He led the way, flashing his beam ahead. As they advanced in the
passage, they heard a dull roar that became louder and louder. Clark
knew it was the sound of the cataract falling into the sacred shaft,
and his excitement increased. Lurain, pressing on behind him, was
shivering.
They reached the end of the passage. They crouched, petrified by the
stupefying view ahead. The opening in which they crouched was twenty
feet below the floor of the temple, in the rock side of the stupendous
pit. Right below and outside this opening lay the narrow steps of the
spiraling stone stair.
Out there in the pit, not ten yards from them, there gleamed in
the faint light from above the falling waters of the thundering
cataract, the river from far away that tumbled headlong down into this
unguessable abyss. Its roar seemed to shatter their ears, and its
flying spray was cold on their white faces.
Clark gripped his nerves and crawled out onto the stone steps. The
steps were not four feet wide, grown with the slimy green moss of ages,
drenched and dripping with spray. Looking up, he could just glimpse the
moonlit interior of the great temple, could just see the heads of the
armored guards on duty at the head of the stair.
Looking down, he could see nothing--nothing but an unplumbed abyss of
darkness into which the waters tumbled, and round whose side dropped
the coils of the spiral stair. Clark's nerves shrank, appalled for
the moment from the thought of venturing down into that enigmatic
gulf, along that slippery, ancient way. Then his jaw set in renewed
resolution. Below lay what he had come so far to seek.
"Lurain, we go downward now," he told the girl, raising his voice over
the roar. "Would you rather wait here?"
"No, Stannar--I go with you," she cried. "My promise was to lead you to
the lake itself."
Cautiously, every nerve strung taut, Clark stepped downward, feeling
with his foot for the next step. He dared not use the flashlight here,
so near the surface. The wet, mossy stone was slippery under his feet,
threatening to send him slipping and sliding off the unrailed stair.
Sick dizziness swept him as he visualized himself plunging downward,
racing those tumbling waters in a nightmare fall.
Now he and Lurain had followed the spiral stair twice around the
falling cataract, were deeper below the surface. They were in almost
complete darkness. Spray stung their cheeks, gusty air-currents howled
up the great shaft, the thunder of the falling waters beside them
was brain-numbing. Still down and down they crept, feeling for each
slippery step, groping down through somber, eternal night toward the
mystic Lake of Life and its legended warders.
_11. The Temptation_
They were in utter darkness now, a stygian obscurity in which the
ear-splitting roar of the falling waters and the shriek of howling
winds were more nerve-cracking. Looking up, pressed desperately against
the wet rock side of the pit, Clark Stannard could see no glimmer of
light at the mouth of the pit, in the temple far above. The flying
spray and mist obscured the light up there.
He thought it safe, therefore, to turn on his flashlight. The bright
little beam, quivering out into the solid blackness, seemed to
accentuate rather than dispel the gloom. Its ray showed the wet, mossy
stone stair on whose narrow steps they stood. It showed the edge of the
falling cataract, close by, and it disclosed Lurain, her naked white
limbs and tight, black metal-mesh tunic wet with spray, her face pale
with age-old terror.
Clark pressed her hand in encouragement, and then started again picking
his way carefully downward. Round and round the side of the pit they
followed the dropping spiral of the stair, circling the stupendous
waterfall again and again as they descended. The green, slimy moss was
treacherously thick on the stone steps. Clark realized, with a sudden
quaking of the spirit, that the unbroken growth of that mass showed
that in truth no one had descended this stair for ages. He and Lurain
were the first for perhaps countless centuries to venture down this
dizzy path.
Deeper and deeper they went. Clark had tried at first to keep count of
the number of spirals, and thus roughly to estimate their depth beneath
the surface. But as time went on, he lost all track of his count. The
brain-numbing roar of the waters, the utter and extreme tension under
which they moved, the knowledge that one slip meant hideous death,
banished all from his mind except the primal necessity of safety. He
could only vaguely remember, in that dazed fixedness of attention, just
why he and Lurain were descending this awful path. It seemed that he
and the girl had been going down into this roaring, shrieking darkness
for an endless time.
As they halted to rest, clinging to the rough rock wall, Clark wondered
dully how far below the surface they now were. It must be thousands
of feet, he guessed. God, how deep into the bowels of earth did this
hell-shaft penetrate? Then he and Lurain started downward again,
endlessly circling the giddy, dropping spiral.
"Look, Stannar!" cried Lurain suddenly, her shout thin over the roar
of the cataract. She was pointing downward into the abyss. "There is
light!"
"No, I don't--_yes_, I do see it!" Clark exclaimed, peering down with
every nerve and muscle suddenly taut. He snapped out his flashlight,
and then the light below came stronger to his eyes.
It was a dim, misty white luminescence that seemed to well up feebly
from far below, touching the spray and fog around the falling cataract
into a faint glow.
"By heaven, we must be nearing the lake!" Clark Stannard cried, his
consuming purpose returning to him in sudden excitement. "The Lake of
Life is supposed to be one of shining, glowing waters."
"Yes, we near the sacred lake and near our doom," answered Lurain, her
chiseled white face tragic in terror.
Clark encouraged her, and moved on down the winding stair with
accelerated speed. Now a feverish excitement held him as he neared
the thing he had come so far to find, through such deadly dangers.
Behind him, the Dordonan girl followed bravely but hopelessly, like one
walking to her execution.
The glow beneath grew steadily stronger. The thunderous sound of the
cataract seemed changing in tone, from a dull, deafening roar into
a crashing splash and hammering. And as they moved farther down the
stair, Clark Stannard beheld, by the feeble glow beneath, the cause of
that change in sound.
Far below, he glimpsed the pit's _bottom_. It was a jagged black rock
floor, upon which the waters that had tumbled clear down the depth of
the awful shaft fell with a crashing splash and explosion of white
foam-smoke. Those foaming, broken waters flowed away, through an
opening at the side of the pit's bottom.
Clark and Lurain, in fifteen minutes, stood at the bottom of the pit,
on the last step of the stair. They were drenched with mist and spray
here, and the unceasing, explosive crashing of the falling waters was
stunning. Presently by the faint glow here, Clark made out the opening
in the side of the pit. It was an arched aperture twelve or fifteen
feet in height, and beyond it lay a glimmering natural rock tunnel
along whose floor the foaming waters flowed away.
There was a narrow footpath in the tunnel, a rock strip crowded between
the raging waters and the wall. The two moved along this, in single
file because of the narrowness of the way. Now Clark perceived that the
faint glow of light came from ahead, a misty luminescence that seeped
back along this tunnel to the giant shaft.
The tunnel ran no more than a thousand feet, then debouched abruptly
into a vast, glowing-lit space. Clark and Lurain hurried forward, and
stepped out into that half-glimpsed space. Then the two stood, frozen
with awe, staring wildly.
"The Lake of Life!" Clark Stannard breathed, in a tense, hoarse whisper.
"The sacred lake that I sin in beholding!" gasped Lurain, her eyes
distended with awe and religious terror.
* * * * *
The scene was stupefying. They looked out into a vast, cavernous space,
at whose eastern wall they stood. It was impossible to see more than
a mile into it, because of the haze of shining mists that filled it.
The sheer black rock wall behind them rose into that concealing, misty
glow, and marched away on either side into it, in a vast curve. Clark
guessed that the cavern was dozens, scores of miles, in length and
breadth. It flashed over him that this vast space must lie deep under
all the land inside the ring of the Mountains of Death.
But it was the stupendous cavern's source of light that held their
eyes. From where they stood, a black rock floor stretched a thousand
feet outward. From there on, extended a vast lake whose waters glowed
like pure liquid light, a shining, shimmering sheet that stretched far
away and was lost in the misty haze of the cavern's farther reaches.
The legended Lake of Light!
The foaming waters that rushed out of the water-tunnel from which Clark
and Lurain had just emerged, flowed across the rock floor and into the
lake. As soon as the foaming waters entered that shimmering sea, they
seemed instantly to become glowing like it. The Lake of Light was fed
by these waters from above, ordinary waters that took on that weird
glow the moment they joined the shining lake.
After a few moments Clark felt his frozen awe replaced by a wild urge
of exultation. By heaven, he had succeeded! He had fought his way
through countless dangers to this shining lake that only legend had
recorded. His spirit soared, his virile brown face blazed with triumph.
"Come on, Lurain!" he cried, plucking the girl's bare arm.
"Yes, Stannar." Her voice was quiet, but the unconquerable terror
was still in her eyes. The Dordonan girl, he realized as he started
forward, was bravely ready for the death she thought inevitable.
He had no time to encourage her. He hastened forward over the rough,
uneven rock floor. But with the first steps that they took, they saw
something ahead that momentarily froze them in their tracks.
It was a statue, a great figure of pale stone that stood upon a
pedestal on the shore of the Lake of Life, facing the mouth of the
tunnel. It was so placed that anyone who emerged from the tunnel would
inevitably be confronted by it.
"God, it--it's not human," muttered Clark, staring.
"It is an image of the Guardians!" cried Lurain, blanched to deathly
white. "A sign that they are watching!"
The stone figure in no sense was modeled after a human being. The body
that had been sculptured was oddly man-like, in that it was bipedal and
carried its brain-case erect. But it was more like a strange, erect
seal-creature than anything else, a rotund, soft-looking body with
thick arms and limbs ending in flippers instead of hands or feet.
The head was round and bulbous, without any ears apparent. The face
was rounded--and alien. Two large circular eyes, with below them flat
nostril-openings and a straight, wide mouth.
But the expression of that stone face! Immense and alien intellectual
power was stamped on it, power and knowledge beyond anything human.
But dominating these was--weariness. A sick, dull weariness as of
superhuman fatigue and frustration, a deep and utter despair.
The weariness and frustration on that alien, carved face were so naked
in their awful agony that they crushed down Clark's spirit to behold.
This statue, he felt dimly, was symbolic of some superhuman tragedy,
some great disaster of long ago. One arm of the figure was raised in
a warning gesture, flipper-palm outward. The sick, weary eyes in the
stone face seemed trying to convey a dark, horrible message. Clark
felt awed fear creeping like a subtle poison through him, and with
difficulty he tore his gaze away from the unearthly figure's face.
"It is an image of the Guardians," Lurain repeated in a fearful
whisper. "Stannar, look--its hand is held up, barring the way to the
Lake of Life. It is a token of their ancient commandment to humanity,
to abstain from the lake."
"Don't get afraid because of that statue, Lurain," Clark told her,
forcing her to turn her awed eyes away from the stone figure. "If the
Guardians looked like this statue, then it must have been millions of
years ago that they lived--no creatures such as those have existed on
earth within all known history. They may have put up the statue here
long ago, but they must all be gone, themselves."
"No!" Lurain cried in desperate terror. "The Guardians die not,
Stannar. Somewhere, here, they are still living. From somewhere here,
they watch us even now."
Her fear-widened eyes gazed out over the shimmering lake, into the haze
of shining mists that hid the farther reaches of the vast cavern from
view, as though she expected to see weird creatures like the stone
figure emerging at any moment.
But Clark, his first awe and amazement at sight of the statue now
passing, hastened eagerly past it toward the lake. She followed slowly,
and as he reached the edge of the radiant, glowing waters, she looked
down with distended gaze.
* * * * *
Clark knelt by the edge of the shimmering lake, drawing out his leaden
flask. He bent eagerly over the shining waters. What made them glow
like this? Did they carry radio-active matter in suspension?
Little curls and wisps of shining vapor rose from the surface of the
glowing waters. And as he inhaled that vapor-laden air, Clark Stannard
felt strange, singing life flowing through his veins, a wine-like fire
that banished all fatigue. The vapor-laden air made him feel suddenly
strong, young, vibrant with energy and life, all pain and fatigue
dropping from him like a cloak.
He stared transfixed, as this breath of life sang inside him. There
fell slowly upon him an awful doubt, a terrible thought that seemed to
let him stare of a sudden into ghastly gulfs of alien knowledge, into
terrific, undreamed secrets of the universe.
"This lake--God, can the legend be _true_?" he said thickly, his eyes
wild in the misty glow. "These waters, giving immortality if you drink
them----"
"It is true!" cried Lurain. "These waters that our blaspheming eyes
behold have in them the pure essence of life."
"But then if I drank them----" Clark's mind reeled at the tremendous
impact of that thought.
He had forgotten Asa Brand, forgotten the whole purpose of his quest
up to now, forgotten everything in the terrific implications of that
possibility. He, first of men for ages, had penetrated to these
hidden, shining waters, and if they could confer undying life, he had
immortality in his grasp.
_Immortality!_ To live on and on without fear of death, once the secret
essence of life in these waters impregnated his frame. To stride the
world god-like, watching the ephemeral generations come and go; to soar
to dizzy heights of knowledge and power; to feel the fire of undying
life shoot through his veins, even as the dim breath of it now was
entering his nostrils with the shining vapors he was breathing; to
drink--to drink, and never to die!
Clark Stannard felt vast new vistas of hitherto undreamed possibilities
unscrolling in his rioting mind. He, immortal! Walking the earth,
gathering wisdom and power, for age after age, while other men were
born and lived and died. Why, he would _rule_ those ephemeral peoples
by sheer weight of knowledge, would rule the earth itself.
Glowing with light beckoned the radiant waters, their shimmering
luminosity a brilliant promise. They held his eyes hypnotically. They
were waiting for him, the legended waters of immortality, that he alone
had won to through the ages. The greatest desire of every man who ever
lived lay now at his feet, his for the taking.
Slowly his hand descended toward the shining waters with the leaden
flask. His whole body tense, his eyes fixed and wild with the
superhuman urge that drove him, Clark dipped the flask, filled it with
the glowing waters. And as slowly, he raised it toward his face.
"Stannar, drink not!" Lurain's voice, gasping in ghastly horror as she
saw his white face, saw him raising the flask with quivering purpose.
She tugged weakly at his arm.
"Drink not, Stannar! I love you--I know you love me--do not commit this
supreme sin! Immortality is not for us----"
Clark thrust her back from him. His eyes were burning, his voice was
suddenly a harsh, unhuman croak.
"Never to die," he was muttering thickly. "To live on and on and on----"
His hand trembling with the strain of tremendous purpose, he lifted the
leaden flask toward his lips.
_12. The Attack_
As Clark tilted back his face, raising the flask of glowing waters
toward his lips, he heard Lurain's heart-broken cry, as from a great
distance. The mouth of the flask was but an inch from his lips, when
his arm suddenly froze rigid.
For his upturned gaze had suddenly rested upon the face of the alien
statue that towered over them, here at the shore. At that angle, it was
as though the weary, sick, dull eyes of the unhuman sculptured figure
were looking right down into his own. And again, but a hundred times
stronger, Clark felt that awful sense of utter tragedy and weariness
and dull despair that the statue conveyed.
He remained rigid, staring wildly up into the stone face. And it seemed
almost that the bitter frustration and futility and tiredness in the
carven features were those of a living face. It almost seemed to Clark
that the stone lips moved dully, that they whispered to him.
"Drink not of the waters! There are depths of suffering in the universe
of which you do not dream, and you open doors into black abysses if you
dare drink the shining waters of immortality."
God, _was_ that stone figure whispering to him? As though in a dream,
Clark stared up at the weary, tragic face.
"Be content to live and die, and seek no undying life. Night is good
after day, and death is good after life. Who would live in an endless
day, without ever attaining the rest of night?"
Lurain's pleading cry came to him from far away as he stood frozen,
staring shakenly up at the alien countenance of stone.
"Stannar, for my sake, do not drink!"
_Immortality!_ sang the wine-like, racing desire in his blood. You will
never, never die!
"Horror, horror undreamed," the carven, tragic face seemed to murmur.
With a sudden wild, clumsy gesture, Clark Stannard flung the leaden
flask far away, its shining contents spilling as it flew. He reeled
around, grasped Lurain's sobbing figure blindly.
"Lurain--my God, I nearly did it! I nearly drank!" he gasped. "That
statue--something in its eyes seemed to speak to me--warn me."
For a few moments he held the sobbing girl, stroking her hair, soothing
her. And when he looked up, at the glowing, beckoning waters, all that
wild thirst that had possessed him was dead and gone. He knew, now, in
his soul he was sure, that those waters _would_ bring immortality--but
the wild desire for undying life had burned to ashes in him.
For he knew now that that message he had seemed to read in the tragic,
unhuman face of the stone figure was deepest truth; that immortality
was not a thing to be sought after, but to be shunned. But suddenly
Clark stiffened as he stared at the shining waters.
_What if Thargo reached this lake?_ What if the hordes of K'Lamm,
behind that powerful, evil king, overcame the Dordonans and forced
their way down here to the waters of immortality? Until now, the
possibility had not greatly disturbed Clark, for he had had no belief
in the virtues of the fabled lake. But now--he knew now that if Thargo
and his human wolves reached the lake and drank its waters, they
_would_ become immortal.
Clark's mind shuddered back from appalling vistas of potential disaster
in that possibility. He was remembering swiftly the thing Thargo had
hinted when he had been the Red king's guest in K'Lamm: "When we drink
of the lake, and go forth immortal to the outer world----"
That was Thargo's plan, and the Red king would do it. There rushed
over Clark a nightmare vision of the wolf-like horde of K'Lamm, become
immortal, going forth into the Twentieth Century world, to dominate it
by virtue of their unnatural immortality, living in pomp and power for
ages, while passing generations of men labored for their glory.
"No, by heaven!" The exclamation was torn from Clark's lips by
desperate resolution. His face was dark and drawn. "Thargo and his men
are not going to reach this lake!"
"Thargo?" Lurain looked up, startled. "I had almost forgotten the Red
king. But in three days comes his attack on Dordona, his attempt to
reach the lake. Stannar, we can stop him?"
"We've got to," declared Clark, his narrowed gaze sweeping over the
radiant waters into the distant haze. "If we don't, it means a race of
immortal tyrants saddled on the world."
"But if the Guardians exist," faltered Lurain, though doubt was in her
eyes now.
"The Guardians, if it was they who put up this warning statue, must
have been gone for ages," Clark told her. "We must rely on our own
resistance, Lurain, to keep Thargo's forces out of here."
The doubt was deeper in the girl's eyes, mixed with a new, great fear.
She whispered, "I have never believed that Thargo could drink of the
lake, even if he killed all in Dordona, because I believed that the
Guardians existed down here and would stop him. But--they did not stop
you when you were about to drink of the waters. If you are right,
if the Guardians do not exist, then I fear Thargo will win to these
waters! We of Dordona will be far outnumbered by his forces when he
comes."
"We'll hold him back--we've got to," Clark declared fiercely. "Come,
Lurain, we must return quickly to the surface. We will have only two
days to organize all the resistance we can."
His hand on the girl's bare arm, the wonder of radiant lake and vast,
haze-hidden cavern forgotten now, Clark ran with her toward the tunnel.
Soon he and the Dordonan girl were ascending in the pit, climbing the
spiral stair in darkness, the cataract thundering beside them.
At long last, they neared the surface, could discern the glimmer of
moonlight up there in the temple. It was still night, he knew. When
they reached the aperture in the wall of the pit, they slipped into the
dark little passage that had been hollowed by the plotters of long ago.
The roar of waters receded behind them as they followed it. Reaching
its end, Clark Stannard drew himself up into the dark interior of the
crumbling old building there, and pulled Lurain up after him.
"Now to see your father, Kimor," he said tautly. "We've got to work
fast, organizing all Dordona's resistance----"
"You shall see Kimor--_now_!" rang a fierce voice beside them in the
darkness.
"My father's voice!" cried Lurain.
* * * * *
Men sprang out of the dark on Clark and the girl, seized them and held
them pinioned by a dozen hands while they bound the two, hand and foot.
Then they were dragged out into the street.
Torches flared out there now, and by the red, quivering light, Clark
saw a dozen Dordonan warriors in black armor. And among them was Kimor,
king of Dordona. The old ruler's fierce hawk-face was awful in its
rage, his white beard quivering, as he surveyed the two.
"The curse of the Guardians on you!" he shrilled. "You have done the
forbidden, unholy thing, have entered the sacred shaft. You, stranger,
and you, girl who is no longer my daughter, shall die as penalty for
the black sin and for the shame it has brought on Dordona."
His thin hand quivered in rage as he told the girl, "And your sin is
greatest of the two of you, for it was you who led this man into the
sacred shaft by that forgotten passage dug by the plotters generations
ago. Yes, when you were missing from my palace tonight, I bethought me
of that ancient passage, and that you knew of it, and so I came with
guards to see if you had dared enter it. And you did, blasphemers!"
"Wait!" cried Clark desperately. "Listen to me, Kimor! We entered the
pit, it is true, and descended to the Lake of Life, but we did not
drink of it. We committed no sacrilege."
Kimor struck him across the face. "Lies, lies! You did not descend to
the holy lake, for if you had done so, you would have been slain by the
Guardians. But you entered the sacred shaft, and for that sacrilege
alone you die.
"Take them to the temple!" he cried to the warriors. "Summon the people
that they may see these two slain on the temple steps as is the custom
with those who commit sacrilege against the ancient commandment of the
Guardians."
"There are no Guardians!" Clark shouted desperately. "And you will need
the help of myself and my men, to keep Thargo and the hordes of K'Lamm
from the lake when they come."
"To the temple!" shouted Kimor fiercely, unheeding.
Clark and Lurain, still bound hand and foot, were dragged through
the streets by the Dordonan warriors, toward the near-by dome of the
temple. Now torches were flaring along many streets and excited crowds
of the Black people converged hastily, as the news spread, toward the
great domed edifice.
They crowded fiercely forward, as they saw Clark and the girl tossed
helplessly down on the broad steps of the big building. Their faces
were contorted with superstitious rage in the flickering torchlight,
and from them came cries of hate and vengeance-lust.
"Death to the blasphemers!"
"I got you into this," said Clark despairingly, trying vainly to snap
his bonds. "Lurain, if I could save you----"
"Stannar, I am not afraid to die, with you!" cried Lurain.
Kimor pointed down at the two, fanatical fervor in every line of his
face. "Kill the blasphemers, now!" he ordered.
_Crack! Crack!_ A volley of sharp reports put a period to the din of
the raging mob, and the Dordonan warriors who had advanced with swords
on the two helpless captives, turned quickly. The crowd was splitting
in panic, and four men in stained, torn solaro suits and leggings,
bareheaded and grim of face, were forging through it.
Blacky Cain was in the lead, his harsh, predatory face menacing,
his automatic raised. The lank Texan, Link Wilson, had both his big
forty-fives in his hand. Lieutenant Morrow's lean face was hard as he
raised his service pistol, and Mike Shinn's battered face was flaming.
Blacky's rasping voice cut across the stunned silence to Clark.
"We heard the fuss and saw them taking you for a ride, chief," rasped
the gangster. "So we're muscling in."
He and the other three were still advancing, their eyes deadly, and
fingers crooked on their pistol-triggers.
"They seek to rescue the condemned ones!" cried Kimor fiercely. "Seize
them--slay them with their blaspheming friends!"
"Father, wait----" appealed Lurain wildly, but the fanatical old man's
shout interrupted her.
"Seize them--men of Dordona!"
The Dordonan warriors, recovering from their surprize, sprang between
the two bound captives and the advancing quartet. Blacky Cain raised
his automatic swiftly.
"Let 'em have it, fellows!" he rasped.
"No, Blacky--wait!" cried Clark. "Don't----"
Suddenly the whole tableau froze, the crowding mob and warriors in the
torchlit streets around the temple, the four adventurers advancing and
the two captives, all struck motionless. From all around the city of
Dordona had come a sudden wild, distant roar--a roar of thousands of
savage voices, over which rose shrill, terrified screams. Then from the
dark edge of the city came racing a warrior on horseback, bleeding and
dying from a half-dozen fresh sword-wounds in throat and breast. He
reeled and fell from his steed, almost at the feet of old Kimor.
"They attack!" choked the dying Dordonan. "The hordes of K'Lamm have
surprized the walls, and Thargo leads them into the city now!"
_13. Thargo Drinks_
A great, horror-stricken cry shuddered up from thousands of throats.
And as though echoing it, there came louder the fierce roar of voices
from all around the city, as the forces of K'Lamm poured ravening into
Dordona.
Clark Stannard, frozen like all the others in a moment of paralyzing
shock, realized with sinking heart what had happened. Thargo had
guessed that Clark and Lurain would bring warning to Dordona of the Red
attack scheduled for three days hence. So Thargo had not waited until
then, but had gathered his forces and swept down on the Black city in
the night, and now had suddenly forced his way inside.
Down the nighted streets of Dordona toward the temple came Thargo's
cavalry now, wild riders of K'Lamm whose red armor and upraised swords
glinted in the red torchlight. They thundered right into the thronged
square around the temple, and hewing, stabbing, yelling like demons,
forced their way through the seething Blacks toward the temple steps.
"To the defense!" shrilled old Kimor over the wild din. "While one of
us lives, the Red spawn must not reach the sacred shaft they seek to
enter!"
"Dordona! Dordona!" answered a wild chorus of shouts as the Black
warriors tore out their swords and sprang to meet the Red riders.
But more of Thargo's fierce cavalry was charging into the plaza of
the temple from other directions. In the red light of the scattered
torches, the great space around the temple had become a mad confusion
of battling men and horses, gleaming swords and panicky fugitives.
Clark and Lurain lay upon the temple steps, still bound and helpless.
Clark strained wildly to break his bonds.
"Blacky! Mike! This way!" he yelled desperately through the uproar of
combat.
He glimpsed his four followers, out there a hundred yards away on the
battle-choked plaza, trying to force their way through the crazy fight
to him. Blacky Cain's eyes were blazing as he shot a slow way through
the conflict, bringing down Red after Red.
But a new troop of the fierce horsemen of K'Lamm had crashed into the
plaza from the west. At their head Clark glimpsed Dral, that suave,
cunning-eyed captain of Thargo's, and at the same moment Dral glimpsed
Clark and the Dordonan girl lying helpless.
Dral shouted to his men, and they spurred their horses through a gap in
the battle. The Red captain's sword was raised, and he was bending low
as he and his men charged, his intention being only too obviously that
of slaying the two bound captives.
"Stannar, they come to kill us!" cried Lurain, as she too saw the
deadly, oncoming troop.
"Blacky!" yelled Clark, and saw even as he shouted that Blacky Cain and
the others were still fifty yards away, trying to force through the mad
mêlée of combatants.
Then Clark saw split-second action. Link Wilson, the lank, tall Texan
who had been fighting behind Blacky, had glimpsed the desperate peril
of Clark and Lurain. The ex-cowboy acted with blurring speed. He made a
sudden fierce spring at one of the Red horsemen near by, avoiding the
warrior's descending sword and pulling him from his mount. Then with a
single incomparably skilful motion, the Texan vaulted into the saddle,
turned the maddened horse, and urged it across the crowded palace in a
wild, crashing gallop toward Dral's riders.
Dral and his charging horsemen were but a few hundred feet from Clark
and Lurain, when Link Wilson galloped past Clark, heading right into
the oncoming troop. Clark glimpsed the Texan's tanned, set face and
blazing eyes, and heard his trailing cry as he passed.
"_Adios_, partner!"
And as he shouted that, as he charged the oncoming riders, Link was
dropping his reins and jerking out both his big forty-fives.
The guns boomed and Dral and three other of his charging men threw up
wild hands toward the sky and fell. The charge of that Red troop halted
momentarily, the horsemen milling madly around Link Wilson and striking
furiously at him with their swords.
And the Texan sat his plunging steed in the middle of them with the
great guns in his hands belching fire and death into the frantic circle
of his attackers, laughing hard, his reckless eyes blazing.
Blacky Cain and Mike Shinn and Lieutenant Morrow now had managed to
force through the raging conflict to Clark and Lurain, and Morrow was
rapidly untying them.
"Link, look out!" yelled Blacky madly. "Behind you!"
Through the battle toward that crazy fight of the Texan against a
score, was forging a solid, irresistible mass of K'Lamm cavalry. Thargo
rode at their head, the Red king's powerful face afire, his great sword
raised. He spurred his mount behind the shooting Texan.
"Look out for Thargo--behind you!" screamed Blacky again, the gangster
shooting as he yelled that vain warning.
"God, Thargo's got him!" cried Mike Shinn wildly.
For Thargo's blade had stabbed into Link Wilson's back, and the
fighting Texan toppled and fell.
Blacky Cain, raging madly, started toward the Red king. "I'll get
Thargo--by God, I will!"
* * * * *
Clark Stannard's heart was swollen with wild anger, as he witnessed the
death of the Texan who had sacrificed himself in that reckless attack
to save his leader and Lurain. Yet Clark held the raging gangster back.
"No, Blacky--you haven't a chance! Into the temple--that's our only
chance now, for the Reds have won the battle!"
It was the truth. Thargo's overpowering forces had by their surprize
attack swept away almost the last of the Dordonan resistance, in this
terrific battle around the temple. Only a few knots of the Black
warriors were left struggling in the midst of the forces from K'Lamm,
and these were going down one by one.
Thargo was already shouting to his red-armored followers, leading them
toward the domed temple. There was no possibility of escape through the
hundreds of his soldiers in the plaza--the only possible refuge for
Clark and his men was the temple itself, on whose steps they were. He
raced with them toward the great doors.
"My father Kimor--I saw him slain!" Lurain was crying. She stooped and
snatched up a fallen sword, wildcat hate blazing in her face as she
exclaimed, "We die soon, but I will die happy if I can kill Thargo."
Clark and Lieutenant Morrow also snatched up swords as they ran into
the building. For Clark knew their ammunition was perilously near its
end. They heard the wolf-like shouting of the horde from K'Lamm,
following Thargo toward the temple.
They pushed shut the great doors, and slammed down the bar that
fell across them on the inside. An instant later, the Red soldiers
crashed against the outside of the doors, and they could hear Thargo's
bull-voice urging them to break them down.
"They've got us trapped," Lieutenant Morrow said coolly. "They hold the
whole city, they're all around this temple, and it's only a question of
minutes until they break in."
"When they do break in," rasped Blacky Cain, "I'm getting Thargo. He
killed Link, and he's mine."
The gangster's predatory face was tigerish in expression. He and the
ex-cowboy had, strangely, been closer to each other than any other of
the oddly assorted group of adventurers. Smoldering hate and desire for
vengeance burned now in his eyes.
Clark Stannard turned his back to the great doors against which the Red
hordes were banging. His eyes tensely searched the vast interior of the
temple, glimmeringly illuminated by shafts of moonlight from the slits
in the high dome.
There at the center of the huge room yawned the round black abyss of
the sacred shaft, the pit descending to the cavern far below. And into
that pit with an uninterrupted, thunderous roar, there still fell the
cataract of tumbling waters from the river that entered the western
wall of the temple. The barred gate which lay at the head of the spiral
stair down into the pit was not guarded now by Dordonan warriors--the
guards there had run out to join the battle at the first alarm.
"They'll be in here in a minute!" cried Morrow, as the bronze doors
bulged ominously inward from the battering outside.
"Men, we'll go down the stair to the bottom, and try to hold them
there," Clark said swiftly. "Down there we'll have a far better chance.
And though it looks as though there's no hope for escape, we'll at
least sell our lives as dearly as possible."
"Okay by me," cried Mike Shinn. "They ain't counted ten over us yet."
"Come on!" Clark cried, grabbing Lurain's arm and hurrying toward the
pit.
The temple doors were now bulging far inward, the bar that held them
slowly bending to the breaking-point. Clark swung aside the barred gate
at the top of the spiral stair. Mike Shinn paused to tear a great metal
bar off the gate, exerting sudden, tremendous strength.
"Shells all gone," grunted the red-headed prizefighter, tossing away
his useless automatic.
"Mine too," said Lieutenant Morrow. He had in his hand the sword he had
snatched up outside.
Clark thrust Lurain down the first steps of the stair, and Morrow and
Mike followed. But Blacky Cain was missing, and Clark turned quickly to
perceive that the gangster had not followed the rest of them across the
huge room to the pit.
Blacky was still standing right inside the great doors, coldly watching
them as they bulged inward from the hammering assault outside. The
gangster had his heavy automatic in his hand, and from somewhere in his
pockets had fished a last crumpled cigarette. It drooped from between
his lips, smoke curling from it, as he faced the door.
"Blacky, come on!" cried Clark, shouting over the dull roar of the
cataract. "You've no chance there--that mob will overwhelm you in a
minute! On the stair we can hold them."
"I'm staying right here," rasped Blacky without turning. "I've got one
last clip in my rod, and I'm putting the heat on Thargo before I get
mine."
Then he turned a little and said harshly, to Clark and Shinn and
Morrow, "So long, pals. This has been as good a mob as I ever traveled
with."
* * * * *
Clark leaped up from the stair, intent on running to the gangster and
dragging him to the pit with him by force. But at that moment the bar
broke, the temple doors crashed open.
In through the doors poured a flood of Red warriors, a torrent of
raging swords. Thargo was in the forefront, shouting with bull-voice,
"On--we are close to the Lake of Life! In minutes now we drink of
immortality!"
Then the inbursting warriors of K'Lamm glimpsed Blacky Cain right in
front of them, facing them with feet wide apart, cigarette drooping
from his contemptuous lips, gun raised in his hand.
Thargo, swift alarm and understanding on _his_ face as he saw the
leveled weapon, threw himself aside. The automatic broke into flaming
life at the same moment. One bullet grazed past Thargo's side, the
others drove into the Red warriors as they charged. A half-dozen of
those warriors toppled with lead slugs in their heads.
Clark saw Blacky Cain, with a harsh laugh, fling the empty gun right
into the faces of the others as they overwhelmed him with a torrent
of stabbing swords. And then they were coming on over the gangster's
fallen body, Thargo leaping back into the lead, the Red king's face
contorted from pain of his wound.
"On, men of K'Lamm!" he roared. "There are but these few now standing
between you and the waters of undying life!"
Clark had but three shells left in his gun, and he was grimly resolved
to save two of them for Lurain and himself, rather than to let
themselves be captured by Thargo and tortured.
He snapped the other shot at the Red king, as he leaped back onto the
stair. But in the wild rush of charging Reds, Thargo had moved too
swiftly and the bullet killed the man behind him.
"Down the stair!" cried Clark to Lurain and Shinn and Morrow. "There's
a place at the bottom where it will be easier to hold them back, and
where there is more light to fight by."
They started down the stair in desperate haste. Incredible scene for
that nightmare retreat! The three men and the slim, armored girl,
retreating down the spiral around and around the side of the pit, while
at the center of the great shaft there thundered downward the foaming,
awful cataract.
After them came the vanguard of the Red horde, hundreds of eager
warriors pressing down the dark stair with upraised swords, wildly
athirst for the promised waters of immortality; Thargo leading them,
his bull-voice roaring over the cataract, to urge them on.
Recklessly, Clark and Lurain and their two companions ran down the
high-flung, dizzy stairway, until at last they were penetrating the
feeble glow in the lower part of the shaft. And then, gasping for
breath, they reached the bottom of the pit, where the falling cataract
broke upon the rock and flowed away through the water-tunnel toward the
Lake of Life.
Clark stopped with his companions in the narrow path that ran beside
the racing river in the water-tunnel.
"Here's where we can hold them longest," he panted. "They can only come
at us a few at a time."
"Then we die here!" cried Lurain, clinging hard to Clark, her face
flaming. "Stannar, I am not afraid!"
Clark kissed her, setting his lips against hers with bruising force.
His heart was leaden. "I know you're not afraid, Lurain, of death. But
we've failed in everything--we can't keep that horde from the Lake of
Life now. God, the horror it will mean for the outside world when those
human wolves go forth, immortal!"
Lieutenant Morrow was gazing at Clark and the clinging girl with a
strange, bitter look in his memory-haunted eyes.
"It is something," he said, "to know that the woman you love is glad to
die with you. I envy you, Stannard."
"Well, it looks like this is my final bout, but it sure ought to be a
swell one!" grinned Mike Shinn, flourishing his great metal bar.
"Here they come!" Clark cried suddenly.
Down the stair into the bottom of the pit were pouring the vanguard
of the Red warriors, Thargo's great form in the lead. They saw the
water-tunnel, and the narrow path.
"This way!" Thargo bawled. "This passage must lead to the Lake of
Immortality!"
Along the path they came, not glimpsing for a moment Clark and Morrow
and Shinn drawn up across it. Then the swords of Clark and the army
officer smote like lightning brands, and Mike Shinn's whirling bar
crashed helmets and skulls like egg-shells.
For a moment the warriors of K'Lamm recoiled from that terrific and
unexpected resistance. Then Thargo, face crimson with rage, shouted and
they advanced again, eyes gleaming wolfishly in the glowing light.
"Come on, ye scuts!" roared Mike Shinn, swinging his huge bar like a
reed. "We're waitin' for ye!"
Clark Stannard struck and struck like a madman with his sword as the
torrent of attackers poured down on them again. The narrowness of the
path between the tunnel wall and the raging river made the fight a
bloody, choked confusion.
Clark felt steel ripping into his shoulder and thigh, was aware that he
was bleeding. Beside him Lieutenant Morrow, his lean face glistening,
his eyes terrible, was slashing and stabbing in saber-fashion. Mike
Shinn was a man gone mad, his battered face wild and scarlet, his eyes
icy flames as his huge arm swung the giant bar. Its sweeping blows
crushed down warrior after warrior into writhing, broken things.
"Come on, there's plenty more for ye!" Shinn's raging voice was
bellowing.
"Morrow, look out!" screamed Clark, lunging wildly.
Morrow's foot had slipped in blood, and as the lieutenant staggered,
a Red warrior stabbed up from beneath at his heart. The young ex-army
officer fell without a sound.
The next moment, Clark's sword sliced the throat of his killer. But
another length of steel tore into Clark's leg below the knee. He reeled
faint now from loss of blood, would have fallen as he stumbled had not
Lurain fiercely held him, striking with her own sword in wildcat fury.
* * * * *
Thargo, keeping cannily a little back from the forefront of the raging
fight, was urging his men forward, shouting promises of the Lake of
Life that lay now almost within their grasp. And with immortality
dangling before them, the men of K'Lamm pushed forward irresistibly,
forcing Clark and Mike and Lurain back and back along the water-tunnel,
back until they were at the end of the tunnel, with behind them the
vast cavern of gleaming haze, the glowing, shimmering sea of the lake.
And at sight of those radiant waters for which their race had thirsted
for generations, the men of K'Lamm came on with wild-beast fury.
Clark stood with the crazily shouting Shinn, keeping Lurain behind him,
and fought like a staggering madman. Clark knew in his dazed mind that
it was all over, that nothing now could keep Thargo's horde from the
lake, but he was wildly determined to kill and kill while life remained
in him.
Then a flashing sword-blade grazed down across Clark's forehead in a
stunning blow. Blood ran into his eyes, and he felt himself swaying
backward, collapsing strengthlessly upon the black rock floor of the
cavern, just beyond the tunnel mouth. He felt Lurain bending over him,
frantically seeking to revive him.
And Mike Shinn held the path!
Alone, dripping with blood from a dozen wounds, a crimsoned, terrible
figure roaring in defiance, the ex-prizefighter stood in the end of
the tunnel, whirling that giant metal mace whose end was bright with
new blood. Upon him pressed the horde of K'Lamm, and for the moment,
ravening as they were at sight of the shining lake, they could not pass
him.
Then Thargo, pushing forward in the attacking throng, whirled his sword
around and cast it javelin-wise. The keen blade tore into Shinn's
throat. For a moment, even the horde of attackers was motionless, as
the great redhead swayed and staggered. His voice was a choked, bloody
murmur.
"I guess--I guess that's--the bell----"
He toppled in a dead heap. With wild, triumphant cries, Thargo and his
red-armored horde pushed past his body, across the black rock shore
toward the radiant, beckoning Lake of Life.
They paid no heed at this moment, in their mad lust for the glowing
waters, to Clark lying half senseless on the rock with Lurain bending
over him. They pushed unheedingly past the forbidding stone statue
of the strange, seal-like figure, with its upraised arm and tragic,
despairing face. They flung themselves down on the shore of the lake,
and bent their heads, hundreds of them, drinking the radiant waters.
"They drink!" cried Lurain in a sob that only half penetrated Clark's
dim brain. "Stannar, they become immortal!"
Thargo and his men, straightening now from their quaffing of the
waters, were beginning to change. Their bodies were beginning
to _glow_. Clark Stannard's dimmed, half-conscious eyes saw the
incredible, ghastly miracle: the bodies of Thargo and his horde,
glowing now with shimmering light like the lake itself, radiant with
weird luminosity.
Thargo's glowing mouth opened and from the weirdly changed king of
K'Lamm came a great, triumphant cry.
"Immortal! Now we are immortal!"
_14. The Guardians_
As Thargo's mad, exultant cry was echoed by a thunderous shout from the
glowing horde that had now drunk of the lake, Clark Stannard reeled
half blindly to his feet. A blood-smeared, terrible figure, he raised
his pistol from his belt. Unnoticed by the triumphant, yelling horde in
this wild moment, he aimed at Thargo's breast.
In Clark's crazed mind was room for just one thought--to kill Thargo.
He had in the pistol the two bullets that he had saved for Lurain and
himself. Now, swaying drunkenly, he pulled the trigger and sent the two
leaden slugs crashing into Thargo's breast.
The sharp double crack of the gun was followed by a momentary tense
silence. The eyes of all the shining horde turned on their king.
Thargo was looking unbelievingly down at his own glowing breast. Out of
a big hole over his heart was flowing a trickle of blood as radiant as
the waters of the lake.
_Then Thargo laughed!_ He laughed loudly, wildly, in supreme, soaring
mirth. He drew out the sword that he had sheathed a few moments before.
And still laughing loudly, he strode over the jagged rock toward Clark
and Lurain. A glowing, weird figure--a man with two bullets through his
heart who walked toward them laughing!
[Illustration: "A glowing weird figure--a man with two bullets through
his heart."]
"You fool!" Thargo's great voice mocked Clark, his glowing face supreme
in unshakable sense of power. "Do you think that your weapons can ever
kill me _now_?"
"Gods!" gasped Lurain. "Now that he has drunk of the lake, he will
never die--and he cannot even be killed!"
_Thargo and his men could not be killed!_ The awful knowledge struck
through the dazed mind of Clark Stannard.
He saw it now, in terrible clarity. The pure essence of life in the
shining waters, once drunk by any man, imbued every atom of his body
with a flame of life that nothing could extinguish. No matter if his
vital organs were shattered, no matter if he were hacked into tiny
pieces, each of those remnants of him would remain living, would retain
a portion of his consciousness.
Thargo and his glowing, evil followers could not be killed--and would
never die. They would remain living as long as the earth endured.
Nothing could prevent it. Nothing could end the strange new flame of
life that shone from every fiber of their bodies.
"For you and this wench of Dordona--death now!" cried Thargo, his sword
raised toward the frozen pair. "And then we who are immortal go forth
from here, out over the mountains to world conquest."
"World conquest!" howled the horde from K'Lamm in great chorus, from
hundreds of glowing throats. "We cannot be killed now and the world is
ours for the taking!"
Thargo swung his sword up, poised it for the downward sweep, his
radiant face hideous with hate. Clark blindly thrust Lurain behind him,
before the sword could fall.
The sword did not fall. From somewhere in the howling, immortal horde
had suddenly come a wild shriek, a thrilling, terrible cry that spun
the gaze of all of them, even that of Thargo, sharply around. The one
who had cried out was pointing out into the shimmering sea of the lake,
out into the shining mists that veiled its farther reaches.
Something was coming out of those gleaming mists. Something vast and
dark, a high, stupendous bulk, was emerging with majestic slowness
from the shrouding haze, moving over the surface of the glowing waters
toward the shore where they stood.
It bulked bigger, nearer, as they stared rigidly. It was a dark mass
thousands of feet in width, hundreds in height, that floated on the
surface of the shining lake, and glided silently over it. Clark
Stannard's dimmed gaze perceived vague outlines of _buildings_ in that
floating, advancing mass.
Then as it emerged completely from the shrouding mists, a great sigh
went up from hundreds of throats, a sigh of horror and stupefaction.
Thargo and the men of K'Lamm, a crowd of motionless, glowing statues,
stared with wild emotion on their shining features.
It was a floating city that was advancing out of the mists. It was
built upon a huge, square plate of black metal that floated like cork
upon the radiant waters. The plate, and the city it supported, were a
half-mile square. The buildings that rose from this floating foundation
were black, cubical, roofless metal ones, severely angular of outline.
And standing in a solemn, silent throng at the near edge of the
advancing city, were a thousand or more weird figures--figures,
creatures, who glowed with the same immortal, radiant life as now did
Thargo and his horde. But these glowing creatures, not men----
Clark heard Lurain cry out chokingly as she discerned the nature
of those glowing inhabitants of the floating city. They were
creatures exactly like the stone statue that towered here on the
shore--seal-like, amphibian-looking beings, with rotund, erect bodies
and bulbous heads and flipper-limbs.
"The Guardians!" Lurain was crying hoarsely. "Stannar, the Guardians
come!"
"Too late," muttered Clark thickly. "They can't kill Thargo and this
horde now--no one can. Too late!"
But the floating city came on, until its edge grated against the black
rock shore. And as Thargo and his men remained rooted, paralyzed as
though by unheard command, the glowing Guardians solemnly, slowly,
trooped ashore.
In silent, weird procession they came, he who seemed their leader
advancing to where Thargo stood frozen near Clark and Lurain,
the others following, two bearing between them a white, box-like
instrument. Weird, incredible scene from nightmare--the vast cavern of
gleaming haze, the shimmering lake upon which floated the unearthly
city, the unhuman, glowing creatures trooping from it and confronting
the glowing horde of frozen, paralyzed men.
The leader of the Guardians stopped, facing the king of K'Lamm. And now
Clark's eyes saw clearly the faces of these creatures. Like the face of
the stone statue they were, in features and in expression. The low,
bulbous forehead, the great, circular eyes, the flat nostril-openings
and straight wide mouth, were the same.
And that expression of immense and alien intellectual power, of
knowledge and capacities beyond anything human, was on these glowing
faces. And dominating them, as in the statue, that sick, dull weariness
of superhuman fatigue and frustration, that deep and utter despair.
Yes, the agony of awful tragedy that looked now out of the eyes of
these beings was crushed, creeping like a cold poison through Clark
Stannard's reeling mind. One read in these glowing orbs, haunting,
horrible memories of superhuman aspiration and tragedy and despair.
"The--the Guardians!" Thargo choked hoarsely, his glowing face hideous
in its naked terror.
* * * * *
The leader of the unhuman creatures spoke, in a heavy, solemn whisper,
like the hollow voice of the speaking dead.
"Aye, the Guardians, whom you disbelieved in and scorned, you who
wished to become immortal," the creature said slowly.
"You sought for immortality--and it is yours!" continued the solemn
voice of the Guardian leader. "Aye, we could have killed you from afar
before ever you drank of the lake. But because of your evil, we let you
drink, so that you might know a doom more terrible than death, a doom
that is ours also.
"Yes, for we too sinned and drank!" Strong, strong was the throbbing
of tragedy in the Guardian leader's hollow voice. "Ages ago, when our
amphibian race ruled the earth and when man did not yet exist, we
found this place where a giant meteor from far away had crashed into
the earth, hollowing out this great space for itself, flinging up the
mountains around it and the rock that fell back over it, bringing to
earth the alien, radiant element that kindles life, that is the spark,
the essence, of life.
"We too forced our way down here, carving the stair in the pit that the
falling waters had eroded. And we found the Lake of Life, the shining
waters that contained in solution that alien, radiant element that had
started life upon earth. We drank of the waters, as you have done, felt
the essence of inextinguishable life flood through our bodies as it now
floods through yours. Yes, we committed that sin.
"For greatest of sins it is! To live for ever is the most terrible of
fates--to experience every possible emotion, every possible event,
until the soul sickens within from the unvarying monotony of ages.
_That_ is why, when we realized the horror of what we had done, we
determined that no others should ever do the hideous thing we had done,
no others should ever drink of the Lake of Life. That is why, long ago,
we gave our command to the men above, not to drink of the lake."
The Guardian leader raised a glowing arm, and his flipper-like hand
pointed in bitter accusation at the paralyzed Thargo.
"You scoffed at our ancient commandment, you forced your way down here
and drank, and you and your followers now are drunken with immortality.
And your sin was greater even than ours, for we quaffed the cup of
undying life long ago only because we hoped to reap greater knowledge
from our immortality. You have drunk, not to gain great knowledge from
undying life, but to gain great power over the outside world. So is
your sin the greater.
"And so," rolled the Guardian's toneless whisper, "we shall close the
Lake of Life now to the world for ever, lest any others should force
their way down here as you have done, and drink as you have drunk.
And the thing that we do now brings doom upon you and upon ourselves
also. But it is a doom that we tired ones welcome, for though it is not
death, it is the closest to death to which we immortals can aspire."
Now the glowing Guardian leader turned his tragic, haunted eyes toward
Clark and Lurain.
Thargo and all his horde remained frozen, as the creature spoke to the
bloody, swaying figure of Clark, and the girl.
"You two alone are guiltless," the Guardian was whispering. "You did
not drink of the lake when you reached it, before, for from afar we
were watching and were ready to slay you if you started to drink. And
you have fought, you and your companions, to keep these evil ones from
reaching the lake.
"Therefore we give you life. Hasten both of you up to the upper world,
and flee swiftly toward the mountains around this land. We have removed
the deadly force with which we invested the mountains long ago, and
unless you reach them quickly, you will perish when we do the thing
that we prepare now to do."
The Guardian extended a shining arm, pointing solemnly toward the
tunnel leading to the shaft.
"Go--and quickly!"
Clark Stannard, hardly able to stand, reeled with Lurain past the
frozen form of Thargo, past the silent, glowing Guardians and the
paralyzed, glowing horde from K'Lamm, toward the tunnel.
He and the girl glanced back as they entered it, shaken with awe. They
saw all the radiant forms there, of men and Guardians, standing utterly
motionless, in a terrible, unbroken silence. But two of the Guardians
were bending over the white, box-like instrument.
Clark staggered through the tunnel, the sobbing girl's arm supporting
him. Then they were on the stair, in the deafening thunder of the
falling cataract, struggling upward. He slipped and fell upon the
steps, and Lurain had to drag him erect.
"Hurry, Stannar--we _must_ reach the surface! Something terrible is
going to happen!"
"Go--you go on, Lurain," he gasped, as he stumbled again. But she clung
fiercely to him.
"No! We escape or perish together!"
It was a wild, nightmare climb in a dream to Clark, the struggle up the
stair. A crazy, unreal ascent, with the thundering cataract bellowing
mockery at his attempts to hasten, with the Dordonan girl's arms half
supporting, half dragging him.
Then light and cool air hit his face, and he discovered they were
climbing out of the pit, into the wrecked temple. It was deserted save
for strewn bodies. They stumbled through its doors into the street
outside. The dawn was breaking over conquered Dordona.
* * * * *
No man or woman moved in the black city's streets! The Black people had
perished to the last one, lay dead around the places they had tried to
defend, slain by Thargo's horde. And Thargo and his warriors were all
down there, in the cavern of the lake.
Lurain with frantic haste caught two of the riderless horses that were
stamping, snorting, and trotting nervously about, whinnying in strange
panic. She helped Clark climb onto one, then leaped into the saddle of
the other. They galloped down the street toward the gate of the city,
raced out of it onto the grassy plain.
"To the mountains!" Lurain cried. "Ride hard, Stannar!"
The panicky horses bolted like mad across the plain, toward the steep,
dark rampart of the Mountains of Death that rose close behind conquered
Dordona. The animals' legs seemed to fly, and to Clark's dazed mind it
was a vague, rocket-like rush through space.
They were within a few hundred feet of the first slopes of the
mountains, when from deep in the earth below came a long, grinding,
wrenching sound as of riven worlds. Lurain shouted, and the horses
plunged with insane speed toward the slope.
They dashed up onto the rocky slope of the mountains. Clark, vaguely
expecting the blue flash of death as they climbed onto the rock,
remembered now what the Guardian leader had said about withdrawing the
fatal force from the mountains.
The tremendous, muttering roar from deep in the earth was growing
louder. The mountains themselves were quivering now, and Lurain slipped
from her rearing horse, held the bridle of Clark's. They turned, stared
with blood freezing, back out over the plain.
The whole fifty-mile circle of land within the mountains was heaving
and rumpling like a sea in storm, as the grinding roll beneath grew
louder. The city Dordona rocked like a ship. Then huge cracks appeared
in the plain, rifts and splits that were widening----
"The land sinks!" Lurain cried wildly.
All the country inside the ring of the mountains was subsiding with
a prolonged and awful roar. Dordona vanished, shattered amid falling
masses of rock. And far away they glimpsed the scarlet towers of K'Lamm
plunging and falling also, in the world-shaking cataclysm.
Then vast clouds of dust rose up that hid all from their view. The
roar died away, the mountains ceased quivering. And when the dust began
to drift away, Clark and Lurain looked, appalled.
"God!" muttered Clark thickly. "The whole land--gone for ever!"
"The Guardians kept their promise!" cried Lurain. "_This_ was the
way in which they closed the Lake of Life to the world for ever--and
brought doom to Thargo and his horde, and to themselves. They used
forces that caused all the land over the great cavern of the lake to
collapse inward on it!"
For inside the Mountains of Death now there lay only a tremendous
depression, a raw new crater of broken rock, thousands of feet deeper
than the former level of the land. Thousands of feet of shattered rock
buried all that had been in the cavern beneath.
"The Lake of Life--buried for ever!" Lurain was crying. "And the
Guardians, and the horde of Thargo, crushed under all that stone!"
"Yes," muttered Clark, his whole body trembling as he visualized
the greatest horror of that awful doom. "Thargo and his men and the
Guardians, crushed and imprisoned for ever beneath the rock--but still
immortal, still _living_."
_15. Epilog_
The Belgian colonial officer in charge of that little trading-post on
the Ubangi River rose from the chair on the bungalow veranda and stared
with unbelieving eyes at the two people who had just emerged from the
green gloom of the jungle. They were walking doubtfully toward him.
One was a hard-bodied young man in a tattered, stained solaro suit, his
black head bare, his brown face gaunt from hardship. The other was a
girl--an astonishing-looking girl with a torrent of blue-black hair
and challenging blue eyes, her legs and arms naked, her only garment a
tight short tunic of black metal-mesh.
"_Mon Dieu!_" muttered the officer, staring at them, his jaw dropping.
"I am delirious--I am dreaming----"
Then his eyes flashed with excitement. "I recognize you now,
_m'sieu_--from the newspaper pictures! The river boat brought the
papers but yesterday. You are the Monsieur Stannard who led a crazy
expedition into the Kiridu country!"
"I am," Clark Stannard admitted, stopping with his arm around the
wondering-eyed girl. "And I'm the only one of the expedition left."
"But it was all in the story, _m'sieu_!" cried the Belgian, utterly
excited. "An American millionaire, one Asa Brand, had you undertake
a search for the Lake of Life which the natives talk about, so the
story said. You got through the French authorities but it was thought
you were killed by the tribes in the Kiridu. And when that report
reached America, this Monsieur Brand died soon after, of a broken heart
they say, because he thought all chance of getting the waters of the
legended lake was gone."
"So Asa Brand is dead?" Clark's face was strange for a moment. "And
the search he sent me on, then, indirectly brought about the death he
feared so much."
"Yes, it is so," cried the officer, "but the newspaper said that before
he died, in remorse for having sent you as he thought to your death, he
bequeathed to your surviving family a million dollars."
Clark Stannard drew a long breath. That old shadow of fear for his
helpless family was lifted from him, at last.
"Did you find the lake, _m'sieu_?" asked the Belgian eagerly. "Of
course, the waters of immortality are just a native fable, but did you
discover anything unusual in there? There were rumors of an earthquake
or something that caused the natives of the Kiridu to flee in panic."
"No," Clark said shortly. "My companions were killed by natives, and
I found no trace of the legended lake. As you say, it was all only a
native fable."
"But this girl?" persisted the other, staring at Lurain's strange
costume. "Where--how----"
"This is my wife," Clark told him briefly. "She is a white girl I
found back in the interior and brought out with me." He added, before
the eager Belgian could ask any more questions, "When will the next
down-river boat be here? And can you relay a cable message for me?"
A week later, as a small liner pulled out from the port of Boma
on the Belgian Congo coast, Clark Stannard stood with Lurain--a
different-looking Lurain in her modern dress--by the rail. They looked
back at the low green African coast, sinking back down behind the
horizon.
Lurain's bright blue eyes winked tears. "I am alone now, Stannar. My
people, my city, my land--gone, lost for ever."
"You'll never be alone," he told her, his arm drawing her closer. "Not
while I'm living."
"But Dordona," she said. "I seem to see it now, there beneath the
rock--broken and shattered----"
Clark, too, was gazing intently toward the receding shoreline, as
though he too could see far inland to the strange mountain-ringed land
that was no more. But it was not the perished city that he was seeing,
but his five followers who lay buried there.
Ruined, hunted men, disgraced and hard-bitten and lawless--but loyal,
staunch and unfearing. They lay there where they had fallen fighting,
forgotten by the world. But Clark Stannard's hand went up in a vague
gesture, that was half salute and half farewell.
"Good-bye, fellows," he whispered. And then he whispered the words that
Mike Shinn once had spoken of another. "You were good guys. You were
_great_ guys."