Valley of the Worm by Robert E. Howard

the urge of hunger, prepared the meal for himself, then forgot about it and wandered away to dream again.”
    “Where do they get their food?” interrupted Conan. “I saw no fields or vineyards outside the city. Have they orchards and cattle-pens within the walls?”
    She shook her head. “They manufacture their own food out of the primal elements. They are wonderful scientists, when they are not drugged with their dream-flower. Their ancestors were mental giants, who built this marvelous city in the desert, and though the race became slaves to their curious passions, some of their wonderful knowledge still remains. Have you wondered about these lights? They are jewels, fused with radium. You rub them with your thumb to make them glow, and rub them again, the opposite way, to extinguish them. That is but a single example of their science. But much they have forgotten. They take little interest in waking life, choosing to lie most of the time in death-like sleep.”
    “Then the dead man at the gate—” began Conan.
    “Was doubtless slumbering. Sleepers of the lotus are like the dead. Animation is apparently suspended. It is impossible to detect the slightest sign of life. The spirit has left the body and is roaming at will through other, exotic worlds. The man at the gate was a good example of the irresponsibility of these peoples’ lives. He was guarding the gate, where custom decrees a watch be kept, though no enemy has ever advanced across the desert. In other parts of the city you would find other guards, generally sleeping as soundly as the man at the gate.”
    Conan mulled over this for a space.
    “Where are the people now?”
    “Scattered in different parts of the city; lying on couches, on silken divans, in cushion-littered alcoves, on fur-covered daises; all wrapt in the shining veil of dreams.”
    Conan felt the skin twitch between his massive shoulders. It was not soothing to think of hundreds of people lying cold and still throughout the tapestried palaces, their glassy eyes turned unseeingly upward. He remembered something else.
    “What of the thing that stole through the chambers and carried away the man on the dais?”
    A shudder twitched her ivory limbs.
    “That was Thog, the Ancient, the god of Xuthal, who dwells in the sunken dome in the center of the city. He has always dwelt in Xuthal. Whether he came here with the ancient founders, or was here when they built the city, none knows. But the people of Xuthal worship him. Mostly he sleeps below the city, but sometimes at irregular intervals he grows hungry, and then he steals through the secret corridors and the dim-lit chambers, seeking prey. Then none is safe.”
    Natala moaned with terror and clasped Conan’s mighty neck as if to resist an effort to drag her from her protector’s side.
    “Crom!” he ejaculated aghast. “You mean to tell me these people lie down calmly and sleep, with this demon crawling among them?”
    “It is only occasionally that he is hungry,” she repeated. “A god must have his sacrifices. When I was a child in Stygia the people lived under the shadow of the priests. None ever knew when he or she would be seized and dragged to the altar. What difference whether the priests give a victim to the gods, or the god comes for his own victim?”
    “Such is not the custom of my people,” Conan growled, “nor of Natala’s either. The Hyborians do not sacrifice humans to their god, Mitra, and as for my people—by Crom, I’d like to see a priest try to drag a Cimmerian to the altar! There’d be blood spilt, but not as the priest intended.”
    “You are a barbarian,” laughed Thalis, but with a glow in her luminous eyes. “Thog is very ancient and very terrible.”
    “These folk must be either fools or heroes,” grunted Conan, “to lie down and dream their idiotic dreams, knowing they might awaken in his belly.”
    She laughed. “They know nothing else. For untold generations Thog has preyed on them. He has been