Clark and his men moved nearer the pit, stood on the very edge of the abyss. He peered down into an impenetrable darkness that seemed to go down to the bowels of the earth. He could make out that the vertical sides of the pit were of rough rock, in which had been carved the steps of a narrow, spiraling stair. The head of this stair was closed by a barred gate guarded by Black warriors. And the raging cataract of waters, leaping out over the edge of the pit, tumbled down its center in a tremendous waterfall, dropping into the dark.
"Good God! this must be the way down to the cavern far below—to the Lake of Life!" exclaimed Clark, stupefiedly.
"Say, I don't hanker to go down there," said Mike Shinn, awed. "It looks to me like the doorway down to purgatory."
Lurain was coming around the edge of the pit now, bringing with her a half-dozen Dordonan men in black armor.
"My father, Stannar!" she said.
Clark turned to confront Kimor, the ruler of Dordona.
Kimor was sixty years old, at least, a tall, arrow- straight, superbly muscled man with white hair and pointed white beard, and fierce, shaggy white eyebrows over keen, watchful blue eyes.
"Strangers, you are welcome!" he told Clark. "My daughter has told me how you helped her escape K'Lamm and bring us warning of the attack which Thargo plans for three days hence. We expected no attack for weeks—there is hardly time to prepare.
"We of Dordona will be grateful for your help in the coming battle." Kimor continued. "Lurain informs me you are from outside the mountains, and bear weapons of great and strange power. You can aid us much, and any reward we can give you will be yours."
"Why, we ask but one reward," Clark said, looking puzzledly at Lurain. "It is what I told your daughter—that we be allowed to go down that stair in the pit to the Lake of Life, and bring back a flask of its waters. For that reward, we have joined you."
Kimor's fierce face turned dead-white as he heard. His eyes blazed fire of outraged, fanatical fury, and he ripped out his sword from its sheath. And from the Dordonans behind him came wrathful, raging cries as they too drew their weapons, their faces contorted.
"You ask that?" thundered Kimor to Clark. "You ask leave from us to commit the supreme sacrilege that no man may commit and live? Your very request is a sacrilege to this Temple of the Shaft! Nobles of Dordona, kill these men for their blasphemy!"
10. Down the Stair
Blacky Cain's gun leaped into his hands, and the others followed his example swiftly as the Dordonan warriors leaped forward with upraised swords, wild wrath on their faces.
"Don't shoot!" Clark yelled tensely.
For Lurain had sprung in front of the charging nobles and her fanatical father, halting them with an urgent gesture.
"Wait!" she cried. "These are strangers from outside our land—they do not know that it is blasphemy they speak. They will not ask for such a thing when they understand that it is a sacrilege."
"So this," Clark grated to the girl, "is how you keep the bargain you made with me!"
"I do not understand you, stranger," she said coldly, and turned back to Kimor. "You will forgive their ignorance, father?"
"They should be slain for such blasphemy," said Kimor fiercely. But slowly,
