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Updated: May 4, 2025
"I think it will be best that we should return to Kurna. Heliodore must play her part as the spirit of a queen till we can hire some boat and escape with her down the Nile." "Never," she cried, "I cannot, I cannot. Having come together we must separate no more. Oh! Olaf, you do not know what a life has been mine during all these dreadful months.
Know that I go to Egypt to search for Heliodore." "Be comforted again," said Martina. "This you could not have done until the peace was signed; it would have been against your oath and duty." "That is so," I answered heavily. "Olaf," said Martina to me that night after Jodd had left us, "you say that you will go to Egypt. How will you go?
The servant went, and, after a while of waiting that seemed long, once more the door was opened, and I heard the sweep of a woman's dress upon the carpet. "Be seated, Lady," said the grave voice of the physician, "for I have words to say to you." "Sir, I obey," answered another voice, at the sound of which my heart stood still. It was that of Heliodore.
"You are a blind man. How can you search?" Then an idea came to him, and he added, "Listen, General. I and the rest of us swore to protect the lady Heliodore and to be as her father or her brothers. Do you bide here. I will go to search for her, either with a vessel full of armed men, or alone, disguised." Now I laughed outright and asked,
"Why not, Heliodore?" "Because I could not feel that you were dead. Therefore I fought for my life, who otherwise, after we were conquered and ruined and my father was slain fighting nobly, should have stabbed, not that eunuch, but myself. Then later, in this tomb, I came to know that you were not dead.
I nodded, since Martina often acted as my secretary in high matters, being from her training skilled in such things. So she broke the seals and read to myself and to Heliodore, who also was present in the room, as follows: "'To the Excellent Michael, a General of our armies and Governor of the Isle of Lesbos, Greetings from Nicephorus, by the will of God Emperor.
Your turn might come at length. Also your father's plans would be forwarded to the last pound of gold in our treasury and the last soldier in our service. Within five years, mayhap, he might rule Egypt as our Governor. What say you?" Heliodore looked at the Empress with that strange, slow smile of hers. Then she looked at me, and answered: "I say what Olaf says. There are two empires in the case.
First one and then another of them went down, whereon the third fled away, taking with him a grizzly wound behind, for I struck him as he fled. "Now it seems there is an end of that," I gasped to Heliodore, who was crouched upon the seat. "Come, let me take you to your father and summon my guards, ere we meet more of these murderers."
I pray that you will think kindly of Harun-al-Rashid, as he does of you, Olaf Red-Sword. Come, let us leave these two. Lady Martina, I pray you to be my guest this night." So they all went, leaving Heliodore and myself alone in the great room, yes, alone at last and safe. Years had gone by, I know not how many, but only that much had happened in them.
"But, oh! tell me, Martina, what of Heliodore?" "This," she whispered into my ear. "Heliodore and her father sailed an hour after sunset and are now safe upon the sea, bound for Egypt." "Then I was right! When Irene told me she was dead she lied."
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