“Because they are everywhere. If you knew a tenth of the schemes that I have—”
“I’ll not cloud my thoughts with if s'' Conan grumbled. “Let Thoth-amon and every bald-pated priest of Set lie in wait for us at Nithia! We shall feed them a feast of steel and send them to Hell ere they overwhelm us. As for Caranthes, perhaps you can clean out his coffers by offering the statue to him. As I see it, we lose nothing by making for the Brass City at full trot. Keep one hand on your reins, the other on your saddle horn, and follow me.” Conan dug his heels into the flanks of his stallion and spurred it to a trot, then to a gallop.
A cloud of dust billowed behind the pair as they raced toward the uncertain future that awaited them in the dunes of Nithia.
XV
Excavation
Toj slid down the scarp and brushed the thick layer of dust from his indigo cloak. He stood for a moment in the shade afforded by the cliff in the narrow pass and let a measure of the sun’s heat abate from his body. He had been fortunate that Conan and the woman— Sivitri was her true name, he now knew—had slowed their horses while following the road through the rocky wall that ringed this desert plateau.
Tracking them from Saridis had been no easy task. The dunes has provided little cover, forcing him to follow at a greater distance than he would have preferred. Fortunate was he that they had kept to the trade roads, where their hoof prints were not too difficult to discern. But he had foregone a few nights of sleep to keep up with them; his horse was apparently inferior to theirs, and the tedious task of ascertaining their route had required him to stop on several occasions. Only after nightfall, when his quarry stopped for rest, did he draw near enough to actually see them. Then he would settle in until sunrise.
The assassin yawned and stretched, flexing his limbs. Earlier, he had watched them enter the cleft in the rocks at the base of the plateau. Then he had taken a chance and closed the distance, making for the cliffs at full gallop. The risk of being seen had weighed not so heavily as that of losing them in the pass. Even so, he had deemed it folly to actually ride into that gap after them, and instead, he had concealed his horse in an outcropping near the mouth of the pass and climbed to the low cliff top.
While the Cimmerian and the woman had cantered up the narrowing path, Toj had run along the high road above them. The dirt encrusting his garments helped him to blend with his surroundings. To avoid being seen, he had followed them by ear and did not risk a glance into the pass. When he came close enough to overhear Conan and Sivitri speaking, he had slunk toward the edge of the cliff, to lie unmoving in a suitable position of espial.
The quaint priest’s appearance had amazed him as much as it had seemed to startle the pair below. Listening with fascination, Toj had at once understood Jade’s lust for the Grim Grey God. Small wonder that she had gone to such extremes to obtain it—to Jade, the Red Asp had been a mere token compared to a relic of such purport. The assassin had little use for baubles or treasures of history, save those that furthered his profession. He had risen to a comfortable station in life, one that provided him with ample opportunity to indulge in his pastime of choice: killing. Why relinquish his freedom to dabble in the affairs of empire?
The presence of Sivitri here was both interesting and unexpected. He knew of her by name only; she ranked high within Jade’s operation. Some claimed that she was Jade’s sister, though none knew for certain save perhaps Jade or Sivitri herself. He was glad now that no opportunity to slay her out of hand had yet presented itself, since Sivitri would provide him with a measure of insurance that Jade would rid him of the kalb beetle once the god was delivered. Yes, Sivitri would be an ideal hostage.
Wrinkling his nostrils, Toj studied the bodies in the pass with professional curiosity. The smell must be strong indeed to penetrate the ointment he had daubed on his upper lip when he had first met the odour rising from the pass to the plateau. His ointment had proven useful in many situations past, where one could not risk impairment or distraction by the effluvium of certain surroundings.
Conan was right. Many of these soldiers had only recently met their end. The vultures had made a mess of the cadavers, but Toj’s expert eye soon divined a few peculiar aspects unique to those who had worn the leather jerkins. The throats of many of them had been mauled. Traces of four parallel scratches were visible at the edges of the wounds, marks of a size that human fingers made. In one tom jugular, Toj saw a protruding finger-bone.
More peculiar than this were the few skeletons with fully desiccated flesh. Their ribs, limbs, and skulls bore fresh white chips and scratches, as if the soldiers had hacked at them with their blades. One bony hand grasped a bloodied scimitar. On the limbs of another jumbled skeleton, Toj saw the tattered wrappings of dull grey cloth... like that of an aged burial shroud.
Now he understood the banter about sorcerers and the mention of Thoth-amon. Here was one explanation: A practitioner of dark arts had imbued these bones with the power to deal death. He found this an interesting way to slay. The shock of facing a foe who had been raised from the grave might freeze the victim with fear. The animated dead, supposed Toj, would be as obedient as any weapons of murder—which were as effective as the wielder. In this case, quite effective.
Toj, however, could ill afford further admiration of this handiwork. He had let Conan and Sivitri gain enough ground, and sunset would come soon. As he sprinted through the pass, he realized that he might have opportunity to pit himself against the sorcerer. For if the priest had spoken truly, and if the Cimmerian did not reach the Brass City by sunset, then that sorcerer might seize the god-relic.
Only once in his long career had the assassin been called upon to dispose of a wizard. Gajaq the Red, cruel seer of the Zamboulan Khan, had made enemies of many men—so many that he had summoned a demonic bodyguard to watch over him night and day and to thwart all attacks on his person. As proof against poison, he cast spells of purification upon his food and water. Toj had spied upon one of the demon-binding rites performed by Gajaq in his tower. When the decadent seer and his guardian had left the chamber, Toj had cut a razor-thin line into the protective circle painted in blood upon the floor.
Gajaq had died rather violently when he next stood within his circle and tried to bind another demon to do his bidding. The simple cut had wrecked the circle’s properties, and the demonic bodyguard had been unable to stop one of his own kind. Toj remembered that event well; never had he seen a man’s head crushed so forcefully that both eyes had popped from their sockets, flown through the air, and splattered against the wall. Spell casters were indeed fallible— mere flesh and blood beneath their veneer of magic. If circumstances dictated that Toj slay another sorcerer, he would find a way. He would obtain the Grim Grey God and bring it to Jade at once, before the kalb beetle finished its crawl through his vitals.
As for Conan, whether the Cimmerian succeeded or failed mattered not to Toj. Be it barbarian or mage who first laid hands upon the pearl god, only Toj would leave the Nithian desert alive.
Tevek Thul paced the rim of the pit that had widened and deepened all too slowly as the day turned to night. Tevek’s skeletal slaves had laboured tirelessly, uncovering the tower completely as they lifted the lid from the coffin of sand wherein the Nithian temple had lain. The process was taking far longer than he had anticipated. The delay bothered him little at first, for he had been engaged in the questioning of the dead Blackblade, once Acheron’s Supreme Warlord.
Eventually, when the last of the smouldering tongue had turned to pale ash in the cup, Blackblade had lapsed into silence as the death-speak conjuration wore off. Tevek lacked another tongue with which to renew the spell, but already he had gleaned invaluable knowledge from the dead man. So he had stood beside the giant Blackblade and watched the excavation progress. As the hole in the sand widened, he had circled it, always with the sword-wielding Acheronian warlord at his side.
The brass spire rose from one comer of the broad marble roof, now entirely cleared of sand. The
building laid bare was square in shape, and broad enough for a dozen men to lie head to toe along each side. The roof had not been built entirely from marble. Crystalline skylights made up much of its surface, though most of these were broken. Fragments of the translucent panes were still attached to the edges of the frames, where they gleamed like glass daggers in the waning sunlight.
Impatient with the slowness of his workers, Tevek searched his memory for any spells that might help to further move the mass of sand. The loss of time pained him, and he thought too often of Thoth-amon's spell of death-—of the spirit-candle that burned shorter with every turn of the glass. Thoth-amon would doubtless have made short work of this excavation, but Tevek’s repertoire simply lacked any sort of spell to move earth. He had devoted his time almost exclusively to a study of the dead, of the spirit world, to gain power that would serve his lifetime goal of vengeance against the Khyfans. What he had done yesterday at the desert village of Kaetta would seem merciful in comparison to hi:> plans for the offspring of those who had murdered his ancestors.
Tevek frowned and stopped his pacing. There was no better way to clear away the sand. He could not afford to exhaust himself again by channelling power into the Black Ring. And the Acheronian soldiers that now served him were moving with as much speed as Tevek could squeeze from them, and he would simply have to wait for them to finish. To while away the time, he extended his necromantic sight into the partially bared temple and probed for any emanations from the god therein. Blackblade had confirmed the relic’s presence there—indeed, the warlord had held it in his hands before the Priest-King’s spell had buried Nithia. But it was too large for him to hold onto and, at the same time, dig himself free of the sand.
As Tevek concentrated, his mind brushed against the five headless dead who lacked any essence. They were of no interest to him, but the sixth body... fear yet lingered within it, where Tevek had detected it before. Five of the Nithians’ minds were closed to his, their ears deaf to his whispers. Now would he work on this sixth one, picking at the scab of woe upon its spirit until he could probe the wound beneath. A pity that he had no spare tongue for the death-speak spell. This Nithian might have much to say. Of course, there were other ways to extract secrets from this headless one.
Tevek walked down the sloping, sandy wall of the pit and hauled himself up onto the roof of the temple. He sat cross-legged upon the marble, cast back the cowl of his robe, and closed his eyes to seal them from the sun’s waning rays. Then he thrust the whole force of his mind, dagger-like, into the spirit of the Nithian who had died in fear. AWAKEN, he urged soundlessly, as the dead one’s essence tried vainly to pull away from him. RISE UP!
Sluggishly, the Nithian obeyed. Tevek fed his summons with a measure of power from the Black Ring. The dead one’s spirit thrashed, as slippery as a fish in the fingers of Tevek’s grasping mind. But the fish had been speared, and soon its struggling abated. FROM THE SAND I SUMMON THEE, he commanded. The skeletal limbs below responded to his call; he felt the reluctant resurgence of life into the bones, and with it, the return of pain and trepidation. But the Nithian continued to resist him. The Acheronian soldiers—all save Blackblade—required almost no conscious thought for Tevek to control them. Not so this fear-racked spirit.
The necromancer continued his goading, determined to bind these bones to his will. Finally, the decayed body emerged from one of the roofs shattered skylights. Tevek opened his eyes and blinked. During the slow summoning, the sun had dipped closer to the western horizon. Nightfall would come within a turn or two of the glass. He welcomed its coming, for his powers had doubtless been hindered all day by the hateful sun.
Tevek at once saw part of the reason for his subject’s slow upward progress. The upper torso had been severed, the rib cage and spine shattered. The missing arms would present a further problem. Without them, the corpse was of little use to the necromancer, whose intent had been to furnish the dead one with a stick of charcoal and force it to inscribe the events just prior to its death. For now, it would wait until the sand was cleared from within the temple.
The ravaged skeleton fell into a heap of bones when Tevek released his grip on the spiritual residue lurking within. He cast forward his cowl and rose to his feet, brushing sand from his robes. While Tevek had occupied himself with the summoning, the excavators had made a measure of progress. Much of the sand obscuring one wall of the structure had been taken away, and the top of the temple entrance would soon be visible.
A strange pain struck Tevek suddenly, nearly doubling him over. The ache came from within him... the curse that had afflicted the Zamorian smuggler, Harrab! He chided himself for his lapse of memory regarding Solnarus’s warding. He had assumed that the disease would not affect one possessed of his immunities. But it was strong. Even so, for a mage of Tevek’s skill, the enchantment could be avoided, unless it progressed too far. Fortunately, his body had furnished him with ample warning.
From a pouch containing numerous tiny phials of bone, Tevek selected one marked with a special rune. He shook grey powder onto his finger, held his hand up and out and began to turn in circles as he lowered his hand. A spiralling tendril of green mist soon surrounded him. It contracted slowly, like a vaporous python, and melted into his skin. Tevek endured the burning sting of that contact, and soon the sensation faded. Then the mist was gone, and with it, the ache brought on by Solnarus’s curse.
Tevek walked toward the wall where the entrance to the temple would soon be accessible. When the sand was cleared from within, the god-relic would be his. He glanced westward, where the huge form of Dhurkhan Blackblade loomed at the edge of the pit. The Acheronian would play a central role in the revenge that Tevek had planned for the Khyfans. In his mind’s eye, the necromancer could already see the blood of the Ibis-worshipping scum flowing into their streets as Tevek unleashed Blackblade upon them, at the head of an army of the dead that would outnumber the living army of mighty Aquilonia.
But first he would deal with Thoth-amon. When he freed himself from the Stygian’s coils, never again would he be taken by surprise and subjected to another geas. Prince of Magicians? That menial of Set’s might wield power and hold such a title now, but even he would one day bow before another.
Soon all would acknowledge Tevek Thul—wielder not only of the mighty Black Ring, but of the ultimate power that was the Grim Grey God—as King of Magicians. And after the Khyfans had suffered the brunt of his wrath, Tevek would find others to punish. Every descendant—every branch that had sprouted from their family tree—must face the ultimate punishment for the sins of their fathers.
For that matter, thought Tevek, did not all people of the Hyborian lands share ancestry with the Khyfans? Indeed, should he not penalize all of those who lived north of the River Styx and west of the Turanian desert? Only then could he cleanse every drop of blood that stained Dumahk’s honour.
None would stand before his legions. Countless dead would march before him, summoned forth by necromantic rites that tapped the Black Ring’s awesome energies, and they would sweep across mountain, plain, and forest... a pestilence of blood and bone that would litter the continent with rotting cadavers.
A campaign of such vengeance was more than a lifetime’s work, but time would soon mean nothing to Tevek Thul. What mattered the passage of years to one with the god-relic’s powers at his command?
Below, the Acheronian soldiers filled their shields with sand from the top of the temple’s entrance.
Soon, thought Tevek. He crossed the marble roof and carefully descended the steep bank of sand, circling the temple to stand near the entrance. Soon.
In the shadows beneath his hood, the rictus upon Tevek’s cadaverous face was untouched by any of the waning warmth from the slowly setting sun.
XVI
The Serpent Awakens
Hot and dry was the wind that rustled the leaves of the palms, rippled across the dark pool, and whispered past the walls of the stone edifice that rose from the Oasis of Kh
ajar. It swept past the rune-covered columns in the long hall within and gently stirred the hem of Thoth-amon's robe. On the floor near his sandalled feet, a deadly emperor scorpion scuttled. Its bronze-hued body was nearly as long as the Stygian’s foot. Its claws brushed against dusky skin, its carapace an angry red in the hall’s eerie glow. The stinger-tipped tail bobbed but did not strike, and the desert predator moved on.
The sorcerer sat inanimate upon his throne, feeling neither wind nor warmth. He did not stir or flinch at the questing touch of the scorpion. His full attention was directed elsewhere, and the grim set of his jaw belied the turmoil that raged within his mind. He stared forward, his eyes hazy pools of blackness. They focused now on. events transpiring in a place far north and east of his oasis.
A scaly snout emerged from a crevice in the wall, forked tongue probing, slitted eyes glimmering. As the serpent slithered forward, its head flattened into a hood and its fanged mouth opened wide. The scorpion took no notice of the doom that approached it. It thrashed and died moments later, pierced by those envenomed scimitars. Had the cobra been like others of its kind, it would have then eaten its prey, but instead, it slithered past, arranging its coils on the stones before Thoth-amon's throne.
Its shiny form began to swell, its hood widening and stretching until it loomed above the motionless Stygian. The body was now as thick as a man’s waist, the menacing eyes as large as hens’ eggs. A crimson tongue flicked at the air when the mouth opened. “Hear me, mine servant,” it hissed is the harsh tongue of archaic Stygian, its voice rustling like dead, windblown leaves across cold stone.
The hazy cast in Thoth-amon's eyes cleared, and pupils slowly reappeared in his inky orbs. If he was startled by the menacing apparition before him, he gave no sign, save perhaps the clenching of fingers upon the stone armrests of his throne. But visitations were rare, and this sudden appearance gnawed at his mind. He could not help but connect it with the imminent doings in the Nithian desert, where he had been projecting his ka. Tevek Thul had been most efficient in the fulfilment of his errand. “Father Set, my Master.” He bowed his head in obeisance. “What service can thy unworthy minion proffer to thee?”
Conan and the Grim Grey God Page 20
