Who had he been? Would that she had been his wife! Seeing all would have known that she could not speak, and that he could neither read nor write, yet would they have remained but strangers to the world only, but never in each others' eyes.
To think how he had finally found what was, to himself and her alone, in this awful, accursed paradise, the true meaning of spiritual life. That he had found it through the notorious persecutions and back-bitings of others, preying viciously upon her nonidolatrous beliefs.
For others had hated her, she knew, and talked behind her back. It was by means of such spiteful, privily expressed hatred that the details of her God had been so published abroad as to eventually reach his ears. Others in their malice had spoken against Si'Wren for her beliefs, but in their restless evil had only served God's good.
This was how, she was certain, that this lone man, this common foot soldier, hearing of how evil she supposedly was, had dared to question that spirit of unthinking hatred, and eventually believed also, and paid the ultimate price for his beliefs while she had gone on about her own business, blissfully unaware of his peril while she in her lofty station had remained perfectly immune to all reproach.
This thought tore at her as nothing else. Now, she would suffer also, for the sake of his memory and what he had believed and suffered and died for. At least, she had made sure his cairn, that the largest of wild beasts might never violate the grave. That little, she could and had done for he who never knew her.
There was something between them now, spanning the spiritual chasm like a bridge of their two kindred souls. She would mourn him forever in the secret places of her heart. It was like gruel without milk and fruit which, if one consumed nothing else, would eventually lose its slight taste of bitterness and ground husks, and become at least indifferent to the palate. Nay, worse. For the rest of her life, she would mourn this stranger long after she had left behind this desolate far-away place, in which he must forever remain buried.
But henceforth she would feel closer to him in her heart, than to any living person or location. She could not forget the memory of this place, though she might never return.
She rose up finally, looking cautiously about her. It was evening. The thickening mists were rolling over the land, spilling their whiteness across the hills into unseen, hidden valleys. Such beauty—such emptiness. The gentle wind had a lonely, desolate sound.
The last of her tears had already dried, but she wept anew when she finally turned to remount her horse for the journey back to camp.
She rode back to the campfire burning in front of Emperor Euphrates' splendid tent, and near his tent was her own, where she halted and dismounted drearily. Merely going through the motions, she groomed down the stallion and staked him to a long tether rope so that he might graze, roll on his back, or do practically whatever he pleased with some measure of freedom.