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The king of Vendhya was dying. Through the hot, stifling night thetemple gongs boomed and the conchs roared. Their clamor was a faint echoin the gold-domed chamber where Bunda Chand struggled on thevelvet-cushioned dais. Beads of sweat glistened on his dark skin; hisfingers twisted the gold-worked fabric beneath him. He was young; nospear had touched him, no poison lurked in his wine. But his veins stoodout like blue cords on his temples, and his eyes dilated with thenearness of death. Trembling slave-girls knelt at the foot of the dais,and leaning down to him, watching him with passionate intensity, was hissister, the Devi Yasmina. With her was thewazam, a noble grown old inthe royal court.

She threw up her head in a gusty gesture of wrath and despair as thethunder of the distant drums reached her ears.

'The priests and their clamor!' she exclaimed. 'They are no wiser thanthe leeches who are helpless! Nay, he dies and none can say why. He isdying now—and I stand here helpless, who would burn the whole city andspill the blood of thousands to save him.'

'Not a man of Ayodhya but would die in his place, if it might be, Devi,'answered thewazam. 'This poison—'

'I tell you it is not poison!' she cried. 'Since his birth he has beenguarded so closely that the cleverest poisoners of the East could notreach him. Five skulls bleaching on the Tower of the Kites can testifyto attempts which were made—and which failed. As you well know, thereare ten men and ten women whose sole duty is to taste his food and wine,and fifty armed warriors guard his chamber as they guard it now. No, itis not poison; it is sorcery—black, ghastly magic—'

She ceased as the king spoke; his livid lips did not move, and therewas no recognition in his glassy eyes. But his voice rose in an eerycall, indistinct and far away, as if called to her from beyond vast,wind-blown gulfs.

'Yasmina! Yasmina! My sister, where are you? I can not find you. All isdarkness, and the roaring of great winds!'

'Brother!' cried Yasmina, catching his limp hand in a convulsive grasp.'I am here! Do you not know me—'

Her voice died at the utter vacancy of his face. A low confused moanwaned from his mouth. The slave-girls at the foot of the dais whimperedwith fear, and Yasmina beat her breast in anguish.

In another part of the city a man stood in a latticed balconyoverlooking a long street in which torches tossed luridly, smokilyrevealing upturned dark faces and the whites of gleaming eyes. Along-drawn wailing rose from the multitude.

The man shrugged his broad shoulders and turned back into the arabesquechamber. He was a tall man, compactly built, and richly clad.

'The king is not yet dead, but the dirge is sounded,' he said to anotherman who sat cross-legged on a mat in a corner. This man was clad in abrown camel-hair robe and sandals, and a green turban was on his head.His expression was tranquil, his gaze impersonal.

'What I can not understand,' he said, 'is why I have had to wait so longfor your masters to strike. If they have slain the king now, why couldthey not have slain him months ago?'

'Even the arts you call sorcery are governed by cosmic laws,' answeredthe man in the green turban. 'The stars direct these actions, as inother affairs. Not even my masters can alter the stars. Not until theheavens were in the proper order could they perform this necromancy.'With a long, stained fingernail he mapped the constellations on themarble-tiled floor. 'The slant of the moon presaged evil for the king ofVendhya; the stars are in turmoil, the Serpent in the House of theElephant. During such juxtaposition, the invisible guardians are removedfrom the spirit of Bhunda Chand. A path is opened in the unseen realms,and once a point of contact was established, mighty powers were put inplay along that path.'

'Point of contact?' inquired the other. 'Do you mean that lock of BhundaChand's hair?'

'Yes. All discarded portions of the human body still remain part of it,attached to it by intangible connections. The priests of Asura have adim inkling of this truth, and so all nail trimmings, hair and otherwaste products of the persons of the royal family are carefully reducedto ashes and the ashes hidden. But at the urgent entreaty of theprincess of Khosala, who loved Bhunda Chand vainly, he gave her a lockof his long black hair as a token of remembrance. When my mastersdecided upon his doom, the lock, in its golden, jewel-encrusted case,was stolen from under her pillow while she slept, and anothersubstituted, so like the first that she never knew the difference. Thenthe genuine lock travelled by camel-caravan up the long, long road toPeshkhauri, thence up the Zhaibar Pass, until it reached the hands ofthose for whom it was intended.'

'By which a soul is drawn from its body and across gulfs of echoingspace,' returned the man on the mat.

'I do not know if you are a man or a demon, Khemsa,' he said at last.'Few of us are what we seem. I, whom the Kshatriyas know as Kerim Shah,a prince from Iranistan, am no greater a masquerader than most men. Theyare all traitors in one way or another, and half of them know not whomthey serve. There at least I have no doubts; for I serve King Yezdigerdof Turan.'

'And I the Black Seers of Yimsha,' said Khemsa; 'and my masters aregreater than yours, for they have accomplished by their arts whatYezdigerd could not with a hundred thousand swords.'

Outside, the moan of the tortured thousands shuddered up to the starswhich crusted the sweating Vendhyan night, and the conchs bellowed likeoxen in pain.

In the gardens of the palace the torches glinted on polished helmets andcurved swords and gold-chased corselets. All the noble-born fighting-menof Ayodhya were gathered in the great palace or about it, and at eachbroad-arched gate and door fifty archers stood on guard, with bows intheir hands. But Death stalked through the royal palace and none couldstay his ghostly tread.

On the dais under the golden dome the king cried out again, racked byawful paroxysms. Again his voice came faintly and far away, and againthe Devi bent to him, trembling with a fear that was darker than theterror of death.

'Yasmina!' Again that far, weirdly dreeing cry, from realmsimmeasurable. 'Aid me! I am far from my mortal house! Wizards have drawnmy soul through the wind-blown darkness. They seek to snap the silvercord that binds me to my dying body. They cluster around me; their handsare taloned, their eyes are red like flame burning in darkness.Aie,save me, my sister! Their fingers sear me like fire! They would slay mybody and damn my soul! What is this they bring before me?—Aie!'

At the terror in his hopeless cry Yasmina screamed uncontrollably andthrew herself bodily upon him in the abandon of her anguish. He was tornby a terrible convulsion; foam flew from his contorted lips and hiswrithing fingers left their marks on the girl's shoulders. But theglassy blankness passed from his eyes like smoke blown from a fire, andhe looked up at his sister with recognition.

'Swift!' he gasped, and his weakening voice was rational. 'I know nowwhat brings me to the pyre. I have been on a far journey and Iunderstand. I have been ensorcelled by the wizards of the Himelians.They drew my soul out of my body and far away, into a stone room. Therethey strove to break the silver cord of life, and thrust my soul intothe body of a foul night-weird their sorcery summoned up from hell. Ah!I feel their pull upon me now! Your cry and the grip of your fingersbrought me back, but I am going fast. My soul clings to my body, but itshold weakens. Quick—kill me, before they can trap my soul for ever!'

'Swiftly, I command you!' There was the old imperious note in hisfailing whisper. 'You have never disobeyed me—obey my last command!Send my soul clean to Asura! Haste, lest you damn me to spend eternityas a filthy gaunt of darkness. Strike, I command you!Strike!'

Sobbing wildly, Yasmina plucked a jeweled dagger from her girdle andplunged it to the hilt in his breast. He stiffened and then went limp, agrim smile curving his dead lips. Yasmina hurled herself face-down onthe rush-covered floor, beating the reeds with her clenched hands.Outside, the gongs and conchs brayed and thundered and the priestsgashed themselves with copper knives.

2 A Barbarian from the Hills

Chunder Shan, governor of Peshkhauri, laid down his golden pen andcarefully scanned that which he had written on parchment that bore hisofficial seal. He had ruled Peshkhauri so long only because he weighedhis every word, spoken or written. Danger breeds caution, and only awary man lives long in that wild country where the hot Vendhyan plainsmeet the crags of the Himelians. An hour's ride westward or northwardand one crossed the border and was among the Hills where men lived bythe law of the knife.

The governor was alone in his chamber, seated at his ornately carventable of inlaid ebony. Through the wide window, open for the coolness,he could see a square of the blue Himelian night, dotted with greatwhite stars. An adjacent parapet was a shadowy line, and furthercrenelles and embrasures were barely hinted at in the dim starlight. Thegovernor's fortress was strong, and situated outside the walls of thecity it guarded. The breeze that stirred the tapestries on the wallbrought faint noises from the streets of Peshkhauri—occasional snatchesof wailing song, or the thrum of a cithern.

The governor read what he had written, slowly, with his open handshading his eyes from the bronze butterlamp, his lips moving. Absently,as he read, he heard the drum of horses' hoofs outside the barbican, thesharp staccato of the guards' challenge. He did not heed, intent uponhis letter. It was addressed to thewazam of Vendhya, at the royalcourt of Ayodhya, and it stated, after the customary salutations:

He was out of his ivory chair and on his feet facing the arched door,all in one instant. He snatched at the curved sword lying in its ornatescabbard on the table, and then checked the movement.

It was a woman who had entered unannounced, a woman whose gossamer robesdid not conceal the rich garments beneath them any more than theyconcealed the suppleness and beauty of her tall, slender figure. A filmyveil fell below her breasts, supported by a flowing headdress boundabout with a triple gold braid and adorned with a golden crescent. Herdark eyes regarded the astonished governor over the veil, and then withan imperious gesture of her white hand, she uncovered her face.

'Devi!' The governor dropped to his knees before her, surprize andconfusion somewhat spoiling the stateliness of his obeisance. With agesture she motioned him to rise, and he hastened to lead her to theivory chair, all the while bowing level with his girdle. But his firstwords were of reproof.

'Your Majesty! This was most unwise! The border is unsettled. Raids fromthe hills are incessant. You came with a large attendance?'

'An ample retinue followed me to Peshkhauri,' she answered. 'I lodged mypeople there and came on to the fort with my maid, Gitara.'

'Devi! You do not understand the peril. An hour's ride from this spotthe hills swarm with barbarians who make a profession of murder andrapine. Women have been stolen and men stabbed between the fort and thecity. Peshkhauri is not like your southern provinces—'

'But I am here, and unharmed,' she interrupted with a trace ofimpatience. 'I showed my signet ring to the guard at the gate, and tothe one outside your door, and they admitted me unannounced, not knowingme, but supposing me to be a secret courier from Ayodhya. Let us not nowwaste time.

'None save threats and curses, Devi. He is wary and suspicious. He deemsit a trap, and perhaps he is not to be blamed. The Kshatriyas have notalways kept their promises to the hill people.'

'He must be brought to terms!' broke in Yasmina, the knuckles of herclenched hands showing white.

'I do not understand.' The governor shook his head. 'When I chanced tocapture these seven hill-men, I reported their capture to thewazam,as is the custom, and then, before I could hang them, there came anorder to hold them and communicate with their chief. This I did, but theman holds aloof, as I have said. These men are of the tribe of Afghulis,but he is a foreigner from the west, and he is called Conan. I havethreatened to hang them tomorrow at dawn, if he does not come.'

'Good!' exclaimed the Devi. 'You have done well. And I will tell you whyI have given these orders. My brother—' she faltered, choking, and thegovernor bowed his head, with the customary gesture of respect for adeparted sovereign.

'The king of Vendhya was destroyed by magic,' she said at last. 'I havedevoted my life to the destruction of his murderers. As he died he gaveme a clue, and I have followed it. I have read theBook of Skelos, andtalked with nameless hermits in the caves below Jhelai. I learned how,and by whom, he was destroyed. His enemies were the Black Seers of MountYimsha.'

'Who does not, Your Majesty?' he replied. 'They are black devils,haunting the uninhabited hills beyond the Zhaibar. But the sages saythat they seldom interfere in the lives of mortal men.'

'Why they slew my brother I do not know,' she answered. 'But I havesworn on the altar of Asura to destroy them! And I need the aid of a manbeyond the border. A Kshatriya army, unaided, would never reach Yimsha.'

'Aye,' muttered Chunder Shan. 'You speak the truth there. It would befight every step of the way, with hairy hill-men hurling down bouldersfrom every height, and rushing us with their long knives in everyvalley. The Turanians fought their way through the Himelians once, buthow many returned to Khurusun? Few of those who escaped the swords ofthe Kshatriyas, after the king, your brother, defeated their host on theJhumda River, ever saw Secunderam again.'

'And so I must control men across the border,' she said, 'men who knowthe way to Mount Yimsha—'

'But the tribes fear the Black Seers and shun the unholy mountain,'broke in the governor.

'Well, as to that,' muttered the governor, 'I doubt if there is anythingthat devil fears.'

'So I have been told. Therefore he is the man I must deal with. Hewishes the release of his seven men. Very well; their ransom shall bethe heads of the Black Seers!' Her voice thrummed with hate as sheuttered the last words, and her hands clenched at her sides. She lookedan image of incarnate passion as she stood there with her head thrownhigh and her bosom heaving.

Again the governor knelt, for part of his wisdom was the knowledge thata woman in such an emotional tempest is as perilous as a blind cobra toany about her.

'It shall be as you wish, Your Majesty.' Then as she presented a calmeraspect, he rose and ventured to drop a word of warning. 'I can notpredict what the chief Conan's action will be. The tribesmen are alwaysturbulent, and I have reason to believe that emissaries from theTuranians are stirring them up to raid our borders. As your majestyknows, the Turanians have established themselves in Secunderam and othernorthern cities, though the hill tribes remain unconquered. KingYezdigerd has long looked southward with greedy lust and perhaps isseeking to gain by treachery what he could not win by force of arms. Ihave thought that Conan might well be one of his spies.'

'We shall see,' she answered. 'If he loves his followers, he will be atthe gates at dawn, to parley. I shall spend the night in the fortress. Icame in disguise to Peshkhauri, and lodged my retinue at an inn insteadof the palace. Besides my people, only yourself knows of my presencehere.'

'I shall escort you to your quarters, Your Majesty,' said the governor,and as they emerged from the doorway, he beckoned the warrior on guardthere, and the man fell in behind them, spear held at salute.

The maid waited, veiled like her mistress, outside the door, and thegroup traversed a wide, winding corridor, lighted by smoky torches, andreached the quarters reserved for visiting notables—generals andviceroys, mostly; none of the royal family had ever honored the fortressbefore. Chunder Shan had a perturbed feeling that the suite was notsuitable to such an exalted personage as the Devi, and though she soughtto make him feel at ease in her presence, he was glad when she dismissedhim and he bowed himself out. All the menials of the fort had beensummoned to serve his royal guest—though he did not divulge heridentity—and he stationed a squad of spearmen before her doors, amongthem the warrior who had guarded his own chamber. In his preoccupationhe forgot to replace the man.

The governor had not been long gone from her when Yasmina suddenlyremembered something else which she had wished to discuss with him, buthad forgotten until that moment. It concerned the past actions of oneKerim Shah, a nobleman from Iranistan, who had dwelt for a while inPeshkhauri before coming on to the court at Ayodhya. A vague suspicionconcerning the man had been stirred by a glimpse of him in Peshkhaurithat night. She wondered if he had followed her from Ayodhya. Being atruly remarkable Devi, she did not summon the governor to her again, buthurried out into the corridor alone, and hastened toward his chamber.

Chunder Shan, entering his chamber, closed the door and went to histable. There he took the letter he had been writing and tore it to bits.Scarcely had he finished when he heard something drop softly onto theparapet adjacent to the window. He looked up to see a figure loombriefly against the stars, and then a man dropped lightly into the room.The light glinted on a long sheen of steel in his hand.

The governor checked his motion toward the sword on the table. He waswithin reach of the yard-long Zhaibar knife that glittered in theintruder's fist, and he knew the desperate quickness of a hillman.

The invader was a tall man, at once strong and supple. He was dressedlike a hillman, but his dark features and blazing blue eyes did notmatch his garb. Chunder Shan had never seen a man like him; he was notan Easterner, but some barbarian from the West. But his aspect was asuntamed and formidable as any of the hairy tribesmen who haunt the hillsof Ghulistan.

'You come like a thief in the night,' commented the governor, recoveringsome of his composure, although he remembered that there was no guardwithin call. Still, the hillman could not know that.

'I climbed a bastion,' snarled the intruder. 'A guard thrust his headover the battlement in time for me to rap it with my knife-hilt.'

'Who else? You sent word into the hills that you wished for me to comeand parley with you. Well, by Crom, I've come! Keep away from that tableor I'll gut you.'

'I merely wish to seat myself,' answered the governor, carefully sinkinginto the ivory chair, which he wheeled away from the table. Conan movedrestlessly before him, glancing suspiciously at the door, thumbing therazor edge of his three-foot knife. He did not walk like an Afghuli, andwas bluntly direct where the East is subtle.

'You have seven of my men,' he said abruptly. 'You refused the ransom Ioffered. What the devil do you want?'

'Terms?' There was a timbre of dangerous anger in his voice. 'What doyou mean? Haven't I offered you gold?'

'You're a liar,' retorted Conan. 'I've seen thesuk of the goldsmithsin Khurusun.'

'Well, more than an Afghuli ever saw,' amended Chunder Shan. 'And it isbut a drop of all the treasure of Vendhya. Why should we desire gold? Itwould be more to our advantage to hang these seven thieves.'

Conan ripped out a sulfurous oath and the long blade quivered in hisgrip as the muscles rose in ridges on his brown arm.

A wild blue flame flickered in the hillman's eyes, but Chunder Shanshrugged his shoulders, though keeping an eye on the keen steel.

'You can kill me easily, and probably escape over the wall afterward.But that would not save the seven tribesmen. My men would surely hangthem. And these men are headmen among the Afghulis.'

'I know it,' snarled Conan. 'The tribe is baying like wolves at my heelsbecause I have not procured their release. Tell me in plain words whatyou want, because, by Crom! if there's no other way, I'll raise a hordeand lead it to the very gates of Peshkhauri!'

Looking at the man as he stood squarely, knife in fist and eyes glaring,Chunder Shan did not doubt that he was capable of it. The governor didnot believe any hill-horde could take Peshkhauri, but he did not wish adevastated countryside.

'There is a mission you must perform,' he said, choosing his words withas much care as if they had been razors. 'There—'

Conan had sprung back, wheeling to face the door at the same instant,lips asnarl. His barbarian ears had caught the quick tread of softslippers outside the door. The next instant the door was thrown open anda slim, silk-robed form entered hastily, pulling the door shut—thenstopping short at sight of the hillman.

'Devi!' It was like an explosive echo from the hillman's lips. ChunderShan saw recognition and intent flame up in the fierce blue eyes.

The governor shouted desperately and caught at his sword, but thehillman moved with the devastating speed of a hurricane. He sprang,knocked the governor sprawling with a savage blow of his knife-hilt,swept up the astounded Devi in one brawny arm and leaped for the window.Chunder Shan, struggling frantically to his feet, saw the man poise aninstant on the sill in a flutter of silken skirts and white limbs thatwas his royal captive, and heard his fierce, exultant snarl: 'Now dareto hang my men!' and then Conan leaped to the parapet and was gone. Awild scream floated back to the governor's ears.

'Guard!Guard!' screamed the governor, struggling up and runningdrunkenly to the door. He tore it open and reeled into the hall. Hisshouts re-echoed along the corridors, and warriors came running, gapingto see the governor holding his broken head, from which the bloodstreamed.

'Turn out the lancers!' he roared. 'There has been an abduction!' Evenin his frenzy he had enough sense left to withhold the full truth. Hestopped short as he heard a sudden drum of hoofs outside, a franticscream and a wild yell of barbaric exultation.

Followed by the bewildered guardsmen, the governor raced for the stair.In the courtyard of the fort a force of lancers stood by saddled steeds,ready to ride at an instant's notice. Chunder Shan led his squadronflying after the fugitive, though his head swam so he had to hold withboth hands to the saddle. He did not divulge the identity of the victim,but said merely that the noblewoman who had borne the royal signet-ringhad been carried away by the chief of the Afghulis. The abductor was outof sight and hearing, but they knew the path he would strike—the roadthat runs straight to the mouth of the Zhaibar. There was no moon;peasant huts rose dimly in the starlight. Behind them fell away the grimbastion of the fort, and the towers of Peshkhauri. Ahead of them loomedthe black walls of the Himelians.

3 Khemsa Uses Magic

In the confusion that reigned in the fortress while the guard was beingturned out, no one noticed that the girl who had accompanied the Devislipped out the great arched gate and vanished in the darkness. She ranstraight for the city, her garments tucked high. She did not follow theopen road, but cut straight through fields and over slopes, avoidingfences and leaping irrigation ditches as surely as if it were broaddaylight, and as easily as if she were a trained masculine runner. Thehoof-drum of the guardsmen had faded away up the hill before she reachedthe city wall. She did not go to the great gate, beneath whose arch menleaned on spears and craned their necks into the darkness, discussingthe unwonted activity about the fortress. She skirted the wall until shereached a certain point where the spire of the tower was visible abovethe battlements. Then she placed her hands to her mouth and voiced a lowweird call that carried strangely.

Almost instantly a head appeared at an embrasure and a rope camewriggling down the wall. She seized it, placed a foot in the loop at theend, and waved her arm. Then quickly and smoothly she was drawn up thesheer stone curtain. An instant later she scrambled over the merlons andstood up on a flat roof which covered a house that was built against thewall. There was an open trap there, and a man in a camel-hair robe whosilently coiled the rope, not showing in any way the strain of hauling afull-grown woman up a forty-foot wall.

'Conan has stolen the Devi out of the fortress and carried her away intothe hills!' She blurted out her news in a rush, the words stumbling overone another.

Khemsa showed no emotion, but merely nodded his turbaned head. 'KerimShah will be glad to hear that,' he said.

'Wait!' The girl threw her supple arms about his neck. She was pantinghard, but not only from exertion. Her eyes blazed like black jewels inthe starlight. Her upturned face was close to Khemsa's, but though hesubmitted to her embrace, he did not return it.

'Do not tell the Hyrkanian!' she panted. 'Let us use this knowledgeourselves! The governor has gone into the hills with his riders, but hemight as well chase a ghost. He has not told anyone that it was the Deviwho was kidnapped. None in Peshkhauri or the fort knows it except us.'

'But what good does it do us?' the man expostulated. 'My masters sent mewith Kerim Shah to aid him in every way—'

'You mean—disobey my masters?' he gasped, and she felt his whole bodyturn cold under her arms.

'Aye!' she shook him in the fury of her emotion. 'You too are amagician! Why will you be a slave, using your powers only to elevateothers? Use your arts for yourself!'

'That is forbidden!' He was shaking as if with an ague. 'I am not one ofthe Black Circle. Only by the command of the masters do I dare to usethe knowledge they have taught me.'

'But youcan use it!' she argued passionately. 'Do as I beg you! Ofcourse Conan has taken the Devi to hold as hostage against the seventribesmen in the governor's prison. Destroy them, so Chunder Shan cannot use them to buy back the Devi. Then let us go into the mountains andtake her from the Afghulis. They can not stand against your sorcery withtheir knives. The treasure of the Vendhyan kings will be ours asransom—and then when we have it in our hands, we can trick them, andsell her to the king of Turan. We shall have wealth beyond our maddestdreams. With it we can buy warriors. We will take Khorbhul, oust theTuranians from the hills, and send our hosts southward; become king andqueen of an empire!'

Khemsa too was panting, shaking like a leaf in her grasp; his faceshowed gray in the starlight, beaded with great drops of perspiration.

'I love you!' she cried fiercely, writhing her body against his, almoststrangling him in her wild embrace, shaking him in her abandon. 'I willmake a king of you! For love of you I betrayed my mistress; for love ofme betray your masters! Why fear the Black Seers? By your love for meyou have broken one of their laws already! Break the rest! You are asstrong as they!'

A man of ice could not have withstood the searing heat of her passionand fury. With an inarticulate cry he crushed her to him, bending herbackward and showering gasping kisses on her eyes, face and lips.

'I'll do it!' His voice was thick with laboring emotions. He staggeredlike a drunken man. 'The arts they have taught me shall work for me, notfor my masters. We shall be rulers of the world—of the world—'

'Come then!' Twisting lithely out of his embrace, she seized his handand led him toward the trap-door. 'First we must make sure that thegovernor does not exchange those seven Afghulis for the Devi.'

He moved like a man in a daze, until they had descended a ladder and shepaused in the chamber below. Kerim Shah lay on a couch motionless, anarm across his face as though to shield his sleeping eyes from the softlight of a brass lamp. She plucked Khemsa's arm and made a quick gestureacross her own throat. Khemsa lifted his hand; then his expressionchanged and he drew away.

He led the girl through a door that opened on a winding stair. Aftertheir soft tread had faded into silence, the man on the couch sat up.Kerim Shah wiped the sweat from his face. A knife-thrust he did notdread, but he feared Khemsa as a man fears a poisonous reptile.

'People who plot on roofs should remember to lower their voices,' hemuttered. 'But as Khemsa has turned against his masters, and as he wasmy only contact between them, I can count on their aid no longer. Fromnow on I play the game in my own way.'

Rising to his feet he went quickly to a table, drew pen and parchmentfrom his girdle and scribbled a few succinct lines.

Then from a golden cage he drew forth a carrier pigeon, to whose leg hemade fast the parchment, rolled into a tiny cylinder and secured withgold wire. Then he went quickly to a casement and tossed the bird intothe night. It wavered on fluttering wings, balanced, and was gone like aflitting shadow. Catching up helmet, sword and cloak, Kerim Shah hurriedout of the chamber and down the winding stair.

The prison quarters of Peshkhauri were separated from the rest of thecity by a massive wall, in which was set a single iron-bound door underan arch. Over the arch burned a lurid red cresset, and beside the doorsquatted a warrior with spear and shield.

This warrior, leaning on his spear, and yawning from time to time,started suddenly to his feet. He had not thought he had dozed, but a manwas standing before him, a man he had not heard approach. The man wore acamel-hair robe and a green turban. In the flickering light of thecresset his features were shadowy, but a pair of lambent eyes shonesurprizingly in the lurid glow.

The stranger did not seem perturbed, though the spear-point touched hisbosom. His eyes held the warrior's with strange intensity.

'To guard the gate!' The warrior spoke thickly and mechanically; hestood rigid as a statue, his eyes slowly glazing.

'You lie! You are obliged to obey me! You have looked into my eyes, andyour soul is no longer your own. Open that door!'

Stiffly, with the wooden features of an image, the guard wheeled about,drew a great key from his girdle, turned it in the massive lock andswung open the door. Then he stood at attention, his unseeing starestraight ahead of him.

'No need of that,' answered the Rakhsha. Lifting his voice slightly hespoke to the guardsman. 'I have no more use for you. Kill yourself!'

Like a man in a trance the warrior thrust the butt of his spear againstthe base of the wall, and placed the keen head against his body, justbelow the ribs. Then slowly, stolidly, he leaned against it with all hisweight, so that it transfixed his body and came out between hisshoulders. Sliding down the shaft he lay still, the spear jutting abovehim its full length, like a horrible stalk growing out of his back.

The girl stared down at him in morbid fascination, until Khemsa took herarm and led her through the gate. Torches lighted a narrow space betweenthe outer wall and a lower inner one, in which were arched doors atregular intervals. A warrior paced this enclosure, and when the gateopened he came sauntering up, so secure in his knowledge of the prison'sstrength that he was not suspicious until Khemsa and the girl emergedfrom the archway. Then it was too late. The Rakhsha did not waste timein hypnotism, though his action savored of magic to the girl. The guardlowered his spear threateningly, opening his mouth to shout an alarmthat would bring spearmen swarming out of the guardrooms at either endof the alleyway. Khemsa flicked the spear aside with his left hand, as aman might flick a straw, and his right flashed out and back, seeminggently to caress the warrior's neck in passing. And the guard pitched onhis face without a sound, his head lolling on a broken neck.

Khemsa did not glance at him, but went straight to one of the archeddoors and placed his open hand against the heavy bronze lock. With arending shudder the portal buckled inward. As the girl followed himthrough, she saw that the thick teakwood hung in splinters, the bronzebolts were bent and twisted from their sockets, and the great hingesbroken and disjointed. A thousand-pound battering-ram with forty men toswing it could have shattered the barrier no more completely. Khemsa wasdrunk with freedom and the exercise of his power, glorying in his mightand flinging his strength about as a young giant exercises his thewswith unnecessary vigor in the exultant pride of his prowess.

The broken door let them into a small courtyard, lit by a cresset.Opposite the door was a wide grille of iron bars. A hairy hand wasvisible, gripping one of these bars, and in the darkness behind themglimmered the whites of eyes.

Khemsa stood silent for a space, gazing into the shadows from whichthose glimmering eyes gave back his stare with burning intensity. Thenhis hand went into his robe and came out again, and from his openingfingers a shimmering feather of sparkling dust sifted to the flags.Instantly a flare of green fire lighted the enclosure. In the briefglare the forms of seven men, standing motionless behind the bars, werelimned in vivid detail; tall, hairy men in ragged hill-men's garments.They did not speak, but in their eyes blazed the fear of death, andtheir hairy fingers gripped the bars.

The fire died out but the glow remained, a quivering ball of lambentgreen that pulsed and shimmered on the flags before Khemsa's feet. Thewide gaze of the tribesmen was fixed upon it. It wavered, elongated; itturned into a luminous greensmoke spiraling upward. It twisted andwrithed like a great shadowy serpent, then broadened and billowed out inshining folds and whirls. It grew to a cloud moving silently over theflags—straight toward the grille. The men watched its coming withdilated eyes; the bars quivered with the grip of their desperatefingers. Bearded lips parted but no sound came forth. The green cloudrolled on the bars and blotted them from sight; like a fog it oozedthrough the grille and hid the men within. From the enveloping foldscame a strangled gasp, as of a man plunged suddenly under the surface ofwater. That was all.

Khemsa touched the girl's arm, as she stood with parted lips and dilatedeyes. Mechanically she turned away with him, looking back over hershoulder. Already the mist was thinning; close to the bars she saw apair of sandalled feet, the toes turned upward—she glimpsed theindistinct outlines of seven still, prostrate shapes.

'And now for a steed swifter than the fastest horse ever bred in amortal stable,' Khemsa was saying. 'We will be in Afghulistan beforedawn.'

4 An Encounter in the Pass

Yasmina Devi could never clearly remember the details of her abduction.The unexpectedness and violence stunned her; she had only a confusedimpression of a whirl of happenings—the terrifying grip of a mightyarm, the blazing eyes of her abductor, and his hot breath burning onher flesh. The leap through the window to the parapet, the mad raceacross battlements and roofs when the fear of falling froze her, thereckless descent of a rope bound to a merlon—he went down almost at arun, his captive folded limply over his brawny shoulder—all this was abefuddled tangle in the Devi's mind. She retained a more vivid memory ofhim running fleetly into the shadows of the trees, carrying her like achild, and vaulting into the saddle of a fierce Bhalkhana stallion whichreared and snorted. Then there was a sensation of flying, and the racinghoofs were striking sparks of fire from the flinty road as the stallionswept up the slopes.

As the girl's mind cleared, her first sensations were furious rage andshame. She was appalled. The rulers of the golden kingdoms south of theHimelians were considered little short of divine; and she was the Deviof Vendhya! Fright was submerged in regal wrath. She cried out furiouslyand began struggling. She, Yasmina, to be carried on the saddle-bow of ahill chief, like a common wench of the market-place! He merely hardenedhis massive thews slightly against her writhings, and for the first timein her life she experienced the coercion of superior physical strength.His arms felt like iron about her slender limbs. He glanced down at herand grinned hugely. His teeth glimmered whitely in the starlight. Thereins lay loose on the stallion's flowing mane, and every thew and fiberof the great beast strained as he hurtled along the boulder-strewntrail. But Conan sat easily, almost carelessly, in the saddle, ridinglike a centaur.

'You hill-bred dog!' she panted, quivering with the impact of shame,anger, and the realization of helplessness. 'You dare—youdare! Yourlife shall pay for this! Where are you taking me?'

'To the villages of Afghulistan,' he answered, casting a glance over hisshoulder.

Behind them, beyond the slopes they had traversed, torches were tossingon the walls of the fortress, and he glimpsed a flare of light thatmeant the great gate had been opened. And he laughed, a deep-throatedboom gusty as the hill wind.

'The governor has sent his riders after us,' he laughed. 'By Crom, wewill lead him a merry chase! What do you think, Devi—will they payseven lives for a Kshatriya princess?'

'They will send an army to hang you and your spawn of devils,' shepromised him with conviction.

He laughed gustily and shifted her to a more comfortable position in hisarms. But she took this as a fresh outrage, and renewed her vainstruggle, until she saw that her efforts were only amusing him. Besides,her light silken garments, floating on the wind, were being outrageouslydisarranged by her struggles. She concluded that a scornful submissionwas the better part of dignity, and lapsed into a smoldering quiescence.

She felt even her anger being submerged by awe as they entered the mouthof the Pass, lowering like a black well mouth in the blacker walls thatrose like colossal ramparts to bar their way. It was as if a giganticknife had cut the Zhaibar out of walls of solid rock. On either handsheer slopes pitched up for thousands of feet, and the mouth of the Passwas dark as hate. Even Conan could not see with any accuracy, but heknew the road, even by night. And knowing that armed men were racingthrough the starlight after him, he did not check the stallion's speed.The great brute was not yet showing fatigue. He thundered along the roadthat followed the valley bed, labored up a slope, swept along a lowridge where treacherous shale on either hand lurked for the unwary, andcame upon a trail that followed the lap of the left-hand wall.

Not even Conan could spy, in that darkness, an ambush set by Zhaibartribesmen. As they swept past the black mouth of a gorge that openedinto the Pass, a javelin swished through the air and thudded home behindthe stallion's straining shoulder. The great beast let out his life in ashuddering sob and stumbled, going headlong in mid-stride. But Conan hadrecognized the flight and stroke of the javelin, and he acted withspring-steel quickness.

As the horse fell he leaped clear, holding the girl aloft to guard herfrom striking boulders. He lit on his feet like a cat, thrust her into acleft of rock, and wheeled toward the outer darkness, drawing his knife.

Yasmina, confused by the rapidity of events, not quite sure just whathad happened, saw a vague shape rush out of the darkness, bare feetslapping softly on the rock, ragged garments whipping on the wind of hishaste. She glimpsed the flicker of steel, heard the lightning crack ofstroke, parry and counter-stroke, and the crunch of bone as Conan's longknife split the other's skull.

Conan sprang back, crouching in the shelter of the rocks. Out in thenight men were moving and a stentorian voice roared: 'What, you dogs! Doyou flinch? In, curse you, and take them!'

'Aye!' the Cimmerian laughed. 'Come forth, you old war-dog. I've slainone of your men.'

There was movement among the rocks, a light flared dimly, and then aflame appeared and came bobbing toward him, and as it approached, afierce bearded countenance grew out of the darkness. The man who carriedit held it high, thrust forward, and craned his neck to peer among theboulders it lighted; the other hand gripped a great curved tulwar. Conanstepped forward, sheathing his knife, and the other roared a greeting.

Others pressed into the wavering circle of light—wild, ragged, beardedmen, with eyes like wolves, and long blades in their fists. They did notsee Yasmina, for she was hidden by Conan's massive body. But peepingfrom her covert, she knew icy fear for the first time that night. Thesemen were more like wolves than human beings.

'What are you hunting in the Zhaibar by night, Yar Afzal?' Conandemanded of the burly chief, who grinned like a bearded ghoul.

'Who knows what might come up the Pass after dark? We Wazulis arenight-hawks. But what of you, Conan?'

'I have a prisoner,' answered the Cimmerian. And moving aside hedisclosed the cowering girl. Reaching a long arm into the crevice hedrew her trembling forth.

Her imperious bearing was gone. She stared timidly at the ring ofbearded faces that hemmed her in, and was grateful for the strong armthat clasped her possessively. The torch was thrust close to her, andthere was a sucking intake of breath about the ring.

'She is my captive,' Conan warned, glancing pointedly at the feet of theman he had slain, just visible within the ring of light. 'I was takingher to Afghulistan, but now you have slain my horse, and the Kshatriyasare close behind me.'

'Come with us to my village,' suggested Yar Afzal. 'We have horseshidden in the gorge. They can never follow us in the darkness. They areclose behind you, you say?'

'So close that I hear now the clink of their hoofs on the flint,'answered Conan grimly.

Instantly there was movement; the torch was dashed out and the raggedshapes melted like phantoms into the darkness. Conan swept up the Deviin his arms, and she did not resist. The rocky ground hurt her slim feetin their soft slippers and she felt very small and helpless in thatbrutish, primordial blackness among those colossal, nighted crags.

Feeling her shiver in the wind that moaned down the defiles, Conanjerked a ragged cloak from its owner's shoulders and wrapped it abouther. He also hissed a warning in her ear, ordering her to make no sound.She did not hear the distant clink of shod hoofs on rock that warned thekeen-eared hill-men; but she was far too frightened to disobey, in anyevent.

She could see nothing but a few faint stars far above, but she knew bythe deepening darkness when they entered the gorge mouth. There was astir about them, the uneasy movement of horses. A few muttered words,and Conan mounted the horse of the man he had killed, lifting the girlup in front of him. Like phantoms except for the click of their hoofs,the band swept away up the shadowy gorge. Behind them on the trail theyleft the dead horse and the dead man, which were found less than half anhour later by the riders from the fortress, who recognized the man as aWazuli and drew their own conclusions accordingly.

Yasmina, snuggled warmly in her captor's arms, grew drowsy in spite ofherself. The motion of the horse, though it was uneven, uphill and down,yet possessed a certain rhythm which combined with weariness andemotional exhaustion to force sleep upon her. She had lost all sense oftime or direction. They moved in soft thick darkness, in which shesometimes glimpsed vaguely gigantic walls sweeping up like blackramparts, or great crags shouldering the stars; at times she sensedechoing depths beneath them, or felt the wind of dizzy heights blowingcold about her. Gradually these things faded into a dreamy unwakefulnessin which the clink of hoofs and the creak of saddles were like theirrelevant sounds in a dream.

She was vaguely aware when the motion ceased and she was lifted down andcarried a few steps. Then she was laid down on something soft andrustling, and something—a folded coat perhaps—was thrust under herhead, and the cloak in which she was wrapped was carefully tucked abouther. She heard Yar Afzal laugh.

'Not for me,' came Conan's answering rumble. 'This wench will buy thelives of my seven headmen, blast their souls.'

She slept while armed men rode through the dark hills, and the fate ofkingdoms hung in the balance. Through the shadowy gorges and defilesthat night there rang the hoofs of galloping horses, and the starlightglimmered on helmets and curved blades, until the ghoulish shapes thathaunt the crags stared into the darkness from ravine and boulder andwondered what things were afoot.

A band of these sat gaunt horses in the black pitmouth of a gorge as thehurrying hoofs swept past. Their leader, a well-built man in a helmetand gilt-braided cloak, held up his hand warningly, until the riders hadsped on. Then he laughed softly.

'They must have lost the trail! Or else they have found that Conan hasalready reached the Afghuli villages. It will take many riders to smokeout that hive. There will be squadrons riding up the Zhaibar by dawn.'

'If there is fighting in the hills there will be looting,' muttered avoice behind him, in the dialect of the Irakzai.

'There will be looting,' answered the man with the helmet. 'But first itis our business to reach the valley of Gurashah and await the ridersthat will be galloping southward from Secunderam before daylight.'

He lifted his reins and rode out of the defile, his men falling inbehind him—thirty ragged phantoms in the starlight.

5 The Black Stallion

The sun was well up when Yasmina awoke. She did not start and stareblankly, wondering where she was. She awoke with full knowledge of allthat had occurred. Her supple limbs were stiff from her long ride, andher firm flesh seemed to feel the contact of the muscular arm that hadborne her so far.

She was lying on a sheepskin covering a pallet of leaves on ahard-beaten dirt floor. A folded sheepskin coat was under her head, andshe was wrapped in a ragged cloak. She was in a large room, the walls ofwhich were crudely but strongly built of uncut rocks, plastered withsun-baked mud. Heavy beams supported a roof of the same kind, in whichshowed a trap-door up to which led a ladder. There were no windows inthe thick walls, only loop-holes. There was one door, a sturdy bronzeaffair that must have been looted from some Vendhyan border tower.Opposite it was a wide opening in the wall, with no door, but severalstrong wooden bars in place. Beyond them Yasmina saw a magnificent blackstallion munching a pile of dried grass. The building was fort,dwelling-place and stable in one.

At the other end of the room a girl in the vest and baggy trousers of ahill-woman squatted beside a small fire, cooking strips of meat on aniron grid laid over blocks of stone. There was a sooty cleft in the walla few feet from the floor, and some of the smoke found its way outthere. The rest floated in blue wisps about the room.

The hill-girl glanced at Yasmina over her shoulder, displaying a bold,handsome face, and then continued her cooking. Voices boomed outside;then the door was kicked open, and Conan strode in. He looked moreenormous than ever with the morning sunlight behind him, and Yasminanoted some details that had escaped her the night before. His garmentswere clean and not ragged. The broad Bakhariot girdle that supported hisknife in its ornamented scabbard would have matched the robes of aprince, and there was a glint of fine Turanian mail under his shirt.

'Your captive is awake, Conan,' said the Wazuli girl, and he grunted,strode up to the fire and swept the strips of mutton off into a stonedish.

The squatting girl laughed up at him, with some spicy jest, and hegrinned wolfishly, and hooking a toe under her haunches, tumbled hersprawling onto the floor. She seemed to derive considerable amusementfrom this bit of rough horse-play, but Conan paid no more heed to her.Producing a great hunk of bread from somewhere, with a copper jug ofwine, he carried the lot to Yasmina, who had risen from her pallet andwas regarding him doubtfully.

'Rough fare for a Devi, girl, but our best,' he grunted. 'It will fillyour belly, at least.'

He set the platter on the floor, and she was suddenly aware of aravenous hunger. Making no comment, she seated herself cross-legged onthe floor, and taking the dish in her lap, she began to eat, using herfingers, which were all she had in the way of table utensils. After all,adaptability is one of the tests of true aristocracy. Conan stoodlooking down at her, his thumbs hooked in his girdle. He never satcross-legged, after the Eastern fashion.

'In the hut of Yar Afzal, the chief of the Khurum Wazulis,' he answered.'Afghulistan lies a good many miles farther on to the west. We'll hidehere awhile. The Kshatriyas are beating up the hills for you—several oftheir squads have been cut up by the tribes already.'

'Keep you until Chunder Shan is willing to trade back my sevencow-thieves,' he grunted. 'Women of the Wazulis are crushing ink out ofshoki leaves, and after a while you can write a letter to thegovernor.'

A touch of her old imperious wrath shook her, as she thought howmaddeningly her plans had gone awry, leaving her captive of the very manshe had plotted to get into her power. She flung down the dish, with theremnants of her meal, and sprang to her feet, tense with anger.

'I will not write a letter! If you do not take me back, they will hangyour seven men, and a thousand more besides!'

The Wazuli girl laughed mockingly, Conan scowled, and then the dooropened and Yar Afzal came swaggering in. The Wazuli chief was as tall asConan, and of greater girth, but he looked fat and slow beside the hardcompactness of the Cimmerian. He plucked his red-stained beard andstared meaningly at the Wazuli girl, and that wench rose and scurriedout without delay. Then Yar Afzal turned to his guest.

'The damnable people murmur, Conan,' quoth he. 'They wish me to murderyou and take the girl to hold for ransom. They say that anyone can tellby her garments that she is a noble lady. They say why should theAfghuli dogs profit by her, when it is the people who take the risk ofguarding her?'

'Pish!' boomed Yar Afzal. 'Do you think I can't handle my own people?I'll have them dancing in their shirts if they cross me! They don't loveyou—or any other outlander—but you saved my life once, and I will notforget. Come out, though, Conan; a scout has returned.'

Conan hitched at his girdle and followed the chief outside. They closedthe door after them, and Yasmina peeped through a loop-hole. She lookedout on a level space before the hut. At the farther end of that spacethere was a cluster of mud and stone huts, and she saw naked childrenplaying among the boulders, and the slim erect women of the hills goingabout their tasks.

Directly before the chief's hut a circle of hairy, ragged men squatted,facing the door. Conan and Yar Afzal stood a few paces before the door,and between them and the ring of warriors another man sat cross-legged.This one was addressing his chief in the harsh accents of the Wazuliwhich Yasmina could scarcely understand, though as part of her royaleducation she had been taught the languages of Iranistan and the kindredtongues of Ghulistan.

'I talked with a Dagozai who saw the riders last night,' said the scout.'He was lurking near when they came to the spot where we ambushed thelord Conan. He overheard their speech. Chunder Shan was with them. Theyfound the dead horse, and one of the men recognized it as Conan's. Thenthey found the man Conan slew, and knew him for a Wazuli. It seemed tothem that Conan had been slain and the girl taken by the Wazuli; so theyturned aside from their purpose of following to Afghulistan. But theydid not know from which village the dead man was come, and we had leftno trail a Kshatriya could follow.

'So they rode to the nearest Wazuli village, which was the village ofJugra, and burnt it and slew many of the people. But the men of Khojurcame upon them in darkness and slew some of them, and wounded thegovernor. So the survivors retired down the Zhaibar in the darknessbefore dawn, but they returned with reinforcements before sunrise, andthere has been skirmishing and fighting in the hills all morning. It issaid that a great army is being raised to sweep the hills about theZhaibar. The tribes are whetting their knives and laying ambushes inevery pass from here to Gurashah valley. Moreover, Kerim Shah hasreturned to the hills.'

A grunt went around the circle, and Yasmina leaned closer to theloop-hole at the name she had begun to mistrust.

'The Dagozai did not know; with him were thirty Irakzai of the lowervillages. They rode into the hills and disappeared.'

'These Irakzai are jackals that follow a lion for crumbs,' growled YarAfzal. 'They have been lapping up the coins Kerim Shah scatters amongthe border tribes to buy men like horses. I like him not, for all he isour kinsman from Iranistan.'

'He's not even that,' said Conan. 'I know him of old. He's an Hyrkanian,a spy of Yezdigerd's. If I catch him I'll hang his hide to a tamarisk.'

'But the Kshatriyas!' clamored the men in the semicircle. 'Are we tosquat on our haunches until they smoke us out? They will learn at lastin which Wazuli village the wench is held. We are not loved by theZhaibari; they will help the Kshatriyas hunt us out.'

'Are we to take all the risks while he reaps the rewards?' he howled.'Are we to fight his battles for him?'

With a stride Conan reached him and bent slightly to stare full into hishairy face. The Cimmerian had not drawn his long knife, but his lefthand grasped the scabbard, jutting the hilt suggestively forward.

'I ask no man to fight my battles,' he said softly. 'Draw your blade ifyou dare, you yapping dog!'

'What!' roared Yar Afzal, his face purpling with wrath. His whiskersbristled, his belly swelled with his rage. 'Are you chief of Khurum? Dothe Wazulis take orders from Yar Afzal, or from a low-bred cur?'

The man cringed before his invincible chief, and Yar Afzal, striding upto him, seized him by the throat and choked him until his face wasturning black. Then he hurled the man savagely against the ground andstood over him with his tulwar in his hand.

'Is there any who questions my authority?' he roared, and his warriorslooked down sullenly as his bellicose glare swept their semicircle. YarAfzal grunted scornfully and sheathed his weapon with a gesture that wasthe apex of insult. Then he kicked the fallen agitator with aconcentrated vindictiveness that brought howls from his victim.

'Get down the valley to the watchers on the heights and bring word ifthey have seen anything,' commanded Yar Afzal, and the man went, shakingwith fear and grinding his teeth with fury.

Yar Afzal then seated himself ponderously on a stone, growling in hisbeard. Conan stood near him, legs braced apart, thumbs hooked in hisgirdle, narrowly watching the assembled warriors. They stared at himsullenly, not daring to brave Yar Afzal's fury, but hating the foreigneras only a hillman can hate.

'Now listen to me, you sons of nameless dogs, while I tell you what thelord Conan and I have planned to fool the Kshatriyas.' The boom of YarAfzal's bull-like voice followed the discomfited warrior as he slunkaway from the assembly.

The man passed by the cluster of huts, where women who had seen hisdefeat laughed at him and called stinging comments, and hastened onalong the trail that wound among spurs and rocks toward the valley head.

Just as he rounded the first turn that took him out of sight of thevillage, he stopped short, gaping stupidly. He had not believed itpossible for a stranger to enter the valley of Khurum without beingdetected by the hawk-eyed watchers along the heights; yet a man satcross-legged on a low ledge beside the path—a man in a camel-hair robeand a green turban.

The Wazuli's mouth gaped for a yell, and his hand leaped to hisknife-hilt. But at that instant his eyes met those of the stranger andthe cry died in his throat, his fingers went limp. He stood like astatue, his own eyes glazed and vacant.

For minutes the scene held motionless; then the man on the ledge drew acryptic symbol in the dust on the rock with his forefinger. The Wazulidid not see him place anything within the compass of that emblem, butpresently something gleamed there—a round, shiny black ball that lookedlike polished jade. The man in the green turban took this up and tossedit to the Wazuli, who mechanically caught it.

'Carry this to Yar Afzal,' he said, and the Wazuli turned like anautomaton and went back along the path, holding the black jade ball inhis outstretched hand. He did not even turn his head to the renewedjeers of the women as he passed the huts. He did not seem to hear.

The man on the ledge gazed after him with a cryptic smile. A girl's headrose above the rim of the ledge and she looked at him with admirationand a touch of fear that had not been present the night before.

'Are you still dizzy from your flight on the horse-of-air, that youdoubt my wisdom?' he laughed. 'As long as Yar Afzal lives, Conan willbide safe among the Wazuli fighting-men. Their knives are sharp, andthere are many of them. What I plot will be safer, even for me, than toseek to slay him and take her from among them. It takes no wizard topredict what the Wazulis will do, and what Conan will do, when my victimhands the globe of Yezud to the chief of Khurum.'

Back before the hut, Yar Afzal halted in the midst of some tirade,surprized and displeased to see the man he had sent up the valley,pushing his way through the throng.

'I bade you go to the watchers!' the chief bellowed. 'You have not hadtime to come from them.'

The other did not reply; he stood woodenly, staring vacantly into thechief's face, his palm outstretched holding the jade ball. Conan,looking over Yar Afzal's shoulder, murmured something and reached totouch the chief's arm, but as he did so, Yar Afzal, in a paroxysm ofanger, struck the man with his clenched fist and felled him like an ox.As he fell, the jade sphere rolled to Yar Afzal's foot, and the chief,seeming to see it for the first time, bent and picked it up. The men,staring perplexedly at their senseless comrade, saw their chief bend,but they did not see what he picked up from the ground.

Yar Afzal straightened, glanced at the jade, and made a motion to thrustit into his girdle.

'Carry that fool to his hut,' he growled. 'He has the look of alotus-eater. He returned me a blank stare. I—aie!'

In his right hand, moving toward his girdle, he had suddenly feltmovement where movement should not be. His voice died away as he stoodand glared at nothing; and inside his clenched right hand he felt thequivering ofchange, ofmotion, oflife. He no longer held asmooth shining sphere in his fingers. And he dared not look; his tongueclove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not open his hand. Hisastonished warriors saw Yar Afzal's eyes distend, the color ebb from hisface. Then suddenly a bellow of agony burst from his bearded lips; heswayed and fell as if struck by lightning, his right arm tossed out infront of him. Face down he lay, and from between his opening fingerscrawled a spider—a hideous, black, hairy-legged monster whose bodyshone like black jade. The men yelled and gave back suddenly, and thecreature scuttled into a crevice of the rocks and disappeared.

The warriors started up, glaring wildly, and a voice rose above theirclamor, a far-carrying voice of command which came from none knew where.Afterward each man there—who still lived—denied that he had shouted,but all there heard it.

That shout focused their whirling minds as one. Doubt, bewilderment andfear vanished in the uproaring surge of the blood-lust. A furious yellrent the skies as the tribesmen responded instantly to the suggestion.They came headlong across the open space, cloaks flapping, eyes blazing,knives lifted.

Conan's action was as quick as theirs. As the voice shouted he sprangfor the hut door. But they were closer to him than he was to the door,and with one foot on the sill he had to wheel and parry the swipe of ayard-long blade. He split the man's skull—ducked another swinging knifeand gutted the wielder—felled a man with his left fist and stabbedanother in the belly—and heaved back mightily against the closed doorwith his shoulders. Hacking blades were nicking chips out of the jambsabout his ears, but the door flew open under the impact of hisshoulders, and he went stumbling backward into the room. A beardedtribesman, thrusting with all his fury as Conan sprang back, overreachedand pitched head-first through the doorway. Conan stopped, grasped theslack of his garments and hauled him clear, and slammed the door in thefaces of the men who came surging into it. Bones snapped under theimpact, and the next instant Conan slammed the bolts into place andwhirled with desperate haste to meet the man who sprang from the floorand tore into action like a madman.

Yasmina cowered in a corner, staring in horror as the two men foughtback and forth across the room, almost trampling her at times; the flashand clangor of their blades filled the room, and outside the mobclamored like a wolf-pack, hacking deafeningly at the bronze door withtheir long knives, and dashing huge rocks against it. Somebody fetched atree trunk, and the door began to stagger under the thunderous assault.Yasmina clasped her ears, staring wildly. Violence and fury within,cataclysmic madness without. The stallion in his stall neighed andreared, thundering with his heels against the walls. He wheeled andlaunched his hoofs through the bars just as the tribesman, backing awayfrom Conan's murderous swipes, stumbled against them. His spine crackedin three places like a rotten branch and he was hurled headlong againstthe Cimmerian, bearing him backward so that they both crashed to thebeaten floor.

Yasmina cried out and ran forward; to her dazed sight it seemed thatboth were slain. She reached them just as Conan threw aside the corpseand rose. She caught his arm, trembling from head to foot.

He glanced down at her quickly, into the pale, upturned face and thewide staring dark eyes.

A vestige of her poise returned to her, and she drew away, making arather pitiful attempt at playing the Devi.

'You are preferable to those wolves howling without,' she answered,gesturing toward the door, the stone sill of which was beginning tosplinter away.

'That won't hold long,' he muttered, then turned and went swiftly to thestall of the stallion.

Yasmina clenched her hands and caught her breath as she saw him tearaside the splintered bars and go into the stall with the maddened beast.The stallion reared above him, neighing terribly, hoofs lifted, eyes andteeth flashing and ears laid back, but Conan leaped and caught his manewith a display of sheer strength that seemed impossible, and dragged thebeast down on his forelegs. The steed snorted and quivered, but stoodstill while the man bridled him and clapped on the gold-worked saddle,with the wide silver stirrups.

Wheeling the beast around in the stall, Conan called quickly to Yasmina,and the girl came, sidling nervously past the stallion's heels. Conanwas working at the stone wall, talking swiftly as he worked.

'A secret door in the wall here, that not even the Wazuli know about.Yar Afzal showed it to me once when he was drunk. It opens out into themouth of the ravine behind the hut. Ha!'

As he tugged at a projection that seemed casual, a whole section of thewall slid back on oiled iron runners. Looking through, the girl saw anarrow defile opening in a sheer stone cliff within a few feet of thehut's back wall. Then Conan sprang into the saddle and hauled her upbefore him. Behind them the great door groaned like a living thing andcrashed in, and a yell rang to the roof as the entrance was instantlyflooded with hairy faces and knives in hairy fists. And then the greatstallion went through the wall like a javelin from a catapult, andthundered into the defile, running low, foam flying from the bit-rings.

That move came as an absolute surprize to the Wazulis. It was asurprize, too, to those stealing down the ravine. It happened soquickly—the hurricane-like charge of the great horse—that a man in agreen turban was unable to get out of the way. He went down under thefrantic hoofs, and a girl screamed. Conan got one glimpse of her as theythundered by—a slim, dark girl in silk trousers and a jeweledbreast-band, flattening herself against the ravine wall. Then the blackhorse and his riders were gone up the gorge like the spume blown beforea storm, and the men who came tumbling through the wall into the defileafter them met that which changed their yells of blood-lust to shrillscreams of fear and death.

6 The Mountain of the Black Seers

'Where now?' Yasmina was trying to sit erect on the rocking saddle-bow,clutching her captor. She was conscious of a recognition of shame thatshe should not find unpleasant the feel of his muscular flesh under herfingers.

'To Afghulistan,' he answered. 'It's a perilous road, but the stallionwill carry us easily, unless we fall in with some of your friends, or mytribal enemies. Now that Yar Afzal is dead, those damned Wazulis will beon our heels. I'm surprized we haven't sighted them behind us already.'

'I don't know. I never saw him before. He's no Ghuli, that's certain.What the devil he was doing there is more than I can say. There was agirl with him, too.'

'Yes.' Her gaze was shadowed. 'I can not understand that. That girl wasmy maid, Gitara. Do you suppose she was coming to aid me? That the manwas a friend? If so, the Wazulis have captured them both.'

'Well,' he answered, 'there's nothing we can do. If we go back, they'llskin us both. I can't understand how a girl like that could get this farinto the mountains with only one man—and he a robed scholar, for that'swhat he looked like. There's something infernally queer in all this.That fellow Yar Afzal beat and sent away—he moved like a man walking inhis sleep. I've seen the priests of Zamora perform their abominablerituals in their forbidden temples, and their victims had a stare likethat man. The priests looked into their eyes and muttered incantations,and then the people became the walking dead men, with glassy eyes, doingas they were ordered.

'And then I saw what the fellow had in his hand, which Yar Afzal pickedup. It was like a big black jade bead, such as the temple girls of Yezudwear when they dance before the black stone spider which is their god.Yar Afzal held it in his hand, and he didn't pick up anything else. Yetwhen he fell dead, a spider, like the god at Yezud, only smaller, ranout of his fingers. And then, when the Wazulis stood uncertain there, avoice cried out for them to kill me, and I know that voice didn't comefrom any of the warriors, nor from the women who watched by the huts. Itseemed to come fromabove.'

Yasmina did not reply. She glanced at the stark outlines of themountains all about them and shuddered. Her soul shrank from their gauntbrutality. This was a grim, naked land where anything might happen.Age-old traditions invested it with shuddery horror for anyone born inthe hot, luxuriant southern plains.

The sun was high, beating down with fierce heat, yet the wind that blewin fitful gusts seemed to sweep off slopes of ice. Once she heard astrange rushing above them that was not the sweep of the wind, and fromthe way Conan looked up, she knew it was not a common sound to him,either. She thought that a strip of the cold blue sky was momentarilyblurred, as if some all but invisible object had swept between it andherself, but she could not be sure. Neither made any comment, but Conanloosened his knife in his scabbard.

They were following a faintly marked path dipping down into ravines sodeep the sun never struck bottom, laboring up steep slopes where looseshale threatened to slide from beneath their feet, and followingknife-edge ridges with blue-hazed echoing depths on either hand.

The sun had passed its zenith when they crossed a narrow trail windingamong the crags. Conan reined the horse aside and followed it southward,going almost at right angles to their former course.

'A Galzai village is at one end of this trail,' he explained. 'Theirwomen follow it to a well, for water. You need new garments.'

Glancing down at her filmy attire, Yasmina agreed with him. Hercloth-of-gold slippers were in tatters, her robes and silkenunder-garments torn to shreds that scarcely held together decently.Garments meant for the streets of Peshkhauri were scarcely appropriatefor the crags of the Himelians.

Coming to a crook in the trail, Conan dismounted, helped Yasmina downand waited. Presently he nodded, though she heard nothing.

'A woman coming along the trail,' he remarked. In sudden panic sheclutched his arm.

'I don't kill women ordinarily,' he grunted; 'though some of thehill-women are she-wolves. No,' he grinned as at a huge jest. 'By Crom,I'llpay for her clothes! How is that?' He displayed a large handfulof gold coins, and replaced all but the largest. She nodded, muchrelieved. It was perhaps natural for men to slay and die; her fleshcrawled at the thought of watching the butchery of a woman.

Presently a woman appeared around the crook of the trail—a tall, slimGalzai girl, straight as a young sapling, bearing a great empty gourd.She stopped short and the gourd fell from her hands when she saw them;she wavered as though to run, then realized that Conan was too close toher to allow her to escape, and so stood still, staring at them with amixed expression of fear and curiosity.

'If you will give this woman your garments,' he said, 'I will give youthis money.'

The response was instant. The girl smiled broadly with surprize anddelight, and, with the disdain of a hill-woman for prudish conventions,promptly yanked off her sleeveless embroidered vest, slipped down herwide trousers and stepped out of them, twitched off her wide-sleevedshirt, and kicked off her sandals. Bundling them all in a bunch, sheproffered them to Conan, who handed them to the astonished Devi.

'Get behind that rock and put these on,' he directed, further provinghimself no native hillman. 'Fold your robes up into a bundle and bringthem to me when you come out.'

'The money!' clamored the hill-girl, stretching out her hands eagerly.'The gold you promised me!'

Conan flipped the coin to her, she caught it, bit, then thrust it intoher hair, bent and caught up the gourd and went on down the path, asdevoid of self-consciousness as of garments. Conan waited with someimpatience while the Devi, for the first time in her pampered life,dressed herself. When she stepped from behind the rock he swore insurprize, and she felt a curious rush of emotions at the unrestrainedadmiration burning in his fierce blue eyes. She felt shame,embarrassment, yet a stimulation of vanity she had never beforeexperienced, and a tingling when meeting the impact of his eyes. He laida heavy hand on her shoulder and turned her about, staring avidly at herfrom all angles.

'By Crom!' said he. 'In those smoky, mystic robes you were aloof andcold and far off as a star! Now you are a woman of warm flesh and blood!You went behind that rock as the Devi of Vendhya; you come out as ahill-girl—though a thousand times more beautiful than any wench of theZhaibar! You were a goddess—now you are real!'

He spanked her resoundingly, and she, recognizing this as merely anotherexpression of admiration, did not feel outraged. It was indeed as if thechanging of her garments had wrought a change in her personality. Thefeelings and sensations she had suppressed rose to domination in hernow, as if the queenly robes she had cast off had been material shacklesand inhibitions.

But Conan, in his renewed admiration, did not forget that peril lurkedall about them. The farther they drew away from the region of theZhaibar, the less likely he was to encounter any Kshatriya troops. Onthe other hand he had been listening all throughout their flight forsounds that would tell him the vengeful Wazulis of Khurum were on theirheels.

Swinging the Devi up, he followed her into the saddle and again reinedthe stallion westward. The bundle of garments she had given him, hehurled over a cliff, to fall into the depths of a thousand-foot gorge.

'The riders from Peshkhauri are combing these hills,' he said. 'They'llbe ambushed and harried at every turn, and by way of reprisal they'lldestroy every village they can take. They may turn westward any time. Ifthey found a girl wearing your garments, they'd torture her intotalking, and she might put them on my trail.'

'Go back to her village and tell her people that a stranger attackedher,' he answered. 'She'll have them on our track, all right. But shehad to go on and get the water first; if she dared go back without it,they'd whip the skin off her. That gives us a long start. They'll nevercatch us. By nightfall we'll cross the Afghuli border.'

'There are no paths or signs of human habitation in these parts,' shecommented. 'Even for the Himelians this region seems singularlydeserted. We have not seen a trail since we left the one where we metthe Galzai woman.'

For answer he pointed to the northwest, where she glimpsed a peak in anotch of the crags.

'Yimsha,' grunted Conan. 'The tribes build their villages as far fromthe mountain as they can.'

'So they say,' he answered. 'This is as near as I ever approached it. Ihave swung north to avoid any Kshatriya troops that might be prowlingthrough the hills. The regular trail from Khurum to Afghulistan liesfarther south. This is an ancient one, and seldom used.'

'All the rest of the day, and all night,' he answered, and grinned. 'Doyou want to go there? By Crom, it's no place for an ordinary human, fromwhat the hill-people say.'

'Wipe out wizards with swords? Anyway, they never interfere with people,unless the people interfere with them. I never saw one of them, thoughI've talked with men who swore they had. They say they've glimpsedpeople from the tower among the crags at sunset or sunrise—tall, silentmen in black robes.'

'I?' The idea seemed a new one to him. 'Why, if they imposed upon me, itwould be my life or theirs. But I have nothing to do with them. I cameto these mountains to raise a following of human beings, not to war withwizards.'

Yasmina did not at once reply. She stared at the peak as at a humanenemy, feeling all her anger and hatred stir in her bosom anew. Andanother feeling began to take dim shape. She had plotted to hurl againstthe masters of Yimsha the man in whose arms she was now carried. Perhapsthere was another way, besides the method she had planned, to accomplishher purpose. She could not mistake the look that was beginning to dawnin this wild man's eyes as they rested on her. Kingdoms have fallen whena woman's slim white hands pulled the strings of destiny. Suddenly shestiffened, pointing.

Just visible on the distant peak there hung a cloud of peculiar aspect.It was a frosty crimson in color, veined with sparkling gold. This cloudwas in motion; it rotated, and as it whirled it contracted. It dwindledto a spinning taper that flashed in the sun. And suddenly it detacheditself from the snow-tipped peak, floated out over the void like agay-hued feather, and became invisible against the cerulean sky.

'What could that have been?' asked the girl uneasily, as a shoulder ofrock shut the distant mountain from view; the phenomenon had beendisturbing, even in its beauty.

'The hill-men call it Yimsha's Carpet, whatever that means,' answeredConan. 'I've seen five hundred of them running as if the devil were attheir heels, to hide themselves in caves and crags, because they sawthat crimson cloud float up from the peak. What in—'

They had advanced through a narrow, knife-cut gash between turretedwalls and emerged upon a broad ledge, flanked by a series of ruggedslopes on one hand, and a gigantic precipice on the other. The dim trailfollowed this ledge, bent around a shoulder and reappeared at intervalsfar below, working a tedious way downward. And emerging from the cutthat opened upon the ledge, the black stallion halted short, snorting.Conan urged him on impatiently, and the horse snorted and threw his headup and down, quivering and straining as if against an invisible barrier.

Conan swore and swung off, lifting Yasmina down with him. He wentforward, with a hand thrown out before him as if expecting to encounterunseen resistance, but there was nothing to hinder him, though when hetried to lead the horse, it neighed shrilly and jerked back. ThenYasmina cried out, and Conan wheeled, hand starting to knife-hilt.

Neither of them had seen him come, but he stood there, with his armsfolded, a man in a camel-hair robe and a green turban. Conan gruntedwith surprize to recognize the man the stallion had spurned in theravine outside the Wazuli village.

The man did not answer. Conan noticed that his eyes were wide, fixed,and of a peculiar luminous quality. And those eyes held his like amagnet.

Khemsa's sorcery was based on hypnotism, as is the case with mostEastern magic. The way has been prepared for the hypnotist for untoldcenturies of generations who have lived and died in the firm convictionof the reality and power of hypnotism, building up, by mass thought andpractise, a colossal though intangible atmosphere against which theindividual, steeped in the traditions of the land, finds himselfhelpless.

But Conan was not a son of the East. Its traditions were meaningless tohim; he was the product of an utterly alien atmosphere. Hypnotism wasnot even a myth in Cimmeria. The heritage that prepared a native of theEast for submission to the mesmerist was not his.

He was aware of what Khemsa was trying to do to him; but he felt theimpact of the man's uncanny power only as a vague impulsion, a tuggingand pulling that he could shake off as a man shakes spiderwebs from hisgarments.

Aware of hostility and black magic, he ripped out his long knife andlunged, as quick on his feet as a mountain lion.

But hypnotism was not all of Khemsa's magic. Yasmina, watching, did notsee by what roguery of movement or illusion the man in the green turbanavoided the terrible disembowelling thrust. But the keen blade whickeredbetween side and lifted arm, and to Yasmina it seemed that Khemsa merelybrushed his open palm lightly against Conan's bull-neck. But theCimmerian went down like a slain ox.

Yet Conan was not dead; breaking his fall with his left hand, he slashedat Khemsa's legs even as he went down, and the Rakhsha avoided thescythe-like swipe only by a most unwizardly bound backward. Then Yasminacried out sharply as she saw a woman she recognized as Gitara glide outfrom among the rocks and come up to the man. The greeting died in theDevi's throat as she saw the malevolence in the girl's beautiful face.

Conan was rising slowly, shaken and dazed by the cruel craft of thatblow which, delivered with an art forgotten of men before Atlantis sank,would have broken like a rotten twig the neck of a lesser man. Khemsagazed at him cautiously and a trifle uncertainly. The Rakhsha hadlearned the full flood of his own power when he faced at bay the knivesof the maddened Wazulis in the ravine behind Khurum village; but theCimmerian's resistance had perhaps shaken his new-found confidence atrifle. Sorcery thrives on success, not on failure.

He stepped forward, lifting his hand—then halted as if frozen, headtilted back, eyes wide open, hand raised. In spite of himself Conanfollowed his gaze, and so did the women—the girl cowering by thetrembling stallion, and the girl beside Khemsa.

Down the mountain slopes, like a whirl of shining dust blown before thewind, a crimson, conoid cloud came dancing. Khemsa's dark face turnedashen; his hand began to tremble, then sank to his side. The girl besidehim, sensing the change in him, stared at him inquiringly.

The crimson shape left the mountain slope and came down in a longarching sweep. It struck the ledge between Conan and Khemsa, and theRakhsha gave back with a stifled cry. He backed away, pushing the girlGitara back with groping, fending hands.

The crimson cloud balanced like a spinning top for an instant, whirlingin a dazzling sheen on its point. Then without warning it was gone,vanished as a bubble vanishes when burst. There on the ledge stood fourmen. It was miraculous, incredible, impossible, yet it was true. Theywere not ghosts or phantoms. They were four tall men, with shaven,vulture-like heads, and black robes that hid their feet. Their handswere concealed by their wide sleeves. They stood in silence, their nakedheads nodding slightly in unison. They were facing Khemsa, but behindthem Conan felt his own blood turning to ice in his veins. Rising, hebacked stealthily away, until he could feel the stallion's shouldertrembling against his back, and the Devi crept into the shelter of hisarm. There was no word spoken. Silence hung like a stifling pall.

All four of the men in black robes stared at Khemsa. Their vulture-likefaces were immobile, their eyes introspective and contemplative. ButKhemsa shook like a man in an ague. His feet were braced on the rock,his calves straining as if in physical combat. Sweat ran in streams downhis dark face. His right hand locked on something under his brown robeso desperately that the blood ebbed from that hand and left it white.His left hand fell on the shoulder of Gitara and clutched in agony likethe grasp of a drowning man. She did not flinch or whimper, though hisfingers dug like talons into her firm flesh.

Conan had witnessed hundreds of battles in his wild life, but never onelike this, wherein four diabolical wills sought to beat down one lesserbut equally devilish will that opposed them. But he only faintly sensedthe monstrous quality of that hideous struggle. With his back to thewall, driven to bay by his former masters, Khemsa was fighting for hislife with all the dark power, all the frightful knowledge they hadtaught him through long, grim years of neophytism and vassalage.

He was stronger than even he had guessed, and the free exercise of hispowers in his own behalf had tapped unsuspected reservoirs of forces.And he was nerved to super-energy by frantic fear and desperation. Hereeled before the merciless impact of those hypnotic eyes, but he heldhis ground. His features were distorted into a bestial grin of agony,and his limbs were twisted as on a rack. It was a war of souls, offrightful brains steeped in lore forbidden to men for a million years,of mentalities which had plumbed the abysses and explored the dark starswhere spawn the shadows.

Yasmina understood this better than did Conan. And she dimly understoodwhy Khemsa could withstand the concentrated impact of those four hellishwills which might have blasted into atoms the very rock on which hestood. The reason was the girl that he clutched with the strength of hisdespair. She was like an anchor to his staggering soul, battered by thewaves of those psychic emanations. His weakness was now his strength.His love for the girl, violent and evil though it might be, was yet atie that bound him to the rest of humanity, providing an earthlyleverage for his will, a chain that his inhuman enemies could not break;at least not break through Khemsa.

They realized that before he did. And one of them turned his gaze fromthe Rakhsha full upon Gitara. There was no battle there. The girl shrankand wilted like a leaf in the drought. Irresistibly impelled, she toreherself from her lover's arms before he realized what was happening.Then a hideous thing came to pass. She began to back toward theprecipice, facing her tormentors, her eyes wide and blank as darkgleaming glass from behind which a lamp has been blown out. Khemsagroaned and staggered toward her, falling into the trap set for him. Adivided mind could not maintain the unequal battle. He was beaten, astraw in their hands. The girl went backward, walking like an automaton,and Khemsa reeled drunkenly after her, hands vainly outstretched,groaning, slobbering in his pain, his feet moving heavily like deadthings.

On the very brink she paused, standing stiffly, her heels on the edge,and he fell on his knees and crawled whimpering toward her, groping forher, to drag her back from destruction. And just before his clumsyfingers touched her, one of the wizards laughed, like the sudden, bronzenote of a bell in hell. The girl reeled suddenly and, consummate climaxof exquisite cruelty, reason and understanding flooded back into hereyes, which flared with awful fear. She screamed, clutched wildly at herlover's straining hand, and then, unable to save herself, fell headlongwith a moaning cry.

Khemsa hauled himself to the edge and stared over, haggardly, his lipsworking as he mumbled to himself. Then he turned and stared for a longminute at his torturers, with wide eyes that held no human light. Andthen with a cry that almost burst the rocks, he reeled up and camerushing toward them, a knife lifted in his hand.

One of the Rakhshas stepped forward and stamped his foot, and as hestamped, there came a rumbling that grew swiftly to a grinding roar.Where his foot struck, a crevice opened in the solid rock that widenedinstantly. Then, with a deafening crash, a whole section of the ledgegave way. There was a last glimpse of Khemsa, with arms wildly upflung,and then he vanished amidst the roar of the avalanche that thundereddown into the abyss.

The four looked contemplatively at the ragged edge of rock that formedthe new rim of the precipice, and then turned suddenly. Conan, thrownoff his feet by the shudder of the mountain, was rising, liftingYasmina. He seemed to move as slowly as his brain was working. He wasbefogged and stupid. He realized that there was a desperate need for himto lift the Devi on the black stallion and ride like the wind, but anunaccountable sluggishness weighted his every thought and action.

And now the wizards had turned toward him; they raised their arms, andto his horrified sight, he saw their outlines fading, dimming, becominghazy and nebulous, as a crimson smoke billowed around their feet androse about them. They were blotted out by a sudden whirling cloud—andthen he realized that he too was enveloped in a blinding crimsonmist—he heard Yasmina scream, and the stallion cried out like a womanin pain. The Devi was torn from his arm, and as he lashed out with hisknife blindly, a terrific blow like a gust of storm wind knocked himsprawling against a rock. Dazedly he saw a crimson conoid cloud spinningup and over the mountain slopes. Yasmina was gone, and so were the fourmen in black. Only the terrified stallion shared the ledge with him.

7 On to Yimsha

As mists vanish before a strong wind, the cobwebs vanished from Conan'sbrain. With a searing curse he leaped into the saddle and the stallionreared neighing beneath him. He glared up the slopes, hesitated, andthen turned down the trail in the direction he had been going whenhalted by Khemsa's trickery. But now he did not ride at a measured gait.He shook loose the reins and the stallion went like a thunderbolt, as iffrantic to lose hysteria in violent physical exertion. Across the ledgeand around the crag and down the narrow trail threading the great steepthey plunged at breakneck speed. The path followed a fold of rock,winding interminably down from tier to tier of striated escarpment, andonce, far below, Conan got a glimpse of the ruin that had fallen—amighty pile of broken stone and boulders at the foot of a giganticcliff.

The valley floor was still far below him when he reached a long andlofty ridge that led out from the slope like a natural causeway. Outupon this he rode, with an almost sheer drop on either hand. He couldtrace ahead of him the trail and made a great horseshoe back into theriver-bed at his left hand. He cursed the necessity of traversing thosemiles, but it was the only way. To try to descend to the lower lap ofthe trail here would be to attempt the impossible. Only a bird could getto the river-bed with a whole neck.

So he urged on the wearying stallion, until a clink of hoofs reached hisears, welling up from below. Pulling up short and reining to the lip ofthe cliff, he stared down into the dry river-bed that wound along thefoot of the ridge. Along that gorge rode a motley throng—bearded men onhalf-wild horses, five hundred strong, bristling with weapons. And Conanshouted suddenly, leaning over the edge of the cliff, three hundred feetabove them.

At his shout they reined back, and five hundred bearded faces weretilted up towards him; a deep, clamorous roar filled the canyon. Conandid not waste words.

'I was riding for Ghor!' he roared. 'I had not hoped to meet you dogs onthe trail. Follow me as fast as your nags can push! I'm going to Yimsha,and—'

'What?' He glared down at them, jolted speechless. He saw wild eyesblazing up at him, faces contorted with fury, fists brandishing blades.

'Traitor!' they roared back, wholeheartedly. 'Where are the seven chiefsheld captive in Peshkhauri?'

A bloodthirsty yell from a hundred throats answered him, with such awaving of weapons and a clamor that he could not understand what theywere saying. He beat down the din with a bull-like roar, and bellowed:'What devil's play is this? Let one of you speak, so I can understandwhat you mean!'

A gaunt old chief elected himself to this position, shook his tulwar atConan as a preamble, and shouted accusingly: 'You would not let us goraiding Peshkhauri to rescue our brothers!'

'No, you fools!' roared the exasperated Cimmerian. 'Even if you'dbreached the wall, which is unlikely, they'd have hanged the prisonersbefore you could reach them.'

'And you went alone to traffic with the governor!' yelled the Afghuli,working himself into a frothing frenzy.

'Where are the seven chiefs?' howled the old chief, making his tulwarinto a glimmering wheel of steel about his head. 'Where are they? Dead!'

The old chief brandished his arms and got the floor again. 'They werenot hanged!' he screeched. 'A Wazuli in another cell saw them die! Thegovernor sent a wizard to slay them by craft!'

'That must be a lie,' said Conan. 'The governor would not dare. Lastnight I talked with him—'

'Aye! You went to him alone! To betray us! It is no lie. The Wazuliescaped through the doors the wizard burst in his entry, and told thetale to our scouts whom he met in Zhaibar. They had been sent forth tosearch for you, when you did not return. When they heard the Wazuli'stale, they returned with all haste to Ghor, and we saddled our steedsand girt our swords!'

'To avenge our brothers!' they howled. 'Death to the Kshatriyas! Slayhim, brothers, he is a traitor!'

Arrows began to rattle around him. Conan rose in his stirrups, strivingto make himself heard above the tumult, and then, with a roar of mingledrage, defiance and disgust, he wheeled and galloped back up the trail.Behind him and below him the Afghulis came pelting, mouthing their rage,too furious even to remember that the only way they could reach theheight whereon he rode was to traverse the river-bed in the otherdirection, make the broad bend and follow the twisting trail up over theridge. When they did remember this, and turned back, their repudiatedchief had almost reached the point where the ridge joined theescarpment.

At the cliff he did not take the trail by which he had descended, butturned off on another, a mere trace along a rock-fault, where thestallion scrambled for footing. He had not ridden far when the stallionsnorted and shied back from something lying in the trail. Conan stareddown on the travesty of a man, a broken, shredded, bloody heap thatgibbered and gnashed splintered teeth.

Impelled by some obscure reason, Conan dismounted and stood looking downat the ghastly shape, knowing that he was witness of a thing miraculousand opposed to nature. The Rakhsha lifted his gory head, and his strangeeyes, glazed with agony and approaching death, rested on Conan withrecognition.

'Where are they?' It was a racking croak not even remotely resembling ahuman voice.

'Gone back to their damnable castle on Yimsha,' grunted Conan. 'Theytook the Devi with them.'

'I will go!' muttered the man. 'I will follow them! They killed Gitara;I will kill them—the acolytes, the Four of the Black Circle, the Masterhimself! Kill—kill them all!' He strove to drag his mutilated framealong the rock, but not even his indomitable will could animate thatgory mass longer, where the splintered bones hung together only by torntissue and ruptured fibre.

'I'm going to,' growled Conan. 'I went to fetch my Afghulis, but they'veturned on me. I'm going on to Yimsha alone. I'll have the Devi back if Ihave to tear down that damned mountain with my bare hands. I didn'tthink the governor would dare kill my headmen, when I had the Devi, butit seems he did. I'll have his head for that. She's no use to me now asa hostage, but—'

'The curse of Yizil on them!' gasped Khemsa. 'Go! I am dying. Wait—takemy girdle.'

He tried to fumble with a mangled hand at his tatters, and Conan,understanding what he sought to convey, bent and drew from about hisgory waist a girdle of curious aspect.

'Follow the golden vein through the abyss,' muttered Khemsa. 'Wear thegirdle. I had it from a Stygian priest. It will aid you, though itfailed me at last. Break the crystal globe with the four goldenpomegranates. Beware of the Master's transmutations—I am going toGitara—she is waiting for me in hell—aie, ya Skelos yar!' And so hedied.

Conan stared down at the girdle. The hair of which it was woven was nothorsehair. He was convinced that it was woven of the thick black tressesof a woman. Set in the thick mesh were tiny jewels such as he had neverseen before. The buckle was strangely made, in the form of a goldenserpent-head, flat, wedge-shaped and scaled with curious art. A strongshudder shook Conan as he handled it, and he turned as though to cast itover the precipice; then he hesitated, and finally buckled it about hiswaist, under the Bakhariot girdle. Then he mounted and pushed on.

The sun had sunk behind the crags. He climbed the trail in the vastshadow of the cliffs that was thrown out like a dark blue mantle overvalleys and ridges far below. He was not far from the crest when, edgingaround the shoulder of a jutting crag, he heard the clink of shod hoofsahead of him. He did not turn back. Indeed, so narrow was the path thatthe stallion could not have wheeled his great body upon it. He roundedthe jut of the rock and came upon a portion of the path that broadenedsomewhat. A chorus of threatening yells broke on his ear, but hisstallion pinned a terrified horse hard against the rock, and Conancaught the arm of the rider in an iron grip, checking the lifted swordin midair.

'Kerim Shah!' muttered Conan, red glints smoldering luridly in his eyes.The Turanian did not struggle; they sat their horses almost breast tobreast, Conan's fingers locking the other's sword-arm. Behind Kerim Shahfiled a group of lean Irakzai on gaunt horses. They glared like wolves,fingering bows and knives, but rendered uncertain because of thenarrowness of the path and the perilous proximity of the abyss thatyawned beneath them.

'I know you have her,' answered Kerim Shah. 'I was on my way northwardwith some tribesmen when we were ambushed by enemies in Shalizah Pass.Many of my men were slain, and the rest of us harried through the hillslike jackals. When we had beaten off our pursuers, we turned westward,toward Amir Jehun Pass, and this morning we came upon a Wazuli wanderingthrough the hills. He was quite mad, but I learned much from hisincoherent gibberings before he died. I learned that he was the solesurvivor of a band which followed a chief of the Afghulis and a captiveKshatriya woman into a gorge behind Khurum village. He babbled much of aman in a green turban whom the Afghuli rode down, but who, when attackedby the Wazulis who pursued, smote them with a nameless doom that wipedthem out as a gust of wind-driven fire wipes out a cluster of locusts.

'How that one man escaped, I do not know, nor did he; but I knew fromhis maunderings that Conan of Ghor had been in Khurum with his royalcaptive. And as we made our way through the hills, we overtook a nakedGalzai girl bearing a gourd of water, who told us a tale of having beenstripped and ravished by a giant foreigner in the garb of an Afghulichief, who, she said, gave her garments to a Vendhyan woman whoaccompanied him. She said you rode westward.'

Kerim Shah did not consider it necessary to explain that he had been onhis way to keep his rendezvous with the expected troops from Secunderamwhen he found his way barred by hostile tribesmen. The road to Gurashahvalley through Shalizah Pass was longer than the road that wound throughAmir Jehun Pass, but the latter traversed part of the Afghuli country,which Kerim Shah had been anxious to avoid until he came with an army.Barred from the Shalizah road, however, he had turned to the forbiddenroute, until news that Conan had not yet reached Afghulistan with hiscaptive had caused him to turn southward and push on recklessly in thehope of overtaking the Cimmerian in the hills.

'So you had better tell me where the Devi is,' suggested Kerim Shah. 'Weoutnumber you—'

'Let one of your dogs nock a shaft and I'll throw you over the cliff,'Conan promised. 'It wouldn't do you any good to kill me, anyhow. Fivehundred Afghulis are on my trail, and if they find you've cheated them,they'll flay you alive. Anyway, I haven't got the Devi. She's in thehands of the Black Seers of Yimsha.'

'Tarim!' swore Kerim Shah softly, shaken out of his poise for thefirst time. 'Khemsa—'

'Khemsa's dead,' grunted Conan. 'His masters sent him to hell on alandslide. And now get out of my way. I'd be glad to kill you if I hadthe time, but I'm on my way to Yimsha.'

'I don't ask you to,' returned Kerim Shah. 'We both want the Devi. Youknow my reason; King Yezdigerd desires to add her kingdom to his empire,and herself in his seraglio. And I knew you, in the days when you were ahetman of thekozak steppes; so I know your ambition is wholesaleplunder. You want to loot Vendhya, and to twist out a huge ransom forYasmina. Well, let us for the time being, without any illusion abouteach other, unite our forces, and try to rescue the Devi from the Seers.If we succeed, and live, we can fight it out to see who keeps her.'

Conan narrowly scrutinized the other for a moment, and then nodded,releasing the Turanian's arm. 'Agreed; what about your men?'

Kerim Shah turned to the silent Irakzai and spoke briefly: 'This chiefand I are going to Yimsha to fight the wizards. Will you go with us, orstay here to be flayed by the Afghulis who are following this man?'

They looked at him with eyes grimly fatalistic. They were doomed andthey knew it—had known it ever since the singing arrows of the ambushedDagozai had driven them back from the pass of Shalizah. The men of thelower Zhaibar had too many reeking bloodfeuds among the crag-dwellers.They were too small a band to fight their way back through the hills tothe villages of the border, without the guidance of the crafty Turanian.They counted themselves as dead already, so they made the reply thatonly dead men would make: 'We will go with thee and die on Yimsha.'

'Then in Crom's name let us be gone,' grunted Conan, fidgeting withimpatience as he started into the blue gulfs of the deepening twilight.'My wolves were hours behind me, but we've lost a devilish lot of time.'

Kerim Shah backed his steed from between the black stallion and thecliff, sheathed his sword and cautiously turned the horse. Presently theband was filing up the path as swiftly as they dared. They came out uponthe crest nearly a mile east of the spot where Khemsa had halted theCimmerian and the Devi. The path they had traversed was a perilous one,even for hill-men, and for that reason Conan had avoided it that daywhen carrying Yasmina, though Kerim Shah, following him, had taken itsupposing the Cimmerian had done likewise. Even Conan sighed with reliefwhen the horses scrambled up over the last rim. They moved like phantomriders through an enchanted realm of shadows. The soft creak of leather,the clink of steel marked their passing, then again the dark mountainslopes lay naked and silent in the starlight.

8 Yasmina Knows Stark Terror

Yasmina had time but for one scream when she felt herself enveloped inthat crimson whirl and torn from her protector with appalling force. Shescreamed once, and then she had no breath to scream. She was blinded,deafened, rendered mute and eventually senseless by the terrific rushingof the air about her. There was a dazed consciousness of dizzy heightand numbing speed, a confused impression of natural sensations gone mad,and then vertigo and oblivion.

A vestige of these sensations clung to her as she recoveredconsciousness; so she cried out and clutched wildly as though to stay aheadlong and involuntary flight. Her fingers closed on soft fabric, anda relieving sense of stability pervaded her. She took cognizance of hersurroundings.

She was lying on a dais covered with black velvet. This dais stood in agreat, dim room whose walls were hung with dusky tapestries across whichcrawled dragons reproduced with repellent realism. Floating shadowsmerely hinted at the lofty ceiling, and gloom that lent itself toillusion lurked in the corners. There seemed to be neither windows nordoors in the walls, or else they were concealed by the nightedtapestries. Where the dim light came from, Yasmina could not determine.The great room was a realm of mysteries, or shadows, and shadowy shapesin which she could not have sworn to observe movement, yet which invadedher mind with a dim and formless terror.

But her gaze fixed itself on a tangible object. On another, smaller daisof jet, a few feet away, a man sat cross-legged, gazing contemplativelyat her. His long black velvet robe, embroidered with gold thread, fellloosely about him, masking his figure. His hands were folded in hissleeves. There was a velvet cap upon his head. His face was calm,placid, not unhandsome, his eyes lambent and slightly oblique. He didnot move a muscle as he sat regarding her, nor did his expression alterwhen he saw she was conscious.

Yasmina felt fear crawl like a trickle of ice-water down her supplespine. She lifted herself on her elbows and stared apprehensively at thestranger.

'I am the Master of Yimsha.' The tone was rich and resonant, like themellow tones of a temple bell.

'If you are one of the Black Seers—yes!' she answered recklessly,believing that he could read her thoughts anyway.

'You would turn the wild children of the hills against the Seers ofYimsha!' He smiled. 'I have read it in your mind, princess. Your weak,human mind, filled with petty dreams of hate and revenge.'

'You slew my brother!' A rising tide of anger was vying with her fear;her hands were clenched, her lithe body rigid. 'Why did you persecutehim? He never harmed you. The priests say the Seers are above meddlingin human affairs. Why did you destroy the king of Vendhya?'

'How can an ordinary human understand the motives of a Seer?' returnedthe Master calmly. 'My acolytes in the temples of Turan, who are thepriests behind the priests of Tarim, urged me to bestir myself in behalfof Yezdigerd. For reasons of my own, I complied. How can I explain mymystic reasons to your puny intellect? You could not understand.'

'I understand this: that my brother died!' Tears of grief and rage shookin her voice. She rose upon her knees and stared at him with wideblazing eyes, as supple and dangerous in that moment as a she-panther.

'As Yezdigerd desired,' agreed the Master calmly. 'For a while it was mywhim to further his ambitions.'

'Is Yezdigerd your vassal?' Yasmina tried to keep the timbre of hervoice unaltered. She had felt her knee pressing something hard andsymmetrical under a fold of velvet. Subtly she shifted her position,moving her hand under the fold.

'Is the dog that licks up the offal in the temple yard the vassal of thegod?' returned the Master.

He did not seem to notice the actions she sought to dissemble. Concealedby the velvet, her fingers closed on what she knew was the golden hiltof a dagger. She bent her head to hide the light of triumph in her eyes.

'I am weary of Yezdigerd,' said the Master. 'I have turned to otheramusements—ha!'

With a fierce cry Yasmina sprang like a jungle cat, stabbingmurderously. Then she stumbled and slid to the floor, where she cowered,staring up at the man on the dais. He had not moved; his cryptic smilewas unchanged. Tremblingly she lifted her hand and stared at it withdilated eyes. There was no dagger in her fingers; they grasped a stalkof golden lotus, the crushed blossoms drooping on the bruised stem.

She dropped it as if it had been a viper, and scrambled away from theproximity of her tormenter. She returned to her own dais, because thatwas at least more dignified for a queen than groveling on the floor atthe feet of a sorcerer, and eyed him apprehensively, expectingreprisals.

'All substance is one to him who holds the key of the cosmos,' he saidcryptically. 'To an adept nothing is immutable. At will, steel blossomsbloom in unnamed gardens, or flower-swords flash in the moonlight.'

'Not I!' he laughed. 'I was born on this planet, long ago. Once I was acommon man, nor have I lost all human attributes in the numberless eonsof my adeptship. A human steeped in the dark arts is greater than adevil. I am of human origin, but I rule demons. You have seen the Lordsof the Black Circle—it would blast your soul to hear from what farrealm I summoned them and from what doom I guard them with ensorcelledcrystal and golden serpents.

'But only I can rule them. My foolish Khemsa thought to make himselfgreat—poor fool, bursting material doors and hurtling himself and hismistress through the air from hill to hill! Yet if he had not beendestroyed his power might have grown to rival mine.'

He laughed again. 'And you, poor, silly thing! Plotting to send a hairyhill chief to storm Yimsha! It was such a jest that I myself could havedesigned, had it occurred to me, that you should fall in his hands. AndI read in your childish mind an intention to seduce by your femininewiles to attempt your purpose, anyway.

'But for all your stupidity, you are a woman fair to look upon. It is mywhim to keep you for my slave.'

The daughter of a thousand proud emperors gasped with shame and fury atthe word.

'The king dares not trample a worm in the road? Little fool, do you notrealize that your royal pride is no more than a straw blown on the wind?I, who have known the kisses of the queens of Hell! You have seen how Ideal with a rebel!'

Cowed and awed, the girl crouched on the velvet-covered dais. The lightgrew dimmer and more phantom-like. The features of the Master becameshadowy. His voice took on a newer tone of command.

'I will never yield to you!' Her voice trembled with fear but it carrieda ring of resolution.

'You will yield,' he answered with horrible conviction. 'Fear and painshall teach you. I will lash you with horror and agony to the lastquivering ounce of your endurance, until you become as melted wax to bebent and molded in my hands as I desire. You shall know such disciplineas no mortal woman ever knew, until my slightest command is to you asthe unalterable will of the gods. And first, to humble your pride, youshall travel back through the lost ages, and view all the shapes thathave been you.Aie, yil la khosa!'

At these words the shadowy room swam before Yasmina's affrighted gaze.The roots of her hair prickled her scalp, and her tongue clove to herpalate. Somewhere a gong sounded a deep, ominous note. The dragons onthe tapestries glowed like blue fire, and then faded out. The Master onhis dais was but a shapeless shadow. The dim light gave way to soft,thick darkness, almost tangible, that pulsed with strange radiations.She could no longer see the Master. She could see nothing. She had astrange sensation that the walls and ceiling had withdrawn immenselyfrom her.

Then somewhere in the darkness a glow began, like a firefly thatrhythmically dimmed and quickened. It grew to a golden ball, and as itexpanded its light grew more intense, flaming whitely. It burstsuddenly, showering the darkness with white sparks that did not illuminethe shadows. But like an impression left in the gloom, a faint luminanceremained, and revealed a slender dusky shaft shooting up from theshadowy floor. Under the girl's dilated gaze it spread, took shape;stems and broad leaves appeared, and great black poisonous blossoms thattowered above her as she cringed against the velvet. A subtle perfumepervaded the atmosphere. It was the dread figure of the black lotus thathad grown up as she watched, as it grows in the haunted, forbiddenjungles of Khitai.

The broad leaves were murmurous with evil life. The blossoms bent towardher like sentient things, nodding serpent-like on pliant stems. Etchedagainst soft, impenetrable darkness it loomed over her, gigantic,blackly visible in some mad way. Her brain reeled with the druggingscent and she sought to crawl from the dais. Then she clung to it as itseemed to be pitching at an impossible slant. She cried out with terrorand clung to the velvet, but she felt her fingers ruthlessly torn away.There was a sensation as of all sanity and stability crumbling andvanishing. She was a quivering atom of sentiency driven through a black,roaring, icy void by a thundering wind that threatened to extinguish herfeeble flicker of animate life like a candle blown out in a storm.

Then there came a period of blind impulse and movement, when the atomthat was she mingled and merged with myriad other atoms of spawning lifein the yeasty morass of existence, molded by formative forces until sheemerged again a conscious individual, whirling down an endless spiral oflives.

In a mist of terror she relived all her former existences, recognizedandwas again all the bodies that had carried her ego throughout thechanging ages. She bruised her feet again over the long, weary road oflife that stretched out behind her into the immemorial past. Back beyondthe dimmest dawns of Time she crouched shuddering in primordial jungles,hunted by slavering beasts of prey. Skin-clad, she waded thigh-deep inrice swamps, battling with squawking water-fowl for the precious grains.She labored with the oxen to drag the pointed stick through the stubbornsoil, and she crouched endlessly over looms in peasant huts.

She saw walled cities burst into flame, and fled screaming before theslayers. She reeled naked and bleeding over burning sands, dragged atthe slaver's stirrup, and she knew the grip of hot, fierce hands on herwrithing flesh, the shame and agony of brutal lust. She screamed underthe bite of the lash, and moaned on the rack; mad with terror she foughtagainst the hands that forced her head inexorably down on the bloodyblock.

She knew the agonies of childbirth, and the bitterness of love betrayed.She suffered all the woes and wrongs and brutalities that man hasinflicted on woman throughout the eons; and she endured all the spiteand malice of women for woman. And like the flick of a fiery whipthroughout was the consciousness she retained of her Devi-ship. She wasall the women she had ever been, yet in her knowing she was Yasmina.This consciousness was not lost in the throes of reincarnation. At oneand the same time she was a naked slave-wench groveling under the whip,and the proud Devi of Vendhya. And she suffered not only as theslave-girl suffered, but as Yasmina, to whose pride the whip was like awhite-hot brand.

Life merged into life in flying chaos, each with its burden of woe andshame and agony, until she dimly heard her own voice screamingunbearably, like one long-drawn cry of suffering echoing down the ages.

In a ghostly gray light she saw again the dais and the cryptic robedfigure seated upon it. The hooded head was bent, the high shouldersfaintly etched against the uncertain dimness. She could make out nodetails clearly, but the hood, where the velvet cap had been, stirred aformless uneasiness in her. As she stared, there stole over her anameless fear that froze her tongue to her palate—a feeling that it wasnot the Master who sat so silently on that black dais.

Then the figure moved and rose upright, towering above her. It stoopedover her and the long arms in their wide black sleeves bent about her.She fought against them in speechless fright, surprized by their leanhardness. The hooded head bent down toward her averted face. And shescreamed, and screamed again in poignant fear and loathing. Bony armsgripped her lithe body, and from that hood looked forth a countenance ofdeath and decay—features like rotting parchment on a moldering skull.

She screamed again, and then, as those champing, grinning jaws benttoward her lips, she lost consciousness....

9 The Castle of the Wizards

The sun had risen over the white Himelian peaks. At the foot of a longslope a group of horsemen halted and stared upward. High above them astone tower poised on the pitch of the mountainside. Beyond and abovethat gleamed the walls of a greater keep, near the line where the snowbegan that capped Yimsha's pinnacle. There was a touch of unrealityabout the whole—purple slopes pitching up to that fantastic castle,toy-like with distance, and above it the white glistening peakshouldering the cold blue.

'We'll leave the horses here,' grunted Conan. 'That treacherous slope issafer for a man on foot. Besides, they're done.'

He swung down from the black stallion which stood with wide-braced legsand drooping head. They had pushed hard throughout the night, gnawing atscraps from saddle-bags, and pausing only to give the horses the reststhey had to have.

'That first tower is held by the acolytes of the Black Seers,' saidConan. 'Or so men say; watch-dogs for their masters—lesser sorcerers.They won't sit sucking their thumbs as we climb this slope.'

Kerim Shah glanced up the mountain, then back the way they had come;they were already far up Yimsha's side, and a vast expanse of lesserpeaks and crags spread out beneath them. Among these labyrinths theTuranian sought in vain for a movement of color that would betray men.Evidently the pursuing Afghulis had lost their chief's trail in thenight.

'Let us go, then.' They tied the weary horses in a clump of tamarisk andwithout further comment turned up the slope. There was no cover. It wasa naked incline, strewn with boulders not big enough to conceal a man.But they did conceal something else.

The party had not gone fifty steps when a snarling shape burst frombehind a rock. It was one of the gaunt savage dogs that infested thehill villages, and its eyes glared redly, its jaws dripped foam. Conanwas leading, but it did not attack him. It dashed past him and leaped atKerim Shah. The Turanian leaped aside, and the great dog flung itselfupon the Irakzai behind him. The man yelled and threw up his arm, whichwas torn by the brute's fangs as it bore him backward, and the nextinstant half a dozen tulwars were hacking at the beast. Yet not until itwas literally dismembered did the hideous creature cease its efforts toseize and rend its attackers.

Kerim Shah bound up the wounded warrior's gashed arm, looked at himnarrowly, and then turned away without a word. He rejoined Conan, andthey renewed the climb in silence.

Both turned their heads to glance back at the wounded warrior toilingafter them among his companions. Sweat glistened on his dark face andhis lips were drawn back from his teeth in a grimace of pain. Then bothlooked again at the stone tower squatting above them.

A slumberous quiet lay over the uplands. The tower showed no sign oflife, nor did the strange pyramidal structure beyond it. But the men whotoiled upward went with the tenseness of men walking on the edge of acrater. Kerim Shah had unslung the powerful Turanian bow that killed atfive hundred paces, and the Irakzai looked to their own lighter and lesslethal bows.

But they were not within bow-shot of the tower when something shot downout of the sky without warning. It passed so close to Conan that he feltthe wind of rushing wings, but it was an Irakzai who staggered and fell,blood jetting from a severed jugular. A hawk with wings like burnishedsteel shot up again, blood dripping from the scimitar-beak, to reelagainst the sky as Kerim Shah's bowstring twanged. It dropped like aplummet, but no man saw where it struck the earth.

Conan bent over the victim of the attack, but the man was already dead.No one spoke; useless to comment on the fact that never before had ahawk been known to swoop on a man. Red rage began to vie with fatalisticlethargy in the wild souls of the Irakzai. Hairy fingers nocked arrowsand men glared vengefully at the tower whose very silence mocked them.

But the next attack came swiftly. They all saw it—a white puffball ofsmoke that tumbled over the tower-rim and came drifting and rolling downthe slope toward them. Others followed it. They seemed harmless, merewoolly globes of cloudy foam, but Conan stepped aside to avoid contactwith the first. Behind him one of the Irakzai reached out and thrust hissword into the unstable mass. Instantly a sharp report shook themountainside. There was a burst of blinding flame, and then the puffballhad vanished, and the too-curious warrior remained only a heap ofcharred and blackened bones. The crisped hand still gripped the ivorysword-hilt, but the blade was gone—melted and destroyed by that awfulheat. Yet men standing almost within reach of the victim had notsuffered except to be dazzled and half blinded by the sudden flare.

The slope above them was almost covered by the billowing spheres. KerimShah bent his bow and sent a shaft into the mass, and those touched bythe arrow burst like bubbles in spurting flame. His men followed hisexample and for the next few minutes it was as if a thunderstorm ragedon the mountain slope, with bolts of lightning striking and bursting inshowers of flame. When the barrage ceased, only a few arrows were leftin the quivers of the archers.

They pushed on grimly, over soil charred and blackened, where the nakedrock had in places been turned to lava by the explosion of thosediabolical bombs.

Now they were almost within arrow-flight of the silent tower, and theyspread their line, nerves taut, ready for any horror that might descendupon them.

On the tower appeared a single figure, lifting a ten-foot bronze horn.Its strident bellow roared out across the echoing slopes, like the blareof trumpets on Judgment Day. And it began to be fearfully answered. Theground trembled under the feet of the invaders, and rumblings andgrindings welled up from the subterranean depths.

The Irakzai screamed, reeling like drunken men on the shuddering slope,and Conan, eyes glaring, charged recklessly up the incline, knife inhand, straight at the door that showed in the tower-wall. Above him thegreat horn roared and bellowed in brutish mockery. And then Kerim Shahdrew a shaft to his ear and loosed.

Only a Turanian could have made that shot. The bellowing of the hornceased suddenly, and a high, thin scream shrilled in its place. Thegreen-robed figure on the tower staggered, clutching at the long shaftwhich quivered in its bosom, and then pitched across the parapet. Thegreat horn tumbled upon the battlement and hung precariously, andanother robed figure rushed to seize it, shrieking in horror. Again theTuranian bow twanged, and again it was answered by a death-howl. Thesecond acolyte, in falling, struck the horn with his elbow and knockedit clattering over the parapet to shatter on the rocks far below.

At such headlong speed had Conan covered the ground that before theclattering echoes of that fall had died away, he was hacking at thedoor. Warned by his savage instinct, he gave back suddenly as a tide ofmolten lead splashed down from above. But the next instant he was backagain, attacking the panels with redoubled fury. He was galvanized bythe fact that his enemies had resorted to earthly weapons. The sorceryof the acolytes was limited. Their necromantic resources might well beexhausted.

Kerim Shah was hurrying up the slope, his hill-men behind him in astraggling crescent. They loosed as they ran, their arrows splinteringagainst the walls or arching over the parapet.

The heavy teak portal gave way beneath the Cimmerian's assault, and hepeered inside warily, expecting anything. He was looking into a circularchamber from which a stair wound upward. On the opposite side of thechamber a door gaped open, revealing the outer slope—and the backs ofhalf a dozen green-robed figures in full retreat.

Conan yelled, took a step into the tower, and then native caution jerkedhim back, just as a great block of stone fell crashing to the floorwhere his foot had been an instant before. Shouting to his followers, heraced around the tower.

The acolytes had evacuated their first line of defence. As Conan roundedthe tower he saw their green robes twinkling up the mountain ahead ofhim. He gave chase, panting with earnest blood-lust, and behind himKerim Shah and the Irakzai came pelting, the latter yelling like wolvesat the flight of their enemies, their fatalism momentarily submerged bytemporary triumph.

The tower stood on the lower edge of a narrow plateau whose upward slantwas barely perceptible. A few hundred yards away this plateau endedabruptly in a chasm which had been invisible farther down the mountain.Into this chasm the acolytes apparently leaped without checking theirspeed. Their pursuers saw the green robes flutter and disappear over theedge.

A few moments later they themselves were standing on the brink of themighty moat that cut them off from the castle of the Black Seers. Itwas a sheer-walled ravine that extended in either direction as far asthey could see, apparently girdling the mountain, some four hundredyards in width and five hundred feet deep. And in it, from rim to rim, astrange, translucent mist sparkled and shimmered.

Looking down, Conan grunted. Far below him, moving across the glimmeringfloor, which shone like burnished silver, he saw the forms of thegreen-robed acolytes. Their outline was wavering and indistinct, likefigures seen under deep water. They walked in single file, moving towardthe opposite wall.

Kerim Shah nocked an arrow and sent it singing downward. But when itstruck the mist that filled the chasm it seemed to lose momentum anddirection, wandering widely from its course.

'If they went down, so can we!' grunted Conan, while Kerim Shah staredafter his shaft in amazement. 'I saw them last at this spot—'

Squinting down he saw something shining like a golden thread across thecanyon floor far below. The acolytes seemed to be following this thread,and there suddenly came to him Khemsa's cryptic words—'Follow thegolden vein!' On the brink, under his very hand as he crouched, he foundit, a thin vein of sparkling gold running from an outcropping of ore tothe edge and down across the silvery floor. And he found something else,which had before been invisible to him because of the peculiarrefraction of the light. The gold vein followed a narrow ramp whichslanted down into the ravine, fitted with niches for hand and foot hold.

'Here's where they went down,' he grunted to Kerim Shah. 'They're noadepts, to waft themselves through the air! We'll follow them—'

It was at that instant that the man who had been bitten by the mad dogcried out horribly and leaped at Kerim Shah, foaming and gnashing histeeth. The Turanian, quick as a cat on his feet, sprang aside and themadman pitched head-first over the brink. The others rushed to the edgeand glared after him in amazement. The maniac did not fall plummet-like.He floated slowly down through the rosy haze like a man sinking in deepwater. His limbs moved like a man trying to swim, and his features werepurple and convulsed beyond the contortions of his madness. Far down atlast on the shining floor his body settled and lay still.

'There's death in that chasm,' muttered Kerim Shah, drawing back fromthe rosy mist that shimmered almost at his feet. 'What now, Conan?'

'On!' answered the Cimmerian grimly. 'Those acolytes are human; if themist doesn't kill them, it won't kill me.'

He hitched his belt, and his hands touched the girdle Khemsa had givenhim; he scowled, then smiled bleakly. He had forgotten that girdle; yetthrice had death passed him by to strike another victim.

The acolytes had reached the farther wall and were moving up it likegreat green flies. Letting himself upon the ramp, he descended warily.The rosy cloud lapped about his ankles, ascending as he lowered himself.It reached his knees, his thighs, his waist, his arm-pits. He felt asone feels a thick heavy fog on a damp night. With it lapping about hischin he hesitated, and then ducked under. Instantly his breath ceased;all air was shut off from him and he felt his ribs caving in on hisvitals. With a frantic effort he heaved himself up, fighting for life.His head rose above the surface and he drank air in great gulps.

Kerim Shah leaned down toward him, spoke to him, but Conan neither heardnor heeded. Stubbornly, his mind fixed on what the dying Khemsa had toldhim, the Cimmerian groped for the gold vein, and found that he had movedoff it in his descent. Several series of hand-holds were niched in theramp. Placing himself directly over the thread, he began climbing downonce more. The rosy mist rose about him, engulfed him. Now his head wasunder, but he was still drinking pure air. Above him he saw hiscompanions staring down at him, their features blurred by the haze thatshimmered over his head. He gestured for them to follow, and went downswiftly, without waiting to see whether they complied or not.

Kerim Shah sheathed his sword without comment and followed, and theIrakzai, more fearful of being left alone than of the terrors that mightlurk below, scrambled after him. Each man clung to the golden thread asthey saw the Cimmerian do.

Down the slanting ramp they went to the ravine floor and moved outacross the shining level, treading the gold vein like rope-walkers. Itwas as if they walked along an invisible tunnel through which aircirculated freely. They felt death pressing in on them above and oneither hand, but it did not touch them.

The vein crawled up a similar ramp on the other wall up which theacolytes had disappeared, and up it they went with taut nerves, notknowing what might be waiting for them among the jutting spurs of rockthat fanged the lip of the precipice.

It was the green-robed acolytes who awaited them, with knives in theirhands. Perhaps they had reached the limits to which they could retreat.Perhaps the Stygian girdle about Conan's waist could have told why theirnecromantic spells had proven so weak and so quickly exhausted. Perhapsit was knowledge of death decreed for failure that sent them leapingfrom among the rocks, eyes glaring and knives glittering, resorting intheir desperation to material weapons.

There among the rocky fangs on the precipice lip was no war of wizardcraft. It was a whirl of blades, where real steel bit and real bloodspurted, where sinewy arms dealt forthright blows that severed quiveringflesh, and men went down to be trodden under foot as the fight ragedover them.

One of the Irakzai bled to death among the rocks, but the acolytes weredown—slashed and hacked asunder or hurled over the edge to floatsluggishly down to the silver floor that shone so far below.

Then the conquerors shook blood and sweat from their eyes, and looked atone another. Conan and Kerim Shah still stood upright, and four of theIrakzai.

They stood among the rocky teeth that serrated the precipice brink, andfrom that spot a path wound up a gentle slope to a broad stair,consisting of half a dozen steps, a hundred feet across, cut out of agreen jade-like substance. They led up to a broad stage or rooflessgallery of the same polished stone, and above it rose, tier upon tier,the castle of the Black Seers. It seemed to have been carved out of thesheer stone of the mountain. The architecture was faultless, butunadorned. The many casements were barred and masked with curtainswithin. There was no sign of life, friendly or hostile.

They went up the path in silence, and warily as men treading the lair ofa serpent. The Irakzai were dumb, like men marching to a certain doom.Even Kerim Shah was silent. Only Conan seemed unaware what a monstrousdislocating and uprooting of accepted thought and action their invasionconstituted, what an unprecedented violation of tradition. He was not ofthe East; and he came of a breed who fought devils and wizards aspromptly and matter-of-factly as they battled human foes.

He strode up the shining stairs and across the wide green gallerystraight toward the great golden-bound teak door that opened upon it. Hecast but a single glance upward at the higher tiers of the greatpyramidal structure towering above him. He reached a hand for the bronzeprong that jutted like a handle from the door—then checked himself,grinning hardly. The handle was made in the shape of a serpent, headlifted on arched neck; and Conan had a suspicion that that metal headwould come to grisly life under his hand.

He struck it from the door with one blow, and its bronze clink on theglassy floor did not lessen his caution. He flipped it aside with hisknife-point, and again turned to the door. Utter silence reigned overthe towers. Far below them the mountain slopes fell away into a purplehaze of distance. The sun glittered on snow-clad peaks on either hand.High above, a vulture hung like a black dot in the cold blue of the sky.But for it, the men before the gold-bound door were the only evidence oflife, tiny figures on a green jade gallery poised on the dizzy height,with that fantastic pile of stone towering above them.

A sharp wind off the snow slashed them, whipping their tatters about.Conan's long knife splintering through the teak panels roused thestartled echoes. Again and again he struck, hewing through polished woodand metal bands alike. Through the sundered ruins he glared into theinterior, alert and suspicious as a wolf. He saw a broad chamber, thepolished stone walls untapestried, the mosaic floor uncarpeted. Square,polished ebon stools and a stone dais formed the only furnishings. Theroom was empty of human life. Another door showed in the opposite wall.

Kerim Shah designated a warrior for that duty, and the man fell backtoward the middle of the gallery, bow in hand. Conan strode into thecastle, followed by the Turanian and the three remaining Irakzai. Theone outside spat, grumbled in his beard, and started suddenly as a lowmocking laugh reached his ears.

He lifted his head and saw, on the tier above him, a tall, black-robedfigure, naked head nodding slightly as he stared down. His wholeattitude suggested mockery and malignity. Quick as a flash the Irakzaibent his bow and loosed, and the arrow streaked upward to strike full inthe black-robed breast. The mocking smile did not alter. The Seerplucked out the missile and threw it back at the bowman, not as a weaponis hurled, but with a contemptuous gesture. The Irakzai dodged,instinctively throwing up his arm. His fingers closed on the revolvingshaft.

Then he shrieked. In his hand the wooden shaft suddenlywrithed. Itsrigid outline became pliant, melting in his grasp. He tried to throw itfrom him, but it was too late. He held a living serpent in his nakedhand, and already it had coiled about his wrist and its wickedwedge-shaped head darted at his muscular arm. He screamed again and hiseyes became distended, his features purple. He went to his knees shakenby an awful convulsion, and then lay still.

The men inside had wheeled at his first cry. Conan took a swift stridetoward the open doorway, and then halted short, baffled. To the menbehind him it seemed that he strained against empty air. But though hecould see nothing, there was a slick, smooth, hard surface under hishands, and he knew that a sheet of crystal had been let down in thedoorway. Through it he saw the Irakzai lying motionless on the glassygallery, an ordinary arrow sticking in his arm.

Conan lifted his knife and smote, and the watchers were dumbfounded tosee his blow checked apparently in midair, with the loud clang of steelthat meets an unyielding substance. He wasted no more effort. He knewthat not even the legendary tulwar of Amir Khurum could shatter thatinvisible curtain.

In a few words he explained the matter to Kerim Shah, and the Turanianshrugged his shoulders. 'Well, if our exit is barred, we must findanother. In the meanwhile our way lies forward, does it not?'

With a grunt the Cimmerian turned and strode across the chamber to theopposite door, with a feeling of treading on the threshold of doom. Ashe lifted his knife to shatter the door, it swung silently open as if ofits own accord. He strode into the great hall, flanked with tall glassycolumns. A hundred feet from the door began the broad jade-green stepsof a stair that tapered toward the top like the side of a pyramid. Whatlay beyond that stair he could not tell. But between him and itsshimmering foot stood a curious altar of gleaming black jade. Four greatgolden serpents twined their tails about this altar and reared theirwedge-shaped heads in the air, facing the four quarters of the compasslike the enchanted guardians of a fabled treasure. But on the altar,between the arching necks, stood only a crystal globe filled with acloudy smoke-like substance, in which floated four golden pomegranates.

The sight stirred some dim recollection in his mind; then Conan heededthe altar no longer, for on the lower steps of the stair stood fourblack-robed figures. He had not seen them come. They were simply there,tall, gaunt, their vulture-heads nodding in unison, their feet and handshidden by their flowing garments.

One lifted his arm and the sleeve fell away revealing his hand—and itwas not a hand at all. Conan halted in mid-stride, compelled against hiswill. He had encountered a force differing subtly from Khemsa'smesmerism, and he could not advance, though he felt it in his power toretreat if he wished. His companions had likewise halted, and theyseemed even more helpless than he, unable to move in either direction.

The seer whose arm was lifted beckoned to one of the Irakzai, and theman moved toward him like one in a trance, eyes staring and fixed, bladehanging in limp fingers. As he pushed past Conan, the Cimmerian threw anarm across his breast to arrest him. Conan was so much stronger than theIrakzai that in ordinary circumstances he could have broken his spinebetween his hands. But now the muscular arm was brushed aside like strawand the Irakzai moved toward the stair, treading jerkily andmechanically. He reached the steps and knelt stiffly, proffering hisblade and bending his head. The Seer took the sword. It flashed as heswung it up and down. The Irakzai's head tumbled from his shoulders andthudded heavily on the black marble floor. An arch of blood jetted fromthe severed arteries and the body slumped over and lay with arms spreadwide.

Again a malformed hand lifted and beckoned, and another Irakzaistumbled stiffly to his doom. The ghastly drama was re-enacted andanother headless form lay beside the first.

As the third tribesman clumped his way past Conan to his death, theCimmerian, his veins bulging in his temples with his efforts to breakpast the unseen barrier that held him, was suddenly aware of alliedforces, unseen, but waking into life about him. This realization camewithout warning, but so powerfully that he could not doubt his instinct.His left hand slid involuntarily under his Bakhariot belt and closed onthe Stygian girdle. And as he gripped it he felt new strength flood hisnumbed limbs; the will to live was a pulsing white-hot fire, matched bythe intensity of his burning rage.

The third Irakzai was a decapitated corpse, and the hideous finger waslifting again when Conan felt the bursting of the invisible barrier. Afierce, involuntary cry burst from his lips as he leaped with theexplosive suddenness of pent-up ferocity. His left hand gripped thesorcerer's girdle as a drowning man grips a floating log, and the longknife was a sheen of light in his right. The men on the steps did notmove. They watched calmly, cynically; if they felt surprise they did notshow it. Conan did not allow himself to think what might chance when hecame within knife-reach of them. His blood was pounding in his temples,a mist of crimson swam before his sight. He was afire with the urge tokill—to drive his knife deep into flesh and bone, and twist the bladein blood and entrails.

Another dozen strides would carry him to the steps where the sneeringdemons stood. He drew his breath deep, his fury rising redly as hischarge gathered momentum. He was hurtling past the altar with its goldenserpents when like a levin-flash there shot across his mind again asvividly as if spoken in his external ear, the cryptic words of Khemsa:'Break the crystal ball!'

His reaction was almost without his own volition. Execution followedimpulse so spontaneously that the greatest sorcerer of the age would nothave had time to read his mind and prevent his action. Wheeling like acat from his headlong charge, he brought his knife crashing down uponthe crystal. Instantly the air vibrated with a peal of terror, whetherfrom the stairs, the altar, or the crystal itself he could not tell.Hisses filled his ears as the golden serpents, suddenly vibrant withhideous life, writhed and smote at him. But he was fired to the speed ofa maddened tiger. A whirl of steel sheared through the hideous trunksthat waved toward him, and he smote the crystal sphere again and yetagain. And the globe burst with a noise like a thunderclap, rainingfiery shards on the black marble, and the gold pomegranates, as ifreleased from captivity, shot upward toward the lofty roof and weregone.

A mad screaming, bestial and ghastly, was echoing through the greathall. On the steps writhed four black-robed figures, twisting inconvulsions, froth dripping from their livid mouths. Then with onefrenzied crescendo of inhuman ululation they stiffened and lay still,and Conan knew that they were dead. He stared down at the altar and thecrystal shards. Four headless golden serpents still coiled about thealtar, but no alien life now animated the dully gleaming metal.

Kerim Shah was rising slowly from his knees, whither he had been dashedby some unseen force. He shook his head to clear the ringing from hisears.

'Did you hear that crash when you struck? It was as if a thousandcrystal panels shattered all over the castle as that globe burst. Werethe souls of the wizards imprisoned in those golden balls?—Ha!'

Another figure stood at the head of the stair. His robe, too, was black,but of richly embroidered velvet, and there was a velvet cap on hishead. His face was calm, and not unhandsome.

'I am the Master of Yimsha!' His voice was like the chime of a templebell, but a note of cruel mirth ran through it.

'What is that to you, dead man? Have you so quickly forgotten mystrength, once lent to you, that you come armed against me, you poorfool? I think I will take your heart, Kerim Shah!'

He held out his hand as if to receive something, and the Turanian criedout sharply like a man in mortal agony. He reeled drunkenly, and then,with a splintering of bones, a rending of flesh and muscle and asnapping of mail-links, his breast burst outward with a shower of blood,and through the ghastly aperture something red and dripping shot throughthe air into the Master's outstretched hand, as a bit of steel leaps tothe magnet. The Turanian slumped to the floor and lay motionless, andthe Master laughed and hurled the object to fall before Conan's feet—astill-quivering human heart.

With a roar and a curse Conan charged the stair. From Khemsa's girdle hefelt strength and deathless hate flow into him to combat the terribleemanation of power that met him on the steps. The air filled with ashimmering steely haze through which he plunged like a swimmer, headlowered, left arm bent about his face, knife gripped low in his righthand. His half-blinded eyes, glaring over the crook of his elbow, madeout the hated shape of the Seer before and above him, the outlinewavering as a reflection wavers in disturbed water.

He was racked and torn by forces beyond his comprehension, but he felta driving power outside and beyond his own lifting him inexorably upwardand onward, despite the wizard's strength and his own agony.

Now he had reached the head of the stairs, and the Master's face floatedin the steely haze before him, and a strange fear shadowed theinscrutable eyes. Conan waded through the mist as through a surf, andhis knife lunged upward like a live thing. The keen point ripped theMaster's robe as he sprang back with a low cry. Then before Conan'sgaze, the wizard vanished—simply disappeared like a burst bubble, andsomething long and undulating darted up one of the smaller stairs thatled up to left and right from the landing.

Conan charged after it, up the left-hand stair, uncertain as to justwhat he had seen whip up those steps, but in a berserk mood that drownedthe nausea and horror whispering at the back of his consciousness.

He plunged out into a broad corridor whose uncarpeted floor anduntapestried walls were of polished jade, and something long and swiftwhisked down the corridor ahead of him, and into a curtained door. Fromwithin the chamber rose a scream of urgent terror. The sound lent wingsto Conan's flying feet and he hurtled through the curtains and headlonginto the chamber within.

A frightful scene met his glare. Yasmina cowered on the farther edge ofa velvet-covered dais, screaming her loathing and horror, an arm liftedas if to ward off attack, while before her swayed the hideous head of agiant serpent, shining neck arching up from dark-gleaming coils. With achoked cry Conan threw his knife.

Instantly the monster whirled and was upon him like the rush of windthrough tall grass. The long knife quivered in its neck, point and afoot of blade showing on one side, and the hilt and a hand's-breadth ofsteel on the other, but it only seemed to madden the giant reptile. Thegreat head towered above the man who faced it, and then darted down, thevenom-dripping jaws gaping wide. But Conan had plucked a dagger from hisgirdle and he stabbed upward as the head dipped down. The point torethrough the lower jaw and transfixed the upper, pinning them together.The next instant the great trunk had looped itself about the Cimmerianas the snake, unable to use its fangs, employed its remaining form ofattack.

Conan's left arm was pinioned among the bone-crushing folds, but hisright was free. Bracing his feet to keep upright, he stretched forth hishand, gripped the hilt of the long knife jutting from the serpent'sneck, and tore it free in a shower of blood. As if divining his purposewith more than bestial intelligence, the snake writhed and knotted,seeking to cast its loops about his right arm. But with the speed oflight the long knife rose and fell, shearing halfway through thereptile's giant trunk.

Before he could strike again, the great pliant loops fell from him andthe monster dragged itself across the floor, gushing blood from itsghastly wounds. Conan sprang after it, knife lifted, but his viciousswipe cut empty air as the serpent writhed away from him and struck itsblunt nose against a paneled screen of sandalwood. One of the panelsgave inward and the long, bleeding barrel whipped through it and wasgone.

Conan instantly attacked the screen. A few blows rent it apart and heglared into the dim alcove beyond. No horrific shape coiled there; therewas blood on the marble floor, and bloody tracks led to a cryptic archeddoor. Those tracks were of a man's bare feet....

'Conan!' He wheeled back into the chamber just in time to catch theDevi of Vendhya in his arms as she rushed across the room and threwherself upon him, catching him about the neck with a frantic clasp, halfhysterical with terror and gratitude and relief.

His wild blood had been stirred to its uttermost by all that had passed.He caught her to him in a grasp that would have made her wince atanother time, and crushed her lips with his. She made no resistance; theDevi was drowned in the elemental woman. She closed her eyes and drankin his fierce, hot, lawless kisses with all the abandon of passionatethirst. She was panting with his violence when he ceased for breath, andglared down at her lying limp in his mighty arms.

'I knew you'd come for me,' she murmured. 'You would not leave me inthis den of devils.'

At her words recollection of their environment came to him suddenly. Helifted his head and listened intently. Silence reigned over the castleof Yimsha, but it was a silence impregnated with menace. Peril crouchedin every corner, leered invisibly from every hanging.

'We'd better go while we can,' he muttered. 'Those cuts were enough tokill any common beast—orman—but a wizard has a dozen lives. Woundone, and he writhes away like a crippled snake to soak up fresh venomfrom some source of sorcery.'

He picked up the girl and carrying her in his arms like a child, hestrode out into the gleaming jade corridor and down the stairs, nervestautly alert for any sign or sound.

'I met the Master,' she whispered, clinging to him and shuddering. 'Heworked his spells on me to break my will. The most awful thing was amoldering corpse which seized me in its arms—I fainted then and lay asone dead, I do not know how long. Shortly after I regained consciousnessI heard sounds of strife below, and cries, and then that snake cameslithering through the curtains—ah!' She shook at the memory of thathorror. 'I knew somehow that it was not an illusion, but a real serpentthat sought my life.'

'It was not a shadow, at least,' answered Conan cryptically. 'He knew hewas beaten, and chose to slay you rather than let you be rescued.'

'What do you mean,he?' she asked uneasily, and then shrank againsthim, crying out, and forgetting her question. She had seen the corpsesat the foot of the stairs. Those of the Seers were not good to look at;as they lay twisted and contorted, their hands and feet were exposed toview, and at the sight Yasmina went livid and hid her face againstConan's powerful shoulder.

10 Yasmina and Conan

Conan passed through the hall quickly enough, traversed the outerchamber and approached the door that led upon the gallery. Then he sawthe floor sprinkled with tiny, glittering shards. The crystal sheet thathad covered the doorway had been shivered to bits, and he remembered thecrash that had accompanied the shattering of the crystal globe. Hebelieved that every piece of crystal in the castle had broken at thatinstant, and some dim instinct or memory of esoteric lore vaguelysuggested the truth of the monstrous connection between the Lords of theBlack Circle and the golden pomegranates. He felt the short hair bristlechilly at the back of his neck and put the matter hastily out of hismind.

He breathed a deep sigh of relief as he stepped out upon the green jadegallery. There was still the gorge to cross, but at least he could seethe white peaks glistening in the sun, and the long slopes falling awayinto the distant blue hazes.

The Irakzai lay where he had fallen, an ugly blotch on the glassysmoothness. As Conan strode down the winding path, he was surprised tonote the position of the sun. It had not yet passed its zenith; and yetit seemed to him that hours had passed since he plunged into the castleof the Black Seers.

He felt an urge to hasten, not a mere blind panic, but an instinct ofperil growing behind his back. He said nothing to Yasmina, and sheseemed content to nestle her dark head against his arching breast andfind security in the clasp of his iron arms. He paused an instant on thebrink of the chasm, frowning down. The haze which danced in the gorgewas no longer rose-hued and sparkling. It was smoky, dim, ghostly, likethe life-tide that flickered thinly in a wounded man. The thought camevaguely to Conan that the spells of magicians were more closely bound totheir personal beings than were the actions of common men to theactors.

But far below, the floor shone like tarnished silver, and the goldthread sparkled undimmed. Conan shifted Yasmina across his shoulder,where she lay docilely, and began the descent. Hurriedly he descendedthe ramp, and hurriedly he fled across the echoing floor. He had aconviction that they were racing with time, that their chances ofsurvival depended upon crossing that gorge of horrors before the woundedMaster of the castle should regain enough power to loose some other doomupon them.

When he toiled up the farther ramp and came out upon the crest, hebreathed a gusty sigh of relief and stood Yasmina upon her feet.

She stole a glance at the gleaming pyramid across the chasm; it rearedup against the snowy slope like the citadel of silence and immemorialevil.

'Are you a magician, that you have conquered the Black Seers of Yimsha,Conan of Ghor?' she asked, as they went down the path, with his heavyarm about her supple waist.

'It was a girdle Khemsa gave me before he died,' Conan answered. 'Yes, Ifound him on the trail. It is a curious one, which I'll show you when Ihave time. Against some spells it was weak, but against others it wasstrong, and a good knife is always a hearty incantation.'

'But if the girdle aided you in conquering the Master,' she argued, 'whydid it not aid Khemsa?'

He shook his head. 'Who knows? But Khemsa had been the Master's slave;perhaps that weakened its magic. He had no hold on me as he had onKhemsa. Yet I can't say that I conquered him. He retreated, but I have afeeling that we haven't seen the last of him. I want to put as manymiles between us and his lair as we can.'

He was further relieved to find horses tethered among the tamarisks ashe had left them. He loosed them swiftly and mounted the black stallion,swinging the girl up before him. The others followed, freshened by theirrest.

'Not just now!' He grinned hardly. 'Somebody—maybe the governor—killedmy seven headmen. My idiotic followers think I had something to do withit, and unless I am able to convince them otherwise, they'll hunt melike a wounded jackal.'

'Then what of me? If the headmen are dead, I am useless to you as ahostage. Will you slay me, to avenge them?'

'Then let us ride to the border,' she said. 'You'll be safe from theAfghulis there—'

'I am Queen of Vendhya,' she reminded him with a touch of her oldimperiousness. 'You have saved my life. You shall be rewarded.'

'Keep your bounty for your city-bred dogs, princess! If you're a queenof the plains, I'm a chief of the hills, and not one foot toward theborder will I take you!'

'And you'd be the Devi again,' he broke in. 'No, girl; I prefer you asyou are now—a woman of flesh and blood, riding on my saddle-bow.'

'Devil take your ransom!' he answered roughly, his arms hardening abouther supple figure. 'The kingdom of Vendhya could give me nothing Idesire half so much as I desire you. I took you at the risk of my neck;if your courtiers want you back, let them come up the Zhaibar and fightfor you.'

'But you have no followers now!' she protested. 'You are hunted! How canyou preserve your own life, much less mine?'

'I still have friends in the hills,' he answered. 'There is a chief ofthe Khurakzai who will keep you safely while I bicker with the Afghulis.If they will have none of me, by Crom! I will ride northward with you tothe steppes of thekozaki. I was a hetman among the Free Companionsbefore I rode southward. I'll make you a queen on the Zaporoska River!'

'If the idea's so repulsive,' he demanded, 'why did you yield your lipsto me so willingly?'

'Even a queen is human,' she answered, coloring. 'But because I am aqueen, I must consider my kingdom. Do not carry me away into someforeign country. Come back to Vendhya with me!'

'Well, there are customs—' she stammered, and he interrupted her with ahard laugh.

'Yes, civilized customs that won't let you do as you wish. You'll marrysome withered old king of the plains, and I can go my way with only thememory of a few kisses snatched from your lips. Ha!'

'Why?' he demanded angrily. 'To chafe your rump on gold thrones, andlisten to the plaudits of smirking, velvet-skirted fools? Where is thegain? Listen: I was born in the Cimmerian hills where the people areall barbarians. I have been a mercenary soldier, a corsair, akozak,and a hundred other things. What king has roamed the countries, foughtthe battles, loved the women, and won the plunder that I have?

'I came into Ghulistan to raise a horde and plunder the kingdoms to thesouth—your own among them. Being chief of the Afghulis was only astart. If I can conciliate them, I'll have a dozen tribes following mewithin a year. But if I can't I'll ride back to the steppes and loot theTuranian borders with thekozaki. And you'll go with me. To the devilwith your kingdom; they fended for themselves before you were born.'

She lay in his arms looking up at him, and she felt a tug at her spirit,a lawless, reckless urge that matched his own and was by it called intobeing. But a thousand generations of sovereignship rode heavy upon her.

They had left Yimsha some miles behind them, and were riding along ahigh ridge that separated two deep valleys. They had just topped a steepcrest where they could gaze down into the valley on their right hand.And there was a running fight in progress. A strong wind was blowingaway from them, carrying the sound from their ears, but even so theclashing of steel and thunder of hoofs welled up from far below.

They saw the glint of the sun on lance-tip and spired helmet. Threethousand mailed horsemen were driving before them a ragged band ofturbaned riders, who fled snarling and striking like fleeing wolves.

'Turanians,' muttered Conan. 'Squadrons from Secunderam. What the devilare they doing here?'

'Who are the men they pursue?' asked Yasmina. 'And why do they fall backso stubbornly? They can not stand against such odds.'

'Five hundred of my mad Afghulis,' he growled, scowling down into thevale. 'They're in a trap, and they know it.'

The valley was indeed a cul-de-sac at that end. It narrowed to ahigh-walled gorge, opening out further into a round bowl, completelyrimmed with lofty, unscalable walls.

The turbaned riders were being forced into this gorge, because there wasnowhere else for them to go, and they went reluctantly, in a shower ofarrows and a whirl of swords. The helmeted riders harried them, but didnot press in too rashly. They knew the desperate fury of the hilltribes, and they knew too that they had their prey in a trap from whichthere was no escape. They had recognized the hill-men as Afghulis, andthey wished to hem them in and force a surrender. They needed hostagesfor the purpose they had in mind.

Their emir was a man of decision and initiative. When he reached theGurashah valley, and found neither guides nor emissary waiting for him,he pushed on, trusting to his own knowledge of the country. All the wayfrom Secunderam there had been fighting, and tribesmen were lickingtheir wounds in many a crag-perched village. He knew there was a goodchance that neither he nor any of his helmeted spearmen would ever ridethrough the gates of Secunderam again, for the tribes would all be upbehind him now, but he was determined to carry out his orders—whichwere to take Yasmina Devi from the Afghulis at all costs, and to bringher captive to Secunderam, or if confronted by impossibility, to strikeoff her head before he himself died.

Of all this, of course, the watchers on the ridge were not aware. ButConan fidgeted with nervousness.

'Why the devil did they get themselves trapped?' he demanded of theuniverse at large. 'I know what they're doing in these parts—they werehunting me, the dogs! Poking into every valley—and found themselvespenned in before they knew it. The poor fools! They're making a stand inthe gorge, but they can't hold out for long. When the Turanians havepushed them back into the bowl, they'll slaughter them at theirleisure.'

The din welling up from below increased in volume and intensity. In thestrait of the narrow gut, the Afghulis, fighting desperately, were forthe time holding their own against the mailed riders, who could notthrow their whole weight against them.

Conan scowled darkly, moved restlessly, fingering his hilt, and finallyspoke bluntly: 'Devi, I must go down to them. I'll find a place for youto hide until I come back to you. You spoke of your kingdom—well, Idon't pretend to look on those hairy devils as my children, but afterall, such as they are, they're my henchmen. A chief should never deserthis followers, even if they desert him first. They think they were rightin kicking me out—hell, I won't be cast off! I'm still chief of theAfghulis, and I'll prove it! I can climb down on foot into the gorge.'

'But what of me?' she queried. 'You carried me away forcibly frommypeople; now will you leave me to die in the hills alone while you godown and sacrifice yourself uselessly?'

She turned her head slightly, a curious expression dawning on herbeautiful face. Then:

A distant fanfare of trumpets was borne faintly to their ears. Theystared into the deep valley on the left, and caught a glint of steel onthe farther side. A long line of lances and polished helmets moved alongthe vale, gleaming in the sunlight.

'There are thousands of them!' muttered Conan. 'It has been long since aKshatriya host has ridden this far into the hills.'

'They are searching for me!' she exclaimed. 'Give me your horse! I willride to my warriors! The ridge is not so precipitous on the left, and Ican reach the valley floor. I will lead my horsemen into the valley atthe upper end and fall upon the Turanians! We will crush them in thevise! Quick, Conan! Will you sacrifice your men to your own desire?'

The burning hunger of the steppes and the wintry forests glared out ofhis eyes, but he shook his head and swung off the stallion, placing thereins in her hands.

She wheeled away down the left-hand slope and he ran swiftly along theridge until he reached the long ragged cleft that was the defile inwhich the fight raged. Down the rugged wall he scrambled like an ape,clinging to projections and crevices, to fall at last, feet first, intothe mêlée that raged in the mouth of the gorge. Blades were whickeringand clanging about him, horses rearing and stamping, helmet plumesnodding among turbans that were stained crimson.

As he hit, he yelled like a wolf, caught a gold-worked rein, and dodgingthe sweep of a scimitar, drove his long knife upward through the rider'svitals. In another instant he was in the saddle, yelling ferociousorders to the Afghulis. They stared at him stupidly for an instant; thenas they saw the havoc his steel was wreaking among their enemies, theyfell to their work again, accepting him without comment. In that infernoof licking blades and spurting blood there was no time to ask or answerquestions.

The riders in their spired helmets and gold-worked hauberks swarmedabout the gorge mouth, thrusting and slashing, and the narrow defile waspacked and jammed with horses and men, the warriors crushed breast tobreast, stabbing with shortened blades, slashing murderously when therewas an instant's room to swing a sword. When a man went down he did notget up from beneath the stamping, swirling hoofs. Weight and sheerstrength counted heavily there, and the chief of the Afghulis did thework of ten. At such times accustomed habits sway men strongly, and thewarriors, who were used to seeing Conan in their vanguard, wereheartened mightily, despite their distrust of him.

But superior numbers counted too. The pressure of the men behind forcedthe horsemen of Turan deeper and deeper into the gorge, in the teeth ofthe flickering tulwars. Foot by foot the Afghulis were shoved back,leaving the defile-floor carpeted with dead, on which the riderstrampled. As he hacked and smote like a man possessed, Conan had timefor some chilling doubts—would Yasmina keep her word? She had but tojoin her warriors, turn southward and leave him and his band to perish.

But at last, after what seemed centuries of desperate battling, in thevalley outside there rose another sound above the clash of steel andyells of slaughter. And then with a burst of trumpets that shook thewalls, and rushing thunder of hoofs, five thousand riders of Vendhyasmote the hosts of Secunderam.

That stroke split the Turanian squadrons asunder, shattered, tore andrent them and scattered their fragments all over the valley. In aninstant the surge had ebbed back out of the gorge; there was a chaotic,confused swirl of fighting, horsemen wheeling and smiting singly and inclusters, and then the emir went down with a Kshatriya lance through hisbreast, and the riders in their spired helmets turned their horses downthe valley, spurring like mad and seeking to slash a way through theswarms which had come upon them from the rear. As they scattered inflight, the conquerors scattered in pursuit, and all across the valleyfloor, and up on the slopes near the mouth and over the crests streamedthe fugitives and the pursuers. The Afghulis, those left to ride, rushedout of the gorge and joined in the harrying of their foes, accepting theunexpected alliance as unquestioningly as they had accepted the returnof their repudiated chief.

The sun was sinking toward the distant crags when Conan, his garmentshacked to tatters and the mail under them reeking and clotted withblood, his knife dripping and crusted to the hilt, strode over thecorpses to where Yasmina Devi sat her horse among her nobles on thecrest of the ridge, near a lofty precipice.

'You kept your word, Devi!' he roared. 'By Crom, though, I had some badseconds down in that gorge—look out!'

Down from the sky swooped a vulture of tremendous size with a thunder ofwings that knocked men sprawling from their horses.

The scimitar-like beak was slashing for the Devi's soft neck, but Conanwas quicker—a short run, a tigerish leap, the savage thrust of adripping knife, and the vulture voiced a horribly human cry, pitchedsideways and went tumbling down the cliffs to the rocks and river athousand feet below. As it dropped, its black wings thrashing the air,it took on the semblance, not of a bird, but of a black-robed human bodythat fell, arms in wide black sleeves thrown abroad.

Conan turned to Yasmina, his red knife still in his hand, his blue eyessmoldering, blood oozing from wounds on his thickly muscled arms andthighs.

'You are the Devi again,' he said, grinning fiercely at the gold-claspedgossamer robe she had donned over her hill-girl attire, and awed not atall by the imposing array of chivalry about him. 'I have you to thankfor the lives of some three hundred and fifty of my rogues, who are atleast convinced that I didn't betray them. You have put my hands on thereins of conquest again.'

'I still owe you my ransom,' she said, her dark eyes glowing as theyswept over him. 'Ten thousand pieces of gold I will pay you—'

He made a savage, impatient gesture, shook the blood from his knife andthrust it back in its scabbard, wiping his hands on his mail.

'I will collect your ransom in my own way, at my own time,' he said. 'Iwill collect it in your palace at Ayodhya, and I will come with fiftythousand men to see that the scales are fair.'

She laughed, gathering her reins into her hands. 'And I will meet you onthe shores of the Jhumda with a hundred thousand!'

His eyes shone with fierce appreciation and admiration, and steppingback, he lifted his hand with a gesture that was like the assumption ofkingship, indicating that her road was clear before her.

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