"When Alexander came up the Nile, the king and queen of Kush (King Nastasen and Queen Sakhmakh) met him with an army. And for reasons no one has ever understood, the invincible Alexander turned away. He instead came here, to Alexandria, and founded the city." "Nastasen and Sakhmakh must have had the Ark. Alexander knew he couldn't win." "... But there's more to it. The only reason we allowed Nastasen and Sakhmakh to carry the Ark with them to meet Alexander is that we knew he would recognize it for what it was. He had one. The Aegis of Zeus, Jupiter's armor. A relatively weak artifact, but useful in that it kept him alive despite wounds that would've killed other men—though it did cause changes to his personality." (Shards, ch 22)
Farther on, close to the end of the gallery, she stopped beside one of the last columns, one showing Alexander in distant India. Walking around the pillar, the tales of his adventures in that strange, far-off land would out before her sight: the defeat of Porus, the refusal of his army to continue east toward the unknown edge of the world, the terrible battle in which Alexander was struck with a spear arrow in the chest. The wound was so grave, so deep, that his men thought it might kill the man they thought was the son of the father-god: it was said that it gushed red and frothed like water when the iron point was pulled free. Selene remembered how in the stories Alexander had looked down on his surgeon's finger pushing cotton into the hole to staunch the bleeding and smiled at the faces around him. "Behold: it is blood, my men, not the ichor of a god," he'd said. Somehow, Alexander had recovered. He always did. Despite his many wounds, despite his insistence on being at the front of the line in so many battles, he was invincible. Like a living Achilles, Didymus had once told her and Helios, certainly not unable to be wounded, but just as surely incapable of dying from his wounds. It took poison to kill him in the end. (Shards, ch 13)
Alexander's body rested beneath the glass on luxurious pillows in his royal red cape, and she was surprised to see that the man looked, as the priests had observed hundreds of years before, like he was merely sleeping. At times she'd seen other corpses in this mausoleum—those of her ancestors in the extended hallways, occasionally ritually rewrapped in ceremonial fashion—and always those mummified remains had appeared dried up, shriveled and hollow, with skin like old leather when it appeared from beneath the linens. Not Alexander. His skin looked as she imagined it did on the battlefields of his life: if not soft at least strong and real. He still bore color in his cheeks, lashes on his closed eyes, and his muscles were taut, as if he were ready to rise for battle at a moment's notice. The leather of his sandals and the wrappings winding up to the greaves on his lower legs appeared more aged than the dead man wearing them. And his hands, crossed over his chest, still seemed to grip the sword that lay vertical over his body. Taking it all in, Selene wondered if the priests who oversaw the tombs here opened the coffin to somehow maintain his appearance of preservation, or if his preservation was a sign that he was truly divine, despite the fact of his death. (Shards, ch 13)
Juba felt impatience rise like heat in his chest, thinking what a small sacrifice two-thirds of these strangers would be when weighed against the destruction of Octavian, but he quickly shook such thoughts away. It was Octavian's kind of thinking, the very thing he wanted to destroy. Such impulses had been coming to him more and more since he had donned the armor of Alexander, the Aegis of Zeus. He resisted the urge to pull away the cloak hiding the armor, the urge to reach out with his mind and embrace the warmth of the black stone mounted at the center of his chest. (Shards, ch 27)
He wasn't dead. He should be. Juba knew that. He'd very nearly drowned. He'd been shot through with four iron-pointed shafts—any one of which would have killed a man. But he was alive. Somehow, somehow, he was alive. How? The answer came to him as if from another voice. The breastplate, it said. Alexander's breastplate.(Shards, ch 27)
He reached out to the Shard in his mind, thinking of the silver and bronze ribbing he'd seen embedded on the inside of the armor and that odd symbol in the middle of it all, directly behind the Shard itself: a six-sided shape in a six-pointed star. Imagining himself pushing out through those metal contacts, through that symbol, he gave himself over to the power of the Shard, just as he had so often with the Trident. Like the feel of those twin snakes beneath his palms, the metal of the breastplate around him seemed to move like a thing alive as the Shard drew him ever deeper even as it pushed back and into him. Power. He felt it coursing into the body that began to awake around him, filling his veins. Power. Life. And rage. Deep and raw. Rage only barely contained. The darkness around him lurched hard. Once. Then twice. Then twice more. In his mind, Juba felt like laughing. His heart was beating again. Beating and calling for blood. So this was how Alexander had survived so long, through so many battles, through so many wounds that should have ended his life. This was the power of the Aegis. Power that was now his. Power that would help him avenge his father. And himself. Power that would help him kill Octavian. Kill. (Shards, ch 27)
THE SHARD OF LIFE: THE AEGIS OF ZEUS
"Nastasen and Sakhmakh must have had the Ark. Alexander knew he couldn't win."
"... But there's more to it. The only reason we allowed Nastasen and Sakhmakh to carry the Ark with them to meet Alexander is that we knew he would recognize it for what it was. He had one. The Aegis of Zeus, Jupiter's armor. A relatively weak artifact, but useful in that it kept him alive despite wounds that would've killed other men—though it did cause changes to his personality." (Shards, ch 22)
Somehow, Alexander had recovered. He always did. Despite his many wounds, despite his insistence on being at the front of the line in so many battles, he was invincible. Like a living Achilles, Didymus had once told her and Helios, certainly not unable to be wounded, but just as surely incapable of dying from his wounds. It took poison to kill him in the end. (Shards, ch 13)
Power. He felt it coursing into the body that began to awake around him, filling his veins. Power. Life.
And rage. Deep and raw. Rage only barely contained.
The darkness around him lurched hard. Once. Then twice. Then twice more.
In his mind, Juba felt like laughing. His heart was beating again. Beating and calling for blood.
So this was how Alexander had survived so long, through so many battles, through so many wounds that should have ended his life. This was the power of the Aegis. Power that was now his. Power that would help him avenge his father. And himself. Power that would help him kill Octavian. Kill. (Shards, ch 27)