Ramiki choked. “The large things of the people are for a man’s thinking upon and handling—”
“O Ramiki!” said Halmis, “how can I help thinking upon and handling my own?”
She moved on toward the god-stone where the people were gathered. Ramiki kept her company. At first they moved with an equal step, then Ramiki quickened his. Halmis looked aside at him. His frame was drawn to great height, his feet seemed hardly to touch the sunburned earth. He seemed to move in quivering air; the inrush of force was evident. “The god is in him! The god is in him!” thought Halmis. Quickening her step she came even with him again. But now Ramiki uttered a shout and began to run....
He came to the massed people; crying aloud, he pursued his way. “Arzan! Arzan!” he cried. “I have been with Arzan in the wood! O people of the river-plain, Arzan has given it to me to say!”
The gathered folk were tow to flame, wax to the moment’s sharp impression. The crisis in their affairs had lifted them, shaken them awake. Now they were ready constantly for new excitement, craved the new, or the old made new. It had been good that Halmis the prophetess should prophesy of what the going stream might find! It was good that there should arrive the fresher alarum of Ramiki the prophet—Ramiki returning from an immediate interview with Over-Knowledge, Over-Power! “Arzan the great maker!” shouted Ramiki. “I have talked with Arzan! You have sinned before him, and I will show you how!”
All turned from prophetess to prophet. All saw Ramiki, but all had a sense of the overshadowing Energy. “Arzan!” cried the people, and “Hearken to the prophet!”
Ramiki came to the god-stone. He mounted to the place of the prophet. He turned, he faced the chiefs and the elders and the people, men and women. The wind blew his garment and lifted his hair; they thought that they saw around him the red light of Arzan. They turned, every one, from Halmis, they centred on Ramiki.
Halmis leaned against a tree. Her heart beat heavily. At first she had felt only rage. She thought she would come to the god-stone and dispute it with that usurper, and then had come fear to halt her. She hated fear, she fought it as with fire. But it was a great beast that, beaten away, came again! To-day she tried to fight fear with scorn, scorn being an arrow always in her quiver. But it failed to-day. Halmis looked at the women about her and farther away in the throng. There were many women, but that did not seem to help.... Men held better by all men. Women held better by the children, but the men by one another.... Halmis felt alone and afraid. Ramiki was speaking for Arzan. Arzan was a terrible deity and an eloquent! Halmis thought that a mist was rising around her....
Ramiki was not telling what the people marked with red should find or do, out of the river country, beyond the heaven-propping hills. He was not telling how plentifully now would be fed the folk marked with blue, the folk staying in the ancient land. He was not telling—or at least it did not yet appear that he was telling—why the wreath was given to man. He was not telling—or at least not yet telling—how, in this moment, the folk were sinning against Arzan. He was telling how the world was made, telling old things that they knew already, and perhaps new things.
Sometimes Ramiki spoke and sometimes he sang, passing from saying into singing, from singing into saying. To a great part of the listening throng what he said or sang was the literal word of Arzan. Imaginings and making to see and touch the Not-There were the Works of Arzan—when they were not the works of Izd, who, with the river-country people, meant darkness and demon....