Then Juma climbed up beside him. The Kushite’s naked torso gleamed like oiled ebony in the dim moonlight, and his oar mowed down the advancing Meruvians like a scythe. The marines, unprepared to face two such monsters, broke and ran for the safety of the poop deck, whence their officer, just aroused from slumber, was screeching confused commands.
Conan bent to the corpse of Gorthangpo and searched his pouch for the key ring. Swiftly he found the key to all the manacles on the ship and unlocked his own, then did the same for Juma.
A bow twanged, and an arrow whistled over Conan’s head and struck the mast. The two freed slaves did not wait to pursue the battle further. Dropping off the catwalk, they pushed through the cowering rowers to the rail, vaulted over the side, and vanished into the dark waters of Shamballah’s harbor. A few arrows sped after them, but in the dim light of the setting crescent moon the archers could do little more than shoot at random.
VI. Tunnels of Doom
Two naked men hauled their dripping bodies out of the sea and peered about them in the murk. They had swum for hours, it seemed, looking for a way to get into Shamballah unobserved. At last they had found the outlet to one of the storm sewers of the ancient stone city. Juma still trailed the length of broken oar with which he had fought the marines; Conan had abandoned his on the ship. Occasionally a faint gleam of light came into the sewer from a storm grating set into a gutter in the street overhead, but the light was so feeble the thin moon having set that the darkness below remained impenetrable. So, in almost total darkness, the twain waded through the slimy waters, seeking a way out of these tunnels.
Huge rats squeaked and fled as they went through the stone corridors beneath the streets. They could see the glimmer of eyes through the dark. One of the larger scavengers nipped Conan’s ankle, but he caught and crushed the beast in his hands and flung its corpse at its more cautious fellows. These quickly engaged in a squealing, rustling battle over the feast, while Conan and Juma hurried on through the upward-winding tunnels.
It was Juma who found the secret passage. Sliding one band along the dank wall, he accidentally released a catch and snorted with surprise when a portion of the stone gave way beneath his questing fingers. Although neither he nor Conan knew where the passage led, they took it, as it seemed to slope upward toward the city streets above.
At last, after a long climb, they came to another door. They groped in utter darkness until Conan found a bolt, which he slid back. The door opened with a squeak of dry hinges to his push, and the two fugitives stepped through and froze.
They stood on an ornamental balcony crowded with statues of gods or demons in a huge, octagonal temple The walls of the eight-sided chamber soared upward, past the balcony, to curve inward and meet to form an eight-sided dome. Conan remembered seeing such a dome towering among the lesser buildings of the city, but he had never inquired as to what lay within it.
Below, at one side of the octagonal floor, a colossal statue stood on a plinth of black marble, facing an altar in the exact center of the chamber. The statue dwarfed everything else in the chamber. Rising thirty feet high, its loins were on a level with the balcony on which Conan and Juma stood. It was a gigantic idol of a green stone that looked like jade, although never had men found true jade in so large a mass. It had six arms, and the eyes in its scowling face were immense rubies.
Facing the statue across the altar stood a throne of skulls, like that which Conan had already seen in the throne room of the palace on his arrival in Shamballah, but smaller. The toadlike little god-king of Mem was seated on this throne. As Conan’s glance strayed from the idol’s head to that of the ruler, he thought he saw a hideous suggestion of similarity between the two. He shuddered and his nape prickled at the hint of unguessable cosmic secrets that lay behind this resemblance.
The rimpoche was engaged in a ritual. Shamans in scarlet robes knelt in ranks around the throne and the altar, chanting ancient prayers and spells. Beyond them, against the walls of the chamber, several rows of Memvians sat cross-legged on the marble pavement. From the richness of their jewels and their ornate if scanty apparel, they appeared to be the officials and the nobility of the kingdom. Above their heads, set in wall brackets around the balcony, a hundred torches flickered and smoked. On the floor of the chamber, in a square about the central altar, stood four torcheres, each crowned by the rich, gplden flame of a butter lamp. The four flames wavered and sputtered.
On the altar between the throne and the colossus lay the naked, white, slender body of a young girl, held to the altar by slender golden chains. It was Zosara.
A low growl rumbled in Conan’s throat. His smouldering eyes burned with blue fire as he watched the hated figures of King Jalang Thonpa and his Grand Shaman, the wizard-priest Tanzong Tengri.
“Shall we take them, Conan?” whispered Juma, his teeth showing white in the flickering dimness. The Cimmerian grunted.
It was the festival of the new moon, and the god-king was wedding the daughter of the king of Turan on the altar, before the many-armed statue of the Great Dog of Death and Terror, Yama the Demon King. The ceremony was proceeding according to the ancient rites prescribed in the holy texts of the Book of the Death God. Placidly anticipating the public consummation of his nuptials with the slim, long-legged Turanian girl, the divine monarch of Mem lolled on his throne of skulls as ranks of scarlet-clad shamans droned the ancient prayers.
Then came an interruption. Two naked giants dropped from nowhere to the floor of the temple one a heroic figure of living bronze, the other a long-limbed menace whose mighty physique seemed to have been carved from ebony. The shamans froze in mid-chant as these two howling devils burst into their midst.
Conan seized one of the torcheres and hurled it into the midst of the scarlet-robed shamans. They broke, screaming with pain and panic, as the flaming liquid butter set fire to their gauzy robes and turned them into living torches. The other three lamps followed in rapid succession, spreading fire and confusion over the floor of the chamber.
Juma sprang toward the dais, where the king sat with his good eye staring in fear and astonishment. The gaunt Grand Shaman met Juma on the marble steps with his magical staff lifted to smite. But the black giant still had his broken oar, and he swung it with terrific force. The ebony staff flew into a hundred fragments. A second swing caught the wizard-priest in the body and hurled him, broken and dying, into the chaos of running, screaming, flaming shamans.
King Jalung Thongpa came next. Grinning, Juma charged up the steps toward the cowering little god-king. But Jalung Thongpa was no longer on his throne. Instead, he knelt in front of the statue, arms raised and chanting a prayer.
Conan reached the altar at the same time and bent over the nude, writhing form of the terrified girl. The light golden chains were strong enough to hold her, but not strong enough to withstand Conan’s strength. With a grunt, he braced his feet and heaved on one; a link of the soft metal stretched, opened, and snapped. The other three chains followed, and Conan scooped up the sobbing princess in his arms. He turned but then a shadow fell over him.
Startled, he looked up and remembered what Tashudang had told him: “When he calls his father, the god comes!”
Now he realized the full extent of the horror behind those words. For, looming above him in the flickering torchlight, the arms of the gigantic idol of green stone were moving. The scarlet rubies that served it for eyes were glaring down at him, bright with intelligence.
VII. When the Green God Wakes
The hairs lifted on Conan’s nape, and he felt as if the blood in his veins had congealed to ice. Whimpering, Zosara pressed her face into the hollow of his shoulder and clung to his neck. On the black dais that upheld the throne of skulls, Juma also froze, the whites of his eyes showing as the superstitious terrors of his jungle heritage rose within him. The statue was coming to life.
As they watched, powerless to move, the image of green stone shifted one of its huge feet slowly, creakingly. Thirty feet above thei
r heads, its great face leered down at them. The six arms moved jerkily, flexing like the limbs of some gigantic spider. The thing tilted, shifting its monstrous weight. One vast foot came down on the altar on which Zosara had lain. The stone block cracked and crumbled beneath the tons of living green stone.
“Crom!” breathed Conan. “Even stone lives and walks in this mad place! Come, girl.” He picked Zosara up and leaped down from the dais to the floor of the temple. From behind him came an ominous scraping sound of stone on stone. The statue was moving.
“Juma!” yelled Conan, casting a wild eye about for the Kushite. The black still crouched motionless beside the throne. Upon the throne, the little god-king pointed an arm, thick with fat and bright with jewels, at Conan and the girl.
“Kill, Yama! Kill! Kill! Kill!” he screamed.
The many-armed thing paused and peered about with its ruby eyes until it sighted Conan. The Cimmerian was nearly mad with the primitive night-fears of his barbarian people. But, as with many barbarians, his very fear drove him into combat with that which he dreaded. He put down the girl and heaved up a marble bench. Sinews creaking with the effort, he strode forward towards the lumbering colossus.
Juma yelled: “No, Conan! Get away! It sees you!”
Now Conan stood near the monstrous foot of the walking idol. The stone legs towered above him like the pillars of some colossal temple. His face congested with the effort, Conan raised the heavy bench over his head and hurled it at the leg. It crashed into the carven ankle of the colussus with terrific impact. The marble of the bench clouded with a web of cracks, which shot through it from end to end. He stepped even closer, picked up the bench again, and again swung it against the ankle. This time the bench shattered into a score of pieces; but the leg, though slightly chipped, was not materially damaged. Conan reeled back as the statue took another ponderous step toward him.
“Conan! Look out!”
Juma’s yell made him look up. The green giant was stooping. The ruby eyes glared into his. Strange, to stare into the living eyes of a god! They were bottomlessly deep shadow-veiled depths wherein his gaze sank endlessly through red eons of time without thought. And deep within those crystalline depths, a cold, inhuman malignancy coiled. The god’s gaze locked on his own, and the young Cimmerian felt an icy numbness spread through him. He could neither move nor think.
Juma, howling with primal rage and fear, whirled. He saw the many mighty hands of stone swoop toward his comrade, who stood staring like one entranced. Another stride would bring Yama upon the paralyzed Cimmerian.
The black was too far from the tableau to interfere, but his frustrated rage demanded an outlet. Without conscious thought, he picked up the god-king, who shrieked and wriggled in vain, and hurled him toward his infernal parent Jalung Thongpa whirled through the air and thudded down on the tessalated pave before the tramping feet of the idol. Dazed by his fall, the little monarch stared widly about with his good eye. Then he screamed hideously as one titanic foot descended upon him.
The crunch of snapping bones resounded in the ringing silence. The god’s foot slid on the marble, leaving a broad, crimson smear on the tiles. Creaking at the waist, the titanic figure bent and reached for Conan, then stopped.
The groping, green stone hands, fingers outspread, halted in mid-air. The burning crimson light faded from the ruby eyes. The vast body with its many arms and devil’s head, which a moment before had been flexible and informed with life, froze into motionless stone once more.
Perhaps the death of the king, who had summoned this infernal spirit from the nighted depths of nameless dimensions, cancelled the spell that bound Yama to the idol. Or perhaps the king’s death released the devil-god’s will from the domination of his earthly kinsman. Whatever the cause, the instant the Jalung Thongpa was crushed into bubbling gore, the statue reverted to lifeless, immobile stone.
The spell that had gripped Conan’s mind also broke. Numbly, the youth shook his head to clear it. He stared about him. The first thing of which he was aware was the princess Zosara, who flung herself into his arms, weeping hysterically. As his bronzed arms closed about her softness and he felt the feathery touch of her black, silken hair against his throat, a new kind of fire flared up in his eyes, and he laughed deeply.
Juma came running across the floor of the temple. “Conan! Everybody either is dead or has ran away! There should be horses in the paddock behind the temple. Now is our chance to quit this accursed place!”
“Aye! By Crom, I shall be glad to shake the dust of this damned land from my heels,” growled the Cimmerian, tearing the robe from the body of the Grand Shaman and draping it over the princess’s nakedness. He snatched her up and carried her out, feeling the warmth and softness of her supple young body against his own.
An hour later, well beyond the reach of pursuit, they reined in their horses and examined the branching roads. Conan looked up at the stars, pondered, and pointed. “This way!”
Juma wrinkled his brow. “North?”
“Aye, to Hyrkania.” Conan laughed. “Have you forgotten that we still have this girl to deliver to her bridegroom?”
Juma’s brow wrinkled with greater puzzlement than before, seeing how Zosara’s slim, white arms were wound around his comrade’s neck and how her small head was nestled contentedly against his mighty shoulder. To her bridegroom? He shook his head; never would he understand the ways of Cimmerians. But he followed Conan’s lead and turned his steed toward the mighty Talakma Mountains, which rose like a wall to sunder the weird land of Mem from the windy steppes of Hyrkania.
A month later, they rode into the camp of Kujula, the Great Khan of the Kuigar nomads. Their appearance was entirely different from what it had been when they fled from Shamballah. In the villages on the southern slopes of the Talakmas, they had traded the links from the golden chains that still dangled from Zosara’s wrists and ankles for clothing suitable to snowy mountain passes and gusty plains. They wore fur caps, sheepskin coats, baggy trousers of coarse wool, and stout boots.
When they presented Zosara to her black-bearded bridegroom, the khan feasted and praised and rewarded them. After a carousal that lasted for several days, he sent them back to Turan loaded with gifts of gold.
When they were well away from Khan Kujula’s camp, Juma said to his friend: “That was a fine girl. I wonder you didn’t keep her for yourself. She liked you, too.”
Conan grinned. “Aye, she did. But I’m not ready to settle down yet. And Zosara will be happier with Kujula’s jewels and soft cushions than she would be with me, galloping about the steppes and being roasted, frozen, and chased by wolves or hostile warriors.” He chuckled. “Besides, though the Great Khan doesn’t know it, his heir is already on the way.”
“How do you know?”
“She told me, just before we parted.”
Juma made clicking sounds from his native tongue. “Well, I will never, never underestimate a Cimmerian again!”
6. THE CURSE OF THE MONOLITH
The sheer cliffs of dark stone closed about Conan the Cimmerian like the sides of a trap. He did not like the way their jagged peaks loomed against the few faint stars, which glittered like the eyes of spiders down upon the small camp on the flat floor of the valley. Neither did he like the chill, uneasy wind that whistled across the stony heights and prowled about the campfire. It caused the flames to lean and flicker, sending monstrous black shadows writhing across the rough stone walls of the nearer valley side.
On the other side of the camp, colossal redwoods, which had been old when Atlantis sank beneath the waves eight thousand years before, rose amid thickets of bamboo and clumps of rhododendron. A small stream meandered out of the woods, murmured past the camp, and wandered off into the forest again. Overhead, a layer of haze or high fog drifted across the tops of the cliffs, drowning the light of the fainter stars and making the brighter ones seem to weep.
Something about this place, thought Conan, stank of fear and of death. He could almost smell th
e acrid odor of terror on the breeze. The horses felt it too. They nickered plaintively, pawed the earth, and rolled white eyeballs at the dark beyond the circle of the fire. So was Conan, the barbarian warrior from the bleak hills of Cimmeria. Like his, their senses were more delicately turned to the aura of evil than were the senses of city-bred men like the Turanian troopers he had led into this deserted vale.
The soldiers sat about the fire, sharing the last of this night’s ration of wine from goatskin bags. Some laughed and boasted of the amorous feats they would do in the silken bagnios of Aghrapur upon their return. Others, weary from a long day’s hard ride, sat silently, staring at the fire and yawning. Soon they would settle down for the night, rolled in their heavy cloaks. With their heads pillowed on saddlebags, they would lie in a loose circle about the hissing fire, while two of their number stood guard with their powerful Hyrkanian bows strung and ready.
They sensed nothing of the sinister force that hovered about the valley.
Standing with his back to the nearest of the giant redwoods, Conan wrapped his cloak more closely about him against the dank breeze from the heights. Although his troopers were well-built men of good size, he towered half a head over the tallest of them, while his enormous breadth of shoulder made them seem puny by comparison. His square cut black mane escaped from below the edges of his spired, turban-wound helmet, and the deepset blue eyes in his dark, scarred face caught glints of red from the firelight.
Sunk in one of his fits of melancholy gloom, Conan silently cursed King Yildiz, the well-meaning but weak Turanian monarch who had sent him on this ill-omened mission. Over a year had passed since he had taken the oath of allegiance to the king of Turan. Six months before, he had been lucky enough to earn this king’s favor; with the help of a fellow-mercenary, Juma the Kushite, he had rescued Yildiz’s daughter Zosara from the mad god-king of Meru. He had brought the princess, more or less intact, to her affianced bridegroom, Khan Kujala of the nomadic Kuigar horde.
The Other Tales of Conan Page 12