Part 10 (2/2)

'Who are you?' she demanded

'Conan, a Ci in Shumballa?'

'I came here to seek my fortune I was formerly a corsair'

'Oh!' New interest shone in her dark eyes; she gathered her hair back in her hands 'We have heard tales of you, whoer a corsair, what are you now?'

'A penniless wanderer'

She shook her head 'No, by Set! You are captain of the royal guard'

He glanced casually at the sprawling figure in silk and steel, and the sight did not alter the zest of his sudden grin

Shubba returned to Shu to Tuthmes in his chamber where leopard skins carpeted the marble floor, he said: 'I have found the wo vessel of Argos I paid the Sheold pieces'

'Let me see her,' co a irl by the wrist She was supple, her white skin al in contrast with the brown and black bodies to which Tuthold stream over her white shoulders She was clad only in a tattered shi+ft This Shubba re in complete nudity

Tuthmes nodded, impersonally

'She is a fine bit of ht be teht her Kushi+te, as I commanded?'

'Aye; in the city of the Sheht her, and i by means of a slipper, after the Shemite fashi+on Her name is Diana'

Tuthirl should sit cross-legged on the floor at his feet, which she did

'I a of Kush as a present,' he said 'You will no to ularly, and you will not fail to carry theenerate, slothful, dissipated It should not be hard for you to achieve coht be tempted to disobey, when you fancy yourself out of , I will demonstrate h a corridor, down a flight of stone stairs and into a long chahted The chamber was divided in equal halves by a wall of crystal, clear as water though soth as to have resisted the lunge of a bull elephant He led her to this wall andit, while he stepped back Abruptly the light went out She stood there in darkness, her slender lian to float in the darkness She saw a hideous row out of the blackness; she saw a bestial snout, chisel-like teeth, bristles - turned and ran, frantic with fear, and forgetful of the sheet of crystal that kept the brute from her She ran full into the arms of Tuthmes in the darkness, and heard his hiss in her ear: 'You have seen my servant; do not fail me, for if you do he will search you out wherever you may be, and you cannot hide fro ear of the Neirl, she proave her into the hands of a black wench with instructions to revive her, to see that she had food and wine, and to bathe, co

BLACK COLOSSUS

'The Night of Pohen Fate stalked through the corridors of the world like a colossus just risen froranite-' E Hoffe-old silence brooded over the mysterious ruins of Kuthchemes, but Fear was there; Fear quivered in thehis breath quick and sharp against his clenched teeth

He stood, the one atom of life amidst the colossallike a black dot in the vast blue vault of the sky that the sun glazed with its heat On every hand rose the grie broken pillars, thrusting up their jagged pinnacles into the sky; long wavering lines of crues, whose horrific features the corroding winds and dust-storn of life: only the sheer breathtaking sweep of the naked desert, bisected by the wandering line of a long-dry river course; in the s of the ruins, the colu up like brokenivory do

The base of this do from what had once been a terraced eminence on the banks of the ancient river Broad steps led up to a great bronze door in the dome, which rested on its base like the half of so The dome itself was of pure ivory, which shone as if unknown hands kept it polished Likewise shone the spired gold cap of the pinnacle, and the inscription which sprawled about the curve of the do No man on earth could read those characters, but Shevatas shuddered at the dim conjectures they raised For he came of a very old race, whose myths ran back to shapes undreamed of by contemporary tribes

Shevatas iry and lithe, as became a master-thief of Zaarment a loin-cloth of scarlet silk Like all his race, he was very dark, his narrow vulture-like face set off by his keen black eyes His long, slender and tapering fingers were quick and nervous as the wings of aa short, narroel-hiked sword in a sheath of ornamented leather Shevatas handled the weapon with apparently exaggerated care He even seemed to flinch away froh Nor was his care without reason

This was Shevatas, a thief a thieves, whose name was spoken with awe in the dives of the Maul and the dim shadowy recesses beneath the tes and myths for a thousand years Yet fear ate at the heart of Shevatas as he stood before the ivory do unnatural about the structure; the winds and suns of three thousand years had lashed it, yet its gold and ivory rose bright and glistening as the day it was reared by nameless hands on the bank of the na with the general aura of these devil-haunted ruins This desert was thesoutheast of the lands of Shem A few days' ride on ca the traveller within sight of the great river Styx at the point where it turned at right angles with its former course, and floard to empty at last into the distant sea At the point of its bend began the land of Stygia, the dark-bosoreat river, rose sheer out of the surrounding desert

Eastward, Shevatas knew, the desert shaded into steppes stretching to the Hyrkanian kingdo in barbaric splendor on the shores of the great inland sea A week's ride northward the desert ran into a tangle of barren hills, beyond which lay the fertile uplands of Koth, the southerned into the meadowlands of Shem, which stretched away to the ocean

All this Shevatas kneithout being particularly conscious of the knowledge, as a man knows the streets of his town He was a far traveller and had looted the treasures of dohest adventure and the htiest treasure of all

In that ivory dora Khotan, the dark sorcerer who had reigned in Kuthcheia stretched far northward of the great river, over the reat drift of the Hyborians swept southward from the cradle-land of their race near the northern pole It was a titanic drift, extending over centuries and ages But in the reign of Thugra Khotan, the last ray-eyed, tawny-haired barbarians in wolfskins and scale-mail had ridden frodom of Koth with their iron swords They had stor the one down in fire and ruin

But while they were shattering the streets of his city and cutting down his archers like ripe corn, Thugra Khotan had sed a strange terrible poison, and his masked priests had locked him into the tomb he himself had prepared His devotees died about that tomb in a crimson holocaust, but the barbarians could not burst the door, nor everthe great city in ruins, and in his ivory-dora Khotan slept unnawed at the cru pillars, and the very river that watered his land in old tiht to gain the treasure which fables said lay heaped about thebones inside the dome And many a thief died at the door of the tomb, and many another was harried by monstrous dreams to die at last with the froth of madness on his lips

So Shevatas shuddered as he faced the toend of the serpent said to guard the sorcerer's bones Over allhorror and death like a pall Froreat hall wherein chained captives had knelt by the hundreds during festivals to have their heads hacked off by the priest-king in honor of Set, the Serpent-God of Stygia Somewhere near by had been the pit, dark and awful, wherein screa victims were fed to a nameless amorphic monstrosity which caend ered in a raded cult, whose votaries stamped his likeness on coins to pay the way of their dead over the great river of darkness of which the Styx was but the material shadow Shevatas had seen this likeness, on coins stolen froe was etched indelibly in his brain

But he put aside his fears and mounted to the bronze door, whose sht had he gained access into darksorisly whispers of the votaries of Skelos under ht trees, and read the forbidden iron-bound books of Vathelos the Blind Kneeling before the portal, he searched the sill with niers; their sensitive tips found projections too sers to discover These he pressed carefully and according to a peculiar systeotten incantation as he did so As he pressed the last projection, he sprang up with frantic haste and struck the exact center of the door a quick sharp bloith his open hand

There was no rasp of spring or hinge, but the door retreated inward, and the breath hissed explosively from Shevatas's clenched teeth A short narrow corridor was disclosed Down this the door had slid, and was now in place at the other end The floor, ceiling and sides of the tunnel-like aperture were of ivory, and now fro horror that reared up and glared on the intruder with awful lu, iridescent scales

The thief did not waste ti below the doerly he drew the sword, and froreenish liquid exactly like that which slavered fros of the reptile The blade was steeped in the poison of the snake's own kind, and the obtaining of that venoara would have a in itself

Shevatas advanced warily on the balls of his feet, knees bent slightly, ready to spring either way like a flash of light And he needed all his co-ordinate speed when the snake arched its neck and struck, shooting out its full length like a stroke of lightning For all his quickness of nerve and eye, Shevatas had died then but for chance His well-laid plans of leaping aside and striking down on the outstretched neck were put at naught by the blinding speed of the reptile's attack The thief had but ti his eyes and crying out Then the srenched from his hand and the corridor was filled with a horrible thrashi+ng and lashi+ng

Opening his eyes, amazed to find hi and twisting its sliiant jaws Sheer chance had hurled it full against the point he had held out blindly A few , scarcely quivering coils, as the poison on the blade struck hoainst the door, which this ti the interior of the dome Shevatas cried out; instead of utter darkness he had coht that throbbed and pulsed alantic red jewel high up in the vaulted arch of the doht of riches The treasure was there, heaped in staggering profusion - piles of diamonds, sapphires, rubies, turquoises, opals, emeralds; zikkurats of jade, jet and lapis lazuli; pyraots; jewel-hiked swords in cloth-of-gold sheaths; golden helmets with colored horsehair crests, or black and scarlet plues three thousand years in their toold, with moonstones for eyes; necklaces of human teeth set with jewels The ivory floor was covered inches deep with gold dust that sparkled and shi+hts The thief stood in a wonderland ofstars under his sandalled feet

But his eyes were focussed on the dais of crystal which rose in thearray, directly under the red jewel, and on which should be lying theof the centuries And as Shevatas looked, the blood drained from his dark features; his marrow turned to ice, and the skin of his back crawled and wrinkled with horror, while his lips worked soundlessly But suddenly he found his voice in one awful screaain the silence of the ages lay a the ruins of h the meadowlands, into the cities of the Hyborians The word ran along the caravans, the long cah the sands, herded by lean, hawk-eyed men in white kaftans It was passed on by the hook-nosed herdsrasslands, from the dwellers in tents to the dwellers in the squat stone cities where kings with curled blue-black beards worshi+pped round-bellied Gods with curious rites The word passed up through the fringe of hills where gaunt tribesmen took toll of the caravans The rumors came into the fertile uplands where stately cities rose above blue lakes and rivers: the rued with ox-wains, with lowing herds, with rich hts in steel, archers and priests They were ruia, far south of the Kothian hills A new prophet had risen a of vultures in the southeast, and a terrible leader who led his swiftly increasing hordes to victory The Stygians, ever a menace to the northern nations, were apparently not connected with thisar ht that of the desert sorcerer, whom men called Natohk, the Veiled One; for his features were always masked

But the tide swept northard, and the blue-bearded kings died before the altars of their pot-bellied Gods, and their squat-walled cities were drenched in blood Men said that the uplands of the Hyborians were the goal of Natohk and his chanting votaries

Raids from the desert were not uncommon, but this latest movement seemed to promise more than a raid Rumor said Natohk had welded thirty no, and that a rebellious Stygian prince had joined him This latter lent the affair an aspect of real war

Characteristically, rowing menace But in Khoraja, carved out of Sheiven Lying southeast of Koth, it would bear the brunt of the invasion And its young king was captive to the treacherous king of Ophir, who hesitated between restoring hi hi of Koth, who offered no gold, but an advantageous treaty Meanwhile, the rule of the struggling kingdo's sister

Minstrels sang her beauty throughout the western world, and the pride of a kingly dynasty was hers But on that night her pride was dropped fro was a lapis lazuli dome, whose marble floor was littered with rare furs, and whose walls were lavish with golden frieze-work, ten girls, daughters of nobles, their slender liem-crusted armlets and anklets, sluolden dais and silken canopy But princess Yasmela lolled not on that silken bed She lay naked on her supple belly upon the bareover her white shoulders, her slender fingers intertwined She lay and writhed in pure horror that froze the blood in her lithe limbs and dilated her beautiful eyes, that pricked the roots of her dark hair andher supple spine

Above her, in the darkest corner of the marble cha of form or flesh and blood It was a clot of darkness, a blur in the sight, ayellow fire that glimmered like two eyes from the blackness

Moreover, a voice issued from it - a low subtle inhu of a serpent than anything else, and that apparently could not e with human lips Its sound as well as its i horror so intolerable that she writhed and twisted her slender body as if beneath a lash, as though to rid hervileness by physical contortion

'You arewhisper 'Before I wakened fro sleep I had marked you, and yearned for you, but I was held fast by the ancient spell by which I escaped mine enemies I am the soul of Natohk, the Veiled One! Look well upon uise, and shall lovedwindled off in lustful titterings, and Yasmela moaned and beat the marble tiles with her small fists in her ecstasy of terror