The Building of the Moon Pool She paused, running her long fingers through her own bronze-flecked ringlets. Selective breeding this, with a vengeance, I thought; an ancient experiment in heredity which of course would in time result in the stamping out of the tendency to depart from type that lies in all organisms; resulting, obviously, at last, in three fixed forms of black-haired, ruddy-haired, and silver-haired--but this, with a shock of realization it came to me, was also an accurate description of the dark-polled _ladala_, their fair-haired rulers and of the golden-brown tressed Lakla! How--questions began to stream through my mind; silenced by the handmaiden's voice. "Above, far, far above the abode of the Shining One," she said, "was their greatest temple, holding the shrines both of sun and moon. All about it were other temples hidden behind mighty walls, each enclosing its own space and squared and ruled and standing within a shallow lake; the sacred city, the city of the gods of this land--" "It is the Nan-Matal that she is describing," I thought. "Out upon all this looked the _Taithu_ who were now but the servants of the Shining One as it had been the messenger of the Three," she went on. "When they returned the Shining One spoke to them, promising them dominion over all that they had seen, yea, _under it_ dominion of all earth itself and later perhaps of other earths! "In the Shining One had grown craft, cunning; knowledge to gain that which it desired. Therefore it told its _Taithu_--and mayhap told them truth--that not yet was it time for _them_ to go forth; that slowly must they pass into that outer world, for they had sprung from heart of earth and even it lacked power to swirl unaided into and through the above. Then it counselled them, instructing them what to do. They hollowed the chamber wherein first I saw you, cutting their way to it that path down which from it you sped. "It revealed to them that the force that is within moon flame is kin to the force that is within it, for the chamber of its birth was the chamber too of moon birth and into it went the subtle essence and powers that flow in that earth child: and it taught them how to make that which fills what you call the Moon Pool whose opening is close behind its Veil hanging upon the gleaming cliffs. "When this was done it taught them how to make and how to place the seven lights through which moon flame streams into Moon Pool--the seven lights that are kin to its own seven orbs even as its fires are kin to moon fires--and which would open for it a path that it could tread. And all this the _Taithu_ did, working so secretly that neither those of their race whose faces were set against the Shining One nor the busy men above know aught of it.