Valley of the Worm (8 page)

The desert shimmered in the heat waves. Conan the Cimmerian stared out over the aching desolation and involuntarily drew the back of his powerful hand over his blackened lips. He stood like a bronze image in the sand, apparently impervious to the murderous sun, though his only garment was a silk loincloth, girdled by a wide gold-buckled belt from which hung a saber and a broad-bladed poniard. On his clean-cut limbs were evidences of scarcely healed wounds.

At his feet rested a girl, one white arm clasping his knee, against which her blond head drooped. Her white skin contrasted with his hard bronzed limbs; her short silken tunic, low-necked and sleeveless, girdled at the waist, emphasized rather than concealed her lithe figure.

Conan shook his head, blinking. The sun’s glare half-blinded him. He lifted a small canteen from his belt and shook it, scowling at the faint splashing within.

The girl moved wearily, whimpering.

“Oh, Conan, we shall die here! I am so thirsty!”

The Cimmerian growled wordlessly, glaring truculently at the surrounding waste, with outthrust jaw, and blue eyes smoldering savagely from under his black tousled mane, as if the desert were a tangible enemy.

He stooped and put the canteen to the girl’s lips.

“Drink till I tell you to stop, Natala,” he commanded.

She drank with little panting gasps, and he did not check her. Only when the canteen was empty did she realize that he had deliberately allowed her to drink all their water supply, little enough that it was.

Tears sprang to her eyes. “Oh, Conan,” she wailed, wringing her hands, “why did you let me drink it all? I did not know—now there is none for you!”

“Hush,” he growled. “Don’t waste your strength in weeping.”

Straightening, he threw the canteen from him.

“Why did you do that?” she whispered.

He did not reply, standing motionless and immobile, his fingers closing slowly about the hilt of his saber. He was not looking at the girl; his fierce eyes seemed to plumb the mysterious purple hazes of the distance.

Endowed with all the barbarian’s ferocious love of life and instinct to live, Conan the Cimmerian yet knew that he had reached the end of his trail. He had not come to the limits of his endurance, but he knew another day under the merciless sun in those waterless wastes would bring him down. As for the girl, she had suffered enough. Better a quick painless sword-stroke than the lingering agony that faced him. Her thirst was temporarily quenched; it was a false mercy to let her suffer until delirium and death brought relief. Slowly he slid the saber from its sheath.

He halted suddenly, stiffening. Far out on the desert to the south, something glimmered through the heat waves.

At first he thought it was a phantom, one of the mirages which had mocked and maddened him in that accursed desert. Shading his sun-dazzled eyes, he made out spires and minarets, and gleaming walls. He watched it grimly, waiting for it to fade and vanish. Natala had ceased to sob; she struggled to her knees and followed his gaze.

“Is it a city, Conan?” she whispered, too fearful to hope. “Or is it but a shadow?”

The Cimmerian did not reply for a space. He closed and opened his eyes several times; he looked away, then back. The city remained where he had first seen it.

“The devil knows,” he grunted. “It’s worth a try, though.”

He thrust the saber back in its sheath. Stooping, he lifted Natala in his mighty arms as though she had been an infant. She resisted weakly.

“Don’t waste your strength carrying me, Conan,” she pleaded. “I can walk.”

“The ground gets rockier here,” he answered. “You would soon wear your sandals to shreds,” glancing at her soft green footwear. “Besides, if we are to reach that city at all, we must do it quickly, and I can make better time this way.”

The chance for life had lent fresh vigor and resilience to the Cimmerian’s steely thews. He strode out across the sandy waste as if he had just begun the journey. A barbarian of barbarians, the vitality and endurance of the wild were his, granting him survival where civilized men would have perished.

He and the girl were, so far as he knew, the sole survivors of Prince Almuric’s army, that mad motley horde which, following the defeated rebel prince of Koth, swept through the Lands of Shem like a devastating sandstorm and drenched the outlands of Stygia with blood. With a Stygian host on its heels, it had cut its way through the black kingdom of Kush, only to be annihilated on the edge of the southern desert. Conan likened it in his mind to a great torrent, dwindling gradually as it rushed southward, to run dry at last in the sands of the naked desert. The bones of its members— mercenaries, outcasts, broken men, outlaws—lay strewn from the Kothic uplands to the dunes of the wilderness.

From that final slaughter, when the Stygians and the Kushites closed in on the trapped remnants, Conan had cut his way clear and fled on a camel with the girl. Behind them the land swarmed with enemies; the only way open to them was the desert to the south. Into those menacing depths they had plunged.

The girl was Brythunian, whom Conan had found in the slave-market of a stormed Shemite city, and appropriated. She had had nothing to say in the matter, but her new position was so far superior to the lot of any Hyborian woman in a Shemitish seraglio, that she accepted it thankfully. So she had shared in the adventures of Almuric’s damned horde.

For days they had fled into the desert, pursued so far by Stygian horsemen that when they shook off the pursuit, they dared not turn back. They pushed on, seeking water, until the camel died. Then they went on foot. For the past few days their suffering had been intense. Conan had shielded Natala all he could, and the rough life of the camp had given her more stamina and strength than the average woman possesses; but even so, she was not far from collapse.

The sun beat fiercely on Conan’s tangled black mane. Waves of dizziness and nausea rose in his brain, but he set his teeth and strode on unwaveringly. He was convinced that the city was a reality and not a mirage. What they would find there he had no idea. The inhabitants might be hostile. Nevertheless it was a fighting chance, and that was as much as he had ever asked.

The sun was nigh to setting when they halted in front of the massive gate, grateful for the shade. Conan stood Natala on her feet, and stretched his aching arms. Above them the walls towered some thirty feet in height, composed of a smooth greenish substance that shone almost like glass. Conan scanned the parapets, expecting to be challenged, but saw no one. Impatiently he shouted, and banged on the gate with his saber-hilt, but only the hollow echoes mocked him. Natala cringed close to him, frightened by the silence. Conan tried the portal, and stepped back, drawing his saber, as it swung silently inward. Natala stifled a cry.

“Oh, look, Conan!”

Just inside the gate lay a human body. Conan glared at it narrowly, then looked beyond it. He saw a wide open expanse, like a court, bordered by the arched doorways of houses composed of the same greenish material as the outer walls. These edifices were lofty and imposing, pinnacled with shining domes and minarets. There was no sign of life among them. In the center of the court rose the square curb of a well, and the sight stung Conan, whose mouth felt caked with dry dust. Taking Natala’s wrist, he drew her through the gate and closed it behind them.

“Is he dead?” she whispered, shrinkingly indicating the man who lay limply before the gate. The body was that of a tall powerful individual, apparently in his prime; the skin was yellow, the eyes slightly slanted; otherwise the man differed little from the Hyborian type. He was clad in high-strapped sandals and a tunic of purple silk, and a short sword in a cloth-of-gold scabbard hung from his girdle. Conan felt his flesh. It was cold. There was no sign of life in the body.

“Not a wound on him,” grunted the Cimmerian, “but he’s dead as Almuric with forty Stygian arrows in him. In Crom’s name, let’s see to the well! If there’s water in it, we’ll drink, dead men or no.”

There was water in the well, but they did not drink of it. Its level was a good fifty feet below the curb, and there was nothing to draw it up with. Conan cursed blackly, maddened by the sight of the stuff just out of his reach, and turned to look for some means of obtaining it. Then a scream from Natala brought him about.

The supposedly dead man was rushing upon him, eyes blazing with indisputable life, his short sword gleaming in his hand. Conan cursed amazedly, but wasted no time in conjecture. He met the hurtling attacker with a slashing cut of his saber that sheared through flesh and bone. The fellow’s head thudded on the flags; the body staggered drunkenly, an arch of blood jetting from the severed jugular; then it fell heavily.

Conan glared down, swearing softly.

“This fellow is no deader now than he was a few minutes agone. Into what madhouse have we strayed?”

Natala, who had covered her eyes with her hands at the sight, peeked between her fingers and shook with fear.

“Oh, Conan, will the people of the city not kill us, because of this?”

“Well,” he growled, “this creature would have killed us if I hadn’t lopped off his head.”

He glanced at the archways that gaped blankly from the green walls above them. He saw no hint of movement, heard no sound.

“I don’t think anyone saw us,” he muttered. “I’ll hide the evidence—”

He lifted the limp carcass by its sword-belt with one hand, and grasping the head by its long hair in the other, he half-carried, half-dragged the ghastly remains over to the well.

“Since we can’t drink this water,” he gritted vindictively, “I’ll see that nobody else enjoys drinking it. Curse such a well, anyway!” He heaved the body over the curb and let it drop, tossing the head after it. A dull splash sounded far beneath.

“There’s blood on the stones,” whispered Natala.

“There’ll be more unless I find water soon,” growled the Cimmerian, his short store of patience about exhausted. The girl had almost forgotten her thirst and hunger in her fear, but not Conan.

“We’ll go into one of these doors,” he said. “Surely we’ll find people after awhile.”

“Oh, Conan!” she wailed, snuggling up as close to him as she could. “I’m afraid! This is a city of ghosts and dead men! Let us go back into the desert! Better to die there, than to face these terrors!”

“We’ll go into the desert when they throw us off the walls,” he snarled. “There’s water somewhere in this city, and I’ll find it, if I have to kill every man in it.”

“But what if they come to life again?” she whispered.

“Then I’ll keep killing them until they stay dead!” he snapped. “Come on! That doorway is as good as another! Stay behind me, but don’t run unless I tell you to.”

She murmured a faint assent and followed him so closely that she stepped on his heels, to his irritation. Dusk had fallen, filling the strange city with purple shadows. They entered the open doorway, and found themselves in a wide chamber, the walls of which were hung with velvet tapestries, worked in curious designs. Floor, walls and ceiling were of the green glassy stone, the walls decorated with gold frieze-work. Furs and satin cushions littered the floor. Several doorways let into other rooms. They passed through, and traversed several chambers, counterparts of the first. They saw no one, but the Cimmerian grunted suspiciously.

“Someone was here not long ago. This couch is still warm from contact with a human body. That silk cushion bears the imprint of someone’s hips. Then there’s a faint scent of perfume lingering in the air.”

A weird unreal atmosphere hung over all. Traversing this dim silent palace was like an opium dream. Some of the chambers were unlighted, and these they avoided. Others were bathed in a soft weird light that seemed to emanate from jewels set in the walls in fantastic designs. Suddenly, as they passed into one of these illumined chambers, Natala cried out and clutched her companion’s arm. With a curse he wheeled, glaring for an enemy, bewildered because he saw none.

“What’s the matter?” he snarled. “If you ever grab my sword-arm again, I’ll skin you. Do you want me to get my throat cut? What were you yelling about?”

“Look there,” she quavered, pointing.

Conan grunted. On a table of polished ebony stood golden vessels, apparently containing food and drink. The room was unoccupied.

“Well, whoever this feast is prepared for,” he growled, “he’ll have to look elsewhere tonight.”

“Dare we eat it, Conan?” ventured the girl nervously. “The people might come upon us, and——”

“Lir an mannanan mac lir!”
he swore, grabbing her by the nape of her neck and thrusting her into a gilded chair at the end of the table with no great ceremony. “We starve and you make objections! Eat!”

He took the chair at the other end, and seizing a jade goblet, emptied it at a gulp. It contained a crimson wine-like liquor of a peculiar tang, unfamiliar to him, but it was like nectar to his parched gullet. His thirst allayed, he attacked the food before him with rare gusto. It too was strange to him: exotic fruits and unknown meats. The vessels were of exquisite workmanship, and there were golden knives and forks as well. These Conan ignored, grasping the meat-joints in his fingers and tearing them with his strong teeth. The Cimmerian’s table manners were rather wolfish at any time. His civilized companion ate more daintily, but just as ravenously. It occurred to Conan that the food might be poisoned, but the thought did not lessen his appetite; he preferred to die of poisoning rather than starvation.