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Updated: April 30, 2025
The most prominent object of all amid the general devastation, and the one that fascinated Theos more than the view of the destroyed monolith and the debased Lion, was the uninjured head of the Prophet Khosrul.
Here the speaker paused, and Theos, surveying the vast listening crowds, fancied they looked like an audience of moveless ghosts rather than human beings, so still, so pallid, so grave were they, one and all. Khosrul continued in softer, more melancholy accents, that, while plaintive, were still singularly impressive.
"Talk not of death!" interrupted the King loudly and in haste, "'Tis a raven note that hath been croaked in mine ears too often and too harshly already! What! ... hast thou been met by the mad Khosrul who lately sprang on me, even as a famished wolf on prey, and grasping my bridle-rein bade me prepare to die! 'Twas an ill jest, and one not to be lightly forgiven!
There he came to an abrupt standstill, and, lifting high his strong hand and brawny arm glittering with jewels, he cried: "Soldiers! Seize yon traitorous rebel! Ten thousand pieces of gold for the capture of Khosrul!" There was an instant of hesitation, ... not one of the populace stirred to obey the order.
"What Name?".. interrupted Theos, with eager abruptness ... "Canst thou pronounce it?" Zuriel shook his head. "Not I, my son" he answered gravely.. "Not even Khosrul can penetrate thus far! The Name of Him who is to come, is hidden deep among God's unfathomed silences! It should suffice thee that thou knowest now the sum and substance of the Prophecy.
"Thou art mad, Khosrul" then said the monarch in calmly measured accents "And for thy madness, as also for thine age, we have till now retarded justice, out of pity. Nevertheless, excess of pity in great Kings too oft degenerates into weakness and this we cannot suffer to be said of us, not even for the sake of sparing thy few poor remaining years.
If the King deemed a poet's counsel worth the taking, he would long ago have shut this bearded ranter within the four walls of a dungeon, where only rats and spiders would attend his lectures on approaching Doom!" "Nay, but my lord " Niphrata ventured to say timidly "The King dare not lay hands on Khosrul ..."
Khosrul may be loved and feared by a certain number of superstitious malcontents who look upon a madman as a sort of sacred wild animal, but the actual population of Al-Kyris, the people who are the blood, bone, and sinew of the city, these are not in favor of change either in religion, laws, manners, or customs.
Even now, as I passed by the embankment, the crowd there was thick as a hive of swarming bees!" He paused, but Sah-luma made no remark, and he continued more glibly, "Also, to-day's 'Circular' contains the full statement of the King's reward for the capture of the Prophet Khosrul, and the formal Programme of the Sacrificial Ceremonial announced to take place this evening in the Temple of Nagaya.
And Khosrul, manifestly possessed by some superhuman access of frenzy, leaped from his position on the back of the stone Lion, and slipping agilely through the ranks of the startled spearmen and guards, who were all unprepared for the suddenness and rapidity of his movements, he sprang boldly on the edge of the Royal chariot, and there clung to the jewelled wheel, looking like a gaunt aerial spectre, an ambassador of coming ruin.
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