Classic Audiobook Collection - Red Nails by Robert E. Howard ~ Full Audiobook [fantasy]

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

Red Nails by Robert E. Howard audiobook. Genre: fantasy Conan the Cimmerian rides into the wild, steaming jungles of the far south and crosses paths with Valeria, a hard-edged mercenary with a past as bloody as his own. Pursued by enemies and driven by the promise of shelter, the pair force their way into Xuchotl, a sealed and ancient city that should have been dead for centuries. Instead, it is very much alive - and sick. Behind its silent walls, two decadent factions cling to fading luxury while waging a private, murderous feud, decorating their world with ominous trophies and the chilling symbol of red nails. As Conan and Valeria try to bargain for safety and a way out, they discover that Xuchotl is a trap: corridors twist like a maze, alliances rot quickly, and something older than the city itself lingers in the dark places, feeding on human cruelty and fear. With steel, instinct, and sheer will, Conan must navigate treachery, siege, and creeping horror to survive a civilization that has turned cannibal on its own pleasures. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:50:32) Chapter 02 (01:37:43) Chapter 03 (02:14:59) Chapter 04 (02:29:27) Chapter 05 (03:02:42) Chapter 06 (03:23:22) Chapter 07 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

red nails by robert e howard chapter i the skull on the crag the woman on the horse reigned in her weary steed it stood with its legs wide braced its head drooping as if it found even the weight of the gold tasseled red leather bridle too heavy the woman drew a booted foot out of the silver stirrup and swung down from the gilt-work saddle she made the reins fast to the fork of a sapling and turned about hands on her hips to survey her surroundings they were not inviting giant trees hemmed in the small pool where her horse had just drunk clumps of undergrowth limited the vision that quested under the sombre twilight of the lofty arches formed by intertwining branches the woman shivered with a twitch of her magnificent shoulders and then cursed she was tall full bosomed and large-limbed with compact shoulders her whole figure reflected an unusual strength without detracting from the femininity of her appearance she was all woman in spite of her bearing and her garments the latter were incongruous in view of her purse The latter were incongruous, in view of her present environs. Instead of a skirt, she wore short, wide-legged silk breeches,

which ceased a hand's breath short of her knees, and were upheld by a wide silken sash worn as a girdle. Blaring-topped boots of soft leather came almost to her knees, and a low-necked, wide-colored, wide-sleeved silk shirt completed her costume. on one shapely hip she wore a straight double-edged sword and on the other a long dirk her unruly golden hair cut square at her shoulders was confined by a band of crimson satin against the background of sombre primitive forest she posed with an unconscious picturesqueness bizarre and out of place she should have been posing against a background of sea-clouds she had been posing against a background of sea-clouds painted masts and wheeling gulls. There was the color of the sea in her wide eyes.

And that was, as it should have been, because this was Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, whose deeds are celebrated in song and ballad wherever seafarers gather. She strove to pierce the sullen green roof of the arched branches and see the sky which presumably lay above it, but presently she gave it up with a muttered oath. Leaving her hearse-tide, she strode off toward the east, glancing back toward the pool from time to time,

in order to fix her root in her mind. The silence of the forest depressed her. No birds sang in the lofty boughs, nor did any rustling in the bushes indicate the presence of any small animals. For Leeds she had traveled in a realm of brooding stillness, broken only by the sounds of her own flight. She had slaked her thirst at the pool, but she felt the gnawings of hunger and began looking about for some of the fruit on which she had sustained herself since exhausting the food

she had brought in her saddle-bags. Ahead of her presently she saw an outcropping of dark flint-like rock that sloped upward into what looked like a rugged crag rising among the trees. Its summit was lost to view amid a cloud of encircling leaves. Perhaps its peak rose above the treetops, and from it she could see what lay beyond, if indeed anything lay beyond but more of this apparently illimitable forest through which she had ridden for so many days. A narrow ridge formed a natural ramp that led to her. led up the steep face of the crag. After she had ascended some fifty feet, she came to the belt of leaves that surrounded the rock. The trunks of the trees did not crowd close to the

crag, but the ends of their lower branches extended about it, veiling it with their foliage. She groped on in leafy obscurity, not able to see either above or below her, but presently she glimpsed blue sky, and a moment later came out in the clear, hot sunlight, and saw the forest roof stretching away under her feet. She was standing on a broad shelf which was about even with the treetops, and from it rose a spire-like jut that was the ultimate peak of the crag she had climbed. But something else caught her attention at the moment. Her foot had struck something in the litter of blown dead leaves which carpeted the shelf.

She kicked them aside and looked down on the skeleton of a man. She ran an experienced eye over the bleached frame but saw no broken bones, nor any sign of violence. The man must have died a natural death, though why he should have climbed a tall Craig to die she could not imagine. She scrambled up to the summit of the spire and looked to where. the horizons. The forest roof, which looked like a floor from her vantage point, was just as impenetrable as from below. She could not even see the pool by which she had left her

horse. She glanced northward, in the direction from which she had come. She saw only the rolling green ocean stretching away and away, and with only a vague blue line in the distance to hint of the hill range she had crossed days before to plunge into this leafy waste. West and east the view was the same, though the blue hill line was lacking in those directions. But when she turned her eyes southward, she stiffened and caught her breath. A mile away in that direction, the forest thinned out and ceased abruptly, giving way to a cactus-dotted plain, and in the midst of the distance, of that plain rose the walls and towers of a city. Valerius swore in abasement. This past belief.

She would not have been surprised to cite human habitations of another sort. The beehive-shaped huts of the black people, or the cliff dwellings of the mysterious brown race, which legends declared inhabited some country of this unexplored region. But it was a startling experience to come upon a wall city here, so many long weeks march from the nearest outposts of any sort of civilization. Her hands, tiring from clinging to the spire-like pinnacle, she let herself down on the shelf, frowning in indecision. She had come far, from the camp of the mercenaries by the border town of Sukmet, amidst the level grasslands, where desperate adventurers of of many races guard the Stygian frontier against the raids that come up like a red wave

from Darfur. Her flight had been blind, into a country of which she was wholly ignorant, and now she wavered between an urge to ride directly to that city in the plain, and the instinct of caution, which prompted her to skirt it widely and continue her solitary flight. Her thoughts were scattered by the rustling of the leaves below her. She wheeled, cat-like, snatched at her sword, and then she froze motionless, staring wide-eyed at the man before her. He was almost a giant in stature, muscles rippling smoothly under his skin, which the sun

had burned brown. His garb was similar to hers except that he wore a broad leather belt. instead of a girdle. Broad-sword and poignered hung from this belt. Conan the Samarian! ejaculated the woman. What are you doing on my trail? He grinned broadly, and his fierce blue eyes

burned with a light any woman could understand, as they ran over her magnificent figure, lingering on the swell of her splendid breasts, beneath the light shirt and the clear white flesh displayed between breeches and boot-tops. "'Don't you know?' he laughed. "'Haven't I made my admiration for you plain ever since I first saw you?' A stallion could have made it no planer. She answered disdainfully.

But I never expected to encounter you so far from the ale barrels and meat-pots of Sukmet. Did you really follow me from Zarulo's camp, or were you whipped forth for a rogue?' He laughed at her insolence and flexed his mighty biceps. "'You know, Zarulo didn't have enough knaves to whip me out of camp,' he grinned. "'Of course I followed you. Lucky thing for you, too, winch. When you knifed that Stygian officer, you forfeited Zerulo's favor and protection and you outlawed yourself with the Stygians.

I know it, she replied sullenly. But what else could I do? You know what my provocation was? Sure, he agreed. If I'd been there, I'd have knifed him myself. But if a woman must live in the war camps of men, she could expect such things. Valeria stamped her booted foot and swore.

Why don't know? Men let me live a man's life." That's obvious. Again, his eager eyes devoured her. But you were wise to run away. The Stygians would have had you skinned. That officer's brother followed you faster than you thought I don't doubt. He wasn't far behind you when I caught up with him.

His horse was better than yours. He'd have caught you and cut your throat within a few more miles. Well, she demanded. Well, what? He seemed puzzled. What of the Stygian? Why, what do you suppose? He returned impatiently.

I killed him, of course, and left his carcass for the vultures. That delayed me, though, and I almost lost your trail when you crossed the rocky spurs of the hill. Otherwise, I'd have caught up with you long ago. And now you think you'll drag you? me back to Zorallo's camp?" she sneered. "'Don't talk like a fool,' he grunted. "'Come, girl, don't be such a spitfire. I'm not like that Stygian you knifed and you know it.'

"'A penniless vagabond,' she taunted. He laughed at her. "'What do you call yourself? You haven't enough money to buy a new seat for your breeches. Your disdain doesn't deceive me. You know I've commanded bigger ships and more men than you ever did in your life. As for being penniless, what rover isn't most of the time. I've squandered enough gold in the seaports of the world to fill a galleon.

You know that, too. Where are the fine ships and the bold lads you commanded now? She sneered. At the bottom of the sea, mostly, he replied cheerfully. The Zingaruns sank my last ship off the Shemite Shoe. That's why I joined Zoralo's free companions. But I saw I'd been stung when we marched to the Darfur border. The pay was poor and the wine was sour.

And I don't like black women. And that's the only kind that came to our camp at Sukhmet. Rings in their noses and their teeth filed. Ba! Why did you join Zoralo? Sokmet's a long way from saltwater." Red Artho wanted to make me his mistress. She answered sullenly.

I jumped overboard one night and swam ashore when we were anchored off the Kushite coast. Off Sibhala, it was. There a Shemite trader told me that Zoralo had brought his free companion south to guard the Darfur border. No better employment offered. I joined an eastbound caravan and eventually came to Sukmette. It was madness to plunge southward as you did, commented Conan, but it was wise, too. For Zarallo's patrols never thought to look for you in this direction.

Only the brother of the man you killed happened to strike your trail. And now what do you intend doing, she demanded. Turn west, he answered. I've been this far south, but not this far east. Many days traveling to the west will bring us to the open savannas where the black tribes graze their cattle. I have friends among them. We'll get to the coast and find a ship. I'm sick of the jungle.

Then be on your way, she advised. I have other plans. Don't be a fool. He showed irritation for the first time. You can't keep wandering through this forest? I can if I choose. But what do you intend doing?' "'That's none of your affair,' she snapped.

"'Yes, it is,' he answered calmly. "'Do you think I've followed you this far to turn around and ride off empty-handed? Be sensible wench. I'm not going to harm you.' He stepped toward her, and she sprang back whipping out her sword. "'Keep back, you barbarian dog. I'll spit you like a roast pig." He halted reluctantly and demanded, "'Do you want me to take that toy away from you and spank you with it?'

Words, nothing but words, she mocked, lights like the gleam of the sun on blue water, dancing in her reckless eyes. He knew it was the truth. No living man could disarm Valeria of the Brotherhood, with his bare hands. He scowled, his sensations, a tangle of conflicting emotions. He was angry, yet he was amused and filled with admiration for her spirit. He burned with eagerness to seize that splendid figure and crush it in his iron arms,

yet he greatly desired not to hurt the girl. He was torn between a desire to shake her soundly, and a desire to caress her. He knew if he came any nearer, her sword would be sheathed in his heart. He has seen Valeria kill too many men in board of forays and tavern brawls to have any illusions about her. He knew she was quick and ferocious as a Tigris. He could draw his broad sword and disarm her,

beat the blade out of her hand, but the thought of drawing a sword on a woman, even without intent of injury, was extremely repugnant to him. "'Blast your soul, you hussy,' he exclaimed in exasperation. "'I'm going to take off your—' he started toward her, his angry passion making him reckless, and she poised herself for a deadly thrust. Then came a startling interruption to a scene at once ludicrous and perilous. What's that?'

It was Valeria who exclaimed, but they both started violently, and Conan wheeled like a cat, his great sword flashing into his hand. Back in the forest had burst forth an appalling medley of screams. The screams of horses in terror and agony. Mingled with their screams, there came the snap of splintering bones. Lions are slaying the horses, cried Valeria. "'Lions nothing!' snorted Conan, his eyes blazing. "'Did you hear a lion roar? Neither did I.

Listen at those bonesnap. Not even a lion could make that much noise killing a horse.' He hurried down the natural ramp, and she followed. Their personal feud forgotten in the adventurous instinct to unite against common peril. The screams had ceased when they worked their way downward. through the green veil of leaves that brushed the rock. "'I found your horse tied by the pool back there,' he muttered, treading so noiselessly, that she no longer wondered how he had surprised her on the crag.

I tied mine beside it and followed the tracks of your boots. Watch now.' They had emerged from the belt of leaves and started down into the lower recesses of the forest. Above them the green roof spread its dust. ski canopy. Below them, the sunlight filtered in just enough to make a jade-tinted twilight. The giant trunks of trees, less than a hundred yards away, looked dim and ghostly. The horses should be beyond that ticket over there, whispered Conan, and his voice might have been a breeze moving through the branches. Listen! Valeria had already heard, and a chill swept through her veins, so she unconsciously laid her

white hand on her companion's muscular brown arm. From beyond the thicket came the noisy crunching of bones and the low rending of flesh, together with the grinding, slobbering sounds of a horrible feast. "'Lions wouldn't make that much noise,' whispered Conan. Something's eating our horses, but it's not a lion. Crom! The noise stopped suddenly, and Conan swore softly. A sudden, risen breeze was blowing from them directly toward the spot where the unseen slayer

was hidden. Here it comes, muttered Conan, half-lifting his sword. The thicket was violently agitated, and Valeria clutched Conan's Conan's arm hard. Ignorant of jungle-lore, she yet knew that no animal she had ever seen could have shaken the tall brush like that. It must be as big as an elephant, muttered Conan, echoing her thoughts. What the devil? His voice trailed away in stunned silence. Through the thicket was thrust a head of nightmare and lunacy, grinning jaws. bared rows of dripping yellow tusks, above the yawning mouth wrinkled a saurian-like snout.

Huge eyes, like those of a pythons a thousand times magnified, stared unwinkingly at the petrified humans, clinging to the rock above it. Blood smeared the scaly, flabby lips, and dripped from the huge mouth. The head, bigger than that of a crocodile, who was a little bit of a crocodile, who further extended on a long-scaled neck on which stood up rows of serrated spikes, and after it, crushing down the briars and saplings, waddled the body of a titan, a gigantic barrel-bellied torso on absurdly short legs. The whitish belly almost raked the ground, while the serrated backbone rose higher than Conan could have reached on tiptoe.

A long spiked tail like that of a gargantuan scorpion trailed out behind. Back up the crag, quick! snapped Conan, thrusting the girl behind him. I don't think he can climb, but he can stand on his hind legs and reach us. With a snapping and rending of pushes and saplings, the monster came hurtling through the thickets, and they fled up the rock before him like leaves blown before a wind. As Valeria plunged into the leafy screen, a backward glance showed her the Titan, rearing up fearsomely on his massive hind legs, even as Conan had predicted. The sight sent panic racing through her.

As he reared, the beast seemed more gigantic than ever. His snouted head towered above the trees. Then Conan's iron hand closed on her wrist and she was jerked head. long into the blinding welter of the leaves, and out again into the hot sunshine above, just as the monster fell forward, with his front feet on the crag, with an impact that made the rock vibrate. Behind the fugitives, the huge head crashed through the twigs, and they looked down for a horrifying instant at the nightmare visage framed among the green leaves, eyes flaming

jaws gaping. Then the giant tusks clashed together futile, and after that the head was withdrawn, vanishing from their sight as if it had sunk in a pool. Peering down through the broken branches that scraped the rock, they saw it squatting on its haunches at the foot of the crag, staring unblinkingly up at them. Valeria shuddered, Oh, how long do you suppose he'll crouch there. Conan kicked the skull on the leaf-strewn shelf. That fellow must have climbed up here to escape him, or one like him. He must have died of starvation. There are no bones broken. That thing must be a dragon, such as the black people speak of in their legends. If so, it won't leave here until we're both dead. Valeria looked at him blankly, her resentment forgotten.

She fought down a surging of panic. She had proved her reckless courage a thousand times in wild battles on sea and land, on the blood-slippery decks of burning warships, in the storming of wall cities and on the trampled sandy beaches, where the desperate men of the Red Brotherhood bathed their knives in one another's blood in their fights for leadership. But the prospect now confronting her congealed her. blood. A cutless stroke in the heat of battle was nothing, but to sit idle and helpless on

a bare rock until she perished of starvation, besieged by a monstrous survival of an elder age, the thought sent panic throbbing through her brain. "'He must have to leave to eat and drink,' she said helplessly. "'He won't have to go far to do either,' Conan pointed out. He's just gorged on horse meat and like a real snake. He can go for a long time without eating or drinking again. But he doesn't sleep after eating like a real snake, it seems. Anyway, he can't climb this crag.

Conan spoke imperturbably. He was a barbarian, and the terrible patience of the wilderness and its children were as much a part of him as his lusts and rages. He could endure a situation like this with a coolness impossible to a civilized person. Can't we get into the trees and get away, traveling like apes through the branches? She asked desperately. He shook his head. I thought of that.

The branches that touch the crag down there are too light. They break with our weight, besides. I have an idea that devil could tear up any tree around here by its roots. Well, are we going to sit here on our rumps until we starve? Like that? She cried furiously, kicking the skull, clattering across the ledge. I won't do it. I'll go down there and cut his damned head off.

Conan had seated himself on a rocky projection at the foot of the spire. He looked up with a glint of admiration at her blazing eyes and tense quivering figure, and realizing that she was in the mood for any madness, he let none of his admiration sound in his voice. Sit down, he grunted, catching her by her wrist and pulling her on his knee. She was too surprised to resist as he took her sword from her hand and shoved it back in its sheath.

Sit still and calm down. You'd only break your steel on his scales. he gobble you up at one gulp or smash you like an egg with that spiked tail of his we'll get out of this jam some way but we shan't do it by getting chewed up and swallowed she made no reply nor did she seek to repulse his arm from about her waist she was frightened and the sensation was new to valeria of the red brotherhood so she sat on her companions or captor's knee with a docility that would have amazed zoralo who had anathematized her as a she-devil out of hell's saraglio conan played idly with her curly yellow locks seemingly intent only upon his conquest neither the skeleton at his feet nor the monster crouching below disturbed his mind or dulled the edge of his interest the girl's restless eyes roving the leaves below them discovered splatches of color among the green it was fruit large darkly crimson globes suspended from the leaves from the green it was fruit large darkly crimson globes suspended from the the boughs of a tree whose broad leaves were a peculiarly rich and vivid green.

She became aware of both thirst and hunger, though thirst had not assailed her until she knew she could not descend from the crag to find food and water. "'We need not starve,' she said. There is fruit we can reach." Conan glanced where she pointed. "'If we ate that we wouldn't need the bite of a dragon,' he grunted. That's what the black people of Kush called the apples of Dorquita. Dorkita is the queen of the dead.

Drink a little of the juice or spill it on your flesh, and you'd be dead before you could tumble to the foot of this Craig. Oh. She lapsed into dismayed silence. There seemed no way out of their predicament she reflected gloomily. She saw no way of escape, and Conan seemed to be concerned only. with her supple waist and curly tresses. If he was trying to formulate a plan of escape, he did not show it. "'If you'll take your hands off me long enough to climb up on that peak,' she said presently, "'you'll see something that will surprise you.' He cast her a questioning

glance, then obeyed with a shrug of his massive shoulders. Clinging to the spire-like pinnacle, he stared out over the forest roof. He stood a long moment in silence, poised like a bronze statue on the rock. It's a walled city right enough, he muttered presently. Was that where you were going when you tried to send me off alone to the coast? I saw it before you came. I knew nothing of it when I left Sukhmet.

Who'd have thought to find a city here? I don't believe the Stygians ever penetrated this one. for. Could black people build a city like that? I see no herds on the plain, no signs of cultivation or people moving about. How could you hope to see all that at this distance, she demanded? He shrugged his shoulders and dropped down on the shelf. Well, the folk of the city can't help us just now. And they might not if they could. The people of the black countries are generally high. hostile to strangers, probably stick us full of spears. He stopped short and stood silent, as if he had forgotten what he was saying,

frowning down at the crimson spheres gleaming among the leaves. Spears, he muttered. What a blasted fool I am not to have thought of that before. That shows what a pretty woman does to a man's mind. What are you talking about? She inquired. Without answering her question, he descended to the belt of leaves and looked down through them.

The great brute squatted below, watching the crag with the frightful patience of the reptile folk. So might one of his breed have glared up at their troglotite ancestors, treed on a high-flung rock, in the dim dawn ages. Conan cursed him without heat, and began cutting branches, reaching out and severing them as far from the end as he could reach. The agitation of the leaves made the monster restless. He rose from his haunches and lashed his hideous tail, snapping off saplings as if they had been toothpicks.

Conan watched him warily from the corner of his eye, and just as Valeria believed the dragon was about to hurl himself up to crag again, the Samarian drew back and climbed up to the ledge, with the branches he had cut. There were three of these, slender shafts about seven feet long, but not larger than his thumb. He had also cut several strands of tough, thin vine. Branches too light for spear-haffs and creepers no thicker than cords, he remarked, indicating the foliage about the crag.

It won't hold our weight, but their strength in union—that's what the Aquilonian renegades used to tell us Samarians when they came into the hills to raise an army to invade their own country, but we always fight by clans and tribes. What the devil has that got to do with those sticks, she demanded? You wait and see. Gathering the sticks in a compact bundle, he wedged his poniard hilt between them at one end. Then, with the vines, he bound them together, and when he had completed his task, he had spear of no small strength, with a sturdy shaft seven feet inlet.

"'What good will that do?' she demanded. "'You told me that a blade couldn't pierce his scales. "'He hasn't got scales all over him?' answered Conan. "'There's more than one way of skinning a panther.' Moving down to the edge of the leaves, he reached the spear up and carefully thrust the blade threw one of the apples of Durkita, drawing aside to avoid the darkly purple drops that dripped from the pierced fruit. Presently he withdrew the blade and showed her the blue steel stained a dull purplish crimson.

"'I don't know whether it will do the job or not,' quoth he. "'There's enough poison there to kill an elephant, but—well, we'll see.' Valeria was close behind him as he let himself. down among the leaves. Cautiously holding the poison pike away from him, he thrust his head through the branches and addressed the monster. "'What are you waiting down there for, you misbegotten offspring of questionable parents?' was one of his more printable queries.

"'Stick your ugly head up here again, you long-necked brute. Or do you want me to come down there and kick you loose from your ill-yellow? legitimate spine. There was more of it. Some of it couched in eloquence that made Valeria stare, in spite of her profane education among the seafarers. And it had its effect on the monster. Just as the incessant yapping of a dog worries and enrages more constitutionally silent

animals, so the clamorous voice of a man rouses fear in some beastial bosoms and insane rage in others. Suddenly, and with appalling quickness, the mastodonic brute reared up on its mighty hind legs and elongated its neck and body in a furious effort to reach, this vociferous pygmy, whose clamor was disturbing the primeval silence of its ancient realm.

But Conan had judged his distance with precision. Some five feet below him, the mighty head crashed terribly but futilely through the leaves. And as the monstrous mouth gaped like that of a great snake, Conan drove his spear into the red angle of the jawbone hinge. He struck downward with all the strength of both arms, driving the long, punyered blade to the hilt in flesh, sinew, and bone. Instantly the jaws clashed convulsively together, severing the triple-piece shaft, and almost

precipitating Conan from his perch. He would have fallen but far the girl behind him, who caught his sword-belt in a desperate grasp. He clutched at a rocky projection and grinned his thanks back at her. Down on the ground the monster was wallowing like a dog with pepper in its eyes. He shook his head from side to side, pawed at it, and opened his mouth repeatedly to its widest extent. Presently he got a huge front foot on the stump of the shaft, and managed to tear the blade out.

Then he threw up his head, jaws wide and spouting blood, and glared up at the crag with such concentration and intelligent fury that Valeria trembled and drew her sword. The scales along his back and flanks turned from rusty brown to a dull, lurid red. Most horribly the monster's silence was broken. The sound that issued from his blood-streaming jaws did not sound like anything that could have been produced by an earthly creation. With harsh grating roars, the dragon hurled himself at the crag that was the citadel of his enemies. Again and again, his mighty head crashed upward through the branches, snapping vainly

on empty air. He hurled his full, ponderous weight against the rock until it vibrated from base to crest. And rearing upright, he gripped it with his front legs like a man and tried to tear it up by the roots as if it had been a tree. This exhibition of primordial fury, chill the blood in Valeria's veins. But Conan was too close to the primitive himself to feel anything but a comprehending interest. To the barbarian, no such gulf existed between himself and other men and the animals as existed in the conception of Valeria.

The monster below them to Conan was merely a form of life differing from himself mainly in physical shape. He attributed to it, characteristic similar to his own, and saw in its wrath a counterpart of his rages, in its roars and bellowings, merely reptilian equivalence to the curses he had bestowed upon it. Feeling a kinship with all wild things, even dragons, it was impossible for him to experience the sick horror which assailed Valeria at the sight of the brute's ferocity. He sat watching it tranquilly and pointed out the various changes that were taking place in its voice and actions.

The poisons taking hold, he said with conviction. I don't believe it. To Valeria, it seemed preposterous to suppose that anything, however, lethal, could have any effect on that mountain of muscle and fury. There's pain in his voice, declared Conan. first he was merely angry because of the stinging in his jaw now he feels the bite of the poison look he's staggering he'll be blind in a few more minutes what did i tell you for suddenly the dragon had lurched about and went crashing off through the bushes is he running away inquired valeria uneasily he's making for the pool conan sprang up galvanized into swift activity The poison makes him thirsty. Come on.

He'll be blind in a few moments, but he can smell his way back to the foot of the craig. And if our scents still here, he'll sit here until he dies. And others of his kind may come at his cries. Let's go. Down there? Valeria was aghast. Sure, we'll make for the city. They may cut our heads off there, but it's our only chance.

We may run into a thousand more dragons on the way. way, but it's sure death to stay here. If we wait until he dies, we may have a dozen more to deal with, after me in a hurry. He went down the ramp as swiftly as an ape, pausing only to aid his less agile companion, who, until she saw the Samarian climb, had fancied herself the equal of any man in the rigging of a ship or on the sheer face of a cliff. They descended into the gloom below the branches and slid to the ground silently, though Valeria felt as if the pounding of her heart must surely be heard from far away. A noisy gurgling and lapping beyond the dense thicket indicated that the dragon was drinking at the pool. As soon as his belly is full he'll be back, muttered Conan.

It may take hours for the poison to kill him, if it does at all. somewhere beyond the forest the sun was sinking to the horizon the forest was a misty twilight place of black shadows and dim vistas conan gripped valeria's wrists and glided away from the foot of the crag he made less noise than a breeze blowing among the tree trunks but valeria felt as if her soft boots were betraying their flight to all the forest i don't think he can follow a trail muttered conan but if a wind blew our body scent to him he could smell us out mitra grant that the wind blow not valeria breathed Her face was a pallid oval in the gloom. She gripped her sword in her free hand, but the feel of the chagrin-bound hilt inspired only a feeling of helplessness in her. They were still some distance from the edge of the forest when they heard a snapping and crashing

behind them. Polaria bit her lip to check a cry. "'He's on our trail,' she whispered fiercely. Conan shook his head. He didn't smell us at the rock and he's blundered. about through the forest, trying to pick up our scent. Come on, it's the city or nothing now. He could tear down any tree we climb, if only the wind stays down."

They stole on until the trees began to thin out ahead of them. Behind them the forest was a black, impenetrable ocean of shadows. The ominous crackling still sounded behind them as the dragon blundered in his erratic course. "'There's the plane ahead,' breathed Valeria. A little more, and we'll— "'Crom!' swore Conan. "'Metra!' whispered Valeria. "'Out of the south a wind had sprung up.

It blew over them directly into the black forest behind them. Instantly a horrible roar shook the woods. The aimless snapping and cracking of the bushes changed to a sustained crashing, as the dragon came like a hurricane straight toward the spot from which the scent of his enemies was wafted. Run! snarled Conan, his eyes blazing like those of a trapped wolf. It's all we can do. Sailor's boots are not made for sprinting, and the life of a pirate does not train one for a runner. Within a hundred yards Valeria was panting and reeling in her gate, and behind them, them the crashing gave way to a rolling thunder as the monster broke out of the thickets and

into the more open ground. Conan's iron arm about the woman's waist, half lifted her, her feet scarcely touched the earth, as she was borne along at a speed she could never have attained herself. If he could keep out of the beast's way for a bit, perhaps that betraying wind would shift. But the wind held, and a quick glance over his shoulder showed Conan that the monster was almost upon them, coming like a war-galley in front of a hurricane. He thrust the Valeria from him with a force that sent her reeling a dozen feet to fall in a crumpled heap at the foot of the nearest tree, and the Samarian wheeled in the path

of the thundering titan. that his death was upon him, the Samarian acted according to his instinct, and hurled himself full at the awful face that was bearing down on him. He leaped, slashing like a wildcat, felt his sword cut deep into the scales that sheathed the mighty snout, and then a terrific impact knocked him rolling and tumbling for fifty feet, with all the wind and half the life battered out of him. How the stunned Samarian regained his feet, not even he could have told, but the only thought that filled his brain was of the woman lying, dazed and helpless, almost in the path

of the hurtling fiend, and before the breath came whistling back into his gullet, he was standing over her with his sword in his hand. She lay where he had thrown her, but she was struggling to a sitting position, neither tearing tusk or trampling feet had touched her. It had been a shoulder or front leg that struck Conan, and the blind monster rushed on, forgetting the victims whose scent it had been following in the sudden agony of its death-throes. Headlong, on its course, it thundered, until its low-hung head crashed into a gigantic tree in its path. The impact tore the tree up by the roots, and must have dashed the brains from the misshapen skull.

Tree and monster fell together, and the dazed humans saw the branches and leaves shaken by the convulsions of the creature they covered, and then grow quiet. Conan lifted Valeria to her feet, and together they started away at a reeling run. A few moments later they emerged into the still twilight of the treeless plain. Conan paused an instant and glanced back at the evidence. fastness behind them. Not a leaf stirred, not a bird chirped. It stood as silent as it must have stood before man was created. Come on, muttered Conan, taking his companion's hand.

It's touch and go now. If more dragons come out of the woods after us. He did not have to finish the sentence. The city looked very far away across the plain, farther than it had looked from the Craig. Valeria's heart hammered until she felt as if it would strangle her. At every step she expected to hear the crashing of the bushes and see another colossal nightmare bearing down upon them.

But nothing disturbed the silence of the thickets. With the first mile between them and the woods, Valeria breathed more easily. Her buoyant self-confidence began to thaw out again. The sun had set, and darkness was gathering over the plain, lightened a little by the stars that made stunt the ghosts out of the cactus growths. "'No cattle, no plowed fields,' muttered Conan. "'How do these people live?' "'Perhaps the cattle are in pins for the night,' suggested Ballaria, and the fields and grazing

pastures are on the other side of the city. "'Maybe,' he grunted. "'I didn't see any from the crag, though.' The moon came up behind the city, etching walls and towers blackly in the yellow glow. Valeria shivered. Black against the moon the strange city had a somber, sinister look. Perhaps something of the same feeling occurred to Conan, for he stopped, glancing about him, and grunted, We stop here.

No use coming to their gates in the night. They probably wouldn't let us in. Besides, we need rest, and we don't know how they'll receive us. If you are asleep, we'll put us in better shape to fight or run. He led the way to a bed of cactus which grew in a circle, a phenomenon common to the southern desert. With his sword, he chopped an opening and motioned Valeria to enter it. We'll be safe from snakes here, anyhow. She glanced fearfully back at the black line that indicated the forest some six miles away.

suppose a dragon comes out of the woods we'll keep watch he answered though he made no suggestion as to what they would do in such an event he was staring at the city a few miles away not a light shone from spire or tower A great black mass of mystery it reared cryptically against the moonlit sky. Lie down and sleep. I'll keep the first watch. She hesitated, glancing at him uncertainly, but he sat down, cross-legged in the opening, facing toward the plain, his sword across his knees, his back to her. Without further comment, she lay down on the sand inside this spiky circle. Wake me when the moon is at a moment.

It's zenith, she directed. He did not reply, nor looked toward her. Her last impression, as she sank into slumber, was of his muscular figure, immobile as a statue hewn out of bronze, outlined against the low-hanging stars. End of Part 1. Chapter 2 of Red Nails by Robert E. Howard. This Libre-Box recording is in the public domain.

Chapter 2 By the blaze of fire jewels. Valeria awoke with a start to the realization that a gray dawn was stealing over the plane. She sat up, rubbing her eyes. Conan squatted beside the cactus, cutting off the thick pears, and dexterously twitching out the spines. "'You didn't awake me,' she accused. "'You let me sleep all night.' "'You were tired,' he answered.

Your posterior must have been sore, too, after that long ride. You pirates aren't used to horseback. What about yourself? she retarded. I was a Cossack before I was a pirate, he answered. They live in the saddle. I snatch naps like a panther watching beside the trail for a deer to come by. My ears keep watch while my eyes sleep. And indeed, the giant barbarians seemed as much refreshed.

as if he had slept the whole night on a golden bed. Having removed the thorns and peeled off the tough skin, he handed the girl a thick, juicy cactus leaf. Sink your teeth in that pair. It's food and drink to a desert man. I was a chief of the Zawgirs once, desert men who lived by plundering the caravans. Is there anything you haven't been? inquired the girl, happened derision and have been fascination. I've never been king of any Iborian kingdom, he grinned, taking an enormous mouthful of cactus, but I've dreamed of being even that.

I may be, too, some day. Why shouldn't I? She shook her head in wonder at his calm audacity, and fell to devouring her pair. She found it not unpleasing to the palate, and full of cool and thirst-satisfying juice, Finishing his meal, Conan wiped his hands in the sand, rose, ran his fingers through his thick black mane, hitched at his sword belt, and said, Well, let's go. If the people in that city are going to cut our throats, they may as well do it now, before the heat of the day begins. His grim humor was unconscious, but Valeria reflected that it might be prophetic.

She, too, hitched her sword belt as she rose. Her terrors of the night were passed. The roaring dragons of the distant forest were like a dim dream. There was a swagger in her stride as she moved off beside the Samarian. Whatever perils lay ahead of them, their foes would be men, and Valeria of the Red Brotherhood had never seen the face of the man she feared. Conan glanced down at her as she strode along beside him with the swinging stride that matched his own.

You walk more like a hillman than a sailor, he said. You must be an Aquilonian. The sons of Darfur never burnt your white-skinned brown. Many a princess would envy you. I am from Aquilonia, she replied. His compliments no longer irritated her. His evident admiration pleased her, for another man to have kept her watch while she slept,

would have angered her. She had always fiercely resented any man's attempting to shield or protect her because of her sex. But she found a secret pleasure in the fact that this man had done so, and he had not taken advantage of her fright and the weakness resulting from it. After all, she reflected, her companion was no common man. The sun rose behind the city, turning the towers to a seat. sinister crimson. Black last night against the moon, grunted Conan, his eyes clouding with the abysimal superstition of the barbarian. Blood red as a threat of blood against the sun this dawn. I do not like this city. But they went on, and as they went, Kodan pointed out the fact

that no road ran to the city from the north. No cattle have trampled the plain on this side of the city, said he. No ploughshire has touched the earth for years, maybe centuries. But look, once this plain was cultivated. Valerius saw the ancient irrigation ditches, he indicated, half-filled in places and overgrown with cactus. She frowned with perplexity as her eyes swept over the plain that stretched on all sides of the city to the forest edge, which marched in a vast dim ring. Vision did not extend beyond that ring. She looked uneasily at the city. No helmets or spearheads gleamed on battlements.

No trumpets sounded. No challenge rang from the towers. A silence as absolute as that of the forest brooded over the walls and minarets. The sun was high above the eastern horizon when they stood before the great gate in the northern wall, in the shadow of the lofty rampart. Rust flecked the iron bracings of the mighty bronze portal. Spider webs glistened thickly on hinge and sill and bolted panel. It hasn't been open for years, exclaimed Valeria.

"'Hugh, a dead city,' grunted Conan. That's why the ditches were broken and the plain untouched. But who built it? Who dwelt here? Where did they go? Why did they abandon it? Who can say? Maybe an exiled clan of Stygians built it.

Maybe not. It doesn't look like Stygian architecture. Maybe the people were wiped out by enemies, or a plague exterminated them. In that case, their treasures may still be gathering dust and cobwebs in there, suggested Valeria, the acquisitive instincts of her profession waking in her, prodded, too, by feminine curiosity. Can we open the gate? Let's go in and explore a bit.

Conan eyed the heavy portal dubiously, but placed his massive shoulder against it, and thrust with all the power of his muscular calves and thighs. With a rasping screech of rusty hinges, the gate moved ponderously inward, and Conan straightened and drew his sword. Valerius stared over his shoulder and made a sound indicative of surprise. They were not looking into an open street or court as one would have expected.

The opened gate or door gave directly into a long broad hall which ran away and away until its vista grew indistinct in the distance. It was of heroic proportions, and the floor of a curious, redstone, cut in square tiles that seemed to smolder as if with a reflection of flames. The walls were of a shiny green material. Jade, or I'm a Shemite, swore Conan. Not in such quantity, protested Valeria. I've looted enough of the Keaton caravans to know what I'm talking about, he asserted.

That's Jade. The vaulted ceiling was of Lappi's lazuli, adorned with clusters of great green stones that gleamed with a poisonous radiance. Green firestones, growled Conan. That's what the people of Punt call them. They're supposed to be the petrified eyes of those prehistoric snakes, the ancients called golden serpents. They glow like a cat's eyes in the dark. At night this hall would be low. lighted by them, but it would be a hellishly weird illumination.

Let's look around. We might find a cache of jewels. Shut the door, advised Valeria. I'd hate to have to outrun a dragon down this hall. Conan grinned and replied, I don't believe the dragons ever leave the forest. But he complied and pointed out the broken bolt on the inner side. I thought I heard something snap when I shoved against

it. That bolts freshly broken. Rust has eaten nearly through it. If the people ran away, why should it have been bolted on the inside? They undoubtedly left by another door, suggested Valeria. She wondered how many centuries had passed, since the light of outer day had filtered into that great hall through the open door. Sunlight was finding its way somehow into the hall, and they quickly saw the source. High up in the vaulted ceiling, skylights were set in slot-like openings, translucent sheets of some crystalline substance. In the splotches of shadow between them, the green jewels winked like the eyes of angry cats. Beneath their feet the dully lurid floor smoldered with changing hues and colors of flame.

It was like treading the floors of hell with evil stars blinking overhead. Three balustrated galleries ran along each side of the hall, one above the other. A four-storied house, grunted Conan, and this hall extends to the roof. It's as long as a street. I seem to see a door at the other end. Valeria shrugged her white shoulders. Your eyes are better than mine, then, though I am accounted sharp-eyed among the sea-rovers. They turned into an open door at random and traversed a series of empty chambers, floored like the hall, and with walls of the same green jade, or of marble or ivory, or chalcedony,

adorned with freezes of bronze, gold, or silver. In the ceilings the green fire gems were set, and their light was as ghostly and elusive as Conan had predicted. Under the witch-fire glow, the intruders moved like spectres. Some of the chambers lacked this illumination, and their doorway showed black as the mouth of the pit. These Conan and Valeria avoided, keeping all ways to the lighted chambers. Cobwebs hung in the corners,

but there was no perceptible accumulation of dust on the floor, or on the tables in seats of marble, jade, or Cornelian, which occupied the chambers. Here and there were rugs of that silk known as ketan, which is practically indestructible. Nowhere did they find any windows or doors opening into streets or courts. Each door merely opened into another chamber or hall. Why don't we come to a street? grumbled Valeria. This place, or whatever we're in, must be as big as the king of Turan Saraglio.

They must not have perished of plague, said Conan, meditating upon the mystery of the empty city. Otherwise, we'd find skeletons. Maybe it became haunted, and everybody got up and left. Maybe—maybe—maybe hell, broke in Valeria rudely. We'll never know. Look at these freezes. They portray men. What race do they belong to?

Conan scanned them and shook his head. I never saw people. exactly like them. But there's the smack of the east about them. Vinhaya, maybe, or Kossala. Were you a king in Kossala? She asked, masking her keen curiosity with derision. No, but I was a war-chief of the Abgoulos,

who lived in the Himalayan mountains above the borders of Vinya. These people favor the Kossalans. But why should Kossolans be building a city this far to the West. The figures portrayed were those of slender, olive-skinned men and women with finely chiseled exotic features. They wore filmy robes and many delicate jeweled ornaments, and were depicted mostly in attitudes of feasting, dancing, or love-making.

"'Eastern is all right,' grunted Conan. "'Hh! But from where I don't know. They must have lived a disgustingly peaceful life, though, or they'd have seen some of wars and fights. Let's go up that stair. It was an ivory spiral that wound up from the chamber in which they were standing. They mounted three flights and came into a broad chamber on the fourth floor, which seemed

to be the highest tier in the building. Skylights in the ceiling illuminated the room in which light the fire gems winked pallidly. Glancing through the doors they saw, except on one side, a series of several similarly lighted chambers. The other door opened upon a balustrated gallery that overhung a hall much smaller than the one they had recently explored on the lower floor. Hell! Valeria sat down disgustedly on a jade bench. The people who deserted this city must have taken all their treasures with them. I'm tired of wondering through these bare rooms at random. All these upper chambers seemed to be lighted, said Conan.

I wish we could find a window that overlooked the city. Let's have a look through that door over there. You have a look, advised Valeria. I'm going to sit here and rest my feet. Conan disappeared through the door opposite that one opening upon the gallery, and Valeria leaned back with her hands clasped behind her head and thrust her booted legs out in front of her. These silent rooms and halls, with their gleaming,

green clusters of ornaments, and burning crimson floors, were beginning to depress her. She wished they could find their way out of the maze into which they had wondered, and emerged into a street. She wondered idly what furtive, dark feet had glided over those flaming floors in past centuries, and how many deeds of cruelty and mystery those winking ceiling-gims had blazed down upon. It was a faint noise that brought her out of her reflections. She was on her feet with her sword in her hand before she realized what had disturbed her.

Conan had not returned, and she knew it was not he that she had heard. The sound had come from somewhere beyond the door that opened on to the gallery. Soundlessly in her soft leather boots, she glided through it, crept across the balcony and peered down between the heavy bellarrow. a man was stealing along the hall. The sight of a human being in this supposedly deserted city was a startling shock, crouching down behind the stone balusters with every nerve tingling, Valeria glared down at the stealthy figure.

The man in no way resemble the figures depicted on the friezes. He was slightly above middle height, very dark, though not negroid. He was naked but for a scanty silk clout that only partly covered his muscular hips, and a leather girdle, a hands breath broad, about his lean waist. His long black hair hung in like strands about his shoulders, giving him a wild appearance. He was gaunt, but knots and cords of muscles stood out on his chest. arms and legs, without that fleshy padding that presents a pleasing symmetry of contour. He was built with an economy that was almost repellent.

Yet it was not so much his physical appearance as his attitude that impressed the woman who watched him. He slunk along, stooped in semi-crowe, his head turning from side to side. He grasped a wide-tipped blade. in his right hand, and she saw its shake with the intensity of the emotion that gripped him. He was afraid, trembling in the grip of some dire terror. When he turned his head, she caught the blaze of wild eyes among the length strands of black

hair. He did not see her. On tiptoe he glided across the hall and vanished through an open door. A moment later she heard a choking-cony-frofen. cry, and then silence fell again. Consumed with curiosity, Valeria glided along the gallery until she came to a door above the one through which the man had passed. It opened into another smaller gallery that encircled a large chamber. This chamber was on the third floor, and its ceiling was not so high as that of the hall. It was lighted only by the firestones, and there

weird green glow left the spaces under the balcony in shadows. Valeria's eyes widened. The man she had seen was still in the chamber. He lay face down on a dark crimson carpet in the middle of the room. His body was limp, his arms spread wide, his curved sword lay near him. She wondered why he should lie there so motionless. Then her eyes narrowed as she stared down at the rug on which he lay. Beneath and about him, the fabric showed a slightly different color, a deeper, brighter crimson.

Shivering slightly, she crouched down closer behind the balustrade, intently scanning the shadows under the overhanging gallery. They gave up no secret. Suddenly another figure entered the grim drama. He was a man similar to the first, and he came in by a door opposite that which gave upon the hall. His eyes glared at the sight of the man on the floor, and he spoke something in a staccato voice that sounded like chick-meck. The other did not move. The man stepped quickly across the floor, bent, gripped the fallen man's shoulder, and turned him over. A choking cry escaped him as the head fell back limply, disclosing a throat that had been severed

from ear to ear. The man let the corpse fall back upon the blood-stained carpet and sprang to his feet, shaking like a wind-blown leaf. His face was an ashy mask of fear. But with one knee flexed for flight, he froze suddenly, became as immobile. as an image staring across the chamber with dilated eyes. In the shadows beneath the balcony, a ghostly light began to glow and grow, a light that was not part of the firestone gleam.

Valeria felt her hair stir as she watched it, far dimly visible in the throbbing radiance. There floated a human skull, and it was from this skull, human, human. yet appallingly misshapen, that the spectral light seemed to emanate. It hung there like a disembodied head, conjured out of night and the shadows, growing more and more distinct, human and yet not human as she knew humanity. The man stood motionless and embodiment of paralyzed horror,

staring fixedly at the apparition. The thing moved out from the wall, and a grotesque shadow moved with it. Slowly the shadow became visible as a man-like figure whose naked torso and limbs shone whitely with the hue of bleached bones. The bear skull on its shoulders grinned eyelessly in the midst of its unholy nimbus, and the man confronting it seemed unable to take his eyes from it. He stood still, his sword dangling from nerveless fingers, on his face the expression of a man bound by the spells of a mesperist.

Valeria realized that it was not fear alone that paralyzed him. Some hellish quality of that throbbing glow had robbed him of his power to think and act. She herself, safely above the scene, felt the subtle impact. of a nameless emanation that was a threat to sanity. The horror swept toward its victim, and he moved at last but only to drop his sword and sink to his knees, covering his eyes with his hands. Dumbly he awaited the stroke of the blade that now gleamed in the apparition's hand as it reared above him like death triumphant over mankind.

acted according to the first impulse of her wayward nature. With one tigerish movement, she was over the balustrade and dropping to the floor behind the awful shape. It wheeled at the thought of her soft boots on the floor, but even as it turned, her keen blade lashed down, and a fierce exultation swept her as she felt the edge cleaves solid flesh and mortal bone. The apparition cried out gurglingly and went down, severed through shoulder, breastbone, and spine. And as it fell, the burning skull rolled clear, revealing a lank mop of black hair, and a dark face twisted in the convulsions of death.

Beneath the horrific masquerade, there was a human being, a man, similar to the one kneeling supinely on the floor. The latter looked up at the second. sound of the blow and the cry, and now he glared in wild-eyed amazement at the white-skinned woman who stood over the corpse with a dripping sword in her hand. He staggered up, yammering as if the sight had almost unseated his reason. She was amazed to realize that she understood him. He was gibbering in the Stygian tongue, though in a dialect unfamiliar to her.

Who are you? Whence come you? What do you do in Zucatl? Then, rushing on, without waiting for her to reply, But you are a friend, goddess or devil, it makes no difference. You have slain the burning skull. It was but a man beneath it after all. We deemed it a demon they conjured up out of the catacombs. Listen! He stopped short in his ravings and stiffened. draining his ears with painful intensity, the girl heard nothing.

"'We must hasten,' he whispered. "'They are west of the great hall. They may be all around us here. They may be creeping upon us even now.' He seized her wrist in a convulsive grasp she found hard to break. "'Whom do you mean by they?' she demanded. He stared at her uncomprehendingly for an instant, as if he found her ignorance hard to understand. They? He stammered vaguely. Why? Why? Why, the people of Zotolunk, the clan of the man you slew, they who dwell by the eastern gate. You mean to say this city is inhabited? she exclaimed. Aye, aye. He was writhing in the impatience of apprehension. Come away, come quick.

We must return to Tekholti. Where is that? she demanded. the quarter by the Western Gate. He had her wrist again, and was pulling her toward the door, through which he had first come. Great beads of perspiration dripped from his dark forehead, and his eyes blazed with terror. Wait a minute, she growled, flinging off his hand. Keep your hands off me, or I'll split your skull. What's this all about? Who are you? Where would you take me? He took a firm grip on himself, casting glances to all sides, and began speaking so fast,

his words tripped over each other. My name is Tekholt. I am of the Tekholti. I and this man, who lies with his throat cut, came into the halls of science to try and ambush some of the Zotelankas. But we became separated, and I returned here to find him with his gullet slit. The burning skull did it. I know.

just as he would have slain me had you not killed him. But perhaps he was not alone. Others may be stealing from Zotelank. The gods themselves blench at the fate of those who they take alive. At the thought he shook with an ague, and his dark skin grew ashy. Valeria frowned puzzledly at him. She sensed intelligence behind this rigamarole, but it was meaningless to her. She turned toward the skull, which still glowed and pulsed,

on the floor, and was reaching a booted toe tentatively toward it, when the man who called himself to Codle sprang forward with a cry. Do not touch it. Do not even look at it. Madness and death lurk in it. The wizards of Zotalanc understand its secret. They found it in the catacombs where lie the bones of terrible kings, who ruled in Zocodal in the black centuries of the past.

To gaze upon it freezes the blood. and withers the brain of a man who understands not its mystery. To touch it causes madness and destruction. She scowled at him, uncertainly. He was not a reassuring figure, with his lean, muscle-knotted frame and snaky locks. In his eyes, behind the glow of terror, lurked a weird light she had never seen in the eyes of a man wholly sane.

Yet he seemed sincere in his protestations. come he begged reaching for her hand and then recalling as he remembered her warning you are a stranger how you came here i do not know but if you were a goddess or a demon come to aid teculti you would know all the things you have asked me you must be from beyond the great forest whence our ancestors came but you are our friend or you would not have slain my enemy come quickly before the xotalancas find us and slay us From his repellent, impassioned face, she glanced to the sinister skull, smoldering and glowing on the floor near the dead man. It was like a skull seen in a dream, undeniably human, yet with disturbing distortions and malformations of contour and outline. In life the wearer of that skull must have presented an alien and monstrous aspect. Life? It seemed to possess some sort of life of its own.

Its jaws yawned at her and snapped together. Its radiance grew brighter, more vivid, yet the impression of nightmare grew, too. It was a dream. All life was a dream. It was Tocodal's urgent voice which snapped Valeria back from the dim gulfs, whither she was drifting. Do not look at the skull! not look at the skull!

It was a far cry from across unreckoned voids. Valeria shook herself like a lion shaking his mane. Her vision cleared. T'Khodal was chattering. In life it housed the awful brain of a king of magicians. It holds still the life and fire of magic drawn from outer spaces. With a curse Valeria leaped, life as a panther, and the skull craze. to flaming bits under her swinging sword somewhere in the room or in the void or in the dim reaches of her consciousness and inhuman voice cried out in pain and rage

techodel's hand was plucking at her arm and he was gibbering you have broken it you have destroyed it not all the black arts of xotalanc can rebuild it come away come away quickly now but i can't go she protested I have a friend somewhere nearby." The flare of his eyes cut her shart as he stared past her with an expression grown ghastly. She wheeled, just as four men rushed through as many doors, converging on the pair in the center of the chamber. They were like the others she had seen, the same knotted muscles bulging on otherwise gaunt limbs, the same blue-black hair, the same mad glare in their wide eyes. They were armed and clad, like Tocotal, but on the breast of each was painted, a white

skull. There were no challenges or war-cries. Like blood-mad tigers, the men of Zotelank sprang at the throats of their enemies. Tachodl met them with the fury of desperation, ducked the swipe of a wide-headed blade, and and grappled with the wielder and bore him to the floor where they rolled and wrestled in murderous silence. The other three swarmed on Valeria. Their weird eyes red as the eyes of mad dogs. She killed the first who came within reach before he could strike a blow,

her long, straight blades splitting his skull, even as his own sword lifted for a stroke. She sidestepped a thrust even as she parried a slash. Her eyes danced, and her lips smiled without mercy. Again she was Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, and the hum of her steel was like a bridal song in her ears. Her sword darted past the blade that sought to parry, and sheathed six inches of its point in a leather-guarded midriff. The man gasped agonizingly and went to his knees,

but his tall mate lunged in in ferocious silence, raining blow on blow so furiously that Valeria had no opportunity to counter. She stepped back coolly, parrying the strokes and watching for her chance to thrust home. He could not long keep up that flailing whirlwind. His arm would tire, his wind would fail. He would weaken, falter, and then her blade would slide smoothly into his heart. A side-long glance showed her Tachotel kneeling on the breast of his antagonist, and striving to break the others hold on his wrist and to drive home a dagger.

Sweat beat the forehead of the man facing her, and his eyes were like burning coals. Smite as he would. He could not break past, nor beat down her guard. His breath came in gusty gulps, his blows began to fall erratically. she stepped back to draw him out and felt her thighs locked in an iron grip. She had forgotten the wounded man on the floor. Crouching on his knees, he held her with both arms locked about her legs, and his mate croaked in triumph and began working his way around to come at her from the left side.

Valeria wrenched and tore savagely, but in vain. She could free herself of this clinging menace, with a downward flick of her sword, but in that instant the curved blade of the tall warrior would crash through her skull. The wounded man began to worry at her bare thigh with his teeth like a wild beast. She reached down with her left hand and gripped his long hair, forcing his head back so that his white teeth and rolling eyes gleamed up at her. The tall, Zotelonk cried out fiercely and leaped in, smiting with all the fury of his furrowing. arm.

Awkwardly she parried the stroke and it beat the flat of her blade down on her head so that she saw sparks flash before her eyes and staggered. Up went the sword again with a low beast-like cry of triumph, and then a giant form loomed behind the Zotelonk and steel flashed like a jet of blue lightning. The cry of the warrior broke short, and he went down like an ox beneath the pole-ax. his brains gushing from his skull that had been split to the throat. Conan! gasped Valeria.

In a gust of passion she turned on the Zootalak, whose long hair she still gripped in her left hand. Dog of hell! Her blade swished as it cut the air in an upswinging arc with a blur in the middle, and the headless body slumped down, spurting blood. She hurled the severed head across the room, What the devil's going on here!

Conan bestrored the corpse of the man he had killed, broad sword in hand, glaring about him in amazement. Takedal was rising from the twitching figure of the last Xotalanc, shaking red drops from his dagger. He was bleeding from the stab deep in his thigh. He stared at Conan with dilated eyes. What is all this? Conan demanded again, not yet recovered from the slid. stunning surprise of finding Valeria engaged in a savage battle with these fantastic figures

in a city he had thought empty and uninhabited. Returning from an aimless exploration of the upper chambers, to find Valeria missing from the room where he had left her, he had followed the sounds of strife that burst on his dumb founded ears. "'Five dead dogs!' exclaimed Tachotel, his flaming eyes reflecting a ghastly exultation. five slain, five crimson nails for the black pillar. The gods of blood be thanked. He lifted quivering hands on high,

and then with the face of a fiend, he spat on the corpses and stamped on their faces, dancing in his ghoulish glee. His recent allies eyed him in amazement, and Conan asked, in the Aquilonian tongue, Who is this madman? Valeria shrugged her shoulders. He says his names, Tekhodel, from his babblings I gather that his people live at one end of

this crazy city, and these others at the other end. Maybe we'd better go with him. He seems friendly, and it's easy to see that the other clan isn't. Tech Hodel had seized his dancing and was listening again. His head tilted sidewise, dog-like, triumphed struggling with fear in his repelible. Helen to countenance. "'Come away now,' he whispered. "'We have done enough.

Five dead dogs. My people will welcome you. They will honor you. But come! It is far, do Tekholti? At any moment the Xotalancs may come on us in numbers too great even for your swords.' "'Lead the way,' grunted Conan. Tach Hodel instantly mounted a stair leading up to the gallery,

beckoning them to follow him, which they did, moving rapidly to keep on his heels. Having reached the gallery, he plunged into a door that opened toward the west, and hurried through chamber after chamber, each lighted by skylights or green fire-jules. "'What sort of place can this be?' muttered Valeria under her breath. "'Crom knows,' answered Conan. "'I've seen his kind before, though. They live on the shores of Lake Zuad, near the border of Cush.

They're a kind of mongrel Stygians, mixed with another race that wandered into Stygia from the east some centuries ago, and were absorbed by them. They're called La Zitlands. I'm willing to bet it wasn't they who built this city, though. Teclotl's fear did not seem to diminish as they drew away from the chamber where the dead men lay. He kept twisting his head on his shoulder to listen for sounds of pursuit, and stared with burning intensity into every doorway they passed. Valeria shivered in spite of herself.

She feared no man, but the weird floor beneath her feet, the uncanny jewels over her head, dividing the lurking shadows among them, the stealth and terror of their guide impressed her with a nameless apprehension, a sensation of lurking inhuman peril. They may be between us and T'Kulthi, he whispered once. We must beware lest they be lying in wait. Why don't we get out of this infernal palace and take to the streets? demanded Valerian.

There are no streets in Zucatl, he answered. No squares, nor open courts. The whole city is built like one giant palace under one roof. The nearest approach to a street is the great hall, which traverses the city from the north gate to the south gate. The only doors opening into the outer world are the city gates, through which no living man has passed for fifty years. How long have you dwelt here? asked Conan.

I was born in the castle of Tukuthli thirty-five years ago. I've never set foot outside the city. For the love of the gods, let us go silently. These halls may be full of lurking devils. O Mek shall tell you all when we reached T'Kulthi. So, in silence, they glided on with the green firestones blinking overhead, and the flaming floors smouldering under their feet, and it seemed to Valeria as if they fled through hell,

guided by a dark-faced, lank-haired goblin. Yet it was Conan who halted them as they were crossing an unusually wide chamber. his wilderness-bred ears were keener even than the ears of Techotel, wetted though these were by a lifetime of warfare in those silent corridors. You think some of your enemies may be ahead of us, lying in ambush? They prowl through these rooms at all hours, answered Tecotel, as do we. The halls and chambers between T'Khothi and Zotelonk, or a disputed region, owned by no man. We call it the halls of silence.

Why do you ask?" "'Because men are in the chambers ahead of us,' answered Conan. I heard steel-clink against Stone. Again a shaking seized Tchodl, and he clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering. "'Perhaps they are your friends,' suggested Valeria. "'We dare not chance it,' he panted, and moved with frenzied activity. He turned aside and glided through a doorway on the left, which led into a chamber from which an ivory staircase wound down into darkness.

This leads to an unlighted corridor below us. He hissed, great beads of perspiration standing out on his brow. They may be lurking there, too. It may all be a trick to draw us into it. But we must take the chance that they have laid their ambush in the rooms above. Come, swiftly now. Softly as phantoms they descended the stair, and came to the mouth of a corridor black as night.

They crouched there for a moment listening, and then melted into it. As they moved along, Valerius flesh crawled between her shoulders in momentary expectation of a sword-thrust in the dark. But for Conan's iron fingers gripping her arm, she had no physical cognizance of her companions. Neither made as much noise as a cat would have made. The darkness was absolute. hand outstretched, touched a wall, and occasionally she felt a door under her fingers. The hallway seemed interminable.

Suddenly they were galvanized by a sound behind them. Valerius flesh crawled anew, for she recognized it as the soft opening of a door. Men had come into the corridor behind them. Even with the thought she stumbled over something that felt like a human skull, it rolled rolled across the floor with an appalling clatter. "'Run!' yel, yelped Tocodal, a note of hysteria in his voice, and was way down the corridor like a flying ghost. Again, Valeria felt Conan's hand bearing her up and sweeping her along as they raced after

their guide. Conan could see in the dark no better than she, but he possessed a sort of instinct that made his course unerring. his support and guidance she would have fallen or stumbled against the wall. Down the corridor they sped, while the swift patter of flying feet drew closer and closer, and then suddenly Tocotal panted. Here is the stair. After me.

Quick! Oh, quick! His hand came out of the dark and caught Valeria's wrist as she stumbled blindly on the steps. She felt herself half dragged, half lifted up the winding stair, while Conan released. her and turned on the steps. His ears and instincts telling him their foes were hard at their backs. And the sounds were not all those of human feet. Something came writhing up the steps, something that slithered and rustled, and brought a chill in the air with it. Conan lashed down with his great sword and felt the blade sheer through something that might have been flesh and bone,

and cut deep into the stair beneath. Something touched his foot that chilled like the touch of frost, and then the darkness beneath him was disturbed by a frightful thrashing and lashing, and a man cried out in agony. The next moment Conan was racing up the winding staircase, and through a door that stood open at the head. Valeria and Tocodal were already through, and Ticotl slammed the door and shot a bolt to cross.

it, the first Conan had seen since they left the outer gate. Then he turned and ran across the well-lighted chamber into which they had come, and as they passed through the farther door, Conan glanced back and saw the door groaning and straining under heavy pressure violently applied from the other side. Though Tocotal did not abate either his speed or his caution, he seemed more confident now. He had the air of a man who has come into familiar territory within call of friends. But Conan renewed his terror by asking, What was that thing that I fought on the stair?

The men of Zotalunk answered to Codol without looking back. I told you the halls were full of them. That wasn't a man, grunted Conan. It was something that crawled, and it was cold as ice to the touch. I think I cut it asunder. It fell back. on the men who were following us and must have killed one of them in its death-throes. Tekhodel's head jerked back. His face ashen again. Convulsively he quickened his pace. It was the crawler. A monster they have brought out of the catacombs to aid them. What it is we do not know, but we have found our people hideously slain by it. In Set's name, hasten. If they put it on our trail, it will follow us to the very door.

doors of Tekhawthi. I doubt it," grunted Conan. That was a shrewd cut I dealt it on the stair. "'Hasten! Hasten!' groaned Tekhodel. They ran through a series of green-lit chambers, traversed a broad hall and halted before a giant bronze door. Tick-Hodel said, this is Tekholti.

End of Part 2. Chapter 3 of Red Nails by Robert E. Howard This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 3. The People of the Feud. Tachotel smote on the bronze door with his clenched hand, then turned sideways so that he could watch back along the hall. Men have been smitten down before this door, when they thought they were safe, he said. Why don't they open the door? asked Conan.

They are looking at us through the eye. I," answered Tekhodel. They are puzzled at the sight of you. He lifted his voice and called, "'Open the door, Exelon! It is I, Tocodle, with friends from the great world beyond the forest. They will open,' he assured his allies. "'They'd better do it in a hurry, then,' said Codan grimly.

I heard something crawling along the floor beyond the hall. Tecotel went ashy again and attacked the door with his fists, screaming, "'Open, you fools open! The crawler is at our heels!' Even as he beat and shouted, the great bronze door swung noiselessly back, revealing a heavy chain across the entrance, over which spearheads bristled and fierce countenances regarded them intently for an instant. Then the chain dropped, and Tech Hodel grasped the arms of his friends in a nervous frenzy and fairly dragged them over the threshold. A glance over his shoulder just as the door was closing showed Conan the long, dim vista of the hall, and dimly framed at the other end, an affidian shape that writhed slowly and painfully into view, flowing in a dull-hued length from a chamber door, its hideous blood-stained head wagging drunkenly. Then the closing door shut off the view.

Inside the square chamber into which they had come, heavy bolts were drawn across the door, and the chain locked into place. The door was made to stand the battering of a siege. Four men stood on guard of the same lank-haired, dark-skinned breed as tecoteled, with spears in their hands and swords at their hips. In the wall near the door there was a complicated contrivance of mirrors, which Conan guessed was the eye, Tekholtel had mentioned, so arranged that a narrow, crystal-paned slot in the wall could be looked through from within without being discernible

from without. The four guardsmen stared at the strangers with wonder, but asked no question, nor did Tchotel vouchsafe any information. He moved with easy confidence now, as if he had shed his cloak of his cloak. of indecision and fear the instant he crossed the threshold. Come, he urged his newfound friends, but Conan glanced toward the door. What about those fellows who were following us? Won't they try to storm that door?

Tech Hodel shook his head. They know they cannot break down the door of the eagle. They will flee back to Zotelonk with their crawling fiend. Come, I will take you to the rulers of Techhuthely. One of the four guards opened the door opposite the one by which they had entered, and they passed through into a hallway which, like most of the rooms on that level, was lighted by both the slot-like skylights and the clusters of winking fire-gims. But unlike the other rooms they had traversed, this hall showed evidences of occupation.

Velvet tapestries adorn the glossy jade walls. Rich rugs were on the crimson floors, and the ivory seats, benches, and vans were littered with satin cushions. The hall ended in an ornate door, before which stood no guard. Without ceremony, Tchhodel thrust the door open and ushered his friends into a broad chamber, where some thirty dark-skinned men and women lounging on satin-covered couches sprang up with exclamations of amazement. The men, all except one, were of the same type as Tocodal, and the women were equally dark and strange-eyed, though not unbeautiful in a weird dark way. They wore sandals, golden breastplates, and scanty silk shirts supported by Jim-crusted girdles, and their black manes, cut square at their naked shoulders, were bound with silver circlets. On a wide ivory seat on a jade dais sat a man and a woman who differed subtly from the others.

He was a giant with an enormous sweep of breast and the shoulders of a bull. Unlike the others he was bearded with a thick blue-black beard which fell almost to his broad girdle. He wore a robe of purple silk which reflected changing sheens of color with his every movement and one wide sleeve, drawn back to his elbow, revealed a forearm massive with corded muscles. The man which confined his blue-black locks was set with glittering jewels. The woman beside him sprang to her feet with a startled exclamation as the strangers entered, and her eyes, passing over Conan, fixed themselves with burning intensity on Valeria. She was tall and lithe by far the most beautiful woman in the room.

She was clad more scantily even than the others, for instead of a skirt she wore merely a broad strip of gilt-worked purple cloth, fastened in the middle of her girdle which fell below her knees. Another strip at the back of her girdle completed that part of her costume, which she wore with cynical indifference. Her breastplates and the circlet about her temple. were adorned with gems. In her eyes alone of all the dark-skinned people, there alirked no brooding gleam of madness. She spoke no word after her first exclamation. She stood tensely, her hands clenched, staring at Valeria. The man on the ivory seat

had not risen. Prince Olmec, spoke Tecotel, bowing low, with arms outspread. and the palms of his hand turned upward. I bring allies from the world beyond the forest. In the chamber of Tuscottie the burning skull slew Chamek, my companion. The burning skull! It was a shuddering whisper of fear from the people of Tekholti. I, then came I and found Chimak lying with his throat cut.

Before I could flee the burning skull came upon me, and when I looked upon it, My blood became as ice, and the marrow of my bones melted, I could neither fight nor run. I could only await the stroke. Then came this white-skinned woman and struck him down with her sword, and lo! It was only a dog of Zotelank, with white paint upon his skin, and the living skull of an ancient wizard upon his head. Now that skull lies in many pieces, and the dog wore it is a little bit. A dead man!"

An indescribably fierce exultation edged the last sentence, and was echoed in the low, savage exclamations from the crowding listeners. "'But wait!' exclaimed Tekotel. "'There is more. While I talk with the woman, four Zotalancs came upon me. One I slew. There was the stab in my thigh to prove how desperate was the fight. Two the woman killed.

we were hard-pressed when this man came into the fray and split the skull of the fourth. Aye, five crimson nails there are to be driven into the pillar of vengeance. He pointed at a black column of ebony which stood behind the dais. Hundreds of red dots scarred its polished surface, the bright scarlet heads of heavy copper nails driven into the black wood. Five red nails for five Zotlanka lives, exulted Tekhodal, and the horrible exultation in the faces of the listeners made them inhuman. "'Who are these people?' asked Omec, and his voice was like the low, deep rumbling of a distant

bull. None of the people of Zucodl spoke loudly. It was as if they had absorbed into their souls. the silence of the empty halls and deserted chambers. I am Conan, a Samarian, answered the barbarian briefly. This woman is Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, an Aquilonian pirate. We are deserters from an army on the Darfur border far to the north, and are trying to reach the coast.

The woman on the dais spoke loudly her words tripping in her haste. You can never reach the coast. There is no escape from Zucodal. you will spend the rest of your lives in this city." "'What do you mean?' growled Conan, clapping his hand to his hilt, and stepping about so as to face both the dais and the rest of the room. Are you telling us we're prisoners?' "'She did not mean that,' interposed Olmec.

"'We are your friends. We would not restrain you against your will, but I fear other circumstances will. make it impossible for you to leave Zucodal." His eyes flickered to Valeria, and he lowered them quickly. "'This woman is Tassela,' he said. "'She is a princess of Tekhulthi. But let food and drink be brought our guests. Doubtless they are hungry and weary from their long travels.'

He indicated an ivory table, and after an exchange of glances, the adventurers seated themselves. The Samarian was suspicious. His fierce blue eyes roved about the chamber, and he kept his sword close to his hand. But an invitation to eat and drink never found him backward. His eyes kept wondering to Tocela, but the princess had eyes only for his white-skinned companion. Tachodl, who had bound a strip of silk about his wounded thigh, placed himself at the table to attend to the wants of his friends, seeming to consider it a privilege and honor to see after their needs. He inspected the food and drank the others brought in gold vessels and dishes, and tasted each before he placed it before his guests.

While they ate, Omec sat in silence on his ivory seat, watching them from under his broad black brows. Tassela sat beside him, chin cupped in her hands and her elbows resting on her knees. dark, enigmatic eyes, burning with a mysterious light, never left Valeria's supple figure. Behind her seat a sullen, handsome girl waved an ostrich-plume fan with a slow rhythm. The food was fruit of an exotic kind unfamiliar to the wanderers, but very palatable, and the drink was a light crimson wine that carried a heady tang. You have come from afar, said Olmec at last.

I have read the books of our fathers. Aquilonia lies beyond the lands of the Stygians and the Shemites, beyond Argos and Zingara, and Samaria lies beyond Aquilonia. We have each a roving foot, answered Conan carelessly. How you won through the forest is a wonder to me, quote, In bygone days, a thousand fighting men scarcely were able to carve a road through its perils. We encountered a bench-legged monstrosity about the size of a mastodon, said Conan casually, holding out his wine goblet, which Techotel filled with evident pleasure.

But when we'd killed it we had no further trouble. The wine vessel slipped from Techodel's hand to crash on the floor. His dusky skin went ashy. Olmec started to his feet, an image of stunned amazement, and a low gasp of awe and terror breathed up from the others. Some slipped to their knees as if their legs would not support them. Only Tassela seemed not to have heard. Conan glared about him bewilderedly.

What's the matter? What are you gaping about? You— You slewool a drow. Dragon God? God? I killed a dragon. Why not?

It was trying to gobble us up. But dragons are immortal, exclaimed Omec. They slay each other, but no man ever killed a dragon. The thousand fighting men of our ancestors who fought their way to Zucodal could not prevail against them. Their swords broke like twigs against their scales. If your ancestors had thought to dip their spears in the poisonous juice of Durkita's apples," quoth Conan with his mouthful, and jab them in the eyes or

mouth or somewhere like that. They have seen that dragons are not more immortal than any other chunk of beef. The carcass lies at the edge of the trees, just within the forest. If you don't believe me, go and look for yourself." Omec shook his head, not in disbelief, but in wonder. It was because of the dragons that our ensigners. ancestors took refuge in Zucodal," said he. They dared not pass through the plain and plunge into the forest beyond.

Scores of them were seized and devoured by the monsters before they could reach the city. Then your ancestors didn't build Zucodal? asked Valeria. It was ancient when they first came into the land. How long it had stood there, not even its degenerate inhabitants knew. Your people came from Lake Zuad, questioned Conan. I, more than half a century ago, a tribe of the Tlazitlands rebelled against the Stygian king, and being defeated in battle flew southward. For many weeks they wandered over grasslands, desert, and hills,

and at last they came into the great forest, a thousand fighting men with their women and children. It was in the forest that the dragons said, fell upon them and tore many to pieces, so the people fled in a frenzy of fear before them, and at last came into the plain and saw the city of Zucodal in the midst of it. They camped before the city, not daring to leave the plain, while the night was made hideous with the noise of the battling monsters throughout the forest. They made war incessantly upon one another, yet they came not into the plain. The people of the city shot their gates and shot arrows at our people from the walls.

The Tla Zitlans were imprisoned on the plain, as if the ring of the forest had been a great wall. For to venture into the woods would have been madness. That night there came secretly to their camp a slave from the city, one of their own blood, who with a band of exploring soldiers had wandered into the forest long before when he was the young man. The dragons had devoured all his companions, but he had been taken into the city to dwell in servitude. His name was Tolkamek. A flame lighted the dark eyes at mention of the name, and some of the people muttered obscenely and spat. He promised to open the gates to the warriors.

He asked only that all captives taken be delivered into his hands. At dawn he opened the gates. The warriors swarmed in, and the halls of Zucodal ran red. Only a few hundred folk dwelt there, decaying remnants of a once great race. Tolkamek said they came from the east, long ago, from old Kusala, when the ancestors of those who now dwell in Kusala came up from the south and drove forth the original inhabitants of the land. They wondered far westward and finally found this forest,

girdled plain, inhabited then by a tribe of black people. These they enslaved and set to building a city. From the hills to the east they brought jade and marble and lapis lazuli and gold and silver and copper. Herds of elephants provided them with ivory. When their city was completed, they slew all the black slaves, and their magicians made a terrible magic to guard the sea. city, for by their necumantic arts they recreated the dragons, which had once dwelt in this lost land,

and whose monstrous bones they found in the forest. Those bones they clothed in flesh and life, and the living beasts walked the earth as they walked it when time was young. But the wizards wove a spell that kept them in the forest, and they came not into the world. the plain. So for many centuries the people of Zucatl dwelt in their city, cultivating the fertile plain until their wise men learn how to grow fruit within the city, fruit which is not planted in soil, but obtains its nourishment out of the air. And then they let the irrigation ditches run dry, and dwelt more and more in luxurious

sloth until decay seized them. They were a dying race when our ancestors broke through the forest and came into the plain. Their wizards had died, and the people had forgot their ancient necromancy. They could fight neither by sorcery nor the sword. Well, our fathers slew the people of Zucotal, all except a hundred which were given living into the hands of Tollkemec, who had been their slave. and for many days and nights the halls re-echoed to their screams under the agony of his tortures. So the Tlazitlans dwelt here for a while in peace ruled by the brothers, Tchaolthi and Zotalunk, and by Tolkamek.

Tolk took a girl of the tribe to wife, and because he had opened the gates, and because he knew many of the arts of the Zucoklans, He shared the rule of the tribe with the brothers who had led the rebellion and the flight. For a few years then they dwelt at peace within the city, doing little but eating, drinking and making love and raising children. There was no necessity to till the plain. Fortolkamek taught them how to cultivate the air-devouring fruits. Besides, the slaying of the Zug Hotlands broke the spell that held the dragons in the forest, and they came nightly and bellowed about the gates of the city.

The plain ran red with the blood of their eternal warfare, and it was then that— He bit his tongue in the midst of the sentence, then presently continued, but Valeria and Conan felt that he had checked an admission he had considered unwise. Five years they dwelt in peace, then— Omec's eyes, or— rested briefly on the silent woman at his side. Zotalanc took a woman to wife, a woman whom both Tekhultli and old Tolkamek desired.

In his madness Tekholti stole her from her husband. Aye, she went willingly enough. Tolkamek, to spite Zotalanc, aided Tekholti. Zotelak demanded that she be given back to him, and the council of the tribe decided that the matter should be left to the woman. She chose to remain with T'akutli. In wrath, Zotalanc sought to take her back by force, and the retainers of the brothers came to blows in the great hall.

There was much bitterness. Blood was shed on both sides. The quarrel became a feud, the feud and open war. From the welter, three factions emerged. Tekhulti, Zotalanc, and Tolkemec. Already in the days of peace, they had divided the city between them. Tekhulti dwelt in the western quarter of the city, Zotelank in the eastern and Tollkamek with his family in the southern gate.

Anger and resentment and jealousy blossomed into bloodshed and rape and murder. Once the sword was drawn, there was no turning back. for blood called for blood, and vengeance followed swift on the heels of atrocity. T'Kulthi fought with Zotelank, and Toll Kamek aided first one and then the other, betraying each faction as it fitted his purposes. T'culti and his people withdrew into the quarter of the western gate, where we now sit. Zocotal is built in the shape of an oval. T'culti, which took its name from its prince, occupied.

the western end of the oval. The people blocked up all doors connecting the quarter with the rest of the city, except one on each floor, which could be defended easily. They went into the pits below the city and built a wall cutting off the western end of the catacombs, where lie the bodies of the ancient Zucolten's, and of those Tlazitlans slain in the feud. They dwelt as an abseaged castle, making sorty, and forays on their enemies. The people of Zotelonk likewise fortified the eastern quarter of the city, and Tolkamek did likewise

with the quarter by the southern gate. The central part of the city was left bare and uninhabited. Those empty halls and chambers became a battleground and a region of brooding terror. Tolcombeck warred on both clans. He was a fiend in the fiend in the warred. form of a human, worse than Zotelonk. He knew many secrets of the city he never told the others. From the crypts of the catacombs he plundered the dead of their grisly secrets, secrets

secrets of ancient kings and wizards, long forgotten by the degenerate Zucolten's our ancestors slew. But all his magic did not aid him the night we of Decolty stormed his castle and butchered all his people. Tolkemec, we tortured for many days. His voice sank to a caressing slur, and a far-away look grew in his eyes, as if he looked back over the years to a scene

which caused him intense pleasure. Ah, we kept the life in him until he screamed for death as for a bride. At last we took him living, from the torture chamber, and cast him into a dungeon for the rats to gnaw as he died. From that dungeon somehow he managed to escape and dragged himself into the catacombs. There, without a doubt, he died, for the only way out of the catacombs beneath Terculte is through Terculte, and he never emerged by that way.

His bones were never found, and the superstitious, among our people swear that his ghost haunts the crypts to this day, wailing among the bones of the dead. Twelve years ago we butchered the people of Tolkamec, but the feud raged on between Tchaulthi and Zotalanc, as it will rage into the last man, the last woman is dead. It was fifty years ago that Tukhulti stole the wife of Zolti. Zotelunk. Half a century the feud has endured. I was born in it. All in this chamber except Tassela were born in it. We expect to die in it. We are a dying race, even as those Zucotlans our ancestors slew. When the feud began there were hundreds in each faction.

Now we of the Tercouthi number only those you see before you, and the men who guard the four doors, forty and all. How many Zotalancs there are we do not know, but I doubt if they are much more numerous than we are. For fifteen years no children have been born to us, and we have seen none among the Zotalancs. We are dying, but before we die, we will slay as many of the men of Zotalanc as the gods permit. And with his weird eyes blazing, Omec spoke long of that grisly feud, fought out in silent chambers and dim halls under the blaze of the green fire jewels, on floors smoldering with the flames of hell, and splashed with deeper crimson from severed veins.

In that long butchery a whole generation had perished. Sotelak was dead long ago, slain in a grim battle on a ivory stare. T'Khurtl was dead, flayed alive by the maddened Zotlank's who had captured him. Without emotion, O. Mek told of hideous battles fought in black corridors, of ambushes on twisting stairs and red butcheries. With a redder, more abysmal gleam in his deep dark eyes, he told of men and women flayed alive, mutilated, and dismembered, of captives' houses.

Howling under torture so ghastly that even the barbarous Samarian grunted. No wonder Tchol had trembled with the terror of capture. Yet he had gone forth to slay, if he could, driven by hate that was stronger than his fear. Olmec spoke further of dark and mysterious matters, of black magic and wizardry conjured out of the black night of the catacombs, of weird creatures invoked out of darkness for horrible allies. In these things, the Zotalancs had the advantage, for it was in the eastern catacombs where lay the bones of the greatest wizards of the ancient Zucotans with their immemorial secrets. Valeria listened with morbid fascination. The feud had become a

terrible elemental power driving the people of Zocotel inexorably on to doom and extinction. It filled their whole lives. They were born in it, and they expected to die in it. They never left their barricaded castle except to steal forth into the halls of silence that lay between the opposing fortresses to slay and be slain. Sometimes the raiders returned with frantic captives, or with grim tokens of victory and fight. Sometimes they did not return at all,

or returned only as severed limbs cast down before the bolted bronze doors. It was a ghastly, unreal nightmare existence these people lived, shut off from the rest of the world, caught together like rabid rats in the same trap, butchering one another through the years, crouching and creeping through the sunless corridors to maim and torture and murder. While Omec talked, Valeria felt the blazing eyes of Tassela fixed upon her. The princess seemed not to hear what Omec was saying. Her expression, as he narrated victories or defeats,

did not mirror the wild rage or fiendish exultation that alternated on the faces of the other Ticulty. The feud that was an obsession to her clansmen seemed meaningless to her. Valeria found her indifferent callousness more repugnant than Olmec's naked ferocity. "'And we can never leave the city,' said Olmec. "'For fifty years. No one has left it, except those.' Again he checked himself. "'Even without the peril of the dragons,' he continued,

"'we who were born and raised in the city would not dare leave it. We have never set foot outside the walls. We are not accustomed to the open sky and the naked sun. No, we were born in Zucotal, and in Zucotal we shall die. Well, said Conan, with your leave, we'll take our chances with the dragons. This feud is none of our business. If you'll show us to the west gate, we'll be on our way. Tassela's hands clenched.

And she started to speak, but Olmec interrupted her. It is nearly nightfall. If you wander forth into the plain by night, you will certainly fall prey to the dragons. We crossed it last night and slept in the open without seeing any, returned Conan. Tassela smiled mirthlessly. You dare not leave, Zucodal! Conan glared at her with instinctive antagonism. She was not looking at him, but at the woman opposite him.

I think they dare, retorted Olmec. But look you, Conan and Valeria, The gods must have sent you to us to cast victory into the laps of the Tecuhltli. You are professional fighters. Why not fight for us? We have wealth in abundance, precious jewels are as common in Zucodal as cobblestones are in the cities of the world. Some the Sukotlands brought with them from Kossala. Some, like the firestones, they found in the hills to the east.

Aid us to wipe out these Zotolonks, and we will give you all the jewels you can carry. And will you help us destroy the dragons? asked Valeria. With bows and poisoned arrows, thirty men could slay all the dragons in the forest. Aye, replied Olmec, promptly. We have forgotten the use of the bow, in years of hand-to-hand fighting, but we can learn again." "'What do you say?' Valeria inquired of Conan. "'We're both penniless vagabonds,' he grinned heartily. "'I'd as soon kill Zodalongs as anybody.'

"'Then you agree?' exclaimed Olmec, while Tekhodel fairly hugged himself with delight. "'Aye, and now suppose you show us chambers where we can sleep. so we can be fresh tomorrow for the beginning of the slaying." Omec nodded and waved his hand, and Tchhodel and a woman led the adventurers into a corridor, which led through a door off to the left of the jade dais. A glance back showed Valeria Omec sitting on his throne, chin on knotted fist staring after them. His eyes burned with a weird flame.

Tassela leaned back in her seat. feet, whispering to the sullen-faced maid, Yassala, who leaned over her shoulder, her ear to the princess's moving lips. The hallway was not so broad as most they had traversed, but it was long. Presently the woman halted, opened a door, and drew aside for Valeria to enter. "'Wait a minute,' growled Conan. "'Where do I sleep?' Tach Hodel pointed to a chamber across the hallway but one door farther down.

Conan hesitated and seemed inclined to raise an objection, but Valerius smiled spitefully at him and shut the door in his face. He muttered something uncomplimentary about women in general, and strode off down the corridor after Tecotal. In the ornate chamber where he was to sleep, he glanced up at the slot-like skylights. Some were wide enough to admit the body of a slender man, supposing a man. the glass were broken. Why don't the Zotalancs come over the roofs and shadow those skylights? he asked.

They cannot be broken, answered Tekhodel. Besides, the roofs would be hard to clamber over. They are mostly spires and domes and steep ridges. He volunteered more information about the castle of Tekhulti. Like the rest of the city, it contained four stories or tiers of chambers, with towers jutting up from the roof. Each tier was named. Indeed, the people of Zucodal had a name for each chamber, hall, and stair in the city, as people of more normal cities designate streets and quarters. In Tukhulti, the floors were named the Eagles' Tier, the Apes Tier, the Tigers' Tier,

and the Serpents' Tier in the order as enumerated. The Eagles' Tier being the highest or fourth floor. is Tassela?" asked Conan Omec's wife. Tekhodel shuddered and glanced furtively about him before answering, No. She is Tassela. She was the wife of Zotlank, the woman Tekholti stole, to start the feud. What are you talking about? demanded Conan.

That woman is beautiful and young. Are you trying to tell me that she was a wife fifty years ago? "'Ah, I swear it. She was a full-grown woman when the Tazitlands journeyed from Lake Zuad. It was because the King of Stygia desired her for a concubine that Zotelonk and his brother rebelled and fled into the wilderness. She is a witch, who possesses the secret of perpetual youth. What's that?' asked Conan. Tach Hodel shuddered again. "'Oh, ask me not, I dare not speak.

It is too grisly, even for Sukhotl. And touching his finger to his lips, he glided from the chamber. End of Chapter 3. End of Part 3. Chapter 4 of Red Nails by Robert E. Howard. This Lieberbox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 4. Sint of Black Lotus

Valeria unbuckled her sword belt. and laid it with the sheathed weapon on the couch where she meant to sleep. She noted that the doors were supplied with bolts and asked where they led. Those lead into adjoining chambers, answered the woman, indicating the doors on right and the left. That one, pointing to a copper-bound door opposite that which opened into the corridor, leads to a corridor which runs to a stair that descends into the catacombs. Do not fear.

Nought can harm you here. Who spoke of fear? snapped Valeria. I just like to know what sort of harbor I'm dropping anchor in. No, I don't want you to sleep at the foot of my couch. I'm not accustomed to being waited on, not by women anyway. You have my leave to go. Alone in the room, the pirate shot the bolts on all the doors,

kicked off her boots and stretched luxuriously out. on the couch. She imagined Conan similarly situated across the corridor, but her feminine vanity prompted her to visualize him as scowling and muttering with chagrin as he cast himself on his solitary couch, and she grinned with gleeful malice as she prepared herself for slumber. Outside night had fallen. In the halls of Zucatl the green fire jewels, blaze, like the eyes of prehistoric cats. Somewhere along the dark towers, a night wind moaned like a restless spirit.

Through the dim passages, stealthy figures began stealing like disembodied shadows. Valeria awoke suddenly on her couch. In the dusky emerald glow of the fire gyms, she saw a shadowy figure bending over her. For a bemused instant, the apparition seemed part of the dream she had been dreaming. She had seemed to lie on the couch in the chamber as she was actually lying, while over her pulsed and throbbed a gigantic black blossom,

so enormous that it hid the ceiling. Its exotic perfume pervaded her being, inducing a delicious, sensuous languor that was something more or less than sleep. she was sinking into scented billows of insensible bliss when something touched her face so super sensitive were her drugged senses that the light touch was like a dislocating impact jolting her rudely into full wakefulness Then it was that she saw not a gargantuan blossom, but a dark-skinned woman standing above her. With the realization came anger and instant action. The woman turned lightly, but before she could run. Valeria was on her feet and caught her arm.

She fought like a wild cat for an instant, and then subdued as she felt herself crushed by the superior strength of her captain. The pirate wrenched the woman around to face her, caught her chin with her free hand, and forced her captive to meet her gaze. It was the Salon Yassala, Tassela's maid. What the devil were you doing bending over me? What's that in your hand? The woman made no reply, but sought to cast away the object.

She had twisted her arm around in front of her, and the thing fell to the floor. A great black, exotic blossom on a jade-green stem, large as a woman's head to be sure, but tiny beside the exaggerated vision she had seen. "'The black lotus,' said Valeria between her teeth. The blossom whose scent brings deep sleep. You were trying to drug me. If you hadn't accidentally touched my face with the petals, you'd have—why did you do it? What's your game?"

Yassala maintained a sulky silence, and with an oath Valeria whirled her around, forced her to her knees and twisted her arm up behind her back. Tell me, or I'll tear your arm out of its socket. Cala squarmed in anguish as her arm was forced excruciatingly up between her shoulder blades, but a violent shaking of her head was the only answer she made. Slot! Valeria cast her from her to sprawl on the floor. The pirate glared at the prostrate figure with blazing eyes.

Fear and the memory of Tocela's burning eyes stirred in her, rousing all her tigerish instincts of self-preservation. These people were decadent. Any sort of perversity might be expected to be encountered among them. But Valerius sensed here something that moved behind the scenes. Some secret terror fowler than common degeneracy. Fear and revulsion of this weird city swept her. These people were neither sane nor normal.

She began to doubt if they were even human. Madness smoldered in the eyes of them all, all except the cruel, cryptic eyes of Tassela, which held secrets and mysteries more abysmal than madness. She lifted her head and listened intently. The halls of Zucodal were as silent as if they were in reality, a dead city. The green jewels bathed the chamber in a nightmare glow, in which the eyes of the woman on the floor glittered eerily up at her. A thrill of panic throbbed through Valeria,

driving the last vestige of mercy from her fierce soul. "'Why did you try to drug me?' she muttered, grasping the woman's black hair, forcing her head back to glare into her sullen, long-lashed eyes. Did Tassala send you? No answer. Valeria cursed venomously and slapped the woman, first on one cheek and then the other. The blows resounded through the room, but Yassala made no outcry. Why don't you scream?

demanded Valeria savagely. Do you fear someone will hear you? Whom do you fear? Tassela? Omec. Conan? Yasella made no reply. She crouched, watching her captor with eyes baleful as those of a basilic. Subvereign silence always fans' anger. Valeria turned and tore a handful of cords from a nearby hanging.

You sulky slut, she said between her teeth. I'm going to strip you stark naked. and tie you across that couch, and whip you until you tell me what you were doing here, and who sent you?' Yasella made no verbal protest, nor did she offer any resistance, as Valeria carried out the first part of her threat, with a fury that her captive's obstinacy only sharpened. Then for a space there was no sound in the chamber,

except the whistle and crackle of hard-woven silken cords on naked flesh. Yesala could not move her fast-bound hands or feet. Her body writhed and quivered under the chastisement. Her head swayed from side to side in rhythm with the blows. Her teeth were sunk into her lower lip, and a trickle of blood began as the punishment continued. But she did not cry out. out.

The pliant cords made no great sound as they encountered the quivering body of the captive, only a sharp crackling snap. But each cord left a red streak across Yassala's dark flesh. Valeria inflicted the punishment, with all the strength of her war-hearted arm, with all the mercilessness acquired, during a life where pain and torment were daily happenings. and with all the cynical ingenuity, which only a woman displays toward a woman. Yassala suffered more physically and mentally than she would have suffered under a lash-wilded by a man, however strong.

It was the application of this feminine cynicism which at last tamed Yassala. A low whimper escaped from her leave. lips, and Valeria paused, arm lifted, and raked back a damp, yellow lock. Well, are you going to talk? she demanded. I can keep this up all night, if necessary. Mercy, whispered the woman. I will tell. Valeria cut the cords from her wrists and ankles, and pulled her to her feet.

Yesala sank down on the couch, half reclining on one bare, hip, supporting herself on her arm and writhing at the contact of her smarting flesh with the couch. She was trembling in every limb. Wine, she begged, dry-lipped, indicating with a quivering hand a gold vessel on an ivory table. Let me drink. I am weak with pain, then I will tell you all."

Valeria picked up the vessel, and Yasala rose unsteadily to receive it. She took it, raised it toward her lips, then dashed the contents full into the Aquilonian's face. Valeria reeled backward, shaking, and clawing the stinging liquid out of her eyes. Through a smarting mist, she saw Yasala dart across the room, flaying back a bolt, throw open the copper-bound door and run down the hall. The pirate was after her instantly, soared out, and murder in her heart. But Yassala had the start, and she ran with the nervous agility of a woman who has just been whipped to the point of hysterical frenzy. She rounded a corner in the corridor, yards ahead of Valeria, and when the pirate turned it, she saw only an empty hall, and at the other end a door that gaped blackly.

A damp, moldy scent reeked up from it, and Valeria shivered. That must be the door that led to the catacombs. Yassala had taken refuge among the dead. Valeria advanced to the door and looked down a flight of stone steps that vanished quickly into utter blackness. Evidently, it was a shaft that led straight to the pits below the city without opening upon any of the lower floors. She shivered slightly the thought of the thousands of corpses

lying in their stone crypts down there, wrapped in their moldering cloths. She had no intention of groping her way down those stone steps. Yassala doubtless knew every turn and twist of the subterranean tunnels. She was turning back, baffled, and furious, when a sobbing cry welled up from the blackness. It seemed to come from a great depth, but human words were faintly distinguishable,

and the voice was that of a woman. Oh, help! Help in Set's name! It trailed away, and Valeria thought she caught the echo of a ghostly tittering. Valeria felt her skin crawl. What had happened to the Asala down there in the thick blackness? There was no doubt that it had been she who had cried out. But what peril could have befallen her? Was a Zoltolongan lurking down there?

Omec had assured them that the catacombs below Terculti were walled off from the rest, too securely for their enemies to break through. Besides, that tittering had not sounded like a human being at all. Valeria hurried back down the corridor, not stopping to close the door that opened on the stair. Regaining her chamber she closed the door and shot the bolt behind her. She pulled on her boots and buckled her sword-belt about her. She was determined to make her away to Conan's room and urge him, if he still lived, to join her in an attempt to fight their way out of that city of devils. But even as she reached the door that opened into the corridor,

A long-drawn scream of agony rang through the halls, followed by the stamp of running feet and the loud clangor of swords. End of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 of Red Nails by Robert E. Howard. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 5. Twenty Red Nails. Two warriors,

lounged in the guard-room on the floor known as the tier of the eagle. Their attitude was casual, though habitually alert. An attack on the great bronze door from without was always a possibility, but for many years no such assault had been attempted on either side. The strangers are strong allies, said one. O. Mech will move against the enemy tomorrow, I believe. He spoke as a soldier in a war might have spoken. In the miniature world of Zucodal, each handful of feudists was an army, and the empty halls between the castles was the country over which they campaigned.

The other meditated for a space. Suppose with their aid we destroy Zotelag, he said. What then, Zatmek? Why, returned Zatmek. We will drive red nails for them all. The captives we will burn and flay and quarter. But afterward, pursued the other. After we have slain them all, will it not seem strange to have no foes to fight?

All my life I have fought and hated the Zotolancas. With the feud ended what is left. Zatmek shrugged his shoulders. His thoughts had never gone beyond the destruction of their foes. They could not go beyond that. Suddenly, both men stiffened at a noise outside the door. To the door, Zatmek, hissed the last speaker. I shall look through the eye.

Zatmek, sword in hand, leaned against the bronze door, straining his ear to hear through the metal, his mate looked into the mirror. He started convulsively. Men were clustered thickly outside the door, grim, dark-faced men with swords gripped in their teeth, and their fingers thrust into their ears. One who wore a feathered headdress,

had a set of pipes which he set to his lips, and even as the Tekhothi started to shout a warning, the pipes began to scurl. The cry died in the guard's throat, as the thin, weird piping penetrated the metal door and smote on his ears. Zatmek leaned, frozen against the door, as if paralyzed in that position.

His face was that of a wooden image, his expression one of horrified listening. The other guard, farther removed from the source of the sound, yet sensed the horror of what was taking place, the grisly threat that lay in that demoniac fiefing. He felt the weird strange plucking like undispsed, seen fingers at the tissues of his brain, filling him with alien emotions and impulses of madness. But with a soul-tearing effort he broke the spell and shrieked a warning in a voice that he did not

recognize as his own. But even as he cried out, the music changed to an unbearable shrilling that was like a knife in the eardrums. Zatmek screamed in sudden agonation. and all the sanity went out of his face like a flame blown out in a wind. Like a madman he ripped loose the chain, tore open the door, and rushed out into the hall, sword-lifted, before his mate could stop him. A dozen blades struck him down, and over his mangled body, the Xotalancs surged into the guardroom with a long-drawn blood-mad yell that sent the unwanted echoes reverberating.

His brain reeling from the shock of it all, the remaining guard leaped to meet them with goring spear. The horror of the sorcery he had just witnessed was submerged in the stunning realization that the enemy were in Tekhulthi. And as his spear ripped through a dark-skinned belly, he knew no more, for a swinging sword crushed his skull, even as wild-eyed warriors came pouring in from the chambers behind the guard-room.

It was the yelling of men and the clanging of steel that brought Conan bounding from his couch, wide awake and broadsword in hand. In an instant he had reached the door and flung it open, and was glaring out into the corridor just as Ticolty rushed up to it, eyes blazing madly. The Zotalancs, he screamed in a voice hardly human. They are within the door. Conan ran down the corridor, even as Valeria emerged from her chamber.

What the devil is it, she called. Tachotl says the Zotalunks are in, he answered hurriedly. That racket sounds like it. With the Tekhulothi on their heels, they burst into the throne room and were confronted by a sea. seen beyond the most frantic dream of blood and fury. Twenty men and women, their black hair streaming, and the white skulls gleaming on their breasts, were locked in combat with the people of Tukhulfi. The women on both sides fought as madly as the men, and already the room and hall beyond were

strewn with corpses. Zatmek and his mate were dead, so there was none to tell the Tukhulthi how their foes had found their way into their citadel. Nor was there any way to say what had prompted that mad attempt. But the losses of the Xotalunks had been greater, their position more desperate than the Tekhulthi had known, the maiming of their scaly ally, the destruction of the burning skull, and the news gasped by a dying man

that mysterious white-skinned allies had joined their enemy. had driven them to the frenzy of desperation and the wild determination to die dealing death to their ancient foes. The Tacholthi, recovering from the first stunning shock of the surprise that had swept them back into the throne room and littered the floor with their corpses, fought back with an equally desperate fury, while the door guards from the lower floors came racing to hurl themselves into the fray. It was the death-fight of rabid wolves, blind, panting, merciless. Back and forth it surged from door to dais, blades wickering and striking into flesh, blood spurting, feet stamping the crimson floor, where redder pools were forming.

Ivory tables crashed over, seats were splintered, velvet hangings torn down were stained red. It was the bloody climax of a bloody half-century, and every man there sensed it. But the conclusion was inevitable. The Ticolthi outnumbered the invaders almost two to one, and they were heartened by the fact and by the entrance into the melee of their light-skinned allies. These crashed into the fray with the devastating effect of a hurricane plowing through a grove of saplings. In sheer strength no three Tazitlans were a match for Conan, and in spite of his weight he was quicker on his feet than any of them. He moved through the whirling, eddying mass, with the surety and destructiveness of a gray wolf amid a pack of alley-cur's, and he strode over a wake of crumpled figures.

Valeria fought beside him, her lips smiling and her eyes blazing. She was stronger than the average man, and far quicker and more ferocious. Her sword was like a living thing in her hand. Where Conan beat down opposition by the sheer weight and power of his blows, breaking spears, splitting skulls, and cleaving bosoms to the breastbone, Valeria brought into action a finesse of swordplay that dazzled and bewildered her antagonists before it slew them. Again and again, a warrior, heaving high his heavy blade,

found her point in his jugular before he could strike. Conan towering above the field, strode through the welter, smiting right and left. But Valeria moved like an elusive phantom, constantly shifting and thrusting and slashing as she shifted. Swords missed her again and again. as the wielders flailed the empty air, and died with her point in their hearts or throats, and her mocking laughter in their ears. Neither sex nor condition was considered by the maddened combatants.

The five women of these Sotelonks were down with their throats cut, before Conan and Valeria entered the fray, and when a man or woman went down under the stamping feet, there was always a knife ready for the helpless throat, or a sandaled foot, eager to crush the prostrate skull. From wall to wall, from door to door, rolled the waves of combat, spilling over into adjacent chambers, and, presently, only Tocolthi and their white-skinned allies

stood upright in the great throne room. The survivors stared bleakly and blankly at each other, like survivors after judgment day, or the destruction of the world. On legs wide-braced, hands gripping notched and dripping swords, blood trickling down their arms, they stared at one another across the mangled corpses of friends and foes. They had no breath left to shout, but a beastial mad howling rose from their lips.

It was not a human cry of triumph. It was the howling. of a rabid wolf-pack stalking among the bodies of its victims. Conan caught Valeria's arm and turned her about. You've got a stab in the calf of your leg, he growled. She glanced down, for the first time aware of a stinging in the muscles of her leg. Some dying man on the floor had fleshed his dagger with his last effort. You look like a butcher yourself, she laughed.

He shook a red shower from the floor. his hands. Not mine. Oh, a scratch here and there. Nothing to bother about. But that calf ought to be bandaged. Olmec came through the litter, looking like a ghoul, with his naked massive shoulders splashed with blood, and his black beard dabbed in crimson. His eyes were red like the reflection of flame on black water. "'We have won!' he croaked dazedly. "'The feud is in. Ended. The dogs of Zotelak lie dead. Oh, for a captive to flay alive. Yet it is good to look upon

their dead faces. Twenty dead dogs. Twenty red nails for the black column. You'd best see to your wounded, grunted Conan, turning away from him. Here, girl, let me see that leg. Wait a minute. She shook him off impatiently. The fire of fighting still burned brightly in her soul. How do we know these are all of them? These might have come on a raid of their own. They would not split the clan on a foray like this, said Olmec, shaking his head, and regaining some of his ordinary intelligence.

Without his purple robe, the man seemed less like a prince than some repellent beast of prey. I will stake my head upon it that we have slain them all. There were less of them that I dreamed, and they must have been desperate. But how came they in T'Khulthi? Tassela came forward, wiping her sword on her naked thigh, and holding in her other hand an object she had taken from the body of the feathered leader of the Zotalunks. The pipe of madness, she said. A warrior tells me that Zatmek opened the door to the Zotalunks and was cut down,

as they stormed into the guardroom. The warrior came to the guardroom from the inner hall just in time to see it happen, and to hear the last of a weird strain of music which froze his very soul. Tolmec used to talk of these pipes, which the Zotalanc swore were hidden somewhere in the catacombs with the bones of the ancient wizard who used them in his lifetime.

Somehow the dogs of Zotelak found them and learned their secret. "'Somebody ought to go to Zotelonk and see if any remain alive,' said Conan. "'I'll go if somebody will guide me.' Olmec glanced at the remnants of his people. There were only twenty left alive, and a V several lay groaning on the floor. Tassela was the only one of the Tekhulti who had escaped without a wound. The princess was untouched, though she had fought as savagely as any. "'Who will go with Conan to Zotalanc?' asked Omec.

Tekhotel leapt forward. The wound in his thigh had started bleeding afresh, and he had another gash across his ribs. "'I will go.' "'No, you won't,' vetoed Conan. "'And you're not going either, Valeria. In a little while that leg will be getting stiff.' "'I will go,' volunteered a warrior, who was nodding a bandage about a slashed for arm. Very well, Yanoth, go with a Samarian. And you, too, Topal. Olmec indicated another man whose injuries were slight. But first aid us to lift the badly wounded on these couches, where we may

bandage their hurts. This was done quickly. As they stooped to pick up a woman who had been stunned by a war club, Olmec's beard brushed Topal's ear. Conan thought the prince muttered something to the warrior, but he could not be sure. A few moments later he was leading his companions down the hall. Conan glanced back as he went out the door, at that shambles where the dead lay on the smoldering floor, blood-stained, dark limbs knotted in attitudes of fierce muscular effort, dark faces frozen in masks of hate, glassy eyes glaring up at the green fire jewels, which bathed the ghastly scene in a dusky emerald witchlight. Among the dead the living moved aimlessly, like people moving in a trance.

Conan heard Omec call a woman and direct her to bandage Valerius' leg. The pirate followed the woman into an adjoining chamber, already beginning to limp slightly. Warily, the two Takhulthi led Conan along the hall beyond the hall beyond the bronze door, and through chamber after chamber shimmering in the green fire. They saw no one, heard no sound. After they crossed the great hall which bisected the city from north to south, their caution was increased by the realization of their nearness to enemy territory. But chambers and halls lay empty to their wary gaze, and they came at last along a broad,

dim hallway, and halted before a bronze door similar to the eagle door of Tekhulthi. Gingerly, they tried it, and it opened silently under their fingers. Odd, they stared into the green-lit chambers beyond. For fifty years, no Tukhulthi had entered those halls, save as a prisoner going to a hideous doom. To go to Zotalanc had been the ultimate horror that could befall a man of the western castle. The terror of it had stalked through their dreams since earliest childhood. To Janoth and Topal, that bronze door was like the portal of hell.

They cringed back, unreasoning horror in their eyes, and Conan pushed past them and strode into Zotelunk. Timidly they followed him. As each man set foot over the threshold, he He stared and glared wildly about him, but only their quick, hurried breathing, disturbed the silence. They had come into a square guard-room, like that beyond the Eagle Door of Tukhothi, and, similarly a hall ran away from it to a broad chamber that was a counterpart of Omec's throne room. Conan glanced down the hall with its rugs and divans and hangings, and stood listening intently.

He heard no noise, and the rooms had an empty feel. He did not believe there were any Zotalans left alive in Zucotal. Come on, he muttered and started down the hall. He had not gone far when he was aware that only Yonath was following him. He wheeled back to see Topal standing in an attitude of horror, one arm out as if to fend off some threatening peril, his distended eyes fixed with hypnotic intensity on something protruding from behind a divan what the devil then conan saw what topal was staring at and he felt a faint twitching of the skin between his giant shoulders a monstrous head protruded from behind the divan a reptilian head broad as the head of a crocodile with downed from behind the divan a reptilian head broad as the head of a crocodile with down

curbing fangs that projected over the lower jaw. But there was an unnatural limpness about the thing, and the hideous eyes were glazed. Conan peered behind the couch. It was a great serpent which lay there limp in death, but such a serpent as he had never seen in his wanderings. The reek and chill of the deep black earth were about it, and its color was an indeterminable huge. which changed with every new angle from which he surveyed it. A great wound in the neck showed what had caused its death. "'It's the crawler,' whispered Janath. "'It's the thing I slashed on the stair,' brunted Conan.

After it trailed us to the eagle door it dragged itself here to die. How could the Xotalancs control such a brute?' The Tukhulthi shivered and shook their heads. They brought it up from the black tunnels below the catacombs. They discovered secrets unknown to Terculthi. Well, it's dead, and if they'd had any more of them, they'd have brought them along when they came to Terculthi. Come on.

They crowded close at his heels as he strode down the hall, unthrust on the silver-work door at the other end. If we don't find anybody on this floor, he said, we'll descend into the lower floors. We'll explore Zotalanc from the roof to the catacombs. If Zotalanc is like Tekhulthi, all the rooms and halls in this tier will be lighted. What the devil?

They had come into the broad throne chamber, so similar to that one in Tekhulthi. There were the same jade diast and ivory seat, the same divans, rugs, and hangings on the walls. No black red-scored columns stood behind the throne dais, but evidences of the grim feud were not lacking. Ranged along the wall behind the dais were rows of glass-covered shelves, and on those shelves hundreds of human heads, perfectly preserved,

stared at the startled watchers with emotionless eyes, as they had stared for only the gods knew how many months and years. Topal muttered a curse, but Yanof, stood silent, the mad light glowing in his wide eyes. Conan frowned, knowing that Tazilton's sanity was hung on a hair-trigger. Suddenly, Yanath pointed to the glassy relics with a twitching finger. "'There's my brother's head,' he murmured. "'And there is my father's younger brother.

And there, beyond them, as my sister's eldest son.' Suddenly he began to weep, dried-eyed, with harsh, loud sobs that shook his frame. He did not take his eyes from the heads. His sobs grew shriller, changed to frightful high-pitched laughter, and that, in turn, became an unbearable screaming. Yanath was stark mad.

Conan laid a hand on his shoulder, and as if the touch had released all the frenzy in his soul, Yanath screamed and whirled, striking at the Samarian with his sword. Conan parried the blow, and Topal tried to catch Yanath's arm. But the madman avoided him, and with froth flying from his lips. He drove his sword deep into Topal's body. Topal sank down with a groan, and Janath whirled for an instant like a crazy dervish. Then he ran at the shell.

and began hacking at the glass with his sword, screeching blasphemously. Conan sprang at him from behind, trying to catch him unaware and disarm him, but the madman wheeled and lunged at him, screaming like a lost soul, realizing that the warrior was hopelessly insane, the Samarian sidestepped,

and as the maniac went past, he swung a cut that severed the shoulder bone and breast, and dropped the man dead beside his dying victim. Conan bent over Topal, seeing that the man was at his last gasp, it was useless to seek to stanch the blood gushing from the horrible wound. You're done for, Topal, grunted Conan. Any word you want to send to your people? Been closer, gasped Topal, and Conan complied.

And an instant later caught the man. his wrist as Topal struck at his breast with a dagger. Crom, swore Conan. Are you mad, too? Oh, Mac ardor did it, gasped the dying man. I know not why. As we lifted the wounded upon the couches, he whispered to me, bidding me to slay you as we return to Teclothi.

And with the name of his clan on his, his lips. Topal died. Conan scowled down at him in puzzlement. This whole affair had an aspect of lunacy. Was Omec mad, too? Were all the Tocluthi madder than he had realized? With a shrug of his shoulders, he strode down the hall and out of the bronze door, leaving the dead T'culthi lying before the staring dead eyes of their kinsman's heads. Conan needed a no guide back through the labyrinth they had traversed. His primitive instinct of direction led him unerringly along the route they had come. He traversed it as warily as he had before, his sword in his hand, and his eyes fiercely searching each shadowed nook and corner,

for it was his former allies he feared now, not the ghosts of the slain Zotalogs. He had crossed the great hall and entered the chambers. beyond when he heard something moving ahead of him, something which gasped and panted, and moved with a strange floundering, scrambling noise. A moment later, Conan saw a man crawling over the flaming floor toward him, a man whose progress left a broad, bloody smear on the smoldering surface. It was Tcholtle, and his eyes were already glazing. From a deep gash in his breast, blood gushed steadily between the fingers of his clutching hand.

With the other he clawed and hitched himself along. Conan! He cried, chokingly. Conan! Omec has taken the yellow-haired woman. So that's why he told Topal to kill me, murmured Conan, dropping to his knee beside the man, who his experience I told him. him was dying. Omec isn't so man as I thought.

Takedl's groping fingers plucked at Conan's arm. In the cold, loveless and altogether hideous life of the Tukulthi, his admiration and affection for the invaders from the outer world formed a warm human oasis, constituted a tie that connect him with a more natural humanity that was totally lacking in his fellows, whose only emotions. were hate, lust, and the urge of sadistic cruelty. I sought to oppose him, gurgled Tekhotel, blood-bubbling frothily to his lips. But he struck me down. He thought he had slain me, but I crawled away. Ah, set! How far I have crawled in my own blood! Beware, Conan! Omec may have set an ambush for your return.

Slay Olmec. He is a beast. Take Valeria and flee. Fear not to traverse the forest. Olmec and Tocela lied about the dragons. They slew each other years ago. All save the strongest. For a dozen years, there has been only one dragon. If you have slain him, there is not in the forest to harm you. he was the god olmec worshipped and omek fed human sacrifices to him the very old and the very young bound and hurl from the wall hasten omec has taken valeria to the chamber of the his head slumped down and he was dead before he came to rest on the floor conan sprang up his eyes like live coals. So that was Omec's game, having first used the strangers to destroy his foes.

He should have known that something of the sort would be going on in that black-bearded degenerate's mind. The Samarian started to Art Tekhulthi with reckless speed. Rapidly, he reckoned the number of his former allies. Only twenty-one, counting Omec, had survived that fiendish, battle in the throne room. Three had died since, which left seventeen enemies with which to reckon. In his rage, Conan felt capable of accounting for the whole clan single-handed.

But the in-a craft of the wilderness rose to guide his berserk rage. He remembered Toculthi's warning of an ambush. It was quite probable that the prince would make such provisions on the chance that Topal might have failed to carry out his order. Olmec would be expecting him to return by the same route he had followed in going to Zotelonk. Conan glanced up at a skylight under which he was passing and caught the blurred glimmer of stars. They had not yet begun to pale for dawn. The events of the night had been crowded into a comparatively short space of time.

He turned aside from his direct. course and descended a winding staircase to the floor below. He did not know where the door was to be found that led into the castle on that level, but he knew he could find it. How he was to force the locks he did not know. He believed that the doors of T'Klothi would all be locked and bolted, if for no other reason than the habits of half a century. But there was nothing else but to attempt it. Sword in hand. He hurried. noiselessly on through a maze of green-lit or shadowy rooms and halls.

He knew he must be near Terculethy, when a sound brought him up short. He recognized it for what it was, a human being trying to cry out through a stifling gag. It came from somewhere ahead of him, and to the left. In these deathly still chambers, a small sound carried a long way. Conan turned aside and went seeking after the sound, which continued to be repeated. Presently he was glaring through a doorway upon a weird scene. In the room into which he was looking a low rack-like frame of iron lay on the floor, and a giant figure was bound prostrate upon it.

His head rested on a bed of iron spikes, which were already crimson pointed with blood where they had pierced his scalp. A peculiar harness-like contrivance was fastened about his head, though in such a manner that the leather band did not protect his scalp from the spikes. The harness was connected by a slender chain

to the mechanism that upheld a huge iron ball, which was suspended above the captive's hairy breast. As long as the man could force himself to remain motionless, the iron ball hung in its place. But when the pain of the iron points caused him to lift his head, the ball lurched downward a few inches. Presently, his aching neck muscles would no longer support his head in its unnatural position, and it would fall back on the spikes again.

It was obvious that eventually the ball would crush him to a pulp slowly and inexorably. The victim was gagged, and above the gag his great black ox-eyes rolled wildly. toward the man in the doorway, who stood in silent amazement. The man on the rack was Olmec, Prince of Tekhulfi. End of Chapter 5. Chapter 6 of Red Nails by Robert E. Howard. This Libri-Vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 6.

The Eyes of Tassela. Why did you bring me into this chamber to bandage my legs? demanded Valeria. Could you have done it just as well in the throne room? She sat on a couch with her wounded leg extended upon it, and the Ticolthi woman had just bound it with silk bandages. Valeria's red-stained sword lay on the couch beside her. She frowned as she spoke.

The woman had done her task silently and efficiently, but Valeria liked neither the lingering, caressing touch of her slim fingers, nor the expression in her eyes. They have taken the rest of the wounded into the other chambers, answered the woman in the soft speech of the Tekhulthi women, which somehow did not suggest either softness or gentleness in the speakers. A little while before, Valeria had seen this same woman stab a Zotalanc woman through the breast and stamp the eyeballs out of a wounded Zotelak man.

They will be carrying the corpses of the dead down into the catacombs. added, lest the ghosts escape into the chambers and dwell there. "'Do you believe in ghosts?' asked Valeria. "'I know the ghost of Tolkemec dwells in the catacombs,' she answered with a shiver. "'Once I saw it, as I crouched in a crypt among the bones of a dead queen. It passed by in the form of an ancient man, with flowing white beard and locks, and luminous eyes that blazed in the darkness. It was Tolkamek.

I saw him living when I was a child, and he was being tortured. Her voice sank to a fearful whisper. Omec laughs, but I know Tolkamek's ghosts dwells in the catacombs. They say it is rats which gnaw the flesh from the bones of the newly dead. But ghosts e-flesh? Who knows but that? She glanced up quickly as the shadow fell across the couch. Valeria looked up to see old Mech gazing down at her.

The prince had cleansed his hands, torso, and beard of the blood that had splashed them, but he had not donned his robe, and his great dark-skinned, hairless body and limbs renewed the impression of strength bestial in its nature. His deep black eyes burned with a more elemental light, and there was the suggestion of a twitching in the fingers that tugged at his thick blue-black beard. He stared fixedly at the woman, and she rose and glided from the chamber. As she passed through the door, she cast a look over her shoulder at Valeria, a glance full of cynical derision and obscene mockery.

She has done a clumsy job, criticized the prince, coming to the divan and bending over the bandage. Let me see. With a quickness amazing in one of his bulk, he snatched her sword and threw. it across the chamber. His next move was to catch her in his giant arms. Quick and unexpected as the move was. She almost matched it, for even as he grabbed her, her dirk was in her hand and she stabbed murderously at his throat. More by luck than skill he caught her wrist, and then began a savage wrestling match. She fought him with fists, feet, knees, teeth, and nails.

with all the strength of her magnificent body, and all the knowledge of hand-to-hand fighting she had acquired in her years of roving and fighting on sea and land. It availed her nothing against his brute strength. She lost her dirk in the first moment of contact, and thereafter found herself powerless to inflict any appreciable pain on her giant attacker. The blaze in his weird black eyes did not alter. their expression filled her with fury, fanned by the sardonic smile that seemed carved upon his bearded lips.

Those eyes and the smile contained all the cruel cynicism that seethes below the surface of a sophisticated and degenerate race, and for the first time in her life, Valeria experienced fear of a man. It was like struggling against some huge elemental force. His iron arms thwarted her efforts, with an ease that sent panic racing through her limbs. He seemed impervious to any pain she could inflict. Only once, when she sank her white teeth savagely into his wrist, so that the blood started did he react.

And that was to buffet her brutally upon the side of the head with his open hand, so that stars flashed before her eyes, and her head rolled on her shoulders. Her shirt had been torn open in the struggle and with cynical cruelty. He rasped his thick beard across her bare breasts, bringing the blood to suffuse the fair skin and fetching a cry of pain and outraged fury from her. Her convulsive resistance was useless. She was crushed down on a couch, disarmed and panting, her eyes blazing up at him like the eyes of a trapped Tigris.

A moment later he was hurrying from the chamber, carrying her in his arms. She made no resistance, but the smoldering of her eyes showed that she was unconquered in spirit at least. She had not cried out. She knew that Conan was not within call, and it did not occur to her that any in Tocluthi would oppose their prince. But she noticed that Omec went stealthily with his eyes. head on one side as if listening for sounds of pursuit, and he did not return to the throne

chamber. He carried her through a door that stood opposite that through which he had entered, crossed another room, and began stealing down a hall. As she became convinced that he feared some opposition to the abduction, she threw back her head and screamed at the top of her lusty voice. She was rewarded by a slap that half-stunned her, and old Omec quickened his pace to a shambling run. But her cry had been echoed, and twisting her head about, Valeria, through the tears and stars that partly blinded her, saw Tekholtel limping after them. Omec turned with a snarl, shifting the woman to an uncomfortable and certainly undignified

position under one huge arm, where he held her writhing and kicking vainly like a child. "'Omec! "'Omec! protested Tekhodel. You cannot be such a dog as to do this thing. She is Conan's woman. She helped us to slay the Sotelonks, and— Without a word, O. Mac bawled his free hand into a huge fist, and stretched the wounded warrior senseless at his feet.

Stooping, and hindered not at all by the struggles and imprecations of his captive, he drew Tocodal's sword from its sheath and stabbed the warrior in the breast. Then, casting aside the weapon, he fled on along the corridor. He did not see a woman's dark face peer cautiously after him for behind a hanging. It vanished, and presently Tekhodel groaned and stirred, rose dazedly and staggered drunkenly away, calling Conan's name. Omec hurried on down the corridor and descended a winding ivory staircase. He crossed several corridors. corridors and halted at last in a broad chamber whose doors were veiled with heavy tapestries,

with one exception, a heavy bronze door similar to the door of the eagle on the upper floor. He was moved to Rumble pointing to it. That is one of the outer doors of Tekhulti. For the first time in fifty years it is unguarded. We need not guarded now, for Zotelak is no more." Thanks to Conan. Conan and me, you bloody rogue," sneered Valeria, trembling with fury and shame of physical coercion. You treacherous dog! Conan will cut your throat for this."

Olmec did not bother to voice his belief that Conan's own gullet had already been severed according to his whispered command. He was too utterly cynical to be at all interested in her thoughts or opinions. His flame-lit eyes devoured her, dwelling burningly on the generous expanses of clear white flesh exposed where his shirt and breeches had been torn in the struggle. "'Forget Conan,' he said thickly. "'Omek is lord of the Kotel.

Zotelank is no more. There will be no more fighting. We shall spend our lives in drinking and love-making. First let us drink.' He seated himself on an ivory table and pulled her down on his knees, like a dark-skinned satyr with a white nymph in his arms. Ignoring her un-nympt-like profanity, he held her helpless with one great arm about her waist, while the other reached across the table and secured a vessel of wine.

"'Drank,' he commanded, forcing it to her lips as she writhed her head away. The liquor slopped over, stinging her lips, splashing down on her naked breasts. Your guest does not like your wine, Omec, spoke a cool, sordonic voice. Omec stiffened. Fear grew in his flaming eyes. Slowly he swung his great head about, and stared at Tocela, who posed negligently in the curtained doorway, one hand on her smooth hip. Valeria twisted herself about in his iron grip, and when she met the burning eyes of Ticella, a chill tinged along her supple spine new experiences were flooding valeria's proud soul that night recently she had learned to fear a man now she knew what it was to fear a woman

omec sat motionless a gray pallor growing under his swarthy skin tascela brought her other hand from behind her and displayed a small gold vessel I feared she would not like your wine, Omec," purred the princess. So I brought some of mine, some I brought with me long ago, from the shores of Lake Zuad. Do you understand, Omec? Beads of sweat stood out suddenly on Omec's brow. His muscles relaxed, and Valeria broke away and put the table between them. But, though Reason told her to dart from the room, Some fascination she could not understand held her rigid, watching the scene.

Tascela came toward the seated prince with a swaying, undulating walk that was mockery in itself. Her voice was soft, slurringly caressing, but her eyes gleamed. Her slim fingers stroked his beard lightly. "'You are selfish, old mech,' she crooned, smiling. You would keep our handsome guest to yourself, though you knew I wished to entertain her. You are much at fault, Omec. The mask dropped for an instant. Her eyes flashed.

Her face was contorted, and with an appalling show of strength, her hand locked convulsively in his beard and tore out a great handful. This evidence of unnatural strength was no way. more terrifying than the momentary bearing of the hellish fury that raged under her bland exterior. Omec lurched up with a roar and stood swaying like a bear, his mighty hands clenching and unclinching. "'Slut!' his booming voice filled the room. "'Which she-devil!' T'Kulthee should have slain you fifty years ago. Be gone.

I have endured too much from you. You. This white-skinned wench is mine. Get hints before I slay you." The princess laughed, and dashed the blood-stained strands into his face. Her laughter was less merciful than the ring of flint on steel. "'Hephe, once you spoke otherwise, old mech,' she taunted. Once in your youth you spoke words of love.

Ah, you were my lover once years ago, and because you loved me, you slept in my arms beneath the enchanted lotus, and thereby put into my hands the chains that enslaved you. You know you cannot withstand me. You know I have but to gaze into your eyes, with a mystic power a priest of Stygia taught me long ago, and you are powerless. You remember the night beneath the black lotus that waved above us, stirred by no worldly breeze. You scent again the unearthly perfumes that stole and rose like a cloud about you to

enslave you. You cannot fight against me. You are my slave, as you were that night, as you shall be as long as you shall live, O mech of Zucotl." Her voice had sunk to a murmur like the rippling of a stream running through starlit darkness. She leaned close to the prince and spread her long, tapering fingers upon his giant breast. His eyes glazed, his great hands fell limply to his sides. With a smile of cruel malice, Tascela lifted the vessel and placed it to his lips.

Drink. Mechanically the prince obeyed, and instantly the glaze passed from his eyes, and they were flooded with fury, comprehension, and an awful fear. His mouth gaped, but no sound issued. For an instant he reeled on buckling knees, and then fell in a sodden heap of the same. on the floor. His fall jolted Valeria out of her paralysis. She turned and sprang toward the door, but with a movement that would have shamed a leaping

panther, Tassela was before her. Valeria struck at her with her clenched fist and all the power of her supple body behind the blow. It would have stretched a man senseless on the floor. But with a light twist of her torso, Tassela avoided the blow and caught the pirate's wrist. The next instant, Valeria's left hand was imprisoned, and holding her wrist together with one hand, Tassela calmly bound them with the cord she drew from her girdle. Valeria thought she had tasted the ultimate in humiliation already that night,

but her shame at being manhandled by Olmec was nothing to the sensations that now shook her supple frame. Valeria had always been inclined to despise the other members of her sex, and it was was overwhelming to encounter another woman who could handle her like a child she scarcely resisted at all when tassela forced her into a chair and drawing her bound wrists down between her knees fastened them to the chair casually stepping over olmec tessala walked to the bronze door and shot the bolt and threw it open revealing a hallway without opening upon this hall she remarked speaking to her feminine captive for the first time. There is a chamber which in old times was used as a torture room. When we retired into Tuckholfe, we brought most of the apparatus with us, but there was one piece too heavy to move. It is still in working order. I think it will be

quite convenient now. An understanding flame of terror rose in Omec's eyes. Tassela strode back to him, bent, and gripped him by the hair. He is only paralyzed temporarily, she remarked conversationally. He can hear, think, and feel. Aye, he can feel very well indeed. With which sinister observation she started toward the door, dragging the giant bulk with an ease that made the pirate's eyes dilate. She passed into the hall and moved down it without hesitation,

presently disappearing with her captive into a chamber that opened into it, and whence, shortly thereafter, issued the clank of iron. Valeria swore softly and tugged vainly, with her legs braced against the chair. The cords that confined her were apparently unbreakable. Tassela presently returned alone. Behind her a muffled groaning issued from the chamber. She closed the door, but did not bolt it. tascela was beyond the grip of habit as she was beyond the touch of other human instincts and emotions valeria sat dumbly watching the woman in whose slim hands the pirate realized her destiny now rested

Tassela grasped her yellow locks and forced back her head, looking impersonally down into her face. But the glitter in her dark eyes was not impersonal. I have chosen you for a great honor, she said. You shall restore the youth of Tassela. Oh, you stare at that. My appearance is that of youth, but through my veins creeps the sluggish chill of approaching age, as I have felt it a thousand times before.

I am old, so old I do not remember my childhood. But I was a girl once, and a priest of Stygia loved me, and gave me the secret of immortality and youth everlasting. He died, then, some set by poison. But I dwelt in my palace by the shores of Lake Zuad, and the passing years touched me not. So at last a king of Stygia desired me, and my people rebelled and brought me to this land. Omec called me a princess. I am not a royal blood. I am greater than a princess. I am Tassela, whose youth your own glorious youth shall restore. Valerius tongue clove to the roof of her mouth.

She sensed here a mystery darker than the degeneracy she had anticipated. The taller woman unbound the Aquilonian's wrists and pulled her to her feet. It was not the fear of the dominant strength that lurked in the princess's limbs that made Valeria a helpless quivering captive in her hands. It was the burning, hypnotic, terrible eyes of Tasella. End of Chapter 6. Chapter 7 of Red Nails by Robert E. Howard. This Libri-Vox recording is in the public domain.

Chapter 7. He comes from the dark. Well, I'm a Cushite. 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 it away, evoking a bellow of fear from the captive, for his action caused the iron ball to lurch down until it nearly touched the broad breast. "'Be careful for set's sake,' begged Omec.

"'What for?' demanded Conan. "'Do you think I care what happens to you? I only wish I had time to stay here and watch that chunk of iron grind your guts out. But I'm in a hurry. Where is Valeria?' "'Lose me,' urged Omec. I will tell you all. Tell me first.

Never! The prince's heavy jaws set stubbornly. All right, Conan seated himself on a nearby bench. I'll find her myself, after you've been reduced to a jelly. I believe I can speed up that process by twisting my sword-point-around in your ear, he added extending the weapon experimentally. Wait! Words came in a rush from the captain.

Dives ashen lips. Dicella took her from me. I've never been anything but a puppet in Ticella's hands. Tassela? Snorted Conan and spat. Why the filthy? No, no, panted Omen. It's worse than you think.

Dicella is old, centuries old. She renews her life and her youth. So I sacrifice of beautiful young women. That's one thing that has reduced the clan. into its present state. She will draw the essence of Valeria's life into her own 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 Tekhulthi. Only Tassela and I know, and she thinks me helpless, and you slain. Free me, and I swear I will help you rescue Valeria. Without my help, you cannot win into Tekhulthi. For even if you tortured me into revealing the secret, you couldn't work it. Let me go, and we will steal on Tosela and kill her before she can work magic, before she can fix her eyes on us.

A knife thrown from behind will do the work. I should have killed her thus long ago. But I feared that without her to aid us the Xotalancs would overcome us. She needed my help, too. That is the only reason she let me live this. long. Now neither needs the other and one must die. I swear that when we have slain the witch, you and Valeria shall go free without harm. My people will obey me when Tassela is dead."

Conan stooped and cut the ropes that held the prince, and Omec slid cautiously from under the great ball and rose, shaking his head like a bull and muttering imprecations, as he fingered his lacerated scalp. Standing shoulder to shoulder, the two men presented a formidable picture of primitive power. Omec was as tall as Conan and heavier, but there was something repellent about the Tazlitsian, something abysmal and monstrous that contrasted unfavorably with the clean-cut compact hardness of the Samarian. Conan had discarded the remnants of his tattered blood-soaked shirt, and stood with

with his remarkable muscular development impressively revealed. His great shoulders were as broad as those of Olmec, and more cleanly outlined, and his huge breast arced with more impressive sweep to a hard waist that lacked the ponshy thickness of Olmec's midsection. He might have been an image of primal strength cut out of bronze. Omec was darker, but not from the burning sun. If Conan was a figure out of the dawn of time, O-MEC was a shambling, somber shape from the darkness of time's pre-dawn.

Lead on, demanded Conan, and keep ahead of me. I don't trust you any farther than I can throw a bull by the tail. Omec turned and stalked on ahead of him, one hand twitching slightly as it plucked at his matted beard. Omec did not lead Conan back to the bronze-strung. door, which the prince naturally supposed Tassala had locked, but to a certain chamber on the border of T'Khulthi. "'This secret has been guarded for half a century,' he said.

"'Not even our own clan knew of it, and the Sotolankans never learned.' Tekhulthi himself built this secret entrance, afterwards slaying the slaves who did the work, for he feared that he might find himself locked out of his own kingdom some day because of the spite of Ticella, whose passion for him soon changed to hate. But she discovered the secret, and barred the inner door against him one day as he fled back from an unsuccessful raid, and the Sotelonks took him and flayed him. But once spying on her, I saw her intertaculthi by this route, and so learned the secret. 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 a tower under the roof, and thence other stairs wind down to the various chambers. Hasten. After you, comrade, retorted Conan, satirically, swaying his broad sword as he spoke, and Olmec shrugged his shoulders and stepped on to the stair-combed. staircase. Conan instantly followed him, and the door shut behind them. Far above a cluster of fire jewels made the staircase a well of dusky dragon-light. They mounted until Conan estimated that they were above the level of the fourth floor, and then came out into

a cylindrical tower in the domed roof of which was set the bunch of fire jewels that lighted the stair. Through gold-barred windows set with unbreakable crystal panes, the first windows he had seen in Sukotal. Conan got a glimpse of high ridges, domes, and more towers, looming darkly against the stars. He was looking across the roofs of Sukotal. Omec did not look through the windows. He hurried down one of the several stairs that wound down from the tower, and when they had descended a few feet, this stair changed into a narrow corridor that wound tortuously on for some distance. It ceased at a steep flight of steps leading downward.

There, Omec paused. Up from below, muffled but unmistakable, welled a woman's scream, edged with fright, fury, and shame. And Conan recognized Valeria's voice. In the swift rage roused by that cry and the amazement of wondering what Peril could ring such a shriek from Valeria's reckless lips. Conan forgot Omec. He pushed past the prince and started down the stair.

Awakening instinct brought him about again just as Omec struck with his great mallet-like fist. The blow, fierce and silent, was aimed at the base of Conan's brain, but the Samarian wheeled in time to receive the buffet on the side of his neck instead. The impact would have snapped the vertebrae of a lesser man, as it was. As Conan swayed backward, but even as he reeled he dropped his sword, useless at such close quarters, and grasped Omec's extended arm, dragging the prince with him as he fell. Had long they went down the steps together in a revolving whirl of limbs and heads and bodies,

and as they went, Conan's iron fingers found and locked in Omec's bull throat. The barbarian's neck and shoulder felt numb from the sledge-like impact of Omec's huge fist, which had carried all the strength of the massive forearm, thick triceps, and great shoulder, but they did not affect his ferocity to any appreciable extent. Like a bulldog, he hung on grimly, shaken and battered and beaten against the steps as they rolled, until at last they struck an ivory panel door at the bottom with such an impact that they They splintered it down its full length and crashed through its ruins. But Olmec was already dead, for those iron fingers had crushed out his life and broken his

neck as they fell. Conan rose, shaking the splinters from his great shoulder, blinking blood and dust out of his eyes. He was in the Great Throne Room. There were fifteen people in that room besides himself. The first person he saw was Valeria. A curious black altar stood before the throne dais. Ranged about it, seven black candles in 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, stark naked, her white flesh gleaming in shocking contrast to the glistening ebbin-stone. She was not bound. She lay at full length. Her arms stretched out above her head to their fullest extent. At the head of the altar knelt a young man holding her wrists firmly. A young woman knelt at the other end of the altar, grasping her ankles. Between them she could neither rise nor move. Eleven men and women of Tekhothi knelt dumbly in a semicircle, watching the scene with hot, lustful eyes. On the ivory throne seat, Tassela lolled.

Bronze bowls of incense rolled their spirals about her. The wisps of smoke curled about her naked limbs like caressing fingers. She could not sit still. She squirmed and shifted about with sensuous abandon. She squirmed and shifted about with sensuous abandon, as if finding pleasure in the contact of the smooth ivory with her sleek flesh. The crash of the door as it broke beneath the impact of the hurtling bodies caused no change in the scene. The kneeling men and women merely glanced incuriously at the corpse of their prince and at the man who rose from the ruins of the door, then swung their eyes greedily back to the writhing white shape on the black altar.

Tassela looked insolently at him, and sprawled back on her seat, laughing mockingly. Slut! Conan saw red. His hands clenched into iron hammers as he started for her. With his first step, something clanged loudly and steel bit savagely into his leg. He stumbled and almost fell, checked in his headlong stride. The jaws of an iron trap had closed on his leg, with teeth that sank deep and held. Only the ridged muscles of his calf save the bone from being splintered. The accursed thing had sprung out of the smouldering floor without warning.

He saw the slots now in the floor where the jaws had lain perfectly camouflaged. "'Foo!' laughed Tassela. "'Do you think I would not guard against your possible return? turn every door in this chamber is guarded by such traps stand there and watch now while i fulfill the destiny of your handsome friend then i will decide your own conan's hand instinctively sought his belt only to encounter an empty scapperd his sword was on the stair behind him his poignard was lying back in the forest where the dragon had turned it from his jaw The steel teeth in his leg were like burning coals, but the pain was not as savage as the fury that seethed in his soul. He was trapped like a wolf. If he had had his sword, he would have hewn off his leg and crawled across the floor to slay Tassela.

Valeria's eyes rolled toward him with mute appeal, and his own helplessness sent red waves of madness surging through his brain. Dropping on the knee of his free leg, he strove to get his fingers between the jaws of the trap, to tear them apart by sheer strength. Blood started from beneath his fingernails, but the jaws fitted close about his leg in a circle whose segments joined perfectly, contracted until 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. Tassela ignored him. Rising languidly from her seat, she swept the ranks of her subjects with a

searching glance and asked, "'Were, Zamek, Zalant, and Tachik.' "'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. Her eyes burned like nothing on the hither side of hell.

She paused beside the altar and spoke in the tense stillness. Your life shall make me young, white woman, she said. I shall lean upon your bosom and place my lips over yours and slowly, ah, slowly, sink this blade. through your heart, so that your life, fleeing your stiffening body, shall undermine, making me bloom again with youth and with life everlasting. Slowly, like a serpent arching toward its victim, she bent down through the writhing smoke, closer and closer, over the now motionless woman who stared up into her glowing dark eyes.

they grew larger and deeper, blazing like black moons in the swirling smoke. The kneeling people gripped their hands and held their breath, tints for the bloody climax, and the only sound was Conan's fierce panting as he strove to tear his leg from the trap. All eyes were glued on the altar and the white figure there. The crash of a thunderbolt could hardly have broken the spell, yet it was only a low cross, that shattered the fixity of the scene and brought all whirling about a low cry yet one to make the hair stand up stiffly on the scalp they looked and they saw framed in the door to the left of the dais stood a nightmare figure it was a man with a tangle of white hair and a matted white beard that fell over his breast rags only partly covered his gaunt frame revealing half-naked limbs strangely unnatural in appearance. The skin was not like that of a normal human.

There was a suggestion of scaliness about it, as if the owner had dwelt long under conditions almost antithetical to those conditions under which human life ordinarily thrives. And there was nothing at all human about the eyes that blazed from the tangle of white hair. They were great gleaming discs that stared unwinkingly, luminous, whitish, and without a hint of normal emotion or sanity. The mouth gaped, but no coherent words issued.

Only a high-pitched tittering. Tocomic! whispered Tassela, livid, while the others crouched in speechless horror. No myth, then, no gun. Ghost! Set! You have dwelt for twelve years in darkness? Twelve years among the bones of the dead?

What grisly food did you find? What mad travesty of life did you live in the stark blackness of that eternal night? I see now why Zamek and Zalant and Tuchik did not return from the catacombs and never will return. But why have you waited so long to strike? Were you seeking something in the pits? Some secret weapon you knew was hidden there, and have you found it at last?" That hideous tittering was Toekemec's only reply, as he bounded into the room with a long

leap that carried him over the secret trap before the door by chance, or by some faint recollection of the ways of Zucotal. He was not mad as a man is mad. He had dwelt apart from humanity so long that he was no longer human. Only an unbroken threat of memory embodied in hate and the urge for vengeance had connected him with the humanity from which he had been cut off and held him lurking near the people he hated. Only that thin string had kept him from racing and prancing off forever into the black corridors

and realms of the subterranean world he had discovered. discovered long ago. You sought something hidden, whispered Tassela, cringing back. And you have found it. You remember the feud. After all these years of blackness, you remember. Far in the lean hand of Tolkemec,

now wave a curious jade-hued wand, on the end of which glowed a knob of crimson shaped like a pomegranate. She sprang aside as he thrust it out like a spear, and a beam of crimson fire lanced from the pomegranate. It missed Tassela, but the woman holding 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 her bosom and struck

the black altar with a snapping of blue sparks. The woman toppled sideways, shriveling and withering like a light of a black altar. mummy even as she fell. Valeria rolled from the altar on the other side and started for the opposite wall on all fours, for hell had burst loose in the throne room of dead Omec. The man who had held Valeria's hands was the next to die. He turned to run, but before he had taken a half-dozen steps, Tolkemec, with an agility appalling in such a frame, bounded around to a position that placed the man between him. and the altar. Again the red fire beam flashed, and they took hulthy rolled lifeless to the floor,

as the beam completed its course with a burst of blue sparks against the altar. Then began slaughter, screaming insanely, the people rushed about the chamber, carooming from one another, stumbling and falling, and among them, Toll Comek capered and pranced, dealing death. They could not escape by the door. for apparently the metal of the portals served like the metal-vane stone altar to complete the circuit for whatever hellish power flashed like thunderbolts from the witch-wond the ancient waved in his hand. When he caught a man or a woman between him and a door or the altar, that one died instantly.

He chose no special victim. He took them as they came, with his rags flapping about his wildly gyrating limbs. and the gusty echoes of his tittering sweeping the room above the screams. And bodies fell like falling leaves about the altar and at the doors. One warrior in desperation rushed at him lifting a dagger, only to fall before he could strike. But the rest were like crazed cattle with no thought of resistance, and no chance of escape. The last T'Kulfi except Tassela had fallen when the princess reached the Samarian and the girl who had taken refuge beside him.

Tassala bent and touched the floor, pressing a design upon it. Instantly the iron jaws released the bleeding limb and sank back into the floor. "'Slay him if you can,' she panted, and pressed a heavy knife into his hand. I have no magic to withstand him. With a grunt he sprang before the women, not heating his lacerated leg in the heat of the fighting lust. Toll Kamek was coming toward him. him, his weird eyes ablaze, but he hesitated at the gleam of the knife in Conan's hand.

Then began a grim game, as Toll Kamek sought to circle about Conan and get the barbarian between him and the altar or a metal doer, while Conan sought to avoid this and drive home his knife. The women watched tensely holding their breath. There was no sound except the rustle and scrape of quick-shifting feet. Tolkmec pranced and capered no more. He realized that Grimmer Game confronted him than the people who had died screaming and fleeing. In the elemental blaze of the barbarian's eyes, he read an intent deadly as his own. Back and forth they weaved.

When one moved, the other moved, as if invisible threads found them together. But all the time, Conan was getting closer and closer to his enemy. Already the coiled muscles of his 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 moving body. 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.

Tassela sprang, not toward Conan, but toward the wand where it shimmered like a live thing on the floor. But as she leaped, so did Valeria, with a dagger snatched from a dead man, and the blade, driven with all the power of the pirate's muscles, impaled the princess of Teclothi so that the point stood out between her breasts. Tosela screamed once and fell dead, and Valeria spurned the body with her. her heel as it fell. I had to do that much for my own self-respect, panted Valeria, facing Conan across the limp

corpse. Well, this cleans up the feud, he grunted. It's been a hell of a night. Where did these people keep their food? I'm hungry. You need a bandage on that leg. Valeria ripped a length of silk from a hanging, and knotted it about her waist, then tore off some smaller strips which she bound efficiently about the bowels.

barbarian's lacerated limb. I can walk on it, he assured her. Let's be gone. It's dawn outside this infernal city. I've had enough of Zucotal. It's well the breed exterminated itself. I don't want any of their cursed jewels. They might 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 as he caught her fiercely in his arms. It's a long way to the coast, she said presently, withdrawing her lips from his. "'What matter?' he laughed. "'There's nothing we can't conquer. We'll have our feet on a ship's deck before the Stygians open their ports for the trading season,

and then we'll show the world what plundering means.' End of Chapter 7. End of Red Nails by Robert E. Howard.