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but too late. As soon as the animal reached the rocky bed below he fell upon his side. He continued to breathe a few moments only, then expired. CHAPTER XIX. THE CITY IN THE CLOUDS. "THERE is a strange story connected with this place known to us as Zomara's Wrath," Omar said, when together we turned away and mounted our horses to ride back to the camp. "Relate it to me," I urged eagerly. "To-night. After we have eaten at sundown I will tell you about it," he answered, and spurring our horses we galloped quickly forward. When we had eaten that evening and were seated aside together, I reminded him of his promise. "It is a story of my ancestors, and it occurred more than a thousand years ago," he said. "Ruler of the great kingdom of Mo, King Lobenba had no children. The three queens observed fasts, kept vows, made offerings to the fetish, all to no effect. By a lucky chance a great hermit made his appearance in our capital. The King and queens received the visitor at the palace, and treated him with the most generous and sincere hospitality. The guest was very pleased; by a prompting of the fetish he knew what they wanted, and gave them three peppercorns, one for each queen. In due time three sons were born, Karmos, Matrugna, and Fausalya, who when they reached a suitable age married by the ceremony of 'choice,' daughters of a branch of the royal family. When the brides arrived at their husbands' family and were disciplined in their wifely duties, King Lobenba, who was growing old, thought the time had arrived for him to make over the royal burden to younger shoulders, and to adopt a hermit's life preliminary to death. So in consultation with the royal fetish-man, a day was appointed for the coronation of Prince Karmos, who had married a beautiful girl named Naya. But the fates had willed it otherwise. Long before the children were born, when King Lobenba, in his younger days, was subduing a revolt in this region where we now are he once fell from his chariot while aiming an arrow, and got his arm crushed under the wheel. The three queens had accompanied their royal husband to the battlefield to soften for him the hardships of his camp life, and during the long illness that followed the wound, Queen Zulnam, who afterwards became mother of Fausalya, nursed him with all the devotion of a wife's first young love. 'Ask me anything and thou shalt have it,' said the monarch during his convalescence. 'I
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