fought out in silent chambers and dim halls under the blaze of the
green fire-jewels, on floors smoldering with the flames of hell and
splashed with deeper crimson from severed veins. In that long butchery a
whole generation had perished. Xotalanc was dead, long ago, slain in a
grim battle on an ivory stair. Tecuhltli was dead, flayed alive by the
maddened Xotalancas who had captured him.
Without emotion Olmec told of hideous battles fought in black corridors,
of ambushes on twisting stairs, and red butcheries. With a redder, more
abysmal gleam in his deep dark eyes he told of men and women flayed
alive, mutilated and dismembered, of captives howling under tortures so
ghastly that even the barbarous Cimmerian grunted. No wonder Techotl had
trembled with the terror of capture. Yet he had gone forth to slay if he
could, driven by hate that was stronger than his fear. Olmec spoke
further, of dark and mysterious matters, of black magic and wizardry
conjured out of the black night of the catacombs, of weird creatures
invoked out of darkness for horrible allies. In these things the
Xotalancas had the advantage, for it was in the eastern catacombs where
lay the bones of the greatest wizards of the ancient Xuchotlans, with
their immemorial secrets.
* * * * *
Valeria listened with morbid fascination. The feud had become a terrible
elemental power driving the people of Xuchotl inexorably on to doom and
extinction. It filled their whole lives. They were born in it, and they
expected to die in it. They never left their barricaded castle except to
steal forth into the Halls of Silence that lay between the opposing
fortresses, to slay and be slain. Sometimes the raiders returned with
frantic captives, or with grim tokens of victory in fight. Sometimes
they did not return at all, or returned only as severed limbs cast down
before the bolted bronze doors. It was a ghastly, unreal nightmare
existence these people lived, shut off from the rest of the world,
caught together like rabid rats in the same trap, butchering one another
through the years, crouching and creeping through the sunless corridors
to maim and torture and murder.
While Olmec talked, Valeria felt the blazing eyes of Tascela fixed upon
her. The princess seemed not to hear what Olmec was saying. Her
expression, as he narrated victories or defeats, did not mirror the wild
rage or fiendish exultation that alternated on the faces of the other
Tecuhltli. The feud that was an obsession to her clansmen seemed
meaningless to her. Valeria found her indifferent callousness more
repugnant than Olmec's naked ferocity.
"And we can never leave the city," said Olmec. "For fifty years no one
has left it except those----" Again he checked himself.
"Even without the peril of the dragons," he continued, "we who were born
and raised in the city would not dare leave it. We have never set foot
outside the walls. We are not accustomed to the open sky and the naked
sun. No; we were born in Xuchotl, and in Xuchotl we shall die."
"Well," said Conan, "with your leave we'll take our chances with the
dragons. This feud is none of our business. If you'll show us to the
west gate, we'll be on our way."
Tascela's hands clenched, and she started to speak, but Olmec
interrupted her: "It is nearly nightfall. If you wander forth into the
plain by night, you will certainly fall prey to the dragons."
"We crossed it last night, and slept in the open without seeing any,"
returned Conan.
Tascela smiled mirthlessly. "You dare not leave Xuchotl!"
Conan glared at her with instinctive antagonism; she was not looking at
him, but at the woman opposite him.
"I think they dare," retorted Olmec. "But look you, Conan and Valeria,
the gods must have sent you to us, to cast victory into the laps of the
Tecuhltli! You are professional fighters--why not fight for us? We have
wealth in abundance--precious jewels are as common in Xuchotl as
cobblestones are in the cities of the world. Some the Xuchotlans brought
with them from Kosala. Some, like the fire-stones, they found in the
hills to the east. Aid us to wipe out the Xotalancas, and we will give
you all the jewels you can carry."
"And will you help us destroy the dragons?" asked Valeria. "With bows
and poisoned arrows thirty men could slay all the dragons in the
forest."
"Aye!" replied Olmec promptly. "We have forgotten the use of the bow, in
years of hand-to-hand fighting, but we can learn again."
"What do you say?" Valeria inquired of Conan.
"We're both penniless vagabonds," he grinned hardily. "I'd as soon kill
Xotalancas as anybody."
"Then you agree?" exclaimed Olmec, while Techotl fairly hugged himself
with delight.
"Aye. And now suppose you show us chambers where we can sleep, so we can
be fresh tomorrow for the beginning of the slaying."
Olmec nodded, and waved a hand, and Techotl and a woman led the
adventurers into a corridor which led through a door off to the left of
the jade dais. A glance back showed Valeria Olmec sitting on his throne,
chin on knotted fist, staring after them. His eyes burned with a weird
flame. Tascela leaned back in her seat, whispering to the sullen-faced
maid, Yasala, who leaned over her shoulder, her ear to the princess'
moving lips.
* * * * *
The hallway was not so broad as most they had traversed, but it was
long. Presently the woman halted, opened a door, and drew aside for
Valeria to enter.
"Wait a minute," growled Conan. "Where do I sleep?"
Techotl pointed to a chamber across the hallway, but one door farther
down. Conan hesitated, and seemed inclined to raise an objection, but
Valeria smiled spitefully at him and shut the door in his face. He
muttered something uncomplimentary about women in general, and strode
off down the corridor after Techotl.
In the ornate chamber where he was to sleep, he glanced up at the
slot-like skylights. Some were wide enough to admit the body of a
slender man, supposing the glass were broken.
"Why don't the Xotalancas come over the roofs and shatter those
skylights?" he asked.
"They cannot be broken," answered Techotl. "Besides, the roofs would be
hard to clamber over. They are mostly spires and domes and steep
ridges."
He volunteered more information about the "castle" of Tecuhltli. Like
the rest of the city it contained four stories, or tiers of chambers,
with towers jutting up from the roof. Each tier was named; indeed, the
people of Xuchotl had a name for each chamber, hall and stair in the
city, as people of more normal cities designate streets and quarters. In
Tecuhltli the floors were named The Eagle's Tier, The Ape's Tier, The
Tiger's Tier and The Serpent's Tier, in the order as enumerated, The
Eagle's Tier being the highest, or fourth, floor.
"Who is Tascela?" asked Conan. "Olmec's wife?"
Techotl shuddered and glanced furtively about him before answering.
"No. She is--Tascela! She was the wife of Xotalanc--the woman Tecuhltli
stole, to start the feud."
"What are you talking about?" demanded Conan. "That woman is beautiful
and young. Are you trying to tell me that she was a wife fifty years
ago?"
"Aye! I swear it! She was a full-grown woman when the Tlazitlans
journeyed from Lake Zuad. It was because the king of Stygia desired her
for a concubine that Xotalanc and his brother rebelled and fled into the
wilderness. She is a witch, who possesses the secret of perpetual
youth."
"What's that?" asked Conan.
Techotl shuddered again.
"Ask me not! I dare not speak. It is too grisly, even for Xuchotl!"
And touching his finger to his lips, he glided from the chamber.
_4. Scent of Black Lotus_
Valeria unbuckled her sword-belt and laid it with the sheathed weapon on
the couch where she meant to sleep. She noted that the doors were
supplied with bolts, and asked where they led.
"Those lead into adjoining chambers," answered the woman, indicating the
doors on right and left. "That one"--pointing to a copper-bound door
opposite that which opened into the corridor--"leads to a corridor which
runs to a stair that descends into the catacombs. Do not fear; naught
can harm you here."
"Who spoke of fear?" snapped Valeria. "I just like to know what sort of
harbor I'm dropping anchor in. No, I don't want you to sleep at the foot
of my couch. I'm not accustomed to being waited on--not by women,
anyway. You have my leave to go."
Alone in the room, the pirate shot the bolts on all the doors, kicked
off her boots and stretched luxuriously out on the couch. She imagined
Conan similarly situated across the corridor, but her feminine vanity
prompted her to visualize him as scowling and muttering with chagrin as
he cast himself on his solitary couch, and she grinned with gleeful
malice as she prepared herself for slumber.
Outside, night had fallen. In the halls of Xuchotl the green fire-jewels
blazed like the eyes of prehistoric cats. Somewhere among the dark
towers a night wind moaned like a restless spirit. Through the dim
passages stealthy figures began stealing, like disembodied shadows.
Valeria awoke suddenly on her couch. In the dusky emerald glow of the
fire-gems she saw a shadowy figure bending over her. For a bemused
instant the apparition seemed part of the dream she had been dreaming.
She had seemed to lie on the couch in the chamber as she was actually
lying, while over her pulsed and throbbed a gigantic black blossom so
enormous that it hid the ceiling. Its exotic perfume pervaded her being,
inducing a delicious, sensuous languor that was something more and less
than sleep. She was sinking into scented billows of insensible bliss,
when something touched her face. So supersensitive were her drugged
senses, that the light touch was like a dislocating impact, jolting her
rudely into full wakefulness. Then it was that she saw, not a gargantuan
blossom, but a dark-skinned woman standing above her.
With the realization came anger and instant action. The woman turned
lithely, but before she could run Valeria was on her feet and had caught
her arm. She fought like a wildcat for an instant, and then subsided as
she felt herself crushed by the superior strength of her captor. The
pirate wrenched the woman around to face her, caught her chin with her
free hand and forced her captive to meet her gaze. It was the sullen
Yasala, Tascela's maid.
"What the devil were you doing bending over me? What's that in your
hand?"
The woman made no reply, but sought to cast away the object. Valeria
twisted her arm around in front of her, and the thing fell to the
floor--a great black exotic blossom on a jade-green stem, large as a
woman's head, to be sure, but tiny beside the exaggerated vision she had
seen.
"The black lotus!" said Valeria between her teeth. "The blossom whose
scent brings deep sleep. You were trying to drug me! If you hadn't
accidentally touched my face with the petals, you'd have--why did you do
it? What's your game?"
Yasala maintained a sulky silence, and with an oath Valeria whirled her
around, forced her to her knees and twisted her arm up behind her back.
"Tell me, or I'll tear your arm out of its socket!"
Yasala squirmed in anguish as her arm was forced excruciatingly up
between her shoulder-blades, but a violent shaking of her head was the
only answer she made.
"Slut!" Valeria cast her from her to sprawl on the floor. The pirate
glared at the prostrate figure with blazing eyes. Fear and the memory of
Tascela's burning eyes stirred in her, rousing all her tigerish
instincts of self-preservation. These people were decadent; any sort of
perversity might be expected to be encountered among them. But Valeria
sensed here something that moved behind the scenes, some secret terror
fouler than common degeneracy. Fear and revulsion of this weird city
swept her. These people were neither sane nor normal; she began to doubt
if they were even human. Madness smoldered in the eyes of them all--all
except the cruel, cryptic eyes of Tascela, which held secrets and
mysteries more abysmal than madness.
She lifted her head and listened intently. The halls of Xuchotl were as
silent as if it were in reality a dead city. The green jewels bathed the
chamber in a nightmare glow, in which the eyes of the woman on the floor
glittered eerily up at her. A thrill of panic throbbed through Valeria,
driving the last vestige of mercy from her fierce soul.
"Why did you try to drug me?" she muttered, grasping the woman's black
hair, and forcing her head back to glare into her sullen, long-lashed
eyes. "Did Tascela send you?"
No answer. Valeria cursed venomously and slapped the woman first on one
cheek and then the other. The blows resounded through the room, but
Yasala made no outcry.
"Why don't you scream?" demanded Valeria savagely. "Do you fear someone
will hear you? Whom do you fear? Tascela? Olmec? Conan?"
* * * * *
Yasala made no reply. She crouched, watching her captor with eyes
baleful as those of a basilisk. Stubborn silence always fans anger.
Valeria turned and tore a handful of cords from a near-by hanging.
"You sulky slut!" she said between her teeth. "I'm going to strip you
stark naked and tie you across that couch and whip you until you tell me
what you were doing here, and who sent you!"
Yasala made no verbal protest, nor did she offer any resistance, as
Valeria carried out the first part of her threat with a fury that her
captive's obstinacy only sharpened. Then for a space there was no sound
in the chamber except the whistle and crackle of hard-woven silken cords
on naked flesh. Yasala could not move her fast-bound hands or feet. Her
body writhed and quivered under the chastisement, her head swayed from
side to side in rhythm with the blows. Her teeth were sunk into her
lower lip and a trickle of blood began as the punishment continued. But
she did not cry out.
The pliant cords made no great sound as they encountered the quivering
body of the captive; only a sharp crackling snap, but each cord left a
red streak across Yasala's dark flesh. Valeria inflicted the punishment
with all the strength of her war-hardened arm, with all the
mercilessness acquired during a life where pain and torment were daily
happenings, and with all the cynical ingenuity which only a woman
displays toward a woman. Yasala suffered more, physically and mentally,
than she would have suffered under a lash wielded by a man, however
strong.
It was the application of this feminine cynicism which at last tamed
Yasala.
A low whimper escaped from her lips, and Valeria paused, arm lifted, and
raked back a damp yellow lock. "Well, are you going to talk?" she
demanded. "I can keep this up all night, if necessary!"
"Mercy!" whispered the woman. "I will tell."
Valeria cut the cords from her wrists and ankles, and pulled her to her
feet. Yasala sank down on the couch, half reclining on one bare hip,
supporting herself on her arm, and writhing at the contact of her
smarting flesh with the couch. She was trembling in every limb.
"Wine!" she begged, dry-lipped, indicating with a quivering hand a gold
vessel on an ivory table. "Let me drink. I am weak with pain. Then I
will tell you all."
Valeria picked up the vessel, and Yasala rose unsteadily to receive it.
She took it, raised it toward her lips--then dashed the contents full
into the Aquilonian's face. Valeria reeled backward, shaking and clawing
the stinging liquid out of her eyes. Through a smarting mist she saw
Yasala dart across the room, fling back a bolt, throw open the
copper-bound door and run down the hall. The pirate was after her
instantly, sword out and murder in her heart.
But Yasala had the start, and she ran with the nervous agility of a
woman who has just been whipped to the point of hysterical frenzy. She
rounded a corner in the corridor, yards ahead of Valeria, and when the
pirate turned it, she saw only an empty hall, and at the other end a
door that gaped blackly. A damp moldy scent reeked up from it, and
Valeria shivered. That must be the door that led to the catacombs.
Yasala had taken refuge among the dead.
Valeria advanced to the door and looked down a flight of stone steps
that vanished quickly into utter blackness. Evidently it was a shaft
that led straight to the pits below the city, without opening upon any
of the lower floors. She shivered slightly at the thought of the
thousands of corpses lying in their stone crypts down there, wrapped in
their moldering cloths. She had no intention of groping her way down
those stone steps. Yasala doubtless knew every turn and twist of the
subterranean tunnels.
She was turning back, baffled and furious, when a sobbing cry welled up
from the blackness. It seemed to come from a great depth, but human
words were faintly distinguishable, and the voice was that of a woman.
"Oh, help! Help, in Set's name! Ahhh!" It trailed away, and Valeria
thought she caught the echo of a ghostly tittering.
Valeria felt her skin crawl. What had happened to Yasala down there in
the thick blackness? There was no doubt that it had been she who had
cried out. But what peril could have befallen her? Was a Xotalanca
lurking down there? Olmec had assured them that the catacombs below
Tecuhltli were walled off from the rest, too securely for their enemies
to break through. Besides, that tittering had not sounded like a human
being at all.
Valeria hurried back down the corridor, not stopping to close the door
that opened on the stair. Regaining her chamber, she closed the door and
shot the bolt behind her. She pulled on her boots and buckled her
sword-belt about her. She was determined to make her way to Conan's room
and urge him, if he still lived, to join her in an attempt to fight
their way out of that city of devils.
But even as she reached the door that opened into the corridor, a
long-drawn scream of agony rang through the halls, followed by the stamp
of running feet and the loud clangor of swords.
_5. Twenty Red Nails_
Two warriors lounged in the guardroom on the floor known as the Tier of
the Eagle. Their attitude was casual, though habitually alert. An attack
on the great bronze door from without was always a possibility, but for
many years no such assault had been attempted on either side.
"The strangers are strong allies," said one. "Olmec will move against
the enemy tomorrow, I believe."
He spoke as a soldier in a war might have spoken. In the miniature world
of Xuchotl each handful of feudists was an army, and the empty halls
between the castles was the country over which they campaigned.
[Illustration: "Even as he shifted, he hurled the knife."]
The other meditated for a space.
"Suppose with their aid we destroy Xotalanc," he said. "What then,
Xatmec?"
"Why," returned Xatmec, "we will drive red nails for them all. The
captives we will burn and flay and quarter."
"But afterward?" pursued the other. "After we have slain them all? Will
it not seem strange, to have no foes to fight? All my life I have
fought and hated the Xotalancas. With the feud ended, what is left?"
Xatmec shrugged his shoulders. His thoughts had never gone beyond the
destruction of their foes. They could not go beyond that.
Suddenly both men stiffened at a noise outside the door.
"To the door, Xatmec!" hissed the last speaker. "I shall look through
the Eye----"
Xatmec, sword in hand, leaned against the bronze door, straining his ear
to hear through the metal. His mate looked into the mirror. He started
convulsively. Men were clustered thickly outside the door; grim,
dark-faced men with swords gripped in their teeth--_and their fingers
thrust into their ears_. One who wore a feathered head-dress had a set
of pipes which he set to his lips, and even as the Tecuhltli started to
shout a warning, the pipes began to skirl.
The cry died in the guard's throat as the thin, weird piping penetrated
the metal door and smote on his ears. Xatmec leaned frozen against the
door, as if paralyzed in that position. His face was that of a wooden
image, his expression one of horrified listening. The other guard,
farther removed from the source of the sound, yet sensed the horror of
what was taking place, the grisly threat that lay in that demoniac
fifing. He felt the weird strains plucking like unseen fingers at the
tissues of his brain, filling him with alien emotions and impulses of
madness. But with a soul-tearing effort he broke the spell, and shrieked
a warning in a voice he did not recognize as his own.
But even as he cried out, the music changed to an unbearable shrilling
that was like a knife in the ear-drums. Xatmec screamed in sudden agony,
and all the sanity went out of his face like a flame blown out in a
wind. Like a madman he ripped loose the chain, tore open the door and
rushed out into the hall, sword lifted before his mate could stop him. A
dozen blades struck him down, and over his mangled body the Xotalancas
surged into the guardroom, with a long-drawn, blood-mad yell that sent
the unwonted echoes reverberating.
His brain reeling from the shock of it all, the remaining guard leaped
to meet them with goring spear. The horror of the sorcery he had just
witnessed was submerged in the stunning realization that the enemy were
in Tecuhltli. And as his spearhead ripped through a dark-skinned belly
he knew no more, for a swinging sword crushed his skull, even as
wild-eyed warriors came pouring in from the chambers behind the
guardroom.
It was the yelling of men and the clanging of steel that brought Conan
bounding from his couch, wide awake and broadsword in hand. In an
instant he had reached the door and flung it open, and was glaring out
into the corridor just as Techotl rushed up it, eyes blazing madly.
"The Xotalancas!" he screamed, in a voice hardly human, "_They are
within the door!_"
Conan ran down the corridor, even as Valeria emerged from her chamber.
"What the devil is it?" she called.
"Techotl says the Xotalancas are in," he answered hurriedly. "That
racket sounds like it."
* * * * *
With the Tecuhltli on their heels they burst into the throne room and
were confronted by a scene beyond the most frantic dream of blood and
fury. Twenty men and women, their black hair streaming, and the white
skulls gleaming on their breasts, were locked in combat with the people
of Tecuhltli. The women on both sides fought as madly as the men, and
already the room and the hall beyond were strewn with corpses.
Olmec, naked but for a breech-clout, was fighting before his throne, and
as the adventurers entered, Tascela ran from an inner chamber with a
sword in her hand.
Xatmec and his mate were dead, so there was none to tell the Tecuhltli
how their foes had found their way into their citadel. Nor was there any
to say what had prompted that mad attempt. But the losses of the
Xotalancas had been greater, their position more desperate, than the
Tecuhltli had known. The maiming of their scaly ally, the destruction of
the Burning Skull, and the news, gasped by a dying man, that mysterious
white-skin allies had joined their enemies, had driven them to the
frenzy of desperation and the wild determination to die dealing death to
their ancient foes.
The Tecuhltli, recovering from the first stunning shock of the surprise
that had swept them back into the throne room and littered the floor
with their corpses, fought back with an equally desperate fury, while
the door-guards from the lower floors came racing to hurl themselves
into the fray. It was the death-fight of rabid wolves, blind, panting,
merciless. Back and forth it surged, from door to dais, blades
whickering and striking into flesh, blood spurting, feet stamping the
crimson floor where redder pools were forming. Ivory tables crashed
over, seats were splintered, velvet hangings torn down were stained red.
It was the bloody climax of a bloody half-century, and every man there
sensed it.
But the conclusion was inevitable. The Tecuhltli outnumbered the
invaders almost two to one, and they were heartened by that fact and by
the entrance into the mêlée of their light-skinned allies.
These crashed into the fray with the devastating effect of a hurricane
plowing through a grove of saplings. In sheer strength no three
Tlazitlans were a match for Conan, and in spite of his weight he was
quicker on his feet than any of them. He moved through the whirling,
eddying mass with the surety and destructiveness of a gray wolf amidst a
pack of alley curs, and he strode over a wake of crumpled figures.