Part 24 (1/2)

Conan cleared the space between hi with all his power And with such blinding speed did the serpenthis limbs and body with half a dozen coils His half-checked stroke fell futilely as he crashed down on the dais, gashi+ng the scaly trunk but not severing it

Then he rithing on the glass steps with fold after sli hiet no purchase to strike a killing blow, and he knew one blowconvulsion ofon his te, tortured knots, he heaved up on his feet, lifting alht of that forty-foot devil

An instant he reeled on wide-braced legs, feeling his ribs caving in on his vitals and his sight growing dark, while his scih the scales and flesh and vertebrae And where there had been one huge writhing cable, now there were horribly two, lashi+ng and flopping in the death throes Conan staggered away from their blind strokes He was sick and dizzy, and blood oozed fro in a dark asped for breath

'Next tiasped, 'you stay!'

He was too dizzy even to knohether she replied Taking her wrist like a truant schoolgirl, he led her around the hideous stumps that still looped and knotted on the floor So, but his ears were still roaring so that he could not be sure

The door gave to his efforts If Khosatral had placed the snake there to guard the thing he feared, evidently he considered it ample precaution Conan half expected so of the door, but in the diue sweep of the arch above, a dully glealiratification he scooped it up, and did not linger for further exploration He turned and fled across the rooreat hall toward the distant door that he felt led to the outer air He was correct A few ed into the silent streets, half carrying, half guiding his companion There was no one to be seen, but beyond the western wall there sounded cries andwails that made Octavia tremble He led her to the southwestern wall, and without difficulty found a stone stair that mounted the rareat hall, and now, having reached the parapet, he looped the soft strong cord about the girl's hips and lowered her to the earth Then,one end fast to a merlon, he slid down after her There was but one way of escape from the island - the stair on the western cliffs In that direction he hurried, swinging wide around the spot from which had come the cries and the sound of terrible blows

Octavia sensed that grim peril lurked-in those leafy fastnesses Her breath caly and she pressed close to her protector But the forest was silent now, and they saw no shape of ure standing on the edge of the cliffs

Jehungir Agha had escaped the dooiant sallied suddenly froate and battered and crushed them into bits of shredded flesh and splintered bone When he saw the swords of his archers break on that ernaut, he had known it was no hu in the deep woods until the sounds of slaughter ceased Then he crept back to the stair, but his boat for hi nervously, had seen, on the cliff above theantic arir ca the reeds beyond ear-shot Khosatral was gone - had either returned to the city or was prowling the forest in search of the ir was just preparing to descend the stairs and depart in Conan's boat, when he saw the hete froealed his blood and alir's intentions toward the kozak chief The sight of the ratification He was astonished to see the girl he had given to Jelal Khan, but he wasted no ti his bow he drew the shaft to its head and loosed Conan crouched and the arrow splintered on a tree, and Conan laughed

'Dog!' he taunted 'You can't hitof Turan!'

Jehungir did not try again That was his last arrow He drew his scimitar and advanced, confident in his spired helmet and close- whirl of swords The curved blades ground together, sprang apart, circled in glittering arcs that blurred the sight which tried to follow the, did not see the stroke, but she heard its chopping i from his side where the Cimmerian's steel had sundered his mail and bitten to his spine

But Octavia's scream was not caused by the death of her forhs Khosatral Khel was upon the cry escaped her as her knees gave way and pitched her grovelling to the sward

Conan, stooping above the body of the Agha,his reddened scireat half-blade of the Yuetshi+ Khosatral Khel was towering above hiht the sheen of the sun, the giant gave back suddenly

But Conan's blood was up He rushed in, slashi+ng with the crescent blade And it did not splinter Under its edge the dusky ave way like coash flowed a strange ichor, and Khosatral cried out like the dirging of a great bell His terrible arms flailed down, but Conan, quicker than the archers who had died beneath those awful flails, avoided their strokes and struck again and yet again Khosatral reeled and tottered; his cries were awful to hear, as if ue of pain, as if iron shrieked and bellowed under torered into the forest; he reeled in his gait, crashed through bushes and caroh Conan followed hion looer-reach of the giant

Then Khosatral turned again, flailing the air with desperate blows, but Conan, fired to berserk fury, was not to be denied As a panther strikes down a bullarms and drove the crescent blade to the hilt under the spot where a human's heart would be

Khosatral reeled and fell In the shape of a man he reeled, but it was not the shape of a man that struck the loam Where there had been the likeness of a human face, there was no face at all, and the edConan, who had not shrunk fro from Khosatral dead, for he had witnessed an awful transain the thing that had crawled up fronance, Conan turned to flee the sight; and he was suddenly aware that the pinnacles of Dagon no longer glih the trees They had faded like sreat bronze gates, the velvets, the gold, the ivory, and the dark-haired women, and the ffien with their shaven skulls With the passing of the inhuiven them rebirth, they had faded back into the dust which they had been for ages uncounted Only the stu walls and broken paves and shattered doain looked upon the ruins of Xapur as he remembered them

The wild het soedy of the fitful ephemera called mankind and the hooded shapes of darkness which prey upon it Then as he heard his na froround, shuddered and turned away toward the cliffs and the girl that waited there

She was peering fearfully under the trees, and she greeted him with a half-stifled cry of relief He had shaken off the dim monstrous visions which had ain

'Where is he?' she shuddered

'Gone back to hell whence he crawled,' he replied cheerfully 'Why didn't you climb the stair and make your escape in ed her o The Hyrkanians would enslave ain, and the pirates would-'

'What of the kozaks?' he suggested

'Are they better than the pirates?' she asked scornfully Conan's admiration increased to see hoell she had recovered her poise after having endured such frantic terror Her arrogance amused him

'You seemed to think so in the cah with your smiles then'

Her red lip curled in disdain 'Do you think I was enamored of you? Do you drea,barbarian unless I had to? My master - whose body lies there - forced me to do as I did'

'Oh!' Conan seehed with undi to rily, when she felt herself snatched off her feet and crushed to the betht hinificent youth, but he only laughed exuberantly, drunk with his possession of this splendid creature writhing in his ar the nectar of her lips with all the unrestrained passion that was his, until the arainst him melted and twined convulsively about his hed down into the clear eyes, and said: 'Why should not a chief of the Free People be preferable to a city-bred dog of Turan?'

She shook back her tawny locks, still tingling in every nerve from the fire of his kisses She did njot loosen her arha's equal?' she challenged

He laughed and strode with her in his are,' he boasted 'I'll burn Khawarizht your way to my tent'

THE PEOPLE OF THE BLACK CIRCLE

1 DEATH STRIKES A KING

The king of Vendhya was dying Through the hot, stifling night the tes boomed and the conchs roared Their claold-doled on the velvet-cushi+oned dais Beads of sweat glistened on his dark skin; his fingers twisted the gold-worked fabric beneath hi; no spear had touched him, no poison lurked in his wine But his veins stood out like blue cords on his temples, and his eyes dilated with the nearness of death Tre down to hi him with passionate intensity, was his sister, the Devi Yasrown old in the royal court

She threw up her head in a gusty gesture of wrath and despair as the thunder of the distant drums reached her ears

'The priests and their clamor!' she exclaimed 'They are no wiser than the leeches who are helpless! Nay, he dies and none can say why He is dying now - and I stand here helpless, ould burn the whole city and spill the blood of thousands to save him'

'Not a ht be, Devi,' answered the wazam 'This poison- 'I tell you it is not poison!' she cried 'Since his birth he has been guarded so closely that the cleverest poisoners of the East could not reach hi on the Tower of the Kites can testify to attempts which were made - and which failed As you well know, there are ten men and ten women whose sole duty is to taste his food and wine, and fifty aruard it now No, it is not poison; it is sorcery - black, ghastlyspoke; his livid lips did not lassy eyes But his voice rose in an eery call, indistinct and far away, as if called to her froulfs

'Yasmina! Yasmina! My sister, where are you? I can not find you All is darkness, and the roaring of great winds!'

'Brother!' cried Yasrasp 'I am here! Do you not know me-'

Her voice died at the utter vacancy of his face A low confused irls at the foot of the dais whiuish

In another part of the city astreet in which torches tossed luridly, slea rose froed his broad shoulders and turned back into the arabesque chamber He was a tallis not yet dead, but the dirge is sounded,' he said to another ed on a mat in a corner This reen turban was on his head His expression was tranquil, his gaze impersonal

'The people knoill never see another dawn,' this , searching stare

'What I can not understand,' he said, 'is why I have had to wait so long for yournohy could they not have slain hioverned by cosreen turban 'The stars direct these actions, as in other affairs Not even -my masters can alter the stars Not until the heavens were in the proper order could they perforernail he mapped the constellations on the ed evil for the king of Vendhya; the stars are in tur such juxtaposition, the invisible guardians are removed from the spirit of Bhunda Chand A path is opened in the unseen realhty poere put in play along that path'