Clear blue water lapped at the hull of the ship. The skies were entirely clear and cerulean. All around her the sailors were busy with ropes and the sails, while they tried to take the ship securely up to the docks. Gabrielle looked upon the proceedings with great disinterest. Her eyes were concentrated on the port city, where the merchant ship had landed her. Alexandria. Gabrielle recalled her and Xena's starry night conversation. Egypt had needed a girl with a chakram back then. She had no idea how things were now or even what the problem had been, but she had decided on Egypt as her first step. The first steps on her lone path as the new warrior of greater good that she was or would have to become. The ship slowly settled into its moorings.
Gabrielle carefully lifted her belongings. She was dressed in her red amazon leathers and carried two bags, one containing her concealed fortune which still seemed rather large as well as her scrolls, the other containing her clothes wrapped around the urn. The chakram hung at her belt and her sai's sat at their customary resting place in her boots. Carefully taking in the sight of the bustling harbor Gabrielle locked her melancholy away in her heart and stepped into the city with a smile even if her sea green eyes kept their sad cast.
The day turned amazingly hot as she wandered aimlessly through the bazaar, which seemed to cover all the large and small streets around here. Gabrielle was browsing for some new clothes, her red leathers were getting worn and she felt a need to renew herself a little. Suddenly she heard brash voices speaking roman in a tone typical of soldiers. Slowly so she didn't attract attention to herself, she turned her position, so that she could observe.
A small platoon of roman legionnaires was walking through the market as if they owned the place. Gabrielle was bewildered. Hadn't they stopped the Romans from taking over Egypt? She remembered the bloody battle between Brutus and Marc Anthony. Her blade slicing through the throat of Brutus... That had been 26 years ago. A lot had probably changed in those years. She wondered again, why she had chosen to go here. She had no idea, what the problem pulling Xena to Egypt had been. Or had it just been another bout of wanderlust like what had gotten them deeper into Africa? Gabrielle shook her head and turned her gaze back down at the different and beautiful clothes on the rack before her. The legionnaires passed her without comment.
Gabrielle stopped in the middle of a market square. Apollo's chariot was getting low and soon the face of the moon would grace the sky. She needed to find a place to rest and maybe glean some more of the state of affairs in the city. She had looked all day, but Alexandria seemed like a warmer cosmopolitan version of Athens or even Rome, not a place in need of her help. Maybe she would soon sail to Athens and from the long but well known trip to Amphipolis and the crypt awaited her. Gabrielle passed a few kids playing in an alley. Smiling she turned and asked: "Hey guys. Could you help me?"
The two boys, who up until then had been busy playing warriors with their stick swords, turned and beheld the stunning woman standing at the mouth of the alley. Achim smiled and quickly ran up to the sweet seeming woman. Something in her eyes and nature assured him that she would never harm him or allow him to come to harm in her presence. "If I can", he replied. Her smile became dazzling.
"Could you direct me to an inn?" She asked.
Achim concentrated very hard. He knew of more than a few taverns, where he and his big brother sometime had to go to pick up their drunken father. But taverns didn't have rooms and this woman, who was clearly not from their lands, would probably need one. Then he remembered a place, his brother had taken him, when they had been out looking for their father. It had been an inn, a huge place made for all the foreign travelers, who came to the city to consult the library and the sages gathered around it. He couldn't remember the name his brother had given him, but he still knew the directions. He explained this to the foreign beauty. She responded by ruffling his hair and walking away. It was only when she left that he noticed the strange weapons she carried her small body and Erkan standing at his side. He stared at the image of a green dragon tattooed permanently to the foreigner's back.
"Who do you think that was?" Erkan asked in awe.
"I don't know but she felt familiar somehow", he responded. When she disappeared around the corner, he shrugged and the two boys returned to their game.
Gabrielle walked the route that sweet little boy had given her and truly enough she reached a beautiful well kept set of buildings obviously a very large inn complete with stables and rooms. The place was open and looked to be able to cater to her tastes. She hoped she could buy a good hot bath here as she hadn't been able to get one since her passing through the Persian lands. Cold baths just left her feeling unwashed for some reason. She walked to the door to the common room. The sign above the inn read 'Sapphire's house' in both Egyptian and Roman. Gabrielle smiled and opened the door letting the familiar sounds of a bustling taproom greet her.
She walked down the three steps to the ground floor briskly and looked around. The room was busy but not crowded. People from many lands sat at different tables drinking and eating heartily. She saw what could only be roman nobles seated next to Persian traders. The sound carried many a language or dialect in her direction. For a second she marveled at the fact that she knew, spoke and wrote all the languages in the room. She approached the bartender, who looked like the person to help her.
"Excuse me", she asked in her best Egyptian.
"Yes?" The old and portly looking Egyptian man turned from some work to look at her. His eyes and face lighted and his weary frown became a smile at the sight before. Gabrielle had become so used to her having that effect on a man that she barely even noticed anymore.
"I would like a room and if possible a hot bath", she asked and looked him straight in the eyes with her most sweet expression.
The man looked her up and down. "Of course that will be 2 dinars for the room a night and 1 dinar for the bath", he explained and indicated a sign besides the door where all the prices were listed in different languages.
"Good I will take it. How long is the kitchen open?" She asked well in the practice of living in inns, while she handed him the coin for both the bath and the room. If the kitchen closed too soon, she would rather eat before she took the bath.
"The kitchen is open until I close the taproom, so at least 2 hours yet for any large meal", he offered. Gabrielle smiled at that and was guided to her room.
Gabrielle felt genuinely refreshed from her bath as she sat down to consume the large portion of food in front of her. A large portion of a stew served with vegetables and some fresh bread. She kept drinking water instead of having ale, as she felt the dehydration of a long day spent in the sun in her body.
As she nursed the last of her stew and bread a murmur passed through the by now crowded taproom, which then slowly conversation by conversation became silent. Gabrielle looked to her side from the back of the room, where she had seated herself. A man stood on a small raised dais just a few feet to her right. "Maybe a bard or some other entertainment", she thought and looked back down at her plate, her stomach telling her to get on with the business of eating.
Behind her the man drew himself up and began to speak in the customary rhymes of the bards. Her well trained ear told her that he was using a Greek storytelling rhythm. "Tonight I will start by relating to you all a story found in the scrolls of the great Gabrielle of Poteidia, the one who became known as the battling bard. In her words as written it begins. I sing the song of Xena Warrior Princess and an adventure we had, which I have chosen to call: When in Rome", he set out on a telling of one of her stories. Gabrielle looked up in surprise and looked around at the different tables, where most faces looked on in rapt attention as the bard gave a performance telling how Xena and she had saved Vercinix and arranged the death of Crassus. Gabrielle remembered the painful day clearly in her mind, which had made her arrange the death of another man for the first time in her life. An evil man for sure, yet it still pained her to think about it. It hadn't been the last death she had arranged either.
The bard finished her story and went of the stage to drink a little before he could continue. A voice beckoned to her in her mind. It called for her to take his place and tell these people how Xena had been in the end, how the end of the great warrior princess had come about. It was an untold story. No one knew and the word from Japan, which was an unknown and unheard of land here in the west, would take centuries to spread if it ever did. She was the only one, who could honor Xena in the telling of her last story, the telling of the last story she would ever write. She had resolved to stop writing heroic tales now that Xena was no longer around. Maybe she would concentrate on poetry for while, it had been long since she had written much of that. Resolved to finally do something about it she rose and walked over to the dais.
"If I may I would like to relate another story, before the honored bard continues", she asked and looked around. She caught the eye of both the bard and the bartender both seemed curious instead of angered and so she took the customary seat of the bard in front of the audience. She had brought a mug of water and drank before speaking again. She hoped that her recent year of adventure without the possibilities or inclination to tell stories hadn't destroyed her abilities. "What I am about to tell you is a true story. I should know I was there. I sing to you a song of Xena, my best friend and soul mate. I sing of her last adventure… As I recall it all began a starry night near the northern borders of Greece…" She spoke clearly and put all the emotion of each moment as she remembered it into her voice and eyes. She maintained eye contact and focused on the task at hand.
"And so I stood alone on a merchant ship sailing away from Higuchi", she finished and fell silent. All around her people was staring at her teary eyed, respectfully or even with eyes tinged in the familiar fear of the unknown. Gabrielle sighed and suddenly noticed that she had been crying. She didn't know for how long. She walked almost in a daze back to her table and sat down. She felt many eyes on her unsettling her warrior instincts. She looked on her hands, which were trembling from unspoken emotions.
"You're Gabrielle of Poteidia. The battling bard", the voice of the bard asked in an awed tone of voice a few feet from her right.
She turned her sea green eyes on the young man, who had recited one of her scrolls earlier. Much earlier Gabrielle realized as her eyes told her from the lack of sunlight coming in from the windows. "Yes", she answered, wondering if perhaps the revealing of her presence in a roman city was a mistake. They were no friends of the Romans.
"I am so honored to meet you. I revere the work you have done. It is by far the best works of fiction I have ever read", he told her exuberantly. "You even include yourself in the story with just enough realism to make it all sound so plausible", he blabbered on.
Gabrielle felt burning hot anger enter her gut and her green eyes darkened. "I have never ever managed to write even a single line of fiction. Those adventures are all real. I was there I know this", she raised her voice.
The man just looked at her uncomprehendingly. "How is that possible? You would have to be ancient or dead? Several times", he looked at her like she was deluded.
Gabrielle looked at the man and suddenly understood that this was a man with little or no imagination of his own. That was why he was so good at reciting her story and probably many others like it yet seemed to make no embellishments of his own. He didn't believe in the fantastic. He only believed in what he had experienced. She let the anger drain away and pitied the man instead as she rose. "I don't want to argue this with you. You and I would never agree", she offered as she walked past him heading for the bar.
She ordered ale and turned only to find the bard standing still at her side. "I don't mean any offense, if I offended you. I would like to make it up to you", he offered as the bartender handed her the ale and said that he had it put on her tab.
Gabrielle sighed as she walked towards her table again, the bard trailing behind her. "I could tell… No, that isn't… Maybe I could…" He babbled as he seemed to search for something to repay her with.
Gabrielle turned and looked at him. "Listen. It was just a minor misunderstanding. You and I are even", she said with resolve and sat back down.
"No. It is not about the argument. Well not entirely. I just wanted to give you something. Your stories have been with me as long as I remember and now you have even graced me with the last adventure of Xena. I must repay you somehow", he explained and took an empty seat across from her.
Gabrielle was growing exasperated. "I don't want anything. I came here to Egypt hoping to find out, what Xena wanted here, but I don't see any problems around here. The story and the scroll it was written on is like all my other stories a part of the world and where I travel I will spread the final story of my friend and her heroics", she explained sincerely.
The bard looked at her then seemed to recall something. "I don't know what Xena wanted or sought here in Egypt, but I can tell you that all is not as calm in the realms of Egypt as it seems to be here in Alexandria", he told and his tone of voice grew conspiratorial.
"First of all my name is Kheron", he explained and offered his hand to her. Gabrielle shook it, but kept her eyes intensely focused on the bard sitting before her.
"Well back to the little story of the problems here in Egypt. Do you know about the Romans?" He asked. Gabrielle warily nodded, while quietly in her thoughts thanking the gods that this rambling man didn't write his own histories.
"Of course, I forgot about your 'encounter' with Cleopatra over 20 years ago. Anyway Egypt became subject to Rome under Augustus Caesar and he installed a governor by the name of Lucius Aemilius Paullus to rule here in his name. Lucius was greatly interested in Egyptian history and the library here in Alexandria. He spent a lot of time here in the beginning. Egypt didn't prosper under him but at least we had some measure of peace. However a few years ago his son supposedly another scholarly roman ex-legionnaire took over for Lucius. And where Lucius was an adequate ruler with a small grain of respect for Egyptian culture and its people, his son Lucius the younger is a greedy, but incredibly smart son of a bitch. He began by making the legions around here and in the rest of the cities stronger, then he increased taxes wildly just to finance his new hobby or should we call it obsession", he paused for drama. Gabrielle barely noted it.
"He began digging up the ancient tombs and places hidden under the sands of the great desert like a mad man. When ever has he found a treasure, he has given it to the roman state instead of keeping it. Rumor has it that he doesn't mind doing this, because he is not seeking treasure. He is seeking the ancient magic of the pharaohs and gods. He wants to become a living god… At least that is what the people fear. You must understand, grand and beautiful as they are all the ancient tombs are riddled with traps and magic. And not all that is kept in them should ever be allowed to see the light of day again. Legend has it that the secrets of life and death even immortality lies hidden out there in the sand dunes. I don't believe it, but the people do, and they have tried to stop the governor and his grave robbers. There have been massacres out there in the open desert. And both sides have lost too many people to stop the madness now", he stopped and looked expectantly at her, like he was expecting her to applaud or react to his story. Gabrielle thanked him and downed her ale. She rose and walked to her room. She understood fully, why Xena had wanted to come. The ancient Egyptian magic was according to Hercules powerful enough to wrest souls from Dahak and resurrect the dead. Added to that she had no idea of how strong the mysterious Egyptian gods were in these times. She entered her room lost in thought.
"I could look for a way to bring Xena back from the dead", the thought suddenly showed up in her recalcitrant mind. It echoed back and forth for many long minutes as she debated the issue. But nothing had changed for Xena. If she brought Xena back against her wishes then according to Xena the 40000 souls of Higuchi would remain unavenged and become lost. "No. I won't disappoint and dishonor Xena with such an action. But the governor must be stopped. If only to stop the insane battles out in the desert", she decided and looked over her room once more. She felt the icy disappointment and loneliness in her heart and bones as she undressed. Slowly she lay down on the bed and sank into a dreamless sleep on the pillows with only a small blanket covering her muscled and sunburned form from the icy cold of the desert night.