“He is not here,” said the voice in her
heart. “Go, seek him in some other world.”
She grew angry.
“Thou mockest me,” she answered, “He
is dead, and this is the home of the dead; therefore
he must be here. Shadow, thou mockest me.”
“I mock not,” came the swift answer.
“Mortal, look now and learn.”
Again the doors burst open, and through them poured
the infinite rout of the dead. That hall would
not hold them all, therefore it grew and grew till
her sight could scarcely reach from wall to wall.
Shapes headed and marshalled them by races and by
generations, perhaps because thus only could her human
heart imagine them, but now none were borne in their
arms. They came in myriads and in millions, in
billions and tens of billions, men and women and children,
kings and priests and beggars, all wearing the garments
of their age and country. They came like an ocean-tide,
and their floating hair was the foam on the tide,
and their eyes gleamed like the first shimmer of dawn
above the snows. They came for hours and days
and years and centuries, they came eternally, and
as they came every finger of that host, compared to
which all the sands of all the seas were but as a
handful, was pointed at her, and every mouth shaped
the words:
“Is it I whom thou seekest?”
Million by million she scanned them all, but the face
of Richard Darrien was not there.
Now the dead Zulus were marching by. Down the
stream of Time they marched in their marshalled regiments.
Chaka stood over her—she knew him by his
likeness to Dingaan—and threatened her with
a little, red-handled spear, asking her how she dared
to sit upon the throne of the Spirit of his nation.
She began to tell him her story, but as she spoke the
wide receding walls of that grey hall fell apart and
crumbled, and amidst a mighty laughter the great-eyed
Shapes rebuilt them to the fashion of the cave in
the mound beneath the tree of the dwarf-folk.
The sound of the trumpets died away, the shrill, sweet
music of the spheres grew far and faint.
Rachel opened her eyes. There in front of her
sat Nya, crooning her low song, and there, on either
side crouched the mutes tapping upon their little
drums and gazing into their bowls of water, while against
her leaned Noie, who stirred like one awaking from
sleep. Ages and ages ago when she started on
that dread journey, the dwarf to her left was stretching
out her hand to steady the bowl at her feet, and now
it had but just reached the bowl. A great moth
had singed its wings in the lamp, and was fluttering
to the ground—it was still in mid-air.
Noie was placing her arm about her neck, and it had
but begun to fall upon her shoulder!
IN THE SANCTUARY
Nya ceased her singing, and the dwarf women their
beating on the drums.
“Hast thou been a journey, Maiden?” she
asked, looking at Rachel curiously.
