The smallest of these unhewn obelisks—­it was about fifty feet high—­marked the resting-place of Umsuka; and deep into its granite Owen with his own hand had cut the dead king’s name and date of death, surmounting his inscription with a symbol of the cross.

Towards this pillar Hokosa made his way through the wet grass, followed by Noma his wife.  Presently they were there, standing one upon each side of a little mound of earth more like an ant-heap than a grave; for, after the custom of his people, Umsuka had been buried sitting.  At the foot of each of the pillars rose a heap of similar shape, but many times as large.  The kings who slept there were accompanied to their resting-places by numbers of their wives and servants, who had been slain in solemn sacrifice that they might attend their Lord whithersoever he should wander.

“What is that you desire and would do?” asked Noma, in a hushed voice.  Bold as she was, the place and the occasion awed her.

“I desire wisdom from the dead!” he answered.  “Have I not already told you, and can I not win it with your help?”

“What dead, husband?”

“Umsuka the king.  Ah!  I served him living, and at the last he drove me away from his side.  Now he shall serve me, and out of the nowhere I will call him back to mine.”

“Will not this symbol defeat you?” and Noma pointed at the cross hewn in the granite.

At her words a sudden gust of rage seemed to shake the wizard.  His still eyes flashed, his lips turned livid, and with them he spat upon the cross.

“It has no power,” he said.  “May it be accursed, and may he who believes therein hang thereon!  It has no power; but even if it had, according to the tale of that white liar, such things as I would do have been done beneath its shadow.  By it the dead have been raised—­ay! dead kings have been dragged from death and forced to tell the secrets of the grave.  Come, come, let us to the work.”

“What must I do, husband?”

“You shall sit you there, even as a corpse sits, and there for a little while you shall die—­yes, your spirit shall leave you—­and I will fill your body with the soul of him who sleeps beneath; and through your lips I will learn his wisdom, to whom all things are known.”

“It is terrible!  I am afraid!” she said.  “Cannot this be done otherwise?”

“It cannot,” he answered.  “The spirits of the dead have no shape or form; they are invisible, and can speak only in dreams or through the lips of one in whose pulses life still lingers, though soul and body be already parted.  Have no fear.  Ere his ghost leaves you it shall recall your own, which till the corpse is cold stays ever close at hand.  I did not think to find a coward in you, Noma.”

“I am not a coward, as you know well,” she answered passionately, “for many a deed of magic have we dared together in past days.  But this is fearsome, to die that my body may become the home of the ghost of a dead man, who perchance, having entered it, will abide there, leaving my spirit houseless, or perchance will shut up the doors of my heart in such fashion that they never can be opened.  Can it not be done by trance as aforetime?  Tell me, Hokosa, how often have you thus talked with the dead?”