Conan growled: "Lucky that trader fellow, Nahor, warned us of Thutmekri's arrival before I sought an audience with the king. I could never match wits with that slippery devil. He would have denounced us to the king, and the fat would have been in the fire."
"Oh, Conan!" whimpered Muriela. "Give up this mad scheme! Nahor offered you a post in his caravan...."
Conan snorted. "Take Nahor's piddling pay as a caravan guard, when there's a fortune for the finding here in Punt? Not I!"
-
Before the first stars ventured forth upon the plain of evening, Conan and Muriela reached the hill they sought. Here in an uninhabited place stood the shrine-temple of the Puntish divinity, Nebethet. There was something about the place—the emptiness, the silence, the somber gloom draping the hills in velvet cloaks— that sent a chill of premonition into Muriela's heart.
Nor was the sight of the shrine reassuring when, having wound up the steep slope, they caught their first glimpse of it. It was a round, domed building of white marble, rare in this land of dun mud-brick walls and roofs of thatch. The barred portal resembled a mouth with bared fangs and was flanked on the second story by two square windows like empty eye sockets. A great silver skull, the edifice grinned down on them in the fight of the gibbous moon, a lonely sentinel guarding a grim and silent land that stretched away on either side in barren desolation.
Muriela shuddered. "The gate is barred. Let us go, Conan; we cannot enter here."
"We stay," muttered Conan. "We will go in if I have to carve a way into this skull-shaped pile. Hold the horses."
Conan swung off his mount, handed his reins to the trembling girl, and examined the entrance. The portal was blocked by a huge portcullis of bronze, green with age. Conan heaved upon the structure; but, although the massive muscles of his arms and chest writhed like pythons, the portcullis would not budge.
"If one way does not serve, we'll try another," he grunted, returning to Muriela and the horses. From the sack strapped to the spare horse, he took a coil of rope, to which was attached a small grapnell. Then he disappeared around a curve of the building, leaving the fearful girl alone in the eerie place. As time passed, her fear turned into stark terror; and when a low voice called her name, she cried aloud. "Here, wench, here!"
Startled, she looked up. At one of the dark windows above the portal, Conan waved at her.
"Tie the nags," he said. "And forget not to loosen their girths."
When she had tethered the beasts to one of the bars of the toothy portal, he added, "Grasp this and sit in the loop I have made."
The rope snaked down, and when she was seated in the bight, he hauled her up, hand over hand. The grazing horses and the grinning entrance wobbled and spun beneath her in the light of the rising moon. She bit her hp and closed her eyes; and her knuckles were alabaster as she clung to the rope. Soon Conan's strong arms closed about her. She felt the cold slickness of the marble sill against her bare thighs as he drew her slim weight in through the casement. When at last the flooring held firm beneath her feet, she breathed a sigh of relief, and her eyes fluttered open.
There was nothing in her new surroundings to give rise to superstitious fear. She stood in a small empty room, the stone walls of which were bare of ornament. Across the room she saw the outlines of a trapdoor, propped open by a stick of wood.
"This way," said Conan, grasping her arm to steady her uncertain steps. "Careful, now. The planks of this floor are old and rotten."
Below the trapdoor, a ladder descended into the gloom. Fighting her queasiness, she let her companion precede her downward. They found themselves in a spacious rotunda, ghostly in the semidarkness. A circle of marble columns surrounded them, supporting the dome overhead.
"The modern Puntians could not have built this temple," muttered Conan. "This marble must have traveled a long way."
"Who built it, then, think you?" asked Muriela.
Conan shrugged. "I know not. A Nemedian I met— one of those learned men—told me entire civilizations rise and fall, leaving but a few scattered ruins and monuments to mark their passing. I have seen such in my travels, and this may be another. Let us strike a light before the moon goes down and it grows too dark to see."
Six small copper lamps hung from long chains beneath the circle of the dome, and reaching up, Conan unhooked one from its hanging.
"There's oil in it and a wick," he said. "That means someone tends these lamps. I wonder who?"
Conan struck sparks from flint and steel into a pinch of tinder, and flame sputtered into being. He caught the flame on the end of the wick and held up the lamp, whence issued a warm yellow glow. The outlines of the chamber sprang into view.
On the perimeter opposite the great portal, backed by a fretted marble screen, they saw a dais set upon three marble steps. A figure stood erect upon the dais.
"Nebethet herself!" announced Conan, grinning recklessly at the life-sized idol.
Muriela shuddered. Revealed in the uncertain lamplight was a woman's beautiful naked body, well-rounded and seductive. But instead of a maidens attractive features, the face of the statue was a fleshless skull. Muriela turned away in horror from the sight of that death's head, obscenely perched upon the voluptuous female form.
Conan, to whom death was an old acquaintance, was less affected. Nonetheless, the sight caused shivers to run along his spine. Raising the lamp, he saw with dismay that the statue was carved from a single piece of ivory. In his travels in Kush and Hyrkania, he had learned much of the elephant tribe; yet he could not imagine what sort of monster might have borne a tusk as thick as a small woman's body.
"Crom!" he grunted, staring at the grinning skull. 'This means my scheme won't work. I planned to spirit away the statue and put you in its place to utter the auguries. But even a fool would never think you that skull-faced abortion come to life."
"Let us fly, then, whilst we still five!" implored Muriela, backing toward the ladder.
"Nonsense, girl! We'll find a way to persuade the black king to oust Thutmekri and shower rewards on us. Till then, we'll search out the rich offerings left here by the faithful. In rooms behind the idol, maybe, or in underground crypts. Let's explore...."
"I cannot," said Muriela faintly. "I am fordone with weariness."
"Then stay here whilst I look around. But wander not away, and call to me if aught occurs!"
Lamp in hand, Conan slipped out of the room, leaving Muriela in the enveloping silence. When the dancer's eyes adjusted to the dark, she could see the outlines of the statue with its sweetly curved woman's body and its gaunt and ghoulish head. The idol was faintly illuminated by the rays of the moon, down-thrusting through an opening in the dome; and as the tomblike silence seemed to take on a tangible shape, so the statue in the moonlight seemed to sway and waver. The beating of her heart became the tramp of ghostly feet.
Resolutely, Muriela turned her back upon the statue and sat, a small huddled shape, on the first step of the dais. The things she felt and saw, she told herself, were illusions wrought by fatigue, lack of food, and the weirdness of her surroundings. Still, her fear blossomed until she could have sworn before the gods of Corinthia that a dim, unholy phosphorescence lifted the gloom of the columned hall and that she heard the spectral shuffle of unseen presences.
Muriela felt a compelling need to turn and look behind her; for she had an uncanny sensation that something stood there, staring at her from the shadows. Time and again she resisted this temptation, urging herself not to succumb to foolish fears.
A dirty, skeletal hand, like the claw of some huge bird of prey, closed on the flesh of her naked shoulder. She shrieked as she turned to find herself looking at a sunken face, with bony, withered jaws, topped by a mat of tangled hair that was barely visible in the palpable-seeming darkness. As she jerked away and began to rise, a lumbering monstrosity materialized on her other side. It picked her up like a doll and pressed her against its hairy, muscular chest. With a scream of sheer terror, Muriela fainted.
-
In the dusty apartments behind the marble rotunda, Conan whirled like a startled jungle cat as the echo of that shriek invaded his senses. With a coarse oath, he sprang from the cubicle he had been investigating and raced back along the corridor, retracing his steps. If something had befallen Muriela, he thought, he was to blame for abandoning her in this ghastly place. He should have kept her with him while exploring the ancient shrine; but, aware that she was near the end of her strength, he had taken pity on her weakness.
When he reentered the central hall, sword in hand and lamp held high, there was nothing to be seen. The girl was no longer where he had left her, nor was she to be found behind one of the many moon-pale columns. Neither could his keen eyes discern any signs of a struggle. It was as if Muriela had evaporated into air.
A prickling of superstitious horror stirred the barbarian to the core. He paid little heed to the dogmas of priests or the oracular warnings of wizards. His Cimmerian gods did not much meddle in the affairs of mortals. But here in Punt, things might be different Besides, he had survived enough encounters with presences from beyond earthly dimensions to have a healthy respect for their powers; and deep within him smoldered an atavistic fear of the supernatural.
Relighting his lamp, which had faltered and flickered out during his frantic survey of the great hall, he searched on, but with a sense of leaden futility.
Wherever the girl might be, she had indeed gone from the rotunda.
-
Muriela slowly came to her senses and found herself slumped against a wall of smooth stone. She was surrounded by darkness so impenetrable that never since the world began, it seemed to her dazed mind, had light plumbed this abyss of gloom.
Rising, she felt her way along the wall until she came to an angle. She set off in a new direction, brushing her fingertips against the rough stone for guidance. She turned another angle, and still another, until it occurred to the frightened and bewildered girl that she had completed the circuit of a small chamber in which she had not detected any door or opening, a featureless cube of stone. How, then, had she come hither? Had she been lowered through a trapdoor? Was she, perchance, in some dark well set deep into the living rock of the hill itself? Was this place her grave?
Muriela shrank into a huddle, staring into the featureless darkness trying to recall what had happened before her swooning. Suddenly, the gates of memory burst open, flooding her mind with living horror. She remembered the touch of the withered claw of the shriveled creature that had crept upon her in the hall of the idol. She felt again the grasp of the hulking monstrosity that had caught her up against its hairy breast.
As memory returned, she cried out again, sobbing Conan's name.
Faint as was that beseeching cry, Conan heard it. His catlike senses, honed through centuries of savage heritage, recognized the echo of Muriela's voice. He whipped about and sought down the corridor in the direction whence the cry had come. The orange flame of his guttering lamp grew feeble, as the gloom of night through which he strode drank up the flickering hght.
Although the stony corridors and gloomy chambers seemed untenanted, the Cimmerian was alert to the slightest sound. When he heard a faint rasp from the black mouth of a side passage, he stopped, wheeled, and thrust his lamp forward.
A wizened, shriveled thing, no taller than a child, leered mummylike, from the lateral corridor. Ancient it seemed as the stones underfoot, and as dead, save for the fire in the bleary eyes set in cavernous sockets in the shrunken face. The thing cowered from the light of the lamp and threw up a skeletal hand as if to ward off a blow.
Then a second apparition took shape out of the darkness behind the first. The monstrous being pushed past the shriveled one and flung itself upon Conan, like a pouncing beast of prey. So swift was the assault that Conan had only a fleeting glimpse of a mountain of sable fur before the lamp was knocked from his hand, to go bouncing and clattering away. Conan found himself fighting for his life in absolute darkness.
Like a trapped leopard, his reaction was instinctive and violent. He tore himself loose from apelike arms, which tried to pinion him, and lashed out blindly with fists that thudded like triphammers. He was unable to discern the true nature of his assailant in the total darkness but assumed that it was some manner of two-legged beast. He felt the jolt of a solid hit travel up his arm and heard the satisfying crunch of a jawbone.
The unknown attacker came on again, swinging long arms. Conan sprang back, but not before the savage talons of the brute raked across his chest, laying his tanned hide open in long scarlet furrows. The cuts, stinging like fury, filled the Cimmerian with black barbaric rage. Needles of agony ripped away the veneer that civilization had placed upon his seething volcanic soul. Throwing back his tousled mane, he howled like a wolf and hurled himself upon his attacker, grappling breast to breast. Hot, fetid breath struck his face like the stinking fumes of a furnace. Sharp fangs slavered and snapped at his corded throat, Hands like clamps closed about his wrists, holding him at bay.
Conan brought his booted foot up in a mighty lack at the enemy's crotch. With a scream of pain, the creature staggered back, loosening his grip on Conan's arms. Conan wrenched loose from the clutching paws and, with a bestial growl, hurled himself forward, groping for the monster's throat. As he locked his hands on the unseen windpipe, the beast tore loose and closed its fanged jaws on Conan's forearm. Lowering his head like a pain-maddened bull, the Cimmerian butted the staggering form in the belly.
His opponent was taller than he by inches, and heavier by far, but its breath erupted with a gasp of anguish and it went down with a crash. Snatching out his dagger, Conan seized a handful of coarse hair and stabbed frantically again and again, driving the weapon into the creature's belly, chest, and throat until he had buffetted the last spark of life from its battered hulk.
Conan rose unsteadily to his feet, gasping and nauseated with the pain of many bites and scratches. When he stopped retching and regained his breath, he wiped his blade on the monster's hairy leg and sheathed it. Then he groped for his lamp. Although the lamp had gone out, a tiny blue flame danced above a puddle of spilled oil. By the feeble light of this elfin fire; Conan found his lamp and lit it.
The dead thing at his feet was a curious hybrid, neither man nor beast. Manlike in shape, it was covered with black hair, like a bear or a gorilla. Yet it was clearly not an ape. Its body and limbs were too manlike in proportions, while its head resembled nothing that Conan had ever looked upon. It had the sloping forehead and protruding snout of a baboon or dog, and its inky, rubbery lips were parted to reveal gleaming canine fangs. And yet, it must have had some link to humankind, for its private parts were covered by a filthy breechclout.
Trembling with terror, Muriela listened to the shouts, snarls, and scuffle of the battle in the passageway above her prison. When it was over, she renewed her plaintive cries. Following the sound of her whimperings, Conan located a niche in the corridor, floored by a flagstone to which was fastened a ring of bronze. He hoisted the slab, bent down, and caught the arms that Muriela reached up to him.
The girl gasped and shrank away from the bloody apparition that supported her, but the sound of Conan's familiar voice reassured her as he helped her step across the battered, hairy corpse that blocked the passage.
Haltingly she described the withered ancient who had laid hands upon her in the rotunda and told how the monster had seized and borne her off. Conan grunted.
'The old hag must be the priestess or oracle of this shrine," he said. "Her voice is the voice of the ivory goddess. There is a closet behind the idol with a door hidden in the fretted marble wall. Hiding there, she can see and speak to those who come to seek her counsel."
"And the monster; what of him?" quavered the girl.
Conan shrugged. "Crom knows! Mayhap her servitor, or some deformed brute the savages of Punt considered touched by the gods and marked for temple duty. Anyway, the thing is dead and the priestess has taken flight. Now we
have naught to do but hide in the small room behind the statue when someone comes to hear the oracle."
"We might wait months. Perhaps no one will ever come."
"Nay, our friend Nahor told us the chiefs of Punt consult the ivory wench before each grave decision. Methinks you will play the skull-faced goddess after all."
"Oh, Conan, I am sore afraid. We cannot stay here, even if we would, for we shall starve," said Muriela. "Nonsense, girl! Our pack horse carries food enough for many days, and this is as good a place to rest as any."
"But how about the priestess?" persisted the frightened girl.
"The old hag cannot harm us now that her monster is dead," said Conan cheerfully, adding, "If we use normal caution, that is. I would not accept a drink from her hand."
"So be it, then," said Muriela. A look of sadness crossed her beautiful face as she added, "In truth I am no oracle, but I foretell that this adventure will end badly for us both."
Conan the Swordsman Page 15
