Words in Tibetan, answered by hoarse responses from the crowd, seemed to be some ceremony or invocation of judgment, in which, they sensed, the two white people were the sacrifice or center of the rite. Standing silently, Tip was watchful but helpless. Roger, too, kept an alert mind but saw no means of escape.
“You seek to hear the Voice. You wish to know the secret.”
The venerable man who appeared to be some sort of super-lama, to whom even their former captor deferred, knelt and pronounced some low, weird and long-winded invocation.
At his gesture they both knelt, submissive if not willing, and he bowed his head to the floor and stayed that way.
All the rest were in similar positions.
And then, blood-curdling in its startling suddenness, after an interval of suspense, there came, but not softly or in small volume as in their recordings it had been, a scream that was as weird as the howl of a soul in torment; and after it followed, louder, but duplicating, the decreasing pitch and growing volume of the howl, roar and groan, that ceased abruptly on a hoarse note.
Apparently, and they all seemed to believe it, the Image had spoken.
Certainly, to Roger, still able to be alert enough to trace sound, it issued from the head or face, possibly the small, slitted mouth of that statue.
“The Doom has judged,” the old man told them in precise English, but in a very formal and cold tone, “the judgment is pronounced. I am to show you our secret and allow your science to prove its worth.”
A mocking twitch took the place of a smile as he added: