Title: Red Nails

Author: Robert E. Howard

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Title: Red Nails

Author: Robert E. Howard







Contents







1 The Skull on the Crag



2 By the Blaze of the Fire Jewels



3 The People of the Feud



4 Scent of Black Lotus



5 Twenty Red Nails



6 The Eyes of Tascela



7 He Comes from the Dark











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-tassled, 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 archs 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 at it should have been, because this was Valeria of the Red

Brotherhood, whose deeds are celebrated in song and ballad wherever

seafarers gather.



She strove to pierce the sullen green roof of the arched branches and

see the sky which presumably lay above 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 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 now felt the gnawings of

hunger and began looking about for some of the fruit on which she had

sustained herself since exhausting the food originally in her

saddlebags.



Ahead of her, presently, she saw an outcropping of dark, flintlike

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 treetops, 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

treetops, and from it rose a spirelike 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 just 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 spirelike 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

promped her to skirt it widely and continue her solitary flight.



Her thoughts were scattered by the rustling of the leaves below her.

She wheeled catlike, 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 his belt.



"Conan, the Cimmerian!" ejaculated 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 breasts 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

meatpots 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,

wench! 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 life 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 seaports of the world to fill a galeon.

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 was 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 irratation 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, wench. 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 hussy!" 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 medly 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 to 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 drippnig 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 backbone

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 hindlegs, 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 jerked 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 cutlass 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 that 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 slience. There seemed no way out of their

predicament, she refleced 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 spirelike 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 can 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, frowining 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 crouched 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 bestial bosoms and insane

rage in others. Suddenly and with appalling quickness, the mastodonic

brute reared up on its mighty hindlegs 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 jawbone 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 percipitating 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, prehaps 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 blind monster

rushed on, forgettnig 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'll stop here. No use

coming to their gates in the night. They probably wouldn't let us in.

Besides, we need rest, and we dont 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 the 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.







By the Blaze of the Fire Jewels



Valeria awoke with a start, to the realization that a grey 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 snatch 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 done?" inquired the girl, half in

derision and half in fascination.



"I've never been king of an Hyborean 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 up 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 up behind the city, turning the towers to a sinister

crimson.



"Black last night against the moon," grunted Conan, his eys 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 spearheads 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 shadown 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 aquisitive 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 traveresed 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 palace or

whatever we're in must be as big as the king of Turan's seraglio."



"They must not have perished of plague," sad 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 the

west?"



The figures portrayed were those of slender, olive-skinned men and

women, with finely chisled, exotic features. They wore filmy robes and

many delicate jeweled ornaments, and were depicted mostly in attitudes

of feasting, dancing, or lovemaking.



"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 those stairs."



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 seies 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 gonig 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 wrinking 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 windblown 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 shadows 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 the

shoulder, breastbone 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-eyes amazement at the whiteskinned 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 Techultli. I and this man who lies with

his throat cut came into the Halls of Silence 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 perhamps 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 a 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 wild 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.



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

this 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 dumfounded 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 lifed 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 Xotalancs 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 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 sem 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 this

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 had

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 had come into

familiar territory, within call of friends.



But Conan renewed his terror by asking: "What was that thing I fought

on the stairs?"



"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 jerked 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!"







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, Excelan! 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

spearheads 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

bloodstained 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 foor, 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 wich, 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 lounged 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 breastplates, 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

scantily 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 Xotalancs 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 to 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 beyone 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

Techutl 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 no 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 through

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 rape

and murder. 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

forrays 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 faraway 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 were 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 hat 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 murder.



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 on 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," stated 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 firestones, 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's 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 soemthing 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 fo 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.







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 to 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 priate 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.



"Slut!" 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 slut!" 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 thereat 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

copperbound door and run down the hall. The pirate was after her

instantly, sword out and murder 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 hed 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 cypts 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 attampt 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.







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.



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 foe 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 headdress had

a set of pipes whch 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 eardrums. 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 breasts, 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 doorguards from the lower floors came racing to hurl

themselves into the fray. It was the deathfight 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 melee 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 breastbone,

Valeria brought into action a finesse of swordplay 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 thir 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 Judgement 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 bestial

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

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 warclub, 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 witchlight. 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 at

silently under their fingers. Awed, they started 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 Topol 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 labryinth 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 as 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, lust, 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.







The Eyes of Tascela



"Why did you bring me into this chamber to bandage my leg?" 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 whch

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 bestial 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 inflict. 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 breasts, 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 lusty 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 presenly 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 trecherous 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 writhered her

head away.



The liquor slopped over, stinging her lips, splashing down on her

naked breasts.



"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 pased 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 he 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; he 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.



"Slut!" 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 wench 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 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 glared, his

great hands fell limply to his sides.



With a smile of cruel malice, Tascela liftd 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, Tasacela 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

impersonably down into her face. But the glitter in her dark eyes was

not impersonable.



"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.







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, afterwards 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 thim 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

strruck with his great mallet-like fist. The blow, firece 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 vertebrae 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, rolled, until at last they struck an ivory panel-door at

the bottom with such and impact that they splintered it 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 shoulders, 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.



"Slut!" 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 fingernails, 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 site 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 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 bosom 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 bought 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 started 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 amd. 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 knob 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 bosom 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 the 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 woman, not heeding his lacerated leg

in the heat of the fighting lust. 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 breasts. 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!"







THE END