IN ZACCARATH
"COME," said the King in sacred Zaccarath, "and let our prophets prophesy before us."
A far-seen jewel of light was the holy palace, a wonder to the nomads on the plains.
There was the King with all his underlords, and the lesser kings that did him vassalage, and there were all his queens with all their jewels upon them.
Who shall tell of the splendour in which they sat; of the thousand lights and the answering emeralds; of the dangerous beauty of that hoard of queens, or the flash of their laden necks?
There was a necklace there of rose-pink pearls beyond the art of dreamer to imagine. Who shall tell of the amethyst chandeliers, where torches, soaked in rare Bhyrinian oils, burned and gave off a scent of blethany?[1]
Enough to say that when the dawn came up it appeared by contrast pallid and unlovely and stripped all bare of its glory, so that it hid itself with rolling clouds.
- ↑ The herb marvellous, which growing near the summit of Mount Zaumnos, scents all the Zaumnian range, and is smelt far out on the Kepuscran plains, and even, when the wind is from the mountains, in the streets of the city of Ognoth. At night it closes its petals and is heard to breathe, and its breath is a swift poison. This it does even by day if the snows are disturbed about it. No plant of this has ever been captured alive by a hunter.
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