It was closed, perhaps twenty miles away, by a barrier of cliffs.
How, I wondered, did the path which Yuruk had pointed out to me pierce them?
Was it by pass or tunnel; and why was it the armored men had not found and followed it?
The waist between these two mountain wedges was a valley not more than a mile wide.

Norhala's house stood in its center; and it was like a garden, dotted with flowering and fragrant lilies and here and there a tiny green meadow.

The great globe of blue that was Norhala's dwelling seemed less to rest upon the ground than to emerge from it; as though its basic curvatures were hidden in the earth.
What was its substance I could not tell.

It was as though built of the lacquer of the gems whose colors it held.

And beautiful, wondrously, incredibly beautiful it was--an immense bubble of froth of molten sapphires and turquoises.
We had not time to study its beauties.