The structure to which we had been carried covered, I estimated, fully an acre.

Oblong, with its slender, vari-coloured columns spaced regularly, its walls were like the sliding screens of the Japanese--shoji.
The green dwarf hurried us up a flight of broad steps flanked by great carved serpents, winged and scaled.

He stamped twice upon mosaicked stones between two of the pillars, and a screen rolled aside, revealing an immense hall scattered about with low divans on which lolled a dozen or more of the dwarfish men, dressed identically as he.
They sauntered up to us leisurely; the surprised interest in their faces tempered by the same inhumanly gay malice that seemed to be characteristic of all these people we had as yet seen.
"The Afyo Maie awaits them, Rador," said one.
The green dwarf nodded, beckoned us, and led the way through the great hall and into a smaller chamber whose far side was covered with the opacity I had noted from the aerie of the cliff.

I examined the--blackness--with lively interest.
It had neither substance nor texture; it was not matter--and yet it suggested solidity; an entire cessation, a complete absorption of light; an ebon veil at once immaterial and palpable.

I stretched, involuntarily, my hand out toward it, and felt it quickly drawn back.
"Do you seek your end so soon ?" whispered Rador.