... the bridal chant of the priests; the ancient words of the Dedication to the Dark One The chant told of the forty times forty flights of onyx steps leading downward behind the great altar to the ... was dark where Ra-sed stood, and he could hear the cries of the people in the courtyard outside, and feel the trembling of the pillars, the very pillars of the Temple, and the groaning of stone ... stone in the great, shadowed arches overhead Above all, the chanting before the altar of the Dark One, rising, rising toward hysteria And then, like a knife in the darkness, the scream, and the...