interests, and his ends my ends. Together we stand or fall, together we
live or die, and that shall be an unhappy hour for you, Soa, when you
attempt to desert or betray us."

"It is well, Shepherdess," she answered, "your will is my will, for I
love you alone in the world, and all the rest I hate," and she glared at
Leonard and Otter. "You are my father, and my mother, and my child, and
where you are, in death or in life, there is my home. Let us go then
among this people of mine, there to perish miserably, so that the
Deliverer may seek to glut himself with wealth.

"Listen; this is the law of my people, or this was their law when I left
them forty years ago: That every stranger who passes through their gates
should be offered as a sacrifice to Aca the mother if the time of his
coming should be in summer, and to Jal the son if the time of his coming
be in winter, for the Mist-dwellers do not love strangers. But there is
a prophecy among my people which tells, when many generations have gone
by, that Aca the mother, and Jal the son, shall return to the land which
once they ruled, clothed in the flesh of men. And the shape of Aca shall
be such a shape as yours, Shepherdess, and the shape of Jal shall be as
is the shape of this black dog of a dwarf, whom when first I saw him in
my folly I deemed immortal and divine. Then the mother and the son
shall rule in the land, and its kings shall cease from kingship, and the
priests of the Snake shall be their servants, and with them shall come
peace and prosperity that do not pass away.

"Shepherdess, you know the tongue of the People of the Mist, for
when you were little I taught it to you, because to me it is the
most beautiful of tongues. You know the song also, the holy Song of
Re-arising, that shall be on the lips of Aca when she comes again,