--a slave."

"A slave to whom?" asked Godwin, staring at her.

"To the Lord of all the Mountains," she answered, with a smile
that was sweet yet very sad; and without another word spurred on
her horse.

"What does she mean," asked Godwin of Wulf, when she was out of
hearing, "seeing that if she speaks truth, for our sakes, in
warning us against him, Masouda is breaking her fealty to this
lord?"

"I do not know, brother, and I do not seek to know. All her talk
may be a part of a plot to blind us, or it may not. Let well
alone and trust in fortune, say I."

"A good counsel," answered Godwin, and they rode forward in
silence.

They crossed the plain, and towards evening came to the wall of
the outer city, halting in front of its great gateway. Here, as
at the first castle, a band of solemn-looking mounted men came
out to meet them, and, having spoken a few words with Masouda,
led them over the drawbridge that spanned the first rock-cut
moat, and through triple gates of iron into the city. Then they
passed up a street very steep and narrow, from the roofs and
windows of the houses on either side of which hundreds of
people--many of whom seemed to be engaged at their evening
prayer--watched them go by. At the head of this street they
reached another fortified gateway, on the turrets of which, so
motionless that at first they took them to be statues cut in
stone, stood guards wrapped in long white robes. After parley,
this also was opened to them, and again they rode through triple
doors.

Then they saw all the wonder of that place, for between the outer
city where they stood and the castle, with its inner town which
was built around and beneath it yawned a vast gulf over ninety
feet in depth. Across this gulf, built of blocks of stone, quite
unrailed, and not more than three paces wide, ran a causeway some
two hundred yards in length, which causeway was supported upon
arches reared up at intervals from the bottom of the gulf.

"Ride on and have no fear," said Masouda. "Your horses are
trained to heights, and the mules and mine will follow."

So Godwin, showing nothing in his face of the doubt that he felt
in his heart, patted Flame upon the neck, and, after hanging back
a little, the horse started lifting its hoofs high and glancing
from side to side at the terrible gulf beneath. Where Flame went
Smoke knew that it could go, and came on bravely, but snorting a
little, while the mules, that did not fear heights