THE THIRD PAPYRUS

Having lighted lanthorns, I began to descend the stair with my familiar: but a very noxious vapour drove us back. And, while I chafed at this delay, Amenemhat reproved me, saying: “Why wait hours for nature to effect that which thou (with magic art) couldst do in a moment?”

And this having been the second time when I myself had forgotten the power which I possessed, till reminded of the same by my familiar, I, indeed, held a sort of council with myself; and I determined that, in the future, I no longer would live as men of my own race are wont to live, in helpless abject obedience to so-called natural laws, seeing that (for me) such laws did not exist, but that I would be limited solely by the mind in my lordly breast, willing what I pleased, and causing its performance by forces amenable to my magic art. And, having thus determined, I instantly invoked certain airy sprites, yellow as sunflowers, who, with millions of legs alternately coming and going, purified the staircase and the edifices to which it led.

The passage having thus been rendered favourable to earth-walking men, we again descended: but, when we came to certain gates beyond the forty-ninth antechamber, some mysterious energy barred our progress. That is to say, when we reached the said gates, my head would have gone through, but my feet refused to budge—though Amenemhat went forward without difficulty, whom I, seeing that he was my familiar and his place behind his lord, recalled. For, if I could not proceed (on account of some inexplicable impotence on the part of my blameless feet), neither might he, for a servant may not go before his master in a case of this kind.

Wherefore, I used my magic art again; and I uttered several spells one by one, excepting the Spell of the Name Ineffable which I do not deem fit to say in any need but that which seems extreme. And none of my spells availed me anything.

But my mind mentioned that Amenemhat’s ability to go forward, and my inability, might perchance indicate some difference of character between us two; and I used my wiles for pondering possible differences. In this manner I perceived that whereas he was a priest according to the highly respectable rite of Khem, I was no more than a Tonsured Clerk of the Latin Obedience. For it may as well be known by all men living that, in my early (or later) life in the kingdom of Victory queen of the stalwart stately Anglicans, one of the many incredibly cruel and unspeakably hideous happenings which marred me and soured me was as follows. The Divine Ones of the Latin Obedience called me to serve them as flamen sacrificing for the Blessed Dead; and I willingly responded to the call. In token whereof I was admitted to the first grade of the flaminian estate, being marked apart from other men by the five-pointed tonsure.⁠[5] And immediately, by the blundering of blind guides (the most righteous of men), confirmed by hierarchical timidity or stupidity or malignity, I was denied my heart’s desire, and bile was mingled with my blood. I, then, endured my torments disdainfully, as my habit is, saying all those invectives which my mind gave me to say as rudely and as loudly as possible. And there appeared unto me processions of heresiarchs and schismatarchs (all blameless), wearing altogether prestigious habiliments, and using gestures (almost salacious) which ran along their bodies and suggested things not said, who proffered to me priesthoods (and in one case) a pontificate. But none of their pretty things pleased me, not being of valid or desirable origin. And I remained where I was, ready to go forward, ruthlessly refusing to go back.

But now the blessed gods inhabiting olympian palaces were permitting me to find in Thebes the representative of a religion prior in time to, and by no means a dissent from, my own—a religion, furthermore, which was to mine what the flower is to the fruit. Wherefore, being denied the fruit, I made no more ado: but I clutched the flower.

For this cause, I retraced my steps, returning to Luxor, where I commanded my faithful Amenemhat, the priest of Tanis, to give me the order of priesthood according to the rite of Khem. And this he did when I had sworn the great oath of an Egyptian priest, which oath bound me, till Mother Isis herself released me, as I shall narrate hereafter. But Amenemhat gave me the unction of sacred nard, with the white linen robe and the silver ankh, breathing on my head, and laying hands on me, saying: “May all the gods bless thee: may Heru-p-Khart love thee: may Isis nurture thee: may Osiris guide and prosper thee, so that thou never look back but alway forward on the illimitable field of wisdom hereby opened to thee. And, by the power committed to me, I Amenemhat, make thee, Nicholas, a priest of Khem, in the name of Apis Osiris the great god who sitteth in Amentet, ever-living lord, everlasting ruler, deliverer, sustainer, who is Osiris, who is Nu, who is Ra, who is Tum, all whose feathers are upon him, and who giveth life for ever and for ever.”

These matters, then, being accomplished, we returned to Thebes; and nothing impeded my entrance to the subterranean palaces.

But we transported my magic apparatus, on a truck, into the forty-ninth antechamber of those secret halls, to be convenient for our operations at a fitting time. But, because the fidelity of the servants whom we left with the rest of our baggage by the river-side (excepting that which I myself had concealed) was not above suspicion, I, indeed, took with me all my money, to wit, five-and-fifty gold quarter-ounces of Victory queen of the stalwart stately Anglicans,⁠[6] and some Egyptian silver. Also I armed myself with my death-spitter,⁠[7] and with a belt containing four-and-sixty death-parcels,⁠[8] for there was always a chance of an encounter with barbarian tomb-riflers in Egypt of the nineteenth century to come. Also, I took my gold time-teller:⁠[9] for that was the last thing which I bought before I left the land of my future birth.

But we stood before the hitherto-resisting portal. A touch from my magic staff caused the massive gates to creak and to yawn with much groaning before us. Having crossed certain vast secret halls, walking at a slow but even pace for an hour or more, we came to the verge of a subterranean lake. I flashed my lanthorn over the watery expanse: but we saw no distant shore. A narrow causeway, only a few spans higher than the dark flood, was all that met our eyes; and that lost itself, twenty cubits away, in impenetrable gloom. I stooped and dipped my hand into the water: by which act I perceived that what I had taken for a lake was actually a strong stream; and I opined that it was some subterranean collateral of sacred Sihor.

But I boldly stepped out on to the causeway, bidding Amenemhat to follow me and to push before him the small wheeled truck, light to lift, easily propelled, which contained my cabinet of essences and quintessences, with my divination-cup and my crystal orb of divination banded with silver with adornments of rose-crystals and blue moonstones, together with a skinful of Nile-water and certain alimentaries. And, as my eyes became accustomed to the murky blackness, I perceived the outlines of colossal columns on both sides of the stream: these supported a carven roof strangely painted with cats and weasels.

But, after a journey which seemed to be interminable owing to the darkness and the silence, though it was not actually more than a thousand paces, the causeway widened suddenly; and, on peering for the edge, I was ware that I had crossed the dark river as by a bridge. That dark river of running water divided my life as a liegeman of Victory queen of the stalwart stately Anglicans from a life which lay before.

New wonders arrested the melancholy dejection of my mind. In front of me, there appeared a wall painted with figures representing the initiation of priests in the divine Isidian mysteries; and this wall was pierced by three doors. Not for me was it to hesitate. Not for me was it even to ask guidance of my familiar. But these opinions did not prevent me from contriving a wile, observing with the corner of my eye that Amenemhat’s glance instinctively went to the door on the right hand. Which door I instantly laid open with a touch of my magic staff; and, having passed along a corridor, richly adorned, very fair to see, we emerged in a vast circular hall, columned, and surrounded by a cloister having a series of apsidal chapels in its outer boundary. And the place was indeed marvellous. For, in the middle of the hall, four-and-twenty circular stairs soared to a circular platform, whereon sat a lonely altar; and the whole place was made of some clear white stone like polished marble, dazzling snow-white marble without veins or mottling, and without any of the joints which are formed when slabs of stone are laid in order one upon another: so that I could not determine whether the wall had been builded with hands, or cut with incalculable toil from the virgin quarry, or merely called into being by art magic. But, though the hall was of most candid whiteness, the altar on the summit of the circular foot-pace was of blood-red porphyry. And, being (as it was) deep in the bosom of the grain-giving earth, the place was lighted by a radiance, perennial, most agreeable to the eyes, the source of which I am not at liberty to tell. Such was the secret hall beneath Thebes.⁠[10]

But I placed my magic apparatus on the altar, and on the foot-pace pertinent thereto, all in proper order; and I sat down, with Amenemhat, on the lowest step, to refresh our bodies with a meal in preparation for the work before us. And, when we had dismissed the desire of eating and drinking, so sitting we conversed as follows.

“I do not remember this white hall as it now is,” said Amenemhat.

“Hast thou then seen it before?” I inquired.

“When I was priest of Tanis, I oft-times celebrated the mysteries here.”

“And to what was it like then?”

“It was draped with white carpets of silk embroidered in silver with images of the assessors of Amentet. And a carpet was hanged between every pair of pillars, veiling the cloister from the hall.”

“Yet the hall will serve our purpose as well without its hangings?”

“Doubtless. But still it seems that some malignant sprite might lurk in the shadow of those columns, watching, with intent to interrupt our sacred rites.”

And hardly had the Tanitic priest uttered the last word, when a blameless shape (very loathesome and ferocious, shewing nothing but the accentuation of a tattered pendulous head and the thick rictus of parts of a face), emerged from those very shadows, and rushed upon us with mouth-foamings and hiccoughs and eye-rollings, hideously screeching.

Amenemhat withered away with terror; and his mind wilted as he fell swooning on the steps. But I, strongly bounding, leaped to the altar; and, having seized my magic staff, and having made the terrible Sign of the Godlike Rulers, then indeed I proclaimed the Spell Which Binds.

The Shape stood, held by the mighty inchantment, a ridiculous and cruel personage, gross and ceruminous, with an incomplete head dandling on a tendinous neck. But I descended to recover my familiar. And, having further bound the Shape with the Word of Fear, I drew back the mind of Amenemhat to his body, fattening it with comfortable words. And anon I required the Shape to decline to me his generalities, telling who and what he was.

But he responded very obediently, saying: “I am Sanes, priest of Osiris, warden of yonder purple altar, and long it is since I have formed mortal speech with these remnants of my tongue.”

I then demanded, “Why, O hideous and excessive prelate, didst thou rush out so menacingly upon us?”

“Because,” he said, “having seen no man since I know not when, I was fearful that ye had evil designs. But, seeing that thou hast the Sign and the Spell and the Word, I must believe thee to be present with the sanction of the gods. Yet, seeing that I (in my lifetime) was the warden of this place, seeing that no man hath deposed me, seeing also that (after my accidental but lamentable death) I was not properly embalmed but did myself fulfil the cavities of the holy crocodiles who ate me, I still must deem myself its warden.”

Thus having spoken, he wept fragmentarily. And I will say that I rarely have seen anything more frightful than the tears of a shape which (some centuries before) had been an eaten clergyman. Wherefore, having required him to make his Mark with his finger (as it were) on the stainless floor, and having counted the angles of the same, I said: “Poor faithful Senior, thou shalt be relieved of thy wardenship and speeded whither thou shouldst have gone ages ago.”

And I removed Spell and Word. But, intoning the Speeding Hymn, I bade the Shape to begone in peace to the dull region of Amentet, giving him the Word of Entrance, and praying the Assessors to deal leniently with him. For surely so dreary and so patient a watch and ward as his should suffice to smooth many wrinkles from his sphere of gold.

And, with a joyful cry, the Shape collected his parts; and, leaping, he evanesced. But we turned to the matter which engrossed us, having dismissed the long-delayed ghost to his rest.

In this manner, I began to use my magic art in the secret hall of Thebes.

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