While the frog-men, those late levies from the farthest forests, were
clearing bridge and ledge of cavern of the litter of the dead, we
listened to a leader of the _ladala_. They had risen, even as the
messenger had promised Rador. Fierce had been the struggle in the
gardened city by the silver waters with those Lugur and Yolara had
left behind to garrison it. Deadly had been the slaughter of the
fair-haired, reaping the harvest of hatred they had been sowing so
long. Not without a pang of regret did I think of the beautiful, gaily
malicious elfin women destroyed--evil though they may have been.

The ancient city of Lara was a charnel. Of all the rulers not
twoscore had escaped, and these into regions of peril which to
describe as sanctuary would be mockery. Nor had the _ladala_ fared so
well. Of all the men and women, for women as well as men had taken
their part in the swift war, not more than a tenth remained alive.

And the dancing motes of light in the silver air were thick,
thick--they whispered.

They told us of the Shining One rushing through the Veil, cometlike,
its hosts streaming behind it, raging with it, in ranks that seemed
interminable!

Of the massacre of the priests and priestesses in the Cyclopean
temple; of the flashing forth of the summoning lights by unseen
hands--followed by the tearing of the rainbow curtain, by colossal
shatterings of the radiant cliffs; the vanishing behind their debris
of all trace of entrance to the haunted place wherein the hordes of
the Shining One had slaved--the sealing of the lair!