The Conan Compendium

by Robert E. Howard

  Besides, it would take sharp and untroubled wits to even think of the Lady's rushing about so meanly clad, let alone be trying to pierce the disguise of everyone who passed. She did not doubt that there were sharp wits among the folk in the valley, not all of whom were foolish either by nature or her creation. But she doubted that they would be untroubled.

  She herself was not untroubled, and as she strode along the path toward the Cave of the Mists, she recited old cantrips to soothe herself. The Mist had begun to feed of its own volition, and that terrible blue light spreading out into the valley was frightening both those who knew what it meant and those who did not. The more fearful the valley dwellers, the more they would run about like headless fowl without taking thought for their own safety.

  Not that they could easily procure it. Men and women were going to die tonight, and each death would feed a life essence into the Mist, making it stronger to seek out the next victim. (She would not use the word "sacrifice" tonight, and had begun to think that she never should have.)

  At least they could run toward the mouth of the valley. The Mist was bound to the magic in the rocks of the valley, the magic going back to the time of Acheron. It could not leave the valley unless it devoured many more life essences than it had found so far.

  And unless she was no longer there to contend with it.

  What her magic had wrought, it could undo. This might not earn her a kinder judgment from anyone except Muhbaras, who was”as he was, and she would not try to find words for it. She was no poet either. In time, when they had lived together in the outside world, she a soldier's lady, he a soldier of Khoraja, one of them might find such words.

  That time would not come tonight.

  She needed to be closer to the Eye of the Mist to wield the needful spells with appropriate power, so she hastened her pace. As she moved, she called to the minds of everyone she passed, and hoped that the call reached beyond the range of her eyes.

  Flee the valley. Flee the valley. Flee to the valley, and beyond it.

  The valley is death. Outside lies hope.

  She repeated this, and one or two folk on the path turned and stared about them, as if seeking the source of the message that seemed to be touching their minds without touching their ears. She almost laughed.

  That was another way of remaining disguised”a call to the mind did not mean using one's all-too-recognizable voice.

  Conan was now backed against the pile of stones. This left him all the fighting room he needed to front and flanks. Not all of the archers atop the pile still lived, but both living and dead had wrought havoc in the enemy's ranks. They were coming at Conan and the remaining defenders on the ground with barely half their strength remaining fighting-fit.

  Bethina crouched behind Farad and Conan, her hand gripping her dagger but her eyes seeing nothing. She had not uttered any of Omyela's messages since battle was joined, but her consciousness was clearly elsewhere.

  Conan hoped that no one saw Bethina as the defender's weak point and hurled themselves on her. That would end in red ruin for the attackers, but perhaps also in Bethina's doom.

  The Cimmerian had met a good many women he'd mourn less than Bethina, altogether apart from the bond with Omyela. What was loose in the valley looked very apt to doom all in its path, without Omyela's help.

  Most of the folk of the Valley of the Mists who yet lived were fleeing even before the Lady bade them do so. One man trotted industriously in the same direction as the Lady.

  It was Ermik, and he could not have moved as swiftly as he did had he still carried the gold entrusted to him by Muhbaras. He had left it in a safe place, hidden even from the Maidens, who in any case were likely to soon be fleeing as swiftly as the rest, too swiftly to search odd caves.

  There was some danger in following the Lady as he was, even had she not been also hurrying toward the unleashed magic. But that way must lie the Lady's treasure, dwarfing the petty sums from the pay chest. Also, that way lay learning more about the Lady's magic than Muhbaras had, for all the time he'd spent swiving her.

  With gold, Ermik could buy his way free of Khoraja. With knowledge, he could buy a higher place in Khorajan service. It would be his tales of the Valley of the Mists that would be believed, not the captain's.

  Swiftly he would rise, and high enough that he would never again need to obey hirelings like Muhbaras.

  Still, he patted the hilt of his dagger as he moved. It held a chaos stone, or one that had been sold to him as such, for a price that would make him seek blood if it did not in truth confuse any spell into whose radius it was thrown.

  If he was alive after such a mischance. Ermik had a good spy's self-command, and animal courage. But he could not keep that ugly thought from his mind, or keep from feeling the night wind blow chill on his spine.

  The attack that Conan had feared came. It began with a flight of arrows, striking with the power of Turanian bows but mercifully ill aimed. One went through Bethina's hair, another gouged Farad's shoulder. The Afghuli slapped at the wound as if it were an insect bite, and brandished his tulwar.

  "Come along, dead men who think they yet live. Come along and meet Farad and Conan and their comrades. We will cure you of your silly notion!"

  He added a few singularly foul obscenities in Iranistani. Those who did not understand his words understood his tone, and it seemed that madmen came howling out of the night at Bethina's defenders.

  In the heart of the Mist, something that might be called a will began to grow. It was a will to seek paths through the rock, following the traces of old magic that it could touch by itself. It did not need more life essences to strengthen itself, if it could do that.

  The Mist ceased to be a creature of the air and became a creature of the depths of the earth. But in the heart of the incandescent blue where the Eye of the Mist had been, a crimson core began to glow.

  The attack on Bethina and her defenders began as a collision and continued as a brawl. Too many men were jammed into too small a space to let anyone use art or even craftsmanship in the fighting.

  That at once gave the advantage to the defenders. Conan could use the weapons nature gave him as fiercely and effectively as the man-made ones whose ways he had learned. He had never studied the barehanded (and -footed) fighting arts of Khitai, so perhaps one of the great masters of those arts might have been a match for the Cimmerian. But the Khitan would have needed luck as well as skill, and only the greatest of masters would have stood any chance of walking away from a bout with Conan.

  Conan slammed his sword-weighted hand into the side of one man's neck.

  He punched another in the ribs so hard that he felt ribs crack under the blow, even through boiled-leather armor. He butted a third man under the chin, snapping his head back so savagely that the neck snapped like a dry branch.

  Meanwhile Farad was doing much the same, with a little assistance from weapons that he had more room to wield. At the outermost fringes of his senses, Conan could hear still other comrades, but they might have been in another world for all that he could tell of what they were doing.

  They had to have done well, because suddenly it was too much for the attackers. Darkness and emptiness gaped before Conan, although not silence”the ground was littered with the crippled and dying, some already crying out as the pain-blunting shock of their wounds wore away.

  Conan watched the attackers retreating uphill, far scantier in numbers than when they came, and losing more men to the archers before they vanished. Then he looked around for Bethina.

  He saw her a moment later, sprawled atop the prostrate form of the prisoner Conan had taken earlier. He sprang toward her, then heard a welcome, healthy oath as he accidentally trod on her outstretched foot.

  "Your pardon, lady."

  "I should think so. I stabbed one fellow with my dagger, but he had so much muscle, the blade stayed in him. So when the bearded one started waking up, all I could do was jump on top of him."

  That seemed to have don
e well enough; the man's nose was a bloody mess from being slammed into the rocky ground. But he was still breathing, and indeed started to groan as Conan lifted Bethina off him.

  "I can take a few of the men up and keep those fellows on the move,"

  Farad said.

  Conan shook his head. "We don't divide our strength on unknown ground.

  Those fellows could rally and cut you to pieces. Besides, we need to protect Bethina. When was the last time you heard from Omyela?"

  Bethina looked blank, then slowed her breathing to open her mind to the other woman's message.

  Conan stared at the sky. Was it his fancy, or was a crimson tint beginning to mingle with the blue glow in the sky?

  The Lady of the Mists had come as close as she dared to the Eye. Any closer and she might find the ground under her feet crumbling as the Mist fed on the traces of the spells of long-dead Acheronian sorcerers, like worms feeding on the bones of long-dead animals.

  It was Acheron's magic that had brought the Mist to terrible Me. Now it would be the same magic that drove it back into the nighted gulfs from which she had drawn it, so that the Valley of the Mists might be a sane and safe abode for common men and women.

  She was leaving it, and she prayed she would leave it with Muhbaras.

  But she would not fail to leave it cleaner than she had made it.

  She could not bring back the dead. She would not even ask their forgiveness, for what she had done was beyond that. She hoped for happiness in this life, before she faced the anger of her victims in another. Meanwhile, she would do what she could to keep the number of the dead from growing any further.

  It would have to be a death-elemental. She had conjured one before, a being from the very darkest heart of Acheron's sinister magic. But that had been a small one, fit only to take a single human life. It had been weak and easy to control.

  Now she needed one so powerful that it held enough of the essence of death to slay the Mist. That which had fed on life essences would now consume pure death, and from that consuming, die.

  The Lady of the Mists remqved her garments and stood wind-clad as was best for such potent magic. This close to the Mist, it was hard to imagine anyone being able to strike at her even if they saw and recognized her.

  The syllables in the Secret Tongue of Acheron ran through her mind, and as she raised her staff over her head, they began to roll off her tongue.

  Muhbaras had just rallied the half or less of his men who remained when a wild-eyed figure stumbled into their rear.

  It was one of the Maidens, clad only in her sword and rags of garments.

  She was bleeding from a dozen scratches and three greater wounds, and reeling with exhaustion, pain, loss of blood, and stark terror that made her eyes seem windows into Hell.

  "They are mad in there," she gasped. "Mad. The Mist marches, and they have all run mad. They are trying to get out. They say the Lady told them. We do not know where she is."

  "Have you no way to reach her?"

  "No. I”yes, that is true. We do not." Muhbaras wanted to shake sense or at least coherence into the woman. Instead he lowered his voice.

  "If we come up and help, can you keep order?"

  "Men within the valley! This cannot be 'There have been men not only within the valley but within its Maidens and even the Lady of its Mists!" Muhbaras roared. His voice would have started a landslide had there been any loose rocks about.

  The Maiden cringed. Then she nodded. "Good," Muhbaras concluded. "And when we have helped you, you will help us against the raiders who are enemies to both of us."

  He hoped he was not overestimating the prowess of the Maidens in a real battle against a plainly formidable foe. He did not want to simply throw their lives away; the Lady would not thank him for that (and how wonderful it was, to think that she would be so concerned).

  But he would disdain no help and no allies, as this night Muhbaras needed all of both that the gods would send him!

  The rosy crimson hue was brighter and also melting into the blue so that the sky was turning an eye-searing shade of purple.

  "It looks like a gigantic bed of violets, diseased and then set aflame," Bethina murmured. Or was it Omyela? The two women were talking again across the hillside, and Conan would have given a chest of silver to learn what they were saying that did not reach bodily ears.

  Farad pretended to spew. Bethina grinned. "Men are so delicate of stomach. It is as well that women bear the babes. Men would die of the morning sickness even before the babe reached its term."

  Farad stared. "You are not

  "Plagues take you," Bethina said. "No. You need not fear for the blood of any sons you may see from me."

  "I would not quarrel with any son of the Cimmerian's blood," Farad said, musingly. "Of course, I would still have to kill Conan before I could raise the lad with a clear conscience”ekkkhh!" he broke off, as Bethina kicked him smartly in the shin.

  Then the young woman stiffened, and when she spoke, her voice had Omyela's gravity and even some of its cracked quality.

  "You must go up to the gate to the valley. Follow the men you defeated.

  They will lead you. They will not be your enemies, for what is unleashed within the valley is the enemy to all."

  Farad looked at the Cimmerian. "A child of five could understand that.

  But he'd be too young to be frightened witless!"

  "What, an Afghuli fearful? A warrior of the folk who use sharp stones

  "Cimmerian, I may kill you after this even if my sons are all of my own getting. Or will you save your breath for climbing?"

  Ermik came upon the Lady of the Mists quite suddenly. He had no warning and she showed no sign of hearing or seeing him.

  Indeed, it was unlikely that she could sense anything in the normal world. She was clad for casting a spell, her staff was glowing with a light that seemed black, if such a thing could be, and her eyes glowed golden.

  Very lovely, she was, too, for all that she was frightening. Ermik no longer wondered at Muhbaras's desire for her, and rather regretted that he would have to put an end to the Lady without amusing himself with that beauty as well.

  However, a wise man struck quickly when dealing with a witch. Ermik strode forward, tossed the dagger with the chaos stone in the hilt, caught it by the point, and threw it. He threw it directly at the Lady, so that if the chaos stone did not do its work, it still might do enough physical harm to break the Lady's concentration.

  There are moments in the creation of even the most potent spell by the most adept sorcerer, when a child sneezing at the wrong moment can bring everything to ruin. The chaos stone was not worth a tenth of what Ermik had paid for it, but it was more potent than that child's sneeze, and it entered the sphere of the Lady's spell at the worst possible moment.

  The point of the dagger also entered the Lady's flesh, and drove through to a lung. The combination of chaos, broken concentration, and pain snapped her control over the death-elemental. It raved and shrieked in her mind, clutching at her with incorporeal tendrils that produced still more very corporeal pain.

  The Lady died in agony of both mind and body. As she died, the death-elemental leaped free of all control. In the moments before its leap, its aura had stunned Ermik, and he lay so completely senseless that a death-elemental in haste could have mistaken him for one already dead.

  This one was in haste, to flee the area where the Lady's magic lingered and had much the same effect on it as a smoke-filled room on a human being with delicate lungs. As it fled it screamed in triumph, and this scream reached human ears already half-deaf with the terror of the Mist.

  Where panic had not reigned in the valley, it reigned now.

  -

  Seventeen

  It went much against Conan's instinctive suspicion of sorcery for him to climb the slope, let alone urge his men on. But there was no other road to the secret of the Valley of the Mists, and for the moment that road lay undefended.

  The Cimmeria
n still did not lead a wild, scrambling rush up the mountain. Those wounded who were coming along had time to bind their wounds. Every surviving archer also collected as many arrows as he could from the quivers of the fallen, both friend and foe.

  Conan himself stepped aside to speak with the prisoner, who gave his name as Bamshir.

  "If I leave you unbound, will you come with us as a guide?"

  Bamshir looked ready to spit on the ground, or perhaps in Conan's face.

  Then he shrugged.

  "My life is forfeit anyhow."

  "Not certainly. Besides, your men may need you to lead them, and we need all the help we can find against what is loose in the valley. If that is not the greatest enemy now, may I be gelded!"

  Bamshir frowned. "You may well be right."

  "I am right. And you've been living cheek by jowl with the Lady's wizardry long enough to know that without my telling you!"

  After that Bamshir acceded, and Conan was even willing to give him back his eating knife. But he kept the prisoner-guide away from Bethina.

  Indeed, the man showed no easy mind about approaching the young woman, and made a gesture of aversion when he thought Conan was not looking.

  Bethina seemed to be in a trance, and it was a miracle that she could put one foot in front of another in the darkness over this ground without falling. But her body seemed to work now without the guidance of a mind altogether bound up with Omyela's.

  She would not be stabbing anyone until the battle of spellcasting was over; that was plain to see. Fortunately Farad could see that for himself, and what anyone could do to guard the woman, he would do.

  Muhbaras's men reached the gate to the valley gasping and winded, but in fair order. He thought some might have fled, but of those who had remained with him, all still bore their weapons. As well, seeing that their fighting was more likely to be against hu-man foes”or humans so maddened by fear that they could not tell friend from foe.