Again she watched those baked black lips with jealous eyes. They strove to form a word that yet died on them ere it could be uttered. Was it in mockery they trembled with certain faint syllables, that to her sense of sight, rather than hearing, seemed to indicate the desert? Was it in mockery they smiled and writhed and gibbered ere they set themselves, fixed and rigid for evermore?
Semiramis turned thoughtfully away, and the vulture came swooping down; for he, too, had waited long and patiently to take his share of one who had been a reader of the stars, a governor of the empire, the Great Queen's favourite servant, Assarac, high priest of Baal.
CHAPTER LIX
FORGIVEN
For two days, woe, perplexity, and dire confusion reigned in the temple of the great Assyrian god. Baal might be an hungered, but they slew for him no droves of sheep and oxen; athirst, but they poured him out no drink-offerings; displeased, but they sought not favour and forgiveness with praise and prayer, because his servants looked in vain for a high-priest to interpret the commands of their deity, and the great golden image, towering sullen, and unmoved, afforded neither word nor sign. The denizens of the temple stared blankly in each other's faces, for men doubted sore in this crisis of the Assyrian hierarchy whose turn it might next be to die.
But on the third day, court and temple were once more redolent of incense and bright with flowers; altars blazed, victims fell, ditches ran crimson with blood. A hundred priests leaped, howled, and cut themselves with knives, a thousand voices raised their hymn of triumph, and Beladon, chosen by direct interposition of his god, under the authority of Ninyas his king, was proclaimed high-priest of Baal, in place of the dead man, crouched yonder on his stake in an open space near the northern gate, already torn and mangled out of human likeness by the birds of prey.
Careless of a fallen master, the new high-priest had turned gladly from Assarac to obtain favour in the sight of Ninyas; and that prince was content to give him honour and promotion in the mean time, waiting his own leisure to destroy him without pity or remorse.
For on this third day, the son of Ninus again sat in the gate to administer justice, again shook off the fetters of sloth, and the drowsiness of wine-cups, to wear the royal tiara of his fathers, and carry the sceptre of Nimrod in his hand.
The people of Babylon indeed clamoured loudly for their queen, crowding the streets and terraces about her palace, rending the air with their cries, vowing vengeance on priest and prophet, if she forbore to show herself, and even threatening the sacred person of her son.