THE ANCIENT WORLD SERIES - Complete Haggard Edition. Henry Rider Haggard

no command?"

      "This, Father: that without his help sent by the gods none of us would be here to-day, seeing that he held the door against traitors and with that axe of his, slew them all, eight in number."

      "Not so, my son, unless my spirit told me falsely, the Lady Kemmah, my kinswoman, slew one of them."

      Now Ru, who had been listening amazed, could contain himself no longer.

      "That is right, O Prophet, or O God," he broke in, in his big voice. "She killed one of them who slipped past me, their captain as I think, with the shrewdest thrust ever driven by a woman's arm--also another escaped. But your sight must be very good, O Prophet, if you can see from here to Thebes and take note of one blow among so many."

      A faint smile flickered on the face of Roy.

      "Come hither, Ru, for so I think you are named," he said.

      The giant obeyed and of his own accord knelt down before Roy, who went on:

      "Hearken, Ru the Ethiopian. You are a gallant man and a true-hearted. You slew those who slew your King Kheperra and bore his body from the battle. By your gift of strength and skill in war you saved your lord's child and the Queen her mother from prison and death. Therefore I number you among our Brotherhood into whose company hitherto no black man has ever entered. Afterwards you shall be instructed in its simpler rites and take the lesser oaths. Yet know, O Ru, that if you betray the smallest of its secrets or work harm to any of your fellow servants of the Dawn, you shall die thus," and leaning forward he whispered fiercely into the Negro's ear.

      "Have done, I pray you, Prophet," exclaimed Ru in lively terror and springing to his feet. "I have seen and heard of many things but never of such a one as this, in Ethiopia or in Egypt, in war or in peace. Moreover, such threats are needless, since I never betrayed any one except myself, and least of all those whose bread I eat and whom I love," and he glanced towards the Queen and the child.

      "I know it, Ru; yet sometimes folly betrays as well as craft. Hearken! You are appointed bodyservant and guard to the Royal Princess of Egypt as you were to her father before her. Where she goes, there you go; when she sleeps your bed is without her door. If she fights you stand at her side in battle, shielding her with your life. If she wanders by day or by night, you wander with her, and when at last she dies, you die also and accompany her to the Underworld. For this shall be your reward--that the blessing and the strength that are on her shall be on you also, and that you shall serve her to all eternity. Retire."

      "I ask no better fate," muttered Ru as he obeyed.

      "Kinswoman, bring me the child," said the Prophet.

      Kemmah came forward bearing the sleeping babe and at Roy's bidding held it up to be seen of all, whereon everyone in that company bowed the knee and bent the head.

      "Brothers and Sisters of the Company of the Dawn, in the person of this child behold your Queen and Egypt's!" cried Roy, and again they bent the knee and bowed the head.

      Then he breathed upon the babe and blessed it, making over it certain mystic signs and calling upon gods and spirits to guard it through life and for ever. This done he kissed the infant and handed it back to Kemmah, saying:

      "Blessed be you also, O faithful woman. Aye, and you shall be blessed, and later instructed in our mysteries and numbered of our Company. Go in peace."

      Now Roy had spoken to all that company save to the chief of them, Rima the Queen, who sat in front of him in a chair that had been given to her, watching him with empty eyes and listening to his words as though they dealt with far-off matters and moved her not. Yet when he had finished she lifted her head, saying:

      "Words and blessings for the slave. Words and blessings for the nurse. Words and adoration for the babe in whom run the royal bloods of Egypt and of Babylon. But what words for the Queen and mother, O Prophet, at whose bidding she and that which was born of her have been brought to this darksome place and habitation of conspirators plotting to ends unknown?"

      Now Roy arose from his throne before the altar, a tall, ethereal shape, and advancing to the stricken queen lifted her hand and kissed it.

      "For your Majesty I have no message," he said, bending his venerable head, "seeing that already you hold communion with one who is greater than I," and he turned and bowed to the solemn statue of the god Osiris which stared at them from beyond the altar.

      "I know it," she answered with a sad smile.

      "Yet," he went on, "it is reported to me that in this night that is gone, your Majesty dreamed a dream. Is it not so?"

      "It is so, Prophet, though who told you I do not know."

      "It matters not who told me. What matters is that I am charged to say to your Majesty that this dream was no phantasy bred of human hopes and longings but the very truth. Learn, O Queen, that this world and its sufferings are but a shadow and a show, and that beyond them, like the pyramids towering above the sands and palm trees at their base, stands the eternal verity whose name is Love. The sands are blown away and having borne their fruit, the palm trees are torn up by the tempest or grow old and die, but the pyramids remain."

      "I understand and I thank you, Prophet. Now lead me hence for I am weary."

      On the third night from this day Rima the Queen, knowing that the fever which consumed her had done its work and that the time was at hand for her to bid farewell to the world, sent a messenger to Roy the Prophet saying that she would speak with him. He came and she addressed him thus:

      "I know not who you are nor what is this Brotherhood of the Dawn of which you speak, and to what ends it works, nor why you have brought the Royal Princess hither, nor what gods you serve, I who take but little count of the gods of Egypt, although it is true that when my child was born two of them seemed to appear to me in a vision. Yet I will add this: my heart tells me that you are a most righteous man and a prophet of power appointed by Fate to fulfil its will; also that you and those about you plan good and not ill for the Princess, who, if there is justice in the world, should one day be Queen of Egypt. There then I leave this matter in the hands of Heaven; I, who, having done all that I can do, find myself dying, unfortunate and powerless. Those things will happen which must happen and there is no more to be said.

      "Now I demand an oath of you, Roy, and of the priest Tau, and of all the Brotherhood under you. It is that when I am dead you will embalm my body with all the skill of the Egyptians, and that afterwards, when there is opportunity, you will cause it to be conveyed to Ditanah, the King of Babylon, my father, or to him who sits in his place, with these my dying words written in a scroll on its breast, accompanied, if may be, by my daughter, the Royal Princess of Egypt.

      "I demand an oath of you, further, that those who bear my body shall say to the King of Babylon that I, the dead daughter of Babylon, aforetime wife of the King of Egypt, call upon him in the name of our gods and by our common blood to avenge the wrongs that I have suffered in Egypt and the death of my lord beloved, my husband, King Kheperra. I call upon him under the pain of the curse of my spirit, to roll down in his might upon Egypt and to smite these Shepherd dogs who slew my husband and took his heritage, and to establish my daughter, the Princess Nefra, as Queen of Egypt, and to seize those who were traitors to her and would have given her to doom and me with her, and to slay them. This is the oath which I demand of you."

      "Yet, Queen," answered Roy, "it is one that is little to my liking, seeing that if fulfilled it may breed war and that we, the sons and daughters of the Dawn--for Harmachis whose image is the Sphinx that watches at our door, is the god of Dawn--seek peace and not war. Forgiveness, not vengeance, is the law we follow. It is true that if may be we desire to depose the usurping Shepherd kings and to restore Egypt to the line of its rightful rulers, of whom the Princess Nefra is the heir, or if as yet this is refused to us by the gods, to unite the North and South so that Egypt may grow greater and cease to bleed from the wounds of war."

      "That is what the Shepherds seek also," said Rima faintly.

      "Aye, but their ends are other than ours. They would rivet a yoke upon the neck of Egypt; we would loose that yoke and not by the sword. The Shepherds are many, but the people of