all you
would demand me in guerdon, and I told you that never would I give
myself to you who was doubly sworn to Isis. Yet now I call and now
I say that if you come and conquer and I yet live, then, if you
still will it, I am yours. Thus stands the case: The Great King
advances upon Egypt with an army countless as the sands, nor can
Egypt hope to battle against him unaided and alone. He comes to
make of her a slave, to kill her children, to burn her temples, to
sack her cities and to defile her gods with blasphemies. Moreover
he comes to seize me and to drag me away to shame in his House of
Women.

"Therefore for the sake of the gods, for Egypt's sake and for my
own, I pray you come and save us. Moreover I still love you,
Shabaka, yes, more a thousand times, then ever I did, though
whether you still love me I know not. For that love's sake,
therefore, I am ready to break my vows to Isis and to dare her
vengeance, if she should desire to be avenged upon me who would
save her and her worship, praying that it may fall on my head and
not on yours. This will I do by the counsel of the holy Tanofir,
by command of Pharaoh, and with the consent of the high priests of
Egypt.

"Now I, Amada, have written. Choose, Shabaka, beloved of my heart."

Such was the letter that caused my head to swim and set my soul on fire.
Still I said nothing, but thrust it into my robe and waited. Presently
Bes, who had been reading in his roll, looked up and spoke, saying,

"Are you minded to see arrows fly and swords shine in war, Brother?
If so, here is opportunity. Pharaoh writes to me above his own seal,
seeking an alliance between Egypt and Ethiopia. He says that the King of
kings invades him and that if he conquers Egypt he has sworn to travel
on and conquer Ethiopia also, since he learns that it is now ruled by a
certain dwarf who once stole his White Signet, and by a certain Egyptian
who once killed his Satrap, Idernes."

"What says the Karoon?" I asked.

Bes rolled his eyes and turning to Karema, asked,

"What says the Karoon's wife?"

Karema laid down the roll she had been studying and answered,

"She says that she has received a command from her master the holy
Tanofir to wait upon him forthwith, for reasons that he will explain
when she arrives, or to brave his curse upon her, her children, her
country and her husband, and not only his but that of the spirits who
serve him."

"The cu