Fantasy Masterworks 01 (67 page)

Presently the dim light shone on a black arch, and into this Conan turned. Natala cringed at what she might see, but the light revealed only a tunnel similar to that they had just left.

How far they went she had no idea, before they mounted a long stair and came upon a stone door, fastened with a golden bolt.

She hesitated, glancing at Conan. The barbarian was swaying on his feet, the light in his unsteady hand flinging fantastic shadows back and forth along the wall.

‘Open the door, girl,’ he muttered thickly. ‘The men of Xuthal will be waiting for us, and I would not disappoint them. By Crom, the city has not seen such a sacrifice as I will make!’

She knew he was half delirious. No sound came from beyond the door. Taking the radium gem from his bloodstained hand, she threw the bolt and drew the panel inward. The inner side of a cloth-of-gold tapestry met her gaze and she drew it aside and peeked through, her heart in her mouth. She was looking into an empty chamber in the center of which a silvery fountain tinkled.

Conan’s hand fell heavily on her naked shoulder.

‘Stand aside, girl,’ he mumbled. ‘Now is the feasting of swords.’

‘There is no one in the chamber,’ she answered. ‘But there is water--’

‘I hear it,’ he licked his blackened lips. ‘We will drink before we die.’

He seemed blinded. She took his darkly stained hand and led him through the stone door. She went on tiptoe, expecting a rush of yellow figures through the arches at any instant.

‘Drink while I keep watch,’ he muttered.

‘No, I am not thirsty. Lie down beside the fountain and I will bathe your wounds.’

‘What of the swords of Xuthal?’ He continually raked his arm across his eyes as if to clear his blurred sight.

‘I hear no one. All is silent.’

He sank down gropingly and plunged his face into the crystal jet, drinking as if he could not get enough. When he raised his head there was sanity in his bloodshot eyes and he stretched his massive limbs out on the marble floor as she requested, though he kept his saber in his hand, and his eyes continually roved toward the archways. She bathed his torn flesh and bandaged the deeper wounds with strips torn from a silk hanging. She shuddered at the appearance of his back; the flesh was discolored, mottled and spotted black and blue and a sickly yellow, where it was not raw. As she worked she sought frantically for a solution to their problem. If they stayed where they were, they would eventually be discovered. Whether the men of Xuthal were searching the palaces for them, or had returned to their dreams, she could not know.

As she finished her task, she froze. Under the hanging that partly concealed an alcove, she saw a hand’s breadth of yellow flesh.

Saying nothing to Conan, she rose and crossed the chamber softly, grasping his poniard. Her heart pounded suffocatingly as she cautiously drew aside the hanging. On the dais lay a young yellow woman, naked and apparently lifeless. At her hand stood a jade jar nearly full of peculiar golden-colored liquid. Natala believed it to be the elixir described by Thalis, which lent vigor and vitality to the degenerate Xuthal. She leaned across the supine form and grasped the vessel, her poniard poised over the girl’s bosom. The latter did not wake.

With the jar in her possession, Natala hesitated, realizing it would be the safer course to put the sleeping girl beyond the power of waking and raising an alarm. But she could not bring herself to plunge the Cimmerian poniard into that still bosom, and at last she drew back the hanging and returned to Conan, who lay where she had left him, seemingly only partly conscious.

She bent and placed the jar to his lips. He drank, mechanically at first, then with a suddenly roused interest. To her amazement he sat up and took the vessel from her hands. When he lifted his face, his eyes were clear and normal. Much of the drawn haggard look had gone from his features, and his voice was not the mumble of delirium.

‘Crom! Where did you get this?’

She pointed. ‘From that alcove, where a yellow hussy is sleeping.’

He thrust his muzzle again into the golden liquid.

‘By Crom,’ he said with a deep sigh, ‘I feel new life and power rush like wildfire through my veins. Surely this is the very elixir of Life!’

‘We had best go back into the corridor,’ Natala ventured nervously. ‘We shall be discovered if we stay here long. We can hide there until your wounds heal--’

‘Not I,’ he grunted. ‘We are not rats, to hide in dark burrows. We leave this devil-city now, and let none seek to stop us.’

‘But your wounds!’ she wailed.

‘I do not feel them,’ he answered. ‘It may be a false strength this liquor has given me, but I swear I am aware of neither pain nor weakness.’

With sudden purpose he crossed the chamber to a window she had not noticed. Over his shoulder she looked out. A cool breeze tossed her tousled locks. Above was the dark velvet sky, clustered with stars. Below them stretched a vague expanse of sand.

‘Thalis said the city was one great palace,’ said Conan. ‘Evidently some of the chambers are built like towers on the wall. This one is. Chance has led us well.’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, glancing apprehensively over her shoulder.

‘There is a crystal jar on that ivory table,’ he answered. ‘Fill it with water and tie a strip of that torn hanging about its neck for a handle while I rip up this tapestry.’

She obeyed without question, and when she turned from her task she saw Conan rapidly tying together the long tough strips of silk to make a rope, one end of which he fastened to the leg of the massive ivory table.

‘We’ll take our chance with the desert,’ said he. ‘Thalis spoke of an oasis a day’s march to the south, and grasslands beyond that. If we reach the oasis we can rest until my wounds heal. This wine is like sorcery. A little while ago I was little more than a dead man; now I am ready for anything. Here is enough silk left for you to make a garment of.’

Natala had forgotten her nudity. The mere fact caused her no qualms, but her delicate skin would need protection from the desert sun. As she knotted the silk length about her supple body, Conan turned to the window and with a contemptuous wrench tore away the soft gold bars that guarded it. Then, looping the loose end of his silk rope about Natala’s hips, and cautioning her to hold on with both hands, he lifted her through the window and lowered her the thirty-odd feet to the earth. She stepped out of the loop, and drawing it back up, he made fast the vessels of water and wine, and lowered them to her. He followed them, sliding down swiftly, hand over hand.

As he reached her side, Natala gave a sigh of relief. They stood alone at the foot of the great wall, the paling stars overhead and the naked desert about them. What perils yet confronted them she could not know, but her heart sang with joy because they were out of that ghostly, unreal city.

‘They may find the rope,’ grunted Conan, slinging the precious jars across his shoulders, wincing at the contact with his mangled flesh. ‘They may even pursue us, but from what Thalis said, I doubt it. That way is south,’ a bronze muscular arm indicated their course; ‘so somewhere in that direction lies the oasis. Come!’

Taking her hand with a thoughtfulness unusual for him, Conan strode out across the sands, suiting his stride to the shorter legs of his companion. He did not glance back at the silent city, brooding dreamily and ghostlily behind them.

‘Conan,’ Natala ventured finally, ‘when you fought the monster, and later, as you came up the corridor, did you see anything of-of Thalis?’

He shook his head. ‘It was dark in the corridor; but it was empty.’

She shuddered. ‘She tortured me - yet I pity her.’

‘It was a hot welcome we got in that accursed city,’ he snarled. Then his grim humor returned. ‘Well, they’ll remember our visit long enough, I’ll wager. There are brains and guts and blood to be cleaned off the marble tiles, and if their god still lives, he carries more wounds than I. We got off light, after all: we have wine and water and a good chance of reaching a habitable country, though I look as if I’ve gone through a meat-grinder, and you have a sore--’

‘It’s all your fault,’ she interrupted. ‘If you had not looked so long and admiringly at that Stygian cat--’

‘Crom and his devils!’ he swore. ‘When the oceans drown the world, women will take time for jealousy. Devil take their conceit! Did I tell the Stygian to fall in love with me? After all, she was only human!’

(DRAFT)

I

Three men squatted beside the water hole, beneath the sunset sky that painted the desert umber and red. Two were Ghanatas, desert warriors, their tatters scarcely concealing their wiry dark frames. Men called them Gobir and Saidu; they looked like vultures as they crouched beside the water hole. The third was yellow-haired and gray-eyed; he was called Amalric.

Nearby a camel ground its cud noisily, and a pair of weary horses vainly nuzzled the bare sand. The men munched dried dates cheerlessly, the desert men intent only on the working of their jaws, Amalric occasionally glancing at the dull red sky, or out across the level monotony where the shadows were gathering and deepening. He was first to see the horseman who rode up and drew rein with a jerk that set the steed rearing.

The rider was a dark-skinned giant. His wide silk pantaloons were gathered in about his bare ankles. They were supported by a broad girdle wrapped repeatedly about his huge belly; that girdle also supported a flaring-tipped scimitar few men could wield with one hand. With that scimitar the man was famed wherever the sons of the desert rode. He was Tilutan, the pride of the Ghanata.

Across his saddle bow a limp shape lay, or rather hung. Breath hissed through the teeth of the Ghanatas as they caught the gleam of smooth, white limbs. A girl hung across Tilutan’s saddle bow, face down, her loose hair flowing over his stirrup in a rippling black wave. The giant grinned with a glint of white teeth, and cast her casually onto the sand, where she lay laxly, unconscious. Instinctively Gobir and Saidu turned. toward Amalric, and Tilutan watched him from his saddle. Three Ghanatas and an oudander. The entrance of a woman into the scene wrought a subde change in the atmosphere.

Almaric was the only one who was apparendy oblivious to the tenseness. He raked back his rebellious yellow locks absendy, and glanced indifferendy at the girl’s limp figure. If there was a momentary gleam in his grey eyes, the others did not catch it.

Tilutan swung down from his saddle, contemptuously tossing the rein to Amalric.

‘Tend my horse,’ he said. ‘By Jhil, I did not find a desert antelope, but I found this little filly. She was reeling through the sands, and she fell just as I approached. I dunk she fainted from weariness and durst. Get away from there, you jackals, and let me give her a drink.’

The big man stretched her out beside the water hole and began laving her face and wrists, trickling a few drops between her parched lips. She moaned presendy and stirred vaguely. Gobir and Saidu crouched with their hands on their knees, staring at her over Tilutan’s burly shoulder. Amalric stood a litde apart from them, his interest seeming only casual.

‘She is coming to,’ announced Gobir.

Saidu said nodiing, but he licked his lips involuntarily, animal-like.

Amalric’s gaze travelled impersonally over the prostrate form, from the torn sandals to the loose crown of glossy black hair. Her only garment was a silk kirde, girdled at the waist. It left her arms, neck and part of her bosom bare, and the skirt ended several inches above her knees. On the parts revealed rested the gaze of the Ghanatas with devouring intensity, taking in the soft contours, childish in their white tenderness, yet rounded with budding womanhood.

Amalric shrugged his shoulders.

‘After Tilutan, who?’ he asked carelessly.

A pair of lean heads turned toward him, bloodshot eyes rolled at the question, then the Ghanatas turned and mutually stared at one another. Sudden rivalry crackled electrically between them.

‘Cast the dice,’ urged Amalric. ‘No need to fight.’ His hand came from under his worn tunic, and he threw down a pair of dice before them. A claw-like hand seized them.

‘Aye!’ agreed Gobir. ‘We cast - after Tilutan, the winner!’

Amalric cast a glance toward the giant who still bent above his captive, bringing life back into her exhausted body. As he looked, her long-lashed lids parted. Deep violet eyes stared up into the leering face bewilderedly. An explosive exclamation of gratification escaped the thick lips of Tilutan. Wrenching a flask from his girdle, he put it to her mouth. She drank the wine mechanically. Amalric avoided her wandering gaze. He was one man and the three Ghanatas were all his match.

Gobir and Saidu bent above the dice; Saidu cupped them in his palm, breathed on them for luck, shook and threw. Two vulture-like heads bent over the spinning cubes in the dim light. And Amalric drew and struck with the same motion. The edge sliced through a duck neck, severing the windpipe, and Gobir fell across the dice, spurting blood, his head hanging by a shred.

Simultaneously, Saidu, with the desperate quickness of a desert man, shot to his feet and hacked ferociously at the slayer’s head. Amalric barely had time to catch the stroke on his lifted sword. The whistling scimitar beat the straight blade down on Amalric’s head, staggering him. He released his sword and threw both arms about Saidu, dragging him into close quarters where his scimitar was useless. Under the desert man’s rags, the wiry frame was like steel cords.

Tilutan, comprehending the matter instandy, had cast the girl down and risen with a roar. He rushed toward the struggling pair like a charging bull, his great scimitar flaming in his hand. Amalric saw him coming, and his flesh turned cold. Saidu was jerking and wrenching, handicapped by the scimitar he was still seeking futilely to turn against his antagonist. Their feet twisted and stamped in the sand, their bodies ground against one another. Amalric smashed his sandal heel down on the Ghanata’s bare instep, feeling bones give way. Saidu howled and plunged convulsively, and Amalric gave a desperate heave. The pair lurched drunkenly about, just as Tilutan struck with a rolling drive of his broad shoulders. Amalric felt the steel rasp the under part of his arm, and chug deep into Saidu’s body. The Ghanata gave an agonized scream, and his convulsive start tore himself free of Amalric’s grasp. Tilutan roared a ferocious oath and, wrenching his steel free, hurled the dying man aside. Before he could srike again, Amalric, his skin crawling with the fear of that great curved blade, had grappled with him.