Back they flowed until from golden doors to cavern mouth a wide lane
stretched, walled on each side by the dead-alive.

The far radiance became brighter; it gathered itself at the end of the
dreadful lane; it was shot with sparklings and with pulsings of
polychromatic light. The crystal storm was intolerable, piercing the
ears with countless tiny lances; brighter still the radiance.

From the cavern swirled the Shining One!

The Dweller paused, seemed to scan the island of the Silent Ones half
doubtfully; then slowly, stately, it drifted out upon the bridge.
Closer it drew; behind it glided Yolara at the head of a company of
her dwarfs, and at her side was the hag of the Council whose face was
the withered, shattered echo of her own.

Slower grew the Dweller's pace as it drew nearer. Did I sense in it a
doubt, an uncertainty? The crystal-tongued, unseen choristers that
accompanied it subtly seemed to reflect the doubt; their notes were
not sure, no longer insistent; rather was there in them an undertone
of hesitancy, of warning! Yet on came the Shining One until it stood
plain beneath us, searching with those eyes that thrust from and
withdrew into unknown spheres, the golden gateway, the cliff face, the
castle's rounded bulk--and more intently than any of these, the dome
wherein sat the Three.

Behind it each face of the dead-alive turned toward it, and those
beside it throbbed and gleamed with its luminescence.

Yolara crept close, just beyond the reach of its spirals. She