I was the shadow's shadow. Because I was possessed of both soul and wit, I could undertake to be inconspicuous. I cared for my charge as I could, as little as there was to do here, with servants to tend her and a king to guard her.
Duty tore at me. My queen came and went as she pleased, by Alexander's order; any who accused her of spying was swiftly silenced. I, seeing the queen's heir so manifestly safe, was sorely tempted to abandon the charge and follow where my heart truly was, with the queen. But I had given my word. I would serve the heir until the queen, or the queen's heir herself, set me free.
She came to me one evening as the year drew on toward winter. Alexander was out fighting; there was a great deal of Persia still to subdue, and he was much preoccupied with it. To my amazement, Etta had not tried to follow him to his war. As if some communication had passed between them, a promise that he would return, she settled into her old, blank calm.
She was sitting by the fire in the room that Alexander had given her, staring blindly at the flames, when her mother passed the door-guard. The queen was windblown and damp and spattered with mud, for it had been raining that day, a cold raw rain. She came in shivering. The servant, unprompted, ran to fetch dry clothes for her; I warmed her hands in mine, and led her to the fire, sitting her down beside her daughter. Etta was rapt in contemplation of the flames; she was oblivious to us both.
The queen ran a hand lightly over the bright gold curls. "It's time," she said. "Winter comes; the people need us. It's time to go home."
My heart leaped at the prospect, but I said, "This one may beg to differ."
"She may," said the queen. She was warming slowly; the chattering of her teeth had eased. She took the cup that the servant brought, and sipped wine heated with spices. Between sips she said, "If she wishes to stay, and if the king will agree to it, she may."
I was silent. I tried to be expressionless, but I was no Etta. My eyes, I have been told, never fail to give me away.
"I release you from your charge," she said. "You've kept it admirably, for years longer than you must ever have expected. Now you may lay it down. She herself has chosen her keeper. You are free."
"No," I said. I startled myself. "I can't be free. Not while her soul is bound apart from her body."
"Not even to go back to the people? Not even to be what you were born to be, priestess and warrior, protector of the tribe?"
"I protect my queen's heir," I said.
She might have said more, but she chose to say nothing. She bent her head. "As you will," she said.
My queen went back to her people, as duty bade her. I stayed where my duty bound me. My heart was dark and still; my prescience had fled. I only knew that where the soulless one went, there must I go.
It was a long journey, a tale of years. We saw the road through Asia, and the land of India, but never the stream of Ocean; Alexander's army refused to go so far. He, forever their lover, gave way. They say he wept that he had no more worlds to conquer. I know that he wept because his people would not follow him where he yearned to go.
Word came from my people through long chains of messengers, until it was stretched and distorted into little more than rumor. There was a war or two, a famine, a fire on the plain; but there were joys, too: rich hunting, strong victory, the birth of a white filly-foal among the horses. I was near to forgetting what I had been; my thoughts most often were in Greek, though my dress remained Persian, for modesty and for convenience.
The histories tell nothing of us. My doing: I could protect my charge from notoriety, and guard her against false rumor. There were so many followers about Alexander, after all, and more, the farther he traveled. We were too familiar to remark on, and too dull, in the end, to notice. What were we, after all, but a woman of a certain age, and a speechless idiot?
Etta grew from beautiful and empty child into even more beautiful and just as empty woman. She needed strong protection then against men who saw the shapely body and the vacant eyes, and thought to take what they pleased. I killed one or two, and maimed half a dozen more. After that they were wary, walking well shy of me and offering at least token respect to my charge.
My queen died while we followed Alexander home from India. We were in the Gedrosian desert then, in that horror of heat and sun and thirst, when even the strong shriveled and died. I endured because I must; I tended Etta, I saw to it that she had what water there was, and I kept her on her feet when she would have lain down on the march.
It was a long while since I had been scrupulous in keeping the rites of the Goddess. I worshipped her still, but in these foreign lands, in this foreign army, with no one of my own kind but a soulless child, I had let slip the observances one by one, until I could barely remember even the great ceremonies.
Yet in one thing I remained as I was. I still dreamed. The dreams came when they would, which was often enough; they were sometimes foreseeings, sometimes memories, and sometimes visions of the world as it was in that hour. I learned more of my people then than from any message or rumor; for a little while I was among them again, living the life to which I was born, and my heart eased immeasurably?until I woke and found myself again among strangers.
In Gedrosia we traveled by night in what cool there was, and slept through the burning heat of the day. That day I had found a sheltered hollow in the sand, and made a burrow for us both. There was water, rather brackish but not too scarce, and bread to wash down with it. I felt almost luxurious, and almost at ease, as I dozed beside Etta.
She was not as drawn with suffering as most of us. She was thin, certainly, and her cream-pale skin had burned dark gold, and her hair bleached from gold to almost white. Yet she showed no sign of weakness. She slept as a healthy young thing could, even in a pit of Tartarus.
As I slid in and out of sleep, I seemed to pass from this world of fire into a world of blessed water. Rain fell in torrents, running in rivers over the plain. I saw my queen, caught in the midst of the hunt, gathered in a circle with her companions. They all sheltered under cloaks, but she stood bareheaded in the storm.
She was older; we all were. But she was still strong, still beautiful. She laughed as the rain sheeted over her, flattening her hair to her skull and her garments to her body. She spread her arms and danced with the joy of life and living.
The Goddess took her just then, in supernal mercy, with great blessing. I saw the fire come down, the bolt from heaven. It pierced through her from crown to sole. It seared her body to ash; her soul spun free, brighter than the lightning, startled, singing like a lark as it soared up to heaven.
The body that I had believed must be waiting for it was still asleep beside me in the horror of Gedrosia. No soul came to fill it; no living spirit to fill her emptiness with splendor.
I had no tears, but still I wept. My queen was dead, gone, lost forever. I sprang up, staggering with the effort. But where would I go, what path would I take, that I had not set foot upon already? My horse was dead; my body clung to life by sheer will. I could go no faster, nor drive myself harder.
There was nothing I could do but sink down in my burrow of sand, and give myself up to mourning for my kinswoman, my beloved, my queen.
We survived Gedrosia, Etta and I, and Alexander whose spirit was unconquerable. Every step of that journey after my dream had come and gone, I yearned for my people and my country, my tribe without a queen. But when we had come to the end, to water and blessed green and relief, at last, from thirst and hunger and furnace heat, I dreamed again.