Howard Robert Ervin. The Hour of the Dragon

The long tapers flickered, sending the black shadows wavering along the walls, and the velvet
tapestries rippled. Yet there was no wind in the chamber. Four men stood about the ebony table on
which lay the green sarcophagus that gleamed like carven jade. In the upraised right hand of each man a
curious black candle burned with a weird greenish light. Outside was night and a lost wind moaning
among the black trees.
Inside the chamber was tense silence, and the wavering of the shadows, while four pairs of eyes, burning
with intensity, were fixed on the long green case across which cryptic hieroglyphics writhed, as if lent life
and movement by the unsteady light. The man at the foot of the sarcophagus leaned over it and moved
his candle as if he were writing with a pen, inscribing a mystic symbol' in the air. Then he set down the
candle in its black gold stick at the foot of the case, and, mumbling some formula unintelligible to his
companions, he thrust a broad white hand into his fur-trimmed robe. When he brought it forth again it
was as if he cupped in his palm a ball of living fire.
The other three drew in their breath sharply, and the dark, powerful man who stood at the head of the
sarcophagus whispered: "The Heart of Ahriman!" The other lifted a quick hand for silence. Somewhere a
dog began howling dolefully, and a stealthy step padded outside the barred and bolted door. But none
looked aside from the mummy-case over which the man in the ermine-trimmed robe was now moving the
great flaming jewel while he muttered an incantation that was old when Atlantis sank. The glare of the
gem dazzled their eyes, so that they could not be sure of what they saw; but with a splintering crash, the
carven lid of the sarcophagus burst outward as if from some irresistible pressure applied from within, and
the four men, bending eagerly forward, saw the occupant-a huddled, withered, wizened shape, with
dried brown limbs like dead wood showing through moldering bandages.
"Bring that thing back?" muttered the small dark man who stood on the right, with a short, sardonic
laugh. "It is ready to crumble at a touch. We are fools-"