Part 11 (2/2)
”Whatback a rebellious lock with an impatient hand ”Make a litter of spears and ?”
”To look to the galley,” grunted Conan ”That bat-thing ht have knocked a hole in the bottom, for all we know”
He ran swiftly down the cracked wharf and sprang aboard A moment's swift exa a clouded glance in the direction the bat-being had vanished He returned hastily to Belit, superintending the plundering of the crypt She had looped the necklace about her neck, and on her naked white bosoe naked black stood crotch-deep in the jewel-brireat handfuls of splendor to pass the between his dusky fingers; drops of red fire dripped froht and rainbow It was as if a black titan stood straddle-legged in the bright pits of hell, his lifted hands full of stars
”That flying devil has staved in the water casks,” said Conan ”If we hadn't been so dazed by these stones we'd have heard the noise We were fools not to have left a uard We can't drink this river water
I'll take twenty le”
She stared at hie passion, her fingers working at the gems on her breast
”Very well,” she said absently, hardly heeding hile closed quickly about thereen branches, creepers dangled like pythons
The warriors fell into single file, creeping through the prihost
Underbrush was not so thick as Conan had anticipated The ground was spongy but not slushy Away froradually upward
Deeper and deeper they plunged into the green waving depths, and still there was no sign of water, either running streanant pool
Conan halted suddenly, his warriors freezing into basaltic statues In the tense silence that followed, the Ciranted to a subchief, N'Gora ”March straight on until you can no longer seefollowed I heard so”
The blacks shuffled their feet uneasily, but did as they were told As they swung onward, Conan stepped quickly behind a great tree, glaring back along the way they had co occurred; the faint sounds of thespearmen faded in the distance Conan suddenly realized that the air was iently brushed his tereen, curiously leafed stalks, great black blossoms nodded at him One of these had touched him They seemed to beckon him, to arch their pliant steh no wind blew
He recoiled, recognizing the black lotus, whose juice was death and whose scent brought dreay stealing over hiht to lift his sword, to hen the serpentine stalks, but his ar lifeless at his side He opened his mouth to shout to his warriors, but only a faint rattle issued The next instant, with appalling suddenness, the jungle waved and dimmed out before his eyes; he did not hear the screams that burst out awfully not far away, as his knees collapsed, letting hireat black blossole
Was it a dreaht?
Then curst the dreaard hour that does not see Hot blood drip blackly fro of Belit
First there was the blackness of an utter void, with the cold winds of cosue, h the expanse of nothingness, as if the darkness were takingpyrarew Shape and Di, the darkness rolled away on either hand and a huge city of dark green stone rose on the bank of a wide river, flowing through an illis of alien configuration
Cast in the ed and of heroic proportions; not a branch on the mysterious stalk of evolution that culminated in man, but the ripe blossom on an alien tree, separate and apart fros, in physical appearance they resereat apes In spiritual, esthetic and intellectual developorilla But when they reared their colossal city, man's primal ancestors had not yet risen fros were s built of flesh and blood
They lived, loved, and died, though the individual span of life was enoran
The vista shi+mmered and wavered, like a picture thrown on a wind-blown curtain Over the city and the land the ages flowed as waves flow over a beach, and each wave brought alterations So; the great glaciers and ice fields ithdrawing toward the new poles
The littoral of the great river altered Plains turned into swamps that stank with reptilian life Where fertile les The changing ages wrought on the inhabitants of the city as well They did not rate to fresher lands
Reasons inexplicable to humanity held them to the ancient city and their doohty land sank deeper and deeper into the blackjungle life sank the people of the city Terrific convulsions shook the earth; the nights were lurid with spouting volcanoes that fringed the dark horizons with red pillars
After an earthquake that shook down the outer walls and highest towers of the city and caused the river to run black for days with some lethal substance spewed up froe became apparent in the waters the folk had drunk for millenniums uncountable