The king glanced at the curtain masking an alcove, absently reflecting that the wind must be rising, since the tapestry swayed a little. His eyes swept the gold-barred window and he went cold. The light curtains there hung motionless. Yet the hangings over the alcove had stirred...

Though short and fat, Kobad Shah did not lack personal courage. As he sprang, seized the tapestries, and tore them apart, a dagger in a dark hand licked from between them and smote him full in the breast He cried out as he went down, dragging his a.s.sailant with him. The man snarled like a wild beast his dilated eyes glaring madly. His dagger ribboned the king's robe, revealing the mail shirt that stopped his first thrust.

Outside, a deep shout echoed the king's shrill yells for help. Booted feet pounded in the corridor. The king had grasped his attacker by throat and knife wrist but the man's stringy muscles were like knotted steel cords. As they rolled on the floor, the dagger, glancing from the links of the mail shirt, fleshed itself in arm, thigh, and hand. Then, as the bravo heaved the weakening ruler under him, grasped his throat and lifted the knife again, something flashed in the lamplight like a jet of blue lightning. The murderer collapsed, his head split to the teeth.

"Your majesty! Sire!" It was Gotarza, the towering captain of the royal guard, pale under his long black beard. As Kobad Shah sank down on a divan, Gotarza began ripping strips from the hangings to bind his wounds.

"Look!" gasped the king, pointing. His face was livid; his hand shook.

"The knife! By Asura, the knife!"

It lay glinting by the dead man's hand-a curious weapon with a wavy blade shaped like a flame. Gotarza started and swore under his breath.

"The flame knife!" panted Kobad Shah. "The same weapon that struck at the King of Vendhya and the King of Turan!"

"The mark of the Hidden Ones," muttered Gotarza, uneasily eyeing the ominous symbol of the terrible cult.

The noise had roused the palace. Men were running down the corridors, shouting to know what had happened.

"Shut the door!" exclaimed the king. "Admit no one but the major-domo of the palace!"

"But we must have a physician, your majesty," protested the officer.

"These wounds will not slay of themselves, but the dagger might have been poisoned."

"No, fetch no one! Whoever he is, he might be in the service of my foes. Asura! The Yezmites have marked me for doom!" The experience had shaken the king's courage. "Who can fight the dagger in the dark, the serpent underfoot, the poison in the wine cup? There is that western barbarian, Conan-but no, not even he is to be trusted, now that he has defied my commands... Let the major-domo in, Gotarza." When the officer admitted the stout official, the king asked: "What news, Bardiya?"

"Oh, sire, what has happened? It is-"

"Never mind what has happened to me. I see by your eyes you have news.

What know you?"

"The kozaki have ridden forth from the city with Conan, who told the guard at the North Gate they were on their way to take Balash as you commanded."

"Good. Perhaps the fellow has repented his insolence. What else?"

"Hakhamani the informer caught Conan on his way home, but Conan slew one of his men and escaped."

"That is just as well. Call off Hakhamani until we know what Conan intends by this foray. Anything more?"

"One of your women, Nanaia the daughter of Kujala, has fled the palace.

We found the rope by which she escaped."

Kobad Shah gave a roar. "She must have gone with Conan! It is too much to have been pure chance! And he must be connected with the Hidden Ones too! Else why should they strike at me just after I have quarreled with him? He must have gone straight from my presence to send the Yezmite to slay me. Gotarza, turn out the royal guard. Ride after the kozaki and bring me Conan's head, or your own shall answer for it! Take at least five hundred men, for the barbarian is fierce and crafty and not to be trifled with."

As Gotarza hurried from the chamber, the long groaned: "Now, Bardiya, fetch a leech. My veins are afire. Gotarza was right; the dagger must have been envenomed."

Three days after his hurried departure from Anshan, Conan sat cross-legged in the trail where it looped over the rock ridge to follow the slope down to the village of Kushaf.

"I would stand between you and death," he said to the man who sat opposite him, "as you did for me when your hill wolves would have ma.s.sacred us."

The man tugged his purple-stained beard reflectively. He was broad and powerful, with gray-flecked hair and a broad belt bristling with knife and dagger hilts. He was Balash, chief of the Kushafi tribesmen and overlord of Kushaf and its neighboring villages. But he spoke modestly:

"The G.o.ds favor you! Yet what man can pa.s.s the spot of his death?"

"A man can either fight or flee, and not sit on a rock like an apple in a tree, waiting to be picked. If you want to take a long chance of making your peace with the king, you can go to Anshan-"

"I have too many enemies at court. In Anshan, the king would listen to their lies and hang me up in an iron cage for the kites to eat Nay, I will not go!"

"Then take your people and find another abode. There are places in these hills where not even the king could follow you."

Balash glanced down the rocky slope to the cl.u.s.ter of mud-and-stone towers that rose above the encircling wall. His thin nostrils expanded, and into his eyes came a dark flame like that of an eagle surveying its eyrie.

"Nay, by Asura! My clan has held Kushaf since the days of Bahram. Let the king rule in Anshan; this is mine!"

"The king will likewise rule in Kushaf," grunted Tubal, squatting behind Conan with Hattusas the Zamorian.

Balash glanced in the other direction where the trail disappeared to the east between jutting crags. On these crags, bits of white cloth were blown out by the wind, which the watchers knew were the garments of archers and javelin men who guarded the pa.s.s day and night.

"Let him come," said Balash. "We hold the pa.s.ses."

"He'll bring ten thousand men, in heavy armor, with catapults and other siege gear," said Conan. "He'll burn Kushaf and take your head back to Anshan."

"That will happen which will happen," said Balash.

Conan fought down a rising anger at the fatalism of these people. Every instinct of his strenuous nature was a negation of this inert philosophy. But, as they seemed to be deadlocked, he said nothing but sat staring at the western crags where the sun hung, a ball of fire in the sharp, windy blue.

Balash dismissed the matter with a wave of his hand and said: "Conan, there is something I would show you. Down in yonder ruined hut outside the wall lies a dead man, whose like was never seen in Kushaf. Even in death, he is strange and evil. I think he is no natural man at all, but a demon. Come."

He led the way down the slope to the hovel, explaining: "My warriors came upon him lying at the base of a cliff, as if he had fallen or been thrown from the top. I made them bring him here, but he died on the way, babbling in a strange tongue. They deem him a demon, with good cause.

"A long day's journey southward, among mountains so wild and barren not even a goat could dwell among them, lies the country we call Drujistan."

"Drujistan!" echoed Conan. "Land of demons, eh?"

"Aye! An evil region of black crags and wild gorges, shunned by wise men. It seems uninhabited, yet men dwell there-men or devils. Sometimes a man is slain or a child or woman stolen from a lonely trail, and we know it is their work. We have followed and glimpsed shadowy figures moving through the night, but always the trail ends against a blank cliff, through which only a demon could pa.s.s. Sometimes we hear drums echoing among the crags, or the roaring of the fiends. It is a sound to turn men's hearts to ice. The old legends say that among these mountains, thousands of years ago, the ghoul-king Ura built the magical city of Yanaidar, and that the deadly ghosts of Ura and his hideous subjects still haunt the ruins. Another legend tells how, a thousand years ago, a chief of the Ilbarsi hillmen settled in the ruins and began to repair them and make the city his stronghold; but in one night he and his followers vanished, nor were they ever seen again."

They reached the ruined hut, and Balash pulled open the sagging door. A moment later, the five men were bending over a figure sprawled on the dirt floor.

It was a figure alien and incongruous: that of a stocky man with broad, square, flat features, colored like dark copper, and narrow, slanting eyes-an unmistakable son of Khitai. Blood clotted the coa.r.s.e black hair on the back of his head, and the unnatural position of his body told of shattered bones.

"Has he not the look of an evil spirit?" asked Balash.

"He's no demon, whether he was a wizard in life or not," answered Conan. "He's a Khitan, from a country far to the east of Hyrkania, beyond mountains and deserts and jungles so vast you could lose a dozen Iranistans in them. I rode through that land when I soldiered for the king of Turan. But what this fellow is doing here I cannot say-"

Suddenly his blue eyes blazed and he tore the bloodstained tunic away from the squat throat A stained woolen shirt came into view, and Tubal, looking over Conan's shoulder, grunted explosively. On the shirt, worked in thread so crimson it might at first glance have been mistaken for a splash of blood, appeared a curious emblem: a human fist grasping a hilt from which jutted a knife with a wavy blade.

The flame knife!" whispered Balash, recoiling from that symbol of death and destruction.

All looked at Conan, who stared down at the sinister emblem, trying to recapture a vague train of a.s.sociations it roused-dim memories of an ancient and evil cult, which used that symbol. Finally he said to Hattusas: