times had ever come back again. Many had gone up Poltarnees sworn to
return. Once a king sent all his courtiers, one by one, to report the
mystery to him, and then went himself; none ever returned.

Now, it was the wont of the folk of the Inner Lands to worship rumours and
legends of the Sea, and all that their prophets discovered of the Sea was
writ in a sacred book, and with deep devotion on days of festival or
mourning read in the temples by the priests. Now, all their temples lay
open to the west, resting upon pillars, that the breeze from the Sea might
enter them, and they lay open on pillars to the east that the breezes of
the Sea might not be hindered by pass onward wherever the Sea list. And
this is the legend that they had of the Sea, whom none in the Inner Lands
had ever beholden. They say that the Sea is a river heading towards
Hercules, and they say that he touches against the edge of the world, and
that Poltarnees looks upon him. They say that all the worlds of heaven go
bobbing on this river and are swept down with the stream, and that
Infinity is thick and furry with forests through which the river in his
course sweeps on with all the worlds of heaven. Among the colossal trunks
of those dark trees, the smallest fronds of whose branches are man nights,
there walk the gods. And whenever its thirst, glowing in space like a
great sun, comes upon the beast, the tiger of the gods creeps down to the
river to drink. And the tiger of the gods drinks his fill loudly, whelming
worlds the while, and the level of the river sinks between its banks ere
the beast's thirst is quenched and ceases to glow like a sun. And many
worlds thereby are heaped up dry and stranded, and the gods walk not among
them evermore, because they are hard to their feet. These are the worlds
that have no destiny, whose people know no god. And the river sweeps
onwards ever. And the name of the River is Oriathon, but men call it
Ocean. This is the Lower Faith of the Inner Lands. And there is a Higher
Faith which is not told to all. Oriathon sweeps on through the forests of