when I finally wrote it down in the scrolls your father found in my secret study. But in those early days, I was a braver man. And I was loved, Julie. You must realize this."
He paused, as if listening to the wind.
"I was worshipped," he went on." It was as if I had died, and become the very thing I claimed to be. Guardian of the royal house. Protector of the ruler; punisher of the bad. Loyal not to the King, but the kingdom."
"Don't even gods get lonely?"
He laughed softly.
"You know the answer. But you don't understand the full power of the potion that made me what I am. I myself do not fully comprehend. Oh, the folly of those first years, when I experimented with it like a physician." A look of bitterness came over his face." To understand this world, that's our task, is it not? And even the simple things elude us."
"Yes, I have no quarrel with that," she whispered.
"In the hardest moments, I put my faith in change. I understood it, though no one around me did." This too shall pass,' the old axiom. But finally I was so ... weary. So tired."
He put his arm around her, closing her against him gently, as they turned and made their way out of the temple. The wind had died down. He kept her warm. She shaded her eyes only now and then from the tiny grains of sand in the air. His voice was quiet, slow, as he remembered:
"The Greeks had come into our land. Alexander, the builder of cities, the maker of new gods. I wanted only the deathlike sleep. Yet I was afraid, as any mortal man might be."
"I know," she whispered. A shiver went through her.
"I made a coward's bargain finally. I'd go into the tomb, into the darkness, which I knew by then would mean a gradual weakening and then a deep sleep from which I couldn't wake. But the priests who served the royal house would know where I lay, and that sunlight could resurrect me. They would give the secret to each new ruler of Egypt with the warning that if I were awakened, it must be to serve the good of Egypt. And woe to anyone rash enough to wake me for curiosity only, or with evil intentions, because then I might take my revenge."
They passed out of the temple doors, stopping as he looked back and up at the colossal figures seated there. High above, the King's face was bathed in moonlight.
"Were you conscious at all as you slept?"
"I don't know. I ask myself this question! Now and then I'd come close to waking, of that I'm sure. And I dreamed, oh, how I dreamed. But whatever I knew, I knew as if in a dream. There was no urgency, no panic. And I could not wake myself, you see. I had no strength to pull the chain that would make the great iron-bound wooden shutter above admit the sunlight. Maybe I knew what had happened in the world outside. Surely it did not surprise me to learn it later. I had become legend - Ramses the Damned; Ramses the Immortal, who slept in the cave waiting for a brave King or Queen of Egypt to wake him. I don't think they believed it anymore, not really. Until ..."
"She came."
"She was the last Queen to rule Egypt. And the only one to whom I ever told the full truth."
"But Ramses, did she really refuse the elixir?"
He paused. It was as if he didn't want to answer. Then:
"In her own way, she refused it. You see, she couldn't understand finally what it was, the elixir. Later, she begged me to give it to Mark Antony."
"I see. It's a wonder I didn't guess it."
"Mark Antony was a man who had destroyed his life and hers also. But she didn't know what she was asking. She didn't understand. She did not realize what such a thing would have meant - a selfish King and Queen with such power. And the formula, they would have wanted that too. Would Antony not have wanted immortal armies?"
"Good God!" she whispered.
Ramses stopped suddenly and moved away from her. They had come some distance from the temple and he turned back, looking at the giant seated figures again.
"But why did you write the story in the scrolls?" she asked. She couldn't stop herself.
"Cowardice, my love. Cowardice, and the dream that someone