The Iron
Crown

Our path now lay over a ridge of dark trees and across a desolate waste of ash and sand; but few were to complete the journey.

For, using few words for an event which still racks sore my heart, the fumes of the fissures all around began to overcome all who walked in the procession, and I noticed the singing growing weaker and weaker.

Every time I turned round the company would be visibly diminished, and famished dirty grey scavengers could be seen scurrying on the paths we had trodden far below.

As day wore into evening I began to notice fat, nay, bloated scavengers loping along beside my contingent and, looking round, saw that most of my men were gone.

Dead they lay.

I wept and slew those beasts, leaving their oily corpses to fester under the now starry sky.

But from the bier of Wollis there issued a piercing cry.

The men who bore him started back in surprise and I rushed over to where his rigid form rolled to rest.

Though his face was taut with distress I understood at once what he intended, and called for the playing cards I had watched my men using from the balcony so long ago.

Taking the last of the guttering lanterns, I put flames to them, and they began to curl: they formed strange shapes, not unlike the letters of some unknown script, though I was not able to make anything of them.

I puzzled.

Though mistrusting him, I saw that I would have to have recourse to Denis, whose knowledge in such matters surpassed that of any other.

I called a messenger, and before I sent him to Denis he informed me that Wollis, before he had died, had uttered words which meant nothing to the messenger but which he thought I might understand: `themptun postoto'.

Indeed I knew what it meant, but hardly dared let myself think what that would signify in circumstances like these.