Too weary to halt, they set forth again, Juss leading. It was many hundred paces along that ice-edge, and the sun was near setting when they stood at last within a stone’s throw of the cliffs of Koshtra Belorn. Since before noon avalanches had thundered ceaselessly down those cliffs. Now, in the cool of the evening, all was still. The wind was fallen. The deep blue sky was without a cloud. The fires of sunset crept down the vast white precipices before them till every ledge and fold and frozen pinnacle glowed pink colour, and every shadow became an emerald. The shadow of Koshtra Pivrarcha lay cold across the lower stretches of the face on the Zimiamvian side. The edge of that shadow was as the division betwixt the living and the dead. “What dost think on?” said Juss to Brandoch Daha, that leaned upon his sword surveying that glory. Brandoch Daha started and looked on him. “Why,” said he, “on this: that it is likely thy dream was but a lure, sent thee by the King to tempt us on to mighty actions reserved for our destruction. On this side at least ’tis very certain there lieth no way up Koshtra Belorn.” “What of the little martlet,” said Juss, “who, whiles we were yet a great way off, flew out of the south to greet us with a gracious message?” “Well if it were not a devil of his,” said Brandoch Daha. “I will not turn back,” said Juss. “Thou needest not to come with me.” And he turned again to look on those frozen cliffs. “No?” said Brandoch Daha. “Nor thou with me. Thou’lt make me angry if thou wilt so vilely wrest my words. Only fare not too securely; and let that axe still be ready in thine hand, as is my sword, for kindlier work than step-cutting. And if thou embrace the hope to climb her by this wall before us, then hath the King’s enchantery made thee fey.” By then was the sun gone down. Under the wings of night uplifted from the east, the unfathomable heights of air turned a richer blue; and here and there, most dim and hard to see, throbbed a tiny point of light: the greater stars opening their eyelids to the gathering dark. Gloom crept upward, brimming the valleys far below like a rising tide of the sea. Frost and stillness waited on the eternal night to resume her reign. The solemn cliffs of Koshtra Belorn stood in tremendous silence, death-pale against the sky. Juss came backward a step along the ridge, and laying his hand on Brandoch Daha’s, “Be still,” he said, “and behold this marvel.” A little up the face of the mountain on the Zimiamvian side, it was as if some leavings of the after-glow had been entangled among the crags and frozen curtains of snow. As the gloom deepened, that glow brightened and spread, filling a rift that seemed to go into the mountain. “It is because of us,” said Juss, in a low voice. “She is afire with expectation of us.”