"'Ascend, ascend, ascend!'" Roya mimicked sarcastically. "'Ascend, O Great Prince Toka! Ascend to your divine abode!'" Roya's last remark was not in mimicry. "Blah, blah, blah!"
"Watch yourselves," Toka warned quietly as they neared the terrace.
The princesses formed a cortege about Toka and party. In the concave entry of the palace, a princess with a black wand waited alone.
An odd exaltation was in her voice. "O Great Prince Toka. Welcome to your divine palace. I am Princess Alota." With a bow, she turned and led them down an immense hall. "Great Prince Toka's Hall Of Life," Alota intoned.
Beginning on the inner sides of the great entry portals, art work progressively lined the walls and the many sets of huge doors. In exquisite execution it portrayed Toka's eventful life from birth in distant Sandcliff to his latest victory—exactly as it had all occurred! But ahead for fully a hundred paces the Hall stretched green and bare, except for a huge bas-relief of Toka on the set of doors at the far end.
"How can they know all this?" Elees puzzled softly.
"And why," Roya worried quietly, "don't they show the rest of the future?"
Toka was gentle but royally commanding. "Princess Alota, why has this not been finished?"
Alota answered humbly. "As Great Prince Toka knows all, so he knows his Hall Of Life cannot be extended until the divinely ordained times." Leading them to the pair of doors at which the Hall ended, Alota touched her wand to each, then stood obsequiously aside as the portals began swinging away. "O Great Prince Toka. Your personal rooms."