![]() ![]() I saw the smoke rising from them in the dark, gray wisps like snakes coiling towards the ceiling and then gone. "I sat up and moved back the curtains, and the lamps in the room went out. ![]() It would have taken a band of mortals several hours to discover the trapdoor, but I found it quickly, and I was able to lift it, which mortals couldn't have done. I went out from the city to where the stars provided the only light, and I walked until I came to a ruined temple, and there I began to dig in the sand. "In the hour that followed I was to remember the strength and the speed I'd known in the forests of Gaul, and had not used since. I knew that this thing I had touched had a man's form. I could feel the sheer humiliation of cowardice. "Easy to think about this, easy to imagine them as so simply dispatched. And I thought I might expire on the spot from fear. "I could hear no more from either of them than you heard from them when I took you down to the chamber here on the island. "I closed my eyes, trying to gather my wits, form some plan of action that didn't include turning and running like a madman, and I heard a dry, crackling sound, and against my closed lids saw fire. And when my hand found the face, the lips proved just a little softer than all the rest of it, and I drew back. But this was no statue, this thing, this thing was made of something more resilient than stone. Then my hands moved on the thing and felt what seemed the chest of a human statue, its shoulders, its arms. And I rested, catching my breath, trying to command myself. "My hands touched something hard before me. I put my hands out in front of me and tried not to feel mortal fear of the blackness in which I was as blind as an ordinary man. ![]()
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