Part 35 (2/2)

The dullest was struck by the contrast between the harsh, taciturn, gloousty and ready, who roared ribald songs in a dozen languages, guzzled ale like a toper, and - apparently - had no thought for thecoh unconsciously, with a man before the er But he was engrossed with his broodings, which had becorirandiose dreairl whose possession was a bitter pleasure, just as all his pleasures were

And she lookedhis mates at work or play He never spoke to her, but there was no aze She did not ath of time lay between her and the palaces of Kordava, but it was as if a world of change separated her fro fro caravel his wolves had plundered She, who had been the spoiled and petted daughter of the Duke of Kordava, learned what it was to be a buccaneer's plaything, and because she was supple enough to bend without breaking, she lived where other wo and vibrant with life, she came to find pleasure in the existence

The life was uncertain, dreae, ht Zaporavo's red visions e Freebooter No one knehat he planned next Now they had left all charted coasts behind and were plunging further and further into that unknown billoaste ordinarily shunned by seafarers, and into which, since the beginnings of Tiht of man for ever All known lands lay behind the iht Here there was no loot - no towns to sack nor shi+ps to burn The s reach the ears of their iloomy majesty, or pored over ancient charts and ti masses of worm-eaten parchment At times he talked to Sancha, wildly it see unguessed auarded treasures gathered by pre-huo

Sancha listened, uncohts constantly roving away frorihter was gusty and elemental as the sea wind

So, after many weary weeks, they raised land to ard, and at dawn dropped anchor in a shallow bay, and saw a beach which was like a white band bordering an expanse of gently grassy slopes, etation and spices, and Sancha clapped her hands with glee at the prospect of adventuring ashore But her eagerness turned to sulkiness when Zaporavo ordered her to reave any explanation for his com devil in him that frequently ed sulkily on the poop and watched the h the calht She saw theether on the sands, suspicious, weapons ready, while several scattered out through the trees that fringed the beach A that tall brown figure with its springy step Men said he was no civilized man at all, but a Ciray hills of the far North, and whose raids struck terror in their southern neighbors At least, she knew that there was so about him, some super-vitality or barbarism that set hi the shore, as the silence reassured the buccaneers The clusters broke up, asthe beach in search of fruit She saw the the trees, and her pretty mouth watered She stamped a little foot and sith a proficiency acquired by association with her blasphemous companions

Theon it, finding one unknown golden-skinned variety especially luscious But Zaporavo did not seek or eat fruit His scouts having found nothing indicatinginland, at the long reaches of grassy slopesinto one another Then, with a brief word, he shi+fted his sword-belt and strode in under the trees Hisalone, and was rewarded by a savage blow in the o alone He desired to learn if this island were indeed that mentioned in the e old Nor, for e, if it were true, with any one, erly from the poop, saw him vanish into the leafy fastness Presently she saw Conan, the Barachan, turn, glance briefly at the men scattered up and down the beach; then the pirate went quickly in the direction taken by Zaporavo, and likewise vanished a the trees

Sancha's curiosity was piqued She waited for them to reappear, but they did not The seamen still moved aimlessly up and down the beach, and some had wandered inland Many had lain down in the shade to sleep Tian to beat down body, in spite of the canopy above the poop-deck Here it arly monotonous; a few yards away across a band of blue shalloater, the cool shady ed beach and woodland-dottedZaporavo and Conan te herwith indecision At last she decided that it orth even one of Zaporavo's whippings to play truant, and with no more ado she kicked off her soft leather sandals, slipped out of her kirtle and stood up on the deck naked as Eve Cla over the rail and down the chains, she slid into the water and swa as the sands tickled her small toes, while she looked for the crew She saw only a few, at some distance up or down the beach Many were fast asleep under the trees, bits of golden fruit still clutched in their fingers She wondered why they should sleep so soundly, so early in the day

None hailed her as she crossed the white girdle of sand and entered the shade of the woodland The trees, she found, grew in irregular clusters, and between these groves stretched rolling expanses of ressed inland, in the direction taken by Zaporavo, she was entranced by the green vistas that unfolded gently before her, soft slope beyond slope, carpeted with green sward and dotted with groves Between the slopes lay gentle declivities, likewise swarded The scenery seemed to melt into itself, or each scene into the other; the vieas singular, at once broad and restricted Over all a dreamy silence lay like an enchantment

Then she came suddenly onto the level summit of a slope, circled with tall trees, and the dreaht of what lay on the reddened and trarass Sancha involuntarily cried out and recoiled, then stole forward, wide-eyed, tre in every li sightlessly upward, a gaping wound in his breast His sword lay near his nerveless hand The Hawk had azed on the corpse of her lord without emotion She had no cause to love hiht feel when looking on the body of the man as first to possess her She did not weep or feel any need of weeping, but she was seized by a strong treeal briefly, and she resisted a wave of hysteria

She looked about her for theof tall, thickly leafed forest giants, and the blue slopes beyond theed himself away, mortally wounded? No bloody tracks led away fro trees, stiffening as she caught a rustle in the emerald leaves that see into the leafy depths

'Conan?' Her call was inquiring; her voice sounded strange and srown suddenly tense

Her knees began to tremble as a nameless panic swept over her

'Conan!' she cried desperately 'It is I - Sancha! Where are you? Please, Conan-' Her voice faltered away Unbelieving horror dilated her brown eyes Her red lips parted to an inarticulate screaripped her liht, she could not move She could only shriek wordlessly

When Conan saw Zaporavo stalk alone into the woodland, he felt that the chance he had watched for had come He had eaten no fruit, nor joined in the horse-play of histhe buccaneer chief Accustomed to Zaporavo's moods, his men were not particularly surprized that their captain should choose to explore an unknown and probably hostile isle alone They turned to their own alided like a stalking panther after the chieftain

Conan did not underrate his doh battle and foray, to challenge the captain to a duel to the death In these empty seas there had been no opportunity for hi to Freebooter law The creould stand solidly against him if he attacked the chieftain openly But he knew that if he killed Zaporavo without their knowledge, the leaderless creould not be likely to be swayed by loyalty to a deadcounted

So he followed Zaporavo with sword in hand and eagerness in his heart, until he came out onto a level summit, circled with tall trees, bethose trunks he saw the green vistas of the slopes lade Zaporavo, sensing pursuit, turned, hand on hilt

The buccaneer swore

'Dog, why do you followswiftly toward his erstwhile chief His lips sleam

Zaporavo ripped out his sith a black curse, and steel clashed against steel as the Barachan ca a wheel of blue flame about his head

Zaporavo was the veteran of a thousand fights by sea and by land There was no hly versed than he in the lore of swordcraft But he had never been pitted against a blade wielded by thews bred in the wild lands beyond the borders of civilization Against his fighting-craft was th i was unorthodox, but instinctive and natural as that of a tiainst his prihts of a panther

Fighting as he had never fought before, straining every last ounce of effort to parry the blade that flickered like lightning about his head, Zaporavo in desperation caught a full stroke near his hilt, and felt his whole aro numb beneath the terrific impact That stroke was instantly followed by a thrust with such terrible drive behind it that the sharp point ripped through chain-mail and ribs like paper, to transfix the heart beneath Zaporavo's lips writhed in brief agony, but, grim to the last, he made no sound He was dead before his body relaxed on the tralittered like spilt rubies in the sun

Conan shook the red drops frorinned with unaffected pleasure, stretched like a huge cat - and abruptly stiffened, the expression of satisfaction on his face being replaced by a stare of bewilder in his hand

As he lifted his eyes from his vanquished foe, they had absently rested on the surrounding trees, and the vistas beyond And he had seen a fantastic thing - a thing incredible and inexplicable Over the soft rounded green shoulder of a distant slope had loped a tall black naked figure, bearing on its shoulder an equally naked white form The apparition vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving the watcher gasping in surprize

The pirate stared about hilanced uncertainly back the way he had come, and swore He was nonplussed - a bit upset, if the terht be applied to one of such steely nerves as his In the e of fantasy and nightht nor his sanity He had seen so alien and uncanny, he knew; theacross the landscape carrying a white captive was bizarre enough, but this black figure had been unnaturally tall

Shaking his head doubtfully, Conan started off in the direction in which he had seen the thing He did not argue the wisdom of his move; with his curiosity so piqued, he had no choice but to follow its pros

Slope after slope he traversed, each with its even sward and clustered groves The general trend was always upward, though he ascended and descended the gentle inclines with ularity The array of rounded shoulders and shallow declivities was bewildering and apparently endless But at last he advanced up what he believed was the highest sureen shi+ning walls and towers, which, until he had reached the spot on which he then stood, had reen landscape as to be invisible, even to his keen sight

He hesitated, fingered his sword, then went forward, bitten by the worm of curiosity He saw no one as he approached a tall archway in the curving wall There was no door Peering warily through, he sahat seerass-carpeted, surrounded by a circular wall of the green semi-translucent substance Various arches opened fro on the balls of his bare feet, sword ready, he chose one of these arches at random, and passed into another siely shaped tower-like structures One of these toas built in, or projected into the court in which he found hi the side of the wall Up this he went, wondering if it were all real, or if he were not in the midst of a black lotus dream

At the head of the stair he found hie, or balcony, he was not sure which He could now less to his could have built them There was symmetry about their architecture, and system, but it was a mad symmetry, a system alien to human sanity As for the plan of the whole town, castle, or whatever it was intended for, he could see just enough to get the ireat number of courts, mostly circular, each surrounded by its oall, and connected with the others by open arches, and all, apparently, grouped about the cluster of fantastic towers in the center

Turning in the other direction froot a fearful shock, and crouched down suddenly behind the parapet of the balcony, glaring aher than the opposite wall, and he was looking over that wall into another swarded court The inner curve of the further wall of that court differed fro ses, croith small objects the nature of which he could not deterave little heed to the wall at the tis that squatted about a dark green pool in the midst of the court These creatures were black and naked, ht, would have towered head and shoulders above the tall pirate They were rangy rather than estion of deforht was abnormal But even at that distance Conan sensed the basic diabolis and naked, stood a youth that Conan recognized as the youngest sailor aboard the Wastrel He, then, had been the captive the pirate had seen borne across the grass-covered slope Conan had heard no sound of fighting - saw no blood-stains or wounds on the sleek ebon liiants Evidently the lad had wandered inland away from his co in ambush Conan mentally termed the creatures black men, for lack of a better ters were not men, as he understood the terestured to one another, but they did not see on his haunches before the cringing boy, held a pipe-like thing in his hand This he set to his lips, and apparently blew, though Conan heard no sound But the Zingaran youth heard or felt, and cringed He quivered and writhed as if in agony; a regularity beca of his li becaular an to dance, as cobras dance by coht of zest or joyful abandon in that dance There was, indeed, abandon that ful to see, but it was not joyful It was as if the rasped the boy's in from it every involuntary expression of secret passion It was a convulsion of obscenity, a spasers framed by compulsion: desire without pleasure, paina soul stripped naked, and all its dark and unlared frozen with repulsion and shaken with nausea Hinorant of the perverse secrets of rotting civilizations He had roamed the cities of Zamora, and known the women of Shadizar the Wicked But he sensed here a coseneracy - a perverse branch on the tree of Life, developed along lines outside huonized contortions and posturing of the wretched boy that he was shocked, but at the cosht the abysmal secrets that sleep in the unfathomed darkness of the hu of such things as should not be hinted at, even in restless nightmares

Suddenly the black torturer laid down the pipes and rose, towering over the writhing white figure Brutally grasping the boy by neck and haunch, the giant up-ended hireen pool Conan saw the white gliiant held his captive deep under the surface Then there was a restlessthe other blacks, and Conan ducked quickly below the balcony wall, not daring to raise his head lest he be seen

After a while his curiosity got the better of hi out of an archway into another court One of thee of the further wall, and Conan saas the one who had tortured the boy He was taller than the others, and wore a jeweled head-band Of the Zingaran boy there was no trace The giant followed his fellows, and presently Conan saw theained access to that castle of horror, and file away across the green slopes, in the direction from which he had come They bore no arainst the Freebooters

But before he went to warn the unsuspecting buccaneers, he wished to investigate the fate of the boy No sound disturbed the quiet The pirate believed that the towers and courts were deserted save for himself

He went swiftly down the stair, crossed the court and passed through an arch into the court the blacks had just quitted Now he saw the nature of the striated wall It was banded by narrow ledges, apparently cut out of the solid stone, and ranged along these ledges or shelves were thousands of tiny figures, er than a man's hand, represented nized various racial characteristics in the different idols, features typical of Zingarans, Argoseans, Ophireans and Kushi+te corsairs These last were black in color, just as their ue uneasiness as he stared at the duures There was aHe felt of theerly and could not decide of what material they were ine petrified substance being found in the locality in such abundance as to be used so lavishly

He noticed that the i types hich he was faes were occupied by figures the features of which were strange to hiination, or typified racial types long vanished and forgotten

Shaking his head impatiently, Conan turned toward the pool The circular court offered no place of concealht, itthe placid green disk, he stared into the glilass, unclouded, yet strangely illusory Of no great direen jade Looking down he could see the rounded bottom - how far below the surface he could not decide But the pool seemed incredibly deep - he are of a dizziness as he looked down,into an abyss He was puzzled by his ability to see the bottoaze, impossibly reht a faint luminosity was apparent deep in the jade-colored depth, but he could not be sure Yet he was sure that the pool was e water

Then where in the name of Crom was the boy who, Conan fingered his sword, and gazed around the court again His gaze focussed on a spot on one of the higher ledges There he had seen the tall black place so - cold sweat broke suddenly out on Conan's brown hide

Hesitantly, yet as if drawn by awall Dazed by a suspicion too ure on that ledge A horrible familiarity made itself evident Stony, iaran boy stared unseeingly at him Conan recoiled, shaken to his soul's foundations His sword trailed in his paralyzed hand as he glared, open-mouthed, stunned by the realization which was too abysrasp