Conan and Valeria had frowned. They would have more gladly been alone, but neither wished to offend Dobanpu's daughter and Seyganko's betrothed. Also, Conan, at least, had heard in Emwaya's voice a hint of something more than wishing to amuse herself on a tedious day.
"Be welcome," Valeria had said, and had sent a bidui boy for an extra mat and water gourd.
Emwaya proved herself a strong if not an overly skilled paddler, and the canoe made good time to the usual fishing spot. As Conan and Valeria slackened their stroke, Emwaya pointed toward the Kwanyi shore.
"Can we go closer?"
This time, Conan did more than frown. "The Kwanyi are not complete landlubbers. If they see suspicious-looking folk bobbing about off their shore, they may find a canoe or two to fill with warriors."
"I will lie down, so that none may recognize me."
"What about us?" Valeria asked. "Or have Conan and I turned your hue from the sun without anyone's telling us?"
Emwaya might know potent magic herself, and to offend her was to offend a master of still more potent spells. But neither she nor her father seemed quite as wise in matters of war as Conan could wish.
They bargained, as Valeria said afterward, like a captain and a ship's chandler haggling over the price of a galley's fittings. In the end, they had drunk half the water to ease throats dry from talking, and agreed on where to go. It was nearer the shore than Conan liked, farther than Emwaya wanted, but would serve the purposes of both.
Above all, they could not readily be caught against the shore by canoes coming in from the lake. Canoes coming out from the land they could see in time to keep their lead, and having a third paddler would help.
"Remember, too, that I can summon aid from the island if we seem to be pursued too closely," Emwaya said. She said no more, and Conan did not ask further. He was still none too easy over having such as Dobanpu as a friend. Sorcerers, he had to admit, might remain friendly, or at least harmlessbut he could count the ones who had done so on the fingers of one hand. Those who had sooner or later been deadly foes, on the other handall the fingers and toes in the canoe could hardly number them.
They reached their intended spot. Conan, having the sharpest eyes of the three, studied the shore. It showed no sign of human presence and precious little sign of any other animal life. Only a spit of sand with furrows where crocodiles had basked hinted that these placid waters might hold peril.
Conan and Valeria threw over their lines and readied their tridents.
Emwaya lay down on her mat in the bow and appeared to fall asleep. To Conan, her breathing seemed less regular than sleep commonly yielded.
The way her hands spread palm-down, fingers opened, against the hull of the canoe also hinted of an unrestful mood.
To the Cimmerian, she seemed to be listening for something. What, he did not know. Remembering that the tunnels might well honeycomb the bottom of the lake, holding the-gods-knew-what ancient evil, he chose not to try to guess.
The sun climbed to its peak, then began sinking. No fish had taken the bait. Indeed, Conan had seen no sign that anything at all lived in this part of the lake. That was not an agreeable thought, but one he kept to himself. Valeria, easier in her mind, had actually gone to sleep.
Suddenly Emwaya sat up, brushing tangled hair out of her eyes, one hand gripping the side of the canoe. She looked wildly about her, then seemed to discover something off to port. Conan looked where she did, but saw nothing save the lake's surface, unrippled by even a breath of wind or a leaping fish. He was still staring when Emwaya sprang up, threw off her waistcloth, and plunged over the side of the canoe.
Conan's roar would have stunned any fish within a good distance. It woke Valeria. Instantly alert, she took in the danger at a glance. She clutched the anchor stone, wriggled clear of the coiled line, then flung the stone overboard. "Two will be better at finding her than one, Conan. The canoe can fend for itself."
The anchor line hissed as it ran out, but when it reached its end, the canoe still drifted freely. Conan looked into the lake, sensing a depth there he had never before encountered. A depth into which Dobanpu's daughter had plunged, and into which Conan and Valeria had to follow her if they were to
Emwaya's head broke the surface. In a few strokes she was alongside, pulling herself half out of the water. Drops sparkled in her hair, sleeked down from the dousing, and glowed on her shoulders and breasts.
Her countenance took away any thoughts of her beauty, however.
"Come and see for yourselves," she said. "Be warned. You will not like what you find."
"My life's been full of unpleasing sights and it's not over yet," Conan said. He swung his legs over the side of the canoe, slipped into the water, then held the craft steady while Valeria dove over the side.
"Stay close to me," Emwaya ordered when Valeria surfaced. "It is my intent to protect you from what lies down there."
Conan could not help but feel that he would rather be sure of more than her intent. But Emwaya had at least this virtue, rare in magic-wielders: she would not promise miracles.
Conan filled his lungs and plunged under the surface, Emwaya behind him and Valeria in the rear. They were a canoe's length below when Conan saw what Emwaya meant.
It was as if they were suddenly swimming through a vast globe of liquid crystal. The water was utterly transparent, utterly without color, all the way to the bottom of the lake.
That bottom, Conan judged, had to be twice the height of a ship's mainmast below them. No wonder the anchor had not found purchase.
Indeed, he could see the anchor stone dangling uselessly from its line, well clear of the bottom.
In that transparent void, nothing moved. Nothing lived, eithernot the smallest fish, not even a scrap of the weeds that choked some portions of the lake. Conan looked down at the bottom.
It, too, was bare of life. But it was not featureless. Across the Cimmerian's field of vision ran what looked like a deep trench. Into that trench had tumbled blocks of stone that showed the unmistakable signs of human shaping. Even from high above, Conan saw that much. He also thought that he saw carved on some of the stones the writhing serpent-shape he had seen rather too often in the tunnels.
That was as much as he could fathom before a burning in his lungs told him that it was time to seek air. He kicked toward the surface, and Emwaya and Valeria followed.
When Conan broke into the sunlight, Valeria was there before he had finished taking his first deep breath. Emwaya was nowhere to be seen, and as Conan filled his lungs, he began to think of diving back down to find her.
"Valeria, if Emwaya's in trouble"
"She'll need us both even more now. And remember, I owe her my life."
"True enough. I was thinking more of the need for one of us to reach the island and tell of what happened."
Valeria looked less out of temper and seemed about to climb into the canoe when Emwaya broke the surface. Her arms flailed about wildly, and her breathing was a desperate rasp. Conan and Valeria each gripped an arm and upheld her with her head clear of the water.
The panic left her eyes as breath filled her lungs again. She lay back in the water, trusting her friends, and her gasping turned to steady breathing. At last she slipped out of their grasp and climbed into the canoe.
"What is it, Emwaya?" Conan asked.
"My father would knowwould say itbetter. But… under the lake bottom is one of those tunnels."
"That's the trench that collapsed?"
"Yes. Butin the tunnelsomewhere beyond where it collapsed, there is something."
"A flooded tunnel, I'd wager."
The jest seemed to frighten Emwaya. "Do not speak lightly of such matters, Conan. Iit seems to me that what is there lives."
"How can that be?" Valeria asked. She had finally caught the sense of the conversation. "Everything else in the water for a good thousand paces seems to be dead. Worse, driven away."
"Yes. What is in the tunnelit lives by eating the the word
is taboo, but will you understand 'life-force'?"
"The life-force of everything that comes close to it?" Valeria had her hand on her dagger as she spoke.
"Suchbeingshave lived. We, my father and I, thought they were all dead."
"It seems that at least one isn't," Conan said briskly. He picked up a paddle. "My thought is, let's return to the island and tell your father, if he hasn't already smelled it out for himself."
"I should dive again, to learn more of what it might be," Emwaya said.
Valeria hugged the Ichiribu woman. "You barely reached the surface after your second dive. Go down for the third time and it won't take any ancient magical monster to eat your life-force. You'll drown, and we will be left to explain to your father and Seyganko. I'd rather fight the monster, myself."
Valeria's words were clumsy and her accent harsh, but Emwaya understood the sense of them, and the goodwill in Valeria's embrace. "Then so be it," the young woman said. "Let us be off, before it senses us."
It was not the largest of the Golden Serpents, but it was the last and the oldest. It and one other had outlived all the rest of their kind, for the magic in the burrows they had found beneath the lake had changed them.
They had once eaten flesh. Now they ate the life-force that animated flesh, even including water-plants. They could draw it from a creature beyond the sight of their jeweled green eyes, and with it, feed their own strength.
Then it came about that the other ancient serpent grew weary, and its own life-force began to ebb. The last of the Golden Serpents had no sense of mercy, or of any human notion. It knew only that if the other was allowed to die, its life-force would not feed the one who survived.
So the Golden Serpents fought, and the last one killed its comrade. The life-force entered it, and it found new strength. But the battle had made great disorder in the magic that bound the tunnels, holding them up and lighting them. A long stretch of tunnel collapsed. Yet the magic held strongly enough that water did not pour in and drown the last of the Golden Serpents.
But the tunnel was fallen, and to find a way back through it would mean digging through much rock. The Golden Serpent was not a keen-witted creature, but it knew that neither its strength nor its teeth would be equal to that task. So it rested, drew life-force from the creatures of the waters above, and from time to time sought a way around the fallen stones.
It found one site that seemed likely to be easily made large enough for passage. But there was no trace of anything living, of anything that would repay the effort to open the way.
At least not at first. Then a time came when the Golden Serpent sensed life-force again in the tunnelstrong life, too, like that of the two-legged creatures who had cast the ancient spells on these tunnels.
It was so faint that the creatures must be far away.
But if life had come once more into the depths, it would not leave. The Golden Serpent worked at the barrier so that it would be easily breached when there was prey worth having on the other side. They would walk up to the barrier and then there would be no escape. There would, however, be new strength for the Golden Serpent. Strength, perhaps, to let it leave this hiding place and be abroad in the world again, where life-force could be had everywhere.
Even those days might come again when the two-legs brought living creatures to the Golden Serpent, that it might feed on flesh. To have both the living flesh and the life-force from it If one could use the word "ambition" of a creature without human wits, one might say that this wily scheme was the Golden Serpent's greatest ambition.
As he hauled the canoe onto the shore, Conan noticed that there were fewer people about than usual. He found nothing amiss in that, until he saw that the same was true all along the path leading up to the village.
When he saw what seemed half of the tribe around the hole where the hearthstone had been, he knew that something was wrong. Emwaya had been sweating and tight-lipped all the way up from the shore, but Conan had taken this as weariness after her strenuous swimming. Now he suspected worse.
He knew worse when he saw women and children loading stones and earth into baskets, and fanda warriors carrying the loaded baskets to the edge of the village. To ask a fanda warrior on duty to perform women's work could mean a death-duel, or at least a harsh judgment from the council of the tribe. Yet here was everyone old enough or young enough to stand on their feet unaided, digging out the shaft which led to the tunnels.
"I think Dobanpu has spoken," Valeria said, almost whispering.
"Likely enough," Conan agreed. "Are you game for another little ramble in the depths?"
"To go hunting Emwaya's life-force eater?" She looked both weary and disgusted with herself. "Ah, well. I have heard they have a proverb in Khitai: 'Be careful what you wish for. The gods may grant it.' It seems we wished a trifle too hard for the opening of the tunnels."
"It's done past undoing," Conan said. He unbuckled his belt and handed it and his weapons to Valeria. "Take these to the hut. I've some knowledge of this kind of work that the Ichiribu may find handy."
THIRTEEN
The last of the fifty warriors vanished into the jungle just as dawn touched the hills to the east. Wobeku looked after them, his face set.
He doubted that he would deceive Chabano, and indeed, he did not.
"So fearful of the lives of men not of your tribe?" the chief asked.
The note of mockery was plain. So was his real intent.
"The Kwanyi are my tribe now," Wobeku said. "Does its chief doubt oaths sworn to him in the presence of Ryku the First Speaker?"
"No."
There was nothing else that Chabano could say. He might doubt Ryku, as Wobeku certainly did. To put these doubts into words that others might hear was not a chief's wisdom.
"I trust the men you are sending against the herdlands and grainlands of the Ichiribu," Wobeku said. "They will do the work of far more than their numbers in confusing the enemy. They can neither lose those lands without starving, nor defend them without so many of them at hand that they can defend nothing else. No, what grieves me is that I cannot go with them."
"You are needed here, Wobeku." Left unsaid was that Wobeku was not yet so trusted by the Kwanyi warriors that he would be safe out of the chief's sight.
"I was a bidui boy for years, in the herdlands," Wobeku insisted. "Then I was of the fanda that guarded the grainlands. I know every hut, every valley, every spring in those lands. If I went, even as a simple guide, the men you have sent will do better work. More of them will also live to boast of it to their women."
"Wobeku, when we have won, there will not be enough women to hear all the boasting we shall do. Nor will there be enough beer to keep our throats wet for it."
Wobeku knelt, rose when dismissed, and turned away. Not until he was out of the chief's sight did he dare make even the smallest gesture of aversion.
Chabano might tempt the gods. That was a chief's right. Wobeku was no chief, and much doubted that he ever would be, even if Chabano came to rule all the lands to the Salt Water. He had dreamed of such things when he had agreed to serve Chabano, but those were the dreams of a younger man.
Now he had seen more years, and more truths about the world. Wobeku would be quite content to end his life with sons to sing the death-song for him, women to wash his body, and cattle and fields enough to provide a feast for his friends when the smoke of his burning had risen to the gods.
He thought he would ask for the woman Mokossa as his first prize of the victory. She seemed not only a pleasure to the eye, but intelligent and healthy, a breeder of worthy sons.
Conan was inspecting the warriors of the tunnel band when a bidui boy came to summon him to Seyganko. From the boy's face, it was urgent that the Cimmerian lose not a moment.
He motioned to Valeria, and she laid her pouches on her shield and ran over. Even after a night spent with little sleep, Conan took pleasure in her lithe grace and sure movements. He took even more pleasure in the knowledge that she would be
at his back when they plunged into the magic-haunted passages beneath the lake once again.
"Valeria, can you finish my work here? Will you see that all the men have what they were ordered to bring and are sober, not astray in their wits and the like?"
"I think that only a drunkard or a madman would have offered himself to this quest," she said with a wry smile.
"Or men who think Dobanpu speaks the truth," Conan said.
"I am surprised to find you among them," Valeria whispered.
Conan shrugged. "Call me one who has not caught Dobanpu or his daughter in a lie as yet. That puts them leagues ahead of most of the sorcerers I've met." He patted her shoulder. "Just pretend to know what you are doing"
"The way you do on the mats?"
"Woman, was it my pretending that made you howl like a she-wolf last night? Half the village heard you, or so I've been told."
Valeria made a sound that was half curse, half laugh, and turned away.
Conan saw her bare shoulders quivering as silent laughter took her.
Then he hurried off to Seyganko.
He found the war leader on hands and knees beside an upturned canoe, studying the bottom as though the secrets of the gods, or at least of victory over the Kwanyi might be found there.
Seyganko seemed drawn with doubt as he led Conan aside. Part of it had to be the burden of leading so many men into a war that neither they nor their tribe might survive. Conan was not vastly older than Seyganko, but he had borne that burden more often than the other, and knew that it grew no lighter with the years.
The other part of Seyganko's unease came out swiftly. "We have seen Kwanyi warriors in the forest on the edge of the herdlands and grainlands. Goats have been found slain, and at least one herdsman has vanished."
Conan nodded. This was a matter of the higher art of war, of which he knew more than he cared to admit, less than he wished. What he both knew and could admit to, however
"Never fight a war believing that the enemy will wait for you to descend on him like a chamber pot from a high window. Chabano seeks to draw warriors away from the attack on him."
The Conan Compendium Page 616