Red Nails
with the blood of their eternal warfare, and it was then that----" He
bit his tongue in the midst of the sentence, then presently continued,
but Valeria and Conan felt that he had checked an admission he had
considered unwise.
"Five years they dwelt in peace. Then"--Olmec's eyes rested briefly on
the silent woman at his side--"Xotalanc took a woman to wife, a woman
whom both Tecuhltli and old Tolkemec desired. In his madness, Tecuhltli
stole her from her husband. Aye, she went willingly enough. Tolkemec, to
spite Xotalanc, aided Tecuhltli. Xotalanc demanded that she be given
back to him, and the council of the tribe decided that the matter should
be left to the woman. She chose to remain with Tecuhltli. In wrath
Xotalanc sought to take her back by force, and the retainers of the
brothers came to blows in the Great Hall.
"There was much bitterness. Blood was shed on both sides. The quarrel
became a feud, the feud an open war. From the welter three factions
emerged--Tecuhltli, Xotalanc, and Tolkemec. Already, in the days of
peace, they had divided the city between them. Tecuhltli dwelt in the
western quarter of the city, Xotalanc in the eastern, and Tolkemec with
his family by the southern gate.
"Anger and resentment and jealousy blossomed into bloodshed and rape and
murder. Once the sword was drawn there was no turning back; for blood
called for blood, and vengeance followed swift on the heels of atrocity.
Tecuhltli fought with Xotalanc, and Tolkemec aided first one and then
the other, betraying each faction as it fitted his purposes. Tecuhltli
and his people withdrew into the quarter of the western gate, where we
now sit. Xuchotl is built in the shape of an oval. Tecuhltli, which took
its name from its prince, occupies the western end of the oval. The
people blocked up all doors connecting the quarter with the rest of the
city, except one on each floor, which could be defended easily. They
went into the pits below the city and built a wall cutting off the
western end of the catacombs, where lie the bodies of the ancient
Xuchotlans, and of those Tlazitlans slain in the feud. They dwelt as in
a besieged castle, making sorties and forays on their enemies.
"The people of Xotalanc likewise fortified the eastern quarter of the
city, and Tolkemec did likewise with the quarter by the southern gate.
The central part of the city was left bare and uninhabited. Those empty
halls and chambers became a battleground, and a region of brooding
terror.
"Tolkemec warred on both clans. He was a fiend in the form of a human,
worse than Xotalanc. He knew many secrets of the city he never told the
others. From the crypts of the catacombs he plundered the dead of their
grisly secrets--secrets of ancient kings and wizards, long forgotten by
the degenerate Xuchotlans our ancestors slew. But all his magic did not
aid him the night we of Tecuhltli stormed his castle and butchered all
his people. Tolkemec we tortured for many days."
His voice sank to a caressing slur, and a far-away look grew in his
eyes, as if he looked back over the years to a scene which caused him
intense pleasure.
"Aye, we kept the life in him until he screamed for death as for a
bride. At last we took him living from the torture chamber and cast him
into a dungeon for the rats to gnaw as he died. From that dungeon,
somehow, he managed to escape, and dragged himself into the catacombs.
There without doubt he died, for the only way out of the catacombs
beneath Tecuhltli is through Tecuhltli, and he never emerged by that
way. His bones were never found, and the superstitious among our people
swear that his ghost haunts the crypts to this day, wailing among the
bones of the dead. Twelve years ago we butchered the people of Tolkemec,
but the feud raged on between Tecuhltli and Xotalanc, as it will rage
until the last man, the last woman is dead.
"It was fifty years ago that Tecuhltli stole the wife of Xotalanc. Half
a century the feud has endured. I was born in it. All in this chamber,
except Tascela, were born in it. We expect to die in it.
"We are a dying race, even as those Xuchotlans our ancestors slew. When
the feud began there were hundreds in each faction. Now we of Tecuhltli
number only these you see before you, and the men who guard the four
doors: forty in all. How many Xotalancas there are we do not know, but I
doubt if they are much more numerous than we. For fifteen years no
children have been born to us, and we have seen none among the
Xotalancas.
"We are dying, but before we die we will slay as many of the men of
Xotalanc as the gods permit."
And with his weird eyes blazing, Olmec spoke long of that grisly feud,
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