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 blue 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.
