“He is a fool who breathes threats into the ear of the Queen, and the portion of fools is fire,” she said, and in the proverb I read my answer.
Then she signed to me to follow, and I obeyed. The way led through the same dark tangle of underground passages, as those we threaded in our escape from the Treasure House, but the journey was not so long, and at length it ended in a kind of antechamber richly hung with rugs and skins.
Two giant slaves advanced and fell prostrate on the ground before the face of Lah.
“Take this man,” she said, “and array him as a member of my household. See that he is veiled and that his cloak covers him from head to foot. When I am seated upon my throne let him take his stand by my right hand. As for you, choose well your station. Watch your prisoner closely. At his first movement, his first outcry, seize him and bear him from the court. Let there be no struggle and no noise. I have spoken. Look you to it.” And without so much as a backward glance at me, the Queen had gone.
It was therefore after the manner now set forth that I entered into the inner Temple of Edba, and waited that which was to come.
Already like thousands of ants, black and brown, the people swarmed within the enclosure, filled the wooden balconies to overflowing, and massed themselves in crowds upon the raised platform that lined the walls.
A band of musicians, stationed near the centre, beat monotonously on their hidebound drums and chanted a doleful hymn of praise.
With a refinement of cruelty, Lah had placed me where I could at once see best the torment of my friends, and do least to relieve it. I watched with cold fury the holiday look on the face and garb of the people. They came to this hideous spectacle with the light laughter and noisy bustle of a merrymaking.
Yet the slow-moving, solemn files of priests pleased me no better, and the calm of the close ranks of soldiery alike called forth my wrath. There was not one in all that vast multitude that thought with pity on the fate of her destined to be the Snake’s unhappy bride. Not one but longed for the fall of the knife that was to sever for all time the thread of life of him I called my friend.
I thought how but the veil of silken tissue that I wore stood between me and death; yet, I say it not with boasting, my pulse beat not faster for the fact. I was as a man carried out of himself. I waited, immovable as the very image of Hed himself whose squat figure presided side by side with Edba, over this heathen revel.