As little as he liked the thought of approaching potent magic, he liked not knowing what enemy he faced even less. Sword in hand, he rose from his hiding placethen knew he need not take a step to find the answer to what was happening up the trail.
A being of crimson-and-sapphire light swirling together, with something of a man's shape but as high as a temple, came striding down the path.
Where itscall them feetstruck the earth, smoke rose: the mephitic purple smoke that Conan remembered from underground.
Those same powers from underground were now loose on Thunder Mountain.
Why, Conan neither knew nor cared. He hoped only that the Kwanyi, enemies that they were, had fled for their lives. Death in such guise, he would not wish upon a Stygian!
Conan plunged downhill from the trail, knowing that the being could follow him at will if it chose, but hoping that it would follow the easier path of the trail. The specter seemed solid enough not to wish to plough through trees thicker than its legs all the way to the shore.
If Conan had been running for his own life, a Cimmerian's reluctance to turn his back on a foe might have slowed him. Running for the lives of Valeria and all of his Ichiribu friends, he plunged down the hill as if it were level ground in daylight.
The magical light from the monster eased his way somewhat, but there were still many shadows, and too many trees lurking in those shadows.
He nearly stunned himself twice, left patches of skin and more than patches of his clothes on bark or twigs, but still had his weapons as he staggered, bloody and cursing, onto the open shore.
He had reached the open a trifle to the north of where the Ichiribu were now gathered. The light of their torches made it plain that they were arrayed to meet a human foe.
Conan cursed louder than before. Spears snapped up and heads turned.
"Into the canoes!" he shouted. "You can't fight with spears what's coming downhill. Seek the water, and hope the thing can't swim!"
A slim figure with smoke-darkened fair hair ran from the circle.
"Conan! We thought it had taken you!"
The Cimmerian and his shield-woman had time for only the briefest of embraces before they broke apart, each to lead a band of warriors into a rear guard.
Seyganko was shouting orders to the other warriors to run for the canoes when Dobanpu stepped forward. From the way Emwaya was clutching her father's arm, the old Spirit-Speaker was clearly about something of which she did not approve. Seeing Conan, Dobanpu beckoned.
"Conan! Bid your shield-woman guard this foolish daughter of mine until I have done my work."
"Your work?" Conan knew he must sound like a witling, but in this matter, he understood no more than one.
"I cannot command the spirits to drive off the Living Wind, still less to destroy it. I might have had that power once, or even now, had I not fought the battle underground. But I can contrive a battle of the spirits so that they will do the work for me, like elephants crushing an enemy's village."
"He must" Emwaya shrieked.
"You must be silent now, and afterward, a good Spirit-Speaker to the Ichiribu," Dobanpu said. "Also, a good wife to Seyganko, who deserves one."
Then Dobanpu cast aside his headdress and other garb. Clad only in amulet, loinguard, and pouch, he walked with the dignity of a king of kings toward the foot of the trail.
He reached the beginning of the rise a few heartbeats before the monstrosity did. There was a moment when the man and the creation of magic seemed to stare at one another. Then Dobanpu leaped, as lightly as any bidui boy, soaring high.
He soared higher than any man could have done with unaided muscles, spending the last of his magic to strike the specter in the chest.
Conan expected to see Dobanpu rebound from the being, to fall like a torn doll to the ground, and to be crushed to pulp. Instead, he seemed to stick to the being, like a fly caught in honey.
Then smoke swirled up around him… and he was gone. For a moment, Conan thought he saw with half dazzled eyes the dark shape of a man within the shape of the monster. Then even that vanished.
A moment later, so did the being itself. It vanished with a roar of thunder that Conan did not doubt was heard in Bossonia. The windblast it flung out snapped grown trees at the base, tossed canoes end over end, and knocked nearly every man on the shore flat on the sand and gravel.
Conan and Valeria dug in fingers and toes and clung to the beach as they would have clung to the yard of a ship in a gale. Closing their eyes against the hurled sand and gravel, they could only judge what else might be happening by the noise, and most of that was the wind.
At last the wind died out. The shouts and cries did not, however. Conan raised himself on hands and knees and saw the Ichiribu hastily running from a stretch of the shore that was now covered with molten rock. The lava was pouring from a gap in the earth where Conan judged the being had stood in the moment of its destruction.
As the stream of lava reached the lake, steam erupted. More steam seemed to be rising from inland, doubtless from the stairs where Conan's band had climbed from the tunnels. Then Valeria gripped Conan's arm and pointed out over the water.
The lake itself was in turmoil, whirlpools appearing and disappearing within moments, spray rising, live fish thrashing and more than a few dead ones bobbing on the surface before they were sucked out of sight.
Some of the Ichiribu canoes were ablaze, engulfed by the lava, while others bobbed on the lake, swept away by the churning water.
Conan would wager a good deal that the tunnels far below had finally lost their magic and were now losing their long battle against the weight of the earth. That would put an end to the fire and any air-breathing creatures alive down there, but what of those shadowy water-dwellers? Would they also die with the magic, or live to infest the Lake of Death?
Conan shouted to one fool of a warrior ready to dive into the lake to swim to a fugitive canoe. Then he saw Seyganko striding along the shore, waving men back from the water.
Conan brushed sand and gravel off Valeria and let her do the same for him.
"You're bleeding," she said. "I think there are salves somewhere down there."
"I'm better off bleeding, I think. I'm for staying well away from the water until we've asked Emwaya what happened."
"If she knows."
"You saw her face. Her father told her what he was going to do to… to the Living Wind, I'd wager."
Valeria shuddered. Then her sword was in her hand as a warrior with Kwanyi headdress and Ichiribu tattoos rose slowly from the bushes.
"Wobeku!" Conan and Valeria said together.
The traitor kept his hands in plain sight. "Great chiefs, do with me as you please when you have heard me out. I wish to yield the men under me to the mercy of the Ichiribu and their chiefs. I can also name those underchiefs of the Kwanyi who may listen to talk of peace between our tribes."
Conan and Valeria looked at each other. They knew of the clan rivalries among the Kwanyi. If Chabano was dead, as seemed likely, the Ichiribu might use these rivalries to impose a victor's peace.
"Was it you or Aondo who slew the bidui boys?" Valeria asked.
"Aondo."
Somehow to Conan that had the ring of truth.
"This is a matter for Seyganko and Emwaya," he said. "Lie down on your shield so none will put a spear through you until we return. Bid your folk stay out of sight. And pray to the gods that you are telling the truth!"
Wobeku swore several potent oaths with a certain dignity that Conan thought did him some honor, then assumed the pose of submission. "Now we'd best make haste to Seyganko, before someone skewers our would-be peacemaker," the Cimmerian grumbled as he broke into a trot. "And here I thought our work was done!"
"We can't seek out the river until the lake's fit to sail on," Valeria reminded him. "Nor am I one for sitting idle while others work."
"But then"
She slipped an arm around his waist. "Downriver to the Trading Coast.
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I've still those fire-stones, and as long as no Golden Serpent comes with them, they may buy us a ship."
"Buy you a ship," Conan said. Her touch was as warming to his blood as ever, but he knew too much about the other sides of her nature. "Two of us on one ship would divide the crew. I'm for turning landsman anyway, until the Barachans have forgotten the name of Conan the Cimmerian."
"They may forget it," Valeria said with a complacent smile. "I will not."
Jewels of Gwahlur
Paths of Intrigue
The cliffs rose sheer from the jungle, towering ramparts of stone that glinted jade-blue and dull crimson in the rising sun, and curved away and away to east and west above the waving emerald ocean of fronds and leaves. It looked insurmountable, that giant palisade with its sheer curtains of solid rock in which bits of quartz winked dazzlingly in the sunlight. But the man who was working his tedious way upward was already halfway to the top.
He came of a race of hillmen, accustomed to scaling forbidding crags, and he was a man of unusual strength and agility. His only garment was a pair of short red silk breeks, and his sandals were slung to his back, out of his way, as were his sword and dagger.
The man was powerfully built, supple as a panther. His skin was bronzed by the sun, his square-cut black mane confined by a silver band about his temples. His iron muscles, quick eyes and sure feet served him well here, for it was a climb to test these qualities to the utmost. A hundred and fifty feet below him waved the jungle. An equal distance above him the rim of the cliffs was etched against the morning sky.
He labored like one driven by the necessity of haste; yet he was forced to move at a snail's pace, clinging like a fly on a wall. His groping hands and feet found niches and knobs, precarious holds at best, and sometimes he virtually hung by his finger nails. Yet upward he went, clawing, squirming, fighting for every foot. At times he paused to rest his aching muscles, and, shaking the sweat out of his eyes, twisted his head to stare searchingly out over the jungle, combing the green expanse for any trace of human life or motion.
Now the summit was not far above him, and he observed, only a few feet above his head, a break in the sheer stone of the cliff. An instant later he had reached it - a small cavern, just below the edge of the rim. As his head rose above the lip of its floor, he grunted. He clung there, his elbows hooked over the lip. The cave was so tiny that it was little more than a niche cut in the stone, but held an occupant. A shriveled mummy, crosslegged, arms folded on the withered breast upon which the shrunken head was sunk, sat in the little cavern. The limbs were bound in place with rawhide thongs which had become mere rotted wisps. If the form had ever been clothed, the ravages of time had long ago reduced the garments to dust. But thrust between the crossed arms and the shrunken breast there was a roll of parchment, yellowed with age to the color of old ivory.
The climber stretched forth a long arm and wrenched away this cylinder. Without investigation he thrust it into his girdle and hauled himself up until he was standing in the opening of the niche. A spring upward and he caught the rim of the cliffs and pulled himself up and over almost with the same motion.
There he halted, panting, and stared downward.
It was like looking into the interior of a vast bowl, rimmed by a circular stone wall. The floor of the bowl was covered with trees and denser vegetation, though nowhere did the growth duplicate the jungle denseness of the outer forest. The cliffs marched around it without a break and of uniform height. It was a freak of nature, not to be paralleled, perhaps, in the whole world: a vast natural amphitheater, a circular bit of forested plain, three or four miles in diameter, cut off from the rest of the world, and confined within the ring of those palisaded cliffs.
But the man on the cliffs did not devote his thoughts to marveling at the topographical phenomenon. With tense eagerness he searched the tree-tops below him, and exhaled a gusty sigh when he caught the glint of marble domes amidst the twinkling green. It was no myth, then; below him lay the fabulous and deserted palace of Alkmeenon.
Conan the Cimmerian, late of the Baracha Isles, of the Black Coast, and of many other climes where life ran wild, had come to the kingdom of Keshan following the lure of a fabled treasure that outshone the hoard of the Turanian kings.
Keshan was a barbaric kingdom lying in the eastern hinterlands of Kush where the broad grasslands merge with the forests that roll up from the south. The people were a mixed race, a dusky nobility ruling a population that was largely pure negro. The rulers - princes and high priests - claimed descent from a white race which, in a mythical age, had ruled a kingdom whose capital city was Alkmeenon. Conflicting legends sought to explain the reason for that race's eventual downfall, and the abandonment of the city by the survivors. Equally nebulous were the tales of the Teeth of Gwahlur, the treasure of Alkmeenon. But these misty legends had been enough to bring Conan to Keshan, over vast distances of plain, river-laced jungle, and mountains.
He had found Keshan, which in itself was considered mythical by many northern and western nations, and he had heard enough to confirm the rumors of the treasure that men called the Teeth of Gwahlur. But its hiding-place he could not learn, and he was confronted with the necessity of explaining his presence in Keshan. Unattached strangers were not welcome there.
But he was not nonplussed. With cool assurance he made his offer to the stately plumed, suspicious grandees of the barbarically magnificent court. He was a professional fighting-man. In search of employment (he said) he had come to Keshan. For a price he would train the armies of Keshan and lead them against Punt, their hereditary enemy, whose recent successes in the field had aroused the fury of Keshan's irascible king.
This proposition was not so audacious as it might seem. Conan's fame had preceded him, even into distant Keshan; his exploits as a chief of the black corsairs, those wolves of the southern coasts, had made his name known, admired and feared throughout the black kingdoms. He did not refuse tests devised by the dusky lords. Skirmishes along the borders were incessant, affording the Cimmerian plenty of opportunities to demonstrate his ability at hand-to-hand fighting. His reckless ferocity impressed the lords of Keshan, already aware of his reputation as a leader of men, and the prospects seemed favorable. All Conan secretly desired was employment to give him legitimate excuse for remaining in Keshan long enough to locate the hiding-place of the Teeth of Gwahlur. Then there came an interruption. Thutmekri came to Keshan at the head of an embassy from Zembabwei.
Thutmekri was a Stygian, an adventurer and a rogue whose wits had recommended him to the twin kings of the great hybrid trading kingdom which lay many-days' march to the east. He and the Cimmerian knew each other of old, and without love. Thutmekri likewise had a proposition to make to the king of Keshan, and it also concerned the conquest of Punt - which kingdom, incidentally, lying east of Keshan, had recently expelled the Zembabwan traders and burned their fortresses.
His offer outweighed even the prestige of Conan. He pledged himself to invade Punt from the east with a host of black spearmen, Shemitish archers, and mercenary swordsmen, and to aid the king of Keshan to annex the hostile kingdom. The benevolent kings of Zembabwei desired only a monopoly of the trade of Keshan and her tributaries -and, as a pledge of good faith, some of the Teeth of Gwahlur. These would be put to no base usage. Thutmekri hastened to explain to the suspicious chieftains; they would be placed in the temple of Zembabwei beside the squat gold idols of Dagon and Derketo, sacred guests in the holy shrine of the kingdom, to seal the covenant between Keshan and Zembabwei. This statement brought a savage grin to Conan's hard lips.
The Cimmerian made no attempt to match wits and intrigue with Thutmekri and his Shemitish partner, Zargheba. He knew that if Thutmekri won his point, he would insist on the instant banishment of his rival. There was but one thing for Conan to do: find the jewels before the king of Keshan made up his mind and flee with them. But by this time he was certain that they were not hidden in Keshia, the royal city which was a swarm of
thatched huts crowding about a mud wall that enclosed a palace of stone and mud and bamboo.
While he fumed with nervous impatience, the high priest Gorulga announced that before any decision could be reached, the will of the gods must be ascertained concerning the proposed alliance with Zembabwei and the pledge of objects long held holy and inviolate. The oracle of Alkmeenon must be consulted.
This was an awesome thing, and it caused tongues to wag excitedly in palace and bee-hive hut. Not for a century had the priests visited the silent city. The oracle, men said, was the Princess Yelaya, the last ruler of Alkmeenon, who had died in the full bloom of her youth and beauty, and whose body had miraculously remained unblemished throughout the ages. Of old, priests had made their way into the haunted city, and she had taught them wisdom. The last priest to seek the oracle had been a wicked man, who had sought to steal for himself the curiously cut jewels that men called the Teeth of Gwahlur. But some doom had come upon him in the deserted palace, from which his acolytes, fleeing, had told tales of horror that had for a hundred years frightened the priests from the city and the oracle.
But Gorulga, the present high priest, as one confident in his knowledge of his own integrity, announced that he would go with a handful of followers to revive the ancient custom. And in the excitement tongues buzzed indiscreetly, and Conan caught the clue for which he had sought for weeks - the overheard whisper of a lesser priest that sent the Cimmerian stealing out of Keshia the night before the dawn when the priests were to start.
Riding as hard as he dared for a night and a day and a night, he came in the early dawn to the cliffs of Alkmeenon, which stood in the southwestern corner of the kingdom, amidst uninhabited jungle which was taboo to common men. None but the priests dared approach the haunted vale within a distance of many miles. And not even a priest had entered Alkmeenon for a hundred years.
No man had ever climbed these cliffs, legends said, and none but the priests knew the secret entrance into the valley. Conan did not waste time looking for it. Steeps that balked these people, horsemen and dwellers of plain and level forest, were not impossible for a man born in the rugged hills of Cimmeria.
The Conan Compendium Page 621
