5 The Voice from the Crystal
In a chamber in a tower near the city wall a group of men listenedattentively to the words of one of their number. They were young men,but hard and sinewy, with a bearing that comes only to men rendereddesperate by adversity. They were clad in mail shirts and worn leather;swords hung at their girdles.
'I knew that Conan spoke the truth when he said it was not Taramis!' thespeaker exclaimed. 'For months I have haunted the outskirts of thepalace, playing the part of a deaf beggar. At last I learned what I hadbelieved--that our queen was a prisoner in the dungeons that adjoin thepalace. I watched my opportunity and captured a Shemitishjailer--knocked him senseless as he left the courtyard late onenight--dragged him into a cellar near by and questioned him. Before hedied he told me what I have just told you, and what we have suspectedall along--that the woman ruling Khauran is a witch: Salome. Taramis, hesaid, is imprisoned in the lowest dungeon.
'This invasion of the Zuagirs gives us the opportunity we sought. WhatConan means to do, I can not say. Perhaps he merely wishes vengeance onConstantius. Perhaps he intends sacking the city and destroying it. Heis a barbarian and no one can understand their minds.
'But this is what we must do: rescue Taramis while the battle rages!Constantius will march out into the plain to give battle. Even now hismen are mounting. He will do this because there is not sufficient foodin the city to stand a siege. Conan burst out of the desert so suddenlythat there was no time to bring in supplies. And the Cimmerian isequipped for a siege. Scouts have reported that the Zuagirs have siegeengines, built, undoubtedly, according to the instructions of Conan, wholearned all the arts of war among the Western nations.
'Constantius does not desire a long siege; so he will march with hiswarriors into the plain, where he expects to scatter Conan's forces atone stroke. He will leave only a few hundred men in the city, and theywill be on the walls and in the towers commanding the gates.
'The prison will be left all but unguarded. When we have freed Taramisour next actions will depend upon circumstances. If Conan wins, we mustshow Taramis to the people and bid them rise--they will! Oh, they will!With their bare hands they are enough to overpower the Shemites left inthe city and close the gates against both the mercenaries and thenomads. Neither must get within the walls! Then we will parley withConan. He was always loyal to Taramis. If he knows the truth, and sheappeals to him, I believe he will spare the city. If, which is moreprobable, Constantius prevails, and Conan is routed, we must steal outof the city with the queen and seek safety in flight.
'Is all clear?'
They replied with one voice.
'Then let us loosen our blades in our scabbards, commend our souls toIshtar, and start for the prison, for the mercenaries are alreadymarching through the southern gate.'
* * * * *
This was true. The dawnlight glinted on peaked helmets pouring in asteady stream through the broad arch, on the bright housings of thechargers. This would be a battle of horsemen, such as is possible onlyin the lands of the East. The riders flowed through the gates like ariver of steel--sombre figures in black and silver mail, with theircurled beards and hooked noses, and their inexorable eyes in whichglimmered the fatality of their race--the utter lack of doubt or ofmercy.
The streets and the walls were lined with throngs of people who watchedsilently these warriors of an alien race riding forth to defend theirnative city. There was no sound; dully, expressionless they watched,those gaunt people in shabby garments, their caps in their hands.
In a tower that overlooked the broad street that led to the southerngate, Salome lolled on a velvet couch cynically watching Constantius ashe settled his broad sword-belt about his lean hips and drew on hisgauntlets. They were alone in the chamber. Outside, the rhythmical clankof harness and shuffle of horses' hoofs welled up through thegold-barred casements.
'Before nightfall,' quoth Constantius, giving a twirl to his thinmustache, 'you'll have some captives to feed to your temple-devil. Doesit not grow weary of soft, city-bred flesh? Perhaps it would relish theharder thews of a desert man.'
'Take care you do not fall prey to a fiercer beast than Thaug,' warnedthe girl. 'Do not forget who it is that leads these desert animals.'
'I am not likely to forget,' he answered. 'That is one reason why I amadvancing to meet him. The dog has fought in the West and knows the artof siege. My scouts had some trouble in approaching his columns, for hisoutriders have eyes like hawks; but they did get close enough to see theengines he is dragging on ox-cart wheels drawn by camels--catapults,rams, ballistas, mangonels--by Ishtar! he must have had ten thousand menworking day and night for a month. Where he got the material for theirconstruction is more than I can understand. Perhaps he has a treaty withthe Turanians, and gets supplies from them.
'Anyway, they won't do him any good. I've fought these desert wolvesbefore--an exchange of arrows for awhile, in which the armor of mywarriors protects them--then a charge and my squadrons sweep through theloose swarms of the nomads, wheel and sweep back through, scatteringthem to the four winds. I'll ride back through the south gate beforesunset, with hundreds of naked captives staggering at my horse's tail.We'll hold a fete tonight, in the great square. My soldiers delight inflaying their enemies alive--we will have a wholesale skinning, and makethese weak-kneed townsfolk watch. As for Conan, it will afford meintense pleasure, if we take him alive, to impale him on the palacesteps.'
'Skin as many as you like,' answered Salome indifferently. 'I would likea dress made of human hide. But at least a hundred captives you mustgive to me--for the altar, and for Thaug.'
'It shall be done,' answered Constantius, with his gauntleted handbrushing back the thin hair from his high bald forehead, burned dark bythe sun. 'For victory and the fair honor of Taramis!' he saidsardonically, and, taking his vizored helmet under his arm, he lifted ahand in salute, and strode clanking from the chamber. His voice driftedback, harshly lifted in orders to his officers.
Salome leaned back on the couch, yawned, stretched herself like a greatsupple cat, and called: 'Zang!'
A cat-footed priest, with features like yellowed parchment stretchedover a skull, entered noiselessly.
Salome turned to an ivory pedestal on which stood two crystal globes,and taking from it the smaller, she handed the glistening sphere to thepriest.
'Ride with Constantius,' she said. 'Give me the news of the battle. Go!'
The skull-faced man bowed low, and hiding the globe under his darkmantle, hurried from the chamber.
Outside in the city there was no sound, except the clank of hoofs andafter a while the clang of a closing gate. Salome mounted a wide marblestair that led to the flat, canopied, marble-battlemented roof. She wasabove all other buildings in the city. The streets were deserted, thegreat square in front of the palace was empty. In normal times folkshunned the grim temple which rose on the opposite side of that square,but now the town looked like a dead city. Only on the southern wall andthe roofs that overlooked it was there any sign of life. There thepeople massed thickly. They made no demonstration, did not know whetherto hope for the victory or defeat of Constantius. Victory meant furthermisery under his intolerable rule; defeat probably meant the sack of thecity and red massacre. No word had come from Conan. They did not knowwhat to expect at his hands. They remembered that he was a barbarian.
* * * * *
The squadrons of the mercenaries were moving out into the plain. In thedistance, just this side of the river, other dark masses were moving,barely recognizable as men on horses. Objects dotted the farther bank;Conan had not brought his siege engines across the river, apparentlyfearing an attack in the midst of the crossing. But he had crossed withhis full force of horsemen. The sun rose and struck glints of fire fromthe dark multitudes. The squadrons from the city broke into a gallop; adeep roar reached the ears of the people on the wall.
The rolling masses merged, intermingled; at that distance it was a
tangled confusion in which no details stood out. Charge andcounter-charge were not to be identified. Clouds of dust rose from theplains, under the stamping hoofs, veiling the action. Through theseswirling clouds masses of riders loomed, appearing and disappearing, andspears flashed.
Salome shrugged her shoulders and descended the stair. The palace laysilent. All the slaves were on the wall, gazing vainly southward withthe citizens.
She entered the chamber where she had talked with Constantius, andapproached the pedestal, noting that the crystal globe was clouded, shotwith bloody streaks of crimson. She bent over the ball, swearing underher breath.
'Zang!' she called. 'Zang!'
Mists swirled in the sphere, resolving themselves into billowingdust-clouds through which black figures rushed unrecognizably; steelglinted like lightning in the murk. Then the face of Zang leaped intostartling distinctness; it was as if the wide eyes gazed up at Salome.Blood trickled from a gash in the skull-like head, the skin was graywith sweat-runneled dust. The lips parted, writhing; to other ears thanSalome's it would have seemed that the face in the crystal contortedsilently. But sound to her came as plainly from those ashen lips as ifthe priest had been in the same room with her, instead of miles away,shouting into the smaller crystal. Only the gods of darkness knew whatunseen, magic filaments linked together those shimmering spheres.
'Salome!' shrieked the bloody head. '_Salome!_'
'I hear!' she cried. 'Speak! How goes the battle?'
'Doom is upon us!' screamed the skull-like apparition. 'Khauran is lost!_Aie_, my horse is down and I can not win clear! Men are falling aroundme! They are dying like flies, in their silvered mail!'
'Stop yammering and tell me what happened!' she cried harshly.
'We rode at the desert-dogs and they came on to meet us!' yowled thepriest. 'Arrows flew in clouds between the hosts, and the nomadswavered. Constantius ordered the charge. In even ranks we thundered uponthem.
'Then the masses of their horde opened to right and left, and throughthe cleft rushed three thousand Hyborian horsemen whose presence we hadnot even suspected. Men of Khauran, mad with hate! Big men in full armoron massive horses! In a solid wedge of steel they smote us like athunderbolt. They split our ranks asunder before we knew what was uponus, and then the desert-men swarmed on us from either flank.
'They have ripped our ranks apart, broken and scattered us! It is atrick of that devil Conan! The siege engines are false--mere frames ofpalm trunks and painted silk, that fooled our scouts who saw them fromafar. A trick to draw us out to our doom! Our warriors flee!Khumbanigash is down--Conan slew him. I do not see Constantius. TheKhaurani rage through our milling masses like blood-mad lions, and thedesert-men feather us with arrows. I--ahh!'
There was a flicker as of lightning, or trenchant steel, a burst ofbright blood--then abruptly the image vanished, like a bursting bubble,and Salome was staring into an empty crystal ball that mirrored only herown furious features.
She stood perfectly still for a few moments, erect and staring intospace. Then she clapped her hands and another skull-like priest entered,as silent and immobile as the first.
'Constantius is beaten,' she said swiftly. 'We are doomed. Conan will becrashing at our gates within the hour. If he catches me, I have noillusions as to what I can expect. But first I am going to make surethat my cursed sister never ascends the throne again. Follow me! Comewhat may, we shall give Thaug a feast.'
As she descended the stairs and galleries of the palace, she heard afaint rising echo from the distant walls. The people there had begun torealize that the battle was going against Constantius. Through the dustclouds masses of horsemen were visible, racing toward the city.
Palace and prison were connected by a long closed gallery, whose vaultedroof rose on gloomy arches. Hurrying along this, the false queen and herslave passed through a heavy door at the other end that let them intothe dim-lit recesses of the prison. They had emerged into a wide, archedcorridor at a point near where a stone stair descended into thedarkness. Salome recoiled suddenly, swearing. In the gloom of the halllay a motionless form--a Shemitish jailer, his short beard tilted towardthe roof as his head hung on a half-severed neck. As panting voices frombelow reached the girl's ears, she shrank back into the black shadow ofan arch, pushing the priest behind her, her hand groping in her girdle.
6 The Vulture's Wings
It was the smoky light of a torch which roused Taramis, Queen ofKhauran, from the slumber in which she sought forgetfulness. Liftingherself on her hand she raked back her tangled hair and blinked up,expecting to meet the mocking countenance of Salome, malign with newtorments. Instead a cry of pity and horror reached her ears.
'Taramis! Oh, my Queen!'
The sound was so strange to her ears that she thought she was stilldreaming. Behind the torch she could make out figures now, the glint ofsteel, then five countenances bent toward her, not swarthy andhook-nosed, but lean, aquiline faces, browned by the sun. She crouchedin her tatters, staring wildly.
One of the figures sprang forward and fell on one knee before her, armsstretched appealingly toward her.
'Oh, Taramis! Thank Ishtar we have found you! Do you not remember me,Valerius? Once with your own lips you praised me, after the battle ofKorveka!'
'Valerius!' she stammered. Suddenly tears welled into her eyes. 'Oh, Idream! It is some magic of Salome's to torment me!'
'No!' The cry rang with exultation. 'It is your own true vassals come torescue you! Yet we must hasten. Constantius fights in the plain againstConan, who has brought the Zuagirs across the river, but three hundredShemites yet hold the city. We slew the jailer and took his keys, andhave seen no other guards. But we must be gone. Come!'
The queen's legs gave way, not from weakness but from the reaction.Valerius lifted her like a child, and with the torch-bearer hurryingbefore them, they left the dungeon and went up a slimy stone stair. Itseemed to mount endlessly, but presently they emerged into a corridor.
They were passing a dark arch when the torch was suddenly struck out,and the bearer cried out in fierce, brief agony. A burst of blue fireglared in the dark corridor, in which the furious face of Salome waslimned momentarily, with a beast-like figure crouching beside her--thenthe eyes of the watchers were blinded by that blaze.
Valerius tried to stagger along the corridor with the queen; dazedly heheard the sound of murderous blows driven deep in flesh, accompanied bygasps of death and a bestial grunting. Then the queen was torn brutallyfrom his arms, and a savage blow on his helmet dashed him to the floor.
Grimly he crawled to his feet, shaking his head in an effort to ridhimself of the blue flame which seemed still to dance devilishly beforehim. When his blinded sight cleared, he found himself alone in thecorridor--alone except for the dead. His four companions lay in theirblood, heads and bosoms cleft and gashed. Blinded and dazed in thathell-born glare, they had died without an opportunity of defendingthemselves. The queen was gone.
With a bitter curse Valerius caught up his sword, tearing his clefthelmet from his head to clatter on the flags; blood ran down his cheekfrom a cut in his scalp.
Reeling, frantic with indecision, he heard a voice calling his name indesperate urgency: 'Valerius! _Valerius!_'
He staggered in the direction of the voice, and rounded a corner just intime to have his arms filled with a soft, supple figure which flungitself frantically at him.
'Ivga! Are you mad!'
'I had to come!' she sobbed. 'I followed you--hid in an arch of theouter court. A moment ago I saw _her_ emerge with a brute who carried awoman in his arms. I knew it was Taramis, and that you had failed! Oh,you are hurt!'
'A scratch!' He put aside her clinging hands. 'Quick, Ivga, tell mewhich way they went!'
'They fled across the square toward the temple.'
He paled. 'Ishtar! Oh, the fiend! She means to give Taramis to the devilshe worships! Quick, Ivga! Run to the south wall where the people watchthe battle! Tell them that their real queen has been found--that t
heimpostor has dragged her to the temple! Go!'
Sobbing, the girl sped away, her light sandals pattering on thecobblestones, and Valerius raced across the court, plunged into thestreet, dashed into the square upon which it debouched, and raced forthe great structure that rose on the opposite side.
His flying feet spurned the marble as he darted up the broad stair andthrough the pillared portico. Evidently their prisoner had given themsome trouble. Taramis, sensing the doom intended for her, was fightingagainst it with all the strength of her splendid young body. Once shehad broken away from the brutish priest, only to be dragged down again.
The group was halfway down the broad nave, at the other end of whichstood the grim altar and beyond that the great metal door, obscenelycarven, through which many had gone, but from which only Salome had everemerged. Taramis's breath came in panting gasps; her tattered garmenthad been torn from her in the struggle. She writhed in the grasp of herapish captor like a white, naked nymph in the arms of a satyr. Salomewatched cynically, though impatiently, moving toward the carven door,and from the dusk that lurked along the lofty walls the obscene gods andgargoyles leered down, as if imbued with salacious life.
Choking with fury, Valerius rushed down the great hall, sword in hand.At a sharp cry from Salome, the skull-faced priest looked up, thenreleased Taramis, drew a heavy knife, already smeared with blood, andran at the oncoming Khaurani.
But cutting down men blinded by the devil's-flame loosed by Salome wasdifferent from fighting a wiry young Hyborian afire with hate and rage.
Up went the dripping knife, but before it could fall Valerius's keennarrow blade slashed through the air, and the fist that held the knifejumped from its wrist in a shower of blood. Valerius, berserk, slashedagain and yet again before the crumpling figure could fall. The bladelicked through flesh and bone. The skull-like head fell one way, thehalf-sundered torso the other.
Valerius whirled on his toes, quick and fierce as a jungle-cat, glaringabout for Salome. She must have exhausted her fire-dust in the prison.She was bending over Taramis, grasping her sister's black locks in onehand, in the other lifting a dagger. Then with a fierce cry Valerius'ssword was sheathed in her breast with such fury that the point sprangout between her shoulders. With an awful shriek the witch sank down,writhing in convulsions, grasping at the naked blade as it waswithdrawn, smoking and dripping. Her eyes were inhuman; with a more thanhuman vitality she clung to the life that ebbed through the wound thatsplit the crimson crescent on her ivory bosom. She groveled on thefloor, clawing and biting at the naked stones in her agony.
Sickened at the sight, Valerius stooped and lifted the half-faintingqueen. Turning his back on the twisting figure on the floor, he rantoward the door, stumbling in his haste. He staggered out upon theportico, halted at the head of the steps. The square thronged withpeople. Some had come at Ivga's incoherent cries; others had desertedthe walls in fear of the onsweeping hordes out of the desert, fleeingunreasoningly toward the centre of the city. Dumb resignation hadvanished. The throng seethed and milled, yelling and screaming. Aboutthe road there sounded somewhere the splintering of stone and timbers.
A band of grim Shemites cleft the crowd--the guards of the northerngates, hurrying toward the south gate to reinforce their comradesthere. They reined up short at the sight of the youth on the steps,holding the limp, naked figure in his arms. The heads of the throngturned toward the temple; the crowd gaped, a new bewilderment added totheir swirling confusion.
'Here is your queen!' yelled Valerius, straining to make himselfunderstood above the clamor. The people gave back a bewildered roar.They did not understand, and Valerius sought in vain to lift his voiceabove their bedlam. The Shemites rode toward the temple steps, beating away through the crowd with their spears.
Then a new, grisly element introduced itself into the frenzy. Out of thegloom of the temple behind Valerius wavered a slim white figure, lacedwith crimson. The people screamed; there in the arms of Valerius hungthe woman they thought their queen; yet there in the temple doorstaggered another figure, like a reflection of the other. Their brainsreeled. Valerius felt his blood congeal as he stared at the swayingwitch-girl. His sword had transfixed her, sundered her heart. She shouldbe dead; by all laws of nature she should be dead. Yet there she swayed,on her feet, clinging horribly to life.
'Thaug!' she screamed, reeling in the doorway. '_Thaug!_' As in answerto that frightful invocation there boomed a thunderous croaking fromwithin the temple, the snapping of wood and metal.
'That is the queen!' roared the captain of the Shemites, lifting hisbow. 'Shoot down the man and other woman!'
But the roar of a roused hunting-pack rose from the people; they hadguessed the truth at last, understood Valerius's frenzied appeals, knewthat the girl who hung limply in his arms was their true queen. With asoul-shaking yell they surged on the Shemites, tearing and smiting withtooth and nail and naked hands, with the desperation of hard-pent furyloosed at last. Above them Salome swayed and tumbled down the marblestairs, dead at last.
Arrows flickered about him as Valerius ran back between the pillars ofthe portico, shielding the body of the queen with his own. Shooting andslashing ruthlessly, the mounted Shemites were holding their own withthe maddened crowd. Valerius darted to the temple door--with one foot onthe threshold he recoiled, crying out in horror and despair.
Out of the gloom at the other end of the great hall a vast dark formheaved up--came rushing toward him in gigantic frog-like hops. He sawthe gleam of great unearthly eyes, the shimmer of fangs or talons. Hefell back from the door, and then the whir of a shaft past his earwarned him that death was also behind him. He wheeled desperately. Fouror five Shemites had cut their way through the throng and were spurringtheir horses up the steps, their bows lifted to shoot him down. Hesprang behind a pillar, on which the arrows splintered. Taramis hadfainted. She hung like a dead woman in his arms.
Before the Shemites could loose again, the doorway was blocked by agigantic shape. With affrighted yells the mercenaries wheeled and beganbeating a frantic way through the throng, which crushed back in sudden,galvanized horror, trampling one another in their stampede.
But the monster seemed to be watching Valerius and the girl. Squeezingits vast, unstable bulk through the door, it bounded toward him, as heran down the steps. He felt it looming behind him, a giant shadowything, like a travesty of nature cut out of the heart of night, a blackshapelessness in which only the staring eyes and gleaming fangs weredistinct.
There came a sudden thunder of hoofs; a rout of Shemites, bloody andbattered, streamed across the square from the south, plowing blindlythrough the packed throng. Behind them swept a horde of horsemen yellingin a familiar tongue, waving red swords--the exiles, returned! With themrode fifty black-bearded desert-riders, and at their head a giant figurein black mail.
'Conan!' shrieked Valerius. '_Conan!_'
The giant yelled a command. Without checking their headlong pace, thedesert men lifted their bows, drew and loosed. A cloud of arrows sangacross the square, over the seething heads of the multitudes, and sankfeather-deep in the black monster. It halted, wavered, reared, a blackblot against the marble pillars. Again the sharp cloud sang, and yetagain, and the horror collapsed and rolled down the steps, as dead asthe witch who had summoned it out of the night of ages.
Conan drew rein beside the portico, leaped off. Valerius had laid thequeen on the marble, sinking beside her in utter exhaustion. The peoplesurged about, crowding in. The Cimmerian cursed them back, lifted herdark head, pillowed it against his mailed shoulder.
'By Crom, what is this? The real Taramis! But who is that yonder?'
'The demon who wore her shape,' panted Valerius.
Conan swore heartily. Ripping a cloak from the shoulders of a soldier,he wrapped it about the naked queen. Her long dark lashes quivered onher cheeks; her eyes opened, stared up unbelievingly into theCimmerian's scarred face.
'Conan!' Her soft fingers caught at him. 'Do I dream? _She_ told me youwere
dead--'
'Scarcely!' He grinned hardly. 'You do not dream. You are Queen ofKhauran again. I broke Constantius, out there by the river. Most of hisdogs never lived to reach the walls, for I gave orders that no prisonersbe taken--except Constantius. The city guard closed the gate in ourfaces, but we burst in with rams swung from our saddles. I left all mywolves outside, except this fifty. I didn't trust them in here, andthese Khaurani lads were enough for the gate guards.'
'It has been a nightmare!' she whimpered. 'Oh, my poor people! You musthelp me try to repay them for all they have suffered, Conan, henceforthcouncilor as well as captain!'
Conan laughed, but shook his head. Rising, he set the queen upon herfeet, and beckoned to a number of his Khaurani horsemen who had notcontinued the pursuit of the fleeing Shemites. They sprang from theirhorses, eager to do the bidding of their new-found queen.
'No, lass, that's over with. I'm chief of the Zuagirs now, and must leadthem to plunder the Turanians, as I promised. This lad, Valerius, willmake you a better captain than I. I wasn't made to dwell among marblewalls, anyway. But I must leave you now, and complete what I've begun.Shemites still live in Khauran.'
As Valerius started to follow Taramis across the square towards thepalace, through a lane opened by the wildly cheering multitude, he felta soft hand slipped timidly into his sinewy fingers and turned toreceive the slender body of Ivga in his arms. He crushed her to him anddrank her kisses with the gratitude of a weary fighter who has attainedrest at last through tribulation and storm.
But not all men seek rest and peace; some are born with the spirit ofthe storm in their blood, restless harbingers of violence and bloodshed,knowing no other path....
* * * * *
The sun was rising. The ancient caravan road was thronged withwhite-robed horsemen, in a wavering line that stretched from the wallsof Khauran to a spot far out in the plain. Conan the Cimmerian sat atthe head of that column, near the jagged end of a wooden beam that stuckup out of the ground. Near that stump rose a heavy cross, and on thatcross a man hung by spikes through his hands and feet.
'Seven months ago, Constantius,' said Conan, 'it was I who hung there,and you who sat here.'
Constantius did not reply; he licked his gray lips and his eyes wereglassy with pain and fear. Muscles writhed like cords along his leanbody.
'You are more fit to inflict torture than to endure it,' said Conantranquilly. 'I hung there on a cross as you are hanging, and I lived,thanks to circumstances and a stamina peculiar to barbarians. But youcivilized men are soft; your lives are not nailed to your spines as areours. Your fortitude consists mainly in inflicting torment, not inenduring it. You will be dead before sundown. And so, Falcon of thedesert, I leave you to the companionship of another bird of the desert.'
He gestured toward the vultures whose shadows swept across the sands asthey wheeled overhead. From the lips of Constantius came an inhuman cryof despair and horror.
Conan lifted his reins and rode toward the river that shone like silverin the morning sun. Behind him the white-clad riders struck into a trot;the gaze of each, as he passed a certain spot, turned impersonally andwith the desert man's lack of compassion, toward the cross and the gauntfigure that hung there, black against the sunrise. Their horses' hoofsbeat out a knell in the dust. Lower and lower swept the wings of thehungry vultures.
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