When at last they stopped, panting, exhausted, the same voice, deafening as an earthquake, roared:
"Bring hither the bride—the stainless dove!"
A chorus of hideous laughter, a swelling, bleating cacophony of execration, so furious and real that it froze the listeners' blood, answered the summons.
Then, from an arch in the apse of the infernal chapel, came four chanting figures, hideously masked and draped in crimson.
With slow, measured steps they approached. The arch was black again. Deep silence supervened.
Now into the centre came two figures.
One was that of a man robed in doublet and hose of flaming scarlet. The figure he supported was that of a woman, though she seemed a corpse returned to earth.
A long white robe covered her from head to toe, like the winding sheet of death. Her eyes were bound with a white cloth. She seemed unable to walk, and was being urged forward, step by step, by the scarlet man at her side.
Again pandemonium reigned, heightened by the crashing peals of the thunder that rolled in the heavens overhead.
"Emen Hetan! Emen Hetan! Palu! Baalberi! Emen Hetan!"