“That is good,” agreed Grôm, whose brain was busy devising other ways of making the wild flames 96 serviceable to man. “But,” he went on, “there is A-ya. She knows as much about it as you and I.”
The Chief pondered a moment.
“Either the girl must die,” said he, eyeing Grôm’s face, “or she must be a priest along with us.”
“I think she will be a very good priest,” said Grôm drily, his eyes resting upon her.
Then the Chief, ascending a rock between the two fires, spoke to the people, and decreed as he had said. He told a little about the Shining One, just so much as he thought it good for his hearers to know. He declared that the ones he had chosen for the great honor of serving the fires must tend them by turns, night and day, and guard them with their lives; for that, if one or the other should be suffered to die out, some great disaster would assuredly come upon the tribe.
“And henceforth,” he concluded, “you shall not be called the People of the Little Hills; for these ridges, indeed, are not such hills as those whose bald and windy tops are keeping the bones of our fathers. But you shall be known and feared greatly by our enemies as ‘The Children of the Shining One,’ under whose protection I declare you.”