Conan and the Spider God

by Lyon Sprague de Camp

  A seated figure in a white turban bent over an ornate, flat-topped desk, writing by the light of a bitumen lamp. As Conan came to attention before him, the man raised his head. “Yes, my son?”

  Conan started and reached for the sword that no longer hung at his side. For the man was Harpagus, he who had cast Conan into a hypnotic sleep in the Marshes of Mehar.

  Harpagus gave no sign of recognition. Gathering his wits, Conan realized that, when he had encountered the Zamorians in the marshes, his face had been obscured by the turban cloth wound about his head. Even when he had shared a dinner with Harpagus and his men, he had not, because of the swarms of biting insects, removed the cloth altogether; he had merely raised the part that covered his mouth and chin and tucked it into the upper folds.

  Struggling to hide the hatred that welled in his barbarian breast for the man who had tricked and robbed him, Conan forced himself to speak calmly: “I am Nial, a mercenary from the Border Kingdom. Hearing that the temple was hiring soldiers, I have come in hope of finding a post.”

  The turbaned man gently shook his head. “You are too late by a fortnight, my son. Captain Catigern likewise learned of the opportunity and, there being no wars at present in Brythunia, brought his Free Company hither.”

  “So I’ve been told. Nonetheless, sir, I need employment; for my money is nearly gone, and I must find more ere leaving to seek a post in other lieus.”

  Harpagus stroked his narrow chin. “The temple needs a clerk skilled in the casting of accounts, to keep our books. Are you a man trained to that task?”

  It was Conan’s turn to shake his shaggy head. “Not I! I cannot add a column of numbers twice and arrive at the same sum.”

  “Well, then—ah! We do have need of a blacksmith, at least for a time; since ours lies dying of a wasting distemperature. Perchance you know that skill?”

  Conan’s teeth flashed whitely in a sudden grin. “My father was a smith, and I was apprenticed to him for years when I was young.”

  “Good; excellent! You have the thews for the task, at least. You may start work today. The Brythunian will show you to your smithy, now in the care of Pariskas’s bellows boy. He shall serve you in like capacity.”

  After settling such matters as Conan’s wage, living quarters for himself, and stabling for his horse, Harpagus said: “We are then agreed, my son. But you must understand that, for those who dwell in holy Yezud, there shall be no drinking of fermented liquors, no gambling, and no fornication. And all do promise to attend the services of holy Zath at least once every ten-day.” The Vicar paused, his brow furrowed. “Have I not met you on some previous occasion?”

  Conan felt his nape-hairs rise, but he spoke with a negligent air. “I think not, sir—unless it were a chance encounter in Nemedia or Brythunia, where I have served as a mercenary.”

  Harpagus shook his head. “Nay, I have never traveled to those lands. Still, your voice reminds me of someone I knew briefly … . No matter. Go with the guard to your new quarters. You will find enough accumulated tasks to keep you busy.”

  “One thing more, sir. I want my sword, now in the custody of the gate guards.”

  Harpagus smiled thinly. “You shall have it. Forbidding a blacksmith his weapon were like confiscating a poet’s verses; he’ll only make another.”

  As the Brythunian led Conan through the narrow streets, the Cimmerian growled: “Is the Vicar’s name Harpagus?”

  “Aye.”

  “So I thought. Did I understand him aright, that in Yezud there is no wine, nor beer, nor gambling, nor light love?”

  Morcant grinned. His manner had thawed to friendliness since learning that Conan would be a fellow employee of the temple. “High Priest Feridun is a very righteous man—a dolorously righteous man, and he hopes to impose his principles on all in Zamora. We of the Free Company go down to Bartakes’s Inn for our sinful amusements. Feridun would like to close down that place, too. But he does not dare, knowing that the Free Company would go on the road if such constraints were imposed upon us.”

  Conan gave a rumble of mirth, knowing full well that brigandage was the usual occupation of mercenary companies out of military employment; but rarely was it so plainly named.

  “I see no cause for merriment,” said Morcant crisply with a reproving stare.

  “No offense meant,” said Conan, wiping the smile from his lips. “But I’ve been a hired sword myself and know somewhat of the ways of mercenaries.”

  The smithy was a simple, one-story affair, of which the larger section, open to the street, housed a forge, while a small apartment to the left did duty as the smith’s domestic quarters. As Conan entered the smithy, a Zamorian boy of perhaps twelve years, who had been perched on the anvil, whittling a stick, jumped to his feet. Conan explained his presence.

  “I am Lar, son of Yazdates,” said the boy. “Pray, Nial sir, I hope you will teach me some smithery whilst I do work for you. The old smith would never let me handle his tools. Belike he feared I should grow up to take his post from him.”

  “We shall see,” replied Conan. “It depends on how able a man of your hands you prove to be.”

  “Oh, I am very able, sir, for my age. I have practiced on the sly when old Pariskas was not looking. Sometimes he caught me at it and beat me.” The boy looked apprehensively at the giant who was to be his new master.

  “If I ever beat you, it won’t be for trying to improve yourself,” growled Conan. “Let’s see to the tools.”

  Conan had not worked as a smith since, years before, a feud had driven him forth from his Cimmerian tribe. But, as he swung the heavy hammers and handled the stout iron tongs, he felt a thrill of familiarity. It would not be long, he felt sure, before he regained his half-remembered skill.

  “Lar,” he said, “I am going down to Khesron to fetch my horse and my belongings. While I’m gone, you shall start up the furnace, and we’ll tackle this work today. By the way, where went all those cattle, which I saw driven into Yezud yestereve?”

  “They went through a doorway on the western side of the temple,” said Lar.

  “A small town like this scarce needs so many beasts for food,” mused Conan.

  “Oh, sir, they are not meat for the townsfolk; not even the priests! They are for Zath.”

  “Forsooth?” said Conan. “That I can hardly believe. I have seen much of temples and more of priests. In those where the worshipers bring animals to sacrifice, the holy men slay the creatures, offer the skin and bones and offal to the god, and feast on the good flesh themselves. Why do you think your priests do not the same?”

  “But, sir, everybody in Yezud knows the cattle are devoured by Zath! Have you been in the naos of the temple?”

  “Not yet. What’s there?”

  “You will see all when you attend your first service. There stands the statue of Zath, in the likeness of a huge spider carven of black stone. Its body is enormous, and its legs—its legs …” The boy broke off with a shudder.

  “A statue cannot eat cattle,” remarked Conan, surprised at the boy’s display of fear.

  “Each night the statue comes to life,” the lad continued. “It descends through a trapdoor in the holy place and enters the tunnels below, where it seizes upon the animals that have been driven in to assuage its appettite. So say the priests.”

  Conan ruminated. “I’ve seen many strange things in my travels, but never a statue that came to life. Even if this tale be true, what would such a spider want with a hundred head of cattle at a time? I have never kept a spider as a pet; but I do know something of the habits of other beasts of prey. I should think one ox would suffice a creature like Zath for a fortnight at the least.”

  “Oh, sir, these are holy mysteries! You must not pry into that which the gods do not intend us mortals to know.” As he spoke, the boy reverently bowed his head and touched his fingertips to his forehead.

  Conan grunted. “That’s as may be. Now start up the forge, lad, while I go to get my gear from the inn.”

/>   Some time later, leading Ymir, Conan approached the common stable where he had been allotted a stall. As Conan was instructing the stable boy in the care of Ymir, a commotion arose in one of the more distant stalls. A horse was rearing, pawing the air, and squealing frantically.

  “What’s that?” asked Conan.

  The groom looked around. “It’s that accursed black stallion the Vicar bought in Turan,” he said. “We have not been able to exercise him properly, because no man durst try to ride him.”

  “Hm,” said Conan. “I’ll take a look.” He strolled down to the stall of the fractious stallion and recognized Egil. The horse whinnied with delight and nuzzled him.

  Not daring to address the horse directly, Conan turned to the groom. “He seems to like me, the gods know why.”

  The groom leaned on his shovel while his sluggish thoughts took form. At last he mumbled: “Perhaps, sir, you could ride him. Are you fain to undertake his exercising? If the priests agreed, that is.”

  It was on the tip of Conan’s tongue to say yes; but then it struck him that, if word got back to Harpagus, the Vicar might suspect that his new blacksmith and the former owner of Egil were one and the same. Instead he replied:

  “We shall see. Just now I can barely spare time to keep my own nag in condition.”

  chapter vi

  THE TEMPLE OF THE SPIDER

  Since Yezud was provided with no inn or eating-house and Conan did not wish to plod down to Khesron for each repast, he made arrangements for Lar’s mother to cook his meals. At sundown, Conan washed the soot from his face and arms and followed Lar to the small house where the boy and his widowed mother dwelt. The house, freshly whitewashed, was neat within and furnished in the rear with a small, well-tended vegetable garden.

  Amytis, a middle-aged woman with a weary face and graying hair, cooked an adequate meal, albeit Conan grumbled at the lack of ale with which to wash it down. He listened in dour silence as Amytis prattled on about her ancestry, her kin, and her well-remembered husband.

  “’Twas bitter hard after he died, poor man,” she sighed. “But with the money you pay my Lar, and the stipend my daughter earns at the temple, and the coppers I make by taking in washing, we manage.”

  “You have a daughter?” asked Conan, eyeing the woman with the first faint stir of interest.

  “Aye, Rudabeh is chief of the temple’s dancing girls and has other responsibilities besides. A very capable maid; the man will be lucky who gets her to wife.”

  “The dancers are allowed to wed?”

  “After their discharge, aye. In fact the priests approve of it; they give each girl a dowry when her service ends—if she has behaved herself, that is.”

  “How do they choose temple dancers?” Conan inquired idly, spooning out a portion of pudding.

  “The priests hold a contest every year,” explained Amytis, “to pick the two likeliest dancers. Families come from as far away as Shadizar, bringing their prettiest maidens, for the competition; but most come from the towns nearby. It is accounted an honor to have a daughter in the service of Zath.”

  “How long is their term of service?”

  “The winners serve the temple for five years.”

  Conan glanced at young Lar. “Why didn’t you tell me that you had a sister?”

  The boy grimaced. “I did not think a great man like you would be interested in a girl.”

  Conan turned back to Amytis to hide his grin from his youthful hero-worshiper and asked: “Does your daughter ever visit you?”

  “Oh, aye; four times in a month she is granted leave and comes here to sup. She spent an evening with us but three nights agone.”

  With an ostentatious show of unconcern, Conan yawned, stretched, and rose. “Lar,” he said carelessly, “you must take me to the temple one day and explain the rituals. The Vicar commanded me to attend not less than thrice a month, and I must needs obey him.”

  Excusing himself, Conan returned to his smithy. He thought briefly of repairing to Bartakes’s Inn to enliven the evening, but an afternoon of wielding the heavy tools of his new trade had left him more than willing to retire early.

  The next day was spent at forge and anvil. While Lar manned the bellows, Conan shod several horses, welded a broken scythe blade, hammered a dent out of a helmet belonging to one of the Brythunians, and in odd moments made several score of nails. He was pleased to find the skills he had learned in boyhood so readily returning to him.

  The following morning, Conan accompanied Lar to the temple of Zath, into which many dwellers of the citadel were streaming. Now the huge inner doors, as well as the outer portals, stood open to the worshipers. The halberd-bearing guards stood stiffly at attention, but their lusty glances followed many a well-favored woman who tempered her piety with smiles.

  Towering above the crowd, Conan entered the naos. The odor of carrion was stronger here; one less hardened to the smell of death than the Cimmerian might have found it nauseating. The circular chamber of the naos, in the hub of the huge temple complex, was capable of accommodating thousands of the faithful. But, since this was not a time of festival, only a few hundred had foregathered in the capacious rotunda.

  Conan observed that the entire floor was inlaid with delicate mosaics, skillfully patterned into the form of a series of connecting spiderwebs. Each web occupied a space scarcely larger than the width of a man’s shoulders; and at the center of one web Lar took his stand, gesturing to Conan to do likewise.

  Conan’s appraising eye sought out the gilded piers that rose at intervals to support the lofty domed ceiling. Everywhere the spiderweb pattern was repeated. It festooned the plastered walls, wreathed around the pillars, and on a larger scale spread out across the inner surface of the gilded dome. Here the design was realized in black on white; there in white on black; elsewhere in red on blue, or gold on green, or purple on silver, or some other chromatic combination.

  The glitter of gold leaf, reflecting the light of a hundred gilded lamps suspended on bronzen chains from the shadowy recesses of the ceiling, and the endless repetition of the spoked cobweb pattern induced hypnotic immobility. Conan closed his eyes to shut out the reeling lights and painted swirls and forced himself to concentrate upon the peaceful garden of the seer Kushad.

  When Conan trusted himself to reopen his eyes, his gaze became fixed upon the scene before him. Partly recessed into the wall surrounding the rotunda and partly projecting into the circle of the naos stood a sacred enclosure, square in plan. This holy place, raised above the level of the floor of the naos for better viewing by the congregated faithful, was fronted by three broad marble steps, which stretched across the full width of the sacred area. A pierced railing of polished brass, the height of a woman’s waist, curved forward from the bottom step to separate the sacred precinct from the section allotted the worshipers.

  Above the steps and on the right side of the stage stood a massive, timeworn ebon chest fitted with bronzen clasps, green with age. This ancient container was decorated with the ubiquitous spiderwebs, formed by slender silver wires cunningly inlaid into the polished wood.

  Balancing this venerable repository, on the left side of the platform, a block of golden marble rose altarlike; and all around this plinth were carven cryptic sigils in the old Zamorian script. Upon this splendid base rested a bowl of chalcedony; and in the translucent basin danced an eternal flame, connected, Conan knew not how, with the worship of the spider-god.

  In the center of the raised enclosure, the far end of which was cloaked in a blood-red arras, towered the statue of Zath; behind it, in the far left corner, the wall of the sacred area was recessed. The idol, graven of black onyx, was wrought with such fidelity to nature that Conan was half tempted to believe that the statue could indeed possess the power of life at night. The heavy ovoid body, supported by some sort of frame or table draped in crimson velvet to match the incarnadined wall behind it, seemed in the flickering light to stand without support, while each of the spider’s eight join
ted limbs, stouter than a galley’s oar, rested on the marble pave. The statue reminded Conan unpleasantly of the giant spider he had fought in the Elephant Tower several years before, save that the arachnid here depicted was more than twice the size of that remembered monster.

  Across the front of the creature’s head—or what would have been its head if members of the spider tribe had possessed heads distinct from the forward segment of their bodies—a row of four great eyes gleamed with a bluish radiance in the lamplight. From where he stood, Conan could perceive that, in addition, Zath had four additional eyes, one pair on the sides of its body and the other pair on top. The sight stirred Conan’s predatory instincts, and he whispered to Lar:

  “What are those eyes composed of, boy?”

  “Sh!” admonished Lar. “Here come the priests.”

  The walls of the sacred enclosure were pierced by two doors, one on each side beyond the chest and the altar. A staid procession emerged from the left-hand door: a dozen men in silken turbans and brocaded robes, each carrying a staff with a jewel-encrusted knob of gold or silver. In the lead strode one taller than the rest, a man clad in a flowing white garment and a night-black turban, whose bristling black brows, eagle’s beak of a nose, and voluminous white beard endowed him with a formidable air.

  Rainbow-hued were the vestments of the other priests. One wore a scarlet gown and azure headgear; another a purple robe topped by a saffron turban; and yet another a gown of sapphire blue surmounted by a headdress of pale celadon. Conan recognized the Vicar, Harpagus, by his sable robe and snowy turban.

  The twelve priests formed a line before the spider-god. At a gesture from Harpagus, the congregation raised their arms aloft and cried in unison: “Hail Zath, god of all! Hail Feridun, apostle of Zath!”