"In a little while," Nelson nodded. "They can get the stuff out of old Yu's arsenal and pack it without us anyway."
He tilted the square bottle, looking unseeingly at the wretched few tables whose grotesque shadows wavered on the crumbling mud walls as the oil-lamp flickered.
Why did that weird little experience stick in his mind like a burr? A dream of strange, coldly menacing voices in his mind, a shadow leaping across his room, a sound of great wings in the night-what was there in those to disturb him so?
"Yet it's cursed queer about Shan Kar," he muttered, half to himself.
Li Kin's head bobbed in earnest agreement. "Very queer. For today I have remembered about L'Lan."
Nelson stared at him blankly. "L'Lan? Oh, that's the name of the fellow's valley back in the mountains. I wasn't thinking of that."
"I have been thinking of it very much," the little Chinese officer affirmed. He leaned across the rough table. "You've been in China a long time, Captain Nelson. Have you never heard the name?"
"No, I never—" Nelson began, then stopped.
He did remember something.
"Magic valley of L'Lan! Long and long ago in L’Lan were born the Yang and Yin — life and death, good and evil, joy and sorrow!"