Part 38 (2/2)
The man started violently at the last comment, his yellow face turning ashy.
”What do you say? Shadows? Into the bellies of shadows?”
”Well,” answered the Cimmerian cautiously, ”whatever it is that takes a man from a sleeping- dais and leaves only a spot of blood.”
”You have seen? You have seen ?” The man was shaking like a leaf; his voice cracked on the
216.high-pitched note.
”Only a man sleeping on a dais, and a shadow that engulfed him,” answered Conan.
The effect of his words on the other was horrifying. With an awful scream the man turned and rushed from the chamber. In his blind haste he caromed from the side of the door, righted himself, and fled through the adjoining chambers, still screaming at the top of his voice.
Amazed, Conan stared after him, the girl trembling as she clutched the giant's arm. They could no longer see the flying figure, but they still heard his frightful screams, dwindling in the distance, and echoing as from vaulted roofs. Suddenly one cry, louder than the others, rose and broke short, followed by blank silence.
”Crom!”
Conan wiped the perspiration from his forehead with a hand that was not entirely steady.
”Surely this is a city of the mad! Let's get out of here, before we meet other madmen!”
”It is all a nightmare!” whimpered Natala. ”We are dead and d.a.m.ned! We died out on the desert and are in h.e.l.l! We are disembodied spirits ow!” Her yelp was induced by a resounding spank from Conan's open hand.
”You're no spirit when a pat makes you yell like that,” he commented, with the grim humor which frequently manifested itself at inopportune times. ”We are alive, though we may not be if we loiter in this devil-haunted pile. Come!”
They had traversed but a single chamber when again they stopped short. Some one or something was approaching. They faced the doorway whence the sounds came, waiting for they knew not what. Conan's nostrils widened, and his eyes narrowed. He caught the faint scent of the perfume he had noticed earlier in the night. A figure framed itself in the doorway.
Conan swore under his breath; Natala's red lips opened wide.
It was a woman who stood there staring at them in wonder. She was tall, lithe, shaped like a G.o.ddess; clad in a narrow girdle crusted with jewels. A burnished ma.s.s of night-black hair set off the whiteness of her ivory body. Her dark eyes, shaded by long dusky lashes, were deep with sensuous mystery. Conan caught his breath at her beauty, and Natala stared with dilated eyes. The Cimmerian had never seen such a woman; her facial outline was Stygian, but she was not dusky-skinned like the Stygian women he had known; her limbs were like alabaster.
217.
But when she spoke, in a deep rich musical voice, it was in the Stygian tongue.
”Who are you? What do you in Xuthal? Who is that girl?”
”Who are you?” bluntly countered Conan, who quickly wearied of answering questions.
”I am Thalis the Stygian,” she replied. ”Are you mad, to come here?”
”I've been thinking I must be,” he growled. ”By Crom, if I am sane, I'm out of place here, because these people are all maniacs. We stagger in from the desert, dying of thirst and hunger, and we come upon a dead man who tries to stab me in the back. We enter a palace, rich and luxuriant, yet apparently empty. We find a meal set, but with no feasters. Then we see a shadow devour a sleeping man ” he watched her narrowly and saw her change color slightly.
”Well?”
”Well what?” she demanded, apparently regaining control of herself.
”I was just waiting for you to run through the rooms howling like a wild woman,” he answered.
”The man I told about the shadow did.”
She shrugged her slim ivory shoulders. ”That was the screams I heard, then. Well, to every man his fate, and it's foolish to squeal like a rat in a trap. When Thog wants me, he will come for me.”
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