Part 39 (2/2)

Natala moaned with terror and clasped Conan's mighty neck as if to resist an effort to drag her from her protector's side.

”Crom!” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed aghast. ”You mean to tell me these people lie down calmly and sleep, with this demon crawling among them?”

220.

”It is only occasionally that he is hungry,” she repeated. ”A G.o.d must have his sacrifices. When I was a child in Stygia the people lived under the shadow of the priests. None ever knew when he or she would be seized and dragged to the altar. What difference whether the priests give a victim to the G.o.ds, or the G.o.d comes for his own victim?”

”Such is not the custom of my people,” Conan growled, ”nor of Natala's either. The Hyborians do not sacrifice humans to their G.o.d, Mitra, and as for my people by Crom, I'd like to see a priest try to drag a Cimmerian to the altar! There'd be blood spilt, but not as the priest intended.”

”You are a barbarian,” laughed Thalis, but with a glow in her luminous eyes. ”Thog is very ancient and very terrible.”

”These folk must be either fools or heroes,” grunted Conan, ”to lie down and dream their idiotic dreams, knowing they might 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 numbers from thousands to hundreds. A few more generations and they will be extinct, and Thog must either fare forth into the world for new prey, or retire to the underworld whence he came so long ago.

”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 parchment but no man of Xuthal has visited it for three generations, much less made any attempt to explore the fertile gra.s.slands which the maps show lying another day's march beyond it. They are a fast- fading race, drowned in lotus-dreams, stimulating their waking hours by means of the golden wine which heals wounds, prolongs life, and invigorates the most sated debauchee.

”Yet they cling to life, and fear the deity they wors.h.i.+p. You saw how one went mad at the knowledge that Thog was roving the palaces. I have seen the whole city screaming and tearing its hair, and running frenziedly out of the gates, 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 l.u.s.t and hunger. Were they not all slumbering now, the word of his coming would send them raving and shrieking again through the outer gates.”

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

”In good time,” muttered Conan, his eyes burning on Thalis' ivory limbs. ”What are you, a Stygian woman, doing here?”

221.

”I came here when a young girl,” she answered, leaning lithely back against the velvet divan, and intertwining her slender fingers behind her dusky head. ”I am the daughter of a king, 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, who, with an army of Kus.h.i.+te bowmen, pushed southward into the wilderness, searching 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 pa.s.sed into delirium from thirst and hunger, and awakened in this city. They told me I had been seen from the walls, early in the dawn, lying senseless beside a dead camel. They went forth and brought me in and revived me with their wonderful golden 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 me, especially the men. As I could not speak their language, they learned to speak mine. They are very quick and able of intellect; they learned my language long before I learned theirs. But they were more interested in me than in my language. I have been, and am, the only thing for which a man of them will forego his lotus- dreams for a s.p.a.ce.”

She laughed wickedly, flas.h.i.+ng her audacious eyes meaningly at Conan.

”Of course the women are jealous of me,” she continued tranquilly. ”They are handsome enough in their yellow-skinned way, but they are dreamy and uncertain as the men, and these latter like me not only for my beauty, but for my reality. I am no dream! Though I have dreamed the dreams of the lotus, I am a normal woman, with earthly emotions and desires.

With such these moon-eyed yellow women can not compare.

”That is why it would be better for you to cut that girl's throat with your saber, before the men of Xuthal waken and catch her. They will put her through paces she never dreamed of! She is too soft to endure what I have thrived on. I am a daughter of Luxur, and before I had known fifteen summers I had been led through the temples of Derketo, the dusky G.o.ddess, and had been initiated into the mysteries. Not that my first years in Xuthal were years of unmodified pleasure! The people of Xuthal have forgotten more than the priestesses of Derketo ever dreamed. They live only for sensual joys. Dreaming or waking, their lives are filled with exotic ecstasies, beyond the ken of ordinary men.”

”d.a.m.ned degenerates!” growled Conan.

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

222.

”Well,” he decided, ”we're merely wasting time. I can see this is no place for ordinary mortals.

We'll be gone before your morons awake, or Thog comes 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.

<script>