creamed and whirled, striking at the
Cimmerian with his sword. Conan parried the blow, and Topal tried to
catch Yanath's arm. But the madman avoided him and with froth flying
from his lips, he drove his sword deep into Topal's body. Topal sank
down with a groan, and Yanath whirled for an instant like a crazy
dervish; then he ran at the shelves and began hacking at the glass with
his sword, screeching blasphemously.

Conan sprang at him from behind, trying to catch him unaware and disarm
him, but the madman wheeled and lunged at him, screaming like a lost
soul. Realizing that the warrior was hopelessly insane, the Cimmerian
side-stepped, and as the maniac went past, he swung a cut that severed
the shoulder-bone and breast, and dropped the man dead beside his dying
victim.

Conan bent over Topal, seeing that the man was at his last gasp. It was
useless to seek to stanch the blood gushing from the horrible wound.

"You're done for, Topal," grunted Conan. "Any word you want to send to
your people?"

"Bend closer," gasped Topal, and Conan complied--and an instant later
caught the man's wrist as Topal struck at his breast with a dagger.

"Crom!" swore Conan. "Are you mad, too?"

"Olmec ordered it!" gasped the dying man. "I know not why. As we lifted
the wounded upon the couches he whispered to me, bidding me to slay you
as we returned to Tecuhltli----" And with the name of his clan on his
lips, Topal died.

Conan scowled down at him in puzzlement. This whole affair had an aspect
of lunacy. Was Olmec mad, too? Were all the Tecuhltli madder than he had
realized? With a shrug of his shoulders he strode down the hall and out
of the bronze door, leaving the dead Tecuhltli lying before the staring
dead eyes of their kinsmen's heads.

Conan needed no guide back through the labyrinth they had traversed. His
primitive instinct of direction led him unerringly along the route they
had come. He traversed it as warily as he had before, his sword in his
hand, and his eyes fiercely searching each shadowed nook and corner; for
it was his former allies he feared now, not the ghosts of the slain
Xotalancas.

He had crossed the Great Hall and entered the chambers beyond when he
heard something moving ahead of him--something which gasped and panted,
and moved with a strange, floundering, scrambling noise. A moment later
Conan saw a man crawling over the flaming floor toward him--a man whose
progress left a broad bloody smear on the sm