Early the following morning they were underway once more. Shortly before noon they scaled the last few yards to a great tableland among the peaks. And it was then that Dylara got her first glimpse of Sephar.
A little below where she stood was a wide, shallow valley, most of it filled with heavy forest and jungle. Directly in the center of this valley, a jewel in a setting of green, lay a city. A city of stone buildings, gray and box-like, erected in the most simple of architectural design. With a few exceptions, all buildings were of one story; none more than two. Broad, clean streets were much in evidence, the principal ones running spokewise to converge at the exact center of the wheel-like pattern. Encircling all this was a great wall of dull gray stone.
But the most arresting feature of the entire city was situated at the hub of it all. Here, rising four full stories above the carefully tended plot of ground surrounding it, stood a tremendous structure of pure white stone, its shining walls adding materially to the dazzling effect given the awe-struck Dylara.
A hand touched her shoulder. Vulcar was smiling at her expression. "That," he said proudly, "is Sephar."
The girl could find no words to answer him. Here was something that all the tales repeated around a hundred cave-fires, during the rainy seasons, had never approached. Here might dwell the gods; those who sent the rain and the flaming bolts from the skies....
"Come," Vulcar said at last, and the little party started down the grass-covered incline toward the valley floor—and Sephar.
The princess Alurna was angry. A few moments ago she had driven her slave woman from the room, hastening the girl's departure with a thrown vase. Raging, the princess paced the chamber's length, kicking the soft fur rugs from her path. Bed coverings were scattered about the floor, flung there during this—her latest—tantrum.
It is doubtful whether Alurna, herself, knew what brought on these savage fits of temper. Actually, it was boredom; life to the girl—still in her early twenties—went on in Sephar in the same uneventful fashion as it had since her great-great grandfather had led a host across the tremendous valley between the present site of Sephar and the northern slopes of Ammad.