The scene beyond the city was like a mediaeval painting representing Hell. The great bonfires roared, sending flickering, smoky light across the rocky plain that was the cavern floor. The giant Argzoon looked like demons as they escorted me over the plain. The fires were the fires on which the damned were roasted. And I was soon to meet a creature very like an ancient representation of Satan!

Horguhl was already there, standing on a dais that was reached by a flight of about sixty steps.

Her back was turned to us and her arms were outstretched. On either side of her were braziers, flaring brightly to show her to all. The Argzoon began to form a semi-circle at the bottom of the steps, and spread out along the sides of what was plainly a pit, now that we were closer. The steps terminated at the dais and the dais looked down on the pit.

My guards halted and waited expectantly just before the first step. We all looked up at Horguhl. She was crooning something. The words—sounds, rather, for I did not recognize them—sent a shudder through me and I noticed that many of the Argzoon were similarly affected.

There came a peculiar, slithering sound from the pit and from it, just to one side of the dais, I saw a great flat serpent head rise up and begin to sway in rhythm to Horguhl's crooning.

The Argzoon muttered in superstitious fear and began to chant and sway in time to the movement of the serpent head. It was of a sickly yellowish color, with long fangs curving out of its mouth from the upper jaw. There was a stale, unwholesome smell about it, and once it opened its great jaws and gave forth a horrid hissing, revealing a gaping red maw and a huge forked tongue.

Then Horguhl's crooning became softer and softer, the swaying more gentle, the humming of the spectators almost inaudible, and then—it came almost as a shock to me—absolute silence.

Suddenly this silence was broken as from behind me there came a cry.

"No! No!"

I turned my head and saw who it was that had cried out.

"Shizala!" I shouted involuntarily. The fiends had brought her here to witness my death—that was obvious. Even from that distance I could see her cheeks were streaked with tears and she struggled in the grasp of two massive blue warriors. I tried to break away and run towards her, but my bonds and my guards stopped me.

"Stay alive!" I shouted to her. "Stay alive! Do not fear!" I could not tell her that Darnad was even now riding for civilization, bent on bringing help to rescue her. But perhaps my cry would mean something to her. "Stay alive!"

Her voice answered faintly: "Oh, Michael Kane, I-I-"

"Silence!" Horguhl had turned and was addressing her subjects as much as myself and Shizala. "Take the prisoner to the pit's edge!"