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Updated: June 9, 2025
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.
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.
"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.
"I told her nothing of the matter, Khania," Leo said in an angry voice. "Nay, thou toldest me nothing, Wanderer; my watching wisdom told me. Oh, didst thou think, Atene, that thou couldst hide the truth from the all-seeing Hesea of the Mountain? If so, spare thy breath, for I know all, and have known it from the first. I passed thy disobedience by; of thy false messages I took no heed.
Soon we had left the melancholy procession behind us and, issuing from the gorge, turned up the Mountain slope towards the edge of the bright snows that lay not far above. It was as we came out of this darksome valley, where the overhanging pine trees almost eclipsed the light, that suddenly we missed our guide. "Has she gone back to to reason with the Khania?" I asked of Oros.
Can I never be rid of thee for an hour?" "O Hes, a writing from the Khania Atene," the priest said with his deprecating bow. "Break the seal and read," she answered carelessly. "Perchance she has repented of her folly and makes submission." So he read
"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."
"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, 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.
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.
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