Part 30 (1/2)
”Aye! But I knoay 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 o, and ill steal on Tascela and kill her before she can work ic before she can fix her eyes on us A knife thrown fro ago, but I feared that without her to aid us the Xotalancas would overcome us She needed
Now neither needs the other, and one must die I swear that e 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 Olreat ball and rose, shaking his head like a bull and ered his lacerated scalp Standing shoulder to shoulder the two men presented a formidable picture of primitive power Ol repellent about the Tlazitlan, so abysmal and monstrous that contrasted unfavorably with the 258
clean-cut, compact hardness of the Cimmerian Conan had discarded the remnants of his tattered, blood-soaked shi+rt, and stood with his rereat shoulders were as broad as those of Ole breast arched with a more impressive sweep to a hard waist that lacked the paunchy thickness of Olth cut out of bronze Ol of the sun If Conan was a figure out of the dawn of Ti, 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”
Ol 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 chauarded for half a century,” he said ”Not even our own clan knew of it, and the Xotalancas never learned Tecuhltli hi the slaves who did the work; for he feared that he dom some day because of the spite of Tascela, whose passion for hied to hate But she discovered the secret, and barred the hidden door against him one day as he fled back from an unsuccessful raid, and the Xotalancas took hi upon her, I saw her enter Tecuhltli by this route, and so learned the secret”
He pressed upon a gold orna 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, co his broadsword as he spoke, and Oled his shoulders and stepped onto the staircase Conan instantly followed him, and the door shut behind them Far above a cluster of fire-jewels ht
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 dohted the stair Through gold-barred s, set with unbreakable crystal panes, the first s he had seen in Xuchotl, Conan got a gliainst the stars He was looking across the roofs of Xuchotl
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Olh the s 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 so doard There Olmec paused
Up from below, ed with fright, fury and shanized Valeria's voice
In the swift rage roused by that cry, and the a such a shriek froot Olmec He pushed past the prince and started down the stair Awakening instinct brought hireat mallet-like fist The blow, fierce and silent, was aimed at the base of Conan's brain
But the Cimmerian wheeled in time to receive the buffet on the side of his neck instead The impact would have snapped the 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 Ol the prince with hiether, in a revolving whirl of liers found and locked in Olmec's bull-throat
The barbarian's neck and shoulder felt nue fist, which had carried all the strength of the reat shoulder But this did not affect his ferocity to any appreciable extent Like a bulldog he hung on griainst the steps as they rolled, until at last they struck an ivory panel-door at the bottoth and crashed through its ruins But Olers had crushed out his life and broken his neck as they fell
CONAN rose, shaking the splinters fro blood and dust out of his eyes
He was in the great throneroom There were fifteen people in that room besides himself The first person he saas Valeria A curious black altar stood before the throne-dais Ranged about it, seven black candles in golden candle-sticks sent up oozing spirals of thick green sly scented These spirals united in a cloud near the ceiling, for a smoky arch above the altar On that altar lay Valeria, stark naked, her white flesh glea 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 youngwo her ankles Between them she could neither rise nor move
Eleven men and wo the scene with hot, 260
lustful eyes
On the ivory throne-seat Tascela lolled Bronze bowls of incense rolled their spirals about her; the wisps of sers She could not sit still; she squir pleasure in the contact of the smooth ivory with her sleek flesh
The crash of the door as it broke beneath the ie in the scene The kneeling lanced incuriously at the corpse of their prince and at thetheir eyes greedily back to the writhing white shape on the black altar Tascela looked insolently at hily
”slut!” Conan saw red His hands clenched into iron ha clanged loudly and steel bit savagely into his leg He stu stride The jaws of an iron trap had closed on his leg, with teeth that sank deep and held Only the ridgedsplintered The accursed thing had sprung out of the s He saw the slots now, in the floor where the jaws had lain, perfectly cahed Tascela ”Did you think I would not guard against your possible return? Every door in this chauarded by such traps Stand there and watch nohile 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 sas on the stair behind hion had torn it fro 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 ofon the knee of his free leg, he strove to get his fingers between the jaws of the trap, to tear theer nails, but the jaws fitted close about his leg in a circle whose segments jointed perfectly, contracted until there was no space between his ht of Valeria's naked body added fla languidly from her seat she swept the ranks of her subjects with a searching glance, and asked: ”Where are Xamec, Zlanath and Tachic?”
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”They did not return from the catacombs, princess,” answered a man ”Like the rest of us, they bore the bodies of the slain into the crypts, but they have not returned Perhaps the ghost of Tolkemec took thehost is awith 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 , 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 ain with youth and with life everlasting!”
Slowly, like a serpent arching toward its victi smoke, closer and closer over the nowdark eyes eyes that grew larger and deeper, blazing like black ripped their hands and held their breath, tense for the bloody cli as he strove to tear his leg frolued on the altar and the white figure there; the crash of a thunderbolt could hardly have broken the spell, yet it was only a low cry that shattered the fixity of the scene and brought all whirling about a low cry, yet one to make the hair stand up stiffly on the scalp
They looked, and they saw
Fraure It was a le of white hair and a s only partly covered his gaunt fraely unnatural in appearance The skin was not like that of a norestion of scaliness about it, as if the owner had dwelt long under conditions almost antithetical to those conditions under which hu at all hule of white hair They were great glealy, luminous, whitish, and without a hint of noraped, but no coherent words issued only a high-pitched tittering
”TOLKEMEC!” whispered Tascela, livid, while the others crouched in speechless horror ”No host! Set! You have dwelt for twelve years in darkness! Twelve years arisly food did you find? What mad travesty of life did you live, in the stark blackness of that eternal night? I see nohy Xamec and Zlanath and Tachic did not return from the cataco to strike?
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Were you seeking so, in the pits? Some secret weapon you kneas hidden there?
And have you found it at last?”
That hideous tittering was Tolke 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 notthat he was no longer human Only an unbroken thread of eance had connected him with the hu near the people he hated Only that thin string had kept hi off for ever into the black corridors and realo
”You sought so back ”And you have found it!
You remember the feud! After all these years of blackness, you remember!”