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Updated: June 4, 2025
"Nay, you shall not go, Olaf, at least not yet. My orders are that you do not fall upon your sword. As for this Egyptian witch, well, presently my people will be here; then we will see." Now I drew Heliodore to the trunk of the great tree which stood near by and set myself in front of her. "What are you about to do?" asked the Empress.
If, as I believe and as you say you believe, there is a God, think whom you will be called upon to salute when that God has heard the truth. Meanwhile I repeat that Heliodore the Egyptian still lives beneath the sun." Irene rose from the stool on which she sat and thought a moment. I gazed through the bars of the window-place in my cell out at the night above.
Nor could I have audience with the Emir Obaidallah, for he too had been called away. Now my heart was filled with terrors, for I feared lest in this way or in that Heliodore had fallen into the hands of the accursed Musa. I prayed Yusuf to tell me the truth of the matter, whereon he swore by the Prophet that she was safe, but would say no more.
Still, as here also are involved high questions of law, I command that the lady Heliodore, daughter of the late Prince Magas, shall also be conveyed with all courtesy and honour to the Caliph Harun at Baghdad, there to abide his judgment of her case. The matter is finished. Let the officers concerned carry out my decree and answer for the safety of these prisoners with their lives."
"Truly you two should give thanks to God," she said, "Who has brought you together again in so wondrous a fashion, as I do on your behalf from the bottom of my heart. Yet you are still hemmed round by dangers many and great. What now, Olaf? Will you become a ghost also and dwell here in the tomb with Heliodore; and if so, what tale shall I tell to Palka and the rest?" "Not so," I answered.
And what were the fates of Heliodore and of our children; of Martina and of Jodd? Also, was the prophecy of Odin, spoken through the lips of Freydisa in the temple at Aar, that he and his fellow gods, or demons, would prevail against my flesh and that of those who clung to me, fulfilled at last in the fires of martyrdom for the Faith, as his promise of my happiness was fulfilled? I cannot tell.
With him will go the woman whom he alleges to be his niece, but who, as we are informed, was one of the waiting-ladies of the Empress Irene. Against her there is nothing to be said save that she may be a Byzantine spy. "Now I come to the matter of the lady Heliodore, who is reported to be the wife or the lover or the affianced of this General Olaf, a question of which God alone knows the truth.
Is it not so, my servants?" "It is so, Caliph," pealed the answer from many throats. "Hearken, then, to the decree of Harun-al-Rashid. Learn both of you that all which has passed between us was but a play that I have played to test the love and faithfulness of you twain. Lady Heliodore, be at ease.
The first of these is that you adopt Islam with a faithful heart and go free." "That I refuse, as I have refused it before," said Heliodore. "The second is," he continued, "that you enter the harem of the Emir Musa." "That I refuse also." "And the third and last is that, having thrust aside his mercy, you suffer the common fate of a captured Christian who persists in error, and die."
"Ah! had you taken my counsel in the past, that title might have been yours in very truth, and there you and your husband could have founded a new line of kings independent of the Empire which totters to its fall." "I remember no such counsel, Madam," said Heliodore.
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