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.