Polaris of the Snows

by Charles B. Stilson

"On a snow-bound shore they landed, those Acheans, with their women and their captives, and pushed on toward the green mountains, whose smoky summits they could not see ahead of them to the south. Thus they came to Sardanes, finding it even as ye see it this day, except that the Gateway to the Future was then as are its sister mountains, for the eternal fires flared at its top.

"So was Sardanes peopled, and the Sardanians of to-day are all the descendants of that little ship's company and their women and their captives from the barbarous isles. For a time they were sore beset in the valley by the great beasts which dwelt here, and they were fain to make their homes in the caves of the smoking hills. But as the years drew on they slew the beasts, and some of the great bones remain even until now in witness of their struggles. Then they built their homes in the valley and throve and multiplied and became a people."

"But what of the Gateway to the Future and the worship of the Lord Hephaistos?" asked Polaris, who had followed the tale of the priest with minute attention, translating it the while to the girl, who listened breathlessly to this unfolding of the pages of the dead past.

"Hephaistos was the smith god of the Acheans," answered Kalin, "and when they came hither they believed that it was Hephaistos who had shown mercy to them and saved them out of the cold and the icy seas. This valley, said the wise men, must be the forge and smithy of the god himself. So, as he had taken them under his protection and set them to dwell in his workshop, they came to worship him alone of all the gods they had known.

"Then, in time, when the ancient fires began to burn low in one of the hills, it was believed that the god was angered, and many sacrifices were made, that he might not forget the people and withdraw from the valley the warmth and light of his forge fires. Should he do so, the valley must go back to the arms of the snows and the people of Sardanes perish miserable one by one with the coming of the terrible cold.

"Thus grew up the customs of the religion which thou hast seen, but ever the ancient fires eats deeper in the pit of the mountain, and ever a great fear lies in the hearts of all Sardanians that some time the fires of the other mountains will follow that fire and leave Sardanes the prey of the ice and snow and darkness that wait without her gates."

Then Kalin questioned Polaris in turn of the world, and listened with an intentness that was wistful to stories of the histories of the great peoples that have ruled the earth since the Greece of which his traditions told him.

"Ah, that I might see it!" he sighed. "Fain I am to fare to the North with thee, and to see the great world and to learn new things before I go into the darkness. But I know not how that may be."

Polaris learned from the priest that his office had been handed down from father to son for uncounted centuries, but that he himself was unwed, and thus far had no successor. He learned further that a few years before, on the coming of Prince Helicon to the throne of Sardanes, there had been a division in church and state, as it were—that the headstrong prince would have none of the domination or advice of the priesthood in conducting the affairs of the kingdom.

In consequence of that, there was a coolness between the prince and Kalin, and each had his followers in the land. Some of the people sided with the prince. Others were for the priests and the religion, and looked with terror on anything that might anger further the Lord Hephaistos. Thus far, however, there had been no open break, and the relations of the prince and his brethren with Kalin and the priests of the gateway, if cold, were not openly hostile.