Moses by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online

some of them would kneel down and touch the ground she walked upon.”
    They had come out now into a broad inner court, where already the darkness was diffused and lessened by the first starlight—reflected and increased by the polished white limestone of the courtyard floor. “Don’t look at me,” the priest went on. “I am too old and fat to contemplate any such foolish memory in personal terms. I’m going to the observatory now, Moses. Have you been there?”
    Moses said that he had—was there a corner of the palace where he had not been?—but never at night; and the priest remarked that an observatory had little significance except at night. They crossed the courtyard and mounted the stone stairs that ran up the farther wall, the priest walking slowly and breathing hard with the effort.
    The stone platform of the observatory was about twenty feet square, railed in by a marble balustrade, with Isis and her husband Osiris cut in stone and guarding it from opposite corners. In the starlight the two immortals, one the moon and the other her husband, lord of the dead and the lands of the dead, looked amazingly alive. Four whiterobed priests stood as a bias line between the two gods, and their soft, lilting chant, the “Psalm to Night,” filled Moses with awe and not a little wonder—for as often as he had heard this sound drifting over the palace as darkness gathered, he had never known either its source or meaning.
    Now, Amon-Teph stopped Moses, with only the boy’s head above the last stair, whispering to him, “Wait until the Psalm is finished, for the music is sweet to the gods of the night, and from it they know that we are here to learn and acknowledge, not to bring harm to the heavenly bodies.” When the psalm was finished, they mounted to the platform, and when one of the priests looked at Moses inquiringly, Amon-Teph said, “Don’t you recognize him? Moses, the son of Enekhas-Amon.”
    â€œPrince of Egypt,” they greeted him gently. One of them, a small old man, came over and peered into Moses’ face, but without hostility. “You will learn things here,” he said, “that your teachers are too ignorant or too frightened to teach you if you wish to learn.”
    Moses nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and sensing that here was mystery that few were permitted to share.
    â€œWith respect. There is no learning without respect, boy. In the old, old times, there was respect for learning and honour for those who knew. Not today. Today the young gods are filled with arrogance and blood lust, and what else do your brothers want but to go forth to war? Is that what you want, Prince?”
    Perhaps it was a combination of the circumstances that went with the question—the silver starlight, the sweet, clean desert air, the stone platform hanging so high in the night, the highest pinnacle of the palace, the white-robed priests—reminding Moses of the ancient meaning of the word priest, pure in the old Egyptian—the music with which they greeted Isis, the moon, making him feel that these old men who served Isis and her kindred in the night sky were different from the plotting, conniving clericals he knew so well; or maybe it was a moment he had been awaiting this long, long time. Howsoever it was, when asked if he wanted what his royal brothers wanted—war and glory and power—he had his sense of the answer, a new feeling in his life, for never before had his whole soul and being yearned for the plain accomplishment of knowing, of unlocking mysteries unending, of knowing the whole reply and solution. But this he could not put into words or even into thoughts that made sense; he could only experience the feeling in a flush of blood and passion that made his heart beat faster and his whole body tremble as he shook his head.
    â€œNot that? Gold and silver and precious jewels, Prince?”
    Still he shook his