"Old Mother Nature played a trick for her amusement," he said. "She hath lighted Sardanes brighter than ever before, and now she melteth the snows of the wilderness. Look! Never saw I such a mist!"
He pointed to the east. Extending from the foothills below the Gateway, northeast, as far as their eyes might see, a rolling bank of fog hung over the snow-lands.
"Bring in the sledges as soon as may be," Minos ordered. "There will be many a shaken heart in Sardanes at yonder sight. I will hasten on."
He leaped on his own sledge, gave the word to his dogs, and in a moment the swift snow-runners had carried him around a bend in the pathway toward the valley. As he went, he heard the dull booming of the huge drum that hung in the hall of the Judgment House, whereon some lusty wight was making play with all the strength of his two arms.
So it happened that, as Analos crossed the green stone bridge over the river, the king entered the valley through the north pass, both of them bound in haste for the Judgment House.
As was his custom, Minos left his sledge in a rock-built shelter at the base of the pass cliffs, where the snows broke into bare ground and rock. With his gray beasts in leash, he hurried through the pass and set off across the valley at a loping, light-footed gait. Skirting the marshes, where the river lost itself in its subterranean channels at the lower end of the valley, the king and his shaggy companions crossed the bridge and took a path above the main road that led them over the slopes through groves of gigantic hymanan trees.
The yellow-bronze and rustling foliage of the forest monarchs reflected the radiance of the mountain moons in a shimmer of whispering gold. Among their gnarled trunks the shadows lay thick. He was still ten minutes' journey from the Judgment House when the gleam of a white robe in the dusk and a subdued growl from the dogs told the king that some one loitered in the path ahead of him. He heard a woman's voice raised in anger, a voice that thrilled him to his heart's core.
Silencing the muttering beasts, he went forward cautiously.
A black-haired girl stood with her back to the bole of a tree, against which her white arms were thrown out at each side. Her head was tilted defiantly. Her bosom heaved and her black eyes snapped. In front of her the dark form of a man barred her way. He was draped in a long robe, the cowl of which obscured his features.
"How darest thou!" Her tones bit scornfully. "How darest thou lay a hand on the daughter of the Lord Karnaon? I care not for thy threats of powers. I tell thee that wert thou twice what thou art, to me thou wouldst be all that is foul and abhorrent. Mate with thee!" She laughed shortly. "I'd sooner mate with the meanest of my father's servants than with thee."