The Conan Chronology

by J. R. Karlsson

  Snatching his tools away from the statue, Conan whirled, mouth drawn back in a voiceless snarl. When he saw Rudabeh in the doorway, he growled: 'What are you doing here, girl?'

  In that instant the dancer, eyes dilated with apprehension, also spoke: 'What do you here, Corin?'

  Conan answered with feigned carelessness: 'The priests told me to fix a loose fitting on the offering chest.'

  'At this time of night? Which priest?' The girl's voice was sharp with tension.

  Conan shrugged. 'I don't remember.'

  'I do not believe you.'

  'And why not, pray?' said Conan with an air of offended innocence.

  'Because such orders would have come only through me, Mistress of the Properties. You came here to steal.'

  'Now Rudabeh dear, you know what fakers and lechers these priests are-'

  'But Zath is still a god, whatever the shortcomings of his, but Corin darling, whatever you came for, you must get you hence at once! The priests from Arenjun have just arrived. They were held up by a storm, which washed out the roads, so missed the Festival of All Gods. Now Lord Feridun is showing them round the temple; they will soon be here. The new Vicar, Mirzes, sent me hither to see that the reservoir of the eternal flame was full, since we haven't had lime to fill it lately.'

  To confirm her words, the sound of many men moving and talking outside the huge front doors of the naos smote Conan's ears.

  'Go quickly!' cried Rudabeh, 'or you will be lost!'

  'I'm going,' growled Conan. Instead of heading for a door, he gathered his tools and torch and ran to the far left corner of the sacred enclosure, where the oil pipe jutted out from the wall. Directly beneath it lay a large trapdoor.

  As Conan stooped and shot back the bolt that held down the trapdoor, Rudabeh gave a cry of consternation. 'What are you doing?'

  'Going below,' grunted Conan as he grasped the handle and raised the trapdoor. An overpowering stench of carrion wafted up out of the square black opening.

  'Do not go there!' cried Rudabeh in anguished tones, her voice rising with terror. 'You know not what you - oh, gods! Here come the priests!'

  The handles of the great bronze front doors clanked, and the doors themselves began to creak open, as a confabulation of voices reached the chamber from the vestibule. With a rush of feet and a slam of the side door, Rudabeh dashed out of the naos; Conan, glaring about like a hunted animal bounded down the stair that descended from the temple floor into the reeking darkness below. He dropped the trapdoor into place over his head, leaving himself in darkness save for the flickering orange light of the small torch.

  The massive doors groaned open, and the swell of conversation rolled across the marble floor and through the thin planking of the trapdoor. Conan caught the deep, bell-like tones of High Priest Feridun, but he could not distinguish words through the babble. At least the murmur of conversation, bland and unctuous, betrayed no excitement, which it surely would have if any of those entering had caught sight of Rudabeh or himself.

  Cautiously, Conan felt his way down the stone stair, I peering ahead as far as the torch could throw its feeble beams. He found himself in a spacious passage, higher than his head and wider than his outstretched arms. No sound save the hiss of the flaring torch, so faint as to be barely audible even to his keen ears, dispelled the sepulchral silence. The smell of carrion rowelled his nostrils.

  As Conan prowled along the rock-hewn floor of the passage, he stumbled over a large object of irregular shape. It proved to be the skull of a bovine - or rather such a skull to which scraps of flesh still adhered. Conan kicked this noisome bit of carrion aside and plodded on, stepping over more fragments of kine - legs, ribs, and other parts. Although no stranger to the stink of corpses and cadavers, the soft squelch of a patch of rotting entrails, on which he crept, so revolted him that for an instant he almost vomited, and fought down an urge to run.

  Coming to a cross tunnel, Conan turned left and walked up steps along that corridor, which sloped sharply up. He was, he reckoned, still beneath the temple. At the top of the slope, he thought, he would find the door on the west side, through which he had seen the flock of sheep driven.

  He went back to the crossing and took the branch that ran straight from the steps down which he had come. This passage, he found, sloped down. Conan continued for some moments, spurning desiccated animal fragments with his moccasins. When the tunnel turned this way and that and sent out branches, so that Conan feared getting lost in the maze, he retraced his steps to the first crossing.

  Then he tried the remaining passage, which had been the right-hand branch when he first reached the intersection. The corridor ran straight for a bow-shot, then wavered and sent out side passages as the downward-sloping tunnel had done.

  Conan began to worry about his torch. It would not last much longer, and to be lost in this catacomb in utter darkness might prove fatal. He had a spare torch thrust through his belt under the apron; but, if he let the first torch die completely before lighting the second from it, he would have the devil's own time igniting the other with flint and steel in darkness. On the other hand, if he lit the second torch sooner than necessary, it, too, would be exhausted that much sooner.

  Conan continued warily, thrusting the weak amber glow of the torch into openings in the sides of the tunnel and peering as far as the feeble light allowed his vision to range, he still came upon bones and other fragments of animals. Above the reek of carrion, another smell assailed his keen barbarian nostrils - the scent of a living creature, but one completely alien to him. The odour emanated from no beast or reptile that he knew of; nor yet from any plant of foodstuff with which he was familiar. The odour was unique, acrid but not altogether unpleasant.

  As he moved stealthily, straining his eyes and ears, he thought he heard a faint repeated click, such as would be made by a horny object striking against the stone. He could not be sure that he heard aright, realizing that the horror of the tunnel had disoriented his senses and might be leading him to imagine things.

  For one wild instant, he wondered whether the statue of Zath in the naos had, in fact, come to life and followed him down into the tunnels. Reason assured him that the onyx spider-god still squatted on its pedestal in the temple. If it had come to life while the High Priest was showing the place to his sacerdotal visitors, Conan would have heard some susurrant echo of the resulting hubbub in the sanctum above.

  Still, something - and of gigantic dimensions - had devoured the animals whose remains littered the floor of the tunnels. Suddenly Conan, who feared little on the earth that he trod, or in the seas, or in the ambient air above, found himself trembling at the implications of this thought.

  He took a few steps down one of the side tunnels, holding high his torch, but saw nothing save some ghostly, whitened bones of a sheep or a goat. He worked his way back to the main corridor and tried another branch, with no happier result; for this branch soon came to a blind end.

  He was certain, now, that the clicking sounds were not born of his febrile imagination. The cadenced crepitation seemed to be coming closer, although from which direction he could not tell. With a horror of being cornered at the end of the short branch tunnel, he hastened back to the main corridor.

  For an instant Conan stood statue-like, his torch upraised and his head turning from side to side as he strove to locate the source of the sound. It came, he was now convinced, further on in this branch of the tunnel, and rapidly waxed in volume.

  His skin crawled with nameless terror as the clicks came louder, although he could not perceive their source.

  Then, just beyond the limit of his torchlight, something moved. As this object approached, Conan saw, reflected in the light of his torch, four spots of brightness in the tunnel at about breast level.

  As the unwavering lights grew larger, they seemed to branch out and become four great jewels, such as might decorate the breastplate of an approaching warrior-king. But they were no such ornaments. Behind the four lights loomed
an indeterminate bulk. Unable to distinguish details, Conan drew his blacksmith's hammer from its belt loop. Because of the need for silence, he had left his sword hack in his quarters.

  The lights seemed to halt at the periphery of his torchlight. The clicking stopped, then resumed; the lights drew closer, and behind them Conan caught a nightmarish impression of a vast hairy bulk propelled by many legs.

  Conan whirled and ran, the wind of his motion causing his torch to flare up to a bright golden flame. Behind him came the relentless clicking of colossal claws on the stone, closer and ever closer.

  Before he realised it, Conan had crossed the main intersection of the tunnels, the one he had first come upon after entering the subterranean system. Too late he decided that his best chance for escape would have been to go back to the trapdoor, burst out, and - if the priests were still in the chaos - to confront them openly. The next best alternative would have been to turn to the right and take the downward-sloping tunnel, on the chance that it would issue into the outer world beyond the bounds of wall-girt Yezud.

  He started to turn back. But it was too late for that; the four glowing eyes, reflecting the saffron light of the torch, had already reached the main crossing and blocked his way. He was trapped in this branch of the tunnel.

  Conan continued his flight up the rising slope. At the top he came to a massive door, which he felt certain was the temple door through which the sheep had been admitted. Shaking with apprehension, he set down his hammer, fumbled for the Clavis of Gazrik, and applied it to the keyhole. When he uttered the spell, he heard the lock clank and pushed on the knob. But the door would not yield. Then Conan remembered that this door was also closed by a heavy bolt on the outside.

  Remembering how he had used the silver arrow on his way into the temple, Conan aimed the arrow to the height where he supposed this bolt to be and repeated: 'Kkapinin achilir genishi!' more loudly. When nothing happened, he shouted the phrase with the full power of his huge lungs.

  Instead of the sound of the bolt's motion, the next thing that Conan noticed was that the silver arrow was growing hot in his fingers. When it became too hot to hold he dropped it. As he did so it glowed, briefly, dull red; as it struck the floor, it softened and melted into an amorphous puddle, which quickly cooled and solidified. Then Conan remembered Parvez's words, that the Clavis of Gazrik would move a door bolt if it were not too heavy. He had evidently overtaxed the powers of the talisman and ruined it. It served him right, he thought, for using magic.

  Conan pulled out his hammer and gave the door a furious blow. The portal boomed but remained immobile. Conan could see where he had dented the tough iron-wood, without affecting the door's security. With such hard wood, it would take him an hour with hammer and chisel to force his way through the barrier.

  He would have struck again, in a frenzy of desperation, but clickings behind him warned him to turn. As he did so, he found that the colossal spider - a living duplicate of the statue in the temple, save that this creature was covered with stiff hairs as long as a man's fingers - was upon him. Reflections of the flame of his torch danced in the four great round eyes across the creature's front.

  Below these eyes, a pair of hairy, jointed appendages extended forward like arms. As these organs reached out for Conan, he smote one of them with his hammer, feeling the integument yield as it cracked. The spider recoiled a step, folding its injured limb beneath its hairy body.

  Then the monster advanced again. It reared up on its six hindmost legs and spread the first pair, together with the uninjured palp, to seize its prey. Conan felt like a fly caught in a web, awaiting its fate.

  Below the palps he could see the spider's fangs, a pair of curved, shiny, sharp-pointed organs like the horns of a bull, curving out and then inwards, so that the points almost met. They, too, now spread horizontally to pierce Oman's body from opposite sides; green venom dripped from their hollow points. Between and below the fangs, the jointed mouth parts worked hungrily.

  For a heartbeat the pair confronted each other, Conan with his hammer raised to deliver one last crushing blow before he died, the spider with its monstrous, hairy appendages spread to grip the man in a last embrace.

  From behind Zath, Conan heard Rudabeh's voice, raised in shrill tones of terror: 'Corin! Dearest! I have-'

  At this anguished cry, the spider backed away from Conan. It turned, so that one of its lateral eyes flashed briefly in the torchlight. Its great sack of an abdomen brushed against the wall of the narrow space, and Zath started toward the voice. Conan heard one frightful shriek; then silence, save for the diminishing click of horny claws on stone. At that instant, Conan's torch went out.

  With a yell of fury, Conan started to run after the spider in total darkness, but he missed his direction and crashed into the wall of the tunnel. Getting shakily to his feet, he pulled the second torch from his belt. He cursed like a madman, The rag at the end of the first torch still glowed a dull red, like a lump of lava spat from a volcano.

  Conan touched the ends together and blew frantic breaths until the second torch flared up. Dropping the exhausted torch, Conan ran down the ramp in pursuit of Zath.

  At the main crossing, he slowed as his torch illumined something sprawled on the floor of the tunnel - something that was not the putrid remains of a cow or a sheep. Dreading what he knew he would find, he approached Rudabeh's body. She looked as if she slept; but when he knelt and pressed an ear to her breast, he could detect no heartbeat.

  He leaned his torch against the tunnel wall to free both hands and examined her more closely. She wore the gauzy, fluttery garments that the dancing girls appeared in when they sang in chorus. He ripped away these obscuring filaments and turned over her finely-formed torso. On one shoulder and in the middle of her back he found a pair of puncture wounds, each surrounded by an area of blackened flesh where the injected spider's venom had taken effect.

  He called: 'Rudabeh! My love! Speak!' He chafed her hands and rhythmically pressed her ribs in hope of starting her breathing. Nothing had any effect.

  Hot tears ran down Conan's rugged countenance - the first he had shed in many years. He angrily wiped them away, but still they flowed. Those who knew Conan as a man of iron, hard, merciless, and self-seeking, would have been astonished to see him weeping in that charnel house, heedless of his own safety.

  The girl must, he thought, have braved these stinking sentinels, after the priests had gone, to warn him of his peril. To have another lay down life to save his was a unique event Conan's experience, and the knowledge of her sacrifice filled him with pity, shame, and self-loathing.

  Rage surged like molten iron through his veins, and he picked up his torch and hammer, glaring about. The spider, he thought, must have dropped its burden when the light of Conan's torch alarmed it, and then retreated to that part of the tunnel where he first had met the brute.

  With a yell of uncontrolled fury, Conan ran headlong down the tunnel branch where he had first encountered Zath, his torch flaring up with the foetid wind of his motion, he must have run a quarter of a league, shouting: 'Zath! Show yourself and fight!' but no sign of the giant arachnid did he see.

  Breathing heavily, he gave up the chase. If Zath were in his branch of the tunnel, he would surely have by now overtaken it in its lumbering flight. Perhaps it was hiding in one of the many cross passages and side chambers, but to explore them all would require days.

  He retraced his steps until he found himself back at the main crossing. Now cold to the touch, Rudabeh lay where he had left her. He would not abandon her in this stinking hell-hole for Zath to consume, because he had a barbarian's superstitious fear of failing to bury the body of one of his kith and kin.

  Such a person's ghost, he had learned as a boy, would haunt him in revenge for his neglect. Since he had few friends and no kinsmen in civilised lands, he had not felt compelled to bury any of the many corpses that he had seen in late years. Besides, Rudabeh had been the one human being whom he had truly loved and who
had loved him in return since he had left his bleak homeland, and he would not desert her now. He would somehow get her out of the tunnels to some lonely place, where he would dig a grave, with his bare hands if need be, and lay her in it. He would pile rocks on the grave against wolves and hyenas, place a single wild-flower atop the stones, and go his way.

  He picked up the girl's body, slung it over one massive shoulder, and started back along the tunnel that led to the trapdoor. Surely, he thought, the priests would have retired by this late hour, leaving the naos deserted. At the end of the corridor he set down the cold corpse, climbed the steps, and listened against the underside of the trapdoor.

  To his surprise, the sound of voices filtered through to him. He made out the deep tones of the High Priest, the higher ones of Mirzes, and a third voice he did not know. Feridun's leonine roar came through to him:

  'Zath curse your eyeballs, Darius! You promised us fair weather for the three days of the festival; instead of which, you allowed your guests to depart in a downpour! Where is the skill at commanding the spirits of the air whereof you have boasted? If you cannot do better than that, we shall have to give the task of weather magic to another.'

  Darius mumbled something apologetic, but then Mirzes the new Vicar spoke: 'I suspect, Holiness, that Darius did it on purpose, to diminish your repute and thus further his own political designs.'

  'Naught of the sort!' protested Darius. 'I have never...' Then all three spoke at once, so that Conan could no longer distinguish words.

  Conan thought of bursting into the naos, laying Rudabeh's body on the offering chest, chiselling out the Eyes of Zath, and fleeing. This was obviously impractical while the chamber was occupied. A wild idea crossed his mind, of pushing up the trapdoor and confronting the priests with the body. But Conan had no sword, and the priests had only to shout to bring the Brythunian guards on the run.

  He quickly abandoned this suicidal idea. If the priests discovered, as they surely would, that Rudabeh had been in collusion with Conan, they might not bury her properly, either. Nor could he pry out the Eyes with one hand while fighting off Catigern's mercenaries with the other. There was nothing for it but to manage the burial himself and come back later for the jewels, when the naos was vacant.