Jewels of Gwahlur
air. There was but one explanation that offered itself to the Cimmerian,
if he rejected the darker speculation that suggested the
supernatural--somewhere in the chamber there was a secret door. And even
as the thought crossed his mind, he saw it.
In what had seemed a curtain of solid marble, a thin perpendicular crack
showed, and in the crack hung a wisp of silk. In an instant he was
bending over it. That shred was from Muriela's torn skirt. The
implication was unmistakable. It had been caught in the closing door and
torn off as she was borne through the opening by whatever grim beings
were her captors. The bit of clothing had prevented the door from
fitting perfectly into its frame.
Thrusting his dagger-point into the crack, Conan exerted leverage with a
corded forearm. The blade bent, but it was of unbreakable Akbitanan
steel. The marble door opened. Conan's sword was lifted as he peered
into the aperture beyond, but he saw no shape of menace. Light filtering
into the oracle chamber revealed a short flight of steps cut out of
marble. Pulling the door back to its fullest extent, he drove his dagger
into a crack in the floor, propping it open. Then he went down the steps
without hesitation. He saw nothing, heard nothing. A dozen steps down,
the stair ended in a narrow corridor which ran straight away into gloom.
He halted suddenly, posed like a statue at the foot of the stair,
staring at the paintings which frescoed the walls, half visible in the
dim light which filtered down from above. The art was unmistakably
Pelishtim; he had seen frescoes of identical characteristics on the
walls of Asgalun. But the scenes depicted had no connection with
anything Pelishtim, except for one human figure, frequently recurrent: a
lean, white-bearded old man whose racial characteristics were
unmistakable. They seemed to represent various sections of the palace
above. Several scenes showed a chamber he recognized as the oracle
chamber with the figure of Yelaya stretched upon the ivory dais and huge
black men kneeling before it. And there were other figures, too--figures
that moved through the deserted palace, did the bidding of the
Pelishtim, and dragged unnamable things out of the subterranean river.
In the few seconds Conan stood frozen, hitherto unintelligible phrases
in the parchment manuscript blazed in his brain with chilling clarity.
The loose bits of the pattern clicked into place. The mystery of
Bît-Yakin was a mystery no longer, nor the riddle of Bît-Yakin's
servants.
Conan turned and peered into the darkness, an icy finger crawling along
his spine. Then he went along the corridor, cat-footed, and without
hesitation, moving deeper and deeper into the darkness as he drew
farther away from the stair. The air hung heavy with the odor he had
scented in the court of the gong.
Now in utter blackness he heard a sound ahead of him--the shuffle of
bare feet, or the swish of loose garments against stone, he could not
tell which. But an instant later his outstretched hand encountered a
barrier which he identified as a massive door of carven metal. He pushed
against it fruitlessly, and his sword-point sought vainly for a crack.
It fitted into the sill and jambs as if molded there. He exerted all his
strength, his feet straining against the door, the veins knotting in his
temples. It was useless; a charge of elephants would scarcely have
shaken that titanic portal.
As he leaned there he caught a sound on the other side that his ears
instantly identified--it was the creak of rusty iron, like a lever
scraping in its slot. Instinctively action followed recognition so
spontaneously that sound, impulse and action were practically
simultaneous. And as his prodigious bound carried him backward, there
was the rush of a great bulk from above, and a thunderous crash filled
the tunnel with deafening vibrations. Bits of flying splinters struck
him--a huge block of stone, he knew from the sound, dropped on the spot
he had just quitted. An instant's slower thought or action and it would
have crushed him like an ant.
Conan fell back. Somewhere on the other side of that metal door Muriela
was a captive, if she still lived. But he could not pass that door, and
if he remained in the tunnel another block might fall, and he might not
be so lucky. It would do the girl no good for him to be crushed into a
purple pulp. He could not continue his search in that direction. He must
get above ground and look for some other avenue of approach.
He turned and hurried toward the stair, sighing as he emerged into
comparative radiance. And as he set foot on the first step, the light
was blotted out, and above him the marble door rushed shut with a
resounding reverberation.
Something like panic seized the Cimmerian then, trapped in that black
tunnel, and he wheeled on the stair, lifting his sword and glaring
murderously into the darkness behind him, expecting a rush of ghoulish
assailants. But there was no sound or movement down the tunnel. Did the
men beyond the door--if they were men--believe that he had been disposed
of by the fall of the stone from the roof, which had undoubtedly been
released by some sort of machinery?
Then why had the door been shut above him? Abandoning speculation, Conan
groped his way up the steps, his skin crawling in anticipation of a
knife in his back at every stride, yearning to drown his semi-panic in a
barbarous burst of blood-letting.
He thrust against the door at the top, and cursed soulfully to find that
it did not give to his efforts. Then as he lifted his sword with his
right hand to hew at the marble, his groping left encountered a metal
bolt that evidently slipped into place at the closing of the door. In an
instant he had drawn this bolt, and then the door gave to his shove. He
bounded into the chamber like a slit-eyed, snarling incarnation of fury,
ferociously desirous to come to grips with whatever enemy was hounding
him.
The dagger was gone from the floor. The chamber was empty; and so was
the dais. Yelaya had again vanished.
'By Crom!' muttered the Cimmerian. 'Is she alive, after all?'
He strode out into the throne-room, baffled, and then, struck by a
sudden thought, stepped behind the throne and peered into the alcove.
There was blood on the smooth marble where he had cast down the
senseless body of Gwarunga--that was all. The black man had vanished as
completely as Yelaya.
4 The Teeth of Gwahlur
Baffled wrath confused the brain of Conan the Cimmerian. He knew no more
how to go about searching for Muriela than he had known how to go about
searching for the Teeth of Gwahlur. Only one thought occurred to him--to
follow the priests. Perhaps at the hiding-place of the treasure some
clue would be revealed to him. It was a slim chance, but better than
wandering about aimlessly.
As he hurried through the great shadowy hall that led to the portico, he
half expected the lurking shades to come to life behind him with rending
fangs and talons. But only the beat of his own rapid heart accompanied
him into the moonlight that dappled the shimmering marble.
At the foot of the wide steps he cast about in the bright moonlight for
some sign to show him the direction he must go. And he found it--petals
scattered on the sward told where an arm or garment had brushed against
a blossom-laden branch. Grass had been pressed down under heavy feet.
Conan, who had tracked wolves in his native hills, found no
insurmountable difficulty in following the trail of the Keshani priests.
It led away from the palace, through masses of exotic-scented shrubbery
where great pale blossoms spread their shimmering petals, through
verdant, tangled bushes that showered blooms at the touch, until he came
at last to a great mass of rock that jutted like a titan's castle out
from the cliffs at a point closest to the palace, which, however, was
almost hidden from view by vine-interlaced trees. Evidently that
babbling priest in Keshia had been mistaken when he said the Teeth were
hidden in the palace. This trail had led him away from the place where
Muriela had disappeared, but a belief was growing in Conan that each
part of the valley was connected with that palace by subterranean
passages.
Crouching in the deep velvet-black shadows of the bushes, he scrutinized
the great jut of rock which stood out in bold relief in the moonlight.
It was covered with strange, grotesque carvings, depicting men and
animals, and half-bestial creatures that might have been gods or devils.
The style of art differed so strikingly from that of the rest of the
valley, that Conan wondered if it did not represent a different era and
race, and was itself a relic of an age lost and forgotten at whatever
immeasurably distant date the people of Alkmeenon had found and entered
the haunted valley.
A great door stood open in the sheer curtain of the cliff, and a
gigantic dragon head was carved about it so that the open door was like
the dragon's gaping mouth. The door itself was of carven bronze and
looked to weigh several tons. There was no lock that he could see, but
a series of bolts showing along the edge of the massive portal, as it
stood open, told him that there was some system of locking and
unlocking--a system doubtless known only to the priests of Keshan.
The trail showed that Gorulga and his henchmen had gone through that
door. But Conan hesitated. To wait until they emerged would probably
mean to see the door locked in his face, and he might not be able to
solve the mystery of its unlocking. On the other hand, if he followed
them in, they might emerge and lock him in the cavern.
Throwing caution to the winds, he glided silently through the great
portal. Somewhere in the cavern were the priests, the Teeth of Gwahlur,
and perhaps a clue to the fate of Muriela. Personal risks had never yet
deterred the Cimmerian from any purpose.
Moonlight illumined, for a few yards, the wide tunnel in which he found
himself. Somewhere ahead of him he saw a faint glow and heard the echo
of a weird chanting. The priests were not so far ahead of him as he had
thought. The tunnel debouched into a wide room before the moonlight
played out, an empty cavern of no great dimensions, but with a lofty,
vaulted roof, glowing with a phosphorescent encrustation, which, as
Conan knew, was a common phenomenon in that part of the world. It made a
ghostly half-light, in which he was able to see a bestial image
squatting on a shrine and the black mouths of six or seven tunnels
leading off from the chamber. Down the widest of these--the one directly
behind the squat image which looked toward the outer opening--he caught
the gleam of torches wavering, whereas the phosphorescent glow was
fixed, and heard the chanting increase in volume.
Down it he went recklessly, and was presently peering into a larger
cavern than the one he had just left. There was no phosphorus here, but
the light of the torches fell on a larger altar and a more obscene and
repulsive god squatting toad-like upon it. Before this repugnant deity
Gorulga and his ten acolytes knelt and beat their heads upon the ground,
while chanting monotonously. Conan realized why their progress had been
so slow. Evidently approaching the secret crypt of the Teeth was a
complicated and elaborate ritual.
He was fidgeting in nervous impatience before the chanting and bowing
were over, but presently they rose and passed into the tunnel which
opened behind the idol. Their torches bobbed away into the nighted
vault, and he followed swiftly. Not much danger of being discovered. He
glided along the shadows like a creature of the night, and the black
priests were completely engrossed in their ceremonial mummery.
Apparently they had not even noticed the absence of Gwarunga.