The native population was no less heterogenous. Here, centuries ago,
the armies of Stygia had come, carving an empire out of the eastern
desert. Zamboula was but a small trading-town then, lying amidst a ring
of oases, and inhabited by descendants of nomads. The Stygians built it
into a city and settled it with their own people, and with Shemite and
Kushite slaves. The ceaseless caravans, threading the desert from east
to west and back again, brought riches and more mingling of races. Then
came the conquering Turanians, riding out of the East to thrust back the
boundaries of Stygia, and now for a generation Zamboula had been Turan’s
westernmost outpost, ruled by a Turanian satrap.

The babel of a myriad tongues smote on the Cimmerian’s ears as the
restless pattern of the Zamboula streets weaved about him–cleft now and
then by a squad of clattering horsemen, the tall, supple warriors of
Turan, with dark hawk-faces, clinking metal and curved swords. The
throng scampered from under their horses’ hoofs, for they were the lords
of Zamboula. But tall, somber Stygians, standing back in the shadows,
glowered darkly, remembering their ancient glories. The hybrid
population cared little whether the king who controlled their destinies
dwelt in dark Khemi or gleaming Aghrapur. Jungir Khan ruled Zamboula,
and men whispered that Nafertari, the satrap’s mistress, ruled Jungir
Khan; but the people went their way, flaunting their myriad colors in
the streets, bargaining, disputing, gambling, swilling, loving, as the
people of Zamboula have done for all the centuries its towers and
minarets have lifted over the sands of the Kharamun.

Bronze lanterns, carved with leering dragons, had been lighted in the
streets before Conan reached the house of Aram Baksh. The tavern was the
last occupied house on the street, which ran west. A wide garden,
enclosed by a wall, where date-palms grew thick, separated it from the
houses farther east. To the west of the inn stood another grove of
palms, through which the street, now become a road, wound out into the
desert. Across the road from the tavern stood a row of deserted huts,
shaded by straggling palm trees, and occupied only by bats and jackals.
As Conan came down the road he wondered why the beggars, so plentiful in
Zamboula, had not appropriated these empty houses for sleeping quarters.
The lights ceased some distance behind him. Here were no lanterns,
except the one hanging before the tavern gate: only the stars, the soft
dust of the road underfoot, and the rustle of the palm leaves in the
desert breeze.

Aram’s gate did not open upon the road, but upon the alley which ran
between the tavern and the garden of the date-palms. Conan jerked
lustily at the rope which depended from the bell beside the lantern,
augmenting its clamor by hammering on the iron-bound teakwork gate with
the hilt of his sword. A wicket opened in the gate and a black face
peered through.

‘Open, blast you,’ requested Conan. ‘I’m a guest. I’ve paid Aram for a
room, and a room I’ll have, by Crom!’

The black craned his neck to stare into the starlit road behind Conan;
but he opened the gate without comment, and closed it again behind the
Cimmerian, locking and bolting it. The wall was unusually high; but
there were many thieves in Zamboula, and a house on the edge of the
desert might have to be defended against a nocturnal nomad raid. Conan
strode through a garden where great pale blossoms nodded in the
starlight, and entered the tap-room, where a Stygian with the shaven
head of a student sat at a table brooding over nameless mysteries, and
some nondescripts wrangled over a game of dice in a corner.

Aram Baksh came forward, walking softly, a portly man, with a black
beard that swept his breast, a jutting hook-nose, and small black eyes
which 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 for
it.’ 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 you
for the room this morning, because I knew I’d probably lose. I wanted to
be sure I had a roof over my head tonight. I notice nobody sleeps in the
streets in Zamboula. The very beggars hunt a niche they can barricade
before dark. The city must be full of a particularly blood-thirsty brand
of thieves.’

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

Conan followed Aram down a corridor lighted by copper lamps, and it did
not please him to note his host’s noiseless tread. Aram’s feet were clad
in soft slippers and the hallway was carpeted with thick Turanian rugs;
but there was an unpleasant suggestion of stealthiness about the
Zamboulan.

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