by Mike Allen
“And Persia misses you.”
He stilled, eyes narrowing, while rain stuck hair to his face and trickled down his back. That choice of words. Only one other had used them. He said, “And in all of Persia, did I ever find your home?”
“You did not.”
“No. I would have known it.” He looked into Gautama’s calm smile. “Your king with the mechanical—he is not the only one whose own men tried to kill him.”
“And it would be a pity if they succeeded,” she said. “So take them home.”
“Yes,” he said slowly. Even the more loyal men looked to him with more appeal than ambition now. They were weary, cold, and ragged. “Yes, Vaacha Devi. Tell Sisygambis that I might.”
He smiled a little, bitterly, at her surprise. The challenge had been petty after all; the win was worthless, and the wonders merely tales. And he was held back, yet again, by the limitations of those smaller than him.
* * *
Everyone knows of the ox cart that stands in Gordion’s old palace. Everyone knows that the knot fastening it to its post cannot be undone.
Alexandros proves them wrong.
He has cause to pride himself on seeing what is there, not merely what is wanted. Wishing the world to be vast does not make it so. Wanting men to be brave and mothers to be patient does not make them so.
Perhaps Arabia will have marvels, if the East does not.
* * *
But a year later, over a smoky campfire, Alexandros had a new wife, a new battle, and a new will to press on. He might lack fond dreams of marvels, but Raja Porus was a foe worth meeting—and Rokhshna, who traveled with him as fearless as any warrior—a bride worth impressing. And every new day told Sisygambis who decided Alexandros’ course—and who did not. Her missives were growing satisfyingly plaintive.
“Did you not suggest,” Alexandros asked the bird, “that a king might like a clever wife?” He smiled like a petted cat. “You were right. I do. But you, of course, were thinking of Sisygambis’ granddaughter when you said it.”
The bird stammered in dismay, feathers clattering. She looked at Rokhshna through one eye, then another. And Rokhshna looked back with cool enmity.
Now, the young king found himself to be protector of vast lands. Many of them remembered a time before his father, and none welcomed a mechanical queen. In the first few years of his reign he put down rebellion in a land of ice and granite, rooted out banditry in a fever-ridden swamp, and fought a hard, heartbreaking battle with his own mutinous navy. But he married a girl from the land of ice and a girl from the swamps, and after some time and some children the lands quieted. And Anaeet still ruled at his side.
But one crystalline winter’s day when the sun peeped pale and hesitant as a new bride over the alabaster roofs, he received word that one of his satraps, the ice girl’s father, had gone missing in the mountains. And though his whole city searched, nobody found so much as a footprint.
Being young, with a thirst for adventure still unquenched, the king decided to find his vassal himself. He left Anaeet to rule in his stead and his other wives in her care, and took only his mechanical friend the gemcutter with him. This time they rode horses of flesh and carried feed enough to last them. They disguised themselves as wealthy tradesmen, with tasseled blankets on the horses and fine jewelry in a box of carven sandalwood.
Towards the sun they rode, over the desert and past Anaeet’s village, into mountains that rose like black talons scratching at the snow-stuffed sky. And in every village they came to, huddled between rock face and cliff, the friends offered bracelets and jeweled pins for sale. The villagers could not buy such wares, of course, but the king intended only for word of them to spread. He reasoned that no ruler disappeared by accident; greed and lust for power must be behind it. So he called out to greed. And while he called, he listened for tidings of his satrap.
The friends came finally to a town whose people spoke of a noble hunting party, all grand in bronze and bearhide, that had passed through one day and never returned. The king chose to stay and learn more. And while he stayed two nobles approached him and said, “We hear that you and your mechanical are gemcutters.”
“We are,” the king agreed.
“We have found a cave full of gold and jewels,” said one noble, “and have hired a dozen village boys to help us transport them, six human and six mechanical. But we would pay you well to come with us and tell us which pieces are worth the most.”
“We shall join you gladly,” said the king, though joy was far from his heart.
He followed the nobles quietly, with his friend and a dozen villagers, to a cave set far into the mountains. Its mouth glittered with icicle teeth, and ice rimed the walls. The path was wide, but it sloped steeply downwards, and the ground underfoot was slick and studded with gravel that broke free and rolled, echoing, into the black distance. The king had to walk with his head bowed, as he never had before, to keep it safe from low-hanging rocks.
So he did not see the two nobles step each one to a side into alcoves, and he took a step further. His feet met empty air. He fell, how far he did not know, and the other men tumbled after him. He came quickly to his feet; but the walls were sheer and icy, and the hole too far above.
Some men had been carrying torches, and in their fallen light he could make out huge cauldrons bubbling to each side. He peered into one; in it, gears and rods and mysterious pieces of shaped bronze bubbled in acid that scoured them clean.
He crossed over to the other side, and a wet carrion stench hit him. He gagged, but looked closer.
A hand rose to the bloody, bubbling surface, and seemed to reach for the king before sinking again into a mess of cooking guts. Then, in the slow churning of the cauldron, came the severed, staring head of the king’s missing satrap.
* * *
“Enough,” Rokhshna said. “This tale disgusts. Have done.” Her face held no fear, but her voice was high and the words too fast.
Alexandros draped the corner of his chlamys over her shoulder. It offered scant warmth, though its embroidered hem glowed in the firelight, but she calmed under it. He said, “You have changed its nature greatly. To upset us? We march on no matter what you say.”
“The story goes as it goes,” the bird replied. “I merely tell it.”
“Oh, surely,” said Rokhshna. “And of course I am not meant to be the princess of ice, and the dead man not my father?”
Alexandros said, “If this is Sisygambis’ way to lure me back, tell her I find it clumsy.”
“I told you once that I serve nobody.” The fickle light turned the bird into a gaudy toy, showed her indignation faintly ridiculous. “I will own that she and I share a goal, but—”
“Then in kindness to her I tell you only this: Begone.”
“If you will not hear this voice, she is already gone.” The bird spread her wings. An eye of new enamel stared at Alexandros from every feather’s tip, liquid black against the copper. In each one danced a miniature fire. “But…” Her voice spoke regret. “You will not turn back from your folly, Basileu, though you sully the holy river Ganga herself?”
Alexandros’ smile was cold as ice and dark as the belly of a cave. “A river,” he said, “is only a river.”
* * *
He founded a new town on the Hypasis, another Alexandria. But by the third day of its building he started to hear mutters and see the sidelong looks.
He called Hephaistion to his side. It was Koinos who came. Hephaistion was away again, as he was too often since Alexandros had married. “Tell me,” Alexandros said, more abruptly than he meant to. “What is it they say to one another?”
“They say you want them to ford the Ganges next,” said Koinos.
“So I do.” He glowered at the rising sun. “What of it?”
“They say the Ganges is wider than even the Nile,” Koinos said. “They say it runs so deep that a hundred men can drown, one on top of another, and never be found. They say it runs frothy brown at str
ange times, churned by the hooves of river horses that will strike us down with their hooves.”
“Where do they hear such tales?” Alexandros demanded, turning on the older man. “It is a river. No more. And beyond these hills, over that river, the lands are ripe with game and fruit.” And, rumor said, mechanical creatures as clever as the bird.
“Perhaps,” said Koinos. “But those lands are ruled by the Gangaritai and the Praisioi. And the men have heard that their forces are allied against you, that the far side of the great river is lined with waiting horsemen and catapults and thousands of elephants, an army so large that an eagle in flight could not see both ends of it at once. They say one elephant in ten is an automaton, and that their trunks spew acid. They say there are pneumatic bows that fire a dozen dozen arrows at a time, their strings pulled so tight that they shoot right across the river. They say—”
“Where,” Alexandros said again, “do they get these tales?” But even as he spoke, he knew.
Koinos reached out, appealing. “They believe them, Basileu. They are tired, and ill, and that breeds fear. They left so many brothers on the field when we fought Porus, and even Porus fears the Gangaritai. You may order them to march on, but you would be wiser not to, for the Greeks remember Kleitos and they will not go.”
Alexandros said, “They will do as I tell them.”
They did not. Mutters rose instead to shouts, and shouts to the clash of bronze on bronze. By the day’s end, a hundred men lay dead and twice that many dying. With them lay three of the Macedon generals. Only two had fought for Alexandros.
Sisygambis had not played this move. She wanted him back. She did not want his vengeance, and she was not one to lose by winning.
If she was not the player now, had she ever been?
When Koinos came again to beg Alexandros to turn back, he paid more heed.
He walked alone again that night. The muddy streets had iced over. They crunched as he walked, and the stars shone bright as little suns, distant as the far side of the Ganges. Though he shivered, he let his chlamys cloak stream proudly out to show the embroidered tunic underneath. Faint on the wind came the moan of injured men.
At the end of town he called, softly. “Come out, bird. I know that you are here.”
Silence. After a time, he added, “Vaacha Devi. My wife is safe abed. Come out.”
Her voice came from shadow. “How did you know to find me?”
“Rokhshna is wary. You always appear in the wake of Sisygambis’ missives. And your stories sent men of mine to their deaths today.”
Silence again. Alexandros sighed and sat on a low wall. He grew tired sometimes, these days. Finally, finally he saw the picture correctly, and he could not even summon rage. “So,” he said. “My men will go no further. Which is what you have worked for all along, isn’t it.”
Why hate her for his mistake? He had misread a player for a piece. Seen a smaller board than was offered after all. And been bested. “Though by the gods,” he said bitterly, “I would know why.”
Gears played a complex rhythm of quiet clicks. A wingbeat, two, and the bird landed delicately next to him. “No secret now,” she said. “Sisygambis wants you back; I merely wanted…want you gone. The land beyond the Ganga, which you think of as a jewel to snatch, which you would paint bloody, and trample the rice and silence the smithies and taint the art with your notion of culture, that land is my home. And some of the Magadha mechanicals, your Gangaritai, are my kin.”
Ah. Was there even a real army awaiting them? Bile rose at the thought that he would never know. He said, “Why not tell my men your tales earlier?”
“And risk an uprising that killed you?” The bird preened and spread her starlit feathers. “A ruby glittering in the pile of gravel that is humanity? I would not simply destroy a wonder.”
“You might have.”
“You came too close to my land.”
Her land it might be, but her new feathers, the enamel work—their elegance was that of Persia. He said, “Though Sisygambis was your patron, and she wants me alive. Were you trying to marry me to the granddaughter, too? Will you tell me she is cleverer than Rokhshna?”
“Human marriages mean little to my kind,” she said, “though tales of them intrigue. They sound messy.”
Anger flared. He would have truth, at least, if it could be wrung from a mechanical. He grabbed for the bird’s neck.
There was a whirr, a blur, a snap; then she was out of reach, and blood welled between his thumb and fingers, black in the starlight. “A ruby indeed,” she said, a tremor in her voice. “I cannot fault you for trying.”
Alexandros wrapped his throbbing hand in a corner of his chlamys cloak.
After a moment the bird said, “As to the girl—Rokhshna is the politician of the two, but you know Stateira’s cleverness. And I wonder which you trust, when you talk behind the back of one and wear the charm the other made you.”
His hurt hand twitched toward the charm. How did she know of that? She saw more clearly than even Hephaistion had. “Is she a wise woman?” he said. “Does it work?” Certainly poison had not touched him yet, and his wounds had never festered.
“Do I look like a magician? If it doesn’t, you will doubtless find out.”
Wind rustled in a pine tree, brought the scent of coming snow. A smell that was the same the world over. But the drooping, dancing branches of this Eastern pine were like nothing in Macedon, and under them gleamed rows of round puddles: elephants’ footprints full of ice. Alexandros said, “Then we have nothing left to speak of.” Odd, how that made it a little harder to breathe.
In denying him the rest of the world, she had shown him that it had been worth the attempt.
She looked at him through one eye, then the other, then said softly, “Unless…you wish to know what happened to that young king we left trapped inside a cave.”
Ice was melting under Alexandros, biting into his fingers and seeping through the chlamys to chill his legs. He needed to plan his return—surely it would not be a retreat—home. And Rokhshna hated waking to find him gone.
Watching the foreign pine, he started to smile. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I would hear that, if you will tell it.”
* * *
The king called up, “What place is this?”
“Your new home,” one of the nobles said, “where you will make us jewelry enough to buy this satrapy. If you walk a little way down this tunnel you will find a workshop with a fire pit, and gold and gems enough to start your work.”
The king glanced once more at his wife’s dead father. “And the cauldrons?”
“You and your mechanical have nothing to fear in them, gemcutter,” the other noble said. “They were men without a trade, worth only their parts and the tallow from their fat, which will light your work.”
At this some of the villagers drew together and looked fearfully up. But the king said, “You must know a great deal about gemcutting, honored sirs. Most men of your class would have no idea that my mechanical and I have need of six helpers each.”
Now in fact the nobles did not know any such thing, since the king had only just made it up, but they smiled knowingly down into the pit and left all twelve villagers their lives. The king made bracelets and bowls and statuettes; and slowly, invisibly, he began with fine work and flattery to gain the nobles’ trust.
And so he spent years far from home, while Anaeet ruled so wisely that most people forgot they had or even needed a king.
One day he told the nobles, “Bring me gems of every type and gold enough to plate my arm, and I shall make a jewelled rhyton cup in the shape of a winged lion. It shall be fine enough for Queen Anaeet herself; she alone has the power to grant you your satrapy. In return I ask only that you set me up as your jeweler, for it pleases me to serve gentlemen of such exquisite taste.”
The nobles brought him these things with glee and good wishes, and in time he fashioned a cup as long as his arm. As he had promised, its base was a lion. Its s
ides were wings set with diamonds and emeralds and rubies, and sapphires yellow and blue, so closely nestled together that no hint of gold showed through their glimmering, mottled pattern. The other prisoners gathered around while he worked, caught between interest and awe; and when the cup was finished the king gave it to his captors with unfeigned pride.
And they took it to the queen.
But the queen, through eyes of ground emerald, saw diamonds and yellow sapphires as green. And to her eyes, rubies and blue sapphires both were black as nighttime blood, and those black stones picked out writing across the green wings. And the words read, “Help me, Anaeet.”
* * *
Finally, finally, Alexandros’ face lit in simple gladness. “Ah,” he said. “So having a clever wife did help him in the end.”
The sky had grown lighter, stars fading into grey, as the tale wound to its close. Now the night silence fractured into the cries and clangs of the waking camp. Vaacha Devi spread her wings to catch the the sun’s first rays; they lit her like a phoenix, turned enameled feathertips to blood. “It depends, young Alexandros,” she said regretfully, “on what Anaeet did with that knowledge.”
And with a musical shiver of wings, she was gone.
DRAGONS OF AMERICA
S.J. Hirons
I
All through winter and spring the dragons of America had flown in Anselm Einarsson’s dreams. When summer finally came, and the first flight of them passed over the city heading for the eastern desert, he was so used to the idea of them that he almost slept through the crossing of that flock, mistaking the sound for low thunder. But they brought with them the odours of the semi-mythical land they came from: hamburgers, hot dogs, buttered popcorn, and beer. Green as dollar bills they would be and just as crinkly. So big they blocked out stars. Swift enough to turn on a dime, and change direction fleetly with the winds.
Anselm had been sleeping on the flat rooftop of the family home for the last two weeks in anticipation of their coming. Now he stirred, his pallid dreams turning Technicolor, full of chances that had not been there moments before; bright dreams clamouring for attention as the thunderous sounds above doubled in intensity, finally waking him. He rolled out from under the canvas he’d stretched on four poles above his bedding and stood, looking up.