Part 51 (1/2)
Murilo's blood turned cold as he saw that the Red Priest's hand grasped a thick velvet rope which hung a the curtains just outside the door
”What treachery is this?” cried Murilo ”You swore ”
”I swore I would not tell the king a jest concerning you! I did not swear not to take matters into my own hands if I could Do you think I would pass up such an opportunity? Under ordinary circumstances I would not dare to kill you , but now none will ever know You will go into the acid-vats along with Thak and the nationalist fools, and none will be the wiser What a night this has been for me! If I have lost some valuable servants, I have nevertheless rid erous enemies Stand back! I am over the threshold, and you can not possibly reach ray lotus, this ti just as effective Nearly every chamber in my house is a trap And so, Murilo, fool that you are ”
Too quickly for the sight to follow, Conan caught up a stool and hurled it Nabonidus instinctively threw up his arainst his head, and the Red Priest swayed and fell face-down in a sloidening pool of dark crirunted Conan
Murilo raked back his sweat-plastered hair with a shaky hand as he leaned against the table,
282weak from the reaction of relief
”It is dawn,” he said ”Let us get out of here, before we fall afoul of so seen, on't be connected with this night's work Let the police write their own explanation”
He glanced at the body of the Red Priest where it lay etched in cried his shoulders
”He was the fool, after all; had he not paused to taunt us, he could have trapped us easily”
”Well,” said the Ciues must walk at last I'd like to loot the house, but I suppose we'd best go”
As they earden, Murilo said: ”The Red Priest has gone into the dark, soto fear But what of you? There is still the matter of that priest in The Maze, and ”
”I'rinned the Ci at the Rat's Den I'm curious to see how fast that horse can carry hway I want to travel before I walk the road Nabonidus walked this night”
283
The Vale of Lost Women
The Vale of Lost Woreat elephant tusk horns was deafening, but in Livia's ears the cla, dull and far away As she lay on the angareb in the great hut, her state bordered between delirium and semi-unconsciousness Outward sounds and ed upon her senses Her whole h dazed and chaotic, was yet centered with hideous certitude on the naked, writhing figure of her brother, blood strearound of dusky interweaving shapes and shadows, that white form was limned in merciless and awful clarity The air seeled and interwoven obscenely with a rustle of fiendish laughter
She was not conscious of sensation as an individual, separate and distinct froulf of pain was herself but pain crystallized and ht or motion, while outside the drums bellowed, the horns cla ti the hard earth and open palh her frozen an slowly to seep A dull wonder that she was still bodily unharmed first iving Theareb and stared dully about her Her extre to blindly awakening nerve-centers Her naked feet scruffed nervously at the hard- beaten dirt floor Her fingers twitched convulsively at the skirt of the scanty under-tunic which constituted her only gar, long ago, rude hands had torn her other garht and sha should have caused her so nity was only relative, after all, like everything else
The hut door opened, and a black woleamed like polished ebony, adorned only by a wisp of silk twisted about her strutting loins The whites of her eyeballs reflected the firelight outside, as she rolled the
She bore a ba ots of native bread and a vessel of haold, filled with yarati beer These she set down on
284the angareb, but Livia paid no heed; she sat staring dully at the opposite wall, hung with hed evilly, with a flash of dark eyes and white teeth, and with a hiss of spiteful obscenity and a e, she turned and swaggered out of the hut, expressinginsolence with the motions of her hips than any civilized woman could with spoken insults
Neither the wench's words nor her actions had stirred the surface of Livia's consciousness All her sensations were still turned inward Still the vividness of her mental pictures hosts and shadows Mechanically she ate the food and drank the liquor without tasting either
It was still mechanically that at last she rose and walked unsteadily across the hut, to peer out through a crack between the bae in the timbre of the drums and horns that reacted upon some obscure part of her mind and made her seek the cause, without sensible volition