Part 26 (1/2)

Then solow, like that of a crawling gloorripped his knife He knehat it was: awith a torch

Noas so close he could ripped it, and the dim oval of a dark face A few more steps and the erish crouch--the torch halted A door was briefly etched in the glohile the torch-bearer fuh it, and darkness closed again on the alley There was a sinister suggestion of furtiveness about that slinking figure, entering the alley-door in darkness; a priest, perhaps, returning froroped toward the door If one ht cohtAt any ht return, find the narrower alley and co down it He felt hemmed in by those sheer, unscalable walls, desirous of escape, even if escape

The heavy bronze door was not locked It opened under his fingers and he peered through the crack He was looking into a great square chamber of massive black stone A torch slided through the lacquered door and closed it behind him

His sandaled feet made no sound as he crossed the blackthrough this, knife in hand, he ca was only a hint of darkness high above him, tohich the black walls swept upward On all sides black-arched doorways opened into the great still hall It was lit by curious bronze lareat hall a broad black , loo like black stone ledges

Conan shi+vered; he was in a teian God, if not Set hirim And the shrine did not lack an occupant In the reat hall stood a black stone altar, s or ornareat sacred serpents, its iridescent scales shi+ht It did not move, and Conan reed part of the time The Cimmerian took an uncertain step out from the door, then shrank back suddenly, not into the room he had just quitted, but into a velvet-curtained recess He had heard a soft step soed a tall, powerful figure in sandals and silken loin-cloth, with a widefrom his shoulders

But face and head were hidden by a monstrous mask, a half-bestial, half-human countenance, from the crest of which floated a ian priests went masked Conan hoped the ian He turned abruptly from his destination, which apparently was the stair, and stepped straight to the recess As he jerked aside the velvet hanging, a hand darted from the shadows, crushed the cry in his throat and jerked hi into the alcove, and the knife iested by logic He lifted off the grinning mask and drew it over his own head The fisher over the body of the priest, which he concealed behind the hangings, and drew the priestly iven hi now for the blaspheainst a sacred snake; but ould drea for him under the mask of a priest?

He strode boldly from the alcove and headed for one of the arched doorways at randoain, all his senses edged for peril

A band of ures filed down the stair, appareled exactly as he was He hesitated, caught in the open, and stood still, trusting to his disguise, though cold sweat gathered on his forehead and the backs of his hands No as spoken Like phantoreat hall and moved past him toward a black arch The leader carried an ebon staff which supported a grinning white skull, and Conan kneas one of the ritualistic processions so inexplicable to a foreigner, but which played a strong--and often sinister--part in the Stygian religion

The last figure turned his head slightly toward thehim to follow Not to do as obviously expected of him would rouse instant suspicion Conan fell in behind the last ait to their , dark, vaulted corridor in which, Conan noticed uneasily, the skull on the staff glowed phosphorescently He felt a surge of unreasoning, wild aniht and left at these uncanny figures, to flee ri down the dim monstrous intuitions that rose in the back of his loom with shadowy shapes of horror; and presently he barely stifled a sigh of relief as they filed through a great double-valved door which was three tiht

Conan wondered if he dared fade into so dark street they padded silently, while such folk as they met turned their heads away and fled from them The procession kept far out from the walls; to turn and bolt into any of the alleys they passed would be too conspicuous While he ateway in the southern wall, and through this they filed Ahead of them and about theroves, shadowy in the starlight

Now if ever, thought Conan, was his tiate was left behind thean to ait was abandoned, the staff with its skull was tucked uncereroup broke ranks and hurried onward And Conan hurried with thealvanized him The as: ”_Thutothmes!_”

18

'I A interest at his masked companions One of them was Thutothmes, or else the destination of the band was a rendezvous with the ht And he knehat that destination hen beyond the palainst the shadowy sky

They passed through the belt of huts and groves, and if any man saw them he was careful not to show himself The huts were dark Behind theainst the stars that were mirrored in the waters of the harbor; ahead of them the desert stretched away in di sandals of the silent neophytestoward that colossal pyramid that rose out of theland

Conan's heart beat quicker as he gazed at the griainst the stars, and his impatience to close with Thutothht mean was not unmixed with a fear of the unknown No man could approach one of those somber piles of black stone without apprehension The very na the northern nations, and legends hinted that the Stygians did not build them; that they were in the land at whatever immeasurably ancient date the dark-skinned people careat river

As they approached the pyralow near the base which presently resolved itself into a doorway, on either side of which brooded stone lions with the heads of wohtht for the doorway, in the deep well of which Conan saw a shadowy figure

The leader paused an instant beside this diure, and then vanished into the dark interior, and one by one the others followed As each loouardian and soesture Conan could not ed behind, and stooping, pretended to be fu of his sandal Not until the last of the hten and approach the portal

He was uneasily wondering if the guardian of the te some tales he had heard But his doubts were set at rest A di narrow corridor that ran away into blackness, and asilent in the mouth of it, wrapped in a wide black cloak No one else was in sight

Obviously the masked priests had disappeared down the corridor