my counsel to you both is that you say nothing of them
beforehand."

"What then shall we report to those who bid me seek the oracle of your
wisdom, O Tanofir?"

"You can tell them that my wisdom declared that the omens were mixed
with good and evil, but that time would show the truth. Hush now, the
maiden is about to awake and must not be frightened. Also it is time for
me to be led from this sepulchre to where I sleep, for I think that Ra
has set and I am weary. Oh! Shabaka, why do you seek to peer into the
future, which from day to day will unroll itself as does a scroll? Be
content with the present, man, and take what Fate gives you of good or
ill, not seeking to learn what offerings he hides beneath his robe in
the days and the years and the centuries to come."

"Yet you have sought to learn those things, O Tanofir, and not in vain."

"Aye and what have they made of me? A blind old hermit weighed down with
the weight of years and holding in my fingers but some few threads that
with pain and grief I have plucked from the fringe of Wisdom's robe. Be
warned by me, Nephew. While you are a man, live the life of a man, and
when you become a spirit, live the life of a spirit. But do not seek to
mix the two together like oil and wine, and thus spoil both. I am glad
to learn, O Bes, that you are going to make a king's, or a slave's wife,
whichever it may be, of this maiden, seeing that I love her well and
hold this trade unwholesome for her. She will be better bearing babes
than reading visions in a diviner's cup, and I will pray the gods that
they may not be dwarfs as you are, but take on the likeness of their
mother, who tells me that she is fair. Hush! she stirs.

"Karema, are you awake? Good. Then lead me from the sepulchre, that I
may make my evening prayer beneath the stars. Go, Shabaka and Bes, you
are brave men, both of you, and I am glad to have the one for nephew
and the other for pupil. My greetings to your mother, Tiu. She is a good
woman and a true, one to whom you will do well to hearken. To the lady
Amada also, and bid her study her beauteous face in a mirror and not be
holy overmuch, since too great holiness often thwarts itself and ends in
trouble for the unholy flesh. Still she loves pearls like other women,
does she not, and even the statue of Isis likes to be adorned. As for
you, Bes, though I think that is not your name, do not lie except when
you are obliged, for jugglers who play with too many kniv