Duar had seen sorcery before over half the world, even in the black mountains of his own forbidding kingdom before the great walls fell to bury it for ever from the sight of man, but some intuition told him he was confronted by a hitherto unwitnessed demonstration. This, thought he, was a witch-fire. He sat quietly; he had not once moved a limb from the moment he awoke. A voice came from the light, a sweet, soft, woman's voice that nevertheless, in spite of its obvious femininity, held undertones of power. "Duar!" it called. "Duar! Do you hear, O Duar?" "I hear you, devil," growled the man in chains. "What wizardry is this, you spawn of Hell, and what do you want of me?" "Duar, my lord!" The scintillating area of light, if the unnatural glow could be described as light, expanded until it was nearly eight feet in diameter. The dethroned king felt terrific forces struggling in wild efforts for freedom there before him, but though the outlines of the circle quivered and writhed they held fast to their shape. Somehow the captive knew he should be glad that this was so; his barbarian blood felt the touch of fear. "Duar, beloved, have you forgotten my voice in these few short eons?" "What talk is this of love and eons?" growled the beleaguered man. "Faith, and I've never known the two to be associated outside of song! And if I had free hands with a sword in them I'd see what cold steel would find in that fire-ball of yours, demon or succuba, or whatever you are!" "Perhaps if you saw me you would remember," said the sweet tones. "I had hopes----" The center of the fire grew dim and blurred as a maid's breath blurs her mirror. Slowly, by degrees, appeared the face and figure of a woman--or a Thing resembling a woman. "In the Name of----" gasped Duar, shocked from his philosophic calm at last. "Nay, do not name the lesser Gods, O Duar," counseled the figure. "Rather, call on Him Whom you have the right to call on, the God of Gods, the Ancient One Who is older than the earth or men, He of Whom _you_ were the high priest!" The words only half penetrated the captive's mind. He was staring at a vision that within the innermost chambers of his mind he knew could not have been born of human flesh. Her form was incased in one long robe of shimmering white, a robe of strange weave and texture to Duar's astonished eyes, held by a black girdle at the waist. The perfect figure beneath the single garment was obvious in every line and curve up to the white column of the shapely throat and the queenly contour of face and brow. Her raven-black hair fell in a long cascade over the proudly held shoulders. In the depths of her dark, hypnotic eyes swam all the black suns of the universe in a constant play of ebony light. Neither flaw nor blemish marred the ivory perfection of her features. Beauty incarnate in the Pits of Ygoth! "Do you remember yet, O Duar?" she of the fire was asking. "Can you recall--the Name?"