The Hour of the Dragon Page 17

  17

  'He Has Slain the Sacred Son of Set!'

  The harbor of Khemi lay between two great jutting points of land thatran into the ocean. He rounded the southern point, where the great blackcastles rose like a man-made hill, and entered the harbor just at dusk,when there was still enough light for the watchers to recognize thefisherman's boat and mantle, but not enough to permit recognition ofbetraying details. Unchallenged he threaded his way among the greatblack war galleys lying silent and unlighted at anchor, and drew up to aflight of wide stone steps which mounted up from the water's edge. Therehe made his boat fast to an iron ring set in the stone, as numeroussimilar craft were tied. There was nothing strange in a fishermanleaving his boat there. None but a fisherman could find a use for such acraft, and they did not steal from one another.

  No one cast him more than a casual glance as he mounted the long steps,unobtrusively avoiding the torches that flared at intervals above thelapping black water. He seemed but an ordinary, empty-handed fisherman,returning after a fruitless day along the coast. If one had observed himclosely, it might have seemed that his step was somewhat too springy andsure, his carriage somewhat too erect and confident for a lowlyfisherman. But he passed quickly, keeping in the shadows, and thecommoners of Stygia were no more given to analysis than were thecommoners of the less exotic races.

  In build he was not unlike the warrior casts of the Stygians, who were atall, muscular race. Bronzed by the sun, he was nearly as dark as manyof them. His black hair, square-cut and confined by a copper band,increased the resemblance. The characteristics which set him apart fromthem were the subtle difference in his walk, and his alien features andblue eyes.

  But the mantle was a good disguise, and he kept as much in the shadowsas possible, turning away his head when a native passed him too closely.

  But it was a desperate game, and he knew he could not long keep up thedeception. Khemi was not like the sea-ports of the Hyborians, wheretypes of every race swarmed. The only aliens here were negro and Shemiteslaves; and he resembled neither even as much as he resembled theStygians themselves. Strangers were not welcome in the cities of Stygia;tolerated only when they came as ambassadors or licensed traders. Buteven then the latter were not allowed ashore after dark. And now therewere no Hyborian ships in the harbor at all. A strange restlessness ranthrough the city, a stirring of ancient ambitions, a whispering nonecould define except those who whispered. This Conan felt rather thanknew, his whetted primitive instincts sensing unrest about him.

  If he were discovered his fate would be ghastly. They would slay himmerely for being a stranger; if he were recognized as Amra, the corsairchief who had swept their coasts with steel and flame--an involuntaryshudder twitched Conan's broad shoulders. Human foes he did not fear,nor any death by steel or fire. But this was a black land of sorcery andnameless horror. Set the Old Serpent, men said, banished long ago fromthe Hyborian races, yet lurked in the shadows of the cryptic temples,and awful and mysterious were the deeds done in the nighted shrines.

  He had drawn away from the waterfront streets with their broad stepsleading down to the water, and was entering the long shadowy streets ofthe main part of the city. There was no such scene as was offered by anyHyborian city--no blaze of lamps and cressets, with gay-clad peoplelaughing and strolling along the pavements, and shops and stalls wideopen and displaying their wares.

  Here the stalls were closed at dusk. The only lights along the streetswere torches, flaring smokily at wide intervals. People walking thestreets were comparatively few; they went hurriedly and unspeaking, andtheir numbers decreased with the lateness of the hour. Conan found thescene gloomy and unreal; the silence of the people, their furtive haste,the great black stone walls that rose on each side of the streets. Therewas a grim massiveness about Stygian architecture that was overpoweringand oppressive.

  Few lights showed anywhere except in the upper parts of the buildings.Conan knew that most of the people lay on the flat roofs, among thepalms of artificial gardens under the stars. There was a murmur of weirdmusic from somewhere. Occasionally a bronze chariot rumbled along theflags, and there was a brief glimpse of a tall, hawk-faced noble, with asilk cloak wrapped about him, and a gold band with a rearingserpent-head emblem confining his black mane; of the ebon, nakedcharioteer bracing his knotty legs against the straining of the fierceStygian horses.

  But the people who yet traversed the streets on foot were commoners,slaves, tradesmen, harlots, toilers, and they became fewer as heprogressed. He was making toward the temple of Set, where he knew hewould be likely to find the priest he sought. He believed he would knowThutothmes if he saw him, though his one glance had been in thesemi-darkness of the Messantian alley. That the man he had seen therehad been the priest he was certain. Only occultists high in the mazes ofthe hideous Black Ring possessed the power of the black hand that dealtdeath by its touch; and only such a man would dare defy Thoth-Amon, whomthe western world knew only as a figure of terror and myth.

  The street broadened, and Conan was aware that he was getting into thepart of the city dedicated to the temples. The great structures rearedtheir black bulks against the dim stars, grim, indescribably menacing inthe flare of the few torches. And suddenly he heard a low scream from awoman on the other side of the street and somewhat ahead of him--a nakedcourtesan wearing the tall plumed head-dress of her class. She wasshrinking back against the wall, staring across at something he couldnot yet see. At her cry the few people on the street halted suddenly asif frozen. At the same instant Conan was aware of a sinister slitheringahead of him. Then about the dark corner of the building he wasapproaching poked a hideous, wedge-shaped head, and after it flowed coilafter coil of rippling, darkly glistening trunk.

  The Cimmerian recoiled, remembering tales he had heard--serpents weresacred to Set, god of Stygia, who men said was himself a serpent.Monsters such as this were kept in the temples of Set, and when theyhungered, were allowed to crawl forth into the streets to take what preythey wished. Their ghastly feasts were considered a sacrifice to thescaly god.

  The Stygians within Conan's sight fell to their knees, men and women,and passively awaited their fate. One the great serpent would select,would lap in scaly coils, crush to a red pulp and swallow as a rat-snakeswallows a mouse. The others would live. That was the will of the gods.

  But it was not Conan's will. The python glided toward him, its attentionprobably attracted by the fact that he was the only human in sight stillstanding erect. Gripping his great knife under his mantle, Conan hopedthe slimy brute would pass him by. But it halted before him and rearedup horrifically in the flickering torchlight, its forked tongueflickering in and out, its cold eyes glittering with the ancient crueltyof the serpent-folk. Its neck arched, but before it could dart, Conanwhipped his knife from under his mantle and struck like a flicker oflightning. The broad blade split that wedge-shaped head and sheared deepinto the thick neck.

  Conan wrenched his knife free and sprang clear as the great body knottedand looped and whipped terrifically in its death throes. In the momentthat he stood staring in morbid fascination, the only sound was the thudand swish of the snake's tail against the stones.

  Then from the shocked votaries burst a terrible cry: 'Blasphemer! He hasslain the sacred son of Set! Slay him! Slay! Slay!'

  Stones whizzed about him and the crazed Stygians rushed at him,shrieking hysterically, while from all sides others emerged from theirhouses and took up the cry. With a curse Conan wheeled and darted intothe black mouth of an alley. He heard the patter of bare feet on theflags behind him as he ran more by feel than by sight, and the wallsresounded to the vengeful yells of the pursuers. Then his left handfound a break in the wall, and he turned sharply into another, narroweralley. On both sides rose sheer black stone walls. High above him hecould see a thin line of stars. These giant walls, he knew, were thewalls of temples. He heard, behind him, the pack sweep past the darkmouth in full cry. Their shouts grew distant, faded away. They hadmissed the smaller alley
and run straight on in the blackness. He tookept straight ahead, though the thought of encountering another of Set's'sons' in the darkness brought a shudder from him.

  Then somewhere ahead of him he caught a moving glow, like that of acrawling glow-worm. He halted, flattened himself against the wall andgripped his knife. He knew what it was: a man approaching with a torch.Now it was so close he could make out the dark hand that gripped it, andthe dim oval of a dark face. A few more steps and the man wouldcertainly see him. He sank into a tigerish crouch--the torch halted. Adoor was briefly etched in the glow, while the torch-bearer fumbled withit. Then it opened, the tall figure vanished through it, and darknessclosed again on the alley. There was a sinister suggestion offurtiveness about that slinking figure, entering the alley-door indarkness; a priest, perhaps, returning from some dark errand.

  But Conan groped toward the door. If one man came up that alley with atorch, others might come at any time. To retreat the way he had comemight mean to run full into the mob from which he was fleeing. At anymoment they might return, find the narrower alley and come howling downit. He felt hemmed in by those sheer, unscalable walls, desirous ofescape, even if escape meant invading some unknown building.

  The heavy bronze door was not locked. It opened under his fingers and hepeered through the crack. He was looking into a great square chamber ofmassive black stone. A torch smoldered in a niche in the wall. Thechamber was empty. He glided through the lacquered door and closed itbehind him.

  His sandaled feet made no sound as he crossed the black marble floor. Ateak door stood partly open, and gliding through this, knife in hand, hecame out into a great, dim, shadowy place whose lofty ceiling was only ahint of darkness high above him, toward which the black walls sweptupward. On all sides black-arched doorways opened into the great stillhall. It was lit by curious bronze lamps that gave a dim weird light. Onthe other side of the great hall a broad black marble stairway, withouta railing, marched upward to lose itself in gloom, and above him on allsides dim galleries hung like black stone ledges.

  Conan shivered; he was in a temple of some Stygian god, if not Sethimself, then someone barely less grim. And the shrine did not lack anoccupant. In the midst of the great hall stood a black stone altar,massive, somber, without carvings or ornament, and upon it coiled one ofthe great sacred serpents, its iridescent scales shimmering in thelamplight. It did not move, and Conan remembered stories that thepriests kept these creatures drugged part of the time. The Cimmeriantook an uncertain step out from the door, then shrank back suddenly,not into the room he had just quitted, but into a velvet-curtainedrecess. He had heard a soft step somewhere near by.

  From one of the black arches emerged a tall, powerful figure in sandalsand silken loin-cloth, with a wide mantle trailing from his shoulders.But face and head were hidden by a monstrous mask, a half-bestial,half-human countenance, from the crest of which floated a mass ofostrich plumes.

  In certain ceremonies the Stygian priests went masked. Conan hoped theman would not discover him, but some instinct warned the Stygian. Heturned abruptly from his destination, which apparently was the stair,and stepped straight to the recess. As he jerked aside the velvethanging, a hand darted from the shadows, crushed the cry in his throatand jerked him headlong into the alcove, and the knife impaled him.

  Conan's next move was the obvious one suggested by logic. He lifted offthe grinning mask and drew it over his own head. The fisherman's mantlehe flung over the body of the priest, which he concealed behind thehangings, and drew the priestly mantle about his own brawny shoulders.Fate had given him a disguise. All Khemi might well be searching now forthe blasphemer who dared defend himself against a sacred snake; but whowould dream of looking for him under the mask of a priest?

  He strode boldly from the alcove and headed for one of the archeddoorways at random; but he had not taken a dozen strides when he wheeledagain, all his senses edged for peril.

  A band of masked figures filed down the stair, appareled exactly as hewas. He hesitated, caught in the open, and stood still, trusting to hisdisguise, though cold sweat gathered on his forehead and the backs ofhis hands. No word was spoken. Like phantoms they descended into thegreat hall and moved past him toward a black arch. The leader carried anebon staff which supported a grinning white skull, and Conan knew it wasone of the ritualistic processions so inexplicable to a foreigner, butwhich played a strong--and often sinister--part in the Stygian religion.The last figure turned his head slightly toward the motionlessCimmerian, as if expecting him to follow. Not to do what was obviouslyexpected of him would rouse instant suspicion. Conan fell in behind thelast man and suited his gait to their measured pace.

  They traversed a long, dark, vaulted corridor in which, Conan noticeduneasily, the skull on the staff glowed phosphorescently. He felt asurge of unreasoning, wild animal panic that urged him to rip out hisknife and slash right and left at these uncanny figures, to flee madlyfrom the grim, dark temple. But he held himself in check, fighting downthe dim monstrous intuitions that rose in the back of his mind andpeopled the gloom with shadowy shapes of horror; and presently he barelystifled a sigh of relief as they filed through a great double-valveddoor which was three times higher than a man, and emerged into thestarlight.

  Conan wondered if he dared fade into some dark alley; but hesitated,uncertain, and down the long dark street they padded silently, whilesuch folk as they met turned their heads away and fled from them. Theprocession kept far out from the walls; to turn and bolt into any of thealleys they passed would be too conspicuous. While he mentally fumed andcursed, they came to a low-arched gateway in the southern wall, andthrough this they filed. Ahead of them and about them lay clusters oflow, flat-topped mud houses, and palm-groves, shadowy in the starlight.Now if ever, thought Conan, was his time to escape his silentcompanions.

  But the moment the gate was left behind them those companions were nolonger silent. They began to mutter excitedly among themselves. Themeasured, ritualistic gait was abandoned, the staff with its skull wastucked unceremoniously under the leader's arm, and the whole group brokeranks and hurried onward. And Conan hurried with them. For in the lowmurmur of speech he had caught a word that galvanized him. The word was:"_Thutothmes!_"