Conan the Invincible Page 20

  “Ort?” Hordo said. “Who is—”

  The heavy, iron-strapped cell door slammed open, and the fat jailer stood in the opening. Behind him was a brazier full of glowing coals, and from the coals projected the wooden handles of irons, their metal ends already as bright red as the coals they nestled among.

  “Who’s to be first?” Ort giggled.

  He snatched an iron from the fire and waved its fiery tip at them. Hordo put his back against the wall, teeth bared in a snarl. Haranides crouched, ready to spring in any direction, so far as his chains would let him. Conan did not move.

  “You, captain?” Ort said. He feinted toward Haranides, who tensed. “Ort likes burning officers. Or you, one-eye?” Giggling, he waggled the glowing iron at Hordo. “Ort could give you another scar, burn out your other eye. And you, strong one,” he said, turning his pig-eyed gaze on Conan, “think you to sit unconcerned?”

  Suddenly Ort darted at the Cimmerian, red-hot iron flashing, and danced back. A long blister stood on Conan’s shoulder. Awkwardly he raised one arm to cover his head, and huddled against the wall, half turning his back on the man with the burning iron. The other three men all stared at the big youth incredulously.

  “Fight him!” Haranides shouted, and had to throw himself back to avoid a vicious slash of the iron that would have taken him across the face.

  “Face him like a man, Conan,” Hordo urged.

  Cautiously Ort dashed again to strike and retreat, curiously agile on his feet. Conan groaned as a second blister grew across his shoulders, and pressed himself tighter to the stone.

  “Why he is no man at all,” Ort giggled. The nearly round jailor swaggered closer, to stand over Conan raising his blazing weapon.

  A roar of battle rage broke from Conan’s throat, and his mighty thews pushed him from his crouch. One hand seized Ort’s bulk, pulling him closer; the other looped its chain about the jailor’s neck, catching at the same time a desperately flung hand. Biceps bulging, he jerked the heavy iron chain tight, fat flesh bulging through the links. Ort’s tiny eyes, too, bulged from that fat face, and his feet scrabbled desperately at the bare stone floor. The jailor had but one weapon, and he used it, stabbing again and again with the burning iron at the Cimmerian’s broad back.

  The stench of burning flesh rose as the fiery rod seared Conan’s muscles, but he locked the pain from his mind. It did not exist. Only the man before him existed. Only the man whose eyes were staring from his fat face. Only the man he must kill. Ort’s mouth opened in a futile attempt to breathe, or perhaps to scream. His tongue protruded through yellowed teeth. The chain had almost disappeared into the fat of his neck. The iron dropped, and breath rattled in Ort’s throat and was silent. Conan put all his strength into one last heave, and there was the crack of a breaking neck. Slowly he unwound the chain, freeing it with some difficulty, and let the heavy body fall.

  “Mitra!” Haranides breathed. “Your back, Conan! I could not have stood it a tenth so long.”

  Wincing, Conan bent to pick up the iron. He ignored the dead man. To his mind all torturers should be treated so. “The means of our escape,” he said, holding Ort’s weapon up. Its metal was yet hot enough to burn, but the glow had faded.

  Carefully Conan fit the length of the iron through a link of the chain a handsbreadth from the manacle on one wrist. He took a deep breath, then twisted, the iron one way, his wrist the other. The manacle cut into the just-healed wounds left from his being staked out by the bandits, and blood trickled over his hand. The other two men held their breath. With a sharp snap the chain broke.

  Laughing, Conan held up his free wrist, the manacle still dangling a few inches of chain, and the iron. “I’d hoped the heat hadn’t destroyed the temper of the metal. It would have broken instead of the chain, otherwise.”

  “You hoped,” Hordo wheezed. “You hoped!” The bandit threw back his shaggy head and laughed. “You bet our freedom on a hope, Cimmerian, and you won.”

  As quickly as he could Conan broke the rest of his chains, and those of the other men. As soon as Hordo was free, the bearded man leaped to his feet. Conan seized his arm to stop him from rushing out.

  “Hold hard,” the Cimmerian said.

  “The time is gone for holding hard,” Hordo replied. “I go to see to the Red Hawk’s safety.”

  “To see to her safety?” Conan asked. “Or to die by her side?”

  “I seek the one, Cimmerian, but I’ll settle for the other.”

  Conan growled deep in his throat. “I’ll not settle for death on S’tarra pikes, and if you will you’re useless to me. And to Karela. Haranides, how many of your men do you think still live? And will they fight?”

  “Perhaps a score,” the captain replied. “And to get out of these cells they’ll fight Ahriman and Erlik both.”

  “Then take you the jailer’s keys, and free them. If you can take and hold the barbican, we may live yet.”

  Haranides nodded. “I’ll hold it. What will you be doing, Cimmerian?”

  “Slaying Amanar,” Conan replied. Haranides nodded gravely.

  “What about me?” Hordo said. The other two had been ignoring him.

  “Are you with us?” Conan asked. He barely waited for Hordo’s nod before going on. “Rouse the bandits. Somehow you must get over the wall without being seen, and bring them up the ramp before the catapults can fire on them. You must kill S’tarra, you and Karela’s hounds, and set as many fires as you can within the keep. Both you and Haranides must wait my signal to move, so we are all in position. When the top of the tallest tower in the keep begins to burn, then ride.”

  “I’ll be ready,” Hordo said. “It is taught that no plan of battle survives the first touch of battle. Let us hope ours is different.”

  “Fare you well, Haranides,” Conan said; then he and Hordo were hurrying from the dungeon.

  At the top of the stone stairs, as they entered the donjon itself, a S‘tarra rounded the corner not two paces from them. Hordo’s shoulder caught the creature in its mailed midriff, and Conan’s balled fist broke its neck. Hurriedly Conan pressed the S’tarra’s sword on Hordo, taking a broadbladed dagger for himself. Then they, too, parted.

  The way to Amanar’s chamber atop the tower was easy to find, Conan thought. All one did was climb stairs until there were no more stairs to climb, sweeping marble arcs supported on air, polished ebon staircases wide enough to give passage to a score of men and massive enough to support an army.

  And then there was only a winding stone stairway, curving around the wall of the tower with no rail to guard its inner drop. With his foot on the bottom step Conan paused, remembering Velita’s tale of a spell-trap. Were Amanar not within the keep, Conan’s next step could mean his bloody death by darkling sorceries. A slow death, he recalled. But if he did not go up, others would die at Amanar’s hands even if he did not. He took a step, then a second and third before he could think, continuing to place one foot in front of another until he was at the top, staring at an ironbound door.

  A sigh of relief left him. Too, there was use in the knowledge that Amanar was within the keep. But this was not a way he cared to go about collecting information.

  He opened the door and stepped into a room where evil soaked the walls, and the very air seemed heavy with sorcerous portent. Circular the room was, without windows and lined with books, but there was that about the pale leather of those fat tomes that made the Cimmerian want not to touch them. The tattered remains of mummies, parts of them ripped away, lay scattered across tables among a welter of beakers, flasks, tripods, and small braziers with their fires extinguished to cold ash. Jars of liquid held distorted things that might once have been parts of men. A dim light was cast over all by glass balls set in sconces around the walls that glowed with an eerie fire.

  But Velita was not there. In truth, he admitted to himself, he had no longer expected her to be. He could, at least, avenge her.

  Quickly he located the crystal coffer of which she had spoken.
It sat in a place of honor, on a bronze tripod standing in the center of the room. Carelessly he tossed the smoky lid aside to shatter on the stone floor, rummaged in the silken wrappings, and lifted out the silver-mounted black stone on its fine silver chain. Within the stone red flecks danced, just as in Amanar’s eyes.

  Tucking the pendant behind his wide leather belt he searched hurriedly for anything else that might be of use. He was ready to go when he suddenly saw his sword, lying among a litter of thaumaturgical devices on one of the tables. He reached for it … and stopped with his hand hovering above the hilt. Why had Amanar brought the sword to this peccant chamber? Conan had had experience of ensorceled swords, had seen one kill the man who grasped it at the command of another. What had Amanar done to his blade?

  The door of the room banged open, and Sitha sauntered in, fanged mouth dropping open in surprise at seeing Conan. Conan’s hand closed over the swordhilt in an instant and brought the blade to guard. At least, he thought with relief, it had not killed him so far.

  “So, Cimmerian,” Sitha said, “you have escaped.” Almost casually it reached to a jumble of long, mostly unidentifiable objects, and produced a spear with a haft as thick as a man’s wrist. The point was near a shortsword in length. “The master cannot punish me for killing you here, in this place.”

  “You must do the killing first,” Conan said. And he must set a fire. Soon. He circled, trying to get the tables out from between them. Reach was the S’tarra’s advantage. Sitha moved in the opposite direction, spear held warily.

  Abruptly the bronze gong began to toll. Sitha’s red eyes flickered away for just a moment; Conan bent, caught the edge of a long table with his shoulder, and heaved it over. Sitha leaped back as the heavy table crashed where his feet had been. Beakers of strange powder and flagons of multicolored liquids shattered on the floor. Acrid fumes rose from their mixing. The tolling continued, and now could be heard the faint sounds of shouting from the walls. Could Haranides or Hordo have decided not to wait, he wondered.

  “My master sent me hence for powders,” Sitha hissed. “Powders he thinks will increase the fear in the sacrifice.” On the last word he lunged, the spear point darting for Conan’s head.

  The Cimmerian’s broadsword beat the thrust aside, and his riposte slashed open the creature’s scaled chin. Sitha leaped back from the blow, putting an elongated hand to the bloody gash and letting out a string of vile oaths.

  “You still don’t seem to have killed me,” Conan laughed.

  Sitha’s sibilant voice became low and grating. “The sacrifice, Cimmerian, is that girl you came to this valley for. Velita. I will watch your face before I kill you, knowing you know she dies.”

  A berserker rage rose in the Cimmerian. Velita alive. But to remain that way only if he got there in time. “Where is she, Sitha?”

  “The chamber of sacrifice, human.”

  “Where’s this chamber of sacrifice?” Conan demanded.

  Sitha bared his fangs in a derisive laugh. With a roar Conan attacked. The berserker was on him. He jumped up, caught a foot on the edge of the overturned table, and leaped down on the S‘tarra’s side. The spearpoint slashed his thigh while he was in midair, but his slashing sword, driven by the fury of a man who meant to kill or die, but to do it now, sliced through the haft. Conan screamed like a hunting beast as he attacked without pause, without thought for his own defense, without allowing time for Sitha to do else but stumble back in panic. His second cut, almost a continuation of the first, severed the S’tarra’s right arm. Black blood spurted; a shriek ripped through those fangs. The third blow bit into Sitha’s thick neck, slicing through. Those red eyes glared at him, life still in them, for a bare moment as that head toppled from the mailed shoulders. Blood fountained, and the body fell.

  Panting with reaction, Conan looked about him. There was still the fire to … . Where the arcane powders and liquids had mixed among shattered fragments of stone and crystal, yellow flames leapt up, emitting an acrid cloud. In seconds the fire had seized on the overturned table, igniting it as though the wood had been soaked in oil from a lamp.

  Choking and coughing, Conan stumbled from the chamber. Behind him flames roared; air stirred already in the body of the tower, drifting upward. Soon that necromanical chamber would be a furnace, and the tower top would flare for the signal. The tollings of the bronze gong rolled forth. If the signal were still needed.

  Quickly the Cimmerian found his way from the tower, to a room with a window overlooking the keep and the valley beyond. His jaw dropped. On the ramparts S’tarra scurried with their weapons like ants in a stirred hill, and to good reason, for the valley floor swarmed with near a thousand turbanned hillmen, mounted and armed with lance and tulwar.

  Where Haranides and Hordo were, Conan had no idea. Their plan was gone by the wayside, but he might still save Velita if he could find the sacrificial chamber. But where in the huge black keep to begin? Even the donjon alone would take a day to search room by room. A sudden thought struck him. A chance, a small, bare chance, for her.

  Pantherine strides took him down alabaster halls and marble stairs, past startled S’tarra scurrying on appointed tasks and so afraid to stop him. Like a hawk he sped, straight to the plain stone arch and the sloping passage beyond that Amanar had falsely claimed led to his thaumaturgical chambers.

  Conan ran down that passage leading into the very heart of the mountain, arms and legs pumping, deep muscled chest working like a bellows. Death rode in his steely blue eyes, and he cared not if it was his death so long as Amanar preceded him into the shadows.

  The gray walls of the passage, lit by flickering torches, began to be carved with serpents, and then there were tall doors ahead, also carved with serpents in intricate arabesques. Conan flung the two doors wide and strode in.

  Amanar stood in his black, serpent-embroidered robe, chanting before a black marble altar, on which lay Velita, naked and bound. Behind the altar a mist of lambent fire swirled; beyond the mist was an infinity of blackness. Conan stalked down the curving row of shadowed columns, his teeth bared in a silent snarl.

  The dark sorcerer seemed to reach a resting place in his chant, for without looking around he said, “Bring it here, Sitha. Hurry!”

  Conan had reached a point a dozen paces from the altar. From there he examined the evil mage with great care. The man had not his golden staff, but what had he in its place? “I am not Sitha,” Conan said.

  Amanar started convulsively, whirling to stare at Conan, who stood in the shadows of the columns. “Is that you, Cimmerian? How have you come … . No matter. Your soul will feed the Eater of Souls somewhat early, that is all.” Velita peered past Amanar at Conan with dark eyes full of hope and desperation. The fiery mists thickened.

  “Release the girl,” Conan demanded. Amanar laughed. The Cimmerian dug the pendant from his belt, let it dangle from one massive finger by its chain. “I have this, mage!”

  The cold-eyed sorcerer’s laugh died. “You have nothing,” he snapped, but he touched his lips with his tongue and glanced nervously at the constantly deepening mists. Something stirred in their depths. “Still, it might cause … difficulties. Give it to me, and I will—”

  “It is his soul!” a voice boomed, seeming to come from every direction. Among the shadows along the columns on the far side of the chamber, one shadow suddenly split, folded, and thickened. And there before them stood Imhep-Aton.

  The Stygian sorcerer wore a golden chaplet set with a square-cut emerald, and a severe black robe that fell to his ankles. He moved slowly toward Amanar and the altar.

  “You,” Amanar spat. “I should have known when those two S’tarra died without wounds that it was you.”

  “The pendant, Conan of Cimmeria,” the Stygian said intently. “It contains Amanar’s soul, to keep it safe from the Eater of Souls. Destroy the pendant, and you destroy Amanar.”

  Conan raised his hand to smash the black stone against a column. And the will was not there to make h
is arm move so. To no avail he strained, then let his arm down slowly.

  Amanar’s laugh came shrilly. “Fool! Think you I placed no protection in that which is so important to me? No one who touches or beholds the pendant can damage it in any way.” Suddenly he drew himself up to his full height. “Slay him!” he shouted, each syllable a command.

  Abruptly Conan became aware of what had coalesced in the mists above and behind the altar. A great golden serpent head reared there, surrounded by long tentacles like the rays of the sun. The auricscaled body stretched into the blackness beyond the mists, and the ruby eyes that regarded Imhep-Aton were knowing.

  The Stygian had time for one horrified look, and then the great serpent struck faster than a lightning bolt. Those long, golden tentacles seized the screaming man, lifted him high. The tentacles seemed but to hold, almost caressingly, but Imhep-Aton’s shrieks welded Conans’ joints and froze his marrow. The man sounded as if something irrevocably irretrievable were being ripped from him. Eater of Souls, Conan thought, and shuddered.

  The tentacles shifted their grip, now encircling and entwining, covering Imhep-Aton from head to feet, tightening. His shrieks continued for a disturbingly long time, long after blood began to ooze between the tentacles like juice squeezed from a ripe fruit, long after there should have been no breath or lungs left to scream with. The bloody bundle was tossed aside, to strike the mosaic floor with a sound like a sack of wet cloth. Conan avoided looking at it. Instead, he concentrated on the pendant hanging from his fist.

  “Thou commanded me,” a voice hissed in Conan’s head, and he knew it was the great serpent, god or demon, which mattered little at the moment, speaking to Amanar. “Thou growest above thyself.”

  Conan stared at the hand holding the pendant. The grim god of his Cimmerian northcountry, Crom, Lord of the Mound, gave a man only life and will. What he did with them, or failed to do, was up to him alone. Life and will.

  “Thy servant begs thee to forgive him,” Amanar said smoothly, but the smoothness slipped as the serpent’s mind-talk went on.