The hair lifted on his scalp and he swallowed hard in the effort to answer; but the lie stuck in his throat: he was not Rutton and … and it is very hard to lie effectively when you stand in stark darkness with a mouth dry as dust and your hair stirring at the roots because of the intensely impersonal and aloof accents of an inhuman Bell-voice, tolling away out of Nowhere.
"Who is there?"
Again he failed to answer. Somewhere near him he heard a slight noise as of a man moving impatiently; and then a whisper: "Respond, thou fool!"
"Art thou come, O Chosen of the Gateway?" the Bell-voice rang.
"I … I am come," Amber managed to reply. And so still and small sounded his own voice in the huge spaces of the place that he was surprised to find he had been heard.
"Hear ye!" rang the Bell. "Hear ye, O Lords and Rulers in Medhyama! O Children of my Gateway, hear ye well! He is come! He stands upon the threshold of the Gateway!"
Resonant, the echoes of those awe-inspiring tones died upon the stillness, and in response a faint sighing rose and, momentarily growing in volume, became as the roaring of a mighty wind; and suddenly it was abrupted, leaving only a ringing in the ears.
A great drum roared like the crack of Doom; and Amber's jaw dropped. For in the high roof of the temple a six-foot slab had been noiselessly withdrawn, and through it a cold shaft of moonlight fell, cutting the gloom like a gigantic rapier, and smote with its immaculate radiance the true Gateway of Swords.
Not six paces from him it leaped out of the darkness in an iridescent sheen: an arch a scant ten feet in height, and in span double the width of a big man's shoulders, woven across like a weaver's frame with ribbons of pale fire. But the ribbons were of steel—steel blades, sharp, bright, gleaming: a countless array of curved tulwars and crescent scimetars, broad jataghans, short and ugly kukurees, long kutars with straight ends, slender deadly patas, snake-like bichwas; swords with jewelled hilts and engraved and damascened blades; sabres with channels cut from point to guard wherein small pearls ran singing; khands built for service and for parade; swords of every style and period in all the history of India. With their pommels cunningly affixed so that their points touched and interlaced, yet swung free, they lined the piers of the arch from base to span and all the graceful sweep of the intrados, a curtain of shimmering, trembling steel, barring the way to the Mystery beyond. Which was—darkness.
"O ye Swords!" belled the Voice…. "O ye Swords that have known no
dishonour! O ye Swords that have sung in the grasp of my greatest!
Swords of Jehangar, Akbar, Alamgir! Swords of Alludin, Humayun, Shah
Jehan! Swords of Timur-Leng, Arungzeb, Rao Rutton!…"