The Conan Compendium

by Various Authors

  It was time to go where he was needed. He had never used the spell of the world-walker with so little preparation or so many witnesses. But then, he had never used it to take himself or anything else over such a short distance.

  The dangers were two: his being detected while he was raising the spell, and his being followed through the world-walker by any of his guards. The first would catch him helpless; he could only do his best and pray.

  As to the second”he much doubted that the statue had brought death to Conan, or indeed to most of the Bamulas as long as Conan was leading them. It occurred to Lysenius that if he wished a war chieftain to wed his daughter, the Cimmerian towered over any Pict”and not only in stature, either. If Conan's band was still alive and fighting-fit, any Picts who followed Lysenius through the world-walker would not live long once they came out at the cave end of the journey.

  Lysenius assumed the posture of meditation, which seemed to arouse no suspicion among the Picts. They looked at him casually, then went back to their gambling. One left the circle briefly and returned with several gourds of beer. Its sour reek made Lysenius want to gag.

  The names of gods seldom invoked, and never lawfully since the fall of the Empire of Acheron, swirled in his thoughts but did not pass his lips. Nor did any eyes but his see the world about him turn golden”until suddenly the golden spiral was so solid that no one could see Lysenius within it.

  A Pict leapt frantically at the golden wall as his comrades flung spears and nocked arrows to bows. The Pict vanished with a cry strangled in midflight. As the echoes of his cry died, thunder boomed across the clearing, making the fire dance, the leaves quiver on the trees, and the mages tent collapse.

  Then darkness and silence both returned, leaving a half-circle of gaping Picts staring at the place where Lysenius had been sitting.

  ***

  In the confines of the cave, the thunderclap was deafening. Conan heard the Bamulas screaming with the pain in their ears, and he opened his mouth to ease his own. There was still no telling which way the thunder came from. For a moment, Conan feared that the statue had encountered magick, either Lysenius's or the Picts', and met its doom just when it was about to turn from menace to useful diversion.

  Then footfalls, the clattering of metal on stone, and a Pictish war cry rose over the fading echoes of the thunderclap. Rose from within the cave, back toward the chamber of the statue. Conan snatched his sword from its scabbard and ran toward the chamber.

  He had expected to see a whole band of Picts, sent by Lysenius to take his people in the rear. Instead, he saw only one Pict, and of all impossible visitors, Lysenius himself, grappling with the savage. The Pict had just drawn a rusty dagger to thrust into Lysenius's ribs when Conan ran him through.

  "You can sheathe that sword," the sorcerer said with as much dignity as any man could contrive under such circumstances. He looked at the dying Pict and wiped a trickle of blood from his own upper lip. "I think only one of them followed me through

  "I can sheathe that sword in you," Conan growled, "unless you talk fast. What are you doing here? Didn't your daughters treachery”?"

  "Scyra's”what?"

  The bemusement in the man's voice was either real or consummate artistry. Conan kept his sword drawn but moved back a pace so that it no longer imminently menaced the sorcerer.

  "Very well. If there is anything I need to know, best tell me now. That cursed statue has gone out of the cave and will be among the Picts

  "Oh, gods! It is as I feared. It will not stop until Scyra is dead or the Picts holding her flee farther than we can pursue."

  "Crom! I'm willing to listen to you if you talk sense. If you give me nothing but riddles

  "Please. Let me speak."

  The Cimmerian saw the effort it was taking the sorcerer to calm himself, and waited, as little as he liked the notion. He was no friend of sorcerers and seldom of anybody who could not offer a well-wielded sword at his side, but matters tonight might have gone beyond what swords could face. If Lysenius had turned his coat”

  It seemed that he had, or at least had given over sacrificing his daughter to his lust for vengeance. It was hard to be sure, harder still to understand what he wished Conan to do. The Cimmerians fingers itched to ram his sword into Lysenius so hard that the hilt rang against the sorcerer's ribs and the blade stuck far out from his back.

  He resisted it. No woman deserved to end as a Pictish slave or sacrifice, even if she had betrayed him, ten times over if she had not.

  Moreover, Conan knew what chance his band had of winning free without more aid than the statue could give. It was somewhere between scanty and none at all.

  Lysenius could hardly make matters worse, and might make them better.

  "You've persuaded me," Conan said. "But my men and I will be watching both back and front. You hurl one thunderbolt, or whatever you wield, at us and you won't live to hurl a second."

  "That is only just," Lysenius said. His empty voice made Conan wonder if the man was too shame-ridden to have about him what wits his sorcery had left. Sorcerers were a chancy lot, even when they called themselves your friend.

  "So be it," Conan said. "Do as you think best, and I'll crawl out and see what our stone-headed friend is doing. Don't be surprised by anything you see me and my people do."

  Lysenius managed a wintry smile. "I give you the same message."

  ***

  Scyra regained her senses to see Sutharo standing over her. His face showed the fatigue of battle and no regard whatever for her. He was a Pictish chief among his warriors, and no care for a woman would enter his thoughts.

  No word of what had happened passed his lips either, but Scyra could now listen with waking ears to the wagging tongues about her. The only ones who did not add to her knowledge were the chakans, being without speech that anyone except a shaman could understand.

  Clearly, her father would be at the mercy of the Picts as long as she was a hostage. It did not matter if she ceased to be a hostage through escape or death; either way would end the Picts' hold over Lysenius.

  Whether she escaped or died, however, she vowed one thing before any gods that might listen: Sutharo would not see another sunrise.

  It was remarkable how that vow eased her mind. Bound to the litter as she was, she was still able to fall into a light sleep soon afterward.

  She awoke to hear, all about her in the darkness, Pictish cries that held more terror than warlike spirit. Her first thought was that the Snakes had returned in such great force that the Owls were about to be overwhelmed. The idea of being slaughtered like a salmon, its brains beaten out on a flat rock, made her stomach heave.

  She struggled, unnoticed by guards or chakans. Indeed, the chakans seemed to be nowhere in sight, although darkness and the forest could still hide menaces perilously close to her. She loosened one hand and one foot from the thongs binding her to the litter and contrived to turn her head to look uphill.

  A blue glow poured from the mouth of the cave now, and against it loomed a towering black shape. For a moment she thought it was Conan himself, then saw that the shape moved too slowly and stiffly for any mortal flesh. The statue had come forth, however animated, seemingly with a will of its own and nothing commanding it.

  The night suddenly seemed colder and darker than before, and the trees overhead ready to come to life and reach down branches like clawing hands, to pluck her from the litter, lift her high, and rend her apart like a rag doll in the hands of a willful child¦

  Scyra bit her lip to hold back a cry of despair. She also began casting about in her mind for any spells that she could work, unaided by the Crystal of Thraz, herbs and simples, being spellclad, or by anything else except her own wits and memory.

  Before this quest yielded consequences, the Picts had regained enough courage to approach the statue. Or at least one did. Scyra saw him close to the image, both figures dark against the blue glow from the cave. She saw the spear rise, and she could riot tell whether in salute
or challenge.

  Then the statue moved. No longer heavily or slowly, but as swiftly as the Cimmerian himself might have done. One arm gripped the spearhead, and a globe of dazzling blue flame flashed, swallowing both spearhead and hand. The spear shaft burst into flames; the Pictish warrior howled and leapt back.

  Not far enough. The statues other arm gripped his free hand. The pict howled again, this time in mortal agony. The statue jerked him off his feet, holding him kicking frantically. His silhouette began to change, twist, shrink. Scyra watched in horror and awe as the Pictish warrior was drained to a limp sack of skin, then tossed away like a fruit sucked dry.

  Horror and awe were also in the cries of the Picts. They drew back, and began hurling spears and shooting arrows from what they doubtless hoped would be a safe distance. Blue sparks flashed all over the statue as the spearheads and arrowheads immolated themselves, and a cloud of reeking smoke began to spread about the figure.

  The image took no harm, though, and neither retreated nor advanced.

  Instead, it suddenly raised both arms, and blue sparks as long as lightning-bolts sprayed from both hands. Its aim was not perfect; some of the sparks left only smoking patches on the hillside.

  Others caught fleeing Picts. A blue glow spread around them as they stopped, limbs writhing in convulsion, mouths opened in screams that reached Scyra's ears even through the crackling of the sparks. It was as if each Pict was being burned in a fierce flame at his own stake.

  Then the sparks died and only smoke spreading out in a noisome cloud remained. Smoke, and a charred thing on the ground.

  Scyra had found her spell now. If she could reach out with her mind as she had done to Conan, and if the Picts had not looted her tent”

  There. The mind-touch she had sent across the miles had gripped the Crystal of Thraz. She kept her touch exquisitely delicate; this was as difficult as milking adders for their venom to make certain potions mentioned only in scrolls forbidden (and indeed, seldom found) outside Stygia.

  Her concentration on the Crystal of Thraz was so complete that she did not notice dark shadowy figures creeping down the slope to either side of the statue.

  ***

  Conan led his rescue party down the slope in silence, although the statues thunderbolts broke the darkness more often than he cared for.

  None came his way. Now he could only hope that the statues increasing power would draw the whole attention of the Picts, without driving them into panic-flight.

  That was what he dreaded, next only to treachery by Lysenius. He had too few men to pursue Scyra and her chakans through the nighted forest, even if those few were united. As they were now, they would be divided between his rescue party and those who remained behind to guard Lysenius from wandering Picts, and the Bamulas from Lysenius's treachery.

  The Bamulas had learned the art of moving as silently on rocky slopes as in their native jungles. No coughs and hardly a single rattling pebble betrayed the rescue party as it crept downhill. They could have made far more noise and still gone unnoticed amid the thunder of the statues magick and the cries of the Picts.

  Beyond the circle of death cleared by the statue, darkness fell again, and Conan's night-sight returned. He saw a single figure standing beside a tree, and behind it, shadows that did not look altogether human. Was it a fancy of the night and the magick, or was there something lying amid those inhuman shadows?

  He would start with the standing figure. At least it seemed human and, from the headdress, a chief. Behead a Pictish war-band by killing the chief, after the band had already been shaken by magick, and one had a good chance of driving the foe into flight.

  With hands and whispers, Conan guided the Bamulas with him to the left.

  There the ground offered more concealment, almost up to the very feet of the standing chief.

  Unfortunately, a good number of Picts had also sought the same concealment. Conan found himself at arm's length from a crouching Pict.

  As he drew back, his hand came down on a twig. In the brief silence, the crack reached the Picts ears.

  He sprang to his feet and the Cimmerian did the same. Conan's dagger swung in a deadly arc, ending in the Pict's chest. Blood and breath sprayed from the man's mouth in silence, and he fell without a cry. But he had a comrade, and that one not only rose but cried out, before a Bamula spear silenced him forever.

  Instantly, the slope seemed to grow Picts the way a cave grows mushrooms. All of them seemed to have both wits and weapons with which to meet human foes, and all were between Conan and the chief.

  A Cimmerian war yell halted some of the Picts as abruptly as if they had been impaled. Before they could advance again, Conan had seen the thinnest part of their line. He charged it, sword and dagger reflecting unearthly blueness as the statue continued its work. The Bamulas streamed behind and to either side of him, shouting their own war cries and wielding blunted and blood-encrusted spears with the strength of madmen.

  The Picts' brief flowering of courage withered. Conan knocked two down by the sheer weight of his massive frame striking at the run. He trampled them underfoot, thrust left with his dagger and slashed right at two more Picts with his sword. The dagger sank between ribs, the sword crippled an arm and laid open a skull. The Pict with the crippled arm died in the next moment as Vuona, of all people, cracked his skull with a Pictish war club.

  "What are you doing here?" Conan snarled.

  "This is my last chance to be a warrior."

  "Or anything else, if the Picts rally while we stand here wagging our tongues!" Conan muttered. The woman seemed unperturbed, and a moment later a swirl of Picts drove between them and both had more important matters on hand.

  A Bamula was down, and from the wounds Conan could see, not likely to rise again. But four Picts lay dead around the warrior and a fifth was reeling about with a lamed leg, until Conan's sword cured the mans limp and his every other earthly ill.

  Now nothing stood between Conan and the chief. The two men saw this at the same moment”and the chief turned. Conan was up with him in a moment, ready to not only kill the chief, but also to disgrace him forever in the eyes of his warriors and gods by giving him a death-wound in the back.

  The chief turned again at the last moment and thrust at Conan with a Gunderman short-sword. The Cimmerian needed to be as nimble as a deer to escape the thrust. By then he was too close to the man to wield a sword, and his dagger was in his other hand.

  Conan's fist drove into the chief's face, the sword-hilt weighting the blow like a cestus. The Pict's head snapped back, and his second thrust was wild. It gouged skin over Conan's ribs; he felt blood trickle. He was already moving as the chief drew his sword back for yet another thrust.

  This time Conan whirled, dagger in his left hand. The point drove into the Pict's throat, and the third attempt on the Cimmerians life ended in a gurgle. The short-sword clanged on the rocks, a Pict dove for it, and Conan kicked the man in the face hard enough to snap his neck.

  Then no merely human foes menaced the Cimmerian. In front, three chakans stood between him and Scyra, bound to a litter. Behind him raged the thunderbolts of the statue, and in the cave, Lysenius was at work.

  Even chakans might have quailed at the Cimmerian's war cry. It drew the Bamulas still on their feet to their chief, and in a compact mass like a clenched fist, Conan's rescue party advanced toward Scyra.

  Nineteen

  Lysenius knew what had to be done, likewise how to do it, as soon as Scyra was no longer among the Picts. The only thing he did not know was the price he would have to pay. He did not expect to know that until the moment of payment, which was more commonly the case in sorcery than any sorcerer ever cared to think about.

  Now he could only command his mind, fearing that Scyra might already be dead and he would not know it. Surely she would have sent him some final message?

  If she had understood what he was trying to do, perhaps. If she had not, or if she had died too swiftly for any spell¦ And Conan had
no ghost-voice from which the truth might be learned another way”

  Lysenius groaned. Outside, the statues thunderbolts seemed to echo that groan.

  Scyra now had both hands and one foot loose enough to be able to free them in a moment. Perhaps not fast enough to escape the chakans if they had warning, but with magick, darkness, and enemies all about, their slow wits might not perceive her movements.

  She clutched the Crystal of Thraz in one free hand. So far, no one had seen it, let alone suspected its nature, but that could change at any moment. She lay still, commanding her breath to be silent and her muscles to end their futile quivering. Fear was in her, more than she had ever felt before, but also a sense of her own power, which allowed her to control the fear.

  Picts no longer stood between her and the hillside, but she had no eyes for the statue. All her attention was on the gigantic living figure storming forward, cutting down Sutharo (she did not dare curse Conan for taking away that pleasure) and striding ahead.

  Two of the chakans bent to raise the litter. Scyra made ready to jerk hands and foot from the thongs and do battle with the aid of the Crystal when, suddenly, the two bending chakans halted. All seemed to be listening to a silent voice.

  Then two chakans advanced on Conan as the third chakan bent, snapping the thongs about Scyra's wrists and ankles as if they were spiderwebs.

  Fear and hope warred in her, as she understood. Vurag Yan had summoned the chakans, two to do battle and a third to carry her off. If she struck at the chakans while their minds were linked to the shaman's”

  The thought summoned the strength to move. She rolled toward the chakan and slapped the hand holding the Crystal of Thraz against one hairy arm. At the same moment, she summoned all the strength of will she had ever dreamed of possessing into putting a single message into the chakan's mind.