Part 10 (2/2)
-The Song of Belit
The Tigress ranged the sea, and the black villages shuddered Toht, with a tale that the she-devil of the sea had found a mate, an iron man whose wrath was as that of a wounded lion And survivors of butchered Stygian shi+ps named Belit with curse, and a white warrior with fierce blue eyes; so the Stygian princes re, and their memory was a bitter tree, which bore crirant wind, the Tigress cruised the southern coasts, until she anchored at the le-clouded walls of mystery
”This is the river Zarkheba, which is Death,” said Belit ”Its waters are poisonous See how dark and murky they run? Only venomous reptiles live in that river The black people shun it Once a Stygian galley, fleeing from me, fled up the river and vanished I anchored in this very spot, and days later, the galley ca down the dark waters, its decks bloodstained and deserted Only one o was intact, but the crew had vanished into silence and mystery
”My lover, I believe there is a city soiant towers and walls glio part way up the river We fear nothing: Conan, let us go and sack that city!”
Conan agreed He generally agreed to her plans Hers was the mind that directed their raids, his the arm that carried out her ideas It ht, so long as they sailed and fought He found the life good
Battle and raid had thinned their crew; only so galley But Belit would not take the tidoerness for her latest venture; so the Tigress swung into the river-ly as she breasted the broad current
They rounded the ht of the sea, and sunset found the sandbars where strange reptiles coiled Not even a crocodile did they see, nor any four-legged beast or winged bird coh the blackness that preceded moonrise they drove, between banks that were solid palisades of darkness, whence calearim eyes And once an inhuman voice was lifted in awfulthat the souls of evil men were imprisoned in these manlike animals as punishold-barred cage in an Hyrkanian city, he had seen an abysmal, sad-eyed beast which ht of the dehter that echoed frole
Then the le awoke in horrific bedlareet it Roars and howls and yells set the black warriors to tre; but all this noise, Conan noted, cale, as if the beasts no less thanabove the black denseness of the trees and above the waving fronds, thescintillation of phosphorescent bubbles that widened like a shi+ning road of bursting jewels The oars dipped into the shi+ning water and came up sheathed in frosty silver The plumes on the warriors'
headpieces nodded in the wind, and the gems on sword hilts and harness sparkled frostily
The cold light struck icy fire from the jewels in Belit's clustered black locks as she stretched her lithe figure on a leopard skin thrown on the deck Supported on her elbows, her chin resting on her slied beside her, his blackin the faint breeze Belit's eyes were dark jewels burning in the ht
”Mystery and terror are about us, Conan, and we glide into the realm of horror and death,” she said ”Are you afraid?”
A shrug of his mailed shoulders was his only answer
”I am not afraid either,” she said meditatively ”I was never afraid I have looked into the naked fangs of Death too often Conan, do you fear the Gods?”
”I would not tread on their shadow,” answered the barbarian conservatively ”So to harm, others, to aid; at least so say their priests Mitra of the HyboriansGod, because his people have builded their cities over the world But even the Hyborians fear Set And Bel, God of thieves, is a good God When I was a thief in Zamora I learned of him”
”What of your own Gods? I have never heard you call on thereat mountain What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you doorim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man's soul What else shall men ask of the Gods?”
”But what of the worlds beyond the river of death?” she persisted
”There is no hope here or hereafter in the cult of le and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright ray, misty realhout eternity”
Belit shuddered ”Life, bad as it is, is better than such a destiny
What do you believe, Conan?”
He shrugged his shoulders ”I have known many Gods He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply I seek not beyond death
It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla I know not, nor do I care Let me live deep while I live; letwine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion I know this: if life is illusion, then I a thus, the illusion is real to me I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content”
”But the Gods are real,” she said, pursuing her own line of thought
”And above all are the Gods of the Shemites-Ishtar and Ashtoreth and Derketo and Adonis Bel, too, is Sheo, and went forth laughing, with curled beard and is of old times