Conan the Barbarian (19 page)

All around the cauldron, huge, sweat-covered beast-men worked to feed the flames beneath the vast cook pot, while other hairy workers struggled with some contraption that stirred the steaming contents. Great chunks of boiling meat floated in the bubbling bowl, while apelike butchers cut up other carcasses to add to the aromatic stew. Beyond the cook pot stretched a generous dining hall furnished with trestle tables and benches made of logs.

Suddenly the three intruders stiffened and stared in disbelief. Hung from meat hooks to one side of the great cauldron, half-hidden by the steam and the flickering firelight, they saw human bodies, drawn and bloodless, like those of beef sides or plucked fowl. From the delicate, almost translucent flesh that covered the pallid faces and immobile limbs, it was clear that the victims had once been pilgrims to the Mountain of Power, followers of the serpent god. As the three adventurers watched in horror, a pair of beast-men hacked up one body with their cleavers and, hotting over to the cauldron, tossed the pieces into the boiling liquid.

Valeria turned pale, and buried her face against Conan's shoulder. The Cimmerian swore an oath beneath his breath. Subotai retched. Fortunately, the rhythmic beating of the drums increased in volume and masked the tell-tale sound. As the noise swelled, the watchers’ attention focused on the frenzied beating, which filled the cavern with reverberating echoes. The drums were as huge as the cauldron; the taut hide stretched across each top was set to vibrating, not by hands or drumsticks, but by the bare feet of grotesque, capering figures.

The dancing figures, either naturally as hirsute as beasts or wrapped closely in the skins of wild animals, seemed oddly deformed. The shadows they cast in the uncertain light of the flames wore the shape of fiends from the nethermost reaches of Hell.

“What manner of man or devil are they?” whispered Subotai, incredulously.

Conan shrugged, remembering the hulking, anthropoid guards whom he had passed on his way into the temple.

The whispers of the raiders were silenced by the clank of armour. They shrank back into deeper gloom, as a squad of hairy men in metal-mounted leather marched into the dining hall, tugged off their helmets, and settled down to Iced. Soon they were joined by a straggle of latecomers, whose noisy gruntings added to the din.

Conan jerked a peremptory thumb to urge his companions on. Proceeding with utmost caution, they circled past the seething cauldron with its ghastly contents, and in time came to another section of the cavern used as a dwelling place by the cave folk. Here the women and children of the noglodytes, as ugly as the males, pursued their domestic affairs.

“Trolls!” muttered Subotai, his eyes widening. “The legends of my people tell of them.”

Valeria shook her head. “No, they are the descendants of an ancient race, who dwelt in caves from times beyond man’s memory.”

“How could they thus have sunk to the level of beasts?” muttered the small Hyrkanian.

Valeria said: “From what I have heard, such is not the case. They are not men who have become animals, but animals who have almost grown to men. My people say that long, long ago there were two branches of man: our forebears and these shadow-dwellers. My ancestors called them that because these beast-men could not endure the light of day and chose to make their home in the hollows beneath the earth. When our forebears spread out across the land, seeking the daylight and the fertile earth, these shadow-dwellers burrowed ever deeper into the ground.”

“And fed on human flesh,” added Subotai disgustedly.

Valeria nodded. “This Doom must breed them here for his unholy purposes. He feeds them on the bodies of his cult-worshippers. Or on those he teaches his followers to kill.”

Conan glowered. “That’s how the snake prophet protects his mindless children—with an army of cannibals! beast-men whose bellies are filled with the fools who follow him.”

“Or those who wish to follow him no more,” said Subotai.

Beyond the living quarters of the cave folk, the three raiders reached the far end of the great cavern, and found themselves confronted by a bridge of thong-bound poles suspended between two mammoth logs. This narrow bridge spanned a wide, deep fissure, which had been opened up in aeons past by some violent convulsion within the mountain. Beyond this obstacle they perceived a generous, man-made portal through which shone a strange, opalescent light. Seeing no guard about, they ventured into the open, with Subotai, arrow nocked, in the lead.

Suddenly, at the far end of the bridge, an apelike boy appeared. About four feet tall, the beast-child was already of a muscular, stocky build that bespoke enormous strength. Pulling a hatchet from his girdle, he snarled and gesticulated wildly. Then he charged.

“They can’t talk,” rumbled Conan, preparing to defend himself and the girl behind him.

Even as the Cimmerian spoke, a bowstring twanged; mid the boy stood transfixed by an arrow. He shrieked, sniggered, and tumbled into the chasm.

Subotai sighed. “He was only a boy.”

“Yes, but he would have grown up,” said Valeria. “Let’s move on.”

Led by the incandescent greenish glow, they hastened through the unguarded portal and found themselves in a mu row hallway, such as servants use when attending to the orders of their masters. There was no sign of any who might challenge them; yet they moved on furtive feet, hugging the wall to take advantage of every shadow.

“This must be the entrance for the guards of Thulsa Doom,” muttered Conan, “and of those who serve the faithful followers of Set.”

Subotai nodded. “And since they are all servants of the snake-god, Doom feels no need to post a sentinel here.” “Let’s still go with caution,” said Valeria. “We do not know what awaits us further on.”

Stealthily they proceeded along the hall and up a rock-hewn stairway; and much amazed, they found themselves at the threshold of a chamber draped in filmy gauze to form, as it were, a pavilion through which the green light pulsed. Around it, half-hidden by the translucent curtains, this by an evening mist, the astonished intruders saw graceful Hits and beds of delicate-hued flowers, planted in soil-ill led hollows to re-create a garden within the confines of the cave. The floor of polished blue-black marble gleamed like the still waters of a lake, and from silver vessels Incense curled upward through the motionless air. Above the distant throbbing of the drums, a flute sang like a nightingale to weave a sense-seducing spell.

Into the ethereal glow of this fairyland crept the three raiders, gliding like insubstantial shadows from shrub to shrub. Behind the draperies of the pavilion they perceived dozens of young people of both sexes clad in gossamer or Hot at all. Some lay in slumber; others languidly made love; yet others sat in a deathlike trance, their backs propped up against the slender columns of malachite, which upheld the draperies that formed the place of pleasure.

So slowly did the pleasure-seekers move, if indeed they moved at all, that Conan looked at his companions and wordlessly formed the word, “Drugged!”

Subotai’s quick glance picked out one guard and then another, their anthropoid, hairy bodies stretched out in swinish sleep beside those whose guardians they were. Even the leopards, chained to a column, had been affected by the potent narcotic that wafted upward with the incense; for they had laid their slumberous heads between their paws and closed their eyes of molten gold.

Suddenly, Valeria touched Conan’s arm and pointed. With a shock, Conan recognized his ancient enemy. Thulsa Doom sat in an alcove, in a trance-like state, his legs and arms crossed, his head bowed, the better to inhale a spiral of drugged vapour that rose from a carven bowl placed on a brazier.

Before him knelt Princess Yasimina of Shadizar. Her transparent garment had fallen from her shoulders, exposing the gentle swell of her high breasts. While two handmaidens chanted an exotic paean in a strange language, the princess—like one sunk in a sensual dream—slowly undulated her naked torso and ran eager hands up and down her bare thighs. Her head was thrown back, her eyes half-closed, and she licked her lips with the tip of her tongue.

Lethargically, Doom raised his head and feasted his eyes on the girl’s exposed beauty.

“The princess?” whispered Valeria. Conan nodded. His blue eyes blazed with anger and disgust.

“So this is the Paradise of Set!” murmured Subotai. “The prophet might convert me from the worship of Erlik, if the women were as wakeful as they are willing.”

Valeria eyed him coldly. Then turning to Conan, she breathed, “What now?” But he made no answer.

“If we wait a while,” Subotai replied, “they will all fall asleep. And then... What say you, Cimmerian?”

Two pairs of eyes sought Conan’s face; but his attention was riveted to the wall of the alcove wherein Doom and Yasimina were lost in their narcotic dreams. Valeria gasped. Never had she seen such an expression on Conan’s face. Hate and animal ferocity possessed the

Cimmerian’s countenance, and with it a heart-aching sadness that lay too deep for tears.

Valeria and Subotai directed a questing glance at the blue-green wall behind the cult leader and his priestess.

There, supported by two silver pegs, hung a heavy broadsword, the cross-guard fashioned in the form of a stag’s millers, and the pommel shaped like the hooves of elk.

Long and superbly crafted was the blade, and its polished length flashed like a mirror in the dim green light.

It was a work of art, a weapon of pure Atlantean steel the sword forged by Conan’s father.

XIV

The Rescue

Oblivious to the scene before him, the young Cimmerian, casting caution to the winds of fate, stepped forward. To regain his father’s sword alone possessed him. Valeria and Subotai, with total disregard of danger, loyally moved forward at his side.

As the three figures, arms at the ready, cut off all escape from the alcove, Thulsa Doom strove to cast off the stupor that held him in thrall. His eyes narrowed as he focused on the three determined faces and the three blades no more than a few strides from his person. An anger more terrible than any the two Pit fighters had ever seen twisted his visage and for a moment immobilized them.

Valeria sank the nails of her left hand into Conan’s sword arm and whispered, “Look!”

Subotai drew in his breath and swore a Hyrkanian oath. One of the leopards chained to a pillar opened its golden cat’s eyes and, with twitching ears, watched silently. Conan stared.

A weird change was coming over the slender form of Doom. His neck rippled and seemed to lengthen. The lower part of his face bulged forward, elongating his jaws. His aquiline nose shrivelled and disappeared as his forehead receded. Cracks appeared on his ascetic face, narrow dark connected and formed a pattern of huge, overlapping scales. As his lips thinned and vanished, his sleepy eyes rounded into lidless orbs with slit pupils ringed in red. A forked tongue of dark purple flicked out of the serpent’s head that Doom now wore, wavered to test the air, and speedily withdrew “Crom!” muttered Conan, as the serpent head and neck swayed, as a cobra sways in its basket to the whine of the snake-charmer’s pipe or the motion of his body.

Subotai was the first to recover his voice. “We must burn out this snake’s nest!” he whispered.

Conan nodded. “Foulness like this can only be cleansed with the torch.”

“But only after we get the princess,” breathed Valeria.

“And my father’s blade.”

With the speed of a pouncing puma, the Cimmerian leaped into the alcove, darted past the swaying serpent’s head, and lifted the great weapon from its pegs. At the same instant, Valeria bounded across the marble floor to stand, with legs widespread and sword in hand, above the kneeling follower of Set.

“Come,” she whispered.

Princess Yasimina looked up at the warrior woman, magnificent in her strength and determination, and screamed.

“Get up,” Valeria commanded; and when the terrified girl failed to obey, she seized her long hair and pulled her to her feet.

Feebly, the stupefied girl struggled as Valeria grasped her arm and half-dragged her, whimpering, across the room in which the sated lovers and drugged celebrants lay with their guards in passionless self-absorption.

Once the unwilling princess had left the alcove, Conan and Subotai snatched up candles and touched the flaming tapers to the drifting curtains that framed the: resting place of Thulsa Doom. The handmaidens, aroused by the acrid stench of burning cloth, fled to the central pavilion, but they found no refuge there.

Covering Valeria’s retreat, Conan and Subotai paused only long enough to touch a candle flame to one gauze drapery, then another, and another. One by one the cultists woke, coughing and rubbing smoke-filled eyes. Then, seeing blazing curtains all around them, they shrieked in mindless terror and scrambled for exits at the far end of the chamber.

One brutish guard interposed himself between the raiders and the stairway by which they sought to flee. Suddenly, there was a flash of steel; and the beast-man fell, half hacked in two by Conan’s Atlantean steel. Subotai thrust a lighted taper into the face of a turbaned youth who came at him with a dagger. Screaming and clutching his singed forehead, the boy staggered off.

As he neared the sheltering stairs, the Cimmerian glanced back, searching the incandescent room for Thulsa Doom, hoping to find him lying dead in his alcove. But even as he looked, his hope was dashed. The curtains no longer smouldered; the smoke had rolled away; and there was no trace of the wizard, who seemed none other than the serpent-god himself.

Beyond the chaos, near to the narrow stairs up which the invaders had come, stood Valeria. At her feet crouched a distraught and trembling Yasimina, whose furtive glances bespoke a frantic search for an opportunity to escape her captor.

Suddenly, a tight little smile flitted across her sullen lips. Like a firefly, it lit her face for a brief moment and vanished; to Valeria, with her training as a Pit fighter, it flashed a message of trouble to come. She heard a scrape of boots on the stairs, faint as the sound was above the throb of the incessant drums in the cavern below and the screams' of panic in the once lovely fairyland created for lovers and their beloved. Valeria whirled.