CHAPTER XXX

The Building of the Moon Pool


She paused, running her long fingers through her own bronze-flecked
ringlets. Selective breeding this, with a vengeance, I thought; an
ancient experiment in heredity which of course would in time result in
the stamping out of the tendency to depart from type that lies in all
organisms; resulting, obviously, at last, in three fixed forms of
black-haired, ruddy-haired, and silver-haired--but this, with a shock
of realization it came to me, was also an accurate description of the
dark-polled _ladala_, their fair-haired rulers and of the golden-brown
tressed Lakla!

How--questions began to stream through my mind; silenced by the
handmaiden's voice.

"Above, far, far above the abode of the Shining One," she said, "was
their greatest temple, holding the shrines both of sun and moon. All
about it were other temples hidden behind mighty walls, each enclosing
its own space and squared and ruled and standing within a shallow
lake; the sacred city, the city of the gods of this land--"

"It is the Nan-Matal that she is describing," I thought.

"Out upon all this looked the _Taithu_ who were now but the servants
of the Shining One as it had been the messenger of the Three," she
went on. "When they returned the Shining One spoke to them, promising