Bring Down the Sun Page 11

  “You’ll have to come with me,” she said. “We have races. My mares always win. It makes the men chew their beards, they get so angry. They have to drive stallions, you know. Which is all very well, but stallions are so easily distracted.”

  “So are men,” Myrtale said, for once getting a word in.

  Philinna laughed, a ringing peal that echoed in the corridor. As far as Myrtale could tell, they were walking from end to end of the women’s quarters, down toward the public gate. A handful of servants passed by with all the makings of a bath: heavy bronze basin, cloths and jars and oil scrapers, and ewers of steaming water.

  “Someone’s taking a bath on the men’s side,” Philinna observed. “He must be getting married, or else being buried. They don’t trouble with it otherwise.”

  “The king does,” said Myrtale.

  “Ah,” said Philinna with a lift and shake of the shoulders. “He’s different. The others aren’t exactly howling savages, but they have their ways. He wants them all to be more Greek.”

  “Do they object?”

  “Some do. Some see what he’s trying to do. We can fight together, you see. The Greeks squabble constantly among their tribes and cities. With a strong enough army, we can roll right over them, take their cities and teach them to be a single nation with a single king.”

  Myrtale regarded her in increased respect. For all her wide eyes and her bright young voice, she was clearly educated. She could think.

  Aloud Myrtale said, “Our husband is ambitious.”

  “Aren’t you?” said Philinna.

  That set Myrtale back on her heels. “Of course.”

  “So are we all,” Philinna said. “We didn’t all choose to be here, but it’s a good place to be—a strong place. We’ll go far with Philip to lead us.”

  “You’d fight beside him? He’d let you?”

  Philinna shrugged. “Who’s to say he won’t? He likes his women strong—like his men; like his country.”

  He might stop short of sending his queen to battle, but Myrtale kept the thought to herself. They had come to the corridor’s end, where a door opened on a place both strange and startlingly familiar.

  Unlike the sharp-cornered boxes of rooms and courtyards elsewhere in the palace, this room was round, like a temple of the old ways. A dome hung in the air above it, open at the zenith to let a shaft of sunlight down to the bare stone floor. Heavy pillars held up the roof; the walls beyond were painted, but in an older style than in the women’s rooms.

  Here was an altar and an image of Herakles in his lionskin, carved in marble in the manner of the Greeks. Away in the shadows, a far more ancient shape squatted, watching over the shrine that had begun as Hers and would continue to be so beneath the words and rites of the men’s upstart gods.

  As Myrtale paused beside Philinna just inside the doorway, a sinuous shape slithered across the floor. Two others followed it: one somewhat smaller and one hardly larger than a hatchling.

  The Mother’s snakes coiled around her feet and explored upward. Her own, her hatchling with its darker scales and narrower head, came to her hand; as she lifted it to her breast, it kissed her face with the soft tickle of its tongue before it slid into the fold of her chiton.

  Its weight was welcome, its presence reassuring in ways she felt no need to explain. She breathed easier for knowing it was here and safe and protected in the Mother’s care.

  Philinna’s eyes were wide. “So it’s true,” she said. “You are a snake witch. My grandmother used to tell me stories. They ruled long ago, before the warrior kings came.”

  Myrtale opened her mouth to deny she was a witch, but she could hardly do that. Instead she said, “Where I come from, the old ways are still alive.”

  “So I can see,” Philinna said. “They’re not well loved here—people are afraid. Not I, mind, or most of the women, but the men get strange if we remind them. They want to forget such things ever existed.”

  “Even the king?”

  “The king as much as any. Strong women excite him, and he honors the Great Mother for the Power she is. Witchcraft and old goddesses make his privates shrivel.”

  Myrtale gaped, then laughed.

  Philinna grinned. “They really do. His father put Herakles here and moved the Mother into the shadows. Philip won’t cast Her out—he’s not that set against Her—but he’s not Her dearest friend.”

  “I don’t think I am, either,” Myrtale said reflectively.

  “Then you’ll please him well,” said Philinna. She stepped carefully past the snakes, with a look that told Myrtale she was not fond of them. “Come, there’s much more to see. We won’t get into the men’s rooms, but the king’s hall is always diverting, and the stables—”

  “Those I’ve seen,” Myrtale said. “I’d like to stay here for a while, if you don’t mind. You don’t have to stay. You want to ride in your chariot, yes? I’ll go with you another day. Today, I need to pray.”

  It seemed Philinna understood prayer, if not the need for solitude. She frowned, but she left Myrtale there, surrounded by serpents, with the Mother’s image looming over her.

  Eighteen

  Myrtale prayed for a little while. If the Mother heard, She was silent. Myrtale did not ask Her for anything. She knew what Myrtale needed, as well as what she wanted.

  When Philinna was long gone, Myrtale left the shrine. Instead of returning to the women’s quarters, she turned in the opposite direction, drawing her veil over her head and walking with a bent and humble posture that made men’s eyes slide over her as if she were invisible.

  Her hatchling rode with her, asleep in the fold of her chiton. Its small cold presence was remarkably comforting.

  This part of the palace was full of men of all stations, voices calling and feet running and an air of bustle and excitement. Next to the quiet of the women’s quarters, it was dizzying, but invigorating, too.

  They were getting ready for a hunt. The king had had word of a boar that was vexing a village on the plain. For all the buzz and commotion, there was no confusion. Every man knew his place.

  Philip was the center around which they spun. The power of his presence bound them all; when he spoke, they could not help but listen.

  Here in the world of men, away from women and Mysteries, he was his purest self. He had an ease about him that she had not seen before, and a strong grace of which she had seen but a shadow. His smile was swift, his gestures expansive; when he laughed, it was a light, free sound.

  That side of Philip would never show itself to any woman, no matter how much he loved her. The thought grieved Myrtale more than she might have expected. She wanted all of him—not only the fragment he was willing to give her.

  Well, and did she give him all of herself, either? What he saw, she liked to think, was her best face. The sharp edge of her temper, the petty jealousies, and the parts of herself of which she was least proud, she kept hidden from him.

  Her aunt would say that this was always so. The woman gave her man her best; in return he gave her his worst.

  Myrtale’s aunt had even more to say in memory that she had in the living presence. Myrtale shut the door on her firmly and watched the crowd of men and dogs and horses stream out of the palace. From its broad open portico her eyes could follow them far down onto the plain.

  She leaned against a column and turned her face to the wind, drinking deep. Part of her would have liked to be out riding with the hunters, but most was pleased to stand here in comfort and watch them dwindle into the distance.

  “You could fly with them, you know,” Erynna said behind her.

  Myrtale neither started nor turned. “I could? Wasn’t that one of the lessons you avoided teaching?”

  “Destiny intervened,” said Erynna. “Are you sorry you’re here instead of in Epiros?”

  “Another day wouldn’t have stretched the thread too thin,” Myrtale said.

  “I don’t control every turn of fate,” Erynna said. “I’m here to teach, if you�
��re minded to learn.”

  “How? When? Here?”

  Myrtale heard the laughter in the witch’s voice. “Anywhere you like, your majesty.”

  “I’m not queen yet,” said Myrtale, “only the king’s most recent acquisition.”

  “You will be,” Erynna said.

  Then finally Myrtale turned. The girl was the same as ever: bright-eyed, wicked, crackling with magic. If she had ever regretted anything in her life, Myrtale was not aware of it.

  And after all, had it really been a betrayal? Myrtale had won the fight; her uncle had sent her to Philip. She was where she had wanted to be. Now she could have the rest of it—all of it.

  She still did not trust Erynna. But to learn to fly—and to learn the rest of the arts she had been eager to learn—she would pay whatever price the witch exacted.

  * * *

  The first part of the lesson was altogether unexpected. Erynna led Myrtale to the room at the farthest end of the women’s corridor. It was larger than the others: twice the size, and its walls were crowded with images that though fresh and newly painted seemed as old as the world.

  Myrtale had never seen their like—or expected to find Philinna waiting, with plump Phila and a handful of noblewomen. It was Philinna who told her where those stiff, angular figures had their origin, painted in flat hues of red and yellow and green, blue and terracotta, white and black. “Egypt,” she said, as Myrtale stared at men with beasts’ heads and women with elaborately plaited hair and headdresses of tall plumes and trailing ribbons of gold.

  “All magic comes from Egypt,” Erynna said with a touch of the scholar’s chant. “In this place, under the eyes of the gods who brought magic to mortals, we learn the ways that were old before our tribes and nations were born.”

  The Mother was older, Myrtale thought, nor had She spoken first in Egypt. But mortals had heard Her there, and some of them had gone in time to Dodona. Myrtale was their descendant.

  So this was how they had seen the world. While Erynna’s half-chant went on, Myrtale circled the room, taking in the images that marched across the walls. One in particular drew her eye: a woman, slender yet richly curved, wearing a headdress that was a coiled snake. There was a flower in her hand.

  “That one is a queen,” Erynna said.

  It was not she who was chanting after all, but Philinna, reading from a book with paintings in it like those on the walls. Myrtale would want to know what words she sang—later. For the moment these images, as large as life, mattered more.

  Myrtale’s hand brushed the queen’s diadem. “Did I know her?” she asked.

  For some it might have been a strange, even incomprehensible question. Erynna answered coolly, “You might have long ago. In another life.”

  “Most would say this is the only life we have.”

  “Would they?”

  “Or maybe I was that queen,” Myrtale said. The flicker of Erynna’s eyes sharpened her own. “I was, wasn’t I? Long ago. Who is this beside her? Is it a ram or a man?”

  “That is Amon,” Erynna said: “a great god in Egypt.”

  “Still?”

  “Still and always,” said Erynna.

  Myrtale looked closely at the man with his broad shoulders and narrow flanks and his ram’s head—more comely somehow than a bull’s, with the curl of its horns matching the curls of its fleece. In their way they made her think of Philip: his blunt features, his thick curling hair.

  “Amon,” she said. Her voice caressed the name.

  “She was his wife,” Erynna said: “that queen. She lay with him in sacred rite, and bore him sons who were destined to be kings.”

  “One son would be enough,” Myrtale said. “One sun-bright child. He is the sun, isn’t he? I heard that once, long ago. Or maybe in that other life.”

  “Sun and father,” said Erynna, “and king besides.”

  “So he would be, if his wife were a queen.” Myrtale spoke slowly. She felt as if she had wandered into a dream.

  Those strange flat figures, twisted to serve a canon that matched nothing in life, took on shape and strength and substance. The queen lowered her eyes and smiled. The god looked on her with a lover’s eyes.

  His arms were warm and strong. He smelled not of wool or musk as she might have expected, but of flowers: a heavy scent but oddly pleasant, rich and sweet. His lips were a man’s; they tasted of honey.

  She opened her eyes and stepped back sharply from the wall. Phila was still reading. However strange or deeply real the dream, it had lasted but the space of a breath.

  She stared at all these women who desired to learn magic. Did none of them know that magic was not a thing to be acquired? Either it was in them or it was not. They could learn how to use it—but only if they had it already.

  On the edge of dream she could see inside them; she could see who was like a lamp filled with light, and who was dull mortal clay. Erynna did not blaze nearly as bright as Myrtale had expected. Her gift was not to wield magic. It was to teach—and to make mischief.

  The rest were clay—all but Philinna. She was a clear white flame, with as pure a heart as Myrtale had imagined.

  Myrtale was strong, but she had never been pure. She had too much pride and temper, and too much ambition. She was Philip’s match as none of the others could be.

  She met Amon’s painted gaze. It was blank, unreadable. It would come alive when the time came.

  She would wait—but not too long. Gods might have infinite patience, but she did not.

  “If you want me,” she said to him, “best take me while you can.”

  He did not answer. He was a god; it would have been beneath him. But she smiled. He had heard her.

  PART III

  Olympias

  Nineteen

  Philip got his boar. He came home in a roaring crowd and drank till dawn. None of his wives enjoyed his company that night, nor did he go looking for them.

  Myrtale lay alone in her not-quite-wide-enough bed and reflected on a great number of things. In the middle night, a much larger serpentine form joined the hatchling beside her. The Mother’s guardian had come to her warmth.

  It slept all night in the hollow of her side. In the dark before dawn, she half-woke as it slithered away. She sighed for its absence, before sleep took her again.

  * * *

  The days fell into a rhythm remarkable for two things: magic’s presence and Philip’s absence. Every day the women gathered among the painted Egyptians to learn spells and cantrips, potions and herb-lore. Every night they slept in their own beds, sometimes together with maids or fellow noblewomen and sometimes alone. Myrtale slept with her hatchling and with the Mother’s guardian, night after night.

  She had not yet learned to fly. That had been an empty lure—rather like her marriage. Philip had not set foot in the women’s quarters since the wedding. He had boys, people said, or rather young men, who kept him entertained when he was not making sons for Macedon.

  Myrtale was neither angry nor discouraged. For once in her life, she cultivated patience. She studied her magic and the women around her and the ways of the palace and the voices of men that echoed through the halls. She listened and learned. The matters of war and politics that so fascinated men, to which she had paid little enough attention before, now opened themselves like the books of philosophy and poetry and magic that Philip and his predecessors had gathered like spoils of war.

  War was everything here. Macedon was one great army; it was always either mustering or campaigning or preparing for the next campaign. This year, as summer mellowed into autumn, Philip rested as much as he ever could, but that meant endless courts and councils and embassies, and hunts and games and drinking bouts that roared and roistered until morning. Then as if that was not excitement enough, he had his troops out day after day, marching and drilling and fighting mock battles. Once or twice they went out on raids, stayed away for a handful of days, then came back full of boasts and the odd bit of booty.

  Philinna
and Phila coveted that life. As much as they could, they imitated it with arrows and javelins, footraces and chariot races and hunts of their own that brought back more game than the men’s hunts did.

  For Myrtale that was no temptation. She turned rather toward the books and the Egyptians’ room and the bed that Philip did not choose to visit. Myrtale liked to sit in comfort while the world came to her.

  She discovered that if she stayed in one place, kept quiet and made it clear that she would listen, people would come—sister wives, ladies and servants, even a few of the younger men if she took the afternoon air on the outer portico. They came and offered gifts—a flower, a delicacy, occasionally a jewel—and told her their names and where they came from and why they were in Pella. As she listened—and truly she did listen; she remembered every word, no matter how trivial—they opened to her. They told her things that she suspected they had not told anyone else.

  It was an art as mysterious as magic, but there was nothing arcane about it. In those many and varied conversations, she saw patterns of allegiance and loyalty, alliance and hostility. She learned what factions there were in the court, who danced with whom and who would, but for Philip’s strong will acting on them all, have been bitter enemies.

  The young men were particularly interesting, and the portico was especially pleasant on those long golden days before winter closed in on the mountains. Myrtale took to spending her mornings with books and magic and her afternoons on the portico. The servants had found a chair for her, and her new friends had brought cushions for it, and a table and a service for wine. As the days grew shorter, they vied to bring her warm mantles to shield her against the wind.

  Often she saw Philip riding on the plain or heard him speaking in the hall. She listened as best she could, and remembered what she heard; more than once she moved closer, the better to hear it.