Haggard Anthology Vol 15, page 97
Khian nodded, and he went on:
"Lord, that man answered the signs and so did another who was near to him, to show me as I think that this was not done by chance. Then I knew that they were friends sent here for a purpose and understood why my Spirit had moved me to climb the pyramid."
"And if so, what of it, Sheik?" asked Khian in a hoarse voice, for his heart beat high with hope and choked him.
"This, Lord. To-morrow at the sunset once more I shall stand upon the crest of the pyramid, and if as I think those Arabs still are there, I shall make other signs to them, showing them where they must wait at midnight, having horses in readiness. Then I shall return and guide you to them, for I think that they will know which way to ride."
"It is dangerous," said Khian, "but so be it, for if I bide here much longer I think that I shall die. Therefore, better meet fate in the open and swiftly than perish here in this hole by inches."
Then he called Temu and the three of them took counsel together. Also the Sheik and Temu talked much of the secret signs of the Order, and practised them by the lamplight.
Next morning ere dawn the Sheik departed again as he had done before. As soon as it was light, watching through their spyholes, Khian and Temu saw that there was much disturbance in the camp of the soldiers, saw also that the skilled cliff-climbers, six or more of them with their ropes and metal spikes, were collected together, talking with the officers.
At last, as it seemed to Khian somewhat against their will, they advanced to the foot of the pyramid, and setting his ear to the hole Khian heard them scrambling up the face of it. For a long while he heard no more, but noted the soldiers watching eagerly, talking together and pointing with their hands, now in this direction and now in that.
Suddenly there rose a scream of horror. Some of the soldiers stared as though fascinated, others turned their backs, and others hid their eyes. The spyhole was obscured for a moment as though by something passing between it and the light. Then soldiers ran forward and presently Khian and Temu saw them returning towards the huts bearing three shapeless things that had been men. A while later they saw the remainder of the cliff-climbers staggering much as the drunken do, towards the same huts where they cast down their ropes with the air of those who have done with them, and departed out of the sight of the watcher.
"The pyramids are avenged on those who thought that they could master them, and their captain will rejoice," said Khian sadly, thinking to himself that had not some power protected him they would have been avenged upon him also, as indeed very nearly happened.
Once more it was sunset and again the Arabs, mounted on fine horses, appeared at the camp. Again, too, there were shoutings and pointings with much disturbance, in the midst of which he who seemed to be the chief of the Arabs drew a little to one side of, also behind, the soldiers, so as not to be seen of them, and from time to time made motions with his arms, as those do who, at its rising or its setting, worship the sun in the desert. Then followed darkness and in it shone the fires round which the soldiers were seated.
Presently they stood up holding their hands behind their ears as though to listen to some sound in the air; then by twos and threes departed like men who are frightened and hid themselves in the huts or elsewhere. A while later the stone turned and the Sheik glided into the passage, but this time he asked for wine, not water.
"I have been near to Osiris," he said, "who slipped upon the blood of one of those cliff-climbing fools and almost fell. Yet I did not fall who I think was guarded, and for the rest all goes well."
"Except for the three who are dead," said Khian, sighing.
"If they died, it was by no fault of mine, Lord. Without knowledge of the road, in their madness, having scaled two-thirds of the height they came to smooth marble where is no holding place for hands or feet. Then one slide down, dragging the others with him, for they were roped together, after which the rest, seeing the fate of their fellows, gave up the venture and returned. Now, as I think, the pyramids will be safe from these common cliff-climbers for many a year."
"What chanced afterwards?" asked Khian.
"I appeared at sunset as before, and making pretence to toss my arms about, as a ghost or a devil might do, I signalled to him who seems to be the captain of the Arabs. He answered me. We understood each other. After dark I shouted curses at the soldiers telling them that I was the Spirit of Roy the Prophet, and that doom was near to them. They grew frightened at what they held to be a voice from Heaven, and crept away to hide themselves from the words of evil omen, nor, as I think, will they come out of their holes again until the sun is high. Now drink a cup of wine and follow me, both of you."
XVIII. HOW NEFRA CAME TO BABYLON
After he who was known as the Scribe Rasa, the envoy of Apepi, King of the North, had received the betrothal ring from his affianced, Nefra the Queen, and sailed down Nile to Tanis, there to undergo many evil things, at the Temple of the Dawn all came about as the Captain of the Pyramids afterwards described to him and the priest Temu.
Scarcely had this Rasa, who was Khian the Prince, departed, than there arrived at the temple, disguised as Arabs, an embassy from Ditanah, the old king of Babylon. These men, nobles of Babylon, were received in secret by the Council, and bowing before Roy the Prophet, presented to him tablets of clay covered with strange signs.
"Read the writing, Tau," said Roy, "for my sight grows feeble and I forget this foreign tongue which is your own."
So Tau took the tablets and read:
"From Ditanah the aged, Lord of Babylon and King of Kings, whose glory is as that of the Sun, the Mighty One. To Roy the holy Seer, the Friend of Heaven, the Prophet of the Order of the Dawn, and to him who sits under Roy, the first of the Brothers of the Dawn, who in Egypt is named Tau, but who, as I, Ditanah, have heard, in Babylon aforetime was named the High Prince Abeshu, the lawful son of my body, with whom I quarrelled because he rebuked my Majesty as to a certain vengeance which I took upon a subject people, and who thereafter fled away and as I believed was long dead-Greetings.
"Know, O Roy and O Tau or Abeshu, that I have received your letters informing me of all that passes in Egypt, and that you, Abeshu, still live. Also that it was the desire of my daughter Rima whom I gave in marriage to Kheperra, the Pharaoh of the South and by right of descent the King of all Egypt, that her bones should be brought back for burial to Babylon. Also I have read that her daughter Nefra has in secret been crowned Queen of Egypt and seeks my help to win her throne out of the hands of my enemy, Apepi the Usurper who rules at Tanis.
"Now I, Ditanah, say to you, Roy the Holy, and to you, Queen Nefra my grandchild, 'Come to me at Babylon with all your company. Thither I swear you safe-conduct in the name of my god Marduk, Ruler of Heaven and Earth, in the name of the gods Nebo and Bel, and of all the other gods who are my lords. There, also, you shall be guarded from all harm by the strength of my hands, and there we will talk together of all these matters.'
"And to you who are called Tau, I say, 'Come also, and if you can prove to me that you are in truth my son, the Prince Abeshu, I will give you all things that you desire, who have mourned over you for many years, save one thing only, the succession to my throne after me which is promised to another. But if you have lied to me in this matter, then do not come, for surely you shall die.'
"To the bones, also, of my daughter Rima, whose husband Kheperra, the wolf, Apepi, brought to his death, I will give honourable burial in the sepulchre of kings, where it was her desire to lie at last. Nor do I think that I shall refuse her death-prayer, if Nefra, my grandchild the Queen, will obey me in a certain matter.
"Sealed with the seal of Ditanah, the Great King and with the seals of his Councillors."
When Tau had read he touched his forehead with the tablet and gave it to Nefra who sat upon her throne in the centre of the Council. She also laid it against her forehead, then turned to Tau and said:
"How comes it, my Lord Tau, that all these years you have kept this secret from me, who if the tale that is written here be true, must be a brother of my mother and my uncle?"—a question which caused the envoys to stare at him.
Tau smiled and answered:
"O Queen and Niece, the tale is true enough, as should we live to come at Babylon, I will prove to my royal father Ditanah and his Councillors. I am Abeshu and the half-brother of Queen Rima. But when I left Babylon she was but a little child born of another mother whom I had scarcely seen, since she dwelt with the royal women. Nor did I reveal myself to her afterwards when we met again and I saved her from the plots of Apepi at Thebes, or to you when you grew to womanhood, because of oaths that I had taken when I became a Brother of the Dawn, which oaths bound me to lay down all my earthly rank and to forget that I had been a prince. Yet in those oaths there was a loophole— namely, should it ever become needful to declare myself and my true name and history thereby to help the Order of the Dawn, I was free to do so. To all of which our father the Prophet can bear me witness."
"Aye," said Roy, "it is true. Hearken, Queen and Sister, and you, the envoys of Ditanah. Many years ago a brother of our Order, now long dead, brought to me a man who said that he desired to become one of us, a noble-looking warrior man, stalwart and square-bearded, who, I judged, had drunk of the water of Euphrates. I asked him his name and country, also why he sought the shelter of the Dawn. He told me, and proved his words, that he was Abeshu, a Prince of Babylon, who had quarrelled with his father, Ditanah the Great King, whose General he had been, over the matter of a subject people whom he had been ordered to massacre, but would not for mercy's sake, and because of his disobedience had been banished or left the land. Afterwards he had served under other kings, those of Cyprus and of Syria, as a captain of their armies, but in the end grew weary of fighting and ambitions, of loves who betrayed him also, and determined to bid farewell to the vanities of the world and in solitude and silence to feed and purify his soul.
"Therefore, having heard of the Order of the Dawn, he came to knock upon its gate. I answered to him that among us there was no room for one who only sought salvation for himself and rest from earthly toil, since those of our Brotherhood must be the servants of all men and more particularly of the poor and those bound with the chains of sin, sworn to bring peace to the world, even at the cost of their own lives, sworn, too, to poverty and, except for special purposes, to celibacy and the renouncement of all earthly honours. For thus only, as we held, could the soul of man come into union with its god. Therefore, if he became one of us, it must be as the slave of the humblest and he must forget that he had been a Prince of Babylon and a General of her hosts, he who henceforward would be but a minister of Heaven appointed to tasks, mayhap, that the meanest idolator would refuse.
"In the end, Queen, this suppliant bowed his neck beneath our yoke and laying down all his titles, became known under the humble name of Tau. Yet from Tau the Servant he grew to be Tau the spiritual Lord, and after me, its aged Prophet, the greatest in our Brotherhood, and so acknowledged throughout the world, though until it became necessary to proclaim it to the Great King Ditanah but the other day, none knew that he was Abeshu, the Prince of Babylon."
Now when they heard this strange story the members of the Council rose and bowed to Tau, as did the envoys from Babylon, setting their hands upon their hearts. But Nefra did more, for she rose also and kissed him on the brow, calling him her beloved uncle and saying that now she understood why she had always loved him from a child.
Then Tau spoke, saying:
"All is as has been told, but because of it I neither seek nor deserve your praise. What I have done I did for my own soul's sake who came to know that there is no true joy save in the service of others and in the seeking to draw near to God. Now for a while it seems that, still in the service of others, I must once more be known as a prince and perhaps as a captain in war. If so, let not my royal Father have any fear lest I should seek to claim the heritage of those whom he has appointed to succeed him, I whose only hope and purpose is that I may live and die a Brother of the Dawn."
At this moment he who kept the door advanced and whispered into the ear of Roy, who said:
"Admit them."
There came in three men, travel-stained and weary, who when they threw open their cloaks and made the signs, were seen to be Brothers of the Order.
"Holy Prophet," said one of them, "we come from Tanis and from the camp of Apepi's army. We have it from those in authority who in secret are the friends of our Order, that Apepi makes preparation, should a certain request of his be refused, to attack you here; to put every one of the Brotherhood to the sword and to drag away yonder royal lady to be his wife. His troops are gathered and in a few days he will be upon you."
"I know it well," answered Roy. "Let those mad servants of Apepi come, for I have words to say to them."
Then he commanded Tau to call together all the people of the Dawn, that he might take counsel with them.
They gathered together and in their presence Roy the Prophet laid down his office and consecrated Tau as his successor, as the Sheik of the Pyramids had told Khian and Temu. Then, too, he bade them farewell and blessed them, and they departed, weeping, after which all things happened as the Sheik had said. There were some among the Council— Nefra the Queen was one of them—who would have seized Roy and borne him away by force. But he read their minds and forbade it. So at last they went, leaving him alone according to his commands. Yet that was a sad parting and at it many tears were shed. Thus Nefra wept much, for she loved Roy who from her infancy had watched over this orphan child as though he were her father. He noted her grief and called her to him:
"Lady of Egypt," he said, "you who to-day are a queen in name and ere so very long, unless my wisdom fails me, will be so indeed, wide seems the gulf that is set between you and the old hermit, the Prophet of a secret faith whose name will vanish away and who ere long will be utterly forgotten upon the earth. Also between you and me lies the span of many years, for I am very, very old, while but yesterday you came to womanhood. Moreover, your lot in life is far different from that which I have trod and that now is ending, so it would seem as though there were little in common between us. Yet it is not so, because we are tied together by the bond of love which, did you but know it, is the one perfect, eternal thing in Heaven and earth. Time is nothing; it seems to be and yet is not, for in everlastingness what place is there for time? Pomp and glories, beauty and desire, wealth and want, things lost and things achieved, all we seek and all we gain, our joys and griefs, yes, birth and death themselves, are but bubbles on the stream of being which appear and disappear. Only love is real and only love endures. For love is God, and being God, is King of the world; a King with a thousand faces, who in the end will conquer all and make of hate a footstool and of evil the oil within his lamp. Therefore, Child, follow after love, not only that love which you know to-day, but the love of all, even of those who do you wrong, for this is the true sacrifice, and through it only shall your soul be fed. Now for an hour, farewell."
Then he kissed her on the brow and bade her leave him.
Such was the parting of Roy the ancient Prophet and Nefra the royal maid who all her life through remembered this his last message, though perhaps its full mystery and meaning never came home to her until at last she was about to follow him into the shadows. Never did she forget the sight of him, white-robed and bearded, hawk-nosed and wrinkled, seated alone upon his chair of state within that dusky hall, staring with steady eyes out into the farther gloom, as though there he sought some beckoning hand of light and awaited the signal to follow whither it might lead.
Ere the dawn they marched, fifty or more of them, besides those who bore the coffin of Rima the Queen. Swiftly they marched by secret ways, for already the sick, the young, and the aged had departed to their appointed hiding places, so swiftly that when the sun rose the pyramids were already distant. Then it was that Nefra bade farewell to the Sheik who had accompanied them thus far, and gave him those commands of which he had spoken afterwards.
For always she believed that Khian would return to seek her there, as did Tau and others of the Brotherhood, who perchance had received some message or spiritual instruction on this matter, and bitterly she grieved that it was not possible to await his coming that he might fly with her. The Sheik bowed and went his way, swearing to fulfil her words, and by degrees the pyramids that had been her only home faded and were lost to sight. Then for the first time Nefra wept a little, for she loved those pyramids which she had conquered and where her joy had found her, and did not know whether she would ever see them more.
They came unharmed to the borders of Egypt, and leaving the great gulf of the Red Sea to the south of them, passed safely into the deserts of Arabia. Indeed, on all that journey through Egypt, avoiding towns and villages, they met few in the war-wasted lands, and those few either fled away or made pretence not to see them. It was almost as though some command had gone out that they should not be observed, though whence it came Nefra did not know. Not until she made that journey did Nefra learn how great was the secret power of the humble Order of the Dawn.
At length they were out of Egypt and camped one night by a well in the desert. Next morning when Nefra looked at dawn out of the tent in which she slept with Kemmah, she perceived a caravan of camels and horsemen advancing upon them and was afraid.
"Now I think that Apepi has us in his net," she said to Kemmah, who looked also, then left the tent, making no answer. Soon she returned accompanied by two of the envoys from Babylon, with whom came the Lord Tau himself.
