“Daughter of the Air,” replied the Sultan, following her hand with his eyes, “I have seen, and in a measure I believe, your message, though my interpretation of it may be other than yours. If the end of the world is at hand, the Commander of the Faithful will know how to meet it as a true believer should. It is not impossible that there may be peace between us yet in the last hours of earthly life, for I would not willingly make war on a people that has daughters such as you.”
“Not for our sake, Sultan, but for the sake of all who have survived this terrible warfare of yours we are come to plead with you for peace,” said Alma. “This is no time for hate and strife and bloodshed. There will be horrors enough upon earth before long without any made by the fury of man. It is in your power to give peace to the world and breathing space to meet its end. Why will you not give it?”
“You forget it is not I alone who can give peace,” replied Khalid. “If that were so”—
Before he could speak another word a salvo of aerial artillery shook the air above the city. All looked up towards the northern sky, whence the sound proceeded, and saw a squadron of twenty silvery-hulled air-ships flying the Moslem and Russian flags, and escorting in two divisions a warship, from whose flagstaff flew the imperial standard of Russia, and whose shining hull of azurine proclaimed her the lost Ithuriel.
Alan grasped the perilous situation in an instant, and was just about to tell Alma to go back on board their own ship when the Sultan, divining his intention, took a step forward and said—
“Do you think that Khalid cannot protect his guests or that his ally will not respect the hospitality of his house? You are safe. If a hair of your head were harmed the Tsarina and I would be enemies and she would come to her death instead of her bridal, for that is what brings her here. There is truce between us for this day at least, and she shall not break it.”
As he ceased speaking the twenty air-ships opened out into a long line and remained suspended five hundred feet above the palace, while the Revenge continued her downward flight and alighted at the farther end of the terrace from where they were standing.
The after door of the deck-chamber opened as she touched the marble pavement, the steps dropped down, and Olga descended, attired as usual in a plain robe of royal purple, over which hung a travelling mantle of pearl-grey cloth as fine and soft as silk and lined with the then almost priceless fur of the silver fox.
Her head was uncovered save for a plain golden fillet, from which rose a pair of slender silver wings so thickly encrusted with diamonds that they seemed entirely fashioned of the flashing gems. The golden fillet shone out brightly yellow against the lustrous black of her thickly-coiled hair, and the diamond wings blazed and scintillated in the sunlight with every movement of her head.