It was like being held within a fire opal--so brilliant, so flashing, was it.

I closed my eyes, opened them; the lambency cascaded from the vast curves of the globular walls; in front of me was a long, narrow opening in them, through which, far away, I could see the end of the wizards' bridge and the ledged mouth of the cavern through which we had come; against the light from within beat the crimson light from without--and was checked as though by a barrier.
I felt Lakla's touch; turned.
A hundred paces away was a dais, its rim raised a yard above the floor.

From the edge of this rim streamed upward a steady, coruscating mist of the opalescence, veined even as was that of the Dweller's shining core and shot with milky shadows like curdled moonlight; up it stretched like a wall.
Over it, from it, down upon me, gazed three faces--two clearly male, one a woman's.

At the first I thought them statues, and then the eyes of them gave the lie to me; for the eyes were alive, terribly, and if I could admit the word--_supernaturally_--alive.
They were thrice the size of the human eye and triangular, the apex of the angle upward; black as jet, pupilless, filled with tiny, leaping red flames.
Over them were foreheads, not as ours--high and broad and visored; their sides drawn forward into a vertical ridge, a prominence, an upright wedge, somewhat like the visored heads of a few of the great lizards--and the heads, long, narrowing at the back, were fully twice the size of mankind's! Upon the brows were caps--and with a fearful certainty I knew that they were _not_ caps--long, thick strands of gleaming yellow, feathered scales thin as sequins! Sharp, curving noses like the beaks of the giant condors; mouths thin, austere; long, powerful, pointed chins; the--_flesh_--of the faces white as the whitest marble; and wreathing up to them, covering all their bodies, the shimmering, curdled, misty fires of opalescence! Olaf stood rigid; my own heart leaped wildly.

What--what were these beings?
I forced myself to look again--and from their gaze streamed a current of reassurance, of good will--nay, of intense spiritual strength.