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Updated: June 22, 2025
At these words Rames turned his head aside to hide his tears, but Mermes bade him not to grieve, saying: "Great is the mystery of our fates, my son.
There you shall find that Royal Loveliness which you desire. Take it to be your wife as you desire, for it shall not say you nay. Be wedded to that Loveliness with pomp before all the eyes of Egypt, and reign by right of that Royalty, until you meet one Rames, son of Mermes, whom you also murdered, and with him a certain Beggar-man who is charged with another message for you, O Abi.
Suddenly with a simultaneous motion these men tore off their masks so that for a moment Asti and Tua saw their faces and behold! the face of the captain was the face of Pharaoh, Tua's father, and the face of the steersman was the face of Mermes, Asti's husband. For one moment only did they see them, then a dark cloud hid the dying sun, and when it passed that ship was gone, whither they knew not.
Then, uttering the war-cry of his fathers, those Pharaohs who once had ruled in Egypt, the tall and noble Mermes grasped his sword in both his hands, and rushed upon the advancing foe, slaying and slaying until he himself was slain. "Come with me, O Wife of a royal hero," said Tua to Asti, who had covered her eyes with her hand, and was leaning against the wall. "Widow, not wife, Queen.
"Once it was ours, Daughter," said her father with a sigh, "or rather the kings of Kesh were also kings of Egypt, but their dynasty fell before my great-great-grandfather was called to the throne, and now but three of their blood are left, Mermes, Captain of the Guard of Amen; Asti, the Seer and Priestess, his wife, your foster-mother and waiting lady, and the young Count Rames, a soldier in our army, who was your playmate, and as you may remember saved you from the sacred crocodile."
Who am I that I should make myself a god and destroy a life that they have fashioned?" So the boy Rames lived and throve, and Mermes and Asti, when they came to hear of these things, thanked Pharaoh and blessed him.
Now the house of Mermes, as Captain of the Guard, was within the wall of the great temple of Amen, near to the palace of the priestesses of Amen where the Princess Neter-Tua was nurtured. Thus it came about that when the Queen Ahura died, the lady Asti was named as nurse to the Princess, since Pharaoh said that she should drink no milk save that of one in whose veins ran royal blood.
"You were born under a strange star, my son," said Mermes, "and I know not whither it will lead you, who pray that it may not be a meteor which blazes suddenly in the heavens and disappears to return no more.
Also he became a friend of Pharaoh and one of his inner Council, to whose voice he always listened, for Mermes was a true-hearted man. Afterwards Mermes married Asti, but like Pharaoh for a long while he remained childless, since he took no other wives.
Now, surrounded by all who remained to her, not a dozen men, they were driven back through the inner courts, through the halls, to the pylon stairs. Here the last stand was made. Step by step they held the stairs, till at length there were left upon their feet only Tua, Asti and Mermes, her husband, who was sorely wounded in many places.
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