whatever we're in must be as big as the king of Turan's seraglio."
"They must not have perished of plague," said Conan, meditating upon the
mystery of the empty city. "Otherwise we'd find skeletons. Maybe it
became haunted, and everybody got up and left. Maybe----"
"Maybe, hell!" broke in Valeria rudely. "We'll never know. Look at these
friezes. They portray men. What race do they belong to?"
Conan scanned them and shook his head.
"I never saw people exactly like them. But there's the smack of the East
about them--Vendhya, maybe, or Kosala."
"Were you a king in Kosala?" she asked, masking her keen curiosity with
derision.
"No. But I was a war-chief of the Afghulis who live in the Himelian
mountains above the borders of Vendhya. These people favor the Kosalans.
But why should Kosalans be building a city this far to west?"
The figures portrayed were those of slender, olive-skinned men and
women, with finely chiseled, exotic features. They wore filmy robes and
many delicate jeweled ornaments, and were depicted mostly in attitudes
of feasting, dancing or love-making.
"Easterners, all right," grunted Conan, "but from where I don't know.
They must have lived a disgustingly peaceful life, though, or they'd
have scenes of wars and fights. Let's go up that stair."
It was an ivory spiral that wound up from the chamber in which they were
standing. They mounted three flights and came into a broad chamber on
the fourth floor, which seemed to be the highest tier in the building.
Skylights in the ceiling illuminated the room, in which light the
fire-gems winked pallidly. Glancing through the doors they saw, except
on one side, a series of similarly lighted chambers. This other door
opened upon a balustraded gallery that overhung a hall much smaller than
the one they had recently explored on the lower floor.
"Hell!" Valeria sat down disgustedly on a jade bench. "The people who
deserted this city must have taken all their treasures with them. I'm
tired of wandering through these bare rooms at random."
"All these upper chambers seem to be lighted," said Conan. "I wish we
could find a window that overlooked the city. Let's have a look through
that door over there."
"You have a look," advised Valeria. "I'm going to sit here and rest my
feet."
* * * * *
Conan disappeared through the door opposite that one opening upon the
gallery, and Valeria leaned back with her hands clasped behind her
head, and thrust her booted legs out in front of her. These silent rooms
and halls with their gleaming green clusters of ornaments and burning
crimson floors were beginning to depress her. She wished they could find
their way out of the maze into which they had wandered and emerge into a
street. She wondered idly what furtive, dark feet had glided over those
flaming floors in past centuries, how many deeds of cruelty and mystery
those winking ceiling-gems had blazed down upon.
It was a faint noise that brought her out of her reflections. She was on
her feet with her sword in her hand before she realized what had
disturbed her. Conan had not returned, and she knew it was not he that
she had heard.
The sound had come from somewhere beyond the door that opened on to the
gallery. Soundlessly in her soft leather boots she glided through it,
crept across the balcony and peered down between the heavy balustrades.
_A man was stealing along the hall._
The sight of a human being in this supposedly deserted city was a
startling shock. Crouching down behind the stone balusters, with every
nerve tingling, Valeria glared down at the stealthy figure.
The man in no way resembled the figures depicted on the friezes. He was
slightly above middle height, very dark, though not negroid. He was
naked but for a scanty silk clout that only partly covered his muscular
hips, and a leather girdle, a hand's breadth broad, about his lean
waist. His long black hair hung in lank strands about his shoulders,
giving him a wild appearance. He was gaunt, but knots and cords of
muscles stood out on his arms and legs, without that fleshy padding that
presents a pleasing symmetry of contour. He was built with an economy
that was almost repellent.
Yet it was not so much his physical appearance as his attitude that
impressed the woman who watched him. He slunk along, stooped in a
semi-crouch, his head turning from side to side. He grasped a
wide-tipped blade in his right hand, and she saw it shake with the
intensity of the emotion that gripped him. He was afraid, trembling in
the grip of some dire terror. When he turned his head she caught the
blaze of wild eyes among the lank strands of black hair.
He did not see her. On tiptoe he glided across the hall and vanished
through an open door. A moment later she heard a choking cry, and then
silence fell again.
Consumed with curiosity, Valeria glided along the gallery until she came
to a door above the one through which the man had passed. It opened into
another, smaller gallery that encircled a large chamber.
This chamber was on the third floor, and its ceiling was not so high as
that of the hall. It was lighted only by the fire-stones, and their
weird green glow left the spaces under the balcony in shadows.
Valeria's eyes widened. The man she had seen was still in the chamber.
He lay face down on a dark crimson carpet in the middle of the room. His
body was limp, his arms spread wide. His curved sword lay near him.
She wondered why he should lie there so motionless. Then her eyes
narrowed as she stared down at the rug on which he lay. Beneath and
about him the fabric showed a slightly different color, a deeper,
brighter crimson.
Shivering slightly, she crouched down closer behind the balustrade,
intently scanning the shadows under the overhanging gallery. They gave
up no secret.
Suddenly another figure entered the grim drama. He was a man similar to
the first, and he came in by a door opposite that which gave upon the
hall.
His eyes glared at the sight of the man on the floor, and he spoke
something in a staccato voice that sounded like "Chicmec!" The other did
not move.
The man stepped quickly across the floor, bent, gripped the fallen man's
shoulder and turned him over. A choking cry escaped him as the head fell
back limply, disclosing a throat that had been severed from ear to ear.
The man let the corpse fall back upon the blood-stained carpet, and
sprang to his feet, shaking like a wind-blown leaf. His face was an ashy
mask of fear. But with one knee flexed for flight, he froze suddenly,
became as immobile as an image, staring across the chamber with dilated
eyes.
In the shadows beneath the balcony a ghostly light began to glow and
grow, a light that was not part of the fire-stone gleam. Valeria felt
her hair stir as she watched it; for, dimly visible in the throbbing
radiance, there floated a human skull, and it was from this skull--human
yet appallingly misshapen--that the spectral light seemed to emanate. It
hung there like a disembodied head, conjured out of night and the
shadows, growing more and more distinct; human, and yet not human as she
knew humanity.
The man stood motionless, an embodiment of paralyzed horror, staring
fixedly at the apparition. The thing moved out from the wall and a
grotesque shadow moved with it. Slowly the shadow became visible as a
man-like figure whose naked torso and limbs shone whitely, with the hue
of bleached bones. The bare skull on its shoulders grinned eyelessly, in
the midst of its unholy nimbus, and the man confronting it seemed unable
to take his eyes from it. He stood still, his sword dangling from
nerveless fingers, on his face the expression of a man bound by the
spells of a mesmerist.
* * * * *
Valeria realized that it was not fear alone that paralyzed him. Some
hellish quality of that throbbing glow had robbed him of his power to
think and act. She herself, safely above the scene, felt the subtle
impact of a nameless emanation that was a threat to sanity.
The horror swept toward its victim and he moved at last, but only to
drop his sword and sink to his knees, covering his eyes with his hands.
Dumbly he awaited the stroke of the blade that now gleamed in the
apparition's hand as it reared above him like Death triumphant over
mankind.
Valeria acted according to the first impulse of her wayward nature. With
one tigerish movement she was over the balustrade and dropping to the
floor behind the awful shape. It wheeled at the thud of her soft boots
on the floor, but even as it turned, her keen blade lashed down, and a
fierce exultation swept her as she felt the edge cleave solid flesh and
mortal bone.
The apparition cried out gurglingly and went down, severed through
shoulder, breast-bone and spine, and as it fell the burning skull rolled
clear, revealing a lank mop of black hair and a dark face twisted in the
convulsions of death. Beneath the horrific masquerade there was a human
being, a man similar to the one kneeling supinely on the floor.
The latter looked up at the sound of the blow and the cry, and now he
glared in wild-eyed amazement at the white-skinned woman who stood over
the corpse with a dripping sword in her hand.
He staggered up, yammering as if the sight had almost unseated his
reason. She was amazed to realize that she understood him. He was
gibbering in the Stygian tongue, though in a dialect unfamiliar to her.
"Who are you? Whence come you? What do you in Xuchotl?" Then rushing
on, without waiting for her to reply: "But you are a friend--goddess or
devil, it makes no difference! You have slain the Burning Skull! It was
but a man beneath it, after all! We deemed it a demon _they_ conjured up
out of the catacombs! _Listen!_"
He stopped short in his ravings and stiffened, straining his ears with
painful intensity. The girl heard nothing.
"We must hasten!" he whispered. "_They_ are west of the Great Hall! They
may be all around us here! They may be creeping upon us even now!"
He seized her wrist in a convulsive grasp she found hard to break.
"Whom do you mean by 'they'?" she demanded.
He stared at her uncomprehendingly for an instant, as if he found her
ignorance hard to understand.
"They?" he stammered vaguely. "Why--why, the people of Xotalanc! The
clan of the man you slew. They who dwell by the eastern gate."
"You mean to say this city is inhabited?" she exclaimed.
"Aye! Aye!" He was writhing in the impatience of apprehension. "Come
away! Come quick! We must return to Tecuhltli!"
"Where is that?" she demanded.
"The quarter by the western gate!" He had her wrist again and was
pulling her toward the door through which he had first come. Great beads
of perspiration dripped from his dark forehead, and his eyes blazed with
terror.
"Wait a minute!" she growled, flinging off his hand. "Keep your hands
off me, or I'll split your skull. What's all this about? Who are you?
Where would you take me?"
He took a firm grip on himself, casting glances to all sides, and began
speaking so fast his words tripped over each other.
"My name is Techotl. I am of Tecuhltli. I and this man who lies with his
throat cut came into the Halls of Science to try and ambush some of the
Xotalancas. But we became separated and I returned here to find him with
his gullet slit. The Burning Skull did it, I know, just as he would have
slain me had you not killed him. But perhaps he was not alone. Others
may be stealing from Xotalanc! The gods themselves blench at the fate of
those they take alive!"
At the thought he shook as with an ague and his dark skin grew ashy.
Valeria frowned puzzledly at him. She sensed intelligence behind this
rigmarole, but it was meaningless to her.
She turned toward the skull, which still glowed and pulsed on the floor,
and was reaching a booted toe tentatively toward it, when the man who
called himself Techotl sprang forward with a cry.
"Do not touch it! Do not even look at it! Madness and death lurk in it.
The wizards of Xotalanc understand its secret--they found it in the
catacombs, where lie the bones of terrible kings who ruled in Xuchotl in
the black centuries of the past. To gaze upon it freezes the blood and
withers the brain of a man who understands not its mystery. To touch it
causes madness and destruction."
She scowled at him uncertainly. He was not a reassuring figure, with his
lean, muscle-knotted frame, and snaky locks. In his eyes, behind the
glow of terror, lurked a weird light she had never seen in the eyes of a
man wholly sane. Yet he seemed sincere in his protestations.
"Come!" he begged, reaching for her hand, and then recoiling as he
remembered her warning, "You are a stranger. How you came here I do not
know, but if you were a goddess or a demon, come to aid Tecuhltli, you
would know all the things you have asked me. You must be from beyond the
great forest, whence our ancestors came. But you are our friend, or you
would not have slain my enemy. Come quickly, before the Xotalancas find
us and slay us!"
From his repellent, impassioned face she glanced to the sinister skull,
smoldering and glowing on the floor near the dead man. It was like a
skull seen in a dream, undeniably human, yet with disturbing distortions
and malformations of contour and outline. In life the wearer of that
skull must have presented an alien and monstrous aspect. Life? It seemed
to possess some sort of life of its own. Its jaws yawned at her and
snapped together. Its radiance grew brighter, more vivid, yet the
impression of nightmare grew too; it was a dream; all life was a
dream--it was Techotl's urgent voice which snapped Valeria back from the
dim gulfs whither she was drifting.
"Do not look at the skull! Do not look at the skull!" It was a far cry
from across unreckoned voids.
Valeria shook herself like a lion shaking his mane. Her vision cleared.
Techotl was chattering: "In life it housed the awful brain of a king of
magicians! It holds still the life and fire of magic drawn from outer
spaces!"
* * * * *
With a curse Valeria leaped, lithe as a panther, and the skull crashed
to flaming bits under her swinging sword. Somewhere in the room, or in
the void, or in the dim reaches of her consciousness, an inhuman voice
cried out in pain and rage.
Techotl's hand was plucking at her arm and he was gibbering: "You have
broken it! You have destroyed it! Not all the black arts of Xotalanc can
rebuild it! Come away! Come away quickly, now!"
"But I can't go," she protested. "I have a friend somewhere near by----"
The flare of his eyes cut her short as he stared past her with an
expression grown ghastly. She wheeled just as four men rushed through as
many doors, converging on the pair in the center of the chamber.
They were like the others she had seen, the same knotted muscles bulging
on otherwise gaunt limbs, the same lank blue-black hair, the same mad
glare in their wide eyes. They were armed and clad like Techotl, but on
the breast of each was painted a white skull.
There were no challenges or war-cries. Like blood-mad tigers the men of
Xotalanc sprang at the throats of their enemies. Techotl met them with
the fury of desperation, ducked the swipe of a wide-headed blade, and
grappled with the wielder, and bore him to the floor where they rolled
and wrestled in murderous silence.
The other three swarmed on Valeria, their weird eyes red as the eyes of
mad dogs.
[Illustration: "You can never reach the coast. There is no escape from
Xuchotl."]
* * * * *
She killed the first who came within reach before he could strike a
blow, her long straight blade splitting his skull even as his own sword
lifted for a stroke. She side-stepped a thrust, even as she parried a
slash. Her eyes danced and her lips smiled without mercy. Again she was
Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, and the hum of her steel was like a
bridal song in her ears.
Her sword darted past a blade that sought to parry, and sheathed six
inches of its point in a leather-guarded midriff. The man gasped
agonizedly and went to his knees, but his tall mate lunged in, in
ferocious silence, raining blow on blow so furiously that Valeria had no
opportunity to counter. She stepped back coolly, parrying the strokes
and watching for her chance to thrust home. He could not long keep up
that flailing whirlwind. His arm would tire, his wind would fail; he
would weaken, falter, and then her blade would slide smoothly into his
heart. A sidelong glance showed her Techotl kneeling on the breast of
his antagonist and striving to break the other's hold on his wrist and
to drive home a dagger.
Sweat beaded the forehead of the man facing her, and his eyes were like
burning coals. Smite as he would, he could not break past nor beat down
her guard. His breath came in gusty gulps, his blows began to fall
erratically. She stepped back to draw him out--and felt her thighs
locked in an iron grip. She had forgotten the wounded man on the floor.
Crouching on his knees, he held her with both arms locked about her
legs, and his mate croaked in triumph and began working his way around
to come at her from the left side. Valeria wrenched and tore savagely,
but in vain. She could free herself of this clinging menace with a
downward flick of her sword, but in that instant the curved blade of the
tall warrior would crash through her skull. The wounded man began to
worry at her bare thigh with his teeth like a wild beast.
She reached down with her left hand and gripped his long hair, forcing
his head back so that his white teeth and rolling eyes gleamed up at
her. The tall Xotalanc cried out fiercely and leaped in, smiting with
all the fury of his arm. Awkwardly she parried the stroke, and it beat
the flat of her blade down on her head so that she saw sparks flash
before her eyes, and staggered. Up went the sword again, with a low,
beast-like cry of triumph--and then a giant form loomed behind the
Xotalanc and steel flashed like a jet of blue lightning. The cry of the
warrior broke short and he went down like an ox beneath the pole-ax, his
brains gushing from his skull that had been split to the throat.
"Conan!" gasped Valeria. In a gust of passion she turned on the Xotalanc
whose long hair she still gripped in her left hand. "Dog of hell!" Her
blade swished as it cut the air in an upswinging arc with a blur in the
middle, and the headless body slumped down, spurting blood. She hurled
the severed head across the room.
"What the devil's going on here?" Conan bestrode the corpse of the man
he had killed, broadsword in hand, glaring about him in amazement.
Techotl was rising from the twitching figure of the last Xotalanc,
shaking red drops from his dagger. He was bleeding from the stab deep in
the thigh. He stared at Conan with dilated eyes.
"What is all this?" Conan demanded again, not yet recovered from the
stunning surprise of finding Valeria engaged in a savage battle with
these fantastic figures in a city he had thought empty and uninhabited.
Returning from an aimless exploration of the upper chambers to find
Valeria missing from the room where he had left her, he had followed the
sounds of strife that burst on his dumbfounded ears.
"Five dead dogs!" exclaimed Techotl, his flaming eyes reflecting a
ghastly exultation. "Five slain! Five crimson nails for the black
pillar! The gods of blood be thanked!"
He lifted quivering hands on high, and then, with the face of a fiend,
he spat on the corpses and stamped on their faces, dancing in his
ghoulish glee. His recent allies eyed him in amazement, and Conan asked,
in the Aquilonian tongue: "Who is this madman?"
Valeria shrugged her shoulders.
"He says his name's Techotl. From his babblings I gather that his people
live at one end of this crazy city, and these others at the other end.
Maybe we'd better go with him. He seems friendly, and it's easy to see
that the other clan isn't."
* * * * *
Techotl had ceased his dancing and was listening again, his head tilted
sidewise, dog-like, triumph struggling with fear in his repellent
countenance.
"Come away, now!" he whispered. "We have done enough! Five dead dogs! My
people will welcome you! They will honor you! But come! It is far to
Tecuhltli. At any moment the Xotalancas may come on us in numbers too
great even for your swords."
"Lead the way," grunted Conan.
Techotl instantly mounted a stair leading up to the gallery, beckoning
them to follow him, which they did, moving rapidly to keep on his heels.
Having reached the gallery, he plunged into a door that opened toward
the west, and hurried through chamber after chamber, each lighted by
skylights or green fire-jewels.
"What sort of a place can this be?" muttered Valeria under her breath.
"Crom knows!" answered Conan. "I've seen _his_ kind before, though. They
live on the shores of Lake Zuad, near the border of Kush. They're a sort
of mongrel Stygians, mixed with another race that wandered into Stygia
from the east some centuries ago and were absorbed by them. They're
called Tlazitlans. I'm willing to bet it wasn't they who built this
city, though."
Techotl's fear did not seem to diminish as they drew away from the
chamber where the dead men lay. He kept twisting his head on his
shoulder to listen for sounds of pursuit, and stared with burning
intensity into every doorway they passed.
Valeria shivered in spite of herself. She feared no man. But the weird
floor beneath her feet, the uncanny jewels over her head, dividing the
lurking shadows among them, the stealth and terror of their guide,
impressed her with a nameless apprehension, a sensation of lurking,
inhuman peril.
"They may be between us and Tecuhltli!" he whispered once. "We must
beware lest they be lying in wait!"
"Why don't we get out of this infernal palace, and take to the streets?"
demanded Valeria.
"There are no streets in Xuchotl," he answered. "No squares nor open
courts. The whole city is built like one giant palace under one great
roof. The nearest approach to a street is the Great Hall which traverses
the city from the north gate to the south gate. The only doors opening
into the outer world are the city gates, through which no living man has
passed for fifty years."
"How long have you dwelt here?" asked Conan.
"I was born in the castle of Tecuhltli thirty-five years ago. I have
never set foot outside the city. For the love of the gods, let us go
silently! These halls may be full of lurking devils. Olmec shall tell
you all when we reach Tecuhltli."
So in silence they glided on with the green fire-stones blinking
overhead and the flaming floors smoldering under their feet, and it
seemed to Valeria as if they fled through hell, guided by a dark-faced,
lank-haired goblin.
Yet it was Conan who halted them as they were crossing an unusually wide
chamber. His wilderness-bred ears were keener even than the ears of
Techotl, whetted though these were by a lifetime of warfare in those
silent corridors.
"You think some of your enemies may be ahead of us, lying in ambush?"
"They prowl through these rooms at all hours," answered Techotl, "as do
we. The halls and chambers between Tecuhltli and Xotalanc are a disputed
region, owned by no man. We call it the Halls of Silence. Why do you
ask?"
"Because men are in the chambers ahead of us," answered Conan. "I heard
steel clink against stone."
Again a shaking seized Techotl, and he clenched his teeth to keep them
from chattering.
"Perhaps they are your friends," suggested Valeria.
"We dare not chance it," he panted, and moved with frenzied activity. He
turned aside and glided through a doorway on the left which led into a
chamber from which an ivory staircase wound down into darkness.
"This leads to an unlighted corridor below us!" he hissed, great beads
of perspiration standing out on his brow. "They may be lurking there,
too. It may all be a trick to draw us into it. But we must take the
chance that they have laid their ambush in the rooms above. Come
swiftly, now!"
* * * * *
Softly as phantoms they descended the stair and came to the mouth of a
corridor black as night. They crouched there for a moment, listening,
and then melted into it. As they moved along, Valeria's flesh crawled
between her shoulders in momentary expectation of a sword-thrust in the
dark. But for Conan's iron fingers gripping her arm she had no physical
cognizance of her companions. Neither made as much noise as a cat would
have made. The darkness was absolute. One hand, outstretched, touched a
wall, and occasionally she felt a door under her fingers. The hallway
seemed interminable.