The Enchanter Completed

Penthesilea

Judith Tarr

The Queen of the Amazons came to the great Alexander in the royal city of Zadrakarta, just after he had become Great King of the Persians and Lord of Asia. She rode into his hall with a company of bare-breasted warriors, gleaming in bronze and gold, and flung herself at his feet, and begged him to be the father of her son. Alexander, men say, was flattered, but he refused; and she went away unsatisfied, but greatly in awe of the young conqueror.

So men say. Men tell tales to serve themselves. Women, unless silenced, have better things to do with the life the Goddess has given them, than to boast and vaunt and tell lies round the fire at night. Women have a taste for the truth, even when that is too strange for men to endure.

The truth of the tale is altogether different, and altogether wonderful, though perhaps, to a man, it would be a horror past imagining.

The Queen of the Amazons had but one child, and that child was born without a soul. She lived, grew, thrived; she ate and slept and seemed to dream. But when the seers looked into her eyes, they saw only emptiness. Even in animals there is a soul, but in this strong young body there was none.

There was consternation among the priestesses and the council, and great outcry against the abomination. But the queen was unmoved. "The Goddess will mend what she has made," she said. "Be patient; protect her; wait and see."

They would not. She was a monstrous thing, they cried; a visitation of the Goddess' wrath upon the tribe.

At that the queen rose up, laid her hand upon the image of the Goddess that had dwelt in the tribe since the dawn time, and swore a great oath by heaven above and earth below, that this and no other would be Queen of the Amazons when she was dead.

She turned in ringing silence, lifted the child from the altar on which she had been laid, and strode away from the priestesses and the council and any word that might be spoken against her one and only and irrevocable heir.

The queen's heir had no name, for a name requires a soul, and she had none. But with the turning of the years, she gained an epithet of sorts, a word that children used to signify a thing for which they knew no other name: Etta. She answered to it as well as she did to anything else, which was little if at all; for she never spoke, nor seemed to see or hear much that was of human making?except the arts of war. For those she had a gift that was pure instinct, and pure deadly skill.

In the twelfth year of Etta's life, the Great King of Persia fell at the hands of a traitor, and a vaunting boy from Macedon took the throne and the empire. Word came even to the far reaches of the steppe, to the tribes and villages where women ruled and men were permitted only on sufferance. It came swiftest of all to the queen where, led perhaps by prescience, she hunted in the hills not far from Zadrakarta.

She went down to the city between the mountains and the sea, to see for herself what new thing had come upon the world. She left her warriors behind, and her hunting companions, for she had no desire to make of it a state visit. Only Etta followed her, and I.

I was Etta's keeper then, her nursemaid as some were inclined to call me; I knew her ways, what she would eat, how she sustained life without wit or conscious will. She had an animal's instinct to protect herself, which made her a remarkably gifted warrior, and an equal instinct for her mother's presence. She was like a dog, trailing in the queen's shadow.

The queen had never made any effort to cast the child aside; no more did she do so now. As for me, I was part of the child, as I had been since first I was given the keeping of her. The queen had not asked it lightly. I was and am rather more than a guard or a dry-nurse; my lineage is old and my rank not inconsiderable, and the Goddess called me to her priesthood before my breasts were budded. But I did not refuse the charge that was laid on me. I had no such clarity of vision as was granted to the queen my cousin; still I could sense a little of it, and be certain that this child must be protected.

We slipped away from the hunt in the quiet before dawn, covering our trail for some distance away from the camp. It was not that we mistrusted the queen's own warband and oath-sisters, but she was minded to see this Alexander for herself, outside the bonds of royal protocol. Therefore we rode as hunters from the plains, with no splendor of dress or ornament. Our clothes were good and our weapons well made, but it needed a keen eye to see their quality beneath the stains of travel.

Zadrakarta was full of Macedonians: big, rough-spoken men who filled the taverns and roistered in the streets. I had heard that this Alexander kept decent discipline in war, but in the flush of victory it seemed that the army could do as it pleased. There were games, to which women were not admitted, and which the townsfolk found frankly embarrassing: all the men in them were naked.

We were not women of town or army, nor would we bow to any man's will. In Persian dress, with scarves over our faces, we tarried for a day at the games. They were not unlike the games of spring and autumn among the tribes, when the young warriors tested their prowess, and men came to be judged for their fitness to be the fathers of our daughters. We saw a few here whom we might have been glad to take to our beds, but that was not our purpose in this place. We looked for the one who ruled them, the king who was still, by all accounts, little more than a boy.

He was not sitting in the high seat above the field, though that was surrounded by men of rank adorned with gold enough to ransom half of Persia. I had heard what people said; I looked for a sturdy man, not tall, with hair the color of new gold. Soon enough I found him, down on the field, ru

He did not always or even often win. The victors were not afraid of his rank and power, either, nor did they yield the prizes to him. The one who tried had to see it given to the man who had come in last, with a warning not to do such a thing again. Alexander, it seemed, wanted his victories whole, well and honestly won.

That was strikingly unusual in a man, and unheard of in a king. But this was not the usual run of either men or kings. Past that first, unknowing glance, when I saw him as those not touched by the Goddess could see, I was blinded, dazzled, confounded. He was like a rioting fire, like a blaze of the sun. Such a soul came direct from the spheres of heaven. It was too strong for living flesh to bear.

This one would never live to grow old. The fire of the spirit would burn his body to ash long before grey age took him. But oh, Goddess, what a light he would shed before he consumed himself!

I came back reluctantly to the duller world, and to my duty. My queen was watching Alexander, but not as one who is rapt in awe. She was studying him, narrow-eyed, judging as a queen must judge.

Her child between us, blank and soulless Etta, startled me by leaning forward over the tier of benches. I gripped her tightly before she tumbled down. She took no more notice of me than she ever did. Her eyes, for the first time that I could remember, had something like an expression. They were fixed on Alexander. They were full of his fire.

She who saw nothing human or animal, only weapons aimed at her, saw this child of light. She tugged at my hand, struggling to break free. I set my teeth and held on tighter. She began to fight in earnest.

Just before she escaped, I realized that her mother was no longer beside me. My queen had risen and begun a leaping descent through the tiers. On the field below, the races had ended. Men were challenging one another, offering tests of combat.