d to the
rim of the dome, which never even swayed beneath their impact. Revel saw
it stretch up before him like a grassy hill, and marveled at the rebels'
artistry. Shortly they were standing on the crest, and he was clutching
at Jerran's arm.

"Orbs above! Look there!"

On the horizon lay a tremendous cloud of gray-black smoke, like the
reeking smudge of a forest fire; above it rose another and more ominous
cloud, this tinged with red and of mushroom shape.

Revel was speechless, but Jerran ripped out a curse that would have
curled the hair of a squire's neck.

"The Globate Credo," he said. "You've proved it wrong in one respect,
but there's terrible proof of its truth in another." He spat. "If I
figure right, that cloud's hanging over the eastern quarter of Dolfya
Town, where none but the ruck lives; and every soul that lived there is
dead as last week's dinner."

"The Credo?" said Revel haltingly.

"Sure. _Vengeance of the gods comes swift and without warning, below the
twin clouds, with a sound of volcanoes._ Nobody ever knew what that
meant ... till now."

CHAPTER VI

The pretty daughter of the squire,
She mourned and would not eat;
The Mink he tried to tempt her
With barley bread and meat.

"O no, O no, you rebel cur,
I'll never eat nor drink,
Till father's hall I see again!
Till death has trapped the Mink!"

--Ruck's Ballad of the Mink

There were seven hundred silent men in the amphitheater of the forest,
and more came in each minute, slipping from the trees without a sound,
taking seats on the sloping grass. Miner's lanterns, the marvelous
contraptions that hung in the shafts beside the veins of coal or pockets
of diamonds, glowing with a dull penetrating radiance, had been filched
from the mines one by one over years, and now illumined the strange hall
like blue glowworms spaced around a pit.

Revel sat, uneasy, on the sward in the center, at the bottom of the
bowl; beside him were Jerran and Dawvys, the small rebel's cousin who
served in the house of Ewyo the squire. There also was the Lady Nirea,
dressed in a miner's plain short-sleeved shirt and unornamented pants,
but looking as delectable to Revel as she had in the silver gown. She
had not spoken to him since the great bang and the twin clouds, but his
mind was so full that he didn't care.

He had killed gods. This had brought his whole world down in ruins,
shaken his belief in all he