THE SECOND PAPYRUS

But I had determined to do my magic in an inner court of the temple at Korte, unknown to persons liable to disturb my peace. And, with incredible toil, I cleared the said court of sand, having left my servants in charge of my boat a mile away. Furthermore, in the hard red-granite pavement of the court, I cut a circular channel of sufficient depth to contain a certain very holy liquid; and this I did with nineteen days’ incessant labour, using a hammer and a well-tempered chisel. But the trench was three paces and nine in circumference, and half-a-span in width, and a quarter of a span in depth.

In the midst of the circle and on the base of a fallen column, I set my silver divination-cup; and, by it, I placed my cabinet of essences and quintessences: but I hanged my divination-orb to my left arm by its silver chain, holding the magic staff in my hand. The fulness of the moon agreed with what was described in my papyrus manual; and, when all was ready, I filled the circular furrow with a bright-green essence, pungent, mysteriously potent, continuing to pour till the trench was lip-deep with the emerald fluid. Next, I filled the divination-cup with water from the sacred river, lowering the orb of divination therein with my left hand, and sprinkling the circle with gum-tragacanth while I intoned the incantation called Of the Buckle of Red Jasper Dipped in Water of Ankham Flowers and Inlaid in Sycamore Wood and Placed on the Neck of the Shining One, which is the Power of Isis.

The moon grew brighter and more fierce, till she wellnigh rivalled the sun in brightness; and her hot rays made me sweat profusely. Wherefore, at the proper time, I was glad to strip me naked; but I began to stir the water in the cup with the magic staff, saying: “The Blood of Isis, the Charms of Isis, the Power of Isis, be a protection unto Me, the Master, crushing that which I abhor, making all Ways passable or flyable or swimable unto Me: and I stretch out one Hand to Heaven and the Other to Earth.”

In the glare of almost unbearable moonlight, I saw that my crystal orb was becoming red-hot notwithstanding that it was immersed in Nile-water. But I poured the proper unguent of aloes into my cup, with nine tears of gum-olibanon; and the green liquid in the trench blushed with ruddily gleaming access of fury. But I, looking again on my papyrus manual, read these words: “See that thou grasp thy staff firmly, not letting it fall from thee through any pang, be thy pangs never so keen; likewise, when the clear sphere gleameth redly, hold thy staff as though it were thy life, for so it is, and if thou lose it thou shalt die.” And, hardly had I read this rule (which I had never seen before: although I had collated the whole manual with some care during my four-months’ quest for spices), hardly, I say, had I read these awful words, when I felt the magic staff growing hot in my hands.

I gripped it more closely: but its heat increased. I felt it searing my flesh. I saw the smoke rise. I heard the flesh frizzle like the hissing collops of an acceptable sacrifice farced with select fats. And, all the while, lurid lightnings leaped from the liquid in the trench.

At last, so poignant was my anguish, that I determined rather to risk death than to see and hear and smell my living hand burned off while I stood. But, at the very moment, piercing through the sputtering of the white-hot lambent rod in my defenceless hand, there came a divine voice from I know not where, saying in the Argive tongue: “Be of good heart, my child, and endure for all my pain: for many of us who inhabit olympian palaces have suffered.”⁠[4]

Whereon I nerved myself, dismissing base thoughts of surrender. And all grew black before my eyes; and my soul was shrouded in obscurity. So I stood, enduring unmentioned and unthought-of anguish with all my might; and I indeed was on the very verge of swooning: when suddenly the admirable voice came again, ringing triumphantly, saying: “Hail, Conquistator of Self! Hail, Nicholas, the Victor over many Peoples!”

And immediately the staff became cool; and my reeking wounds vanished, and only the memory of my ordeal remained.

I turned to inspect the divination-cup. Pale flames leaped silently therein from the crystal orb, of such intense heat as comes from an open furnace to the well-reddened watcher at its door: but the Nile-water lay limpid and cold above and about the raging globe of the seven-times heated fire. But I, mindful of the rules in the papyrus manual, cast in myrrh and powdered ivory; and I intoned the incantation called Demands on the gods, which old Menes had composed many centuries before.

The verdant flame in the trench gave forth volumes of suffocating green vapour, filling the whole court, and beating me brow to pavement. But I ceased not from my chanting; and, when I came to the famous verse, “Nor shall ye slay us by choking: thus we adjure you,” the green steam suddenly arose, till it seemed that I was enclosed in a dome-shaped cell of malachite, so solid did the vapour appear. Whereupon, with the mightiest voice of me I uttered the summons, “O souls, be seen!”

Instantly there was a crash of thunder and the inmarcesible glow of uranian fires. The earth beneath me quivered like a woman; and the temple rocked as ships are rocked (in his spasms) by the azure-haired earth-shaker, lord of the stormy sea. But, above me, the green dome expanded, stretching to unfathomable abysses of space; and I perceived that its place was becoming filled with fiery faces of base grotesque and adipose dignitaries, archbishops of malevolent allure having pleats about their eyes disdainful of obscure persons. Nor were any of them alike for any moment of time: but they waved and flickered like the myriad leaves of a forest blazing with autumnal glory. But out of this maze of bodiless faces came a tired moaning, demanding why they had been summoned.

Now I indeed was serene; and my heart and lordly mind exulted greatly: for I knew that I had the Power. And, holding out the magic staff with my right hand, and placing my left on the cool crystal orb, I cried: “I summon none but Amenemhat, the priest of Tanis.”

Eight flame-like shapes flickered downward, individuals glabrous and mouthing, the torsions of whose pulpy lips avowed their invirility; and they stood before me, but on the further edge of the redly-glaring moat; and each one wailed: “I am Amenemhat, the priest of Tanis.”

Then for the moment I was nonplussed: but I remembered that eight men, all named Amenemhat, had been (in their turns) priests of Tanis. Wherefore I cried again: “I summon none but him who was Amenemhat, the priest of Tanis, at the time when Ptolemais Ayletes reigned as Pharoah in Khem.”

And now but one flame-like shape flickered outside the circle; and it simply sighed, saying: “I am that Amenemhat; and I am here.”

So I commanded him to lie quietly down and lap the emerald liquid in the trench as a test of his good faith. But I conjured the others to return to their own places in Amentet, using the Name Ineffable to compel them, the Spell which may not be spoken save in direst need, nor written save on virgin papyrus by a priest who knows himself to be without blemish. And they bowed thrice when I named the Name, wailing wearily. And there was thunder and lightning and a heaving of all things at their going; and they seemed to melt together into one vast fiery arrow, which sped (like a bolt shot by the lord of the silver bow) upward and away into the arcana of the outer immensity.

But Amenemhat, the priest of Tanis, lay prostrate before me, meekly lapping. And he no longer had the shape of a flame: for, now, the chariot of Helios Hyperion had emerged from the crocus-hued gate of dawn. Ashen-grey was Amenemhat, and hard indeed to see: for, being but an Osirian, he cast no shadow, nor did he obstruct my view of the columns of the court behind him. And I was in the mind to laugh at the thought that, after all, so high a priest as he was should have no more solid shape than a jellyfish, tinted like a rainbow where the rising sun’s radiance touched him. But I remembered that Death comes to all, and that rain-born Iris (a divine one of goddesses) is also thus primarily tinctured; and I hastened to intone the Spell of Embodiment, touching what there was of Amenemhat with the magic staff, and saying: “Advance, thou Dweller in the Outer Space, and be a thing of earth again till I release thee.”

Thus I spoke: but he rose like a brilliant mist, ever thickening into opacity and taking the form which my lordly mind hurriedly made for him. Mother-naked, even as I was, he crossed into the mystic circle which my staff opened to him. I touched his brow with the crystal orb, and placed his hands in the sacred water of Sihor in the divination-cup. And vital fluids came back into his veins, so that he became a thing of earth and fit for reasonable conversation. But I also gave him the Heart-touch, saying: “Receive thy mortal life in lease from me for a season.”

But he stood at his full height, looking into my eyes; and he said: “O thou, unknown, who has called me from Amentet, and hast given me again a mortal body with blood and life-like juices, be ware lest I shall overcome thee. Thus I warn thee, in accordance with the immutable law of Osiris where it is written, He who is summoned shall warn his summoner.”

But I was not afraid. And I laid the Spell of Obedience on Amenemhat. But, when I had thus secured my own safety and also a trusty friend and familiar who was to instruct me in unmentioned and unthought-of magic, then, indeed, I took liberty to give way to a human weakness, having already tolerated enough to slay nineteen ordinary men—to wit, the agony of the scorching staff, and the long labours under the fiery moon, and the stifling green vapour, and the horrid vision of the flickering faces; and I took liberty, I say without shame, to swoon away into oblivion.

When, at length, the mind in my dear breast awakened, I found my new familiar faithfully ministering to me, gently holding the thread of life which bid fair to fray out in my enfeebled grasp. But we two, having clothed ourselves, returned to my boat, there to live in tranquillity while I recollected myself.

But there remained much to be done yet by me. I felt that I would have been quite content to spend the rest of that life as Amenemhat’s pupil, learning from him the occult and affascinating arts of the hierarchs of ancient Khem. For we read together in the many rolls of papyrus which I had collected; and it was easy to know that, whereas I was like a clever child who early has learned to read, he was a perfect adept who (by long experience) was able to understand what was read. But, by chance, the precise method of working a certain inchantment, which opens the Hall of Double Truth and Right, baffled us both. And it was of the very gravest import that I should know how to practise this inchantment: for thereby I could learn the whole secret of a man using himself Bai and Ka and Khou as might seem good to him: which, for a miserable mortal is much to be desired, as being uncommon.

But the rede of Amenemhat was that I should repeat the Spell of Summons, summoning a Great One of the Greater Ones, from whom I should require an instruction. But, for some time, I withstood the priest: I know not why, unless it be that habit and temper make me prompt to resist direction that I may steer my course in accordance only with the mind in my lordly breast.

But there came a night, when we by chance were sitting together on the deck of my Nile-boat in the clear of a full moon; and great peace came upon me, so that my soul swelled sweetly within me, letting me know that I was full of wiles and furnished with inexhaustible reserves of power. And I said: “At dawn we will go southward; and, at the temple of Korte, at a moon-birth, I will use my power for summoning a Great One of The Greater Ones.”

Thus I spoke. But Amenemhat answered me, saying: “Nay, O Summoner, why toil so far, seeing that there are places nearer where this inchantment may be worked with equal ease?”

“I know,” quoth I, “of no place as free from the risk of disturbance as the temple of Korte.”

“Thou hast but to command,” he responded, “and I, O Summoner, must reveal to thee the secret fanes of Khem.”

“Reveal them, thou,” I promptly said.

“There is one at Heliopolis——”

“Too near to noisy Cairo.”

“There is another at Ptolemais, now called Thomis——”

“I saw there a galosh-factory, when last I descended Sihor’s sacred flood.”

“There are those vast secret halls of Thebes——”

“Ruined.”

“Thebes above ground indeed is ruined, O wise Summoner, but not the Thebes which lies below.”

“How know’st thou this?” I said.

“From the gods who revealed the fact to me in my former life: for when I was a priest in Khem, I learned many things which in time would be. And it was given to me to know how that the temples of Khem should be desolated and the peoples of Khem destroyed. And it was shewn to me for how many centuries the secret halls of the three priestly colleges at Thebes would remain forgotten. But I, also, am ware of an entrance, well-concealed, very hard to find, which I can shew to thee if thou desirest to make use of those dim halls as they were wont to be used.”

Thus he spoke. And the mind in my breast exulted. But I said: “Surely the adits will be blocked with shrubs and fallen masonry?”

“That may not be, O Summoner,” he answered, “for the adit of which I speak is in the open plain.”

“Then we will go to Thebes; and the thing which has to be done shall be well-done, there.”

But when, at length, we were come to the ruined capital of the Upper Land and the Lower, having left some of our baggage at the paltry village of Luxor, concealing the rest, anon we pursued our way across the sandy plain thereby, until we reached a certain pebbly strip of land which was unencumbered, excepting by a low pillar of granite. And the pillar, being no more than a span in height, would have been quite unnoticeable had any ruins approximated: as it was, I almost trod upon it before I perceived its weather-worn surface, deeply graven with the dead tongues of tombs, and undecypherable for all who have not (but I have) a knowledge of those tongues from the tongue of one who himself had used them. Time-worn was that little pillar, as well it might be: for Amenemhat said that, in his own day, it had been more venerable than the oldest fanes. Also, he narrated a tradition, which said that a remote ancestor of Menes found it there, marking the site where Divine Osiris first placed his foot on the hallowed soil of Khem: but Amenemhat said (as well) that this tradition rested on no sure warranty, for that Menes himself had taken the pillar from a temple builded many ages before Khem was a country, and had it set there to mark the entrance of the secret halls which he himself was building.

But I instantly put this saying to the proof. For we strove to move the pillar in its socket, where during nineteen centuries at least it had been undisturbed. And, when we turned it round, the slab supporting it sank slowly on a hinge: but sand with many pebbles slid downward on to the stair which was revealed.

Thus then was manifest the entrance to the Secret Halls of Thebes.

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