Part 14 (1/2)

Holding the jewel gingerly, he went out of the fantastic chamber and came upon the silver steps He did not look back; he instinctively felt that so place in the body on the marble couch, and he further felt that it was of a sort not to be witnessed by human eyes

He closed the ivory door behind him and without hesitation descended the silver steps It did not occur to hiiven hirinning silver skull, and pushed it open He looked into a chamber of ebony and jet, and saw, on a black silken couch, a tall, spare for Yara the priest and sorcerer lay before him, his eyes open and dilated with the fuulfs and nighted abysses beyond hu doom ”Awaken!”

The eyes cleared instantly and became cold and cruel as a vulture's The tall silken-clad forauntly above the Ci!” His hiss was like the voice of a cobra ”What do you here?”

Conan laid the jewel on the great ebony table

”He who sent this geift and a last enchantment'”

Yara recoiled, his dark face ashy The jeas no longer crystal-clear; its murky depths pulsed and throbbed, and curious s color passed over its smooth surface As if drawn hypnotically, Yara bent over the table and gripped the ge into its shadowed depths, as if it were asoul froht that his eyeshim tricks For when Yara had risen up froantically tall; yet now he saw that Yara's head would scarcely come to his shoulder He blinked, puzzled, and for the first tiht, doubted his own senses Then with a shock he realized that the priest was shrinking in stature was growing s he watched, as aunreality, the Cier sure of his own identity; he only knew that he was looking upon the external evidences of the unseen play of vast Outer forces, beyond his understanding

Now Yara was no bigger than a child; now like an infant he sprawled on the table, still grasping the jewel And now the sorcerer suddenly realized his fate, and he sprang up, releasing the geure rushi+ng wildly about the ebony table-top, waving tiny ar in a voice that was like the squeak of an insect

Now he had shrunk until the great jewel towered above him like a hill, and Conan saw him cover his eyes with his hands, as if to shi+eld theered about like a netic force was pulling Yara to the ge circle, thrice he strove to turn and run out across the table; then with a scream that echoed faintly in the ears of the watcher, the priest threw up his ar close, Conan saw Yara cla surface, ilassarrisly names only the Gods know And suddenly he sank into the very heart of the jewel, as a man sinks into a sea, and Conan saw the smoky waves close over his head Now he saw him in the crimson heart of the jewel, once more crystal-clear, as a reat distance And into the heart caure with the body of a er blind or crippled Yara threw up his arer Then, like the bursting of86a bubble, the great jewel vanished in a rainbow burst of iridescent gleams, and the ebony tabletop lay bare and deserted as bare, Conan someho, as the marble couch in the cha called Yag-kosha and Yogah had lain

The Cimmerian turned and fled from the chamber, down the silver stairs So mazed was he that it did not occur to him to escape fro, shadowy silver well he ran, and ca stairs There he halted for an instant; he had colitter of their silver corselets, the sheen of their jeweled sword-hilts They sat slu so their dice and fallen goblets on the wine-stained lapis-lazuli floor And he knew that they were dead The proic or the falling shadow of great green wings had stilled the revelry, Conan could not know, but his way had been made clear And a silver door stood open, fraardens came the Cirance of luxuriant growths, he started like afrom a dream He turned back uncertainly, to stare at the cryptic tower he had just left Was he bewitched and enchanted? Had he dreamed all that had see toay against the criht, and crash into shi+ning shards87

The Scarlet Citadel

The Scarlet Citadel

They trapped the Lion on Shahted his limbs with an iron chain;

They cried aloud in the trued at last!”

Woe to the cities of river and plain

If ever the Lion stalks again!

Old Ballad

The roar of battle had died away; the shout of victory ay-hued leaves after an autu sun shi+ilt-worked al folds of silken standards, overthrown in pools of curdling crimson In silent heaps lay war- horses and their steel-clad riders, flowingplu them, like the drift of a storm, were strewn slashed and trampled bodies in steel caps and leather jerkins archers and pikemen

The oliphants sounded a fanfare of triumph all over the plain, and the hoofs of the victors crunched in the breasts of the vanquished as all the straggling, shi+ning lines converged inward like the spokes of a glittering wheel, to the spot where the last survivor still waged unequal strife