Part 3 (1/1)

”Take your sword, man, and cut out my heart; then squeeze it so that the blood will flow over the red stone Then you go down these stairs and enter the ebony chamber wheer Yara sits wrapped in lotus dreaeift and a last enchantet you from the tower quickly; fear not, your way shall be , nor is hue of broken, blind flesh, and I will once , ings to fly, and feet to dance, and eyes to see, and hands to break”

Uncertainly Conan approached, and Yag-kosha, or Yogah, as if sensing his uncertainty, indicated where he should strike Conan set his teeth and drove the sword deep Blood streamed over the blade and his hand, and the monster started convulsively, then lay back quite still Sure that life had fled, at least life as he understood it, Conan set to work on his grisly task and quickly brought forth soh it differed curiously froan over the blazing jewel, he pressed it with both hands, and a rain of blood fell on the stone To his surprise, it did not run off, but soaked into the geingerly, he went out of the fantastic chamber and came upon the silver steps He did not look back; he instinctively felt that so place in the body on the marble couch, and he further felt that it was of a sort not to be witnessed by human eyes

He closed the ivory door behind him and without hesitation descended the silver steps It did not occur to hiiven hirinning silver skull, and pushed it open He looked into a chamber of ebony and jet and saw, on a black silken couch, a tall, spare for Yara the priest and sorcerer lay before him, his eyes open and dilated with the fuulfs and nighted abysses beyond hu doom ”Awaken!”

The eyes cleared instantly and became cold and cruel as a vulture's The tall, silken-clad forauntly above the Ci!” His hiss was like the voice of a cobra ”What do you here?”

Conan laid the jewel on the great ebony table

”He who sent this geift and a last enchantment'”

Yara recoiled, his dark face ashy The jeas no longer crystal-clear; its murky depths pulsed and throbbed, and curious s color passed over its smooth surface As if drawn hypnotically, Yara bent over the table and gripped the ge into its shadowed depths, as if it were asoul froht that his eyeshim tricks For where Yara had risen up froantically tall; yet now he saw that Yara's head would scarcely come to his shoulder He blinked, puzzled, and for the first tiht doubted his own senses Then with a shock he realized the the priest was shrinking in stature -- was growing s he watched, as aunreality, the Cier sure of his own identity; he only knew that he was looking upon the external evidences of the unseen play of vast Outer forces, beyond his understanding

Now Yara was no bigger than a child, now like an infant he sprawled on the table, still grasping the jewel And now the sorcerer suddenly realized his fate, and he sprang up, releasing the geure rushi+ng wildly about the ebony tabletop, waving tiny ar in a voice that was like the squeak of an insect

Now he had shrunk until the great jewel towered above him like a hill, and Conan saw him cover his eyes with his hands, as if to shi+eld theered about like a netic force was pulling Yara to the ge circle, thrice he strove to turn and run out across the table; then with a scream that echoed faintly in the ears of the watcher, the priest threw up his ar close, Conan saw Yara cla surface, ilassarrisly names only the Gods know And suddenly he sank into the very heart of the jewel, as a man sinks into a sea, and Conan saw the smoky waves close over his head Now he saw him in the crimson heart of the jewel, once more crystal-clear, as a reat distance And into the heart caure with a body of a er blind or crippled Yara threw up his arer Then, like the bursting of a bubble, the great jewel vanished in a rainbow burst of iridescent gleams, and the ebony table-top lay bare and deserted -- as bare, Conan someho, as the marble couch in the cha called Yag-kosha and Yogah had lain

The Cimmerian turned and fled from the chamber, down the silver stairs So amazed was he that it did not occur to him to escape fro, shadowy silver well he ran, and ca stairs There he halted for an instant; he had colitter of their silver corselets, the sheen of their jeweled sword-hilts They sat slu so their dice and fallen goblets on the wine-stained, lapis-lazuli floor And he knew that they were dead The proic or the falling shadow of great green wings had stilled the revelry, Conon could not know, but his way had been made clear And a silver door stood open, fraardens came the Cirance of luxuriant growths, he started like afrom a dream He turned back uncertainly, to stare at the cryptic tower he had just left Was he bewitched and enchanted? Had he dreamed all that had see toay against the criht, and crash into shi+ning shards