The dwarfs advanced. Each, I now noted, had the same clustering black hair of Rador. They separated, and from them stepped three figures⁠—a youth of not more than twenty, short, but with the great shoulders of all the males we had seen of this race; a girl of seventeen, I judged, white-faced, a head taller than the boy, her long, black hair dishevelled; and behind these two a stunted, gnarled shape whose head was sunk deep between the enormous shoulders, whose white beard fell like that of some ancient gnome down to his waist, and whose eyes were a white flame of hate. The girl cast herself weeping at the feet of the priestess; the youth regarded her curiously.

“You are Songar of the Lower Waters?” murmured Yolara almost caressingly. “And this is your daughter and her lover?”

The gnome nodded, the flame in his eyes leaping higher.

“It has come to me that you three have dared blaspheme the Shining One, its priestess, and its Voice,” went on Yolara smoothly. “Also that you have called out to the three Silent Ones. Is it true?”