stood, very far away, the House of Silence, upon a low hill. And in that
House were many lights, and no sound. And so had it been through an
uncountable Eternity of Years. Always those steady lights, and no
whisper of sound--not even such as our distance-microphones could have
discovered. And the danger of this House was accounted the greatest
danger of all those Lands.

And round by the House of Silence, wound the Road Where The Silent Ones
Walk. And concerning this Road, which passed out of the Unknown Lands,
nigh by the Place of the Ab-humans, where was always the green, luminous
mist, nothing was known; save that it was held that, of all the works
about the Mighty Pyramid, it was, alone, the one that was bred, long
ages past, of healthy human toil and labour. And on this point alone,
had a thousand books, and more, been writ; and all contrary, and so to
no end, as is ever the way in such matters.

And as it was with the Road Where The Silent Ones Walk, so it was with
all those other monstrous things ... whole libraries had there been made
upon this and upon that; and many a thousand million mouldered into the
forgotten dust of the earlier world.

I mind me now that presently I stepped upon the central
travelling-roadway which spanned the one thousandth plateau of the Great
Redoubt. And this lay six miles and thirty fathoms above the Plain of
the Night Land, and was somewhat of a great mile or more across. And so,
in a few minutes, I was at the South-Eastern wall, and looking out
through The Great Embrasure towards the Three Silver-fire Holes, that
shone before the Thing That Nods, away down, far in the South-East.
Southward of this, but nearer, there rose the vast bulk of the
South-East Watcher--The Watching Thing of the South-East. And to the