Before Drayton could reply the circle of dancers stopped short in their tracks. Each ungainly figure made a strange, wild gesture as of wrath or despair. Then they separated, scattered, and went dancing wildly away across the grass.
"Hss-ss-ss!"
It was a long-drawn, sibilant sound, and it seemed to come from a little pile of rocks close by. In its black shadow they saw two sparklike eyes gleam redly.
"Hss-ss-ss! Touch not the dancers-go not near them-speak not to them! Strange things be abroad and stranger things be done in the white moonlight of Ulithia! Hss-ss-ss! Go not near!"
"And who and what may you be?" demanded Trenmore, bending down; but the sparklike eyes had vanished. An instant later they reappeared, gleaming dimly through a white cobweb between two tall tufts of grass.
"Hss-ss-ss!" Again that snakelike hissing. "Beware! You have escaped the everlasting dance-beware the Weaver and her song!"
"But who-what are you?" demanded Trenmore again rather wildly.
The red sparks flashed and faded from behind the silver web.
Only a dim voice trailed back to them:
"I am the Voice of Warning in a land of Illusion-beware!"
Drayton, somewhat recovered from his own queer experience, moved as if to follow. Again Trenmore checked him.
"We'd best not traffic with that thing either," he recommended gruffly. "We've no place in this world we've got into-no place at all! And the very best we can do is to keep our own company till we find a way out of it."
"What was it the thing said?" queried Drayton as he fell into step again beside the other two. "Ulithia? That sounds some way familiar-"
Trenmore shook his head. "Not to me. I've traveled many a land, and read not a few books, old and new; but nowhere have I heard that name before."
"Nor I," said Viola.
Drayton was silent a moment, searching his memory. Then his face fell. "I recall the association now," he observed discontentedly. "It's no help. There were some letters-the first letters of that name-carved on the ruins back there. I read them, while the ruins were still ruins."
For a while they walked on in silence. With the breaking of that one ring of dancing forms the plain seemed gradually to have cleared, so that they were again alone with the moonlight and each other. Alone until, long before they saw the White Weaver, they heard her singing.
That was a wondrous, murmurous, liquid song of hers, like shallow summer brooks and rustling fields. They were not surprised to come upon her at last, seated in the moon-frosted grass, tossing a weaver's shuttle between her outstretched hands. They could see neither loom nor thread nor web, however, save a thousand silver cobwebs on the grass. All the plain was agleam with them.
This is the song she was singing, or as much of it as any of them could afterward recalclass="underline"
"The web lies broad in the weaving room.
(Fly, little shuttle fly!)
The air is loud with the clashing loom.
(Fly, little shuttle fly!)"
There was a brief pause in the melody, then:
"Year on year have I woven here.
Green earth, white earth, and autumn sere;
Sitting singing where the earth-props mold;
Weave I, singing, where the world grows old.
Time's a traitor, but the loom is leal-
Time's a liar, but the web is real!
Hear my song and behold my web!
(Fly, little shuttle-!)"
"But, madam, 'tis no web you have there," broke in Trenmore. "'Tis naught but a little shuttle and no thread to it at all!"
At that the song ceased, and the woman raised her face. It was beautiful as the moon's self, though her hair was silver and her face without a trace of color. Her clear, pale eyes seemed to look through and far beyond them.
"You are strangers," she said in a voice that might have come from very far away, clear and sweet as a silver bell. "Yet your lives, too, are in my web. Aye! They are mine-bound up fast in my web that you see not. From here on go forward-go deeper! Heed not the mockings of the dancing Shadow People. Heed not the voice of mine enemy, who would keep you forever bound in the shallows of Ulithia. Go forward-go deeper-go forward!"
With that she ceased speaking, and, taking up her song where she had left it, she made the empty shuttle fly like a living thing from hand to hand.
Drayton eyed his companions doubtfully. "If the lady would make her advice a little clearer we might try to follow it. We have to go on somewhere, you know, Terry."
But Viola shook her head, staring at the Weaver with hostile, questioning glance. "Have you so soon forgotten?" she said. "'Beware the Weaver and her song!'"
At that the Weaver again ceased singing. Her thin lips were curled in a smile, but her eyes were like pale blue ice.
"Aye," she murmured, "beware of the Weaver-the White Weaver of the Years-beware! But your feet are set in her web. The door opens before you. There is no way out but on-and what is Ulithia, phantom borderland of life, to such as you? Go forward-go deeper-go forward!"
Trenmore took one step toward her, with what intent he himself scarcely knew. But as he took it Drayton laughed with a touch of weariness.
"You have frightened the lady away, Terry."
It was true. As Trenmore had stepped toward the "White Weaver" that cold-eyed lady had vanished and taken her song and her shuttle with her. As the three again proceeded Viola waved her hand in a wide gesture, indicating the plain they traversed.
"Did either of you notice," she said, "that there were so many of these white spider webs about-before we saw that woman?"
Her brother and Drayton merely stared stupidly, heavy-eyed.
"Before we met the White Weaver," murmured the girl dreamily, "there was only a web here and there, woven between the grass stems. Now it is like-like walking through a silver sea. And the moon. What moon of earth was ever like this of Ulithia?"
"If it is a moon," said Trenmore with no great interest. "She's taking an uncommon long time for her rising."
Blank as a silver shield, the moon, or what they had believed a moon, still rested at the edge of the plain, its lower part bisected by the horizon. More like an enormous archway than a moon it seemed-a sort of celestial door, perhaps, in the edge of the sky.
They neared and neared, walking across a silver sea of web through which the invisible flowers sent up their perpetually increasing incense, almost too sweet now for pleasure. More and more like an arch the moon appeared-an immense, light-filled archway, of the nearly circular Moorish type. About it they began to perceive a certain dim outline of dark substance, behind which the moon itself was just a depth and a blinding expanse of light. Almost unconsciously they hastened their steps. At last, heads swimming with the fragrance of the plain, they had actually reached the splendid thing.
High, high above them curved the perfect arch of stone, black as unpolished ebony and set in what seemed a solid wall of similar rock stretching away to darkness on either hand. Through the opening they could not see, for it was filled with a brilliant mist of pure white light.
"Look!" said Drayton, leaning dizzily against the black stone to which he pointed. "Here on the architrave. There are silver characters-inlaid-aren't they? But they move and writhe like white flame-"
Closing his eyes against the glare, he wished that a great wind might arise-a great, clean wind that would sweep away cobwebs and flowers together.
"Go forward, go deeper, go forward!" murmured a sweet, clear voice. To Drayton it seemed to be Viola's, though with a distant sound, like a far-off silver bell. "Your feet are in the web!" cried the voice. "In the Web of the Weaver of Years. And why linger in the shallows of Ulithia? Go forward-go deeper!"
"Why linger?" echoed Drayton softly.
His feet were in the shallows of a wide, white sea that was carrying him outward-onward.