appetite of a common burgher or labourer. And you, I can see, are a man of abounding appetite for all the things that make life worth living, so let us set to, sir, let us set to!'
Forthwith, the fat man seized a bone-handled carving knife and removed from the roast pig a slab of flesh sufficient to feed a small family. Conan could bear the delectable smells no longer and began to heap his own plate. In silence the two men attacked the banquet, occasionally refilling their cups from the numerous flagons that dotted the table.
The Cimmerian made a substantial dent in the spread, but when at last he leaned back replete, the fat man still tore into the viands as if he had not seen food in weeks. He emptied plates, stripped bones and sopped up gravies, ingested mounds of pastries and devoured slabs of bread spread thick with herbed butter. Since his own hunger was now sated, Conan found the sight repulsive. He studied the chamber surrounding him to avoid the sight of the gorging Casperus.
It was an extremely long room, with windows in every wall. Apparently the merchant-mage had let the entire upper floor of the house. The furnishings were few, but rich: a huge bed, some chairs, the trestle table. Bundles of what looked like travelling gear were neatly stacked in a corner. Most oddly, considering what the man claimed to be, the only piece of wizardly paraphernalia in sight was the scrying glass. Usually the quarters of wizards were replete with astrolabes, ancient books, vials of strange liquids and powders, and bubbling retorts. This one was travelling, he reflected, and was by his own admission not much of a wizard.
At last Casperus sat back and released a mighty belch. The table was devoid of all but scraps of food. Daintily he wiped his lips with a silken napkin and dipped his fingers into a bowl of scented water in which floated rose petals.
'Monstrous fine, sir, monstrous fine,' the fat man proclaimed. 'It is a repast such as this that gives true meaning to life. That, and the search for the ancient, the hidden and the truly valuable. It is of such a matter that we must speak, sir. If you will join me now, we shall discuss our business.'
Casperus rose from the table, moving as lightly as a Poitainian dancer despite the vast meal now lodged in his belly. He took his former chair and sat. He clapped his hands loudly and the servants entered to clear away the ruins of the feast. '
Conan took the chair opposite, and the two men sipped at their wine in silence as the servants went about their work.
'Now,' Conan said when the servants were gone, 'what is this all about?'
'It is a long story, sir, but bear with me. It is worth hearing,! for there is much profit in it.' He leaned forward and spoke in a I voice that was a virtual whisper. 'Now, sir, what do you know of Selkhet?'
Conan shook his head. 'I never heard the word.'
'Few have, outside of Stygia. It is not a word, sir, but a name. The name of a goddess of the Stygian pantheon.'
Conan shifted uncomfortably. He disliked Stygia. He loathed its priest-kings, its wizards, and its infernal collection of gods.
'For many centuries,' Casperus went on, 'Selkhet has been I a minor deity, a mere protector of the grave, her image carved I upon the grave-markers of the poor, or set as a statue atop the tombs of the wealthier. Like all Stygian deities, she has a tutelary animal. Selkhet's is the scorpion. Know you much of magic or godcraft, sir?'
'As little as I can safely manage,' Conan assured him. 'Crom is my god. One god is enough for any man.'
'Ah, yes, Crom of the northlands, the rival of Ymir. An interesting deity, but one with whom little of magic is associated. Well, sir, doubtless you have learned in your travels that most peoples are not of your religious frame of mind. Most prefer a plethora, a veritable multitude of deities, and none of all the earth are as god-besotted as the people of Stygia.' He sat back and smiled. 'Now, sir, I have told you that I am a magician in my I humble way, but that does not mean that I am superstitious. Matters of sorcery and divinity work according to certain immutable laws. These are laws studied and understood only by the highest of mages and priesthoods. Gods are not at all what most people fondly think them to be. To the typical worshipper, a god is just a sort of extremely puissant human being who must be placated, but gods are nothing of the sort, I assure you.
'Take this matter of the tutelary animals. Gods have their origins not upon this earth, but in the vast and awful gulfs of space, so why should they be represented by, or even take the form of, earthly animals? I will tell you why: because men want lo give these unfathomable creatures a form that is familiar to them. Selkhet, for instance. Grave-robbers perform their unclean labours at night. In prying into tombs, one will encounter two sorts of noxious creatures: serpents and scorpions. Serpents are torpid at night and rarely bite then. Scorpions are at their most lively in the hours of darkness. Any tomb-robber will be stung by scorpions, and some of the scorpions of Stygia can slay with a single sting. Therefore, to the vulgar mind, the scorpion is sacred to Selkhet, the guardian of tombs. Do you follow me, sir?'
'Thus far,' Conan said.
'Excellent, sir, excellent. Selkhet is an unthinkably powerful creature from who knows what distant star, but in Stygia she is portrayed in one of three ways: as a beautiful woman wearing a headdress crowned with the image of a scorpion, as a scorpion with the head of a woman, or simply as a scorpion. Now, what know you of Python?' He laced his fingers upon his capacious belly, and the candlelight winked luridly from the rings decorating the pudgy digits.
'A city of ancient legend, the capital of long-perished Acheron.'
'Very good. Now, the people of Acheron were close relatives of the Stygians of today. Both were descended from the people of yet more ancient Lemuria. Acheron was their northern kingdom, Stygia the southern. Ah, sir, if you could only have seen purple-towered Python! I have, in mystic visions, and I can assure you that the most gorgeous cities of today are but poor and shabby places compared to Python. Its extent was ten times that of Luxur, the greatest city of Stygia; its obelisks were high enough to pierce the moon! Its wealth was beyond imagining, and its mages and
priests the most powerful the world has ever seen.' His voice took on a tone of sadness, but it was the tone of a professional storyteller.
'As the millennia turned in their immemorial rotation, Acheron grew decadent, and most of its magical lore was forgotten.' The barbarian Hybori overwhelmed the degenerate heirs of a once-l great empire and scattered them like chaff before the storm. Many of the Acheronians fled south, to take refuge with their cousins, the Stygians. Stygia, unlike Acheron, was at the height of its! power and stopped the Hybori at the Styx, which they were never to cross in all the centuries since that time. Now we come to the meat of the matter.''
'And about time,' Conan grumbled. The merchant went on I as if he had not heard the rude comment.
'Much of the early part of this tale is related in the Book of Skelos, but you must understand that much of that most powerful I of tomes was writ down in a raving delirium, leaving considerable doubt as to sequence and meaning, although every bit of it is reliable, and is understandable to a great mage, which I haven already told you I am not.'
Conan suppressed a groan. This was just the early part of the tale?
'Among the Pythonian refugees were the priests of Selkhet. This once rich and powerful priesthood was sadly reduced, its temples and treasuries seized by the savage Hybori, able to bear away only such books as they could carry in their arms. These were sad times for them, but they found a protector in the god-king of that day, Khopshef the One Hundred Seventy-third. He gave them the town now known as Khet, the City of Scorpions, with broad lands extending from the river far into the desert. Of course their goddess had to accept a subordinate role. The cult of Set, the Old Serpent, was already predominant in Stygia and would brook no rival.
'In gratitude for this munificence, the priests of Selkhet crafted an image of their goddess as a gift to the god-king. It was to be no ordinary image. First, they set out to find the greatest sculptor
'I the age. This was a
man named Ekba, who was a servant of die king of Budhra, a kingdom of that time of which nothing now is known save its name. He was quite mad and therefore suitable for the project. The priests ordered him to create an image of the Goddess as a scorpion with a woman's head, and they subjected him to many spells and rituals to provide him with the correct inspiration. He was to have whatever materials he desired, however rare or valuable.
'These materials proved to be most remarkable; two years were inquired just to assemble them all. Many heroes of the day, men whom I fancy must have been much like yourself, sir, occupied themselves with the quest for these items, and many of them died in the attempt. Ekba demanded the bones of a living princess, the organs of a certain dragon, a pearl of a sort found only in Khitai, and so on. All of these substances were reduced to powders and mixed with the metal of the idol. For ten more years Ekba laboured over the image, spending much time in prayer and ritual, seeking the true vision. He made many attempts to cast the figure, but was unsuccessful. The priests had to guard him at all times, for he frequently attempted suicide.
'At last, Ekba in his despair demanded that he be given a terrible decoction of the black lotus. It is a potion employed only by the greatest mages when attempting the most powerful of spells. With reluctance, the priests agreed and prepared the potion. Ekba drank it and fell into a swoon that lasted ten days and nights, dead to any but the practised eye of a mage.
'When he awoke, he was a man possessed. He ordered that all of his materials be taken from his studio to the very sanctuary of the goddess. There he shut and barred the doors and began his final labour. For twenty days he worked without food or drink, and many were the uncanny sounds that emerged from the temple, heard only by the ears of the priests who surrounded the building. On the final midnight, as the moon reached its zenith over the temple, a terrible scream was heard from inside.
'The priests battered open the doors and rushed within. There they found, on a pedestal, the superb image of their goddess.
Below the pedestal lay the body of Ekba, an expression of unspeakable horror upon its countenance. It had been injected so full of venom that within minutes of the discovery, it exploded from the internal pressure of its bloating.' The fat man seemed to take a certain satisfaction in this grisly revelation.
'Needless to say, the god-king found the image a wholly fitting gift, and he built a shrine in his palace to house it. Now, the image was not valuable for its material, for it was made of basal metal, mostly bronze. Many valuable substances had been incorporated into it, but they had been reduced to powders of no intrinsic worth. No, good sir, what made this image so precious was the tremendous magical power that infused it. For centuries, the god-kings of Stygia employed the scorpion image in their most I esoteric rites, and fora time, the priests of Selkhet enjoyed special! favour and patronage.
'However, even in that haunted kingdom, time goes on and nothing is immutable. The power of Set grew and that of other! gods waned. Less and less often was the image of Selkhet utilized, and her priests fell from power. The Years of Dissolution! came: three centuries when Stygia broke up into warring provinces, the leader of each claiming the mantle of god-king, and great battles were fought both on the ground and on the magical plane.
'The few priests who tended the palace shrine did not want the image to be captured by one of the warring factions, so they moved it to the royal crypt to replace the guardian figure of the goddess that previously resided there. Then, to disguise it, they covered it with a thick, black lacquer so that it would resemble a common figure of black stone. There they left it.
'In the course of the disruptions, the palace changed hands many times, and it is to be assumed that the priests were killed early in this period, because the true nature of the image was forgotten. In time, the palace was abandoned and the desert sands covered it.'
The fat man sat back and peered into his cup, which had grown empty. He remedied this situation, then performed the same service for Conan, who was fascinated with the tale despite his abhorrence of sorcery.
'At some time,' Casperus went on, 'robbers must have tunnelled into the palace to rob its crypts. There are whole villages in Stygia with no livelihood other than the robbing of tombs. They have a great mastery of the counter-spells necessary to protect them from the defensive curses laid upon all such sites. It is certain that about five hundred years ago, the black scorpion was in the possession of the wizard Ashtake of Keshan. He had no concept of its full power, but he knew that it was a talisman of importance. It passed to one of his apprentices upon his death and then it disappeared for more than a century. It resurfaced in the Annals of the Family Ashbaal. For many years it appears among the inventories of that family of merchant-princes of Shem. They had no knowledge of its history or of its magical nature, but even with its unsightly coating of lacquer, it is an exquisite work of art. It resided in their treasury for generations, for as valuable as it plainly was, there was that about it which made the most devoted collectors of art wary.
'The Annals report that the scorpion was stolen, along with much other treasure, when the Argosseans invaded Shem three hundred years ago. It is next mentioned in the memoirs of Elsin Ataro, a high-councillor of King Gitaro the Third of Zingara. This man Ataro was, like me, a dabbler in both art and magic. He knew that the scorpion was more than a fine work of art, wonderful as it was in that capacity. By consulting many rare and ancient tomes, he divined something of its true nature. He conjectured that it was the Selkhet image of the ancient god-kings, although of its origins and creation he knew little. When Ataro died, the scorpion was not among the inventory of his effects.
'Eighty years ago the scorpion reappeared in the possession of the famous wizard Shamtha of Shadizar. How the scorpion fared to Zamora is unknown. The mage became obsessed with the thing and spent many years seeking to unlock its secrets. He attempted numerous magical experiments with it, and he left behind a most unique manuscript detailing his efforts, which came into my possession some years ago. One evening, upon the rising of the gibbous moon, Shamtha attempted a last experiment, the nature of which is unknown since he did not survive to record the process. What is known is that his tower, which stood upon a rise of ground near his house and in which he conducted his wizardly labours, exploded like a mighty volcano, raining stones all over Shadizar. No trace of either wizard or scorpion was found amid the rubble.
'Fortunately, Shamtha kept his record book in his house, which was only slightly damaged. His heirs decided to have the unique document copied and to sell these copies to any student or practitioner of magic who could pay the rather steep price. It has been widely read in the years since, but only as a curiosity, for it was believed that the image of Selkhet was destroyed in the mighty upheaval that shattered the tower of Shamtha.' 'But it was not?' Conan asked.
'Decidedly not. Almost forty years ago the image came into the hands of Melcharus of Numalia, a dealer in antiquities and works of art.' Hands on knees, Casperus leaned forward and spoke with great emphasis. 'That man was my father, and as a boy, I actually saw the fabulous image in the strongroom of his shop! Even as a lad, I was fascinated by something about the image. It drew my thoughts and desires as if by some inner power of its own.' The fat man's eyes glazed and spittle gathered upon his infantile lips. He was a man speaking of his deepest, most secret lust. 'I would seize every chance to visit the strongroom. As often as I could, I volunteered to dust and polish every object therein. My father thought I was merely being dutiful, but I just wanted an excuse to touch it, to stroke its glossy flanks and gaze upon, even stroke lovingly, the beautiful face of the goddess.' His eyes cleared and he shook himself slightly, like a man emerging from a waking dream.
'One evening,' he went on, 'thieves broke into the strongroom. There were many treasures in that room, but the only thing taken was the scorpion. My father was relieved and thought that they must have been alarmed and fled without taking anything truly valuable, but I knew that they had found e
xactly what they had come for. I grieved for its loss, but I resolved to learn everything I could about the scorpion.
'To that end, I studied the arts of magic, although, as I have told you, with no ambition to become a great magician. No, I wished to recover the image of Selkhet. I tracked down every possible reference to this single end, and I became the world's greatest scholar of this one, obscure facet of magical lore. I set many spies and passed many bribes to divine the image's whereabouts. It has been through many hands since the thieves took it from my father's strongroom. It is restless because it has one sterling quality: It causes the death of any incompetent wizard who seeks to use it.'
'Then why,' Conan demanded, 'since it has been the death of great wizards, and you say you are none such yourself, do you wish to own the thing?'
Casperus, hands still on his knees, sat back and laughed until his fat rolled about in the chair as if independent of the man himself.
'Because, sir, when I describe the feelings I had for the object, I describe the feelings of a boy! I was then under its spell, and I thought its beauty and mystery the most desirable things in the world. But I learned better, sir! When I grew to manhood, I discovered that I would never be a great wizard, but I also learned that there is something even better than power, whether it be earthly or sorcerous. Even better than these is great wealth! As a dealer in art objects, I have trafficked with many of the wealthiest people in the world, and I know that they are above worldly laws. They are courted by kings and are the patrons of magicians, who are but their servants. And—' he leaned forward again and resumed his emphatic whisper '—I have determined that the ancient scorpion image of Selkhet is the single most valuable object upon this earth!'
Conan started to speak, but the mage overrode him.
'Think of it, sir. The black scorpion is three things.' He held up a fat hand with one finger extended. 'It is an unthinkably
ancient artefact of a long-dead kingdom, and perfect in every way.' A second, be-ringed finger joined the first. 'It is a work of art as great as any the world has ever known.' The third finger went up. 'It is, perhaps, the most powerful magical talisman in existence. I qualify this last only because it is believed by some that the legendary jewel called the Heart of Ahriman is as puissant, but I do not believe it to be so. In any case, the whereabouts of the Heart have been unknown for three thousand years. Now, when this scorpion is in my hands, I propose to hold a unique auction, an auction for sorcerers and art collectors and those rarefied few who combine both activities. I shall send out missives identifying the work in question, and I shall offer far more than the scorpion itself, sir. There is also the formidable library I have compiled over the years concerning the image. Without this, even a great mage could waste a lifetime seeking to divine the object's secrets. Among these documents is included the original manuscript of experiments compiled by Shamtha, not the imperfect copies hawked by his heirs,
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