The Cimmerian drew a deep breath. Yet more sorcery! “I do not like such things asociated with me,” he said, and was pleased that he had not yelled it.
“Not with you,” Akiro assured him. “With the amulet. Such a thing is much less complex than a living person, and thus easier to fix on. Had I had some of your hair, or some garments you had worn, I could have found you much more quickly.”
“Crom!” Conan breathed. His hair! He would never allow a sorcerer to have such, no matter how much a friend he seemed at the moment.
Akiro went on as if the Cimmerian had not spoken. “With only an inanimate object as a focus, the circle barely changed at first. It was very difficult to read a direction. Much like finding your way through a building in the dark, by feel.”
“And Bombatta did not want to follow it,” Malak burst out. “He said he didn’t trust Akiro.” His last words trailed off to a murmur, and he gave a worried look at Akiro.
“It is all right,” Akiro said. “I was finished.”
All the while they talked Bombatta had sat his horse, glaring from Conan to Jehnna and back again. Now he growled, “Did he harm you, child?”
Jehnna looked up, startled, from her conversation with Zula. “What? Why, what do you mean, Bombatta? Conan protects me, even as you do.”
Her answer did not seem to satsify the black-armored man. His face darkened, and the scars on it became livid. He looked at Akiro, hesitated visibly, then spoke. “I must know, wizard. Is she still an innocent?”
“Bombatta!” Jehnna protested, and Zula spoke close behind her.
“That is no question to be asked, or answered,” the black woman growled.
“Tell me true, wizard,” Bombatta said insistently, “for our lives and more, much more than you can know, depend on it.”
Akiro pursed his lips, then nodded slowly. “She is an innocent. I sense it so strongly, I wonder that the rest of you cannot.” As Bombatta sagged with a relieved sigh, the round-bellied mage moved his horse closer to Conan’s and lowered his voice. “It is a thing of the spirit and not of the flesh, as I said once before,” he murmured.
Conan colored, and colored more when he realized that he had. “You pry,” he muttered. “Do not use your wizardry on me.”
“Use the vial I gave you,” Akiro said. “Use it, and ride away from here. Take the girl, if you wish. I do not doubt you could persuade her to go with you. In another night or two.” A faint leer touched his lips, and was gone. “There can be nothing in this for you, Cimmerian, save more wounds of the kind that neither show nor heal.”
Conan scowled silently, denying the temptation to put his hand to his belt-pouch to see if the small stone vial was still there. Valeria, and a debt still unpaid. He became aware of Jehnna’s voice.
“He says he will not take me, but I know it is there. I know!”
Bombatta turned a scowling visage to the Cimmerian. “Well, thief, do you abandon your precious Valeria? Did those Corinthians frighten your manhood from you? Or did you ever have—?”
Conan’s eyes were so cold that the scar-faced warrior cut off his words. Bombatta’s emotions were writ plain on his features, realization of what he had done, anger at having been afrighted even for a moment, rage that the others had seen it. He gripped his tulwar so hard that the hilt creaked, but the big Cimmerian made no move toward his own weapon.
Patience, Conan told himself. In the rugged mountain ranges of Cimmeria a man without patience was a man who was soon dead. There would be time for killing later. When he spoke his voice was icy calm.
“I would not take her where she wants to go without other eyes to watch, and more blades to guard her. We have them, now.” He pulled his horse up beside Bombatta’s. “Let us not delay, Zamoran. We must be back in Shadizar by tomorrow night, and we have matters to settle, you and I, when this is done.”
“I will look forward to it,” Bombatta snarled.
“And I,” Conan said, starting forward again, “will look back upon it.”
xvii
Half a day’s riding it took to reach those broken fingers of stone, and they looked no better to Conan once he was in them than they had from a distance. Quickly the rough gray walls rose around them, and the way narrowed until they were forced to ride in single file. Hundreds of confined passages crossed and re-crossed like miniature canyons, with thick stone separating them. Sometimes half a score choices of direction were presented at once, and each was more cramped and crooked than the one before.
“To the right,” Jehnna said from directly behind him. “The right, I said. No, not that one. That one over there! It’s close, now. Oh, we could move twice as fast if you’d only let me lead.”
“No!” Bombatta shouted.
Conan said nothing, reining in to study the possibilities ahead, three narrow corridors through the stone leading off in different directions. Very narrow corridors. It was not the first time Jehnna had asked to lead the way, and he had long since tired of explaining the dangers to her. Bombatta now refused to leave her side because, he claimed, he did not trust the Cimmerian not to allow her to go ahead of him. After Bombatta’s display at the rejoining, Conan was sure the Zamoran simply did not want to leave her alone with him, but the problem before him left no time to worry about that.
“Why have we stopped?” Jehnna demanded. “That is the way. Right there.” She pointed to the center gap.
“It is too narrow for the horses,” Conan said. With some difficulty, for the gray walls were already close, he swung down from his saddle and moved ahead of his horse. “We will have to leave them.”
He did not like doing it. Hobbled, they would not wander far, but even a short distance could make a difference in this. And without horses there was no hope in Zandru’s Nine Hells of reaching Shadizar in time. The others had dismounted and were fastening hobbles between their mounts’ forelegs, or pushing past the animals to join him.
“Malak,” he said, “best you stay with the horses.”
The small thief started and stared at the stone around them with a sickly look. “Here? Sigyn’s Bowl, Conan, I don’t think we should divide ourselves. Keep our forces together, eh? A man can’t even breath in here.”
About to make a sharp retort, Conan stopped. He himself had been thinking much about how close the stone was, how it seemed almost to cut off the air. But he was not one to be affected by tight passages or close spaces. He studied the others’ faces, trying to see if any of them felt what he did. Jehnna was all impatience, while Zula had the set face of one who expected combat at any moment. Bombatta glowered, as usual, and Akiro appeared thoughtful, also as usual. Perhaps it was all in his imagination. And perhaps not.
“Yes, we’ll stay together,” he said. He drew his sword in one hand, his dagger in the other. “Thus will I mark our way,” with the dagger he scratched an arrow on the stone, pointing toward the horses, “that we can find the horses again. Stay close.”
To Jehnna’s eager urging Conan moved down the rough-walled passage, though not so quickly as she would have liked, and every ten paces he scratched another arrow on the stone. If the worst came, he thought, even Jehnna could find the animals with these. Even alone she might have a chance of escape.
At times they had to turn sideways, stone scraping their chests and backs, for some stretches were so strait not even Zula or Jehnna could walk through them normally. However Conan walked, he kept his sword advanced and his dagger ready for anything that managed to get past the longer blade. As he moved deeper into the maze, his sense of something ill grew. Almost could he put a name now to what seemed to permeate the stone through which they made their way. It was like the remembrance of a memory of the stench of death, so faint the nose could not smell it, so tenuous the mind could not grasp it, yet there to be touched by the most primitive instincts.
He looked back at the others, and this time found his unease mirrored on their faces, all save Jehnna’s.
“Why do we move so slowly?” the slender
girl demanded. Vainly, she tried to push past the big Cimmerian, but there was barely width enough for him to pass alone. “We are almost there.”
“Akiro?” Conan said.
The gray-haired wizard’s face was twisted as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. “I have sensed it since we entered these passages, but it grows stronger as we go. It is … a foulness.” He stopped to spit. “But it is old, ancient, and I do not think it threatens us. We are more than a few centuries too late for that.”
Conan nodded, and continued on, but he was not convinced. His own senses might not be magical, but they had kept him alive in many places where he could well have died, and they told him there was danger here. He kept a firm grip on his weapons
With startling suddenness the passage spilled out into a large open area. Here the rock had been cut away, and the stone remaining carved in intricate patterns to floor a great courtyard that fronted a temple hewn from the very side of the mountain. Massive fluted columns ran across the face of the temple, and once a score of obsidian statues, four times the height of a man, had stood between them. Now only one remained, an ebon warrior holding a tall spear, with the features of his face worn away by wind and rain. Of the others only shattered chunks of black stone and the stumps of their legs remained.
Conan sheathed his dagger and grabbed Jehnna’s arm as she tried to run to the temple. “Take care, girl,” he told her. “I’ll risk much here, but you I risk as little as possible.”
Bombatta seized her other arm, and the two men stared coldly at one another above her head. The promise of death was strong between them. It was another reason to wish the journey done, Conan thought. Such promises as that could not remain unfulfilled forever.
“Let me go,” Jehnna said, twisting in their grasp. “I must find the Horn. It is inside there. Let me go!”
Zula, sneering at both men, put her hands on Jehnna’s shoulders. “Will you tear her apart, then? Or perhaps crush her between you?”
Conan let his hand fall away, and Bombatta was only an instant behind. Zula drew the girl away, speaking softly in her ear. Conan met Bombatta’s glare unblinkingly.
“This will be settled, thief,” the scar-faced man said.
“In Shadizar,” Conan said, and the other jerked a nod of agreement.
When Conan reached the temple, Akiro was attempting to trace with his finger weather-worn carving in the pedestal on which the obsidian statue stood. Little was left.
“What are you trying to do?” Malak laughed at the old wizard. “Read decorative carving? And to speak of it, I’ve seen better scrollwork done by a one-eyed drunkard.”
Sighing, Akiro straightened and dusted his hands. “I could read it, in part at least, were it not so badly eroded. It is script, not scrollwork. This place is much older even than I believed. The last writings in this language were done more than three thousand years ago, and even then it was a dead tongue. Only scattered fragments remain. Perhaps I can find more inside.”
“We are not here to decipher old languages,” Bombatta growled.
Privately Conan agreed, but all he said was, “Let us get on with it, then.”
Rock doves burst from their nests high behind the massive columns, their wingbeats like an explosion in the stillness, as Conan strode to the tall bronze doors, covered with the verdigris of centuries. Through the thick green could be seen a huge open eye, worked deeply into the metal of each door. A large bronze ring hung below each eye.
“We’ll never get that open,” Malak said, eyeing the corrosion.
Conan grasped one thick ring for an experimental heave. To his surprise the door swung out with a squeal of hinges long ungreased. It was but chance that it opened so, he told himself. If men used those doors, they would grease the hinges. He did not like the relief he felt at that. Still, he told himself, he was there to see to Jehnna’s safety, not to flaunt his own bravery.
“Keep a sharp eye,” he commanded, “and your guard up.” Then he led the way inside.
Beyond the great doors the dust of centuries lay thick on the floor. Torches stood along the intricately carved walls in golden brackets, untarnished by the years but festooned in cobwebs. Above them the ceiling was lost in shadows, and the vast hall stretched before them into darkness.
Suddenly Zula screamed as a spider, its outstretched legs wide enough to cover a man’s hand, ran across her bare foot.
“Only a spider,” Malak said, crushing it beneath his foot. He kicked the pulped remains away. “No need to be afraid of a—” The wiry thief cut off with a yelp as Zula’s staff whistled toward his face and halted, quivering, no more than a fingerwidth from his nose. His eyes crossed staring at it.
“I am not afraid,” Zula hissed. “I simply do not like spiders.” Rustlings sounded deeper in the hall, and she peered in that direction nervously. “And rats. I especially do not like rats.”
Conan lifted a torch down from the wall and sheathed his sword to dig into his pouch for flint and steel. “If these still burn,” he began.
Akiro’s lips moved, and fire suddenly danced atop his bunched fingers. He touched it to the torch, which burst aflame with a crackle that was loud in the still hall. “It will burn,” he said.
“Can you not wait until you are asked?” Conan said drily as he stuffed the lighting implements back. Akiro shrugged apologetically.
Bombatta and Malak lit torches from Conan’s, and they started warily down the great hall. Their feet disturbed dust unmarked save for the small tracks of rats. The bones of small animals and birds lay scattered about, some buried in the dust, some atop it. Long had it been since anything had moved there save the rodents and their prey. The chittering of rats, held back by fire and the strange smell of humans, followed them, and the torches’ flames were reflected in hundreds of tiny, hungry eyes. Zula muttered and swiveled her head as if trying to watch all ways at once. Malak no longer made fun of her discomfort; he rigidly avoided looking at those glittering eyes, and mixed curses and prayers to a score of gods in a low monotone.
At the far end of the hall were broad stone steps leading up to a dais atop which sat a high-back throne of marble. Before that throne lay a small pile of age-dried bones, and on its seat another pile with a human skull in its midst, empty, shadowed eye-sockets staring at Conan and his companions. Armor, garments, a crown, whatever that man had once worn, were all long gone to dust.
Jehnna pointed to their right, to a wide, arched doorway half-hidden in the darkness. “There,” she said. “That is the way.”
Conan found himself relieved that the treasure—the horn, had not Jehnna called it?—was not on that throne. Many years before he had taken the sword he carried from a throne not too different from this one, and it had not been an experience he would care to repeat.
Bombatta had moved to the archway as soon as the girl spoke, and thrust his torch through it. “Stairs!” he muttered. “How much deeper into the bowels of this place must we go?”
“As deep as we must,” Conan said. And pushing Bombatta aside, he started down.
xviii
The wide stairs spiraled down into the depths of the mountain, and here Conan could see signs of the earthquake that had toppled the statues in front of the temple. Cracks spider-webbed the walls, and once there was a jog in the stairs, as if someone had cut neatly through them then pushed one part a handspan to the side. True spiders had been there once, as well. Thick cobwebs clogged the passage, but at the touch of the Cimmerian’s torch they hissed and flared and melted away.
“I do not like this, Conan,” Malak whispered loudly. “Ogon strike me, but I don’t.”
“Then wait above,” Conan replied.
“With the rats!” The small man’s voice was a squeak, and Zula chuckled, though not strongly.
A final turn and the stairs led into a long chamber with a high vaulted ceiling supported by what seemed at first glance to be golden columns, a row of them along each wall. Nearly half the columns were toppled, though, their b
roken pieces littering the dusty, mosaicked floor, and the pieces showed thin hammered gold-leaf atop ordinary gray stone. The ceiling was worked in a profusion of strange symbols, only one of which Conan could even recognize. An open eye, as on the bronze doors, repeated over and over among the other designs. What it meant he could not begin to guess.
“Conan,” Akiro called, “this seems the only way out other than the stairs.”
The wizard stood at the far end of the chamber by a broad door that seemed of iron, yet had no spot of rust on it. It had no hinges either, Conan saw, as if it were merely a huge metal plate set in the stone.
“This is the way,” Jehnna whispered eagerly. She stared intently at the door, or at something beyond. “We must go on.”
The door’s dark gray surface was smooth except for the inevitable open eye in its center and two snarling demons’ heads near the bottom. Tusks, like those of a wild boar, curved out from the open mouths of those grotesque heads. If the door could not be pushed open, Conan thought, then possibly … He rapped his sword sharply against each of the grimacing demon heads. From one gaping mouth wriggled a scarlet centipede; its bite was sure, slow and agonized death. Malak leaped from its way as it scurried for a hiding place among the fallen columns.
Sheathing his sword, Conan handed his torch to Zula and squatted before the door. One hand he placed in each demon mouth. As he had thought, his hands fit easily. He heaved upward.
“Handles,” Malak exclaimed.
With every muscle straining, Conan began to wonder if he had been right in reaching the same conclusion as the smaller man. The metal slab moved no more than if it were a part of the mountain. Suddenly Bombatta was there beside him, grasping one of the demon heads. Conan shifted both hands to the other, and redoubled his effort. Tendons stood out along his neck and thighs, and every sinew of him cried out. Silver flecks danced before his eyes. And the iron slab lurched up a handsbreadth. Slowly then, with a metallic racheting noise, the door rose, until Conan and Bombatta between them held it above their heads.