← catalogue

The Hour of the Dragon

by Robert E. Howard · English · Gutenberg #42243 · 430,664 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Hour of the Dragon
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Hour of the Dragon

Author: Robert E. Howard


        
Release date: March 2, 2013 [eBook #42243]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42243

Credits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON ***

                  THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON

                   By Robert E. Howard

    [Transcriber's Note: This etext was first published in Weird Tales
    December 1935, January, February, March and April 1936. Extensive
    research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on
    this publication was renewed.]




1

O Sleeper, Awake!


The long tapers flickered, sending the black shadows wavering along the
walls, and the velvet tapestries rippled. Yet there was no wind in the
chamber. Four men stood about the ebony table on which lay the green
sarcophagus that gleamed like carven jade. In the upraised right hand of
each man a curious black candle burned with a weird greenish light.
Outside was night and a lost wind moaning among the black trees.

Inside the chamber was tense silence, and the wavering of the shadows,
while four pairs of eyes, burning with intensity, were fixed on the long
green case across which cryptic hieroglyphics writhed, as if lent life
and movement by the unsteady light. The man at the foot of the
sarcophagus leaned over it and moved his candle as if he were writing
with a pen, inscribing a mystic symbol in the air. Then he set down the
candle in its black gold stick at the foot of the case, and, mumbling
some formula unintelligible to his companions, he thrust a broad white
hand into his fur-trimmed robe. When he brought it forth again it was as
if he cupped in his palm a ball of living fire.

The other three drew in their breath sharply, and the dark, powerful man
who stood at the head of the sarcophagus whispered: 'The Heart of
Ahriman!' The other lifted a quick hand for silence. Somewhere a dog
began howling dolefully, and a stealthy step padded outside the barred
and bolted door. But none looked aside from the mummy-case over which
the man in the ermine-trimmed robe was now moving the great flaming
jewel while he muttered an incantation that was old when Atlantis sank.
The glare of the gem dazzled their eyes, so that they could not be sure
of what they saw; but with a splintering crash, the carven lid of the
sarcophagus burst outward as if from some irresistible pressure applied
from within, and the four men, bending eagerly forward, saw the
occupant--a huddled, withered, wizened shape, with dried brown limbs
like dead wood showing through moldering bandages.

'Bring that thing _back_?' muttered the small dark man who stood on the
right, with a short sardonic laugh. 'It is ready to crumble at a touch.
We are fools--'

'Shhh!' It was an urgent hiss of command from the large man who held the
jewel. Perspiration stood upon his broad white forehead and his eyes
were dilated. He leaned forward, and, without touching the thing with
his hand, laid on the breast of the mummy the blazing jewel. Then he
drew back and watched with fierce intensity, his lips moving in
soundless invocation.

It was as if a globe of living fire flickered and burned on the dead,
withered bosom. And breath sucked in, hissing, through the clenched
teeth of the watchers. For as they watched, an awful transmutation
became apparent. The withered shape in the sarcophagus was expanding,
was growing, lengthening. The bandages burst and fell into brown dust.
The shriveled limbs swelled, straightened. Their dusky hue began to
fade.

'By Mitra!' whispered the tall, yellow-haired man on the left. 'He was
_not_ a Stygian. That part at least was true.'

Again a trembling finger warned for silence. The hound outside was no
longer howling. He whimpered, as with an evil dream, and then that
sound, too, died away in silence, in which the yellow-haired man plainly
heard the straining of the heavy door, as if something outside pushed
powerfully upon it. He half turned, his hand at his sword, but the man
in the ermine robe hissed an urgent warning: 'Stay! Do not break the
chain! And on your life do not go to the door!'

The yellow-haired man shrugged and turned back, and then he stopped
short, staring. In the jade sarcophagus lay a living man: a tall, lusty
man, naked, white of skin, and dark of hair and beard. He lay
motionless, his eyes wide open, and blank and unknowing as a newborn
babe's. On his breast the great jewel smoldered and sparkled.

The man in ermine reeled as if from some let-down of extreme tension.

'Ishtar!' he gasped. 'It is Xaltotun!--_and he lives!_ Valerius!
Tarascus! Amalric! Do you see? Do you see? You doubted me--but I have
not failed! We have been close to the open gates of hell this night, and
the shapes of darkness have gathered close about us--aye, they followed
_him_ to the very door--but we have brought the great magician back to
life.'

'And damned our souls to purgatories everlasting, I doubt not,' muttered
the small, dark man, Tarascus.

The yellow-haired man, Valerius, laughed harshly.

'What purgatory can be worse than life itself? So we are all damned
together from birth. Besides, who would not sell his miserable soul for
a throne?'

'There is no intelligence in his stare, Orastes,' said the large man.

'He has long been dead,' answered Orastes. 'He is as one newly awakened.
His mind is empty after the long sleep--nay, he was _dead_, not
sleeping. We brought his spirit back over the voids and gulfs of night
and oblivion. I will speak to him.'

He bent over the foot of the sarcophagus, and fixing his gaze on the
wide dark eyes of the man within, he said, slowly: 'Awake, Xaltotun!'

The lips of the man moved mechanically. 'Xaltotun!' he repeated in a
groping whisper.

'_You_ are Xaltotun!' exclaimed Orastes, like a hypnotist driving home
his suggestions. 'You are Xaltotun of Python, in Acheron.'

A dim flame flickered in the dark eyes.

'I was Xaltotun,' he whispered. 'I am dead.'

'You _are_ Xaltotun!' cried Orastes. 'You are not dead! You live!'

'I am Xaltotun,' came the eery whisper. 'But I am dead. In my house in
Khemi, in Stygia, there I died.'

'And the priests who poisoned you mummified your body with their dark
arts, keeping all your organs intact!' exclaimed Orastes. 'But now you
live again! The Heart of Ahriman has restored your life, drawn your
spirit back from space and eternity.'

'The Heart of Ahriman!' The flame of remembrance grew stronger. 'The
barbarians stole it from me!'

'He remembers,' muttered Orastes. 'Lift him from the case.'

The others obeyed hesitantly, as if reluctant to touch the man they had
recreated, and they seemed not easier in their minds when they felt firm
muscular flesh, vibrant with blood and life, beneath their fingers. But
they lifted him upon the table, and Orastes clothed him in a curious
dark velvet robe, splashed with gold stars and crescent moons, and
fastened a cloth-of-gold fillet about his temples, confining the black
wavy locks that fell to his shoulders. He let them do as they would,
saying nothing, not even when they set him in a carven throne-like chair
with a high ebony back and wide silver arms, and feet like golden claws.
He sat there motionless, and slowly intelligence grew in his dark eyes
and made them deep and strange and luminous. It was as if long-sunken
witchlights floated slowly up through midnight pools of darkness.

Orastes cast a furtive glance at his companions, who stood staring in
morbid fascination at their strange guest. Their iron nerves had
withstood an ordeal that might have driven weaker men mad. He knew it
was with no weaklings that he conspired, but men whose courage was as
profound as their lawless ambitions and capacity for evil. He turned his
attention to the figure in the ebon-black chair. And this one spoke at
last.

'I remember,' he said in a strong, resonant voice, speaking Nemedian
with a curious, archaic accent. 'I am Xaltotun, who was high priest of
Set in Python, which was in Acheron. The Heart of Ahriman--I dreamed I
had found it again--where is it?'

Orastes placed it in his hand, and he drew breath deeply as he gazed
into the depths of the terrible jewel burning in his grasp.

'They stole it from me, long ago,' he said. 'The red heart of the night
it is, strong to save or to damn. It came from afar, and from long ago.
While I held it, none could stand before me. But it was stolen from me,
and Acheron fell, and I fled in exile into dark Stygia. Much I remember,
but much I have forgotten. I have been in a far land, across misty voids
and gulfs and unlit oceans. What is the year?'

Orastes answered him. 'It is the waning of the Year of the Lion, three
thousand years after the fall of Acheron.'

'Three thousand years!' murmured the other. 'So long? Who are you?'

'I am Orastes, once a priest of Mitra. This man is Amalric, baron of
Tor, in Nemedia; this other is Tarascus, younger brother of the king of
Nemedia; and this tall man is Valerius, rightful heir of the throne of
Aquilonia.'

'Why have you given me life?' demanded Xaltotun. 'What do you require of
me?'

The man was now fully alive and awake, his keen eyes reflecting the
working of an unclouded brain. There was no hesitation or uncertainty in
his manner. He came directly to the point, as one who knows that no man
gives something for nothing. Orastes met him with equal candor.

'We have opened the doors of hell this night to free your soul and
return it to your body because we need your aid. We wish to place
Tarascus on the throne of Nemedia, and to win for Valerius the crown of
Aquilonia. With your necromancy you can aid us.'

Xaltotun's mind was devious and full of unexpected slants.

'You must be deep in the arts yourself, Orastes, to have been able to
restore my life. How is it that a priest of Mitra knows of the Heart of
Ahriman, and the incantations of Skelos?'

'I am no longer a priest of Mitra,' answered Orastes. 'I was cast forth
from my order because of my delving in black magic. But for Amalric
there I might have been burned as a magician.

'But that left me free to pursue my studies. I journeyed in Zamora, in
Vendhya, in Stygia, and among the haunted jungles of Khitai. I read the
iron-bound books of Skelos, and talked with unseen creatures in deep
wells, and faceless shapes in black reeking jungles. I obtained a
glimpse of your sarcophagus in the demon-haunted crypts below the black
giant-walled temple of Set in the hinterlands of Stygia, and I learned
of the arts that would bring back life to your shriveled corpse. From
moldering manuscripts I learned of the Heart of Ahriman. Then for a year
I sought its hiding-place, and at last I found it.'

'Then why trouble to bring me back to life?' demanded Xaltotun, with his
piercing gaze fixed on the priest. 'Why did you not employ the Heart to
further your own power?'

'Because no man today knows the secrets of the Heart,' answered Orastes.
'Not even in legends live the arts by which to loose its full powers. I
knew it could restore life; of its deeper secrets I am ignorant. I
merely used it to bring you back to life. It is the use of your
knowledge we seek. As for the Heart, you alone know its awful secrets.'

Xaltotun shook his head, staring broodingly into the flaming depths.

'My necromantic knowledge is greater than the sum of all the knowledge
of other men,' he said; 'yet I do not know the full power of the jewel.
I did not invoke it in the old days; I guarded it lest it be used
against me. At last it was stolen, and in the hands of a feathered
shaman of the barbarians it defeated all my mighty sorcery. Then it
vanished, and I was poisoned by the jealous priests of Stygia before I
could learn where it was hidden.'

'It was hidden in a cavern below the temple of Mitra, in Tarantia,' said
Orastes. 'By devious ways I discovered this, after I had located your
remains in Set's subterranean temple in Stygia.

'Zamorian thieves, partly protected by spells I learned from sources
better left unmentioned, stole your mummy-case from under the very
talons of those which guarded it in the dark, and by camel-caravan and
galley and ox-wagon it came at last to this city.

'Those same thieves--or rather those of them who still lived after their
frightful quest--stole the Heart of Ahriman from its haunted cavern
below the temple of Mitra, and all the skill of men and the spells of
sorcerers nearly failed. One man of them lived long enough to reach me
and give the jewel into my hands, before he died slavering and gibbering
of what he had seen in that accursed crypt. The thieves of Zamora are
the most faithful of men to their trust. Even with my conjurements, none
but they could have stolen the Heart from where it has lain in
demon-guarded darkness since the fall of Acheron, three thousand years
ago.'

Xaltotun lifted his lion-like head and stared far off into space, as if
plumbing the lost centuries.

'Three thousand years!' he muttered. 'Set! Tell me what has chanced in
the world.'

'The barbarians who overthrew Acheron set up new kingdoms,' quoted
Orastes. 'Where the empire had stretched now rose realms called
Aquilonia, and Nemedia, and Argos, from the tribes that founded them.
The older kingdoms of Ophir, Corinthia and western Koth, which had been
subject to the kings of Acheron, regained their independence with the
fall of the empire.'

'And what of the people of Acheron?' demanded Xaltotun. 'When I fled
into Stygia, Python was in ruins, and all the great, purple-towered
cities of Acheron fouled with blood and trampled by the sandals of the
barbarians.'

'In the hills small groups of folk still boast descent from Acheron,'
answered Orastes. 'For the rest, the tide of my barbarian ancestors
rolled over them and wiped them out. They--my ancestors--had suffered
much from the kings of Acheron.'

A grim and terrible smile curled the Pythonian's lips.

'Aye! Many a barbarian, both man and woman, died screaming on the altar
under this hand. I have seen their heads piled to make a pyramid in the
great square in Python when the kings returned from the west with their
spoils and naked captives.'

'Aye. And when the day of reckoning came, the sword was not spared. So
Acheron ceased to be, and purple-towered Python became a memory of
forgotten days. But the younger kingdoms rose on the imperial ruins and
waxed great. And now we have brought you back to aid us to rule these
kingdoms, which, if less strange and wonderful than Acheron of old, are
yet rich and powerful, well worth fighting for. Look!' Orastes unrolled
before the stranger a map drawn cunningly on vellum.

Xaltotun regarded it, and then shook his head, baffled.

'The very outlines of the land are changed. It is like some familiar
thing seen in a dream, fantastically distorted.'

'Howbeit,' answered Orastes, tracing with his forefinger, 'here is
Belverus, the capital of Nemedia, in which we now are. Here run the
boundaries of the land of Nemedia. To the south and southeast are Ophir
and Corinthia, to the east Brythunia, to the west Aquilonia.'

'It is the map of a world I do not know,' said Xaltotun softly, but
Orastes did not miss the lurid fire of hate that flickered in his dark
eyes.

'It is a map you shall help us change,' answered Orastes. 'It is our
desire first to set Tarascus on the throne of Nemedia. We wish to
accomplish this without strife, and in such a way that no suspicion will
rest on Tarascus. We do not wish the land to be torn by civil wars, but
to reserve all our power for the conquest of Aquilonia.

'Should King Nimed and his sons die naturally, in a plague for instance,
Tarascus would mount the throne as the next heir, peacefully and
unopposed.'

Xaltotun nodded, without replying, and Orastes continued.

'The other task will be more difficult. We cannot set Valerius on the
Aquilonian throne without a war, and that kingdom is a formidable foe.
Its people are a hardy, war-like race, toughened by continual wars with
the Picts, Zingarians and Cimmerians. For five hundred years Aquilonia
and Nemedia have intermittently waged war, and the ultimate advantage
has always lain with the Aquilonians.

'Their present king is the most renowned warrior among the western
nations. He is an outlander, an adventurer who seized the crown by force
during a time of civil strife, strangling King Namedides with his own
hands, upon the very throne. His name is Conan, and no man can stand
before him in battle.

'Valerius is now the rightful heir of the throne. He had been driven
into exile by his royal kinsman, Namedides, and has been away from his
native realm for years, but he is of the blood of the old dynasty, and
many of the barons would secretly hail the overthrow of Conan, who is a
nobody without royal or even noble blood. But the common people are
loyal to him, and the nobility of the outlying provinces. Yet if his
forces were overthrown in the battle that must first take place, and
Conan himself slain, I think it would not be difficult to put Valerius
on the throne. Indeed, with Conan slain, the only center of the
government would be gone. He is not part of a dynasty, but only a lone
adventurer.'

'I wish that I might see this king,' mused Xaltotun, glancing toward a
silvery mirror which formed one of the panels of the wall. This mirror
cast no reflection, but Xaltotun's expression showed that he understood
its purpose, and Orastes nodded with the pride a good craftsman takes in
the recognition of his accomplishments by a master of his craft.

'I will try to show him to you,' he said. And seating himself before the
mirror, he gazed hypnotically into its depths, where presently a dim
shadow began to take shape.

It was uncanny, but those watching knew it was no more than the
reflected image of Orastes' thought, embodied in that mirror as a
wizard's thoughts are embodied in a magic crystal. It floated hazily,
then leaped into startling clarity--a tall man, mightily shouldered and
deep of chest, with a massive corded neck and heavily muscled limbs. He
was clad in silk and velvet, with the royal lions of Aquilonia worked
in gold upon his rich jupon, and the crown of Aquilonia shone on his
square-cut black mane; but the great sword at his side seemed more
natural to him than the regal accouterments. His brow was low and broad,
his eyes a volcanic blue that smoldered as if with some inner fire. His
dark, scarred, almost sinister face was that of a fighting-man, and his
velvet garments could not conceal the hard, dangerous lines of his
limbs.

'That man is no Hyborian!' exclaimed Xaltotun.

'No; he is a Cimmerian, one of those wild tribesmen who dwell in the
gray hills of the north.'

'I fought his ancestors of old,' muttered Xaltotun. 'Not even the kings
of Acheron could conquer them.'

'They still remain a terror to the nations of the south,' answered
Orastes. 'He is a true son of that savage race, and has proved himself,
thus far, unconquerable.'

Xaltotun did not reply; he sat staring down at the pool of living fire
that shimmered in his hand. Outside, the hound howled again, long and
shudderingly.




2

A Black Wind Blows


The year of the dragon had birth in war and pestilence and unrest. The
black plague stalked through the streets of Belverus, striking down the
merchant in his stall, the serf in his kennel, the knight at his banquet
board. Before it the arts of the leeches were helpless. Men said it had
been sent from hell as punishment for the sins of pride and lust. It was
swift and deadly as the stroke of an adder. The victim's body turned
purple and then black, and within a few minutes he sank down dying, and
the stench of his own putrefaction was in his nostrils even before death
wrenched his soul from his rotting body. A hot, roaring wind blew
incessantly from the south, and the crops withered in the fields, the
cattle sank and died in their tracks.

Men cried out on Mitra, and muttered against the king; for somehow,
throughout the kingdom, the word was whispered that the king was
secretly addicted to loathsome practises and foul debauches in the
seclusion of his nighted palace. And then in that palace death stalked
grinning on feet about which swirled the monstrous vapors of the plague.
In one night the king died with his three sons, and the drums that
thundered their dirge drowned the grim and ominous bells that rang from
the carts that lumbered through the streets gathering up the rotting
dead.

That night, just before dawn, the hot wind that had blown for weeks
ceased to rustle evilly through the silken window curtains. Out of the
north rose a great wind that roared among the towers, and there was
cataclysmic thunder, and blinding sheets of lightning, and driving rain.
But the dawn shone clean and green and clear; the scorched ground veiled
itself in grass, the thirsty crops sprang up anew, and the plague was
gone--its miasma swept clean out of the land by the mighty wind.

Men said the gods were satisfied because the evil king and his spawn
were slain, and when his young brother Tarascus was crowned in the great
coronation hall, the populace cheered until the towers rocked,
acclaiming the monarch on whom the gods smiled.

Such a wave of enthusiasm and rejoicing as swept the land is frequently
the signal for a war of conquest. So no one was surprised when it was
announced that King Tarascus had declared the truce made by the late
king with their western neighbors void, and was gathering his hosts to
invade Aquilonia. His reason was candid; his motives, loudly proclaimed,
gilded his actions with something of the glamor of a crusade. He
espoused the cause of Valerius, 'rightful heir to the throne'; he came,
he proclaimed, not as an enemy of Aquilonia, but as a friend, to free
the people from the tyranny of a usurper and a foreigner.

If there were cynical smiles in certain quarters, and whispers
concerning the king's good friend Amalric, whose vast personal wealth
seemed to be flowing into the rather depleted royal treasury, they were
unheeded in the general wave of fervor and zeal of Tarascus' popularity.
If any shrewd individuals suspected that Amalric was the real ruler of
Nemedia, behind the scenes, they were careful not to voice such heresy.
And the war went forward with enthusiasm.

The king and his allies moved westward at the head of fifty thousand
men--knights in shining armor with their pennons streaming above their
helmets, pikemen in steel caps and brigandines, cross-bowmen in leather
jerkins. They crossed the border, took a frontier castle and burned
three mountain villages, and then, in the valley of the Valkia, ten
miles west of the boundary line, they met the hosts of Conan, king of
Aquilonia--forty-five thousand knights, archers and men-at-arms, the
flower of Aquilonian strength and chivalry. Only the knights of Poitain,
under Prospero, had not yet arrived, for they had far to ride up from
the southwestern corner of the kingdom. Tarascus had struck without
warning. His invasion had come on the heels of his proclamation, without
formal declaration of war.

The two hosts confronted each other across a wide, shallow valley, with
rugged cliffs, and a shallow stream winding through masses of reeds and
willows down the middle of the vale. The camp-followers of both hosts
came down to this stream for water, and shouted insults and hurled
stones across at one another. The last glints of the sun shone on the
golden banner of Nemedia with the scarlet dragon, unfurled in the breeze
above the pavilion of King Tarascus on an eminence near the eastern
cliffs. But the shadow of the western cliffs fell like a vast purple
pall across the tents and the army of Aquilonia, and upon the black
banner with its golden lion that floated above King Conan's pavilion.

All night the fires flared the length of the valley, and the wind
brought the call of trumpets, the clangor of arms, and the sharp
challenges of the sentries who paced their horses along either edge of
the willow-grown stream.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was in the darkness before dawn that King Conan stirred on his couch,
which was no more than a pile of silks and furs thrown on a dais, and
awakened. He started up, crying out sharply and clutching at his sword.
Pallantides, his commander, rushing in at the cry, saw his king sitting
upright, his hand on his hilt, and perspiration dripping from his
strangely pale face.

'Your Majesty!' exclaimed Pallantides. 'Is aught amiss?'

'What of the camp?' demanded Conan. 'Are the guards out?'

'Five hundred horsemen patrol the stream, your Majesty,' answered the
general. 'The Nemedians have not offered to move against us in the
night. They wait for dawn, even as we.'

'By Crom,' muttered Conan. 'I awoke with a feeling that doom was
creeping on me in the night.'

He stared up at the great golden lamp which shed a soft glow over the
velvet hangings and carpets of the great tent. They were alone; not even
a slave or a page slept on the carpeted floor; but Conan's eyes blazed
as they were wont to blaze in the teeth of great peril, and the sword
quivered in his hand. Pallantides watched him uneasily. Conan seemed to
be listening.

'Listen!' hissed the king. 'Did you hear it? A furtive step!'

'Seven knights guard your tent, your Majesty,' said Pallantides. 'None
could approach it unchallenged.'

'Not outside,' growled Conan. 'It seemed to sound inside the tent.'

Pallantides cast a swift, startled look around. The velvet hangings
merged with shadows in the corners, but if there had been anyone in the
pavilion besides themselves, the general would have seen him. Again he
shook his head.

'There is no one here, sire. You sleep in the midst of your host.'

'I have seen death strike a king in the midst of thousands,' muttered
Conan. 'Something that walks on invisible feet and is not seen--'

'Perhaps you were dreaming, your Majesty,' said Pallantides, somewhat
perturbed.

'So I was,' grunted Conan. 'A devilish dream it was, too. I trod again
all the long, weary roads I traveled on my way to the kingship.'

He fell silent, and Pallantides stared at him unspeaking. The king was
an enigma to the general, as to most of his civilized subjects.
Pallantides knew that Conan had walked many strange roads in his wild,
eventful life, and had been many things before a twist of Fate set him
on the throne of Aquilonia.

'I saw again the battlefield whereon I was born,' said Conan, resting
his chin moodily on a massive fist. 'I saw myself in a pantherskin
loin-cloth, throwing my spear at the mountain beasts. I was a mercenary
swordsman again, a hetman of the _kozaki_ who dwell along the Zaporoska
River, a corsair looting the coasts of Kush, a pirate of the Barachan
Isles, a chief of the Himelian hillmen. All these things I've been, and
of all these things I dreamed; all the shapes that have been I passed
like an endless procession, and their feet beat out a dirge in the
sounding dust.

'But throughout my dreams moved strange, veiled figures and ghostly
shadows, and a faraway voice mocked me. And toward the last I seemed to
see myself lying on this dais in my tent, and a shape bent over me,
robed and hooded. I lay unable to move, and then the hood fell away and
a moldering skull grinned down at me. Then it was that I awoke.'

'This is an evil dream, your Majesty,' said Pallantides, suppressing a
shudder. 'But no more.'

Conan shook his head, more in doubt than in denial. He came of a
barbaric race, and the superstitions and instincts of his heritage
lurked close beneath the surface of his consciousness.

'I've dreamed many evil dreams,' he said, 'and most of them were
meaningless. But by Crom, this was not like most dreams! I wish this
battle were fought and won, for I've had a grisly premonition ever since
King Nimed died in the black plague. Why did it cease when he died?'

'Men say he sinned--'

'Men are fools, as always,' grunted Conan. 'If the plague struck all who
sinned, then by Crom there wouldn't be enough left to count the living!
Why should the gods--who the priests tell me are just--slay five hundred
peasants and merchants and nobles before they slew the king, if the
whole pestilence were aimed at him? Were the gods smiting blindly, like
swordsmen in a fog? By Mitra, if I aimed my strokes no straighter,
Aquilonia would have had a new king long ago.

'No! The black plague's no common pestilence. It lurks in Stygian
tombs, and is called forth into being only by wizards. I was a swordsman
in Prince Almuric's army that invaded Stygia, and of his thirty
thousand, fifteen thousand perished by Stygian arrows, and the rest by
the black plague that rolled on us like a wind out of the south. I was
the only man who lived.'

'Yet only five hundred died in Nemedia,' argued Pallantides.

'Whoever called it into being knew how to cut it short at will,'
answered Conan. 'So I know there was something planned and diabolical
about it. Someone called it forth, someone banished it when the work was
completed--when Tarascus was safe on the throne and being hailed as the
deliverer of the people from the wrath of the gods. By Crom, I sense a
black, subtle brain behind all this. What of this stranger who men say
gives counsel to Tarascus?'

'He wears a veil,' answered Pallantides; 'they say he is a foreigner; a
stranger from Stygia.'

'A stranger from Stygia!' repeated Conan scowling. 'A stranger from
hell, more like!--Ha! What is that?'

'The trumpets of the Nemedians!' exclaimed Pallantides. 'And hark, how
our own blare upon their heels! Dawn is breaking, and the captains are
marshaling the hosts for the onset! Mitra be with them, for many will
not see the sun go down behind the crags.'

'Send my squires to me!' exclaimed Conan, rising with alacrity and
casting off his velvet night-garment; he seemed to have forgotten his
forebodings at the prospect of action. 'Go to the captains and see that
all is in readiness. I will be with you as soon as I don my armor.'

Many of Conan's ways were inexplicable to the civilized people he ruled,
and one of them was his insistence on sleeping alone in his chamber or
tent. Pallantides hastened from the pavilion, clanking in the armor he
had donned at midnight after a few hours' sleep. He cast a swift glance
over the camp, which was beginning to swarm with activity, mail clinking
and men moving about dimly in the uncertain light, among the long lines
of tents. Stars still glimmered palely in the western sky, but long pink
streamers stretched along the eastern horizon, and against them the
dragon banner of Nemedia flung out its billowing silken folds.

Pallantides turned toward a smaller tent near by, where slept the royal
squires. These were tumbling out already, roused by the trumpets. And as
Pallantides called to them to hasten, he was frozen speechless by a deep
fierce shout and the impact of a heavy blow inside the king's tent,
followed by the heart-stopping crash of a falling body. There sounded a
low laugh that turned the general's blood to ice.

Echoing the cry, Pallantides wheeled and rushed back into the pavilion.
He cried out again as he saw Conan's powerful frame stretched out on
the carpet. The king's great two-handed sword lay near his hand, and a
shattered tent-pole seemed to show where his stroke had fallen.
Pallantides' sword was out, and he glared about the tent, but nothing
met his gaze. Save for the king and himself it was empty, as it had been
when he left it.

'Your Majesty!' Pallantides threw himself on his knee beside the fallen
giant.

Conan's eyes were open; they blazed up at him with full intelligence and
recognition. His lips writhed, but no sound came forth. He seemed unable
to move.

Voices sounded without. Pallantides rose swiftly and stepped to the
door. The royal squires and one of the knights who guarded the tent
stood there.

'We heard a sound within,' said the knight apologetically. 'Is all well
with the king?'

Pallantides regarded him searchingly.

'None has entered or left the pavilion this night?'

'None save yourself, my lord,' answered the knight, and Pallantides
could not doubt his honesty.

'The king stumbled and dropped his sword,' said Pallantides briefly.
'Return to your post.'

As the knight turned away, the general covertly motioned to the five
royal squires, and when they had followed him in, he drew the flap
closely. They turned pale at the sight of the king stretched upon the
carpet, but Pallantides' quick gesture checked their exclamations.

The general bent over him again, and again Conan made an effort to
speak. The veins in his temples and the cords in his neck swelled with
his efforts, and he lifted his head clear of the ground. Voice came at
last, mumbling and half intelligible.

'_The thing--the thing in the corner!_'

Pallantides lifted his head and looked fearfully about him. He saw the
pale faces of the squires in the lamplight, the velvet shadows that
lurked along the walls of the pavilion. That was all.

'There is nothing here, your Majesty,' he said.

'It was there, in the corner,' muttered the king, tossing his lion-maned
head from side to side in his efforts to rise. 'A man--at least he
looked like a man--wrapped in rags like a mummy's bandages, with a
moldering cloak drawn about him, and a hood. All I could see was his
eyes, as he crouched there in the shadows. I thought he was a shadow
himself, until I saw his eyes. They were like black jewels.

'I made at him and swung my sword, but I missed him clean--how, Crom
knows--and splintered that pole instead. He caught my wrist as I
staggered off balance, and his fingers burned like hot iron. All the
strength went out of me, and the floor rose and struck me like a club.
Then he was gone, and I was down, and--curse him!--I can't move! I'm
paralysed!'

Pallantides lifted the giant's hand, and his flesh crawled. On the
king's wrist showed the blue marks of long, lean fingers. What hand
could grip so hard as to leave its print on that thick wrist?
Pallantides remembered that low laugh he had heard as he rushed into the
tent, and cold perspiration beaded his skin. It had not been Conan who
laughed.

'This is a thing diabolical!' whispered a trembling squire. 'Men say the
children of darkness war for Tarascus!'

'Be silent!' ordered Pallantides sternly.

Outside, the dawn was dimming the stars. A light wind sprang up from the
peaks, and brought the fanfare of a thousand trumpets. At the sound a
convulsive shudder ran through the king's mighty form. Again the veins
in his temples knotted as he strove to break the invisible shackles
which crushed him down.

'Put my harness on me and tie me into my saddle,' he whispered. 'I'll
lead the charge yet!'

Pallantides shook his head, and a squire plucked his skirt.

'My lord, we are lost if the host learns the king has been smitten! Only
he could have led us to victory this day.'

'Help me lift him on the dais,' answered the general.

They obeyed, and laid the helpless giant on the furs, and spread a
silken cloak over him. Pallantides turned to the five squires and
searched their pale faces long before he spoke.

'Our lips must be sealed for ever as to what happens in this tent,' he
said at last. 'The kingdom of Aquilonia depends upon it. One of you go
and fetch me the officer Valannus, who is a captain of the Pellian
spearmen.'

The squire indicated bowed and hastened from the tent, and Pallantides
stood staring down at the stricken king, while outside trumpets blared,
drums thundered, and the roar of the multitudes rose in the growing
dawn. Presently the squire returned with the officer Pallantides had
named--a tall man, broad and powerful, built much like the king. Like
him, also, he had thick black hair. But his eyes were gray and he did
not resemble Conan in his features.

'The king is stricken by a strange malady,' said Pallantides briefly. 'A
great honor is yours; you are to wear his armor and ride at the head of
the host today. None must know that it is not the king who rides.'

'It is an honor for which a man might gladly give up his life,'
stammered the captain, overcome by the suggestion. 'Mitra grant that I
do not fail of this mighty trust!'

And while the fallen king stared with burning eyes that reflected the
bitter rage and humiliation that ate his heart, the squires stripped
Valannus of mail shirt, burganet and leg-pieces, and clad him in Conan's
armor of black plate-mail, with the vizored salade, and the dark plumes
nodding over the wyvern crest. Over all they put the silken surcoat with
the royal lion worked in gold upon the breast, and they girt him with a
broad gold-buckled belt which supported a jewel-hilted broadsword in a
cloth-of-gold scabbard. While they worked, trumpets clamored outside,
arms clanged, and across the river rose a deep-throated roar as squadron
after squadron swung into place.

Full-armed, Valannus dropped to his knee and bent his plumes before the
figure that lay on the dais.

'Lord king, Mitra grant that I do not dishonor the harness I wear this
day!'

'Bring me Tarascus' head and I'll make you a baron!' In the stress of
his anguish Conan's veneer of civilization had fallen from him. His eyes
flamed, he ground his teeth in fury and blood-lust, as barbaric as any
tribesmen in the Cimmerian hills.




3

The Cliffs Reel


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

The Haunter of the Pits


Conan lay still, enduring the weight of his chains and the despair of
his position with the stoicism of the wilds that had bred him. He did
not move, because the jangle of his chains, when he shifted his body,
sounded startlingly loud in the darkness and stillness, and it was his
instinct, born of a thousand wilderness-bred ancestors, not to betray
his position in his helplessness. This did not result from a logical
reasoning process; he did not lie quiet because he reasoned that the
darkness hid lurking dangers that might discover him in his
helplessness. Xaltotun had assured him that he was not to be harmed, and
Conan believed that it was in the man's interest to preserve him, at
least for the time being. But the instincts of the wild were there, that
had caused him in his childhood to lie hidden and silent while wild
beasts prowled about his covert.

Even his keen eyes could not pierce the solid darkness. Yet after a
while, after a period of time he had no way of estimating, a faint glow
became apparent, a sort of slanting gray beam, by which Conan could see,
vaguely, the bars of the door at his elbow, and even make out the
skeleton of the other grille. This puzzled him, until at last he
realized the explanation. He was far below ground, in the pits below the
palace; yet for some reason a shaft had been constructed from somewhere
above. Outside, the moon had risen to a point where its light slanted
dimly down the shaft. He reflected that in this manner he could tell the
passing of the days and nights. Perhaps the sun, too, would shine down
that shaft, though on the other hand it might be closed by day. Perhaps
it was a subtle method of torture, allowing a prisoner but a glimpse of
daylight or moonlight.

His gaze fell on the broken bones in the farther corner, glimmering
dimly. He did not tax his brain with futile speculation as to who the
wretch had been and for what reason he had been doomed, but he wondered
at the shattered condition of the bones. They had not been broken on a
rack. Then, as he looked, another unsavory detail made itself evident.
The shin-bones were split lengthwise, and there was but one explanation;
they had been broken in that manner in order to obtain the marrow. Yet
what creature but man breaks bones for their marrow? Perhaps those
remnants were mute evidence of a horrible, cannibalistic feast, of some
wretch driven to madness by starvation. Conan wondered if his own bones
would be found at some future date, hanging in their rusty chains. He
fought down the unreasoning panic of a trapped wolf.

The Cimmerian did not curse, scream, weep or rave as a civilized man
might have done. But the pain and turmoil in his bosom were none the
less fierce. His great limbs quivered with the intensity of his
emotions. Somewhere, far to the westward, the Nemedian host was slashing
and burning its way through the heart of his kingdom. The small host of
the Poitanians could not stand before them. Prospero might be able to
hold Tarantia for weeks, or months; but eventually, if not relieved, he
must surrender to greater numbers. Surely the barons would rally to him
against the invaders. But in the meanwhile he, Conan, must lie helpless
in a darkened cell, while others led his spears and fought for his
kingdom. The king ground his powerful teeth in red rage.

Then he stiffened as outside the farther door he heard a stealthy step.
Straining his eyes he made out a bent, indistinct figure outside the
grille. There was a rasp of metal against metal, and he heard the clink
of tumblers, as if a key had been turned in the lock. Then the figure
moved silently out of his range of vision. Some guard, he supposed,
trying the lock. After a while he heard the sound repeated faintly
somewhere farther on, and that was followed by the soft opening of a
door, and then a swift scurry of softly shod feet retreated in the
distance. Then silence fell again.

Conan listened for what seemed a long time, but which could not have
been, for the moon still shone down the hidden shaft, but he heard no
further sound. He shifted his position at last, and his chains clanked.
Then he heard another, lighter footfall--a soft step outside the nearer
door, the door through which he had entered the cell. An instant later a
slender figure was etched dimly in the gray light.

'King Conan!' a soft voice intoned urgently. 'Oh, my lord, are you
there?'

'Where else?' he answered guardedly, twisting his head about to stare at
the apparition.

It was a girl who stood grasping the bars with her slender fingers. The
dim glow behind her outlined her supple figure through the wisp of silk
twisted about her loins, and shone vaguely on jeweled breast-plates. Her
dark eyes gleamed in the shadows, her white limbs glistened softly, like
alabaster. Her hair was a mass of dark foam, at the burnished luster of
which the dim light only hinted.

'The keys to your shackles and to the farther door!' she whispered, and
a slim white hand came through the bars and dropped three objects with a
clink to the flags beside him.

'What game is this?' he demanded. 'You speak in the Nemedian tongue, and
I have no friends in Nemedia. What deviltry is your master up to now?
Has he sent you here to mock me?'

'It is no mockery!' The girl was trembling violently. Her bracelets and
breast-plates clinked against the bars she grasped. 'I swear by Mitra! I
stole the keys from the black jailers. They are the keepers of the pits,
and each bears a key which will open only one set of locks. I made them
drunk. The one whose head you broke was carried away to a leech, and I
could not get his key. But the others I stole. Oh, please do not
loiter! Beyond these dungeons lie the pits which are the doors to hell.'

Somewhat impressed, Conan tried the keys dubiously, expecting to meet
only failure and a burst of mocking laughter. But he was galvanized to
discover that one, indeed, loosed him of his shackles, fitting not only
the lock that held them to the ring, but the locks on his limbs as well.
A few seconds later he stood upright, exulting fiercely in his
comparative freedom. A quick stride carried him to the grille, and his
fingers closed about a bar and the slender wrist that was pressed
against it, imprisoning the owner, who lifted her face bravely to his
fierce gaze.

'Who are you, girl?' he demanded. 'Why do you do this?'

'I am only Zenobia,' she murmured, with a catch of breathlessness, as if
in fright; 'only a girl of the king's seraglio.'

'Unless this is some cursed trick,' muttered Conan, 'I cannot see why
you bring me these keys.'

She bowed her dark head, and then lifted it and looked full into his
suspicious eyes. Tears sparkled like jewels on her long dark lashes.

'I am only a girl of the king's seraglio,' she said, with a certain
proud humility. 'He has never glanced at me, and probably never will. I
am less than one of the dogs that gnaw the bones in his banquet hall.

'But I am no painted toy; I am of flesh and blood. I breathe, hate,
fear, rejoice and love. And I have loved you, King Conan, ever since I
saw you riding at the head of your knights along the streets of Belverus
when you visited King Nimed, years ago. My heart tugged at its strings
to leap from my bosom and fall in the dust of the street under your
horse's hoofs.'

Color flooded her countenance as she spoke, but her dark eyes did not
waver. Conan did not at once reply; wild and passionate and untamed he
was, yet any but the most brutish of men must be touched with a certain
awe or wonder at the baring of a woman's naked soul.

She bent her head then, and pressed her red lips to the fingers that
imprisoned her slim wrist. Then she flung up her head as if in sudden
recollection of their position, and terror flared in her dark eyes.

'Haste!' she whispered urgently. 'It is past midnight. You must be
gone.'

'But won't they skin you alive for stealing these keys?'

'They'll never know. If the black men remember in the morning who gave
them the wine, they will not dare admit the keys were stolen from them
while they were drunk. The key that I could not obtain is the one that
unlocks this door. You must make your way to freedom through the pits.
What awful perils lurk beyond that door I cannot even guess. But greater
danger lurks for you if you remain in this cell.

'King Tarascus has returned--'

'What? Tarascus?'

'Aye! He has returned, in great secrecy, and not long ago he descended
into the pits and then came out again, pale and shaking, like a man who
had dared a great hazard. I heard him whisper to his squire, Arideus,
that despite Xaltotun you should die.'

'What of Xaltotun?' murmured Conan.

He felt her shudder.

'Do not speak of him!' she whispered. 'Demons are often summoned by the
sound of their names. The slaves say that he lies in his chamber, behind
a bolted door, dreaming the dreams of the black lotus. I believe that
even Tarascus secretly fears him, or he would slay you openly. But he
has been in the pits tonight, and what he did there, only Mitra knows.'

'I wonder if that could have been Tarascus who fumbled at my cell door
awhile ago?' muttered Conan.

'Here is a dagger!' she whispered, pressing something through the bars.
His eager fingers closed on an object familiar to their touch. 'Go
quickly through yonder door, turn to the left and make your way along
the cells until you come to a stone stair. On your life do not stray
from the line of the cells! Climb the stair and open the door at the
top; one of the keys will fit it. If it be the will of Mitra, I will
await you there.' Then she was gone, with a patter of light slippered
feet.

Conan shrugged his shoulders, and turned toward the farther grille. This
might be some diabolical trap planned by Tarascus, but plunging headlong
into a snare was less abhorrent to Conan's temperament than sitting
meekly to await his doom. He inspected the weapon the girl had given
him, and smiled grimly. Whatever else she might be, she was proven by
that dagger to be a person of practical intelligence. It was no slender
stiletto, selected because of a jeweled hilt or gold guard, fitted only
for dainty murder in milady's boudoir; it was a forthright poniard, a
warrior's weapon, broad-bladed, fifteen inches in length, tapering to a
diamond-sharp point.

He grunted with satisfaction. The feel of the hilt cheered him and gave
him a glow of confidence. Whatever webs of conspiracy were drawn about
him, whatever trickery and treachery ensnared him, this knife was real.
The great muscles of his right arm swelled in anticipation of murderous
blows.

He tried the farther door, fumbling with the keys as he did so. It was
not locked. Yet he remembered the black man locking it. That furtive,
bent figure, then, had been no jailer seeing that the bolts were in
place. He had unlocked the door, instead. There was a sinister
suggestion about that unlocked door. But Conan did not hesitate. He
pushed upon the grille and stepped from the dungeon into the outer
darkness.

As he had thought, the door did not open into another corridor. The
flagged floor stretched away under his feet, and the line of cells ran
away to the right and left behind him, but he could not make out the
other limits of the place into which he had come. He could see neither
the roof nor any other wall. The moonlight filtered into that vastness
only through the grilles of the cells, and was almost lost in the
darkness. Less keen eyes than his could scarcely have discerned the dim
gray patches that floated before each cell door.

Turning to the left, he moved swiftly and noiselessly along the line of
dungeons, his bare feet making no sound on the flags. He glanced briefly
into each dungeon as he passed it. They were all empty, but locked. In
some he caught the glimmer of naked white bones. These pits were a relic
of a grimmer age, constructed long ago when Belverus was a fortress
rather than a city. But evidently their more recent use had been more
extensive than the world guessed.

Ahead of him, presently, he saw the dim outline of a stair sloping
sharply upward, and knew it must be the stair he sought. Then he whirled
suddenly, crouching in the deep shadows at its foot.

Somewhere behind him something was moving--something bulky and stealthy
that padded on feet which were not human feet. He was looking down the
long row of cells, before each one of which lay a square of dim gray
light that was little more than a patch of less dense darkness. But he
saw something moving along these squares. What it was he could not tell,
but it was heavy and huge, and yet it moved with more than human ease
and swiftness. He glimpsed it as it moved across the squares of gray,
then lost it as it merged in the expanses of shadow between. It was
uncanny, in its stealthy advance, appearing and disappearing like a blur
of the vision.

He heard the bars rattle as it tried each door in turn. Now it had
reached the cell he had so recently quitted, and the door swung open as
it tugged. He saw a great bulky shape limned faintly and briefly in the
gray doorway, and then the thing had vanished into the dungeon. Sweat
beaded Conan's face and hands. Now he knew why Tarascus had come so
subtly to his door, and later had fled so swiftly. The king had unlocked
his door, and, somewhere in these hellish pits, had opened a cell or
cage that held some grim monstrosity.

Now the thing was emerging from the cell and was again advancing up the
corridor, its misshapen head close to the ground. It paid no more heed
to the locked doors. It was smelling out his trail. He saw it more
plainly now; the gray light limned a giant anthropomorphic body, but
vaster of bulk and girth than any man. It went on two legs, though it
stooped forward, and it was grayish and shaggy, its thick coat shot with
silver. Its head was a grisly travesty of the human, its long arms hung
nearly to the ground.

Conan knew it at last--understood the meaning of those crushed and
broken bones in the dungeon, and recognized the haunter of the pits. It
was a gray ape, one of the grisly man-eaters from the forests that wave
on the mountainous eastern shores of the Sea of Vilayet. Half mythical
and altogether horrible, these apes were the goblins of Hyborian
legendry, and were in reality ogres of the natural world, cannibals and
murderers of the nighted forests.

He knew it scented his presence, for it was coming swiftly now, rolling
its barrel-like body rapidly along on its short, mighty bowed legs. He
cast a quick glance up the long stair, but knew that the thing would be
on his back before he could mount to the distant door. He chose to meet
it face to face.

Conan stepped out into the nearest square of moonlight, so as to have
all the advantage of illumination that he could; for the beast, he knew,
could see better than himself in the dark. Instantly the brute saw him;
its great yellow tusks gleamed in the shadows, but it made no sound.
Creatures of night and the silence, the gray apes of Vilayet were
voiceless. But in its dim, hideous features, which were a bestial
travesty of a human face, showed ghastly exultation.

Conan stood poised, watching the oncoming monster without a quiver. He
knew he must stake his life on one thrust; there would be no chance for
another; nor would there be time to strike and spring away. The first
blow must kill, and kill instantly, if he hoped to survive that awful
grapple. He swept his gaze over the short, squat throat, the hairy
swagbelly, and the mighty breast, swelling in giant arches like twin
shields. It must be the heart; better to risk the blade being deflected
by the heavy ribs than to strike in where a stroke was not instantly
fatal. With full realization of the odds, Conan matched his speed of eye
and hand and his muscular power against the brute might and ferocity of
the man-eater. He must meet the brute breast to breast, strike a
death-blow, and then trust to the ruggedness of his frame to survive the
instant of manhandling that was certain to be his.

As the ape came rolling in on him, swinging wide its terrible arms, he
plunged in between them and struck with all his desperate power. He felt
the blade sink to the hilt in the hairy breast, and instantly, releasing
it, he ducked his head and bunched his whole body into one compact mass
of knotted muscles, and as he did so he grasped the closing arms and
drove his knee fiercely into the monster's belly, bracing himself
against that crushing grapple.

For one dizzy instant he felt as if he were being dismembered in the
grip of an earthquake; then suddenly he was free, sprawling on the
floor, and the monster was gasping out its life beneath him, its red
eyes turned upward, the hilt of the poniard quivering in its breast. His
desperate stab had gone home.

Conan was panting as if after long conflict, trembling in every limb.
Some of his joints felt as if they had been dislocated, and blood
dripped from scratches on his skin where the monster's talons had
ripped; his muscles and tendons had been savagely wrenched and twisted.
If the beast had lived a second longer, it would surely have dismembered
him. But the Cimmerian's mighty strength had resisted, for the fleeting
instant it had endured, the dying convulsion of the ape that would have
torn a lesser man limb from limb.




6

The Thrust of a Knife


Conan stooped and tore the knife from the monster's breast. Then he went
swiftly up the stair. What other shapes of fear the darkness held he
could not guess, but he had no desire to encounter any more. This
touch-and-go sort of battling was too strenuous even for the giant
Cimmerian. The moonlight was fading from the floor, the darkness closing
in, and something like panic pursued him up the stair. He breathed a
gusty sigh of relief when he reached the head, and felt the third key
turn in the lock. He opened the door slightly, and craned his neck to
peer through, half expecting an attack from some human or bestial enemy.

He looked into a bare stone corridor, dimly lighted, and a slender,
supple figure stood before the door.

'Your Majesty!' It was a low, vibrant cry, half in relief and half in
fear. The girl sprang to his side, then hesitated as if abashed.

'You bleed,' she said. 'You have been hurt!'

He brushed aside the implication with an impatient hand.

'Scratches that wouldn't hurt a baby. Your skewer came in handy, though.
But for it Tarascus' monkey would be cracking my shin-bones for the
marrow right now. But what now?'

'Follow me,' she whispered. 'I will lead you outside the city wall. I
have a horse concealed there.'

She turned to lead the way down the corridor, but he laid a heavy hand
on her naked shoulder.

'Walk beside me,' he instructed her softly, passing his massive arm
about her lithe waist. 'You've played me fair so far, and I'm inclined
to believe in you; but I've lived this long only because I've trusted no
one too far, man or woman. So! Now if you play me false you won't live
to enjoy the jest.'

She did not flinch at sight of the reddened poniard or the contact of
his hard muscles about her supple body.

'Cut me down without mercy if I play you false,' she answered. 'The very
feel of your arm about me, even in menace, is as the fulfillment of a
dream.'

The vaulted corridor ended at a door, which she opened. Outside lay
another black man, a giant in turban and silk loin-cloth, with a curved
sword lying on the flags near his hand. He did not move.

'I drugged his wine,' she whispered, swerving to avoid the recumbent
figure. 'He is the last, and outer, guard of the pits. None ever escaped
from them before, and none has ever wished to seek them; so only these
black men guard them. Only these of all the servants knew it was King
Conan that Xaltotun brought a prisoner in his chariot. I was watching,
sleepless, from an upper casement that opened into the court, while the
other girls slept; for I knew that a battle was being fought, or had
been fought, in the west, and I feared for you....

'I saw the blacks carry you up the stair, and I recognized you in the
torchlight. I slipped into this wing of the palace tonight, in time to
see them carry you to the pits. I had not dared come here before
nightfall. You must have lain in drugged senselessness all day in
Xaltotun's chamber.

'Oh, let us be wary! Strange things are afoot in the palace tonight. The
slaves said that Xaltotun slept as he often sleeps, drugged by the lotus
of Stygia, but Tarascus is in the palace. He entered secretly, through
the postern, wrapped in his cloak which was dusty as with long travel,
and attended only by his squire, the lean silent Arideus. I cannot
understand, but I am afraid.'

They came out at the foot of a narrow, winding stair, and mounting it,
passed through a narrow panel which she slid aside. When they had passed
through, she slipped it back in place, and it became merely a portion of
the ornate wall. They were in a more spacious corridor, carpeted and
tapestried, over which hanging lamps shed a golden glow.

Conan listened intently, but he heard no sound throughout the palace. He
did not know in what part of the palace he was, or in which direction
lay the chamber of Xaltotun. The girl was trembling as she drew him
along the corridor, to halt presently beside an alcove masked with satin
tapestry. Drawing this aside, she motioned for him to step into the
niche, and whispered: 'Wait here! Beyond that door at the end of the
corridor we are likely to meet slaves or eunuchs at any time of the day
or night. I will go and see if the way is clear, before we essay it.'

Instantly his hair-trigger suspicions were aroused.

'Are you leading me into a trap?'

Tears sprang into her dark eyes. She sank to her knees and seized his
muscular hand.

'Oh, my king, do not mistrust me now!' Her voice shook with desperate
urgency. 'If you doubt and hesitate, we are lost! Why should I bring you
up out of the pits to betray you now?'

'All right,' he muttered. 'I'll trust you; though, by Crom, the habits
of a lifetime are not easily put aside. Yet I wouldn't harm you now, if
you brought all the swordsmen in Nemedia upon me. But for you Tarascus'
cursed ape would have come upon me in chains and unarmed. Do as you
wish, girl.'

Kissing his hands, she sprang lithely up and ran down the corridor, to
vanish through a heavy double door.

He glanced after her, wondering if he was a fool to trust her; then he
shrugged his mighty shoulders and pulled the satin hangings together,
masking his refuge. It was not strange that a passionate young beauty
should be risking her life to aid him; such things had happened often
enough in his life. Many women had looked on him with favor, in the days
of his wanderings, and in the time of his kingship.

Yet he did not remain motionless in the alcove, waiting for her return.
Following his instincts, he explored the niche for another exit, and
presently found one--the opening of a narrow passage, masked by the
tapestries, that ran to an ornately carved door, barely visible in the
dim light that filtered in from the outer corridor. And as he stared
into it, somewhere beyond that carven door he heard the sound of another
door opening and shutting, and then a low mumble of voices. The familiar
sound of one of those voices caused a sinister expression to cross his
dark face. Without hesitation he glided down the passage, and crouched
like a stalking panther beside the door. It was not locked, and
manipulating it delicately, he pushed it open a crack, with a reckless
disregard for possible consequences that only he could have explained or
defended.

It was masked on the other side by tapestries, but through a thin slit
in the velvet he looked into a chamber lit by a candle on an ebony
table. There were two men in that chamber. One was a scarred,
sinister-looking ruffian in leather breeks and ragged cloak; the other
was Tarascus, king of Nemedia.

Tarascus seemed ill at ease. He was slightly pale, and he kept starting
and glancing about him, as if expecting and fearing to hear some sound
or footstep.

'Go swiftly and at once,' he was saying. 'He is deep in drugged slumber,
but I know not when he may awaken.'

'Strange to hear words of fear issuing from the lips of Tarascus,'
rumbled the other in a harsh, deep voice.

The king frowned.

'I fear no common man, as you well know. But when I saw the cliffs fall
at Valkia I knew that this devil we had resurrected was no charlatan. I
fear his powers, because I do not know the full extent of them. But I
know that somehow they are connected with this accursed thing which I
have stolen from him. It brought him back to life; so it must be the
source of his sorcery.

'He had it hidden well; but following my secret order a slave spied on
him and saw him place it in a golden chest, and saw where he hid the
chest. Even so, I would not have dared steal it had Xaltotun himself not
been sunk in lotus slumber.

'I believe it is the secret of his power. With it Orastes brought him
back to life. With it he will make us all slaves, if we are not wary. So
take it and cast it into the sea as I have bidden you. And be sure you
are so far from land that neither tide nor storm can wash it up on the
beach. You have been paid.'

'So I have,' grunted the ruffian. 'And I owe more than gold to you,
king; I owe you a debt of gratitude. Even thieves can be grateful.'

'Whatever debt you may feel you owe me,' answered Tarascus, 'will be
paid when you have hurled this thing into the sea.'

'I'll ride for Zingara and take ship from Kordava,' promised the other.
'I dare not show my head in Argos, because of the matter of a murder or
so--'

'I care not, so it is done. Here it is; a horse awaits you in the court.
Go, and go swiftly!'

Something passed between them, something that flamed like living fire.
Conan had only a brief glimpse of it; and then the ruffian pulled a
slouch hat over his eyes, drew his cloak about his shoulder, and hurried
from the chamber. And as the door closed behind him, Conan moved with
the devastating fury of unchained blood-lust. He had held himself in
check so long as he could. The sight of his enemy so near him set his
wild blood seething and swept away all caution and restraint.

Tarascus was turning toward an inner door when Conan tore aside the
hangings and leaped like a blood-mad panther into the room. Tarascus
wheeled, but even before he could recognize his attacker, Conan's
poniard ripped into him.

But the blow was not mortal, as Conan knew the instant he struck. His
foot had caught in a fold of the curtains and tripped him as he leaped.
The point fleshed itself in Tarascus' shoulder and plowed down along his
ribs, and the king of Nemedia screamed.

The impact of the blow and Conan's lunging body hurled him back against
the table and it toppled and the candle went out. They were both carried
to the floor by the violence of Conan's rush, and the foot of the
tapestry hampered them both in its folds. Conan was stabbing blindly in
the dark, Tarascus screaming in a frenzy of panicky terror. As if fear
lent him superhuman energy, Tarascus tore free and blundered away in the
darkness, shrieking: 'Help! Guards! Arideus! Orastes! Orastes!'

Conan rose, kicking himself free of the tangling tapestries and the
broken table, cursing with the bitterness of his blood-thirsty
disappointment. He was confused, and ignorant of the plan of the palace.
The yells of Tarascus were still resounding in the distance, and a wild
outcry was bursting forth in answer. The Nemedian had escaped him in the
darkness, and Conan did not know which way he had gone. The Cimmerian's
rash stroke for vengeance had failed, and there remained only the task
of saving his own hide if he could.

Swearing luridly, Conan ran back down the passage and into the alcove,
glaring out into the lighted corridor, just as Zenobia came running up
it, her dark eyes dilated with terror.

'Oh, what has happened?' she cried. 'The palace is roused! I swear I
have not betrayed you--'

'No, it was I who stirred up this hornet's nest,' he grunted. 'I tried
to pay off a score. What's the shortest way out of this?'

She caught his wrist and ran fleetly down the corridor. But before they
reached the heavy door at the other end, muffled shouts arose from
behind it and the portals began to shake under an assault from the other
side. Zenobia wrung her hands and whimpered.

'We are cut off! I locked that door as I returned through it. But they
will burst it in a moment. The way to the postern gate lies through it.'

Conan wheeled. Up the corridor, though still out of sight, he heard a
rising clamor that told him his foes were behind as well as before him.

'Quick! Into this door!' the girl cried desperately, running across the
corridor and throwing open the door of a chamber.

Conan followed her through, and then threw the gold catch behind them.
They stood in an ornately furnished chamber, empty but for themselves,
and she drew him to a gold-barred window, through which he saw trees and
shrubbery.

'You are strong,' she panted. 'If you can tear these bars away, you may
yet escape. The garden is full of guards, but the shrubs are thick, and
you may avoid them. The southern wall is also the outer wall of the
city. Once over that, you have a chance to get away. A horse is hidden
for you in a thicket beside the road that runs westward, a few hundred
paces to the south of the fountain of Thrallos. You know where it is?'

'Aye! But what of you? I had meant to take you with me.'

A flood of joy lighted her beautiful face.

'Then my cup of happiness is brimming! But I will not hamper your
escape. Burdened with me you would fail. Nay, do not fear for me. They
will never suspect that I aided you willingly. Go! What you have just
said will glorify my life throughout the long years.'

He caught her up in his iron arms, crushed her slim, vibrant figure to
him and kissed her fiercely on eyes, cheeks, throat and lips, until she
lay panting in his embrace; gusty and tempestuous as a storm-wind, even
his love-making was violent.

'I'll go,' he muttered. 'But by Crom, I'll come for you some day!'

Wheeling, he gripped the gold bars and tore them from their sockets with
one tremendous wrench; threw a leg over the sill and went down swiftly,
clinging to the ornaments on the wall. He hit the ground running and
melted like a shadow into the maze of towering rose-bushes and spreading
trees. The one look he cast back over his shoulder showed him Zenobia
leaning over the window-sill, her arms stretched after him in mute
farewell and renunciation.

Guards were running through the garden, all converging toward the
palace, where the clamor momentarily grew louder--tall men in burnished
cuirasses and crested helmets of polished bronze. The starlight struck
glints from their gleaming armor, among the trees, betraying their every
movement; but the sound of their coming ran far before them. To Conan,
wilderness-bred, their rush through the shrubbery was like the
blundering stampede of cattle. Some of them passed within a few feet of
where he lay flat in a thick cluster of bushes, and never guessed his
presence. With the palace as their goal, they were oblivious to all else
about them. When they had gone shouting on, he rose and fled through the
garden with no more noise than a panther would have made.

So quickly he came to the southern wall, and mounted the steps that led
to the parapet. The wall was made to keep people out, not in. No sentry
patrolling the battlements was in sight. Crouching by an embrasure he
glanced back at the great palace rearing above the cypresses behind him.
Lights blazed from every window, and he could see figures flitting back
and forth across them like puppets on invisible strings. He grinned
hardly, shook his fist in a gesture of farewell and menace, and let
himself over the outer rim of the parapet.

A low tree, a few yards below the parapet, received Conan's weight, as
he dropped noiselessly into the branches. An instant later he was racing
through the shadows with the swinging hillman's stride that eats up long
miles.

Gardens and pleasure villas surrounded the walls of Belverus. Drowsy
slaves, sleeping by their watchman's pikes, did not see the swift and
furtive figure that scaled walls, crossed alleys made by the arching
branches of trees, and threaded a noiseless way through orchards and
vineyards. Watchdogs woke and lifted their deep-booming clamor at a
gliding shadow, half scented, half sensed, and then it was gone.

       *       *       *       *       *

In a chamber of the palace Tarascus writhed and cursed on a
blood-spattered couch, under the deft, quick fingers of Orastes. The
palace was thronged with wide-eyed, trembling servitors, but the chamber
where the king lay was empty save for himself and the renegade priest.

'Are you sure he still sleeps?' Tarascus demanded again, setting his
teeth against the bite of the herb juices with which Orastes was
bandaging the long, ragged gash in his shoulder and ribs. 'Ishtar, Mitra
and Set! That burns like molten pitch of hell!'

'Which you would be experiencing even now, but for your good fortune,'
remarked Orastes. 'Whoever wielded that knife struck to kill. Yes, I
have told you that Xaltotun still sleeps. Why are you so urgent upon
that point? What has he to do with this?'

'You know nothing of what has passed in the palace tonight?' Tarascus
searched the priest's countenance with burning intensity.

'Nothing. As you know, I have been employed in translating manuscripts
for Xaltotun, for some months now, transcribing esoteric volumes written
in the younger languages into script he can read. He was well versed in
all the tongues and scripts of his day, but he has not yet learned all
the newer languages, and to save time he has me translate these works
for him, to learn if any new knowledge has been discovered since his
time. I did not know that he had returned last night until he sent for
me and told me of the battle. Then I returned to my studies, nor did I
know that you had returned until the clamor in the palace brought me out
of my cell.'

'Then you do not know that Xaltotun brought the king of Aquilonia a
captive to this palace?'

Orastes shook his head, without particular surprise.

'Xaltotun merely said that Conan would oppose us no more. I supposed
that he had fallen, but did not ask the details.'

'Xaltotun saved his life when I would have slain him,' snarled Tarascus.
'I saw his purpose instantly. He would hold Conan captive to use as a
club against us--against Amalric, against Valerius, and against myself.
So long as Conan lives he is a threat, a unifying factor for Aquilonia,
that might be used to compel us into courses we would not otherwise
follow. I mistrust this undead Pythonian. Of late I have begun to fear
him.

'I followed him, some hours after he had departed eastward. I wished to
learn what he intended doing with Conan. I found that he had imprisoned
him in the pits. I intended to see that the barbarian died, in spite of
Xaltotun. And I accomplished----'

A cautious knock sounded at the door.

'That's Arideus,' grunted Tarascus. 'Let him in.'

The saturnine squire entered, his eyes blazing with suppressed
excitement.

'How, Arideus?' exclaimed Tarascus. 'Have you found the man who attacked
me?'

'You did not see him, my lord?' asked Arideus, as one who would assure
himself of a fact he already knows to exist. 'You did not recognize
him?'

'No. It happened so quick, and the candle was out--all I could think of
was that it was some devil loosed on me by Xaltotun's magic----'

'The Pythonian sleeps in his barred and bolted room. But I have been in
the pits.' Arideus twitched his lean shoulders excitedly.

'Well, speak, man!' exclaimed Tarascus impatiently. 'What did you find
there?'

'An empty dungeon,' whispered the squire. 'The corpse of the great ape!'

'_What?_' Tarascus started upright, and blood gushed from his opened
wound.

'Aye! The man-eater is dead--stabbed through the heart--and Conan is
gone!'

Tarascus was gray of face as he mechanically allowed Orastes to force
him prostrate again and the priest renewed work upon his mangled flesh.

'Conan!' he repeated. 'Not a crushed corpse--escaped! Mitra! He is no
man; but a devil himself! I thought Xaltotun was behind this wound. I
see now. Gods and devils! It was Conan who stabbed me! Arideus!'

'Aye, your Majesty!'

'Search every nook in the palace. He may be skulking through the dark
corridors now like a hungry tiger. Let no niche escape your scrutiny,
and beware. It is not a civilized man you hunt, but a blood-mad
barbarian whose strength and ferocity are those of a wild beast. Scour
the palace-grounds and the city. Throw a cordon about the walls. If you
find he has escaped from the city, as he may well do, take a troop of
horsemen and follow him. Once past the walls it will be like hunting a
wolf through the hills. But haste, and you may yet catch him.'

'This is a matter which requires more than ordinary human wits,' said
Orastes. 'Perhaps we should seek Xaltotun's advice.'

'No!' exclaimed Tarascus violently. 'Let the troopers pursue Conan and
slay him. Xaltotun can hold no grudge against us if we kill a prisoner
to prevent his escape.'

'Well,' said Orastes, 'I am no Acheronian, but I am versed in some of
the arts, and the control of certain spirits which have cloaked
themselves in material substance. Perhaps I can aid you in this matter.'

       *       *       *       *       *

The fountain of Thrallos stood in a clustered ring of oaks beside the
road a mile from the walls of the city. Its musical tinkle reached
Conan's ears through the silence of the starlight. He drank deep of its
icy stream, and then hurried southward toward a small, dense thicket he
saw there. Rounding it, he saw a great white horse tied among the
bushes. Heaving a deep gusty sigh he reached it with one stride--a
mocking laugh brought him about, glaring.

A dully glinting, mail-clad figure moved out of the shadows into the
starlight. This was no plumed and burnished palace guardsman. It was a
tall man in morion and gray chain-mail--one of the Adventurers, a class
of warriors peculiar to Nemedia; men who had not attained to the wealth
and position of knighthood, or had fallen from that estate; hard-bitten
fighters, dedicating their lives to war and adventure. They constituted
a class of their own, sometimes commanding troops, but themselves
accountable to no man but the king. Conan knew that he could have been
discovered by no more dangerous a foeman.

A quick glance among the shadows convinced him that the man was alone,
and he expanded his great chest slightly, digging his toes into the
turf, as his thews coiled tensely.

'I was riding for Belverus on Amalric's business,' said the Adventurer,
advancing warily. The starlight was a long sheen on the great two-handed
sword he bore naked in his hand. 'A horse whinnied to mine from the
thicket. I investigated and thought it strange a steed should be
tethered here. I waited--and lo, I have caught a rare prize!'

The Adventurers lived by their swords.

'I know you,' muttered the Nemedian. 'You are Conan, king of Aquilonia.
I thought I saw you die in the valley of the Valkia, but----'

Conan sprang as a dying tiger springs. Practised fighter though the
Adventurer was, he did not realize the desperate quickness that lurks in
barbaric sinews. He was caught off guard, his heavy sword half lifted.
Before he could either strike or parry, the king's poniard sheathed
itself in his throat, above the gorget, slanting downward into his
heart. With a choked gurgle he reeled and went down, and Conan
ruthlessly tore his blade free as his victim fell. The white horse
snorted violently and shied at the sight and scent of blood on the
sword.

Glaring down at his lifeless enemy, dripping poniard in hand, sweat
glistening on his broad breast, Conan poised like a statue, listening
intently. In the woods about there was no sound, save for the sleepy
cheep of awakened birds. But in the city, a mile away, he heard the
strident blare of a trumpet.

Hastily he bent over the fallen man. A few seconds' search convinced him
that whatever message the man might have borne was intended to be
conveyed by word of mouth. But he did not pause in his task. It was not
many hours until dawn. A few minutes later the white horse was galloping
westward along the white road, and the rider wore the gray mail of a
Nemedian Adventurer.




7

The Rending of the Veil


Conan knew his only chance of escape lay in speed. He did not even
consider hiding somewhere near Belverus until the chase passed on; he
was certain that the uncanny ally of Tarascus would be able to ferret
him out. Besides, he was not one to skulk and hide; an open fight or an
open chase, either suited his temperament better. He had a long start,
he knew. He would lead them a grinding race for the border.

Zenobia had chosen well in selecting the white horse. His speed,
toughness and endurance were obvious. The girl knew weapons and horses,
and, Conan reflected with some satisfaction, she knew men. He rode
westward at a gait that ate up the miles.

It was a sleeping land through which he rode, past grove-sheltered
villages and white-walled villas amid spacious fields and orchards that
grew sparser as he fared westward. As the villages thinned, the land
grew more rugged, and the keeps that frowned from eminences told of
centuries of border war. But none rode down from those castles to
challenge or halt him. The lords of the keeps were following the banner
of Amalric; the pennons that were wont to wave over these towers were
now floating over the Aquilonian plains.

When the last huddled village fell behind him, Conan left the road,
which was beginning to bend toward the northwest, toward the distant
passes. To keep to the road would mean to pass by border towers, still
garrisoned with armed men who would not allow him to pass unquestioned.
He knew there would be no patrols riding the border marches on either
side, as in ordinary times, but there were those towers, and with dawn
there would probably be cavalcades of returning soldiers with wounded
men in ox-carts.

This road from Belverus was the only road that crossed the border for
fifty miles from north to south. It followed a series of passes through
the hills, and on either hand lay a wide expanse of wild, sparsely
inhabited mountains. He maintained his due westerly direction, intending
to cross the border deep in the wilds of the hills that lay to the south
of the passes. It was a shorter route, more arduous, but safer for a
hunted fugitive. One man on a horse could traverse country an army would
find impassable.

But at dawn he had not reached the hills; they were a long, low, blue
rampart stretching along the horizon ahead of him. Here there were
neither farms nor villages, no white-walled villas looming among
clustering trees. The dawn wind stirred the tall stiff grass, and there
was nothing but the long rolling swells of brown earth, covered with dry
grass, and in the distance the gaunt walls of a stronghold on a low
hill. Too many Aquilonian raiders had crossed the mountains in not too
distant days for the countryside to be thickly settled as it was farther
to the east.

Dawn ran like a prairie fire across the grasslands, and high overhead
sounded a weird crying as a straggling wedge of wild geese winged
swiftly southward. In a grassy swale Conan halted and unsaddled his
mount. Its sides were heaving, its coat plastered with sweat. He had
pushed it unmercifully through the hours before dawn.

While it munched the brittle grass and rolled, he lay at the crest of
the low slope, staring eastward. Far away to the northward he could see
the road he had left, streaming like a white ribbon over a distant rise.
No black dots moved along that glistening ribbon. There was no sign
about the castle in the distance to indicate that the keepers had
noticed the lone wayfarer.

An hour later the land still stretched bare. The only sign of life was a
glint of steel on the far-off battlements, a raven in the sky that
wheeled backward and forth, dipping and rising as if seeking something.
Conan saddled and rode westward at a more leisurely gait.

As he topped the farther crest of the slope, a raucous screaming burst
out over his head, and looking up, he saw the raven flapping high above
him, cawing incessantly. As he rode on, it followed him, maintaining its
position and making the morning hideous with its strident cries,
heedless of his efforts to drive it away.

This kept up for hours, until Conan's teeth were on edge, and he felt
that he would give half his kingdom to be allowed to wring that black
neck.

'Devils of hell!' he roared in futile rage, shaking his mailed fist at
the frantic bird. 'Why do you harry me with your squawking? Begone, you
black spawn of perdition, and peck for wheat in the farmer's fields!'

He was ascending the first pitch of the hills, and he seemed to hear an
echo of the bird's clamor far behind him. Turning in his saddle, he
presently made out another black dot hanging in the blue. Beyond that
again he caught the glint of the afternoon sun on steel. That could mean
only one thing: armed men. And they were not riding along the beaten
road, which was out of his sight beyond the horizon. They were following
him.

His face grew grim and he shivered slightly as he stared at the raven
that wheeled high above him.

'So it is more than the whim of a brainless beast?' he muttered. 'Those
riders cannot see you, spawn of hell; but the other bird can see you,
and they can see him. You follow me, he follows you, and they follow
him. Are you only a craftily trained feathered creature, or some devil
in the form of a bird? Did Xaltotun set you on my trail? Are you
Xaltotun?'

Only a strident screech answered him, a screech vibrating with harsh
mockery.

Conan wasted no more breath on his dusky betrayer. Grimly he settled to
the long grind of the hills. He dared not push the horse too hard; the
rest he had allowed it had not been enough to freshen it. He was still
far ahead of his pursuers, but they would cut down that lead steadily.
It was almost a certainty that their horses were fresher than his, for
they had undoubtedly changed mounts at that castle he had passed.

The going grew rougher, the scenery more rugged, steep grassy slopes
pitching up to densely timbered mountainsides. Here, he knew, he might
elude his hunters, but for that hellish bird that squalled incessantly
above him. He could no longer see them in this broken country, but he
was certain that they still followed him, guided unerringly by their
feathered allies. That black shape became like a demoniac incubus,
hounding him through measureless hells. The stones he hurled with a
curse went wide or fell harmless, though in his youth he had felled
hawks on the wing.

The horse was tiring fast. Conan recognized the grim finality of his
position. He sensed an inexorable driving fate behind all this. He could
not escape. He was as much a captive as he had been in the pits of
Belverus. But he was no son of the Orient to yield passively to what
seemed inevitable. If he could not escape, he would at least take some
of his foes into eternity with him. He turned into a wide thicket of
larches that masked a slope, looking for a place to turn at bay.

Then ahead of him there rang a strange, shrill scream, human yet weirdly
timbred. An instant later he had pushed through a screen of branches,
and saw the source of that eldritch cry. In a small glade below him four
soldiers in Nemedian chain-mail were binding a noose about the neck of a
gaunt old woman in peasant garb. A heap of fagots, bound with cord on
the ground near by, showed what her occupation had been when surprised
by these stragglers.

Conan felt slow fury swell his heart as he looked silently down and saw
the ruffians dragging her toward a tree whose low-spreading branches
were obviously intended to act as a gibbet. He had crossed the frontier
an hour ago. He was standing on his own soil, watching the murder of one
of his own subjects. The old woman was struggling with surprising
strength and energy, and as he watched, she lifted her head and voiced
again the strange, weird, far-carrying call he had heard before. It was
echoed as if in mockery by the raven flapping above the trees. The
soldiers laughed roughly, and one struck her in the mouth.

Conan swung from his weary steed and dropped down the face of the rocks,
landing with a clang of mail on the grass. The four men wheeled at the
sound and drew their swords, gaping at the mailed giant who faced them,
sword in hand.

Conan laughed harshly. His eyes were bleak as flint.

'Dogs!' he said without passion and without mercy. 'Do Nemedian jackals
set themselves up as executioners and hang my subjects at will? First
you must take the head of their king. Here I stand, awaiting your lordly
pleasure!'

The soldiers stared at him uncertainly as he strode toward them.

'Who is this madman?' growled a bearded ruffian. 'He wears Nemedian
mail, but speaks with an Aquilonian accent.'

'No matter,' quoth another. 'Cut him down, and then we'll hang the old
hag.'

And so saying he ran at Conan, lifting his sword. But before he could
strike, the king's great blade lashed down, splitting helmet and skull.
The man fell before him, but the others were hardy rogues. They gave
tongue like wolves and surged about the lone figure in the gray mail,
and the clamor and din of steel drowned the cries of the circling raven.

Conan did not shout. His eyes coals of blue fire and his lips smiling
bleakly, he lashed right and left with his two-handed sword. For all his
size he was quick as a cat on his feet, and he was constantly in motion,
presenting a moving target so that thrusts and swings cut empty air
oftener than not. Yet when he struck he was perfectly balanced, and his
blows fell with devastating power. Three of the four were down, dying in
their own blood, and the fourth was bleeding from half a dozen wounds,
stumbling in headlong retreat as he parried frantically, when Conan's
spur caught in the surcoat of one of the fallen men.

The king stumbled, and before he could catch himself the Nemedian, with
the frenzy of desperation, rushed him so savagely that Conan staggered
and fell sprawling over the corpse. The Nemedian croaked in triumph and
sprang forward, lifting his great sword with both hands over his right
shoulder, as he braced his legs wide for the stroke--and then, over the
prostrate king, something huge and hairy shot like a thunderbolt full on
the soldier's breast, and his yelp of triumph changed to a shriek of
death.

Conan, scrambling up, saw the man lying dead with his throat torn out,
and a great gray wolf stood over him, head sunk as it smelled the blood
that formed a pool on the grass.

The king turned as the old woman spoke to him. She stood straight and
tall before him, and in spite of her ragged garb, her features,
clear-cut and aquiline, and her keen black eyes, were not those of a
common peasant woman. She called to the wolf and it trotted to her side
like a great dog and rubbed its giant shoulder against her knee, while
it gazed at Conan with great green lambent eyes. Absently she laid her
hand upon its mighty neck, and so the two stood regarding the king of
Aquilonia. He found their steady gaze disquieting, though there was no
hostility in it.

'Men say King Conan died beneath the stones and dirt when the cliffs
crumbled by Valkia,' she said in a deep, strong, resonant voice.

'So they say,' he growled. He was in no mood for controversy, and he
thought of those armored riders who were pushing nearer every moment.
The raven above him cawed stridently, and he cast an involuntary glare
upward, grinding his teeth in a spasm of nervous irritation.

Up on the ledge the white horse stood with drooping head. The old woman
looked at it, and then at the raven; and then she lifted a strange weird
cry as she had before. As if recognizing the call, the raven wheeled,
suddenly mute, and raced eastward. But before it had got out of sight,
the shadow of mighty wings fell across it. An eagle soared up from the
tangle of trees, and rising above it, swooped and struck the black
messenger to the earth. The strident voice of betrayal was stilled for
ever.

'Crom!' muttered Conan, staring at the old woman. 'Are you a magician,
too?'

'I am Zelata,' she said. 'The people of the valleys call me a witch. Was
that child of the night guiding armed men on your trail?'

'Aye.' She did not seem to think the answer fantastic. 'They cannot be
far behind me.'

'Lead your horse and follow me, King Conan,' she said briefly.

Without comment he mounted the rocks and brought his horse down to the
glade by a circuitous path. As he came he saw the eagle reappear,
dropping lazily down from the sky, and rest an instant on Zelata's
shoulder, spreading its great wings lightly so as not to crush her with
its weight.

Without a word she led the way, the great wolf trotting at her side, the
eagle soaring above her. Through deep thickets and along tortuous ledges
poised over deep ravines she led him, and finally along a narrow
precipice-edged path to a curious dwelling of stone, half hut, half
cavern, beneath a cliff hidden among the gorges and crags. The eagle
flew to the pinnacle of this cliff, and perched there like a motionless
sentinel.

Still silent, Zelata stabled the horse in a near-by cave, with leaves
and grass piled high for provender, and a tiny spring bubbling in the
dim recesses.

In the hut she seated the king on a rude, hide-covered bench, and she
herself sat upon a low stool before the tiny fireplace, while she made a
fire of tamarisk chunks and prepared a frugal meal. The great wolf
drowsed beside her, facing the fire, his huge head sunk on his paws, his
ears twitching in his dreams.

'You do not fear to sit in the hut of a witch?' she asked, breaking her
silence at last.

An impatient shrug of his gray-mailed shoulders was her guest's only
reply. She gave into his hands a wooden dish heaped with dried fruits,
cheese and barley bread, and a great pot of the heady upland beer,
brewed from barley grown in the high valleys.

'I have found the brooding silence of the glens more pleasing than the
babble of city streets,' she said. 'The children of the wild are kinder
than the children of men.' Her hand briefly stroked the ruff of the
sleeping wolf. 'My children were afar from me today, or I had not needed
your sword, my king. They were coming at my call.'

'What grudge had those Nemedian dogs against you?' Conan demanded.

'Skulkers from the invading army straggle all over the countryside, from
the frontier to Tarantia,' she answered. 'The foolish villagers in the
valleys told them that I had a store of gold hidden away, so as to
divert their attentions from their villages. They demanded treasure from
me, and my answers angered them. But neither skulkers nor the men who
pursue you, nor any raven will find you here.'

He shook his head, eating ravenously.

'I'm for Tarantia.'

She shook her head.

'You thrust your head into the dragon's jaws. Best seek refuge abroad.
The heart is gone from your kingdom.'

'What do you mean?' he demanded. 'Battles have been lost before, yet
wars won. A kingdom is not lost by a single defeat.'

'And you will go to Tarantia?'

'Aye. Prospero will be holding it against Amalric.'

'Are you sure?'

'Hell's devils, woman!' he exclaimed wrathfully. 'What else?'

She shook her head. 'I feel that it is otherwise. Let us see. Not
lightly is the veil rent; yet I will rend it a little, and show you your
capital city.'

Conan did not see what she cast upon the fire, but the wolf whimpered in
his dreams, and a green smoke gathered and billowed up into the hut. And
as he watched, the walls and ceiling of the hut seemed to widen, to grow
remote and vanish, merging with infinite immensities; the smoke rolled
about him, blotting out everything. And in it forms moved and faded, and
stood out in startling clarity.

He stared at the familiar towers and streets of Tarantia, where a mob
seethed and screamed, and at the same time he was somehow able to see
the banners of Nemedia moving inexorably westward through the smoke and
flame of a pillaged land. In the great square of Tarantia the frantic
throng milled and yammered, screaming that the king was dead, that the
barons were girding themselves to divide the land between them, and that
the rule of a king, even of Valerius, was better than anarchy. Prospero,
shining in his armor, rode among them, trying to pacify them, bidding
them trust Count Trocero, urging them to man the wall and aid his
knights in defending the city. They turned on him, shrieking with fear
and unreasoning rage, howling that he was Trocero's butcher, a more evil
foe than Amalric himself. Offal and stones were hurled at his knights.

A slight blurring of the picture, that might have denoted a passing of
time, and then Conan saw Prospero and his knights filing out of the
gates and spurring southward. Behind him the city was in an uproar.

'Fools!' muttered Conan thickly. 'Fools! Why could they not trust
Prospero? Zelata, if you are making game of me, with some trickery----'

'This has passed,' answered Zelata imperturbably, though somberly. 'It
was the evening of the day that has passed when Prospero rode out of
Tarantia, with the hosts of Amalric almost within sight. From the walls
men saw the flame of their pillaging. So I read it in the smoke. At
sunset the Nemedians rode into Tarantia, unopposed. Look! Even now, in
the royal hall of Tarantia----'

Abruptly Conan was looking into the great coronation hall. Valerius
stood on the regal dais, clad in ermine robes, and Amalric, still in his
dusty, blood-stained armor, placed a rich and gleaming circlet on his
yellow locks--the crown of Aquilonia! The people cheered; long lines of
steel-clad Nemedian warriors looked grimly on, and nobles long in
disfavor at Conan's court strutted and swaggered with the emblem of
Valerius on their sleeves.

'Crom!' It was an explosive imprecation from Conan's lips as he started
up, his great fists clenched into hammers, his veins on his temples
knotting, his features convulsed. 'A Nemedian placing the crown of
Aquilonia on that renegade--in the royal hall of Tarantia!'

As if dispelled by his violence, the smoke faded, and he saw Zelata's
black eyes gleaming at him through the mist.

'You have seen--the people of your capital have forfeited the freedom
you won for them by sweat and blood; they have sold themselves to the
slavers and the butchers. They have shown that they do not trust their
destiny. Can you rely upon them for the winning back of your kingdom?'

'They thought I was dead,' he grunted, recovering some of his poise. 'I
have no son. Men can't be governed by a memory. What if the Nemedians
have taken Tarantia? There still remain the provinces, the barons, and
the people of the countrysides. Valerius has won an empty glory.'

'You are stubborn, as befits a fighter. I cannot show you the future, I
cannot show you all the past. Nay, _I_ show you nothing. I merely make
you see windows opened in the veil by powers unguessed. Would you look
into the past for a clue of the present?'

'Aye.' He seated himself abruptly.

Again the green smoke rose and billowed. Again images unfolded before
him, this time alien and seemingly irrelevant. He saw great towering
black walls, pedestals half hidden in the shadows upholding images of
hideous, half-bestial gods. Men moved in the shadows, dark, wiry men,
clad in red, silken loincloths. They were bearing a green jade
sarcophagus along a gigantic black corridor. But before he could tell
much about what he saw, the scene shifted. He saw a cavern, dim, shadowy
and haunted with a strange intangible horror. On an altar of black stone
stood a curious golden vessel, shaped like the shell of a scallop. Into
this cavern came some of the same dark, wiry men who had borne the
mummy-case. They seized the golden vessel, and then the shadows swirled
around them and what happened he could not say. But he saw a glimmer in
a whorl of darkness, like a ball of living fire. Then the smoke was only
smoke, drifting up from the fire of tamarisk chunks, thinning and
fading.

'But what does this portend?' he demanded, bewildered. 'What I saw in
Tarantia I can understand. But what means this glimpse of Zamorian
thieves sneaking through a subterranean temple of Set, in Stygia? And
that cavern--I've never seen or heard of anything like it, in all my
wanderings. If you can show me that much, these shreds of vision which
mean nothing, disjointed, why can you not show me all that is to occur?'

Zelata stirred the fire without replying.

'These things are governed by immutable laws,' she said at last. 'I can
not make you understand; I do not altogether understand myself, though I
have sought wisdom in the silences of the high places for more years
than I can remember. I cannot save you, though I would if I might. Man
must, at last, work out his own salvation. Yet perhaps wisdom may come
to me in dreams, and in the morn I may be able to give you the clue to
the enigma.'

'What enigma?' he demanded.

'The mystery that confronts you, whereby you have lost a kingdom,' she
answered. And then she spread a sheepskin upon the floor before the
hearth. 'Sleep,' she said briefly.

Without a word he stretched himself upon it, and sank into restless but
deep sleep through which phantoms moved silently and monstrous shapeless
shadows crept. Once, limned against a purple sunless horizon, he saw the
mighty walls and towers of a great city such as rose nowhere on the
waking earth he knew. Its colossal pylons and purple minarets lifted
toward the stars, and over it, floating like a giant mirage, hovered the
bearded countenance of the man Xaltotun.

       *       *       *       *       *

Conan woke in the chill whiteness of early dawn, to see Zelata crouched
beside the tiny fire. He had not awakened once in the night, and the
sound of the great wolf leaving or entering should have roused him. Yet
the wolf was there, beside the hearth, with its shaggy coat wet with
dew, and with more than dew. Blood glistened wetly amid the thick fell,
and there was a cut upon his shoulder.

Zelata nodded, without looking around, as if reading the thoughts of her
royal guest.

'He has hunted before dawn, and red was the hunting. I think the man who
hunted a king will hunt no more, neither man nor beast.'

Conan stared at the great beast with strange fascination as he moved to
take the food Zelata offered him.

'When I come to my throne again I won't forget,' he said briefly.
'You've befriended me--by Crom, I can't remember when I've lain down and
slept at the mercy of man or woman as I did last night. But what of the
riddle you would read me this morn?'

A long silence ensued, in which the crackle of the tamarisks was loud on
the hearth.

'Find the heart of your kingdom,' she said at last. 'There lies your
defeat and your power. You fight more than mortal man. You will not
press the throne again unless you find the heart of your kingdom.'

'Do you mean the city of Tarantia?'

She shook her head. 'I am but an oracle, through whose lips the gods
speak. My lips are sealed by them lest I speak too much. You must find
the heart of your kingdom. I can say no more. My lips are opened and
sealed by the gods.'

       *       *       *       *       *

Dawn was still white on the peaks when Conan rode westward. A glance
back showed him Zelata standing in the door of her hut, inscrutable as
ever, the great wolf beside her.

A gray sky arched overhead, and a moaning wind was chill with a promise
of winter. Brown leaves fluttered slowly down from the bare branches,
sifting upon his mailed shoulders.

All day he pushed through the hills, avoiding roads and villages. Toward
nightfall he began to drop down from the heights, tier by tier, and saw
the broad plains of Aquilonia spread out beneath him.

Villages and farms lay close to the foot of the hills on the western
side of the mountains, for, for half a century, most of the raiding
across the frontier had been done by the Aquilonians. But now only
embers and ashes showed where farm huts and villas had stood.

In the gathering darkness Conan rode slowly on. There was little fear of
discovery, which he dreaded from friend as well as from foe. The
Nemedians had remembered old scores on their westward drive, and
Valerius had made no attempt to restrain his allies. He did not count on
winning the love of the common people. A vast swath of desolation had
been cut through the country from the foothills westward. Conan cursed
as he rode over blackened expanses that had been rich fields, and saw
the gaunt gable-ends of burned houses jutting against the sky. He moved
through an empty and deserted land, like a ghost out of a forgotten and
outworn past.

The speed with which the army had traversed the land showed what little
resistance it had encountered. Yet had Conan been leading his
Aquilonians the invading army would have been forced to buy every foot
they gained with their blood. The bitter realization permeated his soul;
he was not the representative of a dynasty. He was only a lone
adventurer. Even the drop of dynastic blood Valerius boasted had more
hold on the minds of men than the memory of Conan and the freedom and
power he had given the kingdom.

No pursuers followed him down out of the hills. He watched for wandering
or returning Nemedian troops, but met none. Skulkers gave him a wide
path, supposing him to be one of the conquerors, what of his harness.
Groves and rivers were far more plentiful on the western side of the
mountains, and coverts for concealment were not lacking.

So he moved across the pillaged land, halting only to rest his horse,
eating frugally of the food Zelata had given him, until, on a dawn when
he lay hidden on a river bank where willows and oaks grew thickly, he
glimpsed, afar, across the rolling plains dotted with rich groves, the
blue and golden towers of Tarantia.

He was no longer in a deserted land, but one teeming with varied life.
His progress thenceforth was slow and cautious, through thick woods and
unfrequented byways. It was dusk when he reached the plantation of
Servius Galannus.




8

Dying Embers


The countryside about Tarantia had escaped the fearful ravaging of the
more easterly provinces. There were evidences of the march of a
conquering army in broken hedges, plundered fields and looted granaries,
but torch and steel had not been loosed wholesale.

There was but one grim splotch on the landscape--a charred expanse of
ashes and blackened stone, where, Conan knew, had once stood the stately
villa of one of his staunchest supporters.

The king dared not openly approach the Galannus farm, which lay only a
few miles from the city. In the twilight he rode through an extensive
woodland, until he sighted a keeper's lodge through the trees.
Dismounting and tying his horse, he approached the thick, arched door
with the intention of sending the keeper after Servius. He did not know
what enemies the manor house might be sheltering. He had seen no troops,
but they might be quartered all over the countryside. But as he drew
near, he saw the door open and a compact figure in silk hose and richly
embroidered doublet stride forth and turn up a path that wound away
through the woods.

'Servius!'

At the low call the master of the plantation wheeled with a startled
exclamation. His hand flew to the short hunting-sword at his hip, and he
recoiled from the tall gray steel figure standing in the dusk before
him.

'Who are you?' he demanded. 'What is your--_Mitra!_'

His breath hissed inward and his ruddy face paled. 'Avaunt!' he
ejaculated. 'Why have you come back from the gray lands of death to
terrify me? I was always your true liegeman in your lifetime----'

'As I still expect you to be,' answered Conan. 'Stop trembling, man; I'm
flesh and blood.'

Sweating with uncertainty Servius approached and stared into the face of
the mail-clad giant, and then, convinced of the reality of what he saw,
he dropped to one knee and doffed his plumed cap.

'Your Majesty! Truly, this is a miracle passing belief! The great bell
in the citadel has tolled your dirge, days agone. Men said you died at
Valkia, crushed under a million tons of earth and broken granite.'

'It was another in my harness,' grunted Conan. 'But let us talk later.
If there is such a thing as a joint of beef on your board----'

'Forgive me, my lord!' cried Servius, springing to his feet. 'The dust
of travel is gray on your mail, and I keep you standing here without
rest or sup! Mitra! I see well enough now that you are alive, but I
swear, when I turned and saw you standing all gray and dim in the
twilight, the marrow of my knees turned to water. It is an ill thing to
meet a man you thought dead in the woodland at dusk.'

'Bid the keeper see to my steed which is tied behind yonder oak,'
requested Conan, and Servius nodded, drawing the king up the path. The
patrician, recovering from his supernatural fright, had become extremely
nervous.

'I will send a servant from the manor,' he said. 'The keeper is in his
lodge--but I dare not trust even my servants in these days. It is better
that only I know of your presence.'

Approaching the great house that glimmered dimly through the trees, he
turned aside into a little-used path that ran between close-set oaks
whose intertwining branches formed a vault overhead, shutting out the
dim light of the gathering dusk. Servius hurried on through the darkness
without speaking, and with something resembling panic in his manner, and
presently led Conan through a small side-door into a narrow, dimly
illuminated corridor. They traversed this in haste and silence, and
Servius brought the king into a spacious chamber with a high, oak-beamed
ceiling and richly paneled walls. Logs flamed in the wide fireplace, for
there was a frosty edge to the air, and a great meat pasty in a stone
platter stood smoking on a broad mahogany board. Servius locked the
massive door and extinguished the candles that stood in a silver
candlestick on the table, leaving the chamber illuminated only by the
fire on the hearth.

'Your pardon, your Majesty,' he apologized. 'These are perilous times;
spies lurk everywhere. It were better that none be able to peer through
the windows and recognize you. This pasty, however, is just from the
oven, as I intended supping on my return from talk with my keeper. If
your Majesty would deign----'

'The light is sufficient,' grunted Conan, seating himself with scant
ceremony, and drawing his poniard.

He dug ravenously into the luscious dish, and washed it down with great
gulps of wine from grapes grown in Servius' vineyards. He seemed
oblivious to any sense of peril, but Servius shifted uneasily on his
settle by the fire, nervously fingering the heavy gold chain about his
neck. He glanced continually at the diamond-panes of the casement,
gleaming dimly in the firelight, and cocked his ear toward the door, as
if half expecting to hear the pad of furtive feet in the corridor
without.

Finishing his meal, Conan rose and seated himself on another settle
before the fire.

'I won't jeopardize you long by my presence, Servius,' he said abruptly.
'Dawn will find me far from your plantation.'

'My lord----' Servius lifted his hands in expostulation, but Conan waved
his protests aside.

'I know your loyalty and your courage. Both are above reproach. But if
Valerius has usurped my throne, it would be death for you to shelter me,
if you were discovered.'

'I am not strong enough to defy him openly,' admitted Servius. 'The
fifty men-at-arms I could lead to battle would be but a handful of
straws. You saw the ruins of Emilius Scavonus' plantation?'

Conan nodded, frowning darkly.

'He was the strongest patrician in this province, as you know. He
refused to give his allegiance to Valerius. The Nemedians burned him in
the ruins of his own villa. After that the rest of us saw the futility
of resistance, especially as the people of Tarantia refused to fight. We
submitted and Valerius spared our lives, though he levied a tax upon us
that will ruin many. But what could we do? We thought you were dead.
Many of the barons had been slain, others taken prisoner. The army was
shattered and scattered. You have no heir to take the crown. There was
no one to lead us----'

'Was there not Count Trocero of Poitain?' demanded Conan harshly.

Servius spread his hands helplessly.

'It is true that his general Prospero was in the field with a small
army. Retreating before Amalric, he urged men to rally to his banner.
But with your Majesty dead, men remembered old wars and civil brawls,
and how Trocero and his Poitanians once rode through these provinces
even as Amalric was riding now, with torch and sword. The barons were
jealous of Trocero. Some men--spies of Valerius perhaps--shouted that
the Count of Poitain intended seizing the crown for himself. Old
sectional hates flared up again. If we had had one man with dynastic
blood in his veins we would have crowned and followed him against
Nemedia. But we had none.

'The barons who followed you loyally would not follow one of their own
number, each holding himself as good as his neighbor, each fearing the
ambitions of the others. You were the cord that held the fagots
together. When the cord was cut, the fagots fell apart. If you had had
a son, the barons would have rallied loyally to him. But there was no
point for their patriotism to focus upon.

'The merchants and commoners, dreading anarchy and a return of feudal
days when each baron was his own law, cried out that any king was better
than none, even Valerius, who was at least of the blood of the old
dynasty. There was no one to oppose him when he rode up at the head of
his steel-clad hosts, with the scarlet dragon of Nemedia floating over
him, and rang his lance against the gates of Tarantia.

'Nay, the people threw open the gates and knelt in the dust before him.
They had refused to aid Prospero in holding the city. They said they had
rather be ruled by Valerius than by Trocero. They said--truthfully--that
the barons would not rally to Trocero, but that many would accept
Valerius. They said that by yielding to Valerius they would escape the
devastation of civil war, and the fury of the Nemedians. Prospero rode
southward with his ten thousand knights, and the horsemen of the
Nemedians entered the city a few hours later. They did not follow him.
They remained to see that Valerius was crowned in Tarantia.'

'Then the old witch's smoke showed the truth,' muttered Conan, feeling a
queer chill along his spine. 'Amalric crowned Valerius?'

'Aye, in the coronation hall, with the blood of slaughter scarcely dried
on his hands.'

'And do the people thrive under his benevolent rule?' asked Conan with
angry irony.

'He lives like a foreign prince in the midst of a conquered land,'
answered Servius bitterly. 'His court is filled with Nemedians, the
palace troops are of the same breed, and a large garrison of them occupy
the citadel. Aye, the hour of the Dragon has come at last.

'Nemedians swagger like lords through the streets. Women are outraged
and merchants plundered daily, and Valerius either can, or will, make no
attempt to curb them. Nay, he is but their puppet, their figurehead. Men
of sense knew he would be, and the people are beginning to find it out.

'Amalric has ridden forth with a strong army to reduce the outlying
provinces where some of the barons have defied him. But there is no
unity among them. Their jealousy of each other is stronger than their
fear of Amalric. He will crush them one by one. Many castles and cities,
realizing that, have sent in their submission. Those who resist fare
miserably. The Nemedians are glutting their long hatred. And their ranks
are swelled by Aquilonians whom fear, gold, or necessity of occupation
are forcing into their armies. It is a natural consequence.'

Conan nodded somberly, staring at the red reflections of the firelight
on the richly carved oaken panels.

'Aquilonia has a king instead of the anarchy they feared,' said Servius
at last. 'Valerius does not protect his subjects against his allies.
Hundreds who could not pay the ransom imposed upon them have been sold
to the Kothic slave-traders.'

Conan's head jerked up and a lethal flame lit his blue eyes. He swore
gustily, his mighty hands knotting into iron hammers.

'Aye, white men sell white men and white women, as it was in the feudal
days. In the palaces of Shem and of Turan they will live out the lives
of slaves. Valerius is king, but the unity for which the people looked,
even though of the sword, is not complete.

'Gunderland in the north and Poitain in the south are yet unconquered,
and there are unsubdued provinces in the west, where the border barons
have the backing of the Bossonian bowmen. Yet these outlying provinces
are no real menace to Valerius. They must remain on the defensive, and
will be lucky if they are able to keep their independence. Here Valerius
and his foreign knights are supreme.'

'Let him make the best of it then,' said Conan grimly. 'His time is
short. The people will rise when they learn that I'm alive. We'll take
Tarantia back before Amalric can return with his army. Then we'll sweep
these dogs from the kingdom.'

Servius was silent. The crackle of the fire was loud in the stillness.

'Well,' exclaimed Conan impatiently, 'why do you sit with your head
bent, staring at the hearth? Do you doubt what I have said?'

Servius avoided the king's eye.

'What mortal man can do, you will do, your Majesty,' he answered. 'I
have ridden behind you in battle, and I know that no mortal being can
stand before your sword.'

'What, then?'

Servius drew his fur-trimmed jupon closer about him, and shivered in
spite of the flame.

'Men say your fall was occasioned by sorcery,' he said presently.

'What then?'

'What mortal can fight against sorcery? Who is this veiled man who
communes at midnight with Valerius and his allies, as men say, who
appears and disappears so mysteriously? Men say in whispers that he is a
great magician who died thousands of years ago, but has returned from
death's gray lands to overthrow the king of Aquilonia and restore the
dynasty of which Valerius is heir.'

'What matter?' exclaimed Conan angrily. 'I escaped from the
devil-haunted pits of Belverus, and from diabolism in the mountains. If
the people rise----'

Servius shook his head.

'Your staunchest supporters in the eastern and central provinces are
dead, fled or imprisoned. Gunderland is far to the north, Poitain far
to the south. The Bossonians have retired to their marches far to the
west. It would take weeks to gather and concentrate these forces, and
before that could be done, each levy would be attacked separately by
Amalric and destroyed.'

'But an uprising in the central provinces would tip the scales for us!'
exclaimed Conan. 'We could seize Tarantia and hold it against Amalric
until the Gundermen and Poitanians could get here.'

Servius hesitated, and his voice sank to a whisper.

'Men say you died accursed. Men say this veiled stranger cast a spell
upon you to slay you and break your army. The great bell has tolled your
dirge. Men believe you to be dead. And the central provinces would not
rise, even if they knew you lived. They would not dare. Sorcery defeated
you at Valkia. Sorcery brought the news to Tarantia, for that very night
men were shouting of it in the streets.

'A Nemedian priest loosed black magic again in the streets of Tarantia
to slay men who still were loyal to your memory. I myself saw it. Armed
men dropped like flies and died in the streets in a manner no man could
understand. And the lean priest laughed and said: 'I am only Altaro,
only an acolyte of Orastes, who is but an acolyte of him who wears the
veil; not mine is the power; the power but works through me.'

'Well,' said Conan harshly, 'is it not better to die honorably than to
live in infamy? Is death worse than oppression, slavery and ultimate
destruction?'

'When the fear of sorcery is in, reason is out,' replied Servius. 'The
fear of the central provinces is too great to allow them to rise for
you. The outlying provinces would fight for you--but the same sorcery
that smote your army at Valkia would smite you again. The Nemedians hold
the broadest, richest and most thickly populated sections of Aquilonia,
and they cannot be defeated by the forces which might still be at your
command. You would be sacrificing your loyal subjects uselessly. In
sorrow I say it, but it is true: King Conan, you are a king without a
kingdom.'

Conan stared into the fire without replying. A smoldering log crashed
down among the flames without a bursting shower of sparks. It might have
been the crashing ruin of his kingdom.

Again Conan felt the presence of a grim reality behind the veil of
material illusion. He sensed again the inexorable drive of a ruthless
fate. A feeling of furious panic tugged at his soul, a sense of being
trapped, and a red rage that burned to destroy and kill.

'Where are the officials of my court?' he demanded at last.

'Pallantides was sorely wounded at Valkia, was ransomed by his family,
and now lies in his castle in Attalus. He will be fortunate if he ever
rides again. Publius, the chancellor, has fled the kingdom in disguise,
no man knows whither. The council has been disbanded. Some were
imprisoned, some banished. Many of your loyal subjects have been put to
death. Tonight, for instance, the Countess Albiona dies under the
headsman's ax.'

Conan started and stared at Servius with such anger smoldering in his
blue eyes that the patrician shrank back.

'Why?'

'Because she would not become the mistress of Valerius. Her lands are
forfeit, her henchmen sold into slavery, and at midnight, in the Iron
Tower, her head must fall. Be advised, my king--to me you will ever be
my king--and flee before you are discovered. In these days none is safe.
Spies and informers creep among us, betraying the slightest deed or word
of discontent as treason and rebellion. If you make yourself known to
your subjects it will only end in your capture and death.

'My horses and all the men that I can trust are at your disposal. Before
dawn we can be far from Tarantia, and well on our way toward the border.
If I cannot aid you to recover your kingdom, I can at least follow you
into exile.'

Conan shook his head. Servius glanced uneasily at him as he sat staring
into the fire, his chin propped on his mighty fist. The firelight
gleamed redly on his steel mail, on his baleful eyes. They burned in the
firelight like the eyes of a wolf. Servius was again aware, as in the
past, and now more strongly than ever, of something alien about the
king. That great frame under the mail mesh was too hard and supple for a
civilized man; the elemental fire of the primitive burned in those
smoldering eyes. Now the barbaric suggestion about the king was more
pronounced, as if in his extremity the outward aspects of civilization
were stripped away, to reveal the primordial core. Conan was reverting
to his pristine type. He did not act as a civilized man would act under
the same conditions, nor did his thoughts run in the same channels. He
was unpredictable. It was only a stride from the king of Aquilonia to
the skin-clad slayer of the Cimmerian hills.

'I'll ride to Poitain, if it may be,' Conan said at last. 'But I'll ride
alone. And I have one last duty to perform as king of Aquilonia.'

'What do you mean, your Majesty?' asked Servius, shaken by a
premonition.

'I'm going into Tarantia after Albiona tonight,' answered the king.
'I've failed all my other loyal subjects, it seems--if they take her
head, they can have mine too.'

'This is madness!' cried Servius, staggering up and clutching his
throat, as if he already felt the noose closing about it.

'There are secrets to the Tower which few know,' said Conan. 'Anyway,
I'd be a dog to leave Albiona to die because of her loyalty to me. I may
be a king without a kingdom, but I'm not a man without honor.'

'It will ruin us all!' whispered Servius.

'It will ruin no one but me if I fail. You've risked enough. I ride
alone tonight. This is all I want you to do: procure me a patch for my
eye, a staff for my hand, and garments such as travelers wear.'




9

'It is the King or His Ghost!'


Many men passed through the great arched gates of Tarantia between
sunset and midnight--belated travelers, merchants from afar with heavily
laden mules, free workmen from the surrounding farms and vineyards. Now
that Valerius was supreme in the central provinces, there was no rigid
scrutiny of the folk who flowed in a steady stream through the wide
gates. Discipline had been relaxed. The Nemedian soldiers who stood on
guard were half drunk, and much too busy watching for handsome peasant
girls and rich merchants who could be bullied to notice workmen or dusty
travelers, even one tall wayfarer whose worn cloak could not conceal the
hard lines of his powerful frame.

This man carried himself with an erect, aggressive bearing that was too
natural for him to realize it himself, much less dissemble it. A great
patch covered one eye, and his leather coif, drawn low over his brows,
shadowed his features. With a long thick staff in his muscular brown
hand, he strode leisurely through the arch where the torches flared and
guttered, and, ignored by the tipsy guardsmen, emerged upon the wide
streets of Tarantia.

Upon these well-lighted thoroughfares the usual throngs went about their
business, and shops and stalls stood open, with their wares displayed.
One thread ran a constant theme through the pattern. Nemedian soldiers,
singly or in clumps, swaggered through the throngs, shouldering their
way with studied arrogance. Women scurried from their path, and men
stepped aside with darkened brows and clenched fists. The Aquilonians
were a proud race, and these were their hereditary enemies.

The knuckles of the tall traveler knotted on his staff, but, like the
others, he stepped aside to let the men in armor have the way. Among the
motley and varied crowd he did not attract much attention in his drab,
dusty garments. But once, as he passed a sword-seller's stall and the
light that streamed from its wide door fell full upon him, he thought
he felt an intense stare upon him, and turning quickly, saw a man in the
brown jerkin of a free workman regarding him fixedly. This man turned
away with undue haste, and vanished in the shifting throng. But Conan
turned into a narrow by-street and quickened his pace. It might have
been mere idle curiosity; but he could take no chances.

The grim Iron Tower stood apart from the citadel, amid a maze of narrow
streets and crowding houses where the meaner structures, appropriating a
space from which the more fastidious shrank, had invaded a portion of
the city ordinarily alien to them. The Tower was in reality a castle, an
ancient, formidable pile of heavy stone and black iron, which had itself
served as the citadel in an earlier, ruder century.

Not a long distance from it, lost in a tangle of partly deserted
tenements and warehouses, stood an ancient watchtower, so old and
forgotten that it did not appear on the maps of the city for a hundred
years back. Its original purpose had been forgotten, and nobody, of such
as saw it at all, noticed that the apparently ancient lock which kept it
from being appropriated as sleeping-quarters by beggars and thieves, was
in reality comparatively new and extremely powerful, cunningly disguised
into an appearance of rusty antiquity. Not half a dozen men in the
kingdom had ever known the secret of that tower.

No keyhole showed in the massive, green-crusted lock. But Conan's
practised fingers, stealing over it, pressed here and there knobs
invisible to the casual eye. The door silently opened inward and he
entered solid blackness, pushing the door shut behind him. A light would
have showed the tower empty, a bare, cylindrical shaft of massive stone.

Groping in a corner with the sureness of familiarity, he found the
projections for which he was feeling on a slab of the stone that
composed the floor. Quickly he lifted it, and without hesitation lowered
himself into the aperture beneath. His feet felt stone steps leading
downward into what he knew was a narrow tunnel that ran straight toward
the foundations of the Iron Tower, three streets away.

The bell on the citadel, which tolled only at the midnight hour or for
the death of a king, boomed suddenly. In a dimly lighted chamber in the
Iron Tower a door opened and a form emerged into a corridor. The
interior of the Tower was as forbidding as its external appearance. Its
massive stone walls were rough, unadorned. The flags of the floor were
worn deep by generations of faltering feet, and the vault of the ceiling
was gloomy in the dim light of torches set in niches.

The man who trudged down that grim corridor was in appearance in keeping
with his surroundings. He was a tall, powerfully built man, clad in
close-fitting black silk. Over his head was drawn a black hood which
fell about his shoulders, having two holes for his eyes. From his
shoulders hung a loose black cloak, and over one shoulder he bore a
heavy ax, the shape of which was that of neither tool nor weapon.

As he went down the corridor, a figure came hobbling up it, a bent,
surly old man, stooping under the weight of his pike and a lantern he
bore in one hand.

'You are not as prompt as your predecessor, master headsman,' he
grumbled. 'Midnight has just struck, and masked men have gone to
milady's cell. They await you.'

'The tones of the bell still echo among the towers,' answered the
executioner. 'If I am not so quick to leap and run at the beck of
Aquilonians as was the dog who held this office before me, they shall
find my arm no less ready. Get you to your duties, old watchman, and
leave me to mine. I think mine is the sweeter trade, by Mitra, for you
tramp cold corridors and peer at rusty dungeon doors, while I lop off
the fairest head in Tarantia this night.'

The watchman limped on down the corridor, still grumbling, and the
headsman resumed his leisurely way. A few strides carried him around a
turn in the corridor, and he absently noted that at his left a door
stood partly open. If he had thought, he would have known that that door
had been opened since the watchman passed; but thinking was not his
trade. He was passing the unlocked door before he realized that aught
was amiss, and then it was too late.

A soft tigerish step and the rustle of a cloak warned him, but before he
could turn, a heavy arm hooked about his throat from behind, crushing
the cry before it could reach his lips. In the brief instant that was
allowed him he realized with a surge of panic the strength of his
attacker, against which his own brawny thews were helpless. He sensed
without seeing the poised dagger.

'Nemedian dog!' muttered a voice thick with passion in his ear. 'You've
cut off your last Aquilonian head!'

And that was the last thing he ever heard.

       *       *       *       *       *

In a dank dungeon, lighted only by a guttering torch, three men stood
about a young woman who knelt on the rush-strewn flags staring wildly up
at them. She was clad only in a scanty shift; her golden hair fell in
lustrous ripples about her white shoulders, and her wrists were bound
behind her. Even in the uncertain torchlight, and in spite of her
disheveled condition and pallor of fear, her beauty was striking. She
knelt mutely, staring with wide eyes up at her tormenters. The men were
closely masked and cloaked. Such a deed as this needed masks, even in a
conquered land. She knew them all nevertheless; but what she knew would
harm no one--after that night.

'Our merciful sovereign offers you one more chance, Countess,' said the
tallest of the three, and he spoke Aquilonian without an accent. 'He
bids me say that if you soften your proud, rebellious spirit, he will
still open his arms to you. If not--' he gestured toward a grim wooden
block in the center of the cell. It was blackly stained, and showed many
deep nicks as if a keen edge, cutting through some yielding substance,
had sunk into the wood.

Albiona shuddered and turned pale, shrinking back. Every fiber in her
vigorous young body quivered with the urge of life. Valerius was young,
too, and handsome. Many women loved him, she told herself, fighting with
herself for life. But she could not speak the word that would ransom her
soft young body from the block and the dripping ax. She could not reason
the matter. She only knew that when she thought of the clasp of
Valerius' arms, her flesh crawled with an abhorrence greater than the
fear of death. She shook her head helplessly, compelled by an impulsion
more irresistible than the instinct to live.

'Then there is no more to be said!' exclaimed one of the others
impatiently, and he spoke with a Nemedian accent. 'Where is the
headsman?'

As if summoned by the word, the dungeon door opened silently, and a
great figure stood framed in it, like a black shadow from the
underworld.

Albiona voiced a low, involuntary cry at the sight of that grim shape,
and the others stared silently for a moment, perhaps themselves daunted
with superstitious awe at the silent, hooded figure. Through the coif
the eyes blazed like coals of blue fire, and as these eyes rested on
each man in turn, he felt a curious chill travel down his spine.

Then the tall Aquilonian roughly seized the girl and dragged her to the
block. She screamed uncontrollably and fought hopelessly against him,
frantic with terror, but he ruthlessly forced her to her knees, and bent
her yellow head down to the bloody block.

'Why do you delay, headsman?' he exclaimed angrily. 'Perform your task!'

He was answered by a short, gusty boom of laughter that was
indescribably menacing. All in the dungeon froze in their places,
staring at the hooded shape--the two cloaked figures, the masked man
bending over the girl, the girl herself on her knees, twisting her
imprisoned head to look upward.

'What means this unseemly mirth, dog?' demanded the Aquilonian uneasily.

The man in the black garb tore his hood from his head and flung it to
the ground; he set his back to the closed door and lifted the headsman's
ax.

'Do you know me, dogs?' he rumbled. 'Do you know me?'

The breathless silence was broken by a scream.

'The king!' shrieked Albiona, wrenching herself free from the slackened
grasp of her captor. 'Oh, Mitra, the king!'

The three men stood like statues, and then the Aquilonian started and
spoke, like a man who doubts his own senses.

'Conan!' he ejaculated. 'It is the king, or his ghost! What devil's work
is this?'

'Devil's work to match devils!' mocked Conan, his lips laughing but hell
flaming in his eyes. 'Come, fall to, my gentlemen. You have your swords,
and I this cleaver. Nay, I think this butcher's tool fits the work at
hand, my fair lords!'

'At him!' muttered the Aquilonian, drawing his sword. 'It is Conan and
we must kill or be killed!'

And like men waking from a trance, the Nemedians drew their blades and
rushed on the king.

The headsman's ax was not made for such work, but the king wielded the
heavy, clumsy weapon as lightly as a hatchet, and his quickness of foot,
as he constantly shifted his position, defeated their purpose of
engaging him all three at once.

He caught the sword of the first man on his ax-head and crushed in the
wielder's breast with a murderous counterstroke before he could step
back or parry. The remaining Nemedian, missing a savage swipe, had his
brains dashed out before he could recover his balance, and an instant
later the Aquilonian was backed into a corner, desperately parrying the
crashing strokes that rained about him, lacking opportunity even to
scream for help.

Suddenly Conan's long left arm shot out and ripped the mask from the
man's head, disclosing the pallid features.

'Dog!' grated the king. 'I thought I knew you. Traitor! Damned renegade!
Even this base steel is too honorable for your foul head. Nay, die as
thieves die!'

The ax fell in a devastating arch, and the Aquilonian cried out and went
to his knees, grasping the severed stump of his right arm from which
blood spouted. It had been shorn away at the elbow, and the ax,
unchecked in its descent, had gashed deeply into his side, so that his
entrails bulged out.

'Lie there and bleed to death,' grunted Conan, casting the ax away
disgustedly. 'Come, Countess!'

Stooping, he slashed the cords that bound her wrists and lifting her as
if she had been a child, strode from the dungeon. She was sobbing
hysterically, with her arms thrown about his corded neck in a frenzied
embrace.

'Easy all,' he muttered. 'We're not out of this yet. If we can reach
the dungeon where the secret door opens on stairs that lead to the
tunnel--devil take it, they've heard that noise, even through these
walls.'

Down the corridor arms clanged and the tramp and shouting of men echoed
under the vaulted roof. A bent figure came hobbling swiftly along,
lantern held high, and its light shone full on Conan and the girl. With
a curse the Cimmerian sprang toward him, but the old watchman,
abandoning both lantern and pike, scuttled away down the corridor,
screeching for help at the top of his cracked voice. Deeper shouts
answered him.

Conan turned swiftly and ran the other way. He was cut off from the
dungeon with the secret lock and the hidden door through which he had
entered the Tower, and by which he had hoped to leave, but he knew this
grim building well. Before he was king he had been imprisoned in it.

He turned off into a side passage and quickly emerged into another,
broader corridor, which ran parallel to the one down which he had come,
and which was at the moment deserted. He followed this only a few yards,
when he again turned back, down another side passage. This brought him
back into the corridor he had left, but at a strategic point. A few feet
farther up the corridor there was a heavy bolted door, and before it
stood a bearded Nemedian in corselet and helmet, his back to Conan as he
peered up the corridor in the direction of the growing tumult and wildly
waving lanterns.

Conan did not hesitate. Slipping the girl to the ground, he ran at the
guard swiftly and silently, sword in hand. The man turned just as the
king reached him, bawled in surprise and fright and lifted his pike; but
before he could bring the clumsy weapon into play, Conan brought down
his sword on the fellow's helmet with a force that would have felled an
ox. Helmet and skull gave way together and the guard crumpled to the
floor.

In an instant Conan had drawn the massive bolt that barred the door--too
heavy for one ordinary man to have manipulated--and called hastily to
Albiona, who ran staggering to him. Catching her up unceremoniously with
one arm, he bore her through the door and into the outer darkness.

They had come into a narrow alley, black as pitch, walled by the side of
the Tower on one hand, and the sheer stone back of a row of buildings on
the other. Conan, hurrying through the darkness as swiftly as he dared,
felt the latter wall for doors or windows, but found none.

The great door clanged open behind them, and men poured out, with
torches gleaming on breast-plates and naked swords. They glared about,
bellowing, unable to penetrate the darkness which their torches served
to illuminate for only a few feet in any direction, and then rushed
down the alley at random--heading in the direction opposite to that
taken by Conan and Albiona.

'They'll learn their mistake quick enough,' he muttered, increasing his
pace. 'If we ever find a crack in this infernal wall--damn! The street
watch!'

Ahead of them a faint glow became apparent, where the alley opened into
a narrow street, and he saw dim figures looming against it with a
glimmer of steel. It was indeed the street watch, investigating the
noise they had heard echoing down the alley.

'Who goes there?' they shouted, and Conan grit his teeth at the hated
Nemedian accent.

'Keep behind me,' he ordered the girl. 'We've got to cut our way through
before the prison guards come back and pin us between them.'

And grasping his sword, he ran straight at the oncoming figures. The
advantage of surprise was his. He could see them, limned against the
distant glow, and they could not see him coming at them out of the black
depths of the alley. He was among them before they knew it, smiting with
the silent fury of a wounded lion.

His one chance lay in hacking through before they could gather their
wits. But there were half a score of them, in full mail, hard-bitten
veterans of the border wars, in whom the instinct for battle could take
the place of bemused wits. Three of them were down before they realized
that it was only one man who was attacking them, but even so their
reaction was instantaneous. The clangor of steel rose deafeningly, and
sparks flew as Conan's sword crashed on basinet and hauberk. He could
see better than they, and in the dim light his swiftly moving figure was
an uncertain mark. Flailing swords cut empty air or glanced from his
blade, and when he struck it was with the fury and certainty of a
hurricane.

But behind him sounded the shouts of the prison guards, returning up the
alley at a run, and still the mailed figures before him barred his way
with a bristling wall of steel. In an instant the guards would be on his
back--in desperation he redoubled his strokes, flailing like a smith on
an anvil, and then was suddenly aware of a diversion. Out of nowhere
behind the watchmen rose a score of black figures and there was a sound
of blows, murderously driven. Steel glinted in the gloom, and men cried
out, struck mortally from behind. In an instant the alley was littered
with writhing forms. A dark, cloaked shape sprang toward Conan, who
heaved up his sword, catching a gleam of steel in the right hand. But
the other was extended to him empty and a voice hissed urgently: 'This
way, your Majesty! Quickly!'

With a muttered oath of surprise, Conan caught up Albiona in one
massive arm, and followed his unknown befriender. He was not inclined to
hesitate, with thirty prison guardsmen closing in behind him.

Surrounded by mysterious figures he hurried down the alley, carrying the
countess as if she had been a child. He could tell nothing of his
rescuers except that they wore dark cloaks and hoods. Doubt and
suspicion crossed his mind, but at least they had struck down his
enemies, and he saw no better course than to follow them.

As if sensing his doubt, the leader touched his arm lightly and said:
'Fear not, King Conan; we are your loyal subjects.' The voice was not
familiar, but the accent was Aquilonian of the central provinces.

Behind them the guards were yelling as they stumbled over the shambles
in the mud, and they came pelting vengefully down the alley, seeing the
vague dark mass moving between them and the light of the distant street.
But the hooded men turned suddenly toward the seemingly blank wall, and
Conan saw a door gape there. He muttered a curse. He had traversed that
alley by day, in times past, and had never noticed a door there. But
through it they went, and the door closed behind them with the click of
a lock. The sound was not reassuring, but his guides were hurrying him
on, moving with the precision of familiarity, guiding Conan with a hand
at either elbow. It was like traversing a tunnel, and Conan felt
Albiona's lithe limbs trembling in his arms. Then somewhere ahead of
them an opening was faintly visible, merely a somewhat less black arch
in the blackness, and through this they filed.

After that there was a bewildering succession of dim courts and shadowy
alleys and winding corridors, all traversed in utter silence, until at
last they emerged into a broad lighted chamber, the location of which
Conan could not even guess, for their devious route had confused even
his primitive sense of direction.




10

A Coin from Acheron


Not all his guides entered the chamber. When the door closed, Conan saw
only one man standing before him--a slim figure, masked in a black cloak
with a hood. This the man threw back, disclosing a pale oval of a face,
with calm, delicately chiseled features.

The king set Albiona on her feet, but she still clung to him and stared
apprehensively about her. The chamber was a large one, with marble walls
partly covered with black velvet hangings and thick rich carpets on the
mosaic floor, laved in the soft golden glow of bronze lamps.

Conan instinctively laid a hand on his hilt. There was blood on his
hand, blood clotted about the mouth of his scabbard, for he had sheathed
his blade without cleansing it.

'Where are we?' he demanded.

The stranger answered with a low, profound bow in which the suspicious
king could detect no trace of irony.

'In the temple of Asura, your Majesty.'

Albiona cried out faintly and clung closer to Conan, staring fearfully
at the black, arched doors, as if expecting the entry of some grisly
shape of darkness.

'Fear not, my lady,' said their guide. 'There is nothing here to harm
you, vulgar superstition to the contrary. If your monarch was
sufficiently convinced of the innocence of our religion to protect us
from the persecution of the ignorant, then certainly one of his subjects
need have no apprehensions.'

'Who are you?' demanded Conan.

'I am Hadrathus, priest of Asura. One of my followers recognized you
when you entered the city, and brought the word to me.'

Conan grunted profanely.

'Do not fear that others discovered your identity,' Hadrathus assured
him. 'Your disguise would have deceived any but a follower of Asura,
whose cult it is to seek below the aspect of illusion. You were followed
to the watch tower, and some of my people went into the tunnel to aid
you if you returned by that route. Others, myself among them, surrounded
the tower. And now, King Conan, it is yours to command. Here in the
temple of Asura you are still king.'

'Why should you risk your lives for me?' asked the king.

'You were our friend when you sat upon your throne,' answered Hadrathus.
'You protected us when the priests of Mitra sought to scourge us out of
the land.'

Conan looked about him curiously. He had never before visited the temple
of Asura, had not certainly known that there was such a temple in
Tarantia. The priests of the religion had a habit of hiding their
temples in a remarkable fashion. The worship of Mitra was overwhelmingly
predominant in the Hyborian nations, but the cult of Asura persisted, in
spite of official ban and popular antagonism. Conan had been told dark
tales of hidden temples where intense smoke drifted up incessantly from
black altars where kidnapped humans were sacrificed before a great
coiled serpent, whose fearsome head swayed for ever in the haunted
shadows.

Persecution caused the followers of Asura to hide their temples with
cunning art, and to veil their rituals in obscurity; and this secrecy,
in turn, evoked more monstrous suspicions and tales of evil.

But Conan's was the broad tolerance of the barbarian, and he had refused
to persecute the followers of Asura or to allow the people to do so on
no better evidence than was presented against them, rumors and
accusations that could not be proven. 'If they are black magicians,' he
had said, 'how will they suffer you to harry them? If they are not,
there is no evil in them. Crom's devils! Let men worship what gods they
will.'

At a respectful invitation from Hadrathus he seated himself on an ivory
chair, and motioned Albiona to another, but she preferred to sit on a
golden stool at his feet, pressing close against his thigh, as if
seeking security in the contact. Like most orthodox followers of Mitra,
she had an intuitive horror of the followers and cult of Asura,
instilled in her infancy and childhood by wild tales of human sacrifice
and anthropomorphic gods shambling through shadowy temples.

Hadrathus stood before them, his uncovered head bowed.

'What is your wish, your Majesty?'

'Food first,' he grunted, and the priest smote a golden gong with a
silver wand.

Scarcely had the mellow notes ceased echoing when four hooded figures
came through a curtained doorway bearing a great four-legged silver
platter of smoking dishes and crystal vessels. This they set before
Conan, bowing low, and the king wiped his hands on the damask, and
smacked his lips with unconcealed relish.

'Beware, your Majesty!' whispered Albiona. 'These folk eat human flesh!'

'I'll stake my kingdom that this is nothing but honest roast beef,'
answered Conan. 'Come, lass, fall to! You must be hungry after the
prison fare.'

Thus advised, and with the example before her of one whose word was the
ultimate law to her, the countess complied, and ate ravenously though
daintily, while her liege lord tore into the meat joints and guzzled the
wine with as much gusto as if he had not already eaten once that night.

'You priests are shrewd, Hadrathus,' he said, with a great beef-bone in
his hands and his mouth full of meat. 'I'd welcome your service in my
campaign to regain my kingdom.'

Slowly Hadrathus shook his head, and Conan slammed the beef-bone down on
the table in a gust of impatient wrath.

'Crom's devils! What ails the men of Aquilonia? First Servius--now you!
Can you do nothing but wag your idiotic heads when I speak of ousting
these dogs?'

Hadrathus sighed and answered slowly: 'My lord, it is ill to say, and I
fain would say otherwise. But the freedom of Aquilonia is at an end.
Nay, the freedom of the whole world may be at an end! Age follows age in
the history of the world, and now we enter an age of horror and slavery,
as it was long ago.'

'What do you mean?' demanded the king uneasily.

Hadrathus dropped into a chair and rested his elbows on his thighs,
staring at the floor.

'It is not alone the rebellious lords of Aquilonia and the armies of
Nemedia which are arrayed against you,' answered Hadrathus. 'It is
sorcery--grisly black magic from the grim youth of the world. An awful
shape has risen out of the shades of the Past, and none can stand before
it.'

'What do you mean?' Conan repeated.

'I speak of Xaltotun of Acheron, who died three thousand years ago, yet
walks the earth today.'

Conan was silent, while in his mind floated an image--the image of a
bearded face of calm inhuman beauty. Again he was haunted by a sense of
uneasy familiarity. Acheron--the sound of the word roused instinctive
vibrations of memory and associations in his mind.

'Acheron,' he repeated. 'Xaltotun of Acheron--man, are you mad? Acheron
has been a myth for more centuries than I can remember. I've often
wondered if it ever existed at all.'

'It was a black reality,' answered Hadrathus, 'an empire of black
magicians, steeped in evil now long forgotten. It was finally overthrown
by the Hyborian tribes of the west. The wizards of Acheron practised
foul necromancy, thaumaturgy of the most evil kind, grisly magic taught
them by devils. And of all the sorcerers of that accursed kingdom, none
was so great as Xaltotun of Python.'

'Then how was he ever overthrown?' asked Conan skeptically.

'By some means a source of cosmic power which he jealously guarded was
stolen and turned against him. That source has been returned to him, and
he is invincible.'

Albiona, hugging the headsman's black cloak about her, stared from the
priest to the king, not understanding the conversation. Conan shook his
head angrily.

'You are making game of me,' he growled. 'If Xaltotun has been dead
three thousand years, how can this man be he? It's some rogue who's
taken the old one's name.'

Hadrathus leaned to an ivory table and opened a small gold chest which
stood there. From it he took something which glinted dully in the mellow
light--a broad gold coin of antique minting.

'You have seen Xaltotun unveiled? Then look upon this. It is a coin
which was stamped in ancient Acheron, before its fall. So pervaded with
sorcery was that black empire, that even this coin has its uses in
making magic.'

Conan took it and scowled down at it. There was no mistaking its great
antiquity. Conan had handled many coins in the years of his plunderings,
and had a good practical knowledge of them. The edges were worn and the
inscription almost obliterated. But the countenance stamped on one side
was still clear-cut and distinct. And Conan's breath sucked in between
his clenched teeth. It was not cool in the chamber, but he felt a
prickling of his scalp, an icy contraction of his flesh. The countenance
was that of a bearded man, inscrutable, with a calm inhuman beauty.

'By Crom! It's he!' muttered Conan. He understood, now, the sense of
familiarity that the sight of the bearded man had roused in him from the
first. He had seen a coin like this once before, long ago in a far land.

With a shake of his shoulders he growled: 'The likeness is only a
coincidence--or if he's shrewd enough to assume a forgotten wizard's
name, he's shrewd enough to assume his likeness.' But he spoke without
conviction. The sight of that coin had shaken the foundations of his
universe. He felt that reality and stability were crumbing into an abyss
of illusion and sorcery. A wizard was understandable; but this was
diabolism beyond sanity.

'We cannot doubt that it is indeed Xaltotun of Python,' said Hadrathus.
'He it was who shook down the cliffs at Valkia, by his spells that
enthrall the elementals of the earth--he it was who sent the creature of
darkness into your tent before dawn.'

Conan scowled at him. 'How did you know that?'

'The followers of Asura have secret channels of knowledge. That does not
matter. But do you realize the futility of sacrificing your subjects in
a vain attempt to regain your crown?'

Conan rested his chin on his fist, and stared grimly into nothing.
Albiona watched him anxiously, her mind groping bewildered in the mazes
of the problem that confronted him.

'Is there no wizard in the world who could make magic to fight
Xaltotun's magic?' he asked at last.

Hadrathus shook his head. 'If there were, we of Asura would know of him.
Men say our cult is a survival of the ancient Stygian serpent-worship.
That is a lie. Our ancestors came from Vendhya, beyond the Sea of
Vilayet and the blue Himelian mountains. We are sons of the East, not
the South, and we have knowledge of all the wizards of the East, who are
greater than the wizards of the West. And not one of them but would be a
straw in the wind before the black might of Xaltotun.'

'But he was conquered once,' persisted Conan.

'Aye; a cosmic source was turned against him. But now that source is
again in his hands, and he will see that it is not stolen again.'

'And what is this damnable source?' demanded Conan irritably.

'It is called the Heart of Ahriman. When Acheron was overthrown, the
primitive priest who had stolen it and turned it against Xaltotun hid it
in a haunted cavern and built a small temple over the cavern. Thrice
thereafter the temple was rebuilt, each time greater and more
elaborately than before, but always on the site of the original shrine,
though men forgot the reason therefor. Memory of the hidden symbol faded
from the minds of common men, and was preserved only in priestly books
and esoteric volumes. Whence it came no one knows. Some say it is the
veritable heart of a god, others that it is a star that fell from the
skies long ago. Until it was stolen, none had looked upon it for three
thousand years.

'When the magic of the Mitran priests failed against the magic of
Xaltotun's acolyte, Altaro, they remembered the ancient legend of the
heart, and the high priest and an acolyte went down into the dark and
terrible crypt below the temple into which no priest had descended for
three thousand years. In the ancient iron-bound volumes which speak of
the Heart in their cryptic symbolism, it is also told of a creature of
darkness left by the ancient priest to guard it.

'Far down in a square chamber with arched doorways leading off into
immeasurable blackness, the priest and his acolytes found a black stone
altar that glowed dimly with inexplicable radiance.

'On that altar lay a curious gold vessel like a double-valved sea-shell
which clung to the stone like a barnacle. But it gaped open and empty.
The Heart of Ahriman was gone. While they stared in horror, the keeper
of the crypt, the creature of darkness, came upon them and mangled the
high priest so that he died. But the acolyte fought off the being--a
mindless, soulless waif of the pits brought long ago to guard the
Heart--and escaped up the long black narrow stairs carrying the dying
priest, who before he died, gasped out the news to his followers, bade
them submit to a power they could not overcome, and commanded secrecy.
But the word has been whispered about among the priests, and we of Asura
learned of it.'

'And Xaltotun draws his power from this symbol?' asked Conan, still
skeptical.

'No. His power is drawn from the black gulf. But the Heart of Ahriman
came from some far universe of flaming light, and against it the powers
of darkness cannot stand, when it is in the hands of an adept. It is
like a sword that might smite at him, not a sword with which he can
smite. It restores life, and can destroy life. He has stolen it, not to
use against his enemies, but to keep them from using it against him.'

'A shell-shaped bowl of gold on a black altar in a deep cavern,' Conan
muttered, frowning as he sought to capture the illusive image. 'That
reminds me of something I have heard or seen. But what, in Crom's name,
is this notable Heart?'

'It is in the form of a great jewel, like a ruby, but pulsing with
blinding fire with which no ruby ever burned. It glows like living
flame--'

But Conan sprang suddenly up and smote his right fist into his left palm
like a thunderclap.

'Crom!' he roared, 'What a fool I've been! The Heart of Ahriman! The
heart of my kingdom! Find the heart of my kingdom, Zelata said. By Ymir,
it was the jewel I saw in the green smoke, the jewel which Tarascus
stole from Xaltotun while he lay in the sleep of the black lotus!'

Hadrathus was also on his feet, his calm dropped from him like a
garment.

'What are you saying? The Heart stolen from Xaltotun?'

'Aye!' Conan boomed. 'Tarascus feared Xaltotun and wanted to cripple his
power, which he thought resided in the Heart. Maybe he thought the
wizard would die if the Heart was lost. By Crom--ahhh!' With a savage
grimace of disappointment and disgust he dropped his clenched hand to
his side.

'I forgot. Tarascus gave it to a thief to throw into the sea. By this
time the fellow must be almost to Kordava. Before I can follow him he'll
take ship and consign the Heart to the bottom of the ocean.'

'The sea will not hold it!' exclaimed Hadrathus, quivering with
excitement. 'Xaltotun would himself have cast it into the ocean long
ago, had he not known that the first storm would carry it ashore. But on
what unknown beach might it not land!'

'Well,' Conan was recovering some of his resilient confidence, 'there's
no assurance that the thief will throw it away. If I know thieves--and I
should, for I was a thief in Zamora in my early youth--he won't throw it
away. He'll sell it to some rich trader. By Crom!' he strode back and
forth in his growing excitement. 'It's worth looking for! Zelata bade me
find the heart of my kingdom, and all else she showed me proved to be
truth. Can it be that the power to conquer Xaltotun lurks in that
crimson bauble?'

'Aye! My head upon it!' cried Hadrathus, his face lightened with fervor,
his eyes blazing, his fists clenched. 'With it in our hands we can dare
the powers of Xaltotun! I swear it! If we can recover it, we have an
even chance of recovering your crown and driving the invaders from our
portals. It is not the swords of Nemedia that Aquilonia fears, but the
black arts of Xaltotun.'

Conan looked at him for a space, impressed by the priest's fire.

'It's like a quest in a nightmare,' he said at last. 'Yet your words
echo the thought of Zelata, and all else she said was truth. I'll seek
for this jewel.'

'It holds the destiny of Aquilonia,' said Hadrathus with conviction. 'I
will send men with you--'

'Nay!' exclaimed the king impatiently, not caring to be hampered by
priests on his quest, however skilled in esoteric arts. 'This is a task
for a fighting man. I go alone. First to Poitain, where I'll leave
Albiona with Trocero. Then to Kordava, and to the sea beyond, if
necessary. It may be that, even if the thief intends carrying out
Tarascus' order, he'll have some difficulty finding an outbound ship at
this time of the year.'

'And if you find the Heart,' cried Hadrathus, 'I will prepare the way
for your conquest. Before you return to Aquilonia I will spread the word
through secret channels that you live and are returning with a magic
stronger than Xaltotun's. I will have men ready to rise on your return.
They will rise, if they have assurance that they will be protected from
the black arts of Xaltotun.

'And I will aid you on your journey.'

He rose and struck a gong.

'A secret tunnel leads from beneath this temple to a place outside the
city wall. You shall go to Poitain on a pilgrim's boat. None will dare
molest you.'

'As you will.' With a definite purpose in mind Conan was afire with
impatience and dynamic energy. 'Only let it be done swiftly.'

       *       *       *       *       *

In the meantime events were moving not slowly elsewhere in the city. A
breathless messenger had burst into the palace where Valerius was
amusing himself with his dancing-girls, and throwing himself on his
knee, gasped out a garbled story of a bloody prison break and the escape
of a lovely captive. He bore also the news that Count Thespius, to whom
the execution of Albiona's sentence had been entrusted, was dying and
begging for a word with Valerius before he passed.

Hurriedly cloaking himself, Valerius accompanied the man through various
winding ways, and came to a chamber where Thespius lay. There was no
doubt that the count was dying; bloody froth bubbled from his lips at
each shuddering gasp. His severed arm had been bound to stop the flow of
blood, but even without that, the gash in his side was mortal.

Alone in the chamber with the dying man, Valerius swore softly.

'By Mitra, I had believed that only one man ever lived who could strike
such a blow.'

'Valerius!' gasped the dying man. 'He lives! Conan lives!'

'What are you saying?' ejaculated the other.

'I swear by Mitra!' gurgled Thespius, gagging on the blood that gushed
to his lips. 'It was he who carried off Albiona! He is not dead--no
phantom come back from hell to haunt us. He is flesh and blood, and more
terrible than ever. The alley behind the tower is full of dead men.
Beware, Valerius--he has come back--to slay us all--'

A strong shudder shook the blood-smeared figure, and Count Thespius went
limp.

Valerius frowned down at the dead man, cast a swift glance about the
empty chamber, and stepping swiftly to the door, cast it open suddenly.
The messenger and a group of Nemedian guardsmen stood several paces down
the corridor. Valerius muttered something that might have indicated
satisfaction.

'Have all the gates been closed?' he demanded.

'Yes, your Majesty.'

'Triple the guards at each. Let no one enter or leave the city without
strictest investigation. Set men scouring the streets and searching the
quarters. A very valuable prisoner has escaped, with the aid of an
Aquilonian rebel. Did any of you recognize the man?'

'No, your Majesty. The old watchman had a glimpse of him, but could only
say that he was a giant, clad in the black garb of the executioner,
whose naked body we found in an empty cell.'

'He is a dangerous man,' said Valerius. 'Take no chances with him. You
all know the Countess Albiona. Search for her, and if you find her, kill
her and her companion instantly. Do not try to take them alive.'

Returning to his palace chamber, Valerius summoned before him four men
of curious and alien aspect. They were tall, gaunt, of yellowish skin,
and immobile countenances. They were very similar in appearance, clad
alike in long black robes beneath which their sandaled feet were just
visible. Their features were shadowed by their hoods. They stood before
Valerius with their hands in their wide sleeves; their arms folded.
Valerius looked at them without pleasure. In his far journeyings he had
encountered many strange races.

'When I found you starving in the Khitan jungles,' he said abruptly,
'exiles from your kingdom, you swore to serve me. You have served me
well enough, in your abominable way. One more service I require, and
then I set you free of your oath.

'Conan the Cimmerian, king of Aquilonia, still lives, in spite of
Xaltotun's sorcery--or perhaps because of it. I know not. The dark mind
of that resurrected devil is too devious and subtle for a mortal man to
fathom. But while Conan lives I am not safe. The people accepted me as
the lesser of two evils, when they thought he was dead. Let him reappear
and the throne will be rocking under my feet in revolution before I can
lift my hand.

'Perhaps my allies mean to use him to replace me, if they decide I have
served my purpose. I do not know. I do know that this planet is too
small for two kings of Aquilonia. Seek the Cimmerian. Use your uncanny
talents to ferret him out wherever he hides or runs. He has many friends
in Tarantia. He had aid when he carried off Albiona. It took more than
one man, even such a man as Conan, to wreak all that slaughter in the
alley outside the tower. But no more. Take your staffs and strike his
trail. Where that trail will lead you, I know not. But find him! And
when you find him, slay him!'

The four Khitans bowed together, and still unspeaking, turned and padded
noiselessly from the chamber.




11

Swords of the South


Dawn that rose over the distant hills shone on the sails of a small
craft that dropped down the river which curves to within a mile of the
walls of Tarantia, and loops southward like a great shining serpent.
This boat differed from the ordinary craft plying the broad
Khorotas--fishermen and merchant barges loaded with rich goods. It was
long and slender, with a high, curving prow, and was black as ebony,
with white skulls painted along the gunwales. Amidships rose a small
cabin, the windows closely masked. Other craft gave the ominously
painted boat a wide berth; for it was obviously one of those 'pilgrim
boats' that carried a lifeless follower of Asura on his last mysterious
pilgrimage southward to where, far beyond the Poitanian mountains, a
river flowed at last into the blue ocean. In that cabin undoubtedly lay
the corpse of the departed worshipper. All men were familiar with the
sight of those gloomy craft; and the most fanatical votary of Mitra
would not dare touch or inte

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/42243