“Six ships are on fire! I have punched them in the face!”
She answered, “In the Battle of Ecnomus they lost two thousands ships. On top of that they lost three hundred ships and one hundred thousand men in a single storm off the coast of Camarina... and they still won that war. Do not play Rome’s game if you want to attack. When they lose they just send for reinforcements. If you are small pretend you are a poisonous snake not a loud elephant.”
“I feel like an elephant!”
She said, “Rome will not be content burning your palace, then. They will pull it down and toss every stone into the sea.”
He finally nodded that she was correct. “Yes, I must first just think of my new witch.”
Sorceress Thrace frowned. “That is not what I was thinking of. She will be more trouble than she is worth. You do not want to travel with her. That awful Roman woman should have just killed herself to leave you alone! When you get to your ship, toss her into the water and watch her drown!” Sorceress Thrace threw herbs into her fire to send out the curse. “I curse you to drown!”
He cautioned, “You’re not worried about her mirror spell?”
She smiled. “That idiot will never drown me.”
Ptolemy reminded her, “But she’s a witch.”
“You saw how easy it was to push her where I wanted her—where you wanted her. I led her easier than leading a dog to her master. She is such a weak undisciplined witch. It will be easy for you to kill her now.”
He stretched his arms. “I don’t want her dead.”
“She was sent to you by the magical forces out to destroy you!”
He smirked. “I know that.”
“It is treason! She must die!”
“I’ll toy with her like I toy with a kitten.”
Sorceress Thrace became strident. “She is a witch from your sister!”
Ptolemy said, “What a better trick than to steal my enemy’s army and make it my own.”
“It is plain your sister has nothing at all. She has been bluffing. As soon as Rome leaves, Cleopatra has nobody. She can be knocked off the throne with a feather!”
He laughed. “Phaedra was sent to stop me. I am not stopped!”
Sorceress Thrace scoffed, “That witch could not stop a rock.”
He smiled. “Yes, she’s so weak and for her it’s been only a hobby so I have nothing to fear. I’ve seen how she’s no harm to you or me. So stop thinking about her so much.”
Sorceress Thrace insisted, “She is terrible and I see doom! Stay away from her! Doom!”
Ptolemy shook his head. “That’s only your petty mundane jealously talking to you now.” He walked to a wall panel and pressed part of a Greek design to unlock it and push it open.
Sorceress Thrace begged, “Take me with you!”
“Stay here for now and make sure I arrive safely in Cairo. Keep the Romans busy here. Set some more mischievous fires. Sleep with a few generals and spread some plagues. Have fun with it.”
“But!”
“Then come to me later, after they’ve given up on me and have left back to Rome. I’ll return with a bigger army and will rule Egypt again. Egypt wants a man to rule—it will be easy to raise an army in Cairo.”
Sorceress Thrace cried, “That is a terrible idea! I must stay with you.”
“Why must you be at my side all the time?”
“You are not safe with that witch! I know what you want! You want a new witch! I am always a new witch! I have the magic of the phoenix bird! Does she have that? She will grow old! You will not want to look at that face of hers in a few years. No! You want me!”
“Don’t be atrocious.” He glared at his witch angrily and walked out of the room.
The magic smoke turned green and blew in Sorceress Thrace’s eyes, blinding her. As she rubbed at her eyes, she shouted, “No, no, it is not safe to leave without me!”
He passed through another secret door, entering a storage room where he’d had his sister’s things dumped. Ptolemy grabbed a gold cat statue. He said to it, “This’ll help pay for my new army.” He kissed its nose and tucked it under his arm as he hurried into another secret hallway that led out of the palace until it came up out of a hay chute in the stables.
~
Aboard his ship, after it launched up the Nile, Ptolemy had his men hold Phaedra down as he raped her. After he finished, he looked down into her face and said, “There. Now I feel better about you. Now you know your place. You are no longer a Roman woman. You are my woman. My servant! You should be honored. I wouldn’t let my last witch touch me. But then she was Sorceress Thrace. You know what that means?”
Phaedra said she didn’t.
He stepped away and tucked himself back into his loincloth. “She was from Thrace!”
“By the gods I don’t know what that means.”
“It means I’m not letting her touch me! She was from mountains where it’s weird. Time for a new witch. A better witch. A witch I can control! A witch I’m not afraid of all the time! You! You’ll become the greatest protector of kings the world has ever seen. And Rome will allow me my throne back. I am a bull elephant and Rome respects strength!”
Phaedra was dismissive. “You shouldn’t really care so much about me, not really.” She looked around at the deck of the boat and wondered how she could get away from everyone. He had hurt her and she wanted to escape into sleep.
Ptolemy grabbed her arm. “Under the Sinai Desert is an eternal temple to the snake god Apophis. The halls are lit by magic jewels that glisten with stars. A high priestess, who is hundreds of years old but curse by the gods, lives down there. She’ll teach you how to be a powerful witch. She serves me! She serves every pharaoh of Egypt!”
“Are you sure that’s not just a fable? Like the story of Pegasus, Perseus or Medusa? Half of the stories of men can’t be taken literally. They are poems of metaphor. They are exaggerations. There are no centaurs or flying horses.”
He insisted, “No this was real.”
“You had a prophetic dream of her?”
“My sister once spoke of it. As real as Poseidon.”
Phaedra grew interested. “How can this high priestess know you even exist?”
“She rides the teeth of the wind, as a ghost. She sees all.”
Phaedra pulled away from him.
He backed off. “I’m not so terrible and you’ll learn to love me but not in the drooling way of that horrible sorcerous I have presently. She’s madly in love with me and it’s only brought her madness. With madness she’s lost wisdom.”
Phaedra regarded how his youthfulness made him seem more appealing than he really was. She said, “The reason we go mad from love is from our giving the appearances of others so much importance. We foolishly see the erotic where there is only vulgarity. We pretend we’ve received kindness where there was only wheedling. I’ve already learned that terrible lesson, years ago. The eyes can be so foolish.”
Ptolemy grew wary. “You’ve had mad feelings like the Sorcerous Thrace has had?”
“Yes, I was mad for a man. He was handsome and lewd, perhaps as much as Pan, and I was a fool not to be all the more suspicious for it.”
He became impressed. “As long as you’ve recovered. Such romantic love is a horrible sickness to have—the philosophers have warned us. It’s best to only love things that are sensible.”
Phaedra cautiously nodded.
He continued, “If you’ve had that malady and have recovered then that makes you a more advanced witch than my last one.”
She quibbled, “A more advanced person, maybe.”
“An advanced witch can’t have a foolish heart. I can’t fight wars within and without as fools befuddle me. I can’t have a witch who’s so bossy and blind.”
Phaedra asked, “Why are you at war with Cleopatra? Why not have a joint rule as has been the family tradition?”
Ptolemy frowned. “My sister is mad with power. She should step aside and let me rule Egypt now that I’m of
age. It’s always men that rule. She was nice enough to take care of things when I was too young but now she has to take her place. Dead! Hades will take care of her.”
Phaedra put up her hand. “Only Rome can sort this one out. It has to be to their liking.”
“And what will they like? Tell me. Show me what magic you can do so far. Tell us of the future.” He pointed over the edge of his boat. “Look into the reflection of the river and tell the future.”
“I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“My old witch hated water but she wasn’t afraid to use it when she had to. Water is a tool.”
Phaedra shook her head. “A tool?”
“It floats boats. It puts out fire. It makes crops grow. Magic, then, if you will. It’s magic. Do it.”
“But I don’t know how.”
He yelled, “Do it!”
Phaedra leaned over the edge of the boat and thought she saw monsters swimming beneath the surface. Eventually she only saw the reflection of sky. She said, “That is disturbing. I’ll reunite with Cleopatra but she’ll be stone.”
Ptolemy shook his head. “Her damn statue? I won’t allow it anywhere near the palace. It’ll just confuse the peasants as to who’s in charge.”
“No, I see it in an underground place.”
“Good, the atrocious rock has been buried.”
“Could it be in the temple to the snake god?”
Ptolemy asked, “Why would they want that? Why would the snake temple want a statue of an old nasty crocodile?”
Phaedra asked, “You said the temple was under the desert. How does anyone find it?”
“It finds you. You must be strong with magic. It must be your destiny. The temple came about because of curses from the gods so your destiny might be your own destruction. You might go into the desert and that is the end of you. Or you might go down into the ground and take roots and finally really grow. We always take our chances with the gods. They often lead men down a thorny path to doom, and only for their own mirth.”
“Are you sure such a thing is real? Maybe the magic temple is only a myth… the sort of myth that’s only make-believe.”
“Why would it not be true?”
“Sometimes there are myths that say one thing to mean other things far more complicated. Maybe we only think the gods laugh at us because we don’t know how else to explain the events around us.”
Ptolemy frowned. “I won’t give the gods a good laugh, that’s all I know. They’ve laughed enough already at my sister. Now it’s time to get serious and violent! The gods like a good laugh but the gods also like a bloody war and a winning team!”
~
In the palace, Sorceress Thrace saw the fate of the city in the smoke of her magic fire. Alexandria was burning. She asked to see herself. She was far outside the city, covered in wrinkles, in the company of dangerous strangers.
“No! I must not grow old, forgotten. Ptolemy can never love me then! I must be with him—staying beautiful for him! I must get to him! I must be there for him for when he misses me and realizes he loves me. Being far from home will make him see his love for me! He has never been away from home before!”
She looked in her mirror of polished volcanic glass and pushed up on her cheeks. “I must not be left behind—I must stay one step ahead of everybody!”
She put mint leaves in her fire. “Sweet bird of youth, thirty times more than ever before, keep me immune until the next full moon!” She poured extra oil into the fire then leaned over the hot smoke until she felt her skin dry and tighten. She fainted from the pain.
When she awoke, Sorceress Thrace put a cap on her bald head, fled the palace and drove a chariot to the Nile. At the first cargo boat she told the four sailors, “I am rich as Midas. I have gold. Take me to Cairo quickly and I will pay you well.”
A farmer who was waiting for another boat, to send his crops, warned her, “Those are a band of cutthroats. Don’t step in their boat.”
She laughed. “Cutthroats? That is not any power against mine. I will make them my slaves.”
The farmer advised, “Wait for another boat.”
“They have a big sail, they will go fast.”
“No, really. Don’t trust them.”
Sorceress Thrace boarded and told the brutes, “You will not see my money until I am there.” A strong wind picked up and filled the sail, pushing the boat out into the wide weedy river delta. “We are on our way, regardless.” She pulled her cap off her bald head and sat facing the sun. “Nice hot day, today.”
A sailor said, “It’ll burn your skin, like that. You’re too pale. You Greek?”
She thought about how she grew up in a cold dark mountain cave and her mother was like a terrible dragon, keeping her deep within, never leaving her alone, teaching her fire spells, until one day she grew strong enough to crush her mother’s head with a rock and then she cooked her and ate her.
After the boat was hidden within the vast swamps upstream of the delta, two men grabbed her arms behind her back. Another sailor facing her held a knife to her throat. “You’ll give us more than all your gold… beautiful lady!”
Sorceress Thrace laughed. He dropped his glowing hot knife and tripped backwards. A man behind her grabbed her but fell back in pain, his fingers burnt black. The other men behind her backed off in caution.
“I am the great Sorceress Thrace, stronger than any witch because I first learned my magic high in the mountains. You are now my slaves and you will be the first of my great army. And you will love me.”
One of the men threw an oil lamp at her. Her dress ignited.
“And you will love me!” She looked down to brush the fire away before it ate up all her fabric. “You can’t kill me. I ate the cooked flesh of a vampire, a man made eternal with liquid gold. That gold is in my blood now. I will live forever!”
A frightened sailor held up a knife.
“Spill my blood and I replace it with yours.” She licked her lips. “I would drink it from your neck.”
He yelled, “Vampires are killed with fire!”
Another sailor cried, “We tried that already!”
She convulsed with hysterical laughter.
A sailor behind her took an oar and pushed her. It burst into flames but still knocked her over the edge of the boat. She splashed into the river. She gasped, “Water! No!” She slipped under. When she splashed back up to the surface of the river her skin was so wrinkled she looked elderly.
The men screamed. She grabbed the boat to try to get back in but they pushed her under with their oars until she drowned. When her corpse settled into the mud of the riverbed it bubbled. A few hours later all that was left of it was a charcoal skeleton.
~
Ptolemy’s ship floated up a stretch of the river that was wild. Phaedra shivered as she felt overwhelmed. She murmured, “Oh my Pegasus. We finally see Egypt.”
Ptolemy spit in the water. “I’ve never been out of Alexandria before to see anything like this. It all looks so awful out here. The Nile looks so primitive. How can anybody live where it’s so primitive! I’ve learned about this land but to see it with my own eyes is shocking. There’s so much empty land and weeds… what an atrocious waste of land!”
Phaedra reminded him, “I’m sure we’ll see farmland when we get closer to Cairo.”
“I want to see it all over the place, everyplace. If Rome is to be kept happy there better be a lot more farms! I’m hungry myself already. Did we bring any food?”
His men looked mortified.
Ptolemy grumbled to his men. “I wish you remembered to pack food. I’m so hungry. Doesn’t this boat go any faster? Is this how slow all boats really go? I want it to go faster! I’d always imagined boats going fast and the king’s boat should be the best!”
The sailors looked dismayed.
Ptolemy added, “When we get to Cairo I hope I see a great city again if I have to spend any time there and eat their food. They better have beer! They better be ad
vanced enough for beer!”
A sailor told him, “Egypt invented beer.”
Phaedra said, “I’ve read that there’s great pyramids there in Cairo.”
He shook his head. “I’m sure that’s all tall tales… the silly myths of this land. The myths of children. You’re right about there being too many stories out there that are such exaggerations. The lighthouse that my family built is surely the tallest thing ever built on all the earth and everybody can see that. Cairo will be nothing compared to the glory of Alexandria. My family built that!”
Phaedra nodded to be agreeable.
Ptolemy kept talking about food and how hungry he was.
As they sailed south up the Nile, marshes turned into deeper waters lined in papyrus plants. Beyond the annually flooded areas of the river was the desert, with little transition between the two areas. Only the toughest drought-resistant trees survived since the floodwaters only came once a year and all the plants beyond the banks needed to survive nine months of the year without any surface water.
Animals appeared in view. Gazelles and wildebeest snuck up to drink. Monkeys were in many of the treetops. Baboons loudly quarreled where there was shade on the ground. Lions and leopards patrolled. Elephants stood in their groups. Hippopotamuses kept paranoid watch in the water. Geese flew from shore to shore, always sounding off alarms.
Phaedra marveled, “This is such a strange land.”
Ptolemy picked his nose as he grumbled, “It’s a wasteland. A waste of land where there isn’t anything growing to eat. Why is it so far to the next city? What a waste of river!”
Phaedra suggested, “Maybe it would be safer for your throne if you ruled from an Egyptian city far up the Nile, farther from the sea and the Romans.”
Ptolemy made a haughty face. “Rule from the Nile? The Egyptians are worthless. The great minds of science were always the Greeks. The world’s greatest scientists were Greeks in Alexandria. Euclid wrote thirteen books of geometrical theorems. Archimedes also did important geometrical research. The city of Alexandria did something new in science no Greek had ever thought to do before… scientists didn’t just sit around and think up ideas and keep it in their head, they experimented and put it out on worktables. They made new stuff!”
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