A/N: A Yuletide gift for sixer. As a gift, it should have been, uh, better.
Crowns Upon The Falcons
A trickster wind born in distant lands was taunting the banners that sluiced from Pella's grim citadels, plucking flags and fringes with an irreverent hand while the city slept. It sent the shadows of the trees into a racing froth, like dozens of furious, silver stallions driven out from the molten core of the moon with strides that struck ice from the mountains, from the snarling sea. Summer was still writing its name in sunlight across the hillsides and open fields by day but the nights had been growing colder; and so, too, the Kabeiria revelries seemed to become more frequent, to pull themselves closer and closer to dawn as if in defiance of the dark winter. Cries and screams and laughter glittered in the palace courtyard, invoking Dionysus without words. And, with veils of dancing wind, Dionysus answered.
Sleepless, Alexander shivered in the slick coils of the old anaconda, listening for his mother's voice, wishing for her hand on his brow or Hephaestion's arm thrown across his collarbone. The serpent's long, sibilant lullabies no longer soothed him, spoken as they were from the corner of her mouth. Her curling tail was no substitute for a cherished caress in the night, her split tongue unsuitable for kisses. Many times, his father had raged through the apartments Alexander shared with Olympias and the nurses, screaming at the perversions all around him, the snake-worship and uncouth manner of living. Who leaves a boy to be raised by beasts? That was how he had said it, and in a most beastly howl.
Something smashed downstairs. Voices roared, delighted and wild, Philip's among them. Like starving dogs on the brink of death.
Hours later, when the black ocean had finally swallowed up Pella and all of her spinning embers, Alexander dreamed of falcons with bright eyes, and entrails strewn through the dirt in sacred shapes of prophecy.
The bird was given to him as a gift upon his return to the sacred gates exalting Ishtar before Babylon. Brass bells spun and sputtered on its ankles when it was raised over the bent backs of his remaining soldiers; and the men looked up at it and smiled strangely, or frowned. Sunlight slicked its beak like butter. People were crowding each other and calling in a dozen languages, coarse as crows, but it was raised above them, an icon scratched into the glassy ceiling melting upward from every horizon, the sky. Alexander gazed with reddened eyes on its fearsome countenance, the head like a polished hook for soft antelope flanks, the shoulders sharp as mountains peaked against the solar arrogance of its own two eyes. Small, for a companion to Basileus, Pharaoh and Shahanshah. But then, all the world shrank beneath it, even when it was earthbound; he could see that for himself. A guide across the desiccated flats, circling Darius' ruin. A dread scavenger carrying off the heads of both enemies and friends. A kingmaker bird, a harbinger of loss; he could see.
It was passed to his hand through the labyrinth of shadow, sun and many-chambered charms swinging from his wrist: azurite, onyx, rare Egyptian turquoise, and carnelian for luck. The leather jess fit easily into his hand. Black as basalt, the bird clutched his gauntlet firmly and stared at him, making no sound. He was suddenly aware of the wet nausea wrapped up tight in his belly, of the hot slats of pain holding up his spine. He felt himself being studied and judged dispassionately, and at once he said to the animal: "Cleitus, very dearest friend to my father, and nearly so to me. How wonderful to see you again when you surely should be dead."
Hephaestion, riding next to him, merely looked aside, peering at all the upturned faces and tawny, open hands stroking his heel as if they were very far away, nine long years behind him, an adoring empire of ghosts.
"Do you understand terror?" Hephaestion asked him; more than once, Alexander would realize later, but most memorably at the peak of a pulsing summer afternoon as they swayed on horseback at the head of an impossibly long caravan, striking out from the richness and opulence of Persia's beating heart into golden desolation. Pacing the river Araxes had taken them to a theatre of shattered cliffs and thin, mean-spirited meadows blurred bronze and yellow in the violence of the sun. When Alexander had finally issued an order to ford the hazy water, even Bucephalus tossed his great black head and seemed to hesitate on the bank before allowing himself to be urged forward.
"More important to wonder, I should think," he eventually replied, watching from the opposite bank as men lashed packs of armour and provisions onto their backs, "is whether or not terror understands us."
"I always knew you were a little mad, but I thought at least you were aware of it. This is the end of the world for many of these people. From here on, they will be afraid, even under strong leadership." His horse stirred beneath him, and Hephaestion paused to soothe it. "You see the danger."
For the first time since they had spoken alone in the palace cloisters, Alexander looked at him squarely. Travel always stole away most of his attention, the navigations and discovery and unexpected distances, but he never ignored his officers, or his infantry for that matter. Hephaestion knew the extent of his devotion better than anyone else and was not surprised by his distress. "This is my army," he said firmly, then: "Ours. Macedon's. There are no traitors here."
"The men, they trust you, of course; but if they felt it acceptable, they would ask: Why do you follow the eagle even as it crosses over wastelands and kingdoms of shadow?" Hephaestion drew a breath, stared at the sheer cliffsides rising behind the dark presence of countless soldiers like great bone shards, the corpses of titans strewn across the broken fields. "Yes, I've seen you. It's not the avatar of Zeus; he would mark the way more vividly for his own kin." That won him a smile. Guarded, but genuine, so much that he found himself asking: "When did you decide that our portent is a bird?"
"What is more suitable?" Alexander answered quietly. "A device of kings for hundreds of years. A devourer of vermin, and serpents," he added, after the barest pause. "If there is only one thing that ever made me stand apart from other men, it was the knowledge that men have no power alone. The beasts of the world are the true masters here, the harsh generals and fighters and flesh-eaters in a hidden war, the ones who will eat us when we die. I have always known that, my friend." Perhaps unconsciously, his fingers twisted in Bucephalus' dark mane, where his rings and cuffs glittered ferociously. "I choose animal companions who know the way and only ever allow myself to be led."
The sun passed briefly behind a feverish cloud. Birds threaded thoughtful songs over the mindless droning of insects, and the sunburned scruff sighed in a textureless wind as if awaiting the sharp hooves of satyrs. Hephaestion said nothing, but gazed through a golden haze of dust hanging like veils between the two of them, his eyes soft and smouldering.
"What?" Alexander said archly.
"There is certainly more than one thing that separates Alexander from other men. There are many things, not all of them good, which are Alexander's alone. Hephaestion is one of those." He turned the words over on his tongue carefully, as if they might have been knives. "But there will be other beasts to chase as omens. Perhaps now is not the time, this is not the way."
"You think this is a pilgrimage. And a doomed one."
"I think that being led can only take you so far. We went out to Gaugamela to face the Persians. We cross the Araxes in pursuit of Darius' killers. Even under the guidance of this eagle, we will run out of little fancies someday, or run up against one that will not bend as we like. You know I plan to follow you anywhere, everywhere, forever. But I must say this: these men are driven beyond their own fears out of love for you, and when this march finally ends and they find themselves surrounded by the horror of the unknown itself, you will need to provide them with reassurance. A sense of home, or at least a secure road back to it."
"This is no time to think of home. I will not have any of us turn back to Babylon until I am satisfied."
"And what does it take to satisfy the Basileus of Macedon, the mighty Alexander? It was easy, once. The boy Alexander always knew what he wanted."
And the king Alexander flashed brilliantly in the cruel light, his eyes narrowing. "You are dear to me, Hephaestion, and you know it. But, very occasionally, you grow tiresome."
"We have known each other too long," Hephaestion said wryly. "There is nothing new to discuss. Straggle a bit, then, and bother your army for the rest of the day. I can keep the head in line."
A subtle transformation occurred as Hephaestion watched. The slow tension sketching lines across Alexander's browned skin abruptly dissipated, gone with the argument he had been anticipating. It was one of the first things about him that Hephaestion had ever learned to gauge, his temper; it was quick and changable as the dogs running half-wild outside Pella - or moreso, he knew now, like the lions kept on silver chains in the markets of Babylon. Carry it too far and he would overreact in turn, but it was easy to turn him aside from an unpleasant mood. He smiled and the muted sun seemed suddenly gentler, less of a burden on Hephaestion's shoulders. He turned Bucephalus' head back toward the column, and even so late in a hot day the horse stepped cleanly, as if with enthusiasm on his behalf.
"I think I will," he said. "But we'll take our evening meal together as usual. In fact, I'll leave Cleitus and Ptolemy to call informal council for the day. We deserve some peace, now and again."
"Peace," Hephaestion said to the crimson flick of his chlamys, retreating like a snake's tongue. "Yes."
They had been in Egypt, in the new Alexandria, when Cleitus approached him, manifesting in the hot, stale air like a trick of the desert. It was the end of a savage day, singing white-hot with all the fury of gods born from fire and sand, and they met on the western wall of the first administrative buildings to be constructed as a marker for the center of the city. Alexander stared out across the golden backs of a thousand residences and towers, imagining the glare from polished white tiles where there were only wooden frames, skeletons of the powerful organisms yet to come.
"There's something I wish to say," Cleitus told him, with the sort of dry boldness that came naturally to him. Slitting his eyes against the last pure facets of blue sky, he added: "As if I were Philip, mind you."
In the shrill heat lingering on the stones, Alexander felt the barest silvers of cold ease under his fingernails. He nodded, led him past the fine lattice into a well-furnished room from which they could watch the sun go down and put a goblet full of scarlet wine into his hand, to remind him of home.
"I can see," Cleitus said, in a careful, venturing voice and with eyes that cut his words viciously through the flesh and bone protecting the spirit, "what is happening to you. Alexander." He glanced at the shimmering wine, but he did not drink. "You don't want my help. You don't need my help. And that's what is happening."
Of all Philip's former retainers, Cleitus was the most like him, the most dangerous and cunning. He had the aspect of a predator recently released from some cursed corner of the world; but then, his image was sewn into Alexander's memory as far back as he cared to recall. He was not cruel or evil, only dark, and so easily mistaken for many dark things.
"Children grow up." Alexander had already decided to treat him with respect. It was important, however, that Cleitus understood it was a form of respect based in familiarity rather than fear. "I did, as my father had made me out to do. As you had, in your own manner, Cleitus. I could hardly rely on others forever. If I was meant to be king, I would grow to be king. I could only allow circumstances to make of me what they would."
Outside, the sun dropped away and pale young shadows gathered at Cleitus' feet like an impatient animal. He spent a moment considering them, probably thinking of Philip and Eurydice though he would never bring up the girl's name on his own. Prudence made him the exceptional commander he had been for years. He turned, pushed lavish cushions and brocades to the floor, leaned back in his chair and set his wine aside.
"You didn't always claim to be son of the great eagle. Once you were a raven, dashing down into the forests with the rest of us. Those were good years."
"Philip was still alive," Alexander reminded him, favouring no particular tone of voice.
"Yes, he was. And I was a friend to him in the fashion of the dearest man who comes to your mind." Raising a crooked finger, he tapped his head vaguely, the motion like a scavenger's claw. "Think about that: your good friend speaking to your son, a generation from now. Would you hope the boy might listen a little?"
"Of course. But I also plan to be alive to raise my son in my own way."
"Don't we always plan to be alive," Cleitus replied, his face taking on strange, harsh angles in the exotic gloom; and then he smiled faintly. "That's all, then. Up. A proper farewell for your father's old sidearm."
As he had in childhood, Alexander obeyed, his arms open to gather the warm press of a summer orchard, the feral brush of wolfskins, though the speckled fields of memory were far away and Cleitus wore only his woven cloaks and leather battle harness. He drew Macedon along at his side like a length of silk, and all the wilderness crept in its fluttering shadow.
"I keep an eye on you," he said, "so return the favour, by Zeus. I'll haunt you if I die."
"I know," Alexander answered, with a younger man's laugh and a strange stroke of affection in his heart as he slapped Cleitus' shoulder, watching him walk down the sandstone steps into the blue twilight as if abandoning the stage in the middle of a principal act.
"I used to have terrible dreams," Alexander breathed into the dark, softly, like mist rising from the barbarian marshes at moonfall. "As a boy. Terrible. You remember how I would spit and twist until you woke me."
"Fierce as a viper," Hephaestion replied; close to his ear, a blessed wraith. He sounded as though he was nearly asleep. "But you don't suffer them anymore."
"Not since leaving Pella. Not when I'm with you."
And those words carried a certain weight, itself long unspoken; so they lay still and silent for some time, thinking of warm nights spent in simple luxury, wrapped in the breathing voice of the ocean and the wind.
"We will all return to Babylon someday, in different shapes and states, more than we ever were before. Even the lost will be there among us in the beating of our hearts. We'll follow you back, Alexander." A soft sound; a sigh, or laughter. "Your falcon, too, he'll be waiting at the Ishtar Gate. Everything you need, there in the desert made a paradise. Your dreams will only grow sweeter with time."
Overhead, the darkness swallowed his promises, its flesh written over with tales of black pyramids and tomb dust. Alexander opened his eyes to one of the worlds in the back of his mind and lapsed into a vision or a dream, muttered in broken verse: "That was long ago and far away. Wouldn't speak to me through the mouth, anaconda; it doesn't matter, I know where you come from."
"Such is life," Hephaestion remarked quietly, to no one.
He finally left Hephaestion's body in the care of trusted men; namely Ptolemy, to be sure that the proper rituals were observed, and Bagoas, to watch. When he saw that they would do as he said - that they were, in fact, afraid of the eminent brightness in his eyes and would not disobey - he left for the palace aerie and collected the sleek, black falcon that had been given to him by a thousand anonymous hands.
Balanced on his fist like a sleeping bromeliad, the bird gazed with interest on all the riches around them, lit splendidly with sunset shades of Macedonian autumn; guardian sphinxes plated in precious metal, silk partitions stitched with gems, a history of pomp and legend etched on the cool, marble walls in bas relief. Slowly, as they ventured from room to room, the light slithered away underfoot and darkness swept over the open continents left behind; and, in that darkness, icy notes struck by the falcon's bells glittered at the end of the long corridors, spinning upward and outward until they were lost in the unfathomable heights beyond seas, beyond stars.
From the royal apartments to the close, clinging fecundity of the gardens; through the gardens to the walls. The thunderous sprawl of courtyards and peacock tails unfurled around them like terrible, blank scrolls, unclaimed by names or honorifics or personal devices. Alexander held the dark bird called Cleitus out as a lantern against the creeping shadows and was untroubled by voices. Panels of polished obsidian threw his reflection back at him like a broken toy. Roaming Nebuchadnezzar's palace for hours, he met no one who wished to be seen.
"Do you understand terror?" he asked Bagoas from the sickly, soothing comfort of what a coward's ailment hoped to make his deathbed, wrapped in Persian shawls and a clutching membrane of the Babylonian musk that crept up parapets and through window arabesques like a dark reassurance, like a cloak of ashes. He was not alone; he could see. Anaconda's ghost slipped out from beneath the embers whispering in a golden brazier, her eyes full of different distances: the road back to Pella, the span of the Outer Sea, the shores on the other side.
"Yes," the boy replied, unperturbed. With fingers dipped in another stinking hellebore tincture, he traced arcane shapes into the air above Alexander's head, throat, and chest patiently. Persians, Alexander thought, were blind to most wonders, being part of so many. "It is meaning that we still have life in us, and a wish to keep that life safe from harm. It is a feeling when we lose the thing we love. I understand very much." He said it softly, the beautiful boy, as Hephaestion would have done. "Are you well?"
The image of a carnivorous bird was perched above him, glaring through the protective web of Bagoas's motions with his father's eyes, waiting to feed. A cold promise shivered in those colder eyes. It would make him a king above all the others, an emperor of phantoms and sky; and there were black falcons nesting in black trees somewhere, in the Indian jungle, in the tangled gardens just beyond the balcony. They ate legends and heroes with Prometheus' liver, an unparalleled honour. Hephaestion's name was in the beating of their wings, and their wings had begun to clap an intuitive rhythm, a hymn to the gods and recently dead ancestors.
"Soon," Alexander replied. "Yes."