The Pyramid Chapter 7

BACK, FIVE THOUSAND YEARS

Carlton felt that there was no need for haste. His first sense of panic had disappeared by this time. In its place had come a feeling of wonder comparatively reflective and calm.

He was intensely alert to his physical sensations and his physical surroundings. This was lion-skin on which he reclined. Beneath it was the unmistakable feel of solid rock.

“This is an inner chamber of the pyramid,” he said softly.

“Yes, my own.”

“And you are Queen Netokris?”

“Most certainly, my dove.”

“And just now you called me Menni.”

“Yea, yea. Ah, let us talk of other things. When will the governor become the Osiris—sit with me on the Double Throne?”

Carlton’s mind may have still been struggling, probably was. But it was like a swimmer who has sunk in deep water, has lost the power or the will to return again to the surface, who finds himself at home in the new element.

This was reality. All that had been was the dream.

Gently, but firmly, he freed himself, stood up, looked about.

“It is time that we were going,” he said gravely, dispassionately.

Comes

He scarcely dared look at the other, feeling that there was danger of another outbreak, that—”Love me, anyway, or I’ll kill you both!”

He was conscious of the mantle of dignity he had put on. He was glancing about him with a certain air of appreciation and comprehension at this place where he knew he had never been before—admired the workmanship of the closely joined rock, the draftsmanship of the richly colored frescoes.

All the time he could feel the eyes of the woman upon him—knew that they were filled with wonder, also; wonder and baffled passion.

Netokris!

Where had he got the impression that she had lived five thousand years ago? Who was it that had referred to her as “Aunt Rhodopis? He smiled inwardly now, in spite of his trepidation, at his having just now himself referred to her as Rhodopis.

Bold he must have been, indeed, to apply to his queen the name of the legendary Greek sorceress. That the epithet was just, even the most unscrupulous gossips of the time would barely whisper.

One of the painted blocks of stone swung upward in response to hidden mechanism, left a yawning portal through which they passed into a tenebrous passageway—probably the one by which they had entered. They followed this for a while, their sandaled feet giving out but a faint whisper from the smooth rock. That same soft, diffused light which seemed to emanate from the woman who preceded him. Then another monolithic door.

This time they had left the silence behind them. Through the still air of the passageway there floated to them a faint, confused murmur of sound—voices that might have been reciting a litany, the cadence of a solemn chant, a barely perceptible ebb and flow of lesser noises which doubtless came from the outer world.

Presently they had entered a room a good deal larger than the first, and Carlton caught a movement of shadowy shapes, of men, young and old, scantily dressed in rich raiment—these he knew to be princes and courtiers—and of other men with shaven heads and dressed in spotless linen, some of them with leopard-skins hanging over their shoulders—and these he knew to be priests.

Once more he had taken note of his own costume; but it was not with the air of a man who is ashamed or surprised. He found it all right—that sort of long kilt that descended almost from armpits to ankles, an embroidered tunic which covered his shoulders but left his two arms free.

Physically, he was feeling immensely fit and comfortable, albeit slightly tired. But in his breast there was an unmistakable sense of depression—the feeling of one who has just recognized the first incident in some drama vitally concerning himself and those he loves.

He heard himself addressed as “Menni,” and again as “my lord-governor,” and knew that this was as it should be. He knew also that his bearing was at once simple and dignified.

Still, through it all, like the shred of an all but forgotten dream, there ran the dim, receding recollection that he was not Menni at all, but a man named Carlton. No, that he had once been Carlton—doubtless in a dream; it couldn’t be otherwise—and that he was Menni now—Menni, governor of the Double Palace which lay over there beyond the sacred lake—the City of the White Wall, in Memphis.

He tested himself, even while he was responding to the salutations of the others there—tested himself for knowledge of himself, his duties, his place in the world, the details of his environment. He called up a quick vision of the Double Palace, of the royal city surrounded with its “white wall” in the midst of the great capital of the Egyptian Empire, historic Memphis!

That something had happened to him he was perfectly aware. He was feeling just a trifle queer—perhaps the effect of an old sunstroke which he had suffered a couple of years previously.

Otherwise, he told himself, he wouldn’t have this haunting subconsciousness of a blurred personality. But he had often talked with the priests—they being the only ones interested in erudition, anyway—about the phenomena of the human brain.

There were even those among them who had studied the mental processes of the “possessed,” who had attempted to penetrate the vagaries of the insane. Even the sanest of mortals—Menni, the governor of the Double Palace, was fully aware—even the sanest of mortals were touched with glamour, with “possession,” at times; dreamed awake, and things like that.

And in the depths of these meditations, even while he talked, was the growing conviction that his queen, Netokris, the Isis, had cast some sort of a spell over him. She was a woman of magic powers—every one knew that; had in her command not only the sorcery of Egypt, but the thaumaturgics of the Far South as well.

There was another moment when, in the eerie light of the place, he felt the burning eyes of the queen upon him.

He gave no sign. He had never been a courtier, anyway; was determined to stick to his duty and let the rest take care of itself. He started for the open air.