he drew forth a curious bottle with wine of his own, and Carter saw that
the bottle was a single hollowed ruby, grotesquely carved in patterns too
fabulous to be comprehended. He offered his wine to his host, and though
Carter took only the least sip, he felt the dizziness of space and the
fever of unimagined jungles. All the while the guest had been smiling more
and more broadly, and as Carter slipped into blankness the last thing he
saw was that dark odious face convulsed with evil laughter and something
quite unspeakable where one of the two frontal puffs of that orange turban
had become disarranged with the shakings of that epileptic mirth.
Carter next had consciousness amidst horrible odours beneath a tent-like
awning on the deck of a ship, with the marvellous coasts of the Southern
Sea flying by in unnatural swiftness. He was not chained, but three of the
dark sardonic merchants stood grinning nearby, and the sight of those
humps in their turbans made him almost as faint as did the stench that
filtered up through the sinister hatches. He saw slip past him the
glorious lands and cities of which a fellow-dreamer of earth - a
lighthouse-keeper in ancient Kingsport - had often discoursed in the old
days, and recognized the templed terraces of Zak, abode of forgotten
dreams; the spires of infamous Thalarion, that daemon-city of a thousand
wonders where the eidolon Lathi reigns; the charnel gardens of Zura, land
of pleasures unattained, and the twin headlands of crystal, meeting above
in a resplendent arch, which guard the harbour of Sona-Nyl, blessed land
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