It was as though Norhala had decreed it as a symbol of this her second victory--or had set it between us as a barrier.
Wider grew the rift.

Save for the bridge of our voices it separated us from Ruth as though she stood upon another world.
Higher we rose; the three of us now upon the flat top of a tower upon whose counterpart fifty feet away and facing the homeward path, Ruth and Norhala stood with white arms interlaced.
The serpent shape flashed toward us; it vanished beneath, merging into the waiting Thing.
Then slowly the Thing began to move; quietly it glided to the chasm it had blasted in the cliff wall.

The shadow of those walls fell upon us.
As one we looked back; as one we searched out the patch of blue with the black blot at its breast.
We found it; then the precipices hid it.

Silently we streamed through the chasm, through the canyon and the tunnel--speaking no word, Drake's eyes fixed with bitter hatred upon Norhala, Ventnor brooding upon her always with that enigmatic sympathy.

We passed between the walls of the further cleft; stood for an instant at the brink of the green forest.
There came to us as though from immeasurable distances, a faint, sustained thrumming--like the beating of countless muffled drums.