I heard Ayesha say presently, and the words struck me as dreadful in their hopeless acceptance of a doom against which even she had no strength to struggle.
“It seems that my lord has left me for awhile; I must hasten to my lord afar.”
After that I do not quite know what happened. I had lost the man who was all in all to me, friend and child in one, and I was crushed as I had never been before. It seemed so sad that I, old and outworn, should still live on whilst he in the flower of his age, snatched from joy and greatness such as no man hath known, lay thus asleep.
I think that by an afterthought, Ayesha and Oros tried to restore him, tried without result, for here her powers were of no avail. Indeed my conviction is that although some lingering life still kept him on his feet, Leo had really died at the moment of her embrace, since when I looked at him before he fell, his face was that of a dead man.
Yes, I believe that last speech of hers, although she knew it not, was addressed to his spirit, for in her burning kiss his flesh had perished.
When at length I recovered myself a little, it was to hear Ayesha in a cold, calm voice — her face I could not see for she had veiled herself — commanding certain priests who had been summoned to “bear away the body of that accursed woman and bury her as befits her rank.” Even then I bethought me, I remember, of the tale of Jehu and Jezebel.
Leo, looking strangely calm and happy, lay now upon a couch, the arms folded on his breast. When the priests had tramped away carrying their royal burden, Ayesha, who sat by his body brooding, seemed to awake, for she rose and said —“I need a messenger, and for no common journey, since he must search out the habitations of the Shades,” and she turned herself towards Oros and appeared to look at him.
Now for the first time I saw that priest change countenance a little, for the eternal smile, of which even this scene had not quite rid it, left his face and he grew pale and trembled.
“Thou art afraid,” she said contemptuously. “Be at rest, Oros, I will not send one who is afraid. Holly, wilt thou go for me — and him?”
“Aye,” I answered. “I am weary of life and desire no other end. Only let it be swift and painless.”
She mused a while, then said —“Nay, thy time is not yet, thou still hast work to do. Endure, my Holly, ’tis only for a breath.”
Then she looked at the Shaman, the man turned to stone who all this while had stood there as a statue stands, and cried —“Awake!”
Instantly he seemed to thaw into life, his limbs relaxed, his breast heaved, he was as he had always been: ancient, gnarled, malevolent.
“I hear thee, mistress,” he said, bowing as a man bows to the power that he hates.
“Thou seest, Simbri,” and she waved her hand.
“I see. Things have befallen as Atene and I foretold, have they not? ‘Ere long the corpse of a new-crowned Khan of Kaloon,’” and he pointed to the gold circlet that Ayesha had set on Leo’s brow, “‘will lie upon the brink of the Pit of Flame’— as I foretold.” An evil smile crept into his eyes and he went on —“Hadst thou not smote me dumb, I who watched could have warned thee that they would so befall; but, great mistress, it pleased thee to smite me dumb. And so it seems, O Hes, that thou hast overshot thyself and liest broken at the foot of that pinnacle which step by step thou hast climbed for more than two thousand weary years. See what thou hast bought at the price of countless lives that now before the throne of Judgment bring accusations against thy powers misused, and cry out for justice on thy head,” and he looked at the dead form of Leo.
“I sorrow for them, yet, Simbri, they were well spent,” Ayesha answered reflectively, “who by their forewritten doom, as it was decreed, held thy knife from falling and thus won me my husband. Aye and I am happy — happier than such blind bats as thou can see or guess. For know that now with him I have re-wed my wandering soul divorced by sin from me, and that of our marriage kiss which burned his life away there shall still be born to us children of Forgiveness and eternal Grace and all things that are pure and fair.
“Look thou, Simbri, I will honour thee. Thou shalt be my messenger, and beware! beware I say how thou dost fulfil thine office, since of every syllable thou must render an account.
“Go thou down the dark paths of Death, and, since even my thought may not reach to where he sleeps tonight, search out my lord and say to him that the feet of his spouse Ayesha are following fast. Bid him have no fear for me who by this last sorrow have atoned my crimes and am in his embrace regenerate. Tell him that thus it was appointed, and thus is best, since now he is dipped indeed in the eternal Flame of Life; now for him the mortal night is done and the everlasting day arises. Command him that he await me in the Gate of Death where it is granted that I greet him presently. Thou hearest?”
“I hear, O Queen, Mighty-from-of-Old.”
“One message more. Say to Atene that I forgive her. Her heart was high and greatly did she play her part. There in the Gates we will balance our account. Thou hearest?”
“I hear, O Eternal Star that hath conquered Night.”
“Then, man, begone! ”
As the word left Ayesha’s lips Simbri leapt from the floor, grasping at the air as though he would clutch his own departing soul, staggered back against the board where Leo and I had eaten, overthrowing it, and amid a ruin of gold and silver vessels, fell down and died.
She looked at him, then said to me —“See, though he ever hated me, this magician who has known Ayesha from the first, did homage to my ancient majesty at last, when lies and defiance would serve his end no more. No longer now do I hear the name that his dead mistress gave to me. The ‘Star-that-hath-fallen’ in his lips and in very truth is become the ‘Star-which-hath-burst-the-bonds-of-Night,’ and, re-arisen, shines for ever — shines with its twin immortal to set no more — my Holly. Well, he is gone, and ere now, those that serve me in the Under-world — dost remember?— thou sawest their captains in the Sanctuary — bend the head at great Ayesha’s word and make her place ready near her spouse.
“But oh, what folly has been mine. When even here my wrath can show such power, how could I hope that my lord would outlive the fires of my love? Still it was better so, for he sought not the pomp I would have given him, nor desired the death of men. Yet such pomp must have been his portion in this poor shadow of a world, and the steps that encircle an usurper’s throne are ever slippery with blood.
“Thou art weary, my Holly, go rest thee. To-morrow night we journey to the Mountain, there to celebrate these obsequies.”
I crept into the room adjoining — it had been Simbri’s — and laid me down upon his bed, but to sleep I was not able. Its door was open, and in the light of the burning city that shone through the casements I could see Ayesha watching by her dead. Hour after hour she watched, her head resting on her hand, silent, stirless. She wept not, no sigh escaped her; only watched as a tender woman watches a slumbering babe that she knows will awake at dawn.
Her face was unveiled and I perceived that it had greatly changed. All pride and anger were departed from it; it was grown soft, wistful, yet full of confidence and quietness. For a while I could not think of what it reminded me, till suddenly I remembered. Now it was like, indeed the counterpart almost, of the holy and majestic semblance of the statue of the Mother in the Sanctuary. Yes, with just such a look of love and power as that mother cast upon her frightened child new-risen from its dream of death, did Ayesha gaze upon her dead, while her parted lips also seemed to whisper “some tale of hope, sure and immortal.”
At length she rose and came into my chamber.
“Thou thinkest me fallen and dost grieve for me, my Holly,” she said in a gentle voice, “knowing my fears lest some such fate should overtake my lord.”
“Ay, Ayesha, I grieve for thee as for myself.”
“Spare then thy pity, Holly, since although the human part of me would have kept him on the earth, now my spirit doth rejoice that for a while he has burst his mortal bonds. For many an age, although I knew it not, in my proud defiance of the Universal Law, I have fought against his true weal and mine. Thrice have I and the angel wrestled, matching strength with strength, and thrice has he conquered me. Yet as he bore away his prize this night he whispered wisdom in my ear. This was his message: That in death is love’s home, in death its strength; that from the charnel-house of life this love springs again glorified and pure, to reign a conqueror forever. Therefore I wipe away my tears and, crowned once more a queen of peace, I go to join him whom we have lost, there where he awaits us, as it is granted to me that I shall do.
“But I am selfish, and forgot. Thou needest rest. Sleep, friend, I bid thee sleep.”
And I slept wondering as my eyes closed whence Ayesha drew this strange confidence and comfort. I know not but it was there, real and not assumed. I can only suppose therefore that some illumination had fallen on her soul, and that, as she stated, the love and end of Leo in a way unknown, did suffice to satisfy her court of sins.
At the least those sins and all the load of death that lay at her door never seemed to trouble her at all. She appeared to look upon them merely as events which were destined to occur, as inevitable fruits of a seed sowed long ago by the hand of Fate for whose workings she was not responsible. The fears and considerations which weigh with mortals did not affect or oppress her. In this as in other matters, Ayesha was a law unto herself.
When I awoke it was day, and through the window-place I saw the rain that the people of Kaloon had so long desired falling in one straight sheet. I saw also that Ayesha, seated by the shrouded form of Leo, was giving orders to her priests and captains and to some nobles, who had survived the slaughter of Kaloon, as to the new government of the land. Then I slept again.
It was evening, and Ayesha stood at my bedside.
“All is prepared,” she said. “Awake and ride with me.”
So we went, escorted by a thousand cavalry, for the rest stayed to occupy, or perchance to plunder, the land of Kaloon. In front the body of Leo was borne by relays of priests, and behind it rode the veiled Ayesha, I at her side.
Strange was the contrast between this departure, and our arrival.
Then the rushing squadrons, the elements that raved, the perpetual sheen of lightnings seen through the swinging curtains of the hail; the voices of despair from an army rolled in blood beneath the chariot wheels of thunder.
Now the white-draped corpse, the slow-pacing horses, the riders with their spears reversed, and on either side, seen in that melancholy moonlight, the women of Kaloon burying their innumerable dead.
And Ayesha herself, yesterday a Valkyrie crested with the star of flame, today but a bereaved woman humbly following her husband to the tomb.
Yet how they feared her! Some widow standing on the grave mould she had dug, pointed as we passed to the body of Leo, uttering bitter words which I could not catch.............