ur and with Yolara and the Shining One!" cried
Rador. "My hand is for you three and for Lakla and those to whom she
is handmaiden!"

The shell leaped forward; seemed to fly.

[1] A _tal_ in Muria is the equivalent of thirty hours of earth surface
time.--W. T. G.

CHAPTER XXII

The Casting of the Shadow

Now we were racing down toward that last span whose ancientness had
set it apart from all the other soaring arches. The shell's speed
slackened; we approached warily.

"We pass there?" asked O'Keefe.

The green dwarf nodded, pointing to the right where the bridge ended
in a broad platform held high upon two gigantic piers, between which
ran a spur from the glistening road. Platform and bridge were swarming
with men-at-arms; they crowded the parapets, looking down upon us
curiously but with no evidence of hostility. Rador drew a deep breath
of relief.

"We don't have to break our way through, then?" There was
disappointment in the Irishman's voice.

"No use, _Larree_!" Smiling, Rador stopped the _corial_ just beneath
the arch and beside one of the piers. "Now, listen well. They have had
no warning, hence does Yolara still think us on the way to the temple.
This is the gateway of the Portal--and the gateway is closed by the
Shadow. Once I commanded here and I know its laws. This must I do--by
craft persuade Serku, the keeper of the gateway, to lift the Shadow;
or raise it myself. And that will be hard and it may well be that in
the struggle life will be stripped of us all. Yet is it better to die
fighting than to dance with the Shining One!"

He swept the shell around the pier. Opened a wide plaza paved with
the volcanic glass, but black as that down which we had sped from the
chamber of the Moon Pool. It shone like a mirrored lakelet of jet; on
each side of it arose what at first glance seemed towering bulwarks of
the same ebon obsidian; at second, revealed themselves as structures
hewn and set in place by men; polished faces pierced by dozens of
high, narrow windows.

Down each facade a stairway fell, broken by small landings on which a
door opened; they dropped to a broad ledge of greyish stone edging the
lip of this midnight pool and upon it also fell two wide flights from
either side of the bridge platform. Along all four stairways the
guards were ranged; and here and there against the ledge stood the
shells--in a curiously comforting resemblance to parked motors in our
own world.

The sombre