Sarchedon Part 23

"I will not test your courage so far," said his visitor; "the more that I know it true as the steel you ought to wear on your thigh even now.

Nor would I dare to summon such powerful aid as those I have named except at utmost need, or by the desire of Pharaoh himself.

Nevertheless, I will show you here on the spot such manifestations of my power as will put to shame all the lore acquired from your lofty towers or your wide Northern plains. Which of your star-readers will bid this dry rod blossom like the almond-tree, or cause a fresh lotus to spring up in flower from the arid soil of that cemented brickwork beneath our feet?"

While he spoke, the same glow as before, though somewhat milder in l.u.s.tre, shone through the cell, revealing to the astonished prisoner a slender figure draped up to the keen black eyes, that never seemed to leave his own. The magician, if such he were, looked imposing neither in gravity of age nor majesty of stature; yet Sarchedon felt a strange consciousness that he was in the presence of one superior to himself.

He watched with eager curiosity every motion of his visitor.

The latter brought out from beneath his robe a lamp of transparent gla.s.s, traced with mystic characters in waving lines of gold, and which shed the radiance that had so startled the a.s.syrian. Over the lamp he brandished a rod some two cubits long, apparently of polished ebony; and immediately a cloud of aromatic vapour filled the cell, hiding him for a s.p.a.ce from the prisoner's sight. When it cleared away, he reached to Sarchedon the branch of an almond-tree, equal in length to the rod he had carried in his hand, green, full of sap, and fragrant in a rich growth of blossoms bursting into flower.

"The warrior can take life," said he gravely, "and the king can level fenced cities with the plain. Is not he greater than king and warrior who can call into existence that which these have only power to destroy?"

Sarchedon gazed on him in mute astonishment and awe. That the magician should have thus appeared in a dungeon of which the walls denoted no possibility for secret entrance was of itself surprising enough; but to inhale its fragrance, and behold in luxuriant blossom that which his own eyes had told him was but now a dry rod of ebony, could only be accounted for by supernatural influences; and he became a firm believer in magic forthwith. He made a last stand, however, for his incredulity, exclaiming almost unconsciously,

"You must have brought it beneath your cloak."

There was something of the kindly patience with which one instructs a child in the other's tone, while he replied,

"Seeing is indeed believing, as you even now averred. See, then, my son, and believe!"

With that, he cast his mantle from his shoulders, and stood forth erect, letting its folds wind about his feet, and showing in the pure white robe that enveloped his person like a pillar of alabaster on a black pedestal. His features were still shrouded; but his eyes gleamed with a mocking fire.

Once more, while he pa.s.sed his hand over the lamp, a cloud obscured the dungeon as before, but for a somewhat longer s.p.a.ce. When it cleared away, he lifted his dark cloak from the floor, and there at the prisoner's very feet, springing, as it seemed, from the hard brickwork, bloomed a fresh lotus, the flower that every son of Ashur deemed specially sacred to his country and his G.o.ds.

Sarchedon was a brave man in battle; braver, indeed, than the average of his countrymen, whose courage, perhaps, was their n.o.blest quality. Had a score of Pharaoh's archers been bending bows all round him, he would have died like a lion in their midst, without a sign of weakness or fear; but it was no part of his creed to set at defiance the powers of another world, and he fell prostrate before his visitor in abject humility, covering his face with his hands.

CHAPTER XXV

THE WISDOM OF THE EGYPTIANS

The magician raised him kindly, tempered to a pale mild light the lamp he had set down, and wrapping his cloak around him as before, fixed his eyes on the prisoner with that calm scrutinising gaze which had dominated the fiery spirit of the warrior from the first.

"Have no fear," said he. "I came not hither through the solid earth that I might destroy you, or I had created but now the greedy monster of the river, the deadly serpent of the brake, rather than a fruitful branch from our Egyptian orchards and the sacred flower of your own a.s.syrian plains. Is it enough? or shall I show you here in this deep dark cell greater and more terrible examples of my power?"

"No more, my lord!" answered the a.s.syrian, who felt his courage, though beginning to rea.s.sert itself, unequal to farther trials of a like nature. "No more, I entreat you; for although I fear not mortal enemies, I have no wish to meet the sons of Seth in all the terrors they bring with them from the South; nor has Baal befriended me so stoutly, that I would trust to his a.s.sistance in an encounter with Abitur face to face."

"Blaspheme not Baal!" was the sarcastic reply. "Think you that he can see down into the earth from his seat up yonder amongst the stars, or that he would deign to aid you if he could? Has he not votaries by tens of thousands in great Babylon, who offer him daily their goods, their blood, their lives? Has he ever descended to his temple for one of them, or made the least sign that he could taste the savour of their sacrifices, could hear their prayers, take note of their outcries and their wounds? Will Ashtaroth give you light in your dungeon, Nebo come to release you from captivity, Dagon bring you to eat and drink, or Shamash himself show pity while you are writhing under his very eyes on the stake? These are your G.o.ds, O a.s.syrian! And you can venture to compare them with ours--with Thmei, of eternal truth and justice; with Osiris, benefactor and regenerator of earth and heaven: with wise Anubis, and subtle Thoth, and Isis, fertile, lavish, glorious in her ten thousand names!"

"There are G.o.ds enough in both countries," answered Sarchedon; "and I have heard the Great King swear by them all, that it was strange out of so large a host he had never set eyes on a straggler yet. But I have not heard of a.s.syrian priest, I tell you frankly, who can claim such dominion over the powers of nature as you showed me even now."

"And you think a man had better force Abitur to do his bidding than implore succour from Baal in vain?" said the other, with a sneer.

"Why not?" was the reply. "I carried a spear already in his royal guard when Semiramis persuaded the Great King to rear an altar for the wors.h.i.+p of Abitur in the mountains beyond old Nineveh. It crossed him sore; for he never endured such ceremonies with patience, complaining that he could feed a score of companies with fewer bullocks than were slain to satisfy one single G.o.d. But the queen's eyes have power in them to draw men whither she will, and Ninus would do her bidding readily as the humblest archer in the host. So we marched up into the mountains at midnight, every man with bow and spear, axe and mattock. Plane, cedar, and broad-leafed oak fell by scores under so many willing arms, while the stoutest spearmen raised a lofty altar, and dug deep trenches, to carry off the blood, bringing in bullocks and sheep for slaughter, that we had driven up with no small trouble from the plains. Ere long we built up such a fire that the watchmen on the walls of Nineveh proclaimed the mountain was ablaze; and when the burnt offerings were made ready, there rose such a smoke that the G.o.ds could have seen but little of what we, their servants, were about beneath it. Perhaps it was too thick even for him to penetrate, whom we went there to honour. I know the Great King's wrath was kindled; for he caught up spear and s.h.i.+eld, bidding the demon come out if he dared, and speak with him face to face."

"Did Abitur make no sign?" asked the other, with the same covert mockery in his tone.

"There were shrieks heard in the mountain more than once before dawn,"

answered Sarchedon; "but they seemed too shrill and faint for the voice of man or demon. Some of the queen's women, who went up with her, affirmed they were cries of lamentation from those daughters of earth scorched in the olden time by the embraces of the stars, wailing that they could not die till they had touched their spirit-lovers once again.

And the queen inclined to think so too."

"But you--what did _you_ think?" inquired the Egyptian, not repressing a smile.

"I was of the guard," replied the a.s.syrian simply; "and I thought with the Great King that the women in the mountain were fairer and fresher than in the plain; also that our spearmen were ever somewhat hasty and eager with those who would be wooed, before they were won. But we marched down again to Nineveh at sunrise, and for my part, I saw no more of Abitur than I had seen of Baal."

The other pondered, as if he scarcely listened. Presently he looked up, and asked,

"This queen of yours--is she, then, so beautiful?"

It was a topic on which Sarchedon could be eloquent, even in a dungeon.

"Beautiful!" he repeated. "In a.s.syria all our women are beautiful; but by the side of the Great Queen the fairest of them show like pearls against a diamond. You have seen morning rising, serene and radiant out of the east--the brow of Semiramis is purer, calmer, fresher than the dawn. When she turns her eyes on you, it is like the golden l.u.s.tre of noon day; and her smile is brighter and more glorious than sunset in the desert--sweeter, softer, lovelier than the evening breeze amongst the palms. To look on her face unveiled is to be the Great Queen's slave for ever more."

"You have looked on it more than once it seems, and to some purpose,"

was the answer.

"I have seen her in silk and steel," replied Sarchedon, "robe and diadem, helmet and war-harness. Deck her how you will, she rivals Ashtaroth, Queen of Heaven, herself. There is not her equal on earth.

'Tis thought, indeed, that she is more than mortal, and will never taste of death."

"Like Pharaoh," said the other, laughing outright. "Nevertheless, if she have many guards stout and devoted as yourself, there can be small risk for that fair body of hers from outward foe. Yet I have heard she mounts a war-chariot and bends a bow with the bravest warriors in your host."

"I was in Bactria," answered Sarchedon, "when the Great Queen surprised ten thousand spearmen of the enemy with the royal guard alone, and a handful of hors.e.m.e.n she had begged of Ninus to bring in corn from the plains the night before. She drove her war-chariot through the thickest of the press, ere we could close in on it, and when we came up with her, she had but one arrow left in the quiver, while around her lay a circle of slain. Her cheek seemed a little flushed, but the smile was on her lip, and her eyes shone softer, lovelier, kinder than ever. The Great King swore that of all the captains in his host, she was the wariest and boldest, but he forbade her sternly such ventures of battle for the future. 'How shall I tarry, when my lord is in front?' was her answer, gentle and low as I am speaking to you now. He would have taken her in his arms then and there, before the a.s.sembled host. Perhaps he did; but she had scarcely spoken, when the trumpets rang out an alarm that the Bactrians were upon us, and I was down with an arrow through my ribs, almost ere you could have bent a bow. But for Sargon, the royal s.h.i.+eld-bearer, who dragged me from under a broken chariot and a dead horse, I had never lifted spear again. The next time I saw the queen she was riding single-handed against a lion, that had slain two of her dogs, and put her people to flight."

"Single-handed!" exclaimed the Egyptian, "and against a lion! But you made in to help without delay?"

"You know not our laws of the land of s.h.i.+nar," replied Sarchedon. "He who draws bow at the royal quarry loses his right hand; he who takes a prey before the prince forfeits his life. I had been safer lying naked under the beast's very jaws than riding in unbidden between the lion and the Great Queen. Yet would I have ventured too, for the sake of her matchless face, but that while I stood watching, she brought her horse within a spear length of the mighty brute, and drove an arrow right through his heart from shoulder to shoulder. I turned rein then; for I knew Semiramis would like well to stand alone over the dead carcase, and jeer at her attendants as they came up."

"Brave, wise, politic," observed the Egyptian, "and yet no doubt a very woman to the core. What think you now? Would she rule prudently over the land of s.h.i.+nar, if the Great King were gathered to his fathers amongst the stars?"

"No woman may reign over the sons of Ashur," was the answer. "We only owe allegiance to a king. It is our privilege and our law."

"But hath she no favourites, this bold and beautiful archer?" pursued the other, turning his lamp so as to mark every line and shade of the prisoner's countenance. "None that share her sports and influence her counsels? The Great King waxes old; does the queen look kindly on _none_ of all the fair and n.o.ble warriors about the palace or in the host?"

Not a quiver of his eyelid would have escaped the Egyptian's notice, but Sarchedon's brow was open and unconcerned, as his tone was loyal, while he replied,

"I am a prisoner, alone here in a dungeon; you are--what are you? A priest, an enchanter, a magician, backed, for all I can tell, by a company of Pharaoh's archers and a host of spirits from the Southern mountains. But were you and I standing two naked men in the market-place, that question had been answered with a buffet; were we in harness on the plain, it were well worth push of spear and clash of steel."

The Egyptian laughed once more--heartily this time, and without disguise.

"I am your friend," said he, "and you will not believe it. A powerful friend, too, as I have shown you, and one who, while able to crush you as a man crushes a locust beneath his hand, would yet lend you all the resources of his art for your solace here and your deliverance from captivity hereafter."

"You cannot set me free!" exclaimed Sarchedon, a delightful hope breaking in to cheer him like the dawn of day.

"I can foretell the future," answered the magician, "clearly, certainly, as you can relate the past. Behold this lamp: see, I darken it to a faint pale gleam. Look on it, and tell me what it shows."

In vain Sarchedon strained his eyes.