Before the latter could realize what was taking place a stone
knife flashed in a savage arc, burying its length in his heart.

Ekbar voiced a single scream of anguish and toppled across the sill and
to the ground beneath, dead beside the master he had so faithfully
served.

While from that same window a young warrior of that same dead master
smiled with grim satisfaction. Otar had made sure his bride, the lovely
Marua, would never again be visited by her former suitor.

With Ekbar died the last of all resistance against Jotan's invading
warriors. Scores of weapons fell uselessly to the ground and the palace
defenders began to stream from the building, their hands lifted in
surrender.

And it was then that a quiet voice from behind Jotan and his father
said:

"Are the pits of Jaltor so shallow that they may not hold my enemies?"

The nobleman and his son wheeled about, then stiffened to rigid
attention at sight of Jaltor, king of Ammad, standing at the forefront
of a squad of his own guards.

CHAPTER XV

CONCLUSION

Dawn had come an hour before but the group of seven people sat about the
breakfast table in the private dining room of Jaltor, ruler of Ammad.

It was a wide, richly furnished room on the top floor of the city's
palace. The east wall was composed entirely of windows, barred by
fluted, slender columns of white stone, through which streamed the
bright rays of morning sun.

"Had you delayed your escape from the pits another two hours," Jaltor
was saying, "all of you would have been freed without having to fight
for proof of your innocence. For old Heglar's mate, the beautiful Rhoa,
had been followed to Vokal's palace, and when she left there, my men
picked her up and brought her to me at the palace. Strangely enough she
was not at all hesitant about betraying Vokal; I think she believed he
was trying to get out of taking her as his mate."

"Then instead of helping," Alurna said, smiling, "I nearly brought about
Jotan's death. That should be a lesson to me not to mix in another's
affairs!"

Jotan smiled at her briefly, then went back to his apparently careful
examination of the earthen plate in front of him. Ever since he had
seated himself across the table from Dylara and the broad-shouldered
young cave man next to her he had little to say. But in his mind there
was a welter of conflicting thoughts and emotions.

Fate had thrown the girl he loved into the arms of the man who long ago
h