THE ANCIENT WORLD SERIES - Complete Haggard Edition. Henry Rider Haggard
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for he is a fine man. Never did I see one more perfect in body or more comely in his face, though half his blood is that of the accursed Shepherds."
"Who told you about his blood, Kemmah, and whence it sprang?"
"The birds of the air or the blowing wind. Are you the last to learn what all here know--that this guest of ours is no palace scribe or officer, but the Prince Khian himself, who, if you take Apepi as a husband, will be your stepson?"
"Have done with your talk of Apepi, on whom be the curse of all the gods of Egypt, and of his own as well. For the rest, I guessed, but I did not know, though I was sure that this Rasa could be no common man. Save him, Kemmah! For if he dies--oh! what am I saying? Come, let me look on him. As he sleeps there can be no harm and I will make the sign of health upon his brow and pray for his recovery to the Spirit that we worship."
"Well, then, be swift, for if the leech or Tau should come, they might think it strange to find the Queen of Egypt in a sick man's chamber. Still, have your way, but be swift, I will keep watch without."
Now although Khian shut his eyes close so that he could see nothing, with his ears he heard the curtain drawn aside, heard, too, a light footfall by his bed. More, he felt soft fingers make a sign upon his brow, a loop it seemed to be with a line drawn through it, perchance the Loop of Life. Then she who had drawn the sign seemed to lean over him and, setting her lips close to his face, to murmur holy words of which he could not catch the drift or meaning. And as she murmured, ever those lips drew closer to his own, till at length for one second they touched his own and swiftly were withdrawn. Then came a sigh and silence.
Now Khian opened his eyes, to see other eyes gazing down at him, and in them tears.
"Where am I? What has chanced?" he asked faintly. "I dreamed that I was dead and that some daughter of the gods breathed new life into me. Oh! now I remember, my foot turned on that accursed rope and being careless and over-sure, I fell. It matters not, soon I shall be strong again and then I swear that I will climb those pyramids one by one more swiftly than does the spirit who inhabits them."
"Hush! Hush!" murmured Nefra. "Nurse, come here. This sick one is awake and speaks, though foolishly."
"Soon he will be asleep again for good if you stay at his side talking of pyramids," answered Kemmah who had entered the place unseen by either. "Have you not had enough of pyramids, both of you? Would that those vain fools of kings had never built them to bring trouble to the greater fools who come after."
"Yet I will climb them," muttered Khian.
"Begone, child, and bid Ru bring the leech, and swiftly," went on Kemmah.
With one quick glance at Khian, Nefra glided away. Kemmah watched her go, saying to herself as she turned to minister to him:
"How strange a thing is love that can send so many to their deaths, or by its strength draw the dying back to life again. But of the love of these two what will be born?"
Then she gave Khian milk to drink and bade him lie still and silent.
Yet he would not obey who, having drunk, asked her dreamily:
"Think you, good Nurse, that the Spirit of the Pyramids of whom all talk in this holy land is as fair as that lady who has left us?"
"The Spirit of the Pyramids! Can I never be rid of these pyramids? Who, then, and what is this Spirit?"
"That is just what I would find out, Nurse, even if I lose my life in seeking it, as it seems that already almost I have done. My soul is aflame with desire to look upon this Spirit, for something within tells me that until I do so never shall I find happiness."
"Here the story runs otherwise," answered Kemmah. "Here it is said that those who look on her, if there be such a one, find madness."
"Are they not perchance the same thing, Nurse? Are we ever happy except when we are mad? Can the sane be happy, or the wise? Is your holy Prophet Roy happy, who is the sanest of the sane and the wisest of the wise? Are all those death-awaiting Whitebeards who surround him happy? Have you ever been happy, except perhaps years ago when sometimes you were mad?"
"If you ask me, I have not," answered Kemmah, remembering certain things and trembling beneath the thought of them. "Perchance you are right, young sir. Perchance, as drunkards think, we are only happy when we are mad. Yet if you will be guided by me, you will cease to seek a spirit in the skies, or near them, and content yourself with following after woman upon the earth."
"Who knows, Nurse," replied Khian with all the solemnity of one whose brain still reels, "that in seeking after the Spirit I may not find the woman, as in seeking after a woman, some have found a spirit? Who knows that they are not the same thing? I will tell you--perhaps--when I have climbed those pyramids by the light of the full moon."
"Which has already shone," interrupted Kemmah angrily.
"There are more full moons to come, Nurse. The sky is as peopled with full moons unborn as the sea is with oysters that will be eaten, and the pyramids will stand for a long while to welcome climbers," answered Khian faintly.
"To Set with the pyramids and with your silly talk!" burst out Kemmah, stamping her foot. Then she ceased, noting that Khian had once more swooned away.
"A fool!" she thought to herself as she ran to find help. "Indeed, the first of fools who would hunt a ghost when the loveliest of flesh and blood lies to his hand. Yet were I thirty years younger I think that I might find it in my heart to go mad with this spirit-seeking fool, as I think also another is in the way of doing. What did he say? That in searching for the Spirit he might find the woman? Well, perhaps he will; perhaps after all this moonstruck prince is not such a fool as he seems. Perhaps those who climb the pyramids find joy at the top of them, and joy is better than wisdom. So at least some come to believe when we grow old and have left it far behind."
Very soon Khian, who was young and strong and though shaken by the shock of his fall, as the physician said, quite unhurt in his brain or his bones, rose recovered from his bed. Indeed, within five days, once more he was climbing the pyramids by the help of the Captain and his sons, for it would seem that this passion had grown upon him during his swoon. Also that swoon, when he shook off the last of it, left no memory of what he had said or done while it endured. From the moment when he set his foot upon the cord and slipped, until at last he rose from his bed, he remembered nothing, not even the visit of Nefra to his chamber or his talk with Kemmah, though it is true that these came back to him in after days. So where he had left off, there he began again, namely, on the slope of the pyramid, which very soon he mastered, as in due time he did the others, like Nefra before him.
Day by day, from dawn until the sun grew too hot for the work, he laboured at those pyramids, so hard that at last the Captain and his sons were almost outworn and declared that they had to do with a devil, not a man. Yet they spoke well of him, as did all others, holding that he who after such a fall dared to persevere and conquer, must be great-hearted. For they did not understand that, from the moment of his slip, of his fall he remembered nothing.
Meanwhile, though he knew it not, at the Court of King Apepi it was believed that he was dead. The tidings of his fall from the pyramid and, it was added, of his death, for dead he seemed to be, had overtaken that messenger, a Brother of the Dawn named Temu, who bore the answer from the Council of the Dawn and Khian's own letter, as he embarked upon the Nile, and he had spread it abroad and carried it to the Court at Tanis. When Apepi heard this news he was grieved in a fashion, since he had loved his son a little, at least when he was younger, though not much because in his fierce and selfish heart there was small room for any love save of himself.
Soon, however, his grief was swallowed up in wrath at that which was written in the letter from the Brotherhood of the Dawn, which he swore to destroy root and branch unless Nefra, whom they had dared to crown Queen of Egypt, were given to him in marriage. Moreover, he believed that Khian had not come to his end by a chance tumble from the pyramid, but that he had been done to death at the decree of this Brotherhood, that the heir to the Crown of the North might be removed because he stood in the path of her who had been consecrated Queen of all Egypt. But of all these things Apepi wrote nothing to the