Part 3 (1/2)

Conan heaved himself to his feet, only a little troubled by wounds that would have incapacitated an ordinaryhis sword out of Baraccus' body, he thundered: ”Lead me to her room at once! And should this prove another trap, your soul will rot on the black floors of hell within the instant!”

Knees knocking, the flabby Khanyrian led the way up the narrow stair

The Ci every cranny olfish wariness On the upper floor, his guide paused before a door and chose a key froirdle He unlocked the door and opened it wide to reassure the edgy barbarian

Conan decided that there was no chance of another ambush in that narrow room The only furniture was a bed and a solden sash, a turban strip with an emerald pin, and a filnition This was the garb of a Hyrkanian noblewo eastern ehrapur itself

Wheeling and retracing his steps, Conan pondered this new enig and sword in hand, Conan stepped alertly from the tavern door His limbs had become a little stiffened froer thrust, but he still had vigor enough to spring into the saddle of his waiting horse

He was mystified by the assault He well knew that many men of different creeds, races, and stations thirsted for his blood and would have loved to roast his guts over a slow fire On this mission, however, he had ridden swiftly, silently, and anony, and their loyalty was beyond question Yet ar blades

Soht Baraccus froether to try to trap hied the puzzle from his mind with the fatalistic equanirasp the whole picture behind the recent incident, he was content to wait until further inforh the streets with eyes darting into the shadows The only light cahts came back to the beautiful woht of her well-molded form had fired his blood, and he hadher But now she was gone as if byupon a wide, deserted square, Conan, aided by the diht of the cloudedlike a finger to the heavens In the deepening darkness it glea sun This was the tohere Pelias secreted himself from the undesired coardens and lawns surrounded the yelloer No walls, fences, or forbidding gates ringed it They were not needed Horrid legends, whispered in the dark of evening, had taught the Khanyrians to keep away froht enter but from which he would probably never return

Conan's horse shi+ed at the edge of the lahinnying and sto It chewed its bit and blew foam from its lips

”Crom!” muttered the Cimmerian ”It seems as if Pelias has unholy company Well, I can walk”

He disstone walk, his eyes roving and his hand on his hilt Necroht, as the smell of carrion attracts vultures

Conan had s spawned in other tiht and slain only by ical weapons or by incantations read fro parchment

But Conan's taste had never run to spells and counterspells He trusted his keen-edged sword ical mummery

However, no demon from the darker haunts barred his way He reached the toithout seeing a single sign of life a the shrubs and flowers

Just then the clouds slid away froht, Conan saw that the yellowish color of the toas caused by an abundance of solden coins set in plaster Conan peered at those on a level with his eyes None was familiar, and he suspected that it was the sae On sons had been worn away until nothing but a polished disk reold was considered a valuable auxiliary in ic, especially in the forht Conan, were tokens froendry, when priests and wizards ruled with awful terror, dragging hastly rituals were perfor thousands of prisoners in the public squares until rivers of bubbling blood filled the gutters

Conan shi+vered Much evil was concentrated here Nevertheless, he tried the iron door

The heavy slab ofsilently inward Sword in hand, the Ci tiger

By the faint light cohts of stairs, one circling uphile the other lost itself in underground darkness

Conan's keen nostrils picked up an alien s doards He suspected that this musky odor wafted up from a maze of caverns beneath the tower The Cimmerian's eyes narrowed Into his mind flitted the remembrance of similar odors in the haunted catacoia, where fearsory lion shakes its mane

Suddenly he was startled by words in a deep, resonant voice: ”Welcoht!”

Glaring about, Conan could detect no clue to the origin of the voice

It see like the tones of a te