“Oh! anything,” replied Nefra still more vaguely, “but generally I run errands.”
“Indeed! And where to?”
“Oh! anywhere. But tell me, Sir, are you acquainted with the pyramids?”
“Not at all, Friend, except from a distance. The pyramids, it would appear, are now the private property of that Order you mentioned, to which, by the way, I, who also run errands, have a message to deliver. None may approach them. Indeed, I have heard that some unfortunate men who wished to explore their wonders not long ago, came to a terrible end. According to the story a black lion rushed out of one of them, killed three of those men, and mauled the fourth so badly that afterwards he died. Or it may have been one of your ghosts that rushed out. At any rate, the men died.”
“What a strange tale, Sir. I wonder that we did not hear of it, but living quite secluded as we do, we hear nothing, or at least very little. But they are beautiful, those pyramids, are they not, standing up thus against the evening sky in majesty? Look how their sharp outlines seem to cut into the heavens. Also from them the great dead seem to speak to us across the gulfs of Time.”
“I perceive, Young Person, that you have imagination, which is unusual in those who run errands and guide travellers. Yet I dare to differ from you. These stone heaps undoubtedly are beautiful with a beauty that crushes the mind, though not so much so as are mountains chiselled out by Nature and capped with snow, such as I have seen in Syria. But to me they speak not of the mighty dead whose memories they glorify, but of the thousands of forgotten ones who perished in the toil of their uprearing, that in them the bones of kings might find a house deemed to be eternal and their names preserved among men. Was it worth while to leave monuments to be the marvel of generations at the cost of so much doom and misery?”
“I do not know, Sir, who never thought of the matter thus. Yet there is this to be said. Mankind must suffer, so I have been told who am but an ignorant——”
“—Young person,” suggested Khian.
“And generally it suffers to no end,” went on Nefra as though she had not heard him, “leaving naught behind, not even a record of its pain. Here at least something remains which the world will admire for thousands of years after those who caused the suffering and those who suffered are lost in darkness. Suffering that has purpose, or that bears fruit, even though we know not the purpose and never see the fruit, may be borne almost with joy, but empty, sterile suffering is a desert without water and a torment without hope.”
Khian looked at the speaker, or rather at her hood, for he could see nothing else, and remarked: