"My friend, I first saw the light on Ruthar's hills well-nigh three hundred years ago," Glorian replied, and as he involuntarily shrank in his saddle, she added hastily, "It is a matter of the inward will that holds the spirit and the flesh. To only a few is it given to have the will to prevail for a time against time itself. And they are not immortal. Presently old age will come to me as it has to Zoar, and I shall shrivel away--and die." She shuddered. Polaris looked at this fair, fresh woman, beautiful as a goddess indeed, and by all earthly standards in the first bloom of her young womanhood, and he felt that this matter was beyond his comprehension. "Are there, then, any others, besides you and Zoar?" he asked. "One other only--and he rides at your side," she answered. "Oleric the Learned is younger than I by only fifty years." "Now, my brother, are some of my wild sayings explained to you," Oleric said. "We do not ask that you believe, for this thing is new to you and contrary to all that you have learned. Only the years will show you the truth of what we tell you--if they pass without accidents. For we are not proof against mischance. A sword-stroke may end my days as swiftly as any man's." "Would you that I impart the secret to you?" asked Glorian. And she turned and looked deep into Polaris's eyes. "You have a will that is stronger than most, and I think that you might well exert it to hold back the years, were you instructed. Say, shall we teach it you?" "Nay, lady," said Polaris. "I will live my appointed years, be they few or many, and die when my time comes. One short human life, it seems, can hold all the troubles for which a man has heart. And I would not, if this thing be possible, see my friends grow old and die, while I lived on." Glorian sighed. Then she seemed struck by a new thought, and asked: "What will happen if Ruthar is too late, and you reach not your friends in Adlaz--and the lady Rose, of whom Oleric has told me? What if you come not to Adlaz in time to save them?" "I think that I shall be in time," Polaris said grimly. "If I am not, then I think death shall find me on the road--and be welcome." Zenas Wright, hearing these things, and marveling, became troubled. "Wow!" he said to the lieutenant. "I can believe anything now. To-day I have seen a living mammoth, and I felt about three thousand years old myself. And now, too, look out for squalls." CHAPTER VII POLARIS MAKES HIS CHOICE Dawn, the cheerless gray of clouded winter, crept over the city of Adlaz. In her bed in the prison-palace of Bel-Tisan the dark-haired Princess Memene of Sardanes lay, and beside her was her new little son. But Memene was not well, and Rose knew she would not live.