Conan the Rebel Read Free

a room or two in high, dingy tenements. None lacked a roof of some kind, for the hierarchy wanted everyone's whereabouts and doings known.
    Toward evening, when a measure of coolness returned, they came forth again and took up their affairs. These generally ended about dusk. The shops must by law be closed. Several inns in the poor sections furtively received patrons for a while, but they would not stay open late. Though there was little crime in Khemi, the streets after sunset held their special perils. Under orders or necessity, or in boldness, various kinds of people did fare about by torchlight – soldiers, messengers, porters, harlots, tradesmen in curious wares, now and then a robed and masked priest. Hardly a one would remain out long.
    Night never left the mansion of Tothapis. Sheathed in white bone, its walls lifted sheer on the Avenue of the Asps, their blankness broken only by doors and air slits. Around the dome on top, a roof garden held not the usual blossoms and bowers, but beds of black and purple lotus, and things more exotic. Within, light was from lamps and candles. The central chamber received never a sign of the world outside, apart from the cold air sighing up from the crypts.
    During the day, the wizard's minions had been busy. As the sun descended crimson, a pair whom they had summoned arrived singly, and were conducted by tongue-less slaves to the centrum. A third soon appeared. But he came in chains, under guard, and his party was taken to a different room and bidden to wait.
    Tothapis received his visitors with aloof courtesy. He was a tall man, gaunt in a plain black robe, shaven-headed as became a priest of Set. On him, the typical hatchet features of a Stygian aristocrat were scimitar-like, and the gullied skin dark ivory rather than light brown. The irises of his deep-set eyes might have been polished obsidian. A ruby glittered on his left hand, carved and incised to represent the terrestrial globe, held between the jaws of a golden snake that formed the ring. A talisman more potent still, in its nameless way, was the articulated skull of a viper, hung on a chain about his neck.
    'Be seated,' he told the newcomers when formalities were done, and took his own chair. The back of it was carved in the form of a cobra, whose outspread hood made a canopy. Elsewhere, vague in the gloom, stood or hung objects less recognizable. A nine-branched candlestick on an altar block gave dim light. The time-blurred glyphs chiselled in the stone were of Acheron, which had perished three thousand years before.
    'We are met on a grave and urgent matter,' Tothapis continued. 'Set himself,' he drew a sign, 'has vouchsafed me a vision of it. That was interrupted by an apparition I believe was from accursed Mitra, for it had the form of an axe -'
    'The Ax of Varanghi?' exclaimed Ramwas. He remembered whom he confronted. 'I servilely beg my lord's pardon. I was startled.'
    Tothapis' gaze sharpened upon him. 'What know you about the Ax of Varanghi?' the magician demanded.
    What he saw in the chair before him was a sturdy, middle-aged person, square-visaged, prow-nosed, tan-skinned, clean-shaven. The hair that fell in severe outline down past his ears was grizzling. Outer garment doffed, Ramwas wore a plain white tunic and leather sandals. He had also, of course, left in the vestibule the short-sword which he, as a military officer, was entitled to bear. In addition he was a minor nobleman and large landholder.
    'Hardly more than what you hear in Taia, my lord,' he said uneasily. 'I was stationed there years ago. The natives claim it is a relic from Mitra, hidden away somewhere, and someday a leader will bear it again and set them free of us.' He shrugged. 'The usual kind of superstition.'
    'Except,' Nehekba murmured, 'that now Taia is once again in rebellion. And Our Master of Night appears to know this is no
    ordinary uprising for a few regiments and executioners to quell.'
    'Quite so,' Tothapis agreed. 'He Who Is did