'Rouse yourself, druid!' he said. 'I sense danger.'
The flabby jowls of the Ligurean priest were pale, his eyes vacant and haunted. He stared into the darkness with a black, unseeing stare.
'Eyes,' he whispered. 'Shadows with eyes. There is evil in the night…'
Conan shook the hunched figure by the shoulder. 'Up, priest! Is it drunk that you are again?'
Diviatix blinked and laughed weakly. 'Drunk? By the breasts of Mother Danu, King, I have swilled enough wine to send half this host staggering, but I am cold sober!' Conan shivered and whirled, peering into the darkness. But there was nothing there—nothing but shadows.
VII
Shadows with Eyes
Conan strode out into the dim, star-filled night. The bemused druid, bearing his oaken staff, trotted at his heels. Trocero, armed and alert, awaited his coming with the yawning prince. Pallantides hastened up.
'What is it, sire?' asked the general.
'I know not, but something,' grumbled Conan. 'Crom curse it, I can't put a name to it, but something's wrong…'
'Shall I rouse the host?'
'Not yet. Let the men get what sleep they can while they may. But double the sentries again. Let us make our own sentry-round; perchance the guards have seen something. Pallantides, lend me two stout men-at-arms who fear neither god, man, nor devil.'
A pair of yawning Gundermen presently approached with a clink of mail. They were big men, deep-chested with impassive faces and hard eyes. Conan looked them over, and liked what he saw. Then the king jerked his head. 'Come.'
They strode down the sandy lane between rows of tents and out toward the edge of the encampment. But there, the sentries had seen nothing, although they had vigilantly prowled and peered. Amric, who commanded that sentry watch, said:
'Nothing at all. Lord King, save the far-off yapping of jackals. But some complain of… well, shadows'.'
'What kind of shadows?' demanded Conan.
The burly Kothian scratched his beard. 'Well, sire, the men say—foolishness, I know!—that they see shadows where no shadows should be, not cast by any visible shape. The fools complain that the shadows watched them!'
'Shadows with eyes! My vision was true,' Diviatix moaned.
Conan chewed a tuft of his moustache. 'Shadows, eh? They'll be starting at mice next! Well, these lords and I will pace on sentry-go for a time, to see if we can find your prowling shadows.'
Loosening his blade in its scabbard, Conan led Trocero, Conn, the druid and the two soldiers around the camp. His boots squealed and crunched in the dry sand. The torches in the hands of the soldiers hissed and sputtered. Their flames streamed in the uneasy wind, sending shadows scurrying before and behind them as they trudged about the perimeter.
Young Conn stopped short, seized his father's arm, and pointed. Conan looked in the direction of the pointing finger and grunted.
'Footprints! It seems we have a spy, after all! For never yet have I heard tell of shadows that leave footprints in soft sand.'
Trocero fingered his hilt. 'Sire, shall I sound the horn and rouse the guard?'
'For one skulking spy? Nonsense, man! We'll track the rogue to his lair ourselves. Time enough to summon the watch if we stumble upon a nest of Thoth-Amon's Set-worshipers.' Conan drew his steel. 'You!' he said to one of the Gundermen. 'Go back and tell Pallantides whither we have gone. Tell him to send a squad of stout rogues on our track, but that they shall not come up with us unless we get into trouble. I hope to catch the slinker unawares, and their clatter would alert him a league away.'
Without further ado, the Cimmerian plunged off in the direction the footprints led. The long march without opposition had made the king restless and reckless. The others crowded after. Soon the track had led them over the dunes beyond the sight of the camp.
'Look, sire!' Trocero hissed, pointing.
Conan stifled a grunt. Was it a blur of strained eyes, a trick of shadows, or did he glimpse a form, hooded and cloaked in black, flitting before them toward the Black Sphinx?
'Follow me!' Conan whispered, plodding after the form.
VIII
That Which Fled in the Night
As glittering stars wheeled slowly overhead, Conan and his companions crunched through the hissing sand on the track of the fleeing form. Ever it stayed just beyond the range of their vision, flitting ahead like a desert phantom.
Now the stony monster that dominated these wastes loomed up before them, blotting out the stars which outlined its hyena's head. The black-cloaked form flitted silently between the outstretched paws of the gigantic monster. For an instant they dimly discerned it against the breast of the towering sphinx; then it merged with the stone and vanished.
'Crom!' breathed Conan, his nape hairs rising with a barbarian's awe of the supernatural.
The mystery, however, was soon solved. As they neared the stony breast, they observed, barely visible in the starlight, a black crack in the smooth stone. It was a huge doorway, thrice the height of a man, cunningly made so that when shut, it would blend with the solid stone of the monster. As they approached, the door was slowly closing on unseen hinges, and the black crack was narrowing to a hairline.
Conan sprinted forward and jammed his sword hilt into the crack. The closing stopped. Then the king inserted his fingers into the crack and heaved. Sweat burst out on his brow, and the massive muscles of his arms, back, and shoulders stood out beneath his mail.
The portal opened with a squeal. Conan snatched up his sword from where it had fallen and, brandishing naked steel, sprang without a moment's hesitation into the gaping black maw. The others followed, although the druid hesitated.
To the remaining Gunderman, Conan said: 'Give me your torch, what's your name—Thorus, is it not? Plant your pike so it holds this door open, and run back to the camp. Tell Pallantides to send a whole company after us. Yare, now! The rest of you, follow me!'
Within the sphinx they followed a high, wide corridor of solid stone. The torch guttered, stretching misshapen black shadows over the rough stone walls. Wary of traps and pitfalls, Conan and his companions traced the corridor, descending by a broad stone stair to the second level, beneath the sands of the desert.
'By Mitra, no wonder we found no one in the city,' breathed Trocero. 'The black magicians were all hiding down in this maze!'
In truth, it was a maze. Corridors branched off at intervals, multiplying until they became a labyrinth. Conan smeared a dab of pitch from the hissing torch at every change of direction, so that they could retrace their steps and regain the surface. But all the chambers they searched were untenanted and bare of furnishings. Where were the wizards of the Black Ring?
'Crom!' Conan wondered aloud. 'Are there levels even deeper than this? If that philosophers' notion be true, that the world is round, meseems we shall soon come out the other side!'
As they descended another stair, Trocero urged: 'Sire, should we not go back for help?'
'Mayhap; but I've a notion to search this place first,' Conan growled. 'The lads should be coming up behind us soon, and thus far we've found nought to beware of. Let us go on!'
At the foot of that last flight of stone stairs, they entered a gigantic chamber, huge as an arena, ringed with tiers of stone benches. Lifting his torch, Conan searched the nearby benches with its wavering light which illumined only a small fraction of the vast area. The place reminded Conan of the great hippodrome of Tarantia, save that the latter was out in the clean open air, not buried deep down in the fetid blackness below the world's crust.
'What do you suppose they use this place for?' he muttered.
Trocero opened his mouth to reply, but another voice broke in. It was a deep, strong, quiet voice, informed with the ring of triumph.
'We use it to dispose of our enemies, Conan of Aquilonia!'
Conan tensed. Before he could move, cold artificial light flared up, filling the vast arena with an uncanny and sourceless illumination almost as brilliant as daylight. By this ill
umination, the Cimmerian saw that the circling stone benches, on the further side, were occupied by hundreds of human figures, robed and cowled in black. To the right yawned a huge open portal, a yawning gulf of darkness, as large as that in the breast of the sphinx far above.
Directly before them, enthroned in a great chair of black stone above the lower rows of magicians, sat a tall, strongly built figure wearing a simple, unadorned green robe. This man had the shaven pate, swarthy skin, slitted dark eyes and hawklike features of a pure-blooded Stygian.
'Welcome to my empire,' said Thoth-Amon, laughing.
Meanwhile, the second Gunderman, Thorus, whom Conan had dispatched to fetch reinforcements from the camp, lay silently on the sands beneath the wheeling stars, a bare hundred paces from the Sphinx of Nebthu, with a Stygian arrow through his throat.
IX
Red Swords of Stygia
Pallantides yelled commands at running men. Trumpets brayed and hoofbeats thudded on the hissing sands.
Things had started going wrong at just the time that Conan and his companions entered the black sphinx. First came the desertion of the troops levied from Koth and Ophir. They had encamped on the far side of the site, and sentries came flying to the general to report that the entire force had fled under cover of darkness, either in mass panic or by some prearranged plan.
Pallantides swore sulfurously. He ordered a squadron of horse to pursue the runaways, but then it transpired that the Aquilonians had no horses. The mounted Kothians and Ophireans had taken their own horses, while the Kothian and Ophidian foot had commandeered the mounts of the Aquilonians. The few remaining animals had been turned loose and had galloped off into the desert with the deserters.
Then the first of the two soldiers who had accompanied Conan arrived, to pass on the king's request for a squad of troopers to follow on his track. Pallantides was picking his squad and giving them the news to pass to the king, when another sentry rushed in to cry:
'To arms, my lord! We are beset! The hordes of Stygia are upon us!'
All around the camp, the somber dunes began erupting men, mostly archers on horse and camel. The darkness made it impossible to ascertain their number. They rode round the camp in a vast swirl, plying their bows. Although the darkness prevented accurate archery, the Aquilonians still suffered a rain of arrows, discharged at random into the camp. Here and there a man yelled or cursed as a shaft found him.
Atop the dunes, other Stygian soldiery appeared, shooting fire arrows into the camp. The missiles tore cometlike paths through the dark; a tent blazed up, and another.
Most of the Aquilonian soldiers had already been aroused by the commotion caused by the desertion of the auxiliaries. Summoned by the trumpets' blare and the war cries of the Stygians, they stumbled out of their tents, red faced and coughing from the smoke, pulling on helmets and buckling baldrics and chin straps.
'Put out the fires!' shouted Pallantides. 'Strike the tents! Cenwulf! Where in hell are you?'
'Here,' said the captain of the Bossonian archers, staggering up to the general. 'Where is the king?'
'Mitra knows; he went off into the desert, tracking a spy. Spread your men around the perimeter and pick off some of these flitting black-cloaks. Detail a squad to beat down those bastards on the dune, with the fire arrows. Amric!'
'Here, general.'
'Spread the men around in a circle outside the Bossonians, kneeling with pikes ready to stop a charge. Pile baggage before them and heap sand upon it for a breastwork…'
Thoth-Amon smiled grimly down from his place of power in the underground arena.
'For too long, Cimmeria… have you stood in my path,' said the earth's greatest black magician. 'I saw you venture into these southern lands from your frozen north, forty years ago. I ought to have crushed you then, when you were small and weak. Had I but known how your power would grow, I should have struck you down with a blast of magic—that first time, when you meddled in my affairs in the house of Kallian Publico; or again when you spoiled my schemes to wrest the kingdom of Zingara from King Ferdrugo's feeble grasp; or when I first glimpsed you in Count Valenso's stronghold on the Western Ocean; or in your early years of kinging it in Aquilonia when I was Ascalante's slave in Tarantia. These lapses, however, shall now be corrected.'
Conan handed his guttering torch to Trocero and folded his mighty arms upon his chest. His face impassive, he bent his lionlike glowering gaze upon Thoth-Amon.
'Speak your piece, Stygian,' he rumbled. 'You have gone to immense effort and exhausted your cunning to trick me into this trap. You might as well have your say.'
A susurration, like the hissing of a nest of angry serpents, ran through the black-robed throng. Thoth-Amon laughed sardonically.
'Well said, dog of a northlander savage! I admire your coolness as much as my fellow sorcerers deplore your effrontery! But now, neither will help you to escape your long overdue punishment. You have crossed my path once too often, and this is the last act of our little drama. I have trapped Aquilonia's host as well as its king. As we exchange pleasantries, my warriors beleaguer your camp. Aquilonia's tall knights are falling to our swords like ripe wheat before the scythe. More than a dynasty ends here tonight; the armed might of a kingdom perishes as well.'
Conan shrugged. 'Mayhap. But I fear your slinking serpents little, and my tall knights will draw their crooked fangs with ease. My warriors, I doubt me not, are reaping a red harvest this hour—'
'I do not fight with swords alone—'
Thoth-Amon smiled, gesturing with the fingers of one hand. A bolt of emerald fire sprang from his fingertips. It lanced across the arena and struck the naked sword in the hand of Trocero. The steel, bathed in the green ray, glowed red. Trocero dropped the smoking sword with an oath and put his blistered fingers in his mouth.
'—but with sorcery as well,' Thoth-Amon concluded.
Conan continued to hold the glinting eyes of Thoth-Amon with his own somber gaze. 'The only way to fight sorcery,' he grunted, 'is with sorcery.'
The slight, hooded figure at Conan's side stepped forth, throwing off its dark cloak to reveal a white robe and an oakleaf chaplet. The black magicians recoiled, hissing.
'It is a White Druid out of Pictland!' said a voice above the murmur.
'It is indeed,' said Thoth-Amon grimly. 'Unless my senses deceive me, it is none other than Diviatix.'
'Diviatix!' The cry arose from a hundred throats. At a signal from the prince of sorcerers, they fell silent. The pressure of hundreds of eyes poured down upon Conan and his companions. The silent, concentrated power of those black, glittering eyes was unnerving.
Conan's skin crept. A coldness like a small, bleak wind from one of his frozen northern hells blew upon his heart. He felt a numbness creeping through his flesh. His vision blurred; his heart faltered. Behind him, young Conn gasped and staggered.
'S-sorcery!' breathed Conan. A malignant power beat down upon him from those intense, glittering eyes. His head swam. In a moment, he thought, the iron would drain from his muscles and he would slump to the floor of the arena.
X
White Druid and Black Magician
Then tine druid broke the spell. He spread his arms and brandished his oaken staff. Conan was astounded to see fresh young leaves sprout from the dead wood of the staff. Diviatix stood at the centre of a pulsing aura of golden light. From his staff wafted the smell of healthy earth and green growing things. The warm light and the good smell beat back the artificial witchlight and the dank, moldering stench that permeated these subterranean labyrinths of ancient stone.
The wizards of the Black Ring sagged back, their concentration broken. Some mopped sweat from their brows. Diviatix swayed, chuckling, as if all the wine he had drunk that night had at last caught up with him. But small and unprepossessing though he was, there was no question but that he dominated this assembly.
Thoth-Amon laughed no longer; his wrinkled brow was drawn together in a scowl of concentration. Drawing himself up to his ful
l regal height, he smote the White Druid with a second beam of crackling green flames. Diviatix fended it off with his staff, and it broke into a shower of hissing sparks.
Thoth-Amon hurled another, and another, and another. Taking heart from their leader, the prime sorcerers of the Black Ring came to their feet, adding their own beams of green force to the shower of deadly bolts that beat down upon Conan's party. For a few moments, the pulsing aura staved them off like a golden shield. Then Diviatix began to weaken. While he still held the golden glow intact, some shafts of cold green fire leaked through to plow smoking furrows in the sand near where Conan and his comrades stood.
'White magic fails in the contest of strength, Cimmerian!' Thoth-Amon called.
'Well, then, perhaps it is time to strengthen it.'
Conan drew from his girdle the small box of gleaming orichalc. From the box he took a great red many-faceted jewel. From it emanated a dazzling glow which pulsed and shimmered and seemed to drip flakes of quivering golden fire on the trampled sands. This sparkling gem Conan handed to Diviatix, who seized it as a drowning man might grasp at a helping hand.
As the druid took the jewel, the protective shield of golden light about them strenghened; a golden fire like that of the sun itself blazed up and smote the black magicians. They fell back shrieking; some pawed at their eyes, while others slumped in unconsciousness or death. The golden glory beat about the white-robed druid, who now seemed superhumanly tall and commanding. A wailing cry arose from the benches. Some black-clad forms struggled madly with each other, while some sought to flee by the smaller portals on the far side.
'The Heart!' gasped Thoth-Amon, sinking back in his black throne with his face pale, drawn, and gaunt. Suddenly the great sorcerer looked like an old, old man.
'The Heart of Ahriman!' he croaked.
Conan laughed heartily. 'Thought you that I would venture into your den without the world's mightiest talisman? You must deem me still that raw, reckless, foolish youth who came out of the North forty years ago!
The Conan Chronology Page 659