Part 7 (1/2)

They went up the path in silence, and warily asthe lair of a serpent The Irakzai were du to a certain doom Even Kerim Shah was silent Only Conan see of accepted thought and action their invasion constituted, what an unprecedented violation of tradition He was not of the East; and he caht devils and wizards as promptly and matter-of-factly as they battled hu stairs and across the wide green gallery straight toward the great golden-bound teak door that opened upon it He cast but a single glance upward at the higher tiers of the great pyra above hi that jutted like a handle fro hardly The handle was made in the shape of a serpent, head lifted on arched neck; and Conan had a suspicion that that risly life under his hand

He struck it frolassy floor did not lessen his caution He flipped it aside with his knife point, and again turned to the door Utter silence reigned over the towers Far below them the mountain slopes fell away into a purple haze of distance The sun glittered on snow-clad peaks on either hand High above a vulture hung like a black dot in the cold blue of the sky But for it the old-bound door were the only evidence of life, tiny figures on a green jade gallery poised on the dizzy height, with that fantastic pile of stone towering above the their tatters about Conan's long knife splintering through the teak panels roused the startled echoes Again and again he struck, hewing through polished wood and lared into the interior, alert and suspicious as a wolf He saw a broad chamber, the polished stone walls untapestried, the mosaic floor uncarpeted Square, polished ebon stools and a stone dais fors The room was empty of human life Another door showed in the opposite wall

”Leave ain”

Kerinated a warrior for that duty, and the allery, bow in hand Conan strode into the castle, followed by the Turanian and the three rerumbled in his beard, and started suddenly as a low 65

h reached his ears

He lifted his head and saw, on the tier above hihtly as he stared down His whole attitude suggested nity

Quick as a flash the Irakzai bent his bow and loosed, and the arrow streaked upward to strike full in the black-robed breast Thesmile did not alter The Seer plucked out the missile and threw it back at the bowesture The Irakzai dodged, instinctively throwing up his ar shaft

Then he shrieked In his hand the wooden shaft suddenly writhed Its rigid outline becarasp He tried to throw it fro serpent in his naked hand and already it had coiled about his wrist and its wicked wedge- shaped head darted at his ain and his eyes became distended, his features purple He went to his knees shaken by an awful convulsion, and then lay still

The men inside had wheeled at his first cry Conan took a swift stride toward the open doorway, and then halted short, baffled To the ainst e, there was a slick, smooth, hard surface under his hands, and he knew that a sheet of crystal had been let down in the doorway

Through it he saw the Irakzai lyingin his arm Naturally, he could not see the man on the tier below

Conan lifted his knife and smote, and the watchers were dumbfounded to see his blow checked apparently insubstance He wasted no endary tulwar of Amir Khurum could shatter that invisible curtain

In a feords he explained the ed his shoulders ”Well, if our exit is barred, we must find another In the runt the Cimmerian turned and strode across the cha on the threshold of doo silently open as if of its own accord He strode into a great hall, flanked with tall glassy colureen steps of a stair that tapered toward the top like the side of a pyramid What lay beyond that stair he could not tell But between hileaolden serpents twined their tails about this altar and reared their wedge-shaped heads in the air, facing the four quarters of the couardians of a fabled treasure

But on the altar, between the arching necks, stood only a crystal globe filled with a cloudy sranates

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The sight stirred some dim recollection in his er, for on the lower steps of the stair stood four black-robed figures He had not seen theaunt, their vulture-heads nodding in unison, their feet and hands hidden by their flowing garments

One lifted his ar his hand and it was not a hand at all

Conan halted in ainst his will He had encountered a force differing subtly froh he felt it in his power to retreat if he wished His companions had likewise halted, and they seemed even more helpless than he, unable to move in either direction

The Seer whose arm was lifted beckoned to one of the Irakzai, and theand fixed, blade hanging in liers As he pushed past Conan, the Cimmerian threw an arer than the Irakzai that in ordinary circumstances he could have broken his spine between his hands But now the muscular arm was brushed aside like a straw and the Irakzaijerkily and mechanically He reached the steps and knelt stiffly, proffering his blade and bending his head The Seer took the sword It flashed as he swung it up and down The Irakzai's head tumbled from his shoulders and thudded heavily on the black marble floor An arch of blood jetted from the severed arteries and the body sluain a malformed hand lifted and beckoned, and another Irakzai stuhastly drama was re-enacted and another headless form lay beside the first

As the third tribesman clumped his way past Conan to his death, the Ci in his temples with his efforts to break past the unseen barrier that held hi into life about hi, but so powerfully he could not doubt his instinct His left hand slid involuntarily under his Bakhariot belt and closed on the Stygian girdle And as he gripped it he felt new strength and power flood his nu white-hot fire, e

The third Irakzai was a decapitated corpse, and the hideous finger was lifting again when Conan felt the bursting of the invisible barrier A fierce, involuntary cry burst from his lips as he leaped with the explosive suddenness of pent-up ferocity His left hand gripped the sorcerer's girdle as a drowningknife was a sheen of light in his right The men on the steps did not move They watched calmly, cynically; if they felt surprize they did not show it Conan did not allow hiht chance when he ca in his teht He was afire with the urge to kill to drive his knife deep into flesh and 67

bone, and twist the blade in blood and entrails

Another dozen strides would carry hi de redly as his charge gathered olden serpents when like a levin-flash there shot across his ain as vividly as if spoken in his external ear, the cryptic words of Khemsa: ”Break the crystal ball!”

His reaction was almost without his own volition Execution followed ie would not have had ti like a cat fro down upon the crystal Instantly the air vibrated with a peal of terror whether from the stairs, the altar, or the crystal itself he could not tell Hisses filled his ears as the golden serpents, suddenly vibrant with hideous life, writhed and ser A whirl of steel sheared through the hideous trunks that waved toward hiain And the globe burst with a noise like a thunder-clap, raining fiery shards on the black ranates, as if released froone

A h the great hall On the steps writhed four black-robed figures, twisting in convulsions, froth dripping from their livid mouths Then with one frenzied crescendo of inhuman ululation they stiffened and lay still, and Conan knew they were dead He stared down at the altar and the crystal shards Four headless golden serpents still coiled about the altar, but no alien life now ani slowly from his knees whither he had been dashed by so from his ears

”Did you hear that crash when you struck? It was as if a thousand crystal panels shattered all over the castle as that globe burst Were the souls of the wizards iolden balls? Ha!”

Conan wheeled as Keriure stood at the head of the stair His robe, too, was black, but of richly embroidered velvet, and there was a velvet cap on his head His face was calm, and not unhandso up at him, knife in hand

”I am the Master of Yimsha!” His voice was like the chih it

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”Where is Yashed down at him

”What is that to you, dead th, once lent to you, that you coainst me, you poor fool? I think I will take your heart, Keri, and the Turanian cried out sharply like a ony He reeled drunkenly, and then, with a splintering of bones, a rending of flesh andof mail-links, his breast burst outith a shower of blood, and through the ghastly aperture soh the air into the Master's outstretched hand, as a bit of steel leaps to the net The Turanian sluhed and hurled the object to fall before Conan's feet a still quivering hued the stair Froth and deathless hate flow into him to combat the terrible emanation of power thatsteely haze through which he plunged like a swih surf, head lowered, left arht hand

His half-blinded eyes, glaring over the crook of his elbow, made out the hated shape of the Seer before and above hi as a reflection wavers in disturbed water

He was racked and torn by forces beyond his co power outside and beyond his own lifting hith and his own agony

Now he had reached the head of the stairs, and the Master's face floated in the steely haze before hie fear shadowed the inscrutable eyes Conan waded through the ed upward like a live thing The keen point ripped the Master's robe as he sprang back with a low cry Then before Conan's gaze the wizard vanished si and undulating darted up one of the s

Conan charged after it, up the left-hand stair, uncertain as to just what he had seen whip up those steps, but in a berserkat the back of his consciousness

He plunged out into a broad corridor whose uncarpeted floor and untapestried walls were of polished jade, and so and shisked down the corridor ahead of him, and into a curtained door Froent terror The sound lent wings to Conan's flying feet and he hurtled through the curtains and headlong into the chalare Yase of a velvet covered dais, screa and horror, an arm lifted as if to ward off attack, while before her swayed the hideous head of a giant serpent, shi+ning neck arching up fro coils