“The Mistress of Night has prophesied death to me,” Rutilius at last began. “But one thing still weighs on my mind. May I be permitted to question farther?”
“Question,” replied Olbasanus.
“Then I would fain know whether this destiny can be averted by no sacrifice, no deed of expiation. If it is in your power, let me learn this. Implore the goddess to pronounce the oracle to the questioner in her own terrible voice.”
As before the Chaldean looked upward; as before lightning flashed; and raising his wand he exclaimed:
“Granted!”
Again he drew from the altar the mysterious metallic sound that summoned the white-robed boy. At an unintelligible order from the Chaldean, the lad went to a monopodium that stood near and took from it a little casket set with gems, which he placed beside the magician. Then the onyx vessel again appeared, and Lucius Rutilius’s gold coins fell rattling within. Directly after the dark curtain between the two pillars behind the altar was drawn aside, revealing a semicircular niche lighted by a bluish lamp. The wizard took from the casket a small vessel, whose contents he burned on the brazier of coals. A fragrant smoke rose to the ceiling, and at the same moment all the lights went out except the bluish lamp, whose glimmering rays showed a grinning skull on the floor of the niche.
Olbasanus beckoned to the questioner. Resting both hands on the altar, Lucius Rutilius was to gaze into the ghostly niche and hear the decree of the terrible goddess. As Caius Bononius also wished to see and hear, he, too, was obliged to grasp the edge of the altar with his right hand.
“Be silent and vanish, ye spirits and demons,” the Chaldean now began in a mysterious tone. “Be silent and vanish, for Hecate, the Inscrutable, will herself speak to this creature of the dust through the symbol of her omnipotence, the skull on the floor of her sanctuary. The fleshless, brainless skeleton, once the seat of thought, the extinct lamp of a long-forgotten human life, will serve the Invisible One for an abode when she rises from the depths of the nether-world. Announce to me, Omnipotent One, has the breath of thy divine life entered this mouldering shell?”
A hollow, horrible: “Thou sayest it,” echoed from the lofty forehead of the skull.
Lucius Rutilius started violently. Caius Bononius thought himself deceived in the direction from which the voice came, and leaning forward listened breathlessly.