Free Alexander and Alestria by Shan Sa Page B

losing any more time, I arranged the ceremony for the following day and dismissed Oibares, still reeling from the speed of my decision.
    The incantations grew louder as I stepped into the dark interior of a massive temple, its long aisle lined with fires. The ceremony had to be interrupted for an awkward incident: the magi wanted to shave the middle of my head and make me wear a turban-a barbarian practice that I refused. The procession was suspended, and the debate lasted three days, dividing all of Persia. The future of the empire was saved when one magus found a passage in an ancient text citing a king who had been converted without having his head shaved. Reciting prayers all the while, the priests threw me into a pool and purified me. They dressed me in a scarlet tunic and allowed me to wear a wreath of golden laurels, the crown conferred on me by the Macedonians and Greeks.
    The magi consecrated me and gave me the name Akassam, the warrior of fire. They revealed to me a very ancient prediction that foretold the arrival of a warrior from the West. Dressed in red and gold, he would bear the fire of the winged gods all the way to the Far East. Every soldier who followed him and took part in that sacred war would be handsomely rewarded after death. They would live happily in celestial houses, surrounded by women and children.
    That evening, in my dreams, I was back on the battlefield. Arrows whistled by; lances flew. I felt the hunger and thirst of combat. The soft cushions, indolent eunuchs, and intoxicating flattery were beginning to soften my mind and relax my muscles. Thirty days had been for Alexander what three years would be for an ordinary man. My time was counted. My life belonged to forced gallops, to the wind, and to unknown lands.
    A woman was waiting for me, in a distant land, at the very top of a steep, rugged rock.

Chapter 4
    The kings and queens of other countries wore crowns and held scepters. The chiefs and their wives in other tribes lived in tents embroidered with gold thread, ate from silver plates, and wore shimmering tunics. Talestria, queen of the Amazons, had no jewels or sumptuous gowns. She was not crowned. She simply dazzled. She was queen and warrior chief by her wisdom and strength.
    Talestria held no scepter. She had no powers. No one in our tribe liked power. The word was forbidden, cursed. To us, the daughters of the steppe, women who valued freedom, our queen was like the nectar hidden in the heart of a flower. She was that fragrance transmitted from generation to generation.
    The spirits of our ancestors chose one girl as the incarnation of their power. The queen was our voice to communicate with the invisible world. She was the path that led us to the Siberian glacier.
    I, Tania, did not know where my queen had been born. All the girls in our tribe had been abandoned as children. What did her mother and father matter, what did it matter which blood flowed in her veins? Talestria was betrothed to the God of Ice. She was the daughter of autumn and winter. She conversed with horses, sang with the birds, and read the stars. She held the secret of the spirits in the palm of her hand. She reigned over the seasons, over time as it sped past and fled, over eternity.
    In the kingdom of the girls who love horses the sky was our timepiece and the trees our calendar. That is why the ancestors dictated that, wherever we went, we should plant trees for the girls who would pass there hundreds of moons later. They would cut their trunks and read the years that lay between us and them by the rings traced in the wood. Trees were an invisible river allowing us to go back in time or navigate the future.
    Once a year we celebrated the queen's birthday, even though not one of us knew the date of her birth. Our ancestors decreed that the day of the previous queen's death marked the birth of the new queen. During that year's celebrations Talestria was sixteen.
    She was decked in flowers, and her loose hair