The drums struck up a slow and solemn beat. The captain of the warriors, with an escort of six men, marched to the litter and took from the woman's hands a bundle wrapped in silks. Bearing it as though it were precious beyond belief, he came to the block and lifted it up, and Kynon took it from him.
The silken wrappings fluttered loose, fell away. And in Kynon's hands gleamed two crystal crowns and a shining rod.
He held them high, the sunlight glancing in cold fire from the crystal.
"Behold!" he said. "The Crowns of the Ramas!"
The crowd drew breath then, one long rasping Ah!
The solemn drumbeat never faltered. It was as though the pulse of the whole world throbbed within it. Kynon turned. The old man began to tremble. Kynon placed one crown on his wrinkled scalp, and the tottering creature winced as though in pain, but his face was ecstatic.
Relentlessly, Kynon crowned with the second circlet the head of the frightened boy.
"Kneel," he said.
They knelt. Standing tall above them, Kynon held the rod in his two hands, between the crystal crowns.
Light was born in the rod. It was no reflection of the sun. Blue and brilliant, it flashed along the rod and leaped from it to wake an answering brilliance in the crowns, so that the old man and the youth were haloed with a chill, supernal fire.