A booming stroke of the huge drum echoed through the valley, telling that the day was done, and that one faithful soul had not forsaken its post. The drum swung between two pillars in the center of the Hall of Judgment. Near to it was a vase of nearly the height of a man. In the bottom of the vase was drilled a tiny hole. The vase was filled with water from the holy River Ukranis. Usually a lad watched it.
When the water had seeped away and the vase was emptied, a process that consumed some ten hours, it was the duty of the watcher to smite a blow on the drum and to refill the vase. Then another took up the vigil. So the Sardanians kept rude reckoning of time.
When Minos reached his home he sent the lad to fetch parchment, brush, and pigment. By the flaring light of a torch he wrote:
To the Lady Memene, greeting:
Though the syllana be a flower little in accord with thy thought, yet when the hour shall strike that thou hast need for a friend who will do and dare all things, wear one on thy gown.
Folding his message, unsigned, the king called the lad.
"Alternes, take thou this parchment to the hall of the Lord Karnaon," he directed. "Give it into the hand of the Lady Memene, and to no other. On thy way thither send to me Zalos and three of his men. Then seek thou thy rest."
Minos seated himself on the topmost step of the palace portico and leaned his head against a pillar. His eyes roved across the shadowy valley, where the flickering light of the mountain moons mingled with the cold, pale radiance of the Antarctic stars. He scarcely saw it. He had fallen into a reverie.
Ill had gone the love-making of this king. Never, since the days when they had played together as children, had the Lady Memene given him one word of love, one single glance in which a lover might read joy. Ah, those far, fair days of childhood! Then he had been but the younger brother of the man who would be king. She had been kind then.
Imperious, proud-spirited, disdainful was this Lady Memene in her dark loveliness. Minos could only dream that she would soften to him, and to him alone. Days of terror were falling on the valley. Perhaps worse were to come. He would like to stand at her side and hold her safe. Well, he had sent her his first love letter. He would watch for the syllana, the peerless blue rose of Sardanes that bloomed in the months of the long night, and, though Sardanians knew it not, bloomed nowhere else in the world besides. It was the Sardanian symbol of love. Ah, that she would wear it, if only to call him to her service!