The Project Gutenberg eBook, Sarchedon, by G. J. (George John) Whyte-Melville, Illustrated by S. E. Waller

Sarchedon

A Legend of the Great Queen

By G. J. Whyte-Melville

Author of "Roy's Wife," "Black but Comely," "Market Harborough," etc.

Illustrated by S. E. Waller

London
Ward, Lock & Co., Limited
New York and Melbourne

TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
AUSTIN LAYARD, D.C.L.,
HER MAJESTY'S MINISTER AT MADRID,
THE
FOLLOWING ROMANCE IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED,
AS A TRIBUTE OF
ADMIRATION TO THE GREAT DISCOVERER,
WHOSE SKILL, COURAGE AND RESEARCH HAVE
EXCAVATED FROM THE DESERT SANDS
THE ARTS, ARMS, AND RECORDS OF A MIGHTY NATION;
WHOSE LEARNING AND PERSEVERANCE
HAVE RESTORED AN IMPORTANT LINK IN THE
WORLD'S HISTORY,
LONG SEVERED IN THE OBLIVION OF THE PAST.

Onslow Gardens,
June, 1871.

"THE STARTLED HORSEMAN DREW REIN."

CONTENTS

The Seven Stars.

"They watch him who wakes—They watch him who sleeps—him who speaks—him who is silent—the guilty, the blameless: there is none on earth who is not watched."—Bhuddhagosa Proverbs.

Ashtaroth, Queen of Heaven.

"From love comes grief, from love comes fear; he who is free from love knows neither grief nor fear."—Bhuddhagosa Proverbs.

Nisroch the Avenger.

"Your sin follows steadily behind, as the cart-wheel follows the draught-bullock."—Bhuddhagosa Proverbs.

SARCHEDON

The Seven Stars

CHAPTER I

THE KING OF BEASTS

Dying in the desert—stretched, limp and helpless, in the darkening waste—poured out like water on the tawny sand—two specks poised high above him in the deeper orange of the upper sky—a wide-winged vulture hovering and wheeling between the stricken lion and the setting sun.

Dying in the desert—grim, dignified, unyielding, like a monarch slain in battle. So formidable in the morning—the herdsman's terror, the archer's dread, the savage wrestler in whose grasp horse and rider went down crushed, mangled, over-matched, like sucking fawn and unweaned child—fierce, tameless, unconquered—a noble adversary for the noblest champions of the plain—but ere the last red streak of evening faded on the dusky level of their wilderness, a thing for the foul night-bird to tear and buffet—for the wild ass, wincing and snorting, half in terror, half in scorn, to spurn and trample with her hoof.

Pitiful in its hopelessness, the wistful pleading of eyes gradually waning to the apathy of death; pitiful the long flickering tongue, licking with something of a dog's homely patience that fatal gash of which the pain grew every moment more endurable, only because it was a death-wound; and pitiful too the utter prostration of those massive limbs, with knotted muscles and corded sinews—of that long, lean, tapering body—the very emblem of agile strength—which, striving in agony to rear but half its height, sank down again in dust, writhing, powerless, like an earthworm beneath the spade.

No yell, no moan—only a short quick breathing, a convulsive shiver, and the occasional effort to rise, that time by time soaked and stained his lair with darker jets of blood.

So those specks on the upper sky widened into two huge soaring vultures, while the wing of a third brushed lightly against the fallen lion's mane, as the foul bird ventured nearer its coming banquet, croaking hideous invitations to others and yet others, that emerged, as if by magic, from the solemn cloudless heaven.

Far back into the desert, varied here and there by clammy clotted spots, lay a single track of footprints, closer together, less sharp, round, and clearly-defined, as they dragged towards the end. Many a weary furlong had he travelled, the king of beasts, on his journey here to die; and yet he never was to reach the patch of arid reeds that instinct bade him seek for a last shelter—the scanty covert where-with nature prompted him to shield his death agony from the remorseless bird of prey.

It is a royal sport to-day. It was a royal sport, no doubt, thousands of years ago, to rouse the kingly lion from his haunt of reeds, or rock, or cool dank quivering morass, in those wide plains that stretch between the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Mesopotamia of the ancients, the Naharaina of its present migratory tribes. A royal sport, when followed by a queen and all her glittering train, defiling from the lofty porches of Babylon the Great, the tramp of horse and ring of bridle, with steady footfall of Assyrian warriors—curled, bearded, erect, and formidable—with ponderous tread of stately elephants, gorgeous in trappings of scarlet, pearls, and gold, with stealthy gait of meek-eyed camels, plodding patient under their burdens in the rear. Scouring into the waste before that jewelled troop, herds of wild asses bruised and broke the shoots of wormwood beneath their flying hoofs, till the hot air was laden with an aromatic smell; the ostrich spread her scant and tufted wings to scud before the wind, tall, swift, ungainly, in a cloud of yellow dust; the fleet gazelle, with beating heart, and head tucked back, sprang forward like an arrow from the bow, never to pause nor stint in her terror-stricken flight, till man and horse, game and hunter, pursuer and pursued, were left hopelessly behind, far down beyond the unbroken level of the horizon. Was not her speed of foot the strength and safety and glory of her being? Nor could the desert falcon strike her save unawares, nor the cruel Eastern greyhound overtake her save when she had lately drunk her fill from the spring.

But the monarch of the desert, the grim and lordly lion, sought no refuge in flight, accepted no compromise of retreat. Driven from his covert, he might move slowly and sullenly away; but it was to turn in savage wrath on the eager horseman who approached too near, on the daring archer who ventured to bend his bow within point-blank distance of so formidable an enemy. Nevertheless, even the fiercest of their kind must yield before man, the conqueror of beasts; before woman, the conqueror of man: and on the shaft which drank his life-blood, and transfixed the lion from side to side, was graven the royal tiara of a monarch's mate, were cut those wedge-shaped letters that indicated the name of Semiramis the Great Queen.

Fainter and fainter drooped the mighty frame of the dying beast; one by one large red drops plashed heavily on the sand beneath him, as the first bright stars of a Chaldean sky blazed from the clear depths of heaven. The perishable was fast fading below. Was that indeed eternal which shone so pure and pitiless above?

Great Babylon lay spread out, massive, mysterious, and indistinct, in the shades of coming night. Here and there, huge piles of building loomed vast and shadowy against the sky, far below these, amidst the tents, houses, palaces, and gardens within the town, glittered and flashed a world of lamps and torches, scattered bright and countless as the stars in that other world above; while rearing its head, like some ghostly giant, high over shaft and column, fortress, palace, and obelisk, rose a lofty tower that seemed to demand of heaven its secrets, and bade defiance to the sky.

Here, on the summit of this tower stood a human figure, gazing fixedly on the planets already visible, scanning the heavens with rapt attention; calm, serious, abstracted, wrestling, as it were, with all its mental forces, for the triumph of intellect, the mastery of thought.

It was Assarac, priest of Baal, reading the stars, as a student reads a book writ in some symbolical language of which he holds the key.

Assarac the priest, the man for whom in that voluptuous climate, amidst that gorgeous people, delighted in splendour, in pleasure, in luxury, in warfare, glory, arts, arms, and magnificence, the world could furnish but one attraction—the insatiable craving of ambition—to lull which he must rule supreme; therefore he trained himself, night and day, with the weapons of victory, seeking diligently that knowledge which constitutes power.

The act of worship is amongst all creation indigenous and peculiar to man. As he alone stands erect and raises his front without effort towards heaven, so he bends the knee in reasoning adoration, neither cowering down with his head in the dust, nor grovelling on his belly, like other creatures, in abject fear; but wanton, unstable, and extravagant even in his noblest aspirations, this viceroy of earth has been ever prone to waver in his allegiance, eager to amplify his worship of the one true God into a thousand false religions, more or less beautiful, poetical, and absurd. Amongst these, none could be less unworthy than that earliest form of superstition which attributed to the celestial bodies certain properties of power and knowledge, such as could affect the present no less than they predicted the future. Man's intellect felt elevated and purified by scientific communion with the book of Fate as written on the luminous pages of the sky, while his soul seemed scarce debased by an adoration that lifted it at least to the visible and material heaven. On the wide-stretching plains of Western Asia, in the warm cloudless Assyrian night, with the lamps of heaven flashing out their radiance in uninterrupted splendour from the centre to the boundless horizon, it was no wonder that students and sages should have accepted for deities those distant worlds of fire on which eyes, brain, hopes, thoughts, and aspirations were nightly fixed—the guides of their science, the exponents of their history, the arbiters of their fate.

While the rude camel-driver, as he plodded by night through the trackless desert, relied, no less than the early mariner, for progress and safety on the stars, priests in their temples, kings in their palaces, consulted the same changeless, passionless, inscrutable witnesses, for the web of policy, the conduct of warfare, the furtherance of love, desire, ambition, or revenge. Ere long, by an inevitable process in the human mind, the instructor of their course came to be looked on as the originator of events; and that which began only with an assumption that it could foretell, was soon credited with the power to bias, to prevent, or to destroy.

Then arose an idolatry which seemed irresistible to the noblest and boldest nations of the ancient world, which, notwithstanding their own sublime creed, possessed a strong fascination for the Chosen People themselves. Yav, Nebo, Bel, and Ashtaroth[1] came to be worshipped as living deities, reigning and revealing themselves through the planets that bore these names. The Seven Stars[2] were believed to time the inevitable march of the universe to their seven tones of mysterious music, unheard by mortal ears only because it never ceased nor faltered in its eternal diapason. The twelve months of the year were sacred, each to its especial luminary. Thirty stars were worshipped as the Consulting Gods. Twelve to the north, twelve to the south, were believed respectively to compel the destinies of living men and dead, the whole twenty-four bearing the title of Judges of the World. And finally, lest superstition should overlook one single object of its adoration, or idolatry fail in the smallest detail to sin against its Creator, priests, temples, sacrifices, and votive offerings were assigned to those countless worlds that gem a Southern night, under the collective title of the Host of Heaven.

Assarac looked abroad, above, around, below—with the confident glance of a monarch who reviews his powers, with the critical attention of a calculator who sums up his total, with the visionary gaze of a prophet who forecasts his destiny, yet not entirely without something of that astute and wary expression which on the magician's face seems to scan and dominate, while it half mistrusts, the implements of his art.

He was yet a young man, to count by years, and his dark almond-shaped eyes had lost none of the fire and softness which are only combined before middle life; but above his black eyebrows there were lines traced deep in the tawny forehead, and at his temples a few white hairs already mingled with the black bushy ringlets that, confined by a fillet of gold, were drawn back in clustering profusion to his neck and shoulders. His arms, but for the heavy gold bracelets that clasped their wrists, were bare, as were his strong muscular legs from knee to ankle; he wore sandals, fastened by straps; of embroidered leather crossing and recrossing so as to form no slight protection for foot and instep. His long gown of white linen, open to the breast and looped so as to give the legs freedom of action at the knee, was bordered with cunning needlework wrought in tissue of gold and scarlet silk, its arrow-headed characters displaying many a dark sentence and time-honoured record. A tasselled cord fastened it at the waist, and a deep fringe also of scarlet tissue, hung below its edges, while an ample cloak, white and embroidered like the gown, fell from one shoulder and trailed behind the priest as he stood erect and motionless, looking out into the night.

On his solid earrings, on his golden bracelets, on the fillet that bound his forehead, on the very clasps that secured his sandals, was graven the mystic circle that, with or without its winged figure, constituted a memorial and a symbol of fate, omnipotence, and eternity. If he worshipped the stars, he could yet conceive of a power so supreme as to control and dominate their influence: nor could his religion in its aspirations for this ineffable essence find a better emblem of its ideal than that geometrical figure which has neither beginning nor end.

He bore in his hand a lotus-flower lately gathered, and was careful, with something of superstitious reverence, to preserve its freshness; though once, when it caught his eye by chance, a smile of mingled scorn and curiosity wreathed his full red lips; but he looked aloft again the next instant with a keener and more rapt attention in his gaze. If he speculated on the symbolical interpretation of the plant, it was not there he sought the power and lore that should enable him to control his kind.

Though he carried two knives in his girdle, though his limbs were massive and muscular, his chest deep and his head erect, the man's habits seemed those of peace and study, not of action and warfare. His face, for all its indications of intellectual virility, was somewhat too rounded in outline, too full and flaccid, rather perhaps unmanly than effeminate, and bearing an expression of sustained effort, as of one who continually strives to hide and overcome a consciousness of unmerited degradation. There was no sign of beard about the well-cut lips, nor on the firmly-moulded chin; and for Assarac the priest it was too obvious that the domestic affections must ever remain a sealed book—his hearth must be the sacred fire of his worship, and the starry canopy of heaven his home.

"And what have you given me?" said he, rising his hand towards the glittering world above, with a gesture that denoted quite as much of defiance as devotion. "What have you given me, O my gods, in exchange for the glow of youth, the dignity of manhood, the rapture and the folly and the sweet sorrow that are common, like cool breezes and running streams, to all but such as me? No wife, no child! None of the treasures others guard so jealously; but, in compensation, none of the fears that bid the brave man cower and the strong man quake. What have you given me, O my gods? The thirst for power, the desire to rule, the knowledge that causes brave and strong to bend and quiver like reeds in the Euphrates before the breeze that hurries down its stream. You have given me wisdom to forecast men's lives and destinies; it is strange if he who has a knowledge of the future cannot control and warp the present to his will. I have torn open your scrolls by force of hand; I have compelled you to reveal your secrets by sheer strength of intellect—ye are my gods indeed, and I your priest and servant; yet is there something working here in this forehead, in this breast, that seems to dominate you as the goad rules the elephant, as the bridle turns and guides the foaming war-horse on the plain! Your strength, your knowledge, and your fire are mine—mine until these reasoning powers are dulled—these senses enervated by luxury and indulgence. Prophesy—prophesy! Trace for me in your shafts of light the story of that which is to come: show me the future of Assarac the priest—his growing knowledge, his indomitable struggles, his successful encounters, the culminating glory of his career. Show me the destiny of that fairest, bravest, fiercest of women—the diamond of the East! whose white arm conquers nations, whose flashing eyes set towns and palaces and kingdoms all ablaze—beautiful, proud, and pitiless—Semiramis the Great Queen; of her lord, the king of nations, the grim old champion who scoffs, forsooth, at your power, O my gods! and trusts only in the strength of his right arm and in his sword. Shall ye not avenge yourselves for his scorn and unbelief? Shall not Assarac your priest rise on the war-worn monarch's ruin to a splendour before which the glory of Ninus and all his line shall pale, even as ye pale yourselves, eternal host, before the Lord of Light who comes with day?"

Even while he spoke, the dying lion, far off in the desert, turned on his side with one quick gasping moan, one convulsive shudder of his mighty limbs, ere they grew rigid and motionless for ever, breaking short off in his death-pang the shaft on which was graven a royal tiara and the symbol of the Great Queen.

CHAPTER II

MERODACH

The boldest war-horse was never too courageous to wince and tremble at the smell of blood.

A solitary rider speeding across the surface of the desert, smooth, swift, and noiseless, like a bird on the wing, found himself nearly unseated by the violence with which the good horse under him plunged aside in terror, swerving from a low dark object lying in his path. While the startled horseman drew rein to examine it more closely, he scared two sated vultures from their work, the gorged birds hopping lazily and unconcernedly to a few paces' distance. Already the gray streaks of morning were tinged with crimson, as they flushed and widened on the long level of the horizon; and the lion, dead at nightfall, was picked nearly to the bone.

Ere dawn had fairly broke, and long before the gold on bit and bridle-piece caught the first flash of sunrise, the traveller had sped many a furlong on his way, and the vultures had laboured back to continue their loathsome meal. He had been riding the live-long night, yet his good horse seemed neither blown nor wearied; snorting, indeed, in the very wantonness of strength, as he settled down again to his long untiring gallop, and cleared his nostrils from the abomination that had so disturbed him in his career.

"Soh, Merodach!" said his master, "my gentle bold-hearted steed! I never knew you shrink from living foe, be it man or brute; but you would not trample on a dead enemy, would you, my king of horses? Steady then! At this rate we shall see the tower of Belus springing out of the plain, and the black tents by the Well of Palms, before the sun is another spear's length above the sky-line of this half-cooled sand. Steady, my gallant horse! Ah! you are indeed fit to carry him who takes the message of a king!"

Merodach, or Mars, no less sensible of his lord's caresses than he was worthy of the praises lavished on him, arched his crest, shook his head till his ornaments rang again, and increased his speed, for a reply.

He was in truth a rare and unequalled specimen of his kind, the true pure-bred horse of the Asiatic plains. Strong and bold as had been the very lion he was leaving rapidly behind him, beautiful in his rounded symmetry of shape, and so swift that Sarchedon, his rider, was wont to boast only one steed in all the armies of the King of Assyria was able, with a man's weight on his back, to outstrip the wild ass in her native plains, and that steed was Merodach. Horse and rider seemed a pair well matched, as they flung their dancing shadows behind them on the sand. The arms of one and accoutrements of the other shone ablaze with gold in the splendour of the morning sun. Both seemed full of pride, courage, mettle, and endurance, counterparts in strength and beauty, forming when combined the fairest and noblest ideal of the warlike element in creation. So they galloped on, choosing their course as if by instinct, through the trackless waste.

Long before noon a lofty tower seemed to grow, cubit by cubit, out of the horizon. Presently the walls and palaces of a city were seen stretching far on either side along the plain, like a line of white surf on a distant shore. Then strips of verdure, intersecting each other with more frequency, as a network of irrigation filtered the waters of the Euphrates through many a trickling stream, to fertilise the desert in the neighbourhood of Great Babylon. Yet a few more furlongs of those smooth untiring strides; a startled ostrich scudding away on long awkward legs before the wind; a troop of wild asses standing at gaze for a moment, to disappear with snort and whinny, and heels glancing upward through volumes of dust; a fleet gazelle scouring off in one direction, a desert-falcon darting through the sunlight in another; and Sarchedon could already descry that knot of feathery trees, that sprinkling of black tents, that low marble structure of dazzling white, which, under the name of the Well of Palms, afforded a landmark for every thirsty wayfarer journeying to the Great City.

But, except the sea, there is no such fallacious medium through which to estimate distance as the sun-dried atmosphere and unbroken expanse of the desert. Ere they reached those scattered tents and halted at the Well of Palms, neither man nor horse were unwilling to enjoy a moment's respite from their exertions; while the former, at least, was suffering from a protracted thirst, which under those scorching skies made a draught from the desert spring such a cordial, such an elixir, as could not be pressed from the choicest grapes that ever blushed and ripened under the Assyrian sun.

Springing off Merodach's back, his master drew the embossed bit carefully from his favourite's mouth, pressing his head down with a caress towards the water, while he administered, like a true horseman, to the needs of his servant before he slaked his own parched lips, or so much as dipped his hand in the cold, clear, tempting element. But Merodach, though he pointed his ears and neighed joyfully, scarcely wetted his muzzle in the marble basin; thereby affording a proof, had any been wanting, of his celebrated pedigree and stainless purity of breed. His young lord was not so abstemious. He looked about, indeed, for a drinking-vessel; but would have done very well without it, had not a shadow come between him and the sun as he was in the act of stooping to immerse face, lips, and nostrils in the sparkling water. With the ready instinct of one whose trade is war, he sprang erect, but bowed his head again in manly courtesy when he saw a girlish figure bending over him to dip her pitcher in the fountain.

"Drink, my lord," said a very sweet and gentle voice from the folds of a thin white veil. "When your thirst is quenched, your servant will take her payment in news from the army of the Great King."

He was young, bold, gallant, born under a Southern sun; but had Ashtaroth, Queen of Heaven, come down in person to accost him, with a pitcher of water in her hand, he must have drunk before he could utter a syllable in reply.

The girl watched him, while he emptied the vessel, with such tender interest as women take in the physical needs of one to whom they render aid, and refilled it forthwith, showing, perhaps not unconsciously, a lithe and graceful figure as she bent over the fountain.

"Thanks, maiden," said he. "You have put new life into a fainting man; for I have galloped over many a weary league of sand, and scarce drawn bridle since yesterday at noon."

"The poor horse!" answered the girl, laying a slender hand on Merodach's swelling neck. "But my lord comes doubtless from the camp, and has joyful tidings to bring, or he had never ridden so far and fast. What of the Great King? and O! what of Arbaces? Is he safe? Is he unhurt? Is he well?"

There was a tremble in her voice that denoted intense anxiety, and the pitcher in her hand shook till it overflowed.

Sarchedon marked her agitation with a sense of displeasure, unaccountable as it was unjust.

"The Great King," he answered, raising his right hand quickly to mouth and eyes while he named him—"the Great King has triumphed, as he must ever triumph when he mounts his war-chariot. The captain of the host is well in health, unwounded, though foremost in battle;—trusted by his lord, feared by the enemy, and honoured of all."

She clasped her pretty hands together in delight, while the pitcher, escaping from her grasp, poured its contents into the thirsty soil and rolled under Merodach's hoofs, eliciting from the horse a prolonged snort of astonishment and disgust.

"You are indeed a messenger of the gods!" said she—"welcome as the breeze at sundown; welcome as the rains of spring; welcome to the Great Queen and her people yonder in the city; but to none so welcome as you have been to me!"

"Indeed!" he answered in a cold, measured voice. "Have I then brought tidings of one so very dear to you?"

"None can ever be so dear," she exclaimed with a light laugh, musical and pleasant as the whisper of the rippling fountain—"none will ever love me so well—none shall I ever love half so dearly in return! Arbaces is my father, and every day since he mounted his chariot at the head of the Great King's captains have I watched here with my maidens, to catch the first gleam of his armour when he returns, to learn good tidings of him by the first messenger who rides hither from the camp. Not one has yet arrived but yourself, my lord. I say again, may all the host of heaven befriend you, for to me you are welcome as the dawn!"

It was unaccountable that his heart should have bounded so lightly at her speech, that his tone should have been so much softer while he replied:

"I am bearing tidings from a king to his queen,—from the conqueror of nations to his people in the greatest city of the earth. I have to relate how we slew and spared not, crushing and trampling down the enemy as an ox treads out the ripened corn; breaking their chariots of iron; taking their fenced cities by assault; capturing and bringing away men, women, and children by thousands and tens of thousands. All that I have to tell is of honour, glory, and victory. Yet I speak truth when I swear to you, maiden, by the light of morning, that whatever recompense it may please the Great Queen to bestow on the lowest of her servants, to have met you here to-day at the Well of Palms, and to have gladdened you with assurance of my lord your father's welfare, is to me the richest and brightest reward of all."

"You have noble triumphs to report," she answered hurriedly, and drawing her veil closer, as if he could see the blood rushing to her cheek behind its folds. "Great victories, but not without fierce warfare—many a broken shield and shivered spear, and deadly arrow quivering in its mark! And you, my lord—have you escaped scathless? Has this good horse borne you always unhurt and triumphant in the press of chariots?—Yes, I know it, in the hottest fore-front of the battle? O, it is dreadful to think of!—the wounded, the dying, the fallen steed, the pitiless conqueror—those we love, it may be, gasping out their lives on the trampled plain, and then to watch on the walls of the city, or here by the Well of Palms, for the horseman that never comes! Pardon me, my lord: I speak too freely. Let me give you to drink once more from the fountain; then will I gather my maidens about me, and depart in peace."

He took her hand in his own, nor did she withdraw it.

"You are not alone?" he asked. "The daughter of Arbaces does not travel unattended so much as a bowshot from the city walls?"

"My damsels are in those tents," she answered, "my camels are kneeling in the shade. I have no need of guards nor horsemen. Over many a league without the ramparts of Babylon her father's fame is a tower of defence for the daughter of Arbaces."

"The daughter of Arbaces!" he repeated. "Maiden, so long as I eat bread and drink water I will remember her by that name."

"And by her own," she added hurriedly. "The servant of my lord is called Ishtar. It was my mother's name, and Arbaces loved her well."

"Ishtar!" he murmured—and his rich low voice dwelt softly on the syllables—"Ishtar, the fair pure queen of night! 'twas well chosen, in good truth; for the moon shines ever gentle, mild, and gracious, like a true goddess."

"And changes, my lord, like a true woman!" laughed the girl; but continued in a graver and more respectful tone: "The day wears on—he who carries a king's tidings must be diligent on the way. I thank my lord for his favourable notice of his servant, and I bid him farewell."

Then she gathered her dress about her, recovered the pitcher, and walked away towards her tents, modest, stately, and graceful—a goddess in gesture, as in name.

She turned once, nevertheless, when he was busied adjusting the bridle in his horse's mouth, and drew her veil aside while he might have counted ten. The large serious eyes, the perfect oval, the pale delicate beauty of that young face haunted him, even to the towers and ramparts of haughty Babylon, even amidst the shouting crowds who thronged her brazen gates.

There is a spirit that, whether for good or evil, when it takes possession of the heart of man, must needs tear and rend, stanch and soothe, torture and perplex, or elevate and encourage, each and all in turn; but, be it a blessing or a curse, it fills the tenement, occupies the whole temple, and when it vanishes, leaves but bare walls and a riven altar to mark the sacred spot that it has scathed and blasted ere it passed away.

Merodach galloped on, swift, mettlesome, untiring, regardless of the many leagues he had traversed, as he was unconscious of the double burden that he bore.

Nearing the city, Sarchedon could not but admire the stupendous walls that frowned over him as he rode at a slower pace through scores of tents and lodges of wood or sun-dried bricks scattered through the richly cultivated garden-grounds without the rampart walls, that, rising to forty cubits in height, were yet so wide as to admit of three chariots being driven abreast along their summits, flanked with lofty towers standing out in pairs, bluff and bold, like defiant warriors, and utterly impregnable to assault. Between every two of these, large gates of brass, worked in fantastic ornaments representing gods, men, and animals, amongst which the bull was the most conspicuous, stood open from sunrise to sunset, while through their portals passed and repassed a busy crowd, swarming like bees in and out of the rich and magnificent city, her own especial residence, which the Great Queen had created to be a Wonder of the World. What mattered waste of life and treasure, starving families, fainting peasants, the sinking slave and the task-master's whip? Each countless brick in all those leagues of building might be moistened with tears and cemented with blood, every stone raised on the crushed and mangled corpses of its founders; masses of marble, slabs of alabaster, roof, tower, and pinnacle, beam of cedar, and parapet of gold, might tell their separate tales of famine, disease, misery, and oppression—what matter? The Great Queen said, "Raise me here a city by the river that shall be worthy of my name!" and straightway up-sprang, on either bank of the mighty stream, such structures of pride, splendour, and magnificence, as were not to be surpassed by that very tower of man's defiance to his Maker, about which their foundations were laid.

Passing within the walls, a guard of Assyrian bowmen turned out to greet with warlike honours the messenger from their monarch's camp; their exertions were even required to clear a passage for him as he rode through the crowded streets—men, women, and children thronging and pressing in as he passed on, shouting a thousand cheers and acclamations, striving with each other to touch his feet, his garments, the horn of his bow, the carved sheath of his sword, the very trappings and accoutrements of his horse. With all his desire for dispatch, it was necessary to rein Merodach back to a foot's-pace; and many a dainty flower fell whirling down on the young warrior, many a charm and amulet was cast with unerring aim on his knees and saddle-cloth, while he paced forward under stately palaces, solemn temples, or broad terraces glowing like gardens with bright-robed Assyrian women, who flung their veils aside to shower greetings and welcome on the brave.

The watchman at the gate had long expected such a one. With the first glint of his armour in the distant waste the news spread like wildfire, and the whole population of the city was astir.

So he rode slowly on, the observed of all; and still, turn which way he would, above that sea of faces, amidst that mass of triumph, splendour, and gorgeous colouring, floated like a star shining through a mist the pale spectral beauty of the gentle girl whom he had left an hour ago at the Well of Palms—even the shouts that rent his ear seemed to reëcho from afar in an unearthly whisper, "Ishtar, Ishtar! pure, sacred, and beautiful queen of night!"

The streets were wider, the buildings more magnificent, the crowd, if possible, denser, as he proceeded through the city.

Presently, reaching a wide flight of low broad marble steps, flanked by those colossal bulls with eagles' wings and human heads, that represented the strength and solidity of the great Assyrian empire, he halted to dismount; for a cloth of gold and scarlet had been rolled out from top to bottom, and down these stairs were marching a body of white-robed priests with slow and solemn gait, their centre figure walking three paces before the rest, and advancing obviously to hold conference with the messenger from the camp.

Then the young warrior took a jewelled signet from his breast, and with a low obeisance pressed it to heart, mouth, and forehead; while over the eager multitude came unbroken silence, as Sarchedon tendered to Assarac, high-priest of Baal, his token from the Great King.

CHAPTER III

SEMIRAMIS

The silence lasted but a short space. When his lord, ere he accompanied that priestly escort into the palace, bestowed one parting caress on Merodach, shouts longer and more deafening than ever went up into the sunny sky. The good horse, led away by half a dozen negroes, now seemed to attract universal attention; for Sarchedon had disappeared between the gigantic bulls of stone that guarded each entrance to the royal dwelling. His armour, here and there defaced with sword-stroke or spear-thrust, his dusty, travel-stained garments, and, notwithstanding bodily strength and warlike training, the weary gait of one who has seen the sun set twice without quitting the saddle, were in marked contrast to the glittering splendour and refined magnificence of all that surrounded him. The marble steps, skirted by their entablatures of gilding and sculpture coloured to the life; the broad level terrace, glistening and polished like a steel breastplate inlaid with gold; the regal front of the costly palace itself, with its colossal eagle-headed figures, its winged monsters, couching or erect, its sacred emblems, its strange deities, its mystic forms, tributes of adoration offered to a host of gods, as the long succession of lifelike carvings on the walls, brought out in high relief with boldness of design and brightness of tint, were memorials of the triumphs won by a line of kings.

Here were represented the pleasures of the chase, the vicissitudes of war, the lion, the stag, the boar, the wild bull, beasts, landscapes, rivers, chariots and horsemen, warriors, captives, towers, and towns. Above rose a hundred stately pillars to support their painted chambers roofed with cedar and other precious wood, inlaid in elaborate and fantastic patterns, brilliant with vermilion or other gaudy colours, and profusely ornamented with gold. Over these lofty rooms rose yet another story, on ivory columns carved with the utmost skill that Indian handicraft could produce and Bactrian triumphs furnish, under a roof of which the very battlements and parapets were plated with silver and gold.

High above all towered the sacred structure of cedar, which formed that mysterious retreat, remote from the gaze of man, where none might enter but the monarch alone when ministering in his holy office, and combining in his own person the sacred characters of priest and king.

Assarac left his retinue at the gate of the palace, where stood two pillars of sardonyx to render poison innocuous should it pass through, and over which a gigantic carbuncle flashed its lurid rays, that seemed to shed an angry gleam even in the darkness of night. He bade Sarchedon follow, and the pair strode swiftly on through a cool and spacious hall, propped by as many columns as there were days in the Assyrian year, or furlongs in the circuit of the city walls, till, having thus traversed the palace at its narrowest part, they emerged once more on a paradise or garden, where the first object that met their eyes was a wild stag roused from his lair, and scouring with all the freedom of his native mountains to the shelter of a neighbouring thicket.

"She seldom hunts within these gardens now," was the priest's comment on this startling incident. "She cares for no tamer pastime than to ride the lion down, and shoot him with bow and arrow when at bay. There are none left here since my lord the king slew three with his javelin not a bowshot from where we stand; so she must away to the desert, or the mountains beyond the great river, for the sport she loves so well. Follow me close; you might lose yourself in this pleasant labyrinth, and it is death, my friend—by impalement too!—for any one caught disturbing the game."

He looked keenly in the other's face while he spoke, and seemed gratified to observe that the young soldier received this announcement with perfect unconcern.

Notwithstanding the power of an Assyrian sun, its rays could not penetrate to the darkling path by which they now threaded a tangled thicket of verdure—the tender flickering of green leaves above their heads, the sweet carol of song-birds in their ears, and a carpet of velvet turf beneath their steps—while they followed the course of a rippling stream, guiding them by its murmur, rather than its leap and sparkle, back to the light of day. Emerging from this grateful shade, they found a broad sheet of water spread at their feet, its surface dotted with wild fowl, its banks fringed with flowers, reflecting in its dazzling mirror a temple of silver and ivory raised in honour of Dagon, the fish-god, and much affected by the Great Queen, who, leaving her own especial palace, loved to retire here with her women and wile away the hottest hours of the summer's day.

One of these attendants seemed in expectation of the priest; for, appearing suddenly in the portico of the temple, she made him a sign to follow, and led the way, wrapping her veil so carelessly about her as to afford ample opportunity for contemplation of her charms. At another time Sarchedon might have observed with greater interest the jetty locks and rich Southern colouring of this smiling dame; but besides his new-born taste for beauty of a fairer, paler, and more gentle type, his heart was beating, as it had never beat in the hurtle of chariots and press of horsemen, at the thought that he was about to enter her presence with whose name the whole world rang.

Immediately within the entrance of this temple hung a curtain of crimson silk embroidered in lotus-flowers of gold. Assarac raised the hangings, and stepping quickly aside, gave place while he let them fall behind his comrade. Sarchedon, prostrating his forehead till it touched the cool shining floor, found himself alone with the Great Queen.

The temple was circular, paved, panelled, vaulted, in ivory and silver, the latter wrought and frosted with exceeding taste and skill, the former carved into a thousand fantastic patterns, delicate and elaborate as needlework. In the midst, a fountain threw its jets of silver to the roof, falling back in silvery showers to an ivory basin, of which the sparkling waters were thus continually moved with a refreshing drip and murmur. White doves flitted about the building, or cooed their drowsy love-song, perched peacefully on pinnacle and shaft. An odour of some subtle perfume, like incense mingled with the scent of flowers, stole on Sarchedon's senses; while he became aware of a figure reclining on the couch of silver and ivory over against the entrance. He dared not raise his eyes, and it was but the hem of her garment that he looked on, while he heard the low musical tones of that enchantress who was destined to subjugate the world.

"Rise, trusty messenger," said Semiramis; "fear not to tell me your tidings for good or evil, and speak with me face to face. He must needs be welcome who carries a token from my lord the king."

Sarchedon sprang to his feet at her bidding, and stood before the queen, as fair a specimen of youth, manhood, and warlike grace as could have been selected from the countless myriads that formed her husband's hosts. He averted his eyes, nevertheless, and kept his head bent down while, plucking from his breast the jewel that had already gained him admission, he replied:

"The light of the queen's countenance dazzles the eyes of her servant. Let him take courage to look but once, and be blind for evermore!"

While he spoke he laid the signet on a silken cushion under her feet. She glanced at it carelessly enough, and bent her eyes on the young warrior with a smile, half soft, half scornful.

"Am I then so dangerous to look upon?" said she; "the face of a queen should be gracious to a faithful servant. I say to you, Look and live!"

A thrill of intense triumph and pleasure shot through him with her words. He took courage to scan the form and features of that celebrated woman, whose intellect and beauty had already made her mistress of the mightiest nation in the East.

She was beautiful no doubt, in the nameless beauty that wins, no less than in the lofty beauty that compels. Her form was matchless in symmetry, so that her every gesture, in the saddle or on the throne, was womanly, dignified, and graceful, while each dress she wore, from royal robe and jewelled tiara to steel breastplate and golden headpiece, seemed that in which she looked her best. With a man's strength of body, she possessed more than a man's power of mind and force of will. A shrewd observer would have detected in those bright eyes, despite their thick lashes and loving glance, the genius that can command an army and found an empire; in that delicate, exquisitely chiselled face, the lines that tell of tameless pride and unbending resolution; in the full curves of that rosy mouth, in the clean-cut jaw and prominence of the beautifully-moulded chin, a cold recklessness that could harden on occasion to pitiless cruelty—stern, impracticable, immovable as fate.

But Sarchedon only saw a lovely woman of queenly bearing, glancing approval on his glowing face. His Southern nature seemed to expand like a flower in the sunshine of her smiles.

His looks could not fail to express admiration, and she, who might have been satiated with homage, seemed well pleased to accept as much as he had to offer.

Bending towards him with a gesture of condescension, that was almost a caress, she bade him advance yet nearer to her couch.

"And now," said she, "that you have looked on this terrible face of mine without perdition, tell me your tidings from the camp. What of the war? what of the host? what of my lord the king?"

"The war is ended," he answered briefly; "the host is victorious. My lord the king will return in triumph ere another day be past."

She started, but controlled herself with an effort.

"Enough," she answered haughtily and coldly; "you have done your duty—you are dismissed!"

Then she clapped her hands, and from behind the silken hangings appeared the woman who had guided Sarchedon into the temple.

"Kalmim," said the queen, still in the same constrained voice, "take this messenger to Assarac without delay; bid the priest report to me, at sunset, all the details he can learn from him regarding the host. But stay"—her tone changed to one of winning sweetness, soft, sad, and irresistible—"not till he has had food and rest. You have ridden day and night through the desert; you have looked on your queen's face and lived. Take courage, you may live to look on it again."

With the last words she turned on him one of her rare intoxicating smiles, and the strong soldier left her presence helpless, confused, staggering like a man who wakes out of a dream.

Within the gardens, or paradise, belonging to the royal palace stood a vast pile of building, dedicated to the worship of Baal, and surrounding the lofty tower of Belus, raised on the same site, and nearly to the same altitude, as that by which human rebellion presumed to offend after the Flood. Here, at the head of a thousand priests, dwelt Assarac in solemn state and splendour, officiating daily in sacrifices offered to the gods of Assyria, and their numerous satellites—Assarac, who combined in his own person the leadership of religion and of politics; for, during the absence of Ninus on his Egyptian expedition, it had been the ambitious eunuch's aim to share, if he could not guide, the queen's counsels, and, as far as he dared, to centre in his own person the executive of government.

Sarchedon found himself, therefore, again threading the shady paths by which he had come, but on this occasion under the conduct of a guide less swift of foot than the priest but, as became her sex, more nimble of tongue. Kalmim made no scruple of unveiling, to afford her companion the whole benefit of her charms.

"A good beginning indeed," said this saucy dame, with a smile that did justice to the reddest lips and wickedest eyes in Babylon; "you are in favour, my young lord, I can tell you. To have seen her face to face is no small boast; but that she should take thought of your food and rest, and bid me charge myself with your guidance through this deserted wilderness! why, I cannot remember her so gracious to any one since—well—since the last of them—there, you needn't look so bold at an unveiled woman—I ought never to have brought you here alone!"

It was almost a challenge; but he was busy with his own thoughts, and made no reply. Kalmim, unaccustomed to neglect, attributed his silence, not unnaturally, to exhaustion and fatigue.

"You are weary," said she kindly; "faint, doubtless, from lack of food, and would not confess it to save your life? O, you men, how your pride keeps you up! and why are you only ashamed of those things in which there is no disgrace?"

He compelled himself to answer, though his thoughts were far away.

"I am not ashamed to be faint and athirst. I have ridden two nights and a day, and drank water but once—at the Well of Palms."

"The Well of Palms!" she repeated, her woman's wit marking his abstraction, and assigning to it a woman's cause. "It is the sweetest water in all the land of Shinar. It would taste none the worse when drawn for you by the daughter of Arbaces."

"Ishtar!" he exclaimed, while his whole face brightened. "You have seen her—you know her! Is she not beautiful?"

Kalmim laughed scornfully.

"Beautiful!" she echoed, "with a poor thin face, white as ivory, and solemn as Dagon's yonder, in the fishing-temple! Well, well! then she is beautiful, if you like; and we shall learn next that she is good as well as fair!"

"What do you mean?" he asked, stopping short to look his companion in the face.

Kalmim burst into another laugh.

"I mean nothing, innocent youth!—for strangely innocent you are, though the beard is budding on your chin. And a modest maiden means nothing, I suppose, who frequents the well at which every traveller from the desert must needs halt—who draws water for warriors to drink, and unveils for a stranger she never saw before! Yes, I am unveiled too, I know; but it is different here. The queen's palace has its privileges; and, believe me, they are sometimes sadly abused!"

"Not by one who has just left the light of her presence," answered Sarchedon, angered to the core, though he scarce knew why. "I have never been taught to offend against the majesty of a king's house—to believe a fenced city taken because a bank is cast against it, nor a woman my lawful prize because she lifts her veil."

Next to making love, Kalmim enjoyed quarrelling. To tease, irritate, and perplex a man, was sport only second to that of seeing him at her feet. She clapped her hands mischievously, and exclaimed,

"You are bewitched, my lord! Confess, now. She unveiled to turn her eyes on you before you got to horse and went your way. Is it possible you do not know who and what she is?"

"Good or evil," he answered, "tell me the truth."

"She bears her mother's name," replied Kalmim; "and, like her mother, the blood that flows in her veins is mingled with the fire that glitters in the stars of heaven—a fire affording neither light nor heat, serving only to dazzle and bewilder the children of earth. Arbaces took a wife from that race whom, far off in the northern mountains, the daughters of men bare to the spirits of the stars, tempting them down from their golden thrones with song and spell and all the wiles of grosser earth-born beauty;—deceiving, debasing the Sons of Light, to be by them deceived and deserted in turn, left to sorrow through long years of hopeless solitude and remorse. Old people yet speak of some who had themselves heard the voice of mourning on those mountains in the still sad night—the shriek of woman wailing for the lost lover, in whose bright face she might never look again! Ishtar, the wife of Arbaces, possessed her share of the unearthly influence hereditary in her race. Her husband became a slave. He loved the very print of her feet on the sand. Travelling here from Nineveh, while this great city was building, he halted in the desert, and Ishtar walked out from her tent into the cool starlight night. They say he followed a few paces off. Suddenly she stopped, and stretched her hands towards the sky, like one in distress or pain. Rushing forward to take her in his arms, she vanished out of his very grasp. At sunrise a camel-driver found Arbaces senseless on the plain, and Ishtar was seen no more in tent or palace. But all the love he bore the mother seemed henceforth transferred to the child. Doubtless she has bewitched him too. Beware, my lord—beware! I have heard of men leaving real springs in the desert for shining rivers and broad glittering lakes, that faded always before them into the hot interminable waste. I am but a woman; yet, had I your chance of fortune, I would think twice before I bartered it away for a draught of water and an empty dream!"

He seemed very sad and thoughtful, but they had now reached the temple, and he made no reply. A white-robed priest received the young warrior at its portal with every mark of respect, and ushered him into the cool and lofty building, where bath, raiment, food, and wine, he said, were already prepared, casting a look of intelligence at Kalmim, who answered with as meaning a glance, and one of her brightest smiles. Then dropping her veil, since nobody was there to see her handsome face, she tripped back a good deal faster than she had come to her duties about the person of the Great Queen.

CHAPTER IV

THE TEMPLE OF HIS GOD

In the hierarchy of Baal, as in other religious orders, false and true, it was deemed but right that the priests should want for nothing, while the altar was well supplied with offerings. To one who had dismounted from a two nights' ride, such luxuries as were scattered profusely about the temple of the great Assyrian god formed a pleasing contrast to camp lodging and camp fare.

If Sarchedon, weary and travel-stained, was yet of so comely and fair a countenance as to extort approval from the queen herself, Sarchedon, bathed, refreshed, unarmed, clad in silken garments, and with a cup of gold in his hand, was simply beautiful. Assarac the priest, sitting over against him, could not but triumph in the sparkle of that bauble by which he hoped to divert and dull the only intellect in the Eastern world that he believed could rival his own.

The servant of Ninus and the servant of Baal sat together on the roof of a lower story of the temple; below them the pillars and porticoes of the outer court, behind them vast piles of building, vague, gloomy, and imposing in the shades of coming night. High over their heads rose the tower of Belus, pointing to the sky, and many a fathom down beneath their feet the stir and turmoil of the great city came up, terrace by terrace, till it died to a faint drowsy murmur like the hum of bees in a bed of flowers. The sun was sinking in uninterrupted splendour behind the level sky-line of the desert, and already a cool breeze stole over the plains from the hills beyond the marshes, to stir the priest's white garments and lift the locks on Sarchedon's glossy head, while for each it enhanced the flavour and fragrance of their rich Damascus wine, bubbling and blushing in its vase of gold. Between them stood a table, also of gold, studded with amethysts, while the liquor in their golden cups was yet more precious than the metal and brighter than the gem.

Something to this effect said Sarchedon, after a draught almost as welcome and invigorating as that which he had drained in the morning at the Well of Palms; while, with a sigh of extreme repose and content, he turned his handsome face to the breeze.

"It is so," answered Assarac; "and who more worthy to drink it than the warrior whose bow and spear keep for us sheep-fold and vineyard—who watches under arms by night, and bears his life in his hand by day, that our oxen may tread the threshing-floor, and our peasants press out their grapes in peace? I empty this cup to Ninus, the Great King, yonder in the camp, in love, fear, and reverence, as I would pour out a drink-offering from the summit of that tower to Ashtaroth, Queen of Heaven."

"And the Great King would dip his royal beard in it willingly enough, were it set before him," answered the light-hearted warrior. "I saw him myself come down from his chariot when we crossed the Nile, and drink from the hollow of his buckler mouthful after mouthful of the sweet vapid water; but he swore by the Seven Stars he would have given his best horse had it been the roughest of country wine; and he bade us ever spare the vineyards, though we were ordered to lay waste cornland and millet-ground, to level fruit-trees, break down water-sluices, burn, spoil, ravage, and destroy. Who is like the Great King—so fierce, so terrible? Most terrible, I think, when he smiles and pulls his long white beard; for then our captains know that his wrath is kindled, and can only be appeased with blood. I had rather turn my naked breast to all Pharaoh's bowmen than face the Great King's smile."

Assarac was deep in thought, though his countenance wore but the expression of a courteous host.

"He is the king of warriors," said the priest carelessly—"drink, I pray you, yet once more to his captains—and beloved, no doubt, as he is feared among the host."

"Nay, nay," answered the other laughing, for the good wine had somewhat loosened his tongue, while it removed the traces of fatigue from his frame. "Feared, if you will. Is he not descended from Nimrod and the Thirteen Gods? Brave, indeed, as his mighty ancestors, but pitiless and unsparing as Ashur himself."

"Hush!" exclaimed the priest, looking round. "What mean you?"

"I have not counted twenty sunsets," answered the other, "since I saw the Great King's arrow fly through buckler and breastplate, aye, and a brave Assyrian heart too, ere it stuck in the ground a spear's length farther on. He has a strong arm, I can bear witness, and the man fell dead under his very chariot; but it should not have been one of his own royal guard that he thus slew in the mere wantonness of wrath. Sataspes, the son of Sargon, had better have died in Egypt, where he fought so bravely, than here, under an Assyrian sky, within a few days' march of home."

"Sataspes!" repeated the other; "and what said his father? It is not Sargon's nature to be patient under injury or insult."

"His dark face grew black as night," answered Sarchedon, "and the javelin he held splintered in his grasp; but he bowed himself to the ground, and said only, 'My lord draws a stiff bow, and the king's arrow never yet missed its mark.'"

"It was a heavy punishment," observed Assarac thoughtfully.

"And for a light offence," answered the other. "Sataspes did but lift her veil to look on the face of a virgin in a drove of captives who had not yet defiled by the Great King's chariot. She cried out, half in wrath, half in fear; and ere the veil fell back on her bosom, the offender was a dead man."

"Did the Great King look favourably on the virgin?" asked Assarac. "A woman must needs be fair to warrant the taking of a brave man's life."

"I scarce heeded her," answered Sarchedon. "She came of a captive race, whom the Egyptians hold in bondage down yonder, imposing on them servile offices and many hard tasks—a race that seem to mix neither with their conquerors nor with strangers. They have peculiar laws and customs in their houses and families, giving their daughters in marriage only to their kindred, and arraying their whole people like an army, in hosts and companies. I used to see them at work for their task-masters, moving with as much order and precision as the archers and spearmen of the Great King."

"I have heard of them," said Assarac; "I have heard too that their increasing numbers gave no small disquiet to the last Pharaoh, who was wiser than his successor. Will they not rise at some future time, and cast off the Egyptian yoke?"

"Never!" answered the warrior scornfully. "It presses hard and heavy, but this people will never strike a blow in self-defence: they are a nation of slaves, of shepherds and herdsmen. Not a man have I seen amongst them who could draw a bow, nor so much as sling a stone. Where are they to find a leader? If such a one rose up, how are they to follow him? They are utterly unwarlike and weak of heart; they have no arms, no horses, and scarcely any gods."

Assarac smiled with the good-humoured superiority of an adept condescending to the crude intelligence of a neophyte. Did he not believe that through the very exercise of his profession he had sounded the depths of all faith, here and hereafter—in the earth, in the skies, in the infinite—above all, in himself and his own destiny?

"Their worship is not so unlike our own as you, who are outside the temple, might believe," said he, pointing upwards to the glowing spark on the summit of the tower of Belus, which was never extinguished night or day. "I have learned in our traditions, handed down, word for word, from priest to priest, since the first family of man peopled the earth after the subsiding of the waters, that they too worship the sacred element which constitutes the essence and spirit of the universe. If they have no images, nor outward symbols of their faith, it is because their deity is impalpable, invisible, as the principle of heat which generates flame. If they turn from the Seven Stars with scorn, if they pour out no drink-offering, make no obeisance to the Queen of Heaven, it is because they look yet higher, to that mystic property from which Baalim and Ashtaroth draw light and life and dominion over us poor children of darkness down here below. Their great patriarch and leader came out of this very land; and there is Assyrian blood, though I think shame to confess it, in the veins of that captive people subject now to our hereditary enemies in the South."

"The men are well enough to look on," answered Sarchedon, "but, to my thinking, their women are not so fair as the women of the plain between the rivers; not to be spoken of with the Great Queen's retinue here, nor the mountain maids who come down from the north to gladden old Nineveh like sweet herbs and wild flowers growing in the crevices of a ruined wall. If this people are of our lineage, they have fallen away sadly from the parent stock."

"What I tell you is truth," replied Assarac; "and I, sitting by you here to-night, have spoken with men whose fathers remembered those that in their boyhood had seen the great founder of our nation—old, wrinkled, with a white beard descending to his feet, but lofty still, and mighty as the tower of defiance he reared to heaven, though suffering daily from torment unendurable; and why? Because of the patriarch and chief of the nation you despise."

Through all the Assyrian people, but especially amongst the hosts of the Great King, to believe in Nimrod was to believe in Baal, in Ashur, in their religion, their national existence, their very identity.

The colour rose to Sarchedon's brow as he passed his hand over his lips, scarcely yet darkened with a beard, while he answered haughtily,

"Nimrod was lord of earth by right of bow and spear. No man living, backed by all the gods of all the stars in heaven, would have dared to dispute his word, nor so much as look him in his lion-like face!"

"And yet did this old man, lord only in his own family—chief of a tribe scarce numbering a thousand bowmen—beard the lion-king in the city he had founded, in the palace where he reigned, in the very temple of his worship. The patriarch reasoned with him on the multitude of his gods; and Nimrod answered proudly, he could make as many as he would, but that while they emanated from himself they had supreme dominion on earth and over all in heaven, save only the Seven Stars and the Twenty-four Judges of the World. Then the patriarch took the king's molten images out of the temple, kindled a great furnace in the centre of the city, and in the presence of all Nineveh, cast them into the midst."

Sarchedon started to his feet.

"And the king did not hew him in pieces with his own hand where he stood!" exclaimed he. "It is impossible! It is contrary to all reason and experience!"

"The king could scarce believe his eyes," continued Assarac, smothering a smile, "when he saw his sacred images crumbling down and stealing away in streams of molten gold. It is even said that he uttered a great cry of lamentation and sat on the ground a whole night, with his garments rent, fasting, and in sore distress. This I scarcely think was the fashion of the mighty hunter: what I do believe is, that he sent a company of bowmen after the offender with orders to bring him back into his presence, alive or dead. They pursued the patriarch through the Valley of Siddim, till they came to the bitter waters; and here"—Assarac put his goblet with something of embarrassment to his lips—"here the stars in their courses must have fought against Assyria; for our warriors turned and fled in some confusion, so that the daring son of Terah escaped. Then it is said that he prayed to his God for vengeance against our lion-king, entreating that he who had been conqueror of the mightiest men and slayer of the fiercest beasts on earth, should be punished by the smallest and humblest of that animal creation it had been his chief pleasure to persecute and destroy. His God answered his prayer, though he raised no temples, made no golden images of man, beast, bird, nor monster, and sacrificed but a lamb or a kid in burnt-offering on the altar of unhewn stones in the plain.

"A tiny gnat was sent to plague great Nimrod, as the sand-fly of the wilderness maddens the lion in his lair. Under helm or diadem—in purple robe or steel harness—at board and bed—in saddle, bath, or war chariot, the lord of all the earth was goaded into a ceaseless encounter where there was no adversary, and exhausted by perpetual flight where none pursued.

"Then he sent for cunning artificers, who made for him a chamber of glass, impervious even to the air of heaven, so that the king entered it well pleased; for he said, 'Now shall I have ease from my tormentor, to eat bread and drink wine, and be refreshed with sleep.'

"But while he spoke the gnat was in his ear, and soon it ascended, and began to feed on his brain. Then the king's agony was greater than he could bear, and he cried aloud to his servants, bidding them beat on his head with a hammer, to ease the pain. So he endured for four hundred years; and then he—then he went home to his father Ashur; and when the Seven Stars shine out in the Northern sky, he looks down, well pleased, from his throne of light, on the city that his children have built, and the statue of gold they have raised to his name."

"And this is true?" exclaimed Sarchedon, whose love of the marvellous could not but be gratified by the priest's narrative.

"True as our traditions," answered Assarac, with something like a sneer; "true as our worship, true as our reason and intellect, true as the lessons we have learned to read in the stars themselves. What can be truer? except labour, sorrow, pain, and the insufficiency of man!"

"Every one to his own duty," replied the young warrior. "Slingers and bowmen in advance, spears and chariots in the centre, horsemen on the wings. It is your business to guess where the shaft falls; mine is but to fit the arrow and draw the bow. I am glad of it. I never could see much in the stars but a scatter of lamps to help a night march, when no brighter light was to be had. The moon has been a better friend to me ere now than all the host of heaven. Tell me, Assarac, can you not read on her fair open face when I shall be made captain of the guard to the Great King?"

"What you ask in jest," said the other, smiling, "I will hereafter answer in sober earnest. I go hence to the summit of that high tower, and all night long must I read on those scrolls of fire above us a future which they alone can tell—the destiny of nations, the fate of a line of kings, nay, the fortunes of a young warrior whom the queen delighteth to honour, and who may well deserve to sleep to-night while others take their turn to watch."

Thus speaking, he spread his mantle over a heap of silken cushions, disposed at the foot of the stairs leading to the tower of Belus so as to form a tempting couch, in the cool night air, for one who had ridden so far through the heat of an Assyrian day.

He had not ascended three steps towards the tower, ere Sarchedon, overcome with fatigue, excitement, and Damascus wine, laid his head amongst the cushions and fell into a deep sound sleep.

CHAPTER V

THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES

Casting his eye on the fire of fragrant wood that burned in its brazen tripod at the summit of the tower, passing his fingers, as it seemed, mechanically through its flame, and with the same unconscious gesture touching his right eyebrow, Assarac leaned his massive figure against the parapet, plunged in a train of deep engrossing thought.

The tapering structure he had ascended was built, as his traditions taught him to believe, for purposes of astral worship and observation. It afforded, therefore, a standing-point from which, on all sides, an uninterrupted view of the heavens could be obtained down to the horizon; yet the eyes of Assarac were fixed steadfastly on the great city sleeping at his feet, and it was of earthly interests, earthly destinies, that he pondered, rather than those spheres of light, hanging unmarked above him in the golden-studded sky.

A soft but measured step, the rustle of a woman's garment, caused him to turn with a start. He prostrated himself till his brow touched the brickwork at her feet, and then, resuming an erect position, looked his visitor proudly in the face, like a teacher with his pupil, rather than a subject before his queen.

"Assarac," said Semiramis, "I have trusted you with a royal and unreserved confidence to-night. I do not say, deserve it, because your life is in my hand, but because our wishes, our interests, and the very object we aim at, are the same. Many have served me in slavish subjection through fear. Do you serve me with loyal regard as a friend?"

She laid her white hand frankly on his arm, and he, priest, man of science, as he was, ambitious, isolated, above and below the strongest impulses of humanity, felt the blood mount to his brain, the colour to his cheek, at that thrilling touch.

"Your servant's life," he answered, "and the lives of a thousand priests of Baal, are in the queen's hand to-night; for doth she not hold the signet of my lord the king, sent with Sarchedon from the camp in token of victory? And more than my life,—my art, my skill, the lore by which I have learned to compel those gods above us, are but precious in my sight so far as they can advantage the Great Queen."

"You will unfold the mysteries of the sky," she replied eagerly. "You will bid Baalim, Ashtaroth, and all the host of heaven speak with me face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. If you will answer for the gods up yonder," she added with a touch of sarcasm on her sweet proud lip, "I will take upon myself to order the actions of men below."

"Something of this I can do," said he gravely, "or I have watched here night by night, and fasted, and prayed, and cut myself with knives before the altar of Baal, in vain. But, first, I must ask of the queen, doth she believe in the power of the gods? Doth she trust her servant to interpret truly the characters of fire engraved by them on the dark tablets of night?"

She scanned him with a searching look. "I believe," she said, "thus far—that man makes for himself the destiny to which hereafter he must submit. I believe the gods can foretell that destiny, and I would fain believe, if I had proof, that you, Assarac, their faithful servant, possess power to read up yonder the counsels of the Thirteen, and all their satellites."

"What proof does my queen desire?" asked the priest. "Shall I read off to her from those shining tables the plastic mouldings of the future, or the deep indelible engravings of the past?"

The queen pondered. "Of the future," she replied, "I cannot judge whether they speak true or false. Were they to tell me of a past known only to myself and one long since gone from earth"—she sighed while she spoke—"I might give credit to their intelligence, and shape my course by those silent witnesses, as men do in the desert or at sea."

"Look upward, my queen," answered Assarac, "and mark where the belt of the Great Hunter points to that distant cluster of stars, like the diamonds on your own royal tiara. Faintest and farthest shines one that records her past history, as yonder golden planet, glowing low down by the horizon, foretells her future destiny."

He stopped, and from a vase of wine that stood near the sacred fire, sprinkled a few drops to the four quarters of the sky. "I pour this drink-offering," he said, "to Ashtaroth, Queen of Heaven! Shall I tell the Queen of Earth a tale I read in those stars forming the symbol which, rightly interpreted, contains the name of Semiramis?"

The queen nodded assent, turning her beautiful face upward to the sky.

"Could it all be true?" was the wild thought that fleeted for an instant through his brain, "and had not Ashtaroth herself come down from heaven to look on her adoring votary?"

With a glance almost of awe into the queen's upturned countenance, Assarac proceeded: "I read there of a city in the South, a city beyond the desert, pleasant and beautiful in the waving of palms, the music of rushing waters, built on the margin of a lake, where leaping fish at sundown dot the glistening surface, countless as rain-drops in a shower. On its bank stands a temple to that goddess who, like Dagon, bears half a human form, terminating in the scales and body of a fish. Very fair is Derceta to the girdle, and, womanlike, fanciful as she is fair. Near her temple dwelt a young fisherman, comely, ruddy, of exceeding beauty and manhood, so that the goddess did not scorn to love him with all the ardour of her double nature, only too well.

"Yet it shamed her of her human attributes when she gave birth to a child, though the stars tell me, O queen, that never was seen so beautiful a babe, even amongst those borne by the daughters of men to the host of heaven.

"Nevertheless, a foul wound festers equally beneath silk and sackcloth; so that the goddess, in wrath and shame, carried her infant into the wilderness, and left it there to die.

"Behold how Ashtaroth glows and brightens in the darkening night. Surely it was the Queen of Heaven who sent fair doves to pity, succour, and preserve that child of light, tender as a flower, and beautiful as a star. Day by day the fond birds brought her fruits and sustenance, till certain peasants, observing their continual flight in the same direction, followed their guidance, and found by a rill of water the laughing infant, bearing even then a promise of beauty to be unequalled hereafter in the whole world."

There was pride and sorrow in the queen's deep eyes as she fixed them on the seer, and whispered,

"Ask, then, if it had not been better to have left the child there to die."

"The stars acknowledge no pity," was his answer. "It is the first of human weaknesses cast off by those who rule in earth or heaven. Had they not written the destiny of that babe by the desert spring in the same characters I read up there to-night? They tell me how, in her earliest womanhood, she was seen by Menon, governor of ten provinces under my lord the king. They tell me how Menon made her his wife. They tell me, too, of an amulet graven with a dove on the wing, which that maiden wore hidden in her bosom when she came veiled into the presence of her lord."

The queen started.

"How know you this?" she exclaimed almost angrily. "I have never yet shown it even to my lord the king."

"I do but read that which is written," he answered. "They tell me also how, when she shall part with that amulet, it will purchase for her the dearest wish of her heart at the sacrifice of all its powers hereafter. Its charm will then be broken, its virtue departed. She never showed it man save Menon; for the governor of those wide provinces stretching to the Southern sea would have gone ragged and barefoot, would have given rank, riches, honours, life itself, for but one smile from the loveliest face that ever laughed behind a veil."

"They speak truth," murmured the queen; "he loved me only too well."

"It was written in heaven," continued Assarac, "that the servant must yield to his master, and that a jewel too precious for Menon was to blaze in the diadem of the Great King. I read now of a fenced city, frowning and threatening, far off in an Eastern land; of a bank cast against its ramparts, and mighty engines smiting hard at its gates; of archers, spears, slingers, and horsemen; of the king of nations seated on his chariot in the midst, pulling his grey beard in anger because of the tower of strength he could in no wise lay waste and level with the ground. But for Menon and his skill in warfare, the besiegers must have fled from before it in disorder and dismay. One morning at sunrise there were heard strange tidings in the camp. Men asked each other who was the youth who had ridden to Menon's tent in shining apparel, devoid of helm and buckler, but armed with bow and spear—beautiful as Shamash the God of Light, so that human eyes were dazzled, looking steadfastly on his face.

"Ere set of sun the Great King had himself taken counsel with this blooming warrior; ere it had risen twice, Menon was made captain of the host, and the work of slaughter commenced; for the proud city had fallen, and the gods of Assyria were set up in its holy places, to be appeased with blood and suffering and spoil.

"When the host returned in triumph, they left a mighty warrior dead in his tent over against the ruins of the smoking town. No meaner hand could have sufficed to lay him low, and none but Menon took Menon's life, because—Shall I read on?"

A faint moan caused him to stop and scan the queen's face. It was fixed and rigid as marble, pale too with an unearthly whiteness beneath that starlit sky; but there was neither pity for herself nor others in the calm, distinct articulation with which she syllabled her answer in his own words—"Read on!"

"They teach me," he continued, "that Menon could not bear his loss, after she had left his tent whose place was on the loftiest throne the earth has ever seen. When the triumph returned to Nineveh, there sat by the Great King's side, in male attire, the fairest woman under heaven. She guided his wisest counsels; she won for him his greatest victories; she raised his noblest city; she became the light of his eyes, the glory of his manhood, the treasure of his heart, mother of kings and mistress of the world; but she had never yet parted with her amulet to living man. All this is surely true; for it is written in those symbols of fire that cannot lie, and that trace the history of the Great Queen."

Semiramis turned her eyes on him with a look that seemed to read his very heart. The priest bore that searching glance in austere composure, creditable to his nerve and coolness; though these were enhanced by a vague conviction of his own prophetic powers, the result, no doubt, of a certain exaltation of mind, consequent on his previous fasts, his studies, and his long hours of brooding over deep ambitious schemes. After a protracted silence, she sighed like one who shakes off a heavy burden of memories; and, giving her companion the benefit of her brightest smile, asked him the pertinent question: "Is it the amulet that controls the destiny, or the destiny that gives a value to the amulet? Do the stars shed lustre on the woman, or is it the woman's fame that adds a glory to her star?"

For answer he pointed to a ruby in her bracelet, sparkling and glowing in the light of the mystic flame.

"That gem," said he, "was beyond price in the rayless cavern of its birth. Nevertheless, behold how its brilliancy is enhanced by the gleams it catches from the sacred fire. The stars shine down on a beautiful woman, and they make of her an all-powerful queen."

"All-powerful!" repeated Semiramis. "None is all-powerful but my lord the king. To be second in place is to be little less a slave than the meanest subject in his dominions."

He took no heed of her words. He seemed not to hear, so engrossed was he with his studies of the heavens, so awe-struck and preoccupied was the voice in which he declaimed his testimony, like a man reading from a sacred book.

"She whose counsels have won battles shall lead armies in person; she who has reached her hand to touch a sceptre shall lift her arm to take a diadem; she who has built a city shall found an empire. Walls and ramparts must hem in the one; but of the other brave men's weapons alone constitute the frontier: as much as they win with sword and spear so much do they possess. The dove is the bird of peace; and for her whom doves nourished at her birth there shall be peace in her womanhood, because none will be left to contend with the conqueror and mistress of the world."

He fell back against the parapet of the tower, pale, gasping, as if faint and exhausted from the effects of the inspiration that had passed away; but beneath those half-closed lids not a shade on the queen's brow, not a movement of her frame, escaped his penetrating eyes. He could read that fair proud face with far more certainty than the lustrous pages of heaven. Perhaps he experienced a vague consciousness that here on these delicate features were written the characters of fate, rather than yonder above him in the fathomless inscrutable sky. She seemed to have forgotten his presence. She was looking far out into the night, towards that quarter of the desert over which Sarchedon had ridden from the camp, where an arrow from her own quiver lay under the bleaching bones of the dead lion. Her eyes were fierce, and her countenance bore a rigid expression, bright, cold, unearthly, yet not devoid of triumph, like one who defies and subdues mortal pain.

Such a glare had he seen in the eyes of the Great King when he awarded death to some shaking culprit—such a look on the victim's fixed face, ere it was covered, while they dragged him away.

It was well, thought Assarac, for men who dealt with kings and queens to have no sympathies, no affections, none of the softer emotions and weaknesses of our nature. The tools of ambition are sharp and double-edged; the staff on which it leans too often breaks beneath it, and pierces to the bone. Moreover, it would have been wiser and safer to commit himself to the mercy of winds and waves than to depend on the wilfulness of a woman, even though she wore a crown. Already the queen's mood had changed: her face had resumed its habitual expression of calm, indolent, and somewhat voluptuous repose.

"No more to-night," she said, with a gracious gesture, as of thanks and dismissal. "There is much to be done before the return in triumph of my lord the king. To-morrow you will carry my commands to the captains within the city, bidding them have all their preparations made for the reception of the conquerors. Let them assemble their companies under shield; let the chariots and horsemen be drawn up in the great square over against the palace; and let the archers look that their bows have new strings. You can answer for your own people here?"

"For every hand that bears a lotus in temple, palace, or streets—two thousand in all, without counting the prophets of the grove, and the priests of Baal, outside the walls."

"Enough," said the queen; "you have done well. I, too, can read in the future more and mightier things than you have imparted to me to-night."

She wrapped her mantle round her to depart, not suffering Assarac to attend her one step on her way. Kalmim, she said, was waiting in the garden, and would accompany her to the palace. So she walked slowly down the winding staircase, grave, abstracted, as though revolving some weighty purpose in her mind. At its foot she started to see the recumbent figure of Sarchedon buried in profound sleep.

Was it a fatality of the stars? Was it an impulse of womanhood? She bent over that beautiful unconscious face till her breath stirred the curls on its comely brow, then, with a gesture almost fierce in its passionate energy, snatched the famous amulet from her neck, and laid it on his breast.

"It is a rash purchase," she muttered; "but I am willing to pay the price."

CHAPTER VI

A DREAMER OF DREAMS

He was sleeping, yet not so sound but that his rest was visited by a strange and terrifying dream.

He thought he was in the desert, galloping his good horse in pursuit of an ostrich, winged with plumes worthy to tuft the spears that guarded the Great King's tent. But for all his efforts of voice, hand, and frame, Merodach laboured strangely in the deep sand, of which the long-legged bird threw back such volumes as to choke his lips and nostrils, wrapping him in a dim revolving cloud, that whirled and towered to the sky. Like a stab came the conviction that he was in the midst of the pitiless simoon, and he must die. Once more he strove to rouse Merodach with heel and bridle; but the horse seemed turned to stone, till, plunging wildly, he struggled forward, only to sink under his rider and disappear beneath the sand. Then the cloud burst asunder to reveal the glories of a dying sunset, fading into the purple sea.

He was on foot in the desert, fainting, weary, and sore athirst; but he heard the night-breeze sighing through palms and whispering in lofty poplars; he heard the cool ripple of water against the shore, and the pleasant welcome of a stream, singing in starts of broken melody as it danced down to meet the waves; then he saw a yoke of oxen, a camel at rest, a few huts, and a boat drawn up high and dry on the beach.

He was no longer a warrior in the armies of the Great King, but a rude fisherman amongst fishermen. He ate of their bread, he drank from their pitcher; yet was he still hungry and athirst, still wore a sword at his girdle and carried a bow in his hand.

He took his share of their labour; he drew in their nets. It seemed to him he had seen their faces before, though they knew him not; but he marvelled why they moved so slowly, and neither spoke nor smiled. While he helped them, too, it was as if the whole weight of rope and meshes hung on his arm alone. So night fell; and they took him into a hut, pointing to a cruse of water and a mantle spread in the corner, but withdrawing in the same sad silence, calm and grave, like those who mourn for the dead.

He could not sleep. The moon rose and shone in on him where he lay. After long hours of tossing troubled waking, a figure blocked the window where her rays streamed in on his couch. Then a great horror came over him without cause or reason, and tugging hard to draw his sword, he found it fastened in the sheath. Solemnly, slowly the figure signed to follow. Leaving his couch, he felt his heart leap, for it resembled Ishtar! But in the porch of the hut he seemed to recognise the clear proud features of the queen. Nevertheless, when its face was turned to the moonlight, he knew it was Assarac under the garb of a fisherman, but bearing the lotus-flower always in his hand. Without exchanging word or look, with averted eyes and stealthy steps, these two set the little bark afloat and took the oars. Then at last was broken the long weary silence, by a voice that came up from the deep, saying, "Ferrymen, bring over your dead!"

Light, buoyant, and high in the water, the boat had danced like a sea-bird on the surface; but now, though never a form was seen nor sound heard, she began to sink—deeper, deeper, so that the waves seemed to peer over her sides, leaping and sporting about her in cruel mockery, as though eager to break in and send her down.

It was a hard task to row that heavy freight out to sea. Weary and horror-stricken he tugged at his oar till the sweat dropped from his brow.

The moon went down, and a great darkness settled on the waters—the thick clogging waters, through which their oars passed so heavily. Was it the sea of the plain whereon they were embarked? Yes, surely, it must be the sea of the plain, the Dead Sea.

Was he never to approach the term of this numbing oppressive labour? Must he row on for ever and ever, without pause or respite, having bid his last farewell to the shores of earth and the light of day? Thus thinking, he felt the boat's keel grate against the bottom, while the oar started from his hand.

He took courage to look about him; but mortal eye could not pierce that thick darkness; and though the toil awhile ago had been so severe, a chill air curdled his blood, and crept into his very heart.

Still and silent as the grave seemed that shadowy land, till the same voice he had heard on the other shore called out the name of one he knew well and loved with a brother's love. There was no answer; but the boat lightened perceptibly, and her keel no longer touched the shingle.

Another name was called, and yet another, always in the same calm passionless accents, always with the same strange solemn result.

At every summons the boat rose higher in the water. When Sataspes was called, she swung to the flow and wash of the sluggish wave against her sides; at the name of Ninus, the Great King, she floated free and unencumbered as before she put out on her mysterious voyage.

With a heart lightened as was the boat that bore him, he pushed her off to return; for something warned him that now his task was done. He would fain have spoken with Assarac; but the surrounding gloom seemed so to oppress his lungs and chest, that the words formed by his tongue could not find vent through his lips.

Once more he was bending to the oar, when, as it were out of his own heart, came a voice whispering his name, "Sarchedon! Sarchedon!" in low sweet tones, which yet he knew vibrated with the sentence of his doom.

An unseen power raised him to his feet, and would have lifted him to shore, but that the priest held him back by his coarse fisher's garment, which dragged on chest and throat till he was fairly choked. Then, in extremity of fear and agony, he found his voice to call on Assarac for help at the moment when his vesture, yielding to the strain laid on it, parted asunder to let the cold night air in on his naked breast.

So he awoke, scared, trembling, panting for breath, and even in his waking seemed still wrapped in the gloom of that Isle of Shadows—seemed still to catch the tread of muffled footsteps, the breath of airy whispers, faint echoes from another world.

In that age, and amongst a people ever striving after a mystic ideal, yearning for communion with a higher world, dreams, and the interpretations thereof, were held of no small account.

Sarchedon, warrior though he was, and, like his great chief, little imbued with the superstitions of his time and country, could not yet pass over such a scene as his imagination had even now pictured without much cogitation and concern. He sat up and considered it in no small perplexity, inclining to regard the vision now as an omen of fortune, anon as a warning of fate. In his suffocating struggles to wake, his hands had been pressed close against his breast; a few moments elapsed ere he became conscious that he held in them a jewel he had never seen before. Rising from his couch at the foot of the tower, he hastened to examine it by starlight under the open sky. It consisted of an emerald, on which was cut the figure of a dove with outspread wings, following, as it seemed, the course of an arrow flying upward through the air. That it had come to him by supernatural influences during his sleep, he never doubted, and interpreted it, as men always do interpret the inexplicable, in the manner most agreeable to his own wishes. This dove, he said to himself, must mean the girl he had so lately seen at the Well of Palms; for what could be more dove-like than the maiden sweetness and innocent bearing of Ishtar? The arrow doubtless signified, in its upward flight, his own future career. He would become illustrious as a warrior, and Ishtar would follow him in his brilliant course to fame. Was it an arrow, or the initial of a name? He was forced to confess, from its shape and direction, that it seemed intended to represent the weapon itself, and not the letter of which he would fain consider it a symbol. Nevertheless, it must be a sign that the gods intended him for great things, and it should be no fault of his if the only woman who had yet touched his heart did not share with him the good fortune thus promised by the stars.

Meantime it wanted many hours of dawn; so he returned to his cushions and mantle for the remainder of his night's rest, stopping by the table at which he had sat with Assarac in the evening for a pull at the golden flagon, not yet emptied of its good Damascus wine.

Nevertheless, long before sunrise, he awoke refreshed, invigorated, happy; feeling the amulet resting on his breast, he accepted its presence for a fortunate omen; and ere daylight paled the beacon-fire on the tower of Belus, was galloping Merodach through the desert on his way to the Well of Palms.

"Surely," thought this dreamer, "she will be watching there for the first glitter of spears that shall give token of her father's return? Then will I tell her when to expect the host, and how to distinguish between its vanguard and the spearmen of its strength, having Arbaces at their head, who march with the chariot of the Great King. She will give me to drink, and I will say unto her, Maiden, as this draught of water to one athirst and stifled with the desert sand, so is a whisper from the lips and a glance from the eyes of the fairest damsel in all the land of Shinar to him who has ridden from the great city only to look on her face ere he departs to see her no more. Then she cannot but lift her veil, and speak kindly to me, bidding me tarry but a few moments, while she draws water for my horse. So will I tell her the whole tale; and hereafter, when my lord the king has rewarded his warriors for service done with bow and spear, I will take to Arbaces a score of camels, a hundred sheep, and a talent of gold, together with the armour I won of that swarthy giant beyond the sweet river; and how shall he say me nay? So will I lead her home to my tent, and then shall I have attained full happiness, and need ask for nothing more on earth."

Thus it fell out that Kalmim, arriving in the temple of Baal soon after daybreak, missed both the object of her real and her fictitious search. The queen after a heated restless night, bade her chief tiring-woman seek in that edifice for an amulet, which Semiramis affirmed she could only have dropped at the foot of the tower of Belus, where some one, she added, was sleeping, who must be brought to her and interrogated forthwith. Kalmim's experience, in her own person and that of her mistress, led her at once to guess the truth; therefore she hurried off to apprise Sarchedon he was wanted without delay in the royal palace. On her arrival, it might be said that she found the nest still warm, though the bird had flown; for a priest was carrying away the cloak and cushions that had formed the young man's couch, and his dark eyes glittered with a roguish smile while he peered into the flagon of Damascus, to find little left in it but dregs.

"These warriors seem to know the use of good wine when they can get it," said he, "and I doubt not it sings and mantles under helm of steel no less than linen tiara or fillet of gold; but they clasp bow and spear through many a long night for one that they spend with goblet of Ophir in hand. Men sleep little in the camp too, and feed sparingly, they tell me, nor day after day must they be cheered by the sight of a woman's veil or the sound of a woman's voice. To say nothing of a fierce enemy and a place in the fore-front of the battle between two hosts in array, where it is scarcely more dangerous to fight than to fly. Truly it is better to be a servant of Baal than of the Great King."

"It is better to be a boar in the marshes than a lion in the mountain!" retorted Kalmim with high disdain; "a vulture battening on a dead camel than an eagle striking the wild goat from its rock! Conquering or conquered, up or down, a warrior is at least a man, and a match for men!"

"While a priest is a match for women," answered the other, laughing. "Is that what you would say? Nevertheless, Kalmim, it must be a priest who will serve your turn this morning, for there are here a thousand in the temple, and never a hand among us to draw bowstring or close round the shaft of a spear."

"There was a warrior in the porch even now," replied Kalmim; "a goodly young warrior with dark flowing locks, and a chin nearly as smooth, Beladon, as your own. What have you done with him? He bore hither the Great King's signet, and if he has come by harm, not all the gods of all your temples will shield you from the fair face that never looked on man in anger but he was consumed."

Beladon, a handsome young priest, with bright roguish eyes and swarthy complexion, turned pale while she spoke—pale even through the rich crimson of his cheek and the blue tint of lips and chin, where his beard was close-shaven, and rubbed down with pumice-stone in imitation of Assarac's smooth unmanly face.

"The youth lay here scarce an hour ago," said he, trembling. "He mounted the noblest steed that ever wore a bridle—a white horse, with eyes of fire—and rode off through the Great Brazen Gate into the desert like an arrow from a bow. Surely he will return."

Kalmim burst out laughing at his discomposure.

"Surely he will return!" she repeated; "and when he does return, surely you will bring him to me by the path through the great paradise without delay. Semiramis hath been dealing justice amongst the people since sunrise, but she will pass the heat of the day as usual in the fishing temple, and you will find me in its porch. You do not fear to present yourself before Dagon? His worship requires no sacrifice of sheep nor oxen, no blood of priests to flow from the gashes they cut in their naked flesh, before his altar."

She spoke in a jesting tone ill befitting the solemnity of the subject, and he answered in the same vein.

"The sheep and oxen we offer are consumed without doubt by Baal himself, while his servants live miraculously on the light of his countenance and the fragments that he leaves! Touching our self-inflicted wounds, notwithstanding all the blood spilt before the people, we scarcely feel the pain; and this too cannot but be by a miracle of the god. I make no secret with you of our mysteries. Tell me, in return, what mean these warlike preparations that have set the whole city astir to-day?"

Her tone was still of banter and sarcasm.

"Would you wish the Great King to be received," said she, "with no more ceremony than a shepherd bringing a stray lamb in from the wilderness on his shoulders? When he returns a conqueror, shall not the triumph be worthy of the victory?"

"But if every man who can bear arms is to stand forth in array with bow and spear; if the women and children, on pain of death, are not to come down into the streets; if the priests of Baal and the prophets of the grove are to be marshalled like warriors, with knives unsheathed and sacrificing weapons in hand, our welcome will seem to Ninus more like the assault of a fenced city than the return of my lord the king to his home!"

"So be it," answered Kalmim. "It is not the flash of a blade or the gleam of a spear that will frighten the old king. By the serpent of Ashtaroth, he fears neither man nor demon; and when his queen raised a temple in Bactria to Abitur of the Mountains, he profaned his altar and defied the Chief of the Devils in sight of our whole army. It angered her, and she hath not forgotten it. Why, men say, he believes no more in Baal than—than you do yourselves!"

He looked about him in alarm.

"Hush!" said he. "It is not for me to judge between my gods and my lord the king. The divining cup of Assarac has not failed to tell him that Ninus shall one day take his place with the Thirteen Gods. It may be that he knows the golden throne is waiting for him even now."

He scrutinised her face narrowly, but saw on it only a light and careless smile.

"Were I the queen, I'd have a younger one next time," was her reply. "Of your years, say you? No, thank you, Beladon—not for me. Well, you may come with me to the Jaspar Gate and as far as the outer court; I dare not pass alone through all those oxen, lowing, poor things, as if they knew not one of them would be left alive to-day at noon."

CHAPTER VII

THE KING OF NATIONS

Leaning on his spear within a day's march of the Great City, the tall figure of a warrior loomed massive and indistinct in the early light of morning breaking on the Assyrian camp. Line by line, shade by shade, as dawn stole slowly upward, his form came out in bolder relief. Presently a dark blurred mass, some few paces off, took the shape of a sleeping camel; soon shadowy tents, dusky banners, spoil, arms, accoutrements, all the encumbrances of an army on the march, grew into their real outline, filled with their respective colours; and the man's features, under his steel headpiece, became plainly visible in the light of day.

He was arrayed in the utmost splendour of armour and apparel. The former, inlaid throughout with gold, shone bright and polished like a mirror, though the goodly silks and heavy embroidery that formed the latter were sadly rent and frayed by the press of many a hot encounter, the wear and tear of many a weary march. He wore in his girdle a short straight sword with jewelled hilt and ornamented scabbard, carried a bow and quiver of arrows at his back, and a shield studded with precious stones on his arm. From his shoulders hung an ample mantle of crimson silk, bordered with deep fringes of gold; while the head of the spear, or rather javelin, on which he rested, though broad, sharp, and heavy, was plated and ornamented with the same costly metal.

In such an arm it seemed no doubt a formidable weapon; for the man's square frame and weighty limbs denoted great personal strength; while his marked features wore an expression of habitual fierceness, in accordance with a swarthy complexion, thick black brows, and ample curling beard.

He was buried in thought of no pleasing nature, to judge by the working of his lips and the scowling glances he directed towards a tent standing apart, of which two upright spears tufted with ostrich-plumes marked, and seemed to guard, the entrance.

As morning brightened, the whole camp came into view from the mound where he kept guard, and whereon the Great King's tent was pitched—a camp of many sleeping thousands, ranged in warlike order under a hundred banners drooping heavily in the still clear air.

Suddenly the warrior started from his listless attitude into life and action; for a light step was approaching, and a figure advanced to the tufted spears that denoted the abode of royalty.

"Stand!" he exclaimed in threatening accents, advancing his shield and raising the javelin to strike. "Nay, pass, Sethos," he added with a scornful laugh. "I have no orders to stop the king's cup-bearer; but you are on foot betimes this morning, though you wot well the old lion stirs not before break of day."

Sethos patted the wine-skin under his arm—a homely vessel enough, though its contents were to be poured into a jewelled cup.