The Hour of the Dragon
In certain ceremonies the Stygian priests went masked. Conan hoped the
man would not discover him, but some instinct warned the Stygian. He
turned abruptly from his destination, which apparently was the stair,
and stepped straight to the recess. As he jerked aside the velvet
hanging, a hand darted from the shadows, crushed the cry in his throat
and jerked him headlong into the alcove, and the knife impaled him.
Conan's next move was the obvious one suggested by logic. He lifted off
the grinning mask and drew it over his own head. The fisherman's mantle
he flung over the body of the priest, which he concealed behind the
hangings, and drew the priestly mantle about his own brawny shoulders.
Fate had given him a disguise. All Khemi might well be searching now for
the blasphemer who dared defend himself against a sacred snake; but who
would dream of looking for him under the mask of a priest?
He strode boldly from the alcove and headed for one of the arched
doorways at random; but he had not taken a dozen strides when he wheeled
again, all his senses edged for peril.
A band of masked figures filed down the stair, appareled exactly as he
was. He hesitated, caught in the open, and stood still, trusting to his
disguise, though cold sweat gathered on his forehead and the backs of
his hands. No word was spoken. Like phantoms they descended into the
great hall and moved past him toward a black arch. The leader carried an
ebon staff which supported a grinning white skull, and Conan knew it was
one of the ritualistic processions so inexplicable to a foreigner, but
which played a strong--and often sinister--part in the Stygian religion.
The last figure turned his head slightly toward the motionless
Cimmerian, as if expecting him to follow. Not to do what was obviously
expected of him would rouse instant suspicion. Conan fell in behind the
last man and suited his gait to their measured pace.
They traversed a long, dark, vaulted corridor in which, Conan noticed
uneasily, the skull on the staff glowed phosphorescently. He felt a
surge of unreasoning, wild animal panic that urged him to rip out his
knife and slash right and left at these uncanny figures, to flee madly
from the grim, dark temple. But he held himself in check, fighting down
the dim monstrous intuitions that rose in the back of his mind and
peopled the gloom with shadowy shapes of horror; and presently he barely
stifled a sigh of relief as they filed through a great double-valved
door which was three times higher than a man, and emerged into the
starlight.
Conan wondered if he dared fade into some dark alley; but hesitated,
uncertain, and down the long dark street they padded silently, while
such folk as they met turned their heads away and fled from them. The
procession kept far out from the walls; to turn and bolt into any of the
alleys they passed would be too conspicuous. While he mentally fumed and
cursed, they came to a low-arched gateway in the southern wall, and
through this they filed. Ahead of them and about them lay clusters of
low, flat-topped mud houses, and palm-groves, shadowy in the starlight.
Now if ever, thought Conan, was his time to escape his silent
companions.
But the moment the gate was left behind them those companions were no
longer silent. They began to mutter excitedly among themselves. The
measured, ritualistic gait was abandoned, the staff with its skull was
tucked unceremoniously under the leader's arm, and the whole group broke
ranks and hurried onward. And Conan hurried with them. For in the low
murmur of speech he had caught a word that galvanized him. The word was:
"_Thutothmes!_"
18
'I Am the Woman Who Never Died'
Conan stared with burning interest at his masked companions. One of them
was Thutothmes, or else the destination of the band was a rendezvous
with the man he sought. And he knew what that destination was, when
beyond the palms he glimpsed a black triangular bulk looming against the
shadowy sky.
They passed through the belt of huts and groves, and if any man saw them
he was careful not to show himself. The huts were dark. Behind them the
black towers of Khemi rose gloomily against the stars that were mirrored
in the waters of the harbor; ahead of them the desert stretched away in
dim darkness; somewhere a jackal yapped. The quick-passing sandals of
the silent neophytes made no noise in the sand. They might have been
ghosts, moving toward that colossal pyramid that rose out of the murk of
the desert. There was no sound over all the sleeping land.
Conan's heart beat quicker as he gazed at the grim black wedge that
stood etched against the stars, and his impatience to close with
Thutothmes in whatever conflict the meeting might mean was not unmixed
with a fear of the unknown. No man could approach one of those somber
piles of black stone without apprehension. The very name was a symbol of
repellent horror among the northern nations, and legends hinted that the
Stygians did not build them; that they were in the land at whatever
immeasurably ancient date the dark-skinned people came into the land of
the great river.
As they approached the pyramid he glimpsed a dim glow near the base
which presently resolved itself into a doorway, on either side of which
brooded stone lions with the heads of women, cryptic, inscrutable,
nightmares crystalized in stone. The leader of the band made straight
for the doorway, in the deep well of which Conan saw a shadowy figure.
The leader paused an instant beside this dim figure, and then vanished
into the dark interior, and one by one the others followed. As each
masked priest passed through the gloomy portal he was halted briefly by
the mysterious guardian and something passed between them, some word or
gesture Conan could not make out. Seeing this, the Cimmerian purposely
lagged behind, and stooping, pretended to be fumbling with the fastening
of his sandal. Not until the last of the masked figures had disappeared
did he straighten and approach the portal.
He was uneasily wondering if the guardian of the temple were human,
remembering some tales he had heard. But his doubts were set at rest. A
dim bronze cresset glowing just within the door lighted a long narrow
corridor that ran away into blackness, and a man standing silent in the
mouth of it, wrapped in a wide black cloak. No one else was in sight.
Obviously the masked priests had disappeared down the corridor.
Over the cloak that was drawn about his lower features, the Stygian's
piercing eyes regarded Conan sharply. With his left hand he made a
curious gesture. On a venture Conan imitated it. But evidently another
gesture was expected; the Stygian's right hand came from under his cloak
with a gleam of steel and his murderous stab would have pierced the
heart of an ordinary man.
But he was dealing with one whose thews were nerved to the quickness of
a jungle cat. Even as the dagger flashed in the dim light, Conan caught
the dusky wrist and smashed his clenched right fist against the
Stygian's jaw. The man's head went back against the stone wall with a
dull crunch that told of a fractured skull.
Standing for an instant above him, Conan listened intently. The cresset
burned low, casting vague shadows about the door. Nothing stirred in the
blackness beyond, though far away and below him, as it seemed, he caught
the faint, muffled note of a gong.
He stooped and dragged the body behind the great bronze door which stood
wide, opened inward, and then the Cimmerian went warily but swiftly down
the corridor, toward what doom he did not even try to guess.
He had not gone far when he halted, baffled. The corridor split in two
branches, and he had no way of knowing which the masked priests had
taken. At a venture he chose the left. The floor slanted slightly
downward and was worn smooth as by many feet. Here and there a dim
cresset cast a faint nightmarish twilight. Conan wondered uneasily for
what purpose these colossal piles had been reared, in what forgotten
age. This was an ancient, ancient land. No man knew how many ages the
black temples of Stygia had looked against the stars.
Narrow black arches opened occasionally to right and left, but he kept
to the main corridor, although a conviction that he had taken the wrong
branch was growing in him. Even with their start on him, he should have
overtaken the priests by this time. He was growing nervous. The silence
was like a tangible thing, and yet he had a feeling that he was not
alone. More than once, passing a nighted arch he seemed to feel the
glare of unseen eyes fixed upon him. He paused, half minded to turn back
to where the corridor had first branched. He wheeled abruptly, knife
lifted, every nerve tingling.
A girl stood at the mouth of a smaller tunnel, staring fixedly at him.
Her ivory skin showed her to be Stygian of some ancient noble family,
and like all such women she was tall, lithe, voluptuously figured, her
hair a great pile of black foam, among which gleamed a sparkling ruby.
But for her velvet sandals and broad jewel-crusted girdle about her
supple waist she was quite nude.
'What do you here?' she demanded.
To answer would betray his alien origin. He remained motionless, a grim,
somber figure in the hideous mask with the plumes floating over him. His
alert gaze sought the shadows behind her and found them empty. But there
might be hordes of fighting-men within her call.
She advanced toward him, apparently without apprehension though with
suspicion.
'You are not a priest,' she said. 'You are a fighting-man. Even with
that mask that is plain. There is as much difference between you and a
priest as there is between a man and a woman. By Set!' she exclaimed,
halting suddenly, her eyes flaring wide. 'I do not believe you are even
a Stygian!'
With a movement too quick for the eye to follow, his hand closed about
her round throat, lightly as a caress.
'Not a sound out of you!' he muttered.
Her smooth ivory flesh was cold as marble, yet there was no fear in the
wide, dark, marvelous eyes which regarded him.
'Do not fear,' she answered calmly. 'I will not betray you. But are you
mad to come, a stranger and a foreigner, to the forbidden temple of
Set?'
'I'm looking for the priest Thutothmes,' he answered. 'Is he in this
temple?'
'Why do you seek him?' she parried.
'He has something of mine which was stolen.'
'I will lead you to him,' she volunteered so promptly that his
suspicions were instantly roused.
'Don't play with me, girl,' he growled.
'I do not play with you. I have no love for Thutothmes.'
He hesitated, then made up his mind; after all, he was as much in her
power as she was in his.
'Walk beside me,' he commanded, shifting his grasp from her throat to
her wrist. 'But walk with care. If you make a suspicious move--'
She led him down the slanting corridor, down and down, until there were
no more cressets, and he groped his way in darkness, aware less by sight
than by feel and sense of the woman at his side. Once when he spoke to
her, she turned her head toward him and he was startled to see her eyes
glowing like golden fire in the dark. Dim doubts and vague monstrous
suspicions haunted his mind, but he followed her, through a labyrinthine
maze of black corridors that confused even his primitive sense of
direction. He mentally cursed himself for a fool, allowing himself to be
led into that black abode of mystery; but it was too late to turn back
now. Again he felt life and movement in the darkness about him, sensed
peril and hunger burning impatiently in the blackness. Unless his ears
deceived him he caught a faint sliding noise that ceased and receded at
a muttered command from the girl.
She led him at last into a chamber lighted by a curious seven-branched