"Princess, thy crafts become thee not, nor is it meet that a woman meddleth in affairs of men. Go, then, to the tent of thy lord whom Ninus spareth, and rear him children, leaving the arts of magic and of war to priests and warriors."
"Wherefore?" she asked, and looked into his eyes.
"Because," he made reply, "where the fires of heaven fall, the earth is seared, and the daughters of mortals sleep to wake no more."
She smiled, then answered, proudly, and as one who knows not fear:
"My mother was Derketo; my father a warrior-god from the Eastern Seas. The fires of heaven may warm me, but will never blight."
Full well she knew the cause of his discontent, for the worm of jealousy may eat into the hearts of priests, even as it feeds upon the vanity of lesser men. In bending Ninus to her will, she had filched the boasted powers of Nakir-Kish, and even though she gave him credit for his magic arts, still she contrived to stand upon a step above his own. Where an army of spies had failed to win the secret of Zariaspa's food, where even the Magi with their spells and slaughtered birds discovered naught, a woman had sought among the hills and found; thus, coming as the savior of Assyria's hosts, her, shadow fell athwart the temple's door, and the pride of the priest was shamed. What if this shadow grew? What if this woman thirsted for a higher power and yearned to sway a nation, even as she swayed the minds of a score of fools? Might she not, in the end, push Ninus from his godly pedestal, and in his fall bring bruises to the flesh of Nakir-Kish? Born of devils or of men, what the Syrian craved, that thing must be her own; so the heart of the priest was troubled lest these happenings come to pass.
"Think," he whispered; "once, once only, will Assyria's King forgive, and at a word from me the pardon of thy lord may slip his memory, in that Menon passeth from our sight to comfort thee no more."
Now threats against herself Semiramis could bear, and smile at them as at an idle puff of wind, yet at a hint of evil unto her lord, the tigress within her woke and showed its claws.
"Priest," she answered, in that purring tone which in after years her courtiers learned to dread, "I bethink me of a little fox I reared in Syria. A weakling he was that grew in strength and appetite because of my bounty and my care. From my hand he received his food, from my heart a love which shielded him from every harm; yet when he stole my father's fowls and hid among the rocky hills, nine days I hunted him with this my hunting spear, and nailed his skin against the wall."
Semiramis thrust her weapon upright in the earth and beside it held forth her hand.