"Here. It is not the finest vintage, and watered besides, but I'll wager that you won't cast it aside now," said the barbarian. Wearing a faintly sheepish expression, Heng Shin took the wineskin. The first swallow seemed to slice through the layer of dust coating his throat.
The second filled his mouth with rich flavor. The wine may have been second-rate and watered, but he could not remember ever appreciating a drink so thoroughly. After they both drank their fill, the skin was returned to the backpack and the men advanced as one to the doorway.
Outside the room was an empty, lightless corridor leading away to both left and right. Conan's eyes adjusted to the darkness at once, and he perceived that vacant doorways flanked the one from which they emerged.
A moment's exploration revealed that both of these rooms had windows opening out onto the pillared facade, and were identical to the one that had admitted them to the palace. To either side, beyond the rooms, the corridor turned inward and tunneled deeper into the rock.
Conan chose the hallway to the right. Once they rounded the corner, the sound of the storm dwindled to a distant whispering and the air grew thick and stale. The stagnant smell of ancient dust filled their nostrils.
The corridor continued in gloom, uninterrupted for a space, then split in a three-way intersection. Ahead, and to the left, the hall went on as before, with no sign of light or another doorway. To their right a spiral stairway coiled downward. A vague yellow glow, faint as a vapor, shone along the stairwell's curving wall.
Conan thrust down with the sickle blade of his scimitar. The Khitan nodded, and the two stole down the stair. Conan led the way, keeping his back to the wall and his sword extended before him. The stairs opened out onto the second floor, where the two men hesitated. The Cimmerian crouched, leaning into the hallway, but all was darkness and silence. The phantom glow of light came from farther below. He withdrew and they continued.
The stairwell ended by opening out upon a broad hall that led away to the left and right. A single light, set in a niche carved into the wall, filled the long chamber with a soft illumination. It was not a torch. The light looked like nothing that Conan had ever seen before.
It appeared to be a hollow ball of glass containing water and a sprig of some leafy plant. The whole gave off a steady, not unpleasant, glow.
The barbarian noted its oddity, then gave it no further thought. Death stalked these corridors and would claim the unwary.
To Conan's right, the hall extended fifteen paces before ending in another open doorway. To his left, the corridor reached a similar length to a similar portal, but this one was covered by a hanging blanket of coarse brown cloth. Faint sounds, echoing and indistinguishable, came from beyond the fabric barrier, which twitched gently, as if touched by a gentle breeze.
Conan came out of the stairwell and padded stealthily toward the covered doorway. His boots made no sound on the stone floor. Heng Shih began to follow about four paces behind, but was struck into immobility when the Cimmerian suddenly thrust an open palm toward him.
A voice spoke in Stygian, startlingly loud in the pervasive silence.
For a terrible instant Conan and Heng Shih both stood stock-still; then the hanging over the doorway rippled and was thrust aside. Two men in bright mail pushed into view. Lights bobbed, and flared behind them.
Conan had a split second of indecision. It was shattered by the rising voices of an unknown number of men, coming up behind the two that now stood, goggling, in the doorway. The Cimmerian lunged across the hallway, snatched the light-globe from its niche, spun and ran straight at Heng Shih. The Khitan took an involuntary step backward.
"Run, damn it!" The barbarian shoved his comrade back into the stairwell as cries of alarm rang out behind them.
The sound of boots on stone filled the stairwell with rebounding echoes. Conan took the steps three at a time, easily driving past the laboring Khitan. At the second level he slid to a halt, bent, and rolled the light-globe down the darkened hallway to the north.
Yellow-white light blazed up eerily, splashing the walls with unnatural radiance as the sorcerous torch rolled swiftly away, scarcely bouncing on the smooth stone floor. Conan didn't stop to watch, but ran past the darkened second level and continued up to the third, bursting into the dim hallway at the three-way intersection with the shouts of his pursuers loud in his ears. Heng Shih followed the Cimmerian as he turned right, sprinting into the inner reaches of the palace's third floor.
They ran through another intersection and passed an open doorway on the right, but Conan did not even slow his pace. Then there was a curtained opening on the left and the barbarian was shoving the fabric aside, charging into the darkness beyond. Heng Shih was at his heels, sliding to a stop in complete blackness as Conan let the blanket fall across the doorway. They pressed their backs to the wall on either side of the door, ready to cut down any who might follow them. Heng Shih strove to muffle his gasps for breath and slow the rapid hammering of his heart.
Voices and footsteps came to them from an uncertain distance, fading and blurring together. Heng Shih wiped sweat from his pate with the dirty sleeve of his golden kimono. Across from him, Conan stood with his scimitar at the ready, as charged with potential energy as a leopard poised to spring.
The sounds of pursuit dwindled and disappeared. Conan grinned savagely, invisible in the gloom, and lowered his blade. His steel clinked softly against something on the wall. Turning, the barbarian reached out. His hand encountered something smooth and spherical sitting in a niche in the wall. When his fingers closed upon and lifted it, a dull pulse of light came from the thing. It was a light-globe like the one he had seized in the hall below. When he picked the thing up, the water within it rolled about and the light came more steadily. Conan gave the glass ball a good shake, and the room was revealed in the resulting yellow glow.
The first thing he saw was Heng Shih, pressed against the wall across from him, sword in hand and an incredulous frown wrinkling his smooth features. The Khitan extended a hand as if to knock the light-globe from Conan's grasp.
"Easy." The Cimmerian stepped away from the door. "They're chasing the light I rolled into the second floor. With any luck, they'll think we dropped it and are hiding down there. Probably wouldn't believe a man of your size could run fast enough to get this far anyway."
Heng Shih lowered his scimitar, but kept his frown, apparently seeing little humor in the situation.
The globe in Conan's fist showed the room to be an eldritch combination of sorcerous laboratory and unnatural greenhouse. The barbarian wrinkled his nose in puzzlement. The chamber smelled more like a humid jungle glade than a stone room in a desert ruin.
A single small chair stood in the center of one wall, overlooking the many tables that all but filled the chamber.
The tables were of varying sizes, each holding a bewildering array of odd paraphernalia, ranging from racks of liquid-filled vials to a set of flat, metal trays that apparently held only moist earth. One of the central tables held a box fashioned of transparent glass panels bound with bronze. Within the box was a round bush, thickly covered with fat, reddish leaves.
. Along the wall across from the chair was a long table covered with a tent-like drape of thick black velvet. Heng Shih approached the shroud of dark fabric. The sharp tip of his scimitar lifted the fabric from the table and a brilliant ray of golden light shone out, stinging his eyes. It was as though he revealed the desert sun itself. The table beneath was set with a number of unrecognizable plants growing from ceramic pots full of soil. The velvet cowl was draped over a framework of thin metal struts that also held, at measured intervals, several extraordinarily bright light-globes.
Heng Shih let the cowl fall back into place and the golden light faded abruptly, like the sun falling behind a storm cloud. He turned to see Conan standing beside a. small table. The Cimmerian had laid the light-globe on the tabletop. He was fastening his backpack and adjusting it beneath his dusty cloak. The barbarian gestured to
the black and empty doorway across the room.
"We've tarried long enough."
The portal opened upon yet another dark and deserted hall. Conan held the light-globe muffled beneath his cloak, so that only a dim glow lit their way. They turned to the right, moving deeper into the palace's stone heart. The silence was as heavy as lead, weighting them down.
Ahead, the hallway ended in a high arch unlike anything they had seen thus far. Conan stopped, and drew from his belt the silken shirt he had used as a mask against the storm. He wrapped the light-globe in the shirt and set it against a wall. A gentle, yellow radiance shone faintly through the bundle of cloth. Heng Shih watched with a concealed impatience that the barbarian seemed to sense.
"Come," said the Cimmerian. "This room is different."
Conan passed beneath the open arch, stepping into an even deeper darkness. The stone floor of the hall ended at the arch. Within the circular room beyond there was no true floor, but rather a ring-like balcony made of a lusterless black metal. The balcony ran around the room's perimeter, encircling an open shaft of uncertain depth.
Heng Shih followed Conan into the strange chamber, pacing soundlessly a step behind and to the right. The pair . drew to a halt on the metal balcony, straining their eyes into the dark, trying to see across the room's empty center. Conan laid a hand on the low railing and spoke in a harsh whisper.
"We can reach the other door from either side. But what is that scent?"
Heng Shih frowned in frustration. His dilated eyes could scarcely discern a darker smudge against a featureless background that had to be the far wall. It made sense that both branches of the balcony would meet at a doorway across from the one they had entered, but he could see nothing of it. The Cimmerian's vision was uncanny. Then Heng Shih noticed the scent.
The balcony, only wide enough for two men to walk abreast, bracketed a well of absolute darkness. And from the unfathomed depths below rose a faint odor, reminiscent of stale perfume. After a few breaths, Heng Shih found that its apparent sweetness masked a cloying undercurrent of decay. His hands ached to spell out questions in sign language, but he knew that Conan would not understand.
The barbarian stood rigidly at the balcony's lip, all of his senses focused into the darkness before him. The hair on his forearms prickled. There was something wrong about this room. Heng Shih stared at Conan in dismay, noting the Cimmerian's animal wariness and unable to account for it. The Khitan put his hand on the worn hilt of his scimitar.
Conan's sword lashed from its scabbard, hissing sharply as it cut the air.
"Soldiers. More than four of them, coming to the other door."
Heng Shih started in surprise, drew his sword from his sash and stared in vain across the lightless room. He waited a suspended moment, every sense awakening. A faint and wavering yellow glow illuminated the opposite arch, revealing the room to be about twenty paces across. The scuff of boots on stone came to his ears. He tugged the wooden mace from his belt and looked to Conan. The Cimmerian cocked his head and grinned wolfishly at his comrade.
"No better time to shift the odds in our favor. Here we can take them one at a time. Are you game?"
The Khitan nodded his shaven head, stepping to the right branch of the balcony even as Conan moved onto the left. The pair advanced slowly, weapons at the ready. And then the opposite arch was abruptly full of light and armed men.
"They're here!"
Hands gripping luminous spheres of crystal were thrust into the room's darkness as twelve armored Stygians pushed out onto the balcony. They reacted smoothly, drawing blades and splitting into two groups without orders, moving like professional warriors who had trained long together.
Conan cursed under his breath. There were too many of them, and they were too good. The balcony forced the Stygians to advance in single file. The last man in each line held a light-globe high, so that his comrades could see.
"Intruders," cried the light-bearer on Heng Shih's side, "cast down your blades and be spared!"
Conan's reply was to charge his first challenger. A barbaric war cry resounded in the vaulted chamber as the Cimmerian sprinted forward, closing the distance between himself and his foe with terrible speed.
The Stygian mercenary was astonished by this unexpected tactic, recoiling into the soldier to his rear. Conan brought his scimitar down with all the power of his shoulders behind it. His blow dashed aside the attempted parry, cleaving through the steel helmet to split the Stygian's skull. The man fell back among his fellows, dead on his feet.
The second mercenary stumbled over the sprawling body, an outhrust hand catching at the balcony's rail. Stepping forward, Conan reversed his blade. His return cut brought the sword back up in a murderous swath that passed inside the staggering man's failing guard and up through the breastplate to split his sternum. The shattering impact of the blow lifted the man from his feet and sent him hurtling over the balcony in a shower of blood and a mad flurry of flailing limbs.
"Come ahead, dogs!" roared the barbarian. The battle-madness of the berserker raged through Conan's veins, driving him forward with such raw fury that his more numerous opponents found themselves drawing backward in an involuntary retreat.
Across the pit, Heng Shih feinted with his wooden mace. When the mercenary facing him parried the blow, the Khitan's scimitar lashed out with such strength that the man's head sprang from his shoulders and rebounded from the ceiling. The body collapsed like a dropped wineskin, sending a wash of crimson vintage spilling over the balcony's rim. The next Stygian lunged in, only to find his thrust blocked by a precise movement of the mace, and his belly laid open by a sudden slash of the scimitar.
Conan saw none of this, for his third opponent was a man of some ability. Cursing steadily in the name of Set and Bubastis, the warrior traded cuts with the Cimmerian, closing with him over the sprawled body of Conan's first kill. The barbarian's boot skidded on blood-smeared metal, and the Stygian drove forward, his thrust tearing through the patched portion of Conan's mail and searing along his ribs. Conan grunted in pain and, hooking the point of his scimitar in above his foe's gorget, thrust the mercenary through the throat. The blade burst through the man's neck, splintering his spine and lodging in the bone.
The luckless Stygian reeled backward with a gurgling cry, tearing the blade from Conan's hand and tumbling headlong over the railing to disappear in the darkness below.
The Cimmerian drew his dagger even as he watched his sword go. The fourth mercenary gave a hoarse shout of triumph to see the fearsome barbarian disarmed. The shout's timbre shifted as Conan dove headfirst into his oncoming foes, slamming bodily into the leading Stygian and bearing both of those following to the balcony in a cursing, writhing heap. No sooner had they struck the metal flooring than Conan was struggling up, wrenching his dagger from the entrails of his fourth opponent. The fifth, fighting for position, came to his knees and awkwardly brought his shortsword down on the head of the rising Cimmerian. The leather helmet saved his skull, but couldn't keep his scalp from splitting under the impact. Fire-shot blackness rolled across Conan's vision. Stunned by the blow, the barbarian half lunged and half fell forward, driving a clenched fist into the swordsman's face. The blow landed with a meaty crunch and the man spilled over backward with a broken jaw.
Conan's sole remaining opponent scrambled up from the balcony and turned to flee. Hurling himself forward across the flooring, the Cimmerian caught at the mercenary's flying ankle, snagging a strap of his sandal. With a cry of terror, the man twisted in midstride, desperate to escape the barbarian's grip. The Stygian tore free of Conan's fist, but in doing so spun wildly into the railing, which struck him just below the waist. He upended, all but flying over the rail, and fell into the shaft with a horrible scream. There was a muffled crunch from below, as though the man had fallen into a dry thicket.
Conan seized a fallen shortsword in a bloodied fist. Gripping the railing with his other hand, he pulled himself slowly to his feet. The breath whistled bet
ween his clenched teeth, and sweat ran freely along his limbs. He looked across the pit to see how Heng Shih fared.
The Khitan stood splay-legged, holding the hilt of his scimitar against his broad belly with both hands. The point of the scimitar was embedded in the chest of the last Stygian mercenary, whose body hung as limply on the blade as an impaled rag. As Conan looked on, Heng Shih hoisted the body up, and with a powerful heave, hurled it into the pit.
The last soldiers had laid their light-globes on the balcony before engaging the invaders. Now the two men looked at each other in the eerie yellow glow. The Cimmerian bared his teeth in a grotesque approximation of a smile. He drew a hand across his brow to wipe away the blood seeping from his scalp wound.
"Crom and Ymir, that was as touchy a set-to as I have ever
A terrible screaming arose from the shaft and silenced him. A single human voice strained in notes of an unknowable agony. The hair rose on Conan's head. He drew away from the balcony's rim, pressing his broad back to the cool stone wall, as the screaming intensified into an inhuman siren and was suddenly cut off.
A new sound floated up from the hidden depths of the shaft. A subtle rustle that grew steadily in volume until it was a ragged rasping, as if the walls below were scraped by thousands of steel blades.
Conan shot a glance at Heng Shin and saw that the Khitan was moving carefully toward the arch through which the soldiers had come. The Cimmerian stepped in that direction too, moving stealthily, and then hastening as the sounds in the pit grew louder and, horribly, nearer.
Something was rising out of the shaft. It moved faster and faster, tearing at the walls around it, until it shot up past the balcony. To Conan's horrified eyes it resembled nothing so much as a tree of surging darkness, hurling its black branches aloft until they crunched against the domed ceiling. It paused there, suspended in the shaft, a tangled tower of rustling darkness, and then it fell down toward them.
The Conan Compendium Page 448
