"If we ate that we wouldn't need the bite of a dragon," he grunted. "That's what the black people of Kush call the Apples of Derketa. Derketa is the Queen of the Dead. Drink a little of the juice, or spill it on your flesh, and you'd be dead before you could tumble to the foot of this crag." "Oh!" She lapsed into dismayed silence. There seemed no way out of their predicament, she reflected gloomily. She saw no way of escape, and Conan seemed to be concerned only with her supple waist and curly tresses. If he was trying to formulate a plan of escape, he did not show it. "If you'll take your hands off me long enough to climb up on that peak," she said presently, "you'll see something that will surprise you." He cast her a questioning glance, then obeyed with a shrug of his massive shoulders. Clinging to the spire-like pinnacle, he stared out over the forest roof. * * * * * He stood a long moment in silence, posed like a bronze statue on the rock. "It's a walled city, right enough," he muttered presently. "Was that where you were going, when you tried to send me off alone to the coast?" "I saw it before you came. I knew nothing of it when I left Sukhmet." "Who'd have thought to find a city here? I don't believe the Stygians ever penetrated this far. Could black people build a city like that? I see no herds on the plain, no signs of cultivation, or people moving about." "How could you hope to see all that, at this distance?" she demanded. He shrugged his shoulders and dropped down on the shelf. "Well, the folk of the city can't help us just now. And they might not, if they could. The people of the Black Countries are generally hostile to strangers. Probably stick us full of spears----" He stopped short and stood silent, as if he had forgotten what he was saying, frowning down at the crimson spheres gleaming among the leaves. "Spears!" he muttered. "What a blasted fool I am not to have thought of that before! That shows what a pretty woman does to a man's mind." "What are you talking about?" she inquired.