Sarchedon: A Legend of the Great Queen

by G. J. Whyte-Melville

For answer he pointed to a ruby in her bracelet, sparkling and glowing in the light of the mystic flame.

"That gem," said he, "was beyond price in the rayless cavern of its birth. Nevertheless, behold how its brilliancy is enhanced by the gleams it catches from the sacred fire. The stars shine down on a beautiful woman, and they make of her an all-powerful queen."

"All-powerful!" repeated Semiramis. "None is all-powerful but my lord the king. To be second in place is to be little less a slave than the meanest subject in his dominions."

He took no heed of her words. He seemed not to hear, so engrossed was he with his studies of the heavens, so awe-struck and preoccupied was the voice in which he declaimed his testimony, like a man reading from a sacred book.

"She whose counsels have won battles shall lead armies in person; she who has reached her hand to touch a sceptre shall lift her arm to take a diadem; she who has built a city shall found an empire. Walls and ramparts must hem in the one; but of the other brave men's weapons alone constitute the frontier: as much as they win with sword and spear so much do they possess. The dove is the bird of peace; and for her whom doves nourished at her birth there shall be peace in her womanhood, because none will be left to contend with the conqueror and mistress of the world."

He fell back against the parapet of the tower, pale, gasping, as if faint and exhausted from the effects of the inspiration that had passed away; but beneath those half-closed lids not a shade on the queen's brow, not a movement of her frame, escaped his penetrating eyes. He could read that fair proud face with far more certainty than the lustrous pages of heaven. Perhaps he experienced a vague consciousness that here on these delicate features were written the characters of fate, rather than yonder above him in the fathomless inscrutable sky. She seemed to have forgotten his presence. She was looking far out into the night, towards that quarter of the desert over which Sarchedon had ridden from the camp, where an arrow from her own quiver lay under the bleaching bones of the dead lion. Her eyes were fierce, and her countenance bore a rigid expression, bright, cold, unearthly, yet not devoid of triumph, like one who defies and subdues mortal pain.

Such a glare had he seen in the eyes of the Great King when he awarded death to some shaking culprit—such a look on the victim's fixed face, ere it was covered, while they dragged him away.

It was well, thought Assarac, for men who dealt with kings and queens to have no sympathies, no affections, none of the softer emotions and weaknesses of our nature. The tools of ambition are sharp and double-edged; the staff on which it leans too often breaks beneath it, and pierces to the bone. Moreover, it would have been wiser and safer to commit himself to the mercy of winds and waves than to depend on the wilfulness of a woman, even though she wore a crown. Already the queen's mood had changed: her face had resumed its habitual expression of calm, indolent, and somewhat voluptuous repose.

"No more to-night," she said, with a gracious gesture, as of thanks and dismissal. "There is much to be done before the return in triumph of my lord the king. To-morrow you will carry my commands to the captains within the city, bidding them have all their preparations made for the reception of the conquerors. Let them assemble their companies under shield; let the chariots and horsemen be drawn up in the great square over against the palace; and let the archers look that their bows have new strings. You can answer for your own people here?"

"For every hand that bears a lotus in temple, palace, or streets—two thousand in all, without counting the prophets of the grove, and the priests of Baal, outside the walls."