen-box."

One of the scribes hastened to offer one; and, at the in-
terpreter's command, to use it as it was meant to be used.

Issus 85

"Write this," said Alexander, speaking slowly, then
more quickly as the words came together in his mind.

"Alexander of Macedon to Darius in Persia. Your fore-
fathers brought war and invasion against Macedonia and
Hellas and wrought havoc among our people without in-
citement or provocation. As commander of the armies of
Hellas I crossed into Asia to avenge that act of war—a
war for which Persia, and Persia alone, is to blame. I
defeated your satraps and your generals. Now I have de-
feated you yourself and all your armies. By the gods' will
I rule in your country, and I have taken into my charge
those of your people who sought sanctuary with me. No
force constrains them; they serve me of their own will and
gladly, as they themselves will testify."

Alexander paused. The Persians said nothing, did noth-
ing. They seemed powerless to move. He leaned toward
them. His voice rose by a careful degree. "Come to me,
Darius. Come to me as to the lord of Asia. Do you fear
that I shall harm you? Then send your friends, and I will
pledge their safety. Ask me for your mother and your
queen and your children and whatever else you can wish
for, and I will give them to you. Only remember that I am
king of Asia, and you are not my equal. All that was yours
is mine; ask for it fittingly and you shall have it, but fail
in that and I will give you the recompense of a thief. Or
would you contest your throne? Stand then and fight for it.
Do not run away. For wherever you may hide, be sure of
this: Alexander will find you."

Alexander sat back. "Write it fair," he said, "and you,
^Thyrsippos, take it to Darius. You will be safe- My word
on that."

No one asked him how he could give pledges for
Darius. Even his own men were speechless. King of Asia!
Had he gone mad?

Hardly. He was laughing behind those limpid eyes.
Light wild boy-laughter, daring the lion in his pride; danc-
ing with the whirlwind.

86 Lord of the Two Lands

The Persians would not stay to suffer the madman's
courtesy. They asked only that they be assured of the royal
ladies' safety. When they had seen it, though night was
coming winter-swift, they took their horses and the small
company of the king's embassy, and went back the way
they had come.

"Pity," said Alexander. 'They missed some good ap-
ples."

And some very painful humiliation; but Meriamon did
not say that. She was too richly pleased to have seen their
faces as they learned what Alexander was. Mad, yes, but
as a god is, or a king whom the gods have made.

• EIGHT •

From Marathos to Sidon was a triumphal procession.
Sidon, that ancient city, opened its arms to Alexander and
called him King of Asia.

It had a king of its own, who sailed in Sidon's fleet
under the Persian king. His son and heir was nowhere in
evidence when Alexander sent for him; he had wisely
made himself scarce. If he had any sense, he would have
put to sea where Alexander could not get at him.

Alexander was not inclined to go after him. He went
hunting instead. They were a small party, as a king's fol-
lowing went: a company of the Bodyguard, some of the
older pages, a friend or two, even a few of the more in-
trepid nobles from Sidon. It was a glorious, yelling, blood-
and-sweat chase, and a lion at the end of it for the king to
kill.

"Better than battle," one of the Sidonians said in trad-
ers' Greek, grinning through his tangled beard.

Hephaistion looked down at the man whose head came
just to his shoulder, and returned the grin with one some-

Issus 87

what less broad. He had got a clawing when the lion
turned at bay, going in too close; but it had laid the beast's
heart open to Alexander's spear. Alexander would have
something to say about that, come evening. Now he was in
the lead with the lion's skin for a cloak and its cleaned
skull for a helmet, leading the hunt back to the city.
Hephaistion lengthened his stride a fraction. The
wounds were nothing to fret over—spectacular but shal-
low, and bound tight. The bandages across the ribs were a
nuisance: they made it harder to breathe.

"He is ... impressive," the Sidonian said.

Hephaistion glanced at him again. His grin had faded.
Another had come up beside him, younger and neater-
bearded but obviously his brother: little red-brown curly-
bearded man, hawk-faced and quick-eyed. Artas the elder
and Tennes the younger were his guest-hosts in Sidon, and
apt for almost anything.

"Your Alexander," Tennes said, "is somewhat more than
tales make him."

"The boy king," Artas explained. "The young fool
who's mad enough to take on Persia. One doesn't expect
him to be so ..."

"Brilliant," said Tennes. "Striking."

"Capable," said Artas.

Hephaistion wondered if he should be offended, or
should pretend to it. He shrugged to himself. Sidonians
chattered. It was their nature. Alexander never minded if
people talked about him, as long as they gave him due re-
spect. As these did, after their fashion.

They were already talking about something else, and
doing it in Greek which was their courtesy, or maybe their
cleverness. "Sidon's king is no Alexander," Tennes said.

"Straton?" Anas snorted. "Straton is the Persian king's
toady. His son hasn't seen fit to linger, now that Alexan-
der's in the city."

"Sidon needs a king," said Tennes.

"It has Alexander," Hephaistion said.

88 Lord of the Two Lands

That should have quelled them. But they were Sidoni-
ans. "Alexander is a king of kings," Artas said. "And what
king can he be king of here, if the one who wears the
crown is out commanding a fleet in Darius' name?"

Hephaistion felt his eyes narrow, his smile go hard.
"Why? Does one of you want it?"
Their jaws dropped. It was something for the ages, to
see a Sidonian struck dumb.

Artas found his voice. It came out strangled, but that
passed. "One of us?"

Hephaistion halted. They were last in the procession,
and had got behind as they talked. Now the rest were
round a bend in the track. They might have been alone in
this steep and stony place, with a tree crouching over them
and a dry streambed marking the way down to Sidon.
"That's what you're asking, isn't it? For me to talk to Al-
exander, and for him to name you king."

Artas drew himself up. He did not have much height,
but he had dignity enough when he needed it. "I cannot be
king. Nor can my brother. Our blood is ancient, and noble
beyond question. But it is not royal."

Now Hephaistion was speechless.

"Isn't that so in Macedon?" Tennes asked. "Mustn't a
king be of the royal line?"

"Yes," Hephaistion said. He was tempted, perilously, to
laugh. They had him neatly in their ambush. He could
fight his way out of it, he supposed. Or stay and see what
they were getting at.

"There, you see," Tennes said. "Neither of us can be
king."

"That wouldn't stop most people." said Hephaistion.

Tennes laughed. Artas smiled. "We're not philoso-
phers," he said, "or altruists. We're merchants. Why
should I want to be king, and live mewed up in the city,
and never go out trading? I'd run screaming into the hills."

Hephaistion's eyes flickered to the hill on which they
stood, and the mountain behind. "So would I," he said. He

Issus 89

shifted his feet- There; better. Less ache under the ban-
dages.

"Still," said Tennes, "somebody has to be king. A city
needs a head; someone to look to when there's trouble,
and to talk to the king over him as king to king."

"And what do you think I can do?" Hephaistion asked.
He put an edge in it, to warn them.

They caught it. Artas let the lightness drain out of his
face. He looked older for it, and solider. More like a
spokesman for his people—which, no doubt, he was. "We
know that Alexander listens to you. We think—"

"We?" asked Hephaistion.

"Tennes and I." Level, that, inviting no argument.
Hephaistion chose to let it pass. Artas went on. "We think
that you have a good eye for people, and a clear head for
judging them. We've seen how you keep the army fed and
provisioned, and things running smoothly. You're good at
what you do."

Hephaistion raised a brow. "So? What does that have to
do with choosing a king for Sidon?"

"Everything," said Tennes. "We know who might do.
But we need someone to convince Alexander."

"Just Alexander? Not your own people?"

"That's our side of it," Artas said.

"I can't help feeling," said Hephaistion, "that I'm being
taken for a fool. Why don't you simply send an embassy
to Alexander and ask him to approve your choice?"

"We're doing it," said Tennes with an air of perfect in-
nocence. "We're asking you to be our embassy."

Hephaistion began to walk again. The rest of the hunt
was long gone. He did not hurry for that, but he did not
drag his feet, either. The others had to trot to keep pace.

They picked their way down the last sleep slope, out
upon the open road.. Sidon's fields stretched in front of
them, and the city up against the sea. The hunt was well
ahead, almost to the walls. Even at that distance
Hephaistion knew Alexander: there was no mistaking that

90 Lord of the Two Lands

quick gait or that angle of the head in its exotic new fm-
ery.

After a while the brothers stopped trying to coax him to
say anything. They dropped out of Greek then and into
their own language. He took no notice. It was almost
peaceful, like the chatter of birds.
He got his talking-to, over wine, very late. By then there
was no one near to listen, except one or two of the Com-
panions who had fallen asleep on the couches. Pages
would cany them to bed in a little while.

Alexander had drunk less heavily than some; even at
that, he could hold his wine as well as anyone Hephaistion
knew. His humours burned it up. He moved more slowly,
that was all, and fidgeted less. His words were clear, pre-
cise, and cutting, on the theme of idiots who walked up to
lions as if they were the Egyptian woman's cat, and risked
their necks for nothing but to set up a kill for a friend who
was perfectly capable of setting up his own, and if that
was not enough, came ambling back hours late—

"Not hours," Hephaistion said. "I was talking to Artas
and Tennes "

Alexander's teeth clicked together. He hated to be inter-
rupted in the middle of a speech.

Hephaistion had been nursing the same cup of wine for
most of the evening. It had stopped being shameful long
ago, that he had a poor head for it. He met Alexander's
glare over the rim of the cup and sipped, savoring the
taste. "You weren't beside yourself with fear for me, ei-
ther. You were telling the tanners exactly how you wanted
your lionskin cured and fitted. Are you really going to
wear it9"

"Why? Do you think I'll look silly in it?"

That was real worry, and real vanity, but it had a dan-
gerous edge. "You'll look magnificent, of course,"
Hephaistion said. "You always do,"

"You looked magnificent in front of the lion," said Al-

Issus 91

exander. "Magnificent, and bloody reckless. Whatever
possessed you to go in that close?"

Hephaistion shrugged. It hurt- "It wasn't supposed to be
quite so dramatic. Damned thing lunged before I expected.
I learned my lesson, believe that. I'll be walking stiff for
a week."

"At least," Alexander growled. But the worst of his
temper was gone. He left his couch, staggering only a lit-
tle, and sat down on Hephaistion's. "So what were you
talking about with your two magpies?"
Hephaistion grinned. "They do go on. don't they?"

"They all do in Phoenicia. They're almost as bad as
Celts." Alexander lowered his brows. "Well?"

Hephaistion told him.

"Clever," Alexander said when he was done. "Using
you to get at me. Do they think I'll do whatever you say?"

"I doubt it," said Hephaistion a little wryly.

"It can't be someone popular," Alexander said, "if they
cornered you on a mountainside instead of tempting you
with ease and comfort and good wine under a roof like a
properly civilized being."

"And servants listening, and people coming in and out,
and rumors all through the city before the hour was out.
No," said Hephaistion, "they didn't want that. I wonder
why?"

"You didn't think to ask?"

Hephaistion's cheeks were warm. "I never do, do I?"

"No," said Alexander, not too impatiently. "Go on, then.
Find out for me what this kinglet of theirs is like."

"And if he looks like making a king?"

"Make him one," said Alexander. Lightly, but meaning
it- Trusting him as far as that. It was half pain, to know it,
and half sweetness; and all honor, as of a king to a lord
and friend.

Artas and Tennes were not unduly cocky, at least to
Hephaistion's face. "After all," said Tennes, "we can name

92 Lord of the Two Lands

whomever we please, but Alexander has to approve of
him."

"And Sidon," said Hephaistion. He did not speak of
himself. Some weapons were best kept in the arsenal for
when one needed them.

"We'll see to Sidon," Artas said.

"So then," said Hephaistion. "Who is this man who
should be king? Do I know him?"
"I doubt it," Artas said. "He's not in the city much. If
I know him. he doesn't even know about Alexander."

Hephaistion's brow went up.

"He's not a fool," Tennes said quickly. "He's poor,
that's true, but it's not his fault. His blood is as royal as
you could ask. He's honest, which isn't a virtue in a mer-
chant. But in a king—if it doesn't get him assassinated, it
should serve him very well."

"That depends," said Hephaistion. "There's honest, and
then there's tactless. How do I know that he can be a
king?"

"Come and see for yourself," said Artas.

They sent the servants to fetch a necessity or two, and had
horses readied; nding horse for Hephaistion, carriage team
for the brothers, since they had a fair distance to cross.

"His name is Abdalonymos," Artas said when they were
on their way. "He keeps a garden outside the walls, and
lives on what he gets from it."

Hephaistion's stallion bucked under him, protesting the
slowness of the pace. He sent it into a sidewise prance.
keeping more or less level with the carriage, and said, "He
sounds like something out of a book."

He looked like something out of Hesiod: another of
these little brown men, but browner than some, and
broader, strong with years of heavy labor. His tunic was
ragged and his trousers threadbare, and the earth of his
garden was thick on him as he knelt in it, clearing away
a tangle of weeds.

Issus 93

The brothers picked their way toward him, with
Hephaistion following and the servant behind, carrying a
bundle wrapped in faded wool. He was aware of them: he
glanced over his shoulder, but he went on with what he
was doing. His face was pure Phoenician, with a nose like
a knifeblade. His eyes were clear but preoccupied; they
widened not at all to see the Macedonian looming behind
his countrymen. "Wait just a bit," he said in quite decent
Greek. "I'm almost done."

They waited. The brothers glanced at one another and at
Hephaistion, with a glint of mirth. Hephaistion grinned
back. "Alexander should see this," he said, making no ef-
fort to keep his voice down. "He'd love it."
Abdalonymos kept on with his work, methodical but
quick. At last he stood straight. The plot was clear, the
weeds in a neat pile to the side of it. He dusted his hands
on his shirt. It did little but add to the stains that were
there already. "Well," he said, looking from one to the
next. "What can I do for you?"

Tennes crooked a finger. The servant came forward. He
laid the bundle on the cleared ground and folded back the
covering. Gold gleamed within, and the deep splendor of
purple. "This is yours," said Tennes, "as King of Sidon."

Hephaistion stiffened. This went far beyond any author-
ity he had given. But he kept his tongue between his teeth,
and watched Abdalonymos narrowly, and waited.

Abdalonymos looked at the glittering things in their dull
wrappings, and then up at the men who offered them to
him. His face was flushed, maybe, under its weathering.
"Now," he said. "Now look here. I'm not taking any of
your pranks. Not in my garden."

"Not a prank," said Artas. He pointed with his chin.
"This gentleman is a prince of Macedon, King Alexan-
der's friend. He's looking for a king for Sidon. We told
him that you would make a good one- Are you going to
make liars of us?"

94 Lord of the Two Lands

No more, Hephaistion thought, than they were making
of themselves.

Abdalonymos yielded not a fraction. "King?" he said.
"Alexander? What is this?"

"Sidon has a new overlord," Artas said patiently. "His
name is Alexander. He comes from Macedon. He defeated
the Persian king in a battle, and now he is king of Asia."

"What's a king to me?" the gardener asked. 'The earth
is the same, no matter who calls himself lord of it."

"But if the lord is bad," said Hephaistion, "the earth
suffers."

Abdalonymos looked at him. His eyes were not quick
and glancing-shallow as Phoenician eyes were wont to be.
They looked deep; they took careful measure. It was al-
most a Macedonian look, level and shrewd and suffering
no nonsense. "And who might you be?" he wanted to
know.
"King Alexander's friend," said Tennes.

That was not what Abdalonymos wanted. Hephaistion
had known that before Tennes spoke. A smile wanted to
conquer his face, but he held it still: his tragedy-mask, Al-
exander called it, smooth and inhumanly serene. "I am a
king's friend," he said. "but that's not the whole of me.
My father's name was Amyntor; he was a lord of men and
horses in Macedon. When he died I took over his lands."

"Why didn't you stay in them?"

A shrewd blow, that. It almost cracked the mask. What
woke behind it, whether grief or homesickness or rueful
mirth, or a mingling of all of them, Hephaistion could not
tell. "My friend was given a great trust," he said. "He
asked me to share it with him."

"That would be the conquest of Asia," said
Abdaionymos. Oh, no, no fool at all, though he did not
know a king's name when he heard it. Nor was he an ig-
norant man, with his good Greek and his hard questions.
"I can't say I have much love for the Persians. They
burned us out, back in King Ochos' day, and we were a

Issus 95

long time building again. I'll be glad if I see that they're
gone for good. But why should I be glad of a new over-
lord? He could be worse than the old one."

Quick anger tightened Hephaistion's jaw, but he did not
burst out at once with it. He took a long breath, careful of
his bound ribs. He counted heartbeats in the marks of the
lion's claws. He said, "A good and honest king can do
much, even under a bad Great King. A bad king can wreak
havoc in despite of a good overlord. Though," he said,
"not for long, if Alexander hears about it. Alexander has
infinite patience in most things. But he has none at all for
cowards and thieves."

"I'd like to see him," said Abdalonymos.

"So you shall," Hephaistion said, "if you'll be king.
He'll set you on your throne himself, and crown you with
his own hand."

"No," said Abdalonymos. "That won't sit well with
people here. They'll want a say in it. They hated it when
the Persians got too obvious about being our masters.
That's what made them turn rebel."
"We can speak for the people," Artas said. "You know
us; you know what influence we can bring to bear. Will
you be king in Sidon?"

"Well," said Abdalonymos, looking at the   crown and
the robe and the staff where they lay in   their wrappings-
The sun made them shine; the black earth   of his garden
brightened their splendor. He raised his   mud-blackened
hands. "I'm no princeling," he said.

Hephaistion held out his own hands. They were clean
enough, but roughened and callused with years of riding
and hunting and fighting- "Soft hands would blister fast,"
he said, "if they had to hold the reins of kingship."

"I suppose," said Abdalonymos. He looked about him.
His garden was grey and forlorn in its winter sleep- Over-
head, sudden and sharp, a seabird cried.

Abdalonymos stiffened his shoulders. "All right." he
said. "All right. Get me to a bath and tell me what a king

96 Lord of the Two Lands

does, and lei me see how I like this Alexander. If we look
like getting on, I'll do it."

Hephaistion let the smile bloom at last. "Oh, you'll get
on. Believe me, lord king. You'll get on famously."

Meriamon was not there to see the new king's meeting
with Alexander, but she heard about it afterward.
Abdalonymos was blunt and completely unawed, and Al-
exander, people said, was delighted with him. They did,
indeed, get on; and Sidon settled to it, though its elders
were not pleased to be ruled by a man of low estate. "So
I'll give him a great one," Alexander said, and gave him
all that the old king had had, and a share of the Persians'
booty, and a great estate outside the city, with his old gar-
den in the middle of it. After that, will they or nill they,
the eiders held their peace.

Meriamon was tired of traveling about, of living on strang-
ers' sufferance, of being rained on and windblown and
shouted at in languages that were not her own. Worse than
that, she could not sleep, for when she did, her dreams
were haunted.

It was not the Parsa. The Magi had gone with Darius'
ambassadors, and they had not come back, openly or in se-
cret. This was something else. As if the gods wanted to
speak to her, but the distance was too great, her strength
too little, so far from its source.
It was always the same dream: the dark country, the vul-
ture and the serpent, the shadow-dancers, the voice speak-
ing, gentle and low. She always woke before she
understood the words. It was not the dream of comfort that
she had had at Marathos. Its darkness was the darkness be-
hind the stars. Its gods wore demons' faces. She lay there
always in that bed which was not an Egyptian bed, and
breathed air that was not the air of Khemet, and knew, in
the dark before the dawn, that if she did not see her home
again, she would die.

Issus 97

She was growing thinner. Her Persian trousers were
loose, folded thick under the belt- Her face fell bony and
haggard; when she glimpsed it in the side of a silver cup.
there were hollows under her eyes.

"You look awful," said Niko.

They had been the better part of a week in Sidon, and
the army was starting to settle in, as armies will if given
opportunity. Where they would go next or what they
would do, no one was sure of, although there were rumors
in plenty. Meriamon dragged herself out of bed before
sunup, dressed in what came to hand, came out to the cen-
tral room to find Niko there alone, mending a shield-strap.
It should have been impossible for a man with one good
hand and one in splints, but he was making do.

He no longer glared quite so terribly when she came out
in the morning, but his greeting was pure Niko. She knot-
ted her hands together before they could rise to her face,
and went to look at the breakfast laid on the table by the
brazier. Greeks would never eat anything but dry bread till
midday at least, but Phoenicians were more sensible. They
ate well before the day began, to make it begin properly.
Here was flat bread fresh from the baking, a bowl of dates,
a jar of watered wine, even a dainty: something savory
that smelled of spices. Her stomach clenched.

"You look as if you haven't slept since Issus," he said.
"Are you sick?"

"No," she said, not quite snapping it. She poured a cup
of wine, choked down a sip.

He stood up. At first he had made heavy going of it, be-
tween pain and the unbalance of his splinted arm, but he
was mending now, and he had his grace back. There was
a surprising quantity of it. "You're homesick. Aren't you?"
She did not like to be loomed over. She moved out of
his shadow, aiming for the door.

He was there, broad as a wall and quite as immovable.
"Go back and eat, and then I'll take you to Philippos."

98 Lord of the Two Lands

"I'm not hungry," said Meriamon, "and I certainly don't
need a doctor."

"You can't see yourself," said Niko.

She glared up at him. "I'm not sick!"

"Tell that to your mirror."

She drew a long, careful breath. "Yes, I am homesick,"
she said. "Yes, I have been sleeping badly. No, I am not
ill, or haunted, or mad—unless you give me reason to be."

"So eat," he said. "Maybe you don't mind if you die on
me, but I'm fond of my hide. I'd rather the king didn't
have it for a carpet."

"I won't die on you."

"Prove it."

She glared. He glared back. She stalked to the table and
snatched a round of bread, and bit into it. It was still
warm, fresh and fragrant. It tasted like ashes.

She ate it. Niko counted every bite. Damnable, madden-
ing man. He disliked her intensely, she could see it in ev-
ery line of him; but she was his duty, and he would look
after her if it killed him.

He was supposed to fall in love with her. Guardsmen
did, in stories. Particularly if what they guarded was a
princess, and a maiden at that, and no man but the king to
answer for her.

Not this guardsman. When the bread was gone, he set a
bowl in front of her and filled it with the spiced meat. It
was goat, probably. She tasted it. Yes, goat. If she could
have had goose or duck, or the flesh of a fat ox ...

Somehow she ate it. Her stomach wanted to cast it up
again, but she was stronger. The wine went down a little
more easily, both dizzying and steadying her.

She set down the empty cup- "Now. tyrant. May I have
your leave to go?"

"Now you may," he said. Was that a flicker of a smile?

Of course not. Niko never smiled at her.

• NINE •

There was a boy waiting when Meriamon came back to
her lodging, one of Alexander's own pages. The king
would like her company, the boy said. if it pleased her la-
dyship.

For a moment she was sure that Niko had had some-
thing to do with it. But he had been with her all morning,
treading on her shadow till it was sorely tempted to snap
at him, and he had not spoken to anyone who belonged to
the king. He seemed as surprised as she, even with
Sekhmet to distract him, draping her loudly pumng self
over his shoulder.

"The cat, too," said the page. "Alexander said she
should come. And dress for riding, if you will."

Meriamon stifled a sigh, and shrugged inwardly. Why
not? Her clothes were clean, and she was presentable
enough, though Phylinna was hovering and signaling
broadly toward the bath.

"I'm ready," Meriamon said. "Shall we go?"

When Meriamon came out of the house with Sekhmet rid-
ing on her shoulder, another of Alexander's messengers
was waiting for her: a redheaded, freckled, gap-toothed
Thracian savage, holding the bridle of a bay mare. She
was Persian booty beyond a doubt, but smaller than the
Persians were accustomed to breed Desert stock,
Meriamon saw, and very fine, and if her blood ran true, as
hardy as she was beautiful. There was fire in her, in the
flare of her great nostrils and the roll of her great eyes, and
yet she looked to have sense.

She was a kingly gift in her trappings of silk and gold,
with plainer gear for the march, and the horseboy to look

100 Lord of the Two Lands

after her. And, he said half in signs and half in abominable
Greek, there was a mule in the lines as well, with pack and
driver, and if she wanted a cart she could have that, though
the king thought she might be well enough suited as it
was.
"That. I am," said Meriamon, running a hand down the
silken neck, blowing softly into the mare's nostril. The
mare blew back more softly still. She saw Meriamon's
shadow; her ears pricked, quivered; her eye rolled. But she
stood her ground. Meriamon smoothed the long black
forelock, traced the shape of the star beneath it. "She is
beautiful," she said.

The Thracian grinned- Meriamon could not help but
grin back. Little thick bandy-legged lad with his gapped
teeth: he looked like Bes, dwarf-god, luck-god, whose gift
was laughter.

Even Niko could not take the edge off her pleasure. He
was quite as unhappy as she had expected, to see that she
would be mounted where he could not. "Soon," she said to
him. "When you've mended a littie more. Then I'll let you
ride."

That was not enough for him, but it would have to do.
Even Imhotep's priests could not make a bone heal faster
than it wanted to, and her power was a dim candle to the
great blooming fire of theirs.

Enough, she thought. She set Sekhmet carefully on
the ground, grasped mane, swung up to the gilded sad-
dlecloth. Sekhmet leaped to her lifted knee and thence
once more to her shoulder, coiling about her neck. The
mare stood rock-solid under them both. Meriamon gath-
ered up the reins. The bit was a bar of simple bronze,
none of the Greek cruelty that pried the jaws apart and
held them rigid. But then, thought Meriamon, the
Greeks insisted on stallions.

The Thracian let go the bridle. The mare was warm,
supple, new-ridden from the lines. She tucked her chin and
flagged her tail and danced. Everything in Meriamon

Issus 101

yearned to clap heels to the sleek sides and plunge whoop-
ing through the city.

She turned the mare about instead. Niko had not moved.
His jaw was set hard.

There was another horse waiting, and the page readying
to mount it. it was a gelding, big for a Greek horse and
heavy-headed, with a mild eye. From the slope of its
shoulder, it would have a smooth gait. Meriamon looked
from it to Niko. His eyes were fixed on a point somewhat
to the left of the gelding's ears.
"You'll need help mounting," she said.

His shoulders stiffened. For a moment she thought that
he would bolt. He moved, but not away. Toward the geld-
ing. The page looked unhappy, but he offered his linked
hands. Niko set foot in them and swung lightly astride. He
took in rein, using teeth and sword-hand. He would ha'-c
done the same, maybe, in full armor, with a shield on hi-,
arm.

His eye caught the page. The boy scrambled up behind
him. Niko kicked the gelding into a walk-

The mare pawed the ground and snorted. Meriamon let
her move into a dancing trot, passing man and boy and
gelding, leading them down the winding street.

The king was waiting al the northward gate with a com-
pany of horsemen, and one without a rider a fine snorting
stallion, fighting the bit with its disks of bronze holding
his mouth wide, shedding flakes of foam as he tossed his
head. Niko's. Obviously.

"No," said Meriamon.

Niko showed her his teeth. "Think you can ride him?"
he asked the page.

The boy shrugged. His nonchalance was elaborate- "If
you like," he said.

"I don't like," said Niko. "But he needs his exercise.
Get on with you. People are waiting."

Grinning, too. The page approached the stallion, calm-

102 Lord of the Two Lands

ing as he moved, till he had the reins in his hands. He
paused to let the beast inspect him, forestalled a lunge,
mounted in a smooth long leap.

As they rode out of the gate, Meriamon found herself be-
side Alexander. That was intended: she could see it per-
fectly well. She could feel the eyes on her. too, and the
pressure of scrutiny. There was less enmity than she might
have expected, knowing courts, and this one most of all.
Alexander's men were fiercely jealous of him, fought over
a moment of his time, came to blows over a word or a
glance.

She was not a man. That mattered. And she was not a
Macedonian, which should have mattered, and did, until
they remembered what else she was. Sometimes she sus-
pected that they thought of her rather as they did of
Sekhmet: the gods' creature, as uncanny as she was holy,
and nothing human to hang their envy on. If anything, she
proved what they had always known, that their king was
not like any other in the world.

She shook herself. She was maundering, and time ran
on. She glanced back. Hephaistion was directly behind,
and Niko beside him. The two of them were talking eas-
ily, as if they were friends. Hephaistion was recovering
well from his encounter with the lion. No stiffness in him
that she could see. Or in Niko, either, though even a
smooth-gaited horse could jostle hard enough if put to it.

"Don't worry." said Alexander. "If it gets to be too
much for him, I'll send him back."

"You knew he'd come," Meriamon said.

"He's your bodyguard," said Alexander.

She considered answers to that. None seemed adequate.
She shifted on the saddlecloth instead, getting more com-
fortable, feeling out the mare's gaits. They were like silk.

"Do you like her?" the king asked.

She glanced at him. His face was open, shining. He
loved to give presents; it was the part of being king that,

Issus 103

maybe, he liked best. Meriamon smiled- "She's fit for a
queen," she said.

"I thought so."

Sekhmet uncoiled from about Menamon'1) neck. Before
Meriamon could stop her, she lofted smoothly across the
arm's length of space onto Alexander's shoulder. He did
not start or recoil, though his eyes widened. Sekhmet liked
her new resting place: it was broad and level, and it barely
moved with his horse's gait. Meriamon could hear her
purring even through the thudding of hoofs and the mur-
mur of men's voices.

Alexander reached up very carefully and scratched the
cat under the chin. Her purring rose to thunder. She draped
herself over his neck. giving herself up to bliss.

"Peritas would be appalled," Meriamon observed.
"Peritas is in disgrace," said Alexander. "He chased a
certain cat through one midden too many. Or was chased.
Accounts vary. I've confined him to quarters."

"Oh," said Meriamon. "Oh, no. She didn't."

"She did," Alexander said. "Peritas knows better, too. I
know you'd never believe it, but, he's as well trained as
any dog in Macedon."

"I do believe it," Meriamon said. "I believe that he's
immune to cats, too. Except for Sekhmet."

"Except for Sekhmet-" Alexander rubbed the cat's ears.
She, the harlot, leaned into the rubbing, eyes shut in ec-
stasy. "No wonder you named her that."

"That is her name," said Meriamon, "and her essence.
Power and chaos, and the lioness' heart. Names are power,
Alexander."

"So they are," he said- "Mariamne."

"Meriamon."

"Meri-Amon."

"Better," she said with a touch of a smile.

They rode on in silence. Meriamon was content to be
quiet, to feel the sun on her face, to listen to the men talk-
ing behind- They were leaving the open fields now, riding

104 Lord of the Two Lands

up the track of a small swift river, coming to a wide grove
that rose before them on the flanks of a mountain. Road
and river passed into the trees under an arch of branches.
A strong green scent blew toward her, a scent of earth and
trees and holy places. Alien, and yet familiar: sanctity was
sanctity, wherever one found it. This was a holiness that
she knew, although it was not her chief power. A power of
making and healing.

"Whose is this grove?" she asked. Her voice, though
soft, was loud in the green stillness.

"It belongs to Asklepios," said Alexander. 'Though
here they call him Eshmun."

"In Egypt he is Imhotep," said Meriamon. "I feel him in
the air; I sense him in the earth. This is his river, is it
not?"
Alexander looked at her, not surprised, not exactly; but
as if he had let himself forget what she was- "This is his
river," he said, "and his temple where we're going. It's a
great place of pilgrimage. People come from all over
Greece and Asia to ask him for healing."

"Have you something to ask him for?" asked
Meriamon.

"No," said Alexander, who still limped when he thought
no one was looking. "I give him honor, that's all. I thought
you'd like to do the same."

"I would," she said.

Under the peace of the trees, Sekhmet came back to
Meriamon. A cat knew about peace, but healing was a
thing that she did in solitude. She slid inside Meriamon's
coat and lay there, warm and still.

Meriamon looked over her shoulder. No one was talking
now, or laughing, or making the way light with a song.
Niko was a little pale. There was no one else on the road,
which was strange, if this was indeed a place of pilgrim-
age. Or maybe they came by another way; or the way was
cleared for Alexander.

Whatever the reason, they were alone in the god's

Issus 105

wood, in the shade and the cool and the windless stillness.
No bird sang. No leaf stirred. Only the river moved, flow-
ing swift and eager to the sea.

The trees ended suddenly. The light was blinding bright,
the wind breathtaking, cold as it was and strong, tunneling
down the narrow gap in the mountain. Up against the wall
of it, set high on a dais of stone, stood the temple.

In Sidon they built, as in Khemet, for the ages. Huge
blocks of pale stone piled one on another to form walls
that rose up against heaven. There was an air of Khemet
in the angling of them, and more of Persia in the winged
bulls that stood atop them, but the crimson that shaded
them was Phoenicia purely, the purple land, the place
where all peoples met and mingled.

Twin pillars stood on either side of the gate, one bright
gold, the other bright crimson. The gates themselves stood
open on a wide columned courtyard brilliant with paint
and gilding, alive with carving and limning and, somewhat
drab among the images, a gathering of crimson-clad
priests. Their heads and faces were shaven as in Khemet,
startling in this country where men wore their hair long
and grew their beards to their breasts. Their robes were
thin and must have been cold in the winter chill, even with
the sun imparting its whisper of warmth; caps on their
bare skulls and stoles over their left shoulders did a little
to warm them, Meriamon supposed, shivering in her heavy
coat and her Persian cap.

There were women behind them, ranked and silent,
and boys with softer faces than one saw in the city, fat
and sleek, which was reckoned beauty here. What they
did for the god, Meriamon did not need to ask. The
body's pleasure was a kind of healing.

There were people to take their horses, others to offer
ceremonial water for washing, wine for drinking. Each of
them dipped his fingers in the bowl, sipped from the cup.
When cup and basin had gone round, one of the priests
came forward and addressed Alexander as lord and king.

106 Lord of the Two Lands

Alexander was gracious. Seducing these people as he did
everyone, with a word, a gesture, a flash of those remark-
able eyes. Of course he would do honor to the god; of
course he would tour the god's temple; naturally he was
delighted to meet the priests, one by one and by name, and
the priestesses, too, and the boys down to the least and
shyest, a little dark thing who had not yet grown sleek
with ease and good feeding. Alexander smoothed the blue-
black curls with a light hand and coaxed him into a smile;

then, with a word, into laughter. When Alexander turned
away, his light lingered, shining in the boy's face.

"Whoring for the god," Niko muttered under his breath.
"A good tumble in the grass, with both sides willing—
that's rite and sacrament enough. This is disgusting."

"In Babylon they do it out in public," said one of the
others—Peukestas, Meriamon reminded herself. The hand-
some one with the elegant hands, who was not at all as
languid as he looked- "Right out in the sacred grove,
where anyone can see. This is as circumspect as a Persian
harem."

"Have you been in one, that you'd know?" Nearchos
looked about. "Interesting work here. Is that Eygptian,
there?"

"And Persian next to it," said Meriamon. "Hveryone has
been here at one time or another, and left something to
show for it."

"That's like the Phoenicians," Nearchos said. He linked
arms wii.h Peukestas and wandered off, as most of the oth-
ers were doing, as if by consent. The king was still occu-
pied with the priests, getting ready to go into the
sanctuary. Hephaistion was with him, of course, and Ptol-
emy, and after a little, Peukestas and Nearchos and black-
bearded Kleitos and one or two of the others.

Meriamon had meant to go in with them. Now she did
not want to- The god's image would be a Phoenician im-
age, with maybe something of Khemet in it, or maybe not.

Issus 107

The hand of the Parsa was heavy here. She did not want
to see a Persian face on Sidonian Eshmun.

She wandered instead. Niko followed her. The temple
was a simple enough place, porch and hall and inmost
sanctuary, but a city had grown about it, shrines and chap-
- els, courtyards, colonnades, houses for the priests, grana-
ries and treasuries, groves and gardens and, bound to the
river by a stone-lined channel, the pool and fountain of the
god. There the pilgrims came when there was no king to
grace the temple with his presence; there they found heal-
ing, or not, as the god willed.

The fountain was surprisingly simple. A spout and a ba-
sin, that was all, with water bubbling into the basin and
spilling over into the pool- The pool was big enough to
swim in. There were weeds in it, and a flicker that might
have been a fish, or maybe a coin cast in as an offering.

"Do you wish heating?"

Meriamon started and almost fell in. The person who
had spoken to her must have been there all the while,
sitting quiet near the fountain, the crimson robe faded to
brown, blending into the shade -of the wall. It was a
woman by the voice, but old enough almost to be sex-
less, with white hair bound tightly under the faded veil.

Meriamon drew a long breath. Her heart stopped ham-
mering. She bowed low, as low as if this had been a priest-
ess of her own gods. "Holy one," she said.

"No holier than you," said the priestess. She moved
slightly, into the light. Her eyes were on Niko. "No, priest-
ess from the Two Lands. I spoke to this one."
He looked surprised, as if it had never occurred to him
to connect his splinted arm and the god's healing. "Lady,"
he said. "Holy one. I don't know—"

"Of course not." The priestess was tiny, even standing:

she hardly came to his breastbone. Even Meriamon was
taller than that. She tilted back her head, birdlike, and
fixed him with a bright hard stare. "Do you want to be
whole?"

108 Lord of the Two Lands

"Yes," he said, barely above a whisper. "Yes."

"So," said the priestess. "Sit down."

Meriamon thought that she should say something. Do
something. But the god had brought them here. surely; and
this priestess had been waiting for them.

Whatever else she was, she had a surgeon's eyes. She
made Niko take his arm out of the sling—his lips went
white as he moved it: whiter than Meriamon had seen
them in days—and rest it on the curbing of the pool. Then
she unwrapped the bindings. Meriamon moved closer,
alert, but did not interfere. The gnarled hands were deft,
sure of themselves.

It was not pretty to look at. The long muscles were
shrinking with disuse, the flesh pale and withered, the
stitched wound healing into a livid scar. The bone looked
to have set straight, at least, and of late he had had some
movement in his fingers, though the thumb was twisted
still.

Niko's eyes were shut. He was hardly squeamish: he al-
ways insisted on watching when Menamon changed ban-
dages. She should not have let him ride so far.

Eshmun's priestess bent over the curbing, dipping water
in her cupped hands. Her lips moved. Prayer, maybe, or
incantation. She poured the water over the wounds.

He gasped. His eyes snapped open. His arm jerked;

spasmed. His face went grey.

"Be still," said the priestess, soft, but there was iron in
it.

"It's cold," he said-
"It's winter," said the priestess. She filled her cupped
palms again, washed his arm again. And yet a third time.

tt! don't feel anything," said Niko.

Nor did Meriamon.

Or—no. Something. It was faint, so faint that her
shadow barely quivered. It was not the wind-rush of power
that she knew in herself, nor the blaze of fire that was Al-
exander. It was almost not there at all.

Issus 109

The priestess dried Niko's arm gently with the edge of
her veil. When it was dry she began to wrap it again, tight
in its splints.

He could hardly resist her, with pain stiffening every
move he made. But he said, "I see no miracle."

"No." The priestess was calm.

"I suppose," he said, "your god doesn't see fit to favor
me."

"That is his privilege," the priestess said. She finished
the binding, tucked in the end of it, arranged the sling
about his neck- "Eshmun bless," she said, "and keep you."

That was a dismissal. Meriamon obeyed it without ques-
tion. Niko, whose eyes were full of questions, followed
her perforce. He was neither awed nor comforted. He was
angry. "Mummery!" he said.

"No," said Meriamon. "It's not."

He glowered at her. He was tired, he hurt, of course he
was cross. He would be blaming her for letting him do
what he had wanted to do. If he had had his miracle, he
would have been doubting it. He was a Hellene. That was
the way he was.

She was very tired, suddenly, of Hellenes. She turned
from the way back to the temple, to a gate that opened on
a little court. A man of stone stood in the center of it,
solid, foursquare, and unmistakably of Khemet. His name
was carved on the plinth, and his titles, and the rest of his
immortality, preserved in this alien place.

She stopped in front of him. He was stone, not flesh
to shiver in this alien cold; he strode out in his pleated
kilt, clasping crook and flail to his breast, head raised
under the crown of the Two Lands, eyes fixed beyond
the horizon.

Her finger smoothed the carved oval that bound his
name. Nekhtharhab. Nectanebo. The face was not a bad
likeness: a face of Upper Egypt, long-eyed, broad-nosed,
full-lipped. He had looked far more the Ethiop than she,
whose mother had been born in the Delta.

110 Lord of the Two Lands

Tears pricked, sudden and unwelcome. They said that he
had fled to his kin in Ethiopia, running like a coward from
the Parsa and their power. Parsa lies. He had died in the
fall of Thebes, his last great working-broken by the
massed power of the Magi. no magic left in him, but
strength enough to die under a Persian sword. His body
lay in the Red Land in a secret tomb. strong-warded
against thieves. His spirit was long gone under the earth.

She was his inheritance. She had a little learning, a little
power. She dreamed dreams. She was never the mage that
he had been. She would never wear the Double Crown.
She was eyes and a voice, and a flicker of memory.'

"Your father?"

She did not turn. She had felt his coming like a fire on
her skin.

"My father," she said.

Alexander stood behind her. Looking up, no doubt, into
the face of the man who had willed him into existence.

That was the gods' doing. She kissed the cold stone feet
and moved away from them, letting the wind dry the tears
on her face.

There was no one with Alexander. He had come here
alone, led as she was led, by chance or the god.

"You weep for him," he said.

"I weep for myself."

"That too," he said.

"He was hardly ever there," said Meriamon. "He was
always away, being king, being a mage, being our shield
against the night."

"He was your father."
"Yes." She looked up again at the carven face. It had
never been so still in the living man, nor ever so serene,
even amid the great magics. He had been—formidable,
yes. But quick, too; nervous in his movements; gifted with
sudden laughter. He loved to ride his horses, and to laugh
about it, saying that he was as bad as a Persian.

Issus 111

"He couldn't sing at all," she said. She did not know
where the words came from. "He couldn't carry a note. It
used to startle him that I couldn't not carry one. Even
when, for laughter's sake, I tried. Gods-gifted, he called
me. Amon's sweet singer." Her throat wanted to swell
shut. She swallowed hard, a little painfully. "I can't sing at
all now. 1 haven't sung since I left Egypt."

"You miss it so much?"

"It's more than that. Homesickness—you Hellenes have
a word for that- Do you have a word for the heart that
can't live anywhere but in its native country?"

"We know it," he said. "Exile is a bitter punishment,
even for us who wander the world at will."

"But I'm not in exile. I wanted to come. I wanted to see
another sky, and look on other faces. Only, when I did it,
the music went away."

"Maybe it will come back."

"It will," she said, "when I go back to Egypt."

"Soon, then. for your music's sake."

She shrugged. "I am where the gods want me. The
music is outside of it."

"Not if you're robbed of it."

"Are you robbed of anything," she asked him, "for be-
ing so far from Macedon?"

"I am Macedon." He said it simply, without even arro-
gance. "The land—that is where it is, and what it is, and
when the time comes I'll go back to it. But not now.
Here's all the world in front of me, and victories enough
to give me wings; and yet I've scarce begun to fly."

"Will your army fly with you?"
"They'll follow me wherever I go."

They would She had seen it. "Where?" she asked him.

Her heart was beating. This was what she had wanted;

this was why she had come. To speak that one word.

He did not answer at once. She looked at him. He was
looking at her father's image, as if he could find an answer
in its face; as if, so strong the will he bent on it, it could

112 Lord of the Two Lands

stir and wake and speak. But there was no magic in him,
not for him to use, whose whole self and kingship were
the gods' doing.

He did not need it. He could see farther than any sooth-
sayer, if he but thought of it.

"I have to secure the sea," he said after a while. 'That's
only wise, since Persia has always been strong there. So I
take Phoenicia, whose ships fight for the Great King. After
that, there will be Darius. He'll give me a fight—his
princes won't let him do otherwise. From the sea, then,
with my people ruling the cities at my back, I can turn in-
land and take the revenge my father meant."

"There's more to the sea than Phoenicia," Meriamon
said, "and more to the empire than Asia."

Someone else spoke- Niko. She had forgotten him; and
he was right by her, standing in her father's shadow. "You
mean Egypt, of course."

"Of course," she said.

"But," said Niko, "if we take Egypt, what happens to
Persia?"

"It waits," she said, "and after a while grows tired of
waiting, and thinks that the barbarian has stomach only for
me edges of empire. Egypt has always been rebellious.
What matter if it rebels again? Time enough later to bring
it to heel."

"Darius would think like that," said Alexander. "He was
brave once—they made him king on account of it. But
he's grown soft, and used to his comforts. He'd give up
the sea, I think, if that were as far as I wanted to go."

"And Egypt?"
"Do I want Egypt?"

She stiffened. He was smiling. Testing her. She showed
her teeth in what could have been a smile. "You want
Egypt," she said. "Your strength is there."

"My strength is in Macedon."

"Is that why you left it?"

Now it was he who went stiff, who met her smile with

Issus 113

tightened lips and glittering eyes. "The tree grows high
from a deep root."

"Deep," she said, "and wide. Who are you, Alexander?
Who was your father?"

"Do you speak dishonor of my mother?"

Deadly, deadly. Her smile warmed and widened. "I least
of any woman in the world. My father saw your begetting,
clear in the water of seeing. But a god can wear many
faces."

She was aware, almost too keenly, of Niko: of how he
listened, taut and silent.

Alexander's stillness was deeper, but there was a quiver
in it, the quiver of the flame that even motionless, still
bums.

"Remember Tyndareus," said Meriamon, "and Herakles
your forefather."

"No," said Alexander, barely above a whisper. "She told
me once—more than once—but that was rancor. He could
never hold to one woman alone. Even her. Especially her.
She was always too fierce a fire."

"Fire calls to fire," said Meriamon. Soft, as soft as he.
Her voice, and not her voice.

"No," he said. "No god sired me. None has ever
claimed me. I'm Philip's get, and no one else's,"

"No?"

He seized her in hands that were cruelly strong. 'Then
where was the god when I needed him? Where was he
when they beat me and starved me to break me to their
will? Where was he when my father took woman after
woman, flinging shame in my mother's face, and laughed
when she railed at him? Where was he when my father
mocked even me with his bastard get, and cast me out for
demanding what was mine? Where was he when my father
died?"

Love. she thought in that bitter grip. Love, and hate so
deep it twisted full round to love again, soured with envy,
sweetened with pride. Great men so seldom begot great

114 Lord of the Two Lands

sons; and there was Philip, and here was Alexander, and
which of them had ever endured a rival?

"They say that you killed him," she said, clear and calm
and perfectly sane.

He did not snap her neck. Nor did he strike her- That
was ingrained in him from his mother's teaching: never to
raise hand against a woman.

He let her go. He drew back a step, breathing hard. He
said, "I could have killed him. ) wanted to—gods, more
often than you can imagine. But not that way. Not through
such an instrument."

"A fool," said Hephaistion. He had come to stand be-
hind them, and clearly he had been listening for a while.
"That was an honest idiot, lady. He thought himself
scorned for a younger and prettier boy; he chewed on it
for years, till there was nothing left but hate."

"He was mad," Niko said, like an echo of the king's
friend. But his voice was his own, and his solidity at
Meriamon's back. "There was nothing left of him but
rancor. No, lady. Macedonians have always been in-
clined to kill their kings, it keeps the line strong. But not
that way."

"I know it," said Meriamon. And if she had not, she
would have known it when Alexander cried out to her of
his father's death. His father in the blood. There was never
any doubt of that. But his father in the spirit ... "You are
not flesh alone, Alexander. But gods have their own ways
and their own times. Maybe you were tested, and tempered
in the forge. Maybe you were meant to find your own
way."

"Then why are you here?" he demanded of her.
"To guide you," she said. "Perhaps. If it is your choice."

"Do you mean I have one?"

His mockery made her smile. "I'll not blast you if you
refuse me."

"No. You'll wear away at me till I give in."

Issus 115

She shrugged a little. "I can be very stubborn- It's a
flaw in me."

"In all your race," said Alexander. "Tell me why I
should go to Egypt." But before she could speak, he
held up a hand. "No, don't give me gods and prophecies.
Give me good common sense. What use is Egypt in my
fight against Persia? Its satrap is dead; I saw his body.
Its lesser overlords will be too caught up in fighting
against me to keep your people down. They can rise by
themselves and settle matters without me. Why do they
need me at all?"

"For what you are," she answered. "For what the gods
have made you. What do you want to do, Alexander? Do
you want revenge, and only that, and assurance that Persia
will stay away from Hellas while you live to defend it?
You had that much when you left Issus."

"I won't have it as long as Darius is alive to remember
his manhood."

"Well then. Suppose he does remember; suppose you
get him to stand and fight. Suppose you even win. What
then? Will you go back home and be king in Pella, and
play at archon of the Hellenes? Is that empire enough for
you?"

"It was for my father."

"Was it?"

Alexander's face was very still. "Are you telling me
that I should conquer the world?"

"I am telling you that you can try."

"And Egypt?"

"Egypt is waiting for you."

"I know nothing of that," said Alexander-
"Then maybe you should learn," said Meriamon. "We
can teach you, Alexander. Our land is very old, and our
power runs deep. We can give you both."

"Can you give me the truth about what I am?"

"If you will come to us," she said, "we can."

" -We'?"

116 Lord of the Two Lands

"My gods," said Menamon, "and my people "

"I don't believe you "

She smiied "Of course you don't You know so little,
and yet you could have so much    Do you know any-
thing of oracles9"

He blinked at the shift, but his mind was quick
"Delphi9"

"Ah," she said "Your bright god No, I mean your fa-
ther He who speaks from your mother's country, from
Dodona of the great trees "

"He is not—" Alexander shut his mouth with a chck
Opened it again, speaking tightly "Yes I know Dodona "

"That is one of the world's ends," said Menamon
"There is another Deep in the deserts of Libya, beyond
the horizon of the Two Lands, where the god's voice
speaks out of the sand and the deep water We call him
Amon in my country, hidden god, sky-god, king of gods
He is your Zeus also, and his voice is the voice that speaks
from the trees "

She had caught him He leaned toward her, quivering
like a hound on the scent Behind him her father's image
seemed to stand taller, its eyes to glitter 'That place too
1 know," he said "They call it Siwah "

"Yes," said Menamon "Siwah It waits for you,- if you
will come to it It holds the truth of all that you are "

"But," he said, testing her even yet, because he was Al-
exander "What good is truth, if Persia takes me from be-
hind9"

"Persia can do nothing to an empire fairly won "
His tension eased a fraction His brows were knit "And
so we come back to it You want me to conquer the
world "

"Are you afraid to try9"

The quick temper sparked She smiled at it "Maybe it's
you who should be afraid," he said "How do you know
what I'll do with your country once I have it9"

"That is with the gods," she said

Issus   117

"You're quite mad, do you know that9"

"Yes," said Menamon

He looked at her, at her calm under the gods' wings,
and the shadow of her father slanting long across her

Suddenly he laughed "Well then, so am I I'll do it I'll
be your king in Egypt"

PART Two

TYRE

•TEN*

Meriamon should have been content. She had Alexander's
promise and his army's readiness to march out of Sidon.
They were going to Egypt. The king was coming to the
throne which the gods had ordained.

Maybe it was the wine she had had at dinner with the
king, little as she had drunk of it. She left early and ex-
hausted, but she slept badly, and her dreams were dark.
Even her shadow, set on guard, could not drive them away.
"I did what you asked," she cried out to them. "I gained
what you wanted. Why won't you let me go?"

They returned no answer. Only words she could not
hear, promises, commands, remonstrance or reassurance
that she could not catch.

She rose more tired than when she had lain down, to
hear the word that had gone out. Tomorrow they left
Sidon. Comfortable as some of the army had been, no one
grumbled where she could hear. It was a fine clear day, if
cold, with a keen wind off the sea. Good packing weather,
and if it held, splendid for marching in.
She had little to pack, and that was taken care of.
Phylinna and the servants had it in hand. There was noth-
ing for her to do but hang about and watch and get in the
way.

In the end she went up on the walls, looking for a mo-
ment's peace. The city was like an anthill stirred with a
stick, but it was quiet up there, high over the harbor, with
the sea beyond so blue it pierced the heart. Khemet had
never been a country for seafarers. Yet here on the height
of Sidon, with the wind in her face, she almost understood.
No bitter Red Land here, no desert as far as the eye could

122 Lord of the Two Lands

see; no Black Land ever reborn from the Nile. Only wind
and stones and changeful, changeless sea.

Her shadow did not like it at all. It stretched thin behind
her, shivering. Sekhmet, wise cat, had stayed in the house
where it was warm.

She sighed at them both. Niko at least looked happy- He
stood apart from her, leaning on the parapet, and eyed the
ships as if he had a mind to buy them. She would have to
look at his arm later. Eshmun's priestess had worked no
miracle over it, but there had been something there, in the
words she spoke, in the water she washed it with. He was
in a little less pain today, who by rights should have been
in more, what with riding so far and going straight to din-
ner afterward, and never a thought of resting. Though
whether even a god could give him back full use of his
hand - - -

It was well for him that he was left-handed. His sword-
arm was safe. He could fight, even, as long as he could
manage a shield, though when it came down to fighting
hand to hand, a man with two strong arms had every ad-
vantage over a man with one.

The worst of it, for him, was simple vanity. His face
was forthrightly unhandsome, with its strong bones and its
heavy jaw, but his body was well made, and he knew it.
A scarred and withered arm, however proud a memory of
battle, destroyed the symmetry that Hellenes prized so
much.

One thing Meriamon could grant the older Macedoni-
ans: they did not hold with Greek nonsense about beauty.
Scars were beautiful because they made a man. Scars
taken in battle were most beautiful of all.

She rubbed her own smooth-skinned arm and shivered.
The wind was growing no warmer, though the sun was
high. Niko saw the movement, standing there without
sleeves or trousers, with his cloak blowing out behind him.
He reached up to his shoulder and undid the sunburst

TYRE 123

brooch. Before she could stop him, he had wrapped the
heavy thing about her.

It was warm. It smelied of horses and of clean sweat.
She would happily have curled up in it and let him grin at
her, but he was still her charge. She struggled out of the
cloak, which no more wanted to leave her than she wanted
to leave it, and made him put it on again. "I won't be re-
sponsible for your death of cold," she said.

"But," said Niko, "if you turn to ice and shatter, my
hide is forfeit."

"I'm not that fragile!"

"Oh, you're as tough as old leather. But you grew up in
Egypt. This is a fine balmy day in Macedon."

"Gods forbid that I ever look on that country," she said
through chattering teeth.

"It's beautiful," he said. "Wild, and sometimes even we
find it cold. It makes us strong."

"I should like to see you on a fine balmy day in Thebes,
when the sun sends his lances straight down and the sand
sends its heat straight up, and even the desert falcon takes
^refuge in the shade."

He shuddered.

She reached up and patted his shoulder. "There now.
You have something to look forward to."

"The king loves heat," said Niko- "He loves cold, too.
Nothing ever stops him."

"Except idleness."

"Well," said Niko. "Then he finds something to do.
Like conquer the world."

She laughed. He had lifted her spirits. Again. He made
a habit of that. Not that she would tell him, or he would
stop. He was as bad as Alexander about doing anything
that anyone else wanted him to do.
The sun was shining when they left Sidon, and the strong
wind blowing, making their armor glitter, whipping their
cloaks behind them. The horses danced and snorted and

124 Lord of the Two Lands

flagged their tails. The men sang as they inarched. Alexan-
der, up in front of them all, led them in a song that must
have reddened ears even in the prostitutes' quarter. The Si-
donians, to their credit, cheered him on his way regardless,
and some of them even rode beside him.

"They're not horsemen," Thais said, watching them.
She spoke as one who knew. Her seat on the sand-colored
mule was competent, and she would stay there for as long
as she needed to, but it was plainly no pleasure.

"They'd rather be on shipboard," Meriamon agreed. Her
mare was restive, not liking this crawling pace. When they
came out to more open country, Meriamon would let her
run for a bit. Others would be doing it, too. And Alexan-
der might even try his trick for passing the time on the
march: running alongside a chariot, now leaping in and
riding, now leaping out and matching the horse's pace.

Niko was riding again on the same gelding he had had
before. When she met his eye, he stared levelly back. He
was not going to walk, it was clear, as long as anyone else
was riding.

As long as he did not look ready to faint, she would al-
low it.

She looked over her shoulder. Sidon was no city of hers,
but it had housed her for a white. And Eshmun had fa-
vored her cause with the king. She offered him a prayer of
thanks. He had not healed her of anything that troubled
her; but only Khemet could do that.

She faced forward. South, with the wind at her back.
Southward to Egypt.

An hour out of Sidon, Alexander's cavalry transformed it-
self into infantry, freed the horses from their bits and re-
turned them to the line's and swung into the rhythm of the
foot-pace. Half a day out of Sidon, the clouds rolled in.
Well before nightfall the rains came down. Wind drove
them. Sleet edged them. Men wrapped their armor in
leather and themselves in their cloaks and endured. Beasts

TYRE 125
lowered their heads and tucked in their tails and pressed
on. Meriamon, in two wool cloaks and a leather one, was
more exquisitely miserable than she had ever imagined she
could be. The cold, the wet, the wind, conspired to leach
her body of every spark of warmth. The cold sank swiftly
into her bones, and there stayed. Nothing that she did
could shake it free.

In camp mat night they had the tent, and fire in the bra-
zier, tended lovingly by the servants. It wanned the air a
little. It wanned Meriamon's bones not at all.

She slept a little, shivering. Her dreams were the same
dreams, but for once she welcomed them, because they
were warm. She woke to cold and wet and endless rain.
She ate what somebody gave her, but after a bite or two it
gagged her. She found her mare—she would have to give
the beast a name; names were everything; but there was
nothing in her now but cold. She mounted. She rode.
There was nothing to see but rain, nothing to hear but
wind. She could not feel her hands or her feet.

Warm. Something was warm. She floated. No, her head
floated. Her body was lost somewhere below, poor miser-
able heavy thing. There was ice in its bones.

"Mariamne!"

A name? But it was not hers.

"Mariamne!"

Another one. Another voice. Quick. Angry?

"Mariamne!"

Three rimes was power. But not over Meriamon. She
laughed at it. It roared back. No words at all. No name.
Only wind and falling water, and cold, but so warm, so
sweet, so light ...

"Damn it, she's not made for this!"

Words. Hurting-loud; piercing-sharp.

"The fever's broken." Someone else, softer, calmer.
"She'll keep on sinking now, or she'll come out of it. Ei-
ther one. The gods will decide."

126 Lord of the Two Lands

"The gods?" Laughter, short and bitter. "You believe in
them after all?"
"I believe that there is more to the world than what I
can see."

"The king believes every word of them. Greek educa-
tion or no. And he'll give me to any one of them who
asks, if this woman dies."

"Why? What can you do? You're a guardsman, not a
physician."

"I shouldn't have let her get sick."

The soft voice lilted with mockery- "Oh, then you could
have stopped her? You could have told the rain to go
away, and calmed the wind?"

"I could have made her ride in a wagon with some of
the Persian women. They wouldn't mind. They like her."

"Maybe," said the other. The woman.

"Maybe that's still worth thinking of," the man said-
'Their tents are warmer, with all those rugs and carpets;

and quieter, too. She'd get good nursing there."

"Better than here?"

Thai's.-That was Thai's talking. And Niko, rough in her
ears, angry.

Scared.

No wonder, if he honestly believed that Alexander
would punish him for her weakness.

He said, "She's too sick for me to look after. You, too;

didn't you just say so? The hospital's wagon is no place
for a sick woman."

There was a pause. Then: "I'll ask Barsine," said Thais.

"But—" said Niko.

A pause. A gust of icy air. "The rain has let up a little.
I'll do well enough. Phylinna! Come with me, please."

The cold blast stopped. Warmth crept about Meriamon.
She opened her eyes, heavy as the lids were, resisting.

Dimness. A lamp's flicker. A huge shadow danced and
capered. It was not her own. Her shadow was gone.
Gone—

TYRE 127

Niko caught her and held her down. She struggled. "My
shadow!" she cried to him. "My shadow—I can't—"

His face was empty of understanding. She could not
make mm understand.

Not in Egyptian.

Greek came back to her, poor stumbling snatches. "I
can't find my shadow."

"It's right behind you."

She struggled in his grip. He was cradling her as if she
were a child. To him she was no bigger than one. "That's
not my shadow. My shadow!"

"It's here," he said. Not understanding. "It's right here.
Hush now. Rest."

"It's not—" She broke off. He did not know. She
clamped her lips shut and lay where she was, trying to
breathe. Her lungs were not deep enough.

"I'm sick," she said. Startled. Not liking it at all.

"You're sick." Niko kept on holding her. Rocking her,
even. His face was never as gentle as his arm was, holding
her in its curve, cradling her in his lap. He looked furious.

"How long?"

He looked down at her. "You're not delirious."

"I am. Still. A little. Tell me! How long?"

"Since yesterday."

"Since—" Her head fell back against his chest. "Two
days. Two—nights?"

"Just one."

A moan escaped her. "Gods. My shadow."

"Hush," said Niko.

She hushed. Her shadow was gone. There was nothing
in her that could hunt for it. No strength. No power at all.
The sickness had emptied her.

After a long while she found another word. "Sekhmet?"

"Here."

Soft paw, prick of claws. Murmur of inquiry:

"Mnn-ttt?"

"Sekhmet," said Meriamon. The cat's light weight

128 Lord of the Two Lands

lofted into the nest that Niko's arm and lap made of her
body. She was not strong enough to gather the cat in.
Sekhmet did that herself, butting against Meriamon's chin,
purring.

Niko was grinning. It died as soon as Meriamon saw it,
became his usual scowl. "You are awake. You really are."

"For a tittle while." Meriamon sighed, coughed. He
tensed; his grip tightened to pain. "Please," she said.

He stopped hurting her. He did not lay her down. He
was sitting on her bed. He looked tired, as if he had had
too little sleep for too long.

"I should look at your hand," she said.

"You should not," he said. "Philippos looked at it yes-
terday, after you fainted. He said it was mending perfectly
well."

"Not better than well?"

He did not understand that, either. She did not try to
sigh again, since it scared him so when she did. He was
warm, at least. And not in pain, that she could tell. There
were worse places to rest her head. Maybe, if she kept
quiet, he would sleep.

It was she who slept, sliding down into me long dream-
less dark. And woke to moving and jostling and a babble
of voices, someone asking a question and someone an-
swering.

"Still alive?"

"Still."
"Thank the gods."

"Of course I'm still alive!" Meriamon snapped.

Strangers' faces stared at her. The voices were long
gone. She breathed in the scent of Persian unguents and
looked at Persian faces, and thought. No. And. Out. Must
go—out—

They caught her and made her drink wine heavy with
spices and thick with sleep, and held her until she suc-
cumbed to it. She struggled even then, battling captivity.

TYRE 129

"How is she?"

This voice she would know when she lay in her tomb.
This one would call her souls together and make her live
again.

"Sleeping," said someone female, someone who hardly
mattered. "Breathing—better than before, I think. We had
to dose her. She went wild when she saw where she was."

"Nobody warned her?" he said sharply.

"Alexander," the woman said, respectful without servil-
ity, "as sick as she is, she would hardly remember."

"True enough," he said after a pause. When he spoke
again, his voice was much closer. Right over her; and the
weight on her middle was Sekhmet, purring. "Sweet
Hygieia, she's shrunk to nothing! What have people been
feeding her?"

"Whatever she will eat."

"Precious little, then, if she's been as sick as that. I'll
have my cooks fix her a posset."

He touched her. His hand was fire-warm, even against
her burning skin. It felt of her brow, her cheek. It rested
over her heart, where her breast curved; more maybe than
he had expected, bird-small as she was. He did not pull
away- "Water, too," he said, "as pure as we can find. I'll
make sure you get some. She's dried to a husk with the fe-
ver."

"We've been giving her what we have," the woman
said, "but more would be welcome." She pa'used. "You
value her."
His hand left Meriamon's breast. "Yes, I do- Does that
disturb you?"

"No," said the woman in her Greek that was perfect but
for the hint of a Persian lilt. Barsine. The name came, and
with it the memory of her face. "No. You don't want her
for what her body is."

"I might," said Alexander. Light. Almost bantering.

Barsine did not respond in kind. "I have all of you that
I need."

130 Lord of the Two Lands

"Do you?"

Meriamon could have opened her eyes. She did not.
This was nothing that she was meant to hear.

"Will you come to me again?"

"Yes," said Alexander. Still light. Still easy. But there
was truth in it.

"He doesn't mind?"

"Who? Parmenion?"

"Is he your lover, too?"

Alexander laughed. "No, Hephaistion doesn't mind. He
knows who comes first."

"Yes," said Barsine. Her tone was level, calm. Color-
less.

Maybe he heard it. Maybe he did not. He moved away
from Meriamon. "Look after my friend- Help her to get
well again."

He left. Barsine did not move. "First," she said to the
air. "Yes. And those of us who are always second—what
have we?"

Friendship, Meriamon could have told her. Goodwill.
Protection.

She could not but know it. If it made her bitter, then
that was her right, as well as her folly.

Meriamon was very ill. She knew that. Her head was light,
her thoughts inclined to wander, but she could think
clearly enough for brief stretches. She could reckon and
count, and surmise- As far as she could tell, it was the
third day out of Sidon. That meant that they were at Tyre,
or close to it if the rain had slowed them. It was not
raining any longer. There was wind above the tent, stirring
the heavy walls, and sun beyond it, and the sound of the
sea.

People kept talking over her head. Alexander went
away, and after a while Barsine followed. The women who
came to sit with Meriamon were given to chatter, and chat-
ter they did, incessantly. "Sister, have you heard?" one

TYRE 131

asked the other. "Have you heard what he wants with
Tyre?"

"What, the sacrifice in the temple?" her sister said. "It's
one of his gods, they say. The one he claims to be de-
scended from, who wore a lionskin, the way he does
sometimes. Do you think he's handsome?"

"I think our lady is in love with him. She's not wise.
Everyone knows about the other one, the one who's so
beautiful to look at, but he never looks at women at all."

"That's a shame," the sister said.

"It's what is. It doesn't stop the king."

"Nothing stops the king."

They sighed together. "Did you see the envoys when
they came to camp? They were so humble it must have
hurt. With their king in the Great King's fleet, and this
king at their doorstep, and nowhere to turn; and now he
wants to pray to their god. I think he baffled them. They
couldn't say yes or no. They had to go away and promise
to come back."

"He wasn't happy about that. He hates to wait."

"He won't wait much longer They were coming this
morning, Sardates said when he brought breakfast."

"We could go," the other said. "And see."

"You wouldn't."

"I would."                            •>

"But," said her sister. "If our lady catches us—or if
Sardates does—"

"They won't," the other said with sweeping confidence.
"The mouse is asleep, look. She'll be well enough for an
hour."

"She could die," her sister said doubtfully.

"She hasn't so far- Go on, get our wraps, before
Sardates comes back and catches us."

They went, one striding strongly, the other still protest-
ing, but following her.

Mouse, Meriamon thought. They called her a mouse.
She would be angry, later. Or she would laugh.

132 Lord of the Two Lands

It was better than some of the things they might have
called her.

They were at Tyre. She had been right, then. And Alex-
ander wanted to sacrifice ..to the god there. That would be
Melqart, whom the Hellenes likened to their Herakles.

He did like to pay his respects to the gods wherever he
went- It was a courtesy of his, and a piety. And he was
king, and priest as well as king; it was for him to make the

sacrifice.

She was sitting up. Her head reeled. She took no notice.
She shivered convulsively. Parsa modesty had wrapped her
in a robe under all the blankets and furs, but the air was
cold. She fell getting out of bed. She stayed there on hands
and knees, scraping together her strength. After a while
she went forward, still on all fours, and found a cloak, and
shoes that were her own. She had to rest when she had put
on each shoe, and after she had wrapped the mantle about

her.

Somehow she got to her feet. Once she was up, she
found that she could stay there, if she kept moving and did

not stop.

The sun struck her blind, but no blinder than the light
that called her. The wind almost beat her down, but no
harder than the force that drew her to the shore. She
ducked her head and made herself small and pushed
against it. Her sight came and went. She did not stop to
wonder where she was going. The sea's scent was strong,
its voice sighing through her. The sun was warm on her
back, though the wind was bitter.

There were people. She did not see them, except as
shadows. She did see where they were: the long white
sweep of shore, the blue brilliance of the sea, the rock in
the midst of it ringed in walls and crowned with towers.
There were ships, black and crimson and Tyrian purple,
and purple sails, and hawk-faced sailors with gold in their
ears, leaning over the rails.

She was as close as that. Close enough almost to wet

TYRE 133

her feet in the sea. Down the length of the shore she saw
them, remote and clear as images in a scrying-pool: the
Macedonians in their cloaks and their tunics and their
scorn for wind and cold, the Tyrians in their long robes
and their curled beards, smaller than the Macedonians,
Egyptian-small, thin and dark and wily. They were polite-
They even smiled. They yielded not a hair's width.

"Lord king." said the one who stood foremost, neither
the oldest nor the youngest of them, but clearly the highest
in rank. His robe was dyed with his city's famous purple
and embroidered with gold. "The priests have spoken- The
elders concur with them. There will be no Persian nor
Macedonian within the walls of our city."

Alexander stood facing him, wearing the lionskin that
he favored, with its head for a helmet. He looked odd to
Meriamon's eyes, half man, half lion. yet all Alexander.
His high color was up, between the wind and his temper,
but his voice was quiet. "Even if I come alone, with only
a friend or two? Even if I promise to touch nothing and of-
fend no one, and worship the god as his priests prescribe?"

"The priests prescribe that there be no sacrifice," the en-
voy said.

"Herakles is my forefather," said Alexander. "I wish to
do him honor in his own city."

"If honor is what you wish to give him," said the envoy,
"then you may give it in Old Tyre, down the shore yonder.
There's a temple to Melqart there; its priests would be
pleased to receive you."

"New Tyre is Herakles' city," Alexander said, still qui-
etly, still calmly. "He built it wfth his own hands; he sanc-
tified it with his presence."
The envoy's head shook from side to side. "Lord king,
we regret to oppose you, but we must. Our laws require it.
We cannot permit a foreigner in our city. You are welcome
here and in Old Tyre; you may sacrifice to your ancestor
with our priests' blessing. But not in our city."

"I see," said Alexander softly, barely to be heard above

134 Lord of the Two Lands

the song of the wind. He was bulking larger the more qui-
etly he spoke, the fire in him rising higher. "The king
makes sacrifice here as in our country. You will not have
this king inside your walls. Will you not reconsider?'*

"We cannot," the envoy said.

Alexander's head lifted. The color had left his face. His
eyes were brilliant in it, open wide and fixed on the city.
"I will make the sacrifice," he said. "You have my word
on it."

'Then you    will wait long," said the envoy. He too had
gone pale    under beard and bronzing. Alexander's pallor
was rage.    The envoy's was anger, and more than anger,
fear. But    he would not yield; no more than Alexander.

"1 will wait as long as it takes me," Alexander said.
"Nor will I move until I have made my sacrifice."

Even his own people gasped at that. They could see the
city on its rock and the stretch of sea between, and the
ships in it, tiny under the immensity of the walls. Twenty
fathoms and five, that was the height of them- No one had
ever scaled them. No one had ever taken them.

Alexander smiled at them. "I'll take you," he said. "I'll
have my sacrifice."

• ELEVEN •

"It's not mad," said Ptolemy. "It makes perfect sense."

"Lunatic's sense." Niko was disgusted- "Have you taken
a good look at the place? Half a mile of water between us
and it, no fleet to our names, and our king is crazy-mad
because somebody told him he couldn't have what he
wanted."

"I'll say he's angry," Ptolemy said. "He always did hate
to be crossed. But he hasn't lost any wits to speak of.
Think, for once. Remember what we're doing here.
TYRE 135

There's a whole fleet out there, taking its pay in Persian
gold, and most of it built and crewed by Phoenicians. The
Tyrian king is in it, and you can be sure he's near the head
of it. He can come in here with a whole army, keep it sup-
plied, land it when he's minded to fight and keep it nicely
out of range when he's minded to rest, and kill any chance
we have of breaking the Persians' yoke."

"I know that!" Niko snapped. "I'll wager I know it bet-
ter than you- But he can't take Tyre. What's he going to do
it with? Wings?"

"He has a plan," Ptolemy said. "You watch."

"Yes," said Niko. "And for how long?"

"As long as it takes," his brother said.

Meriamon did not remember coming this far down the
shore. She had been up by the women's end of the camp.
Now she was past the place where the king had been, lean-
ing against a spear that someone had thrust into the sand
and apparently forgotten, listening to Niko and his brother.
There were other people about. They were all shouting,
saying most of the same things that either Ptolemy or Niko
had said. Most of them were of Niko's mind.

The king was gone. So were the Tyrians, rowing away
in one of their boats, and no doubt glad to have escaped
alive. The king's anger had a scent like hot iron, hanging
in the air, making men's eyes roll white.

"He can't do mis," she said.

Her voice was clear in a moment of silence. Niko spun
about, quick as a startled cat. She met his eyes. "He can't
do it," she said again. "He can't stay here. He'll have to
move heaven and earth to take this city- What will happen
to Khemet?"

"What in the gods' name are you doing here?"

His temper did not trouble her at all. Even with the
spear to hold her up, she was swaying. Her knees had had
enough. So, on reflection, had her hands. But she wanted
an answer. "What of my country? What will become of it
while Alexander salves his pride in Tyre?"

136 Lord of the Two Lands
"Well," said Ptolemy. "It's been around for a while. It
can wait a little longer."

"Months'" she cried. "Years. It's too long. It's—too—"

Niko caught her. She was surprised. She might have ex-
pected Ptolemy to do it, unhappy as Niko always was to
be her nursemaid; and he had got out of it so neatly, aban-
doning her among the Parsa women. But he was there
when she fell, keeping her from falling too hard, and then
cursing because he did not have enough arms to lift her.
His brother did it for him, making nothing of her little
bulk.

"It's too long," she said.

"It cursed well might be." said Niko, "if you kill your-
self fretting over it. I'll have those bitches' necks, by gods
I will. Letting you out when you're half dead, burning up
with fever, and how in Hades you walked this far—"

"I don't know," she said, "how I got here. Aren't you
happy? He'll kill them instead of you, if I don't get bet-
ter."

"I'll kill you" he gritted.

"There," said Ptolemy. He was worried; his brow fur-
rowed when he looked at Meriamon. But he was amused,
too. 'There now. I'll gel you back where you belong,
m'lady, and as for you, Niko, maybe this time you'd better
keep a watch on her. She's right, you know. You did dump
her off on Barsine. I'd hate to hear what the king would
say if he knew."

"He knows," said Menamon. "He came. He didn't say
anything. Except I'm too thin."

"You are." Ptolemy began to walk. His stride was long
and firm, but he carried her lightly, nodding now and then
to men who passed. They stared. She could feel their eyes,
a raw pain, for she had no shadow to protect her. She had
forgotten about her shadow. She struggled.

"No," she said. "Not back there."

"What, with the women?" Ptolemy frowned down at
her. "You're best with them, you know. Barsine even stud-

TYRE 137

ied medicine for a while, with Greek tutors. Thai's can't
take care of you as well as that."
"No," said Meriamon.

"Delirious," Niko said. "She was like that when she
woke up and saw where she was. Wild. They had to dose
her."

"No," Meriamon said again. "I won't go back there.
Don't take me back there!"

She was weak, but she was stronger maybe than Ptol-
emy had expected. She almost broke his hold. He gasped;

her elbow had caught his ribs.

His arms clamped tight. She could hardly breathe. Her
hair was out of its plaits, snarled across her face. Her arms
were trapped; she could not push it away. Shaking her
head made her dizzy. Her stomach heaved.

Even for that he did not let her go. He would need a
clean chiton.

"That does it," he said. "I'm taking her to Philippos.
Unless," he said to her with an edge of irony, "your high-
ness objects?"

She had no words in her. Nor fear; nor flight. Philippos
was not the Parsa. More than that, she did not care for.

Meriamon should have not gone down to the water. She
knew that very well. She did not need everyone telling her,
repeatedly, whenever she was awake enough to hear it.

She almost died. They told her that, too. Often. Did they
mink she did not know? She knew the dark, and the long
light, and the voices without words. She knew the dry land
and the empty sky. She knew the shadows that passed
there. She knew death. She had walked its edges all her
life, in the silence behind the gods' commands.

They did not want her yet. Death and his demons would
have taken her in spite of them, but Philippos was stronger
than they. He would have been a priest in Khemet. He had
the gift and the art, and the strength of will. He was a

138 Lord of the Two Lands

greater healer of bodies than she; what he might have been
as a healer of souls, she could well see.

When he was not there, Kleomenes was. He never said
much, and that was astonishing, for Kieomenes loved to
chatter. He watched, he listened, he did what needed
doing. Something about his touch woke a truth in her.
Even on the edge of the dark she smiled. Why, the boy
was in love with her. Poor thing, he should have had better
sense-

Niko, now: Niko had sense. He slept by her pallet, when
he slept at all. He gave what help he could, and neither
Philippos nor Kleomenes was shy about asking for it. He
was gentler than she would have believed, if she had not
been the object of it. He was certainly not in love with her.

Kleomenes' adoration was like a hand on her skin, con-
stant, unvarying, sometimes comforting, often uncomfort-
able. Niko was presence simply, no worship in it. Far
down in the dark she was aware of him, standing like a
stone among the shadows, guarding her. When Philippos
fought his battle for her life, Niko was there. When
Philippos went away to rest, Niko stayed. She was his
duty. He had forsaken her once. He would not do it again.

He was there when she decided to wake. His presence
was part of why she did it then. Philippos was too strong,
Kleomenes too mutely worshipful. Niko was there, that
was all. She opened her eyes on lamplight and said, "I'm
hungry."

He was sitting by her bed with Sekhmet in his lap. He
did not start or stare, but something in him eased percep-
tibly. He set the cat beside her, got up, went out. She heard
him calling, and people answering. In a little while he
came back. "You'll get a posset." he said. "For now, drink
this."

He held her head while she drank sweet water from a
cup. She was lying down again, dizzy with effort, before
it struck her. One ami had held her, the other hand had
held the cup.

TYRE 139

He was still in bandages, but me siing was off, and the
splints.

"That long?" she asked, staring at it.

"Yes." He sounded almost angry. Impatient, maybe. She
was too weak to tell.

"How—"

"I'm not supposed to tell you."
She tried to sit up. She got her head up, but that was as
far as it went.

"Half a month," he said, snapping it. "Don't get up.
You'll kill yourself."

"No," she said. "I won't die now." But neither did she
try to move. She lay for a while, simply breathing. She
would never have believed that she could be so weak, or
so tired for doing so tittle. And so long. Anything could
have happened. Oh, gods—anything at all.

She clung to calm against the easy panic, the easier and
far more frightening tears. "We're still in Tyre?"

"Still."

She sighed. Her heart ceased its hammering. Her eyes
cleared. She looked about. "I'm in Thais' tent."

"You wouldn't stay in Barsine's."

Clearly he had no sympathy with that. She could not
imagine why he would. Sekhmet stretched purring along
her side, welcoming her back to the living. In a little while
she would stroke the cat. She was too tired now. She
would sleep, she thought. Real sleep, healing sleep, with
no dreams in it.

It was slow, learning to live again. Sometimes she won-
dered why she bothered. Here was Alexander, and there
was Tyre, and neither would give in to the other, though
the stars fell. Alexander would never come to Egypt. He
would live here and he would die here, because all men
died, even men who were begotten of gods.

But life, having won its way with her, was not about to
let her go. She slept, and sleep healed her. She ate, and

140 Lord of the Two Lands

strength came back. She learned to walk again, slow stum-
bling steps, leaning on Nikolaos or Kleomenes or Thais-
The hetaira had been there in the dark, too, but not so of-
ten and not so strong as the others; healing was not at all
her gift. Living was, and laughing, and making Meriamon
remember both.

She was the one who saw to it that Meriamon had a real
bath, well before anyone else might have allowed it, and
salvaged her hair. "They wanted to cut it," she said. "but
I wouldn't let them. Men. They'd never think of anything
so simple as a pair of braids. They've got to hack and cut,
and never mind the consequences."

Meriamon would not have minded it if they had. Her
hair was filthy, and even braids had not kept it from knot-
ting. Why it had not acquired a nest of vermin, she could
not imagine. It was pleasant, she admitted, to lie in the
warm water and be stroked like a cat, and then to lie in a
soft robe while Thai's and Phylinna between them combed
out her hair. Wet, it came halfway to her waist. She was
surprised. It had grown. The sickness had dulled it; it
would probably come out in handfuts, and then she would
have to cut it off in spite of That's.

She rested her cheek on her arm. In spite of the effort
of getting up and having a bath, she was not extraordinar-
ily tired. Before Phylinna came to help Thais with the
combing, she had opened the tent's flap and tied it there,
letting in sun and a bit of breeze. It was warmer than
Meriamon had expected. There was nothing much to see
outside but the tent across the way, and a dog or two
asleep in the sun, and now and then a soldier or a servant.
Those might have lingered if her guardsman had not ap-
peared, looming, saying nothing, but encouraging them to
go about their business.

One of them came and did not retreat. He was almost as
tall as Niko but even narrower, rawboned and gangling,
coming in right over Niko's spear, and grinning down at

TYRE 141

Meriamon. "Now 1 know you're well." said Kleomenes.
"You've taken a bath."

"Was I so repulsive?" Meriamon asked.

"No," he said, taken aback. "Oh, no. Not at all."

She swallowed a sigh. She did not know that she was
ready to be adored, even by Kleomenes. Fortunately for
her peace of mind, he sat with every appearance of ease,
ignoring Niko's lowering looks, and considered her with a
physician's eye.

"You'll do," he decided. "I won't tell Philippos you got
wet. You know what he would say."

Meriamon did. "Did he send you?"

"Well," said Kleomenes. "Yes. In a manner of speaking.
He wanted to know how you were. I came to see. You're
looking very well," he sakt, "considering."
Considering that she looked like a years-old corpse.
There was no flesh on her bones at all. She had not tried
to find a mirror. She would be all eyes and cheekbones.

"You should see what the king is doing." Kleomenes
said. He had been talking for a while; she had slipped off,
as she still sometimes did. It did not seem to trouble him.
"He's going to take Tyre, you know. He's swom it. He's
got a whole army of workers out there, people from Old
Tyre and people from the villages, and his engineers, and
every soldier he can spare from guard duty."

She did not want to know. But she asked, because she
could not help herself. "Why?"

"People say he's out of his mind," said Kleomenes.
'Tyre is an island. Well enough, he says, but not when Al-
exander is done with it He'll build a bridge. He'll make
it a leg of me land. Then it will have to surrender like all
the rest of this country, and be a part of it."

Meriamon closed her eyes. Mad. indeed. Obsessed.

Thais spoke over her. "He won't have much trouble on
mis side. But the water is deep out toward the island, and
the Tyrians won't sit still to wait for him."

"He'll do it," said Kleomenes, whose adoration of the

142 Lord of the Two Lands

king was older and even stronger than his worship of
Meriamon. "He's got crews out in the mountains, cutting
down trees, and people tearing down Old Tyre for its
stones—they're huge; they must have been laid by giants.
You can already see what his bridge will be, from the be-
ginning he's made."

"Show me."

At first Meriamon did not think that anyone heard her.
Then Kleomenes said, "What?"

"Show me what he's done," she said. 'Take me to me

bridge."

"Maybe in a few days," said Kleomenes. "When you're
stronger."

"Now," said Meriamon.

She had her way- Kleomenes was not happy, but there
were uses for adoration. Thais shrugged, Phylinna fretted,
but to no purpose. Niko said nothing. He glared at the boy,
the worse for that Kleomenes had to carry her. Niko's arm
was hardly strong enough for that yet, if it would ever be.

They made a fair procession, with Sekhmet in the lead,
head and tail high, and the rest of them following.
Meriamon was wrapped like the dead, as thick and almost
as tight. One of the servants had a sunshade, which she did
not like at all; she wanted, needed, that warmth on her
face, that brightness in her eyes, though they bumed and
teared with the strength of it.

It was Niko who understood. He got rid of the shade, if
not the servant. He set himseif in the woman's place, still
without a word. Meriamon was glad of him. He was an
anchor in the turning of the world, even with a scowl on
his face.

The wind was cold but it was clean, once they came to
the sea. She breathed it in, drinking deep. She felt a little
stronger; as if, almost, she could get down and walk.
Maybe when she came to the bridge she would.

While she was sick the camp had moved south toward

TYRE 143

Old Tyre, setting itself between the town and the shore op-
posite the island. It was a fair distance for Kleomenes, far-
ther than she had expected, but he managed it. He was
sweating in the cold and breathing hard as they followed
the sounds of hammering and sawing and the beating of
drums to the king's bridge. Men were shouting and some
were singing, and there was a startling amount of laughter.

That was Alexander. He was in the middle of them in
nothing much but a hat, lending a hand wherever they
needed one. He seemed to be everywhere at once. Now far
down the road urging on the team of mules that dragged
in yet another great fallen cedar, now on the shore with a
handful of his engineers, drawing with a stick in the
smoothed sand, now out on the mole itself, clambering
over the stones and timbers, perching at the very end with
the water lapping his feet. It was a fair few furlongs al-
ready, though wider as yet than it was long, a blunt finger
pointing toward Tyre.

Wherever Alexander was, people smiled wider, moved
faster, worked harder. He wanned them like a hearthfire,
just by being with them.

Kleomenes set Meriamon carefully on the sand, out of
,the way of the men but close enough to see what they did.
He flung himself beside her and occupied himself with
simply breathing. The others, after a moment's pause,
wandered off toward the bridge. Except Niko. He stayed
on his feet, spear in hand, on guard. Sekhmet rather
spoiled the picture, draped as she was over his shoulder.

Meriamon watched Alexander's men build Alexander's
bridge. So great a labor already, and so little of the whole;

and the city waiting, silent behind its walls, haughty and
impregnable. They would fight when the time came. Ships
were running in and out of the harbors, the Sidonian north
of the mole's line, the Egyptian south of it: bringing in
provisions for the siege. Often their sailors mocked the
men on the shore, laughing and jeering and even, more
than once, relieving themselves in long arcs over the. bows.

144 Lord of the Two Lands

"We piss on you!" they shouted in gutter Greek. "Come
up to the walls and see! Right in your faces, bully-boys.
Right in your kinglet's eye."

"Want to bet on it?" That was Alexander's voice, high
and sharp and unmistakable; and he was laughing.
"Surely," one of them yelled back. "What's the stakes?"
"Your hide," said Alexander, "and your city thrown in."
The ship had come far in in its captain's bravado, so far
that it nigh ran aground. He had to scramble back out to
deeper water, with the Macedonians jeering him on. No
one thought to shoot, though it would have been a fair
spearcast, or an easy shot with a bow.

Not yet, thought Meriamon. They would remember soon
enough. Then the blood would flow.

She was very tired, but she had no desire to sleep. She
lay in her nest of sand. Sekhmet stalked a flock of
seabirds, sand-colored cat against sand-colored shore.

She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened
them, Alexander was striding toward her, windblown and
ruddy-faced and sheened with sweat. He should have been
reeking. There was no scent on him but salt and sea and
clean wool. He looked as if he wanted to pick her up and
hug her, or maybe shake her for daring so much so soon.

The strength of him was almost more than she could
stand. It rocked her where she lay.

He dropped down beside her, boylike, half grinning,
half frowning. "You shouldn't be here."
"No," she said.

The grin conquered the frown. "Of course you had to do
it. I would. I did when I got sick swimming in the Kydnos.
Philippos was beside himself."
"I'm not afraid of Philippos."

"Nor was I." said Alexander. "I should have been. I got
sicker the first time I tried anything. But then I got stron-
ger." He eyed her. "I've seen you looking better."
She laughed. It was weak, but it was honest mirth. "I

• TYRE 145

look like creeping death. I don't mind. Much. I never had
any looks to lose."

"Don't say that," said Alexander.

"Why not? It's true."

"I'll never understand modesty," Alexander said. He
stretched out, propped on his elbow. He was fully at his
ease, but he could see everything that happened where his
men were. His eyes never rested, no more than his mind.

"You were there," she said. "When I was sick."

"Once or twice," he said. "You had us worried."

She took no notice of that. "You were in the light. I
didn't know it was you; and yet I did. Do you know how
strong you are?"

She did not mean in body. His eyes narrowed a little;

his brows drew together. "I prayed," he said. "I made sac-
rifice. I didn't think your Imhotep would mind that I called
him Asklepios."

"Or Eshmun?" she asked.

He shrugged a little. "I sent to the temple in Sidon. The
priests said that you had your own gods. and your own
power against sickness."

"So I do," said Meriamon. She turned her eyes from
him toward the work he had begun. "It seems you have
forgotten them."

"No," Alexander said.

'This is not forgetting?"
He was still. His voice was soft. Not as it had been with
the Tyrian embassy, not quile. But it was not a voice that
one could argue with. "When I slept, the night before I
came to Tyre, I dreamed. A man came to me. He was a big
man, but not so big as I might have expected. He carried
a club; he wore a lion's skin.

"Of course I knew his name. 'Herakles,' I said. 'Do I
dream you, or is this a sending?'

" 'If you know my name, you know the rest of it,' he
said.

146 Lord of the Two Lands

"That made me laugh," said Alexander, "which was
hardly respectful, but he laughed with me.

" 'You know what you have to do,' he said. 'This city
is yours; I name you my heir.'

" 'Even if I have to take it by force?' I asked him.

" 'Even so,' said Herakles."

Alexander paused. Meriamon did not say anything.
"You see," he said. "I dream, too; and I dream true. This
I have to do. When it is done, I shall go on to Egypt."

She could argue with a god if she thought he needed it.
"How long will that be? How many days, Alexander?
How many months wasted because you took a vow in an-
ger?"

"I was angry," he said. "I was hardly out of my wits-
Tyre is strong enough to break me, unless I break it first.
And Tyre serves the Persian king."

"Tyre refused to give you what you wanted."

"So it did," he said lightly enough. "It will pay for that.
But even if it hadn't earned a drubbing, I wouldn't want it
at my back. That's necessity, Mariamne, and soldier's
sense. Even beyond a god's will."

"It holds you back from Egypt," she said.

"Not forever."

"Long enough."

He tossed his hair out of his face. He was a boy, after
all, however brilliant, however much a king. "I'm going to
take Tyre," he said.

"Or Tyre will take you."

"No one will ever conquer me," said Alexander-

"No man," Meriamon said, "maybe. There are still the
gods. There is still, at the end of them, death."

No cloud shadowed the sun, but it dimmed for a mo-
ment, and the wind bit cold- Then Alexander laughed,
sharp and short- "Death comes for every man. I'll live
while I can, and hold my honor, and keep my word. When
Tyre is mine, I'll follow you to Egypt."

• TWELVE •

The slow days turned from winter into spring. Alexander's
causeway stretched toward Tyre. Meriamon was an emp-
tied thing: a woman without a shadow, a priestess without
her gods, a mage bereft of her magic. She was alt winter,
and no spring in her, though her body healed and grew
strong again.

And yet, like winter in this stony country, she kept in
her a memory of spring. Alexander would not speak to
her, nor move, nor do anything but lay siege to an impreg-
nable city. She would not pine for that. She was too stub-
born. Since death did not want her, she would cling to life,
and get back her strength, and wait.

Someone else was waiting, and in far less calmness than
she. Meriamon could see that for herself, summoned to
Barsine's tent and let in without'even a judicious hour's
delay. She had not gone willingly. Her memory of waking
there, sick to death and wild beyond reason, could still
trouble her in the dark before dawn. Trapped, suffocating,
surrounded by enemies—no matter that they had meant
her well. Her head knew that. Her heart knew only that
they were Parsa, and they had taken her and held her.

Still, when the messenger came, the same young eunuch
who had fetched her first from the surgeons' wagon, back
before Sidon, Meriamon bent her head and followed him.
Barsine was no enemy except by blood; and Alexander
loved her in his fashion. No woman would ever be the
other half of him. That was given long ago, and to
Hephaistion. But she had known him since he was young,
she pleased him, maybe he even reckoned her a friend.

Barsine's tent was as Meriamon remembered it: dim,
shadowed, laden with die scent of Persian unguents. No
148 Lord of the Two Lands

light ever came there, unless it was lamplight. There was
a new thing here and there, a box carved of cedar, a lamp
bright with gilding, a vase with a frieze of women weav-
ing and spinning. That was not a Persian thing; it came,
maybe, from Athens. Thai's had one like it, but on hers the
women were dancing to the music of flute and tambour.

Barsine had been sitting in the shadows. As Meriamon
paused, half-blinded, trying to breathe in the heavy air,
Barsine rose and came to embrace her. She had not ex-
pected that. She stiffened; eased with an effort, returned
the embrace.

Barsine stood back, hands still on Meriamon's shoul-
ders. "You're well again," she said- "But thin. Are they
feeding you enough?"

Meriamon laughed. "They all say that," she said. "Alex-
ander, too. Yes, they're feeding me. Too much. You'd
think they were fattening me for the pot."

Barsine smiled. She led Meriamon to a chair and saw to
it that she had wine and sweets as was proper. Meriamon
had to eat and drink a little under those grave dark eyes.
She was hungry after all; she drank most of the cup of
wine and ate a whole cake, and nibbled on another, for the
taste.

As she nibbled, she considered Barsine. The lady was
even more beautiful than Meriamon remembered, and yet
it was a different beauty. Her face seemed fuller, her eyes
gentler. Her body, mat had been nigh as slender as a boy's,
was richer, softer.

What had caused it, Meriamon knew very well. She had
known it the moment Barsine embraced her. "I suppose,"
she said, "mat I should offer felicitations."

Barsine lowered her eyes. Her hand went to the swell of
her belly. "You miss very Uttte," she said.

"I could hardly have failed to notice this," said
Meriamon. She paused. There was no delicate way to say
it. "It is his?"

TYRE 149

Barsine did not look up, but her eyes glittered under the
long lashes. "You doubt it?"
"I can count," said Meriamon. "You're slim and you
carry small, but you've been carrying since summer, or I
know nothing of childbearing. This one was conceived in
Mytilene, if certainly no earlier- Does Alexander know?"

"Yes,'* Barsine said- "He has promised to take up the
child, even if it is a boy."

"As his heir?"

Barsine looked up then. Her eyes made Meriamon think
of, of all people, Thai's. The same clarity of purpose; the
same spirit, startling in the Persian face. "Parmenion has
come back. He hounds my lord without mercy. If my lord
can offer him a child of my body, then my lord may have
a little peace. For awhile. Until he gets one of his own."

"If I can count," Meriamon said, "what makes you
think that no one else can do as well?"

"You are a woman," said Barsine.

"And a man wouldn't notice?" Meriamon sat back. The
second cake was gone; she had eaten it without noticing.
She wiped her fingers with the cloth the servant offered,
dipped in warm water scented with citron. "Maybe he
wouldn't, at that. As close as you keep yourself, as quiet
as you can be, you can conceal the child until the time is
ripe, and bring it out, and let people decide whose it is."

"Precisely," Barsine said. "And my lord can let it be
known that 1 am bearing. He can come more seldom for it,
and stay more briefly."

She said it calmly, but Meriamon saw the pain behind it.
And knew it for what it was. "He's known from the begin-
ning."

"I told him."

"Then—he never really—"

"He did," said Barsine, soft and fierce. 'That first time.
He did. But I had to tell him. I had lied enough in keeping
silent and letting him love me once."

150 Lord of the Two Lands

"And a Hellene won't touch a bearing woman," said
Meriamon.

"He was angry," Barsine said. "But he forgave me. He
loves to forgive, as he loves to give. He saw wisdom in
what I had done."

Meriamon had her doubts of that. No doubt Barsine
needed to believe it. "So he keeps coming back to you,
and keeps up the pretense. He won't need to do it much
longer."

"Unless he wishes."

There was a silence. Meriamon let it stretch. After a
while she said, "You wanted me to know. Why?"

"I used you," said Barsine. "I lied, a little- I let you
think thai I was free to accept him."

"You were talking yourself into it," Meriamon said.

Barsine smoothed her skirt along her thigh, long, slow,
focused on it. She had done much the same when she
played the bashful beloved.

Parsa, thought Meriamon. Parsa, always, no matter that
all her men had been Hellenes.

Slowly Barsine said, "I wanted to see what you were."

"And what was that?"

"His friend."

"And now?"

"You are still. You could be more. If you would."

Meriamon was calm. She should not have been, maybe.
But this was too fierce a battle to fight in anger. "Are you
asking me to do that?"

"No," said Barsine. Still smoothing her gown with those
long fingers; still centered on it, eyes lowered, profile cut
as clean as a carving in ivory. "He may not go to Egypt
now. Will you do anything to force him?"

"If I can," said Meriamon, "yes."

"I could help you," Barsine said.

"Why?"

Barsine could not have expected that, even from

TYRE 151
Meriamon. For a moment she looked up; for a moment her
eyes met Meriamon's. "I mean no treachery."

"No?"

"I love Alexander," Barsine said-
Truth. But what was truth to a Persian?

"He admires you greatly," said Barsine, "even when he
curses you for a stubborn fool. He means to do what you
ask, when his pride has salved itself in Tyre. But if he dies
here—"

"If he dies here, Persia is safe."

"I am Alexander's now," Barsine said. "Persia is no part
of me."

"Persia is all of you."

Barsine's breath caught. "How you hate us!"

"Yes, I hate you," said Meriamon. "I hate everything
that you are. You marched out of Persis. You trampled my
country under your feet. You murdered our kings; you
mocked our gods, or strove to make them your own."

"You are as proud as Alexander," said Barsine. "And no
more sensible in it."

"I am of Egypt. No foreigner has ever ruled my people
in peace."

"Yet you would make Alexander your king?"

"Alexander, we choose. Alexander rules by our gods'
will."

"We rule by the will of Ahuramazda."

"That is no god of Egypt."

"That is the Truth."

And there, in the ringing silence, was the heart of it.
"Your Truth is one," Meriamon said, "and unyielding, and
unforgiving. Ours is many; it shifts, it changes, it takes
new shapes as the world grows."

"There can be but one Truth. AH else is the Lie."

"No," said Meriamon.
"Yes," Barsine said.

"You are Persian," said Meriamon. "You will never be
aught but that. As I will never be aught but Egyptian. Al-

152 Lord of the Two Lands

exander ... he is always Alexander, and only Alexander,
but that is as endlessly varied as the faces of my gods.
Cambyses, Darius, Artaxerxes the accursed, Ochos who
drove my father to his death—they came in their Truth,
and laid its yoke on us, and wondered that we hated it, and
through it hated them. Alexander will be our king, our
pharaoh, our Great House of Egypt."

"If he succeeds in taking Tyre."

"If he does that," said Meriamon.

"Can you protect him?"

There. At last. Meriamon swallowed a sigh, a curse on
Persian indirection. She could barely protect herself. But
she said, "The gods watch over him."

"You are a sorceress," said Barsine. "You are very pow-
erful, they say. Will you guard him against harm?"

"He is guarded," Meriamon said. Not knowing if she
spoke the truth. A good priestess, she told herself, should
trust the gods to look after their own.

She rose. She needed the sun and the clean air. "Guard
yourself," she said, "and the child you carry."

Kleomenes was waiting outside of Barsine's tent, trying to
look as if he had just happened by. Niko was glowering at
him, as usual. Niko did not approve of her lapdog, as he
called the boy.

Meriamon walked past them both. Niko fell in behind
her. He had the sense not to say anything. Kleomenes, who
was younger, stretched to keep up, for she was striding
swiftly. "What happened?" he wanted to know. "You look
furious. Has somebody been at you?"

She did not answer. There were too many words in her;

they fell over one another.

"It was Barsine, wasn't it?" he said. "She's jealous of
you. everybody knows it. The king thinks too much of you
to suit her- What did she say? I'll give her what for."
Meriamon stopped short. Kleomenes went on past her,
caught himself, scrambled back. "Kleomenes," she said.

TYRE 153

She kept it gentle, but there was iron in it. "I know per-
fectly well that you're running out on Philippos. Even if
there is nothing much to do in the hospital now."

He looked like a whipped pup, alt droop and wounded
eyes. "But there isn't anything to do," he said.

"You are still Philippos1 apprentice. He won't love me
for luring you away from your duty."

"But—" said Kleomenes.

"Go," said Meriamon.

He went. He dragged his feet, he looked back often, he
even shed a tear. She hardened her heart and her eyes. He
heaved a mighty sigh and turned his back on her.

She had no pity to spare. She turned from the way he
had taken and went to the horselines.

Her mare was there, accepting a grooming with queenly
condescension. The Thracian grinned at Meriamon and
bobbed his untidy head. One way and another they had
both acquired names. The groom was Lampas, which was
not the name his father had given him, but he liked it, and
answered to it. The mare was Phoenix. Meriamon said
their names to herself, anchoring herself with them, inclin-
ing her head to the groom and laying a hand on the mare's
neck. Lampas grinned even wider. Phoenix snorted and
shook her head.

"You ride?" Lampas asked.

"I ride," said Meriamon.

It did not matter where. Phoenix wanted to run.
Meriamon let her.

Niko caught them not far from the Leontes,   and that be-
cause Meriamon had stopped to let the mare   graze. He was
riding the bow-nosed gelding, which had no   speed, but
was almost the mare's match for endurance.   He had a pack
with him, and a full wineskin, and Sekhmet   riding in the
fold of his cloak.

Meriamon eyed him askance. He did not say anything.
154 Lord of the Two Lands

He was armed, she noticed, with sword and spears. He at
ieast, it seemed, was prepared for a journey.

She shrugged. Why not? She twitched the mare's head
up. The river ran loud and high, leaping down from the
mountain. Snow lay thick on them amid and above the
deep green of cedars. Alexander's men were up there, cut-
ting down the great trees for his causeway. Meriamon
touched the mare into a canter, toward the cedars and the
snow.

The long ride and the clean air did much to restore
Meriamon to herself. She was still a woman without a
shadow, but there was no pain in it, or none that mattered.
As the way grew steep, the river forged its path through
thickening trees, outriders of the forests of the Lebanon.
The ground was deep with their castings, the air dizzying
with their scent, strong and pure and green. The trees were
small here, but small in a cedar of the Lebanon was as
high as a tower, and great branches spreading wide like
outstretched arms.

"They pray to your Zeus," Meriamon said, halting under
one of them.

"Maybe they have their own gods," said Niko. He tilted
his head back. measuring the tree with his eye. "Titans,
maybe. These are trees the way giants are men."

"We don't have anything like them in Egypt."

"No one has anything tike them." Niko swung his leg
over the gelding's neck and slid to the ground. He had
taken to riding with a smooth bit as Meriamon did, kinder
by far than the monstrosities that the warhorses endured.
The gelding seemed to like it; he browsed happily enough
around it while Niko unslung the wineskin and held it out
to Meriamon.

She drank and handed it back, holding the wine in her
mouth, letting it go down slowly. It was good wine, well
watered: as good as the king had.

She dismounted, stretching stiffened muscles. She was

TYRE 155

thinner still than she needed to be; her bones jutted in un-
comfortable places. She rubbed one that ached particularly,
trying to be discreet about it. Of course Niko saw. The cor-
ner of his mouth twitched. She set her jaw and rubbed
harder. He shrugged out of his pack and squatted to rum-
mage in it, with Sekhmet offering advice.

Meriamon wandered a little, leading Phoenix; or maybe
the mare led her. And wisely: the hill moderated its slope,
and the trees paused suddenly, opening on a broad cleared
space that rolled down to the river. Cutters had been there,
but not for a season or more. Grass had grown over me
stumps; from one sprouted a young cedar, no taller than
Meriamon's knee, no thicker than her finger.

The mare strained against the bridle. Meriamon slipped
the bit from its mooring and hobbled her with a bit of old
rein and let her go. She set promptly to grazing, like a sen-
sible beast.

Niko's gelding followed her soon enough, hobbled like-
wise and freed of his bridle. Niko came up beside
Meriamon where she sat on a stump, with bread and a bit
of cheese and more of the wine.

They ate in companionable silence, listening to the call-
ing of birds in the wood and the cropping of horses in the
meadow. Meriamon was tired, but it was a good tiredness.
with wind in it, and sun, and her troubles left far behind.
The sun was still high, warm on her face, warm enough
that she pulled off her cap and unbuttoned her coat and let
the wind cool her skin.

Niko got up after a while and went down to the river.
He stooped to drink from it, and stayed there, trailing his
hand in the swift water. He would not be mad enough to
swim in it, surely. It was snow-cold.

He stood straight and let his cloak fall. Meriamon
opened her mouth to shout at him, but he stayed on the
bank, clasping his right arm to him as he often did, staring
down at the rushing water. Sekhmet wove about his an-

156 Lord of the Two Lands

kles. He gathered her up. She was almost the same color
as he was.

Meriamon dragged her eyes back to the horses. They
grazed side by side, peacefully, tails switching, now one,
now the other. It was not, Meriamon thought, as if she had
never seen a man before. And yet there was something
about him standing there, that made her insides clench.

He was not handsome. He was, in fact, rather un-
abashedly homely. He had a nose like a ship's prow and a
jaw like an outcropping of granite. But he was well made,
if one liked them long and lean, and he moved like a good
horse. He was a pleasure to watch.

It was spring, and she was lately come back from a long
sickness, and her body knew very well what it was for.
Nor did it care that Niko was the last man in the world
who would want the likes of Meriamon. He was male, was
he not? And young and strong even with his scarred and
twisted hand, and good to look at, there in the sun, with
the cat on his shoulder.

He came up from the river and stood by her. His cloak
was in his hand. He said something. "What?" she said.

"Nothing," said Niko maddeningly. He spread the cloak
on the ground and sat on it. He hardly looked at her. He
could stare at her till her skin crawled, when he decided to
be obvious about being on guard. When she would have
liked him to notice her, he was oblivious.

"Kleomenes notices me," she said.

He glanced at her then, sharp with ill temper. "What?"

"Nothing," she said.

He slapped at a fly. It had bitten him. He rubbed his
shin, muttering.

It was not the fly he was muttering at. "That puppy.
What finally inspired you to chase him off?"'

"He's been shirking his work," said Meriamon.
"Philippos is a hard man as it is; Kleomenes doesn't need
to make him harder."

"He could use a good tanning."

TYRE 157

"Oh, come," Meriamon said. "He's not as bad as that.
I've been teaching him as much as I can. He's a good pu-
pil. Just ... persistent."

"Pestiferous."

"I'd think you'd like him," she said. "He's clever
enough, and he wants to do well."

"He moons after you like a lovesick calf."

His voice was venomous. Meriamon looked at him in
surprise. He glared at his foot, which he had freed of its
shoe. There was nothing at all wrong with it.

"I suppose," said Meriamon, "he is a little exasperating.
Young things are. They do grow out of it."

"Not that one," Niko said.

"Why, what's he ever done to you?"

"Nothing." Niko pushed himself to his feet- Sekhmet
chose that moment to leap down from his shoulder. He
stumbled over her; his foot turned.

He did not fall on his bad arm. Not quite. But he fell
hard; hard enough to knock the breath out of him.

Meriamon did not even remember getting up. She was
on the ground beside him, reaching for him.

He had not harmed himself. The bone was all but
mended; muscle had withered as muscle did round a bro-
ken bone. It was not a pretty thing, but it was beautiful to
eyes that knew what it had been. She laid his arm in her
lap, working her fingers into the bleached and whitened
skin. He gasped. His hand twitched. Stiffly; barely to be
seen. But it moved. She bent the wasted fingers one by
one, carefully, easing when his breath caught.

He was staring at it. His lips were set tight; sweat ran
down his face. Pain. And he had not made a sound. He
never did.

"It's healing," she said.

He turned his face away, refusing what that healing
meant. A withered arm. A twisted hand.

"No," she said, firm enough to bring his head about.
"You've let it wither so that the bone can knit. Now you'll

158 Lord of the Two Lands

make it strong. It's going to hurt," she said. "I don't deny
it. But you'll have two hands again."

"One and a half," he said.

"More than that," said Meriamon. "It will never be as
strong as it was before, that's true enough. It won't be use-
less, either. How strong does it have to be to carry a
shield?"
Hope leaped in his eyes, but he knocked it down and sat
on it. "Philippos said I'd be invalided out."

Her breath hissed between her teeth. "He said what?"

"He said I'd heal enough for light work, if I didn't force
it. But I won't do any more fighting."

"When did he say that?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes!" she snapped.

"Somewhere back there," Niko said.

"Before Sidon?"

He shrugged. "I suppose."

"And he hasn't said a word since?"

"He hasn't needed to."

Meriamon wanted to spit. "That—maddening—man!
You, too. Both of you. He's got eyes as good as mine. He
can see what I see."

"Scars."

"Miracles!" She struck his shoulder with her fist.
"Don't you remember Eshmun's temple?"

"That was nonsense. It didn't do a thing."

"It did," said Meriamon. "Look at this! This should
have rotted and come off. It's healing. It's mending where
only a god could cause it to mend."

"If a god did it," said Niko with a curl of the lip, "why
didn't he do it all at once, instead of dragging it on and
on?"

"Maybe he wanted to teach you patience."

He glared. She glared back.

Why she did what she did next, she would never in her
life be able to explain. It was the sun in her, and the green

TYRE 159

smell, and the heat of temper sparking between them. She
bent down. She kissed him hard.

He tasted of wine and cedar. He smetled of himself:

horses, wool, clean sweat.

She straightened. Her cheeks were burning hot. His
were scarlet. All the way down to the neck of his chiton.

His arm was still in her lap. He reclaimed it. Carefully.

He would not look at her. She could hardly look at him.
He disliked her intensely; he had made that clear long
since. Now he would hate her.

Her guardsman was supposed to fall in love with her.
Not she with her guardsman.

He stood. He could not get into his cloak as easily as he
had got out of it. She had to help him. The shame of it
thinned his iips and pinched his nostrils tight.

She started to turn away, looking toward the horses. He
caught her.

She stood stiff and still.

"Why?" he asked her.

Her throat had locked shut- She drove words through it.
"I don't know."

His hand did not let go- She could break his grip easily
enough if she tried. "That's not an answer," he said.

"It's all I have."

She waited for him to say something more. He did not.
He let her go. She went to catch her mare.

• THIRTEEN •

As Alexander's causeway drew near the walls of Tyre, the
Tyrians roused to defend their city- They had catapults on
the walls, and armament in plenty for them, and galleys
that could row to within bowshot of the mole and harry
the men who labored there. Bolts and arrows were bitter.

160 Lord of the Two Lands

Fire arrows were deadly, catching in the timbers, flaring
into wildfire- Then in the balance of the equinox a storm
blew out of Hades and gnawed great gaps in the mole, that
needed long days to mend.

"At least," said Alexander, "we haven't got the towers
up, to be blown down again."

Towers indeed. They were Alexander's inspiration—
divine madness, people said, but he and his engineers built
two of them out of wood from the forests and walled them
with raw hides against fire. There had been siege-towers
before, but never like this: as high as Tyre's walls, twenty
fathoms and five, so high that men who climbed them
came to the summit winded and reeling, and looking down
felt as high as eagles.

If they had time to look down. Men who mounted the
dizzy height went up to man the catapults against the en-
gines in Tyre, and to shoot across the dwindling stretch
of sea, every day a few lengths smaller, a few lengths
closer to the frown of the walls. Men below manned cat-
apults against the ships and held them off, while the
workers on the mole widened and lengthened it and
made it strong enough to last, Alexander said, until the
world's end.

There had never been such siegecraft. But Tyre had its
own arts in war. The Tyrians, seeing the towers rising level
with their own, prepared a counterstroke.

They took a horse-transport, a wallowing big-bellied
tub of a ship, and they fenced its decks with dry timber
and filled it with tinder: broken branches, shaved wood,
sulfur and pitch. They lashed yardarms to its masts and
hung from them cauldrons filled with naphtha. Then
they weighted the stern until it sank deep in the water
and the bow lifted high, high enough to rise over the
causeway.

Alexander's men saw it coming, towed by galleys. Cat-
apult shot, bowshot, took a toll of the crews, but there
were too many, too well protected. The ship's own crew

TYRE 161

grinned and jeered from the shielded decks. The galleys
paused just within catapult-range, as if to gather their
strength. Then, with a shout, the oars flew up; paused;

swept down. The galleys leaped forward. The ship lurched
in their wake. A torch flared high on the foredeck. Others
r kindled from it. The men on it scattered, dipping, darting.
A handful shinned up the masts and out across the yard-
arms, and dropped their torches into the cauldrons- One
caught with a rush. The sailor above it dropped, plunging
into the sea. The other cauldrons, slower, burned with a
steadier fire, their kindlers diving as the first one had, but
smoother, swimming hard for haven.

The crew below dropped over the sides one by one. One
lingered longest: the captain, he would be, with his long
plaited beard and his arms heavy with gold. The many
scattered fires sputtered, wavered, seemed to ponder. All at
once and all together, they leaped up.

The captain poised on the rail. It was smoldering; sparks
sprang thick about him. He leaped, cutting a clean arc,
sleek as a dolphin.

Even as he struck the water, the ship struck the cause-
way at the foot of a tower. Men on the mole sprang for-
ward with spears, timbers, anything that came to hand.
Arrows rained about them. Tyre had unleashed a fleet,
boats like cockleshells but full of armed men, running up
the mole, springing into battle.

On board the fireship, one of the yardarms broke. The
cauldron tumbled down, spraying fire. Then another; then
another.

Someone had the sense to bolt for shore, to gather buck-
ets and bails and cauldrons, to muster a rank of men to
quench the fire. But the Tyrians had overrun the causeway.
One of the towers was alight. As the line of Macedonians
charged down the mole, the other sparked and smoldered
and caught. Men boiled out of it, full into the army of Tyr-
ians. They, massing, had fallen on the palisade that pro-
tected the towers, and torn it down.

162 Lord of the Two Lands

Alexander's voice rose high above the uproar. Gathering
his men, driving them forward, cursing the enemy with in-
ventiveness that won grins even in the heat of the fight.

He drove the Tyrians back into the sea. But they had
won their purpose. His towers burned like torches. AH his
engines, the timbers drawn up for the last stretch of the
mole, the tools and the devices and far too many of the
builders, smoldered into ashes.

"I'm not giving up now," said Alexander.

He was filthy, covered with soot, and smarting with
bums, but that was nothing to the anger that burned in
him. He would not have let himself be looked after at all,
but he came to the hospital carrying one of the worst
wounded, and Meriamon caught him before he could es-
cape.

"I won't give up," he said. He was not talking to her
at all. He was burning, and yet his fever was all of the
spirit. Rage. Outrage. Mere men had dared to thwart Al-
exander.

"They burned my towers," he said. "They destroyed
my engines. They killed my men. They dared. They
dared—"

Meriamon got his chiton off. It was half burned to bits,
and the other half was torn and tattered. He had not even
had armor on. He had been on the shore when the attack
began, contriving something intricate with his chief engi-
neer. He had had his sword—no Macedonian would go
anywhere without one. And, fortunately for his mobility,
he had been wearing solid shoes, a bit of sense that he had
learned from hard experience, taking splinters and worse
from scrambling over rough-cut timbers. The soles were
scorched almost through, but they had held.

The high color of his face was not all temper. He had
burned it, more on one side than on the other, and singed
his eyebrows. Blisters were rising along his neck and

TYRE 163

shoulder. His hands were burned, not badly, but when he
came to himself he would hurt.

"I built those engines once," he said. "I'll build them
again. I'll build them higher, harder, stronger. I'll show
those sons of dogs what it is to make war against Alexan-
der."

Meriamon set to work with cool cloths and salve. One
of the wounded men was shrieking. He had come in
among the first, a charred and writhing thing, faceless and
handless but not, yet, voiceless. Naphtha had rained down
on him and scoured his flesh away. The gods had not seen
fit to take him.

"They shall pay," said Alexander. "They shali pay in
blood."

She salved his hands and wrapped them in soft ban-
dages. He did not see her. His anger was all that there was,
a fire hotter than any that had burned on his causeway.
Pride had driven him to build it, but wrath ruled him
now, and would rule him after. If he could ever have with-
drawn from this madness, that hope was gone. The Tyrians
had burned it with his towers.
"Stubborn," said Meriamon. "Stubborn fool."

She waited to say it, though it rose up in her till she
thought she would burst. She did all that she could for the
wounded. She looked after the simply sick, and the odd
mishap. She put Kleomenes to bed, doing it bodily, while
he protested that he was perfectly able to keep on
working—nodding even as he said it. Niko tripped the boy
neatly and dropped him into his blankets, and sat on him
until he fell asleep.

She exchanged bared-teeth grins with the one of the
other boys whom Kleomenes' racket had managed to
wake, and ducked through the tentflap. It was almost
dawn. The camp was as quiet as it ever was, no hammer-
ing and singing from the causeway, no sounds of revelry

164 Lord of the Two Lands

from the tents. Somewhere over toward Old Tyre a cock
crowed.

She was bone-tired, but there was no sleep in her.
Sekhmet came, a shadow out of shadows, and wove about
her ankles. She gathered the cat in her arms and turned to
glare at the looming bulk that was the king's tent. "Stub-
born, obstinate, pigheaded idiot."

"Who, Kleomenes?"

She directed her glare at Niko. "You know perfectly
well who it is."

Niko shrugged. She heard it more than saw it: a rustle
of cloth, a creaking of leather, a clinking of metal on
metal. He was wearing his corselet, had put it on when
word first came of the fight, and not taken it off again.
They could do that, these Macedonians; live in armor, and
never admit to noticing how it itched and chafed.

"Alexander is Alexander," Niko said.

"You're all as blind mad as he is."

"Probably."

She hissed, sharp and impatient. What had happened
under the cedars had not changed anything. He was still
Niko: stubborn, obstinate, pigheaded, and given to sulks.
For all the difference it made, she might never have kissed
him at all.
It was a mercy, she supposed. He could have fled from
her, demanded another posting, gone back to Macedon,
even. Instead he stayed, and was her guardsman, and was
no different than he had ever been.

She walked. She did not much care where. Niko fol-
lowed where her shadow had been. Before sickness took
all the magic from her.

No. Not all of it. Only that part of it which made her
more than a minor priestess of a foreign god. She was still
a healer of sorts, still a companion to the Bastet-on-earth
who purred in her arms, still a pharaoh's daughter.

Dawn lightened as she walked through the camp. It
touched the edges of die mountains; it spread long across

TYRE 165

the sea- In a little while the king would come out to make
the morning's sacrifice. Then the crews would go down
to the causeway and set to work again, making nothing of
fire and death and the enemy's assault. Alexander would
have thought of something new to protect them, a new
wall, a new shield, a strengthened guard. Alexander was
always thinking of new ways to win a battle. He was like
a god in that, or like a madman. Or was there any differ-
ence?

Meriamon paused on the eastern edge of the camp. The
splendor of the morning was in her suddenly, filling her so
full that she staggered. Strong arms caught her. One was
stronger than the other, but not so much now, not so evi-
dent. She did not look at him, did not try to free herself.
The boat of the sun lifted above the horizon, far and far
behind the mountains' wall.

The shadows withered and fled. All but one. Running
long and low out of the wake of the sun, sulfur-eyed,
laughing with jackal-jaws agape, rising man-high,
Macedonian-high, weaving and dancing about her, her
shadow, her lost magic, coming with the sun to make her
whole again.

As whole as she could be when she was not in Khemet.

The long light of morning spread about her. She stepped
out of Niko's grasp. He did not try to hold her. Nor had he
dropped her, or thrust her away. She could admire him for
that.

"You're shining," he said. "Like a lamp in a dark
room."
"Am I?" she asked him.

"Yes." His eyes drifted toward her shadow, danced war-
ily back to her face. "Why?"

His favorite question. This time she could answer. "The
gods willed it."

"Why now?"

"The gods know."

"You," he said, "can be infinitely exasperating."

166 Lord of the Two Lands

She laughed. She had not done that in much too long.
"Then I'm a match for the rest of you."

"We don't—" He did not finish it. Wise man. "It's easy
to forget," he said. "What you are."

She did not say anything to that.

He shook himself, rattling his armor. "Well. You're still
human enough. Are you hungry?"

Her-stomach answered for her, loudly. That made him
laugh. "Come on, then. Let's go badger the cooks."

Hellenes. She would never understand them. Stark awe
one moment, laughing mockery the next, and an explana-
tion for everything. Niko explained her to herself over
bread sopped in honeyed wine, sitting in front of Thais'
tent, with Sekhmet making her own breakfast of a fresh-
caught mouse. "It's obvious what it is," he said. "You
needed a sign that you haven't failed with Alexander. The
gods want him here. So ... that . . . came back to you."
He paused. Even he was not ready to put a name to her
shadow. "Shouldn't that make it easier to bear the wait-
ing?"

"No," she said.

He was not listening. "I wonder what Aristotle would
say? Not that I studied much with him, but Ptolemy used
to tell me about their lessons, and the king is always talk-
ing about them. Reason and logic are everything to
Aristotle. He'd even impute reason to the acts of the
gods."

"Gods don't need to be reasonable," Meriamon said.
"But they are," said Niko. "We just don't see it, because
our sight is too limited. If we could comprehend the mind
of Zeus, we'd be Zeus ourselves."

"That's hubris,"

He widened his eyes at her.

"I know whal that means," she said. "Is your Aristotle
that proud of his intelligence, that he'd claim to know the
mind of a god?"

TYRE 167

"Aristotle says that the world is a rational thing, and
reason is the chief faculty of a man."

"Not of a woman?"

"Women," said Niko, "are the offspring of a flawed
seed. Having no reason of their own, they submit to the
rule and reason of the male."

Meriamon laughed aloud. "Aristotle says that?"

"Aristotle is the wisest philosopher in Greece."

"Ah," she said. "A philosopher. Wisdom's own sweet
friend. I'm sure, if he used his eyes instead of his reason,
he'd see what a fool he is."

Niko glared. "If Alexander heard you say that—"

"Alexander is a fool, too," said Meriamon- "All men are
fools. The world is reasonable? The world is logical? Not
that I've ever seen."

"You are a woman and a foreigner. How do you know
what you can see?"

"I have eyes," she said.

"But do you understand what they tell you?"

She looked at Aim. Simply looked. His eyes shifted and
wavered and dropped. But he said, "You're not a philoso-
pher. You don't understand."

"And you are?"

"Well," he said. "No. But it's a Greek thing- We Mac-
edonians are Greeks, when it comes down to it. That's
why Alexander took so well to Aristotle's teaching. He's
got the mind and the temperament for it."

"I haven't," said Meriamon. "I wouldn't want it."

"Why should you?"

She thought of throwing the dregs of her wine in his
face. Arrogant, muleheaded Hellene. She set down her cup
instead and said, "I want a bath. You might think about
one yourself."

She did not wait to hear what he said to that. The ser-
vants were ready with the water and the basin, and
Phylinna was waiting, as she was every morning, for Thais
never rose earlier than midday if she could help it.

168 Lord of the Two Lands

Meriamon was glad to wash off the dirt and the sweat and
the stains of a long day and a longer night; and with them
a little of her temper.

It was joy beyond expression to have her shadow back;

to reach within and find its presence in place of echoing
absence. But in the end it altered nothing. It brought her
no closer to Khemet.

She was not surprised to find who waited for her when
she came out, clean and combed and dressed and begin-
ning to feel the tug of sleep. She had been expecting it;

avoiding it.

Barsine's eunuch bowed low, with a slant of dark eyes
'toward her shadow. It lay quiescent. Where it had been, it
was not telling. It would not be leaving again that it
knew of.

Meriamon inclined her head and waited.

"Lady," the eunuch said. "My lady asks . . ."

Meriamon sighed. "I come," she said.

The tent was the same. It never changed. The air never
stirred, the women never moved, except to go from bed
to outer chamber and back- It was a matter of great mo-
ment to step outside and see the sun, a deed of high dar-
ing to wrap oneself in veils and go down to the market.
Two of them would not be doing that again, Meriamon
suspected. She was almost sorry for them, Parsa though
they were.

She did not see them in the outer chamber, in which she
waited for an interminable while. In the inner was only
Barsine and, settling at her feet, the eunuch.

Barsine at least had changed. She was close to her time
now, hugely swollen but serene. She looked like an image
of a goddess, sitting in the carved and rug-swathed chair,
wrapped in a great robe of purple thickly woven with gold.

Her eyes were clear still, regarding Meriamon with
grave interest. "You look well," she said.

TYRE 169

"I am well," said Meriamon.

"So his majesty tells me."

Jealousy? Meriamon wondered. But there was none that
she could see. Only interest, and if not warmth, then some-
thing like concern.

"I hope," said Meriamon, "that my nurses haven't paid
too high a price for letting me escape."

"The king dealt with them," Barsine said.

"Mercifully?"

"Very," said Barsine. "He sent them back with escort to
their fathers. There was no place for fools in his army, he
to!d them. Maybe the Great King would have better use
for them."

Meriamon drew a slow breath. "That was no punish-
ment."

"No? Their fathers might not choose to take them back.
They had been captives, after all; and the world knows
what barbarians do to the women they have taken."

"Not Alexander."

"The world knows him but little yet. They see the bar-
barian, no more. And he is so young."

"So is Horus young, and the Hellenes' Dionysos. They
are no less gods."

"Were they known for gods when their years were
few?"
Keen, that mind behind the quiet face. Meriamon ac-
knowledged it with an inclination of the head, even a
flicker of a smile. "You know what Alexander is."

"A blind man could see it," Barsine said.

"Even a Persian?"

"I am almost a Hellene."

"No," said Meriamon. "You are not that."

The fine brows drew together. "You hate us, then. You
truly hate us."

"Not you," Meriamon said. "Not for yourself. But for
what you are, yes."

"Why?"

170 Lord of the Two Lands

"Need there be a reason?"

"I am Hellene enough for that," said Barsine.

Meriamon laughed. It was free enough, and the air
seemed cleaner for it. "So you are. Well then. Would you
love us if we had taken your empire, set it under our heel,
given you leave to worship your gods—but worked our
will with them first, so that you might know who was
master?"

"But," said Barsine, "that is the way of the world,
surely. For conqueror to become conquered, and for a new
conqueror to rise up, and for him in turn to fall. Egypt has
had its day. Persis, it may be, is passing as well, in the
face of the king from Macedon."

"That doesn't trouble you?"

"It troubles me. I accept it. It is the will of heaven."

There," said Meriamon. "There we differ. Egypt does
not accept. Egypt rules, or it rebels."

"And yet its gods accept all who come, and make each
their own."

"Except yours."

"We have no gods to give. We have the Truth."
"There is no one truth. Its faces are as many as there are
gods in heaven."

"But—" said Barsine- And stopped. She sat back. She
firmed her lips.

"You see," Meriamon said. "Your faith knows the way
of adversaries, of two who can never be one, nor share
what is theirs. Your king, your faith, your magic—there is
nothing that ours can meet or match."

"We were never unjust to your people."

"No? Artaxerxes crushed us and slew our gods, slaugh-
tered Apis' bull in his own temple. You call that justice?"

"That was long ago," said Barsine, "and richly earned.
You had rebelled against him."

"We had taken back what was ours."

"You were conquered."

"We are never conquered."

TYRE 171

The air rang like the clash of sword on sword. Barsine
was taut, half on her feet.

Slowly she subsided. Meriamon, who had never sat at
all, took the chair that wailed for her, and willed herself to
be calm. When she could trust her voice, she asked, "Now
do you understand?"

"No," Barsine said.

"Then you never will."

"No."

There was a silence. It was oddly peaceful.

"I do," Barsine said after a while, "understand why you
left us. You would have found us unbearable."

Meriamon did not feel that she needed to answer that.

The silence stretched again. Meriamon made no move
to break it. Again it was Barsine who spoke. "Will you be
with me when my child is bom?"
That took Menamon by surprise. "You want me there?
Even knowing what you know?"

"You hate with a clean hate. And you are a healer."

"A poor one as my people reckon it."

"That is better than anything here."

"Not now. There are priests of Imhotep in the service of
the king. He will see that they look after you."

"Priests," said Barsine. "Will mey consent to be made
eunuchs, then, to attend my presence?"

"You wouldn't," Meriamon said, shocked out of dignity.

Was that a glint of wickedness in the dark eyes? "I shall
ask for you."

And Alexander wouid grant it. Meriamon knew that as
well as Barsine did. He would say exactly what Barsine
said, and be even less patient about it.

"I could strangle your child at birth," Meriamon said.

"You would not," said Barsine.

Clear, clear eyes. And a will as strong as any queen's.
It was gentle, it seemed soft, but it would not yield for
anything that Meriamon could do. She would have

172 Lord of the Two Lands

Menamon there, festering hate, feeble magic, and all; and
that was that-

• FOURTEEN •

Menamon frowned at Niko. "Close your fist," she said.

He did. It was not much of a fist, but it was more than
he had had. "Open," she said. She set a ball in it: a small
one such as children played with, tanned hide sewn over
thick-wadded wool. "Now," she said. "Squeeze it."

He shook with effort. The muscles stood out in his jaw;

sweat ran down his face.

His fingers sagged open. The ball dropped. Sekhmet
bounded after it, batting it with a paw.
Meriamon smiled at them both. Niko glowered. "I'm as
weak as a baby."

"Not quite," she said. She retrieved the ball. "Now.
Again."

He set his teeth, but he obeyed her. She watched care-
fully. The bone was knit long since. His hand was twisted
and shortened, ugly enough but far from what it could
have been. He was, for all his doubts, getting his strength
back, and regaining use of his hand. He would not get all
of it. But neither would he be a one-handed man.

His fingers were stiffened and clawed. They would soft-
en, she hoped, if he did as she told him. His thumb and
forefinger could not meet, not yet, but she had hopes of it.
He did not voice any objection to the game with the ball,
which every other Macedonian she knew would have pro-
tested loudly and refused to have anything to do with.
Niko gritted his teeth and knotted his brows and endured,
till his face was wringing wet and his body trembling with
exhaustion.

She caught the ball as it fell yet again, and tossed it to-

TYRE 173

ward Sekhmet. The cat pursued it joyously under
Meriamon's bed.

Niko half-rose to go after it. Meriamon held him down.
"Not now," she said. "Rest a bit. You're trying too hard."

"I want to be whole," he said.

She took his hand in hers, working her fingers into its
knots and spasms. He jerked in sudden pain; she held him
till he eased, and went on. "You'll be whole," she told
him. "It takes time, that's all."

"I want it to be now."

He was as simple as a child. She had a sudden, power-
ful urge to kiss him. She did not. He had not welcomed it
before, or ever said a word of it.

He was not aware of her at all, except as a source of
pain and slow ease.

"You've been practicing with weapons," she said.

He started. She held his hand before it could pull away.
"How did you know?"
"I've watched you. You're losing sleep on it. Why not
do it in the day like everyone else?"

"I'm guarding you in the day."

"That's no excuse."

He shrugged one-sided. "I didn't think you would ap-
prove."

"Why not? It's making you stronger."

"Strong enough to go back to the cavalry?"

Her heart stuttered. She said steadily, "Strong enough
for that. Since you're a left-handed man."

A long sigh escaped him. It did not look like relief. He
was scowling at his hand, or at her fingers flexing his,
making them bend and straighten. "I still can't hold Ty-
phon's rein."

"You've tried."

It was not a question. His response was not an answer.
"I was thinking. Did you see the horse that Peukestas
brought in yesterday, that he said had come from Scythia?
Did you see what it had for gear?"

174 Lord of the Two Lands

"No," said Meriamon- "I was getting a catapult bolt out
of some idiot's leg."

"It was something," Niko said. "It had a bit—not even
like the thing you use on Phoenix, that wouldn't keep a stal-
lion down for a heartbeat. It was just a broken link, nothing
to hold the tongue, no bars to clamp the jaw, nothing. But
the groom was riding as solid as you please. It's the saddle
mat did it. It's got padding, and arches that come up fore and
aft, and hold you where you sit. You can't lose your seat for
anything, unless you're hopeless to begin with."

"You rode Peukestas' horse." said Meriamon. She
wished that she could doubt it.

"He's not much to look at—he's got a coat like a half-
shorn sheep, and a head to match. But he's as tough as old
leather. And his mouth: silk. I had him going from a gal-
lop to a standstill and back, with hardly more than a finger
on the rein."
"Did you buy him?"

"Peukestas wouldn't sell."

He did not, she noticed, sound unduly cast down. "So?"

"So I was thinking," he said. "If I could get one of the ar-
morers to have a try at a saddle like that, and keep the bridle
I've got—I wouldn't need so much strength to keep Typhon
in hand. Even," he said with a curl of the lip, '^this one."

"Why not trade Typhon for a quieter horse? Then you
won't need to'do anything at all."

"Typhon is mine," he said. "I bred him- I was the first
man ever to sit on his back. And the last, too, if I hadn't
let Amyntas look after him."

"Sell him to Amyntas."

"No," said Niko.

Meriamon shut her mouth with a click. She should have
known better. She did; but she had to try.

"He's pure Nisaian, you know," said Niko. "I had his
dam out of a Persian mare, and his sire was the king's
own—Philip, that was, before he died. He's not the best-
tempered of beasts, but he has heart, and brains . .. too

TYRE 175

much, if you ask some people. You've never really seen
him, have you?"

"I've seen enough," Meriamon said.

"You haven't." He got up, freed from her grip at last,
eager. "We've time before sundown. Maybe we can even
talk to an armorer. The king might be interested, if we can
make it work."

Meriamon could think of no good reason to refuse him.
If she was there, she told herself, he would not try to ride
the beast. Greek horses were flighty, and enough of them
were wicked-tempered that she could almost forgive the
ghastly bridles their masters hung on them, but Typhon
had a name for viciousness. The grooms talked when she
went to visit Phoenix, telling tales of men kicked and bit-
ten, and Amyntas thrown and nearly trampled.

The beast was handsome enough. Not a delicate beauty like
Phoenix, but big for a Greek horse—Nisaian certainly, a
solid sixteen hands, deep-chested and proud-necked, with a
fine straight head and a bright intelligent eye. Not, she
admit-
ted, a malicious one, but there was'no kindness in it.

He greeted his master with upflung head and deafening
whinny, half-rearing on his tether: they did not keep him
hobbled, no hobble could hold him. Niko went in under
the rope, catching it close to the halter, taking no notice of
the pawing hoofs. The stallion bucked and plunged. For a
moment Meriamon was sure that Niko would leap onto his
back. Clearly he thought of it, but he had a little sense left.
He soothed and gentled the stallion down, stroking the
dampened neck, murmuring in the flattened ear. It quiv-
ered, flicked, rose.

Niko grinned at Meriamon. "He's a beauty, isn't he?"
He was that: gleaming copper, with a star on his fore-
head. Some brave soui—the groom, no doubt, with his
bruises and his insouciant look, lounging out of reach—
kept him spotless, his mane cropped and standing stiff, his
tail brushed to silk.

176 Lord of the Two Lands

"He'd fetch a kingly price," Meriamon said.

The grin vanished from Niko's face. "I'm not selling him."

"Pity."

"Well," said Niko. Cleariy he felt that he could be forgiv-
ing, with his demon of a stallion eating sweets out of his
hand—drawing back when the hand was empty, snaking to-
ward it with teeth snapping, to be slapped smartly on the
nose. "Thew now," said Niko to one or both of mem. "He's
testing, that's all. He has to know he can respect you."

"I'd rather be respected by a horse with more sense."

'Typhon has a lot of sense. He doesn't put up with idiots."

"You'd never know it."

Niko bared his teeth at her.

She exchanged look for look with the horse. There was
a god in him, she thought. And not a gentle one. "Set,"
she said. "Your name is Set."

"His name is Typhon."

"It is the same."
"You call your cat Sekhmet."

"Sekhmet is her own cat. I don't ask her to carry my
life in battle."

"Don't you?"

Meriamon's mouth was open. She closed it. He did not
mean— No. He did not know what he was saying. He was
being a Hellene, that was all: quick, and clever with his
tongue, and no matter what it said.

"I'm going to get a saddle made," Niko said, more to
the horse than to her. "And if it works well, who knows?
I'll try the bridle, too. You'd welcome that. No more edges
on your tongue. No more iron on your jaw. You'll leam
what gentle is."

"Not that one," said Meriamon.

Niko ignored her- The horse's eye rolled, mocking her
fears.

Alexander had had enough of idling outside of Tyre. What
he called idling was the greatest siegecraft in the world, from

TYRE 177

dawn tili long after dark and up again before the sun was up,
building the bridge to the city. It was all but up to the gate
now, the towers raised anew, and more of them, a wall of
wood and reeking raw hides, flinging boits over the walls
and stones upon the ships that harried from the sea.

"There's nothing to do here," he said, "but hew wood
and haul water. I'm for the mountains inland. They've
been harrying our crews, keeping them from the timber-
cutting. I'll settle them."

And gather a fleet. He did not talk in public about that,
but Niko heard of it from Ptolemy, and went over it until
Meriamon could recite the tale by heart. "The kings are com-
ing back to Phoenicia out of the Great King's service, and
bringing their fleets with them. Gerostratos is on his way to
Tyre. Arados, Byblos, Sidon—their fleets are back, and their
cities have surrendered to Alexander. He has ships now, if
he'll only claim them. He can take Tyre by sea."

"How in the world—" Meriamon began, the first time
or six. After that she did not need to.

'To begin with," Niko said, "he. can drive off the boats
that harry our crews. Then he'll find a way to break the
walls."

"With ships?"

"There is   a way," said Niko. "Alexander will see it, if
he hasn't   already. I'm just a soldier," he said, "and no gen-
eral, but   I see what's in front of my face. Ships are the
key. Once   he has ships, he has Tyre."

Meriamon was not at all sure of that. But Niko was off
and running, and no word of hers could call him back.

Just a soldier, she thought. Oh, certainly. And Alexander
was just a boy who happened to be a king. Niko had no
such fire on him as Alexander had. No one did. But he had
a power of his own, earth-deep, earth-strong, and he was
full of it. He followed her dutifully as a guardsman should,
but his mind was on the king, and his eyes whenever they
were near where Alexander was.

He had the saddle he had been looking for. It was an

178 Lord of the Two Lands

odd lumpy thing like a cushion gone bad, and Typhon re-
garded it in plunging, snapping, kicking mistrust, but
Niko, with Amyntas and the groom and a sizable audience
of hangers-on, got it on the horse's back. Then he let the
beast get the feel of it, taking his time, losing idlers to
livelier entertainment.

Meriamon had hoped—prayed—that he would let
Amyntas do the testing. The boy was horseman enough,
and the horse knew him and would accept him. But Niko
was hardly one to watch when he could be up and doing.
With no more warning than a word to the two who held
the bridle, he sprang into the saddle.

Typhon stood rock-still. Meriamon remembered to
breathe. The horse flung himself squealing skyward and
came down plunging- Bucking, it would have been, but
Niko had the beast's chin hauled against his chest. Using
his good hand. The bad one gripped mane, then saddle.
Holding- His legs clamped to the horse's sides; his body
rode with the heaving, lunging, kicking, motion, one with
it, flowing into it.

The stallion was galloping, no longer plunging; slowing
little by little, easing, smoothing, accepting this weight on
his back: this and no other, that had been the first to tame
him. His ears were up. Had been up, Meriamon realized,
almost from me first.
It was play. For both of them. Niko grinned like a ma-
niac, riding his maniac of a horse. Now his hand was on
his thigh. His left hand. His right hand, twisted and
clawed, held the reins in its weak grip.

Meriamon's hands went to her face. She wanted to close
her eyes, but she dared not. That demon, that Set-in-flesh—it
would kill him. It would break free and rear and twist and
throw him, and trample him to bloody nothingness-

They danced up to her, snorting horse, grinning rider,
and halted, breathing hard, both alike. "You!" she raged at
them. "You idiots!"

Niko laughed. Typhon tossed his head. His mouth was

TYRE 179

shut. She forgot his temper, forgot her caution, forgot ev-
erything in hauling his head about and prying his mouth
open. He was wearing the Scythian bit.

Words forsook her. She let the bridle go. She got her
hands on Niko and hauled him down, so hard, so sudden,
that he could not even stop her. When she had his feet on
the ground, she knocked them out from under him and sat
on him, hands fisted in his chiton, screaming at him.
"Have you gone mad?"

"Have you?"

That was not Niko. She got up slowly. Alexander was
there. Ptolemy, too, and Peukestas holding Typhon's bri-
dle, and Hephaistion. She was quite calm. A blank calm.
She pointed toward the horse's head. "Look," she said.
"Look at that."

They looked. Peukestas whistled between his teeth.
"Herakles! I wouldn't have tried that.'*

"I'd like to," Alexander said. "on Boukephalas. Who,"
he said before Meriamon could say anything, "is a great
deal more reliable than this spawn of Mother Night."

Niko got to his feet, a little stiffly. Meriamon spared no
sympathy for him. He had not harmed his hand. She had
made sure of that- "He likes it," Niko said. "He goes bet-
ter with it."

"You caught him off guard," Ptolemy said.

Niko set his jaw and looked stubborn.
"You have to admit," said Alexander, "'it wasn't the
most intelligent thing you've ever tried. If not quite the
least. There was a little matter of stopping a chariot with
your bare hands."

Niko flushed. "Damn it, Alexander—"

"Damn it, Niko, is it your neck you'll break next?"

"No," Niko said. Fearless. Even with Alexander glaring
down that royal nose at him, which was a feat: Niko was
a good head taller than the king.

Suddenly Alexander laughed. 'There never was any
keeping you down, was there?"

180 Lord of the Two Lands

"No," said Niko. "Alexander." He made a title of it. and
of his stiff pride a grudging respect-

"Well," Alexander said. "I must admit it was impres-
sive. But promise me you won't try that bit again till
you've got it on a safer horse."

"TYphon is perfectly safe," said Niko.

"I wouldn't bet on it" Alexander exchanged glances with
the stallion. His eyes narrowed. Meriamon moved to catch
him before he tried the beast himself, but he stayed where he
was. His glance shifted to Niko. 'Tell me, Niko. If I asked
you to ride with me, would you ride another horse?"

Niko stood frozen-still. His voice was almost too low to
hear. "Ride where?"

"To the mountains," said Alexander. "To start with."

Niko drew a great sobbing breath. His whole heart was
in his eyes. But he said, "You gave me another duty."

"So I did." Alexander looked at Meriamon. "Can you
spare him, lady?"

"Do I need to?"

Alexander's head tilted.

"You have other Companions," Meriamon said. "Why
do you need this one?"

"He seems to need me," said Alexander.
He did. But she said, "What if I need him?"

"That's for you to say."

Niko had not moved a muscle. What he wanted, she
could see with her eyes shut. What she wanted ...

'Take him," she said. "He belongs to you."

• FIFTEEN •

"I don't have to go," Nikolaos said. He had drunk enough
at dinner to make him say it very carefully, but he was
steady—mostly—on his feet. And he was not where

TYRE 181

Meriamon would have expected him to be, with the King's
Companions, making himself one of them again. He had
been there for a while, but then he came to Thai's' tent.
The hetaira was gone, taking dinner with her lover and the
rest of the king's friends. Meriamon was there alone as she
liked to be, quiet with Sekhmet and her shadow, trying not
to think of what the day had done.

Niko loomed over her as he had the first time she saw
him, enormously tall and enormously foreign, in a cloud of
wine and flower-scent. He had a garland on his head. He
carried a jar of wine cradled in his weak arm, and a pair
of cups. He looked down at her and said what he must
have come to say. "I can stay," he said. "If you need me."

"I don't need you."

He sat down on the couch beside her. Sekhmet promptly
established herself in his lap. She did not mind that he
reached around her to fill a cup and hand it to Meriamon.
He filled the other, set the jar on the table.

Neither of them drank. There was an ell-broad stretch of
couch between them. It could have been as wide as Alex-
ander's causeway.

"Why aren't you with your friends?" she asked him.

"Why weren't you having dinner with the king?"

"I wasn't hungry."

"You never are."

She frowned at the cup in his hands. There was a sphinx
painted on the bottom, glimmering darkly through the
wine. "I ate. Phylinna ate with me."

"Good."

She raised the cup to her lips. The wine was strong, the
way the Macedonians liked it: dark and sweet and barely
watered.

"The Persians have a saying," Niko said. "If you make
a decision, first consider it sober. Then consider it drunk.
If it's the same in both conditions, it's the right one."

"I thought it was the other way about. First drunk, then

•Kr1

5^     sober."

182 Lord of the Two Lands

"As long as you do both, it doesn't matter."

"I have precious little head for wine," said Meriamon.

"I can drink for three of you."

He proceeded to do it. She caught his hand as he low-
ered the empty cup, and captured the cup. "I think you al-
ready have," she said.

"I'll stay if you need me," he said.

"I told you I didn't."

"Then who'll look after you?"

"Who looked after me before the king inflicted me on
youT'

"He didn't—"

That was a lie, and he knew it. Meriamon laid aside
both cups, the full and the empty. "Why don't you go?
You have things to do, preparations to make. You're riding
before sunup. You know how the king is. If you're iate,
he'll leave you behind."

"I won't be late."

"So go."

"No," said Niko.
She got a grip on him and pulled. He was set like a
stone.

She stamped her foot. "Get out of my tent!"

"No," he said.

He was laughing at her. And Sekhmet in his lap, little
whore, yawning in her face.

"I don't need you!" she shouted at him. "I've got
Kleomenes."

That stopped him.

He was jealous.

She laughed.

He stood. Her head came to his breastbone. She sneered
up at him. "What kind of Greek are you, turning down a
fight to stay with a woman?"

That did it. His mouth opened, shut. There was every-
thing to say, or nothing. In the end he said nothing. He
look his wine with him. He left the cups.

TYRE 183

Meriamon picked up the one that was full. The wine's
fumes dizzied her. She drained the cup.

The king rode out before dawn. Meriamon did not see him
go. She had given Niko back his pride. She did not need
to watch him take it.

"He didn't take Typhon," said Kieomenes, who had
been there, yearning after the king's cavalry as only a
young thing could. "He had one of the king's mounts, the
big grey."

Meriamon took a breath. She was seeing to the dress-
ings of a man who had been burned when the fireship
came. He was the last of the worst wounded, the only one
who had not died. She mustered a smile for him. He had
no smile to return. The bottom of his face was melted and
seared, but his eyes were warm. "You're doing well," she
told him, "with the gods' help." She patted his unbumed
shoulder and went on to the next man.

Kleomenes followed her, chattering happily. "Amyntas
is in bliss. He gets to ride Typhon while Niko is away. Ev-
erybody was betting that Niko would take the horse and be
damned. Except me."

"Why?" asked the man whom Meriamon tended. He
had got a bolt in the thigh; for all that she could do, it had
begun to fester.

"Alexander said he couldn't," Kieomenes said. "Even
Niko listens to Alexander."

Meriamon snorted. Neither of them noticed. The
wounded man yelped. "Hold still," she snapped at him. He
held still, though his hands were knotted in the blanket.

Her temper cooled a little. "There," she said, lightening
her hands. "There now. It's done."

She could as well have said it to Niko. He was gone.
His own world had taken him, his war and his king. He
would come back, if the gods were merciful, but not to
Meriamon. What need? He had only been her guardsman

184 Lord of the Two Lands

because he could do nothing more deserving of his place.
Now he was whole again.

As was she, with her shadow gliding in her wake, and
her purpose undiminished though Alexander held to his lu-
nacy of taking Tyre. There was no place in her fate for a
great sullen oaf of a Macedonian.

Word came back quickly enough. Alexander had swept
down on the Tyrian bandits like the wrath of heaven, bro-
ken their'will and ended their raids and gone on to Sidon.
There, the couriers said, he had found a fleet, and sworn
it to his service. There were ships building, ships fitting,
ships massing in the harbors from Arados to Cyprus.

Scores of galleys, the messenger said, gathered in Alex-,
ander's name. Meriamon was in the hospital when the man
came. He had a festering sore in his foot, which troubled
him little enough when he rode, or so he said, but
Parmenion had sent him to the physicians once his mes-
sage was delivered.

Even then he would not have said anything, but she
gave him wine with poppy to keep him quiet while she
lanced his foot, and after he had finished screaming he
babbled out the whole of his message word for word. Not
loudly, for a mercy. If Tyre had spies—and who knew but
that one of the men in the hospital was in Tyrian pay?—it
would give gold to know what force Alexander could mus-
ter against it.

If anyone could take the city, Alexander could. Even
Meriamon had never doubted that.

Alexander's messenger did not know anything of a cer-
tain one of Alexander's Companions. There were so many
to remember, after all, and Niko was hardly the greatest of
them- Merely a rider in the cavalry, no officer nor prince,
nor Personal Companion as his brother was and thus well
known to anyone who knew Alexander.

Meriamon could not have expected otherwise. She left
the hospital when it was time, went as she had taken to

TYRE 185

doing, to look in on Barsine. It never grew easier. It did
become less unbearable the more often she did it.

Barsine was close to her time. She would be glad to be
rid of the burden. Not that she said it; it was not her way
to complain. No more would she dress other than in
swathings of modest robes, although summer was well and
fully come to Tyre, in heat that was almost enough to
please Meriamon.

Meriamon left the stifUng closeness of Barsine's tent, cer-
tain that it would be only a day or two longer. The women
had gathered what was needful; they knew to summon
Meriamon wherever she was, as soon as she was needed.

But not before morning. She went to the market in
search of cooler clothing than she had, fine Egyptian linen,
coarser weave from looms in Asia, a single mad extrava-
gance; a bolt of Tyrian purple, deep-dyed, the merchant
said, and fit for a royal lady. Gods knew, he wanted
enough for it; but she bargained him down to a little less
than a queen's ransom, and found a servant who would
carry the whole of it for an obol and a flask of wine.

Thais was not in the tent. She seldom was. Not that she
entertained other lovers than Ptolemy while he rode with
the king, but she had friends among the hetairai, who liked
to keep one another company.

Meriamon ate her solitary dinner. Even Sekhmet had
left her to hunt in the shadows. Her own shadow was far-
ther yet, prowling among the cedars. For a moment
Meriamon caught the strong green scent, felt the softness
of leafmold under her feet.

She did not miss Niko's presence. Of course not. His
sulks and his tempers. His patent yearning to be elsewhere.
What did she need a guard for? If she wanted someone to
sleep across her door, Kleomenes would do it happily
enough. He had offered more than once, but she had never
needed him that badly.

It was quiet in the lamplight. The servants were all gone
to sleep, except Phylinna, who was with her mistress.

186 Lord of the Two Lands

The silence closed in. The noises of the camp came
muted through the tent's walls. The flap was open. the veil
down against the hordes of stinging and biting things, but
no breeze blew. No air stirred at all.

Days were easy. Meriamon could fill them with light
and occupation, could pretend that there was anything be-
neath but echoing emptiness.

It was not Niko's absence- Or not only that. Without her
shadow to guard her, without Sekhmet to weave spells
about her feet, she was naked to the night.

She rose from her couch. Her robe was thin, but in the
still heat even it was more weight than her body needed.
And yet she shivered.

There was another veil like the one that kept out the
flies. Meriamon draped it over herself. She looked like a
Persian lady, she thought somewhat wryly, or like a
shrouded spirit.

She walked through the camp. What precisely she
hunted, she did not know. An emptiness; an echo in the
heart of things. Where people were, they almost filled it.
But even they seemed thin somehow, stretched tight.

It was the siege, that was all. Five montfis of it, stretch-
ing toward half a year, and no end to it that any but Alex-
ander could see. That had a price. Men's souls, men's
courage, men's strengdi to face the enemy. Tyre suffered
little enough, with its fleets to keep it fed. Alexander's
army was nuisance only, a boy's bravado, brag and boast
and nothing more.

Her hands were cold, but they were warmer than her
heart.

What profit for her or for Khemet in this endless, boot-
less siege? Alexander would never have his way with
Tyre. He would camp here until he died, and died mad, for
a city he could not conquer.
Cold waves lapped her feet. She started back. Somehow,
without knowing it, she had come to the sea. The cause-
way was a darkness across the starlit water. Torches flick-

TYRE 187

ered along it; guards paced, now in shadow, now in light.
The towers at its end were dark. They had touched the
wall at last, only the day before, and Tyre had done noth-
ing to stop it. Why trouble? Nothing in the towers or on
the mole was strong enough to break those walls.

The city was dark. Sometimes there were lights along
the wail or shining from towers. Buildings were tall in
Tyre: its people lived in lowers, one atop another, like bees
in a great clustering hive.

Meriamon swayed on the sand. Here, between the water
and the sky, the emptiness was as vast as all heaven- Noth-
ing below her feet but void. Nothing above her head but
sky. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

"Mother Isis!"

Her voice was thin in die immensity. And yet it an-
chored her. It, and the name that had flown out of her. She
was Amon's priestess; but it was me Mother whose pres-
ence came strongest to her. warm breast, soft voice, a wall
against the emptiness.

"Magic," Meriamon whispered.

Magi.

Yet ...

She had quartered the camp. The Persians' tents were
quiet, no malice upon them, no hatred, not even enmity.
Alexander had won them with his mercy and his smile.
Their priests worshipped their Truth in peace. They
worked no magics against the king-

They were not, for once, the enemy. Bitter as that was,
as bitter as their own Truth.

Meriamon looked toward Tyre. Its enmity served Persia.
Its resistance-served itself. It would accept an overlord; but
not within its walls.

"So," she said to the loom of it. "Your priests are
^     mages, too."
It was aware of her, dimly, as a beast is of a gnat upon
its hide. How long had it been adding this power to the
rest? Had it done so from the first, or had it waited until

188 Lord of the Two Lands

Alexander was gone? Without the light and potency of his
presence, his siege was a frailer thing. His will informed
it stiil, his men went on unwearied with their labors, but
the bright edge was gone.

This had taken the heart out of her. This had caught her
when she was sick and driven her nigh down into death.
For this her shadow had hunted, and gone so far that it
could not find her again, until the sun and the king's pres-
ence and her own waxing strength had guided it back.

She staggered and almost fell, to know so much, so
fully, to be so naked to it—no shadow, no Bastet-on-earth,
no strength at all but what was in her body and her
shrinking mind. She was no warrior. She was singer, seer,
voice of the gods. She was eyes and a tongue, not a sword.

She was all that there was. Alexander's priests, his
soothsayers, his wise men and his philosophers: they had
no magic. They had talked it out of their world. It hid in
their deep places among the women and the mysteries.
Wine freed it. Alexander embodied it. But not here.

It had ridden in the fireship. It made itself one with ev-
ery man and woman and child ^of Tyre, set the will of the
city against the one who would conquer it. What bred it,
what fed it ...

Sight opened before her. The water at her feet stilled al-
though the waves rolled elsewhere as before, stilled and
smoothed and rounded as in a basin. Light welled within
it, torchlight and firelight. Voices chanted in a tongue nigh
as old as that of Khemet, so old that none now remem-
bered the meanings of the words, but shaped them for
sound alone. They were power purely, now the deep
voices of priests, now the high voices of priestesses. Shad-
ows moved: robed figures, cowled, their faces in darkness.
Tall pillars rose about them. A curtain stirred in a wander-
ing air. The lamps and the torches flickered. A shape
loomed, a gleam of gold, a dark sheen of bronze, a glitter
of carven eyes.

"Melqart," Meriamon breathed. Naming it. It was huge

TYRE 189

and heavy, man-shaped, thrice man-high; like the Hel-
lenes' Herakles it bore a club and wore for a cloak a lion's
skin. But no god of the Hellenes had ever had such a face,
broad and heavy, with a great braided beard and a nose
like a ship's prow; nor squatted as this one did, half kneel-
ing, half crouching, with its hands outstretched.

One of the priests stirred from among the rest, and
moved toward the god's feet. His hands were lifted. Some-
thing wriggled in them: something small and pale, raising
its voice in a sudden lusty cry. The priest paused, rocking
and soothing it: eerie to hear a croon like a mother's from
an old man's lips. The child quieted.

It was a boychild, well-formed, so plump that its limbs
broke into rolls of fat. The priest smiled down at it,
tenderly.

The god's hand was broad and curved like a bowl.
Gently the priest laid the child in it. The chanting had
ceased. In the silence, the sound of metal sliding on metal
was startlingly loud. The child wriggled in its strange bed.
Below it, the fire opened.

The chant began again, low and slow, but rising in long
cadences like the sea> until it mundered to the roof. At the
summit of it, the god's hand dropped. The child fell. The
fire leaped to embrace it.

Meriamon knelt in the sand. Her throat was raw. Had she
screamed? She could not remember. The scrying-basin was
gone, the waves curling and falling, sighing as they with-
drew.

She raised cold and shaking hands to her cheeks. They
were wet, and not with spray. The power—the power mat
was in blood, human blood, blood of a child—

She dragged herself to her feet. Horror had sunk deep. Be-
low it, beyond it, above it rose wrath. It was not the sun-
bright anger of the king. It was darker, deeper. It was as
implacable as the Nile in its flood. "No," she said to the city
and the night, and to the priests in their temple, in their
reek

190 Lord of the Two Lands

of blood and burning, and their terrible gentleness. "No." She
raised her fists and her voice, crying aloud. "No!"

In that word she set ail her rage and her pity and her
horror of any god who would demand not only blood but
blood burned in fire. She made of it a spear. She thrust it
with all her strength into the heart of the power.
It raised its force against her: arms as strong as iron, hands
of bronze, buffeting her. She swayed under the force of them.
Braced. Thrust deeper yet, though the power writhed like a
live thing, battering her, rocking her on her feet. "Gods," she
whispered. "0 my gods. Amon, Osiris, Horus upon the
throne of the horizon—Ra-Harakhte, 0 defend me. Isis—
Mother Isis—if ever you loved your child—"

She was failing. She would crumple. She would fall.
She would lie beneath the god's power, and for Alexander
in his bright splendor—for Alexander, nothing. Defeat,
death, the end of his empire; and Persia would rule as its
Truth ordained.

That too was the power's doing. Alexander was never
so weak as that, nor his defeat as certain. But if it came to
the crux, and it was power against power, then truly he
could fall.

She set her teeth, body and soul- She gathered every
fading drop of strength. She shaped it into a word: No. She
drove that word against the power out of Tyre.

It surged against her. She surged back. It held. She
would fail, fall, crumble into dust.

For an endless while they hung in the balance. In the ut-
most instant, just as she knew that she could hold no
longer, it fell.

It was broken- She knew that, there on the sea's edge,
with the darkness stooping over her. Tyre stood, and
maybe would stand for all that Alexander could do. But
his enemies would be flesh and blood, stone and steel.
Magic would play no part in it.

TYRE 191

"Lady. Lady Mariamne."

Light stabbed her. She recoiled from it. Her head—
gods, how much wine had she drunk?

Phylinna shook her none too gently. "Lady Mariamne.
Will you wake up?"

Meriamon opened her aching eyes. Bed beneath her.
Tent over her. Phylinna between, fairly dancing with impa-
tience. "Lady! Lady Barsine is brought to bed. She's call-
ing for you."

Phylinna would never understand why Meriamon
laughed, or why she wept, sitting up and shaking sand out
of her hair and groping for a robe that she did not remem-
ber taking off. The sand—she had not dreamed it, then.
Nor the long stumble back to the tent. half blind, half mad,
and worn to the bare bone, and her shadow, impossibly,
holding her up.

Sekhmet, washing her paw with delicate strokes of a
pink tongue, had a cat's disregard for mortal frettings.
Meriamon had been there, and she had fought a battle.
Now she was here. A child had died. Now one undertook
to be bom. That was balance, such as was in everything.

Balance. Surely. Barsine's child was a son, a handsome
lusty man-child whose hair, when he shed the dark furze
of birth, would perhaps be mouse-fair.

"His father cannot name him," his mother said. "There-
fore I take it on myself." She looked down at the infant in
her arms. Having shouted his presence in the world, he
had subsided into a watchful calm. Almost Meriamon fan-
cied that his newbom eyes could look into Barsine's own,
meet them and understand the light that caught in them.
"Herakles," Barsine said. "I name you Herakles."

• SIXTEEN •

Alexander was coming. Meriamon felt him in the earth.
He came like the bark of Ra, the boat of a million years,
that sails in the night in the land of the dead, and rises in
the morning in the land of the living. A fleet came with
him, but to the eyes of her power they were a host of can-
dles about the fire of the sun.

Meriamon could hardly think for the power of   it. It had
brought her out of Amon's temple, drawn like   a moth to
a flame, but in Alexander's presence she had   become in-
ured to it. With Alexander's absence and now   his return,
she remembered what great light and fire had   called her up
from Khemet.

Philippos would get no use out of her. She sent a boy
with word that she would not be coming to the hospital,
and went down to the sea. The city was deceptively quiet.
The siege-towers stood against the walls, but the catapults
were motionless, the soldiers who manned them quiescent
at their posts. No cloud of magic came out of Melqart's
temple. That was hardly destroyed; she was never such a
fool as to think so. Quelled, only. Dealt a brief defeat. But
there would be no blood rite for yet a while. She had made
sure of that.

Alexander would assure it. Or fall, and take his people
with him. That was not prescience, not exactly. It was
clear sight and long thought and the training given the
royal stock of the Two Lands.

After a while Meriamorr sat on the sand, clasping her
knees. Her shadow stretched lazily ahead of her, half on
the earth, half in the water. It bared its teeth at Tyre.

"A fine partisan you are," she said to it. It blinked lam-
bent eyes at her and settled into a watchful doze.

TYRE 193

As the sun rose higher, the day's heat rose with it. She
dropped her mantle gladly. The dress she wore beneath it
had made Phylinna catch her breath and wonder aloud if
Lady Mariamne was turning hetaira. It was Egyptian, that
was all, and modest enough for any decent sense, good
white linen cut close from breast to ankle and leaving her
arms bare. The air was delicious on skin that had been
wrapped in wool too long, cool still for her taste, but
pleasantly so. It played with the many braids of her hair,
touched the sea in long light swaths, ran away toward the
north. She fancied that she caught a breath of Khemet in
it under the sea-smell.

Someone else came and sat beside her. She glanced
without surprise at Thais. Phylinna was behind her, and a
pair of the servants, carrying a Persian parasol.

"It is pleasant out here," said That's. "And still cool. Are
you happy now that it's become a furnace?"

"It's not as warm as Egypt," Meriamon said.

"No wonder you dress as you do."

Meriamon's cheeks were warm. She did not know why.
Hellenes had no modesty at all.-

Hellene men. Their women were as shamefast as Per-
sians.

"I dress as all my people do," she said a little stiffly. "Is
there something wrong with it?"

"No," said Thais. "It's very practical."

"And wanton."

"Well," the hetaira said. "Those straps over your
shoulders—they'd drive a man wild, the way they slip and
let your breast peep out. And the linen, as thin as it is ..."
Her   eyes narrowed- She began to smile. "What a fashion
you   could set! It's better than nakedness. It hides so little,
but   just enough. Does our Niko knew what a beauty you
are   under all the coats and trousers?"

Meriamon's face flamed. Had she been a man, sun-dyed
red-dark all over, maybe it would not have been obvious.
But she was decently pale, as a woman should be.

194 Lord of the Two Lands

Thais forbore to laugh at her. "The Great King has sent
another embassy. Did you know that?"

"Yes," said Meriamon, blessing Thais' mercy. She had
felt the embassy's coming, too. Magi came with it with
their sacred fire and their bone-deep certainty, carrying
their mighty weight of Truth. They would be hoping to
wield it against Alexander.

"He's coming," she said. "He's close. Can you feel
him?"

Thais did not need to ask whom she meant. There was
only one He in Alexander's camp. "Can you?" she asked.

"With all my souls."

That's blinked at her.

Meriamon   shook herself. Clear-eyed, hard-headed Athe-
nian: no   magic for that one, no mystery outside of her phi-
losophy.   Meriamon smiled, tricking a smile out of Thais.
"I don't   think I understand you," Thais said, but lightly.

"You aren't supposed to," said Meriamon.

"I'm Greek. I have to try."

Meriamon laughed. The sun on her back was hardly less
potent than the sun of Alexander's coming on her face.
"Look!" she said. "Ships."

Tenscore and onescore and three. Two hundred ships and
more under Phoenician and Cyprian crews, sailing down
out of Sidon, with Alexander on the deck of the flagship.
Its sails were purple blazoned in gold with the emblem of
his house, the sunburst with its many rays.

Tyre saw him coming. Whatever shock his numbers
were, it hardly blunted their cunning. Ships of their own
sailed swiftly out, some to close in battle, some to come
about and wall the harbors against him. Outriders of his
fleet lowered oars and drove straight for the narrow mouth
of the northern harbor: iron-beaked war-galleys like great
winged arrows. The beat of their drums echoed over the
water, and the shouts of their masters, driving them to
stroke swifter, swifter, swifter. No ship from Tyre was

TYRE 195

close enough, or fast enough, to catch them. Bolts and ar-
rows failed and fell short.

The ship in the lead seemed to leap from the water full
into the center of the ship-wall. Even from the shore,
through the shouts and cries of men and the pounding of
drums, Meriamon heard the clash of iron-shod ram on
iron-shod prow, and the heavy thud of wood behind, and
the rending, rushing sound of the ship's hull giving way,
water pouring in, crew leaping into the sea.

But Tyre had not endured so long by giving way to a
single assault. Alexander's ships sank three of those that
walled the harbor, but behind those three were thrice and
four and ten times the number, and more on die open sea,
harrying the edges of the fleet.

It was victory enough for a beginning. The signal went
out, calling the ships to moor along the strand.

Alexander leaped from deck to shallow water and
waded to the sand, first of all his men. Meriamon had not
gone as far down as he was, or tried, with the whole army
streaming from camp and mole and half-ruined town,
shouting his name. It was a force, that passion of love,
strong enough to shatter stone. But Alexander was stron-
ger. He drank it in; he turned it all to light.

She could not see him, slender youthful figure that he
was, even in a scarlet chiton; he was engulfed in taller,
broader men. And yet he towered over them. Not one of
them but knew where he was, and who he was, and what
he was to them.

"Alexander." She said it to herself, softly. That's had not
moved from beside her, but even that uncompromising
face was rapt, seeing nothing but the king.

Meriamon stood, shaking sand from her dress. She held
out her hand.

Thais   took it, let it draw her to her feet. A little of the
blind   enchantment left her eyes. "Well," she said. "Now
we'll   see what Tyre says to that." Her glance took in the
fleet   drawn up along the strand, the men swarming from
196 Lord of the Two Lands

the ships, horses rearing and calling as grooms led them
from the holds.

Chaos; but chaos with a heart of law, and a smallish
man in scarlet whose presence filled it everywhere.

Alexander went up from the shore to the camp, walking
briskly. That was as much of a miracle as anything Meri-
amon had seen: going as he chose to go in so thick a
crowd. Where he went, a path opened. He paused often to
clasp a hand, to grip a shoulder, to exchange a word, but
his progress was swift, and no one hindered him.

He took the throng with him, all but those who had to
stay with the ships. Meriamon picked her way on the tram-
pled sand, aware that she had left Thai's behind. Her heart
lugged her toward the king. Later, she told it.

She realized that she was cool, as if in shade, but nei-
ther mantle nor parasol covered her. She had left them
both behind. Her shadow served for both. What men saw
as she passed them, she did not know. Nothing, maybe. A
cloud across the sun. A woman wrapped in a dark veil,
walking slowly toward the mole. No one spoke to her or
ventured to touch her.

Many of the ships had not come in with the others, but
sailed around behind the bulk of Tyre. Now one by one
they appeared on the southern tip of the isle, oars out,
rowing toward me strand. The city made no move to stop
them.

They backed oars a shiplength from the shore, men
springing down, wading or swimming, or lowering boats
from the larger galleys. The smaller ships ran full to land
and beached there. They were in a fine high humor, all of
them, Phoenicians here as those to the north had been of
Cyprus. If it troubled them to be assaulting a city of their
own nation, they showed no sign of it.

Sekhmet appeared from wherever a sensible cat went to
escape sun and trampling feet, and padded at Meriamon's
heel. People saw no more of her than of Meriamon. There

TYRE 197

was quiet where they were, however sudden, and a path to
walk in.

It was not the power Alexander had; people knew him
and gave way before him. They did not know Meriamon
or the power that was on her. It was a shadow-thing, a
thing of art and stillness.

There were Macedonians among the Phoenicians, big
fair-haired smooth-shaven men rising like trees above the
little dark bearded sailors. They lent a hand with the haw-
sers as all the rest did, or stood in colloquy with the cap-
tains. One had charge of the horse-transports, seeming to
be everywhere at once, now on deck, now in the hold, now
on the ramp with one of the horses. New ones, Meriamon
saw, and Nisaian from the look of them, fine blooded
stock. The one on the ramp must have been a full seven-
teen hands: the man at its head was no great deal taller.

The horse was giving him no trouble. It paused as it
came into the light, raised its head and drank deep of the
air. He murmured in its ear. The ear flicked back, pricked
forward again. Delicately for all its size, it picked its way
down the ramp.

Nikolaos looked well. Wind and sun had darkened his
skin to bronze and turned his hair flax-fair. His eyes were
more startling than ever before, like raw silver. He hardly
favored his weak hand at all.

He handed the horse to one of those who waited on the
sand, and turned to call out to someone. As he turned, his
eyes* path crossed Meriamon. He checked for an instant.
Perhaps perceiving a shadow where none should be. Per-
haps . . .

He did not see her. His eyes did not return to her, nor
did he approach. He went back to the ship and vanished
below.

She left before he came out again. The touch of his
eyes, however unwary, had shaken her to the root. To him
she was nothing but aggravation. To her he was much too
much.

198 Lord of the Two Lands

He had his place now. a command under the king, in the
fleet he had wanted, with the horses he loved. He would
not want to be reminded of a hated duty, an even more
hated incapacity.

The gods knew, she had troubles enough without adding
this one to it. The Great Wife of Amon should be a
maiden, but his singers could live the life of the body if
they chose; but Meriamon had never so chosen. The gods
took too much of her.
Now, when they should have all of her that was or could
be, she skittered and scattered over this impossible for-
eigner. It was a test, surely. A judgment. A proving of her
fitness.

Her heart, fickle thing, yearned now toward the man on
the ship. She forced it toward the king, and her body after it

Sekhmet suffered no such agonies. She streaked toward
the ship and vanished in Niko's wake.

Meriamon wished heavy hoofs on her; then hated her-
self for it. Sekhmet did as she pleased. If that was to play
the harlot with an oaf of a Macedonian, then Meriamon
could hardly stop her.

Alexander received the Persian embassy almost as soon as
he came to his tent. Proper royalty would have kept them
waiting for days upon his leisure, but Alexander had never
been one to be proper when he could be unpredictable.
Certainly, Meriamon thought as she fitted herself into an
accommodating shadow, the Persians were caught off bal-
ance. They should have expected something of the sort;

but no Great King would ever have summoned them and
then received them at once, as he was, with his chiton
damp and stiff with sea-salt, and a cup of mountain water
in his hand.

It was the same emissary as before, and the same white-
robed priest-princes wim him, father and sons. The hot dry
fire-scent was strong on them, the wall of righteousness as
broad and high as Tyre. There was an air of desperation in

TYRE 199

it as in the manner of the ambassador, for all his haughty
dignity. He had come to beg on behalf of his king; and that
sat ill with him, so ill that it was a sickness in Meriamon's
belly.

Blessed sickness, that it came from a Parsa nobleman in
front of the Macedonian king. She drew herself up.

As she stood straight, the ambassador went down, pros-
trating himself before Alexander. Alexander's body tensed
as if to step forward, but he stood where he was, still hold-
ing his cup. The Persian rose. Alexander handed the cup to
him and said, "Drink. You look as if you need it."

The Great King's ambassador looked nonplussed. He
took the cup; it would have fallen else. He touched it to
his lips. It rattled against his teeth. He lowered it, not
hast-
ily, but not slowly either.

"Well?" said Alexander.

"It is ... very good water, your majesty," the Persian
said.

"It ought to be. It comes from springs in the Lebanon."
Alexander went to a camp stool and sat on it. There were
chairs; some of them had been the Persian king's. He took
no notice of them. He looked up at the tall Persian, and it
was the Persian who, all at once, seemed the smaller.
"What does Darius want?"

"His family."

The Persian's directness made even Alexander blink. Then
he smiled. "So. Even a Persian can come to the point if he
has to. What will he give me if I let him have his family
back?"

The back of his hand, the ambassador's glance said. But
his .voice was level. "The Great King, the King of Kings,
offers the King of Macedon ten thousand talents for the re-
turn of his mother and his wife and his children."

"Ten thousand talents?" Alexander tilted his head.
"That's a fair handful of coppers."

The ambassador drew a long breath. "In addition," he
said; pausing as if he expected Alexander to interrupt. Alex-

200 Lord of the Two Lands

ander simply sat and waited, limpid-eyed, half-smiling. "In
addition, the Great King, the King of Kings, offers the King
of Macedon the half of his kingdom, from the Euphrates to
the sea, to be held by him in bond of friendship, m earnest
of which, the Great King, the King of Kings, offers the hand
of his daughter in marriage, to seal the alliance and to firm
the bond of peace between king and king."

Alexander's smile was gone. Something else had taken
its place; something to which Meriamon could put no
name. Glee, she might have thought, except that there was
anger in it too, and startlement, and a tinge of disbelief.

Focused, intent on the ambassador and the king, she had
not noticed who else was there. There were always people;

Alexander was never alone even in sleep. But she saw the
one who came forward. He had not been there when she
came, nor did she remember when he had come in. For all
she knew, he had slipped in through the back of the tent.

Once she had seen him, she could hardly forget him.
Parmenion was out of his armor for once, in a chiton that
surprised her: it was rich enough for a prince's. She would
hardly have expected it of him.

His words were exactly what she had thought they
would be. "Now there's a fine end to the war," he said.
His voice would never be less than harsh, but he was
clearly delighted. "If I were you I'd take it, money, king-
dom, girl, and all."

"If you were I ..." Alexander looked from him to the
Persians. They stood with eyes cast down, jaws set hard
against humiliation.

Alexander looked again at his general. There was a faint
line between his brows. "Yes," he said, "that's what I'd do
if I were Parmenion. I'd take the lot."

'Parmenion smiled.

Alexander smiled more sweetly than the old soldier ever
could. "But I am not Parmenion," he said. "I am Alexan-
der. And Alexander says to Darius: No."

TYRE 201

The Persians stiffened. No more so, for all of that, than
Parmenion.

"Why should I take half a kingdom?" Alexander said.
"Asia is mine already, and its treasure with it, and Darius'
daughter, too. If I want to marry her, then I will; I don't
have to ask her father's leave." Alexander stood. He
plucked the cup from the ambassador's slack fingers and
handed it to a page. "Does Darius want kindness from me?
Tell him to come himself, and ask for himself. He'll get
nothing from me otherwise."

The Persian stared at Alexander. He was tall even for
one of his people, head and shoulders above the king, his
fluted hat raising him higher still; robed like a king him-
self, with his great curled beard and his air of invincible
dignity. Alexander beside him was an upstart boy, a little
cock-a-whoop, an urchin playing at being king.

Alexander met the Persian's eyes. The man did not
flinch. He was too much me nobleman for that. But he
caught his breath- He bowed again, down to the carpet.
Then, with ceremony, he retreated.

His retinue followed him in -haste that bordered on
unseemly. All but the Magi. They waited for the rest to
withdraw, making no move.

They were aware of Meriamon. It was nothing so obvi-
ous as a turn of glance upon her, but her presence was
marked, her essence known and named. Her shadow raised
itself above her head, cobra-slender, cobra-deadly. She felt
its swaying in her bones.

The Great King's sorcerers neither attacked nor fled.
There was no enmity in them. No warning. Simply ac-
knowledgment, as of power to power.

The embassy was all but gone. The Magi stirred. They
did not bow, did not look at the king at all, but neither did
they turn their backs on him. Gliding in their robes, as
smooth as if they walked so every day, they backed out of
his presence.

• SEVENTEEN •

With Alexander back and the fleet on guard, the siege
leaped from long waiting to labor that was more like war.
His causeway was built, his towers raised, but he had an-
other inspiration for breaking down the wall.

He dreamed it, maybe, or a god taught him. He listened
to everyone who had an opinion, and studied the city, and
went hunting in the hills for a whole long careless day, and
came back shouting for his engineers.

Rams. Of course. But rams mounted on ships below the
wall, shielded as the towers were against the Tyrians' fire.
They could move where they needed to go, testing the
walls, and stop where they chose to stop. drop anchor and
batten hatches and hammer at the huge impervious stones.
Nor only were there stones in the wall; stones lay deep-
sunken in the water, barring the ships' approach. Under a
hail of bolts and fire arrows, divers bound ropes round the
stones, and men on shipboard drew them up with cranes
and made channels for the ramships.

It was the maddest thing Alexander had done yet, and it
seemed the most useless. People looked at him and mut-
tered about gods and insanity.

Nor had Tyre been idle. Its catapults shot missiles from
above. Its galleys, sailing close, cut the cables of the
ramships. Alexander armed galleys against them. Tyre
withdrew its ships and sent divers with knives. Alexander
anchored his ships with chains.

Tyre gave him a day's grace. Then it caught him nap-
ping. Quite literally: he liked to sleep for an hour in the
noon's heat, lying under a canopy to the south of his
causeway, while the Cyprians in the north and the Phoeni-
cians in the south moored or beached their ships and took

TYRE 203

their daymeal. Tyre raised a screen of sails across its
northern harbor, gathered its ships, and readied an attack.

Meriamon had seen the sail-wall in the morning when
she came to the hospital, and wondered what it was.
Something new for the war, she supposed. She came out
of the tent into the blazing heat of noon, and the wail was
still up, the wind making it belly and flap.

There was no wind, no breath of air. There were men
atop the towers that warded the harbor, tiny at that dis-
tance, moving quickly.

Niko was standing near the tent, peering toward the city.
Meriamon did not pause to wonder at that, or to reflect
that he was often about, doing one thing or another. "What
are they doing?" she asked him.

"I don't know." He shaded his eyes with his hand.
"They're up to something."

Without thinking about it, she started toward the shore.
Niko walked with her, his long strides keeping pace with
her shorter, quicker ones. Her eyes swept the water. There
was the causeway, looking as if it had been there since the
world was made. There was the fleet, moored or beached,
one desultory galley stroking landward. The ramships lay
at anchor, their scrabbling and thudding stilled for once.
Even the sea was still.

She began to run.

Alexander was under his canopy, eating and talking to a
handful of people. When he was done, his guards would
hurry them out and he would sleep.

The man on guard today was Ptolemy. He saw who she
was, and his brother behind her, sweat-streaming both, and
both a little wild- He got out of her way. She pushed a
great hulk of a Macedonian from her path, slid round an-
other, came face to face with the king.

"Mariamne," he said, glad as always to see her, raising
his brows at the figure she cut. She had forgotten to bring
a mantle. Her dress was wet, and it clung; and Egyptian

204 Lord of the Two Lands

linen, when it was wet and clinging, might have been no
garment at all.

"Alexander," she said, taking too many breaths to say it.
Even in Khemet one knew better than to run in the full
glare of noon. "Why are all your ships on shore?"

"We always stop at midday," someone said.

"Tyre knows that," said Meriamon.

Alexander had turned to say something to the man who
spoke. He spun back to face her. He understood. It ap-
palled him. "Zeus Pater!" He was running even before the
words were out.

The Tyrians dropped their wall of sails and loosed their
ships and fell on the Cyprian fleet. But even as they closed
for the kill, Alexander came, driving hard under sail and
oar, circling the city from the south and falling on the Tyr-
ian ships; and none too soon. Moored or beached and
empty of crews, the ships were sitting prey for the Tyrian
war-galleys. Even with warning from the city, so swiftly
did Alexander come that he caught the enemy's fleet be-
fore it could come about, and drubbed it soundly. He
drove its remnants back into the harbor and bottled them
there, while his Phoenicians barred the southern haven.
Tyre's fleet was broken; it would be land-battle now, and
shipless siege, until one or the other yielded.

Alexander was in no mood to celebrate his victory. "I
made a mistake," he said. "I slacked off. I could have tost
the war for it."

Meriamon did not argue with him. Other people tried;

but he snarled at them until they stopped- He was rising to
a rage. Not the anger that had begun the siege; that was
mere pricked pride. This was a more terrible thing. Fury at
himself. He had erred. He had almost failed. Because he
had not planned for everything. Because he had let himself
become predictable.

There was predictability, and then there was predictabil-
ity. Slackness, complacence—those he would destroy

TYRE 205
wherever he found them, and in himself most of all. Hot
temper and swift movement—those he was known for, and
those he would wield, and no matter the cost.

He flung his rams against unyielding walls. He smote
again and again, his men catching the fury that drove him,
hurling it into stones that chipped and crumbled but would
not shatter. Tyre, trapped in its defenses, dropped stones
and cauldrons of fire. The stones tumbled wide. The fire
sizzled and went out as it struck the shields of wetted
hides. Here a man fell, crushed by a stone; there one died
when, looking up from pouring water on the hides, he
breathed a sheet of flame. They mattered nothing. Alexan-
der was in a rage. Alexander would conquer or die.

Even stone must yield at last, and even Herakles' walls
could not stand forever against Alexander's wrath. One of
his ships found a flawed stone and hammered at it until it
gave way, loosening the one beside it, and the one above
it, and the rubble within: breaching the wall. Alexander
himself was at the ram, his voice a whipcrack, lashing his
men, cajoling them, urging them on. The wall shook with
the force of the attack.

Someone shouted. The men at the ram scrambled back.
A whole length of wall buckled and crumbled and fell,
some within, some into the sea. A cheer went up. Alexan-
der's voice snapped over it. A ramp slid from the ship's
side and crashed down inside the walls of Tyre. Alexander
was on it almost before it fell, running mad-alone against
the Tyrian army.

His men barely paused. They thundered after him,
chanting their paean, which for many was simply his
name.

There were too few of them, and too many Tyrians.
They fell back. But the wall was breached. Alexander had
set foot in Tyre.

And, having done it, he drew back. He left the city with
its broken wall, called all but the guards from the ships

206 Lord of the Two Lands

and the causeway, and went back to camp. Tyre, expecting
renewed assault, received nothing. No move. No word.

The first day after the wall was breached, Alexander
whiled the time with his poets and his friends, being
Greek. The second day after the breach, he went hunting
in what cool the morning had and idled the rest of the day,
except for an hour with his generals. He talked particularly
to Admetos. who led a company of the Royal Hypaspists,
the Shieldbearing Guard, and to Koinos who commanded
a battalion of the phalanx. He dined in company that night,
awash in wine.

Meriamon was there because he asked, and because the
air was so full of power. Her skin rippled with it, the small
hairs quivering and rising erect. Her shadow was almost
solid. It would not go hunting when she would have let it
go. The hunting was better where she went.

She went as what she was: royal Egyptian. She wore her
gown of sheerest linen folded into myriad pleats and cut as
close as her skin, and over it a broad pectoral of lapis and
gold that the king had sent her, knowing that she would
wear it; and golden armlets, and rings of gold and lapis on
her fingers and in her ears, and a fillet about the many
plaits of her hair. She would have given much for a wig,
but there was none that would do; and both That's and
Phylinna averred that her own hair was wonderful enough,
as black and thick and waving as it was. Phyiinna oiled
and plaited it and bound the end of each plait with a bead
of gold or lapis or camelian. Meriamon painted her eyes
herself with kohl and lapis and malachite, drawing the
long lines longer, firming the arch of her brows. Thais
anointed her with scent that could only have come from
Khemet, rich as it was, with a hint of spices, a hint of
musk, a suggestion of flowers.

She did not know what she was making herself beautiful
for. The king would approve; he liked his friends to look
their best. But she would have been happy to be simply
Meriamon. and not this princess, this royal lady in her

TYRE 207

jewels and her unguents, with a lotus flower in her hand.
How that had come there ...

Her shadow smiled a fanged smile. She raised the
bloom to her face. Its sweetness dizzied her. It smelled of
the Nile; it smelled of Khemet. There was power on it,
in it.

Tomorrow Alexander would finish what he had begun.
He would end the siege. He would take the city, or he
would fall. Tonight might be his last upon the earth, his
last as the madman who fancied that he could conquer an
unconquerable city.

What she could give him, she would give, and be living
reminder of what he must fight for. Khemet's waiting was
ended, for better or for ill.
She remembered little of the king's banquet. She had a
couch to herself near Alexander's own. She ate, perhaps.
She drank. She did not say anything that she recalled. Peo-
ple stared at first, Hellenes astonished or disgusted by her
foreignness, hetairai narrow-eyed, measuring the familiar
stranger, reckoning her potential as a rival. Phoenicians, of
whom there were a few, offered her reverence. They knew
what she was.

She was too busy being it to remember what she did.
Alexander was her opposite. He did not need to be any-
thing but Alexander. Sometimes he was everywhere, draw-
ing every eye. Sometimes he was nowhere at all, effacing
himself, letting the revel go on without him. He rested in
that, talking softly with Hephaistion who had come to
share his couch. No one took much notice. The king lay
back against his friend's breast, half-drowsing, toying with
a cup of wine. Hephaistion smoothed his hair. The Com-
panion's face was still as it often was, like an image
carved in ivory, beautiful almost to insipidity, but for the
eyes. They held a calm that Alexander had never known,
but in which he rested; a peace that was not placidity, a fo-
cus and a center, and far down in it a spark of youthful
mirth.

208 Lord of the Two Lands

Hephaistion was water, deep and seeming quiet. Alexan-
der was fire. Even at rest he could not be still. He turned
the cup in his hands, quick eyes darting round the room,
catching now and then. More than once he smiled or said
a word, bringing its object into his orbit, holding the man
or woman there, letting go. His lover was his lover here,
and that entirely. So might Alexander be, maybe, in the in-
ner room, when the lamp was lit and there were but the
two alone. But here he was multifold, now king, now
friend, now lover, now simple joiner in the feast.

Meriamon's inward eye saw the woman who sat veiled
within a Persian tent, watching as another woman nursed
a swaddled child. Barsine was his lover, too, but she
would never have what this one had. No woman could. No
man either, perhaps, nor boy. Achilles had but the one
Patroklos. There could never be another.

Alexander rose. Hephaistion drew up his knee and
sipped from his cup and looked not at all abandoned. The
king came to sit on Meriamon's couch, smiling at her. His
garland had wilted in the heat; he looked, not ridiculous,
but young and rather rakish. She could hardly help but
smile back.
"Give me your blessing?" he asked her.

She raised her brows. "Do I have a blessing to give?"

"I think you do."

"And it matters to you?"

"It matters," he said.

She thought about it. "There's a god in you, you know.
Nothing else could have brought you to this."

His eyes narrowed as if against the sun. He was not
looking at her now; he saw beyond her, beyond any hori-
zon that she knew.

He blinked, shook himself. He saw her again. His flesh
was mortal flesh, his mind a mortal mind, if not quite like
any other. He said, "You, too. You even more than I are a
god's child. Why don't you take the power that's in your
hand, and rule Egypt?"

TYRE 209

"That is not given to me," she said.

"1 could die tomorrow."

She inclined her head.

"You're calm about it," he said-

"Would it stop you if I wailed and gnashed my teeth?"

"No," said Alexander.

"So then," Meriamon said. "You will do what you will
do. May the gods protect you."

He bowed to that- Not afraid, no, not Alexander. But
that bright surety was won at a cost. No peace for him, no
moment's stillness; and the god's fire in him wherever he
was. What he needed of her—she had no worship for him.
But she had the gods' voices in her, clearer maybe than he
had ever heard them. She was their instrument. He was
one of them. Or would be. If he lived past the morrow.

The third day after the sortie dawned with a sea like glass,
no whisper of wind, no breath of air to stir the water, or
lift the pennants, or cool a body risen from a hot and
sleepless bed. Alexander's men were up before the first
light, the Shieldbearers and Koinos' phalanx armed and
ready. Their fellows looked on them in varying degrees of
envy, even the veterans for whom war held no mysteries.
Alexander changed it- He made it shine, because he was
part of it.

He came out just as the light began to rise, splendid in
his scarlet cloak, with his golden lion helmet in his hand.
He gave it to a page as he advanced to perform the morn-
ing's sacrifice—a bull for Zeus this day, and another for
Herakles, whose city the king meant to take. As the bull's
blood streamed upon the altar, the sun leaped into the sky,
turning his hair bright gold. The thighbone of Father Zeus'
bull, wrapped in the fat and laid in the fire, sent its smoke
up to heaven; that of Herakles' bull mingled with it, half
savory, half terrible. The king's men shared the meat of the
sacrifice, partaking of its strength. They seemed to finish

210 Lord of the Two Lands

all in the same instant, springing up with a shout and run-
ning to the sea.

Tyre was waiting for them. The ramships had gone out
in the dawn; the booming and battering mounted with the
light, carried on the still air, until surely the dead could
hear and wake. As the king's men readied to board a pair
of ships, Koinos' company on one, Admetos' Shield-
oearers on the other with the king leaping ahead of them
to mount the bow, metal glinted on the city's wall, and fig-
ures moved, gathering: Men ran out on the causeway,
reckless of bolts or arrows, but none fell. Tyre had easier
prey. A ship or two of Alexander's had faltered on the
voyage from Sidon, run afoul of Tyrian galleys, and fallen
to the enemy- Their crews were up on the walls. There
could be no doubt of that. Heralds' voices rang over the
water, proclaiming it. Even as the echoes died. figures as
small as dolls, as effigies, as amulets, spun and wheeled
down from the wall. They made no sound. They fell with-
out grace or wit, dead before they left the wall, slaughtered
like the bulls upon the altar. One fell full upon the deck of
a ramship. The outcry of its crew reached even to the
camp, a raw howl of rage and loss.

Trapped, the Tyrians, and desperate to folly, with meir
walls falling about their ears, and Alexander's army struck
not to terror but to rage by the death of their fellows. The
ramships backed oars from the great ragged gap in the
wall and made way for their king. His two ships ran up to
the rock. Each bore a bridge, lowering even as it ap-
proached, crashing down amid the rubble.

Admetos the commander hardly waited for the ramp to
fall before he was on it, up the crumbling treacherous
slope into Tyre, full into a Tyrian spear. The men behind
him, his men even before they were Alexander's, saw him
fall. They had seen the murder on the walls. Blood for
blood and life for life, and sweet revenge for the long
siege.

Alexander came behind with the second wave of men.

TYRE 211

That was never his place, but for once he had yielded to
honor and sense, and seen a good man die for it. He thrust
through the ranks and seized the lead. The Tyrian line
stood firm before him. His eye swept along it. He raised
his sword. He charged, and all his men charged with him,
bright shields, long spears, implacable will.

The Tyrians stood while they could. But they had no
spear to match the sarissa of Macedon, three manlengths
long and wielded from behind a wall of shields. They wa-
vered and broke and ran.

A cry went up from the walls. The harbors were
breached, Phoenicians pouring in from the south, Cyprians
from the north, and Alexander himself in the center with
the pick of his army. Tyre, beset from three sides, broken
and battered and breached, fought as it could. Street by
street, alley by alley, its fighting men fell back. They held
for a while in one of their shrines, that of Agenor near the
city's center, but Alexander broke their line again with his
Shieldbearers and drove them out.

Metqart's temple rose at the summit of the city, its walls
of cedar from the Lebanon, its roof sheathed in gold, and
before its gate two tall pillars, one of ivory, one of beryl
the color of grass. There Alexander halted. There the
princes had taken refuge, and the King of Tyre himself,
barricaded behind doors of bronze.

Alexander's men were sacking the city. The fighting had
turned to butchery. Blood ran in the streets. Life paid for
life, and for resistance that should never have been. Tyre
had defied the gods. It paid in alt that it was.

Meriamon was there. Her body lay in its tent in the
camp with Sekhmet mounting guard over it. Her soul rode
in a soldier's cloak, a wisp of shadow with ember-eyes.
Niko had come in with the Phoenicians, but he had taken
a company ahead of the rest and gone straight for the tem-
ple, knowing where Alexander would inevitably be. He
was close by the king now. There was blood on his sword.

212 Lord of the Two Lands
As if he had only now noticed it, he moved to wipe the
blade on his cloak.

The king stood in front of the temple's gate, between
the pillars. For all the press of men about him, he was
alone. He could not fail to know that his men were slaugh-
tering children, or that they were destroying the city in
their anger. Here was the center of it, the heart of the re-
sistance.

To Meriamon's sight, freed of the body's constraints,
Melqart's temple was a shape of shadow and light, washed
in the blood of sacrifice. The princes huddled in the outer
courts and prayed to all their gods and to their king, who
had no more courage to face Alexander than they. The
priests held the sanctuary, and their strength was the
strength of despair. They called on the god. They wove a
mingled magic of will and chant and blood—blood of their
own children, that the Macedonians loosed in their fury.
The power grew like a cloud, waxing and pulsing, spitting
lightnings. A moment more, a bending of will, and there
would be no end to it. Tyre would fall, and Tyre's con-
querors with it, and the sea would devour them.

Meriamon spread her soul's wings and rose from Niko's
shoulder. He could not have been aware of her presence,
but her absence touched him: he glanced about, eyes
rolling a little, like a startled horse. She paused in the air
above him, hawk-bodied, woman-headed, beating her
wings against the force mat came out of the temple. Alex-
ander felt it. He swayed, braced. She struggled toward
him. Each wingbeat battled the weight of a world. Each
handbreadth was bought in the soul's strength.

Within arm's reach of Alexander, her wings failed. She
dropped. A soul could not die, nor could the earth break it,
but such power as the priests raised could trap and bind
her, and swallow her with the rest in the city's fall. The
bonds closed in about her, the power's weight heavy upon
her, crushing her shadow-body.

She gathered every scrap of strength, every flicker of

TYRE 213

will. It made a pitifully small spark. She opened her heart
to it. She beat her wings with all her strength. The tips
brushed the stone of the paving. But she was rising, driv-
ing upward, flinging herself at the king. Just as her
strength died, just as she plummeted, her talons seized his
cloak.
He saw her. She looked up into a face grown vast to
hawk-size, soul-sight. She saw the eyes wide and silver-
pale, terrible as the lightning's fall. "Do you feel it?" she
asked him. "Do you see it? What the old sorcerers did to
Mu, to Atlantis, they would do to Tyre. To you, Alexander.
To all that you would do and be."

He reached down. To his hands she had substance, if no
weight. Gently he freed her claws from his cloak, cradling
her in his palms, raising her to meet eye with eye. What
the men with him thought he was doing, she could not
imagine. Maybe they saw a bird tangled in his mantle.
"What can I do?" he asked her.

"Defeat them," she answered.

"How?"

She tucked her feet under her, folded her wings. His
hands enclosed her, warm and solid, ward and wall against
the power that rose in the temple. "Will it," she said.

"Will it? Want it? That's all?"

"For you," she said, "yes."

"But—" He stopped. "Aristotle would howl."

She laughed. She sounded to herself like a bird twitter-
ing.

Alexander looked a little disconcerted. But then he
grinned. 'This is impossible, you know."

"Only to a rational Greek."

He laughed at that. His eyes lifted from her to the gate.
They saw what she could see. The cloud of power. The
lightnings growing more frequent, joining, one to one, two
to two. When they were all one, then Tyre would fall.

"No," he said. His voice was quiet. It had no particular
force in it, no power but what was in him from his birth.

214 Lord of the Two Lands

He walked forward. One hand still cradled Meriamon's
soul-self. The other reached to set palm against the door.
As flesh touched bronze, the city rocked.

"No," Alexander said again. And pushed.

The gates were bolted and barred. Even as strong as he
was for his size, even trained from youth in the arts of
war, Alexander was neither a big man nor a weighty one.
He could not open gates of bronze, bolted with bronze.

"Yes," he said. "I can."

The gate moved. The power behind it rocked and
swayed. His brows drew together. He was not straining,
not yet. He shifted his feet, bracing them. He set
Meriamon in the fold of his cloak and brought to bear both
hands and all of his weight.

"Your will," she said in his ear. "Your will is all that
you need."

"It's all one," he said, a little breathless. He relaxed sud-
denly, as if to retreat. But he was only gathering his forces-
With suddenness that nearly cost her her perch, he flung
the whole of him, hands, weight, will, the god that was in
him, all, into one single concerted thrust.

Gate and power held. The earth was uneasy, swaying
harder now, hard enough for simple men to sense. Some-
one cursed, caught off balance, knocked from his feet.

"Be still!" Alexander's voice, sharp, no smoothness
in it.

The earth was still. The power reared up. The gate burst
open.

Light flooded through the temple. Alexander rode on it,
his men behind him. Priests and power broke and scattered
and fled.

But the princes held. Here at the end of things, they
found their courage. They made a living wall about their
king.

Alexander's Shieldbearers would joyfully have slaugh-
tered them all- But he said, "No."

TYRE 215

They stopped. They did not lower swords or spears, but
neither did they strike.

The line of Tyrians opened. King Azemilk came for-
ward. He was not as tall as Alexander, nor even as broad:

little long-bearded hawk-faced man like all his people. But
proud, even defeated. He went down on his knees, stiffly;
then on his face. "Tyre is fallen," said the King of Tyre,
and each word was bitter, bitter. "Alexander is victorious.
All hail Alexander, lord of Asia."

One by one, raggedly, but clear enough, the princes
echoed him. "Hail Alexander. Hail the lord of Asia!"

• EIGHTEEN •

Tyre was fallen. Its king had made his submission to Al-
exander, and received pardon. But his people, for their re-
sistance, paid in lives and wealth and freedom. Alexander,
thwarted, was no merciful creature, and he had been
thwarted to the edge of defeat. He took the city and ail that
was in it. He sold its men into slavery. He made his sac-
rifice to Herakles in the temple that had refused him, be-
fore the priests who had defied him, and he held games of
victory on the shore where he had camped so long.

On the last night of the games, while Alexander's army
in city and camp alike completed their triumph in wine
and song, Meriamon walked on the sand by the quiet sea.
There was a moon; it gave her shadow substance, and
gleamed coldly on the ring in Sekhmet's ear. Tyre was a
darkness against the stars, sparked here and there with
light. The long sad train of its people had gone in the
morning, some inland to Damascus, some in ships to Hel-
las and the isles. New citizens would come after Alexan-
der was gone, people from the villages of the mainland
who would fill the city again and make it strong under

216 Lord of the Two Lands

Alexander's rule, at the bidding of a Macedonian com-
mander.

That was war. To the victor, everything. To the van-
quished, if he was fortunate, his life.

Someone came toward her over the sand. She was not
surprised to know that gait, that angle of the shoulders,
that lift of the head against the stars.

"Do you know what troubles me most?" she said to
him. "I think I like war- Even the grief that comes after
it."

Niko stopped a little distance from her. "I think I hate
it," he said.

It was the dark and the solitude, and neither able to read
the other's face. It opened the gates between them. It
turned the walls to air-
"Blood," she said, "I hate. And slaughter of children.
But strong man against strong man, city against invader,
lung against king—so must the world be."

"I won't kill children," he said. "Or women, unless
they're trying to kill me first."

"I know. I saw."

He moved closer, standing over her. She could see his
face now, the gleam of his eyes. "That was you. The—
thing—that was with me."

"What did you see?" she asked.

"Something," he said. "Like a bird, but not. It was you.
I thought it might be."

"It was easier," she explained. Or tried to. "Knowing
you, and knowing you knew me. But you couldn't see me.
The king would have sent me back if I'd gone with him.
He could see, you see."

"I see." His voice was perfectly -'flat.

She bit her lip. She wanted to laugh aloud; but that
would not have been wise at all. "Do you mind? Terri-
bly?"

"Well," he said- "No. Not terribly. You could have told
me."

TYRE 217

"And been forbidden?"

"Do I have a right to forbid you?"

"Would it have mattered if you did?"

"Probably not," he said after a while. His hands settled
themselves on her shoulders, starting as they touched bare
skin under the almost-nothingness of veil. Coming back
carefully, as if they could not help themselves. The one
that was whole and supple. The one that was remember-
ing, slowly, to be strong.

She did not flinch or move away. Her heart was beating
hard. He would shake her now, call her witch and deceiver
of men. pay her as she deserved for making such use of
him.
He said, "You are more than anyone knows. Even the
king."

"He knows," she said faintly.

He heard her. "Not all of it."

"Enough."

"You seem like such a little thing," he said. "With those
long eyes and that husky voice, and a way about you—
now creeping like a brown mouse, now holding your head
up like a queen. And showing yourself in clothes that
would incite an army to riot, but no army would ever dare,
unless you wanted it."

"You don't like my dress?"

He opened his mouth. Shut it. Said. "I like it too much."

"It's cool," she said. "And sensible. That's had one made
for herself. When winter comes, she says, she might try
Persian trousers."

"Gods!" said Niko. "My poor brother."

"Why? Because his woman wants to be warm in winter
and cool in summer? You Hellenes—you go naked all year
round. What can you say of what a woman should wear?"

"Nothing," he said. He let her go, half-turning from her.
"I forget myself. I'm sorry. Lady."

She pulled him about. Temper burned the silliness out
of her; she could see straight enough, and her heart was

218 Lord of the Two Lands

exactly where it belonged, and not in her throat, or flutter-
ing somewhere about his head. "Oh, come!" she said. "We
know each other well enough to be honest, surely. And
none of this 'my lady' nonsense. I'm no queen or goddess.
And you're not my guardsman. You're a captain now, with
men of your own. I saw you win a footrace today, and a
mounted race. What did the king say when he saw you
back on Typhon?"

"About what you would have said," said Niko. "I won,
didn't I? And stayed on, too."

"And kept him from making a meal of the horse that
came up behind him on the final turn- Idiot horse. He
could have won by a furlong instead of a length, if he'd
kept his mind on what he was doing."

"I suppose you could have done better," he said acidly.

"Not at all," she said. "I yelled myself hoarse. So did
everybody else. You're a favorite in the army. And you
think you can play the servant with me?"

"I am nothing," he said, "and no one, beside you. You
could be Alexander's equal if it suited you to try. You do
your gods' will instead. You bully and cajole and trick him
into doing it with you. When are the two of you going to
see what a match you make?"

"Not we," said Meriamon. "He wants no wife."

"He would if you wanted him to."

"I don't." She was holding his hand, the right, the one
that was hurt. She brought it to her cheek. "I don't want
him."

The stiffened fingers twitched. Straightened: he caught
his breath with the effort and the pain of it. Curved to fit
her cheek.

He snatched his hand back. "Of course you want the
king! He's the only man who's fit for you. He's brilliant,
he's splendid, the god is in him. He finds you fascinating.
More than that, he likes you. Trusts you. Loves you,
maybe. If either of you could admit it."

"No," said Meriamon.

TYRE 219

He clasped his crippled arm with his good one, tightly,
shaking just hard enough to see. "Then you are both
fools."

"No doubt," she said.

"If I were Alexander," he said- "If I were the king, you
would know that I wanted you. And so would I."

"If you were Alexander," she said, "then I would want
him."

"You should not."

He said it so firmly that she laughed. She knew better.
She had no mirth in her. It was all anger and incredulity
and a white mad joy. He wanted—he wanted—
He did shake her then, until she stopped giggling. "I
thought," she said, gasping. "I thought—you—couldn't
stand—"

"I can't. What does that have to do with it?"

His sharpness brought her to herself a little. Familiar;

bracing. Finding its match in her temper. "Sometimes I
wish I did want the king," she said. "He's a simpler thing.
Fire and willfutness, and a genius for commanding armies.
You ... I never know what you will do or say."

"I'm just a trooper in the cavalry. I'm not even anything
particular to the king."

"He knows who you are," said Meriamon. "And what
you are. You weren't brought up with him as Ptolemy was.
But you're not his father's son, either."

Niko started. His hands tightened to pain. "What do
you—"

"They're brothers. I can see that. Did Lagos ever
know?"

Niko let her go. He drew away. This time she did not
try to stop him. When he wandered down the strand, she
followed. "He knew," Niko said. "From the beginning. He
married her knowing that she had Philip's baby in her
belly. Philip wasn't king, and wasn't likely to be either,
with his brother the king young enough yet and likely to
live for a while, and capable enough of siring sons. So she

220 Lord of the Two Lands

went with Lagos, and when h'er son was born Lagos took
him up and called him his own. By the rime Perdikkas
died and left a baby to inherit, and Philip got himself
named king, Ptolemy was Lagos' son and that was the
whole of it. Except that Philip had a long memory for
women—he always kept track of them, the way he kept
track of everything else that ever concerned him—and our
mother didn't forget, either. So everybody knows, but no-
body talks about it."

And no wonder. Ptolemy was the elder. He could lay
claim to Alexander's throne.

Niko saw well enough what she was thinking. "He
wouldn't. He's not that much of a fool."
"No," said Meriamon. "Ptolemy has more sense than
most. He knows what's best for himself and for his peo-
ple."

"And he loves Alexander." Niko stopped walking- "We
all do. Even the ones who started by wanting someone else
to be king—they came round, one way and another. It
takes a rare man to resist him."

"Or woman?" Meriamon waded out into the water. It
was neither warm nor cool, lapping gently against her
knees, tugging at her skirt. If she opened her senses wide
enough, she could find a glimmer in it that had been the
Nile, a memory of the greatest river in the world, river of
power as of water, rising unknown and unseen in the deeps
of Africa and pouring its gathered waters into the' sea. In
that gathering it gave and it took, gave the Two Lands
their riches and their power, and took them back, and car-
ried them to the Great Green, the sea at the bottom of the
world.

She turned. Niko stood on the water's edge, dark shape
of head and shoulders, white glimmer of chiton. "Your
mother refused a king," she said.

"He wasn't king yet."

"But he would be. And when he was, when she had his
son to wield as a weapon, she said no word. She kept the

TYRE 221

life she had chosen. She gave her husband another son
who was all his own."

"That was plain good sense. Alexander was born by
then. Everyone knew what he had for a mother."

"A woman with a mind of her own."

"A harpy." Niko shook himself. "Well, no. Maybe she's
not as bad as that. They had a love match, those two, even
when he went a-roving. He always came back, or she did,
or both at once. It's not true what they say, that Alexander
and Olympias paid off the assassin who killed Philip."

"I know," said Meriamon.

"You saw it, I suppose."

Meriamon did not answer. She did not need to.

"She was wild when he died," Niko said. "Wild with
joy one moment, because he'd got his comeuppance. Wild
with gnef the next. But cold all through it, and making
sure her son got what was his. She's a terrible woman.
There's a goddess in her, I think; or a Fury."

"Intelligence, maybe," said Meriamon, "and impatience
with men's follies. That sours fast, if one isn't careful."

"How do you stand us?"

She laughed. "Come here," she said.

For a wonder he obeyed her. She took his hands in hers.
"Don't ask why," she said, "or doubt. Just accept."

"But you are—I'm not—"

She stopped his lips with her hand, reaching high- "I
didn't see, either. Till now. You so tall and so strong, and
I so little, and no beauty—"

He lifted her suddenly as if she had been a child, setting
her level with him, face to face. "You are beautiful." He
said it as he would command a trooper in parade.

"I am not," she said. "Pretty, sometimes, when I work
at it. For the rest of it—"

"And what do you see in me? I'm a cripple. I've got a
face like an old sandal. If I had any rank to add to it, or
power in myself, or any touch of godhood—"

"You are yourself," she said. She set her hand against

222 Lord of the Two Lands

his cheek It was rough with stubble The long jaw. the
long mouth, the uncompromising nose, would never de-
light a sculptor, but they were his own "I would have you
exactly as you are Even when you sulk "

He glowered "You have a tongue like an adder"

"Surely," she said "We match, you see "

"I have no magic "

"You have eyes "

They   looked hard at her She curved her arms about his
neck   He held her easily She did not weigh a great deal
more   than his armor, which she had discovered for herself
when   she tried to lift the lot of it She played with the hair
that curled on his neck "And you have very handsome
hair," she said "Almost as bright as the king's Did you
get it from your mother'7"

"Yes " It was hard to tell in the dark, but she thought he
might be blushing She laid her cheek against his Oh, in-
deed it was burning hot

"Poor boy," she said "I embarrass you "

"You can't be any older than I am," he snapped

"Oh, but I am I was born a good half-year before the
king"

"That makes you ancient," he said, dripping irony
"Three whole years' worth "

"All women are as old as time, and I am a woman of
Egypt I was ancient when the world was made To us all
you Hellenes are children "

"So," he said, "I've heard"

She laughed She was aware, not at all unpleasantly, that
her body pressed close against his, and that he was warm,
warmer than the night

"My smallest sinter is bigger than you," he said

"You are enormous," she agreed

The heat that rose m him was fierce enough to bum He
set her down abruptly and splashed back to shore

There he stopped "Niko," she said He did not turn, but

TYRE 223

neither did he run away "Niko. do you want me as much
as 1 want you9"

His voice was very much itself, for all the ngidity that
it came out of "Are ali Egyptians that blunt about it9"

"I don't know," she said "I never wanted anyone be-
fore "

His   shoulders shook She wondered if she had driven
him   to tears "You never—' His voice caught Laughter It
was   laughter It stopped abruptly "You aren't    sworn,
are   you9 To take no man9"
"Of course not," she said

"But the gods—"

"The gods celebrate life as we do They would hardly
forbid me "

"I don't understand you "

"Nor do I," she said, "often "

He turned She could not see his face He was a shadow,
tall against the stars "It's not right, of course," he said in
careful, flawless Greek No soft Macedonian burr "You
are royal and I am not"

"Your mother is royal km "

"I am not a king," he said, "nor a king's son And I
have nothing to give you but a valley in Macedonia, with
a hill fort above it, and good grazing for horses It's much
too cold for you there "

She stared at him "Are you offering me mamage9"

"I am telling you why I cannot"

"That," she said, "is the most presumptuous thing I
have ever heard "

"Yes," he said tightly

She wanted to shake him She often did It was becom-
ing a habit "That's not what I meant' How dare you pre-
sume what is and is not suitable for me9 I am my own
woman You are your king's man If I ask him, he will do
no more and no less than give you to me "

"No'" He was shouting He lowered his voice
"Manamne Man—Menamon Don't ask him"

224 Lord of the Two Lands

"You don't want me."

"I do want you!" He forced calm again, forced softness.
"It's that . . . you keep him safe. In a way- While you're
here, and Egypt is there, the ones who want him married
off are less likely to press him."

"There's Barsine," said Meriamon.

"What, and Memnon's brat? Even Arrhidaios can count
on his fingers, and anyone who knows babies can tell you
that's no newbom. Two months, is he? Three?"

"Two," she said. She drew a slow breath. "Yes," she
said. "I suppose it's true. Egypt needs me; Alexander
needs me- I can't bind myself to anything until that is
done."

"You can't." he said.

"But," said Meriamon, "outside of binding, where the
heart is, there I am free." She came out of the water, ad-
vancing on him. He stood his ground. She set her palms
flat on his breast, over his heart. "Not now," she said, "but
soon, I shall claim you. Will you let me?"

His chest heaved. He was trembling. But then, in a
breath's pause, he steadied. That was the splendor of him:

that courage to face what he was most afraid of, and over-
come it. "Maybe," he said.

She hit him. He caught her. She hooked his knee and
spilled him into the sand. He had let her, knowing she
would do it. That was answer enough. She dusted her
hands and gathered her skins and went back to the camp.
Whether he followed, or when, she did not need to know.
He had her mark on him. The gods would look to the rest.

• NINETEEN *

Alexander's army marched from Tyre in the full heat of
summer, traveling in the cool of the morning and in the
cool of the night, and resting in the day's heat. The moun-
tains of the Lebanon fell away with their snows that
cooled the eye even as the sun battered it blind- The green
uplands, the little rivers, faded and shrank. Dun earth, dust
and flies, and heat that would not relent for any wishing,
and no blessed green: harvest was over where any water
was, the fields stripped bare, and only here and there the
relief of an oasis. This was desert, the Red Land indeed
though far from Khemet, and it had no mercy on any who
would invade it, whatever his right to it.

They marched beside the sea, cool glorious blue that no
man could drink; its salt was cruel to fair Macedonian skin
seared raw by the sun. The fleet sailed in it, keeping close
to shore and putting in with water, wine, bread and meat
and daintier things. Hephaistion had command of it, re-
ceived as calmly as he did everything that mattered, and
managed with admirable competence.

Nikolaos sailed with him. It was a sore choice between
the ships and the horses, but the ships won the toss.
Meriamon, for her part, would not leave the land. Not for
fear of the great water or of the ships that sailed on it; but
Alexander marched with the army, and she wanted to be
with Alexander. If Niko was fleeing her by taking to the
sea, then so be it. He still came in every night, beached his
ship and slept on the sand with his men. She sat with them
sometimes near the fire that kept the flies at bay, and heard
their songs and stories, and told her own. as much as she
could with no song in her. That had not come back, not
even yet, though Khemet's nearness rose in her like a tide.

228 Lord of the Two Lands

There were cities along the coast, and villages in the
green places, huddled about a spring or a river now
thinned to a trickle or gone dry. The people there wor-
shipped a god who was one alone, and owed their alle-
giance to a city of priests in the inland hills. The temple
there, people said, was like the temple of Melqart in Tyre,
and built by the same hands, but the god in it wore no
earthly form, nor allowed one to be ascribed to him. The
Macedonians thought it very strange. Meriamon thought it
rather like Amon, who in his chief semblance was hidden
and had no face that mortal eyes could see.

The cities received Alexander with welcome or at the
least without resistance. He bought what he needed from
them, of water little for they had none to spare and he had
ships conveying it from the rivers of Syria, but of their
harvest whatever they would offer. That grew less as he
marched southward, and his ships supplied more, sailing
by night as well as by day to meet the army's need.

At last they came to Gaza. They had had warning as far
north as Tyre that the commander of Gaza, Batis the Bab-
ylonian, was not minded to surrender to Alexander. They
found the city locked and barred and its people as defiant
as if they had never known the lesson of Tyre. "I'll break
you," Alexander said to their envoys. "Gaza is no Tyre. It
can't stand against me."

"We can try," said Batis' men. The chief of them, squat
heavy-bodied Babylonian like his commander, looked Al-
exander up and down and said, "You've never lost a bat-
tle, have you? Maybe it's time you learned."

Alexander's face was bumed scarlet by the sun; it could
hardly have reddened more. His eyes in it were almost
white, like the sun in the merciless sky. "Do you dare de-
lay me?"

"We'll stop you if we can."
"Then try," said Alexander. 'Try and be damned."

EGYPT 229

Tyre had been pure frustration. This was maddening: the
city squatting in its sandpit, the army drying to leather out-
side of it, and no hope of moving while Batis was there to
raise the country against them. Behind was retreat more
bitter than Alexander ever meant to endure. Beyond was
desert as bitter as any in the world. Seven days—seven
marches through the furnace of the gods to the gateway of
Egypt.

Batis was as stubborn as his enemy, and as deaf to rea-
son. He would hold or he would die. What had befallen
Tyre cost him not a moment's hesitation.

There was malice here. Not in Batis, perhaps; Meriamon
saw him on the walls, and he was as any other man, light
and darkness mingled, and a black root of obstinacy in-
forming all that he did. The seed from which it sprouted,
the source which gave it its strength, was no part of him
at all.

And yet there was no temple here, no circle of priests
working power out of sacrifice. There was nothing that she
could see. Only the dark thing, the quiver in the senses,
the pervading, numbing hostility.' The land itself might
have spawned it, or the air, or a god whose name she did
not know. Melqart, no; he had never wished ill to Alexan-
der, whatever his priests might have done. She had not
seen him at all in his city, as if he had withdrawn from it,
left his priests and his descendant to settle their quarrel as
they would.

This was different- This was both more real and less,
more solid and less certain. A will set against him. A
mind, or minds, that would destroy him if it could.

Arrhidaios knew about it. In Tyre his keepers had kept
him close, and he had gone with Alexander to Sidon. On
the march they had relaxed their vigilance, perhaps be-
cause he could hardly go far in that country, or want to. In
Gaza he took to following Meriamon about, helping her as
he could, fetching and carrying when she was in the hos-
pital, or making a looming second to her shadow when she

230 Lord of the Two Lands

walked abroad in the camp. Her shadow rather liked him.
He could see it; he talked to it, easily, a child's prattle in
his deep rumble of a voice.
Even before she was fully aware of what was beneath
the earth, she heard him say to her shadow, "Do you feel
it, too? It's all dark underneath. It doesn't like us at all."

*' 'It'?" she asked, pausing in her stride.

Arrhidaios shrugged and looked guilty. "Nothing," he
said. Nor could she coax any more out of him, though she
cursed the Greeks who had taught him. "Ifs bad," was all
he would say.

She let it go. He stopped telling her shadow about it, al-
most stopped talking at all, walking hunched and low, like
a dog with its tail between its legs.

She found herself walking the same way, and shooting
glances over her shoulder. The shadow behind her was al-
ways her own, sulfur-eyed, jackal-grin, but more and more
it was no grin but a snarl. Its ears lay flat against its head;

its hands, human-fingered but tipped with claws, flexed
and eased, flexed and eased.

Even a fool could see sense if she had her nose rubbed
in it. Meriamon rose up on a day out of count, brazen sky,
hammer of sun, and Alexander's army burrowing like des-
ert rats; and Gaza on its rock, a ship in a sea of sand.

He was in the front as he always was, as filthy and sun-
scorched and water-starved as they, and in a towering rage.
That he had been in it for the greater part of a month, and
no end to it that anyone could see, had done nothing to
lessen it. Quite the contrary. The glare he turned on
Meriamon was actual white pain, so sudden and so fierce
that she gasped. Her shadow glided forward against all
logic of sun or shade, ears flat, teeth bared, the ghost of a
growl in its throat.

Alexander regarded it as he would have done Peritas,
who, being a sensible creature, had taken refuge in the
shade of the engineers' tent. Meriamon's shadow was nei-

EGYPT 231

ther sensible nor an earthly creature. It barred the way be-
tween Meriamon and the king.

"Down," he said to it. "Peace. I won't harm her."

It subsided slowly. He looked from it to Meriamon, then
about him to the struggle of the siege.
Abruptly he signaled his trumpeter. "Call a rest," he
said, "and water—double ration. You," he said to
Meriamon, "come with me."

She went with him. It was hardly cooler under the can-
opy, but one of the king's pages was there with a jar of
water, and wine to mix in it, and a soldier's ration of bread
and fruit. Peritas' tail thumped the ground, raising a puff
of dust- Alexander knelt to ruffle his ears.

Meriamon waited. Urgency was fierce in her, but pa-
tience nested in it, allowing him this moment's indulgence.
She gained time to measure his mood.

The bright power that had sailed out of Sidon was dark-
ened now. Wrath stained it, and the long rankling of siege
piled upon siege. What was in the earth here was little
enough in itself—a small malice, a feeble resentment, a
touch of the old dark that had been before the gods. But
his souls were open to it, ripe for its taking. It was soft,
supple, creeping round the walls of his spirit, pouring cold
over the fire that was his strength. It would not break him
but subvert him. Not lightning out of heaven but a serpent
in the heel, subtle and deadly.

She sat down abruptly. Her knees had given way.
Arrhidaios squatted by her, brown eyes worried. "What is
it. Men? Are you sick?"

"No," she managed to say. "It's the heat, that's all. May
I have a cup of water, please?"

He went eagerly as she had hoped, to fetch a cup and
fill it. She tucked her feet under her. She was no woman
of the desert, to scorn the weakness of chair or stool, but
the chair that was closest was too great a height to scale.
In a moment she would try it. She leaned against its leg.

232 Lord of the Two Lands

The carved and gilded wood was cool, cooler than her
cheek. She closed her eyes.

She knew when Alexander came to stand by her. She
would always know where he was, however far he went,
however feeble her strength. He crouched as his brother
had, but lightly, without the audible grunt and creak of
bones. "Something's wrong," he said.

She opened her eyes. His face rilled her vision. His nose
was peeling. She said so.

He rubbed it. His eyes were clear grey, the color of
flint; one was perceptibly darker, odd to meet from so
close. The white light seemed to have gone from them, but
she could feel it beneath.

Tyre had done that. Gaza had deepened it. Where great
Ught was, was greatest dark. Where the highest god walked,
the god of the netherworld paced after. And Alexander would
not be thwarted. His spirit would not endure it.

She shivered, though the air was as hot as she could
ever have wished. She who was a king's daughter knew
what a king was. This one knew gentleness, knew mercy.
But that was the work of his will, of long teaching at
strong hands. If he loosed the bonds that constrained him,
if he opened himself to the fullness of his power, to the
dark as well as the light, then all that he had wrought, he
could destroy. And Khemet would know a tyrant worse
than any out of Persis.

Her heart hardened. It would not happen. The gods
would not let it. But what was here. what he tried to do—
that was deadly dangerous.

"Alexander," she said, "do you feel the ill-will that is
here?"

"I could hardly miss it," he said.
"No," she said. "Not Gaza. Not Batis and his soldiers,
though they share a pan of it. They've called up some-
thing else. Waked it, brought it with them—it doesn't mat-
ter which. It means you no good."

"No more did Melqart's priests," Alexander said. "They

EGYPT 233

gave way easily enough, and there was more to them than
I'll ever see here." He smiled and helped her up. "There
now. You're heatstruck, that's all, and half mad as we all
are with another siege so hard on the heels of the other. It
will be over soon; we'll bring you home to Egypt. Did you
know I've had embassies from Mazaces the satrap? He's
minded to let me in without a fight. Wise man, Mazaces."

"The Parsa are not always fools," she said. "Or cow-
ards, either."

Alexander set her in the chair, as solicitous as if she had
been a queen, and smiled down at her. It was a bright boy-
smile, with no shadow in it. "They aren't, are they? I've
liked the ones I've met. Very much, some of them. Queen
Sisygambis is more of a man than most of the men I've
seen; and Artabazos is a philosopher. It used to drive
Aristotle wild when I said as much, but I meant it. I still
do."

Meriamon heard him out. He was talking around her,
and he knew it as well as she. When he finished she said,
"I think you should forget this siege and go on. It's ill for
you. It turns your mind on itself and gnaws it to pieces.
Better to leave it behind, and find your strength in Egypt."

"I can't do that," he said much too reasonably. He
should have been furious that she should see a weakness
in him, and speak of it so clearly. "With Persia rising like
a wave in the east, and the sea-cities barely subdued, I
can't leave one to think it's thwarted me. Others wilt fol-
low once they see what one can do, and I'll have the
whole war to fight again."

"Not if you die here."

There. She had said it. It was cold and hard in her heart,
and true, a seer's truth.

He laughed. "Oh, come! You've been listening to my
soothsayers. Mutter, mutter, mumble, mumble, and dark
days lie ahead, and things worse than dark, but they know
and I know what they mean. There's the danger. If I'm
made to think I'll die, so I will, and the enemy will have
his way."

234 Lord of the Two Lands

"I haven't listened to anyone," she said, "but the gods
who are in me. I see death for you here. What is the word
the Greeks use? Hubris. I see it in you."

His eyes went wide and pale. "Lady," he said with care-
ful control. "Mariamne. You are what you are, and I grant
you fair indulgence. But you are not Alexander."

"Nor are you," she said, "when you speak so. There is
a god in you, I have no doubt of it. But even gods must
acknowledge their limits."

"I'm not a god," he said. Quickly. Fiercely. "I am a
king. I do as a king must. Hellas calls me to this war,
Egypt waits for me, Asia cries out to me. Tyche—Tyche
who is Fate—commands all that I do."

"Even your Tyche. who is like and unlike our Ma'at, al-
lows a choice. If you leave now, you can come back with
all Egypt behind you and scatter this city to the winds."

"If, Persia will let me, or Phoenicia stay subdued." Alex-
ander's face was firm, set against her. "I thank you for
your trouble. You mean well, I know. But I won't change

my mind."

She stood. He had to retreat quickly or be overset.
Arrhidaios stood behind him with a cup in his hand, star-
ing at them both. She took the cup with as much of a
smile as she could muster, and drank it down. "Thank
you," she said. •

Arrhidaios' eyes shifted away from her. "You should
listen to her, Alexander," he said. "She sees the bad thing,

too."

Alexander did not turn on his brother. The softening of his
face was never for Meriamon, and his words though gentle
had no yielding in them. "So do 1. It doesn't scare me."

"It should," said Arrhidaios. "It's bad."

"Why, what does it look like to you?"

Arrhidaios knit his heavy brows and pulled at his beard.
For a moment he might have been right in the head: a man
of the king's council called on to settle a difficult dispute-

EGYPT 235

Then he covered his eyes with his hands and shrank down
shivering. "It's bad," he said, sobbing it. "It's bad!"

"Hush," said Alexander, kneeling beside him and hold-
ing him tightly. "It can't hurt you."

"It doesn't want to. It wants you."

"It won't get me."

Arrhidaios clutched his brother's arm, pulling him
about, face to face. "It bites you," he said. "Like a snake.
Niko caught a snake. It bit a dog. The dog swelled up and
died. Niko killed it, and a dog ate it, and it died too."

"I'm not a dog. I won't die."

"It's bad," said Arrhidaios. "It's bad!"

Alexander's lips were tight. Meriamon could see the
flesh reddening and swelling where Arrhidaios gripped
him. How strong the man was, she well knew. But Alex-
ander voiced no protest. "Hush," he said. "Hush."
Soon enough Arrhidaios hushed. He let Alexander go,
only to bury his head in his brother's shoulder. Alexander
rocked him, murmuring in Macedonian, brother-words,
mother-words, comfort-words-

Over the rough dark head he met Meriamon's stare. He
did not speak. Nor did she. She left them there, the king
and the one who could have been king if he had grown as
a man should. Simple earthly sickness, it might have been,
that addled his wits in youth. Or mischance: a nurse's
carelessness, a guardsman's failure to watch over him. Or
poison sent awry. Or an ill working, a spell sung in the
dark of the moon.

The darkness was fouling all that she thought of. She
fled it as best she could, seeking the nearest refuge.

That's was just out of bed—was it still only mid-
moming?—and retching into a basin. That was a common
enough sight after a Macedonian drinking-bout, but Thais
did not often succumb to it. Meriamon would have gone
by; Phylinna had matters well in hand. But she paused.
She was counting, reckoning mornings and frequencies.

236 Lord of the Two Lands

Yesterday, yes. And the day before. Not the day before
that, but Meriamon had gone early to the hospital and
stayed late, and she had not seen Thais at all.

It was admirable distraction from what beset her. She
went to kneel by Thais, taking the basin from the servant.
The girl was delighted to be relieved of such duty; she
backed away.

Thais lay back at last, exhausted. Phylinna wiped her
brow with a dampened cloth, clucking to herself.
Meriamon leveled an eye at the servant, who retrieved the
basin and took it elsewhere. To the privies, Meriamon
hoped, and not simply to the back of the tent.

Thais sighed. It caught. Meriamon looked about swiftly
for another basin, but Thais said, "It's over. Just ... a last
remembrance."

"Does Ptolemy know?" asked Meriamon.

"Not yet." Thais seemed not at all surprised that
Meriamon had guessed. Meriamon was Egyptian after ail,
and a physician. She could hardly fail to know what these
morning indispositions meant.
"Will you keep it?"

The hetaira closed her eyes. After a moment she opened
them. They were as old as Khemet. "I don't know," she
said.

"Do you want to?"

"I don't know that, either."

"Maybe you should ask its father."

Thais stiffened at the word. Offended? Startled? "No,"
she said. "This child is mine. 1*11 do the choosing for it."

Meriamon did not say anything. Fathers chose in Hellas,
she knew that; to take up the child and rear it, or to expose
it on the hillside. But that was a living child. Whether its
mother would bear it at all—that was another matter.

Her hand went to her own middle. No life kindled in it.
None would- She had bought power and purpose, and a
destiny, and paid in the children she would have borne- Yet
she could feel—could imagine—the spark caught, swell-

EGYPT 237

ing, waxing into humanity. It hurt. She had not expected
that.

Thais sat up. She wobbled; Phylinna steadied her. She
waved the maid away. Color came back to her cheeks. She
looked like herself again. The little page whom Ptolemy
had given her after Tyre, eunuch already and reared for
Tank's temple, stood with cup and bowl. Thais smiled at
him. He blushed and ducked his head. He was a pretty
thing, less oily-sleek than most of his kind, and endear-
ingly shy.

"Do you know what I discovered last night?" asked
Thais in her bright brittle day-voice. "Thettalos is back."

"The Thessalian?" Meriamon had heard the name, but
at the moment she could not remember where. "One of the
cavalry?"

Thais laughed. "Oh! I forget. You came after Issus. He
was gone by then—he wintered in Hellas, and summered
there, too, till he decided to come back to Alexander.
They're dear friends. He's the best tragic actor in Hellas.
He has a troupe that he takes everywhere, and they do the
plays at festivals. Have you ever- seen the tragedy?*'
"Once," said Meriamon, "or twice, when I was small.
We have part-rites of our own. Osiris' are famous, that are
sung in Abydos."

"Then you know what it's like, though no one does it as
well as Thettalos. He's going to do scenes tonight, just for
the king's friends. Will you come? Niko will be there,"
said Thais, wicked. "He never misses a performance."

That decided it. Meriamon would not go. She did not
need to contend with the disturbance that he was, with all
the rest that beset her. She heard herself say, "I'll go."

Thais clapped her hands. "Oh, good! I'll wear my Egyp-
tian gown. I have a new collar. It's not as handsome as
yours, but I look very well in it. Almost a proper Egyp-
tian."

***

238 Lord of the Two Lands

Menamon, improper Egyptian, regarded Thais in her fin-
ery and smiled The hetaira would never look anything but
Greek, but the sheer linen and the golden pectoral set off
her body's nchness admirably She preened in it, shaking
her head to make the plaits dance Her hair did not take
well to the hundred tiny braids that Menamon wore, but
she professed herself well content with a simpler fashion,
narrow plaits about the face, the rest caught up in a fillet
more Greek than Egyptian, but very becoming Menamon
said so

"You of course are exquisite," said Thais "What I
would give for bones that fine    and those eyes' If you
ever tire of being a pnestess, you'd make a splendid cour-
tesan "

"I'll remember that," said Menamon, trying not to
blush

The king's friends were gathered in his tent, in the central
hall made larger by the removal of the inner walls A half-
circle of couches faced another of the walls, and emptiness
m front of it, an absence waiting to be filled There, was
wine and a flute player, and a blind man plucking sweet
random notes on a lyre

Thais went at once as she always did, to Ptolemy's
couch Menamon could not see one that was empty Most
had two already, man and woman or man and youth There
were a few on which men reclined alone
One was Niko's Menamon sat in the woman's place
and took the cup that the servant filled for her He was
massively silent She slanted a glance over her shoulder
"Good evening," she said

"Good evening," he replied civilly "You're looking
very pretty"

"And you," she said

His brows flew up She laughed at his expression
Pretty, no, that was not the word But his chiton looked
new, and seemed—was—heavy raw silk Its hem was em-

EGYPT 239

broidered with gold He had his good cloak draped over
the couch, the one he had taken ah booty in Tyre, the beau-
tiful amethyst purple of a lighter dyeing It was not so
highly pnzed as the deep-dyed royal vermilion, but she
loved the color of it A fillet bound his hair, raw silk
again, and a thin strand of gold She smoothed a lock that
was minded to stray "You're very pleasant to look at," she
said

"I'd rather look at you"

"Then we're both content," said Menamon She consid-
ered bnefly No one was looking, nor, on reflection, would
she care if anyone did She stretched out, leaning on her
elbow, her back against his front He hardly flinched
Brave man She sipped her wine and nibbled the dainties
that came her way and decided that she liked to have him
so close As close as her shadow, but warmer

The king made an entrance as he liked to do, with
Pentas on a lead and, somewhat surpnsmgly, Arrhidaios
walking behind The king's brother had a clean chiton and
an eager expression He greeted Menamon with delight
"Men' You'll see Thettalos too"

"I will," she said

"Sit with me7" he asked

Menamon did not know what to say

"Niko won't mind," said Arrhidaios "Will you, Niko7
You can sit with Alexander"

People were grinning Niko, for a marvel, did not even
frown "You can sit with the lady," he said, almost manag-
ing not to sound relieved
A little man tugged at Arrhidaios' arm the chief of his
guardians, speaking softly "Come, my lord Here is a
couch for you, right in front, and a pretty lady to wait on
you "

"I want Menamon," said Arrhidaios

She started to nse Alexander's voice stilled them all,
even the watchers who had begun to laugh "Go on,

240 Lord of the Two Lands

brother. Thettalos is coming out soon. Don't you want to
hear him?"

Arrhidaios' face clouded. "I want Meriamon," he said.

"You may help Meriamon in the hospital in the mom-
ing," said Alexander firmly.

"Promise?"

"I promise," Meriamon said.

Arrhidaios did not like it at all. His brows knit, stub-
born. The servant tugged at him.

Slowly Arrhidaios yielded. Meriamon sank back to the
couch. Alexander's eyes flashed over her and her compan-
ion. His smile was sudden and quite dazzling. When she
had blinked the brilliance away, the king was at ease on
his couch and the servants had dimmed the lamps, all but
those which illuminated the space near the Wl. They
made a half-circle within the half-circle, a house of light
amid the crowding shadows.

The notes of the lyre, present but forgotten through the
rest of it, gathered and came together. The flute wove among
them. A drum began to beat, blood-beat, pulse-beat.

He came out of the dark: a slender youth in a purple robe,
dancing, swaying, with a golden branch in his hand. His face
was white as marble, white as death, the eyes as deep as the
darkness behind the stars. The skin of a spotted panther was
his girdle and his cloak. His hair streamed down his back,
tawny gold, loose long locks like a lion's mane.

He sang as he came. His voice was neither deep nor
light, neither man's nor woman's. Youth's, maybe, just
broken and finding its depth. The purity of it walked cold
down Meriamon's spine. Zeus' son, he, child of the gods,
god become man beside the stream of Theban Dirce: Di-
onysos in the madness of wine.

"From Lydia come I," he sang, "from fields of gold,
from Phrygia, from Persia's sunstruck plains, from strong-
walled towns of Bactria, cold-bitter Media and blessed Ar-
aby. All Asia have I conquered, and all the salt sea coast,

EGYPT 241

all the fair cities, Hellene, barbarian, all: all mine, all
wor-
ship me, all know that I am god."

Meriamon struggled to breathe, to see what eyes could
see. A man in a Tyrian robe, in a worn and tattered
panther-skin, his wig a lion's mane, his mask—his mask—

She tore her eyes from it. They fell on Alexander's face.
Half was in shadow, half in reflected light. The same face,
ruddy to the pallor of the mask, and yet inescapably the
.same. The same expression, even, half mad, half exalted.
He knew. He saw the god and the tribute. He took it as his
due.

She must have said something, made some move.
Niko's arm settled over her. His voice murmured in her
ear. "Hush. Watch."

She watched. There were other people, other singers; or
maybe it was only the actor's skill, evoking them as surely
as if they had been living flesh. There was a war of sorts.
Women serving the god in a madness of ecstasy. The
young king refusing him, denying his divinity—that too a
madness, implacable, inescapable. He took arms against a
god. His own mother slew him, rent him asunder, and the
god, dancing, laughed. *Too late," he sang, "too late you
knew me; too late you spoke my name."

Alexander never moved, hardly seemed to breathe. The
mask's strange smile was his own. The mask's eyes, light-
less dark, bore deep within a gleam of fire.

"Thus," sang the god, "my father Zeus ordained. So let
it ever be."

• TWENTY •

"Hubris," said Meriamon. She had been saying it too of-
ten. She knew that. People had stopped listening. Alexan-
der was the young god, Herakles incarnate, Achilles come

242 Lord of the Two Lands
again, undefeated and undefeatable. That Gaza resisted
him so well and so long—that was outrage, and the town
would suffer for it.

Having made an isthmus of Tyre and bound it irrevoca-
bly to the land, he made nothing of raising a hill in front
of the mount of Gaza, to set his siege engines level with
the walls. But Gaza was not Tyre. Its people knew what
they had to hope for if their resistance failed. They had
reason to fight, and fight they did.

On the morning when Alexander's hill drew level with
that of Gaza, the king had his engines ready to begin the
ascent, the crews waiting in the cool of the dawn, the
priests around him at the altar as he blessed his work with
sacrifice. It was the king's duty to take the first victim.
The wreath was on his head—odd to Meriamon's eye as
she watched, to see the green leaves brought from far
away, and the king's hair fallow gold under them, for it
was near sunrise, the light of the torches gone pale. A little
wind played with the garland, plucked a leaf and sent it
spinning. The sacrifice, a fine fat ram, baaed inquiringly.
Alexander smoothed its head before he raised its chin, the
knife in his hand. As the knife touched the woolly throat,
he started and staggered.

A bird. Desert falcon, Meriamon thought, seeing the
flash of wings against the sunrise. It had had something in
its claws—a stone: someone held it up in a trembling
hand. People stirred and muttered- Voices cried out against
the omen.

"Quiet!" Alexander's voice cut across the growing roar.
The ram blatted and lunged. Two of the priests flung
memselves on it. They went down in a flurry of hoofs and
robes and tattered garlands.

One way and another the king made his sacrifice. But
the omen was given. Aristandros the seer spoke it as the
ram's flesh roasted on the altar. "You will take the town,
my king," he said, "but look to yourself. This day for you
is perilous."

EGYPT 243

Meriamon was close enough by then to see Alexander's
face. It was as pale as the mask of the god, and as still. He
moved abruptly, took off his garland and laid it on the al-
tar. "I'll remember," he said.

He passed her as if she had not been there. She almost
reached, almost stayed him. But something held her back.
Her eyes met Aristandros'. The seer's were as dark al-
most as an Egyptian's, and wise. "He listens to you," she
said.

The seer shrugged slightly. "As much as he listens to
anyone."

They watched him go, walking steadily as he always
did, and yet managing to touch and be touched, speak and
be spoken to, win his army all over again as if he were its
lover and it his beloved. "He is mortal," Menamon said.
"Pray the gods he remembers it."

Foot by straining foot the engines mounted Alexander's
hill to the southern wall of Gaza. Bolts and arrows and
stones rained down on them from the city. Some of the ar-
rows were fire arrows, but the engines had known such at
Tyre, and overcome them. Alexander's archers did what
they might, but it was ill shooting from below, and the cat-
apults no use until they should rise to the summit. First
one, then another wavered and slowed and halted as its
crews fell, or scrambled for cover.

Batis, seeing them so beset, loosed his sortie. A stream
of howling Arabs poured out of the southern gate, swarm-
ing over the hill, attacking the siege engines with fire.

Alexander had been holding back. He stayed out of
range of bolt and arrow, and therefore of the fight, though
he paced and fretted and made his pages miserable. When
Batis' sortie overran his engines and bade fair to drive his
men down off the hill, he could bear it no longer. He
shouted for his Shieldbearers.

They looked at one another, and at Hephaistion. He

244 Lord of the Two Lands

looked into Alexander's eyes and saw nothing there to
touch-
Fate, he thought. Gods. Madness. His belly clenched.
"Alexander—" he began.

Alexander was past hearing him, or any voice but the
one in his own soul- Hephaistion breathed a word—prayer,
curse, he did not know which—and braced to leap into the
fight. The others fell into ranks behind. Alexander bolted
ahead of them, into the thick of the battle.

There was no mistaking him, however fierce the press,
He was ail blood and gold and fiery temper, hewing a path
through the enemy. He had no fear at all. The god was in
him.
The Arabs had their own gods, and their own mad-
nesses. He hewed one down and leaped over the body,
springing at another.

Hephaisdon saw the flash of a blade. " 'Ware behind!"
he shouted. Alexander half-spun. A knife plunged toward
his corselet, bent and slipped and snapped, the man who
wielded it sinking down dead with Alexander's blade in
his vitals. Alexander laughed, sharp and short, and swung
his shield edge-on. A swath opened before him. For a mo-
ment they stood alone, he and Hephaistion, an island in a
sea of shouting, screaming, struggling men. Alexander did
not speak, or glance at his friend. He was oblivious to any-
thing outside of himself.

Hephaistion knew better than to grieve for what he
could not change. He took the time to breathe, to wipe the
sweat from his forehead, to take in what he could see of
the fight. It was going well. Even as he watched, a clump
of men—some in Arab dress, some in Persian—broke and
ran for the gate. A company of Shieldbearers sprinted to
catch them.

Alexander stirred, looking about for an enemy to fight.
It was raining missiles stilt—a stone larger than
Hephaistion's head thudded to earth within his arm's
reach, bounced and struck another and shattered. A shard

EGYPT 245

stung his thigh between tunic and greave. He raised his
shield, firmed his grip on his sword. Two robed Arabs
with knives had brought down a Macedonian. Alexander
sprang to even the odds, too quick for Hephaistion to fol-
low. There were men in his way, swords, spears, bodies in-
numerable. Hephaistion struggled, fighting blindly like a
stag caught in a thicket, antlers snared, hounds snapping at
his belly.

He saw it beyond him, out of reach or help or hope. A
god helped it, maybe, or the dark thing that was in the
earth of Gaza. As Alexander leaped, danger from the sky
forgotten, eyes only for the man who had fallen, a bolt fell
from the walls. In the last instant he saw it. His shield flew
up. The bolt pierced it. Pierced his corselet; pierced his
shoulder.

He stopped, swayed. His face wore no expression but
surprise.

He firmed his feet, gathered himself, went on.
Hephaistion, trapped still, hacking at a man without a face,
cursing endlessly and helplessly, saw the blood trickling
down, scarlet on gold.

The faceless one fell. The way was clear.

Alexander was no longer in it. His sword rose and fell,
cutting through the thicket of the enemy, pressing toward
the walls. Hephaistion knew as clearly as if a god had spo-
ken, what was in that mad brilliant mind. He had an army
to lead, a battle to win. Pain was nothing, a wound—
however deep—an irrelevance. It was a price. He had paid
it. Now he would take Gaza.

He was conscious when they brought him out of the fight.
Bled out, white with shock, and cursing them for taking
him from the battle. "I've paid the price," he said. 'The
city's mine for the taking. Aristandros said it- Let me up.
Let me get back. Didn't you hear? Batis thinks I'm dead.
Let me go back before my men think the same!"

Meriamon's hands stopped him. She had no strength to

246 Lord of the Two Lands

match his, but her touch brought him up short. Philippos
had come in with the others, having followed the battle as
he always did, as mad in his way as his madman of a king.
He had got the corselet off on the field and cut the bolt
out, but the bleeding that came after, once begun, would
not stop. Nor would Alexander. He had lost an ungodly lot
of Mood. It weakened him enough to slow him down;

when he collapsed, they carried him to safety.

Meriamon had needle and thread to hand, and an iron
will to go with it. She set to work sewing him up.

He fought her. Her shadow laid itself on him and held
him still, and opened the gates of sleep. He struggled, but
the pain was beyond even his endurance. It overcame him,
and darkness with it, and blessed relief for the surgeons.

It was a bad wound, and it did not want to heal. As
quickly as it closed, he opened it again, insisting on being
taken in a litter to the siege, and then refusing to stay put,
getting up to point out a new angle for the sappers or to
order the shift of a catapult. Even wine with poppy could
not keep him down. He refused to drink it, or he drank too
little to matter. He had them mining the walls, and he had
to be there, he said. "You know what they did when I went
down," he said to Meriamon, not for the first time. "They
won the skirmish for me, but they didn't storm the walls.
They thought I'd been killed. They have to see that I'm
alive and fighting, or the whole siege will collapse."
"That might not be a bad thing," she said.
He struggled up on his couch. She had got him to allow
that much: a couch under a canopy, well out of range of
the enemy's fire, and runners to carry his orders to the sap-
pers and the crews on the siege engines. She propped him
with cushions, though he gave her no thanks for it. He was
going to get up and prowl again. She knew the signs-

"There are drugs," she said, "that can keep a man down
for as long as they must. I am not above using them. The
wound is festering now—it could kill you."

EGYPT 247

"It won't," he said.

She would not hit him. It was not fear of striking a king.
It was fear of her own temper; that she would not be able
to stop. She stood over him, looming as much as woman
could: a small woman in a great towering mantle of
shadow. "I see now," she said, "what a mistake I made,
letting you think that you might be the son of a god. You
are still mortal flesh. You can still die."

He looked at her with clear pale eyes, seeing shape and
shadow both, and showing no fear of either. "I know," he
said. "I know that I am mortal."

"You do not."

He touched the bandages that bound his shoulder. There
was pain: his lips were tight, his face waxen under the
flush of temper. "This tells me so."

"You don't listen."

"Am I supposed to turn coward, then," he snapped,
"and slink out of Gaza with my tail between my legs?"

"Gaza hates you. The stones themselves are turned
against you."

He struck the couch with his fist. It shook him: he
gasped. He would not let her touch him. "That is non-
sense!"

"It is not."

He pushed himself to his feet. He stayed by the couch,
face to face, fury to fury. "Listen to me," he said. "Yonder
is Egypt's gate. This is its gatehouse. If we leave the en-
emy in it, we trap ourselves beyond. We must have Gaza.
We must not allow it to hold against us."

"Then take it," she said, "and have done."

She had caught him off balance. "You won't let me—"

"You can stay where you are. Your generals can do the
fighting. Take it and put an end to it."

"I have to be out there," he said. 'They need me."

"Why?"

"I'm the king."

'They need you alive and whole and able to rule them."

248 Lord of the Two Lands

"A king rules from the front."

"So can he die in the front."

Alexander sat down rather abruptly. It was not weak-
ness, not all of it. His eyes were almost black. The mood
that hung on him was blacker yet.

Meriamon drew back softly. She had said all that it was
wise to say. He was what he was: king, and Alexander. He
was also, for all his brilliance, no more than a boy. One
tended to forget it. He was adept at looking younger and
smaller than he was, and seeming harmless, but that was
his own deception, for his own ends.

She thought of the god in the terrible, beautiful play. It
had been strange afterward to meet and speak to the man
who wore his mask, and find him neither young nor mad:

a soft-spoken aging man with a shy smile. He was like
herself, she had thought then. The gods spoke "through
him. He had no part of them.

Alexander was more than a voice. The god who had
wielded Thettalos, Dionysos lord of Asia, was in the king:

in his way was the king. But even Dionysos had worn
mortal form, was bred of mortal woman. The madness that
was in him was divine madness, but it took shape in mor-
tal flesh, and suffered mortal frailty.

Alexander had never had to think of it before. He knew
battles, and death's bloody face. He had shed blood
enough of his own. But that he was mortal, that he could
die: that had not come home to him. It did not, often,
when one was male, and young, and king, and beloved of
the gods. This pain that was in him, this wound that fes-
tered and would not heal, edged everything he did with a
new intensity.

He spoke suddenly, startling her. *' 'Better, say I, to
delve the earth as a peasant's slave, than be king of the
weary dead.'

"And yet," he said, "when the gods gave Achilles to
choose, whether long life without glory or glory beyond

EGYPT 249

all others and death before his time, he chose glory. He
chose death. He died young."

Meriamon shivered.

"I am of Achilles' line," said Alexander, "as I am of
Herakles'. If I choose to live all my life in a moment, who
are you to allow or forbid?"

"Nothing," she said. "No one. But my gods have need
of you."

"Your gods," he said. "Not mine."

"They are all one."

He fell silent again. That was Greek, to talk in poetry
and name old names and look for excuses. So did children
do, dreaming children's dreams. But this man-child
dreamed like a god, with the world for his plaything.

"Aristandros said that I would take Gaza," he said.

"Then you shall," said Meriamon. "Through your gen-
erals."

"I can fight. A lighter corselet—a horse under me—
Boukephalas knows not to toss his head—"

"Boukephalas will toss you if you insist on being an id-
iot."

He glared. "You wouldn't."

"We get along, he and 1. He has a liking for Phoenix. If
you come out of this alive, I may be inclined to consider
a breeding. He sires good foals, Niko says."
"Bribery."

"Certainly," she said. "Your men are going sour here.
Water is increasingly hard to come by. And there is still
the desert to pass before we come to Egypt."

"You don't call this desert?"

"This is green and fertile country in any but the driest
season. Desert is the Red Land. Desert is the road to
Egypt."

"You're trying to talk me out of it."

"No," she said. "Send for your generals. Tell them what
you want done. You can trust them to do it. Or can't you?"

250 Lord of the Two Lands

"I have the best army in the world," he said hotly, "and
the best generals anywhere."

"So use them," said Meriamon.

He held her glare for a long moment. Then he spun
away from her. Shouting for Nikanor, for Philotas. for
Kraieros, for the rest of his generals and his council of
war.

Alexander had heard her. Heeded her. He wielded his army
from a judicious distance, commanded from Boukephalas'
back. He resisted the lure of the fighting.

But it was too much for him. The harder his engines la-
bored, the more the walls trembled, the closer he came.

The walls crumbled and fell, eaten away below by the
sappers, above by rams and hurled stones. When they went
down, Alexander went over them. He left his horse with
the pages, safe as he was not. He was on his feet, running
as lightly as any of them, leading his troops from the front
as a madman must. His high voice rang above them, urg-
ing them on.

Once it broke. He rocked and nearly fell. A stone had
struck him in the thigh. He steadied. His voice went up
again. He went on, limping, leaning on his spear, but
fiercely, determinedly afoot. His wrath was the color of
blood-
He took Gaza. The city that had defied him, that had
wounded him twice and all but killed him, suffered more
terribly than Tyre ever had. Its defenders died to the last
man, valiant in despair. Its women and children fell prey
to the victors, who killed them or kept them, raped them
and sold them, and knew no mercy.

And he did not stop them. They brought Batis to him,
bound and naked and bloodied and yet alive. Alexander
looked at the man who had come closest of any to defeat-
ing him; at whose command he had been wounded, in
whose cause he now could barely stand, with a great
throbbing bruise on his thigh and only the gods to thank

EGYPT 251

that the bone had not broken: a little thick hairy man with
a big belly, who reeked like a goat. Alexander said to him,
"Do you regret what you have done?"

Batis spat in his face-
Alexander stood with the spittle running down his
cheek. His men leaped with swords drawn. He stopped
them. His eyes were wide and fixed, the color of water,
which was no color at all. Meriamon, watching, staggered.
It was as if the earth heaved; as if the darkness rose, en-
veloping him.

"Take him," said Alexander softly. "He would be
Hektor to my Achilles. Let him be so. Do to him as Achil-
les did to Hektor,"

Some of those near him gasped. Most grinned wide and
white and vicious.

"What will he do?" Meriamon asked the man next to
her, one who looked horrified. "What is he saying?"

The man would not answer. There was no one else to
ask: the rest who could hear her were cheering the king, a
sound like lions' roaring, deep and deadly.

Batis did not begin to scream until they drove the spike
through his heels and threaded the ropes on it. He did not
stop when they bound the rope to a chariot and whipped
up the horses, and drove horses and chariot and screaming,
tumbling, writhing man round the walls of Gaza. He
screamed for an appallingly long time. Even after he
stopped, the sound went on, as if the earth had taken it up
and the wind become a part of it.

"Hektor was dead," said Niko. "Achilles killed him be-
fore he dragged him."

He sounded quite calm about it. Not appalled; not re-
volted. But he said it, and in Meriamon's hearing.
She had seen worse under the Parsa. They were as cruel
as cats; lives mattered little to them, particularly the lives
of foreigners.

"There has to be a lesson," Niko said. "Tyre was not

252 Lord of the Two Lands

enough. Gaza has to be the end of it—defiance, resistance.
They have to know better than to stop Alexander."

She walked away from him. He followed. She was
aware of him like a hand on her back. She ignored him.
Alexander had gone away when Batis stopped screaming.
His charioteer dragged the body for a while, making sure
that it was dead. She did not see that there was any doubt.
What tumbled behind the chariot and sent the dust up in
clouds, no longer looked anything like a man.

She was not thinking of Batis. Appalled—she was that,
but distantly. Surprise had no part of it. Alexander was
Philip's son, and Philip had been no weakling. Myrtale
was his mother, Myrtale who had been given the name
Olympias. The ram and the serpent. Deep earth and red
fire. The warrior and the sorceress. She wielded the wild
magic that roiled on the edges of things, far from the
stately power of Khemet. Chaos was her realm, and blood
her mystery.

Alexander who dreamed of Herakles, who mounted
sieges that no sane man would have ventured, who took
cities that could never be taken—Alexander was no tame
thing. He had the lion in him: Sekhmet, goddess and de-
stroyer.

Meriamon walked softly on the torn and bloodied earth.
It was quiet now. Truly; wholly. The darkness was gone
out of it. Alexander had taken it into himself, and trans-
formed it into fire.

She found him deep in the city, sitting on a fallen col-
umn- He had a child on his knee. It was filthy, it was
bone-thin, but it smiled at the man with the bright hair,
and played with something that shone: the brooch of his
cloak. "Clear the city," he said to the man who waited by
him, "and round up the prisoners. We'll ship them off to
Tyre."

"And that one?" somebody asked, cocking his chin at
the child.

"I'll keep him," the king'said. "Queen Sisygambis lost
EGYPT 253

a page to fever, just a little while ago. I'll clean this young
one up and give her a present. Maybe a girl, too, to go
with him. See if you can find one who matches him."

"But—" said someone else.

Alexander took no notice. He patted the child and
smiled at it, and said, "You'll belong to a queen. She's a
great queen, the greatest there is. You're very fortunate."

Maybe he was, Meriamon thought. Maybe he would not
mind that a male entire could not serve a Parsa lady. He
would be alive at least, and given to a just mistress. No
one else in Gaza had that surety.

She had not come to say anything to the king, though
his glance invited her to speak. She needed to be near him.
To see him inside and out. The dark was gone, the malice
burned away. Sekhmet the goddess, Sekhmet of the lion's
head, knew calm as well as wrath. Dionysos was god of
wine and laughter. Yet, for that, a god.

Alexander went to his tent long after the sun had set, when
the city was settled and the dead attended to, the wounded
and the dying entrusted to the surgeons and the rest of the
army fed, warmed with wine, and sent victorious to bed.
He went alone as few others did.

Someone was waiting. Not one of the pages, but adept
enough in a page's work, having done his share of it in his
time, and not so long ago, either. He did nol say anything.
He never needed to. He filled a cup and held it out.

Alexander dropped into the chair that waited for him,
took the cup and drank deep of well-watered wine. The
restless energy quivered and sparked in him still, like sum-
mer lightnings in the sky over Pella. But there was an
edge to it, a quiver of exhaustion.

Hephaistion got the chiton off him. The bandage on his
shoulder was filthy, stiff with more than sweat. He
frowned at it. "Shall I call Philippos?" he asked. "Or the
Egyptian woman?"

254 Lord of the Two Lands

"No." Alexander's voice was quiet, no sharpness in it,
but it suffered no argument.

Hephaistion would have argued regardless, if it had mat-
tered enough. He shrugged and set to work peeling the
bandage from bruised and tender flesh. The wound, that he
could see, was no worse than it had been before. It was
healing. Maybe. At last. As for the thigh, with its great
swollen bruise ...

"The things you do to yourself," he said.

Alexander did not reply to that. His lips were set tight.
He would never give in to pain, no more than he gave in
to anything else, man, god, or force of nature.

"Someday your muleheadedness is going to get you
killed," Hephaistion said. Not looking at him while he said
it; getting fresh bandages from the box by the bed, bring-
ing the padding and the jar of salve that the Egyptian had
made: odd little woman, but clever with her arts and her
potions. He set to work with them.

"So," said Alexander when he was almost done. "You
think I'm a fool, too."

"Not a fool," said Hephaistion.

"Mad, then."

"Not that, either."

Alexander shifted. Hephaistion frowned. Alexander
stilled, but only for as long as it took to finish off the
bandage. Then he was up and prowling.

Hephaistion sat on his heels and watched. There was an
odd comfort in it, in doing what he had done for—what,
ten years now? Being still while Alexander fidgeted. Be-
ing quiet, simply being there.

Alexander stopped and turned on his heel. It caught at
the heart, that movement: the grace of it, swift and entirely
unconscious, even with the stiffness of bandaged shoulder,
bound and bandaged thigh- "I had to do it," he said.

Hephaistion waited.

Alexander's voice came quicker, harder. "I had to make
an example. That kind of defiance—that kind of

EGYPT 255

resistance—I had to break it. They're saying I lost my
temper; I went too far."

"Did you?"
Alexander laughed: a strangled sound. "Do you know, I
knew you'd say that? After Thebes, you didn't say any-
thing."

"There was nothing to say."

"Thebes was worse. This was a Persian rebellion. A ne-
cessity of war. That was Greece, and I destroyed it."

"I was angry enough myself, then," said Hephaistion.

"And now?"

"You did what you had to do."

"What would you have done?"

"ICilled him."

Simple, that. Absolute. Alexander came in a long stride,
standing over him; wound fingers in his hair. It was not a
gentle grip, but neither was it cruel. Hephaistion let it pull
his head back, met the fierce colorless eyes- "Killed him
first?" demanded Alexander.

"Killed him," said Hephaistion, "slowly."

"That wasn't slow enough?"

Hephaistion paused, for tact. "It was .. . convincing."

"It went too far." Alexander let him go, went to the bed,
sank down onto it. "Gods," he said. "How he screamed."

Hephaistion rose. Alexander lay on his back, open-eyed.
His face was stark.

There was something to be said for Persian beds. They
were wide enough for a troop. Hephaistion lay beside Al-
exander, not touching him.

"Do you remember what Aristotle used to   say," said Al-
exander, "of what is right, and what is   proper, and what is
just? And what he said of kings? That a   king must be
stronger than other men. That he should   be master of him-
self."

"A king must also do what is necessary," said
Hephaistion. He set no particular emphasis in the words.

256 Lord of the Two Lands

He did not need to. Alexander's glance marked everything
that Hephaistion wanted to say.

Alexander said it aloud, himself, as he had to. "Achilles
was not a king," he said. "He was a haughty boy. He did
no more and no less than it pleased him to do. And when
it came to the end—he died like a fool, from a coward's
arrow. So, almost, did I." He drew a sharp breath. It hurt,
maybe: his body stiffened, then slowly eased- "The gods
were testing me. I failed."

Hephaistion opened his mouth to speak, but closed it
again. He opened his arms instead. Alexander seemed not
to see; then suddenly he was there, holding hard, with
strength that was always astonishing. He wept as hard as
he clung, though he did not weep long. He never did. The
fire in him burned away tears.

In a little while it had burned away the rest of it as well.
He lay in his friend's arms, quiet as he was after, love; sad,
one might almost have said, if one had not known him so
well. He was never so still as he was now, never so close
to peace.

And yet, when Hephaistion yielded at last to sleep, Al-
exander was still awake. For ail Hephaistion knew, he lay
awake nightlong, wrapped in his friend's arms, his mind
gone away where none but a god could follow.

•TWENTY-ONE*

The road from Gaza was a testing of fire. But for the ships
that followed faithfully along the sea-tracks, the army
would have died for lack of water. Even with them, with
the sun bearing down and the flies devouring the sweat as
it streamed from men and beasts alike, and for each man
but a sip at morning and a sip at midday and a bare cupfui
at evening, it was a bitter march.

EGYPT 257

The king had   no more to drink than the least of his men,
nor would he   ride, or take his ease on shipboard. What his
men endured,   he too would suffer; and no matter that he
was wounded,   limping, unwontedly silent since the fall of
Gaza.

It was not a black silence. Grey, rather. Still. A gather-
ing of strength, for what end none knew, perhaps not even
himself.

He was still Alexander. In front of his army he had not
changed. He marched with them, jested with them, shared
the heat and the flies and the choking, clinging dust.
His shoulder healed. Whether the heat did it, or the rig-
ors of the march, or simply the strength that was in him.
the wound ceased to fester, began to close.

Or perhaps it was Egypt, reaching out to him across the
sand.

Meriamon marched as they all did, foot by foot, parched
and sunstruck and caring not at all- Niko tried to drag her
on board his ship. She stared him down. "The earth." she
said, "under my feet. I need it." She knelt on it, set palms
to it. "Here, Niko. Feel."

He eyed her as if she had gone mad; transparently chose
to humor her. "So?"

"So!" She set her hands on top of his, pressed them
down into the sand. "Do you feel it?"

"I feel sand," he said. "And a stone. It's cutting me. Do
you mind ... ?"

It was indeed: the earth drank his blood. She wrapped
the cut, regretting the pain; but she smiled at him. "Now
your blood is Egypt's."

"This isn't—"

"Soon," she said. "It surges under us like the sea. My
land. My gods. My magic. Soon we'll pass the gate. Soon
I'll be whole again."

He understood more than he knew. Poor Hellene; it baf-
fled him. He fled back to his ship.

258 Lord of the Two Lands

Seven days, they marched. Seven days in the forge. Seven
days to the gate in the desert, the city on the easternmost
mouth of the Nile, the strong fortress called Pelusium.
There, if there should be resistance. Alexander would find
it: in walls as strong as those of Gaza, as those of Tyre.

Fleet and land force came in battle order. Mazaces the
satrap had promised submission, but Parsa faith was never
absolute except among their own. On the last day before
the approach to Pelusium, Alexander called for an early
halt and doubled rations for his troops. Their spirits were
high, for all that they had suffered- They were Alexander's
men. They had never lost a battle.

Meriamon was dizzy with the nearness of her country.
She could have taken her water bottle and her bag of be-
longings and gone on alone. Would have, if it had not been
for Alexander. He was her purpose. She could not be
aught but where he was.

She found him with the horses, alone but for a pair of
pages: so rare a thing that she stopped and wondered for
a moment what was lacking.

Only the flock of his friends. She came forward in the
long light. Boukephalas saw her: he raised his head and
neighed. She greeted him gravely and offered him the bit
of bread that she had brought.

Alexander looked up from examining the horse's hoof.
"Did you know, he's twenty-four years old? And still go-
ing strong. You'd think he'd been romping through a pas-
ture instead of this forge of the gods."

"He's good stock," said Meriamon. "Tough. Like his
master."

Alexander set down the hoof and slapped the stallion's
neck- "He's got more sense than I have. Always did."

She did not contest that.

He noticed. He draped his arm over Boukephalas' back
and leaned in seeming ease, but his body was taut. "To-
morrow we'll be in Egypt."

"Yes," said Meriamon.

EGYPT 259

"You say it will welcome me."

"As a bride," she said, "and her beloved."

"Are you going to bet on that?"

"Certainly," she said. "I wager the Two Lands."

He laughed. "Now there's a stake for a king!"

"It was yours'from the womb."

The mirth went out of his face. He ran a hand down the
stallion's neck. Not uncertain; Alexander was never that.
But his mood had gone dark. "Was it?" he asked. "Is it
mine without question? Or must 1 be tested? After Tyre,
after Gaza—will your country refuse me because I
wouldn't set it first?"
"Tomorrow," she said, "you will see."

His brows lowered. "Is that in the bet, too?"

"Yes."

"But," he said. "Can it be so easy?"

"Was Tyre easy? Was Gaza? Have you paid no prices,
Alexander?"

"There are always prices," he said.

"None that you cannot pay."

"Ah, but will I?" He straightened. "No. Don't answer
that. I've been no good to anyone since I left Gaza- That
was a comeuppance. You were right in that. Are you
pleased to hear it?"

"No," said Meriamon.

"Then what will please you?"

"The sight of you," she said, "in the Great House of
Egypt."

"And very odd I'll look there," he said.

"It is where you belong."

"So you say," said Alexander. Then he raised his head,
shifting as he of alt men could, catching fire again, finding
the god where he had retreated from the testing. "So I'll
see for myself. Will you be with me?"

"It's for that I came."

He smiled his sudden smile. "And now you'll have it. I
hope it brings you joy."

260 Lord of the Two Lands

She went to her bed with a light heart, even though there
might be dreams. Tonight she would open her heart to
them. If there was darkness, if there was fear—she would
face it, and strike it down. Khemet's power was in the
earth beneath her feet. Khemet's gladness sang in her
blood.

Too much, maybe. She was not afraid to admit it. They
were not in Khemet yet. But there was no quelling the
singing that was in her-

The camp had no water to spare for a bath. She cleansed
herself as best she could with sand—a desert expedient,
and better than one might have expected, if one did not
mind sand in one's hair. Better certainly than the Hellenes'
rancid oil scraped off with a strigil, that made the camp
smell like a kitchen gone bad. As clean as she could be,
and shivering, for night in the desert was cold, she sought
her bed.

Her shadow stretched out over her. She would have re-
leased it to hunt, but it would not go. No more would
Sekhmet who came to curl purring at her side. So guarded,
with a prayer against ill dreams, she gave herself up to
sleep.

It was the same dream. She had known that it would be.
Edjo and Nekhbet loomed over her smallness, serpent and
vulture vaster than she had ever seen them. She had come
to the gate of their power. It thrummed in the dry earth. It
rang in the sky. The stroke of it could kill.

Tonight she had no fear. As when first she dreamed this
dream, she found comfort even in its terrors. It was
Khemet. It was the Two Lands. She came of the gods'
will, guiding the gods' instrument.

"Instrument enough," said a voice above and behind
her. A voice she knew: a woman's voice, soft and heart-
stoppingly sweet; but huge as no mortal voice could ever

EGYPT 261

be. "Instrument, and more than instrument. His will is as
much his own as any god's."

"Yet," said Meriamon though she could not turn, not
yet, not unbidden, "he is a man, and mortal."

"So even was I," said the voice with a flicker of laugh-
ter. "Mortal flesh, mortal woman. Even as are you."

"I am no goddess!"

Meriamon's voice echoed in the dark country. A terrible
silence met it."

Even now she was not afraid. She was beyond fear.
Much more softly she said, "I am no goddess. That burden
is not given me."

"Is it so you reckon it?"
"I will be Osiris when I am dead, as all the dead are, fe-
male and male alike. In this life I am only Meriamon-"

"So," said the voice. The goddess. Meriamon sensed no
anger in her.

"You spoke to me," said Meriamon when the other did
not go on. "Over and over, night after night. I never under-
stood you. You were too far away."

"Not that," said the goddess. "It was not time for you to
hear."
."And yet you spoke."

"Even the gods have their fates and their destinies."

Meriamon stood quiet in the grasp of the night. It felt
like her shadow, narrow god-strong hands, blunt claw-
nails; unmoving, but gentle enough. She was aware all at
once of Sekhmet's presence, a warmth spread over her
feet, a rumble of purr. The cat was not forbidden to look
on the face of the one behind Meriamon, nor was she
blinded by it, or struck with terror. She was a goddess her-
self, a goddess' image.

"So she is," said the great one behind. "So is the one
you bring to us- He bears a great burden of pride- But he
learns. He begins to understand."

"He could die for it."

"If such is his choice."

262 Lord of the Two Lands

Meriamon pressed her hand to the coldness in her mid-
dle. She knew what the gods were. She had belonged to
them for all the days of her life. Still, to speak so, to hear
in such a voice what she most feared ...

"Child," said the goddess, and her voice was the gen-
tlest in the world- "Child, look at me."

The hands on Meriamon eased. She did not turn at once.
She needed a moment to draw breath, to firm her will.

It was only a woman. A little long-eyed Egyptian
woman in a linen gown, with a wig over her hair. She was
beautiful as queens could be, or great ladies, or simple
farmers' wives in the fields by the Nile: elegant oval face,
delicate nose, mouth full yet finely molded.
"Nefertiti," said Meriamon. Not to name her. Simply to
name what she was: The beautiful one is come.

The beautiful one smiled. 'That is a name of mine, and
of many of my daughters. And you, beloved of Amon:

would you have another name of me?"

"I need none," said Meriamon. She should have bent
down in homage, but it was late for that—even knowing
what she knew, now, looking at that lovely mortal face,
those dark mirthful eyes. "Mother," she said, and put it all
in her voice. "Mother Isis."

"Now you know me," the goddess said.

"But," said Meriamon. "It should be—it ought to have
been—"

"It ought to have been Amon?" The goddess' brows
arched. "Ah, but he has done his duty, and now that it is
done ..."

"Not all of it," said Meriamon.

"All of it that matters in this place." The goddess
seemed not at all perturbed. But she had been a woman
once, as she herself had said, and a queen; and Meriamon
was royal enough when she chose to remember it. It was
not as strange as that, to speak blunt words to the queen
of earth and heaven.

EGYPT 263

Mother Isis laughed. "Oh, indeed, we are kin; and it is
joy to see a child so fearless."

"I was always yours," said Meriamon.

"You are," the goddess said. "And your king, and all
that is."

"Then ... me rest?"

"They, too," said the goddess. "I am then- mother and
their queen. My king who died and lives again—his realm
is death, and life that comes out of death. Mine is all that
is. This that you do, in Amon's name as you did it, was
done for me."

"And he? The king whom you made?"

"He above all," the goddess said.
"Then," said Meriamon, "it was not the others at all. It
was you."

"I, and they by my will. Do you see, child? Do you un-
derstand?"

- "No," said Meriamoo. "But I will. I'm Amon's singer.
I did as he bade me. This shadow that walks with me—"

"Ah," said the goddess. Her smile warmed. Meriamon's
shadow grinned with jackal-jaws-and bowed to the ground.
"Friend," the goddess said. "Brother. Anubis my beloved,
it is well?"

"It is well," said the shadow. Its voice was deep, with
a growl in it, and a touch of laughter. It turned from the
goddess to Meriamon, and she knew. It would leave her.
Now that she was returned to her own country. Now that
she had no more need of it.

It shocked her, how much it hurt. She had accepted the
guardian for need and for obedience, when she took the
burden on her of departing from Amon's temple, of bring-
ing the king to his throne. Its loss in Tyre had been bitter,
but her strength had gone with it, and what power she had
outside of Khemet. To lose it now would matter nothing.
She had come home.

It had become a part of her, living in her shadow,
guarding her body and her souls.

264 Lord of the Two Lands

It had turned from the goddess to face her. It—he. She
would think of him as he was, here where he was more
whole than she, more truly real. His ears flattened, then
pricked. His eyes were keen.

"You have served well," said Meriamon steadily, "in
stooping so to serve a mortal woman, you who are more
by far than mortal creature."

The jackal-head dipped, assenting. The bright eyes
never wavered. There was no resentment in them. Had
never been, even at the beginning, when she was new to
me power that he lent her, and high-handed with it, be-
cause she was afraid.

She drew herself up. Serpent-shadow, vulture-shadow,
loomed above her and filled the sky. They were great, but
greater still was the woman before her. Who was no image
of divinity. Who was goddess wholly.
Meriamon bowed then at last. Bowed to the ground.
Stood straight then and faced the goddess and said, "I
have done all that was required of me. What little remains
I shall do: open the gate of the Two Lands, set the crown
upon his head. Then am I freed to go?"

"Do you wish to be?"

The question was not entirely unexpected. It was
Meriamon's dream, after all, and Meriamon's goddess. Of
course she would ask the difficult thing, the one that most
needed answer.

"Yes," said Meriamon. And, "No. I was a guide and a
goad. Once that's done, he'll need little enough from me."

"Except your friendship."

"He has friends in scores."

"Not as you are."

"And how is that?"

The goddess did not answer. Not directly. She said,
"Look before you."

Meriamon looked. She saw darkness, and the dry coun-
try, and the shadowed sky. But as she looked at it, it shim-
mered. She held her eyes steady. Like water in a basin,

EGYPT 265

like wine in a cup, it steadied. She looked in it as in a mir-
ror.

She did not remember all of what she saw. It poured
into her, filled her, overflowed. Later, when she needed it,
it would come back. But even what she remembered was
enough.

"This," she said as the vision faded and the darkness
came back. "This—it's but a beginning. And what it is—
what you are, and will, and will be—"

'*—will be," said Mother Isis. She held out her hands.
"Come, daughter. Kiss me as a child ought, and go. What
you must do, you will know. What you must choose, you
will choose."

"And if I fail?"
"Even gods can fail," the goddess said, "if they set out
to do it." That was stern, and Meriamon's eyes dropped.

Warm fingers touched her chin, lifting it. They were hu-
man fingers; no power in them, no awe. They needed
none. They simply were. "Child," said the goddess.
"Meriamon. I am with you. Remember that. I was with
you from your beginning. I will- never leave you."

Meriamon bit her tongue. She would not say what a
child would have said.

But the Mother heard it. She smiled. "I promise," she
said lightly, but with all heaven in it. "Now, child, go. Be
strong. And remember."

"—Remember."

Meriamon started awake. Sekhmet glowered from the
hollow of her side, and expressed her opinion of fools who
talked in their sleep.

Meriamon soothed her with a long rub under the chin.
The dream was fading, but its essence was burned deep.
What it had taught her ...

Not Amon. Not the gods of Memphis or of Thebes,
though they had had a part in it. Not simple kingly neces-
sity had brought her out of Egypt and led her to Alexan-

266 Lord of the Two Lands

der. That was but a beginning. This that she did was more
and greater than she had ever known; and she had thought
it the greatest matter in the world-

"It still is," she said to Sekhmet- "But now I know the
size of it. Or I begin to." She sat up. She knew the feel of
dawn, the taste of the air at night's ending.

As she rose, something stirred in her shadow. She
whirled. Sulfur-eyes laughed at her. Jackal-jaws gaped in
mockery of her astonishment.

She could not embrace a shadow. But she could grin un-
til her jaws ached, and say in a voice that caught, "You
came back. You stayed with me."

Her shadow showed teeth. Of course it had stayed. It
was hers.

"But—"
She broke off. She knew better than to argue with air.
Even air in Anubis-shape, daring her to try. She looked at
it long, sidelong for it was nothing to stare at direct, and
let it know how glad she was. It was not displeased, either.
Heart-whole and shadow-whole and full of the dream's re-
membrance, she went out into the rising day.

• TWENTY-TWO •

Pelusium gave itself wholly to Alexander, the strong gates
flung wide, its people streaming from it in their hundreds
and thousands to meet him as he came. Nor were they the
folk of the city alone; they had come from every town and
city within a day's ride or Nile-sail, thronging to look on
the king who would set them free.

The Persians made no move to stop him. Mazaces the
satrap received him at the gates of Pelusium, graceful in
surrender as Persians could be.

EGYPT 267

"Doesn't it trouble you?" Alexander demanded of him
in Meriamon's hearing.

"What, lord king?" the satrap inquired with lifted brow
and air of innocence.

"This," Alexander said. "Bowing to me. Calling me
king. Knowing that your king is still alive and stilt king.
and could come back to claim you."

"He could," the satrap conceded. "I doubt that he will.
This province is my trust. I give it over to the one who
best can rule it."

Alexander could hardly argue with that, and Mazaces
would not. He had done what he had done. He would live
or die by it.

From Pelusium by ship up the Nile and by land on its
banks, Alexander's army advanced toward Memphis. It
was a march of triumph. He had fought no battle, shed no
blood. Not in Egypt. The Persians were gone or had sur-
rendered, the weight of them raised from the land, their
presence blotted out in sun and sand and black Nile mud.

Meriamon rode in the throng at Alexander's back, quiet,
effacing herself among them. He knew who had brought
him here; and she. It was enough.

That Mazaces held the place of honor at his right hand,
where by most rights she should have been, and tfiat the
crowd of soldiers and servants and hangers-on contained a
sufficiency of Persian faces, troubled her less than she
might have expected. They were defeated. They had to see
Alexander where he was, and the people where they were,
shouting Alexander's name. it was a bitter blow to their
pride. They bore it well, that much she would give them.
Better than she could have begun to.

The Nile was quiescent, months yet from the flood, a
broad dreaming river flowing from the world's heart. They
marched through the marshes and fens of the Delta, the
green thickets loud with birds, tall fans of papyrus and
bulrush-spears, the arrow-dart of a crocodile, the roaring

268 Lord of the Two Lands

of the river-horses in their deep wallows, and round the
fleet as it rowed beside them, flocks of the little boats of
Egypt. Every village and town turned itself out to see the
king; every city opened its gates. They sang as he came,
and sang as he went, songs of the coming of the king-
He drank it like wine. But no less than she.
Her music had come back. It was in her the morning af-
ter she came to Pelusium, washed in seawater and water of
the Nile, red earth and black earth under her feet and the
sun's boat sailing up over the eastern desert. She stood
outside the walls and opened her heart, and the song came
to fill it. If there were words in it, she did not remember
them. They would be a hymn, the waking of Ra, of Amon,
of Khnum the Creator, ram-god, sun-god, lord in the Two
Lands -

Her voice was raw, too long unused, but in a little while
it remembered its power. She had forgotten what it was to
be voice and voice alone, a body of pure song. What had
filled the high temple in Thebes and soared over the
chants of the priests, now rang through earth and heaven-
It raised the sun from the horizon. It brought the day into
Khemet.

"Such a big voice for such a little woman."

Tomorrow they would be in Memphis. Tonight they
were in Heliopolis, the city of the Sun, Alexander within
in the royal house, the bulk of his army camped in the
broad fields to the east of the river. The Red Land
stretched wide and far; the Black Land lay about them in
the long light of evening, under the blue vault of heaven.

Meriamon had been   singing to herself as Phylinna
plaited her hair.   There was an Egyptian maid now, and a
plenitude of wigs   if she wanted any. but tonight she was
content with what   she had had since Asia. She smiled at
Thais, who had decided to be Hellene from the modest
coil of her hair to the elegant turn of her sandal. "Am I too
loud for you?"

EGYPT 269

"Of course not." Thais cooled herself with a palmleaf
fan. "And this is winter," she said. "Gods forbid I ever see
this country in summer."

"It's very cool," said Meriamon, "for Egypt." Still, she
did not reach for the cloak draped over the back of her
chair. Even the chill was blessed, because it was Khemet.

"You haven't stopped singing since we came to this
country," Thai's said.

"I'm home," said Meriamon.

"In every bone and sinew of you." That's sighed, not for
sadness, not for impatience; if anything, for envy. "If I
saw Athens again, I would be happy. But not like this. Are
you all so much in love with Egypt?"

"It's ours," Meriamon said. She held still while Phylin-
na, frowning, held the mirror, and the new maid painted
her eyes. Phylinna did not like to see her place so usurped,
but Ashait was more than her match for strength of will.

They were not enemies for all of that, or even for that
Ashait was a free woman and drew wages, while Phylinna
was a slave. That was a feat of diplomacy which neither
went so far as to acknowledge. It was admirable, thought
Meriamon, and much more amusing than not.

Ashait smoothed the last stroke of kohl, paused,
frowned slightly; added a touch more of lapis. "Now you
are beautiful," she said.

Meriamon rather thought that she was. It was the being
in her own country, and the gladness that blazed out of
her, even more than gold and paint and royal linen. Tomor-
row she would bring Alexander to Memphis—and let
Mazaces think that he had done it; she and her gods knew
better. He would take the crowns of the Two Lands, the
crook and the flail, the rule of the Great House. No power
would stop him, no force stand against him. She had sung
the wards about him, and the land had welcomed him. He
was its renewer, its healer and restorer.

She saw visions in the darkness of her closed eyes.
They made her smile. She looked again at the light of eve-
270 Lord of the Two Lands

ning in this room of a palace in which she had been as a
child, at the painted walls and the bright-gilded pillars and
the windows looking down into the garden; and, still smil-
ing, at Thais making herself beautiful to dine with the
king.

Under the full folds of her gown Thais was beginning to
round with the child. Her morning sicknesses were over;

she was thriving, for all that Meriamon could see. But she
had not yet told Ptolemy. It never seemed to be time. If he
noticed, he said nothing, or perhaps simply thought she
grew plump with the largesse of Egypt. Men could be
blind to anything that had to do with women's matters—
and Hellene men worse than most.

Meriamon's forehead was stiff. She was frowning. She
smoothed it away. She had no time now for Niko- She had
a king .to crown, and gods—a goddess—to serve. If he
should find another Egyptian woman, or a hetaira in the
king's following, one of the many who had come upriver
from the cities of the Delta—

She would kill him. She would quite simply kill him.

Colors in Egypt were brighter than they were anywhere
else in the world. By day, in the sun, they blinded: red and
green and blue and white and gold. By night they glowed
in the light of lamps, bright clean colors, sunlight colors,
shining Joyous against the dark. Hellenes rolled their eyes
at them, not for any lack in their own artistry, but for that
every wall was covered with them. A palace could hardly
be a palace unless it teemed with painted people, animals,
birds and fishes, flowers and trees, gods and demons and
beings of the spirit world; and everywhere the march and.
dance of the scribe's art, each symbol an image in itself.
To Meriamon whose father had commanded that she be
taught to read the old holy writing, every wall and lintel
spoke in its own voice. To the Macedonians it meant noth-
ing, but it made them uneasy.

She read a little for Alexander when dinner was done

EGYPT 271

and the wine was going round. It was nothing so wonder-
ful, only the names and titles of the king for whom the
hall was made. He had a great many of those.

"He was a braggart," Alexander said.
Meriamon forbore to bristle. "He said what he had
done, and who he was. Would you do any less?"

"I'd give it fewer words," said Alexander, "and more
action."

She smiled in spite of herself. "Ah, but you are a bar-
barian from the bottom of the world."

He laughed, but then he sobered. "I am that." He rose
abruptly from his couch. People stared. Some—Persians,
an Egyptian or two—began to rise. He waved them down.
"Come with me," he said to Meriamon.

No one followed but the guard, and the dog Peritas
heaving himself up from the foot of the couch. Meriamon
went in silence. So, for once, did Alexander- He took her
through passages that she might have known, and across
courts that she remembered from long ago. The memory
was bittersweet: the scent of her mother's perfume, the
sound of her father's voice.

Whether this to which he brought her had been the rob-
ing room before, she did not recall. Its walls were painted
with forests of palm and papyrus, and hunters moving
through it armed with bow and lance, and a flock of geese
startled into flight. Laid out in it were garments so familiar
that she stopped, and for a moment could not go on.

Alexander caught her arm. She had not been aware that
she swayed. "Are you ill?" he asked in sudden concern.

"No," she managed to say. Then, more strongly: "No-
It's only . . . I'm remembering too much."

"So you are," he said. "I didn't think- If you'd rather
not—"

She shook herself. "I'm well enough. What did you
want to show me?"

He did not take offense at her tone, though it was
sharper than she would have liked. He went to the table on

272 Lord of the Two Lands

which lay the regalia of the Great House, and took up the
false beard. "Can you see me wearing this thing?"

She looked at it. It was absurd, she could not deny that,
like a blue braided phallus on a string. "You wear garlands
in your festivals," she said. "They're hardly more prepos-
sessing."
"They're Greek."

"And this is not." Meriamon touched the robe of linen
with its stiff pleats, its armor-thickness of embroidery. She
would not venture to lay hand on the two crowns: the
While with its lofty peak, the Red like a helmet encasing
it, low before, high and narrow behind.

He had no such scruples. He held them up in front of
his face, turning them, tracing with a finger the curve of
the golden tongue that bound them together. "I know what
you want me to be," he said. "You want me to be Egyp-
tian. But I'm not. I was bom and bred in Macedon. What
this is, what it means—that's not the kind of king I am.
We're easier about it where I come from. We don't keep
the kind of ceremony your priests are willing on me."

"Do you refuse it?"

She did not mean the ceremony. Nor, in his answer, did
he. He said it slowly. "No," he said. "No. But ... it has
to be different. Do you see?"

"It has been the same for a thousand and a thousand
years."

»"And a thousand before that." He was not smiling. "I
know how old this country is. But I am a new thing. If
your gods mean me to rule, they must mean that I rule in
my way, or they would never have bred me in Macedon."

"You will have your Greek games still," she said, "and
your festival in the manner of your people. Is it so terrible
that you should be crowned in the Egyptian way. in the
Great House of Egypt?"

He took time to think about that. While he did it, Peritas
came back from sniffing about comers and leaned .against
him. He set the crown in its place and rubbed the dog's

EGYPT 273

ears absently, frowning at the table and its burden. "There
is courtesy," he said at length, "and policy. I like your peo-
ple. They're odd, I don't deny that, and as old as their
places are, sometimes I wonder if there is anything like a
young thing here. But they know how to laugh."

"Laughter is all that makes the world bearable, some-
times."

He glanced at her. His frown had not lightened. But
there was more in it of reflection than of distaste. He lifted
the crook and the flail, shook out the gilded lashes of the
latter. They clicked on one another, soft but distinct.

'That is for the master of men," she said, "and that for
the shepherd. To guard and to guide; for justice and for
mercy."

"So the priests told me," Alexander said. "They also
said that I could be crowned with the war-helmet if I
wanted it: the Khes—Khep—"

"Kheperesh."

"Keperos."

"Kheperesh."

He could not say it. "It sounds Persian," he said, "and
a fine jaw-cracker that is."

"It is not Persian," she said stiffly. "It does not even be-
gin to be Persian."

He smiled his sweetest smile. "You know I never meant
to insult you. But how you can say s—st—" He shook his
head, as if with the movement be could shake the stumble
from his tongue. "But then the Persians can't say my
name."

"What, Alexander?" She said it easily enough. "So.
Would you wear the Kheperesh, if the two crowns suit you
so ill?"

"I thought about it," he said. "I am a soldier, after all;

and I come with an army. But it doesn't feel right. This is
an oddity, and this"—his finger brushed the false beard—
"is ludicrous, but it's not war I'd make in Egypt, nor war

274 Lord of the Two Lands

that Egypt has given me. It's had enough of that. Peace is
what I would wage here."

"Egyptian peace? Or Macedonian?"

He paused, frowning again. She could almost see the
turning of his mind. "My generals would say that there is
no difference. That the peace should be my peace, and
therefore Macedonian. So would Aristotle say. Only
Greeks are made to be free, he taught me. Barbarians are
by nature slaves. But as I come to know those bar-
barians—even Persians—I wonder. Aristotle is wise, but
he hasn't seen what I've seen."

"We have never been slaves," said Meriamon, "save
under the Parsa. And that, we fought with all mat was in
us."

"So," said Alexander. He faced her fully now, crook and
flail held lightly in his hands. There was a new light in his
face. 'There is the heart of it. That they took away your
freedom. That they made you slaves."

"It took you so long to understand?"

"I had to see. To be told—it's not enough. You lost a
war. More than one. The price was, is, high; but it's the'
same price wherever war is. It's justice, of its kind. But
that you bore so deep a rancor for so long, against a race
who ruled you well enough by any lights ..."

'They ruled us."

"Will you hate us, too? We'll rule you."

"You, we chose."

"Yes." He raised the crook. "Macedon is a land of shep-
herds. We understand this, I think."

She inclined her head.

He looked at her. His eyes were steady. "Why do you
allow it? Why don't you simply set up your own king, and
bid me go back where I came from?"

"You are the king who was given us."

"That's no reason."

"It's all you'll have."

His temper sparked. She waited for the flare; but he was

EGYPT 275

master of himself. "Very well," he said abruptly. "I'll be
crowned as an Egyptian, though I'll look like twenty kinds
of fool for doing it. I'll do it for you, and for no one else.
Because it will please you."

If he had hoped to discomfit her, he was disappointed.
She shrugged. "You do it for the gods, whether you admit
it or no. If you please to serve them in my name, then who
am I to quibble?"

"I'm still what I am," he said. "I'm still Alexander of
Macedon. Nothing that I do here will change it."

"You were always what you are," she said, "and always
will be."

Meriamon was very tired, walking back alone to her
chambers. There should have been a guard, she supposed,
or a servant. But someone had forgotten; or she had
slipped away before anyone could see. She had not been
taking notice.

There was someone waiting for her. A lamp was lit and
set on the table. A figure sat in the best chair, the one with
the carved and gilded back. It was a small figure, and thin,
and for a moment she knew that it was dead: a tiny wiz-
ened mummy of a man. Then his eyes glittered, and she
saw the life burning strong in them.

His robe was simple to starkness, the robe of a priest;

the light gleamed on his shaven skull. He wore no orna-
ment, carried no mark of honor. Of rank he had little, nor
wanted any, nor needed it. What he was, was clear for any
eye to see, if that eye was gifted with magic.

Her breath caught. Her heart stopped, then leaped. She
bowed down to the floor. "Mage," she said, all reverence.
"Great priest. Lord Ay: I marvel to see you here."

"Come," he said. His voice was like his eyes, rich and
vibrant- Was that laughter in it? Or impatience? "Up. It's
I who should be bowing to you, and these bones are too
stiff for that."

276 Lord of the Two Lands

She rose to her knees. "You? Bow to me? What in the
world for?"

He laughed. It caught on a cough. The shadow behind
him stirred, became a young priest with the skin and the
face of Nubia, as black almost as Meriamon's own
shadow. Lord Ay waved the boy away, never taking his
eyes from Meriamon. Or from what stood behind her, as
solid almost as the young priest, resting an air-light hand
on her shoulder. "Every living thing has a shadow," the
old man said. "None but you, in all the world that I know
of, has such a shadow as this."

"You were one of those who gave it to me," she said.
"Not I." he said, "nor any human creature. This is of the
gods' bestowing. We asked them to protect you. They an-
swered in their own fashion."

She sat on her heels. It was comfortable enough, and Ay
did not seem to mind it. Now that she had time to think,
she wondered to see him here, whom she had thought safe
in Amon's temple, far up the Nile in Thebes. "You've
come a long way," she said, "to see the king."

"I came to see you."

She frowned.

He smiled. "Come here, child."

After a moment she obeyed. The young priest set a stool
beside the chair. She thanked him gravely. He was a stran-
ger: new since she left. He trembled when he looked at
her, and shied from her shadow. She wanted to tell him not
to be ridiculous, but she would not shame him so in front
of the mage. She sat on the stool and waited for Ay to
speak.

"Well then," he said, "I came to see the king; but first
I came for you."

"To take me back to Thebes?" She did not know what
she felt. Joy? Relief? Reluctance so deep that it shook her
body?

"That is with the gods," he said. "Though some in the
temple would be glad to have you back among them. No

EGYPT 277

one has quite so pure a voice for the morning hymn, and
the workings in the inner temple tack somewhat of savor
without your presence. There may even be a broken heart
or two among the younger priests—it seems that I heard
word of such."

That was mischief, and too much like him. She meant to
fix him with a stem stare; but that lacked force, with her
cheeks as hot as they were, and her mind darting not to a
certain few young idiots, but to one whom Ay had never
seen. Whom, gods grant, he would never see.

His smile was as innocent as a child's. "No, I didn't
come to fetch you, though I would have been happy to do
it. I came to talk to you."
She breathed a sigh. Regret, maybe. Relief. "About Al-
exander?"

"About the Great House."

"Alexander is pharaoh. In Memphis he will be so for
the world to see."

"Will he?"

Ay's voice was soft, his face serene, but she stilled,
within and without. "The gods have ordained it," she said.

"Have they?"

"They have told me," said Meriamon.

"Tell me."

She took his hands. They were stick-thin, dry and with-
ered, but there was strength in them. She gave him all that
she had, not in empty rattling words but in the voice of the
heart, tale and vision both: the king, his wars, her dreams
from beginning to end. It was a world's worth, passed be-
tween breath and breath, a single endless moment.

She let him go. If she had been tired before, she was ex-
hausted now. Ay seemed more than ever a dead thing. His
eyes were closed; his face was still. He hardly seemed to
breathe.

He stirred. He opened his eyes. She met them, then
looked away.

"So," he said. It was a sigh. "That is how it is. We

278 Lord of the Two Lands

guessed. We never would have dared to believe the whole
of it."

Meriamon knotted her fingers in her lap. Her gown was
as tired as she was, the stiff linen softening, falling out of
its pleats. The servants would have to wash it again, and
stiffen it, and set the folds with stones, and spread it in the
sun. So much labor for a few hours' display.

She was avoiding what she should be thinking of. That
Ay—Lord Ay who had taught her father what he knew of
magic, who was a mage to match any that there was—was
in awe of her. Of Meriamon. She had power enough, she
could hardly deny that, but she was never as great as he.
She was a child still, an infant in the ways of magic. She
would never have his brilliance or his artistry, or his
strength of will.

"The gods speak to you," he said, following her thought
as he could, for he was a master of mages. "And you an-
swer them, and give them respect but no fear. Do you even
know how rare that is?"

"Would fear be any use," she asked, "except to make
them impatient?"

"Who but you would think of that?" He sighed, and
shook himself. "There. You are tired, and the hour grows
late. Tell me why we should accept this king of yours."

"The gods chose him."

"That was hardly answer enough for Alexander. It is
never enough for me."

She frowned at him. The awe was gone, at least. He was
pricking her with impossible questions, knowing full well
what he did. Il was almost comforting. "Isn't it a little late
to talk of rejecting him?"

"Maybe," said Ay. "Tell me why we should not."

"He has an army, thousands strong and devoted to him.
The Parsa have surrendered to him. If we refuse him now,
he can destroy us all."

The old man seemed a little surprised to hear her speak
so bluntly. "Would he destroy us?"

EGYPT 279

"Yes," she said, not hesitating. "He can't bear to be
crossed. And he has never lost a battle."

*Then he may indeed be worse than the Parsa. Worse
even than the ones whose name is effaced from the earth."

She shivered. They were the Hyksos, those nameless
ones, the Shepherd Kings, and no more than that, no face,
no shape, no memory, and any name that they had given
themselves was lost for all of time. It was a sensation like
pain, that namelessness, a void in the heart of her magic.
But she said, "He is the gods' chosen. I know that for a
certainly- As do you, or you would never have come here."

"So well you know me," said Ay. He was not smiling,
though his words were light. "What if the gods have cho-
sen that we suffer?"
"They haven't," said Meriamon. Too quickly; but she
did not try to take it back.

"He is a foreigner," said Ay. "A barbarian even to the
Hellenes whom he rules. Once we have accepted him,
there will never be another of our blood on the throne of
the Two Lands. Is that what you wish?"

"Am I given a choice?"

"He calls you friend," Ay said. "He trusts you. If you
went to him tonight, with the arts which you command—"

"I am not an assassin!"

"Did I say that you should kill him? Dissuade him.
Convince him to depart from Khemet. How you do it, and
how thoroughly .. . that is for you to determine. Only be
certain that he neither takes the throne of the Two Lands,
nor seizes it. nor ever destroys it."

Meriamon sat stiff on the stool. She would have risen,
but her knees would not bear her. She searched the old
man's face, looking for a sign that he jested; that he did
not mean what he was saying.

"I am not joking," he said. "I am asking whether you
would do this. For Khemet. For our freedom down all the
long years."

She could not breathe. She had forgotten how. This man

280 Lord of the Two Lands

had sent her out—had sung the words that made her more
than simple woman, gave her a god-bom shadow, weighed
her down with the burden of the gods' will. Now he bade
her cast it all away. Because he saw what she saw. Alien
blood in the Great House of Khemet. And no hope, no
dream of restoration.

"Without Alexander," she said, "we have nothing."

"We have you."

She closed her eyes. It was dark, dark as the land of the
dead, and cold. And she was tired, so tired. To take the
crowns, the crook and the flail, even the beard—other
women had done it, other women ruled, through the long
years—to be lord in the Great House—

She could do it. Her hands were small, but strong
enough. Her will was firm to command, if command she
must.

Her shadow stirred at her back. Her hackles rose. It was
me gods' creature, yet it was also hers. If she defied them,
even Mother Isis, took what Ay bade her take, ruled as her
blood was meant to rule—it would stay. Would protect her.

And the Parsa would come. Or Alexander, disenchanted,
with the world at his back. And she would resist them.
And fall as her father had; but fall free.

She drew a shuddering breath. It stabbed her. She drew
another, bitter-edged. "We have failed," she said, "we of
the Black Land, to rule ourselves and our kingdom. So in
the end would I. What we do now ... it saves us. Not as
we were before, we can never be that, in so much you see
true; but we shall endure and be strong—and more than
we, our gods. That, I was shown. If Alexander takes the
throne as pharaoh in Memphis, all the world shall know
our gods, and Mother Isis shall be worshipped wherever
men are. If he does not, we dwindle and fail, and our gods
sink with us, down into the long night."

There was a silence. Meriamon opened her- eyes, but
kept them downcast, fixed on her knotted fingers. She was
aware of Ay's presence, the rattle and catch of his breath-

EGYPT 281

ing, the quick nervous breaths of the young priest behind
him, the murmur of wind about the waits. She had not
known what she would say until she said it. Now that it
was done she was emptied, lightened. That she could have
been what her father was, done what he did, and died as
he died—that was almost joy. So likewise that she would
not do it.

"I love him, I think," she said. "Not as a woman loves
a man—that's no part of it- But as a soldier loves a gen-
eral; as a priest can love a king. There's a light in him,
even when he's being mad, or maddening. He's full of the
god."

"Ah, but which god?" asked Ay. "If it is Set, and not
Horus, or Amon who begot him ..."

"It can be all three. And Dionysos, too—and that is Osi-
ris, who is lord of all that lives or is dead."

Ay pondered that, sitting as still as Osiris himself, only
the glitter of his eyes betraying that he lived. Not much
longer, Meriamon knew, and that was grief. The rattle in
his lungs was stronger by far than it had been when she
left Thebes, and there was little of him left but will and
magic. But he would see the end of this, for good or for
ill: Alexander crowned and taken into the Great House,
and Khemet made greater by it or diminished to nothing,
a nation of slaves under a tyrant's heel.

"This is the gamble," she said. "The great throw. We
began it long ago. Should we shrink from it now, when the
end is so near?"

"That part is yours," he said, "to accept or to cast away.
I only tell you what can be."

"You test me," she said. She did not ask why, as per-
haps she was meant to. She knew. Because the power was
in her, here at the crux, to let it go on, or to stop it before
it was unstoppable. And, more than that, because Ay was
never one to go blindly where anyone led, even a god. He
wanted her to think. To choose. To decide for herself.

It was terrifying, that freedom. Knowing that her

282 Lord of the Two Lands

shadow waited as Ay waited, and would not move to com-
pel her. The gods in their majesty, the Mother herself who
was queen of them all. would speak no word. What
Meriamon said, what she did, were hers and hers alone.

"No," she said. "I will not stop him. If that makes me
a coward, then so be it. At least I am an honest coward."

"Or as brave as any in the world," said Ay. 'To refuse
power when it is offered, when you have blood-right to
it—that's no common cowardice."

"No; it's noble. Royal, for a fact." She rose. Her knees
wobbled. She stiffened them. "This is only a beginning.
That's what you're telling me. Making me see."

The bright eyes hooded. The old man smiled. "Now you
begin to understand."

She almost hit him. She glared instead; then, all unwill-
ingly, laughed. She embraced him, careful of his fragility,
and set a kiss on his brow. "I'd forgotten how exasperating
you can be. And—for all of that—how necessary."

"What, like one of the priests' purges?"

"Very like," said Meriamon, shocking the poor young
priest into immobility, and making Ay laugh. That too she
had forgotten: what it was to share laughter with a kins-
man. By that more than anything, she knew that she had
come home.

• TWENTY-THREE •

Meriamon J-ose long before dawn on the morning of Alex-
ander's crowning in Memphis. Even at that, he would be
up before her: the priests and the servants would have seen
lo it. They had been instructing him for much of the day
before, and finding him, they said, a quick pupil. "If not,"
Lord Ay had said, "precisely tractable." He had been
amused.

EGYPT 283

Meriamon smiled, thinking of Alexander and Ay to-
gether. Ay would not have compelled the king to do any-
thing against his grain, but there was a strong magic of
persuasion in the old priest's presence.

She prepared herself carefully. It   had been a long while
since she walked as a priestess of   Amon. The gown, the
wig, the paint went on like armor,   heavy, stiff with disuse.
She was to be nothing in this rite   except eyes and a voice;

she held no rank and accepted no honor but that of a
singer of the god. On that she had been adamant. Ay, wise
man, had not pressed her. Alexander might have, but she
had hardly seen him since they came to Memphis. He
needed for this brief time to be in Khemet wholly, without
her to stand between, distracting him with familiarity.

With dawn as yet the faintest glimmer on the horizon.
she left the Great House and walked down to the temple
of Min—Min and not Ptah of Memphis, because Min
oversaw the fruits of the land, and hence the reign of the
king. The streets were full of people, but they were quiet,
their ebullience muted by the coot and the dimness. She
slipped through them like a shadow. She felt light, empty,
neither joyful nor afraid. Eyes, no more, and when the
time came, a voice.

She knew that there was more to her than that. But the
solid center, the knot of fears and joys and confusions, was
in part buried deep, in part left behind in the Great House,
in the keeping of a certain Macedonian guardsman. Now
she must be all Khemet, all priestess. This had walked up
out of Thebes. This had come to the field of Issus, and
found the king whom the gods had chosen.

Such a little thing, she had been. So pure in her empti-
ness. So unformed, like clay before the potter shapes it.
Her journey had been the shaping. Alexander—king,
god's chosen, but man and friend besides—was the fire
that had made her strong.

Alexander, and his friends who had become hers. And
Nikolaos.

284 Lord of the Two Lands

She stood on the terrace between the Great House and
the temple of Min, no longer a shape of air and darkness,
but earth and flesh, with life burning in it. The sun was
coming. And with it. the king.

He left the palace as the sky flushed bright with dawn.
He came as Lord of the Two Lands: no Hellene king
mounted on a horse, but pharaoh borne high on the shoul-
ders of princes, under a canopy of gold, and before him
me princes of Khemet, and behind him the lords of the
Two Lands, and behind those the foot and the chariotry, to
the sound of drums and trumpets. Two priests walked
ahead of them all in a cloud of frankincense, and between
them a lone priest chanting the processional.

As me king left the Great House, the procession of Min
left me god's dwelling, the god borne as the king was
borne, on the shoulders of a score of priests. The god's
white bull walked before, and the long tine of priests be-
hind, carrying the panoply of the king and the images of
me gods. They for mis day suffered Min to stand preem-
inent, but their presence was strong, blessing the rite with
their mingled power: Amon and Mut and Khonsu, Plan
and Sekhmet and Nefertem, Horus and Osiris and Mother
Isis, Khnum, Sobek, Set, Hathor, Thoth and Bastet, and all
me gods who were in Khemet.

They met upon the terraced square, wide it seemed as a
city, just as the sun rose. A shout went up from the priests
and the people. In its aftermath, the air still throbbing from
the force of it, Min's priest stepped out into the center of
the square, looking small and yet strangely potent in the
empty space. Priests followed him bearing cages. One by
one he opened them, brought forth a flapping, protesting
goose, and flung it into the sky. The birds floundered,
steadied, beat their way upward. "Bear word," the priest
cried to them in a voice as thin and clear itself as a bird's,
"to the four realms of heaven, that Horus the son of Isis
and Osiris takes the two crowns, that the son of the living

EGYPT 285

gods receives the White Crown and the Red Crown over
the land of Khemet."

Meriamon, on the edge of the square, lowered her eyes
from the birds to the glitter that was the king. Her souls
knew him, always. Her sight saw a stranger.

He had put on the kilt. He looked welt in it, was built
for it with his wide shoulders and his graceful compact
body, though his fair skin was odd, given as it was to go-
ing red and peeling when sensible skin went bronze-dark.
He wore the headdress with its lappets over the shoulders
and its twisted tail behind, striped blue and gold. They had
not succeeded in painting his eyes—no Hellene would suf-
fer that, reckoning it a thing for barbarians and women—
but the face under the headdress, at, this distance, was a
royal mask. What he was thinking, only the gods knew.

When the priests took off the headdress, there was no
mistaking the bright-gold mane, or the way, perhaps for-
getting himself, he shook it out and back. A murmur ran
through the gathered people. Wonder, surprise. A full
mane on a king, and yellow at that: astonishing. Min's
priest frowned slightly. The murmur died.

Alexander's face did not change at all. His eyes were
lifted, fixed on the horizon. They remained so as the
priests vested him with the regalia of,the Great House:

crook, flail, even the false beard. As the priests ap-
proached with the crowns, his gaze focused.

Meriamon felt it in her bones. A gathering. A swelling
of power. An awareness in the earth, that here at last, after
far too long, a true king stood again in the heart of the
Two Lands. She sank to her knees, unmindful of anything
but the earth beneath. She laid her hands flat on the stones.
Men had quarried them, shaped them, set them here, but
they were Khemet too, under the sky of Khemet, before
Khemet's king.

He was as still as ever, but his feet were braced a little
apart, as if against the rocking of a ship. As the joined

286 Lord of the Two Lands

crowns touched his brow, he stiffened. His eyes were
wide.

He felt it at least as strongly as she. White heat. Pure
raw power, centering in him. For this moment, from this
moment, he was Khemet. His heart was her heart, his life
her life. As he prospered, so must she. If he failed, so
would she fail, unless an heir be found to restore the
power.

Across the sun-shot stretch of paving, his eyes met
Meriamon's. The light in them was terrible, and yet it did
not blind her. Had it been so, she asked him with the voice
of the soul made strong by the power that was here, when
he was made king in Macedon?

He answered her, soul to soul. Alike, he said, yet differ-
ent. A darker earth, a younger power, milder, weaker, less
fiercely potent. He showed it to her. It made her think of
water from a rock, and of a ram upon the altar, offering its
throat for the sacrifice.

This was nothing so gentle. It was the eye of the sun,
ancient and terrible. And yet he was master of it. As will-
ingly as the ram, it offered itself to him.

He took it. He held it as he held the crook and me flail:

shepherd's rod, master's whip, persuasion and force
matched and balanced.

"For you," he said in me voice of the heart. "For you
I do this. Because you want it so badly."

"I?" she asked him silently. "Not you?"

He was motionless in the center of the square, an image
of a king. But inside her he laughed, and that was all Al-
exander. "Well. I too. But I'd have done it Greek-fashion,
and never mind the rest of it."

"Then you would have been a foreign king," she said,
"no belter than Cyrus or Cambyses, and no more truly
king in Egypt. This makes us yours. And you, ours."

"For a while," he said.

"For always," said Meriamon.

EGYPT 287

Alexander gave himself to Khemet and accepted Khemel
m return, and the Two Lands were glad of him. An hour
after, he put on a chiton and bound his brows with a gar-
land of Nile lilies and went to his Greek games; and that
was all for his Hellenes.

Meriamon could not have gone to the games in any
•event, since she was a foreigner, and worse than that, a
woman; but she did not miss them. She could never under-
stand what pleasure these people found in hour after hour
of watching naked men running and leaping and fighting.
The horse-games might have been a little more interesting,
and the contests of music and dance, though she would
rather not have had the judges giving prizes. Were they not
all showing the best that they had?

She said as much to Niko. She was sitting with That's in
one of the courts of the Great House, listening to a flute
player who had taken a second in the competition—an
Egyptian, and he should have been more sensible, but he
had imbibed enough of the Hellenes' silliness to be dis-
mayed that he had not won- Niko, who had come looking
for his brother, accepted a cup of wine from the servant's
hand and seemed inclined to linger.

"What is this about choosing the best?" she asked him.
"Can't anyone be happy to be what he is?"

"No," said Niko. Then, before she could snap at him;

"The best is what every man should strive to be, or what's
the worth in anything?"

"And if he can't be? What then? He gnaws himself in
silence, and wishes he were dead?"

"He tries harder," Niko said.

She frowned al him. "You won the races again. Ptolemy
told us. Don't you get tired of winning?"

He laughed, which made her frown the more blackly.
"Never! I love to win. Typhon lives for it. Aren't you
proud of us?"

"I don't understand you," she said.

"What. are we a mystery? And you an Egyptian."

288 Lord of the Two Lands

"We're not mysterious at all."

"No?" His hand took in the whole of it: the court with
its trees and fountains, the walls that the Hellenes called
the work of gods or giants, the sky the pure deep blue of
lapis; and beyond, to the mind if not the eye. Black Land
and Red Land and the inscrutable tombs of the old kings.
"This country is like nothing else that ever was. The size
of it—vaster than anything in the world, and older, and
stranger, with its myriad gods. And you can't understand
why we look for the best, and reward it when we find it?"
"We don't need to look. We are."

Ptolemy came back then, and none too soon in Meri-
amon's mind. Niko was grinning. Incorrigible.

She left soon after that. Her temper had cooled some-
what. She could—should—have been in Amon's temple
with her own people. Lord Ay was there. But she was not
minded to face them. She was the one who had gone
away. She had spoken with me gods; she had become a
stranger.

"I am home," she .said to herself. "I am."

And so she had been till she saw the awe in Ay's face-
Till she knew that she had changed.

The land was still her own. The people had gone
strange. Narrow dark faces, long black eyes; light and
small and quick, their language like the rattle of the sis-
trum.

She could walk among them, and no one stared, or reck-
oned her a foreigner. It was the other whom they gaped at,
striding to catch her, big fair Macedonian with his improb-
able eyes.

She was not as alien as he was. Neither was she one of
them- She walked between the worlds.

She always had. That was what it was to be bom royal
and gifted with magic.

The streets were thronged. They could not have walked
side by side if Niko had not been so much larger than any-

EGYPT 289

one near, and so determined to breast the flood. She
walked in the lee of him, and no one jostled her.

A suspicious bulge in his mantle wriggled and became
Sekhmet, treading the breadth of his shoulders to spring
lightly down into Meriamon's arms. The cat looked highly
pleased with herself. As well she might, who had escaped
from standing guard over Meriamon's chambers.

Beyond the Great House, past the avenues of me tem-
ples, vast sky-roofed halls with their ranks of sphinxes, the
city of giants became a smaller thing. The streets narrowed
to human-width. The houses shrank and dwindled undl
they were no more than huts of mud and palm-trunks, with
dogs and big-bellied children playing in me dust in front
of mem, and women chattering as they fetched water from
me cistern. Someone was baking bread, someone else was
brewing beer. Children's voices rang in unison from a little
temple, reciting a lesson. Under an awning a potter plied
his trade.

From here one could not see the temples or the palace,
or the White Wall that had been raised about it when the
worid was young. This was another Egypt, less wonderful
to see, but more truly itself.

"Now this I could leam to like," said Niko, stepping
over a dog that had lain down in the street and had no
mind to move. He grinned at a child who stared at him
from a doorway, thumb in mouth, eyes black and round
and shiny as olives. 'Temples and palaces—they're pleas-
ant to look at, but they aren't much good for living in."

"I've never lived anywhere else," said Meriamon. "Ex-
cept in tents, following the king."

"Could you learn?"

It was such an odd question, and asked so simply, that
she stopped. He went on a stride or two, halted, turned on
his heel. She was aware of him, but her eyes were on the
rest, the small mean houses with their bright paint on
doorpost and rafter, the dog and the child and the gaggle

290 Lord of the Two Lands

of women at the cistern, whispering and giggling and dart-
ing glances at the foreigner.

"I don't know," she said. "I never thought of it."

"No," said Niko, and all the brightness had gone out of
him. "You couldn't. You belong in the temples and the
palaces. I belong here."

"You are a nobleman," she said.

"I am a shepherd's son, a breaker of horses. My feet
knew the feel of earth before they ever walked on marble."

"Carpets," she said. "We walk on carpets."

"The only carpet I ever knew was grass where the sheep
had grazed it."

"I've walked on grass," said Meriamon. "It's very
strange. Here it's sand, and mud in season."
His expression was odd. After a while, and not happily,
she recognized it. Pity. "They never let you set foot in it,
did they? You were always in a litter, or on a horse."

"I used to play in the garden," she said. She was not go-
ing to be angry, or to defend herself. To him least of all.
'There was a pool, with lilies. I was always falling into
it."

"Or jumping in?"

A smile tugged at the comer of her mouth, for all that
she could do. "I wasn't supposed to. But if I went too
close to the edge, and once I had got wet ... what use to
,come out until I'd had my fill of it?"

"We had a pool," said Niko, "out by the mares' pasture,
where the river cut through a bank. We all swam in it. It
was ghastly cold, and there were fish that liked to bite at
dangling toes and fingers. We thought it was the best thing
in the world."

Meriamon's smile broke free. She began to walk again.
He walked with her past the women with their laughing,
knowing eyes. One of them said something that brought
the blood rushing to her cheeks.

He did not see it. Maybe. And he knew no Egyptian.
She walked faster. He lengthened his stride, easily, hum-

EGYPT 291

ming to himself. Blessed innocent. If he lived here, he
would have them all falling in love with him.

She was long lost. She could not even stay angry with
him for being Nikolaos.

When the games were over, Alexander took a company of
friends and Companions and, escorted by a small army of
priests, rode out of the living city into the city of the dead.

This was the Red Land, the dry land, and yet it was not
'lifeless. The city of tombs was full of shrines, and each
shrine had its priests, greater and lesser in the degree
which the dead had endowed. Roads ran through it, wide
and level and smoothly paved, scoured clean by wind and
sand and sun.

There was no grief here. Only awe, and the   fields of
monuments to the immortal dead. On the far   edge of it
down an aisle of sphinxes, huge man-headed   lions crouch-
ing forever on guard, lay Apis' temple and   tomb.
The king had seen Apis-on-earth in the city of the liv-
ing: the black bull with the star on his brow and the image
of an eagle astride his back. He had his temple and his ha-
rem, his priests who served him and offered him sacrifice.
Alexander had paid him reverence, and he had accepted it,
bowing his great homed head and suffering the king to
touch him.

Here was the tomb of the bulls who had been Apis, dug
deep and walled strong amid a cluster of shrines and tem-
ples- There, wrapped like a king and laid to rest, was that
Apis whom Cambyses had killed-

"He took the city," said Apis' priest, standing in the dim
echoing chamber under the weight of stone and years,
"and woke in the morning to hear, not wails and lamenta-
tion, but laughter and rejoicing. A god was bom, his cap-
tives told him. A child of heaven had come to earth and
blessed his city.

" 'And does it matter nothing that his city has fallen?'
the king demanded of them. They only laughed and sang

292 Lord of the Two Lands

with all the rest. even when he tormented them. Then he
was struck with wonder, and although he was a Persian
and his Truth was inviolate, he yearned to see for himself
what face a living god would wear.
- '* 'Bring the god to me,' he bade his servants. And they
obeyed, and brought him the god. Damp yet from its birth,
wobble-legged, bawling for its mother: a black bull-calf
with a white forehead.

"Cambyses laughed aloud. 'This is your god? This you
worship? See how I give it reverence!'

"He swept out his sword, and before any could stay
him, thrust it into the rump of the calf.

"It died of the wound, and the Great King gave it to his
cooks, and that night he feasted on it, he and his princes.
Such," said the priest, "was Cambyses' reverence for the
gods of Egypt."

"And Ochos," said Meriamon. "He .too, when he had
slain my father: he slew the Apis and dined on its flesh,
for he was not to be outdone."

"No wonder you hate them," said Ptolemy. The others,
even Alexander, had looked at the dead thing in its wrap-
pings and its reek of grave-spices, and retreated rapidly.
Ptolemy regarded it with something very like reverence.
"Poor thing, to die so young. Was it born again quickly?"

"Soon enough," said the priest. "Apis is always reborn;

always to a cow who conceives of fire from heaven, who
bears no young after. We reverence the Mother of the Apis
as we do her son."

"I saw her in the temple," Ptolemy said. "A fine crea-
ture, that. I can see that a god would favor her."

Meriamon watched him after that. He was no different
than he ever was, and yet something about him had
changed. It was she—she was seeing him anew. He was
interested in what was here. He wanted to know. He
walked with the priest, and asked questions, and listened
to the answers. The echoing gloom, the dry scent of death,

EGYPT 293

^pemed not to trouble him. He seemed almost to be at
home here.

More than she. She was glad to leave the tombs, to walk
in the sun again. Time enough and more when she was
dead, to walk these passages. Now she would live, and
breathe the clean air, and turn her face to the fire of Ra.

• TWENTY-FOUR •

Arriudaios loved Egypt. "Colors," he said. "And all the
warm. And people laughing."

Thais grimaced. No one, it was clear, had warned her
mat beauty lingered longest in a serene face. Hers was
mobile always, and more of late, as her belly swelled with
the child.

She caught her breath now. Arrhidaios stopped talking
and stared at her. Meriamon poised, alert.

"It moved," said Thal's. "It kicked me."

Her surprise was pure. No joy in it, but no anger either,
simply astonishment.

"Babies do that," said Arrhidaios. "Myrrhine let me feel
when the baby kicked. It kicked hard. She said it hurt.
Does it hurt, Thais?"

"No," Thais said.
Meriamon did not ask who Myrrhine was. Someone in
Macedon, no doubt. She kept her eyes on Thais. The he-
taira let her hand fall from her middle, where it had flown
when the child moved, and shook herself, and went on
with what she had been saying. "So I told him," she said.
"Finally."

"Had he guessed?" asked Meriamon.

"He said not." Thais filled her cup with wine. The
bright brittle look was on her as it sometimes was, but
rarely now when there was only Meriamon there, and

294 Lord of the Two Lands

Arrhidaios who had wandered in a little while ago and set-
tled contentedly at Meriamon's feet. "I am clever," Thai's
said, "after all. And men never look, once they're sure one
has the proper count of breasts and diighs, in suitable pro-
portions."

"Ptolemy is hardly as blind as that."

"Maybe he wanted to be."

Meriamon narrowed her eyes. "What did he say?"

"What would you expect him to say?"

Arrhidaios said suddenly, " 'If it is a boy you may keep
it. If it is a girl, see that you expose it, and that ail is
done
duly and properly, before I return.' "

The women stared at Arrhidaios. He smiled, pleased
with himself.

"Where on earth did you hear that?" Meriamon asked
him.

His smile wavered. He shrugged, with a touch of sullen-
ness. "I don't remember."

"It's a play," said Thai's.

"Yes!" cried Arrhidaios; "Thettalos was in it. He said
the baby had to be a boy. It wasn't. So they put it out on
the hill. But somebody came and found it. Somebody will
find your baby, too."

"I hope not," Thai's said.

"You won't keep it, then?" asked Meriamon.
"I didn't say that!" Thais' voice was sharp. She drank
deep from her cup, and drew a long breath after, as if to
summon patience. "I didn't say that at all. Nor did he. He
wants me to keep the child. Even"—her voice wavered a
fraction—"if it is a girl."

"Do you want to keep it?"

"Does it matter what I want?"

"To Ptolemy," Meriamon said, "1 think it does."

Thais held her stare for a long moment. Then the bold
eyes lowered. She sighed. "He would have shouted for a
festival, if I hadn't forced him to be reasonable. As it was,
he drank much too much, and told far too many people,

EGYPT 295

and made a perfect fool of himself. You'd think," she said,
"that he'd never sired a cub before."

"Hasn't he?"

"Not that he'll admit to." Thai's set the cup on the table
with a small, definite click. "And when are you going to
admit that Nikolaos is in love with you?"

The shift left Meriamon mute. It was evasion, of course.
That's hated to speak of things that came too close to her
heart. It was like her to cut to the quick of Meriamon's.

Arrhidaios spoke in the pause. "Men, are you going to
have a baby for Niko?"

Meriamon rose from her chair. What she said, if she
said anything, she did not afterward remember. She hoped
that she left in something resembling dignity.

She came to a halt in a passageway that looked only
vaguely familiar. Her eyes were burning dry. One learned
to do that in Khemet: tears made the kohl run.

A child for Nikolaos. A child for any man. A'child to
fill this womb of hers that the gods had made barren, to
mark her as their chosen—the price she paid, to be their
slave and servant.

She shut away the thought, with its grief and—yes, its
anger. It had never hurt so much before. It had never mat-
tered.
She looked about. One way seemed as good as another.
She went on as she had begun, through the painted corri-
dors. People passed her. One was agitated. He was looking
for Arrhidaios. She would have told him where the king's
brother was, but he was past before she could speak, look-
ing as distracted as she felt.

The next runner was looking for her. He was one of the
king's pages, a boy so fair that he looked unnatural, like a
bleached bone. He had been in the sun again without a hat:

his face was crimson, and it had begun to swell. "I have
a salve for that," she said.

"The king said you did, lady," said the boy, "and I'm to
fetch it later. But first he wants to see you."

296 Lord of the Two Lands

She thought of not wanting to see him. But the boy
would be upset, and she had nowhere to go that was not
painful. She shrugged. "Why not?" she said.

She had shocked the poor child. His back was rigid with
disapproval as he led her through the corridors. He bowed
her through every door, so scrupulously, exaggeratedly
correct that she almost laughed.

A man caught them as they turned to go to the king's
chambers. He was one of the Old Macedonians as the
younger ones had taken to calling them, a man who kept
his beard and dressed in the rough wool of the uplands,
even in Egypt. He looked at the page with no pleasure at
all. and at Meriamon with barely restrained disgust. "My
commander wants to see you," he said to Meriamon.

She could understand his accent. Just- She would not
have stopped, but he was barring her way. "And who is
your commander?" she asked.

She had offended him. But then her simple presence did
that; this merely added to it. "Parmenion," he said, "will
see you now."

"I am going to see the king," she said.

"You can see the king after you see Parmenion."

Alexander's page was   no help at all. He shifted from
foot to foot, but he   said nothing. For once Meriamon
would have been glad   of one of me older boys, one who
could be as arrogant   as this great bristling scowling man.
So could she be. "Very well," she said. "I'll spare your
general a moment. Tell him he may find me in the cham-
ber of me birds."

She was gone before the man could muster wits to
speak. The room she had spoken of was close, and small
as rooms went in this palace, with a wall that was open on
one of the gardens. The others were painted with birds of
every kind that was in Khemet, from the fowl of reed and
sedge to the falcon of the desert, swimming and feeding
and flying in a long band above painted ranks of pillars.
There was a couch to sit on, carved with birds, painted and

EGYPT 297

gilded, and a stool, and a table, and little else but light and
air.

Meriamon settled herself on the couch. Alexander's
page, finding his courage at last, said, "Lady, the king—"

"The king will wait a little longer," she said.

"But—"

"He will wait," she said. There was iron in her tone. A
flush could not show on his face, as scarlet as the sun had
seared it, but he looked down quickly and was silent. He
had taken a guard's place, she noticed, beside and behind
her. She thought of sending him back to his master. But
there was comfort in his presence, and he was a witness.
if Parmenion ventured to harm her.

They waited in silence. Meriamon began to wonder if
there was any use in it: if Parmenion would come at all.
As she considered rising, stretching the knots out of back
and arms, going to find the king, she heard the sound of
feet. Soldier's boots; the clanking of armor. She willed
herself to remain as she was, half-reclining on the couch.

It was only one man, pausing at the door, then open-
ing it-

Meriamon hoped that she was not gaping like an idiot.
Niko looked ready to stand guard on the king. His armor
was polished till it shone, his cloak hung in impeccable
folds. He had his best sword, and his helmet had a new
plume.

He hardly looked at her at all, which was as well: it
gave her time to recover herself. "Go on, Leukippos," he
said. "Tell the king we'll be along as soon as we're done
here. I'll look after the lady."
Leukippos grinned, sudden and startling, and set off at
a run. Niko took his place.

Meriamon found her tongue at last. "What in the gods'
name—"

"Some people need to remember that you're a king's
daughter," Niko said. -

298 Lord of the Two Lands

She could hardly argue with that. "But," she said,
"where did you come from?"

"Thais told me you'd run off. I ran into Marsyas in the
hall; he told me where you were."

"How hard did you hit him?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" said Niko. Then, before
she could hit him herself: "I didn't need to- I'm a King's
Companion, and I outrank him. Maybe I rattled my sword
a bit. For appearances. After all."

"After all," said Meriamon. dry as sand in a tomb. She
had not expected to find him comforting. His solidity was
an anchor. His levity tightened her heart, even now. There
was no nursing ancient grievances under that bright pale
stare.

But they did matter. He did not know, could not.

He would learn.

Parmenion came at long last, with a pair of guards who es-
tablished themselves at the door, and a glare for Niko.
Niko stood at parade rest, wearing no expression at all: the
perfect guardsman. Parmenion's glare slid from him to
Meriamon.

"Well," the commander said. "Have you something to
say?"

His insolence was breathtaking. Niko stiffened percepti-
bly. Meriamon allowed herself a slow smiie. It was sweet;

it was puzzled. "I? But, commander, it was you who ex-
pressed a desire to speak with me."

"I am not accustomed to running at a woman's bid-
ding," Parmenion said.
"No," said Meriamon. "I can see that you would not be.
Except, of course," she said, "if that woman is a queen."

"You are not that," said Parmenion.

"True," said Meriamon. "Will you speak now? The king
is waiting."

Parmenion paused. She watched his face suffuse with
anger; she watched it smooth itself clean. No rough sol-

EGYPT 299

dier, this one, for all his rudeness. He knew courts and
kings. She could hardly blame him, she supposed, for try-
ing to cow her or prick her to temper, and so gain the ad-
vantage.

He gave no signal that she could see, but one of his
guards fetched the stool. He lowered himself into it, stiffly,
and set his hands on his knees. "Very well," he said.
"You're no fool; I shouldn't have treated you like one.
Can we be honest with one another?"

"Have we ever been anything else?"

"On my side of it," he said, "no. You have name
enough for truthfulness, whether you speak for your gods
or yourself. Suppose you tell me, then. If Alexander
agreed to it, would you marry him?"

She opened her mouth, closed it. "He never would."

"He well could," said Parmenion. "He should. You're a
king's daughter. You know what a king's first duty is. To
give sons to the line."

"He knows that," she said. 'There's Barsine's Herakles.
A fine child, growing well and quickly."

"Too quickly," said Parmenion, "for one as young as
he's supposed to be." She was silent. His mouth twisted:

perhaps a smile, perhaps not. "Don't take me for an idiot,
lady. That's Memnon's brat, and you know it as well as I
do. So, I'll wager, does Alexander. He visits them both as
seldom as he possibly can, and stays hardly long enough
to exchange a word or two. No, Mariamne. That was a
weak deception, and it gets weaker the longer it goes on.
Alexander has no son alive, and no chance of getting one.
Unless," he said, "you see to it."

Meriamon's lips set tight.
"You know he has to have a Macedonian queen,"
Parmenion said, oblivious to her silence, or not caring to
notice it. "But Macedon is on the other side of the earth,
and time runs on. While he plays king in Egypt, he can
take an Egyptian wife. He's thought of you, don't think he
hasn't. He likes the look of you."

300 Lord of the Two Lands

"Not as a woman," she said more faintly than she would
have liked.

"That's for you to teach him, then, isn't it?"

Meriamon wanted to close her eyes and breathe deep,
but that would be a betrayal. She said as calmly as she
could, "Have you considered sending for a properly Mace-
donian bride? Once she was here, he could hardly pack her
off again without insulting her mortally; or more to the
point, her family."

"Macedonian women do not tramp about with the
troops."

"Not even briefly, to give your king an heir?"

"It's not done."

His face was a shut door. Meriamon could find no chink
in it. "Why, then? Why choose me?"

"Who else is there?"

"Half the nobility of Egypt have daughters of appropri-
ate age," said Meriamon.

"Is any of royal blood?"

"Several," she said.

"None is a king's daughter," said Pannenion. "Or the
king's friend. Or as likely to win him over."

That, unfortunately, was true. Alexander had said it
once where Meriamon could hear. He did not like to bed
strangers. Friends were the best lovers. Dear friends were
best of all. He had been looking at Hephaistion when he
said it, and Hephaistion had laughed and made a jest of it,
but it was true. She knew it as well as they.

Her throat was trying to shut tight. She willed it open.
Parmenion spoke again before she could begin. "You
have to marry. Every woman does. Why not marry a king?
You can't be queen in Macedon, but if they call you queen
in Egypt, who's to gainsay them? Isn't this what you've
been aiming for since you tracked us down in Issus?"

"No," she was going to say. Did say, but no one heard
it. Someone was at the door: a high sharp voice raised, the
guards' deeper tones, a sudden flurry.

EGYPT 301

The door was open, and Alexander was in it, in a fine
hot temper, but smiling. "Parmenion! So that's where
you've got to. And Mariamne. Am 1 interrupting some-
thing? Should I come back?"

Meriamon wondered distantly what he would have done
if she had taken him at his word. She did not; and
Parmenion seemed to have lost his voice.

She started to rise. Alexander waved her down again,
looked about, found the other stool, pulled it up beside her.
His eyes were bright as he looked from one to another of
them. Bitter-bright. "Let me guess. You're talking about
marrying me off again."

"How can you tell?" asked Meriamon. She did not
mean it for coyness. She honestly wanted to know.

"Parmenion," said Alexander. "You. In the same room.
And there's a look you both get ... Have you settled the
contract yet?"

"We could hardly do that without your knowledge and
consent," Parmenion said.

"No," said the king. "But you might get the haggling
over before you started on me. It's logical, I suppose. As
long as you're looking to drag me to my duty. And now
we're here, with all the priests and the princes, and enough
Persians to be properly horrified when the new pharaoh
marries the old pharaoh's daughter. It would be a very eco-
nomical wedding."

'Then you'll assent to it?" Parmenion asked. His voice
was as level as ever, no quickening of eagerness in it, but
he had eased visibly. He was poised still, for all of that;

knowing his king, and wary of this new complaisance and
its attendant, unwonted stillness.

Alexander paused as if in thought. "I made a joke of it
once, or a challenge. That didn't make it less sensible. Not
that I need anyone to give me Egypt. That's done, and
well done. But establishing my rule here, giving what I
can to a woman of mis country ... that's tempting."

"This woman will have you," Parmenion said. "There's

302 Lord of the Two Lands

none better suited. She's not as much for looks as some,
but she'll do. Her family, if she has any— Do you have
family, lady?"

"None alive," Alexander answered for her. And when
Parmenion raised a brow: "I asked. She has cousins,
maybe, in Ethiopia. There's only Amon's temple and the
priests, and they won't give trouble."

"Good," said Parmenion, still warily, but playing the
game, if game it was. Netting his prey. "The sooner you
get her bedded and bearing, the happier we'll be."

Meriamon rose very slowly. Neither seemed to see her.
Niko did. She was aware of him, a shiver on her skin.
What he was thinking, she could not begin to guess.

The voice that came out of her was her own. No god
wielded it. And yet it seemed hardly to be part of her.
" 'We'?" she said. " *We', Parmenion?"

He looked at her then. "Of course, we. The king will
take you. You can hardly refuse him."

"Oh," she said. "But I can."

He did not seem to understand. Even Alexander looked
blank.

She faced the king. She spoke as gentle as she could.
"You are my king," she said. "I would follow you to the
ends of the earth. But I. do not want to marry you."

That was shock, that wide pale stare. Fury. And maybe,
under all the rest, relief.

"1 do not want to marry you," she said again. "Nor you,
me. We are not for one another."

"That is nonsense," said Parmenion.

She paid no heed to him. "Alexander, look at me- Do I
look like anything you would want to call wife?"
The king's head tilted. He was angry. Dangerously so.
"Do I look like anything you would want to call hus-
band?"

"No," said Meriamon. "But king, yes. And pharaoh.
And friend, if you will still have that."

EGYPT 303

"No one has ever refused me before," Alexander said.
He sounded almost calm about it.

"As one suffers, so one learns."

The old gnomic words made Alexander laugh, but it
was fanged laughter. "Why?"

It was hard, but not as hard as it had been, even a mo-
ment before. The worst was knowing that Niko was there
and listening, and saying nothing. "It's not that I have any
distaste for you, or any fear of what you are, or, Mother
Isis knows, any vow or bond that keeps me unmarried.
Nor would it go so ill if I accepted. There have been
worse matches made, and they prospered well enough.

"But," she said, "what you would want out of this
union—what your counselors have been urging you to
do—that would fail."

"What?" asked Alexander. "Egypt? It's mine already;

I've no fear of losing it. unless I lose everything."

"No," said Meriamon. Trying not to shout it. Trying to
speak calmly. "Egypt has nothing to do with it. You
need—your counselors want—heirs. I cannot give them to
you,"

The silence was abrupt, and to Meriamon, terrible.

Parmenion broke it, roughshod. "Of course you can give
them. There's not much to you, but what there is is sound,
and young enough to bear a whole troop of sons."

"No," Meriamon said again. "There will be no sons for
me. Nor daughters. No children at all. This that I am"—
her hand gestured to her shadow where it lay watchful—
"and this that I do, in speaking for my gods—it has a
,price. That price is my hope of children."

"For always?" Alexander asked. His voice was soft, al-
most gentle. "For ever?"
"For always," said Meriamon. Her eyes were burning
with unshed tears. "It never mattered. Much- I had so
much to leam; so much to do. Then there was the shock
of leaving Egypt, and the shock, almost greater, of coming

304 Lord of the Two Lands

back- It seemed little enough price to pay for Egypt. Oth-
ers have paid more. Others have died."

"Was I worth so much?" asked Alexander. Soft still. But
no pity. If she had not loved him before, she would have
loved him then, and known him for her king.

Her answer did not come at once. She said slowly, "I
had thought so. It was only a dream that I was losing: a
hope of children who might never "be bom, even if I hadn't
given them in sacrifice. And in return, all of Egypt was
gaining its king. But what I did for it—am I any better, af-
ter all, than the priests in Tyre, giving their firstborn chil-
dren to the gods?"

'They gave living children," Alexander said. "You gave
children who had never been conceived."

"That is so," she said. "And it is better to be doomed to
barrenness than to be condemned to virginity. But I am not
the woman to give you the sons you need."

They stared at her, all of them. She drew herself up.
"The grief is old," she said, "almost as old as I. I am sorry
that I cannot be what you need me to be. There will be a
queen for you, Alexander. And sons. My gods have prom-
ised me that."

• TWENTY-FIVE •

Meriamon felt swept clean. She had left the three of them
in the chamber of the birds, speechless all, and even Niko
had not tried to follow her.

There was pain in that, but no surprise. She should have
told him the truth from the beginning. If he hated her now,
she had only herself to blame for it.

She went down to Amon's temple. It was smaller by far
than the great temple in Thebes, but great enough for a
stranger to marvel at- -She hardly saw its splendors. They

EGYPT 305

welcomed her there, glad enough that she knew a pang of
guilt: she had been neglecting them shamefully. When she
put on the vestments and bound her hair beneath the heavy
wig and sang the god's office, she made herself pure
prayer.

Or as pure as she could be   with a small cold knot of
pain in her heart. And all   for a pack of Hellenes. What
were they to her? This was   her place and this was her
world. She had left it for   a while. She would never leave
it again.

The old ways closed in about her, and the old, close-
walled existence. If she was restless, if she remembered
too much and too often, if her dreams were strange again,
as if she had not done all that she was sent to do, then that
was only to be expected. The tamed cat of the temple had
been loosed for a time to be a hunter- Now she must be the
god's again, and live within his wails, and bind her days
with the cords of his worship.

Sekhmet was not with her. The cat had let herself be
taken to the temple in Meriamon's cloak, but the next
morning when Meriamon woke she was gone. A hunt
through the temple yielded nothing. There was no use in
hunting through the city, not as large as it was and full of
cats, though Meriamon did enough of that. Sekhmet be-
longed to no one but herself. She would come back, or she
would not.

It was much the same with Meriamon's shadow. It had
not abandoned her: it came and it went. But it hunted ev-
ery night, and Meriamon had no will to restrain it. It was
not hunting in the city. It had promised her that- In the
days it slept, waking only to startle a navice with keener
eyes than most, who happened to be staring at it when it
opened lambent eyes and yawned.

"I'm a fallow field," Meriamon said to Lord Ay. She
had been in the temple for a hand of days. She was set-
tling. she thought, not badly. All things considered. "I'll

306 Lord of the Two Lands

never bear fruit in children. I've done what I was born to
do. What's left for me now but a round of empty days?"

Ay regarded her gravely enough, though there was a
glint in his eye. 'Those are grim words for one so young,"
he said.

"Not as young as that," said Meriamon.

"Oh, you are ancient," he said, "and weary and wise.
You brought us a king. Do you think there is nothing
greater that you can do?"

"Isn't there?"

He shrugged, coughed. His young priest tensed, clean
cloths in hand. Ay waved him away. "Nothing greater in
the world's eye," he said, "maybe. But small things have
their own splendor. Now that the gods have freed you, you
can be simply Meriamon, as you have never allowed your-
self to be."

"But what is Meriamon?"

He looked at her. His eyes were dark, but there was a
brightness in them. "What would you like to be?"

"Happy."

When he smiled, all the lines of his face seemed to
curve upward. "Surely that is simple enough."

"It's the most complicated thing m the world." Meri-
amon was sitting on a stool at his feet. She clasped her
hands between her knees, frowning ahead of her. tt!
thought I knew what I was going to do. Go out of Khemet,
however terrifying a thing that was, and bring back its
king. And I did it. It took longer than I'd ever expected,
and cost me both more and less: more in time and comfort,
less in courage. Then, I thought, I would come back to
Amon, and be what I was before. Nothing would have
changed."

"Except that the Parsa were conquered."

"But that was simply part of it. The world would be all
different, and I would be exacdy as I was before—except
that the old hate was gone."

EGYPT 307

"Old hates leave great gaping holes in one's heart," said
Ay, "when they are gone."

Meriamon sat very still. "Yes," she said slowly. "Yes.
But it's not gone. It's simply . .. vindicated. There are still
Parsa faces in Khemet. They still weigh down the world
with their Truth. Now it's simply another truth, and our
gods are come into their own again."

"Would you wish them to be destroyed?"

"No," she said, surprising herself a little. "They have
their place, and their purpose in the gods' eyes. But not in
Khemet."

Ay inclined his head. "Wise indeed."

"1 still hate them," said Meriamon, "for what they did
to us. That won't change. What has ... I thought I could
be happy if I came back to my own kind. They—you—are
still that. And I've done everything that 1 was sent out to
do. But it's not enough."

"Maybe you have not done all that the gods intended."

Meriamon sat upright. "But I have! Alexander is king in
the Great House."

"Will he stay there?"

"Khemet has had warrior pharaohs before. Even foreign
pharaohs."

"None like this," said Ay. "He is as restless as a fire,
and as little inclined to linger."

"It doesn't matter," Meriamon said. "He has done what
needed to be done. "If he goes away, if he makes war
against the Parsa in their own country, Khemet is still
free."

"But are you?"

She met his eyes. Something in her was quivering, com-
ing awake. Something that she had not known was there,
or had not wanted to know. "What more is there for me to
do?"

"The gods know." said Ay.

"I don't want to do any more. I want to go home. I want
to be myself."

308 Lord of the Two Lands

"Maybe your self is in what more you must do."

She shied at that, like the mare she had left behind with
the rest of her life among the Hellenes. She was not wear-
ing a wig. Her many plaits slipped out of the ring that
caught them at her nape, and slithered down her back.
"What if my self is the wife of a Macedonian soldier?
What then, Father Ay?"

He barely blinked. "Why then, I would wish you happy,
daughter."
She crumpled slowly. '*No. You wouldn't. He wouldn't
have me. I can give him no sons."

"Did he tell you so?"

Much too shrewd, that one, and much too keen of eye.
"He didn't need to," she said. "I know what men are, in
Hellas as in Khemet. And I won't be his whore."

"I doubt that he would ask it of you."

"How do you know?"

Her tone was unspeakably rude. Ay only smiled. "If he
is the one I think he is, I know that he would have you
however you are, and whatever you may do."

"I wasn't running away from him," said Meriamon. "Or
even from Alexander."

"You were not," Ay said. "You were running away from
Meriamon."

"I can't run back," she said.

"Why not?"

"I left," said Meriamon. "I never said a word."

"Then you have no words to unsay."

Except what she had said to Ay. She got up. She meant
to stand over Ay, to say something irrevocable. Instead she
found herself walking away, back to the duties she had
chosen.

They were empty, that once had been all the world.
They rang hollow. The singers with whom she sang were
not those among whom she had been raised and trained.
They were strangers, and they watched her sidelong, curi-
ous and even hostile. They knew what she was. Not all of

EGYPT 309

them forgave her for it. The young priests doing their sea-
son's service in the temple, with the lives of merchants or
nobles or even princes behind and before them, had other
thoughts than jealousy.

One of them spoke to her, a day or two after her collo-
quy with Ay. He was a quite presentable young, man, well-
spoken and not too bold, but not shy, either. She did not
recall what he said, or what she replied. She was too busy
realizing that she could like him; he was in awe of her, but
overcoming it, and he looked as if he knew how to laugh.

He was slender, and tall for a man in Khemet. His body
was shaved smooth as all the priests' were, but he did not
look as if he would be a hairy man: smooth brown limbs
and quick grace, the beauties of her people. His dark eyes
smiled at her. He ventured a touch, a brush of fingers
along the line of her shoulder, ostensibly to smooth her
plaits.

Her throat closed. He was quite beautiful and quite
charming, and quite suitable for a princess of Khemet.
And when he looked at her, she could not see him at all.
Long lanky sandy-furred body, face as nearly ugly as
made no matter, sulks and scowls and sharp-edged words,
and strength that was earth to her air and emptiness.

He did not want her. She did not want him to want her,
and so be robbed of sons.

And if he were left out of it, then what of Alexander?

Ay asked her that: She had no memory of seeking him
out. She was simply there, in the room in which she had
left him. "What of Alexander?" he asked again. "Will you
leave him to find his fate alone?"

"We are not mated," Meriamon said tightly.

"Not in the flesh," he agreed, serene-

"Nor in the heart, either. I was a messenger, that was
all. My message is delivered. My task is done."

"So you say," said Ay.

She walked to the wall and back- She was pacing the

310 Lord of the Two Lands

way Alexander did. It helped him think, he said. It did
nothing for her.

She stood over the priest. Her shadow was awake: she
felt it behind her. "If I go to Alexander now," she said, "I
may never come back."

'That is in the gods' hands," said Ay.

She would never be as serene as he was, though she
lived the count of his years thrice over.
"How will you know until you have done it?''

She laughed painfully. "You were never such a tangle of
fears and follies as I am."

"Certainly not. I was worse."

She embraced him suddenly, careful of his fragile
bones. He was stronger than he looked, for a moment,
holding her almost painfully hard.

She drew back. Her eyes were pricking with tears. "I
don't want to go."

"And yet you do."

"I shouldn't."

"You think so?" There was sharpness in his voice now;

a touch of impatience. It stung her, as it was meant to. "I
think that you have done quite enough brooding over
'should' and 'shouldn't.' Go now and do what your heart
tells you."

"The gods—"

"Some of us," said Ay, "are not privileged to speak wim
the gods face to face. To us they speak through the heart-
You asked to be simply Meriamon. Maybe that is the be-
ginning of it."

She ducked her head. Her cheeks were hot.

There," he said more gently. "You've won yourself a
little indulgence. Now it's time to be up and doing again."

"Past time," she said. Accepting it—and well past time,
he would have told her.

She bent again and set a kiss on his brow. It was all the
thanks he needed, and all the promise.

EGYPT 311

Alexander was getting ready to leave Memphis. Meriamon
had had rumors of that even in the temple. She should
have known how close he would be to doing it, once he
had decided on it.

Tomorrow," said the guard at the inner gate. He was
not happy about it. "Just me king and the King's Squadron
and a handful of servants. The rest of us are staying here,
with Parmenion to look after us."

Meriamon's stomach clenched at the name, though she
chided it for a fool. Parmenion was neither enemy nor
friend. She was nothing to him, since she could not give
Alexander sons.

But he was staying here, and Alexander was going
away. "Where?" she demanded, a little fiercely perhaps:

the guard looked alarmed.

"Maybe you should ask him," he said.

She could have pressed. But he was only a guard, after
all, and Alexander was within. Her heart knew it, and her
skin, sensing the force of his presence.

He had found the wrestling-court in the princes' palace,
and made good use of it Meriamon heard it long before
she came there: shouts and laughter, a sudden hush, a
whoop and the sound of hands slapping thighs in approval.

The court was full of men, and not a chiton among
them. They wrestled and tumbled in pairs, or stood about,
free of themselves as young animals, and cheered the com-
batants on. The center of their attention was a tangle of
oiled limbs, sun-brown but fair beneath. Some of them be-
longed to Ptolemy. The rest, leaner and longer and yet as-
tonishingly like Ptolemy's, almost put Meriamon to flight.

Niko was getting the worst of it. He was fast and he
was strong, but his brother had me greater weight; and his
crippled hand failed him in the holds. That made him an-
gry; she saw the glitter of his eyes. But he was grinning,
a predator's baring of teeth. Even when he broke under his
brother's assault and crashed to the mat, the breath that

312 Lord of the Two Lands

broke out of him was a laugh. Ptolemy set a knee on his
chest and straightened to claim the victory.

Niko twisted. Ptolemy's knee slipped on sweat and oil.
Niko pulled him down.

They lay side by side, knotted like lovers, in a roar of
laughter.

Niko was up First, pulling Ptolemy with him. They
leaned on one another and panted, wringing wet and glo-
riously content.
Neither of them saw Meriamon. She had shrunk back
among the Macedonians—Egyptians too, now that she no-
ticed, red-dark and small as children in this company, re-
garding her in curiosity. But then they were properly
kilted, and they did not mind that she was a woman. In
much too brief a while, the stillness had spread.

She could not be invisible with so many eyes on her,
even in her shadow's shadow. She straightened her shoul-
ders and lifted her chin and put on her most royal aspect.
"Has any of you seen the king?"

Throats cleared. Eyes slid sidewise- Bodies shifted,
hands rose, chitons appeared as if from air. One splendid
young thing blushed scarlet all the way down to the hand
over his privates.

"He's in the baths," said a voice she knew much too
well for comfort. "Shall I take you to him?" -

"I can find him," she began to say. But Niko was in
front of her with his chiton in his hand, covering as much
of him as it' needed to. Someone tossed him a cloth. He
pulled the garment over his head and belted it, and used
the cloth to wipe the sweat from his face. He was already
walking, not even a glance to see if she would follow.

She would happily have refused. But a woman in the
court was more than Alexander's men had bargained for.
They were going to cramp, some of them, trying to cover
themselves without being obvious about it. She took pity
on them.

The baths were not far away: through a passage, down

EGYPT 313

a stair. Niko was standing in the passage- It was cool there,
and dark after the bright sun of the courtyard. For a mo-
ment he seemed as dark as her shadow and no more solid:

shape without definition, and a gleam of eyes. Then slowly
he came clear.

She stopped. What she wanted to do was perfectly mad.

Well then, so was she. She held out her hands.

He looked at them. Her heart chilled. Her hands began
to fall.

He caught them. His grip was warm and much too
strong to break. "You didn't need to run away," he said.

"Yes, I did."

"Not from me."

"It wasn't you," she said.

"I'm glad of that."

There was a silence. Her eyes were on their clasped
hands. Hers were so small, and his so big. And yet they
fit.

"I was false to you," she said. "I let you think that there
was more of me than there was. That... I could give you
what a wife gives her husband."

"Can a woman be a eunuch, then?"

"You'll have no sons of me."

He regarded her steadily. His eyes were clear. No
shrinking. Regret, maybe, for what could not be; but none
for what he was choosing. "I'm not a king, that I need
them."

"Every man wants them."

"Not every man gets them."

"But if you can—"

'There are concubines," he said. "If it comes to that."

The purity of her rage astonished her. She pulled him
hard, nearly oversetting him. Her arms locked about his
middle. His heart beat under her ear. It was not beating
nearly hard enough to please her. "If you take me—if you
look at another woman—I swear to you—"

314 Lord of the Two Lands

"You would," he said. Not even a flicker of fear. "You
could do it, too."

She bent her head back to glare at him. "How can you
be so calm?"

"I talked to the old priest," he said. "The Lord Ay. He
told me what I was bargaining for."

"Obviously you didn't believe it."
"I believe it," he said. "I know you. You're not like our
Macedonian witches. Your power is real."

"So is theirs."

"Not like yours- Theirs is wild magic—it comes and
goes; more often than not it fails them. You have all the
magic of Egypt in you."                      «

"A few tricks. A shadow with eyes."

He laid his finger on her lips. "Stop it. You said you
were going to claim me. I'm ready to be claimed."

"Even by the likes of me?"

"You should have thought of that when you put your
mark on me."

She hid her face in his chiton. It was not a logical thing
to do, not in the least. The wool pricked her cheek, washed
to softness in Nile water and dried in the sun. It smelled
of that, and of clean sharp sweat, and a suggestion of
leather and horses.

His heart beat no faster than it had from the first. His
breaths came deep and even. Her ears, trained to catch ev-
ery nuance of a body's working, found in it no flaw or
frailty.

Damnable arrogant Hellene. She pulled away from him.
"I don't want to be protected. Or sheltered. Or watched
and guarded like a child that can't leave its mother."

"A queen should have a guard," he said. "Kings do.
Even Alexander."

"A guard," she said. "Not a nursemaid." She pulled
free, though he did nothing to hold her. "I have to see the
king."

EGYPT 315

He stepped aside. The comer of his mouth was—
almost—turned up. Laughing at her.

"You are horrible," she said.

He grinned and sketched a bow. "At my lady's plea-
sure."

She swept past him. He fell in behind.
There was a war on in the baths: a party of Companions,
with Hephaistion for commander, behind an earthwork of
benches and towels, and the king mounting a siege with
half a dozen pages and a troop of bemused Egyptian ser-
vants. Not that bemusement kept them from the game.
They had amassed an armory of sponges, and somewhere
they had got hold of a basket of onions, with which they
kept up a steady barrage. The price of death or captivity
was to be hurled into the bathing-pool, which was already
full of grinning, yelling bodies.

Alexander raised a shout and flung his army on the bar-
ricades. They poured over it, toppling the whole length of
it, and swept it all into the water.

The king emerged dripping and triumphant, ducking a
last fusillade of onions. Meriamon held out a towel that
was almost dry. He shook the water out of his eyes and
started. "Mariamne!"

He looked so much like a boy caught with his hand in
the honeypot that she laughed. "Meriamon," she said,
"yes, and that was a noble victory."

"Wasn't it?" He took the towel and wrapped it very de-
liberately about his middle. Gravely she handed him an-
other. Just as gravely he dried himself with it, eyes sliding
toward the melee in the pool. "I think your countrymen
arc shocked."

"No Persian satrap would ever do such a thing," she
agreed.

He laughed aloud. "Oh, Herakles, no! Can you see
Mazaces getting his beard wet?"

"Mazaces has a beautiful beard," she said.

316 Lord of the Two Lands

Alexander rubbed his chin- She knew why he made his
Companions go shaven: one less handhold for an enemy in
a fight. But she doubted that Alexander could have raised
much beard in any event. He grinned at her as if he could
read her thought, and said, "I'm a wretched excuse for a
Persian."

"I should hope so," said Meriamon.

He went in search of his chiton. By the time he found
it the battle had splashed and tumbled to a halt, and the
combatants were climbing out of the pool. Most of them
avoided Meriamon's eye as the young men had in the
court. Hephaistion smiled at her, so perfectly at ease with
himself and her presence and so unconscious of his own
beauty that she forgot to breathe. He said something; she
mumbled something in reply.

Niko shifted his feet. The hot blood flooded Meriamon's
cheeks. "Like a bitch in a pack of hounds," she muttered
under her breath.

Niko arched a brow. Devils take him: he had heard her.

Alexander spared her the humiliation of Niko's reply.
He strode up to her, shining clean in a fresh chiton, comb-
ing his hair back with his fingers. He shook his head; the
bright mane fell into its lion-sweep. He smiled at her.
"I've missed you," he said.

She almost broke down at that. By me time she found
her tongue, Alexander had taken her hand and led her out
of the bath- His pace was quick as it always was, but not
too quick for her to follow. "I'm going out of Memphis,"
he said. "But I suppose you know that. Did you come to
talk me out of it?"

"That depends on where you're going," she said.

"Siwah," he said.

The word rang empty in her brain.

"The oracle," he said, "of Zeus Amon. Your god and
mine both."

Her wits scrambled themselves together. She was in
worse case than she had thought, if she did not know that

EGYPT 317

of all names he could have spoken. "You're going all the
way to Siwah?"

"From Dodona to Siwah, you said to me. Did you think
I'd forgotten? I have dreams, too, Mariamne- This one
bade me seek out the voice in the sands."

"And then?"

"And then the god will speak. Or he will not. That's in
his hands."

"What will you ask him?"
"Come with me and see."

She stopped so suddenly that Niko nearly collided with
her. Alexander, still holding her hand, was brought up
short. "You want me to go to Siwah?"

"I can hardly command you, can I?"

"You are king in the Great House."

"You are a king's daughter," he said, "and the gods'
own." He paused. His eyes searched her face. One was
dark and one was light, as if he could not decide what he
felt. "Do you want to go?"

"Yes," she said. She had not known it until she said it.
"I want to go to Siwah."

Light flooded his face. "Now I know my dream was
true."

"You doubted it?"

"No," said Alexander. "But two certainties are better
than one. Especially when the other is yours."

She let him draw her onward. "Parmenion will be
disgusted," she said.

"What? That I'd take a woman on a pilgrimage?"

"That it's such a perfect trap for his hope of your dy-
nasty, and I'm such hopeless bait."

"Poor Parmenion," said Alexander. There was some-
thing like compassion in his voice. "Someday I'll do my
duty. But not here, and not yet."

Her tongue quivered. Words had come to it, from the
gods perhaps. Or perhaps not. A page was running toward
them from the baths, and an older man from the palace,

318 Lord of the Two Lands

and someone was calling down the well of a stair, hunting
for the king. What Meriamon would have said was lost in
babble and confusion; nor could she get it back.

•TWENTY-SIX*

Alexander sailed out of Memphis in much less state than
he had sailed in, with but the Royal Squadron and his per-
sonal Companions and their beasts and their servants
crowded into a handful of ships, and a few others who
would come with him as far as the Nile's mouth. One of
those was Thai's, in spite of her swelling belly. She did not
say why she came. Meriamon did not need to ask. A he-
taira, Thai's had said often enough, was not well advised to
fall in love with her patron. It was bad for business. But
Ptolemy, like his brother, was a very difficult man to re-
sist, once he had got under one's skin.

Another of the followers was Mazaces who had been
the satrap. He sailed with remarkably little escort for a
Persian, no more than a handful of guards, a troop of ser-
vants, and the one of all his women who, having been born
a Scythian, had no objection to travel- She went swathed
to the eyes in veils and surrounded by wary eunuchs, but
she seemed to thrive on the journey. Probably she had not
known such pleasure since she was taken captive.

Meriamon might have liked to talk to her, and the eu-
nuchs could hardly have prevented it; but the woman knew
little Persian and no Greek at all, and Meriamon knew not
a word of Scythian. The best that they could do, the first
evening when the fleet had moored and the company made
camp, was a civil greeting and an exchange of glances in
what might, in other circumstances, have become friend-
ship. When Meriamon would have tried for more, Mazaces
came down from the low eminence on which he had

EGYPT 319

pitched his tent, haughty as all the Parsa were even under
a barbarian master, and put an end to it with his presence.

Meriamon turned her back on him. That was rude, she
knew it perfectly well, but she could not help herself.

"Wait," the Persian said.

She might not have obeyed him. But the woman was
watching, and something in her eyes made Meriamon
pause. There was no hate in them. and no fear. Only pride
when she looked on the man who owned her.

He was not ill to look at. Persian noblemen seldom
were. They bred themselves like their horses, for size and
for beauty, and he had a sufficiency of both. Meriamon
would have liked to see what his face was like under the
beard that hid it from just below the eyes to just above the
breastbone. What she could see of it was cleanly carved,
with a nose like the arc of the new moon.

What he saw when he looked at her, she could imagine.
Too small, too plain, and much too shameless in Egyptian
linen, with the shape of her body clear to see. She met his
eyes boldly. They lowered. Persian courtesy, never to meet
one's stare direct: shiftiness, one might think it. "Does it
trouble you," she asked, "that if your king catches you,
you will die a traitor's death?"

"My king is Alexander." Mazaces said.

His Greek was accented, but fluent enough. Better than
hers had been when she came to Alexander's camp. "You
are Persian," she said.

"You are Egyptian," said Mazaces.

"He is the king we chose," she said.

"So was he mine," he said, "when I came to know
him."

"And what of your Great King?"

"My Great King," he said, and his voice though soft
was deeply bitter, "left me to make what peace I could in
a province rent with war and rebellion. There was even a
fleet of Macedonian pirates looking to carve a kingdom
outside of their king's reach. Did you know that?"

320 Lord of the Two Lands

"It came to nothing," she said.

"Because I fought it," Mazaces said. "If the king goes
on as he has begun, he will take Persis as he took Asia and
Egypt. Then he will be Great King. What will you do
then? Will you rebel against him?"

"He will be our Great King," said Meriamon.

"Just so," Mazaces said.

Meriamon frowned at the blaze of the sunset.

"Surely," said Mazaces, "you who can comprehend
many truths, can foresee an empire in which both Persis
and Egypt dwell at peace."

He was smiling. Mocking her, a little, but gently. And
not as an enemy will.

She must have said it aloud. He said, "I am not your en-
emy. Nor is any who calls Alexander king."

That was more than she could contemplate in comfort.
She turned away again. This time he did not try to call her
back.

She wandered slowly to her tent. It was the same one in
which she had lived for so long with Thais, more honestly
home than anywhere she had been since she left Thebes.
Thais was out. no doubt with Ptolemy.

Niko was in, coaxing a smile and a plate of sweets out
of Phylinna. A sleek tawny shape uncoiled in his lap and
greeted Meriamon in tones redolent of impatience.

"Where was I?" Meriamon demanded of the cat. "And
where, pray, were you?"

Sekhmet yawned, baring each pearl-bright tooth. She
left Niko's lap lo coil about Meriamon's ankles, marking
her. Meriamon swept her up. She was purring thunder-
ously.

"She moved in with me," Niko said, licking honey from
his fingers- "And a fine companion she's been, too. She
nags like a wife."

"I don't nag," said Meriamon.

EGYPT 321

"You don't," Niko agreed sweetly. "You let your eyes
do it for you."

"When have I ever—"

He laughed. "Sit down," he said, "and have a honey-
cake. They're good."

Meriamon sat, but she was not hungry. "You've had
Sekhmet all this time and you never said a word? I was
half ftantic."

"Well," he said, "and so was I, when you went away
and never said a word. Fair's fair, Mariamne."

"Meriamon."

"Mariamne."

She sighed, sharp with temper, and gave it up.

He divided the last cake in half. "Here, eat. You never
do eat enough to keep a bird happy."

"Have you ever seen a bird eat? Pigs are ascetics beside
mem."

"You are quite impossible," he said, grinning and feed-
ing her the cake, till she must eat or have her face smeared
with honey. It was good, she granted him that. He downed
the other half all at once, and sat smiling at her.

"Why do you look so smug?" she demanded.

"Wouldn't you, if you were going to marry a princess?"

"Who said that I would marry you?"

"You did," said Niko. "I told Ptolemy. He was enor-
mously pleased."

"And Alexander? Did you tell him?*'

"Well," Niko said, "no. Not yet. We thought it might be
politic to wait a bit. Seeing that you wouldn't have him,
and it pricked his pride. I'd hardly want to flaunt my good
fortune in his face."

She sucked in a breath. She would never have believed
his impudence—except that he was Nikolaos. "So I'm
bought and paid for, am I?"

"You have a dowry. Lord Ay assured me of that. He'll
be talking with Ptolemy when we get back from Siwah.
Do you want to be married in Memphis or in Thebes?"

322 Lord of the Two Lands

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Realized that she was
not breathing.

"Memphis might be better," said Niko. Cheerful; infuri-
ating. "Then Alexander can be sure to come. He isn't go-
ing to Thebes. I don't think. Once he's been to Siwah, if
the god favors him, he'll be turning back toward Asia.
Darius is still alive, and he's still Great King. It's time he
had his comeuppance."

"He hasn't already?" Meriamon asked faintly.

'This is only a beginning. Of course," Niko said, "for
you it's all there needs to be. Egypt is free. What's the rest
of the world to that?"

"Nothing," she said. "Everything."

"Exactly." He leaped up, pulling her with him. Sekhmet
had just time to spring to his shoulder before she was
spilled on the carpet. "Come to dinner now, and stop
scowling. It won't be so terribly long rill the wedding. Un-
less .. ." He paused. "If you'd rather . . ."

"Not till the king knows," she said.

"Then we'll wait." He sounded perfectly happy about it.
Mad, she decided. And maddening. And irresistible.

They followed the westernmost arm of the river, bearing
west as it divided in the mists and marshes of the Delta.
This was the broad lotus-blossom of which Upper Egypt
was the stem, rich land and fertile, spreading wide on the
shores of the sea. At the mouth that was called Canopus
they left the ships and mounted their restive horses and
turned west, away from the Nile. The land narrowed to a
long spit of sand: the sea on the right, Lake Mareotis on
the left, blue water and blue water, and the sky more blue
than they.

On the point of land between the lake and the sea was
a traders' town. Rhakotis, its people called it, good Egyp-
tian name though they were more Greek than not, mer-
chants and travelers who moored their ships in the broad
sweep of the harbor with its wall of island. If Pelusium

EGYPT 323

was the easternmost gate of the Two Lands, then this was
the gate of the west: much lesser and weaker, but lovely in
its setting, and the land about it, though narrow, was rich.

Alexander took a boat on the lake with a handful of
friends, and Meriamon because she had been in sight when
he came down to the water. He was in high good humor,
dressed in an old rag of a chiton that must have driven his
bodyservants to distraction, and a broad-brimmed hat with
a purple ribbon tied about it. Sekhmet batted at a dangling
end.

"She doesn't mind boats at all," Hephaistion said, offer-
ing to scratch her under the chin. She thought about it for
a while, then regally deigned to allow it.

"That's an Egyptian cat for you," said Alexander. He
leaned on the rail. A gust of wind tugged at his hat; he
caught it before it could take flight, and let it drop to hang
by its cord about his neck. His eyes were on the ragged
line that was the town, and the shape of the island be-
yond it.

"Look at that," he said.
Everybody was looking who was not needed to sail the
boat. "It's pretty," someone said.

"Good land, too," said someone else. "And very good
climate. Not too warm as Egypt goes, with wind off the
sea. Less fever than you'd expect—no marshes on the
lake's rim lo breed sickness in summer. The river drowns
them before they can begin."

"Good harbor up yonder," said Niko, down the rail with
Nearchos. "Did you see how the island makes a wall
against the open sea, and the harbor inside it, with reefs to
break the waves? I'm surprised the Phoenicians didn't
grab it ages ago and make one of their sea-cities out of it."

"Greeks kept them out," Nearchos said. "We're sea-
people too, don't forget."

"Egypt had somewhat to say in it besides," said Meri-
amon.

"I could build a city here," Alexander said.

324 Lord of the Two Lands

His voice was quiet. People kept talking up and down
the boat, taking no notice of him. But for Meriamon the
world had gone suddenly still. Niko was listening too, she
noticed, and the black-curled Cretan, and Ptolemy who
had come up beside Niko.

"I could build a city," Alexander said again. "Here, in
this place, between the lake and the sea. A gate for all of
Africa; a gate to the riches of Egypt. Egypt has always
looked inward from Memphis and Thebes. Now I say it
should look outward to the world."

Meriamon clung to the rail. The ship rocked gently on
the waves; but she felt as if it rode in a storm. Her shadow
was wide awake. Sekhmet crouched on her shoulder. The
gods were listening: a tautening of awareness in water and
sky.

This alone was not what she had come for. And yet it
was part of it. This place, this time, this new voice speak-
ing softly, shaping a city that would be.

It was not Alexander's voice. Ptolemy, solid imperturb-
able Ptolemy with his feet on the earth and his mind on
practicalities, was dreaming aloud. "And a wall there, and
of course we'd have to build a bridge between the island
and the mainland, and if ships are to find their way in,
we'll have to put something, some marker, on the rock at
the island's head. A tower, maybe. White. You can see a
white tower a long way away. And on top of it, all night
long, a light ..."

"A city," said Alexander, sharp and painfully clear, "to
rule the world."

"We can do it," Ptolemy said. "That's one thing a king
does, after all, to make his mark on the world: a mark that
lasts longer than most. A city founded in his name."

"Alexandria," said Alexander. "I like the sound of that."

"Alexandria," said Meriamon. Naming it. Making it
true.

•TWENTY-SEVEN*

Once Alexander had decided on something, he swept ev-
eryone else with him. In an entourage of engineers who
had come up with him from Memphis, he paced the
boundaries of the town and marked each point for the
workmen who would come. He could have done it with
pen and papyrus in decent privacy, and he had drafters
there to do just that; but he had an audience to play to.

They were marking out the limits with powdered chalk,
for the surveyors to follow with lines and stakes. As they
came round to the midpoint of the western side, they wa-
vered and halted-

"More chalk!" Alexander called out.

There was a pause- It stretched.

"Well?" said Alexander-
One of the engineers cleared his throat. "There isn't any
more," he said.

"And why not?" the king demanded.

There was another pause. Feet shuffled. The spokesman
said, "It didn't get packed when it should have."

"Oh?" said Alexander. Soft. Gentle.

"Well then," said Ptolemy, brisk and practical. "We'll
have to make do, won't we? What have we got?"

"There's this," Hephaistion said, shrugging out of the
pack that he seemed to wear as easily as his chiton, and
rummaging in it. He brought out a bag and untied it and
poured its contents into his hand: the meal-ration of the
Macedonian soldier. He looked about at the men who
crowded in, curious. "Well? Can you help?"

They traded glances. One grinned, then another. Packs
dropped; sacks came out. In a moment the captains had

326 Lord of the Two Lands

their men in ranks, piling up sacks and keeping tally; and
Hephaistion stood watchful, but smiling.

Alexander's high light mood was back. He grinned at
his friend. Hephaistion let his smile widen.

The small mound of grain grew. The engineers eyed it
dubiously, but Diades the Thessalian laughed and dipped
out a handful and began again where he had left off.

"That was an omen," Meriamon said. 'That Alexander's
city was marked out in barley meal."

"A good omen," said Niko-

They sat in the door of Thai's' tent. The sun had set a
little while since, but the sky was full of light. The survey-
ors were out still, following the line Alexander had
walked.

"Did you notice," said Meriamon, "the birds only come
down to feed where the line is marked already? They don't
touch the new line at all."

"Aristandros says the city will be fruitful, and people
will come to it from all over the world."

"He sees with a clear eye."

"As clear as yours?*'

He was only half laughing at her. She watched the tine
of men as it moved slowly down to the lake's edge, pacing
and pausing, dipping and rising. Ptolemy was with them.
He had come to dinner, eaten a mouthful, gone away
again. Alexander had laughed and called after him,
"You're even madder about this than I am. Will you be
asking for the city when it's built?"

Ptolemy had grinned over his shoulder. "Not as long as
you're using it," he said. "If you get tired of it, now . . ."

"If I get tired of it," Alexander said, "which the gods
forbid, it's yours."
"Your brother has changed," Meriamon said now.

Niko glanced sharply at her. "Why? Because he tikes
this place?"

EGYPT 327

"Yes. And not just this one town that wilt be a city. All
of Egypt. As if ... he was meant to be here."

"Are you prophesying?"

"I hope not," she said. And when he stared at her: "Al-
exander is enough. I don't need to see signs and omens for
every man in his army."

"I didn't think you had a choice."

She rose with enormous dignity. "I am tired," she said.
"I am going to sleep."

He let her go without protest. That was surprising. Until
she heard him behind her. He was going to comer her,
then. She swallowed a sigh-
He did not say anything as she lit the lamps, only stood
by the door. He had Sekhmet in his arms, purring as she
always did for him. If she could be anyone's cat,
Meriamon thought, she would be Niko's.

The bed was made up long since, with a sprinkling of
herbs to make it sweet. Phylinna's hand, that. There was
water for washing, and a jar of ointment for cleansing the
paint from her face.

It would not be the first time she had done it under
Niko's eyes. She almost ordered him out. But she did not.
She opened the jar, began carefully to wipe away the kohl
and the malachite and the dusting of lapis. She did not al-
ways use the bronze mirror. Tonight she did. It was a
shield of sorts.

He took it from her hand and held it for her. She would
not took at him over it. She fixed her eyes on her reflec-
tion, though she hardly saw it. Paint, here. Kohl, there.
Gone, effaced, vanished.

If she could efface herself, make herself nothing, no
gods, no fates, no prophecies .. .

"Meriamon!"

Her name. Her self. Grey eyes on her, and in them
something like fear.
"Don't go away like that," he said.

328 Lord of the Two Lands

The mirror was gone. She was holding his hands. Or he
hers. "You have not a grain of magic in you," she said.

"I think you have enough for both of us."

'Too much," she said. "It's only going to get worse, the
closer we come to Siwah."

'Then you're going to need me, aren't you? To keep
you from flying to pieces."

"I'm not that fragile!"

He smiled his slow smile, the one that warmed his
whole long homely face and made it beautiful. "Certainly
you're not fragile. That's why you need me. The bow can't
be strung every moment of every day."

"I'll rest after Siwah."

"So you will." He let go her hands and touched a fore-
finger to her cheek, tracing the curve of it as if it were a
lesson he would remember. "You can rest now. I'm here."

"You are not restful," she said.

His hand found its way to her shoulder. "Such a little
woman," he said, "to stand so high."

"Such a great gawk of a man," she said, "to fit me so
well." She stood as high as she could, and set her hands
on his shoulders. She was dizzy, looking up at him. "Do
you know how impossible we are?"

"What's impossible? This is Alexander's army. We're
what his empire will be. Not Macedonian or Egyptian or
Greek or Persian, or anything but man and woman under
the one king."

"And I said you had no magic," she said.

"I don't." He was sad, a little, but philosophical. "It's
logic, that's all. And hope."

"Hope and logic are very great magics."

"Love, too?"
"Is that what this is?"

"You didn't know?"

She narrowed her eyes to see him better. "1 don't sup-
pose it can be anything else. Unless there's another word

EGYPT 329

for what makes you follow me about like a dog after a
bone."

"That's habit. I can't get out of the way of looking after
you. Since no one else seems inclined to do it."

"So," she said much too lightly. "I'm a habit, am I?"

"A welcome one," he said. "One I want to keep."

He stooped. His face filled her vision. Not ugly, not
beautiful. Not any longer. Itself purely.

She could stop him now. She knew it as she knew what
the gods wanted. She could hold him back, push him off,
win herself free of him. He would go; he would sulk for
a while; he would come again, but later. After Siwah.

Her heart was cold. None of them knew what that road
was. Oh, they thought they did, those soldiers and scouts,
talking to travelers and desert tribesmen- They knew that
it was desert, days without water, bitter marches in a sea-
son of wind and storm. They did not know what it would
be with Alexander at the head of them, and the god wait-
ing.

She wound her fists in Niko's chiton. The wool was
rough, reassuringly solid, and he 1)eneath it, warm breath-
ing man with no taint of magic. Only trust in her, and eyes
to see the shadow that walked with her.

She pulled. He followed unresisting, only raising a brow
when she halted by the bed. "Are you sure?" he asked her.

"No," she said. "Yes." She pushed him down. The bed
creaked. She was going to laugh; and that would be fatal.

He wrapped long arms around her and pulled her into
his lap. He was grinning like an idiot.

She began to laugh. No; that was too dignified a word.
She began to giggle. There was nothing to laugh at, and
everything. The two of them. This world they were in.
This city that would be, a stretch of grass and sand be-
tween a lake and the sea.

He tumbled backward, and she on top of him. The bed
rocked but held. Built for the trade, that. She sat on him,
-grinning as foolishly as he.

330 Lord of the Two Lands

The plaits of her hair hung down. He caught a pair of
them. "Now I have you," he said.

"Not yet," she said. Her gown had ridden up shock-
ingly. One of her breasts had escaped the top of it. She felt
his eyes on it; and the stillness-                      /

Time yet, and still, to escape. If she would- He was
trembling.

Poor boy, she thought. And almost laughed. Certainly
he was a boy. Just as certainly he knew what a woman was
for; had proven it often and gladly. He should be teaching
her, not waiting for her to give him leave.

Her gown galled her. She rid herself of it. His eyes were
enormous. "What," she asked him, "you haven't seen a
woman before?"

"Not a woman who was you," he said. His voice was
faint, but his wits were keen enough, considering.

"Hellene," she said, but tenderly. "You'll talk your way
through anything."

"Not anything," he said. He sat up, and she knew that
he was going to leave her; then he had tossed aside his
chiton.

She had seen it before. Been close to it, even. And yet
this was not the same. Not in the least. This was frighten-
ing. Exhilarating. Like being a hawk, and taking wing, and
soaring into the sun.

"Meriamon," he said. Calling her back.

'That's twice," she said.

His brows went up.

"You used my right name," she said. "Twice. If you say
it a third lime, you will have claimed me."

"So I shall," he said. He touched the tip of her breast.
It quivered and tautened. "Meriamon," said Nikolaos.
It was not like flying. More like learning to fly. Awkward;

laughable, sometimes. It hurt. Very much, at first. She set
her teeth and endured it, but he knew. He started to draw
back. She locked arms about him, holding him.

EGYPT 331

"I'm too big for you," he said miserably.

She bit her tongue. She must not laugh. "Bigger than a
baby's head?"

He went scarlet.

Her tongue was starting to ache where she had bitten it.
"Be brave," she said. Try."

Blessed courage; he tried. It did not hurt so much. After
a while it did not hurt at all. A while after that, and even
the memory of hurt was gone; then was only pleasure.

PART FOUR •

SIWAH

• TWENTY-EIGHT •

Alexander left the engineers behind in Rhakotis, and the
Persians with them. sharing the townsfolk's bemusement
with the city that was taking shape already in stakes and
string between the lake and sea. Maybe he would have
liked to stay with them and watch the city grow, but the
god was calling him. He took the Companions and the few
pages and servants whom they needed to look after them
and their horses, and turned his back resolutely on the
newbom Alexandria.

One who was neither servant nor Companion nor voice
of the gods, made it abundantly clear that he was coming
to Siwah. "I can ride," said Arrhidaios. "I ride as well as
anybody. I walk, too. I want to see the god in the sand."

"I know you can ride," Alexander said with remarkable
patience; but he was always patient with Arrhidaios. "I
want you to stay here and help with my city, and take care
of Peritas. Mazaces is staying. He's the best rider in the
army."

"Except you," said Arrhidaios. His brows knotted.
"Mazaces can take care of Peritas. I want to come to
Siwah."
"And what will you do when you get there?" his brother
asked.

"See the god," said Arrhidaios. "You said I didn't have
to stay with Parmenion. I don't want to stay with Mazaces,
either. I want to stay with you."

Alexander sighed. "You always get your own way in the
end. Maybe you should be king instead of me."

Arrhidaios made a sign against evil. "Don't talk like
that, Alexander. You know it's bad luck."

"I know you're not going to like this road we take. If

336 Lord of the Two Lands

you complain, even once, you have to come straight back.
Promise?"

"Promise," Arrhidaios said solemnly. Then he grinned
and whooped and ran to fetch his horse.

"I hope I don't live to regret that," Alexander said.

"You haven't yet," said Hephaistion. "There now, it's
only his wits that are addled. He sticks like a burr to any-
thing on four legs, and he's as tough as an old soldier."

"He sticks like a burr to me, too," Alexander said.
"Gods help me, I couldn't leave him with Parmenion
when he was so insistent that he wanted to come with me,
and Mazaces is no kind of guardian for him. If I could
have left him in Macedon ..."

Hephaistion carefully did not say anything.

Alexander's glance was wry. "No, he wouldn't have
lasted long there. Not Philip's elder son, addled or no."

"He won't be any trouble. He never is."

"No," said Alexander. "One can almost forget him.
can't one?"

One could not. But Hephaistion did not say it. Alexan-
der went like his brother to see to the horses. Hephaistion
had duties of his own, but he lingered in the empty field
that had been a camp, brushing sand over the embers of a
fire.

When he looked up, the Egyptian woman was there, and
Lagos' son behind her. There was a sheen on them that he
well knew. He smiled to himself. They had taken their
time about it; well past any decent wager.

Whatever she had done to make herself and her guards-
man glad, she was somber now. Her eyes were dark be-
hind their mask of paint. "It's going to be a harder road
than even Alexander knows," she said.

"A death-road?" asked Hephaistion.

When she was intent, her long eyes seemed to grow
even longer, and to slant like a cat's. She looked, in fact,
very like the cat that rode on Niko's shoulder, with her
high-cheeked face and her slender supple body. "We will

SIWAH 337

walk the road of coming forth by day. Whether we will
walk out of it—that is with the gods."

Hephaistion glanced at Nikolaos. Niko shrugged. He did
not stand in her shadow, Hephaistion noticed. Few people
did. Rumor had it that the thing had eyes, and that it freed
itself from her at night and hunted in the dark.

She was only a small woman in Persian trousers—
because, she had been heard to say, nothing else made
sense for hard traveling—talking in that husky voice of
hers, and staring straight through Hephaistion. Seeing
gods, no doubt, and prophecies.

She blinked. Not a cat after all but a desert falcon,
fierce and focused. "Stay with Alexander. Don't leave him
for anything, day or night."

"Not even to make water?"

A line appeared between the painted brows. "Not even
then."

"He's going to hate the sight of me," said Hephaistion.

"Let him. He'll be alive and sane to do the hating."

Hephaistion thought about that. She waited. That was a
virtue of hers. She never pressed for answers that needed
thinking on.

Finally he said, "Is it going to be as bad as that?"

"I don't know," she said. "I only know that I could very
easily be afraid."
There were some who would have scoffed at her.
Hephaistion was not one of them. She spoke for her gods.
He knew that in his bones, as surety as he knew that
Aristandros spoke for the gods of Hellas. If she could be
afraid, then he could be cautious.

It was not so grim a prospect to be at Alexander's side,
night as well as day. So had they been when they were
younger, eating from the same bowl, drinking from me
same cup, sleeping on one cloak and wrapped in another.
There had been plenty in the world besides them; Alexan-
der could never forget mat he was Alexander, and He-

338 Lord of the Two Lands

phaistion had pride of his own. But in the middle of it, al-
ways, then as now, were they two.

The Egyptian knew. Neither she nor her guardsman had
moved, but they were two, and together.

A woman and a man. He did not know if he liked that.
or approved of it. It was not Greek, or properly philosoph-
ical. A woman could not be a true soul. That was for men.

This was not as other women. Nothing mat she had ever
done showed the least concern for propriety, or for any-
thing but her gods and her lover and—yes—her king. He
bent his head to her. She bent her own in return. "I'll look
after my king," he said.

Alexander's company rode out of Rhakotis in a prancing,
jingling procession, with the king at their head in his
bright armor. But once they had left the town behind, they
dismounted and freed the horses from their bits and sent
all but a few of the beasts back to Rhakotis, packed away
their gauds and put on marching gear and marched. The
Companions were inured to it: they shouldered their packs,
pulled their hats down over their eyes, and fell into a long,
swinging stride that made nothing of sand or stones. The
handful of horses kept pace in a herd, some on leads, most
sensible enough to follow their fellows. The servants held
their own ranks just ahead of the rearguard, none loaded
down more than the Companions themselves, carrying the
pots and kettles, the extra foodstuffs, and the tents and
poles.

They went light and they went fast. Meriamon felt the
eyes on her—and not only Niko's. They were waiting for
her to give up, she was sure, and mount Phoenix and ride.
The mare would not have minded; she was desert-bred and
she did not have to suffer the war-bridle. But Meriamon
had her pride. She had softened somewhat in Memphis;

still, she was no weakling. She could keep pace.

They followed the coast for a long while, keeping to the
road that led to a town called Paraetonium, and thence to

SIWAH 339

the village of Apis. The green and wet of the Delta sank
away behind them; the Red Land claimed them. There was
water in plenty, and provender: ships from Alexander's
fleet paced them, putting in in the evenings as they had on
me road from Tyre.

It was not ill marching. The sea cooled them with its
breezes, though it brought no rain. The road was broad
and smooth, a traders' road, with people on it now and
then. Those looked with curiosity on the armed company,
and told tales of raiders inland. "You'll want your spears
then," they said, "and camels if you can get them—horses
and mules aren't much good for the deep desert."

"Even horses that are desert-bred?" Alexander wanted
to know.

"Horses can't carry as much," said the traveler, himself
on a camel and speaking barbarous Greek, "or go as long.
There will be camels in Paraetonium. If you have sense
you'll buy them."

"We might, at that," Hephaistion said. He eyed the
man's mount, somewhat dubiously to be sure, but with
interest enough. "Would this one be for sale, by any
chance?"

The man's eyes narrowed. "She is a racing camel of a
line of champions."

"So are they all," said Hephaistion sweetly. "We'll buy
our camels in Paraetonium, then. I don't suppose you have
cousins with camels to sell?"

"My uncle bred this beauty,*' the man said. "Her sisters
are almost as good as she. Her mother is better. But you
won't be wanting racing camels; you'll be wanting good
beasts of burden. Ask for the house of the rock. Anyone
can tell you where that is."

"The house of the rock," said Alexander. "We'll re-
member."

The traveler went on his way, loping eastward- He van-
ished amazingly quickly. They continued on the westward
road.

340 Lord of the Two Lands

Meriamon set one foot in front of the other. And then
again. And again. She had found the rhythm of it. She
could leave her body to its walking and let her mind and
her souls wander as they would, seeking out the powers in
earth and air. Often at first her shadow left her to hunt, but
as the days stretched, it clung closer.

This no longer was Khemet, though the power of the
Nile was a memory in the earth, a quiver in the air. Stron-
ger by far was the Great Green, the sea that surged and
breathed beside them. Poseidon, the Hellenes called it, Po-
seidon Earthshaker, lord of horses. It was no enemy to Al-
exander. It suffered his ships to ride on it, and murmured
beside his camp in the nights, and held back the fierce
heat of the desert.

That at night was no earthly heat: on the contrary, the
nights could be cold. even bitter. But to Meriamon's
senses the Red Land was a flame in the dark. Old things
were rising, strong things, enemies for long and long of
the Black Land and the people who dwelt in it: devourers
of flesh, drinkers of blood, eaters of souls.

No Parsa magic, this, feeble matter of fire and dogma
that that was. This was sunk deep in the earth, woven with
it, old and strong and black. The gods of the Two Lands
had overcome it long ago. Now a king out of the Two
Lands trespassed in its domain, and would lay claim to the
oracle in the heart of it.

While they kept to the sea it had no power to do more
than trouble their dreams. When they turned inland, then it
would rise up against them.

Alexander had his guardsman as Meriamon had hers.
Neither he nor she was about to turn back- Meriamon
doubted that they could. This road was ordained for them.
Each step had the inevitability of a prophecy.

That too was dangerous. It lulled the mind; it weakened
the wits. She made herself ride, sometimes, and so sepa-
rate herself from the earth. In camp she kept to the light
and the company of men, and when she slept, she did not

SIWAH 341

sleep alone. Everyone knew who kept her company—as
far as she could see, the greatest scandal was that it had
not happened sooner-

She found herself missing Tha'i's, even with Niko to
share her tent. The hetaira would -have come, but Ptolemy
would not let her. Even mat would hardly have stopped
her, if Meriamon had not bidden her remember the baby.
"This is not a road for an unborn child," Meriamon had
said. Thai's had not been happy at all, but in the end she
yielded. Ptolemy had given her a host of errands to run
and matters to see to, which she took on happily enough,
once she had resigned herself to staying behind.

She had the Persian tent still, pitched in a field outside
of Rhakotis. Meriamon had a smaller one for the march,
and Phylinna to look after it. Phylinna was a gift- She had
given herself, nor would she be refused. For all her citified
elegance, she had proven herself an able trooper. She
marched without complaining, she kept up handily, and
still she managed to look as if she had just come in from
a morning in the agora.

She approved of Niko, though she would never be so
crass as to admit it. She also approved of Arrhidaios, who
spent most of his evenings near Meriamon, and most of
me marches beside or behind her. Addled he might be, but
he was large and he was strong, and he doted on Meri-
amon. "You're well guarded," Phylinna said, "and thank
the gods for it. This is no journey for a woman."

"So?" Meriamon asked. 'Then why did you make it?"

"Because you insist on doing it, and someone should be
here to look after you."

Meriamon could hardly argue with logic. They were a
wall, all of them, and a shield, as the whole company was
for Alexander.

She said so to Niko, the night before they came to Par-
aetonium, while the wind cluttered and flapped in the
tentwall, and Phylinna snored on her mat. It had been dis-
concerting at first, having the servant next to them, and not

342 Lord of the Two Lands

even a blanket between for decency; but the woman could
hardly sleep outside in the chill. Niko was in comfort. He
ignored her. Meriamon was learning to.

"I'm glad we're good for something," he said now.

They were nested in the bed, she in the warm middle,
he curved around her. He ran his hand over her breast and
belly and let it come to rest between her thighs. She laid
her own over it. "I know it's not your custom to share a
bed all night long. You're guarding me. Losing sleep for
it, too."

"Less than I was losing in my bed alone, wishing I were
here," he said.

She smiled, though he could not see it. "Did you re-
ally?"

"You doubt it?"

"I thought Macedonians were made of sterner stuff than
that."

"We are. Except when it comes to wicked-tongued
Egyptian witches."

"Wicked, am I?"

"Terribly."

She turned in his arms. He was ready for her. She
grinned at him. "Then let's be wicked, and put the night
to flight."

They did their best to do   just that. Her shadow came
back in the middle of it,   and laughed soundlessly at the
spectacle they made. Niko   laughed back. Bold child. If he
did not learn prudence ..   .

In a little while she stopped worrying. A little longer,
and she stopped thinking at all.

There were indeed camels in Paraetonium. Every camel
trader in that part of the world must have had word that a
fool with an army needed transport to Siwah. The town
reeked of camels. The air was full of their roaring and
their flatulence. The herds had stripped every bit of green

SIWAH 343

from the town, and given a day or two longer would strip
it from every town within a day's march.

"When they don't have anything to eat," the traveler's un-
cle explained, "they don't eat, or drink either. When there's
food and water to be had, they make up for lost time."

Alexander's face was expressionless. Meriamon sus-
pected that he was trying not to laugh. The house of the
rock had turned out to be not quite impossible to find, and
its tenant to be a reasonably honest man, as camel dealers
went. He was no more disposed to sell Alexander his fine
racing beauties than his nephew had been, but he had
lesser beasts enough. One of which was doing its best to
take Seleukos' head off.

"Bulls," said the dealer. "Not the best choice for the use
you're going to put them to. You'll take she-camels.
They're gentler, and you get milk from the ones in calf.
You'll be glad of that if your water runs out."

"It won't," Alexander said. "Siwah is five days' march
from Apis, no? We'll take water in plenty, if we have cam-
els to carry it."

"Five days with good luck and fair weather," said the
dealer, "and supposing you don't meet raiders. Not that
they'll bother you, I don't think, unless the young ones
have a mind for a litde sport."

"Five days," said Alexander. "There are three hundred
of us, with servants, and a score of horses."

The dealer frowned. "Horses? Hadn't you better leave
them here? I can see that they're well taken care of, and
at a fair price, too."

"I think not," said Alexander with perfect courtesy.

The man opened his mouth. Alexander smiled. He shut
it again. He had just discovered, thought Meriamon, that
Alexander was Alexander. He blinked, shrugged. "You'll
do what you'll do. Now, about those camels ..."

They had their camels, and drovers for them, and saddles,
and grain in addition to what the ships brought in, and wa-

344 Lord of the Two Lands

terskins now lightly filled. They would see to those more
properly in Apis. Alexander was not displeased with the
price he paid for the whole. Nor, much more to the point,
was Hephaistion, who did the paying. He was quarter-
master here as he had been on the road from Tyre, and he
was good at it. He had everything in order and (he price
haggled down almost within the limits of reason, and the
whole caravan on the march by sunup.

They looked like a proper caravan now, men in the fore,
camels behind except for me rearguard, and horses in the
center, away from the camels. Phoenix did not mind them;

she had been foaled among them. The Macedonian horses
loathed everything about the great stinking beasts.
Boukephalas would have entered into battle with one of
them, had not Alexander hauled him off. He was still
prancing on his lead, throwing up his head and snorting in
disgust.

"I don't think he'll ever forgive me," Alexander said.

Meriamon slanted a glance at him. He looked like any
other man in the company in hat and chiton, cloak and
sandals, and a short spear for a walking stick. He carried
his own pack though the pages had most of his gear, and
swung out as cheerfully as the lowliest trooper. If he
sensed what waited in the desert, he showed no sign
of it.

"He'd forgive you less," she said. "if you left him be-
hind."

"I know," said Alexander. Boukephalas thrust his nose
into the king's shoulder; he sighed, but he laughed. "I
never did have much luck with traveling light."

"I call this light enough," she said, "for an army."

"This is the lap of luxury," said Alexander. "Light is a
knife in your belt and air in your wallet, and one cloak for
two of you. Light is hunting down your supper with the
knife, and sharing the cloak, and knowing yourself for a
rich man."

"Do you wish it could be that simple?" she asked him.

SIWAH 345

He did not answer at once. They measured a dozen
strides of the road. Then two dozen. Halfway through the
third, he said, "Sometimes. This is close, when you come
down to it. Even with camels."

She smiled. He grinned back. "It's going to get interest-
ing, isn't it?" he said.

He knew. Better than she, maybe. And he was always
one to laugh at fear.

He did not say that she could go back and be safe. For
that, more than anything else he had done or not done, she
knew that she loved him. Not as she loved Nikolaos, no;

of course not. But as a woman could love the man who
was her king.
• TWENTY-NINE •

From Apis that was a fleck of green in the Red Land, a
huddle of houses against the Great Green, the road bent
south and turned its back on the sea. This was the pil-
grims' road to Siwah, a thread strung between the sea and
the oracle. It made its way through a land both bleak and
unforgiving, red sand and barren rock and the bitter vault
of the sky. No rain fell here. No river ran. No Black Land
sprouted green to gentle the earth.

The power in this place was alien and enemy. It knew
Meriamon for what she was. And more than her, it knew
Alexander.

Set was a god, as often ally as enemy. Typhon was far
away in windy Hellas. This was Enemy pure, earth that
would not be conquered, sky that would not be ruled, even
by gods. Khemet's power had driven it back beyond the
mountains of the sunset, and walled itself against it with
me tombs of its kings. But here it was whole and it was
strong, and it had Alexander's army in its hand.

346 Lord of the Two Lands

On the first day it did nothing. The sky was ciear of
aught but birds: the desert falcon, the vulture that was holy
in Khemet. The way stretched before them. Often there
was nothing to mark it among the sand and the stones, but
they had taken guides in Apis, men who swore by their
names that they knew the way to Siwah. Alexander would
have had them swear on images of their gods, but
Meriamon stopped him. "Their names will be enough,"
she said. He found that very odd, but he did not quarrel
with her.

Trust, she thought- He trusted her to know what men in
this land would do. She trusted the land not at all. It was
quiescent. Biding its time.

The second day passed. The birds wheeled. Alexander
sent scouts to see what interested the vultures. A lion's
kill: a gazelle scoured to bones, and jackals feeding on it.
Aristandros saw no omen in mat. Meriamon wondered if
she was a fool for thinking it a message.

That night they made a waterless camp. There was an
oasis, the guides promised, within the next day's march.
The water in the skins was sweet enough, if redolent of
leather. They had provisions in plenty, and the last of the
fodder for the horses and the camels. They were comfort-
able, as travelers in the desert went.
Meriamon sat on the camp's edge and watched the sun
go down. The sounds of the camp went on peacefully in
back of her: men talking, horses snorting, camels chewing
their cuds- The guides had shown them how to build fires
out of camel dung, hardly a necessity now as the day's
heat radiated out of "the sand, but later they would be glad
of it-
She felt rather than saw Niko squat on his heels beside
her. Sekhmet walked from his shoulder to Meriamon's.
Meriamon reached up to smooth the cat's fur, and started.
"Sparks," she said.

"Air's dry," said Niko-

SIWAH 347

"It's always dry in the—" She stopped. He was grin-
ning. She had no laughter in her.

There was a wind blowing. Not much of one, but per-
sistent. It picked up a handful of sand and cast it across
the top of a rock, and rested; then amused itself in sculpt-
ing a dune. It blew from the left hand. South.

The horizon was the color of blood. The zenith was' the
color of lapis, deep pure blue. She turned her eyes south-
ward. Blood-red, blood-crimson. Sparks leaped in it. Flick-
ers of lightning.

She drew herself up. Her trousers were full of sand. She
shook them out, taking great care. Not that it would mat-
ter. But she preferred to be clean while she had the choice.

The guides were already with the king. "You're sure?"
Alexander asked them as Meriamon came up.

The oldest of them did his best not to look offended.
"We know the signs, lord king. There will be storms
within a day, maybe two. That is the khamsin blowing, the
dry wind."

"It blows out of Siwah," Alexander said, "and to Siwah
I will go. Can we make the oasis if we march through the
night?"

"Night is not safe," the man said, "lord king."

"Is day any safer?"

The man rubbed at his beard. "Demons walk the night,
lord king."

"The dry wind walks the day, if what you say is true.
Should I fear a demon that may growl at me, over a sand-
storm that can scour the flesh from my bones?"

"You should not speak lightly of these things," said the
guide. "Lord king."

Alexander's blood was up, but his mind was cool
enough. He scanned the camp with a swift eye; met
Meriamon's stare. "Well?" he asked her.

"I don't like the look of the sky," she said. "If we had
water enough I'd say stay, and wait it out."

"But we don't," said Hephaistion. "We have enough for

348 Lord of the Two Lands

one more round for the men. Barely enough for the horses.

Precious little for the camels, even if the men and the

horses go thirsty. Camels," he said, "need a great deal of

water, when they need it."

"They can go longer than you think," the guide said.
"Horses can't," said Hephaistion. "Men shouldn't. If

this storm is bad and we're held up, we won't be in good

case."
Alexander paced along the line of them, turned sharply.

"We'll rest half the night. After that, we march."

The wind died down near middle night. Meriamon did not
ease for that. Alexander, unfortunately, did. By the time
the trumpet sounded the Wake and Ann, it was nearly
dawn. They had drunk their ration of water and eaten their
bit of bread, struck camp and turned their faces toward the
southward road, when the sky began to lighten in the east-
It was cold, frost-cold. Meriamon huddled in the sol-
dier's cloak that Niko had got for her before they left
Rhakotis. Sekhmet was a warm weight in a fold of it. For-
tunate cat: she could ride when humans had to walk.

Meriamon's shadow strained at its bindings. She loosed
them. It wandered a little distance but came back, bris-
tling, teeth bared in a soundless snarl. It was almost solid,
she noticed. It dropped to all fours and paced behind her.
A Companion who wandered sleepily out of his place in
the Une shied away from it, muttering something about
"bloody great dogs."
The stars faded. The wind was blowing in their faces:

brief hard gusts, a sting of sand. The sun rose as it had set,
in blood. The tight it cast was strangely dim, and dim-
ming.

"We're going to get it," Ptolemy said. He was walking
with his brother, just behind Meriamon.

Word came back down the line. "Push on as far as you
can before it hits. Then barricade yourselves—behind a

SIWAH 349

camel, if you can. Watch the camels! They know what to
do."

A march of Hellenes was never a silent march unless
they were mounting an ambush. Even in dry desert some-
one was always singing, and everyone was talking. Now
the sound of voices sank away. The wind was growing
stronger, the sting of sand fiercer.

The camels walked on, each beast seeming made up of
half a dozen disparate parts, and every one moving in a
different direction. For once no one commented on it.
While the camels walked, they were safe. Some of them
made a litany of it and marched to its rhythm.

All at once the camels stopped. The beast in the lead
raised her head on its improbable neck and turned it from
side to side. The drover shouted and struck her with his
goad. She took no more notice of him than of the flies that
swarmed on her hide. With great and deliberate care she
folded her legs beneath her, joint by joint. First one, then
another of the caravan followed her.

Their backs were to the south, Meriamon noticed, and
their faces to the north.

The horses were shirting about uneasily. Phoenix, wise
to the desert, was sweating. Her eyes rolled white as
Meriamon approached, and she shied from the hand on her
bridle. "Go on," Meriamon said to the groom. "I'll look
after her."

The Thracian set his jaw. "No," he said. "You go."

Meriamon got a firmer grip on the bridle and half
dragged, half coaxed the mare toward the nearest of the
camels. The company had gone to ground already, except
for those with the horses. Boukephalas was quiet, almost
alarmingly so. Alexander had his bridle, was stroking his
neck, talking to him. Meriamon cried out. The king threw
up his head, remarkably like a horse himself. "Here!" she
cried.

After a moment he moved toward her. She forgot him
and set to work persuading Phoenix to lie in the lee of the

350 Lord of the Two Lands

camel. The mare knew what she was supposed to do; was
glad to do it. But the air was full of thunder. The earth was
throbbing like a heart. It was more than a horse could rea-
sonably be expected to endure.

The sun was a feeble flicker. The sand was thickening.
A shape loomed out of it—two shapes. Alexander; Bou-
kephalas. The stallion lay down willingly beside Phoenix,
and greeted her with a flutter of the nostrils. She flattened
her ears and snaked her head. He offered no presumption.
Her trembling quieted.

"Where's Niko?" Meriamon asked. Shouted. The wind
was rising.

She tried to get up. Alexander pulled her down. "Not
now, idiot! He was back there the last time I looked—with
Ptolemy. Hephaistion, too."

There was nothing of mind in what she wanted. To go,
to find him. But Alexander was in her way, and he would
not move. She subsided slowly. "Mother," she prayed.
"Mother Isis, look after him."

If the goddess heard, she had keener ears than anything
living. They were in the mouth of the furnace. One mo-
ment there was wind and sand and a crackle of lighting,
The next, a lake of fire, a blast of heat, sand to scour the
flesh from bones even through a soldier's cloak. Every
drop of moisture sucked from skin and mouth and eyes.
And howling like every voice of every torment that had
ever beset man or beast or demon below.

It was a paean. A song of triumph. That they were
taken. That they would be destroyed.

"No," said Meriamon.

Not precisely said. She had no voice to say it. It was
burned out of her. But she willed it. There was more than
earthly malice in that wind, and more than earthly destruc-
tion in the storm. Her souls were flayed raw. What it had
done to the simple magicless Macedonians, she could not
mink; dared not, or she would despair.

SIWAH 351

She could not move. There was a weight on her. It was
alive; it breathed. It was shielding her.

Alexander. She knew the bright heat of him. A different
heat: welcome. It was barely touched at all.

It offered itself for what she must do. She shaped the
words with her souls' tongue. She made the wall, stone by
stone, word by word of shaped and focused power. Half of
them the storm scoured away. Half it haltered against,
blow on blow.

But they held. Patiently she heaped them one on the
other, making a ward against the storm, raising it over the
small trapped souls, men, beasts, even a desert mouse
cowering under a stone. The flesh that housed them could
perish even yet, drowned in sand. But they would escape
uneaten.

There was little of her left when the wall was made. She
had just strength enough to set the last stone and curl up
behind it, and wait-
Silence.

She had gone deaf. Or dead.

Something moved. A voice spoke in her ear. "Hera-
kles!"

Sand sifted down, hissing. The weight scrambled off
her. She got an elbow in the ribs.

She was definitely not dead, unless the dead could hurt-

A hand got a grip on her, heaved her up. Light blinded
her.

Alexander looked like nothing human, covered in sand
from head to foot, and his eyes staring out of it, blazing
pale. He shook like a dog. Sand flew.

The world had changed. What had been a bare stony
valley with a bit of scrub for the camels to graze on, was
a sea of sand, great undulating dunes stretching to the ho-
rizon. North was a haze of storm, shot with lightnings.
South was a still clear blue.

One of the smaller dunes heaved- A camel rose out of
352 Lord of the Two Lands

it, shook itself as Alexander had, looked about with an air
of vast disgust.

"My sentiments exactly." said Alexander. He sounded a
great deal calmer than he looked. He eyed the hillock
nearest him, and began to dig. Meriamon burrowed al-
ready where her bones told her to burrow, no mind in her
at all, only a madness of fear.

Niko was coiled in a knot, death-still. She gasped. Her
mouth was full of sand. She dragged him out bodily.

He struggled, unknotting, coughing hard enough to
knock him flat, and Meriamon with him. Her hands were
locked on his arms. He tore free, rolling to all fours, and
coughed himself into shaking silence. He was ghastly to
look at, sand caked in his hair and brows and clinging to
his skin, and sweat plowing furrows in it. He was quite the
most beautiful thing Meriamon had ever seen.

He tasted of salt and of sand, and of himself. His shak-
ing stopped. She stumbled to her feet, drawing him with
her. Other mounds sprouted their crop of men and beasts,
snorting and blowing and shaking off clouds of sand.

They had lost no one, and every one of the animals was
safe. One or two of the camels had strayed, but those came
back on their own as the company took count of itself. The
worst casualty was a man who had got a stone in his eye.
He would keep the eye, Meriamon judged. She did what
she could to stitch and bind the cut above it. No one else
had more than a bruise or two, and a few unfortunates had
had the skin scoured from exposed portions of their anat-
omy.

"That will teach you to stick your arse out in a sand-
storm." Alexander said to the worst wounded of them; but
he had a smile for the man after, and that was as good an
anodyne as anything Meriamon could muster,

They had a sip of water each—not quite all of it, but
there was a fair distance to go yet, the guides said. Once
they had shaken the worst of the sand out of clothes and

SIWAH 353

hair and seen to their packs and their animals, they took
the road again. Even as parched as they were, their spirits
were high. The storm was gone. The sky was serene. By
night they would have water enough for all of them, man
and beast.
It was hard going. The sand was deep, and could be
treacherous. The curve of the dunes lured them away from
the straight path. The sun sank, slowly at first, then with
breathtaking swiftness.

"Soon," the guides said. "The oasis is close. Soon we
come to it."

Each rise of sand invited the certainty that water lay on
the other side of it. Each downward slope looked only to
another dune. Red sand, dun sand, blue sky. No green at
all. Not a bush, not a leaf, not a blade of grass. And of wa-
ter, nothing. Not even the shadow of it.

The guides were moving more slowly now, pausing
more often to confer with one another. Most of the Com-
panions were too tired to care about anything but putting
one foot in front of the other. So should Meriamon have
been—she perhaps more than any, for the wall that she
had built of magic and her souls' substance, to guard them
all in the midst of the storm. But she was past exhaustion
in a white fierce clarity. She knew in her skin that Niko
was beside her. She was aware of Sekhmet riding on his
shoulder, of Phoenix stepping delicately behind, of Alex-
ander working his way up from the rear, a flare like a
torch in a dark night.

When he passed, she fell in beside him. His glance ac-
knowledged but did not forbid her.

The guides had stopped again. The chief of Alexander's
scouts was with them, addressing them in a fierce low
voice. "You what?"

"We know which way is south," one of the guides said,
just as low and just as fierce. "It's only—"

"Only what?"

354 Lord of the Two Lands

They whipped about. Even the scout looked suddenly,
horribly guilty.

"What don't you know?" Alexander asked again.

None of them would answer.

"It is only," Meriamon said, "that there is a whole world,
to the south of this place, and Siwah is a very small por-
tion of it." She fixed the chief of the guides with her stare.
"How long have you been lost?"
"We are not lost," the man said, "lady. We know where
we must be."

"Are we anywhere near water?" Alexander demanded.

There was another silence.

The scout could not spit: he was too dry. He managed
to look as if he had done it. "They're lost, Alexander.
Don't you doubt it. They've been lost since we dug our-
selves out of that sandpit."

"The storm changed everything'" cried the youngest of
the guides. "How were we to know that it would make a
new world?"

"Sandstorms do," Alexander said mildly. He looked
about. There was nothing to see but sand. "I don't suppose
it will be any better at night? Navigating by the stars, or
however you do it?"

"We go by the land," the chief of the guides said, "lord
king. There is always something that never changes: a
shape under the sand, or a turning of the hills."

"How much rime do you need to find it?"

"We have been looking," the man said. "Nothing is as
we remember." He threw up his hands.l-"Nothing! Never in
all my years have I seen it so. The very earth has shifted,
I swear by the gods."

Meriamon shivered.

Alexander did not hear the truth that she heard, or did
not care. "In a word," he said, "you're lost. And so, there-
fore, are we."

"We are not—" The guide snatched off his headcloth
and scratched fiercely at his swarm of lice. "Lord king, we

SIWAH 355

are not lost. We are here, and Siwah is there, to the south.
We have only to walk until we come to it."

"Or," said Alexander, "until we die of thirst."

'The gods will provide," said the guide.

'Then you had better pray," said Alexander. "Or better
yet, find a landmark that you recognize. We'll camp here
while you go about it."

The guides stared at him. He smiled his sweet terrible
smile, and went back down the line.

• THIRTY •

By morning the water was gone. The wine without it was
deadly stuff, nor could the beasts drink it even if there had
been enough. The guides had not found the oasis. They
knew where Siwah was, they insisted on that. Their insis-
tence had an air of desperation.

Alexander shrugged. He was as dry as anyone else.
Someone had tried to save out a flask of water for him. He
had. smiled, thanked the man, and passed it round the
man's company. Now he said, "We'll go on. What's a dry
march or two to the likes of us?"

His men cheered. He flashed them his brightest smile
and took his place at the head of the line, and led them out
of the camp.

He was carrying them with his strength. And   yet they
were tough, these Macedonians. They marched   behind
their king, erect under the weight of packs   and armor, and
their eyes were bright and their faces were   firm and they
knew nothing of defeat or despair.

They did not feel what Meriamon felt: the malice under
their feet, the ill-will in the sky. It had them, and it would
kill them. And they laughed at it.

She walked as straight as she could, slipping and scram-

356 Lord of the Two Lands

bling in sand. She kept her head as high as it would go.
She worried about Phoenix, but the mare was lively
enough. They all were.

And for how long? Four days at least to Siwah, the
guides said. The camels were irritable already, trying to
wander off, biting their handlers when they were dragged
back. They wanted water. In four days they would do
worse than want it. They would be dead for lack of it.

She stumbled and went down. She stayed there on
hands and knees, shaking her head. There was a darkness
in it. Trap. Trapped. Thirsty—thirsty—

"Meriamon!"
Niko. Always Niko.

Her head spun. He lifted her, shook her. She tried to
push him away. It was like pushing at a wall.

He slapped her. She gasped. She could see again. He
looked furious.

Not as furious as she. "Put me down," she said through
gritted teeth.

He kept on holding her, and he kept on walking. She
struggled. He did not even trouble to tighten his grip. She
lay in his arms, glaring.

Anger was a power. It cleared her mind. It named what
had felled her. Enemy.

The sky was still dark. Grey. She tried to banish it, to
bring back the blue. A wind brushed her cheek. She shiv-
ered. It was cold.

The marchers halted. They were all staring upward.

Alexander's voice rang out, seeming to echo in the
empty spaces. "By the dog! It's going to rain."

"In the desert?" someone said.

"Taste the wind," said Ptolemy. "That's rain." He
paused. His voice sharpened. "Quick, everybody. Get out
your tents, your waterskins—anything you've got. If the
gods are with us at all—if they've ever listened to a prayer
we've said—"

"Zeus'" cried Alexander. "Skyfather! Did you hear that?

SIWAH 357

You'll have a hecatomb of fine bulls when I get back to
Memphis, if you give us rain now."

There was no sudden stillness. No listening pause; no
silence of awe. The men ran to do as Ptolemy bade them.
some muttering, some speaking aloud of madmen and des-
peration. But they ran. They unfolded lents, skins, cloaks,
hauled out pots and jars.

The wind blew harder. It was a water-wind as the kham-
sin had been a fire-wind. It massed clouds above them. It
gave them nothing that they could drink, not a drop. Al-
ready there was light on the far side of it, dry naked sky,
pitiless sun.
"Zeus!" cried Alexander, high and peremptory. "Father
Zeus! Can you hear us?"

He was standing on me summit of a dune. A long shaft
of sun caught him, striking fire in his hair. He spread his
arms wide.

' Meriamon's feet were on the ground again. She almost
leaped back into Niko's arms. The earth was humming. It
was Alexander—not working power, but being power;

drawing it up from the deep places and down from the sky.

He did not know what he was doing- He would call it
prayer, if he called it anything. Making the gods listen.
Taking no notice at all of the Enmity that beat upon him.

The sky shattered.

' Meriamon raised herself on her hands. Whether she had
flung herself flat, or been flung, she would never be sure.
She drew a breath, and choked. It was like breathing a
river.

Rain. Hard, driving, relentless, miraculous rain. Alexan-
der's madmen were whooping and dancing in it, trying to
drink it as it fell, gagging and half drowning themselves,
and laughing all the while. But they were gathering it in
everything they had. Alexander egged them on. He was
whole, grinning, sopping wet. Not even a scorched eyelash
after the bolt that surely had struck through him into the
earth.

358 Lord of the Two Lands

The rain stopped as suddenly as it had   begun. The si-
lence was enormous. The clouds thinned   and paled and
scattered, blowing away southward. The   thirsty sand drank
the last of the wet, glistening in the   new-washed sun.

They were all wet to the skin, men, horses, camels.
They looked at one another. Then at the full waterskins;

the jars brimming over; the pools made of tents, with cam-
els drinking from them in long noisy draughts.

No one said the word that they were all thinking. Mir-
acle. Gods' gift. Four days' worth, by the quartermaster's
measure.

They took time to make sure their armor and weapons
were dry. By the time they marched, they were only a little
damp around the edges. There was water in them, pure
sweet rainwater, and they went the swifter for it.

The desert was coming to life about them. Dried
branches put forth leaves. Flowers seemed to spring be-
neath their feet. Small creatures came out of hiding to feed
on the new bounty, or simply to revel in it,

"Water is life," said Niko. "I never knew it before as I
know it here."

"Desert is very close to the truth of things." Meriamon
was weak still, and sometimes she was dizzy. Her eyes did
not seem to want to see very far, but what was close was
bitterly, painfully clear. Niko's face, now. Peeling where
the sun had burned it. Raw on one cheekbone from the
scouring of sand. Rough with fair stubble. His hat shaded
it, cutting a sharp line across it, part in sun, part in
shadow.

They had stopped ahead. Some of them had spears.
None of them moved; they seemed hardly to breathe.

Meriamon made her way to them. Alexander was lost
amid the taller men, until one of them shifted. She saw
what had stopped them.

Two of them, eye to eye with Alexander. His eyes were
wide. One was almost black, and the other was almost sil-

SIWAH 359

ver. Theirs could not be anything but wide, cold and yel-
low and slit-pupiled. Their hoods were spread. Their
forked tongues tasted the air. Tails coiled, long bodies
raised and swaying gently, they were as tall as the king.

One of the Bodyguard jerked forward, spear up, face a
rictus of disgust. Ptolemy caught him and hurled him back
bodily. "You fool! Do you want to kill the king?"

"I'm not going to die." Alexander's voice was soft, a
little blurred, as if he spoke from a dream. He did not
glance at Meriamon, could not have seen her coming, but
he said, "Menamne. Did you ask your gods for guides?"

"I don't think I needed to," she said. The serpents
swayed toward her. They were beautiful, all supple length
and glistening scales. Their hoods were like the headdress
of Pharaoh in his great house. Very, very carefully she
bowed to them. She went low and low, but with an eye al-
ways upon them. "Great ones," she said to them in the
oldest of tongues, the language of priests from the dawn of
the Two Lands. "Handmaidens of Edjo in the house of the
horizon. 1 bring to you the lord of Upper and Lower
Egypt, king from across the sea, -son of that one whom you
know."

The nearer serpent hissed. The other dipped its head and
flowed along the sand southward and westward. At the
length of a furrow in Thebes it stopped, curved round,
raised its head again.

"It says," said Meriamon. "follow."

Alexander shook himself. For a moment she thought
that he would laugh, or say something unfortunate. The
serpent that had not moved could strike in an eyeblink.
Would. She knew that as she knew the feel of the earth be-
neath her feet.

But he only tilted his head, looking from her to the ser-
pents. Maybe at last he understood what this was that he
did. "Go on," he said. "I'll be behind you."

360 Lord of the Two Lands

Meriamon did nol want to lead, but Alexander was ada-
mant. She was a shield of sorts. And an interpreter, though
surely it was obvious what their guides wanted of them.
They were allowed to rest at night. The serpents left them
then, and they breathed a little easier, all of them, until the
fear struck. If they were being led into perdition—if their
guides did not come back—

The serpents came back the first morning, and again the
second. By the third the travelers were something like
comfortable, even the horses, who the first day had been
unmanageable until their grooms took them to the rear and
kept them there. Horses were on speaking terms with di-
vinity, and often foaled of the wind; but snakes were the
Enemy, even snakes who belonged to the gods.

Meriamon spent most of the first day upbraiding herself
for doubting that the gods were looking after their chosen
king. She had been perilously close to despair, even after
the rain- That was the malice in the earth, working on her
weaknesses. It had little enough to do, when it came to
that. She had never been perfect in her faith.

This was hardly a sign for her. The gods knew the
Enemy—they could hardly escape it. They wanted Alexander
in their oracle. Meriamon was but a means to their end.

It was a comfort of sorts, to be insignificant. She
walked behind the serpents, keeping the pace they set. Al-
exander walked behind her. His Companions walked be-
hind him. The camels kept the outer line, with guards to
watch for raiders, and the horses held the rear. Just ahead
of the rearguard. The land did not change from day to day.
It was the same barren undulation of rock and sand. The
same blue infinity of sky. Even the same vulture hovering
against it, wide wings, blood-speck of head peering down.
Nekhbet's eyes, Meriamon thought. As the hawk that flew
over them was Horus, winging into the sun. And when
night fell, the sky would be the arch of a goddess' body,
the stars the garment that clothed her, and the moon the
jewel on her neck.

SIWAH 361

They were not in the world any longer. That the guides,
bom and bred to this country, had not known the shape of
it after the storm, nor had they known it since—Meriamon
had known in her heart, even then, what that meant. Now
she let herself acknowledge it.

Where they were ...

They taught in Thebes, and likewise in Memphis, that
the gods dwelt beyond the horizon. That the horizon of the
west, the Red Land between the river and the sunset, was
both living earth and land of the dead. That one could
walk through a door, or through the words of a spell, or
even through the wall of a storm, and come to that earth
on which no living creature walked.

It was exactly like the land of the living. The sun rode
there, the priests taught, when it was night for living men;

and who was to say that Alexander's company had not
somehow turned itself about and entered day-in-night?

She stooped, the morning of that third day, and took up
a handful of sand. It was simply sand. Dry, whispering as
it trickled from her palm. She had eaten bread before
dawn, fresh from baking in a fire of camel-dung, and
drunk wine thinned with water from the rain. She knew
what she had been doing before she had to rise and eat:

her belly was warm with it still, and Niko kept smiling to
himself in odd moments. Ptolemy was chaffing him for it;

he snapped back, stung. Their voices were living voices,
rough-sweet and pleasant to hear at her back as Edjo's ser-
vants slithered in front of her, leading her to the oracle.

And yet there was her shadow. It walked beside her, and
it was a man with a jackal's head, its body as solid as her
own. No one looked at it askance, or said anything of the
stranger in the mask.

Its name touched the edge of her tongue. She almost
said it. Anubis. Guide and guardian. Though for her it had
always been more the latter; and here their guides were
Edjo's serpents.

She was not afraid. That surprised her. There were two

362 Lord of the Two Lands

of her. Flesh walking in the land of flesh. Ka-spirit walk-
ing in this land, the dry land, the land of coming forth by
day.

She glanced back- The company held their ranks,
marching as they had marched since Rhakotis- They
sensed nothing amiss. Now and then one fell out to relieve
himself or to shake a stone out of his boot. Someone was
singing about a boy with cheeks like a peach.

Her shadow left her side to walk ahead. Edjo's serpents
slowed for it. It came up between them; they went on. Its
ears tilted back at her, then flicked forward. Guarding her
still.

Someone else took her shadow's place. It was not Niko,
though he was close enough. Arrhidaios watched her
shadow with wide interested eyes, and said, "We're some-
where else. Aren't we?"

That was one way to put it. Meriamon said, "We'll be
safe." Or so, at least, she hoped.

"There are things back there," Arrhidaios said. "Watch-
ing. The horses don't like them."

Meriamon kept her eyes sternly to the front- "What sort
of things?"

"Things," said Arrhidaios. shrugging. "Like him"—he
tilted his chin at her shadow—"but ugly. They just watch.
They have knives."

She stumbled and almost fell. Arrhidaios caught her
hand to steady her. "Are you all right, Meri?"

"Yes." She said it through stiff lips. "They cannot touch
us. I know their names."

If names were enough. If the scribes and the priests had
known truly, and not through a veil of lies and guesses.
She was marching through simple desert to an oasis and
a temple. There were no demons behind the company.

"I can count them," said Arrhidaios proudly. "Seven
and seven and seven, and three more sevens. Six sevens."

"Six sevens," she said. "Yes. That is their number."

SIWAH 363

She would not look back. If she- looked back, her bow-
els would melt.

Words came to her. She spoke them, slowly at first,
faintly, then louder and stronger. "In truth I walk. In the
Hall of the Two Truths I walk. In Osiris' name, in Horus'
name, in the name of Isis, Mother, goddess, lady of the
living and the dead, I defend me. From the bearers of
knives, from the eaters of souls, from the Powers that wait
upon the day of judgment, deliver me."

Silence. Her shadow paced without pausing. Edjo's ser-
pents slithered on either side.

She looked over her shoulder. Her eye caught Niko's.
He smiled, sudden warmth, a surge of pure strength.

Alexander was beyond him. He had been down the line,
keeping company with the singers. Once away from them,
he lost his air of lightness.

He knew.

She waited for him to come level with her. As she
waited she sang softly, little more than a croon. "I am the
hawk of the desert. I am the cat soft-footed in shadow. I
am the sand across the empty track. I walk unseen. 1 walk
defended. No demon touches me."

She stopped. Alexander was beside her.

"You see them, too," said Arrhidaios before Meriamon
could begin. "You do, don't you, Alexander?"

Alexander patted him on the shoulder. When he spoke,
it was to Meriamon. "What are they?"

"Watchers." she said.

"Armed?"

"It's their way," she said.
He frowned at the three who led them. "Tell me," he
said. 'Tell me that that is a Nubian in a mask. And that
those, back there, are more men who like, for reasons best
known to themselves, to wear the heads of animals and
carry naked knives and follow strangers through the dry
land."

364 Lord of the Two Lands

"They're not men," she said. "But the rest is true
enough."

She saw him shiver. "What ... do they do?"

"They watch." That did not satisfy him. She said after
a moment, "They judge. But that is in the hail. This is me
open land."

"Is it?"

She glanced upward in spite of herself. If that vault was
the vault of a ceiling, and about her walls as vast as a
world, and under her feet not sand but smoothed stone ...

Stone of every kind mat was in the worid, laid in pat-
terns that lured the eye, and having won it, netted it and
drew it down and down. Pillars like tall fans of papyrus or
tike the trees of the Lebanon, inlaid with gold and precious
things, lapis and camelian and malachite. Vault the color
of the sky at night, or perhaps the sky on the verge of
morning, when all was darkest, and day a dream to which
there was no waking.

"No," she said. "It is the desert of Libya, and tomorrow
we will come to Siwah."

"What do they judge?" Alexander asked her, pitiless as
a child, and as innocently persistent.

"Souls," she answered him.

"We're alive, t think," he said.

"We are," she said- "This is the land of the living. This
is the sun that rises in the morning and sets at evening.
Those are the stars that rise and set."

Each word came with the weight of a world. Here the
worlds met. Here, if she slackened, or if she failed to name
each name as it was given in the morning of the worlds,
the world she built would crumble and fade.
"This is sky," she said. 'This is the sun, that is the boat
of Ra, that sails on the sea of the million years. This is
sand. Red Land of the west, desert beyond the green fields
of Egypt. This is life."

Her foot turned a stone. She picked it up. It was sharp-
edged; it tried to bite her hand as it had bitten her foot.

SIWAH 365

She smiled at it. Pain was life. Pain was real. Pain was
power in this shifting, wavering place.

The desert melted into mist. The hall stretched before
her. She knew its name. The Hall of Twofold Truth. And
in it, moving from behind her to take their ancient places,
six sevens of Watchers. Man-formed, now man-high, now
as vast as giants, with the faces of hungry beasts. Their
knives glittered in the pitiless light. Their teeth gleamed.
One that wore a jackal's smile met her eyes with eyes the
color of blood, and sketched what might have been a bow.

She shot a glance over her shoulder. Her shadow kept
its place as it always did, and its eyes were as clear as the
living sky of Khemet. And yet it too was of this place.

The Watchers closed in slowly. Beyond them swayed a
balance. Her shadow's image stood beside it, ears pricked,
alert. In his clawed hand, stirring with the airs that moved
in the hall, lay a feather. Its name was Justice. Below the
balance crouched a beast. Its jaws gaped. Its eyes gleamed.
Hungry.

Meriamon's souls quailed. They knew its name; none
better man they. Eater of Souls.'

Something—someone—wavered before the balance.
Dead soul, woman's it might have been, slender and
afraid. Behind her rose a throne, and on the throne the lord
of this place, dead god wrapped in cerements and crowned
with the Two Crowns. The crowned head bent. Its face
was a mask, the mask of the dead. In the pits of its eyes
was the darkness between stars.

The Guide laid the feather in one arm of. the balance. In
the other he laid a beating, crimson thing: a heart, and in
its essence a name, the name of the soul that waited upon
the judgment. The balance quivered. If the heart proved
the weightier, the stronger in truth, then the soul was free,
and freed to enter the lands of ever-living- If the heart
were the lighter, the feebler in justice, it would fail, and
the soul would fall, and be devoured. The soul stretched
366 Lord of the Two Lands

out her hand, as if she could sway the balance, send her
heart swinging down under the weight of her will.

The feather dropped. The heart flew up. The soul
wailed. Watchers caught her before she could flee, bound
her with cords of night and sorrow. They took no heed of
her struggles, or of her keening that was like the cry of a
bird. They cast her into the waiting maw.

"Zeus Paler!" Alexander's oath rang among the pillars.
No god came to it, no flare of levin-light in the dimness
of ages. Nothing of Hellas,had power in this place.

Alexander sprang past Meriamon. His hand was on his
swordhilt, the blade half-drawn. She seized his wrist with
both hands and held, though he dragged her nearly off her
feet.

He halted. His eyes were wild. "That thing," he said.
"Those things—"

They circled. Eyes, fangs, ill-will so strong that it
choked like a stench. Living flesh, living blood, cold steel
in this place of all places in all the worlds—

Death was the penalty for walking living here. Cold
blades would pierce their flesh that was so warm and
solid, cut out their hearts that dared beat where all hearts
were stilled, sunder their souls and cast them into the maw
of the Devourer.

Alexander had. never been afraid of anything, in the
world or out of it. He laughed in their faces.

"Walk," Meriamon said. Her voice was thin with strain.
"For the love of life, walk!"

He walked. He left a trail of light. The hall trembled in
it like an image caught in water.

Meriamon's magic, quelled and cowed as it had been,
found strength it had not known it had. It willed another
image, another world, a world of light and the living. She
built it of the light that was her king. She made it grow
about her. She made it strong, she made it real, she fixed
it with the power of the word and the will and me name.

The hall of the dead was gone. They walked in the

SIWAH 367
world of the living. Living sand under their feet. Living
sky over their heads. The sun was westering, but it was
high still. And the night ahead of it; and morning that
would bring them to their end. Siwah. Or, if they failed the
test, the Hall of Twofold Truth, and six sevens of Watch-
ers, and the Eater of Souls with jaws opened wide to de-
vour all that they were.

"Sun," she said. "Sky. Earth. Sand. Stone." Over and
over. No elegance in it after a while. No fine turn of
phrase. It was not the elegance that imparted power; it was
the name, and the will behind the name. To make the
world real. To hold me Watchers at bay. To bring night
and not everlasting day; stars that changed and set, and not
stars that could not die.

Her body, or her ka's body, walked in the wake of the
shadow and the serpents. A white light walked with it. hi
the sun, a second sun. In me night, a beacon.

"Alexander," she said. The name resounded through all
the levels of the worlds. The name that his father had
given; that, nonetheless, the gods had willed. Alexander.

•THIRTY-ONE.

Sometimes Meriamon's soul was her body's image, walk-
ing as her body walked, with a stone clutched in its palm.
Sometimes it was a bird with a woman's head, fluttering
through a changeless sky, under stars that did not move.
Whatever it was, it knew what it followed, the serpents
and the Guide; and what it followed them to, the presence
beyond the horizon. A place of living green, a forest in the
heart of the desert, and the temple in the midst of it, the
halls and the courts, and the fountain of the Sun from
which the rest of it sprang.

There were others who followed her. Shadows, but

368 Lord of the Two Lands

shadows with faces, and about them, in some greater, in
some less, a shimmer of light. Deep earth and green si-
lences and a tang of iron: Nikolaos her guardsman and her
beloved, guarding her without fear in this most fearsome
of places. Earth too but with a sharpness that was fire, a
suggestion of brimstone: Ptolemy, clear kin to Niko, and
kin likewise to the rioting fu-e that was Alexander, less
man he by far but potent enough in his souls' center. And
with them one who was all earth shot through with tight,
now blurred and dimmed and muddied, now shining forth
as clear and pure as a star out of clouds in Hellas.
Arrfiidaios in the souls' shape, bred of Alexander's blood
and kin, with a beauty and a strength in him that caught
her unawares. It did not weaken her spell, but made it
stronger, broadened and deepened it and held the world to
its solidity.

Greater than any of them, so bright that he cast shadows
in the shadowless land, was the one who walked closest
behind her. He was coming to a destiny. Whether it was
the one he wanted, or whether he would be given another
altogether, the gods were not telling.

"If I am," she heard him say to the shadow beside him.
"If I really am—but if I'm not—"

"The god will tell you," the shadow said. Cool softness
like water, a chill that was iron, a glint of sudden bril-
liance: Hephaistion walking close behind his king,
guarding him as Nikolaos guarded Meriamon.

"But if I'm not the god's son," said Alexander, "if I've
let myself believe it because I want to, and claimed all the
rest in the name of a lie, then how will I live with myself
after?"

"I don't think it is a tie," said Hephaistion. "You have
to live inside yourself. The rest of us can see what you are.
You're blazing like a torch in the dark, did you know
that?"

There was a pause, as if Alexander looked down at him-
self. "I look just the same as I always have."

SIWAH 369

"Exactly," said Hephaistion.

"But," said Alexander all over again. "If I'm not—'*

She did not see what Hephaistion did to silence him. It
was something subtle, she supposed. The others would
have laughed and cheered mem on, else.

Doubt was the Enemy. She had suffered from it once,
when her souls and she were one creature. She would
again, very likely, when they were reunited. If they were.
Her bird-soul liked the freedom of the sky, even under
stars that did not change. Her ka was comfortable walking
die track behind its guides. Her body did what it did. The
place it was going to was close now. It could see the shim-
mer on the world's edge, me blessed, impossible green.
Some of me trees were in flower, sweet scent, fragile blos-
som; others in fruit, green or glowing ripe. After so long
in the red land and the dun land, the sight almost broke its
heart.

Not it alone. The shadows of men came up behind it
and streamed past it. Whether it had slowed or they had
begun to run, she did not know. The guides were ahead of
(hem still. She had no need of them. That was neither trick
nor deceit, the place that opened before them. It was real
in every world. The god's house, the place of his proph-
ecy. Siwah.

"Meriamon."

The name spun a cord, thin as spidersilk and as strong.
It netted the bird-soul in its wandering. It .looped round her
ka. It wound them together so quickly that even the
winged thing had barely moved before it was done.

Flesh was leaden heavy after so long in the spirit. The
sun was brazenly bright. She blinked in it.

"Meriamon," said the taller of die two shapes in front of
her.

"Meri," said the other. "Men, look. You almost got
lost."

In more ways than one. She stared stupidly at the track
she had been on. It led past the oasis and out into the des-

370 Lord of the Two Lands

ert. Her body would have followed it, blind and unguided,
until sun and thirst struck it down. Her souls would have
gone past the Lake of Fire and the Lake of Rowers, and
entered the high hall, and seen the Watchers with their
knives and their hungry eyes, and the Eater of Souls under
the golden scale, and the dead king upon his throne.

A thought, a word, a turning of the will, and she could
go. They would weigh her heart against the feather of Jus-
tice, and find it sufficient or find it wanting, and grant her
dissolution or life everlasting. She need only speak. Or not
speak. For one of her blood and her power, it was as sim-
ple as that.

"Meriamon!"

Real fear, that. And temper. "You're always calling me
back from edges," said Meriamon.

"And I'm tired of it, too," Niko said. "When are you
going to stop mooning and dreaming and act like a sensi-
ble woman?"
"I can't," she said. "It isn't in me."

"You can try."

He was perfectly unreasonable. He had also brought her
fully to herself. She had expected to be much more tired
than she was. Her feet were sore, which was hardly sur-
prising: she had walked an ungodly way. She was thirsty.
And hungry. She was very much in the flesh.

"I could have been comfortably dead," she said.

"Not while I have anything to say about it."

"You think you do?"

"I know I do."

She glared. He glared back. Suddenly she began to
laugh. So, after a moment, did he. And Arrhidaios, making
no effort to understand them, simply being glad that they
were glad.

For all the eternities that she had been soul-lost, the world
of the living had advanced no more than a drip of the
water-clock. Alexander's Companions were only now

SIWAH 371

come through the wood—a forest of tangled branches, a
track dim to darkness after the glare of sun on sand, then
sudden sun and open space and the temple's gate. The
priests came forth in a wailing of pipes and a rattling of
sistra, the high voices of women and the deep voices of
men, and a whirl and sway of dancers. "Welcome," they
sang. "Welcome, lord of the Two Lands!"

The serpent-guides were gone. Meriamon's shadow was
in back of her again, a shape without substance. Alexander
stood in front of his Companions, dusty and waywom: di-
sheveled boyish man in a purple cloak much stained with
travel, no height to boast of, too much brow and nose and
cheek for proper beauty, his face red and his nose peeling
and precious little dignity about him. Then he moved, and
one forgot everything but that he was Alexander.

The eyes. They ruled the rest of him, and the world
with it.

Meriamon was beside him. Someone had moved to give
her room. Ptolemy. She bent her head to him. He dipped
his own in acknowledgment.
The crowd of welcomers had halted and spread in ranks
along the wall. A man came down the aisle which they
had made. He was neither old nor young, neither large nor
small, neither beautiful nor ugly: a brown shaven man in
a robe of white linen. He wore no ornament but one, but
that was enough, a heavy collar of gold and iapis and car-
nelian. He carried a staff of dark wood, very old, and its
head was a carven serpent. Meriamon fell the stir behind
her as the Macedonians saw what it was.

The high priest of Amon's temple at Siwah advanced to-
ward Alexander. Alexander waited, standing lightly, no
sign of the tension that was in him; unless one knew him,
and saw the way his hand clenched and unclenched in a
fold of his cloak. He looked, Meriamon thought, like a
warhorse on the edge of a battlefield. Alert, upheaded, not
quite quivering.

The priest paused at several paces' remove. He was of

372 Lord of the Two Lands

a height with Alexander. His dark eyes met Alexander's
light ones. They were keen, measuring. Alexander lifted
his chin a fraction. It was not for him to speak, the gesture
said. He was the guest. Let the master of the place give
him greeting, or refuse it.

The high priest smiled very slightly. He bent his knee;

slowly, with the grace of one who surely had been a
dancer, he went down in obeisance. His voice went up in
clear if accented Greek. "I give you welcome," he said,
"son of Amon."

Alexander's body snapped erect.

The priest went on. "Protected of Horus, face of Ra in
the world of the living, child of the god who dwells in the
wood and the spring. Great House of the Two Lands: wel-
come, welcome, welcome!"

The last he sang in the tongue of Khemet, and the choir
of women echoed him, sweet eerie voices ringing from
wall of stone to wall of trees and up into the sky. Amid the
torrent of sound, he took Alexander's hand. Alexander
made no effort to resist him. "Come with me," he said,
soft and breathtakingly ordinary after the priestesses'
chant.

His Bodyguard stirred uneasily. He was rapt; enspelled,
one might have said. But he mastered enough of himself to
turn. "I'll go," he said. "I'm safe. No one will harm me
here."

They did not like that, but his eyes were on them. Nor
could any meet them.

Except Hephaistion. As the priest led Alexander away,
he moved to follow.

Alexander paused again. "No," he said. Hephaistion
stopped. His face was perfectly still.

Alexander smiled. There was all the love in the world in
that smile, and all the regret. "If I could share," he said, "I
would. Only this, sweet friend. Only this of all that we've
ever done or had or been ..."

SIWAH 373

"I can never be king," Hephaistion said, soft and calm.

"Nor would I want to be."

Alexander touched his shoulder. Hephaistion stood stiff.
Alexander seized him suddenly in a strong embrace and
held him till his arms came up, a fierce, hard grip more
like war than love. As abruptly as it had begun, it ended.
They stepped apart. Alexander's face now was as still as
Hephaistion's, as whitely, blankly rapt.

The high priest was waiting. Alexander turned to follow
him.

Meriamon went in behind them. She did not ask. She was
not invited. No more than Hephaistion did she want to be
a king, but she was royal bom, and the voice of die gods.
They were in her again.

That, maybe, was what it was to be pregnant: that swell-
ing fullness, that sense of a life inside one's body, part of
yet apart from one's own. Pregnancy filled the belly. This
filled the heart and the head.

They took Alexander to the inner temple. She went
where her feet led her, past the door through which he had
gone, into a broad pillared hall open to the sky. There the
choir of priestesses had come. There were the strongest of
the priests, a full fourscore of them, ranged for all the
world like the Macedonians' phalanx, and in the center of
the square a great gilded thing tike a ship yet on shafts like
a litter. On its deck rode the image of the god. In Thebes
he was most like a man, but ram-homed. Here he wore no
human shape at all. He was a strange squat thing, a dark
stone studded with brighter stones, and brightest of them
all a great emerald.

The power in the stone rocked Meriamon to her founda-
tions. Every god gave a part of himself to his image, and
his worshippers gave what they had, the force of their wor-
ship. This was old, old and strong, its green stone like an
eye, transfixing her, stripping her soul bare.

She had nothing to fear from it. Doubt was a failing

374 Lord of the Two Lands

even of gods; or why had Osiris died and been brought to
life again? She had seen his realm, its beauties and its ter-
rors. Dissolution she did not fear while her name endured.
Nikolaos remembered it. Alexander knew it. Mother Isis
herself had spoken it in the deeps of Meriamon's dream.

Here in Amon's temple, it seemed not at all amiss that
her heart should go out to the Lady of earth and heaven.
Or that she took her place in the ranks of priestesses
among those whose voices were deeper yet purer, and sang
as they sang, the hymn of praise to the god.

The high priest came out of the inner shrine. Alexander
was not with him. The king would be sitting in the small
dark room, alone with his thoughts and his god. His father,
he would be thinking. Hoping. Dreading.

The hymn reached the highest of its high notes. The
priests bent, all eighty as one, and set their shoulders be-
neath the shafts of the Sun-boat. As the hymn spiraled
down into a deep clear note like the song of bronze on
bronze, the boat rose up. It was a mighty weight even for
fourscore priests. As they stood erect its power focused.
The priestesses' voices wove about it. The priests' strength
bore it up. It rode upon them both as on a sea of sound
and light. The god within it came awake.

The high priest spoke no word. The hymn itself shifted,
changed; became a croon, a shape of pure sound. What it
asked, what it wished, Meriamon knew in her bones.

The boat began to sway. The priests swayed with it. not
as men who moved it, but as men moved by it. Holding to
it for all the world tike sailors in a swell, bracing against
the oars, struggling to hold their boat steady.

The high priest watched. His eyes were intent, glitter-
ing. Reading each movement as a captain reads the shift-
ing of wind and sea-
Who am I? Alexander asked. What am I? What is meant
for me? And more perhaps that she could not see; the
wishes of his heart, beyond her perceiving.

SIWAH 375

The god answered. Answered gladly. Answered iong
and clear, and never a word in it.

Then he was still. The priestesses' song died away. The
litter bore down on the men who carried it. They bowed
beneath it, lowering it to the ground.

The high priest bowed low, and kissed the stone of the
paving.

As he rose, his eye caught Meriamon's. She started,
stiffened. In that glance was everything she would have
asked, and everything she might have answered. Doubts
faced and stared down. Dreams understood. Purpose,
choices—decisions she had never known she would make,
until she had made them.

And under it she thought, how strange. He was a man
and no eunuch, and yet in that moment his face seemed to
her to be a woman's face, his body a woman's body, his
hands a woman's hands, giving her greeting, blessing her
with a goddess' graciousness. And he—the goddess—
smiled. Meriamon could not help herself. It was presump-
tuous, no doubt, and yet she did it. She smiled back.

But then, before she was a goddess. Mother Isis was a
woman. A woman could understand what even a goddess
could not, and share the joy that was in it.

• THIRTY-TWO •

Alexander came out of the temple silent and exalted.
Hephaistion was waiting for him, not in the front of those
who waited, or even in the front ranks, but a little apart.
Those who wanted an oracle had had one. Hephaistion had
not asked. He would not judge it mummery—he had seen
enough on the march to Siwah, and he had seen what the
Egyptian woman did. Her magic was a quiet thing, no

376 Lord of the Two Lands

wands or spells, no smokes or stenches or sleights of char-
latanry. It was all words, and indomitable will.

He did not want to hear a prophecy. Of those who had,
he noticed, few were minded to tell anyone what they had
heard. Something about this place discouraged babbling.
Alexander's coming was as quiet, and yet as potent, as
the Egyptian woman's magic. One moment he was still
within. The next, he stood outside the gate, and his men
were running toward him. Moths to the flame, Hephaistion
thought. His own heart yearned forward, but he quelled it.
It was pride, he knew that very well. Let the little men
flock and bleat. He would go to his lord in his own rime.

His eyes had no pride. They fixed on the king in some-
thing like hunger.

Alexander was taken purely out of himself. He looked
like a man who has seen a god; or who has discovered that
he is one. The light that had always been on him, bright
as a beacon, seemed both dim and scattered to what was
on him now. That had been like sun behind a cloud. This
was the sun laid bare.

"He knows what he is now," Ptolemy said, standing be-
side Hephaistion.

Hephaistion laughed. It cut his belly like pain. "Was
there ever any doubt of it?"

Ptolemy looked at him oddly, but said nothing.

Alexander would not speak of what the god had said. Not
even to Hephaistion.

"I suppose you told the Egyptian woman," Hephaistion
said in the quiet of the night. He had not been asked into
Alexander's tent, but he had gone in spite of it- Alexander
did not cast him out. His welcome was as warm as always,
his smile the one he kept for his friend.

It did not waver in the face of Hephaistion's bitterness.
No, Hephaistion thought. Let it bear its proper name. Jeal-
ousy. "No," said Alexander. "I didn't tell Meriamon."

"She knows," Hephaistion said. "I'd wager gold on it."

SIWAH 377

"Maybe," said Alexander. He had been reading by the
light of the lamp. Hephaistion knew the book: his Hiad
that he had had since he was a boy.

Alexander had risen to embrace his friend. He sat again
in the chair, rolling the book and binding it, still smiling
faintly. The light of the oracle lingered in his face.

Hephaistion stayed where he was, erect and stiff. Some-
thing in him wanted to throw itself down and weep, and
flay them both with words. / am your friend, your
Patroklos. Everything that you have, you give to me. Ev-
erything that is mine, I share with you.

Everything but the kingship. And this.

He turned blindly.

"Phai."

The old name, the love-name. It had been a mock for
boys once, because it sounded like the name of Socrates'
boy-courtesan: Phai, Phaidon. But Alexander had taken the
shame out of it.

It stopped him now. It did not bring him about.

"Hephaistion," said Alexander. "Everything I can share
with you, I do. But some things—"

It was like him to know the precise turning of Hephais-
tion's mind. "Some things," Hephaistion said, "are yours
alone." His voice was flat.

"If I could," Alexander said, "I would."

He meant it. Hephaistion, turning, saw it in his face. But
there was a limit to his yielding, and they had come to it.

It would be very easy to quarrel. A glorious, rancorous
fight, with every grief and transgression of years raked up
and flung in each other's face. There was a black pleasure
in the prospect of it.

And what would be the use of it? It would not break
down the wall of silence. It would not make Alexander
any less Alexander, or Hephaistion any less himself.

"It always amazes me," Alexander said, "how you think
yourself out of your tempers—and nothing to be seen of it
but a muscle-twitch here, an eyeblink there."

378 Lord of the Two Lands

"Am I as transparent as that?" Hephaistion asked.

"Clear as granite," Alexander said.

Hephaistion's teeth ached with clenching. He unlocked
his jaw, willed his body to unknot. "I thought I had more
pride than this," he said. '"Or more sense."
"You needed to be sure." said Alexander. He did not
look as if it angered him. "People need that. Even you."

"Damn you for knowing that," Hephaistion said, but
calmly.

Alexander smiled. It was still his smile. The brightness
in it was knowledge, that was all. The god had always
been there.

Hephaistion bent his head to the god. He smiled at the
king who was his friend: a smile with edges, but real
enough when all was considered.

The king and his Companions lingered a while in Siwah-
Alexander was eager to be gone, but his men needed a day
or two to rest. They camped in a broad cleared space
among the trees, and were given whatever they asked for
by way of food and drink and even company. Some of the
women and boys of Siwah were intensely curious about
these big fair strangers; and the strangers were pleased to
assuage that curiosity.

Alexander's curiosity was of another order. The sheen
of the god lingered on him after a night's sleep, but it was
dimming, becoming part of him. He wanted to see the
spring that was famous even in Hellas, that was bitter cold
at noon, and at midnight hot to boiling.

Or so the tales said. It was cool enough when they went,
he and a friend or two and Meriamon, though not exactly
icy. The sun was directly overhead. The tangled branches
of trees kept off most of its heat, but where the spring was,
was an open space, much trampled by pilgrims' feet. The
water bubbled out of a rock into a little mossy basin, and
overflowed into a trickle of a stream that wandered away
into a thicket.

SIWAH 379

There was a flock of crows in the trees, flapping and
quarrelling and making a dreadful racket. The priest who
guided them made a move to chase the birds away.

Alexander stopped him. "Let them be," he said. "They
belong here rather more than we."

The man looked as if he would have argued, but after a
moment he shrugged. "As you will, lord," he said.

Alexander smiled at him, melting him where he stood.
Someday, thought Meriamon, he would meet a human
creature who was immune to his smile. She doubted that
it would be soon.

He knelt by the pool's edge and dipped in his hand-
"Cool," he said. He sipped. "Sweet, too. Pure water from
me rock."

"It is the god's gift," said me priest-

"So is all that is," said Alexander. He straightened, rest-
less already. As the others came to taste the water and re-
mark at its coo! purity, he wandered back to the trees.
They were olive trees. He reached to touch a branch, ruf-
fling the grey-green leaves. "Strange to find olives here in
the middle of the desert."

Meriamon had not gone to the spring with the rest. It
was cool in the shade of the trees, and the crows' clamor
was surprisingly pleasant. They were laughing, she
thought, taking joy in being alive.

Alexander sat on the ground beside her. Sekhmet, after
a moment's thought, left her lap to occupy his. "I miss
Peritas," he said.

"You'll see him soon enough," said Meriamon.

"A week, probably," he said. "If there are no more ar-
guments from the desert."

"There won't be," she said. "It wanted to keep you from
coming here. Now that it's failed, it will be only too glad
to be rid of you."

He raised a brow at her. "You felt it, too? That the land
didn't want us to be in it?"

"It never did love us of the Black Land. We're noisy;

380 Lord of the Two Lands

we're many. We infest the clean desert, we poison it with
water, we make green things grow like a blight across it."

"I'd think that would be the Nile's fault," he said. "See-
ing that its floods are what make your land rich."

"That too," she said. And after a pause: "You're going
back to Rhakotis, then."

"And Memphis. And after that, Asia."

A chill ran through her. It was not entirely unpleasant.
"You won't stay in Egypt?"
"1 can't." He had said it maybe too quickly. He softened
it with a smile, though that did not last long. "I'd like to
stay. But there's Darius and a whole empire on my eastern
flank, and a small matter of unfinished business for the
League of Hellas. I came out here, after all, to fight Per-
sia."

"You've done that."

"I've begun it. That's all it is: a beginning. If I'm to
make it last, I have to go through with the rest of it."

"And what is that?" she asked him.

"All of it." He grinned at her expression. "Hubris again,
maybe. And maybe not. There's a whole world out there.
Did you ever think of that? Persia first—Persia is danger-
ous as long as I let it resist me. Then, who knows? There
are lands to the east beyond Persia. There are lands to the
west, Italy and Sicily where Greeks already are, and wild
places beyond them, and finally the sunset gates, the Pil-
lars of Herakles. He set them up, my ancestor did, or so
they say. I'd like to see them for myself."

"You'd like to do everything a mortal man can do."

"And a little of what a god can." He met her stare.
Lightning, she thought. Striking at the heart. "Don't tell
me you didn't know it. You're me one who led me here."

"Not I," said Meriamon, "but the gods who speak
through me."

"It's all one," he said.

"Is that what you learned in the god's chamber?"

He lowered his eyes. She blinked, dazzled. The world

SIWAH 381

seemed very dark here at high noon in the grove of the
Sun. He stroked Sekhmet from head to twitching tail, over
and over, to the rhythm of her purring.

"I learned ..." he said. Stopped. Frowned. "I learned
... too much, maybe. It was comfort of a sort, not to
know. To wonder if I was mad, or my mother was lying,
or everything I did was foolishness. I was never ordinary.
I never could be. But when I knew .. . that changed
things. It wasn't myself, you see. It was always the god."
"The god begot you," said Meriamon, "through his cho-
sen instrument. That doesn't mean he is you, or you are
He, any more than any son can become his father."

"Philip wasn't ordinary, either," Alexander said, sharp,
almost angry. "Not in the least. They say I get my gift of
warfare from him. He was more solid; saner. But he was
a brilliant general."

"Every man is what his life has made him."
Alexander was not listening. "I'm better in the tight
spots. I think faster. I always did. That's my mother—she's
lethally quick. If she'd been a man, Macedon would have
been hard put to seize as much power as it did. It's as well
she was bom a woman. Then she could marry Macedon
instead of conquering it."
"Or destroying it in a war."

"So they would have, both of them. Gods know, mey
tried hard enough as they were; and she trapped in a wom-
an's body, and he trapped by every woman's body he set
eyes on. There's irony for you. Brats by the cartload, and
his heir, his king who would be, bastard-bred of a god."
"Through Philip's body," said Meriamon.
"That wouldn't matter to him," said Alexander. He
parted Sekhmet's toes to make the claws come out, white
and gleaming sharp. "I think I'm happy to know what I
am. I know I'm terrified."

"Of course you are. You're only half mad."

He laughed. "And which half would you say that is?"

"The half that makes you do what no one else would

382 Lord of the Two Lands

do, and do it brilliantly. I'll never forgive you for Tyre,
you know. Even if you did come to Egypt in the end."

"I had to do it," he said. "And I came, as you say,
where you wanted me to come. Did what you wanted, too.
I'm surprised you aren't trying to make me stay and be a
proper pharaoh."

"Would I tell you if I were?"

His head tilted. He thought about it. "Probably," he said.
"Or I'd know."

"I'm that transparent?"

"You're that honest."
"So," she said, "are you."

'Then it's as well I was bom in Macedon, where people
aren't subtle, even when they're killing one another. I'd
not have lasted a week-in Persia."

"In Egypt," she said, "you might have managed a
month."

"And what of you?"

"I'm god-touched," she said. "No one else would try."

He sprang up, light and smooth, hardly jarring the cat
on his arm; drawing Meriamon with him, holding her face
to face. "I'm almost sorry you don't want to marry me."

"There's plenty of almost for both of us," said Meri-
amon.

"Poor Niko," Alexander said. "I hope you were plan-
ning to invite me to the wedding."

She blushed, so sudden and so fierce that it burned
away every scrap of wit. "We were going to tell you."

"Not ask?"

She stared at him blankly.

"I am, after all, his king. I have some say in whom he
marries. Particularly if the lady is a foreigner."

At least the heat was gone. The cold, perhaps, was
worse. "You are my king also," she said.

"So I am." His eyes narrowed. "If 1 forbade you. would
you still do it?"

She could not keep her gaze on him. In part because it

SIWAH 383

would have been a glare. In part—in great part—because
he was her king.

"Mariamne." he said.

That was not her name.

"Meriamon," said Alexander.
Her eyes rose. Glaring.

"Come now," he said. "You know I wouldn't stop you
from doing what you've got your heart set on. Though
what you see in him, out of all the men in my army—"

"If you can't see it, 1 can hardly explain it to you."

That gave him pause. Then he laughed. Delighted with
her. Damn him. He knew perfectly well what she spoke of.
He had Hephaistion.

She should have been appalled. That she could think
such things of him. That he could see it.

And if she could not think so, and he could not see, then
he would not have been her king. Kings, gods—they
thought too much of themselves, too often.

Alexander had a very high opinion of himself, no doubt
of that. But he knew it. He could even laugh at it. Some-
times.

He all but dragged her back to the spring, the men wait-
ing there, the eyes and the smiles—greeting, not mockery;

little good as that did. She was blushing again. So, she no-
ticed, was Niko. There was something about secrets badly
kept; they had a way of mortifying.

In the end she would shrug and live with it. And no
thanks to his majesty the king, who was getting up a
water-fight, and shocking the poor priest into speechless-
ness. It could hardly be blasphemy, since it was the god's
son who did it; but kings were more staid in this part- of
the world.

• THIRTY-THREE •

The desert let them pass unmolested out of Siwah. Its
power was quiescent; if not conquered, then certainly sub-
dued. No gate opened on the other side of a storm. No
guide came for them, nor did the way lose itself in front
of them. It was quiet, all of it. Quiet to rest in..

At Rhakotis the city was shaping itself. Deinokrates the
architect had sent to Memphis for rolls of papyrus and
boxes of chalk and crews of men to begin the marking and
digging of foundations. It was like old days in the valleys
of the kings, but these labored to build not a tomb but a
living city.

For far too long the Two Lands had looked backward to
a splendor that was gone. Now it would look forward
again under a king whose face was toward living glory
and not the splendor of the dead.

Their passage to Memphis, rowing up the stow strong
stream of the Nile, was a triumphal procession. The army
was waiting for them. Like, Meriamon thought, a lover for
his beloved. They were that, with Alexander.

She had the same rooms she had had before in the Great
House behind its white walls. She went to the temple to
sing the offices, but she did not sleep there, and no one
asked it. Amon's priests from Thebes had gone, and Lord
Ay with them. He had left a message for her. [t was writ-
ten in the most ancient of the tongues the priests knew,
drawn and painted as meticulously as the writings on me
temple's walls.

When she held it in her hands, it seemed to stir gently.
The eyes of the beasts and birds, the men and women and
gods, looked for a moment like the eyes of living things.

SIWAH 385

Words were power. Words written were the strongest of
strong magics.

These were, in the end and after the invocations of the
gods and the full forms of his name and hers and me
wardings against ill use or misuse, supremely simple. "Do
as your heart bids you. May Mother Isis guide your steps."

She took the message back with her to her rooms. There
was dinner to go to: Alexander's last in Memphis before
he took the road to Asia. People were coming who had
had far to go, as far as Elephantine in the uppermost of
Upper Egypt. All the Companions of Siwah were invited
to it, and for the rest of the army there was a banquet laid
on in the soldiers' messes.

It was, in short, an obligation. She was still in the robe
of a singer in the temple. She took off the heavy braided
wig, running frngers through her hair. Phylinna had the
bath things ready, and me other wig, the state wig that was
suitable for a royal lady.

Tonight she would be that, every inch of her, even to the
scent she wore. She had walked in the land of coming
forth by day. She had spoken with the Lady of the living
and the dead. She was the daughter of the Great House of
the Two Lands, and mis was the feast of her victory.

And yet she lingered. She put down the message from
Lord Ay, and took it up again. She was following her
heart. She had been doing it, truly and wholly, since
Siwah. And yet ...

Sekhmet came mincing from wherever she had been.
She was getting thick about the middle. The gods knew
how she had managed that, with all me wandering and
hunting she had been doing. She sprang as tightly as ever
to Meriamon's bed and curled in the center of it, and went
calmly to sleep.

Meriamon sat on me coverlet beside her, smoothing her
fur. She began to purr.

Phylinna was waiting. Meriamon stood. She was moon-
ing like a girl on the eve of her wedding. Which this al-

386 Lord of the Two Lands

most was; but not for a while. She shook herself and went
to the cooling bath.

The banquet was as splendid as she could have imagined.
Alexander looked magnificent in a gold-embroidered chi-
ton and a new purple cloak, with a crown of golden oak
leaves hardly brighter than his hair. Meriamon might have
liked to see him robed and crowned as pharaoh, but his
face was turned already toward the east; and he had his
army to think of. They wanted to see their own proper
king. The princes of Egypt, maybe, needed to see him as
he was. They did not look displeased.

The feast itself was as Egyptian as anyone could wish.
The Macedonians bore it bravely. They were not com-
pelled to drink beer, which they were glad of. Their opin-
ion of Egyptian beer was, to put it mildly, jaundiced. "Cat
piss," Niko had pronounced it, magisterially, after a good
two jugs of it.

There was wine, and it was quite acceptable. There was
goose prepared in a dozen ways, and duck, and dove and
quail, and lamb and goat and beef, and oryx and gazelle,
and great platters of green stuff, and fruit, and cheeses, and
more manners of bread than a Hellene could have dreamed
of, with a dizzying array of sauces. All eaten in music and
in song, with dancers and players and a whole troupe of
acrobats leaping and tumbling among the couches.

Nikolaos was not-there. Meriamon had the couch to the
right of (he king's, high honor and quite scandalous for a
woman, even a royal Egyptian; and two servants to wait
on her, and people staring at her. She smiled, and spoke
when spoken to, and ate as much as she could stand. That
was not very much. It never was. She drank more than she
usually did. The wine was rather more than acceptable. In
fact it was good. Very good. Excellent.

' Niko was busy. Some people had to get ready for the
march in the morning, after alt. He would come in before
the night was over, if not to the hall then to her rooms. He

SIWAH 387

had said he would, that morning when he left her, getting
up even earlier than she and running off to do something
unintelligible. There had been an air about him of sup-
pressed excitement. Of surprises, and of great secrets.

Whatever he was up to, she would know soon enough.
What niggled at her was no more than uneasiness on the
edge of changes.

He was not waiting for her when she came back to her
rooms. Sekhmet was on the bed again, or still. She grum-
bled about moving to make room for Meriamon, but she
was much too lazy to leave the bed. She settled for walk-
ing deliberately down the length of Meriamon's body and
then halfway back up again, and coiling herself against
Meriamon's hip.

Meriamon's body was full of wine. It had been almost
too much to sit up while Phylinna washed her, cleansed
the paint from her face, plaited her hair down her back.
But her mind was sharply, almost painfully alert. It
counted each breath as she drew it. It marked the slow
turning of the stars, and the first faint glimmer of dawn
upon the horizon. It knew the touch of each hair of
Sekhmet's coat as she stroked the sleeping cat.

And made a discovery that shocked laughter out of her.
"Sekhmet! You didn't!"

The cat yawned and stopped her ears with an upcurved
paw. She did not want to hear about it.

"I hope it was one of the temple cats," Meriamon said.

"I think it was the king of the stevedores' quarter," said
Nikolaos.

Meriamon started- She had not heard him at all.

He was barefoot, with his sandals in his hand. He
looked extraordinarily pleased with himself.

"Where have you been?" she demanded of him. Not fu-
riously, no. Of course not. Merely vehemently.

"I do think it was the big he-cat from down by the

388 Lord of the Two Lands

docks," Niko said. "He courted her for days. I'd hardly
blame her if she gave in simply to shut him up."

"Maybe she likes great grinning louts," said Meriamon.

"You'll never get her to admit it." He set his sandals in
their usual place next to the clothing chest, and unfastened
his belt. His chiton was plain and somewhat workwom.

The lamplight did wonderful things to the planes and
angles of his body. He paused with his chiton in his hand,
frowning at the other, the twisted one, and flexing the stiff-
ened ringers. They were moving more easily now. He
hardly seemed to notice any longer that there was anything
amiss. He could ride, he could hold a shield. He could not
play the double pipes, but then he had never been much
good with them.

"Does it hurt you?" she asked him.

"No." His voice was abstracted, but peaceful enough.
"Sometimes a twinge or two ... no. I had Typhon on the
Scythian bit again. He likes it. I'm thinking of keeping
him on it."

"What does Alexander say to that?"

"Alexander thinks I'm starting to make sense. Ptolemy
says I never did, why should I start now?"

She smiled. He grinned back. Yes, definitely he was
keeping secrets.

He had had a bath. He smelled of clean skin and sweet
oil. His hair was damp, curling as it dried.

Her body woke for him. But he was not ready, not quite
yet. He stretched out beside her. Whatever he was thinking
of, he was bursting with it.

"Tell me," she said.

His eyes were wide. He played a very poor innocent.
"What's to tell?"

"You know better than I."
He bit his lip. He was trying not to grin.

She measured him with a surgeon's eye- "I happen to
know," she said, "that when I touch you there"—and she
did—"and there"—and she did that—"you howl."

SIWAH 389

He did. He bolted-halfway out of bed. She wrapped
arms and legs about him and trapped him. "Tell," she said.

"Under torture?" he asked, affronted.

She straightened her best finger. She threatened his most
sensitive rib-

"I'll tell!" he cried. He was laughing like an idiot- She
had to wait for him to stop.

"I've been talking," he said at long last. "To the king.
And to Ptolemy. And Mazaces—did you know he's going
to stay in Egypt? Alexander is keeping him on. He knows
the place, after all. And he's not too badly hated, for a Per-
sian."

"He won't be satrap again, surely," said Meriamon. Her
lips were tight.

"Not likely," said Niko. "No; Peukestas will be gover-
nor here, and Aischylos of Rhodes. A Macedonian and a
Greek. And Egyptians to stand behind them."

"That's well," Meriamon said. She had known about
Peukestas, of course. But one never knew. Kings could
change their minds.

"I've been talking to Deinokrates, too," Niko said.
"He's down from Rhakotis, getting more men and having
a last word with Alexander. They're calling the place Al-
exandria already. It looks as if it's going to stick."

"Of course it will," said Meriamon. "The gods have
said it."

"I'm going up there," he said. "I'm going to help build
it."

"We're going straight to Tyre," she said. "There won't
be time to stop by Rhakotis again."

"I'm not going to Tyre," said Nikolaos. "I'm going to
Alexandria."
"But—"

And he said. " 'We'?"

There was a pause.

"I'm going to Tyre," Meriamon said very carefully.
"I'm going with Alexander."

390 Lord of the Two Lands

"Of course you aren't," said Niko. "You hated it there.
You spent every moment wanting to be in Egypt."

"I was supposed to be in Egypt. He was dallying, build-
ing that mole of his."

"And making the greatest siege m the world," Niko
said.

"It kept him out of Egypt." She shook herself. She was
letting him ture her from the straight track. "He's king in
Egypt now. He has to go and conquer Persia."

"Of course he does. I'm not going with him. I'm going
to help Deinokrates build his city. It's going to be splen-
did, Meriamon. All the best of Egypt, and all the best of
Hellas. We'll build temples to our gods, and temples to
yours; Amon, of course—"

"Isis," she said. "Build a temple to Isis."

"Isis," he said, obliging. "And a market, Meriamon. A
market for everything in the world, and ships to bring it,
and a harbor for the ships to anchor in. And a place for
philosophers. Alexander was particular about that. Some-
where for them to do their thinking, and somewhere for
their teaching, and scribes to copy their books, and a li-
brary to keep them in. We'll have a theater, and festivals
to match the ones in Athens. We'll have a gymnasium.
We'll have the greatest city that ever was."

"And places for ordinary people?" Meriamon asked.
"Will you make room for those?"

"Everywhere," he said. "Cities aren't made, you know.
Mostly they just grow. Here we'll leam from their mis-
takes."

"So we shall," she said.

He did not hear the echoes in her voice. His smile
dazzled her. He kissed her thoroughly, drew back still grin-
ning, said, "I knew you'd see    it. We can be married there.
Or if you'd rather, we can go    with Alexander as far as
Pelusium. It won't be much of    a wedding for a king's
daughter, but he'll be there,    at least, to bless it."

SIWAH 391

"I'm going with him," she said. 'To Tyre. And wher-
ever he goes after that."

The brightness faded from his face. He frowned. "But
why?"

"Because he is my king."

"He's your king in Egypt. He's not staying here."

"It doesn't matter," she said.

"But," said Niko. "You wither and fade outside of your
Black Land. Your magic is weak. The air is too cold or too
wet. The sun is wrong. The sky is too narrow."

"All of that is true," she said. "It makes no difference.
Alexander is my king. Where he is, my power lies."

"Does he know that?"

Bless the boy. He was jealous.

Her heart was cold and small and hard. She understood
now. What Ay had meant; what he had bidden her to do.

There were gods in it somewhere. They felt very far
away and supremely indifferent. Even the Mother of them
all. She had seen her beloved slain and rent in pieces, and
gone up and down the Two Lands in search of them. She
would hardly have pity on a woman whose lover was sim-
ply determined to stay in Khemet. Fine good sense, she
would reckon that.

"Alexander knows," Meriamon said. "He's not dis-
pleased. I'll go back to working with Philippos, and
Aristandros might decide to make use of me. There will be
other Egyptians with us. And Thais, of course. And
Phytinna. It's not as if I'll be all alone."

Niko looked blank. Stunned. "But why?"

She drew a deep breath. She prayed for patience. "I
have to. The same way I had to leave Egypt in the begin-
ning. Because it's where I must be. And—" She stopped.
Very well: let him know the truth. "I want to. Yes, this is
my country. Yes, there is no place like it. But I want to see
other places; other skies. There are whole worlds that I've
never seen. He said that to me, did you know? When we

392 Lord of the Two Lands

were in Siwah. 1 know what he meant. I want to see them
with him."

"You should have married him after all," said Niko,
hard and Hat.

"No," she said. "It's not that kind of wanting. It's what
you want in his city."

He did not want to understand that- His face was set
against her. He was growing angry: his scowl was as black
as she had ever seen it.

Her hand tried to creep out,   to smooth the scowl away.
She clenched it at her side.   But never as tight as she
clenched her heart, lest she   break down and cry. "I love
you," she said. "Don't doubt   it for a moment. When I can
come back, I will. I promise   you."

"Will you come back? Will you ever?"

She looked into the grey glass of his eyes. There were
visions there. "Yes," she said. "I will come back. I will die
in Khemet, in the Black Land where I was bom."

He shivered so hani that the bed shook. But his temper
was stronger than his awe. "Maybe I'll find another
woman. Maybe I won't care if I ever see you again."

"Maybe," she said. The word was soft and cold.

He rolled to his feet. "By the dog!" he cried. "Don't
you even care?"

She looked up at him. Remembering how she had first
seen him: a shadow against uncertain light, towering,
swaying just visibly. It had been pain then, of his wounds
and his exhaustion. It was pain now, and if the wounds
were of the heart, they were all the deeper for that.

No deeper than her own. "Your brother wilt be king in
Egypt," she said. "Did you know that?"

"What?" She had caught him off balance.

"I saw it," she said. "Your eyes are like a scrying
glass."
He squeezed them shut. "Oh, gods. I wish I could hate
you. It would be so much simpler."

"You're not even afraid of me."

SIWAH 393

His eyes flew open. "Why should I be?"

She crooked a finger- Her shadow reared up. It grinned
in Niko's face

He grinned back nastily. It shut its mouth, nonplussed.
"Is that your real shape," he asked it, "or do you have one
you were born witfi?"

It looked at Meriamon- Its eyes were, of all things,
laughing.

She did not see what there was to laugh at. Her heart
was going to Asia with Alexander. Her body wanted to
cling to this beautiful fearless idiot and never let him go.

She went still. She could hardly—he would never—

And why not?

She stood. They towered over her, both of them, shadow
and man. She stretched out her hand. She laid it flat over
Niko's heart. She looked him in the eye—eye to eye, and
that was a feat. She hoped that he was properly in awe of
it. "I am going with Alexander," she said. "You are com-
ing with me."

His brows went up. "What if I won't?"

"You will."

"How? By sorcery?'*

"Because you love me."

"If you love me, you'll stay in Egypt."

"No," she said.

. If he was a fool, he would decide that she did not love
him. He would break away, and rage at her, and fling him-
self out.

He raised his hand. Her shadow tensed. He laid it over
hers, closed his fingers, turned her hand palm up. It was
scarred still from the stone that had pierced it on the
march to Siwah. The mark would not fade, she suspected.
It was a reminder, and a remembrance.

"You have will enough to rule a world," he said.

"That's Alexander," she said.

"And you." He looked angry. Sulking. "What do I have
to do to make you see sense?"

394 Lord of the Two Lands

"Come with me."

"Will we come back?"

Her heart leaped. She kept her face impassive. "I've
told you we will."

"Well then," he said. "If we come back, and you
promise—on your solemn word—that we will live in Al-
exandria, and build il, and make it beautiful—"

"And be as kings in it?"

"Plain good citizens will do," he said. "Will you prom-
ise?"

"By my name," said Meriamon.

"Then I'll go," he said. His anger was gone. His smile
swelled, bloomed, blazed. "We'll be the greatest army that
has ever been. Our king is the greatest king who ever was.
We'll stride from horizon to horizon. We'll conquer the
world."

Or at least, thought Meriamon, a goodly portion of it.

She closed her fingers over the memory of pain. She
had not seen the last of it. Oh, no. When that day came,
she would have come forth into another day than this
which brightened the sky of the living earth, and stood in
another Great House than this, in the Hall of the Two
Truths, and the judges would be weighing the purity of her

heart.

She was smiling. Broadly, she noticed. Grinning, for a
fact. "We'll conquer the world," she agreed. "Tomorrow.
Tonight—or what is left of tonight—"

"Tonight," said Nikolaos, "we conquer Egypt."
Fair was fair, Meriamon thought. Egypt, after all, had
conquered Macedon. And would again; and years to do it
in, and worlds to wander as they did it.

Even the Weigher of Hearts would be pleased to call
that justice.

•AUTHOR'S NOTE*

I • ALEXANDER

The life and achievements of Alexander III of Macedon
(356-323 B.C.), with the exception of Mary Renault's
trilogy. Fire from Heaven, The Persian Boy, and Funeral
Games, have inspired few recent novels in English.
There has, however, been a plethora of monographs,
biographies, and popular histories. Perhaps the best of
the recent crop, with its summaries of prior scholarship
and its meticulous recording of dates, events, and
sources, is A.B. Bosworth's Conquest and Empire: The
Reign of Alexander the Great (Cambridge, 1988). Both
Bosworth and Renault draw ultimately from the ancient
historians of Alexander's life and times, all of whom are
available in English translation.' Plutarch and Curtius in
Penguin editions (Plutarch, The Age of Alexander, tr. lan
Scott-Kilvert, 1973, and Quintus Curtius Rufus, The
History of Alexander, tr. John Yardley, 1984), Arrian's
The Campaigns of Alexander in the translation of
Aubrey de Selmcourt (New York, 1958), and the histo-
ries of Diodorus Siculus (Diodorus of Sicily) in Loeb
.editions, especially volume 8, ed- and tr. C.B. Welles,
and volume 9, ed. and tr. R.M. Geer (Cambridge, Mass.,
1963, 1967). It should be noted that, since Renault's as-
sessment of Curtius as an irredeemably silly man with
access to priceless sources, scholars have concluded that
Curtius, for all his bombast, is in fact more accurate
than Arrian- There is also, and significantly for this
novel, an odd, highly fantastical, and quite entertaining
Life of Alexander of Macedon attributed to Alexander's
own chronicler, Callisthenes. Elizabeth Hazelton Haight

396 Lord of the Two Lands

in her translation (New York, 1955) sets its actual com-
position at about A.D. 300, but adds that certain inci-
dents have been found on papyri dated not long after
Alexander's death. Here, in the work of the author com-
monly known as "Pseudo-Callisthenes," is the story of
Nectanebo, last native pharaoh of Egypt, and his attempt
to create a savior for Egypt through the offices of the
god Amon and the womb of the Queen of Macedon.
This novel adheres closely to actual historical events
from the battle of Issus in the autumn of 333 B.C.,
through Alexander's journey to the oracle of Zeus Amon
at Siwah in the Libyan desert, in the spring of 331 B.C.
I have made occasional changes in the interests of
theme, story, or narrative simplicity. Although some
sources, including Curtius, speak of Alexander's crown-
ing in Memphis, this probably does not refer to the na-
tive rite of accession. Alexander was not at that point
interested in taking on the trappings of the country
which he had taken. Most likely he held his Greek
games, toured the sights (including the Pyramids and the
tomb of the Apis Bull) as numerous foreigners had be-
fore him, and left promptly for Siwah. The founding of
Alexandria probably took place after his return from the
oracle; to avoid an anticlimax, I have chosen to follow
the tradition that sets the founding before the journey to
the shrine. The story of the sandstorm and the miracu-
lous rain seems to have been commonly accepted by an-
cient historians, likewise the account of the guides,
whether serpents or ravens from the groves of the oasis.
Some scholars have proposed that this story was origi-
nally told by Ptolemy in his memoirs. Alexander never
spoke to anyone of his time alone with the oracle, not
even to Hephaistion, who, as Curtius says, was privy to
all his secrets.

Although Ptolemy claimed after Alexander's death to be
the king's illegitimate half-brother, this was probably a po-
litical ploy—a means of laying claim to the kingship of

AUTHOR'S NOTE 397

Egypt. He died in 283 B.C., having preserved his kingdom
intact through the Wars of Succession that followed Alex-
ander's death. His family ruled Egypt until the suicide of
Cleopatra VII and her Roman consort, Mark Antony, in
30 B.C., when Egypt became a province of the Roman Em-
pire.

The Athenian courtesan Thai's probably did not join
Alexander's army until the siege of Tyre. At Issus the
army was still under the regimen of Alexander's father
Philip, who mandated that no women or camp followers
accompany the troops. Soldiers were not allowed wag-
ons or large trains of belongings. Each company shared
a servant, and each man carried his own possessions and
armor as he marched. After the capture of the Persian
king's women and treasure, the army's discipline slack-
ened, and it began to swell into the ambulatory city that
accompanied Alexander on his journeys through Asia.
For a short, thorough, and very useful account of the
army and its logistics, see Donald W. Engels, Alexander
the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army
(Berkeley, 1978).

It was Thai's who, the story goes, persuaded Alexan-
der in the midst of a drunken revel to burn Persepolis.
She bore Ptolemy three children, but she never became
his wife. When Ptolemy claimed the kingship of Egypt,
he took a properly respectable—and Greek—queen.

When Alexander died in Babylon at the age of thirty-
two, worn out by fever, wounds, and grief for the death of
Hephaistion, Philip Arrhidaios, Alexander's half-brother,
became King Philip III of Macedon. He was murdered in
317 B.C.—a common fate of Macedonian kings, addlepated
or otherwise. Precisely what incapacity he suffered is not
known, nor is it known whether it was congenital or the
result of an accident in his childhood. He was succeeded
by Alexander's son by the Bactrian princess Roxane, Al-
exander IV, who was murdered in his turn, at the age of
about twelve, in 310 B.C. His death ended the dynasty. For

398 Lord of the Two Lands

a good, brief analysis of Macedon's history in general and
Alexander Ill's effect on it in particular, see R. Malcolm
Emngton*s A History of Macedonia, tr. Catherine
Errington (Berkeley, 1990).

Likenesses of Alexander were frequent in ancient times.
It has been said that he changed the standards of beauty
from the austere Classical model to the fuller, lusher Hel-
lenistic image. A particularly interesting portrait, done
from life, has been found in the tomb of Philip 11 at
Vergina in northern Greece, and is reproduced in The
Search for Alexander: An Exhibition (Boston, 1980).
Manolis Andronikos' essay in this volume, 'The Royal
Tombs at Vergina: A Brief Account of the Excavations,"
pp. 26ff., despite its good grey title, is an archeological ad-
venture story. The Getty Museum in Malibu, California,
has on display a marble portrait of the young Alexander,
and rather more interesting, a likeness that has been iden-
tified by most scholars as that of Hephaistion. Likenesses
of Ptolemy can be found in any book of classical coins;

his lantern jaw and uncompromising nose are unmistak-
able.

II • EGYPT AND EGYPTIAN MAGIC

Meriamon, like Nikolaos, is my invention, as is her mis-
sion to Alexander. Her father, however, was in fact a
pharaoh of Egypt, Nectanebo II, last of the native rulers,
defeated by the Persians in 341 B.C. and driven out,
probably to his death. Pseudo-CalIisthenes makes him a
great mage. This is true enough, insofar as Pharaoh (the
title means "Great House") was regarded as the living
incarnation of the god Horus, the direct intercessor with
the gods, by whose health and safety the realm pros-
pered or failed.

Egypt in the fourth century B.C. was regarded as un-
imaginably ancient and profoundly mysterious. Magic had

AUTHOR'S NOTE 399

its source there, and magic pervaded the lives and minds
of its people. Its practitioners guarded their secrets jeal-
ously, but their purposes were as profoundly practical as
the rest of Egyptian culture: magical rituals and practices
were designed to obtain specific results through manipula-
tion of natural and supernatural forces. Books on the sub-
ject are legion, and most are sheer nonsense. The few
reliable sources are to be found, in general, in scholarly
journals. I have made use, with caution, of Bob Brier's
Ancient Egyptian Magic (New York, 1981); in this book,
while prospecting for tidbits useful to a novelist, I found
the quotation from Pseudo-Callisthenes, on Nectanebo and
Alexander, which inspired this novel. A sampling of gen-
uine Egyptian magic can be found in Ancient Egyptian
Magical Texts, tr. J.F. Borghouts (Leiden, 1978). Words are
vitally important, puns and double meanings frequent, and
the name crucial to me mastery of the thing, whether god,
demon, animal, or human.

There is no single, comprehensive, completely reliable
book-length text on ancient Egypt-1 have found useful J.E.
Manchip White's Ancient Egypt: Its Culture and History
(New York, 1970), and B.G. Trigger, B.J. Kemp, D.
O'Connor, and A.B. Lloyd, Ancient Egypt: A Social
History (Cambridge. 1983). For the religion of the Egyp-
tians, Siegfried Morenz, Egyptian Religion, tr. Ann E.
Keep (Ithaca, N.Y., 1973), is sufficiently comprehensive
for a beginning. Useful also is Adolf Erman's Life in An-
cient Egypt, tr. H.M. Tirard (New York, 1971). I have
adapted Erman's description of the accession of the king,
rather than the version described in White, as more likely
to have appealed to Alexander's personality and imagina-
tion.

Meriamon herself appears—under the name of Ah-
mose Merit-Amon, a queen of the 18th dynasty, around
'1550 B.C.—in Mohamed Saleh and Hourig Sourouzian,
Official Catalogue, The Egyptian Museum, Cairo, tr. Pe-

400 Lord of the Two Lands
ter Der Manuelian and Helen Jacquet-Gordon (Mainz,
1987). Her sarcophagus is listed as number 127.

Although Egypt never again saw the rule of native
kings after the arrival of Alexander—all the Ptolemies,
including the last and most famous Cleopatra, were
Hellenes—its cults and gods thrived under Roman rule.
The cult of Isis only failed completely with the triumph
of Christianity. Even then, many of the attributes of the
Blessed Virgin can be traced to Isis and other mother
goddesses of the pagans.

Women in Egypt enjoyed more freedom than did
women of the Persians or the Greeks. There was no pre-
dynastic matriarchy. Egypt was always ruled primarily
by men, but queens ruled and held regencies; even, once
or twice, claimed the title of king. Under the Ptolemies,
queens ruled often, and sometimes unassisted by kings.

Herodotus is incorrect in his statement that the Egyptian
priesthoods were entirely male. The priesthood of Amon,
at least, included a female high priestess, the Great Wife of
Amon, and women singers and dancers in the temple. Or-
dinary women, even in Hellenistic times, were sometimes
educated, were able to make contracts and own property,
and, to some extent, had a say in the choosing of their
husbands. Statues and paintings depict over and over an
image of marriage as a bond of affection between near-
equals. Sarah B. Pomeroy's Women in Hellenistic Egypt
from Alexander to Cleopatra (New York, 1984) addresses
the question of women in pharaonic times as well. A
broader spectrum appears in the essays collected by Averil
Cameron and Amelie Kuhrt, eds.. Images of Women in An-
tiquity (London, 1983).

The Egyptian obsession with death was in fact an obses-
sion with life. Elaborate tombs, meticulous preservation of
the body, intricate magical rituals for the passage through
the land of the dead, were all aimed at reproducing in
eternity the image of mortal existence. The essential liter-
ary and magical guide to the afterlife, me so-called "Book

AUTHOR'S NOTE 401

of the Dead," is actually and more properly titled "The
Book of Coming Forth by Day." That the land of the dead
was perceived as lying beyond the western horizon of
Egypt, in the Libyan desert, and that Alexander journeyed
through these lands to reach Siwah, is one of the happy
coincidences of the novelist's trade.