Conan Of The Isles

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.