Conan Compilation - The Bloody Crown of Conan Part 33

"It can not be far," she answered. "I walked a whole day and then I do not know how far the black man carried me, after he found me. But he must have discovered me about sunset, so he could not have come far."

"In what direction?" he demanded.

"I do not know. I travelled eastward when I left the city."

"City?" he muttered. "A day's travel from this spot? I had thought there was only desert for a thousand miles."

"Gazal is in the desert," she answered. "It is built amidst the palms of an oasis."

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Putting her aside, he got to his feet, swearing softly as he fingered his throat, the skin of which was bruised and lacerated. He examined the three blacks in turn, finding no life in either. Then one by one he dragged them a short distance out into the desert. Somewhere the jackals began yelping. Returning to the water hole, where the girl squatted patiently, he cursed to find only the black stallion of Tilutan with the camel. The other horses had broken their t.i.thers and bolted during the fight.

Amalric went to the girl and proffered her a handful of dried dates. She nibbled at them eagerly, while the other sat and watched her, his chin on his fists, an increasing impatience throbbing in his veins.

"Why did you run away?" he asked abruptly. "Are you a slave?"

"We have no slaves in Gazal," she answered. "Oh, I was weary so weary of the eternal monotony. I wished to see something of the outer world. Tell me, from what land do you come?"

"I was born in the western hills of Aquilonia," he answered.

She clapped her hands like a delighted child.

"I know where it is! I have seen it on the maps. It is the westernmost country of the Hyborians, and its king is Epeus the Sword-wielder!"

Amalric experienced a distinct shock. His head jerked up and he stared at his fair companion.

"Epeus? Why, Epeus has been dead for nine hundred years. The king's name is Vilerus."

"Oh, of course," she said, rather embarra.s.sedly. "I am foolish. Of course, Epeus was king nine centuries ago, as you say. But tell me tell me all about the world!"

"Why, that's a big order," he answered nonplussed. "You have not traveled?"

"This is the first time I have ever been out of sight of the walls of Gazal," she declared.

His gaze was fixed on the curve of her white bosom. He was not interested in her adventures at the moment, and Gazal might have been h.e.l.l for all he cared.

He started to speak, then changing his mind caught her roughly in his arms, his muscles tensed for the struggle he expected. But he encountered no restistance. Her soft yielding body lay 295.

across his knees, and she looked up at him somewhat in surprize, but without fear or embarra.s.sment. She might have been a child, submitting to a new kind of play. Something about her direct gaze confused him. If she had screamed, wept, fought, or smiled knowingly, he would have known how to deal with her.

"Who in Mitra's name are you, girl?" he asked roughly. "You are neither touched with the sun, nor playing a game with me. Your speech shows you to be no ignorant country la.s.s, innocent in ignorance. Yet you seem to know nothing of the world and its ways."

"I am a daughter of Gazal," she answered helplessly. "If you saw Gazal perhaps you would understand."

He lifted her and set down in the sand. Rising, he brought a saddle blanket and spread it out for her.

"Sleep, Lissa," he said, his voice harsh with conflicting emotions. "Tomorrow I mean to see Gazal."

At dawn they started westward. Amalric had placed Lissa on the camel, showing her how to maintain her balance. She clung to the seat with both hands, showing no knowledge whatever of camels, which again surprized the young Aquilonian. A girl raised in the desert, she had never before been on a camel, nor, until the preceding night, had she ever ridden or been carried on a horse. Amalric had manufactured a sort of cloak for her, and she wore it without question, not asking whence it came, accepting it as she accepted all things he did for her, gratefully, but blindly, without asking the reason. Amalric did not tell her that the silk that s.h.i.+elded her from the sun had once covered the black hide of her abductor.

As they rode she again begged him to tell her something of the world, like a child asking for a story.

"I know Aquilonia is far from this desert," she said. "Stygia lies between, and the Lands of Shem, and other countries. How is it that you are here, so far from your home land?"

He rode for a s.p.a.ce in silence, his hand on the camel's guide-rope.

"Argos and Stygia were at war," he said abruptly. "Koth became embroiled. The Kothians urged a simultaneous invasion of Stygia. Argos raised an army of mercenaries, which went into s.h.i.+ps and sailed southward along the coast. At the same time, a Kothic army was to invade Stygia by land. I was one of that mercenary army. We met the Stygian fleet and defeated it, driving it back into Khemi. We should have landed and looted the city, and advanced along the course of the Styx but our admiral was cautious. Our leader was Prince Zapayo da Kova, a 296.

Zingaran. We cruised southward until we reached the jungle-clad coasts of Kush. There we landed, and the s.h.i.+ps anch.o.r.ed, while the army pushed eastward, along the Stygian border, burning and pillaging as we went. It was our intention to turn northward at a certain point and strike into the heart of Stygia, to form a juncture with the Kothic host which was supposed to be pus.h.i.+ng down from the north. Then word came that we were betrayed. Koth had concluded a separate peace with the Stygians. A Stygian army was pus.h.i.+ng southward to intercept us, while another already had cut us off from the coast.

"Prince Zapayo, in desperation, conceived the mad idea of marching eastward, hoping to skirt the Stygian border and eventually reach the eastern Lands of Shem. But the army from the north overtook us. We turned and fought. All day we fought, and drove them back in route to their camp. But the next day the pursuing army came up from the west, and crushed between the hosts, our army ceased to be. We were broken, annihilated, destroyed. There were few left to flee. But when night fell, I broke away with my companion, a Cimmerian named Conan, a brute of a man, with the strength of a bull.

"We rode southward into the desert, because there was no other direction in which we might go. Conan had been in this part of the world before, and he believed we had a chance to survive. Far to the south we found an oasis, but Stygian riders harried us, and we fled again, from oasis to oasis, fleeing, starving, thirsting, until we found ourselves in a barren unknown land of blazing sand and empty sand. We rode until our horses were reeling, and we were half delirious. Then one night we saw fires, and rode up to them, taking a desperate chance that we might make friends with them. As soon as we came within range, a shower of arrows greeted us. Conan's horse was. .h.i.t, and reared, throwing its rider. His neck must have broken like a twig, for he never moved. I got away in the darkness, somehow, though my horse died under me. I had only a glance of the attackers tall, lean, brown men, wearing strange barbaric garments.

"I wandered on foot through the desert, and fell in with those three vultures you saw yesterday.

They were jackals Ghanatas, members of a robber tribe, of mixed blood, negro and Mitra knows what else. The only reason they didn't murder me was because I had nothing they wished. For a month I have been wandering and thieving with them, because there was nothing else I could do."

"I do not know it was like that," she murmured faintly. "They said there were wars and cruelty out in the world, but it seemed like a dream and far away. But hearing you speak of treachery and battle seems almost like seeing it."

"Do no enemies ever come against Gazal?" he demanded.

She shook her head. "Men ride wide of Gazal. Sometimes I have seen black dots moving in lines along the horizons, and the old men said it was armies moving to war, but they never 297.

come near Gazal."

Amalric felt a dim stirring of uneasiness. This desert, seemingly empty of life, never the less contained some of the fiercest tribes on earth the Ghanatas, who ranged far to the east; the masked Tibu, whom he believed dwelt further to the south; and somewhere off to the southwest lay the semi-mythical empire of Tombalku, ruled by a wild and barbaric race. It was strange that a city in the midst of this savage land should be left so completely alone that one of its inhabitants did not even know the meaning of war.

When he turned his gaze elsewhere, strange thoughts a.s.sailed him. Was the girl touched by the sun? Was she a demon in womanly form come out of the desert to lure him to some cryptic doom? A glance at her clinging childishly to the high peak of the camel saddle was sufficient to dispel these broodings. Then again doubt a.s.sailed him. Was he bewitched? Had she cast a spell on him?

Westward they forged steadily, halting only to nibble dates and drink water at midday. Amalric fas.h.i.+oned a frail shelter out of his sword and sheath and the saddle blankets, to s.h.i.+eld her from the burning sun. Weary and stiff from the tossing, bucking gait of the camel, she had to be lifted down in his arms. As he felt again the voluptuous sweetness of her soft body, he felt a hot throb of pa.s.sion sear through him, and he stood momentarily motionless, intoxicated with the nearness of her, before he laid her down in the shade of the make-s.h.i.+ft tent.

He felt a touch of almost anger at the clear gaze with which she met his, at the docility with which she yielded her young body to his hands. It was as if she was unaware of things which might harm her; her innocent trust shamed him and pent a helpless wrath within him.

As they ate, he did not taste the dates he munched; his eyes burned on her, avidly drinking in every detail of her lithe young figure. She seemed as unaware of his intentness as a child.

When he lifted her to place her again on her camel, and her arms went instinctively about his neck, he shuddered. But he lifted her up on her mount, and they took up the journey once more.

It was just before sundown when Lissa pointed and cried out: "Look! The towers of Gazal!"

On the desert rim he saw them spires and minarets, rising in a jade-green cl.u.s.ter against the blue sky. But for the girl, he would have thought it the phantom city of a mirage. He glanced at Lissa curiously; she showed no signs of eager joy at her home coming. She sighed, and her slim shoulders seemed to droop.

As they approached the details swam more plainly into view. Sheer from the desert sands rose the wall which enclosed the towers. And Amalric saw that the wall was crumbling in many places. The towers, too, he saw, were much in disrepair. Roofs sagged, broken battlements 298.

gaped, spires leaned drunkenly. Panic a.s.sailed him; was it a city of the dead to which he rode, guided by a vampire? A quick glance at the girl rea.s.sured him. No demon could lurk in that divinely molded exterior. She glanced at him with a strange wistful questioning in her deep eyes, turned irresolutely toward the desert, then, with a deep sigh, set her face toward the city, as if gripped by a subtle and fatalistic despair.

Now through the gaps of the jade green wall, Amalric saw figures moving within the city. No one hailed them as they rode through a broad breach in the wall, and came out into a broad street. Close at hand, limned in the sinking sun, the decay was more apparent. Gra.s.s grew rank in the streets, pus.h.i.+ng through shattered paving; gra.s.s grew rank in the small plazas. Streets and courts likewise were littered with rubbish of masonry and fallen stones.

Domes rose, cracked and discolored. Portals gaped, vacant of doors. Every where ruin had laid his hand. Then Amalric saw one spire untouched; a s.h.i.+ning red cylindrical tower which rose in the extreme south eastern corner of the city. It shone among the ruins.

Amalric indicated it.

"Why is that tower less in ruins than the others?" he asked. Lissa turned pale; she trembled, and caught his hand convulsively.

"Do not speak of it!" she whispered. "Do not look toward it do not even think of it!"

Amalric scowled; the nameless implication of her words somehow changed the aspect of the mysterious tower. Now it seemed like a serpent's head rearing among ruin and desolation.

The young Aquilonian looked warily about him. After all, he had no a.s.surance that the people of Gazal would receive him in a friendly manner. He saw people moving leisurely about the streets. They halted and stared at him, and for some reason his flesh crawled. They were men and women with kindly features, and their looks were mild. But their interest seemed so slight so vague and impersonal. They made no movement to approach him or to speak to him. It might have been the most common thing in the world for an armed horseman to ride into their city from the desert; yet Amalric knew that was not the case, and the casual manner with which the people of Gazal received him, caused a faint uneasiness in his bosom.

Lissa spoke to them, indicating Amalric, whose hand she lifted like an affectionate child. "This is Amalric of Aquilonia, who rescued me from the black people and has brought me home."

A polite murmur of welcome rose from the people, and several of them approached to extend their hands. Amalric thought he had never seen such vague, kindly faces; their eyes were soft and mild, without fear and without wonder. Yet they were not the eyes of stupid oxen; rather, 299.

they were the eyes of people wrapped in dreams.

Their stare gave him a feeling of unreality; he hardly knew what was said to him. His mind was occupied by the strangeness of it all; these quiet dreamy people, in their silken tunics and soft sandals, moving with aimless vagueness among the discolored ruins. A lotus paradise of illusion? Somehow the thought of that sinister red tower struck a discordant note.

One of the men, his face smooth and unlined, but his hair silver, was saying: "Aquilonia? There was an invasion we heard King Bragorus of Nemedia how went the war?"

"He was driven back," answered Amalric briefly, resisting a shudder. Nine hundred years had pa.s.sed since Bragorus led his spearmen across the marches of Aquilonia.

His questioner did not press him further; the people drifted away, and Lissa tugged at his hand.

He turned, feasted his eyes upon her; in a realm of illusion and dream, her soft firm body anch.o.r.ed his wandering conjectures. She was no dream; she was real; her body was sweet and tangible as cream and honey.

"Come, let us go to rest and eat."

"What of the people?" he demurred. "Will you not tell them of your experiences?"

"They would not heed, except for a few minutes," she answered. "They would listen a little, and then drift away. They hardly know I have been gone. Come!"

Amalric led the horse and camel into an enclosed court where the gra.s.s grew high, and water seeped from a broken fountain into a marble trough. There he tethered them, then he followed Lissa. Taking his hand she led him across the court, into an arched doorway. Night had fallen.

In the open s.p.a.ce above the court, the stars were cl.u.s.tering, etching the jagged pinnacles.

Through a series of dark chambers Lissa went, moving with the sureness of long practise.

Amalric groped after her, guided by her little hand in his. He found it no pleasant adventure.

The scent of dust and decay hung in the thick darkness. Under his feet sometimes were broken tiles, by the feel of them, sometimes worn carpets. His free hand touched the fretted arches of doorways. Then the stars gleamed through a broken roof, showing him a dim winding hallway, hung with rotting tapestries. They rustled in a faint wind and their noise was like the whispering of witches, causing the hair to stir next his scalp.

Then they came into a chamber dimly lighted by the stars.h.i.+ne streaming through open windows, and Lissa released his hand, fumbled an instant and produced a faint light of some sort. It was a gla.s.sy k.n.o.b which glowed with a golden radiance. She set it on a marble table, and indicated that Amalric should recline on a couch thickly littered with silks. Groping into 300.

some mysterious recess, she produced a gold vessel of wine, and others containing food unfamiliar to Amalric. There were dates; the others, pallid and insipid to his taste, he did not recognize. The wine was pleasant to the palate, but no more heady than dish water.

Seated on a marble seat opposite him, Lissa nibbled daintily.

"What sort of place is this?" he demanded. "You are like these people yet strangely unlike."

"They say I am like our ancestors," answered Lissa. "Long ago they came into the desert and built this city over a great oasis which was in reality only a series of springs. The stone they took from the ruins of a much older city only the red tower " her voice dropped and she glanced nervously at the star-framed windows "only the red tower stood there. It was empty then.

"Our ancestors, who were called Gazali, once dwelt in southern Koth. They were noted for their scholarly wisdom. But they sought to revive the wors.h.i.+p of Mitra, which the Kothians had long ago abandoned, and the king drove them from his kingdom. They came southward, many of them, priests, scholars, teachers, scientists, with their Shemitish slaves.

"They reared Gazal in the desert; but the slaves revolted almost as soon as the city was built, and fleeing, mixed with the wild tribes of the desert. They were not illy treated word came to them in the night a word which sent them fleeing madly from the city into the desert.

"My people dwelt here, learning to manufacture their food and drink from such material as was at hand. Their learning was a marvel. When the slaves fled, they took with them every camel, horse and donkey in the city. There was no communication with the outer world. There are whole chambers in Gazal filled with maps and books and chronicles, but they are all nine years old at the lest; for it was nine hundred years ago that my people fled from Koth. Since then no man of the outside world has set foot in Gazal. And the people are slowly vanis.h.i.+ng. They have become so dreamy and introspective that they have neither human pa.s.sions nor ambitions. The city falls into ruins and none moves hand to repair it. Horror " she choked and shuddered; "when horror came upon them, they could neither flee nor fight."

"What do you mean?" he whispered, a cold wind blowing on his spine. The rustling of rotten hangings down nameless black corridors stirred dim fear in his soul.

She shook her head; she rose, came around the marble table, laid hands on his shoulders. Her eyes were wet and they shone with horror and a desperate yearning that caught at his throat.

Instinctively his arm went around her lithe form, and he felt her tremble.

"Hold me!" she begged. "I am afraid! Oh, I have dreamed of such a man as you. I am not like 301.

my people; they are dead men walking forgotten streets; but I am alive. I am warm and sentient. I hunger and thirst and yearn for life. I can not abide the silent streets and ruined halls and dim people of Gazal, though I have never known anything else. That is why I ran away I yearned for life "

She was sobbing uncontrollably in his arms. Her hair streamed over his face; her fragrance made him dizzy. Her firm body strained against his. She was lying across his knees, her arms locked about his neck. Straining her to his breast he crushed her lips with his. Eyes, lips, cheeks, hair, throat, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, he showered with hot kisses, until her sobs changed to panting gasps. His pa.s.sion was not the violence of a ravisher. The pa.s.sion that slumbered in her woke in one overpowering wave. The glowing gold ball, struck by his groping fingers, tumbled to the floor and was extinguished. Only the stars.h.i.+ne gleamed through the windows.

Lying in Amalric's arms on the silk-heaped couch, Lissa opened her heart and whispered her dreams and hopes and aspirations, childish, pathetic, terrible.

"I'll take you away," he muttered. "Tomorrow. You are right. Gazal is a city of the dead; we will seek life and the outer world. It is violent, rough, cruel; but better that than this living death "

The night was broken by a shuddering cry of agony, horror and despair. Its timbre brought out cold sweat on Amalric's skin. He started upright from the couch, but Lissa clung to him desperately.

"No, no!" she begged in a frantic whisper. "Do not go! Stay!"

"But murder is being done!" he exclaimed, fumbling for his sword. The cries seemed to come from across an outer court. Mingled with them there was an indescribable tearing, rending sound. They rose higher and thinner, unbearable in their hopeless agony, then sank away in a long shuddering sob.

"I have heard men dying on the rack cry out like that!" muttered Amalric, shaking with horror.

"What devil's work is this?"

Lissa was trembling violently in a frenzy of terror. He felt the wild pounding of her heart.

"It is the Horror of which I spoke!" she whispered. "The Horror which dwells in the red tower.

Long ago it came some say it dwelt there in the lost years, and returned after the building of Gazal. It devours human beings. Bats fly from the tower. What it is, no one knows, since none have seen it and lived to tell of it. It is a G.o.d or a devil. That is why the slaves fled; why the desert people shun Gazal. Many of us have gone into its awful belly. Eventually all will have 302.

gone, and it will rule over an empty city, as men say it ruled over the ruins from which Gazal was reared."

"Why have the people stayed to be devoured?" he demanded.

"I do not know," she whimpered; "they dream "

"Hypnosis," muttered Amalric; "hypnosis coupled with decay. I saw it in their eyes. This devil has them mesmerized. Mitra, what a foul secret!"