Conan the Barbarian (18 page)

“Aye, aye, Sire,” said the captain.'

“And as they go, bid the servants extinguish the larger candles. The light does hurt my eyes.”

The captain bowed and turned away, repeating the royal wishes to those about the throne. Soon courtiers, guards, and slave girls bowed and withdrew, all save the two stalwart soldiers who took their stand behind a pair of massive pillars near the royal seat. As the candles were snuffed out, long shadows crawled like serpents across the marble tiles.

Osric shuddered and wet his lips. But he sat upright still, concealing his apprehension behind a regal mien. He drained his cup of wine and tossed the goblet aside, forgetting that the servant who would have caught it had issued from the chamber. Like a gong struck by a mallet, the vessel hit the marble and, clattering, rolled to the feet of Yaro.

The black priest had entered the audience chamber on noiseless feet and now, with slow and measured tread, approached the throne. Standing impassively before the king, he folded his arms upon his breast and inclined his shaven pate in a fleeting nod. Osric regarded him silently, but there was fear and loathing in his hooded eyes.

“Sire,” the priest began.

“Well?” demanded the monarch, a false bravado strengthening his quavering voice. “You desired words with me. To what import?”

“Great import, Sire,” replied Yaro taking a step closer to the throne. “My Lord, Thulsa Doom, the true prophet of Set the Eternal, wishes to honour your house by marriage with your daughter, the Princess Yasimina.”

“Honour my house!” cried Osric shrilly. “Honour! You abuse the word, sir, and my patience.”

“Sire, marriage is an honourable estate... “Monstrous! You have the insolence to come here and say that?” The king clawed at his beard with a shaking hand. “Your effrontery surpasses all belief!”

“No effrontery was intended,” said Yaro tonelessly. "The honour that Doom would do you extends beyond yourself. It is the Grand Master’s wish that, by this alliance, Zamora shall become the true kingdom of Set, and the centre of an ever-expanding empire.”

Quivering with fury, Osric rose. “Enough!” he cried. "Whilst I am king, I shall never sanction this monstrous union, this hellish corruption of the marriage vows. Guards!”

The two massive bodyguards stepped from the shelter of the marble columns. Yaro looked them over. In a soft, expressionless voice he said: “You promised that we should be alone, in private audience, King Osric.”

The king’s laugh was the bark of an angry dog. “Think you that I would trust myself alone with a human viper of the serpent cult? I have not lived this long by offering my naked heel to the fangs of a crawling snake.”

Yaro bowed with mock servility. “O wise and mighty King.” Then, turning to the two armed men, he said: “If I were to ask you, would you slay this infidel for our master, Thulsa Doom?”

Like men walking in a dream, the guards drew their swords and advanced on the king, who stood, trembling, on the dais of his throne. “Help! Murder! To me, loyal guards....” Osric cried in vain; his feeble shouts could not penetrate the heavy doors, firmly shut at the old king’s command.

As the sound of heavy blades chopping into flesh supplanted the monarch’s frantic cries, Yaro turned his back and made his way down the darkened immensity of the audience chamber. The two guards wiped the blood from their blades on the dead king’s robe and followed him.

By the shores of the inland sea, Conan, Valeria, and Subotai continued to enjoy the hospitality of the hermit-wizard. In the course of a few days, the Cimmerian had fully regained his former vigour; and the friends sought a plan to rescue Princess Yasimina despite the mutant soldiery and the girl’s entranced fascination with the cult leader.

One dusk, as they sat around a fire in the sorcerer’s hut, Conan said, “The old man tells me that the Mountain of Power contains a vast network of chambers, some natural caves and others hollowed out by those who built Doom’s templed hiding place. I saw some of those chambers when I went thither in the guise of a pilgrim.”

Valeria said: “You tried to enter by the door open to the faithful, and you nearly died of it. If we dare not try that way again, how shall we enter?”

“There is a secret entrance,” muttered Conan. “Behind the mountain, a stream has cut a deep and narrow gorge. Far up the gorge, there is an unguarded opening. The old man says none knows of it but he.”

“You mean,” said Subotai, “that a good thief could climb the gorge, steal the girl, and be off before anyone would miss her?”

“How does the wizard know about this opening?” Valeria asked suspiciously.

“The ancient sorcerer has lived his life in these parts,” rumbled Conan. “He prowled the mountain passages before Doom came to this land.”

Subotai, picking his teeth with a splinter, added, From whatever pit of Hell it was that spawned him!” “That same Hell to which, Crom grant, I shall return him!” The Cimmerian’s angry eyes glowed a volcanic blue, and his right hand clenched as if around the pommel of a sword.

Valeria looked sharply at Conan. Unable to read his saturnine expression, she said, “We have come here for one purpose only—to fetch the girl Yasimina to her father and to fain a kingly fortune. Later there will be time to seek revenge; later, when we have Osric’s promised treasure, we can hire assassins or raise whole armies to lay siege to yonder fortress.”

Subotai nodded his agreement. Conan sat silently caressing with his thumb the edge of his sturdy weapon. Valeria said no more.

In the chill of the following dawn, they parted from the wizard. The wind ruffled the manes of the three horses as Valeria galloped off, her blonde hair floating behind her on a freshet of moving air. Subotai paused to adjust his bow and quiver full of well-tipped arrows before he followed her. Keeping a tight rein on his gelding, Conan trotted over to the sorcerer, who sat glumly on the threshold of his now empty abode.

The wizard, lost in prayers or contemplation, rubbed one gnarled hand upon the other, seemingly unaware of the Cimmerian’s approach. His eyes remained averted, even when the other spoke.

“Wish us well, old man,” said the barbarian, “for today we lie on the laps of the careless gods.”

Not certain that his words had been received, Conan waved a salute to the bent and indrawn figure, wheeled his steed, and galloped off to join the others. With tears streaming down his weathered cheeks, the wise man gazed after him until horse and rider were swallowed in mists from the Vilayet Sea.

The three adventurers crossed the plain and, choosing an obscure path, skirted the flanks of the Mountain of Power with care, lest they be noticed by sentries posted on the heights. In time, they entered a region of broken foothills, through which a stream had chiselled a deep cleft. Ahead, this channel rose steeply to a tremendous height. Hemmed in by these sheer walls of stone, a spring-fed stream tumbled and cascaded down the mountain side, rushed, seething, over boulders and pebbled sands, to swirl at last into quiet pools among the rock slides.

Here, where dwarfed trees clung to the sparse soil, the three dismounted and tethered their horses. Subotai drew from his saddle bags several curious objects, which he had constructed with the shaman’s help. These were goatskin bags, their seams caulked with pitch. While the two men inflated these grotesque spheres, tying the necks tightly, Valeria combined in a small bowl mineral oil and powdered charcoal to make a thick and sticky pigment. Setting aside their outer garments, they smeared their bodies with a mottled pattern, resembling sunlight dancing on long shadows. Black bands confined their hair; and in these sable strips they placed small branches of leafy greens, so that the casual observer would see a bush, and not a human form.

In the grey light of a sunless afternoon, the rushing torrent looked icy cold and perilous, but there was no other way to steal into the citadel. So, tying favourite weapons, wrapped in dark cloth, to their backs, and clasping the inflated bags of hide, one by one they abandoned themselves to the stream.

Sometimes breasting the freezing water, sometimes clambering upward on submerged rocks, they clawed their way to the margin of the flume. There, where the water fell with brutal force, Conan seized an up-thrust spire and clambered to the top of a steep bank. Soon Valeria and Subotai followed him from the water; and, their bodies atingle from the cold kiss of the wind, they began to work their way up the crude staircase formed by forbidding rocks.

Beside them the falling water roared like thunder; above them the cliff walls seemed to intersect, shuttering out the pale light of fading day. They paused to rest where a particularly large boulder offered a moment’s refuge. Looking up they saw, high on the massive cliffs, the glow of fire 11umed by the entrance to a cave. The opening was a mere licit in the rock wall, tall and narrow, like the pointed window of a fortress.

Suddenly, above the thunder of the waterfall, they heard the slow and measured cadence of beaten drums. As they resumed their tortuous climb, the low and resonant throbbing increased in volume, deep-throated, persistent, Unrelenting. Conan whispered to the girl behind him: "Sounds as if the devil Doom is about to greet his benighted fools. If only I could get my hands on him...”

Valeria felt panic freeze her heart, panic far colder than the chill wind on her naked back. It lent an urgency to her half-audible reply. “Just the girl, Conan. We came for just the girl.”

The Cimmerian nodded briefly and continued on his upward climb. Shadow-like in the dusk, they reached the entrance to the cave and wriggled through. As silently as wraiths cavorting in a graveyard, Conan and Valeria wedged themselves into small fissures in the cave walls, while Subotai, on stealthy feet, moved forward toward the firelight.

The drums fell silent; and hiding in the dark recesses, the invaders heard a cacophony of little sounds: a squeaking Hint might have been the voices of hungry rats; the slow drip Of water on stone; and, from the cave entrance, a weird ululation of the wind.

At length Subotai returned from his explorations and signalled them excitedly. They inched their way forward, trying not to dislodge a wayward pebble, lest the slipping alone betray them.

“Hark!” growled Conan, stopping suddenly. “The drums again....’’In some chamber set above the rocky ceiling of the narrow cave, they heard the maniacal fury of the drums, loud and demanding, and with the pounding noise, a plaintive chanting from a hundred youthful voices tuned to the frenzied beat. Under the cover of this all-encompassing noise, the three made their way to the larger cave wherein lay the source of the firelight.

Before them, lit by many bonfires, was a scene from Hell itself. The leaping flames painted the rocky roof far above their heads yellow, and orange, and red; and by this unearthly illumination, they discovered the immensity of the cavern that opened out before them. Vast it was as the interior of a temple; and, like a place of worship, the dome-shaped roof was supported by a series of limestone columns. These, however, seemed not to be the work of man, but rather the result of dripping water divesting itself of bits of lime over untold centuries. Wonder vied with caution as they beheld this natural magnificence.

“Guards!” hissed Subotai, touching Conan’s arm; for suddenly, in the flickering firelight, the intruders saw the moving forms of armed men. At Conan’s gesture, they glided back into the shadows and sought places of concealment. There, in the dappled darkness, their mottled bodies invisible, they prepared for action. The Hyrkanian drew his bow from its case, and, setting an end on the stone flooring, strung the weapon with a practised motion. Conan loosened his sword from its cloth-wrapped scabbard, while Valeria unsheathed her long knife. Soon, they knew, they would need all their skill at arms.

XIII

The Cavern

From his place of concealment, Conan peered warily hi the leaping flames and the burly guards in iron and leather. He licked his lips, but otherwise stood motionless, us if awaiting some signal that would launch him into battle with these brutes; for there appeared to be no way to gain entry to the cavern except by force.

Subotai seemed unhappy. A thief rejoices in his mastery of the furtive arts, and a straightforward fight tests none of the larcenous skills on which he prides himself. At length, he whispered: “Must we fight our way in, Cimmerian? I’m no coward, Erlik knows; but it seems folly to seek our goal against such odds, when by craft and stealth we could gain our ends unscathed.”

Valeria nodded. “They have their backs to us. That gives us some advantage.”

Conan grunted assent. “They know nothing of the entrance from the gorge—if the old wizard spoke true.” “He’s been right so far,” murmured Valeria.

Conan growled something inarticulate. The young Cimmerian was spoiling for a fight. His blood was up, and he yearned to repay his enemies for the sufferings they had inflicted on him. Still, he realized that to reveal their presence so early would lose them the advantage of surprise.

Subotai, whose darting glances had been studying their surroundings, whispered excitedly: “Look over there, to the left! See you those clusters of rock columns free-standing from the cavern wall? They’ll make a screen for us if we can scramble along the cave side without making too much noise.”

“It is narrow,” objected Valeria, “and the wall juts out in places. You and I might get through, but what of Conan?”

Conan grinned. “I don’t mind leaving a little skin behind, if I must,” he grunted. “I’d get rid of this oily muck on my hide, at least.”

Led by Subotai, they threaded their way along the cavern wall, their progress curtained by the stalagmites that rose like giant’s teeth from the bedrock. Their rude path led upward, so that, when they paused to survey the scene from a break in the rocky curtain, they found themselves looking down across the whole immensity of the cavern floor.

They saw in the centre a huge cauldron upheld by four massive posts of blackened stone, the vessel itself of some substance that, from the distance, looked like stone. Flames roared up from fire pits cut out of the rocky floor, the leaping blaze clawing the smoky air.