But now, as Conan watched the windings on the nearest piece of the idol curl and drop away from its soot-blackened contours, the shape that was revealed made him uneasy. It was not human, not even remotely so; rather, it looked sinuously plantlike in nature.
It was moulded as a broad wedge, clearly, with two flat sides meant to fit flush against the idol’s other segments; the side that was elaborately featured and moulded suggested the statue’s overall shape. From the base, which was rounded like the bole of a weathered oak, the stalk rose straight and powerful, striated by long, shallow ridges. The top branches bulged forth not in a graceful treelike taper, but stubbly and strongly, like a pollarded elm. The two limbs, short and thick, terminated not in foliage but in two rounded, melon-sized fruit. Remarkably, each globe, though its seamed surface had no visible eyes or other facial features, was pierced by what could only be the representation of a gaping mouth. Jagged-toothed and unpleasant, these orifices seemed variously to be snarling or biting.
The sight of the thing—as the last, smoking shreds of its wrapping fell away—caused a hush to settle over the crowd in the Agora. It certainly did not resemble the kind of hero-god the Qjarans expected, as their dubious murmurs showed. And yet the other segments of the idol, judged by their scorched silhouettes across the Agora, were similar or possibly identical to this one.
The shape of the undraped idol tugged at dark threads of awe and menace running deep into Conan’s soul. Thoughts and impressions he could scarcely seize hold of flitted through his awareness. The shape resembled something, surely.... He thought of the carving, the petroglyph on the flank of the solitary rock standing in the ruins of Yb, the City in the Waste. It had depicted some kind of tree with howling heads on it, to be sure....
It gave him a sense of eerie familiarity. That place and this one, now... the broad, open expanses themselves bore a certain resemblance, it seemed to him—except, of course, for the crowds of people in the Agora, and the proud, unruined buildings around the periphery. A vision came to him of the city wall of Yb, with the human figures graven on its inner surface. Woman, man, and child, their shapes frozen there like living shadows burned into the very stone...
Thinking further, Conan remembered how Khumanos had gone alone to visit the monolith in the city, and had bowed before it as if to worship it. No wonder he did so, if it was an image of his native city’s god! Conan remembered puzzling over what relation the pictogram had to the fate of the ancient city... and to that of its blighted, degraded descendants, who now dwelt among the tumbled rocks of the stream-side canyon.
Khumanos... the priest was suddenly absent from Conan’s side, gone to urge the faithful back to their task of moving the idols, since the uncanny fires had died. But Khumanos, Conan knew, had braved great pain and risk to move the effigy to Qjara in three separate pieces, and by widely separated routes. Why then, he wondered again, go to such extremes to keep the pieces from coming together too soon? Would something sinister happen when they joined?
What indeed? Had the city of Yb, too, been favoured with a visit by the great god Votantha? Had the place been aided by it, or destroyed? He thought of the evil repute of the southern priest-kings and their blood-drenched deities, and of Khumanos’s cold, inhuman disregard of his own followers' illness and suffering. Everything seemed to point a certain way, the signs and omens were there... he bethought himself then of Afriandra's power, and of the grim, fiery nature of her recent visions.
As he wondered, half-paralysed by the elusiveness of it all, the idols began trundling again—turning in place this time, their chariot-tongues wheeling around to face outward so that their cargoes could be rolled backward, just another two score paces, and then butted up against one another to make the idol whole.
The manoeuvre went smoothly under the priest’s direction—the chariots grating and creaking under scores of ready hands, the eyeless, smoke-blackened mouths pivoting as if to broadcast their mute message of warning and woe over the heads of the crowd. The turn was accomplished and, with scarcely a pause, the vehicles rumbled inward, moving toward their common destination.
As they did so, a further odd impression grew in Conan’s awareness. The central expanse of the Agora was now bare of onlookers, with no obstacle standing between the advancing chariots. And yet at the focus of their movement, near the unmarked place where the three segments of the idol would join together, strange flashes and shimmerings seemed to occur— brisk swirls of dust, and glassy heat waves rising and rippling more sharply than elsewhere in the courtyard. As he watched, he fancied he saw faint, ethereal channels of disturbance cut through the air—pale lines of radiance extending straight from each idol to the common centre, to join there in a haze of simmering phantom energy.
Much of it was the heat, he sensed; his body and limbs were heavily garbed and protected, but on his face and hands he could feel furnace waves radiating from the statue nearest him. No surprise, in truth, since the idol had already incinerated its winding-cloth. Some of the labourers engaged in pushing the body of the chariot seemed to have drawn back from the intensity of the heat, leaving only those who leaned against the wheel rims and the chariot's long wooden tongue to do the job.
"Wait!”
The voice that rang out across the Agora was a lone, youthful one; yet it bore a firm and urgent note of. command. It was Afriandra's—the princess, stepping forth from her row of bridesmaids, threw out her challenge to the those assembled.
“Enough! Halt this travesty of a wedding! Our Goddess needs no husband... no foreign tyrant, at least, to overshadow her rightful rule of Qjara! You can see the idol,” she appealed to the crowd. "It is no civilized god! It is not man, woman, or even beast, but an unholy monster! We priestesses of Saditha enjoin all her faithful followers to halt this ceremony, and to cast out the evil foreigners who have instigated it!”
So saying, she tore the wreath of flowers from her brow and dashed it to the ground. During her recent cloistering in the temple, she must have spread her message to the other priestesses—for most of them, including Sharia, joined her, stripping off their bright garlands with defiant, dancer-like gestures.
Afriandra’s royal father and mother, standing behind her at the bronze goddess's side, failed to react at once; presumably her stridency took them by surprise. The onlookers, too, seemed uncertain what to do—especially since, of all the vast crowd, the princess’s words and gestures could only reach those in fairly close view of her. Of these, many were distracted by the movement of the idols and by the strange, luminous effects that were now taking clearer shape at the centre of the Agora.
For although most of the Qjaran labourers had stepped back from the chariots, the juggernauts still inched forward through the efforts of a few dozen white-draped survivors of the original journey from Sark. As they did so, the scintillations of the mysterious force linking the statues intensified, growing with the proximity of the three metal castings. Its eerie sheen held the bystanders’ stares, especially when it seemed that some vague, ominous shape was coalescing at the centre of the three streams of radiance.
These distractions left Princess Afriandra one principal set of allies—the temple warriors who now, in near-unison, clapped hands on the hilts of their swords. With a ringing cry they strode forward from their places beside king, queen, and bronze goddess. Conan silently congratulated the princess for joining with them— though he misdoubted whether their zeal against foreigners might, as before, be vented on him as well as the Sarkads. Clutching the hilt of his knife, he waited to see just what action the temple fighters would take.
Attention was abruptly drawn away from them by the high priest Khumanos striding out again into the Agora. Standing rigid, with palms raised toward the point of convergence in a ritual gesture, he commenced an invocation.
"Votantha, Lord of the Desert," he intoned, "we summon thee to receive our sacrifice! The rituals are complete—the spells are spoken, the feast is laid. Nothing more can hinder thee from desc
ending to our plane and striding forth across the earth in all your primal power. Come thee hither, O Ravenous One! Possess your holy idol, and may our offering satisfy your all-consuming mouths!
"In return, Lord Votantha, we ask only that you bless our humble city of Sark. Send plentiful rain, that those of your worshippers. who survive this millennial day may flourish and sustain your tribute in the centuries to come, until next we make sacrifice. This and nothing more we beseech of Thee, Great Votantha, immortal Tree of Mouths.”
XVI
Judgement
Exalted Priest Khumanos, having spoken, lowered his palms. He turned back toward the fringe of the crowd and strode to it, making no further attempt to urge or direct his idol-bearers.
Conan now guessed with grim certainty that the sacrifice the priest referred to was Qjara— the entire city, populace and all; they were to be scorched and blasted by some unthinkable force, even as Yb had been wiped from the map. He felt mightily tempted to take his Ilbarsi knife and find out whether this villain Khumanos had a heart—yet that was pointless, if the priest had no further part in the unfolding of the spell. And in truth, the idol segments now seemed to grind forward by some mysterious magnetism of their own, half-dragging with them their fanatical but feeble bearers.
Conan saw with foreboding that the lines of energy between the three parts of the idol waxed stronger as the heavy castings moved together. In the brilliant sun, the mystic emanations now shimmered like narrow rivulets of fire above the stones of the Agora—sinuous webs of liquid lightning, tirelessly reaching and questing toward one another. Before the onlookers' astonished eyes they pulsed and flowed together in the vacant place where the idol would be reared.
In that spot, building and coalescing like a mirage over the featureless pavement, there took shape an image... roughly what the idol would look like, Conan saw, but larger and still growing. Votantha, the ancient god of Sark and of countless dead cities, feared and worshipped as an austere and almighty Lord and Commander. Votantha, known in His true form to His most trusted initiates as the sacred, undying Tree of Mouths.
Made of living, swirling energy, the spectre grew and intensified, fattening each moment with power drawn root-like from the three converging channels. Its base was a tangled turbulence of fire-streams, twining and joining like the gnarled tentacles of an ancient oak; its trunk rose thickly, a massive conduit of energy coursing skyward. As for its head, or heads... the top part soon blossomed forth in a spreading, multiplying mass of bluntly ill-shaped protuberances. These numbered far more than the six that were represented on the idol; eyeless and faceless, each hideous globe bore only a snarling, hungry-looking mouth with which to gape down and menace the onlookers.
Seeing these mouths gain hideous reality, Conan somehow imagined them exhaling plumes of smoke and flame. He even thought he could feel their hot breath on his face, separately from the ever-intensifying heat of the idol. At the same time, there commenced in his ears a thin, distant snarling or wailing, eerie and half-illusory. It was the raging of the demon-heads—the merest precursor, he guessed, of the howling chaos that would issue forth once this many-headed ghost grew to its full, godlike power.
At the horrific spectacle, one of the rebellious temple guards stirred himself to action. Brandishing his sword and striding into the path of the advancing idol, he harshly commanded its bearers to halt.
But as he shouted the order, he or his weapon must have been touched by the half-visible current of energy that twined ever more strongly into the towering mirage. There came at once a blinding flash; the warrior’s body stiffened, haloed by flaring tongues of light. Mere instants later he twisted away and crumpled to the pavement, a wilting husk of scorched bone and feathery ash. The power of the god Votantha had consumed the young hero as a candle flame would devour a gnat.
Amid the murmurs of horror at the guard's death, two of his fellow warriors stepped forward in his place. Careful to avoid the fire-streams, they advanced toward the point of convergence, waving and shouting to all three slave-gangs to halt. But at a certain moment they must have approached too close—for without warning, living fire blossomed in the air about them. It shimmered there an instant, gloating and consuming; then, like the first guard, the two warriors crumpled to earth. Their bodies lay incinerated, their swords and helmets melting to puddles of smoking slag on the paves of the Agora.
Their fellow warriors held back in shock; only Conan found in himself the resolution to follow in their steps. Clad in the dark, hooded cloak, he made a grim, imposing figure. Yet few eyes shifted to him from the snarling, writhing menace above their heads—until Conan, with a twisting flourish, wrenched off his cloak and flung it aside.
Beneath it he wore bright armour.—helmet, breastplate and greaves of purest gleaming gold—the lost mail of Pronathos, or of some far older hero, that he had found in the bow of the Stone Ship of the desert. The costume drew stares and exclamations of surprise as, girded in it, he strode forward past the foully smoking remains of the temple fighters. Countless eyes watched him draw his heavy knife; then, growling a savage oath, he moved toward the shimmering spectre of the Tree of Mouths.
The Ilbarsi blade, though black and pitted with corrosion, was still a good weapon—a well-balanced hunk of steel that would hold a superb edge. Yet for battling against incandescent gods it might not be the best tool; Conan sensed this as it grew hot in his hand. The steel seemed to draw and channel the living energy that pulsed around the phantom before him; holding the knife raised, and sensing that in another instant it would scorch or immolate him, he flung it in desperation at the hellish tree.
It never reached its target; mere inches from his hand it melted—yes, and vaporized in mid-air. Its hard substance hissed away to nothingness, like water droplets flung into the bed of a blacksmith’s forge.
Such heat... a mere mortal could scarce imagine it, except in the seething hearth of the sun! And yet from it Conan learned something vital. His gold armour.—this soft, ornamental frippery that would not stand in battle before a well-cast javelin—protected him from the god’s fierce energy. Those parts of his body it masked—the front parts, from neck to groin and knee to ankle—felt cool and unaffected by the bone-piercing glare of the mirage, enabling the rest of his skin to better tolerate the heat. Flicking down the gold visor of his helm, his eyes gained relief, along with his singed eyebrows. Now, if only he could find a suitable weapon...
A movement behind Conan drew his attention—followed at once by a clashing on the pavement close at hand. Whirling, he found the source: Khumanos. The priest had, evidently, crept up behind him, bearing a long sword which now lay on the stones of the Agora. A fine weapon, if an antique one—of gleaming bronze and iron, crusted with its own share of heavy gold. Where Khumanos had obtained it, there was no guessing—nor why he had let it fall from his hand, instead of trying out his skills of butchery against the weaponless Cimmerian. The Sarkad stood frozen now with one hand near his chest, looking pale and wide-eyed with what could be fear—uncharacteristic for him— or possibly amazement. His hand clutched the thong he always wore around his neck, though Conan saw no sign of the amulet usually tied to it.
Taking up his new-found broadsword, Conan regarded Khumanos balefully. He ought to try its balance by hacking the priest in twain, even if the rascal was unarmed. But in any event a more dangerous enemy loomed. Turning, he stalked toward the glowing, writhing phantom of the demon-god Votantha.
The sword was well-found, he could tell at once, as perfect for the task as his golden armour. The bronze blade did not draw in the baleful energy that pulsed and swirled around the ghostly image of the god; its gold-crusted hilt remained cool in Conan’s grip. Whether the blade would have an effect on the being’s filmy substance was the next question. Darting in quickly to brave the heat, he swung the weapon in a mighty stroke against the trunk of the monster-tree.
The effect was vaguely satisfying. Although the blade passed almost unimpeded through th
e spectre, there was faint resistance, as of tough cobwebs parting before a housemaid’s broom. The dim tracery of the god’s shape blurred in iridescent lines that seemed to swirl and try to reweave themselves.
Overhead, from the tree’s hellish fruit, a louder howling meanwhile issued, as of muted rage and pain. As Conan ducked back out of the heat, several of the monstrous heads lashed down to growl and grimace at him, searing his arms and throat with their hot, growling breath; he seized the chance for further swordplay, slashing through the hideous appendages with more free-swinging strokes. The tree writhed and snarled in frenzied pain even as the hovering shapes dissolved before his eyes.
Darting in and out by swift turns, Conan continued to strike and slash at the god's ectoplasmic form. Though the thing did not bleed or die, its violent reactions hinted that he might be hurting or at least distracting it.
Yet it continued to wax and grow, drawing ever more power from the idol's segments as they came together. They were barely a dozen paces apart now, pushed by the frail, diseased remnant of Khumanos’s slaves.
Meanwhile, some Qjarans, notably the temple warriors, eagerly joined in. Lacking the armour. to get close, and not daring to risk the cindery fate of their comrades, they turned their efforts against the idol-bearers, dragging the pathetic creatures away from the chariot-stems and hurling them to the pavement, to keep them from moving the monuments forward. Princess Afriandra and her priestly bridesmaids joined in this melee, as did some onlookers; Conan, glancing aside from his own sweaty labour, even saw a band of youths, under Ezrel’s lead hurling stones at the toilers.
But deterring them from their mission was not easy, for the heat from the idols themselves was intense. The giant castings now glowed fiery green, pulsing and shimmering with the same eerie light that coursed along the fire-streams; even the chariots beneath them smoked, their paint and wood beginning to roast from the unnatural heat.
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