ough Lakla, their handmaiden," the
golden voice was like low trumpet notes. "At the threshold of doom is
that world of yours above. Yea, even the doom, Goodwin, that ye
dreamed and the shadow of which, looking into your mind they see, say
the Three. For not upon earth and never upon earth can man find means
to destroy the Shining One."

She listened again--and the foreboding deepened to an amazed fear.

"They say, the Silent Ones," she went on, "that they know not whether
even they have power to destroy. Energies we know nothing of entered
into its shaping and are part of it; and still other energies it has
gathered to itself"--she paused; a shadow of puzzlement crept into her
voice "and other energies still, forces that ye _do_ know and symbolize
by certain names--hatred and pride and lust and many others which are
forces real as that hidden in the _Keth_; and among them--fear, which
weakens all those others--" Again she paused.

"But within it is nothing of that greatest of all, that which can make
powerless all the evil others, that which we call--love," she ended
softly.

"I'd like to be the one to put a little more _fear_ in the beast,"
whispered Larry to me, grimly in our own English. The three weird
heads bent, ever so slightly--and I gasped, and Larry grew a little
white as Lakla nodded--

"They say, Larry," she said, "that there you touch one side of the
heart of the matter--for it is through the way of fear the Silent Ones
hope to strike at the very life of the Shining One!"

The visage Larry turned to me was eloquent of wonder; and mine
reflected it--for what _really_ were this Three to whom our minds were
but open pages, so easily read? Not long could we conjecture; Lakla
broke the little silence.

"This, they say, is what is to happen. First will come upon us Lugur
and Yolara with all their host. Because of fear the Shining One will
lurk behind within its lair; for despite all, the Dweller _does_ dread
the Three, and only them. With this host the Voice and the priestess
will strive to conquer. And if they do, then will they be strong
enough, too, to destroy us all. For if they take the abode they banish
from the Dweller all fear and sound the end of the Three.

"Then will the Shining One be all free indeed; free to go out into the
world, free to do there as it wills!

"But if they do not conquer--and the Shining One comes not to their
aid, abandoning them even as it abandoned its own _Taithu_--t