This must I do--by
craft persuade Serku, the keeper of the gateway, to lift the Shadow;
or raise it myself. And that will be hard and it may well be that in
the struggle life will be stripped of us all. Yet is it better to die
fighting than to dance with the Shining One!"
He swept the shell around the pier. Opened a wide plaza paved with
the volcanic glass, but black as that down which we had sped from the
chamber of the Moon Pool. It shone like a mirrored lakelet of jet; on
each side of it arose what at first glance seemed towering bulwarks of
the same ebon obsidian; at second, revealed themselves as structures
hewn and set in place by men; polished faces pierced by dozens of
high, narrow windows.
Down each facade a stairway fell, broken by small landings on which a
door opened; they dropped to a broad ledge of greyish stone edging the
lip of this midnight pool and upon it also fell two wide flights from
either side of the bridge platform. Along all four stairways the
guards were ranged; and here and there against the ledge stood the
shells--in a curiously comforting resemblance to parked motors in our
own world.
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