And again came the pleading voice. “Let me in, O Ar-lane. Oh, let me in.”
Alan looked questioningly at Desmond and he gave his cousin a quick nod. “If it’s treachery we’re done,” he remarked, as he touched the spring and the stone moved.
As soon as it was wide open the woman entered. They did not know her, but her eyes were swollen from weeping and her face drawn with emotion, and they realized that she had suffered.
“Waste no time,” she commanded imperiously. “My flight is already spoken of in the temple. Should they seek me, it will need all our strength, all our cunning to hide from them. Close the door, O Ar-lane, and build up a wall of stones in front, that is strong, and then let us hasten on.” So once more the place was barricaded, and only when the barrier was complete did she deign to explain her presence.
“You know me not, O Men of the Upper World, for you have never set eyes upon me before; but I have seen you often. Behold, I am Jez-Riah, seed of the house of Bin-Nab, and hereditary Keeper of the Hall of Fire. It is the custom, know ye, in this land of ours, for the female seed of Bin-Nab to keep veiled after they have reached the age of ten. I cast aside my veil yester-eve, and immediately came to seek thee.”
“Why?” asked Alan curtly.
The woman was fair to look upon—her eyes were deep and luminous, and her tear-stained cheeks filled them with pity. Yet to be hampered with a woman seemed to take from them every chance of their ultimate escape.
Jez-Riah seemed to read their thoughts. “No, harden not your hearts against me, for I can help you,” said she earnestly.
“Why have you sought us?” asked Alan, this time less curtly.
“I know a road in here—a secret road, said to be a thousand and ten miles long; a stream of unknown depths, races along by the side of it—a stream that is swifter by far than the fastest of waters—there,” and she pointed in the direction from which she had come. “It leads to the tomb of Korah, so they say, but torture was threatened to all who would have ventured in search of it. O Ar-lane, you know not what our tortures are.”