The Conan Chronology

by J. R. Karlsson

  With a heavy sigh he descended, picked up the body, and set forth. At the main crossing he continued straight on, down the slope of the central passage. Where the tunnel branched, he followed what seemed to be the main corridor.

  XII

  The Children of Zath

  Suddenly, the tunnel opened out into a vast cavern, where stalactites hung from the roof over stalagmites that reared up from the floor to meet them. Directly before Conan, half a dozen stone steps led down to the floor of the cavern, so that he had a clear view across to the further wall. The feeble light of his torch could not throw its amber beams so far; but in the midst of the distant blackness appeared an opening to the outer world. Through this aperture Conan sighted a patch of night sky, in which a star glimmered. Evidently the rain clouds of the previous day had rolled away.

  Within the cave entrance, below the actual aperture, was another patch of dim luminescence. Conan's keen vision identified this as a circular pool of water, reflecting the night sky outside and blocking the entrance to the cave. The strange odour which he had sensed before his encounter with Zath assailed his nostrils with nauseating intensity.

  All about the floor of the cave, the flickering orange light showed large, lumpish things scattered here and there among the stalagmites, like giant mushrooms of mottled grey-and-brown colouring. As Conan began to descend the steps, intending to pick his way among these obstacles to the exit, motion caught his eye. When he looked more closely, he saw that one of the supposed fungi was coming to life. It

  unfolded jointed legs, raised its body from the ground, and turned four gleaming eyes on Conan.

  The thing was a duplicate, in miniature, of Zath, although its dimensions were only half those of the original spider-god. Still, it was larger than the giant spider that Conan had fought in the Tower of the Elephant years before. One such monster could easily kill Conan, and there must be hundreds in the cavern.

  The first spider to awaken started toward Conan, while on all sides other giant spiders were coming to life and rising to their clawed feet. Within a few heartbeats of Conan's first appearance in the cave, the monster arachnids were streaming toward him. The click of their claws on the stone rose to a continuous rattle. Wherever Conan looked, quartets of gleaming eyes caught the light of his torch.

  Conan whirled and ran back up the long slope of the tunnel, while his hearing told him that the entire swarm was crowding into the tunnel behind him and racing after him, like a jointed-legged flood. On, on he went. At first, to judge from the diminishing sounds behind him, he gained on his pursuers. But, heavily burdened, he was forced to slow down, while his heart laboured and his breath came in gasps. Then the castanet-like sound of hundreds of horny claws on the stone came closer. These, he realised, must be the Children of Zath of whom the High Priest had spoken.

  Ever the rough walls of the tunnel fled past. Without the body, Conan was sure he could outrun the spiders; but it inevitably slowed him down. Still, he would not abandon it. He had the feeling of being in a nightmare, where one runs and runs through darkness while an unseen menace comes ever closer behind. He feared that he must have taken a wrong fork and would be lost forever in this maze.

  When he was almost in despair, he found himself at the main crossing. He kept straight on and soon reached the stair to the trapdoor.

  At the end of the tunnel, Conan climbed the steps and listened. He heard no sound from above - no talking, shuffling, or other indication of human activity. Perhaps the accursed priests had gone to bed at last. In these hours between midnight and morning, all in the temple, save the Brythunian guards on night duty, should be sound asleep. Conan did not know how he could escape unnoticed from the temple with Rudabeh's body; but, with the clatter of claws of the Children of Zath coming closer, he had no time to concoct a clever scheme.

  With the fist that held the torch, he pushed against the trapdoor. The square of planking failed to move. With a silent curse, Conan wondered if someone had noticed that the bolt had been shot back and replaced it.

  With the crepitation of the Children's claws coming closer, Conan was not about to let a mere bolt stop him now. If a good push would not dislodge it, he could break through the trap with his hammer, although he would have preferred not to do so because of the noise.

  He stepped back down to the tunnel floor and set down Rudabeh's body. Then he leaned his torch against the tunnel wall. Again he mounted the steps, put both hands against the underside of the trap, and gave a terrific heave.

  The trap rose against resistance, as if someone had placed a heavy weight upon it. Then suddenly the resistance ceased; there was a sharp cry, the thump of a falling body, and the trap flew open.

  As Conan leaped out into the gloom, a stream of oil struck him and cascaded over his clothing. By the wavering light of the eternal flame in its bowl, he saw a priest, whom he recognised as Mirzes, the Vicar, sprawled on the floor and beginning to rise. Beside him lay a large pitcher on its side, and a pool of oil spread out from it across the marble.

  In a flash, Conan understood. When Rudabeh had disappeared instead of reporting back to the Vicar, Mirzes had doubtless searched for her. Failing to find her, he had undertaken the task of refilling the reservoir himself. He had

  been standing on the trapdoor and directing the stream of bitumen into his pitcher when Conan's sudden emergence had thrown him off the planking.

  Mirzes started to scramble up, crying: 'Who - what -Corin! What in the seven hells -' But then his feet slipped on the oily surface, and he fell again.

  Conan leaped out on the floor and turned toward Mirzes, but his feet skidded also. He staggered and recovered.

  'Help!' croaked Mirzes. 'Guards!'

  Slipping and scrambling, Conan reached Mirzes just as the priest regained his feet. As Mirzes opened his mouth to cry another alarm, Conan whipped his fist up against the Vicar's chin with a meaty smack, hurling the slight priest back on the mosaic floor unconscious.

  Standing over his victim, Conan thought of finishing him off with a skull-cracking blow of his hammer. But with the hammer in his hand, he drew back from his bloodthirsty resolution. To slay a man while that man was asleep or otherwise helpless went against his notions of honour. He thought of cutting Mirzes' turban into lengths to bind and gag the priest.

  But it was more urgent to recover his torch and Rudabeh's body and to bolt the trapdoor, before the Children of Zath swarmed up into the naos. Conan started back toward the recess in the wall, aware that the faucet had remained open and that the abundant stream of bitumen continued to pour down into the tunnel. He must quickly turn off the valve; once the flow was stopped and the trap securely bolted, he could turn his attention back to Mirzes.

  After that, Conan thought, he would try to pry out the Eyes from the spider idol. To escape from the temple, he would pound on the front door and shout for help. When the Brythunians unlocked and opened the doors, Conan would cry 'Murder! Robbery! Help the Vicar!' When the guards rushed in, he would slip past them and out.

  Conan had taken but two steps toward the trapdoor when, with a thunderous belching sound, a mass of flame and smoke erupted out of the square opening in the floor. The oil had come in contact with Conan's torch in the tunnel. Conan made one desperate effort to reach the faucet, but the flames drove him back with singed hair and eyebrows, frantically beating out a small fire started in his oil-soaked clothing.

  Realizing at last that he could do nothing more for Rudabeh's body, he sprang to the statue and began fumbling for tools, to extract at least one Eye before the conflagration drove him forth. Smoke rolled out, thicker and thicker, until it set Conan to coughing and prevented him from even seeing clearly enough to work on the jewels in the statue.

  Stubbornly, he continued to try to place a drill in the proper position. He got in one stroke of his hammer and was pleased to see the point of the drill bite into the lead. But the smoke so afflicted him with coughing that he could only clutch at the nearest stone spider leg, g
asping and retching.

  Then the light in the naos brightened, and through the billowing smoke Conan saw that a wall hanging was going up in flame. From outside the naos he heard cries of 'Fire! Fire!'

  The smoke momentarily lifted; and Conan, glancing toward the flaming recess with the trapdoor, saw a sight that wrung a shudder from him. A colossal grey-and-brown spider was hoisting itself out of the trapdoor. Its massive bulk scraped against the sides of the opening as it forced its hairy body through the aperture, like some demon rising from a flaming hell. Zath had escaped its tunnel-prison at last.

  Out it came, swivelling about on its jointed legs, and sighted Conan. As the scuttling horror started for its prey, the Cimmerian ran for the front door, putting away his tools as he went. He seized the bronze door handles and tried to thrust open the doors, but they were still locked. A glance behind showed that the spider was close upon him.

  Then a key clicked in the lock and the doors opened. Conan found himself facing the startled countenances of two Brythunians, one of whom held a large key. Others crowded behind the mercenaries. Smoke had already seeped out the cracks around these doors, alerting the people of the temple.

  Conan staggered, coughing, out of the naos and into a scene of wild confusion. Priests of Zath, visiting priests from Arenjun, acolytes, dancing girls, mercenaries, and slaves ran in all directions. Priests bawled commands.

  Through the smoke loomed Zath in the doorway. At the sight, everyone in the vestibule broke into mad flight for the nearest exit. The small door in the outer valves was jammed with several fugitives trying to get through it at once.

  Forcing his way to the door by sheer strength, Conan seized the handles of the main door, wrenched them around, and pushed the groaning valves open. Those clustered against the door bolted out, falling, tripping over one another, and scrambling up to run. Conan glimpsed a pair of acolytes hustling the former Vicar out of the temple, while Harpagus stared about in childlike wonder.

  Conan bounded down the front steps two at a time. Halfway down he turned to snatch a look back. Thick smoke poured out of the open portal. Overhead the night was clear and star-dusted, while a half moon stood high in the eastern sky.

  In the open front portal stood two figures. One was the giant spider; its long hairs had been mostly singed off, but it seemed otherwise uninjured. The other, almost within arm's length of the monster, was the lean, hawk-nosed figure of High Priest Feridun, in his white robe and black turban. The priest was making passes with his hands and chanting some rigmarole.

  With its forelegs raised as if to seize Feridun, Zath paused. The priest continued his incantation, raising his voice to a shout and frantically gesturing, so that his long white beard lashed the smoky night air. The two grotesque figures were silhouetted against the lurid glare of the fire behind them. The spider retreated a step, back toward the naos; then another step. The priest's fabled control over animals could even force this monster to immolate itself in the blaze.

  Then Feridun got a lungful of smoke and went into a spell of coughing. Instantly, the spider, no longer constrained by its master's voice, darted forward. Its great jointed limbs enfolded the priest, who screamed once.

  A burly figure in mail dashed past Conan up the steps, waving a sword. From the flowing red hair Conan recognised Captain Catigern. Reaching the top, the Brythunian took a cut at the spider's body, opening a gash from which a dark fluid seeped. Zath, who had issued from the portal and now stood on the topmost step, dropped the priest's body and turned upon its new adversary. As it spread its appendages, Catigern backed away, swinging his sword right and left. The spider followed, keeping just beyond reach of the blade.

  'Hold on, Catigern!' shouted Conan between coughs. He had sighted, lying on the steps, a halberd belonging to one of the guards on duty at the main entrance. The Brythunian had dropped it when he fled.

  Pounding up the steps, Conan snatched up the pole-arm. Coming up on the side of Zath, he swung the halberd high over his head and, with every ounce of power that he possessed, brought it whistling down on the forward segment of the monster.

  The axe blade sank deeply into the spider's leathery flesh, and such was the force of the stroke that the shaft broke off midway from butt to head. Ponderously, Zath turned toward Conan. Running in from the other side, Catigern drove his sword in deeply above the base of the second leg and wrenched it out.

  Zath began to turn back toward the Brythunian, but it moved more and more slowly. Before it completed its turn, its legs gave way, dropping its body to the marble steps, which became fouled with the dark ichor that dripped from its wounds. Its sprawling legs continued to twitch, but these movements slowly dwindled. Zath was dead.

  Catigern seized Conan around the shoulders in a fierce hug. 'Thank all the gods you came along! Any time you want a lieutenancy in my company, do but ask.'

  'I'll think about it,' said Conan, coughing.

  Another Brythunian approached. 'Captain, the priest Dinak wants our help in fighting the fire.'

  Seeing the spider dead, Yezudites began crowding back into the square before the temple. The citizens bolted out of their houses, some in nightwear and some in hastily donned work garments. The priests dashed about organizing fire fighting. Thick, oily smoke continued to roll out the doors of the temple.

  'Bear a hand!' shouted Catigern in Conan's ear, shoving a bucket into his grip. 'Get into yonder line!'

  Conan had been about to turn away and go to the smithy, collect his gear, and shake the dust of Yezud from his feet. The temple of Zath was an evil fane, even more obnoxious than most Zamorian cults. He cared nothing for its architectural splendour, and if more priests were destroyed in the conflagration, that was all right with him. If he could not bury Rudabeh, to burn the temple for her funeral pyre was the next best thing. With her gone, there was no one in Yezud for whose fate Conan cared.

  Well, that was not quite true. Captain Catigern had become a friend, and each had saved the other's life. If the Brythunian were locked in battle with the fire, it behoved Conan to give him a hand.

  The sky had begun to pale with the approach of dawn; but then it suddenly clouded over. A small but very black cloud formed over Yezud. A flash of lightning paled the flames

  licking out around the base of the central dome, and a roll of thunder drowned out the roar of the flames. Down came rain, but such rain as Conan had never seen. It was like standing under a waterfall.

  Conan took his place in the bucket line and, with rain running down his face, handed buckets back and forth in a steady rhythm. The buckets were filled at the fountain in the temple square and were passed back to Yezudites around and within the fane.

  With a roaring crash, the central dome collapsed and disappeared. A cloud of sparks, smoke, and dust billowed up from the gap; rain poured into it. Little by little, between the fire fighters and the rain, the fire was beaten back; it had been confined to the naos.

  The Yezudites were still battling the flames, and the sun, though not yet visible, was tingeing the scattered dawn clouds crimson when Conan slipped away from the temple. Soon after, somewhat cleaned up and booted, he appeared at the stable with his saddle over one shoulder and a blanket roll over the other. The groom on duty, a stolid youth named Yazdan, looked up as the Cimmerian pushed into the stalls. He asked:

  'What would you, Master Corin? I thought you had lost your steed!'

  'One of them,' grunted Conan, striding down the row of stalls to that housing Egil. 'This one's mine, also.'

  'Ho? What say you?' cried Yazdan. 'You must be mad! That unmanageable beast belongs to the temple; Vicar Harpagus brought him back from his travels.'

  'After he stole him from me!' roared Conan. 'Stand aside, boy, if you don't wish to be hurt!'

  'I cannot - Zath's curse would-' protested the youth, striving to block Conan's advance with outstretched arms.

  'I'm sorry to do this,' grated Conan, dropping his burdens. 'But you give me no choice.'

  He pic
ked up Yazdan, who kicked and flailed the air, and slammed the groom against the wall. Yazdan sagged to the floor, half unconscious. Minutes later, Conan led a saddled Egil out of the stable; the horse whinnied and took little dancing steps with the pleasure of being reunited with his old master.

  Conan stopped at Bartakes's Inn to buy extra provisions -a loaf, a slab of meat, and a leather bottle of ale - for his journey. He was counting out coins to a yawning Bartakes, whom he had routed out of bed, when a familiar voice said:

  'Aha, there you are! I wondered what had become of you.' Captain Catigern, still filthy with soot and ash, had his arm in a sling. He continued: 'From the blanket roll on your horse, I'd say you were planning to leave us.'

  'I might,' said Conan, 'if I had a better prospect elsewhere. What befell your arm?'

  'A beam fell on me, and I think the bone is cracked. I'll get a chirurgeon as soon as may be. When I saw the fire was under control, I turned command over to Gwotelin.'

  'How much of the temple burned?'

  'The naos is an indescribable mess; the falling roof timbers smashed that damned spider idol into a hundred pieces. But elsewhere the damage was only slight; most of the building is stone, and the oil stopped flowing out that pipe in the naos. I suppose the pool that feeds it ran dry.'

  'Will this end the cult of Zath?'

  'Mitra, no! They are already talking of rebuilding. I'll wager they'll choose Darius their new high priest, for that his rain spell saved most of the building. There should be plenty of work for a craftsman like you.'

  'No doubt, but I have other plans.' Conan thought, the Eyes of Zath, if not smashed to fragments by the fall of the dome, would have been baked by the heat to plain white stones of no value. At least, he thought with vindictive relish, if he could not enjoy them, neither could anyone else.