The trip across the desert had given him only a short time to regenerate his energies, but he was eager to press on with his purpose. The Black Ring again pulsed with power, ready to effuse at his command. Inhaling deeply as he gathered his willpower, Tevek again opened himself to the flood of spectral sighing that emanated from Nithia’s deceased. The fingers of his mind reached down to one and brushed it lightly, to rouse the bones from a centuries-long torpor.
It did not stir.
Brow furrowing in consternation, Tevek tightened his necromantic grip on the reluctant corpse, shaking it and calling loudly to it.
Again it ignored him, its only response the sibilant sadness that he now found even more maddening. So accustomed was Tevek to the dead rising instantly at his command that he was taken aback. His frustration grew when he tried to raise another who ignored his call—even with the Black Ring’s power added to his own. He suspected that their very beliefs locked the residue of their spirits away from his necromancy.
This unexpected development posed a problem most vexing. Even with the Black Ring, Tevek knew none of the sort of spells that raise wind or move and shape the earth. Such sorceries originated from schools of magic foreign to his own. He could return to Kaetta and recruit his labourers from the fallen there, at a cost of time that he could ill afford to spend. No, he decided, that would be a last resort. He would instead sift-through the slain below, and survey a wider area than that which he had already scanned. Briefly did he consider that the sun itself might be thwarting his efforts, for certainly its radiance impeded his ability to concentrate. But no light reached where his would-be minions lay, so he misdoubted this as a cause of failure.
He hurried toward the spire, which he presumed to be the centre of the Brass City. Here would he begin the search anew. Drawing in a deep breath of the hot, dry air, Tevek thrust his thoughts downward.
Ah! Here, at least, the deceased did not exude that irksome lassitude. In fact... here he discovered something quite interesting. His necromantic gaze was pulled toward the skeleton of a man who must have been quite imposing in life. He was tall arid thick-boned, a giant to be sure, but what intrigued Tevek more was the unquenched rage that yet seethed within the decayed corpse. That rage must once have burned like the sun itself to retain such vigour. Here was one whom Tevek could use. This one had succumbed to something slow and painful—not to wounds of battle, but perhaps to suffocation. Seldom did the necromancer encounter such a powerful, radiant aura surrounding one so long demised. And when he called, the bones answered eagerly and began the painfully slow process of self-excavation.
Others also heeded his summons. One by one he awakened them, though none were so empowered as the first. Soon he assembled enough for his purposes. Many registered anger, others fear, but all were malleable to his touch.
Tevek knew from experience that they would not emerge from the sand until well into night. Sand was a strangely confining substance, compared even to hard-packed dirt. A corpse freeing itself from the latter would pull down clumps of dirt and push itself upward. In sand, the method more resembled that of swimming upstream, against stubborn currents. But Tevek would wait. He moved into the small shadow now cast by the spire and, to pass the time, continued to pick at the bodies below.
Almost all of those directly beneath the brass-topped tower had died of the same cause, and he was now certain that it had been asphyxiation. Yet there were several exceptions. Could he speculate upon what had happened below, so many centuries past? Not yet, he realized. Five of the slain lacked any essence whatsoever. These had quite possibly died of beheading, and they evidently met death fearlessly and at peace with themselves. From them, he would learn nothing. But within a sixth headless one he found lingering traces of fear—-mingled with regret. This Nithian might reveal something to him, in time. It was a matter he would attempt to probe later, after the temple was cleared of sand.
While his undead slaves wriggled upward, Tevek raised others, stopping only when the count reached some three hundred. Then he rested for a span, thankful that the sun would soon sink below the horizon. Its retreating heat drew but little sweat from him. No, the physical discomfort of the sun was secondary to its intrusive light. How he hated its glare! He fumbled with the dusty rag tied about his head and closed the thin gap to shade his eyes completely. For a turn or two, he rested blindly in shadow, half asleep.
A loud rustle stirred him. Pulling up on the cloth strip so that he could see, he was gratified to find that the sun had fled the sky and given way to the more tolerable moon. In its pale glow he saw the giant, who had at last broken free of his sandy prison. He stood but a few paces away, silently awaiting Tevek’s next directive. The necromancer observed an unusual facet of the giant’s appearance. The bony fingers of his right hand were clenched into a fist; in his left he held a massive sword, its blade tarnished black by the passage of time. The weapon must have been in hand when he died, for the bones yet grasped its hilt. Iron latches held his burnished breastplate in place around his broad rib cage.
Bones of this extreme an age were often fragile and loose, bound together solely by the necromantic energy that Tevek channelled. That energy was not always sufficient to support such burdens as were laden upon this giant, but the power of the Black Ring supplemented the surprising amount of residual force within the bones themselves.
The armoured skeleton somehow conveyed a distinct impression of... impatience. Tevek, in his long experience, had never seen this kind of display. He would soon know its cause, for earlier he had decided to speak with this one. In doing so, he would ultimately prolong his task, but he could not ignore the likelihood that this giant might know something of the object sought by the accursed Thoth-amon. And such knowledge might provide Tevek with the means to escape from the Stygian who had netted him with the spell of death.
Rummaging through his robes, the necromancer assembled the few necessities required for speaking with one dead for so long. Some of the conjurative components were quite rare—a tongue cut from a virgin’s mouth and dried under the moonlight upon the tombstone of a murderer—but others were simple, such as the oil-soaked bone-dust sprinkled upon the tongue before he placed it into the tiny iron cup and set it afire. He muttered the phrases memorized from the blood-inked pages within a tome of ancient Pythonian necromancy. Then he commanded the giant to approach. Smoke from the cup curled upward like an airy eel and sought the giant’s grimacing, hollow-socketed skull.
“Speak, ancient one,” commanded Tevek.
The huge, crooked-toothed jaw did not move.
Tevek nodded, reprimanding himself for committing a neophyte’s blunder. This fellow knew no Stygian, for if the histories had it right, the last of the Nithians had perished near the end of the Acheronian era. Some of the most powerful tomes of sorcery dated to those times, so Tevek was of necessity well-versed in the languages of that period. “By what name are you called?” he asked haltingly, for seldom had he needed to speak in the awkward tongue of Acheron.
“The Jackal,” came the response, hollow and distorted, as if its speaker stood at the bottom of a deep pit.
“From where come you?”
“Tartarus.”
Tartarus—the very seat of the Acheronian empire! Did Tevek hear bitterness in the voice? This Jackal’s tones were not as flat as those of the other dead with whom Tevek had spoken. “What name was given to the place where you were born?”
“Pyrrophlagalon.”
The City of Burning Souls—the very black heart of Acheron! Were he not so pressed for time, Tevek would have questioned this Jackal at length for lore of that lost capital. Little was known of Acheron’s cities, most of which had been burned, nay—razed— when the empire fell. “What station held you in Pyrrophlagalon?” “Supreme Warlord of the Imperial Legions.”
Tevek could not miss the tone of that voice, proud and arrogant even in death. But the answer did not jibe with the historical accounts, not those familiar to the necroman
cer. The Accords of Acheron listed the names of Acheron’s warlords, and the only one distinguished as “Supreme” had been Dhurkhan Blackblade, brother of the dread sorcerer Xaltotun. Blackblade had vanished with many of his warriors while on a campaign of eastward expansion. His final resting place had remained a mystery—until now, perhaps.
“By what names were your brother and father called?”
“Xaltotun, my brother. Ixion, our father.”
Ixion... here was lore sought after by many a scholar, for the name of that most evil of tyrants had been stricken from every scroll, every tablet. That name was the foulest curse to any worshipper of Mitra. To history, the father of Xaltotun had been known only by the name “Devourer.”
“Why came you to Nithia?”
“To ensure the eternal supremacy of Acheron.”
The evasive response momentarily irked Tevek. The deathspeak enchantment did not always elicit a response, but neither could its subject lie outright. Even so, avoidance of questions was not altogether uncommon. “And what object within Nithia sought you, then?”
“The Grim Grey God.”
Had the bony grip on the sword tightened? Tevek could not be certain. He would study Blackblade later, at his leisure—after he acquired the key to freedom from Thoth-amon's death-spell. “And we shall find the god together, Blackblade,” muttered Tevek. As he spoke, more skeletons emerged from the sand, rustling and creaking.
There was work to be done before Tevek continued his inquisition. He derived some satisfaction from subjugating the Supreme Warlord of Acheron, and he deemed it fitting to raise the ancient enemies of Ibis from the dust to aid him in his quest for vengeance. One by one these bony minions extricated themselves from the desert grave. Tevek commanded them to assemble in a single file behind their former leader.
Most of these Acheronians wore breastplates, as did Blackblade. Some wore shields upon their backs, held there by chains of hammered bronze. This armour would serve well to aid in the excavation of the tower. The necromancer ordered the lot to remove these makeshift tools and begin scooping away the sand. He could only guess at how long the digging of this immense pit would take, but at least his workers never tired, and the simple spell he had woven would keep them at their task until he bade them stop.
Before long, they exposed a span of white marble, where the brass spire ended. The scene would have unnerved anyone but a necromancer—hundreds of the walking dead, scooping sand into their shields or breastplates, hauling it to a distance carefully measured by their taskmaster, dumping it and returning for more.
Tevek commanded Blackblade to drop his sword and dig, but the ancient giant did not obey. This perturbed the necromancer. Suspecting that some spell yet enchanted that exotic weapon, he gave the order again, this time adding a burst of power from the Black Ring.
Knuckle by knuckle, the fingers lifted from the hilt. Tevek felt a tangible resistance, but he overcame it eventually. He next willed Blackblade to unfasten the breastplate before realizing the futility of that directive. The latches that held it in place had been riveted there. The man must have slept in his armour. The necromancer simply dismissed the idea of including Blackblade in the labour. In fact, here was an ideal time to learn what he could of the giant’s tale.
The tongue yet smouldered within the cup, and while it did so, he could interrogate this Jackal. “Take up your blade again,” he said, his tone that of a magnanimous lord granting a boon to a serf. Tevek moved away from the spire with the giant in tow, repositioned the smoking cup, and seated himself atop a mound of sand. “Now, Dhurkhan Blackblade,” he began. “Tell me, how came you to Nithia... and what were your plans once you seized the Grim Grey God?”
As he heard the details of Blackblade’s bloody deeds of long ago, he posed many other questions. While the moon travelled across the dark sky, illuminating the strange events taking place below, the necromancer listened to a tale recorded in no writings, a tale known to no living sage.
And in the hours before dawn, an ancient and diabolical scheme of vengeance was born anew.
XIV
Desert of the Damned
By Erlik and Zandru—look you yonder!” Conan exclaimed, shifting in his saddle and pointing toward the desert’s eastern horizon. There, above a rocky plateau, vultures flapped, first circling the cliffs before diving behind them. None flew away from the plateau—rather, more seemed to be gathering there. Their dull black forms filled the sky above that sloping hill. The Cimmerian knew at once what must have transpired there to draw so many carrion birds. This was neither a dead beast, nor a merchant caravan slain by brigands. A flock of such size bespoke a recent battle in which hundreds—perhaps even thousands—must have perished.
“What in Mitra’s name..Sivitri started, staring at the massed scavengers.
“Mitra had no hand in that. ’Tis the work of men... of many men, to judge by the drawing of so many carrion-fowl. But for what would so many fools fight? I know less of this barren region than of the western part of Shem, but naught is about save sand and rock. Although... when I was among the kozaki, some of them spoke of mining settlements in eastern Shem. And this road that we happened upon seems to lead toward the area.”
Sivitri nodded. “Just so. One of the thieves’ guilds—in Khoraja, north and east of here—traffics in precious ores stolen from the merchants who travel through here.”
“And their trade road leads into the thick of those feasting vultures. Crom!” Conan brought his horse to a halt and pulled the map from his vest. Smoothing its sweat-stained parchment, he studied their surroundings. “If I read this aright, the Brass City lies not far from here. Another day’s ride at most.”
“Can we not turn from the road and avoid this place of death?” Conan, who had been considering just that option, readjusted his sweat-soaked headdress and dug his heels into the flanks of his horse until the beast resumed its canter. “No,” he said finally. “I would as soon not delay our search for the god, but if the army responsible for that is still at large, better to know sooner than later. Let us see what transpired ere we press on.”
“What say you that we make camp in a few turns?” Sivitri suggested. “I know not what has made my body so sore—yesterday’s ride with the asshuri, last night’s... bath, or this cursed cheap saddle.”
Conan grinned. For his part, he had found the bath invigorating, though it had left them with less time for sleep. When he awakened at sunrise, with Sivitri curled up beside him, many aches that he had felt so keenly all day had fled from his limbs in the night. The barbarian’s wolfish vitality had ever been such that he recovered from wounds or weariness with little rest—especially if he was driven by a purpose. Today, he was eager to seize the god-bauble, collect his reward, and return to Messantia at full gallop. Entanglement in the webs of thieves and assassins put a man’s nerves on edge. Conan preferred the company of simpler rogues, like those of his Hawk. And Rulvio, though honest enough for a seafaring rogue, would not wait forever for his return.
“Well, Conan?” Sivitri asked.
Lost in his thoughts, Conan had forgotten to consider Sivitri’s suggestion. “Camp? Nay, not until the stars shine. The moon will be bright enough to light our way, and the best time to travel through this desert will be under the night sky.”
“Our horses cannot go all day and all night,” she argued. “Know you of any springs or any oasis that lies ahead? Though we brought water, it were better to conserve when we can.”
“No man knows the deserts of eastern Shem—or western Turan, as some call it, depending upon the monarch to whom they swear fealty. When I rode among my kozaki as chief, the Shemitish claim seemed stronger. Most nomads and raiders alike shun this stretch of desert. And if you care to listen, they’ll blab legends of curses and hauntings that set your teeth on edge. Such tales are as common as grains of sand hereabouts—and some might even be true. Only foreigners and a few hardy traders frequent this waste. By Crom, I never gave thought to trudging here u
ntil I came by the map to the Brass City.”
Sivitri watched the circling vultures and considered Conan’s words. “’Tis certain this ribbon of road leads somewhere. Mayhap we shall find water beyond the rocks of yon plateau.”
“Water—aye, that we might. But I doubt not that much more than water awaits us there. Wrap a cloth around your face and breathe no open air when we near that grisly feast... the smell alone could tie. your stomach in knots. Be advised to look away when we approach, unless you have seen a field of carnage. Vultures are sloppy eaters.” He grinned wolfishly.
“Like you, I have broken bread at death’s table on more than one occasion. A warrior pays no mind to the stink or the aspect of carrion.”
Their conversation dwindled as their mounts trotted along the road, which sloped gradually upward. The afternoon sun continued to pound the dunes and suck every morsel of moisture from the air. Soon, the smell of baked horsehair and dry dust gave way to an odour of increasing pungency. They neared a cleft in the rocks, through which the road led. Here the flapping and rustling of wings and the cawing of squabbling vultures became loud.
When their horses’ hooves brought them into the cleft, the carrion-stench flowed into their nostrils like a reeking wave. Sivitri coughed and raised a hand to her mouth, her face paling in spite of her earlier bold words about death. The road had narrowed to a path, flanked on both sides by steep cliffs of stone. The Cimmerian admired the effectiveness of this natural fortification; anyone approaching the plateau was forced to follow this pass, which a small band of men could easily defend.
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