Winter had passed from Aquilonia. Leaves sprang out on the limbs of
trees, and the fresh grass smiled to the touch of the warm southern
breezes. But many a field lay idle and empty, many a charred heap of
ashes marked the spot where proud villas or prosperous towns had stood.
Wolves prowled openly along the grass-grown highways, and bands of
gaunt, masterless men slunk through the forests. Only in Tarantia was
feasting and wealth and pageantry.
Valerius ruled like one touched with madness. Even many of the barons
who had welcomed his return cried out at last against him. His
tax-gatherers crushed rich and poor alike; the wealth of a looted
kingdom poured into Tarantia, which became less like the capital of a
realm than the garrison of conquerors in a conquered land. Its merchants
waxed rich, but it was a precarious prosperity; for none knew when he
might be accused of treason on a trumped-up charge, and his property
confiscated, himself cast into prison or brought to the bloody block.
Valerius made no attempt to conciliate his subjects. He maintained
himself by means of the Nemedian soldiery and by desperate mercenaries.
He knew himself to be a puppet of Amalric. He knew that he ruled only on
the sufferance of the Nemedian. He knew that he could never hope to
unite Aquilonia under his rule and cast off the yoke of his masters, for
the outland provinces would resist him to the last drop of blood. And
for that matter the Nemedians would cast him from his throne if he made
any attempt to consolidate his kingdom. He was caught in his own vise.
The gall of defeated pride corroded his soul, and he threw himself into
a reign of debauchery, as one who lives from day to day, without thought
or care for tomorrow.
Yet there was subtlety in his madness, so deep that not even Amalric
guessed it. Perhaps the wild, chaotic years of wandering as an exile had
bred in him a bitterness beyond common conception. Perhaps his loathing
of his present position increased this bitterness to a kind of madness.
At any event he lived with one desire: to cause the ruin of all who
associated with him.
He knew that his rule would be over the instant he had served Amalric's
purpose; he knew, too, that so long as he continued to oppress his
native kingdom the Nemedian would suffer him to reign, for Amalric
wished to crush Aquilonia into ultimate submission, to destroy its last
shred of independence, and then at last to seize it himself, rebuild it
after his own fashion with his vast wealth, and use its men and natural
resources to wrest the crown of Nemedia from Tarascus. For the throne of
an emperor was Amalric's ultimate ambition, and Valerius knew it.
Valerius did not know whether Tarascus suspected this, but he knew that
the king of Nemedia approved of his ruthless course. Tarascus hated
Aquilonia, with a hate born of old wars. He desired only the destruction
of the western kingdom.
And Valerius intended to ruin the country so utterly that not even
Amalric's wealth could ever rebuild it. He hated the baron quite as much
as he hated the Aquilonians, and hoped only to live to see the day when
Aquilonia lay in utter ruin, and Tarascus and Amalric were locked in
hopeless civil war that would as completely destroy Nemedia.
He believed that the conquest of the still defiant provinces of
Gunderland and Poitain and the Bossonian marches would mark his end as
king. He would then have served Amalric's purpose, and could be
discarded. So he delayed the conquest of these provinces, confining his
activities to objectless raids and forays, meeting Amalric's urges for
action with all sorts of plausible objections and postponements.
His life was a series of feasts and wild debauches. He filled his palace
with the fairest girls of the kingdom, willing or unwilling. He
blasphemed the gods and sprawled drunken on the floor of the banquet
hall wearing the golden crown, and staining his royal purple robes with
the wine he spilled. In gusts of blood-lust he festooned the gallows in
the market square with dangling corpses, glutted the axes of the
headsmen and sent his Nemedian horsemen thundering through the land
pillaging and burning. Driven to madness, the land was in a constant
upheaval of frantic revolt, savagely suppressed. Valerius plundered and
raped and looted and destroyed until even Amalric protested, warning him
that he would beggar the kingdom beyond repair, not knowing that such
was his fixed determination.
But while in both Aquilonia and Nemedia men talked of the madness of the
king, in Nemedia men talked much of Xaltotun, the masked one. Yet few
saw him on the streets of Belverus. Men said he spent much time in the
hills, in curious conclaves with surviving remnants of an old race:
dark, silent folk who claimed descent from an ancient kingdom. Men
whispered of drums beating far up in the dreaming hills, of fires
glowing in the darkness, and strange chantings borne on the winds,
chantings and rituals forgotten centuries ago except as meaningless
formulas mumbled beside mountain hearths in villages whose inhabitants
differed strangely from the people of the valleys.
The reason for these conclaves none knew, unless it was Orastes, who
frequently accompanied the Pythonian, and on whose countenance a haggard
shadow was growing.
But in the full flood of spring a sudden whisper passed over the sinking
kingdom that woke the land to eager life. It came like a murmurous wind
drifting up from the south, waking men sunk in the apathy of despair.
Yet how it first came none could truly say. Some spoke of a strange,
grim old woman who came down from the mountains with her hair flowing in
the wind, and a great gray wolf following her like a dog. Others
whispered of the priests of Asura who stole like furtive phantoms from
Gunderland to the marches of Poitain, and to the forest villages of the
Bossonians.
However the word came, revolt ran like a flame along the borders.
Outlying Nemedian garrisons were stormed and put to the sword, foraging
parties were cut to pieces; the west was up in arms, and there was a
different air about the rising, a fierce resolution and inspired wrath
rather than the frantic despair that had motivated the preceding
revolts. It was not only the common people; barons were fortifying their
castles and hurling defiance at the governors of the provinces. Bands of
Bossonians were seen moving along the edges of the marches: stocky,
resolute men in brigandines and steel caps, with longbows in their
hands. From the inert stagnation of dissolution and ruin the realm was
suddenly alive, vibrant and dangerous. So Amalric sent in haste for
Tarascus, who came with an army.
* * * * *
In the royal palace in Tarantia the two kings and Amalric discussed the
rising. They had not sent for Xaltotun, immersed in his cryptic studies
in the Nemedian hills. Not since that bloody day in the valley of the
Valkia had they called upon him for aid of his magic, and he had drawn
apart, communing but little with them, apparently indifferent to their
intrigues.
Nor had they sent for Orastes, but he came, and he was white as spume
blown before the storm. He stood in the gold-domed chamber where the
kings held conclave and they beheld in amazement his haggard stare, the
fear they had never guessed the mind of Orastes could hold.
'You are weary, Orastes,' said Amalric. 'Sit upon this divan and I will
have a slave fetch you wine. You have ridden hard--'
Orastes waved aside the invitation.
'I have killed three horses on the road from Belverus. I cannot drink
wine, I cannot rest, until I have said what I have to say.'
He paced back and forth as if some inner fire would not let him stand
motionless, and halting before his wondering companions:
'When we employed the Heart of Ahriman to bring a dead man back to
life,' Orastes said abruptly, 'we did not weigh the consequences of
tampering in the black dust of the past. The fault is mine, and the sin.
We thought only of our ambitions, forgetting what ambitions this man
might himself have. And we have loosed a demon upon the earth, a fiend
inexplicable to common humanity. I have plumbed deep in evil, but there
is a limit to which I, or any man of my race and age, can go. My
ancestors were clean men, without any demoniacal taint; it is only I who
have sunk into the pits, and I can sin only to the extent of my personal
individuality. But behind Xaltotun lie a thousand centuries of black
magic and diabolism, an ancient tradition of evil. He is beyond our
conception not only because he is a wizard himself, but also because he
is the son of a race of wizards.
'I have seen things that have blasted my soul. In the heart of the
slumbering hills I have watched Xaltotun commune with the souls of the
damned, and invoke the ancient demons of forgotten Acheron. I have seen
the accursed descendants of that accursed empire worship him and hail
him as their arch-priest. I have seen what he plots--and I tell you it
is no less than the restoration of the ancient, black, grisly kingdom of
Acheron!'
'What do you mean?' demanded Amalric. 'Acheron is dust. There are not
enough survivals to make an empire. Not even Xaltotun can reshape the
dust of three thousand years.'
'You know little of his black powers,' answered Orastes grimly. 'I have
seen the very hills take on an alien and ancient aspect under the spell
of his incantations. I have glimpsed, like shadows behind the realities,
the dim shapes and outlines of valleys, forests, mountains and lakes
that are not as they are today, but as they were in that dim
yesterday--have even sensed, rather than glimpsed, the purple towers of
forgotten Python shimmering like figures of mist in the dusk.
'And in the last conclave to which I accompanied him, understanding of
his sorcery came to me at last, while the drums beat and the beast-like
worshippers howled with their heads in the dust. I tell you he would
restore Acheron by his magic, by the sorcery of a gigantic
blood-sacrifice such as the world has never seen. He would enslave the
world, and with a deluge of blood _wash away the present and restore the
past_!'
'You are mad!' exclaimed Tarascus.
'Mad?' Orastes turned a haggard stare upon him. 'Can any man see what I
have seen and remain wholly sane? Yet I speak the truth. He plots the
return of Acheron, with its towers and wizards and kings and horrors, as
it was in the long ago. The descendants of Acheron will serve him as a
nucleus upon which to build, but it is the blood and the bodies of the
people of the world today that will furnish the mortar and the stones
for the rebuilding. I cannot tell you how. My own brain reels when I try
to understand. _But I have seen!_ Acheron will be Acheron again, and
even the hills, the forests and the rivers will resume their ancient
aspect. Why not? If I, with my tiny store of knowledge, could bring to
life a man dead three thousand years, why cannot the greatest wizard of
the world bring back to life a kingdom dead three thousand years? Out of
the dust shall Acheron arise at his bidding.'
'How can we thwart him?' asked Tarascus, impressed.
'There is but one way,' answered Orastes. 'We must steal the Heart of
Ahriman!'
'But I--' began Tarascus involuntarily, then closed his mouth quickly.
None had noticed him, and Orastes was continuing.
'It is a power that can be used against him. With it in my hands I might
defy him. But how shall we steal it? He has it hidden in some secret
place, from which not even a Zamorian thief might filch it. I cannot
learn its hiding-place. If he would only sleep again the sleep of the
black lotus--but the last time he slept thus was after the battle of the
Valkia, when he was weary because of the great magic he had performed,
and--'
The door was locked and bolted, but it swung silently open and Xaltotun
stood before them, calm, tranquil, stroking his patriarchal beard; but
the lambent lights of hell flickered in his eyes.
'I have taught you too much,' he said calmly, pointing a finger like an
index of doom at Orastes. And before any could move, he had cast a
handful of dust on the floor near the feet of the priest, who stood like
a man turned to marble. It flamed, smoldered; a blue serpentine of smoke
rose and swayed upward about Orastes in a slender spiral. And when it
had risen above his shoulders it curled about his neck with a whipping
suddenness like the stroke of a snake. Orastes' scream was choked to a
gurgle. His hands flew to his neck, his eyes were distended, his tongue
protruded. The smoke was like a blue rope about his neck; then it faded
and was gone, and Orastes slumped to the floor a dead man.
Xaltotun smote his hands together and two men entered, men often
observed accompanying him--small, repulsively dark, with red, oblique
eyes and pointed, rat-like teeth. They did not speak. Lifting the
corpse, they bore it away.
Dismissing the matter with a wave of his hand, Xaltotun seated himself
at the ivory table about which sat the pale kings.
'Why are you in conclave?' he demanded.
'The Aquilonians have risen in the west,' answered Amalric, recovering
from the grisly jolt the death of Orastes had given him. 'The fools
believe that Conan is alive, and coming at the head of a Poitanian army
to reclaim his kingdom. If he had reappeared immediately after Valkia,
or if a rumor had been circulated that he lived, the central provinces
would not have risen under him, they feared your powers so. But they
have become so desperate under Valerius' misrule that they are ready to
follow any man who can unite them against us, and prefer sudden death to
torture and continual misery.
'Of course the tale has lingered stubbornly in the land that Conan was
not really slain at Valkia, but not until recently have the masses
accepted it. But Pallantides is back from exile in Ophir, swearing that
the king was ill in his tent that day, and that a man-at-arms wore his
harness, and a squire who but recently recovered from the stroke of a
mace received at Valkia confirms his tale--or pretends to.
'An old woman with a pet wolf has wandered up and down the land,
proclaiming that King Conan yet lives, and will return some day to
reclaim the crown. And of late the cursed priests of Asura sing the same
song. They claim that word has come to them by some mysterious means
that Conan is returning to reconquer his domain. I cannot catch either
her or them. This is, of course, a trick of Trocero's. My spies tell me
there is indisputable evidence that the Poitanians are gathering to
invade Aquilonia. I believe that Trocero will bring forward some
pretender who he will claim is King Conan.'
Tarascus laughed, but there was no conviction in his laughter. He
surreptitiously felt of a scar beneath his jupon, and remembered ravens
that cawed on the trail of a fugitive; remembered the body of his
squire, Arideus, brought back from the border mountains horribly
mangled, by a great gray wolf, his terrified soldiers said. But he also
remembered a red jewel stolen from a golden chest while a wizard slept,
and he said nothing.
And Valerius remembered a dying nobleman who gasped out a tale of fear,
and he remembered four Khitans who disappeared into the mazes of the
south and never returned. But he held his tongue, for hatred and
suspicion of his allies ate at him like a worm, and he desired nothing
so much as to see both rebels and Nemedians go down locked in the death
grip.