Black Tears
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1. The Jaws of the Trap.

The noonday sun blazed down from the fiery dome of the sky. The harsh,
dry sands of Shan-e-Sorkh, the Red Waste, baked in the pitiless blaze
as in a giant oven. Naught moved in the still air; the few thorny
shrubs that crowned the low, gravel-strewn hills, which rose in a wall
at the edge of the Waste, stirred not.

Neither did the soldiers who crouched behind them, watching the trail.

Here some primeval conflict of natural forces had riven a cleft through
the escarpment Ages of erosion had widened this cleft, but it still
formed a narrow pass between steep slopes—a perfect site for an ambush.

The troop of Turanian soldiery had lain hidden atop the hills all
through the hot morning hours. Sweltering in their tunics of chain and
scale mail, they crouched on sore hams and aching knees. Cursing under
his breath, their captain, the Amir Boghra Khan, endured the long,
uncomfortable vigil with them. His throat was as dry as sun-baked
leather; within his mail, his body stewed. In this accursed land of
death and blazing sun, a man could not even sweat comfortably; the
desiccated desert air greedily drank up every drop of moisture, leaving
one as dry as the withered tongue of a Stygian mummy.

Now the amir blinked and rubbed his eyes, squinting against the glare
to see again that tiny flash of light. A forward scout, concealed
behind a dune of red sand, caught the sun in his mirror and flashed a
signal toward his chief, hidden atop the hills.

Now a cloud of dust could be seen. The portly, black-bearded Turanian
nobleman grinned and forgot his discomfort. Surely his traitorous
informant had truly earned the bribe it took to buy him!

Soon, Boghra Khan could discern the long line of Zuagir warriors, robed
in flowing white khalats and mounted on slender desert steeds. As the
band of desert marauders emerged from the cloud of dust raised by the
hoofs of their horses, the Turanian lord could even make out the dark,
lean, hawk-faced visages of his quarry, framed by their flowing
headdresses—so clear was the desert air and so bright the sun.
Satisfaction seethed through his veins like red wine of Aghrapur from
young King Yezdigerd's private cellars.

For years, now, this outlaw band had harried and looted towns and
trading posts and caravan stations along the borders of Turan—first
under that blackhearted Zaporoskan rogue, Olgerd Vladislav; then, a
little more than a year ago, by his successor, Conan. At last, Turanian
spies in villages friendly to the outlaw band had found a corruptible
member of that band—one Vardanes, not a Zuagir but a Zamorian. Vardanes
had been a blood brother to Olgerd, whom Conan had overthrown, and was
hungry for vengeance against the stranger who had usurped the
chieftainship.

Boghra thoughtfully tugged his beard. The Zamorian traitor was a
smiling, laughing villain, dear to a Turanian heart Small, lean, lithe,
and swaggering, handsome and reckless as a young god, Vardanes was an
amusing drinking companion and a devilish fighter but as cold-hearted
and untrustworthy as an adder.

Now the Zuagirs were passing through the defile. And there, at the head
of the outriders, rode Vardanes on a prancing black mare. Boghra Khan
raised a hand to warn his men to be ready. He wanted to let as many as
possible of the Zuagirs enter the pass before closing the trap upon
them. Only Vardanes was to be allowed through. The moment he was beyond
the walls of sandstone, Boghra brought his hand down with a chopping
motion.

"Slay the dogs!" he thundered, rising.

A hail of hissing arrows fell slanting through the sunlight like a
deadly rain. In a second, the Zuagirs were a turmoil of shouting men
and bucking horses. Flight after flight of arrows raked them. Men fell,
clutching at feathered shafts, which sprouted as by magic from their
bodies. Horses screamed as keen barbs gashed their dusty flanks.

Dust rose in a choking cloud, veiling the pass below. So thick it
became that Boghra Khan halted his archers for a moment, lest they
waste their shafts in the murk. And that momentary twinge of thrift was
his undoing. For out of the clamor rose one deep, bellowing voice,
dominating the chaos.

"Up the slopes and at them!"

It was the voice of Conan. An instant later, the giant form of the
Cimmerian himself came charging up the steep slope on a huge, fiery
stallion. One might think that only a fool or a madman would charge
straight up a steep slope of drifting sand and crumbling rock into the
teeth of his foe, but Conan was neither. True, he was wild with
ferocious lust for revenge, but behind his grim, dark face and
smouldering eyes, like blue flames under scowling black brows, the
sharp wit of a seasoned warrior was at work. He knew that often the
only road through an ambush is the unexpected.

Astonished, the Turanian warriors let bows slacken as they stared.
Clawing and scrambling up the steep slopes of the sides of the pass,
out of the dust-clouded floor of the defile, came a howling mob of
frenzied Zuagirs, afoot and mounted, straight at them. In an instant
the desert warriors—more numerous than the amir had expected— came
roaring over the crest, scimitars flashing, cursing and shrieking
bloodthirsty war cries.

Before them all came the giant form of Conan. Arrows had ripped his
white khalat, exposing the glittering black mail that clad his
lion-thewed torso. His wild, unshorn mane streamed out from under his
steel cap like a tattered banner, a chance shaft had torn away his
flowing kaffia. On a wild-eyed stallion, he was upon them like some
demon of myth. He was armed not with the tulwar of the desert folk but
with a great, cross-hilted western broadsword—his favorite among the
many weapons of which he was master. In his scarred fist, this length
of whirling, mirror-bright steel cut a scarlet path through the
Turanians. It rose and fell, spraying scarlet droplets into the desert
air. At every stroke it clove armor and flesh and bone, smashing in a
skull here, lopping a limb there, hurling a third victim mangled and
prone with ribs crushed in.

By the end of a short, swift half-hour it was all over. No Turanians
survived the onslaught save a few who had fled early—and their leader.
With his robe torn away and his face bloody, the limping and disheveled
amir was led before Conan, who sat on his panting steed, "wiping the
gore from his steel with a dead man's khalat.

Conan fixed the wilted lordling with a scornful glance, not unmixed
with sardonic humor.

"So, Boghra, we meet again!" he growled.

The amir blinked with disbelief. "You!" he gasped.

Conan chuckled. A decade before, as a wandering young vagabond, the
Cimmerian had served in the mercenaries of Turan. He had left King
Yildiz's standards rather hurriedly over a little matter of an
officer's mistress—so hurriedly, in fact, that he had failed to settle
a gambling wager with the same amir who stood astonished before him
now. Then, as the merry young scion of a noble house, Boghra Khan and
Conan had been comrades in many an escapade from gaming table to
drinking shop and bawdy house. Now, years older, the same Boghra gaped
up, crushed in battle by an old comrade whose name he had somehow never
connected with that of the terrible leader of the desert tribesmen.

Conan raked him with narrowing eyes. "You were awaiting us here,
weren't you?" he growled.

The amir sagged. He did not wish to give information to the outlaw
leader, even if they were old drinking companions. But he had heard too
many grim tales of the Zuagirs' bloody methods of wringing information
from captives. Fat and soft from years of princely living, the Turanian
officer feared he could not long keep silent under such pressure.

Surprisingly, his cooperation was not needed. Conan had seen Vardanes,
who had curiously requested the post of advance scout that morning,
spur ahead through the further end of the pass just before the trap had
been sprung.

"How much did you pay Vardanes?" Conan demanded suddenly.

"Two hundred silver shekels…" the Turanian mumbled. Then he broke off,
astonished at his own indiscretion. Conan laughed.

"A princely bribe, eh? That smiling rogue—like every Zamorian,
treacherous to the bottom of his rotten black heart! He's never
forgiven me for unseating Olgerd." Conan broke off, leveling a
quizzical glance at the bowed head of the amir. He grinned, not
unkindly. "Nay, berate yourself not, Boghra. You did not betray your
military secrets; I tricked you out of them. You can ride back to
Aghrapur with your soldierly honor intact."

Boghra lifted his head with astonishment. "You will let me live?" he
croaked.

Conan nodded. "Why not? I still owe you a bag of gold from that old
wager, so let me settle the debt this way. But next time, Boghra, have
a care how you set traps for wolves. Sometimes you catch a tiger!"

2. The Land of Ghosts.

Two days of hard riding through the red sands of Shan-e-Sorkh, and
still the desert marauders had not caught up with the traitor. Thirsty
for the sight of Vardanes' blood, Conan pressed his men hard. The cruel
code of the desert demanded the Death of Five Stakes for the man who
betrayed his comrades, and Conan was determined to see the Zamorian pay
that price.

On the evening of the second day, they made camp in the shelter of a
hillock of parched sandstone, which thrust up from the rust-colored
sands like the stump of some ruined ancient tower. Conan's hard face,
burnt almost black by the desert sun, was lined with fatigue. His
stallion panted at the edge of exhaustion, slobbering through frothy
lips as he set the water bag to the animal's muzzle. Behind him, men
stretched weary legs and aching arms. They watered the horses and lit a
campfire to keep the wild desert dogs away. He heard the creak of ropes
as saddlebags disgorged tents and cooking equipment.

Sand crunched under a sandaled heel behind him. He turned to see the
lined, bewhiskered face of one of his lieutenants. This was Gomer, a
sloe-eyed, hook-nosed Shemite with greasy, blue-black ringlets escaping
from the folds of his headdress.

"Well?" growled Conan as he rubbed down the tired stallion with long,
slow strokes of a stiff brush.

The Shemite shrugged. "He's still making a straight path to the
southwest," he said. "The black-hearted devil must be made of iron."

Conan laughed harshly. "His mare may be iron, but not Vardanes. He's
flesh and blood, as you shall see when we spread him out to the stakes
and slit his guts for the vultures!"

Gomer's sad eyes were haunted by a vague fear. "Conan, will you not
give over this quest? Each day takes us deeper into this land of sun
and sand, where only vipers and scorpions can live. By Dagon's tail,
unless we turn back, we shall leave our bones here to bleach forever!"

"Not so," grunted the Cimmerian. "If any bones are left to bleach here,
they'll be Zamorian. Don't fret, Gomer; we'll catch up to the traitor
yet. Tomorrow, perhaps. He can't keep up this pace forever."

"Nor can we!" Gomer protested. He paused, feeling Conan's smoldering
blue gaze searching his face.

"But that's not all that's eating at your heart, is it?" demanded
Conan. "Speak up, man. Out with it!"

The burly Shemite shrugged eloquently. "Well, no. I —the men feel—" His
voice trailed away.

"Speak, man or I'll kick it out of you!"

"This—this is the Makan-e-Mordan!" Gomer burst out "I know. I've heard
of this 'Place of Ghosts' before. So what? Are you afraid of old
crones' fables?"

Gomer looked unhappy. "They are not just fables, Conan. You are no
Zuagir; you do not know this land and its tenors, as do we who have
long dwelt in the wilderness. For thousands of years, this land has
been a cursed and haunted place, and with every hour that we ride, we
go deeper into this evil land. The men fear to tell you, but they are
half mad with terror."

"With childish superstition, you mean," snarled Conan. "I know they've
been quaking in their boots over legends of ghosts and goblins. I've
heard stories of this country, too, Gomer. But they are only tales to
frighten babes, not warriors! Tell your comrades to beware. My wrath is
stronger than all the ghosts that ever died!"

"But, Conan!"

Conan cut him off with a coarse word. "Enough of your childish night
fears, Shemite! I have sworn by Crom and Mitra that I will have the
blood of that Zamorian traitor or die trying! And if I have to scatter
a little Zuagir blood along the way, I'll not scruple to do so. Now
cease yammering and come share a bottle with me. My throat's as dry as
this blasted desert, and all this talk dries it out the more."

Clapping Gomer on the shoulder, Conan strode away toward the campfire,
where the men were unpacking stores of smoked meat, dried figs and
dates, goat cheese, and leathern bottles of wine.

But the Shemite did not rejoin the Cimmerian at once. He stood long,
gazing after the swaggering chieftain he had followed for nearly two
years, ever since they had found Conan crucified near the walls of
Khauran. Conan had been a guard captain in the service of Queen Taramis
of Khauran until her throne was usurped by the witch Salome, leagued
with Constantius the Falcon, the Kothic voivode of the Free Companies.

When Conan, realizing the substitution, took his stand with Taramis and
was defeated, Constantius had him crucified outside the city. By
chance, Olgerd Vladislav, chief of the local band of Zuagir outlaws,
had come riding by and had cut Conan down from his cross, saying that
if he survived his wounds he might join their band. Conan not only
survived but also proved so able a leader that in time he ousted Olgerd
from the band, which he had led from this day to this.

But this was the end of his leadership. Gomer of Akkharia sighed
deeply. Conan had ridden before them for the last two days, sunk in his
own grim lust for revenge. He did not realize the depth of the passion
in the hearts of the Zuagirs. Gomer knew that, although they loved
Conan, their superstitious terrors had driven them to the brink of
mutiny and murder. To the scarlet gates of Hell they might follow the
Cimmerian—but no further into the Land of Ghosts.

The Shemite idolized his chieftain. But, knowing that no threat would
swerve the Cimmerian from the path of vengeance, he could think of but
one way to save Conan from the knives of his own men. From a pocket in
his white khalat he withdrew a small, stoppered phial of green powder.
Secreting it in his palm, he rejoined Conan by the campfire, to share a
bottle of wine with him.

3. Invisible Death.

When Conan awoke, the sun was high. Heat waves shimmered across the
barren sands. The air was hot and still and dry, as if the heavens were
an inverted brazen bowl heated to incandescence.

Conan staggered to his knees and clutched his throbbing brow. His
aching skull felt as if he had been clubbed.

He lurched to his feet and stood swaying. Through bleary eyes, squinted
against the glare, he looked slowly about him. He was alone in this
cursed, waterless land.

He croaked a curse on the superstitious Zuagirs. The entire troop had
decamped, taking with them all the gear, the horses, and the
provisions. Two goatskin water bags lay beside him. These, his mail
shirt and khalat, and his broadsword were all that his erstwhile
comrades had left him.

He fell to his knees again and pulled the stopper from one of the water
bags. Swirling the lukewarm fluid about, he rinsed the vile taste from
his mouth and drank sparingly, reluctantly replacing the stopper before
his fiery thirst was half assuaged. Although he longed to up-end the
bag over his aching head, reason asserted its dominance. If he were
lost in this sandy waste, every drop would be needed for survival.

Through the blinding headache and the groggy state of his wits, he
could see what must have occurred. His Zuagirs were more fearful of
this dubious realm than he had supposed, despite Gomer's warnings. He
had made a serious—perhaps a fatal—error. He had underestimated the
power of superstition over his desert warriors and overestimated his
power to control and dominate them. With a dull groan, Conan cursed his
own arrogant, bull-headed pride. Unless he learned better, it might
some day be the death of him.

And perhaps this was the day. He took a long, stony look at his
chances. They seemed slim. He had water for two days on short
rations—three, if he would risk madness by limiting his intake further.
No food and no horse, which meant he must wend afoot.

Well then, on he would go. But whither? The obvious answer was: back
the way he had come. But there were arguments against that course. Of
these, the most eloquent was that of distance. They had ridden for two
days after leaving the last water hole. A man on foot could travel at
best at only half the speed of a horse. For him, then, to return by the
route they had come would mean he must travel for at least two full
days without any water at all…

Conan rubbed his jaw reflectively, trying to forget the throbbing in
his skull and to cudgel some sense out of his groggy wits. Retracing
his steps would not be the best idea, for he knew there was no water
closer than four days' march away.

He looked ahead, where the trail of the fleeing Vardanes stretched
straight from this place to the horizon.

Perhaps he should continue to follow the Zamorian. While the path led
into unknown country, the mere fact that the land was unknown was in
its favor. An oasis might lie just beyond the nearest dunes. It was
hard to reach a sensible decision under such circumstances, but Conan
resolved upon what seemed the wiser course. Girding his khalat about
his mailed form and slinging his sword across his shoulders, he strode
off along Vardanes' track, the water bags slapping against his back.

The sun hung forever in a sky of burning brass. It blazed down like a
fiery eye in the brow of some colossal cyclops, gazing upon the tiny,
slow-moving figure that trudged across the baking surface of the
crimson sands. It took forever for the afternoon sun to glide down the
vast, empty curve of the sky, to die on the flaming funeral pyre of the
west Then purple evening stole on shadowy wings across the vault of the
heavens, and a trace of blessed coolness crept across the dunes, with
soft shadows and a light breeze.

By then, Conan's leg muscles were beyond pain. Fatigue had numbed the
ache in them, and he stumbled forward on limbs like stone columns
animated by sorcery.

His great head was bowed on his massive chest He plodded on numbly,
needing rest but driven by the knowledge that now, in the coolness of
evening, he could make the most distance with the least discomfort.

His throat was caked with dust; his swarthy visage was dusted brick-red
with a mask of desert sand. He had drunk a mouthful an hour ago and
would drink no more until it became so dark that he could no longer see
to follow Vardanes' trail.

His dreams that night were turgid and confused, filled with shaggy
nightmare figures with one glaring eye in their bestial brows, who beat
his naked body with whips of red-hot chain.

When he blinked awake, he found the sun already high and another hot
day before him. It was agony to rise. Every muscle throbbed as if tiny
needles had been thrust deep into his tissues. But rise he did, to
drink lightly and go forward.

Soon he lost track of time, but still the tireless engine of his will
drove him on, step after staggering step. His mind wandered away into
shadowy bypaths of delusion. But still he held three thoughts before
him: to follow the trail of hoofprints, to save water stringently, and
to stay on his feet. If once he fell, he knew he would be unable to
rise again. And if he fell during the scorching day, his bones would
desiccate and whiten amidst these scarlet wastes for ages to come.

4. The Deathless Queen.

Vardanes of Zamora halted at the crest of the hills and stared down at
a sight so strange that it struck him dumb. For five days, since the
botched ambush against the Zuagirs had rebounded upon the Turanians, he
had ridden like a madman, scarcely daring to snatch an hour or two of
rest for himself and his mare. A terror so great that it robbed the
very manhood from within him goaded him on.

Well did he know the vengeance of the desert outlaws. His imagination
was filled with sickening scenes of the price the grim avengers would
exact from his body if ever he fell into their hands. Thus, when he saw
that the ambush had failed, he had galloped straight out into the
desert. He knew that devil, Conan, would flay the traitor's name from
Boghra Khan and then would come howling on his heels with a
bloodthirsty mob of Zuagirs. Nor would they easily give up the quest of
their treacherous former comrade.

His one slim chance had been to head out into the trackless reaches of
Shan-e-Sorkh. Although Vardanes was a city-bred Zamorian of culture and
sophistication, the fortunes of his age had flung him in with the
desert outlaws, and he knew them well. He knew they dreaded the very
name of the Red Waste and that their savage imaginations peopled it
with every monster and devil ever dreamed of. Why the desert tribesmen
feared the Red Waste so terribly he neither knew nor cared, so long as
their fear would keep them from following him very far into that deadly
desert.

But they had not turned back. His lead on them was so slight that, day
after day, he could see the clouds of dust raised by the Zuagir
horsemen behind him. He pressed ahead with every moment, eating and
drinking in the saddle and pushing his mount to the verge of exhaustion
in order to widen that narrow gap.

After five days, he knew not whether they were still on his track; but
soon it mattered little. He had exhausted the food and water for
himself and his mare and pressed on in the faint hope of finding a
water hole in this endless waste.

His horse, caked with dry mud where desert dust had stuck to lathered
sides, staggered forward like a dead thing driven by a sorcerer's will.
Now it was near to death. Seven times this day it had fallen, and only
the lash of the whip had driven it to its feet again. Since it could no
longer support his weight, Vardanes walked, leading it by its rein.

The Red Waste had taken a fearful toll of Vardanes himself. Once
handsome as a laughing young god, he was now a gaunt, sunblackened
skeleton. Bloodshot eyes glared through matted, stringy locks. Through
cracked, swollen lips he mumbled mindless prayers to Ishtar, Set,
Mitra, and a score of other deities. As he and his trembling steed
lurched to the crest of yet another row of dunes, he looked down and
saw a lush green valley, dotted with clumps of emerald-green date
palms.

Amid this fertile vale lay a small, walled city of stone. Bulging domes
and squat guard towers rose above a stuccoed wall, wherein was set a
great gate whose polished bronzen hinges redly reflected the sun.

A city in this scorching waste? A lush valley of cool, green trees and
soft lawns and limped lotus pools, in the heart of this bleak
wilderness? Impossible!

Vardanes shuddered, shut his eyes, and licked his cracked lips. It must
be a mirage, or a phantom of his disordered wits! Yet a shard of
half-forgotten lore, gleaned from his youthful studies long ago, came
back to him. It was a fragment of legend called Akhlat the Accursed.

He strove to recover that thread of memory. It had been in an old
Stygian book, which his Shemite tutor kept locked in a sandalwood
chest. Even as a bright-eyed lad, Vardanes had been blessed or cursed
with greed, curiosity, and nimble fingers. One dark night, he had
picked that lock and pored with mingled awe and loathing through the
portentous pages of that dark grimoire of elder necromancy. Penned in a
spidery hand on pages of dragon parchment, the text described strange
rites and ceremonies. The pages crawled with cryptic hieroglyphs from
elder kingdoms of sorcerous evil, like Acheron and Lemuria, which had
flourished and fallen in time's dawn.

Among the pentacle-crowded pages had been fragments of some dark
liturgy designed to draw down undying demon-things from dark realms
beyond the stars, from the chaos that ancient mages said reigned beyond
the borders of the cosmos. One of these liturgies contained cryptic
references to "devil-cursed and demon-haunted Akhlat in the Red Waste,
where power-mad sorcerers of yore called down to this earthly sphere a
Demon from Beyond, to their unending sorrow … Akhlat, where the Undying
One rules with a hand of horror to this very day… doomed, accursed
Akhlat, which the very gods spurned, transforming all the realm round
about into a burning waste …"

Vardanes was still sitting in the sand by the head of his panting mare
when grim-faced warriors seized him and bore him down from the ring of
stony hills that encircled the city—down into the garden valley of date
palms and lotus pools—down to the gates of Akhlat the Accursed.

5. The Hand of Zillah.

Conan roused slowly, but this time it was different. Before, his
awakening had been painful, prying gummed lids open to squint at the
fiery sun, hoisting himself slowly erect to stagger forward across
broiling sands.

This time he awoke easily, with a blissful sensation of repletion and
comfort. Silken pillows lay beneath his head. Thick awnings with
tasseled fringes kept the sun from his body, which was clean and naked
save for a fresh loincloth of white linen.

He sprang instantly to full alertness, like an animal whose survival in
the wild depends upon this ability. He stared about with unbelieving
eyes. His first thought was that death had claimed him at last and that
his spirit had been borne beyond the clouds to the primitive paradise
where Crom, the god of his people, sat enthroned amid a thousand
heroes.

Beside his silken couch lay a silver ewer, filled with fresh, clear
water.

Moments later, Conan lifted his dripping face from the ewer and knew
that whatever paradise he was in, it was real and physical. He drank
deep, although the state of his throat and mouth told him that he was
no longer racked with the burning thirst of his desert trek. Some
caravan must have found him and borne him to these tents for healing
and succor. Looking down, Conan saw that his limbs and torso had been
washed clean of desert dust and smeared with soothing salve. Whoever
his rescuers might be, they had fed and cherished him while he raved
and slumbered his way toward recovery.

He peered around the tent. His great broadsword lay across an ebony
chest. He padded toward it on silent feet, like some wary jungle
cat—then froze as he heard the tinkle of a warrior's harness behind
him.

The musical sound, however, came from no warrior but from a slim,
fawn-eyed girl who had just entered the tent and stood staring. Dark,
shining hair fell unbound to her waist, and tiny silver bells were
threaded through these tresses. Thence had come the faint tinkle.

Conan took in the girl in one swift glance: young, scarcely more than a
child, slim and lovely, with a pale body that gleamed enticingly
through gauzy veils. Jewels glistened on her slim, white hands. From
the golden bangles on her brow and the look of her large, dark eyes,
Conan guessed her to be of some folk akin to the Shemites.

"Oh!" she cried. "You are too weak to stand! You must rest some more to
regain your strength." Her language was a dialect of Shemitish, full of
archaic forms but close enough to the Shemitish that Conan knew for him
to understand.

"Nonsense, girl, I'm fit enough," he replied in the same tongue. "Was
it you who tended me here? How long since you found me?"

"Nay, strange lord, 'twas my father. I am Zillah the daughter of Enosh,
a lord of Akhlat the Accursed. We found your body amid the everlasting
sands of the Waste three days past," she replied, veiling her eyes with
silken lashes.

Gods! he thought, but this was a fair wench. Conan had seen no woman in
weeks, and he frankly studied the swelling contours of her lithe body,
scarcely hidden by the gauzy veils. A trace of scarlet rose to her
cheeks.

"So your pretty hand tended me, eh, Zillah?" he said. "My thanks to you
and your sire for this mercy. I was close enough to death, I'll
warrant. How did you chance upon me?" He strove without success to
recall any city by the name of Akhlat the Accursed, although he thought
he knew every city of the southern deserts, by repute if not by an
actual visit.

"It was not by chance; indeed, we came in search of you," said Zillah.

Conan's eyes narrowed as his nerves tingled to the sense of danger.
Something in the sudden hardening of his grim, impassive face told the
girl that he was a man of swift animal passions, a dangerous man unlike
the soft, milda townsmen she had known.

"We meant you no harm!" she protested, lifting one slim hand
defensively. "But follow me, sir, and my sire will explain all things
to you."

For a moment, Conan stood tense, wondering if Vardanes had set these
people on his trail. The silver he had carried off from the Turanians
should be enough to buy the souls of half a hundred Shemites.

Then he relaxed, deliberately calming the blood lust that rose within
him. He took up his sword and slung the baldric over his shoulder.

"Then take me to this Enosh, lass," he said calmly. "I would hear his
tale."

She led him from the chamber. Conan squared his naked shoulders and
padded after her.

6. The Thing from Beyond.

Enosh was poring over a wrinkled, time-faded scroll in a high-backed
chair of black wood, as Zillah conducted Conan into his presence. This
part of the tent was hung with dark purple cloth; thick carpets muffled
the tread of their feet On a coiling stand composed of intertwined
serpents of glinting brass, a black minor of curious design reposed.
Eery lights flickered in its ebon depths.

Enosh rose and greeted Conan with courtly phrases. He was a tall,
elderly man, lean but straight His pate was covered with a headdress of
snowy linen, his face was lined with age and creased with thought, and
his dark eyes were weary with ancient sorrow.

He bade his guest be seated and commanded Zillah to bring wine. When
the formalities were over, Conan asked abruptly: "How did you come to
find me, O shaykh?"

Enosh glanced at the black mirror. "Whilst I am no fell sorcerer, my
son, I can make use of some means not altogether natural."

"How is it that you were looking for me?"

Enosh lifted a thin, blue-veined hand to quiet the warrior's
suspicions. "Be patient, my friend, and I will explain all," he said in
his quiet, deep-toned voice. Reaching to a low tabouret, he set aside
his scroll and accepted a silver cup of wine.

When they had drunk, the old man began his tale: "Ages ago, a wily
sorcerer of this land of Akhlat conceived of a plot against the ancient
dynasty that had ruled in this place since the fall of Atlantis," he
said slowly. "With cunning words, he made the people think their
monarch —a weak, self-indulgent man—was their foe, and the people rose
and trampled the foolish king into the mire. Setting himself up as a
priest and prophet of the Unknown Gods, the sorcerer pretended to
divine inspiration. He averred that one of the gods would soon descend
to earth to rule over Akhlat the Holy—as it was called—in person."

Conan snorted. "You Akhlatim, it seems, are no less gullible than the
other nations I have seen."

The old man smiled wearily. "It is always easy to believe what one
wishes to be true. But the plan of this black sorcerer was more
terrible than any could dream. With vile and nameless rites, he
conjured into this plane of existence a demoness from Outside, to serve
as goddess to the people. Retaining his sorcerous control over this
being, he presented himself as the interpreter of her divine will.
Struck with awe, the people of Akhlat soon groaned beneath a tyranny
far worse than that which they had suffered from the old dynasty."

Conan smiled wolfishly. "I have seen that revolutions often throw up
worse governments than those they replace."

"Perhaps. At any rate, this one did. And in time matters became even
grimmer; for the sorcerer lost control over the demoniac Thing he had
summoned down from Beyond, and it destroyed him and ruled in his place.
And it rules to this very day," he concluded softly.

Conan started. "The creature is immortal, then? How long ago was this?"

"More years have passed than these wastes have grains of sand," said
Enosh. "And still the goddess rules supreme in sad Akhlat The secret of
her power is such that she leaches the life force from living
creatures. All this land about us was once green and fair, lush with
date palms along the streams and grassy hills whereon the fat herds
pastured. Her vampiric thirst for life has drained the land dry, save
for the valley wherein the city of Akhlat stands. That she has spared,
for without living things to drain to dry, lifeless husks, she cannot
sustain herself on this plane of being."

"Crom!" whispered Conan, draining his wine cup.

For centuries, now," Enosh continued, "this land has been transformed
into a dead and sterile waste. Our young go to slake the dark thirst of
the goddess, as do the beasts of our flocks. She feeds daily. Each day
she chooses a victim, and each day they dwindle and lessen. When she
attacks one victim incessantly, day after day, he may last but a few
days or he may linger half a moon. The strongest and bravest endure for
as many as thirty days before she exhausts their store of life force
and must begin on the next."

Conan fondled the hilt of his sword. "Crom and Mitra, man, why have you
not slain this thing?"

The old man wearily shook his head. "She is invulnerable, unkillable,"
he said softly. "Her flesh is composed of matter drawn to her and held
together by the goddess's unconquerable will. An arrow or a sword could
but wound that flesh: it is a trifling matter for her to repair the
injury. And the life force she drinks from others, leaving them dry
husks, gives her a terrible store of inner strength from which to
remold her flesh anew."

"Bum the thing," Conan growled. "Burn the palace down about her head,
or cut her into little pieces for the flames of a bonfire to devour!"

"No. She shields herself with dark powers of hellish magic. Her weapon
transfixes into paralysis all she looks upon. As many as a hundred
warriors have crept into the J Black Temple, determined to end this
grim tyranny. Naught was left of them but a living forest of motionless
men, who served in turn as human banquets for the insatiable monster."

Conan stirred restlessly. 'Tis a wonder that any of you still dwell in
this accursed land!" he rumbled. "How has this damnable leech not
drained every last human being in this valley dry long since? And why
have you not bundled your belongings and fled from this demon-haunted
place?"

"In truth, very few of us are left; she consumes us and our beasts
faster than their natural increase can make up the loss. For ages, the
demoness sated her lust with the minute life force of growing green
things, sparing the people. When the land became a waste, she fed first
upon our flocks and then from our slaves and finally from the Akhlatim
themselves. Soon we shall be gone, and Akhlat will be one vast city of
death. Nor can we leave the land, for the power of the goddess holds us
within narrow bounds, beyond which we cannot stray."

Conan shook his head, his unshorn mane brushing his bare, bronzed
shoulders. "It is a tragic tale you tell, old man. But why do you
repeat it to me?"

"Because of an ancient prophecy," said Enosh gently, picking up the
worn and wrinkled scroll from the tabouret.

"What prophecy?"

Enosh partly unrolled the scroll and pointed to lines of writing of a
form so old that Conan could not read it, although he could manage the
written Shemitish of his own time. "That in the fullness of time," said
Enosh, "when our end was near, the Unknown Cods, whom our ancestors
turned away from to worship the demoness, would relent of their wrath
and send a liberator, who should overthrow the goddess and destroy her
evil power. You, Conan of Cimmeria, are that savior…"

7. Hall of the Living Dead.

For days and nights, Vardanes lay in a dank dungeon cell beneath the
Black Temple of Akhlat. He yelled and pleaded and wept and cursed and
prayed, but the dull-eyed, cold-faced, bronze-helmed guardsmen paid him
no heed, save to tend to his bodily needs. They would not answer his
questions. Neither would they submit to bribery, which much astonished
him. A typical Zamorian, Vardanes could hardly conceive of men who did
not lust for wealth, yet these strange men with their antique speech
and old-fashioned armor were so little covetous of the silver he had
rung from the Turanians in payment for his betrayal that they even let
his coin-filled saddle bags lie undisturbed in a comer of his cell.

They tended him well, however, bathing his haggard body and soothing
his blisters with salves. And they fed him sumptuously with fine roast
fowl, rich fruits, and sweetmeats. They even gave him wine. Having
known other gaols in his time, Vardanes realized how extraordinary this
was. Could, they, he wondered uneasily, be fattening him for slaughter?

Then, one day, guards came to his cell and brought him forth. He
assumed he was at last to appear before some magistrate to answer
whatever absurd charges his accusers might make. Confidence welled up
within him. Never had he known a magistrate whose mercy could not be
purchased with the silver in those fat saddle bags!

But, instead of to a judge or suffete, he was led by dark and winding
ways before a mighty door of greened bronze, which loomed in front of
him like the gate of Hell itself. Triply locked and barred was this
portal, and strong enough to withstand an army. With nervous hands and
taut faces, the warriors unfastened the great door and thrust Vardanes
within.

As the door clanged shut behind him, the Zamorian found himself in a
magnificent hall of polished marble. It was drowned in deep, purple
gloom and thick with dust On every hand lay tokens of unrepaired decay,
of untended neglect He went forward curiously.

Was this a great throne room, or the transept of some colossal temple?
It was hard to say. The most peculiar thing about the vast, shadowy
hall, other than the neglect from which it had evidently long suffered,
was the statuary that stood about its floor in clusters. A host of
puzzling questions rose within Vardanes' troubled brain.

The first mystery was the substance of the statues. Whereas the hall
itself was builded of sleek marble, the statues were made of some dull,
lifeless, porous gray stone that he could not identify. Whatever the
stuff was, it was singularly unattractive. It looked like dead wood
ash, though hard as dry stone to the touch.

The second mystery was the amazing artistry of the unknown sculptor,
whose gifted hands had wrought these marvels of art They were lifelike
and detailed to an incredible degree: every fold of garment or drapery
hung like real cloth; every tiny strand of hair was visible. This
astonishing fidelity was carried even to the postures. No heroic
groupings, no monumental majesty was visible in these graven images of
dull-gray, plasterlike material. They stood in lifelike poses, by the
score and the hundred. They were scattered here and there with no
regard for order. They were carved in the likeness of warriors and
nobles, youths and maidens, doddering grandsires and senile hags,
blooming children and babes in arms.

The one disquieting feature held in common by all was that each figure
bore on its stony features an expression of unendurable terror.

Before long, Vardanes heard a faint sound from the depths of this dark
place. Like the sound of many voices it was, yet so faint that he could
make out no words. A weird diapason whispered through this forest of
statues. As Vardanes drew nearer, he could distinguish the strains of
sound that made up the whole: slow, heart-rending sobs, faint, agonized
moans; the blurred babble of prayers; croaking laughter; monotonous
curses. These sounds seemed to come from half a hundred throats, but
the Zamorian could see no source for them. Although he peered about, he
could see naught in all this place but himself and the thousands of
statues.

Sweat trickled down his forehead and his lean cheeks. A nameless fear
arose within him. He wished from the depths of his faithless heart that
he were a thousand leagues from this accursed temple, where voices of
invisible beings moaned, sobbed, babbled, and laughed hideously.

Then he saw the golden throne. It stood in the midst of the hall,
towering above the heads of the statues. Vardanes' eyes fed hungrily on
the luster of gold. He edged through the stony forest toward it.

Something was propped up on that rich throne—the shriveled mummy of
some long-dead king? Withered hands were clasped over a sunken breast
From throat to heel, the thin body was wrapped in dusty cerements. A
thin mask of beaten gold, worked in the likeness of a woman of
unearthly beauty, lay over the features.

A twinge of greed quickened Vardanes' panting breath. He forgot his
fears, for, between the brows of that golden mask, a tremendous black
sapphire glowed like a third eye. It was an astounding gem, worth a
prince's ransom.

At the foot of the throne, Vardanes stared covetously at the golden
mask. The eyes were carved as if closed in slumber. Sweet and beautiful
slept the drowsy, full-lipped mouth in that lovely golden face. The
huge, dark sapphire flashed with sultry fires as he reached for it.

With trembling fingers, the Zamorian snatched the mask away. Beneath it
lay a brown, withered face. The cheeks had fallen in; the flesh was
hard, dry, and leathery. He shuddered at the malevolent expression on
the features of that death's head.

Then it opened its eyes and looked at him.

He staggered back with a scream, the mask falling from nerveless
fingers to clatter against the marble pave. The dead eyes in the
skull-face leered into his own. Then the Thing opened its third eye…

8. The Face of the Gorgon.

Conan padded through the hall of gray statues on naked feet, prowling
the dusty, shadow-haunted aisles like some great jungle cat. Dim light
slowed along the keen edge of the mighty broadsword in his huge,
capable fist His eyes glared from side to side and the hackles bristled
upon his nape. This place stank of death; the reek of fear lay heavy in
the still air.

How had he ever let old Enosh talk him into this foolish venture? He
was ho redeemer, no destined liberator, no holy man come from the gods
to free Akhlat from the deathless curse of the demoness. His only
purpose was one of red revenge.

But the wise old shaykh had spoken many words, and his eloquence had
persuaded Conan to undertake this perilous mission. Enosh had pointed
out two facts that convinced even the hard-bitten barbarian. One was
that, once within this land, Conan was bound there by black magic and
could not leave until the goddess was slain. The other was that the
Zamorian traitor was immured beneath the Black Temple of the goddess,
soon to face the doom that would, if not averted, destroy them all.

So Conan had come by secret underground ways, which Enosh had shown
him. He had emerged from a hidden portal in the wall of this vast,
gloomy hall, for Enosh knew when Vardanes was to go before the goddess.

Like the Zamorian, Conan also noted the marvelous realism of the gray
statues; but, unlike Vardanes, he knew the answer to this riddle. He
averted his eyes from the expressions of horror on the stone faces
about him.

He, too, heard the mournful wailing and crying. As he drew nearer to
the center of the mighty hypostyle hall, the sobbing voices became
clearer. He saw the golden throne and the withered thing upon it, and
he crept toward the lustrous chair on silent feet.

As he approached, a statue spoke to him. The shock almost unmanned him.
His flesh crawled, and sweat started from his brow.

Then he saw the source of the cries, and his heart pounded with
revulsion. For those about the throne were not yet dead. They were
stone up to the neck, but the heads still lived. Sad eyes rolled in
despairing faces, and dry lips prayed that he would bury his sword in
the living brains of these almost—but not completely—petrified beings.

Then he heard a scream, in Vardanes' well-known voice. Had the goddess
slain his enemy before he could wreak his vengeance? He sprang forward
to the side of the throne.

There a terrible sight met his eyes. Vardanes stood before the throne,
eyes popping and lips working feverishly. The rasp of stone caught
Conan's ear, and he looked at Vardanes' legs. Where the Zamorian's feet
touched the floor, a gray pallor crept slowly up them. Before Conan's
gaze, the warm flesh whitened. The gray tide had reached Vardanes'
knees; but, even as Conan watched, the flesh of the upper legs was
transmuted into ashen-gray stone. Vardanes strained to walk but could
not His voice rose in a shriek, while his eyes glared at Conan with the
naked fear of a trapped animal.

The thing on the throne laughed a low, dry cackle. As Conan watched,
the dead, withered flesh of her skeletal arms and wrinkled throat
swelled and became smooth; it flushed from dead, leathery brown to the
warm flesh tones of life. With every vampiric draught of vital energy
that the Gorgon drained from Vardanes' body, her own body became imbued
with life.

"Crom and Mitra!" breathed Conan.

With every atom of her mind focused on the half-petrified Zamorian, the
Gorgon paid Conan no heed. Now her body was filling out. She bloomed; a
soft rondure of hip and thigh stretched the dull cerements. Her woman's
breasts swelled, straining the thin fabric. She stretched firm,
youthful arms. Her moist, crimson mouth opened in another peal of
laughter—this time, the musical, voluptuous laughter of a full-bodied
woman.

The tide of petrification had crept to Vardanes' loins. Conan did not
know whether she would spare Vardanes with the semi-petrification of
those near the throne or whether she would drain him to the dregs. He
was young and vital; his life force must have been a robust vintage to
the vampire goddess.

As the stony tide swept up to the Zamorian's panting breast, he uttered
another scream—the most awful sound that Conan had ever heard from
human lips. Conan's reaction was instinctive. Like a striking panther,
he leaped from his place of concealment behind the throne. Light caught
the edge of his blade as he swung it.

Vardanes' head jumped from its trunk and fell with a meaty smack to the
marble floor.

Shaken by the impact, the body toppled and fell. It crashed to the
floor, and Conan saw the petrified legs crack and splinter. Stony
fragments scattered, and blood welled from the cracks in the petrified
flesh.

So died Vardanes the traitor. Even Conan could hot tell whether he
struck from lust for revenge, or whether a merciful impulse to end the
torment of a helpless creature had prompted the blow.

Conan turned to the goddess. Without meaning to, he instinctively
raised his eyes to hers.

9. The Third Eye.

Her face was a mask of inhuman loveliness; her soft, moist lips were as
full and crimson as ripe fruit Glossy, ebon hair tumbled across
shoulders of glowing pearl, to fall in tides of silken night through
which thrust the round moons of her breasts. She was beauty incarnate—
save for the great dark orb between her brows.

The third eye met Conan's gaze and riveted him fast. This oval orb was
larger than any organ of human vision. It was not divided into pupil,
iris, and white as are human eyes; it was all black. His gaze seemed to
sink into it and become lost in endless seas of darkness. He stared
rapt, the sword forgotten in his hand. The eye was as black as the
lightless seas of space between the stars.

Now he seemed to stand at the brink of a black, bottomless well, into
which he toppled and fell. Down, down through ebon fogs he fell,
through a vast, cold abyss of utter darkness. He knew that, if he did
not soon turn his eyes away, he would be forever lost to the world.

He made a terrible effort of will. Sweat stood out on his brow; his
muscles writhed like serpents beneath his bronzed skin. His deep chest
heaved.

The Gorgon laughed—a low, melodious sound with cold, cruel mockery in
it. Conan flushed, and rage rose within him.

With a surge of will, he tore his eyes from that black orb and found
himself staring at the floor. Weak and dizzy, he swayed on his feet. As
he fought for the strength to stand erect, he glanced at those feet.
Thank Crom, they were still of warm flesh, not cold, ashen stone! The
long moment he had stood ensorcelled by the Gorgon's gaze had been only
a brief instant, too short for the stony tide to have crept up his
flesh.

The Gorgon laughed again. With his shaggy head bowed, Conan felt tie
tug of her will. The muscles of his corded neck swelled in his effort
to keep his head bent away.

He was still looking down. Before him, on the marble pave, lay the thin
golden mask with the huge sapphirine gem set in it to represent the
third eye. And suddenly, Conan knew.

This time, as his glance rose, his sword swung with it. The flashing
blade clove the dusty air and caught the mocking face of the
goddess—slashing the third eye in twain.

She did not move. With her two normal eyes of surpassing beauty, she
stared silently at the grim warrior, her face blank and white. A change
swept over her.

From the ruin of the Gorgon's third eye, dark fluid ran down the face
of inhuman perfection. Like black tears, the slow dew fell from the
shattered organ.

Then she began to age. As the dark fluid ran from the riven orb, so the
stolen life force of aeons drained from her body. Her skin darkened and
roughened into a thousand wrinkles. Withered dewlaps formed beneath her
chin. Glowing eyes became lusterless and milky.

The superb bosom sagged and shrank. Sleek limbs became scrawny. For a
long moment, the dwarfed, withered form of a tiny woman, incredibly
senile, tottered on the throne. Then flesh rotted to papery scraps and
mouldering bones. The body collapsed, spilling across the pavement in a
litter of leathery fragments, which crumbled as Conan watched to a
colorless, ashy powder.

A long sigh went through the hall. It darkened briefly as if the
passage of half-transparent wings dimmed the obscure light. Then it was
gone, and with it the brooding air of age-old menace. The chamber
became just a dusty, neglected old room, devoid of supernatural
terrors.

The statues slept forever now in graves of eternal stone. As the Gorgon
passed from this dimension, so her spells snapped, including those that
had held the living dead in a grisly semblance of life. Conan turned
away, leaving the empty throne with its litter of dust and the broken,
headless statue of what had once been a bold, high-spirited Zamorian
fighting man.

"Stay with us, Conan!" Zillah pleaded in her low, soft voice. "There
will be posts of high honor for a man such as you in Akhlat, now that
we are freed of the curse."

He grinned hardly, sensing something more personal in her voice than
the desire of a good citizen to enlist a worthy immigrant in the cause
of civic reconstruction. At the probing gaze of his hot, male eyes, she
flushed in confusion.

Lord Enosh added his gentle voice to the pleadings of his daughter.
Conan's victory had lent new youth and vigor to the elderly man. He
stood straight and tall, with a new firmness in his step and a new
command in his voice. He offered the Cimmerian wealth, honors,
position, and a place of power in the newborn city. Enosh had even
hinted that he would look with favor upon Conan as a son-in-law.

But Conan, knowing himself ill-suited to the life of placid, humdrum
respectability they held out to him, refused all offers. Courtly
phrases did not spring readily to the lips of one whose years had been
spent on the field of battle and in the wine shops and joy houses of
the world's cities. But, with such tact as his blunt, barbaric nature
could muster, he turned aside his hosts' pleas.

"Nay, friends," he said. "Not for Conan of Cimmeria the tasks of peace.
I should too soon become bored, and when boredom strikes, I know of but
few cures: to get drunk, to pick a fight, or to steal a girl. A fine
sort of citizen I should make for a city that now seeks peace and quiet
to recover its strength!"

"Then whither will you go, O Conan, now that the magical barriers are
dissolved?" asked Enosh.

Conan shrugged, ran a hand through his black mane, and laughed. "Crom,
my good sir, I know not! Luckily for me, the goddess's servants fed and
watered Vardanes' horse. Akhlat, I see, has no horses—only donkeys—and
a great lout like me would look like a fool, jogging along on a sleepy
little ass with my toes dragging in the dust!

"I think I'll bend my path to the southeast. Somewhere yonder lies the
city of Zamboula, which I have never been. Men say it is a rich city of
fleshpots and revelry, where the wine all but flows free in the
gutters. I've a mind to taste the joys of Zamboula, to see what
excitement it has to offer."

"But you need not leave us a beggar!" Enosh protested. "We owe you
much. Let us give you what little gold and silver we have for your
labors."

Conan shook his head. "Keep your treasure, shaykh. Akhlat is no rich
metropolis, and you will need your money when the merchants' caravans
begin to arrive again from across the Red Waste. And now that my water
bags are full and I've provisions aplenty, I must be off. This time, I
shall make the journey through the Shan-e-Sorkh in comfort."

With a last, brisk farewell, he swung into the saddle and cantered up
out of the valley. They stood looking after him, Enosh proudly, but
Zillah with tears on her cheeks. Soon he was out of sight.

As he reached the top of the dunes, Conan halted the black mare for a
last look at Akhlat. Then he rode off into the Waste. Perhaps he had
been a fool not to accept their small store of treasure. But there was
plenty in Vardanes' saddle bags, which he reached behind him to thump.
He grinned. Why squabble over a few shekels like a greasy tradesman? It
does a man good, once in a while, to be virtuous. Even a Cimmerian!

Conan duly arrives in Zamboula, where he swiftly dissipates the small
fortune he brings with him in a colossal debauch. A week of guzzling,
gorging, roistering, whoring, and gambling reduce him once more to
destitution.