She had met with the asshuri who bore the accoutrements of a general. He had bowed to her and nodded respectfully at her curt commands. The two had stayed out of earshot, much to Toj’s disappointment. Then, before Toj’s incredulous gaze, she had stripped down to her tunic, rubbed dirt on herself, mussed her hair, and marched into the building. The general had the beard shaven from an asshuri corpse’s face—one of the men slain by Conan—and outfitted the body in the garb of a Zamorian soldier.
“When the barbarian awakens, have the torturer begin,” she had said, this time near enough for Toj to hear.
“Yes, milady. We shall depart ere dawn breaks.”
“Be-like he will slay your torturer.”
“It is of no moment, milady. The dog is not asshuri—he is naught but a Shemite murderer whom I freed from the headsman’s block in Kyros. The brute knows nothing.”
“So be it, then—his blood stains your hands, Arostrio.”
Toj had lain upon the roof, vexed that this woman had befouled his plan to free the Cimmerian from captivity. Conan must reach the City of Brass soon, before the kalb beetle laid its lethal eggs. But his curiosity had prompted him to lie prone upon the roof and watch the strange woman’s scheme unfold. Besides, these warriors would have dispatched the barbarian already, had they been so inclined.
The assassin waited as several horses were saddled and led into the stable with the woman’s ebony stallion. Muffled screams from a room below him had reached Toj’s ears, at which time the entire asshuri contingent had gathered at the enclosure’s gate and ridden away.
Conan and the woman had emerged from the building shortly thereafter. The woman had altered her voice and her demeanour, though... like an actress changing roles in some incomprehensible drama.
Even now, Toj could not hazard a guess at what the final act might be. He could easily have disposed of the meddlesome woman with a flick of his wrist, but in doing so, he would have revealed himself to Conan. No... instead, he would see where their path led. The woman presented no obstacle yet, and Jade had warned Toj that “others” would seek the pearl statue. Toj would slay the woman only if she further impeded Conan. And Toj reasoned that this would be a deed best done under the cover of night, while the Cimmerian slept. The assassin carried with him the means to deter suspicions of murder.
Indeed, the thin leather sack strapped to his back was crammed ' with cunning devices, rare poisons and herbs, and some few live creatures, all of which dealt death in myriad ways. Perhaps he would use the white Vendhyan scorpion for the woman—but no, the serpent’s skull had advantages. With his Zembabwan bamboo pipe, he could blow an envenomed needle into the woman’s neck while she slept. For such a purpose, he carried a small jar of his most deadly poison: powder from the black Khitan mushroom stalk mixed with venom from the Stygian emperor cobra. A drop of that blend was as deadly as a dagger plunged into the victim’s heart.
The woman would die in a few silent moments, after which he would puncture her face with the skull’s fangs. The wound—and the corpse’s bloated, contorted visage—would mirror the attack of a virulent asp. Conan would suspect no foul play.
Satisfied with his plan, Toj followed the tracks of the Cimmerian and the mysterious woman. The two had already ridden out of sight, ' but their trail proved easy to follow.
The assassin shifted in the saddle, unaccustomed to its feel. He continued his assessment of the meddlesome woman. Whatever fate her scheme held for Conan, it could not be helpful to Toj. Tonight, he would end her involvement.
Tonight, she would die.
Some hundred leagues south of Kyros, the sluggish River Styx flowed past the Stygian city of Harakht, where dusky-faced Stygians clad in amber-hued robes bowed and crooned strange dirges before immense idols of their Hawk-God. Harakht’s sentries admitted no foreigners; even Stygians who requested egress were subjected to knife-sharp inquiries, lest they be acting as spies. Many were searched, and Harakht’s gatekeepers turned away any who were not devout worshippers of the Hawk-God or of Set.
This policy condemned many to death, for no water save that of the befouled Styx—and that of a single oasis—could be found within a day’s ride or Harakht. Yet the oasis was avoided, even by those whose dry, sand-choked throats had not tasted water in days. Travellers in that arid waste heeded grim warnings whispered only in the light of day. And at night, no one dared to speak of what befell trespassers at the dreaded Oasis of Khajar.
There were worse fates than dying of thirst... much, much worse. For Thoth-amon, Stygia’s prince of sorcerers, dealt harshly with those who violated his domain.
Fully aware of these dire consequences, Tevek Thul nonetheless willed his skeletal steeds to venture into the oasis. He felt no apprehension at the imminent encounter. Tevek suspected that Thoth-amon had already felt his approach. The necromancer relaxed his magical grip on his undead caravan, letting the sands of control trickle between his fingers. The horses and warriors toppled to the sand in jumbled heaps of bone.
Tevek exhaled deeply. His head tingled uncomfortably from breaking the psychic bonds he had formed with his subjects, and he paused to let the brief moment of disorientation pass. The animation of the dead required little energy to maintain once the bonds were in place, but the enchantment’s dissolution took its toll. The longer that one left the bonds in place, the greater the strain at their severance. A lesser practitioner would have been rendered unconscious for a day. However, Tevek had scarcely used a drop from the deep well of necromantic energy he possessed. He had deemed it unwise to proceed with his minions, lest Thoth-amon misinterpret his motives. The message borne by the vulture zombie may not have arrived; no acknowledgement of receipt had been made.
Tevek had longed to meet Set’s champion again... this time as one worthy of Thoth-amon's respect. He gathered his offering—the three clay Tablets of Epithur—and tucked them under his deceptively scrawny arm. Opening the trapdoor in the bottom of his black carriage, he stepped down onto the sands at the perimeter of Thoth-amon's lair.
Nightfall had already drained the air and the ground of the desert sun’s warmth. The earth felt cool beneath Tevek’s bare feet, and a gentle breeze whispered through the dark palms and rippled across a sinister black pool. Its unwholesome surface reflected no moonlight or starlight, and its writhing currents endowed it with an eerie semblance of life. In spite of the breeze, a stifling silence enshrouded the oasis. No lizards stirred in the sand or swam in the pool; no birds roosted in the palms overhead.
At the centre of the oasis loomed a massive, forbidding edifice. Constructed of gigantic sandstone blocks, its reddish exterior was worn smooth, its edges rounded. Tevek could not guess at the number of centuries this structure had stood, weathering the wind-driven storms.
The necromancer breathed deeply, relishing the comforting scent of cloying wickedness that pervaded the pool and radiated from the immense building. No maggots of Mitra had ever writhed in the innards of this dead place; the very air teemed with an almost palpable presence of immaculate evil. Tevek understood why Thoth-amon seldom took leave of this comforting domain. He himself was, for similar reasons, loath to abandon his own necropolis.
On his way to the entrance of the edifice, he became aware of a curious sensation of emptiness. He paused and closed his eyes, focusing his mind to sense if any remains of the dead lay buried nearby. With practised efficiency, he pushed the fingers of his mind into the hard-packed sand. He widened and deepened his search, but encountered nothing. As he had suspected, no charnel lay beneath the structure or the sand around it. He frowned. Evil as it was, this oasis lacked the burial chambers that nourished a necromancer’s mind... and his body. He had expected to find catacombs beneath this sandstone edifice, and their absence unsettled him. All he sensed was a vague residue of carrion lingering within the sand at the bottom of the deep pool, but he could not see within. Water defied his spectral sight.
Tevek opened his eyes and waited impatiently for his vision to return.
He endured a moment of blindness for every moment that he had employed his spectral sight. When the oasis’s shadowy outline came into focus, he walked alongside the pool and boldly stepped up to the hulking megalith. Its shadowy entrance gaped like an open maw that led straight into Hell’s throat.
The necromancer glanced at the glyphs etched into the massive arched doorway. Even Tevek, well-versed in obscure and ancient writings, had never seen their like. But he could guess their purpose; Thoth-amon would lay sorcerous traps to snare or slay those not initiated into Set’s priesthood. The practice was common enough in Stygia.
Tevek extended a hand from his voluminous sleeve and began to trace the sigil of Set in the air. Priests at Nebthu had shown him this sign, though he seldom invoked it. Green lines glowed in mid-air, as if Tevek were writing on an invisible tablet with a luminous stylus.
Behind him, the black pool was aboil.
Its gargantuan mass oozed upward, out of its bed in the sand, sprouting two arm-like appendages and growing a bulbous protuberance at its apex. Its torso glistened and pulsated like a misshapen heart. Not one droplet of water fell from it, as if its surface had become a shiny skin. Monstrous hands, each large enough to engulf a man, reached for the necromancer.
Tevek’s fingernail traced the last line of the symbol.
As quickly as it had taken form, the pool receded. But for a sluggish ripple on its surface, no evidence of its transformation remained. Tevek glanced over his shoulders. For just a moment, he had sensed the presence of the dead... an overwhelmingly powerful surge like that he had experienced at the ancient ossuary in Luxur’s temple district, where for centuries priests had dumped the cadavers of their sacrificial victims into the same pit. The weight of fresher corpses above eventually compacted the desiccated mass below, slowly crushing bones into dust. Tevek had admired its efficiency.
He stared again at the pool, now certain that its oily waters concealed a vast trove of remains. Thoth-amon had doubtless sacrificed thousands to Set in return for prodigious magical powers.
Tevek strode forward into an empty antechamber and descended a flight of stone steps. His soft footfalls raised whispering echoes against the smooth, worn stone. He needed no lantern; a simple invocation imbued his eyes with a red glow that pierced the veil of darkness. Moving well below the level of the desert, he soon entered a hall.
Serpentine cressets, set into walls of seamless stone, radiated sinister green light. Tevek let the red hue abate from his eyes, finding this new illumination to be more than adequate. Ahead, two rows of monolithic columns lined the spacious hall. Cryptic glyphs, like those on the doorway’s arch outside, stippled the rounded stone pillars from ceiling to floor.
A simple throne, sculpted from glittering basaltic rock, dominated the opposite end of the hall. As Tevek approached, he held his clay tablets out before him and studied the throne’s occupant.
Thoth-amon had not aged visibly since Tevek had last seen him. Here was the same giant of a man, his skin the rich brown of mahogany. His only garment was a robe of white linen that stretched | across his broad shoulders and swept the tops of his sandalled feet. | Tevek greedily eyed the Stygian’s massive ring of beaten copper.
This object—Thoth-amon's sole ornament—had been forged in the likeness of a serpent that coiled thrice about his finger and held its tail in fanged jaws. Though copper in colour, it was known as the Black Ring, for Set himself had imbued it with dark powers to aid his chosen champions. Beneath the sarcophagus of Ptah-nefer, an ancient predecessor of Thoth-amon interred at Nebthu, Tevek had found a bronze tablet whose etched runes revealed the Black Ring’s secrets.
It was that lore, etched in bronze, that had inspired Tevek to seek Thoth-amon, for there he had read that any sorcerer could bend the Black Ring to a particular purpose. Ptah-nefer described in great detail the workings of the ancient talisman and the methods of channelling its power. With that power at his disposal, Tevek hoped to recover and control the object that would turn his dreams of vengeance into reality: the Grim Grey God.
He had only recently learned where the god lay, but its destructive powers could not be summoned unless one knew any three of the six names that comprised the god’s full and true name. The high priests of Ibis knew only three names; the other three were recorded in grimoires of the blackest sorcery that dated back to Acheron. Knowledge of all six names would grant the power to destroy the god—something the priests of Ibis had doubtless sought to accomplish. But whoever knew all six names could do more than that—he could command the god’s considerable powers. What better way to seek retribution, to doom the vermin of Khyfa beyond all hope? This time, Mitra would not save them!
Tevek could, with the Black Ring, divine all six of the names. Among his arcane lore was a spell that forced the departed to speak. Even those dead for centuries could be commanded to answer queries, but such an undertaking required tremendous magickal energy—more than Tevek possessed if he were to cast the enchantment upon a long-dead priest of Ibis. Only by drawing upon the Black Ring’s raw power could Tevek succeed.
The sight of the ring sent a ripple of cold satisfaction through the mage’s bones. He envisioned it upon his own finger. Soon, Tevek would grind the Mitran temples of Khyfa to dust and punish the descendants of Amentet’s desecrators.
“Greetings, mighty Thoth-amon,” Tevek rasped, surprised by the dryness in his throat.
The dusky giant did not respond. His muscular frame sat motionless in its ebony seat. Eyes as black as his throne stared glassily forward, like those of a corpse.
“Thoth-amon?” Tevek repeated, this time raising his voice. He shifted his tablets to one hand and lifted his cowl, uncovering his gaunt, pockmarked face. The necromancer’s eyes and skin, in contrast to Thoth-amon's, were pallid, yellowed grey. The palest of blue hues diffused his lips. Tevek’s shocking white hair reached down past his shoulders; his square-cut beard curled outward at its end, halfway down his neck. The emerald glow from the cressets only accentuated Tevek’s ghoulish visage.
Beneath his simple robes, Thoth-amon's breast neither rose nor fell.
Tevek sighed. Perhaps the Stygian had freed his ka to roam a nameless spirit-realm, abandoning his body utterly. If so, Tevek might wait here for a long time. “So be it,” he muttered, lowering himself to the floor. As he did so, the topmost tablet slid from his grasp and shattered on the black flagstones. Vexed, Tevek cursed and glared at the clay fragments.
A hollow moan issued from Thoth-amon's motionless lips, quiet at first, as if from far away, but increasing in volume. The previously inert hands clenched into fists. “Ai kon-phog, yaa!” His voice howled through the hall like a fierce blast of frost.
Silence swiftly returned as the reverberatious died away. Tevek set down the remaining tablets, rose from the floor, clasped his hands, and mentally prepared his defences, just in case.
The Stygian mage seemed to have regained his composure. His black eyes, alert now, swept Tevek from head to toe, the gaze as cold and predatory as a serpent’s. Finally, he spoke. “Tevek Thul.” Beneath the strong, clear voice was a rustling undertone, like the sound of slithering snakes.
“Yes, Dread Lord. Forgive my intrusion, but a matter of utmost importance has compelled me to—”
“—to end your insignificant life,” the Stygian intoned. “What know you of importance, doltish robber of graves? Fah!” He gestured dismissively with his copper-ringed hand.
Tevek felt seeds of tension sprout in his shoulders. “I meant no offence, Mighty One. Did not my winged herald precede me?”
“My guardian would have destroyed any messenger—as it should have destroyed you. Your clumsiness has ruined a magical operation of true importance. For many of your months have I worked undisturbed, my ka searching the akashic records..Thoth-amon paused, the irritation in his voice replaced with a tone as cold and sharp as a dagger of ice. “All for naught.”
“Your” months? Tevek had sceptically listened to tales of Thoth-amon's po
wers, but perhaps he had underestimated the Stygian. Nevertheless, he stepped forward and spoke boldly. “Dread Lord, before you are two of Epithur’s clay tablets.”
Thoth-amon's serpentine eyes flickered briefly to the shattered remnants on the floor. The ringed hand gestured. “Three,” he murmured as clay fragments rapidly coalesced into their original form. “So Epithur’s engravings do exist. The elusive Codices of Eibon were accurate, then. Perhaps I shall spare your life after all. Begone and never return, lest I squash you like the carrion-maggot that you are.”
Tevek raised an eyebrow and abandoned his pretence of deference. He had not travelled so far to be kicked like a begging dog. “Years ago, the search for these consumed you like a fire! I deliver them now in return for a favour.”
“And I have granted you one. Depart!” Cold, green fire flickered in the Stygian’s black eyes.
“At once. Dread Lord,” Tevek hissed between clenched teeth. “After you give your ring to me. I shall return it in a fortnight.” Thoth-amon's sibilant laughter filled the hall like a blast of winter sleet. He held his muscular hand aloft so that green light glimmered on his ring. “Is that all?” he thundered, leaning forward. “A favour. Then you shall have it!” As he spoke, the Stygian extended his arm, his hand clenched into a fist. Emerald fire flared from the out-thrust ring and spewed toward Tevek.
The necromancer’s robes burst into flames. However, the wearer within had vanished; the garments lay smouldering upon the flagstones.
“Eh?” Thoth-amon's brow lifted in surprise. Then he saw Tevek’s shadow, extending from the robes to one of the hall’s columns.
“Your bolts cannot harm me.” Tevek’s voice was muffled.
“Bah! A Kheshattan shadow-mage’s parlour trick,” Thoth-amon said dismissively. “It cannot save you from this!” He raised both hands at shoulder-width apart, palms facing each other, his fingers a blur of motion. A hole of opaque darkness opened in the air before him, its edges swirling. The black vortex widened as it spun, whistling hellishly, and Tevek’s shadow began to stretch toward its centre. The Stygian’s words were a mocking roar. “Join your ancestors as your feeble spirit is sucked into the well of souls!”
Conan and the Grim Grey God Page 6
