Kolano and the Old Ones centered their silvery eyes on the huge Sphere. A faint thrumming sang through the court and a chill swept the air. The golden light faded swiftly. The Sphere seemed suspended in a black void.
"O Great Prince Toka!" Kolano intoned. "Behold the time of Present!"
The Sphere shone with a pale cold light and Toka saw his quarters. The rooms had been cleaned and straightened. Rok and Old Ledo were sprawled comfortably on their beds, their weapons beside them. The Sphere Of All Time abruptly dulled.
"O Great Prince Toka!" Once more Kolano's contralto echoed through the chill and thrumming air, "Behold the time of Past and Present!"
Again the Sphere shone with that pale cold light. Toka saw Kosanna's square as in moonlight and shadow. The door between the feet of that colossal statue of him swung in. Led by Alota, a procession of princesses marched out—each four carrying a black bier on which lay a girl. The first eight wore only small Toka figurines between their breasts. These eight girls were laid in a row on the fore edge of the altar.
Two more biers were carried out. Deprived only of weapons and consciousness, their occupants were Roya and Elees! They were added to the girls at altar's edge. At a wave of Alota's wand the princesses retired.
Toka wanted to cry out—but even in speech he was immobile! And ten dragons swept over the deserted city. Flapping above the altar, each monster whipped its tail about a girl and carried her away. Back over the city the dragons lined—and shot into that down-river cavern.
The Sphere Of All Time held to the route—through a dungeon gloom, on to a weirdly illumined area of slowly swirling steam and grotesque stalagmites, then through a black tunnel guarded by a dragon at coiled rest. Down into a vast red pit of stalagmites and stalactites, of yellow steam and slimy green moss hangings, the way led. And each dragon placed its prize in a green cage, latched the door, then flapped away into a great den of their own.
Regaining consciousness and beholding their position, the Kosanna girls began shuddering in abject fear. Of finer stuff, Roya and Elees fought to retain reason and hope—when a horde of the pit's inhabitants came into view!
Terror ripped through Toka. The things were half man and half dragon, their slimy scaliness a shiny black mottled through with a fiery red. From their flat reptilian heads lidless red eyes burned with an insatiable lust. From their mouths yellow fangs thrust down to vicious needlepoints. Their hands and feet ended in ten long and sinuous digits. Their bodies continued on down beyond their pelvis to become a tail that ended in a restless coil of blue rattles.