By Robert E. Howard

[Transcriber’s Note: This etext was first published in Weird Tales
March 1935. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

1 Paths of Intrigue

The cliffs rose sheer from the jungle, towering ramparts of stone that
glinted jade-blue and dull crimson in the rising sun, and curved away
and away to east and west above the waving emerald ocean of fronds and
leaves. It looked insurmountable, that giant palisade with its sheer
curtains of solid rock in which bits of quartz winked dazzlingly in the
sunlight. But the man who was working his tedious way upward was already
halfway to the top.

He came of a race of hillmen, accustomed to scaling forbidding crags,
and he was a man of unusual strength and agility. His only garment was a
pair of short red silk breeks, and his sandals were slung to his back,
out of his way, as were his sword and dagger.

The man was powerfully built, supple as a panther. His skin was bronzed
by the sun, his square-cut black mane confined by a silver band about
his temples. His iron muscles, quick eyes and sure feet served him well
here, for it was a climb to test these qualities to the utmost. A
hundred and fifty feet below him waved the jungle. An equal distance
above him the rim of the cliffs was etched against the morning sky.

He labored like one driven by the necessity of haste; yet he was forced
to move at a snail’s pace, clinging like a fly on a wall. His groping
hands and feet found niches and knobs, precarious holds at best, and
sometimes he virtually hung by his finger nails. Yet upward he went,
clawing, squirming, fighting for every foot. At times he paused to rest
his aching muscles, and, shaking the sweat out of his eyes, twisted his
head to stare searchingly out over the jungle, combing the green expanse
for any trace of human life or motion.

Now the summit was not far above him, and he observed, only a few feet
above his head, a break in the sheer stone of the cliff. An instant
later he had reached it–a small cavern, just below the edge of the rim.
As his head rose above the lip of its floor, he grunted. He clung there,
his elbows hooked over the lip. The cave was so tiny that it was little
more than a niche cut in the stone, but held an occupant. A shriveled
mummy, cross-legged, arms folded on the withered breast upon which the
shrunken head was sunk, sat in the little cavern. The limbs were bound
in place with rawhide thongs which had become mere rotted wisps. If the
form had ever been clothed, the ravages of time had long ago reduced the
garments to dust. But thrust between the crossed arms and the shrunken
breast there was a roll of parchment, yellowed with age to the color of
old ivory.

The climber stretched forth a long arm and wrenched away this cylinder.
Without investigation he thrust it into his girdle and hauled himself up
until he was standing in the opening of the niche. A spring upward and
he caught the rim of the cliffs and pulled himself up and over almost
with the same motion.

There he halted, panting, and stared downward.

It was like looking into the interior of a vast bowl, rimmed by a
circular stone wall. The floor of the bowl was covered with trees and
denser vegetation, though nowhere did the growth duplicate the jungle
denseness of the outer forest. The cliffs marched around it without a
break and of uniform height. It was a freak of nature, not to be
paralleled, perhaps, in the whole world: a vast natural amphitheater, a
circular bit of forested plain, three or four miles in diameter, cut off
from the rest of the world, and confined within the ring of those
palisaded cliffs.

But the man on the cliffs did not devote his thoughts to marveling at
the topographical phenomenon. With tense eagerness he searched the
tree-tops below him, and exhaled a gusty sigh when he caught the glint
of marble domes amidst the twinkling green. It was no myth, then; below
him lay the fabulous and deserted palace of Alkmeenon.

Conan the Cimmerian, late of the Baracha Isles, of the Black Coast, and
of many other climes where life ran wild, had come to the kingdom of
Keshan following the lure of a fabled treasure that outshone the hoard
of the Turanian kings.

Keshan was a barbaric kingdom lying in the eastern hinterlands of Kush
where the broad grasslands merge with the forests that roll up from the
south. The people were a mixed race, a dusky nobility ruling a
population that was largely pure negro. The rulers–princes and high
priests–claimed descent from a white race which, in a mythical age, had
ruled a kingdom whose capital city was Alkmeenon. Conflicting legends
sought to explain the reason for that race’s eventual downfall, and the
abandonment of the city by the survivors. Equally nebulous were the
tales of the Teeth of Gwahlur, the treasure of Alkmeenon. But these
misty legends had been enough to bring Conan to Keshan, over vast
distances of plain, river-laced jungle, and mountains.

He had found Keshan, which in itself was considered mythical by many
northern and western nations, and he had heard enough to confirm the
rumors of the treasure that men called the Teeth of Gwahlur. But its
hiding-place he could not learn, and he was confronted with the
necessity of explaining his presence in Keshan. Unattached strangers
were not welcome there.

But he was not nonplussed. With cool assurance he made his offer to the
stately plumed, suspicious grandees of the barbarically magnificent
court. He was a professional fighting-man. In search of employment (he
said) he had come to Keshan. For a price he would train the armies of
Keshan and lead them against Punt, their hereditary enemy, whose recent
successes in the field had aroused the fury of Keshan’s irascible king.