Under my hand Lakla’s shoulder quivered; dead-alive and their master vanished⁠—I danced, flickered, within the rock; felt a swift sense of shrinking, of withdrawal; slice upon slice the carded walls of stone, of silvery waters, of elfin gardens slipped from me as cards are withdrawn from a pack, one by one⁠—slipped, wheeled, flattened, and lengthened out as I passed through them and they passed from me.

Gasping, shaken, weak, I stood within the faceted oval chamber; arm still about the handmaiden’s white shoulder; Larry’s hand still clutching her girdle.

The roaring, impalpable gale from the cosmos was retreating to the outposts of space⁠—was still; the intense, streaming, flooding radiance lessened⁠—died.

“Now have you beheld,” said Lakla, “and well you trod the road. And now shall you hear, even as the Silent Ones have commanded, what the Shining One is⁠—and how it came to be.”