Free Persian Fire by Tom Holland

acknowledged this. At Pasargadae, a horse from Nisaea would be sacrificed every month before the hallowed tomb of Cyrus himself. Perhaps that was why Bardiya, turning off the Khorasan Highway and pausing in his descent towards the lowlands, lingered in the presence of the herd. Whether he sought legitimisation, or a sign from the heavens, or perhaps just the reading of bad dreams, he would have found in Nisaea ready experts on hand. Magi, interpreters of all that was mysterious, were the guardians of the sacred horses too. Did Bardiya summon these masters of ritual to his presence and ask them what his future might hold? Perhaps. What is certain, however, is that on 29 September 522 bc , a man calling himself Bardiya was in Nisaea, in a fort named Sikyavautish — and that it was there that Darius finally tracked him down.
    What happened next would be retold by all those who traced their lineage from the seven leaders of the assassination squad. Many versions must have been elaborated over the years. All agreed, however, that Bardiya was taken wholly by surprise. It seems that the conspirators and their followers, coolly riding up to the gates of the fortress, baldly announced that they had come to see the king. The guards, overawed by the rank of the new arrivals, scurried to let them in. Only in the courtyard, as they approached the royal quarters, did anyone think to challenge them — but by then it was too late. The assassins, overpowering the courtiers in their path, burst into Bardiya's chamber. The king, it is said, was with a concubine. Desperately, he sought to stave off his attackers with the leg of a broken stool, but to no avail. It is also said that it was Darius' brother, 'faithful Artaphernes', who finally plunged the dagger home. 46
    And Bardiya, the son of Cyrus, King of the Persians, slumped dead to the ground.
     
     

Double Vision

     
    Or did he? No sooner had the assassins completed their bloody work than they themselves were promoting a quite different tale. The corpse of the murdered man may not have been exposed to public view, but a great deal else was now revealed, to universal amazement. The story told by the conspirators was staggering. The man they had slain, they claimed, was not Bardiya, the son of Cyrus, at all. That Bardiya was already long dead. Cambyses, jealous and savage, had ordered his execution years before. Had it not been for the acumen of Darius and his fellow patriots, who had stumbled upon the secret, and their courage in daring to expose it, the Persian people might never have learned of the monstrous scam.
    All of which begged a rather obvious question. If the man assassinated at Sikyavautish had not been the son of Cyrus — and the rightful king — then who had he been? Here the revelations took an even more sinister turn. That an impostor had taken on the role of a prince of the royal blood was alarming enough, but that he had played it for years unsuspected even by his family and household could only be evidence of the blackest necromancy. Surely, then, a Magus, one who had been schooled in the mastery of the supernatural, was the likeliest suspect? Could it have been merely a coincidence that the imposter had been surprised in Nisaea, on the plain of the sacred horses, well known as a haunt of the Magi? It seemed not — for Bardiya's doppelganger, the conspirators hurriedly announced, had indeed been a Magus, 'Gaumata by name'. 47 An obscure and low-born villain he may have been, and yet so potent had his sorcery proved itself, and so audacious his plot, that he had almost won the empire by his fraud.
    Sensationalist retellings would tease out the full implications of this scandal and adorn them further. For all his powers, it appeared that the Magus had forgotten to conceal one crucial detail: his ears, for some unspecified crime, had long before been cut off by Cyrus. A daughter of Otanes named Phaidime, a wife of Bardiya who had never suspected that he might have been