She turned her head and gave him a long, peculiar look; then, without any sort of expostulation, started singing.  Her voice was low and weird.  The song was so extraordinary that he had to rub his eyes to ascertain whether he was awake or dreaming.  The slow surprises of the grotesque melody began to agitate him in a horrible fashion; the words were pure nonsense—­or else their significance was too deep for him.

“Where, in the name of all unholy things, did you acquire that stuff, woman?”

Tydomin shed a sickly smile, while the corpse swayed about with ghastly jerks over her left shoulder.  She held it in position with her two left arms.  “It’s a pity we could not have met as friends, Maskull.  I could have shown you a side of Tormance which now perhaps you will never see.  The wild, mad, side.  But now it’s too late, and it doesn’t matter.”

They turned the angle of the mountain, and started to traverse the western base.

“Which is the quickest way out of this miserable land?” asked Maskull.

“It is easiest to go to Sant.”

“Will we see it from anywhere?”

“Yes, though it is a long way off.”

“Have you been there?”

“I am a woman, and interdicted.”

“True.  I have heard something of the sort.”

“But don’t ask me any more questions,” said Tydomin, who was becoming faint.

Maskull stopped at a little spring.  He himself drank, and then made a cup of his hand for the woman, so that she might not have to lay down her burden.  The gnawl water acted like magic—­it seemed to replenish all the cells of his body as though they had been thirsty sponge pores, sucking up liquid.  Tydomin recovered her self-possession.

About three-quarters of an hour later they worked around the second corner, and entered into full view of the north aspect of Disscourn.

A hundred yards lower down the slope on which they were walking, the mountain ended abruptly in a chasm.  The air above it was filled with a sort of green haze, which trembled violently like the atmosphere immediately over a furnace.

“The lake is underneath,” said Tydomin.

Maskull looked curiously about him.  Beyond the crater the country sloped away in a continuous descent to the skyline.  Behind them, a narrow path channelled its way up through the rocks toward the towering summit of the pyramid.  Miles away, in the north-east quarter, a long, flat-topped plateau raised its head far above all the surrounding country.  It was Sant—­and there and then he made up his mind that that should be his destination that day.

Tydomin meanwhile had walked straight to the gulf, and set down Crimtyphon’s body on the edge.  In a minute or two, Maskull joined her; arrived at the brink, he immediately flung himself at full length on his chest, to see what could be seen of the lake of fire.  A gust of hot, asphyxiating air smote his face and set him coughing, but he did not get up until he had stared his fill at the huge sea of green, molten lava, tossing and swirling at no great distance below, like a living will.