“The thought is just and finely put. They instruct those who run errands well in this land.”
“The brethren of the Order are learned, so even the young can pick up crumbs of knowledge from their feasts—if it pleases them to look for them, Sir—but forgive me, how are you named?”
“Named?—Oh! I am called Rasa the Scribe.”
“Is it so? I did not guess your trade because among us scribes carry palettes at the girdle, not swords; also their hands are different. I should have thought that you were a soldier and a hunter and a climber of the mountains of which you spoke, not a copyist of documents in hot palace rooms.”
“Sometimes I am these things also,” he replied hastily, “especially a climber—when I was in Syria. By the way, my guide, I have heard strange stories of another climber, one who scales these pyramids. It is said at Tanis and elsewhere that they are haunted by a spirit who runs up and down their sides at night, and even in the daytime also. I say by a spirit, for woman she cannot be.”
“Why not, Scribe Rasa?”
“Because, or so the tale tells, this climber is so beautiful that those who look upon her go mad, and who could be made mad by the sight of any woman? Also what woman could clamber over those smooth and mighty monuments like a lizard?”
“If you are a scaler of mountains, Scribe Rasa, you will know that such feats are often not so difficult as they seem. There lives a family of men in this place that for generations has been able to conquer the pyramids by day or night,” she replied, leaving the first part of his question unanswered.
“Then if I stay here long enough I will pray them to teach me their art, in the hope that at the top of them I might meet this spirit and be made mad by drinking of the Cup of Beauty. But you have not answered me. Is there such a spirit, and if so, can I see her?—to do which I would give my—well, a great deal.”
“Here before us is the Sphinx which I thought, Scribe Rasa, being one so curious, you would have noticed as we approached it. Now put your question to that god, for they say that he solves riddles sometimes, if he likes the asker, though never yet have I wrung an answer from those stony, smiling lips.”