“But you are the Baaltis and inviolate.”
“In such a time the goddess herself would not be held inviolate in Zimboe, much less her priestess, Aziel. I have discovered that this very night they have laid their plans to seize me. Mesa and others have been chosen for the deed, and afterwards they think to offer me as a bribe to Ithobal, who will take no other price.”
Aziel groaned aloud: “It were better that we should die,” he said.
She nodded and answered: “It were better that I should die. But hear me, for I also have a plan, and there is still hope, though very little. Perhaps, as you drew near to Zimboe by the coast road, you may have noted three miles or more from the gates of the city, and almost overhanging the path on which you travelled, a shoulder of the mountain where the rock is cut away, showing the narrow entrance to a cave closed with a gate of bronze?”
“I saw it,” answered Aziel, “and was told that there was the most sacred burying-place of the city.”
“It is the tomb of the high-priestesses of Baaltis,” went on Elissa, “and this day at sunset I must visit it to lay an offering upon the shrine of her who was the Baaltis before me, entering alone, and closing the gate, for it is not lawful that any one should pass in there with me. Now, the plan is to lay hands on me as I go back from the tomb to the palace—but I shall not go back. Aziel, I shall stay in the tomb—nay, do not fear—not dead. I have hidden food and water there, enough for many days, and there with the departed I shall live—till I am of their number.”
“But if so, how can it help you, Elissa, for they will break in the gates of the place, and drag you away?”
“Then, Aziel, they will drag away a corpse, and that they will scarcely care to present to Ithobal. See, I have hidden poison in my breast, and here at my girdle hangs a dagger; are not the two of them enough to make an end of one frail life? Should they dare to touch me, I shall tell them through the bars that most certainly I shall drink the bane, or use the knife; and when they know it, they will leave me unharmed, hoping to starve me out, or trusting to chance to snare me living.”
“You are bold,” murmured Aziel in admiration, “but self-murder is a sin.”
“It is a sin that I will dare, beloved, as in past days I would have dared it for less cause, rather than be given alive into the hands of Ithobal; for to whoever else I may be false, to you through life and death I will be true.”