Then again there was silence, and as I waited, lo! a great light filled the Burial Hall, and from a distance came a glorious voice not mortal, wholly sweet, yet full of power. And before it the dead Kings bent their heads, and at its sound I forgot the jewel that I wore, and the voice spoke to me, and of me, and with it both joy and sorrow overflowed my heart. As for the words it spoke I know them not.
But this I know, that it called me both blessed and cursed in the love that raised me above my fellows; and bade me be of good cheer, for of the blackness of the night is born the glory of the dawn, and both the darkness and the light were to be mine throughout the years; and in the latter end, peace, unknowable in time, endless throughout eternity.
Then the voice was stilled, and I awoke, and descending from the throne I sought the Queen’s presence. But all these things I kept close locked in my heart, nor at her eager questioning would I tell my dream.
Chapter XIX
For Life, for Love, for Freedom
It was near to midnight. I was weary, mind and body, for I had been urging the Queen to tell me plainly of the fate of my friends, and she had pleaded ignorance, and either could not or would not give me satisfaction.
To a reasonable man like myself it is a tedious process and one bearing little fruit, to thread the mazes of a woman’s mind, yet this had been my task, and after all these hours I now laid me to rest with the comfortable knowledge that I had perchance been cajoled, and at any rate altogether baffled.
Yet she was beautiful, my Queen, and I could not be wholly discontent. Her very contrariness was a charm, or would have been, had I felt less bondsman to the cause of my friends. And this was the more strange, in that I have always loved obedience in a woman, and reckoned docility the chief of female virtues.
I put this down that men may read. You that wonder at my folly may perchance go further and with less cause, when the touch of the blind god comes to you as to me. As for you who smile on, knowing no better, from your lonely height, you have missed wholly the inwardness of life and its savor, and so my pity may well match your own and with the greater reason.
Well, I have said that it was close to midnight when I sought my couch, and not five minutes after when I was wrapped in deepest slumber, therefore I cannot say when the scent of coming trouble filled my nostrils, or when the heavy burden of the foreknowledge of sorrow broke my rest. But this I do know: I breathed with difficulty. A heavy weight seemed pressing on my chest, and in the distance, even in my sleep, I heard a thunderous rumble as of the chariot wheels of the gods.
With that thought I woke, and waking, knew that the air was full of sulphur and that something lay across me, motionless, in the darkness. I put forth my strength and pushed the thing away, and it was cold, and it rolled from off the couch, and fell on the floor beside it, with a dull sound I liked but little.