“Ha! My Lord Guiseppo, son of mine. I greet thee! Hast thou any message for me?”
“A strange man clad in Paynim costume, attended by a train of twelve, attired strangely as himself, wait at the castle gate. He sends his greeting and this simple scroll.”
“A strange man clad in Paynim costume”—murmured Aldarin in a whispering tone—“A scroll! Give it me, Guiseppo—Ha! What words are these—Ibrahim-Ben-Malakim salutes his brother, Aldarin the Scholar!”
A warm flush like a sudden glow of sunshine passed over the face of Aldarin, his eye gleamed and brightened until it seemed burning its socket, and the Scholar stood for a moment agitated and motionless.
“Guiseppo!” he shouted in a voice of thunder as he turned towards the youthful Lord—“Away, away, to the castle gate and answer the giver of this scroll with the words—Aldarin greets his brother Ibrahim!”
“And then my Lord Aldarin”—
“Lead the stranger to my presence!”
And while Guiseppo turned to obey the behest of the Scholar, the Count Aldarin, strode with a hurried step along the floor of the Red Chamber, with his arms folded and his head drooped low upon his breast.
There was a long pause of absorbing thought.
“He comes—he comes, with the last scroll of the Book! He comes with the Charm, which in the hands of Aldarin shall wake the dead! When the last scroll is read, when the last charm is spoken, then, then, Aldarin lives forever! And Ibrahim—ha, ha, ’twere but fair that the blood of the Priest, who first awoke this Idea within my bosom, should mingle with the blood of the victims, slain at the shrine of the awful Thought.”