Red Nails Page 7

  _7. He Comes from the Dark_

  "Well, I'm a Kushite!"

  Conan glared down at the man on the iron rack.

  "What the devil are _you_ doing on that thing?"

  Incoherent sounds issued from behind the gag and Conan bent and tore itaway, evoking a bellow of fear from the captive; for his action causedthe iron ball to lurch down until it nearly touched the broad breast.

  "Be careful, for Set's sake!" begged Olmec.

  "What for?" demanded Conan. "Do you think I care what happens to you? Ionly wish I had time to stay here and watch that chunk of iron grindyour guts out. But I'm in a hurry. Where's Valeria?"

  "Loose me!" urged Olmec, "I will tell you all!"

  "Tell me first."

  "Never!" The prince's heavy jaws set stubbornly.

  "All right." Conan seated himself on a near-by bench. "I'll find hermyself, after you've been reduced to a jelly. I believe I can speed upthat process by twisting my sword-point around in your ear," he added,extending the weapon experimentally.

  "Wait!" Words came in a rush from the captive's ashy lips. "Tascela tookher from me. I've never been anything but a puppet in Tascela's hands."

  "Tascela?" snorted Conan, and spat. "Why, the filthy----"

  "No, no!" panted Olmec. "It's worse than you think. Tascela isold--centuries old. She renews her life and her youth by the sacrificeof beautiful young women. That's one thing that has reduced the clan toits present state. She will draw the essence of Valeria's life into herown body, and bloom with fresh vigor and beauty."

  "Are the doors locked?" asked Conan, thumbing his sword edge.

  "Aye! But I know a way to get into Tecuhltli. Only Tascela and I know,and she thinks me helpless and you slain. Free me and I swear I willhelp you rescue Valeria. Without my help you cannot win into Tecuhltli;for even if you tortured me into revealing the secret, you couldn't workit. Let me go, and we will steal on Tascela and kill her before she canwork magic--before she can fix her eyes on us. A knife thrown frombehind will do the work. I should have killed her thus long ago, but Ifeared that without her to aid us the Xotalancas would overcome us. Sheneeded my help, too; that's the only reason she let me live this long.Now neither needs the other, and one must die. I swear that when we haveslain the witch, you and Valeria shall go free without harm. My peoplewill obey me when Tascela is dead."

  Conan stooped and cut the ropes that held the prince, and Olmec slidcautiously from under the great ball and rose, shaking his head like abull and muttering imprecations as he fingered his lacerated scalp.Standing shoulder to shoulder the two men presented a formidable pictureof primitive power. Olmec was as tall as Conan, and heavier; but therewas something repellent about the Tlazitlan, something abysmal andmonstrous that contrasted unfavorably with the clean-cut, compacthardness of the Cimmerian. Conan had discarded the remnants of histattered, blood-soaked shirt, and stood with his remarkable musculardevelopment impressively revealed. His great shoulders were as broad asthose of Olmec, and more cleanly outlined, and his huge breast archedwith a more impressive sweep to a hard waist that lacked the paunchythickness of Olmec's midsection. He might have been an image of primalstrength cut out of bronze. Olmec was darker, but not from the burningof the sun. If Conan was a figure out of the dawn of Time, Olmec was ashambling, somber shape from the darkness of Time's pre-dawn.

  "Lead on," demanded Conan. "And keep ahead of me. I don't trust you anyfarther than I can throw a bull by the tail."

  Olmec turned and stalked on ahead of him, one hand twitching slightly asit plucked at his matted beard.

  * * * * *

  Olmec did not lead Conan back to the bronze door, which the princenaturally supposed Tascela had locked, but to a certain chamber on theborder of Tecuhltli.

  "This secret has been guarded for half a century," he said. "Not evenour own clan knew of it, and the Xotalancas never learned. Tecuhltlihimself built this secret entrance, afterward slaying the slaves who didthe work; for he feared that he might find himself locked out of his ownkingdom some day because of the spite of Tascela, whose passion for himsoon changed to hate. But she discovered the secret, and barred thehidden door against him one day as he fled back from an unsuccessfulraid, and the Xotalancas took him and flayed him. But once, spying uponher, I saw her enter Tecuhltli by this route, and so learned thesecret."

  He pressed upon a gold ornament in the wall, and a panel swung inward,disclosing an ivory stair leading upward.

  "This stair is built within the wall," said Olmec. "It leads up to atower upon the roof, and thence other stairs wind down to the variouschambers. Hasten!"

  "After you, comrade!" retorted Conan satirically, swaying hisbroadsword as he spoke, and Olmec shrugged his shoulders and steppedonto the staircase. Conan instantly followed him, and the door shutbehind them. Far above a cluster of fire-jewels made the staircase awell of dusky dragon-light.

  They mounted until Conan estimated that they were above the level of thefourth floor, and then came out into a cylindrical tower, in the domedroof of which was set the bunch of fire-jewels that lighted the stair.Through gold-barred windows, set with unbreakable crystal panes, thefirst windows he had seen in Xuchotl, Conan got a glimpse of highridges, domes and more towers, looming darkly against the stars. He waslooking across the roofs of Xuchotl.

  Olmec did not look through the windows. He hurried down one of theseveral stairs that wound down from the tower, and when they haddescended a few feet, this stair changed into a narrow corridor thatwound tortuously on for some distance. It ceased at a steep flight ofsteps leading downward. There Olmec paused.

  Up from below, muffled, but unmistakable, welled a woman's scream, edgedwith fright, fury and shame. And Conan recognized Valeria's voice.

  In the swift rage roused by that cry, and the amazement of wonderingwhat peril could wring such a shriek from Valeria's reckless lips, Conanforgot Olmec. He pushed past the prince and started down the stair.Awakening instinct brought him about again, just as Olmec struck withhis great mallet-like fist. The blow, fierce and silent, was aimed atthe base of Conan's brain. But the Cimmerian wheeled in time to receivethe buffet on the side of his neck instead. The impact would havesnapped the vertebrae of a lesser man. As it was, Conan swayed backward,but even as he reeled he dropped his sword, useless at such closequarters, and grasped Olmec's extended arm, dragging the prince with himas he fell. Headlong they went down the steps together, in a revolvingwhirl of limbs and heads and bodies. And as they went Conan's ironfingers found and locked in Olmec's bull-throat.

  The barbarian's neck and shoulder felt numb from the sledge-like impactof Olmec's huge fist, which had carried all the strength of the massiveforearm, thick triceps and great shoulder. But this did not affect hisferocity to any appreciable extent. Like a bulldog he hung on grimly,shaken and battered and beaten against the steps as they rolled, untilat last they struck an ivory panel-door at the bottom with such animpact that they splintered it down its full length and crashed throughits ruins. But Olmec was already dead, for those iron fingers hadcrushed out his life and broken his neck as they fell.

  * * * * *

  Conan rose, shaking the splinters from his great shoulder, blinkingblood and dust out of his eyes.

  He was in the great throne room. There were fifteen people in that roombesides himself. The first person he saw was Valeria. A curious blackaltar stood before the throne-dais. Ranged about it, seven black candlesin golden candlesticks sent up oozing spirals of thick green smoke,disturbingly scented. These spirals united in a cloud near the ceiling,forming a smoky arch above the altar. On that altar lay Valeria, starknaked, her white flesh gleaming in shocking contrast to the glisteningebon stone. She was not bound. She lay at full length, her armsstretched out above her head to their fullest extent. At the head of thealtar knelt a young man, holding her wrists firmly. A young woman kneltat the other end of the altar, grasping her ankles. Between them shecould neither rise nor move.
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  Eleven men and women of Tecuhltli knelt dumbly in a semicircle, watchingthe scene with hot, lustful eyes.

  On the ivory throne-seat Tascela lolled. Bronze bowls of incense rolledtheir spirals about her; the wisps of smoke curled about her naked limbslike caressing fingers. She could not sit still; she squirmed andshifted about with sensuous abandon, as if finding pleasure in thecontact of the smooth ivory with her sleek flesh.

  The crash of the door as it broke beneath the impact of the hurtlingbodies caused no change in the scene. The kneeling men and women merelyglanced incuriously at the corpse of their prince and at the man whorose from the ruins of the door, then swung their eyes greedily back tothe writhing white shape on the black altar. Tascela looked insolentlyat him, and sprawled back on her seat, laughing mockingly.

  "Slut!" Conan saw red. His hands clenched into iron hammers as hestarted for her. With his first step something clanged loudly and steelbit savagely into his leg. He stumbled and almost fell, checked in hisheadlong stride. The jaws of an iron trap had closed on his leg, withteeth that sank deep and held. Only the ridged muscles of his calf savedthe bone from being splintered. The accursed thing had sprung out of thesmoldering floor without warning. He saw the slots now, in the floorwhere the jaws had lain, perfectly camouflaged.

  "Fool!" laughed Tascela. "Did you think I would not guard against yourpossible return? Every door in this chamber is guarded by such traps.Stand there and watch now, while I fulfill the destiny of your handsomefriend! Then I will decide your own."

  Conan's hand instinctively sought his belt, only to encounter an emptyscabbard. His sword was on the stair behind him. His poniard was lyingback in the forest, where the dragon had torn it from his jaw. The steelteeth in his leg were like burning coals, but the pain was not as savageas the fury that seethed in his soul. He was trapped, like a wolf. If hehad had his sword he would have hewn off his leg and crawled across thefloor to slay Tascela. Valeria's eyes rolled toward him with muteappeal, and his own helplessness sent red waves of madness surgingthrough his brain.

  Dropping on the knee of his free leg, he strove to get his fingersbetween the jaws of the trap, to tear them apart by sheer strength.Blood started from beneath his finger nails, but the jaws fitted closeabout his leg in a circle whose segments jointed perfectly, contracteduntil there was no space between his mangled flesh and the fanged iron.The sight of Valeria's naked body added flame to the fire of his rage.

  Tascela ignored him. Rising languidly from her seat she swept the ranksof her subjects with a searching glance, and asked: "Where are Xamec,Zlanath and Tachic?"

  "They did not return from the catacombs, princess," answered a man."Like the rest of us, they bore the bodies of the slain into the crypts,but they have not returned. Perhaps the ghost of Tolkemec took them."

  "Be silent, fool!" she ordered harshly. "The ghost is a myth."

  She came down from her dais, playing with a thin gold-hilted dagger. Hereyes burned like nothing on the hither side of hell. She paused besidethe altar and spoke in the tense stillness.

  "Your life shall make me young, white woman!" she said. "I shall leanupon your bosom and place my lips over yours, and slowly--ah,slowly!--sink this blade through your heart, so that your life, fleeingyour stiffening body, shall enter mine, making me bloom again withyouth and with life everlasting!"

  Slowly, like a serpent arching toward its victim, she bent down throughthe writhing smoke, closer and closer over the now motionless woman whostared up into her glowing dark eyes--eyes that grew larger and deeper,blazing like black moons in the swirling smoke.

  The kneeling people gripped their hands and held their breath, tense forthe bloody climax, and the only sound was Conan's fierce panting as hestrove to tear his leg from the trap.

  All eyes were glued on the altar and the white figure there; the crashof a thunderbolt could hardly have broken the spell, yet it was only alow cry that shattered the fixity of the scene and brought all whirlingabout--a low cry, yet one to make the hair stand up stiffly on thescalp. They looked, and they saw.

  Framed in the door to the left of the dais stood a nightmare figure. Itwas a man, with a tangle of white hair and a matted white beard thatfell over his breast. Rags only partly covered his gaunt frame,revealing half-naked limbs strangely unnatural in appearance. The skinwas not like that of a normal human. There was a suggestion of_scaliness_ about it, as if the owner had dwelt long under conditionsalmost antithetical to those conditions under which human lifeordinarily thrives. And there was nothing at all human about the eyesthat blazed from the tangle of white hair. They were great gleamingdisks that stared unwinkingly, luminous, whitish, and without a hint ofnormal emotion or sanity. The mouth gaped, but no coherent wordsissued--only a high-pitched tittering.

  * * * * *

  "Tolkemec!" whispered Tascela, livid, while the others crouched inspeechless horror. "No myth, then, no ghost! Set! You have dwelt fortwelve years in darkness! Twelve years among the bones of the dead! Whatgrisly food did you find? What mad travesty of life did you live, in thestark blackness of that eternal night? I see now why Xamec and Zlanathand Tachic did not return from the catacombs--and never will return. Butwhy have you waited so long to strike? Were you seeking something, inthe pits? Some secret weapon you knew was hidden there? And have youfound it at last?"

  That hideous tittering was Tolkemec's only reply, as he bounded into theroom with a long leap that carried him over the secret trap before thedoor--by chance, or by some faint recollection of the ways of Xuchotl.He was not mad, as a man is mad. He had dwelt apart from humanity solong that he was no longer human. Only an unbroken thread of memoryembodied in hate and the urge for vengeance had connected him with thehumanity from which he had been cut off, and held him lurking near thepeople he hated. Only that thin string had kept him from racing andprancing off for ever into the black corridors and realms of thesubterranean world he had discovered, long ago.

  "You sought something hidden!" whispered Tascela, cringing back. "Andyou have found it! You remember the feud! After all these years ofblackness, you remember!"

  For in the lean hand of Tolkemec now waved a curious jade-hued wand, onthe end of which glowed a knob of crimson shaped like a pomegranate. Shesprang aside as he thrust it out like a spear, and a beam of crimsonfire lanced from the pomegranate. It missed Tascela, but the womanholding Valeria's ankles was in the way. It smote between her shoulders.There was a sharp crackling sound and the ray of fire flashed from herbosom and struck the black altar, with a snapping of blue sparks. Thewoman toppled sidewise, shriveling and withering like a mummy even asshe fell.

  Valeria rolled from the altar on the other side, and started for theopposite wall on all fours. For hell had burst loose in the throne roomof dead Olmec.

  The man who had held Valeria's hands was the next to die. He turned torun, but before he had taken half a dozen steps, Tolkemec, with anagility appalling in such a frame, bounded around to a position thatplaced the man between him and the altar. Again the red fire-beamflashed and the Tecuhltli rolled lifeless to the floor, as the beamcompleted its course with a burst of blue sparks against the altar.

  Then began slaughter. Screaming insanely the people rushed about thechamber, caroming from one another, stumbling and falling. And amongthem Tolkemec capered and pranced, dealing death. They could not escapeby the doors; for apparently the metal of the portals served like themetal-veined stone altar to complete the circuit for whatever hellishpower flashed like thunderbolts from the witch-wand the ancient waved inhis hand. When he caught a man or a woman between him and a door or thealtar, that one died instantly. He chose no special victim. He took themas they came, with his rags flapping about his wildly gyrating limbs,and the gusty echoes of his tittering sweeping the room above thescreams. And bodies fell like falling leaves about the altar and at thedoors. One warrior in desperation rushed at him, lifting a dagger, onlyto fall before he could strike. But the rest were like crazed cattle,with no thought
for resistance, and no chance of escape.

  The last Tecuhltli except Tascela had fallen when the princess reachedthe Cimmerian and the girl who had taken refuge beside him. Tascela bentand touched the floor, pressing a design upon it. Instantly the ironjaws released the bleeding limb and sank back into the floor.

  "Slay him if you can!" she panted, and pressed a heavy knife into hishand. "I have no magic to withstand him!"

  With a grunt he sprang before the women, not heeding his lacerated legin the heat of the fighting-lust. Tolkemec was coming toward him, hisweird eyes ablaze, but he hesitated at the gleam of the knife in Conan'shand. Then began a grim game, as Tolkemec sought to circle about Conanand get the barbarian between him and the altar or a metal door, whileConan sought to avoid this and drive home his knife. The women watchedtensely, holding their breath.

  There was no sound except the rustle and scrape of quick-shifting feet.Tolkemec pranced and capered no more. He realized that grimmer gameconfronted him than the people who had died screaming and fleeing. Inthe elemental blaze of the barbarian's eyes he read an intent deadly ashis own. Back and forth they weaved, and when one moved the other movedas if invisible threads bound them together. But all the time Conan wasgetting closer and closer to his enemy. Already the coiled muscles ofhis thighs were beginning to flex for a spring, when Valeria cried out.For a fleeting instant a bronze door was in line with Conan's movingbody. The red line leaped, searing Conan's flank as he twisted aside,and even as he shifted he hurled the knife. Old Tolkemec went down,truly slain at last, the hilt vibrating on his breast.

  * * * * *

  Tascela sprang--not toward Conan, but toward the wand where it shimmeredlike a live thing on the floor. But as she leaped, so did Valeria, witha dagger snatched from a dead man, and the blade, driven with all thepower of the pirate's muscles, impaled the princess of Tecuhltli so thatthe point stood out between her breasts. Tascela screamed once and felldead, and Valeria spurned the body with her heel as it fell.

  "I had to do that much, for my own self-respect!" panted Valeria, facingConan across the limp corpse.

  "Well, this cleans up the feud," he grunted. "It's been a hell of anight! Where did these people keep their food? I'm hungry."

  "You need a bandage on that leg." Valeria ripped a length of silk from ahanging and knotted it about her waist, then tore off some smallerstrips which she bound efficiently about the barbarian's lacerated limb.

  "I can walk on it," he assured her. "Let's begone. It's dawn, outsidethis infernal city. I've had enough of Xuchotl. It's well the breedexterminated itself. I don't want any of their accursed jewels. Theymight be haunted."

  "There is enough clean loot in the world for you and me," she said,straightening to stand tall and splendid before him.

  The old blaze came back in his eyes, and this time she did not resist ashe caught her fiercely in his arms.

  "It's a long way to the coast," she said presently, withdrawing her lipsfrom his.

  "What matter?" he laughed. "There's nothing we can't conquer. We'll haveour feet on a ship's deck before the Stygians open their ports for thetrading season. And then we'll show the world what plundering means!"

  [THE END]

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from _Weird Tales_ July, August-September and October 1936. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.