“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 so long as the ground was firm beneath their feet, followed.  Only Masouda’s horse was terrified, backed, and strove to wheel round, till she drove the spur into it, when of a sudden it started and came over at a gallop.