At a signal, the monarch’s servant handed him a thin bronze-handled dagger with a blade that undulated like the body of a serpent. Holding it in his outstretched palm, the king continued:
“Here is the serpent’s fang, thrust into my father’s heart by his younger son, my brother, who has been ensorcelled by their witchcraft. And my own daughter, the jewel of my kingdom, the joy of my old age, has likewise fallen under the spell of Thulsa Doom. She has turned against me and the elder gods. Does she bear a dagger such as this, pointed at my heart? Is this the fate awaiting me?” Conan scowled, remembering the exquisite beauty of the young woman in the veiled palanquin. Subotai had told him she was the daughter of the king, but the barbarian found it difficult to believe that a girl so lovely might someday murder her own sire, although he knew that she was a priestess of the serpent god.
With a sudden explosion of anger, King Osric hurled the serpentine dagger to the marble floor, where it lay, a thing of evil exposed for all to see. “Each generation is weaker than the one before. Today’s young wallow in this snake cult—this false religion. They yearn to be slaves and beggars, drugged dreamers. When I was young, boys strove to be heroes, not parasites and destroyers.”
The King looked down, a weak old man beset by problems that he could not solve. Tremulously, he said: “Now I must call on thieves to save my kingdom!”
Valeria, with unaccustomed pity in her voice, directed a question at the rambling monarch. “What is it that you want of us, Sire?”
“My daughter, my little Yasimina—she follows him wherever he goes... Yaro, I mean, Yaro the black priest. She says she seeks the truth in the depths of her soul.... These addle-pated fools forget the old strengths, the old virtues. They wallow in depravity, as hogs wallow in mud, and call it a religion!
“And at this very moment, my daughter travels eastward to meet the man called Doom in the mighty stronghold of his cult, the centre of his web of intrigue. Go you to the Mountain of Power and steal her back for me!”
The king gestured; and at the wordless command, the servant bore an urn from the shadows and tipped the vessel. Out spilled a dazzling flood of gems, to rattle to the floor before the adventurers’ feet—rubies, amethysts, topazes, sapphires, and winking diamonds. A second kingly gesture stemmed the flow. Valeria gasped; greed shone in the Hyrkanian’s eyes. Conan, suspecting a trick, stood staring at the king.
“Go on, pick them up,” urged Osric. “They’ll do for an earnest. With them you can buy weapons and horses. You can hire mercenaries to fight for you. Fetch my Yasimina back, and you shall be given all the gems remaining in that lair. Show them, Vardanes!”
The servant proffered the vessel, whereupon Subotai thrust in a finger and felt around. Satisfied that the jar had no false bottom and that myriad jewels remained, the Hyrkanian nodded and withdrew his inquiring hand. With Valeria, he swept up the fallen stones and placed them in a wallet.
Conan watched his companions scramble to retrieve the gems; then, frowning thoughtfully, he addressed the King: “Why is it that you do not fear a dagger in the dark, or poison in your cup?”
Osric smiled a bitter smile. “There comes a time, my friend, when, even for kings, gems cease to sparkle, gold’s lustre dims, and food and drink lose all their savour. A time when the very throne room, however gilded, becomes a prison cell. Then all that remains is a father’s love for his child. But you... what would you know of that? You are too young, too full of life.
“When my end comes, at the hand of Doom or any other, I shall not greatly mind, if only my child be free of this curse and able to serve my people as their queen.” Conan nodded. “Very well, King Osric, I will slay this Doom or die in the attempt—I have my own score to settle with him. If I can rescue your daughter, I’ll do that, too.” “We are then in accord!” said the King, and added to his captain of the guard, “Show my guests to the chambers prepared for them. See to their comfort. Fare you well!” The three followed Captain Kobades from the shadow-haunted room, leaving Osric brooding on his dais.
IX
The Road
For two days after their audience with King Osric, the adventurers went to bed bone weary. Many preparations had to be made in haste—dried foods, skins of wine, bedding, and a hundred other things were needed for the journey. Jewels had to be bartered for coins of gold, silver, and humble copper. Then there was the matter of the horses.
One morning Conan and Valeria strolled about the horse market while Subotai, the only experienced horseman among them, haggled over their mounts. Once Conan drew Subotai’s attention to a spirited stallion, which pranced at the end of its tether and rolled a wicked eye.
“That’s the one for me!” exclaimed Conan.
The Hyrkanian chuckled. “Just how long do you think you would sit that steed? Since you have never been astride any nag, let me find you one that is safe and slow and big enough to bear your weight.”
Conan spent hours learning to ride the beast that Subotai selected for him. Under his friend’s tutelage, he learned how to walk, trot, and gallop, and how to saddle, curry, and feed the animal. Once, when a tumble weed, driven by the wind, startled the horse, it moved with unexpected suddenness and threw its rider. Cursing, the barbarian picked himself up and set about catching his mount.
“I told you to use your knees!” admonished Subotai. “Never mind; if that’s the worst tumble you ever take, you’ll be luckier than most. We Kerlaits say a man is not a horseman until he has had seven falls.”
That evening, as Conan sat in the bedchamber nursing his sore muscles, two of the king’s servants hauled in a large wooden tub. Other attendants appeared with buckets of steaming water. When they withdrew, Valeria stripped off her clothes and stepped into the tub with a sigh of contentment.
“Come on in!” she said. “There’s room for both of us.” Conan shook his head. “Hot baths are unhealthy. Steam damages the lungs.”
“Rubbish! I’ve had hot baths all my life, and look at me! Besides, you don’t smell like attar of roses. I’ll scrub your back for you.”
Still the barbarian refused. “Later, perhaps, when you are done.”
The girl sat in the tub, scrubbing her slender limbs. Suddenly she turned to Conan. “To hell fires with Doom and the princess, both! The man is evil—a sorcerer who can summon demons from the nether pits, things like that which you slew on the parapet. As for the princess, why should we save her if she wants to die in his service? Let her reap the results of her folly!
“Besides, ’tis said this Mountain of Power, Doom’s fortress, cannot be breached. It houses thousands of his followers. What chance have we against so many?” She stood up. “Throw me that towel, will you?”
Bathed and dried, Valeria lay back on the huge bed, toying with her fistful of gems. She watched the firelight flicker across their polished surfaces as she let them trickle between her fingers, cascade down the cleft between her high breasts, and spill across her belly. Then she continued: “I’ve spoken to Subotai, and he agrees. We’d be fools to undertake so perilous a mission. Let us take what we have whilst we still have our lives! Forget Doom and his silly princess! What the king has given us, together with the gold we’ll surely get when we sell the Serpent’s Eye, will make us rich... able to live like gentlefolk.”
Conan sat on the edge of the bed, his thoughts in-turned, his back to the girl. Valeria crawled over to him, spilling the jewels upon the coverlet. She ran a caressing hand across his broad shoulders, kissed the nape of his neck, and, sliding her arms about his chest, pillowed her head on his shoulder.
Seemingly oblivious to Valeria’s beguilements, Conan sat motionless, staring at his closed fist.
“Never have I had so much as now,” the she-thief murmured dreamily. “All my life I’ve been alone. Often I've stared into the open jaws of death, with none to care whether I lived or died. Alone in the cold and dark, I’ve peered into the huts and tents of others, and seen the warm plough of firelight and men and women sitting side
by side, with their young playing at their feet. But I walked the world... alone.”
She looked at Conan’s face, but found it dark and sombre.
“Now I have you. We have warmth and passion and love. And we are rich. We need never face perils again in the getting of gold. Let us sit together with a lighted lamp to banish darkness. Let some other lonely person look in and envy us....”
Valeria reached out, scooped up a handful of bright jewels, and poured them playfully down his naked chest. “Come, let us live!”
Wordlessly, Conan shook his head. Then slowly he opened his clenched hand. On his palm rested the bronze medallion taken from the altar of the serpent-god—the plaque that bore the sigil of Doom, two snakes facing each other upholding a black sun.
Dawn tiptoed into Shadizar, turning the spires of the royal palace into rose and gold. Entering the chamber where Valeria lay sleeping, the tender morning light aroused her from her dreams. Sleepily, she threw back the silken coverlet and stretched her nude limbs in sensuous enjoyment of the sun’s warm kisses. Then she reached out to touch the naked body of her lover, but nobody lay beside her. Conan was gone.
Instantly she was wide awake, staring at the empty pillow. Instead of the magnificent form of the young barbarian, she saw only a handful of glittering stones, his share of the king’s advance payment. Involuntarily, her hand sought her throat; the Eye of the Serpent still hung between her breasts. Her eager eyes searched the bedchamber; Conan’s gear and clothing had vanished. A tear rolled down her cheek and was instantly wiped away. Pit fighters don’t cry, she told herself sternly.
Far to the east of Shadizar, a lone rider picked his way through a pass in the Kezankian Mountains, where the foothills reach the stone-strewn steppe of northernmost Turan. It was Conan, but not the penniless runaway slave who once before traversed this forbidding land. The huge barbarian was now clad in fine raiment, with a tunic of mesh-mail over his clothing. He bore a steel cap on his head. At his side hung the ancient sword that he had taken from the cave of the grinning skeleton, now whetted to a razor edge and thrust into a splendid scabbard of reptile skin. To guard against the chill winds of early spring, he wore above his mail shirt a cloak of well-tanned wolf skin.
Remembering the past, he rubbed the coarse black beard that shadowed his scarred face. The Pit master Toghrul had compelled his fighters to shave, lest they present their opponents with an advantage, and Conan had continued in this habit. But now, eager to come to grips with Doom, he had ignored the practice.
The Cimmerian remembered, too, the lovely woman from whose encircling arms he had departed. Many years later, he told his scribe, 1 knew Valeria would never understand. Her gods were not the northern gods. I turned east, but bowed my head to Valhalla. Crom awaited my vengeance upon my enemies with calm indifference. I knew my life hung on a slender thread, but I had no other course.
For days on end he rode along a narrow trail made festive with a profusion of wild flowers, red, blue, lavender, and yellow. Sometimes he bent low in the saddle to shield himself against a sudden storm, while winds and mountain-born sleet tore at his weather-ravaged face. From time to time, he paused to give the ponderous gelding Subotai had selected for him a few hours of grazing on the sparse vegetation.
Whenever Conan feared that he might have strayed from his true path, he questioned those he met along the road: a lone shepherd, a ragged, toil-worn peasant, a nomad driving a creaking wagon crammed with his household goods, while his wife and sons herded his starveling cattle before him. Ever they directed him further to the east.
One toothless peasant looked blankly at the imposing figure on his enormous steed. Conan showed him the symbol of the snake cult, the sigil of Doom. The light of comprehension lit the besotted face, and the man responded, “Many go—children mostly—they travel this way.” He motioned with a weathered hand; then, reversing the direction, he added, “None travels back again.”
One day the Cimmerian picked up a trail made by many feet. He quickened his pace and, before sundown, saw a grey plume of dust staining the cerulean sky. Warily, he approached, keeping the dust cloud in sight; and at length he overtook the source of the unwanted cloud. As he expected, it was a long procession of pilgrims headed for the sacred environs of Set, the snake god. Bedraggled youths and maidens, decked with wreaths and garlands of long-dead flowers, plodded along, beating tambourines and singing their monotonous chants.
Conan rode past them, eyeing the column watchfully. One or another of the votaries called out to him as he rode past, saying: “Come, O warrior! Join with us! Throw away your sword and give yourself to time, to the earth, as we have done! Yield to fate! Come with us to the Mountain of Power!”
Smiling grimly, Conan shook his head and cantered on. Time enough to give oneself to the earth when life has lied, he thought.
The trail sloped upward to a pass between two ridges of volcanic rock; and beyond them, on a level plain, a conical peak loomed high against the sky. In the distance Conan could see the shimmering blue waters of the Vilayet Sea, which reached to the horizon. From his high vantage point, the barbarian perceived another column of trudging pilgrims, half hidden in a cloud of dust, their rhythmic chanting carried to him on the ambient air.
Conan paused on the uplands to breathe his mount and study the landscape that stretched before him in the lush greenery of its springtime foliage. Along the shores of the great inland sea, to the right of the Mountain of Power, lay a stretch of broken country from which thrust up a series of mounds. Abandoning the path beaten by the shambling feet of many pilgrims, Conan urged his nag toward the broken ground half a league south of the mountain. When he came among them, he recognized the mounds as tumuli of the sort in which some primordial peoples were wont to bury their kings. Dominating the rest, one extensive mound rose to the height of several men and pressed outward to the width of half a bow shot. Around the base at intervals were set a row of pointed stakes; and on each he saw impaled the remains of a horse and mounted rider. Wind and weather had reduced most to simple skeletal states, decked only in bits of faded cloth and the remains of iron armour.
Conan circled the heaped-up earth warily, a prickling of uncanny premonition roughening his hide. He could not tell how long the ghastly company had stood on guard in this forgotten place, but there was something in his barbaric soul that cowered before the undead and unknown.
On the far side of the mounds, he came upon an area of tumbled masonry and broken stones, the shards of a city ruined long ago. He paced his horse among the shattered columns, toppled slabs, collapsing walls, rubble-filled ditches, and ghosts of wells waterless for aeons past. The devastation seemed complete, its cause beyond man’s understanding.
Then to his astonishment, Conan sighted a shabby hut, scarcely more than a lean-to of sticks bound into a frame covered with the hides of wild animals. Before the entrance of tattered skins, a small fire burned, wafting the pungent smoke of roasting meat into the sea air. As the Cimmerian reined his beast to gaze in wonder at this habitation, a gaunt greybeard in worn and dirty robes appeared to stare uncertainly at the intruder.
“Hail, grandfather!” growled Conan, raising an empty hand to signal his intentions. “I come in peace.”
“And well it is you do!” the oldster replied with an energy of manner that belied his wrinkled age. Shaven-headed, fiat-faced, ill-clad though he was, in some strange way he commanded the barbarian’s respect. “Know, young warrior, that I am a wizard, and that this necropolis contains the bones of mighty kings and their restless spirits. He who harms my living flesh must deal with forces that he knows not of.”
“Can you summon demons, wizard?” A note of jocundity appeared in the barbarian’s voice.
“Aye, that I can! A devil fiercer than any other in the seven hells!” The old man’s boast ended in a fit of coughing.
“How fortunate, then, that we shall be friends,” said Conan. He tossed a silver coin to the wizard, who caught it with notable agility. “
That should pay for a few days’ board at this, your inn.”
At sunset, Conan, having doffed his helm and mail, sat before the fire, gnawing on a piece of smoked meat and unleavened bread. The hermit bustled about, offering his guest a gourd of sour ale and gabbing as if had had no converse in years.
“These burial mounds have been here since the days of the Titans, stranger,” the old man said. “Great kings sleep here, kings whose realms once glittered like lightning on a windy sea. And curses lie beneath those piles of earth; that is why I dwell below their summit.”
“Are you the caretaker of this graveyard, then?” inquired Conan.
The wizard laughed. “Nay, but I sing to those who lie here, to lull their slumbers... tales of old, of battles fought and heroes made, of riches and of women.”
“How do you live, good wizard?”
“The neighbouring country folk bring me flesh and bread; and 1 cast spells and tell fortunes for them. I raise a few tubers and greens, besides. No one molests me; they know my powers and position.”
Conan dipped his shaggy head towards the Mountain of Power. “What about them?”
“The serpent-besotted fools? They know me well. But, thinking me mad, they do not bother me. Each spring the man named Doom comes hither to make sacrifice to the ghosts of my sleeping kings. You’ve seen them....” He gestured towards the skeletal remains of men astride their horses. Conan, unsure whether the bones were those of ancient kings or of Doom’s followers, ate in silence for a space.
“Do any wild flowers bloom hereabouts?” he asked. The old man’s jaw hung slack. “Flowers? What on earth..." Then, recovering his composure, he said, “Yes, 1 suppose you can gather a few. A month ago the plain was carpeted with them. What do you want with flowers?”
“You’ll see,” said Conan.
The next morning Conan arose, shaved off his recent growth of beard, and brought out from his bag of gear the white robe of a pilgrim. Thus clad, he spent an hour prowling the outskirts of the ruined city, plucking the sturdiest flowers he could find. When, after breaking his fast, the barbarian began to weave the blossoms into a wreath, the wizard eyed him with distaste.
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