Now, they sped from the Cave of Chrysolites by another passage than that
by which they entered it, and nothing but the light of the Sword to guide
them. By that light Shibli Bagarag could distinguish glimmering shapes,
silent and statue-like, to the right and the left of them, their visages
hidden in a veil of heavy webs; and he saw what seemed in the dusk broad
halls, halls of council, and again black pools and black groves, and
columns of crowded porticoes,--all signs of an underground kingdom. They
came to some steps and mounted these severally, coming to a platform, in
the middle of which leapt a fountain, the top spray of it touched with a
beam of earth and the air breathed by men. Here he heard the youths
dabble with the dark waters, and he discerned Gulrevaz tossing it in her
two hands, calling, 'Koorookh! Koorookh!' Then they said to him, 'Stir
this fountain with the Sword, O Master of the Event!' So he stirred the
fountain, and the whole body of it took a leap toward the light that was
like the shoot of a long lance of silver in the moon's rays, and lo! in
its place the ruffled feathers of a bird. Then the seven youths and the
Princess and Shibli Bagarag got up under its feathers like a brood of
water-fowl; and the bird winged straight up as doth a blinded bee,
ascending, and passing in the ascent a widening succession of winding
terraces, till he observed the copper sun of Aklis and the red lands
below it. Thrice, in the exuberance of his gladness, he waved the Sword,
and the sun lost that dulness on its disk and took a bright flame, and
threw golden arrows everywhere; and the pastures were green, the streams
clear, the sands sparkling. The bird flew, and circled, and hung poised
a moment, presently descending on the roof of the palace. Now, there was
here a piece of solid glass, propped on two crossed bars of gold, and it
was shaped like an eye, and might have been taken for one of the eyes
inhabiting the head of some monstrous Genie. Shibli Bagarag ran to it
when he was afoot, and peered through it. Surely, it was the first