y on her, but without
making obeisance.

He was a frail old man, with white hair tumbling on his shoulders, and
ragged white beard. The mud of wayfaring hung in clots on his feet and
legs. His wizened body was bare save for a single cloth wound about
his shoulders and his loins, and he carried in his hand a wand with the
symbol of our Lord the Sun glowing at its tip. That wand went to show
his caste, but in no other way could I recognize him.

I took him for one of those ascetics of the Priests' Clan, who had
forsworn the steady nurtured life of the Sacred Mountain, and who lived
out in the dangerous lands amongst the burning hills, where there is
daily peril from falling rocks, from fire streams, from evil vapours,
from sudden fissuring of the ground, and from other movements of those
unstable territories, and from the greater lizards and other monstrous
beasts which haunt them. These keep constant in the memory the might of
the Holy Gods, and the insecurity of this frail earth on which we have
our resting-place, and so the sojourners there become chastened in the
spirit, and gain power over mysteries which even the most studious and
learned of other men can never hope to attain.

A silence filled the room when the old man came to his halt, and
Phorenice was the first to break it. "Those two guards," she said, in
her clear, carrying voice, "who held the door, are not equal to their
work. I cannot have imperfect servants; remove them."

The soldiers next in the rank lifted their spears and drove them home,
and the two fellows who had admitted the old man fell to the ground. One
shrieked once, the other gave no sound: they were clever thrusts both.

The old man found his voice, thin, and high, and broken. "Another crime
added to your tally, Phorenice. Not half your army could have hindered
my entrance had I wished to come, and let me tell you that I am here to
bring you your last warning. The Gods have shown you much favour; they
gave you merit by which you could rise above your fellows, till at last
only the throne stood above you. It was seen good by those on the Sacred
Mountain to let you have this last ambition, and sit on this throne
that has as long and honourably been filled by the ancient kings of
Atlantis."

The Empress sat back on the divan smiling. "I seemed to get these things
as I chose, and in spite of your friends' teeth. I may owe to you, old
man, a small parcel of thanks, though that I offered to r