Thou hast mercy upon a worm
And upon the midges of the air.
But now He had no mercy upon her.
The king and queen never left the invalid's side, but she was delirious and did not recognize them. If a ray of sunlight penetrated between the curtains or through a crack in the door, she grew restless and cried:
"It is coming, it is coming again! There it is stretching out its leg.... Abby darling, do drive it away, quick! It will seize me and suck me dry like a fly ... whoever could have let a spider into the sky?"
The king understood: Aton the Sun was the spider, the hand shaped rays were the spider's legs.
But most often she talked in her delirium about Shiha, the eunuch.
"Shiha, what does it mean 'light is greater than darkness'? Who has blasphemed against divine darkness? Do you say King Uaenra is godless? .... How dare you, you old monkey? .... Drink, drink! Isn't there something cooler? You gave me boiling water last time, it scalded my mouth...."
They gave her the freshest water out of porous Tyntyrian vessels, but she pushed the cup away:
"Hot water again!"
The baby boy had been born prematurely; it had no nails, no hair and was weak and pale like a blade of grass grown in darkness. It hardly cried at all and only wrinkled its face painfully at the lamplight.