"But why?" I asked. "For burial above?"
Denham smiled grimly. "You saw the slaves in the city above," he said, "but did you notice how strange they were, how glassy-eyed and stiff-moving?"
When I nodded, he said, "Well, the slaves of the city above are men who have been killed here in the under-city."
At my exclamation of horror, he repeated his statement. "Man," he exclaimed, "you do not know the power of the Kanlars. With the wisdom that is theirs, such an accomplishment is child's-play."
"But how done?" I asked.
"Ask them," he answered darkly. "In some way they are able to bring back the breath of life into the dead men, to repair the wounds that killed them. They can make them live again, but not even the Kanlars can bring back their souls. They are just living, walking bodies, whom the Kanlars are able to control and to force to work their will in all things. Dead-alive, and slaves to the Kanlars!"
I shuddered deeply, for the idea was soul-sickening. Yet I knew now that Denham spoke truth, for I remembered how from my cell in the city above I had seen Talerri, garbed as a slave, Talerri, whom I had killed myself. It was an invention that would have aroused pride in the fiends of lowest hell, thus to raise dead men back to life and use them as servants. And I knew that this was but one of the dark evils that lay concealed under the rule of the laughing, bright-haired Kanlars.
While we talked we had been moving along the crowded street toward the distant wall of the pit. Finally, very near that wall, Denham turned in at a low, long building that was of white stone, and roofless, like most others in the city. I followed him inside, and looked around curiously.
The building's interior was a single large room, shaded from the light above by a suspended awning of green cloth. Ranged along the walls was a triple tier of metal bunks, in some of which lay cloth and fur robes. There was a long metal table at the room's center, and lounging in chairs around it, and in the bunks, were a score of men who looked up without interest as we entered.