The Aquilonian host was drawn up, long serried lines of pikemen and
horsemen in gleaming steel, when a giant figure in black armor emerged
from the royal pavilion, and as he swung up into the saddle of the black
stallion held by four squires, a roar that shook the mountains went up
from the host. They shook their blades and thundered forth their acclaim
of their warrior king--knights in gold-chased armor, pikemen in mail
coats and basinets, archers in their leather jerkins, with their
longbows in their left hand.
The host on the opposite side of the valley was in motion, trotting down
the long gentle slope toward the river; their steel shone through the
mists of morning that swirled about their horses' feet.
The Aquilonian host moved leisurely to meet them. The measured tramp of
the armored horses made the ground tremble. Banners flung out long
silken folds in the morning wind; lances swayed like a bristling forest,
dipped and sank, their pennons fluttering about them.
Ten men-at-arms, grim, taciturn veterans who could hold their tongues,
guarded the royal pavilion. One squire stood in the tent, peering out
through a slit in the doorway. But for the handful in the secret, no one
else in the vast host knew that it was not Conan who rode on the great
stallion at the head of the army.
The Aquilonian host had assumed the customary formation: the strongest
part was the center, composed entirely of heavily armed knights; the
wings were made up of smaller bodies of horsemen, mounted men-at-arms,
mostly, supported by pikemen and archers. The latter were Bossonians
from the western marches, strongly built men of medium stature, in
leathern jackets and iron head-pieces.
The Nemedian army came on in similar formation, and the two hosts moved
toward the river, the wings in advance of the centers. In the center of
the Aquilonian host the great lion banner streamed its billowing black
folds over the steel-clad figure on the black stallion.
But on his dais in the royal pavilion Conan groaned in anguish of
spirit, and cursed with strange heathen oaths.
'The hosts move together,' quoth the squire, watching from the door.
'Hear the trumpets peal! Ha! The rising sun strikes fire from
lance-heads and helmets until I am dazzled. It turns the river
crimson--aye, it will be truly crimson before this day is done!
'The foe have reached the river. Now arrows fly between the hosts like
stinging clouds that hide the sun. Ha! Well loosed, bowmen! The
Bossonians have the better of it! Hark to them shout!'
Faintly in the ears of the king, above the din of trumpets and clanging
steel, came the deep fierce shout of the Bossonians as they drew and
loosed in perfect unison.
'Their archers seek to hold ours in play while their knights ride into
the river,' said the squire. 'The banks are not steep; they slope to the
water's edge. The knights come on, they crash through the willows. By
Mitra, the clothyard shafts find every crevice of their harness! Horses
and men go down, struggling and thrashing in the water. It is not deep,
nor is the current swift, but men are drowning there, dragged under by
their armor, and trampled by the frantic horses. Now the knights of
Aquilonia advance. They ride into the water and engage the knights of
Nemedia. The water swirls about their horses' bellies and the clang of
sword against sword is deafening.'
'Crom!' burst in agony from Conan's lips. Life was coursing sluggishly
back into his veins, but still he could not lift his mighty frame from
the dais.
'The wings close in,' said the squire. 'Pikemen and swordsmen fight hand
to hand in the stream, and behind them the bowmen ply their shafts.
'By Mitra, the Nemedian arbalesters are sorely harried, and the
Bossonians arch their arrows to drop amid the rear ranks. Their center
gains not a foot, and their wings are pushed back up from the stream
again.'
'Crom, Ymir, and Mitra!' raged Conan. 'Gods and devils, could I but
reach the fighting, if but to die at the first blow!'
* * * * *
Outside through the long hot day the battle stormed and thundered. The
valley shook to charge and counter-charge, to the whistling of shafts,
and the crash of rending shields and splintering lances. But the hosts
of Aquilonia held fast. Once they were forced back from the bank, but a
counter-charge, with the black banner flowing over the black stallion,
regained the lost ground. And like an iron rampart they held the right
bank of the stream, and at last the squire gave Conan the news that the
Nemedians were falling back from the river.
'Their wings are in confusion!' he cried. 'Their knights reel back from
the sword-play. But what is this? Your banner is in motion--the center
sweeps into the stream! By Mitra, Valannus is leading the host across
the river!'
'Fool!' groaned Conan. 'It may be a trick. He should hold his position;
by dawn Prospero will be here with the Poitanian levies.'
'The knights ride into a hail of arrows!' cried the squire. 'But they do
not falter! They sweep on--they have crossed! They charge up the slope!
Pallantides has hurled the wings across the river to their support! It
is all he can do. The lion banner dips and staggers above the mêlée.
'The knights of Nemedia make a stand. They are broken! They fall back!
Their left wing is in full flight, and our pikemen cut them down as they
run! I see Valannus, riding and smiting like a madman. He is carried
beyond himself by the fighting-lust. Men no longer look to Pallantides.
They follow Valannus, deeming him Conan as he rides with closed vizor.
'But look! There is method in his madness! He swings wide of the
Nemedian front, with five thousand knights, the pick of the army. The
main host of the Nemedians is in confusion--and look! Their flank is
protected by the cliffs, but there is a defile left unguarded! It is
like a great cleft in the wall that opens again behind the Nemedian
lines. By Mitra, Valannus sees and seizes the opportunity! He has driven
their wing before him, and he leads his knights toward that defile. They
swing wide of the main battle; they cut through a line of spearmen, they
charge into the defile!'
'An ambush!' cried Conan, striving to struggle upright.
'_No!_' shouted the squire exultantly. 'The whole Nemedian host is in
full sight! They have forgotten the defile! They never expected to be
pushed back that far. Oh, fool, fool, Tarascus, to make such a blunder!
Ah, I see lances and pennons pouring from the farther mouth of the
defile, beyond the Nemedian lines. They will smite those ranks from the
rear and crumple them. _Mitra, what is this?_'
He staggered as the walls of the tent swayed drunkenly. Afar over the
thunder of the fight rose a deep bellowing roar, indescribably ominous.
'The cliffs reel!' shrieked the squire. 'Ah, gods, what is this? The
river foams out of its channel, and the peaks are crumbling! The ground
shakes and horses and riders in armor are overthrown! The cliffs! The
cliffs are falling!'
With his words there came a grinding rumble and a thunderous concussion,
and the ground trembled. Over the roar of the battle sounded screams of
mad terror.
'The cliffs have crumbled!' cried the livid squire. 'They have thundered
down into the defile and crushed every living creature in it! I saw the
lion banner wave an instant amid the dust and falling stones, and then
it vanished! Ha, the Nemedians shout with triumph! Well may they shout,
for the fall of the cliffs has wiped out five thousand of our bravest
knights--Hark!'
To Conan's ears came a vast torrent of sound, rising and rising in
frenzy: 'The king is dead! _The king is dead! Flee! Flee! The king is
dead!_'
'Liars!' panted Conan. 'Dogs! Knaves! Cowards! Oh, Crom, if I could but
stand--but crawl to the river with my sword in my teeth! How, boy, do
they flee?'
'Aye!' sobbed the squire. 'They spur for the river; they are broken,
hurled on like spume before a storm. I see Pallantides striving to stem
the torrent--he is down, and the horses trample him! They rush into the
river, knights, bowmen, pikemen, all mixed and mingled in one mad
torrent of destruction. The Nemedians are on their heels, cutting them
down like corn.'
'But they will make a stand on this side of the river!' cried the king.
With an effort that brought the sweat dripping from his temples, he
heaved himself up on his elbows.
'Nay!' cried the squire. 'They cannot! They are broken! Routed! Oh gods,
that I should live to see this day!'
Then he remembered his duty and shouted to the men-at-arms who stood
stolidly watching the flight of their comrades. 'Get a horse, swiftly,
and help me lift the king upon it. We dare not bide here.'
But before they could do his bidding, the first drift of the storm was
upon them. Knights and spearmen and archers fled among the tents,
stumbling over ropes and baggage, and mingled with them were Nemedian
riders, who smote right and left at all alien figures. Tent-ropes were
cut, fire sprang up in a hundred places, and the plundering had already
begun. The grim guardsmen about Conan's tent died where they stood,
smiting and thrusting, and over their mangled corpses beat the hoofs of
the conquerors.
But the squire had drawn the flap close, and in the confused madness of
the slaughter none realized that the pavilion held an occupant. So the
flight and the pursuit swept past, and roared away up the valley, and
the squire looked out presently to see a cluster of men approaching the
royal tent with evident purpose.
'Here comes the king of Nemedia with four companions and his squire,'
quoth he. 'He will accept your surrender, my fair lord--'
'Surrender the devil's heart!' gritted the king.
He had forced himself up to a sitting posture. He swung his legs
painfully off the dais, and staggered upright, reeling drunkenly. The
squire ran to assist him, but Conan pushed him away.
'Give me that bow!' he gritted, indicating a longbow and quiver that
hung from a tent-pole.
'But your Majesty!' cried the squire in great perturbation. 'The battle
is lost! It were the part of majesty to yield with the dignity becoming
one of royal blood!'
'I have no royal blood,' ground Conan. 'I am a barbarian and the son of
a blacksmith.'
Wrenching away the bow and an arrow he staggered toward the opening of
the pavilion. So formidable was his appearance, naked but for short
leather breeks and sleeveless shirt, open to reveal his great, hairy
chest, with his huge limbs and his blue eyes blazing under his tangled
black mane, that the squire shrank back, more afraid of his king than of
the whole Nemedian host.
Reeling on wide-braced legs Conan drunkenly tore the door-flap open and
staggered out under the canopy. The king of Nemedia and his companions
had dismounted, and they halted short, staring in wonder at the
apparition confronting them.
'Here I am, you jackals!' roared the Cimmerian. 'I am the king! Death to
you, dog-brothers!'
He jerked the arrow to its head and loosed, and the shaft feathered
itself in the breast of the knight who stood beside Tarascus. Conan
hurled the bow at the king of Nemedia.
'Curse my shaky hand! Come in and take me if you dare!'
Reeling backward on unsteady legs, he fell with his shoulders against a
tent-pole, and propped upright, he lifted his great sword with both
hands.
'By Mitra, it _is_ the king!' swore Tarascus. He cast a swift look about
him, and laughed. 'That other was a jackal in his harness! In, dogs, and
take his head!'
The three soldiers--men-at-arms wearing the emblem of the royal
guards--rushed at the king, and one felled the squire with a blow of a
mace. The other two fared less well. As the first rushed in, lifting his
sword, Conan met him with a sweeping stroke that severed mail-links like
cloth, and sheared the Nemedian's arm and shoulder clean from his body.
His corpse, pitching backward, fell across his companion's legs. The man
stumbled, and before he could recover, the great sword was through him.
Conan wrenched out his steel with a racking gasp, and staggered back
against the tent-pole. His great limbs trembled, his chest heaved, and
sweat poured down his face and neck. But his eyes flamed with exultant
savagery and he panted: 'Why do you stand afar off, dog of Belverus? I
can't reach you; come in and die!'
Tarascus hesitated, glanced at the remaining man-at-arms, and his
squire, a gaunt, saturnine man in black mail, and took a step forward.
He was far inferior in size and strength to the giant Cimmerian, but he
was in full armor, and was famed in all the western nations as a
swordsman. But his squire caught his arm.
'Nay, your Majesty, do not throw away your life. I will summon archers
to shoot this barbarian, as we shoot lions.'
Neither of them had noticed that a chariot had approached while the
fight was going on, and now came to a halt before them. But Conan saw,
looking over their shoulders, and a queer chill sensation crawled along
his spine. There was something vaguely unnatural about the appearance of
the black horses that drew the vehicle, but it was the occupant of the
chariot that arrested the king's attention.
He was a tall man, superbly built, clad in a long unadorned silk robe.
He wore a Shemitish head-dress, and its lower folds hid his features,
except for the dark, magnetic eyes. The hands that grasped the reins,
pulling the rearing horses back on their haunches, were white but
strong. Conan glared at the stranger, all his primitive instincts
roused. He sensed an aura of menace and power that exuded from this
veiled figure, a menace as definite as the windless waving of tall grass
that marks the path of the serpent.
'Hail, Xaltotun!' exclaimed Tarascus. 'Here is the king of Aquilonia! He
did not die in the landslide as we thought.'
'I know,' answered the other, without bothering to say how he knew.
'What is your present intention?'
'I will summon the archers to slay him,' answered the Nemedian. 'As long
as he lives he will be dangerous to us.'
'Yet even a dog has uses,' answered Xaltotun. 'Take him alive.'
Conan laughed raspingly. 'Come in and try!' he challenged. 'But for my
treacherous legs I'd hew you out of that chariot like a woodman hewing a
tree. But you'll never take me alive, damn you!'
'He speaks the truth, I fear,' said Tarascus. 'The man is a barbarian,
with the senseless ferocity of a wounded tiger. Let me summon the
archers.'
'Watch me and learn wisdom,' advised Xaltotun.
His hand dipped into his robe and came out with something shining--a
glistening sphere. This he threw suddenly at Conan. The Cimmerian
contemptuously struck it aside with his sword--at the instant of contact
there was a sharp explosion, a flare of white, blinding flame, and Conan
pitched senseless to the ground.
'He is dead?' Tarascus' tone was more assertion than inquiry.
'No. He is but senseless. He will recover his senses in a few hours. Bid
your men bind his arms and legs and lift him into my chariot.'
With a gesture Tarascus did so, and they heaved the senseless king into
the chariot, grunting with their burden. Xaltotun threw a velvet cloak
over his body, completely covering him from any who might peer in. He
gathered the reins in his hands.
'I'm for Belverus,' he said. 'Tell Amalric that I will be with him if he
needs me. But with Conan out of the way, and his army broken, lance and
sword should suffice for the rest of the conquest. Prospero cannot be
bringing more than ten thousand men to the field, and will doubtless
fall back to Tarantia when he hears the news of the battle. Say nothing
to Amalric or Valerius or anyone about our capture. Let them think Conan
died in the fall of the cliffs.'
He looked at the man-at-arms for a long space, until the guardsman moved
restlessly, nervous under the scrutiny.
'What is that about your waist?' Xaltotun demanded.
'Why, my girdle, may it please you, my lord!' stuttered the amazed
guardsman.
'You lie!' Xaltotun's laugh was merciless as a sword-edge. 'It is a
poisonous serpent! What a fool you are, to wear a reptile about your
waist!'
With distended eyes the man looked down; and to his utter horror he saw
the buckle of his girdle rear up at him. It was a snake's head! He saw
the evil eyes and the dripping fangs, heard the hiss and felt the
loathsome contact of the thing about his body. He screamed hideously and
struck at it with his naked hand, felt its fangs flesh themselves in
that hand--and then he stiffened and fell heavily. Tarascus looked down
at him without expression. He saw only the leathern girdle and the
buckle, the pointed tongue of which was stuck in the guardsman's palm.
Xaltotun turned his hypnotic gaze on Tarascus' squire, and the man
turned ashen and began to tremble, but the king interposed: 'Nay, we can
trust him.'
The sorcerer tautened the reins and swung the horses around.
'See that this piece of work remains secret. If I am needed, let Altaro,
Orastes' servant, summon me as I have taught him. I will be in your
palace at Belverus.'
Tarascus lifted his hand in salutation, but his expression was not
pleasant to see as he looked after the departing mesmerist.
'Why should he spare the Cimmerian?' whispered the frightened squire.
'That I am wondering myself,' grunted Tarascus.
Behind the rumbling chariot the dull roar of battle and pursuit faded in
the distance; the setting sun rimmed the cliffs with scarlet flame, and
the chariot moved into the vast blue shadows floating up out of the
east.
4
'From What Hell Have You Crawled?'
Of that long ride in the chariot of Xaltotun, Conan knew nothing. He lay
like a dead man while the bronze wheels clashed over the stones of
mountain roads and swished through the deep grass of fertile valleys,
and finally dropping down from the rugged heights, rumbled rhythmically
along the broad white road that winds through the rich meadowlands to
the walls of Belverus.
Just before dawn some faint reviving of life touched him. He heard a
mumble of voices, the groan of ponderous hinges. Through a slit in the
cloak that covered him he saw, faintly in the lurid glare of torches,
the great black arch of a gateway, and the bearded faces of men-at-arms,
the torches striking fire from their spearheads and helmets.
'How went the battle, my fair lord?' spoke an eager voice, in the
Nemedian tongue.
'Well indeed,' was the curt reply. 'The king of Aquilonia lies slain and
his host is broken.'
A babble of excited voices rose, drowned the next instant by the
whirling wheels of the chariot on the flags. Sparks flashed from under
the revolving rims as Xaltotun lashed his steeds through the arch. But
Conan heard one of the guardsmen mutter: 'From beyond the border to
Belverus between sunset and dawn! And the horses scarcely sweating! By
Mitra, they--' Then silence drank the voices, and there was only the
clatter of hoofs and wheels along the shadowy street.
What he had heard registered itself on Conan's brain but suggested
nothing to him. He was like a mindless automaton that hears and sees,
but does not understand. Sights and sounds flowed meaninglessly about
him. He lapsed again into a deep lethargy, and was only dimly aware
when the chariot halted in a deep, high-walled court, and he was lifted
from it by many hands and borne up a winding stone stair, and down a
long dim corridor. Whispers, stealthy footsteps, unrelated sounds surged
or rustled about him, irrelevant and far away.
Yet his ultimate awakening was abrupt and crystal-clear. He possessed
full knowledge of the battle in the mountains and its sequences, and he
had a good idea of where he was.
He lay on a velvet couch, clad as he was the day before, but with his
limbs loaded with chains not even he could break. The room in which he
lay was furnished with somber magnificence, the walls covered with black
velvet tapestries, the floor with heavy purple carpets. There was no
sign of door or window, and one curiously carven gold lamp, swinging
from the fretted ceiling, shed a lurid light over all.
In that light the figure seated in a silver, throne-like chair before
him seemed unreal and fantastic, with an illusiveness of outline that
was heightened by a filmy silken robe. But the features were
distinct--unnaturally so in that uncertain light. It was almost as if a
weird nimbus played about the man's head, casting the bearded face into
bold relief, so that it was the only definite and distinct reality in
that mystic, ghostly chamber.
It was a magnificent face, with strongly chiseled features of classical
beauty. There was, indeed, something disquieting about the calm
tranquility of its aspect, a suggestion of more than human knowledge, of
a profound certitude beyond human assurance. Also an uneasy sensation of
familiarity twitched at the back of Conan's consciousness. He had never
seen this man's face before, he well knew; yet those features reminded
him of something or someone. It was like encountering in the flesh some
dream-image that had haunted one in nightmares.
'Who are you?' demanded the king belligerently, struggling to a sitting
position in spite of his chains.
'Men call me Xaltotun,' was the reply, in a strong, golden voice.
'What place is this?' the Cimmerian next demanded.
'A chamber in the palace of King Tarascus, in Belverus.'
Conan was not surprised. Belverus, the capital, was at the same time the
largest Nemedian city so near the border.
'And where's Tarascus?'
'With the army.'
'Well,' growled Conan, 'if you mean to murder me, why don't you do it
and get it over with?'
'I did not save you from the king's archers to murder you in Belverus,'
answered Xaltotun.
'What the devil did you do to me?' demanded Conan.
'I blasted your consciousness,' answered Xaltotun. 'How, you would not
understand. Call it black magic, if you will.'
Conan had already reached that conclusion, and was mulling over
something else.
'I think I understand why you spared my life,' he rumbled. 'Amalric
wants to keep me as a check on Valerius, in case the impossible happens
and he becomes king of Aquilonia. It's well known that the baron of Tor
is behind this move to seat Valerius on my throne. And if I know
Amalric, he doesn't intend that Valerius shall be anything more than a
figurehead, as Tarascus is now.'
'Amalric knows nothing of your capture,' answered Xaltotun. 'Neither
does Valerius. Both think you died at Valkia.'
Conan's eyes narrowed as he stared at the man in silence.
'I sensed a brain behind all this,' he muttered, 'but I thought it was
Amalric's. Are Amalric, Tarascus and Valerius all but puppets dancing on
your string? Who are you?'
'What does it matter? If I told you, you would not believe me. What if I
told you I might set you back on the throne of Aquilonia?'
Conan's eyes burned on him like a wolf.
'What's your price?'
'Obedience to me.'
'Go to hell with your offer!' snarled Conan. 'I'm no figurehead. I won
my crown with my sword. Besides, it's beyond your power to buy and sell
the throne of Aquilonia at your will. The kingdom's not conquered; one
battle doesn't decide a war.'
'You war against more than swords,' answered Xaltotun. 'Was it a
mortal's sword that felled you in your tent before the fight? Nay, it
was a child of the dark, a waif of outer space, whose fingers were afire
with the frozen coldness of the black gulfs, which froze the blood in
your veins and the marrow of your thews. Coldness so cold it burned your
flesh like white-hot iron!
'Was it chance that led the man who wore your harness to lead his
knights into the defile?--chance that brought the cliffs crashing down
upon them?'
Conan glared at him unspeaking, feeling a chill along his spine. Wizards
and sorcerers abounded in his barbaric mythology, and any fool could
tell that this was no common man. Conan sensed an inexplicable something
about him that set him apart--an alien aura of Time and Space, a sense
of tremendous and sinister antiquity. But his stubborn spirit refused to
flinch.
'The fall of the cliffs was chance,' he muttered truculently. 'The
charge into the defile was what any man would have done.'
'Not so. You would not have led a charge into it. You would have
suspected a trap. You would never have crossed the river in the first
place, until you were sure the Nemedian rout was real. Hypnotic
suggestions would not have invaded your mind, even in the madness of
battle, to make you mad, and rush blindly into the trap laid for you, as
it did the lesser man who masqueraded as you.'
'Then if this was all planned,' Conan grunted skeptically, 'all a plot
to trap my host, why did not the "child of darkness" kill me in my
tent?'
'Because I wished to take you alive. It took no wizardry to predict that
Pallantides would send another man out in your harness. I wanted you
alive and unhurt. You may fit into my scheme of things. There is a vital
power about you greater than the craft and cunning of my allies. You are
a bad enemy, but might make a fine vassal.'
Conan spat savagely at the word, and Xaltotun, ignoring his fury, took a
crystal globe from a near-by table and placed it before him. He did not
support it in any way, nor place it on anything, but it hung motionless
in midair, as solidly as if it rested on an iron pedestal. Conan snorted
at this bit of necromancy, but he was nevertheless impressed.
'Would you know of what goes on in Aquilonia?' he asked.
Conan did not reply, but the sudden rigidity of his form betrayed his
interest.
Xaltotun stared into the cloudy depths, and spoke: 'It is now the
evening of the day after the battle of Valkia. Last night the main body
of the army camped by Valkia, while squadrons of knights harried the
fleeing Aquilonians. At dawn the host broke camp and pushed westward
through the mountains. Prospero, with ten thousand Poitanians, was miles
from the battlefield when he met the fleeing survivors in the early
dawn. He had pushed on all night, hoping to reach the field before the
battle joined. Unable to rally the remnants of the broken host, he fell
back toward Tarantia. Riding hard, replacing his wearied horses with
steeds seized from the countryside, he approaches Tarantia.
'I see his weary knights, their armor gray with dust, their pennons
drooping as they push their tired horses through the plain. I see, also,
the streets of Tarantia. The city is in turmoil. Somehow word has
reached the people of the defeat and the death of King Conan. The mob is
mad with fear, crying out that the king is dead, and there is none to
lead them against the Nemedians. Giant shadows rush on Aquilonia from
the east, and the sky is black with vultures.'
Conan cursed deeply.
'What are these but words? The raggedest beggar in the street might
prophesy as much. If you say you saw all that in the glass ball, then
you're a liar as well as a knave, of which last there's no doubt!
Prospero will hold Tarantia, and the barons will rally to him. Count
Trocero of Poitain commands the kingdom in my absence, and he'll drive
these Nemedian dogs howling back to their kennels. What are fifty
thousand Nemedians? Aquilonia will swallow them up. They'll never see
Belverus again. It's not Aquilonia which was conquered at Valkia; it was
only Conan.'
'Aquilonia is doomed,' answered Xaltotun, unmoved. 'Lance and ax and
torch shall conquer her; or if they fail, powers from the dark of ages
shall march against her. As the cliffs fell at Valkia, so shall walled
cities and mountains fall, if the need arise, and rivers roar from their
channels to drown whole provinces.
'Better if steel and bowstring prevail without further aid from the
_arts_, for the constant use of mighty spells sometimes sets forces in
motion that might rock the universe.'
'From what hell have you crawled, you nighted dog?' muttered Conan,
staring at the man. The Cimmerian involuntarily shivered; he sensed
something incredibly ancient, incredibly evil.
Xaltotun lifted his head, as if listening to whispers across the void.
He seemed to have forgotten his prisoner. Then he shook his head
impatiently, and glanced impersonally at Conan.
'What? Why, if I told you, you would not believe me. But I am wearied of
conversation with you; it is less fatiguing to destroy a walled city
than it is to frame my thoughts in words a brainless barbarian can
understand.'
'If my hands were free,' opined Conan, 'I'd soon make a brainless corpse
out of you.'
'I do not doubt it, if I were fool enough to give you the opportunity,'
answered Xaltotun, clapping his hands.
His manner had changed; there was impatience in his tone, and a certain
nervousness in his manner, though Conan did not think this attitude was
in any way connected with himself.
'Consider what I have told you, barbarian,' said Xaltotun. 'You will
have plenty of leisure. I have not yet decided what I shall do with you.
It depends on circumstances yet unborn. But let this be impressed upon
you: that if I decide to use you in my game, it will be better to submit
without resistance than to suffer my wrath.'
Conan spat a curse at him, just as hangings that masked a door swung
apart and four giant negroes entered. Each was clad only in a silken
breech-cloth supported by a girdle, from which hung a great key.
Xaltotun gestured impatiently toward the king and turned away, as if
dismissing the matter entirely from his mind. His fingers twitched
queerly. From a carven green jade box he took a handful of shimmering
black dust, and placed it in a brazier which stood on a golden tripod at
his elbow. The crystal globe, which he seemed to have forgotten, fell
suddenly to the floor, as if its invisible support had been removed.
Then the blacks had lifted Conan--for so loaded with chains was he that
he could not walk--and carried him from the chamber. A glance back,
before the heavy, gold-bound teak door was closed, showed him Xaltotun
leaning back in his throne-like chair, his arms folded, while a thin
wisp of smoke curled up from the brazier. Conan's scalp prickled. In
Stygia, that ancient and evil kingdom that lay far to the south, he had
seen such black dust before. It was the pollen of the black lotus, which
creates death-like sleep and monstrous dreams; and he knew that only the
grisly wizards of the Black Ring, which is the nadir of evil,
voluntarily seek the scarlet nightmares of the black lotus, to revive
their necromantic powers.
The Black Ring was a fable and a lie to most folk of the western world,
but Conan knew of its ghastly reality, and its grim votaries who
practise their abominable sorceries amid the black vaults of Stygia and
the nighted domes of accursed Sabatea.
He glanced back at the cryptic, gold-bound door, shuddering at what it
hid.
Whether it was day or night the king could not tell. The palace of King
Tarascus seemed a shadowy, nighted place, that shunned natural
illumination. The spirit of darkness and shadow hovered over it, and
that spirit, Conan felt, was embodied in the stranger Xaltotun. The
negroes carried the king along a winding corridor so dimly lighted that
they moved through it like black ghosts bearing a dead man, and down a
stone stair that wound endlessly. A torch in the hand of one cast the
great deformed shadows streaming along the wall; it was like the descent
into hell of a corpse borne by dusky demons.
At last they reached the foot of the stair, and then they traversed a
long straight corridor, with a blank wall on one hand pierced by an
occasional arched doorway with a stair leading up behind it, and on the
other hand another wall showing heavy barred doors at regular intervals
of a few feet.
Halting before one of these doors, one of the blacks produced the key
that hung at his girdle, and turned it in the lock. Then, pushing open
the grille, they entered with their captive. They were in a small
dungeon with heavy stone walls, floor and ceiling, and in the opposite
wall there was another grilled door. What lay beyond that door Conan
could not tell, but he did not believe it was another corridor. The
glimmering light of the torch, flickering through the bars, hinted at
shadowy spaciousness and echoing depths.
In one corner of the dungeon, near the door through which they had
entered, a cluster of rusty chains hung from a great iron ring set in
the stone. In these chains a skeleton dangled. Conan glared at it with
some curiosity, noticing the state of the bare bones, most of which
were splintered and broken; the skull which had fallen from the
vertebrae, was crushed as if by some savage blow of tremendous force.
Stolidly one of the blacks, not the one who had opened the door, removed
the chains from the ring, using his key on the massive lock, and dragged
the mass of rusty metal and shattered bones over to one side. Then they
fastened Conan's chains to that ring, and the third black turned his key
in the lock of the farther door, grunting when he had assured himself
that it was properly fastened.
Then they regarded Conan cryptically, slit-eyed ebony giants, the torch
striking highlights from their glossy skin.
He who held the key to the nearer door was moved to remark, gutturally:
'This your palace now, white dog-king! None but master and we know. All
palace sleep. We keep secret. You live and die here, maybe. Like him!'
He contemptuously kicked the shattered skull and sent it clattering
across the stone floor.
Conan did not deign to reply to the taunt, and the black, galled perhaps
by his prisoner's silence, muttered a curse, stooped and spat full in
the king's face. It was an unfortunate move for the black. Conan was
seated on the floor, the chains about his waist; ankles and wrists
locked to the ring in the wall. He could neither rise, nor move more
than a yard out from the wall. But there was considerable slack in the
chains that shackled his wrists, and before the bullet-shaped head could
be withdrawn out of reach, the king gathered this slack in his mighty
hand and smote the black on the head. The man fell like a butchered ox,
and his comrades stared to see him lying with his scalp laid open, and
blood oozing from his nose and ears.
But they attempted no reprisal, nor did they accept Conan's urgent
invitation to approach within reach of the bloody chain in his hand.
Presently, grunting in their ape-like speech, they lifted the senseless
black and bore him out like a sack of wheat, arms and legs dangling.
They used his key to lock the door behind them, but did not remove it
from the gold chain that fastened it to his girdle. They took the torch
with them, and as they moved up the corridor the darkness slunk behind
them like an animate thing. Their soft padding footsteps died away, with
the glimmer of their torch, and darkness and silence remained
unchallenged.
5