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Updated: June 1, 2025
"Greeting, Cousin Shabaka," she said, "though not for the first time to-day. Oh! my heart was glad when looking up, outside the temple, I caught sight of you clad in that strange Eastern armour, and knew that you had returned safe from your long wanderings. Yet afterwards I must do penance for it by saying two added prayers, since at such a time my thoughts should have been with the goddess only."
Then while I stared at him he threw back his hood and I saw that beneath was the ancient withered face and the long white beard of my great-uncle, the holy Tanofir, the hermit and magician. "Great things happen yonder, Shabaka.
Besides, I measure you by myself." "You at least should be happy, Karema, who are great and rich and beloved, and the wife of a King who is one of the best of men, and the mother of children." "Yes, Shabaka, I should be but I am not, for who can live on sweetmeats only, especially when they like what is sour? See now how strangely we are made.
"Had I known all this story from the first, perhaps I should not have done what I have done to-day and perhaps I should have forgiven and forgotten, for in truth even if the dwarf still lies, I believe your word, O Shabaka, and understand how all came about. But now it is too late to change. Say, O Priest of the Mother, is it not too late?"
"Am I not greater than this Peroa and cannot I therefore shoot better?" "Doubtless, O King of kings, and therefore how can I who shoot worse than Peroa, match myself against you?" "For which reason I will give you odds, Shabaka. Behold this rope of rose-hued pearls I wear.
"For Egypt of course, and when, reflected in the alabaster, I saw you enter that shrine, where you remember I was praying for your success and safety, I nearly died of joy. For you know I had been, well, attached to you to Shabaka, I mean all the time that's my part of the story which I daresay you did not see.
When it had been answered he said in a voice loud enough for me to overhear, "Tell me, O Prince Peroa, was this cup ever that of the Great King which it so much resembles?" "So I understand, O Idernes," answered Peroa. "That is, until it became mine by gift from the lord Shabaka, who received it from the Great King."
Lastly as we were leaving the house to seek the boat which Bes had made ready on the Nile, there came yet another messenger at the sight of whom my heart leapt, for he was priest of Isis. He bowed and handed me a roll. I opened it with a trembling hand and read: "From the Prophetess of Isis whose house is at Amada, aforetime Royal Lady of Egypt, to the Count Shabaka,
Who but a spirit or a bird of the air could have told you that I was coming, seeing that I sent no messenger before me?" "You must have done so, Shabaka, since yesterday one came from the holy Tanofir, our relative who dwells in the desert in the burial- ground of Sekera.
"All is not said and done," I broke out in fury. "Pharaoh, I ask your leave to tell the full story of this business of the naming of the lady Amada to the King of kings, and that in the presence of the dwarf Bes. Even a slave is allowed to set out his tale before judgment is passed upon him." Peroa glanced at Amada who made no sign, then said, "It is granted, General Shabaka."
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