He turned back and hewed down a pine sapling that thrust up through the broken pavement. Then he lopped its limbs and cut it into short lengths. Whittling a pile of shavings with his sword, he started a small fire with flint and steel. He split the ends of two of the billets until they were frayed out and then ignited them. The resinous wood burned vigorously. He handed one torch to Nestor, and each of them thrust half the spare billets through his girdle. Then, swords out, they again approached the palace.
Inside the archway, the flickering yellow flames of the torches were reflected from polished walls of black stone; but underfoot the dust lay inches thick. Several bats, hanging from bits of stone carving overhead, squeaked angrily and whirred away into deeper darkness.
They passed between statues of horrific aspect, set in niches on either side. Dark hallways opened on either hand. They crossed a throne room.
The throne, carved of the same black stone as the rest of the building, still stood. Other chairs and divans, being made of wood, had crumbled into dust, leaving a litter of nails, metallic ornaments, and semi-precious stones on the floor.
"It must have stood vacant for thousands of years," whispered Nestor.
They traversed several chambers, which might have been a king's private apartments; but the absence of perishable furnishings made it impossible to tell. They found themselves before a door. Conan put his torch close to it.
It was a stout door, set in an arch of stone and made of massive timbers, bound together with brackets of green-filmed copper. Conan poked the door with his sword. The blade entered easily; a little shower of dusty fragments, pale in the torchlight, sifted down.
"It's rotten," growled Nestor, kicking out. His boot went into the wood almost as easily as Conan's sword had done. A copper fitting fell to the floor with a dull clank.
In a moment they had battered down the rotten timbers in a shower of wood dust. They stooped, thrusting their torches ahead of them into the opening. Light, reflected from silver, gold, and jewels, winked back at them.
Nestor pushed through the opening, then backed out so suddenly that he bumped into Conan. "There are men in there!" he hissed.
"Let's see." Conan thrust his head into the opening and peered right and left. "They're dead. Come on!"
Inside, they stared about them until their torches burned down to their hands and they had to light a new pair. Around the room, seven giant warriors, each at least seven feet tall, sprawled in chairs. Their heads lay against the chair backs and their mouths hung open. They wore the trappings of a bygone era; their plumed copper helmets and the copper scales on their corselets were green with age. Their skins were brown and waxy-looking, like those of mummies, and grizzled beards hung down to their waists. Copper-bladed bills and pikes leaned against the wall beside them or lay on the floor.
In the center of the room rose an altar, of black basalt like the rest of the palace. Near the altar, on the floor, several chests of treasure had lain. The wood of these chests had rotted away; the chests had burst open, letting a glittering drift of treasure pour out on the floor.
Conan stepped close to one of the immobile warriors and touched the man's leg with the point of his sword. The body lay still. He murmured:
"The ancients must have mummified them, as they tell me the priests do with the dead in Stygia."
Nestor looked uneasily at the seven still forms. The feeble flames of the torches seemed unable to push the dense darkness back to the sable walls and roof of the chamber.
The block of black stone in the middle of the room rose to waist height. On its flat, polished top, inlaid in narrow strips of ivory, was a diagram of interlaced circles and triangles. The whole formed a seven-pointed star. The spaces between the lines were marked by symbols in some form of writing that Conan did not recognize. He could read Zamorian and write it after a fashion, and he had smatterings of Hyrkanian and Corinthian; but these cryptic glyphs were beyond him.
In any case, he was more interested in the things that lay on top of the altar. On each point of the star, winking in the ruddy, wavering light of the torches, lay a great green jewel, larger than a hen's egg.
At the center of the diagram stood a green statuette of a serpent with up-reared head, apparently carved from jade.
Conan moved his torch close to the seven great, glowing gems. "I want those," he grunted. "You can have the rest."
"No, you don't!" snapped Nestor. "Those are worth more than all the other treasure in this room put together. I will have them!"
Tension crackled between the two men, and their free hands stole toward their hilts. For a space they stood silently, glaring at each other.
Then Nestor said:
"Then let us divide them, as we agreed to do."
"You cannot divide seven by two," said Conan. "Let us flip one of these coins for them. The winner takes the seven jewels, while the other man has his pick of the rest. Does that suit you?"
Conan picked a coin out of one of the heaps that marked the places where the chests had lain. Although he had acquired a good working knowledge of coins in his career as a thief, this was entirely unfamiliar. One side bore a face, but whether of a man, a demon, or an owl he could not tell. The other side was covered with symbols like those on the altar.
Conan showed the coin to Nestor. The two treasure hunters grunted agreement. Conan flipped the coin into the air, caught it, and slapped it down on his left wrist. He extended the wrist, with the coin still covered, toward Nestor.
"Heads," said the Gunderman.
Conan removed his hand from the coin. Nestor peered and growled:
"Ishtar curse the thing! You win. Hold my torch a moment."
Conan, alert for any treacherous move, took the torch. But Nestor merely untied the strap of his cloak and spread the garment on the dusty floor. He began shoveling handfuls of gold and gems from the heaps on the floor into a pile on the cloak.
"Don't load yourself so heavily that you can't run," said Conan. "We are not out of this yet, and it's a long walk back to Shadizar."
"I can handle it," said Nestor. He gathered up the comers of the cloak, slung the improvised bag over his back, and held out a hand for his torch.
Conan handed it to him and stepped to the altar. One by one he took the great, green jewels and thrust them into the leathern sack that hung from his shoulders.
When all seven had been removed from the altar top, he paused, looking at the jade serpent. "This will fetch a pretty price," he said.
Snatching it up, he thrust it, too, into his booty bag.
"Why not take some of the remaining gold and jewels, too?" asked Nestor. "I have all I can carry."
"You've got the best stuff," said Conan. "Besides, I don't need any more. Man, with these I can buy a kingdom! Or a dukedom, anyway, and all the wine I can drink and women I—"
A sound caused the plunderers to whirl, staring wildly. Around the walls, the seven mummified warriors were coming to life. Their heads came up, their mouths closed, and air hissed into their ancient, withered lungs. Their joints creaked like rusty hinges as they picked up their pikes and bills and rose to their feet.
"Run!" yelled Nestor, hurling his torch at the nearest giant and snatching out his sword.
The torch struck the giant in the chest, fell to the floor, and went out. Having both hands free, Conan retained his torch while he drew his sword. The light of the remaining torch flickered feebly on the green of the ancient copper harness as the giants closed in on the pair.
Conan ducked the sweep of a bill and knocked the thrust of a pike aside. Between him and the door, Nestor engaged a giant who was moving to block their escape. The Gunderman parried a thrust and struck a fierce, backhanded blow at his enemy's thigh. The blade bit, but only a little way; it was like chopping wood. The giant staggered, and Nestor hewed at another. The point of a pike glanced off his dented cuirass.