There was now no sound. Alone and undisturbed the bleached viper warmed to its dance with the pulsing flame, turning and twisting, weaving and writhing in its infernal glare….
"Hear ye, O my peoples!"
Amber jumped. The Voice had seemed to ring out from a point directly overhead.
He looked up and discovered above him, vague in the obscurity, the outlines of a gigantic bell, hanging motionless. The green glare, shining on its rim and partly illumining its empty hollow (he saw no clapper) revealed the sheen of the bronze of which it was fashioned.
Out of its immense bowl, the Voice rolled like thunder:
"Hear ye, O my peoples!"
A responsive murmur ascended from the company round the walls:
"We hear! We hear, O Medhyama!"
"Mark well this man, O Children of my Gateway! Mark well! Out of ye all have I chosen him to lead thee in the work of healing; for I thy Mother, I Medhyama, I Bharuta, I the Body from which ye are sprung, call me by whatever name ye know me—I am laid low with a great sickness…. Yea, I am stricken and laid low with a sickness."
A great and bitter wailing arose from the multitude.