Theos, following, watched his movements with a strange affection,
--every turn of his head, every gesture of his hand seemed fraught
with meanings as yet inexplicable. The grass beneath their feet
was soft as velvet and dotted with a myriad wild flowers,--the
ascent was gradual and easy, and in a few minutes they had reached
the summit, where Sah-luma, throwing himself indolently on the
smooth turf, pulled Theos gently down by his side. There they
rested in silence, gazing at the magnificent panorama laid out
before them,--a panorama as lovely as a delicately pictured scene
of fairy-land. Above, the sky was of a dense yet misty rose-
color,--the sun, low on the western horizon appeared to rest in a
vast, deep, purple hollow, rifted here and there with broad gashes
of gold,--long shafts of light streamed upwards in order like the
waving pennons of an angel-army marching,--and beyond, far away
from this blaze of splendid color, the wide ethereal expanse paled
into tender blue, whereon light clouds of pink and white drifted
like the fluttering blossoms that fall from apple-trees in spring.

Below, and seen through a haze of rose and amber, lay the city of
Al-Kyris,--its white domes, towers and pinnacled palaces rising
out of the mist like a glorious mirage afloat on the borders of a
burning desert. Al-Kyris the Magnificent!--it deserves its name,
Theos thought, as shading his eyes from the red glare he took a
wondering and gradually comprehensive view of the enormous extent
of the place. He soon perceived that it was defended by six
strongly fortified walls, each placed within the other at long
equal distances apart, so that it might have been justly described
as six cities all merged together in one,--and from where he sat
he could plainly discern the great square where he had rested in