Part 13 (1/2)

He grunted with satisfaction The feel of the hilt cheered hilow of confidence Whatever webs of conspiracy were drawn about him, whatever trickery and treachery ensnared hiht arm swelled in anticipation ofwith the keys as he did so It was not locked Yet he reure, then, had been no jailer seeing that the bolts were in place He had unlocked the door, instead There was a sinister suggestion about that unlocked door But Conan did not hesitate He pushed open the grille and stepped froht, the door did not open into another corridor The flagged floor stretched away under his feet, and the line of cells ran away to right and left behind him, but he could not make out the other limits of the place into which he had come He could see neither the roof nor any other wall The rilles of the cells, and was almost lost in the darkness Less keen eyes than his could scarcely have discerned the diray patches that floated before each cell door

Turning to the left, he eons, his bare feet lanced briefly into each dungeon as he passed it They were all elirio when Belverus was a fortress rather than a city

But evidently their uessed

Ahead of hi sharply upward, and knew it ht Then he whirled suddenly, crouching in the deep shadows at its 113

foot

So bulky and stealthy that padded on feet which were not hu row of cells, before each one of which lay a square of diht that was little more than a patch of less dense darkness

But he saw so these squares What it was he could not tell, but it was heavy and huge, and yet it liray, then lost it as it ed in the expanses of shadoeen It was uncanny, in its stealthy advance, appearing and disappearing like a blur of the vision

He heard the bars rattle as it tried each door in turn Now it had reached the cell he had so recently quitted, and the door swung open as it tugged He saw a great bulky shape liray doorway, and then the thing had vanished into the dungeon

Sweat beaded Conan's face and hands Now he knehy Tarascus had come so subtly to his door, and later had fled so swiftly The king had unlocked his door, and, soe that held so fro up the corridor, its round It paid noout his trail He saw it iant anthropoirth than any h it stooped forward, and it was grayish and shaggy, its thick coat shot with silver Its head was a grisly travesty of the huround

Conan knew it at last understood the eon, and recognized the haunter of the pits It was a gray ape, one of the grisly man-eaters from the forests that wave on the mountainous eastern shores of the Sea of Vilayet Half oblins of Hyborian legendry, and were in reality ogres of the natural world, cannibals and hted forests

He knew it scented his presence, for it was co on its short,stair, but knew that the thing would be on his back before he could mount to the distant door He chose to meet it face to face

Conan stepped out into the nearest square of e of illumination that he could; for the beast, he knew, could see better than hireat yellow tusks gleaht and the silence, the gray apes of Vilayet were voiceless But in its dim, hideous features, which were a bestial travesty of a huhastly exultation

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Conan stood poised, watching the onco monster without a quiver He knew he must stake his life on one thrust; there would be no chance for another; nor would there be ti away The first blow must kill, and kill instantly, if he hoped to survive that awful grapple He swept his gaze over the short, squat throat, the hairy swagbelly, and the iant arches like twin shi+elds Itdeflected by the heavy ribs than to strike in where a stroke was not instantly fatal With full realization of the odds, Conan ainst the brute ht and ferocity of the man-eater He must meet the brute breast to breast, strike a death-blow, and then trust to the ruggedness of his fra that was certain to be his

As the ape ca wide its terrible ared in between them and struck with all his desperate power He felt the blade sink to the hilt in the hairy breast, and instantly, releasing it, he ducked his head and bunched his whole body into one corasped the closing arms and drove his knee fiercely into the rapple

For one dizzy instant he felt as if he were being disrip of an earthquake; then suddenly he was free, sprawling on the floor, and theout its life beneath him, its red eyes turned upward, the hilt of the poniard quivering in its breast His desperate stab had gone ho conflict, tre in every limb Some of his joints felt as if they had been dislocated, and blood dripped from scratches on his skin where the monster's talons had ripped; his ely wrenched and twisted If the beast had lived a second longer, it would surely have disth had resisted, for the fleeting instant it had endured, the dying convulsion of the ape that would have torn a lesser man limb from limb

VI

THE THRUST OF A KNIFE

Conan stooped and tore the knife from the monster's breast Then he went swiftly up the stair

What other shapes of fear the darkness held he could not guess, but he had no desire to encounter anywas too strenuous even for the giant Ci fro like panic pursued hih of relief when he reached the head, and felt the third key turn in the lock He opened the door slightly, and craned his neck to peer through, half expecting an attack from some human or bestial enehted, and a slender, supple figure stood before 115

the door

”Your Majesty!” It was a low, vibrant cry, half in relief and half in fear The girl sprang to his side, then hesitated as if abashed

”You bleed,” she said ”You have been hurt!”

He brushed aside the implication with an impatient hand

”Scratches that wouldn't hurt a baby Your skewer cah But for it Tarascus's ht now But what now?”

”Follow me,” she whispered ”I will lead you outside the city wall I have a horse concealed there”

She turned to lead the way down the corridor, but he laid a heavy hand on her naked shoulder

”Walk besidehis massive arm about her lithe waist

”You've played me fair so far, and I' only because I've trusted no one too far, man or woman So! Now if you play me false you won't live to enjoy the jest”

She did not flinch at sight of the reddened poniard or the contact of his hard muscles about her supple body

”Cut me doithout mercy if I play you false,” she answered ”The very feel of your arm about me, even in menace, is as the fulfillment of a dream”

The vaulted corridor ended at a door, which she opened Outside lay another black iant in turban and silk loin-cloth, with a curved sword lying on the flags near his hand He did notto avoid the recuuard of the pits None ever escaped from them before, and none has ever wished to seek theuard the Conan that Xaltotun brought a prisoner in his chariot I atching, sleepless, from an upper caseirls slept; for I knew that a battle was being fought, or had been fought, in the west, and I feared for you

”I saw the blacks carry you up the stair, and I recognized you in the torchlight I slipped into 116

this wing of the palace tonight, in time to see thehtfall You ed senselessness all day in Xaltotun's chas are afoot in the palace tonight The slaves said that Xaltotun slept as he often sleeps, drugged by the lotus of Stygia, but Tarascus is in the palace

He entered secretly, through the postern, wrapped in his cloak which was dusty as with long travel, and attended only by his squire, the lean silent Arideus I cannot understand, but I am afraid”

They ca it, passed through a narrow panel which she slid aside When they had passed through, she slipped it back in place, and it became merely a portion of the ornate wall They were in a more spacious corridor, carpeted and tapestried, over which hanging lalow

Conan listened intently, but he heard no sound throughout the palace He did not knohat part of the palace he was, or in which direction lay the cha the corridor, to halt presently beside an alcovethis aside, she motioned for him to step into the niche, and whispered: ”Wait here! Beyond that door at the end of the corridor we are likely to ht I will go and see if the way is clear, before we essay it”

Instantly his hair-trigger suspicions were aroused