Conan and the Spider God (17 page)
Read Conan and the Spider God Online
Authors: Lyon Sprague de Camp
“Bear a hand!” shouted Catigern in Conan’s ear, shoving a bucket into his grip. “Get into yonder line!”
Conan had been about to turn away and go to the smithy, collect his gear, and shake the dust of Yezud from his feet. The temple of Zath was an evil fane; even more obnoxious than most Zamorian cults. He cared nothing for its architectural splendor, and if more priests were destroyed in the conflagration, that was all right with him. If he could not bury Rudabeh, to burn the temple for her funeral pyre was the next best thing. With her gone, there was no one in Yezud for whose fate Conan cared.
Well, that was not quite true. Captain Catigern had become a friend, and each had saved the other’s life. If the Brythunian were locked in battle with the fire, it behooved Conan to give him a hand.
The sky had begun to pale with the approach of dawn; but then it suddenly clouded over. A small but very black cloud formed over Yezud. A flash of lightning paled the flames licking out around the base of the central dome, and a roll of thunder drowned out the roar of the flames. Down came rain, but such rain as Conan had never seen. It was like standing under a waterfall.
Conan took his place in the bucket line and, with rain running down his face, handed buckets back and forth in a steady rhythm. The buckets were filled at the fountain in the temple square and were passed back to Yezudites around and within the fane.
With a roaring crash, the central dome collapsed and disappeared. A cloud of sparks, smoke, and dust billowed up from the gap; rain poured into it. Little by little, between the firefighters and the rain, the fire was beaten back; it had been confined to the naos.
T
he Yezudites were still battling the flames, and the sun, though not yet visible, was tinging the scattered dawn clouds crimson when Conan slipped away from the temple. Soon after, somewhat cleaned up and booted, he appeared at the stable with his saddle over one shoulder and a blanket roll over the other. The groom on duty, a stolid youth named Yazdan, looked up as the Cimmerian pushed into the stalls. He asked:
he Yezudites were still battling the flames, and the sun, though not yet visible, was tinging the scattered dawn clouds crimson when Conan slipped away from the temple. Soon after, somewhat cleaned up and booted, he appeared at the stable with his saddle over one shoulder and a blanket roll over the other. The groom on duty, a stolid youth named Yazdan, looked up as the Cimmerian pushed into the stalls. He asked:
“What would you, Master Nial? I thought you had lost your steed!”
“One of them,” grunted Conan, striding down the row of stalls to that housing Egil. “This one’s mine, also.”
“Ho? What say you?” cried Yazdan. “You must be mad! That unmanageable beast belongs to the temple; Vicar Harpagus brought him back from his travels.”
“After he stole him from me!” roared Conan. “Stand aside, boy, if you don’t wish to be hurt!”
“I cannot—Zath’s curse would—” protested the youth, striving to block Conan’s advance with outstretched arms.
“I’m sorry to do this,” grated Conan, dropping his burdens. “But you give me no choice.”
He picked up Yazdan, who kicked and flailed the air, and slammed the groom against the wall. Yazdan sagged to the floor, half unconscious. Minutes later, Conan led a saddled Egil out of the stable; the horse whinnied and took little dancing steps with the pleasure of being reunited with his old master.
Conan stopped at Bartakes’s Inn to buy extra provisions—a loaf, a slab of meat, and a leather bottle of ale—for his journey. He was counting out coins to a yawning Bartakes, whom he had routed out of bed, when a familiar voice said:
“Aha, there you are! I wondered what had become of you.” Captain Catigern, still filthy with soot and ash, had his arm in a sling. He continued: “From the blanket roll on your horse, I’d say you were planning to leave us.”
“I might,” said Conan, “if I had a better prospect elsewhere. What befell your arm?”
“A beam fell on me, and I think the bone is cracked. I’ll get a chirurgeon as soon as may be. When I saw the fire was under control, I turned command over to Gwotelin.”
“How much of the temple burned?”
“The naos is an indescribable mess; the falling roof timbers smashed that damned spider idol into a hundred pieces. But elsewhere the damage was only slight; most of the building is stone, and the oil stopped flowing out that pipe in the naos. I suppose the pool that feeds it ran dry.”
“Will this end the cult of Zath?”
“Mitra, no! They are already talking of rebuilding. I’ll wager they’ll choose Darius their new high priest, for that his rain spell saved most of the building. There should be plenty of work for a craftsman like you.”
“No doubt, but I have other plans.” Conan thought, the Eyes of Zath, if not smashed to fragments by the fall of the dome, would have been baked by the heat to plain white stones of no value. At least, he thought with vindictive relish, if he could not enjoy them, neither could anyone else.
“That is your business,” said Catigern. “By the bye, that black stallion looks uncommonly like one of the temple’s horses.”
“Egil is mine,” growled Conan. “Some day I’ll tell you how Harpagus stole him from me. If you doubt me, I’ll show you how he answers to my voice.”
“I am in no condition to gainsay you,” said Catigern. “At least, with a new High Priest, let us hope there will be no more giant spiders.”
“Whence did Feridun get that one?”
Catigern shrugged, then winced at the sudden pain in his injured arm. “I know not. Perchance it was a leftover from some bygone era; or perchance he grew it by sorcery from an ordinary tarantula.”
“What’s become of the last two Vicars?”
“Harpagus is still out of his mind, and Mirzes is dead. We found him in the naos, apparently suffocated by smoke.”
“Good!” growled Conan.
Catigern looked keenly at the Cimmerian. “That reminds me. One of my men swears he saw you come rushing out of the naos with the spider hot behind you, although no one had seen you go in. Might there be a connection betwixt your unauthorized visit and the death of Mirzes?”
“There might,” said Conan. “But there is something else you should know.” He described the cavern with the swarming Children of Zath. “The spider must have laid a clutch of eggs after Feridun installed her in the tunnels. If the King didn’t give in, Feridun would unleash the horde on Zamora. I think there must be some means of draining that pool, to let the Children escape their cave and scatter over the countryside.”
Catigern whistled. “Then the real spider was a female, for all that they call Zath a male god! And these creatures are still there?”
“Unless the river of flaming oil, running down into the cavern, has cooked them. I suppose it did, or they’d have swarmed up out of their burrow as did the big one.”
“This I must see,” mused the Brythunian. “Can you show me the cave entrance?”
Conan shook his head. “It is somewhere in these hills; but you could search for a month without finding it. You’d better go down through the trapdoor, as I did.”
Catigern shuddered. “I must lead my men into that hole with pikes and torches, to make sure all those vermin are dead,” he muttered. “Feridun was honest in his way, but the gods preserve me from fanatics!”
“I’m told he controlled beasts of all kinds,” said Conan, yawning prodigiously. “If he’d lost his spiders but survived, he might have set wolves or lions or eagles on the Zamorians. Well, I must away.”
Catigern accompanied Conan out the door, musing: “There are mysteries here, which the priests will want me to investigate. I shall be glad not to pry into the doings of one who has twice saved my hide, not to mention thwarting the High Priest’s mad plan.”
Conan wrung the hand of the Catigern’s uninjured arm and began to unhitch his horse when he spied the barrel of bitumen, for Bartakes’s lamps, standing around the corner of the inn.
Conan left the horse and opened the door. “Mandana!” he called.
“Aye?” The innkeeper’s daughter came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron.
Conan turned to Catigern. “Farewell, friend. I would have a word with the damsel alone.”
Catigern grinned wolfishly and entered the tavern. Conan said: “Mandana, will you step out here? I have somewhat to say.”
Misinterpreting Conan’s grim smile, the girl came forward with alacrity, simpering. “So, have you tired of that skinny temple wench at last?”
“I shall never see her again,” said Conan. “Ere he went mad, Harpagus the Vicar told me that you had informed him of Rudabeh’s visit to the inn.”
“What if I did? She deserved it for violating her temple’s rules and coming down here to lure away my patrons. How are we to live, with such unfair competition?”
Conan nodded sagely. “I’ll show you something.” He stepped to the barrel and threw off the lid. “Now,” he said, clutching Mandana about the waist and swinging her off her feet.
“Nial!” she cried. “Not here in the mud! You barbarians are so impetuous! I have a fine bed upstairs—”
“Aye,” grunted Conan. With a stride he towered over the barrel. Bending over, with the laughing girl still clutched about the waist, he dipped her flowing black mane into the tarlike fluid.
So speedy and so accurate was his move that Mandana did not suspect his true intention until her scalp was immersed in the black, sticky oil. Then she screamed.
In a single, sweeping motion, Conan raised and set her on her feet. She stood for a moment transfixed, with tar running down her plump, pink cheeks to drip on her bodice. Frantically, she ran her hands through the ropelike strands of hair, stared at the viscous substance that befouled them, and shrieked wordlessly.
“Your just desert for tattling,” rumbled Conan. “By the time your shaven skull has grown a new crop, perhaps you’ll have learned to mind your own affairs.”
Conan unhitched his horse and swung into the saddle. Pursued by screams of “I hate you! I hate you!” he trotted briskly away on the Shadizar road.
W
here the narrow valley below Yezud opened out, Conan rode past Kharshoi and into the more spacious lands of central Zamora. The sun being well past its zenith, Conan drew rein on a rise in the road, whence he had a good view of the route by which he had come. Yawning, he pulled a fowl’s leg and a biscuit out of his saddle bag and sat cross-legged on the ground, eating, while Egil, reins trailing, cropped the grass behind him. Sleep plucked seductively at Conan’s elbow, for he had had none the night before; but he dared not relax until he was farther from Yezud.
here the narrow valley below Yezud opened out, Conan rode past Kharshoi and into the more spacious lands of central Zamora. The sun being well past its zenith, Conan drew rein on a rise in the road, whence he had a good view of the route by which he had come. Yawning, he pulled a fowl’s leg and a biscuit out of his saddle bag and sat cross-legged on the ground, eating, while Egil, reins trailing, cropped the grass behind him. Sleep plucked seductively at Conan’s elbow, for he had had none the night before; but he dared not relax until he was farther from Yezud.
Suddenly there came a disturbance in the air before Conan, as if a tiny dust-devil had formed. The dust cleared, and there stood Psamitek the Stygian, holding a small brass tripod with a little smoking brazier at its apex. While Conan gaped with astonishment, the Stygian stooped and set the tripod on the ground. He made passes over it, chanting in some guttural tongue that Conan did not know.
“What the devil?” cried Conan, scrambling to his feet and reaching for his scimitar. “By Crom, this time—”
As he spoke, Psamitek shouted a word. Thereupon the sapphire smoke from the tripod instantly compacted itself into a ropelike column, writhing like a pale-blue, translucent serpent in the still afternoon air.
Another gesture and word from the Stygian, and the blue serpentine of smoke whipped toward Conan like a striking snake. The smoky cord threw coils around Conan’s body, like some ghostly python, pinioning his sword arm with his scimitar half drawn. Another coil wrapped itself around Conan’s neck and tightened, cutting off the Cimmerian’s breath.
Conan struggled until he foamed at the mouth. With his free left hand he clawed at the loop of smoke around his throat, so that his tunic bulged with the desperate bunching of muscles beneath it. To his touch the smoke felt like a cable of some slick, yielding, but animate substance, like a live eel, but dry.
He forced his thumb between the noose and his neck, although he had to gouge his own flesh with his thumbnail. He pulled the loop far enough from his throat to allow a wheezy, strangulated breath, but he might as well have tugged at a steel cable. The loop tightened, and Conan’s face purpled. The veins in his temples swelled until they seemed likely to burst.
Psamitek smiled thinly. “I said you should see more of my little tricks. Now I shall at leisure collect your head and the reward therefor. I need not even divide it with that Turanian savage. I shall have the finest occult library in Stygia!”
Conan tried to bite into the noose but could not pull it far enough from his chin to get his teeth into it. He thought of trying to throw his dagger, but one of the loops of smoke had pinioned the weapon against his side. Behind him he heard Egil moving uneasily, watching the drama with anxious incomprehension.
At the spectacle of Conan’s violent but unavailing struggles, Psamitek gave a coldly cynical laugh. “This,” he purred, “gives me more pleasure than even the gladiatorial games of Argos!”
Before Conan’s eyes, the landscape swam and darkened. With a final effort, he pulled the noose far enough from his throat to emit one shout. “Egil!” he croaked. “Kill him!”
With a snort, the well-trained warhorse sprang past Conan and reared up at Psamitek. Conan had a glimpse of the Stygian’s sallow countenance, suddenly wide-eyed with alarm at this unexpected intervention. And then one of Egil’s hooves descended on Psamitek’s shaven head with a crunch of shattered cranium.
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