Red Nails
down this hall."
Conan grinned, and replied: "I don't believe the dragons ever leave the
forest."
But he complied, and pointed out the broken bolt on the inner side.
"I thought I heard something snap when I shoved against it. That bolt's
freshly broken. Rust has eaten nearly through it. If the people ran
away, why should it have been bolted on the inside?"
"They undoubtedly left by another door," suggested Valeria.
She wondered how many centuries had passed since the light of outer day
had filtered into that great hall through the open door. Sunlight was
finding its way somehow into the hall, and they quickly saw the source.
High up in the vaulted ceiling skylights were set in slot-like
openings--translucent sheets of some crystalline substance. In the
splotches of shadow between them, the green jewels winked like the eyes
of angry cats. Beneath their feet the dully lurid floor smoldered with
changing hues and colors of flame. It was like treading the floors of
hell with evil stars blinking overhead.
Three balustraded galleries ran along on each side of the hall, one
above the other.
"A four-storied house," grunted Conan, "and this hall extends to the
roof. It's long as a street. I seem to see a door at the other end."
Valeria shrugged her white shoulders.
"Your eyes are better than mine, then, though I'm accounted sharp-eyed
among the sea-rovers."
* * * * *
They turned into an open door at random, and traversed a series of empty
chambers, floored like the hall, and with walls of the same green jade,
or of marble or ivory or chalcedony, adorned with friezes of bronze,
gold or silver. In the ceilings the green fire-gems were set, and their
light was as ghostly and illusive as Conan had predicted. Under the
witch-fire glow the intruders moved like specters.
Some of the chambers lacked this illumination, and their doorways showed
black as the mouth of the Pit. These Conan and Valeria avoided, keeping
always to the lighted chambers.
Cobwebs hung in the corners, but there was no perceptible accumulation
of dust on the floor, or on the tables and seats of marble, jade or
carnelian which occupied the chambers. Here and there were rugs of that
silk known as Khitan which is practically indestructible. Nowhere did
they find any windows, or doors opening into streets or courts. Each
door merely opened into another chamber or hall.
"Why don't we come to a street?" grumbled Valeria. "This place or
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.