Now Roy arose from his throne before the altar, a tall, ethereal shape, and advancing to the stricken queen lifted her hand and kissed it.
“For your Majesty I have no message,” he said, bending his venerable head, “seeing that already you hold communion with one who is greater than I,” and he turned and bowed to the solemn statue of the god Osiris which stared at them from beyond the altar.
“I know it,” she answered with a sad smile.
“Yet,” he went on, “it is reported to me that in this night that is gone, your Majesty dreamed a dream. Is it not so?”
“It is so, Prophet, though who told you I do not know.”
“It matters not who told me. What matters is that I am charged to say to your Majesty that this dream was no phantasy bred of human hopes and longings but the very truth. Learn, O Queen, that this world and its sufferings are but a shadow and a show, and that beyond them, like the pyramids towering above the sands and palm trees at their base, stands the eternal verity whose name is Love. The sands are blown away and having borne their fruit, the palm trees are torn up by the tempest or grow old and die, but the pyramids remain.”
“I understand and I thank you, Prophet. Now lead me hence for I am weary.”
On the third night from this day Rima the Queen, knowing that the fever which consumed her had done its work and that the time was at hand for her to bid farewell to the world, sent a messenger to Roy the Prophet saying that she would speak with him. He came and she addressed him thus:
“I know not who you are nor what is this Brotherhood of the Dawn of which you speak, and to what ends it works, nor why you have brought the Royal Princess hither, nor what gods you serve, I who take but little count of the gods of Egypt, although it is true that when my child was born two of them seemed to appear to me in a vision. Yet I will add this: my heart tells me that you are a most righteous man and a prophet of power appointed by Fate to fulfil its will; also that you and those about you plan good and not ill for the Princess, who, if there is justice in the world, should one day be the Queen of Egypt. There then I leave this matter in the hands of Heaven; I who, having done all that I can do, find myself dying, unfortunate and powerless. Those things will happen which must happen and there is no more to be said.
“Now I demand an oath of you, Roy, and of the priest Tau, and of all the Brotherhood under you. It is that when I am dead you will embalm my body with all the skill of the Egyptians, and that afterwards, when there is opportunity, you will cause it to be conveyed to Ditanah, the King of Babylon, my father, or to him who sits in his place, with these my dying words written in a scroll on its breast, accompanied, if may be, by my daughter, the Royal Princess of Egypt.