“I am glad,” she said, “that he dreamed no other dreams, since had he done so and babbled of them it would have been ill-omened, and I do not wish that one who has travelled far to visit us should be hurled to the death-dogs for burial; one, moreover, who although old and hideous, still has the air of a wise and silent man.”
Now while I shivered at these unpleasant hints—though what the “death-dogs” in which people were buried might be, I could not conceive—to my intense joy I heard the foot of the Guardian on the stairs, heard him too enter the room and saw him bow before the lady.
“How go these sick men, niece?”[[3]] he said in his cold voice.
[3] I found later that the Khania, Atene, was not Simbri’s niece but his great-niece, on the mother’s side.—L. H. H.
“They swoon, both of them,” she answered.
“Indeed, is it so? I thought otherwise. I thought they woke.”
“What have you heard, Shaman (i.e. wizard)?” she asked angrily.
“I? Oh! I heard the grating of a dagger in its sheath and the distant baying of the death-hounds.”
“And what have you seen, Shaman?” she asked again, “looking through the Gate you guard?”
“Strange sight, Khania, my niece. But—men awake from swoons.”