The room at the top of the spire was open and airy, ringed entirely with arched windows and brass latticework. The space under the domed roof was swathed in opulence, and at the center of it, Somnhas lounged, indolent, reclining on a velvet couch.

He turned towards them, facing them with engraved bronze that capped what remained of his maimed head, and Sumira wondered if the eyeless sight the Agarthans posessed was still intact in him, in spite of all he had done to sever himself from his origins.

He rose to greet them, and it struck Enoch as immensely strange, this alien creature putting on the manners of a gracious human host. And from nearby, a voice spoke, quiet and almost slurred by the sleeping speaker's languid tongue.

"Whatever brings you here with such urgency that you do not even wash away the dust of the road before entering my presence, assuredly it can abide while you partake of my hospitality." A fair-skinned youth lay dreaming among the cushions with a hookah pipe in his slack fingers.

"Please, sit."

Somnhas gestured towards an empty couch with a sweep of his arm. Clearly these were his words, coming from the sleeper's lips, for he no longer had jaws or tongue that could utter them.