and
bringing down the great hall and its groves, and glasses and gems, lamps,
traceries, devices, a heap of ruin, the seventh pillar alone standing.
Then, while he pumped back breath into his body, Abarak said, 'There's no
delaying in this place now, O youth! Say, halt thou spells for the
entering of Aklis?'

He answered, 'Three!'

Then said Abarak, ''Tis well! Surely now, if thou takest me in thy
service, I'll help thee to master the Event, and serve thee faithfully,
requiring nought from thee save a sight of the Event, and 'tis I that
myself missed one, wiled by Rabesqurat.'

Quoth Shibli Bagarag, 'Thou?'

He answered, 'No word of it now. Is't agreed?'

So Shibli Bagarag cried, 'Even so.'

Thereupon, the twain entered the pillar, leaving Rabesqurat prone, and
the waves of the sea bounding toward her where she lay. Now, they
descended and ascended flights of slippery steps, and sped together along
murky passages, in which light never was, and under arches of caves with
hanging crystals, groping and tumbling on hurriedly, till they came to an
obstruction, and felt an iron door, frosty to the touch. Then Abarak said
to Shibli Bagarag, 'Smite!' And the youth lifted the bar to his right
shoulder, and smote; and the door obeyed the blow, and discovered an
opening into a strange dusky land, as it seemed a valley, on one side of
which was a ragged copper sun setting low, large as a warrior's battered
shield, giving deep red lights to a brook that fell, and over a flat
stream a red reflection, and to the sides of the hills a dark red glow.
The sky was a brown colour; the earth a deeper brown, like the skins of
tawny lions. Trees with reddened stems stood about the valley, scattered
and in groups, showing between their leaves the cheeks of melancholy
fruits swarthily tinged, and toward the centre of the valley a shining
palace was visible, supported by massive columns of marble reddened by
that copper sun. Shibli Bagarag was awed at the stillness that hung
everywhere, and said to Abarak, 'Where am I, O Abarak? the look of this
place is fearful!'

And the little man answered, 'Where, but beneath the mountains in Aklis?
Wullahy! I should know it, I that keep the passage of the seventh
pillar!'

Then the thought of his betrothed Noorna, and her beauty, and the words,
'Remember the seventh pillar,' struck the heart of Shibli Bagarag, and he
exclaimed passionately, 'Is she in safety? Noorna, my companion, my
betrothed, n