and away like torn gauze veils. It was seven o'clock when he reached the western gate, an ancient marble structure, incrusted with symbolistic figures and archaic terra-cotta medallions, and topped by a lacy, fretted lotus-bud molding.
Beyond, the city stretched like a flower of stone petals.
Oneypore!
The sacred city of Hindustan! The holy soil where the living descendants of the gods had ruled for over five thousand years—and one of them dead, on unclean, foreign soil—buried in unclean, foreign soil!
An outcast! He, the descendant of Rama, an outcast!
Oneypore! And it was a fascinating town, with crooked streets and low, white houses, cool gardens ablaze with mangoes and mellingtonia and flowering peepul-trees and, in the distance, a gigantic palace, built out of a granite hillside, and descending into the dip of the valley with an avalanche of bold masonry.
Toward it, without hesitation, Thorneycroft set his face.
He had to cross the Oneypore River, only second
