Again there was silence for a while.  Then Elissa spoke in a broken voice.

“King Ithobal, I have chosen.  Trusting to your royal word I will stand upon the rock and when I have seen the prince Aziel go by in safety, then, since you desire it, you shall put your arms about me and bear me whither you will.  You have conquered me, king Ithobal!  Henceforward these lips of mine are yours and no other man’s.  Give the signal, I pray you, and I will cast aside the dagger and the poison and come out living from this tomb.”

Aziel hung in his cage over the abyss of air, awaiting death, and glad to die, because now he was sure that Elissa had refused to purchase his life at the expense of her own surrender.  There he hung, dizzy and sick at heart, making his prayer to heaven and waiting the end, while the eagles that would prey upon his shattered flesh swept past him.

Presently, from the opposing cliff, came the sound of a horn blown thrice.  Then, while Aziel wondered what this might mean, the cage in which he lay was drawn in gently over the edge of the precipice, and carried down the steeps of the granite hill as it had been carried up them.

At the foot of the hill its covering was torn aside, and he saw before him a caravan of camels, and seated on each camel a comrade of his own.  But one camel had no rider, and Metem led it by a rope.

The servants of Ithobal took him from the cage and set him upon this camel, though they did not loosen the bonds about the wrists.

“This is the command of the king,” said the captain to Metem “that the arms of the prince Aziel shall remain bound until you have travelled for six hours.  Begone in safety, fearing nothing.”

*****

“What happens now, Metem,” asked Aziel, as the camels strode forward, “and why am I set free who was expecting death?  Is this some new artifice of yours, or has the lady Elissa——­” and he ceased.

“Upon the word of an honest merchant I cannot tell you, Prince.  Yesterday, as I was forced, I gave the message of king Ithobal to the lady Elissa yonder in the tomb.  She would answer me only one thing, which she whispered in my ear through the bars of the holy tomb; that if we could escape we should do so, moreover that you must have no fear for her since she also had found a means of escape from Ithobal, and would certainly join us upon the road.”

As Metem spoke, the camels passed round the little hill on to the path that ran beneath the tomb of Baaltis.  There, standing upon the rock some fifty feet above them, was Elissa, and with her, but at a distance, Ithobal the king.

“Halt, prince Aziel,” she called in a clear voice, “and hearken to my farewell.  I have bought your life, and the lives of your companions, and you are free, for the road is clear and nothing can overtake the twelve swiftest camels in Zimboe.  Go, therefore, and be happy, forgetting no word that has passed my lips.  For all my words are true, even to a certain promise which I made you lately by the mouth of Metem, and which I now fulfil—­that I would join you on your road lest you should deem me faithless to the troth which I have so often sworn to you.