It showed that
although the College of Hes affected to be indifferent to the doings and
politics of the people of the Plain that they once ruled and over which,
whilst secretly awaiting an opportunity of re-conquest, they still
claimed a spiritual authority, the attitude was assumed rather than
real. Moreover it suggested a system of espionage so piercing and
extraordinary that it was difficult to believe it unaided by the
habitual exercise of some gift of clairvoyance.
The service, if I may call it so, was finished; the dead man had
followed the record of his sins into that lurid sea of fire, and by
now was but a handful of charred dust. But if his book had closed, ours
remained open and at its strangest chapter. We knew it, all of us, and
waited, our nerves thrilled, with expectancy.
The Hesea sat brooding on her rocky throne. She also knew that the hour
had come. Presently she sighed, then motioned with her sceptre and spoke
a word or two, dismissing the priests and priestesses, who departed
and were seen no more. Two of them remained however, Oros and the head
priestess who was called Papave, a young woman of a noble countenance.
"Listen, my servants," she said. "Great things are about to happen,
which have to do with the coming of yonder strangers, for whom I have
waited these many years as is well known to you. Nor can I tell the
issue since to me, to whom power is given so freely, foresight of the
future is denied.
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