So, defending if need be every jot and tittle of my tale, I will set forth in plain unvarnished words what fate set me to see of the red witch and her revel.
The last thing I remember was the fall of some heavy substance above my head, as half-carried by Lah, the Queen, I was let down into that dark hole, beyond which lay the moment’s safety, and perchance escape.
Then came a swift rushing and surging as of mighty waters about and above me; fiery darts shot through my brain and danced before my eyes. Then distant voices, and figures passing and repassing, but ever afar off. Lastly, a glimmer of light, and the touch of cooling bandages bound tight about my head. After a time the darkness wholly passed; I lay on a couch of skins, and a bowl full of some evil-smelling mixture was pressed against my lips.
At this, I remember I was wroth, and would have smote the unseen nurse that teased me, but my hand, when I tried to raise it, fell, heavy as lead, by my side. I heard a hoarse cackling laugh, and against my will I drank of the cup held out to me.
Nor, save for a slightly bitter flavor, was the draught nauseous. Indeed, it warmed like wine. I felt new strength run tingling from limb to limb, and I opened my eyes, my own man once more, a little weak and stiff in the joints still, yet whole and sound again and ready for the morrow and its burden.
Looking about me I found that I lay in a corner of a cave barely six feet high, whose end was lost in darkness. This cavern was lighted from above, by torches stuck in rude brackets here and there in the rocky wall. I saw, too, that the earth of the floor had been pounded hard and smooth, and was covered over with intermingling lines of black and white, red, blue, and yellow.
I followed these lines with my eyes, and I beheld, without understanding it, that the network had a meaning. Sometimes a line would end abruptly with a star, sometimes it was cut clean across, often other lines met the first, so that the colors ran thickly together; but at all times there was a certain order like the lines of a map, or a puzzle in geometry.
After a time I grew giddy watching this never-ending maze, and I turned upon my side that I might better see the other portion of my prison house. A fire smouldered in a distant corner, and a leaping flame showed the edge of a great cauldron that stood in the cave’s centre, from which came the quick shimmer and sparkle of precious metal and of gems. A dark mass near by uncoiled itself slowly, and two unwinking, lidless, fiery eyes looked straight at me and beyond. The thing slipped away without noise into the farther darkness, and I sat up. A draught of air played about my head. It was damp, and pleasantly cool in this underground retreat, and save for the crackling of the fire all was silent.
I am not, I trust, a coward, but I tell this as it happened, leaving out nothing, altering nothing. For all I knew I was alone, safe and alone, but on a sudden my heart began to beat thickly, my hair stood erect, and my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth. Cold sweat stood in beads upon my body, and some inner force compelled me to look where I would not.
And there, crouching by the fire, I saw the bent figure of a woman, hardly larger than a child, but old beyond man’s counting.