Conan the Adventurer Part 22

The young Aquilonian looked warily about him. After all, he had no a.s.surance that the people of Gazal would receive him in a friendly manner. He saw people moving leisurely about the streets. When they halted and stared at him, his flesh for some reason crawled. They were men and women with kindly features, and their looks were mild. But their interest seemed so slight-so vague and impersonal. They made no move to approach or speak to him. It might have been the commonest thing in the world for an armed horseman to ride into their city from the desert; yet Amalric knew that this was not the case, and the casual manner with which the people of Gazal received him caused a faint uneasiness in his bosom.

Lissa spoke to them, indicating Amalric, whose hand she lifted like an affectionate child. "This is Amalric of Aquilonia, who rescued me from the black people and has brought me home."

A polite murmur of welcome rose from the people, and several of them approached to extend their hands. Amalric thought he had never seen such vague, kindly faces; their eves were soft and mild, without fear and without wonder. Yet they were not the eyes of stupid oxen; rather, they were the eyes of people wrapped in dreams.

Their stare gave him a feeling of unreality; he hardly knew what was said to him. His mind was occupied by the strangeness of it all: these quiet, dreamy people, in their silken tunics and soft sandals, moving with aimless vagueness among the discolored ruins. A lotus paradise of illusion? Somehow that sinister red tower struck a discordant note.

One of the men, with a smooth, unlined face but hair of silver, said: "Aquilonia? There was an invasion-we heard by King Bragorus of Nemedia.

How went the war?"

"He was driven hack," answered Amalric briefly, resisting a shudder.

Nine hundred years had pa.s.sed since Bragorus had led his spearmen across the marches of Aquilonia.

His questioner did not press him further; the people drifted away, and Lissa tugged at his hand. He turned and feasted his eyes upon her. In a realm of illusion and dream, her soft, firm body anch.o.r.ed his wandering conjectures. She was no dream; she was real; her body was sweet and tangible as cream and honey.

"Come," she said, "let us go to rest and eat."

"What of the people?" he demurred. "Will you not tell them of your experiences?"

"They would not heed, except for a few moments," she answered. "They would listen a little, then drift away. They hardly know I have been gone. Come!"

Amalric led the horse and the camel into an enclosed court, where the gra.s.s grew high and water seeped from a broken fountain into a marble trough. There he tethered them; then he followed Lissa. Taking his hand, she led him across the court into an arched doorway. .Night had fallen. In the open s.p.a.ce above the court; the stars cl.u.s.tered, etching the jagged pinnacles.

Through a series of dark chambers Lissa went, moving with the sureness of long practice. Amalric groped after her, guided by her little hand in his. He found it no pleasant adventure. The scent of dust and decay hung in the thick darkness. Under his feet were sometimes broken tiles and sometimes worn carpets. His free hand touched the fretted arches of doorways. Then the stars gleamed through a broken roof, showing him a dim winding hallway, hung with rotting tapestries. They rustled in a faint breeze; their noise was like the whispering of witches, causing the hair of his scalp to stir.

Then they came into a chamber dimly lighted by star-shine streaming through open windows, and Lissa released his hand. She fumbled for an instant and produced a faint light It was a gla.s.sy k.n.o.b, which glowed with a golden radiance. She set it on a marble table and indicated that Amalric should recline on a couch thickly littered with silks. Groping into some hidden recess, she produced a golden vessel of wine and others containing food unfamiliar to Amalric. There were dates; but the other fruits and vegetables, pallid and insipid to his taste, he did not recognize. The wine was pleasant to the palate but no more heady than dishwater.

Seated on a marble seat facing him, Lissa nibbled daintily.

"What sort of place is this?" he demanded. "You are like these people, yet strangely unlike them."

"They say I am like our ancestors," answered Lissa. "Long ago, they came into the desert and built this city amid a great oasis, which contained a series of springs. The stone they took from the ruins of a much older city-only the Red Tower-" (her voice dropped, and she glanced nervously at the star-framing windows) "-only the red tower stood there. It was empty-then.

"Our ancestors, who were called Gazali, once dwelt in southern Koth.

They were noted for their scholarly wisdom. But they sought to revive the worship of Mitra, which the Kothians had long since abandoned, and the king drove them from his kingdom. They came southward, many of them: priests, scholars, teachers, and scientists, with their Shemitish slaves.

"They reared Gazal in the desert; but the slaves revolted almost as soon as the city was built and, fleeing, mixed with the wild tribes of the desert. They were not ill-treated; but word came to them in the night-a word that sent them fleeing madly from the city into the desert.

"My people dwelt here, learning to produce their food and drink from such material as was at hand. Their learning was a marvel. When the slaves fled, they took with them every camel, horse, and a.s.s in the city. Thenceforth, there was no communication with the outer world.

There are whole chambers in Gazal filled with maps and books and chronicles, but they are all nine hundred years old at the least; for it was nine hundred years ago that my people fled from Koth. Since then, no man of the outside world has set foot in Gazal. And the people are slowly vanishing. They have become so dreamy and introspective that they have neither human pa.s.sions nor human appet.i.tes. The city falls into ruins and none moves a hand to repair it. Honor-" (she choked and shuddered) "-when horror came upon them, they could neither flee nor fight."

"What do you mean?" he whispered, a cold wind blowing on his spine. The rustling of rotten hangings down nameless black corridors stirred dim fears in his soul.

She shook her head. She rose, came around the marble table, and laid hands on his shoulders. Her eyes were wet and shone with horror and a desperate yearning that caught at his throat. Instinctively his arm went around her lithe form, and he felt her tremble.

"Hold me!" she' begged. "I am afraid! Oh, I have dreamed of such a man as you. I am not like my people; they are dead men walking forgotten streets; but I am alive. I am warm and sentient. I hunger and thirst and yearn for life. I cannot abide the silent streets and ruined halls and dim people of Gazal, although I have never known anything else.

That is why I ran away; I yearned for life-"

She was sobbing uncontrollably in his arms. Her hair streamed over his face; her fragrance made him dizzy. Her firm body strained against his.

She was lying across his knees, her arms locked about his neck.

Straining her to his breast, he crushed her lips with his. Eyes, lips, cheeks, hair, throat, b.r.e.a.s.t.s-he showered her with hot kisses, unto her sobs changed to panting gasps. His pa.s.sion was not the violence of a ravisher. The pa.s.sion that slumbered in her woke in one overpowering wave. The glowing golden ball, struck by his groping fingers, tumbled to the floor and was extinguished. Only the starshine gleamed through the windows.

Lying in Amalric's arms on the silk-heaped couch, Lissa opened her heart and whispered her dreams and hopes and aspirations-childish, pathetic, terrible.

"I'll take you away," he muttered. 'Tomorrow. You are right; Gazal is a city of the dead. We will seek life in the outer world. It is violent, rough, and cruel, but better than this living death-"

The night was broken by a shuddering cry of agony, horror, and despair.

Its timbre brought out cold sweat on Amalric's skin. He started upright from the couch, but Lissa desperately clung to him.

"No, no!" she begged in a frantic whisper. "Do not go! Stay!"

"But murder is being done!" he exclaimed, fumbling for his sword. The cries seemed to come from across an outer court. Mingled with them was an indescribable, tearing, rending sound. They rose higher and thinner, unbearable in their hopeless agony, then sank away in a long, shuddering sob.

"I have heard men dying on the rack cry out like that!" muttered Amalric, shaking with horror. "What devil's work is this?"

Lissa was trembling violently in a frenzy of terror. He felt the wild pounding of her heart.

"It is the horror of which I spoke!" she whispered. The horror that dwells in the Red Tower. Long ago it came; some say it dwelt there in the lost years and returned after the building of Gazal. It devours human beings. What it is, no one knows, since none has seen it and lived to tell of it. It is a G.o.d or a devil. That is why the slaves fled; why the desert people shun Gazal. Many of us have gone into its awful belly. Eventually, all will have gone, and it will rule over an empty city, as men say it ruled over the ruins from which Gazal was reared."

"Why have the people stayed to be devoured?" he demanded.

"I do not know," she whimpered. "They dream..."

"Hypnosis," muttered Amalric; "hypnosis coupled with decay. I saw it in their eyes. This devil has them mesmerized. Mitra, what a foul secret!"

Lissa pressed her face against his bosom and dung to him.

"But what are we to do?" he asked uneasily.

There is nothing to do," she whispered. 'Tour sword would be useless.

Perhaps if will not harm us. It has taken a victim tonight. We must wait like sheep for the butcher."

"I'll be d.a.m.ned if I will-" Amalric exclaimed, galvanized. "We will not wait for morning. We'll go tonight Make a bundle of food and drink.

I'll get the horse and the camel and bring them to the court outside.

Meet me there?

Since the unknown monster had already struck, Amalric felt that he was safe in leaving the girl alone for a few minutes. But his flesh crawled as he groped his way down the winding corridor and through the black chambers, where the swinging tapestries whispered. He found the beasts huddled nervously together in the court where he had left them. The stallion whinnied and nuzzled him, as if sensing peril in the breathless night.

<>Amalric saddled and bridled the animals and led them through the narrow opening into the street. A few minutes later, he was standing in the starlit court. Even as he reached it, he was electrified by an awful scream, which rang shudderingly upon the air. It came from the chamber where he had left Lissa.

He answered that piteous cry with a wild yell. Drawing his sword, he rushed across the court and hurled himself through the window. The golden ball was glowing again, carving out black shadows in the shrinking corners. Silks lay scattered on the floor. The marble seat was upset; but the chamber was empty.

A sick weakness overcame Amalric, and he staggered against the marble table, the dim light wavering dizzily to his sight Then he was swept by a mad rage. The Red Tower! There the fiend would bear its victim!

He darted back across the court; sought the streets, and raced toward the tower, which glowed with an unholy light under the stars. The streets did not run straight. He cut through silent black buildings and crossed courts whose rank gra.s.s waved in the night wind.

Ahead of him, cl.u.s.tered about the crimson tower, rose a heap of ruins, where decay had eaten more savagely than at the rest of the city.

Apparently none dwelt among them. They reeled and tumbled, a crumbling ma.s.s of quaking masonry, with the red tower rearing up among them like a poisonous red flower from charnel-house ruin.