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