Shadows in Zamboula

tap-room, where a Stygian with the shavenhead of a student sat at a table brooding over nameless mysteries, andsome nondescripts wrangled over a game of dice in a corner.

  Aram Baksh came forward, walking softly, a portly man, with a blackbeard that swept his breast, a jutting hook-nose, and small black eyeswhich were never still.

  'You wish food?' he asked. 'Drink?'

  'I ate a joint of beef and a loaf of bread in the _suk_,' grunted Conan.'Bring me a tankard of Ghazan wine--I've got just enough left to pay forit.' He tossed a copper coin on the wine-splashed board.

  'You did not win at the gaming-tables?'

  'How could I, with only a handful of silver to begin with? I paid youfor the room this morning, because I knew I'd probably lose. I wanted tobe sure I had a roof over my head tonight. I notice nobody sleeps in thestreets in Zamboula. The very beggars hunt a niche they can barricadebefore dark. The city must be full of a particularly blood-thirsty brandof thieves.'

  He gulped the cheap wine with relish, and then followed Aram out of thetap-room. Behind him the players halted their game to stare after himwith a cryptic speculation in their eyes. They said nothing, but theStygian laughed, a ghastly laugh of inhuman cynicism and mockery. Theothers lowered their eyes uneasily, avoiding one another's glance. Thearts studied by a Stygian scholar are not calculated to make him sharethe feelings of a normal human being.

  Conan followed Aram down a corridor lighted by copper lamps, and it didnot please him to note his host's noiseless tread. Aram's feet were cladin soft slippers and the hallway was carpeted with thick Turanian rugs;but there was an unpleasant suggestion of stealthiness about theZamboulan.

  At the end of the winding corridor Aram halted at a door, across which aheavy iron bar rested in powerful metal brackets. This Aram lifted andshowed the Cimmerian into a well-appointed chamber, the windows ofwhich, Conan instantly noted, were small and strongly set with twistedbars of iron, tastefully gilded. There were rugs on the floor, a couch,after the Eastern fashion, and ornately carved stools. It was a muchmore elaborate chamber than Conan could have procured for the pricenearer the center of the city--a fact that had first attracted him,when, that morning, he discovered how slim a purse his roisterings forthe past few days had left him. He had ridden into Zamboula from thedesert a week before.

  Aram had lighted a bronze lamp, and he now called Conan's attention tothe two doors. Both were provided with heavy bolts.

  'You may sleep safely tonight, Cimmerian,' said Aram, blinking over hisbushy beard from the inner doorway.

  Conan grunted and tossed his naked broadsword on the couch.

  'Your bolts and bars are strong; but I always sleep with steel by myside.'

  Aram made no reply; he stood fingering his thick beard for a moment ashe stared at the grim weapon. Then silently he withdrew, closing thedoor behind him. Conan shot the bolt into place, crossed the room,opened the opposite door and looked out. The room was on the side of thehouse that faced the road running west from the city. The door openedinto a small court that was enclosed by a wall of its own. Theend-walls, which shut it off from the rest of the tavern compound, werehigh and without entrances; but the wall that flanked the road was low,and there was no lock on the gate.

  Conan stood for a moment in the door, the glow of the bronze lamp behindhim, looking down the road to where it vanished among the dense palms.Their leaves rustled together in the faint breeze; beyond them lay thenaked desert. Far up the street, in the other direction, lights gleamedand the noises of the city came faintly to him. Here was only starlight,the whispering of the palm leaves, and beyond that low wall, the dust ofthe road and the deserted huts thrusting their flat roofs against thelow stars. Somewhere beyond the palm groves a drum began.

  The garbled warnings of the Zuagir returned to him, seeming somehow lessfantastic than they had seemed in the crowded, sunlit streets. Hewondered again at the riddle of those empty huts. Why did the beggarsshun them? He turned back into the chamber, shut the door and bolted it.

  The light began to flicker, and he investigated, swearing when he foundthe palm oil in the lamp was almost exhausted. He started to shout forAram, then shrugged his shoulders and blew out the light. In the softdarkness he stretched himself fully clad on the couch, his sinewy handby instinct searching for and closing on the hilt of his broadsword.Glancing idly at the stars framed in the barred windows, with the murmurof the breeze through the palms in his ears, he sank into slumber with avague consciousness of the muttering drum, out on the desert--the lowrumble and mutter of a leather-covered drum, beaten with soft, rhythmicstrokes of an open black hand....