The thing glowed all over now with a weird phosphorous radiance, and this glow was in Conan’s eyes, blinding him, as suddenly the heaving billowing mass fell away from beneath him, the saber tearing loose and remaining in his locked hand. This hand and arm hung down into space, and far below him the glowing body of the monster was rushing downward like a meteor. Conan dazedly realized that he lay on the brink of a great round well, the edge of which was slimy stone. He lay there watching the hurtling glow dwindling and dwindling until it vanished into a dark shining surface that seemed to surge upward to meet it. For an instant a dimming witchfire glimmered in those dusky depths; then it disappeared and Conan lay staring down into the blackness of the ultimate abyss from which no sound came.
4
Straining vainly at the silk cords which cut into her wrists, Natala sought to pierce the darkness beyond the radiant circle. Her tongue seemed frozen to the roof of her mouth. Into that blackness she had seen Conan vanish, locked in mortal combat with the unknown demon, and the only sounds that had come to her straining ears had been the panting gasps of the barbarian, the impact of struggling bodies, and the thud and rip of savage blows. These ceased, and Natala swayed dizzily on her cords, half fainting.
A footstep roused her out of her apathy of horror, to see Conan emerging from the darkness. At the sight she found her voice in a shriek which echoed down the vaulted tunnel. The manhandling the Cimmerian had received was appalling to behold. At every step he dripped blood. His face was skinned and bruised as if he had been beaten with a bludgeon. His lips were pulped, and blood oozed down his face from a wound in his scalp. There were deep gashes in his thighs, calves and forearms, and great bruises showed on his limbs and body from impacts against the stone floor. But his shoulders, back and upper-breast muscles had suffered most. The flesh was bruised, swollen and lacerated, the skin hanging in loose strips, as if he had been lashed with wire whips.
‘Oh, Conan!’ she sobbed. ‘What has happened to you?’
He had no breath for conversation, but his smashed lips writhed in what might have been grim humor as he approached her. His hairy breast, glistening with sweat and blood, heaved with his panting. Slowly and laboriously he reached up and cut her cords, then fell back against the wall and leaned there, his trembling legs braced wide. She scrambled up from where she had fallen and caught him in a frenzied embrace, sobbing hysterically.
‘Oh, Conan, you are wounded unto death! Oh, what shall we do?’
‘Well,’ he panted, ‘you can’t fight a devil out of hell and come off with a whole skin!’
‘Where is it?’ she whispered. ‘Did you kill it?’
‘I don’t know. It fell into a pit. It was hanging in bloody shreds, but whether it can be killed by steel I know not.’
‘Oh, your poor back!’ she wailed, wringing her hands.
‘It lashed me with a tentacle,’ he grimaced, swearing as he moved. ‘It cut like wire and burned like poison. But it was its damnable squeezing that got my wind. It was worse than a python. If half my guts are not mashed out of place, I’m much mistaken.’
‘What shall we do?’ she whimpered.
He glanced up. The trap was closed. No sound came from above.
‘We can’t go back through the secret door,’ he muttered. ‘That room is full of dead men, and doubtless warriors keep watch there. They must have thought my doom sealed when I plunged through the floor above, or else they dare not follow me into this tunnel. – Twist that radium gem off the wall. – As I groped my way back up the corridor I felt arches opening into other tunnels. We’ll follow the first we come to. It may lead to another pit, or to the open air. We must chance it. We can’t stay here and rot.’
Natala obeyed, and holding the tiny point of light in his left hand and his bloody saber in his right, Conan started down the corridor. He went slowly, stiffly, only his animal vitality keeping him on his feet. There was a blank glare in his bloodshot eyes, and Natala saw him involuntarily lick his battered lips from time to time. She knew his suffering was ghastly, but with the stoicism of the wilds he made no complaint.
Presently the dim light shone on a black arch, and into this Conan turned. Natala cringed at what she might see, but the light revealed only a tunnel similar to that they had just left.
How far they went she had no idea, before they mounted a long stair and came upon a stone door, fastened with a golden bolt.
She hesitated, glancing at Conan. The barbarian was swaying on his feet, the light in his unsteady hand flinging fantastic shadows back and forth along the wall.
‘Open the door, girl,’ he muttered thickly. ‘The men of Xuthal will be waiting for us, and I would not disappoint them. By Crom, the city has not seen such a sacrifice as I will make!’
She knew he was half delirious. No sound came from beyond the door. Taking the radium gem from his blood-stained hand, she threw the bolt and drew the panel inward. The inner side of a cloth-of-gold tapestry met her gaze and she drew it aside and peeked through, her heart in her mouth. She was looking into an empty chamber in the center of which a silvery fountain tinkled.
Conan’s hand fell heavily on her naked shoulder.
‘Stand aside, girl,’ he mumbled. ‘Now is the feasting of swords.’
‘There is no one in the chamber,’ she answered. ‘But there is water—’
‘I hear it,’ he licked his blackened lips. ‘We will drink before we die.’
He seemed blinded. She took his darkly stained hand and led him through the stone door. She went on tiptoe, expecting a rush of yellow figures through the arches at any instant.
‘Drink while I keep watch,’ he muttered.
‘No, I am not thirsty. Lie down beside the fountain and I will bathe your wounds.’
‘What of the swords of Xuthal?’ He continually raked his arm across his eyes as if to clear his blurred sight.
‘I hear no one. All is silent.’
He sank down gropingly and plunged his face into the crystal jet, drinking as if he could not get enough. When he raised his head there was sanity in his bloodshot eyes and he stretched his massive limbs out on the marble floor as she requested, though he kept his saber in his hand, and his eyes continually roved toward the archways. She bathed his torn flesh and bandaged the deeper wounds with strips torn from a silk hanging. She shuddered at the appearance of his back; the flesh was discolored, mottled and spotted black and blue and a sickly yellow, where it was not raw. As she worked she sought frantically for a solution to their problem. If they stayed where they were, they would eventually be discovered. Whether the men of Xuthal were searching the palaces for them, or had returned to their dreams, she could not know.
As she finished her task, she froze. Under the hanging that partly concealed an alcove, she saw a hand’s breadth of yellow flesh.
Saying nothing to Conan, she rose and crossed the chamber softly, grasping his poniard. Her heart pounded suffocatingly as she cautiously drew aside the hanging. On the dais lay a young yellow woman, naked and apparently lifeless. At her hand stood a jade jar nearly full of peculiar golden-colored liquid. Natala believed it to be the elixir described by Thalis, which lent vigor and vitality to the degenerate Xuthal. She leaned across the supine form and grasped the vessel, her poniard poised over the girl’s bosom. The latter did not wake.
With the jar in her possession, Natala hesitated, realizing it would be the safer course to put the sleeping girl beyond the power of waking and raising an alarm. But she could not bring herself to plunge the Cimmerian poniard into that still bosom, and at last she drew back the hanging and returned to Conan, who lay where she had left him, seemingly only partly conscious.
She bent and placed the jar to his lips. He drank, mechanically at first, then with a suddenly roused interest. To her amazement he sat up and took the vessel from her hands. When he lifted his face, his eyes were clear and normal. Much of the drawn haggard look had gone from his features, and his voice was not the mumble of delirium.
/> ‘Crom! Where did you get this?’
She pointed. ‘From that alcove, where a yellow hussy is sleeping.’
He thrust his muzzle again into the golden liquid.
‘By Crom,’ he said with a deep sigh, ‘I feel new life and power rush like wildfire through my veins. Surely this is the very elixir of Life!’
‘We had best go back into the corridor,’ Natala ventured nervously. ‘We shall be discovered if we stay here long. We can hide there until your wounds heal—’
‘Not I,’ he grunted. ‘We are not rats, to hide in dark burrows. We leave this devil-city now, and let none seek to stop us.’
‘But your wounds!’ she wailed.
‘I do not feel them,’ he answered. ‘It may be a false strength this liquor has given me, but I swear I am aware of neither pain nor weakness.’
With sudden purpose he crossed the chamber to a window she had not noticed. Over his shoulder she looked out. A cool breeze tossed her tousled locks. Above was the dark velvet sky, clustered with stars. Below them stretched a vague expanse of sand.
‘Thalis said the city was one great palace,’ said Conan. ‘Evidently some of the chambers are built like towers on the wall. This one is. Chance has led us well.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, glancing apprehensively over her shoulder.
‘There is a crystal jar on that ivory table,’ he answered. ‘Fill it with water and tie a strip of that torn hanging about its neck for a handle while I rip up this tapestry.’
She obeyed without question, and when she turned from her task she saw Conan rapidly tying together the long tough strips of silk to make a rope, one end of which he fastened to the leg of the massive ivory table.
‘We’ll take our chance with the desert,’ said he. ‘Thalis spoke of an oasis a day’s march to the south, and grasslands beyond that. If we reach the oasis we can rest until my wounds heal. This wine is like sorcery. A little while ago I was little more than a dead man; now I am ready for anything. Here is enough silk left for you to make a garment of.’
Natala had forgotten her nudity. The mere fact caused her no qualms, but her delicate skin would need protection from the desert sun. As she knotted the silk length about her supple body, Conan turned to the window and with a contemptuous wrench tore away the soft gold bars that guarded it. Then, looping the loose end of his silk rope about Natala’s hips, and cautioning her to hold on with both hands, he lifted her through the window and lowered her the thirty-odd feet to the earth. She stepped out of the loop, and drawing it back up, he made fast the vessels of water and wine, and lowered them to her. He followed them, sliding down swiftly, hand over hand.
As he reached her side, Natala gave a sigh of relief. They stood alone at the foot of the great wall, the paling stars overhead and the naked desert about them. What perils yet confronted them she could not know, but her heart sang with joy because they were out of that ghostly, unreal city.
‘They may find the rope,’ grunted Conan, slinging the precious jars across his shoulders, wincing at the contact with his mangled flesh. ‘They may even pursue us, but from what Thalis said, I doubt it. That way is south,’ a bronze muscular arm indicated their course; ‘so somewhere in that direction lies the oasis. Come!’
Taking her hand with a thoughtfulness unusual for him, Conan strode out across the sands, suiting his stride to the shorter legs of his companion. He did not glance back at the silent city, brooding dreamily and ghostlily behind them.
‘Conan,’ Natala ventured finally, ‘when you fought the monster, and later, as you came up the corridor, did you see anything of – of Thalis?’
He shook his head. ‘It was dark in the corridor; but it was empty.’
She shuddered. ‘She tortured me – yet I pity her.’
‘It was a hot welcome we got in that accursed city,’ he snarled. Then his grim humor returned. ‘Well, they’ll remember our visit long enough, I’ll wager. There are brains and guts and blood to be cleaned off the marble tiles, and if their god still lives, he carries more wounds than I. We got off light, after all: we have wine and water and a good chance of reaching a habitable country, though I look as if I’ve gone through a meat-grinder, and you have a sore—’
‘It’s all your fault,’ she interrupted. ‘If you had not looked so long and admiringly at that Stygian cat—’
‘Crom and his devils!’ he swore. ‘When the oceans drown the world, women will take time for jealousy. Devil take their conceit! Did I tell the Stygian to fall in love with me? After all, she was only human!’
THE POOL OF THE BLACK ONE
Into the west, unknown of man,
Ships have sailed since the world began.
Read, if you dare, what Skelos wrote,
With dead hands fumbling his silken coat;
And follow the ships through the wind-blown wrack—
Follow the ships that come not back.
1
SANCHA, ONCE OF KORDAVA, yawned daintily, stretched her supple limbs luxuriously, and composed herself more comfortably on the ermine-fringed silk spread on the carack’s poop-deck. That the crew watched her with burning interest from waist and forecastle she was lazily aware, just as she was also aware that her short silk kirtle veiled little of her voluptuous contours from their eager eyes. Wherefore she smiled insolently and prepared to snatch a few more winks before the sun, which was just thrusting his golden disk above the ocean, should dazzle her eyes.
But at that instant a sound reached her ears unlike the creaking of timbers, thrum of cordage and lap of waves. She sat up, her gaze fixed on the rail, over which, to her amazement, a dripping figure clambered. Her dark eyes opened wide, her red lips parted in an O of surprize. The intruder was a stranger to her. Water ran in rivulets from his great shoulders and down his heavy arms. His single garment – a pair of bright crimson silk breeks – was soaking wet, as was his broad gold-buckled girdle and the sheathed sword it supported. As he stood at the rail, the rising sun etched him like a great bronze statue. He ran his fingers through his streaming black mane, and his blue eyes lit as they rested on the girl.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘Whence did you come?’
He made a gesture toward the sea that took in a whole quarter of the compass, while his eyes did not leave her supple figure.
‘Are you a merman, that you rise up out of the sea?’ she asked, confused by the candor of his gaze, though she was accustomed to admiration.
Before he could reply, a quick step sounded on the boards, and the master of the carack was glaring at the stranger, fingers twitching at sword-hilt.
‘Who the devil are you, sirrah?’ this one demanded in no friendly tone.
‘I am Conan,’ the other answered imperturbably. Sancha pricked up her ears anew; she had never heard Zingaran spoken with such an accent as the stranger spoke it.
‘And how did you get aboard my ship?’ The voice grated with suspicion.
‘I swam.’
‘Swam!’ exclaimed the master angrily. ‘Dog, would you jest with me? We are far beyond sight of land. Whence do you come?’
Conan pointed with a muscular brown arm toward the east, banded in dazzling gold by the lifting sun.
‘I came from the Islands.’
‘Oh!’ The other regarded him with increased interest. Black brows drew down over scowling eyes, and the thin lip lifted unpleasantly.
‘So you are one of those dogs of the Barachans.’
A faint smile touched Conan’s lips.
‘And do you know who I am?’ his questioner demanded.
‘This ship is the Wastrel; so you must be Zaporavo.’
‘Aye!’ It touched the captain’s grim vanity that the man should know him. He was a tall man, tall as Conan, though of leaner build. Framed in his steel morion his face was dark, saturnine and hawk-like, wherefore men called him the Hawk. His armor and garments were rich and ornate, after the fashion of a Zingaran grandee. His hand was never far from his sword-hilt.
/>
There was little favor in the gaze he bent on Conan. Little love was lost between Zingaran renegades and the outlaws who infested the Baracha Islands off the southern coast of Zingara. These men were mostly sailors from Argos, with a sprinkling of other nationalities. They raided the shipping, and harried the Zingaran coast towns, just as the Zingaran buccaneers did, but these dignified their profession by calling themselves Freebooters, while they dubbed the Barachans pirates. They were neither the first nor the last to gild the name of thief.
Some of these thoughts passed through Zaporavo’s mind as he toyed with his sword-hilt and scowled at his uninvited guest. Conan gave no hint of what his own thoughts might be. He stood with folded arms as placidly as if upon his own deck; his lips smiled and his eyes were untroubled.
‘What are you doing here?’ the Freebooter demanded abruptly.
‘I found it necessary to leave the rendezvous at Tortage before moonrise last night,’ answered Conan. ‘I departed in a leaky boat, and rowed and bailed all night. Just at dawn I saw your topsails, and left the miserable tub to sink, while I made better speed in the water.’
‘There are sharks in these waters,’ growled Zaporavo, and was vaguely irritated by the answering shrug of the mighty shoulders. A glance toward the waist showed a screen of eager faces staring upward. A word would send them leaping up on the poop in a storm of swords that would overwhelm even such a fighting-man as the stranger looked to be.