What Hothrun Dath saw there upon the face of Yarni Zai no history
telleth, or how he came again alive to Yarnith, but this is writ that
he fled, and none hath since beheld the face of Yarni Zai. Some say
that he saw a look on the face of the image that set a horror tingling
through his soul, but it is held in Yarnith that he found the marks of
instruments of carving about the figure's feet, and discerning thereby
that Yarni Zai was wrought by the hands of men, he fled down the valley
screaming:

"There are no gods, and all the world is lost." And hope departed from
him and all the purposes of life. Motionless behind him, lit by the
rising sun, sat the colossal figure with right hand uplifted that man
had made in his own image.

But the men of Yarnith tell how Hothrun Dath came back again panting to
his own city, and told the people that there were no gods and that
Yarnith had no hope from Yarni Zai. Then the men of Yarnith when they
knew that the Famine came not from the gods, arose and strove against
him. They dug deep for wells, and slew goats for food high up on
Yarnith's mountains and went afar and gathered blades of grass, where
yet it grew, that their cattle might live. Thus they fought the Famine,
for they said: "If Yarni Zai be not a god, then is there nothing
mightier in Yarnith than men, and who is the Famine that he should bare
his teeth against the lords of Yarnith?"

And they said: "If no help cometh from Yarni Zai then is there no help
but from our own strength and might, and we be Yarnith's gods with the
saving of Yarnith burning within us or its doom according to our
desire."