Below, at one side of the octagonal floor, a colossal statue stood on a plinth of black marble, facing an altar in the exact centre of the chamber. The statue dwarfed everything else in the chamber. Rising thirty feet high, its loins were on a level with the balcony on which Conan and Juma stood. It was a gigantic idol of a green stone that looked like jade, although never had men found true jade in so large a mass. It had six arms, and the eyes in its scowling face were immense rubies.
Facing the statue across the altar stood a throne of skulls, like that which Conan had already seen in the throne room of the palace on his arrival in Shamballah, but smaller. The toadlike little god-king of Mem was seated on this throne. As Conan's glance strayed from the idol's head to that of the ruler, he thought he saw a hideous suggestion of similarity between the two. He shuddered and his nape prickled at the hint of unguessable cosmic secrets that lay behind this resemblance.
The rimpoche was engaged in a ritual. Shamans in scarlet robes knelt in ranks around the throne and the altar, chanting ancient prayers and spells. Beyond them, against the walls of the chamber, several rows of Memvians sat cross-legged on the marble pavement. From the richness of their jewels and their ornate if scanty apparel, they appeared to be the officials and the nobility of the kingdom. Above their heads, set in wall brackets around the balcony, a hundred torches flickered and smoked. On the floor of the chamber, in a square about the central altar, stood four torcheres, each crowned by the rich, gplden flame of a butter lamp. The four flames wavered and sputtered.
On the altar between the throne and the colossus lay the naked, white, slender body of a young girl, held to the altar by slender golden chains. It was Zosara.
A low growl rumbled in Conan's throat. His smouldering eyes burned with blue fire as he watched the hated figures of King Jalang Thonpa and his Grand Shaman, the wizard-priest Tanzong Tengri.
'Shall we take them, Conan?' whispered Juma, his teeth showing white in the flickering dimness. The Cimmerian grunted.
It was the festival of the new moon, and the god-king was wedding the daughter of the king of Turan on the altar, before the many-armed statue of the Great Dog of Death and Terror, Yama the Demon King. The ceremony was proceeding according to the ancient rites prescribed in the holy texts of the Book of the Death God. Placidly anticipating the public consummation of his nuptials with the slim, long-legged Turanian girl, the divine monarch of Mem lolled on his throne of skulls as ranks of scarlet-clad shamans droned the ancient prayers.
Then came an interruption. Two naked giants dropped from nowhere to the floor of the temple―one a heroic figure of living bronze, the other a long-limbed menace whose mighty physique seemed to have been carved from ebony. The shamans froze in mid-chant as these two howling devils burst into their midst.
Conan seized one of the torcheres and hurled it into the midst of the scarlet-robed shamans. They broke, screaming with pain and panic, as the flaming liquid butter set fire to their gauzy robes and turned them into living torches. The other three lamps followed in rapid succession, spreading fire and confusion over the floor of the chamber.
Juma sprang toward the dais, where the king sat with his good eye staring in fear and astonishment. The gaunt Grand Shaman met Juma on the marble steps with his magical staff lifted to smite. But the black giant still had his broken oar, and he swung it with terrific force.
The ebony staff flew into a hundred fragments. A second swing caught the wizard-priest in the body and hurled him, broken and dying, into the chaos of running, screaming, flaming shamans.
King Jalung Thongpa came next. Grinning, Juma charged up the steps toward the cowering little god-king. But Jalung Thongpa was no longer on his throne. Instead, he knelt in front of the statue, arms raised and chanting a prayer.
Conan reached the altar at the same time and bent over the nude, writhing form of the terrified girl. The light golden chains were strong enough to hold her, but not strong enough to withstand Conan's strength. With a grunt, he braced his feet and heaved on one; a link of the soft metal stretched, opened, and snapped. The other three chains followed, and Conan scooped up the sobbing princess in his arms. He turned―but then a shadow fell over him.
Startled, he looked up and remembered what Tashudang had told him: 'When he calls his father, the god comes!'
Now he realised the full extent of the horror behind those words. For, looming above him in the flickering torchlight, the arms of the gigantic idol of green stone were moving. The scarlet rubies that served it for eyes were glaring down at him, bright with intelligence.
VII
When the Green God Wakes
The hairs lifted on Conan's nape, and he felt as if the blood in his veins had congealed to ice. Whimpering, Zosara pressed her face into the hollow of his shoulder and clung to his neck. On the black dais that upheld the throne of skulls, Juma also froze, the whites of his eyes showing as the superstitious terrors of his jungle heritage rose within him. The statue was coming to life.
As they watched, powerless to move, the image of green stone shifted one of its huge feet slowly, creakingly. Thirty feet above their heads, its great face leered down at them. The six arms moved jerkily, flexing like the limbs of some gigantic spider. The thing tilted, shifting its monstrous weight. One vast foot came down on the altar on which Zosara had lain. The stone block cracked and crumbled beneath the tons of living green stone.
'Crom!' breathed Conan. 'Even stone lives and walks in this mad place!
Come, girl―' He picked Zosara up and leaped down from the dais to the floor of the temple. From behind him came an ominous scraping sound of stone on stone. The statue was moving.
'Juma!' yelled Conan, casting a wild eye about for the Kushite. The black still crouched motionless beside the throne. Upon the throne, the little god-king pointed an arm, thick with fat and bright with jewels, at Conan and the girl.
'Kill―Yama! Kill―kill―kill!' he screamed.
The many-armed thing paused and peered about with its ruby eyes until it sighted Conan. The Cimmerian was nearly mad with the primitive night-fears of his barbarian people. But, as with many barbarians, his very fear drove him into combat with that which he dreaded. He put down the girl and heaved up a marble bench. Sinews creaking with the effort, he strode forward towards the lumbering colossus.
Juma yelled: 'No, Conan! Get away! It sees you!'
Now Conan stood near the monstrous foot of the walking idol. The stone legs towered above him like the pillars of some colossal temple. His face congested with the effort, Conan raised the heavy bench over his head and hurled it at the leg. It crashed into the carven ankle of the colussus with terrific impact. The marble of the bench clouded with a web of cracks, which shot through it from end to end. He stepped even closer, picked up the bench again, and again swung it against the ankle. This time the bench shattered into a score of pieces; but the leg, though slightly chipped, was not materially damaged. Conan reeled back as the statue took another ponderous step toward him.
'Conan! Look out!'
Juma's yell made him look up. The green giant was stooping. The ruby eyes glared into his. Strange, to stare into the living eyes of a god!
They were bottomlessly deep―shadow-veiled depths wherein his gaze sank endlessly through red eons of time without thought. And deep within those crystalline depths, a cold, inhuman malignancy coiled. The god's gaze locked on his own, and the young Cimmerian felt an icy numbness spread through him. He could neither move nor think…
Juma, howling with primal rage and fear, whirled. He saw the many mighty hands of stone swoop toward his comrade, who stood staring like one entranced. Another stride would bring Yama upon the paralyzed Cimmerian.
The black was too far from the tableau to interfere, but his frustrated rage demanded an outlet. Without conscious thought, he picked up the god-king, who shrieked and wriggled in vain, and hurled him toward his infernal parent Jalung Thongpa whirled through the air and thudded down on the tessalated pave before the
tramping feet of the idol. Dazed by his fall, the little monarch stared widly about with his good eye. Then he screamed hideously as one titanic foot descended upon him.
The crunch of snapping bones resounded in the ringing silence. The god's foot slid on the marble, leaving a broad, crimson smear on the tiles. Creaking at the waist, the titanic figure bent and reached for Conan, then stopped.
The groping, green stone hands, fingers outspread, halted in mid-air.
The burning crimson light faded from the ruby eyes. The vast body with its many arms and devil's head, which a moment before had been flexible and informed with life, froze into motionless stone once more.
Perhaps the death of the king, who had summoned this infernal spirit from the nighted depths of nameless dimensions, cancelled the spell that bound Yama to the idol. Or perhaps the king's death released the devil-god's will from the domination of his earthly kinsman. Whatever the cause, the instant the Jalung Thongpa was crushed into bubbling gore, the statue reverted to lifeless, immobile stone.
The spell that had gripped Conan's mind also broke. Numbly, the youth shook his head to clear it. He stared about him. The first thing of which he was aware was the princess Zosara, who flung herself into his arms, weeping hysterically. As his bronzed arms closed about her softness and he felt the feathery touch of her black, silken hair against his throat, a new kind of fire flared up in his eyes, and he laughed deeply.
Juma came running across the floor of the temple. 'Conan! Everybody either is dead or has ran away! There should be horses in the paddock behind the temple. Now is our chance to quit this accursed place!'
'Aye! By Crom, I shall be glad to shake the dust of this damned land from my heels,' growled the Cimmerian, tearing the robe from the body of the Grand Shaman and draping it over the princess's nakedness. He snatched her up and carried her out, feeling the warmth and softness of her supple young body against his own.
An hour later, well beyond the reach of pursuit, they reined in their horses and examined the branching roads. Conan looked up at the stars, pondered, and pointed. 'This way!'
Juma wrinkled his brow. 'North?'
'Aye, to Hyrkania.' Conan laughed. 'Have you forgotten that we still have this girl to deliver to her bridegroom?'
Juma's brow wrinkled with greater puzzlement than before, seeing how Zosara's slim, white arms were wound around his comrade's neck and how her small head was nestled contentedly against his mighty shoulder. To her bridegroom? He shook his head; never would he understand the ways of Cimmerians. But he followed Conan's lead and turned his steed toward the mighty Talakma Mountains, which rose like a wall to sunder the weird land of Mem from the windy steppes of Hyrkania.
A month later, they rode into the camp of Kujula, the Great Khan of the Kuigar nomads. Their appearance was entirely different from what it had been when they fled from Shamballah. In the villages on the southern slopes of the Talakmas, they had traded the links from the golden chains that still dangled from Zosara's wrists and ankles for clothing suitable to snowy mountain passes and gusty plains. They wore fur caps, sheepskin coats, baggy trousers of coarse wool, and stout boots.
When they presented Zosara to her black-bearded bridegroom, the khan feasted and praised and rewarded them. After a carousal that lasted for several days, he sent them back to Turan loaded with gifts of gold.
When they were well away from Khan Kujula's camp, Juma said to his friend: 'That was a fine girl. I wonder you didn't keep her for yourself. She liked you, too.'
Conan grinned. 'Aye, she did. But I'm not ready to settle down yet. And Zosara will be happier with Kujula's jewels and soft cushions than she would be with me, galloping about the steppes and being roasted, frozen, and chased by wolves or hostile warriors.' He chuckled.
'Besides, though the Great Khan doesn't know it, his heir is already on the way.'
'How do you know?'
'She told me, just before we parted.'
Juma made clicking sounds from his native tongue. 'Well, I will never, never underestimate a Cimmerian again!'
The People of the Summit
L. Sprague de Camp & Bjorn Nyberg
The lean Turanian, whose dusty crimson jerkin and stained white breeches testified to the rigours of his flight, reined in his mare at the signal. Turning questing black eyes upon his giant leader, he asked:
'Dare we tarry here?'
His companion, similarly garbed, save that the flowing left sleeve of his woollen shirt bore the golden scimitar of a sergeant in the Turanian frontier cavalry, scowled. Blue eyes blazing beneath the crimson turban that bound his spired helmet, he tossed aside the flap of cloth that protected his face from the swirling dust and spat before he answered.
'The beasts must rest.'
The heaving flanks of the two animals and their foam-flecked mouths made plain the need for a halt.
'But, Conan,' protested the Turanian, 'what if those Khozgari devils still follow us?' Uneasily he studied the curved scimitar thrust into his sash, and his grip tightened on the lance resting in its leathern pouch beside his right stirrup. He was comforted by the weight of the double-curved bow and the full quiver of arrows slung upon his back.
'Damn that stupid emissary!' growled the Cimmerian. 'Jamal, thrice I warned him of the treacherous Khozgari tribesmen; but his head was so full of trade treaties and caravan routes that he would not listen. Now that thick-skulled head of his hangs in the smoke room of a chief's hut, along with seven of our company. Damn him to Hell, and damn the lieutenant for permitting the palaver in the rock village!'
'Aye, Conan, but what could our lieutenant do? The emissary had full power to command. Our task was to protect him and obey him, only. Had he countered the emissary's orders, the captain would have snapped his scimitar before the regiment and reduced him to the ranks. You know the captain's temper.'
'Better broken to the ranks than dead,' growled Conan, scowling. 'We two were lucky to escape when the devils rushed us! Listen!' He held up his hand. 'What was that?'
Conan rose in his stirrups, blue eyes sweeping the gorges and crevices for the source of the faint sound he had heard. As his companion silently unslung his great bow and nocked an arrow, Conan's hand closed on the hilt of his scimitar.
A moment later, he flung himself from the saddle and, like a charging bull, rushed towards the nearby rock wall; for in that fleeting space of time, a youth had raced across the narrow gorge and scaled the steep cliff with the agility of a monkey.
Conan swept to the granite wall, found purchase for reaching hands and feet, and clambered upward with the assurance born of long experience. He heaved himself over the rim of the rock and cast himself aside just as a club descended on the spot where, a moment earlier, his head had been. Rolling to his knees, he rose and gripped the arms of his assailant before another blow could fall. Then he stared.
It was a girl he held, dirty and dishevelled but nevertheless a girl, and her body would have graced the statues of a king's sculptor. Her face was pretty even through the grime, although she was sobbing now in impotent rage as she twisted her slim arms savagely against the fierce grip of her captor.
Conan's voice was rough with suspicion. 'You are a spy! What tribe?'
The girl's emerald eyes flamed as she hurled back her defiance:
'I am Shanya, daughter of Shaf Karaz, chief of the Khoz-gari and ruler of the mountains! He will spit you on his lance and roast you over his council fire for daring to lay hands on me!'
'A likely story!' taunted the Cimmerian. 'A chief's daughter without an armed following, here, alone?'
'No one dares lay violent hands on Shanya. The Theggir and the Ghoufags cower in their huts as Shanya, daughter of Shaf Karaz, rides abroad to hunt the mountain goat. Dog of a Turanian! Let me loose!'
She twisted angrily, but Conan held her slim body in the vice of his arms.
'Not so fast, my pretty one! You'll make a fine hostage for our safe passage back to Samara. You will ride before me on the saddle all t
he way; and you'd best sit still, lest you make the journey bound and gagged.' He shrugged his massive shoulders in cold indifference to her hot temper.
'Dog!' she cried. 'I do as you say for the present. But have a care that you fall not into the hands of the Khozgari in the future!'
'We were surrounded by your tribesmen a scant two hours past,' growled Conan. 'But their bowmen could not hit the wall of a canyon. Jamal here could out-shoot a dozen of them. Enough of this chatter! We move, and move fast.
Keep your pretty mouth shut from now on; it is easy enough to gag.'
The girl's lips curled with unspoken ire as the horses picked their careful way between the rocks and boulders.
'Which way do you plan to go, Conan?' Jamal's voice was anxious.
'We cannot go back. I don't trust this hostage business too much in the heat of ambush. We will ride straight south to the road of Garma and cross the Misty Mountains through the Bhambar Pass. That should put us within two days' journey of Samara.'
The girl turned to stare at him, her face blanched with sudden fright.
'You fool! Are you so careless of life as to try to cross the Misty Mountains? They are the haunts of the People of the Summit. No traveller has ever entered their land and returned. The People emerged but once out of the mists during the reign of Angharzeb of Turan, and they defeated his whole army by magic and monsters, as the king strove to recover the burial grounds of the ancient Turanians. Tis a land of terror and death! Do not go there!'
Conan's reply was indifferent. 'Everywhere there are old wives' tales of demons and monsters that no one living has ever seen. This is the safest and shortest way. If we make a detour, we shall have to spend a week in the guard-house for dallying along the road.' He urged his horse forward. The clatter of hooves on stone alone broke the silence as they wove their way among the towering cliffs.
The Conan Chronology Page 149