Part 56 (1/2)

He stalked through the world like a God, for no earthly weapon could hars he caonia, and it pleased hiive this race culture and civilization, and by his aid they built the city of Dagon and they abode there and worshi+pped hirisly were his servants, called frootten ages yet lurked His house in Dagon was connected with every other house by tunnels through which his shaven-headed priests bore victies a fierce and brutish people appeared on the shores of the sea They called themselves Yuetshi+, and after a fierce battle were defeated and enslaved, and for nearly a generation they died on the altars of Khosatral

His sorcery kept theaunt ed into the wilderness, and when he returned he bore a knife that was of no earthly substance It was forged of aarrow and fell in a far valley The slaves rose Their saw-edged crescents cut down the ainst that unearthly knife the hter bellowed through the red srireat daised chamber with its copper throne and its walls mottled like the skin of serpents

Froed alone He had not slain his foe, because he wished to hold the threat of his loosing over the heads of his own rebellious subjects He had left Khosatral lying upon the golden dais with the mystic knife across his breast for a spell to hold hies passed and the priest died, the towers of deserted Dagon crumbled, the tales becaues and fa the seashore

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Only the cryptic dome resisted the rot of time, until a chance thunderbolt and the curiosity of a fisheric knife and broke the spell Khosatral Khel rose and lived and waxed hty once more It pleased him to restore the city as it was in the days before its fall By his necrootten es ain

But folk who have tasted of death are only partly alive In the dark corners of their souls and ht the people of Dagon moved and loved, hated and feasted, and rehter only as a di the strangeness of their existence but not inquiring the reasons therefor With the coain only by the coht, which is akin to death

All this rolled in a terrible panorama before Conan's consciousness as he crouched beside the tapestried wall His reason staggered All certainty and sanity were swept away, leaving a shadowy universe through which stole hooded figures of grisly potentialities Through the belling of the voice which was like a tolling of triumph over the ordered laws of a sane planet, a huh spheres ofof a woha waited with growing i the reeds More than an hour passed, and Conan had not reappeared Doubtless he was still searching the island for the girl he thought to be hidden there But another surha Suppose the hetrow suspicious and coir spoke to the oarslided toward the carven stairs

Leaving half a dozen hty archers of Khawarizer-skin cloaks Like hunters invading the retreat of the lion, they stole forward under the trees, arrows on string Silence reigned over the forest except when a great green thing that ht have been a parrot swirled over their heads with a low thunder of broad wings, and then sped off through the trees With a sudden gesture Jehungir halted his party, and they stared incredulously at the towers that showed through the verdure in the distance

”Tariir ”The pirates have rebuilt the ruins! Doubtless Conan is there We ate this A fortified town this close to the lided through the trees The game had altered; from pursuers and hunters they had becorowth, the reed arrows

Conan realized with a crawling of his skin that beyond the wall the belling voice had ceased

He stood aze fixed on a curtained door through which he knew a cul horror would presently appear

It was dian to lift on his scalp as he looked

He saw a head and a pair of gigantic shoulders grow out of the twilight gloorew ure of a irdle His square-cut old Conan stared at the sweep of thebreast, the bands and ridges and clusters of muscles on torso and limbs

The face ithout weakness and without mercy The eyes were balls of dark fire And Conan knew that this was Khosatral Khel, the ancient froonia

No as spoken No as necessary Khosatral spread his great ariant's belly Then he bounded back, eyes blazing with surprize The keen edge had rung on theThen Khosatral cae

There was a fleeting concussion, a fierce writhing and intertwining of li clear, every thew quivering fro fingers had torn the skin In that instant of contact he had experienced the ultimate madness of blasphemed nature; no human flesh had bruised his, butiron which opposed his

Khosatral looers lock and they would not loosen until the hurasp In that twilit chahtht up a heavy bench and hurled it with all his power It was such a hty breast it siant on his braced legs His face lost so of its human aspect, a ni tower he came on

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With a desperate wrench Conan ripped a whole section of tapestry froreater than that required for throwing the bench, he flung it over the giant's head For an instant Khosatral floundered, s stuff that resisted his strength as wood or steel could not have done, and in that instant Conan caught up his si his speed he hurled hi chamber, slammed the door and shot the bolt