by Anthology
"Death to Lurain of Dordona!" they yelled, shaking swords and fists in imprecation. "Death and torture for the Dordonan wench!"
Lurain looked neither to right nor left. Again that strong, unwilling respect for the girl stirred in Clark Stannard.
"You are still our prisoner," he leaned forward to tell her. "They shall not take you from us."
"I do not fear them—nor you," snarled Lurain without turning. "The day comes when this Red spawn go to their doom."
At the end of the broad avenue down which they rode loomed the largest building in the city. It was an hexagonal scarlet tower, blunt and truncated, a hundred feet high, a squat, ugly structure. They dismounted in front of it, and the Red captain Dral strode to them.
"The king Thargo has been already informed of your coming and anxiously awaits you," he informed Clark smoothly.
"Lead the way," Clark said curtly. "Our prisoner goes with us." And as they started forward he muttered to his men, "Keep close together and don't make a move unless we're attacked."
They followed Dral into the building, past red-armored guards and down corridors. Dral clanked in the lead, Clark following with the girl, her dark head high, his five men rolling belligerently along and staring about with frank curiosity.
They emerged into a large, round banqueting-hall with red stone walls, lit by shafts of sunset from slit-like windows. All around it were tables, empty now except for one raised on a dais. There alone sat a man in the red helmet and armor, a great jewel blazing on his breast. Behind him hovered a wrinkled- faced, withered old man with sly eyes.
"The strangers and the captive, great king," announced Dral as he paused and bowed to the sitting man. The man stood up.
"You are welcome, strangers," Thargo told Clark. "Yes, more than welcome, when you bring as captive Lurain of Dordona."
Thargo, king of K'Lamm, was a big man. Well over six feet he towered, and his shoulders were as broad as Mike Shinn's. His shining red armor well set off that towering, great-thewed figure.
There was power in his face, not only the arrogant consciousness of utter authority, but hard power innate in the man himself. It was in the square, merciless mouth, in the flaring nostrils, strongest of all in the black, penetrating eyes behind which little devil-lights of mockery and amused contempt seemed to dance.
"Be ready for trouble," Clark muttered to his men. "It may pop right this minute."
For Dral, the Red captain, was now making a respectful report to his lord. And Thargo stiffened as he heard.
"So you claim the Black girl as your prisoner?" he said to Clark, his eyes narrowing.
Clark nodded curtly. "We do. We took her, and she is ours."
"Now why, strangers from outside, did you penetrate this land?" Thargo asked thoughtfully. "No others from outside have ever crossed the death mountains and entered. What object brought you here?"
"In the great world outside," Clark told him, "there are legends of a strange, shining lake in this land. We came in search of that lake, and once we find it, will return with some of its waters to our own land."
"The legends you heard were true, strangers," said Thargo, with changed expression. "That shining Lake of Life does exist in this land, but not here, not at K'Lamm. For many generations we of K'Lamm have been striving also to win to that lake. It may be," he added craftily, "that you and I should become allies. Dral tells me your weapons are strange and powerful. Together we would have no trouble in winning to the Lake of Life."
"Never will you win to the Lake, Red dog!" lashed Lurain's silver voice suddenly. "Even if you conquered us of Dordona, there are still—the Guardians."
"The Guardians?" echoed Thargo, then uttered a deep laugh. "Why, the Guardians are but a myth, a legend. For ages that myth has kept you of Dordona from the lake, but it shall not keep us. No!"
His nostrils were flaring with abrupt passion, his black eyes suddenly all devil. Clark seemed to glimpse in the man's wolfish face a long- repressed, eating ambition, a desire of superhuman intensity, baffled and raging. Then Thargo smiled smoothly at him.
"We shall talk of these things later, strangers. Meanwhile, you are welcome in K'Lamm. Tonight we banquet here in your honor, and until then the finest rooms in this palace are yours."
"Our prisoner goes with us," Clark said coolly.
"Your prisoner goes with you, of course," Thargo agreed smoothly. "But guard the little wildcat well, I warn you. I do not think she could escape from this palace"—a gleam of mirth crossed his eyes— "no, I do not think that, but she might do harm if not guarded.
"Dral will conduct you to your rooms," he finished courteously. "Until tonight, strangers."
Clark bowed curtly. Then, taking Lurain's tensed arm, he followed the suave captain out of the great banquet hall. His five men strode after him, and Dral led the way up a broad stone stair to an upper floor of stone-walled corridors and rooms. He conducted them into a suite of four large rooms.
Tapestries depicting combats of red and black armored soldiers hung on the walls, and lay on the floor. There were chairs and couches, and a series of great windows whose unshuttered openings looked out on the flat red roofs of K'Lamm, gleaming in the sunset. Dral bowed and left them, closing the door. The girl Lurain went over to the window and stood, a slim figure, looking silently out over K'Lamm.
"Say, what was all the powwow about?" Blacky Cain asked Clark. "This moll seemed to get the big shot's goat."
Clark told them briefly what had passed between him and Thargo.
"As far as I can see," Clark finished, "our best course is to play along with Thargo until we find out where we stand. He wants to get to the lake, that's evident—he believes that stuff about its waters conferring immortality. It's also evident that Lurain's people, the Dordonans, prevent him from reaching the lake and would prevent us also. Our best chance to reach this Lake of Life may be to throw in with Thargo."
"Why didn't you give up this girl to the Red king, then?" asked Lieutenant Morrow. "It would put us in solid with him."
"But Thargo would likely have had her killed or tortured," Clark objected. "It's plain he'd like nothing better."
"Well, what if he did?" shrugged the young ex-army officer indifferently. And Morrow's face was bitter with memory as he added, "Keeping her our own prisoner may wreck everything—it won't be the first time a woman's done it."
"Why, ye heartless scut," said Mike Shinn wrathfully, "would ye give up a spunky girl like that to be killed?"
"We're not giving her up," Clark said decisively. "I want to question her about the Lake of Life."
He advanced toward Lurain, and the Dordonan girl turned and met his gaze defiantly, with hot, stormy blue eyes.
"Lurain, just where is the Lake of Life?" Clark asked. "If you told us that, it may be we'd let you escape from here."
"Would you?" asked Lurain doubtfully, coming closer to him. Clark nodded quickly, in affirmation.
"Yes, we would. Can you tell us how to reach the lake?"
Lurain came so close that the haunting perfume of her blue-black hair was in his nostrils, her troubled eyes raised.
"I cannot tell the secrets of the sacred lake," she said slowly, worriedly. "But I can tell you—this!"
And her hand suddenly jerked out the sheath-knife at Clark's belt, and stabbed it with lightning speed at his heart.
7. Thargo's Treachery
Instinct can save itself where the momentary delay of reason would be fatal. It was not the first time in his life that Clark Stannard had seen the swift deadly flicker of steel licking toward his heart. The sight exploded his brain and body into instant action.
He threw himself staggeringly backward, and the bleak steel whizzed down through the front of his shirt, scoring his breast like a white-hot wire. Before Lurain could turn the blade and strike upward, Clark's brown hand grabbed her wrist. He twisted it, and was not gentle. There was a cold, savage anger in his brain. The knife clattered to the floor from the twisted hand. Lurain's blu
e eyes blazed out of a paper-white face, but she uttered no cry of pain or fear, hate throbbing from her.
"So you'd trick me, would you?" spat Clark harshly. "You'd kill me to keep me from reaching your sacred lake, eh?"
"Yes, I would!" Lurain's voice cracked like a silver whip, "You who would become Thargo's ally, who would help him and the other blasphemers of K'Lamm who lust for the lake—you deserve death!"
"I warned you," Lieutenant Morrow told Clark bitterly. "All women are alike—just playing you for a sucker."
"Say, the dame's got nerve!" said Blacky Cain, respect and admiration in the gangster's pale eyes.
"She sure has," grinned Link Wilson. "Reminds me of a litle Mex down in Agua Prieta who tried to knife me one night, when——"
"Hell, we can do without autobiography," rasped Clark. "Bring cords and we'll tie her hands—she's not safe unbound."
When they had finished securing the bonds around Lurain's wrists, the Dordonan girl sat and glared at them fiercely.
"Someone has to stay here and watch her while we're down at this banquet," Clark declared. "Not only because she might escape, but because I don't trust Thargo too far. Quell, will you stay?"
"I'll watch her," Ephraim Quell nodded dourly. "Don't ngger I'd care much for the goings-on down there, anyway."
Night fell quickly. From the window, K'Lamm stretched a mass of dark, flat roofs in the starlight, with windows and doors spilling red torchlight. Somber against the climbing stars bulked the looming, mighty barrier of the Mountains of Death.
Clark and his men shaved, brushed their clothes, and made what improvements they could in their appearance, by the light of the flickering torches servants had brought. Then Dral appeared, his long sword clanking on the stone floor as he entered.
"The lord Thargo awaits you at the banquet, strangers," he said, his eyes flickering toward the bound girl.
The great, round banquet hall flared brightly with ruddy torchlight when Clark Stannard and his four companions entered it after Dral. Now the tables that ran around the room were laden heavily with cooked meats and fruits and big glass flagons of black and yellow wines. At them sat more than a hundred men and women, the nobles and artistocrats of feudal, medieval K'Lamm.
The men wore the red metal-mesh tunics and their swords, even at table. The women wore chitons of red stuffs much like the garments of the women they had seen in the city, but richer, embroidered with gold and jewels. Their upper breasts and arms were bare as in the old Cretan costume. They drank and laughed with the male feasters. But they and all in the hall fell silent, staring in eager curiosity at these five swaggering strangers who first in all the history of this land had entered from outside the deadly mountains.
"Welcome to our feast, strangers," Thargo greeted in his powerful voice. "Here are seats for you, and here are wine and meats and women, for we count you as ourselves who are, we hope, to be our allies in the great quest we soon shall make."
The Red king's face was frank and open, the sincerity of his greeting warming. But, Clark wondered, was there not a suppressed gleam in his black eyes, a quirk of secret amusement?
Clark took the backless metal chair held out for him, beside Thargo himself. His four followers were distributed further along the table. On the other side of Clark sat a languorous beauty introduced to him as Yala, the sister of Thargo. Despite his inward alertness, Clark could not but be moved to admiration by the coal-black hair, smooth ivory skin and audaciously revealed rounded figure of this princess of K'Lamm. Her velvety black eyes met his curiously.
But he turned toward Thargo. He felt that the time had come to learn what he could of the mysteries surrounding him:
"You still wish us, then, to become your allies in an attempt to reach the Lake of Life?" he asked bluntly.
"Very much I wish it," Thargo avowed frankly. "You carry weapons of a power unknown here, and they will make certain our victory; though I am sure that even without them, we still could crush Dordona."
"Where is the lake?" Clark demanded directly.
"It lies beneath us," Thargo answered.
"Beneath us?"
"Aye," the Red king nodded. "Deep beneath this prisoned land, under leagues of solid rock, exists a great cavern, and in that cavern lies the shining Lake of Life."
"Then how in the world can you hope to reach it?" exploded Clark, stiffening.
"There is only one way down to that cavern of the lake," Thargo told him. "It is a pit, or shaft, whose mouth is in the city of our enemies, Dordona, near the eastern edge of this land. The river that flows through the mountains runs across this whole land, and drops into that pit.
"Long ago," Thargo continued, "our ancestors came into this land from the outside world. They climbed over the mountains, for at that time, so legend says, it was not death to tread the mountains, as it is now. They explored the land, and found the pit into which the river falls, and went down that pit into the cavern where lies the Lake of Life. And they learned that if they drank those waters they would become immortal, but they were forbidden to drink of them.
"They were forbidden, they said, by strange, unhuman beings who dwelled down in the cavern of the lake and guarded its waters of immortality. These beings, the Guardians, bade those exploring humans to return to the surface, and never again come down to drink of the waters, since that was an unholy thing. So the men returned in fear to the surface, obeying the command. And legend says that the Guardians then cast a deadly force on the mountains around this land, which still invests them, so that no more men might enter this land in future.
"The people who were already within this land founded a city around the mouth of that shaft to the underworld. They called the city Dordona and over the mouth of the pit they built a temple. They considered it blasphemy for any to think of descending the pit to the Lake of Immortality and, in their superstition, they slew any who dared to try it. For they were in great fear of the Guardians they believed dwelling below, though none but the first explorers had ever seen those beings.
"But as generations passed, age after age, rebellion grew up in the city Dordona. Many of its people said, 'Why should we die when beneath our feet lie the waters of immortality? Who are the Guardians, to forbid us the lake? Let us not allow them to monopolize the waters of immortality longer; let us go down and drink of them whether they permit it or not, so that we may become undying.'"
Thargo's fist clenched, his eyes glittered, as he continued, "Thus spake the rebellious ones in Dordona! They sought by force to enter the pit and descend to the lake. But most of the Dordonans were still swayed by superstitious fears of the mysterious Guardians. They put down the rebels by force, prevented them from entering the pit. After that, the rebels deserted Dordona and came here to the western edge of this land and founded a new city, this city of K'Lamm.
"And ever since then, we of K'Lamm have desired to go back and conquer the Dordonans and go down the pit to the Lake of Life. We had not the strength, at first. But during past generations, more and more people have deserted from Dordona to our city, coming to believe as we do that it is folly to grow old and die when immortality is in our grasp. So that now, stranger, we of K'Lamm are powerful enough at last to attack Dordona, crush the superstitious Blacks, force our way down to the shining lake, and drink its waters and achieve immortality!"
"You actually believe, then," Clark Stannard said incredulously, "that the waters of the lake would confer immortality?"
"I am sure of it!" Thargo said, his eyes flashing. "If we drink of them we shall never die* for they contain the pure essence of life itself. That fact, our exploring ancestors were sure about."
"Yet you're not afraid of meeting the legended Guardians, if you penetrate to the lake?" Clark asked curiously.
Thargo laughed contemptuously. "The Guardians do not frighten us, for we do not think they still watch down there by the lake. No man has seen them for ages, and even the few who saw them ages ago were not slain by them. I think that even if
the Guardians still exist down there, they will not be able to stop us."
Here was a frank, unfearing skeptic, Clark thought. It was odd that while Thargo was so skeptical of the dreaded Guardians, he still believed in the impossible virtues of the shining lake.
"Why," Clark asked bluntly, "do you want our help, if you have enough forces to overwhelm Dordona, as you say?"
"We want it," Thargo said frankly, "not because we need your help—easily can we overcome Dordona—but because we do not want you against us, strangers, with your strange, powerful weapons. And for reward for joining us," the Red king added, "you shall drink the waters of the Lake of Life with us. You will become immortal, strangers, as we will."
Thargo's black eyes Bashed with strange light, his fist clenched tight, his voice pregnant with emotion.
"To be immortal—think what that will mean! To stride the world undying, generation after generation, feared and worshipped by the races that continue to die! By the sun, once I have drunk those waters of undying life, I will go forth from this prisoned land, will rule——"
He stopped abruptly, glancing at Clark with narrowed eyes. Then he continued in a smooth, lower tone.
"But what is your answer, stranger, now that you know the situation? Do you join forces with us to attack Dordona?"
Clark hesitated. A strong instinct told him not to commit himself.
"I think we will join you," he said slowly, "but before I give my word on it, I must speak with my followers. If we do join you, our reward is to be as much of the shining waters as we wish to take."
"Has that Dordonan wench Lurain tried to turn you against me?" Thargo asked suspiciously. "Has she endeavored to make you an ally of her doomed people?"
"She tried to kill me, but an hour ago," Clark said tartly. "There's no danger of my becoming her ally."
Yet it seemed to him that smoldering suspicion persisted in Thargo's eyes. Then the Red king laughed and exclaimed: