All night long the attack was maintained. All the night Polaris raged helplessly before that stubborn barrier of stone. In the morning light he counseled with Oleric, Zenas, and Zoar. "If you could but clear a way for my beasts!" groaned Zoar. "Then I would send them against the gates, though it killed them--which might well happen, for those gates are heavy enough to challenge even the strength of an amaloc." Zenas sprang up and beat himself on the forehead. "Doddering fool that I am!" he cried. "Here we have wasted men and time, and because my wits were sleeping in my boot-heels. Get your amalocs ready, Zoar." While Oleric sent one more assault against the gates, the geologist directed his engineers, under the cover of the attack, to mine, not the gates, but the pile of stones itself, with the melinite. Four big charges of the explosive they placed in Fanaer's barricade, and Zenas, with a tap of his finger on the battery, blew the barrier against the wall. Hardly had the stones quit falling when an amaloc rushed the gateway. Zoar spoke truly when he said those gates were strong. Fearful as was the impetus of the beast's charge, and though it cracked the great steel plates which protected its head with the impact, it did not shatter the gates. It withdrew from the onset somewhat sick and groggy--if that word may be applied to the mental condition of the amaloc. Zoar sent in another. Four of the monsters were launched successively against the portals before the gates crashed down. The last shock was so fearful that the beast which delivered it fell just beyond the gateway and died with a broken skull in the midst of the ruin it had made. Through the gap and into the Mazanion avenue, almost under the lee of the falling mammoth, flashed Polaris, mounted and in full armor. Hard behind him rode Oleric. Ahead of them the wide street was choked with Maeronican soldiery, and the son of the snows would have charged without pause; for the time that was left him was reduced to minutes now. Taking of the gates had not been quick or easy, and Shamar was high in the heavens. But the red captain caught at his bridle-rein. "Hold, friend and king; you will peril your life needlessly," he shouted. "Leave this desperate scum to Zoar, and follow where he leads. Ah! here he comes! Now see them scatter!" Oleric threw back his head and laughed. But Polaris, with that sun riding high above him, was in no mood for laughter. In through the rifted gateway thrust Ixstus. The giant amaloc was in his full panoply of war. On his head he bore proudly his master, Zoar the aged, and in the turret behind Zoar rode the Goddess Glorian--Glorian coming to the end to take what gift fate had in store.