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"Come, Wanderer; they await us," and she gave him her hand that he might lead her. So they went back to the banquet hall. They hearkened as they sat till far in the night, and still the Apura passed, countless as the sands of the sea. At length all were gone, and the sound of their feet died away in the distance.
Here the fierce-faced Apura, clamouring like gulls, tore the silver trinkets from the children of those of the baser sort, or the sacred amulets from the mummies of those who were laid out for burial, and here a water-carrier wailed over the carcass of the ass that won him his livelihood. At length, passing through the crowd, they came to a temple that stood near to the Temple of the God Ptah.
They sat there side by side, but the Queen spoke little, and that little of Pharaoh and the host of the Apura, from whom no tidings came. When at length the feast was done, Meriamun bade the Wanderer to her private chamber, and thither he went for awhile, though sorely against his will. But Rei came not in with them, and thus he was left alone with the Queen, for she dismissed the waiting ladies.
There at the end of the hall, among the dead and dying, there stood the two ancient men of the Apura, and in their hands were cedar rods. "It is the Wizards the Wizards of the Apura," men cried, and shrunk this way and that, thinking no more on war. The ancient men drew nigh.
Dead are our first born, they lie in heaps as the fish lay when Sihor ran red with blood. Dead are they because of the curse that has been brought upon us by the prophets of the Apura, whom Pharaoh, and Pharaoh's Queen, yet hold in Khem."
Night and day have I journeyed from the host of the Apura who fly into the wilderness. Night and day have I journeyed, leaving wife and flocks and children and the Promise of the Land, that I may once more look upon the beauty of the Hathor. Shut not the gates!" "Pass in," said the priest, "pass in, so shall we be rid of one of those whom Khem nurtured up to rob her."
It were well if Meriamun the Queen would let them go for ever, as they desire, to their death in the desert, but she hardens the King's heart." There was silence without at last; the clamour and the tread of the Apura were hushed in the distance, dying far away, and Rei grew calm, when he heard no longer the wild song, and the clashing of the timbrels.
I came at eve, but I might not fall upon them because of a veil of darkness that spread between my armies and the hosts of the Apura. All night long through the veil of darkness, and through the shrieking of a great gale, I heard a sound as of the passing of a mighty people the clangour of their arms, the voices of captains, the stamp of beasts, and the grinding of wheels.
As they lifted the rods on high the Guards shrank like beaten hounds, and all the guests hid their faces, save Meriamun and the Wanderer alone. Even Pharaoh dared not look on them, but he murmured angrily in his beard: "By the name of Osiris," he said, "here be those Soothsayers of the Apura once again. Now Death waits on those who let them pass the doors."
This is the Queen's command, that 'every woman in Tanis who has lost son, or husband, or brother, or kin or lover, through the witchcraft of the False Hathor, or by the plagues that she hath wrought on Khem, or in the war with the Apura, whom she caused to fly from Khem, do meet me at sundown in the Temple of Osiris before the face of the God and of dead Pharaoh's Majesty."
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