And at last Leothric came to the end of the Corridor of the Bells,
and beheld there a small black door. And all the corridor behind him
was full of the echoes of the tolling, and they all muttered to one
another about the ceremony; and the dirge of the musicians came
floating slowly through them like a procession of foreign elaborate
guests, and all of them boded ill to Leothric.

The black door opened at once to the hand of Leothric, and he found
himself in the open air in a wide court paved with marble. High over
it shone the moon, summoned there by the hand of Gaznak.

There Gaznak slept, and around him sat his magical musicians, all
playing upon strings. And, even sleeping, Gaznak was clad in armour,
and only his wrists and face and neck were bare.

But the marvel of that place was the dreams of Gaznak; for beyond
the wide court slept a dark abyss, and into the abyss there poured a
white cascade of marble stairways, and widened out below into
terraces and balconies with fair white statues on them, and
descended again in a wide stairway, and came to lower terraces in
the dark, where swart uncertain shapes went to and fro. All these
were the dreams of Gaznak, and issued from his mind, and, becoming
gleaming marble, passed over the edge of the abyss as the musicians
played. And all the while out of the mind of Gaznak, lulled by that
strange music, went spires and pinnacles beautiful and slender, ever
ascending skywards. And the marble dreams moved slow in time to the
music. When the bells tolled and the musicians played their dirge,
ugly gargoyles came out suddenly all over the spires and pinnacles,
and great shadows passed swiftly down the steps and terraces, and