uncertain steps. 'Careful, now. The planks of this floor are old and rotten.'
Below the trapdoor, a ladder descended into the gloom. Fighting her queasiness, she let her companion precede her downward. They found themselves in a spacious rotunda, ghostly in the semi-darkness. A circle of marble columns surrounded them, supporting the dome overhead.
'The modern Puntians could not have built this temple,' muttered Conan. 'This marble must have travelled a long way.'
'Who built it, then, think you?' asked Muriela.
Conan shrugged. 'I know not. A Nemedian I met - one of those learned men - told me entire civilizations rise and fall, leaving but a few scattered ruins and monuments to mark their passing. I have seen such in my travels, and this may be another. Let us strike a light before the moon goes clown and it grows too dark to see.'
Six small copper lamps hung from long chains beneath (he circle of the dome, and reaching up, Conan unhooked one from its hanging.
'There's oil in it and a wick,' he said. 'That means someone tends these lamps. I wonder who?'
Conan struck sparks from flint and steel into a pinch of tinder, and flame sputtered into being. He caught the flame on the end of the wick and held up the lamp, whence issued ; warm yellow glow. The outlines of the chamber sprang into view.
On the perimeter opposite the great portal, backed by a fretted marble screen, they saw a dais set upon three marble steps. A figure stood erect upon the dais.
'Nebethet herself!' announced Conan, grinning recklessly at the life-sized idol.
Muriela shuddered. Revealed in the uncertain lamplight, was a woman's beautiful naked body, well-rounded and seductive. But instead of a maiden's attractive features, the face of the statue was a fleshless skull. Muriela turned away in horror from the sight of that death's head, obscenely perched upon the voluptuous female form.
Conan, to whom death was an ordinary occurrence was not affected. Nonetheless, the sight caused shivers to run along his spine. Raising the lamp, he saw with dismay that the statue was carved from a single piece of ivory. In his travels in Kush and Hyrkania, he had learned much of the elephant tribe; yet he could not imagine what sort of monster might have borne a tusk as thick as a small woman's body.
'Crom!' he grunted, staring at the grinning skull. 'This means my scheme won't work. I planned to spirit away the statue and put you in its place to utter the auguries. But even a fool would never think you that skull-faced abortion come to life.'
'Let us fly, then, whilst we still live!' implored Muriela, backing toward the ladder.
'Nonsense, girl! We'll find a way to persuade the black king to oust Thutmekri and shower rewards on us. Till then, we'll search out the rich offerings left here by the faithful. In rooms behind the idol, maybe, or in underground crypts. Let's explore...'
'I cannot,' said Muriela faintly. 'I am fordone with weariness.'
'Then stay here whilst I look around. But wander not away, and call to me if aught occurs!'
Lamp in hand, Conan slipped out of the room, leaving Muriela in the enveloping silence. When the dancer's eyes adjusted to the dark, she could see the outlines of the statue with its sweetly curved woman's body and its gaunt and ghoulish head. The idol was faintly illuminated by the rays of the moon, down-thrusting through an opening in the dome; and as the tomblike silence seemed to take on a tangible shape, so the statue in the moonlight seemed to sway and waver. The beating of her heart became the tramp of ghostly feet.
Resolutely, Muriela turned her back upon the statue and sat, a small huddled shape, on the first step of the dais. The things she felt and saw, she told herself, were illusions wrought by fatigue, lack of food, and the weirdness of her surroundings. Still, her fear blossomed until she could have sworn before the gods of Corinthia that in a dim, unholy place she heard the spectral shuffle of unseen presences.
Muriela felt a compelling need to turn and look behind her; for she had an uncanny sensation that something stood here, staring at her from the shadows. Time and again she resisted this temptation, urging herself not to succumb to foolish fears.
A dirty, skeletal hand, like the claw of some huge bird of prey, closed on the flesh of her naked shoulder. She shrieked as she turned to find herself looking at a sunken face, with bony, withered jaws, topped by a mat of tangled hair that was barely visible in the palpable darkness. As. she jerked away and began to rise, a lumbering monstrosity materialized on her other side. It picked her up like a doll and pressed her against its hairy, muscular chest. With a scream of sheer terror, Muriela fainted.
In the dusty apartments behind the marble rotunda, Conan whirled like a startled jungle cat as the echo of that shriek invaded his senses. With a coarse oath, he sprang from the cubicle he had been investigating and raced back along the corridor, retracing his steps. If something had befallen Muriela, he thought, he was to blame for abandoning her in this ghastly place. He should have kept her with him while exploring the ancient shrine; but, aware that she was near the end of her strength, he had taken pity on her weakness.
When he re-entered the central hall, sword in hand and lamp held high, there was nothing to be seen. The girl was no longer where he had left her, nor was she to be found behind one of the many moon-pale columns. Neither could his keen eyes discern any signs of a struggle. It was as if Muriela had evaporated into air.
A prickling of superstitious horror stirred the barbarian to the core. He paid little heed to the dogmas of priests or the oracular warnings of wizards. His Cimmerian gods did not much meddle in the affairs of mortals. But here in Punt, things might be different. Besides, he had survived enough encounters with presences from beyond earthly dimensions that within him now smouldered an atavistic fear of the supernatural.
Relighting his lamp, which had faltered and flickered out during his frantic survey of the great hall, he searched on, but with a sense of leaden futility. Wherever the girl might be, she had indeed gone from the rotunda.
Muriela slowly came to her senses and found herself slumped against a wall of smooth stone. She was surrounded by darkness so impenetrable that never since the world began, it seemed to her dazed mind, had light plumbed this abyss of embalmed darkness.
Rising, she felt her way along the wall until she came to an angle. She set off in a new direction, brushing her finger tips against the rough stone for guidance. She turned another angle, and still another, until it occurred to the frightened and bewildered girl that she had completed the circuit of a small chamber in which she had not detected any door or opening, a featureless cube of stone. How, then, had she come hither? Had she been lowered through a trapdoor? Was she, perchance, in some dark well set deep into the living rock of the hill itself? Was this place her grave?
Muriela shrank into a huddle, staring into the featureless darkness trying to recall what had happened before her swooning. Suddenly, the gates of memory burst open, flooding her mind with living horror. She remembered the touch of the withered claw of the shrivelled creature that had crept upon her in the hall of the idol. She felt again the grasp of the hulking monstrosity that had caught her up against its hairy breast.
As memory returned, she cried out again, sobbing Conan's name. Faint as was that beseeching cry, Conan heard it. His catlike senses, honed through centuries of savage heritage, recognised the echo of Muriela's voice. He whipped about and sought down the corridor in the direction whence the cry had come. The orange flame of his guttering lamp grew feeble, as the gloom of night through which he strode drank up the flickering light.
Although the stony corridors and gloomy chambers seemed untenanted. the Cimmerian was alert to the slightest
sound. When he heard a faint rasp from the black mouth of a side passage, he stopped, wheeled, and thrust his lamp forward.
A wizened, shrivelled thing, no taller than a child, leered, mummy-like, from the lateral corridor. Ancient it seemed as Hie stones underfoot, and as dead, save for the fire in the bleary eyes set in cavernous sockets in the shrun
ken face. The thing cowered from the light of the lamp and threw up a skeletal hand as if to ward off a blow.
Then a second apparition took shape out of the darkness behind the first. The monstrous being pushed past the shrivelled one and flung itself upon Conan, like a pouncing beast of prey. So swift was the assault that Conan had only a fleeting glimpse of a mountain of sable fur before the lamp was knocked from his hand, to go bouncing and clattering .way. Conan found himself fighting for his life in absolute darkness.
Like a trapped leopard, his reaction was instinctive and violent. He tore himself loose from apelike arms, which tried to pinion him, and lashed out blindly with fists that thudded like trip hammers. He was unable to discern the true nature of his assailant in the total darkness but assumed that it was some manner of two-legged beast. He felt the jolt of a solid contact as it travelled up his arm and heard the satisfying crunch of a jawbone.
The unknown attacker came on again, swinging long arms. Conan sprang back, but not before the savage talons of the brute raked across his chest, laying his tanned hide open in long scarlet furrows. The cuts, stinging like fury, filled the Cimmerian with black barbaric rage. Needles of agony ripped away the veneer that civilisation had placed upon his seething volcanic soul. Throwing back his tousled mane, he howled like a wolf and hurled himself upon his attacker, grappling breast to breast. Hot, foetid breath struck his face like the stinking fumes of a furnace. Sharp fangs slavered and snapped at his corded throat. Hands like clamps closed about his wrists, holding him at bay.
Conan brought his booted foot up in a mighty kick at the thing, which staggered back, loosening his grip on Conan's arms. Conan wrenched loose from the clutching paws and, with a bestial growl, hurled himself forward, groping for the monster's throat. As he locked his hands on the unseen windpipe, the beast tore loose and closed its fanged jaws on Conan's forearm. Lowering his head, like a pain-maddened bull, the Cimmerian butted the staggering form in the belly.
His opponent was taller than he by inches, and heavier by far, but its breath erupted with a gasp of anguish and it went down with a crash. Snatching out his dagger, Conan seized a handful of coarse hair and stabbed frantically again and again, driving the weapon into the creature's belly, chest, and throat until he had buffeted the last spark of life from its battered hulk.
Conan rose unsteadily to his feet, gasping and nauseated with the pain of many bites and scratches. When he stopped retching and regained his breath, he wiped his blade on the monster's hairy leg and sheathed it. Then he groped for his lamp. Although the lamp had gone out, a tiny blue flame danced above a puddle of spilled oil. By the feeble light of this elfin fire, Conan found his lamp and lit it.
The dead thing at his feet was a curious hybrid, neither man nor beast. Manlike in shape, it was covered with black hair, like a bear or a gorilla. Yet it was clearly not an ape. Its body and limbs were too manlike in proportions, while its head resembled nothing that Conan had ever looked upon. It had the sloping forehead and protruding snout of a baboon or dog, and its inky, rubbery lips were parted to reveal gleaming canine fangs. And yet, it must have had some link to humankind, for its private parts were covered by a filthy breech clout.
Trembling with terror, Muriela listened to the shouts, snarls, and scuffle of the battle in the passageway above her prison. When it was over, she renewed her plaintive cries. Following the sound of her whimperings, Conan located a niche in the corridor, floored by a flagstone to which was fastened a ring of bronze. He hoisted the slab, bent down, and caught the arms that Miriela reached out to him.
The girl gasped and shrank away from the bloody apparition that supported her, but the sound of Conan's familiar voice reassured her as he helped her step across the battered, hairy corpse that blocked the passage.
Haltingly she described the withered ancient who had laid hands upon her in the rotunda and told how the monster had seized and borne her off. Conan grunted.
'The old hag must be the priestess or oracle of this shrine,' he said. 'Her voice is the voice of the ivory goddess. There is a closet behind the idol with a door hidden in the fretted marble wall. Hiding there, she can see and speak to those who come to seek her counsel.'
'And the monster; what of him?' quavered the girl.
Conan shrugged. 'Crom knows! Mayhap her servitor, or some deformed brute the savages of Punt considered touched by the gods and marked for temple duty. Anyway, the thing is dead and the priestess has taken flight. Now we have naught to do but hide in the small room behind the statue when someone comes to hear the oracle.'
'We might wait months. Perhaps no one will ever come.'
'Nay, our friend Nahor told us the chiefs of Punt consult the ivory wench before each grave decision. Methinks you will play the skull-faced goddess after all.'
'Oh, Conan, I am sore afraid. We cannot stay here, even if we would, for we shall starve,' said Muriela.
'Nonsense, girl! Our pack horse carries food enough for many days, and this is as good a place to rest as any.'
'But how about the priestess?' persisted the frightened woman.
'The old hag cannot harm us now that her monster is lead,' said Conan cheerfully, adding, 'if we use normal caution, that is. I would not accept a drink from her hand.'
'So be it, then,' said Muriela. A look of sadness crossed her beautiful face as she added, 'In truth I am no oracle, but I foretell that this adventure will end badly for us both.'
Conan put his arms around her to comfort her. And in (lie early morning light that stole through the opening of the dome, she saw the blood oozing from the razor cuts across
his chest
'My beloved, you are hurt and I knew it not! I must wash and bind your wounds.'
'Just a few scratches,' grumbled Conan. But he allowed her to lead him to the well in the little cloistered courtyard behind the skull-faced temple. There she washed the dried blood from his limbs and bandaged the beast's bites with strips of silk torn from her skirt. A half-hour later, Conan and Muriela returned to the rotunda and rested behind a pillar out of sight of the ivory goddess. Keeping alternate watch, they slept all that day and the following night.
When Conan awoke, the golden rays of the rising sun were gilding the clouds of morning, and the East was ablaze with ruddy vapours. Muriela sat with her back to a pillar, cradling Conan's head in her arms.
He stretched. 'I must go and get us some food,' he said. 'Here, take this dagger in case the old priestess returns.'
Climbing the ladder to the small storeroom through whose window they had entered, he hooked the grapnel into the sill and prepared to descend the rope. Then he paused to peer westward, for he caught - or thought he caught - a glimpse of distant movement.
Beyond the hills that surrounded the temple-shrine lay a wide savannah, and at the far end of that grassy plain stood the city of Kassali, roof ornaments on temple and palace , twinkling in the slanting sunlight. All seemed peaceful, the city asleep. Then Conan's keen eyes discerned a row of black dots moving across the plain. A faint plume of dust arose 1 behind them.
'Our visitors are coming sooner than I thought,' he growled. 'I cannot leave the nags tethered here. The delegation would know at once that strangers occupied their temple.'
He swung over the sill and let himself down swiftly. In a I moment he had unhitched the horses. Tightening the girth on one, he vaulted into the saddle and departed at a gallop, leading the other two. A quarter-hour later he returned, breathing hard from running up the long slope of the hill,
He climbed the rope and drew it in, then made his way to the head of the ladder.
'Horsemen coming!' he gasped. 'Tied the nags - in the woods - at the foot of the hill! Put on your goddess garb, and quickly.' He tossed Muriela a bundle of female garments.
Returning to the window, he found that the line of dots had grown into a cavalcade, cantering toward the foot of the temple knoll. He raced to the ladder, clambered down, and said:
'Come, we have scarce time to hide our
selves in the oracle chamber. You remember your speech?'
'Y-yes; but I fear. It did not work when we tried it at Alkmeenon.'
'There was a rascal then, and Bit-Yakin's accursed servants. This priestess lacks her monster, and I've seen no other temple denizens. This time, I'll stay beside you. Come!'
He took her hand and almost dragged her across the room. By the time the cavalcade reached the temple, Conan and Muriela were crowded into the small chamber behind the ivory goddess.
They heard the clop of hooves, the jingle of harness, and the mumble of distant voices, as men dismounted. Presently Conan caught a slow mechanical rumble.
'That must be the portcullis,' he whispered. 'The priests mist have some sort of key.'
The voices grew louder, mingled with the tramp of many feet. Through the band of fretwork that ran across the door, Conan saw a procession file into the rotunda. First came a group of blacks in barbaric finery. In their midst paced a large, stout man with greying, woolly hair, on which rode an elaborate crown, made of sheets of gold hammered into the form of a hawk with outspread wings. This, Conan surmised, must be King Lalibeha. A very tall, lean man in a purple robe he took to be Zaramba, the high priest.
They were followed by a squad of Puntian spear men with headdresses of ostrich plumes and rhinoceros-hide shields, behind them strode Thutmekri the Stygian and a score of his personal retainers, among them Kushite spear men and Shemitish archers armed with heavy double-curved bows. Conan's neck hairs stiffened as he sighted his enemy.
Thutmekri the Stygian felt the morning breeze at his back. That same chill, or an echo of it, closed about his heart. Rogue and adventurer though he was, the tall Stygian cared little for this unexpected visit to the shrine of the ivory goddess. He remembered all too well the disaster that had befallen his partner in the temple of the goddess Yelaya at Alkmeenon.
Although Thutmekri had spoken plausibly about the possibility of war against Punt, King Lalibeha had remained doubtful and suspicious. Among the rulers of the northern tier of black countries, the old king was known as canny and cautious. To cap the king's doubts, his high priest Zaramba had received a drum message from his sacerdotal colleagues to westward, warning against certain pale-skinned trouble-makers who were fleeing towards Punt. When the smooth-talking Stygian persisted, Zaramba proposed a visit to the oracular shrine of Nebethet, to seek the advice of the goddess.
The Conan Chronology Page 511
