Red Nails, Polished Read online

across her knees, her back to him. Without further comment he lay down on the sand inside the spiky circle.

  "Wake me when the moon is at its zenith," he directed.

  She did not reply nor look toward him. His last impression, as he sank into slumber, was of her muscular figure, immobile as a statue hewn out of bronze, outlined against the low-hanging stars.

  By the Blaze of the Fire Jewels

  Valerian awoke with a start, to the realization that a grey dawn was stealing over the plain.

  He sat up, rubbing his eyes. Conyn squatted beside the cactus, cutting off the thick pears and dexterously twitching out the spikes.

  "You didn't awake me," he accused. "You let me sleep all night!"

  "You were tired," she answered. "Your posterior must have been sore, too, after that long ride. You pirates aren't used to horseback."

  "What about yourself?" he retorted.

  "I was a kozak before I was a pirate," she answered. "They live in the saddle. I snatch naps like a panther watching beside the trail for a deer to come by. My ears keep watch while my eyes sleep."

  And indeed the giant barbarian seemed as much refreshed as if she had slept the whole night on a golden bed. Having removed the thorns, and peeled off the tough skin, she handed the boy a thick, juicy cactus leaf.

  "Skin your teeth in that pear. It's food and drink to a desert woman. I was a chief of the Zuagirs once--desert women who live by plundering the caravans."

  "Is there anything you haven't done?" inquired the boy, half in derision and half in fascination.

  "I've never been queen of an Hyborean kingdom," she grinned, taking an enormous mouthful of cactus. "But I've dreamed of being even that. I may be too, some day. Why shouldn't I?"

  He shook his head in wonder at her calm audacity, and fell to devouring his pear. He found it not unpleasing to the palate, and full of cool and thirst-satisfying juice. Finishing her meal, Conyn wiped her hands in the sand, rose, ran her fingers through her thick black mane, hitched up her sword belt and said:

  "Well, let's go. If the people in that city are going to cut our throats they may as well do it now, before the heat of the day begins."

  Her grim humor was unconscious, but Valerian reflected that it might be prophetic. He too hitched his sword belt as he rose. His terrors of the night were past. The roaring dragons of the distant forest were like a dim dream. There was a swagger in his stride as he moved off beside the Cimmerian. Whatever perils lay ahead of them, their foes would be women. And Valerian of the Red Sisterhood had never seen the face of the woman he feared.

  Conyn glanced down at his as he strode along beside her with his swinging stride that matched her own.

  "You walk more like a hillman than a sailor," she said. "You must be an Aquilonian. The suns of Darfar never burnt your white skin brown. Many a prince would envy you."

  "I am from Aquilonia," he replied. Her compliments no longer irritated him. Her evident admiration pleased him. For another woman to have kept his watch while he slept would have angered him; he had always fiercely resented any woman's attempting to shield or protect him because of his sex. But he found a secret pleasure in the fact that this woman had done so. And she had not taken advantage of his fright and the weakness resulting from it. After all, he reflected, his companion was no common woman.

  The sun rose up behind the city, turning the towers to a sinister crimson.

  "Black last night against the moon," grunted Conyn, her eys clouding with the abysmal superstition of the barbarian. "Blood-red as a threat of blood against the sun this dawn. I do not like this city."

  But they went on, and as they went Conyn pointed out the fact that no road ran to the city from the north.

  "No cattle have trampled the plain on this side of the city," said she. "No plowshare has touched the earth for years, maybe centuries. But look: once this plain was cultivated."

  Valerian saw the ancient irrigation ditches she indicated, half filled in places, and overgrown with cactus. He frowned with perplexity as his eyes swept over the plain that stretched on all sides of the city to the forest edge, which marched in a vast, dim ring. Vision did not extend beyond that ring.

  He looked uneasily at the city. No helmets or spearheads gleamed on battlements, no trumpets sounded, no challenge rang from the towers. A silence as absolute as that of the forest brooded over the walls and minarets.

  The sun was high above the eastern horizon when they stood before the great gate in the northern wall, in the shadown of the lofty rampart. Rust flecked the iron bracings of the mighty bronze portal. Spiderwebs glistened thickly on hinge and sill and bolted panel.

  "It hasn't been opened for years!" exclaimed Valerian.

  "A dead city," grunted Conyn. "That's why the ditches were broken and the plain untouched."

  "But who built it? Who dwelt here? Where did they go? Why did they abandon it?"

  "Who can say? Maybe an exiled clan of Stygians built it. Maybe not. It doesn't look like Stygian architecture. Maybe the people were wiped out by enemies, or a plague exterminated them."

  "In that case their treasures may still be gathering dust and cobwebs in there," suggested Valerian, the aquisitive instincts of his profession waking in him; prodded, too, by masculine curiosity. "Can we open the gate? Let's go in and explore a bit."

  Conyn eyed the heavy portal dubiously, but placed her massive shoulder against it and thrust with all the power of her muscular calves and thighs. With a rasping screech of rusty hinges the gate moved ponderously inward, and Conyn straightened and drew her sword. Valerian stared over her shoulder, and made a sound indicative of surprise.

  They were not looking into an open street or court as one would have expected. The opened gate, or door, gave directly into a long, broad hall which ran away and away until its vista grew indistinct in the distance. It was of heroic proportions, and the floor of a curious red stone, cut in square tiles, that seemed to smolder as if with the reflection of flames. The walls were of a shiny green material.

  "Jade, or I'm a Shemite!" swore Conyn.

  "Not in such quantity!" protested Valerian.

  "I've looted enough from the Khitan caravans to know what I'm talking about," she asserted. "That's jade!"

  The vaulted ceiling was of lapis lazuli, adorned with clusters of great green stones that gleamed with a poisonous radiance.

  "Green fire-stones," growled Conyn. "That's what the people of Punt call them. They're supposed to be the petrified eyes of those prehistoric snakes the ancients called Golden Serpents. They glow like a cat's eyes in the dark. At night this hall would be lighted by them, but it would be a hellishly weird illumination. Let's look around. We might find a cache of jewels."

  "Shut the door," advised Valerian. "I'd hate to have to outrun a dragon down this hall."

  Conyn grinned, and replied: "I don't believe the dragons ever leave the forest."

  But she complied, and pointed out the broken bolt on the inner side.

  "I thought I heard something snap when I shoved against it. That bolt's freshly broken. Rust has eaten nearly through it. If the people ran away, why should it have been bolted on the inside?"

  "They undoubtedly left by another door," suggested Valerian.

  He wondered how many centuries had passed since the light of outer day had filtered into that great hall through the open door. Sunlight was finding its way somehow into the hall, and they quickly saw the source. High up in the vaulted ceiling skylights were set in slot-like openings--translucent sheets of some crystalline substance. In the splotches of shadow between them, the green jewels winked like the eyes of angry cats. Beneath their feet the dully lurid floor smoldered with changing hues and colors of flame. It was like treading the floors of Hell with evil stars blinking overhead.

  Three balustraded galleries ran along on each side of the hall, one above the other.

  "A four-storied house," grunted Conyn, "and this hall extends to the roof. It's long a
s a street. I seem to see a door at the other end."

  Valerian shrugged his white shoulders.

  "Your eyes are better than mine, then, though I'm accounted sharp-eyed among the sea-rovers."

  They turned into an open door at random, and traveresed a series of empty chambers, floored like the hall, and with walls of the same green jade, or of marble or ivory or chalcedony, adorned with friezes of bronze, gold, or silver. In the ceilings the green fire-gems were set, and their light was as ghostly and illusive as Conyn had predicted. Under the witch-fire glow the intruders moved like specters.

  Some of the chambers lacked this illumination, and their doorways showed black as the mouth of the Pit. These Conyn and Valerian avoided, keeping always to the lighted chambers.

  Cobwebs hung in the corners, but there was no perceptible accumulation of dust on the floor, or on the tables and seats of marble, jade, or carnelian which occupied the chambers. Here and there were rugs of that silk known as Khitan which is practically indestructible. Nowhere did they find any windows, or doors opening into streets or courts. Each door merely opened into another chamber or hall.

  "Why don't we come to a street?" grumbled Valerian. "This palace or whatever we're in must be as big as the queen of Turan's seraglio."

  "They must not have perished of plague," sad Conyn, meditating upon the mystery of the empty city. "Otherwise we'd find skeletons. Maybe it became haunted, and everybody got up and left. Maybe--"

  "Maybe, hell!" broke in Valerian rudely.