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Updated: May 14, 2025
"If so," he answered hoarsely, "if so, I think that perhaps we had best fulfil our fates apart " "Ah!" she said, with a little scream of pain as though a knife had stabbed her, "wouldst thou away to Atene? I tell thee that thou canst not leave me. I have power above all men thou shouldst know it, whom once I slew. Nay, thou hast no memory, poor creature of a breath, and I I remember too well.
I was minded to wait and receive thee in the Sanctuary, yet when I learned that at length both of you had escaped Atene and drew near, I could restrain myself no more, but came forth thus hideously disguised. Yes, I was with you even at the river's bank, and though you saw me not, there sheltered you from harm.
In front of the altar the bier was set down and the priests fell back, leaving Atene and her uncle standing alone before the corpse. "What seeks my vassal, the Khania of Kaloon?" asked the Hesea in a cold voice. Now Atene advanced and bent the knee, but with little graciousness.
But some instinctive hate seemed to bubble up in Atene, and she would not be silent, for she addressed our guide using the direct "thou," a manner of speech that we found was very usual on the Mountain though rare upon the Plains. "Let the air carry them whither it will," she cried. "Sorceress, strip off thy rags, fit only for a corpse too vile to view.
Still, Atene thought me no mortal, since she told us that man and spirit may not mate; and there are matters in which I let her judgment weigh with me, as without doubt now, as in other lives, she and that old Shaman, her uncle, have wisdom, aye, and foresight. So bid my lord press me no more to wed him, for it gives me pain to say him nay ah! thou knowest not how much.
"It has been accorded as thou sayest," answered the Hesea, "by those priestesses who filled my place before me, nor shall it be refused to thy dead lord or to thee Atene when thy time comes." "I thank thee, O Hes, and I pray that this decree may be written down, for the snows of age have gathered on thy venerable head and soon thou must leave us for awhile.
"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?
For the rest, should human eyes ever fall upon it, each reader must form his own opinion of this history, its true interpretation and significance. These and the exact parts played by Atene and myself in its development I hope to solve shortly, though not here. Well, as I have said, the upshot of it all was that Ayesha was devoured with anxiety about Leo.
"Royal woman," she went on, addressing Atene, "as is his right, thou hast brought thy dead lord hither for burial in this consecrated place, where the ashes of all who went before him have become fuel for the holy fires.
Yet Ayesha was miserable. Even in her lightest moods it was clear to me that those skeletons at the feast of which she had spoken were her continual companions. Indeed, when we were alone she would acknowledge it in dark hints and veiled allegories or allusions. Crushed though her rival the Khania Atene might be, also she was still jealous of her.
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