psaltery or cymbal.
And the next day, rejoicing, to Allathurion they hauled the
dragon-crocodile. And Leothric went with them, holding his battered
staff; and a tall, broad man, who was smith of Allathurion, made a
great furnace, and melted Tharagavverug away till only Sacnoth was
left, gleaming among the ashes. Then he took one of the small eyes
that had been chiselled out, and filed an edge on Sacnoth, and
gradually the steel eye wore away facet by facet, but ere it was
quite gone it had sharpened redoubtably Sacnoth. But the other eye
they set in the butt of the hilt, and it gleamed there bluely.

And that night Leothric arose in the dark and took the sword, and
went westwards to find Gaznak; and he went through the dark forest
till the dawn, and all the morning and till the afternoon. But in
the afternoon he came into the open and saw in the midst of The
Land Where No Man Goeth the fortress of Gaznak, mountainous before
him, little more than a mile away.

And Leothric saw that the land was marsh and desolate. And the
fortress went up all white out of it, with many buttresses, and was
broad below but narrowed higher up, and was full of gleaming
windows with the light upon them. And near the top of it a few white
clouds were floating, but above them some of its pinnacles
reappeared. Then Leothric advanced into the marshes, and the eye of
Tharagavverug looked out warily from the hilt of Sacnoth; for
Tharagavverug had known the marshes well, and the sword nudged
Leothric to the right or pulled him to the left away from the
dangerous places, and so brought him safely to the fortress walls.

And in the wall stood doors like precipices of steel, all studded
with boulders of iron, and above every window were terrible
gargoyles of stone; and the name of the fortress shone on the wall,
writ large in letters of brass: 'The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save
For Sacnoth.'

Then Leothric drew and revealed Sacnoth, and all the gargoyles
grinned, and the grin went flickering from face to face right up
into the cloud-abiding gables.

And when Sacnoth was revealed and all the gargoyles grinned, it was
like the moonlight emerging from a cloud to look for the first time
upon a field of blood, and passing swiftly over the wet faces of the
slain that lie together in the horrible night. Then Leothric
advanced towards a door, and it was mightier than the marble quarry,
Sacremona, from which of old men cut enormous slabs to buil