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Title: Shadows in Zamboula

Author: Robert E. Howard

Release date: February 25, 2013 [eBook #42196]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHADOWS IN
ZAMBOULA ***

SHADOWS IN ZAMBOULA

By Robert E. Howard
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was first published in Weird Tales
November 1935. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

1 A Drum Begins
'Peril hides in the house of Aram Baksh!'
The speaker's voice quivered with earnestness and his lean, black-nailed
fingers clawed at Conan's mightily muscled arm as he croaked his warning.
He was a wiry, sun-burnt man with a straggling black beard, and his ragged
garments proclaimed him a nomad. He looked smaller and meaner than
ever in contrast to the giant Cimmerian with his black brows, broad chest,
and powerful limbs. They stood in a corner of the Sword-Makers' Bazar,
and on either side of them flowed past the many-tongued, many-colored
stream of the Zamboula streets, which is exotic, hybrid, flamboyant and
clamorous.
Conan pulled his eyes back from following a bold-eyed, red-lipped Ghanara
whose short skirt bared her brown thigh at each insolent step, and frowned
down at his importunate companion.
'What do you mean by peril?' he demanded.
The desert man glanced furtively over his shoulder before replying, and
lowered his voice.
'Who can say? But desert men and travelers have slept in the house of Aram
Baksh, and never been seen or heard of again. What became of them? He
swore they rose and went their way—and it is true that no citizen of the city
has ever disappeared from his house. But no one saw the travelers again,
and men say that goods and equipment recognized as theirs have been seen
in the bazars. If Aram did not sell them, after doing away with their owners,
how came they here?'
'I have no goods,' growled the Cimmerian, touching the shagreen-bound hilt
of the broadsword that hung at his hip. 'I have even sold my horse.'
'But it is not always rich strangers who vanish by night from the house of
Aram Baksh!' chattered the Zuagir. 'Nay, poor desert men have slept there—
because his score is less than that of the other taverns—and have been seen

no more. Once a chief of the Zuagirs whose son had thus vanished
complained to the satrap, Jungir Khan, who ordered the house searched by
soldiers.'
'And they found a cellar full of corpses?' asked Conan in good-humored
derision.
'Nay! They found naught! And drove the chief from the city with threats
and curses! But—' he drew closer to Conan and shivered—'something else
was found! At the edge of the desert, beyond the houses, there is a clump of
palm trees, and within that grove there is a pit. And within that pit have
been found human bones, charred and blackened! Not once, but many
times!'
'Which proves what?' grunted the Cimmerian.
'Aram Baksh is a demon! Nay, in this accursed city which Stygians built
and which Hyrkanians rule—where white, brown and black folk mingle
together to produce hybrids of all unholy hues and breeds—who can tell
who is a man, and who a demon in disguise? Aram Baksh is a demon in the
form of a man! At night he assumes his true guise and carries his guests off
into the desert where his fellow demons from the waste meet in conclave.'
'Why does he always carry off strangers?' asked Conan skeptically.
'The people of the city would not suffer him to slay their people, but they
care naught for the strangers who fall into his hands. Conan, you are of the
West, and know not the secrets of this ancient land. But, since the beginning
of happenings, the demons of the desert have worshipped Yog, the Lord of
the Empty Abodes, with fire—fire that devours human victims.
'Be warned! You have dwelt for many moons in the tents of the Zuagirs, and
you are our brother! Go not to the house of Aram Baksh!'
'Get out of sight!' Conan said suddenly. 'Yonder comes a squad of the city-
watch. If they see you they may remember a horse that was stolen from the
satrap's stable—'
The Zuagir gasped, and moved convulsively. He ducked between a booth
and a stone horse-trough, pausing only long enough to chatter: 'Be warned,

my brother! There are demons in the house of Aram Baksh!' Then he darted
down a narrow alley and was gone.
Conan shifted his broad sword-belt to his liking, and calmly returned the
searching stares directed at him by the squad of watchmen as they swung
past. They eyed him curiously and suspiciously, for he was a man who
stood out even in such a motley throng as crowded the winding streets of
Zamboula. His blue eyes and alien features distinguished him from the
Eastern swarms, and the straight sword at his hip added point to the racial
difference.
The watchmen did not accost him, but swung on down the street, while the
crowd opened a lane for them. They were Pelishtim, squat, hook-nosed,
with blue-black beards sweeping their mailed breasts—mercenaries hired
for work the ruling Turanians considered beneath themselves, and no less
hated by the mongrel population for that reason.
Conan glanced at the sun, just beginning to dip behind the flat-topped
houses on the western side of the bazar, and hitching once more at his belt,
moved off in the direction of Aram Baksh's tavern.
With a hillman's stride he moved through the ever-shifting colors of the
streets, where the ragged tunics of whining beggars brushed against the
ermine-trimmed khalats of lordly merchants, and the pearl-sewn satin of
rich courtezans. Giant black slaves slouched along, jostling blue-bearded
wanderers from the Shemitish cities, ragged nomads from the surrounding
deserts, traders and adventurers from all the lands of the East.
The native population was no less heterogenous. Here, centuries ago, the
armies of Stygia had come, carving an empire out of the eastern desert.
Zamboula was but a small trading-town then, lying amidst a ring of oases,
and inhabited by descendants of nomads. The Stygians built it into a city
and settled it with their own people, and with Shemite and Kushite slaves.
The ceaseless caravans, threading the desert from east to west and back
again, brought riches and more mingling of races. Then came the
conquering Turanians, riding out of the East to thrust back the boundaries of
Stygia, and now for a generation Zamboula had been Turan's westernmost
outpost, ruled by a Turanian satrap.

The babel of a myriad tongues smote on the Cimmerian's ears as the restless
pattern of the Zamboula streets weaved about him—cleft now and then by a
squad of clattering horsemen, the tall, supple warriors of Turan, with dark
hawk-faces, clinking metal and curved swords. The throng scampered from
under their horses' hoofs, for they were the lords of Zamboula. But tall,
somber Stygians, standing back in the shadows, glowered darkly,
remembering their ancient glories. The hybrid population cared little
whether the king who controlled their destinies dwelt in dark Khemi or
gleaming Aghrapur. Jungir Khan ruled Zamboula, and men whispered that
Nafertari, the satrap's mistress, ruled Jungir Khan; but the people went their
way, flaunting their myriad colors in the streets, bargaining, disputing,
gambling, swilling, loving, as the people of Zamboula have done for all the
centuries its towers and minarets have lifted over the sands of the
Kharamun.
Bronze lanterns, carved with leering dragons, had been lighted in the streets
before Conan reached the house of Aram Baksh. The tavern was the last
occupied house on the street, which ran west. A wide garden, enclosed by a
wall, where date-palms grew thick, separated it from the houses farther east.
To the west of the inn stood another grove of palms, through which the
street, now become a road, wound out into the desert. Across the road from
the tavern stood a row of deserted huts, shaded by straggling palm trees,
and occupied only by bats and jackals. As Conan came down the road he
wondered why the beggars, so plentiful in Zamboula, had not appropriated
these empty houses for sleeping quarters. The lights ceased some distance
behind him. Here were no lanterns, except the one hanging before the
tavern gate: only the stars, the soft dust of the road underfoot, and the rustle
of the palm leaves in the desert breeze.
Aram's gate did not open upon the road, but upon the alley which ran
between the tavern and the garden of the date-palms. Conan jerked lustily at
the rope which depended from the bell beside the lantern, augmenting its
clamor by hammering on the iron-bound teakwork gate with the hilt of his
sword. A wicket opened in the gate and a black face peered through.
'Open, blast you,' requested Conan. 'I'm a guest. I've paid Aram for a room,
and a room I'll have, by Crom!'

The black craned his neck to stare into the starlit road behind Conan; but he
opened the gate without comment, and closed it again behind the
Cimmerian, locking and bolting it. The wall was unusually high; but there
were many thieves in Zamboula, and a house on the edge of the desert
might have to be defended against a nocturnal nomad raid. Conan strode
through a garden where great pale blossoms nodded in the starlight, and
entered the tap-room, where a Stygian with the shaven head of a student sat
at a table brooding over nameless mysteries, and some nondescripts
wrangled over a game of dice in a corner.
Aram Baksh came forward, walking softly, a portly man, with a black beard
that swept his breast, a jutting hook-nose, and small black eyes which were
never still.
'You wish food?' he asked. 'Drink?'
'I ate a joint of beef and a loaf of bread in the suk,' grunted Conan. 'Bring
me a tankard of Ghazan wine—I've got just enough left to pay for it.' He
tossed a copper coin on the wine-splashed board.
'You did not win at the gaming-tables?'
'How could I, with only a handful of silver to begin with? I paid you for the
room this morning, because I knew I'd probably lose. I wanted to be sure I
had a roof over my head tonight. I notice nobody sleeps in the streets in
Zamboula. The very beggars hunt a niche they can barricade before dark.
The city must be full of a particularly blood-thirsty brand of thieves.'
He gulped the cheap wine with relish, and then followed Aram out of the
tap-room. Behind him the players halted their game to stare after him with a
cryptic speculation in their eyes. They said nothing, but the Stygian
laughed, a ghastly laugh of inhuman cynicism and mockery. The others
lowered their eyes uneasily, avoiding one another's glance. The arts studied
by a Stygian scholar are not calculated to make him share the feelings of a
normal human being.
Conan followed Aram down a corridor lighted by copper lamps, and it did
not please him to note his host's noiseless tread. Aram's feet were clad in
soft slippers and the hallway was carpeted with thick Turanian rugs; but
there was an unpleasant suggestion of stealthiness about the Zamboulan.

At the end of the winding corridor Aram halted at a door, across which a
heavy iron bar rested in powerful metal brackets. This Aram lifted and
showed the Cimmerian into a well-appointed chamber, the windows of
which, Conan instantly noted, were small and strongly set with twisted bars
of iron, tastefully gilded. There were rugs on the floor, a couch, after the
Eastern fashion, and ornately carved stools. It was a much more elaborate
chamber than Conan could have procured for the price nearer the center of
the city—a fact that had first attracted him, when, that morning, he
discovered how slim a purse his roisterings for the past few days had left
him. He had ridden into Zamboula from the desert a week before.
Aram had lighted a bronze lamp, and he now called Conan's attention to the
two doors. Both were provided with heavy bolts.
'You may sleep safely tonight, Cimmerian,' said Aram, blinking over his
bushy beard from the inner doorway.
Conan grunted and tossed his naked broadsword on the couch.
'Your bolts and bars are strong; but I always sleep with steel by my side.'
Aram made no reply; he stood fingering his thick beard for a moment as he
stared at the grim weapon. Then silently he withdrew, closing the door
behind him. Conan shot the bolt into place, crossed the room, opened the
opposite door and looked out. The room was on the side of the house that
faced the road running west from the city. The door opened into a small
court that was enclosed by a wall of its own. The end-walls, which shut it
off from the rest of the tavern compound, were high and without entrances;
but the wall that flanked the road was low, and there was no lock on the
gate.
Conan stood for a moment in the door, the glow of the bronze lamp behind
him, looking down the road to where it vanished among the dense palms.
Their leaves rustled together in the faint breeze; beyond them lay the naked
desert. Far up the street, in the other direction, lights gleamed and the noises
of the city came faintly to him. Here was only starlight, the whispering of
the palm leaves, and beyond that low wall, the dust of the road and the
deserted huts thrusting their flat roofs against the low stars. Somewhere
beyond the palm groves a drum began.

The garbled warnings of the Zuagir returned to him, seeming somehow less
fantastic than they had seemed in the crowded, sunlit streets. He wondered
again at the riddle of those empty huts. Why did the beggars shun them? He
turned back into the chamber, shut the door and bolted it.
The light began to flicker, and he investigated, swearing when he found the
palm oil in the lamp was almost exhausted. He started to shout for Aram,
then shrugged his shoulders and blew out the light. In the soft darkness he
stretched himself fully clad on the couch, his sinewy hand by instinct
searching for and closing on the hilt of his broadsword. Glancing idly at the
stars framed in the barred windows, with the murmur of the breeze through
the palms in his ears, he sank into slumber with a vague consciousness of
the muttering drum, out on the desert—the low rumble and mutter of a
leather-covered drum, beaten with soft, rhythmic strokes of an open black
hand....

2 The Night Skulkers
It was the stealthy opening of a door which awakened the Cimmerian. He
did not awake as civilized men do, drowsy and drugged and stupid. He
awoke instantly, with a clear mind, recognizing the sound that had
interrupted his sleep. Lying there tensely in the dark he saw the outer door
slowly open. In a widening crack of starlit sky he saw framed a great black
bulk, broad, stooping shoulders and a misshapen head blocked out against
the stars.
Conan felt the skin crawl between his shoulders. He had bolted that door
securely. How could it be opening now, save by supernatural agency? And
how could a human being possess a head like that outlined against the stars?
All the tales he had heard in the Zuagir tents of devils and goblins came
back to bead his flesh with clammy sweat. Now the monster slid noiselessly
into the room, with a crouching posture and a shambling gait; and a familiar
scent assailed the Cimmerian's nostrils, but did not reassure him, since
Zuagir legendry represented demons as smelling like that.
Noiselessly Conan coiled his long legs under him; his naked sword was in
his right hand, and when he struck it was as suddenly and murderously as a
tiger lunging out of the dark. Not even a demon could have avoided that
catapulting charge. His sword met and clove through flesh and bone, and
something went heavily to the floor with a strangling cry. Conan crouched
in the dark above it, sword dripping in his hand. Devil or beast or man, the
thing was dead there on the floor. He sensed death as any wild thing senses
it. He glared through the half-open door into the starlit court beyond. The
gate stood open, but the court was empty.
Conan shut the door but did not bolt it. Groping in the darkness he found
the lamp and lighted it. There was enough oil in it to burn for a minute or
so. An instant later he was bending over the figure that sprawled on the
floor in a pool of blood.
It was a gigantic black man, naked but for a loin-cloth. One hand still
grasped a knotty-headed bludgeon. The fellow's kinky wool was built up

into horn-like spindles with twigs and dried mud. This barbaric coiffure had
given the head its misshapen appearance in the starlight. Provided with a
clue to the riddle, Conan pushed back the thick red lips, and grunted as he
stared down at teeth filed to points.
He understood now the mystery of the strangers who had disappeared from
the house of Aram Baksh; the riddle of the black drum thrumming out there
beyond the palm groves, and of that pit of charred bones—that pit where
strange meat might be roasted under the stars, while black beasts squatted
about to glut a hideous hunger. The man on the floor was a cannibal slave
from Darfar.
There were many of his kind in the city. Cannibalism was not tolerated
openly in Zamboula. But Conan knew now why people locked themselves
in so securely at night, and why even beggars shunned the open alleys and
doorless ruins. He grunted in disgust as he visualized brutish black shadows
skulking up and down the nighted streets, seeking human prey—and such
men as Aram Baksh to open the doors to them. The innkeeper was not a
demon; he was worse. The slaves from Darfar were notorious thieves; there
was no doubt that some of their pilfered loot found its way into the hands of
Aram Baksh. And in return he sold them human flesh.
Conan blew out the light, stepped to the door and opened it, and ran his
hand over the ornaments on the outer side. One of them was movable and
worked the bolt inside. The room was a trap to catch human prey like
rabbits. But this time instead of a rabbit it had caught a saber-toothed tiger.
Conan returned to the other door, lifted the bolt and pressed against it. It
was immovable and he remembered the bolt on the other side. Aram was
taking no chances either with his victims or the men with whom he dealt.
Buckling on his sword-belt, the Cimmerian strode out into the court, closing
the door behind him. He had no intention of delaying the settlement of his
reckoning with Aram Baksh. He wondered how many poor devils had been
bludgeoned in their sleep and dragged out of that room and down the road
that ran through the shadowed palm groves to the roasting-pit.
He halted in the court. The drum was still muttering, and he caught the
reflection of a leaping red glare through the groves. Cannibalism was more
than a perverted appetite with the black men of Darfar; it was an integral

element of their ghastly cult. The black vultures were already in conclave.
But whatever flesh filled their bellies that night, it would not be his.
To reach Aram Baksh he must climb one of the walls which separated the
small enclosure from the main compound. They were high, meant to keep
out the man-eaters; but Conan was no swamp-bred black man; his thews
had been steeled in boyhood on the sheer cliffs of his native hills. He was
standing at the foot of the nearer wall when a cry echoed under the trees.
In an instant Conan was crouching at the gate, glaring down the road. The
sound had come from the shadows of the huts across the road. He heard a
frantic choking and gurgling such as might result from a desperate attempt
to shriek, with a black hand fastened over the victim's mouth. A close-knit
clump of figures emerged from the shadows beyond the huts, and started
down the road—three huge black men carrying a slender, struggling figure
between them. Conan caught the glimmer of pale limbs writhing in the
starlight, even as, with a convulsive wrench, the captive slipped from the
grasp of the brutal fingers and came flying up the road, a supple young
woman, naked as the day she was born. Conan saw her plainly before she
ran out of the road and into the shadows between the huts. The blacks were
at her heels, and back in the shadows the figures merged and an intolerable
scream of anguish and horror rang out.
Stirred to red rage by the ghoulishness of the episode, Conan raced across
the road.
Neither victim nor abductors were aware of his presence until the soft swish
of the dust about his feet brought them about, and then he was almost upon
them, coming with the gusty fury of a hill wind. Two of the blacks turned to
meet him, lifting their bludgeons. But they failed to estimate properly the
speed at which he was coming. One of them was down, disemboweled,
before he could strike, and wheeling cat-like, Conan evaded the stroke of
the other's cudgel and lashed in a whistling counter-cut. The black's head
flew into the air; the headless body took three staggering steps, spurting
blood and clawing horribly at the air with groping hands, and then slumped
to the dust.
The remaining cannibal gave back with a strangled yell, hurling his captive
from him. She tripped and rolled in the dust, and the black fled in blind

panic toward the city. Conan was at his heels. Fear winged the black feet,
but before they reached the easternmost hut, he sensed death at his back,
and bellowed like an ox in the slaughter-yards.
'Black dog of hell!' Conan drove his sword between the dusky shoulders
with such vengeful fury that the broad blade stood out half its length from
the black breast. With a choking cry the black stumbled headlong, and
Conan braced his feet and dragged out his sword as his victim fell.
Only the breeze disturbed the leaves. Conan shook his head as a lion shakes
its mane and growled his unsatiated blood-lust. But no more shapes slunk
from the shadows, and before the huts the starlit road stretched empty. He
whirled at the quick patter of feet behind him, but it was only the girl,
rushing to throw herself on him and clasp his neck in a desperate grasp,
frantic from terror of the abominable fate she had just escaped.
'Easy, girl,' he grunted. 'You're all right. How did they catch you?'
She sobbed something unintelligible. He forgot all about Aram Baksh as he
scrutinized her by the light of the stars. She was white, though a very
definite brunette, obviously one of Zamboula's many mixed breeds. She
was tall, with a slender, supple form, as he was in a good position to
observe. Admiration burned in his fierce eyes as he looked down on her
splendid bosom and her lithe limbs, which still quivered from fright and
exertion. He passed an arm around her flexible waist and said, reassuringly:
'Stop shaking, wench; you're safe enough.'
His touch seemed to restore her shaken sanity. She tossed back her thick,
glossy locks and cast a fearful glance over her shoulder, while she pressed
closer to the Cimmerian as if seeking security in the contact.
'They caught me in the streets,' she muttered, shuddering. 'Lying in wait,
beneath a dark arch—black men, like great, hulking apes! Set have mercy
on me! I shall dream of it!'
'What were you doing out on the streets this time of night?' he inquired,
fascinated by the satiny feel of her sleek skin under his questing fingers.
She raked back her hair and stared blankly up into his face. She did not
seem aware of his caresses.

'My lover,' she said. 'My lover drove me into the streets. He went mad and
tried to kill me. As I fled from him I was seized by those beasts.'
'Beauty like yours might drive a man mad,' quoth Conan, running his
fingers experimentally through her glossy tresses.
She shook her head, like one emerging from a daze. She no longer
trembled, and her voice was steady.
'It was the spite of a priest—of Totrasmek, the high priest of Hanuman, who
desires me for himself—the dog!'
'No need to curse him for that,' grinned Conan. 'The old hyena has better
taste than I thought.'
She ignored the bluff compliment. She was regaining her poise swiftly.
'My lover is a—a young Turanian soldier. To spite me, Totrasmek gave him
a drug that drove him mad. Tonight he snatched up a sword and came at me
to slay me in his madness, but I fled from him into the streets. The negroes
seized me and brought me to this—what was that?'
Conan had already moved. Soundlessly as a shadow he drew her behind the
nearest hut, beneath the straggling palms. They stood in tense stillness,
while the low mutterings both had heard grew louder until voices were
distinguishable. A group of negroes, some nine or ten, were coming along
the road from the direction of the city. The girl clutched Conan's arm and he
felt the terrified quivering of her supple body against his.
Now they could understand the gutturals of the black men.
'Our brothers have already assembled at the pit,' said one. 'We have had no
luck. I hope they have enough for us.'
'Aram promised us a man,' muttered another, and Conan mentally promised
Aram something.
'Aram keeps his word,' grunted yet another. 'Many a man we have taken
from his tavern. But we pay him well. I myself have given him ten bales of
silk I stole from my master. It was good silk, by Set!'

The blacks shuffled past, bare splay feet scuffing up the dust, and their
voices dwindled down the road.
'Well for us those corpses are lying behind these huts,' muttered Conan. 'If
they look in Aram's death-room they'll find another. Let's begone.'
'Yes, let us hasten!' begged the girl, almost hysterical again. 'My lover is
wandering somewhere in the streets alone. The negroes may take him.'
'A devil of a custom this is!' growled Conan, as he led the way toward the
city, paralleling the road but keeping behind the huts and straggling trees.
'Why don't the citizens clean out these black dogs?'
'They are valuable slaves,' murmured the girl. 'There are so many of them
they might revolt if they were denied the flesh for which they lust. The
people of Zamboula know they skulk the streets at night, and all are careful
to remain within locked doors, except when something unforeseen happens,
as it did to me. The blacks prey on anything they catch, but they seldom
catch anybody but strangers. The people of Zamboula are not concerned
with the strangers that pass through the city.
'Such men as Aram Baksh sell these strangers to the blacks. He would not
dare attempt such a thing with a citizen.'
Conan spat in disgust, and a moment later led his companion out into the
road which was becoming a street, with still, unlighted houses on each side.
Slinking in the shadows was not congenial to his nature.
'Where do you want to go?' he asked. The girl did not seem to object to his
arm about her waist.
'To my house, to rouse my servants,' she answered. 'To bid them search for
my lover. I do not wish the city—the priests—anyone—to know of his
madness. He—he is a young officer with a promising future. Perhaps we
can drive this madness from him if we can find him.'
'If we find him?' rumbled Conan. 'What makes you think I want to spend the
night scouring the streets for a lunatic?'
She cast a quick glance into his face, and properly interpreted the gleam in
his blue eyes. Any woman could have known that he would follow her

wherever she led—for a while, at least. But being a woman, she concealed
her knowledge of that fact.
'Please,' she began with a hint of tears in her voice, 'I have no one else to
ask for help—you have been kind—'
'All right!' he grunted. 'All right! What's the young reprobate's name?'
'Why—Alafdhal. I am Zabibi, a dancing-girl. I have danced often before the
satrap, Jungir Khan, and his mistress Nafertari, and before all the lords and
royal ladies of Zamboula. Totrasmek desired me, and because I repulsed
him, he made me the innocent tool of his vengeance against Alafdhal. I
asked a love potion of Totrasmek, not suspecting the depth of his guile and
hate. He gave me a drug to mix with my lover's wine, and he swore that
when Alafdhal drank it, he would love me even more madly than ever, and
grant my every wish. I mixed the drug secretly with my lover's wine. But
having drunk, my lover went raving mad and things came about as I have
told you. Curse Totrasmek, the hybrid snake—ahhh!'
She caught his arm convulsively and both stopped short. They had come
into a district of shops and stalls, all deserted and unlighted, for the hour
was late. They were passing an alley, and in its mouth a man was standing,
motionless and silent. His head was lowered, but Conan caught the weird
gleam of eery eyes regarding them unblinkingly. His skin crawled, not with
fear of the sword in the man's hand, but because of the uncanny suggestion
of his posture and silence. They suggested madness. Conan pushed the girl
aside and drew his sword.
'Don't kill him!' she begged. 'In the name of Set, do not slay him! You are
strong—overpower him!'
'We'll see,' he muttered, grasping his sword in his right hand and clenching
his left into a mallet-like fist.
He took a wary step toward the alley—and with a horrible moaning laugh
the Turanian charged. As he came he swung his sword, rising on his toes as
he put all the power of his body behind the blows. Sparks flashed blue as
Conan parried the blade, and the next instant the madman was stretched
senseless in the dust from a thundering buffet of Conan's left fist.

The girl ran forward.
'Oh, he is not—he is not—'
Conan bent swiftly, turned the man on his side and ran quick fingers over
him.
'He's not hurt much,' he grunted. 'Bleeding at the nose, but anybody's likely
to do that, after a clout on the jaw. He'll come to after a bit, and maybe his
mind will be right. In the meantime I'll tie his wrists with his sword-belt—
so. Now where do you want me to take him?'
'Wait!' She knelt beside the senseless figure, seized the bound hands and
scanned them avidly. Then, shaking her head as if in baffled
disappointment, she rose. She came close to the giant Cimmerian, and laid
her slender hands on his arching breast. Her dark eyes, like wet black jewels
in the starlight, gazed up into his.
'You are a man! Help me! Totrasmek must die! Slay him for me!'
'And put my neck into a Turanian noose?' he grunted.
'Nay!' The slender arms, strong as pliant steel, were around his corded neck.
Her supple body throbbed against his. 'The Hyrkanians have no love for
Totrasmek. The priests of Set fear him. He is a mongrel, who rules men by
fear and superstition. I worship Set, and the Turanians bow to Erlik, but
Totrasmek sacrifices to Hanuman the accursed! The Turanian lords fear his
black arts and his power over the hybrid population, and they hate him. If
he were slain in his temple at night, they would not seek his slayer very
closely.'
'And what of his magic?' rumbled the Cimmerian.
'You are a fighting-man,' she answered. 'To risk your life is part of your
profession.'
'For a price,' he admitted.
'There will be a price!' she breathed, rising on tiptoe, to gaze into his eyes.

The nearness of her vibrant body drove a flame through his veins. The
perfume of her breath mounted to his brain. But as his arms closed about
her supple figure she avoided them with a lithe movement, saying: 'Wait!
First serve me in this matter.'
'Name your price.' He spoke with some difficulty.
'Pick up my lover,' she directed, and the Cimmerian stooped and swung the
tall form easily to his broad shoulder. At the moment he felt as if he could
have toppled over Jungir Khan's palace with equal ease. The girl murmured
an endearment to the unconscious man, and there was no hypocrisy in her
attitude. She obviously loved Alafdhal sincerely. Whatever business
arrangement she made with Conan would have no bearing on her
relationship with Alafdhal. Women are more practical about these things
than men.
'Follow me!' She hurried along the street, while the Cimmerian strode easily
after her, in no way discomforted by his limp burden. He kept a wary eye
out for black shadows skulking under arches, but saw nothing suspicious.
Doubtless the men of Darfar were all gathered at the roasting-pit. The girl
turned down a narrow side street, and presently knocked cautiously at an
arched door.
Almost instantly a wicket opened in the upper panel, and a black face
glanced out. She bent close to the opening, whispering swiftly. Bolts
creaked in their sockets, and the door opened. A giant black man stood
framed against the soft glow of a copper lamp. A quick glance showed
Conan the man was not from Darfar. His teeth were unfiled and his kinky
hair was cropped close to his skull. He was from the Wadai.
At a word from Zabibi, Conan gave the limp body into the black's arms, and
saw the young officer laid on a velvet divan. He showed no signs of
returning consciousness. The blow that had rendered him senseless might
have felled an ox. Zabibi bent over him for an instant, her fingers nervously
twining and twisting. Then she straightened and beckoned the Cimmerian.
The door closed softly, the locks clicked behind them, and the closing
wicket shut off the glow of the lamps. In the starlight of the street Zabibi
took Conan's hand. Her own hand trembled a little.

'You will not fail me?'
He shook his maned head, massive against the stars.
'Then follow me to Hanuman's shrine, and the gods have mercy on our
souls!'
Along the silent streets they moved like phantoms of antiquity. They went
in silence. Perhaps the girl was thinking of her lover lying senseless on the
divan under the copper lamps; or was shrinking with fear of what lay ahead
of them in the demon-haunted shrine of Hanuman. The barbarian was
thinking only of the woman moving so supplely beside him. The perfume of
her scented hair was in his nostrils, the sensuous aura of her presence filled
his brain and left room for no other thoughts.
Once they heard the clank of brass-shod feet, and drew into the shadows of
a gloomy arch while a squad of Pelishtim watchmen swung past. There
were fifteen of them; they marched in close formation, pikes at the ready,
and the rearmost men had their broad brass shields slung on their backs, to
protect them from a knife-stroke from behind. The skulking menace of the
black man-eaters was a threat even to armed men.
As soon as the clang of their sandals had receded up the street, Conan and
the girl emerged from their hiding-place and hurried on. A few moments
later they saw the squat, flat-topped edifice they sought looming ahead of
them.
The temple of Hanuman stood alone in the midst of a broad square, which
lay silent and deserted beneath the stars. A marble wall surrounded the
shrine, with a broad opening directly before the portico. This opening had
no gate or any sort of barrier.
'Why don't the blacks seek their prey here?' muttered Conan. 'There's
nothing to keep them out of the temple.'
He could feel the trembling of Zabibi's body as she pressed close to him.
'They fear Totrasmek, as all in Zamboula fear him, even Jungir Khan and
Nafertari. Come! Come quickly, before my courage flows from me like
water!'

The girl's fear was evident, but she did not falter. Conan drew his sword and
strode ahead of her as they advanced through the open gateway. He knew
the hideous habits of the priests of the East, and was aware that an invader
of Hanuman's shrine might expect to encounter almost any sort of
nightmare horror. He knew there was a good chance that neither he nor the
girl would ever leave the shrine alive, but he had risked his life too many
times before to devote much thought to that consideration.
They entered a court paved with marble which gleamed whitely in the
starlight. A short flight of broad marble steps led up to the pillared portico.
The great bronze doors stood wide open as they had stood for centuries. But
no worshippers burnt incense within. In the day men and women might
come timidly into the shrine and place offerings to the ape-god on the black
altar. At night the people shunned the temple of Hanuman as hares shun the
lair of the serpent.
Burning censers bathed the interior in a soft weird glow that created an
illusion of unreality. Near the rear wall, behind the black stone altar, sat the
god with his gaze fixed for ever on the open door, through which for
centuries his victims had come, dragged by chains of roses. A faint groove
ran from the sill to the altar, and when Conan's foot felt it, he stepped away
as quickly as if he had trodden upon a snake. That groove had been worn by
the faltering feet of the multitude of those who had died screaming on that
grim altar.
Bestial in the uncertain light Hanuman leered with his carven mask. He sat,
not as an ape would crouch, but cross-legged as a man would sit, but his
aspect was no less simian for that reason. He was carved from black marble,
but his eyes were rubies, which glowed red and lustful as the coals of hell's
deepest pits. His great hands lay upon his lap, palms upward, taloned
fingers spread and grasping. In the gross emphasis of his attributes, in the
leer of his satyr-countenance, was reflected the abominable cynicism of the
degenerate cult which deified him.
The girl moved around the image, making toward the back wall, and when
her sleek flank brushed against a carven knee, she shrank aside and
shuddered as if a reptile had touched her. There was a space of several feet
between the broad back of the idol and the marble wall with its frieze of

gold leaves. On either hand, flanking the idol, an ivory door under a gold
arch was set in the wall.
'Those doors open into each end of a hair-pin shaped corridor,' she said
hurriedly. 'Once I was in the interior of the shrine—once!' She shivered and
twitched her slim shoulders at a memory both terrifying and obscene. 'The
corridor is bent like a horseshoe, with each horn opening into this room.
Totrasmek's chambers are enclosed within the curve of the corridor and
open into it. But there is a secret door in this wall which opens directly into
an inner chamber—'
She began to run her hands over the smooth surface, where no crack or
crevice showed. Conan stood beside her, sword in hand, glancing warily
about him. The silence, the emptiness of the shrine, with imagination
picturing what might lie behind that wall, made him feel like a wild beast
nosing a trap.
'Ah!' The girl had found a hidden spring at last; a square opening gaped
blackly in the wall. 'Set!' she screamed, and even as Conan leaped toward
her, he saw that a great misshapen hand had fastened itself in her hair. She
was snatched off her feet and jerked head-first through the opening. Conan,
grabbing ineffectually at her, felt his fingers slip from a naked limb, and in
an instant she had vanished and the wall showed blank as before. Only from
beyond it came briefly the muffled sounds of a struggle, a scream, faintly
heard, and a low laugh that made Conan's blood congeal in his veins.

3 Black Hands Gripping
With an oath the Cimmerian smote the wall a terrific blow with the pommel
of his sword, and the marble cracked and chipped. But the hidden door did
not give way, and reason told him that doubtless it had been bolted on the
other side of the wall. Turning, he sprang across the chamber to one of the
ivory doors.
He lifted his sword to shatter the panels, but on a venture tried the door first
with his left hand. It swung open easily, and he glared into a long corridor
that curved away into dimness under the weird light of censers similar to
those in the shrine. A heavy gold bolt showed on the jamb of the door, and
he touched it lightly with his finger tips. The faint warmness of the metal
could have been detected only by a man whose faculties were akin to those
of a wolf. That bolt had been touched—and therefore drawn—within the
last few seconds. The affair was taking on more and more of the aspect of a
baited trap. He might have known Totrasmek would know when anyone
entered the temple.
To enter the corridor would undoubtedly be to walk into whatever trap the
priest had set for him. But Conan did not hesitate. Somewhere in that dim-
lit interior Zabibi was a captive, and, from what he knew of the
characteristics of Hanuman's priests, he was sure that she needed help
badly. Conan stalked into the corridor with a pantherish tread, poised to
strike right or left.
On his left, ivory, arched doors opened into the corridor, and he tried each
in turn. All were locked. He had gone perhaps seventy-five feet when the
corridor bent sharply to the left, describing the curve the girl had
mentioned. A door opened into this curve, and it gave under his hand.
He was looking into a broad, square chamber, somewhat more clearly
lighted than the corridor. Its walls were of white marble, the floor of ivory,
the ceiling of fretted silver. He saw divans of rich satin, gold-worked
footstools of ivory, a disk-shaped table of some massive, metal-like

substance. On one of the divans a man was reclining, looking toward the
door. He laughed as he met the Cimmerian's startled glare.
This man was naked except for a loin-cloth and high-strapped sandals. He
was brown-skinned, with close-cropped black hair and restless black eyes
that set off a broad, arrogant face. In girth and breadth he was enormous,
with huge limbs on which the great muscles swelled and rippled at each
slightest movement. His hands were the largest Conan had ever seen. The
assurance of gigantic physical strength colored his every action and
inflection.
'Why not enter, barbarian?' he called mockingly, with an exaggerated
gesture of invitation.
Conan's eyes began to smolder ominously, but he trod warily into the
chamber, his sword ready.
'Who the devil are you?' he growled.
'I am Baal-pteor,' the man answered. 'Once, long ago and in another land, I
had another name. But this is a good name, and why Totrasmek gave it to
me, any temple wench can tell you.'
'So you're his dog!' grunted Conan. 'Well, curse your brown hide, Baal-
pteor, where's the wench you jerked through the wall?'
'My master entertains her!' laughed Baal-pteor. 'Listen!'
From beyond a door opposite the one by which Conan had entered there
sounded a woman's scream, faint and muffled in the distance.
'Blast your soul!' Conan took a stride toward the door, then wheeled with
his skin tingling. Baal-pteor was laughing at him, and that laugh was edged
with menace that made the hackles rise on Conan's neck and sent a red
wave of murder-lust driving across his vision.
He started toward Baal-pteor, the knuckles on his sword-hand showing
white. With a swift motion the brown man threw something at him—a
shining crystal sphere that glistened in the weird light.

Conan dodged instinctively, but, miraculously, the globe stopped short in
midair, a few feet from his face. It did not fall to the floor. It hung
suspended, as if by invisible filaments, some five feet above the floor. And
as he glared in amazement, it began to rotate with growing speed. And as it
revolved it grew, expanded, became nebulous. It filled the chamber. It
enveloped him. It blotted out furniture, walls, the smiling countenance of
Baal-pteor. He was lost in the midst of a blinding bluish blur of whirling
speed. Terrific winds screamed past Conan, tugging, tearing at him, striving
to wrench him from his feet, to drag him into the vortex that spun madly
before him.
With a choking cry Conan lurched backward, reeled, felt the solid wall
against his back. At the contact the illusion ceased to be. The whirling,
titanic sphere vanished like a bursting bubble. Conan reeled upright in the
silver-ceilinged room, with a gray mist coiling about his feet, and saw Baal-
pteor lolling on the divan, shaking with silent laughter.
'Son of a slut!' Conan lunged at him. But the mist swirled up from the floor,
blotting out that giant brown form. Groping in a rolling cloud that blinded
him, Conan felt a rending sensation of dislocation—and then room and mist
and brown man were gone together. He was standing alone among the high
reeds of a marshy fen, and a buffalo was lunging at him, head down. He
leaped aside from the ripping scimitar-curved horns, and drove his sword in
behind the foreleg, through ribs and heart. And then it was not a buffalo
dying there in the mud, but the brown-skinned Baal-pteor. With a curse
Conan struck off his head; and the head soared from the ground and
snapped beast-like tusks into his throat. For all his mighty strength he could
not tear it loose—he was choking—strangling; then there was a rush and
roar through space, the dislocating shock of an immeasurable impact, and
he was back in the chamber with Baal-pteor, whose head was once more set
firmly on his shoulders, and who laughed silently at him from the divan.
'Mesmerism!' muttered Conan, crouching and digging his toes hard against
the marble.
His eyes blazed. This brown dog was playing with him, making sport of
him! But this mummery, this child's play of mists and shadows of thought,
it could not harm him. He had but to leap and strike and the brown acolyte

would be a mangled corpse under his heel. This time he would not be
fooled by shadows of illusion—but he was.
A blood-curdling snarl sounded behind him, and he wheeled and struck in a
flash at the panther crouching to spring on him from the metal-colored
table. Even as he struck, the apparition vanished and his blade clashed
deafeningly on the adamantine surface. Instantly he sensed something
abnormal. The blade stuck to the table! He wrenched at it savagely. It did
not give. This was no mesmeristic trick. The table was a giant magnet. He
gripped the hilt with both hands, when a voice at his shoulder brought him
about, to face the brown man, who had at last risen from the divan.
Slightly taller than Conan, and much heavier, Baal-pteor loomed before
him, a daunting image of muscular development. His mighty arms were
unnaturally long, and his great hands opened and closed, twitching
convulsively. Conan released the hilt of his imprisoned sword and fell
silent, watching his enemy through slitted lids.
'Your head, Cimmerian!' taunted Baal-pteor. 'I shall take it with my bare
hands, twisting it from your shoulders as the head of a fowl is twisted! Thus
the sons of Kosala offer sacrifice to Yajur. Barbarian, you look upon a
strangler of Yota-pong. I was chosen by the priests of Yajur in my infancy,
and throughout childhood, boyhood and youth I trained in the art of slaying
with the naked hands—for only thus are the sacrifices enacted. Yajur loves
blood, and we waste not a drop from the victim's veins. When I was a child
they gave me infants to throttle; when I was a boy I strangled young girls;
as a youth, women, old men and young boys. Not until I reached my full
manhood was I given a strong man to slay on the altar of Yota-pong.
'For years I offered the sacrifices to Yajur. Hundreds of necks have snapped
between these fingers—' he worked them before the Cimmerian's angry
eyes. 'Why I fled from Yota-pong to become Totrasmek's servant is no
concern of yours. In a moment you will be beyond curiosity. The priests of
Kosala, the stranglers of Yajur, are strong beyond the belief of men. And I
was stronger than any. With my hands, barbarian, I shall break your neck!'
And like the stroke of twin cobras, the great hands closed on Conan's throat.
The Cimmerian made no attempt to dodge or fend them away, but his own
hands darted to the Kosalan's bull-neck. Baal-pteor's black eyes widened as

he felt the thick cords of muscles that protected the barbarian's throat. With
a snarl he exerted his inhuman strength, and knots and lumps and ropes of
thews rose along his massive arms. And then a choking gasp burst from him
as Conan's fingers locked on his throat. For an instant they stood there like
statues, their faces masks of effort, veins beginning to stand out purply on
their temples. Conan's thin lips drew back from his teeth in a grinning snarl.
Baal-pteor's eyes were distended; in them grew an awful surprize and the
glimmer of fear. Both men stood motionless as images, except for the
expanding of their muscles on rigid arms and braced legs, but strength
beyond common conception was warring there—strength that might have
uprooted trees and crushed the skulls of bullocks.
The wind whistled suddenly from between Baal-pteor's parted teeth. His
face was growing purple. Fear flooded his eyes. His thews seemed ready to
burst from his arms and shoulders, yet the muscles of the Cimmerian's thick
neck did not give; they felt like masses of woven iron cords under his
desperate fingers. But his own flesh was giving way under the iron fingers
of the Cimmerian which ground deeper and deeper into the yielding throat-
muscles, crushing them in upon jugular and windpipe.
The statuesque immobility of the group gave way to sudden, frenzied
motion, as the Kosalan began to wrench and heave, seeking to throw
himself backward. He let go of Conan's throat and grasped his wrists, trying
to tear away those inexorable fingers.
With a sudden lunge Conan bore him backward until the small of his back
crashed against the table. And still farther over its edge Conan bent him,
back and back, until his spine was ready to snap.
Conan's low laugh was merciless as the ring of steel.
'You fool!' he all but whispered. 'I think you never saw a man from the West
before. Did you deem yourself strong, because you were able to twist the
heads off civilized folk, poor weaklings with muscles like rotten string?
Hell! Break the neck of a wild Cimmerian bull before you call yourself
strong. I did that, before I was a full-grown man—like this!'
And with a savage wrench he twisted Baal-pteor's head around until the
ghastly face leered over the left shoulder, and the vertebrae snapped like a

rotten branch.
Conan hurled the flopping corpse to the floor, turned to the sword again and
gripped the hilt with both hands, bracing his feet against the floor. Blood
trickled down his broad breast from the wounds Baal-pteor's finger nails
had torn in the skin of his neck. His black hair was damp, sweat ran down
his face, and his chest heaved. For all his vocal scorn of Baal-pteor's
strength, he had almost met his match in the inhuman Kosalan. But without
pausing to catch his breath, he exerted all his strength in a mighty wrench
that tore the sword from the magnet where it clung.
Another instant and he had pushed open the door from behind which the
scream had sounded, and was looking down a long straight corridor, lined
with ivory doors. The other end was masked by a rich velvet curtain, and
from beyond that curtain came the devilish strains of such music as Conan
had never heard, not even in nightmares. It made the short hairs bristle on
the back of his neck. Mingled with it was the panting, hysterical sobbing of
a woman. Grasping his sword firmly, he glided down the corridor.

4 Dance, Girl, Dance!
When Zabibi was jerked head-first through the aperture which opened in
the wall behind the idol, her first, dizzy, disconnected thought was that her
time had come. She instinctively shut her eyes and waited for the blow to
fall. But instead she felt herself dumped unceremoniously onto the smooth
marble floor, which bruised her knees and hip. Opening her eyes she stared
fearfully around her, just as a muffled impact sounded from beyond the
wall. She saw a brown-skinned giant in a loin-cloth standing over her, and,
across the chamber into which she had come, a man sat on a divan, with his
back to a rich velvet curtain, a broad, fleshy man, with fat white hands and
snaky eyes. And her flesh crawled, for this man was Totrasmek, the priest of
Hanuman, who for years had spun his slimy webs of power throughout the
city of Zamboula.
'The barbarian seeks to batter his way through the wall,' said Totrasmek
sardonically, 'but the bolt will hold.'
The girl saw that a heavy golden bolt had been shot across the hidden door,
which was plainly discernible from this side of the wall. The bolt and its
sockets would have resisted the charge of an elephant.
'Go open one of the doors for him, Baal-pteor,' ordered Totrasmek. 'Slay
him in the square chamber at the other end of the corridor.'
The Kosalan salaamed and departed by the way of a door in the side wall of
the chamber. Zabibi rose, staring fearfully at the priest, whose eyes ran
avidly over her splendid figure. To this she was indifferent. A dancer of
Zamboula was accustomed to nakedness. But the cruelty in his eyes started
her limbs to quivering.
'Again you come to me in my retreat, beautiful one,' he purred with cynical
hypocrisy. 'It is an unexpected honor. You seemed to enjoy your former visit
so little, that I dared not hope for you to repeat it. Yet I did all in my power
to provide you with an interesting experience.'

For a Zamboulan dancer to blush would be an impossibility, but a smolder
of anger mingled with the fear in Zabibi's dilated eyes.
'Fat pig! You know I did not come here for love of you.'
'No,' laughed Totrasmek, 'you came like a fool, creeping through the night
with a stupid barbarian to cut my throat. Why should you seek my life?'
'You know why!' she cried, knowing the futility of trying to dissemble.
'You are thinking of your lover,' he laughed. 'The fact that you are here
seeking my life shows that he quaffed the drug I gave you. Well, did you
not ask for it? And did I not send what you asked for, out of the love I bear
you?'
'I asked you for a drug that would make him slumber harmlessly for a few
hours,' she said bitterly. 'And you—you sent your servant with a drug that
drove him mad! I was a fool ever to trust you. I might have known your
protestations of friendship were lies, to disguise your hate and spite.'
'Why did you wish your lover to sleep?' he retorted. 'So you could steal
from him the only thing he would never give you—the ring with the jewel
men call the Star of Khorala—the star stolen from the Queen of Ophir, who
would pay a roomful of gold for its return. He would not give it to you
willingly, because he knew that it holds a magic which, when properly
controlled, will enslave the hearts of any of the opposite sex. You wished to
steal it from him, fearing that his magicians would discover the key to that
magic and he would forget you in his conquests of the queens of the world.
You would sell it back to the queen of Ophir, who understands its power
and would use it to enslave men, as she did before it was stolen.'
'And why did you want it?' she demanded sulkily.
'I understand its powers. It would increase the power of my arts.'
'Well,' she snapped, 'you have it now!'
'I have the Star of Khorala? Nay, you err.'
'Why bother to lie?' she retorted bitterly. 'He had it on his finger when he
drove me into the streets. He did not have it when I found him again. Your

servant must have been watching the house, and have taken it from him,
after I escaped him. To the devil with it! I want my lover back sane and
whole. You have the ring; you have punished us both. Why do you not
restore his mind to him? Can you?'
'I could,' he assured her, in evident enjoyment of her distress. He drew a
phial from among his robes. 'This contains the juice of the golden lotus. If
your lover drank it he would be sane again. Yes, I will be merciful. You
have both thwarted and flouted me, not once but many times; he has
constantly opposed my wishes. But I will be merciful. Come and take the
phial from my hand.'
She stared at Totrasmek, trembling with eagerness to seize it, but fearing it
was but some cruel jest. She advanced timidly, with a hand extended, and
he laughed heartlessly and drew back out of her reach. Even as her lips
parted to curse him, some instinct snatched her eyes upward. From the
gilded ceiling four jade-hued vessels were falling. She dodged, but they did
not strike her. They crashed to the floor about her, forming the four corners
of a square. And she screamed, and screamed again. For out of each ruin
reared the hooded head of a cobra, and one struck at her bare leg. Her
convulsive movement to evade it brought her within reach of the one on the
other side and again she had to shift like lightning to avoid the flash of its
hideous head.
She was caught in a frightful trap. All four serpents were swaying and
striking at foot, ankle, calf, knee, thigh, hip, whatever portion of her
voluptuous body chanced to be nearest to them, and she could not spring
over them or pass between them to safety. She could only whirl and spring
aside and twist her body to avoid the strokes, and each time she moved to
dodge one snake, the motion brought her within range of another, so that
she had to keep shifting with the speed of light. She could move only a
short space in any direction, and the fearful hooded crests were menacing
her every second. Only a dancer of Zamboula could have lived in that grisly
square.
She became, herself, a blur of bewildering motion. The heads missed her by
hair's breadths, but they missed, as she pitted her twinkling feet, flickering

limbs and perfect eye against the blinding speed of the scaly demons her
enemy had conjured out of thin air.
Somewhere a thin whining music struck up, mingling with the hissing of
the serpents, like an evil night-wind blowing through the empty sockets of a
skull. Even in the flying speed of her urgent haste she realized that the
darting of the serpents was no longer at random. They obeyed the grisly
piping of the eery music. They struck with a horrible rhythm, and perforce
her swaying, writhing, spinning body attuned itself to their rhythm. Her
frantic motions melted into the measures of a dance compared to which the
most obscene tarantella of Zamora would have seemed sane and restrained.
Sick with shame and terror Zabibi heard the hateful mirth of her merciless
tormentor.
'The Dance of the Cobras, my lovely one!' laughed Totrasmek. 'So maidens
danced in the sacrifice to Hanuman centuries ago—but never with such
beauty and suppleness. Dance, girl, dance! How long can you avoid the
fangs of the Poison People? Minutes? Hours? You will weary at last. Your
swift, sure feet will stumble, your legs falter, your hips slow in their
rotations. Then the fangs will begin to sink deep into your ivory flesh—'
Behind him the curtain shook as if struck by a gust of wind, and Totrasmek
screamed. His eyes dilated and his hands caught convulsively at the length
of bright steel which jutted suddenly from his breast.
The music broke off short. The girl swayed dizzily in her dance, crying out
in dreadful anticipation of the flickering fangs—and then only four wisps of
harmless blue smoke curled up from the floor about her, as Totrasmek
sprawled headlong from the divan.
Conan came from behind the curtain, wiping his broad blade. Looking
through the hangings he had seen the girl dancing desperately between four
swaying spirals of smoke, but he had guessed that their appearance was
very different to her. He knew he had killed Totrasmek.
Zabibi sank down on the floor, panting, but even as Conan started toward
her, she staggered up again, though her legs trembled with exhaustion.
'The phial!' she gasped. 'The phial!'

Totrasmek still grasped it in his stiffening hand. Ruthlessly she tore it from
his locked fingers, and then began frantically to ransack his garments.
'What the devil are you looking for?' Conan demanded.
'A ring—he stole it from Alafdhal. He must have, while my lover walked in
madness through the streets. Set's devils!'
She had convinced herself that it was not on the person of Totrasmek. She
began to cast about the chamber, tearing up divan-covers and hangings, and
upsetting vessels.
She paused and raked a damp lock of hair out of her eyes.
'I forgot Baal-pteor!'
'He's in hell with his neck broken,' Conan assured her.
She expressed vindictive gratification at the news, but an instant later swore
expressively.
'We can't stay here. It's not many hours until dawn. Lesser priests are likely
to visit the temple at any hour of the night, and if we're discovered here
with his corpse, the people will tear us to pieces. The Turanians could not
save us.'
She lifted the bolt on the secret door, and a few moments later they were in
the streets and hurrying away from the silent square where brooded the age-
old shrine of Hanuman.
In a winding street a short distance away Conan halted and checked his
companion with a heavy hand on her naked shoulder.
'Don't forget there was a price—'
'I have not forgotten!' She twisted free. 'But we must go to—to Alafdhal
first!'
A few minutes later the black slave let them through the wicket door. The
young Turanian lay upon the divan, his arms and legs bound with heavy
velvet ropes. His eyes were open, but they were like those of a mad dog,
and foam was thick on his lips. Zabibi shuddered.

'Force his jaws open!' she commanded, and Conan's iron fingers
accomplished the task.
Zabibi emptied the phial down the maniac's gullet. The effect was like
magic. Instantly he became quiet. The glare faded from his eyes; he stared
up at the girl in a puzzled way, but with recognition and intelligence. Then
he fell into a normal slumber.
'When he awakes he will be quite sane,' she whispered, motioning to the
silent slave.
With a deep bow he gave into her hands a small leathern bag, and drew
about her shoulders a silken cloak. Her manner had subtly changed when
she beckoned Conan to follow her out of the chamber.
In an arch that opened on the street, she turned to him, drawing herself up
with a new regality.
'I must now tell you the truth,' she said. 'I am not Zabibi. I am Nafertari.
And he is not Alafdhal, a poor captain of the guardsmen. He is Jungir Khan,
satrap of Zamboula.'
Conan made no comment; his scarred dark countenance was immobile.
'I lied to you because I dared not divulge the truth to anyone,' she said. 'We
were alone when Jungir Khan went mad. None knew of it but myself. Had
it been known that the satrap of Zamboula was a madman, there would have
been instant revolt and rioting, even as Totrasmek planned, who plotted our
destruction.
'You see now how impossible is the reward for which you hoped. The
satrap's mistress is not—cannot be for you. But you shall not go
unrewarded. Here is a sack of gold.'
She gave him the bag she had received from the slave.
'Go, now, and when the sun is come up to the palace, I will have Jungir
Khan make you captain of his guard. But you will take your orders from
me, secretly. Your first duty will be to march a squad to the shrine of
Hanuman, ostensibly to search for clues of the priest's slayer; in reality to

search for the Star of Khorala. It must be hidden there somewhere. When
you find it, bring it to me. You have my leave to go now.'
He nodded, still silent, and strode away. The girl, watching the swing of his
broad shoulders, was piqued to note that there was nothing in his bearing to
show that he was in any way chagrined or abashed.

When he had rounded a corner, he glanced back, and then changed his
direction and quickened his pace. A few moments later he was in the quarter
of the city containing the Horse Market. There he smote on a door until
from the window above a bearded head was thrust to demand the reason for
the disturbance.
'A horse,' demanded Conan. 'The swiftest steed you have.'
'I open no gates at this time of night,' grumbled the horse-trader.
Conan rattled his coins.
'Dog's son knave! Don't you see I'm white, and alone? Come down, before I
smash your door!'
Presently, on a bay stallion, Conan was riding toward the house of Aram
Baksh.
He turned off the road into the alley that lay between the tavern compound
and the date-palm garden, but he did not pause at the gate. He rode on to the
northeast corner of the wall, then turned and rode along the north wall, to
halt within a few paces of the northwest angle. No trees grew near the wall,
but there were some low bushes. To one of these he tied his horse, and was
about to climb into the saddle again, when he heard a low muttering of
voices beyond the corner of the wall.
Drawing his foot from the stirrup he stole to the angle and peered around it.
Three men were moving down the road toward the palm groves, and from
their slouching gait he knew they were negroes. They halted at his low call,
bunching themselves as he strode toward them, his sword in his hand. Their

eyes gleamed whitely in the starlight. Their brutish lust shone in their ebony
faces, but they knew their three cudgels could not prevail against his sword,
just as he knew it.
'Where are you going?' he challenged.
'To bid our brothers put out the fire in the pit beyond the groves,' was the
sullen, guttural reply. 'Aram Baksh promised us a man, but he lied. We
found one of our brothers dead in the trap-chamber. We go hungry this
night.'
'I think not,' smiled Conan. 'Aram Baksh will give you a man. Do you see
that door?'
He pointed to a small, iron-bound portal set in the midst of the western
wall.
'Wait there. Aram Baksh will give you a man.'
Backing warily away until he was out of reach of a sudden bludgeon blow,
he turned and melted around the northwest angle of the wall. Reaching his
horse he paused to ascertain that the blacks were not sneaking after him,
and then he climbed into the saddle and stood upright on it, quieting the
uneasy steed with a low word. He reached up, grasped the coping of the
wall and drew himself up and over. There he studied the grounds for an
instant. The tavern was built in the southwest corner of the enclosure, the
remaining space of which was occupied by groves and gardens. He saw no
one in the grounds. The tavern was dark and silent, and he knew all the
doors and windows were barred and bolted.
Conan knew that Aram Baksh slept in a chamber that opened into a cypress-
bordered path that led to the door in the western wall. Like a shadow he
glided among the trees and a few moments later he rapped lightly on the
chamber door.
'What is it?' asked a rumbling voice within.
'Aram Baksh!' hissed Conan. 'The blacks are stealing over the wall!'
Almost instantly the door opened, framing the tavern-keeper, naked but for
his shirt, with a dagger in his hand.

He craned his neck to stare into the Cimmerian's face.
'What tale is this—you!'
Conan's vengeful fingers strangled the yell in his throat. They went to the
floor together and Conan wrenched the dagger from his enemy's hand. The
blade glinted in the starlight, and blood spurted. Aram Baksh made hideous
noises, gasping and gagging on a mouthful of blood. Conan dragged him to
his feet and again the dagger slashed, and most of the curly beard fell to the
floor.
Still gripping his captive's throat—for a man can scream incoherently even
with his tongue slit—Conan dragged him out of the dark chamber and down
the cypress-shadowed path, to the iron-bound door in the outer wall. With
one hand he lifted the bolt and threw the door open, disclosing the three
shadowy figures which waited like black vultures outside. Into their eager
arms Conan thrust the innkeeper.
A horrible, blood-choked scream rose from the Zamboulan's throat, but
there was no response from the silent tavern. The people there were used to
screams outside the wall. Aram Baksh fought like a wild man, his distended
eyes turned frantically on the Cimmerian's face. He found no mercy there.
Conan was thinking of the scores of wretches who owed their bloody doom
to this man's greed.
In glee the negroes dragged him down the road, mocking his frenzied
gibberings. How could they recognize Aram Baksh in this half-naked,
bloodstained figure, with the grotesquely shorn beard and unintelligible
babblings? The sounds of the struggle came back to Conan, standing beside
the gate, even after the clump of figures had vanished among the palms.
Closing the door behind him, Conan returned to his horse, mounted and
turned westward, toward the open desert, swinging wide to skirt the sinister
belt of palm groves. As he rode, he drew from his belt a ring in which
gleamed a jewel that snared the starlight in a shimmering iridescence. He
held it up to admire it, turning it this way and that. The compact bag of gold
pieces clinked gently at his saddle-bow, like a promise of the greater riches
to come.

'I wonder what she'd say if she knew I recognized her as Nafertari and him
as Jungir Khan the instant I saw them,' he mused. 'I knew the Star of
Khorala, too. There'll be a fine scene if she ever guesses that I slipped it off
his finger while I was tying him with his sword-belt. But they'll never catch
me, with the start I'm getting.'
He glanced back at the shadowy palm groves, among which a red glare was
mounting. A chanting rose to the night, vibrating with savage exultation.
And another sound mingled with it, a mad, incoherent screaming, a frenzied
gibbering in which no words could be distinguished. The noise followed
Conan as he rode westward beneath the paling stars.

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