are you? What is it?"_

I murmured the words to myself as with all my power, I thought them over
and over, flinging out the thoughts like radio waves into the night.
Mysterious vibrations! In an instant, from here--everywhere in the
universe. Who knows their character? Their speed? The speed of light a
laggard perhaps beside the flash of a thought! Waves of my thoughts,
speeding through the night, with only one receiving station in all the
universe! Would Elza's brain capture them?

_"Elza dear! Where are you? What is it?"_

_"Jac! Danger! Jac! Danger!"_

It was very clear. The words rang in my head. But always only those two.
And then at last--it may have been an hour later--other words:

_"Death! The black cloud of death! You can see it coming! See it coming!
Death! To you Jac! To all of you in the city!"_

We rushed to the casement. The broad lagoon before the palace lay like a
mirror tinted red and purple. Beyond it, palms and the outlines of
houses lay dark against the star-strewn sky.

But out there, over the city, in the distance a dark patch obscured the
stars. We watched it breathless. A dark patch which soon took shape. A
cloud! A black cloud--unnatural of aspect somehow--a rolling, low-lying
black cloud. Growing larger; spreading out side-wise; sweeping toward
the city on a wind which had not reached us.

_"Jac! Jac dear! Danger! Death to all the city!"_

Elza's words were still beating in my brain. Soundless words of terror
and warning!

_"Death, Jac! Death to all the city! The black cloud of death!"_

CHAPTER XXVII

_Tarrano the Man_

"Wake up, Lady Elza."

A silence. His hand touched her white shoulder. "Wake up, Lady Elza. It
is I--Tarrano."

Elza opened her eyes, struggling to confused wakefulness. The white
walls of her sleeping room in Tarrano's palace of the City of Ice were
stained with the dim red radiance of her night light. She opened her
eyes to meet Tarrano's inscrutable face as he bent over her couch;
became conscious of his low, insistent, "Wake up, Lady Elza;" and his
fingers half caressing the filmy scarf that covered her shoulders.

Terror flooded Elza; that time she had always feared, had come. Yet she
had the presence of mind to smile, drawing away from him and sitting up,
with the fur bed-covering pulled to her chin.

"Tarrano? Why--"

He straightened, and into his expression came apology.

"I frightened you, Lady Elza? I'm sorry. I would not do that for a