Then I went to one who had been a priest of Anubis in the little temple of Athlanta. He was the only true dreamer in that temple, where the Light should have shone, but he had blunted his will and had lost his sleep-memory: for he had become a sooted mirror that no longer reflected the light. He was too lazy to strive to recapture his lost power, yet he was too proud to admit of his failure. So he recounted that which was not true, and which was but a weaving of his earth thoughts. And when the time came that the Prophecy of Doom was heard by all true priests, those who came to his temple received it not, and with their false priest perished beneath the water.
For more than two thousand years he has dwelt alone in a temple whose courts echo to his solitary footsteps. Here there are statues of gods whose faces he knows not. He prays to them, although he knows that their ears are deaf and their hearts are of stone, for he can reach no others. And he prays to them that there may be one still left in this land of desolation who may come to him; for he thinks that all the world perished because of his sin.
Often he stands at the gate of the temple, looking out upon an endless plain. Sometimes he sees a loved child running towards him and he thinks that his prayers are answered; but as he touches it, it is as though his hands were white-hot, for the child shrivels before him, and he holds but a figurine of charred wood. Sometimes he sees one walking toward him in the robe of a true priest; but as he clasps his hand in greeting, he finds that he holds the whitened bones of the long drowned. Sometimes he sees his mother walking towards him with infinite compassion on her face, but when he touches her, he finds waterweeds dripping between his fingers. Sometimes upon the barren plain he sees in the distance flowers growing; but as he runs toward them, they turn to a reef of coral that cuts his feet.
When I came to him, he stood before me not daring to stretch out his hand, lest I should turn to ashes at his touch. I put my hands upon his shoulders, and his drowned face was lit with a radiance. And I said to him, “Your time has come. You will return to Earth to train your memory, and it will take you five lives to gain that perfection which once you should have had. But your great loneliness is ended. In five months you will be born from your mother’s womb and feel the gentle comfort of her arms. For your companions you will have three brothers. And when you are seven, a seer will come to your house and he will say that in your twelfth year you must go to the temple to be trained. And the time shall come when you shall bring wisdom to those on Earth; and you shall express your knowledge in such words that you shall be known as ‘the priest of the silver tongue’.”