The man in ermine reeled as if from some let-down of extreme tension.
'Ishtar!' he gasped. 'It is Xaltotun!—and he lives! Valerius! Tarascus! Amalric! Do you see? Do you see? You doubted me—but I have not failed! We have been close to the open gates of hell this night, and the shapes of darkness have gathered close about us—aye, they followed him to the very door—but we have brought the great magician back to life.'
'And damned our souls to purgatories everlasting, I doubt not,' muttered the small, dark man, Tarascus.
The yellow-haired man, Valerius, laughed harshly.
'What purgatory can be worse than life itself? So we are all damned together from birth. Besides, who would not sell his miserable soul for a throne?'
'There is no intelligence in his stare, Orastes,' said the large man.
'He has long been dead,' answered Orastes. 'He is as one newly awakened. His mind is empty after the long sleep—nay, he was dead, not sleeping. We brought his spirit back over the voids and gulfs of night and oblivion. I will speak to him.'
He bent over the foot of the sarcophagus, and fixing his gaze on the wide dark eyes of the man within, he said, slowly: 'Awake, Xaltotun!'
The lips of the man moved mechanically. 'Xaltotun!' he repeated in a groping whisper.
'You are Xaltotun!' exclaimed Orastes, like a hypnotist driving home his suggestions. 'You are Xaltotun of Python, in Acheron.'