Conan the Barbarian

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Instead she arranged them to be her first worshippers. For while her father would be made a god, he would only ever see her as a princess. That was an error he would not be the first god to make; and her taking her rightful place in the pantheon would not be the first act of divine rebellion. Though she loved her mother and father dearly, she was fully aware that they had used her as a means to achieving their own ends, and so she would use them as a means for her to become that which she had always been meant to be.

  Below, two acolytes blew on ivory horns carved from mastodon tusks. The bass call reverberated through the sacrificial cavern. Marique felt a familiar thrill running through her belly. Outside, warriors snapped to attention. They stood on either side of the roadway, ready to welcome their new queen. Maliva would make them over into the creatures Acheron had relied upon for centuries. Their limbs would be straightened, the forms made more powerful. They would cease to be human, and would not notice or care. They would be handsome, if the shadowed murals below were any clue, and alien.

  She thought briefly of Remo, whom she had seen skulking through the ruins from time to time. He’d seen the murals. It was his wish to be transformed. He believed—or at least had presumed to hope—that Khalar Zym would choose him as Marique’s consort. And the true pity was that his wish might have come true, though his transformation would have rendered any conventional understanding of their relationship moot.

  Her father appeared and the horns blasted again. He had donned golden armor, which shone with unnatural brightness within the cavern. It had been modeled on that worn by the last priest-king of Acheron, and the ruins themselves imparted energy to it—the tribute of ghosts who longed to honor near-forgotten glories. His twinned serpentine blades rode in the scabbard at his left hip. He walked to the platform, his steps sure, his eyes bright—every bit a warrior and a ruler. He took up his place at Tamara’s left hand, his back toward Khor Kalba, then surveyed the gathered faithful as a god might survey an assembly of his high priests.

  He opened his hands. “Now is the time in which great wrongs are righted. Through this woman and her sacrifice, my wife shall return, and through her shall we return Acheron to its glory. All of you, whether from far Nemedia or Turan, from the deserts of Stygia, the dank jungles of Keshan, or the jeweled cities of Aquilonia, you all have shared with me a secret. The blood of Acheron runs through our veins. Some of us had it introduced by rapine. Others of us fled when Acheron fell. Some of us never knew until recent times of our heritage, and others have worked for centuries to bring this day to fruition.

  “The day of our redemption is at hand!”

  That statement was Marique’s cue. She turned to an acolyte and accepted from his hands the red silk-wrapped Cimmerian sword. She descended a short set of stone stairs and approached her father’s left side. She could not keep a smile from her face, but whether it arose from pride in her father, or because she knew that all of them would soon be on bended knee before her, she could not say.

  Marique unwrapped the blade and raised it high, red silk hiding her hand and flowing, bloodlike, down her arm. “As a victorious barbarian’s sword once shattered the Mask of Acheron, a vanquished barbarian’s sword—one made by the hand of the last guardian of a mask shard—shall revive it.”

  Khalar Zym took the naked blade from her, and as he did so, her smallest finger brushed the sword’s bronze pommel. It stung, as if a metal burr had slid into her flesh . . . but she knew it was not that at all. The barbarian is close. She smiled. He was not close enough. Nothing could stop her father now.

  Khalar Zym studied the blade, then washed it in the smoke of a censer. As the acolyte bearing that censer moved to waft smoke over Tamara, two other acolytes tipped the wheel forward. Tamara hung by her chains above the fiery river far below, her long hair idly buffeted by rising currents. The last acolyte moved onto the platform, bearing the mask on a golden ceremonial tray. Marique took the tray from him, and moved to her father’s right hand.

  Again he raised the sword above his head. “By lusty Derketo and the serpent lord Set, by Dagon and Nergal and gods we shall return to their rightful places . . . with this blade I do seed the mask with the blood of its ancient master.”

  With the delicacy of a parent brushing an errant lock from a child’s cheek, Khalar Zym laid the sword’s edge against Tamara’s collarbone and slid it forward. The woman gasped and blood flowed. It trailed down from the cut to the fullness of her breast, then dripped off, hot and red.

  On bended knee, Marique raised the tray and let the blood splash over the mask. The droplets did not spatter as might have been expected, but were sucked into the mask as if it were thirsty silk. What had been a hard-edged puzzle of bone and reptilian leather drank the blood. Tiny bubbles frothed along the breaks caused by the shattering, then those fissures sealed themselves. Desiccated flesh grew more supple. Tissue swelled, taking on a deeper luster. The patina of age faded and vitality suffused the mask.

  And there, for the first time, one of the tentacles twitched. It was not a strong motion, but it was not a trick of the eye either. Then another one moved, and another. The motions became deliberate. One tentacle tested itself against the tray, lifting the mask for a heartbeat, then letting it thump down again. Marique felt it through the gold, and heard it, and when she looked up, in her reflection on the golden tray’s edge, she spied a goddess.

  She turned, and her father, bloody sword in one hand, secured the mask in the other. The tentacles caressed his hand. Marique did not know which she envied more: the tentacles for being able to touch her father in way that lit his face so, or her father, for holding, pulsing and alive there in his hand, the culmination of his dreams,

  “Ancient ones which burn beneath us, unspeakable art thy names.” Ecstasy in full possession of his expression, Khalar Zym lifted his face to the heavens and laughed aloud. “Behold your new master, and despair in his lack of mercy.”

  He stared at the mask in his left hand, then slowly raised it to his face. The tentacles, as if feeling his breath, bent themselves toward him. As he pressed the mask against his flesh, they wrapped around his head. Their tips plunged into his skin, through his scalp and cheeks, along his jaw. No blood welled from the wounds because the mask’s flesh and his flesh became as one.

  “Yes, of course, yes.” Khalar Zym turned toward Marique. She rose and held the tray between them as if it were a shield. “Fear not, daughter. I have always loved you. I always shall. I can forgive you anything.”

  A chill ran through Marique. She bowed her head. “My father is most kind.”

  “He is.” Khalar Zym’s voice grew slightly distant. “But I shall not always be your father.”

  He turned, extending his open hand toward Tamara. “Maliva, my queen, hear my call! I summon you from the depths of the deepest hell. Swiftly return, my love, and bring with you all knowledge forgotten and damned. Now is the time for our eternal rule to begin.”

  On the other side of the wheel, the censer clanked to the decking. The acolyte’s body fell one way. His head rolled and bounced off the platform. The acolyte beside him began to bleed from the forehead, in a line that ran down his nose. His eyes rolled up as if he were attempting to see what had happened, then he jerked forward, rebounding off the wooden collar, having been propelled by a booted foot.

  Khalar Zym snarled. “Who dares?”

  “That mask is not yours, Khalar Zym. Nor is the power that goes with it.” The Cimmerian crouched low, blood running from his blade. “I’ve come to take the piece that is mine, and to send you to join your wife in hell.”

  CHAPTER 33

  CONAN FLICKED BLOOD from his blade and stalked across the platform toward the man who would be a god. One of the acolytes let loose with a blast on his ivory horn—a blast Conan aborted with a harsh glance. The other acolyte pulled back, and his retreat spurred the ritual’s observers to join him, giving the fighters ample room to engage each other.

  Khalar Zym raised the Cimmerian
great sword and struck a guard, as if he were once again a minor Nemedian prince dueling at court. Conan came at him directly, both hands on his long sword’s hilt. He did not feint or waver; he came on directly. When Khalar Zym lunged, hoping to spit him, Conan battered aside the blade his father had made and struck. He caught Khalar Zym above the right ear, striking sparks from the mask and drawing blood that the mask greedily drank in.

  Foul green energy pulsed forth, sending a cold wave of numbness down Conan’s arm. Khalar Zym fell back and the very earth itself shook. Planks snapped. The platform sagged, spilling half the visitors off into the fiery abyss. Stones crumbled and began to fall, then a loud crack sounded from behind the Cimmerian.

  “Conan!”

  The Cimmerian turned and leaped toward the ceremonial wheel. The wooden collar around it had broken. His gaze met Tamara’s for a heartbeat, then the wheel dropped down, as if falling down a chimney, taking her with it. Conan ran to the edge, fearing all he would see was her body dwindling in the distance, a blackened shadow against the molten river below.

  But there, twenty feet down, the wheel’s pins caught. On either side of the crevasse two statues faced each other, kneeling, arms spread. The black basalt figures, one male, the other female, regarded Tamara with blind, pitiless eyes. The wheel slowly spun in the space between the statues, Tamara’s fate resting in the laps of forgotten gods.

  Conan leaped down and landed with feline precision, one foot on a god and the other on the wheel. He hammered a manacle with his sword’s pommel, popping it open, then slashed the chain binding Tamara in half.

  “I will have you out in a heartbeat.”

  She smiled at him. “And then for getting us out of here, you have a plan?”

  Before he could reply or reach her other manacle, the Cimmerian looked up. Khalar Zym landed across from him and stomped on the wheel. It came up and over, spilling Conan back against the basalt goddess’s breasts. “Tamara!”

  A chain slithered through a bolt. “I’m free, Conan. There’s a ledge.”

  “Find a way out.”

  “I won’t leave you.”

  “I won’t be far behind.”

  Khalar Zym shouted back up the chimney. “Marique, find her. She cannot escape.” He then reached down and pressed his left hand to the wheel. His hand glowed, not the green emanating from the mask, but the dark violet glow that pulsed from deep within some of the ruins’ recesses. Purple witchfire spread over the wheel, consuming nothing. Instead it appeared to stabilize the platform.

  Khalar Zym straightened, then stepped onto the wheel. “Come, Cimmerian. You shall be the first sacrificed to my glory. Forever shall be remembered your name.”

  Conan joined him, contempt in the grin he wore. “I don’t want to be remembered—just to make certain you’re forgotten for all time.”

  TAMARA RAN ALONG the ledge and onto a broader avenue of soot-blackened ruins. To the right and downstream of the fiery river was the platform from which she’d fallen. She wasn’t certain she could get back out that way, and was positive that people would try to stop her. To the left, the avenue paralleled the river, and slowly curved off to the right before making a broader sweep back to the left and inland. Below and before her, ancient bridges crossed the burning flow.

  She saw footprints in the dust near her feet, so she ran along left. Since everything at her right hand was on the coastal side of the ruin, she peered through doorways, hoping to see the night sky through a crack, or perhaps catch a hint of a breeze from the sea. She ran along quickly and then, toward the back of a long, dark space, she caught a flicker of light. Carrying the length of chain still bound to her right wrist, she made for it.

  Halfway along, the room exploded with light. Tamara found herself in a forest of obscene statues—graven images that mocked and blasphemed. They’d been gathered together in tableaux which defied description and could only have amused a very sick mind.

  And down through the aisle between them strode Marique, her head held proudly high. She spread her hands, Stygian talons bright on the right, a sharp poniard in the left. “Welcome to my realm. Do you like it?”

  “Not in the least.” Tamara dropped the chain and slowly started looping it around her forearm. “Show me the way out of here.”

  The witch smiled coldly. “If I do not?”

  “I’m not drugged. I’m not in chains, and you don’t have a cadre of guards to restrain me.” Tamara’s eyes became slits. “You can’t stop me, and if I need to prove I’m not lying, you’ll pay the price in pain.”

  THE TWO MEN moved around the wheel, swords occasionally licking out like serpents’ tongues, to contest the space at the wheel’s heart. The blades rang together, the Cimmerian steel all the sweeter for its masterful construction. The peal and the echoes brought back memories of Conan’s father wielding that same blade, and a slow fury at Khalar Zym’s unworthiness to use it began to rise in Conan.

  Conan came around the wheel, knees bent, shoulders forward, always keeping his weight even and his balance under control. He pushed forward, poking low with the long sword, then withdrawing the blade before Khalar Zym could parry. He blocked the man’s return cuts with ease.

  Khalar Zym’s frustration grew. The mask writhed impatiently on his face. Conan did not wonder if the mask remembered the barbarians who had come to destroy it before. It would be enough that Khalar Zym did. It would get him thinking about insignificant things, about Conan being from Cimmeria and being the only man who’d drawn his blood in duels.

  “Damn you, Cimmerian!” Khalar Zym’s face twisted in a demoniacal snarl. “You have troubled me too long. It is time for you to die.”

  The man-god advanced quickly, stabbing low and coming high. Conan retreated before him, working his way back around the wheel. They’d come all the way around, Khalar Zym quickening his pace, when Conan stopped. The Nemedian lunged, but Conan leaned left. The Cimmerian great sword passed between Conan’s body and arm. He clamped down on Khalar Zym’s wrist, binding it tight to his side, then hit him twice with a fist, hammering that bleeding ear.

  Khalar Zym pulled back. Conan stripped the sword from the man-god’s hand, letting his own long sword fall away, and reared back. He planted a front kick against Khalar Zym’s breastplate that slammed the man-god back against the ebon idol’s chest. Khalar Zym rebounded onto his knees and caught himself before he could pitch headlong into the abyss.

  “Damn you, Cimmerian.” Khalar Zym raised a fist wreathed with arcane flames. “Damn you to hell!”

  The man-god’s fist fell.

  The wheel exploded.

  MARIQUE REGARDED THE monk with new eyes. “Should I be amused by you, or angered?”

  “If those are your only choices, you’re an idiot.” Tamara drifted forward more quickly than Maliva’s gown should have allowed. She let a foot or so of chain slip into her hand. Then she whipped it around, lashing out. Before Marique could move, the chain tore the dagger out of her hand. The blade ricocheted off into the darkness below the cruel gods. Then Tamara’s fist came around and Marique saw stars. She found herself flat on the ground with the monk heading out the side passage.

  Marique tasted blood. She struck me. She dared strike me! She came up on all fours like a cat, then started after the monk. You will pray that I let you die!

  Marique bolted through a short passage, then down a flight of stairs that spread out into a small courtyard. Back when the sun shined on the city, it had been a garden, but the molten river had long since nibbled away the edge on this level and all those below. Opposite the courtyard, she’d arranged a half-dozen statues of horned gods, thinking eventually to consign them to the flames, but at the moment she was pleased to have them there to witness her victory.

  Tamara turned, her back against the little garden’s wall.

  Marique spat blood. “No one dares to strike me. No one.”

  The monk smiled. “I’ll be happy to do it again.”

  “You don’t understand, my dear.
” Marique raised her right hand and, with her index finger, inscribed a burning sigil in the air. “You learned to fight. I taught myself to kill.”

  At a whispered word, the Acheronian sigil flew directly at Tamara. The monk dodged, impressing Marique with both her speed and agility. Neither mattered, however, as the sigil hit her in hip and spun her around. She slammed into the wall and bounced off it, dropping to her hands and knees, her head down.

  Marique marched over and grabbed a fistful of her hair. She yanked back, stretching the woman’s throat. She raised her right hand, the claw full of Stygian metal glinting gold in the hot river’s glow. “And kill you I shall.”

  Tamara looked up. “But if you kill me, you kill your mother!”

  Marique laughed. “Who do you think it was who let my mother’s enemies take her in the first place?”

  The monk gasped in horror.

  Marique grinned.

  Her hand rose high and descended . . .

  . . . And the Cimmerian great sword took it off cleanly at the wrist.

  Marique spun, staring at the blood spurting from the stump, and the barbarian crouched with his back to the gods. She started to say something, but then the monk was again on her feet. Tamara spun and caught Marique with a kick to the belly. The witch flew from the garden, plummeting toward the river, but a stone post one level down stopped her. It snapped her spine, crushing her heart against her breastbone, then burst up through her chest. Impaled, she slid down its glistening length and stared up into the darkness.