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Red Nails by Robert E. Howard
Reading by Gregg Margarite
Chapter 1. The Skull on the Crag
The woman on the horse reined in her weary steed. It stood with its legs wide-braced,
its head drooping, as if it found even the weight of the gold-tasseled, red-leather bridle
too heavy. The woman drew a booted foot out of the silver stirrup and swung down from
the gilt-worked saddle. She made the reins fast to the fork of a sapling, and turned
about, hands on her hips, to survey her surroundings. They were not inviting. Giant trees hemmed
in the small pool where her horse had just drunk. Clumps of undergrowth limited the vision
that quested under the somber twilight of the lofty arches formed by intertwining branches.
The woman shivered with a twitch of her magnificent shoulders, and then cursed.
She was tall, full-bosomed and large-limbed, with compact shoulders. Her whole figure reflected
an unusual strength, without detracting from the femininity of her appearance. She was
all woman, in spite of her bearing and her garments. The latter were incongruous, in
view of her present environs. Instead of a skirt she wore short, wide-legged silk breeches,
which ceased a hand's breadth short of her knees, and were upheld by a wide silken sash
worn as a girdle. Flaring-topped boots of soft leather came almost to her knees, and
a low-necked, wide-collared, wide-sleeved silk shirt completed her costume. On one shapely
hip she wore a straight double-edged sword, and on the other a long dirk. Her unruly golden
hair, cut square at her shoulders, was confined by a band of crimson satin.
Against the background of somber, primitive forest she posed with an unconscious picturesqueness,
bizarre and out of place. She should have been posed against a background of sea-clouds,
painted masts and wheeling gulls. There was the color of the sea in her wide eyes. And
that was as it should have been, because this was Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, whose
deeds are celebrated in song and ballad wherever seafarers gather.
[Illustration: "Convinced that his death was upon him, the Cimmerian acted according to
his instinct."] She strove to pierce the sullen green roof
of the arched branches and see the sky which presumably lay about it, but presently gave
it up with a muttered oath. Leaving her horse tied she strode off toward
the east, glancing back toward the pool from time to time in order to fix her route in
her mind. The silence of the forest depressed her. No birds sang in the lofty boughs, nor
did any rustling in the bushes indicate the presence of any small animals. For leagues
she had traveled in a realm of brooding stillness, broken only by the sounds of her own flight.
She had slaked her thirst at the pool, but she felt the gnawings of hunger and began
looking about for some of the fruit on which she had sustained herself since exhausting
the food she had brought in her saddle-bags. Ahead of her, presently, she saw an outcropping
of dark, flint-like rock that sloped upward into what looked like a rugged crag rising
among the trees. Its summit was lost to view amidst a cloud of encircling leaves. Perhaps
its peak rose above the tree-tops, and from it she could see what lay beyond—if, indeed,
anything lay beyond but more of this apparently illimitable forest through which she had ridden
for so many days. A narrow ridge formed a natural ramp that
led up the steep face of the crag. After she had ascended some fifty feet she came to the
belt of leaves that surrounded the rock. The trunks of the trees did not crowd close to
the crag, but the ends of their lower branches extended about it, veiling it with their foliage.
She groped on in leafy obscurity, not able to see either above or below her; but presently
she glimpsed blue sky, and a moment later came out in the clear, hot sunlight and saw
the forest roof stretching away under her feet.
She was standing on a broad shelf which was about even with the tree-tops, and from it
rose a spire-like jut that was the ultimate peak of the crag she had climbed. But something
else caught her attention at the moment. Her foot had struck something in the litter of
blown dead leaves which carpeted the shelf. She kicked them aside and looked down on the
skeleton of a man. She ran an experienced eye over the bleached frame, but saw no broken
bones nor any sign of violence. The man must have died a natural death; though why he should
have climbed a tall crag to die she could not imagine.
She scrambled up to the summit of the spire and looked toward the horizons. The forest
roof—which looked like a floor from her vantage-point—was just as impenetrable as
from below. She could not even see the pool by which she had left her horse. She glanced
northward, in the direction from which she had come. She saw only the rolling green ocean
stretching away and away, with only a vague blue line in the distance to hint of the hill-range
she had crossed days before, to plunge into this leafy waste.
West and east the view was the same; though the blue hill-line was lacking in those directions.
But when she turned her eyes southward she stiffened and caught her breath. A mile away
in that direction the forest thinned out and ceased abruptly, giving way to a cactus-dotted
plain. And in the midst of that plain rose the walls and towers of a city. Valeria swore
in amazement. This passed belief. She would not have been surprised to sight human habitations
of another sort—the beehive-shaped huts of the black people, or the cliff-dwellings
of the mysterious brown race which legends declared inhabited some country of this unexplored
region. But it was a startling experience to come upon a walled city here so many long
weeks' march from the nearest outposts of any sort of civilization.
Her hands tiring from clinging to the spire-like pinnacle, she let herself down on the shelf,
frowning in indecision. She had come far—from the camp of the mercenaries by the border
town of Sukhmet amidst the level grasslands, where desperate adventurers of many races
guard the Stygian frontier against the raids that come up like a red wave from Darfar.
Her flight had been blind, into a country of which she was wholly ignorant. And now
she wavered between an urge to ride directly to that city in the plain, and the instinct
of caution which prompted her to skirt it widely and continue her solitary flight.
Her thoughts were scattered by the rustling of the leaves below her. She wheeled cat-like,
snatched at her sword; and then she froze motionless, staring wide-eyed at the man before
her. He was almost a giant in stature, muscles
rippling smoothly under his skin which the sun had burned brown. His garb was similar
to hers, except that he wore a broad leather belt instead of a girdle. Broadsword and poniard
hung from this belt. "Conan, the Cimmerian!" *** the woman.
"What are you doing on my trail?" He grinned hardly, and his fierce blue eyes
burned with a light any woman could understand as they ran over her magnificent figure, lingering
on the swell of her splendid *** beneath the light shirt, and the clear white flesh
displayed between breeches and boot-tops. "Don't you know?" he laughed. "Haven't I made
my admiration for you plain ever since I first saw you?"
"A stallion could have made it no plainer," she answered disdainfully. "But I never expected
to encounter you so far from the ale-barrels and meat-pots of Sukhmet. Did you really follow
me from Zarallo's camp, or were you whipped forth for a rogue?"
He laughed at her insolence and flexed his mighty biceps.
"You know Zarallo didn't have enough knaves to whip me out of camp," he grinned. "Of course
I followed you. Lucky thing for you, too, ***! When you knifed that Stygian officer,
you forfeited Zarallo's favor and protection, and you outlawed yourself with the Stygians."
"I know it," she replied sullenly. "But what else could I do? You know what my provocation
was." "Sure," he agreed. "If I'd been there, I'd
have knifed him myself. But if a woman must live in the war-camps of men, she can expect
such things." Valeria stamped her booted foot and swore.
"Why won't men let me live a man's life?" "That's obvious!" Again his eager eyes devoured
her. "But you were wise to run away. The Stygians would have had you skinned. That officer's
brother followed you; faster than you thought, I don't doubt. He wasn't far behind you when
I caught up with him. His horse was better than yours. He'd have caught you and cut your
throat within a few more miles." "Well?" she demanded.
"Well what?" He seemed puzzled. "What of the Stygian?"
"Why, what do you suppose?" he returned impatiently. "I killed him, of course, and left his carcass
for the vultures. That delayed me, though, and I almost lost your trail when you crossed
the rocky spurs of the hills. Otherwise I'd have caught up with you long ago."
"And now you think you'll drag me back to Zarallo's camp?" she sneered.
"Don't talk like a fool," he grunted. "Come, girl, don't be such a spitfire. I'm not like
that Stygian you knifed, and you know it." "A penniless vagabond," she taunted.
He laughed at her. "What do you call yourself? You haven't enough
money to buy a new seat for your breeches. Your disdain doesn't deceive me. You know
I've commanded bigger ships and more men than you ever did in your life. As for being penniless—what
rover isn't, most of the time? I've squandered enough gold in the sea-ports of the world
to fill a galleon. You know that, too." "Where are the fine ships and the bold lads
you commanded, now?" she sneered. "At the bottom of the sea, mostly," he replied
cheerfully. "The Zingarans sank my last ship off the Shemite shore—that's why I joined
Zarallo's Free Companions. But I saw I'd been stung when we marched to the Darfar border.
The pay was poor and the wine was sour, and I don't like black women. And that's the only
kind that came to our camp at Sukhmet—rings in their noses and their teeth filed—bah!
Why did you join Zarallo? Sukhmet's a long way from salt water."
"Red Ortho wanted to make me his mistress," she answered sullenly. "I jumped overboard
one night and swam ashore when we were anchored off the Kushite coast. Off Zabhela, it was.
There a Shemite trader told me that Zarallo had brought his Free Companies south to guard
the Darfar border. No better employment offered. I joined an east-bound caravan and eventually
came to Sukhmet."
"It was madness to plunge southward as you did," commented Conan, "but it was wise, too,
for Zarallo's patrols never thought to look for you in this direction. Only the brother
of the man you killed happened to strike your trail."
"And now what do you intend doing?" she demanded. "Turn west," he answered. "I've been this
far south, but not this far east. Many days' traveling to the west will bring us to the
open savannas, where the black tribes graze their cattle. I have friends among them. We'll
get to the coast and find a ship. I'm sick of the jungle."
"Then be on your way," she advised. "I have other plans."
"Don't be a fool!" He showed irritation for the first time. "You can't keep on wandering
through this forest." "I can if I choose."
"But what do you intend doing?" "That's none of your affair," she snapped.
"Yes, it is," he answered calmly. "Do you think I've followed you this far, to turn
around and ride off empty-handed? Be sensible, ***. I'm not going to harm you."
He stepped toward her, and she sprang back, whipping out her sword.
"Keep back, you barbarian dog! I'll spit you like a roast pig!"
He halted, reluctantly, and demanded: "Do you want me to take that toy away from you
and spank you with it?" "Words! Nothing but words!" she mocked, lights
like the gleam of the sun on blue water dancing in her reckless eyes.
He knew it was the truth. No living man could disarm Valeria of the Brotherhood with his
bare hands. He scowled, his sensations a tangle of conflicting emotions. He was angry, yet
he was amused and filled with admiration for her spirit. He burned with eagerness to seize
that splendid figure and crush it in his iron arms, yet he greatly desired not to hurt the
girl. He was torn between a desire to shake her soundly, and a desire to caress her. He
knew if he came any nearer her sword would be sheathed in his heart. He had seen Valeria
kill too many men in border forays and tavern brawls to have any illusions about her. He
knew she was as quick and ferocious as a tigress. He could draw his broadsword and disarm her,
beat the blade out of her hand, but the thought of drawing a sword on a woman, even without
intent of injury, was extremely repugnant to him.
"Blast your soul, you ***!" he exclaimed in exasperation. "I'm going to take off your——"
He started toward her, his angry passion making him reckless, and she poised herself for a
deadly thrust. Then came a startling interruption to a scene at once ludicrous and perilous.
"What's that?" It was Valeria who exclaimed, but they both
started violently, and Conan wheeled like a cat, his great sword flashing into his hand.
Back in the forest had burst forth an appalling medley of screams—the screams of horses
in terror and agony. Mingled with their screams there came the snap of splintering bones.
"Lions are slaying the horses!" cried Valeria. "Lions, nothing!" snorted Conan, his eyes
blazing. "Did you hear a lion roar? Neither did I! Listen at those bones snap—not even
a lion could make that much noise killing a horse."
He hurried down the natural ramp and she followed, their personal feud forgotten in the adventurers'
instinct to unite against common peril. The screams had ceased when they worked their
way downward through the green veil of leaves that brushed the rock.
"I found your horse tied by the pool back there," he muttered, treading so noiselessly
that she no longer wondered how he had surprised her on the crag. "I tied mine beside it and
followed the tracks of your boots. Watch, now!"
They had emerged from the belt of leaves, and stared down into the lower reaches of
the forest. Above them the green roof spread its dusky canopy. Below them the sunlight
filtered in just enough to make a jade-tinted twilight. The giant trunks of trees less than
a hundred yards away looked dim and ghostly. "The horses should be beyond that thicket,
over there," whispered Conan, and his voice might have been a breeze moving through the
branches. "Listen!" Valeria had already heard, and a chill crept
through her veins; so she unconsciously laid her white hand on her companion's muscular
brown arm. From beyond the thicket came the noisy crunching of bones and the loud rending
of flesh, together with the grinding, slobbering sounds of a horrible feast.
"Lions wouldn't make that noise," whispered Conan. "Something's eating our horses, but
it's not a lion—Crom!" The noise stopped suddenly, and Conan swore
softly. A suddenly risen breeze was blowing from them directly toward the spot where the
unseen slayer was hidden. "Here it comes!" muttered Conan, half lifting
his sword. The thicket was violently agitated, and Valeria
clutched Conan's arm hard. Ignorant of jungle-lore, she yet knew that no animal she had ever seen
could have shaken the tall brush like that. "It must be as big as an elephant," muttered
Conan, echoing her thought. "What the devil——" His voice trailed away in stunned silence.
Through the thicket was thrust a head of nightmare and lunacy. Grinning jaws bared rows of dripping
yellow tusks; above the yawning mouth wrinkled a saurian-like snout. Huge eyes, like those
of a python a thousand times magnified, stared unwinkingly at the petrified humans clinging
to the rock above it. Blood smeared the scaly, flabby lips and dripped from the huge mouth.
The head, bigger than that of a crocodile, was further extended on a long scaled neck
on which stood up rows of serrated spikes, and after it, crushing down the briars and
saplings, waddled the body of a titan, a gigantic, barrel-bellied torso on absurdly short legs.
The whitish belly almost raked the ground, while the serrated back-bone rose higher than
Conan could have reached on tiptoe. A long spiked tail, like that of a gargantuan scorpion,
trailed out behind. "Back up the crag, quick!" snapped Conan,
thrusting the girl behind him. "I don't think he can climb, but he can stand on his hind-legs
and reach us——" With a snapping and rending of bushes and
saplings the monster came hurtling through the thickets, and they fled up the rock before
him like leaves blown before a wind. As Valeria plunged into the leafy screen a backward glance
showed her the titan rearing up fearsomely on his massive hind-legs, even as Conan had
predicted. The sight sent panic racing through her. As he reared, the beast seemed more gigantic
than ever; his snouted head towered among the trees. Then Conan's iron hand closed on
her wrist and she was *** headlong into the blinding welter of the leaves, and out
again into the hot sunshine above, just as the monster fell forward with his front feet
on the crag with an impact that made the rock vibrate.
Behind the fugitives the huge head crashed through the twigs, and they looked down for
a horrifying instant at the nightmare visage framed among the green leaves, eyes flaming,
jaws gaping. Then the giant tusks clashed together futilely, and after that the head
was withdrawn, vanishing from their sight as if it had sunk in a pool.
Peering down through broken branches that scraped the rock, they saw it squatting on
its haunches at the foot of the crag, staring unblinkingly up at them.
Valeria shuddered. "How long do you suppose he'll crouch there?"
Conan kicked the skull on the leaf-strewn shelf.
"That fellow must have climbed up here to escape him, or one like him. He must have
died of starvation. There are no bones broken. That thing must be a dragon, such as the black
people speak of in their legends. If so, it won't leave here until we're both dead."
Valeria looked at him blankly, her resentment forgotten. She fought down a surging of panic.
She had proved her reckless courage a thousand times in wild battles on sea and land, on
the blood-slippery decks of burning war-ships, in the storming of walled cities, and on the
trampled sandy beaches where the desperate men of the Red Brotherhood bathed their knives
in one another's blood in their fights for leadership. But the prospect now confronting
her congealed her blood. A cutlas-stroke in the heat of battle was nothing; but to sit
idle and helpless on a bare rock until she perished of starvation, besieged by a monstrous
survival of an elder age—the thought sent panic throbbing through her brain.
"He must leave to eat and drink," she said helplessly.
"He won't have to go far to do either," Conan pointed out. "He's just gorged on horse-meat,
and like a real snake, he can go for a long time without eating or drinking again. But
he doesn't sleep after eating, like a real snake, it seems. Anyway, he can't climb this
crag." Conan spoke imperturbably. He was a barbarian,
and the terrible patience of the wilderness and its children was as much a part of him
as his lusts and rages. He could endure a situation like this with a coolness impossible
to a civilized person. "Can't we get into the trees and get away,
traveling like apes through the branches?" she asked desperately.
He shook his head. "I thought of that. The branches that touch the crag down there are
too light. They'd break with our weight. Besides, I have an idea that devil could tear up any
tree around here by its roots." "Well, are we going to sit here on our rumps
until we starve, like that?" she cried furiously, kicking the skull clattering across the ledge.
"I won't do it! I'll go down there and cut his damned head off——"
Conan had seated himself on a rocky projection at the foot of the spire. He looked up with
a glint of admiration at her blazing eyes and tense, quivering figure, but, realizing
that she was in just the mood for any madness, he let none of his admiration sound in his
voice. "Sit down," he grunted, catching her by her
wrist and pulling her down on his knee. She was too surprised to resist as he took her
sword from her hand and shoved it back in its sheath. "Sit still and calm down. You'd
only break your steel on his scales. He'd gobble you up at one gulp, or smash you like
an egg with that spiked tail of his. We'll get out of this jam some way, but we shan't
do it by getting chewed up and swallowed." She made no reply, nor did she seek to repulse
his arm from about her waist. She was frightened, and the sensation was new to Valeria of the
Red Brotherhood. So she sat on her companion's—or captor's—knee with a docility that would
have amazed Zarallo, who had anathematized her as a she-devil out of hell's seraglio.
Conan played idly with her curly yellow locks, seemingly intent only upon his conquest. Neither
the skeleton at his feet nor the monster crouching below disturbed his mind or dulled the edge
of his interest. The girl's restless eyes, roving the leaves
below them, discovered splashes of color among the green. It was fruit, large, darkly crimson
globes suspended from the boughs of a tree whose broad leaves were a peculiarly rich
and vivid green. She became aware of both thirst and hunger, though thirst had not assailed
her until she knew she could not descend from the crag to find food and water.
"We need not starve," she said. "There is fruit we can reach."
Conan glanced where she pointed. "If we ate that we wouldn't need the bite
of a dragon," he grunted. "That's what the black people of Kush call the Apples of Derketa.
Derketa is the Queen of the Dead. Drink a little of the juice, or spill it on your flesh,
and you'd be dead before you could tumble to the foot of this crag."
"Oh!" She lapsed into dismayed silence. There seemed
no way out of their predicament, she reflected gloomily. She saw no way of escape, and Conan
seemed to be concerned only with her supple waist and curly tresses. If he was trying
to formulate a plan of escape, he did not show it.
"If you'll take your hands off me long enough to climb up on that peak," she said presently,
"you'll see something that will surprise you." He cast her a questioning glance, then obeyed
with a shrug of his massive shoulders. Clinging to the spire-like pinnacle, he stared out
over the forest roof.
He stood a long moment in silence, posed like a bronze statue on the rock.
"It's a walled city, right enough," he muttered presently. "Was that where you were going,
when you tried to send me off alone to the coast?"
"I saw it before you came. I knew nothing of it when I left Sukhmet."
"Who'd have thought to find a city here? I don't believe the Stygians ever penetrated
this far. Could black people build a city like that? I see no herds on the plain, no
signs of cultivation, or people moving about." "How could you hope to see all that, at this
distance?" she demanded. He shrugged his shoulders and dropped down
on the shelf. "Well, the folk of the city can't help us
just now. And they might not, if they could. The people of the Black Countries are generally
hostile to strangers. Probably stick us full of spears——"
He stopped short and stood silent, as if he had forgotten what he was saying, frowning
down at the crimson spheres gleaming among the leaves.
"Spears!" he muttered. "What a blasted fool I am not to have thought of that before! That
shows what a pretty woman does to a man's mind."
"What are you talking about?" she inquired. Without answering her question, he descended
to the belt of leaves and looked down through them. The great brute squatted below, watching
the crag with the frightful patience of the reptile folk. So might one of his breed have
glared up at their troglodyte ancestors, treed on a high-flung rock, in the dim dawn ages.
Conan cursed him without heat, and began cutting branches, reaching out and severing them as
far from the end as he could reach. The agitation of the leaves made the monster restless. He
rose from his haunches and lashed his hideous tail, snapping off saplings as if they had
been toothpicks. Conan watched him warily from the corner of his eye, and just as Valeria
believed the dragon was about to hurl himself up the crag again, the Cimmerian drew back
and climbed up to the ledge with the branches he had cut. There were three of these, slender
shafts about seven feet long, but not larger than his thumb. He had also cut several strands
of tough, thin vine. "Branches too light for spear-hafts, and creepers
no thicker than cords," he remarked, indicating the foliage about the crag. "It won't hold
our weight—but there's strength in union. That's what the Aquilonian renegades used
to tell us Cimmerians when they came into the hills to raise an army to invade their
own country. But we always fight by clans and tribes."
"What the devil has that got to do with those sticks?" she demanded.
"You wait and see." Gathering the sticks in a compact bundle,
he wedged his poniard hilt between them at one end. Then with the vines he bound them
together, and when he had completed his task, he had a spear of no small strength, with
a sturdy shaft seven feet in length. "What good will that do?" she demanded. "You
told me that a blade couldn't pierce his scales——" "He hasn't got scales all over him," answered
Conan. "There's more than one way of skinning a panther."
Moving down to the edge of the leaves, he reached the spear up and carefully thrust
the blade through one of the Apples of Derketa, drawing aside to avoid the darkly purple drops
that dripped from the pierced fruit. Presently he withdrew the blade and showed her the blue
steel stained a dull purplish crimson. "I don't know whether it will do the job or
not," quoth he. "There's enough poison there to kill an elephant, but—well, we'll see."
Valeria was close behind him as he let himself down among the leaves. Cautiously holding
the poisoned pike away from him, he thrust his head through the branches and addressed
the monster. "What are you waiting down there for, you
misbegotten offspring of questionable parents?" was one of his more printable queries. "Stick
your ugly head up here again, you long-necked brute—or do you want me to come down there
and kick you loose from your illegitimate spine?"
There was more of it—some of it couched in eloquence that made Valeria stare, in spite
of her profane education among the seafarers. And it had its effect on the monster. Just
as the incessant yapping of a dog worries and enrages more constitutionally silent animals,
so the clamorous voice of a man rouses fear in some *** bosoms and insane rage in
others. Suddenly and with appalling quickness, the mastodonic brute reared up on its mighty
hind legs and elongated its neck and body in a furious effort to reach this vociferous
pigmy whose clamor was disturbing the primeval silence of its ancient realm.
But Conan had judged his distance with precision. Some five feet below him the mighty head crashed
terribly but futilely through the leaves. And as the monstrous mouth gaped like that
of a great snake, Conan drove his spear into the red angle of the jaw-bone hinge. He struck
downward with all the strength of both arms, driving the long poniard blade to the hilt
in flesh, sinew and bone. Instantly the jaws clashed convulsively together,
severing the triple-pieced shaft and almost precipitating Conan from his perch. He would
have fallen but for the girl behind him, who caught his sword-belt in a desperate grasp.
He clutched at a rocky projection, and grinned his thanks back at her.
Down on the ground the monster was wallowing like a dog with pepper in its eyes. He shook
his head from side to side, pawed at it, and opened his mouth repeatedly to its widest
extent. Presently he got a huge front foot on the stump of the shaft and managed to tear
the blade out. Then he threw up his head, jaws wide and spouting blood, and glared up
at the crag with such concentrated and intelligent fury that Valeria trembled and drew her sword.
The scales along his back and flanks turned from rusty brown to a dull lurid red. Most
horribly the monster's silence was broken. The sounds that issued from his blood-streaming
jaws did not sound like anything that could have been produced by an earthly creation.
With harsh, grating roars, the dragon hurled himself at the crag that was the citadel of
his enemies. Again and again his mighty head crashed upward through the branches, snapping
vainly on empty air. He hurled his full ponderous weight against the rock until it vibrated
from base to crest. And rearing upright he gripped it with his front legs like a man
and tried to tear it up by the roots, as if it had been a tree.
This exhibition of primordial fury chilled the blood in Valeria's veins, but Conan was
too close to the primitive himself to feel anything but a comprehending interest. To
the barbarian, no such gulf existed between himself and other men, and the animals, as
existed in the conception of Valeria. The monster below them, to Conan, was merely a
form of life differing from himself mainly in physical shape. He attributed to it characteristics
similar to his own, and saw in its wrath a counterpart of his rages, in its roars and
bellowings merely reptilian equivalents to the curses he had bestowed upon it. Feeling
a kinship with all wild things, even dragons, it was impossible for him to experience the
sick horror which assailed Valeria at the sight of the brute's ferocity.
He sat watching it tranquilly, and pointed out the various changes that were taking place
in its voice and actions. "The poison's taking hold," he said with conviction.
"I don't believe it." To Valeria it seemed preposterous to suppose that anything, however
lethal, could have any effect on that mountain of muscle and fury.
"There's pain in his voice," declared Conan. "First he was merely angry because of the
stinging in his jaw. Now he feels the bite of the poison. Look! He's staggering. He'll
be blind in a few more minutes. What did I tell you?"
For suddenly the dragon had lurched about and went crashing off through the bushes.
"Is he running away?" inquired Valeria uneasily. "He's making for the pool!" Conan sprang up,
galvanized into swift activity. "The poison makes him thirsty. Come on! He'll be blind
in a few moments, but he can smell his way back to the foot of the crag, and if our scent's
here still, he'll sit there until he dies. And others of his kind may come at his cries.
Let's go!" "Down there?" Valeria was aghast.
"Sure! We'll make for the city! They may cut our heads off there, but it's our only chance.
We may run into a thousand more dragons on the way, but it's sure death to stay here.
If we wait until he dies, we may have a dozen more to deal with. After me, in a hurry!"
He went down the ramp as swiftly as an ape, pausing only to aid his less agile companion,
who, until she saw the Cimmerian climb, had fancied herself the equal of any man in the
rigging of a ship or on the sheer face of a cliff.
They descended into the gloom below the branches and slid to the ground silently, though Valeria
felt as if the pounding of her heart must surely be heard from far away. A noisy gurgling
and lapping beyond the dense thicket indicated that the dragon was drinking at the pool.
"As soon as his belly is full he'll be back," muttered Conan. "It may take hours for the
poison to kill him—if it does at all." Somewhere beyond the forest the sun was sinking
to the horizon. The forest was a misty twilight place of black shadows and dim vistas. Conan
gripped Valeria's wrist and glided away from the foot of the crag. He made less noise than
a breeze blowing among the tree-trunks, but Valeria felt as if her soft boots were betraying
their flight to all the forest. "I don't think he can follow a trail," muttered
Conan. "But if a wind blew our body-scent to him, he could smell us out."
"Mitra grant that the wind blow not!" Valeria breathed.
Her face was a pallid oval in the gloom. She gripped her sword in her free hand, but the
feel of the shagreen-bound hilt inspired only a feeling of helplessness in her.
They were still some distance from the edge of the forest when they heard a snapping and
crashing behind them. Valeria bit her lip to check a cry.
"He's on our trail!" she whispered fiercely. Conan shook his head.
"He didn't smell us at the rock, and he's blundering about through the forest trying
to pick up our scent. Come on! It's the city or nothing now! He could tear down any tree
we'd climb. If only the wind stays down——" They stole on until the trees began to thin
out ahead of them. Behind them the forest was a black impenetrable ocean of shadows.
The ominous crackling still sounded behind them, as the dragon blundered in his erratic
course. "There's the plain ahead," breathed Valeria.
"A little more and we'll——" "Crom!" swore Conan.
"Mitra!" whispered Valeria. Out of the south a wind had sprung up.
It blew over them directly into the black forest behind them. Instantly a horrible roar
shook the woods. The aimless snapping and crackling of the bushes changed to a sustained
crashing as the dragon came like a hurricane straight toward the spot from which the scent
of his enemies was wafted. "Run!" snarled Conan, his eyes blazing like
those of a trapped wolf. "It's all we can do!"
Sailor's boots are not made for sprinting, and the life of a pirate does not train one
for a runner. Within a hundred yards Valeria was panting and reeling in her gait, and behind
them the crashing gave way to a rolling thunder as the monster broke out of the thickets and
into the more open ground. Conan's iron arm about the woman's waist half
lifted her; her feet scarcely touched the earth as she was borne along at a speed she
could never have attained herself. If he could keep out of the beast's way for a bit, perhaps
that betraying wind would shift—but the wind held, and a quick glance over his shoulder
showed Conan that the monster was almost upon them, coming like a war-galley in front of
a hurricane. He thrust Valeria from him with a force that sent her reeling a dozen feet
to fall in a crumpled heap at the foot of the nearest tree, and the Cimmerian wheeled
in the path of the thundering titan. Convinced that his death was upon him, the
Cimmerian acted according to his instinct, and hurled himself full at the awful face
that was bearing down on him. He leaped, slashing like a wildcat, felt his sword cut deep into
the scales that sheathed the mighty snout—and then a terrific impact knocked him rolling
and tumbling for fifty feet with all the wind and half the life battered out of him.
How the stunned Cimmerian regained his feet, not even he could have ever told. But the
only thought that filled his brain was of the woman lying dazed and helpless almost
in the path of the hurtling fiend, and before the breath came whistling back into his gullet
he was standing over her with his sword in his hand.
She lay where he had thrown her, but she was struggling to a sitting posture. Neither tearing
tusks nor trampling feet had touched her. It had been a shoulder or front leg that struck
Conan, and the blind monster rushed on, forgetting the victims whose scent it had been following,
in the sudden agony of its death throes. Headlong on its course it thundered until its low-hung
head crashed into a gigantic tree in its path. The impact tore the tree up by the roots and
must have dashed the brains from the misshapen skull. Tree and monster fell together, and
the dazed humans saw the branches and leaves shaken by the convulsions of the creature
they covered—and then grow quiet. Conan lifted Valeria to her feet and together
they started away at a reeling run. A few moments later they emerged into the still
twilight of the treeless plain.
Conan paused an instant and glanced back at the ebon fastness behind them. Not a leaf
stirred, nor a bird chirped. It stood as silent as it must have stood before Man was created.
"Come on," muttered Conan, taking his companion's hand. "It's touch and go now. If more dragons
come out of the woods after us——" He did not have to finish the sentence.
The city looked very far away across the plain, farther than it had looked from the crag.
Valeria's heart hammered until she felt as if it would strangle her. At every step she
expected to hear the crashing of the bushes and see another colossal nightmare bearing
down upon them. But nothing disturbed the silence of the thickets.
With the first mile between them and the woods, Valeria breathed more easily. Her buoyant
self-confidence began to thaw out again. The sun had set and darkness was gathering over
the plain, lightened a little by the stars that made stunted ghosts out of the cactus
growths. "No cattle, no plowed fields," muttered Conan.
"How do these people live?" "Perhaps the cattle are in pens for the night,"
suggested Valeria, "and the fields and grazing-pastures are on the other side of the city."
"Maybe," he grunted. "I didn't see any from the crag, though."
The moon came up behind the city, etching walls and towers blackly in the yellow glow.
Valeria shivered. Black against the moon the strange city had a somber, sinister look.
Perhaps something of the same feeling occurred to Conan, for he stopped, glanced about him,
and grunted: "We stop here. No use coming to their gates in the night. They probably
wouldn't let us in. Besides, we need rest, and we don't know how they'll receive us.
A few hours' sleep will put us in better shape to fight or run."
He led the way to a bed of cactus which grew in a circle—a phenomenon common to the southern
desert. With his sword he chopped an opening, and motioned Valeria to enter.
"We'll be safe from snakes here, anyhow." She glanced fearfully back toward the black
line that indicated the forest some six miles away.
"Suppose a dragon comes out of the woods?" "We'll keep watch," he answered, though he
made no suggestion as to what they would do in such an event. He was staring at the city,
a few miles away. Not a light shone from spire or tower. A great black mass of mystery, it
reared cryptically against the moonlit sky. "Lie down and sleep. I'll keep the first watch."
She hesitated, glancing at him uncertainly, but he sat down cross-legged in the opening,
facing toward the plain, his sword across his knees, his back to her. Without further
comment she lay down on the sand inside the spiky circle.
"Wake me when the moon is at its zenith," she directed.
He did not reply nor look toward her. Her last impression, as she sank into slumber,
was of his muscular figure, immobile as a statue hewn out of bronze, outlined against
the low-hanging stars. End of Part 1
Chapter 2. By the Blaze of the Fire-Jewels
Valeria awoke with a start, to the realization that a gray dawn was stealing over the plain.
She sat up, rubbing her eyes. Conan squatted beside the cactus, cutting off the thick pears
and dexterously twitching out the spikes. "You didn't awake me," she accused. "You let
me sleep all night!" "You were tired," he answered. "Your posterior
must have been sore, too, after that long ride. You pirates aren't used to horseback."
"What about yourself?" she retorted. "I was a kozak before I was a pirate," he
answered. "They live in the saddle. I *** naps like a panther watching beside the trail
for a deer to come by. My ears keep watch while my eyes sleep."
And indeed the giant barbarian seemed as much refreshed as if he had slept the whole night
on a golden bed. Having removed the thorns, and peeled off the tough skin, he handed the
girl a thick, juicy cactus leaf. "Skin your teeth in that pear. It's food and
drink to a desert man. I was a chief of the Zuagirs once—desert men who live by plundering
the caravans." "Is there anything you haven't been?" inquired
the girl, half in derision and half in fascination. "I've never been king of an Hyborian kingdom,"
he grinned, taking an enormous mouthful of cactus. "But I've dreamed of being even that.
I may be too, some day. Why shouldn't I?" She shook her head in wonder at his calm audacity,
and fell to devouring her pear. She found it not unpleasing to the palate, and full
of cool and thirst-satisfying juice. Finishing his meal, Conan wiped his hands in the sand,
rose, ran his fingers through his thick black mane, hitched at his sword-belt and said:
"Well, let's go. If the people in that city are going to cut our throats they may as well
do it now, before the heat of the day begins." His grim humor was unconscious, but Valeria
reflected that it might be prophetic. She too hitched her sword-belt as she rose. Her
terrors of the night were past. The roaring dragons of the distant forest were like a
dim dream. There was a swagger in her stride as she moved off beside the Cimmerian. Whatever
perils lay ahead of them, their foes would be men. And Valeria of the Red Brotherhood
had never seen the face of the man she feared. Conan glanced down at her as she strode along
beside him with her swinging stride that matched his own.
"You walk more like a hillman than a sailor," he said. "You must be an Aquilonian. The suns
of Darfar never burnt your white skin brown. Many a princess would envy you."
"I am from Aquilonia," she replied. His compliments no longer irritated her. His evident admiration
pleased her. For another man to have kept her watch while she slept would have angered
her; she had always fiercely resented any man's attempting to shield or protect her
because of her sex. But she found a secret pleasure in the fact that this man had done
so. And he had not taken advantage of her fright and the weakness resulting from it.
After all, she reflected, her companion was no common man.
The sun rose behind the city, turning the towers to a sinister crimson.
"Black last night against the moon," grunted Conan, his eyes clouding with the abysmal
superstition of the barbarian. "Blood-red as a threat of blood against the sun this
dawn. I do not like this city." But they went on, and as they went Conan pointed
out the fact that no road ran to the city from the north.
"No cattle have trampled the plain on this side of the city," said he. "No plowshare
has touched the earth for years, maybe centuries. But look: once this plain was cultivated."
Valeria saw the ancient irrigation ditches he indicated, half filled in places, and overgrown
with cactus. She frowned with perplexity as her eyes swept over the plain that stretched
on all sides of the city to the forest edge, which marched in a vast, dim ring. Vision
did not extend beyond that ring. She looked uneasily at the city. No helmets
or spear-heads gleamed on battlements, no trumpets sounded, no challenge rang from the
towers. A silence as absolute as that of the forest brooded over the walls and minarets.
The sun was high above the eastern horizon when they stood before the great gate in the
northern wall, in the shadow of the lofty rampart. Rust flecked the iron bracings of
the mighty bronze portal. Spiderwebs glistened thickly on hinge and sill and bolted panel.
"It hasn't been opened for years!" exclaimed Valeria.
"A dead city," grunted Conan. "That's why the ditches were broken and the plain untouched."
"But who built it? Who dwelt here? Where did they go? Why did they abandon it?"
"Who can say? Maybe an exiled clan of Stygians built it. Maybe not. It doesn't look like
Stygian architecture. Maybe the people were wiped out by enemies, or a plague exterminated
them." "In that case their treasures may still be
gathering dust and cobwebs in there," suggested Valeria, the acquisitive instincts of her
profession waking in her; prodded, too, by feminine curiosity. "Can we open the gate?
Let's go in and explore a bit." Conan eyed the heavy portal dubiously, but
placed his massive shoulder against it and thrust with all the power of his muscular
calves and thighs. With a rasping screech of rusty hinges the gate moved ponderously
inward, and Conan straightened and drew his sword. Valeria stared over his shoulder, and
made a sound indicative of surprise. They were not looking into an open street
or court as one would have expected. The opened gate, or door, gave directly into a long,
broad hall which ran away and away until its vista grew indistinct in the distance. It
was of heroic proportions, and the floor of a curious red stone, cut in square tiles,
that seemed to smolder as if with the reflection of flames. The walls were of a shiny green
material. "Jade, or I'm a Shemite!" swore Conan.
"Not in such quantity!" protested Valeria. "I've looted enough from the Khitan caravans
to know what I'm talking about," he asserted. "That's jade!"
The vaulted ceiling was of lapis lazuli, adorned with clusters of great green stones that gleamed
with a poisonous radiance. "Green fire-stones," growled Conan. "That's
what the people of Punt call them. They're supposed to be the petrified eyes of those
prehistoric snakes the ancients called Golden Serpents. They glow like a cat's eyes in the
dark. At night this hall would be lighted by them, but it would be a hellishly weird
illumination. Let's look around. We might find a cache of jewels."
"Shut the door," advised Valeria. "I'd hate to have to outrun a dragon down this hall."
Conan grinned, and replied: "I don't believe the dragons ever leave the forest."
But he complied, and pointed out the broken bolt on the inner side.
"I thought I heard something snap when I shoved against it. That bolt's freshly broken. Rust
has eaten nearly through it. If the people ran away, why should it have been bolted on
the inside?" "They undoubtedly left by another door," suggested
Valeria. She wondered how many centuries had passed
since the light of outer day had filtered into that great hall through the open door.
Sunlight was finding its way somehow into the hall, and they quickly saw the source.
High up in the vaulted ceiling skylights were set in slot-like openings—translucent sheets
of some crystalline substance. In the splotches of shadow between them, the green jewels winked
like the eyes of angry cats. Beneath their feet the dully lurid floor smoldered with
changing hues and colors of flame. It was like treading the floors of hell with evil
stars blinking overhead. Three balustraded galleries ran along on each
side of the hall, one above the other. "A four-storied house," grunted Conan, "and
this hall extends to the roof. It's long as a street. I seem to see a door at the other
end." Valeria shrugged her white shoulders.
"Your eyes are better than mine, then, though I'm accounted sharp-eyed among the sea-rovers."
They turned into an open door at random, and traversed a series of empty chambers, floored
like the hall, and with walls of the same green jade, or of marble or ivory or chalcedony,
adorned with friezes of bronze, gold or silver. In the ceilings the green fire-gems were set,
and their light was as ghostly and illusive as Conan had predicted. Under the witch-fire
glow the intruders moved like specters. Some of the chambers lacked this illumination,
and their doorways showed black as the mouth of the Pit. These Conan and Valeria avoided,
keeping always to the lighted chambers. Cobwebs hung in the corners, but there was
no perceptible accumulation of dust on the floor, or on the tables and seats of marble,
jade or carnelian which occupied the chambers. Here and there were rugs of that silk known
as Khitan which is practically indestructible. Nowhere did they find any windows, or doors
opening into streets or courts. Each door merely opened into another chamber or hall.
"Why don't we come to a street?" grumbled Valeria. "This place or whatever we're in
must be as big as the king of Turan's seraglio." "They must not have perished of plague," said
Conan, meditating upon the mystery of the empty city. "Otherwise we'd find skeletons.
Maybe it became haunted, and everybody got up and left. Maybe——"
"Maybe, hell!" broke in Valeria rudely. "We'll never know. Look at these friezes. They portray
men. What race do they belong to?" Conan scanned them and shook his head.
"I never saw people exactly like them. But there's the smack of the East about them—Vendhya,
maybe, or Kosala." "Were you a king in Kosala?" she asked, masking
her keen curiosity with derision. "No. But I was a war-chief of the Afghulis
who live in the Himelian mountains above the borders of Vendhya. These people favor the
Kosalans. But why should Kosalans be building a city this far to west?"
The figures portrayed were those of slender, olive-skinned men and women, with finely chiseled,
exotic features. They wore filmy robes and many delicate jeweled ornaments, and were
depicted mostly in attitudes of feasting, dancing or love-making.
"Easterners, all right," grunted Conan, "but from where I don't know. They must have lived
a disgustingly peaceful life, though, or they'd have scenes of wars and fights. Let's go up
that stair." It was an ivory spiral that wound up from
the chamber in which they were standing. They mounted three flights and came into a broad
chamber on the fourth floor, which seemed to be the highest tier in the building. Skylights
in the ceiling illuminated the room, in which light the fire-gems winked pallidly. Glancing
through the doors they saw, except on one side, a series of similarly lighted chambers.
This other door opened upon a balustraded gallery that overhung a hall much smaller
than the one they had recently explored on the lower floor.
"Hell!" Valeria sat down disgustedly on a jade bench. "The people who deserted this
city must have taken all their treasures with them. I'm tired of wandering through these
bare rooms at random." "All these upper chambers seem to be lighted,"
said Conan. "I wish we could find a window that overlooked the city. Let's have a look
through that door over there." "You have a look," advised Valeria. "I'm going
to sit here and rest my feet."
Conan disappeared through the door opposite that one opening upon the gallery, and Valeria
leaned back with her hands clasped behind her head, and thrust her booted legs out in
front of her. These silent rooms and halls with their gleaming green clusters of ornaments
and burning crimson floors were beginning to depress her. She wished they could find
their way out of the maze into which they had wandered and emerge into a street. She
wondered idly what furtive, dark feet had glided over those flaming floors in past centuries,
how many deeds of cruelty and mystery those winking ceiling-gems had blazed down upon.
It was a faint noise that brought her out of her reflections. She was on her feet with
her sword in her hand before she realized what had disturbed her. Conan had not returned,
and she knew it was not he that she had heard. The sound had come from somewhere beyond the
door that opened on to the gallery. Soundlessly in her soft leather boots she glided through
it, crept across the balcony and peered down between the heavy balustrades.
A man was stealing along the hall. The sight of a human being in this supposedly
deserted city was a startling shock. Crouching down behind the stone balusters, with every
nerve tingling, Valeria glared down at the stealthy figure.
The man in no way resembled the figures depicted on the friezes. He was slightly above middle
height, very dark, though not negroid. He was naked but for a scanty silk clout that
only partly covered his muscular hips, and a leather girdle, a hand's breadth broad,
about his lean waist. His long black hair hung in lank strands about his shoulders,
giving him a wild appearance. He was gaunt, but knots and cords of muscles stood out on
his arms and legs, without that fleshy padding that presents a pleasing symmetry of contour.
He was built with an economy that was almost repellent.
Yet it was not so much his physical appearance as his attitude that impressed the woman who
watched him. He slunk along, stooped in a semi-crouch, his head turning from side to
side. He grasped a wide-tipped blade in his right hand, and she saw it shake with the
intensity of the emotion that gripped him. He was afraid, trembling in the grip of some
dire terror. When he turned his head she caught the blaze of wild eyes among the lank strands
of black hair. He did not see her. On tiptoe he glided across
the hall and vanished through an open door. A moment later she heard a choking cry, and
then silence fell again. Consumed with curiosity, Valeria glided along
the gallery until she came to a door above the one through which the man had passed.
It opened into another, smaller gallery that encircled a large chamber.
This chamber was on the third floor, and its ceiling was not so high as that of the hall.
It was lighted only by the fire-stones, and their weird green glow left the spaces under
the balcony in shadows. Valeria's eyes widened. The man she had seen
was still in the chamber. He lay face down on a dark crimson carpet
in the middle of the room. His body was limp, his arms spread wide. His curved sword lay
near him. She wondered why he should lie there so motionless.
Then her eyes narrowed as she stared down at the rug on which he lay. Beneath and about
him the fabric showed a slightly different color, a deeper, brighter crimson.
Shivering slightly, she crouched down closer behind the balustrade, intently scanning the
shadows under the overhanging gallery. They gave up no secret.
Suddenly another figure entered the grim drama. He was a man similar to the first, and he
came in by a door opposite that which gave upon the hall.
His eyes glared at the sight of the man on the floor, and he spoke something in a staccato
voice that sounded like "Chicmec!" The other did not move.
The man stepped quickly across the floor, bent, gripped the fallen man's shoulder and
turned him over. A choking cry escaped him as the head fell back limply, disclosing a
throat that had been severed from ear to ear. The man let the corpse fall back upon the
blood-stained carpet, and sprang to his feet, shaking like a wind-blown leaf. His face was
an ashy mask of fear. But with one knee flexed for flight, he froze suddenly, became as immobile
as an image, staring across the chamber with dilated eyes.
In the shadows beneath the balcony a ghostly light began to glow and grow, a light that
was not part of the fire-stone gleam. Valeria felt her hair stir as she watched it; for,
dimly visible in the throbbing radiance, there floated a human skull, and it was from this
skull—human yet appallingly misshapen—that the spectral light seemed to emanate. It hung
there like a disembodied head, conjured out of night and the shadows, growing more and
more distinct; human, and yet not human as she knew humanity.
The man stood motionless, an embodiment of paralyzed horror, staring fixedly at the apparition.
The thing moved out from the wall and a grotesque shadow moved with it. Slowly the shadow became
visible as a man-like figure whose naked torso and limbs shone whitely, with the hue of bleached
bones. The bare skull on its shoulders grinned eyelessly, in the midst of its unholy nimbus,
and the man confronting it seemed unable to take his eyes from it. He stood still, his
sword dangling from nerveless fingers, on his face the expression of a man bound by
the spells of a mesmerist.
Valeria realized that it was not fear alone that paralyzed him. Some hellish quality of
that throbbing glow had robbed him of his power to think and act. She herself, safely
above the scene, felt the subtle impact of a nameless emanation that was a threat to
sanity. The horror swept toward its victim and he
moved at last, but only to drop his sword and sink to his knees, covering his eyes with
his hands. Dumbly he awaited the stroke of the blade that now gleamed in the apparition's
hand as it reared above him like Death triumphant over mankind.
Valeria acted according to the first impulse of her wayward nature. With one tigerish movement
she was over the balustrade and dropping to the floor behind the awful shape. It wheeled
at the thud of her soft boots on the floor, but even as it turned, her keen blade lashed
down, and a fierce exultation swept her as she felt the edge cleave solid flesh and mortal
bone. The apparition cried out gurglingly and went
down, severed through shoulder, breast-bone and spine, and as it fell the burning skull
rolled clear, revealing a lank mop of black hair and a dark face twisted in the convulsions
of death. Beneath the horrific masquerade there was a human being, a man similar to
the one kneeling supinely on the floor. The latter looked up at the sound of the blow
and the cry, and now he glared in wild-eyed amazement at the white-skinned woman who stood
over the corpse with a dripping sword in her hand.
He staggered up, yammering as if the sight had almost unseated his reason. She was amazed
to realize that she understood him. He was gibbering in the Stygian tongue, though in
a dialect unfamiliar to her. "Who are you? Whence come you? What do you
in Xuchotl?" Then rushing on, without waiting for her to reply: "But you are a friend—goddess
or devil, it makes no difference! You have slain the Burning Skull! It was but a man
beneath it, after all! We deemed it a demon they conjured up out of the catacombs! Listen!"
He stopped short in his ravings and stiffened, straining his ears with painful intensity.
The girl heard nothing. "We must hasten!" he whispered. "They are
west of the Great Hall! They may be all around us here! They may be creeping upon us even
now!" He seized her wrist in a convulsive grasp
she found hard to break. "Whom do you mean by 'they'?" she demanded.
He stared at her uncomprehendingly for an instant, as if he found her ignorance hard
to understand. "They?" he stammered vaguely. "Why—why,
the people of Xotalanc! The clan of the man you slew. They who dwell by the eastern gate."
"You mean to say this city is inhabited?" she exclaimed.
"Aye! Aye!" He was writhing in the impatience of apprehension. "Come away! Come quick! We
must return to Tecuhltli!" "Where is that?" she demanded.
"The quarter by the western gate!" He had her wrist again and was pulling her toward
the door through which he had first come. Great beads of perspiration dripped from his
dark forehead, and his eyes blazed with terror. "Wait a minute!" she growled, flinging off
his hand. "Keep your hands off me, or I'll split your skull. What's all this about? Who
are you? Where would you take me?" He took a firm grip on himself, casting glances
to all sides, and began speaking so fast his words tripped over each other.
"My name is Techotl. I am of Tecuhltli. I and this man who lies with his throat cut
came into the Halls of Science to try and ambush some of the Xotalancas. But we became
separated and I returned here to find him with his gullet slit. The Burning Skull did
it, I know, just as he would have slain me had you not killed him. But perhaps he was
not alone. Others may be stealing from Xotalanc! The gods themselves blench at the fate of
those they take alive!" At the thought he shook as with an ague and
his dark skin grew ashy. Valeria frowned puzzledly at him. She sensed intelligence behind this
rigmarole, but it was meaningless to her. She turned toward the skull, which still glowed
and pulsed on the floor, and was reaching a booted toe tentatively toward it, when the
man who called himself Techotl sprang forward with a cry.
"Do not touch it! Do not even look at it! Madness and death lurk in it. The wizards
of Xotalanc understand its secret—they found it in the catacombs, where lie the bones of
terrible kings who ruled in Xuchotl in the black centuries of the past. To gaze upon
it freezes the blood and withers the brain of a man who understands not its mystery.
To touch it causes madness and destruction." She scowled at him uncertainly. He was not
a reassuring figure, with his lean, muscle-knotted frame, and snaky locks. In his eyes, behind
the glow of terror, lurked a weird light she had never seen in the eyes of a man wholly
sane. Yet he seemed sincere in his protestations. "Come!" he begged, reaching for her hand,
and then recoiling as he remembered her warning, "You are a stranger. How you came here I do
not know, but if you were a goddess or a demon, come to aid Tecuhltli, you would know all
the things you have asked me. You must be from beyond the great forest, whence our ancestors
came. But you are our friend, or you would not have slain my enemy. Come quickly, before
the Xotalancas find us and slay us!" From his repellent, impassioned face she glanced
to the sinister skull, smoldering and glowing on the floor near the dead man. It was like
a skull seen in a dream, undeniably human, yet with disturbing distortions and malformations
of contour and outline. In life the wearer of that skull must have presented an alien
and monstrous aspect. Life? It seemed to possess some sort of life of its own. Its jaws yawned
at her and snapped together. Its radiance grew brighter, more vivid, yet the impression
of nightmare grew too; it was a dream; all life was a dream—it was Techotl's urgent
voice which snapped Valeria back from the dim gulfs whither she was drifting.
"Do not look at the skull! Do not look at the skull!" It was a far cry from across unreckoned
voids. Valeria shook herself like a lion shaking
his mane. Her vision cleared. Techotl was chattering: "In life it housed the awful brain
of a king of magicians! It holds still the life and fire of magic drawn from outer spaces!"
With a curse Valeria leaped, lithe as a panther, and the skull crashed to flaming bits under
her swinging sword. Somewhere in the room, or in the void, or in the dim reaches of her
consciousness, an inhuman voice cried out in pain and rage.
Techotl's hand was plucking at her arm and he was gibbering: "You have broken it! You
have destroyed it! Not all the black arts of Xotalanc can rebuild it! Come away! Come
away quickly, now!" "But I can't go," she protested. "I have a
friend somewhere near by——" The flare of his eyes cut her short as he
stared past her with an expression grown ghastly. She wheeled just as four men rushed through
as many doors, converging on the pair in the center of the chamber.
They were like the others she had seen, the same knotted muscles bulging on otherwise
gaunt limbs, the same lank blue-black hair, the same mad glare in their wide eyes. They
were armed and clad like Techotl, but on the breast of each was painted a white skull.
There were no challenges or war-cries. Like blood-mad tigers the men of Xotalanc sprang
at the throats of their enemies. Techotl met them with the fury of desperation, ducked
the swipe of a wide-headed blade, and grappled with the wielder, and bore him to the floor
where they rolled and wrestled in murderous silence.
The other three swarmed on Valeria, their weird eyes red as the eyes of mad dogs.
[Illustration: "You can never reach the coast. There is no escape from Xuchotl."]
She killed the first who came within reach before he could strike a blow, her long straight
blade splitting his skull even as his own sword lifted for a stroke. She side-stepped
a thrust, even as she parried a slash. Her eyes danced and her lips smiled without mercy.
Again she was Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, and the hum of her steel was like a bridal
song in her ears. Her sword darted past a blade that sought
to parry, and sheathed six inches of its point in a leather-guarded midriff. The man gasped
agonizedly and went to his knees, but his tall mate lunged in, in ferocious silence,
raining blow on blow so furiously that Valeria had no opportunity to counter. She stepped
back coolly, parrying the strokes and watching for her chance to thrust home. He could not
long keep up that flailing whirlwind. His arm would tire, his wind would fail; he would
weaken, falter, and then her blade would slide smoothly into his heart. A sidelong glance
showed her Techotl kneeling on the breast of his antagonist and striving to break the
other's hold on his wrist and to drive home a dagger.
Sweat beaded the forehead of the man facing her, and his eyes were like burning coals.
Smite as he would, he could not break past nor beat down her guard. His breath came in
gusty gulps, his blows began to fall erratically. She stepped back to draw him out—and felt
her thighs locked in an iron grip. She had forgotten the wounded man on the floor.
Crouching on his knees, he held her with both arms locked about her legs, and his mate croaked
in triumph and began working his way around to come at her from the left side. Valeria
wrenched and tore savagely, but in vain. She could free herself of this clinging menace
with a downward flick of her sword, but in that instant the curved blade of the tall
warrior would crash through her skull. The wounded man began to worry at her bare thigh
with his teeth like a wild beast. She reached down with her left hand and gripped
his long hair, forcing his head back so that his white teeth and rolling eyes gleamed up
at her. The tall Xotalanc cried out fiercely and leaped in, smiting with all the fury of
his arm. Awkwardly she parried the stroke, and it beat the flat of her blade down on
her head so that she saw sparks flash before her eyes, and staggered. Up went the sword
again, with a low, beast-like cry of triumph—and then a giant form loomed behind the Xotalanc
and steel flashed like a jet of blue lightning. The cry of the warrior broke short and he
went down like an ox beneath the pole-ax, his brains gushing from his skull that had
been split to the throat. "Conan!" gasped Valeria. In a gust of passion
she turned on the Xotalanc whose long hair she still gripped in her left hand. "Dog of
hell!" Her blade swished as it cut the air in an upswinging arc with a blur in the middle,
and the headless body slumped down, spurting blood. She hurled the severed head across
the room. "What the devil's going on here?" Conan bestrode
the corpse of the man he had killed, broadsword in hand, glaring about him in amazement.
Techotl was rising from the twitching figure of the last Xotalanc, shaking red drops from
his dagger. He was bleeding from the stab deep in the thigh. He stared at Conan with
dilated eyes. "What is all this?" Conan demanded again,
not yet recovered from the stunning surprise of finding Valeria engaged in a savage battle
with these fantastic figures in a city he had thought empty and uninhabited. Returning
from an aimless exploration of the upper chambers to find Valeria missing from the room where
he had left her, he had followed the sounds of strife that burst on his dumbfounded ears.
"Five dead dogs!" exclaimed Techotl, his flaming eyes reflecting a ghastly exultation. "Five
slain! Five crimson nails for the black pillar! The gods of blood be thanked!"
He lifted quivering hands on high, and then, with the face of a fiend, he spat on the corpses
and stamped on their faces, dancing in his ghoulish glee. His recent allies eyed him
in amazement, and Conan asked, in the Aquilonian tongue: "Who is this madman?"
Valeria shrugged her shoulders. "He says his name's Techotl. From his babblings
I gather that his people live at one end of this crazy city, and these others at the other
end. Maybe we'd better go with him. He seems friendly, and it's easy to see that the other
clan isn't."
Techotl had ceased his dancing and was listening again, his head tilted sidewise, dog-like,
triumph struggling with fear in his repellent countenance.
"Come away, now!" he whispered. "We have done enough! Five dead dogs! My people will welcome
you! They will honor you! But come! It is far to Tecuhltli. At any moment the Xotalancas
may come on us in numbers too great even for your swords."
"Lead the way," grunted Conan. Techotl instantly mounted a stair leading
up to the gallery, beckoning them to follow him, which they did, moving rapidly to keep
on his heels. Having reached the gallery, he plunged into a door that opened toward
the west, and hurried through chamber after chamber, each lighted by skylights or green
fire-jewels. "What sort of a place can this be?" muttered
Valeria under her breath. "Crom knows!" answered Conan. "I've seen his
kind before, though. They live on the shores of Lake Zuad, near the border of Kush. They're
a sort of mongrel Stygians, mixed with another race that wandered into Stygia from the east
some centuries ago and were absorbed by them. They're called Tlazitlans. I'm willing to
bet it wasn't they who built this city, though." Techotl's fear did not seem to diminish as
they drew away from the chamber where the dead men lay. He kept twisting his head on
his shoulder to listen for sounds of pursuit, and stared with burning intensity into every
doorway they passed. Valeria shivered in spite of herself. She
feared no man. But the weird floor beneath her feet, the uncanny jewels over her head,
dividing the lurking shadows among them, the stealth and terror of their guide, impressed
her with a nameless apprehension, a sensation of lurking, inhuman peril.
"They may be between us and Tecuhltli!" he whispered once. "We must beware lest they
be lying in wait!" "Why don't we get out of this infernal palace,
and take to the streets?" demanded Valeria. "There are no streets in Xuchotl," he answered.
"No squares nor open courts. The whole city is built like one giant palace under one great
roof. The nearest approach to a street is the Great Hall which traverses the city from
the north gate to the south gate. The only doors opening into the outer world are the
city gates, through which no living man has passed for fifty years."
"How long have you dwelt here?" asked Conan. "I was born in the castle of Tecuhltli thirty-five
years ago. I have never set foot outside the city. For the love of the gods, let us go
silently! These halls may be full of lurking devils. Olmec shall tell you all when we reach
Tecuhltli." So in silence they glided on with the green
fire-stones blinking overhead and the flaming floors smoldering under their feet, and it
seemed to Valeria as if they fled through hell, guided by a dark-faced, lank-haired
goblin. Yet it was Conan who halted them as they were
crossing an unusually wide chamber. His wilderness-bred ears were keener even than the ears of Techotl,
whetted though these were by a lifetime of warfare in those silent corridors.
"You think some of your enemies may be ahead of us, lying in ambush?"
"They prowl through these rooms at all hours," answered Techotl, "as do we. The halls and
chambers between Tecuhltli and Xotalanc are a disputed region, owned by no man. We call
it the Halls of Silence. Why do you ask?" "Because men are in the chambers ahead of
us," answered Conan. "I heard steel clink against stone."
Again a shaking seized Techotl, and he clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering.
"Perhaps they are your friends," suggested Valeria.
"We dare not chance it," he panted, and moved with frenzied activity. He turned aside and
glided through a doorway on the left which led into a chamber from which an ivory staircase
wound down into darkness. "This leads to an unlighted corridor below
us!" he hissed, great beads of perspiration standing out on his brow. "They may be lurking
there, too. It may all be a trick to draw us into it. But we must take the chance that
they have laid their ambush in the rooms above. Come swiftly, now!"
Softly as phantoms they descended the stair and came to the mouth of a corridor black
as night. They crouched there for a moment, listening, and then melted into it. As they
moved along, Valeria's flesh crawled between her shoulders in momentary expectation of
a sword-thrust in the dark. But for Conan's iron fingers gripping her arm she had no physical
cognizance of her companions. Neither made as much noise as a cat would have made. The
darkness was absolute. One hand, outstretched, touched a wall, and occasionally she felt
a door under her fingers. The hallway seemed interminable.
Suddenly they were galvanized by a sound behind them. Valeria's flesh crawled anew, for she
recognized it as the soft opening of a door. Men had come into the corridor behind them.
Even with the thought she stumbled over something that felt like a human skull. It rolled across
the floor with an appalling clatter. "Run!" yelped Techotl, a note of hysteria
in his voice, and was away down the corridor like a flying ghost.
Again Valeria felt Conan's hand bearing her up and sweeping her along as they raced after
their guide. Conan could see in the dark no better than she, but he possessed a sort of
instinct that made his course unerring. Without his support and guidance she would have fallen
or stumbled against the wall. Down the corridor they sped, while the swift patter of flying
feet drew closer and closer, and then suddenly Techotl panted: "Here is the stair! After
me, quick! Oh, quick!" His hand came out of the dark and caught Valeria's
wrist as she stumbled blindly on the steps. She felt herself half dragged, half lifted
up the winding stair, while Conan released her and turned on the steps, his ears and
instincts telling him their foes were hard at their backs. And the sounds were not all
those of human feet. Something came writhing up the steps, something
that slithered and rustled and brought a chill in the air with it. Conan lashed down with
his great sword and felt the blade shear through something that might have been flesh and bone,
and cut deep into the stair beneath. Something touched his foot that chilled like the touch
of frost, and then the darkness beneath him was disturbed by a frightful thrashing and
lashing, and a man cried out in agony. The next moment Conan was racing up the winding
staircase, and through a door that stood open at the head.
Valeria and Techotl were already through, and Techotl slammed the door and shot a bolt
across it—the first Conan had seen since they left the outer gate.
Then he turned and ran across the well-lighted chamber into which they had come, and as they
passed through the farther door, Conan glanced back and saw the door groaning and straining
under heavy pressure violently applied from the other side.
Though Techotl did not abate either his speed or his caution, he seemed more confident now.
He had the air of a man who has come into familiar territory, within call of friends.
But Conan renewed his terror by asking: "What was that thing that I fought on the stair?"
"The men of Xotalanc," answered Techotl, without looking back. "I told you the halls were full
of them." "This wasn't a man," grunted Conan. "It was
something that crawled, and it was as cold as ice to the touch. I think I cut it asunder.
It fell back on the men who were following us, and must have killed one of them in its
death throes." Techotl's head *** back, his face ashy
again. Convulsively he quickened his pace. "It was the Crawler! A monster they have brought
out of the catacombs to aid them! What it is, we do not know, but we have found our
people hideously slain by it. In Set's name, hasten! If they put it on our trail, it will
follow us to the very doors of Tecuhltli!" "I doubt it," grunted Conan. "That was a shrewd
cut I dealt it on the stair." "Hasten! Hasten!" groaned Techotl.
They ran through a series of green-lit chambers, traversed a broad hall, and halted before
a giant bronze door. Techotl said: "This is Tecuhltli!"
End of Part 2
Chapter 3. The People of the Feud
Techotl smote on the bronze door with his clenched hand, and then turned sidewise, so
that he could watch back along the hall. "Men have been smitten down before this door,
when they thought they were safe," he said. "Why don't they open the door?" asked Conan.
"They are looking at us through the Eye," answered Techotl. "They are puzzled at the
sight of you." He lifted his voice and called: "Open the door, Xecelan! It is I, Techotl,
with friends from the great world beyond the forest!—They will open," he assured his
allies. "They'd better do it in a hurry, then," said
Conan grimly. "I hear something crawling along the floor beyond the hall."
Techotl went ashy again and attacked the door with his fists, screaming: "Open, you fools,
open! The Crawler is at our heels!" Even as he beat and shouted, the great bronze
door swung noiselessly back, revealing a heavy chain across the entrance, over which spear-heads
bristled and fierce countenances regarded them intently for an instant. Then the chain
was dropped and Techotl grasped the arms of his friends in a nervous frenzy and fairly
dragged them over the threshold. A glance over his shoulder just as the door was closing
showed Conan the long dim vista of the hall, and dimly framed at the other end an ophidian
shape that writhed slowly and painfully into view, flowing in a dull-hued length from a
chamber door, its hideous blood-stained head wagging drunkenly. Then the closing door shut
off the view. Inside the square chamber into which they
had come heavy bolts were drawn across the door, and the chain locked into place. The
door was made to stand the battering of a siege. Four men stood on guard, of the same
lank-haired, dark-skinned breed as Techotl, with spears in their hands and swords at their
hips. In the wall near the door there was a complicated contrivance of mirrors which
Conan guessed was the Eye Techotl had mentioned, so arranged that a narrow, crystal-paned slot
in the wall could be looked through from within without being discernible from without. The
four guardsmen stared at the strangers with wonder, but asked no question, nor did Techotl
vouchsafe any information. He moved with easy confidence now, as if he had shed his cloak
of indecision and fear the instant he crossed the threshold.
"Come!" he urged his new-found friends, but Conan glanced toward the door.
"What about those fellows who were following us? Won't they try to storm that door?"
Techotl shook his head. "They know they cannot break down the Door
of the Eagle. They will flee back to Xotalanc, with their crawling fiend. Come! I will take
you to the rulers of Tecuhltli."
One of the four guards opened the door opposite the one by which they had entered, and they
passed through into a hallway which, like most of the rooms on that level, was lighted
by both the slot-like skylights and the clusters of winking fire-gems. But unlike the other
rooms they had traversed, this hall showed evidences of occupation. Velvet tapestries
adorned the glossy jade walls, rich rugs were on the crimson floors, and the ivory seats,
benches and divans were littered with satin cushions.
The hall ended in an ornate door, before which stood no guard. Without ceremony Techotl thrust
the door open and ushered his friends into a broad chamber, where some thirty dark-skinned
men and women lounging on satin-covered couches sprang up with exclamations of amazement.
The men, all except one, were of the same type as Techotl, and the women were equally
dark and strange-eyed, though not unbeautiful in a weird dark way. They wore sandals, golden
breast-plates, and scanty silk skirts supported by gem-crusted girdles, and their black manes,
cut square at their naked shoulders, were bound with silver circlets.
On a wide ivory seat on a jade dais sat a man and a woman who differed subtly from the
others. He was a giant, with an enormous sweep of breast and the shoulders of a bull. Unlike
the others, he was bearded, with a thick, blue-black beard which fell almost to his
broad girdle. He wore a robe of purple silk which reflected changing sheens of color with
his every movement, and one wide sleeve, drawn back to his elbow, revealed a forearm massive
with corded muscles. The band which confined his blue-black locks was set with glittering
jewels. The woman beside him sprang to her feet with
a startled exclamation as the strangers entered, and her eyes, passing over Conan, fixed themselves
with burning intensity on Valeria. She was tall and lithe, by far the most beautiful
woman in the room. She was clad more *** even than the others; for instead of a skirt
she wore merely a broad strip of gilt-worked purple cloth fastened to the middle of her
girdle which fell below her knees. Another strip at the back of her girdle completed
that part of her costume, which she wore with a cynical indifference. Her breast-plates
and the circlet about her temples were adorned with gems. In her eyes alone of all the dark-skinned
people there lurked no brooding gleam of madness. She spoke no word after her first exclamation;
she stood tensely, her hands clenched, staring at Valeria.
The man on the ivory seat had not risen. "Prince Olmec," spoke Techotl, bowing low,
with arms outspread and the palms of his hands turned upward, "I bring allies from the world
beyond the forest. In the Chamber of Tezcoti the Burning Skull slew Chicmec, my companion——"
"The Burning Skull!" It was a shuddering whisper of fear from the people of Tecuhltli.
"Aye! Then came I, and found Chicmec lying with his throat cut. Before I could flee,
the Burning Skull came upon me, and when I looked upon it my blood became as ice and
the marrow of my bones melted. I could neither fight nor run. I could only await the stroke.
Then came this white-skinned woman and struck him down with her sword; and lo, it was only
a dog of Xotalanc with white paint upon his skin and the living skull of an ancient wizard
upon his head! Now that skull lies in many pieces, and the dog who wore it is a dead
man!" An indescribably fierce exultation edged the
last sentence, and was echoed in the low, savage exclamations from the crowding listeners.
"But wait!" exclaimed Techotl. "There is more! While I talked with the woman, four Xotalancas
came upon us! One I slew—there is the stab in my thigh to prove how desperate was the
fight. Two the woman killed. But we were hard pressed when this man came into the fray and
split the skull of the fourth! Aye! Five crimson nails there are to be driven into the pillar
of vengeance!" He pointed at a black column of ebony which
stood behind the dais. Hundreds of red dots scarred its polished surface—the bright
scarlet heads of heavy copper nails driven into the black wood.
"Five red nails for five Xotalanca lives!" exulted Techotl, and the horrible exultation
in the faces of the listeners made them inhuman. "Who are these people?" asked Olmec, and his
voice was like the low, deep rumble of a distant bull. None of the people of Xuchotl spoke
loudly. It was as if they had absorbed into their souls the silence of the empty halls
and deserted chambers. "I am Conan, a Cimmerian," answered the barbarian
briefly. "This woman is Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, an Aquilonian pirate. We are
deserters from an army on the Darfar border, far to the north, and are trying to reach
the coast." The woman on the dais spoke loudly, her words
tripping in her haste. "You can never reach the coast! There is no
escape from Xuchotl! You will spend the rest of your lives in this city!"
"What do you mean?" growled Conan, clapping his hand to his hilt and stepping about so
as to face both the dais and the rest of the room. "Are you telling us we're prisoners?"
"She did not mean that," interposed Olmec. "We are your friends. We would not restrain
you against your will. But I fear other circumstances will make it impossible for you to leave Xuchotl."
His eyes flickered to Valeria, and he lowered them quickly.
"This woman is Tascela," he said. "She is a princess of Tecuhltli. But let food and
drink be brought our guests. Doubtless they are hungry, and weary from their long travels."
He indicated an ivory table, and after an exchange of glances, the adventurers seated
themselves. The Cimmerian was suspicious. His fierce blue eyes roved about the chamber,
and he kept his sword close to his hand. But an invitation to eat and drink never found
him backward. His eyes kept wandering to Tascela, but the princess had eyes only for his white-skinned
companion.
Techotl, who had bound a strip of silk about his wounded thigh, placed himself at the table
to attend to the wants of his friends, seeming to consider it a privilege and honor to see
after their needs. He inspected the food and drink the others brought in gold vessels and
dishes, and tasted each before he placed it before his guests. While they ate, Olmec sat
in silence on his ivory seat, watching them from under his broad black brows. Tascela
sat beside him, chin cupped in her hands and her elbows resting on her knees. Her dark,
enigmatic eyes, burning with a mysterious light, never left Valeria's supple figure.
Behind her seat a sullen handsome girl waved an ostrich-plume fan with a slow rhythm.
The food was fruit of an exotic kind unfamiliar to the wanderers, but very palatable, and
the drink was a light crimson wine that carried a heady tang.
"You have come from afar," said Olmec at last. "I have read the books of our fathers. Aquilonia
lies beyond the lands of the Stygians and the Shemites, beyond Argos and Zingara; and
Cimmeria lies beyond Aquilonia." "We have each a roving foot," answered Conan
carelessly. "How you won through the forest is a wonder
to me," quoth Olmec. "In bygone days a thousand fighting-men scarcely were able to carve a
road through its perils." "We encountered a bench-legged monstrosity
about the size of a mastodon," said Conan casually, holding out his wine goblet which
Techotl filled with evident pleasure. "But when we'd killed it we had no further trouble."
The wine vessel slipped from Techotl's hand to crash on the floor. His dusky skin went
ashy. Olmec started to his feet, an image of stunned amazement, and a low gasp of awe
or terror breathed up from the others. Some slipped to their knees as if their legs would
not support them. Only Tascela seemed not to have heard. Conan glared about him bewilderedly.
"What's the matter? What are you gaping about?" "You—you slew the dragon-god?"
"God? I killed a dragon. Why not? It was trying to gobble us up."
"But dragons are immortal!" exclaimed Olmec. "They slay each other, but no man ever killed
a dragon! The thousand fighting-men of our ancestors who fought their way to Xuchotl
could not prevail against them! Their swords broke like twigs against their scales!"
"If your ancestors had thought to dip their spears in the poisonous juice of Derketa's
Apples," quoth Conan, with his mouth full, "and jab them in the eyes or mouth or somewhere
like that, they'd have seen that dragons are not more immortal than any other chunk of
beef. The carcass lies at the edge of the trees, just within the forest. If you don't
believe me, go and look for yourself." Olmec shook his head, not in disbelief but
in wonder. "It was because of the dragons that our ancestors
took refuge in Xuchotl," said he. "They dared not pass through the plain and plunge into
the forest beyond. Scores of them were seized and devoured by the monsters before they could
reach the city." "Then your ancestors didn't build Xuchotl?"
asked Valeria. "It was ancient when they first came into
the land. How long it had stood here, not even its degenerate inhabitants knew."
"Your people came from Lake Zuad?" questioned Conan.
"Aye. More than half a century ago a tribe of the Tlazitlans rebelled against the Stygian
king, and, being defeated in battle, fled southward. For many weeks they wandered over
grasslands, desert and hills, and at last they came into the great forest, a thousand
fighting-men with their women and children. "It was in the forest that the dragons fell
upon them, and tore many to pieces; so the people fled in a frenzy of fear before them,
and at last came into the plain and saw the city of Xuchotl in the midst of it.
"They camped before the city, not daring to leave the plain, for the night was made hideous
with the noise of the battling monsters throughout the forest. They made war incessantly upon
one another. Yet they came not into the plain. "The people of the city shut their gates and
shot arrows at our people from the walls. The Tlazitlans were imprisoned on the plain,
as if the ring of the forest had been a great wall; for to venture into the woods would
have been madness. "That night there came secretly to their camp
a slave from the city, one of their own blood, who with a band of exploring soldiers had
wandered into the forest long before, when he was a young man. The dragons had devoured
all his companions, but he had been taken into the city to dwell in servitude. His name
was Tolkemec." A flame lighted the dark eyes at mention of the name, and some of the people
muttered obscenely and spat. "He promised to open the gates to the warriors. He asked
only that all captives taken be delivered into his hands.
"At dawn he opened the gates. The warriors swarmed in and the halls of Xuchotl ran red.
Only a few hundred folk dwelt there, decaying remnants of a once great race. Tolkemec said
they came from the east, long ago, from Old Kosala, when the ancestors of those who now
dwell in Kosala came up from the south and drove forth the original inhabitants of the
land. They wandered far westward and finally found this forest-girdled plain, inhabited
then by a tribe of black people. "These they enslaved and set to building a
city. From the hills to the east they brought jade and marble and lapis lazuli, and gold,
silver and copper. Herds of elephants provided them with ivory. When their city was completed,
they slew all the black slaves. And their magicians made a terrible magic to guard the
city; for by their necromantic arts they re-created the dragons which had once dwelt in this lost
land, and whose monstrous bones they found in the forest. Those bones they clothed in
flesh and life, and the living beasts walked the earth as they walked it when Time was
young. But the wizards wove a spell that kept them in the forest and they came not into
the plain.
"So for many centuries the people of Xuchotl dwelt in their city, cultivating the fertile
plain, until their wise men learned how to grow fruit within the city—fruit which is
not planted in soil, but obtains its nourishment out of the air—and then they let the irrigation
ditches run dry, and dwelt more and more in luxurious sloth, until decay seized them.
They were a dying race when our ancestors broke through the forest and came into the
plain. Their wizards had died, and the people had forgot their ancient necromancy. They
could fight neither by sorcery nor the sword. "Well, our fathers slew the people of Xuchotl,
all except a hundred which were given living into the hands of Tolkemec, who had been their
slave; and for many days and nights the halls re-echoed to their screams under the agony
of his tortures. "So the Tlazitlans dwelt here, for a while
in peace, ruled by the brothers Tecuhltli and Xotalanc, and by Tolkemec. Tolkemec took
a girl of the tribe to wife, and because he had opened the gates, and because he knew
many of the arts of the Xuchotlans, he shared the rule of the tribe with the brothers who
had led the rebellion and the flight. "For a few years, then, they dwelt at peace
within the city, doing little but eating, drinking and making love, and raising children.
There was no necessity to till the plain, for Tolkemec taught them how to cultivate
the air-devouring fruits. Besides, the slaying of the Xuchotlans broke the spell that held
the dragons in the forest, and they came nightly and bellowed about the gates of the city.
The plain ran red with the blood of their eternal warfare, and it was then that——"
He bit his tongue in the midst of the sentence, then presently continued, but Valeria and
Conan felt that he had checked an admission he had considered unwise.
"Five years they dwelt in peace. Then"—Olmec's eyes rested briefly on the silent woman at
his side—"Xotalanc took a woman to wife, a woman whom both Tecuhltli and old Tolkemec
desired. In his madness, Tecuhltli stole her from her husband. Aye, she went willingly
enough. Tolkemec, to spite Xotalanc, aided Tecuhltli. Xotalanc demanded that she be given
back to him, and the council of the tribe decided that the matter should be left to
the woman. She chose to remain with Tecuhltli. In wrath Xotalanc sought to take her back
by force, and the retainers of the brothers came to blows in the Great Hall.
"There was much bitterness. Blood was shed on both sides. The quarrel became a feud,
the feud an open war. From the welter three factions emerged—Tecuhltli, Xotalanc, and
Tolkemec. Already, in the days of peace, they had divided the city between them. Tecuhltli
dwelt in the western quarter of the city, Xotalanc in the eastern, and Tolkemec with
his family by the southern gate. "Anger and resentment and jealousy blossomed
into bloodshed and *** and ***. Once the sword was drawn there was no turning back;
for blood called for blood, and vengeance followed swift on the heels of atrocity. Tecuhltli
fought with Xotalanc, and Tolkemec aided first one and then the other, betraying each faction
as it fitted his purposes. Tecuhltli and his people withdrew into the quarter of the western
gate, where we now sit. Xuchotl is built in the shape of an oval. Tecuhltli, which took
its name from its prince, occupies the western end of the oval. The people blocked up all
doors connecting the quarter with the rest of the city, except one on each floor, which
could be defended easily. They went into the pits below the city and built a wall cutting
off the western end of the catacombs, where lie the bodies of the ancient Xuchotlans,
and of those Tlazitlans slain in the feud. They dwelt as in a besieged castle, making
sorties and forays on their enemies. "The people of Xotalanc likewise fortified
the eastern quarter of the city, and Tolkemec did likewise with the quarter by the southern
gate. The central part of the city was left bare and uninhabited. Those empty halls and
chambers became a battleground, and a region of brooding terror.
"Tolkemec warred on both clans. He was a fiend in the form of a human, worse than Xotalanc.
He knew many secrets of the city he never told the others. From the crypts of the catacombs
he plundered the dead of their grisly secrets—secrets of ancient kings and wizards, long forgotten
by the degenerate Xuchotlans our ancestors slew. But all his magic did not aid him the
night we of Tecuhltli stormed his castle and butchered all his people. Tolkemec we tortured
for many days." His voice sank to a caressing slur, and a
far-away look grew in his eyes, as if he looked back over the years to a scene which caused
him intense pleasure. "Aye, we kept the life in him until he screamed
for death as for a bride. At last we took him living from the torture chamber and cast
him into a dungeon for the rats to gnaw as he died. From that dungeon, somehow, he managed
to escape, and dragged himself into the catacombs. There without doubt he died, for the only
way out of the catacombs beneath Tecuhltli is through Tecuhltli, and he never emerged
by that way. His bones were never found, and the superstitious among our people swear that
his ghost haunts the crypts to this day, wailing among the bones of the dead. Twelve years
ago we butchered the people of Tolkemec, but the feud raged on between Tecuhltli and Xotalanc,
as it will rage until the last man, the last woman is dead.
"It was fifty years ago that Tecuhltli stole the wife of Xotalanc. Half a century the feud
has endured. I was born in it. All in this chamber, except Tascela, were born in it.
We expect to die in it. "We are a dying race, even as those Xuchotlans
our ancestors slew. When the feud began there were hundreds in each faction. Now we of Tecuhltli
number only these you see before you, and the men who guard the four doors: forty in
all. How many Xotalancas there are we do not know, but I doubt if they are much more numerous
than we. For fifteen years no children have been born to us, and we have seen none among
the Xotalancas. "We are dying, but before we die we will slay
as many of the men of Xotalanc as the gods permit."
And with his weird eyes blazing, Olmec spoke long of that grisly feud, fought out in silent
chambers and dim halls under the blaze of the green fire-jewels, on floors smoldering
with the flames of hell and splashed with deeper crimson from severed veins. In that
long butchery a whole generation had perished. Xotalanc was dead, long ago, slain in a grim
battle on an ivory stair. Tecuhltli was dead, flayed alive by the maddened Xotalancas who
had captured him. Without emotion Olmec told of hideous battles
fought in black corridors, of ambushes on twisting stairs, and red butcheries. With
a redder, more abysmal gleam in his deep dark eyes he told of men and women flayed alive,
mutilated and dismembered, of captives howling under tortures so ghastly that even the barbarous
Cimmerian grunted. No wonder Techotl had trembled with the terror of capture. Yet he had gone
forth to slay if he could, driven by hate that was stronger than his fear. Olmec spoke
further, of dark and mysterious matters, of black magic and wizardry conjured out of the
black night of the catacombs, of weird creatures invoked out of darkness for horrible allies.
In these things the Xotalancas had the advantage, for it was in the eastern catacombs where
lay the bones of the greatest wizards of the ancient Xuchotlans, with their immemorial
secrets.
Valeria listened with morbid fascination. The feud had become a terrible elemental power
driving the people of Xuchotl inexorably on to doom and extinction. It filled their whole
lives. They were born in it, and they expected to die in it. They never left their barricaded
castle except to steal forth into the Halls of Silence that lay between the opposing fortresses,
to slay and be slain. Sometimes the raiders returned with frantic captives, or with grim
tokens of victory in fight. Sometimes they did not return at all, or returned only as
severed limbs cast down before the bolted bronze doors. It was a ghastly, unreal nightmare
existence these people lived, shut off from the rest of the world, caught together like
rabid rats in the same trap, butchering one another through the years, crouching and creeping
through the sunless corridors to maim and torture and ***.
While Olmec talked, Valeria felt the blazing eyes of Tascela fixed upon her. The princess
seemed not to hear what Olmec was saying. Her expression, as he narrated victories or
defeats, did not mirror the wild rage or fiendish exultation that alternated on the faces of
the other Tecuhltli. The feud that was an obsession to her clansmen seemed meaningless
to her. Valeria found her indifferent callousness more repugnant than Olmec's naked ferocity.
"And we can never leave the city," said Olmec. "For fifty years no one has left it except
those——" Again he checked himself. "Even without the peril of the dragons," he
continued, "we who were born and raised in the city would not dare leave it. We have
never set foot outside the walls. We are not accustomed to the open sky and the naked sun.
No; we were born in Xuchotl, and in Xuchotl we shall die."
"Well," said Conan, "with your leave we'll take our chances with the dragons. This feud
is none of our business. If you'll show us to the west gate, we'll be on our way."
Tascela's hands clenched, and she started to speak, but Olmec interrupted her: "It is
nearly nightfall. If you wander forth into the plain by night, you will certainly fall
prey to the dragons." "We crossed it last night, and slept in the
open without seeing any," returned Conan. Tascela smiled mirthlessly. "You dare not
leave Xuchotl!" Conan glared at her with instinctive antagonism;
she was not looking at him, but at the woman opposite him.
"I think they dare," retorted Olmec. "But look you, Conan and Valeria, the gods must
have sent you to us, to cast victory into the laps of the Tecuhltli! You are professional
fighters—why not fight for us? We have wealth in abundance—precious jewels are as common
in Xuchotl as cobblestones are in the cities of the world. Some the Xuchotlans brought
with them from Kosala. Some, like the fire-stones, they found in the hills to the east. Aid us
to wipe out the Xotalancas, and we will give you all the jewels you can carry."
"And will you help us destroy the dragons?" asked Valeria. "With bows and poisoned arrows
thirty men could slay all the dragons in the forest."
"Aye!" replied Olmec promptly. "We have forgotten the use of the bow, in years of hand-to-hand
fighting, but we can learn again." "What do you say?" Valeria inquired of Conan.
"We're both penniless vagabonds," he grinned hardily. "I'd as soon kill Xotalancas as anybody."
"Then you agree?" exclaimed Olmec, while Techotl fairly hugged himself with delight.
"Aye. And now suppose you show us chambers where we can sleep, so we can be fresh tomorrow
for the beginning of the slaying." Olmec nodded, and waved a hand, and Techotl
and a woman led the adventurers into a corridor which led through a door off to the left of
the jade dais. A glance back showed Valeria Olmec sitting on his throne, chin on knotted
fist, staring after them. His eyes burned with a weird flame. Tascela leaned back in
her seat, whispering to the sullen-faced maid, Yasala, who leaned over her shoulder, her
ear to the princess' moving lips.
The hallway was not so broad as most they had traversed, but it was long. Presently
the woman halted, opened a door, and drew aside for Valeria to enter.
"Wait a minute," growled Conan. "Where do I sleep?"
Techotl pointed to a chamber across the hallway, but one door farther down. Conan hesitated,
and seemed inclined to raise an objection, but Valeria smiled spitefully at him and shut
the door in his face. He muttered something uncomplimentary about women in general, and
strode off down the corridor after Techotl. In the ornate chamber where he was to sleep,
he glanced up at the slot-like skylights. Some were wide enough to admit the body of
a slender man, supposing the glass were broken. "Why don't the Xotalancas come over the roofs
and shatter those skylights?" he asked. "They cannot be broken," answered Techotl.
"Besides, the roofs would be hard to clamber over. They are mostly spires and domes and
steep ridges." He volunteered more information about the
"castle" of Tecuhltli. Like the rest of the city it contained four stories, or tiers of
chambers, with towers jutting up from the roof. Each tier was named; indeed, the people
of Xuchotl had a name for each chamber, hall and stair in the city, as people of more normal
cities designate streets and quarters. In Tecuhltli the floors were named The Eagle's
Tier, The Ape's Tier, The Tiger's Tier and The Serpent's Tier, in the order as enumerated,
The Eagle's Tier being the highest, or fourth, floor.
"Who is Tascela?" asked Conan. "Olmec's wife?" Techotl shuddered and glanced furtively about
him before answering. "No. She is—Tascela! She was the wife of
Xotalanc—the woman Tecuhltli stole, to start the feud."
"What are you talking about?" demanded Conan. "That woman is beautiful and young. Are you
trying to tell me that she was a wife fifty years ago?"
"Aye! I swear it! She was a full-grown woman when the Tlazitlans journeyed from Lake Zuad.
It was because the king of Stygia desired her for a concubine that Xotalanc and his
brother rebelled and fled into the wilderness. She is a witch, who possesses the secret of
perpetual youth." "What's that?" asked Conan.
Techotl shuddered again. "Ask me not! I dare not speak. It is too grisly,
even for Xuchotl!" And touching his finger to his lips, he glided
from the chamber.
Chapter 4. Scent of Black Lotus
Valeria unbuckled her sword-belt and laid it with the sheathed weapon on the couch where
she meant to sleep. She noted that the doors were supplied with bolts, and asked where
they led. "Those lead into adjoining chambers," answered
the woman, indicating the doors on right and left. "That one"—pointing to a copper-bound
door opposite that which opened into the corridor—"leads to a corridor which runs to a stair that descends
into the catacombs. Do not fear; naught can harm you here."
"Who spoke of fear?" snapped Valeria. "I just like to know what sort of harbor I'm dropping
anchor in. No, I don't want you to sleep at the foot of my couch. I'm not accustomed to
being waited on—not by women, anyway. You have my leave to go."
Alone in the room, the pirate shot the bolts on all the doors, kicked off her boots and
stretched luxuriously out on the couch. She imagined Conan similarly situated across the
corridor, but her feminine vanity prompted her to visualize him as scowling and muttering
with chagrin as he cast himself on his solitary couch, and she grinned with gleeful malice
as she prepared herself for slumber. Outside, night had fallen. In the halls of
Xuchotl the green fire-jewels blazed like the eyes of prehistoric cats. Somewhere among
the dark towers a night wind moaned like a restless spirit. Through the dim passages
stealthy figures began stealing, like disembodied shadows.
Valeria awoke suddenly on her couch. In the dusky emerald glow of the fire-gems she saw
a shadowy figure bending over her. For a bemused instant the apparition seemed part of the
dream she had been dreaming. She had seemed to lie on the couch in the chamber as she
was actually lying, while over her pulsed and throbbed a gigantic black blossom so enormous
that it hid the ceiling. Its exotic perfume pervaded her being, inducing a delicious,
sensuous languor that was something more and less than sleep. She was sinking into scented
billows of insensible bliss, when something touched her face. So supersensitive were her
drugged senses, that the light touch was like a dislocating impact, jolting her rudely into
full wakefulness. Then it was that she saw, not a gargantuan blossom, but a dark-skinned
woman standing above her. With the realization came anger and instant
action. The woman turned lithely, but before she could run Valeria was on her feet and
had caught her arm. She fought like a wildcat for an instant, and then subsided as she felt
herself crushed by the superior strength of her captor. The pirate wrenched the woman
around to face her, caught her chin with her free hand and forced her captive to meet her
gaze. It was the sullen Yasala, Tascela's maid.
"What the devil were you doing bending over me? What's that in your hand?"
The woman made no reply, but sought to cast away the object. Valeria twisted her arm around
in front of her, and the thing fell to the floor—a great black exotic blossom on a
jade-green stem, large as a woman's head, to be sure, but tiny beside the exaggerated
vision she had seen. "The black lotus!" said Valeria between her
teeth. "The blossom whose scent brings deep sleep. You were trying to drug me! If you
hadn't accidentally touched my face with the petals, you'd have—why did you do it? What's
your game?" Yasala maintained a sulky silence, and with
an oath Valeria whirled her around, forced her to her knees and twisted her arm up behind
her back. "Tell me, or I'll tear your arm out of its
socket!" Yasala squirmed in anguish as her arm was
forced excruciatingly up between her shoulder-blades, but a violent shaking of her head was the
only answer she made. "***!" Valeria cast her from her to sprawl
on the floor. The pirate glared at the prostrate figure with blazing eyes. Fear and the memory
of Tascela's burning eyes stirred in her, rousing all her tigerish instincts of self-preservation.
These people were decadent; any sort of perversity might be expected to be encountered among
them. But Valeria sensed here something that moved behind the scenes, some secret terror
fouler than common degeneracy. Fear and revulsion of this weird city swept her. These people
were neither sane nor normal; she began to doubt if they were even human. Madness smoldered
in the eyes of them all—all except the cruel, cryptic eyes of Tascela, which held secrets
and mysteries more abysmal than madness. She lifted her head and listened intently.
The halls of Xuchotl were as silent as if it were in reality a dead city. The green
jewels bathed the chamber in a nightmare glow, in which the eyes of the woman on the floor
glittered eerily up at her. A thrill of panic throbbed through Valeria, driving the last
vestige of mercy from her fierce soul. "Why did you try to drug me?" she muttered,
grasping the woman's black hair, and forcing her head back to glare into her sullen, long-lashed
eyes. "Did Tascela send you?" No answer. Valeria cursed venomously and slapped
the woman first on one cheek and then the other. The blows resounded through the room,
but Yasala made no outcry. "Why don't you scream?" demanded Valeria savagely.
"Do you fear someone will hear you? Whom do you fear? Tascela? Olmec? Conan?"
Yasala made no reply. She crouched, watching her captor with eyes baleful as those of a
basilisk. Stubborn silence always fans anger. Valeria turned and tore a handful of cords
from a near-by hanging. "You sulky ***!" she said between her teeth.
"I'm going to strip you stark naked and tie you across that couch and whip you until you
tell me what you were doing here, and who sent you!"
Yasala made no verbal protest, nor did she offer any resistance, as Valeria carried out
the first part of her threat with a fury that her captive's obstinacy only sharpened. Then
for a space there was no sound in the chamber except the whistle and crackle of hard-woven
silken cords on naked flesh. Yasala could not move her fast-bound hands or feet. Her
body writhed and quivered under the chastisement, her head swayed from side to side in rhythm
with the blows. Her teeth were sunk into her lower lip and a trickle of blood began as
the punishment continued. But she did not cry out.
The pliant cords made no great sound as they encountered the quivering body of the captive;
only a sharp crackling snap, but each cord left a red streak across Yasala's dark flesh.
Valeria inflicted the punishment with all the strength of her war-hardened arm, with
all the mercilessness acquired during a life where pain and torment were daily happenings,
and with all the cynical ingenuity which only a woman displays toward a woman. Yasala suffered
more, physically and mentally, than she would have suffered under a lash wielded by a man,
however strong. It was the application of this feminine cynicism
which at last tamed Yasala. A low whimper escaped from her lips, and Valeria
paused, arm lifted, and raked back a damp yellow lock. "Well, are you going to talk?"
she demanded. "I can keep this up all night, if necessary!"
"Mercy!" whispered the woman. "I will tell." Valeria cut the cords from her wrists and
ankles, and pulled her to her feet. Yasala sank down on the couch, half reclining on
one bare hip, supporting herself on her arm, and writhing at the contact of her smarting
flesh with the couch. She was trembling in every limb.
"Wine!" she begged, dry-lipped, indicating with a quivering hand a gold vessel on an
ivory table. "Let me drink. I am weak with pain. Then I will tell you all."
Valeria picked up the vessel, and Yasala rose unsteadily to receive it. She took it, raised
it toward her lips—then dashed the contents full into the Aquilonian's face. Valeria reeled
backward, shaking and clawing the stinging liquid out of her eyes. Through a smarting
mist she saw Yasala dart across the room, fling back a bolt, throw open the copper-bound
door and run down the hall. The pirate was after her instantly, sword out and ***
in her heart. But Yasala had the start, and she ran with
the nervous agility of a woman who has just been whipped to the point of hysterical frenzy.
She rounded a corner in the corridor, yards ahead of Valeria, and when the pirate turned
it, she saw only an empty hall, and at the other end a door that gaped blackly. A damp
moldy scent reeked up from it, and Valeria shivered. That must be the door that led to
the catacombs. Yasala had taken refuge among the dead.
Valeria advanced to the door and looked down a flight of stone steps that vanished quickly
into utter blackness. Evidently it was a shaft that led straight to the pits below the city,
without opening upon any of the lower floors. She shivered slightly at the thought of the
thousands of corpses lying in their stone crypts down there, wrapped in their moldering
cloths. She had no intention of groping her way down those stone steps. Yasala doubtless
knew every turn and twist of the subterranean tunnels.
She was turning back, baffled and furious, when a sobbing cry welled up from the blackness.
It seemed to come from a great depth, but human words were faintly distinguishable,
and the voice was that of a woman. "Oh, help! Help, in Set's name! Ahhh!" It trailed away,
and Valeria thought she caught the echo of a ghostly tittering.
Valeria felt her skin crawl. What had happened to Yasala down there in the thick blackness?
There was no doubt that it had been she who had cried out. But what peril could have befallen
her? Was a Xotalanca lurking down there? Olmec had assured them that the catacombs below
Tecuhltli were walled off from the rest, too securely for their enemies to break through.
Besides, that tittering had not sounded like a human being at all.
Valeria hurried back down the corridor, not stopping to close the door that opened on
the stair. Regaining her chamber, she closed the door and shot the bolt behind her. She
pulled on her boots and buckled her sword-belt about her. She was determined to make her
way to Conan's room and urge him, if he still lived, to join her in an attempt to fight
their way out of that city of devils. But even as she reached the door that opened
into the corridor, a long-drawn scream of agony rang through the halls, followed by
the stamp of running feet and the loud clangor of swords.
Chapter 5. Twenty Red Nails
Two warriors lounged in the guardroom on the floor known as the Tier of the Eagle. Their
attitude was casual, though habitually alert. An attack on the great bronze door from without
was always a possibility, but for many years no such assault had been attempted on either
side. "The strangers are strong allies," said one.
"Olmec will move against the enemy tomorrow, I believe."
He spoke as a soldier in a war might have spoken. In the miniature world of Xuchotl
each handful of feudists was an army, and the empty halls between the castles was the
country over which they campaigned. [Illustration: "Even as he shifted, he hurled
the knife."] The other meditated for a space.
"Suppose with their aid we destroy Xotalanc," he said. "What then, Xatmec?"
"Why," returned Xatmec, "we will drive red nails for them all. The captives we will burn
and flay and quarter." "But afterward?" pursued the other. "After
we have slain them all? Will it not seem strange, to have no foes to fight? All my life I have
fought and hated the Xotalancas. With the feud ended, what is left?"
Xatmec shrugged his shoulders. His thoughts had never gone beyond the destruction of their
foes. They could not go beyond that. Suddenly both men stiffened at a noise outside
the door. "To the door, Xatmec!" hissed the last speaker.
"I shall look through the Eye——" Xatmec, sword in hand, leaned against the
bronze door, straining his ear to hear through the metal. His mate looked into the mirror.
He started convulsively. Men were clustered thickly outside the door; grim, dark-faced
men with swords gripped in their teeth—and their fingers thrust into their ears. One
who wore a feathered head-dress had a set of pipes which he set to his lips, and even
as the Tecuhltli started to shout a warning, the pipes began to skirl.
The cry died in the guard's throat as the thin, weird piping penetrated the metal door
and smote on his ears. Xatmec leaned frozen against the door, as if paralyzed in that
position. His face was that of a wooden image, his expression one of horrified listening.
The other guard, farther removed from the source of the sound, yet sensed the horror
of what was taking place, the grisly threat that lay in that demoniac fifing. He felt
the weird strains plucking like unseen fingers at the tissues of his brain, filling him with
alien emotions and impulses of madness. But with a soul-tearing effort he broke the spell,
and shrieked a warning in a voice he did not recognize as his own.
But even as he cried out, the music changed to an unbearable shrilling that was like a
knife in the ear-drums. Xatmec screamed in sudden agony, and all the sanity went out
of his face like a flame blown out in a wind. Like a madman he ripped loose the chain, tore
open the door and rushed out into the hall, sword lifted before his mate could stop him.
A dozen blades struck him down, and over his mangled body the Xotalancas surged into the
guardroom, with a long-drawn, blood-mad yell that sent the unwonted echoes reverberating.
His brain reeling from the shock of it all, the remaining guard leaped to meet them with
goring spear. The horror of the sorcery he had just witnessed was submerged in the stunning
realization that the enemy were in Tecuhltli. And as his spearhead ripped through a dark-skinned
belly he knew no more, for a swinging sword crushed his skull, even as wild-eyed warriors
came pouring in from the chambers behind the guardroom.
It was the yelling of men and the clanging of steel that brought Conan bounding from
his couch, wide awake and broadsword in hand. In an instant he had reached the door and
flung it open, and was glaring out into the corridor just as Techotl rushed up it, eyes
blazing madly. "The Xotalancas!" he screamed, in a voice
hardly human, "They are within the door!" Conan ran down the corridor, even as Valeria
emerged from her chamber. "What the devil is it?" she called.
"Techotl says the Xotalancas are in," he answered hurriedly. "That racket sounds like it."
With the Tecuhltli on their heels they burst into the throne room and were confronted by
a scene beyond the most frantic dream of blood and fury. Twenty men and women, their black
hair streaming, and the white skulls gleaming on their ***, were locked in combat with
the people of Tecuhltli. The women on both sides fought as madly as the men, and already
the room and the hall beyond were strewn with corpses.
Olmec, naked but for a breech-clout, was fighting before his throne, and as the adventurers
entered, Tascela ran from an inner chamber with a sword in her hand.
Xatmec and his mate were dead, so there was none to tell the Tecuhltli how their foes
had found their way into their citadel. Nor was there any to say what had prompted that
mad attempt. But the losses of the Xotalancas had been greater, their position more desperate,
than the Tecuhltli had known. The maiming of their scaly ally, the destruction of the
Burning Skull, and the news, gasped by a dying man, that mysterious white-skin allies had
joined their enemies, had driven them to the frenzy of desperation and the wild determination
to die dealing death to their ancient foes. The Tecuhltli, recovering from the first stunning
shock of the surprise that had swept them back into the throne room and littered the
floor with their corpses, fought back with an equally desperate fury, while the door-guards
from the lower floors came racing to hurl themselves into the fray. It was the death-fight
of rabid wolves, blind, panting, merciless. Back and forth it surged, from door to dais,
blades whickering and striking into flesh, blood spurting, feet stamping the crimson
floor where redder pools were forming. Ivory tables crashed over, seats were splintered,
velvet hangings torn down were stained red. It was the bloody climax of a bloody half-century,
and every man there sensed it. But the conclusion was inevitable. The Tecuhltli
outnumbered the invaders almost two to one, and they were heartened by that fact and by
the entrance into the mêlée of their light-skinned allies.
These crashed into the fray with the devastating effect of a hurricane plowing through a grove
of saplings. In sheer strength no three Tlazitlans were a match for Conan, and in spite of his
weight he was quicker on his feet than any of them. He moved through the whirling, eddying
mass with the surety and destructiveness of a gray wolf amidst a pack of alley curs, and
he strode over a wake of crumpled figures. Valeria fought beside him, her lips smiling
and her eyes blazing. She was stronger than the average man, and far quicker and more
ferocious. Her sword was like a living thing in her hand. Where Conan beat down opposition
by the sheer weight and power of his blows, breaking spears, splitting skulls and cleaving
bosoms to the breast-bone, Valeria brought into action a finesse of sword-play that dazzled
and bewildered her antagonists before it slew them. Again and again a warrior, heaving high
his heavy blade, found her point in his jugular before he could strike. Conan, towering above
the field, strode through the welter smiting right and left, but Valeria moved like an
illusive phantom, constantly shifting, and thrusting and slashing as she shifted. Swords
missed her again and again as the wielders flailed the empty air and died with her point
in their hearts or throats, and her mocking laughter in their ears.
Neither sex nor condition was considered by the maddened combatants. The five women of
the Xotalancas were down with their throats cut before Conan and Valeria entered the fray,
and when a man or woman went down under the stamping feet, there was always a knife ready
for the helpless throat, or a sandaled foot eager to crush the prostrate skull.
From wall to wall, from door to door rolled the waves of combat, spilling over into adjoining
chambers. And presently only Tecuhltli and their white-skinned allies stood upright in
the great throne room. The survivors stared bleakly and blankly at each other, like survivors
after Judgment Day or the destruction of the world. On legs wide-braced, hands gripping
notched and dripping swords, blood trickling down their arms, they stared at one another
across the mangled corpses of friends and foes. They had no breath left to shout, but
a *** mad howling rose from their lips. It was not a human cry of triumph. It was
the howling of a rabid wolf-pack stalking among the bodies of its victims.
Conan caught Valeria's arm and turned her about.
"You've got a stab in the calf of your leg," he growled.
She glanced down, for the first time aware of a stinging in the muscles of her leg. Some
dying man on the floor had fleshed his dagger with his last effort.
"You look like a butcher yourself," she laughed. He shook a red shower from his hands.
"Not mine. Oh, a scratch here and there. Nothing to bother about. But that calf ought to be
bandaged."
Olmec came through the litter, looking like a ghoul with his naked massive shoulders splashed
with blood, and his black beard dabbled in crimson. His eyes were red, like the reflection
of flame on black water. "We have won!" he croaked dazedly. "The feud
is ended! The dogs of Xotalanc lie dead! Oh, for a captive to flay alive! Yet it is good
to look upon their dead faces. Twenty dead dogs! Twenty red nails for the black column!"
"You'd best see to your wounded," grunted Conan, turning away from him. "Here, girl,
let me see that leg." "Wait a minute!" she shook him off impatiently.
The fire of fighting still burned brightly in her soul. "How do we know these are all
of them? These might have come on a raid of their own."
"They would not split the clan on a foray like this," said Olmec, shaking his head,
and regaining some of his ordinary intelligence. Without his purple robe the man seemed less
like a prince than some repellent beast of prey. "I will stake my head upon it that we
have slain them all. There were less of them than I dreamed, and they must have been desperate.
But how came they in Tecuhltli?" Tascela came forward, wiping her sword on
her naked thigh, and holding in her other hand an object she had taken from the body
of the feathered leader of the Xotalancas. "The pipes of madness," she said. "A warrior
tells me that Xatmec opened the door to the Xotalancas and was cut down as they stormed
into the guardroom. This warrior came to the guardroom from the inner hall just in time
to see it happen and to hear the last of a weird strain of music which froze his very
soul. Tolkemec used to talk of these pipes, which the Xuchotlans swore were hidden somewhere
in the catacombs with the bones of the ancient wizard who used them in his lifetime. Somehow
the dogs of Xotalanc found them and learned their secret."
"Somebody ought to go to Xotalanc and see if any remain alive," said Conan. "I'll go
if somebody will guide me." Olmec glanced at the remnants of his people.
There were only twenty left alive, and of these several lay groaning on the floor. Tascela
was the only one of the Tecuhltli who had escaped without a wound. The princess was
untouched, though she had fought as savagely as any.
"Who will go with Conan to Xotalanc?" asked Olmec.
Techotl limped forward. The wound in his thigh had started bleeding afresh, and he had another
gash across his ribs. "I will go!"
"No, you won't," vetoed Conan. "And you're not going either, Valeria. In a little while
that leg will be getting stiff." "I will go," volunteered a warrior, who was
knotting a bandage about a slashed forearm. "Very well, Yanath. Go with the Cimmerian.
And you, too, Topal." Olmec indicated another man whose injuries were slight. "But first
aid us to lift the badly wounded on these couches where we may bandage their hurts."
This was done quickly. As they stooped to pick up a woman who had been stunned by a
war-club, Olmec's beard brushed Topal's ear. Conan thought the prince muttered something
to the warrior, but he could not be sure. A few moments later he was leading his companions
down the hall. Conan glanced back as he went out the door,
at that shambles where the dead lay on the smoldering floor, blood-stained dark limbs
knotted in attitudes of fierce muscular effort, dark faces frozen in masks of hate, glassy
eyes glaring up at the green fire-jewels which bathed the ghastly scene in a dusky emerald
witch-light. Among the dead the living moved aimlessly, like people moving in a trance.
Conan heard Olmec call a woman and direct her to bandage Valeria's leg. The pirate followed
the woman into an adjoining chamber, already beginning to limp slightly.
Warily the two Tecuhltli led Conan along the hall beyond the bronze door, and through chamber
after chamber shimmering in the green fire. They saw no one, heard no sound. After they
crossed the Great Hall which bisected the city from north to south, their caution was
increased by the realization of their nearness to enemy territory. But chambers and halls
lay empty to their wary gaze, and they came at last along a broad dim hallway and halted
before a bronze door similar to the Eagle Door of Tecuhltli. Gingerly they tried it,
and it opened silently under their fingers. Awed, they stared into the green-lit chambers
beyond. For fifty years no Tecuhltli had entered those halls save as a prisoner going to a
hideous doom. To go to Xotalanc had been the ultimate horror that could befall a man of
the western castle. The terror of it had stalked through their dreams since earliest childhood.
To Yanath and Topal that bronze door was like the portal of hell.
They cringed back, unreasoning horror in their eyes, and Conan pushed past them and strode
into Xotalanc. Timidly they followed him. As each man set
foot over the threshold he stared and glared wildly about him. But only their quick, hurried
breathing disturbed the silence. They had come into a square guardroom, like
that behind the Eagle Door of Tecuhltli, and, similarly, a hall ran away from it to a broad
chamber that was a counterpart of Olmec's throne room.
Conan glanced down the hall with its rugs and divans and hangings, and stood listening
intently. He heard no noise, and the rooms had an empty feel. He did not believe there
were any Xotalancas left alive in Xuchotl. "Come on," he muttered, and started down the
hall. He had not gone far when he was aware that
only Yanath was following him. He wheeled back to see Topal standing in an attitude
of horror, one arm out as if to fend off some threatening peril, his distended eyes fixed
with hypnotic intensity on something protruding from behind a divan.
"What the devil?" Then Conan saw what Topal was staring at, and he felt a faint twitching
of the skin between his giant shoulders. A monstrous head protruded from behind the divan,
a reptilian head, broad as the head of a crocodile, with down-curving fangs that projected over
the lower jaw. But there was an unnatural limpness about the thing, and the hideous
eyes were glazed. Conan peered behind the couch. It was a great
serpent which lay there limp in death, but such a serpent as he had never seen in his
wanderings. The reek and chill of the deep black earth were about it, and its color was
an indeterminable hue which changed with each new angle from which he surveyed it. A great
wound in the neck showed what had caused its death.
"It is the Crawler!" whispered Yanath. "It's the thing I slashed on the stair," grunted
Conan. "After it trailed us to the Eagle Door, it dragged itself here to die. How could the
Xotalancas control such a brute?" The Tecuhltli shivered and shook their heads.
"They brought it up from the black tunnels below the catacombs. They discovered secrets
unknown to Tecuhltli." "Well, it's dead, and if they'd had any more
of them, they'd have brought them along when they came to Tecuhltli. Come on."
They crowded close at his heels as he strode down the hall and thrust on the silver-worked
door at the other end. "If we don't find anybody on this floor,"
he said, "we'll descend into the lower floors. We'll explore Xotalanc from the roof to the
catacombs. If Xotalanc is like Tecuhltli, all the rooms and halls in this tier will
be lighted—what the devil!" They had come into the broad throne chamber,
so similar to that one in Tecuhltli. There were the same jade dais and ivory seat, the
same divans, rugs and hangings on the walls. No black, red-scarred column stood behind
the throne-dais, but evidences of the grim feud were not lacking.
Ranged along the wall behind the dais were rows of glass-covered shelves. And on those
shelves hundreds of human heads, perfectly preserved, stared at the startled watchers
with emotionless eyes, as they had stared for only the gods knew how many months and
years.
Topal muttered a curse, but Yanath stood silent, the mad light growing in his wide eyes. Conan
frowned, knowing that Tlazitlan sanity was hung on a hair-trigger.
Suddenly Yanath pointed to the ghastly relics with a twitching finger.
"There is my brother's head!" he murmured. "And there is my father's younger brother!
And there beyond them is my sister's eldest son!"
Suddenly he began to weep, dry-eyed, with harsh, loud sobs that shook his frame. He
did not take his eyes from the heads. His sobs grew shriller, changed to frightful,
high-pitched laughter, and that in turn became an unbearable screaming. Yanath was stark
mad. Conan laid a hand on his shoulder, and as
if the touch had released all the frenzy in his soul, Yanath screamed and whirled, striking
at the Cimmerian with his sword. Conan parried the blow, and Topal tried to catch Yanath's
arm. But the madman avoided him and with froth flying from his lips, he drove his sword deep
into Topal's body. Topal sank down with a groan, and Yanath whirled for an instant like
a crazy dervish; then he ran at the shelves and began hacking at the glass with his sword,
screeching blasphemously. Conan sprang at him from behind, trying to
catch him unaware and disarm him, but the madman wheeled and lunged at him, screaming
like a lost soul. Realizing that the warrior was hopelessly insane, the Cimmerian side-stepped,
and as the maniac went past, he swung a cut that severed the shoulder-bone and breast,
and dropped the man dead beside his dying victim.
Conan bent over Topal, seeing that the man was at his last gasp. It was useless to seek
to stanch the blood gushing from the horrible wound.
"You're done for, Topal," grunted Conan. "Any word you want to send to your people?"
"Bend closer," gasped Topal, and Conan complied—and an instant later caught the man's wrist as
Topal struck at his breast with a dagger. "Crom!" swore Conan. "Are you mad, too?"
"Olmec ordered it!" gasped the dying man. "I know not why. As we lifted the wounded
upon the couches he whispered to me, bidding me to slay you as we returned to Tecuhltli——"
And with the name of his clan on his lips, Topal died.
Conan scowled down at him in puzzlement. This whole affair had an aspect of lunacy. Was
Olmec mad, too? Were all the Tecuhltli madder than he had realized? With a shrug of his
shoulders he strode down the hall and out of the bronze door, leaving the dead Tecuhltli
lying before the staring dead eyes of their kinsmen's heads.
Conan needed no guide back through the labyrinth they had traversed. His primitive instinct
of direction led him unerringly along the route they had come. He traversed it as warily
as he had before, his sword in his hand, and his eyes fiercely searching each shadowed
nook and corner; for it was his former allies he feared now, not the ghosts of the slain
Xotalancas. He had crossed the Great Hall and entered
the chambers beyond when he heard something moving ahead of him—something which gasped
and panted, and moved with a strange, floundering, scrambling noise. A moment later Conan saw
a man crawling over the flaming floor toward him—a man whose progress left a broad bloody
smear on the smoldering surface. It was Techotl and his eyes were already glazing; from a
deep gash in his breast blood gushed steadily between the fingers of his clutching hand.
With the other he clawed and hitched himself along.
"Conan," he cried chokingly, "Conan! Olmec has taken the yellow-haired woman!"
"So that's why he told Topal to kill me!" murmured Conan, dropping to his knee beside
the man, who his experienced eye told him was dying. "Olmec isn't so mad as I thought."
Techotl's groping fingers plucked at Conan's arm. In the cold, loveless and altogether
hideous life of the Tecuhltli his admiration and affection for the invaders from the outer
world formed a warm, human oasis, constituted a tie that connected him with a more natural
humanity that was totally lacking in his fellows, whose only emotions were hate, *** and the
urge of sadistic cruelty. "I sought to oppose him," gurgled Techotl,
blood bubbling frothily to his lips. "But he struck me down. He thought he had slain
me, but I crawled away. Ah, Set, how far I have crawled in my own blood! Beware, Conan!
Olmec may have set an ambush for your return! Slay Olmec! He is a beast. Take Valeria and
flee! Fear not to traverse the forest. Olmec and Tascela lied about the dragons. They slew
each other years ago, all save the strongest. For a dozen years there has been only one
dragon. If you have slain him, there is naught in the forest to harm you. He was the god
Olmec worshipped; and Olmec fed human sacrifices to him, the very old and the very young, bound
and hurled from the wall. Hasten! Olmec has taken Valeria to the Chamber of the——"
His head slumped down and he was dead before it came to rest on the floor.
Conan sprang up, his eyes like live coals. So that was Olmec's game, having first used
the strangers to destroy his foes! He should have known that something of the sort would
be going on in that black-bearded degenerate's mind.
The Cimmerian started toward Tecuhltli with reckless speed. Rapidly he reckoned the numbers
of his former allies. Only twenty-one, counting Olmec, had survived that fiendish battle in
the throne room. Three had died since, which left seventeen enemies with which to reckon.
In his rage Conan felt capable of accounting for the whole clan single-handed.
But the innate craft of the wilderness rose to guide his berserk rage. He remembered Techotl's
warning of an ambush. It was quite probable that the prince would make such provisions,
on the chance that Topal might have failed to carry out his order. Olmec would be expecting
him to return by the same route he had followed in going to Xotalanc.
Conan glanced up at a skylight under which he was passing and caught the blurred glimmer
of stars. They had not yet begun to pale for dawn. The events of the night had been crowded
into a comparatively short space of time. He turned aside from his direct course and
descended a winding staircase to the floor below. He did not know where the door was
to be found that let into the castle on that level, but he knew he could find it. How he
was to force the locks he did not know; he believed that the doors of Tecuhltli would
all be locked and bolted, if for no other reason than the habits of half a century.
But there was nothing else but to attempt it.
Sword in hand, he hurried noiselessly on through a maze of green-lit or shadowy rooms and halls.
He knew he must be near Tecuhltli, when a sound brought him up short. He recognized
it for what it was—a human being trying to cry out through a stifling gag. It came
from somewhere ahead of him, and to the left. In those deathly-still chambers a small sound
carried a long way. Conan turned aside and went seeking after
the sound, which continued to be repeated. Presently he was glaring through a doorway
upon a weird scene. In the room into which he was looking a low rack-like frame of iron
lay on the floor, and a giant figure was bound prostrate upon it. His head rested on a bed
of iron spikes, which were already crimson-pointed with blood where they had pierced his scalp.
A peculiar harness-like contrivance was fastened about his head, though in such a manner that
the leather band did not protect his scalp from the spikes. This harness was connected
by a slender chain to the mechanism that upheld a huge iron ball which was suspended above
the captive's hairy breast. As long as the man could force himself to remain motionless
the iron ball hung in its place. But when the pain of the iron points caused him to
lift his head, the ball lurched downward a few inches. Presently his aching neck muscles
would no longer support his head in its unnatural position and it would fall back on the spikes
again. It was obvious that eventually the ball would crush him to a pulp, slowly and
inexorably. The victim was gagged, and above the gag his great black ox-eyes rolled wildly
toward the man in the doorway, who stood in silent amazement. The man on the rack was
Olmec, prince of Tecuhltli.
Chapter 6. The Eyes of Tascela
"Why did you bring me into this chamber to bandage my legs?" demanded Valeria. "Couldn't
you have done it just as well in the throne room?"
She sat on a couch with her wounded leg extended upon it, and the Tecuhltli woman had just
bound it with silk bandages. Valeria's red-stained sword lay on the couch beside her.
She frowned as she spoke. The woman had done her task silently and efficiently, but Valeria
liked neither the lingering, caressing touch of her slim fingers nor the expression in
her eyes. "They have taken the rest of the wounded into
the other chambers," answered the woman in the soft speech of the Tecuhltli women, which
somehow did not suggest either softness or gentleness in the speakers. A little while
before, Valeria had seen this same woman stab a Xotalanca woman through the breast and stamp
the eyeballs out of a wounded Xotalanca man. "They will be carrying the corpses of the
dead down into the catacombs," she added, "lest the ghosts escape into the chambers
and dwell there." "Do you believe in ghosts?" asked Valeria.
"I know the ghost of Tolkemec dwells in the catacombs," she answered with a shiver. "Once
I saw it, as I crouched in a crypt among the bones of a dead queen. It passed by in the
form of an ancient man with flowing white beard and locks, and luminous eyes that blazed
in the darkness. It was Tolkemec; I saw him living when I was a child and he was being
tortured." Her voice sank to a fearful whisper: "Olmec
laughs, but I know Tolkemec's ghost dwells in the catacombs! They say it is rats which
gnaw the flesh from the bones of the newly dead—but ghosts eat flesh. Who knows but
that——" She glanced up quickly as a shadow fell across
the couch. Valeria looked up to see Olmec gazing down at her. The prince had cleansed
his hands, torso and beard of the blood that had splashed them; but he had not donned his
robe, and his great dark-skinned hairless body and limbs renewed the impression of strength
*** in its nature. His deep black eyes burned with a more elemental light, and there
was the suggestion of a twitching in the fingers that tugged at his thick blue-black beard.
He stared fixedly at the woman, and she rose and glided from the chamber. As she passed
through the door she cast a look over her shoulder at Valeria, a glance full of cynical
derision and obscene mockery. "She has done a clumsy job," criticized the
prince, coming to the divan and bending over the bandage. "Let me see——"
With a quickness amazing in one of his bulk he snatched her sword and threw it across
the chamber. His next move was to catch her in his giant arms.
Quick and unexpected as the move was, she almost matched it; for even as he grabbed
her, her dirk was in her hand and she stabbed murderously at his throat. More by luck than
skill he caught her wrist, and then began a savage wrestling-match. She fought him with
fists, feet, knees, teeth and nails, with all the strength of her magnificent body and
all the knowledge of hand-to-hand fighting she had acquired in her years of roving and
fighting on sea and land. It availed her nothing against his brute strength. She lost her dirk
in the first moment of contact, and thereafter found herself powerless to inflict any appreciable
pain on her giant attacker. The blaze in his weird black eyes did not
alter, and their expression filled her with fury, fanned by the sardonic smile that seemed
carved upon his bearded lips. Those eyes and that smile contained all the cruel cynicism
that seethes below the surface of a sophisticated and degenerate race, and for the first time
in her life Valeria experienced fear of a man. It was like struggling against some huge
elemental force; his iron arms thwarted her efforts with an ease that sent panic racing
through her limbs. He seemed impervious to any pain she could indict. Only once, when
she sank her white teeth savagely into his wrist so that the blood started, did he react.
And that was to buffet her brutally upon the side of the head with his open hand, so that
stars flashed before her eyes and her head rolled on her shoulders.
Her shirt had been torn open in the struggle, and with cynical cruelty he rasped his thick
beard across her bare ***, bringing the blood to suffuse the fair skin, and fetching
a cry of pain and outraged fury from her. Her convulsive resistance was useless; she
was crushed down on a couch, disarmed and panting, her eyes blazing up at him like the
eyes of a trapped tigress. A moment later he was hurrying from the chamber,
carrying her in his arms. She made no resistance, but the smoldering of her eyes showed that
she was unconquered in spirit, at least. She had not cried out. She knew that Conan was
not within call, and it did not occur to her that any in Tecuhltli would oppose their prince.
But she noticed that Olmec went stealthily, with his head on one side as if listening
for sounds of pursuit, and he did not return to the throne chamber. He carried her through
a door that stood opposite that through which he had entered, crossed another room and began
stealing down a hall. As she became convinced that he feared some opposition to the abduction,
she threw back her head and screamed at the top of her *** voice.
She was rewarded by a slap that half stunned her, and Olmec quickened his pace to a shambling
run. But her cry had been echoed, and twisting
her head about, Valeria, through the tears and stars that partly blinded her, saw Techotl
limping after them. Olmec turned with a snarl, shifting the woman
to an uncomfortable and certainly undignified position under one huge arm, where he held
her writhing and kicking vainly, like a child. "Olmec!" protested Techotl. "You cannot be
such a dog as to do this thing! She is Conan's woman! She helped us slay the Xotalancas,
and——"
Without a word Olmec balled his free hand into a huge fist and stretched the wounded
warrior senseless at his feet. Stooping, and hindered not at all by the struggles and imprecations
of his captive, he drew Techotl's sword from its sheath and stabbed the warrior in the
breast. Then casting aside the weapon he fled on along the corridor. He did not see a woman's
dark face peer cautiously after him from behind a hanging. It vanished, and presently Techotl
groaned and stirred, rose dazedly and staggered drunkenly away, calling Conan's name.
Olmec hurried on down the corridor, and descended a winding ivory staircase. He crossed several
corridors and halted at last in a broad chamber whose doors were veiled with heavy tapestries,
with one exception—a heavy bronze door similar to the Door of the Eagle on the upper floor.
He was moved to rumble, pointing to it: "That is one of the outer doors of Tecuhltli. For
the first time in fifty years it is unguarded. We need not guard it now, for Xotalanc is
no more." "Thanks to Conan and me, you bloody rogue!"
sneered Valeria, trembling with fury and the shame of physical coercion. "You treacherous
dog! Conan will cut your throat for this!" Olmec did not bother to voice his belief that
Conan's own gullet had already been severed according to his whispered command. He was
too utterly cynical to be at all interested in her thoughts or opinions. His flame-lit
eyes devoured her, dwelling burningly on the generous expanses of clear white flesh exposed
where her shirt and breeches had been torn in the struggle.
"Forget Conan," he said thickly. "Olmec is lord of Xuchotl. Xotalanc is no more. There
will be no more fighting. We shall spend our lives in drinking and love-making. First let
us drink!" He seated himself on an ivory table and pulled
her down on his knees, like a dark-skinned satyr with a white nymph in his arms. Ignoring
her un-nymphlike profanity, he held her helpless with one great arm about her waist while the
other reached across the table and secured a vessel of wine.
"Drink!" he commanded, forcing it to her lips, as she writhed her head away.
The liquor slopped over, stinging her lips, splashing down on her naked ***.
"Your guest does not like your wine, Olmec," spoke a cool, sardonic voice.
Olmec stiffened; fear grew in his flaming eyes. Slowly he swung his great head about
and stared at Tascela who posed negligently in the curtained doorway, one hand on her
smooth hip. Valeria twisted herself about in his iron grip, and when she met the burning
eyes of Tascela, a chill tingled along her supple spine. New experiences were flooding
Valeria's proud soul that night. Recently she had learned to fear a man; now she knew
what it was to fear a woman. Olmec sat motionless, a gray pallor growing
under his swarthy skin. Tascela brought her other hand from behind her and displayed a
small gold vessel. "I feared she would not like your wine, Olmec,"
purred the princess, "so I brought some of mine, some I brought with me long ago from
the shores of Lake Zuad—do you understand, Olmec?"
Beads of sweat stood out suddenly on Olmec's brow. His muscles relaxed, and Valeria broke
away and put the table between them. But though reason told her to dart from the room, some
fascination she could not understand held her rigid, watching the scene.
Tascela came toward the seated prince with a swaying, undulating walk that was mockery
in itself. Her voice was soft, slurringly caressing, but her eyes gleamed. Her slim
fingers stroked his beard lightly. "You are selfish, Olmec," she crooned, smiling.
"You would keep our handsome guest to yourself, though you knew I wished to entertain her.
You are much at fault, Olmec!" The mask dropped for an instant; her eyes
flashed, her face was contorted and with an appalling show of strength her hand locked
convulsively in his beard and tore out a great handful. This evidence of unnatural strength
was no more terrifying than the momentary baring of the hellish fury that raged under
her bland exterior. Olmec lurched up with a roar, and stood swaying
like a bear, his mighty hands clenching and unclenching.
"***!" His booming voice filled the room. "Witch! She-devil! Tecuhltli should have slain
you fifty years ago! Begone! I have endured too much from you! This white-skinned ***
is mine! Get hence before I slay you!" The princess laughed and dashed the blood-stained
strands into his face. Her laughter was less merciful than the ring of flint on steel.
"Once you spoke otherwise, Olmec," she taunted. "Once, in your youth, you spoke words of love.
Aye, you were my lover once, years ago, and because you loved me, you slept in my arms
beneath the enchanted lotus—and thereby put into my hands the chains that enslaved
you. You know you cannot withstand me. You know I have but to gaze into your eyes, with
the mystic power a priest of Stygia taught me, long ago, and you are powerless. You remember
the night beneath the black lotus that waved above us, stirred by no worldly breeze; you
scent again the unearthly perfumes that stole and rose like a cloud about you to enslave
you. You cannot fight against me. You are my slave as you were that night—as you shall
be so long as you shall live, Olmec of Xuchotl!"
Her voice had sunk to a murmur like the rippling of a stream running through starlit darkness.
She leaned close to the prince and spread her long tapering fingers upon his giant breast.
His eyes glazed, his great hands fell limply to his sides.
With a smile of cruel malice, Tascela lifted the vessel and placed it to his lips.
"Drink!" Mechanically the prince obeyed. And instantly
the glaze passed from his eyes and they were flooded with fury, comprehension and an awful
fear. His mouth gaped, but no sound issued. For an instant he reeled on buckling knees,
and then fell in a sodden heap on the floor. His fall jolted Valeria out of her paralysis.
She turned and sprang toward the door, but with a movement that would have shamed a leaping
panther, Tascela was before her. Valeria struck at her with her clenched fist, and all the
power of her supple body behind the blow. It would have stretched a man senseless on
the floor. But with a lithe twist of her torso, Tascela avoided the blow and caught the pirate's
wrist. The next instant Valeria's left hand was imprisoned, and holding her wrists together
with one hand, Tascela calmly bound them with a cord she drew from her girdle. Valeria thought
she had tasted the ultimate in humiliation already that night, but her shame at being
manhandled by Olmec was nothing to the sensations that now shook her supple frame. Valeria had
always been inclined to despise the other members of her sex; and it was overwhelming
to encounter another woman who could handle her like a child. She scarcely resisted at
all when Tascela forced her into a chair and drawing her bound wrists down between her
knees, fastened them to the chair. Casually stepping over Olmec, Tascela walked
to the bronze door and shot the bolt and threw it open, revealing a hallway without.
"Opening upon this hall," she remarked, speaking to her feminine captive for the first time,
"there is a chamber which in old times was used as a torture room. When we retired into
Tecuhltli, we brought most of the apparatus with us, but there was one piece too heavy
to move. It is still in working order. I think it will be quite convenient now."
An understanding flame of terror rose in Olmec's eyes. Tascela strode back to him, bent and
gripped him by the hair. "He is only paralyzed temporarily," she remarked
conversationally. "He can hear, think, and feel—aye, he can feel very well indeed!"
With which sinister observation she started toward the door, dragging the giant bulk with
an ease that made the pirate's eyes dilate. She passed into the hall and moved down it
without hesitation, presently disappearing with her captive into a chamber that opened
into it, and whence shortly thereafter issued the clank of iron.
Valeria swore softly and tugged vainly, with her legs braced against the chair. The cords
that confined her were apparently unbreakable. Tascela presently returned alone; behind her
a muffled groaning issued from the chamber. She closed the door but did not bolt it. Tascela
was beyond the grip of habit, as she was beyond the touch of other human instincts and emotions.
Valeria sat dumbly, watching the woman in whose slim hands, the pirate realized, her
destiny now rested. Tascela grasped her yellow locks and forced
back her head, looking impersonally down into her face. But the glitter in her dark eyes
was not impersonal. "I have chosen you for a great honor," she
said. "You shall restore the youth of Tascela. Oh, you stare at that! My appearance is that
of youth, but through my veins creeps the sluggish chill of approaching age, as I have
felt it a thousand times before. I am old, so old I do not remember my childhood. But
I was a girl once, and a priest of Stygia loved me, and gave me the secret of immortality
and youth everlasting. He died, then—some said by poison. But I dwelt in my palace by
the shores of Lake Zuad and the passing years touched me not. So at last a king of Stygia
desired me, and my people rebelled and brought me to this land. Olmec called me a princess.
I am not of royal blood. I am greater than a princess. I am Tascela, whose youth your
own glorious youth shall restore." Valeria's tongue clove to the roof of her
mouth. She sensed here a mystery darker than the degeneracy she had anticipated.
The taller woman unbound the Aquilonian's wrists and pulled her to her feet. It was
not fear of the dominant strength that lurked in the princess' limbs that made Valeria a
helpless, quivering captive in her hands. It was the burning, hypnotic, terrible eyes
of Tascela.
Chapter 7. He Comes from the Dark "Well, I'm a Kushite!"
Conan glared down at the man on the iron rack. "What the devil are you doing on that thing?"
Incoherent sounds issued from behind the gag and Conan bent and tore it away, evoking a
bellow of fear from the captive; for his action caused the iron ball to lurch down until it
nearly touched the broad breast. "Be careful, for Set's sake!" begged Olmec.
"What for?" demanded Conan. "Do you think I care what happens to you? I only wish I
had time to stay here and watch that chunk of iron grind your guts out. But I'm in a
hurry. Where's Valeria?" "Loose me!" urged Olmec, "I will tell you
all!" "Tell me first."
"Never!" The prince's heavy jaws set stubbornly. "All right." Conan seated himself on a near-by
bench. "I'll find her myself, after you've been reduced to a jelly. I believe I can speed
up that process by twisting my sword-point around in your ear," he added, extending the
weapon experimentally. "Wait!" Words came in a rush from the captive's
ashy lips. "Tascela took her from me. I've never been anything but a puppet in Tascela's
hands." "Tascela?" snorted Conan, and spat. "Why,
the filthy——" "No, no!" panted Olmec. "It's worse than you
think. Tascela is old—centuries old. She renews her life and her youth by the sacrifice
of beautiful young women. That's one thing that has reduced the clan to its present state.
She will draw the essence of Valeria's life into her own body, and bloom with fresh vigor
and beauty." "Are the doors locked?" asked Conan, thumbing
his sword edge. "Aye! But I know a way to get into Tecuhltli.
Only Tascela and I know, and she thinks me helpless and you slain. Free me and I swear
I will help you rescue Valeria. Without my help you cannot win into Tecuhltli; for even
if you tortured me into revealing the secret, you couldn't work it. Let me go, and we will
steal on Tascela and kill her before she can work magic—before she can fix her eyes on
us. A knife thrown from behind will do the work. I should have killed her thus long ago,
but I feared that without her to aid us the Xotalancas would overcome us. She needed my
help, too; that's the only reason she let me live this long. Now neither needs the other,
and one must die. I swear that when we have slain the witch, you and Valeria shall go
free without harm. My people will obey me when Tascela is dead."
Conan stooped and cut the ropes that held the prince, and Olmec slid cautiously from
under the great ball and rose, shaking his head like a bull and muttering imprecations
as he fingered his lacerated scalp. Standing shoulder to shoulder the two men presented
a formidable picture of primitive power. Olmec was as tall as Conan, and heavier; but there
was something repellent about the Tlazitlan, something abysmal and monstrous that contrasted
unfavorably with the clean-cut, compact hardness of the Cimmerian. Conan had discarded the
remnants of his tattered, blood-soaked shirt, and stood with his remarkable muscular development
impressively revealed. His great shoulders were as broad as those of Olmec, and more
cleanly outlined, and his huge breast arched with a more impressive sweep to a hard waist
that lacked the paunchy thickness of Olmec's midsection. He might have been an image of
primal strength cut out of bronze. Olmec was darker, but not from the burning of the sun.
If Conan was a figure out of the dawn of Time, Olmec was a shambling, somber shape from the
darkness of Time's pre-dawn. "Lead on," demanded Conan. "And keep ahead
of me. I don't trust you any farther than I can throw a bull by the tail."
Olmec turned and stalked on ahead of him, one hand twitching slightly as it plucked
at his matted beard.
Olmec did not lead Conan back to the bronze door, which the prince naturally supposed
Tascela had locked, but to a certain chamber on the border of Tecuhltli.
"This secret has been guarded for half a century," he said. "Not even our own clan knew of it,
and the Xotalancas never learned. Tecuhltli himself built this secret entrance, afterward
slaying the slaves who did the work; for he feared that he might find himself locked out
of his own kingdom some day because of the spite of Tascela, whose passion for him soon
changed to hate. But she discovered the secret, and barred the hidden door against him one
day as he fled back from an unsuccessful raid, and the Xotalancas took him and flayed him.
But once, spying upon her, I saw her enter Tecuhltli by this route, and so learned the
secret." He pressed upon a gold ornament in the wall,
and a panel swung inward, disclosing an ivory stair leading upward.
"This stair is built within the wall," said Olmec. "It leads up to a tower upon the roof,
and thence other stairs wind down to the various chambers. Hasten!"
"After you, comrade!" retorted Conan satirically, swaying his broadsword as he spoke, and Olmec
shrugged his shoulders and stepped onto the staircase. Conan instantly followed him, and
the door shut behind them. Far above a cluster of fire-jewels made the staircase a well of
dusky dragon-light. They mounted until Conan estimated that they
were above the level of the fourth floor, and then came out into a cylindrical tower,
in the domed roof of which was set the bunch of fire-jewels that lighted the stair. Through
gold-barred windows, set with unbreakable crystal panes, the first windows he had seen
in Xuchotl, Conan got a glimpse of high ridges, domes and more towers, looming darkly against
the stars. He was looking across the roofs of Xuchotl.
Olmec did not look through the windows. He hurried down one of the several stairs that
wound down from the tower, and when they had descended a few feet, this stair changed into
a narrow corridor that wound tortuously on for some distance. It ceased at a steep flight
of steps leading downward. There Olmec paused. Up from below, muffled, but unmistakable,
welled a woman's scream, edged with fright, fury and shame. And Conan recognized Valeria's
voice. In the swift rage roused by that cry, and
the amazement of wondering what peril could wring such a shriek from Valeria's reckless
lips, Conan forgot Olmec. He pushed past the prince and started down the stair. Awakening
instinct brought him about again, just as Olmec struck with his great mallet-like fist.
The blow, fierce and silent, was aimed at the base of Conan's brain. But the Cimmerian
wheeled in time to receive the buffet on the side of his neck instead. The impact would
have snapped the vertebræ of a lesser man. As it was, Conan swayed backward, but even
as he reeled he dropped his sword, useless at such close quarters, and grasped Olmec's
extended arm, dragging the prince with him as he fell. Headlong they went down the steps
together, in a revolving whirl of limbs and heads and bodies. And as they went Conan's
iron fingers found and locked in Olmec's bull-throat. The barbarian's neck and shoulder felt numb
from the sledge-like impact of Olmec's huge fist, which had carried all the strength of
the massive forearm, thick triceps and great shoulder. But this did not affect his ferocity
to any appreciable extent. Like a bulldog he hung on grimly, shaken and battered and
beaten against the steps as they rolled, until at last they struck an ivory panel-door at
the bottom with such an impact that they splintered it down its full length and crashed through
its ruins. But Olmec was already dead, for those iron fingers had crushed out his life
and broken his neck as they fell.
Conan rose, shaking the splinters from his great shoulder, blinking blood and dust out
of his eyes. He was in the great throne room. There were
fifteen people in that room besides himself. The first person he saw was Valeria. A curious
black altar stood before the throne-dais. Ranged about it, seven black candles in golden
candlesticks sent up oozing spirals of thick green smoke, disturbingly scented. These spirals
united in a cloud near the ceiling, forming a smoky arch above the altar. On that altar
lay Valeria, stark naked, her white flesh gleaming in shocking contrast to the glistening
ebon stone. She was not bound. She lay at full length, her arms stretched out above
her head to their fullest extent. At the head of the altar knelt a young man, holding her
wrists firmly. A young woman knelt at the other end of the altar, grasping her ankles.
Between them she could neither rise nor move. Eleven men and women of Tecuhltli knelt dumbly
in a semicircle, watching the scene with hot, lustful eyes.
On the ivory throne-seat Tascela lolled. Bronze bowls of incense rolled their spirals about
her; the wisps of smoke curled about her naked limbs like caressing fingers. She could not
sit still; she squirmed and shifted about with sensuous abandon, as if finding pleasure
in the contact of the smooth ivory with her sleek flesh.
The crash of the door as it broke beneath the impact of the hurtling bodies caused no
change in the scene. The kneeling men and women merely glanced incuriously at the corpse
of their prince and at the man who rose from the ruins of the door, then swung their eyes
greedily back to the writhing white shape on the black altar. Tascela looked insolently
at him, and sprawled back on her seat, laughing mockingly.
"***!" Conan saw red. His hands clenched into iron hammers as he started for her. With
his first step something clanged loudly and steel bit savagely into his leg. He stumbled
and almost fell, checked in his headlong stride. The jaws of an iron trap had closed on his
leg, with teeth that sank deep and held. Only the ridged muscles of his calf saved the bone
from being splintered. The accursed thing had sprung out of the smoldering floor without
warning. He saw the slots now, in the floor where the jaws had lain, perfectly camouflaged.
"Fool!" laughed Tascela. "Did you think I would not guard against your possible return?
Every door in this chamber is guarded by such traps. Stand there and watch now, while I
fulfill the destiny of your handsome friend! Then I will decide your own."
Conan's hand instinctively sought his belt, only to encounter an empty scabbard. His sword
was on the stair behind him. His poniard was lying back in the forest, where the dragon
had torn it from his jaw. The steel teeth in his leg were like burning coals, but the
pain was not as savage as the fury that seethed in his soul. He was trapped, like a wolf.
If he had had his sword he would have hewn off his leg and crawled across the floor to
slay Tascela. Valeria's eyes rolled toward him with mute appeal, and his own helplessness
sent red waves of madness surging through his brain.
Dropping on the knee of his free leg, he strove to get his fingers between the jaws of the
trap, to tear them apart by sheer strength. Blood started from beneath his finger nails,
but the jaws fitted close about his leg in a circle whose segments jointed perfectly,
contracted until there was no space between his mangled flesh and the fanged iron. The
sight of Valeria's naked body added flame to the fire of his rage.
Tascela ignored him. Rising languidly from her seat she swept the ranks of her subjects
with a searching glance, and asked: "Where are Xamec, Zlanath and Tachic?"
"They did not return from the catacombs, princess," answered a man. "Like the rest of us, they
bore the bodies of the slain into the crypts, but they have not returned. Perhaps the ghost
of Tolkemec took them." "Be silent, fool!" she ordered harshly. "The
ghost is a myth." She came down from her dais, playing with
a thin gold-hilted dagger. Her eyes burned like nothing on the hither side of hell. She
paused beside the altar and spoke in the tense stillness.
"Your life shall make me young, white woman!" she said. "I shall lean upon your *** and
place my lips over yours, and slowly—ah, slowly!—sink this blade through your heart,
so that your life, fleeing your stiffening body, shall enter mine, making me bloom again
with youth and with life everlasting!" Slowly, like a serpent arching toward its
victim, she bent down through the writhing smoke, closer and closer over the now motionless
woman who stared up into her glowing dark eyes—eyes that grew larger and deeper, blazing
like black moons in the swirling smoke. The kneeling people gripped their hands and
held their breath, tense for the bloody climax, and the only sound was Conan's fierce panting
as he strove to tear his leg from the trap. All eyes were glued on the altar and the white
figure there; the crash of a thunderbolt could hardly have broken the spell, yet it was only
a low cry that shattered the fixity of the scene and brought all whirling about—a low
cry, yet one to make the hair stand up stiffly on the scalp. They looked, and they saw.
Framed in the door to the left of the dais stood a nightmare figure. It was a man, with
a tangle of white hair and a matted white beard that fell over his breast. Rags only
partly covered his gaunt frame, revealing half-naked limbs strangely unnatural in appearance.
The skin was not like that of a normal human. There was a suggestion of scaliness about
it, as if the owner had dwelt long under conditions almost antithetical to those conditions under
which human life ordinarily thrives. And there was nothing at all human about the eyes that
blazed from the tangle of white hair. They were great gleaming disks that stared unwinkingly,
luminous, whitish, and without a hint of normal emotion or sanity. The mouth gaped, but no
coherent words issued—only a high-pitched tittering.
"Tolkemec!" whispered Tascela, livid, while the others crouched in speechless horror.
"No myth, then, no ghost! Set! You have dwelt for twelve years in darkness! Twelve years
among the bones of the dead! What grisly food did you find? What mad travesty of life did
you live, in the stark blackness of that eternal night? I see now why Xamec and Zlanath and
Tachic did not return from the catacombs—and never will return. But why have you waited
so long to strike? Were you seeking something, in the pits? Some secret weapon you knew was
hidden there? And have you found it at last?" That hideous tittering was Tolkemec's only
reply, as he bounded into the room with a long leap that carried him over the secret
trap before the door—by chance, or by some faint recollection of the ways of Xuchotl.
He was not mad, as a man is mad. He had dwelt apart from humanity so long that he was no
longer human. Only an unbroken thread of memory embodied in hate and the urge for vengeance
had connected him with the humanity from which he had been cut off, and held him lurking
near the people he hated. Only that thin string had kept him from racing and prancing off
for ever into the black corridors and realms of the subterranean world he had discovered,
long ago. "You sought something hidden!" whispered Tascela,
cringing back. "And you have found it! You remember the feud! After all these years of
blackness, you remember!" For in the lean hand of Tolkemec now waved
a curious jade-hued wand, on the end of which glowed a *** of crimson shaped like a pomegranate.
She sprang aside as he thrust it out like a spear, and a beam of crimson fire lanced
from the pomegranate. It missed Tascela, but the woman holding Valeria's ankles was in
the way. It smote between her shoulders. There was a sharp crackling sound and the ray of
fire flashed from her *** and struck the black altar, with a snapping of blue sparks.
The woman toppled sidewise, shriveling and withering like a mummy even as she fell.
Valeria rolled from the altar on the other side, and started for the opposite wall on
all fours. For hell had burst loose in the throne room of dead Olmec.
The man who had held Valeria's hands was the next to die. He turned to run, but before
he had taken half a dozen steps, Tolkemec, with an agility appalling in such a frame,
bounded around to a position that placed the man between him and the altar. Again the red
fire-beam flashed and the Tecuhltli rolled lifeless to the floor, as the beam completed
its course with a burst of blue sparks against the altar.
Then began slaughter. Screaming insanely the people rushed about the chamber, caroming
from one another, stumbling and falling. And among them Tolkemec capered and pranced, dealing
death. They could not escape by the doors; for apparently the metal of the portals served
like the metal-veined stone altar to complete the circuit for whatever hellish power flashed
like thunderbolts from the witch-wand the ancient waved in his hand. When he caught
a man or a woman between him and a door or the altar, that one died instantly. He chose
no special victim. He took them as they came, with his rags flapping about his wildly gyrating
limbs, and the gusty echoes of his tittering sweeping the room above the screams. And bodies
fell like falling leaves about the altar and at the doors. One warrior in desperation rushed
at him, lifting a dagger, only to fall before he could strike. But the rest were like crazed
cattle, with no thought for resistance, and no chance of escape.
The last Tecuhltli except Tascela had fallen when the princess reached the Cimmerian and
the girl who had taken refuge beside him. Tascela bent and touched the floor, pressing
a design upon it. Instantly the iron jaws released the bleeding limb and sank back into
the floor. "Slay him if you can!" she panted, and pressed
a heavy knife into his hand. "I have no magic to withstand him!"
With a grunt he sprang before the women, not heeding his lacerated leg in the heat of the
fighting-***. Tolkemec was coming toward him, his weird eyes ablaze, but he hesitated
at the gleam of the knife in Conan's hand. Then began a grim game, as Tolkemec sought
to circle about Conan and get the barbarian between him and the altar or a metal door,
while Conan sought to avoid this and drive home his knife. The women watched tensely,
holding their breath. There was no sound except the rustle and scrape
of quick-shifting feet. Tolkemec pranced and capered no more. He realized that grimmer
game confronted him than the people who had died screaming and fleeing. In the elemental
blaze of the barbarian's eyes he read an intent deadly as his own. Back and forth they weaved,
and when one moved the other moved as if invisible threads bound them together. But all the time
Conan was getting closer and closer to his enemy. Already the coiled muscles of his thighs
were beginning to flex for a spring, when Valeria cried out. For a fleeting instant
a bronze door was in line with Conan's moving body. The red line leaped, searing Conan's
flank as he twisted aside, and even as he shifted he hurled the knife. Old Tolkemec
went down, truly slain at last, the hilt vibrating on his breast.
Tascela sprang—not toward Conan, but toward the wand where it shimmered like a live thing
on the floor. But as she leaped, so did Valeria, with a dagger snatched from a dead man, and
the blade, driven with all the power of the pirate's muscles, impaled the princess of
Tecuhltli so that the point stood out between her ***. Tascela screamed once and fell
dead, and Valeria spurned the body with her heel as it fell.
"I had to do that much, for my own self-respect!" panted Valeria, facing Conan across the limp
corpse. "Well, this cleans up the feud," he grunted.
"It's been a hell of a night! Where did these people keep their food? I'm hungry."
"You need a bandage on that leg." Valeria ripped a length of silk from a hanging and
knotted it about her waist, then tore off some smaller strips which she bound efficiently
about the barbarian's lacerated limb. "I can walk on it," he assured her. "Let's
begone. It's dawn, outside this infernal city. I've had enough of Xuchotl. It's well the
breed exterminated itself. I don't want any of their accursed jewels. They might be haunted."
"There is enough clean loot in the world for you and me," she said, straightening to stand
tall and splendid before him. The old blaze came back in his eyes, and this
time she did not resist as he caught her fiercely in his arms.
"It's a long way to the coast," she said presently, withdrawing her lips from his.
"What matter?" he laughed. "There's nothing we can't conquer. We'll have our feet on a
ship's deck before the Stygians open their ports for the trading season. And then we'll
show the world what plundering means!"
End of Red Nails by Robert E. Howard