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
