“Your Majesty knows well that I am none of these. In order to bring about a certain alliance, your Majesty was pleased to reduce me from my rank of heir apparent to that of a private person and as such to send me on an embassy. As envoy I did my duty, but those to whom I was sent would not listen to your Majesty’s proposal which I could not help. Afterwards, as a private person I chanced to become attached to a certain lady who, if I had not lived, for reasons of her own would never have listened to the offer of your Majesty. That is all the tale.”
“That perhaps we shall know when you have ceased to live, Khian. Learn now how I will deal with these tomb rats of the pyramids who have defied and insulted me. I will send an army—already it is on its road—to knock them on the head, all of them. Only one will I spare—the Lady Nefra; not because she is born of a royal House, but because I have looked upon her and seen that she is beautiful, for, Khian, you are not the only man who can worship beauty. Therefore I will bring her here and make her mine, and for a marriage gift I will give her your head, Khian; yes, you, the traitor, shall die before her eyes.”
Now when they heard this decree the high officers who were named Companions of the King stared at each other dismayed, for never before had such a thing been told of, as that a Pharaoh of Egypt should kill his own son because both of them loved the same woman. Even Anath the Vizier started and paled; yet all that came from his lips was the ancient salutation:
“Life! Health! Strength! Pharaoh’s word is spoken, let Pharaoh’s will be done!”
As this hideous sentence fell upon his ears and a vision of all it meant rose before his eyes, for a moment Khian felt his heart stop and his knees tremble beneath him. He saw his Brethren of the Dawn slaughtered and lying in their blood wherever they were trapped in their hiding places. He saw the giant Nubian, Ru, overcome at last and falling dead upon a mat of foes that he had slain. He saw the Lady Kemmah butchered and Nefra seized and dragged a prisoner to Tanis, there to be wed by force to a man she loathed. He saw himself led out to death before her eyes and his gory head laid at her feet as an offering. All these things and others he saw with the eye of his mind and was afraid.
Yet of a sudden that fear passed. It was as though a spirit spoke to his soul, the spirit of Roy, or so he thought, because for an instant he seemed to appear before him seated where Apepi sat, venerable, calm, and holy. Then he was gone, and with him went the terrors of Khian. Moreover, now he knew what to answer; the words welled up within him like water welling in a spring.
“Pharaoh and my Father,” he said in a bold, clear voice, “speak not so madly, for I say that you cannot do these things which you have decreed. Did not the Prophet of the Dawn repeat to you in his letter his answer to your threat? Did he not say that he had no fear of you and that should you attempt harm against the Brotherhood, every stone of the pyramids would lie lighter on your head than will the curse of Heaven which you would earn as a butcher and one forsworn? Did he not tell you that the Order of the Dawn marshalled hosts unseen and that with it goes the Strength of God? If not, I, your son, who am to-day a Brother of the Dawn and its consecrated priest, deliver to you this, his message. Try to do the wickedness that you have decreed, O Pharaoh, and speaking with the voice of the Order of the Dawn, as I am taught by the Spirit which it worships, I warn you that you will draw down upon yourself disaster and death on earth, and after you have left the earth, woe untold in the Underworld. Thus say I, speaking not with my own voice but with that of the Spirit within me.”
When Apepi heard these dreadful words, he bowed his head and with trembling hands drew the coloured robe more tightly about him, like to one who in the midst of great heat is struck suddenly by a blast of icy wind. Then again his rage possessed him and he answered:
“Now, Khian, I am minded to send you, the traitor, to your gods, your king, your father, and your blood, down to that Underworld of which you speak, there to discover whether this wizard Roy is or is not a liar. Yes, I am minded to do this instantly here in the presence of the Court. And yet I will not, since to you I appoint a punishment more worthy of your crime. You shall live to see your fellow knaves dead, every one of them; to see this maiden whom you have beguiled, not yours but mine. Then, Khian, you shall die and not before.”
“Pharaoh has spoken, and I, an ordained Brother and Priest of the Order of the Dawn, have spoken also,” answered Khian in the same clear and quiet voice. “Now let the Spirit judge between us and show to all who have heard our words, and to the whole world, in which of us shines the light of Truth.”