L. Camp - Conan Of The Isles

'Lords of Hell - iron, or I'm a blind man!' gasped one of them.

Another muttered an expletive and peered more closely at Conan, observing with wonder his height, his unshorn mane and beard, and his smouldering blue eyes.

'Gods of death, what is he?' the fellow swore. 'No such man has ever been seen in all Antillia! ‘

With his back against the wall, Conan barked a laugh, swinging his blade from side to side to menace all five hoodlums.

'One who stole this robe from its owner, friend, and no spy for your rulers, if that is what you think!' he rumbled. 'Moreover, one who would see your chief on business, to profit of both. And I will see him, whether you like or not!'

He held his sword level so that the daylight flashed from its blade. The four guards and the cutpurse gave back, eyeing him with growing alarm. Strangely, his sword seemed to arouse more interest than he himself did. Conan guessed that for some reason - perhaps lack of ores in this island chain - ferrous metals were virtually unknown here, although legendary tales of the iron and steel of ancient Atlantis had been handed down through the generations.

'Now,' he grunted, 'will you take me to your leader, or would you rather fight?'

They were happy to oblige.

The local underworld lordling was an enormously fat man named Metemphoc. His face was a bulging mass of lardlike flesh in which a pair of cold black eyes glittered like fragments of polished obsidian. His mouth was a thin-lipped gash across his round, brown face; his nose, a mere blob between his swollen cheeks.

His headquarters was a series of abandoned cellars beneath the ruined houses at the end of a filthy alley. The walls of stained, crumbling plaster were hung with gorgeous tapestries of strange design, and on the cement floors were scattered elaborately woven mats and the tanned skins of beasts of many kinds. Silver thuribles filled the air with rich incense. The quiet luxury and gilded splendor of Metemphoc's apartment contrasted vividly with the squalor of the exterior.

Like a fat toad, Metemphoc lay wrapped in gorgeous brocade amidst a nest of cushions as he listened to Conan's tale. His face impassive and his black eyes coldly glittering, he uttered no word until Conan had finished his account. Then a long, suspenseful moment stretched on while Metemphoc examined Conan from head to foot, paying almost as much heed to the sword that lay across the Cimmerian's knees as to the man who held it.

With a sigh, Metemphoc rubbed fat jowls with pudgy fingers, whereon sparkled a king's ransom in gem-studded rings. He laughed throatily and called for wine and meat. The suspense broke.

'By the gods of stealth, big man!' he chuckled, 'old Metemphoc has never heard such a tale in all his poor, sick days; therefore it must be true! Aye, with that barbarous mane and uncouth face fur, and those uncanny sky-colored eyes - and, ahem, an accent such as these tired old ears can barely understand - this fat old man has no choice but to believe that you do, forsooth, hail from an unknown land to the east. Notwithstanding that our beloved masters, the holy priesthood - ha! - inform us that naught lies thither but a wild waste of waters, with never a speck of land.'

They amicably toasted each other. Conan gulped thirstily at a sweet, pungent wine such as he had never tasted. Doubtless, he thought, this drink was fermented, not from grapes, but from some unfamiliar local fruit.

He felt quite at home. By pure instinct, he and the toad-like master thief understood each other. Although born thousands of leagues apart and of alien cultures, they spoke the same lawless language in their hearts.

While they drank, food was brought and set out on the low table between them. Conan dug hungrily into the repast. Besides the Antillian foods with which he had already become familiar, there were nuts and berries of a dozen kinds. The repast ended with a curious, large,, prickly fruit with a spray of sword-shaped leaves growing from its top. Metemphoc cut it into ring-shaped, yellow-green slices. Conan found the taste startling at first but not bad after a few bites.

Meanwhile they carried on a desultory conversation between mouthfuls. Metemphoc said: 'Aye, I know of that strange ship, full of barbarous foreigners, which our Sea Guard captured a few days past. That is one reason I was willing to believe your tale.'

'Are my men still alive, and if so where?' grunted Conan.

'They live, or did last night. They are in a dungeon below the Anteroom of the Gods - that gay citadel that stands on the edge of the Square of the Great Pyramid.'

Conan reflected that the wily underworld princeling seemed willing to give him the information he sought, frankly enough; but almost visibly his cold, clever, mind was searching for a mode to make a profit from the stranger. He did not trouble to conceal this from Conan, who fully grasped the thoughts that raced behind the impassive fagade of the man's fat face.

'What will be their fate?'

'They are held for sacrifice, in the temple atop the Great Pyramid.'

‘Eh?' Conan made a sudden movement, spilling some of his wine.

'Why, yes. They will be given to the demon-god Xotli, in accordance with the rituals that have come down from ancient Atlantis...'

Conan's nape hairs bristled as Metemphoc explained, with unruffled aplomb, the customs of the local priesthood. Before the fall of Atlantis, the priests of Xotli had been a powerful faction, who worshipped their demon-god with awful rites of blood and terror. When the High Gods had destroyed Atlantis for its sins, the priests of Xotli and their slaves had fled from the sinking land in a mighty fleet of flying ships powered by the mysterious force called vril.

Conan had heard vague rumors of these Atlantean sky ships. He understood that, with the passage of centuries, the ships had worn out, or their supply of power had failed; and the secret of their manufacture had been lost in the ages of barbarism and bloodshed that followed the Cataclysm. Therefore no such ships existed in Hyborian times.

The priests of Xotli, continued Metemphoc, had ventured southwest from the doomed continent. They made a landfall in the little-known island chain they called Antillia. This consisted of seven large islands in the Western Ocean between Atlantis and a much larger continent, sometimes called Mayapan, still farther west. When the Atlanteans landed, they found the islands in the possession of a race of small, brown, slant-eyed savages, similar to the people of Mayapan. They easily conquered these natives and reduced them to the same slavery as the servants they had brought with them. In the millennia since the Cataclysm, the blood of the Atlanteans and of the aboriginal Antillians had mingled, until today the islands were inhabited by a single, mixed race.

Since the original conquest of Antillia and the construction of great Ptahuacan, the Xotlian priesthood, under the hereditary Hierarch of the Sacred Mysteries of Xotli, had ruled with an iron hand, despite occasional outbursts of rebellion on the part of their subjects. The hierarchs had kept the masses under control by telling the people that all lands - even Mayapan - had sunk with Atlantis, and the world was naught but a waste of wind-tossed waters, stretching from Antillia in all directions to the rim of the world, where sea met sky and the stars rose out of the foam of the endless seas.

'Do you believe this?’ said Conan.

Metemphoc chuckled. 'If a priest asked me, I should say yes. Most of the people believe, or at least lack the guts to question the teachings of their masters. But, between you and me, some of us know that Mayapan still stands; and now your coming has shown that land still exists on the other side of the waters, also.'

'Why do the priests proclaim this lie, when they know better?’