gaze, she changed color and the remnants of thefruit slipped from her fingers.
Without comment, he indicated with a gesture that they should continuetheir explorations, and rising, she followed him out of the trees andinto a glade, the farther end of which was bounded by a dense thicket.As they stepped into the open there was a ripping crash in this thicket,and Conan, bounding aside and carrying the girl with him, narrowly savedthem from something that rushed through the air and struck a tree-trunkwith a thunderous impact.
Whipping out his sword, Conan bounded across the glade and plunged intothe thicket. Silence ensued, while Olivia crouched on the sward,terrified and bewildered. Presently Conan emerged, a puzzled scowl onhis face.
'Nothing in that thicket,' he growled. 'But there was something--'
He studied the missile that had so narrowly missed them, and gruntedincredulously, as if unable to credit his own senses. It was a hugeblock of greenish stone which lay on the sward at the foot of the tree,whose wood its impact had splintered.
'A strange stone to find on an uninhabited island,' growled Conan.
Olivia's lovely eyes dilated in wonder. The stone was a symmetricalblock, indisputably cut and shaped by human hands. And it wasastonishingly massive. The Cimmerian grasped it with both hands, andwith legs braced and the muscles standing out on his arms and back instraining knots, he heaved it above his head and cast it from him,exerting every ounce of nerve and sinew. It fell a few feet in front ofhim. Conan swore.
'No man living could throw that rock across this glade. It's a task forsiege engines. Yet here there are no mangonels or ballistas.'
'Perhaps it was thrown by some such engine from afar,' she suggested.
He shook his head. 'It didn't fall from above. It came from yonderthicket. See how the twigs are broken? It was thrown as a man mightthrow a pebble. But who? What? Come!'
She hesitantly followed him into the thicket. Inside the outer ring ofleafy brush, the undergrowth was less dense. Utter silence brooded overall. The springy sward gave no sign of footprint. Yet from thismysterious thicket had hurtled that boulder, swift and deadly. Conanbent closer to the sward, where the grass was crushed down here andthere. He shook his head angrily. Even to his keen eyes it gave no clueas to what had stood or trodden there. His gaze roved to the green roofabove their heads, a solid ceiling of thick leaves and interwovenarches. And he froze suddenly.
Then rising, sword in hand, he began to back away, thrusting Oliviabehind him.
'Out of here, quick!' he urged in a whisper that congealed the girl'sblood.
'What is it? What do you see?'
'Nothing,' he answered guardedly, not halting his wary retreat.
'But what is it, then? What lurks in this thicket?'
'Death!' he answered, his gaze still fixed on the brooding jade archesthat shut out the sky.
Once out of the thicket, he took her hand and led her swiftly throughthe thinning trees, until they mounted a grassy slope, sparsely treed,and emerged upon a low plateau, where the grass grew taller and thetrees were few and scattered. And in the midst of that plateau rose along broad structure of crumbling greenish stone.
They gazed in wonder. No legends named such a building on any island ofVilayet. They approached it warily, seeing that moss and lichen crawledover the stones, and the broken roof gaped to the sky. On all sides laybits and shards of masonry, half hidden in the waving grass, giving theimpression that once many buildings rose there, perhaps a whole town.But now only the long hall-like structure rose against the sky, and itswalls leaned drunkenly among the crawling vines.
Whatever doors had once guarded its portals had long rotted away. Conanand his companion stood in the broad entrance and stared inside.Sunlight streamed in through gaps in the walls and roof, making theinterior a dim weave of light and shadow. Grasping his sword firmly,Conan entered, with the slouching gait of a hunting panther, sunken headand noiseless feet. Olivia tiptoed after him.
Once within, Conan grunted in surprize, and Olivia stifled a scream.
'Look! Oh, look!'
'I see,' he answered. 'Nothing to fear. They are statues.'
'But how life-like--and how evil!' she whispered, drawing close to him.
They stood in a great hall, whose floor was of polished stone, litteredwith dust and broken stones, which had fallen from the ceiling. Vines,growing between the stones, masked the apertures. The lofty roof, flatand undomed, was upheld by thick columns, marching in rows down thesides of the walls. And in each space between these columns stood astrange figure.
They were statues, apparently of iron, black and shining as ifcontinually polished. They were life-sized, depicting tall, lithelypowerful men, with cruel hawk-like faces. They were naked, and everyswell, depression and contour of joint and sinew was represented withincredible realism. But the most life-like feature was their proud,intolerant faces. These features were not cast in the same mold. Eachface possessed its own individual characteristics, though there was atribal likeness between them all. There was none of the monotonousuniformity of decorative art, in the faces at least.
'They seem to be listening--and waiting!' whispered the girl uneasily.
Conan rang his hilt against one of the images.
'Iron,' he pronounced. 'But Crom! In what molds were they cast?'
He shook his head and shrugged his massive shoulders in puzzlement.
Olivia glanced timidly about the great silent hall. Only the ivy-grownstones, the tendril-clasped pillars, with the dark figures broodingbetween them, met her gaze. She shifted uneasily and wished to be gone,but the images held a strange fascination for her companion. He examinedthem in detail, and barbarian-like, tried to break off their limbs. Buttheir material resisted his best efforts. He could neither disfigure nordislodge from its niche a single image. At last he desisted, swearing inhis wonder.
'What manner of men were these copied from?' he inquired of the world atlarge. 'These figures are black, yet they are not like negroes. I havenever seen their like.'
'Let us go into the sunlight,' urged Olivia, and he nodded, with abaffled glance at the brooding shapes along the walls.
So they passed out of the dusky hall into the clear blaze of the summersun. She was surprized to note its position in the sky; they had spentmore time in the ruins than she had guessed.
'Let us take to the boat again,' she suggested. 'I am afraid here. It isa strange evil place. We do not know when we may be attacked by whatevercast the rock.'
'I think we're safe as long as we're not under the trees,' he answered.'Come.'
The plateau, whose sides fell away toward the wooded shores on the east,west and south, sloped upward toward the north to abut on a tangle ofrocky cliffs, the highest point of the island. Thither Conan took hisway, suiting his long stride to his companion's gait. From time to timehis glance rested inscrutably upon her, and she was aware of it.
They reached the northern extremity of the plateau, and stood gazing upthe steep pitch of the cliffs. Trees grew thickly along the rim of theplateau east and west of the cliffs, and clung to the precipitousincline. Conan glanced at these trees suspiciously, but he began theascent, helping his companion on the climb. The slope was not sheer, andwas broken by ledges and boulders. The Cimmerian, born in a hillcountry, could have run up it like a cat, but Olivia found the goingdifficult. Again and again she felt herself lifted lightly off her feetand over some obstacle that would have taxed her strength to surmount,and her wonder grew at the sheer physical power of the man. She nolonger found his touch repugnant. There was a promise of protection inhis iron clasp.
At last they stood on the ultimate pinnacle, their hair stirring in thesea wind. From their feet the cliffs fell away sheerly three or fourhundred feet to a narrow tangle of woodlands bordering the beach.Looking southward they saw the whole island lying like a great ovalmirror, its bevelled edges sloping down swiftly into a rim of green,except where it broke in the pitch of the cliffs. As far as they couldsee, on all sides stretched the blue wat
ers, still, placid, fading intodreamy hazes of distance.
'The sea is still,' sighed Olivia. 'Why should we not take up ourjourney again?'
Conan, poised like a bronze statue on the cliffs, pointed northward.Straining her eyes, Olivia saw a white fleck that seemed to hangsuspended in the aching haze.
'What is it?'
'A sail.'
'Hyrkanians?'
'Who can tell, at this distance?'
'They will anchor here--search the island for us!' she cried in quickpanic.
'I doubt it. They come from the north, so they can not be searching forus. They may stop for some other reason, in which case we'll have tohide as best we can. But I believe it's either pirate, or an Hyrkaniangalley returning from some northern raid. In the latter case they arenot likely to anchor here.