There was no sound in all the limitless desert, yet the air was filled as with the tramp of feet, the thunder of horses, the rumble of wheels.
They came from nowhere, those countless legions, from out of the shadows of the spent night. They walked in phalanxes, the uncountable spirits of dead kingdoms, with eyes uplifted to the dawn; spears raised, mouths open, with their shouts of welcome to the break of day, they rode their horses thundering down the path of Time; they drove their four-horsed chariots straight towards the cup of gold which rested on the rim of the world.
They come from nowhere, those countless legions, from out the shadows of the spent night; they journey over the ordained path which they have trod since the beginning of time, which has no beginning, and which they will tread unto the end of all time which shall have no end.
And, laughing or sobbing, hoping, despairing, we shall fall in as our line passes and go marching along with them, marching along, until we came to the place where "the shadow of the God is like a ram set with lapis lazuli, adorned with gold and with precious stones."
"Wait for me."
The whisper was just a part of the shadows, as the girl turned her face to the East.
Wrapped in her satin cloak, she walked wearily on and on. Her eyes were wide open, staring in a terrible fatigue; she saw nothing; her heelless slippers were torn to shreds, her feet were bleeding; she felt nothing. Not once did she look up or back or round. Had she done so, she might have noticed that her footprints in the sand were describing a circle, as our footprints do when we are lost in the bush or the desert.
The shadows had gone, and the sands stretched a carpet of rose and grey and gold before her; the sky a canopy of blue and grey and purple above.
Like a lighthouse of Hope, Day was flashing his golden beams across the sky, a message to the weary who have toiled through the night.
And then, with one great leap he sprang clear of the horizon, just as
Damaris stopped.