Read "Domnei" by James Branch Cabell online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It is a tale which they narrate in Poictesme, telling how Demetrios returned into the country of the pagans and found all matters there as he had left them. They relate how Melicent was summoned.
And the tale tells how upon the stairway by which you descended from the Women's Garden to the citadel -- people called it the Queen's Stairway, because it was builded by Queen Rudabeh very long ago when the Emperor Zal held Nacumera -- Demetrios waited with a naked sword. Below were four of his soldiers, picked warriors. This stairway was of white marble, and a sphinx carved in green porphyry guarded each balustrade.