"Enough," said the queen; "you have done well. I, too, can read in the future more and mightier things than you have imparted to me to-night."
She wrapped her mantle round her to depart, not suffering Assarac to attend her one step on her way. Kalmim, she said, was waiting in the garden, and would accompany her to the palace. So she walked slowly down the winding staircase, grave, abstracted, as though revolving some weighty purpose in her mind. At its foot she started to see the recumbent figure of Sarchedon buried in profound sleep.
Was it a fatality of the stars? Was it an impulse of womanhood? She bent over that beautiful unconscious face till her breath stirred the curls on its comely brow, then, with a gesture almost fierce in its passionate energy, snatched the famous amulet from her neck, and laid it on his breast.
"It is a rash purchase," she muttered; "but I am willing to pay the price."
CHAPTER VI
A DREAMER OF DREAMS
He was sleeping, yet not so sound but that his rest was visited by a strange and terrifying dream.
He thought he was in the desert, galloping his good horse in pursuit of an ostrich, winged with plumes worthy to tuft the spears that guarded the Great King's tent. But for all his efforts of voice, hand, and frame, Merodach laboured strangely in the deep sand, of which the long-legged bird threw back such volumes as to choke his lips and nostrils, wrapping him in a dim revolving cloud, that whirled and towered to the sky. Like a stab came the conviction that he was in the midst of the pitiless simoon, and he must die. Once more he strove to rouse Merodach with heel and bridle; but the horse seemed turned to stone, till, plunging wildly, he struggled forward, only to sink under his rider and disappear beneath the sand. Then the cloud burst asunder to reveal the glories of a dying sunset, fading into the purple sea.
He was on foot in the desert, fainting, weary, and sore athirst; but he heard the night-breeze sighing through palms and whispering in lofty poplars; he heard the cool ripple of water against the shore, and the pleasant welcome of a stream, singing in starts of broken melody as it danced down to meet the waves; then he saw a yoke of oxen, a camel at rest, a few huts, and a boat drawn up high and dry on the beach.