Conan and the Grim Grey God

by Sean A. Moore

  He reached for the bundle with both hands before realizing his error. Distracted by her high, flat cheekbones, he had exposed the Black Ring. A lambent green nimbus surrounded its coppery coils, and she stared at it in wide-eyed fear. “Sorcery!” she whispered.

  Before she could scream, Tevek focused his will. It was not too late to undo this mishap, and he knew well the weaving of the enchantment that brought sleep. But the ring itself twisted his intent, as if he had angered it by bringing it into a shrine of Mitra’s. Tendrils of translucent green fire flared toward the girl’s breast and lodged within to close like ghostly fingers around her heart. She gasped and pitched forward as her eyes rolled upward. Tevek grasped her wrists and broke her fall, instantly aware that the ring had slain her. The whites of her eyes stared sightlessly into his pitiless face, and he let her body slump to the floor.

  Sandalled feet shuffled against the floor of the hallway and stopped in the doorway. “More comfortable now, I hope—” Oradne stopped, his mouth agape. “Mitra save us!” He made the sign against evil and dashed away before Tevek could loose the ring’s power against him.

  “Pray that he hears you,” Tevek laughed. This subterfuge had exhausted his patience. He would desecrate the burial vaults and eat his fill. Any who stood in his way would perish before they realized their folly.

  Tevek strode brazenly into the hallway and followed the long corridor that spiralled downward into the catacombs. His ring illuminated the narrow passageway and revealed more of the peculiar arabesques upon the floor. Unlike those in the structure above, here the walls of striated stone featured odd symbols.

  The sight of these stirred Tevek’s memory. The arabesques—he had seen them in drawings that represented Ibis’s temples. The symbols were ancient glyphs, known only to the prophets of Ibis. Had Kaetta been built upon the ruins of the place where aeons-dead followers of Ibis had worshipped? Here was something to trade with Thoth-amon, for the Stygian had long sought to rid the world of Caranthes, High Priest of Ibis. What weaknesses of Ibis’s cult might Thoth-amon uncover here?

  Tevek continued his descent. He heard the shouts and the booted feet of those who followed him, already summoned by Oradne. Let them come. The necromancer reached the bottom of the spiral, where the smell of the dead was much more evident. He looked down a long, wide corridor whose walls were pocked with niches— shelves for the shroud-wrapped flesh that lay there. The taint of consecration stank, but he would soon tend to that.

  Tevek extracted a small, flat box of wood from one of his robe’s many pockets. He worked the lid and dipped his finger into the black powder within—soot from the burned flesh of a beheaded murderer. Crouching, he swiftly sketched a circle and the six symbols of Thanatos at equal distances on its perimeter. He studied it carefully, for even the slightest flaw or break would foul the ritual.

  Ignoring the increasingly loud sounds of pursuit, Tevek slid a dull-grey flute from the sheath strapped to his back. The instrument, carved from the leg-bone of an infant strangled by its mother, had been dipped in the blood of a virgin maiden and first winded beneath a full moon on the eve of her death. Tevek lifted it to his lips and played, his slender fingers working along its six slotted holes. The eerie melody echoed like the muted cries of a thousand unseen demons. The walls began to weep blood, which ran in meandering rivulets that pooled on the floor. A score of mouths yawned open in the once-seamless stonework and vomited forth a noisome black slime that stank of excrement.

  Sequins of white light suddenly shimmered in the air and swirled, as if seeking escape from the noxious fluids that spewed from the ceiling and the walls. The lights flew straight at Tevek.

  A cylinder of roaring emerald fire suddenly encircled the necromancer, matching the shape of the circle in which he stood. The white specks of light sparked and crackled as they struck the green flame, vanishing in tiny puffs of smoke like mosquitoes caught in a campfire. None escaped.

  Tevek lowered the flute, and the blazing cylinder vanished. The pools of blood and gobbets of slime evaporated like shallow puddles beneath the hot sun, leaving only the stink of offal and carrion.

  A troop of men, led by Uzgaru, rounded the bend at the bottom of the spiralling passage and stared. Several doubled over and clutched their stomachs, heaving at the stench.

  A tall, swarthy man draped in full chain mail stepped up to Uzgaru’s side. Behind him stood Oradne, flanked by two others in the plain garb of the Mitraic priesthood. “I am Lord Ranjau, faithful man of Mitra. Begone, vile servant of Set,” he boomed. Symbols against evil adorned his pale green tabard, and he held his sword with point extended.

  “Begone!” Oradne hissed, as he flung a cup of water at Tevek.

  The necromancer made no effort to dodge the water, taking it full upon his breast. It dripped from him, hissing and smoking only where it contacted the Black Ring. He was surprised that it had come through his circle of protection, which would easily have stopped true holy water. Perhaps Oradne, when he had blessed that cup’s contents, had enchanted it only against one sworn to Set.

  Uzgaru lifted his two-handed scimitar and rushed at the necromancer. “Ranjau! Ranjau!”

  Tevek laughed, a hideous sound that reverberated through the long catacomb. His voice deepened. “Yotha-hie, eyes to black, Xet'ta, steel to rust, Hie-yotha, bones to crack, Ta’xet, blood to dust!” He pointed his forefinger at Uzgaru, who jerked forward, puppet-like, clutching at his throat. His eyes bulged outward, then vanished within his skull. His scimitar and armour crumbled away from him in a shower of corroded flakes, and his body popped and twisted as if a dozen heavy mallets struck him at once. He collapsed, spilling scarlet dust from his gaping mouth and hollow eye sockets.

  The others fell silent. The only sound in the catacombs was a droll chuckle from Tevek’s throat. The necromancer had never seen the desiccation set in so quickly—the Black Ring had empowered the spell with a potency beyond Tevek’s expectations. As well swat a gnat with a sledge, he thought. The rest of the helpless scum would flee when their leader fell. He formed the words of the chant again, his gaze fixed on Ranjau.

  “Your necromancy cannot harm me, worm of the Pit,” said Ranjau as Tevek spoke. “For I bear a sword forged in the lava-furnaces of the Taian Mountains, cooled in the holiest of Mitra-blessed fonts, and woven with prayers to protect its bearer from evil!” Encouraged by his pronouncement, the warlord advanced. He gripped the hilt with both hands and held the point out-thrust. The others trembled behind him, even Oradne.

  “... Ta’xet, blood to dust!” finished Tevek as he extended his forefinger toward Ranjau’s mailed torso.

  From the sword’s rune-etched blade flashed white fire that filled the murky catacombs with its brilliance.

  Tevek’s eyelids closed instinctively, his eyes unable to bear the burning whiteness. He blinked and peered through his slitted lids at Ranjau, who continued his advance. The spell had failed.

  With a triumphant shout, the warlord swung his blade toward Tevek’s neck.

  The necromancer held his ground, trusting in the circle to protect him from the onrushing edge.

  In mid-air, as the sword crossed the plane of Tevek’s circle, a translucent shield of emerald appeared. The blade rang against it as if striking stone. Ranjau grimaced and clutched the hilt as the impact travelled painfully up his arm. Yet he swiftly redoubled his attack, making several tentative swings, each of which rebounded from the green barrier. Finally he leaned the blade against his shoulder and fell back a step, panting.

  “Foolish worm,” Tevek muttered. “Naught bearing Mitra’s taint can touch me.”

  “Cower dog-like behind your sorcerer’s shield, then, and yap all you will,” Ranjau countered. “Your foul spells can do naught against the power of Mitra. My sword has pulled your fangs, serpent. Even now do more of my men approach. How long can you stand against us? You shall soon be as dead as those who lie herein.”

  Tevek’s eyes flickered. “You dare threaten me—think you that one of
my power cannot crush you like the crawling insect you are?” Saying no more to Ranjau, he closed his eyes and began a slow chant. His voice deepened slightly with every syllable intoned, until the words sounded unlike any that a human throat could issue. His dirge caused the very walls to vibrate, and the slack-jawed onlookers felt their bones shake.

  A cold draft of wind flowed through the corridor, as if the vent of an icy hell had suddenly opened. Tevek’s mouthings reached a thundering crescendo, loud enough to reverberate within the deepest recesses of the catacombs.

  Which indeed had been Tevek’s intent.

  His eyes opened, and the dirge ended abruptly, though a bitter chill still permeated the air. “Now, misguided wretches, witness the power that I draw from the bottomless well of Thanatos, the undying one, Emperor of the Black Beyond.” Tevek turned his back and shouted down the long chamber, to the stirring, shroud-wrapped forms that lay there. “Arise, my minions! Arise, and rend the flesh of the living!” His words were strained, as if their utterance had overexerted him. Tevek’s hands trembled slightly.

  From deep within the catacombs, they moved at his bidding. Whether deceased for untold centuries or for mere years, all heeded the necromancer’s call. The rustling of their dusty shrouds on rough stone was a great sigh that echoed in the darkness. The echo gave way to the scraping of hundreds of bony feet that shuffled across the stones. Bound by the unearthly power of ancient words and by Tevek’s will, the mindless, soulless army shambled toward its summoner.

  A second band of Kaettan fighters burst into the hall. A few held aloft flickering torches that illuminated the nightmarish scene before them. The decayed corpses of their ancestors swayed toward them with skeletal arms outstretched. Those nearest to Tevek reached Ranjau first. Their shrouds, crumbling from age, had fallen or tom away as they slid from their niches along the walls. Clad in naught but tattered rags or the dust of their own desiccation, they approached, bony fingers extended.

  The undead host parted as they passed the necromancer, whose face was a mask of fierce concentration. Tevek struggled to control their movements and to bend them to his purpose. Such was the peculiar drawback of the Thanatosian necromancy: The chant swiftly awakened all of the dead in the vicinity of its evoker—-be there a score or a thousand—but every corpse thusly summoned required the constant touch of the mage’s mind upon it, else it would turn against him. And the catacombs here reached deeper and farther than Tevek had supposed. Some half-thousand had heard his call, and these soon would work their way upward from the dusty bowels below.

  Tevek sensed that the dead of Kaetta had slept soundly and were resentful of his intrusion. He knew by this that many herein had died quietly, from natural causes. More easily controlled were those whose lives had been tom from them—the victims of violence or malady—or those claimed by death before they could make peace with their gods.

  The Kaettans’ resistance to him accounted for their unsteady, jerky movements. But Tevek lashed at them with whip-like thoughts, driving them forward with relentless rage. For he ached to see these miserable villagers cower at his feet and whimper for mercy. He would grant none.

  “Stand fast!” came Ranjau’s rallying cry, as the men behind him shrank from the macabre scene. “’Tis said that when you kill the sorcerer, his magic dies with him. Slay this spawn of Set!” He waved his sword and stepped toward Tevek.

  The warlord’s words spurred several men forward. These were met at once by the front ranks of Tevek’s eerie men. Bone met blade in a din of cracking and crunching. Steel hacked at claw-like fingers, and blades severed clutching hands from bony wrists as the Kaettans fought an army of their ancestors. But the macabre mien of the skeletal host seemed to drain the fighting spirit from Ranjau’s warriors. Before the fighters could reach Tevek, every man found himself surrounded by groping claws and clacking teeth. Even the severed limbs twitched and grabbed at feet and ankles, tearing into warm flesh and spilling blood.

  The archers nocked iron-tipped arrows and took aim at Tevek, their bows twanging as they loosed a volley. Uncertain of the integrity of his protective circle, the necromancer hastily dropped to a crouch behind the skeletal wall before him. The wave passed through the air above him to clatter harmlessly against bone and stone. His concentration had broken but for a moment before he again asserted his control. In the meantime, more of the walking dead came from below to swell the ranks of their worm-eaten fellows.

  Ranjau’s warriors began to scream as cold hands dragged them down and half-rotted teeth sank into their flesh. A few cried out in terror and turned to flee, but many slipped on slick patches of blood. Others tripped over twitching limbs. Blood from their tom throats drowned their appeals to Mitra, and a crimson wash soon spread across the stone floor.

  Relentlessly, the expressionless host pushed forward, engulfing the priests and the archers and rending them limb from limb. Ranjau was the last to fall, his sword cleaving a skull as a pair of undead warriors seized his sword-arm. His blade fell to the floor with a hollow clang and was soon drenched in the spray of blood that fountained from his tom throat.

  Tevek stood, his gaze still vapid, his pale lips pressed tightly from the effort he expended to command his retinue. He stepped out of his circle and spat contemptuously into Ranjau’s upturned face. Taian forges and prayers to Mitra were no proof against the risen dead.

  Go forth, he silently commanded those who now jammed the corridor. He projected his thoughts to every creature in the burial chamber. Slay those who dwell above. Then come you here, to your place of rest, and slumber again.

  Weariness soaked into his skin like pelting rain, but his directive would be obeyed by all he had summoned.

  All but one.

  For when the villagers of Kaetta had met the doom decreed by Tevek, he would slake his thirst and vent his hunger here, among the dead. Then would he would permit himself a small dalliance before he departed for the Brass City. His mind had touched that of Beladah, who lay unbreathing in the temple above. She, too, had heard the chant and been bound by his summons, but he was saving her for later. When the clammy chill of death had banished all colour and warmth from her flesh, he would seek such pleasures with her as only a necromancer could know.

  From the temple above, he heard the pitiful screams of the dying as his legions undertook their dire mission. The sounds filled his ears with pleasing music, and a cruel smile danced upon his pallid face as he moved among the throng of the dead, up the spiralling hallway, to the cold arms of she who awaited him.

  XI

  “Into the Pit!”

  Before he became fully cognizant, Conan sensed that he was lying atop a swiftly moving horse. Thick cords of rope bit into his wrists, and when his eyelids reluctantly rose, he saw that he had been bound to the steed’s harness, behind its rider. Groggy and sore, he tried to shift his position, but the ropes permitted him no slack. The asshuri had lashed him belly-down, and there he would stay. Whenever the horse leapt over a large stone or a hole in the road, the impact travelled through his spine in a dull wave of pain.

  Conan’s every muscle ached to the bone, and his skull pounded as though a Pict were using it for a war-drum. But these injuries would heal, and he gave them no further notice. Why had the asshuri not cut him down in the alley? Doubtless he would find out. Shemites were a cruel and vengeful folk, and the asshuri were accounted as harshest among their people. He wasted no more thought on the matter of his fate. He would devote his attention to eluding whatever grim plans his captors had laid for him.

  By the heat and the bright sky, he judged that he had slept until midday, or perhaps a few glasses past it. The terrain afforded no clues of his exact whereabouts; the horses traversed a nameless strip of road flanked by seemingly endless fields of vines. Much of western Shem bore the same features.

  A low moan from nearby prompted Conan to crane his neck over his shoulder. This effort rewarded him with a stab of pain intense enough to make him grit his teeth.

 
; Kylanna—or Sivitri—lay trussed upon the horse that rode slightly behind his. She, too, had been tied belly-down behind the saddle. Her hair hung down and covered her face. He noticed that several bruises had flowered upon her shapely arms, amid the nicks and cuts taken in their pitched battle. She had gone down fighting. This capture was no plot of hers, then, or so it seemed to Conan. He would be careful, though, never to trust the deceitful wench again.

  Conan thought it likely that the asshuri would reach their destination soon. He could discern little in the way of provision, and no pack horses burdened by tents or other gear. Less than half a company was present, as far as he could see. But forty or fifty men were more than enough to guard two captives, though some of the Shemites sported bandages on their arms, legs, or heads. He looked toward the front of the host and drew in a sharp breath when he caught sight of the rider in the lead. A man from Balvadek’s citadel, marked as such by adornments on his tabard. The other asshuri wore no garments that bespoke of rank or allegiance, but this man’s dress marked him as captain. And the ivory-hued cape, the devices on his riding harness, they looked all too familiar. Duke Balvadek’s lineage, perhaps a younger sibling, cousin, or nephew.

  Small wonder, then, that Conan had been taken alive. The duke still sought him. Crom! All he had done was to bed a few wenches... and, in keeping with his usual luck, at a place and time that had nearly lowered a noose around his neck.

  “Water,” came the demand from Sivitri, her voice hoarse.

  Conan sympathized. He could have drained a full flagon in one gulp, but he knew better than to ask a boon of these hook-nosed, black-bearded devils.

  A few laughs sounded from the riders near enough to hear Sivitri.