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 CHAPTER XXII

THE LOOSING OF THE POWERS

When I came to myself again, it was daylight. I saw the calm, gentle face of Oros bending over me as he poured some strong fluid down my throat that seemed to shoot through all my body, and melt a curtain in my mind. I saw also that beside him stood Ayesha.

Speak, man, speak, she said in a terrible voice. What hast chanced here? Thou livest, then where is my lord? Where hast thou hid my lord? Tell me—or die.

It was the vision that I saw when my senses left me in the snow of the avalanche, fulfilled to the last detail!

Atene has taken him, I answered.

Atene has taken him and thou art left alive?

Do not be wrath with me, I answered, it is no fault of mine. Little wonder we were deceived after thou hadst said that thou mightest summon us ere dawn.

Then as briefly as I could I told the story.

She listened, went to where our murdered guards lay with unstained spears, and looked at them.

Well for these that they are dead, she exclaimed. Now, Holly, thou seest what is the fruit of mercy. The men whose lives I gave my lord have failed him at his need.

Then she passed forward to the spot where Leo was captured. Here lay a broken sword—Leo's—that had been the Khan Rassen's, and two dead men. Both of these were clothed in some tight-fitting black garments, having their heads and faces whitened with chalk and