They skirted the sinister pool and approached Thoth-Amon's abode. As the palms opened out before them, they saw that this edifice was, like the altar, made of massive blocks of red sandstone. It was a large structure, better called a palace than a mere house. The surface and edges of the stone were worn, testifying to great age.
What lost age had reared this huge pile, none could say. The glyphs carved in the arch over the doorway were unlike any that Zarono had seen in his wide travels. The design of the building was severely plain. Zarono found it hard to relate it to any known architectural style, save perhaps the massive pyramids that rose from the desert near Khemi. The effect was less that of a dwelling than that of a tomb.
The black doorway gaped like a yawning mouth in the hulking, brutal mass of sandstone. Menkara strode without pause up to those stone jaws and traced a cryptic sign in the air. Zarono, with a twinge of awe, saw that the sign glowed lines of green fire in the air for some moments after that bony finger had traced it.
Within, all was dark stone and echoing silence. There was no sign of any guards or servants. Menkara strode confidently forward, and Zarono could only follow.
Beyond the antechamber, a flight of stone steps, worn into smooth curves by many ages of sandaled feet, led down into darkness. Down below the level of die desert they descended, until they came at last to a level space. Advancing, they emerged into a hall.
Here was light―a sinister green glow from serpentine torcheres of polished copper. By the flickering emerald luminescence, Zarono could see that the hall was lined with two rows of huge, monolithic columns, graven with cryptic glyphs of the same kind that he had seen over the outer doorway. At the end of the column-lined hall, a man sat on a throne of black, glittering stone. As the two travelers approached, the man became clear to Zarono's sight.
The man was a dusky giant, with broad shoulders and aloof, hawklike features.
From his shaven skull to his sandaled feet, his skin was a deep, rich brown.
Black eyes glittered hypnotically from the depths of cavernous eye-sockets. He wore a simple white linen robe. The only ornament to be seen on his person was a copper-colored ring, in the form of a serpent that, making three turns around one finger of a muscular hand, held its tail in its jaws.
In a flash of insight, Zarono, from the severe plainness of the building and from the lack of adornment of the mighty sorcerer, divined something of the inner nature of Thoth-Amon. Here was a man to who material possessions and showy gauds meant noth-T
ing. His passion was for something intangible―for power over his fellow men.
As they halted a few paces from the throne, the man spoke in a strong, clear voice: "Greetings, Menkara, little brother!"
Menkara sank to all fours and touched his forehead to the black flagstones. "In the name of Father Set, dread lord," he whispered, "I am come."
The disquieting thought came to Zarono that even the priest was frightened.
Zarono found himself sweating despite the dryness of the desert air.
"Who is this black-visaged Zingaran whom you have brought to my place?" queried Thoth-Amon.
"Captain Zarono, a buccaneer, dread lord: an emissary from Villagro, duke of Kordava."
The cold, serpentine eyes leisurely looked Zarono up and down. Zarono had the feeling that the intelligence behind that ophidian gaze was so far removed from earthly considerations that the doings of men were all but alien to it.
"And what have I to do with Zingara, or Zingara with me?" asked Thoth-Amon.
Menkara opened his mouth, but Zarono decided that it was time to assert himself.
With a boldness that he did not truly feel, he stepped forward, dropped to one knee before the throne, and drew from his doublet the parchment scroll that was Villagro's letter. This he handed to Thoth-Amon, who took it with his copper-ringed hand and dropped it in his lap.
"Mightiest of magicians," he began, "I bring you familial greeting from the lord duke of Kordava, who salutes you and offers rich gifts in return for some slight service, which this missive will explain."
Thoth-Amon did not unroll the letter; he seemed to know its contents already. He mused for a time.
' Twere near to my heart to trample the accursed cult of Mitra into the slime and raise up the worship of our Father Set," he murmured. "But I am occupied with mighty magical operations, and Villagro's gold means little to me."
"That is not all, dread lord," said Menkara, drawing the Book of Skelos from under his robe. "In tender of the duke's good will, we beg you to receive this gift from our hands." He laid the ancient tome at Thoth-Amon's feet.
Thoth-Amon snapped his fingers, and the book rose into the air and settled gently, open, on the sorcerer's lap. The wizard-priest idly turned a few pages.
"A rare gift, in sooth," he said. "I had not thought a third copy yet existed; or have you rifled the royal librarium of Aquilonia?"
"Nay, dread lord," quoth Menkara. "A chance find, this, on the Nameless Isle that lies in the western Sea…"
His voice trailed off, for the figure of the somber giant before them had suddenly grown tense. Cold fires leapt up in those snaky black eyes. The air seemed cold, and a sense of peril sprang up in Zarono. He caught his breath; had they done something to anger the great magician?
"Bore you away aught else from the altar of Tsathoggua the Toad-god?" said Thoth-Amon in a soft voice like a sword sliding from its sheath.
Menkara quailed. "Naught else, dread lord, save a sack or two of gems…"
"Which lay before the altar upon the book, did they not?"
Menkara nodded, trembling.
Thoth-Amon rose to his feet, and hellish fires blazed in his black eyes. The room seemed to blaze with green fire, and the pavement quaked as at the step of a giant. The magician spoke in a voice of thunder: "You crawling worms! By such fools am I, Thoth-Amon, servedl Set, mighty father, give me men of keener wit for slaves 1 A kan-phog, yaaH
"Mighty one! Prince of magicians! How have we angered you?" wailed Menkara, groveling.
The grim gaze of the mighty Stygian swept down upon the pair in deadly wrath.
His thunderous voice sank to a serpent's hiss.
"Know, fools, that there was hidden beneath the idol that whose worth the entire wealth of the earth cannot equal, compared to which the Book of Skelos is worth no more than a shopkeeper's tally sheet! I speak of the Cobra Crown]"
Zarono gasped. He had dimly heard of this sacred talisman of the serpent-men of Valusia―the most potent sorcerous sigil the earth had ever borne―the all-commanding crown of the serpent-kings, wherewith they had, in pre-human ages, gained the empire of the earth. And they had taken the book and the gems, leaving the supreme treasure behind!
Chapter Nine
WIND IN THE RIGGING
For days, the Wastrel lay becalmed off the Nameless Isle. The men sat along the rail, dangling fishing lines in the water. Half a cable's length forward of the ship, the crew of the longboat, belayed by a line to the Wastrel's bow, sweated at their oars, towing the carack inch by inch toward the unknown shores of the main continent.
Conan cursed and called upon his savage Cimmerian gods, but in vain. Day after day, the sails hung slack from their yards. The small, smooth swells slapped listlessly against the hull. To the south, thun-derheads rose slowly into the hazy sky, and lightning flickered along the horizon at night; but where the Wastrel lay, the air was still.
The burly Cimmerian worried. Zarono's ship could have fallen upon him and taken him, except that the local calm would have halted the Petrel as surely as it had Conan's vessel. Either the Zingaran, too, lay becalmed over the horizon, or he had taken another route in departing from the island and so had missed the Wastrel.
Whatever errand of mischief Zarono was bound on, Conan thought, it was just as well that they had not fallen in with him. They had enough trouble of their own, without his help. For one thing, they were running low on food and fresh water.
For another, there
was Sigurd and his crew. Conan had taken a Liking to the frank, fearless young redbeard from Vanaheim and had offered berths among his own men to the marooned Barachans. He had known that this might lead to trouble, and so it had. There was fierce rivalry between the buccaneers of Zingara and the pirates―mainly Argosseans―of the Isles. Each had fought the other too often and too savagely to develop any mutual liking on short order.
Yet seamen are seamen and 'follow a common trade. Ruthless though he was in many things, Conan felt that he could not simply up-anchor and sail away, leaving fellow mariners to their fate. So he had trusted that, between himself and Sigurd, they could keep the peace. Such, alas, had not been the case. The Zingarans had baited the hapless maroons until fighting broke out. No matter how often Conan or Sigurd hauled snarling sea dogs apart and beat sense into them, another fight was soon a-brewing.
This accursed calm aggravated the friction between the rival groups of corsairs.
Furious with frustration, Conan growled a curse and gripped the rail between clenched hands. If ever, he hoped, a blessed wind would arise and give his men proper seamen's tasks to do, they would be too busy to spend time baiting rivals.
Another problem gnawed at his mind as well. Chabela had confided to him all that she had learned from Zarono and his snake-eyed Stygian sorcerer. Some information they had let slip, more she had overheard, and yet more she had shrewdly inferred, about the reason for Zarono's voyage and his seizure of her vessel. Much of the truth of the plot against the crown had revealed itself to her active mind, and all this she had passed on to Conan.
Now the Cimmerian was in a dilemma. A mere buccaneer, the dynastic conflicts of kingdoms meant lit-tie to him, and he owed little to Ferdrugo of Zingara. True, the old monarch had given him a royal commission as a privateer of the crown, and Kordava provided Conan with a safe harbor after voyages. But this much he might expect from any king of Zingara. The next one, in fact, might demand a smaller percentage of his loot.
In such matters, however, the rude chivalry of his Cimmerian heritage sometimes overcame his self-interest. It was not in the grim barbarian to stand idly by, ignoring the pleas of a beautiful Zingaran princess, while her royal father was slowly done to death by cunning plots and Stygian sorcery. Although he knew pot what he was getting into, Conan at length decided to make her battle his own.
It was not, however, entirely altruism that suggested this course to the buccaneer. He had his ambitions, too. He did not intend to remain a mere privateer all his days. If he could save the king of Zingara and his daughter from the plots of traitors and thus bolster the tottering throne, what could he not ask as a reward? A dukedom? An admiralship?
Conan even toyed with the idea of suing for Princess Chabela's hand and settling down as a royal consort. During a life of wild adventure, many women had tendered Conan the ultimate hospitality. But, although the Cimmerian treated women with a rough chivalry, he had avoided any land of legitimate marriage. He liked to fulfill his definite obligations; and, to one whose lifeblood had been travel, adventure, and conflict, the thought of being tied down to one hearth, with the welfare of a family to think of, was repugnant.
Now, however, he was over thirty-five and past the first flush of youth.
Although he showed few signs of age save the many scars that crisscrossed his mighty frame, he knew that he could not expect to continue his footloose, brawling, roistering life forever. He would have to give some thought to his own future. Chabela was a fine, round, bouncing girl, forceful and intelligent, and she seemed to like him. He could fare further and do worse…
Frowning in thought, Conan left the rail, descended leisurely to his cabin, and flung himself into a chair. The twinkle of gems caught his eye, and he grinned sourly. Something, at least, had been gained from his efforts. On the desk before him, the Cobra Crown twinkled and flashed as the level shafts of the ruddy afternoon sun, slanting through the porthole, struck fire from its blazing gems.
On their march back from the cliff whence the toad-idol had fallen, Conan and his companions had again passed the black temple. Now, it seemed, the aura of evil, which had earlier enshrouded the ruin, was dispelled. The cryptic structure of black stone lay bathed in sparkling sunlight. No longer did an eery thrill of supernatural premonition tingle in the nerves of those who viewed it.
Cautiously, Conan set foot in the gloomy place again. Where the toad-god had squatted for untold ages, a black hole yawned in the plinth on which it had been enthroned. As Conan leaned over the cavity, his alert eye had caught the sparkle of gems. Had Zarono missed something? Conan quickly thrust his hand into the opening and brought forth the Cobra Crown.
It was a hollow cone of gold, crusted with thousands of white, fiery gems. Conan guessed these to be cut and faceted diamonds, although the craft of cutting and polishing the hardest of all gems was virtually unknown to the gem carvers of his day. The crown was fashioned into the likeness of a serpent, whose coils formed the conical headpiece and whose arched neck rose up from behind, to curve across the top of the crown so that the serpent's blunt head stared out above the brows of the wearer. Thousands of gems encrusted the Cobra Crown, and their worth was beyond calculation. So after all, the trip to lie Nameless Isle had not been without its profit.
A roar of excitement roused the buccaneer from his somber thought: "By Frigga's teats and Shaitan's fiery member!"
Conan grinned, knowing the voice of Sigurd the Vanr. An instant later, a redbearded face, flushed with excitement, thrust into his doorway. Before either could speak, Conan knew the cause without words. The boom of taut canvas and the song of wind in the rigging came to his ears, and the cabin tilted as the ship heeled. The wind had come at last.
And what a wind! For two days and a night the Wastrel, stripped to a storm foresail, rode the scudding waves, driven by one of the lusty simooms that caused the mariners of the Hyborian Age to avoid these uncharted seas.
When the wind fell, the Wastrel dropped anchor in a cove on the coast of the main continent. Just where on that coast, Conan did not know, because a heavy overcast had hidden the sun and the stars during this leg of their voyage. Conan knew that they had sailed in a generally easterly direction. From the jungled appearance of the coast, he knew that they were south of the meadowlands of Shem; but whether they had made a landfall in Stygia, or in the kingdom of Kush, or in the little-known black countries still further south, remained to be seen.
"A chancy-looking place, my Captain," grumbled Zeltran the mate. "Where is it we might be?"
"The devil knows and the devil cares," grunted Conan. "The main thing is to find water; the butts are nigh empty and full of slime. Pick me a landing party, and let's be out with barrels. Jump to it!"
Zeltran scurried to the main deck to summon all hands. As the party assembled and swung down on lines to the longboat, Sigurd cast a frowning glance at the shoreline and grumbled one of his cosmopolitan curses. The Vanr had belted a huge leathern baldric across his matted chest.
"What's that, man?" demanded Conan.
Sigurd shrugged. "Maybe naught, shipmate; but this land looks uncommon like the coasts or Kush."
"Well, what of it? We were bound to hit Kush if we kept on to eastward."
"If so it be, these lands are no safe haven for honest mariners. The black devils would as lief eat a man as give him the time of day. And there's tales of a nation of warrior women in the interior, fiercer fighters than the men even."
Conan stared across the water to where the longboat labored shoreward. "Maybe so, but water we must have, and our victuals are none too ample. When our stores are full, well steer north for Kordava again."
Chapter Ten
THE BLACK COAST
The harbor into which they had sailed lay at the mouth of a small, sluggish river, whose banks were thickly grown with tall, slender palms and heavy underbrush. The longboat slowed in the shallows, and several buccaneers clambered overboard to drag it to safety higher up on the beach. Then, while arche
rs mounted guard, the party trooped up to the beach to river mouth with empty casks. They continued on up the banks of the river, out of sight, stopping betimes to taste the water to see if they had reached the place where it was no longer brackish.
Conan, who had come ashore with the second boatload, stood frowning on the beach with mighty arms folded on his bare chest. The configuration of the river mouth seemed naggingly familiar, and the name of the Zikamba River came unbidden to his mind. Either he had once seen this stretch of coast depicted on a chart, or he had actually touched here during his voyages with Belit, years before. The expression on Conan's grim, scarred features softened as he thought of his years with Belit at his side and a horde of howling black corsairs at his back. Belit―languorous, tawny panther of a woman―Belit whose eyes were like dark stars―his first and greatest love…
With the swiftness of a tropical storm, a screaming mob of naked blacks burst from the underbrush, their ebony bodies gleaming through beads, plumes, and war paint. Scraps of wild-animal skin girded their loins, and their hands brandished feather-tufted spears.
With a startled oath, Conan sprang from his resting place, whipping out his cutlass with a rasp of steel on leather and bellowing: "To me^ you buccaneer dogs! To arms! To me, and yare!"
The leader of the black warriors was a giant, muscled like a statue of a gladiator hewn from gleaming black marble. Like the rest, he was naked but for a leopard-skin loincloth and a few beads and bangles. A crown of aigrettes nodded above his head. Intelligent black eyes looked out of a clean-lined face of majestic dignity.
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