by Roland Green
"Has your father gone mad?" Valeria snapped. Conan shook his head. If Emwaya was not afraid, Dobanpu must have some scheme in mind. To make it succeed was another matter.
"What must we do?" he asked the girl.
"He will lead the creature to a place he has sensed, I think. He used much power in coming here, so he will not be able to kill it unaided. But in that place he seeks, he will find a way of ending its life."
Conan cursed himself for expecting a straight answer from any magic-wielder. Valeria glared at Emwaya.
"You want us to follow that thing down some burrow where it might turn and rend us? Trusting only to your father's wizardry?"
"Yes."
"Cimmerian—"
"Call me names afterward. Meanwhile, would you wager two hairs of your head on our surviving if Dobanpu dies?"
As always, Valeria saw reason. She leaped out in front of the warriors and waved her sword. "Come on, you dogs' leavings! It's turned its back to us, and that means it's fleeing!"
The warriors might not have understood all of Valeria's words. Those who understood might not have believed that she spoke the truth. All understood and believed that they should not let the Blue-Eyed Chief's shield-woman shame them by leading the charge. War cries echoed nearly as loud as the thunderclap of Dobanpu's appearance, and the Ichiribu warriors plunged after their foe.
Ryku gazed down into the whirlpool of light that was the Living Wind—or at least its outward form. He stood on the outermost rim of the ledge, rather than sitting in the First Speaker's seat.
He had never felt at ease in that seat, and now it was more important than ever that he do nothing to make himself feel uneasy. It might be only a tale that the Living Wind could sense when those in its presence were afraid, or unsure of themselves, but such tales often held bits of truth.
Also, Ryku did not altogether like what he saw now when he gazed down into the Living Wind. That it was unveiled by the smoke, long a tradition in the ritual, mattered little. Indeed, he had not called up the smoke, thinking it an outworn custom.
The hues of the Living Wind were still crimson and sapphire, swirling in patterns that both held and repelled the eye. But the crimson now seemed the color of old blood, while the sapphire was growing steadily paler.
Also, there was a distant sound that seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It was a sound hard to find words to describe. To Ryku, it seemed that if bees could chant war cries, the sound might be rather like what he was hearing.
Even the smell of the Cave of the Living Wind had altered. It had always been fresh and cool, in spite of being far below the slopes of Thunder Mountain, with few natural passages for air. Now the odor of the jungle seemed to be overtaking the cave, or at least the odor of some sort of life.
Why not? Ryku told himself that the Living Wind had earned its name fairly, so why should it not take on some of the qualities of life when it began to change?
He had to use all of the disciplines he had learned so as not to be uneasy at that thought, nonetheless. Yet again, why should it be a surprise? Mighty and ancient magic was being wielded in this land, magic left untouched for centuries, and the very gods of Thunder Mountain might be waking.
Ryku now thought he had calmed himself enough to sit down in the chair of the First Speaker. Let the gods wake, he told himself. Let them wake, and they will see that I am their friend and my enemies are theirs. Then I will not even need Dobanpu, not when I have gods for friends.
Emwaya seemed to be speaking to her father without words, and her gestures guided the war band on the trail of the Golden Serpent. They might not have needed that guidance, for the creature now hissed almost continuously, and left smears of blood that grew thicker as it writhed along.
Conan held his tongue. He would not allow his own hopes to rise, let alone those of the band. False hope made warriors careless, and careless warriors died in the face of less formidable foes than the Golden Serpent.
The band certainly ran faster with Emwaya guiding them than they would have dared otherwise. Indeed, Conan did not know how far they had come, or how much longer some of the warriors could keep up the pace. Those with baggage were beginning to breathe hard, and some of those with slight wounds clearly would need rest before long.
Conan did not like to think of dividing the band, leaving the baggage and the lightly wounded behind. Once divided in these depths, could the band ever unite again? Also, the Golden Serpent might have ways of doubling back on its tracks, to fall on such easy prey.
A familiar smell began to tickle the Cimmerian's nostrils. Not one he remembered with pleasure, on the whole, although the giant fungi had certainly saved him and Valeria on their first journey underground. But when one has fed off something for so long, the smell lingers in memory.
They were approaching another cave full of the giant fungi. Conan wondered what purpose that might serve, as the Golden Serpent was plainly a meat-eater. Emwaya was too lost in speaking with her father to answer to anything save a shout in her ear, and Conan had no wish to break her bond with Dobanpu.
The floor sloped more sharply downward now, and the patches of green blood were not only thicker, but fresher. The warriors had to slow their onrush, to avoid stepping in the still-fuming green patches of death and agony. One warrior was unlucky enough to go down nonetheless, but leaped up at once, holding a blistered hand over his head like a trophy.
"It bleeds! It bleeds, and does not stop! Come, brothers, and we shall make it bleed to death!"
Then the tunnel bent sharply, and now the blood smeared the walls as well as the floor. Conan took the lead again, with Valeria just behind him. Around this bend, the serpent might be lying in wait, even if Dobanpu was alive and well, as he seemed to be, judging by the way Emwaya looked.
Then a sudden battering-ram stroke of the serpent's head caught an unsuspecting warrior to Conan's left. No teeth pierced the man, but the horn caught his shoulder and hurled him against the wall. Conan heard his skull crack.
The Cimmerian leaped and thrust in the same motion. His sword slashed deep through scales into the flesh under the serpent's throat. The scales parted, and blood spurted from a gash a sword's length wide, deeper than any wound the beast had taken thus far.
This time, the hiss was nearly a roar, with an ugly, bubbling note. Blood sprayed Conan, Valeria, Emwaya, and several warriors. As it had not done before, it stung. Conan blinked his eyes clear, wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand, and glanced at his sword-blade. There was no harm to it as far as he could see.
Then they heard Dobanpu calling from beyond the serpent, "Have fire ready! When I lead the beast among the earth-fruits, you must cast fire upon them!"
Conan and Valeria spent no time in wondering at the sense of Dobanpu's call. The serpent now writhed in a broader patch of tunnel, half-choked with the fungi. Emwaya's eyes also discouraged questions.
"Flint and steel to the fore! And a torch! Hurry!" Valeria shouted.
A man ran up from the baggage bearers. Valeria struck a spark with flint and steel into the dried, oil-soaked grass at the head of one of the torches. It blazed up, with flame that was no natural yellow or orange, but a violet hue as sickening as the serpent's blood, as sickening as the magic the creature used for eating life-force.
Valeria held the torch at arm's length as the serpent backed slowly deeper into the fungus. Conan stood beside her, sword and spear alike ready. He saw Dobanpu raise a hand and fling what seemed to be a gobbet of the serpent's own blood into its face. He saw the serpent lunge forward, then halt, its head buried deep in a mass of the fungi as tall as two men.
Before Dobanpu or Emwaya could speak, Valeria flung the torch. It soared over the serpent's back and plunged into the piled fungi.
Flames puffed up, of the same virulent purple hue as the torch-flame. Thick smoke of similar color rose above them. The Golden Serpent quivered from nose to tail, then flung its head up as if trying to pierce the ceiling to seek the op
en sky.
It failed. As the monster rose, Conan saw that smoke and flames were pouring from those wounds still open. Green blood turned black; then golden scales around the wounds also blackened. Smoke rose up from throat and body, and at last began pouring from the eyes.
When smoke belched from the serpent's mouth, Conan threw an arm around Valeria's shoulders and drew her close. He could feel her shuddering. He sheathed his sword, dropped his spear, and drew Emwaya close with his other arm.
They stood that way as the flames they had kindled with the aid of Dobanpu's magic devoured both the fungi and the Golden Serpent. The brute was tenacious of its life to the end. Not until the scales were mostly fallen from the flesh did it stop writhing. Even then Conan thought he heard a faint scraping in the middle of the roaring flames, as if the serpent were still twitching feebly.
That was the Golden Serpent's last sign of life. Smoke was rising so thickly now that Conan and others were binding strips of cloth across their mouths and noses. Some wetted the strips as well. Emwaya stared into the smoke, with it plain on her face that she feared for her father.
Then the smoke eddied and disgorged the staggering figure of Dobanpu. He was coughing like a man in the grip of lung-fever, and so nearly blind that he all but spitted himself on Valeria's sword as he rushed up. Valeria and Emwaya held the Spirit-Speaker while he coughed his lungs clear, then gave him water. When he could speak, he nodded his thanks and then gasped:
"We must hasten from here! I do not know how long this fire will burn, nor how much smoke it will yield. The whole underground may become unfit for life."
"I rejoice!" Valeria cried. "We are saved from the Golden Serpent only to stifle like rabbits in a burrow!"
"Save your breath for running," Emwaya said, "and you may not find yourself short of it!" It was the first time in a long while that she had spoken with her old sharpness. Conan took that as a favorable omen; Valeria seemed to think otherwise.
She did follow Emwaya's advice nonetheless. Like the others, she was silent as they hurried back up the tunnel, the smoke thickening behind them.
"Wobeku," the Kwanyi warrior said, "a messenger has come from the watchers of the great crack in the earth."
Wobeku sat up and shook sleep from his head. One of these days, they might use some honorific for him. At least they had given over calling him "the chief's Ichiribu."
"What is the message?"
"He smells smoke."
"Smoke, as from a fire?"
"So he said."
Wobeku rose and girded himself for battle. When that was done, he was fully awake. It was also then that he noticed that the jungle was more silent than usual. Many of the common night birds and insects did not live down by the Kwanyi shore, but the jungle was neither lifeless nor silent under the moon.
Until now. Wobeku felt a chill in his loins. He sensed that he was about to be called on to fight a foe not wholly of this earth.
"See that the drums warn Chabano and Ryku," he ordered. "Have the guards at the lesser crack drive the logs we have ready into it." That would be of no avail against unearthly foes, but if anyone human tried to come through that crack, he would face a long night of ax-work before he succeeded.
"Gather the guards about the great crack," he concluded. "Not too close, but every man is to be fully armed. The baggage boys and the women are to take the trail back to the villages. At once!"
The man almost made the gesture of respect to a chief before he remembered to whom he was making it. Instead, he nodded and ran off.
Wobeku did not run, but he moved at a brisk trot as he headed down the trail toward what he knew might be his last battle. The drums were talking before he was halfway to his post.
SIXTEEN
Conan's band would have gladly run from the smoke faster than they had run from the Golden Serpent. There was no need to stop and thrust a spear at the swirling purple wall hard on their heels.
If only they could breathe! Heat followed the smoke, and long tendrils of both smoke and heat seemed to clutch at the fleeing men like jungle vines. Conan ventured a look behind him, took one of the tendrils squarely in the face, and nearly coughed himself into a fit.
His feet kept moving by a will of their own, however, until his wits ruled them again. He did not falter or fall, and neither did most of the band. Those who did, their comrades lifted and carried along.
No one wanted to see a comrade overtaken by this new peril. It was impossible to imagine living within that purple murk, even had not strange shapes lurked there. Conan had seen them, Valeria had seen them, and even Emwaya and Dobanpu admitted they were there.
The two Spirit-Speakers did not, however, say what those shapes might be. That was about as much as Conan expected of any sorcerer, and he was not much for being rude to those who had saved his life. So he followed Emwaya's advice to keep his breath for running.
"Here we turn," Dobanpu called. He pointed at a narrow slit in the wall to the right. Dried mud lay on the floor about it, and a smell of jungle rot warred with the smoke-reek.
As an escape route, it looked unpromising. But Dobanpu seemed confident, and so far, he had proven trustworthy. Also, Conan had no wish to wait for the fire to burn itself out. Already there was more smoke and heat than all the fungi in all these caves could have produced. Magic was in this fire, magic of a kind that sensible men escaped as quickly as possible, even if they did have a momentarily friendly sorcerer in company.
"Up!" Conan shouted, pointing at the gap. It was a measure of his authority, or of their desperation, that four warriors plunged in without hesitation. Four more followed, carrying the rope ladders and other climbing gear. Before any more could go, Emwaya darted in.
Dobanpu's howl caused her to thrust her head back into view. "Father, I can climb faster than you. Who knows what lies above, or what arts we may need against it? Be ready to help me if I call."
Then she vanished. Dobanpu looked about wildly, no longer a sorcerer, but a father seeing his child plunge into danger. "Valeria!" Conan called. "I'll take the rear. You join the vanguard and see to Emwaya!"
Valeria left with the next handful of warriors. The men were, in fact, now disappearing so fast that Conan wondered if the way to the surface was easier than he had dared believe. If they found stairs—
"Conan!" Valeria called. "There are stairs up to the surface, and open sky above! Make haste!"
Conan needed no urging. The tendrils of smoke seemed to curl about his ankles, then his knees, then his waist. He drew his sword and hacked at them as if they were living foes, and saw them retreat. But his sword was growing hot to his touch, and he knew that if the main mass of smoke surrounded him, he was lost.
Dobanpu shouted three harsh syllables, then reeled against the wall as if the blood had rushed from his head. Conan watched the wall of smoke draw back as the Golden Serpent had done, and felt the heat diminish. Then he all but flung the Spirit-Speaker through the gap and followed him.
The stairs were there, and—incredibly—the Cimmerian could indeed see stars shining above. He dragged Dobanpu toward the rise, but the Spirit-Speaker held back.
"I must restore the guardian spells on these stairs," he gasped, "or the smoke-bringer will follow us, catch us halfway up, burn us in mid-stride—"
"As you wish," Conan said. Arguing with a sorcerer was more futile than fighting with one. The Cimmerian had won battles with many sorcerers, but had won arguments with few.
This spell called for more than three times three syllables. When Dobanpu was done, the gap behind them was yet dark with smoke, but the tendrils did not escape. The air in the stairwell remained musty but clean as Conan and the Spirit-Speaker mounted.
They had just caught up with the rearmost warrior when, from above, Emwaya screamed.
The scream floated across the dark lake to Seyganko's canoe. Everyone in the three leading canoes heard it, but only Seyganko heard it in his mind. He desperately sought a message in the scream.
; Emwaya! What is the danger? Where are you?
No answer came. He knew that for her cry to reach him this far out in the lake, she had to be close to the shore. Also, she had to be on or close to the surface of the earth.
This gave neither knowledge nor consolation. He thrust his paddle in deep and looked behind him. Then he gave his war cry with all the breath in his body, and thrust again with his paddle.
Without magic, with nothing but their strength and their sweat, the other warriors were overtaking him. A hundred of the Ichiribu's best fighters had gone to the mainland, to defend the herds and crops. Of the rest, four hundred had taken to their canoes to challenge the Kwanyi on their own shore. Only a handful remained behind to guard the island.
As if Seyganko's war cry had been a signal, torches sparked to life in the bows of the oncoming canoes. It seemed as though a line of fire was advancing across the lake behind Seyganko.
He held his paddle aloft like a spear until the leading canoes were almost abreast of his craft. Then he tossed the paddle, caught it, and gave his war cry again. This time, the warriors gave it back to him so that it seemed to fill the night and the lake, from shore to shore. If the Kwanyi had not known what was coming, they could hardly be ignorant of it now.
Seyganko began paddling again. The brief sense of triumph left him as he realized that he had heard nothing more from Emwaya, neither with his ears nor with his mind.
Conan took the stairs two at a time, for all that they were crumbling and moss-grown. Once he nearly missed his footing and fell back. He gripped a root with one hand and caught himself in time so as not to squash Dobanpu like a grape.
The stairs ended at a man's height from the surface, but to picked Ichiribu warriors, that distance was but a child's leap; they had already reached solid ground by the time Conan joined them.
The first thing he saw was a warrior falling with a Kwanyi spear in his thigh. Conan snatched the man's shield and drew his own sword, then whirled, searching for Emwaya and Valeria.