With an oath the Cimmerian smote the wall a terrific blow with the
pommel of his sword, and the marble cracked and chipped. But the hidden
door did not give way, and reason told him that doubtless it had been
bolted on the other side of the wall. Turning, he sprang across the
chamber to one of the ivory doors.
He lifted his sword to shatter the panels, but on a venture tried the
door first with his left hand. It swung open easily, and he glared into
a long corridor that curved away into dimness under the weird light of
censers similar to those in the shrine. A heavy gold bolt showed on the
jamb of the door, and he touched it lightly with his finger tips. The
faint warmness of the metal could have been detected only by a man whose
faculties were akin to those of a wolf. That bolt had been touched--and
therefore drawn--within the last few seconds. The affair was taking on
more and more of the aspect of a baited trap. He might have known
Totrasmek would know when anyone entered the temple.
To enter the corridor would undoubtedly be to walk into whatever trap
the priest had set for him. But Conan did not hesitate. Somewhere in
that dim-lit interior Zabibi was a captive, and, from what he knew of
the characteristics of Hanuman's priests, he was sure that she needed
help badly. Conan stalked into the corridor with a pantherish tread,
poised to strike right or left.
On his left, ivory, arched doors opened into the corridor, and he tried
each in turn. All were locked. He had gone perhaps seventy-five feet
when the corridor bent sharply to the left, describing the curve the
girl had mentioned. A door opened into this curve, and it gave under his
hand.
He was looking into a broad, square chamber, somewhat more clearly
lighted than the corridor. Its walls were of white marble, the floor of
ivory, the ceiling of fretted silver. He saw divans of rich satin,
gold-worked footstools of ivory, a disk-shaped table of some massive,
metal-like substance. On one of the divans a man was reclining, looking
toward the door. He laughed as he met the Cimmerian's startled glare.
This man was naked except for a loin-cloth and high-strapped sandals. He
was brown-skinned, with close-cropped black hair and restless black eyes
that set off a broad, arrogant face. In girth and breadth he was
enormous, with huge limbs on which the great muscles swelled and rippled
at each slightest movement. His hands were the largest Conan had ever
seen. The assurance of gigantic physical strength colored his every
action and inflection.
'Why not enter, barbarian?' he called mockingly, with an exaggerated
gesture of invitation.
Conan's eyes began to smolder ominously, but he trod warily into the
chamber, his sword ready.
'Who the devil are you?' he growled.
'I am Baal-pteor,' the man answered. 'Once, long ago and in another
land, I had another name. But this is a good name, and why Totrasmek
gave it to me, any temple wench can tell you.'
'So you're his dog!' grunted Conan. 'Well, curse your brown hide,
Baal-pteor, where's the wench you jerked through the wall?'
'My master entertains her!' laughed Baal-pteor. 'Listen!'
From beyond a door opposite the one by which Conan had entered there
sounded a woman's scream, faint and muffled in the distance.
'Blast your soul!' Conan took a stride toward the door, then wheeled
with his skin tingling. Baal-pteor was laughing at him, and that laugh
was edged with menace that made the hackles rise on Conan's neck and
sent a red wave of murder-lust driving across his vision.
He started toward Baal-pteor, the knuckles on his sword-hand showing
white. With a swift motion the brown man threw something at him--a
shining crystal sphere that glistened in the weird light.
Conan dodged instinctively, but, miraculously, the globe stopped short
in midair, a few feet from his face. It did not fall to the floor. It
hung suspended, as if by invisible filaments, some five feet above the
floor. And as he glared in amazement, it began to rotate with growing
speed. And as it revolved it grew, expanded, became nebulous. It filled
the chamber. It enveloped him. It blotted out furniture, walls, the
smiling countenance of Baal-pteor. He was lost in the midst of a
blinding bluish blur of whirling speed. Terrific winds screamed past
Conan, tugging, tearing at him, striving to wrench him from his feet, to
drag him into the vortex that spun madly before him.
With a choking cry Conan lurched backward, reeled, felt the solid wall
against his back. At the contact the illusion ceased to be. The
whirling, titanic sphere vanished like a bursting bubble. Conan reeled
upright in the silver-ceilinged room, with a gray mist coiling about his
feet, and saw Baal-pteor lolling on the divan, shaking with silent
laughter.
'Son of a slut!' Conan lunged at him. But the mist swirled up from the
floor, blotting out that giant brown form. Groping in a rolling cloud
that blinded him, Conan felt a rending sensation of dislocation--and
then room and mist and brown man were gone together. He was standing
alone among the high reeds of a marshy fen, and a buffalo was lunging at
him, head down. He leaped aside from the ripping scimitar-curved horns,
and drove his sword in behind the foreleg, through ribs and heart. And
then it was not a buffalo dying there in the mud, but the brown-skinned
Baal-pteor. With a curse Conan struck off his head; and the head soared
from the ground and snapped beast-like tusks into his throat. For all
his mighty strength he could not tear it loose--he was
choking--strangling; then there was a rush and roar through space, the
dislocating shock of an immeasurable impact, and he was back in the
chamber with Baal-pteor, whose head was once more set firmly on his
shoulders, and who laughed silently at him from the divan.
'Mesmerism!' muttered Conan, crouching and digging his toes hard against
the marble.
His eyes blazed. This brown dog was playing with him, making sport of
him! But this mummery, this child's play of mists and shadows of
thought, it could not harm him. He had but to leap and strike and the
brown acolyte would be a mangled corpse under his heel. This time he
would not be fooled by shadows of illusion--but he was.
A blood-curdling snarl sounded behind him, and he wheeled and struck in
a flash at the panther crouching to spring on him from the metal-colored
table. Even as he struck, the apparition vanished and his blade clashed
deafeningly on the adamantine surface. Instantly he sensed something
abnormal. The blade stuck to the table! He wrenched at it savagely. It
did not give. This was no mesmeristic trick. The table was a giant
magnet. He gripped the hilt with both hands, when a voice at his
shoulder brought him about, to face the brown man, who had at last risen
from the divan.
Slightly taller than Conan, and much heavier, Baal-pteor loomed before
him, a daunting image of muscular development. His mighty arms were
unnaturally long, and his great hands opened and closed, twitching
convulsively. Conan released the hilt of his imprisoned sword and fell
silent, watching his enemy through slitted lids.
'Your head, Cimmerian!' taunted Baal-pteor. 'I shall take it with my
bare hands, twisting it from your shoulders as the head of a fowl is
twisted! Thus the sons of Kosala offer sacrifice to Yajur. Barbarian,
you look upon a strangler of Yota-pong. I was chosen by the priests of
Yajur in my infancy, and throughout childhood, boyhood and youth I
trained in the art of slaying with the naked hands--for only thus are
the sacrifices enacted. Yajur loves blood, and we waste not a drop from
the victim's veins. When I was a child they gave me infants to throttle;
when I was a boy I strangled young girls; as a youth, women, old men and
young boys. Not until I reached my full manhood was I given a strong man
to slay on the altar of Yota-pong.
'For years I offered the sacrifices to Yajur. Hundreds of necks have
snapped between these fingers--' he worked them before the Cimmerian's
angry eyes. 'Why I fled from Yota-pong to become Totrasmek's servant is
no concern of yours. In a moment you will be beyond curiosity. The
priests of Kosala, the stranglers of Yajur, are strong beyond the belief
of men. And I was stronger than any. With my hands, barbarian, I shall
break your neck!'
And like the stroke of twin cobras, the great hands closed on Conan's
throat. The Cimmerian made no attempt to dodge or fend them away, but
his own hands darted to the Kosalan's bull-neck. Baal-pteor's black eyes
widened as he felt the thick cords of muscles that protected the
barbarian's throat. With a snarl he exerted his inhuman strength, and
knots and lumps and ropes of thews rose along his massive arms. And then
a choking gasp burst from him as Conan's fingers locked on his throat.
For an instant they stood there like statues, their faces masks of
effort, veins beginning to stand out purply on their temples. Conan's
thin lips drew back from his teeth in a grinning snarl. Baal-pteor's
eyes were distended; in them grew an awful surprize and the glimmer of
fear. Both men stood motionless as images, except for the expanding of
their muscles on rigid arms and braced legs, but strength beyond common
conception was warring there--strength that might have uprooted trees
and crushed the skulls of bullocks.
The wind whistled suddenly from between Baal-pteor's parted teeth. His
face was growing purple. Fear flooded his eyes. His thews seemed ready
to burst from his arms and shoulders, yet the muscles of the Cimmerian's
thick neck did not give; they felt like masses of woven iron cords under
his desperate fingers. But his own flesh was giving way under the iron
fingers of the Cimmerian which ground deeper and deeper into the
yielding throat-muscles, crushing them in upon jugular and windpipe.
The statuesque immobility of the group gave way to sudden, frenzied
motion, as the Kosalan began to wrench and heave, seeking to throw
himself backward. He let go of Conan's throat and grasped his wrists,
trying to tear away those inexorable fingers.
With a sudden lunge Conan bore him backward until the small of his back
crashed against the table. And still farther over its edge Conan bent
him, back and back, until his spine was ready to snap.
Conan's low laugh was merciless as the ring of steel.
'You fool!' he all but whispered. 'I think you never saw a man from the
West before. Did you deem yourself strong, because you were able to
twist the heads off civilized folk, poor weaklings with muscles like
rotten string? Hell! Break the neck of a wild Cimmerian bull before you
call yourself strong. I did that, before I was a full-grown man--like
this!'
And with a savage wrench he twisted Baal-pteor's head around until the
ghastly face leered over the left shoulder, and the vertebrae snapped
like a rotten branch.
Conan hurled the flopping corpse to the floor, turned to the sword again
and gripped the hilt with both hands, bracing his feet against the
floor. Blood trickled down his broad breast from the wounds Baal-pteor's
finger nails had torn in the skin of his neck. His black hair was damp,
sweat ran down his face, and his chest heaved. For all his vocal scorn
of Baal-pteor's strength, he had almost met his match in the inhuman
Kosalan. But without pausing to catch his breath, he exerted all his
strength in a mighty wrench that tore the sword from the magnet where it
clung.
Another instant and he had pushed open the door from behind which the
scream had sounded, and was looking down a long straight corridor, lined
with ivory doors. The other end was masked by a rich velvet curtain, and
from beyond that curtain came the devilish strains of such music as
Conan had never heard, not even in nightmares. It made the short hairs
bristle on the back of his neck. Mingled with it was the panting,
hysterical sobbing of a woman. Grasping his sword firmly, he glided down
the corridor.