"Then let us begone from this place," said Zaemon, and took me
by the arm and waved a way for us with the Symbol. No further word
did I have with Nais, fearing to embroil her with these rebels who
clustered round, but I caught one hot glance from her eyes, and
that had to suffice for farewell. The dense ranks of the crowd
opened, and we walked away between them scathless. Fiercely though
they lusted for my life, brimming with hate though they made their
cries, no man dared to rush in and raise a hand against me.
Neither did they follow. When we reached the outskirts of the
crowd, and the ranks thinned, they had a mind, many of them, to
surge along in our wake; but Zaemon whirled the Symbol back before
their faces with a blaze of lurid light, and they fell to their
knees, grovelling, and pressed on us no more.

The rain still fell, and in the light of the camp fires as we
passed them, the wet gleamed on the old man's wasted body. And far
before us through the darkness loomed the vast bulk of the Sacred
Mountain, with the ring of eternal fires encincturing its crest.
I sighed as I thought of the old peaceful days I had spent in its
temple and groves.

But there was to be no more of that studious leisure now.
There was work to be done, work for Atlantis which did not brook
delay. And so when we had progressed far out into the waste, and
there was none near to view (save only the most High Gods), we
found the place where the passage was, whose entrance is known only
to the Seven amongst the Priests; and there we parted, Zaemon to
his hermitage in the dangerous lands, and I by this secret way back
into the capital.