Classic Audiobook Collection - Shadows in Zamboula by Robert E. Howard ~ Full Audiobook [fantasy]

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

Shadows in Zamboula by Robert E. Howard audiobook. Genre: fantasy In the decadent desert city of Zamboula, travelers vanish after nightfall, whispered to be taken by cannibals and worse. Conan, a hard-bitten wanderer with a thief's instincts and a mercenary's muscle, rides in looking for food, coin, and answers - and quickly finds that survival depends on reading the city's shifting alliances as much as wielding a sword. Behind perfumed taverns and torchlit streets, Zamboula is a crossroads of cultures and cruelties: silk-clad nobles, suspicious innkeepers, secretive priests, and shadowy foreigners who trade in flesh and fear. When Conan crosses paths with a captive dancer desperate to escape her fate, he is drawn into a night of pursuit, ambush, and brutal revelation, forced to navigate labyrinthine alleys and hidden chambers where the line between civilization and savagery dissolves. As the moon rises, Conan must confront not only a monstrous threat preying on the helpless, but also the corruption that feeds it - and decide what justice looks like in a city that sells everything. Dark, fast, and visceral, this tale blends swordplay, suspense, and eerie horror into a classic Hyborian nightmare. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:17:57) Chapter 02 (00:49:57) Chapter 03 (01:07:24) Chapter 04 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shadows in Zambula by Robert E. Howard. Part 1. A drum begins. Peril hides in the house of Aram Bakshi. The speaker's voice quivered with earnestness, and his lean black-nailed fingers clawed at Conan's mightily muscled arm as he croaked his warning. He was a wiry, sunburnt man with a straggling black beard, and his ragged garments proclaimed him a nomad. He looked smaller and meaner than ever in contrast to the giant Samarian

with his black brows, broad chest, and powerful limbs. They stood in a corner of the Swordmaker's Bazaar, and on either side of them flowed past the many-tongued, many-colored stream of the Zambollah streets, which is exotic, hybrid flamboyant and clamorous. conan pulled his eyes back from following a bold-eyed red-lipped gonara whose short skirt bared her brown thigh at each insula step and frowned down at his importunate companion what do you mean by peril he demanded the desert man glanced furtively over his shoulder before replying and lowered his voice who can say but desert men and travellers have slept in the house of Aram Bakshi and never been seen or heard of again. What became of them?

He swore they rose and went their way, and it is true that no citizen of the city has ever disappeared from his house. But no one saw the travelers again, and men say that goods and equipment recognized as theirs have been seen in the bazaars. If Aram did not sell them after doing the same. away with their owners? How came they here?" "'I have no goods,' growled the Samarian, touching the chagrin-bound hilt of the broadsword that hung at his hip. I have even sold my horse.

But it is not always rich strangers who vanish by night from the house of Arambakshi,' chattered the Zuhakir. "'Nay! Poor desert men have slept there, because his score is less than that of the other's taverns, and have been seen no more. Once a chief of the Zawgirs, whose son had thus vanished, complained to the satrap Jungeir Khan, who ordered the house searched by soldiers. And they found a cellar full of corpses? asked Conan in good-humored derision.

Nay, they found naught, and drove the chief from the city with threats and curses, but... He drew closer to Conan and shivered. Something else was found. At the edge of the desert beyond the houses, there is a clump of palm trees. And within that grove there is a pit. And within that pit have been found human bones charred and blackened. Not once, but many times. Which proves what? grunted the Samarian.

Arambakshi is a demon, nay, in this accursed city which Stygians built, and which the Harkhanians ruled, where white, brown, and black folk mingle together to produce hybrids of all unholy hues and breeds, who can tell who is a man and who a demon in disguise. Aramakshi is a demon. in the form of a man. At night he assumes his true guise and carries his guests off into the desert where his fellow demons from the waste meet in conclave.

Why does he always carry off strangers? asked Conan skeptically. The people of the city would not suffer him to slay their people, but they care not for the strangers who fall into his hands. Conan, you are of the West, and know not the secrets of this ancient land. But since the beginning of happenings, the demons of the desert have worshipped Yagg, the Lord of the empty abodes with fire, fire that devours human victims. Be warned! You have dwelt for many moons in the tents of the Zawakirs.

And you are our brother. Go not into the house of Aram Bakshi. Get out of sight, Conan said suddenly. The undercomes a squad of the city watch. If they see you, they may remember a horse that was stolen from the Satrap's stable. The Zuhakir gasped and moved convulsively. He ducked between a booth and a stone horse trough, pausing only long enough to chatter. Be warned, my brother.

There are demons in the house of Aramakshi. Then he darted down a narrow alley and was gone. Conan shifted his broad sword belt to his liking, calmly returned the searching stairs directed at him by the squad of watchmen as they swung past. They eyed him curiously and suspiciously, for he was a man who stood out, even in such a motley throng as crowded the winding streets of Zambula. His blue eyes and alien features distinguished him from. the eastern swarms, and the straight sword at his hip added point to the racial difference.

The watchman did not accost him but swung on down the street, while the crowd opened the lane for them. They were pillished him, squat, hook-nosed, with blue-black beards sweeping their mailed breasts. Mercenaries hired for work the ruling Terranians considered beneath themselves, and no less hated by the mongru population for that reason. Conan glanced at the sun, just beginning to dip behind the flat-topped houses on the western side of the bazaar, and hitching once more at his belt, moved off in the direction of Aram Bakshi's tavern.

With a hillman's stride he moved through the ever-shifting colors of the streets, where the ragged tunics of whining beggars brushed against the ermine-trimmed caholots of lordly merchants, and the pearl-sown satin of rich cortisans. Giant black slaves slouched along, jostling blue-bearded wanderers from the Shemite-ish cities, ragged nomads from the surrounding desert, traders and adventurers from all the lands of the east. The native population was no less heterogeneous. Here, centuries ago, the armies of Stygia had come, carving an empire out of the east

Eastern Desert. Zambula was but a small trading town then, lying amid a ring of oases, and inhabited by descendants of nomads. The Stigians built it into a city and settled it with their own people and with Shemite and Kushite slaves. The ceaseless caravans, threatening the desert from east to west and back again, brought riches and more mingling of races. Then came the conquering Terranians, riding out of the east to thrust back the boundaries of Stygia, and now for a generation, Zambula had been Turan's westernmost outpost, ruled by a Turanian setrap. The babble of a myriad tongues smote on the Samarian's ears as the restless pattern of the Zambula streets weaved about him, cleft now and then by a squad of clattering horsemen,

the tall, supple warriors of Toron with dark hawk faces, clinking metal and curved swords. The throngs scampered from under their horse's hoofs, for they were the lords of Zambula. But tall, sombrestitians standing back in the shadows glowered darkly, remembering their ancient glories. The hybrid population cared little whether the king who controlled their destinies dwelt in dark Khahemi or gleaming Agripor. Junjir Khan ruled Zambula, and men whispered that Nefertari, the Satrap's mistress, ruled Junjir Khan.

But the people went their way, flaunting their myriad colors in the streets, bargaining, disputing, gambling, swilling, loving, as the people of Zambula have done for all the centuries its towers and minarets have lifted over the sands of the Kaharamun. lanterns, carved with leering dragons, had been lighted in the streets before Conan reached the house of Arambakshi. The tavern was the last occupied house on the street which ran west. A wide garden enclosed by a wall where date palms grew thick, separated it from the houses further east.

To the west of the inn stood another grove of palms, through which the street, now become a road, wound out into the desert. Across the road from the tavern stood a row of deserted huts, shaded by straggling palm trees, and occupied only by bats and jackals. As Conan came down the road, he wondered why the beggars, so plentiful in Zambula, had not appropriated these empty houses for sleeping quarters. The lights ceased some distance behind him. There were no lanterns except the one.

hanging before the tavern gate. Only the stars, the soft dust of the road underfoot, and the rustle of the palm leaves in the desert breeze. Aram's gate did not open upon the road, but upon the alley which ran between the tavern and the garden of the date palms. Conan jerked lustily at the rope which depended from the bell beside the lantern, augmenting its clamor by hammering on the iron-bound teakwork gate with the hilt of his sword. A wicket opened in the gate and a black face peered through. "'Open blast you,' requested Conan. "'I'm a guest.

I've paid Adam for a room and a room I'll have by crumb.' The black craned his neck to stare into the starlet road behind Conan, but he opened the gate without comment and closed it again behind the Samarian, locking and bolting it. The wall was unusually high, but there were many thieves in Zambula. and a house on the edge of the desert might have to be defended against a nocturnal nomad raid. Conan strode through a garden where great pale blossoms nodded in the starlight, and entered the taproom, where a Stygian with the shaven head of a student sat at a table brooding over nameless mysteries,

and some nunduscripts wrangled over a game of dice in a corner. Adam Bakshi came forward, walking softly, a portly man, with a black beard that swept his breast, a jutting-hooked nose, and small black eyes which were never still. "'You wish food?' he asked. "'Drink?' "'I ate a joint of beef and a loaf of bread in the souk,' grunted Conan. "'Bring me a tankard of gossan wine. I've got just enough left to pay for it.'

He tossed a copper coin on the Warren's splashboard. "'You did not win at the gaming tables?' "'Oh, could I, with only a handful of silver to begin with. I paid you for the room this morning because I knew I'd probably lose. I wanted to be sure I had a roof over my head to-night. I notice nobody sleeps in the streets in Zambula. The very beggars hunt a niche they can barricade before dark. The city must be full of a particularly bloodthirsty brand of thieves.

He gulped the cheap wine with relish, and then followed Aram out of the taproom. Behind him the players halted their game to stare after him with a cryptic speculation in their eyes. They said nothing but the Stichian laughed, a ghastly laugh of inhuman's cynicism and mockery. The others lowered their eyes uneasily, avoiding one another's glance. The arts studied by a Stygian scholar are not calculated to make him share the feelings of a normal human being. Conan followed Aram down a corridor lighted by copper lamps, and it did not please him to note his host's noiseless tread. Aram's feet were clad in soft slippers, and the hallway was carpeted with thick terranian rugs. But there was an unpleasant suggestion of sturd.

stealthiness about the Zambulin. At the end of the winding corridor, Aram halted at a door, across which a heavy iron bar rested in powerful metal brackets. This Aram lifted and showed the Samarian into a well-appointed chamber, the windows of which, Conan instantly noted, were small and strongly set with twisted bars of iron tastefully gilded. There were rugs on the floor, a couch after the eastern fashion, and ornately carved stools. It was a much more elaborate chamber than Conan could have procured for the price nearer the center of the city, a fact that had first attracted him when that morning he discovered how slim a purse his roisterings for the past few days had left him. He had ridden into Zambula from the desert

a week before. Autumn had lighted a bronze lamp, and he now called Conan's attention to the two doors. Both were provided with heavy bolts. "'You may sleep safely to-night, Samarian,' said Aram, blinking over his bushy beard from the inner doorway. Conan grunted and tossed his naked broadsword on the couch. "'Hh! Your bolts and bars are strong, but I always sleep with steel by my side.' Aram made no reply. He stood fingering his thick beard for a moment as he stared at the grim weapon. Then, silently, he withdrew, closing the door behind him. Conan shot the bolt into place, crossed the room, opened the opposite door, and looked out. The room was on the side of the

house that faced the road running west from the city. The door opened into a small court that was enclosed by a wall of its own. The inn walls, which shut it off from the rest of the Tavern compound were high and without entrances, but the wall that flanked the road was low and there was no lock on the gate. Conan stood for a moment in the door. The glow of the bronze lamp behind him, looking down the road to where it vanished among the dense palms. Their leaves rustled together in the faint breeze. Beyond them lay the naked desert. Far up the street in the other direction, lights gleamed, and the noises of the city came faintly to him. Here was only starlight, the whispering of the palm leaves, and beyond that low wall,

the dust of the road and the deserted huts thrusting their flat roofs against the low stars. Somewhere beyond the palm groves a drum began. The garbled warnings of the Zawakir returned to him, seeming somehow less fantastic than they had seemed in the crowded sunlit streets. He wondered again at the riddle of those empty huts. Why did the beggars shun them? He turned back into the chamber, shut the door, and bolted it. The light began to flicker, and he investigated, swearing, when he found the palm oil in the lamp, was almost exhausted. He started to shout for Aram, then shrugged his shoulders and blew out the light.

In the soft darkness he stretched himself fully clad on the couch, his sinewy hand by instinct, searching for and closing on the hilt of his broadsword. Glancing idly at the stars framed in the barred windows, with the murmur of the breeze through the palms in his ears, he sank into slumber with a vague consciousness of the muttering drum out on the desert. The low rumble and mutter of a leather-covered drum beaten with soft rhythmic strokes of an open black hand. End of Part 1. Part 2 of Shadows in Zambula by Robert E. Howard.

This Libri-Vox recording is in the public domain. Part 2. The Night Skulkers. It was the stealthy opening of a door which awakened the Samarian. He did not awake as civilized men. drowsy and drugged and stupid. He awoke instantly with a clear mind, recognizing the sound that had interrupted his sleep. Lying there tensely in the dark,

he saw the outer door slowly open. In a widening crack of starlight sky, he saw framed a great black bulk, broad, stooping shoulders, and a misshapen head blocked out against the stars. Conan felt the skin crawl between his shoulders. He had bolted that door securely.

How could it be opening now, save by supernatural agency? And how could a human being possess a head like that outlined against the stars? All the tales he had heard in the Zawagir tents of devils and goblins came back to bead his flesh with clammy sweat. Now the monster slid noiselessly into the room with the same. a crouching posture and a shambling gait, and a familiar scent assailed the Samarians' nostrils, but did not reassure him, since Zawagir legendary represented demons as smelling like that.

Noiselessly, Conan coiled his long legs under him. His naked sword was in his right hand. And when he struck, it was as suddenly and murderously as a tiger lunging out of the dark. Not even a demon could have avoided that catapulting charge. His sword met and clove through flesh and bone, and something went heavily to the floor with a strangling cry. Conan crouched in the dark above it, sword dripping in his hand. Devil or beast or man, the thing was dead there on the floor.

He sensed death as any wild thing senses it. He glared through the half-open. door into the starlit court beyond. The gate stood open, but the court was empty. Conan shut the door, but did not bolt it. Grooping in the darkness, he found the lamp and lighted it. There was enough arl in it to burn for a minute or so. An instant later, he was bending over the figure that sprawled on the floor in a pool of blood. It was a gigantic black man, naked but for a loincloth. One hand still grasped a knotty-headed bludgeon.

The fellow's kinky wool was built up into horn-like spindles with twigs and dried mud. This barbaric coiffure had given the head its misshapen appearance in the starlight. Provided with a clue to the riddle, Conan pushed back the thick red lips and grunted as he stared down at teeth filed to points. He understood now the mystery of the strangers who had disappeared from the house of Aram Bakshi, the riddle of the black drum thrumming out there beyond the palm groves and that pit of charred bones. That pit where strange meat might be roasted under the stars, where black beasts squatted about to glut a hideous hunger.

The man on the floor was a cannibal slave from Darfur. There were many of his kind in the city. Cannibalism was not tolerated openly in Zambula, but Conan knew now why people locked themselves in so securely at night, and why even beggars shunned the open alleys and doorless ruins. He grunted in disgust as he visualized brutish black shadows, skulking up and down the nighted streets, seeking human prey, and such men as Aram Bakshi to open the doors to them.

The innkeeper was not a demon. He was worse. The slaves from Darfar were notorious thieves. There was no doubt that some of their pilfered loot found its way into the hands of Aram Bakshi, and in return he sold them human flesh. Conan blew out the light, stepped to the door and opened it, and ran his hand over the ornaments on the other side.

One of them was movable and worked the bolt inside. The room was a trap to catch human prey like rabbits. But this time instead of a rabbit, it had caught a saber-toothed tiger. Conan returned to the other door, lifted the bolt, and pressed against it. It was immovable, and he remembered the bolt on the other side. Aram was taking no chances either with his victims or the men with whom he dealt. Buckling on his sword-belt, the Samarians strode out into the court, closing the door behind him. He had no intention of delaying the settlement of his reckoning with Aram Bakshi.

He wondered how many poor devils had been bludgeoned in their sleep and dragged out of that room and down the road that ran through the shadowed pongshy. groves to the roasting pit. He halted in the court. The drum was still muttering, and he caught the reflection of a leaping red glare through the groves. Cannibalism was more than a perverted appetite with the black men of Darfur. It was an integral element of their ghastly cult. The black vultures were already in conclave, but whatever flesh filled their bellies that night, it would not be his.

To reach Aram Bakshi, he must climb one of the walls which separated the small enclosure from the main compound. They were high, meant to keep out the man-eaters, but Conan was no swamp-bred black man. His views had been steeled in boyhood on the sheer cliffs of his native hills. He was standing at the foot of the narrow wall when a cry echoed under the trees. In an instant Conan was crouching at the gate, glaring down the road. The sound had come from the shadows of the huts across the road. He heard a frantic choking and gurgling, such as might result from a desperate attempt to shriek with a black hand fastened over the victim's mouth. A close-knit clump of figures emerged from

the shadows beyond the huts and started down the road, three huge black men carrying a slender struggling figure between them. Conan caught the glimmer of pale limb. writhing in the starlight, even as, with a convulsive wrench, the captive slipped from the grasp of the brutal fingers and came flying up the road, a supple young woman, naked as the day she was born. Conan saw her plainly before she ran out of the road and into the shadows between the huts. The blacks were at her heels, and back in the shadows the figures merged, and an intolerable scream of anguish and horror rang out.

Sturred to red rage by the ghoulishness of the episode, Conan raced across the road. Neither victim nor abductors were aware of his presence, until the soft swish of the dust about his feet brought them about, and then he was almost upon them, coming with the gusty fury of a hill wind. Two of the blacks turned to meet him, lifting their bludgeon's. but they failed to estimate properly the speed at which he was coming. One of them was down, disemboweled before he could strike, and wheeling cat-like. Conan evaded the stroke of the other's casual and lashed in a whistling countercut. The black's head flew into the air.

The headless body took three staggering steps, spurting blood and clawing horribly at the air with groping hands, and then slumped to the dust. The remaining cannibal gave back with a strangled yell, hurling his captive from him. She tripped and rolled in the dust, and the black fled in blind panic toward the city. Conan was at his heels. Fear winged the black feet, but before they reached the Eastermost hut, he sensed death at his back and bellowed like an ox in the slaughtering yards. "'Black dog of hell!' Conan drove his. his sword between the dusky shoulders with such vengeful fury that the broad blade stood out half

its length from the black breast. With a choking cry, the black stumbled headlong, and Conan braced his feet and dragged out his sword as his victim fell. Only the breeze disturbed the leaves. Conan shook his head as a lion shakes its mane and growled his unsatiated bloodlust. but no more shapes slunk from the shadows, and before the huts the starlit road stretched empty. He whirled at the quick patter of feet behind him, but it was only the girl, rushing to throw herself on him, and clasp his neck in a desperate grasp, frantic from terror at the abominable fate she had just escaped.

Easy girl, he grunted. You're all right. How do they catch you? She sobbed something unintelligible. He forgot all about Aram Bakshi as he scrutinized her by the light of the stars. She was white, though a very definite brunette, obviously one of Zambula's many mixed breeds. She was tall, with a slender, supple form, as he was in a good position to observe. Adoration burned in his fierce eyes as he looked down on her splendid bosom and her lithe limbs, which still quivered from fright and exertion.

He passed an arm around her flexible waist and said, reassuringly, Stop shaking, wench, you're safe enough. His touch seemed to restore her shaken sanity. She tossed back her thick, glossy locks, and cast a fearful glance over her shoulder, while she pressed closer to the Samarian as if seeking security in the contact. They caught me in the streets, she muttered, shuddering, lying in wait, beneath the dark arch, black men like great hulking apes.

Set, have mercy on me. I shall dream of it. What were you doing out on the streets this time of night? he inquired, fascinated by the satiny feel of her sleek skin under his questing fingers. She raked back her hair and stared blankly up into his face. She did not seem aware of his caresses. "'My lover,' she said, "'my lover drove me into the streets. "'He went mad and tried to kill me. "'As I fled from him, I was seized by those beasts.' "'Beauty like yours might drive a man mad,' quoth Conan,

"'running his fingers experimentally through her glossy tresses. "'She shook her head, like one emerging from a daze. "'She no longer trembled and her voice was steady.' It was the spite of a priest of Tartrasmec, the high priest of Hanuman, who desired me for himself, the dog. No need to curse him for that, grinned Conan. The old hyena has better taste than I thought. She ignored the bluff compliment.

She was regaining her paws swiftly. My lover is a young Terranian soldier. To spite me, Tartrassema, smek gave him a drug that drove him mad. Tonight he snatched up a sword and came at me to slay me in his madness, but I fled from him into the streets. The negro seized me and brought me to this. What was that?

Conan had already moved. Soundlessly as the shadow, he drew her behind the nearest hut beneath the straggling palms. They stood in tense stillness, while the low mutterings both at her, grew louder until voices were distinguishable. A group of Negroes, some nine or ten, were coming along the road from the direction of the city. The girl clutched Conan's arm, and he felt the terrified quivering of her supple body against his.

Now they could understand the gutturals of the black men. "'Our brothers have already assembled at the pit,' said one. "'We have had no luck. I hope they have enough for us.' Aram promised us a man, murmured another, and Conan mentally promised Aram something. Aram keeps his word, grunted yet another. Many a man we have taken from his tavern, but we pay him well. I myself have given him ten bales of silk I stole from my master.

It was good silk by set. The blacks shuffled past, bare, splay feet scuffling up the dock. and their voice has dwindled down the road. "'Well, for us, those corpses are lying behind these huts,' muttered Conan. "'If they look in Aram's death-room, they'll find another. "'Let's be gone.' "'Yes, let us hasten,' begged the girl, almost hysterical again. "'My lover is wondering somewhere in the streets alone.

"'The Negroes may take him.' "'A devil of a custom this is,' growled Conan, as he led the way toward the city, paralleling the road, but keeping behind the huts and straggling trees. Why don't the citizens clean out these black dogs? They are valuable slaves, murmured the girl. There are so many of them they might revolt if they were denied the flesh for which they lost. The people of Zambula know they skulked the streets at night, and all are careful to remain within locked doors,

except when something unforeseen happens as it did to me. The blacks prey on anything they catch, but they seldom catch anybody but strangers. The people of Zambula are not concerned with the strangers that pass through the city. Such men as Aram Bakshi sell these strangers to the blacks. He would not dare attempt such a thing with a citizen. Conan spat in disgust, and a moment later led his companion out into the road,

which was becoming a street with still unlighted houses on each side. Slinking in the shadows was not ingenial to his nature. "'Where do you want to go?' he asked. The girl did not seem to object to his arm about her waist. "'To my house, to rouse my servants,' she answered. "'To bid them search for my lover. "'I do not wish the city, the priests, anyone to know of his madness. "'He is a young officer with a promise

future. Perhaps we can drive this madness from him if we can find him. If we find him, rumbled Conan, what makes you think I want to spend the night scouring the streets for a lunatic? She cast a quick glance into his face, and properly interpreted the gleam in his blue eyes. Any woman could have known that he would follow her wherever she led for a while at least. But being a woman, she could have been a woman, she could. concealed her knowledge of that fact. "'Please,' she began with a hint of tears in her voice. "'I have no one else to ask for help.

"'You have been kind.' "'All right,' he grunted, all right. "'What's the young reprobate's name?' "'Why, aloftol. "'I am Zabibi, a dancing girl. "'I have danced often before the satrap, "'Jun Jir Khan, and his mistress, Nefertari, "'and before all the lords and royal ladies of Zambula.

Tartramesque desired me, and because I repulsed him, he made me the innocent tool of his vengeance against Alafdahl. I asked the love potion of Tertramsk, not suspecting the depth of his guile and hate. He gave me a drug to mix with my lover's wine, and he swore that when Alafdal drank it, he would love me even more madly than ever, and grant my every wish. I mixed the drug secretly with my lover's wine. But having drunk, my lover went raving mad, and things came about as I have told you. Curse Tartrasmec, the hybrid snake! Ah! She caught his arm convulsively, and both stopped short.

They had come into a district of shops and stalls, all deserted and unlighted, for the hour was late. They were passing an alley, and in its mouth, a man was standing motionless and silent. His head was lowered, but Conan caught the weird gleam of eerie eyes regarding them unblinkingly. His skin crawled, not with fear of the sword in the man's hand, but because of the uncanny suggestion of his posture and silence, they suggested madness. Conan pushed the girl aside and drew his sword. Don't kill him, she begged.

In the name of Set, do not slay him. You are strong. Overpower him. We'll see, he muttered, grasping his sword in his right hand and clenching his left into a mallet-like fist. He took a wary step toward the alley, and with a horrible, moaning laugh, the Terranian charged. As he came, he swung his sword,

rising on his toes as he put all the power of, of his body behind the blows. Sparks flashed blue as Conan parry the blade. And the next instant the madman was stretched senseless in the dust from a thundering buffet of Conan's left fist. The girl ran forward. Oh, he is not! He is not! Conan bent swiftly, turned the man on his side and ran quick fingers over him.

He's not hurt much, he grunted, bleeding at the nose, but anybody's likely to do. that after a cloud on the jaw. He'll come to after a bit, and maybe his mind will be right. In the meantime I'll tie his wrists with his sword-belt. So, now where do you want me to take him? Wait. She knelt beside the senseless figure, seized the bound hands, and scanned them avidly. Then, shaking her head, as if in baffled disappointment, she rose. She came close to the giant Samaria. and laid her slender hands on his arching breast.

Her dark eyes, like wet black jewels in the starlight, gazed up into his. "'You are a man. Help me! Tartrasmek must die! Slay him for me!' "'And put my neck into a terranian noose?' he grunted. "'Nay!' The slender arms, strong as pliant steel,

were around his corded neck. Her supple body throbbed against his. The Hercadians have no love for Tertrismek. The priests of Set fear him. He is a mongrel who rules men by fear and superstition. I worship set, and the Terranians bow to Erlik. But Tartasmec sacrifices to Hanamon, the e-cursed. The Terranian lords fear his black arts

and his power over the hybrid population, and they hate him. If he were slain in his temple at night, they would not seek his slayer very closely. And what of his magic? Rumble the Samarian. You are a fighting man, she answered, to risk your life as part of your profession. For a price, he admitted. There will be a price, she breathed, rising on texie. tiptoe to gaze into his eyes. The nearness of her vibrant body drove a flame through his veins.

The perfume of her breath mounted to his brain. But as his arms closed about her supple figure, she avoided them with a lithe movement, saying, Wait! First serve me in this matter. Name your price, he spoke with some difficulty. Pick up my lover, she directed, and the Samarian stooped and swung the tall form easily to his broadshoulder. At the moment, he felt as if he could have toppled over Jungir Khan's palace with equal ease.

The girl murmured an endearment to the unconscious man. There was no hypocrisy in her attitude. She obviously loved Al-Loftal sincerely. Whatever business arrangements she made with Conan would have no bearing on her relationship with Al-Lafdahl. Women are more practical about these things than men. Follow me! She hurried along the street, while the Samarian strode easily after her, in no way discomforted by his limp burden.

He kept a wary eye out for black shadows skulking under arches, but saw nothing suspicious. Doubtless the men of Darfur were all gathered at the roasting pit. The girl turned down a narrow side street, and presently knocked cautiously at an arched door. Almost instantly a wicket opened in the upper panel, and a black face glanced out. She bent close to the opening, whispering swiftly. Bolts creaked in their sockets, and the door opened.

A giant black man stood framed against the soft glow of a copper lamp. A quick glance showed Conan the man was not from Darfur. His teeth were unfiled And his kinky hair was cropped close to his skull He was from the wad-eye At a word from Zabibi Conan gave the limp body into the black's arms And saw the young officer laid on a velvet divan

He showed no signs of returning consciousness The blow that had rendered him senseless might have felled an ox Zabibi bent over him for an instant her fingers nervously twining and twisting. Then she straightened and beckoned the Samarian. The door closed softly. The locks clicked behind them, and the closing wicket shut off the glow of the lamps.

In the starlight of the street, Zabibi took Conan's hand. Her own hand trembled a little. You will not fail me? He shook his main head massive against the stars. Then follow me to Hanuman's shrine, and the gods have mercy on our souls. Along the silent streets they moved like phantoms of antiquity. They went in silence. Perhaps the girl was thinking of her lover, lying senseless on the divan under the copper lamps,

or was shrinking with fear of what lay ahead of them in the demon-haunted shrine of Hanuman. The barbarian was thinking only. only of the woman moving so supply beside him. The perfume of her scented hair was in his nostrils. The sensuous aura of her presence filled his brain and left room for no other thoughts. Once they heard the clank of brass-shod feet and drew into the shadows of a gloomy arch

while a squad of Polishdom watchmen swung past. There were fifteen of them. They marched in close formation pikes at the ready, and the rearmost men had their broad brass shields slung on their backs to protect them from a knife-stroke from behind. The skulking menace of the black man-eaters was a threat even to armed men. As soon as the clank of their sandals had receded up the street, Conan and the girl emerged from their hiding-place and hurried on.

A few moments later they saw the squat, flat-topped edifice, they sought, looming ahead of them. The temple of Honoman stood alone in the midst of a broad square, which lay silent and deserted beneath the stars. A marble wall surrounded the shrine with a broad opening directly before the portico. This opening had no gate or any sort of barrier. Why don't the black seat their prey here? muttered the Conan. There's nothing to keep them out of the temple.

He could feel the trembling of Zabibi's body as she pressed close to him. They fear Tartrasmec as all in Zambula fear him. And even Jarnjir Khan and Nefertari. Come, come quickly, before my courage flows from me like water. The girl's fear was evident, but she did not falter. Conan drew his sword and strode ahead of her as they advanced through the open gateway. He knew the hideous hat. of the priests of the East, and was aware that an invader of Honoman Shrine might expect to

encounter almost any sort of nightmare horror. He knew that there was a good chance that neither he nor the girl would ever leave the shrine alive, but he had risked his life too many times before to devote much thought to that consideration. The Interday Court paved with marble which gleamed whitely in the starlight. A short flight of broad marble steps led up to the pillared portico. The great bronze doors stood wide open as they had stood for centuries, but no worshippers burnt incense within.

In the day men and women might come timidly into the shrine and place offerings to the ape-god on the black altar. At night, the people shunned the temple of Honoman as hares shunned the lair of the circle. Burning sensors bathed the interior in a soft, weird glow that created an illusion of unreality. Near the rear wall, behind the black stone altar, sat the god with his gaze fixed forever on the open door, through which for centuries his victims had come dragged by chains of roses. A faint groove ran from the sill to the altar,

and when Conan's foot felt it he stepped away as quickly as if he had trodden upon a snake. That groove had been worn by the faltering feet of the multitude of those who had died screaming on that grim altar. Be still in the uncertain light. Hanuman leered with his carven mask. He sat not as an ape would crouch, but cross-legged as a man would sit, but his aspect was no less Simeon for that reason. He was carved from black marble, but his eyes were rubies,

which glowed red and lustful as the coals of hell's deepest pits. His great hands lay upon his lap, palms upward, taloned fingers spread and grasping. In the gross emphasis of his attributes, in the leer of his satyr countenance, was reflected the abominable cynicism of the degenerate cult which deified him. The girl moved around the image, making toward the back wall, and when her sleek flank brushed against a carved knee,

she shrank aside and shuddered as if a reptile had touched her. There was a space of several feet between the broad back of the idol and the marble wall with its freezes of gold leaves. On either hand, flanking the idol, an ivory door under a gold arch was set in the wall. These doors opened into each end of a hairpin-shaped corridor, she said hurriedly. Once I was in the interior of the shrine. Once! She shivered and twitched her slim shoulders at a memory both terrifying and obscene.

The corridor is bent like a horseshoe, with each horn opening into this room. Tartrasmec's chambers are enclosed within the curve of the corridor and open into it. But there is a secret door in this wall, which opens directly into an inner chamber. She began to run her hands over the smooth surface where no crack or crevice showed. Conan stood beside her, sword in hand, glancing warily about him. The silence, the emptiness of the shrine, with imagination picturing what might lie behind that wall, made him feel like a wild beast nosing a trap.

Ah, the girl had found a hidden spring at last. A square opening gaped blankly in the wall. "'Sat!' she screamed. And even as Conan leaped toward her, he saw that a great misshapen hand had fastened itself in her. She was snatched off her feet and jerked headfirst through the opening. Conan, grabbing ineffectually at her, felt his fingers slipped from a naked limb, and in an instant she had vanished and the walls showed blank as before.

Only from beyond it came briefly the muffled sounds of a struggle, a scream faintly heard, and a low laugh that made Conan's blood congeal in his veins. End of Part 2. Part 3 of Shadows in Zambula by Robert E. Howard. This Lieber Vox recording is in the public domain. Part 3. Black Hands Gripping. With an oath, the Samarion smote the wall a terrific blow with the pommel of his sword, and the marble cracked and chipped.

But the hidden door did not give way, and reasoned. told him that doubtless it had been bolted on the other side of the wall. Turning, he sprang across the chamber to one of the ivory doors. He lifted his sword to shatter the panels, but on a venture tried the door first with his left hand. It swung open easily, and he glared into a long corridor that curved away into dimness under the weird light of sensors similar to those in the shrine. A heavy gold bolt showed on the jam of the door, and he touched it lightly with his fingertips.

The faint warmness of the metal could have been detected only by a man whose faculties were akin to those of a wolf. That bolt had been touched, and therefore drawn within the last few seconds. The affair was taking on more and more the aspect of a baited trap. He might have known, taught Trosmec would know when anyone entered the temple. To enter the corridor would undoubtedly be to walk into whatever trap the priest had set for him. But Conan did not hesitate. Somewhere in that dim-lit interior, Zabibi was a captive, and, from what he knew of the characteristics of the Hanuman priests,

he was sure that she needed help badly. Conan stalked into the corridor with a pantherish tread, poised to strike right or left. On his left, ivory-arched doors opened into the corridor, and he tried each in turn. All were locked. He had gone perhaps seventy-five feet, when the corridor bent sharply to the left, describing the curve the girl had mentioned. A door opened into this curve, and it gave under his hand. He was looking into a broad square chamber, somewhat more clearly lighted than the corridor.

Its walls were of white marble, the floor of ivory, the ceiling of fretted silver. He saw divans of rich satin, gold-worked footstools of ivory, a disc-shaped table of some massive metal-like substance. On one of the divans a man was reclining looking toward the door. He laughed as he met the Samarian's startled glare. The man was naked, except for a loincloth and high-strapped sandals. He was brown-skinned, with close-cropped black hair and restless black eyes that set off a broad, arrogant face.

In girth and breath he was enormous, with huge limbs on which the great muscles swelled and rippled at each. slightest movement. His hands were the largest Conan had ever seen. The assurance of gigantic physical strength colored his every action and inflection. Why not enter barbarian? He called mockingly with an exaggerated gesture of invitation. Conan's eyes began to smolder ominously, but he trod warily into the chamber, his sword ready. "'Who the devil are you?' he growled. "'I am Balpitor,' the man answered.

"'Once long ago in another land I had another name. "'But this is a good name, "'and why Tottrosmek gave it to me any temple wench can tell you.' "'So you're his dog,' grunted Conan. "'Well, curse your brown hide, Balpator. "'Where's the wench you? you jerked through the wall. "'My master entertains her,' laughed Balpatar.

"'Listen!' From beyond the door opposite the one by which Conan had entered, there sounded a woman's scream, faint and muffled in the distance. "'Blast your soul!' Conan took a stride toward the door, then wheeled with his skin tingling. Balpatar was laughing at him, and that laugh was edged with menace that made the hackles rise on Conan's neck and sent a red wave of murder lust driving across his vision.

He started towards Balpator, the knuckles on his sword hands showing white. With the swift motion the brown man threw something at him, a shining crystal sphere that glistened in the weird light. Conan dodged instinctively, but miraculously the globe stopped short in it air, a few feet from his face. It did not fall to the floor. It hung, suspended, as if by invisible filaments, some five feet above the floor. And as he glared in amazement, it began to rotate with growing speed, and as it revolved, it grew, expanded, became nebulous. It filled the chamber. It enveloped him. It blotted out furniture.

walls, the smiling countenance of Bal Patar. He was lost in the midst of a blinding bluish blur of whirling speed. Terrific wind screamed past Conan, tugging, tearing at him, striving to wrench him from his feet, to drag him into the vortex that spun madly before him. With a choking cry, Conan lurched backward, reeled, felt the solid wall against his back. At the contact, the illusion ceased to be. The whirling titanic sphere vanished like a bursting bubble. Conan reeled upright in the silver-ceilinged room, with a gray mist coiling about his feet,

and saw Balpator lolling on the divan, shaking with silent laughter. "'Sone of a slut!' Conan lunged at him. But the mist swirled up from the floor, blotting on the floor, blotting on the wall. out that giant brown farm. Groping in a rolling cloud that blinded him, Conan felt a rending sensation of dislocation, and then room and mist and brown man were gone together. He was standing alone among the high reeds of a marshy fin,

and a buffalo was lunging at him head down. He leaped aside from the ripping scimitar curved horns and drove his sword in behind the four-legged. leg, through ribs and heart. And then it was not a buffalo dying there in the mud, but a brown-skinned Balpator. With a curse Conan struck off his head, and the head soared from the ground and snapped beast-like tusks into his throat. For all his mighty strength he could not tear it loose.

He was choking, strangling. there was a rush and roar through space, the dislocating shock of an immeasurable impact, and he was back in the chamber with Balpator, whose head was once more set firmly on his shoulders, and who laughed silently at him from the divan. Mesmerism, muttered Conan, crouching and digging his toes hard against the marble. His eyes blazed. This brown dog was playing with him, making sport of him. But this mummery, this child's play of mists and shadows of thought,

it could not harm him. He had but to leap and strike, and the brown acolyte would be a mangled corpse under his heel. This time he would not be fooled by shadows of illusion. But he was. A blood-curdling snarl sounded behind him, and he wheeled and struck in a flash at the panther crouching to spring on him from the metal-colored table. Even as he struck, the apparition vanished and his blade clashed definitely on the adamantine surface.

Instantly he sensed something abnormal. The blade stuck to the table. He wrenched at its sad. savagely, it did not give. This was no mesmeristic trick. The table was a giant magnet. He gripped the hilt with both hands, when a voice at his shoulder brought him about to face the brown man who had at last risen from the divan.

Slightly taller than Conan and much heavier, Balpatar loomed before him, a daunting image of muscular development. His mighty arms were unnaturally long, and his great hands opened and closed, twitching convulsively. Conan released the hilt of his imprisoned sword, and fell silent, watching his enemy through slitted lids. "'Your head, Samarian,' taunted Balpatore. "'I shall take it with my bare hands.' twisting it from your shoulders as the head of a foul is twisted. Thus the sons of Kossala offer sacrifice to Yajor.

Barbarian, you look upon a strangler of Yotapong. I was chosen by the priests of Yangor in my infancy, and throughout childhood, boyhood, and youth, I trained in the art of slaying with the naked hands. For only thus are the sacrifices enacted. Yon Jor loves blood, and we waste not a drop from the victim's veins. When I was a child they gave me infants to throttle. When I was a boy I strangled young girls.

As a youth, women, old men, and young boys. Not until I reached my full manhood was I given a strong man to slay on the ultimate. of Yotapong. For years I offered the sacrifices to Yajor. Hundreds of necks have snapped between these fingers. He worked them before the Samarion's angry eyes. Why I fled the Yotapong to become Totasmec's servant is of no concern of yours. In a moment you will be beyond curiosity.

The priests of Kossala, the stranglers of Yajor, are strong beyond the belief of men. And I was stronger than any. With my hands, barbarian, I shall break your neck. And like the stroke of twin cobras, the great hands closed on Conan's throat. The Sumerian made no attempt to dodge or fend them away. But his own hands darted to the Kassalans' bull neck. Balpator's black eyes widened as he felt the thick cords of muscles that protected the barbarian's throat.

With a snarl, he exerted his inhuman strength, and knots and lumps and ropes of fuse rose along his massive arms. And then a choking gasp burst from him, as Conan's fingers locked on his throat. For an instant they stood there like statues, their faces, masks of effort, veins beginning to stand out purply on their temples. Conan's thin lips drew back from his teeth in a grinning snarl.

Bald Patara's eyes were distended. In them grew an awful surprise, and the glimmer of fear. Both men stood motionless as images, except for the expanding of their muscles on rigid arms and braced legs. But strength beyond common conception was warring there, strength that might have uprooted trees and crushed the skulls of bullocks. The wind whistled suddenly from between Balpatar's parted teeth.

His face was growing purple. Fear flooded his eyes. His fuse seemed ready to burst from his arms and shoulders, yet the muscles of the Samarian's thick neck did not give. They felt like masses of woven iron cords under his desperate fingers. But his own flesh was giving way under the iron fingers of the Samarian, which ground deeper and deeper into the yielding throat muscles, crushing them in upon jugular and windpipe.

The statuesque immobility of the group gave way to sudden frenzied motion, as the Casalin began to wrench and heave, seeking to throw himself backward. He let go of Conan's throat and grasped his wrists, trying to tear away those inexorable fingers. With a sudden lunge, Conan bore him backward until the small of his back crashed against the table, And still farther over its edge Conan bent him back and back until his spine was ready to snap. Conan's low laugh was merciless as the ring of steel.

You fool, he all but whispered, I think you never saw a man from the west before. Did you deem yourself strong? Because you were able to twist the heads off civilized folk? Poor weaklings with muscles like rotted string? Hell, break the neck of a wild Samarian bull before you call yourself strong. I did that before I was a full-grown man like this. And with a savage wrench, he twisted Balpator's head around,

until the ghastly face leered over his head. left shoulder, and the vertebrae snapped like a rotten branch. Conan hurled the flopping corpse to the floor, turned to the sword again and gripped the hilt with both hands, bracing his feet against the floor. Blood trickled down his broad breast from the wounds. Balpator's fingernails had torn in the skin of his neck. His black hair was damp, sweat ran down his face, and his chest heaved. for all his vocal scorn of Bal Patar's strength,

he had almost met his match in the inhuman Kosalin. But without pausing to catch his breath, he exerted all his strength in a mighty wrench that tore the sword from the magnet where it clung. Another instant, and he had pushed open the door from behind which the scream had sounded, and was looking down a long, straight corridor, lined with ivory doors.

The other end was masked by a rich velvet curtain, and from beyond that curtain came the devilish strains of such music as Conan had never heard, not even in nightmares. It made the short hairs bristle on the back of his neck. Mingled with it was the panting, hysterical sobbing of a woman. his sword firmly. He glided down the corridor. End of Part 3. Part 4 of Shadows in Zambula by Robert E. Howard. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Part 4. Dance Girl, Dance. When Zabibi was jerked headfirst through the aperture which opened in the wall behind the title. Her first dizzy, disconnected, thought, was that her time had come. She instinctively shut her eyes and waited for the blow to fall, but instead she found herself dumped

unceremoniously onto the smooth marble floor which bruised her knees and hip. Opening her eyes, she stared fearfully around her, just as a muffled impact sounded from beyond the wall. She saw a brown-skinned giant in a loin cloth standing over her, and across the chamber into which she had come, a man sat on a divan, with his back to a rich velvet curtain, a broad fleshy man, with fat white hands and snaky eyes. And her flesh crawled. For this man was Totrasmec, the priest of Hanuman, who for years has been a man who for years had spun his slimy webs of power throughout the city of Zambula. "'The barbarian seeks to batter his way through the wall,' said Totasmec sardonically.

"'But the bolt will hold.' The girl saw that a heavy golden bolt had been shot across the hidden door, which was plainly discernible from this side of the wall. The bolt and its sockets would have resided. the charge of an elephant. Go open one of the doors for him, Balpeter, ordered Tortasmec. Slay him in the square chamber at the other end of the corridor. The Krasalan salamed, and departed by the way of a door in the sidewall of the chamber.

Sabibi rose, staring fearfully at the priest, whose eyes ran avidly over her splendid figure. To this she was indifferent. A dancer of Zambula was accustomed to nakedness. But the cruelty in his eyes started her limbs to quivering. Again you come to me in my retreat, beautiful one, he purred with cynical hypocrisy. It is an unexpected honor. You seemed to enjoy your former visit so little that I dared not hope for you to repeat it. Yet I did all in my power to provide you with an interesting experience.

For a Zambulin dancer to blush would be an impossibility. But a smolder of anger mingled with fear in Zabibi's dilated eyes. Fat, pig, you know I did not come here for love of you. No, laughed Tartrasmec. You came like a fool. creeping through the night with a stupid barbarian to cut my throat. Why should you seek my life?" "'You know why,' she cried, knowing the futility of trying to dissemble.

"'Ha, ha, you are thinking of your lover,' he laughed. The fact that you are here seeking my life shows that he quaffed the drug I gave you. Well, did you not ask for it? And did I not send what you asked for out of the love I bear you? I asked you for a drug that would make him slumber harmlessly for a few hours. She said bitterly, and you, you sent your servant with a drug that drove him mad. I was a fool ever to trust you. I might have known your protestations of friendship were lies,

to disguise your hate and spite. Why did you wish your lover to sleep? he retorted. So you could steal from him the only thing he would never give you, the ring with the jewel men called the Star of Corolla, the star stolen from the Queen of Ophir, who would pay a room full of gold for its return. He would not give it to you willingly, because he knew that it holds a magic which, when properly controlled, will enslave the hearts

of any of the opposite sex. You wish to steal it from him, fearing that his magicians would discover the key to that magic, and he would forget you in his conquests of the queens of the world. You would sell it back to the queen of Ophir, who understands its power, and would use it to enslave men as she did before it was stolen. And why did you want it? She demanded sulkily. I understand its powers.

It would increase the power of my arts. Well, she snapped, you have it now. I have the star of Corolla? Nay, you err. Why bother to lie? She retorted bitterly. He had it on his side. finger when he drove me into the streets.

He did not have it when I found him again. Your servant must have been watching the house and have taken it from him after I escaped him. To the devil with it! I want my lover back sane and whole. You have the ring. You have punished us both. Why do you not restore his mind to him?

Can you?" I could. He assured her in evident enjoyment of her distress. He drew a file from among his robe. This contains the juice of the golden lotus. If your lover drank it he would be sane again. Yes, I will be merciful. You have both thwarted and flouted me not once but many times.

He has constantly opposed my wishes, but I will be merciful. Come and take the file from my hand." She stared at Tartrosmack, trembling with even, eagerness to seize it, but fearing it was but some cruel jest. She advanced timidly, with a hand extended, and he laughed heartlessly and drew back out of her reach. Even as her lips parted to curse him, some instinct snatched her eyes upward. From the gilded ceiling four jade-hued vessels were falling.

She dodged, but they did not strike her. They crashed to the floor about her. forming the four corners of a square, and she screamed, and screamed again. For out of each ruin reared the hooded head of a cobra, and one struck at her bare leg. Her convulsive movement to evade it brought her within reach of the one on the other side, and again she had to shift like lightning to avoid the flash of its hideous head. She was caught in a frightful trap. All four serpents were swaying and striking at foot, ankle, calf, knee, thigh, hip,

whatever portion of her voluptuous body chanced to be nearest to them, and she could not spring over them or pass between them to safety. She could only whirl and spring aside and twist her body to avoid the strokes, and each time she moved to dodge one snake, the motion brought her within range of another, so that she had to keep shifting with the speed of light. She could move only a short space in any direction, and the fearful hooded crests were menacing her every second.

Only a dancer of Zambula could have lived in that grisly square. She became herself a blur of bewildering motion. The heads missed her by hair's breaths, but they missed. As she pitted her twinkling feet, flickering limbs and perfect, against the blinding speed of the scaly demons her enemy had conjured out of thin air. Somewhere a thin, whining music struck up, mingling with the hissing of the serpents like an evil night wind blowing through the empty sockets of a skull. Even in the flying speed of her urgent haste, she realized that the darting of the serpents

was no longer at random. They obeyed the grisly piping of the eerie music. They struck with a horrible rhythm and perforce her swaying, writhing, spinning body attuned itself to their rhythm. Her frantic motions melted into the measures of a dance compared to which the most obscene Tarantella of Zamora would have seemed sane and restrained. Sick with shame and terror, Sabibi heard the hateful mirth of her merciless tormentor. Ha ha, the dance of the cobras, my lovely one, laughed to Trasmuch. So maidens danced in the sacrifices to Honumann centuries ago. But never with such beauty and suppleness.

Dance, girl, dance! How long can you avoid the fangs of the poison people? Minutes? Hours? You will weary at last. Your swift, sure feet will stumble, your legs falter, your hips slow in their rotations. Then the fangs will begin to sink deep into your ivory flesh. Behind him the curtain shook as if struck by a gust of wind, and Tartrasmec screamed.

His eyes dilated, and his hands caught convulsively at the length of bright steel which jutted suddenly from his breast. The music broke off short. The girl swayed dizzily in her dance, crying out in dreadful anticipation of the flickering fangs, and then only four wisps of harmless blue smoke curled up from the floor about her, as Tostrasmic sprawled headlong from the divan.

Conan came from behind the curtain, wiping his broad blade. Looking through the hangings, He had seen the girl dancing desperately between four swaying spirals of smoke, but he had guessed that their appearance was very different to her. He knew he had killed Tertrasmic. Sabibi sank down on the floor, panting, but even as Conan started toward her, she staggered up again, though her legs trembled with exhaustion. The file! she gasped. The file! Tertrasmic still grasped.

it in his stiffening hand. Ruthlessly she tore it from his locked fingers, and then began frantically to ransack his garments. "'What the devil are you looking for?' Conan demanded. "'A ring! He stole it from a loft-doll. He must have, while my lover walked in madness through the streets. Sets devils!' She had convinced herself that it was not on the person of Tartrosmik. She began to cast about the chamber, tearing up Devan covers and hangings and upsetting vessels. She paused and raked a damp lock of hair out of her eyes.

I forgot Balpatar. He's in hell with his neck broken, Conan assured her. She expressed vindictive gratification at the news, but an instant later swore expressively. We can't stay here. It's not many hours until dawn. Lesser priests are likely to visit the temple at any hour of the night, and if we're discovered here with his corpse the people will tear us to pieces. The Turanians could not save us.

She lifted the bolt on the secret door, and a few moments later they were in the streets and hurrying away from the silent square where brooded the age-old shrine of Honuman. In a winding street a short distance away, Conan halted and checked his companion. with a heavy hand on her naked shoulder. Don't forget. There was a price. I have not forgotten, she twisted free. But we must go to a loft-au first.

A few minutes later, the black slave let them through the wicket door. The young Terranian lay upon the divan, his arms and legs bound with heavy velvet ropes. His eyes were open, but they were like those of a mad dog, and foam was thick on his lips. Sabibi shuddered. Force his jaws open, she commanded,

and Conan's iron fingers accomplished the task. Sabibi emptied the file down the maniac's gullet. The effect was like magic. Instantly he became quiet. The glare faded from his eyes. He stared up at the girl in a puzzled way, but with recognition and intelligence. Then he fell into a normal slumber.

When he awakes he will be quite sane, she whispered, motioning to the silent slave. With a deep bow he gave into her hands a small leathern bag and drew about her shoulders a silken cloak. Her manner has subtly changed when she beckoned Coney and to follow her out of the chamber. In an arch that opened on the street, she turned to him, drawing herself up with a regality. I must now tell you the truth, she said. I am not Zabibi.

I am Nuffertari. And he is not Aloftal, a poor captain of the guardsman. He is Janjir Khan, Satrap of Zambula. Conan made no comment. His scarred, dark countenance was immobile. I lied to you because I dared not divulge the truth to anyone, she said. We were alone when John J. Kahn went mad. No one knew of it but myself.

Had it been known that the satrap of Zambula was a madman, there would have been an instant revolt in rioting, even as Trasmec planned who plotted our destruction. You see now how impossible is a reward for which you hoped. The Satrap's mistress is not, cannot be for you. But you shall not go unrewarded. Here is a sack of gold." She gave him the bag she had received from the slave.

Go now, and when the sun has come up to the palace I will have Jungir Khan make you captain of his guard. But you will take your orders from me secretly. Your first duty will be to march a squad to the shrine of Honuman, ostensibly to search for clues of the priest's slayer. In reality, to search for the star of the star of the king. Corolla. It must be hidden there somewhere. When you find it, bring it to me. You have my leave to go now. He nodded, still silent, and strode away. The girl, watching the swing of his broad shoulders,

was piqued to note that there was nothing in his bearing to show that he was in any way chagrined or abashed. When he had rounded a corner, he glanced back, and then changed his direction and quick his pace. A few moments later, he was in the quarter of the city containing the horse market. There he smote on a door until, from the window above, a bearded head was thrust to demand the reason for the disturbance. A horse, demanded Conan. The swiftest steed you have.

I open no gates at this time of night, grumbled the horse-trader. Conan rattled his coins. "'Dog, son, knave, don't you see I'm white and alone? Come down before I smash your door.' Presently on a bay stallion, Conan was riding toward the house of Aram Bakshi. He turned off the road into the alley that lay between the tavern compound and the Date Palm Garden, but he did not pause at the gate. He rode on to the northeast corner of the wall, then turned and rode along the north-east corner of the wall,

then turned and rode along the north wall to halt within a few paces of the northwest angle. No trees grew near the wall, but there were some low bushes. To one of these he tied his horse and was about to climb into the saddle again when he heard a low muttering of voices beyond the corner of the wall. Drawing his foot from the stirrup, he stole to the angle and peered around it. Three men were moving down the road toward the palm groves, and from their slouching gate he knew they were negroes. They halted at his low call, bunching themselves as he strode toward them, his sword

and his hand. Their eyes gleamed whitely in the starlight. Their brutish lust shone in their ebony faces, but they knew their three cudgels could not prevail against his sword, just as he knew it. Where are you going? He challenged. To bid our brothers put out the fire in the pit beyond the groves, was the sullen, guttural reply.

Aram Bakshi promised us a man, but he lied. We found one of our brothers dead in the trap chamber. We go hungry this night. I think not, smiled Conan. Arambakshi will give you a man. Do you see that door? He pointed to a small iron-bound point. portal set in the midst of the western wall.

Wait there. Arambakshi will give you a man. Backing warily away until he was out of reach of a sudden bludgeon blow, he turned and melted around the northwest angle of the wall. Reaching his horse, he paused to ascertain that the blacks were not sneaking after him, and then he climbed into the saddle and stood upright on it, quieting the uneasy steed with a low word. He reached up, grasped the coping of the wall, and drew himself up and over. There he studied the grounds for an instant. The tavern was built in the southwest corner of the enclosure,

the remaining space of which was occupied by groves and gardens. He saw no one in the grounds. The tavern was dark and silent, and he knew all the doors and windows were barred and bolted. Conan knew that Aram Bakshi slept in a chamber that opened into a cypress bordered path that led to the door in the western wall. Like a shadow he collided among the trees, and a few minutes later he rapped lightly on the chamber door. What is it? asked a rumbling voice within. Aramakshi, hissed Conan.

The blacks are stealing over the wall. Almost instantly the door opened, framing. the tavern keeper, naked but for his shirt, with a dagger in his hand. He craned his neck to stare into the Samarian's face. What tail is this you?" Conan's vengeful fingers strangled the yell in his throat. They went to the floor together, and Conan wrenched the dagger from his enemy's hand. The blade glinted in the starlight and blood spurted.

Aram Bakshi made hideous noises, gasping and gagging. on a mouthful of blood. Conan dragged him to his feet, and again the dagger slashed, and most of the curly beard fell to the floor. Still gripping his captive throat, for a man can scream incoherently, even with his tongue slit, Conan dragged him out of the dark chamber and down the cypress shadowed path to the iron-bound door in the outer wall. With one hand he lifted the bolt and threw the door open, disclosing the

three shadowy figures which waited like black vultures outside. Into their eager arms, Conan thrust the innkeeper. A horrible blood-choked scream rose from the Zambulin's throat, but there was no response from the silent tavern. The people there were used to screams outside the wall. Aram Bakshi fought like a wild man. His distended eyes turned frantically on the Samarian's face. He found no mercy there.

Conan was thinking of the scores of wretches who owed their bloody doom to this man's greed. In glee the negroes dragged him down the road, mocking his frenzied gibberings. How could they recognize Aram Bakshi in this half-naked blood-stained figure with the grotesquely shorn beard and unintelligible babblings. The sound of the struggle came back to Conan, standing beside the gate, even after the clump of figures had vanished among the palms. Closing the door behind him, Conan returned to his horse, mounted and turned westward toward the open desert, swinging wide to skirt the sinister belt of palm groves.

As he rode, he drew from his belt a ring in which gleamed a jewel. that snared the starlight in a shimmering iridescence. He held it up to admire it, turning it this way and that. The compact bag of gold pieces clinked gently at his saddle-bow, like a promise of the greater ridges to come. I wonder what she say if she knew I recognized her as Nefertari and him as Jungir Khan the instant I saw them, he mused. I knew the star of Koralah too.

there'll be a fine scene if she ever guesses that i slipped it off his finger while i was tying him with his sword-belt but they'll never catch me with a sword i'm getting he glanced back at the shadowy pond groves among which a red glare was mounting a chanting rose in the night vibrating with savage exultation and another sound mingled with it a mad incoherent screaming a frenzy gibbering in which no words could be distinguished. The noise followed Conan as he rode westward beneath the paling stars. End of Part 4. End of Shadows in Zambula.