She bit her lip to the blood, and glanced at me with an evil glint in her bright eyes.
“Thou carest naught for me,” she observed, reproachfully, regarding me sharply with narrowing brows.
“I am but thy captive,” I responded. “As Queen of Ea thou mayest not allow love to enter thine heart until thou growest old. Why dost thou taunt me?”
Mention of the rigid law of her great ancestress, Semiramis, caused her to frown.
“So be it,” she answered, hoarsely. “If thou wilt not renounce thy love for this woman who dwelleth in thine accursed land, then thou art still my slave.”
“I am content,” I said.
“Thou hast chosen?” she inquired, slowly rising to her feet and standing erect before me.
“I have chosen.”
“Then to-morrow the lions shall rend thee in full gaze of the assembled people of Ea, who shall make sport of thy supplications, and thy cries shall be as music unto their ears,” she burst forth, in a sudden fury of passion. “Anu shall rend thee, Nergal, lord of death, shall seize thee, and thou shalt be accursed by the Fever-god, and cast into the dread kingdom of Niffer. Baal shall show thee no mercy; Adarmalik, lord of the noonday sun, shall hide his light from thee; Shamas shall blind thee, and thou shalt exist for ever in the torments prepared by Ninkigat in the burning land where all is dust. Thou hast disdained the favours that I would have bestowed upon thee, despised me, and flung back the love that I would have given thee. Therefore shalt thou die. I, Istar, ruler of Ea, have spoken.”
Her beautiful face was distorted by fierce, uncontrolled passion, vituperation fell from her lips with a rapidity which almost choked her, her mass of dead gold hair had escaped from its fillet and fell in profusion about her shoulders, while her white, filmy robe, open again at the neck, disclosed the hideous, mysterious blemish scarred dark red upon the white flesh—the mark that was branded upon the woman I loved as well as the queen-goddess who had condemned me to death.