ul, filled with a supernal power!

Sparks and flashes of white flame darted from the ring, penetrating
the radiant swathings of the Dweller, striking through its pulsing
nucleus, piercing its seven crowning orbs.

Now the Shining One's radiance began to dim, the seven orbs to dull;
the tiny sparkling filaments that ran from them down into the
Dweller's body snapped, vanished! Through the battling nebulosities
Yolara's face swam forth--horror-filled, distorted, inhuman!

The ranks of the dead-alive quivered, moved, writhed, as though each
felt the torment of the Thing that had enslaved them. The radiance
that the Three wielded grew more intense, thicker, seemed to expand.
Within it, suddenly, were scores of flaming triangles--scores of eyes
like those of the Silent Ones!

And the Shining One's seven little moons of amber, of silver, of blue
and amethyst and green, of rose and white, split, shattered, were
gone! Abruptly the tortured crystal chimings ceased.

Dulled, all its soul-shaking beauty dead, blotched and shadowed
squalidly, its gleaming plumes tarnished, its dancing spirals stripped
from it, that which had been the Shining One wrapped itself about
Yolara--wrapped and drew her into itself; writhed, swayed, and hurled
itself over the edge of the bridge--down, down into the green fires of
the unfathomable abyss--with its priestess still enfolded in its
coils!

From the dwarfs who had watched that terror came screams of panic
fear. They turned and ran, racing frantically over the bridge toward
the cavern mouth.

The serried ranks of the dead-alive trembled, shook. Then from their
faces tied the horror of wedded ecstasy and anguish. Peace, utter
peace, followed in its wake.

And as fields of wheat are bent and fall beneath the wind, they fell.
No longer dead-alive, now all of the blessed dead, freed from their
dreadful slavery!

Abruptly from the sparkling mists the cloud of eyes was gone. Faintly
revealed in them were only the heads of the Silent Ones. And they drew
before us; were before us! No flames now in their ebon eyes--for the
flickering fires were quenched in great tears, streaming down the
marble white faces. They bent toward us, over us; their radiance
enfolded us. My eyes darkened. I could not see. I felt a tender hand
upon my head--and panic and frozen dread and nightmare web that held
me fled.

Then they, too, were gone.

Upon Larry's breast the handmaiden was sobbing--sobbing out her
h