They turned into an open door at random, and traversed a series of empty
chambers, floored like the hall, and with walls of the same green jade,
or of marble or ivory or chalcedony, adorned with friezes of bronze,
gold or silver. In the ceilings the green fire-gems were set, and their
light was as ghostly and illusive as Conan had predicted. Under the
witch-fire glow the intruders moved like specters.

Some of the chambers lacked this illumination, and their doorways showed
black as the mouth of the Pit. These Conan and Valeria avoided, keeping
always to the lighted chambers.

Cobwebs hung in the corners, but there was no perceptible accumulation
of dust on the floor, or on the tables and seats of marble, jade or
carnelian which occupied the chambers. Here and there were rugs of that
silk known as Khitan which is practically indestructible. Nowhere did
they find any windows, or doors opening into streets or courts. Each
door merely opened into another chamber or hall.

"Why don't we come to a street?" grumbled Valeria. "This place or
whatever we're in must be as big as the king of Turan's seraglio."

"They must not have perished of plague," said Conan, meditating upon the
mystery of the empty city. "Otherwise we'd find skeletons. Maybe it
became haunted, and everybody got up and left. Maybe----"

"Maybe, hell!" broke in Valeria rudely. "We'll never know. Look at these
friezes. They portray men. What race do they belong to?"

Conan scanned them and shook his head.

"I never saw people exactly like them. But there's the smack of the East
about them--Vendhya, maybe, or Kosala."

"Were you a king in Kosala?" she asked, masking her keen curiosity with
derision.

"No. But I was a war-chief of the Afghulis who live in the Himelian
mountains above the borders of Vendhya. These people favor the Kosalans.
But why should Kosalans be building a city this far to west?"

The figures portrayed were those of slender, olive-skinned men and
women, with finely chiseled, exotic features. They wore filmy robes and
many delicate jeweled ornaments, and were depicted mostly in attitudes
of feasting, dancing or love-making.

"Easterners, all right," grunted Conan, "but from where I don't know.
They must have lived a disgustingly peaceful life, though, or they'd
have scenes of wars and fights. Let's go up that stair."

It was an ivory spiral that wound up from the chamber in which they were
standing. They mounted three flights an