Red Nails
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.
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