It was the smoky light of a torch which roused Taramis, Queen of
Khauran, from the slumber in which she sought forgetfulness. Lifting
herself on her hand she raked back her tangled hair and blinked up,
expecting to meet the mocking countenance of Salome, malign with new
torments. Instead a cry of pity and horror reached her ears.
'Taramis! Oh, my Queen!'
The sound was so strange to her ears that she thought she was still
dreaming. Behind the torch she could make out figures now, the glint of
steel, then five countenances bent toward her, not swarthy and
hook-nosed, but lean, aquiline faces, browned by the sun. She crouched
in her tatters, staring wildly.
One of the figures sprang forward and fell on one knee before her, arms
stretched appealingly toward her.
'Oh, Taramis! Thank Ishtar we have found you! Do you not remember me,
Valerius? Once with your own lips you praised me, after the battle of
Korveka!'
'Valerius!' she stammered. Suddenly tears welled into her eyes. 'Oh, I
dream! It is some magic of Salome's to torment me!'
'No!' The cry rang with exultation. 'It is your own true vassals come to
rescue you! Yet we must hasten. Constantius fights in the plain against
Conan, who has brought the Zuagirs across the river, but three hundred
Shemites yet hold the city. We slew the jailer and took his keys, and
have seen no other guards. But we must be gone. Come!'
The queen's legs gave way, not from weakness but from the reaction.
Valerius lifted her like a child, and with the torch-bearer hurrying
before them, they left the dungeon and went up a slimy stone stair. It
seemed to mount endlessly, but presently they emerged into a corridor.
They were passing a dark arch when the torch was suddenly struck out,
and the bearer cried out in fierce, brief agony. A burst of blue fire
glared in the dark corridor, in which the furious face of Salome was
limned momentarily, with a beast-like figure crouching beside her--then
the eyes of the watchers were blinded by that blaze.
Valerius tried to stagger along the corridor with the queen; dazedly he
heard the sound of murderous blows driven deep in flesh, accompanied by
gasps of death and a bestial grunting. Then the queen was torn brutally
from his arms, and a savage blow on his helmet dashed him to the floor.
Grimly he crawled to his feet, shaking his head in an effort to rid
himself of the blue flame which seemed still to dance devilishly before
him. When his blinded sight cleared, he found himself alone in the
corridor--alone except for the dead. His four companions lay in their
blood, heads and bosoms cleft and gashed. Blinded and dazed in that
hell-born glare, they had died without an opportunity of defending
themselves. The queen was gone.
With a bitter curse Valerius caught up his sword, tearing his cleft
helmet from his head to clatter on the flags; blood ran down his cheek
from a cut in his scalp.
Reeling, frantic with indecision, he heard a voice calling his name in
desperate urgency: 'Valerius! _Valerius!_'
He staggered in the direction of the voice, and rounded a corner just in
time to have his arms filled with a soft, supple figure which flung
itself frantically at him.
'Ivga! Are you mad!'
'I had to come!' she sobbed. 'I followed you--hid in an arch of the
outer court. A moment ago I saw _her_ emerge with a brute who carried a
woman in his arms. I knew it was Taramis, and that you had failed! Oh,
you are hurt!'
'A scratch!' He put aside her clinging hands. 'Quick, Ivga, tell me
which way they went!'
'They fled across the square toward the temple.'
He paled. 'Ishtar! Oh, the fiend! She means to give Taramis to the devil
she worships! Quick, Ivga! Run to the south wall where the people watch
the battle! Tell them that their real queen has been found--that the
impostor has dragged her to the temple! Go!'
Sobbing, the girl sped away, her light sandals pattering on the
cobblestones, and Valerius raced across the court, plunged into the
street, dashed into the square upon which it debouched, and raced for
the great structure that rose on the opposite side.
His flying feet spurned the marble as he darted up the broad stair and
through the pillared portico. Evidently their prisoner had given them
some trouble. Taramis, sensing the doom intended for her, was fighting
against it with all the strength of her splendid young body. Once she
had broken away from the brutish priest, only to be dragged down again.
The group was halfway down the broad nave, at the other end of which
stood the grim altar and beyond that the great metal door, obscenely
carven, through which many had gone, but from which only Salome had ever
emerged. Taramis's breath came in panting gasps; her tattered garment
had been torn from her in the struggle. She writhed in the grasp of her
apish captor like a white, naked nymph in the arms of a satyr. Salome
watched cynically, though impatiently, moving toward the carven door,
and from the dusk that lurked along the lofty walls the obscene gods and
gargoyles leered down, as if imbued with salacious life.
Choking with fury, Valerius rushed down the great hall, sword in hand.
At a sharp cry from Salome, the skull-faced priest looked up, then
released Taramis, drew a heavy knife, already smeared with blood, and
ran at the oncoming Khaurani.
But cutting down men blinded by the devil's-flame loosed by Salome was
different from fighting a wiry young Hyborian afire with hate and rage.
Up went the dripping knife, but before it could fall Valerius's keen
narrow blade slashed through the air, and the fist that held the knife
jumped from its wrist in a shower of blood. Valerius, berserk, slashed
again and yet again before the crumpling figure could fall. The blade
licked through flesh and bone. The skull-like head fell one way, the
half-sundered torso the other.
Valerius whirled on his toes, quick and fierce as a jungle-cat, glaring
about for Salome. She must have exhausted her fire-dust in the prison.
She was bending over Taramis, grasping her sister's black locks in one
hand, in the other lifting a dagger. Then with a fierce cry Valerius's
sword was sheathed in her breast with such fury that the point sprang
out between her shoulders. With an awful shriek the witch sank down,
writhing in convulsions, grasping at the naked blade as it was
withdrawn, smoking and dripping. Her eyes were inhuman; with a more than
human vitality she clung to the life that ebbed through the wound that
split the crimson crescent on her ivory bosom. She groveled on the
floor, clawing and biting at the naked stones in her agony.
Sickened at the sight, Valerius stooped and lifted the half-fainting
queen. Turning his back on the twisting figure on the floor, he ran
toward the door, stumbling in his haste. He staggered out upon the
portico, halted at the head of the steps. The square thronged with
people. Some had come at Ivga's incoherent cries; others had deserted
the walls in fear of the onsweeping hordes out of the desert, fleeing
unreasoningly toward the centre of the city. Dumb resignation had
vanished. The throng seethed and milled, yelling and screaming. About
the road there sounded somewhere the splintering of stone and timbers.
A band of grim Shemites cleft the crowd--the guards of the northern
gates, hurrying toward the south gate to reinforce their comrades
there. They reined up short at the sight of the youth on the steps,
holding the limp, naked figure in his arms. The heads of the throng
turned toward the temple; the crowd gaped, a new bewilderment added to
their swirling confusion.
'Here is your queen!' yelled Valerius, straining to make himself
understood above the clamor. The people gave back a bewildered roar.
They did not understand, and Valerius sought in vain to lift his voice
above their bedlam. The Shemites rode toward the temple steps, beating a
way through the crowd with their spears.
Then a new, grisly element introduced itself into the frenzy. Out of the
gloom of the temple behind Valerius wavered a slim white figure, laced
with crimson. The people screamed; there in the arms of Valerius hung
the woman they thought their queen; yet there in the temple door
staggered another figure, like a reflection of the other. Their brains
reeled. Valerius felt his blood congeal as he stared at the swaying
witch-girl. His sword had transfixed her, sundered her heart. She should
be dead; by all laws of nature she should be dead. Yet there she swayed,
on her feet, clinging horribly to life.
'Thaug!' she screamed, reeling in the doorway. '_Thaug!_' As in answer
to that frightful invocation there boomed a thunderous croaking from
within the temple, the snapping of wood and metal.
'That is the queen!' roared the captain of the Shemites, lifting his
bow. 'Shoot down the man and other woman!'
But the roar of a roused hunting-pack rose from the people; they had
guessed the truth at last, understood Valerius's frenzied appeals, knew
that the girl who hung limply in his arms was their true queen. With a
soul-shaking yell they surged on the Shemites, tearing and smiting with
tooth and nail and naked hands, with the desperation of hard-pent fury
loosed at last. Above them Salome swayed and tumbled down the marble
stairs, dead at last.
Arrows flickered about him as Valerius ran back between the pillars of
the portico, shielding the body of the queen with his own. Shooting and
slashing ruthlessly, the mounted Shemites were holding their own with
the maddened crowd. Valerius darted to the temple door--with one foot on
the threshold he recoiled, crying out in horror and despair.
Out of the gloom at the other end of the great hall a vast dark form
heaved up--came rushing toward him in gigantic frog-like hops. He saw
the gleam of great unearthly eyes, the shimmer of fangs or talons. He
fell back from the door, and then the whir of a shaft past his ear
warned him that death was also behind him. He wheeled desperately. Four
or five Shemites had cut their way through the throng and were spurring
their horses up the steps, their bows lifted to shoot him down. He
sprang behind a pillar, on which the arrows splintered. Taramis had
fainted. She hung like a dead woman in his arms.
Before the Shemites could loose again, the doorway was blocked by a
gigantic shape. With affrighted yells the mercenaries wheeled and began
beating a frantic way through the throng, which crushed back in sudden,
galvanized horror, trampling one another in their stampede.
But the monster seemed to be watching Valerius and the girl. Squeezing
its vast, unstable bulk through the door, it bounded toward him, as he
ran down the steps. He felt it looming behind him, a giant shadowy
thing, like a travesty of nature cut out of the heart of night, a black
shapelessness in which only the staring eyes and gleaming fangs were
distinct.
There came a sudden thunder of hoofs; a rout of Shemites, bloody and
battered, streamed across the square from the south, plowing blindly
through the packed throng. Behind them swept a horde of horsemen yelling
in a familiar tongue, waving red swords--the exiles, returned! With them
rode fifty black-bearded desert-riders, and at their head a giant figure
in black mail.
'Conan!' shrieked Valerius. '_Conan!_'
The giant yelled a command. Without checking their headlong pace, the
desert men lifted their bows, drew and loosed. A cloud of arrows sang
across the square, over the seething heads of the multitudes, and sank
feather-deep in the black monster. It halted, wavered, reared, a black
blot against the marble pillars. Again the sharp cloud sang, and yet
again, and the horror collapsed and rolled down the steps, as dead as
the witch who had summoned it out of the night of ages.
Conan drew rein beside the portico, leaped off. Valerius had laid the
queen on the marble, sinking beside her in utter exhaustion. The people
surged about, crowding in. The Cimmerian cursed them back, lifted her
dark head, pillowed it against his mailed shoulder.
'By Crom, what is this? The real Taramis! But who is that yonder?'
'The demon who wore her shape,' panted Valerius.
Conan swore heartily. Ripping a cloak from the shoulders of a soldier,
he wrapped it about the naked queen. Her long dark lashes quivered on
her cheeks; her eyes opened, stared up unbelievingly into the
Cimmerian's scarred face.
'Conan!' Her soft fingers caught at him. 'Do I dream? _She_ told me you
were dead--'
'Scarcely!' He grinned hardly. 'You do not dream. You are Queen of
Khauran again. I broke Constantius, out there by the river. Most of his
dogs never lived to reach the walls, for I gave orders that no prisoners
be taken--except Constantius. The city guard closed the gate in our
faces, but we burst in with rams swung from our saddles. I left all my
wolves outside, except this fifty. I didn't trust them in here, and
these Khaurani lads were enough for the gate guards.'
'It has been a nightmare!' she whimpered. 'Oh, my poor people! You must
help me try to repay them for all they have suffered, Conan, henceforth
councilor as well as captain!'
Conan laughed, but shook his head. Rising, he set the queen upon her
feet, and beckoned to a number of his Khaurani horsemen who had not
continued the pursuit of the fleeing Shemites. They sprang from their
horses, eager to do the bidding of their new-found queen.
'No, lass, that's over with. I'm chief of the Zuagirs now, and must lead
them to plunder the Turanians, as I promised. This lad, Valerius, will
make you a better captain than I. I wasn't made to dwell among marble
walls, anyway. But I must leave you now, and complete what I've begun.
Shemites still live in Khauran.'
As Valerius started to follow Taramis across the square towards the
palace, through a lane opened by the wildly cheering multitude, he felt
a soft hand slipped timidly into his sinewy fingers and turned to
receive the slender body of Ivga in his arms. He crushed her to him and
drank her kisses with the gratitude of a weary fighter who has attained
rest at last through tribulation and storm.
But not all men seek rest and peace; some are born with the spirit of
the storm in their blood, restless harbingers of violence and bloodshed,
knowing no other path....
* * * * *
The sun was rising. The ancient caravan road was thronged with
white-robed horsemen, in a wavering line that stretched from the walls
of Khauran to a spot far out in the plain. Conan the Cimmerian sat at
the head of that column, near the jagged end of a wooden beam that stuck
up out of the ground. Near that stump rose a heavy cross, and on that
cross a man hung by spikes through his hands and feet.
'Seven months ago, Constantius,' said Conan, 'it was I who hung there,
and you who sat here.'
Constantius did not reply; he licked his gray lips and his eyes were
glassy with pain and fear. Muscles writhed like cords along his lean
body.
'You are more fit to inflict torture than to endure it,' said Conan
tranquilly. 'I hung there on a cross as you are hanging, and I lived,
thanks to circumstances and a stamina peculiar to barbarians. But you
civilized men are soft; your lives are not nailed to your spines as are
ours. Your fortitude consists mainly in inflicting torment, not in
enduring it. You will be dead before sundown. And so, Falcon of the
desert, I leave you to the companionship of another bird of the desert.'
He gestured toward the vultures whose shadows swept across the sands as
they wheeled overhead. From the lips of Constantius came an inhuman cry
of despair and horror.
Conan lifted his reins and rode toward the river that shone like silver
in the morning sun. Behind him the white-clad riders struck into a trot;
the gaze of each, as he passed a certain spot, turned impersonally and
with the desert man's lack of compassion, toward the cross and the gaunt
figure that hung there, black against the sunrise. Their horses' hoofs
beat out a knell in the dust. Lower and lower swept the wings of the
hungry vultures.