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Beyond the arcane door, Baradir found a silent, starlit landscape. Sand dunes stretched as far as his altered eyes could see, pale in the moonlight. A mist wafted hither and thither, clinging to the ground, its airy contours aglow with some ancient sorcery. At first Baradir thought himself sent from one place of ethereal wonder to another, and bent his efforts to discovering which sorcerous realm the fairy of the waters had dispatched him to.
At length, when nothing more marvellous than the mists met his eye, and he had trudged some way over the starlit sands without encountering anything of note, it occurred to him that he had sought for too marvellous an explanation. He was returned into his own, familiar world; what he saw with his ensorcelled eyes was only the magic of the earth an
