SHARING THE SPOIL

In the palace of Ardesh, where the naked sword stood for men to worship, they set up a golden image of Baal; where a free monarch sat amongst his free warriors, the servant of a despotic mistress now lorded it over a conquered race. Between rise and set of sun a king had perished, an army had been cut to pieces, and a warlike people ceased to hold its place among nations.

In the court of that royal dwelling, under the soft evening sky, Assarac stood in state to receive the captains of the host, take note of their prisoners, and count the spoil. He had borne him all day like a warrior of might—cool as the wariest of leaders, bold as the fiercest of spearmen. None the less was his practised eye scanning the material results of triumph, his active brain plotting to consolidate the fruits of victory.

Though himself unwounded, the eunuch's harness was riven and dented, the linen garment, which, in right of his priestly office, he affected even in battle, was streaked and spotted with blood. Fed by the fire within, his look was keen and piercing; there seemed little more trace of fatigue on his care-worn face than it had worn day and night since the host marched out from the northern gate of Babylon; and, conscious he had borne him like a true son of Ashur, under the eyes of the Great Queen, his aspect, lately so dejected and morose, was brightened by a passing gleam, as from the light of hope.

It looked a ghastly task on which his mind was bent. Files of Assyrian spearmen, passing proudly before him, laid down the heads of enemies slain in arms or taken prisoners after the combat; so lavishly and with such precision, that a pile of these hideous trophies had already risen to the height of a man's girdle. Two scribes, tablet in hand, took note of their exact number; while Assarac, as the queen's chief counsellor, recorded the names of the successful warriors, and apportioned the share to which each would be entitled in dividing the spoil.

Not a murmur rose against his award; for it was still fresh in men's minds how at the turning-point of battle, when victory hung doubtful in the balance, all that fierce energy and daring which had rendered Ninus such a successful leader seemed to have descended on the priest of Baal whom the old king so mistrusted and reviled.

Man by man the champions of the Assyrian host passed by. One laden with the spoil he had already gathered, rude in workmanship, yet precious in its barbaric splendour and intrinsic worth. Another, dragging some hapless foeman, whom he had bound securely with his girdle, and whose fate hung on the eunuch's nod; for the conqueror, with bared arm and naked steel, held himself ready to pierce, flay, or decapitate at the lightest sign. A third, leading a comely mountain maid, white and ruddy, with shy blue eyes and tangled locks of gold, scared, trembling, weeping, yet sometimes blushing, not without conscious triumph, that she had herself taken captive the strong fighter in whose power she seemed to be.

For the vanquished, Assarac now showed a clemency unusual in the traditions of his people, not entirely in accordance with his own nature, as it had hitherto appeared, hard, practical, uninfluenced by feeling, and looking only to results. It was observed that he spared all captives save only such warriors as had been taken fighting against the bodyguards of the Great Queen; while for the Armenian women, in this their hour of sorrow, he manifested a pity and consideration that elicited certain ribald comments from his countrymen, and no small surprise from the prisoners themselves. But censure, praise, and ridicule were alike unable to affect him to-day. With that power of concentration which constitutes the principal element of success in war, government, or indeed any business of life, his energies were engrossed in the important task of so disposing that great Assyrian army, as to provide for security and good order in the captured town.

Leader after leader therefore he summoned and dismissed, receiving their tale of spoil and captives, giving directions for the distribution of their men. "Where has he learned his skill of warfare," said the old captains to each other, "this high-priest of our Assyrian god? Surely Baal comes down to him by night and speaks with him face to face."

So strongly was national pride and self-confidence imbued with a religious belief in their gods, that this opinion seemed to the sons of Ashur extremely probable and well-conceived. It reflected honour on themselves, their worship, and their triumph; above all, it invested Assarac with an influence and authority most essential in the absence of the Great Queen. Not a line of the eunuch's face, not a turn of his body, was permitted to weaken this impression of superhuman strength and sagacity, of holiness fresh from the fount of fire itself. Calm, dignified, imperious, moved by no casualty, equal to all occasions, he issued his commands with a foresight and wisdom that elicited order from the very excesses of a victorious army in a city taken by assault; and yet at Assarac's heart, though stifled and suppressed by the strong will within, raged a tumult far more difficult to deal with in its unbridled folly than the wildest license of warriors drunk with wine and blood.

Where was the queen? Again and again had that question presented itself in the hour of victory, and now, though the stars were out, he could not answer it yet.

While driving the Armenians back upon the town of Ardesh, and entering their capital with a routed enemy, he never doubted but that Semiramis was performing her part of the battle, and that they would meet at sunset in the Comely King's palace, where he would receive from her some acknowledgment of the valour he had shown, some word of thanks for the service he had done. For a time the exigencies of such a success left him not a moment to make inquiries concerning the mistress of nations, even had it been prudent to do so. It was necessary to assume supreme authority, and wield it without scruple; but when a clear head, an undisputed will, and an unequalled organisation had disposed of their immediate necessities, and the Assyrian host with its captives was securely established for the night, Assarac's anxiety became maddening as hour by hour passed on, but brought no tidings of the Great Queen.

It never entered his head that she could be slain. To him, Ashtaroth was no more an impersonation of light, beauty, and unearthly power than Semiramis. That she might have been taken up at the moment of victory, to join the stars of heaven in a chariot of fire, he was perhaps the only man of all the host who did not believe; but none the less was it impossible for him to realise that imperial glory as shadowed by defeat, that matchless face as pale and fixed in death.

Thus was he spared more than one hideous pang; yet perhaps it is a question whether the suspense that racked him now, with all its maddening possibilities, was not fiercer torture than would have been the certainty that she was gone from him for ever, and he must grovel before his idol no more.

While the stars shone coldly down on the scene of conflict, while a new moon shed her gentle light on fire-scathed tower and blackened wall above—on writhing sufferer and stiffened corpse below—on riven harness, prostrate horses, chariots broken where they fell—on the tents of the conquerors, the lines of the vanquished, the wounded, the sleeping, the dying, and the great banner of Ashur drooping sullenly over all,—Assarac wrapped himself in a dark-coloured mantle, and leaving the royal palace of Ardesh, stole down to the plain below, hoping that on the field of battle, where he had last seen her, he might recover some traces of the queen.

Already, ere he proceeded half a bowshot, he had disturbed a jackal at its loathsome feast. The eunuch shuddered and hurried on. Was this, then, the end and climax of all the pomp of war, the glory of the host, the thunder of chariots, the shouting of captains, the sword, the shield, and the battle?

A nation rising in its might at sunrise, going forth to conquer, and at nightfall—lo, a wild dog mumbling a bone!

His pursuits, his profession, the juggleries that deceived the people, the pseudo-science that professed to read the stars, had taught him, perhaps, to ponder and reflect, where others of his nation were content to act and to enjoy. Looking from the scene of carnage at his feet to that summer's night so fair and pure above, the great question thrust itself upon his mind, which his experience, his reason, all the traditions of Ashur, all the mystic lore of Baal, seemed unable to answer.

What was this confusion on earth, this order and regularity in heaven, and why were these things so? Did Nisroch take thought for that Armenian woman, wailing in the darkness over the body of her dead lord, or Baal pity the maimed swordsman yonder, trailing his length like a crushed reptile towards the stream that, in his agony of thirst, he forgot had been drained and turned aside? Was there indeed a motive power to govern in heaven? And if so, did it leave the evils of earth to right themselves as best they might, by force, fraud, and subtlety, the strong arm and the cunning brain? A thrill of triumph passed through him, while he murmured,

"It must be so! Let him lord it up yonder who will, man is the god below; and he who never flinches from his purpose shall not fail in his desire. Such a one stands here to-night in these my garments. Conqueror of the north, Assarac the eunuch has to-day taken his place among the mighty ones of earth, and who shall say him nay? Hath he not led the hosts of Assyria to victory? Hath he not adjudged to each triumphant man of war the meed of his deserts; and shall not he also take his share of the spoil? Costly jewels, treasures of gold, herds of camels, horses, armour, and cunning needlework—the common needs of common men—he careth for none of these; and yet to-night, surely to-night, shall he garner the harvest that has been sown in fire, and reaped in blood. Ashtaroth, Ashtaroth, queen of love and light, hast thou ever known a worshipper who flung before thee all he had to give, taking his heart out, to lay it at thy feet, and asked only in return for one approving glance, one soft and kindly smile? Surely she to whom I pray cannot withhold these from me in such a time as this! Surely there is a goodly meed in store for him who has to-day placed her crowning victory on the brows of the Great Queen!"

He had nearly reached the river's bed, where the battle had been hottest, where the carnage lay thick and reeking in broad swathes of slaughter; a few more steps brought him to where Merodach lay stiff and cold, with a vulture feasting on his eyes, and a wild dog tearing at his flank. The bright stars and the young moon afforded light enough to distinguish the dead white horse with its ghastly attendants. Assarac's brain reeled, his blood ran cold, while he remembered that he had last seen its rider charging furiously through the battle, on the back of her favourite.

The vulture croaked and flapped its wings, the wild dog growled, glared, and slunk away. Like a man chained in a nightmare, half conscious that he is dreaming, yet wholly unable to resist the petrifying spell, Assarac felt as if some unseen power compelled him to remain and confront the nameless horror that he so dreaded, yet was so resolved to disbelieve. He tried to shout, but his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth; to draw his sword, but his hand hung powerless, and his flesh crept, so that the very hair rose in the nape of his neck; for gliding through the gloom, scarce half a bowshot off, there passed him a ghostly procession, such as the spirits of the dead might form, in their land of shadows beyond the grave.

Four tall dark figures, moving with solemn gait, bore aloft, on one of the long wicker shields used by assailants of a fenced city, such a shrouded burden as denoted the presence of death under the cloak that veiled its ghastly truth.

Behind them, with drooping head, clasped hands, and a bearing that betrayed the utmost abandonment of woe, walked a female mourner, majestic even in the hour of sorrow that bowed her to the earth. Assarac started into life now, if indeed that could be called life which was but restoration to consciousness under the smart of a deadly stab; for in the folds hanging about the corpse he recognised a royal mantle—in the drooping and dejected mourner, beheld the person of the Great Queen.

With fixed and rigid face, with hands clasped tight, with steps that seemed borne up and guided by some extraneous power, independent of and even dominating his own will, the eunuch followed through the darkness, as a sleep-walker follows the immaterial object of his dreams, never decreasing the space that intervened, never turning aside from the footprints of those who led, passing without heed over mailed corpse and broken chariot, through sand and shingle and shallow pools of blood.

So the procession laboured gravely on, away from the battlefield, across the vineyards, up the rocky path that led to those mountain forests in which the dead king of Armenia might have found safety from his foes.

The bearers neither increased their speed nor halted, nor stinted for lack of breath, but moved calmly forward with even measured pace, symbol of a haughty reverence and respect, rather than of pity or distress; for he whom they bore feet foremost had been a warrior like themselves, and lay warlike in his riven harness, with a broken bow in his hand. He had fallen, as was meet for a stout champion, in the fore-front of battle, and though the horsemen of Assyria slashed it cruelly with their swords, his comely face had never turned one hair's-breadth from the foe.

Therefore the sons of Ashur thought no shame to carry him sternly and proudly to his rest, at the command of their mistress; therefore in their hearts they told themselves, how at Nisroch's appointed time, it would be well for them too that they should die in their armour, and that their last end should be like his.

The frogs clamoured in the marsh, the night wind moaned in the pines, filmy clouds swept over the crescent moon, and the corpse went ever upward into the mountain, while the queen followed after it, weeping, mute, unconscious, and Assarac, giddy and bewildered, followed blindly after the queen.

COUNTING THE COST

Ever as their path grew steeper, and they penetrated farther into its recesses, the forest became more gloomy, while its trees assumed more hideous and fantastic shapes. The sky was dark and wild, the air loaded with those murmurs of the night that are to sounds of waking life as passing shadows to real objects of flesh and blood; gigantic faces, grim, gray, and indistinct, blinked and peered from naked crag or gnarled and wrinkled trunk; while here, there, everywhere around, brooded a presence, no less awful because so vague and impalpable, that would have curdled and chilled the boldest human heart. It seemed to Assarac, he was treading the border-land between here and hereafter; that at every step he might come face to face with some departed spirit, for which the universal experience was no longer a problem to be solved, which could tell him the secret all his life had been but an effort to inquire.

A white owl flitted noiselessly through the darkness, and the eunuch's heart stood still with something less debasing, yet far more horrible than fear. Nevertheless, as the shadowy train moved before him, mechanically he followed on.

In a gorge of the mountain, where night was blackest, a red light glowed suddenly across the sky. Wheeling round the stem of a rugged oak, the bearers halted with their burden, in an open space where four glades met, converging on an indistinct mass, that seemed, in the fitful glare, some rough rude altar reared of unhewn stones.

Reverently they laid the dead hero down. Rising erect, when he touched the earth, Assarac recognised in their lofty frames and costly armour four spearmen from the body-guard of the Great Queen.

Semiramis stood apart, peering eagerly into the gloom, only the outline of a white face visible in the deep folds of a mantle, that shrouded her head and figure.

Wild yells and piercing shrieks rose from the forest, while the flash of many torches danced fitfully among the trees. A score of hideous figures now came leaping into the open space, and formed themselves in a circle round the queen, the spearmen and the dead warrior laid upon his shield.

Interest and curiosity had somewhat mastered the eunuch's over-powering sense of horror, so that, waking, as it were, from the oppression of a trance, he seemed to resume his faculties of body and mind.

He knew the shapes at last, recognising them for those frantic votaries who, electing to worship Abitur of the Mountains, disowned all human ties and interests, abjured all other creeds and professions, that they might serve the great principle of evil in the wilderness.

These men were naked to the waist, their hair and beards were matted and tangled in foul disorder, they tossed their lean arms aloft with frantic vehemence, and their eyes glared in the torchlight with the fierce cunning of insanity.

They might have been themselves the demons they adored, so strange and unearthly was their appearance, while dancing, gibbering, howling, they came and went, now opening out, now closing in, their circle, now retiring among the trees, now advancing towards the altar, but still, like vultures about a carrion, converging gradually round the corpse.

The queen held up her hand; immediately the torches gave a steadier light, the wavering shapes were still, and prostrated themselves before her with mute signs of submission, reverence, even abject fear.

She had protected the sect, respected their tenets, even joined in their worship, from motives of policy long ago.

Now, in her great need, she clung to this desperate resource, and had come to wring from Abitur of the Mountains that which the host of heaven seemed unable to bestow.

With the increased light afforded by a score of torches, no longer whirled and brandished in the air, Assarac observed that, in the rock over against him, was hewn an entrance to some vast cavernous temple, ornamented with rough symbols and grotesque representations of the demon worshipped within. This cavity seemed partly natural, partly hollowed out from the bowels of the earth, by the same rude labour that had erected the altar in its front.

Four of the wild men raised the burden recently laid down by the Assyrian warriors, and, preceded by two of their companions with torches, disappeared in the entrance of the temple or mouth of the cavern. While they lifted the corpse, Semiramis passed her hand, with a gesture of exceeding tenderness, over the dead face, and followed close behind, succeeded by the rest of the torch-bearing troop, leaving the spearmen without, as if to guard the threshold.

An irresistible impulse drove the eunuch onward in his strange adventure, yet it seemed that he could not have uttered a word to save his life. With every faculty strained, every sense painfully sharpened, speech was alone denied him.

The sons of Ashur crossed their spears to bar his entrance; but throwing the cloak back from his face, though still without a word, he caused them to recognise him that stood at the right hand of the Great Queen, and thus passed unimpeded into the temple of the fiend.

In a vaulted cavern, so lofty that the glare of twenty torches scarce illumined the shadowy masses of its roof, stood four unhewn blocks of granite, supporting, at the height of a man's knee a rough slab of the same, on a flooring of rock, over which nature had spread a deep covering of sand. There was here no appearance of shrine or altar, none of those attempts at ornament, by which even the rudest of worshippers do honour to their deity with hand and brain. The walls of this natural temple were of bare bulging stone, its roof was reared far into the bowels of the mountain; it had but one aperture, through which a dim thread of light might be seen at noon-day, and where, if he ever did visit them, the worshippers of Abitur were taught to expect the appearance of their master.

Buried in the depths of the forest, beneath those wild shaggy hills, this dwelling of the evil principle was as dark and shadowy compared with the temple of Baal, as that shrine of the Assyrian god, glowing in vermilion and gold, seemed poor and paltry to the starry dome above, of which it professed to be the type.

From behind a jutting boulder of rock, forming, as it were, a natural buttress of the cavern, Assarac watched in horror. The dew stood on his brow, damp and chill as the slime on the surface against which he leaned.

Semiramis snatched a torch from one of the wild figures at her side, and with its unlighted end described a triangular figure, while keeping herself carefully within that mystic border, around the broad flat stone on which the dead man lay.

A wild unreasoning terror then seemed to take possession of the worshippers, they trembled from head to foot, and cowered back as far as the limits of the cavern would allow. In the silence that succeeded this movement, even Assarac expected some tangible horror to appear.

The Great Queen planted her torch firmly in the sand at the corpse's head, stripping off at the same time its enshrouding mantle, while her own cloak fell from her shoulder in the act, revealing at one stroke her matchless beauty and the glittering splendour of her attire.

It was a ghastly contrast—the same wavering light that played on the queen's jewels imparted a flicker of life and motion to the dead man's face, gashed and seamed with the sword, drawn and distorted with spasms of mortal pain. He seemed to gasp, to gibber, to be about to speak, as if the longing eyes that looked down on him were indeed able to draw his very soul back from those unknown regions to which it had taken flight, as if the force of a woman's will, the desire of a woman's love, must needs have power to bridge the gulf that parts the living and the dead.

Was it indeed Sarchedon who laid there disfigured into so maimed and unsightly an object? And did she love him so dearly, that now to-night, in the very hour of her triumph, she could forego her royal pomp and glory, could stoop her neck and bend her pride for such a thing as this?

Then Assarac felt at his heart that keen and searching stab to which every other pain is but as a dull outward bruise to a serpent's venomed sting.

With dropped jaw, fixed eyes, and rigid limbs, he watched like a man turned to stone.

She plucked an amulet from her neck, gazing on it for an instant ere she laid it softly, tenderly, in the dead man's breast. Then she looked upward, moving lips and hands, like one who pleads hard for life, though not a sound came forth. This was the second time she had bartered away her mystic charm. Surely all her resources of peace and war must stand her in some stead! Surely the dove and the arrow would not fail her now!

When she turned her eyes again to the body, they gleamed with the light of hope. On her face was the smile that welcomes some dear one's home-coming, and she stretched her arms, as if to invite the wanderer back to her loving heart.

But while still he moved not, lying there stark and rigid, without word or sign, it seemed strange to Assarac, that the Great Queen, whose nature was so imperious, manifested neither anger nor impatience at this protracted opposition to her will. Sorrow indeed came down over the beautiful face like a veil; but through it there shone the exceeding tenderness of a love that owns no limit of time or place, that acknowledges no barrier, even in the chasm of an open grave.

Once more her lips and eyes moved wildly, once more she looked around, as if to plead for that fiendish help she had come here to implore; then while her bosom heaved, and her throat swelled high, she burst into a strain of melody that rang through the remotest corners of the cavern, causing the wild men's senses to thrill with a strange intoxicating delight, and the eunuch's heart to quiver with a fierce intolerable pain.

It was the incantation by which, in sight of all the gods of her people, she protested against her loss, calling on the parted spirit to return from its place beyond the grave.

Laying her right hand on the dead man's forehead, her left upon his heart, she raised her head and sang:

While the last syllables died on her lips in long pathetic tones, she sank across the dead body, brow to brow, breast to breast, and mouth to mouth. Surely, if but one spark of life had been left, that wild embrace must have drawn and kindled it into flame.

But Assarac's brain reeled, and the cavern swam before his eyes. Staggering, suffocated, he hastened from the place, passing the men of war at the entrance as he rushed blindly out into the darkness. Said one spearman to his comrade, "Surely it is a spirit. Behold how it vanisheth in the night!" To which the other, leaning thoughtfully on his shield, replied,

"It is the demon who hath entered, and taken possession of the man, and driven him forth, and fled with him into the wilderness."

THE VOICE OF THE CHARMER

It was not the custom of an Assyrian army to leave its work half done. The day after the great battle of Ardesh, the Armenians were scattered to the four winds of heaven. Thorgon and his long swords indeed lay on the field in regular lines of rank and file, as they had fallen; but, though resisting bravely while his crest could be seen above the tumult, when their king went down, the remnant of the mountain men broke up and fled in confusion to their homes. The very stratagem that had, as it were, doubled his presence for their encouragement, served perhaps but to dishearten them the more, when they no longer beheld the royal form which had hitherto seemed ubiquitous in the fight. Every portion of his host was satisfied it had taken its orders directly from the monarch; and when at last those two mailed figures, each of which was believed to be Aryas himself, came together in the hottest of the conflict, men lay so thick about the spot, that few indeed were left to observe the fall of one and disappearance of the other warrior, either of whom might have been their king.

Through many a league of mountain pass and tangled brake, fording the torrent or scouring the wind-swept plain, fled broken bands of fugitives, panting, scared, disarmed, looking wildly over their shoulder for the fierce and terrible foe, who spared not where he conquered, and when he lifted sword or javelin, never failed to drive it home.

But there was one troop of horsemen, scanty in number, yet formidable in appearance, that although fighting on the side of victory had suffered considerable loss. Returning towards the south in fair and orderly retreat, it yet bore no symptoms of discomfiture or flight. The children of Anak presented rather the appearance of assailants proceeding on some promising expedition than of a solitary force wilfully deserting the cause it had espoused. They restrained their invincible little horses to a steady regulated pace, halting at frequent intervals to show a bold front in case of pursuit from friend or foe. Their arms were bright, and held in readiness; their bearing was haughty and full of confidence; even the wounded sat firm and upright in their saddles, and at any moment all seemed prepared to resume the fray.

In the centre rode their Veiled Queen, accompanied by one in Armenian armour, who seemed less a prisoner than a guest.

While the battle raged at its fiercest round the white stone which Semiramis had marked at its turning-point, Ishtar found herself carried on its tide against the very person of him whom she had come to seek. It needed but a wave of her arm to rally round her those champions who believed so simply in her supernatural attributes, with whom no horsemen in the world could counter stroke for stroke. Pressing in on their leader, they soon encircled Ishtar and Sarchedon, soon cut their way to the outskirts of the battle, and merging alike their compact with Semiramis and their own love of fighting in blind obedience to their queen, drew off in perfectly good order, to commence a steady retreat for their southern home.

The Assyrian had seen Aryas fall in fight, had noted the destruction of the long swords, the total rout of those hardy warriors who hoped in vain to make head against his countrymen. What was left him now, but to drift with the stream of fate in the arms of the woman he loved?

The Anakim soon recognised him as the companion of their leader, when first she appeared among their tents and they knew her not. This was enough to insure their protection and regard. At the first halt, there was even a question of receiving him as an adopted brother in the tribe; but he wanted more than a span of the necessary stature, and that project was unwillingly abandoned. Nevertheless, every man felt pledged to do him homage and defend his person to the death.

It seemed to Sarchedon that he was riding through some unreal paradise in a dream. He told Ishtar as much, while she related her trials, her sorrows, and her undeviating constancy since they parted in the desert after their flight from Ascalon. He feared to wake, he said, and find himself again in that Egyptian dungeon, from which escape seemed hopeless as from the tomb.

"Beloved," she answered, "the queen of heaven will not permit us to be tried yet farther. Behold! twice has she brought you deliverance through me her servant in your hour of greatest need. It is enough. We shall be parted no more. We will cast in our lot with these children of the wilderness: they are brave, generous, faithful; they will fence us from our enemies with a hedge of steel."

"Be it so," he answered, looking fondly in the dear face that was unveiled only to him. "Better a goats' hair tent with Ishtar in the desert than a painted chamber and an empty heart in the palace of a king. And yet," he added somewhat wistfully, "I would fain see the inside of great Babylon again before I die."

They were crossing a fair and level plain, the mountains above Ardesh were already sinking on the horizon, and the children of the desert welcomed that smooth unvaried surface, as reminding them of the boundless tract they called their home.

Presently the chief, riding warily in their rear, shouted to halt. Forming towards the point of danger, they observed a column of dust rising in the distance, as of an armed party proceeding rapidly on their track.

To those observant eyes, prompt and reliable information was afforded by the lightest tokens of earth or sky. While Sarchedon could detect but a rolling yellow cloud, the sons of Anak told each other of ten score horsemen and a war-chariot travelling at speed.

They bore down, therefore, in the direction of the approaching party, forming carefully round Ishtar and her companion in case of conflict.

When within a furlong of each other, both troops somewhat slackened pace, and a chariot, driven furiously towards the Anakim, was stopped at a spear-length from their chief.

Standing in it, erect and fearless before drawn bows and levelled spears, with head bared, shield lowered in token of amity, Assarac raised his unarmed hands, and cried in a loud voice, "Is it peace, O my brother?"

"Let there be peace, my brother, between thee and me," answered the chief of the Anakim; and the eunuch, getting down out of his chariot, proceeded to explain the reason of his coming and his absence in the hour of victory from the army of the Great Queen.

"Semiramis," he said, "had been grievously wounded at the very moment of triumph. If not hurt to the death, she was at least unable to retain command of the host, or even to provide for the government of her empire at home. Therefore must he hasten back to Babylon, that he might rule wisely and in accordance with the laws of Shinar, while the queen's authority was thus for a space in abeyance. New times were coming—a new policy, perhaps a new dominion. Those who were so skilful to rein a steed and wield a sword must ever be welcome to a warlike government, such as could alone control the sons of Ashur. He had it in his power to offer the Anakim a tract of fertile country, a land of corn and wine and oil, in which to dwell at ease, ruled by their hereditary chief and subject to their fathers' laws. Would they not hold it of the Great Queen by service of bow and spear, each man sitting under his own vine and his own fig-tree, doing that which seemed good in his own eyes?"

The Anakim glanced doubtfully at each other; their chief pointed to the mare from which he had dismounted, and shook his head.

"I could not breathe Lotus-flower," said he, "in the confines of such a tract. Like the wild ass, whose speed she laughs to scorn, her limbs would stiffen if she might not stretch them on a plain boundless as the sky that meets it on every side."

"There is rich spoil to share," urged the eunuch. "Herds of sheep, oxen, and camels, droves of captives—men, women, and children—wine, jewels, goodly raiment, and gold to be had for the asking."

The other stooped his tall person to bend his bow against the hollow of his foot and ease its string.

"All these," he answered, "I can have by the tightening of this weapon in my hand. What need I more than the inheritance of my fathers—the desert sun, the trackless sand, and the goods of every man whose spear is a span shorter than mine own? Go to, thou lordly son of Ashur! my portion is better than thine. I have spoken. Take a gift from thy servant, and depart in peace."

Assarac would never have been in his present position had he admitted the impossibility of an enterprise because of its first failure.

"I will accept the gift of my brother," said he, receiving with exceeding courtesy a loaf of barley-bread and a handful of dried dates, offered by one of the Anakim at a signal from his chief. "May it be returned to him a hundredfold when he encamps without the gate of Babylon, and I, even I, Assarac, governor of the city, bow my head at the door of his tent to do him honour! If we may not draw bow again side by side in battle, at least let there be peace between thy people and my people, so that a son of Ashur, meeting a child of Anak in the wilderness, shall cast his spear down before him and say, Is it well with thee, O my brother?"

Pausing to mark the effect of these friendly sentiments, and observing that they were well received by his listeners, the eunuch turned to Sarchedon, and continued in a lighter tone:

"There is indeed a new dominion in Babylon when those laws of the land of Shinar have been set aside which sentence to death that Assyrian-born who shall be found arrayed in war-harness against the banner of Ashur. And therefore, Sarchedon, if thou art a prisoner among these my brethren, I will ransom thee at a royal price. If a friend, I will bid thee leave them for a space, to their profit and thine own. If a captain and leader, I will promote thee to yet higher honour in the great army that has never known defeat."

Sarchedon, glancing doubtfully at Ishtar, noted the colour fade from her cheek ere she drew the veil over her face. Nevertheless, the tempter was skilled in his art; and the prospect of once more bearing arms with his countrymen was too welcome to be dismissed.

"I would fain return to the land of my fathers," said he, "and ride to battle with my brethren in burnished armour and costly raiment once more. But yet it is better to dwell in the desert with a whole skin than to writhe on a stake in the sun, even though it be over against the palace of a king. If I came in the light of the Great Queen's countenance, behold, she would consume me in her wrath. If Ninyas reigned in her stead, my death might peradventure be more merciful, but more speedy also, and no less sure."

Assarac had a purpose to serve, and the lie glided smooth and facile from his lips.

"Semiramis," he answered—and even now, in this his hour of fierce revenge and mad disloyalty, he could not speak that name without a quiver of the lip, a tremble of the voice—"Semiramis sickens in her tent with a death-hurt. Ninyas her son, sunk in sloth and pleasure, lover of the garland, the wine-cup, and the couch, would soon weary of the sceptre as he wearied of the sword. The Assyrian ruler needs a wise brain and a long arm. The Assyrian people look for qualities in their kings that are the attributes of their gods. Ninus will never return to us from the stars; but Ninus was less powerful than Nimrod, even as Nimrod himself was weaker than Ashur, from whose loins he sprang. Why should we, his descendants, owe allegiance to any earthly power? Why should kings, queens, and princes come between Baal and the people of his choice?"

The audacious project of wresting from the line of Nimrod that dynasty it had held with so strong a hand, and substituting a hierarchy of which he should himself be the head, had long appeared to Assarac a feasible project enough—one worthy of his own tameless energy and insatiable ambition, although the temptation had been stifled hitherto by his loyalty, his devotion to the queen. Now, in the torture of a vexed heart and wounded spirit, he swore to cast aside every sentiment but revenge, at least till Semiramis was at the mercy of him whose fidelity she had used, and scorned, and outraged without remorse. Therefore, it would be well, he thought, to strengthen his hands with all the weapons he could seize, to make such friends for himself on every side as should become willing tools, to ply at need, and cast away at will. When he met them by chance in the plain, it struck him that the Anakim would be no contemptible auxiliaries; when he found Ishtar and Sarchedon in their midst, he reflected that the former might still be made a bait, if necessary, for the allurement of Ninyas; the latter, according as events fell out, might form a snare, a bribe, or a punishment for the Great Queen. That she believed him to have been killed, and in her agony of sorrow thought to raise him from the dead, he knew by the evidence of his own senses, and although the Armenian habit, in which he now recognised Sarchedon, convinced him of her error, the bitterness of his anguish seemed rather enhanced than modified by this discovery that the object of her desire was not yet wholly out of reach.

It was scarcely jealousy he experienced, for jealousy implies possession, past, present, or prospective; it was rather that morbid recklessness of despair, which pulls down the whole edifice on its own head, if only the idol may be crushed and buried in the ruins of its shrine.

Could he have hated her as sincerely as he wished, he would, perhaps, have triumphed, and, favoured by circumstances, might have held the proud Semiramis in his power, if only for a day; but when did man ever succeed in any perilous enterprise who suffered his heart to paralyse his arm, the outcry of his affections to drown the promptings of his brain?

Nevertheless, it was his present object to gain over Sarchedon, and after a pause, as of deep consideration, he spoke out with a semblance of the utmost frankness:

"Hearken, my son. Let nothing be kept back between thee and me. Baal, though he lead a host in heaven, needs also an army here on earth. That army must have a captain. He who has set the battle in array for friend and foe, at home, in Egypt, here among the mountains of the north, is surely well fitted to command the warriors of the Assyrian god. When Assarac declares his will from the altar before his temple at home, Sarchedon shall stand forth in shining raiment, chief and Tartan of the great Assyrian host. Said I well, my son? and wilt thou not follow me in all haste to Babylon?"

He had bought him, he thought, for a price, and, through him, that foolish girl, together with this formidable tribe of stalwart simple-minded warriors.

Again Sarchedon glanced at Ishtar; but her veil was down, and she made no sign.

"To lead the host!" he muttered thoughtfully. "To have the power of Ninus, and wield it wisely, as did Arbaces!"

"Ponder it well, my son," said the eunuch solemnly, "while I speed on to prepare the way. What art thou here?" he added, lowering his voice. "A hostage in a foeman's camp, at a woman's will. Behold, I can make thee the noblest leader on earth, and she, this veiled queen of a handful of horsemen, shall sit on the throne of a province larger than the great northern land we went out to conquer. What Baal offers, do not thou despise. Go to! Stretch forth thy hand, and take it whilst thou canst. To-morrow it may be too late. I have spoken."

Then, with a courteous farewell to the Anakim, he mounted into his chariot, and was gone, speeding, like some pestilent wind, towards the south on his mission of treachery, rebellion, and revenge.

REQUITED

"I have cast stones in the air to fall on mine own head! I have knelt at the stream, and, lo, the waters were bitter and defiled! O Kalmim, there is neither faith, nor honour, nor gratitude in Ninyas, the son of Ninus. May the king live for ever!"

She laughed outright. It was a rare jest to behold Sethos in a vein of serious reflection; above all, to hear him revile the prince to whom, through good and evil, he had been a devoted servant, notwithstanding the vices, caprices, and heartless ingratitude of his lord.

"You are but a child," she answered lightly, "and for all your downy lip and shapely limbs, not yet fit to run alone. Trust a strained bow, a frayed string, a blown horse, or a baffled woman—all these will quit them better in the hour of need than a king on the throne, whom you have served when he was a captive in the dungeon."

They were standing together on a terrace of the royal palace in Babylon, looking over many a league of gardens, vineyards, lofty palms, thin silvery streams—vast tracts of desert sand beyond—all shining and glowing in the bright morning sun, while their own comely faces and splendid attire were rich and deep in colour as the surrounding hues of earth and sky.

A great change had indeed taken place at home, since the queen's expedition to Armenia left the city without a ruler, while its lawful prince languished a weary prisoner, losing health, energy, and all the dignity of manhood, under supervision of the priests of Baal. The return of Assarac, bearing, as he affirmed, full powers and authority on the part of Semiramis, sickening even to death in the far north, had extricated Ninyas from captivity, and placed him on the throne to which he was entitled by the laws of Shinar, the eunuch, in a secret interview, extorting a solemn oath of vengeance on the mother who had deprived him of his liberty and his empire. Broken in health and courage by close imprisonment, acting on a frame already yielding to the effects of unbridled indulgence, the young king was but a tool in the hands of Assarac, who soon conceived the idea of making him also a mere stepping-stone to the attainment of supreme power at which he aimed.

Though scrupulous in practising the usual forms and observances towards his lord, the eunuch scarcely affected to ignore his own real superiority, affirming only that his words and deeds were prompted by the immediate inspiration of his god.

"And Baal bids him store up goodly treasures for himself, you may be sure," observed Kalmim, discussing with her old admirer the character of their new and arbitrary ruler; "so that at any time he may win over the spearmen with spoil, as he secured the priests by promises, and the prophets of the grove by threats. Gold and steel, Sethos—these are the only real forces on earth, and I sometimes think there is no power that can dominate them in heaven."

"Good faith," answered Sethos, "is precious as the one and true as the other. I have never wavered, Kalmim, in my loyalty to Ninyas, nor my love for you."

"And what have they profited you?" she retorted lightly. "You stood by the prince in good and evil, eating with him the bitter morsel and sharing the cup of affliction. One fine morning, Baal forsooth sends a fat man in white to pull the king of nations out of a prison-house and put him in a palace with a royal mantle on his shoulders, and a golden sceptre in his hand. Then comes the cup-bearer, who has proved his readiness to go to the gates of death with his lord, and asks to be made leader of the host and to stand on the king's right hand, in the day of his glory as in the night of his bondage. What said Ninyas to the poor youth, in answer to so modest a request?"

"He laughed in my face," replied the other, with considerable irritation. "And if there is justice in heaven it will be repaid him fourfold. May the king live for ever!"

"So much for loyalty to a prince," she continued. "Now for truth to a woman. Have you really kept faith with me, Sethos, all this time? It is many a long day since you and I first met by a strange chance in the queen's paradise, and you told me—I forget what you told me, but it was something very foolish, no doubt."

"You know I have," said Sethos bitterly, almost fiercely, turning his head away while he spoke.

It was a short answer, but to a woman's ear worth a whole series of protestations. In perception of such matters, Kalmim was no whit behind her sex.

If he had but looked at her, he would have seen her blush, and surely in no encounter whatsoever should a man take his eye off his enemy. Sethos, alas, was completely at the adversary's mercy, and she trampled him accordingly.

"Well, and what has this service, also, profited you for your pains?" she asked in taunting accents, wholly unable to forbear the pleasure of tormenting him. "You have stood by me at my need faithfully, nobly, grudging nothing, keeping nothing back. When the time comes, you will ask me too to make you my captain and leader, to seat you on my right hand till I die, and, Sethos, I too—I shall laugh in your face!"

"Be it so," he answered in a grave quiet voice, so unlike his usual tones that she glanced anxiously towards him. He seemed sad and troubled, yet looked like a man whose loyalty was still unshaken and unimpeachable.

"And you are tired of it at last?" she asked, in the same mocking accents.

"It is too late to change now," was his answer, with a wan and weary smile.

"Ninyas refused you?" she continued, looking straight into his eyes.

He bowed his head in silence.

"But I have only laughed at you," she murmured, drawing her veil hastily over her face. "And, Sethos, have you passed your life in Babylon and not found out that liking grows with laughter as blossoms come with rain? I am not a king, I am only a woman; and I cannot deny a faithful servant who asks the reward he has toiled through storm and sunshine to attain."

He would have passed his arm round her waist, but with a dexterous twirl, the result, perhaps, of considerable practice, she placed herself out of reach.

"No," she said with imposing force and gesture, "my friend, and more than friend, this is not a time for follies such as these. Some day, when the heavy hand of Baal has been taken off this unhappy city, when men's flocks and herds and wives and children have ceased to be at the command of those who are but hewers of wood and drawers of water in the temple, I may peradventure suffer you to—to—well, to touch the tip of my finger with your lips. But now, the first duty of every son of Ashur is to cast off this hateful yoke that bows his nation to the dust. O that the old lion had but lived to see the white robes lording it in his well-beloved city! He would have cleared them out with fire and sword, ay, though all the host of heaven had come down from the stars to take their part.

"Look at me! O, I know well you never take your eyes off me if you can help it; but I am serious now. Look at me, I say—a woman who in her life before never knew a thought nor care weightier than the smoothing of a plait, the planting of a bodkin: I tell you I would take up spear and shield to-morrow, if I might help to lay Assarac and his priests in their blood at the altar before which they serve. What have they done for us? What has Baal himself done for us since he has governed from the throne of Nimrod? Corn is dear, water scarce, the people starve, and the priests wax fatter, prouder, fiercer, day by day. Even Beladon, who used to be meek and gentle as a weaned child, and was indeed a personable youth, and one of my truest friends—even Beladon, I say, holds that we are to be at his beck and call without question or murmur, you and I, and every one within the hundred gates of the city wall."

"May Nisroch tear him limb from limb!" exclaimed Sethos, in high wrath; for he had long been jealous of the comely young priest's intimacy with Kalmim, and it was in no ignorance of his feelings that the latter now worked upon her listener with the hated name.

"Yes, Beladon," she continued, "though he be not so bad as some of the rest. But how long are we to bear this? How long are we to be trodden on and kept down, not by a conqueror of worlds like old Ninus, wielding bow and spear as I would handle a needle, but by a slothful priest, a eunuch forsooth, in flowing robes and linen tiara, who never lifted weapon deadlier than gilded fir-cone or fresh-gathered lotus, never bore heavier burden than jewelled casket, nor faced a fiercer enemy than the poor sheep he slays to please his god!"

"Nay, there you wrong him," argued honest Sethos. "If all that comes out of Armenia be true, never bolder champion mounted war-chariot than Assarac, the priest of Baal."

"Armenia!" retorted Kalmim, with infinite contempt—"a desert peopled by a few half-starved wretches, doubtless naked and without arms. Besides, was he not warring in the mountains under the banner of the Great Queen? I pray you, when did Semiramis ever fail to conquer where she set the battle in array? And now, by his own confession, she languishes with a death-wound, and he is not ashamed to be standing here within the brazen gates in a whole skin! O, it passes all patience! But I know my mistress well. Surely never yet was that shaft feathered which could drink her life-blood. Once I loved her dearly, and she repaid my faithful service with the gratitude of—of a Great Queen, I suppose! But for all that is past and gone, I will never believe, wounded or unwounded, she could abandon the sceptre of Nimrod, or license Baal himself to usurp her authority in the land of Shinar and the city she loves to call her own."

"But Ninyas sits in the royal palace," observed Sethos, "under the mystic circle and the wings of gold. It is before Ninyas that the spearmen defile at noon, and to Ninyas that the people cry for justice in the gate at sunrise, when he is sober enough to hear."

"And how often is that?" exclaimed Kalmim. "Not once in twenty days. But are you too blind to perceive, O simple youth, that while Ninyas wears the tiara, Assarac holds the sceptre; while Ninyas fits the arrow, Assarac draws the bow? It is time Babylon were rid of both. The fire that crowns that sacred tower burns doubtless night and day; but what is that to me if it be so high up I cannot thread my needle in its light? When Baal means to rule over us in person, let him come down and show himself. I am tired of a god who never answers, call on him loudly as you will."

Such liberal sentiments would have astonished her companion more, but that Sethos, during his lord's captivity, had dwelt long enough within its sacred precincts to have lost much of his former reverence for the mysteries of the temple, of his early confidence in the unseen power of its god. He felt somewhat bewildered, nevertheless, and astray in this uprooting of a faith that seemed like a birth-right to every son of Ashur, and asked helplessly,

"If Baal cannot, and Ninyas must not, and Assarac will not, succour us, to whom then are we to look?"

"To the Great Queen," answered Kalmim proudly: "never believe but she will come again in her majesty, beautiful as morning, fierce and terrible as the storm that rises with midday. I have seen her angered once, only once in all my life. I tell you, Sethos, I would rather stand in the presence of Nisroch to be consumed than face the blaze of those eyes again. She spoke not, scarcely moved a limb; but I felt as the lamb must feel when the leopard has made her spring, and there is no escape. In her love, her hatred, and her desire, she knows no bounds and acknowledges no check, yet never sunlight was welcomed by captive in a dungeon as would be that beautiful face to-day in Babylon by the people of the Great Queen."

While she spoke, she looked wistfully out over the desert towards the north; Sethos, watching her eager face, saw it brighten with a sudden gleam of triumph and hope. Following the direction of her eyes, he observed the flash of spears through a dense cloud low on the horizon, that denoted a body of horsemen on the march.

Pointing towards it, Kalmim burst into tears.

"It is the Great Queen!" she sobbed. "For my sake, Sethos—for my sake, will you not be on our side?"

BETRAYED

Pacing to and fro in the familiar cedar gallery, vexed, troubled, and impatient, Assarac shot glances of anger and defiance at the four-winged image of Nisroch, as though reproaching the god in whom he did not believe for withholding aid he would have considered it childish folly to implore. Though he had dispatched a messenger in eager haste to seek out the tents of the Anakim, and renew the offer of promotion he made to Sarchedon, so preoccupied was he, that Beladon had already prostrated himself more than once, ere his superior seemed conscious of his presence. The younger priest wondered to see the resolute and subtle eunuch so changed, so worn, so saddened. He marked the restless step, the sullen gesture, the moody unquiet eye, remembering, not without pity, a caged wild beast that had been trapped and brought into Babylon, long ago by certain hunters of the mountain, as a gift to the Great Queen.

Though a faithful servant enough, while a keener intellect and firmer spirit held him in subjection, he bethought him somewhat remorsefully it was time to leave his master now.

Assarac's eyes wandered over the other's figure with the unconscious stare of a sleep-walker ere they lighted into recognition, then he started and exclaimed, "How now, Beladon? Returned so soon? What tidings of Semiramis—I mean of Sarchedon, and the children of Anak with whom he dwells?"

"Let not my lord be wroth," was the answer. "Though his servant fled through the waste like an ostrich, yet was he wiser than that foolish bird, which plies her long legs and helpless wings to meet the storm of thunder and lightning she dreads. I have heard the thunder of the queen's chariots; I have seen the lightning of her spears. Instead of scouring the desert to seek the Anakim, lo, I turned bridle, and hastened back that I might warn my lord of her approach."

Though something seemed to tell him the information was tantamount to a death-warrant, his heart leaped up with a wild unreasoning joy.

"The queen!" he exclaimed, while the blood flew to his wan heavy cheek. "Is she then so near?"

"She will encamp to-night beneath the city walls," answered Beladon imperturbably. "She marches with the vanguard of her army; but the conquerors of Armenia cannot be many furlongs in her rear; and when the sun goes down to-morrow, the hosts of Ninyas will be increased fourfold, while the Great Queen lays her trophies and her sceptre at the feet of her son. May the king live for ever!"

Something in the cold sneering tones seemed to recall the eunuch's energies and wake him, as it were, from a dream.

"Never!" he muttered between his teeth; and seizing the other's arm in a gripe that caused him to wince with pain, he hurried out of the corridor, past the golden image of Baal, across the court of the temple, and so, through leafy thicket and level lawn, threaded its cool green paradise to the palace of the Great King.

Here Beladon, notwithstanding a sufficiently good opinion of his own merits, would have excused himself from entering; but Assarac's grasp was never relaxed, and ere the younger priest could realise the imprudence of such an intrusion, he found himself in the presence of one for whom he had been alternately spy and gaoler, yet who held over him irresponsible power of life and death.

Ninyas was seated in the shade on a chair of state, ornamented and embossed with the symbols of Assyrian sovereignty, under a trellis-work whereon had been trained the luxuriant tendrils of a vine, already bending and blushing in clusters of ripening grapes. A fountain scattered its silver spray in the sunshine, while female forms, with jetty locks, transparent veils, and glancing eyes, flitted through the shade. Soft airs murmured among the flowers, birds carolled from the thicket, and the king held a half-emptied goblet in his hand. With a hasty inclination of head and body, far short of the usual ceremony observed on entering the royal presence, Assarac placed himself in front of his lord, and looking him full in the face, arrested the cup that Ninyas was raising to his lips.

"Is this a time," said he, in grave sonorous accents, "for bubble of wine and sound of timbrel—for dance and song and careless revel—the mirth that goes before destruction—the folly that is a sure fore-runner of death? Rouse you, my lord, rouse you! Take bow in hand, gird you sword upon your thigh; for the watchman cries out on the wall, and even now your enemy is at the gate!"

The king's eyes, once so bright, looked dim and dull, the handsome features were flushed and sodden with excess; but he set his goblet down untasted, while there seemed something of interest, even apprehension, in the tone with which he asked, "What enemy, and whence? I have but one in all the kingdoms of the earth, and she is sick unto death beyond the mountains of the north."

Again, while he smiled in scorn, came a glow of triumph on the eunuch's weary face. "Semiramis," he answered, "is encamped within bowshot of the wall—Semiramis, the mother of my lord the king—Semiramis, who never cast a bank against a city but she razed it to the ground—who never drew bow but she shot her arrow home—who never took account of an injury but she requited it with death! O my queen, my queen!" he added in a broken murmur, "even now the lord of earth trembles and cowers at the very whisper of your name!"

Ninyas turned pale. "Counsel me, Assarac!" he exclaimed, while his eye roved helplessly over all the splendour and luxury that surrounded him. "If my mother enters the city, I am undone."

"Not so," answered the eunuch. "Let my lord the king go out to meet her as a son should welcome the mother of his affections bringing home the wife of his desire. Let the gates be thrown open, and the people give her greeting as she passes by. The hosts of the Great Queen are yet many a league off in the desert. Her vanguard, few in number, must be wearied sore with travel. When she enters her own city, who so fitting to provide for her safety as the son of her vows? Let him guard her like the apple of his eye, and relieve her of all care in the government of the people whom he rules."

"You know her not!" exclaimed Ninyas, much disturbed. "Where is the prison-house in Babylon that could hold her for a single day? Where is the son of Ashur who would not leap to the saddle with bow and spear at the first wave of the Great Queen's hand?"

The eunuch's answer came in firm and measured accents, though his face was distorted as with a hidden agony of pain.

"There is a prison-house from which not Ashtaroth herself could break out—from which old Nimrod might not be delivered by all the horsemen of Assyria. When my lord's servants shall surround and hew her in pieces, then may every son of Ashur bind on his headpiece a shred of the Great Queen's garments, whom he loved so well."

Ninyas laughed aloud, and, seizing his discarded goblet, drained it to the dregs.

"Enough!" he exclaimed. "She sinned against Nisroch and Baal, when she took the sceptre of Nimrod from the hand of his descendant. What am I, that I should interfere to avert her doom? And yet, I would it might be done without shedding of blood. Can we not lead her forth from the city into some desert place, and so dispose of her in safety, where she shall disturb the king no more?"

"Will my lord trust his servant?" asked the eunuch.

"I will remain here at the banquet in my palace until it is over," answered Ninyas brutally. "Let Baal be his own avenger, and let Assarac see to vindicating the honour of his god. I have spoken." Then, clapping his hands, Ninyas summoned back the women who usually surrounded him at his revels, to dismiss the whole matter from his mind in a deep and stupefying carouse.

Leaving the royal presence, Beladon felt his arm seized once more in the eunuch's painful gripe, while Assarac muttered, half-unconsciously, such broken sentences as served to disclose the plot he had constructed, and the means by which it was to be carried out. Presently, in a few simple directions, he imparted to his subordinate the outline of his purpose, commanding him to muster all the priests and prophets in the city at the great northern gate by which the queen should enter, with knife and lotus-flower in hand; to surround these with so strong a force of spearmen as it would be impossible for the populace to break through; and then, at a given signal, to fall on Semiramis with his followers, bind her in fetters of iron, and so bring her a helpless captive into the temple of Baal. It would be a fine revenge, thought Assarac, to keep her there till the arrival of Sarchedon from the desert, and then to slay them, in each other's sight, before the altar of his god. Better still, perhaps, and worthier of his fierce mad love, to strike his own knife into her heart at the first halt of her chariot within the gate.

"I can trust you," said he, when they parted, and Beladon proposed to attest his fidelity in a great oath by the everlasting wings, "because the queen's first act, when she reënters the city, will be to take vengeance on him who kept the door of her son's prison-house, and suffered the captive to escape."

But the wariest of mankind may leave one weak point undefended—the keenest judges of human nature will omit from their calculation some vice, prejudice, or folly, such as dominates the very self-interest of their tools. That Beladon should have disclosed a plot, on the success of which his own personal safety, his very life depended, would have been unaccountable, but for the joyous, pleasure-loving disposition which, priest of Baal though he was, could not keep his secret from a woman.

Kalmim had beguiled him out of every particular before sundown, affecting, the better to deceive him, an irreconcilable enmity to the Great Queen, and entire devotion in the service of her son.

If a woman makes up her mind to duplicity, a little more or a little less counts as nothing to her conscience. She finds it as easy to profess an affection she does not feel, and a candour of which she is incapable, as to push another bodkin into her hair, lay another coat of red or white on the cheek she is not ashamed to paint. When Kalmim had resolved she would take him into captivity, it was no more possible for Beladon to resist than for the bird to escape out of the snare of the fowler. And, although the latter was exceedingly lavish of smiles and liberal of promises, the prey found itself captured, plumed, and despoiled, with no material equivalent for utter discomfiture and disgrace.

More than a match for a score of priests, she could indeed have outwitted the whole male population of Babylon, but that she too had found her master, and was but a weak foolish woman in presence of the man she loved.

To him she betook herself in her distress, imploring him to interfere at such a juncture, and prevent a crime which, with all his loyalty to his prince, seemed to Sethos too foul and unnatural to contemplate.

"There is danger also for you," she exclaimed, wringing her hands and sobbing in real perplexity. "No son of Ashur must leave the city to-night on pain of death; and yet, if the queen be not forewarned, nothing can save her from the vengeance of these blood-thirsty priests. O Sethos, Sethos, did I not love you dearly, I had never trusted you with such a mission; yet how can I bear to send you out into the very jaws of death?"

But the cup-bearer's equanimity was proof even against so formidable a consideration. Accepting her confession of attachment with a good-humoured carelessness that at any other time would have cut her to the quick, he professed his readiness to incur any amount of peril so that he might preserve Semiramis from the threatened assault, and her son from the commission of so hideous an outrage. It was agreed, therefore, that he should escape from the city at all hazards, and make his way to the tent of the Great Queen, under cover of night. To leave Babylon through any one of her gates was impracticable, so closely were they guarded by the spearmen of Ninyas under Assarac's orders; and it was only by watching a favourable opportunity during the darkest hours before the moon had risen, that Kalmim succeeded in letting her lover down from the wall by a rope, to dispatch him on his errand of life and death.

With characteristic coolness the cup-bearer received his instructions and embarked on his perilous enterprise; but Kalmim, though not a nerve failed her while, swinging in mid-air, his life depended on her steadiness of hand, had over-taxed her strength; for no sooner was the tension of the rope relaxed, and the form of Sethos lost in darkness as he sped from beneath the wall, than brain and sense gave way, leaving her pale, prostrate, and helpless on the ground.