"Every precaution must be taken," observed the priest with another hideous smile. "But if it be the will of his ancestor Ashur to descend for him in a chariot of fire, and these reeds thus saturated should catch the flame, then must the Great King, if he be not overcome with wine and sleep, escape by yonder narrow staircase. His shield-bearer will lie in wait there to help him down."
Sargon nodded, and his white teeth gleamed between the curls of his jetty beard.
"It is a faithful servant who thus risks life with his master," continued the priest. "When a subject approaches the king in his sacred office, the punishment is death."
"Death!" repeated Sargon, and his hand stole to the haft of his two-edged sword, while he burst into a mocking laugh.
Semiramis meantime, left to her own devices, strolled through the long corridors and lofty halls of the temple with wavering steps and slow, that yet bore her nearer and nearer the chamber at the end of the painted gallery, where Sarchedon was lodged. Opposite its entrance stood an eagle-headed figure of Nisroch, with beak and wings of gold. On this the prisoner's eyes were fixed, as he watched the lapse of time by the fading sunlight on its burnished edges, and, looking only for deliverance in the carelessness of the priests, longed for darkness, that he might explore the temple and find for himself some secret passage through which to gain the town. Thus gazing, it was with no assumed start of surprise that he marked the queen's beautiful figure and shining raiment emerge like a vision from under the very shadow of the god; and while he prostrated himself at her feet, he could not forbear covering his eyes with his hands in honest doubt whether he were face to face with a woman of real flesh and blood, or with some illusive creation of his own excited fancy. Perhaps no intentional flattery could have been so grateful to the queen, whose daring nature was yet sufficiently feminine to be tempered with a certain reserve and restraint in the presence of a man she loved.
Semiramis looked tenderly down on the kneeling form at her feet, leaning towards it with the graceful pliancy of the palm-tree as she bends in the evening breeze.
"Rise, Sarchedon," she whispered, dwelling fondly on every syllable of his name as it passed her trembling lips; "this is no time for empty homage and unmeaning form. Know you not that you are to die with to-morrow's dawn?"
Even that hideous prospect, even love for another woman burning at his heart, could not veil the passionate admiration that blazed from his eyes while he looked up in the fairest face beneath the sky.
Meeting his glances, her own kindled into fire. She laid her white hand on his shoulder with a gesture that was almost a caress. But the hand, so firm to draw a bow, to grasp a sceptre, to record a doom, shook like a leaf of the great tamarisk-tree in her own gardens.
"I have come to save you," she continued in a voice that sank lower and lower with her failing breath. "Was I not the cause of your offence? Do I not share your crime? I cannot let you die!"