"Nay, I fly not," said Helen. "Let her come. But do thou, Rei, pass through the Temple gates and mingle with the crowd. There thou shalt await my coming, and when I come, draw near, fearing nothing; and together we will pass down the path of the Wanderer in such fashion as I shall show thee. Go! go swiftly, and bid those who minister to me pass out with thee."
Then Rei turned and fled. Without the doors of the Shrine many priests were gathered.
"Fly! the women of Tanis are upon you!" he cried. "I charge ye to fly!"
"This old crone is mad," quoth one. "We watch the Hathor, and, come all the women of the world, we fly not."
"Ye are mad indeed," said Rei, and sped on.
He passed the gates, the gates clashed behind him. He won the outer space, and hiding in the shadows of the Temple walls, looked forth.
The night was dark, but from every side a thousand lights poured down towards the Shrine. On they came like lanterns on the waters of Sihor at the night of the feast of lanterns. Now he could see their host. It was the host of the women of Tanis, and every woman bore a lighted torch. They came by tens, by hundreds, and by thousands, and before them was Meriamun, seated in a golden chariot, and with them were asses, oxen, and camels, laden with bitumen, wood, and reeds. Now they gained the gates, and now they crashed them in with battering trees of palm. The gates fell, the women poured through them. At their head went Meriamun the Queen. Bidding certain of them stay by her chariot she passed through, and standing at the inner gates called aloud to the priests to throw them wide.
"Who art thou who darest come up with fire against the holy Temple of the Hathor?" asked the guardian of the gates.
"I am Meriamun, the Queen of Khem," she answered, "come with the women of Tanis to slay the Witch thou guardest. Throw the gates wide, or die with the Witch."
"If indeed thou art the Queen," answered the priest, "here there sits a greater Queen than thou. Go back! Go back, Meriamun, who art not afraid to offer violence to the immortal Gods. Go back! lest the curse smite thee."
"Draw on! draw on! ye women," cried Meriamun; "draw on, smite down the gates, and tear these wicked ones limb from limb."
Then the women screamed aloud and battered on the gates with trees, so that they fell. They fell and the women rushed in madly. They seized the priests of Hathor and tore them limb from limb as dogs tear a wolf. Now the Shrine stood before them.
"Touch not the doors," cried Meriamun. "Bring fire and burn the Shrine with her who dwells therein. Touch not the doors, look not in the Witch's face, but burn her where she is with fire."
Then the women brought the reeds and the wood, and piled them around the Shrine to twice the height of a man. They brought ladders also, and piled the fuel upon the roof of the Shrine till all was covered.
And they poured pitch over the fuel, and then at the word of Meriamun they cast torches on the pitch and drew back screaming. For a moment the torches smouldered, then suddenly on every side great tongues of flame leapt up to heaven. Now the Shrine was wrapped in fire, and yet they cast fuel on it till none might draw near because of the heat.
Now it burned as a furnace burns, and now the fire reached the fuel on the roof. It caught, and the Shrine was but a sheet of raging flame that lit the white-walled city, and the broad face of the waters, as the sun lights the lands. The alabaster walls of the Shrine turned whiter yet with heat: they cracked and split till the fabric tottered to its fall.
"Now there is surely an end of the Witch," cried Meriamun, and the women screamed an answer to her.
