Part 22 (2/2)

When the lookout did sight a sail, it was to the north, not the south Far on the skyline behind thealley, with full spread of purple sail The blacks urged Conan to turn and plunder it, but he shook his head So toward the ports of Stygia That night, before darkness shut down, the lookout's last glialley on the horizon, and at dawn it was still hanging on their tail, afar off, tiny in the distance Conan wondered if it was following hiical reason for such a supposition But he paid little heed Each day that carried him farther southward filled him with fiercer impatience Doubts never assailed him As he believed in the rise and set of the sun he believed that a priest of Set had stolen the Heart of Ahriia? The blacks sensed his eagerness, and toiled as they had never toiled under the lash, though ignorant of his goal They anticipated a red career of pillage and plunder and were content The men of the southern isles knew no other trade; and the Kushi+tes of the crew joined whole-heartedly in the prospect of looting their own people, with the callousness of their race Blood-ties ain everything

Soon the character of the coastline changed No longer they sailed past steep cliffs with blue hills e of broad e and swept away and away into the hazy distance Here were few harbors and fewer ports, but the green plain was dotted with the cities of the Shereen plains, and the zikkurats of the cities glea whitely in the sun, so-lands moved the herds of cattle, and squat, broad riders with cylindrical helmets and curled blue-black beards, with bows in their hands This was the shore of the lands of Shem, where there was no law save as each city-state could enforce its own Far to the eastward, Conan knew, the ave way to desert, where there were no cities and the nomadic tribes roamed unhindered

Still as they plied southward, past the changeless panoraan to alter Clurew denser

The shore-line becareen fronds and trees, and behind them rose bare, sandy hills Streaetation grew thick and of vast variety

So at last they passed the led its floith the ocean, and saw the great black walls and towers of Kheainst the southern horizon

The river was the Styx, the real border of Stygia Khereatest port, and at that 194

ti dwelt at ned the priest-craft; though ion lay far inland, in a mysterious, deserted city near the bank of the Styx This river, springing froia, ran northward for a thousand miles before it turned and floard for some hundreds of miles, to e no lights, stole past the port in the night, and before dawn discovered her, anchored in a small bay a few reen tangle ofwith crocodiles and serpents Discovery was extremely unlikely Conan knew the place of old; he had hidden there before, in his corsair days

As they slid silently past the city whose great black bastions rose on the jutting prongs of land which locked the harbor, torches gleamed and smoldered luridly, and to their ears came the low thunder of drums The port was not croith shi+ps, as were the harbors of Argos The Stygians did not base their glory and power upon shi+ps and fleets Trading-vessels and war- galleys, indeed, they had, but not in proportion to their inland strength Many of their craft plied up and down the great river, rather than along the sea-coasts

The Stygians were an ancient race, a dark, inscrutable people, powerful and o their rule had stretched far north of the Styx, beyond the meadowlands of Shem, and into the fertile uplands now inhabited by the peoples of Koth and Ophir and Argos Their borders had marched with those of ancient Acheron But Acheron had fallen, and the barbaric ancestors of the Hyborians had swept southward in wolfskins and horned hel the ancient rulers of the land before theotten

All day the Venturer lay at anchor in the tiny bay, walled in with green branches and tangled vines through which flitted gay-pluht- scaled, silent reptiles Toward sundown a s and finding that which Conan desired a Stygian fisherht hiily built res of that coast He was naked except for his silken breeks, for, like the Hyrkanians, even the coia wore silk; and in his boat was a wide ainst the chill of the night

He fell to his knees before Conan, expecting torture and death

”Stand on your legs, ,” said the Cimmerian impatiently, who found it difficult to understand abject terror ”You won't be haralley returning froos, put into Khemi within the last few days?”

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”Aye, my lord,” answered the fisherman ”Only yesterday at dawn the priest Thutothe far to the north Men say he has been to Messantia”

”What did he bring from Messantia?”

”Alas, o to Messantia?” demanded Conan

”Nay, my lord, I am but a common man Who am I to know the minds of the priests of Set? I can only speak what I have seen and what I have heard reat ih of what none knows; and it is well known that the lord Thutothreat haste Now he is returned, but what he did in Argos, or what cargo he brought back, none knows, not even the seaalley Men say that he has opposed Thoth-Amon, who is the master of all priests of Set, and dwells in Luxur, and that Thutothmes seeks hidden power to overthrow the Great One But who am I to say? When priests ith one another a common man can but lie on his belly and hope neither treads upon him”

Conan snarled in nervous exasperation at this servile philosophy, and turned to hisalone into Khemi to find this thief Thutothmes Keep this man prisoner, but see that you do hi! Do you think we can sail into the harbor and take the city by stor the claarments and donned the prisoner's silk breeches and sandals, and the band from the man's hair, but scorned the short fisheria were not allowed to wear swords, and theblade, but Conan buckled to his hip a Ghanata knife, a weapon borne by the fierce desert ians, a broad, heavy, slightly curved blade of fine steel, edged like a razor and long enough to disuarded by the corsairs, Conan climbed into the fisher's boat

”Wait for me until dawn,” he said ”If I haven't come then, I'll never come, so hasten southward to your own homes”

As he cla, until he thrust his head back into sight to curse therasped the oars and sent the tiny craft shooting over the waves more swiftly than its owner had ever propelled it

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XVII

”HE HAS SLAIN THE SACRED SON OF SET!”

The harbor of Khe points of land that ran into the ocean He rounded the southern point, where the great black castles rose like a man-made hill, and entered the harbor just at dusk, when there was still enough light for the watchers to recognize the fishernition of betraying details

Unchallenged he threaded his way ahted at anchor, and drew up to a flight of wide stone steps which e

There heset in the stone, as nue in a fisher his boat there None but a fisherman could find a use for such a craft, and they did not steal frolance as hethe torches that flared at intervals above the lapping black water He see after a fruitless day along the coast If one had observed hiht have seey and sure, his carriage somewhat too erect and confident for a lowly fisher in the shadows, and the coiven to analysis than were the commoners of the less exotic races

In build he was not unlike the warrior castes of the Stygians, ere a tall, muscular race

Bronzed by the sun, he was nearly as dark as many of them His black hair, square-cut and confined by a copper band, increased the resemblance The characteristics which set him apart from them were the subtle difference in his walk, and his alien features and blue eyes

But the uise, and he kept asaway his head when a native passed hia keep up the deception Khemi was not like the sea-ports of the Hyborians, where types of every race swarro and Shemite slaves; and he reseians theia; tolerated only when they came as ambassadors or licensed traders But even then the latter were not allowed ashore after dark And now there were no Hyborian shi+ps in the harbor at all A strange restlessness ran through the city, a stirring of ancient a none could define except those hispered This Conan felt rather than knew, his whetted pri unrest about hihastly They would slay hinized as Amra, the corsair chief who had swept their coasts with steel and flame an involuntary shudder twitched Conan's broad shoulders Human foes he did not fear, nor any death by steel or fire But this was a black land of sorcery and nameless horror

Set the Old Serpent, o from the Hyborian races, yet lurked in the shadows of the cryptic tehted shrines

He had draay fro down to the water, and was entering the long shadowy streets of the main part of the city There was no such scene as was offered by any Hyborian city no blaze of la along the pave their wares

Here the stalls were closed at dusk The only lights along the streets were torches, flaring s the streets were co, and their numbers decreased with the lateness of the hour Conan found the scene gloomy and unreal; the silence of the people, their furtive haste, the great black stone walls that rose on each side of the streets There was a griian architecture that was overpowering and oppressive

Few lights showed anywhere except in the upper parts of the buildings Conan knew thatthe palardens under the stars There was a murmur of weird music fro the flags, and there was a brief glimpse of a tall, hawk-faced noble, with a silk cloak wrapped about hi serpent-head e his black ainst the straining of the fierce Stygian horses

But the people who yet traversed the streets on foot were commoners, slaves, tradesressed He wastoward the temple of Set, where he kneould be likely to find the priest he sought He believed he would know Thutothlance had been in the semi-darkness of the Messantian alley That the man he had seen there had been the priest he was certain Only occultists high in thepossessed the power of the black hand that dealt death by its touch; and only such a man would dare defy Thoth-Aure of terror and myth

The street broadened, and Conan are that he was getting into the part of the city dedicated to the teainst the di in the flare of the few torches And suddenly he heard a low scream from a woman on the other side of the street and so the tall pluainst the 198

wall, staring across at so he could not yet see At her cry the few people on the street halted suddenly as if frozen At the sa ahead of hi he was approaching poked a hideous, wedge- shaped head, and after it flowed coil after coil of rippling, darkly glistening trunk

The Ci tales he had heard serpents were sacred to Set, God of Stygia, who men said was himself a serpent Monsters such as this were kept in the teered, were allowed to crawl forth into the streets to take what prey they wished Their ghastly feasts were considered a sacrifice to the scaly God

The Stygians within Conan's sight fell to their knees, reat serpent would select, would lap in scaly coils, crush to a red pulp and s as a rat-snake ss a mouse The others would live That was the will of the Gods

But it was not Conan's will The python glided toward him, its attention probably attracted by the fact that he was the only hureat knife under his mantle, Conan hoped the slimy brute would pass him by But it halted before hiht, its forked tongue flickering in and out, its cold eyes glittering with the ancient cruelty of the serpent-folk Its neck arched, but before it could dart, Conan whipped his knife fro The broad blade split that wedge-shaped head and sheared deep into the thick neck

Conan wrenched his knife free and sprang clear as the great body knotted and looped and whipped terrifically in its death throes In thein morbid fascination, the only sound was the thud and swish of the snake's tail against the stones