Part 39 (2/2)

”You are a barbarian,” laughed Thalis, but with a glow in her lu is very ancient and very terrible”

”These folk runted Conan, ”to lie down and dreaht awaken in his belly”

She laughed ”They know nothing else For untold generations Thog has preyed on them He has been one of the factors which have reduced their nuenerations and they will be extinct, and Thog must either fare forth into the world for new prey, or retire to the underworld whence he cao

”They realize their ultimate doom, but they are fatalists, incapable of resistance or escape Not one of the present generation has been out of sight of these walls There is an oasis a day's march to the south I have seen it on the old maps their ancestors drew on parchenerations, rasslands which theanother day'srace, drowned in lotus-dreaolden hich heals wounds, prolongs life, and invigorates theto life, and fear the deity they worshi+p You sa one wentthe palaces I have seen the whole city screaates, to cower outside the walls and draw lots to see which would be bound and flung back through the arched doorways to satisfy Thog's lust and hunger Were they not all slu and shrieking again through the outer gates”

”Oh, Conan!” begged Natala hysterically ”Let us flee!”

”In good ti on Thalis' ivory li here?”

221

”I ca lithely back against the velvet divan, and intertwining her slender fingers behind her dusky head ”I a, no common woman, as you can see by my skin, which is as white as that of your little blond there

I was abducted by a rebel prince, ith an army of Kushi+te bow for a land he could make his own He and all his warriors perished in the desert, but one, before he died, placed me on a camel and walked beside it until he dropped and died in his tracks The beast wandered on, and I finally passed into deliriuer, and awakened in this city They toldsenseless beside a dead caht olden wine And only the sight of a woman would have led them to have ventured that far from their walls

”They were naturally much interested in e, they learned to speak mine They are very quick and able of intellect; they learnedbefore I learned theirs But they were e I have been, and ao his lotus- drea her audacious eyes ly at Conan

”Of course the women are jealous of h in their yellow-skinned way, but they are dreamy and uncertain as the men, and these latter like me not only for h I have dreamed the dreams of the lotus, I am a normal woman, with earthly emotions and desires

With such these moon-eyed yelloomen can not compare

”That is why it would be better for you to cut that girl's throat with your saber, before the h paces she never dreamed of! She is too soft to endure what I have thrived on I ahter of Luxur, and before I had known fifteen suh the temples of Derketo, the dusky Goddess, and had been initiated into the mysteries Not that my first years in Xuthal were years of unotten more than the priestesses of Derketo ever drea, their lives are filled with exotic ecstasies, beyond the ken of ordinary rowled Conan

”It is all in the point of view,” smiled Thalis lazily

222

”Well,” he decided, ”we'retime I can see this is no place for ordinarycomes to devour us I think the desert would be kinder”

Natala, whose blood had curdled in her veins at Thalis' words, fervently agreed She could speak Stygian only brokenly, but she understood it well enough Conan stood up, drawing her up beside him