Conan the Barbarian (17 page)

One vulture floated near on slow-beating wings, and settled on a branch above the Cimmerian’s head. It stretched its wattled neck to peer at the crucified man, whose head had sagged upon his broad breast. To the scavenger, the man’s battered carcass seemed devoid of life. The vulture peered more closely, swivelling its head from side to side to bring first one, then the other eye to bear upon its prey.

Conan remained motionless. In a lucid moment, he had become aware that, without a sip of liquid, death would snatch him up before the sun had set. And there was only one thing he might drink on all the burning plain.

The vulture left its perch; and a solitary figure in a windless sky, it dipped, then gained altitude for its attack. As it swept in, its hooked beak poised for a stab at Conan’s eyes, the bird’s shadow fell across the Cimmerian’s face. Summoning all his waning strength, Conan raised his head. He remained motionless when the vulture raked his chest, us, wings beating the air, the scavenger braced itself to lunge.

At that moment, Conan’s head shot forward. His jaws snapped, wolf-like, as his strong teeth sank into the bird’s slender neck and choked off its squawk of surprise and pain. Black wings buffeted the barbarian’s sun-baked face; claws inked his reddened flesh. But Conan’s grip held fast, as he sink his teeth ever deeper into the wrinkled, featherless neck. There was a final crunch of breaking bone, and the vulture’s wings hung limp. Keeping his jaws clenched, Conan sucked the vulture’s blood. Warm and salty though it was, the moisture rivalled a cup of the finest wine.

Somewhat revived, Conan raised his head once more. He saw that the sun, now declining in the west, had streaked the dreary plain with crimson. Suddenly, something about the scene brought the barbarian’s dulled wits into focus. Was it a plume of dust, shot through with red from the setting sun, or was it a column of smoke? Whatever it might be, it was growing larger, moving closer.

For a long time, Conan could not make out the nature of the approaching object, which swam through ripples of heat like a swimmer breasting a wind-tossed sea. At length its irregular form coalesced into the figure of a man on horseback, riding at an easy canter. Abruptly, the horseman, riding as only a Hyrkanian could ride, urged his mount into a gallop. Despite his cracked and swollen lips, Conan grinned.

“Erlik! What have they done to you?” cried Subotai, leaping from his horse and tying the reins to a low branch of the blasted tree. Conan growled a reply, but so dry was his throat that no articulate sound issued forth.

With shaking hands, Subotai fumbled in his saddle bag and found an implement, a tweezer of the sort used to pull stones from the hooves of horses. Tucking it into his belt, he clambered up the tree trunk to the place where the Cimmerian hung. In frantic haste, he struggled to extract the nails from Conan’s hands, hands that were swollen to twice their normal size. While the barbarian bit his lip to stifle his groans, Subotai wrenched and strained, until the nails came free.

Then, dropping the tweezer, the Hyrkanian sawed with his dagger at the ropes that bound Conan’s legs; and, when those bonds were loosened, he slashed at the binding around his friend’s arms.

“Hook an elbow over the branch, if you can,” he advised. “You don’t want to fall to the ground.”

At length the last rope was severed: and Conan, supported by the small thief, slid limply down. Propped against the tree trunk, the injured man silently endured the torment as Subotai rubbed his bruised and sunburned limbs to restore the circulation. Proffering a leathern flask of water, he said: “Rinse your mouth out first and spit. Then make a few small sips. If you drink as much as you’d like to, it will sicken you or worse. I’ve seen men die that way.”

“I know,” grunted the Cimmerian. “Have you aught to eat?”

“First let me start a signal fire, to fetch Valeria. We’ve been hunting for you. A fortune-teller said that you would be south of the Mountain of Power, but he could not tell us

more.”

The Hyrkanian gathered twigs from the litter at the foot of the dead tree, broke off a couple of small branches, and with flint and steel soon had a brisk fire going. Then, searching the neighbourhood, he discovered a few faded blades of grass that, added to the blaze, caused a billowing cloud of smoke. That done, Subotai picked up the dead vulture and, squatting down, began to pluck the bird.

“What in Crom’s name are you doing?” muttered Conan.

“Taking the feathers off,” replied the small thief.

“You do not mean to cook that thing!”

“Why not? Flesh is flesh, and we’re both hungry.”

Conan controlled his desire to retch, and grumbled: “If I am to sup, you will have to feed me. My hands are useless.”

Subotai nodded and bent over his small fire. Soon pieces of broiling vulture meat impaled on a sharpened stick were merrily spattering fat into the fire, and the delicious smell of cooking filled the air. After his spare but welcome meal, Conan sighed. Then, with his back against the Tree of Woe, he fell asleep.

Conan awoke to find himself among the burial mounds of the dead kings, near the shores of the Sea of Vilayet. Valeria was bending over him, bathing and salving his wounds. He had a faint memory—or was it a dream—of sitting Valeria’s horse while she rode behind him, guiding the beast, and steadying him each time he began to topple from the saddle.

He stared at his hands, stiff, swollen, and inflamed. To move a finger was sheer agony. “Never to bear a sword again,” he muttered. “I might as well be dead!”

Then consciousness again flickered out, and reality existed no more. The endless hours on the Tree of Woe had so sapped the Cimmerian’s store of animal vitality that those who tended him feared that he might not recover from his wounds. He burned with a raging fever; his faith in his own strength was gone.

“Does he yet live?” inquired the old shaman, shuffling to the doorway of the hut, beyond which lay the dying man.

“Aye, but barely,” replied the girl. “Old man, he called you a wizard. Have you any magic that can help him now? Or do your gods owe you a favour?”

The shaman eyed her silently. Taking his sombre stare as a confession that he did indeed have otherworldly powers, Valeria cried: “Then work your spells! Put strength back into the hands that must wield the sword of vengeance!”

The old man looked weary but resigned. “For such a spell, there is a heavy price. There always is for such a rite of magic. The spirits that haunt this sacred place and guard the tombs of kings exact their toll.”

“Whatever the price, I will gladly pay it!” said Valeria. “To work, sorcerer!”

A strange wind moaned, and shadows prowled amongst the tombs. Above the quicksilver surface of the Vilayet Sea, a gibbous moon showed the pallid face of a restless ghost, whose dark radiance illumined the barren earth between two of the larger monuments. In this uncouth place, while Valeria and Subotai watched with rapt attention, the shaman bound Conan’s limbs with strips of sable cloth and veiled his inert body with a shroud-like material of the same funereal hue. With another strip he encircled the barbarian’s head, carefully covering his bruised and sunburned eyelids. Upon this bandage, with deft strokes of a small brush, the old man painted a row of cryptic glyphs.

The wizard next dispatched Subotai to the seashore, bidding him to fetch a bucket of clear water; and when the water was brought, the shaman squatted on a piece of carpeting to meditate and gather up his powers. Valeria, alert to every move the old man made, sensed that he was reaching deep into his soul to tap a dormant source of inner strength.

Finally, the shaman roused himself from his mystic trance. He ceremoniously sprinkled the water over all of Conan’s body, as he mumbled potent names beneath his breath. This done, he bid the Hyrkanian bind Conan’s limbs securely to four stakes, driven deeply into the ground.

“Why so?” demanded Valeria.

Sombrely, the shaman watched Subotai at work. "During the night,” he said, “the spirits of this place, angered by my magic, will try to take the young man hence.

II they succeed...” His voice trailed off.

Valeria unsheathed her dagger and turned its blade until it glinted in the moonlight. “If your spirits bear him off, old man, you will soon follow.” In the hushed darkness, the girl’s fierce words assailed the moon with all the venom of a cornered cougar.

The shaman merely shrugged; but a faint smile, at youthful ardour long forgotten, trembled on his lips. Slowly the night dragged on, while the three held vigil among the ancient tombs. The uncaring moon climbed high in the velvet sky and picked her way among the stars. Southward, the Mountain of Power thrust up an ominous cone, black against the luminous darkness of the star-strewn sky. No cricket chirped. The silence was complete.

Suddenly, Valeria gripped the Hyrkanian’s wrist. Subotai, who had been dozing, swore as the girl’s nails pierced his skin. Then he, too, stared at Conan.

The huge Cimmerian’s shrouded form was heaving moving uncannily, without volition, as if seized by giant, invisible hands. The ropes that held him tensed and groaned; the stakes creaked under the strain of enormous unseen forces.

“They’ll tear him apart!” wailed Valeria, as Conan’s body twitched and thrashed about so violently that one stake was ripped from the ground. The shaman made no answer, but he began a strange chant pitched to a silent scream and moved his bony hands in mystical gestures.

Valeria leaped to her feet and threw herself on Conan’s body, shouting imprecations at the night. As the frantic girl wrestled with unseen powers, snarling like a lioness protecting her cub, Subotai fumbled for his scimitar. Then, bounding forward, he slashed through the empty air above the Cimmerian’s unconscious body and the girl who strove to weigh it down.

To Valeria’s surprise, the shrouded body slumped and lay motionless on its pallet. A wind sprang up from the sea and shadowy presences, borne aloft like shreds of mist, seemed to float away.

“They have gone,” sighed the shaman, shivering. “My spell was potent, and they failed.” The look he cast upon Valeria was full of pity.

As the morning sun leaped above the ocean waves, the wizard removed the sepulchral wrappings from Conan’s body. Subotai gasped. Valeria clapped her hands to her cheeks to curb the tears that welled up in her weary eyes.

The giant Cimmerian awoke, yawned, and stretched. Then he studied his hands in sheer amazement. His cuts and bruises—even the holes in his palms—had healed as if his ordeal had never been. With a grin of delight, he held his hands before his face, turning them to study every angle. The wounds made by the nails had closed to small, well-healed scars; the fingers, which had been grotesquely swollen, were back to normal size. He clenched and unclenched his hands to see if they still functioned.

“Wizard, I owe you a great debt,” the barbarian rumbled. Beaming, the old man nodded.

Valeria, who had pledged her life for his, and who was wan with sleepless anxiety, tightened her encircling arms around the Cimmerian and kissed him repeatedly, saying: “My love is stronger than death. Neither deities nor demons from the nether regions can separate us! If I were dead, and you in peril, remember that I’d return from the abyss—from the very pits of Hell—to fight by your side....”

Conan grinned, and crushing her to him, kissed her lustily. Valeria, unsatisfied still, persisted. “Promise me that you'll remember, always.”

Smiling at her womanly concern, Conan kissed her again and said, “Don’t worry; I’ll remember.”

XII

The Cleft

As Conan and his friends rejoiced in the wizard’s humble hut, the night was filled with laughter in distant Shadizar. In the great hall of the palace, Osric, King of Zamora, made wassail. His seers had informed him that Conan had reached the Mountain of Power and penetrated the recesses of its most secret temple; now the king looked forward to the imminent return of his daughter.

His age-worn frame was decked in robes of glittering brocade, his bent fingers glowed with splendid rings; he sat on his throne proudly, sipping rich wine from a cup of beaten gold. In the cheerful light of many candles, some as tall as a five-year child and as thick as a man’s thigh, lordly courtiers strolled in all their finery or gathered near the monarch to renew friendships long grown cold. At Osric’s feet, slave girls in loose trousers of bright transparent gauze reclined on purple and crimson cushions, reminding those with long acquaintance of the warrior-king of bygone years, before the cult of Set had infected the land with fear and loathing.

Yet even here in the throne room itself, the king did not feel safe from the assassins of the cult leader Doom; thus, grim-faced guards stood in pairs at every portal and at each open window to secure the monarch from stealthy footsteps in the night.

Osric broke off his unwanted banter as the chief chamberlain approached the throne, candlelight flashing from the polished curves of his silver mace of office. “Sire,” he said, “I desire a word with you.”

The king beckoned the official to come closer. “What is it, Choros?”

“Sire, he has come again—Yaro, the black priest of Doom. He begs a private audience with Your Majesty on some high matter of state.”

The king bared his teeth in a mirthless grin. “Begs, you say. Demands, like as not. Well, bid the dog back to his kennel, and leave me to my rare moment of pleasure.” “But, Sire,” the chamberlain persisted, “he has imparted to me that the matter concerns your daughter, the Princess Yasimina.”

The king’s face turned grey; his eyes grew dull. “Very well. But have the fellow searched most thoroughly. Do not overlook his rings, brooches, or other ornaments. These snake-worshippers are cunning men and treacherous. In their hands, the most unlikely object may become a deadly weapon.”

As the chamberlain bowed and withdrew, Osric beckoned to the captain of the guard.

“Clear the room. Tell my guests affairs of state press in upon me. I want no witnesses, save only Manes and Bagoas, my most trusted guards. Have each stand behind a pillar, ready to emerge in case the black dog attempts treachery.”