Deadly had been the slaughter of the fair-haired, reaping the harvest of hatred they had been sowing so long.

Not without a pang of regret did I think of the beautiful, gaily malicious elfin women destroyed--evil though they may have been.
The ancient city of Lara was a charnel.

Of all the rulers not twoscore had escaped, and these into regions of peril which to describe as sanctuary would be mockery.

Nor had the _ladala_ fared so well.

Of all the men and women, for women as well as men had taken their part in the swift war, not more than a tenth remained alive.
And the dancing motes of light in the silver air were thick, thick--they whispered.
They told us of the Shining One rushing through the Veil, cometlike, its hosts streaming behind it, raging with it, in ranks that seemed interminable! Of the massacre of the priests and priestesses in the Cyclopean temple; of the flashing forth of the summoning lights by unseen hands--followed by the tearing of the rainbow curtain, by colossal shatterings of the radiant cliffs; the vanishing behind their debris of all trace of entrance to the haunted place wherein the hordes of the Shining One had slaved--the sealing of the lair! Then, when the tempest of hate had ended in seething Lara, how, thrilled with victory, armed with the weapons of those they had slain, they had lifted the Shadow, passed through the Portal, met and slaughtered the fleeing remnants of Yolara's men--only to find the tempest stilled here, too.
But of Marakinoff they had seen nothing! Had the Russian escaped, I wondered, or was he lying out there among the dead?
But now the _ladala_ were calling upon Lakla to come with them, to govern them.
"I don't want to, Larry darlin'," she told him.