Avon Fantasy Reader No. 8 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

, , QUEEN OF THE BLACK COAST 11 bY 2. The Black Lotus In that dead citadel of crumbling stone Her eyes were snared by that unholy sheen, And curious madness took me by the throat, As of a rival lover thrust between. —The Song of Béhit. The Tigress ranged the sea, and the black villages shuddered. Tom-toms beat in the night, with a tale that the she-devil of the sea had found a mate, an iron man whose wrath was as that of a wounded lion. And survivors of butchered Stygian ships named Bélit with curse, and a white warrior with fierce blue eyes; so the Stygian princes remembered this man long and long, and their memory was a bitter tree which bore crimson fruit in the years to come, But heedless as a vagrant wind, the Tigress cruised the southern coasts, until she anchored at the mouth of a broad sullen, river, whose banks were jungle-clouded walls of mystery. : “This is the river Zarkheba, which is Death,” said Bélit. “Its waters are poisonous. See how dark and murky they run? Only venomous reptiles live in that river. The black people shun it. Once a Stygian galley, fleeing from me, fled up the river and vanished. I anchored in this very spot, and days later, the galley came floating down the dark waters, its decks blood-stained and deserted. Only one man was on board, and he was mad and died gib- bering. The cargo was intact, but the crew had vanished into silence and mystery. | : “My lover, I believe there is a city somewhere on that river. I have heard tales of giant towers and walls glimpsed afar off by sailors who dared go part-way up the river. We fear nothing: Conan, let us go and sack that city!” Conan agreed. He generally agreed to her plans. Hers was the mind that directed their raids, his the arm that carried out her ideas. It mattered little to him where they sailed or whom they fought, so long as they sailed and fought. He found the life good. Battle and raid had thinned their crew; only some eighty spearmen re- mained, scarcely enough to work the long galley. But Bélit would not take the time to make the long cruise southward to the island kingdoms where she recruited her buccaneers. She was afire with eagerness for her latest venture; so the Tigress swung into the river-mouth, the oarsmen pulling strongly as she breasted the broad current. They rounded the mysterious bend that shut out the sight of the sea, and sunset found them forging steadily against the sluggish flow, avoiding sand- bars where strange reptiles coiled. Not even a crocodile did they see, nor any four-legged beast or winged bird coming down to the water’s edge to drink. On through the blackness that preceded moonrise they drove, between banks - (@) my ag