“What other power, Yva?”

“Oh! perhaps that which you worship, that which is called Love.  The love of man may avert the massacre of men.  I hope so with all my heart.  Hist!  Oro comes.  I feel, I know that he comes, though not in search of us who are very far from his thought tonight.  Follow me.  Swiftly.”

She sped across the temple to where a chapel opened out of it, which was full of the statues of dead kings, for here was the entrance to their burial vault.  We reached it and hid behind the base of one of these statues.  By standing to our full height, without being seen we still could see between the feet of the statue that stood upon a pedestal.

Then Oro came.

Chapter XXIV

The Chariot of the Pit

Oro came and of necessity alone.  Yet there was that in his air as he advanced into the temple, which suggested a monarch surrounded by the pomp and panoply of a great court.  He marched, his head held high, as though heralds and pursuivants went in front of him, as though nobles surrounded him and guards or regiments followed after him.  Let it be admitted that he was a great figure in his gorgeous robes, with his long white beard, his hawk-like features, his tall shape and his glittering eyes, which even at that distance I could see.  Indeed once or twice I thought that he glanced out of the corners of them towards the chapel where we were hid.  But this I think was fancy.  For as Yva said, his thoughts were set elsewhere.

He reached the statue of Fate and stood for a while contemplating it and the suppliant figures on either side, as though he were waiting for his invisible court to arrange itself.  Then he doffed his jewelled cap to the effigy, and knelt before it.  Yes, Oro the Ancient, the Super-man, the God, as the early peoples of the earth fancied such a being, namely, one full of wrath, revenge, jealousy, caprice and power, knelt in supplication to this image of stone which he believed to be the home of a spirit, thereby showing himself to be after all not so far removed from the savages whose idol Bastin had destroyed.  More, in a clear and resonant voice which reached us even across that great space, he put up his prayer.  It ran something as follows, for although I did not understand the language in which he spoke Yva translated it to me in a whisper: 

“God of the Sons of Wisdom, God of the whole earth, only God to whom must bow every other Power and Dominion, to thee I, Oro the Great King, make prayer and offer sacrifice.  Twenty times ten thousand years and more have gone by since I, Oro, visited this, thy temple and knelt before this, thy living effigy, yet thou, ruler of the world, dost remember the prayer I made and the sacrifice I offered.  The prayer was for triumph over my enemies and the sacrifice a promise of the lives of half of those who in that day dwelt upon the earth.  Thou heardest the prayer, thou didst bow thy head and accept the sacrifice.  Yea, the prayer was granted and the sacrifice was made, and in it were counted the number of my foes.