Barbarians Lady Epub

[Domenec Reynolds]

Thebase of this dome was a gigantic pedestal of marble risingfrom what had once been a terraced eminence on the banks of theancient river. Broad steps led up to a great bronze door in thedome, which rested on its base like the half of some titanic egg.The dome itself was of pure ivory, which shone as if unknownhands kept it polished. Likewise shone the spired gold cap of thepinnacle, and the inscription which sprawled about the curve ofthe dome in golden hieroglyphics yards long. No man on earthcould read those characters, but Shevatas shuddered at the dimconjectures they raised. For he came of a very old race, whosemyths ran back to shapes undreamed of by contemporary tribes.

Shevatas was wiry and lithe, as became a master-thief ofZamora. His small round head was shaven, his only garment a loin-cloth of scarlet silk. Like all his race, he was very dark, hisnarrow vulture-like face set off by his keen black eyes. Hislong, slender and tapering fingers were quick and nervous as thewings of a moth. From a gold-scaled girdle hung a short, narrow,jewel-hilted sword in a sheath of ornamented leather. Shevatashandled the weapon with apparently exaggerated care. He evenseemed to flinch away from the contact of the sheath with hisnaked thigh. Nor was his care without reason.

This was Shevatas, a thief among thieves, whose name wasspoken with awe in the dives of the Maul and the dim shadowyrecesses beneath the temples of Bel, and who lived in songs andmyths for a thousand years. Yet fear ate at the heart of Shevatasas he stood before the ivory dome of Kuthchemes. Any fool couldsee there was something unnatural about the structure; the windsand suns of three thousand years had lashed it, yet its gold andivory rose bright and glistening as the day it was reared bynameless hands on the bank of the nameless river.

This unnaturalness was in keeping with the general aura ofthese devil-haunted ruins. This desert was the mysterious expanselying southeast of the lands of Shem. A few days' ride on camel-back to the southwest, as Shevatas knew, would bring thetraveller within sight of the great river Styx at the point whereit turned at right angles with its former course, and flowedwestward to empty at last into the distant sea. At the point ofits bend began the land of Stygia, the dark-bosomed mistress ofthe south, whose domains, watered by the great river, rose sheerout of the surrounding desert.

Eastward, Shevatas knew, the desert shaded into steppesstretching to the Hyrkanian kingdom of Turan, rising in barbaricsplendor on the shores of the great inland sea. A week's ridenorthward the desert ran into a tangle of barren hills, beyondwhich lay the fertile uplands of Koth, the southernmost realm ofthe Hyborian races. Westward the desert merged into themeadowlands of Shem, which stretched away to the ocean.

All this Shevatas knew without being particularly conscious ofthe knowledge, as a man knows the streets of his town. He was afar traveller and had looted the treasures of many kingdoms. Butnow he hesitated and shuddered before the highest adventure andthe mightiest treasure of all.

In that ivory dome lay the bones of Thugra Khotan, the darksorcerer who had reigned in Kuthchemes three thousand years ago,when the kingdoms of Stygia stretched far northward of the greatriver, over the meadows of Shem, and into the uplands. Then thegreat drift of the Hyborians swept southward from the cradle-landof their race near the northern pole. It was a titanic drift,extending over centuries and ages. But in the reign of ThugraKhotan, the last magician of Kuthchemes, gray-eyed, tawny-hairedbarbarians in wolfskins and scale-mail had ridden from the northinto the rich uplands to carve out the kingdom of Koth with theiriron swords. They had stormed over Kuthchemes like a tidal wave,washing the marble towers in blood, and the northern Stygiankingdom had gone down in fire and ruin.

But while they were shattering the streets of his city andcutting down his archers like ripe corn, Thugra Khotan hadswallowed a strange terrible poison, and his masked priests hadlocked him into the tomb he himself had prepared. His devoteesdied about that tomb in a crimson holocaust, but the barbarianscould not burst the door, nor ever mar the structure by maul orfire. So they rode away, leaving the great city in ruins, and inhis ivory-domed sepulcher great Thugra Khotan slept unmolested,while the lizards of desolation gnawed at the crumbling pillars,and the very river that watered his land in old times sank intothe sands and ran dry.

Many a thief sought to gain the treasure which fables said layheaped about the moldering bones inside the dome. And many athief died at the door of the tomb, and many another was harriedby monstrous dreams to die at last with the froth of madness onhis lips.

So Shevatas shuddered as he faced the tomb, nor was hisshudder altogether occasioned by the legend of the serpent saidto guard the sorcerer's bones. Over all myths of Thugra Khotanhung horror and death like a pall. From where the thief stood hecould see the ruins of the great hall wherein chained captiveshad knelt by the hundreds during festivals to have their headshacked off by the priest-king in honor of Set, the Serpent-god ofStygia. Somewhere near by had been the pit, dark and awful,wherein screaming victims were fed to a nameless amorphicmonstrosity which came up out of a deeper, more hellish cavern.Legend made Thugra Khotan more than human; his worship yetlingered in a mongrel degraded cult, whose votaries stamped hislikeness on coins to pay the way of their dead over the greatriver of darkness of which the Styx was but the material shadow.Shevatas had seen this likeness, on coins stolen from under thetongues of the dead, and its image was etched indelibly in hisbrain.

But he put aside his fears and mounted to the bronze door,whose smooth surface offered no bolt or catch. Not for naught hadhe gained access into darksome cults, had harkened to the grislywhispers of the votaries of Skelos under midnight trees, and readthe forbidden iron-bound books of Vathelos the Blind.

Kneeling before the portal, he searched the sill with nimblefingers; their sensitive tips found projections too small for theeye to detect, or for less-skilled fingers to discover. These hepressed carefully and according to a peculiar system, muttering along-forgotten incantation as he did so. As he pressed the lastprojection, he sprang up with frantic haste and struck the exactcenter of the door a quick sharp blow with his open hand.

There was no rasp of spring or hinge, but the door retreatedinward, and the breath hissed explosively from Shevatas'sclenched teeth. A short narrow corridor was disclosed. Down thisthe door had slid, and was now in place at the other end. Thefloor, ceiling and sides of the tunnel-like aperture were ofivory, and now from an opening on one side came a silent writhinghorror that reared up and glared on the intruder with awfulluminous eyes; a serpent twenty feet long, with shimmering,iridescent scales.

The thief did not waste time in conjecturing what night-blackpits lying below the dome had given sustenance to the monster.Gingerly he drew the sword, and from it dripped a greenish liquidexactly like that which slavered from the scimitar-fangs of thereptile. The blade was steeped in the poison of the snake's ownkind, and the obtaining of that venom from the fiend-hauntedswamps of Zingara would have made a saga in itself.

Shevatas advanced warily on the balls of his feet, knees bentslightly, ready to spring either way like a flash of light. Andhe needed all his co-ordinate speed when the snake arched itsneck and struck, shooting out its full length like a stroke oflightning. For all his quickness of nerve and eye, Shevatas haddied then but for chance. His well-laid plans of leaping asideand striking down on the outstretched neck were put at naught bythe blinding speed of the reptile's attack. The thief had buttime to extend the sword in front of him, involuntarily closinghis eyes and crying out. Then the sword was wrenched from hishand and the corridor was filled with a horrible thrashing andlashing.

Opening his eyes, amazed to find himself still alive, Shevatassaw the monster heaving and twisting its slimy form in fantasticcontortions, the sword transfixing its giant jaws. Sheer chancehad hurled it full against the point he had held out blindly. Afew moments later the serpent sank into shining, scarcelyquivering coils, as the poison on the blade struck home.

But his eyes were focussed on the dais of crystal which rosein the midst of the shimmering array, directly under the redjewel, and on which should be lying the moldering bones, turningto dust with the crawling of the centuries. And as Shevataslooked, the blood drained from his dark features; his marrowturned to ice, and the skin of his back crawled and wrinkled withhorror, while his lips worked soundlessly. But suddenly he foundhis voice in one awful scream that rang hideously under thearching dome. Then again the silence of the ages lay among theruins of mysterious Kuthchemes.

They were rumors from the desert that lies east of Stygia, farsouth of the Kothian hills. A new prophet had risen among thenomads. Men spoke of tribal war, of a gathering of vultures inthe southeast, and a terrible leader who led his swiftlyincreasing hordes to victory. The Stygians, ever a menace to thenorthern nations, were apparently not connected with thismovement; for they were massing armies on their eastern bordersand their priests were making magic to fight that of the desertsorcerer, whom men called Natohk, the Veiled One; for hisfeatures were always masked.

But the tide swept northwestward, and the blue-bearded kingsdied before the altars of their pot-bellied gods, and theirsquat-walled cities were drenched in blood. Men said that theuplands of the Hyborians were the goal of Natohk and his chantingvotaries.

Raids from the desert were not uncommon, but this latestmovement seemed to promise more than a raid. Rumor said Natohkhad welded thirty nomadic tribes and fifteen cities into hisfollowing, and that a rebellious Stygian prince had joined him.This latter lent the affair an aspect of real war.

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