After Astolba’s departure we waited with what patience we might for the appointed hour. A mute, black as ebony, like his brother of the goblets, brought us a supper that did no shame to the hospitality of his royal mistress. Delicious fruits were served to us in massive silver dishes; there was, beside, a steak, from what animal I know not, that was rarely toothsome. There were flat cakes of grain and a jar of ruby-tinted wine that would have made an anchorite forswear himself. So we dined together, Lestrade and I, and little by little, a moodiness that before had wrapped us round, now fell from us like a cloak; the potent grape juice warmed us through, and we were gay.
After the banquet the slave departed, silent as he had come, and Gaston, stretched upon the lion skin, sang snatches of fair French ditties, while I, in a reverie strangely sweet, with Lah’s face floating in a glory through the waking dream, watched, motionless and content, the leaden balls fall clanging, on the hour, into the bowl of brass beneath.
At length the longed-for moment came, and with it the crystal ball. Lestrade rose, yawned, and was about to speak, but I, with a warning gesture, pressed thrice the serpent’s head painted on our prison wall.
Back, slow and noiseless as before, slipped the massive stone. With a courteous gesture Gaston bade me look. I plucked at the rent in the curtain of hide, and even as I gazed, with measured step, two by two, the priests of Edba and of Hed entered from the farther end of the Council Room.
Lestrade cut with my knife another slit in the folds of the heavy drapery of skins, and together we watched in silence.
The chamber into which we looked was of great size, and seemingly hollowed like our prison cell, from out the solid rock. Massive pillars of stone supported the roof, and these were carved with hideous, leering figures grotesquely entwined.
The walls of the place were covered with painted pictures, rudely drawn but strangely and horribly lifelike. These represented victims suffering all the tortures that a cruel and fertile mind could think of, and through all the horrid story appeared at intervals the emblem of Hed, the serpent, and the sign of Edba, the silver moon; and these were shown forth also on curtains of hide that draped, as before our hiding-place, certain portions of the apartment.
The room was bare, but there was a throne of ebony on a raised platform at the further end, and in front of this stood a round stone altar with a deep groove running through it, that slanted and ended in a large basin or trough. Before this altar burned a fire in a three-cornered and very large brazier, holding not coals, but fagots. From this there shot forth forked tongues of blue flame, and from it also came the only light that illuminated the Council Hall.
Back of the throne I beheld a gigantic figure of black marble, but painted in glaring colors. The eyes of this image were of blazing jewels worth a king’s ransom, and in the squat figure I recognized my old enemy, Hed, the snake-encircled god. The firelight shone on the serpent’s silver scales, and the reptile seemed to move. With an effort I looked away and saw that beside the revolting figure of Hed, there stood, on a pedestal, a tall, veiled, and graceful statue, all of white and luminous stone, and holding in its hand a crescent jewelled moon. This, then, was Edba.
I turned once more to the advancing priests, and as I did so, a wild blood-curdling chant broke from the on-moving ranks. I looked at Lestrade; his face was white, and I saw that he recognized the song that we had heard once before, at midnight, in our other prison cell beneath the temple. Slowly the priests drew near, forty in number, and ranged themselves about the sides of the apartment, near unto the throne. One brawny fellow took his stand almost in front of me, and so near that I could easily have plucked him by the shoulder.