AYESHA

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Not with a view of conciliating those readers who on principle object to
sequels, but as a matter of fact, the Author wishes to say that he does
not so regard this book.

Rather does he venture to ask that it should be considered as the
conclusion of an imaginative tragedy (if he may so call it) whereof one
half has been already published.

This conclusion it was always his desire to write should he be destined to
live through those many years which, in obedience to his original design,
must be allowed to lapse between the events of the first and second parts
of the romance.

In response to many enquiries he may add that the name Ayesha, which since
the days of the prophet Mahomet, who had a wife so called, and perhaps
before them, has been common in the East, should be pronounced Assha.

INTRODUCTION

Verily and indeed it is the unexpected that happens! Probably if there was
one person upon the earth from whom the Editor of this, and of a certain
previous history, did not expect to hear again, that person was Ludwig
Horace Holly. This, too, for a good reason; he believed him to have taken
his departure from the earth.

When Mr. Holly last wrote, many, many years ago, it was to transmit the
manuscript of She, and to announce that he and his ward, Leo
Vincey, the beloved of the divine Ayesha, were about to travel to Central
Asia in the hope, I suppose, that there she would fulfil her promise and
appear to them again.

Often I have wondered, idly enough, what happened to them there; whether
they were dead, or perhaps droning their lives away as monks in some
Thibetan Lamasery, or studying magic and practising asceticism under the
tuition of the Eastern Masters trusting that thus they would build a
bridge by which they might pass to the side of their adored Immortal.

Now at length, when I had not thought of them for months, without a single
warning sign, out of the blue as it were, comes the answer to these
wonderings!

To think—only to think—that I, the Editor aforesaid, from its
appearance suspecting something quite familiar and without interest,
pushed aside that dingy, unregistered, brown-paper parcel directed in an
unknown hand, and for two whole days let it lie forgotten. Indeed there it
might be lying now, had not another person been moved to curiosity, and
opening it, found within a bundle of manuscript badly burned upon the
back, and with this two letters addressed to myself.

Although so great a time had passed since I saw it, and it was shaky now
because of the author’s age or sickness, I knew the writing at once—nobody
ever made an “H” with that peculiar twirl under it except Mr. Holly. I
tore open the sealed envelope, and sure enough the first thing my eye fell
upon was the signature, L. H. Holly. It is long since I read
anything so eagerly as I did that letter. Here it is:—

“My dear Sir,—I have ascertained that you still live, and strange to
say I still live also—for a little while.

“As soon as I came into touch with civilization again I found a copy of
your book She, or rather of my book, and read it—first of all
in a Hindostani translation. My host—he was a minister of some
religious body, a man of worthy but prosaic mind—expressed surprise
that a ‘wild romance’ should absorb me so much. I answered that those who
have wide experience of the hard facts of life often find interest in
romance. Had he known what were the hard facts to which I alluded, I
wonder what that excellent person would have said?

“I see that you carried out your part of the business well and faithfully.
Every instruction has been obeyed, nothing has been added or taken away.
Therefore, to you, to whom some twenty years ago I entrusted the beginning
of the history, I wish to entrust its end also. You were the first to
learn of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, who from century to century sat
alone, clothed with unchanging loveliness in the sepulchres of Kôr,
waiting till her lost love was born again, and Destiny brought him back to
her.

“It is right, therefore, that you should be the first to learn also of
Ayesha, Hesea and Spirit of the Mountain, the priestess of that Oracle
which since the time of Alexander the Great has reigned between the
flaming pillars in the Sanctuary, the last holder of the sceptre of Hes or
Isis upon the earth. It is right also that to you first among men I should
reveal the mystic consummation of the wondrous tragedy which began at Kôr,
or perchance far earlier in Egypt and elsewhere.

“I am very ill; I have struggled back to this old house of mine to die,
and my end is at hand. I have asked the doctor here, after all is over, to
send you the Record, that is unless I change my mind and burn it first.
You will also receive, if you receive anything at all, a case containing
several rough sketches which may be of use to you, and a sistrum,
the instrument that has been always used in the worship of the Nature
goddesses of the old Egyptians, Isis and Hathor, which you will see is as
beautiful as it is ancient. I give it to you for two reasons; as a token
of my gratitude and regard, and as the only piece of evidence that is left
to me of the literal truth of what I have written in the accompanying
manuscript, where you will find it often mentioned. Perhaps also you will
value it as a souvenir of, I suppose, the strangest and loveliest being
who ever was, or rather, is. It was her sceptre, the rod of her power,
with which I saw her salute the Shadows in the Sanctuary, and her gift to
me.

“It has virtues also; some part of Ayesha’s might yet haunts the symbol to
which even spirits bowed, but if you should discover them, beware how they
are used.

“I have neither the strength nor the will to write more. The Record must
speak for itself. Do with it what you like, and believe it or not as you
like. I care nothing who know that it is true.

“Who and what was Ayesha, nay, what is Ayesha? An incarnate
essence, a materialised spirit of Nature the unforeseeing, the lovely, the
cruel and the immortal; ensouled alone, redeemable only by Humanity and
its piteous sacrifice? Say you! I have done with speculations who depart
to solve these mysteries.

“I wish you happiness and good fortune. Farewell to you and to all.

“L. Horace Holly.”

I laid the letter down, and, filled with sensations that it is useless to
attempt to analyse or describe, opened the second envelope, of which I
also print the contents, omitting only certain irrelevant portions, and
the name of the writer as, it will be noted, he requests me to do.

This epistle, that was dated from a remote place upon the shores of
Cumberland, ran as follows:—

“Dear Sir,—As the doctor who attended Mr. Holly in his last illness
I am obliged, in obedience to a promise that I made to him, to become an
intermediary in a somewhat strange business, although in truth it is one
of which I know very little, however much it may have interested me. Still
I do so only on the strict understanding that no mention is to be made of
my name in connexion with the matter, or of the locality in which I
practise.

“About ten days ago I was called in to see Mr. Holly at an old house upon
the Cliff that for many years remained untenanted except by the
caretakers, which house was his property, and had been in his family for
generations. The housekeeper who summoned me told me that her master had
but just returned from abroad, somewhere in Asia, she said, and that he
was very ill with his heart—dying, she believed; both of which
suppositions proved to be accurate.

“I found the patient sitting up in bed (to ease his heart), and a
strange-looking old man he was. He had dark eyes, small but full of fire
and intelligence, a magnificent and snowy-white beard that covered a chest
of extraordinary breadth, and hair also white, which encroached upon his
forehead and face so much that it met the whiskers upon his cheeks. His
arms were remarkable for their length and strength, though one of them
seemed to have been much torn by some animal. He told me that a dog had
done this, but if so it must have been a dog of unusual power. He was a
very ugly man, and yet, forgive the bull, beautiful. I cannot describe
what I mean better than by saying that his face was not like the face of
any ordinary mortal whom I have met in my limited experience. Were I an
artist who wished to portray a wise and benevolent, but rather grotesque
spirit, I should take that countenance as a model.

“Mr. Holly was somewhat vexed at my being called in, which had been done
without his knowledge. Soon we became friendly enough, however, and he
expressed gratitude for the relief that I was able to give him, though I
could not hope to do more. At different times he talked a good deal of the
various countries in which he had travelled, apparently for very many
years, upon some strange quest that he never clearly defined to me. Twice
also he became light-headed, and spoke, for the most part in languages
that I identified as Greek and Arabic; occasionally in English also, when
he appeared to be addressing himself to a being who was the object of his
veneration, I might almost say of his worship. What he said then, however,
I prefer not to repeat, for I heard it in my professional capacity.

“One day he pointed to a rough box made of some foreign wood (the same
that I have now duly despatched to you by train), and, giving me your name
and address, said that without fail it was to be forwarded to you after
his death. Also he asked me to do up a manuscript, which, like the box,
was to be sent to you.

“He saw me looking at the last sheets, which had been burned away, and
said (I repeat his exact words)—

“‘Yes, yes, that can’t be helped now, it must go as it is. You see I made
up my mind to destroy it after all, and it was already on the fire when
the command came—the clear, unmistakable command—and I
snatched it off again.’

“What Mr. Holly meant by this ‘command’ I do not know, for he would speak
no more of the matter.

“I pass on to the last scene. One night about eleven o’clock, knowing that
my patient’s end was near, I went up to see him, proposing to inject some
strychnine to keep the heart going a little longer. Before I reached the
house I met the caretaker coming to seek me in a great fright, and asked
her if her master was dead. She answered No; but he was gone—had
got out of bed and, just as he was, barefooted, left the house, and was
last seen by her grandson among the very Scotch firs where we were
talking. The lad, who was terrified out of his wits, for he thought that
he beheld a ghost, had told her so.

“The moonlight was very brilliant that night, especially as fresh snow had
fallen, which reflected its rays. I was on foot, and began to search among
the firs, till presently just outside of them I found the track of naked
feet in the snow. Of course I followed, calling to the housekeeper to go
and wake her husband, for no one else lives near by. The spoor proved very
easy to trace across the clean sheet of snow. It ran up the slope of a
hill behind the house.

“Now, on the crest of this hill is an ancient monument of upright
monoliths set there by some primeval people, known locally as the Devil’s
Ring—a sort of miniature Stonehenge in fact. I had seen it several
times, and happened to have been present not long ago at a meeting of an
archaeological society when its origin and purpose were discussed. I
remember that one learned but somewhat eccentric gentleman read a short
paper upon a rude, hooded bust and head that are cut within the chamber of
a tall, flat-topped cromlech, or dolmen, which stands alone in the centre
of the ring.

“He said that it was a representation of the Egyptian goddess, Isis, and
that this place had once been sacred to some form of her worship, or at
any rate to that of a Nature goddess with like attributes, a suggestion
which the other learned gentlemen treated as absurd. They declared that
Isis had never travelled into Britain, though for my part I do not see why
the Phoenicians, or even the Romans, who adopted her cult, more or less,
should not have brought it here. But I know nothing of such matters and
will not discuss them.

“I remembered also that Mr. Holly was acquainted with this place, for he
had mentioned it to me on the previous day, asking if the stones were
still uninjured as they used to be when he was young. He added also, and
the remark struck me, that yonder was where he would wish to die. When I
answered that I feared he would never take so long a walk again, I noted
that he smiled a little.

“Well, this conversation gave me a clue, and without troubling more about
the footprints I went on as fast as I could to the Ring, half a mile or so
away. Presently I reached it, and there—yes, there—standing by
the cromlech, bareheaded, and clothed in his night-things only, stood Mr.
Holly in the snow, the strangest figure, I think, that ever I beheld.

“Indeed never shall I forget that wild scene. The circle of rough, single
stones pointing upwards to the star-strewn sky, intensely lonely and
intensely solemn: the tall trilithon towering above them in the centre,
its shadow, thrown by the bright moon behind it, lying long and black upon
the dazzling sheet of snow, and, standing clear of this shadow so that I
could distinguish his every motion, and even the rapt look upon his dying
face, the white-draped figure of Mr. Holly. He appeared to be uttering
some invocation—in Arabic, I think—for long before I reached
him I could catch the tones of his full, sonorous voice, and see his
waving, outstretched arms. In his right hand he held the looped sceptre
which, by his express wish I send to you with the drawings. I could see
the flash of the jewels strung upon the wires, and in the great stillness,
hear the tinkling of its golden bells.

“Presently, too, I seemed to become aware of another presence, and now you
will understand why I desire and must ask that my identity should be
suppressed. Naturally enough I do not wish to be mixed up with a
superstitious tale which is, on the face of it, impossible and absurd. Yet
under all the circumstances I think it right to tell you that I saw, or
thought I saw, something gather in the shadow of the central dolmen, or
emerge from its rude chamber—I know not which for certain—something
bright and glorious which gradually took the form of a woman upon whose
forehead burned a star-like fire.

“At any rate the vision or reflection, or whatever it was, startled me so
much that I came to a halt under the lee of one of the monoliths, and
found myself unable even to call to the distraught man whom I pursued.

“Whilst I stood thus it became clear to me that Mr. Holly also saw
something. At least he turned towards the Radiance in the shadow, uttered
one cry; a wild, glad cry, and stepped forward; then seemed to fall through
it on to his face.

“When I reached the spot the light had vanished, and all I found was Mr.
Holly, his arms still outstretched, and the sceptre gripped tightly in his
hand, lying quite dead in the shadow of the trilithon.”

The rest of the doctor’s letter need not be quoted as it deals only with
certain very improbable explanations of the origin of this figure of
light, the details of the removal of Holly’s body, and of how he managed
to satisfy the coroner that no inquest was necessary.

The box of which he speaks arrived safely. Of the drawings in it I need
say nothing, and of the sistrum or sceptre only a few words. It was
fashioned of crystal to the well-known shape of the Crux-ansata, or
the emblem of life of the Egyptians; the rod, the cross and the loop
combined in one. From side to side of this loop ran golden wires, and on
these were strung gems of three colours, glittering diamonds, sea-blue
sapphires, and blood-red rubies, while to the fourth wire, that at the
top, hung four little golden bells.

When I took hold of it first my arm shook slightly with excitement, and
those bells began to sound; a sweet, faint music like to that of chimes
heard far away at night in the silence of the sea. I thought too, but
perhaps this was fancy, that a thrill passed from the hallowed and
beautiful thing into my body.

On the mystery itself, as it is recorded in the manuscript, I make no
comment. Of it and its inner significations every reader must form his or
her own judgment. One thing alone is clear to me—on the hypothesis
that Mr. Holly tells the truth as to what he and Leo Vincey saw and
experienced, which I at least believe—that though sundry
interpretations of this mystery were advanced by Ayesha and others, none
of them are quite satisfactory.

Indeed, like Mr. Holly, I incline to the theory that She, if I may still
call her by that name although it is seldom given to her in these pages,
put forward some of them, such as the vague Isis-myth, and the wondrous
picture-story of the Mountain-fire, as mere veils to hide the truth which
it was her purpose to reveal at last in that song she never sang.

The Editor.

AYESHA

The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed

CHAPTER I

THE DOUBLE SIGN

Hard on twenty years have gone by since that night of Leo’s vision—the
most awful years, perhaps, which were ever endured by men—twenty
years of search and hardship ending in soul-shaking wonder and amazement.

My death is very near to me, and of this I am glad, for I desire to pursue
the quest in other realms, as it has been promised to me that I shall do.
I desire to learn the beginning and the end of the spiritual drama of
which it has been my strange lot to read some pages upon earth.

I, Ludwig Horace Holly, have been very ill; they carried me, more dead
than alive, down those mountains whose lowest slopes I can see from my
window, for I write this on the northern frontiers of India. Indeed any
other man had long since perished, but Destiny kept my breath in me,
perhaps that a record might remain. I must bide here a month or two till
I am strong enough to travel homewards, for I have a fancy to die in the
place where I was born. So while I have strength I will put the story
down, or at least those parts of it that are most essential, for much can,
or at any rate must, be omitted. I shrink from attempting too long a book,
though my notes and memory would furnish me with sufficient material for
volumes.

I will begin with the Vision.

After Leo Vincey and I came back from Africa in 1885, desiring solitude,
which indeed we needed sorely to recover from the fearful shock we had
experienced, and to give us time and opportunity to think, we went to an
old house upon the shores of Cumberland that has belonged to my family for
many generations. This house, unless somebody has taken it believing me to
be dead, is still my property and thither I travel to die.

Those whose eyes read the words I write, if any should ever read them, may
ask—What shock?

Well, I am Horace Holly, and my companion, my beloved friend, my son in
the spirit whom I reared from infancy was—nay, is—Leo Vincey.

We are those men who, following an ancient clue, travelled to the Caves of
Kôr in Central Africa, and there discovered her whom we sought, the
immortal She-who-must-be-obeyed. In Leo she found her love, that
re-born Kallikrates, the Grecian priest of Isis whom some two thousand
years before she had slain in her jealous rage, thus executing on him the
judgment of the angry goddess. In her also I found the divinity whom I was
doomed to worship from afar, not with the flesh, for that is all lost and
gone from me, but, what is sorer still, because its burden is undying,
with the will and soul which animate a man throughout the countless eons
of his being. The flesh dies, or at least it changes, and its passions
pass, but that other passion of the spirit—that longing for oneness—is
undying as itself.

What crime have I committed that this sore punishment should be laid upon
me? Yet, in truth, is it a punishment? May it not prove to be but that
black and terrible Gate which leads to the joyous palace of Rewards? She
swore that I should ever be her friend and his and dwell with them
eternally, and I believe her.

For how many winters did we wander among the icy hills and deserts! Still,
at length, the Messenger came and led us to the Mountain, and on the
Mountain we found the Shrine, and in the Shrine the Spirit. May not these
things be an allegory prepared for our instruction? I will take comfort. I
will hope that it is so. Nay, I am sure that it is so.

It will be remembered that in Kôr we found the immortal woman. There
before the flashing rays and vapours of the Pillar of Life she declared
her mystic love, and then in our very sight was swept to a doom so
horrible that even now, after all which has been and gone, I shiver at its
recollection. Yet what were Ayesha’s last words? “Forget me not . . .
have pity on my shame. I die not. I shall come again and shall once more
be beautiful. I swear it—it is true.”

Well, I cannot set out that history afresh. Moreover it is written; the
man whom I trusted in the matter did not fail me, and the book he made of
it seems to be known throughout the world, for I have found it here in
English, yes, and read it first translated into Hindostani. To it then I
refer the curious.

In that house upon the desolate sea-shore of Cumberland, we dwelt a year,
mourning the lost, seeking an avenue by which it might be found again and
discovering none. Here our strength came back to us, and Leo’s hair, that
had been whitened in the horror of the Caves, grew again from grey to
golden. His beauty returned to him also, so that his face was as it had
been, only purified and saddened.

Well I remember that night—and the hour of illumination. We were
heart-broken, we were in despair. We sought signs and could find none. The
dead remained dead to us and no answer came to all our crying.

It was a sullen August evening, and after we had dined we walked upon the
shore, listening to the slow surge of the waves and watching the lightning
flicker from the bosom of a distant cloud. In silence we walked, till at
last Leo groaned—it was more of a sob than a groan—and clasped
my arm.

“I can bear it no longer, Horace,” he said—for so he called me now—“I
am in torment. The desire to see Ayesha once more saps my brain. Without
hope I shall go quite mad. And I am strong, I may live another fifty
years.”

“What then can you do?” I asked.

“I can take a short road to knowledge—or to peace,” he answered
solemnly, “I can die, and die I will—yes, tonight.”

I turned upon him angrily, for his words filled me with fear.

“Leo, you are a coward!” I said. “Cannot you bear your part of pain as—others
do?”

“You mean as you do, Horace,” he answered with a dreary laugh, “for on you
also the curse lies—with less cause. Well, you are stronger than I
am, and more tough; perhaps because you have lived longer. No, I cannot
bear it. I will die.”

“It is a crime,” I said, “the greatest insult you can offer to the Power
that made you, to cast back its gift of life as a thing outworn,
contemptible and despised. A crime, I say, which will bring with it worse
punishment than any you can dream; perhaps even the punishment of
everlasting separation.”

“Does a man stretched in some torture-den commit a crime if he snatches a
knife and kills himself, Horace? Perhaps; but surely that sin should find
forgiveness—if torn flesh and quivering nerves may plead for mercy.
I am such a man, and I will use that knife and take my chance. She is
dead, and in death at least I shall be nearer her.”

“Why so, Leo? For aught you know Ayesha may be living.”

“No; for then she would have given me some sign. My mind is made up, so
talk no more, or, if talk we must, let it be of other things.”

Then I pleaded with him, though with little hope, for I saw that what I
had feared for long was come to pass. Leo was mad: shock and sorrow had
destroyed his reason. Were it not so, he, in his own way a very religious
man, one who held, as I knew, strict opinions on such matters, would never
have purposed to commit the wickedness of suicide.

“Leo,” I said, “are you so heartless that you would leave me here alone?
Do you pay me thus for all my love and care, and wish to drive me to my
death? Do so if you will, and my blood be on your head.”

“Your blood! Why your blood, Horace?”

“Because that road is broad and two can travel it. We have lived long
years together and together endured much; I am sure that we shall not be
long parted.”

Then the tables were turned and he grew afraid for me. But I only
answered, “If you die I tell you that I shall die also. It will certainly
kill me.”

So Leo gave way. “Well,” he exclaimed suddenly, “I promise you it shall
not be to-night. Let us give life another chance.”

“Good,” I answered; but I went to my bed full of fear. For I was certain
that this desire of death, having once taken hold of him, would grow and
grow, until at length it became too strong, and then—then I should
wither and die who could not live on alone. In my despair I threw out my
soul towards that of her who was departed.

“Ayesha!” I cried, “if you have any power, if in any way it is permitted,
show that you still live, and save your lover from this sin and me from a
broken heart. Have pity on his sorrow and breathe hope into his spirit,
for without hope Leo cannot live, and without him I shall not live.”

Then, worn out, I slept.

I was aroused by the voice of Leo speaking to me in low, excited tones
through the darkness.

“Horace,” he said, “Horace, my friend, my father, listen!”

In an instant I was wide awake, every nerve and fibre of me, for the tones
of his voice told me that something had happened which bore upon our
destinies.

“Let me light a candle first,” I said.

“Never mind the candle, Horace; I would rather speak in the dark. I went
to sleep, and I dreamed the most vivid dream that ever came to me. I
seemed to stand under the vault of heaven, it was black, black, not a star
shone in it, and a great loneliness possessed me. Then suddenly high up in
the vault, miles and miles away, I saw a little light and thought that a
planet had appeared to keep me company. The light began to descend slowly,
like a floating flake of fire. Down it sank, and down and down, till it
was but just above me, and I perceived that it was shaped like a tongue or
fan of flame. At the height of my head from the ground it stopped and
stood steady, and by its ghostly radiance I saw that beneath was the shape
of a woman and that the flame burned upon her forehead. The radiance
gathered strength and now I saw the woman.

“Horace, it was Ayesha herself, her eyes, her lovely face, her cloudy
hair, and she looked at me sadly, reproachfully, I thought, as one might
who says, ‘Why did you doubt?’

“I tried to speak to her but my lips were dumb. I tried to advance and to
embrace her, my arms would not move. There was a barrier between us. She
lifted her hand and beckoned as though bidding me to follow her.

“Then she glided away, and, Horace, my spirit seemed to loose itself from
the body and to be given the power to follow. We passed swiftly eastward,
over lands and seas, and—I knew the road. At one point she paused
and I looked downwards. Beneath, shining in the moonlight, appeared the
ruined palaces of Kôr, and there not far away was the gulf we trod
together.

“Onward above the marshes, and now we stood upon the Ethiopian’s Head, and
gathered round, watching us earnestly, were the faces of the Arabs, our
companions who drowned in the sea beneath. Job was among them also, and he
smiled at me sadly and shook his head, as though he wished to accompany us
and could not.

“Across the sea again, across the sandy deserts, across more sea, and the
shores of India lay beneath us. Then northward, ever northward, above the
plains, till we reached a place of mountains capped with eternal snow. We
passed them and stayed for an instant above a building set upon the brow
of a plateau. It was a monastery, for old monks droned prayers upon its
terrace. I shall know it again, for it is built in the shape of a
half-moon and in front of it sits the gigantic, ruined statue of a god who
gazes everlastingly across the desert. I knew, how I cannot say, that now
we were far past the furthest borders of Thibet and that in front of us
lay untrodden lands. More mountains stretched beyond that desert, a sea of
snowy peaks, hundreds and hundreds of them.

“Near to the monastery, jutting out into the plain like some rocky
headland, rose a solitary hill, higher than all behind. We stood upon its
snowy crest and waited, till presently, above the mountains and the desert
at our feet shot a sudden beam of light that beat upon us like some signal
flashed across the sea. On we went, floating down the beam—on over
the desert and the mountains, across a great flat land beyond, in which
were many villages and a city on a mound, till we lit upon a towering
peak. Then I saw that this peak was loop-shaped like the symbol of Life of
the Egyptians—the crux-ansata—and supported by a lava
stem hundreds of feet in height. Also I saw that the fire which shone
through it rose from the crater of a volcano beyond. Upon the very crest
of this loop we rested a while, till the Shadow of Ayesha pointed downward
with its hand, smiled and vanished. Then I awoke.

“Horace, I tell you that the sign has come to us.”

His voice died away in the darkness, but I sat still, brooding over what I
had heard. Leo groped his way to me and, seizing my arm, shook it.

“Are you asleep?” he asked angrily. “Speak, man, speak!”

“No,” I answered, “never was I more awake. Give me time.”

Then I rose, and going to the open window, drew up the blind and stood
there staring at the sky, which grew pearl-hued with the first faint tinge
of dawn. Leo came also and leant upon the window-sill, and I could feel
that his body was trembling as though with cold. Clearly he was much
moved.

“You talk of a sign,” I said to him, “but in your sign I see nothing but a
wild dream.”

“It was no dream,” he broke in fiercely; “it was a vision.”

“A vision then if you will, but there are visions true and false, and how
can we know that this is true? Listen, Leo. What is there in all that
wonderful tale which could not have been fashioned in your own brain,
distraught as it is almost to madness with your sorrow and your longings?
You dreamed that you were alone in the vast universe. Well, is not every
living creature thus alone? You dreamed that the shadowy shape of Ayesha
came to you. Has it ever left your side? You dreamed that she led you over
sea and land, past places haunted by your memory, above the mysterious
mountains of the Unknown to an undiscovered peak. Does she not thus lead
you through life to that peak which lies beyond the Gates of Death? You
dreamed——”

“Oh! no more of it,” he exclaimed. “What I saw, I saw, and that I shall
follow. Think as you will, Horace, and do what you will. To-morrow I start
for India, with you if you choose to come; if not, without you.”

“You speak roughly, Leo,” I said. “You forget that I have had no
sign, and that the nightmare of a man so near to insanity that but a few
hours ago he was determined upon suicide, will be a poor staff to lean on
when we are perishing in the snows of Central Asia. A mixed vision, this
of yours, Leo, with its mountain peak shaped like a crux-ansata and
the rest. Do you suggest that Ayesha is re-incarnated in Central Asia—as
a female Grand Lama or something of that sort?”

“I never thought of it, but why not?” asked Leo quietly. “Do you remember
a certain scene in the Caves of Kôr yonder, when the living looked upon
the dead, and dead and living were the same? And do you remember what
Ayesha swore, that she would come again—yes, to this world; and how
could that be except by re-birth, or, what is the same thing, by the
transmigration of the spirit?”

I did not answer this argument. I was struggling with myself.

“No sign has come to me,” I said, “and yet I have had a part in the play,
humble enough, I admit, and I believe that I have still a part.”

“No,” he said, “no sign has come to you. I wish that it had. Oh! how I
wish you could be convinced as I am, Horace!”

Then we were silent for a long while, silent, with our eyes fixed upon the
sky.

It was a stormy dawn. Clouds in fantastic masses hung upon the ocean. One
of them was like a great mountain, and we watched it idly. It changed its
shape, the crest of it grew hollow like a crater. From this crater sprang
a projecting cloud, a rough pillar with a knob or lump resting on its top.
Suddenly the rays of the risen sun struck upon this mountain and the
column and they turned white like snow. Then as though melted by those
fiery arrows, the centre of the excrescence above the pillar thinned out
and vanished, leaving an enormous loop of inky cloud.

“Look,” said Leo in a low, frightened voice, “that is the shape of the
mountain which I saw in my vision. There upon it is the black loop, and
there through it shines the fire. It would seem that the sign is for
both of us, Horace.”

I looked and looked again till presently the vast loop vanished into the
blue of heaven. Then I turned and said—“I will come with you to
Central Asia, Leo.”

CHAPTER II

THE LAMASERY

Sixteen years had passed since that night vigil in the old Cumberland
house, and, behold! we two, Leo and I, were still travelling, still
searching for that mountain peak shaped like the Symbol of Life which
never, never could be found.

Our adventures would fill volumes, but of what use is it to record them.
Many of a similar nature are already written of in books; those that we
endured were more prolonged, that is all. Five years we spent in Thibet,
for the most part as guests of various monasteries, where we studied the
law and traditions of the Lamas. Here we were once sentenced to death in
punishment for having visited a forbidden city, but escaped through the
kindness of a Chinese official.

Leaving Thibet, we wandered east and west and north, thousands and
thousands of miles, sojourning amongst many tribes in Chinese territory
and elsewhere, learning many tongues, enduring much hardship. Thus we
would hear a legend of a place, say nine hundred miles away, and spend two
years in reaching it, to find when we came there, nothing.

And so the time went on. Yet never once did we think of giving up the
quest and returning, since, before we started, we had sworn an oath that
we would achieve or die. Indeed we ought to have died a score of times,
yet always were preserved, most mysteriously preserved.

Now we were in country where, so far as I could learn, no European had
ever set a foot. In a part of the vast land called Turkestan there is a
great lake named Balhkash, of which we visited the shores. Two hundred
miles or so to the westward is a range of mighty mountains marked on the
maps as Arkarty-Tau, on which we spent a year, and five hundred or so miles to
the eastward are other mountains called Cherga, whither we journeyed at
last, having explored the triple ranges of the Tau.

Here it was that at last our true adventures began. On one of the spurs of
these awful Cherga mountains—it is unmarked on any map—we
well-nigh perished of starvation. The winter was coming on and we could
find no game. The last traveller we had met, hundreds of miles south, told
us that on that range was a monastery inhabited by Lamas of surpassing
holiness. He said that they dwelt in this wild land, over which no power
claimed dominion and where no tribes lived, to acquire “merit,” with no
other company than that of their own pious contemplations. We did not
believe in its existence, still we were searching for that monastery,
driven onward by the blind fatalism which was our only guide through all
these endless wanderings. As we were starving and could find no “argals,”
that is fuel with which to make a fire, we walked all night by the light
of the moon, driving between us a single yak—for now we had no
attendant, the last having died a year before.

He was a noble beast, that yak, and had the best constitution of any
animal I ever knew, though now, like his masters, he was near his end. Not
that he was over-laden, for a few rifle cartridges, about a hundred and
fifty, the remnant of a store which we had fortunately been able to buy
from a caravan two years before, some money in gold and silver, a little
tea and a bundle of skin rugs and sheepskin garments were his burden. On,
on we trudged across a plateau of snow, having the great mountains on our
right, till at length the yak gave a sigh and stopped. So we stopped also,
because we must, and wrapping ourselves in the skin rugs, sat down in the
snow to wait for daylight.

“We shall have to kill him and eat his flesh raw,” I said, patting the
poor yak that lay patiently at our side.

“Perhaps we may find game in the morning,” answered Leo, still hopeful.

“And perhaps we may not, in which case we must die.”

“Very good,” he replied, “then let us die. It is the last resource of
failure. We shall have done our best.”

“Certainly, Leo, we shall have done our best, if sixteen years of tramping
over mountains and through eternal snows in pursuit of a dream of the
night can be called best.”

“You know what I believe,” he answered stubbornly, and there was silence
between us, for here arguments did not avail. Also even then I could not
think that all our toils and sufferings would be in vain.

The dawn came, and by its light we looked at one another anxiously, each
of us desiring to see what strength was left to his companion. Wild
creatures we should have seemed to the eyes of any civilized person. Leo
was now over forty years of age, and certainly his maturity had fulfilled
the promise of his youth, for a more magnificent man I never knew. Very
tall, although he seemed spare to the eye, his girth matched his height,
and those many years of desert life had turned his muscles to steel. His
hair had grown long, like my own, for it was a protection from sun and
cold, and hung upon his neck, a curling, golden mane, as his great beard
hung upon his breast, spreading outwards almost to the massive shoulders.
The face, too—what could be seen of it—was beautiful though
burnt brown with weather; refined and full of thought, sombre almost, and
in it, clear as crystal, steady as stars, shone his large grey eyes.

And I—I was what I have always been—ugly and hirsute,
iron-grey now also, but in spite of my sixty odd years, still wonderfully
strong, for my strength seemed to increase with time, and my health was
perfect. In fact, during all this period of rough travels, although now
and again we had met with accidents which laid us up for awhile, neither
of us had known a day of sickness. Hardship seemed to have turned our
constitutions to iron and made them impervious to every human ailment. Or
was this because we alone amongst living men had once inhaled the breath
of the Essence of Life?

Our fears relieved—for notwithstanding our foodless night, as yet
neither of us showed any signs of exhaustion—we turned to
contemplate the landscape. At our feet beyond a little belt of fertile
soil, began a great desert of the sort with which we were familiar—sandy,
salt-encrusted, treeless, waterless, and here and there streaked with the
first snows of winter. Beyond it, eighty or a hundred miles away—in
that lucent atmosphere it was impossible to say how far exactly—rose
more mountains, a veritable sea of them, of which the white peaks soared
upwards by scores.

As the golden rays of the rising sun touched their snows to splendour, I
saw Leo’s eyes become troubled. Swiftly he turned and looked along the
edge of the desert.

“See there!” he said, pointing to something dim and enormous. Presently
the light reached it also. It was a mighty mountain not more than ten
miles away, that stood out by itself among the sands. Then he turned once
more, and with his back to the desert stared at the slope of the hills,
along the base of which we had been travelling. As yet they were in gloom,
for the sun was behind them, but presently light began to flow over their
crests like a flood. Down it crept, lower, and yet lower, till it reached
a little plateau not three hundred yards above us. There, on the edge of
the plateau, looking out solemnly across the waste, sat a great ruined
idol, a colossal Buddha, while to the rear of the idol, built of yellow
stone, appeared the low crescent-shaped mass of a monastery.

“At last!” cried Leo, “oh, Heaven! at last!” and, flinging himself down,
he buried his face in the snow as though to hide it there, lest I should
read something written on it which he did not desire that even I should
see.

I let him lie a space, understanding what was passing in his heart, and
indeed in mine also. Then going to the yak that, poor brute, had no share
in these joyous emotions but only lowed and looked round with hungry eyes,
I piled the sheepskin rugs on to its back. This done, I laid my hand on
Leo’s shoulder, saying, in the most matter-of-fact voice I could command—“Come.
If that place is not deserted, we may find food and shelter there, and it
is beginning to storm again.”

He rose without a word, brushed the snow from his beard and garments and
came to help me to lift the yak to its feet, for the worn-out beast was
too stiff and weak to rise of itself. Glancing at him covertly, I saw on
Leo’s face a very strange and happy look; a great peace appeared to
possess him.

We plunged upwards through the snow slope, dragging the yak with us, to
the terrace whereon the monastery was built. Nobody seemed to be about
there, nor could I discern any footprints. Was the place but a ruin? We
had found many such; indeed this ancient land is full of buildings that
had once served as the homes of men, learned and pious enough after their
own fashion, who lived and died hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago,
long before our Western civilization came into being.

My heart, also my stomach, which was starving, sank at the thought, but
while I gazed doubtfully, a little coil of blue smoke sprang from a
chimney, and never, I think, did I see a more joyful sight. In the centre
of the edifice was a large building, evidently the temple, but nearer to
us I saw a small door, almost above which the smoke appeared. To this door
I went and knocked, calling aloud—“Open! open, holy Lamas. Strangers
seek your charity.” After awhile there was a sound of shuffling feet and
the door creaked upon its hinges, revealing an old, old man, clad in
tattered, yellow garments.

“Who is it? Who is it?” he exclaimed, blinking at me through a pair of
horn spectacles. “Who comes to disturb our solitude, the solitude of the
holy Lamas of the Mountains?”

“Travellers, Sacred One, who have had enough of solitude,” I answered in
his own dialect, with which I was well acquainted. “Travellers who are
starving and who ask your charity, which,” I added, “by the Rule you
cannot refuse.”

He stared at us through his horn spectacles, and, able to make nothing of
our faces, let his glance fall to our garments which were as ragged as his
own, and of much the same pattern. Indeed, they were those of Thibetan
monks, including a kind of quilted petticoat and an outer vestment not
unlike an Eastern burnous. We had adopted them because we had no others.
Also they protected us from the rigours of the climate and from remark,
had there been any to remark upon them.

“Are you Lamas?” he asked doubtfully, “and if so, of what monastery?”

“Lamas sure enough,” I answered, “who belong to a monastery called the
World, where, alas! one grows hungry.”

The reply seemed to please him, for he chuckled a little, then shook his
head, saying—“It is against our custom to admit strangers unless
they be of our own faith, which I am sure you are not.”

“And much more is it against your Rule, holy Khubilghan,” for so these
abbots are entitled, “to suffer strangers to starve”; and I quoted a
well-known passage from the sayings of Buddha which fitted the point
precisely.

“I perceive that you are instructed in the Books,” he exclaimed with
wonder on his yellow, wrinkled face, “and to such we cannot refuse
shelter. Come in, brethren of the monastery called the World. But stay,
there is the yak, who also has claims upon our charity,” and, turning, he
struck upon a gong or bell which hung within the door.

At the sound another man appeared, more wrinkled and to all appearance
older than the first, who stared at us open-mouthed.

“Brother,” said the abbot, “shut that great mouth of yours lest an evil
spirit should fly down it; take this poor yak and give it fodder with the
other cattle.”

So we unstrapped our belongings from the back of the beast, and the old
fellow whose grandiloquent title was “Master of the Herds,” led it away.

When it had gone, not too willingly—for our faithful friend disliked
parting from us and distrusted this new guide—the abbot, who was
named Kou-en, led us into the living room or rather the kitchen of the
monastery, for it served both purposes. Here we found the rest of the
monks, about twelve in all, gathered round the fire of which we had seen
the smoke, and engaged, one of them in preparing the morning meal, and the
rest in warming themselves.

They were all old men; the youngest could not have been less than
sixty-five. To these we were solemnly introduced as “Brethren of the
Monastery called the World, where folk grow hungry,” for the abbot Kou-en
could not make up his mind to part from this little joke.

They stared at us, they rubbed their thin hands, they bowed and wished us
well and evidently were delighted at our arrival. This was not strange,
however, seeing that ours were the first new faces which they had seen for
four long years.

Nor did they stop at words, for while they made water hot for us to wash
in, two of them went to prepare a room—and others drew off our rough
hide boots and thick outer garments and brought us slippers for our feet.
Then they led us to the guest chamber, which they informed us was a
“propitious place,” for once it had been slept in by a noted saint. Here a
fire was lit, and, wonder of wonders! clean garments, including linen, all
of them ancient and faded, but of good quality, were brought for us to put
on.

So we washed—yes, actually washed all over—and having arrayed
ourselves in the robes, which were somewhat small for Leo, struck the bell
that hung in the room and were conducted by a monk who answered it, back
to the kitchen, where the meal was now served. It consisted of a kind of
porridge, to which was added new milk brought in by the “Master of the
Herds,” dried fish from a lake, and buttered tea, the last two luxuries
produced in our special honour. Never had food tasted more delicious to
us, and, I may add, never did we eat more. Indeed, at last I was obliged
to request Leo to stop, for I saw the monks staring at him and heard the
old abbot chuckling to himself.

“Oho! The Monastery of the World, where folk grow hungry,” to which
another monk, who was called the “Master of the Provisions,” replied
uneasily, that if we went on like this, their store of food would scarcely
last the winter. So we finished at length, feeling, as some book of maxims
which I can remember in my youth said all polite people should do—that
we could eat more, and much impressed our hosts by chanting a long
Buddhist grace.

“Their feet are in the Path! Their feet are in the Path!” they said,
astonished.

“Yes,” replied Leo, “they have been in it for sixteen years of our present
incarnation. But we are only beginners, for you, holy Ones, know how
star-high, how ocean-wide and how desert-long is that path. Indeed it is
to be instructed as to the right way of walking therein that we have been
miraculously directed by a dream to seek you out, as the most pious, the
most saintly and the most learned of all the Lamas in these parts.”

“Yes, certainly we are that,” answered the abbot Kou-en, “seeing that
there is no other monastery within five months’ journey,” and again he
chuckled, “though, alas!” he added with a pathetic little sigh, “our
numbers grow few.”

After this we asked leave to retire to our chamber in order to rest, and
there, upon very good imitations of beds, we slept solidly for four and
twenty hours, rising at last perfectly refreshed and well.

Such was our introduction to the Monastery of the Mountains—for it
had no other name—where we were destined to spend the next six
months of our lives. Within a few days—for they were not long in
giving us their complete confidence—those good-hearted and simple
old monks told us all their history.

It seemed that of old time there was a Lamasery here, in which dwelt
several hundred brethren. This, indeed, was obviously true, for the place
was enormous, although for the most part ruined, and, as the weather-worn
statue of Buddha showed, very ancient. The story ran, according to the old
abbot, that two centuries or so before, the monks had been killed out by
some fierce tribe who lived beyond the desert and across the distant
mountains, which tribe were heretics and worshippers of fire. Only a few
of them escaped to bring the sad news to other communities, and for five
generations no attempt was made to re-occupy the place.

At length it was revealed to him, our friend Kou-en, when a young man,
that he was a re-incarnation of one of the old monks of this monastery,
who also was named Kou-en, and that it was his duty during his present
life to return thither, as by so doing he would win much merit and receive
many wonderful revelations. So he gathered a band of zealots and, with the
blessing and consent of his superiors, they started out, and after many
hardships and losses found and took possession of the place, repairing it
sufficiently for their needs.

This happened about fifty years before, and here they had dwelt ever
since, only communicating occasionally with the outside world. At first
their numbers were recruited from time to time by new brethren, but at
length these ceased to come, with the result that the community was dying
out.

“And what then?” I asked.

“And then,” the abbot answered, “nothing. We have acquired much
merit; we have been blest with many revelations, and, after the repose we
have earned in Devachan, our lots in future existences will be easier.
What more can we ask or desire, removed as we are from all the temptations
of the world?”

For the rest, in the intervals of their endless prayers, and still more
endless contemplations, they were husbandmen, cultivating the soil, which
was fertile at the foot of the mountain, and tending their herd of yaks.
Thus they wore away their blameless lives until at last they died of old
age, and, as they believed—and who shall say that they were wrong—the
eternal round repeated itself elsewhere.

Immediately after, indeed on the very day of our arrival at the monastery
the winter began in earnest with bitter cold and snowstorms so heavy and
frequent that all the desert was covered deep. Very soon it became obvious
to us that here we must stay until the spring, since to attempt to move in
any direction would be to perish. With some misgivings we explained this
to the abbot Kou-en, offering to remove to one of the empty rooms in the
ruined part of the building, supporting ourselves with fish that we could
catch by cutting a hole in the ice of the lake above the monastery, and if
we were able to find any, on game, which we might trap or shoot in the
scrub-like forest of stunted pines and junipers that grew around its
border. But he would listen to no such thing. We had been sent to be their
guests, he said, and their guests we should remain for so long as might be
convenient to us. Would we lay upon them the burden of the sin of
inhospitality? Besides, he remarked with his chuckle—“We who dwell
alone like to hear about that other great monastery called the World,
where the monks are not so favoured as we who are set in this blessed
situation, and where folk even go hungry in body, and,” he added, “in
soul.”

Indeed, as we soon found out, the dear old man’s object was to keep our
feet in the Path until we reached the goal of Truth, or, in other words,
became excellent Lamas like himself and his flock.

So we walked in the Path, as we had done in many another Lamasery, and
assisted at the long prayers in the ruined temple and studied the Kandjur,
or “Translation of the Words” of Buddha, which is their bible and a very
long one, and generally showed that our “minds were open.” Also we
expounded to them the doctrines of our own faith, and greatly delighted
were they to find so many points of similarity between it and theirs.
Indeed, I am not certain but that if we could have stopped there long
enough, say ten years, we might have persuaded some of them to accept a
new revelation of which we were the prophets. Further, in spare hours we
told them many tales of “the Monastery called the World,” and it was
really delightful, and in a sense piteous, to see the joy with which they
listened to these stories of wondrous countries and new races of men; they
who knew only of Russia and China and some semi-savage tribes, inhabitants
of the mountains and the deserts.

“It is right for us to learn all this,” they declared, “for, who knows,
perhaps in future incarnations we may become inhabitants of these places.”

But though the time passed thus in comfort and indeed, compared to many of
our experiences, in luxury, oh! our hearts were hungry, for in them burned
the consuming fire of our quest. We felt that we were on the threshold—yes,
we knew it, we knew it, and yet our wretched physical limitations made it
impossible for us to advance by a single step. On the desert beneath fell
the snow, moreover great winds arose suddenly that drove those snows like
dust, piling them in heaps as high as trees, beneath which any unfortunate
traveller would be buried. Here we must wait, there was nothing else to be
done.

One alleviation we found, and only one. In a ruined room of the monastery
was a library of many volumes, placed there, doubtless, by the monks who
were massacred in times bygone. These had been more or less cared for and
re-arranged by their successors, who gave us liberty to examine them as
often as we pleased. Truly it was a strange collection, and I should
imagine of priceless value, for among them were to be found Buddhistic,
Sivaistic and Shamanistic writings that we had never before seen or heard
of, together with the lives of a multitude of Bodhisatvas, or
distinguished saints, written in various tongues, some of which we did not
understand.

What proved more interesting to us, however, was a diary in many tomes
that for generations had been kept by the Khubilghans or abbots of the old
Lamasery, in which every event of importance was recorded in great detail.
Turning over the pages of one of the last volumes of this diary, written
apparently about two hundred and fifty years earlier, and shortly before
the destruction of the monastery, we came upon an entry of which the
following—for I can only quote from memory—is the substance—

“In the summer of this year, after a very great sandstorm, a brother (the
name was given, but I forget it) found in the desert a man of the people
who dwell beyond the Far Mountains, of whom rumours have reached this
Lamasery from time to time. He was living, but beside him were the bodies
of two of his companions who had been overwhelmed by sand and thirst. He
was very fierce looking. He refused to say how he came into the desert,
telling us only that he had followed the road known to the ancients before
communication between his people and the outer world ceased. We gathered,
however, that his brethren with whom he fled had committed some crime for
which they had been condemned to die, and that he had accompanied them in
their flight. He told us that there was a fine country beyond the
mountains, fertile, but plagued with droughts and earthquakes, which
latter, indeed, we often feel here.

“The people of that country were, he said, warlike and very numerous but
followed agriculture. They had always lived there, though ruled by Khans
who were descendants of the Greek king called Alexander, who conquered
much country to the south-west of us. This may be true, as our records
tell us that about two thousand years ago an army sent by that invader
penetrated to these parts, though of his being with them nothing is said.

“The stranger-man told us also that his people worship a priestess called
Hes or the Hesea, who is said to reign from generation to generation. She
lives in a great mountain, apart, and is feared and adored by all, but is
not the queen of the country, in the government of which she seldom
interferes. To her, however, sacrifices are offered, and he who incurs her
vengeance dies, so that even the chiefs of that land are afraid of her.
Still their subjects often fight, for they hate each other.

“We answered that he lied when he said that this woman was immortal—for
that was what we supposed he meant—since nothing is immortal; also
we laughed at his tale of her power. This made the man very angry. Indeed
he declared that our Buddha was not so strong as this priestess, and that
she would show it by being avenged upon us.

“After this we gave him food and turned him out of the Lamasery, and he
went, saying that when he returned we should learn who spoke the truth. We
do not know what became of him, and he refused to reveal to us the road to
his country, which lies beyond the desert and the Far Mountains. We think
that perhaps he was an evil spirit sent to frighten us, in which he did
not succeed.”

Such is a precis of this strange entry, the discovery of which,
vague as it was, thrilled us with hope and excitement. Nothing more
appeared about the man or his country, but within a little over a year
from that date the diary of the abbot came to a sudden end without any
indication that unusual events had occured or were expected.

Indeed, the last item written in the parchment book mentioned the
preparation of certain new lands to be used for the sowing of grain in
future seasons, which suggested that the brethren neither feared nor
expected disturbance. We wondered whether the man from beyond the
mountains was as good as his word and had brought down the vengeance of
that priestess called the Hesea upon the community which sheltered him.
Also we wondered—ah! how we wondered—who and what this Hesea
might be.

On the day following this discovery we prayed the abbot, Kou-en, to
accompany us to the library, and having read him the passage, asked if he
knew anything of the matter. He swayed his wise old head, which always
reminded me of that of a tortoise, and answered—“A little. Very
little, and that mostly about the army of the Greek king who is mentioned
in the writing.”

We inquired what he could possibly know of this matter, whereon Kou-en
replied calmly—“In those days when the faith of the Holy One was
still young, I dwelt as a humble brother in this very monastery, which was
one of the first built, and I saw the army pass, that is all. That,” he
added meditatively, “was in my fiftieth incarnation of this present Round—no,
I am thinking of another army—in my seventy-third.”^[1]

[1]
As students of their lives and literature will be aware, it is common for
Buddhist priests to state positively that they remember events which occurred
during their previous incarnations.—ed.

Here Leo began a great laugh, but I managed to kick him beneath the table
and he turned it into a sneeze. This was fortunate, as such ribald
merriment would have hurt the old man’s feelings terribly. After all,
also, as Leo himself had once said, surely we were not the people to mock
at the theory of re-incarnation, which, by the way, is the first article
of faith among nearly one quarter of the human race, and this not the most
foolish quarter.

“How can that be—I ask for instruction, learned One—seeing
that memory perishes with death?”

“Ah!” he answered, “Brother Holly, it may seem to do so, but oftentimes it
comes back again, especially to those who are far advanced upon the Path.
For instance, until you read this passage I had forgotten all about that
army, but now I see it passing, passing, and myself with other monks
standing by the statue of the big Buddha in front yonder, and watching it
go by. It was not a very large army, for most of the soldiers had died, or
been killed, and it was being pursued by the wild people who lived south
of us in those days, so that it was in a great hurry to put the desert
between it and them. The general of the army was a swarthy man—I
wish that I could remember his name, but I cannot.

“Well,” he went on, “that general came up to the Lamasery and demanded a
sleeping place for his wife and children, also provisions and medicines,
and guides across the desert. The abbot of that day told him it was
against our law to admit a woman under our roof, to which he answered that
if we did not, we should have no roof left, for he would burn the place
and kill every one of us with the sword. Now, as you know, to be killed by
violence means that we must pass sundry incarnations in the forms of
animals, a horrible thing, so we chose the lesser evil and gave way, and
afterwards obtained absolution for our sins from the Great Lama. Myself I
did not see this queen, but I saw the priestess of their worship—alas!
alas!” and Kou-en beat his breast.

“Why alas?” I asked, as unconcernedly as I could, for this story
interested me strangely.

“Why? Oh! because I may have forgotten the army, but I have never
forgotten that priestess, and she has been a great hindrance to me through
many ages, delaying me upon my journey to the Other Side, to the Shore of
Salvation. I, as a humble Lama, was engaged in preparing her apartment
when she entered and threw aside her veil; yes, and perceiving a young
man, spoke to me, asking many questions, and even if I was not glad to
look again upon a woman.”

“What—what was she like?” said Leo, anxiously.

“What was she like? Oh! She was all loveliness in one shape; she was like
the dawn upon the snows; she was like the evening star above the
mountains; she was like the first flower of the spring. Brother, ask me
not what she was like, nay, I will say no more. Oh! my sin, my sin. I am
slipping backward and you draw my black shame out into the light of day.
Nay, I will confess it that you may know how vile a thing I am—I
whom perhaps you have thought holy—like yourselves. That woman, if
woman she were, lit a fire in my heart which will not burn out, oh! and
more, more,” and Kou-en rocked himself to and fro upon his stool while
tears of contrition trickled from beneath his horn spectacles, “she
made me worship her! For first she asked me of my faith and listened
eagerly as I expounded it, hoping that the light would come into her
heart; then, after I had finished she said—“‘So your Path is
Renunciation and your Nirvana a most excellent Nothingness which some
would think it scarce worth while to strive so hard to reach. Now I
will show you a more joyous way and a goddess more worthy of your
worship.’

“‘What way, and what goddess?’ I asked of her.

“‘The way of Love and Life!” she answered, ‘that makes all the world to
be, that made you, O seeker of Nirvana, and the goddess called
Nature!’

“Again I asked where is that goddess, and behold! she drew herself up,
looking most royal, and touching her ivory breast, she said, ‘I am She.
Now kneel you down and do me homage!’

“My brethren, I knelt, yes, I kissed her foot, and then I fled away shamed
and broken-hearted, and as I went she laughed, and cried: ‘Remember me
when you reach Devachan, O servant of the Budda-saint, for though I
change, I do not die, and even there I shall be with you who once gave me
worship!’

“And it is so, my brethren, it is so; for though I obtained absolution for
my sin and have suffered much for it through this, my next incarnation,
yet I cannot be rid of her, and for me the Utter Peace is far, far away,”
and Kou-en placed his withered hands before his face and sobbed outright.

A ridiculous sight, truly, to see a holy Khublighan well on the wrong side
of eighty, weeping like a child over a dream of a beautiful woman which he
imagined he had once dreamt in his last life more than two thousand years
ago. So the reader will say. But I, Holly, for reasons of my own, felt
deep sympathy with that poor old man, and Leo was also sympathetic. We
patted him on the back; we assured him that he was the victim of some evil
hallucination which could never be brought up against him in this or any
future existence, since, if sin there were, it must have been forgiven
long ago, and so forth. When his calm was somewhat restored we tried also
to extract further information from him, but with poor results, so far as
the priestess was concerned.

He said that he did not know to what religion she belonged, and did not
care, but thought that it must be an evil one. She went away the next
morning with the army, and he never saw or heard of her any more, though
it came into his mind that he was obliged to be locked in his cell for
eight days to prevent himself from following her. Yes, he had heard one
thing, for the abbot of that day had told the brethren. This priestess was
the real general of the army, not the king or the queen, the latter of
whom hated her. It was by her will that they pushed on northwards across
the desert to some country beyond the mountains, where she desired to
establish herself and her worship.

We asked if there really was any country beyond the mountains, and Kou-en
answered wearily that he believed so. Either in this or in a previous life
he had heard that people lived there who worshipped fire. Certainly also
it was true that about thirty years ago a brother who had climbed the
great peak yonder to spend some days in solitary meditation, returned and
reported that he had seen a marvellous thing, namely, a shaft of fire
burning in the heavens beyond those same mountains, though whether this
were a vision, or what, he could not say. He recalled, however, that about
that time they had felt a great earthquake.

Then the memory of that fancied transgression again began to afflict
Kou-en’s innocent old heart, and he crept away lamenting and was seen no
more for a week. Nor would he ever speak again to us of this matter.

But we spoke of it much with hope and wonder, and made up our minds that
we would at once ascend this mountain.

CHAPTER III

THE BEACON LIGHT

A week later came our opportunity of making this ascent of the mountain,
for now in mid-winter it ceased storming, and hard frost set in, which
made it possible to walk upon the surface of the snow. Learning from the
monks that at this season ovis poli and other kinds of big-horned
sheep and game descended from the hills to take refuge in certain valleys,
where they scraped away the snow to find food, we announced that we were
going out to hunt. The excuse we gave was that we were suffering from
confinement and needed exercise, having by the teaching of our religion no
scruples about killing game.

Our hosts replied that the adventure was dangerous, as the weather might
change at any moment. They told us, however, that on the slopes of this
very mountain which we desired to climb, there was a large natural cave
where, if need be, we could take shelter, and to this cave one of them,
somewhat younger and more active than the rest, offered to guide us. So,
having manufactured a rougri tent from skins, and laden our old yak, now
in the best of condition, with food and garments, on one still morning we
started as soon as it was light. Under the guidance of the monk, who,
notwithstanding his years, walked very well, we reached the northern slope
of the peak before mid-day. Here, as he had said, we found a great cave of
which the opening was protected by an over-hanging ledge of rock.
Evidently this cave was the favourite place of shelter for game at certain
seasons of the year, since in it were heaped vast accumulations of their
droppings, which removed any fear of a lack of fuel.

The rest of that short day we spent in setting up our tent in the cave, in
front of which we lit a large fire, and in a survey of the slopes of the
mountain, for we told the monk that we were searching for the tracks of
wild sheep. Indeed, as it happened, on our way back to the cave we came
across a small herd of ewes feeding upon the mosses in a sheltered spot
where in summer a streamlet ran. Of these we were so fortunate as to kill
two, for no sportsman had ever come here, and they were tame enough, poor
things. As meat would keep for ever in that temperature, we had now
sufficient food to last us for a fortnight, and dragging the animals down
the snow slopes to the cave, we skinned them by the dying light.

That evening we supped upon fresh mutton, a great luxury, which the monk
enjoyed as much as we did, since, whatever might be his views as to taking
life, he liked mutton. Then we turned into the tent and huddled ourselves
together for warmth, as the temperature must have been some degrees below
zero. The old monk rested well enough, but neither Leo nor I slept over
much, for wonder as to what we might see from the top of that mountain
banished sleep.

Next morning at the dawn, the weather being still favourable, our
companion returned to the monastery, whither we said we would follow him
in a day or two.

Now at last we were alone, and without wasting an instant began our ascent
of the peak. It was many thousand feet high and in certain places steep
enough, but the deep, frozen snow made climbing easy, so that by midday we
reached the top. Hence the view was magnificent. Beneath us stretched the
desert, and beyond it a broad belt of fantastically shaped, snow-clad
mountains, hundreds and hundreds of them; in front, to the right, to the
left, as far as the eye could reach.

“They are just as I saw them in my dream so many years ago,” muttered Leo;
“the same, the very same.”

“And where was the fiery light?” I asked.

“Yonder, I think;” and he pointed north by east.

“Well, it is not there now,” I answered, “and this place is cold.”

So, since it was dangerous to linger, lest the darkness should overtake us
on our return journey, we descended the peak again, reaching the cave
about sunset. The next four days we spent in the same way. Every morning
we crawled up those wearisome banks of snow, and every afternoon we slid
and tobogganed down them again, till I grew heartily tired of the
exercise.

On the fourth night, instead of coming to sleep in the tent Leo sat
himself down at the entrance to the cave. I asked him why he did this, but
he answered impatiently, because he wished it, so I left him alone. I
could see, indeed, that he was in a strange and irritable mood, for the
failure of our search oppressed him. Moreover, we knew, both of us, that
it could not be much prolonged, since the weather might break at any
moment, when ascents of the mountain would become impossible.

In the middle of the night I was awakened by Leo shaking me and saying—“Come
here, Horace, I have something to show you.”

Reluctantly enough I crept from between the rugs and out of the tent. To
dress there was no need, for we slept in all our garments. He led me to
the mouth of the cave and pointed northward. I looked. The night was very
dark; but far, far away appeared a faint patch of light upon the sky, such
as might be caused by the reflection of a distant fire.

“What do you make of it?” he asked anxiously.

“Nothing in particular,” I answered, “it may be anything. The moon—no,
there is none, dawn—no, it is too northerly, and it does not break
for three hours. Something burning, a house, or a funeral pyre, but how
can there be such things here? I give it up.”

“I think it is a reflection, and that if we were on the peak we should see
the light which throws it,” said Leo slowly.

“Yes, but we are not, and cannot get there in the dark.”

“Then, Horace, we must spend a night there.”

“It will be our last in this incarnation,” I answered with a laugh, “that
is if it comes on to snow.”

“We must risk it, or I will risk it. Look, the light has faded;” and there
at least he was right, for undoubtedly it had. The night was as black as
pitch.

“Let’s talk it over to-morrow,” I said, and went back to the tent, for I
was sleepy and incredulous, but Leo sat on by the mouth of the cave.

At dawn I awoke and found breakfast already cooked.

“I must start early,” Leo explained.

“Are you mad?” I asked. “How can we camp on that place?”

“I don’t know, but I am going. I must go, Horace.”

“Which means that we both must go. But how about the yak?”

“Where we can climb, it can follow,” he answered.

So we strapped the tent and other baggage, including a good supply of
cooked meat, upon the beast’s back, and started. The tramp was long since
we were obliged to make some detours to avoid slopes of frozen snow in
which, on our previous ascents, we had cut footholds with an axe, for up
these the laden animal could not clamber. Reaching the summit at length,
we dug a hole, and there pitched the tent, piling the excavated snow about
its sides. By this time it began to grow dark, and having descended into
the tent, yak and all, we ate our food and waited.

Oh! what cold was that. The frost was fearful, and at this height a wind
blew whose icy breath passed through all our wrappings, and seemed to burn
our flesh beneath as though with hot irons. It was fortunate that we had
brought the yak, for without the warmth from its shaggy body I believe
that we should have perished, even in our tent. For some hours we watched,
as indeed we must, since to sleep might mean to die, yet saw nothing save
the lonely stars, and heard nothing in that awful silence, for here even
the wind made no noise as it slid across the snows. Accustomed as I was to
such exposure, my faculties began to grow numb and my eyes to shut, when
suddenly Leo said—“Look, below the red star!”

I looked, and there high in the sky was the same curious glow which we had
seen upon the previous night. There was more than this indeed, for beneath
it, almost on a line with us and just above the crests of the intervening
peaks, appeared a faint sheet of fire and revealed against it, something
black. Whilst we watched, the fire widened, spread upwards and grew in
power and intensity. Now against its flaming background the black object
became clearly visible, and lo! it was the top of a soaring pillar
surmounted by a loop. Yes, we could see its every outline. It was the crux
ansata, the Symbol of Life itself.

The symbol vanished, the fire sank. Again it blazed up more fiercely than
before and the loop appeared afresh, then once more disappeared. A third
time the fire shone, and with such intensity, that no lightning could
surpass its brilliance. All around the heavens were lit up, and, through
the black needle-shaped eye of the symbol, as from the flare of a beacon,
or the search-light of a ship, one fierce ray shot across the sea of
mountain tops and the spaces of the desert, straight as an arrow to the
lofty peak on which we lay. Yes, it lit upon the snow, staining it red,
and upon the wild, white faces of us who watched, though to the right and
left of us spread thick darkness. My compass lay before me on the snow,
and I could even see its needle; and beyond us the shape of a white fox
that had crept near, scenting food. Then it was gone as swiftly as it
came. Gone too were the symbol and the veil of flame behind it, only the
glow lingered a little on the distant sky.

For awhile there was silence between us, then Leo said—“Do you
remember, Horace, when we lay upon the Rocking Stone where her
cloak fell upon me—” as he said the words the breath caught in his
throat—“how the ray of light was sent to us in farewell, and to show
us a path of escape from the Place of Death? Now I think that it has been
sent again in greeting to point out the path to the Place of Life where
Ayesha dwells, whom we have lost awhile.”

“It may be so,” I answered shortly, for the matter was beyond speech or
argument, beyond wonder even. But I knew then, as I know now that we were
players in some mighty, predestined drama; that our parts were written and
we must speak them, as our path was prepared and we must tread it to the
end unknown. Fear and doubt were left behind, hope was sunk in certainty;
the fore-shadowing visions of the night had found an actual fulfilment and
the pitiful seed of the promise of her who died, growing unseen through
all the cruel, empty years, had come to harvest.

No, we feared no more, not even when with the dawn rose the roaring wind,
through which we struggled down the mountain slopes, as it would seem in
peril of our lives at every step; not even as hour by hour we fought our
way onwards through the whirling snow-storm, that made us deaf and blind.
For we knew that those lives were charmed. We could not see or hear, yet
we were led. Clinging to the yak, we struggled downward and homewards,
till at length out of the turmoil and the gloom its instinct brought us
unharmed to the door of the monastery, where the old abbot embraced us in
his joy, and the monks put up prayers of thanks. For they were sure that
we must be dead. Through such a storm, they said, no man had ever lived
before.

It was still mid-winter, and oh! the awful weariness of those months of
waiting. In our hands was the key, yonder amongst those mountains lay the
door, but not yet might we set that key within its lock. For between us
and these stretched the great desert, where the snow rolled like billows,
and until that snow melted we dared not attempt its passage. So we sat in
the monastery, and schooled our hearts to patience.

Still even to these frozen wilds of Central Asia spring comes at last. One
evening the air felt warm, and that night there were only a few degrees of
frost. The next the clouds banked up, and in the morning not snow was
falling from them, but rain, and we found the old monks preparing their
instruments of husbandry, as they said that the season of sowing was at
hand. For three days it rained, while the snows melted before our eyes. On
the fourth torrents of water were rushing down the mountain and the desert
was once more brown and bare, though not for long, for within another week
it was carpeted with flowers. Then we knew that the time had come to
start.

“But whither go you? Whither go you?” asked the old abbot in dismay. “Are
you not happy here? Do you not make great strides along the Path, as may
be known by your pious conversation? Is not everything that we have your
own? Oh! why would you leave us?”

“We are wanderers,” we answered, “and when we see mountains in front of us
we must cross them.”

Kou-en looked at us shrewdly, then asked—“What do you seek beyond
the mountains? And, my brethren, what merit is gathered by hiding the
truth from an old man, for such concealments are separated from falsehoods
but by the length of a single barleycorn. Tell me, that at least my
prayers may accompany you.”

“Holy abbot,” I said, “awhile ago yonder in the library you made a certain
confession to us.”

“Oh! remind me not of it,” he said, holding up his hands. “Why do you wish
to torment me?”

“Far be the thought from us, most kind friend and virtuous man,” I
answered. “But, as it chances, your story is very much our own, and we
think that we have experience of this same priestess.”

“Speak on,” he said, much interested.

So I told him the outlines of our tale; for an hour or more I told it
while he sat opposite to us swaying his head like a tortoise and saying
nothing. At length it was done.

“Now,” I added, “let the lamp of your wisdom shine upon our darkness. Do
you not find this story wondrous, or do you perchance think that we are
liars?”

“Brethren of the great monastery called the World,” Kou-en answered with
his customary chuckle, “why should I think you liars who, from the moment
my eyes fell upon you, knew you to be true men? Moreover, why should I
hold this tale so very wondrous? You have but stumbled upon the fringe of
a truth with which we have been acquainted for many, many ages.

“Because in a vision she showed you this monastery, and led you to a spot
beyond the mountains where she vanished, you hope that this woman whom you
saw die is re-incarnated yonder. Why not? In this there is nothing
impossible to those who are instructed in the truth, though the
lengthening of her last life was strange and contrary to experience.
Doubtless you will find her there as you expect, and doubtless her khama,
or identity, is the same as that which in some earlier life of hers once
brought me to sin.

“Only be not mistaken, she is no immortal; nothing is immortal. She is but
a being held back by her own pride, her own greatness if you will, upon
the path towards Nirvana. That pride will be humbled, as already it has
been humbled; that brow of majesty shall be sprinkled with the dust of
change and death, that sinful spirit must be purified by sorrows and by
separations. Brother Leo, if you win her, it will be but to lose, and then
the ladder must be reclimbed. Brother Holly, for you as for me loss is our
only gain, since thereby we are spared much woe. Oh! bide here and pray
with me. Why dash yourselves against a rock? Why labour to pour water into
a broken jar whence it must sink into the sands of profitless experience,
and there be wasted, whilst you remain athirst?”

“Water makes the sand fertile,” I answered. “Where water falls, life
comes, and sorrow is the seed of joy.”

“Love is the law of life,” broke in Leo; “without love there is no life. I
seek love that I may live. I believe that all these things are ordained to
an end which we do not know. Fate draws me on—I fulfil my fate——”

“And do but delay your freedom. Yet I will not argue with you, brother,
who must follow your own road. See now, what has this woman, this
priestess of a false faith if she be so still, brought you in the past?
Once in another life, or so I understand your story, you were sworn to a
certain nature-goddess, who was named Isis, were you not, and to her
alone? Then a woman tempted you, and you fled with her afar. And there
what found you? The betrayed and avenging goddess who slew you, or if not
the goddess, one who had drunk of her wisdom and was the minister of her
vengeance. Having that wisdom this minister—woman or evil spirit—refused
to die because she had learned to love you, but waited knowing that in
your next life she would find you again, as indeed she would have done
more swiftly in Devachan had she died without living on alone in so much
misery. And she found you, and she died, or seemed to die, and now she is
re-born, as she must be, and doubtless you will meet once more, and again
there must come misery. Oh! my friends, go not across the mountains; bide
here with me and lament your sins.”

“Nay,” answered Leo, “we are sworn to a tryst, and we do not break our
word.”

“Then, brethren, go keep your tryst, and when you have reaped its harvest
think upon my sayings, for I am sure that the wine you crush from the
vintage of your desire will run red like blood, and that in its drinking
you shall find neither forgetfulness nor peace. Made blind by a passion of
which well I know the sting and power, you seek to add a fair-faced evil
to your lives, thinking that from this unity there shall be born all
knowledge and great joy.

“Rather should you desire to live alone in holiness until at length your
separate lives are merged and lost in the Good Unspeakable, the eternal
bliss that lies in the last Nothingness. Ah! you do not believe me now;
you shake your heads and smile; yet a day will dawn, it may be after many
incarnations, when you shall bow them in the dust and weep, saying to me,
‘Brother Kou-en, yours were the words of wisdom, ours the deeds of
foolishness;’” and with a deep sigh the old man turned and left us.

“A cheerful faith, truly,” said Leo, looking after him, “to dwell through
aeons in monotonous misery in order that consciousness may be swallowed up
at last in some void and formless abstraction called the ‘Utter Peace.’ I
would rather take my share of a bad world and keep my hope of a better.
Also I do not think that he knows anything of Ayesha and her destiny.”

“So would I,” I answered, “though perhaps he is right after all. Who can
tell? Moreover, what is the use of reasoning? Leo, we have no choice; we
follow our fate. To what that fate may lead us we shall learn in due
season.”

Then we went to rest, for it was late, though I found little sleep that
night. The warnings of the ancient abbot, good and learned man as he was,
full also of ripe experience and of the foresighted wisdom that is given
to such as he, oppressed me deeply. He promised us sorrow and bloodshed
beyond the mountains, ending in death and rebirths full of misery. Well,
it might be so, but no approaching sufferings could stay our feet. And
even if they could, they should not, since to see her face again I was
ready to brave them all. And if this was my case what must be that of Leo!

A strange theory that of Kou-en’s, that Ayesha was the goddess in old
Egypt to whom Kallikrates was priest, or at the least her representative.
That the royal Amenartas, with whom he fled, seduced him from the goddess
to whom he was sworn. That this goddess incarnate in Ayesha—or using
the woman Ayesha and her passions as her instruments—was avenged
upon them both at Kôr, and that there in an after age the bolt she shot
fell back upon her own head.

Well, I had often thought as much myself. Only I was sure that She
herself could be no actual divinity, though she might be a manifestation
of one, a priestess, a messenger, charged to work its will, to avenge or
to reward, and yet herself a human soul, with hopes and passions to be
satisfied, and a destiny to fulfil. In truth, writing now, when all is
past and done with, I find much to confirm me in, and little to turn me
from that theory, since life and powers of a quality which are more than
human do not alone suffice to make a soul divine. On the other hand,
however, it must be borne in mind that on one occasion at any rate, Ayesha
did undoubtedly suggest that in the beginning she was “a daughter of
Heaven,” and that there were others, notably the old Shaman Simbri, who
seemed to take it for granted that her origin was supernatural. But of all
these things I hope to speak in their season.

Meanwhile what lay beyond the mountains? Should we find her there who held
the sceptre and upon earth wielded the power of the outraged Isis, and
with her, that other woman who wrought the wrong? And if so, would the
dread, inhuman struggle reach its climax around the person of the sinful
priest? In a few months, a few days even, we might begin to know.

Thrilled by this thought at length I fell asleep.

CHAPTER IV

THE AVALANCHE

On the morning of the second day from that night the sunrise found us
already on our path across the desert. There, nearly a mile behind us, we
could see the ruined statue of Buddha seated in front of the ancient
monastery, and in that clear atmosphere could even distinguish the bent
form of our friend, the old abbot, Kou-en, leaning against it until we
were quite lost to sight. All the monks had wept when we parted from them,
and Kou-en even more bitterly than the rest, for he had learned to love
us.

“I am grieved,” he said, “much grieved, which indeed I should not be, for
such emotion partakes of sin. Yet I find comfort, for I know well that
although I must soon leave this present life, yet we shall meet again in
many future incarnations, and after you have put away these follies,
together tread the path to perfect peace. Now take with you my blessings
and my prayers and begone, forgetting not that should you live to return”—and
he shook his head, doubtfully—“here you will be ever welcome.”

So we embraced him and went sorrowfully.

It will be remembered that when the mysterious light fell upon us on the
peak I had my compass with me and was able roughly to take its bearings.
For lack of any better guide we now followed these bearings, travelling
almost due north-east, for in that direction had shone the fire. All day
in the most beautiful weather we marched across the flower-strewn desert,
seeing nothing except bunches of game and one or two herds of wild asses
which had come down from the mountains to feed upon the new grass. As
evening approached we shot an antelope and made our camp—for we had
brought the yak and a tent with us—among some tamarisk scrub, of
which the dry stems furnished us with fuel. Nor did we lack for water,
since by scraping in the sand soaked with melted snow, we found plenty of
fair quality. So that night we supped in luxury upon tea and antelope
meat, which indeed we were glad to have, as it spared our little store of
dried provisions.

The next morning we ascertained our position as well as we could, and
estimated that we had crossed about a quarter of the desert, a guess which
proved very accurate, for on the evening of the fourth day of our journey
we reached the bottom slopes of the opposing mountains, without having
experienced either accident or fatigue. As Leo said, things were “going
like clockwork,” but I reminded him that a good start often meant a bad
finish. Nor was I wrong, for now came our hardships. To begin with, the
mountains proved to be exceeding high; it took us two days to climb their
lower slopes. Also the heat of the sun had softened the snow, which made
walking through it laborious, whilst, accustomed though we were to such
conditions through long years of travelling, its continual glitter
affected our eyes.

The morning of the seventh day found us in the mouth of a defile which
wound away into the heart of the mountains. As it seemed the only possible
path, we followed it, and were much cheered to discover that here must
once have run a road. Not that we could see any road, indeed, for
everything was buried in snow. But that one lay beneath our feet we were
certain, since, although we marched along the edge of precipices, our
path, however steep, was always flat; moreover, the rock upon one side of
it had often been scarped by the hand of man. Of this there could be no
doubt, for as the snow did not cling here, we saw the tool marks upon its
bare surface.

Also we came to several places where galleries had been built out from the
mountain side, by means of beams let into it, as is still a common
practice in Thibet. These beams of course had long since rotted away,
leaving a gulf between us and the continuation of the path. When we met
with such gaps we were forced to go back and make a detour round or over
some mountain; but although much delayed thereby, as it happened, we
always managed to regain the road, if not without difficulty and danger.

What tried us more—for here our skill and experience as mountaineers
could not help us—was the cold at night, obliged as we were to camp
in the severe frost at a great altitude, and to endure through the long
hours of darkness penetrating and icy winds, which soughed ceaselessly
down the pass.

At length on the tenth day we reached the end of the defile, and as night
was falling, camped there in the most bitter cold. Those were miserable
hours, for now we had no fuel with which to boil water, and must satisfy
our thirst by eating frozen snow, while our eyes smarted so sorely that we
could not sleep, and notwithstanding all our wraps and the warmth that we
gathered from the yak in the little tent, the cold caused our teeth to
chatter like castanets.

The dawn came, and, after it, the sunrise. We crept from the tent, and
leaving it standing awhile, dragged our stiffened limbs a hundred yards or
so to a spot where the defile took a turn, in order that we might thaw in
the rays of the sun, which at that hour could not reach us where we had
camped.

Leo was round it first, and I heard him utter an exclamation. In a few
seconds I reached his side, and lo! before us lay our Promised Land.

Far beneath us, ten thousand feet at least—for it must be remembered
that we viewed it from the top of a mountain—it stretched away and
away till its distances met the horizon. In character it was quite flat,
an alluvial plain that probably, in some primeval age, had been the bottom
of one of the vast lakes of which a number exist in Central Asia, most of
them now in process of desiccation. One object only relieved this dreary
flatness, a single, snow-clad, and gigantic mountain, of which even at
that distance—for it was very far from us—we could clearly see
the outline. Indeed we could see more, for from its rounded crest rose a
great plume of smoke, showing that it was an active volcano, and on the
hither lip of the crater an enormous pillar of rock, whereof the top was
formed to the shape of a loop.

Yes, there it stood before us, that symbol of our vision which we had
sought these many years, and at the sight of it our hearts beat fast and
our breath came quickly. We noted at once that although we had not seen it
during our passage of the mountains, since the peaks ahead and the rocky
sides of the defile hid it from view, so great was its height that it
overtopped the tallest of them. This made it clear to us how it came to be
possible that the ray of light passing through the loop could fall upon
the highest snows of that towering pinnacle which we had climbed upon the
further side of the desert.

Also now we were certain of the cause of that ray, for the smoke behind
the loop explained this mystery. Doubtless, at times when the volcano was
awake, that smoke must be replaced by flame, emitting light of fearful
intensity, and this light it was that reached us, concentrated and
directed by the loop.

For the rest we thought that about thirty miles away we could make out a
white-roofed town set upon a mound, situated among trees upon the banks of
a wide river, which flowed across the plain. Also it was evident that this
country had a large population who cultivated the soil, for by the aid of
a pair of field glasses, one of our few remaining and most cherished
possessions, we could see the green of springing crops pierced by
irrigation canals and the lines of trees that marked the limits of the
fields.

Yes, there before us stretched the Promised Land, and there rose the
mystic Mount, so that all we had to do was to march down the snow slopes
and enter it where we would.

Thus we thought in our folly, little guessing what lay before us, what
terrors and weary suffering we must endure before we stood at length
beneath the shadow of the Symbol of Life.

Our fatigues forgotten, we returned to the tent, hastily swallowed some of
our dried food, which we washed down with lumps of snow that gave us
toothache and chilled us inside, but which thirst compelled us to eat,
dragged the poor yak to its feet, loaded it up, and started.

All this while, so great was our haste and so occupied were each of us
with our own thoughts that, if my memory serves me, we scarcely
interchanged a word. Down the snow slopes we marched swiftly and without
hesitation, for here the road was marked for us by means of pillars of
rock set opposite to one another at intervals. These pillars we observed
with satisfaction, for they told us that we were still upon a highway
which led to the Promised Land.

Yet, as we could not help noting, it was one which seemed to have gone out
of use, since with the exception of a few wild-sheep tracks and the spoor
of some bears and mountain foxes, not a single sign of beast or man could
we discover. This, however, was to be explained, we reflected, by the fact
that doubtless the road was only used in the summer season. Or perhaps the
inhabitants of the country were now stay-at-home people who never
travelled it at all.

Those slopes were longer than we thought; indeed, when darkness closed in
we had not reached the foot of them. So we were obliged to spend another
night in the snow, pitching our tent in the shelter of an over-hanging
rock. As we had descended many thousand feet, the temperature proved,
fortunately, a little milder; indeed, I do not think that there were more
than eighteen or twenty degrees of frost that night. Also here and there
the heat of the sun had melted the snow in secluded places, so that we
were able to find water to drink, while the yak could fill its poor old
stomach with dead-looking mountain mosses, which it seemed to think better
than nothing.

Again, the still dawn came, throwing its red garment over the lonesome,
endless mountains, and we dragged ourselves to our numbed feet, ate some
of our remaining food, and started onwards. Now we could no longer see the
country beneath, for it and even the towering volcano were hidden from us
by an intervening ridge that seemed to be pierced by a single narrow
gulley, towards which we headed. Indeed, as the pillars showed us, thither
ran the buried road. By mid-day it appeared quite close to us, and we
tramped on in feverish haste. As it chanced, however, there was no need to
hurry, for an hour later we learned the truth.

Between us and the mouth of the gulley rose, or rather sank, a sheer
precipice that was apparently three or four hundred feet in depth, and at
its foot we could hear the sound of water.

Right to the edge of this precipice ran the path, for one of the stone
pillars stood upon its extreme brink, and yet how could a road descend
such a place as that? We stared aghast; then a possible solution occurred
to us.

“Don’t you see,” said Leo, with a hollow laugh, “the gulf has opened since
this track was used: volcanic action probably.”

“Perhaps, or perhaps there was a wooden bridge or stairway which has
rotted. It does not matter. We must find another path, that is all,” I
answered as cheerfully as I could.

“Yes, and soon,” he said, “if we do not wish to stop here for ever.”

So we turned to the right and marched along the edge of the precipice
till, a mile or so away, we came to a small glacier, of which the surface
was sprinkled with large stones frozen into its substance. This glacier
hung down the face of the cliff like a petrified waterfall, but whether or
no it reached the foot we could not discover. At any rate, to think of
attempting its descent seemed out of the question. From this point onwards
we could see that the precipice increased in depth and far as the eye
could reach was absolutely sheer.

So we went back again and searched to the left of our road. Here the
mountains receded, so that above us rose a mighty, dazzling slope of snow
and below us lay that same pitiless, unclimbable gulf. As the light began
to fade we perceived, half a mile or more in front a bare-topped hillock
of rock, which stood on the verge of the precipice, and hurried to it,
thinking that from its crest we might be able to discover a way of
descent.

When at length we had struggled to the top, it was about a hundred and
fifty feet high; what we did discover was that, here also, as beyond the
glacier, the gulf was infinitely deeper than at the spot where the road
ended, so deep indeed that we could not see its bottom, although from it
came the sound of roaring water. Moreover, it was quite half a mile in
width.

Whilst we stared round us the sinking sun vanished behind a mountain and,
the sky being heavy, the light went out like that of a candle. Now the
ascent of this hillock had proved so steep, especially at one place, where
we were obliged to climb a sort of rock ladder, that we scarcely cared to
attempt to struggle down it again in that gloom. Therefore, remembering
that there was little to choose between the top of this knoll and the snow
plain at its foot in the matter of temperature or other conveniences, and
being quite exhausted, we determined to spend the night upon it, thereby,
as we were to learn, saving our lives.

Unloading the yak, we pitched our tent under the lee of the topmost knob
of rock and ate a couple of handfuls of dried fish and corn-cake. This was
the last of the food that we had brought with us from the Lamasery, and we
reflected with dismay that unless we could shoot something, our
commissariat was now represented by the carcass of our old friend the yak.
Then we wrapped ourselves up in our thick rugs and fur garments and forgot
our miseries in sleep.

It cannot have been long before daylight when we were awakened by a sudden
and terrific sound like the boom of a great cannon, followed by thousands
of other sounds, which might be compared to the fusillade of musketry.

“Great Heaven! What is that?” I said.

We crawled from the tent, but as yet could see nothing, whilst the yak
began to low in a terrified manner. But if we could not see we could hear
and feel. The booming and cracking had ceased, and was followed by a soft,
grinding noise, the most sickening sound, I think, to which I ever
listened. This was accompanied by a strange, steady, unnatural wind, which
seemed to press upon us as water presses. Then the dawn broke and we saw.

The mountain-side was moving down upon us in a vast avalanche of snow.

Oh! what a sight was that. On from the crest of the precipitous slopes
above, two miles and more away, it came, a living thing, rolling, sliding,
gliding; piling itself in long, leaping waves, hollowing itself into
cavernous valleys, like a tempest-driven sea, whilst above its surface
hung a powdery cloud of frozen spray.

As we watched, clinging to each other terrified, the first of these waves
struck our hill, causing the mighty mass of solid rock to quiver like a
yacht beneath the impact of an ocean roller, or an aspen in a sudden rush
of wind. It struck and slowly separated, then with a majestic motion
flowed like water over the edge of the precipice on either side, and fell
with a thudding sound into the unmeasured depths beneath. And this was but
a little thing, a mere forerunner, for after it, with a slow, serpentine
movement, rolled the body of the avalanche.

It came in combers, it came in level floods. It piled itself against our
hill, yes, to within fifty feet of the head of it, till we thought that
even that rooted rock must be torn from its foundations and hurled like a
pebble to the deeps beneath. And the turmoil of it all! The screaming of
the blast caused by the compression of the air, the dull, continuous
thudding of the fall of millions of tons of snow as they rushed through
space and ended their journey in the gulf.

Nor was this the worst of it, for as the deep snows above thinned, great
boulders that had been buried beneath them, perhaps for centuries, were
loosened from their resting-places and began to thunder down the hill. At
first they moved slowly, throwing up the hard snow around them as the prow
of a ship throws foam. Then gathering momentum, they sprang into the air
with leaps such as those of shells ricocheting upon water, till in the
end, singing and hurtling, many of them rushed past and even over us to
vanish far beyond. Some indeed struck our little mountain with the force
of shot fired from the great guns of a battle-ship, and shattered there,
or if they fell upon its side, tore away tons of rock and passed with them
into the chasm like a meteor surrounded by its satellites. Indeed, no
bombardment devised and directed by man could have been half so terrible
or, had there been anything to destroy, half so destructive.

The scene was appalling in its unchained and resistless might evolved
suddenly from the completest calm. There in the lap of the quiet
mountains, looked down upon by the peaceful, tender sky, the powers hidden
in the breast of Nature were suddenly set free, and, companioned by
whirlwinds and all the terrifying majesty of sound, loosed upon the heads
of us two human atoms.

At the first rush of snow we had leapt back behind our protecting peak
and, lying at full length upon the ground, gripped it and clung there,
fearing lest the wind should whirl us to the abyss. Long ago our tent had
gone like a dead leaf in an autumn gale, and at times it seemed as if we
must follow.

The boulders hurtled over and past us; one of them fell full upon the
little peak, shattering its crest and bursting into fragments, which fled
away, each singing its own wild song. We were not touched, but when we
looked behind us it was to see the yak, which had risen in its terror,
lying dead and headless. Then in our fear we lay still, waiting for the
end, and wondering dimly whether we should be buried in the surging snow
or swept away with the hill, or crushed by the flying rocks, or lifted and
lost in the hurricane.

How long did it last? We never knew. It may have been ten minutes or two
hours, for in such a scene time loses its proportion. Only we became aware
that the wind had fallen, while the noise of grinding snow and hurtling
boulders ceased. Very cautiously we gained our feet and looked.

In front of us was sheer mountain side, for a depth of over two miles, the
width of about a thousand yards, which had been covered with many feet of
snow, was now bare rock. Piled up against the face of our hill, almost to
its summit, lay a tongue of snow, pressed to the consistency of ice and
spotted with boulders that had lodged there. The peak itself was torn and
shattered, so that it revealed great gleaming surfaces and pits, in which
glittered mica, or some other mineral. The vast gulf behind was half
filled with the avalanche and its debris. But for the rest, it seemed as
though nothing had happened, for the sun shone sweetly overhead and the
solemn snows reflected its rays from the sides of a hundred hills. And we
had endured it all and were still alive; yes, and unhurt.

But what a position was ours! We dared not attempt to descend the mount,
lest we should sink into the loose snow and be buried there. Moreover, all
along the breadth of the path of the avalanche boulders from time to time
still thundered down the rocky slope, and with them came patches of snow
that had been left behind by the big slide, small in themselves, it is
true, but each of them large enough to kill a hundred men. It was obvious,
therefore, that until these conditions changed, or death released us, we
must abide where we were upon the crest of the hillock.

So there we sat, foodless and frightened, wondering what our old friend
Kou-en would say if he could see us now. By degrees hunger mastered all
our other sensations and we began to turn longing eyes upon the headless
body of the yak.

“Let’s skin him,” said Leo, “it will be something to do, and we shall want
his hide to-night.”

So with affection, and even reverence, we performed this office for the
dead companion of our journeyings, rejoicing the while that it was not we
who had brought him to his end. Indeed, long residence among peoples who
believed fully that the souls of men could pass into, or were risen from,
the bodies of animals, had made us a little superstitious on this matter.
It would be scarcely pleasant, we reflected, in some future incarnation,
to find our faithful friend clad in human form and to hear him bitterly
reproach us for his murder.

Being dead, however, these arguments did not apply to eating him, as we
were sure he would himself acknowledge. So we cut off little bits of his
flesh and, rolling them in snow till they looked as though they were
nicely floured, hunger compelling us, swallowed them at a gulp. It was a
disgusting meal and we felt like cannibals: but what could we do?

CHAPTER V

THE GLACIER

Even that day came to an end at last, and after a few more lumps of yak,
our tent being gone, we drew his hide over us and rested as best we could,
knowing that at least we had no more avalanches to fear. That night it
froze sharply, so that had it not been for the yak’s hide and the other
rugs and garments, which fortunately we were wearing when the snow-slide
began, it would, I think, have gone hard with us. As it was, we suffered a
great deal.

“Horace,” said Leo at the dawn, “I am going to leave this. If we have to
die, I would rather do so moving; but I don’t believe that we shall die.”

“Very well,” I said, “let us start. If the snow won’t bear us now, it
never will.”

So we tied up our rugs and the yak’s hide in two bundles and, having cut
off some more of the frozen meat, began our descent. Now, although the
mount was under two hundred feet high, its base, fortunately for us—for
otherwise it must have been swept away by the mighty pressure of the
avalanche—was broad, so that there was a long expanse of piled-up
snow between us and the level ground.

Since, owing to the overhanging conformation of the place, it was quite
impossible for us to descend in front where pressure had made the snow
hard as stone, we were obliged to risk a march over the looser material
upon its flank. As there was nothing to be gained by waiting, off we went,
Leo leading and step by step trying the snow. To our joy we discovered
that the sharp night frost had so hardened its surface that it would
support us. About half way down, however, where the pressure had been
less, it became much softer, so that we were forced to lie upon our faces,
which enabled us to distribute our weight over a larger surface, and thus
slither gently down the hill.

All went well until we were within twenty paces of the bottom, where we
must cross a soft mound formed of the powdery dust thrown off by the
avalanche in its rush. Leo slipped over safely, but I, following a yard or
two to his right, of a sudden felt the hard crust yield beneath me. An
ill-judged but quite natural flounder and wriggle, such as a newly-landed
flat-fish gives upon the sand, completed the mischief, and with one
piercing but swiftly stifled yell, I vanished.

Any one who has ever sunk in deep water will know that the sensation is
not pleasant, but I can assure him that to go through the same experience
in soft snow is infinitely worse; mud alone could surpass its terrors.
Down I went, and down, till at length I seemed to reach a rock which alone
saved me from disappearing for ever. Now I felt the snow closing above me
and with it came darkness and a sense of suffocation. So soft was the
drift, however, that before I was overcome I contrived with my arms to
thrust away the powdery dust from about my head, thus forming a little
hollow into which air filtered slowly. Getting my hands upon the stone, I
strove to rise, but could not, the weight upon me was too great.

Then I abandoned hope and prepared to die. The process proved not
altogether unpleasant. I did not see visions from my past life as drowning
men are supposed to do, but—and this shows how strong was her empire
over me—my mind flew back to Ayesha. I seemed to behold her and a
man at her side, standing over me in some dark, rocky gulf. She was
wrapped in a long travelling cloak, and her lovely eyes were wild with
fear. I rose to salute her, and make report, but she cried in a fierce,
concentrated voice—“What evil thing has happened here? Thou livest;
then where is my lord Leo? Speak, man, and say where thou hast hid my lord—or
die.”

The vision was extraordinarily real and vivid, I remember, and, considered
in connection with a certain subsequent event, in all ways most
remarkable, but it passed as swiftly as it came.

Then my senses left me.

I saw a light again. I heard a voice, that of Leo. “Horace,” he cried,
“Horace, hold fast to the stock of the rifle.” Something was thrust
against my outstretched hand. I gripped it despairingly, and there came a
strain. It was useless, I did not move. Then, bethinking me, I drew up my
legs and by chance or the mercy of Heaven, I know not, got my feet against
a ridge of the rock on which I was lying. Again I felt the strain, and
thrust with all my might. Of a sudden the snow gave, and out of that hole
I shot like a fox from its earth.

I struck something. It was Leo straining at the gun, and I knocked him
backwards. Then down the steep slope we rolled, landing at length upon the
very edge of the precipice. I sat up, drawing in the air with great gasps,
and oh! how sweet it was. My eyes fell upon my hand, and I saw that the
veins stood out on the back of it, black as ink and large as cords.
Clearly I must have been near my end.

“How long was I in there?” I gasped to Leo, who sat at my side, wiping off
the sweat that ran from his face in streams.

“Don’t know. Nearly twenty minutes, I should think.”

“Twenty minutes! It seemed like twenty centuries. How did you get me out?
You could not stand upon the drift dust.”

“No; I lay upon the yak skin where the snow was harder and tunnelled
towards you through the powdery stuff with my hands, for I knew where you
had sunk and it was not far off. At last I saw your finger tips; they were
so blue that for a few seconds I took them for rock, but thrust the butt
of the rifle against them. Luckily you still had life enough to catch hold
of it, and you know the rest. Were we not both very strong, it could never
have been done.”

“Thank you, old fellow,” I said simply.

“Why should you thank me?” he asked with one of his quick smiles. “Do you
suppose that I wished to continue this journey alone? Come, if you have
got your breath, let us be getting on. You have been sleeping in a cold
bed and want exercise. Look, my rifle is broken and yours is lost in the
snow. Well, it will save us the trouble of carrying the cartridges,” and
he laughed drearily.

Then we began our march, heading for the spot where the road ended four
miles or so away, for to go forward seemed useless. In due course we
reached it safely. Once a mass of snow as large as a church swept down
just in front of us, and once a great boulder loosened from the mountain
rushed at us suddenly like an attacking lion, or the stones thrown by
Polyphemus at the ship of Odysseus, and, leaping over our heads, vanished
with an angry scream into the depths beneath. But we took little heed of
these things: our nerves were deadened, and no danger seemed to affect
them.

There was the end of the road, and there were our own footprints and the
impress of the yak’s hoofs in the snow. The sight of them affected me, for
it seemed strange that we should have lived to look upon them again. We
stared over the edge of the precipice. Yes, it was sheer and absolutely
unclimbable.

“Come to the glacier,” said Leo.

So we went on to it, and scrambling a little way down its root, made an
examination. Here, so far as we could judge, the cliff was about four
hundred feet deep. But whether or no the tongue of ice reached to the foot
of it we were unable to tell, since about two thirds of the way down it
arched inwards, like the end of a bent bow, and the conformation of the
overhanging rocks on either side was such that we could not see where it
terminated. We climbed back again and sat down, and despair took hold of
us, bitter, black despair.

“What are we to do?” I asked. “In front of us death. Behind us death, for
how can we recross those mountains without food or guns to shoot it with?
Here death, for we must sit and starve. We have striven and failed. Leo,
our end is at hand. Only a miracle can save us.”

“A miracle,” he answered. “Well, what was it that led us to the top of the
mount so that we were able to escape the avalanche? And what was it which
put that rock in your way as you sank into the bed of dust, and gave me
wit and strength to dig you out of your grave of snow? And what is it that
has preserved us through seventeen years of dangers such as few men have
known and lived? Some directing Power. Some Destiny that will accomplish
itself in us. Why should the Power cease to guide? Why should the Destiny
be baulked at last?”

He paused, then added fiercely, “I tell you, Horace, that even if we had
guns, food, and yaks, I would not turn back upon our spoor, since to do so
would prove me a coward and unworthy of her. I will go on.”

“How?” I asked.

“By that road,” and he pointed to the glacier.

“It is a road to death!”

“Well, if so, Horace, it would seem that in this land men find life in
death, or so they believe. If we die now, we shall die travelling our
path, and in the country where we perish we may be born again. At least I
am determined, so you must choose.”

“I have chosen long ago. Leo, we began this journey together and we will
end it together. Perhaps Ayesha knows and will help us,” and I laughed
drearily. “If not—come, we are wasting time.”

Then we took counsel, and the end of it was that we cut a skin rug and the
yak’s tough hide into strips and knotted these together into two
serviceable ropes, which we fastened about our middles, leaving one end
loose, for we thought that they might help us in our descent.

Next we bound fragments of another skin rug about our legs and knees to
protect them from the chafing of the ice and rocks, and for the same
reason put on our thick leather gloves. This done, we took the remainder
of our gear and heavy robes and, having placed stones in them, threw them
over the brink of the precipice, trusting to find them again, should we
ever reach its foot. Now our preparations were complete, and it was time
for us to start upon perhaps one of the most desperate journeys ever
undertaken by men of their own will.

Yet we stayed a little, looking at each other in piteous fashion, for we
could not speak. Only we embraced, and I confess, I think I wept a little.
It all seemed so sad and hopeless, these longings endured through many
years, these perpetual, weary travellings, and now—the end. I could
not bear to think of that splendid man, my ward, my most dear friend, the
companion of my life, who stood before me so full of beauty and of vigour,
but who must within a few short minutes be turned into a heap of
quivering, mangled flesh. For myself it did not matter. I was old, it was
time that I should die. I had lived innocently, if it were innocent to
follow this lovely image, this Siren of the caves, who lured us on to
doom.

No, I don’t think that I thought of myself then, but I thought a great
deal of Leo, and when I saw his determined face and flashing eyes as he
nerved himself to the last endeavour, I was proud of him. So in broken
accents I blessed him and wished him well through all the aeons, praying
that I might be his companion to the end of time. In few words and short
he thanked me and gave me back my blessing. Then he muttered—“Come.”

So side by side we began the terrible descent. At first it was easy
enough, although a slip would have hurled us to eternity. But we were
strong and skilful, accustomed to such places moreover, and made none.
About a quarter of the way down we paused, standing upon a great boulder
that was embedded in the ice, and, turning round cautiously, leaned our
backs against the glacier and looked about us. Truly it was a horrible
place, almost sheer, nor did we learn much, for beneath us, a hundred and
twenty feet or more, the projecting bend cut off our view of what lay
below.

So, feeling that our nerves would not bear a prolonged contemplation of
that dizzy gulf, once more we set our faces to the ice and proceeded on
the downward climb. Now matters were more difficult, for the stones were
fewer and once or twice we must slide to reach them, not knowing if we
should ever stop again. But the ropes which we threw over the angles of
the rocks, or salient points of ice, letting ourselves down by their help
and drawing them after us when we reached the next foothold, saved us from
disaster.

Thus at length we came to the bend, which was more than half way down the
precipice, being, so far as I could judge, about two hundred and fifty
feet from its lip, and say one hundred and fifty from the darksome bottom
of the narrow gulf. Here were no stones, but only some rough ice, on which
we sat to rest.

“We must look,” said Leo presently.

But the question was, how to do this. Indeed, there was only one way, to
hang over the bend and discover what lay below. We read each other’s
thought without the need of words, and I made a motion as though I would
start.

“No,” said Leo, “I am younger and stronger than you. Come, help me,” and
he began to fasten the end of his rope to a strong, projecting point of
ice. “Now,” he said, “hold my ankles.”

It seemed an insanity, but there was nothing else to be done, so, fixing
my heels in a niche, I grasped them and slowly he slid forward till his
body vanished to the middle. What he saw does not matter, for I saw it all
afterwards, but what happened was that suddenly all his great weight came
upon my arms with such a jerk that his ankles were torn from my grip.

Or, who knows! perhaps in my terror I loosed them, obeying the natural
impulse which prompts a man to save his own life. If so, may I be
forgiven, but had I held on, I must have been jerked into the abyss. Then
the rope ran out and remained taut.

“Leo!” I screamed, “Leo!” and I heard a muffled voice saying, as I
thought, “Come.” What it really said was—“Don’t come.” But indeed—and
may it go to my credit—I did not pause to think, but face outwards,
just as I was sitting, began to slide and scramble down the ice.

In two seconds I had reached the curve, in three I was over it. Beneath
was what I can only describe as a great icicle broken off short, and
separated from the cliff by about four yards of space. This icicle was not
more than fifteen feet in length and sloped outwards, so that my descent
was not sheer. Moreover, at the end of it the trickling of water, or some
such accident, had worn away the ice, leaving a little ledge as broad,
perhaps, as a man’s hand. There were roughnesses on the surface below the
curve, upon which my clothing caught, also I gripped them desperately with
my fingers. Thus it came about that I slid down quite gently and, my heels
landing upon the little ledge, remained almost upright, with outstretched
arms—like a person crucified to a cross of ice.

Then I saw everything, and the sight curdled the blood within my veins.
Hanging to the rope, four or five feet below the broken point, was Leo,
out of reach of it, and out of reach of the cliff; as he hung turning
slowly round and round, much as—for in a dreadful, inconsequent
fashion the absurd similarity struck me even then—a joint turns
before the fire. Below yawned the black gulf, and at the bottom of it,
far, far beneath, appeared a faint, white sheet of snow. That is what I
saw.

Think of it! Think of it! I crucified upon the ice, my heels resting upon
a little ledge; my fingers grasping excrescences on which a bird could
scarcely have found a foothold; round and below me dizzy space. To climb
back whence I came was impossible, to stir even was impossible, since one
slip and I must be gone.

And below me, hung like a spider to its cord, Leo turning slowly round and
round!

I could see that rope of green hide stretch beneath his weight and the
double knots in it slip and tighten, and I remember wondering which would
give first, the hide or the knots, or whether it would hold till he
dropped from the noose limb by limb.

Oh! I have been in many a perilous place, I who sprang from the Swaying
Stone to the point of the Trembling Spur, and missed my aim, but never,
never in such a one as this. Agony took hold of me; a cold sweat burst
from every pore. I could feel it running down my face like tears; my hair
bristled upon my head. And below, in utter silence, Leo turned round and
round, and each time he turned his up-cast eyes met mine with a look that
was horrible to see.

The silence was the worst of it, the silence and the helplessness. If he
had cried out, if he had struggled, it would have been better. But to know
that he was alive there, with every nerve and perception at its utmost
stretch. Oh! my God! Oh! my God!

My limbs began to ache, and yet I dared not stir a muscle. They ached
horribly, or so I thought, and beneath this torture, mental and physical,
my mind gave.

I remembered things: remembered how, as a child, I had climbed a tree and
reached a place whence I could move neither up nor down, and what I
suffered then. Remembered how once in Egypt a foolhardy friend of mine had
ascended the Second Pyramid alone, and become thus crucified upon its
shining cap, where he remained for a whole half hour with four hundred
feet of space beneath him. I could see him now stretching his stockinged
foot downwards in a vain attempt to reach the next crack, and drawing it
back again; could see his tortured face, a white blot upon the red
granite.

Then that face vanished and blackness gathered round me, and in the
blackness visions: of the living, resistless avalanche, of the snow-grave
into which I had sunk—oh! years and years ago; of Ayesha demanding
Leo’s life at my hands. Blackness and silence, through which I could only
hear the cracking of my muscles.

Suddenly in the blackness a flash, and in the silence a sound. The flash
was the flash of a knife which Leo had drawn. He was hacking at the cord
with it fiercely, fiercely, to make an end. And the sound was that of the
noise he made, a ghastly noise, half shout of defiance and half yell of
terror, as at the third stroke it parted.

I saw it part. The tough hide was half cut through, and its severed
portion curled upwards and downwards like the upper and lower lips of an
angry dog, whilst that which was unsevered stretched out slowly, slowly,
till it grew quite thin. Then it snapped, so that the rope flew upwards
and struck me across the face like the lash of a whip.

Another instant and I heard a crackling, thudding sound. Leo had struck
the ground below. Leo was dead, a mangled mass of flesh and bone as I had
pictured him. I could not bear it. My nerve and human dignity came back. I
would not wait until, my strength exhausted, I slid from my perch as a
wounded bird falls from a tree. No, I would follow him at once, of my own
act.

I let my arms fall against my sides, and rejoiced in the relief from pain
that the movement gave me. Then balanced upon my heels, I stood upright,
took my last look at the sky, muttered my last prayer. For an instant I
remained thus poised.

Shouting, “I come,” I raised my hands above my head and dived as a bather
dives, dived into the black gulf beneath.

CHAPTER VI

IN THE GATE

Oh! that rush through space! Folk falling thus are supposed to lose
consciousness, but I can assert that this is not true. Never were my wits
and perceptions more lively than while I travelled from that broken
glacier to the ground, and never did a short journey seem to take a longer
time. I saw the white floor, like some living thing, leaping up through
empty air to meet me, then—finis!

Crash! Why, what was this? I still lived. I was in water, for I could feel
its chill, and going down, down, till I thought I should never rise again.
But rise I did, though my lungs were nigh to bursting first. As I floated
up towards the top I remembered the crash, which told me that I had passed
through ice. Therefore I should meet ice at the surface again. Oh! to
think that after surviving so much I must be drowned like a kitten and
beneath a sheet of ice. My hands touched it. There it was above me shining
white like glass. Heaven be praised! My head broke through; in this low
and sheltered gorge it was but a film no thicker than a penny formed by
the light frost of the previous night. So I rose from the deep and stared
about me, treading water with my feet.

Then I saw the gladdest sight that ever my eyes beheld, for on the right,
not ten yards away, the water running from his hair and beard, was Leo.
Leo alive, for he broke the thin ice with his arms as he struggled towards
the shore from the deep river.^[2]
He saw me also, and his grey eyes seemed to start out of his head.

[2]
Usually, as we learned afterwards, the river at this spot was quite shallow;
only a foot or two in depth. It was the avalanche that by damming it with
fallen heaps of snow had raised its level very many feet. Therefore, to this
avalanche, which had threatened to destroy us, we in reality owed our lives,
for had the stream stood only at its normal height we must have been dashed to
pieces upon the stones. —L. H. H.

“Still living, both of us, and the precipice passed!” he shouted in a
ringing, exultant voice. “I told you we were led.”

“Aye, but whither?” I answered as I too fought my way through the film of
ice.

Then it was I became aware that we were no longer alone, for on the bank
of the river, some thirty yards from us, stood two figures, a man leaning
upon a long staff and a woman. He was a very old man, for his eyes were
horny, his snow-white hair and beard hung upon the bent breast and
shoulders, and his sardonic, wrinkled features were yellow as wax. They
might have been those of a death mask cut in marble. There, clad in an
ample, monkish robe, and leaning upon the staff, he stood still as a
statue and watched us. I noted it all, every detail, although at the time
I did not know that I was doing so, as we broke our way through the ice
towards them and afterwards the picture came back to me. Also I saw that
the woman, who was very tall, pointed to us.

Nearer the bank, or rather to the rock edge of the river, its surface was
free of ice, for here the stream ran very swiftly. Seeing this, we drew
close together and swam on side by side to help each other if need were.
There was much need, for in the fringe of the torrent the strength that
had served me so long seemed to desert me, and I became helpless; numbed,
too, with the biting coldness of the water. Indeed, had not Leo grasped my
clothes I think that I should have been swept away by the current to
perish. Thus aided I fought on a while, till he said—“I am going
under. Hold to the rope end.”

So I gripped the strip of yak’s hide that was still fast about him, and,
his hand thus freed, Leo made a last splendid effort to keep us both,
cumbered as we were with the thick, soaked garments that dragged us down
like lead, from being sucked beneath the surface. Moreover, he succeeded
where any other swimmer of less strength must have failed. Still, I
believe that we should have drowned, since here the water ran like a
mill-race, had not the man upon the shore, seeing our plight and urged
thereto by the woman, run with surprising swiftness in one so aged, to a
point of rock that jutted some yards into the stream, past which we were
being swept, and seating himself, stretched out his long stick towards us.

With a desperate endeavour, Leo grasped it as we went by, rolling over and
over each other, and held on. Round we swung into the eddy, found our
feet, were knocked down again, rubbed and pounded on the rocks. But still
gripping that staff of salvation, to his end of which the old man clung
like a limpet to a stone, while the woman clung to him, we recovered
ourselves, and, sheltered somewhat by the rock, floundered towards the
shore. Lying on his face—for we were still in great danger—the
man extended his arm. We could not reach it; and worse, suddenly the staff
was torn from him; we were being swept away.

Then it was that the woman did a noble thing, for springing into the water—yes,
up to her armpits—and holding fast to the old man by her left hand,
with the right she seized Leo’s hair and dragged him shorewards. Now he
found his feet for a moment, and throwing one arm about her slender form,
steadied himself thus, while with the other he supported me. Next followed
a long confused struggle, but the end of it was that three of us, the old
man, Leo and I, rolled in a heap upon the bank and lay there gasping.

Presently I looked up. The woman stood over us, water streaming from her
garments, staring like one in a dream at Leo’s face, smothered as it was
with blood running from a deep cut in his head. Even then I noticed how
stately and beautiful she was. Now she seemed to awake and, glancing at
the robes that clung to her splendid shape, said something to her
companion, then turned and ran towards the cliff.

As we lay before him, utterly exhausted, the old man, who had risen,
contemplated us solemnly with his dim eyes. He spoke, but we did not
understand. Again he tried another language and without success. A third
time and our ears were opened, for the tongue he used was Greek; yes,
there in Central Asia he addressed us in Greek, not very pure, it is true,
but still Greek.

“Are you wizards,” he said, “that you have lived to reach this land?”

“Nay,” I answered in the same tongue, though in broken words—since
of Greek I had thought little for many a year—“for then we should
have come otherwise,” and I pointed to our hurts and the precipice behind
us.

“They know the ancient speech; it is as we were told from the Mountain,”
he muttered to himself. Then he asked—“Strangers, what seek you?”

Now I grew cunning and did not answer, fearing lest, should he learn the
truth, he would thrust us back into the river. But Leo had no such
caution, or rather all reason had left him; he was light-headed.

“We seek,” he stuttered out—his Greek, which had always been feeble,
now was simply barbarous and mixed with various Thibetan dialects—“we
seek the land of the Fire Mountain that is crowned with the Sign of Life.”

The man stared at us. “So you know,” he said, then broke off and added,
“and whom do you seek?”

“Her,” answered Leo wildly, “the Queen.” I think that he meant to say the
priestess, or the goddess, but could only think of the Greek for Queen, or
rather something resembling it. Or perhaps it was because the woman who
had gone looked like a queen.

“Oh!” said the man, “you seek a queen—then you are those for
whom we were bidden to watch. Nay, how can I be sure?”

“Is this a time to put questions?” I gasped angrily. “Answer me one
rather: who are you?”

“I? Strangers, my title is Guardian of the Gate, and the lady who was with
me is the Khania of Kaloon.”

At this point Leo began to faint.

“That man is sick,” said the Guardian, “and now that you have got your
breath again, you must have shelter, both of you, and at once. Come, help
me.”

So, supporting Leo on either side, we dragged ourselves away from that
accursed cliff and Styx-like river up a narrow, winding gorge. Presently
it opened out, and there, stretching across the glade, we saw the Gate. Of
this all I observed then, for my memory of the details of this scene and
of the conversation that passed is very weak and blurred, was that it
seemed to be a mighty wall of rock in which a pathway had been hollowed
where doubtless once passed the road. On one side of this passage was a
stair, which we began to ascend with great difficulty, for Leo was now
almost senseless and scarcely moved his legs. Indeed at the head of the
first flight he sank down in a heap, nor did our strength suffice to lift
him.

While I wondered feebly what was to be done, I heard footsteps, and
looking up, saw the woman who had saved him descending the stair, and
after her two robed men with a Tartar cast of countenance, very impassive;
small eyes and yellowish skin. Even the sight of us did not appear to move
them to astonishment. She spoke some words to them, whereon they lifted
Leo’s heavy frame, apparently with ease, and carried him up the steps.

We followed, and reached a room that seemed to be hewn from the rock above
the gateway, where the woman called Khania left us. From it we passed
through other rooms, one of them a kind of kitchen, in which a fire
burned, till we came to a large chamber, evidently a sleeping place, for
in it were wooden bedsteads, mattresses and rugs. Here Leo was laid down,
and with the assistance of one of his servants, the old Guardian undressed
him, at the same time motioning me to take off my own garments. This I did
gladly enough for the first time during many days, though with great pain
and difficulty, to find that I was a mass of wounds and bruises.

Presently our host blew upon a whistle, and the other servant appeared
bringing hot water in a jar, with which we were washed over. Then the
Guardian dressed our hurts with some soothing ointment, and wrapped us
round with blankets. After this broth was brought, into which he mixed
medicine, and giving me a portion to drink where I lay upon one of the
beds, he took Leo’s head upon his knee and poured the rest of it down his
throat. Instantly a wonderful warmth ran through me, and my aching brain
began to swim. Then I remembered no more.

After this we were very, very ill. What may be the exact medical
definition of our sickness I do not know, but in effect it was such as
follows loss of blood, extreme exhaustion of body, paralysing shock to the
nerves and extensive cuts and contusions. These taken together produced a
long period of semi-unconsciousness, followed by another period of fever
and delirium. All that I can recall of those weeks while we remained the
guests of the Guardian of the Gate, may be summed up in one word—dreams,
that is until at last I recovered my senses.

The dreams themselves are forgotten, which is perhaps as well, since they
were very confused, and for the most part awful; a hotch-potch of
nightmares, reflected without doubt from vivid memories of our recent and
fearsome sufferings. At times I would wake up from them a little, I
suppose when food was administered to me, and receive impressions of
whatever was passing in the place. Thus I can recollect that yellow-faced
old Guardian standing over me like a ghost in the moonlight, stroking his
long beard, his eyes fixed upon my face, as though he would search out the
secrets of my soul.

“They are the men,” he muttered to himself, “without doubt they are the
men,” then walked to the window and looked up long and earnestly, like one
who studies the stars.

After this I remember a disturbance in the room, and dominating it, as it
were, the rich sound of a woman’s voice and the rustle of a woman’s silks
sweeping the stone floor. I opened my eyes and saw that it was she who had
helped to rescue us, who had rescued us in fact, a tall and
noble-looking lady with a beauteous, weary face and liquid eyes which
seemed to burn. From the heavy cloak she wore I thought that she must have
just returned from a journey.

She stood above me and looked at me, then turned away with a gesture of
indifference, if not of disgust, speaking to the Guardian in a low voice.
By way of answer he bowed, pointing to the other bed where Leo lay,
asleep, and thither she passed with slow, imperious movements. I saw her
bend down and lift the corner of a wrapping which covered his wounded
head, and heard her utter some smothered words before she turned round to
the Guardian as though to question him further.

But he had gone, and being alone, for she thought me senseless, she drew a
rough stool to the side of the bed, and seating herself studied Leo, who
lay thereon, with an earnestness that was almost terrible, for her soul
seemed to be concentrated in her eyes, and to find expression through
them. Long she gazed thus, then rose and began to walk swiftly up and down
the chamber, pressing her hands now to her bosom and now to her brow, a
certain passionate perplexity stamped upon her face, as though she
struggled to remember something and could not.

“Where and when?” she whispered. “Oh! where and when?”

Of the end of that scene I know nothing, for although I fought hard
against it, oblivion mastered me. After this I became aware that the
regal-looking woman called Khania, was always in the room, and that she
seemed to be nursing Leo with great care and tenderness. Sometimes even
she nursed me when Leo did not need attention, and she had nothing else to
do, or so her manner seemed to suggest. It was as though I excited her
curiosity, and she wished me to recover that it might be satisfied.

Again I awoke, how long afterwards I cannot say. It was night, and the
room was lighted by the moon only, now shining in a clear sky. Its steady
rays entering at the window-place fell on Leo’s bed, and by them I saw
that the dark, imperial woman was watching at his side. Some sense of her
presence must have communicated itself to him, for he began to mutter in
his sleep, now in English, now in Arabic. She became intensely interested;
as her every movement showed. Then rising suddenly she glided across the
room on tiptoe to look at me. Seeing her coming I feigned to be asleep,
and so well that she was deceived.

For I was also interested. Who was this lady whom the Guardian had called
the Khania of Kaloon? Could it be she whom we sought? Why not? And yet if
I saw Ayesha, surely I should know her, surely there would be no room for
doubt.

Back she went again to the bed, kneeling down beside Leo, and in the
intense silence which followed—for he had ceased his mutterings—I
thought that I could hear the beating of her heart. Now she began to
speak, very low and in that same bastard Greek tongue, mixed here and
there with Mongolian words such as are common to the dialects of Central
Asia. I could not hear or understand all she said, but some sentences I
did understand, and they frightened me not a little.

“Man of my dreams,” she murmured, “whence come you? Who are you? Why did
the Hesea bid me to meet you?” Then some sentences I could not catch. “You
sleep; in sleep the eyes are opened. Answer, I bid you; say what is the
bond between you and me? Why have I dreamt of you? Why do I know you? Why——?”
and the sweet, rich voice died slowly from a whisper into silence, as
though she were ashamed to utter what was on her tongue.

As she bent over him a lock of her hair broke loose from its jewelled
fillet and fell across his face. At its touch Leo seemed to wake, for he
lifted his gaunt, white hand and touched the hair, then said in English—“Where
am I? Oh! I remember;” and their eyes met as he strove to lift himself and
could not. Then he spoke again in his broken, stumbling Greek, “You are
the lady who saved me from the water. Say, are you also that queen whom I
have sought so long and endured so much to find?”

“I know not,” she answered in a voice as sweet as honey, a low, trembling
voice; “but true it is I am a queen—if a Khania be a queen.”

“Say, then, Queen, do you remember me?”

“We have met in dreams,” she answered, “I think that we have met in a past
that is far away. Yes; I knew it when first I saw you there by the river.
Stranger with the well remembered face, tell me, I pray you, how you are
named?”

“Leo Vincey.”

She shook her head, whispering—“I know not the name, yet you I
know.”

“You know me! How do you know me?” he said heavily, and seemed to sink
again into slumber or swoon.

She watched him for a while very intently. Then as though some force that
she could not resist drew her, I saw her bend down her head over his
sleeping face. Yes; and I saw her kiss him swiftly on the lips, then
spring back crimson to the hair, as though overwhelmed with shame at this
victory of her mad passion.

Now it was that she discovered me.

Bewildered, fascinated, amazed, I had raised myself upon my bed, not
knowing it; I suppose that I might see and hear the better. It was wrong,
doubtless, but no common curiosity over-mastered me, who had my share in
all this story. More, it was foolish, but illness and wonder had killed my
reason.

Yes, she saw me watching them, and such fury seemed to take hold of her
that I thought my hour had come.

“Man, have you dared——?” she said in an intense whisper, and
snatching at her girdle. Now in her hand shone a knife, and I knew that it
was destined for my heart. Then in this sore danger my wit came back to me
and as she advanced I stretched out my shaking hand, saying—“Oh! of
your pity, give me to drink. The fever burns me, it burns,” and I looked
round like one bewildered who sees not, repeating, “Give me drink, you who
are called Guardian,” and I fell back exhausted.

She stopped like a hawk in its stoop, and swiftly sheathed the dagger.
Then taking a bowl of milk that stood on a table near her, she held it to
my lips, searching my face the while with her flaming eyes, for indeed
passion, rage, and fear had lit them till they seemed to flame. I drank
the milk in great gulps, though never in my life did I find it more hard
to swallow.

“You tremble,” she said; “have dreams haunted you?”

“Aye, friend,” I answered, “dreams of that fearsome precipice and of the
last leap.”

“Aught else?” she asked.

“Nay; is it not enough? Oh! what a journey to have taken to befriend a
queen.”

“To befriend a queen,” she repeated puzzled. “What means the man? You
swear you have had no other dreams?”

“Aye, I swear by the Symbol of Life and the Mount of the Wavering Flame,
and by yourself, O Queen from the ancient days.”

Then I sighed and pretended to swoon, for I could think of nothing else to
do. As I closed my eyes I saw her face that had been red as dawn turn pale
as eve, for my words and all which might lie behind them, had gone home.
Moreover, she was in doubt, for I could hear her fingering the handle of
the dagger. Then she spoke aloud, words for my ears if they still were
open.

“I am glad,” she said, “that he dreamed no other dreams, since had he done
so and babbled of them it would have been ill-omened, and I do not wish
that one who has travelled far to visit us should be hurled to the
death-dogs for burial; one, moreover, who although old and hideous, still
has the air of a wise and silent man.”

Now while I shivered at these unpleasant hints—though what the
“death-dogs” in which people were buried might be, I could not conceive—to
my intense joy I heard the foot of the Guardian on the stairs, heard him
too enter the room and saw him bow before the lady.

“How go these sick men, niece?”^[3]
he said in his cold voice.

[3]
I found later that the Khania, Atene, was not Simbri’s niece but his
great-niece, on the mother’s side.—L. H. H.

“They swoon, both of them,” she answered.

“Indeed, is it so? I thought otherwise. I thought they woke.”

“What have you heard, Shaman (i.e. wizard)?” she asked angrily.

“I? Oh! I heard the grating of a dagger in its sheath and the distant
baying of the death-hounds.”

“And what have you seen, Shaman?” she asked again, “looking through the
Gate you guard?”

“Strange sight, Khania, my niece. But—men awake from swoons.”

“Aye,” she answered, “so while this one sleeps, bear him to another
chamber, for he needs change, and the lord yonder needs more space and
untainted air.”

The Guardian, whom she called “Shaman” or Magician, held a lamp in his
hand, and by its light it was easy to see his face, which I watched out of
the corner of my eye. I thought that it wore a very strange expression,
one moreover that alarmed me somewhat. From the beginning I had misdoubted
me of this old man, whose cast of countenance was vindictive as it was
able; now I was afraid of him.

“To which chamber, Khania?” he said with meaning.

“I think,” she answered slowly, “to one that is healthful, where he will
recover. The man has wisdom,” she added as though in explanation,
“moreover, having the word from the Mountain, to harm him would be
dangerous. But why do you ask?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“I tell you I heard the death-hounds bay, that is all. Yes, with you I
think that he has wisdom, and the bee which seeks honey should suck the
flower—before it fades! Also, as you say, there are commands with
which it is ill to trifle, even if we cannot guess their meaning.”

Then going to the door he blew upon his whistle, and instantly I heard the
feet of his servants upon the stairs. He gave them an order, and gently
enough they lifted the mattress on which I lay and followed him down
sundry passages and past some stairs into another chamber shaped like that
we had left, but not so large, where they placed me upon a bed.

The Guardian watched me awhile to see that I did not wake. Next he
stretched out his hand and felt my heart and pulse; an examination the
results of which seemed to puzzle him, for he uttered a little
exclamation and shook his head. After this he left the room, and I heard
him bolt the door behind him. Then, being still very weak, I fell asleep
in earnest.

When I awoke it was broad daylight. My mind was clear and I felt better
than I had done for many a day, signs by which I knew that the fever had
left me and that I was on the high road to recovery. Now I remembered all
the events of the previous night and was able to weigh them carefully.
This, to be sure, I did for many reasons, among them that I knew I had
been and still was, in great danger.

I had seen and heard too much, and this woman called Khania guessed that I
had seen and heard. Indeed, had it not been for my hints about the Symbol
of Life and the Mount of Flame, after I had disarmed her first rage by my
artifice, I felt sure that she would have ordered the old Guardian or
Shaman to do me to death in this way or the other; sure also that he would
not have hesitated to obey her. I had been spared partly because, for some
unknown reason, she was afraid to kill me, and partly that she might learn
how much I knew, although the “death-hounds had bayed,” whatever that
might mean. Well, up to the present I was safe, and for the rest I must
take my chance. Moreover it was necessary to be cautious, and, if need
were, to feign ignorance. So, dismissing the matter of my own fate from my
mind, I fell to considering the scene which I had witnessed and what might
be its purport.

Was our quest at an end? Was this woman Ayesha? Leo had so dreamed, but he
was still delirious, therefore here was little on which to lean. What
seemed more to the point was that she herself evidently appeared to think
that there existed some tie between her and this sick man. Why had she
embraced him? I was sure that she could be no wanton, nor indeed would any
woman indulge for its own sake in such folly with a stranger who hung
between life and death. What she had done was done because irresistible
impulse, born of knowledge, or at least of memories, drove her on, though
mayhap the knowledge was imperfect and the memories were undefined. Who
save Ayesha could have known anything of Leo in the past? None who lived
upon the earth to-day.

And yet, why not, if what Kou-en the abbot and tens of millions of his
fellow-worshippers believed were true? If the souls of human beings were
in fact strictly limited in number, and became the tenants of an endless
succession of physical bodies which they change from time to time as we
change our worn-out garments, why should not others have known him? For
instance that daughter of the Pharaohs who “caused him through love to
break the vows that he had vowed” knew a certain Kallikrates, a priest of
“Isis whom the gods cherish and the demons obey;” even Amenartas, the
mistress of magic.

Oh! now a light seemed to break upon me, a wonderful light. What if
Amenartas and this Khania, this woman with royalty stamped on every
feature, should be the same? Would not that “magic of my own people that I
have” of which she wrote upon the Sherd, enable her to pierce the darkness
of the Past and recognize the priest whom she had bewitched to love her,
snatching him out of the very hand of the goddess? What if it were not
Ayesha, but Amenartas re-incarnate who ruled this hidden land and once
more sought to make the man she loved break through his vows? If so,
knowing the evil that must come, I shook even at its shadow. The truth
must be learned, but how?

Whilst I wondered the door opened, and the sardonic, inscrutable-old-faced
man, whom this Khania had called Magician, and who called the Khania,
niece, entered and stood before me.

CHAPTER VII

THE FIRST ORDEAL

The shaman advanced to my side and asked me courteously how I fared.

I answered, “Better. Far better, oh, my host—but how are you named?”

“Simbri,” he answered, “and, as I told you by the water, my title is
Hereditary Guardian of the Gate. By profession I am the royal Physician in
this land.”

“Did you say physician or magician?” I asked carelessly, as though I had
not caught the word. He gave me a curious look.

“I said physician, and it is well for you and your companion that I
have some skill in my art. Otherwise I think, perhaps, you would not have
been alive to-day, O my guest—but how are you named?”

“Holly,” I said.

“O my guest, Holly.”

“Had it not been for the foresight that brought you and the lady Khania to
the edge of yonder darksome river, certainly we should not have
been alive, venerable Simbri, a foresight that seems to me to savour of
magic in such a lonely place. That is why I thought you might have
described yourself as a magician, though it is true that you may have been
but fishing in those waters.”

“Certainly I was fishing, stranger Holly—for men, and I caught two.”

“Fishing by chance, host Simbri?”

“Nay, by design, guest Holly. My trade of physician includes the study of
future events, for I am the chief of the Shamans or Seers of this land,
and, having been warned of your coming quite recently, I awaited your
arrival.”

“Indeed, that is strange, most courteous also. So here physician and
magician mean the same.”

“You say it,” he answered with a grave bow; “but tell me, if you will, how
did you find your way to a land whither visitors do not wander?”

“Oh!” I answered, “perhaps we are but travellers, or perhaps we also have
studied—medicine.”

“I think that you must have studied it deeply, since otherwise you would
not have lived to cross those mountains in search of—now, what did
you seek? Your companion, I think, spoke of a queen—yonder, on the
banks of the torrent.”

“Did he? Did he, indeed? Well, that is strange since he seems to have
found one, for surely that royal-looking lady, named Khania, who sprang
into the stream and saved us, must be a queen.”

“A queen she is, and a great one, for in our land Khania means queen,
though how, friend Holly, a man who has lain senseless can have learned
this, I do not know. Nor do I know how you come to speak our language.”

“That is simple, for the tongue you talk is very ancient, and as it
chances in my own country it has been my lot to study and to teach it. It
is Greek, but although it is still spoken in the world, how it reached
these mountains I cannot say.”

“I will tell you,” he answered. “Many generations ago a great conqueror
born of the nation that spoke this tongue fought his way through the
country to the south of us. He was driven back, but a general of his of
another race advanced and crossed the mountains, and overcame the people
of this land, bringing with him his master’s language and his own worship.
Here he established his dynasty, and here it remains, for being ringed in
with deserts and with pathless mountain snows, we hold no converse with
the outer world.”

“Yes, I know something of that story; the conqueror was named Alexander,
was he not?” I asked.

“He was so named, and the name of the general was Rassen, a native of a
country called Egypt, or so our records tell us. His descendants hold the
throne to this day, and the Khania is of his blood.”

“Was the goddess whom he worshipped called Isis?”

“Nay,” he answered, “she was called Hes.”

“Which,” I interrupted, “is but another title for Isis. Tell me, is her
worship continued here? I ask because it is now dead in Egypt, which was
its home.”

“There is a temple on the Mountain yonder,” he replied indifferently, “and
in it are priests and priestesses who practise some ancient cult. But the
real god of this people now, as long before the day of Rassen their
conqueror, is the fire that dwells in this same Mountain, which from time
to time breaks out and slays them.”

“And does a goddess dwell in the fire?” I asked.

Again he searched my face with his cold eyes, then answered—“Stranger
Holly, I know nothing of any goddess. That Mountain is sacred, and to seek
to learn its secrets is to die. Why do you ask such questions?”

“Only because I am curious in the matter of old religions, and seeing the
symbol of Life upon yonder peak, came hither to study yours, of which
indeed a tradition still remains among the learned.”

“Then abandon that study, friend Holly, for the road to it runs through
the paws of the death-hounds, and the spears of savages. Nor indeed is
there anything to learn.”

“And what, Physician, are the death-hounds?”

“Certain dogs to which, according to our ancient custom, all offenders
against the law or the will of the Khan, are cast to be torn to pieces.”

“The will of the Khan! Has this Khania of yours a husband then?”

“Aye,” he answered, “her cousin, who was the ruler of half the land. Now
they and the land are one. But you have talked enough; I am here to say
that your food is ready,” and he turned to leave the room.

“One more question, friend Simbri. How came I to this chamber, and where
is my companion?”

“You were borne hither in your sleep, and see, the change has bettered
you. Do you remember nothing?”

“Nothing, nothing at all,” I answered earnestly. “But what of my friend?”

“He also is better. The Khania Atene nurses him.”

“Atene?” I said. “That is an old Egyptian name. It means the Disk of the
Sun, and a woman who bore it thousands of years ago was famous for her
beauty.”

“Well, and is not my niece Atene beautiful?”

“How can I tell, O uncle of the Khania,” I answered wearily, “who have
scarcely seen her?”

Then he departed, and presently his yellow-faced, silent servants brought
me my food.

Later in the morning the door opened again, and through it, unattended,
came the Khania Atene, who shut and bolted it behind her. This action did
not reassure me, still, rising in my bed, I saluted her as best I could,
although at heart I was afraid. She seemed to read my doubts for she said—“Lie
down, and have no fear. At present you will come by no harm from me. Now,
tell me what is the man called Leo to you? Your son? Nay, it cannot be,
since—forgive me—light is not born of darkness.”

“I have always thought that it was so born, Khania. Yet you are right; he
is but my adopted son, and a man whom I love.”

“Say, what seek you here?” she asked.

“We seek, Khania, whatsoever Fate shall bring us on yonder Mountain, that
which is crowned with flame.”

Her face paled at the words, but she answered in a steady voice—“Then
there you will find nothing but doom, if indeed you do not find it before
you reach its slopes, which are guarded by savage men. Yonder is the
College of Hes, and to violate its Sanctuary is death to any man, death in
the ever-burning fire.”

“And who rules this college, Khania—a priestess?”

“Yes, a priestess, whose face I have never seen, for she is so old that
she veils herself from curious eyes.”

“Ah! she veils herself, does she?” I answered, as the blood went thrilling
through my veins, I who remembered another who also was so old that
she veiled herself from curious eyes. “Well, veiled or unveiled, we would
visit her, trusting to find that we are welcome.”

“That you shall not do,” she said, “for it is unlawful, and I will not
have your blood upon my hands.”

“Which is the stronger,” I asked of her, “you, Khania, or this priestess
of the Mountain?”

“I am the stronger, Holly, for so you are named, are you not? Look you, at
my need I can summon sixty thousand men in war, while she has naught but
her priests and the fierce, untrained tribes.”

“The sword is not the only power in the world,” I answered. “Tell me, now,
does this priestess ever visit the country of Kaloon?”

“Never, never, for by the ancient pact, made after the last great struggle
long centuries ago between the College and the people of the Plain, it was
decreed and sworn to that should she set her foot across the river, this
means war to the end between us, and rule for the victor over both.
Likewise, save when unguarded they bear their dead to burial, or for some
such high purpose, no Khan or Khania of Kaloon ascends the Mountain.”

“Which then is the true master—the Khan of Kaloon or the head of the
College of Hes?” I asked again.

“In matters spiritual, the priestess of Hes, who is our Oracle and the
voice of Heaven. In matters temporal, the Khan of Kaloon.”

“The Khan. Ah! you are married, lady, are you not?”

“Aye,” she answered, her face flushing. “And I will tell you what you soon
must learn, if you have not learned it already, I am the wife of a madman,
and he is—hateful to me.”

“I have learned the last already, Khania.”

She looked at me with her piercing eyes.

“What! Did my uncle, the Shaman, he who is called Guardian, tell you? Nay,
you saw, as I knew you saw, and it would have been best to slay you for,
oh! what must you think of me?”

I made no answer, for in truth I did not know what to think, also I feared
lest further rash admissions should be followed by swift vengeance.

“You must believe,” she went on, “that I, who have ever hated men, that I—I
swear that it is true—whose lips are purer than those mountain
snows, I, the Khania of Kaloon, whom they name Heart-of-Ice, am but a
shameless thing.” And, covering her face with her hand, she moaned in the
bitterness of her distress.

“Nay,” I said, “there may be reasons, explanations, if it pleases you to
give them.”

“Wanderer, there are such reasons; and since you know so much, you shall
learn them also. Like that husband of mine, I have become mad. When first
I saw the face of your companion, as I dragged him from the river, madness
entered me, and I—I——”

“Loved him,” I suggested. “Well, such things have happened before to
people who were not mad.”

“Oh!” she went on, “it was more than love; I was possessed, and that night
I knew not what I did. A Power drove me on; a Destiny compelled me, and to
the end I am his, and his alone. Yes, I am his, and I swear that he shall
be mine;” and with this wild declaration dangerous enough under the
conditions, she turned and fled the room.

She was gone, and after the struggle, for such it was, I sank back
exhausted. How came it that this sudden passion had mastered her? Who and
what was this Khania, I wondered again, and—this was more to the
point, who and what would Leo believe her to be? If only I could be with
him before he said words or did deeds impossible to recall.

Three days went by, during which time I saw no more of the Khania, who, or
so I was informed by Simbri, the Shaman, had returned to her city to make
ready for us, her guests. I begged him to allow me to rejoin Leo, but he
answered politely, though with much firmness, that my foster-son did
better without me. Now, I grew suspicious, fearing lest some harm had come
to Leo, though how to discover the truth I knew not. In my anxiety I tried
to convey a note to him, written upon a leaf of a water-gained
pocket-book, but the yellow-faced servant refused to touch it, and Simbri
said drily that he would have naught to do with writings which he could
not read. At length, on the third night I made up my mind that whatever
the risk, with leave or without it, I would try to find him.

By this time I could walk well, and indeed was almost strong again. So
about midnight, when the moon was up, for I had no other light, I crept
from my bed, threw on my garments, and taking a knife, which was the only
weapon I possessed, opened the door of my room and started.

Now, when I was carried from the rock-chamber where Leo and I had been
together, I took note of the way. First, reckoning from my sleeping-place,
there was a passage thirty paces long, for I had counted the footfalls of
my bearers. Then came a turn to the left, and ten more paces of passage,
and lastly near certain steps running to some place unknown, another sharp
turn to the right which led to our old chamber.

Down the long passage I walked stealthily, and although it was pitch dark,
found the turn to the left, and followed it till I came to the second
sharp turn to the right, that of the gallery from which rose the stairs. I
crept round it only to retreat hastily enough, as well I might, for at the
door of Leo’s room, which she was in the act of locking on the outside, as
I could see by the light of the lamp that she held in her hand, stood the
Khania herself.

My first thought was to fly back to my own chamber, but I abandoned it,
feeling sure that I should be seen. Therefore I determined, if she
discovered me, to face the matter out and say that I was trying to find
Leo, and to learn how he fared. So I crouched against the wall, and waited
with a beating heart. I heard her sweep down the passage, and—yes—begin
to mount the stair.

Now, what should I do? To try to reach Leo was useless, for she had locked
the door with the key she held. Go back to bed? No, I would follow her,
and if we met would make the same excuse. Thus I might get some tidings,
or perhaps—a dagger thrust.

So round the corner and up the steps I went, noiselessly as a snake. They
were many and winding, like those of a church tower, but at length I came
to the head of them, where was a little landing, and opening from it a
door. It was a very ancient door; the light streamed through cracks where
its panels had rotted, and from the room beyond came the sound of voices,
those of the Shaman Simbri and the Khania.

“Have you learned aught, my niece?” I heard him say, and also heard her
answer—-“A little. A very little.”

Then in my thirst for knowledge I grew bold, and stealing to the door,
looked through one of the cracks in its wood. Opposite to me, in the full
flood of light thrown by a hanging lamp, her hand resting on a table at
which Simbri was seated, stood the Khania. Truly she was a beauteous
sight, for she wore robes of royal purple, and on her brow a little
coronet of gold, beneath which her curling hair streamed down her shapely
neck and bosom. Seeing her I guessed at once that she had arrayed herself
thus for some secret end, enhancing her loveliness by every art and grace
that is known to woman. Simbri was looking at her earnestly, with fear and
doubt written on even his cold, impassive features.

“What passed between you, then?” he asked, peering at her.

“I questioned him closely as to the reason of his coming to this land, and
wrung from him the answer that it was to seek some beauteous woman—he
would say no more. I asked him if she were more beauteous than I
am, and he replied with courtesy—nothing else, I think—that it
would be hard to say, but that she had been different. Then I said that
though it behooved me not to speak of such a matter, there was no lady in
Kaloon whom men held to be so fair as I; moreover, that I was its ruler,
and that I and no other had saved him from the water. Aye, and I added
that my heart told me I was the woman whom he sought.”

“Have done, niece,” said Simbri impatiently, “I would not hear of the arts
you used—well enough, doubtless. What then?”

“Then he said that it might be so, since he thought that this woman was
born again, and studied me a while, asking me if I had ever ‘passed
through fire.’ To this I replied that the only fires I had passed were
those of the spirit, and that I dwelt in them now. He said, ‘Show me your
hair,’ and I placed a lock of it in his hand. Presently he let it fall,
and from that satchel which he wears about his neck drew out another tress
of hair—oh! Simbri, my uncle, the loveliest hair that ever eyes
beheld, for it was soft as silk, and reached from my coronet to the
ground. Moreover, no raven’s wing in the sunshine ever shone as did that
fragrant tress.

“‘Yours is beautiful,’ he said, ‘but see, they are not the same.’

“‘Mayhap,’ I answered, ‘since no woman ever wore such locks.’

“‘You are right,’ he replied, ‘for she whom I seek was more than a woman.’

“And then—and then—though I tried him in many ways he would
say no more, so, feeling hate against this Unknown rising in my heart, and
fearing lest I should utter words that were best unsaid, I left him. Now I
bid you, search the books which are open to your wisdom and tell me of
this woman whom he seeks, who she is, and where she dwells. Oh! search
them swiftly, that I may find her and—kill her if I can.”

“Aye, if you can,” answered the Shaman, “and if she lives to kill. But
say, where shall we begin our quest? Now, this letter from the Mountain
that the head-priest Oros sent to your court a while ago?”—and he
selected a parchment from a pile which lay upon the table and looked at
her.

“Read,” she said, “I would hear it again.”

So he read: “From the Hesea of the House of Fire, to Atene, Khania of
Kaloon.

“My sister—Warning has reached me that two strangers of a western
race journey to your land, seeking my Oracle, of which they would ask a
question. On the first day of the next moon, I command that you and with
you Simbri, your great-uncle, the wise Shaman, Guardian of the Gate, shall
be watching the river in the gulf at the foot of the ancient road, for by
that steep path the strangers travel. Aid them in all things and bring
them safely to the Mountain, knowing that in this matter I shall hold him
and you to account. Myself I will not meet them, since to do so would be
to break the pact between our powers, which says that the Hesea of the
Sanctuary visits not the territory of Kaloon, save in war. Also their
coming is otherwise appointed.”

“It would seem,” said Simbri, laying down the parchment, “that these are
no chance wanderers, since Hes awaits them.”

“Aye, they are no chance wanderers, since my heart awaited one of them
also. Yet the Hesea cannot be that woman, for reasons which are known to
you.”

“There are many women on the Mountain,” suggested the Shaman in a dry
voice, “if indeed any woman has to do with this matter.”

“I at least have to do with it, and he shall not go to the Mountain.”

“Hes is powerful, my niece, and beneath these smooth words of hers lies a
dreadful threat. I say that she is mighty from of old and has servants in
the earth and air who warned her of the coming of these men, and will warn
her of what befalls them. I know it, who hate her, and to your royal house
of Rassen it has been known for many a generation. Therefore thwart her
not lest ill befall us all, for she is a spirit and terrible. She says
that it is appointed that they shall go——”

“And I say it is appointed that he shall not go. Let the other go
if he desires.”

“Atene, be plain, what will you with the man called Leo—that he
should become your lover?” asked the Shaman.

She stared him straight in the eyes, and answered boldly—“Nay, I
will that he should become my husband.”

“First he must will it too, who seems to have no mind that way. Also, how
can a woman have two husbands?”

She laid her hand upon his shoulder and said—“I have no husband. You
know it well, Simbri. I charge you by the close bond of blood
between us, brew me another draught——”

“That we may be bound yet closer in a bond of murder! Nay, Atene, I will
not; already your sin lies heavy on my head. You are very fair; take the
man in your own net, if you may, or let him be, which is better far.”

“I cannot let him be. Would that I were able. I must love him as I must
hate the other whom he loves, yet some power hardens his heart against me.
Oh! great Shaman, you that peep and mutter, you who can read the future
and the past, tell me what you have learned from your stars and
divinations.”

“Already I have sought through many a secret, toilsome hour and learned
this, Atene,” he answered. “You are right, the fate of yonder man is
intertwined with yours, but between you and him there rises a mighty wall
that my vision cannot pierce nor my familiars climb. Yet I am taught that
in death you and he—aye, and I also, shall be very near together.”

“Then come death,” she exclaimed with sullen pride, “for thence at least
I’ll pluck out my desire.”

“Be not so sure,” he answered, “for I think that the Power follows us even
down this dark gulf of death. I think also that I feel the sleepless eyes
of Hes watching our secret souls.”

“Then blind them with the dust of illusions—as you can. To-morrow,
also, saying nothing of their sex, send a messenger to the Mountain and
tell the Hesea that two old strangers have arrived—mark you, old—but
that they are very sick, that their limbs were broken in the river, and
that when they have healed again, I will send them to ask the question of
her Oracle—that is, some three moons hence. Perchance she may
believe you, and be content to wait; or if she does not, at least no more
words. I must sleep or my brain will burst. Give me that medicine which
brings dreamless rest, for never did I need it more, who also feel eyes
upon me,” and she glanced towards the door.

Then I left, and not too soon, for as I crept down the darksome passage, I
heard it open behind me.

CHAPTER VIII

THE DEATH-HOUNDS

It may have been ten o’clock on the following morning, or a little past
it, when the Shaman Simbri came into my room and asked me how I had slept.

“Like a log,” I answered, “like a log. A drugged man could not have rested
more soundly.”

“Indeed, friend Holly, and yet you look fatigued.”

“My dreams troubled me somewhat,” I answered. “I suffer from such things.
But surely by your face, friend Simbri, you cannot have slept at all, for
never yet have I seen you with so weary an air.”

“I am weary,” he said, with a sigh. “Last night I spent up on my business—watching
at the Gates.”

“What gates?” I asked. “Those by which we entered this kingdom, for, if
so, I would rather watch than travel them.”

“The Gates of the Past and of the Future. Yes, those two which you
entered, if you will; for did you not travel out of a wondrous Past
towards a Future that you cannot guess?”

“But both of which interest you,” I suggested.

“Perhaps,” he answered, then added, “I come to tell you that within an
hour you are to start for the city, whither the Khania has but now gone on
to make ready for you.”

“Yes; only you told me that she had gone some days ago. Well, I am sound
again and prepared to march, but say, how is my foster-son?”

“He mends, he mends. But you shall see him for yourself. It is the
Khania’s will. Here come the slaves bearing your robes, and with them I
leave you.”

So with their assistance I dressed myself, first in good, clean
under-linen, then in wide woollen trousers and vest, and lastly in a
fur-lined camel-hair robe dyed black that was very comfortable to wear,
and in appearance not unlike a long overcoat. A flat cap of the same
material and a pair of boots made of untanned hide completed my attire.

Scarcely was I ready when the yellow-faced servants, with many bows, took
me by the hand and led me down the passages and stairs of the Gate-house
to its door. Here, to my great joy, I found Leo, looking pale and
troubled, but otherwise as well as I could expect after his sickness. He
was attired like myself, save that his garments were of a finer quality,
and the overcoat was white, with a hood to it, added, I suppose, to
protect the wound in his head from cold and the sun. This white dress I
thought became him very well, also about it there was nothing grotesque or
even remarkable. He sprang to me and seized my hand, asking how I fared
and where I had been hidden away, a greeting of which, as I could see, the
warmth was not lost upon Simbri, who stood by.

I answered, well enough now that we were together again, and for the rest
I would tell him later.

Then they brought us palanquins, carried, each of them, by two ponies, one
of which was harnessed ahead and the other behind between long shaft-like
poles. In these we seated ourselves, and at a sign from Simbri slaves took
the leading ponies by the bridle and we started, leaving behind us that
grim old Gate-house through which we were the first strangers to pass for
many a generation.

For a mile or more our road ran down a winding, rocky gorge, till suddenly
it took a turn, and the country of Kaloon lay stretched before us. At our
feet was a river, probably the same with which we had made acquaintance in
the gulf, where, fed by the mountain snows, it had its source. Here it
flowed rapidly, but on the vast, alluvial lands beneath became a broad and
gentle stream that wound its way through the limitless plains till it was
lost in the blue of the distance.

To the north, however, this smooth, monotonous expanse was broken by that
Mountain which had guided us from afar, the House of Fire. It was a great
distance from us, more than a hundred miles, I should say, yet even so a
most majestic sight in that clear air. Many leagues from the base of its
peak the ground began to rise in brown and rugged hillocks, from which
sprang the holy Mountain itself, a white and dazzling point that soared
full twenty thousand feet into the heavens.

Yes, and there upon the nether lip of its crater stood the gigantic
pillar, surmounted by a yet more gigantic loop of virgin rock, whereof the
blackness stood out grimly against the blue of the sky beyond and the
blinding snow beneath.

We gazed at it with awe, as well we might, this beacon of our hopes that
for aught we knew might also prove their monument, feeling even then that
yonder our fate would declare itself. I noted further that all those with
us did it reverence by bowing their heads as they caught sight of the
peak, and by laying the first finger of the right hand across the first
finger of the left, a gesture, as we afterwards discovered, designed to
avert its evil influence. Yes, even Simbri bowed, a yielding to inherited
superstition of which I should scarcely have suspected him.

“Have you ever journeyed to that Mountain?” asked Leo of him.

Simbri shook his head and answered evasively.

“The people of the Plain do not set foot upon the Mountain. Among its
slopes beyond the river which washes them, live hordes of brave and most
savage men, with whom we are oftentimes at war; for when they are hungry
they raid our cattle and our crops. Moreover, there, when the Mountain
labours, run red streams of molten rock, and now and again hot ashes fall
that slay the traveller.”

“Do the ashes ever fall in your country?” asked Leo.

“They have been known to do so when the Spirit of the Mountain is angry,
and that is why we fear her.”

“Who is this Spirit?” said Leo eagerly.

“I do not know, lord,” he answered with impatience. “Can men see a
spirit?”

“You look as though you might, and had, not so long ago,” replied
Leo, fixing his gaze on the old man’s waxen face and uneasy eyes. For now
their horny calm was gone from the eyes of Simbri, which seemed as though
they had beheld some sight that haunted him.

“You do me too much honour, lord,” he replied; “my skill and vision do not
reach so far. But see, here is the landing-stage, where boats await us,
for the rest of our journey is by water.”

These boats proved to be roomy and comfortable, having flat bows and
sterns, since, although sometimes a sail was hoisted, they were designed
for towing, not to be rowed with oars. Leo and I entered the largest of
them, and to our joy were left alone except for the steersman.

Behind us was another boat, in which were attendants and slaves, and some
men who looked like soldiers, for they carried bows and swords. Now the
ponies were taken from the palanquins, that were packed away, and ropes of
green hide, fastened to iron rings in the prows of the boats, were fixed
to the towing tackle with which the animals had been reharnessed. Then we
started, the ponies, two arranged tandem fashion to each punt, trotting
along a well-made towing path that was furnished with wooden bridges
wherever canals or tributary streams entered the main river.

“Thank Heaven,” said Leo, “we are together again at last! Do you remember,
Horace, that when we entered the land of Kôr it was thus, in a boat? The
tale repeats itself.”

“I can quite believe it,” I answered. “I can believe anything. Leo, I say
that we are but gnats meshed in a web, and yonder Khania is the spider and
Simbri the Shaman guards the net. But tell me all you remember of what has
happened to you, and be quick, for I do not know how long they may leave
us alone.”

“Well,” he said, “of course I remember our arrival at that Gate after the
lady and the old man had pulled us out of the river, and, Horace, talking
of spiders reminds me of hanging at the end of that string of yak’s hide.
Not that I need much reminding, for I am not likely to forget it. Do you
know I cut the rope because I felt that I was going mad, and wished to die
sane. What happened to you? Did you slip?”

“No; I jumped after you. It seemed best to end together, so that we might
begin again together.”

“Brave old Horace!” he said affectionately, the tears starting to his grey
eyes.

“Well, never mind all that,” I broke in; “you see you were right when you
said that we should get through, and we have. Now for your tale.”

“It is interesting, but not very long,” he answered, colouring. “I went to
sleep, and when I woke it was to find a beautiful woman leaning over me,
and Horace—at first I thought that it was—you know who, and
that she kissed me; but perhaps it was all a dream.”

“It was no dream,” I answered. “I saw it.”

“I am sorry to hear it—very sorry. At any rate there was the
beautiful woman—the Khania—for I saw her plenty of times
afterwards, and talked to her in my best modern Greek—by the way,
Ayesha knew the old Greek; that’s curious.”

“She knew several of the ancient tongues, and so did other people. Go on.”

“Well, she nursed me very kindly, but, so far as I know, until last night
there was nothing more affectionate, and I had sense enough to refuse to
talk about our somewhat eventful past. I pretended not to understand, said
that we were explorers, etc., and kept asking her where you were, for I
forgot to say I found that you had gone. I think that she grew rather
angry with me, for she wanted to know something, and, as you can guess, I
wanted to know a good deal. But I could get nothing out of her except that
she was the Khania—a person in authority. There was no doubt about
that, for when one of those slaves or servants came in and interrupted her
while she was trying to draw the facts out of me, she called to some of
her people to throw him out of the window, and he only saved himself by
going down the stairs very quickly.

“Well, I could make nothing of her, and she could make little of me,
though why she should be so tenderly interested in a stranger, I don’t
know—unless, unless—oh! who is she, Horace?”

“If you will go on I will tell you what I think presently. One tale at a
time.”

“Very good. I got quite well and strong, comparatively speaking, till the
climax last night, which upset me again. After that old prophet, Simbri,
had brought me my supper, just as I was thinking of going to sleep, the
Khania came in alone, dressed like a queen. I can tell you she looked
really royal, like a princess in a fairy book, with a crown on, and her
chestnut black hair flowing round her.

“Well, Horace, then she began to make love to me in a refined sort of way,
or so I thought, looked at me and sighed, saying that we had known each
other in the past—very well indeed I gathered—and implying
that she wished to continue our friendship. I fenced with her as best I
could; but a man feels fairly helpless lying on his back with a very
handsome and very imperial-looking lady standing over him and paying him
compliments.

“The end of it was that, driven to it by her questions and to stop that
sort of thing, I told her that I was looking for my wife, whom I had lost,
for, after all, Ayesha is my wife, Horace. She smiled and suggested that I
need not look far; in short, that the lost wife was already found—in
herself, who had come to save me from death in the river. Indeed, she
spoke with such conviction that I grew sure that she was not merely
amusing herself, and felt very much inclined to believe her, for, after
all, Ayesha may be changed now.

“Then while I was at my wits’ end I remembered the lock of hair—all
that remains to us of her,” and Leo touched his breast. “I drew it
out and compared it with the Khania’s, and at the sight of it she became
quite different, jealous, I suppose, for it is longer than hers, and not
in the least like.

“Horace, I tell you that the touch of that lock of hair—for she did
touch it—appeared to act upon her nature like nitric acid upon sham
gold. It turned it black; all the bad in her came out. In her anger her
voice sounded coarse; yes, she grew almost vulgar, and, as you know, when
Ayesha was in a rage she might be wicked as we understand it, and was
certainly terrible, but she was never either coarse or vulgar, any more
than lightning is.

“Well, from that moment I was sure that whoever this Khania may be, she
had nothing to do with Ayesha; they are so different that they never could
have been the same—like the hair. So I lay quiet and let her talk,
and coax, and threaten on, until at length she drew herself up and marched
from the room, and I heard her lock the door behind her. That’s all I have
to tell you, and quite enough too, for I don’t think that the Khania has
done with me, and, to say the truth, I am afraid of her.”

“Yes,” I said, “quite enough. Now sit still, and don’t start or talk loud,
for that steersman is probably a spy, and I can feel old Simbri’s eyes
fixed upon our backs. Don’t interrupt either, for our time alone may be
short.”

Then I set to work and told him everything I knew, while he listened in
blank astonishment.

“Great Heavens! what a tale,” he exclaimed as I finished. “Now, who is
this Hesea who sent the letter from the Mountain? And who, who is the
Khania?”

“Who does your instinct tell you that she is, Leo?”

“Amenartas?” he whispered doubtfully. “The woman who wrote the Sherd,
whom Ayesha said was the Egyptian princess—my wife two thousand
years ago? Amenartas re-born?”

I nodded. “I think so. Why not? As I have told you again and again, I have
always been certain of one thing, that if we were allowed to see the next
act of the piece, we should find Amenartas, or rather the spirit of
Amenartas, playing a leading part in it; you will remember I wrote as much
in that record.

“If the old Buddhist monk Kou-en could remember his past, as
thousands of them swear that they do, and be sure of his identity
continued from that past, why should not this woman, with so much at
stake, helped as she is by the wizardry of the Shaman, her uncle, faintly
remember hers?

“At any rate, Leo, why should she not still be sufficiently under its
influence to cause her, without any fault or seeking of her own, to fall
madly in love at first sight with a man whom, after all, she has always
loved?”

“The argument seems sound enough, Horace, and if so I am sorry for the
Khania, who hasn’t much choice in the matter—been forced into it, so
to speak.”

“Yes, but meanwhile your foot is in a trap again. Guard yourself, Leo,
guard yourself. I believe that this is a trial sent to you, and doubtless
there will be more to follow. But I believe also that it would be better
for you to die than to make any mistake.”

“I know it well,” he answered; “and you need not be afraid. Whatever this
Khania may have been to me in the past—if she was anything at all—that
story is done with. I seek Ayesha, and Ayesha alone, and Venus herself
shall not tempt me from her.”

Then we began to speak with hope and fear of that mysterious Hesea who had
sent the letter from the Mountain, commanding the Shaman Simbri to meet
us: the priestess or spirit whom he declared was “mighty from of old” and
had “servants in the earth and air.”

Presently the prow of our barge bumped against the bank of the river, and
looking round I saw that Simbri had left the boat in which he sat and was
preparing to enter ours. This he did, and, placing himself gravely on a
seat in front of us, explained that nightfall was coming on, and he wished
to give us his company and protection through the dark.

“And to see that we do not give him the slip in it,” muttered Leo.

Then the drivers whipped up their ponies, and we went on again.

“Look behind you,” said Simbri presently, “and you will see the city where
you will sleep to-night.”

We turned ourselves, and there, about ten miles away, perceived a
flat-roofed town of considerable, though not of very great size. Its
position was good, for it was set upon a large island that stood a hundred
feet or more above the level of the plain, the river dividing into two
branches at the foot of it, and, as we discovered afterwards, uniting
again beyond.

The vast mound upon which this city was built had the appearance of being
artificial, but very possibly the soil whereof it was formed had been
washed up in past ages during times of flood, so that from a mudbank in
the centre of the broad river it grew by degrees to its present
proportions. With the exception of a columned and towered edifice that
crowned the city and seemed to be encircled by gardens, we could see no
great buildings in the place.

“How is the city named?” asked Leo of Simbri.

“Kaloon,” he answered, “as was all this land even when my fore-fathers,
the conquerors, marched across the mountains and took it more than two
thousand years ago. They kept the ancient title, but the territory of the
Mountain they called Hes, because they said that the loop upon yonder peak
was the symbol of a goddess of this name whom their general worshipped.”

“Priestesses still live there, do they not?” said Leo, trying in his turn
to extract the truth.

“Yes, and priests also. The College of them was established by the
conquerors, who subdued all the land. Or rather, it took the place of
another College of those who fashioned the Sanctuary and the Temple, whose
god was the fire in the Mountain, as it is that of the people of Kaloon
to-day.”

“Then who is worshipped there now?”

“The goddess Hes, it is said; but we know little of the matter, for
between us and the Mountain folk there has been enmity for ages. They kill
us and we kill them, for they are jealous of their shrine, which none may
visit save by permission, to consult the Oracle and to make prayer or
offering in times of calamity, when a Khan dies, or the waters of the
river sink and the crops fail, or when ashes fall and earthquakes shake
the land, or great sickness comes. Otherwise, unless they attack us, we
leave them alone, for though every man is trained to arms, and can fight
if need be, we are a peaceful folk, who cultivate the soil from generation
to generation, and thus grow rich. Look round you. Is it not a scene of
peace?”

We stood up in the boat and gazed about us at the pastoral prospect.
Everywhere appeared herds of cattle feeding upon meadow lands, or troops
of mules and horses, or square fields sown with corn and outlined by
trees. Village folk, also, clad in long, grey gowns, were labouring on the
land, or, their day’s toil finished, driving their beasts homewards along
roads built upon the banks of the irrigation dykes, towards the hamlets
that were placed on rising knolls amidst tall poplar groves.

In its sharp contrast with the arid deserts and fearful mountains amongst
which we had wandered for so many years, this country struck us as most
charming, and indeed, seen by the red light of the sinking sun on that
spring day, even as beautiful with the same kind of beauty which is to be
found in Holland. One could understand too that these landowners and
peasant-farmers would by choice be men of peace, and what a temptation
their wealth must offer to the hungry, half-savage tribes of the
mountains.

Also it was easy to guess when the survivors of Alexander’s legions under
their Egyptian general burst through the iron band of snow-clad hills and
saw this sweet country, with its homes, its herds, and its ripening grass,
that they must have cried with one voice, “We will march and fight and
toil no more. Here we will sit us down to live and die.” Thus doubtless
they did, taking them wives from among the women of the people of the land
which they had conquered—perhaps after a single battle.

Now as the light faded the wreaths of smoke which hung over the distant
Fire-mountain began to glow luridly. Redder and more angry did they become
while the darkness gathered, till at length they seemed to be charged with
pulsing sheets of flame propelled from the womb of the volcano, which
threw piercing beams of light through the eye of the giant loop that
crowned its brow. Far, far fled those beams, making a bright path across
the land, and striking the white crests of the bordering wall of
mountains. High in the air ran that path, over the dim roofs of the city
of Kaloon, over the river, yes, straight above us, over the mountains, and
doubtless—though there we could not follow them—across the
desert to that high eminence on its farther side where we had lain bathed
in their radiance. It was a wondrous and most impressive sight, one too
that filled our companions with fear, for the steersmen in our boats and
the drivers on the towing-path groaned aloud and began to utter prayers.
“What do they say?” asked Leo of Simbri.

“They say, lord, that the Spirit of the Mountain is angry, and passes down
yonder flying light that is called the Road of Hes to work some evil to
our land. Therefore they pray her not to destroy them.”

“Then does that light not always shine thus?” he asked again.

“Nay, but seldom. Once about three months ago, and now to-night, but
before that not for years. Let us pray that it portends no misfortune to
Kaloon and its inhabitants.”

For some minutes this fearsome illumination continued, then it ceased as
suddenly as it had begun, and there remained of it only the dull glow
above the crest of the peak.

Presently the moon rose, a white, shining ball, and by its rays we
perceived that we drew near to the city. But there was still something
left for us to see before we reached its shelter. While we sat quietly in
the boat—for the silence was broken only by the lapping of the still
waters against its sides and the occasional splash of the slackened
tow-line upon their surface—we heard a distant sound as of a hunt in
full cry.

Nearer and nearer it came, its volume swelling every moment, till it was
quite close at last. Now echoing from the trodden earth of the towing-path—not
that on which our ponies travelled, but the other on the west bank of the
river—was heard the beat of the hoofs of a horse galloping
furiously. Presently it appeared, a fine, white animal, on the back of
which sat a man. It passed us like a flash, but as he went by the man
lifted himself and turned his head, so that we saw his face in the
moonlight; saw also the agony of fear that was written on it and in his
eyes.

He had come out of the darkness. He was gone into the darkness, but after
him swelled that awful music. Look! a dog appeared, a huge, red dog, that
dropped its foaming muzzle to the ground as it galloped, then lifted it
and uttered a deep-throated, bell-like bay. Others followed, and yet
others: in all there must have been a hundred of them, every one baying as
it took the scent.

“The death-hounds!” I muttered, clasping Leo by the arm.

“Yes,” he answered, “they are running that poor devil. Here comes the
huntsman.”

As he spoke there appeared a second figure, splendidly mounted, a cloak
streaming from his shoulders, and in his hand a long whip, which he waved.
He was big but loosely jointed, and as he passed he turned his face also,
and we saw that it was that of a madman. There could be no doubt of it;
insanity blazed in those hollow eyes and rang in that savage, screeching
laugh.

“The Khan! The Khan!” said Simbri, bowing, and I could see that he was
afraid.

Now he too was gone, and after him came his guards. I counted eight of
them, all carrying whips, with which they flogged their horses.

“What does this mean, friend Simbri?” I asked, as the sounds grew faint in
the distance.

“It means, friend Holly,” he answered, “that the Khan does justice in his
own fashion—hunting to death one that has angered him.”

“What then is his crime? And who is that poor man?”

“He is a great lord of this land, one of the royal kinsmen, and the crime
for which he has been condemned is that he told the Khania he loved her,
and offered to make war upon her husband and kill him, if she would
promise herself to him in marriage. But she hated the man, as she hates
all men, and brought the matter before the Khan. That is all the story.”

“Happy is that prince who has so virtuous a wife!” I could not help saying
unctuously, but with meaning, and the old wretch of a Shaman turned his
head at my words and began to stroke his white beard.

It was but a little while afterwards that once more we heard the baying of
the death-hounds. Yes, they were heading straight for us, this time across
country. Again the white horse and its rider appeared, utterly exhausted,
both of them, for the poor beast could scarcely struggle on to the
towing-path. As it gained it a great red hound with a black ear gripped
its flank, and at the touch of the fangs it screamed aloud in terror as
only a horse can. The rider sprang from its back, and, to our horror, ran
to the river’s edge, thinking evidently to take refuge in our boat. But
before ever he reached the water the devilish brutes were upon him.

What followed I will not describe, but never shall I forget the scene of
those two heaps of worrying wolves, and of the maniac Khan, who yelled in
his fiendish joy, and cheered on his death-hounds to finish their red
work.

CHAPTER IX

THE COURT OF KALOON

Horrified, sick at heart, we continued our journey. No wonder that the
Khania hated such a mad despot. And this woman was in love with Leo, and
this lunatic Khan, her husband, was a victim to jealousy, which he avenged
after the very unpleasant fashion that we had witnessed. Truly an
agreeable prospect for all of us! Yet, I could not help reflecting, as an
object lesson that horrid scene had its advantages.

Now we reached the place where the river forked at the end of the island,
and disembarked upon a quay. Here a guard of men commanded by some
Household officer, was waiting to receive us. They led us through a gate
in the high wall, for the town was fortified, up a narrow, stone-paved
street which ran between houses apparently of the usual Central Asian
type, and, so far as I could judge by moonlight, with no pretensions to
architectural beauty, and not large in size.

Clearly our arrival was expected and excited interest, for people were
gathered in knots about the street to watch us pass; also at the windows
of the houses and even on their flat roofs. At the top of the long street
was a sort of market place, crossing which, accompanied by a curious crowd
who made remarks about us that we could not understand, we reached a gate
in an inner wall. Here we were challenged, but at a word from Simbri it
opened, and we passed through to find ourselves in gardens. Following a
road or drive, we came to a large, rambling house or palace, surmounted by
high towers and very solidly built of stone in a heavy, bastard Egyptian
style.

Beyond its doorway we found ourselves in a courtyard surrounded by a kind
of verandah from which short passages led to different rooms. Down one of
these passages we were conducted by the officer to an apartment, or rather
a suite, consisting of a sitting and two bed-chambers, which were
panelled, richly furnished in rather barbaric fashion, and well-lighted
with primitive oil lamps.

Here Simbri left us, saying that the officer would wait in the outer room
to conduct us to the dining-hall as soon as we were ready. Then we entered
the bed-chambers, where we found servants, or slaves, quiet-mannered,
obsequious men. These valets changed our foot-gear, and taking off our
heavy travelling robes, replaced them with others fashioned like civilized
frock-coats, but made of some white material and trimmed with a beautiful
ermine fur.

Having dressed us in these they bowed to show that our toilette was
finished, and led us to the large outer room where the officer awaited us.
He conducted us through several other rooms, all of them spacious and
apparently unoccupied, to a great hall lit with many lamps and warmed—for
the nights were still cold—with large peat fires. The roof of this
hall was flat and supported by thick, stone columns with carved capitals,
and its walls were hung with worked tapestries, that gave it an air of
considerable comfort.

At the head of the hall on a dais stood a long, narrow table, spread with
a cloth and set with platters and cups of silver. Here we waited till
butlers with wands appeared through some curtains which they drew. Then
came a man beating a silver gong, and after him a dozen or more courtiers,
all dressed in white robes like ourselves, followed by perhaps as many
ladies, some of them young and good-looking, and for the most part of a
fair type, with well-cut features, though others were rather
yellow-skinned. They bowed to us and we to them.

Then there was a pause while we studied one another, till a trumpet blew
and heralded by footmen in a kind of yellow livery, two figures were seen
advancing down the passage beyond the curtains, preceded by the Shaman
Simbri and followed by other officers. They were the Khan and the Khania
of Kaloon.

No one looking at this Khan as he entered his dining-hall clad in festal
white attire would have imagined him to be the same raving human brute
whom we had just seen urging on his devilish hounds to tear a
fellow-creature and a helpless horse to fragments and devour them. Now he
seemed a heavy, loutish man, very strongly built and not ill-looking, but
with shifty eyes, evidently a person of dulled intellect, whom one would
have thought incapable of keen emotions of any kind. The Khania need not
be described. She was as she had been in the chambers of the Gate, only
more weary looking; indeed her eyes had a haunted air and it was easy to
see that the events of the previous night had left their mark upon her
mind. At the sight of us she flushed a little, then beckoned to us to
advance, and said to her husband—“My lord, these are the strangers
of whom I have told you.”

His dull eyes fell upon me first, and my appearance seemed to amuse him
vaguely, at any rate he laughed rudely, saying in barbarous Greek mixed
with words from the local patois—“What a curious old animal! I have
never seen you before, have I?”

“No, great Khan,” I answered, “but I have seen you out hunting this night.
Did you have good sport?”

Instantly he became wide awake, and answered, rubbing his hands—“Excellent.
He gave us a fine run, but my little dogs caught him at last, and then——”
and he snapped his powerful jaws together.

“Cease your brutal talk,” broke in his wife fiercely, and he slunk away
from her and in so doing stumbled against Leo, who was waiting to be
presented to him.

The sight of this great, golden-bearded man seemed to astonish him, for he
stared at him, then asked—“Are you the Khania’s other friend whom
she went to see in the mountains of the Gate? Then I could not understand
why she took so much trouble, but now I do. Well, be careful, or I shall
have to hunt you also.”

Now Leo grew angry and was about to reply, but I laid my hand upon his arm
and said in English—“Don’t answer; the man is mad.”

“Bad, you mean,” grumbled Leo; “and if he tries to set his cursed dogs on
me, I will break his neck.”

Then the Khania motioned to Leo to take a seat beside her, placing me upon
her other hand, between herself and her uncle, the Guardian, while the
Khan shuffled to a chair a little way down the table, where he called two
of the prettiest ladies to keep him company.

Such was our introduction to the court of Kaloon. As for the meal that
followed, it was very plentiful, but coarse, consisting for the most part
of fish, mutton, and sweetmeats, all of them presented upon huge silver
platters. Also much strong drink was served, a kind of spirit distilled
from grain, of which nearly all present drank more than was good for them.
After a few words to me about our journey, the Khania turned to Leo and
talked to him for the rest of the evening, while I devoted myself to the
old Shaman Simbri.

Put briefly, the substance of what I learned from him then and afterwards
was as follows—Trade was unknown to the people of Kaloon, for the
reason that all communication with the south had been cut off for ages,
the bridges that once existed over the chasm having been allowed to rot
away. Their land, which was very large and densely inhabited, was ringed
round with unclimbable mountains, except to the north, where stood the
great Fire-peak. The slopes of this Peak and an unvisited expanse of
country behind that ran up to the confines of a desert, were the home of
ferocious mountain tribes, untamable Highlanders, who killed every
stranger they caught. Consequently, although the precious and other metals
were mined to a certain extent and manufactured into articles of use and
ornament, money did not exist among the peoples either of the Plain or of
the Mountain, all business being transacted on the principle of barter,
and even the revenue collected in kind.

Amongst the tens of thousands of the aborigines of Kaloon dwelt a mere
handful of a ruling class, who were said to be—and probably were—descended
from the conquerors that appeared in the time of Alexander. Their blood,
however, was now much mixed with that of the first inhabitants, who, to
judge from their appearance and the yellow hue of their descendants must
have belonged to some branch of the great Tartar race. The government, if
so it could be called, was, on the whole, of a mild though of a very
despotic nature, and vested in an hereditary Khan or Khania, according as
a man or a woman might be in the most direct descent.

Of religions there were two, that of the people, who worshipped the Spirit
of the Fire Mountain, and that of the rulers, who believed in magic,
ghosts and divinations. Even this shadow of a religion, if so it can be
called, was dying out, like its followers, for generation by generation,
the white lords grew less in number or became absorbed in the bulk of the
people.

Still their rule was tolerated. I asked Simbri why, seeing that they were
so few. He shrugged his shoulders and answered, because it suited the
country of which the natives had no ambition. Moreover, the present
Khania, our hostess, was the last of the direct line of rulers, her
husband and cousin having less of the blood royal in his veins, and as
such the people were attached to her.

Also, as is commonly the case with bold and beautiful women, she was
popular among them, especially as she was just and very liberal to the
poor. These were many, as the country was over-populated, which accounted
for its wonderful state of cultivation. Lastly they trusted to her skill
and courage to defend them from the continual attacks of the Mountain
tribes who raided their crops and herds. Their one grievance against her
was that she had no child to whom the khanship could descend, which meant
that after her death, as had happened after that of her father, there
would be struggles for the succession.

“Indeed,” added Simbri, with meaning, and glancing at Leo, out of the
corners of his eyes, “the folk say openly that it would be a good thing if
the Khan, who oppresses them and whom they hate, should die, so that the
Khania might take another husband while she is still young. Although he is
mad, he knows this, and that is why he is so jealous of any lord who looks
at her, as, friend Holly, you saw to-night. For should such an one gain
her favour, Rassen thinks that it would mean his death.”

“Also he may be attached to his wife,” I suggested, speaking in a whisper.

“Perhaps so,” answered Simbri; “but if so, she loves not him, nor any of
these men,” and he glanced round the hall.

Certainly they did not look lovable, for by this time most of them were
half drunk, while even the women seemed to have taken as much as was good
for them. The Khan himself presented a sorry spectacle, for he was leaning
back in his chair, shouting something about his hunting, in a thick voice.
The arm of one of his pretty companions was round his neck, while the
other gave him to drink from a gold cup; some of the contents of which had
been spilt down his white robe.

Just then Atene looked round and saw him and an expression of hatred and
contempt gathered on her beautiful face.

“See,” I heard her say to Leo, “see the companion of my days, and learn
what it is to be Khania of Kaloon.”

“Then why do you not cleanse your court?” he asked.

“Because, lord, if I did so there would be no court left. Swine will to
their mire and these men and women, who live in idleness upon the toil of
the humble folk, will to their liquor and vile luxury. Well, the end is
near, for it is killing them, and their children are but few; weakly also,
for the ancient blood grows thin and stale. But you are weary and would
rest. To-morrow we will ride together,” and calling to an officer, she
bade him conduct us to our rooms.

So we rose, and, accompanied by Simbri, bowed to her and went, she
standing and gazing after us, a royal and pathetic figure in the midst of
all that dissolute revelry. The Khan rose also, and in his cunning fashion
understood something of the meaning of it all.

“You think us gay,” he shouted; “and why should we not be who do not know
how long we have to live? But you yellow-haired fellow, you must not let
Atene look at you like that. I tell you she is my wife, and if you do, I
shall certainly have to hunt you.”

At this drunken sally the courtiers roared with laughter, but taking Leo
by the arm Simbri hurried him from the hall.

“Friend,” said Leo, when we were outside, “it seems to me that this Khan
of yours threatens my life.”

“Have no fear, lord,” answered the Guardian; “so long as the Khania does
not threaten it you are safe. She is the real ruler of this land, and I
stand next to her.”

“Then I pray you,” said Leo, “keep me out of the way of that drunken man,
for, look you, if I am attacked I defend myself.”

“And who can blame you?” Simbri replied with one of his slow, mysterious
smiles.

Then we parted, and having placed both our beds in one chamber, slept
soundly enough, for we were very tired, till we were awakened in the
morning by the baying of those horrible death-hounds, being fed, I
suppose, in a place nearby.

Now in this city of Kaloon it was our weary destiny to dwell for three
long months, one of the most hateful times, perhaps, that we ever passed
in all our lives. Indeed, compared to it our endless wanderings amid the
Central Asia snows and deserts were but pleasure pilgrimages, and our stay
at the monastery beyond the mountains a sojourn in Paradise. To set out
its record in full would be both tedious and useless, so I will only tell
briefly of our principal adventures.

On the morrow of our arrival the Khania Atene sent us two beautiful white
horses of pure and ancient blood, and at noon we mounted them and went out
to ride with her accompanied by a guard of soldiers. First she led us to
the kennels where the death-hounds were kept, great flagged courts
surrounded by iron bars, in which were narrow, locked gates. Never had I
seen brutes so large and fierce; the mastiffs of Thibet were but as
lap-dogs compared to them. They were red and black, smooth-coated and with
a blood-hound head, and the moment they saw us they came ravening and
leaping at the bars as an angry wave leaps against a rock.

These hounds were in the charge of men of certain families, who had tended
them for generations. They obeyed their keepers and the Khan readily
enough, but no stranger might venture near them. Also these brutes were
the executioners of the land, for to them all murderers and other
criminals were thrown, and with them, as we had seen, the Khan hunted any
who had incurred his displeasure. Moreover, they were used for a more
innocent purpose, the chasing of certain great bucks which were preserved
in woods and swamps of reeds. Thus it came about that they were a terror
to the country, since no man knew but what in the end he might be devoured
by them. “Going to the dogs” is a term full of meaning in any land, but in
Kaloon it had a significance that was terrible.

After we had looked at the hounds, not without a prophetic shudder, we
rode round the walls of the town, which were laid out as a kind of
boulevard, where the inhabitants walked and took their pleasure in the
evenings. On these, however, there was not much to see except the river
beneath and the plain beyond, moreover, though they were thick and high
there were places in them that must be passed carefully, for, like
everything else with which the effete ruling class had to do, they had
been allowed to fall into disrepair.

The town itself was an uninteresting place also, for the most part peopled
by hangers-on of the Court. So we were not sorry when we crossed the river
by a high-pitched bridge, where in days to come I was destined to behold
one of the strangest sights ever seen by mortal man, and rode out into the
country. Here all was different, for we found ourselves among the
husbandmen, who were the descendants of the original owners of the land
and lived upon its produce. Every available inch of soil seemed to be
cultivated by the aid of a wonderful system of irrigation. Indeed water
was lifted to levels where it would not flow naturally, by means of wheels
turned with mules, or even in some places carried up by the women, who
bore poles on their shoulders to which were balanced buckets.

Leo asked the Khania what happened if there was a bad season. She replied
grimly that famine happened, in which thousands of people perished, and
that after the famine came pestilence. These famines were periodical, and
were it not for them, she added, the people would long ago have been
driven to kill each other like hungry rats, since having no outlet and
increasing so rapidly, the land, large as it was, could not hold them all.

“Will this be a good year?” I asked.

“It is feared not,” she answered, “for the river has not risen well and
but few rains have fallen. Also the light that shone last night on the
Fire-mountain is thought a bad omen, which means, they say, that the
Spirit of the Mountain is angry and that drought will follow. Let us hope
they will not say also that this is because strangers have visited the
land, bringing with them bad luck.”

“If so,” said Leo with a laugh, “we shall have to fly to the Mountain to
take refuge there.”

“Do you then wish to take refuge in death?” she asked darkly. “Of this be
sure, my guests, that never while I live shall you be allowed to cross the
river which borders the slopes of yonder peak.”

“Why not, Khania?”

“Because, my lord Leo—that is your name, is it not?—such is my
will, and while I rule here my will is law. Come, let us turn homewards.”

That night we did not eat in the great hall, but in the room which
adjoined our bed-chambers. We were not left alone, however, for the Khania
and her uncle, the Shaman, who always attended her, joined our meal. When
we greeted them wondering, she said briefly that it was arranged thus
because she refused to expose us to more insults. She added that a
festival had begun which would last for a week, and that she did not wish
us to see how vile were the ways of her people.

That evening and many others which followed it—we never dined in the
central hall again—passed pleasantly enough, for the Khania made Leo
tell her of England where he was born, and of the lands that he had
visited, their peoples and customs. I spoke also of the history of
Alexander, whose general Rassen, her far-off forefather, conquered the
country of Kaloon, and of the land of Egypt, whence the latter came, and
so it went on till midnight, while Atene listened to us greedily, her eyes
fixed always on Leo’s face.

Many such nights did we spend thus in the palace of the city of Kaloon
where, in fact, we were close prisoners. But oh! the days hung heavy on
our hands. If we went into the courtyard or reception rooms of the palace,
the lords and their followers gathered round us and pestered us with
questions, for, being very idle, they were also very curious.

Also the women, some of whom were fair enough, began to talk to us on this
pretext or on that, and did their best to make love to Leo; for, in
contrast with their slim, delicate-looking men, they found this
deep-chested, yellow-haired stranger to their taste. Indeed they troubled
him much with gifts of flowers and messages sent by servants or soldiers,
making assignations with him, which of course he did not keep.

If we went out into the streets, matters were as bad, for then the people
ceased from their business, such as it was, and followed us about, staring
at us till we took refuge again in the palace gardens.

There remained, therefore, only our rides in the country with the Khania,
but after three or four of them, these came to an end owing to the
jealousy of the Khan, who vowed that if we went out together any more he
would follow with the death-hounds. So we must ride alone, if at all, in
the centre of a large guard of soldiers sent to see that we did not
attempt to escape, and accompanied very often by a mob of peasants, who
with threats and entreaties demanded that we should give back the rain
which they said we had taken from them. For now the great drought had
begun in earnest.

Thus it came about that at length our only resource was making pretence to
fish in the river, where the water was so clear and low that we could
catch nothing, watching the while the Fire-mountain, that loomed in the
distance mysterious and unreachable, and vainly racking our brains for
plans to escape thither, or at least to communicate with its priestess, of
whom we could learn no more.

For two great burdens lay upon our souls. The burden of desire to continue
our search and to meet with its reward which we were sure that we should
pluck amid the snows of yonder peak, if we could but come there; and the
burden of approaching catastrophe at the hands of the Khania Atene. She
had made no love to Leo since that night in the Gateway, and, indeed, even
if she had wished to, this would have been difficult, since I took care
that he was never left for one hour alone. No duenna could have clung to a
Spanish princess more closely than I did to Leo. Yet I could see well that
her passion was no whit abated; that it grew day by day, indeed, as the
fire swells in the heart of a volcano, and that soon it must break loose
and spread its ruin round. The omen of it was to be read in her words, her
gestures, and her tragic eyes.

CHAPTER X

IN THE SHAMAN’S CHAMBER

One night Simbri asked us to dine with him in his own apartments in the
highest tower of the palace—had we but known it, for us a fateful
place indeed, for here the last act of the mighty drama was destined to be
fulfilled. So we went, glad enough of any change. When we had eaten Leo
grew very thoughtful, then said suddenly—“Friend Simbri, I wish to
ask a favour of you—that you will beg the Khania to let us go our
ways.”

Instantly the Shaman’s cunning old face became like a mask of ivory.

“Surely you had better ask your favours of the lady herself, lord; I do
not think that any in reason will be refused to you,” he replied.

“Let us stop fencing,” said Leo, “and consider the facts. It has seemed to
me that the Khania Atene is not happy with her husband.”

“Your eyes are very keen, lord, and who shall say that they have deceived
you?”

“It has seemed, further,” went on Leo, reddening, “that she has been so
good as to look on me with—some undeserved regard.”

“Ah! perhaps you guessed that in the Gate-house yonder, if you have not
forgotten what most men would remember.”

“I remember certain things, Simbri, that have to do with her and you.”

The Shaman only stroked his beard and said: “Proceed!”

“There is little to add, Simbri, except that I am not minded to
bring scandal on the name of the first lady in your land.”

“Nobly said, lord, nobly said, though here they do not trouble much about
such things. But how if the matter could be managed without scandal? If,
for instance, the Khania chose to take another husband the whole land
would rejoice, for she is the last of her royal race.”

“How can she take another husband when she has one living?”

“True; indeed that is a question which I have considered, but the answer
to it is that men die. It is the common lot, and the Khan has been
drinking very heavily of late.”

“You mean that men can be murdered,” said Leo angrily. “Well, I will have
nothing to do with such a crime. Do you understand me?”

As the words passed his lips I heard a rustle and turned my head. Behind
us were curtains beyond which the Shaman slept, kept his instruments of
divination and worked out his horoscopes. Now they had been drawn, and
between them, in her royal array, stood the Khania still as a statue.

“Who was it that spoke of crime?” she asked in a cold voice. “Was it you,
my lord Leo?”

Rising from his chair, he faced her and said—“Lady, I am glad that
you have heard my words, even if they should vex you.”

“Why should it vex me to learn that there is one honest man in this court
who will have naught to do with murder? Nay, I honour you for those words.
Know also that no such foul thoughts have come near to me. Yet, Leo
Vincey, that which is written—is written.”

“Doubtless, Khania; but what is written?”

“Tell him, Shaman.”

Now Simbri passed behind the curtain and returned thence with a roll from
which he read: “The heavens have declared by their signs infallible that
before the next new moon, the Khan Rassen will lie dead at the hands of
the stranger lord who came to this country from across the mountains.”

“Then the heavens have declared a lie,” said Leo contemptuously.

“That is as you will,” answered Atene; “but so it must befall, not by my
hand or those of my servants, but by yours. And then?”

“Why by mine? Why not by Holly’s? Yet, if so, then doubtless I shall
suffer the punishment of my crime at the hands of his mourning widow,” he
replied exasperated.

“You are pleased to mock me, Leo Vincey, well knowing what a husband this
man is to me.”

Now I felt that the crisis had come, and so did Leo, for he looked her in
the face and said—“Speak on, lady, say all you wish; perhaps it will
be better for us both.”

“I obey you, lord. Of the beginning of this fate I know nothing, but I
read from the first page that is open to me. It has to do with this
present life of mine. Learn, Leo Vincey, that from my childhood onwards
you have haunted me. Oh! when first I saw you yonder by the river, your
face was not strange to me, for I knew it—I knew it well in dreams.
When I was a little maid and slept one day amidst the flowers by the
river’s brim, it came first to me—ask my uncle here if this be not
so, though it is true that your face was younger then. Afterwards again
and again I saw it in my sleep and learned to know that you were mine, for
the magic of my heart taught me this.

“Then passed the long years while I felt that you were drawing near to me,
slowly, very slowly, but ever drawing nearer, wending onward and outward
through the peoples of the world; across the hills, across the plains,
across the sands, across the snows, on to my side. At length came the end,
for one night not three moons ago, whilst this wise man, my uncle, and I
sat together here studying the lore that he has taught me and striving to
wring its secrets from the past, a vision came to me.

“Look you, I was lost in a charmed sleep which looses the spirit from the
body and gives it strength to stray afar and to see those things that have
been and that are yet to be. Then I saw you and your companion clinging to
a point of broken ice, over the river of the gulf. I do not lie; it is
written here upon the scroll. Yes, it was you, the man of my dreams, and
no other, and we knew the place and hurried thither and waited by the
water, thinking that perhaps beneath it you lay dead.

“Then, while we waited, lo! two tiny figures appeared far above upon the
icy tongue that no man may climb, and oh! you know the rest. Spellbound we
stood and saw you slip and hang, saw you sever the thin cord and rush
downwards, yes, and saw that brave man, Holly, leap headlong after you.

“But mine was the hand that drew you from the torrent, where otherwise you
must have drowned, you the love of the long past and of to-day, aye, and
of all time. Yes, you and no other, Leo Vincey. It was this spirit that
foresaw your danger and this hand which delivered you from death, and—and
would you refuse them now—when I, the Khania of Kaloon, proffer them
to you?”

So she spoke, and leaned upon the table, looking up into his face with
lips that trembled and with appealing eyes.

“Lady,” said Leo, “you saved me, and again I thank you, though perhaps it
would have been better if you had let me drown. But, forgive me the
question, if all this tale be true, why did you marry another man?”

Now she shrank back as though a knife had pricked her.

“Oh! blame me not,” she moaned, “it was but policy which bound me to this
madman, whom I ever loathed. They urged me to it; yes, even you, Simbri,
my uncle, and for that deed accursed be your head—urged me, saying
that it was necessary to end the war between Rassen’s faction and my own.
That I was the last of the true race, moreover, which must be carried on;
saying also that my dreams and my rememberings were but sick phantasies.
So, alas! alas! I yielded, thinking to make my people great.”

“And yourself, the greatest of them, if all I hear is true,” commented Leo
bluntly, for he was determined to end this thing. “Well, I do not blame
you, Khania, although now you tell me that I must cut a knot you tied by
taking the life of this husband of your own choice, for so forsooth it is
decreed by fate, that fate which you have shaped. Yes, I must do
what you will not do, and kill him. Also your tale of the decree of the
heavens and of that vision which led you to the precipice to save us is
false. Lady, you met me by the river because the ‘mighty’ Hesea, the
Spirit of the Mountain, so commanded you.”

“How know you that?” Atene said, springing up and facing him, while the
jaw of old Simbri dropped and the eyelids blinked over his glazed eyes.

“In the same way that I know much else. Lady, it would have been better if
you had spoken all the truth.”

Now Atene’s face went ashen and her cheeks sank in.

“Who told you?” she whispered. “Was it you, Magician?” and she turned upon
her uncle like a snake about to strike. “Oh! if so, be sure that I shall
learn it, and though we are of one blood and have loved each other, I will
pay you back in agony.”

“Atene, Atene,” Simbri broke in, holding up his claw-like hands, “you know
well it was not I.”

“Then it was you, you ape-faced wanderer, you messenger of the evil gods?
Oh! why did I not kill you at the first? Well, that fault can be
remedied.”

“Lady,” I said blandly, “am I also a magician?”

“Aye,” she answered, “I think that you are, and that you have a mistress
who dwells in fire.”

“Then, Khania,” I said, “such servants and such mistresses are ill to
meddle with. Say, what answer has the Hesea sent to your report of our
coming to this land?”

“Listen,” broke in Leo before she could reply. “I go to ask a certain
question of the Oracle on yonder mountain peak. With your will or without
it I tell you that I go, and afterwards you can settle which is the
stronger—the Khania of Kaloon or the Hesea of the House of Fire.”

Atene listened and for a while stood silent, perhaps because she had no
answer. Then she said with a little laugh—“Is that your will? Well,
I think that yonder are none whom you would wish to wed. There is fire and
to spare, but no lovely, shameless spirit haunts it to drive men mad with
evil longings;” and as though at some secret thought, a spasm of pain
crossed her face and caught her breath. Then she went on in the same cold
voice—“Wanderers, this land has its secrets, into which no foreigner
must pry. I say to you yet again that while I live you set no foot upon
that Mountain. Know also, Leo Vincey, I have bared my heart to you, and I
have been told in answer that this long quest of yours is not for me, as I
was sure in my folly, but, as I think, for some demon wearing the shape of
woman, whom you will never find. Now I make no prayer to you; it is not
fitting, but you have learned too much.

“Therefore, consider well to-night and before next sundown answer. Having
offered, I do not go back, and tomorrow you shall tell me whether you will
take me when the time comes, as come it must, and rule this land and be
great and happy in my love, or whether, you and your familiar together,
you will—die. Choose then between the vengeance of Atene and her
love, since I am not minded to be mocked in my own land as a wanton who
sought a stranger and was—refused.”

Slowly, slowly, in an intense whisper she spoke the words, that fell one
by one from her lips like drops of blood from a death wound, and there
followed silence. Never shall I forget the scene. There the old wizard
watched us through his horny eyes, that blinked like those of some night
bird. There stood the imperial woman in her royal robes, with icy rage
written on her face and vengeance in her glance. There, facing her, was
the great form of Leo, quiet, alert, determined, holding back his doubts
and fears with the iron hand of will. And there to the right was I,
noting all things and wondering how long I, “the familiar,” who had earned
Atene’s hate, would be left alive upon the earth.

Thus we stood, watching each other, till suddenly I noted that the flame
of the lamp above us flickered and felt a draught strike upon my face.
Then I looked round, and became aware of another presence. For yonder in
the shadow showed the tall form of a man. See! it shambled forward
silently, and I saw that its feet were naked. Now it reached the ring of
the lamplight and burst into a savage laugh.

It was the Khan.

Atene, his wife, looked up and saw him, and never did I admire that
passionate woman’s boldness more, who admired little else about her save
her beauty, for her face showed neither anger nor fear, but contempt only.
And yet she had some cause to be afraid, as she well knew.

“What do you here, Rassen?” she asked, “creeping on me with your naked
feet? Get you back to your drink and the ladies of your court.”

But he still laughed on, an hyena laugh.

“What have you heard?” she said, “that makes you so merry?”

“What have I heard?” Rassen gurgled out between his screams of hideous
glee. “Oho! I have heard the Khania, the last of the true blood, the first
in the land, the proud princess who will not let her robes be soiled by
those of the ‘ladies of the court’ and my wife, my wife, who asked me to
marry her—mark that, you strangers—because I was her cousin
and a rival ruler, and the richest lord in all the land, and thereby she
thought she would increase her power—I have heard her offer herself
to a nameless wanderer with a great yellow beard, and I have heard him,
who hates and would escape from her”—here he screamed with laughter—“refuse
her in such a fashion as I would not refuse the lowest woman in the
palace.

“I have heard also—but that I always knew—that I am mad; for,
strangers, I was made mad by a hate-philtre which that old Rat,” and he
pointed to Simbri, “gave me in my drink—yes, at my marriage feast.
It worked well, for truly there is no one whom I hate more than the Khania
Atene. Why, I cannot bear her touch, it makes me sick. I loathe to be in
the same room with her; she taints the air; there is a smell of sorceries
about her.

“It seems that it takes you thus also, Yellow-beard? Well, if so, ask the
old Rat for a love drink; he can mix it, and then you will think her sweet
and sound and fair, and spend some few months jollily enough. Man, don’t
be a fool, the cup that is thrust into your hands looks goodly. Drink,
drink deep. You’ll never guess the liquor’s bad—till to-morrow—though
it be mixed with a husband’s poisoned blood,” and again Rassen screamed in
his unholy mirth.

To all these bitter insults, venomed with the sting of truth, Atene
listened without a word. Then, she turned to us and bowed.

“My guests,” she said, “I pray you pardon me for all I cannot help. You
have strayed to a corrupt and evil land, and there stands its crown and
flower. Khan Rassen, your doom is written, and I do not hasten it, because
once for a little while we were near to each other, though you have been
naught to me for this many a year save a snake that haunts my house. Were
it otherwise, the next cup you drank should still your madness, and that
vile tongue of yours which gives its venom voice. My uncle, come with me.
Your hand, for I grow weak with shame and woe.”

The old Shaman hobbled forward, but when he came face to face with the
Khan he stopped and looked him up and down with his dim eyes. Then he said—“Rassen,
I saw you born, the son of an evil woman, and your father none knew but I.
The flame flared that night upon the Fire-mountain, and the stars hid
their faces, for none of them would own you, no, not even those of the
most evil influence. I saw you wed and rise drunken from your marriage
feast, your arm about a wanton’s neck. I have seen you rule, wasting the
land for your cruel pleasure, turning the fertile fields into great parks
for your game, leaving those who tilled them to starve upon the road or
drown themselves in ditches for very misery. And soon, soon I shall see
you die in pain and blood, and then the chain will fall from the neck of
this noble lady whom you revile, and another more worthy shall take your
place and rear up children to fill your throne, and the land shall have
rest again.”

Now I listened to these words—and none who did not hear them can
guess the fearful bitterness with which they were spoken—expecting
every moment that the Khan would draw the short sword at his side and cut
the old man down. But he did not; he cowered before him like a dog before
some savage master, the weight of whose whip he knows. Yes, answering
nothing, he shrank into the corner and cowered there, while Simbri, taking
Atene by the hand, went from the room. At its massive, iron-bound door he
turned and pointing to the crouching figure with his staff, said—“Khan
Rassen, I raised you up, and now I cast you down. Remember me when you lie
dying—in blood and pain.”

Their footsteps died away, and the Khan crept from his corner, looking
about him furtively.

“Have that Rat and the other gone?” he asked of us, wiping his damp brow
with his sleeve; and I saw that fear had sobered him and that for awhile
the madness had left his eyes.

I answered that they had gone.

“You think me a coward,” he went on passionately, “and it is true, I am
afraid of him and her—as you, Yellow-beard, will be afraid when your
turn comes. I tell you that they sapped my strength and crazed me with
their drugged drink, making me the thing I am, for who can war against
their wizardries? Look you now. Once I was a prince, the lord of half this
land, noble of form and upright of heart, and I loved her accursed beauty
as all must love it on whom she turns her eyes. And she turned them on me,
she sought me in marriage; it was that old Rat who bore her
message.

“So I stayed the great war and married the Khania and became the Khan; but
better had it been for me if I had crept into her kitchen as a scullion,
than into her chamber as a husband. For from the first she hated me, and
the more I loved, the more she hated, till at our wedding feast she
doctored me with that poison which made me loathe her, and thus divorced
us; which made me mad also, eating into my brain like fire.”

“If she hated you so sorely, Khan,” I asked, “why did she not mix a
stronger draught and have done with you?”

“Why? Because of policy, for I ruled half the land. Because it suited her
also that I should live on, a thing to mock at, since while I was alive no
other husband could be forced upon her by the people. For she is not a
woman, she is a witch, who desires to live alone, or so I thought until
to-night”—and he glowered at Leo.

“She knew also that although I must shrink from her, I still love her in
my heart, and can still be jealous, and therefore that I should protect
her from all men. It was she who set me on that lord whom my dogs tore
awhile ago, because he was powerful and sought her favour and would not be
denied. But now,” and again he glowered at Leo, “now I know why she has
always seemed so cold. It is because there lived a man to melt whose ice
she husbanded her fire.”

Then Leo, who all this while had stood silent, stepped forward.

“Listen, Khan,” he said. “Did the ice seem like melting a little while
ago?”

“No—unless you lied. But that was only because the fire is not yet
hot enough. Wait awhile until it burns up, and melt you must, for who can
match his will against Atene?”

“And what if the ice desires to flee the fire? Khan, they said that I
should kill you, but I do not seek your blood. You think that I would rob
you of your wife, yet I have no such thought towards her. We desire to
escape this town of yours, but cannot, because its gates are locked, and
we are prisoners, guarded night and day. Hear me, then. You have the power
to set us free and to be rid of us.”

The Khan looked at him cunningly. “And if I set you free, whither would
you go? You could tumble down yonder gorge, but only the birds can climb
its heights.”

“To the Fire-mountain, where we have business.”

Rassen stared at him.

“Is it I who am mad, or are you, who wish to visit the Fire-mountain? Yet
that is nothing to me, save that I do not believe you. But if so you might
return again and bring others with you. Perchance, having its lady, you
wish this land also by right of conquest. It has foes up yonder.”

“It is not so,” answered Leo earnestly. “As one man to another, I tell you
it is not so. I ask no smile of your wife and no acre of your soil.
Be wise and help us to be gone, and live on undisturbed in such fashion as
may please you.”

The Khan stood still awhile, swinging his long arms vacantly, till
something seemed to come into his mind that moved him to merriment, for he
burst into one of his hideous laughs.

“I am thinking,” he said, “what Atene would say if she woke up to find her
sweet bird flown. She would search for you and be angry with me.”

“It seems that she cannot be angrier than she is,” I answered. “Give us a
night’s start and let her search never so closely, she shall not find us.”

“You forget, Wanderer, that she and her old Rat have arts. Those who knew
where to meet you might know where to seek you. And yet, and yet, it would
be rare to see her rage. ‘Oh, Yellow-beard, where are you, Yellow-beard?’
he went on, mimicking his wife’s voice. ‘Come back and let me melt your
ice, Yellow-beard.’”

Again he laughed; then said suddenly—“When can you be ready?”

“In half an hour,” I answered.

“Good. Go to your chambers and prepare. I will join you there presently.”

So we went.

CHAPTER XI

THE HUNT AND THE KILL

We reached our rooms, meeting no one in the passages, and there made our
preparations. First we changed our festal robes for those warmer garments
in which we had travelled to the city of Kaloon. Then we ate and drank
what we could of the victuals which stood in the antechamber, not knowing
when we should find more food, and filled two satchels such as these
people sling about their shoulders, with the remains of the meat and
liquor and a few necessaries. Also we strapped our big hunting knives
about our middles and armed ourselves with short spears that were made for
the stabbing of game.

“Perhaps he has laid a plot to murder us, and we may as well defend
ourselves while we can,” suggested Leo.

I nodded, for the echoes of the Khan’s last laugh still rang in my ears.
It was a very evil laugh.

“Likely enough,” I said. “I do not trust that insane brute. Still, he
wishes to be rid of us.”

“Yes, but as he said, live men may return, whereas the dead do not.”

“Atene thinks otherwise,” I commented.

“And yet she threatened us with death,” answered Leo.

“Because her shame and passion make her mad,” I replied, after which we
were silent.

Presently the door opened, and through it came the Khan, muffled in a
great cloak as though to disguise himself.

“Come,” he said, “if you are ready.” Then, catching sight of the spears we
held, he added: “You will not need those things. You do not go a-hunting.”

“No,” I answered, “but who can say—we might be hunted.”

“If you believe that perhaps you had best stay where you are till the
Khania wearies of Yellow-beard and opens the gates for you,” he replied,
eyeing me with his cunning glance.

“I think not,” I said, and we started, the Khan leading the way and
motioning us to be silent.

We passed through the empty rooms on to the verandah, and from the
verandah down into the courtyard, where he whispered to us to keep in the
shadow. For the moon shone very clearly that night, so clearly, I
remember, that I could see the grass which grew between the joints of the
pavement, and the little shadows thrown by each separate blade upon the
worn surface of its stones. Now I wondered how we should pass the gate,
for there a guard was stationed, which had of late been doubled by order
of the Khania. But this gate we left upon our right, taking a path that
led into the great walled garden, where Rassen brought us to a door hidden
behind a clump of shrubs, which he unlocked with a key he carried.

Now we were outside the palace wall, and our road ran past the kennels. As
we went by these, the great, sleepless death-hounds, that wandered to and
fro like prowling lions, caught our wind and burst into a sudden chorus of
terrific bays. I shivered at the sound, for it was fearful in that
silence, also I thought that it would arouse the keepers. But the Khan
went to the bars and showed himself, whereon the brutes, which knew him,
ceased their noise.

“Fear not,” he said as he returned, “the huntsmen know that they are
starved to-night, for to-morrow certain criminals will be thrown to them.”

Now we had reached the palace gates. Here the Khan bade us hide in an
archway and departed. We looked at each other, for the same thought was in
both our minds—that he had gone to fetch the murderers who were to
make an end of us. But in this we did him wrong, for presently we heard
the sound of horses’ hoofs upon the stones, and he returned leading the
two white steeds that Atene had given us.

“I saddled them with my own hands,” he whispered. “Who can do more to
speed the parting guest? Now mount, hide your faces in your cloaks as I
do, and follow me.”

So we mounted, and he trotted before us like a running footman, such as
the great lords of Kaloon employed when they went about their business or
their pleasure. Leaving the main street, he led us through a quarter of
the town that had an evil reputation, and down its tortuous by-ways. Here
we met a few revellers, while from time to time night-birds flitted from
the doorways and, throwing aside their veils, looked at us, but as we made
no sign drew back again, thinking that we passed to some assignation. We
reached the deserted docks upon the river’s edge and came to a little
quay, alongside of which a broad ferryboat was fastened.

“You must put your horses into it and row across,” Rassen said, “for the
bridges are guarded, and without discovering myself I cannot bid the
soldiers to let you pass.”

So with some little trouble we urged the horses into the boat, where I
held them by their bridles while Leo took the oars.

“Now go your ways, accursed wanderers,” cried the Khan as he thrust us
from the quay, “and pray the Spirit of the Mountain that the old Rat and
his pupil—your love, Yellow-beard, your love—are not watching
you in their magic glass. For if so we may meet again.”

Then as the stream caught us, sweeping the boat out towards the centre of
the river, he began to laugh that horrible laugh of his, calling after us—“Ride
fast, ride fast for safety, strangers; there is death behind.”

Leo put out his strength and backed water, so that the punt hung upon the
edge of the stream.

“I think that we should do well to land again and kill that man, for he
means mischief,” he said.

He spoke in English, but Rassen must have caught the ring of his voice and
guessed its meaning with the cunning of the mad. At least he shouted—“Too
late, fools,” and with a last laugh turned, ran so swiftly up the quay
that his cloak flew out upon the air behind him, and vanished into the
shadows at its head.

“Row on,” I said, and Leo bent himself to the oars.

But the ferry-boat was cumbersome and the current swift, so that we were
swept down a long way before we could cross it. At length we reached still
water near the further shore, and seeing a landing-place, managed to beach
the punt and to drag our horses to the bank. Then leaving the craft to
drift, for we had no time to scuttle her, we looked to our girths and
bridles, and mounted, heading towards the far column of glowing smoke
which showed like a beacon above the summit of the House of Fire.

At first our progress was very slow, for here there seemed to be no path,
and we were obliged to pick our way across the fields, and to search for
bridges that spanned such of the water-ditches as were too wide for us to
jump. More than an hour was spent in this work, till we came to a village
wherein none were stirring, and here struck a road which seemed to run
towards the mountain, though, as we learned afterwards, it took us very
many miles out of our true path. Now for the first time we were able to
canter, and pushed on at some speed, though not too fast, for we wished to
spare our horses and feared lest they might fall in the uncertain light.

A while before dawn the moon sank behind the Mountain, and the gloom grew
so dense that we were forced to stop, which we did, holding the horses by
their bridles and allowing them to graze a little on some young corn. Then
the sky turned grey, the light faded from the column of smoke that was our
guide, the dawn came, blushing red upon the vast snows of the distant
peak, and shooting its arrows through the loop above the pillar. We let
the horses drink from a channel that watered the corn, and, mounting them,
rode onward slowly.

Now with the shadows of the night a weight of fear seemed to be lifted off
our hearts and we grew hopeful, aye, almost joyous. That hated city was
behind us. Behind us were the Khania with her surging, doom-driven
passions and her stormy loveliness, the wizardries of her horny-eyed
mentor, so old in years and secret sin, and the madness of that strange
being, half-devil, half-martyr, at once cruel and a coward—the Khan,
her husband, and his polluted court. In front lay the fire, the snow and
the mystery they hid, sought for so many empty years. Now we would solve
it or we would die. So we pressed forward joyfully to meet our fate,
whatever it might be.

For many hours our road ran deviously through cultivated land, where the
peasants at their labour laid down their tools and gathered into knots to
watch us pass, and quaint, flat-roofed villages, whence the women snatched
up their children and fled at the sight of us. They believed us to be
lords from the court who came to work them some harm in person or in
property, and their terror told us how the country smarted beneath
the rod of the oppressor. By mid-day, although the peak seemed to be but
little nearer, the character of the land had changed. Now it sloped gently
upwards, and therefore could not be irrigated.

Evidently all this great district was dependent on the fall of timely
rains, which had not come that spring. Therefore, although the population
was still dense and every rod of the land was under the plough or spade,
the crops were failing. It was pitiful to see the green, uneared corn
already turning yellow because of the lack of moisture, the beasts
searching the starved pastures for food and the poor husbandmen wandering
about their fields or striving to hoe the iron soil.

Here the people seemed to know us as the two foreigners whose coming had
been noised abroad, and, the fear of famine having made them bold, they
shouted at us as we went by to give them back the rain which we had
stolen, or so we understood their words. Even the women and the children
in the villages prostrated themselves before us, pointing first to the
Mountain and then to the hard, blue sky, and crying to us to send them
rain. Once, indeed, we were threatened by a mob of peasants armed with
spades and reaping-hooks, who seemed inclined to bar our path, so that we
were obliged to put our horses to a gallop and pass through them with a
rush. As we went forward the country grew ever more arid and its
inhabitants more scarce, till we saw no man save a few wandering herds who
drove their cattle from place to place in search of provender.

By evening we guessed that we had reached that border tract which was
harried by the Mountain tribes, for here strong towers built of stone were
dotted about the heaths, doubtless to serve as watch-houses or places of
refuge. Whether they were garrisoned by soldiers I do not know, but I
doubt it, for we saw none. It seems probable indeed that these forts were
relics of days when the land of Kaloon was guarded from attack by rulers
of a very different character to that of the present Khan and his
immediate predecessors.

At length even the watch-towers were left behind, and by sundown we found
ourselves upon a vast uninhabited plain, where we could see no living
thing. Now we made up our minds to rest our horses awhile, proposing to
push forward again with the moon, for having the wrath of the Khania
behind us we did not dare to linger. By this evening doubtless she would
have discovered our escape, since before sundown, as she had decreed, Leo
must make his choice and give his answer. Then, as we were sure, she would
strike swiftly. Perhaps her messengers were already at their work rousing
the country to capture us, and her soldiers following on our path.

We unsaddled the horses and let them refresh themselves by rolling on the
sandy soil, and graze after a fashion upon the coarse tufts of withering
herbage which grew around. There was no water here; but this did not so
much matter, for both they and we had drunk at a little muddy pool we
found not more than an hour before. We were finishing our meal of the food
that we had brought with us, which, indeed, we needed sorely after our
sleepless night and long day’s journey, when my horse, which was
knee-haltered close at hand, lay down to roll again. This it could not do
with ease because of the rope about its fore-leg, and I watched its
efforts idly, till at length, at the fourth attempt, after hanging for a
few seconds upon its back, its legs sticking straight into the air, it
fell over slowly towards me as horses do.

“Why are its hoofs so red? Has it cut itself?” asked Leo in an indifferent
voice.

As it chanced I also had just noticed this red tinge, and for the first
time, since it was most distinct about the animal’s frogs, which until it
rolled thus I had not seen. So I rose to look at them, thinking that
probably the evening light had deceived us, or that we might have passed
through some ruddy-coloured mud. Sure enough they were red, as
though a dye had soaked into the horn and the substance of the frogs. What
was more, they gave out a pungent, aromatic smell that was unpleasant,
such a smell as might arise from blood mixed with musk and spices.

“It is very strange,” I said. “Let us look at your beast, Leo.”

So we did, and found that its hoofs had been similarly-treated.

“Perhaps it is a native mixture to preserve the horn,” suggested Leo.

I thought awhile, then a terrible idea struck me.

“I don’t want to frighten you,” I said, “but I think that we had better
saddle up and get on.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I believe that villain of a Khan has doctored our horses.”

“What for? To make them go lame?”

“No, Leo, to make them leave a strong scent upon dry ground.”

He turned pale. “Do you mean—those hounds?”

I nodded. Then wasting no more time in words, we saddled up in frantic
haste. Just as I fastened the last strap of my saddle I thought that a
faint sound reached my ear.

“Listen,” I said. Again it came, and now there was no doubt about it. It
was the sound of baying dogs.

“By heaven! the death-hounds,” said Leo.

“Yes,” I answered quietly enough, for at this crisis my nerves hardened
and all fear left me, “our friend the Khan is out a-hunting. That is why
he laughed.”

“What shall we do?” asked Leo. “Leave the horses?”

I looked at the Peak. Its nearest flanks were miles and miles away.

“Time enough to do that when we are forced. We can never reach that
mountain on foot, and after they had run down the horses, they would hunt
us by spoor or gaze. No, man, ride as you never rode before.”

We sprang to our saddles, but before we gave rein I turned and looked
behind me. It will be remembered that we had ridden up a long slope which
terminated in a ridge, about three miles away, the border of the great
plain whereon we stood. Now the sun had sunk behind that ridge so that
although it was still light the plain had fallen into shadow. Therefore,
while no distant object could be seen upon the plain, anything crossing
the ridge remained visible enough in that clear air, at least to persons
of keen sight.

This is what we saw. Over the ridge poured a multitude of little objects,
and amongst the last of these galloped a man mounted on a great horse, who
led another horse by the bridle.

“All the pack are out,” said Leo grimly, “and Rassen has brought a second
mount with him. Now I see why he wanted us to leave the spears, and I
think,” he shouted as we began to gallop, “that before all is done the
Shaman may prove himself a true prophet.”

Away we sped through the gathering darkness, heading straight for the
Peak. While we went I calculated our chances. Our horses, as good as any
in the land, were still strong and fresh, for although we had ridden far
we had not over-pressed them, and their condition was excellent. But
doubtless the death-hounds were fresh also, for, meaning to run us down at
night when he thought that he might catch us sleeping, Rassen would have
brought them along easily, following us by inquiry among the peasants and
only laying them on our spoor after the last village had been left behind.

Also he had two mounts, and for aught we knew—though afterwards this
proved not to be the case, for he wished to work his wickedness alone and
unseen—he might be followed by attendants with relays. Therefore it
would appear that unless we reached some place whither he did not dare to
follow, before him—that is the slopes of the Peak many miles away,
he must run us down. There remained the chance also that the dogs would
tire and refuse to pursue the chase.

This, however, seemed scarcely probable, for they were extraordinarily
swift and strong, and so savage that when once they had scented blood, in
which doubtless our horses’ hoofs were steeped, they would fall dead from
exhaustion sooner than abandon the trail. Indeed, both the Khania and
Simbri had often told us as much. Another chance—they might lose the
scent, but seeing its nature, again this was not probable. Even an English
pack will carry the trail of a red herring breast high without a fault for
hours, and here was something stronger—a cunning compound of which
the tell-tale odour would hold for days. A last chance. If we were forced
to abandon our horses, we, their riders, might possibly escape, could we
find any place to hide in on that great plain. If not, we should be seen
as well as scented, and then——No, the odds were all against
us, but so they had often been before; meanwhile we had three miles start,
and perhaps help would come to us from the Mountain, some help unforeseen.
So we set our teeth and sped away like arrows while the light lasted.

Very soon it failed, and whilst the moon was hidden behind the mountains
the night grew dark.

Now the hounds gained on us, for in the gloom, which to them was nothing,
we did not dare to ride full speed, fearing lest our horses should stumble
and lame themselves, or fall. Then it was for the second time since we had
dwelt in this land of Kaloon that of a sudden the fire flamed upon the
Peak. When we had seen it before, it had appeared to flash across the
heavens in one great lighthouse ray, concentrated through the loop above
the pillar, and there this night also the ray ran far above us like a
lance of fire. But now that we were nearer to its fount we found ourselves
bathed in a soft, mysterious radiance like that of the phosphorescence on
a summer sea, reflected downwards perhaps from the clouds and massy rock
roof of the column loop and diffused by the snows beneath.

This unearthly glimmer, faint as it was, helped us much, indeed but for it
we must have been overtaken, for here the ground was very rough, full of
holes also made by burrowing marmots. Thus in our extremity help did come
to us from the Mountain, until at length the moon rose, when as quickly as
they had appeared the volcanic fires vanished, leaving behind them nothing
but the accustomed pillar of dull red smoke.

It is a commonplace to speak of the music of hounds at chase, but often I
have wondered how that music sounds in the ears of the deer or the fox
fleeing for its life.

Now, when we filled the place of the quarry, it was my destiny to solve
this problem, and I assert with confidence that the progeny of earth can
produce no more hideous noise. It had come near to us, and in the desolate
silence of the night the hellish harmonies of its volume seemed terrific,
yet I could discern the separate notes of which it was composed,
especially one deep, bell-like bay.

I remembered that I had heard this bay when we sat in the boat upon the
river and saw that poor noble done to death for the crime of loving the
Khania. As the hunt passed us then I observed that it burst from the
throat of the leading hound, a huge brute, red in colour, with a
coal-black ear, fangs that gleamed like ivory, and a mouth which resembled
a hot oven. I even knew the name of the beast, for afterwards the Khan,
whose peculiar joy it was, had pointed it out to me. He called it Master,
because no dog in the pack dared fight it, and told me that it could kill
an armed man alone.

Now, as its baying warned us, Master was not half a mile away!

The coming of the moonlight enabled us to gallop faster, especially as
here the ground was smooth, being covered with a short, dry turf, and for
the next two hours we gained upon the pack. Yes, it was only two hours, or
perhaps less, but it seemed a score of centuries. The slopes of the Peak
were now not more than ten miles ahead, but our horses were giving out at
last. They had borne us nobly, poor beasts, though we were no light
weights, yet their strength had its limits. The sweat ran from them, their
sides panted like bellows, they breathed in gasps, they stumbled and would
scarcely answer to the flogging of our spear-shafts. Their gallop sank to
a jolting canter, and I thought that soon they must come to a dead stop.

We crossed the brow of a gentle rise, from which the ground, that was
sprinkled with bush and rocks, sloped downwards to where, some miles below
us, the river ran, bounding the enormous flanks of the Mountain. When we
had travelled a little way down this slope we were obliged to turn in
order to pass between two heaps of rock, which brought us side on to its
brow. And there, crossing it not more than three hundred yards away, we
saw the pack. There were fewer of them now; doubtless many had fallen out
of the hunt, but many still remained. Moreover, not far behind them rode
the Khan, though his second mount was gone, or more probably he was riding
it, having galloped the first to a standstill.

Our poor horses saw them also, and the sight lent them wings, for all the
while they knew that they were running for their lives. This we could tell
from the way they quivered whenever the baying came near to them, not as
horses tremble with the pleasureable excitement of the hunt, but in an
extremity of terror, as I have often seen them do when a prowling tiger
roars close to their camp. On they went as though they were fresh from the
stable, nor did they fail again until another four miles or so were
covered and the river was but a little way ahead, for we could hear the
rush of its waters.

Then slowly but surely the pack overtook us. We passed a clump of bush,
but when we had gone a couple of hundred yards or so across the open plain
beyond, feeling that the horses were utterly spent, I shouted to Leo—“Ride
round back to the bush and hide there.” So we did, and scarcely had we
reached it and dismounted when the hounds came past. Yes, they went within
fifty yards of us, lolloping along upon our spoor and running all but
mute, for now they were too weary to waste their breath in vain. “Run for
it,” I said to Leo as soon as they had gone by, “for they will be back on
the scent presently,” and we set off to the right across the line that the
hounds had taken, so as not to cut our own spoor.

About a hundred yards away was a rock, which fortunately we were able to
reach before the pack swung round upon the horses’ tracks, and therefore
they did not view us. Here we stayed until following the loop, they came
to the patch of bush and passed behind it. Then we ran forward again as
far as we could go. Glancing backwards as we went, I saw our two poor,
foundered beasts plunging away across the plain, happily almost in the
same line along which we had ridden from the rise. They were utterly done,
but freed from our weights and urged on by fear, could still gallop and
keep ahead of the dogs, though we knew that this would not be for very
long. I saw also that the Khan, guessing what we had done in our despair,
was trying to call his hounds off the horses, but as yet without avail,
for they would not leave the quarry which they had viewed.

All this came to my sight in a flash, but I remember the picture well. The
mighty, snow-clad Peak surmounted by its column of glowing smoke and
casting its shadow for mile upon mile across the desert flats; the plain
with its isolated rocks and grey bushes; the doomed horses struggling
across it with convulsive bounds; the trailing line of great dogs that
loped after them, and amongst these, looking small and lonely in that vast
place, the figure of the Khan and his horse, of which the black hide was
beflecked with foam. Then above, the blue and tender sky, where the round
moon shone so clearly that in her quiet, level light no detail, even the
smallest, could escape the eye.

Now youth and even middle age were far behind me, and although a very
strong man for my years, I could not run as I used to do. Also I was most
weary, and my limbs were stiff and chafed with long riding, so I made but
slow progress, and to worsen matters I struck my left foot against a stone
and hurt it much. I implored Leo to go on and leave me, for we thought
that if we could once reach the river our scent would be lost in the
water; at any rate that it would give us a chance of life. Just then too,
I heard the belling bay of the hound Master, and waited for the next. Yes,
it was nearer to us. The Khan had made a cast and found our line.
Presently we must face the end.

“Go, go!” I said. “I can keep them back for a few minutes and you may
escape. It is your quest, not mine. Ayesha awaits you, not me, and I am
weary of life. I wish to die and have done with it.”

Thus I gasped, not all at once, but in broken words, as I hobbled along
clinging to Leo’s arm. But he only answered in a low voice—“Be
quiet, or they will hear you,” and on he went, dragging me with him.

We were quite near the water now, for we could see it gleaming below us,
and oh! how I longed for one deep drink. I remember that this was the
uppermost desire in my mind, to drink and drink. But the hounds were
nearer still to us, so near that we could hear the pattering of their feet
on the dry ground mingled with the thud of the hoofs of the Khan’s
galloping horse. We had reached some rocks upon a little rise, just where
the bank began, when Leo said suddenly—“No use, we can’t make it.
Stop and let’s see the thing through.”

So we wheeled round, resting our backs against the rock. There, about a
hundred yards off, were the death-hounds, but Heaven be praised! only
three of them. The rest had followed the flying horses, and doubtless
when they caught them at last, which may have been far distant, had
stopped to gorge themselves upon them. So they were out of the fight. Only
three, and the Khan, a wild figure, who galloped with them; but those
three, the black and red brute, Master, and two others almost as fierce
and big.

“It might be worse,” said Leo. “If you will try to tackle the dogs, I’ll
do my best with the Khan,” and stooping down he rubbed his palms in the
grit, for they were wet as water, an example which I followed. Then we
gripped the spears in our right hands and the knives in our left, and
waited.

The dogs had seen us now and came on, growling and baying fearfully. With
a rush they came, and I am not ashamed to own that I felt terribly afraid,
for the brutes seemed the size of lions and more fierce. One, it was the
smallest of them, outstripped the others, and, leaping up the little rise,
sprang straight at my throat.

Why or how I do not know, but on the impulse of the moment I too sprang to
meet it, so that its whole weight came upon the point of my spear, which
was backed by my weight. The spear entered between its forelegs and such
was the shock that I was knocked backwards. But when I regained my feet I
saw the dog rolling on the ground before me and gnashing at the spear
shaft, which had been twisted from my hand.

The other two had jumped at Leo, but failed to get hold, though one of
them tore away a large fragment from his tunic. Foolishly enough, he
hurled his spear at it but missed, for the steel passed just under its
belly and buried itself deep in the ground. The pair of them did not come
on again at once. Perhaps the sight of their dying companion made them
pause. At any rate, they stood at a little distance snarling, where, as
our spears were gone, they were safe from us.

Now the Khan had ridden up and sat upon his horse glowering at us, and his
face was like the face of a devil. I had hoped that he might fear to
attack, but the moment I saw his eyes, I knew that this would not be. He
was quite mad with hate, jealousy, and the long-drawn excitement of the
hunt, and had come to kill or be killed. Sliding from the saddle, he drew
his short sword—for either he had lost his spear or had brought none—and
made a hissing noise to the two dogs, pointing at me with the sword. I saw
them spring and I saw him rush at Leo, and after that who can tell exactly
what happened?

My knife went home to the hilt in the body of one dog—and it came to
the ground and lay there—for its hindquarters were paralysed,
howling, snarling and biting at me. But the other, the fiend called
Master, got me by the right arm beneath the elbow, and I felt my bones
crack in its mighty jaws, and the agony of it, or so I suppose, caused me
to drop the knife, so that I was weaponless. The brute dragged me from the
rock and began to shake and worry me, although I kicked it in the stomach
with all my strength. I fell to my knees and, as it chanced, my left hand
came upon a stone of about the size of a large orange, which I gripped. I
gained my feet again and pounded at its skull with the stone, but still it
did not leave go, and this was well for me, for its next hold would have
been on my throat.

We twisted and tumbled to and fro, man and dog together. At one turn I
thought that I saw Leo and the Khan rolling over and over each other upon
the ground; at another, that he, the Khan, was sitting against a stone
looking at me, and it came into my mind that he must have killed Leo and
was watching while the dog worried me to death.

Then just as things began to grow black, something sprang forward and I
saw the huge hound lifted from the earth. Its jaws opened, my arm came
free and fell against my side. Yes! the brute was whirling round in the
air. Leo held it by its hind legs and with all his great strength whirled
it round and round.

Thud!

He had dashed its head against the rock, and it fell and lay still, a
huddled heap of black and red. Oddly enough, I did not faint; I suppose
that the pain and the shock to my nerves kept me awake, for I heard Leo
say in a matter-of-fact voice between his gasps for breath—“Well,
that’s over, and I think that I have fulfilled the Shaman’s prophecy.
Let’s look and make sure.”

Then he led me with him to one of the rocks, and there, resting supinely
against it, sat the Khan, still living but unable to move hand or foot.
The madness had quite left his face and he looked at us with melancholy
eyes, like the eyes of a sick child.

“You are brave men,” he said, slowly, “strong also, to have killed those
hounds and broken my back. So it has come about as was foretold by the old
Rat. After all, I should have hunted Atene, not you, though now she lives
to avenge me, for her own sake, not mine. Yellow-beard, she hunts you too
and with deadlier hounds than these, those of her thwarted passions.
Forgive me and fly to the Mountain, Yellow-beard, whither I go before you,
for there one dwells who is stronger than Atene.”

Then his jaw dropped and he was dead.

CHAPTER XII

THE MESSENGER

“He is gone,” I panted, “and the world hasn’t lost much.”

“Well, it didn’t give him much, did it, poor devil, so don’t let’s speak
ill of him,” answered Leo, who had thrown himself exhausted to the ground.
“Perhaps he was all right before they made him mad. At any rate he had
pluck, for I don’t want to tackle such another.”

“How did you manage it?” I asked.

“Dodged in beneath his sword, closed with him, threw him and smashed him
up over that lump of stone. Sheer strength, that’s all. A cruel business,
but it was his life or mine, and there you are. It’s lucky I finished it
in time to help you before that oven-mouthed brute tore your throat out.
Did you ever see such a dog? It looks as large as a young donkey. Are you
much hurt, Horace?”

“Oh, my forearm is chewed to a pulp, but nothing else, I think. Let us get
down to the water; if I can’t drink soon I shall faint. Also the rest of
the pack is somewhere about, fifty or more of them.”

“I don’t think they will trouble us, they have got the horses, poor
beasts. Wait a minute and I will come.”

Then he rose, found the Khan’s sword, a beautiful and ancient weapon, and
with a single cut of its keen edge, killed the second dog that I had
wounded, which was still yowling and snarling at us. After this he
collected the two spears and my knife, saying that they might be useful,
and without trouble caught the Khan’s horse, which stood with hanging head
close by, so tired that even this desperate fight had not frightened it
away.

“Now,” he said, “up you go, old fellow. You are not fit to walk any
farther;” and with his help I climbed into the saddle.

Then slipping the rein over his arm he led the horse, which walked
stiffly, on to the river, that ran within a quarter of a mile of us,
though to me, tortured as I was by pain and half delirious with
exhaustion, the journey seemed long enough.

Still we came there somehow, and, forgetting my wounds, I tumbled from the
horse, threw myself flat and drank and drank, more, I think, than ever I
did before. Not in all my life have I tasted anything so delicious as was
that long draught of water. When I had satisfied my thirst, I dipped my
head and made shift to jerk my wounded arm into it, for its coolness
seemed to still the pain. Presently Leo rose, the water running from his
face and beard, and said—“What shall we do now? The river seems to
be wide, over a hundred yards, and it is low, but there may be deep water
in the middle. Shall we try to cross, in which case we might drown, or
stop where we are till daylight and take our chance of the death-hounds?”

“I can’t go another foot,” I murmured faintly, “much less try to ford an
unknown river.”

Now, about thirty yards from the shore was an island covered with reeds
and grasses.

“Perhaps we could reach that,” he said. “Come, get on to my back, and we
will try.”

I obeyed with difficulty, and we set out, he feeling his way with the
handle of the spear. The water proved to be quite shallow; indeed, it
never came much above his knees, so that we reached the island without
trouble. Here Leo laid me down on the soft rushes, and, returning to the
mainland, brought over the black horse and the remaining weapons, and
having unsaddled the beast, knee-haltered and turned it loose, whereon it
immediately lay down, for it was too spent to feed.

Then he set to work to doctor my wounds. Well it proved for me that the
sleeve of my garment was so thick, for even through it the flesh of my
forearm was torn to ribbons, moreover a bone seemed to be broken. Leo
collected a double handful of some soft wet moss and, having washed the
arm, wrapped it round with a handkerchief, over which he laid the moss.
Then with a second handkerchief and some strips of linen torn from our
undergarments he fastened a couple of split reeds to serve as rough
splints to the wounded limb. While he was doing this I suppose that I
slept or swooned. At any rate, I remember no more.

Sometime during that night Leo had a strange dream, of which he told me
the next morning. I suppose that it must have been a dream as certainly I
saw or was aware of nothing. Well, he dreamed—I use his own words as
nearly as possible—that again he heard those accursed death-hounds
in full cry. Nearer and nearer they came, following our spoor to the edge
of the river—all the pack that had run down the horses. At the
water’s brink they halted and were mute. Then suddenly a puff of wind
brought the scent of us upon the island to one of them which lifted up its
head and uttered a single bay. The rest clustered about it, and all at
once they made a dash at the water.

Leo could see and hear everything. He felt that after all our doom was now
at hand, and yet, held in the grip of nightmare, if nightmare it were, he
was quite unable to stir or even to cry out to wake and warn me.

Now followed the marvel of this vision. Giving tongue as they came, half
swimming and half plunging, the hounds drew near to the island where we
slept. Then, suddenly Leo saw that we were no longer alone. In front of
us, on the brink of the water, stood the figure of a woman clad in some
dark garment. He could not describe her face or appearance, for her back
was towards him.

All he knew was that she stood there, like a guard, holding some object in
her raised hand, and that suddenly the advancing hounds caught sight of
her. In an instant it was as though they were paralysed by fear—for
their bays turned to fearful howlings. One or two of those that were
nearest to the island seemed to lose their footing and be swept away by
the stream. The rest struggled back to the bank, and fled wildly like
whipped curs.

Then the dark, commanding figure, which in his dream Leo took to be the
guardian Spirit of the Mountain, vanished. That it left no footprints
behind it I can vouch, for in the morning we looked to see.

When, awakened by the sharp pangs in my arm, I opened my eyes again, the
dawn was breaking. A thin mist hung over the river and the island, and
through it I could see Leo sleeping heavily at my side and the shape of
the black horse, which had risen and was grazing close at hand. I lay
still for a while remembering all that we had undergone and wondering that
I should live to wake, till presently above the murmuring of the water I
heard a sound which terrified me, the sound of voices. I sat up and peered
through the reeds, and there upon the bank, looking enormous in the mist,
I saw two figures mounted upon horses, those of a woman and a man.

They were pointing to the ground as though they examined spoor in the
sand. I heard the man say something about the dogs not daring to enter the
territory of the Mountain, a remark which came back to my mind again after
Leo had told me his dream. Then I remembered how we were placed.

“Wake!” I whispered to Leo. “Wake, we are pursued.”

He sprang to his feet, rubbing his eyes and snatching at a spear. Now
those upon the bank saw him, and a sweet voice spoke through the mist,
saying—“Lay down that weapon, my guest, for we are not come to harm
you.”

It was the voice of the Khania Atene, and the man with her was the old
Shaman Simbri.

“What shall we do now, Horace?” asked Leo with something like a groan, for
in the whole world there were no two people whom he less wished to see.

“Nothing,” I answered, “it is for them to play.”

“Come to us,” called the Khania across the water. “I swear that we mean no
harm. Are we not alone?”

“I do not know,” answered Leo, “but it seems unlikely. Where we are we
stop until we are ready to march again.”

Atene spoke to Simbri. What she said we could not hear, for she whispered,
but she appeared to be arguing with him and persuading him to some course
of which he strongly disapproved. Then suddenly both of them put their
horses at the water and rode to us through the shallows. Reaching the
island, they dismounted, and we stood staring at each other. The old man
seemed very weary in body and oppressed in mind, but the Khania was strong
and beautiful as ever, nor had passion and fatigue left any trace upon her
inscrutable face. It was she who broke the silence, saying—“You have
ridden fast and far since last we met, my guests, and left an evil token
to mark the path you took. Yonder among the rocks one lies dead. Say, how
came he to his end, who has no wound upon him?”

“By these,” answered Leo, stretching out his hands.

“I knew it,” she answered, “and I blame you not, for fate decreed that
death for him, and now it is fulfilled. Still, there are those to whom you
must answer for his blood, and I only can protect you from them.”

“Or betray me to them,” said Leo. “Khania, what do you seek?”

“That answer which you should have given me this twelve hours gone.
Remember, before you speak, that I alone can save your life—aye, and
will do it and clothe you with that dead madman’s crown and mantle.”

“You shall have your answer on yonder Mountain,” said Leo, pointing to the
peak above us, “where I seek mine.”

She paled a little and replied, “To find that it is death, for, as I have
told you, the place is guarded by savage folk who know no pity.”

“So be it. Then Death is the answer that we seek. Come, Horace, let us go
to meet him.”

“I swear to you,” she broke in, “that there dwells not the woman of your
dreams. I am that woman, yes, even I, as you are the man of mine.”

“Then, lady, prove it yonder upon the Mountain,” Leo answered.

“There dwells there no woman,” Atene went on hurriedly, “nothing dwells
there. It is the home of fire and—a Voice.”

“What voice?”

“The Voice of the Oracle that speaks from the fire. The Voice of a Spirit
whom no man has ever seen, or shall see.”

“Come, Horace,” said Leo, and he moved towards the horse.

“Men,” broke in the old Shaman, “would you rush upon your doom? Listen; I
have visited yonder haunted place, for it was I who according to custom
brought thither the body of the Khan Atene’s father for burial, and I warn
you to set no foot within its temples.”

“Which your mistress said that we should never reach,” I commented, but
Leo only answered—“We thank you for your warning,” and added,
“Horace, watch them while I saddle the horse, lest they do us a mischief.”

So I took the spear in my uninjured hand and stood ready. But they made no
attempt to hurt us, only fell back a little and began to talk in hurried
whispers. It was evident to me that they were much perturbed. In a few
minutes the horse was saddled and Leo assisted me to mount it. Then he
said—“We go to accomplish our fate, whatever it may be, but before
we part, Khania, I thank you for the kindness you have shown us, and pray
you to be wise and forget that we have ever been. Through no will of mine
your husband’s blood is on my hands, and that alone must separate us for
ever. We are divided by the doors of death and destiny. Go back to your
people, and pardon me if most unwillingly I have brought you doubt and
trouble. Farewell.”

She listened with bowed head, then replied, very sadly—“I thank you
for your gentle words, but, Leo Vincey, we do not part thus easily. You
have summoned me to the Mountain, and even to the Mountain I shall follow
you. Aye, and there I will meet its Spirit, as I have always known I must
and as the Shaman here has always known I must. Yes, I will match my
strength and magic against hers, as it is decreed that I shall do. To the
victor be that crown for which we have warred for ages.”

Then suddenly Atene sprang to her saddle, and turning her horse’s head
rode it back through the water to the shore, followed by old Simbri, who
lifted up his crooked hands as though in woe and fear, muttering as he
went—“You have entered the forbidden river and now, Atene, the day
of decision is upon us all—upon us and her—that predestined
day of ruin and of war.”

“What do they mean?” asked Leo of me.

“I don’t know,” I answered; “but I have no doubt we shall find out soon
enough and that it will be something unpleasant. Now for this river.”

Before we had struggled through it I thought more than once that the day
of drowning was upon us also, for in places there were deep rapids which
nearly swept us away. But Leo, who waded, leading the Khan’s horse by the
bridle, felt his path and supported himself with the spear shaft, so that
in the end we reached the other bank safely.

Beyond it lay a breadth of marshy lands, that doubtless were overflowed
when the torrent was in flood. Through these we pushed our way as fast as
we could, for we feared lest the Khania had gone to fetch her escort,
which we thought she might have left behind the rise, and would return
with it presently to hunt us down. At that time we did not know what we
learned afterwards, that with its bordering river the soil of the Mountain
was absolutely sacred and, in practice, inviolable. True, it had been
invaded by the people of Kaloon in several wars, but on each occasion
their army was destroyed or met with terrible disaster. Little wonder then
they had come to believe that the House of Fire was under the protection
of some unconquerable Spirit.

Leaving the marsh, we reached a bare, rising plain, which led to the first
slope of the Mountain three or four miles away. Here we expected every
moment to be attacked by the savages of whom we had heard so much, but no
living creature did we see. The place was a desert streaked with veins of
rock that once had been molten lava. I do not remember much else
about it; indeed, the pain in my arm was so sharp that I had no eyes for
physical features. At length the rise ended in a bare, broad donga, quite
destitute of vegetation, of which the bottom was buried in lava and a
debris of rocks washed down by the rain or melting snows from slopes
above. This donga was bordered on the farther side by a cliff, perhaps
fifty feet in height, in which we could see no opening.

Still we descended the place, that was dark and rugged; pervaded,
moreover, by an extraordinary gloom, and as we went perceived that its
lava floor was sprinkled over with a multitude of white objects. Soon we
came to the first of these and found that it was the skeleton of a human
being. Here was a veritable Valley of Dead Bones, thousands upon thousands
of them; a gigantic graveyard. It seemed as though some great army had
perished here.

Indeed, we found afterwards that this was the case, for on one of those
occasions in the far past when the people of Kaloon had attacked the
Mountain tribes, they were trapped and slaughtered in this gully, leaving
their bones as a warning and a token. Among these sad skeletons we
wandered disconsolately, seeking a path up the opposing cliff, and finding
none, until at length we came to a halt, not knowing which way to turn.
Then it was that we met with our first strange experience on the Mountain.

The gulf and its mouldering relics depressed us, so that for awhile we
were silent, and, to tell the truth, somewhat afraid. Yes, even the horse
seemed afraid, for it snorted a little, hung its head and shivered. Close
by us lay a pile of bones, the remains evidently of a number of wretched
creatures that, dead or living, had been hurled down from the cliff above,
and on the top of the pile was a little huddled heap, which we took for
more bones.

“Unless we can find a way out of this accursed charnel-house before long,
I think that we shall add to its company,” I said, staring round me.

As the words left my lips it seemed to me that from the corner of my eye I
saw the heap on the top of the bones stir. I looked round. Yes, it was
stirring. It rose, it stood up, a human figure, apparently that of a woman—but
of this I could not be sure—wrapped from head to foot in white and
wearing a hanging veil over its face, or rather a mask with cut eye-holes.
It advanced towards us while we stared at it, till the horse, catching
sight of the thing, shied violently and nearly threw me. When at a
distance of about ten paces it paused and beckoned with its hand, that was
also swathed in white like the arm of a mummy.

“What the devil are you?” shouted Leo, and his voice echoed drearily among
those naked rocks. But the creature did not answer, it only continued to
beckon.

Leo walked up to it to assure himself that we were not the victims of some
hallucination. As he came it glided back to its heap of bones and stood
there like a ghost of one dead arisen from amidst these grinning evidences
of death, or rather a swathed corpse, for that is what it resembled. Leo
followed with the intention of touching it to assure himself of its
reality, whereon it lifted its white-wrapped arm and struck him lightly on
the breast. Then as he recoiled it pointed with its hand, first upwards as
though to the Peak or the sky, and next at the wall of rock which faced
us.

He returned to me saying, “What shall we do?”

“Follow, I suppose. It may be a messenger from above,” and I nodded toward
the mountain crest.

“From below, more likely,” Leo muttered, “for I don’t like the look of
this guide.”

Still he motioned with his hand to the creature to proceed. Apparently it
understood, for it turned to the left and began to pick its way amongst
the stones and skeletons swiftly and without noise. We followed for
several hundred yards till it reached a shallow cleft in the rock. This
cleft we had seen already, but as it appeared to end at a depth of about
thirty feet, we passed on. The figure entered here and vanished.

“It must be a shadow,” said Leo doubtfully.

“Nonsense,” I answered, “shadows don’t strike one. Go on.”

So he led the horse up the cleft, to find that at the end it turned
sharply to the right and that the form was standing there awaiting us.
Forward it went again and we after it down a little gorge that grew ever
gloomier till it terminated in what might have been a cave, or a gallery
cut in the rock.

Here our guide came back to us apparently with the intention of taking the
horse by the bridle, but at this nearer sight of it the brute snorted and
reared up, so that it almost fell backwards upon me. As it found its feet
again the figure struck it on the head in the same passionless, inhuman
way that it had struck Leo, whereon the horse trembled and burst into a
sweat as though with fear, making no further attempt to escape or to
disobey. Then it took one side of the bridle in its swathed hand and, Leo
clinging to the other, we plunged into the tunnel.

Our position was not pleasant, for we knew not whither we were being led
by this horrible conductor, and suspected that it might be to meet our
deaths in the darkness. Moreover, I guessed that the path was narrow and
bordered by some gulf, for as we went I heard stones fall, apparently to a
considerable depth, while the poor horse lifted its feet gingerly and
snorted in abject fear. At length we saw daylight, and never was I more
glad of its advent, although it showed us that there was a gulf on
our right, and that the path we travelled could not measure more than ten
feet in width.

Now we were out of the tunnel, that evidently had saved us a wide detour,
and standing for the first time upon the actual slope of the Mountain,
which stretched upwards for a great number of miles till it reached the
snow-line above. Here also we saw evidences of human life, for the ground
was cultivated in patches and herds of mountain sheep and cattle were
visible in the distance.

Presently we entered a gully, following a rough path that led along the
edge of a raging torrent. It was a desolate place, half a mile wide or
more, having hundreds of fantastic lava boulders strewn about its slopes.
Before we had gone a mile I heard a shrill whistle, and suddenly from
behind these boulders sprang a number of men, quite fifty of them. All we
could note at the time was that they were brawny, savage-looking fellows,
for the most part red haired and bearded, although their complexions were
rather dark, who wore cloaks of white goat skins and carried spears and
shields. I should imagine that they were not unlike the ancient Picts and
Scots as they appeared to the invading Romans. At us they came uttering
their shrill, whistling cries, evidently with the intention of spearing us
on the spot.

“Now for it,” said Leo, drawing his sword, for escape was impossible; they
were all round us. “Good-bye, Horace.”

“Good-bye,” I answered rather faintly, understanding what the Khania and
the old Shaman had meant when they said that we should be killed before we
ascended the first slope of the Mountain.

Meanwhile our ghastly-looking guide had slipped behind a great boulder,
and even then it occurred to me that her part in the tragedy being played,
she, if it were a woman at all, was withdrawing herself while we met our
miserable fate. But here I did her injustice, for she had, I suppose, come
to save us from this very fate which without her presence we must most
certainly have suffered. When the savages were within a few yards suddenly
she appeared on the top of the boulder, looking like a second Witch of
Endor, and stretched out her arm. Not a word did she speak, only stretched
out her draped arm, but the effect was remarkable and instantaneous.

At the sight of her down on to their faces went those wild men, every one
of them, as though a lightning stroke had in an instant swept them out of
existence. Then she let her arm fall and beckoned, whereon a great fellow
who, I suppose, was the leader of the band, rose and crept towards her
with bowed head, submissive as a beaten dog. To him she made signs,
pointing to us, pointing to the far-off Peak, crossing and uncrossing her
white-wrapped arms, but so far as I could hear, speaking no word. It was
evident that the chief understood her, however, for he said something in a
guttural language. Then he uttered his shrill whistle, whereon the band
rose and departed thence at full speed, this way and the other, so that in
another minute they had vanished as quickly as they came.

Now our guide motioned to us to proceed, and led the way upward as calmly
as though nothing had happened.

For over two hours we went on thus till our path brought us from
the ravine on to a grassy declivity, across which it wound its way. Here,
to our astonishment, we found a fire burning, and hanging above the fire
an earthenware pot, which was on the boil, although we could see no man
tending it. The figure signalled to me to dismount, pointing to the pot in
token that we were to eat the food which doubtless she had ordered the
wild men to prepare for us, and very glad was I to obey her.
Provision had been made for the horse also, for near the fire lay a great
bundle of green forage.

While Leo off-saddled the beast and spread the provender for it, taking
with me a spare earthen vessel that lay ready, I went to the edge of the
torrent to drink and steep my wounded arm in its ice-cold stream. This
relieved it greatly, though by now I was sure from various symptoms that
the brute Master’s fangs had fortunately only broken or injured the small
bone, a discovery for which I was thankful enough. Having finished
attending to it as well as I was able, I filled the jar with water.

On my way back a thought struck me, and going to where our mysterious
guide stood still as Lot’s wife after she had been turned into a pillar of
salt, I offered it to her, hoping that she would unveil her face and
drink. Then for the first time she showed some sign of being human, or so
I thought, for it seemed to me that she bowed ever so little in
acknowledgment of the courtesy. If so—and I may have been mistaken—this
was all, for the next instant she turned her back on me to show that it
was declined. So she would not, or for aught I knew, could not drink.
Neither would she eat, for when Leo tried her afterwards with food she
refused it in like fashion.

Meanwhile he had taken the pot off the fire, and as soon as its contents
grew cool enough we fell on them eagerly, for we were starving. After we
had eaten and drunk, Leo re-dressed my arm as best he could and we rested
awhile. Indeed, I think that, being very tired, we began to doze, for I
was awakened by a shadow falling on us and looked up to see our
corpse-like guide standing close by and pointing first to the sun, then at
the horse, as though to show us that we had far to travel. So we saddled
up and went on again somewhat refreshed, for at least we were no longer
ravenous.

All the rest of that day we journeyed on up the grassy slopes, seeing no
man, although occasionally we heard the wild whistle which told us that we
were being watched by the Mountain savages. By sundown the character of
the country had changed, for the grass was replaced with rocks, amongst
which grew stunted firs. We had left the lower slopes and were beginning
to climb the Mountain itself.

The sun sank and we went on through the twilight. The twilight died and we
went on through the dark, our path lit only by the stars and the faint
radiance of the glowing pillar of smoke above the Peak, which was
reflected on to us from the mighty mantle of its snows. Forward we toiled,
whilst a few paces ahead of us walked our unwearying guide. If she had
seemed weird and inhuman before, now she appeared a very ghost, as, clad
in her graveyard white, upon which the faint light shimmered, never
speaking, never looking back, she glided on noiselessly between the black
rocks and the twisted, dark-green firs and junipers.

Soon we lost all count of the road. We turned this way and turned that
way, we passed an open patch and through the shadows of a grove, till at
length as the moon rose we entered a ravine, and following a path that ran
down it, came to a place which is best described as a large amphitheatre
cut by the hand of nature out of the rock of the Mountain. Evidently it
was chosen as a place of defence, for its entrance was narrow and
tortuous, built up at the end also, so that only one person could pass its
gateway at a time. Within an open space and at its farther side stood low,
stone houses built against the rock. In front of these houses, the
moonlight shining full upon them, were gathered several hundred men and
women arranged in a semicircle and in alternate companies, who appeared to
be engaged in the celebration of some rite.

It was wild enough. In front of them, and in the exact centre of the
semi-circle, stood a gigantic, red-bearded man, who was naked except for a
skin girdle about his loins. He was swinging himself backwards and
forwards, his hands resting upon his hips, and as he swung, shouting
something like “Ho, haha, ho!” When he bent towards the audience it
bent towards him, and every time he straightened himself it echoed his
final shout of “Ho!” in a volume of sound that made the precipices
ring. Nor was this all, for perched upon his hairy head, with arched back
and waving tail, stood a great white cat.

Anything stranger, and indeed more fantastic than the general effect of
this scene, lit by the bright moonlight and set in that wild arena, it was
never my lot to witness. The red-haired, half-naked men and women, the
gigantic priest, the mystical white cat, that, gripping his scalp with its
claws, waved its tail and seemed to take a part in the performance; the
unholy chant and its volleying chorus, all helped to make it
extraordinarily impressive. This struck us the more, perhaps, because at
the time we could not in the least guess its significance, though we
imagined that it must be preliminary to some sacrifice or offering. It was
like the fragment of a nightmare preserved by the awakened senses in all
its mad, meaningless reality.

Now round the open space where these savages were celebrating their
worship, or whatever it might be, ran a rough stone wall about six feet in
height, in which wall was a gateway. Towards this we advanced quite
unseen, for upon our side of the wall grew many stunted pines. Through
these pines our guide led us, till in the thickest of them, some few yards
from the open gateway and a little to the right of it, she motioned to us
to stop.

Then she went to a low place in the wall and stood there as though she
were considering the scene beyond. It seemed to us, indeed, that she saw
what she had not expected and was thereby perplexed or angered. Presently
she appeared to make up her mind, for again she motioned to us to remain
where we were, enjoining silence upon us by placing her swathed hand upon
the mask that hid her face. Next moment she was gone. How she went, or
whither, I cannot say; all we knew was that she was no longer there.

“What shall we do now?” whispered Leo to me.

“Stay where we are till she comes back again or something happens,” I
answered.

So there being nothing else to be done, we stayed, hoping that the horse
would not betray us by neighing, or that we might not be otherwise
discovered, since we were certain that if so we should be in danger of
death. Very soon, however, we forgot the anxieties of our own position in
the study of the wild scene before us, which now began to develop a
fearful interest.

It would seem that what has been described was but preliminary to the
drama itself, and that this drama was the trial of certain people for
their lives. This we could guess, for after awhile the incantation ceased
and the crowd in front of the big man with the cat upon his head opened
out, while behind him a column of smoke rose into the air, as though light
had been set to some sunk furnace.