'For all these years, the Heart has slumbered in the vault of the Mitraeum. When the druid apprised me of your plot against it, I sent heralds to fetch both it and my son. With this amulet, old Diviatix has the power of a thousand of your wizards.
'That is why you so lusted for the gem—not to augment your own great magic, but to keep another from using it against you. That is why the Gods of the West drew this druid from his grove, hither across the wide world to the sandy wastes of shadow-haunted Stygia. No other white magician could stand against the temptation such power holds out to him who wields it—the power to make oneself a very god—save this drink-befuddled little man, this sanctified and holy vessel of the will of the gods!'
His visage curiously shrunken and pale, skull-like in the fierce golden fire that shone up from the figure of the druid, Thoth-Amon wilted. Of the lesser mages of the Black Ring, some lay dead or senseless; some gibbered and frothed in madness; some jammed the exits, clawing at one another in their frenzy to be gone. Diviatix held up the mighty arch-talisman, which focused stupendous forces like a lens. Beam after beam of glory flashed across the arena, and with each bolt a wizard died.
By now, Thoth-Amon alone still lived and had full possession of his faculties. Conan's nape prickled as he saw a shadow gathering about the Stygian—a clot of gloom, which wound about the sorcerer like the coils of a gigantic serpent. Had Father Set himself come to claim his chief votary? Thoth-Amon panted:
'You force me, against will and prudence, to play my masterstroke, dog of a Cimmerian!'
The shadowy coils about him darkened until he stood cloaked in utter gloom. Through this cloak of shadow, Thoth-Amon's eyes burned like glittering stars of dark fire. A chill passed over Conan as the Stygian uttered an enigmatic command in an unknown, guttural tongue. The human throat was never shaped to speak aloud that uncanny, bestial speech. The alien words re-echoed back and forth across the shadowy immensity of the arena.
AH eyes were drawn to the huge open portal at the farther end of the arena. Now something hulking and monstrous and unthinkable stirred to wakefulness beyond that yawning gulf of darkness. And Thoth-Amon laughed.
XI
From the Black Gate
It came forth slowly from the abyss of darkness. At first Conan could not make it out, for it seemed but an extension of the darkness. But it was no insubstantial shadow, for the earth trembled beneath its ponderous tread.
'Crom!' muttered Conan between his teeth. His companions shrank back after one horrific glimpse of the moving shape.
'Gods, help us!' groaned Diviatix, 'It is the living prototype of the Black Sphinx above! Earth was never meant to bear the weight of such a hell-spawned abomination . Think of the ages the accursed thing has dwelt here in the bowels of the black underworld! Now may the Lords of Light aid us, for not even the Heart of Ahriman can give me power over the Black Beast, the very child of Chaos itself!'
Conan raked the corpse-strewn benches with his eyes. None lived there; even Thoth-Amon had fled the coming forth of the beast that his prayers had roused from its aeons of slumber.
'Back up the stair behind us!' Conan barked. 'Give me that torch, Trocero! Stir yourselves, for the beast is upon us!'
They raced back the way they had come, up the broad stairway and along the lofty corridor that they had traversed before. As they ran, Conan looked about for narrow passages through which the black beast could not pursue them—but found none. This vast hall would not delay the beast in the slightest; indeed, it might have been hewn from the rock for the monster's convenience.
Their only hope of escape lay at the further end, where they might or might not find a narrow exit. Sword in hand and boot heels thudding, the king of Aquilonia ran down the immense hallway, breathing a prayer to the cold, indifferent gods of his northern homeland.
The camp had been crudely fortified with an embankment of baggage and sand, behind which crouched the spearmen of Gunderland, the knights of Aquilonia and Poitain, and the Bossonian archers. Whenever the swirling horde of Stygians came too close, the archers on signal rose and sent a volley of clothyard shafts whistling across the sands, now littered with corpses. The Bossonian longbows outranged the shorter weapons borne by the mounted Stygian archers. When the heavy Aquilonian shafts struck home, they pierced through mail and cloth and flesh to the vitals.
Pallantides, however, did not deceive himself about the desperate plight of his host. In the east the faint glow of false morning paled the stars. It would fade, but then the real dawn would arise. Without their horses, the Aquilonians could not defeat the mobile, mounted, and overwhelmingly more numerous Stygians. For the men to try to come to grips with their foes by toiling through the sand after them on foot would merely earn them all a quick demise.
The Aquilonians could hold their present position as long as their supplies held out, for the Stygians had no heavily armoured men to break through the perimeter. But, with dawn, the Stygians would acquire a mighty ally: the desert sun. Even with the most careful rationing, the existing supplies of water would soon be drunk up, and men could not be sent down to the banks of the Bakhr to fetch more in the face of the foe.
Nor would the arrows of the Bossonians last forever. At the present rate, their quivers would be exhausted in an hour or two. The Stygians had only to keep circling the trapped army, showering its camp with their light but deadly shafts, and by the end of the day the Aquilonian force would be reduced to helplessness.
But the Stygians, it seemed, had other ideas. Unit by unit, the mounted archers drew off toward the Black Sphinx. They became mere bobbing black dots against the faintly paling sky and then disappeared behind the dunes.
When all had vanished from around the camp, Pallantides sent a soldier noted for his fleetness of foot out to scout. Stripped to shoes and breechclout, the man climbed the highest dune between the camp and the monument and ran back to report:
'Nay, general they be not retreating. They be all gathered around that great ugly black statue, and their general's standing up on the rump of the critter, giving 'em a speech. Methinks they're getting ready for a grand charge; I seen what looks like a company of armoured horsemen in that black mail they wear.'
Pallantides turned to where his men, relaxing for the first time in hours, were eating hasty bites of cold breakfast.
'We can stop some with our shafts and some with our pikes,' he told Cenwulf and Amric, 'but there are plenty more to take the place of these. We shall put our knights in the front rank, using their lances as pikes, since their armour is the best…'
But even as he spoke he heard the hollowness of his own words and knew their chances were few.
And where was Conan?
XII
The Black Beast Slays
Stone grated. The mighty portal swung open in the breast of the Black Sphinx. Upon the threshold towered Conan of Cimmeria, the light from the torch in his hand winking on his tunic of chain mail and flashing on the mirror surface of his naked sword. Behind him crowded Prince Conn, Count Trocero, and the druid Diviatix, who still bore the Heart of Ahriman in his fist.
Outside, the stars had dimmed in the east and the sky had visibly lightened. The colossal, doglike forelimbs of the stony monster stretched away at slightly diverging angles from the body, each forepaw being twice the height of a man. Beyond them lay the dunes, sparsely spotted with camel-thorn and tufts of dry grass.
Nothing moved in the angle between the forelimbs of the statue or in the visible desert beyond. From another direction, however, came the sounds of a large armed host: the creak of saddles, the clink of weapons, the nickering and stamping of horses, the grunts and bubblings of camels, the murmur of men. Over all these noises sounded the voice of the Stygian general, giving his units their orders and exhorting them to be valiant and destroy the filthy foreign worshipers of unclean gods. His harsh, guttural voice resounded through the lightening gloom.
Conan cocked an ear back towards the portal. 'It's after us,' he breathed,
as the ground trembled to the tread of the hyena-headed monster. 'Thoth-Amon must have summoned the whole damned Stygian army. If we run for the camp, and they see us, 'twill be the last…'
The vibrations grew stronger. From the unseen host gathered around the rear of the Black Sphinx came trumpet calls and the rumble of kettle drums. The Stygians were on the move.
'Follow me,' murmured Conan, thrusting his torch, which now bore only a small, smoky flame, into the sand to extinguish it.
The king led his comrades along the path between the diverging forelimbs of the statue. Behind them, a moving shape of darkness appeared in the opening in the sphinx's breast. At the mouth of the great shaft that led down to immemorial crypts appeared a shape of living horror, leering and slavering. Huge as half a hundred lions, it peered into the darkness and sniffed the pre-dawn air.
A glance behind them sent Conan and his comrades scurrying. 'That gully! Over there!' growled Conan, pointing. 'Mayhap it won't see us.'
They dashed to the gully that he had indicated and crouched, scarcely daring to breathe. The monster shambled out on their track just as the Stygian host, with much drumming and trumpeting, began to move. The first units passed the left paw of the statue—to find themselves riding parallel to the monster and only a few yards from it.
One Stygian uttered an exclamation; then others; then shouts of terror and amazement filled the night. Bowstrings twanged and a shower of arrows and javelins fell about the monster. These missiles were mere pin pricks to so vast a creature, but they stuck in its hide and roused it to fury.
It wheeled ponderously toward the host and for an instant towered over them, like the living cub of the stone monster it resembled. Then it was among them! Its great paws swept right and left, dashing men and mounts head over heels in a welter of gore. The Black Beast waded through the slaughter, dipping its huge head with every stride to snatch up a Stygian and crunch him to jelly with one bite. The air was hideous with the shrieking of mangled horses, the agony and terror of broken men.
The Stygians did not lack courage. Horrified though he was, their general ordered one desperate charge. The beast swept his men to earth with its slashing paws and snapping jaws as fast as they came within reach. At last the Stygians went mad with terror, clawing and trampling one another in their haste to flee. Most of them were dismounted by the frantic leaps and buckings of their terrified horses and camels and had to slog through the sand afoot. And after them came the Black Beast, trampling and crunching. Ever it slew… and slew… and slew.
As the sun's golden disc lifted above the desert beyond the Bakhr, the monster returned from its slaughter. It moved with haste, shivering as the sun's inimical rays struck it, and squeezed through the great portal in the sphinx's breast. Then it was gone, and the vast stone door boomed shut behind it.
From a distance, Conan and his companions watched the disappearing monster. Then they trudged back to the camp. There the Aquilonians, drawn up in ranks of archers and spearmen determined to sell their lives dearly, could hardly believe their deliverance.
Some of the baggage had been lost in tent fires. A few men had died from Stygian arrows but many more were wounded, for those light, long-range shafts were designed to cripple rather than to kill. Everywhere, surgeons were cleaning and binding minor wounds.
Soon Conan and Pallantides organised the recovery. A few of the masterless horses and camels which wandered disconsolately around the camp were captured and then used to round up more of the Stygians' mounts. In the course of this work, the Aquilonians discovered the Stygians' abandoned baggage train, by which they soon made good their own losses of material.
His powers augmented by the Heart of Ahriman, the White Druid searched the spirit plane with his astral senses. He awoke from his trance to say that Thoth-Amon had fled the destruction of the Black Ring and was on his way southeast, toward the mysterious black kingdom of Zembabwei.
The host was drawn up, awaiting orders. There had been changes. Most of the horses were now wiry Stygian ponies. Their riders had put away their plate armour as too heavy for such small steeds to bear; they wore light tunics of chain mail instead. There was a newly formed camel corps, whose members looked uneasily upon their angular, irascible mounts.
Conan sat easily on his camel, his legs locked together in front of the hump. He grinned at a remark by Trocero.
'Of course I know how to ride a camel!' he chuckled. Wasn't I once a chief of the Zuagir nomads of the eastern deserts? If you treat a camel well and know its limitations, 'tis no harder to manage than any other beast.'
He stared at the distant, dun-coloured horizon, his blue eyes fierce under scowling brows. Beside him, Diviatix smiled up from his mule cart. He had been drinking again, but his voice was steady enough.
'The Lords of Light are still with you, O King!' he said. He turned to where Prince Conn sat a Stygian pony. 'Lend me your brand, O Prince!'
Conn handed over the sword. With his forefinger, Diviatix sketched a series of runes on the blade. The characters showed black on the bright steel.
'What's that?' asked Conn, taking back the sword and looking curiously at it.
Diviatix smiled crookedly. 'Ask no question, lad. Suffice it to say that in a vision last night, one of the powers told me to write those words. It was said that they would prove of use to you. And now, farewell!'
Pallantides cantered up, reining in a restive Stygian grey. 'We are ready to march, sire.'
'Give the order, then,' growled Conan.
'Whither away?' asked Trocero.
Conan grinned, white teeth flashing in his bronzed, impassive face. 'Southeast, to Zembabwei and the jungle lands—and to the end of the earth, if need be!'
And the trumpets sang.
Red Moon of Zembabwei
L. Sprague de Camp & Lin Carter
I
Green Hell
Count Trocero of Poitain snatched at his saddlebow as his weary, lathered horse—a small but sturdy Stygian grey—slipped in the mud, nearly causing him to lose his stirrups. He tugged at the reins, pulling the grey's head around, and slapped at the cloud of stinging gnats that hovered before his face. He muttered a weary curse. Behind him, Pallantides, commander of the Aquilonian host, ripped out a sulfurous oath as his steed slipped in the same patch of mud.
Trocero squinted at the cloudy sky which lay close above them. It seemed hardly to clear the tops of the tall, canelike grasses which rose to the height of a horseman's head all about them. Below, the hooves of their horses splashed through the shallow sheet of water which lay fetlock-deep over the land. For the rainy season had come to the plains of Zembabwei, turning the country into a reeking morass.
In another fortnight the rains would cease and the water which drained sluggishly in this flatland would vanish. The soil would change to dry, hard-baked clay. The towering grasses would turn from green to yellow, dry out, and be swept by brush fires. But that lay in the future.
'Looks like rain,' Trocero grunted to Pallantides.
The general cast a grim eye aloft. 'By Set's slimy scales,' he growled, 'tell me something new, Count! It's rained every day for the last ten, and I've given up trying to keep the rust off my gear. How much longer will the king keep us at this back-breaking pace?'
Trocero shrugged with a saturnine grin. 'You know Conan! Until it's so black an owl couldn't see its way. 'Ware serpent!' he snapped as his grey shied.
Pallantides jerked his reins as a mottled grey swamp viper, thick as a man's thigh, slithered among the stems of the grasses and vanished.
I've had a bellyful of this accursed swamp,' the general snorted. 'Gut me on the altars of Derketo, but I wish that spindle-shanked old tosspot of a druid were still with us! Belike he could magic us through the air to Old Zembabwei. Anything were better than slogging afoot through this mire! Half our horses and camels are dead or ailing, and half our men are spilling their guts with swamp fever… How in the forty-nine hells he expects to reach the Forbidden City in shape
to fight is beyond me.'
Trocero shrugged. For more than a month King Conan had driven the Aquilonian host on and on, following the course of the Styx towards its unknown source. They had trudged along the borders of eastern Stygia, where the slender ribbon of greenery along the river was flanked on either side by the golden sands of the eastern deserts. Then the river bent southward. They had traversed a parched no man's land, where few signs of human life were to be seen save the wandering clans of the eastern Shemites, the Zuagirs, with their camels and sheep.
The host had passed beyond the bounds of Stygia and threaded its way between the kingdoms of Keshan and Punt. The desert yielded to rolling, grassy savannas, with patches of jungle in the valleys and along the streams. In southern Punt, the Styx spread out to form vast, sluggish swamps, which they had skirted for several days. Now they were approaching the borders of mysterious Zembabwei.
There had indeed been many times when Trocero could have wished that the White Druid, Diviatix, still rode with the host. A highly civilised man, the Count of Poitain put little faith in magical mummeries. But there, in the sandy wastes of demon-haunted Stygia, the drunken old druid had acquitted himself well in the battle with Thoth-Amon's wizardly warriors. He alone had saved them from entrapment by the sorcerers of the Black Ring. Now that the Black Ring was crushed and Thoth-Amon himself was fled to jungle-girt Zembabwei, far to the southeast, the count could have hoped that Conan would return to many-towered Tarantia.
But no! This time, Conan was determined to run the Stygian sorcerer to earth and extinguish, once and for all, the supernatural menace to his throne. With the help of that ancient talisman, the Heart of Ahriman, the White Druid had served them well at Nebthu. But Trocero knew why Conan had let Diviatix return to the West.
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