Conan Of The Isles

CHAPTER TWELVE LOST CITY

Conan heaved himself out of the waves and on to the lowest of the stone steps that led up to the sea gate, now closed for the night. From where he crouched, the setting sun had disappeared behind the crenelations of the towering sea wall.

Wearily, he pulled off the crystal helmet and its breathing tubes, whose supply of air was now exhausted, and laid the apparatus on the stone beside him. Then he tagged off his boots and poured the water out of them. For a while he sat hunched on the stone, glaring warily about him and breathing heavily. The task of hiking three miles over the bottom of the shallow, shark-infested sea, and then another mile along the shore to the city, had gravely sapped the old warrior's strength.

When he had reached the city in midafternoon, he had slipped back into the water. He waited, almost submerged, until all the small craft had tied up for the night, the sailors had gone in through the gate, and the gate had closed, before daring to come closer.

Up and down the long, stone quays, which stretched north and south from the gate, several larger vessels were moored. Others rode at anchor in the harbor, but no life appeared on their decks. The crews either were below at their evening repast or had gone ashore. These Antillians, thought Conan, must either be careless or confident in their own strength, to post no watches on their walls and their ships at all times. Among the Antillian ships, the fire-blackened hull of the Red Lion lay half-submerged in shallow water.

Conan was not only tired after his day-long exertions but also ravenously hungry. As he sat under the darkening sky, he thought out his next step. Whatever it was, he had better be about it before some watchman stumbled across him.

His best chance, he thought, would be to get into the city. This would place him in a fearfully dangerous position. Not only would he be alone and friendless; but also he could not hope to pass unnoticed, because his height, color, and features distinguished him at the slightest glance from the small, brown Antillians.

Added to this was the problem of language. Back in his own world, he had a rough-and-ready command of a dozen tongues, albeit he had never lost the barbarous Cimmerian accent with which he spoke them. But the Antillians would use some speech of remotely Atlantean origin, long forgotten in Conan's world and changed in the course of eight thousand years out of all resemblance to any languages Conan knew.

Nonetheless, he could not lie here by the water's edge forever. Perhaps this evening hour, when the people were at their meals, would offer the best chance he could look for.

He rose and ran a hand along the stone of the forty-foot sea wall. The wall was made of huge, well-shaped blocks, worn by the salt spray of centuries. Between the blocks, the mortar had softened and crumbled out, leaving gaps into which fingers and toes could be thrust between the courses of stone.

As a youth, Conan would have faced the climb of such a wall without trepidation. Scaling sheer cliffs was a normal accomplishment of a Cimmerian clansman. But he had not had occasion to make such a climb in many years, and his grasp was not so strong, nor his movements so sure as formerly.

He pulled himself together, kicked the helmet and its breathing apparatus into the water, and tucked his boots through his belt. He was tempted to leave his mailshirt but decided to keep it after all. Doffing one's armor in the face of peril, merely to rid oneself of its irksome weight, was the act of a rash and foolish youth - not of crafty old Conan.

Then, digging fingers and toes into the cracks between the courses, he began to climb. Slowly, like some great tail-less lizard, he crept up the wall. More than once he felt a finger or a toe slip and almost resigned himself to a bone-breaking fall. But his grip held, and presently he squeezed through one of the embrasures of the battlement and dropped to the broad, level top of the wall.

On the other side of the wall, towards the city, a low parapet without crenelations ran along the edge. Crouching, Conan slunk across the wall to the inner side and peered over the parapet. The city lay spread out before him.

Near the wall, fishermen's hovels and sheds stood in the red glow of the sunset. Smoke from cookfires rose from the huts, and here and there fishermen were stretching out their nets to dry. Now and then a naked brown child ran on an evening errand. Beyond lay cobbled streets and a vista of stone nouses, great and small.

The city was built on the sloping side of a hill. From where Conan crouched., he could see streets and squares, rising in tiers to the heights. The larger buildings were designed in a curious monolithic style, with thick, squat, tapering columns supporting heavy lintels and wedge-shaped corbelled arches. Walls of massive stone were dressed with stucco and plaster, either whitewashed or colored a violent crimson, a tawny cream, a bold canary, an emerald green, or a brilliant blue. The styling, although faintly reminiscent of nighted Khem or of the mysterious walled cities - some living, some ruined - that he had glimpsed years before in the deserts and jungles of the South, was strange to Conan's eye. It baffled him, as though built in accordance with an alien canon of aesthetics.

Higher on the slope rose stately edifices which were probably palaces, mansions, or temples. They had roofs of red tile or green copper and squat, five-sided towers with pyramidal tops. Conan saw imposing pylons, towering obelisks, and spacious gateways. Some avenues were lined with fantastic stone monsters.

Wall, cornice, doorway, architrave, and column capital were covered with leering, bug-eyed faces. Parrot-beaked, winged, or multilimbed beings of myth and legend sprawled in low, chiseled relief over gateways and walls. On some of the nearer walls, he could just make out rows of curious picture-writing. Composed of little squares containing weird faces and other elements, this form of writing was entirely new to him.

In the center of the city, amid a spacious square of level stone paving, rose a titanic pyramid with sloping sides, built of alternate blocks of block basalt and red sandstone. A lazy plume of smoke ascended from the topmost level, where Conan could faintly make out the outlines of a huge, flat altar. Flights of stone steps, guarded by stone monsters, rose up the side of the pyramid.

This structure exuded a sinister, disturbing aura of menace and terror, as if the mingled emotions of sacrificed thousands radiated from every stone. As he gazed at the accursed thing, Conan felt his skin roughen and suppressed a growl of hostility deep in his chest.

Few people moved in the darkening streets, increasingly drowned in purple night shadow. A few beggars slept in doorways. Here and there a yawning, sleepy-faced slave shuffled along on some errand for his master.

Conan waited until these few pedestrians were no longer to be seen. Then he took off his mail, made a bundle of it and his sword, and dropped the bundle to the ground below. The drop was considerably less than that on the seaward side of the wall. Then he swung himself over the parapet and began to descend, as he had ascended on the seaward side. Halfway down his grip slipped, and he kicked himself away from the wall as he fell, to land in a crouch on the turf fifteen feet below, jarred but unhurt.

A hasty glance revealed no sign that he had been 'seen, so he quickly donned boots, mail shirt, and sword. His only weapons were the broadsword and a broad-bladed dirk whose sheath was thrust through a slit in his girdle. These were not much with which to tackle a city full of implacable foes. But, with luck, daring, and the caution beaten into him by half a century of desperate adventure, he might have a fighting chance. And that was all he had ever asked of the gods.

Like a bronze shadow, he slipped between the hovels and across the first street into the shadows of an arcade. No eye marked his progress as he moved from column to gate, from doorway to pylon. In the daytime, the streets would be alive with a milling throng; now they were almost deserted.

In his shadowy progress through this silent city of gaudily-painted stucco over massive stone, Conan chose dark alleys and winding ways rather than the broad streets and wide ramps that climbed from level to level. He wondered where Sigurd and the pirates were - if they were still alive. Probably they would be immured near the Antil-lian equivalent of a slave market. In a strange city filled with enemies, where no man spoke a language he could understand,, he had little chance of finding and freeing them; but he meant to try. Even in the lawless days of his early career, he had been noted for his fierce loyalty to his comrades.

Besides, if one man had no hope of prevailing against a city of twenty or thirty thousand, with sixty hardened fighters behind him the mathematics became a little better - not much, true, but sixty-odd men still have a better chance of winning out of a tight spot than one, even if that one be Conan the Cimmerian.

Conan's first problem, however, was to find a safe haven, a place of concealment. Where, in a city full of unintelligible foes, could he find an ally ?

Then it would seem that he could count upon the favor of his barbaric gods, after all. He was slinking down a narrow street, lined with mean little one-room houses, when he heard a sharp hiss. As he looked around for the source, hand on hilt, the hiss was repeated from other directions. The faces of several women, dim in the dusk, had appeared in the doorways, and their hands beckoned to him.

In a flash, he realized that he had strayed into the Street of Harlots. He picked one door at random and strode to it. There was no time to examine the women closely in order to choose the most comely.

The harlot pulled Conan into her room. The cubicle was dimly lit by a bundle of rushes dipped in grease, set alight, and clamped in a wall bracket. She spoke to him in a stream of meaningless syllables, but the hand that she held out, palm up, was eloquent enough.

Conan pulled a small purse out of his girdle, took out a silver coin, and placed it on the outstretched palm. The woman held the coin to the rushlight, then squeaked with delight and threw herself upon Conan. She was plump, not unattractive, and clad in a simple cotton dress.

'Easy, lass!' he rumbled. 'That coin should be worth several days' board, now shouldn't it?!’

The woman fingered Conan's hair and beard and spoke again. This time her words bore a sound of disappointment. Conan guessed at her meaning.

'So you think I'm too old for such games, eh?’ he said with a grin. 'We'll see about that later. Meanwhile, by Crom, get me somewhat to eat, ere I starve!' By sign language he finally put his meaning across.

An hour later, he sat down to the meal that the woman, whose name was Catlaxoc, had prepared. She had gone out and returned with a basketload of provender, which she had cooked on her little hearth. She had not stinted on the supplies, and Conan dug hungrily into the large, strangely flavored roast fowl. The woman stood back, deferentially waiting for him to finish before eating herself.

'Now what’ growled Conan, 'is this thing?' He held up a cylindrical vegetable a foot long, on which grew rows of golden kernels. 'And how in hell do you eat it?'

He finally made her understand that he wanted the name of the object. 'MahizJ she said.

'Mahiz, eh? Well now, show me how to eat it. Come on, sit down and eat, or I'll devour everything in sight and leave naught for you!'

At last he made his desires understood. Imitating the harlot, he gnawed the rows of kernels from the ear of maize, meanwhile asking for the names of the other edibles. By the end of the repast, he and Catlaxoc could exchange a few simple sentences.

Conan washed down the last of the meal with a flagon of an unfamiliar fermented fruit juice. He belched and looked at Catlaxoc, who cast her eyes down demurely and smiled. Then she glanced significantly toward the alcove at the end of the room.

Conan grinned. 'Well, 'tis true I am not so young as once I was, and I'm a little weary from a day of walking the ocean bottom and battling men, sharks, and krakens. But we shall see.'

He rose, stretched, scooped Catlaxoc up in his arms, and bore her to the alcove.

It was several days later, in the evening, that Conan took leave of the harlot Catlaxoc. She clung to his arm, weeping, and he had to use gentle force to peel her off. He now wore the cotton cloak and kilt of a common Antil-Uan. Catlaxoc had obtained this raiment for him and had also taught him the rudiments of the Atillian language. He knew that he was in Ptahuacan, the last surviving city of the Atlanteans on earth. His old garments and accouter-ments he had tied up in a bundle, which he carried by a sling over one shoulder.

He still dared not show himself abroad by day, since his size and his alien coloring and features would have made him a marked man in any but the dimmest light. But he now had a fair idea of the layout of the city and of the sort of disguise he would need to carry out his designs.

As the evening passed, Conan despaired of finding that which he sought. At last, as he stalked down a dark alley toward an open square, a huge figure, wrapped in a weird cloak of feathers, turned into the opposite end of the alley and came directly toward him.

Conan froze, then sprang upon the stranger like a striking lion. Before the man could utter a sound, Conan clubbed him into unconsciousness with a fist to the temple. He dragged the limp figure into a dark doorway, sweating a little at the nearness of the thing. One squawk from the robed giant, and Conan's enterprise might have ended right there.

He looked his victim over. Assuming the glass-mailed warriors on the dragon-ships to have been normal Antil-lians, this fellow was an unusually large one. Then Conan saw that the man wore built-up boots with seven-inch stilts for soles. To impress the gullible, perhaps? The fellow had the look of a priest or warlock about him: shaven pate, hands covered with talismanic rings, and chains of seals, amulets, and tiny idols strung about his scrawny throat.

Conan examined the man's hands. Aye, he must be a priest. No other occupation left one's hands so soft and uncallused.

The man was curiously clad. Beneath the feather robe, his lean, brown body was nearly naked, save for a tight skirt of pleated cotton. Thick bracelets of gold, worked with complex cryptic glyphs, encircled his wrists, arms, and ankles. The feather robe, the like of which Conan had never seen before, included a plumed cowl. The robe was of coarsely-woven wool, covered with feathers whose bright hues could be discerned even in this faint light. The quills of the feathers were drawn through the coarse weave of the wool and fixed in place with small, individual knots. A lining of a thin, finely woven crimson stuff resembling silk kept this rough, prickly surface from scratching the wearer's body.

It struck Conan that if he donned the robe without the built-up boots, he would be only a little taller than the priest-magician. In fact, with his arms hidden and the cowl pulled up around his face, he might be able to walk abroad without attracting attention. But even the cowl would not be enough to hide his undipped gray mane and beard, which contrasted with the smooth face and shaven pate of the priest.

Conan solved this problem by tearing off a length of the silky red material and winding it about his hair and the lower part of his face, concealing all but his eyes. Then he struggled into his boots and mail shirt and hung his sword at his side. He donned the heavy, hot, prickly feather robe and pulled the cowl close about his face.

He had no way of judging the effect, but it seemed likely that he could pass casual scrutiny. His blue eyes and the red scarf about his chin might still attract attention, but he shrugged off this possibility. In his experience of city life, a priest or a magician was unlikely to be meddled with by common folk, who were usually only too glad to avoid men of these classes.

Gathering his courage, Conan strode boldly forth into a square lit by the moon and by torches set in brackets on the walls of the surrounding buildings. Almost at once, his disguise was put to the test. A potbellied shopkeeper, who was just putting away his display of goods for the night, confronted him first. The little brown man was placing his stock of ornaments of copper, jade, silver, and gold and his collection of feathered headdresses in a set of wooden caskets. As Conan strode into view, the feathered robe swirling about his booted ankles, the shopkeeper glanced sideways with black, frightened eyes at the towering, faceless figure. Then he bowed and, snatching up an amulet of jade that dangled against his breast, kissed it obsequiously and remained in this servile position until Conan had passed.

So Conan had survived his first test! Obviously, the little folk of Antilla went in great fear and awe of their priest-wizards. With reasonable care and luck, he stood in little danger of challenge.

For hours, Conan explored the broad ways and winding alleys of Ptahuacan without arousing any special interest. Priests in such feathered robes were evidently a common sight along the high-walled, cobblestoned streets of the lost Atlantean city. Later, when the streets became wholly deserted, he found an empty, tumbledown hut and slept until dawn. Then he set forth on his expeditions again.

In the morning's light, Conan saw dozens of other tall, feather-robed figures stalking about on stilt-soled shoes. They strode grandly through the crowds, never deigning to reply to the humble greetings of those they passed. It would seem that the priest-wizards.of old Atlantis were the rulers of this city, also.

It would also seem that the populace was entirely subordinated to them. To Conan the people seemed a listless, downtrodden lot, with glazed, indifferent eyes and frightened faces. With apprehension in their dark eyes, they scurried out of the path of the tall, feather-robed priests, whose arrogant authority Conan strove to imitate.

Ptahuacan, Conan found, was built on ascending levels, and the parallel streets that ran along these levels were connected by sloping ramps and stairways. The city was a remarkable technical achievement, denoting a sophisticated culture with ancient traditions and well-developed artistic canons. The stonework was equal to anything Conan had seen in his own world; even the modern cities of his realm could not match the massive proportions of the mighty temples or the meticulous precision of their masonry. The fantastic, temple-crowned ziggurat in the central square, as large as any of the pyyramids of Stygia and reminiscent in its style of the fanes of some of the sinister cults of Shem, must have taken centuries of labor by thousands of workers to erect. Around the margins of the square ran a set of stone benches, rising tier upon tier until they could have held thousands of spectators facing the pyramid.

Conan stayed out of the square of the pyramid, for it seemed to be a holy place. He might well encounter many priests garbed like himself, who would not be timid about accosting him. So far, he had been able to dodge the feather-robed ones he saw in the streets. They did not seem a very companionable caste anyway. Aloof, unapproachable, and busy on their own unguessable errands, they rarely stopped to speak even with one another.

Conan spent much time in loitering near groups in order to hear something of the language. It was guttural and sibilant, given to long word-units. He could now understand many isolated words and a few phrases, but a long sentence spoken rapidly baffled him. Although its grammar seemed utterly different from that of any of the languages he knew, a few of the words he had learned from Catlaxoc did bear a faint resemblance to the corresponding words in his native Cimmerian,

It occurred to the old Cimmerian that the Atlanteans -who rose to civilization after the fall of Valusia, much of whose culture they adopted - were in part the ancestors of his own people. In the little-known era before the Cataclysm, the tribes and clans of an elder Cimmeria had warred and intermarried with the Atlantean colonists on the Thurian coasts. Many Cimmerian tribes, half-civilized through long contact with Atlantean colonists., had served Atlantis as mercenaries in the final centuries before the island continent sank beneath the sea. As the Cimmerian barbarians acquired the rudiments of civilization, they borrowed words to express more complex concepts from their ancient enemies. Hence, some faint resemblances lingered between a few words of similar meaning on both sides of the vast Western Ocean. Such resemblances, however, were not enough to give a stranger from across the sea a command of Antillian speech without much arduous practice.

From the occasional overheard word or phrase that he could understand, Conan grasped that the main topics of gossip in Ptahuacan that morning were two. One was the combat between the dragon-ships of the Sea Guard and the alien vessel from parts unknown. The other was the blasphemous assault upon one of the holy priests, who had been incredibly robbed of his sacred feather robe. Conan listened eagerly for news of the whereabouts and fortunes of his crew; but, if any speaker knew the answer to that question, he did not say.

While Conan was loitering near crowded market stalls in one of the larger bazaars, the chance that he had awaited presented itself. A sly-eyed little man in a tattered kilt lingered with elaborate casualness near the copper-bound box where a fat merchant kept his trade "metal: slugs of lead, rings of copper and silver, and quills of gold dust. Even as Conan glanced, he saw the little man dip one bare, scrawny arm into the box with the deft speed of a striking serpent. In the blink of an eye, the man had removed two quills of gold dust.

The merchant, engaged in a voluble exchange with an aristocratic customer, who leaned from a slave-borne palanquin to haggle over a fine pelt from some large, catlike beast, saw nothing. A grin of joy wrinkled Oman's hidden features as he watched the thief glide away, the precious quills vanishing into his kilt.

As the thief slunk from the bazaar, Conan quietly followed him into an empty alley. Then in one lithe bound he was upon the little Antillian, who squeaked like a frightened mouse when Conan's massive hand clamped on his bony shoulder. Conan fended off the stroke of the needle-like little obsidian dagger that had appeared from thin air.

He seized and squeezed the man's hand, and the glass-bladed knife tinkled to the slimed cobbles.

As the little thief raised fearful, curious eyes to the giant in the feathered cowl, Conan growled in broken Antillian: 'Take me to king of thieves, or I break your arm!'

At last the dice were rolling in his favor. Like all cities, great Ptahuacan must have a criminal underworld. And, if one is in trouble with the ruling class, one can always find a welcome amongst the worldwide guild of thieves!