“Then you had best wish that he shall return to his own city and leave mine alone,” said Runa.
The knights smiled and the ladies tittered. The stranger took no heed of these things, nor, as it seemed, of her Highness’s remark.
“I was high in the King’s confidence,” he said. “He deemed me a wise man, and held that I knew all that was to be known, and that by my aid alone he could discover all that was hidden, and unravel any riddle, however difficult. Through three victorious campaigns I was by his side, and then he brought me to the walls of Or, not doubting that by my valour and counsel he should be enabled to make himself master of the city. I do not boast. I repeat only what the King has many a time said of me, both publicly and when we two were alone.”
“Then one man at least has a good esteem of you,” said Runa. “Indeed, as I think, two.”
Again the ladies tittered and the knights smiled. But the stranger was unmoved.
“Then,” he went on in a smooth equable voice whose rich tones struck pleasantly on their ears and made the ladies sorry for their mocking, “came the day, fatal to me, when your Highness was pleased to send his Majesty a message. For when the King asked me the meaning of your riddle—asked how a man could carry the citadel before he passed the ramparts—I told him to take no heed of it, for it was an idle vaunt. And he believed me and assaulted the ramparts three times in vain. And in vain brave men died. Again came your message, and when the King asked me the meaning of it, I said it was insolent defiance. And he believed me, and assaulted the ramparts three times in vain. And in vain brave men died. Then came the message a third time, and the King demanded of me the meaning of it. But I did not know the meaning, and, lest more men should die, I confessed to him that I could not read the riddle.”
“You learnt wisdom late and at a cost,” said Runa, setting her eyes on him over the top of the peacock fan.
“When I confessed that, he called me a blockhead and, with many hard words, told me plainly that all my credit stood on my reading him that riddle, and reading it, the third time, right; and that if I could not read it, I could never see home again nor my own people, but that my life must end here outside the walls of the city, and end in disgrace and defeat. So the King said to me in his wrath, and in fear of him and of the death he threatened I stole by night from his camp and delivered myself to the officer of your Highness’s watch at the southern gate of the city.”
“What do you want of me?” asked Runa.
“Either the answer to the riddle, that I may carry it back to the King forthwith and have his favour again——”