The Conan Chronology

by J. R. Karlsson

  Three bolts slammed into the platform beneath his feet With no better prospects, he ventured out onto the uncertain ladder. He found it to be much like climbing the rigging of a ship, although no ship ever had a ladder so long. Bulls and quarrels sailed past him, but shooting from such an angle was a difficult task even for a good archer, and he suspected that these seldom got to practice their art at extreme range. He reflected that had there been pursuing Hyrkanians below him, he would by now bristle with arrows like a target at a village fair.

  He could not tell where in the idol he was. The gloom enveloped the upper terminus of the ladder like a black shroud. But he could discern the faintly glowing shape of the homunculus. As much as he detested sorcery, the thing did not seem to be especially hostile, which could not be said of the people below.

  Then his dark-adjusted eyes made out the bulk of another platform above him. It was only a lesser darkness in the gloom, but at least it proved that the ladder ended somewhere. No more than a score of rungs remained between himself and the platform when the ladder began to shake. Looking back, he could just make out the forms of masked guards upon the platform below as one of their number, braver than the others, ventured upon the ladder’s uncertain footing.

  A great metallic booming thundered through the hollow idol, accompanied by clashings and rattlings of metal. Far below him, they were striving to open the gate whose mechanism the Cimmerian had ruined. He laughed as he scrambled up the last rungs and gained the relatively more secure footing of the platform. By his calculation, if Achilea and the others had run at top speed and had not become lost in the city, they ought now to be at or near the opal-studded main gate of Janagar. His laugh cut off in the middle as the small platform lurched beneath his feet with a groan of tortured metal. His own weight and that of the guards upon me ladder below him had combined to tear the ancient, rickety structure loose from its moorings.

  There came another lurch and a sound of corroded rivets snapping. The platform tilted, and the men on the ladder shouted in consternation. Conan looked about him for some means of escape. Could he fight his way back down the ladder,clearing it before the platform tore wholly from its feeble supports?

  The prospect seemed as unlikely as his chances of survival among the overwhelming odds below. Where had the damned homunculus gone?

  Then he saw the purple glow again. The curved bronze wall before him, from which the platform was being torn at that very moment, featured a long, horizontal slit, and through this slit shone the light.

  Even as he looked, the tiny man-shape appeared in the slit and beckoned to him. He dashed for it as more rivets popped and the platform began to tear itself away from the wall with a metallic shriek that blended with the screams of the guards upon the ladder below.

  The slit was barely wide enough to admit his head, but at the loss of some skin and hair, Conan thrust it somewhat apart as his hands gripped the lower edge and he Cried to pull his body through. The slanting platform gave his feet little purchase, then none at all as, with a final screech of rending metal, it fell away completely, leaving his legs kicking futilely against empty air. The screams of the guards on the

  ladder dwindled to silence as the Cimmerian struggled against the unyielding metal.

  Slowly, with a scraping noise, the metal above him began to rise. Conan knew that even his great strength could not bend thick bronze. The section above him was hinged some how. From the noise it made, its mechanism had not been used in many years, perhaps not for eons. Painfully, he pulled his massive shoulders and chest through the opening. After that, the rest came easily. He slid through and came to rest, breathing heavily, upon a narrow, curving ledge. After a few deep breaths to restore his strength, he sat up carefully and surveyed his surroundings, At first, all he could see was that he was very high up, near the domed ceiling of the temple. The exterior of the idol was a great bulk below him. As he looked down over the ledge, it diminished with a perspective that was dizzying even to his senses. He examined the tapering slit through which he had emerged and the domelike section he had raised for the purpose, then laughed. He had come out through one of the idol’s eyes. The upper segment was a movable eyelid. Doubtless, in ages past, fires had burned within the head and the eyes would have been opened mechanically to suitably awesome effect.

  He lay now upon one of the idol’s cheekbones, and his first order of business was to get down to the ground somehow without breaking his neck, and hopefully before those below who thirsted for his blood managed to reopen the gate. The booming as they pounded at the portal resounded through the vast temple like the sound of an unthinkably huge gong. The homunculus was nowhere in sight, but after the gloom inside the idol, the interior of the temple was to his eyes as bright as daylight, and the uncanny little thing would be difficult to see under such conditions.

  Directly below him there was nothing but a sheer drop of fifty feet or more to the jutting breast of the goddess, and even should he accomplish the span uninjured, the bronze hemisphere was so smooth that he would just slide off to his death upon the bronze lap, like some sort of belated sacrifice to a deity whose worshipers had long since abandoned her temple.

  The ridge of the nose jutted forth from the face too far for him to lean around, so Conan went in the opposite direction and saw that the ear offered some possibilities. Its hollow was large enough to hold him, and the elongated lobe terminated in a dangling ornament that reached almost to the The distance from the comer of the cheekbone to the ear was too great for him to clear in a single leap, but just above the ear, the hair of the goddess was formed by a mass of bronze rods that, looked as if they might support his weight. It was chancy, but his lire had seldom been free from risk. The sound of the pounding below changed, as if the gate were beginning to give way.

  Conan did not hesitate. He crouched deeply, then sprang out and upward. His hands grasped two of the bronze rods and he felt one of them give. He released it and reached for another even as the first broke and fell away. The curling rod clattered against the shoulder of the goddess and rebounded away to the floor below. Swiftly, he swung from one bronze tress to another, never letting one bear his weight long enough to break off and send him spinning to the unyielding surfaces below. Then he was in the ear and planning his next move.

  The earlobe was narrow enough for him to grasp and slide down until he reached the dangling ornament, as large and elaborate as a chandelier in a Nemedian palace. This he descended as easily as if it were an oak tree, and from its terminus, it was no more than a short drop to me shoulder below. The arm was smooth, but what appeared to be a great string of beads crossed the shoulder and slanted across the body to the opposite hip.

  Gripping the ornate carvings and raised decorations of the beads, Conan began to descend the ornament. The first part was easy going, but after the swell of the breast, he had to grip even more tightly as his own weight pulled at his fingers and his toes could gain little purchase. The gentle mounding of the belly was less arduous and soon he passed above the navel, which looked like the mouth of a cavern.

  When he reached the slope of the hip, be slid down its rondure to the top of a huge thigh, thence down to its inner jointure with the body. Before him were the crossed ankles, and these he scrambled over and at last he was off the idol proper and atop its pedestal. Unhesitatingly, he leapt from the pedestal and landed on the floor, his knees bent to take up the shock.

  His exultation in his feat was cut short as with a mighty crash, the gate was smashed open a few paces behind him and the guards came pouring out. Fleet as a mountain stag, Conan sped for the great door of the temple, hoping that they had not thought to bring any of the crossbowmen to the front as they stormed out of the interior.

  Once away, he had little fear of being overtaken. He had never lost a footrace, and surely the underground world produced few trained runners. He sprinted toward the door in long-legged strides, and he heard crossbows snapping behind him, but the bolts flew wide and struck the
walls or glanced off the floor. The doorway beckoned like a promise of relief, for sunlight streamed through it and he knew that the mob behind him abhorred sunlight the way other people detested pestilence.

  He fairly flew through the door and into the wide plaza beyond. He laughed with triumph as he did so, but the laughter died in his throat as he saw what lay before him. Achilea and her three remaining followers, who should have been mounted on their camels and riding away from the city by now, stood with heads downcast and faces dejected. Behind them were ranged about a score of men, some of them desert dwellers, others foreign warriors. Before these, next to Achilea, stood two men Conan recognised 'I take it that you are Conan of Cimmeria?' said the tall, lean man who wore a purple turban. 'I believe you know my friend, Vladig.' He gestured toward the man who stood beside him in red boots.

  Vladig saluted him with a sardonic smile.

  'I am Arsaces, a mage of Qum, in Iranistan. It is good that you and I meet at last, for we have much to talk about.' His hands were moving idly before his body, and Conan saw that he was pouring from one to the other a heap of glistening violet crystals.

  XIV

  A man in a padded silken jacket lined with tiny steel plates cook Conan’s sword and dirk. The Cimmerian, in the midst of his consternation, made a mental note of the man’s face, his accoutrements and the colour of his armoured jacket. He wanted to make sure to go for the right man when the time came to recover his weapons.

  'Are you unharmed?' he asked Achilea, ignoring me wizard.

  'You see us,' she said. 'We are well, if not at liberty. Conan, did you truly shut that gate behind us?'

  'Aye,' he admitted. 'I wanted you to have a good head start. I thought you’d be away from the city by now.'

  'As you can see,' she replied, 'you need not have bothered.' Despite the chagrin in her voice, he saw a new glow in her eyes as she regarded him. 'I would have forbidden you to do it, had I known.'

  He smiled crookedly. 'That is why I said nothing. I was in no mood for an arguement.'

  'My heroic friends,' Arsaces said quietly, 'allow me to speak discourteously. You have had much time to converse together and can well afford to hold your tongues for a while. I, on the other hand, have business of vast importance in this place. You will come with me.' He signed to his retinue and the four were hustled away, in a manner that Conan thought was becoming distressingly habitual. He looked back over his shoulder and saw a crowd of masked forms standing within the partly opened temple door. He thought he recognised Abbadas among them. He knew that they would come out at nightfall, but he saw no reason to apprise his latest captors of the fact.

  'Where is Amram?' he muttered through the side of his mouth.

  Achilea shrugged. 'I did not see him after we left the temple. He is still in there, for aught I know.'

  Conan shook his head in wonderment. The man was as slippery as a greased eel.

  Achilea looked up, 'A few days ago, I’d not have believed dial I would rejoice to see the sun again.

  The prospect of a life underground cured that. Even captive, it is like bairn to me.'

  'Quiet there!' Vladig said sternly.

  'Be respectful of your betters, dog!' Achilea said with withering scorn. 'Were you fit to kiss my feet, I would spit upon you.'

  Vladig snarled and snatched at his hilt, but Arsaces spoke a single word, very quietly: 'Vladig.'

  Instantly the man calmed and turned his face from me prisoners. Conan and all four women chuckled at the man’s discomfiture. It was small enough recompense for days of unremitting humiliation.

  As they made their way through the mazelike city, Conan began to take note of the buildings around them and he noticed dial something had changed. He nudged Achilea and jerked his chin upward, indicating the higher reaches of the buildings. These captors had not bound their hands, but he wanted to avoid obvious gestures. She looked upward and saw what he had seen.

  When they had first come through the unthinkably ancient city, it had appeared as pristine as if it had never known occupants, Omia had told him that nocturnal maintenance crews had kept it that way since the inhabitants had abandoned it for their underground world. Now something had changed, The star, crescent and sunburst terminals atop many of the domes were gone, and the domes themselves had been damaged. Some had been partly smashed, as by sledgehammers, but others appeared to have been somehow melted. Their tops were gone, and stone, glass, ceramic and gilded bronze had been in some manner liquefied and had run down to congeal in glistening masses like hardened lava.

  The desecration showed every sign of deliberation, as if someone were starting at the top and disassembling the city stone by stone, brick by brick, tile by tile. Demolition by hammer and crowbar he understood, but something that could melt the most unyielding of substances suggested things the Cimmerian preferred not to think about.

  Payna nudged him and her queen as they passed an alley. Within it were bodies and shredded parts of bodies. The most complete specimens were clothed and masked like the inhabitants of the underground city. Some might have been slaves, but most were too mutilated to recognise. Conan has reminded of the massacred tribe whose remains they had found in the desert. An appalling charnel stench drifted from the alley and in any ordinary city, the air would have been vibrating with swarms of flies.

  This, Conan surmised, had been the previous night’s maintenance crew, whose age-old task had conflicted with that of the demolishes.

  They reached the city wall and found the great gate fully open. They passed through the found beyond it a camp set up near the water-trough, complete with tents. Many camels grazed upon the grass, and Conan could not tell which, if any, of them had been the mounts he, the women, the dwarf and the Hyrkanians had ridden into the desert. Nowhere did he see the tall, two-humped camels ridden by the twins.

  They were conducted to the largest tent. In the desert fashion, three of its sides were raised, leaving only the canopy for shade and its back lowered to face the prevailing wind. Except. Conan reflected, that there was no wind in this uncanny place. Then, with a shock, be felt a faint breeze. He looked up and saw that the perfect bowl in which the city lay was no longer quite perfect. The lip of the crater showed dips and notches. Even as he watched, an errant gust blew sand over the rim and onto the interior slope.

  'Be seated,' said Arsaces, crossing his ankles and lowering himself onto a cushion. To the guards, he said, 'Wait you a little way off. I wish private converse with these people.'

  'My lord―' Vladig began, but Arsaces cut him off.

  'I shall be safe,' said the wizard, his voice and his gaze so firm that the words could not be doubted.

  Vladig bowed, signaled to the others and walked off with ill grace.

  Conan and Achilea sat facing Arsaces, separated from him by me distance of a pace. Achilea’s women sat just behind her. Automatically, as if by long habit, Payna began to massage her queen’s neck and shoulders.

  'You people have caused me some little consternation,' Arsaces began. 'I came hither expecting a conflict of wizards and higher powers. I knew that there would be a retinue of guards, but I expected scum like those I myself hired.' He nodded toward the rabble of desert men and warriors who sat some way off. Already the desert nomads had a fire of hoarded brush burning. They were brewing their inevitable-herb tea. Arsaces looked back at his involuntary guests. 'I was not expecting a barbarian hero and an Amazon warrior-queen.'

  'Life is full of imponderables,' said Achilea, as regal as if she were seated upon a throne surrounded

  by perfumed courtiers.

  The mage smiled grudgingly. 'And who should know that better than a wizard? Even so, you may have been of service to me, albeit unknowingly.'

  'You called the sandstorm upon us!' Conan said, 'And I’ve no doubt it was you who set the whirlwind-demons upon me!'

  Arsaces regarded him blandly. 'And wherefore not? You were spying upon my encampment. I do not take lightly such impertinences from the lower orders
.'

  'My queen is not to be referred to thus!' said Payna, as proud as a duchess despite her ragged condition.

  'Your queen is my prisoner. Be silent, woman.'

  Achilea patted Payna’s hand. 'Yes, my pet, be still. This fellow wants something from us and we must endure his lordly posturing until he informs us what it is.'

  The wizard’s face reddened. Then he calmed himself with an effort. 'For a start, I would know what transpired below.'

  'We’ve been running and fighting and climbing for what seems like hours,' Conan said. 'How about some food and drink before we get down to business? A real man of the desert would have offered refreshment even to prisoners beneath his tent.'

  'You are insolent beyond belief!' Arsaces snapped. 'But then, I suppose that is to be expected from a barbarian!'

  'Expect it from people of the north,' Conan said. 'We are not toadies and lickspittles like your followers out there.' He jerked his touseled black mane toward the little group without.

  Arsaces clapped his hands and shouted. Men came in and set before them food and drink: preserved travel rations and watered wine. When they had eaten, they sat back on their heels, ready to bargain.

  'What would you know?' Conan asked. 'You saw the fight with the crocodile, did you not? We saw your little crystal man down there. Is he not your eyes and ears?'

  Arsaces smiled again. 'You are less stupid than you appear, Cimmerian, Eyes only―alas. These crystals vibrate only in the plane of vision, not in that of hearing. Yes, I saw the battle, and it was most impressive. That was when I knew that the two of you were not persons of the common sort and that your presence here may not be entirely coincidental. So let us begin with how you came to be employed by my Adversary.'

  'You mean the twins?' Achilea asked.

  'I mean my Adversary,' he repeated firmly. 'Tell me.'

  Thus Achilea told of bow they had all met in the wretched outlaw village of Leng in the mountains of faraway Brythunia, and of how in their desperation they had agreed to accompany the mysterious twins on their madman’s mission into the desert, and of how the twins had manifested uncanny powers in their travels through the lands in between.