*       *       *       *       *

"I am indeed that Most Ancient One," said the Guide, "of whom you know. We have awaited you--the Ancient Ones and I. You are welcome, even
though long delayed. You have the key, and have unlocked the First
Gate. Now the Ultimate Gate is ready for your trial. If you fear, you
need not advance. You may still go back unharmed, the way you came. But
if you choose to advance----"

The pause was ominous, but the radiations continued to be friendly. Carter hesitated not a moment, for a burning curiosity drove him on. "I will advance," he radiated back, "and I accept you as my Guide." At this reply the Guide seemed to make a sign by certain motions of his
robe which may or may not have involved the lifting of an arm or some
homologous member. A second sign followed, and from his well-learned
lore Carter knew that he was at last very close to the Ultimate Gate. The light now changed to another inexplicable color, and the shapes on
the quasi-hexagonal pedestals became more clearly defined. As they sat
more erect, their outlines became more like those of men, though Carter
knew that they could not be men. Upon their cloaked heads there now
seemed to rest tall, uncertainly colored miters, strangely suggestive
of those on certain nameless figures chiselled by a forgotten sculptor
along the living cliffs of a high, forbidden mountain in Tartary; while
grasped in certain folds of their swathings were long scepters whose
carven heads bodied forth a grotesque and archaic mystery. Carter guessed what they were and whence they came, and Whom they
served; and guessed, too, the price of their service. But he was still
content, for at one mighty venture he was to learn all. Damnation, he
reflected, is but a word bandied about by those whose blindness leads
them to condemn all who can see, even with a single eye. He wondered at
the vast conceit of those who had babbled of the _malignant_ Ancient
Ones, as if They could pause from their everlasting dreams to wreak a
wrath on mankind. As well, he thought, might a mammoth pause to visit
frantic vengeance on an angleworm. Now the whole assemblage on the
vaguely hexagonal pillars was greeting him with a gesture of those
oddly carven scepters and radiating a message which he understood:

"We salute you, Most Ancient One, and you, Randolph Carter, whose
daring has made you one of us." Carter saw now that one of the pedestals was vacant, and a gesture
of the Most Ancient One told him it was reserved for him. He saw
also another pedestal, taller than the rest, and at the center of
the oddly curved line--neither semicircle nor ellipse, parabola nor
hyperbola--which they formed. This, he guessed, was the Guide's own
throne. Moving and rising in a manner hardly definable, Carter took his
seat; and as he did so he saw that the Guide had seated himself. Gradually and mistily it became apparent that the Most Ancient One
was holding something--some object clutched in the outflung folds of
his robe as if for the sight, or what answered for sight, of the
cloaked Companions. It was a large sphere, or apparent sphere, of
some obscurely iridescent metal, and as the Guide put it forward a
low, pervasive half-impression of _sound_ began to rise and fall in
intervals which seemed to be rhythmic even though they followed no
rhythm of Earth. There was a suggestion of chanting--or what human
imagination might interpret as chanting. Presently the quasi-sphere
began to grow luminous, and as it gleamed up into a cold, pulsating
light of unassignable color, Carter saw that its flickerings conformed
to the alien rhythm of the chant. Then all the mitered, scepter-bearing
Shapes on the pedestals commenced a slight, curious swaying in the same
inexplicable rhythm, while nimbuses of unclassifiable light--resembling
that of the quasi-sphere--played around their shrouded heads. The Hindoo paused in his tale and looked curiously at the tall,
coffin-shaped clock with the four hands and hieroglyphed dial, whose
crazy ticking followed no known rhythm of Earth. "You, Mr. de Marigny," he suddenly said to his learned host, "do not
need to be told the particularly alien rhythm to which those cowled
Shapes on the hexagonal pillars chanted and nodded. You are the only
one else--in America--who has had a taste of the Outer Extension. That
clock--I suppose it was sent you by the Yogi poor Harley Warren used
to talk about--the seer who said that he alone of living men had been
to Yian-Ho, the hidden legacy of eon-old Leng, and had borne certain
things away from that dreadful and forbidden city. I wonder how many of
its subtler properties you know? If my dreams and readings be correct,
it was made by those who knew much of the First Gateway. But let me go
on with my tale." *       *       *       *       *

At last, continued the Swami, the swaying and the suggestion of
chanting ceased, the lambent nimbuses around the now drooping and
motionless heads faded, while the cloaked shapes slumped curiously on
their pedestals. The quasi-sphere, however, continued to pulsate with
inexplicable light. Carter felt that the Ancient Ones were sleeping
as they had been when he first saw them, and he wondered out of what
cosmic dreams his coming had aroused them. Slowly there filtered into
his mind the truth that this strange chanting ritual had been one of
instruction, and that the Companions had been chanted by the Most
Ancient One into a new and peculiar kind of sleep in order that their
dreams might open the Ultimate Gate to which the silver key was a
passport. He knew that in the profundity of this deep sleep they were
contemplating unplumbed vastnesses of utter and absolute outsideness,
and that they were to accomplish that which his presence had demanded. The Guide did not share this sleep, but seemed still to be giving
instructions in some subtle, soundless way. Evidently he was implanting
images of those things which he wished the Companions to dream: and
Carter knew that as each of the Ancient Ones pictured the prescribed
thought, there would be born the nucleus of a manifestation visible
to his earthly eyes. When the dreams of all the Shapes had achieved a
oneness, that manifestation would occur, and everything he required
be materialized, through concentration. He had seen such things on
Earth--in India, where the combined, projected will of a circle of
adepts can make a thought take tangible substance, and in hoary
Atlaanât, of which few even dare speak. Just what the Ultimate Gate was, and how it was to be passed, Carter
could not be certain; but a feeling of tense expectancy surged over
him. He was conscious of having a kind of body, and of holding the
fateful silver key in his hand. The masses of towering stone opposite
him seemed to possess the evenness of a wall, toward the center of
which his eyes were irresistibly drawn. And then suddenly he felt the
mental currents of the Most Ancient One cease to flow forth.