And, thinking of Aryenis, I looked around the chamber with its carvings, foul but vivid representations of torture and mutilation, and I shivered involuntarily. How many shrinking prisoners, men and women alike, had prayed there in vain, not for life, but just for clean, speedy death! In a corner was a sheaf of arrows, black-shafted and white-lettered, such as we had found in the gate. The use of these we learnt from one of the guard archers whose life had been spared. When the chief Shaman considered a prisoner to be of no further use, he was made to pick an arrow from the cloth-swathed sheaf. One does not like to think of the scenes that room must have witnessed. Then, according to the lettering upon it, once outside the gate the tortured wretch might feel the prayed-for point in his heart, or know the lingering death of many hours as he lay crippled among the vultures and the obscene horrors of the place of death. So, leaving a guard upon the chamber, we returned to the topmost palace where, in the last rays of the sun just sinking behind the hills, Kyrlos announced to the leading Shaman prisoners his intention of ruling their country, and, with the unanimous assent of his chiefs, appointed Henga as military governor, and Wrexham to take charge of all the mines and metal industries of the Shaman and Brown Sakae countries. That night we slept in the palace, and all next day explored the Shaman citadel, cleansing its foul prisons, and giving decent burial to the pitiful remains. Many of our men clamoured for the Shamans to be flung to the vultures in the gate, but I am glad to say that Kyrlos insisted on more humane measures, slaying only such as were definitely proven guilty of murder and raid, and allowing the dead to be carried away by their own folk. But none came to claim the chief Shaman’s body. Whence he came none could tell us for certain. The office was hereditary, but the advent of this man was a mystery, since his reputed father was old beyond even the long-lived Shaman elders, and his mother none knew. The chief Shaman and his successor-designate never left the citadel, and until attaining years of manhood the Shaman’s heir was not brought to the council save only if his father died before he became of age. Those who knew the history of the dead fiend in the great chair were dead. Perhaps the secret--if secret there were--lay locked in the brain of that still figure sprawling on the floor before its master. Of papers and records we found none. Any that existed--and we knew the Shaman councillors had ancient records of their history and religion--must have been hidden or destroyed.