2 The Black Lotus
_In that dead citadel of crumbling stone Her eyes were snared by that unholy sheen, And curious madness took me by the throat, As of a rival lover thrust between._
THE SONG OF BELIT
The _Tigress_ ranged the sea, and the black villages shuddered. Tomtomsbeat in the night, with a tale that the she-devil of the sea had found amate, an iron man whose wrath was as that of a wounded lion. Andsurvivors of butchered Stygian ships named Belit with curses, and awhite warrior with fierce blue eyes; so the Stygian princes rememberedthis man long and long, and their memory was a bitter tree which borecrimson fruit in the years to come.
But heedless as a vagrant wind, the _Tigress_ cruised the southerncoasts, until she anchored at the mouth of a broad sullen river, whosebanks were jungle-clouded walls of mystery.
'This is the river Zarkheba, which is Death,' said Belit. 'Its watersare poisonous. See how dark and murky they run? Only venomous reptileslive in that river. The black people shun it. Once a Stygian galley,fleeing from me, fled up the river and vanished. I anchored in this veryspot, and days later, the galley came floating down the dark waters, itsdecks blood-stained and deserted. Only one man was on board, and he wasmad and died gibbering. The cargo was intact, but the crew had vanishedinto silence and mystery.
'My lover, I believe there is a city somewhere on that river. I haveheard tales of giant towers and walls glimpsed afar off by sailors whodared go part-way up the river. We fear nothing: Conan, let us go andsack that city!'
Conan agreed. He generally agreed to her plans. Hers was the mind thatdirected their raids, his the arm that carried out her ideas. Itmattered little to him where they sailed or whom they fought, so long asthey sailed and fought. He found the life good.
Battle and raid had thinned their crew; only some eighty spearmenremained, scarcely enough to work the long galley. But Belit would nottake the time to make the long cruise southward to the island kingdomswhere she recruited her buccaneers. She was afire with eagerness for herlatest venture; so the _Tigress_ swung into the river mouth, the oarsmenpulling strongly as she breasted the broad current.
They rounded the mysterious bend that shut out the sight of the sea, andsunset found them forging steadily against the sluggish flow, avoidingsandbars where strange reptiles coiled. Not even a crocodile did theysee, nor any four-legged beast or winged bird coming down to the water'sedge to drink. On through the blackness that preceded moonrise theydrove, between banks that were solid palisades of darkness, whence camemysterious rustlings and stealthy footfalls, and the gleam of grim eyes.And once an inhuman voice was lifted in awful mockery--the cry of anape, Belit said, adding that the souls of evil men were imprisoned inthese man-like animals as punishment for past crimes. But Conan doubted,for once, in a gold-barred cage in an Hyrkanian city, he had seen anabysmal sad-eyed beast which men told him was an ape, and there had beenabout it naught of the demoniac malevolence which vibrated in theshrieking laughter that echoed from the black jungle.
Then the moon rose, a splash of blood, ebony-barred, and the jungleawoke in horrific bedlam to greet it. Roars and howls and yells set theblack warriors to trembling, but all this noise, Conan noted, came fromfarther back in the jungle, as if the beasts no less than men shunnedthe black waters of Zarkheba.
Rising above the black denseness of the trees and above the wavingfronds, the moon silvered the river, and their wake became a ripplingscintillation of phosphorescent bubbles that widened like a shining roadof bursting jewels. The oars dipped into the shining water and came upsheathed in frosty silver. The plumes on the warrior's headpiece noddedin the wind, and the gems on sword-hilts and harness sparkled frostily.
The cold light struck icy fire from the jewels in Belit's clusteredblack locks as she stretched her lithe figure on a leopardskin thrownon the deck. Supported on her elbows, her chin resting on her slimhands, she gazed up into the face of Conan, who lounged beside her, hisblack mane stirring in the faint breeze. Belit's eyes were dark jewelsburning in the moonlight.
'Mystery and terror are about us, Conan, and we glide into the realm ofhorror and death,' she said. 'Are you afraid?'
A shrug of his mailed shoulders was his only answer.
'I am not afraid either,' she said meditatively. 'I was never afraid. Ihave looked into the naked fangs of Death too often. Conan, do you fearthe gods?'
'I would not tread on their shadow,' answered the barbarianconservatively. 'Some gods are strong to harm, others, to aid; at leastso say their priests. Mitra of the Hyborians must be a strong god,because his people have builded their cities over the world. But eventhe Hyborians fear Set. And Bel, god of thieves, is a good god. When Iwas a thief in Zamora I learned of him.'
'What of your own gods? I have never heard you call on them.'
'Their chief is Crom. He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call onhim? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than tocall his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He isgrim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slayinto a man's soul. What else shall men ask of the gods?'
'But what of the worlds beyond the river of death?' she persisted.
'There is no hope here or hereafter in the cult of my people,' answeredConan. 'In this world men struggle and suffer vainly, finding pleasureonly in the bright madness of battle; dying, their souls enter a graymisty realm of clouds and icy winds, to wander cheerlessly throughouteternity.'
Belit shuddered. 'Life, bad as it is, is better than such a destiny.What do you believe, Conan?'
He shrugged his shoulders. 'I have known many gods. He who denies themis as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death.It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom'srealm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of theNordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep whileI live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on mypalate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle whenthe blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers andpriests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. Iknow this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and beingthus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, Islay, and am content.'
'But the gods are real,' she said, pursuing her own line of thought.'And above all are the gods of the Shemites--Ishtar and Ashtoreth andDerketo and Adonis. Bel, too, is Shemitish, for he was born in ancientShumir, long, long ago and went forth laughing, with curled beard andimpish wise eyes, to steal the gems of the kings of old times.
'There is life beyond death, I know, and I know this, too, Conan ofCimmeria--' she rose lithely to her knees and caught him in a pantherishembrace--'my love is stronger than any death! I have lain in your arms,panting with the violence of our love; you have held and crushed andconquered me, drawing my soul to your lips with the fierceness of yourbruising kisses. My heart is welded to your heart, my soul is part ofyour soul! Were I still in death and you fighting for life, I would comeback from the abyss to aid you--aye, whether my spirit floated with thepurple sails on the crystal sea of paradise, or writhed in the moltenflames of hell! I am yours, and all the gods and all their eternitiesshall not sever us!'
* * * * *
A scream rang from the lookout in the bows. Thrusting Belit aside, Conanbounded up, his sword a long silver glitter in the moonlight, his hairbristling at what he saw. The black warrior dangled above the deck,supported by what seemed a dark pliant tree trunk arching over the rail.Then he realized that it was a gigantic serpent which had writhed itsglistening length up the side of the bow and gripped the lucklesswarrior in its jaws. Its dripping scales shone leprously in themoonlight as it reared its form high above the deck, while the strickenman screamed and writhed like a mouse in the fangs of a python. Conanrushed into the bows, and swinging his great sword, hewed nearly throughthe giant trunk, which was thicker than a man'
s body. Blood drenched therails as the dying monster swayed far out, still gripping its victim,and sank into the river, coil by coil, lashing the water to bloody foam,in which man and reptile vanished together.
Thereafter Conan kept the lookout watch himself, but no other horrorcame crawling up from the murky depths, and as dawn whitened over thejungle, he sighted the black fangs of towers jutting up among the trees.He called Belit, who slept on the deck, wrapped in his scarlet cloak;and she sprang to his side, eyes blazing. Her lips were parted to callorders to her warriors to take up bow and spears; then her lovely eyeswidened.
It was but the ghost of a city on which they looked when they cleared ajutting jungle-clad point and swung in toward the in-curving shore.Weeds and rank river grass grew between the stones of broken piers andshattered paves that had once been streets and spacious plazas and