“Handles,” Malak exclaimed.
With every muscle straining, Conan began to wonder if he had been right in reaching the same conclusion as the smaller man. The metal slab moved no more than if it were a part of the mountain. Suddenly Bombatta was there beside him, grasping one of the demon heads. Conan shifted both hands to the other, and redoubled his effort. Tendons stood out along his neck and thighs, and every sinew of him cried out. Silver flecks danced before his eyes. And the iron slab lurched up a handsbreadth. Slowly then, with a metallic racheting noise, the door rose, until Conan and Bombatta between them held it above their heads.
“In,” Conan rasped. “Quickly.”
The others of the party squeezed hurriedly by the two big men, then Bombatta released his hold and followed. Conan’s thews quivered with the strain of holding the weighty door alone, yet he hesitated. When he released it, it would come down, and look as he might, he could see no demons’ open mouths nor other means of lifting it from the other side. They would be trapped. But if he could not find a way to prop it open, he would have to let it fall.
Murmuring to himself thoughtfully, Akiro stepped to the wall beside the door, where a bronze rod ending in a large knob, embossed with the ever-present open eye, projected from the stone. The mage put a hand on the knob, pushed, and the rod sank into the wall.
Conan blinked. There seemed to be a lessening of the weight on him. He eased his upward pressure slightly. The door did not move. With a sour grunt he stepped from under it.
“I thank you,” he told Akiro, “but now that I think of it, could you not have opened this yourself?”
“I could have,” Akiro replied mildly, “but you said I should wait to be asked. As I was not—”
“Where are the others?” Conan cut him off.
The light of Akiro’s torch lit one end of a narrow corridor, and there was no sign of anyone other than the two of them, nor any light from the other torches. Cursing, the Cimmerian set out down that hall at a run, with Akiro panting in his footsteps. The corridor opened into a large, circular chamber, and both men skidded to a halt in amazement. The others were already there, holding their torches high while they stared about them.
Directly opposite the door through which they entered a monstrous head of carved black stone, fanged and glaring, as tall as a big man, projected from the wall. Two other doorways, set equidistant around the circle from the first, led from the chamber. Or rather, one did, for the other was broken and choked with rubble that spilled in a fan into the room. The rest of the walls were carved in bas-relief, images of fabled beasts, gilded, with gems set for their eyes while others formed hooves and claws and horns. At intervals around the walls great plaques of gold were set, covered with strange script. The low domed ceiling was tied with onyx and set with diamonds and sapphires, twinkling in the light of the torches, as if to represent a night sky.
Akiro rushed to one of the golden plaques and ran his fingers over the deep-carved script as if he did not believe his eyes. “This is the same language as outside, and more of it than exists in one place anywhere else in the world. I can … yes, I can make it out. Listen.” He spoke on slowly, pausing to trace letters. “And on the thirteenth day of the Last Battle, the gods did come to war, and the mountains did tremble at their footsteps.”
The rotund wizard went on, but Conan was more interested in what Jehnna was doing under Bombatta’s watchful eye. She alone had not goggled at the riches of the chamber. Her eyes were only for the massive, terrible head of black stone. Now she stood before it, looking nowhere else. Beneath her feet was a circle of runes carved in the marble of the floor, and woven among them was a five-pointed star with straight lines joining its points.
Conan’s breath caught in his throat. He knew the symbol of the star of old, knew it to his regret. A pentagram, a focus of sorcerous powers. He half-raised a hand to stop her. But there was Valeria. And Jehnna said this was her destiny, that she had been born to do this thing. The hand he had raised clenched into a fist until his knuckles cracked. He could do nothing else but see it through to the end.
From beneath her robes Jehnna produced the black velvet bag in which she carried the Heart of Ahriman. As the blood-red gem slipped into her palm its sanguine glow filled the chamber, and the jewels set in the ceiling seemed to glitter more fiercely. Carefully she set the Heart down before her in the pentagram; there was a small niche carved into which it fit exactly. As she straightened awareness faded from her eyes. In a trance, she chanted, and her words rang round the walls.
As she intoned the words, the radiance of the Heart increased, yet now it was focused, shining only on the great stone head, bathing it in crimson light. The black stone eyes especially seemed to reflect its glow, and crimson shadows danced in their depths, depths that had not been there moments before.
“It lives,” Zula hissed, and Malak began muttering prayers.
“You must stop her,” Akiro said suddenly, urgency riddling his voice. “Quickly, Conan, you must—” He broke off with a moan of denial that seemed wrung from his bones.
Soundlessly the stone jaws of the monstrous head opened, spreading wide enough to swallow three men whole, and in that mouth burned fire such as no eye there had ever before seen. Blood turned to flame, it was, and Conan found himself stepping back, a hand before to his face to shield him from heat that seemed to sear the very air. Though it pained his eyes to look, the Cimmerian saw a crystal spire in the midst of those flames. It was a pellucid column such as the one on which the Heart of Ahriman had rested in Amon-Rama’s place, but atop this one was a horn of gold, like the horn of a bull. Neither spire nor horn seemed touched by the fiery tempest that roared about them.
Jehnna still stared as if not at this world, but worlds beyond. Her large eyes were blank, and her face lacked all expression. Slowly her hands rose to her shoulders, and her robes fell to her feet Naked, she stood, slender curves bathed with the light of the flames before her, the birthmark between her small breasts glowing like those fires. With quick, unhesitating steps, she moved forward. Not a muscle moving, Bombatta watched her, and the light in his dark eyes could have been a reflection of the fiery furnace.
“No!” Conan shouted, yet even as he did it was too late.
Into the roaring flames Jehnna stepped. About her the fire flared as if in fury at her invasion, licking at her slim nudity, yet she moved deeper, unaware and unharmed. In both hands she lifted the golden horn, and with it walked from the blazing furnace, back to the pentagram.
For a moment she stood there, and all in the room seemed frozen where they stood. Then she sighed, sagged, and would have fallen had not Zula rushed to support her. Quickly the black woman pulled the girl’s robes up about her.
“It is done,” Bombatta said softly. “The Horn is in the hands of the One.”
“Conan,” Akiro said shakily, “there is something you must know.”
Abruptly there was a wind in the chamber, an icy gale of eerie howls that they felt to their bones, yet which did not so much as bend the flames of the torches. Then it was gone as suddenly as it had come, and the fires in that huge mouth were gone, as well, but the chill of the wind remained.
“Conan,” Akiro said again.
“Later,” Conan snapped. One too many pieces of sorcery had he seen for a single day, and this last had come at no one’s bidding that he could tell. “We leave now!’ And barely waiting for Jehnna to gather the Heart of Ahriman, he hurried them from the chamber.
XIX
It was a procession that Conan led back along the narrow corridor, and he did not care for the feeling of it. Jehnna carried the golden horn hugged tightly to her bosom, and Bombatta and Zula hovered protectively on either side of her, interspersing solicitous looks for the slender girl with cold stares at each other. Though glad beyond measure that she was unharmed, the Cimmerian was troubled by what Jehnna had experienced, and troubled as well by the artifact she carried so carefully.
Akiro tugged at
Conan’s elbow. “I must talk with you,” he said quietly, glancing back at Bombatta. “In private. It is urgent.”
“Yes,” Conan agreed distractedly. He had come in contact with sorcery many times before in his young life, many more than he wished to remember. Betimes he found he could sense it, and what he sensed from the golden object the girl clutched to her breast was the odor of evil. Very much he wanted to be gone from that place, to be back in Shadizar with the thing done. “In private, Akiro,” he murmured. “Later.”
Malak ran before them, dancing in his eagerness to leave. “Hurry!” he called over his shoulder. “This place is ill! Mitra’s Bones! Hurry!” He darted from view ahead, and his words faded away.
“Fool,” Conan muttered. “This is no time to be separated.” Then he was into the chamber of gilded columns, and he fell silent as well.
Malak was there, rolling his eyes nervously. Also there were more than a score of warriors in black leather armor of archaic design, leaning on long spears. The smallest of the men was head and shoulders taller than Conan or Bombatta. They were as black as the obsidian statue before the temple, and Conan was relieved to see their chests rise and fall with breathing. They were men, not statues come to life. That had been his first thought.
Two of the warriors stepped forward. One had a crest of long white hair spilling down the back of his bronze helmet; the other wore no helmet, but rather a black leather skull-cap from which hung long fringes of red hair. He with the white crest spoke. To Jehnna.
“Long have we waited for you, for the One. We have slept, as our god sleeps, and we have awaited the day of your coming. The Night of Awakening approaches.”
Bombatta shifted uneasily, and Akiro’s breath whistled between his teeth.
“This girl has no part in your ways,” Conan said. “We crave pardon if we have disturbed your temple, but we have far to travel, and we must go.”
All the while he noted the disposition of the ebon warriors. He had no wish to fight if it could be avoided, but these men seemed to be saying that this was their temple, for all it looked not to have known a human tread in centuries. And men often grew violent when they thought strangers interfered with their religion.
“You may go,” the towering black warrior replied. “For bringing us the girl, the One, your lives are given to you. But she remains with us.”
Making every attempt to seem casual, Conan stepped between the tall warrior and Jehnna. “She is not the One you seek,” he said, but the ebon man ignored him and spoke again to Jehnna.
“For all the years we have slept, guarding the Horn of Dagoth, waiting for you, for the One who could touch the Horn. Now will the Sleeping God be awakened, and his vengeance will spread against those who betrayed—”
Conan caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye as Bombatta’s arm whipped forward, and a dagger blossomed in the tall man’s throat Blood poured from the black giant’s mouth as he fell, and pandemonium broke loose in the chamber.
“Back!” Conan shouted. There was no way forward except through huge men who were raising their spears and snarling with fury. “Back! Quickly!” The Cimmerian thrust his torch into one tall warrior’s face, beat aside another’s spear thrust, and ran a third through the middle.
A metallic racheting caught his ear. Sword dancing desperately to hold off an ever-increasing number of spears, he risked a quick glance over his shoulder. The great iron door was descending in jerks, and it did not have far to fall. With a roar he attacked, his blade a grim blur of razor steel before him, the sheer fury of him forcing his opponents back despite their greater numbers. With a suddenness that caught them all off-guard, he whirled and threw himself into a rolling dive toward the rapidly closing doorway. The bottom of the iron door scraped his shoulder, then he was through, and the slab settled against the floor with a heavy, grating thud.
Akiro, Malak and Zula stared down at him worriedly, but there was no time for their worry. “We must hurry,” he said as he scrambled to his feet. “’Tis likely they got a spear point or two under the edge of that trying to stab me, and if so they’ll lever it up soon enough.”
“I will see what I can do about that,” Akiro said. Delving in his pouch, he drew out materials and began drawing symbols on the metal of the door.
“You could have given me a little warning,” Conan muttered to Malak. “A shout that you were letting the door fall.”
“Bombatta caught us all by surprise,” Malak replied. “He grabbed Jehnna and darted in here before any of the rest of us could move. I guess he pulled that rod out as soon as he was past the door.”
“There,” Akiro said, stepping back from his labors. A string of faintly glowing symbols, each of which resisted efforts to focus the eye on it, stretched across the door from side to side. “That should hold them for a time.”
Conan found he was no longer interested in whether the door held or not. “Where is Jehnna?” he demanded. “And Bombatta?”
Zula spun to stare down the dark hall. “I was so worried about you,” she whispered, “that I did not … If he has hurt her …”
Conan did not wait to hear the rest. He sped toward the chamber of the great stone head as fast as his legs would carry him. It was empty. Without hesitation he took the one way out other than the way he had come, the unblocked, third corridor.
Grim thoughts filled the Cimmerian’s head. Perhaps Bombatta meant to try spiriting Jehnna back to Shadizar without him, to cheat him of his reward. It would be like the Zamoran, he thought, to rob Valeria of a chance at rebirth just to strike at him. There would be no waiting until Shadizar now. The time for accounting had come.
The corridor ran straight as an arrow, without bend or fork, without a doorway leading to another chamber. Like a tunnel, the corridor had been carved from the living rock of the mountain, its walls, ceiling and floor polished as smooth as marble. Dust dulled and covered all, now, and it was in that dust that the light of his torch showed the traces of those he followed, signs as plain to his keen eyes as ruts in a wagon road. The spaces between the tracks told him they, too, were running.
Suddenly the hallway spilled into a large, square chamber filled with thick, fluted columns set close together and supporting a ceiling lined with cracks and fissures. Many of the columns were filled with cracks as well, some seeming to need only a breath to topple. Dust-covered implements lay among them, fallen braziers with high, tripod legs, things that might have been tall stands to hold torches, others the purposes of which he could not guess.
Conan’s torch was enough for him to make another door ahead, a deeper black rectangle in the shadows. The tracks in the dust led toward that door as well, but he stopped his headlong dash. Bombatta could be hidden anywhere among those myriad columns, and tracks so plain could lead to an ambush. In a cautious crouch, poised to spring in any direction, broadsword at the ready, the big Cimmerian advanced. His eyes probed the dark about him for the slightest hint of movement.
“Jehnna,” he called softly, then louder, “Jehnna!” The name echoed, and he shouted over it, louder still, “Jehnna!”
Then he saw Bombatta, standing beside the far doorway with a thick rod of rusted iron, a good three paces long, in his hands. The Zamoran moved quickly for such a big man. He thrust the rod crossways between two cracked pillars like a lever and heaved.
Time seemed to slow for Conan as the columns bowed outwards in opposite directions, began to fall in chunks. The ceiling above him groaned; bits of stone and dirt pelted him.
In one smooth motion the Cimmerian turned and threw himself back the way he had come, away from collapsing stone. The roar of falling rock reverberated through the chamber. Something struck Conan’s head, and darkness swallowed him.
Jehnna crouched where Bombatta had left her, peering down the corridor down which they had fled. He had fled, she thought angrily. She had been dragged behind him like a bundle. Until reaching this spot he had refused to listen to her pleas that he help the others, th
en he told her to wait and dashed back. It was all very well that he put her safety first, but he should have listened to her sooner. Golden-red sunlight shone through a crack at the top of a huge stone slab behind her, but she did not look at it. Daylight and the way back to Shadizar lay on the other side of that thick slab, but Conan was still behind her, in the depths of the mountain. What if he were injured, and needed her? What if …
Running footsteps announced Bombatta’s return. He scrambled up the slope of the corridor in haste.
“Is he unharmed?” she demanded.
Dust and dirt covered the scar-faced man, and blood trickled from a scratch on his cheek. He started past her, then stopped suddenly, his face paling. “Where’s the horn, child?” he demanded. “Zandru’s Nine Hells, if you’ve lost it …”
“It is here.” She showed him the bundle she had made, wrapped in strips torn from her cloak. It was her destiny, she knew, this quest for the Horn of Dagoth, but there was something about the golden object that made her want not to touch it. The Heart of Ahriman and the Horn of Dagoth were together, swathed in layers of white wool, and she truly wished there were more layers. Many more. “Where is … where are the others?”
“Dead,” Bombatta replied curtly. Huge muscles straining, he threw his weight against the massive slab of stone.
Jehnna sat as if poleaxed. Dead? Conan could not be dead. She could not imagine him as dead. Or the others, she told herself quickly. Zula, Akiro, even Malak, had taken on special meaning to her. She did not want to think of any of them being harmed. But the tall youth with the strange sapphire eyes and the hands that were so gentle when they did not hold a sword, he was more than special. “I cannot believe it,” she whispered. The great slab fell outwards with a crash, raising a cloud of dust and letting in a flood of fading sunlight. “I heard him call my name. I know that I did.”
“Come, Jehnna. We have little time, child.”
Conan Chronicles 2 Page 54