Shadows in Zamboula
throat. The Cimmerian made no attempt to dodge or fend them away, but
his own hands darted to the Kosalan's bull-neck. Baal-pteor's black eyes
widened as he felt the thick cords of muscles that protected the
barbarian's throat. With a snarl he exerted his inhuman strength, and
knots and lumps and ropes of thews rose along his massive arms. And then
a choking gasp burst from him as Conan's fingers locked on his throat.
For an instant they stood there like statues, their faces masks of
effort, veins beginning to stand out purply on their temples. Conan's
thin lips drew back from his teeth in a grinning snarl. Baal-pteor's
eyes were distended; in them grew an awful surprize and the glimmer of
fear. Both men stood motionless as images, except for the expanding of
their muscles on rigid arms and braced legs, but strength beyond common
conception was warring there--strength that might have uprooted trees
and crushed the skulls of bullocks.
The wind whistled suddenly from between Baal-pteor's parted teeth. His
face was growing purple. Fear flooded his eyes. His thews seemed ready
to burst from his arms and shoulders, yet the muscles of the Cimmerian's
thick neck did not give; they felt like masses of woven iron cords under
his desperate fingers. But his own flesh was giving way under the iron
fingers of the Cimmerian which ground deeper and deeper into the
yielding throat-muscles, crushing them in upon jugular and windpipe.
The statuesque immobility of the group gave way to sudden, frenzied
motion, as the Kosalan began to wrench and heave, seeking to throw
himself backward. He let go of Conan's throat and grasped his wrists,
trying to tear away those inexorable fingers.
With a sudden lunge Conan bore him backward until the small of his back
crashed against the table. And still farther over its edge Conan bent
him, back and back, until his spine was ready to snap.
Conan's low laugh was merciless as the ring of steel.
'You fool!' he all but whispered. 'I think you never saw a man from the
West before. Did you deem yourself strong, because you were able to
twist the heads off civilized folk, poor weaklings with muscles like
rotten string? Hell! Break the neck of a wild Cimmerian bull before you
call yourself strong. I did that, before I was a full-grown man--like
this!'
And with a savage wrench he twisted Baal-pteor's head around until the
ghastly face leered over the left shoulder, and the vertebrae snapped
like a rotten branch.
Conan hurled the flopping corpse to the floor, turned to the sword again
and gripped the hilt with both hands, bracing his feet against the
floor. Blood trickled down his broad breast from the wounds Baal-pteor's
finger nails had torn in the skin of his neck. His black hair was damp,
sweat ran down his face, and his chest heaved. For all his vocal scorn
of Baal-pteor's strength, he had almost met his match in the inhuman
Kosalan. But without pausing to catch his breath, he exerted all his
strength in a mighty wrench that tore the sword from the magnet where it
clung.
Another instant and he had pushed open the door from behind which the
scream had sounded, and was looking down a long straight corridor, lined
with ivory doors. The other end was masked by a rich velvet curtain, and
from beyond that curtain came the devilish strains of such music as
Conan had never heard, not even in nightmares. It made the short hairs
bristle on the back of his neck. Mingled with it was the panting,
hysterical sobbing of a woman. Grasping his sword firmly, he glided down
the corridor.
4 Dance, Girl, Dance!
When Zabibi was jerked head-first through the aperture which opened in
the wall behind the idol, her first, dizzy, disconnected thought was
that her time had come. She instinctively shut her eyes and waited for
the blow to fall. But instead she felt herself dumped unceremoniously
onto the smooth marble floor, which bruised her knees and hip. Opening
her eyes she stared fearfully around her, just as a muffled impact
sounded from beyond the wall. She saw a brown-skinned giant in a
loin-cloth standing over her, and, across the chamber into which she had
come, a man sat on a divan, with his back to a rich velvet curtain, a
broad, fleshy man, with fat white hands and snaky eyes. And her flesh
crawled, for this man was Totrasmek, the priest of Hanuman, who for
years had spun his slimy webs of power throughout the city of Zamboula.
'The barbarian seeks to batter his way through the wall,' said Totrasmek
sardonically, 'but the bolt will hold.'
The girl saw that a heavy golden bolt had been shot across the hidden
door, which was plainly discernible from this side of the wall. The bolt
and its sockets would have resisted the charge of an elephant.
'Go open one of the doors for him, Baal-pteor,' ordered Totrasmek. 'Slay
him in the square chamber at the other end of the corridor.'
The Kosalan salaamed and departed by the way of a door in the side wall
of the chamber. Zabibi rose, staring fearfully at the priest, whose eyes
ran avidly over her splendid figure. To this she was indifferent. A
dancer of Zamboula was accustomed to nakedness. But the cruelty in his
eyes started her limbs to quivering.
'Again you come to me in my retreat, beautiful one,' he purred with
cynical hypocrisy. 'It is an unexpected honor. You seemed to enjoy your
former visit so little, that I dared not hope for you to repeat it. Yet
I did all in my power to provide you with an interesting experience.'
For a Zamboulan dancer to blush would be an impossibility, but a smolder
of anger mingled with the fear in Zabibi's dilated eyes.
'Fat pig! You know I did not come here for love of you.'
'No,' laughed Totrasmek, 'you came like a fool, creeping through the
night with a stupid barbarian to cut my throat. Why should you seek my
life?'
'You know why!' she cried, knowing the futility of trying to dissemble.
'You are thinking of your lover,' he laughed. 'The fact that you are
here seeking my life shows that he quaffed the drug I gave you. Well,
did you not ask for it? And did I not send what you asked for, out of
the love I bear you?'
'I asked you for a drug that would make him slumber harmlessly for a few
hours,' she said bitterly. 'And you--you sent your servant with a drug
that drove him mad! I was a fool ever to trust you. I might have known
your protestations of friendship were lies, to disguise your hate and
spite.'
'Why did you wish your lover to sleep?' he retorted. 'So you could steal
from him the only thing he would never give you--the ring with the jewel
men call the Star of Khorala--the star stolen from the Queen of Ophir,
who would pay a roomful of gold for its return. He would not give it to
you willingly, because he knew that it holds a magic which, when
properly controlled, will enslave the hearts of any of the opposite sex.
You wished to steal it from him, fearing that his magicians would
discover the key to that magic and he would forget you in his conquests
of the queens of the world. You would sell it back to the queen of
Ophir, who understands its power and would use it to enslave men, as she
did before it was stolen.'
'And why did _you_ want it?' she demanded sulkily.
'I understand its powers. It would increase the power of my arts.'
'Well,' she snapped, 'you have it now!'
'_I_ have the Star of Khorala? Nay, you err.'
'Why bother to lie?' she retorted bitterly. 'He had it on his finger
when he drove me into the streets. He did not have it when I found him
again. Your servant must have been watching the house, and have taken it
from him, after I escaped him. To the devil with it! I want my lover
back sane and whole. You have the ring; you have punished us both. Why
do you not restore his mind to him? Can you?'
'I could,' he assured her, in evident enjoyment of her distress. He drew
a phial from among his robes. 'This contains the juice of the golden
lotus. If your lover drank it he would be sane again. Yes, I will be
merciful. You have both thwarted and flouted me, not once but many
times; he has constantly opposed my wishes. But I will be merciful. Come
and take the phial from my hand.'
She stared at Totrasmek, trembling with eagerness to seize it, but
fearing it was but some cruel jest. She advanced timidly, with a hand
extended, and he laughed heartlessly and drew back out of her reach.
Even as her lips parted to curse him, some instinct snatched her eyes
upward. From the gilded ceiling four jade-hued vessels were falling. She
dodged, but they did not strike her. They crashed to the floor about
her, forming the four corners of a square. And she screamed, and
screamed again. For out of each ruin reared the hooded head of a cobra,
and one struck at her bare leg. Her convulsive movement to evade it
brought her within reach of the one on the other side and again she had
to shift like lightning to avoid the flash of its hideous head.
She was caught in a frightful trap. All four serpents were swaying and
striking at foot, ankle, calf, knee, thigh, hip, whatever portion of her
voluptuous body chanced to be nearest to them, and she could not spring
over them or pass between them to safety. She could only whirl and
spring aside and twist her body to avoid the strokes, and each time she
moved to dodge one snake, the motion brought her within range of
another, so that she had to keep shifting with the speed of light. She
could move only a short space in any direction, and the fearful hooded
crests were menacing her every second. Only a dancer of Zamboula could
have lived in that grisly square.
She became, herself, a blur of bewildering motion. The heads missed her
by hair's breadths, but they missed, as she pitted her twinkling feet,
flickering limbs and perfect eye against the blinding speed of the scaly
demons her enemy had conjured out of thin air.
Somewhere a thin whining music struck up, mingling with the hissing of
the serpents, like an evil night-wind blowing through the empty sockets
of a skull. Even in the flying speed of her urgent haste she realized
that the darting of the serpents was no longer at random. They obeyed
the grisly piping of the eery music. They struck with a horrible rhythm,
and perforce her swaying, writhing, spinning body attuned itself to
their rhythm. Her frantic motions melted into the measures of a dance
compared to which the most obscene tarantella of Zamora would have
seemed sane and restrained. Sick with shame and terror Zabibi heard the
hateful mirth of her merciless tormentor.
'The Dance of the Cobras, my lovely one!' laughed Totrasmek. 'So maidens
danced in the sacrifice to Hanuman centuries ago--but never with such
beauty and suppleness. Dance, girl, dance! How long can you avoid the
fangs of the Poison People? Minutes? Hours? You will weary at last. Your
swift, sure feet will stumble, your legs falter, your hips slow in their
rotations. Then the fangs will begin to sink deep into your ivory
flesh--'
Behind him the curtain shook as if struck by a gust of wind, and
Totrasmek screamed. His eyes dilated and his hands caught convulsively
at the length of bright steel which jutted suddenly from his breast.
The music broke off short. The girl swayed dizzily in her dance, crying
out in dreadful anticipation of the flickering fangs--and then only four
wisps of harmless blue smoke curled up from the floor about her, as
Totrasmek sprawled headlong from the divan.
Conan came from behind the curtain, wiping his broad blade. Looking
through the hangings he had seen the girl dancing desperately between
four swaying spirals of smoke, but he had guessed that their appearance
was very different to her. He knew he had killed Totrasmek.
Zabibi sank down on the floor, panting, but even as Conan started toward