“Hearken. By the death of this holy man, or half-god, I have become the keeper of a certain treasure over which he watched. It is hidden deep in the bowels of the earth beneath us. I must go to visit it and see that it is safe. This I shall do presently. Bide you here, if you will, till I return, and if I return not, wait till the ray strikes upon the point of rock, cross the bridge, climb the spur, and flee whither ye will. Philo can guide you.”
“Not so, Child of Isis,” said Philo. “My oath and duty are to you, not to this pair. Whither you go, I follow to the end.”
“I follow also,” said Kallikrates, “who would not be left in this darksome place companied by death.”
“Yet it might be wiser, Kallikrates,” I answered, “since who can escape that company of death of which you speak?” for again dreadful and ominous words rushed unbidden from my heart.
“I care not. I go,” he said almost sullenly.
“Then I go also,” broke in Amenartas. “This Prophetess doubtless is wise and holy, yet I may be pardoned if I choose to share her fellowship with you upon a road unknown. Perchance it has another gate elsewhere that I might never find,” she added in bitter jest.
Oh! had this fool but known that her coarse stabs at me did but harden the heart which she sought to pierce, and drive it whither she did not desire.
“As you will,” I answered. “Now eat and rest till the hour of departure comes and I summon you.”
So they ate, if not much, though for my part I touched no food, and laid them down in the inner cave as best they might, and there slept, or did not sleep. But I, I watched the hours away by the dead shell of the holy Noot, striving to commune with his spirit which I knew to be near to me. Yet it gave no answer to all my questions. Or at least there came one only which again and again seemed to shape itself to a single word,
“Beware!”