Mnathl's eyes fell on a man near her. She spoke to him. Instantly he bowed profoundly before her, and made a second, shallower obeisance to Ericson.
"Go with him," Mnathl said, turning to the ethnographer. "Sleep in his house." Obediently, Ericson followed his guide. When he looked around toward Mnathl, she had already disappeared.
The man (his name seemed to be Boator) took Ericson to an airy suite of rooms on the top floor of one of the biggest of the houses of red stone. Attendants waited on him with food and drink and water for bathing. They took away his dirt-encrusted, ragged clothing and brought him a heavy greenish robe. After Ericson had bathed and put it on, he inspected himself in the sheet of polished metal that served for a looking glass and decided that the color of the fabric made his curling beard and fair skin look as if they had been cast from yellow gold.
He was tired, but far too excited to rest.
The chief thing, the indubitable, the incredible thing, was that there was a very old, a very populous city, a city whose existence no one had even suspected, in the heart of the South Polar Minor continent. It was news to inflame an ethnographer to the point of hysteria. When Ericson got back to Penhairn with his report, it was going to revolutionize their whole concept of Fyhonese history; one would hardly exaggerate to say that it would be epoch-making news. No doubt there would be a period when they'd consider him the biggest liar since Marco Polo. But after the first skepticism wore off he'd have a permanent ethnographic appointment almost forced upon him. His report would shake established reputations, found new schools, would—oh, if he only had something to write on!
When the attendant came in again, Ericson made motions of writing in the palm of his hand, but the man's face remained blank. And when he asked for Mnathl the attendant merely shook his head and went out.
For want of anything better the young man hung out of the window watching the smoky flicker of lights in the city around him. It was not until the last one had gone out that he went, reluctantly, to bed.
Next morning, immediately after breakfast, Mnathl came to visit him. He hardly knew her at first. The scanty garments she had worn unconcernedly on their journey to Dridihad had been replaced by the stiff, hieratic folds of a dull purple robe embroidered in blue. On her head there was a silvery crown of antique workmanship, set with luminous purple stones, and she moved with the conscious dignity of a princess or a priest.
Her manner toward him, too, had changed. She smiled faintly when she first saw him, and everything about her seemed freer than Ericson had seen it before. She was animated, almost vivacious.