I saw her meaning, and almost started at the impiety of it. If this was to be the new rule of things, I would have no hand in it. Fate might deal with me as it chose. To serve truly a reigning monarch, that I was prepared for; but to palter with sacrilege, and accept a swineherd’s daughter as a God, who should receive prayers and obeisances, revolted my manhood. So I invited a crisis.
“Phorenice,” I said, “I have been a priest from my childhood up, revering the Gods, and growing intimate with their mysteries. Till I find for myself that those old things are false, I must stand by that allegiance, and if there is a cost for this faithfulness I must pay it.”
She looked at me with a slow smile. “You are a strong man, Deucalion,” she said.
I bowed.
“I have heard others as stubborn,” she said, “but they were converted.” She shook out the ruddy bunches of her hair, and stood so that the light of the burning earth-breath might fall on the loveliness of her face and form. “I have found it as easy to convert the stubborn as to burn them. Indeed, there has been little talk of burning. They have all rushed to conversion, whether I would or no. But it seems that my poor looks and tongue are wanting in charm today.”
“Phorenice is Empress,” I said stolidly, “and I am her servant. Tomorrow, if she gives me leave, I will clear away this rabble which clamours outside the walls. I must begin to prove my uses.”
“I am told you are a pretty fighter,” said she. “Well, I hold some small skill in arms myself, and have a conceit that I am something of a judge. Tomorrow we will take a taste of battle together. But today I must carry through the honourable reception I have planned for you, Deucalion. The feast will be set ready soon, and you will wish to make ready for the feast. There are chambers here selected for your use, and stored with what is needful. Ylga will show you their places.”
We waited, the fan-girl and I, till Phorenice had passed out of the glow of the light-jet, and had left the hall of waiting through a doorway amongst the shadows of its farther angle, and then (the girl taking a lamp and leading) we also threaded our way through the narrow mazes of the pyramid.
Everywhere the air was full of perfumes, and everywhere the passages turned and twisted and doubled through the solid stone of the pyramid, so that strangers might have spent hours—yes, or days—in search before they came to the chamber they desired. There was a fine cunningness about those forgotten builders who set up this royal pyramid. They had no mind that kings should fall by the hand of vulgar assassins who might come in suddenly from outside. And it is said also that the king of the time, to make doubly sure, killed all that had built the pyramid, or seen even the lay of its inner stones.
But the fan-girl led the way with the lamp swinging in her hand, as one accustomed to the mazes. Here she doubled, there she turned, and here she stopped in the middle of a blank wall to push a stone, which swung to let us pass. And once she pressed at the corner of a flagstone on the floor, which reared up to the thrust of her foot, and showed us a stair steep and narrow. That we descended, coming to the foot of an inclined way which led us upward again; and so by degrees we came unto the chamber which had been given for my use.
“There is raiment in all these chests which stand by the walls,” said the girl, “and jewels and gauds in that bronze coffer. They are Phorenice’s first presents, she bid me say, and but a small earnest of what is to come. My Lord Deucalion can drop his simplicity now, and fig himself out in finery to suit the fashion.”
“Girl,” I said sharply, “be more decorous with your tongue, and spare me such small advice.”
“If my Lord Deucalion thinks this a rudeness, he can give a word to Phorenice, and I shall be whipped. If he asks it, I can be stripped and scourged before him. The Empress will do much for Deucalion just now.”
“Girl,” I said, “you are nearer to that whipping than you think for.”
“I have got a name,” she retorted, looking at me sullenly from under her black brows. “They call me Ylga. You might have heard that as we rode here on the mammoth, had you not been so wrapped up in Phorenice.”
I gazed at her curiously. “You have never seen me before,” I said, “and the first words you utter are those that might well bring trouble to yourself. There is some object in all this.”
She went and pushed to the massive stone that swung in the doorway of the chamber. Then she put her little jewelled fingers on my garment and drew me carefully away from the airshaft into the farther corner. “I am the daughter of Zaemon,” she said, “whom you knew.”
“You bring me some message from him?”
“How could I? He lives in the priests’ dwellings on the Mountain you did obeisance to. I have not put eyes on him these two years. But when I saw you first step out from that red pavilion they had pitched at the harbour side, I—I felt a pity for you, Deucalion. I remembered you were my father’s, Zaemon’s, friend, and I knew what Phorenice had in store. She has been plotting it all these two months.”
“I cannot hear words against the Empress.”
“And yet—”
“What?”
She stamped her sandal upon the stone of the floor. “You must be a very blind man, Deucalion, or a very daring one. But
