Conan proceeded carefully around a bend in the path. “Zandru’s bones,” he muttered. Several paces ahead, where the path ended and opened onto the plateau, he counted at least a score of slain men. Vultures squawked in annoyance at the interruption of their feast, flapping away from a heap of sprawling corpses. The pile was half the height of a man, a tangle of chewed limbs and gutted bodies. Empty sockets gaped lifelessly from bloodied faces, the eyes tom out by scavenging beaks. Much of the flesh had been stripped away, exposing patches of bone here and there among the fallen. Flies, not as shy as the carrion-fowl, swarmed around the mound of the dead.
Under the hot afternoon sky, the overpowering reek of rot was more than even Conan could stomach. He took a rag from his saddlebag and knotted it snugly in place to cover his mouth and nose. Sivitri hastily did likewise. They slowed their horses and stared with morbid curiosity at the carcasses.
“Who were they—and how did they die?” Sivitri asked, her voice somewhat muffled by the cloth.
“Shemites they were, though swarthier. Dead for no more than a day, else the maggots would writhe among them. Some carried weapons and wore leather jerkins,” observed Conan, dismounting for a closer look at the grisly remains. “Strange,” he murmured. He slid out his sword and used it to flip a corpse onto its back.
“What?” demanded Sivitri, who remained upon her horse. She rubbed at her neck and yawned, as if bone-tired already.
To Conan, she seemed a trifle wan; perhaps mild sunstroke was setting in. But the ride had not been unbearably hot, certainly cooler than some Conan had endured. Of course, she was not accustomed to this sort of travel. He would keep an eye on her for signs of any serious illness, he decided, then turned his attention back to the mound of the dead. “The symbols—three triangles within a circle— etched upon these jerkins,” he replied absently as he separated more of the dead and studied them.
“Most warriors, unless they be mercenaries, adorn themselves with devices of one sort or another. What of it?”
“I have seen their like nowhere south of the Nemedian capital,” Conan answered. “If I have it aright, these folk were worshippers of Ibis.”
“Quite so, young man.” The smooth tones seemed to come from nowhere.
“Crom!” Conan jumped backward, sword upraised.
Sivitri hissed in surprise, whipped her blade from its scabbard and held it at ready, scanning the pass behind them.
Conan then noticed that he stood in the elongated shadow of a man... one who stood above and behind him. He spun and looked up, to the top of the rocks. The cliffs were not so steep here, where the pass ended.
There stooped a thin old man clad in a long-sleeved tunic and breeches of dazzling white silk. His thin, silvery beard sprouted from his wrinkled face and swept down to the pale leather straps of his sandals, to curl slightly upward. In a knobby fist he clasped a tapering staff, its wood the colour of alabaster. His belt was of bleached, braided cord, its clasp of flat silver fashioned into a symbol like that emblazoned upon the jerkins of the slain. The clasp was the only bit of ornamentation among his plain garments.
“Crom?” The old man repeated Conan’s epithet, shaking his head. He tapped his staff against the ground and vanished.
Conan whirled and scanned the tops of the rocks, the face of the sloping cliff, and the bend of the path behind him, finding nothing.
“Gone!” Sivitri flashed him a look of puzzlement ad shrugged her shoulders. “How? It cannot be!”
“Quite so—again,” came the voice. This time, the wizened stranger stood at the end of the pathway, where it led out to the plateau. “Weigh not so heavily the evidence gathered by your eyes—too easily can they be deceived.” He shuffled toward them and stopped a sword’s length from the edge of the carrion-pile.
Conan kept his sword in hand but did not raise it. A sudden quiet settled over the pass, and the Cimmerian only then realized that the flies had stopped buzzing. He glanced down at the gruesome heap, his scalp-hairs prickling. The flies lay still upon the ground. “Crom! Whence—”
Dozens of new wrinkles appeared on the bearded face as the old man smiled. But his brow remained furrowed, as if in sadness, or perplexity. “Not Crom, young man, no indeed, not I! In the halls of mist beneath his mountain of grey stone does he brood, never to venture into this realm. But how like him are you men of Cimmeria—how 'hardened your thews, your minds—your souls.” He sighed.
Sivitri swung her legs from her saddle. She mopped at her brow and sauntered over to Conan’s side. “You have a face like that of Caran—oh, it must be the heat, for it could not be him. Enough of your rambling, old one! State your name and your purpose, or, if you be a spirit, disappear and trouble us no more. We have an urgent errand that is no concern of yours.”
“No spirit am I... naught but tired flesh and old blood, which, as a whole, form the man known as Caranthes, priest of Ibis.”
Conan could not conceal the doubt in his tone. “Caranthes? Come you hence from your temple in faraway Hanumar, then? Or do you deceive us with some priestly mummery?”
“Both, you might say. For as I stand here at the gate of Kaetta, I stand within the Seventh Ring of Prayer upon the roof of the temple in Hanumar, bathed in the bright sunlight there. It sits ill with me to involve others in this matter, but time is short, and no portent forewarned us of the fate that may soon grasp us all. Holy Ibis, roused from a long and deep slumber by the dying screams of his devotees, awakened me. He could not stop this carnage, for his temple here had been too thoroughly desecrated. He came unto me in a dream and bade me to spirit walk here, where dire and blasphemous work has been wrought within the sphere of our sister temple.”
Conan could not deny the benevolent radiance he felt within this man’s presence, though he knew not if the man were holy priest or foul sorcerer. “Spirit walk?” he asked dubiously. “Men say that ghosts cast no shadow, and I stood in yours not long ago.”
“As I said before, your eyes can mislead you. You saw the shadow because you believed I stood atop the rock. But I urge you, spend not the few coins of daylight that remain to us in idle debate with me. When the sun sets, I perforce return to Hanumar—there to stay until sunrise next.”
An ache, brought on by the appearance of this strange priest, had begun to develop within Conan’s skull. He rubbed at his face and then met Caranthes’ piercing gaze, whereupon he was at once startled by the contrast between the priest’s eyes. The right glowed like amber in bright torchlight, the left gleamed with blue as intense as the cold waters of the northern Vilayet Sea. This brought to Conan’s mind the rumours he had heard long ago in Numalia—that Caranthes had been born with one blue and one orange eye, a phenomenon that had designated the priests of Ibis for as long as men could recall.
“Though I know not why, I believe you really are Caranthes. You must know that we had naught to do with this slaughter,” Conan said, indicating the dead with a sweep of his blade.
“We but wished to passed through,” added Sivitri. “Bel! You really do look like Caranthes.”
“I assure you that I am. And that,” Caranthes said with a nod, “that is why your ‘urgent errand’ concerns me, despite your claim to the contrary. I would like to say that Holy Ibis guided you to this place, but no priest of Ibis has ever spoken falsely. Nor is it the will of your gods—the concerns of Ibis are far removed from those of reclusive Crom.” He craned his head toward Sivitri. “And the motives of whimsical Bel seldom parallel those of the One True Sun God.” He glanced upward, pausing. “No. It is of your own free will that you come, and if no prophecy of Ibis speaks of you... then none of accursed Set names you either. Therein lies our advantage, for we can surprise those who—”
“Half a moment, Caranthes,” objected Conan. “Our advantage? 1 Whom are we to surprise, and why? Have you come for vengeance against the slayers who did this deed here?”
Caranthes took a step backward. “Vengeance is neither motive nor purpose for a follower of Holy Ib
is. Never have we sought it.” His words came slowly, full of sorrow. “I mourn those who perished here, but in death they may have fulfilled their purpose, and they now dwell in peace and light. Had the evildoer not revealed himself to Holy Ibis by wreaking this slaughter, we might have been too late to stop the fingers of evil from clasping the god and twisting it to < foul deeds.
“Nay, Cimmerian. I come to stop what must be stopped, to shield 9 the candle of goodness from the dark gust that would extinguish its flame forever. While I dreamed, Holy Ibis revealed to me an image from the past, of a place thought lost forever to us... gleaming spires of brass, smooth walls of marble. Centuries ago, before the rise of Acheron, my ancestors worshipped Holy Ibis within a temple of such splendour that none today can claim. Two purposes did it serve—as a place of prayer, and as a vault in which an object of ancient power was hidden.”
“The Grim Grey God,” Conan said with a scowl.
Sivitri glared at him. “Will you not let him finish, barbar? Bel!” Caranthes ignored her outburst. “In Nithia, which means City of Brass, where the Seven Fountains of Ibis once flowed, the Priest-King Solnarus became the last of my order to hold that title. For he perished there with all Nithians save one—his own son, whom he had secretly sent away, knowing that the doom of Nithia was nigh. His son founded the lesser temple in Hanumar, where I stand today.
“Never did Solnarus’s son commit Nithia’s whereabouts to scroll or tablet, nor did he speak of the Brass City to his heirs. The dead stir not when they are forgotten by the living, or so we believe. But other forces, as ancient as Ibis himself, conspired to make known again the burial ground of my ancestors.
“Holy Ibis disclosed to me the location of Nithia. I was warned that the site is known to another: Set’s most evil disciple, vile Thoth-amon.”
“Thoth-amon!” Conan growled, tightening his grip around his sword’s hilt. “There’s a name I hoped never to hear again. What has that motherless serpent-spawn to do with this?”
“Nothing, if you reach the Brass City in time,” said Caranthes, his orange eye flickering. “Though Ibis spoke not of how Kaetta fell, ’tis my suspicion that we look upon the hideous handiwork of that sorcerer. The taint of his Black Ring lingers here,”
“True enough,” Conan agreed. He put a hand on Sivitri’s arm. “See here the evidence. Some of the bodies wear neither weapons nor armour, and look at this one.” He nudged it with the toe of his sandal.
Sivitri leaned to stare at remains that were utterly bare of flesh. “The vultures may have picked it clean,” she said, as if to convince herself. “But it lay beneath the others—”
“Aye, that it did. The flesh was long gone from these bones—it rotted away, it was not eaten by vultures.” With the tip of his sword, Conan pointed to the corpse’s bony lingers, the knuckles of which were wrapped around the hilt of a bloodied scimitar. “This may be the work of Thoth-amon. These people did not perish in battle with desert raiders.”
Caranthes smoothed his beard. “To Kaetta will come those who seek Nithia, Holy Ibis told me. Those who know the way. And if their feet tread upon the sands of the Nithian desert before sunset, they shall bring about the death of the defiler of Kaetta, and to their care will the fate of the Grim Grey God be entrusted.”
“Sunset?” Conan pointed toward the rubiate sun. “Why, your tale whiled away a half-turn of the glass already. If your foretelling be true, we must gallop from here without delay. Crom and Badb! If Thoth-amon wishes to crush us, we shall be hard-pressed to stop him. With steel, we can lay low any foe of flesh and blood, but to face that devil’s spawn armed only with swords and a prophecy from your dream... have you aught else to offer?”
“Thoth-amon is flesh and blood, doubt it not.”
“Wait... Caranthes,” Sivitri interrupted. “We must know more about the Grim Grey God. Why does the Stygian sorcerer seek it? From what I hear of his dealings, treasures move him not. He places value on that which others might deem worthless.”
“The relic has powers which, by comparison, would render his Black Ring a child’s toy. Quite fortunate are we that the complete name of the pearl god was buried with the fall of Acheron. I know three of its names, enough to awaken it, but it can be destroyed only by speaking all six of its names in reverse. The other three names were inscribed within tomes that vanished when Acheron fell. These are rumoured to exist, though I have not seen them. But Thoth-amon is too dangerous, too cunning. If the statue falls into his hands, he might one day divine its true name, awaken the forces of Chaos, and begin anew the god-war that sank Atlantis and nearly took the rest of the world with it.”
“So it is no mere giant pearl after all,” murmured Sivitri.
“Quite so,” Caranthes said. He shifted his staff to his left hand and flexed the gnarled fingers that had held it. “I would venture to say that you knew—or guessed—that it was more than a treasure. But I cannot coerce you to retrieve it. You must choose to do this thing of your own volition, for whatever motives you may have, be they base or noble. If you dare not face the dark disciple of accursed Set, then get you from this place of death and return to whence you came.”
The throbbing Of Conan’s headache had trebled. To confront Thoth-amon surely meant taking the short road to Hell, but if there was a chance... if the god Ibis had truly foretold of that fiend’s death... well, to a Cimmerian, vengeance was both motive and purpose. If he could eliminate that damnable Stygian and profit from so doing, then why not? “So if we hasten, then the relic will be entrusted to our care. Expect you that we shall deliver it to you afterward?”
Caranthes slowly shook his head. “’Tis unclear to me. If the god was not safe in Nithia, it would not be safe in Hanumar. This matter must I meditate upon, and at sunset shall I confer with those of our order. Much may depend upon events that have yet to transpire.”
Sivitri sheathed her sword. “Tomorrow, you will again... spirit walk and appear before us?”
“If Holy Ibis empowers me to appear once more, I shall return.”
“Not too soon tomorrow, if you please,” Conan said. “Slaying a wizard and searching a lost city for a relic sounds to me like a full night’s work. Into the saddle, then, and on to Nithia.” He wiped his sword against the sole of a sandal to clean it of stains, slammed it into his belt, and bounded onto his mount.
Caranthes held up his hand. “A final question before you go— what are your names?”
“Conan of Cimmeria.”
“Kyla—” Sivitri began, then paused for a moment. “Sivitri, of Zamora.”
A frown flickered across Caranthes’ face—disappointment? But it was swiftly replaced with a warm smile. “Well met, Conan and Sivitri. May Holy Ibis watch over both of you, my young friends. You must turn back and go around the plateau, for no road leads out of Kaetta save the one beneath the hooves of your horses.”
Conan and Sivitri exchanged glances and took up their reins, steering their mounts around. Caranthes waved at them, a grave expression on his aged face. Neither Cimmerian nor Zamorian spoke until they were halfway through the pass.
“Believe you that Caranthes actually appeared before us, then?” Sivitri began.
“What matters it? Were that illusion or not, my plan has not changed.” Conan was troubled by a strange sensation that he was being watched. On impulse, he scanned the tops of the cliffs that flanked the road, then glanced backward. He shrugged the feeling from his shoulders, deeming it an after-effect of the strange encounter farther back.
“What if it were a trick played upon us by another, to cause a delay? He went on for some time, claiming urgency, then bade us to go around the plateau—further slowing our departure.”
“Perhaps,” Conan said amiably.
“And this talk of Thoth-amon. He is no stranger to our guilds— many times has my mistress procured the odd item for him, for he is free enough with gold when he seeks something and has no time to obtain it himself. Our information places him in the Oasis at Khajar, from
which he has not stirred in some time. A constant, if distant, watch is kept by agents of our Stygian guild, and last I heard, he was in the midst of some unfathomable conjuration expected to occupy him for years.”
Conan swigged from his waterskin. “If you knew of him... suffice it to say that his sorcerous arm has a long reach. Distance means nothing to that Stygian devil. Those who whisper of him say that he works his wizardly mischief without leaving his lair.”
“You act as if you have run afoul of him before. Tell me, what would Thoth-amon, who sways the fate of nations, have to do with a barbarian freebooter?”
“Nothing—and I would have it remain so. Only a slack-wit embroils himself in the affairs of Stygian sorcerers. But as a youth, I abided for a time in Nemedia. There was an occasion when a foppish fool of a Numalian hired me to borrow a certain object from a nobleman—without telling that nobleman, mind you. When the blasted watchman caught me at my work, my neck nearly made its way into a Nemedian noose. Whilst making my escape, I spoiled a plot of Thoth-amon's and slew a minion spawned in Set’s blackest breeding pit.” He shivered at the memory of the horror he had witnessed before taking to his heels. He hoped never again to encounter a beast like that, a thing with a human head of flawless beauty that sat atop the shimmering coils of a serpent.
“So you find nothing suspicious in that Caranthes himself would take notice of us and so handily knit a cloth of enticement?” Sivitri pushed a stray lock of hair aside and raised an eyebrow. “Did it not occur to you that we may have seen an illusion conjured by some mage—perhaps even Thoth-amon himself—one who sought to turn us away? Most would flee at the mere mention of Thoth-amon's name.”
Conan massaged his temples with his free hand in a futile attempt to stave off the growing ache within his head. “Crom, woman! You see hidden purposes and deceitful plots everywhere.”
Conan and the Grim Grey God Page 19
