Already lines of flickering torches showed where many a devout ka-servant, together with priests to assist him, could be seen winding along the well-beaten paths or marching up the inclined planes of the sphinx or tree-bordered avenues by which the royal mortuary-temples were approached.
The Feast of the Apts was indeed, as it was often styled, a veritable “Feast of Lights.”
Enana gazed northward. Across the river, a bright circle of lights showed where his brother-priests of Amen had commenced the encircling of the walls of Amen’s temple. Huy and his brother-priests still put on a bold front.
Fires were lit at intervals along the Nile embankments. The river itself now reflected many a fire that leaped, died, and leaped into life again, along the great quay fronting the temple of the Southern Apt.
Nearer, scarcely a stone’s throw away, it seemed, appeared the lights of the innumerable lamps which served to illuminate the pleasure-barge of Thi, the Queen-Mother. As Enana well knew, Pharaoh and his immediate family were accustomed to join the nightly fête from this point of vantage.
Enana raised his hands in the direction of the broad patch of buildings and trees which marked at once the royal palace and the nearby villa of Menna, the Overseer.
Suddenly a brilliant meteor shot from the highest zenith and seemed to bury itself in the waters of the palace lake. Enana’s voice rose upon the night air:
An omen, Pharaoh! an omen Thi! an omen Menna!
By the Power of the Book, closed to ye are
The gates of the Sky. Closed to ye are