Prologue

The young girl lay tormented, tossing and moaning in the toils of delirium. Her fair skin was clammy with fear, her dreams dizzy and tortured. She felt herself adrift, struggling to stay afloat on a vast river... a river of black sand whose hot, ashy currents burned and chafed her limbs as they bore her away downstream.

Worse, she was not alone in the ebony torrent. Around her she glimpsed nightmare shapes: the thick undulating coils of serpents, nameless flashes of fin and fluke. Monstrous tooth-lined jaws grinned at her as they broke the surface, and teacup-sized eyes rolled and blinked.

She thrashed weakly on her silken bed, trying to push the tangled coverlets off her thin, sweat-damp body. Her faint moans sounded like the dry rasping of one choking on the sand caught in her throat.

In a short time, her stirrings roused the chief governess, who hurried to her bedside in the wan moonlight that filtered through the lace curtains. “O Princess Ismaia! Wake up, you are dreaming again. Come, child, what is the matter, are you ill?”

But the girl heard only the soughing of the dream-river, which bore her now into a hellish region of red, furnace-like mountains. Their rugged flanks gaped and belched forth brimstone and flame, the heat searing her skin as she drifted past. Between the volcanoes, in steep-walled canyons, lay great mounds of snow and frost whose icy drafts chilled her at intervals and made her shiver.

“Ismaia, what has befallen you? Wake up, child, and speak.”

The governess lit an oil lamp and summoned other members of the royal household. Among them was a statuesque woman, red-haired and anxious, dressed in a richly embroidered silk robe thrown hastily over her night-clothes. Seating herself on the bed, she lifted the tousled blonde head into her lap and cradled it lovingly. Yet the princess resisted her, fighting weakly against things visible only to her.

“I found her thus mere moments ago, Queen Rufia,” the governess said. “She was cheerful this evening, but now the dreams have returned worse than ever. Poor child, her cries awoke me in my closet.”

“She is drenched with sweat,” the queen declared, restraining the child and stroking her brow. “This is a night-fever, swift and possibly dangerous. Run and fetch the court physician. Caspius will know what to do.” Meanwhile, the princess had drifted further down the river of dream into a swampy waste of curling mists and drooping, half-dead trees. Ahead on the rocky stream bank loomed an ancient shrine, a heathen altar set between high stone monoliths carved with serpents and leering skulls. Before the altar stood a terrifying figure—a woman, snakeskin-caped, her raven hair matted and twisted in spiky curls. Her slim body was laced

tightly into dark, shiny breeches and a leather halter, her pale hands spider-webbed by her black lace gloves.

Terrified at the stranger’s malevolent looks, the girl Ismaia struggled futilely. The witch-woman, standing before a fire that blazed atop the altar, welcomed the child with an evil smile. Extending long, slender arms, she beckoned to the princess and laughed... a throbbing, vengeful sound that grated in the young girl’s ears.

Caspius, besides serving as court physician for the Shemitish city-state of Baalur, was also privy counsellor to the city’s well-loved King Aphrates. Roused from his bed in the palace’s west wing, he threw on robe and sandals and hurried forth promptly at his queen’s bidding. His examination of the princess was followed by a careful interrogation of the servants as to the child’s recent diet, travels, behaviour, and toilet habits, as well as a quick skilful casting of her horoscope.

His findings did not lead him to undertake any immediate exorcism or sacrifice. Instead, he ordered the attendants to fan the princess with damp linens, encourage her to sip cooling draughts of water, and listen carefully to any ravings that might pass her lips. Meanwhile, he retreated to his library to consult esoteric texts.

Toward morning some improvement was seen in the child’s condition. Her breathing grew less stertorous and her thrashing subsided, allowing her to rest. As the sun climbed out of the eastern haze, she returned to wakefulness and spoke to her servants and her mother. Caspius was immediately summoned to her side.

“So, Princess, you are feeling better?” The physician ventured to touch the royal girl’s forehead and stroke her cool damp hair, which was a fawn-pale version of Queen Rufia’s rubicund tresses. “Do you recall being troubled by ill dreams last night?”

“Oh, yes, physician,” the child weakly murmured. “I was swept away in a torrent... a dry, hot, burning river. The journey was so terribly long... and all jumbled up, repeating itself over and over, as if the river flowed in a circle. And there was an evil witch who tried to catch me.”

“You saw this witch... a woman, you say?”

“Yes, a pale, black-haired Stygian, beautiful but evil, burning sacrifices at a strange altar. She was dressed all in leather, with spider webs on her hands. And her hair was awful too, all matted and ugly!”

“I see. Calm yourself, Ismaia.” Caspius, noting the anguish in the girl’s eyes, followed her fixed gaze to the large, bronze-caged hourglass on the bedside table. With its ever-falling stream of dark sand, it seemed to trouble her. Shifting forward to pat the princess’s cheek, the physician momentarily screened the object with his body, long enough to shove it away out of sight. “Everything is all right, my child. Just rest now.”

“Behind the altar and the fire,” the girl continued, “from the darkness of the shrine, something was looking down at me. When I close my eyes I can almost see it.”

“A shrine, you say,” Caspius murmured. Then, rumpling her hair, he called her back from dream. “That’s enough now, Ismaia. Here, take some cool liquid.”

“Yes, physician,” the child said obediently. “But the dream,” she insisted weakly between sips of palm nectar. “Will it come back?”

“You rest yourself,” he assured her, smiling. “Get well as quickly as you can, and fear not, there will be only good dreams from now on.” Leaning forward, he brushed his lips upon her damp forehead: an avuncular kiss to seal his promise—which, he felt almost certain, had been a lie.

Turning, he went to the tired-eyed queen and drew her outside with him into the corridor. “Arrange a royal audience if you will, milady,” he urged her softly. “This matter should be discussed in the presence of your husband the king.”

I

By Storm and Siege

The assault on Baron Raguly’s castle commenced at dawn. Over the gorse and rocks of the foothills came the rebels, weather-worn husbandmen and thick-wristed farm wives, brash boys and buxom girls marching in resolute files. Along with axes and bows, they carried heavy makeshift siege ladders, cowhide shields, and arrows by the bushel-full.

The first squadrons had to be held back from the attack, under gruff orders by their respective squires and clan chiefs, until the others were in position around the walls. Then, to the shrill, tuneless blatting of hunting horns, the rough-clad insurgents rushed forward on all sides.

“Onward, folk of Koth, for freedom and revenge! Archers, loose swiftly and sweep the bastions clear!”

The one who bellowed commands, poised atop a rocky hillock, was a black-haired giant whose fierce blue eyes blazed from a sturdy, square-featured northern face. More rugged-looking than any of the farmers, he was also more warriorly in his dress. His untrimmed, savage mane was crowned with a battered steel helmet spiked at the top in the Eastern style, while his massive shoulders bulked under a chain-link tunic worn and notched from countless campaigns. Waist and nether limbs were heavily girded; sword, dagger, and axe depended from his thick metal-link belt, and steel crotch-plate and greaves completed his armour.

But it was a longbow that now took his attention. The stout Bossonian stave was nearly as tall as the man, and supplied with shafts a full clothier’s yard in length, which he drew from a quiver grounded on the rocks beside him. Pluck, nock, bend, and loose—his motions were smooth and well- practised. Judging from his easy stance, he was certain of his targets.

“They are well under way,” a worried voice called to him from nearby. “What a fine crew of lads, and these good Kothian dames! I do hope they carry the day! But what of us, Conan? I thought you and I would lead the attack...?”

“We can do them better service from here,” the marksman replied patiently, not breaking his deadly rhythm. Even as he spoke, an armoured defender twisted head-first from the wall, gripping the fletched end of a shaft that had passed through both front and back plate of his hauberk. A moment later another sentry clutched no arrow-pierced thigh and tumbled out of sight behind the battlement. “At this range I can pick my marks at leisure. Best you bide here with me, Tethrun.”

Dozens of other archers sped arrows inward from the rocky, treeless apron surrounding the castle. The rain of shafts helped keep the defences clear; but the bowmen themselves were under threat since their short, curved bows carried less far than similar weapons plied from atop the towers and battlements. With men and women Inhering and dying among their ranks, the peasant archers could not aim coolly. Their arrows were loosed hurriedly, at an unfavourable angle. And the short Kothian arrows lacked the bite of the clothyard shafts.

“The ladders are going up! Now to claim some real trophies.” Speaking with grim certitude, the archer loosed yet again. Coolly he feathered the tin-plated chest of a castle warden who strode out to urge his men forward. He sped a shaft through the neck of a halberdier trying to use his long axe to thrust away the head of a siege ladder. A crossbow bolt, dropping at long range, glanced off the rocks at his feet. Noting this, he returned his next arrow straight through the tower transom where it had issued.

Tethrun grew restless. “They have mounted the ladders—see there, Cimmerian! I should be up with them, as you should!” The stocky elderly squire with his curled grey locks, edged forward nervously and palmed the hilt of his sheathed sword; yet he did not rush the castle.

“Preserve your life yet a moment, Tethrun. They will need a greybeard to govern this castle once it falls—” Abruptly, he stopped. “Confound the fools, that ladder is short!”

Of the half-dozen siege ladders before the wall, the one nearest the main tower of the castle’s keep had been angled too flat, or else had slid out of place on the rocky slope. Its top stood fully a man’s-length below the notched crenellations of the wall, which rose four times that height above the littered slope. In spite of this, the rebels swarmed on blindly, only to find the distance between the topmost step and the parapet an impossible, fatal one. They and the milling attackers beneath them were under fierce bombardment by stones, darts, and arrow-shafts from the wall top as well as the round tower of the keep.

“Go now, you dogs, by Mannanan! Make your way up top and clear those vermin from the wall!” Cursing as he bent his bow, Conan neatly spitted one of the guards who hurled rocks down on the rebels near the tower. The defenders on the wall, taking note, huddled down behind the battlements. One of the farmers stood up precariously on the ladder’s topmost rung and strained to climb the parapet. A mailed arm, wielding a mace, reached out to brain him. Conan transfixed the arm with an arrow, but not before the rebel plummeted senseless onto the heads of his fellows.

“By Crom’s slathering hounds,” the Cimmerian swore, “they will not make it! A fifth part of our host is stopped beneath yon tower, waiting to be slaughtered like cattle! And the cowards atop the wall won’t show themselves!”

Indeed, the defenders flailed out at the climbers with halberds and pikes from behind the battlement, depriving the archers of targets. Elsewhere some few rebels were heavily embattled on the wall top, making it all but impossible to find a mark amid the heaving fray. In frustration, Conan flung aside his bow and bolted forward.

“Now, Tethrun. If you want action, follow me! Let’s gut this foreign tyrant and his traitorous crew!”

Running across the broken field, leaping over ditches and arrow-shafted bodies, the warrior soon left the elder man behind. An occasional barb nicked the earth in his boot-tracks, but most of the defenders were occupied with troubles nearer at hand. The fight went on grimly in a low, snarling clangour broken by occasional cries of fear or mortal agony. Seen close-up, the castle loomed tall against the gleaming southern mountains. Its arrow-slits and embrasures rained down anonymous, impersonal death.

“Here, you louts, move aside! Let your battle-teacher past!”

Shouldering roughly among the farmers with their upraised shields, stepping over tumbled bodies and plummeted stones, Conan found his way to the base of the double ladder. Its uprights stood in a depression fully three strides away from the base of the steeply-sloping wall. Besiegers stood on the rungs, their upward progress stopped; they defended themselves awkwardly, unable to back down because of the press of would-be attackers from behind.

“Down, fellow,” Conan barked abruptly, grasping an ankle. “You there, jump clear! Come and get under this—we must heave it up against the wall!”

Bending to the base of the ladder, the giant Cimmerian planted his booted feet and began to lift. The broad double trellis was heavy, as were the five or six rebels who yet clung to its upper rungs—burly farmers, armed and hide-armoured. Other calloused hands hastened to join in, yet it was principally the dark-maned Cimmerian who strained his thick muscles and lifted, scraping the butts of the timbers across the rock, then grunting out a command to drag the burden up higher. From above, at first, came cries of giddy uncertainty, then shouts of exultation and ringing axe-strokes, as the gap between besiegers and defenders narrowed.

“Up now, dogs, for glory! Storm the wall!” Leading by example, Conan laid hold of the rungs and swarmed upward, shoving past slower climbers on the way. He mounted straight up before the rough-fitted, blood-spattered castle stones, until the notch of the embrasure came within reach. The rebel just ahead of him was heavily embattled: a doughty farm-mistress, flailing a timber-axe at one side of the double ladder. Conan arrived an instant too late, and saw her run through the breast by a long spear. With a shriek of defiance she grasped the spear shaft in a bloody double grip, wrenching it after her as she toppled backward. Conan seized the momentary advantage, hurling himself straight over the top of the ladder and into the embrasure.

The guards crouching at either side sprang to meet him. Instead of dashing forward he stood, covering the climbers who mounted behind him. Sword and axe sprang into his fists and lashed out left and right, as he skilfully parried the longer, clumsier weapons of the defenders. Conan lunged and twisted in place, evading the stab and sweep of blood-encrusted steel until he felt more rebels at his back and heard their gruff cries of battle-lust. Then, with catlike ease, he darted inside the deadly radius of pike and halberd. He skewered one of the murdering guards with his sword; the other he sent toppling from the parapet with a backhanded swipe of his axe.

His momentum carried him straight across to the round tower at the near end of the keep. This communicated with the battlement by a single low archway, barely shoulder-high to the Cimmerian’s hulking frame. The door was already bolted tight—a stout wood panel, which Conan immediately set upon with his axe. Hacking with fierce two-handed blows, he prized loose a long, pale splinter. Then he snatched up a discarded steel pike and set to work with it, straining to lever whole planks free of the iron-bolted cross-members.

“Conan, have a care!”

Responding to the shout, or perhaps to a sixth sense, the rampaging Cimmerian flung himself clear of the archway. As he did so, a massive weight struck in front of the door, sending off sparks, splinters of pavement, it and the pungent odour of bruised flint. It was a copingstone, doubtless pried loose from the tower-top mid hurled down by the defenders.

Fortunately the stone retained its oblong shape; three burly rebels, rushing forward unbidden, picked it up and set about using it as a battering-ram against the splintered timbers of the door.

Conan, sprawling against the greybeard Tethrun, pulled free and bent to retrieve his axe. “You wasted no time in getting into the fray, old man! Crom’s bounty to you for the warning.”

“I want you in good shape as well,” the rebel leader assured him. “I hear our fighters have all but cleared the wall and the bailey, but we need help gaining the inner keep and freeing the hostages. Remember, my daughter is in Baron Raguly’s clutches.”

Even as he spoke, the tower door gave in before the battering onslaught. The first rebel to kick his way through the wreckage was pierced by a crossbow bolt, to sprawl back dead; but he was hauled swiftly aside to make way for others, Conan pressing close behind.

The fight inside the castle was fierce, a hectic pursuit along Winding stairwells and cramped corridors, a series of battered-in doors and swift, faceless sword-skirmishes in gloomy chambers.

The bloody trail led upward and back out at last into the dazzling daylight of the castle’s topmost parapet. There, against the hazy glare of lush valleys, rugged foothills, and snow-crested peaks, Baron Raguly stood at bay with the last of his retainers. Clutched before him was the hostage chosen to win his freedom in case of defeat: fair-faced Dagobrit, daughter of the rebel leader Tethrun.

“So, mutineers,” the foreign suzerain challenged them in his thick Karpash rendering of the Kothian tongue. “You have seized my castle, and no doubt you expect to kill me or clap me in chains!” Unstrapping his scarlet-crested helm, he flung it carelessly aside, revealing his short-cropped skull and hawk-like warrior’s visage. “Do you really think the king in Khorshemish will countenance the overthrow of one of his appointed barons? Or that he will hesitate to send troops and catapults to level this place?”

“A noble who cannot keep hold of his own domain has few friends at court,” Conan gruffly observed. “Least of all, the king who unwisely trusted him. Me-

thinks your royal master has no more love for a thieving, spoiling baron than do his subjects.”

“Aye, ’tis so,” Tethrun staunchly affirmed from behind Conan. “Your defeat will teach royal Khorshemish not to place loyal Kothians under the yoke of outsiders from the far borders of the kingdom—lawless, tyrannical Karpashians!”

At his words, a cheer went up from the rebels crowding onto the tower-top and filling the passage below. Its savagery made the baron’s men brace their weapons in a tighter grip as they stood on their dwindling half of the parapet. The two sides were ready to resume the battle; Conan, for his part, stooped to pick up a short Kothian bow lying with a fistful of arrows near the trapdoor.

“The king’s ruling on this matter may yet be heard!” Baron Raguly’s harsh accents quelled the tumult even as it threatened to break out into an open fight. He clutched the captive tighter before him. “One thing is certain,” he went on defiantly, “before I am ever taken, this fair girl will die! She is your daughter, is she not, Tethrun?”

The Karpash baron, having seized the young woman by her honey-dark hair, twisted her forearm up cruelly behind her and thrust her body out over the battlement. Bracing himself precariously against the frame of a mangonel, the baron snarled, “Unless you promise me sale passage out of the castle, with weapons and horses for my men, I will hurl her down to her death! Do you want that?”

“If he gets to the king first,” a voice warned Tethrun from behind, “there could be an imperial army at our borders inside a fortnight!”

"Think, sire,” another cautioned breathlessly. “The dog must be silenced! Then at least we will have a chance!”

Raguly grinned at his would-be usurper, his thin northern lips stretched paler than his yellow, gnashing teeth. “Well, squire, what is your decision? Do I have your oath?”

Tethrun, his face frozen and drawn beneath his grey locks, said nothing.

“Kill them all and have done with it!” voices muttered among the rebels. “If Mitra wills it, the girl will be spared.”

“Aye,” another said. “Cast the villains off the battlement!”

“Yes, Father, hear them, and let me die!” The girl Dagobrit, struggling fiercely in Baron Raguly’s grip, was doing her maidenly best to fling herself overside and, if possible, drag her persecutor after her. “My death is worth the life of the province,” she pleaded, her words ending in a half-sob.

“Well, Squire Tethrun?” Baron Raguly taunted, his S grin wolfish. “Your subjects have spoken their wish, even unto your own blood offspring! Are you a faithful servant of the people’s will? Shall I let her go, so that we may fight like men?”

Pale with uncertainty, Tethrun yet said nothing. He could not fail to recognize this sly challenge, and its possible consequences for his rulership—yet the life of his daughter, his child and heir, was too great a price to pay.

“You must choose,” Tethrun’s nearest advisor pressed him. “And your choice must be for the good of the province!”

Finally Conan, waiting in silence, saw his chance. As the baron’s armoured guard shifted nervously aside, the Cimmerian loosed the bowstring he held drawn and nocked at waist level. His shaft thudded home into the mangonel-frame against which Baron Raguly’s legs were braced. The baron glanced down in momentary irritation, and then back up—directly at Conan’s second arrow that flew between the guardsmen even as they closed ranks to protect their master. It slammed straight into, Raguly’s ill-shaved throat, just above the rim of his steel gorget.

The force of the arrow bore him over backward to disappear without a murmur beyond the rim of the parapet. The maid Dagobrit toppled along with him, but was caught up short by her thick woollen skirt—which Conan’s first arrow shaft had pinned to the stout frame of the mangonel. As she clung there head-downward, a phalanx of eager rebels rushed forward and bowled the startled defenders aside. Seizing hold of Dagobrit and dragging her upright, they placed her sobbing into her father’s arms.

There the two embraced, while around them, amid the ringing and rasping of steel, the fight ended. The final sounds of battle were vengeful cries, long dwindling wails, and the clanking crunch of steel-plate armour as the last few defenders were hurled over the sides of the tower.

“Many thanks, Conan,” Tethrun said when it was over. “You have helped us in countless ways from the beginning of this revolt, but that was your truest mark. We are eternally in your debt.”

“Not eternally, I hope. I was promised a share of the old baron’s loot, remember?”

While the jest tumbled from his lips, his eyes regarded the fair maid Dagobrit. She gave him only the briefest eye blink of thanks before turning to a group of stout farm wives, who bundled her away downstairs.

“The time is ripe for a victory celebration,” Conan told Tethrun as they followed her. “And for settling up, of course. Tell me, squire—or shall I say, baron—how extensive are your castle’s wine cellars? At the sack of Khorusun, we roistered and drank for three nights and days.”

“Celebrate, yes, by all means.” Leading the way downstairs, Tethrun shook his head solemnly. “But there will be as much mourning as jubilation among our people, I fear. They have lost many friends and kinsmen this day.”

Conan shrugged. “Your people have lost friends, true. But by my count, they have lost a good many more enemies. Your cause is cheaply won.”

“Even so, greater challenges lie ahead—such as sending a lavish tribute to the king to win his approval as a provincial court.”

“Restoring the bulk of what Raguly stole should guarantee that,” Conan said.

“I must see if they have found the rest of the hostages, as well,” Tethrun said, worried. “Mitra and Ishtar grant that they still live!”

“If they are, that will be even more cause for celebration,” Conan said wistfully.

They saw many exultant and anguished faces on their descent through the castle. The squires had already set trusted men in the corridors to forestall looting, while others worked at dragging out bodies and swabbing up blood. Arms and armour were gathered into piles and inventoried, and a fire pit was dug before the gate to make final disposition of the old baron and his troops.

In the castle’s lordly apartments, rebel guards eyed each other suspiciously across the rich furnishings. A table spread with viands was in near-perfect array, the lavish breakfast scarcely eaten. Aside from a few signs of skirmishing, the embroidered hangings, silver mirrors, gilded utensils, and fine statues stood untouched. “I can hardly believe the honesty of your men,” Conan told Tethrun, measuring the wealth.

“We are pious farmers,” the new baron said, “not some ignorant rabble. Our clan chiefs are wise and stem in their years, and they are obeyed.”

“Here is wine, at least,” Conan said, striding to the table and filling a goblet from a tall decanter. “Ahhh, that tastes good! Butchery is thirsty work. Can old Raguly's treasure room be far from here? These maids might know, if anyone does.”

Conan turned his attention to a pair of silk-gowned women cowering on a divan in a comer of the chamber. Having failed to gain sympathy from the young farm rebels posted here, the two sat silent and uneasy. Now they looked for relief to Conan, a type of man they recognized.

“They are the former baron’s doxies,” Tethrun remarked. “Concubines, no better, on hire like his mercenaries. Their kin have likely disowned them. I misdoubt their safety, should any of our honest farm women find them here.”

Conan regarded the two judiciously for a moment, wondering what vengeance they might wish to take against the slayer of their former lord. But when told by Tethrun of the battle’s outcome, they did not cry out in anger or even grieve overmuch, but only seemed concerned about their own fortunes.

Conan had seen many such women indeed, pliant creatures of circumstance. “For now,” he assured Tethrun, “you can place them under my protection. Come, ladies, and tell me of your former master’s ways.”

In short order Baron Raguly’s mistresses directed their conquerors to his treasury, and then to the hidden room where the rest of the hostages were found, still living. A victory gathering was proclaimed for the evening and a coarse but hearty stew set a-boiling in the castle scullery. At Tethrun’s order the main banquet hall was cleared of furniture in preparation for a round of elaborate folk dances.

Wine flowed but sparingly among the farmers, however, and Conan soon drifted upstairs, where Raguly’s private stock of drink and viands remained all but untouched. He took with him the two courtesans, Lilit and

Thelia by name. They had already been amply snubbed and scorned by the more righteous women of the company.

A leisurely repast followed, the three of them reclining on a broad divan while sipping and nibbling various dainties from the side table. Midway through the evening, Lilit posed a question.

“Tell me, Conan, why did you not shove Tethrun aside and declare yourself baron? Someone as imposing as you might easily take control of this castle and secure it against the others.”

Conan shook his head lazily. “Nay, girl, there is no real place for me here. They have a mistrust of outsiders, as you have learned. Even if I succeeded at first, they would want to rise up and unseat me later, as they did your greedy former lord. And I, for one, prefer a good swift fight to a slow-cooking tyranny.”

“But do they stand a chance as it is?” Thelia objected. “Will old Tethrun be a keen enough ruler?” “Who can say?” Conan shrugged, then laughed aloud. “If he is not strong enough, his daughter ' Dagobrit may be!”

When night finally claimed its due for the day’s bloody exertions and the evening’s drink and carousal, the bed in the baronial apartments proved soft and spacious enough for comfort. Yet even so, Conan’s rest was far from easy. Whether it was the queasy stirrings of ghosts not yet wholly sundered from the carcasses lying butchered in the castle courtyard below, or the snores of the two lemans who slept nearby, or yet some impurity in the rich ferments and distillations Conan had imbibed... the Cimmerian found himself prey to troubled dreams.

In sleep, mingling with images of that turbulent day—the rough awakening and torch-lit preparation of early morning, the onrushing violent blur that was the castle assault, the rasp and gurgle of lives spilled out in blood and darkness within stone corridors—he saw also scenes from his remote past, ice-clad mountains and verdant vales, fire-scarred battlefields, and lush southern cities outgrowing their tower-girt walls. He saw friends and enemies too, well-remembered figures of a hundred races, the polyglot harvest of a youth spent far-roving.

One face in particular haunted his dreams: a fair, oval visage enfolded by dark red hair, a courtesan born comely enough to govern monarchs and deplete royal treasuries—Rufia, the wily she-slave of Shemitish kings and generals. Yet this night she appeared to Conan not draped in regal finery, but as he had first found her- naked, in terror of her life, striped by the lash, and fleeing torture. To her breast she clutched a mere shred of something, a tightly-wrapped bundle. Behind her, moving in pursuit from shadow to shadow, came a tall angular shape, a black-clad demoness whose clenched fists lashed out in bright steel and snaking, glistening leather. Was there not something familiar about this grim spectre, as well?

Then, in a storm-lit tableau of dream-vision, the scene grew painfully distinct. The woman, driven up against a broad stone altar, turned at bay to face her dark pursuer. The object she clung to was a child—a girl, dead or unconscious, bundled against her as limply as a rag doll.

Before the woman’s wide-eyed gaze, the stalker emerged from the shadows, poised and ready to spring. Flinging aside her whip, the feral figure raised the steel dagger. In another lightning-flash, lurid and red-lit as hell’s furnaces, her identity was revealed: Zeriti, the ill-lamed Stygian witch-queen of Asgalun, Shem—in Conan’s true memory, Rufia’s real-life nemesis and tormentress.

Zeriti! The leering bitch who should have died—had her infernal sorcery not been stronger than the steel of the mercenary blade that ran her through.

The woman Rufia, caught off balance in the agonized slowness of dream, recoiled at the undead vision. Her motions carried her up against the altar, onto the oily-looking stone and back across it, with her girl-child still hoarded up in her arms. Zeriti loped eagerly forward, her gleaming dagger arching high for the sacrifice.

Meanwhile, above the three females in the black gulf beyond the altar, something immeasurably larger and darker loomed... and laughed. Its vast, murky eyes glared down...

Smothered in a heap of struggling bodies, Conan writhed and lashed out. His blows were hampered by linens; now he felt a small but determined fist smiting him sharply and repeatedly on the side of the face.

“Quiet, you great thrashing brute! Whatever night-fiend you were battling against, it fled away with the shadows when we struck a light! Now, stop it! You almost throttled poor Lilit!”

“Girls... Thelia, confound you, I am sorry! Lilit, are you all right?” Unwinding his arm from the blankets, Conan reached out and gingerly plucked the woman’s hand aside from her throat, but saw no bruise there. “I did not think to harm you,” he apologized.

“You are too big and brutish for your own good,” Lilit complained, her voice little affected by the choking. She pouted at him in mock resentment; but her nightdress was pulled askew, and Conan saw that she did not trouble to cover herself.

Conan turned to Thelia, who pouted nearby. “Sorry. Sometimes a warrior is plagued by ghosts—”

Thelia interrupted with an admonishing look. “I hurt my knuckles pounding your hard skull!”

“Here, let me kiss them,” Conan said, but the lass drew coyly away.

“You are a fierce fighter indeed,” Lilit observed petulantly, while belatedly straightening her nightgown.

“Are you sure you will not be staying on here—as the new Baron’s guardian-in-chief, perhaps?”

“No, the farmers will want to be rid of me as soon as possible. These peaceable rural types mistrust fighting-men—when we aren’t needed for the heavy work, that is.” Conan eased himself back against the silken bolsters. “Tethrun hired me to run his rebellion, not his government.”

“You feel unwanted, like the two of us,” Lilit sighed. “There will be little peace for us here, I am afraid.”

“Then ride with me, both of you” Conan said, putting his arms about the two of them. “Tell me, have you ever travelled southward to the city-states of Shem?”

Late the next morning, Tethrun and his lieutenants knocked on Conan’s door. They felt some trepidation about their purpose, which was to dislodge him from the baronial apartments, render up payment, and send him on his way. Frankly, if the foreign warrior should not wish to go, they knew it would cost them dearly to make him.

Solicitous kitchen servants informed them that the Cimmerian had already arisen—before dawn, in fact— dined in the scullery with the former baron’s two Iemans, and departed with them at first light.

Tethrun and his officers felt anxious until they determined that the fugitives had taken away only three pairs of horses, a supply of food, and approximately the agreed-upon share of the castle treasury. Establishing this, their mutual reaction was a sigh of relief.

II

Zeriti

The witch finished and turned away from her altar, weary and depleted. From the stained, pitted stone platform behind her, streams of multi-hued incense smoke still rose. The fumes, variously acrid and cloying, blended in the airless chamber, curling among the heavy pillars and vaultings of the cramped candlelit space. The vaporous stench would take time to dissipate in the inner recesses as the cones and crucibles of mystic powders smouldered slowly to ash.

These were the remnants of her day-long labour at invocation and conjuration—this time unsuccessful, yet Zeriti sensed that progress was being made. Soon, with further toilsome attention, invisible barriers would begin to crumble. Ancient bonds and wardings would be breached, and her great, glorious scheme would move that much nearer to fulfilment.

Stepping down from the stone dais around the altar, the jaded sorceress stumbled on the rough floor and

nearly fell. She steadied her lean, leather-clad body against a rack of withered scrolls—parchments yellowed darker than the full, pale bosom that brushed against them. Her once-brown skin had faded to a pasty pallor in these inner reaches. Long had it been since she had basked in the rays of the sun. Now she felt weak, drained by the harsh demands of chanting and concentration, and still dizzy from the heady smoke. She must sustain and renew her depleted strength at once, even before allowing herself to sleep.

Her toil, it seemed, was unceasing. During the day she navigated the steeps and caverns of the spirit realms, making the necessary pacts and preparing the channels of power—even as a humble Stygian farmer might survey, stake out, and ditch his dry bottomland, making it ready to be bathed and enriched by the coming river flood.

And by night—if there was such a thing as night here—by night, she slept as others sleep. Even as common peasants and courtesans and craftsmen do... alike as the ancient priests and Pharaohs of her native Stygia slept, in cool darkness beneath the vast tombs. And as other, even older beings might sleep, for hours or days or aeons, waiting to be roused.

But there was one difference: while Zeriti slept, she dreamed—richly, vividly, and variously, a score of different dreams at the same time. Zeriti’s dreams went forth upon the night winds like darting bats and luminous, fluttering moths. They found their way back to the realm of the living, to settle and lay their eggs in the tattered, threadbare consciousness of common mortals. There the dreams would hatch and proliferate, gnawing their way like white wiggling larvae toward one city and one ill-starred dynasty in particular. To one small, unlucky bitch-whelp, who, though misbegotten, had been placed upon the earth for a purpose, a very special purpose indeed.

But now refreshment, she must at all costs restore her waning energy. Shuffling across the stone floor, she bore her candle to a dim comer of her chamber where nitre deposits hung like white glistening beards dripping rank bitter water from regions above. There, bats nested. Thick clusters of small, fox-eared forms, like bunches of furred and twitching fruit, hung inverted above mounds of their foetid red-brown offal.

My little messengers, she thought, my providers... Zeriti reached up and plucked the fattest of the creatures from the ceiling. The others of the flock scarcely stirred in their resting-places, while the one she had chosen writhed and fluttered vainly in her grip, emitting shrill, muffled squeals. Deftly she stifled its noise and struggles, keeping the small head imprisoned inside her fist, feeling the tiny fangs lacerate her hand.

Drowsy with anticipation, she raised the creature two-handed to her lips. She bit down hard, nipping with her eye-teeth and feeling them part the tough, hairy hide. Gouts of rich salty nourishment surged forth, for the creature was engorged, swollen full from its night-long flight through the outer realms. Its sweet vitality flowed into her. She sucked and gulped voraciously till she felt sated, and the creature was a flaccidly twitching sack of bones. But still alive, for the moment at least. Tossing it aside, she barely saw it flutter off, struggling to regain a place among its crowded kin.

Little matter if it lived. If so, it would fly off to sate itself all the more deeply, and be gorged upon again in turn. It would bring more refreshment, or others would take its place; further, it would carry forth her living enchantment into the night-lands. For its blood was hers, commingled, as was the blood of the entire flock. If they should bite a carrion bird, that creature would be under her command, bound by the mystical law of sympathetic magic to carry out her will. Its eyes would become her eyes, its talons her long-nailed fingers.

Feeling pleasantly sleepy, she moved though the shadows to the far wall of the gallery. Leaning upright there against the stone stood a gilded sarcophagus. Garish-figured and glossily embellished—except where the bright gold leaf had been stripped away in dark scabrous patches—it was a relic of her homeland, with its cat-faced lid propped against the wall by its side. Zeriti stepped into it, to recline amid soft corpse-wrappings and prop her elbows inside its human-shaped outline. Crossing her arms before her breast, Zeriti shut her eyes and composed herself to dream.

III

The Plague of Dreams

The walled city of Baalur lay like an eight-sided amulet on the bosom of the Pyrrhenian foothills, a rare worn pendant against the breast of a reclining woman gowned in greenest velvet. Fertile valleys and rolling fields, well-watered by snows and showers rising toward the mountain crests, made Baalur nigh the richest in crops and husbandry of all the Shemitish city-states. Add to this the fruits of trade gleaned from caravans travelling up from southern realms, like strings of pearls winding toward the mountain-maiden’s neck. The wealth of distant empires converged through Baalur toward the lofty Pyrrhenians, and equal bounty spilled southward in return.

Even so Baalur, when Conan reached it, seemed a city of ill omen. The great northern gate stood locked and barred, its rough-voiced, suspicious warders requiring long haggling and interrogation before admitting a wayfarer and his two companions. Inside the walls, the narrow angular lanes were full of pinched, haggard faces and grumbling dispositions. The entire city seemed in the grip of some indefinable shadow or distemper.

Oddly enough, this fitted Conan’s expectation. This dark, grim-shadowed southern journey had been foretold to him in dreams. There was no longer any doubt in his mind that he was destined to come here, that this place was the source of a dim, inexorable summons... or at least a step along the way.

The stolid Cimmerian had never been inclined toward dreams or prophetic visions. Ordinarily, any inkling of the supernatural would have been enough to send him spurring away in the opposite direction. But this recent nocturnal visitation—involving, as it did, the fate of a former love—brought with it an odd sense of confirmation, the nagging lure of unfinished business. He was not especially surprised, nor yet tempted to turn back, not even when he saw black specks of carrion birds wheeling over the city centre, high above the palace district.

Lilit and Thelia, on the other hand, ignored the atmosphere of doom, fixing instead upon the wealth and balmy weather of the place. The girls had improved in spirits as they drew further from Koth, proclaiming the northern kingdom to have been a chill place both emotionally and physically. Now they took in with enthusiasm Baalur’s finely dressed population hailing from a score of lands, the gold-leaved minarets and jewelled window-lights. By their squeals and caperings on horseback, and the carefree shedding of unneeded travelling garb, they did more than their part to enliven the town’s gloomy spirits.

The two urged Conan hurriedly past the slave mart, hit when they came to the gaudy-canopied amusement district they preferred to dawdle. The street of fakirs, mountebanks, and drinking stalls, though far from busy

this dull afternoon, seemed brightened by their presence. Conan installed them in a lively inn, with spending money and a promise to return and visit. By way of a dowry he left them their two horses each. Then, after stabling his own mounts, he went to sound matters out

From a publican at another popular doss-house and caravan stop—a portly Shemite who had soothed himself to gruff amiability by sampling his own fermented wares—Conan learned the events of recent days. A strange kind of contagion had gone forth through the city, it was murmured, a plague of ill dreams. It began with the rumoured illness of Princess Ismaia, the city’s darling and its main hope for a peaceable succession to the throne.

With the first news of the child’s malady had come stirrings of unease, rumours of poisonings and enchantment. Then, beginning with those who knew the princess personally or stood in greatest favour with the royal family, the sickness had spread. Sufferers moaned and tossed night-long in the clutches of fever, hounded incessantly by the vilest of nightmares. By day they resumed a more lucid state of mind, yet felt miserable and exhausted from the lack of sleep. As the days progressed, the condition of those afflicted usually worsened—often to mad, raving delirium in the night-time hours, alternating with stuporous half-awareness during the day. The sufferers continually and vainly sought rest, yet jolted themselves awake in dread of the torments that night and sleep must inevitably bring.

By now, the drunken publican told Conan, the disease had spread from the highest levels of elite society all the way down through the mid-ranks of city garrison officers. It likely included Queen Rufia herself and King Aphrates, who stayed secluded in the palace. Though state officials were forbidden to discuss the malady and its effects, ordinary folk were now having dreams, too—enough, at least, to proclaim that this night-curse was demonic in origin. The plague itself was only one of several ill omens, such as the carrion birds wheeling over the city. The princess, it was said, lay in a delirious state, tormented continuously day and night. Government administration was crippled, and Baalur, depending on whom you listened to, lay near civil collapse or military rule.

“What, then, do they dream about?” Conan asked.

“Ah, well, it differs from one person to the next.” The innkeeper made a superstitious sign to ward away spirits, touching a forefinger to both earlobes in succession. “I myself have had no more than a glimpse of the shadowy dream-realm, thanks be to Mardur. If I had, I would not be overly anxious to speak of it.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “The one thing they all tell of is the face and leather-girded form of a hellish vixen, some dark sorceress who taunts and menaces them in their sufferings.” He shook his balding head in dismay. “The street prophets say it is revenge, a doom that Queen Rufia herself brought on the city by her past sins.” He glanced around the empty tavern, then nudged Conan conspiratorially. “For you know, outlander, before she wed our king and was elevated above the rest of his harem, practically nothing is known of our goodly queen’s origins.”

“Hmmph.” Conan was amazed that the man would say so much to a stranger regarding his city’s rulers. Such talk must be on every fickle tongue in Baalur’s hour of trouble. The Cimmerian resisted his temptation to empty his drinking mug on the publican’s bald head. Draining it instead, grunting farewell, and thumping down a silver shekel, he walked out.

It was not long afterwards that he found his way to the government district and the domed, low-walled palace. These innermost streets were nearly empty of the sullen-looking citizenry, so the place seemed peaceful, almost cheery. From here, to view the vultures high overhead, one had to turn the gaze straight into the sun-bright sky.

Yet Conan had no certainty of gaining entry to Baalur’s palace. The outer gate was a sturdy filigree of gilt-painted iron, the thick bars skilfully worked into the shape of a coiled dragon. As he mounted the broad front steps and peered through the interstices, a sullen, helmeted face came up opposite his, returning his stare.

Before he could open his mouth, the gate swung wide and a gold-liveried arm beckoned him in.

“You are the one called Conan, are you not?” The helmeted captain confronted him when he stepped into the marble-paved court.

“Why should you even ask?” He eyed the three guards warily as the gate clanged shut behind him. “Do you not know already?”

“Come with me, barbarian.” Nodding curtly, the officer wheeled around. “I will notify Her Majesty of your arrival.”

From the vine-draped court, Conan was led off through the ornate ground-level corridors and high-domed chambers. At the heart of the palace he was surprised to find an inner garden, far sunnier and more verdant than the one in the forecourt. In flowered ferny glades and arbours, fountains merrily tinkled. Servants—a pair of maids clad in loose, sheer dresses— came hurrying up to Conan, where the captain left him on a cushioned bench near a rippling pool. Offering their guest every manner of refreshment, the two hurried off at once to fetch bread, cheese, and wine. They were young and comely, trained to amuse and delight— yet hovering over them, and over the guard captain too, Conan sensed an aura of trouble and worry.

When they returned with gold trays and silver-chased vessels, they seated themselves beside the visitor. Playfully they attempted to hand-feed him and tipped the foaming goblet to his lips. Yet scarcely had they begun this sport than they ceased their nervous giggles and edged away. A tall, stately figure intruded on the scene, and a female voice addressed them.

“Enough, girls; you may return to the harem. Thank you for entertaining our guest so bravely.”

Queen Rufia moved near. Her Ophirean features looked as lovely, if careworn, as ever. “Conan, welcome. ’Tis long since we parted.”

Rufia, in the intervening time, had achieved the true bearing and dignity of a queen. Robed in finely figured silk over a pleated, gold-clasped gown—her red hair piled up in a high coif bound with golden cord, and ruby-nailed toes framed in gold-braided sandals, she emanated the power of a female who might only be approached by royal license. When first she extended her hand to Conan, he scarcely knew what to do with it. Without rising from his seat, he kissed it—not the smooth back but the soft, fleshy palm. Instead of pulling herself free, she eased down onto the bench near him.

“You are still impetuous, ever the adventurer.” She brushed the side of his face with her fingertips. “And little changed, I see, except for some new scars.” “Your palace guard seemed to recognize me well enough,” he replied, releasing her hand. “Have you sought me for long?”

“I gave Captain Furio the order to find you only yesterday,” Rufia explained carelessly. “I told him to send couriers eastward to Khoraja, where it was rumoured you had gone. I heard you commanded an army there, and won a victory in Shamla Pass.”

Raising his brows in reminiscence, Conan laughed. “In truth, that was years ago! ’Tis long since I thought of it. I was a general in Khoraja for a time.”

Rufia regarded him knowingly. “The queen there, Yasmela, was grateful for your services, so I am told.” Conan smiled. “Aye, true, but her favour did not last. Since then I have travelled far: to Turan and Hyrkania, where I roved the Vilayet. And farther east to Vendhya, also the Stygian deserts and the Black Kingdoms of the south.”

It was Rufia’s turn to arch her shapely eyebrows— dutifully amazed, if indeed she believed him. “Have you become a slave-broker, then? The city guards report to me that you arrived here in the company of two women.”

“Lilit and Thelia, you mean. My boon companions from Koth.” Conan laughed again easily. “No, they merely liked the looks of your town and wanted to dawdle here. I’ll warrant you, in a month’s time they’ll possess themselves of a fat merchant or two, with his camels and harem to boot!” He met Rufia’s sceptical gaze without a blink. “Much like the old days, if you recall.”

“You are the same as of old,” the queen said at last. “Ever too willing to part with a lady.”

“And what of our old friend Mazdak?” Conan reminisced. “I hear that he is king in Asgalun, where we left him picking up the leavings of dead mercenary captains.”

“Aye,” Rufia said, “he is a royal ally of my husband’s, though I have not seen him since we left. He has dredged the river channel, so they say, and opened the port to sea trade.” Rufia shook her head as if dismissing the past; but after a thoughtful pause, she resumed. “Is it by luck, then, that you happen to visit this part of the world?”

“Luck, yes, and dreams,” Conan said, watching her. “’Tis not only your subjects here in Baalur who have trouble sleeping nights.”

She lowered her eyes. “No coincidence, then, that you have appeared in my waking dreams of late. There is a higher purpose, perhaps, to all our mortal cares.” She earnestly gripped his hand. “Conan, I prayed for you to come! With Caspius, my chief sage, I made sacrifice at the temple.”

“To Mitra, I hope, and not some fish-faced Shemitish god, or else to Crom. His temples are the mountains, you know.” Conan nodded in the direction of the snowy peaks away to northward. “But you were never overly pious, as I recall. Your need must be great.”

Rufia gazed up at him without pretence but with an irresistible appeal. “It is my daughter, Ismaia. Our only child”—she paused almost imperceptibly—“Aphrates’ and mine. I fear that she is dying, Conan, and with her, perhaps, our whole court, and the whole troubled city!” “I have heard rumours of a dream plague,” Conan said. “In my own dream, in Koth, I saw you in dire trouble. But I do not know all that is revealed in these dreams------”

“Nor do I,” Rufia complained bitterly. “If you can imagine it, I am spared, as is my husband the king. While our child slowly perishes, we wait dreamless, watching her suffer and relying on the confused, horrid accounts of others to imagine what she sees, what evil threatens her. My sleeplessness is left to a natural cause—a mother’s anguish. What a devilish refinement of cruelty that is!” A tear, slow and reluctant as if coaxed from a long-depleted reserve, crept from one kohl-dark eye.

“One thing I did see,” Conan said, laying a hand on Rufia’s trembling shoulder. “It was the undead witch Zeriti. No doubt she has a part in this.”

“I have heard as much,” Rufia acknowledged with a shudder. “She was as before?”

“Yes. Like a very demon out of Sheol... or whatever dark netherworld she now rules. I don’t know if Imbalayo’s sword left a scar where it slew her. She was dressed all in leather, like the chief torturess in the Stygian gaol.”

Solemnly Rufia shook her high-coiffed head. “Who would have thought the witch would be so hard to kill?” “Do you think she found her way back south of the river,” Conan asked, “to work her spells from there?” “Possibly—if she still walks upon this earth. She comes of an eldritch race, those Stygians—a dark descent, hoary with knowledge and evil. If she has made herself into a demigoddess, or even a priestess of Set, her powers are considerable. As best I can understand these things, she may not dwell on the mortal plane.” Conan frowned in distaste at the topic. “If you want her killed yet again, I’d advise you to find yourself a priest—or a wizard, if you dare to trust one. I am no spell caster and cannot abide sorceries.”

“Even so, Conan, you may be able to help us in another way”—Rufia’s lovely face still bore an appeal—“if you are so willed. My husband’s physician, Caspius, has made a detailed study of the problem. I will take you to see him.” She arose from the bench, keeping hold of his hand. “Come, I must return to my daughter. Aphrates is with her now, and you will meet him. One or the other of us, or the physician, is always at her side.”

She led him from the garden court into a pink-columned vestibule with a spiral stair leading up several flights toward a tiled dome. Near the top they passed out through an arch and found themselves on a parapet above the palace’s east wall. Guardsmen, slouching groggily at their posts, straightened themselves before the queen with a scrape of weapons and armour.

“Under such bright heavens,” Rufia asked, “how can midnight sorcery hold sway?” Shading her eyes and peering upward, she pointed toward the black specks circling high overhead. “The birds are not of this earth. They never land, at least not by day, nor descend low enough to be clearly seen.”

“Mayhap they have no real life and substance,”

Conan said. Striding to one of the guards, he reached past the sluggish fellow’s head and removed the bow from the quiver at his shoulder.

“Your Majesty...?” Blinking uncertainly until the queen gave a nod, the man then grounded his pike. From an oilskin pouch at his waist, he obediently produced a coiled bowstring and a wrist guard.

With the armlet lashed in place, Conan unwound the bowstring and looped it to the lower end of the bow. Stepping through the “v” thus formed, he bent the stave with a steady, powerful arching of his torso. After testing the pull of the strung weapon, he accepted the arrow proffered by the guard.

“Take care where your shaft falls,” the man warned him with a trace of haughtiness. “It is an impossible shot. I, for one, could never hope to make it.”

“Even if you were fit and clear-headed, you mean.” Sighting straight upward, Conan drew the bow smoothly to the arrow’s full length and loosed. The shaft disappeared into sun glare.

Long moments later a faint fluttering sound reached their ears as a black-feathered shape plummeted into view. It struck a red-tiled roof just inside the palace wall. From where they stood on the parapet they could plainly see it and, a moment later, smell it: the slack, tattered body transfixed by an arrow, the naked, bloated, carrion-eater’s head, with pale beak and bones protruding from overripe, purplish flesh. Where the already-putrefying carcass had split open, small wriggling specks spilled forth: white maggots, death devouring death.

“Faugh.” Rufia turned away with a frown of disgust and moved toward an open doorway. “Was it dead before,” she fretted aloud, “or did it rot on the way down? It is like a show put on for our benefit. How inhumanly vile!”

“Mayhap Zeriti never was quite human,” Conan muttered under his breath. Tossing the bow back to the guardsman, he followed the queen through the doorway. Beyond a landing with stairs, benches, and defensive window slits another door opened into a sleeping chamber. At its centre, a curtained bed stood in the light of a broad-arched window that opened on the inner court. “My darling, is there any change?”

Rufia, hurrying to the bedside, was intercepted by a white-bearded, haggard-looking man in white physician’s robes, who placed a careful fatherly arm around her. Together they moved to overlook the small frail shape on the bolster.

“No change, she is as before,” the greybeard whispered. “She is getting some rest but awakens at intervals. Once, I think she knew where she was, though she would say nothing.”

“Mitra, would that I had been there! But thanks, Caspius.” She conferred on the elder sage a gentle, decorous embrace. “This is Conan,” she added, “who has helped me in the past. It may be that our prayers were efficacious. He knows something of the dreams, as well.”

At her words, the seer turned and took Conan’s hand. He clasped it in a withered and weary but firm grip. “I sense you are a man of considerable strength and determination—well-rested, too, and alert. Such qualities can be useful to us here.”

“Caspius and my husband, King Aphrates, here is Conan of Cimmeria.” Rufia half-bowed in obeisance before a tall, dark, curly-bearded man who had risen from a shadowed seat in one comer. His garb, though perfectly tailored, was plain in cut and adornment, a gold-hemmed green caftan with matching pantaloons and velvet boots. On his head, atop silvery-black ringlets of hair, he wore a simple circlet of gold adorned with a thumbnail-sized emerald.

“Northerner.” The king, solemn-faced, regarded Conan as he drew near. “You look well—unlike most of my officer corps at present. My wife tells me you can be trusted. If Caspius determines that you can help us, and you are able to do so, you will be lavishly rewarded.” Aphrates nodded; without stopping or offering his hand to any of the three, he moved past them to an inner door, where he made his exit.

“He is a steadfast ruler,” Rufia said after he left. “All the more so in this hour of crisis. And here... here is our daughter, Ismaia.”

Following Rufia to the sickbed, Conan gazed down on a pale-haired child, beautifully formed but disturbingly wan and frail. Through the gossamer bed curtains she looked ghostly—and, once they were swept aside, scarcely less so. Her pale mouth drew breath in the shallowest gasps, and her half-lidded white orbs rolled on worlds unseen by any waking mortal. Her thin limbs stirred beneath the silken coverlet in fitful trepidation. Furtively, almost guiltily, the queen’s hands caught up her small limp hand, clutching and hoarding it. The girl’s face rolled weakly toward her mother. Her eyes, finding Rufia’s face and then Conan’s, seemed to glimpse their world a moment. But they lost their focus and widened in all-too-evident fear, as some new leviathan surfaced on the dark sea of dream.

A sigh that was more a sob issued from the queen’s voluptuous throat. “You see how she suffers.” Clinging to her daughter, kneeling on a velvet cushion laid beside the bed, she looked up beseechingly at Conan. “If you could help us it would be a great victory, Conan, more memorable even than a military triumph in a mountain pass. And far better appreciated.” From his face, she turned her gaze back to her daughter. “But I, I must remain here with Ismaia. You and Caspius should leave now if you are going to talk. She rests uneasily; I worry lest she overhear something that might trouble her sleep even more.”

“Come.” Beckoning to Conan, the sage Caspius led the way out of the chamber. As they moved into the corridor beyond, he gave the Cimmerian a haggard look. “What a sorrow it is—the little princess is our city’s treasure. A clever child, too, fit and bright-spirited—until lately.” He shook his head as if to clear it, obviously fighting sleep. “And beautiful to gaze on, as well,” he added with an inquiring look at Conan. “Her features are quite remarkable—especially those blue eyes, not shared by either of her parents.”

“Her mother is a famous beauty,” Conan said, following the elder counsellor’s shuffling lead down the hall.

“Ah, yes,” Caspius agreed, scarcely looking back. “You knew Queen Rufia when she first came to Baalur, I am told, at the time she was taken into the royal harem, less than a year before she offered our childless king an heir, and so gained the crown.”

“She saw great prospects here in your city.” Conan shook his head. “Myself, I found the place too settled and merchant-like, and moved on.”

“You both came from Asgalun, fleeing the civil war there.” Caspius, having come to a descending spiral stairway, led his guest steeply downward.

“Things had grown hot in Asgalun, true enough,” Conan avowed. “Most of the rulers and mercenary captains were dead, and the city a red flaming shambles.” Conan did not know how frank he should be with Caspius. He did not care to discuss, for instance, the extreme danger of his being recognized in any sea coast town as the notorious pirate Amra.

“Yet Mazdak, who now rules as Asgalun’s king, was your friend,” Caspius prodded him. “He and King Aphrates have since become allies.”

Yes, Conan thought to himself, and Mazdak probably still lusts after his neighbour king’s queen. He wondered if any here knew that Mazdak had once owned her.

Aloud, he said, “I took Rufia from there mainly for her own protection.”

“Leaving an enchantress named Zeriti far behind you,” Caspius added. “Dead, but still jealous.” Coming to the bottom of the stairwell, the grey beard ushered Conan down a corridor and through an archway with a low lintel, beneath which the Cimmerian had to duck. “You had dealings with her before...?”

“Understand me, Caspius,” Conan rumbled to the weary but watchful sage, “that witch is not jealous of me! I’ve made it a practice not to have dealings with such as her, not if I can help it. I never even saw her till the hour of her death, or rather her undeath, since you evidently know the story. To this day I brook no wizards or sorcerers.” He said this last in mild disapproval of the low-vaulted, windowless room they had entered; for it was lined with dusty shelves of books, scrolls, curios, and obvious magical and alchemic paraphernalia, much like any sorcerer’s den.

“Rather,” the Cimmerian added in grudging explanation, “if Zeriti’s jealousy goads her even now, beyond life, it is because Asgalun’s crazy King Akhirom, in the fickle blossoming of his madness, turned his royal affection from her to Rufia. Then, during her undeath, she doubtless watched her rival gain wealth, nobility, and power, while her own life and holdings were dissolved in the dust of years.”

Caspius nodded. “From talks with the queen, I have come to the same conclusion. And too, in the aftermath, Queen Rufia gained an heir—an innocent babe, loved by all, who is now the principal target of Zeriti’s deathless rage. A jealous obsession, there is little doubt.” Turning himself in the midst of the room like a man half-asleep, the sage seated himself on a cot spread with humble woollen blankets. “Take a seat, Cimmerian, I pray you. I apologize for these rude quarters. When this crisis began, I moved my sleeping place here to be near the ancient scrolls, which are benefited by the chill and drought of the cellars.”

“You found something of value in those crumbling sheaves?” Doubtfully Conan eyed the racks and repositories leading off into the gloom. Reaching forth he ruffled them and heard the brittle pages rasp like dry reeds.

“Aye, indeed. Be careful there.” Leaning forward, Caspius unsheathed one of the scrolls from the rack as a younger and more virile fellow might draw a sword. “Our Pelishti archives are antique and well-maintained. I have found a precise description of the illness that afflicts our city, as well as a most specific, if difficult, cure.”

Seating himself on a high, rickety stool, Conan grunted a concession. “I have, ere this, seen benign magic of a sort—white wizardry that is meant to counter the darker elemental spells. But the cost of magic is always high. I would advise you to tread with caution.”

“Your views are welcome, given what you know of this case,” Caspius said. “Your help will be needed as well, since the preparations amount to no small task.”

Conan arose impatiently, stepping clear of his perch. “I warn you, Caspius, I am no adept or wizard’s apprentice! Whatever scheme you may have to lay this deathless sorceress low, you’d best look to someone else. I, a simple man-at-arms, am of little use in a witches’ war.”

“Nay, Conan, you misapprehend me.” Caspius shook his grey head, waving Conan back to his seat. “I do not expect you to do sorcerous battle with Zeriti. As you say, that would be ill-advised. Our greatest need for help is here and now, on the physical plane. It relates to obtaining a cure for this foul malady of sleeplessness that grips the kingdom”—he caught himself yawning—“and myself, as well.” He stirred his slack old body where he sat, seeking to stretch himself awake.

“You are hounded by the ill dreams at night?” Conan asked pointedly. “Even you, a physician?”

“Worse for me... far beyond anything you might imagine,” Caspius said. “I hope so, anyway. For your own sake.”

“Yet you say you have a cure for these dreams, one that is proven, regardless of Zeriti’s sorcerous will? Can you not try it out on yourself and see if it eases your sufferings?”

“I have found a cure, ’tis true.” Beside him on the cot, Caspius unfurled the scroll he had taken from the nearby rack. “Dream plagues are not new to our day. Their occurrence of old is discussed in the ancient texts.”

With one careful hand he smoothed the parchment, revealing strings of inked characters that resembled modem Pelishtic, though they contained some flourishes and symbols wholly unfamiliar to Conan’s eye.

“The dreams are caused by an ill humour,” Caspius explained, “a kind of infectious vapour that passes from one individual to the next. It can arise from contamination or be mediated by necromantic power, as is doubtless the case here.” He shook his grey head. “Once unleashed, such an epidemic spreads of its own accord, leaving the sleepers’ minds open and vulnerable to the direst sort of spectral invasion.” Unwinding the scroll deftly from post to post, Caspius waved his hand over new areas of crabbed, ornamented text. “Such a malaise has been deployed as a sorcerous weapon before—and for revenge, as it details here. There is but one known cure, and that a rare draught that has not been seen in our apothecary trade for a century or more—a sleeping infusion produced from the petals of the silver lotus.”

“Lotus petals?” Conan exclaimed, unbelieving. “Why, let me but step outside, and I’ll find you enough lotus of whatever variety to dope your whole palace into a stupor!” He guffawed loudly. “Surely whatever it is can be found on the market, even if it is contraband.”

Shaking his grey head, Caspius smiled sadly. “Do not imagine that we have not tried. The same agents we dispatched to hunt for you in the eastern kingdoms were also engaged in scouring souls and bazaars for the specific remedy we need. But in truth, there is slight hope.” The seer advanced his scroll further, pointing to an illuminated section where a simple painted map showed a long blue line turning sharply to the right. “According to established lore, the silver lotus is too rare and delicate a bloom to be imported and cultivated. It has not appeared in local trade in the memory of any living man. Its single known source lies far, far to the southward, in lands whose names are scarcely more than fable to our civilized ears.” The sage laid a finger on the crude map and gazed at Conan for effect.

“To be precise, Cimmerian,” Caspius said, “it grows only at the remotest headwaters of the River Styx.”

IV

The Quest

Conan’s reaction to Caspius’s words was immediate. “The source of the Styx! Man, do you know what you are blathering about? To journey beyond the reach of maps, and aye, of legends, to pluck flowers!”

For the first time since entering this blighted city, Conan threw back his head and laughed, loudly and boisterously, his black mane dancing in riotous disbelief, as the physician watched.

“Why, Caspius,” the Cimmerian breathed at last, “no lone man or legion could ever hope to make such a journey and return! Not, anyway, in the course of a single lifetime! If your ancient scripts tell you the only cure lies at the headwaters of the black river, then they tell you it is pure fancy—it does not exist, not in the world of mortal’s ken!”

The old physician looked up guardedly from the cot, waiting for his guest’s amusement to spend itself. “Aye,” he conceded at length, “what you say may be true.” He spread his hands in dismay. “Yet we thought to propose the matter to you in any case, because it was rumoured that you travelled extensively in the South. Have you not been to the upper reaches of the Styx?” Scowling now, Conan thumped a palm against his thick-muscled knee. “Aye, I have been there, old fellow, farther up than most men, high enough to know that the headwaters must lie far out of any civilized man’s reach.” He shook his head. “I crossed the Styx in the wild realms of Punt, Keshan, and nameless Black Kingdoms whose borders shift from season to season. Where I crossed the accursed stream, it ran broad, deep, dark, and swift—too swift, when in flood, for a hardy man to swim. From that, I would judge that the river’s source, if it has one, could be another thousand leagues or so to the southward. Or westward, or eastward... why, old fellow, the water might pour down from the moon, for all the good its nethermost fountains will do you!” Narrowing his eyes, the Cimmerian scowled in reminiscence. “Where I struck the Styx, there grew poppies aplenty, jungles of them! But none of silver, that I would remember.”

Caspius nodded in evident comprehension. “Good, then, you may know as much of the terrain as anyone. But when it comes to the difficulty of such an expedition... why, surely you exaggerate somewhat! The Styx is just a river, after all. Such a broad, deep channel should be all the easier to navigate and trace, should it not? For part of its course, where it flows westward toward the sea, the Styx is our most frequented trade route. If it is only a matter of distance..

“Distance, hah!” Conan derided him. “You speak of distance, sitting here in your eight-walled city? What do you know of distance, of mere footsteps hacked through thorny, snake-ridden under brush, or trudged amid blinding sandstorms?” He shrugged impatiently. “In the southern thickets, I’d hazard, one as soft and city-bred as you could not make your way from here to yonder wall alive! And beyond the jungles and deserts lie far worse obstacles: the swamps, the cataracts, the mountains, and who knows what wild beasts and nations of hostile warriors?”

Thumping a heavy fist abruptly on the stained worktable beside his stool, the Cimmerian caused mortars, pestles, and alembics to rattle precariously. “Nay, ’tis madness, I say—a dangerous, devouring madness, like your city’s dream plague. Should such an idea truly take hold of you, it bodes to cause untold suffering and death. If you have some wizardly way of transporting yourself to the source of the Styx instantly and painlessly, then do so with my blessing, and with caution! Otherwise, forget the idea.”

“Suffering, you say?” Caspius quietly challenged his guest in return. “You fear suffering? Tell me, then, have you slept a whole night cradled in the witch Zeriti’s dream embrace? As our young princess even now does?” The old physician grimaced a bitter half-smile. “In truth, I think that any hundred of our Baalur guards and officers would gladly set out to swim the River Styx—upstream its entire length, like spawning salmon—to rid themselves of her night-trysts! And I myself would not blame them.” He rubbed weary knuckles against his seamed, dark-hollowed eyes.

“As for yourself,” Caspius continued, “you are a traveller who knows those territories better, perhaps, than any living man. Queen Rufia herself has vouched for you, and your reputation as a commander and adventurer makes me think it would be hard for you to resist such an undertaking, which now, after all, affords you a splendid opportunity to earn a vast ransom in our city’s service. From these facts it would seem to me, or to any thinking person, that fate has already cast in your lot for you.”

Conan gazed from beneath his tousled mane, looking suddenly wary and more than a little resentful. “Tell me, then, Caspius, why should you trust me? Why would your queen, for that matter? For, you know, if I were to take charge of such an expedition, the men, treasure and equipment I would want under my command would be more than enough to sack some foreign city, or even carve out a small empire. If you gave me such power, what makes you think you’d ever see me again?”

Caspius met his gaze thoughtfully, if wearily. “It seems to me that you have aided our queen in the past, and would honour an oath made in her service. Keeping in mind how much she and her city suffer—in particular, how much she cares for her ailing child—who, if she lives, will someday wear the crown of Baalur...” The wise man shook his grey head. “The bonds of blood are strong ones, or should be.”

Feeling cornered, Conan met the physician with a less-than-pleasant look. “I know I do not have to mince words with you, Caspius. So let us lay it out on the table, for once and all.” With a wary glance around the room’s shadows, he lowered his voice to a murmur. “I am as dutiful as the next man, and would not wish to neglect any sick child, much less my own kin. But face it: even if the brat is mine, and stands to usurp the throne, is her untroubled sleep worth the waste of a hundred good men, or a thousand? And a city treasury in the bargain? For, make no mistake about it, that is what it would likely cost to make a decent effort at this quest of yours.”

Caspius nodded, offering up a sly, weary smile. “True enough. The treasure should pose no problem in Baalur, wealthy as our city-state is from trade and traffic. King Aphrates is modest in his habits, so it might not be evident to an outsider just how rich... But I assure you, the king would be willing to expend every last shekel in his coffers to preserve our city and its royal dynasty. He would send his entire army to face death as well.” As he spoke, the sage carefully rolled the ageless scroll on its two ivory spindles. “As for the value of saving the child Ismaia—aside from any sentimental appeals her mother may raise to you—to do so, remember, is also to oppose the witch Zeriti. She has cursed our land and made an innocent girl the target of her dire spells, but do you imagine that is the whole extent of her plans? Knowing the foibles of wizards, I would guess that she has something more sinister in store—for our queen, and perhaps for yourself and others.”

Conan nodded at the elder man’s words. “’Tis a point, mayhap.” He tried his best to look unconcerned. “Stopping the enchantress here and now, on this earthly plane, might head off worse torments and witcheries to come; if only you could be sure your touted lotus cure will be effective..He sighed in weary resignation. “You make shrewd argument, Caspius.”

Tucking the coiled scroll under his arm, the physician rose heavily from his place on the cot. “You argue most forcefully yourself, Cimmerian. If our expedition is to go forward, I cannot think of a better man to lead it: one with highly pertinent experience and a clear-eyed appreciation of perils to be faced.” He moved toward the door. “Shall we proceed upstairs now, for our audience with the king?”

“You have been told, then, barbarian, of the emergency expedition that is proposed to obtain the cure sought by our chief physician?”

The questioner, goat-faced General Shalmanezer, was attired in gold-braided splendour that befit Baalur’s highest military leader. He cut an imposing figure, pacing tall and rail-thin before the enthroned King Aphrates and various courtiers seated in the ornate hall.

“I was told.” Conan’s answer ignored the general’s rude, officious manner. “In my view the plan is foolishly conceived, a wild gamble that will lead nowhere.” The general harrumphed and turned again to face his target. “Even so, we have determined to make the effort. An armed deputation will go southward to obtain the drug at its source, or else buy it on the open market, if its purity can be affirmed. There will be need for guidance by someone who has travelled in those parts. Do I understand correctly that you meet this qualification?”

Conan did not feel like repeating his history. He shot back, “Let me ask, general, how large a party are you planning to send? Do you know how difficult such a quest bodes to be?”

Shalmanezer looked unhappy at being interrogated. “I had thought perhaps twenty or thirty picked men— with mounts and wagons, of course. Passage upriver can be taken in one of the southern river ports, and perhaps a camel train hired father south---------”

“If I am to lead an expedition,” Conan declared, “I would require five hundred men, no less.” Having caught the attention of the court, he held it. “A thousand would be better, fully armed and equipped to guard the necessary treasury and provisions against pirates and desert raiders. Even so, they’d be at risk. They’ll have need of special tools and weapons, with ample trade goods for bribe and barter. The southern

chieftains customarily demand tribute---------”

“What is he babbling about?” Shalmanezer, seeming astonished, looked around at the courtiers with raised eyebrows before wheeling on Conan. “I had proposed to enlist you as a guide or scout, not a regimental commander! We have fine officers like young Furio, here, who are fully capable of leading a trading party, and not such an excessive one as you describe.” He waved his hand at the trim, moustached captain standing nearby, whose gold braids and ornaments were yet but a sprig of his own. “A few dozen men at most, working under their established officers, have the best chance of doing the job efficiently-----”

“If I am to go,” Conan broke in again, “I must be in full command, no less. Your officers can go along, but the expedition will be mine, laid out according to my requirements. We are not talking about a mere caravan here.”

“What, a foreign vagabond? A half-baked mercenary taking command of loyal Baalur troops?” Shalmanezer curled his lip in undisguised contempt. “Are we to grant a fortune and a legion to be squandered by a stranger, who has no reason to care about our aims, and no legitimate experience?” He turned to King Aphrates in appeal, meanwhile drawing breath for more invective.

“I have commanded armies before,” Conan broke in evenly, “and I have been to the regions you intend to search for your lotus. Of all the far-travelled caravan-seers who put in here at Baalur, do you know any other who has?”

“We can always find someone else,” Shalmanezer protested. “Any seasoned traveller would know how to proceed------”

“If anyone can do it, I can,” Conan declared. “But I must have full command, with license to carry out the task as I see fit.”

“Done.”

The word was spoken abruptly, and so quietly that it was almost overlooked in the midst of the argument. Within moments, nevertheless, it brought a hush to the gallery, for it had been spoken by King Aphrates, and there was no gainsaying it.

Even so, General Shalmanezer tried. “Sire, I would caution against striking any bargains with this fellow. Such a foreign adventurer as this, a mere vagabond, is certain to misuse whatever force and wealth we may entrust to him. Do we really want him making enemies for Baalur all over the southern lands?” The general drew himself up near the throne with a scathing glance at Conan. “What’s worse, he might rob and abandon the expedition, or send our troops into needless danger. He will sell us out at his first opportunity, I guarantee it, or try to turn our men to piracy and brigandage--------”

“Enough, general,” King Aphrates said mildly, “lest you offend this fellow whom I have selected as my officer. Caspius has approved him, have you not, physician?” He turned to the sage, who bowed in respectful reply. “Conan’s reputation is most impressive, and he obviously knows how to take command of a situation. He shall rule over the expedition, even as I rule here in Baalur. Now, let us go forward and work out the details.”

Conan found himself back-stepping. “I warn you, Your Majesty, this journey we speak of could take many months, even years. The cure, if ’tis found, may arrive long past any need of it.”

“Over such a time, morale and discipline are all-important,” General Shalmanezer put in harshly. “Therefore, I insist that Captain Furio be appointed second-in-command to keep an eye on things, and that all the rest of the party’s officers be drawn from our city legion.”

“Well enough,” Aphrates peremptorily said. “Remember, speed is of the essence—and discretion as well.” He shifted his ermine-heavy shoulders, weighted too with royal cares. “For, quite aside from the health of our daughter and the comfort of our citizens, if Baalur becomes known as the locus of a plague or curse, the caravans will bypass us and diminish the trade that is our city’s lifeblood.”

“The most hopeful goal,” Conan said, “would be to return downstream before midwinter, when winter floods make the Styx too dangerous to navigate.” He took a bench-seat before the throne, gesticulating broadly as he warmed up to the idea. “To my thinking, the logical place to take ship upriver would be at Asgalun, along the sea coast. The ruler there, Mazdak, is an old fellow mercenary of mine..

They listened at last. The details of funding and provisioning required lengthy discussion and note-taking, which lasted well into evening. Through it all, Aphrates remained patient. He struck Conan as being a grave and honest leader, though the Cimmerian privately wondered whether the king was prone to assume that others shared those virtues. To all seeming, he had already been fooled once.

After a late working supper, Conan was led by a servant to a guest bedchamber opening on the inner garden; there he found Rufia awaiting him. She was clad in a flimsy informal gown and robe, as was her habit while shuttling in and out of the child’s sickroom. When he entered, she hastened into his arms. Her embrace, he sensed, was more for compassion than passion.

“Ismaia sleeps—soundly, for once,” she told him, seating herself down on the divan where he settled himself. “Just by undertaking some action, perhaps, we help her. You did agree, did you not?” She clung to his arm, murmuring feverishly in his ear. “Caspius’s plan is our only hope! It must come to pass!”

Conan glanced around at the closed door, wondering what tales the servants would bear of his intimacies with Aphrates’ wife, and what the ultimate consequences might be. But he did not shove her away. “What priestly or magical measures might be taken,” he told her, “I am not the one to say. Your husband and his counsellors laid forth a practical course, with solid men and weapons in this earthly world. And I consented to it, mayhap foolishly.”

“All the gods will bless you, Conan!” The queen bathed his brawny silk-clad shoulder with kisses. “Mitra, Dagon, Mardur, your Crom, and the decent sane lords of the Upper Sky... to battle against such a sorcerous scourge does honour to them all!”

“Do not raise your hopes too high, Rufia.” Conan used both arms to contain her worshipful ardour. “The mazes of dark gods and wizards are thorny and tangled, and can lead to a very real death. Crom and his brother gods do not often save mortals, not even the best-intentioned ones, from their own folly.”

“Oh, Conan, you can succeed! You never shirk danger, and I know you will do this now, for me and Aphrates, and for the life of our daughter!” Straining forward against Conan, she drew herself up to press kisses on his mouth.

V

Leave-taking

A fortnight later, in the broad avenue before the royal palace at Baalur, a formidable procession took shape. In the red-gold light of dawn pricked by yellow torches, three dozen cargo wagons drew up, with teams of oxen snorting and scraping in their traces. These were flanked by forty score infantry parading in formation, with two hundred cavalry clopping into place beside them. Beyond, along converging boulevards and alleys, the citizens of Baalur gathered in a dense, enthusiastic crowd.

Lucky it was that such a cause for celebration should occur just now. In recent weeks there had been little relief from terror; the sinister dream plague had continued its spread from the high nobles and officers of Baalur down to nearly every resident of the city, even lowly kitcheners and stable-hands.

The dreams that haunted these poorest citizens were not so painfully vivid, perhaps, nor so laden with dire meaning as those that troubled the aristocrats. But they were frightening enough to set the afflicted awake, gasping or crying out, and make them unable to settle down again to sleep. Commoners’ dreams as well brought glimpses of the vile but alluring witch Zeriti, rumoured to be the enchantment’s devilish source.

It so happened that, during those same troubled days and nights, the people of Baalur were called on to labour harder than ever, gathering goods and making countless preparations for the great expedition. Confronted all the more starkly by necessity, they fell to their various tasks with energy.

Though weary and exacting, the work distracted them from their fears and gave them hope. This festive morning, as high city officials addressed the crowd, faces that had long been drawn or pinched with fatigue showed smiles, even exuberance. The gathering grew, promising to turn into a day-long and night-long debauch, for, given their way, these careworn citizens of Baalur would never fall asleep again.

Conan watched from the palace portico, secretly glad to be leaving the city and its hovering curse behind. He hoped travel might lessen his troops’ chronic weariness and distraction. Yet he was troubled about what might happen here in Baalur once the cream of the civil guards and horsemen marched off under his command. The city had been sore stricken, there was no doubt of it. Now it would be weakened all the more, laid open to dangers from within and without.

At least the expedition was decently equipped. King Aphrates, as predicted, had dug deep into his royal coffers to furnish weapons, supplies, transport, and funds. The labour of local metalworkers, arrow-fletchers, tanners, cartwrights, and rope-makers had been expert and unstinting. Perhaps more important, a flurried exchange of couriers brought swift agreement from Asgalun’s King Mazdak to provide ships, crews, and naval provisions for the river-bourne leg of the journey. The foreign ruler would accept only modest payment out of respect to his old friend King Aphrates—and perhaps his older flame Rufia, Conan thought. If Mazdak’s word could be relied upon, a small flotilla would await his band after their march overland to Asgalun. The ships would be ready for the short journey southward to the mouth of the Styx, and the longer voyage upriver.

Conan knew Mazdak as a tough and clever former mercenary chief: an energetic officer, though naturally devious. Whether he could be trusted not to sabotage the mission—or merely hasten its departure, the better to weave designs of his own on Baalur, and perhaps on Rufia—Conan could not be sure. He would have to take his old henchman at his word, for the time at least.

In all this need and urgency, Conan recognized the perfect opportunity for a freelancer of his own sort—an unparalleled chance to gain wealth and renown, and to forge contacts and military loyalties, meanwhile acting in service to a wealthy king in a popular cause. It was an opening any mercenary chieftain might scheme and slay for; yet it had fallen into Conan’s lap seemingly by sheer luck and past acquaintance. The cost, as always in such ventures, would be the risk to life and fortune, and the very sizeable likelihood of failure. The main consideration as in any mercenary command, was the old law of not getting too deeply involved for personal and sentimental reasons, and not sacrificing one’s resources and life in some hopeless, vainglorious cause. When the time came to break off, as eventually it must, Conan hoped he might remember this rule, in spite of all Rufia’s tearful pleas and night-time visits.

One source of doubt was at least diminished, if not removed. Conan himself had been very little troubled by dreams during the days of preparation, and, of those he did have, he was never sure which had been sent by Zeriti and which by Crom or other benign forces. In one dream he saw again the evil teasing witch, dancing lithely half-naked before her stone altar, and behind it the dark, formless entity that she seemed to worship. But in the foreground, hemming in the altar like silver seas around a dark islet, was a field of unnaturally bright, metallic-looking flowers waving and glinting in moonlight. This vision led Conan to believe that Caspius’s silver lotus might indeed exist, and have efficacy as a cure. Perhaps there was some point to this journey after all.

While Conan brooded on the palace step, King Aphrates went forward to address the cheering crowd. “Today, my subjects,” he spoke to prompt and respectful silence, “from the depths of our dark uncertainty our best and bravest go forth. With them go our hopes, along with the arrow-points you so carefully honed, and the tent-cloths you have painstakingly woven. When the will of our just gods finally prevails, these heroes will return, to relieve our dear princess and our entire city from suffering. Keep faith intact till their victory, my subjects! Honour them and our gods, and turn your back on evil! We wish all success to our legion, to Conan and his officers. May the gods favour Baalur.” King Aphrates’s closing words were drowned then in a chorus of acclaim.

Turning aside on the palace steps, Conan eyed the royal delegation that had assembled before the citizens. Queen Rufia stood there, resplendent and dignified beside her husband, who turned resignedly away from his harvest of praise. The general-in-chief, the shaven-headed priests, Caspius the physician, and Conan’s second-in-command Furio, along with the other nobles and courtiers, all put on a brave appearance. A good many of them, though, wore talc and face paint to hide the ravages of wakeful nights and tortured slumbers.

“We’ll be off, then.” Conan spoke gruffly over the applause, hoping to keep any other dignitaries from feeling inspired to give a speech. “We should have been away before the sun. ’Tis a long march to Asgalun and the sea, with more days to be spent in preparation there.”

“Go, then. Our prayers are for your safe return before winter.” Aphrates clapped Conan’s armoured shoulder in farewell.

“Yes, go, and Godspeed,” was all Rufia said to him. Conan nodded and turned away, remembering the more heartfelt good-bye she had given him the previous night. To universal applause and a well-timed hail from the troops, he descended the broad steps into the street.

On his way to the front of the marching column, Conan drew near the sage Caspius. “Well, physician, do you still have the mad idea of accompanying us?” He loomed over the elder man, addressing him confidentially and in deadly earnest. “’Tis not too late to back out now.”

Caspius, haggard as most all of the courtiers but not obviously infirm, walked ahead determinedly. “Nay, commander, my equipment is already loaded, and my plans have not changed. I still intend to go along.”

“Are you sure?” Conan had no wish for extra problems and encumbrances on the expedition. “1 still fail to understand—what of your services to the king and queen, and to Princess Ismaia? Will the health of the court not suffer in your absence?”

The sage continued his deliberate walk. “As I have said, my various assistants are as skilled in the medical arts as I am. Regarding Princess Ismaia’s condition, I have worked out a regimen that will moderate her suffering and sustain her life as long as possible. If I were to ponder the matter another year, I do not think I could improve her chances. Her best hope lies in a cure.”

“What, then, of your advanced age and uncertain health?” Conan pressed him. “How long do you think you can survive a journey like this one?”

Looking up at Conan, Caspius smiled warily. “The question is rather, how much longer can I survive palace life in Baalur, with its dreams and dreads?” He shook his grey head. “I have travelled before, though never so far south as nethermost Stygia. I possess medical skill and supplies adequate to protect my own life, and yours as well, commander. I have an inquisitive mind, with worldly and astronomical knowledge that will aid your expedition’s progress. The king and queen have both agreed that my botanical knowledge could make a crucial difference in finding and transporting the substance we seek. They have given me leave to go with you.” He bowed his head in token submission to Conan as leader. “If, as I believe, the effects of this dream plague will ease with travel, then the journey should provide a welcome rest. I may feel younger and healthier at its end.”

Conan knew Caspius was determined, and that the physician would be of considerable use if he lived. So he yielded finally to the inevitable. “Well enough, sage, if you choose to risk what years may be left you, you can come along. I warrant that, should you keep your eyes and ears open on this trip, you’ll gain another lifetime’s worth of wisdom.”

Arriving at the head of the column, Conan leapt into his chariot. Caspius went to the first wagon behind him, to be pulled up into his seat by two teamsters.

“Caravan, ready!” Conan barked. “Officers, move them out by section. Go!”

The staccato of trumpets and rustle of drums through the marcher’s ranks was answered by a more melodious fanfare from the palace wall. Hooves clopped, harnesses jingled, drill masters barked out orders, and the front of the procession began to move. Among the watchers a frenzy of celebration commenced, with thunderous cheering and hats thrown up into the air like flocks of startled birds. Tearful women blew kisses at departing sons and lovers, and street urchins ran in hordes to follow the parade. On the palace steps King Aphrates raised a palm branch in farewell. Rufia was no longer in sight—doubtless she had already retired to keep vigil by her daughter’s bedside.

A moment later, the space ahead of his team cleared. Conan took the whip from his chariot driver and cracked it overhead, starting the four speckled geldings forward.

The march through the city went smoothly, since traffic had been banned for the day. Baalur’s main southbound avenue was easily cleared of gawkers by the cavalry vanguard. The cobbled street, roughened for the traction of horses’ hooves, threatened to shake the ox carts to pieces. Foreseeing this, Conan had assigned a crew of quartermasters to go from wagon to wagon along the route, tightening stays and securing cargo even as they rolled.

One thing he noticed: the circling vultures, which had formerly stayed over the palace and its environs, remained in sight over the city outskirts. They seemed almost to be following the tail of his procession.

Once through the high-arched southern gate where the last city officials orated, matrons flung down their last handfuls of flower petals, and the last brazen trumpets stuttered salutes, the road grew smoother. It was early summer, not yet the best season for travel overland. The high road known as the Incense Road was sometimes muddy and sunken, even swampy in places. A string of mules or camels could have passed through more easily than a full marching column. After several delays, Conan drove his chariot forward beyond the foremost body of marchers. That enabled him to pause at long intervals in high spots on or near the road and survey the moving formation.

In general it consisted of cavalry, infantry, ox wagons, a last few unlucky foot soldiers assigned to help with the wagons when they proved too bulky and baulky for the oxen, and a well-armed cavalry rearguard. Looking back now toward Baalur, where the city crested the rolling plain against a steep curtain of mountains, Conan could see a further scattering of riders and walkers, not just stray celebrants, but true camp followers carrying duffels and driving pack mules. Some southbound caravans, complete with horses and camels, had delayed their departure from Baalur long enough to travel under his army’s protection. These and others, doubtless including wayfarers, profiteers, gamblers, wives, camp hussies, and even small children, brought up the rear. They could continue shadowing his expedition all the way to the sea coast or even beyond, Conan guessed.

Ahead, the way sloped gradually downward toward the great expanse of the Shemitish plain. The lands hereabouts were well-settled farm and pasture, secure tributaries of the city-state of Baalur. Except for taxes and military conscription, the inhabitants were little affected by urban events, including the plague, which so far had not spread into the country. In his dispatch pouch Conan bore letters ordering full cooperation from the local squires and nobles should any help be needed. A lush, hospitable land stretched before them, yet he knew it would not be so all the way to Asgalun. Shem itself was far from tame, less so the hostile expanses which lay farther south and east along the River Styx.

The army’s noon rest was taken where the trail ran along a stream; there the marchers could fall out in road order and keep their relative places. Riding his stallion to the rear of the column, Conan saw troops splashing in the water, gorging on delicacies carried from home, and napping in cool shade with mouths agape. Discipline had lapsed, but the men’s condition looked good; they seemed for once to have forgotten any sorceries and plagues, so he did not take them firmly in hand— not just yet. Nor did he call their attention to something else they may have forgotten, or not yet noticed: black carrion birds circling unnaturally high over the route of the march.

Arriving at the rear, Conan ordered a part of his cavalry guard to hang back near the caravans and ragtag civilians, protect them, and keep an eye on them. He did not want rural brigands preying on the stragglers, or worse, falling in with his legion.

At length the trek resumed. It proceeded at a brisk pace till sunset. At mid-afternoon a cavalry squad was sent ahead to scout out a camp, and foragers rode off into the countryside to gather cattle, fowl, and farm produce for the legion’s supper and breakfast. Conan told his officers to forage lightly, even though no payment was required to be made here in Baalur’s territory. He trusted them to be fair with their countrymen, though he had no real control over their actions once they were out of his sight.

That night the murmur of voices, the flicker and smoke of camp fires, and the gentle lowing of draft animals brought back vivid memories of past campaigns. Conan, Caspius, and several officers perched on folding stools around a camp table, conversing, sipping mulled wine, and disposing of petty details of military business.

“Our men march ably, in spite of the spread of the dream plague through their ranks,” Caspius observed to Conan. “The exercise and practice marches you ordered must have worked.”

At Conan’s silent nod, his first officer Furio spoke up. “Our crack city troops have kept up their readiness without need of extra drill.” He was a young, vigorous man, curly haired and trimly moustached, his hollow-eyed lack of sleep barely showing above the gleam of his breastplate in the firelight. “They march of their own will, as loyal men of Baalur.”

Conan, setting down his cup, arose and faced Furio. “Even so, they need a commander, a single voice to heed without question or hesitation. And that voice is mine, captain.”

Furio nodded, his half-smile glinting in the firelight. “True enough, commander, for the time being. Our men will follow, so long as you lead them properly.”

Conan could have drubbed the man then and there, very likely killing him. Neither Caspius nor the other officers could have doubted it. Armed or unarmed, the Cimmerian had the advantage in height and girth of shoulder, in quickness and battle experience, had he wanted to teach his subordinate a lesson. Instead, out of respect to Aphrates, he spoke bluntly.

“You are General Shalmenezer’s eyes and ears in this camp. I do not doubt that you mistrust my aims and expect to overrule me when the time comes.”

Furio shrugged cavalierly. “Believe me, there are others who feel the same, and who would take my place if any harm befell me. Our wish is to complete our mission as quickly as possible.”

“Mayhap, captain.” Conan glanced around the small, tense group of officers, not bothering to study their faces. “But I warn you, where we are going, half-hearted obedience will riot be enough. Your general cannot help you any more, and carrier pigeons bearing tales to him will avail you nothing.” He gestured toward the wagons, where the birds were kept. “Your life and all our lives will depend on my word, and on prompt obedience to it.”

“That may be,” Furio said, “once we get there. But now, commander, if you will excuse me, I want to go and make sure the guards are awake.” Saluting, he turned and strode off into the night.

The camp lay quiet. Except for a few superstitious murmurs caused by the fluttering of bats at sunset, all had remained calm. Later, after moonrise, the expanse of fresh white tents murmured deeply with snores, broken only by an occasional moan of fear or incoherent cry of torment. Conan’s sleep was wary but dreamless, and on the whole, his army rested.

VI

The Shaman

In her dream, Princess Ismaia fought her way through a dense jungle. Brightly coloured birds shrilled, and buzzing insects flew up in her face as she groped to find a path. Moisture from the thick leaves streamed down her arms and soaked through her frilly nightgown. Exotic flowers with grotesquely formed blossoms larger than a human face leered down at her from the thick vines, whose long curving thorns dripped yellow venom. Meanwhile, in the branches overhead, enormous green serpents draped and coiled.

Pushing through a last tangle of vegetation, Ismaia stumbled into an open space and found a hut. It was a tiny dwelling, a rough heap of boughs and wilted leaves roped together with stringy vines. Standing before it-in the clearing was a small, crooked sapling, on whose leafless branches various objects dangled from lengths of twine: snake skins, empty snail shells, bundles of feathers and bones, and the bleached skulls of small birds and animals. From a hole in the roof of the hut, pale smoke sifted, and from the dark cavity of the doorway a hoarse chanting emanated.

Though she gave the sinister ju-ju tree a wide berth, the princess was nevertheless drawn to the mystery of the hut’s entry. Crouching down on hands and knees, she crept forward and looked inside.

In the middle of the cramped space, a small fire of twigs and bones flickered up in eerie colours. Beyond it, squatting cross-legged and sprinkling coloured powders into the flames, sat the dream witch. She was bare and dirty like a savage, her black hair clumped and tangled with yellow clay, her body wrapped in ragged scaly hides of unknown beasts. Looped around her neck and dangling over her bosom was a crude necklace made of animal claws and teeth.

Zeriti greeted the princess with a solemn nod of familiarity. “Again you come to visit me, my child. That is most gracious of you. Your Royal Highness is always welcome here.” She sneered, her teeth glinting in the firelight. “I have much to show you, much that you can learn, even in these humble lodgings.” She waved one black-nailed hand around the hovel, from whose smoky rafters limp herbs and shreds of meat dangled to dry.

“I—I did not want to come,” Ismaia told her, trying to conceal her fright. Though keeping her eyes averted, the princess noticed a large, pale scar on the woman’s chest, just below the broad green snakeskin that bound up her breasts. “I—I was lost in the jungle, trying to get back home,” the girl stammered.

“Ah, child, that is because you do not know your way around the lands of dream.” The witch-woman shook a dirty, scolding finger at Ismaia. “When you are here with me you must watch carefully and learn all you can. Then you will be mistress of this place, as I am. And maybe someday, you can be the princess of dreams.”

“I don’t want to be mistress here or princess either. I just want to go home to my mother the queen!” In spite of herself, Ismaia could not keep her eyes away from Zeriti’s wide, livid scar. It must have been a dreadful wound that made it, she thought, one that pierced straight through the woman’s thin body.

“Nonsense,” the witch said. “In your boring everyday world you will learn nothing, not even the fundamentals of magic. Fortune-telling, for instance—that is the most primitive kind of spell, known even in the remotest jungles.” As she spoke, she reached into a pouch sagging open beside her and drew out a fistful of powder, which she tossed into the fire. The flame blazed up instantly, dazzling Ismaia with its brightness and dancing, shifting colours.

The powder, Ismaia realized, had a pungent incense-like fragrance that made her feel light-headed. And the smoke did not stream up out of the chimney-hole, but hovered there in front of her. It formed a grey, shifting curtain, through which she could barely see the witch-woman’s face. In it, other shapes began to appear.

“There now, see how easy it is?” Zeriti leered through the dancing curtain. “Of course, the first question every young girl asks is: who will I marry? Watch the smoke, in it I can see the answer... as you can, even though some of the symbols may be unfamiliar to you. The signs tell me that it will be someone powerful. Ah, yes, a being of more importance than you can possibly imagine! Someone tall, very tall... and handsome, too! He will be young, though, even younger than you are, because he is not born yet... or rather, reborn. But he will be a full-sized man, because he is old and young at the same time—far older, in fact, than the world you live in. There now, doesn’t that make a delightful riddle?”

As the witch simpered on, Ismaia could see the cabbalistic whorls of smoke receding and forming into an image. It was a deep cavity, like a mineshaft or a grave, with a stone door in its bottom. As she watched, the door began to open. Beyond lay a dark void, blacker than the charcoals at the edge of the fire. But in it something was stirring, rushing toward her and becoming clearer.

“He is approaching now, can you see him?” Zeriti asked breathlessly. “He would make a rare catch for any bride—and you, of all maidens, are to be offered to him! A virgin princess, after all, is the only fitting gift for one so mighty! There, see, isn’t he beautiful? But do not fret and pine for him, my child—you do not have to wait much longer, not even for a single year to run its course. You will go to him very soon!”

Staring into the smoke, Ismaia watched the tiny figure approach and accelerate. She began to distinguish its particular shape and features. A moment later, she screamed out and clutched about her for something solid—the skirts of her mother, who sat on the edge of her bed. With the hut, the fire, and the witch spinning and dissolving around her, she shrieked and clung, hurtling out of the country of dream.

Seven

Marching Order

Conan decreed strenuous marches, intending to keep his troops’ minds occupied and their bodies tired. His legion rose before dawn, regardless of weather, and travelled long. They slogged through heat and rain-showers alike and paused only briefly for meals, even in the driest, dustiest noons.

Given the urgency of their mission, the soldiers did not complain overmuch. And insofar as they did, their grousings and grumblings were preferable to vague apprehensions about witchery and the unknown dangers that lurked ahead. During their late and hasty bivouacs, as a refreshing change from palace life, the sentries kept awake and the soldiers slept. Their relative contentment led Caspius to remark to Conan, “Hard toil is the best narcotic.”

The way remained passable, the Incense Road being a major trade route through northern Shem. It was so named, legends said, because the very dust of the road smelled of spice and fragrances spilled from northbound caravans. But Conan’s men swore the only incense their noses could detect was that of pulverized ox and camel dung.

There was no dearth of traffic on the road; the expedition met one or two caravans each day, as well as other smaller parties. All lesser bands were invariably muscled aside, taking a resented or well-appreciated rest during the dust-choked hour or so it took Conan’s sizeable force to lumber past.

Many of their own camp followers found the pace too exhausting and were left by the wayside, presumably to turn back with the northbound parties. A few managed to keep within the protective range of Conan’s cavalry. There was little trouble with brigands, given their company’s size and armament, and the fact that King Aphrates’ efficient governance extended a good way south and east.

Yet in time their route passed through lands that were ill-settled at best and sparsely cultivated, if at all. Forests closed in on the road, which soon narrowed to a mere wagon track. The troop formations were forced to straggle out more thinly, and communication from one end of the column to the other was impeded. In such stretches, Conan kept a mount saddled and ready behind his chariot. He rode near the column’s centre, between the main body of foot soldiers and the lead wagons bearing most of the gold and weapons, so as to be apprised quickly of any emergencies and be able to react swiftly.

Even so there was seldom any alarm, aside from a broken axle or a horse mauled by a bear. Forage grew sparse among the trees, and the band had to supplement their catch of game, including the bear and horse, with some of the supplies carried in the train. But that only made the ox carts lighter and speeded them along.

After days of wild terrain, the rolling forest began to level out. Caspius, riding toward the front of the column in the chariot with Conan, had been complaining bitterly about the lack of civilization here in Shem’s hinterland. Then, abruptly, he exclaimed at the view which opened out before them.

“A castle, by Mitra! And a fine, tall one! So there is after all a refuge for nobility and culture here in the wilderness.”

Conan, hearing the physician’s remark, burst out with a cynical laugh. “Aye, ’tis fine and noble, all right! A finer thieves’ roost I never saw!” Motioning the column to a stop, he lashed his chariot team up onto a crest beside the road.

“It is the furthest outpost claimed by the city-state of Nedrezzar,” Conan said, glancing at his unrolled parchment map. “To avoid their road tolls, most caravans detour three or four leagues eastward to where the river can be forded. With our wagons that would be inconvenient.”

The bastion before them rose on a low stone outcrop forming the far bank of a tree-lined river. Where water pooled at the base of the rock, the road ran out on a causeway through reedy shallows; then it angled upward over a bridge with three stone arches, to come ashore close under the castle’s wall.

“No great matter to us,” Caspius ventured, eyeing the battlemented pile. “Baalur has not warred against Nedrezzar in a century or so, and the road tolls should not be any problem. Surely we provided well enough for that in our planning.”

“No problem indeed,” Conan said, “so long as they don’t want half our cargo and wagons as their toll. The Nedrezzim have a reputation of being sharp dealers, and that is something noteworthy in Shem.” He signalled to the officers who had drawn up beside his chariot. “Captain Furio, have them assemble the hardware in that lead wagon. Advance the quarrellers’ light detachment as well.”

“Is that really necessary, commander?” Furio, to the veiled notice of the other officers, did not immediately rein his horse around to convey the order. “Mightn’t such a display of force provoke a needless fight?”

“Weakness provokes fights, captain,” Conan snapped, giving Furio short shrift. “Convey the order.”

Not waiting to see his officers comply, he lashed the chariot team down the knoll and back onto the road. A brisk command started the foremost of the foot soldiers marching. The chariot rolled forward at their head, creating an impressive show.

Some moments later they rumbled out onto the causeway. The castle rose across a broad expanse of river scattered with bright green lily pads. Faint trumpet calls sounded, and there was a stirring atop the castle wall, particularly along the battlements of the large round tower near the middle. The castle’s entry gate was invisible, lying very likely at the top of a road that curved away out of sight. There were also hurried movements around a building at the farther end of the stone bridge—a mere toll station, not enough of a bastion in itself to keep an armed force from crossing.

“For a toll road, this one is poorly maintained,” Caspius remarked.

True enough; as they rumbled out onto the causeway the chariot wheels began to jolt and bounce in potholes along the gravelled stretch.

“A poor road, aye. Poor enough to be dangerous.” Conan indicated the reedy shallows at either side of the causeway, where broken wheels and the half-sunken frames of carts stuck up out of the mire. He signalled the officers marching behind him. “Infantry halt, but stand ready!” he bellowed back over his shoulder.

Once they rolled up onto the stone bridge, the irregular jolting gave way to a steady rattling of cobbles under the metal-shod wheels. As they reached the top of the span, a troop of eight cavalry rode out from the other side to confront them.

“Halt instantly, in the name of the City and State of Nedrezzar!”

The leader, from some distance away, spoke loudly in arrogant Pelishti. He was an aristocrat—young, but just possibly the chief officer of the fort. His armour matched the uniform of the regular military riders except for the purple plume atop his helmet, the gold sheen on his breastplate, and the polished gold lozenges of his armour-studded kilt. In his hand he waved a lion-headed mace, more a symbol of rank than a weapon; his troopers bore everyday lances and shields, with long sabres buckled at their waists. “I am Erskar, commandant of the North Frontier. Retire your forces at once.”

Conan had already reined in his chariot team as the horsemen clattered up. “If you are here to collect tolls,” he suggested, “be aware that none are required of us.” From the dispatch pouch looped over the chariot’s rail, Caspius had produced a rolled parchment adorned with a red wax seal, which he passed to his commander.

“I am Conan of Cimmeria, appointed expeditionary commander of Baalur. My company travels westward to the sea on a special mission from King Aphrates, your neighbour and ally. The king authorized me to invoke the hospitality of his brother states in the Shemitish Union.” Glancing at his riders, who had drawn up on either side in a solid phalanx, the officer Erskar proclaimed, “No tolls will be demanded of you.” With his lion-headed sceptre he waved the parchment deprecatingly aside. “That is because your passage is denied. Retire from here, and do not again violate Nedrezzar’s border.”

“Now then, commandant,” Caspius put in placatingly, while Conan scowled in puzzlement. From the dispatch pouch, the physician produced a purse of heavy coin which he clanked audibly in one hand. “If some contribution, for bridge upkeep, say, is required, that should not be any real obstacle. Our sole wish is to pass westward unmolested and leave your district as swiftly as possible——”

“You cannot pass,” Erskar reiterated with a purple-plumed head shake. “Here nor elsewhere, now nor ever.” He waved his baton at the Baalur infantry standing ready on the far end of the causeway. “You think me foolish enough, for a fistful of gold, to admit a force that could despoil my lands and trouble my command? This bridge is made for commerce, not invasion.” Conan, restraining his exasperation, spoke with gruff calm. “Our force is well-disciplined, Erskar, and our intent is peaceable. If you give us entry, we will not disturb your troops or take from your farmers without fair payment. We are bound for Asgalun, there to be received by King Mazdak on a mission of mercy and relief.”

“An ill-omened mission, to be sure,” the commandant replied with a glance upward at the buzzards circling high overhead. “Has your presence here aught to do with the plague that struck Baalur, the mysterious malady that so many wish to flee?”

“We are not fleeing,” Caspius protested, “but riding

in search of a cure------”

“Yet the sickness has infested your ranks, has it not?” demanded Erskar. “I like not the look of your men, even from here. Would you have me open the frontier to plague carriers, to spread the contagion in our country? Away with you Baaluri, and your poxes and blights!” He reined his horse half-around. Waving his sceptre broadly overhead, he elicited some kind of response atop the castle’s round central turret. “Begone, I say,” he repeated, turning back. “Do not trespass, or this is what you may expect.”

From afar came a loud, twanging report. An instant later a rushing noise sounded overhead, passing toward the rear. As they turned, the chariot riders saw a fan of water shoot up from the pond close alongside the causeway. The spray plumed out in the breeze, wetting the foremost ranks of the troops who stood waiting on the road.

The catapult ball had undoubtedly been loosed from the tower; whether it had been aimed to miss or scatter Conan’s footmen was anyone’s guess.

“There, you see,” Erskar bragged, signalling his horsemen away. “To trespassers like yourselves, yon causeway means death. I can hurl darts and burning oil onto this span as well, so do not attempt to cross.” Wheeling, he galloped away with his troops even as Conan, reversing his team, backed the chariot against the low curb of the bridge and accomplished a narrow about-face.

While jolting back, Caspius remarked, “It does not sound as if he is holding out for a better bribe.”

“No,” Conan agreed seriously. “His fear of plague may be genuine, not knowing, as we do, that the malady is a local curse. More likely, he thinks our expedition is a ruse for an attack—mayhaps joint treachery, with Asgalun driving in from the west. Be-like he rails against the plague only to conceal his weakness.”

“He did not seem weak to me,” Caspius observed. “Aye,” Conan said, “but even lodged in his castle, he is isolated here on the border. His rulers in Nedrezzar cannot have failed to notice the recent spate of messengers between our nations, and the two kings’ hasty preparations, which they may construe as invasion plans. Erskar, like any good officer, is putting on a show of strength to deter us.”

“What shall we do to persuade him, then? Is our baggage train too cumbersome to move upriver?”

“No need for that, at least not yet.” Steering his team to avoid the holes in the road, Conan shrugged. “We shall put his fears to rest,” he said.

Ahead of them, the foot troops had retired a dozen steps to clear the causeway. Now, rolling between them, Conan instructed the officers to march them back to the nearest trees and wait, screened out of sight of the castle. If riders came in pursuit, they were to hold them off and send back an alarm.

When the chariot arrived at the wagons, blows of hammer and axe already resounded from the nearby copse. Heavy construction was under way beside the road. Metal fittings carried in the cargo of the lead wagon had been used to join adzed timbers together. And, from a nearby stream bed, heavy stones were being dragged up by oxen and horse teams yoked to rope slings.

“Excellent,” Conan said, pulling up next to the awkward-looking timber crane that had taken shape with such speed. “Attach the spare axles and wheels, so that we may trundle it down the road.”

More minutes of hewing, wedging, and spiking were followed by bovine snorts and the scuff of hooves. A dozen horsemen affixed ropes to the gawky six-wheeled contrivance and hauled it forward, with other animals roped on behind to keep it from escaping down the incline. The partly laden wagon followed, heavy with stones; and behind it the cavalry. Conan, with Caspius still in his chariot, led the way, pausing only to instruct the captain of the light detachment.

“Send your quarrellers out at wide intervals, a dozen paces at the least. They can shelter along the edge of the causeway and behind the bridge abutment. But keep them off the span, and do not let them clump together. Their target is the battlement, especially the round tower.”

As the wheeled engine rumbled out of the trees onto the riverbank, infantrymen ran forward to manhandle it off the road. Conan indicated a flat space where it was rolled into place, aligned with the castle.

“There,” he said. “Now knock off the wheels and spike her around. These forged bindings and fresh-cut timbers will give us ample range, better than anything they can mount on yon tower.”

As he spoke, the heavy frame thudded into place on the greensward. Stones were dragged and trundled forward, the larger ones strung up in a net of heavy ropes to serve as a counterweight. The smaller boulders, scarcely larger than a man’s head, were stacked nearby for ammunition. The drag line was hauled back, levelling the great boom and raising the net of heavy stones. Meanwhile, the quarrellers set out along the causeway.

“They have not opened up bombardment yet,” Conan remarked to Caspius, stepping up beside the chariot. “That is because they cannot reach this spot; the pits and wreckage along the causeway stop well short of us. Unless, perhaps, they have a heavier catapult in reserve.”

“See there,” Caspius said, “they are trying to feather our men on the bridge.”

Spurts of dust and faint splashes could be seen along the sparse line of runners, as arrows skimmed the road and pelted into the swamp. Conan saw none of his skirmishers fall—until, at a hoarse shout from their officer and a blast from his trumpeter, they all sank down into the fringe of weeds that lined the road embankment. The foremost quarrellers crouched beside the bridge, as ordered; now, at the men’s own convenience, their barrage commenced. Heavy crossbows were levelled and primed, goat’s-foot levers ratcheted back, and targets selected. The sharp twanging could be heard at random intervals; the hits made by the small, square-headed quarrels could not be seen, but it was evident from the sudden stir and prompt vacancy along the parapet that they were having an effect.

“Good, then, our own catapult is ready,” Conan said. “Loose!”

At the ensuing crash and groan of timber, most of the nearby troops flinched, afraid the war-engine might hurl itself to pieces. Yet the long boom rocked to a quivering halt overhead, and the missile could faintly be seen streaking toward the castle.

They all watched... and saw nothing further. Upon the common realization that the stone had flown out of sight over the castle wall, a cheer went up.

“Nay, do not adjust the stop-bar,” Conan instructed. “Instead try a heavier stone.”

The second shot struck the near comer of the castle wall with a faint crack, raising a thin shimmer of dust from the parapet. It did no visible damage, but must have dismayed the defenders. “Spike the engine a hair to the right,” Conan commanded, and with pry bars and tackles the men set to work.

Meanwhile the fort’s catapult opened up. A shot struck the causeway, rebounding over the heads of the crouching crossbowmen. Then after a brief interval, a second shot fell into the mire of the river bank, spattering some of the browsing oxen with mud.

“They have a well-trained crew,” Conan observed to Caspius. “But it must be a light weapon, if they can recharge it so fast. I doubt they can muster up more range.”

As he spoke, his own catapult discharged again. It struck the castle wall below and beside the round tower, causing one of the crenellated teeth to crack and slump down from the battlement. The watching soldiers’ cheering and dancing became frenzied.

“Enough play now, rogues,” Conan ordered, “and back to work! Choose a good round, smooth missile for this flight!”

The shot from the tower, delayed rather longer this time, splashed harmlessly into the river. It was followed

by another that merely dented the mud and rolled up onto the sand bank. “They have found their limit,” Conan confided to Caspius. “They may be dead accurate on the causeway, but they cannot touch us here ashore.”

With a thud and a shudder, their own missile hurtled toward the castle. It flew out of sight, its fall marked by an audible crash and by echoing yells atop the tower.

“A hit, a direct hit!” Caspius shouted in exultation. “Did we destroy their catapult?” ;

Bounding up into the chariot, Conan grinned. “There is one way to find out!” Raising his whip, he lashed the team forward. “You men, keep up your barrage until we ' are well across.” As he thundered up onto the road, he called to his officers: “Cavalry to the fore, Captain Furio, then infantry and wagons! If I do not turn back before the bridge, you may lead the charge.”

This time they rolled onto the causeway at full gallop, bouncing high at every shot-hole. The castle’s artillery hurled no projectiles at them, a sure proof that the weapon had been smashed or dismounted. Arrows fell on the road; one or two even glanced off the leather barding on the horses’ backs. But these missiles lacked force, and the archers were likely hampered by the more powerful crossbows twanging efficiently at them from the roadside.

“We shall cross the bridge this time, with Crom’s luck,” Conan said grimly. “The question remains, what to do once we are over?” Glancing aside to Caspius, who stood white-faced gripping the chariot rail, he added, “Too bad, old fellow. If you do not like these antics, you should have waited behind for the wagons.” Furio’s cavalry, true to temperament, could not be restrained long; as Conan’s chariot rolled up onto the bridge, frantic hooves were already drumming the roadway a few dozen paces behind him. Their disobedience was fortunate, he knew, since they provided more tempting targets to the castle archers. One or two wounded men slumped low in their saddles, yet galloped on, their mounts caught up in the frenzy of the charge. Behind them ran the quarrellers, racing through the dust clouds to gain better fighting positions; while from the rear, in a teeming mass, came the infantry. And still the catapult behind them pecked patient holes in the castle parapet.

The toll house on the far bank had already been vacated. Wheeling around it, Conan left Caspius and his horse team in concealment from the castle wall. Arming himself with a bow and quiver from the weapons boot, he strode off to direct the cavalry, who were arriving and milling before the high battlements. All the horsemen carried bows, most having strung them before the charge. Already the shafts flying upward outnumbered those that came down from the loopholes.

“Enough! Hold your arrows, but stand ready.” The artillery barrage, faithful to his order, had ceased. Now Conan waited, glaring to see whether the defenders would likewise halt their target-plucking. In moments a trumpet stuttered forth a command, which he took to be a cease-fire.

“You may as well give up your assault,” Erskar’s voice rang down from the battlement as the commandant himself came into view. “For the moment you may have forced the bridge, but our fort is still impregnable, and we still control the road! When those ungainly wagons try to cross,”—he pointed beyond the infantry, who were moving onto the bridge—“we can easily pick off your draft animals. You will never pass!”

“Try it, and you will lose more archers than we do oxen.” Conan waved to indicate his quarrellers, who were taking up sheltered positions around the bridge. “But see, Erskar, I have more to do than stand here and argue—or build more engines and lay siege to your outpost! All I wish is to use the Incense Road. Let us past without further trouble, and we will be gone from your territory within two days. Tell your leaders that I offer King Aphrates’ gratitude to the City and State of Nedrezzar. They will praise the wisdom of your choice.”

“I warn you, commander,” Erskar said, “if your words conceal some sly treachery...” His voice trailing off inaudibly, the commandant turned away and disappeared from the parapet.

Several moments later he was back. “Well enough, then,” he announced in a casual, arrogant way. “Have your whole pox-eaten band out of sight by mid-afternoon, and take your vultures with you!” He waved his baton upward. “Else we’ll unloose arrows and bedevil you with raids.”

“Agreed.” Conan waved his bow on high, a flourish of accord, since this slinking Nedrezzi hound would never trust him close enough for a handshake. “But remember, the caravaners and others who follow are under our protection. There will be no tolls and no thievery.”

If Erskar gave any answer, it was not audible. Instead, with an ungracious nod, he vanished again from the parapet.

Conan made his cavalry tie up their horses beyond sight of the castle and march back with their bows. Meanwhile, the infantry crossed the river uninterrupted, followed by the wagons. Last came the unwieldy catapult, partly dismantled and hauled by spare drays. As the camp followers straggled across, Conan gradually dispersed his watching troops.

When they marched clear of the castle, albeit trailing a strong rear guard, the troops struck up a light-hearted victory song. Losses had been nothing, no more than a few minor wounds; indeed, their march had scarcely been delayed. Furio, in leading the cavalry charge, had upheld his status with the men. But by initially opposing Conan, he had weakened himself. Henceforth the legion would look to the Cimmerian as leader.

Two days later, they passed the frontier outpost on Nedrezzar’s southern border. It was an ill-kept cylindrical tower in a low, rugged pass. When they rode past, no life showed about the yard. No tolls were demanded, and no door or window was as much as unbarred. Except for a wisp of smoke from the chimney, the place seemed uninhabited.

VIII

Asgalun

Where the expedition wound its way down among the Libnun hills, the Western Ocean seemed to stretch away to the brink of the world. Few of the troops from Baalur had seen this sight. It gave them an inkling of conquest, a merest hint of the immensities that lay ahead.

But scenery was soon forgotten in the toil of restraining the wagons on the steep downward track. Conan, making his restless team hold back his chariot, waited impatiently for a glimpse of Asgalun’s seaport sprawl. He wondered whether he might have to unleash bows and catapults against that city as well, and make his entry by storm.

But the town’s welcome seemed sincere. From the moment the marchers trudged into the fish-smelling slums that lay outside the city walls, they were provided with an escort of the king’s finest cavalry. Conan recognized the officer who greeted him as one of Mazdak’s former mercenary lieutenants, outfitted now as captain of a posh and prosperous city guard. The gate stood open for the travellers, and within, where the buildings crowded more densely, foot soldiers stood ready to hold back the citizens, who waved and shouted their welcome in a dozen tongues.

Conan hoped, in any event, that they were shouts of welcome; he did not let his expedition tarry long enough to find out for certain. He knew these folk of Asgalun as an unruly lot, divided into factions and ever fond of riot and disorder. If they feared catching a plague from his men, it could turn out to be a danger... or yet a positive advantage. His troops might easily acquire more diseases here than they gave. He must see his band lodged safely in the city, and without overmuch contact with the locals during their stay, which, above all else, must be brief.

The town itself looked prosperous. Formerly a place of squalid hovels, rank ruins, and splendid palaces, swept over periodically by fire and riot, it now benefited from several years of firm and uninterrupted rule. Much of the rubble had been rebuilt into fresh tenements, while elsewhere new shops and temples rose. The old Outer City had been walled in like the inner one, with vigorous new slums spreading beyond. And the improvements to the river channel brought in wealth from the sea.

King Mazdak himself met the expedition at the Square of Adonis, cleared of ruins now and repaved. The tall Hyrkanian had grown no visible fat since his mercenary days, but had had new rich armour forged nevertheless—ornately figured mirror-plate steel inlaid with yellow gold. He retained his dashing appearance, sitting astride his black stallion at the head of a company. His hawk-nosed Hyrkanian features looked imperious under his gold-spired helmet, with a scimitar at his waist and his cloak of white silk rippling from broad shoulders—a soldier-king, fit ruler for a city of turbulent, scheming partisans.

“Conan, you perambulating rogue!” Swinging down lightly from his charger, Mazdak sprang aboard the chariot the Cimmerian rode with Caspius. “What far-roving quest are you off on now?”

“In search of lotus, Mazdak, as you well know,” Conan answered in good humour. “The rare blossom that takes men far from their origins, or out of this world entirely.”

“Lotus, aye,” Mazdak reached to his pouch, evidently by habit, to scatter coins to the teeming crowd. “I myself never fancied the weed, seeing what it can do to a fellow. But I remember the lengths you and I used to go to in pursuit of real treasures, such as gold and glory and revenge! Those were the days, were they not?” “Aye, lean times but lively.” Conan snatched a silver coin from the king’s fingers and held it up in the sunlight for inspection. “That was before your face was on the money.”

Mazdak laughed heartily. “And Rufia,” he said, shifting topics abruptly. “You come here at her bidding, so I have heard. She made herself queen, what think you of that? Is she still as handsome as ever? Curse my folly, to lose such a wench as that at gambling. She could have been queen of Asgalun, sitting proudly at the foot of my throne.”

“More likely lording over it. Such is her way with her so-called rulers.” Conan shot a judicious glance at the physician Caspius, who stood to gain an earful.

“Letting you run off with her was a mistake. But anyway,” he added good-naturedly, “give her my regards when next you see her. If indeed you ever return from this overambitious junket of yours.”

As they spoke, their chariot clattered over the stone-bridged canal that served as a moat for the Inner City, and trundled beneath a gate that rivalled the one in the city’s outer wall. Within, the travellers were greeted with trumpets and enthusiasm, for the king of Asgalun rode in their van, and the nobles and priests of the privileged district were eager to show their loyalty. Between palaces, granaries, and temple porticoes where Conan had once seen wildfires quenched by blood, and boulevard trees where bodies had hung like over purpled fruit, the procession made its triumphal way.

“So this is the reward of a mercenary chief,” Conan could not help but remark. “No more do we creep into the palace district by secret ways. Now it is laid open for us with cheering throngs and temple dancers. But do these Asgalunim really let a Hyrkanian rule them?”

Mazdak laughed. “Better, really, than if I were of one of the local parties. They see a foreigner as being an impartial judge of their squabbles. The puppet king Ezreth, whom I first installed, died promptly of the unlimited drink—a grand-nephew of dead King Uriaz, he was—so they let me take the throne without too much rebellion.” The Hyrkanian shrugged. “Kingship is not so hard to achieve, really, not if you are a clever gambler, and proof against sword-thrusts.” He thumped his gold-chased chest plate. “You must try it sometime.”

Amid the bustle and the improvements, Conan saw familiar landmarks, in particular a tall, thin tower that now leaned precariously from a crooked section near its middle. “That is where mad King Akhirom died, is it not?”

“Aye,” Mazdak nodded, “from there the lunatic tried to fly like a bird to convince the angry mob of his godhead, after Zeriti poisoned him and drove him mad. I leave the unsightly thing standing as a monument, a reminder to the Asgalunim of the sort of kings that preceded me. It is a hazard, though. It should be thrown down, like its former owner.”

Mazdak directed them around the central palace to the harbour front side. The grounds were in excellent repair but less opulent-looking than Conan might have expected, with more attention given to battlements than banners, and to guard posts than gardens—a mercenary captain’s eye for décor. But it did not strike Conan as being particularly threatening, just disciplined.

Conversely, Mazdak obviously had little fear of him and his paltry thousand. His chariot clattered to a halt in the waterfront plaza, with the long train of wagons and troops trailing up the broad avenue inland.

“Good, then, you have brought us straight to the ships.” Conan scanned the thicket of masts riding in the river harbour. “Which ones are ours?”

“But say, old friend, I had looked forward to a leisurely day or two of carousal. Are you not eager to make an inventory of my harem first? Surely business can wait.”

“Alas, Mazdak, time is our greatest enemy. I want to load ships today and tomorrow if we can, and sail with the next favourable tide. But that depends on whether your vessels and crews are ready.”

“Never fear, Conan, all is provided for. But first, can we not at least dine? When your legion’s approach was reported to me, I ordered a luncheon to be laid in the Emerald Hall and inner court.” After alighting, Mazdak urged Conan toward the palace. “Anyway, you must meet Guliazar, my minister of naval commerce and my most able pilot. He can steer you on the eastward leg of your journey, and smooth over any difficulties you may have from Stygian officials.”

“Greetings, Your Majesty, and your lordship—Conan, is it? I am most pleased to serve you.” The minister Guliazar, hurrying down from the palace entry, bowed humbly to both men. He was short, stocky, and amply moustached, clad in silken blouse and pantaloons, pointed slippers and a fez. “Fear not,” he assured Conan, “I know the currents and channels of the Styx like the veins of my own wrist.” He lifted an embroidered cuff from one manicured, long-nailed hand in demonstration. “I will guide you as far as the river is navigable.”

Yielding to hospitality, Conan fell into discussion of the river’s extent and politics with the two men. There followed a generous repast, with most of the foot soldiers dining outdoors, by turns. Conan left a mere token guard with the wagons, but he placed Mazdak’s wine supply under strict watch, and forbade the servants to breach more than six casks. Then the animals were fed and groomed, and the broad palace fountain was made accessible to the troops for laundry and bathing. Afterwards, Mazdak and Guliazar took Conan aboard an eight-oared launch for a harbour. tour.

“I have set aside four dahabiyahs as your main haulers,” Mazdak said from astern. “River craft, but seaworthy enough to cruise down the coast to Styx-mouth in most weather. With them, I can furnish you several smaller craft for dispatches, trade and foraging, to scout out river channels, and so forth.

“Will they carry the horses safely?” Conan asked, standing up in the bow. “My cavalry is needed for the upland trek.” He examined the dahabiyahs riding level at anchor—four of the broad-waisted, barge-like craft, each built with a sturdy-pointed prow, square cabin aft, and two tall lateen-rigged masts fitted with wide-spreading booms. As the launch cruised past, the brown, turbaned crews grinned and waved from the rail.

“Why, yes, lordship,” Guliazar volunteered. “Each ship can carry a good three hundred passengers, with cargo. But stalls can easily be set up for animals instead. You will not be taking the oxen, I presume? Camels are easily obtained in the southern lands.”

“Indeed.” Conan doubted that the dahabiyahs, however broad-beamed, would carry three hundred in decent conditions; but there were four of them, adequate for his troops. “Mazdak, you may keep our wagons and ox teams, with thanks for your help. But what about a warship? I wanted a swift vessel for protection against pirates, one with eighty oars or more.”

Mazdak nodded. “I think you will be pleased with what I saved for you.” As he spoke, their launch pulled around the raised prow of the fourth riverboat, and the king of Asgalun nodded past Conan to a fifth vessel lying low and sleek in the water.

It resembled an Argossean penteconter, long and straight-hulled. A deck that amounted to little more than a broad catwalk ran its entire length, raised less than the height of a man above the water. It bore two masts. However, they were not stepped in place, but secured lengthwise along the walkway in battle position, with sails lying in bundles amidships. At the bow and stem rose the highest parts of the ship, wedge-shaped fighting platforms braced against the dragon-figured main stem and the high-arching tail. At the bow, just below the magical beast’s fanged, double-tongued head, a sturdy bronze ram extended beneath the blue, lapping water.

“’Tis a Barachan ramship, designated a centireme. There are benches and oars for a hundred men, but sixty or seventy can drive her through the water at battle speed, should the others choose to fight.”

“Excellent, Mazdak,” Conan beamed back at his host. “She looks to be a match for any Stygian revenue cutter”—he turned forward, squinting—“and could even pass for one, with a little dressing up. Well-made for towing ships off a sandpit, or driving away pirates.” Mazdak laughed. “If pirates come for you, they’ll want that ship most of all! But I doubt they’ll ever take her.”

Conan reached up and slapped the yellow-scaled trunk of the figurehead as his launch glided past. “Not with crack archers aboard, and mayhap some artillery...”

By dusk, the ships had been towed to the docks for loading. The men worked under torchlight with help from Mazdak’s stevedores, and the sounds of timber-sawing and shipwrights’ mallets echoed night-long as stalls and shelters were erected on deck. Other sounds, the lowing of beasts and the quartermasters’ gruff shouts, continued the following day and night as, working in shifts, the troops completed the loading and provisioning and made places for themselves on the decks.

Conan oversaw the operation principally by way of his officers, keeping himself out of sight as much as possible. He wanted to avoid any embarrassment to himself and Mazdak, should one of Asgalun’s wharf side idlers happen to recognize him as Amra, the once-notorious pirate of the southern coast. The legend of Amra had faded over the years, and most eyewitnesses to his exploits were probably dead by now; yet even so, such a rumour might cause ferment in Asgalun and estrange his royal host.

“So you really plan to sail by dawn?” Mazdak asked him as they idled on the palace battlement overlooking the wharves. “I will not take your unseemly haste as a reproof of my hospitality, but rather as proof of the urgency of your task.”

“Aye, Mazdak,” Conan said, “I mean you no slight, after all your help. But a job like this must be done swiftly if it is to be done at all. Delays aplenty will offer themselves, but to hold such a force as mine together, and to conserve our strength and supplies, the momentum has to be kept up.”

“Frankly,” Mazdak said, “I cannot imagine, even as a footloose mercenary, undertaking such a journey myself. But should you succeed at it, and return eventually to Baalur, I have an even better proposition for you: make yourself general-in-chief of the city, as Aphrates would no doubt be happy to name you, bind him into a tighter alliance with me, as Rufia would doubtless approve, and together we can set forth to conquer all of Shem for our two city-states! We’d attack Nedrezzar from two sides first, roll up all the other coastal towns, then march eastward into the desert.”

Conan laughed heartily. “An ambitious plan, Mazdak! But first, before Shem, I have a river to conquer.”

The self-made king nodded. “Well enough, old friend. But promise me, if you survive this trek and return by water, you’ll put in here along the way. We’ll bend an elbow together, refurbish your expedition, and have more boon companionship.”

IX

The Black Highway

“We are in the Styx estuary,” the pilot Guliazar declared. Standing beside Conan in the stern of the ramship, he waved a plump hand to indicate the dark expanse of bay surrounded by green delta. “You can feel the weight of the river working against the waves, and the ship drags heavier in the water.”

Not far from the curly-bearded Pelishti, two shaven-headed steersmen leaned on the helves of the long stem sweeps. Though the stout oars were roped to the rails with adjustable tackles, the two stood ready, gauging the pressure of the sea against the blades. On the benches in the waist of the ship, a hundred lubberly Shemitish infantry sat talking, dozing, and gambling. With oars indrawn, they rested and let the canvas sails swell and strain overhead to ease them through the water.

To Conan’s sea-sense, Guliazar’s words seemed true. The waves washing under the centireme’s starboard quarter, though brisk, were blunt-topped and darker-hued than clean open sea. Inshore, spreading along the low coastal hills was a dense band of swampy green instead of a line of white breakers.

One of the sailors swung himself over the rail, bent low, and ladled up a dipperful of water, which he raised to his lips. “‘Tastes brackish, sires, not salty,” he reported.

“Good, then,” Guliazar said. “We can tack immediately and hug the north bank. All the coastal traders who head upriver do the same. The currents are slower, it’s easier to make headway, and the sea wind blows steady.” He turned to give the order, but Conan stopped him.

“Not just yet, Guliazar,” the Cimmerian said. “Mud-banks lie along this shore, and there are isles and inlets where pirates may lurk. ’Tis better to stand out in open water and see clearly what lies ahead.”

“Surely we have little to fear from pirates, milord, with a thousand swords at the ready, and this ample fleet my king has furnished.” Guliazar, though respectful by well-learned habit, obviously thought he knew far more than his commander. “In any case,” he added, sounding hurt, “I know the river well enough to avoid shoals.”

“Aye, pilot,” Conan growled, wishing to humour the fellow if not heed him overmuch. “But can you speak as surely for the last ship in our line, which could be lost or strike a snag?” He gestured astern, where the four white-sailed dahabiyahs stretched out behind them like sea birds scavenging in the wake of a shark. “Such a mischance would scatter our force and cost us time, at the very least.”

Conan did not want to add that Furio and the other untested officers, placed by necessity aboard the sailing vessels, might, in an emergency, respond tardily or not at all. He had spread most of Guliazar’s fifty or so sailors, rugged-looked sea dogs all, among the four cargo ships to prevent mishaps. Aboard the stemmost, he had left Furio with venerable Caspius to keep an eye on him. But a fractious Shemitish officer, backed by two hundred-odd armed troops, could overrule any sailing-master or sage.

“Very well, milord, if that be your wish.” Guliazar seemed glumly resigned to serving under a stubborn landsman. “But remember, you have more to fear from Stygian patrols along the far banks than from pirates along this one. The Set-worshippers have some fair-sized dromons cruising these waters. They make it their business to levy taxes on cargoes and confiscate whole ships and crews.”

They sailed out into the broad bay of the river mouth, letting green-fringed Shem dwindle to low barrens behind them. Ahead, ever more clearly as the sun edged toward the west, they could make out the coast of Stygia, its rank swampy delta rising to a desert interior and the knobbed, contorted shapes of distant hills. A walled coastal city took shape before them, a sinister dark pile squatting under a smear of grey smoke that hung above the windless delta.

Black-walled Khemi: ancient spiritual home to the priesthood of Set, the fearsome serpent god of the Stygians. There, dark-robed acolytes hissed chants and made sacrifices in ageless catacombs buried deep beneath the bedrock of the lofty royal tombs. In Khemi, so it was whispered, the vast bronze city gates were shut up tight at dusk, and hungry temple pythons roved free by night to scour the streets of sinners and unbelievers.

“If the River Styx is truly the embodiment of the serpent god,” Guliazar said, “then yonder headland is its fang.” He pointed south to a fortified peninsula that breasted the sea. “And black Khemi is its never-closing eye.”

Sails were few in the broad bay, though Conan made out a scattering of hulls and masts moving sluggishly before the hazy pile of the city. These were barges and river craft, so Guliazar said, plying the glassy-calm harbour. that connected with a network of inland canals.

But one sail did make itself conspicuous: tall and red-dyed, a triangular pennon that bore swiftly to intercept them from the shelter of the headland. Conan shaded his eyes against the westering sun to peer at it, then turned to his crew and barked out orders.

“Rowers, unlimber your oars! Drummer, beat us a brisk pace when ready. Guliazar, signal the other vessels to turn upriver without delay.”

The pilot conveyed the order obediently enough to the signalman; but then, gazing south-west, he had to have his say. “I do not see a cause for such urgency, commander. The craft is fast-rigged, but she is no warship. Likely she can do us little harm, other than have a look at us and report back to the city priests.”

Over the scrape and thump of oars in their tholes, the mutterings of the aroused crew, and a deep, throbbing roll as the hortator limbered up his drumskins, Conan answered. “Yon ship is not harmless, Guliazar, far from it. Very likely it contains a peril we are ill-prepared to resist, the one thing that could put our fleet into disarray, weaken the expedition, and bind a good many Baaluri to a lifelong servitude in Stygia.” He raised his voice to a bellow of command. “Oarsmen, remember the drills I have put you through since Asgalun! Give us a medium turn to port. Drummer, begin!”

To the agile, lopsided thumping of the drums, which the semi-skilled rowers would presumably recognize as pacing a turn, the manoeuvre commenced. Port oars lifted parallel to the water, neither assisting nor back watering, while the starboard rowers stroked at double time. Meanwhile the steersmen, working their thick torsos energetically, paddled the high, rudderless stem of the centireme around to starboard. There were lubberly splashes, along with thumps and curses whenever some oarsman’s blade skipped the surface and tangling with others. But the ocean swells had subsided in the river mouth, and so in all, the turn went smoothly.

“Now, drum up full speed dead ahead! Furl that sail lest it hamper us—and leave off talking, you rogues! Save your breaths to outpace the wind!”

Conan turned to watch the dahabiyahs make the course change, doubling their mainsails out to either sides to battle the river current. At length he nodded, satisfied that all his captains had obeyed. He turned again to the marauding ship. At their present speeds, his warship would likely head it off. But tight manoeuvring might be called for to keep the intruder away from the slower sail ships. Furthermore, he knew his men lacked the endurance of trained rowers.

“What ho, there seem to be passengers clambering onto the rails,” Guliazar said, shading his eyes intently. “Well, by Ishtar! I have heard aught of this.”

“Eyes astern, there!” Conan admonished his crew. “Keep them on your drummer, handsome as he is!” He thanked the gods that the oar benches faced rearward. But even without a clear view, an equally vivid intimation came from the approaching ship. An exotic perfume, faint but heady, drifted their way on the afternoon breeze, which seemed warm and torpid now because both ships were running with it.

As the red-sailed vessel drove nearer, its occupants could more clearly be seen crowding the high serpent-prow of the ship—women, naked and dusky-skinned, waving and beckoning lewdly to the centireme and the cargo ships beyond. They postured atop the rail and clung in the rigging, displaying their lush charms, each one wearing a large red flower in her hair and little or nothing else. Their plaintive calls and appeals to Conan’s crews came drifting across the water, faint invitations to a mad debauch.

“Drummer, half-speed, but with a drumroll,” Conan ordered. “Steersmen, head them off by threatening to ram! Signal the rest of the squadron to run ahead with all possible sail.”

Guliazar remarked to him, “Those blossoms in their hair are the red lotus, which keeps them in a drugged daze. Can you smell its perfume? Its resin is also caked under their fingernails—you see how long and pointed they are? Each female is like an insect-eating flower, or a venomous serpent, able to stupefy a man with a few caresses. They are the temple harlots of Idris the asp goddess, so the stories say, faithful granddaughters of Set.”

“As I would have thought,” Conan grunted. “The man who surrenders to their kisses will end up in a slave galley or dragging a barge.”

Guliazar studied the positions of the two vessels. “They are not sheering off. If we have to hole them, it could be messy.”

Conan watched the distant harbour., where it looked as if more sails were being raised in haste. “Aye, the strumpets would be all over our decks, and the men could scarce be made to fight them.” He scowled. “Nor would I want the wenches to drown needlessly and call down on us the wrath of Set’s priests.” Turning forward to the deckhands, he shouted gruffly, “You, there, ready the catapult! Charge it with a length of chain for stripping down sails.”

Guliazar nodded. “A shrewd idea, commander. It could get us through. After all, we can hardly run back out to sea.” The pilot laughed aloud. “Imagine the great expedition of King Aphrates and King Mazdak, turned away by a boatload of women, unarmed and unclad!” The cries of the female zealots, near enough now to be heard over the stuttering drumroll that accompanied the oar stroke, distracted the rowers. They craned their necks to starboard, losing the rhythm and jostling their fellows with ill-handled oar-helves.

“Eyes astern!” Conan rasped. “Look alive now, and row steady! The next eyeball that strays, I’ll pluck out with hot pincers!”

Matters aboard the dahabiyahs were little better. The nearest one, with the best view of the harlot ship, had idle troopers mobbing the rail, so many that Conan thought he could see the vessel listing under their weight.

But the hand at the helm of the Stygian ship, whether male or female, wavered. The ship veered upstream almost suicidally, trying to cut in front of the racing oar ship’s ram. But the sudden manoeuvre caused the boom of the lateen to jibe, making the vessel shudder and heel over. Some few of the women fell into the water—or leaped, or were shoved, so Conan half-suspected. The ship lost way immediately, caught between wind and current, its red sail flapping uselessly.

As the centireme drew ahead, the rowers were finally treated to a full view. Some of the houris splashed in the water, crying out shrilly in loud, piteous fear of sharks and crocodiles. Others dangled from ropes and struggled to clamber back on board. The rowers sent up a spontaneous cheer of triumph, its note soured slightly by dismay at leaving the females behind. Only one crewman, seized with a sudden impulse of heroism, swung down from the mast and dove overboard to the aid of the women floundering in the lee of the drifting ship. The men at the oars variously cheered him on, cursed him, or made bets on his success.

Guliazar, wrathful that one of his hired sailors would abandon ship, grabbed up a bow and loosed an arrow at the swimming form. When the first shaft missed, Conan restrained him, saying, “Let him go, he will find Set’s paradise soon enough.” He knew that few if any of his own men could swim; so he had little fear of further desertions, for now at least.

Leaving the bay’s waters behind in the fast-kindling blaze of sunset, they found themselves in the middle of a delta edged by hill and plateau, lying closer on the northern side than across the marshy fringe of Stygia. To the southward near the black smudge of Khemi, extending some way inland, the points of lofty tomb pyramids could now be seen, pink-stained in the sunset’s glow. The broad river was already beginning to divide and diminish, splitting apart into reedy byways and lagoons. Soon, Conan knew, it might become difficult to tell which was the main, continuous channel.

“The best landmarks to follow are the northern cliffs and hills,” Guliazar confided to Conan. “They lie near the river along most of its route, so when you are in doubt, ’tis better to bear to the left.”

“You can also judge by the water, can you not?” Conan asked. “The cooler currents flow from the main channel, so I have heard.”

Guliazar nodded, regarding Conan critically. “From what you seem to know, ’tis hard to believe you have not sailed these waters before.”

“From what little you know, Guliazar, ’tis hard to believe you have.” Conan gave the Pelishti a hearty buffet on one shoulder, resolving to conceal his pirate past. “Remember, I have sojourned in seaport towns and drunk with Argosseans and Barachans, sailors from all up and down this coast.”

Nodding and rubbing his shoulder, the Pelishti seemed to accept this. “For now,” he said, “we must find a side-channel where we can heave-to and rest for the night.”

“Aye,” Conan agreed with him, “once it gets dark enough to enter unobserved.”

The water of the Styx, though clear when cupped in the hand, was jet-black at any depth, letting almost no light penetrate its surface. Though worshipped and treated as holy by the Stygians, the river was said by others to be poisonous as venom. Indeed, even bathing in it could cause a wasting illness, though Conan had been told that boiling the water made it safe to drink.

Viewed to the eastward, the Styx stretched before them like a broad black highway. It led the string of five boats inland, out of the lurid bloodbath of the sun’s death in the Western Ocean and toward the brooding night of Stygia, where it rose massive in the east.

By their fourth night’s rest along the river delta, the expedition had devised a routine to ensure safety. The five ships dropped anchor in line along a quiet side-channel on the Stygian side, often as not, moored together only a man’s-length apart to prevent scattering of the fleet and fouling by drifting snags. The ramship bearing the expedition’s commander took the upstream berth, so as to be able to respond quickly to any trouble down the line. The first of the four dahabiyahs was occupied by Furio, Conan’s lieutenant, with the pilot Guliazar taking his sleep aboard the third ship, where he might be able to assist either the second or fourth in case of anchor-slippage or fouling.

The troopers, bored by the slow river journey and eager to complete their mission, would have preferred to travel by night as well as by day. But they soon found that the land breeze, warm and heavy with scents of sun-dried brush and the perfume of inland orchards, rolled westward to the sea during the night, making it impossible to sail upstream. To try to row the ungainly cargo ships against wind and current would have been folly; in any case, night travel on the river was impractical due to shoals and mud banks. The black water made such obstacles difficult to see even in bright daylight, much more so on sultry nights like this present one, which boasted no moon and only a few faint pinpricks of stars.

Camping ashore, as the land-loving troopers craved, was likewise judged impractical. Dry land along the river was scarce, and the reedy marshes teemed with the asps, adders, and other vipers that gave the Stygians their gods, not to mention the danger posed by crocodiles, panthers, wild oxen, stump-footed river horses, and possibly human thieves and cut throats. Furthermore, if the ships were to be attacked by Stygian patrol vessels, better leave them free to manoeuvre without stranding their passengers ashore.

The days of journeying had thus far been uneventful. The ships inched their way upriver under the scorching sun, meeting few vessels bound downstream and giving those a wide berth when possible, lest the alarm of an invading fleet be spread. The broad dahabiyahs, clawing for every scrap of speed upwind, scissored their tall triangular sails out to either side like the raised white wings of a stork or sea bird. Their progress across the slow-moving water, borne up at times on mirror-like reflections of their own forms, was eerily graceful.

Indeed, the whole setting, with its bright competing hues of green and day-blue, its vast fields of pond lotus and cottony flotillas of drifting cloud, might have been beautiful, had the swamps that verged on the stagnant water not reeked so to the travellers of decay and of foreign, ancient menace. The damp slitherings of lizard and python, the vine-choked enigma of tomb and eldritch ruin, the spectral blue swamp-fires by night, and the frequent thump and rustle of invisible things against the boat-hulls underwater, poisoned the natural beauty of the scene and made the explorers yearn to leave it behind.

And leave it they did, for the Styx was a river of many mysteries. Above the lower estuaries, beyond the Black Lotus Swamp, it dwindled at times to a none-too-broad channel confined by reed and willow banks, shallow enough in places for an army to ford. The men speculated that the river’s deepest currents might run through caverns underground, or perhaps through realms supernatural; for soon again it swelled to the broad artery of irrigation and commerce that watered Stygian and Shemitish lands.

Their chosen route, assuming that it could be found, ran along the north edge of the main channel. Guliazar’s knowledge proved useful but less than up-to-date, since the river’s course changed with each flood season. Launches were sent ahead to do soundings and scout the way through navigable passes and around islands. There was always a risk of sailing into blind lagoons, and several times each day the ships were forced to backtrack out of false, shoaling channels. But Conan was careful to keep each vessel in sight of the next, even in the most meandering, tortuous passes. Only a few times so far had ships run aground, to be pulled free by the oar ship without much damage or delay. Launches were sent ashore too, whenever they passed on Shemitish river town, to bargain discreetly for fresh foodstuffs and news of river conditions.

Speed was regarded as vital, and the troops, penned up day and night on shipboard, resorted to using paddles, poles, and sweeps to try to aid the sails in fighting the current. Additionally, boats were lowered to tow the bigger vessels along. In straight open reaches of the river, races between the sail ships were held, with the winners awarded a coveted ration of rum at day’s end. Aside from this pastime, fishing, gambling, and walking the equally bored horses around the decks were the principal sports.

The one thing they could never outrace was the flock of circling carrion birds that still followed the expedition, even here on shipboard, a hundred leagues and more from Baalur. Conan had forbidden the waste of arrows in efforts to pierce them, so they remained unspoken-of, an ever-present reminder and harbinger.

Yet even so, the rigours of the journey, with its tedious work and fresh-air regimen, tired the men adequately to let them sleep in relative peace. Screaming fits and night frenzies were rare now, and by midnight the last gamblers and gossips were made to retire from the foredecks. Sleepers filled every flat space on every deck invisibly, since the scuppers were draped with fine netting to hinder bats and mosquitoes. Drugged by toil and the sodden weight of river night, they dozed and snored in peace till dawn.

The sentries, broken into two nightly shifts, numbered three per vessel, one each to trim and oil the dark lanterns kept faintly aglow, and one other to walk a circuit of the ship’s rail at regular intervals. In practice the three traded duties, one remaining alone at bow or stem while another paced to the far end to join the sentry there and keep him awake. This seemed adequate precaution to keep the vessels safe.

Milus Redhair, a corporal of the Baalur city guard, did not feel especially fearful watching the river darkness during the silent hours. He had seen trouble enough in his day—fights with unruly caravaners, skirmishes with mountain brigands—and he knew he could handle himself. He had heard the stories about this accursed river: that the local villagers dumped their dead into it, that the dead were not always wholly dead, or that they festered on the bottom, to come back up as something not quite human. He considered such tales to be the purest drivel. If this river really teemed with dead men, then what were the massive tombs in yonder hills for? What were the long-jawed crocodiles supposed to feed on, anyway? He was not superstitious, far from it. And he was no fool.

Anyway, nothing Milus had seen in this world, nothing in his thirty-one years of life, was as troubling as what had come to him in dreams, right there in his own bed in Baalur. Nothing could frighten him more than that—but it was behind him now, and soon to be over for his family, too—with Mitra’s guidance, he felt devoutly sure. He had nothing more to fear, not even from this hell-black river.

Arriving astern, he saw Truvik seated in the thread of light from the covered lamp, facing rearward at the river’s empty blackness, since this tub was the last in line. Truvik sat on the helm-step, his head propped sideways against the lashed steering oar. Asleep, by Dagon, and caught in a hot pisspot if the commander ever saw him thus.

‘Truvik, fellow,” Milus called gruffly to rouse his friend, “how goes the watch? Have any owls hooted lately? Or a blind fish leapt aboard, perchance?”

The man did not move. Coming up behind him none too stealthily, Milus clapped a hand on his shoulder... saw his friend’s head flop over backward, impossibly, to hang there gaping up at him. Truvik’s chest was drenched in blood, his throat hacked wide from ear to ear.

A heavy dripping noise sounded to one side... black water, or thick blood? Milus reached up and unmasked the flame of the dark lantern. By its light he saw a face heaving slowly up over the rail, pale and glassy-eyed, slack-mouthed, with river-weed tangled in its hair. He gathered breath to shout.

From behind him a rough hand clamped across his lips. Struggling, Milus Redhair cold steel bite into his neck.

X

Pirate Blades

In a dream, Conan found himself in the depths of the earth. He stood in a fantastic cavern formed of veined pink marble. Rows of stalactites, nitrous-white and yellowing with age, hung down from the arching roof, almost far enough to join with similar jagged spikes rising underfoot.

The light, lurid and unsteady, came from a torch that flared redly in a rock crevice just ahead. Beside it, reclining on an oval bed made up with a pink silk coverlet, was the witch Zeriti—paler-skinned than Conan remembered, but eerily attractive, her mortal female charms veiled by a gold-embroidered black vest and black gossamer harem pants. The vest, loosely covering her breasts, did not conceal the livid scar between them, whose origin Conan recalled all too well: the murderous sword-thrust of the giant Kushite war captain Imbalayo, just before the smoke-demon conjured up by the sorceress had sucked all the bones and blood from the mercenary’s body. There should be an equally gruesome scar on her back, he guessed, where the gory blade stood out a hands-breadth between her shoulder blades.

“Zeriti, you undead hag,” he greeted her, not wanting to seem ungallant. “A moment ago I was in my bedchamber; now I find myself in yours.” He waved to indicate the strange surroundings. “To what do I owe your summons?”

Zeriti laughed, her red-stained lips writhing sensuously, revealing an unnerving abundance of teeth. “Ah, Conan, is it—the fortune-hunter from the Cimmerian waste! I see that, though you have made yourself into a mercenary chieftain great as Mazdak or Othbaal ever was in our old days, you have not yet learned the balm of courtly speech.” She rearranged her limbs alluringly on the silken bed. “I knew you only briefly, but I think I fancied you better then, as a raw, rude savage.” Her eyes roved up and down his form, clad only in a breech clout. “Still,” she added, “I do fancy you.”

“You must be much-adored yourself,” he replied, “since so many men see you nightly, in their dreams.” She laughed again, but swiftly tamed her unruly mouth to a businesslike pout. “Seriously, Conan, I think I can use a man of your very impressive skills and parts.” She ran her eyes suggestively once again down his physique. “Do you think you can fulfil the very rigorous demands I would place on you?”

He heard the coarse note of invitation in her words, and felt an involuntary twitch of nausea in his taut-strung vitals at the notion of embracing the undead witch. Staying well back from the bed, and wondering when the dream would end, he crossed his arms before his chest. “Alas, Zeriti, I have urgent business which may take months to settle, even years. Beyond that, I have taken up cause with some interests in opposition to yours—”

“Enough!” Sitting suddenly upright on her bolster, Zeriti tossed her bony shoulders in indignation. “Reject my offer if you will,” she snarled at him, “but know this: I will have you, Cimmerian—your body, your spirit, and your worldly renown as well—though not, perhaps, in the way you anticipate.” She laughed harshly. “I will settle all the old scores, and when I am done there will be no other interests than mine—” Zeriti leered “for, mark me, I make and take and destroy what I please! I control everything, forever....” Still ranting, her face ugly with wrath, she reached from her bed and snatched up the torch wedged into the rock crevice beside her.

“Never do I trouble about the pains and fears reserved for such as you, the not-yet-dead! For I have a greater lover than you, a mighty god whose name is... Jukala!” So saying, she touched the flame to the fringed silk around her, making it blossom up in a fiery veil that illuminated more than it obscured. Reaching high above her, she held the flaming torch to the ceiling of the cavern, which blistered and cracked at the touch, erupting in an angry red ulcer. The results were strange and frightening. All around them the cave began to shudder and its shape distort. A blast of clammy air, rancid with decay, blew bright wisps of flame toward Conan. A shuddering, subterranean roaring began to build.

Gazing about him, Conan suddenly understood where he was. The cave... it was no cave at all, but the slack mouth of some immense, awakening predator. The sharp yellow stalactites were truly fangs and Zeriti’s fancy bed, where she now sat laughing maniacally at him, was the monster’s vast tongue. Turning from her, he bolted for the exit—but the stony spikes clashed together, penning him in. And slowly, as the jaws began to chew, the thick wet tongue thrust him forward … Sweating, Conan bolted awake—and almost knocked himself back to unconsciousness on the beam supporting the centireme’s low stem deck. He cursed aloud.

The pain, at least, dulled the impression of his recent nightmare, and, too, the hangover from that accursed sour wine. Rubbing his head, he slid himself carefully out of the low flat space that passed for a bunk.

The river was still. Somewhere downstream a cry sounded, forlorn and fading. A human lament— unusual, that. His men were frighted from their sleep far less often lately.

But then, it was long since he himself had entertained the dream-witch Zeriti in his joyless bed by night Was something new afoot, perhaps? Never before had he been given any reason to think that her interest in him was so intense, and so personal. He shuddered at the thought.

On his own ship’s fore- and stemdecks, the lamps winked their muted glow. Both sentries hailed him, and he answered with a growl. All seemed in order; looking astern, he could see faint slivers of light marking the bows of the four dahabiyahs riding in the pitchy blackness.

Still, there was something about the cry...

“Sentries, wake the crew.” Striding astern, he met the patrolling guard and clapped him on the shoulder. “Get the men up at their benches and make ready to slip anchor. But quietly, I do not want to rouse the whole fleet before I see what is afoot.”

Going astern, he unfastened the mooring to the next ship’s bow and told the sentry there to summon Captain Furio. Meanwhile, with muffled thumps and murmurs, his rowers furled up the mosquito netting and readied their oars, a process that was not time-consuming, since they slept on their benches and the slatted deck in between.

When Furio appeared, surly with interrupted sleep, Conan explained matters briefly. “I will circle the anchorage and return here if I find nothing. You, meanwhile, have command of the sail ships.”

“Why, then, should you expect trouble?” Furio asked. “If aught is amiss—”

“I thought I heard something,” Conan replied curtly, “but I cannot say for sure.” He had no time for the fellow’s insubordination—after all, he himself commanded real power in the form of the ramship, whose crew could be relied upon. Hearing the anchor float drop in, he turned to his steersmen and ordered them to swing the warship’s bow out into the current. “Now, men, we need no drum cadence,” he told the drowsy crew. “Just row six even strokes, then ship your oars and stand ready for orders.”

Under way, the stem sweeps manoeuvred the ship down along the line of berths. Each river vessel sat quiet—with nets and sentries in place, so Conan’s unmasked lantern revealed—until he came to the fifth in line. The dark lantern that should have marked its bow hung on the mast of a small, disreputable skiff that floated empty, moored to the dahabiyah’s anchor line. The big vessel itself was nowhere to be seen.

“Oarsmen, backwater oars! One, two, one, two! Steersmen, put us alongside that barge! You and you, find your swords and follow me!”

When the hulls bumped together, they sprang on board the fourth dahabiyah in search of the sentries. They soon found them. One of the three tumbled into the scuppers, stunned senseless by the flat of Conan’s blade. The second sentry, a straggly-bearded coastal Shemite, dove overside when pursued to disappear forever. The one posted at the bows fell to his knees, beseeching Conan and swearing that he had done no wrong.

“Then where is my ship, you lying rogue? Nay, never mind! Secure these two and question them as you see fit.”

Guliazar, dressed in a loose shift and nightcap, came blustering to the fore. “Never fear, milord, I will get the truth out them!”

“No, pilot, come along with me, I may be needing you. Captain, rouse all the troops and arm them against sneaking pirates. I must be away.”

“Will you not want another ship with you?” the officer asked. “With more men, perhaps?”

“Nay,” Conan said bitterly, “keep together what little we have left! If I do not return before daylight, you can reconnoitre downstream in force. But whatever happens, remember our mission.”

Going aboard the centireme with Guliazar, Conan ordered more lights carried forward into the bows. He called for a brisk drumbeat to get the ship moving, then for silence, with oars raised dripping above the water, listening to night sounds.

“Well, pilot,” he said in the utter stillness, “where have they taken her?”

“There is no knowing,” the pilot said, spreading his hands in helplessness. “Most likely just afloat downstream, to get as far away as possible. There are a dozen

places to which they might drift----------”

“Drummer, beat full speed!” Conan ordered, interrupting Guliazar. “Steersmen, guide us across-current to the Shemitish side! We moored in Stygian waters to avoid sneak-thieves, and what do we have for it—a whole ship lost!”

Once they sailed the maze of channels, the oar ship glided silent again. Crocodiles slipped into the water with leaden splashes, and a few marsh birds fled squealing. The search lamps flashed out over reeds and mudflats, throwing up quivering reflections from the troubled water.

“You will have to beat a steady pace if you want to overtake them,” Guliazar suggested, knotting his nightcap in his hands. “There is no telling how much of a lead they may have——”

“Hush! Hear that?” Stilling Guliazar’s chatter with an iron hand clamped on the back of the pilot’s neck, Conan listened. From somewhere far off came a metallic scraping, sharper than the croak of a swamp rail.

“Oarsmen, half speed, no drumbeat! Helm, bear into that channel ahead. But skilfully, we must not go around! Quiet, all of you, and listen.”

As they slid forward, with the bow lamps casting eerie shadows among the reeds, the sound grew louder—it was a distant butchery, the ringing of blades and the scream of frightened horses. The channel curved ahead, yet remained open; some of the reeds here were broken down, as by the passing of ships.

“There, now—drummer ramming to speed! Steersmen, keep us under way, do you hear? Our mark lies in yonder lagoon!”

Ahead, lit by torches lashed to boat poles stuck in the shallow open bay, the lost dahabiyah floated, grappled to several smaller, more disreputable craft. On the big ship’s foredeck, pikes and cutlasses could be seen rising and falling in rhythmic slaughter. It looked as if most of the ship was already overrun, except for the cabins and horse stalls amidships. Judging from the zestful cries of the ragged, motley attackers, the fight had become a massacre.

“Enough, no more drumming! Ship oars—smartly now, do it at once! Then lay hands on your swords, but keep them sheathed. Steersmen, guide us in to ram that hulk—aye, that’s it. Now, brace yourselves!”

To the straining efforts of the helmsmen, the ramship glided straight in on the largest of the marauding vessels moored to the cargo ship. The bronze ram-sheaf struck full amidships, punching into the half-rotten planks below the waterline with slight resistance and scarcely any impact. Before the force of the centireme’s high prow, the target’s side began to cave in. Luckily it did not split entirely apart and sink away out of sight.

“Now, war dogs, over the bows and board the pirate! Kill whom you see, then carry the fight to our own deck and aid your comrades! Slay boldly, brothers, for the sake of your friends!”

If any pirates lurked aboard the barge, they fled or died in silence. Most of Conan’s oarsmen leaped straight over from the centireme to the dahabiyah, barefoot and lacking armour, but fired with a purpose. The pirates in the ship’s waist, seeing a hundred enemies springing up at their backs without warning, were cut apart while struggling to escape. Then the cargo ship’s trapped survivors, mostly unarmed, were turned loose to seek vengeance on their assailants. Near the battle’s end, the men of Baalur waded through the swamp shallows with pikes and boat hooks, hunting out those foe-men who leapt overboard for their lives.

“Nay, dogs, save two or three of them for me.” Conan, who for once hung back with Guliazar to direct the fight from the dahabiyah’s stem, called out to his men to cease killing. Several bedraggled pirates, accordingly, were hauled back in the battle’s aftermath, to stand sullen and dripping on the sail ship’s deck.

Then it was possible to see the toll that had been taken. Aboard the stolen ship, fully forty troopers lay, throats slit. They had never awakened, much less armed themselves. Astern, the silent killers had worked their way through the sleepers, even as the hapless ship drifted downstream. Only later, when more pirate boats took the prize in tow to hide it away among the reeds, had the real, desperate fight begun, claiming dozens more Baaluri lives.

“They could not just let her drift free,” Conan ventured. “They would have risked running aground, or into a Stygian patrol. And aye, once they cleared this ship of fighters, they would have gone back for the next one and the next, till our strength to take revenge on them was broken.”

“’Tis a good thing they blundered, then, and gave us the alarm.” Guliazar dolefully regarded the three wet prisoners being dragged aboard. “Mitra knows, such a mad plan could never have succeeded.”

“Nay, Guliazar, it might have; the cry I heard came from a dreamer, not a murdered man.” Conan gazed solemnly around the circle of his men. “But it sounded too faint to be amid the fleet—too distant, and moving off downstream.” The frowning Cimmerian shook his head. “Had he not dreamt—had / not dreamt, I might never have known.” He surveyed the red waste of bodies. “Mayhap he awakened some of his shipmates, too.” “The filthy butchers,” Guliazar said of the sullen pirates. “They ought to be hanged at once, or beheaded and thrown to the fish!” Picking up a sword from the blood-slimed deck, he stepped forward toward the cringing captives.

“Nay, pilot, not so fast.” Reaching out panther-like, Conan laid hold of Guliazar’s wrist. At his paralysing grip, the sword wilted from the Shemite’s hand and fell to the planks. “For, you know, they must have had an accomplice aboard our fleet. Someone in an influential place.”

“What... why, whom do you mean?” Guliazar asked, his face paling. “Who would dare such blatant treachery?”

“Who but yourself, pilot?” Conan asked, fixing the man with a smouldering look. “Who else chose the watch aboard the cargo ships? Who assigned the treasonous sentries who turned a blind eye when our last ship in line was traded for a skiff?”

“Nonsense,” Guliazar sputtered. “Why, I would never be foolish enough to attempt such a thing!”

“In sooth not? Answer me this, then: where are the sailors you brought aboard, when first you fitted out this expedition for Mazdak and myself? I do not see any of them lying dead. They are not among the survivors. But is this not one here, soaked to the gills in blood?” He pointed to one of the three captives, a crop-eared, snaggle-toothed rogue whose sodden clothes still bore evidence of his gruesome doings.

Conan turned his accusing finger to Guliazar. “Most of them, mayhap the whole lot, were your pirate cronies, I’d wager, with ten-score more waiting to ambush us in the swamps. You tried to put us in their way from the start, by losing us in river channels, but I kept to the open water. So this morning, when you rowed ashore to barter, you made contact and told them your plan, and returned to us with a cask of drugged wine!”

“Milord,” Guliazar protested, “how can you believe such things of me? I am King Mazdak’s commerce minister, he trusts me------”

“I do not doubt it,” Conan said. “And I would carry you back to Mazdak to let him punish your betrayal, if we did not have such a long journey ahead of us.” He shrugged coldly. “So instead, mayhap I’ll let you be judged by these three pirates, here and now. Well, rogues, what think you of your former master, who is so ready to sell you downriver even as he sold us?” He thrust the unwilling Guliazar toward the three captives.

They had been glowering at the pilot for some time; now they fell on him fiercely—kicking, thumping, trying to gouge out his eyes and gnaw his ears. One of them pulled a concealed knife from his boot; it flashed redly in the torchlight as he lunged to strike.

“Enough, knave!” Conan stepped forward and kicked the knife out of the pirate’s hand, sending it spinning into the canal. “Having stolen my ship and my men, would you also rob me of my vengeance?” As he spoke he drew out his sword, raised it and, with a shearing backhand cut, struck the head from Guliazar’s shoulders. It went arching away on a fountain of blood, to splash into the black river and sink out of sight.

“There, ’tis the fate Guliazar himself proposed for a sneaking, slinking murderer!” After wiping his blade on the limp, headless body at his feet, Conan re-sheathed the weapon. “As for these three—put them in irons to bear witness before the others. An honest pirate deserves some pretence of a trial before he is hanged.”

Later that same night the centireme towed the chamel-ship back to the anchorage, bodies and all. On returning, when asked by Furio what had become of Guliazar, Conan told him simply, “He paid the price of mutiny against me.” He then left it to the others to fill in the story for the somewhat pale-faced but always officious captain.

When the butcher’s bill was tallied, Conan’s thousand men had been diminished by more than a hundred. At least eighty pirate corpses were left soaking in the marsh, and doubtless some others had escaped.

The Baaluri dead were rolled decently in their blankets and stacked aboard the captured pirate skiffs with bundles of dry reeds, which were set ablaze by dawn light. The river soon bore them away out of sight, their downriver course marked by three retreating pillars of smoke. The survivors noticed more carrion birds than usual that morning; the creatures were excited and flapped toward the bloody marsh and the unburned pirate corpses with shrieking cries that echoed the witch Zeriti’s mad laughter. Yet evidently the gods of death were not satisfied, for some of the black specks still circled overhead, following the fleet as they set out upstream.

Under sail, the stricken dahabiyah was cleaned and put back in order. But it was doubtful whether the congealed blood could ever be completely scoured from her timbers.

During Conan’s absence, as it happened, the unconscious sentry revived. He had confessed his own complicity in the pirate attack, and Guliazar’s as well. To satisfy the crew and quiet their vengeful murmurs, Conan ordered the pirates hanged, all four simultaneously, one from the yardarm of each dahabiyah.

After all the various funerals and hangings, Conan gathered the remaining twenty or so sail hands from Asgalun on his foredeck and addressed them. “Since you were brought aboard by Guliazar, you are all under suspicion. For now, I am willing to assume that none of you knew of this conspiracy, since none of you has bloody hands. If you did know, and you fear discovery, then you should not find it hard to jump ship—you are welcome to try, anyway.

“But for those who wish to stay on, to sail for me and teach my troops to sail, I can promise fair treatment and the agreed-upon wage. What’s more, if you stay for the return trip, I will undertake to feed and house you during the interval, with more pay and a hefty bonus at journey’s end. There is always a place here for loyal men—but as before, the penalty for treachery and disobedience is death.”

XI

Desert Voyage

Upriver, the rank marshlands gave way gradually to tame delta planted in vast tracts with grain, onion and papyrus. The valley, if anything, broadened here and as each day’s breeze dispersed the morning haze, great cities could be seen lying a day’s trek or more from the central river channel. It was evident that canals and sloughs wound through these crop lands, forming the primary means of transport for the local harvests. This was demonstrated by the wide variety of boats, barges, canoes, and rafts—some formed of reeds bundled into graceful hulls, others of hides, planks, or hollowed-out logs—that plied the Styx’s dark waters.

The traffic moved crosswise as well as up and downriver. Indeed, walled cities rose on both river banks and, with them, elaborate tombs and whole necropolitan centres built to receive Stygian and Shemitish dead alike. It was evident that trade between the Set-worshippers and the river ports of Shem was lively. Among the serpent-headed dispatch boats bearing the symbols of the Stygian priesthood, traders and oar ships could be seen bearing the embroidered emblems of northern city-states on their sails or blazoned on pennants fluttering aloft.

In an effort to fit in, Conan had Baalur’s royal seal painted on his flagship’s sail and stood uniformed men on the foredecks. He hoped to make his small armada resemble the well-protected trading convoy of a local municipality. Meanwhile, his shore parties continued to buy or barter intelligence about local conditions at every village stop they made for fresh vegetables. But Conan avoided the great cities, preferring to slip past at dusk or dawn. Even between brother Shemitish city-states there were no close ties, and Conan reminded his men that theirs was no diplomatic mission.

They did enlist a few local sail hands for their knowledge of river and political conditions. Luckily the local Shemitish dialects were fairly understandable to the men of Baalur. They earnestly inquired of every river-merchant they met about the availability of silver lotus, but found none who had heard of that particular variety.

Though the valley was obviously a realm of great wealth, breadbasket of the mighty Stygian nation, the lives of most of its inhabitants did not seem enviable. From dawn to dusk whole families could be seen toiling in fields alongside the river. The children planted and weeded, while their parents raised water by means of buckets, shadoofs, and screw pumps over the low earthen dikes that separated their farms from the open marsh and canal.

On seeing these sun-darkened river folk wading and fishing in the Styx, drinking from it, and bathing their infants in it, Conan’s men inevitably lost some of their fear of the river and were tempted to do the same. After all, its waters were clearer and presumably less noxious in the broad open reaches than the swamps and narrows. Those troops who suffered skin and stomach ills were treated with local remedies under Caspius’s super- 1 vision, and generally recovered.

These low crop lands depended on irrigation and on regular seasonal flooding of muddy water to maintain the soil’s richness. Consequently, farm homes were little more than temporary encampments, rude huts laid amid kitchen gardens on flat mounds of soil and rock, or reed-topped wattle platforms raised on poles above river shallows, with canoes and fish traps tethered underneath. When the waters rose, the occupants must have sought shelter on the valley’s desert fringes, or else in the walled mounds of the cities—whose great wealth, after all, was the result of their toil.

When river traders informed Conan’s men that they had passed the canal junction leading to Stygia’s capital city, Conan felt that some observance was called for. He ordered up fruits and date candies for the men and had a table on the stem deck of his centireme set with fine victuals. Caspius came aboard looking as if the voyage, despite all its perils, had brought him much-needed rest; in fact he seemed younger.

“What do you tell them, physician, of this expedition’s progress?” Captain Furio, for once riding aboard the flagship, now looked over Caspius’s shoulder as he sat at the table, writing with an ink-tipped quill on a tiny square of rabbit skin parchment.

“I am saying,” Caspius murmured, “that we have passed Luxur on our ascent of the river...” Finishing his fine text, he commenced copying identical characters onto another scrap of parchment. “That we fought off a pirate attack, and emerged victorious.”

“Do not tell them we lost men,” Conan said from his place between the steersmen. “Every wife, mother, and lover would lose more sleep worrying over it than they have already lost to the dream plague.”

“Aye, and do not send them the names,” Furio added ironically. “We have not pigeons enough, in any case, to carry the roll of the dead.”

The young captain had been forced by events thus far to put aside, for a time at least, his doubts of Conan’s honesty. He now contented himself with slyly questioning his commander’s fitness to lead, and the merits of every order.

Conan, for his part, tolerated this nuisance. He preferred to have sedition out in the open where he could see it, rather than conducted in dagger-pointed whispers behind his back.

Caspius, having completed three parchments, rolled them into tiny cylinders, tied each one neatly with twine, and dipped the bundles in a pot of beeswax melting over a candle. Setting these aside to cool, he reached under the table and took out three small cages. From the first he took a fat dove, satiny-white and well cared-for. To its leg he tied one of the messages, knotting the twine with his deft old physician’s fingers. He held it up to release it, but Conan, after a glance upward, said, “Wait.”

Going forward to the table, he took the dove from Caspius and cradled it between his large, battle-scarred hands. When a second blinding-white bird was tagged, he nodded Furio forward. “Hold it for now, so that we may release them together.” The cavalry captain grudgingly complied.

“Would that carrier pigeons could find us here,” a watching officer said, “to tell us news of the king and queen, and of Princess Ismaia.”

“Aye,” another said, “and would that the news were favourable.”

When Caspius was ready, the three men held up their pigeons and, at a nod from Conan, released them. The birds immediately circled aloft past the sails, wheeling in formation as if searching for their bearings. The hazy scene, with its broad black river winding through an emerald-green delta, must have seemed strange to them.

Stranger yet was the menace from above; for the circling black carrion kites plunged silently, stooping like falcons in a manner alien to their species.

The pigeons scattered, mutely flapping for their lives. Two were caught up instantly in a flurry of black wings, to be tom and plucked to pieces in mid-air by sorcerous beaks and talons. The third dove, its wing tips skimming the water, fleeing low over the reeds... into the shelter of some tall willows on the northern bank and away out of sight. There was no further pursuit by the unnatural flock overhead, who circled upward again, still playing and worrying at their bloody trophies.

“That one messenger at least may make it to Baalur,” Conan said. He eyed the white feathers scattering away on the black water, downstream toward the four dahabiyahs that followed with their sail-wings spread. “Zeriti’s powers for evil are not limitless, so it would seem.”

Caspius agreed. “If they were, she would have destroyed this entire expedition long ago. For surely,” the sage reasoned, “anything that will bring comfort to her victims weakens her power over them.”

Conan grunted assent, unmoving. “Yet plainly she knows what we are about. Be-like she watches our progress even now, through her emissaries there.” He waved to the birds playing high above. “The witch has spoken to me personally in dreams and has no great love of me... not,” he amended, “of my spirit, anyway. She seems to presume that our mission will come to naught, because of some mystic power arrayed against us. Tell me, Caspius,” Conan asked the physician, “have you ever heard of a god or devil named Jukala?”

“Nay, I cannot say that I have,” the sage replied. “Though it may be that the witch has many unknown tricks in store against us.”

“Or maybe,” Furio declared, “she simply lacks faith that we can pull off the feat we have proposed, at least in the manner we have undertaken it.” He eyed the group of watching officers. “She might have feared a good Baalur cavalry charge more or a smaller, stealthier mission to obtain the lotus.”

Conan disregarded this. “Zeriti is a skilful seeress, but there are other, more powerful wizards nearby, adepts who hold sway in the material world as well as the lands of dream.” His blue eyes roved southward toward the hazy reaches beyond the river. “Zeriti is Stygian by birth. I wonder if she has Stygia’s supreme rulers, the priests of Set, on her side.”

Caspius followed his gaze. “But is she important enough even to gain their notice?” the physician asked. “A mere undead courtesan? Do they care about such persons, or even about the fate of whole cities as remote from here as Baalur?”

Conan laughed. “With all their scheming to spread their ancient faith—by means of the spies and cults they maintain in foreign cities, or through the reach of their sorcery—I’d wager that they both know and care about our expedition.” He did not trouble to mention that, based on old feuds, the Set-priests might also harbour. a personal grudge against him.

“They are an ill lot, from all I have heard,” Furio said, managing as ever to sound vindicated. “If the witch Zeriti can call on their aid, it poses a new threat to this voyage.”

Caspius shrugged. “From my experience, Old Set has not haunted the visions of those stricken by the dream plague. To Zeriti, snakes are just another tool of terror, and no more prominent in her shadow plays than spiders or, say, fleshless skulls.” The old man’s tone grew sombre. “The entity she seems to worship is something else—insofar I have glimpsed it, hovering in remote, murky voids—some mysterious ancient deity, no less sinister than Set, perhaps, but more human-like.”

Caspius’s voice had sunk gradually to a murmur, his face taking on a somewhat drawn, haunted look. He shrugged now in an effort at unconcern. “True, the dreams have receded of late and left me in relative peace, but I do not recall taking any special note of the snake god or his sacred trappings in them.”

“Enough,” Conan said. “The subject can hardly be pleasant to anyone here. I shall order special measures to be taken—perhaps a scout boat sent in advance to watch for Stygian patrols, and another one following astern. We need some warning to deal with them, whether by diplomacy, or failing that, force of arms.”

The speed of their travel improved as they proceeded inland. For, in the broader, less treacherous river channels of central Stygia, night breezes oft-times blew from the dry northern meadowlands or the southern deserts, full and steady enough to propel the ships upriver. So, with bright moonlight crusting calcareous hills and glistening on black water, the five ships would go ghosting silently eastward past dew-bright farm fields and slumbering cities.

There were also days when hot, perverse winds out of the east thwarted upriver sailing, so the squadron, moored together with the oar ship in the lead, spent long days toiling at the sweeps, making but a fraction of their usual distance.

As they went, the character of the river continued to change. They passed long stretches of riverbank built up straight and level as a roadway, and obviously well-maintained between flood seasons. The travellers wondered at the purpose of these embankments until they overtook a horde of near-naked slaves numbering in the hundreds, toiling under the lashes of proud, serpent-crested overseers. As the toilers trudged wearily upriver, they dragged ropes yoked to a great raft, which other slaves were guiding and fending away from shore with poles. The vessel’s cargo was an immense square-cut alabaster stone, bound from its native quarry to the site of some monumental tomb.

Elsewhere, the banks of the Styx turned to pale bedrock and drift-sand, and the flotilla spent whole days sailing through parched land that evidently took no life-giving draught from the swift black water. Across these expanses could be seen no farm or inhabited city, only isolated, crumbling ruins; the sole signs of life were occasional herds or caravans of camels, tended by nomads who watched the passing ships with dark, incurious eyes.

Yet further upstream, meadows, orchards, and richly cultivated bottom lands sprang once again from the river’s thick black mud. And Conan knew that the Styx, rather than threading off into desolation, would remain a vital and much-trafficked artery for countless leagues to come. The Shemitish city-states were finally left behind, and the river formed, if not the border of Stygia, then a main thoroughfare through the bitterly contested and exploited north-eastern frontier of the expanding Stygian empire.

Here caravan routes brought treasure from Iranistan and Vendhya; here wild Zuagirs, Ilbarsis, and local bedouins raided the caravans and battled the Stygian military patrols who tried to protect and tax the vital eastern trade, while fending off black insurgents and raiders out of Punt and Keshan in the south. Here, Conan guessed, where the river course narrowed and meandered through hills, was the most likely place to meet Stygian river patrols.

Regardless, they ran eastward into broad gorges walled by precipices and rainbow-ribbed hills. They scarcely noticed when the river made its legendary right turn south. They stole by night past the many-spired huddle of Erkulum, the walled City of Set, and the rock-fanged mouth of the Helu River. They wound between stony curtains of hills that loomed so close over the river course that they blocked the perpetual desert winds, or funnelled them into abrupt, treacherous gusts. They sailed near sheer-walled river oases, caverns cut deep under mountains, and the vast, abandoned temple-tombs carved by forgotten races into the crimson face of the river cliffs at Qamak. They crossed the brooding black depths of Ellobolu, the narrow, marble-walled lake of the eastern Styx that was rumoured to be bottomless.

It was there in open water, without warning or chance of concealment, that the Stygian ram ships opposed them. Four two-masted dromons, each with doubled oar banks of at least forty on a side, fanned out wide to cut off their progress. The ships were imposing, fighting-trim and well-handled, each with the coiled green asp of Set emblazoned on its sail. The flagship, positioned centre-starboard, was distinguished by a catapult on its foredeck and astern one or more senior officers, whose gold-trimmed chest plates glinted in the bright, uncompromising noon sun.

“Steer to port, oars half-speed,” Conan ordered. “Lower sails and unstep the masts for combat, but signal the squadron to continue under sail with troops at the ready.”

Pulling away to guard the fleet, Conan fell back so as to threaten any attacker with a ram to the side. The big dahabiyahs, clumsy under sail and relatively helpless at oars, were nevertheless crammed with fighting men. They were dangerous to any assailant that might try to ram them, once he himself was rammed or grappled in place. Conan let Furio’s ship take the lead, because he was a fighting horse soldier. Grouse and cavil as he might at orders, he would never refuse to make a charge or otherwise allow his men to think him a coward.

Caspius, healthy enough now to bear the sparse conditions aboard the centireme, joined Conan before the helm. “You think we can bluff our way through, then?” He shaded his eyes against the hot day glare. “They could put a hole in every one of our dahabiyahs.”

“If they try,” Conan said, scanning the opposing fleet, “we might end up with nine ships instead of five. Those oarsmen are slaves, not fighters. I worry more that they will throw chain into our sails, and force us to drift back downriver. Or vex us with fire pots.” Conan eyed the thin wisp of smoke trailing downwind from the Stygian flagship. “There are no Shemitish ports here to run to.”

The four enemies advanced in line abreast; the dahabiyahs, Furio’s in the lead, sailed straight at them with the oar ship keeping pace alongside and downwind. As the drums beat briskly, the centireme’s sparse crew armed themselves and hurried to the forecastle.

Conan watched for battle manoeuvres; most likely three ramships would turn to disable him while the catapult picked off his other four. He had to assume the Stygians knew the composition of his force; if so, they would avoid grappling or running afoul of the troop-laden ships. His legionnaires had been alerted, and the ship’s rails already bristled with pikes and boat hooks.

Yet he saw that the purpose of the fire on the enemy flagship was evidently not so much for igniting ammunition as for divination. Around the flaming brazier amidships, three green-skirted men in high glittering headdresses stood—Set-priests, thinner of chest and arm, but suntanned just as brown as the half-naked marines who lined the dromon’s waist. They were engaged in some ritual that made the smoke billow up greenish, then diminish. Now, as Conan watched, the three holy men turned from the fire and filed astern to where the bronze-armoured officers stood.

“See there,” Conan pointed out to Caspius, “the church is delivering the day’s augury. Mayhap Set himself has dictated a battle plan.”

The clergy and officers conferred. Then the drums rolled, oars flashed, and signal flags flapped aloft. To Conan’s surprise, the marauders began to alter their course. Pointing all four vessels out of the way of the Baalur squadron, they headed across the lake, downwind and downstream.

“It seems they are refusing battle,” Conan said, “though I do not trust them well enough to drop our guard so soon.” He glanced overhead. “Our vultures may have scared them off.

Caspius turned to him, smiling in relief. “If, as you say, the Stygian priests know all that occurs in the magical realm, and can communicate by supernatural means, then the meaning of this is clear. They have divined the purpose of our mission; they, too, oppose the witch Zeriti and want us to succeed.”

Conan shrugged, watching the ships retreat. “That may be,” he said.

Beyond the lake, there were more bends and convolutions in the wilder and less-inhabited river. The desert wind was often blocked by cliffs, or else it soughed in hot dry torrents down the river course, forcing the squadron to drop sail and heave to till sunset, or else row and pole upstream roped together in a line, clawing for traction against the river’s rocky banks and sandy margins. The few towns, fortified outposts and ferry crossings, clung between the river’s black flume and the beetling, barren hills.

No written log of the voyage was kept. No account could tell of all the strange sights seen only by those few who happened to be on watch at the time. Sailing by gusty moonlight under the walls of a sinister island fortress, the fleet’s lookouts heard wild drumming and the clashing of chimes, saw strange lights reflecting upward against the towers, and caught the pained or frenzied screaming of some nameless rite. Or, passing some beach or sheltered inlet, they saw troops battling on the riverbank and towns ablaze, fired by piracy or local

wars.

When at last the southward canyons opened out, it was into a broad, shallow reach of river whose steep western bank boasted a settlement of stone buildings straggling out among date palms. Ahead, from stony buttresses of hills, the Styx came thundering down in white-foaming cataracts. It was, as they could see, the first of many falls and rapids receding into a steep canyon, through which no ship could possibly pass.

XII

Jukala

The witch Zeriti prostrated herself before the onyx altar. She was clad seductively after the fashion of a priestess of Ishtar, the majority of her raiment consisting of bead and bone necklaces hanging down over her bosom. Her hair, bundled high in a black coif pierced through with green needles, left her long, stately neck bare. As a concession to coyness, a clout of green silk trailed before and behind her, drawn up to her crotch by means of a gleaming belt that was a supple snakeskin bearing interleaved green and gold scales... or was it, perhaps, a live serpent biting its own tail to keep Zeriti’s modesty intact? In the dimness it was hard to tell. The light of the candles, flickering tapers made from bat tallow, played gently on Zeriti’s pale skin. As she stood before the mirror fragment behind the altar, she fancied that she looked attractive. She wanted to be irresistible when she called on Jukala.

Atop the altar stood a broad copper salver filled with deep-red liquid. But it was not entirely filled, for the thick fluid beaded unevenly at the edges, leaving part of the basin’s flat bottom uncovered. Reaching into a squirming sack beside the altar, Zeriti pulled out a fluttering form: a brown, chittering bat, its tiny needle-like fangs gnashing in rage. Raising it to her lips, she deftly nipped an artery with her long, pointed eye-teeth. Then she held the creature over the basin, squeezing it dry like a plump furry fruit. Blood spattered down, augmenting the thickening contents enough to fill in the octagonal shape of the salver’s bottom.

Tossing the limp, depleted bat away into the shadows, the witch reached into a sack before the altar. From it she took a fistful of bright mineral dust, which she scattered across the surface of the blood offering. Taking a flaring taper from the crooked candelabrum atop the altar, she waved it low above the salver. The tray of blood immediately caught fire and burned with a vaporous green flame. The ghostly ambience played across the vessel in a transparent dance, eerily illuminating the priestess’s smile.

It also lit the space beyond the altar, which was occupied by a jagged polished shard of metal or crystal. This crooked relic shimmered in the light like a piece of silvered mirror-glass; yet now it did not throw back the room, the flame, or the face of its female worshipper. Instead it reflected only indistinct, murky depths pricked by tiny dents or holes that could have been stars.

Then Zeriti spoke. “Great Jukala, I conjure thee! Out of the dim huddle of centuries, the abyss of forgotten aeons, I call upon you and beseech your vigour and feral strength! For you are of the world’s raw youth, O Great One, your reign ever young and potent, your masculine power unflagging! I, Zeriti, crave to arouse you from your ancient sleep. Come forth, Jukala, and grant my desire!”

So saying, the self-ordained priestess dropped again to her belly before the altar. She grovelled on the dusty stone floor, moaning and writhing in attitudes well-calculated to abase herself and interest an onlooker.

As she did so, something stirred within the smudged mirror. The silver-grey shard seemed to flicker and enlarge till at last, impossibly, it overlooked the altar and the worshipper’s squirming obeisance.

“My lord Jukala!” the witch-woman cried, raising herself to her knees. “You stand before me as first you rose before a world of creatures that could only swim, wriggle, and crawl! I welcome you, great master, as ever before! Long I have yearned for you and prepared the way for your coming. I continue to plan and prepare, master, as I have vowed!”

In response to her chanted words, the formless thing beyond the altar made no definite reply. The mirror-shard only seemed to loom there in vague imminency and, if possible, to bulge outward, as if whatever gazed from it strained at its jagged confines. But no audible answer came. Indeed, if there was any sound beyond the echoes of the priestess’s ravings in the stillness of the crypt, it was unintelligible, a mere alimentary rumbling from earth’s bowels.

Yet Zeriti knelt there, straining forward in devout earnestness with her hands pressed together against the battered altar stone, and spoke eagerly as if some question had been addressed to her. “Yes, master,” she effused, “as I told you, I am preparing rare offerings: first, as proof my devotion, a bride. Knowing your preferences, she is of unmatched youth and innocence. A flower of a child, a human, and a princess of the highest mortal estate, bred and chosen specially to honour your greatness. A suitable ornament for your crown of dominion over the earth.

“Yes, lord,” Zeriti resumed volubly after a pause, “I know what use you make of brides. And no, it does not trouble me. A marriage is but a diplomatic union, after all, a mere form of blood tribute from earthly kings. But I, milord, I am not of bridal stuff. I would better be employed as your mistress—a humbler station but a more permanent one—your concubine, your faithful servant and high priestess!” As if spurred on by her own temerity, Zeriti pressed forward against the altar. “For you know, lord, as priestess I can help to spread your faith across the world, so that you may rule again as once you did, and your name be revered as once it was—that of an all-powerful god over men and other vermin, over anything that may walk or crawl the earth or swim the gloomy depths of the seas—” She paused in mid-sentence as if an impatient question had been posed.

“Where, you ask? Why, starting in Baalur, Shem, for it is true, milord, I have obtained you a city! Just another small offering, really, a love-gift to promote this great purpose of ours. Tiny and inconsiderable it may be, but it can serve as a starting point, milord, a seat for our earth-spanning empire. By dream and delusion I have readied the inhabitants. They know me, and soon they will know you, Jukala, in all your vast primordial glory! They shall fear you as much as ever you were feared by man, or any other race capable of cowering in righteous dread before a vengeful, living god.”

From her supplicant posture, arching forward against the altar with her painted face turned up in rapture toward the broken mirror, she spoke in fulsome transports of devotion. “And there is yet a third gift I offer you, Jukala. I am sending him to you now... another soul, a robust male to use as you will. A splendid figure for a human, well-known and well-feared, as mortals go. You may see him, if you care to... here, permit me.” Rising from her knees to her bare feet, Zeriti stepped forward to stand before the altar. “Here in the circle..Waving one black-nailed hand above the flaming basin without fear of being burned, she caused the fire to swirl and brighten into an image more distinct, and indeed more blindingly bright, than the murky form she addressed.

From high aloft, as from the vantage of a hovering falcon, the circle showed a row of ships sailing into a sandy lagoon before a broad, thundering cataract. Aboard the foremost vessel, a warship with painted sails, a group of men idled astern. As the putative hawk’s-eye viewpoint circled and stopped, dropping suddenly nearer, it could be seen that one of the men, though wearing no particularly splendid uniform or armament, towered over the others and dominated them. He was black-haired, with broad burly shoulders, and moved in a swift, authoritative way as he paced the white-scrubbed planks.

“You see, milord,” Zeriti murmured adoringly to her amorphous god, “even now he seeks his way to you—a deluded conqueror with his loyal entourage, bringing along men, ships, horses, and wealth enough for you to employ in any small earthly pursuit that may tease your fancy. I have bound him over by his own petty human laws, and pointed him toward you, there in your dwelling at the heart of the world. He knows not of your existence, not yet. But at your whim you may confront him face-to-face, take his measure, and decide what use he merits.” She waved a hand, and the image disappeared from the bowl. “He bears promise, I’ll warrant. There are certain possibilities you may find intriguing------

“What is that, great lord?” Responding to a gruff subterranean rumbling with deep cracking overtones, a communication which she obviously felt as well as heard, Zeriti crossed her hands anxiously on the altar before her. “No, great sire, no, he is not my lover! In earthly life I never touched him, though in truth, women find him comely.” She leaned confidingly forward. “Nay, Jukala,’ my passions are reserved for one alone— yourself, my eternal lord and master! That is why I have laboured so carefully to prepare the way for your coming... and why, whenever I entreat you here, I yearn to feel your godly presence in a more tangible form.” She paused, red lips parted in anticipation. “Do you think, Great Jukala... is it possible that, in some fleeting way, I might experience your immortal embrace?”

To her senses it came: a profound, scraping shudder, that shook the very altar stone and made dry dust trickle down from the vaultings above. But to the ears of anyone else present in the chamber, there would have been no doubt that this gruff tremor formed the sibilance of a single word, “Yes.”

Shoving aside the offering-bowl, sloshing out half-clotted blood in her haste, Zeriti mounted the altar. She poised there on her knees with arms outstretched, while before her in the mirror-fragment, dark and light vapours entwined, casting forth a silver gleam that outshone the candles’ wavering light. From the centre of the shard, smoke billowed upward as something tried desperately to shape itself. Then it emerged, larger than human, tapering upward like a spreading smoke plume.

With an impassioned cry, the witch Zeriti flung herself forward to grapple with a tangible, swirling fury of smoke and shadow.

XIII

The Wrath of Erlik

Soon after arriving at the small river port, Conan’s army established a defensive enclave just downstream. Furio explored upriver with a few men and a dinghy, returning to report a series of rapids and low cataracts that made navigation impossible. This confirmed local accounts of the terrain; furthermore, the Styx flowed through a rocky canyon, with steep cliffs that would force too many hazardous crossings. There was no trail, so the river was impassable with or without ships.

The road that kept the town’s ferries and hostelries alive, besides boat and foot traffic downriver, was a caravan trail, reputedly leading eastward to gold-spired Turan and the half-legendary realms of Iranistan and Vendhya. The trail ran west into the Stygian interior past the legend-haunted desert ruin of Pteion. But just west of the falls, in the hilly region over the ridge, there was said to be a lake. So Conan rode with a few dozen cavalry to see it.

On the way up the short, steep trail, Conan’s party overtook a train of pack donkeys and armed Stygian slaves bearing a rich householder in a sedan chair. The plump elderly passenger, after getting over his initial fear of brigands, fell into conversation with Conan, while warhorse and slave-team picked their way together through the scattered pines and cacti of the rocky slope.

When asked his destination, the rich man said, “I am bound for the source of the River Styx, which lies just over yonder crest.”

Conan wondered at first whether the old fellow was a mirage, or mayhap a witch-sprite sent to lead him astray. But by diligent questioning he determined that there was indeed a lake, and on its banks a resort whose hot, aromatic waters were said to cure all manner of rheums and agues. The fame of this warm spring was trumpeted throughout eastern Stygia, where it was renowned as the ultimate and holy source of the Styx’s life-giving waters.

The place, when they came to it, was indeed a sort of shrine, a low, rambling abbey on the lake’s rim maintained by hooded brothers of one of the monastic orders of Set’s ubiquitous cult. The monks proved to be sharp traders, exacting the steepest prices for their medical and spiritual cures, as well as hay to satisfy Conan’s famished Shemitish steeds.

The Cimmerian was bemused by this discovery; he even experienced a spell of hopeful, wistful elation until, after spending a day exploring the lake shore, he judged that the local scrub and pine barrens contained no flower that could reasonably be called a silver lotus.

Nevertheless, he brought Caspius up to the lake to learn whether, among other possibilities, such a flower might bloom only briefly, during some other season. He also called up a work party to build a large encampment on the lakeside—over the protests of the local monks, who feared business competition or outright attack. He put several hundred troops to work clearing and improving the trail leading up from the riverside. He sold one of the dahabiyahs to local traders—the blood-soaked one. Then Conan proclaimed that the four remaining ships would be unloaded, disassembled as necessary, and hauled up-slope to the mountain lake.

“What, have you gone mad?” Furio scolded on behalf of the other officers. “Such a feat has never been undertaken! To lift whole vessels over mountains... it would be an engineering miracle, or rather a nightmare! And to what purpose? Why should we float a good-sized navy on a remote puddle in the Stygian hills?” He shook his head in disgust. “Why else, but to make yourself into a petty chieftain and promote some mad dream of kingship! I feared all along that you would subvert our cause—”

“The puddle,” Conan drily interrupted, “feeds a fair-sized river, which in turn is a tributary of the Styx. That is why the locals mistake it for the river’s source. The two streams join together well south of here, above the cataracts, in the direction we are bound. I have sent scouts along the watercourse, and it is boatable. Troublesome as it may seem, this is the best way to get our ships upriver. With our losses in the pirate attack, and the stores we have consumed, we need only three transports now. But we need them as badly as ever.”

“Impossible!” the junior commander sputtered. “Why not just send the cavalry upstream with me in command, and some supplies on camelback? I promise to find the lotus and return swiftly. Tell me, how long do you think this project of yours will delay our mission?”

“Delay us, you say? Not long,” Conan shot back in irritation, “because for once, you Baalur city skites will be working your humps off! I do not know who told you this entire trip would be a pleasure cruise or a horseback ride, but now comes the time to taste some of the hard toil! I tell you, captain, I know what lies ahead of us.”

The task proved a monumental one indeed, requiring construction skills and inventiveness as well as backbreaking labour. Fortunately, the sail hands were expert with knots and rigging, and some had even learned engineering tricks used in constructing the great tombs. A considerable array of ropes and tackle-blocks taken from the stores was rigged to tree trunks on the hillside, and men, horses, and mules were employed to do the hauling. The ships, with decking and cabins removed, were dragged overland on their keels along plank-lined notches, while oars, supplies, weapons, and timbers were carried uphill on pack trains.

In all it took a fortnight, working by sun and torch, with interruptions only during the hottest afternoons. The pace was slowed by the necessity of leaving forty men above and a hundred below at all times, to guard against bandits and Stygian patrols; but the watch duty served as a much-needed rest detail. The Stygian navy, remarkably, left the expedition alone, not even sending a dromon upriver to observe the ambitious portage.

Meanwhile, only a handful of deaths were due to hauling accidents. Those who suffered crushed limbs and severe strains were treated to the healing mercies of the Brothers of Set, whose chants and medicaments all but one of them survived.

The ships—after being dragged over the rugged crest, beached on the shore of the tepid green lake, and re-caulked—were refitted. Some modifications to the dahabiyahs were made as well, to provide seats for oarsmen and raised, treaded walkways for shallow-water poling. When loaded, the four remaining craft were more crowded than before. But the cavalry could travel just as swiftly around the margin of the lake, and even assist in places by hauling the ships along the shoreline with ropes.

Much to the wrath of some officers, they found that the lake fed into the river by a waterfall. The troops howled at the prospect of another portage. Yet the river flowed between steep banks; so, upon Conan’s order, trees were felled in the nearby woods, and a dam of stones and timber was constructed a short distance downstream. Once the stream filled the reservoir, the laden ships were floated in from the lake. Then, as the dam was pried apart log by log, the vessels sank to the level of the new watercourse and the expedition continued on its way.

Along the winding course of the stream, three more falls were encountered and three more dams built, each one requiring a full day’s toil. In other narrow stretches, the ships had to be guided through rock-snagged rapids by ropes secured to trees and horse teams along the banks. Nevertheless, travel downstream was a welcome change. During the several days they traversed the river canyon, they saw no other boats or human habitations.

At its end, they found the River Styx broad and calm, with small craft plying the black waters and mud-and-wattle settlements on the willow-lined shores. The gorge where the river dropped lay somewhere downstream, dangerous and unexplored, but by all accounts, the Styx continued tranquil a good many leagues southward.

The Baalur expedition was the strongest naval force on this stretch of river. Local craft, including the rare Stygian patrol ships, were made primarily of bundled reeds, with fishing canoes and flatboats also in use. Some of the reed ships were good-sized vessels, all but impervious to the effects of a ram, as Conan’s crews learned in brief encounters with river pirates. Even so, in those few skirmishes, the surprised pirates never stood a chance; the Shemites were able to fight off their attackers by dint of superior numbers and weapons, with few losses. With their concentrated force and mobility they could have ruled the upper river. But it would have been a troubled domain.

This expanse of the Styx traversed a brushy plateau with dry hills away to eastward. As before, the river was the lifeline of agriculture and civilization along its irrigated and flood-enriched bottomlands. The district, though claimed on both sides of the river by Stygia, was prone to strife and unrest, particularly on the eastern bank, where bands of wild Zuagirs made frequent forays. There were no great cities, only brick-walled riverside towns, with the occasional burnt, eroding remnants of fort and trading post giving mute testimony to recent skirmishes. Farther back from the banks could be seen the ruined stone temples and ruptured tombs of some older race. Absent the iron discipline of Set’s tomb police, such ancient monuments had not been well preserved.

Through interpreters and acquired Stygian dialect, the shore parties continued to gather knowledge along with extra provisions. They learned that the Stygian colonists and frontier commanders were especially hard-pressed just now by a religious uprising among the Zuagirs, most of whom were worshippers of the fierce desert god Erlik. Stirred to frenzy by a wild-bearded prophet known as Mahtu the Oracle, they combined in ever increasing numbers with the intent of driving out the Stygian invaders and foreigners in general. Fortunately they were horsemen and camel riders, not river sailors; they could cross to the western bank only by capturing a ferry.

Such was the situation in these troubled lands, according to the locals, but upstream things were worse. Some hundred leagues southward, they said, the Styx issued out of another and mightier gorge that was its birthplace. But well before that the great river turned wild and foreign to men. Settlement so far upriver was unsafe due to the fierce Zuagirs and Keshan renegades along its banks, among other perils.

But here, at least, the wind blew steady across the plateau, fair for sailing on most days. Provisions held out, stretched by gleaning and occasional hunting trips ashore. The troops had long since become skilled at catching fish, eels, and turtles out of the river, as well as garnering wild grains and onions and pilfering fruit from local orchards. They had learned the many dangers of the Styx, from swimming asps to night-stalking panthers. The legionnaires knew to beware when stepping ashore, so as not to be cornered by a grazing hippo on its blind rush back to the river and to avoid the ugly river horses in the water, lest boat and man alike be overturned and champed in razor-toothed jaws. These lessons all cost lives, but saved a good many more.

Where the river stretched narrow and wild, and the wind was faint or blocked by stream-side trees, various means of propulsion were used. Towing by the centireme was reserved for hauling the sail ships off snags and mud banks and out of blind channels. More often, men with long poles walked the length of the planks that had been installed atop the rails, driving the ships upstream with the force of their strides.

In deeper water, men lined the benches that had been installed inside the rails, plying sweeps. Additionally, small boats would row out ahead of each ship, playing out lines attached to kedge hooks, which they then fastened to willow roots or lowered to the river bottom. The hardware Conan had insisted on bringing along included ratchets, pawls, and bearings for windlasses. These engines, when used to reel in the kedge lines and haul the ships forward, enabled scores of men to apply their strength in the unused central space of the foredeck.

Where farms could be seen from the river, they increasingly showed signs of strife: scorched outbuildings, hastily erected walls, and the bodies of dead Zuagirs propped up on stakes to warn away other raiders. Elsewhere, burned boats and decomposing corpses were caught in logjams and riverside brush. Conan’s crew found one survivor clinging to the prow of a half-burnt reed boat lodged offshore—a young ferryman, Stygian or Shemitish by his look, barefoot and dressed in the typical jerkin and pantaloons of the river trade. A dinghy was sent over to free the lad, but Conan, from his vantage point on the oar ship’s stem, noticed some peculiar things.

The refugee had been huddled at the highest point of the wreck for some time, days perhaps, as shown by the fact that his clothes were dry and crusted with river muck. His face was burnt, whether from sun or fire, and his failure to make his own way ashore seemed peculiar. After all, most river hands were passable swimmers, and the crocs were hardly clever and persistent enough to tree a man as hounds would. When the rescuers manoeuvred near, the fellow clung to his perch in stubborn fear, refusing even to climb down into the boat. When finally they tumbled him in to the scuppers, he struggled mutely, interfering with the oarsmen and causing them to drift inshore.

It was then, seizing hold of an overhanging tree limb, that he scrambled ashore bone-dry, clawed his way up the muddy bank, and bolted inland, never to be seen again.

Strange indeed, since the fellow could scarcely be sure of finding safety on the Styx’s war-ravaged east bank. He was crazed with fear, obviously, but rather than fearing his rescuers, his manner suggested to Conan that his fear was more general: that he bore a fixed, intense dread of the river itself, the swirling black enigma that bore up every ship and dinghy. The river that had witnessed the destruction of his own frail craft and crew mates, sometime in the recent past, some unknown distance upstream.

As one last peculiarity, Conan noticed that the papyrus-reed wreck had burned in an unusual way. Instead of being consumed down to the waterline, as most vessels would be, it had been charred in cross-section somewhat forward of the mast, leaving the bow section unscathed—the result of the crew’s fire-fighting efforts, perhaps, or else the ship may have been set afire while beached.

But the pivotal chance, the one that finally drew Conan’s party into turbulent events ashore, came days later when they sailed into a battle. A caravan, caught at a ferry landing by fierce Zuagirs, fought from horseback for survival. The well-laden camels had been led out onto the sandy promontory where they stood guzzling rank water, refilling their humps after a long inland trek. The caravan guards, barely two-score in number, held off a hundred or more howling, white-cloaked desert raiders. The fighters made galloping passes atop the grassy bank with lance and sabre and plucked short, powerful bows from the saddle. Across; the river, meanwhile, two barges and two dozen river boatmen stood watching, unwilling to risk poling across.

As his ships bore upstream, Conan judged the situation. In years past he had ridden with the Zuagirs; his name might even be known to some of these tribesmen as a minor chieftain. They, like his Baaluri, were Shemites, and they controlled the country he would be seeking to cross. It did not bode wise, perhaps, to offend them.

On the other hand, he knew the desert riders’ nature. Aware that they had been inflamed by the call for a holy war against foreigners, he did not imagine that they would welcome him back—not in foreign officer’s garb, and not at the head of a city-bred legion, not even a Shemitish-speaking one. He knew their boundless suspicion of lowlanders, and their unbounded lust for wealth and goods of the sort with which his party was laden. If one nomad chief did not try to loot and harass his expedition, another would. Best to give them a show of strength from the start.

“Oars and helm bear starboard, then full speed astern. We’ll beach this tub and wade ashore. Unloose your weapons for a fight!”

The sudden, brisk drumbeats and the splashing of oars charged the bright afternoon with excitement. The rowers set up a chant, exultant at the promise of action. By reversing oar-strokes and landing with its raised, rudderless stem ashore, the ramship scraped a good way onto the beach and stood ready to re-launch. Conan signalled the dahabiyahs to beach as well, but the impetuous Captain Furio was already leading the way, lashing his rowers with brisk commands. From the horse stalls amidships came stamping and neighing as the beasts were hastily saddled.

When the lead sail ship ran aground, the crew was ready at the halyards, letting the sails come cascading down so that the masts would not snap. A trumpet sounded, and hoof beats thudded on timber; then the already-mounted cavalry poured overside, leaping ashore amid bright fans of spray. One ship after another bumped to a halt and disgorged horsemen, two hundred in all, followed by foot soldiers yelling in mad exhilaration.

“Go, you river dogs! Save the caravan and drive off the thieves! Three golden shekels to the man who brings me a fine Zuagir stallion!”

Bellowing encouragement, Conan stood aboard long enough to see his men pouring over the stem with swords in hand, scattering frightened camels before them. Then he sprang ashore and pelted through the melee, seeking the caravan leaders to assure them of his intentions. He found one of the caravaners, a thick-moustached Turanian speeding arrows from atop the high hump of a dromedary. Shouting for the man’s attention, he offered their party safe transport across the river once the battle was over. On seeing the man’s wary look, he added, “For a decent price, of course.”

His bargaining reassured the Turanian. “If you can drive off these desert jackals, northerner, we will owe you more than that!” He nocked a fresh arrow. “Our sincere thanks under Tarim,” the canny merchant added.

The Zuagirs, swift and merciless on the attack, were equally swift to give way before the inevitable. Seeing such a huge force appear before them out of nowhere, they fell back through the scattered brush and trees of the river margin. Conan saw his next task as restraining the cavalry—lest, under Furio’s overeager command, they become scattered and vulnerable. The desert riders were deft at retreating in evident disorder, only to turn and deal a crippling blow to their pursuers.

But the nomads’ lean horses had already outrun the less well-conditioned Shemitish steeds. Without footmen or baggage trains to slow them, they soon dwindled to a few white cloaks disappearing across the grassy plain. The Shemites rode back to the river, jovial at a victory gained almost without cost.

The caravan, as it turned out, had been overtaken on the trail leading downriver and had barely reached the crossing. They were bound westward toward Sukhmet and Kheshatta in southern Stygia, bearing trade goods from Khawarism and the far-off Vilayet. But the local bargemen, seeing them under attack, feared to cross the river and risk losing their flatboats and their lives.

“But if you came north, heading downriver,” Conan asked, “why not just cross the Styx earlier upstream? The west bank is not in open rebellion, and the Keshan outlaws are less numerous and lack horses, from what I hear.”

Zirfar, the stout old merchant who was senior to the one Conan had met on the battlefield, scratched vigorously beneath his soiled turban—its jewelled gold pin signifying rank. “Aye, a good enough plan, but there are no ferries to be found farther upstream. The war chiefs are far too powerful, and the river too wild, so we must run the gauntlet of these thieving Zuagirs every time. The desert tribes are easier to deal with, for a patriarch controls each oasis, and will usually accept tribute. But these local bands are prone to feuding. Now that they are united under this one whom they call the Oracle, ’tis worse.”

“Some enterprising boatmen might pioneer a ferry crossing south of here, and charge steeper prices,” Conan speculated. “Some may have tried.”

Zirfar shrugged. “Where the southern desert crossings strike the River Styx, it runs through a broad, deep chasm. ’Tis worth a man’s life just to climb down for a drink, much less cross, though many, mad with thirst, have tried. To the south, Kassali and the other great Puntish towns lie in the open plain, far from the river basin, so there is no easy crossing. Travelling north, we must first descend from the plateau to reach the river, and then march more days to find a ferry, hoping to meet no Zuagirs along the way. Thus it has always been in living men’s memory.”

“Hmmph.” Conan glanced at his officers, wondering if these tales would dispirit them. “And this Mahtu, he says no outsiders should be allowed to pass?”

“The Oracle, true to the traditions of these Erlik-worshippers, spreads the fear of unclean foreign ways. His visions have told him that an arch-demon, an ancient enemy of Erlik, is rising to take over the world. The menace—Thutal, I think it is called—will be brought back to foreign non-believers, who must be slain or driven out.”

“The Oracle’s commandments,” the moustached Turanian guard added with a smile, “are translated by his followers into a liberal license to rob and plunder.”

“Indeed so.” Plump old Zirfar frowned in disapproval and crossed his hands piously on his chest. “We worshippers of the holy Tarim do not entertain such bloodthirsty superstitions, nor put our faith in prophetic dreams. And we respect the sacred rights of property and trade.”

Conan grunted his respect to the eastern merchant god. Later, while transferring the caravan across the river, he shut himself up with Zirfar in one of the ship’s cabins to conduct business. Then he went ashore to confer with the ferry captain who had refused to send his boats across the river.

“You have much nerve stealing our business,” the fezzed, bulbous-nosed Stygian rebuked him. “Now I suppose you river pirates will sink my boats and destroy our livelihood for good!”

“Business?” Conan laughed scornfully at the bargeman and his handful of sons who skulked ashore. “You would have had no business at all today if my men had not driven off the nomads! Why do you not arm yourselves and defend your customers?”

“Ha! Easy for you to say, with all your horses and warships! Myself, I cannot risk losing these boats to the Zuagirs, who would use them to cross the river themselves, bum our homes, and slaughter all our families!” The boatman shrugged bitterly. “Our customers are few enough of late! Now, with bandits like you and the Zuagirs destroying my trade, I’m thinking of moving downriver.”

“We are not pirates, but armed travellers,” Conan assured him. “But if you must go, why not move upriver, and get the northern-bound caravans before the Zuagirs catch them?”

The ferryman laughed. “What, seek a better life up the river?” Touching his fez superstitiously, the Stygian cast a wary glance up the black, willow-lined reach of water where it curved away out of sight. “Nay, stranger, the Styx would not allow it. Men seldom travel beyond this stretch, and when they do, the river sends them drifting back down to us. Or their boats.” He pointed at a scatter of broken, charred timbers lining the muddy promontory. “If you are heading south, I would advise you to leave your ships here with me. Take to horse or camelback and face the Zuagirs instead! The Sacred River does not like intruders pushing too near its birthplace.”

XIV

Night Terrors

In sheer-walled Baalur, men threw up feeble bastions of light against the encroaching dark. The yellow flares of torches, whose resinous smoke choked the city’s byways, lit the night-long parade of citizens filing through the abnormally crowded bazaars and plazas. A dismal parade it was, in all truth a procession of zombies. Even in the guttering yellow gloom, one could see their hollow eyes, their discoloured skin, and the stooped, weary postures they assumed in their dogged shuffling to keep awake.

For months now the dream plague had held Baalur in its remorseless grip. By day these same parks and plazas would be crowded with sleepers, bodies strewn together in exhaustion, the noon sun scorching their upturned faces and limbs. The occasional frenzied thrashings of some, combined with the sobs and moans of others, made a freakish chorus. It felt almost safe, somehow, to dream one’s disjointed nightmares in sun glare, with light burning through your half-closed eyelids, and to be frightened awake in a public place, where familiar faces and landmarks could instantly be identified.

But now, during Baalur’s long night, if a sufferer succumbed to sleep in solitude or in darkness, he or she would be caught entirely in the power of dream, wholly at the non-existent mercy of the mad witch Zeriti.

That was why the Narsus fruit-seller trudged the streets so late—or rather, so early in the unborn day. He could ply his trade best by night, offering sweet distraction to the countless weary somnambulants desperate for anything to occupy their minds and senses, anything that might keep them poised another moment on the tightrope stretched above the yawning pit of sleep. He could empty his pouch of apples and tamarinds before dawn, make his way home, and give the coppers to his parents. They would feed him a morning supper, whatever meagre fare his previous day’s earnings had purchased in the night markets. Then, once the sun climbed a sufficient distance above the city’s east wall, he could go back into the streets and seek his day’s rest.

He did not feel tired, not really. He had slept a fair interval in the livery yard the previous day from mid-morn till sometime past noon. Then the struggles and ravings of a nearby sleeper had called him back from the monster-haunted fen where the witch-dreams carried him lately. After helping others staunch the plague victim’s burning dreams in a watering trough, belabour him with wet hands and rouse him fully awake, Narsus had been too wet and troubled to sleep again himself. With so many lining the public ways, in any case, it was hard to find a space. So he wandered till nightfall, then picked up his wares to hawk.

There were those in town, he knew, who could still sleep untroubled. Life for some was little different from before the plague. Others managed to keep up ordinary appearances—mainly the wealthy, who had servants to watch over them while they slept. Some tried leaving the city to escape the dreams—without success, so it was said. Neighbouring city-states had long since closed their gates to travellers from Baalur, and residents of local towns and farms complained that city refugees brought and spread the dreams.

There was no escape, not even in death. The priests of Dagon said that those who died of dreaming would become Zeriti’s spirit-slaves for eternity. All hope hinged on the expedition that had been sent into the South to obtain a cure, and had reported back recently from Stygia. Those without special advantages were best-advised to huddle together to sleep in public, in misery’s reassuring company.

As Narsus walked along, occasional screams and frenzied yelling echoed from the courts and alleyways he passed. The panic and dread of dream could at times spill over into the waking world. There were the accidents, too; just tonight, another block of tenements had burned to the ground, doubtless because of a torch or candle dropped from some sleeper’s sagging hand. On his own walks, Narsus took pains to stay out of the path of dozing teamsters and charioteers—-almost a welcome threat, in a way, since it helped him stay alert.

But now, tonight, through no intent of his own, he seemed to have entered a lonelier street than the surrounding ones. No torches bobbed ahead, and he himself carried no light; so shadows gathered thick in the doorways and arches. The darkness was always a menace and a lure, offering the false promise of rest. So intimate and private it was, like the dark, discreet oblivion that could so simply be had, just by closing one’s eyes...

He jolted himself back to awareness, as he had already done a dozen times that night. This was too dangerous. Best to turn back toward the crowded, well-lit thoroughfares.

But then, just ahead of him, there appeared a noisy party armed with not one but a pair of unshuttered lanterns. False hearty voices, thick with the forced gaiety that was the only kind to be found in Baalur these days, sang out ribaldries. The lamp beams cut through the smoky dimness and crossed upon him, sizing him up from toe to crown.

“Ho, fruiterer, may we test your wares?” a drunken voice called out.

“Yes, fellow, please.” This a woman’s husky tones. “I crave the taste of something sweet on my tongue, after the too-bitter wine of Eruk!”

“But beware of Milo here, O fruiterer,” another voice crowed. “He may feel fruitier tonight than thou art. He might try to squeeze thy plums!”

A boisterous band it was, their yells and hoots echoing eerily in the passage. Then, as light from the shuttered lamps struck a wall and rebounded on the lamp-bearers, their forms became visible: reptile-crested, with bulbous batrachian faces, their impossibly baggy skin mottled and gleaming like that of human-sized swamp toads.

“Back, keep away from me!” Narsus cried at once. Turning to run, he smashed into a pillar and reeled away half-blind.

“Here, fellow, what is the trouble? Come now, are you injured?”

“No, unhand me!” Fumbling in his pouch and laying hold of the curved knife he used to pare fruit, he lashed out fiercely at the demons’ clawed, web-fingered hands.

“What man, are you mad?” they croaked at him out of fanged, misshapen mouths. “He has hurt her! Stop him, he dreams!”

But no, Narsus knew the truth now: day was night, night was day, and dream was waking—at long last he was awake! Striking out blindly with his knife and turning, he ran back toward the boulevards, which likewise thronged with paunchy amphibians, their flabby, humpbacked forms shambling toward him, their slick liver-spotted lips parting to expose needle-sharp teeth.

“Beware, he is mad with dream! He has slaughtered Milo! Stop him and hold him down!”

Desperately he ran through their midst, battering monsters out of his way and striking at them with his blade. He headed toward home, his one place of safety. The blood that besmirched his knife glistened green in | the torchlight, but the hand that clutched it, to his relief, remained human.

“Call the guards! A murdering fiend is loose!”

The leaping, shuffling horde of pursuers fell behind him. Arriving at his door, he pounded furiously at it till it opened.

“It is Narsus, returning early,” a voice said from within.

“Come in, child, quickly, there is some trouble in the street.”

Stepping up into the gloomy passage, he heard the heavy door slammed shut and bolted. Only then, as he moved into the unsteady glow of tapers on the stair landing, did he see the true nature of those who climbed with him. The larger, deeper-voiced figure was a mere man-shaped knot of writhing smoke, with two red-hot coals glowing where eyes should be.

The woman, not his mother, was in reality a lean, wiry-haired temptress in a flimsy black gown, with red fingernails and kohl-smudged eyes: Zeriti, the leering demoness of dream.

“Narsus, why do you fear me so? Come here, into mama’s arms!”

“What is that, son, a knife? Here, let me take it.”

Recoiling from their lethal touch, he struck out blindly with his blade, then turned and dashed up the tenement’s inner stair.

“Why, what have you done? You must be mad... Wait, stop!”

“Monster! He hurt his mother, be careful! You, children, run inside!”

Charging upward, Narsus fought past figures on the stairs. The devils behind were as nothing to what now obstructed his way: giant rotting animals, huge knots of wriggling worms, and viny tendrils sprouting out of the walls and banisters themselves to snatch at him. One flight up, then two, and three, with the clamour of pursuit mounting close behind him.

The top landing was mercifully unoccupied. There was only one door, closed tight. Tearing at the latch, he wrenched it open to take refuge.

And saw before him not a room, but a vast, gaping mouth with pink throat convulsing, tongue dripping saliva, and teeth parting in eager anticipation to receive him.

With a shriek, Narsus turned and dove through the thin window curtains into tumbling, crashing darkness, with a sledgehammer blow rising to meet him at the bottom.

There he lay, dimly aware of sounds and impressions.

“Narsus, oh, my child! Poor lad, the dreams have slain you!”

His mother knelt over him, cradling his head in her lap, disregarding the wound on her own arm. The blood that ran down her wrist was red, so he noticed.

Then he slept.

XV

Out of the Depths

Rowing upriver, Conan’s men were made gloomy by the changing aspect of the Styx. Villages disappeared and cultivated lands grew scarce as the riverbanks rose wild in woods and impenetrable thickets. Beyond the tangle on both sides, desert and meadow were replaced by steep-sided, craggy-topped hills. River traffic and tidings were a thing of the past as humans hid from view. Zuagir riders at times taunted them from the eastern bank, or lobbed arrows from the saddle, but they attempted no organized attack. To the west, the only sign of human presence was a brief glimpse of a dusky face peering through dense foliage.

As the funnel of hills closed in tighter, the sense of desolation increased. Within the valley’s confines, the Styx’s course meandered in broad looping curves, doubling back on itself and greatly increasing the distance the boats had to travel. Often as not, while rowing between curves in the waterway, the centireme’s crew could look over the brushy bank and see the masts of the dahabiyahs a few-score paces away, moving in the opposite direction.

The reason for the river’s perverse behaviour, other than perhaps to frustrate explorers, could not be guessed; the water here was inky-black, and continued to flow at an unknown depth and swiftness beneath the wooden hulls.

“We should have made peace with the Zuagirs,” Furio complained. “I thought them mere bandits; did you not know that they control the river territory ahead?” As ever, the young captain tried to impeach Conan’s leadership. “If we have to make another portage soon, or leave our ships behind, we shall have nothing but grief at the hands of these obstreperous nomads!”

“I know the Zuagirs well,” Conan reassured his troubled officers. “They are as hostile to one another as to outsiders, and slow to react in any unified way. If we could trust them, I would have sought to bargain our way through, but they are peerless thieves and traitors. Fortunately, they respect strength above all else.”

That men with boats had travelled this far upriver, and even dwelt here, was not in question. For there were frequent ruins of stone and timber in high spots on either shore. Amid the driftwood piled against tree roots and snagged in brush at the high-water mark, charred bits of man-made flotsam could sometimes be seen, with an occasional spike or mortise peg still protruding.

Understandably, these human traces did not make the men happier. But as the winding river and encroaching hills interrupted the wind, heavy toil at oars and boat poles helped to distract the crews from their gloom. Conan kept the idle ones busy at miscellaneous tasks, such as mending frayed ropes and sharpening the kedge hooks.

Then, as they rounded a broad, curving reach of water, they spied the river’s destination. The surrounding hills became bluffs into whose face a deep gorge was cut. That the mighty Styx issued thence could scarcely be doubted; no lesser stream could have carved so deep a cleft in the terraced, many-coloured slopes.

“By Father Dagon,” Furio called across the water from the ship just behind Conan’s, “yonder lies another stretch of rapids! If we cannot continue by river, or climb out of this gully, we will have to backtrack to find a route—”

He was interrupted just then by shouts and the clatter of oars. There followed a sound even more unnerving: horses screaming, and the cries of strong men stricken with intense pain or fear. The tumult came from somewhere behind; but Conan, looking back from the stem of the centireme, could not see past the bend of the river.

“Back oars, full stroke astern! Steersmen, bear to starboard and give us a view! But take care not to foul Furio’s ship.”

For another moment their vision was blocked by the dahabiyah’s sagging, useless sail. Then, as they pulled past the drifting and disorganized vessel, Conan and his rear rowers saw their worst and wildest imaginings come to pass: the Black River itself was alive, rearing up from its bed.

The middle dahabiyah, third ship in line, was engulfed by a glossy, gleaming coil of living blackness. The animated stream flowed up seamless out of the sun- glistening river, enfolding the ship’s bow and weighting it down toward the depths. Men swarmed and scampered helplessly on deck; they flailed at the menace with their oars, and jabbed at it with pikes and boat hooks. Yet they were rolled under or thrown back limply as the stream continued to writhe and pulse upward, heaving itself into glinting sunlight. Several crewmen were dislodged from the tilting deck and thrown overside into the lashing, surging river, there to scream and flail madly as the black current swallowed them

alive.

“Dogs, keep up your stroke!” Conan shouted to his crew, who gaped at the catastrophic scene and eyed the water with nameless dread. “Beat the river, flog it with your oars, and drive us in closer! Drummer, double stroke! Deck crew, swing the catapult astern and load it with a kedge hook!”

With oars flailing at first, but gradually yielding to the drum’s relentless pace, the centireme regained way and sculled stem-first toward the turmoil. From the nearby ship, which Furio was still trying to get in order, Conan called for a line to be passed with another kedge anchor attached. This he bore along with his own vessel as it neared the nightmarish, insane fray.

The great black loop, thicker around than the stoutest tree trunk, swelled up out of the depths with titan strength to wring and rack the fore-part of the vessel, which it bore down by the bow and sidewards. Men were flattened where they sat at oars; others lashed out with knives and axes, to be crushed before Conan’s eyes as the shimmering tendril surged forward for a better grip. Although weapons seemed to pierce its viscous blackness, those wielding them instantly writhed and gaped in agony, gripping their hafts in a pale-faced rictus or crumpling nerveless to the wet planking. Meanwhile, sudden fires broke out aboard the stricken ship, the tarred cordage springing alight and the sail curling and blackening like brittle papyrus on a cook-fire.

Escaping the flames, one bearded officer leaped overboard with a rapier and began hacking and flailing at the Styx itself. The river did not bleed; but the man, caught in some evil enchantment, stiffened and rolled his eyes upward in paralysis. His teeth clenched spasmodically. His wet clothing singed and smoked, and uncanny blue sparks danced in his beard.

“The river has come to life, like the devil-snake they say it is,” Conan’s crew murmured in the benches. “It bums and strangles men at the same time, even as it devours their ships!”

“Enough babbling, fools, and keep on stroking,” Conan bellowed as he strode amidships. “Level that catapult! I want to set our anchor in the root of Hell itself!”

Luckily the mast was unstepped, giving the catapult a clear shot astern. Conan jerked the lanyard and, with a thud that made the deck-planks quiver, loosed it. The anchor, trailing its length of stout rope, arched flat across the open water to fall with a crash amid the fire and wreck of the sailship’s foremast.

“Good! Now reverse oars and haul! We need not get any closer, so pull for your lives! You, take up the slack and secure the anchor line! You there, recharge the catapult and bring up that line of Furio’s. Look smart, you Shemites, and we can beat this hell-river!”

Catapulting the anchors ahead and kedging up to them was a tactic that had been tried and abandoned, as not really lessening toil for the centireme’s crew. But the practice served them well this day, as a second line went flying overhead to lodge aboard the embattled dahabiyah.

“Now, you river dogs, pull harder! Splice that line, cast it off, and let Furio use his windlass! Pull, and we’ll see some action! Steady oar beats, working tempo—pace yourselves, my brothers!”

Conan’s crew likely assumed that he meant to haul: the entangled ship free of the danger, which seemed, after all, to be localized in a single spot. But as the brisk oar strokes took hold, to the crew’s morbid amazement, they saw their anchors hook into the looping black coil of river itself. Whatever substance the animated blackness was, solid or liquid, the sharpened flukes had bedded themselves deeply in it; now the oar ship’s steady motion pulled and pried visibly at the great tendril, where it lay taut across the sister ship’s deck.

“There now, lads, keep on pulling! Steady, now.” Their commander cupped his hands and roared across the water. “Furio, engage your windlass and haul it tight! You others, plant your anchors and do the same! We’ll see what this river worm is made of!”

Even as he spoke, a rent appeared where the centireme’s polished bronze anchor bit into the glistening black. There was a gleam of bright scarlet as thick blood welled forth and poured down the ebony surface. At the sight, a savage cheer went up from the crew, and the force of their stroking instantly doubled.

“The Styx can bleed after all! Conan has wounded the black river!”

“Pull, men, and slay this loathsome reptile!”

Then Furio’s anchor bit deep, tightening to the steady clack of ratchet-pawls as the less agile ship rowed to keep its place. The thick cable slowly lifted out of the river and strained in another direction.

Suddenly above the stricken ship reared a hideous head—many-fanged and monstrous, with black beady eyes the size of barrel-tops and a swollen, dog-faced snout. The face, bestial and soulless, radiated pure malevolence as it craned upward to the full height of the dahabiyah’s mainmast. Then it dashed down blindly at ship and crew, snapping and tearing at men and rigging alike, easily capable of severing human bodies with a single bite. What it bit into it did not bother to swallow, but raged on to wreck and slay again, until spears pierced its puffy face and arrows flew into its black glassy eyes, driving it back aloft.

The awful thing grimaced and snarled on high, making no sound other than the thrashing and roiling of black water. But then it bent, to gnaw and tug at the hooked lines in its own flesh. It was in pain. The wrenching on the anchor lines made the oar ship’s hull jerk under Conan’s feet, but the cables held.

“’Tis nothing but an eel, a great overgrown fish,” the crew began to exult. “We shall haul it in and bake it for supper!”

“Pray do so,” a frightened oarsman joked, “before it eats any more of us!”

Indeed, as Conan saw, it was the most common sort of river creature grown unimaginably huge. Jet-black in colour, made to glide and lurk invisibly beneath the river’s ebony hide, its glossy eel skin matched the silty substance of the river mud itself. Likewise, it bore the weapon Conan had heard of in lesser eels: the magic power to scorch and paralyse its victims, and even throw off fiery sparks. This stealthy monster, no doubt, was responsible for the half-burnt shipwrecks, and likewise for the mad, unreasoning fear of the lone castaway they had found.

“Keep hold of the brute,” he commanded. “We must catch it and slay it for once and all! Cast on more lines!”

Distracted by the kedge hooks, the beast had loosened its grip on the dahabiyah and now began to slip from the shattered deck. Meanwhile, the fourth ship in line had hauled up close to pass a line over to the embattled deck, and a courageous sailor ran forward to hurl it at the creature. It struck amid a hail of sparks, and the sailor, unable to get clear of the flailing rope in time, was knocked by the crackling energy into the scuppers. Then the ship rowed clear, pulling the third line taut.

Writhing and twisting now in agony, with crested head and blue-sparking tail slapping the water, the great eel slid slowly from the ship’s deck. As it did so, a fourth anchor bit home—straight into the neck, if indeed the snakelike thing could be said to have a neck. The grapple was hurled from the ravaged ship, whose surviving crew now found enough unbroken oars to backwater downstream.

Caught at the river’s surface, far from its deep accustomed haunts—and pulled in four directions at once on cruel hooks—the beast raged and splashed furiously. Its powerful heaving jerked the hulls underfoot, unseating rowers and straining the masts; but the stays held, and the ship’s crews struggled fiercely for their vengeance. In time the monster weakened, letting itself be drawn out zigzag like a snake on skewers. Even the crackling energy bursts began to diminish, insofar as Conan and his steersmen could feel the prick of their residual energy and see it sparking from the moored anchor cable.

Where the ebony monster broke the surface, blood now coloured the black water, drawing hungry crocodiles to the spot. The time had come to end it. At Conan’s order, the ships worked the great, thrashing carcass around onto a sandbar at the river’s edge. Men went ashore in small boats with pikes and, hurling them in from a safe distance, slew the creature.

There followed large-scale butchery as troops cut off the choicest parts of the eel, to be boiled and pickled with salt from the expedition’s stores.

The triumph over the river beast renewed the Baalur troops’ spirits, in spite of the loss of a dozen or more of their number. Lookouts watched the river keenly; but identical, smaller eels had frequently been speared or netted, so there seemed little likelihood of others having grown so large. The men decided it had been a freak, monstrously oversized as a grandfather fish sometimes grows to be. The ships proceeded bravely upriver, and the next day reached the mouth of the gorge.

Where the river poured forth from the canyon, pale with silt, it would have been impossible to force the ships upstream. Neither sails nor oars could overcome that swift, roiling current, and the walls of the gorge rose too steep for towing. The water’s jetting force was expended in a broad rocky pool, out of which the ships could easily be dragged up onto the sloping, sandy western bank. From there, the Styx commenced its meandering course downstream.

Thus it was that, on the high shoulder which formed the first peninsula of the river valley, Conan established a fortified camp. He ordered defensive ditches dug, and most trees on the promontory were felled to make a stout timber palisade. A central storehouse was built to house the ships’ wares, with timber barracks and stables raised nearby. The fort was secure from the east bank, though plainly visible to it. In case the Zuagirs should obtain boats, catapults were placed to command the whole loop of river.

Since the west bank was brushy and wooded, a cavalry attack upriver seemed unlikely; and any local outlaws on the sparsely populated Keshan side appeared to pose little threat. During the several days of construction, Conan dispatched cavalry scouts in various directions to report on trails and other possible routes. When the fort was complete and well-stocked, with the ships safely at anchor below, Conan addressed his officers in the main keep.

“Having come this far toward the river’s source, very likely halfway or more, I am establishing a base camp. That will enable us to hold troops and supplies in reserve and keep our ships ready for the return. As you know, finding the silver lotus means little if we are not able to get it back to Baalur.

“I intend to leave half our troops, cavalry, and officers behind. That will be enough to weather any local troubles, leaving us a swift, compact party to push in overland. If we run into trouble we can fall back here or else send for reinforcements.”

The first to protest, naturally, was Furio. “Why leave half our number here, in such a godforsaken place? The men will go mad with idleness, and this forlorn stockade will be picked apart by Zuagirs and wild beasts. Better just to rest here, and use our full force to press southward. Better to burn the boats and devote our whole will and passion to finding the river’s source!”

Conan waited for his headstrong subordinate to finish. “I would not leave men here,” he said, “if I meant them to stay idle under threat of destruction. I chose this part of the river, first of all, because it is beyond the reach of Stygia’s imperial power. Our ships are the strongest naval force on the upper river, and the Set- worshippers will not easily crush us, whatever their political whims or auguries may dictate. We are outside the Stygian frontier, and they are preoccupied with the Zuagir raiders on their east bank.

“Instead of waiting passively and defending, I expect the men encamped here to take an active part in events downriver. While I am leading the search upstream, your task will be to seek out merchant caravans, escort them along the east and westbound trails, and protect them from the Zuagirs in disputed territory... for a fair price, of course. This site, now that we have destroyed the much-overrated river monster, makes a perfect crossing. It will cut out the dangerous trek down the east valley, and steal the loot right out of the thieving Zuagirs’ saddlebags!

“Based here, our ships can take large parties across the Styx without delays that can prove deadly, as you have seen. We can even float them downriver, if they are willing to pay for it! So, in my absence, this camp will flourish. You must gain the trust of the local Stygians and Keshans, keep the Zuagirs in line, and gather wealth and information that will aid us in our quest.”

“But, by Mitra,” the red-faced Furio interrupted, “is this not what I have warned of all along? And what our far-sighted General Shalmanezer foresaw in Baalur? Here is our mercenary chieftain setting up a puppet kingdom far from Shem, and using our fighting men to gather loot and line his coffers! If we listen to his schemes, if we let our force be divided like this, and do his bidding for him, mark me, we will fail in our mission and end up dead or stranded in this godless wasteland, tricked by a barbarian—”

The rasp of drawn steel was followed by the thick meaty sound of Conan’s sword shearing deep. It struck, not Furio, but the rough timber pillar that stood just an arm-length from the raving captain.

The silence that followed was profound, broken only by a half-hearted clanking as Furio clutched at his sword hilt. But he did not draw it, and Conan let his blade stand half-embedded in the timber pole.

“I doubt not your zeal, captain.” Conan addressed them all, using the full depth of his field-commander’s voice. “The whole lot of you Shemites have been loyal and unswerving—to your cause, if not to me—faithful even to the death. If not, I could scarce have led you this far, not without mutinies and desertions. That is why I can risk dividing our force. Do you think for a minute that half this legion, or its officers, will forget our purpose or let the other half languish? I do not.” He turned his gaze on the red-faced captain. “That is why I intend to leave you, Furio, in command of this base camp. I know that you will watch out for our expedition’s welfare and success. I need an active commander in charge here, and you are the man.”

At this offer, Furio was for once silent. The sudden change of fortune, combined with the prospect of full, unfettered command of half the force obviously attracted him. And a land-based post with cavalry must sound all the more desirable. He might keep track of his commander’s doings from such a place, even if he was not in the front line.

While he pondered, Conan pressed on. “I foresaw this situation some days ago. While crossing the river with the caravan leader Zirfar, I made arrangements.

Camels and drovers for our upriver journey should be ready by now at the first town south of our crossing. It is a day’s ride from here, longer by water because of the river bends. You should dispatch a party at once to purchase camels. That will be the place to pick up east- bound caravans, as well.

“As far as our route southward is concerned, we must go east of the river, through Zuagir territory. The west is steep and overgrown, with ravines extending far inland into Keshan. What’s more, no clear track through the jungle canyons exists, and cutting one would delay us a fortnight or more. By contrast, the east should afford us a swift, easy passage. I expect to depart in two days, once the camels are brought up and loaded.”

Furio was troubled again, though less belligerent than before. “What, then, you mean to fare southward in the teeth of angry Zuagirs? I would choose any other route, after what we have seen of them! Surely they will disrupt our communications, harass us, and pare down our numbers, under the urging of this fanatic chieftain of theirs—”

“That, Captain Furio, is why you are here, to control the Zuagirs. For the time being, if they hound us and speed us along, so much the better.” Reaching up and wrenching his sword blade out of the half-splintered pillar, Conan returned it deliberately to its sheath. “The trails east of the river are well-marked. If caravans can get through, we can, and if you are to keep the trail open, we had better go in force. When we depart, I will expect your cavalry to accompany us and guard our flank.”

XVI

The Trail of Bones

The Zuagir bands who preyed on the river passes were outnumbered and driven off in a skirmish with the combined cavalry. Evidently the valley tribes had been too busy raiding downriver to muster a pursuit. The Shemites, with their ten-score, fully laden camels, gained the plateau in a day, and the extra cavalry returned to the river fort. Their too-easy victory over the desert raiders left them free to face their true enemies: scorching sand, pitiless sun, and a dwindling reserve of water.

Thus things stood as, some days later, the marchers toiled along the desert mesa above the Grand Gorge of the River Styx. The road across the scrub-dotted waste was easy to follow, lined as it was by bones—the dry, sun-bleached remnants of camel and ass, of horse and rider alike. These had perished along the way, doubtless from thirst, and then, carefully de-fleshed by birds and beetles, had been kicked aside by the shuffling feet and hooves of later parched, sun-stricken travellers.

Conan led his horse, since he had no wish to kill the panting, thirsty brute with the burden of his weight. He walked alongside the camel-borne figure of Caspius, who sat wrapped in his thick grey shawl against the sun’s relentless glare. The physician, with only his keen old eyes and a tuft of grey beard showing, resembled one of the less prosperous local Zuagirs.

“Well, sage, do you regret coming along on this leg of our journey? Now that we must decide whether to turn back for water, or gamble our lives on finding the fickle river again soon?” Conan nodded toward the nigh-bottomless gulf that they both knew lay to westward, somewhere between the skeleton trail and the remote, scrub-covered hills of south Keshan. “The water ration has not been too hard on you, I trust?”

The hooded figure shook his head and spoke in a dry-lipped murmur. “Nay, commander, I cannot say that 1 regret the trip, not yet at least. Harsh as it is, there is much of interest here.” He nodded at the flitting shape of a butcher bird, who was busy impaling the squirming carcass of a lizard on the blade of a sword palm near the trail.*“As you promised at the outset, it adds up to another lifetime of scholarly learning.”

Conan nodded. “There are many lessons, indeed. Who would guess that we, following the course of a mighty river, would suffer so from thirst?” He slapped the nearly empty water bottle on his own saddle. “None of our scouts has yet found an oasis.”

The long column of marchers and riders bunched together ahead, where the caravan trail made a shallow curve around one of the side ravines of the vast gorge. As they drew near the cleft, a panorama gradually unfolded, filling their eyes and temporarily distracting them from the heat and their thirst. It was a stark array of jagged, multicoloured earth, a ditch dug by titans in an effort to split the world in two. At their feet the cliff dropped sheer away, mocking and frustrating any hope of climbing down. Yet the devil-pit of spires and tortuous ravines seemed to draw them nearer, sucking the wayfarers mysteriously toward its edge to induce them to leap in.

“One idea that strikes me time and again,” Caspius was saying from the saddle, “is how this expedition of ours seems a journey into past time. Think how, first, we marched to Asgalun, where you and our queen hearkened from, to fight Zeriti, who is a ghost out of the past. Then we traversed Stygia, a country as hoary and ancient as any land in living man’s ken. Thence we fared through bogs and wild river-reaches never yet settled by any human tribe. And look you here, at yon layers of earth and stone...” He pointed a crooked old finger ahead and downward, to where the rainbow-ribbed cliffs fell away to nothingness. “Some of those levels must have been laid down before any ship or city was built, and aye, before men had the tongues to tell of their making...” His voice trailed off in silence a moment, then rasped harshly in a dry cough. “We search for the source of the Styx,” he added at last, “which must lie near the beginning of time itself.”

Conan said nothing, not wanting to hint of his own past exploits along the Styx and the Black Coast. Instead he gazed into the maze of freakish pinnacles. There at the bottom could be seen a short braid of black water, jetting forth at one place in a froth of cool whiteness. All the other marchers, he felt sure, had their eyes fixed on this same spot. The river was down there, clear and drinkable, yet all the rope and twine in all their camel packs, all the picks and shovels and axes, all their gourds and buckets and water skins and canteens would not avail to fetch a single drop of it up to this mesa. To try a descent and fail would mean a suicidal delay for the party, not to mention a far speedier death for any would-be climbers. As if to taunt him, a scorching-hot breath from the chasm wafted up the cliff side and blew dust at his face, prickling his eyebrows and the roots of his hair with its dryness.

Ahead of them echoed a forlorn cry. A man had slipped from the edge; now he plummeted down the sheer cliff-face, to rebound from a slope at the bottom and tumble away out of sight. Conan blinked for an instant, stunned. Had the cry, whose echoes still faded, been one of despair, or of thirst-mad exultation at the prospect of plummeting to the river?

“Enough, you rogues,” Conan bawled at them, “get back from these devil-haunted cliffs and move along! Do not let the river-sprites entice you to your doom, as did that poor fool! The next one of you who goes within five paces of the edge, I’ll fling over myself!”

“Conan! Commander, an urgent message!” Distracted by the sudden misfortune, Conan had failed to notice the scuff of camel-pads in the sand; now they were almost up to him. Loping along the line of marchers that stretched out behind, the courier slowed his beast to a walk beside his leader.

“Milord, Zuagirs have been sighted far to the rear! A large party of them, judging from their dust plume. They ride under the red banner of Mahtu the Oracle.” Continuing to walk on as if untroubled, Conan nodded thoughtfully. “So he has gathered the tribes together at last. Well, if they chased us across this desert, they cannot be in much better shape than we are. We at the front of the column will maintain our pace. Apprise the vanguard of the situation.” He waved one waiting horseman away. “You, order the rear elements to close up with us. No skirmishes yet, not unless they catch us, but have the cavalry hang back to keep an eye on things.” He dismissed the camel rider. To Caspius he remarked, “So much for the question of whether to turn back for water.”

By dusk everyone had seen the pursuers approaching, so large and bright was the crimson banner that flew at the head of their ominous dust cloud. Conan’s men, though hardened to shipboard rowing and exercise, were scarcely inured to day-long treks through hot, loose sand in a scorching desert. Furthermore, if the mounted Zuagirs had any foot troops, they must have long since outrun them. Their finely bred horses and camels closed the distant swiftly. Conan’s party drew together for a better defence, since his scouts reported that the Zuagirs’ numbers far exceeded their own.

Yet ahead, finally, was the terrain Conan had been seeking. At the rim of the gorge, two ravines intruded like scorpions’ claws, pinching off a narrow neck of land that led out to a good-sized mesa. The cliffs formed an absolute barrier against attack, and the narrow isthmus would be easy to defend; though of course, once the Zuagirs came up to guard the approach, it would leave them cornered on the desolate outcrop.

“Go on, march the men up double-time and make camp,” Conan ordered his lieutenant. “Set crews to work to fortifying the approach. Dig a ditch across, and pile up the earth to stop their camels. If any of our foot troops are caught in open desert, they will be cut to pieces.”

“But how long can we last?” Caspius inquired as they had dismounted. “Three days, or four at best? The Zuagirs may know of some nearby oasis, or have reinforcements bringing up water skins.”

Conan frowned. “Or yet, they may themselves be mad with thirst.” He turned to another officer. “Break out rope and tackle, and have some skilled sail hands try to lower men with buckets down to the river. Yes, do it now, by torchlight. It doesn’t necessarily matter if they succeed, but put on a show. If the Zuagirs think we have water, they’ll be less inclined to sit and wait us out.”

In point of fact, the river had gained in elevation during their long day’s flight. The gorge here was shallower, if no less steep. It looked as if the riverbed must climb, somewhere ahead, to the level of the plateau. But for now, the view to south and west lay shrouded in a dusty haze scorched pink by sunset’s flame.

Past nightfall, hoof beats thundered to the chasm’s edge, and bloodthirsty yells resounded under the moon. The smell of dry dust, camels, and angry Zuagirs wafted on the land breeze out over the mesa. The spear men and archers on the fortified line turned away an immediate assault, killing but a few nomads, as the desert riders sized up the situation. A fierce exchange of insults was followed by a tentative agreement to parley, which was promptly reported to Conan’s tent.

From past experience, he trusted the Zuagir leaders enough to face them man-to-man. This Mahtu especially, as a holy oracle, should honour the desert riders’ long tradition of hospitality. Conan selected only a handful of bodyguards and allowed Caspius along as well, thinking the greybeard’s years might earn them more respect.

But when they came to the firelit pavilion that had been set up under the red banner, amid tents and rows of snorting camels, they found that the Oracle was a mere boy, thin and beardless, dressed in a man’s robes and surrounded by reclining war chiefs.

In lieu of formalities or obeisances, Conan crouched before the fire in the businesslike fashion he had learned among the desert tribes. He offered first greetings, then gifts. “For,” he said, “since they call you Oracle, you already know that we mean to leave your country without delay. We seek only your good auguries and a guide to take us southward, for which we will pay you amply.”

“Aye,” one of the war chiefs interrupted, “and what of your comrades who have squatted themselves on the lower river, and now threaten to disrupt my caravan trade? Are they seeking a way out, too?” He brandished his eating knife, “I would be pleased to show them a permanent one.”

Conan grinned understandingly. “If providing a ferry route is disrupting trade, why, they would be sorry to hear it. I suggest that you do business with them by selling the caravans your protection as of old, and sharing the profits.”

“You talk smoothly enough,” another chieftain observed, “for one whom the vultures follow wherever he goes!” The man waved a greasy skewer at the night sky, where the kites undoubtedly still hovered. “Your deeds belie your goodwill, and your birds speak more truth than you do.”

“I swear to you,” the physician Caspius put in earnestly in his cultivated Shemitish, “we seek no conquest or plunder, only a medicinal herb that grows along the upper river reaches. It is called the silver lotus—” “Lotus is a holy sacrament under Erlik,” a boyish voice interrupted, “reserved for the pleasure of those in Paradise.” The Oracle, where he sat cross-legged, spoke with patient authority. “If we knew of such a balm, we would not deliver it into the profane hands of unbelievers.”

“Then let us take our quest elsewhere, outside your territory,” Conan said, happy to hear a word at last from the holy youth. “We respect your ways and your faith, and any business misunderstandings should be easy to clear up. If you want to take back instructions to my companions on the river, in Shemitish writing that you can understand—”

“No, enough,” the youth said primly. “By great Erlik’s commandment, no trafficking with minions of Thutala is permitted! You must renounce your heresy, surrender yourselves and your weapons, and submit to judgement before the True Lord. Any who prostrate themselves and repent will receive Erlik’s mercy, and may be permitted to live as slaves.”

“And the rest?” Conan, still smiling, felt a steely prick of alarm. For, if this sanctimonious boy had no wish to bargain, why had he called a parley? Yet he kept his hand from his hilt. “Anyway, what makes you think that we serve this... Thutala, is it? I never heard of such a one, and my men respect the ancient gods and goddesses of Shem. We have no thought of raising up some rival to your high lord.”

“Whether you serve Thutala in ignorance or malice is of no matter,” the boy said. “He is an ancient tempter of men, who knows many guises.” The youth, staring into the rising flames, did indeed seem to be controlled by some higher presence. “But the chief of a forsworn band, who leads others into dark heresies, is more to be chastised than his followers. Seize him, and bend him to the yoke of Father Erlik!”

The chiefs around the fire moved swiftly, but Conan was ready. His sword hissed smoothly forth, to slide past a descending blade and pierce through its owner’s shoulder. Steel rang on all sides as his guards pressed forward to surround him and Caspius; meanwhile Conan darted past the fire and seized the sleeve of the boy Mahtu’s tunic. “Hold, or your Oracle will have no throat left to voice his warnings,” he called to the Zuagirs as they boiled forth in overwhelming numbers. “One who violates Erlik’s truce deserves no better! Now, back away from my guards and let us depart as we came.”

Conan withdrew into the midst of his Shemites, dragging the scrawny boy with him. The young fanatic, defiant-eyed and careless of his life, struggled without regard for the point of Conan’s sword, but his thick garments protected him. Conan kept hold of the lad even as he and his men, with the slower moving Caspius, mounted horseback before a crowd of angry-eyed nomads.

“Defiler!” one cried, “you have dishonoured our prophet with your unclean touch!”

“I touched only his hem,” Conan snarled back, “and it was none too clean to begin with! Now, if you value Erlik’s law, you will let us go in peace.” Sending the boy staggering with an unceremonious kick, he wheeled his horse and galloped away with his guards.

While thundering through the aroused camp, Conan lost two of his men to arrows—a sorry waste that should have been prevented. But he had hoped, perhaps foolishly, to bargain with the Zuagirs. As things now stood, once he was ready to return downriver, he would likely have to fight his way through them.

Escaping across the well-guided ditch to the mesa camp, Conan saw a cluster of torches flaring near the cliff’s edge. Instead of dismounting he rode straight there and overlooked the workers.

“How goes it?” he asked. “Did you get down to the water?”

“Better than that,” his lieutenant said, pointing. “Look yonder.”

Below them, partway down to the canyon’s bottom, lay a broad shelf of land. Through it, the river had cut an inner gorge. The terrace thus formed was continuous on this side of the river, undulating palely southward under the moon. Along it a rider galloped carrying the flaring pinprick of a torch.

“You lowered a horse down there?” Conan asked, impressed.

“No, we found a passable trail,” the man said, gesturing down over the cliff side. “It could lead us upriver, clear of the Zuagirs.”

“Excellent.” Conan sat watching the torch-bearer disappear over a rise. He then ordered that, if a route was found to water or freedom, the troops should be allowed to rest in shifts and the horses and camels led down overnight with their loads. All were to be roused silently before dawn and the camp abandoned, except for a few tents and fires left as decoys. The trail might then he destroyed by means of stakes driven into the cliffs and broken free with ropes.

Before the sky lightened, they were under way. Scouts had returned with favourable reports; they marked out for the troops a series of goat trails along the ledge, while work crews rode ahead to bridge small crevices and fill in gullies. As the canyon turned pink with the dawn, there was some stir among lookouts posted along the rim of the Zuagir camp. But then, looking backward, they had the satisfaction of seeing the brittle cliff collapse and send dust clouds rolling where the downward trail had been.

The shelf between cliff and gorge narrowed as they went, with occasional obstacles and steep ascents. At times piles of toppled stone forced the marchers to the very edge of the abyss, where the Styx could be seen plunging and swirling below. Even so, the marchers were in a better position than the mounted Zuagirs, who could occasionally be seen galloping along the cliff top; for the steep canyons cut far inland, forcing the riders to make wide detours while the men below outdistanced them.

In the heat of afternoon the river rose near the trail and could continuously be heard rushing and pouring down its winding course. Then the shelf before them opened out into a broad basin, a valley stretching between low, funnelling cliffs. The soil here was watered by the river’s outflow, tufted with brush and grasses that grew steadily more dense as they moved upstream. Ahead, the undergrowth rose up in thickets, obscuring the river course and muffling its sound with dense foliage. Troops with scimitars were sent forward to beat a trail of sufficient width and drive away snakes, while others went to the stream to fill canteens.

Then, once again, an alarm was carried forward.

“Sire, the Zuagirs have found a way down the cliff! They are overrunning our rear sentries and pursuing the cavalry guard. Soon they will be up with the marching column!”

This was an ill chance, for the brush, though a hindrance to foot troops, was highly suitable for cavalry. The Zuagir steeds leaping through the tall grass could easily cut apart and rout an army. Conan ordered his men to bypass the baggage trains and make their best speed for the forest.

Then, just ahead, came worse news. Even as battle cries and sword-clashes sounded from the rear, a new force came swarming out of the trees to block the expedition’s path: black Puntish warriors dressed in leopard skins and tough hippo-hide sandals, armed with tall painted shields and long steel-tipped assegais.

Though savage in aspect, with bone-pierced noses and ritually scarred faces and arms, they were a disciplined fighting force. Holding spears and shields at the ready, they waited for the word of some unseen commander. Conan’s men halted and bunched together in confusion, sizing up the relative strength of their two foes. Behind them, the fastest Zuagir horseman came galloping through the brush along the east flank, swords clashing in a running fight with Conan’s cavalry guard.

There sounded a blood-curdling war cry. With spears raised, the Puntish tribesmen charged forward to attack, not Conan’s troops, but the surprised Zuagirs. Bounding across the glade, the tall warriors hedged the horsemen back with their shields and speared them out of the saddle with agile thrusts. Quick to rally, Conan’s Shemites formed a phalanx and brought their own spears to the fore, falling on the stream of desert raiders from both sides.

XVII

Death Forest

The black tribesmen, as Conan was able to make out from their Keshan dialect, occupied several villages scattered along the foot of this new river basin. They had attacked the Zuagirs and driven them back to the desert because they said the nomads often raided these lands for slaves, and the warriors craved revenge for lost wives and children.

Seeing the expedition’s sizeable baggage train, they assumed that the Shemites were traders. Conan let them think so, though he would not barter with them for anything more substantial than fruit, starch roots, hippo meat, and a few vats of the local pombe to refresh his men’s thirst. He did offer the tribal chieftains gifts in thanks for their help, and they gave the band a cordial welcome. They did not notice the carrion-kites that still followed the explorers’ track.

Beyond the belt of forest was a vast lake, so they told Conan, the birthplace of the great River Styx. In response to earnest questioning about local flowers, many varieties were produced including some lotus strains, but none could rightly be called silver.

The lake, so Conan discovered, was really a swamp. By the time his men reached its edge they were slogging across sodden floating islands of papyrus reed, with the horses and heavier-laden men occasionally breaking through the surface and sinking waist-deep. Ahead, across a shallow expanse of black water, clumps of waving reeds stretched away as far as the eye could see. Reports from cavalry scouts tended to confirm that the swamp was too vast to go around, bordered on the west by jungle cliffs and on the east by Zuagir-patrolled desert.

So they built boats. All the men had seen reed vessels^ close-up on the lower river, and some of the local villagers knew the construction technique. This included bundling reeds into three or more long, tapering tubes, lashing them together, and then bending the bow and stem upward and binding them taut with a stout, permanent rope. Viewed from abeam, the finished hull resembled a gracefully strung bow, with no floating ends to become waterlogged.

Fortunately, there was no shortage of sharp implements with which to cut reeds. Unwinding ropes into twine and stitching tents into sailcloth, felling trees for masts, and chiselling stones as anchors, the party soon possessed four good-sized raft-like vessels and two smaller ones, enough to float all the men, horses, and supplies. The camels, which could be traded locally, Conan gave to the village chiefs in exchange for their hospitality.

Setting out across the swamp, the boats almost immediately encountered difficulties. The vast, floating mats of living reed, drifting downriver before the feeble current, blocked the channels and made progress impossible. It was necessary for the men to climb out of the boats and, wading chest-deep in water and knee- deep in the bottom muck, use their swords to hack through roots and decaying plant muck to cut a path for the boats. Then the crews could pole the boats or help the wading troops haul them through—only to face another living, floating dam a few dozen oar strokes further on.

This labour, in the steaming heat of the tepid slough, became agonizing. Sun glared fiercely off the water, insects bit and swarmed, and the stench of chumed-up decay bubbled out of the depths. The sheer difficulty of hacking through tangled reeds and taking one more step in the sucking mire dragged into a hellish round of hardship, worse than Zeriti’s most excruciating fever dream. Such toil, continuing day after day, could drive a man mad, or make him fatally careless.

After the first few deaths, to save lives and reduce the corrosive effect of fear, pike-bearing guards were posted to form a hedge against wily crocodiles. Others waded nearby with tongs and baskets to catch swimming vipers. But there was no way to drive off the clinging black leeches that could drain a man pallid by afternoon, or the wallowing hippos, a menace to be constantly watched.

Conan did his share of physical labour. It was vile, punishing work, but waiting idle aboard the rafts would have been harder. Brute muscle-power was sometimes needed to widen the gaps cut into the reed mats. The poled ships could occasionally push the floating islets aside; but more of the stubborn obstacles always drifted into place, while the passages closed behind them as if they had never come through at all.

“Here is papyrus enough to fill every house in Shem with learned scrolls,” Caspius remarked to Conan. “But it would scarce be enough, methinks, to record the wonders we have seen on this journey.”

“Aye,” the Cimmerian replied in dismal spirits, “or the sufferings both behind and before us. Do you remember what I told you, when first you proposed this journey, of its trouble and cost?”

Indeed, the cost was great. Many of the men, sickened after a fortnight of heat and toil, fell ill with nameless swamp fevers. Worse, the dreams returned; whether because of Zeriti’s renewed attentions or the vagaries of delirium, men moaned and tossed by day and night or else burst forth in shrieking fits. Skin-rot and infections from the continuous dampness afflicted both the ill and the otherwise healthy. The horses sickened and wasted too, as did the weapons. Rust, impossible to forestall in the sweltering damp, dulled and consumed the steel blades that were the men’s only means of survival and escape.

These evils persisted even as the swamp gave way first to open slough, then dense forest. The river became a stinking black canal walled by impenetrable curtains of brush and vine. The immense forest trees resounded with the shrieks of bird and monkey and the raving howls of larger stalking creatures. Flowers hung in bright cascades from the treetops, and sprouted from the steaming mud of stagnant backwater. But none of the blossoms were silver-hued.

Elsewhere, the channel was narrowed by bends or split by islands, and the boatmen had to pole beneath overhanging limbs and trailing vines, feeling the jungle’s careless, lethal touch. Leopards were seen to bound across the decks in pursuit of fleeing game, gone before men could lift spears against them. Tiny vipers slithered into the wicker cages and killed the last of the carrier pigeons, cutting off all contact with Baalur. Monkeys showered the voyagers with fruit rinds and offal, insects swarmed noisily and dangerously in the men’s faces; and, worse of all, the forest’s seldom-seen human denizens caused occasional death and injury by lobbing poisoned darts and arrows into the close-packed confines of the ships.

The presence of humans was further evidenced by distant drums, whose rumbling seemed to follow their tortuous path upriver. Occasional sticks, feathers, skull bones and other ornaments festooned the stream- side trees, possibly in warning to trespassers. Along their route, human bodies floating downriver attested to local tenancy, though in this stretch it was noted that these bloated corpses often lacked limbs, and were invariably headless.

Just when the horrors of the jungle voyage finally seemed unbearable, a boat full of Shemites swarmed ashore and caught one of the forest dwellers who had tormented them. He wore a necklace of shrunken human heads—little else—and carried a short, crude bow, with a pot of poison at his belt to dip his arrows in. His taut brown skin was patterned with ritual scars, and in the manner of cannibals, his teeth were filed sharp. Yet he displayed them in friendly smiles to all, and seemed affable, apparently fearing nothing that his captors might do to him.

Conan, again making reference to Keshanian dialect, managed to comprehend him. His name, so it seemed, was Hk!Cha, and his hunting grounds lay along both sides of the river below the great fall. His tribe and village were the property of the mighty chief Gwandula residing upriver, an immense man who preached the virtues of cannibalism and boasted that he could consume an entire full-grown boy at one sitting.

Addressing the chief of his captors, Hk!Cha was repentant in his own way, for he knew it was wasteful to kill strangers without eating them. He admitted to feeling remorse for this, and worried that his high chief might regard it as a form of illegal poaching. He had tried to kill the ship-bound voyagers not for any personal or political reason, so he assured Conan, but because every man slain brought a warrior credit in the eyes of the river dwellers’ crocodile god, Juwala.

Conan took this information under careful consideration. He did not wish to make war on the cannibals—he could not win, he decided, since most of his men were weak or ill and his horses dying. The forest dwellers, even if they did not outnumber his force, could easily prevail in this hellish terrain.

Therefore he kept Hk!Cha as a guide, shackling him securely to the mast of the lead ship and assigning guards to protect him from forest perils. The Shemites doubtless would have preferred to throttle him and throw him overboard to his crocodile god; but the savage’s amiable, smiling presence could likely take them some distance upriver, since he swore that his tribe had no powerful rivals along this river reach.

To Caspius, Conan confided his deeper musings. “Could it be, then, that the boy-prophet Mahtu knows more about our mission than we do ourselves?”

The sage, looking frail but tolerably healthy in his wicker seat astern, stroked his grey beard. “You mean, Thutala is Jukala and also, perhaps, Juwala? That our course is guided by some unknown cabal of the gods... and our destiny here is truly to unleash some new god, who is a mortal enemy of Erlik...?”

Conan shrugged. “Rather, some confoundedly ancient god. That could be why the Stygian fleet did not oppose us, if there is a secret alliance between Set and this Jukala, between snake and crocodile. Maybe even Zeriti...” He trailed off, not knowing how far to carry the thought.

“If that were so,” Caspius said, “perhaps the best course would be to turn back.” He gazed at the hostile jungle around them. “Though in fact, a god’s will has a way of working itself out regardless.”

“Whatever the gods may will,” Conan said, “I have given my oath, and that is sacred.”

It was undeniable that the explorers faced no more skirmishing or opposition from the river tribes. Conan remarked on this to the captive Hk!Cha, who answered l hat he had heard drum talk preceding the expedition upriver, spreading word for the reed ships to be left alone.

“Excellent,” Conan said. “I hoped your smiling face might have that effect.”

The cannibal grinned up at him, wide-eyed. “No, great river lord! It is not for me that they clear the way, hut out of respect for the birds sacred to Juwala that follow your track.” He pointed astern toward the circling Mack specks that traced the river course through the jungle.

So they poled upriver through mists, miasmas, insect swarms, and daily rain showers. When possible they continued poling by night through the ranting, shrieking forest, paced by the yellow moon’s tremulous reflection is it swam upstream. Conan noted that even the stars had grown foreign, with strange new constellations dawning up out of the timeless jungle. He commented on this to Caspius, whose nightly astrological readings were baffled by these unknown configurations.

“True enough,” the sage answered, “the stars are changing. ’Tis as if this river has carried us out of the world we know. Stranger still, you will note that the sun and moon have drifted close over our heads, and may soon hang behind us. Whether this river flows in a great circle, or whether the heavens themselves have been disjointed, I cannot rightly say.”

Conan said nothing, but continued gazing out across l he mirror-black water, in which the diamond-dusting of constellations was clearly reflected. It was as if their small ship sailed across a liquid, shimmering sky to alien worlds where new stars rose to greet new gods.

In time the mists grew thicker. They passed the next day into a zone of perpetual chilly fog, where the jungle sounds were drowned by a steady, remote thundering. Gliding forward into a broad, rippling pond, they saw it... a vast waterfall plummeting half a league or more down a fern-lined cliff, with plumes of mist peeling away to form mighty clouds that billowed and towered overhead.

XVIII

The Silurian

The witch Zeriti was creating a work of sculpture. From one of the stone pillars of her crypt, she hewed out a monumental form, plying mallet and chisel busily in yellow candlelight. It was hot work, and the undead witch had dressed informally for her comfort. She wore only a coarse butcher’s apron, whose white powdering of stone dust covered many older, darker stains.

Zeriti stretched on tiptoe atop a stool to work, for her statue was the idol of a god, taller than any living man. The tapping of her chisel echoed but faintly in the con- lined space; she was none too strong of shoulder, but what she lacked in force she made up in creative energy. She had thus far given shape to the statue’s chest and face; the rest of its Cyclopean form was still hidden away in coarse stone.

“There, now, Jukala, your brow is noble and lofty enough.” She spoke as she worked, not absently but in a doting, adoring way. “Such heroic features will inspire your followers to the full pitch of worship and fear.”

The face she delineated was not what most mortals would have called heroic, clumped as it was with thick heavy eyebrows, sharp cheekbones, and a jaw resembling coarse bone or armour plating. Its eyes were small, dark pits and its mouth like a vise. What might have seemed particularly unnerving to any unsuspecting watcher was the way that, shedding dust and rock fragments, the mouth opened and answered Zeriti.

“I have taken many forms over the aeons,” it confided in a series of dry, forceful croaks, “depending, of course, on what sort of creatures I wanted to command. This shape should be quite enough to impress your human kind.”

“In truth, sire, I am anxious to see more of it.” Zeriti climbed down from her stool, transferring her efforts with hammer and chisel to one of the creature’s bulging, scaly arms. It was evident that, rather than creating the form of the monster, she was merely chipping it out of the raw stone, freeing it from its ancient prison. Now her hand lingered delicately on the swollen biceps that had taken shape beneath her chisel. “You have chosen an incarnation that is most attractive and... powerful.”

The idol rasped forth a laugh. “You should have seen the form I took as god of the saurian races, before the great lava flood,” it said. “There, now, was something inspiring.” A minor earth tremor shook the room as the monstrous bony head, with a grating and sifting of brittle stone, broke free of the pillar and craned its thick neck to look around the chamber. “But that body would have been far too large for this space.”

“Your exploits,” Zeriti murmured, “must have been fascinating indeed, over all the countless ages of your godly rule.” Bending over the idol’s bony-knuckled hand, she chipped and chiselled with special care.

"Where on earth, or in the cosmos—if I may ask, great lord—where did you first hail from?”

The idol craned its heavy head down at her slender, bent form. “I am Silurian,” it said in cryptic simplicity.

“Oh.” Zeriti continued chipping and scraping around the deity’s clawed fingertips with worshipful attention. "I know not where Siluria is, or was. Perhaps the secret is lost in eternity. But 1 do know, of course, of your sacred origin in the primal muck that gave birth to all life, where you were first to rear yourself up, stand above I he others, and seize ascendancy over all things that swim and flop and crawl.”

“Aye, such a deed as that is not soon forgotten,” Jukala gruffly boasted. “It earns one an eternal place in (lie world’s pantheon. I was there among the great old ones, Tsathoggua and Bokrug and Set... though Set, of course, was an upstart god, the patron of young degenerates who forsook their limbs and learned to squirm all over again. But such things pass in and out of fashion, and we gods must be open-minded. Set and I, in our heyday, were boon companions.”

“And shall be again, lord.” Leaving off her chiselling, Zeriti stepped back to watch as the great rough-hewn hand she had been labouring at twitched, flexed itself, and broke free of the stone amid a shower of dusty fragments. Jukala raised it in air, turned it before his curious beady eyes, then reached out and clutched Zeriti’s shoulder in an experimental caress. The witch, squirming beneath the touch in passion or in pain, dropped her hammer and chisel, but then at once seized hold of the great claw with both hands and planted devotional kisses on its knuckles.

“What strength, Great Jukala! How thrilling it is to feel your embrace!” Kneeling down at once and picking up her tools, she set eagerly to work on the vicinity of the idol’s other imprisoned hand, and its as-yet- unformed waist and groin as well. “Your very presence exudes masculine power, O Lord,” she breathed enthusiastically. “I cannot wait to see what divine form and strength may reside in your... nether limbs.”

“Ah, yes.” The idol, evidently pleased with itself, grated forth a laugh. “And yet, satisfactory as this shape is, I have made plans to use another and lesser one, for a time at least. For I think it would be interesting, would it not, to go forth in your human world and learn its ways disguised as one of your own?

“For that purpose, I can use the mortal body you have dispatched to me, once it arrives. It looks to be a fairly hefty one as humans go, so it could gain me a share of the respect I am used to as a god. Furthermore, you say that this mortal is already known and famed, admired and even feared by some of your race. Such a reputation could be a handy starting point. I may choose to conquer your world’s physical extent, just for the challenge of it, before I rule its spiritual plane.”

“In your immortal wisdom, O Jukala, do as you will,” Zeriti murmured, intent on her work. “That, too, is a strong and comely body, though never so potent, nay, godlike, as this one!” Having uncovered the idol’s other hand, she tugged and pulled to help it free; then she arched her neck under its caresses like a purring kitten, meanwhile resuming feverish labours with her hammer and chisel.

“It should be a simple matter to make the transfer,” Jukala explained. “All that will be needed is for the ancient seals to be broken, to release my true physical essence from its resting place. Once the puny soul of the current tenant is forced out, the body can be infused with my immortality and my godly power, to use as I wish. But it is vital that the seals be broken.”

“I have provided for that, Great Jukala, you may be sure of it. I have learned the elder protocols most carefully.” After chipping and pounding away in a frenzy of enthusiasm, Zeriti stood back and surveyed her handiwork. “Oh, milord, what grandeur,” she effused breathlessly, her gaze riveted downward. “Never have I seen such perfection of physical form, so far superior to the merely mortal!”

As she spoke, the Silurian’s hard, muscular body inched in its place and broke loose with a clattering of small stones. Kicking free its legs, it lumbered forward mid left but a narrow spindle of the former stone pillar in place, barely enough to support the roof.

Reaching out, the idol swept Zeriti up in its colossal arms, embraced her manfully, and bore her backwards against the stained, worn altar.

XIX

Above the Cataract

Worn down by continuous toil and the ills of swamp and jungle, the explorers now faced a sheer climb out of the misty, echoing river canyon. There was almost certainly a more roundabout, gradual path through the jungle, as their guide Hk!Cha insisted. But Conan chose to go as directly as possible and avoid the hospitality of cannibals.

The sodden, disintegrating reed boats were impossible to drag ashore, much less carry to the top of the fall. The horses—those which had survived the murderous heat and damp, the mildewy hay, the insects, and the poisoned darts—had to be hauled bodily in slings up the steepest parts of the rocky trail. The way was exhausting for an unburdened man, deadly for the incautious; in all, Conan and his hardiest survivors had to climb fully loaded and descend twenty or more times to transfer all the needed hardware and supplies.

Atop the falls the air was clear and dry, with bright sun scattering the mists and a pungent breeze blowing from grassy hills away to the west. Looking down beyond the plunging, pluming cataract, the jungle gorge resembled a cauldron of green, steaming evil from which they had dragged themselves. Ahead, they soon saw, jungle growth was limited to narrow strips along I he Styx and its tributaries. The dry open veldt that surrounded them was the sort of country Conan remembered having crossed on his previous journey eastward.

The river ran deep here, if somewhat less oily-black, mid not nearly so broad and forceful as in the Stygian lowlands. The terrain was more hospitable, too. Yet navel overland, even with the horses in good condition, would have required hiring or otherwise enlisting brutes of humans as luggage bearers. Likely, too, it would have forced them to abandon the river and miss some tributaries. So, in the interest of directness and certitude, Conan set about building more boats.

Hereabouts timber was plentiful, and a quick expedient was borrowed from their stores: iron nails and cleats were used to construct clinker-type ships from overlapping planks. The axes, adzes, saws, and hammers they had shipped so many hundreds of leagues and preserved so painstakingly against rust were put to use under Conan's personal direction. They also used the oars, poles, masts, and sails brought up from the abandoned reed rafts.

The resulting layover in an open, airy camp, with clean-running water and fresh meat available from the game-rich meadowlands, enabled most of the sick and weakened Shemites to recover fully. As the days progressed, more and more men set their hands to shaping, assembling, and caulking the pliant timbers.

When finished, they had two broad, open ships and two long canoes, together capable of carrying the three hundred troopers remaining, plus essential cargo. The surviving horses, it was decided, would be walked along on a parallel course, the better to graze and recover their health; floating them upriver would have overcrowded the ships and made rowing difficult.

The river voyage, though arduous, was healthful, with clean food, water, and air, and the sun helping to dry out the jungle-rot. Although by night the cries of lions, elephants, hyenas, and nameless creatures came to them from the open veldt, by day the grassy expanses were almost pleasant, and wheeling kites and flapping storks came near to blotting out the carrion birds that still followed their track.

Almost immediately, however, they were confronted by a dilemma; for, in the midst of an open, brushy basin, the river course split into two nearly equal forks. A morning’s reconnaissance indicated that the streams continued apart indefinitely, one running in a westerly direction and the other due south. Which of the two branches was the true Styx or, at any rate, the hiding-place of the silver lotus, could only be guessed.

The cannibal Hk!Cha, while admitting that he had never travelled above the falls, maintained that the left branch was the principal one, extending much farther south to snow-capped mountains which could be seen on the horizon. The right fork, which he called the Nkthubu, allegedly sprang from a nearer range of hills. But that, even if true, might only mean a lesser distance to their goal; it was quoted by some as being a good reason to scout out the right hand, shorter tributary first. Furthermore, Conan had noticed that Hk!Cha’s references to the river’s right and left banks were often confused by the question of whether the cannibal was facing upstream or down. He was not sure he could resolve the problem in translation.

The sun, which now seemed to shine in the north, was of dubious help as to plotting course. And they had as yet found no native villages from which to obtain better information. If there were any local tribes at all, they were good at staying out of sight. At length Conan announced his decision.

“Since we are nearing flood season, which could make river exploration impossible for months—in the interest of time, we must divide our force. Half the men, ships, and horses will travel up the west fork under Captain Lampridius’s command. The rest go south with me.” He placed a hand on the stooped shoulder of the aged Caspius.

“Our physician, here, says his ancient scrolls place the silver lotus at the Styx’s nethermost source, presumably to the southward. So I myself will undertake to go the longer distance. But to Lampridius and his men, I wish a swift and complete success.

“Whoever obtains the lotus first must proceed downstream with it at all possible speed, leaving behind a cavalry or canoe detachment to find and notify the other party. Or, if either band returns here unsuccessful, they can await the rest at the head of the falls, sending out search parties as they wish. Once the lotus is carried back to the base camp, a fast voyage home to Baalur can be mounted. Although,” he added sternly, “I expect the commanding officer to make ample provision for the party that may return later. We do not want to abandon any fellow troopers in this trackless wilderness.”

At this talk of home and triumph, spirited cheers went up. A redistribution of the cargo was made, and half the remaining horses were ferried across the river. By morning’s light the two complements said their good-byes, and Conan gave a final caution to the departing captain.

“Remind your men, Lampridius, not to get caught between a water buffalo and her calf. Nor stray between a lone elephant and the fierce old bull of the herd. The armoured horn-nosed beasts you will find unstoppable in a charge; but they are purblind and easy to dodge, if only a fellow keeps his wits about him. Be mindful, too, of the hyenas; they are well-nigh as treacherous as the lions and a good deal more likely to hunt men in packs. If you can keep from running afoul of these few creatures—along with the leopards, cockodrills, river horses, and of course, the spitting vipers and the ant legions—well then, you should be able to make your way safely. Best of luck to you all.”

Without more farewell, the detachments set out along separate river channels through the brushy, rolling veldt. They soon were lost to one another’s sight. Conan, keeping watch astern, felt mingled satisfaction and dismay on seeing whom the circling vultures had chosen to follow: not the other party, but his own.

The way across this southern country was long and, except for the daily trials and hazards, eventless. The great towns of Punt lay in the open plain, far out of sight and ken of the voyagers; these environs were wild, and stray humans were seldom glimpsed fleeing across the veldt or vanishing into stream-side thickets. Native drums and smoke were rare; and in the few inhabited kraals they found, the inhabitants spoke an obscure Puntish dialect and professed neither to know nor care where the river flowed. Their name for this branch of the Styx, or perhaps for water in general, was Waputan.

The river in these parts was not often ferried or forded, much less used as a route of travel and commerce. Rather, it was a watering trough and mud wallow for beasts of all descriptions, flocks and herds and swarms of them. They regarded the passing boats with baleful eyes peering out from under horns, antlers, bony ridges, feathered crests, or fur-tufted ears; or else they took fright and scattered on thundering wings and hooves. By night, the riverbanks were a cacophony of hoots, howls, screams, and roars, shrieks of feral alarm and the guttural snarls of predators, mingled with the ripping of flesh and the rending of bone joints. When there was enough of a moon, or even adequate starlight spilling down from the rivers of strange stars that poured overhead, the explorers made their way through dim-lit gallery of sound and fierce, staring eyes. On darker nights the Shemites anchored well away from land, lying quiet and trying to sleep in the raging blackness.

So, over countless days of poling through thorny thickets and willow tunnels, sailing across reed lakes and dragging or carrying the ships over sandbanks, they drew near the mountain range that seemed to rise from the centre of the earth.

These mountains were strange in aspect. Their rocky slopes glistened white with snowfields and glaciers, yet I heir burnt-looking summits trailed dark smoke or veiled themselves for whole days in a yellow, sulphurous haze. At other times the ragged peaks seemed to attract strange clouds that arched or trailed over them like hovering sword blades or a conjurer’s cloak. Or again, for days at a time, the whole range was hidden from sight under rain and snow clouds so dense the voyagers were surprised to see the crags return again, nearer than before.

For the flood season was just now arriving, and Conan well-nigh despaired of finding the lotus and returning it by King Aphrates’s arbitrary deadline. The River Styx, this much farther from the sea, seemed to be growing rather than diminishing. Hours or days after each cloudburst, however many leagues away to the south it may have been, the river’s current ran a little deeper and pressed a little harder against their keels and oars.

As the land gradually changed and Conan’s expedition climbed into the broad valleys that stretched between the towering pinnacles, the strangeness of the place grew positively menacing. It was evident that these mountains burned with an inner fire. Jagged fissures belched smoke and yellow fumes, and open, gaping sores in their flanks bubbled forth hot mud and ichor. From countless springs, rust-red and inky-black fluid ran down to stain the lapping waters.

Conan waxed hopeful at the unmistakable omen of the black river’s source and ordered frequent side excursions to search for more evidence. This meant but slight delay, for the Shemites were often ashore anyway, dragging the boats up shallow stretches of riverbed or manhandling them around falls. Although the wildlife had thinned to the goats and elk of the barren mountains, along with occasional prowling cat-bears glimpsed in forested ravines—there were still dangers. Several men were lost from falls into bubbling mud pits where the earth’s brittle crust broke under them, an unpleasant death by scalding. Some few unfortunates were seared or blinded by hot geysers jetting forth from the rocks, while others collapsed on inhaling the noxious fumes rising out of deep, lime-encrusted craters.

The most disastrous event of this sort was witnessed personally by Conan. He had climbed high up a rocky shoulder of the mountain to survey the river, and saw that it broadened into a deep blue lake not far upstream. Just below and behind him a smaller, cauldron-like lake in a side canyon fed into the Styx by way of rivulets running down the barren slope. A group of explorers had stopped on the lake’s rim, resting, cautiously sampling the water, and surveying the surrounding cliffs and talus slopes. Idly, one of the men took up a stone and flung it into the centre of the glassy-calm lake... whose waters, at the source of the fast-spreading ripples, instantly began to bubble and effervesce in an uncanny way.

As Conan watched, the turbulence grew and spread across the whole surface of the lake. It became unimaginably violent, with huge bubbles spewing upward in gouts of turbid black water. The troops scattered in alarm or reined their horses around to flee; but the bubbling must have produced some noxious exhalation. I or, even as the Shemites turned and pounded down the rocky canyon, away from the gouting, spewing tarn, an invisible pall of death overtook them. Men slowed and dropped to their knees. Horses stumbled and spilled their riders. Conan could almost see it, a faint unearthly vapour flowing down the canyon.

“Back away from the lake!” Conan bellowed, waving to the troops strung out in the valley below. “Get upstream! Beware the river of death! You there, forget the supplies and run, up to the boats!”

The troops, sensing some unseen danger, obeyed him its best they could. The last few stragglers, slowest to drop their burdens, ran but a few steps up the new-made path before their knees began to wobble and fail. Moments later they dropped motionless, scattered in a trail of death below the belching, upheaving lake.

“Curse the gods!” Conan swore bitterly to himself, surveying the losses and the boiling fountain. “Another twenty good men and the last of the horses, to boot!” Whether dead or merely unconscious, the lot of them would just have to lie there, he decided. He dared not send any more troops down to them until the lake calmed, and the mountain wind scattered the noxious humour.

Moving across the rocky slope searching for a safe way to descend, he glimpsed something—a pale gemlike flicker in a stony crevice, nothing more. Working his way up to it, he bent to look more closely. He saw a thin, anemic-looking flower barely larger than his thumb. Its fragile, curling leaves were grey-green, and its pointed oval petals had a delicate silvery sheen.

“By Crom!” Unearthing the plant awkwardly from the sparse soil with his rough warrior’s hands, he scooped it up and wrapped it carefully in a parchment taken from his waist pouch. Then he rose and headed upriver, angling down-slope.

A puny sort of blossom it was, and solitary, so far as he could see from scanning the slope. Might not there be more of them higher up the cliff side? His men would have to become mountaineers to find out.

Caspius, luckily, had been among the first of the vital commodities brought upstream, and had remained there while the crews went back for the other goods. The boats were already beached in the long, narrow river- lake, and men had splashed in the water to load cargo; so presumably it was not poisonous or ready to seethe and boil. The physician stood gazing back amid a knot of men atop a knoll, reluctant to enter the zone of death. From where they stood they could not see the bubbling lake, only the nearest bodies lying a few-score paces down the trail.

“What evil spell was it?” Caspius asked as he came near. “Are they dead, do you think, or merely stupefied?”

“I know not,” Conan said, descending to the trail. “’Tis one more of the poisonous traps of these accursed mountains, a devil-lake. We had best leave them there for now till the vapour departs. But see, Caspius, here is something else.” Unfolding the parchment, he showed the sage what he had found.

“Mitra, the silver lotus—it could scarce be anything else!” Raising the flower close to his faded old eyes, Caspius gloatingly examined it, then sniffed, savouring its scent. “A most subtle, faint perfume. You found it there on the barren slope? Mayhap it springs from a lone seed blown down from high elevations.”

“We will have a devil of a time gathering them by the bushel,” Conan observed. “Your scroll said only the petals have medicinal power—though Crom knows, they will be light enough to carry once they are dried.” “The blossoms may grow larger on the high slopes,” Caspius said, gazing up the mountain valley.

“Can anything grow up there?” Conan wondered aloud, scanning the barren talus.

“If they rely on the heat of underground springs, as some of these plants seem to do, there is no telling what we will find.” Caspius gazed down the valley at the brushy slopes and inert bodies. “Anyway, it may not be wise to send out searchers just here.”

“You are right,” Conan said, turning to the boats. "We will press on upriver. I will leave three men with it canoe to watch over the fallen in the valley, in case they still live. At least the vultures won’t worry at them for a time,” he added, nodding back at the ever-circling specks. “The rest of us should return this way soon, Crom willing.”

Conan gave all the Shemites a close look at the silver lotus, hoping to inspire them and turn their thoughts from the recent deaths. They finished loading, raised the masts, and set sail on the mountain lake. There were few enough troopers now to have taken only the bigger ship and left the other behind; but Conan chose to bring both along, to cruise both lake shores simultaneously. The lake was cold and rock-rimmed, curving out of sight around sheer grey cliffs; but a favourable breeze blew up the valley, speeding them along.

The guide Hk!Cha, having survived the rigours of the journey, rode in the stem of the big ship with Conan. He had grown apprehensive of late and, since this recent disaster, was in a frenzy of agitation. Oddly enough, in spite of all the ferocity and peril of his native jungle, he found these mountain terrors worse. He trembled from fear, as well as from the cold drafts blowing across his sweaty dark skin.

The Shemites, aware that much of their food had been left behind at the bottom of the ill-fated portage, remarked only half-jokingly about the wisdom of travelling with a cannibal. But Hk!Cha ignored their good-natured threats, eyeing instead the looming mountains and jabbering frequent oaths to his god Juwala. He claimed to have seen this place before in dreams.

Along the lake shore, even in the narrow glades and wet meadows that lined the low places, they saw no more silver lotus. If the plants lived in these altitudes, they grew too small and sparsely to be seen, or perhaps they sprouted in another season. The thought of spending summer and winter in these desolate valleys to find out made even Conan’s mountain-bred soul uneasy.

The jagged mountain peaks closed in above them. Sheer, lichen-covered basalt cliffs formed promontories that dropped straight down into the dark water. On rounding these, they saw the lake end in a steep, dense snow pack whose icy crest overhung the rocky shallows. From beneath the ice, water from snowmelt could be heard rushing down from higher elevations.

Gliding forward into a ghostly landscape of wet black cliffs, white snow cornices, frigid dark water and melting ice floes, they beached the boats on a coarse pebble bank at the lakehead. There was no vegetation here, no life at all but their own, nothing but rock, water, ice, and sky. The men stepped silently from the boats, knowing they had reached the end.

“So this is it,” Conan muttered, “by all the gloating gods—the ultimate source of the Styx!”

“Mayhap not.” Caspius, easing his spry old body down over the prow of the boat, walked forward across a rocky spit. “See, there is a way.”

Striding wordless, with his men coming after and circling by habit to guard against nameless dangers, Conan followed. Caspius, who had moved fearlessly into the shadow of the overhanging glacier, knelt to dip his hand in the running brook.

“The water is chill,” he reported, “but not nearly as cold as these ice-mounds. It must be heated by natural springs that empty forth somewhere above.” He gestured ahead. “I would guess that this cavern goes far up the valley.”

What he showed them as he led the way forward was indeed a cave—not of stone, but of ice. Above them, high blue-white ceilings arched and vaulted between pillars of stone, retreating upward to immeasurable heights. The floor comprised broad terraces of polished pebble and stone, down which shallow, babbling waters cascaded, pooling and recombining in clear rivulets and waterfalls. No torch was necessary once their eyes adjusted, for the interior was lit by a blue-white glare shining down through the ice. The place resembled a vast temple or cathedral, echoing with the mindless chanting of waters. It was the Styx, the same old wily river serpent in a shiny new skin.

“We can go on, then,” Conan said, his voice echoing over the cascades. “Moor the boats well, for there is no point in hauling them over or under the snow. Pack supplies, bring torches, and we will forge on to the source of the river.”

XX

Conspirators

Bandar-Hek, priest of Set, moved silently down streets that echoed with screams and night-ravings. Baalur was a city in torment, with lurid swatches of light from open bonfires and burning tenements piercing the blackness at frequent intervals. Each conflagration was surrounded and avidly watched by huddled forms—the bleary refugees of sleep, desperate for any distraction to keep them awake.

The witch-dreams gripped the populace, driving them more than half-mad. If riot and civil war had not yet swept the place, it was only because the shambling residents lacked the strength to sack and destroy the city that had become the prison of their despair.

The priest saw it all with a cool, calculating eye. As a cleric of Mitra and a secret third-level initiate of the Ophidian Sect, Bandar-Hek was spared the worst torments of the dreams. He remained able to look on things dispassionately, and as a priest, knew that this was good for business.

Proof of this was the recent phenomenal growth of his sect—his secret flock, not his official one. For, while holding forth publicly as the humble minister of hi obscure denomination of Mitra worshippers and even conducting tame ceremonies for the few elderly members of his parish, in private he served a much larger mid wealthier following, providing foreign rites and teachings that would have offended most ordinary Shemites.

Underground snake cults were not uncommon in northern lands. Every major Hyborian city had one, ceded with gold from the immensely rich Church of Set. Such secret temples were staffed by religious agents like himself, devotees trained in Stygia and hound by the deepest arcane oaths and physical pledges to the service of old Father Set.

But of late, his coterie of power-seekers and independent-minded followers—or downright perverse ones— had grown beyond its usual numbers and zeal. Fugitives of dream, shaken from their former worship by the failure of Mitra and Dagon to protect them, came to his temple for relief from the plague. In Set, so they understood, resided real power: magic and its many weapons, the control of mortals and their desires, and the stark spectacle of life created and life destroyed, all ran close to the surface of his ancient faith.

So his flock grew larger and his temple tithes greater—all for the best, in the very long run of an ancient creed. More important, the political function and influence of Bandar-Hek’s cult had grown. These latest recruits obviously craved a new faith. Their acceptance of his teachings, and of his carefully planted suggestions, was instant and unquestioning, almost as if the dream plague had conditioned them to believe. Some of these rich new zealots came from high places in Baalur’s military and court hierarchy, even the traditional priesthood. And they willingly discussed conspiracy, the overturning of the established kingship, and the creation of a newer, more religious-based rule. This was welcome news to Bandar-Hek, and all the more so to his shadowy Stygian masters.

The priest now knew how things truly stood in Baalur. He had heard intimate eyewitness accounts of King Aphrates and his upstart Queen Rufia, driven to muddle-headedness by worry over their daughter Ismaia’s ever-deepening stupor. He knew how miserably they doted, how desperately and futilely they waited for something to patch their reign together... perhaps one more carrier pigeon from their long-absent champion Conan. Bandar-Hek saw how weak the sinews of their government had become, how distracted and disaffected by the plague were their highest officers— including General Shalmanezer, the cult’s newest member—and how restive and rebellious the lower ranks had become. Baalur’s monarchy was like soft fruit, ripe for a fall. And the Set-cult was ready, carefully positioned to shake the tree and gather up the harvest.

In recognition of it all, Bandar-Hek and his sect had been rewarded with gold from Stygia, weapons, and vials of rare poison to aid their secular operations. Just today, special recognition had arrived: a third sarcophagus to adorn the sacrificial gallery. This splendid new coffin, undoubtedly containing the remains of some great Stygian priest-king, would make a fine centrepiece, the crowning gem in Bandar-Hek’s priestly diadem. Very soon now, he felt sure, he would be accepted into the second rank of Stygian initiates. Beyond that, possibly, lay even greater glory.

It was all deliciously ironic, the workings of chance. Queen Rufia’s murky past had returned to punish her a thousandfold for unguessed sins. A witch’s revenge had ravaged and weakened her city. And thus far, Bandar-Hek and his hidden cult stood to be the prime beneficiaries.

Yet, perhaps there was destiny in it, too. By contrast to the nightly torments of most citizens, Bandar-Hek recalled only one vivid dream. It had taken place in a vast, ornate temple, with a great host of worshippers grovelling and chanting on the floor. The service was conducted by Zeriti, the well-known witch, clad in black robe and vestments. She made a perfunctory sacrifice of some furry, writhing mammal, slitting it open bloodily with a curved blade. Then she invoked the formless entity beyond the altar—one of her standard dream props, so Bandar-Hek understood. This time, though, the shape materialized more clearly. It bent forward to her over the altar, and surveyed the crowd with a leering smile.

The face that Bandar-Hek had seen on the mysterious god had been his own.

Emerging from his reverie as he passed through the front portal of his temple, Bandar-Hek scanned the lamp-lit interior. No Mitra worshippers were present; they had all but given up appealing to the aloof granite god who scowled from his carved throne. In any case, the god’s quiet sanctuary was too readily conducive to sleep, and was by no means proof against the dire dreams from which the plague-sufferers fled.

Just as well, since he was minutes late for his secret ceremony in the crypt below; to stop and bless parishioners would have been a delay and a nuisance. Bandar-Hek strode behind the tall idol and opened the secret door with the green-stained, serpent-shaped key he wore around his neck. The curving steps led downward. At the bottom, in the circular gallery with the viper pit at its centre, the true worshippers waited.

They had assembled discreetly by way of the rear alley door, and now stood gowned and masked between the pillars encircling the pit in the wavering torchlight. Unknown to each other, perhaps, but Bandar-Hek knew all their identities, and knew how much their social and governmental positions would suffer if their presence at such a rite were publicly known. Suffer, yes, even during this crisis. And if it should end, it would still give him power over them long afterwards.

“Sethissa fa Sathan!” Hissed from the mouths of two- score faithful, the chant greeted Bandar-Hek as he donned his snakeskin chasuble and walked forward. His two half-naked, muscular assistants, oversized veterans of the city guard, were ready there at either side of the altar that stood by the rim of the pit. Between them, stretched out naked on the green stone and held down by their iron grip on her wrists and ankles, was the evening’s sacrifice. She was a pale-limbed, voluptuous beauty, obviously weary from struggling. She lay on her side with her face averted from him, her shapely breast heaving with sobs; but, from the silken cascade of her long blonde hair, it seemed likely that she was one more slave caught in Koth and brought over the mountains. An especially comely female mammal, a prime sacrifice for the snake god.

The worshippers watched expectantly, their eyes glittering behind their grotesque feathered masks. Reaching to his waist and drawing out the curved sacrificial knife, he raised it hilt-first before the altar in salute to the golden sarcophagi across the pit. Now three in number, the tallest and most ornate one at the centre was also the latest one received. The knife was a mere formality, a relic of early days when the poor, furtive sect had been unable to afford real serpents or a pit for its sacrifices. He would make only a small, critical incision, enough to cause copious bleeding, provide the snakes with scent and stimulation, and keep the ritual death from being needlessly prolonged. He was not, after all, a cruel man.

Gripping the knife hilt and stepping forward, Bandar-Hek gazed down on the luscious sacrifice. She writhed where she lay, then looked upward, giving him a shock. The face laughing up at him, framed impossibly in luxuriant blonde hair, was that of the witch Zeriti.

As he stood frozen, his two burly assistants grabbed him powerfully by his upper arms. Zeriti, her limbs freed from the men’s grip, sat up swiftly and caught hold of his chasuble. With a coordinated lunge, before he could lash out with his knife, the three of them dragged him forward and hurled him across the altar, into the snake pit.

He struck the sand with a crushing impact, the knife slipping from his grasp and wounding him painfully in the chest. Yet he was not stunned, only deprived of breath, which he laboured to regain. Around him, he knew, were the serpents, deadly sand vipers imported from Stygia, specially cared for and teased to exquisite cruelty by himself and his two acolytes. Why his human helpers would turn on him like this, he knew not, but the snakes, they knew neither master nor benefactor. They would strike with impunity, given the least cause.

Struggling to breathe, he nevertheless lay still, hoping the snakes would keep away. But now the whole ring of masked worshippers around the pit was laughing and jeering. They seized the torches from the sconces and threw them down onto the sand, making the vipers squirm and wriggle forward. One of them lashed out and bit Bandar-Hek on his sandalled foot.

“Why?"

The anguished moan, squeezed out in pain with the priest’s first complete breath since his fall, only brought glee and catcalls. The woman on the altar, standing with arms around the shoulders of his two assistants, was not Zeriti. She looked nothing like the witch, he now saw; still, she laughed just as wickedly. A second snake bit him, then a third, each strike calling down an exultant cheer from the onlookers, his flock.

Well, he told himself, they had a surprise coming. Bandar-Hek, as an initiate of Set’s cult from his earliest boyhood, had handled snakes continually, most of them venomous. Inevitably, over the years of his apprenticeship, there had been accidents. He had fallen gravely ill with the first snakebites, and been nursed back to health by the priests; now in adulthood, the venom of even the most virulent reptiles did not affect him severely. He felt numbness spread from the hand and shoulder that had been bitten. He was already numb from the foot up, and unable to move his leg. He watched more snakes strike at his exposed flesh, feeling it scarcely more than a pinprick.

He would grow numb, he guessed. He would feel deathly ill, and perhaps even fall unconscious. His limbs would bloat and his life-signs diminish, until he resembled a particularly grisly corpse. At that point they would be fooled; likely they would dump him outside the city wall with the other plague victims. But for a third-level initiate of the Ophidian Sect, snake venom did not bring death; if anything it was a preservative. Little did his persecutors know that he would live, and someday gain his revenge.

Seeing their priest writhe, moan, and twitch his last, the worshippers’ frenzy did not subside. Now, before Bandar-Hek’s blurring upward gaze, they gathered around the three golden coffins and moved the largest, newest one forward. They treated it with exaggerated respect, he saw, all straining together to lift its massive bulk off the stone floor, as if the crowned reptilian form moulded on its cover were a sacred idol and not simply an ancient totem figure. Yet this was the church’s token of respect to him, the selfsame parcel he had uncrated that morning, smuggled direct from Stygia still bearing the priestly seal. If they repudiated his teachings, why should they revere the sarcophagus so?

His question went unanswered as, with great care and ceremony, they set about removing the lid. The priest dreaded to think what ancient curse might be unleashed by such a desecration, yet they seemed to perform the (ask with eager anticipation. From his immobile position on the pit floor, Bandar-Hek could not see the contents. But he did see how they looped long ribbons below the uncovered box and, like sextons lowering a fresh coffin into a grave, dangled it down the side of the pit.

Then the occupant became visible, and the watchers’ shouts and cheers were renewed. For, by adroit manoeuvring of the ribbons, the box was tilted on end and its contents tipped forward into the arena. It was no mummy, nor a serpent, though it flowed and slithered like one as it spilled forward out of its prison. Watching it, the cultists began an unfamiliar chant that grew in intensity: “Jukala,” they murmured. “Jukala!”

The thing was a crocodile, a giant hunter of the southern river. It must have been restless from its long journey, but it had not been injured... nor fed, judging from the greedy gleam in its eyes and the champing of its great jaws.

As the giant beast shambled forward, Bandar-Hek had time for a single, silent scream.

XXI

City of the Forgotten Dead

The ice cave retreated up the mountainside in broad galleries vaulted over by blue crystal domes and arches. The way through the cave led across wet jumbled boulders, icy hummocks, and fast-running stream shallows, an ascent all the harder to make on numb, sodden feet. From the start, Conan and his Shemites roped themselves together and used spears and boat poles to thrust themselves forward, all the while cursing and shivering from the chill. They had set forth on this southward journey with all manner of equipment, but never had Conan thought to provide his men with waterproof buskins and heavy furs suited to the snow and ice of his native Cimmeria.

Yet the cold was not severe enough to turn them back, nor freeze them in their tracks. Down the gullies of the smoking mountain, and up from the very rocks underfoot, volcano springs gushed forth hot enough to melt the ice and keep the river flowing. After hours of difficult climbing, with the end of the cave not yet in sight, they were lucky enough to find an expanse of steam-heated gravel on which to curl up and sleep. Here the cold was less an annoyance than the water that dripped night-long from the melting roof.

Indeed, moving on next morning, the travellers had to avoid jets and currents hot enough to slough the skin off a misplaced foot or leg. From the warmest pools, steamy vapours billowed up to freeze in fantastic lattices and pendants on the overarching ice. In remote galleries their torches revealed forests of shimmering crystal, elaborate curtains of ice, and terraces of polished stone.

Elsewhere, the bright mountain sun bore in through crevices and thin snow packs, dazzling them all with its bluish-tinted glare. Their ears, meanwhile, were assailed by the chattering, echoing, and in places thundering noise of the roofed-in river.

After labouring up icy ledges and stream-washed boulders, climbing so far that it seemed they must have reached the mountain’s topmost crest, the men found that the fall of the stream began to level out. Simultaneously the cave ceiling split and opened, first into a blue- lit ice canyon overhung by snowy cornices, then a broader gorge of ice-crusted stone. Its walls rose so sheerly that the white-topped mountain peaks beyond could be glimpsed only in places.

Snow and ice became rare, as did vegetation, presumably because the stones themselves were so hot. The tagged new earth baked and fumed with the mountains’ inner fires, which spewed forth in gas flares, mineral seeps, and sputtering geysers. The band passed a spot where, undeniably, the whole fledgling river boiled in its bed, bubbling up in foul, sulphur-smelling vapours. Nearby, the subterranean rock had melted to a red-hot glowing ore. Gouting and spurting forth intermittently from a jagged, luminous fissure, it oozed down to quench itself at the river’s seething edge, amid clouds of scalding steam.

Then, soon again, the explorers found themselves edging past the frozen tongue of a glacier, whose loose, calving ice-chunks bobbed and dissolved in the torrid stream. Struck by the bizarre contrasts in this realm of ice and fire, Conan remarked on it to Caspius, who had made the climb quite ably and energetically with his commander’s help.

“Physician,” he began, “you said our voyage was a journey back in time. What think you now, having left the haunts of civilized men behind, and passed through swamps and jungles older than our mortal race, to arrive at this raw land where the life we know, even the puniest wild-flower, has yet to spring from the rocks?” Conan spoke solemnly, eyeing the hellish desolation around them. “The closest kin of ours hereabouts, so it would seem to me, is this primal river muck.” He poked with the butt of his spear at the green algal scum that floated in the unnaturally warm stream eddies, fouling and staining the jagged black stones. “Have we not come too far into the dead past to think of finding the lotus?”

Caspius, observing everything around them with bright eyes, shook his grey, vigorous old head. “I recall,” he said, “that the basic strategy of our quest was to reach the river’s source. We have not yet done that, though we may be close. The vultures, evidently, see no further need to shadow us.”

With a start, Conan looked up at the sky. Surely enough, for the first time in memory there were no black specks circling behind them. What had become of the birds he knew not; it must have been so ever since leaving the ice cave. The Shemites saw Conan’s backward glance and, realizing the fact, buzzed excitedly among themselves. Even their frail, shivering mascot Hk!Cha seemed cheered by the change.

The river, reduced now to a gurgling streamlet narrow enough in places to leap across, led ever upward. It ran down to them by way of falls and rock flumes, pouring itself noisily from pool to crystal-grey pool. The party’s progress upstream was easier now, enabling the men to untie the ropes that had joined them. The river's stone causeway ascended in a series of rectilinear troughs and ledges that resembled Cyclopean stair steps and jumbled city boulevards, though pitched at unnerving angles. The native rock in these parts was not the predominant coarse red ash or flowstone of the mountains; it was hard, black basalt that had obviously been laid down sometime in earth’s remote past, possibly before these smouldering mountains reared themselves up from the plain.

Moving up-canyon, Conan gradually felt himself overtaken by an odd sensation. He felt certain that these angular fronts and up-tilting stone pavements were in fact the remains of some incredibly ancient city, reared by titans, then buried deep underground sometime in obscure past aeons. Crushed and deformed by the weight of earth, sea, and mountain chain, and raised up on the breast of the volcano, they were then scoured clean by this timeless river as it coursed seaward... an eerie thought, as if such things were really possible.

But here, in truth, were the unmistakable signs graven in stone: the pinched windows and canting doors, foreign-looking to begin with and filled in now with obdurate rock, petrified over the ages and roughly scraped free; the fossil buildings visibly smoothed and honed, their unguessed upper levels and soaring towers wholly removed by earth’s slow violence. Of their original outlines, enough remained to provide a clue... the raised thresholds, the sagging lintels... and here an untouched embellishment, a perfect little seashell-shape engraved in a window jamb. This chain of sloping stream-side ledges, Conan could guess, was a series of elongated stair steps like those which might be found on any hillside lane in Baalur or Khorshemish. Except that, where once they had descended, they now travelled up.

ward, the whole street thrown over at an angle, warped and elongated by the unimaginable burdens and upheavals of ages.

His men likewise sensed it; he could tell by their uneasy glances, the discreetly pointed fingers, and low murmurs. They too, perhaps, wondered what unearthly realm the Styx had carried them into, and what might be the timeless curse that spawned its inky-black waters.

“Is there a name for this eldritch city?” Conan asked Caspius while helping him up alongside a chuckling waterfall. “Do your ancient scrolls say what race lived here?”

“Ha ha, a most clever conceit!” The aged physician, gazing around bright-eyed, evidently did not see the same things Conan did, not at all. “’Tis true,” he conceded, “these planes and angles are curious. They do seems almost man-made, but doubtless it is all random. See how this black stone naturally breaks in trapezoidal angles, and is polished smooth by stream gravel and ice? A curious effect, indeed.”

Conan, while feeling in his belly that something more than the mountainside was askew, chose to accept the older man’s interpretation for now. Whatever the cause of the oddly suggestive corners and angles, it most likely had nothing to do with their mission. In any case, Caspius’s scepticism, spread in murmurs down the line, would help keep the men calm in these disturbing surroundings. The sky overhead, though still vulture-less, was darkening fast as the volcanoes spewed forth thick smoke. At this elevation, their restless internal grumblings could be heard and even felt underfoot. The hour was past noon, as the sun’s sooty-orange disc seemed to indicate, and the prospect of spending the night in these unearthly environs made the ice-caves seem positively cosy.

Still Conan led the way forward. Beyond the knife-angled walls of the gorge, he caught occasional glimpses of fan-shaped talus slopes covered by gleaming snowfields. These led up to the smoking, iron-red inns of the nearest volcanoes. The river could hardly hike them higher than that, but, having come thus far, hi* wanted to make sure.

“How fascinating!” he heard Caspius suddenly exclaim. “A most impressive formation, very likely natural in origin, though perhaps embellished and modified by human labour. It suggests that other men than ourselves may indeed have visited this remote place.”

The physician’s remarks were made in reference to a broad, imposing mound that dominated a bend in the stream. There, atop stone benches that gave the impression of giant tumbled stairs, a small mesa of polished black basalt rose in a truncated, sloping pile. It had the same superficial markings and skewed proportions that had caught Conan’s eye downstream, with a difference of scale. If those former stone ridges represented streets and houses, then this structure was a great palace or temple. Its central and most dominant feature was a pair of immense, leaning stone slabs that gave the impression of doors.

“You are telling me this is nature’s work?” Conan, standing beside Caspius, waved a hand critically. “But look at the evenness of it.” Though indeed, it leaned at a disturbing angle to the slope. “And see, those vertical chunks could just as well be shorn-off columns. If we could but see how it once was... it all looks too regular to me,” he gruffly finished.

“Dressed and finished with human effort, perhaps,” Caspius conceded. “And regarded as a holy shrine by some local pilgrims, very likely so.” He directed Conan's attention to the young cannibal Hk!Cha, who stood gazing up in mute, frightened awe. “But can you really say such an immense feature, formed of such hard stone, is a work of man?” Shaking his head, the sage moved forward toward the first of the skewed stair steps. “I will have to examine it closely before I can give you a more definite opinion.”

“Take care, old man.” With a wave of his hand, Conan dispatched two Shemites to guard the physician. “And be quick, I do not want to dawdle here long.” Striding on past the unaccountable monument, Conan saw that there was very little left of the black stone ravine. Just ahead, its walls opened out to reveal a breathtaking vista of encircling volcanic ridges, fuming craters, and blinding-white snowfields stretching across a fan of red ash. The last ruinous tumble of basalt blocks, down which the stream ran and glistened, lay before them. Feeling suddenly invigorated, Conan struck out forward at a brisk pace—although he sprang carefully from stone to stone, knowing that proportion and distance could prove misleading at these elevations. Behind him, his men followed and exchanged lusty shouts, promising to show one another the river’s end.

What, then, of the true object of their quest? Half-blinded by sunglare, Conan shaded his eyes and carefully scanned the mountain expanse. He squinted to gain a clearer look at the snowfields... Could he be mistaken? No, it was true.

The blinding white expanses on the nearest slopes were not snow at all, but fragile silver blossoms, throngs and legions and hordes of them, growing out of the loose volcanic soil, shimmering and scintillating under the yellow-tinged sun. They grew here within easy reach, a few score paces away.

“Ahoy, you men! Unload those gunny sacks and make ready, we have found what we came for!”

As the Shemites reacted, first with astonishment and then joyous exuberance, Conan made swift mental calculations. There would be no shortage of lotus, and gathering it should be easy. They could take only enough to fill their one ship, for now, but barges could always be built down at timberline, if Caspius thought greater quantities were needed. They had brought along twine and gauze and oilcloth for wrapping bales. Preserving them from rot on the long journey back would be the most difficult part.

“Use care, men,” he cautioned his troops. “Pluck the whole plant for now, until we can try out its effects. No need to build fires, there are scorching caves in the cliffs downstream that we can use for drying. Look lively, you rogues—our journey is but half over!”

The Shemites scarcely needed Conan to speed them in their work. In mere moments the swiftest of them returned with a double handful of the plants; in return Conan fished for the gold coin that had long since been offered as a reward. But without thought of payment, the man turned and bounded away, careless of profit and eager to help his countrymen.

These flowers, as Caspius had predicted, were considerably larger and more robust than the paltry specimen he had found below, with flamboyant silver petals mid downy leaves. After sniffing them and detecting the same subtle perfume, Conan turned and took the fistful downstream to show the physician.

When he came to the basalt mound resembling a temple, he found several things changed. First, Caspius and his guards were nowhere in sight. The two slabs that looked like doors had somehow been pried apart, exposing a broad, dark aperture that made the hackles rise at the back of Conan’s neck. The cannibal guide Hk!Cha still remained before the stone pile, but now he knelt in an attitude of quaking submission, obviously terrified. When Conan came up beside him, the savage gazed up wide-eyed and spoke only one word: “Juwala!”

On the buckled threshold between the pair of canted slabs, a small fire had been built. It appeared to have been the means of some magical ritual, contained as it was within the chalked outline of an odd seven-pointed star. The heartless ashes included remnants of small bones and coloured powders. Just how the two massive stones had parted, without an upheaval of the whole mountain, was unclear—unless, perhaps, they moved on unseen pivots set into the Cyclopean walls.

Conan strode up before the vast doorway. An unspeakable stench rolled forth to meet him, as of fresh charnel decay blossoming amid the musty reek of ages. The floor beyond the dark threshold was encrusted with centuries-old filth and debris... yet obviously it was just that, a floor, made of cut and fitted stones still relatively level. The cavernous space inside was dark as it was noisome; but, peering deep within, Conan thought he saw the glimmer of a flame.

Without hesitation he strode toward the distant light. As he went forward and his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, he could see enough to be fairly sure he was not stepping off into an abyss. He even gained a faint, fleeting sense of the architectural features around him—broad, bulging pillars carved in the shape of thick-ridged tree trunks, and massive, heavy vaultings overhead—but his main attention was to his footing on the buckling, downward-sloping pavement. Before long the floor beneath him felt more like a steep ramp, made slippery in places by seepage and the accompanying mineral scum. The daylight shining in through the vast doorway dwindled to a small blue crevice behind him. The only sound was that of water droplets falling from the vaultings and occasionally the larger, deeper perturbation of waters somewhere ahead.

“Caspius, are you there? We have found the lotus!”

The flame, which had disappeared from view, now flickered back into sight. It was a torch, likely borne by one of Caspius’s bodyguards. Beyond the wavering flame, he could make out a further tenuous ghost where the light reflected on broadly rippling waters. The dim shapes of three men could be seen against the glimmer.

“Come, physician,” Conan called out, “let us leave this foul place! The men are harvesting the lotus, vast silver fields of it—see here?” He held up the drooping handful of flowers. “We must prepare it for shipment back to Baalur with all dispatch.”

“What news!” Caspius replied from between the two guards. “You must be happy indeed. I have taken a small side excursion to observe this event, very likely I he most unique sight of our journey. Come down here, you may find it instructive as well.”

The physician, speaking amiably, extended a beckoning hand. The guards who flanked him, bearing spear and torch, looked frozen with fear. Conan peered into the dimness beyond them at what Caspius had found.

The three stood at the edge of lapping water, where the lowest part of the ancient Vault must have been tilled in by drips and seeps from volcanic springs. The pool was warm as a bath, Conan could tell even from a few feet away; the moist, thick atmosphere made the nameless stench all the more suffocating. The torchlight, shining out over the agitated ripples, revealed objects that were large but none too clear. There was a huge sphere, tom open and partly collapsed; evidently it was formed of some pliant material, like a burst bladder. To Conan it resembled an immense, hatched-out egg. Had it not been caved-in, it would have towered live times the height of a man.

The enormous thing it presumably had given birth to, farther out in the water, was difficult to discern in the torchlight. The hatchling thrashed and flopped ponderously, sending ankle-high wavelets ashore; with every convulsive movement it seemed to be trying to drive itself inshore, like a whale unaccountably struggling to beach itself. It was fishlike, with vertical tail flukes, but it also had a thick, rounded body, bulbous eyes, and a wide mouth resembling a tadpole’s. The thing’s facial features were grotesque in the wavering light, crusted with ridges and swellings that could have been a natural form of armour. But its aspect was not fierce, hardly that of a predator lunging at the watching men. Rather it seemed dumbly determined, like a fledgeling bird trying to force itself out of a nest.

“A most illustrative case,” Caspius was telling Conan, evidently without fear or detestation of the huge tadpole. “Often I have thought that creatures of widely differing types seem to be related, if only remotely. Sometimes it may be seen that, in growing to their mature shape, beings pass through other forms, as a dragonfly first resembles a worm, then a beetle, then a bird. It may be that the order of these changes bears profound significance.”

In spite of the odiousness of the place, and its possible danger, Conan felt a momentary fascination. The behemoth was thrashing its great fins impatiently in the water, thrusting itself slowly and inexorably forward. It was two-thirds aground now, already looming a good deal taller than the watchers, and its mouth gaped hugely, gulping in more air than water.

Conan wondered if, like any fish, it would drown in the air. Apart from the powerful sideways thrashings of its tail, the two pairs of fins at the creature’s sides were most active; they churned up billows of water like crabbing oars, flailing wildly in what he thought might be death-throes.

Before his gaze, a subtle change occurred. The plumed fins at the great fish’s side flapped and became useless, then sloughed wholly away. Instead of fins beating air, the monster now had four limbs scrabbling at the stone beneath the water, clawed legs that pulled it forward considerably faster, in concert with its thrashing tail.

“Back, let us take leave of this hell-pit!” Conan nodded to the guards, who already strained away from the churning, frothing pond. But Caspius, staying near the water’s edge, seemed in no hurry. “Observe how, as fins become legs, other features also mature and change. The tail shortens and the tail fins become mere fringes. The facial armour dwindles, and the bulging eyes retreat somewhat into the head and move to the front. These improvements clearly relate to emergence from the water, as well as hunting ability. The new-found limbs, too, lengthen themselves and grow strong.”

It was equally clear that the diluvian beast, while dragging itself faster out of the water, was growing larger before their eyes. “Take him,” Conan said to the guards, nodding at Caspius. They obediently ran forward and seized the sage by one shoulder each, hauling him bodily back from the spectacle of the advancing thing.

Yet the monster, too, decided to waste no more time. Squirming forward lizard-like, it wallowed out of its amniotic bath, almost keeping pace with the retreating men. Its head had grown more wedge-shaped, and its jaws, lined with budding teeth, gulped air greedily, without any apparent need for water. As it laboured, its out-breathed exhalations came forth with deep, croaking grunts.

“So you see,” Caspius lectured as he was drawn away between the two Shemites, “at long last the transition from fish to lizard is complete.”

“Come on, grey one,” Conan told the sage, grasping him firmly by the collar. “Whatever possessed you to stop and waken this devil, I know not. But we have the lotus!” He thrust the wilting silver blossoms under the old man’s nose. “It is time to go home.”

Caspius, staggering up the slippery ramp, accepted the bouquet and sniffed it. His nostrils flared and the flowers’ perfume made him blink. He looked back over his shoulder at the thing that followed them.

The gargantuan beast was surprisingly agile on dry land, crawling crocodile-like after them. But it was thicker-bodied than a crocodilian, with shorter-tapering tail and head. Its hide was smooth and scaleless, but its face still bore vestigial armour ridges from its fishlike state.

The four fled toward the patch of daylight, glancing back frequently at their pursuer. As they watched, it gathered its clumsy limbs beneath itself and gave a mighty heave. With an elephantine shuddering that jarred the very stones underfoot, it slung its vast bulk up to stand on four legs.

The monster’s croaking grunts and wheezes began, impossibly, to take the form of speech. “That is how, in past times, I raised myself above the mire to found a new order. Thus I ruled all the others and became a god.” The words, belched forth deafeningly in crude Shemitish, echoed around the sunken gallery.

Conan, dragging the faltering Caspius away from the abomination, had a nightmarish sense of all his darkest fears and visions coming true. The monstrous thing was godlike indeed, more imposing than any mere beast. Yet he and the others, in their race for the door, were well ahead of it, and it was none too steady on its new-found legs. The Cimmerian began to hope fervently that the monster had blown itself up too large to fit out the stone archway.

“Know and fear me, O humans! For I am Jukala, the Silurian! I came first from the sea, to breed the mightiest dynasty that ever ruled the land!”

The great mouth, biting down on the final thunderous word, opened again instantly in a narrow slit. Out of it, like a striking serpent, shot an immensely long purple 1 filament, bigger around than Conan’s arm. The darting tongue struck one of the guards at Caspius’s side, gripping his neck with a slimy, adhesive touch. He tried to thrust it away with his spear shaft, but it jerked him off his feet. Shouting and struggling vainly, he was dragged a dozen paces across the stone floor and up into lukala's mouth, which opened roomily to accommodate him. The jaws closed, and the wattled, pendulous throat quivered in a gulp. Then the monster was speaking again, still trundling forward.

“See how little I, Jukala, care for mortals! Run if you want or try to fight. But know this: now that I am born again, I shall reign supreme over your puny world!” Conan, who had paused only long enough to snatch up the Shemite’s fallen spear, raced after the others. The second guard had dropped his torch; but it did not matter for they were already at the door. The three darted out into daylight, with Jukala looming up to fill the entryway behind them. Hk!Cha, still kneeling before the temple, looked on wide-eyed.

“Up, fellow, and away!” Conan urged the cannibal, emphasizing his words with urgent gestures. “Your god has awakened, and he has a mighty appetite!” Stopping beside Caspius and the panting Shemite guard, Conan mined back to face the basalt pile. “With any luck, he has prisoned himself inside.”

It was not so. The thing known as Jukala, squatting down and wriggling with a superhuman if not godlike effort, thrust its head and forelimbs out the doorway, then squeezed the rest of its bulk through, shoving the stone portals wider apart as it did so.

As it emerged, the mouth slitted open and the tongue shot forth again. This time its target was the frightened, immobile Hk!Cha.

Conan, seeing the fleeting movement, raised his spear to strike back. But the prehensile member flitted through the air so fleetingly that he could not intercept it. It did not take hold of the man as it had before, it merely touched him. As it did so, some bright spark of energy was transferred to the kneeling cannibal.

“See now,” the monstrosity croaked, “Jukala can kill at a whim, or confer blessings and miracles with the same ease. Those who truly believe need not fear me, so long as they remain faithful.”

The monster had stopped before the entrance of the temple, tasting the air and basking in the sunlight it had been shut away from for so many ages. Conan judging that he and his Shemite friends were momentarily out of reach of Jukala’s tongue, he stopped and looked back al Hk!Cha, who knelt in an attitude of abject devotion between them and the ancient nemesis. But the touch of the monstrous appendage had transformed the cannibal miraculously. The figure that arose and slowly turned to face them looked taller, paler, and differently shaped; staring in amazement, Conan saw that it was none other than the sorceress Zeriti.

True, the undead witch appeared before them as something of a compromise. She still wore Hk!Cha’s jungle costume of bones, thongs, and feathers, the garb’s scantiness revealing her witchy charms. Her long, lithe limbs were unchanged, as were her black-nailed fingers and toes, her full, pendulous breasts, and the white death-scar that peeked out from between them. When she smiled, it was evident that she had retained the cannibal’s filed teeth and the pattern of ritual scarifications on his cheeks. But apart from that, no visible trace of the Keshan remained.

“Ho, adventurers,” the witch greeted them in a voice Conan knew well from his nightmares. “Handsome Cimmerian and my devoted servant Caspius! Have no fear for your cannibal friend, for he is one of the faithful. Great Jukala sometimes snuffs out lives with his divine tongue, and sometimes merely souls. The souls he can give back, if he so wishes.”

Conan gripped his spear, tempted to hurl it at the taunting Stygian. Yet her form, he guessed, was but an illusion superimposed over Hk!Cha’s mortal frame— anyway, one killing had already been wasted on her, as the scar left by dead Imbalayo proved. “Well, my brave Cimmerian,” the witch teased, observing Conan, “I did not know you harboured violent urges against women! Go ahead, strike at me if you want!” Raising her arms, Zeriti wove her slim body in n lewd gyration before him. “Though you know, it will only be a dead cannibal who falls at your feet—and then only when I will it!”

“Get on with it, temptress,” Conan rasped impatiently. “What is it you come here tell us? Or do you merely wish to gloat?”

“Why, I came to express sincere thanks to my devoted acolyte, Caspius.” She bowed politely to the elder physician. “For his help in unsealing the shrine and treeing immortal Jukala from his long sleep. Without your help, old man, this millennial event could never have come to pass, at least not so easily.” She turned and bowed more deeply to her god. The amphibian-thing seemed content for the moment to stand before its temple, bask in the sun and be worshipped, blinking its frog-like eyes in the four-footed stance it was so vain of.

“If Caspius had a part in this,” Conan ventured angrily, “it was through your witcheries—”

“It was the dreams, Conan!”

Caspius, his voice breaking, came up pitifully behind his commander.

“It was the hateful, unspeakable nightmares. You have glimpsed them, perhaps, but you could not know the full, odious weight of them, not over all these months and all these many leagues! If you did, you would be as mad as I am—nay, as I was!”

“You suffered from the dream plague?” Conan marvelled. “Even after leaving Baalur?”

“After leaving was the worst,” the elder said. “While others screamed themselves awake on the ships, I lay in silence, afraid to cry out.” Caspius slumped, ashamed to look up at Conan. “You cannot guess how dreadful it was, I had no choice but to obey. I am sorry, so sorry!”

It is only since you brought the fresh lotus...” He held up the crushed blossoms he had been pressing to his nose. “The aroma helps to clear my head. It truly works!”

Zeriti, where she stood wryly smiling, shrugged impatiently. “It matters little if there are antidotes to some of my spells. I have no further need of dreams to control you, and the lotus need never get back to Baalur.” The witch laughed harshly. “The weed was only a lure to draw you here—to Jukala’s birthplace, here at the centre of the world.”

For the first time, Conan parried her laugh with one of his own. “If you think that I, after coming all these thousand leagues, will let you or any self-styled god keep me from carrying out my mission—”

“And what choice do you think you have?” Zeriti imperiously demanded. “Jukala is all-powerful already, at least so far as you and your gaggle of Shemites are concerned! You, O great commander, are my birthday gift to him. Your body will serve as a disposable mortal garment for his godly return, once he gets around to lapping up your pitiful soul. You shall return to Baalur, indeed, bearing with you the long-sought lotus cure, if he wishes—and a far more powerful drug as well, that of religion. Your wretched city of Baalur will be the first to hail Jukala’s godhood! Your former tart Rufia and her cuckold Aphrates will be the first human rulers to prostrate themselves before his glory! Their mewling Princess Ismaia will be his short-lived human bride, a sacrificial morsel. And I, I will be Jukala’s prophetess and mistress, the true voice of eternal wisdom, spreading his name across the. Hyborian kingdoms and all the world!”

“Aye, give heed to her, mortals, for it is so!”

Behind Zeriti, the croaking voice of the godly monster suddenly trumpeted forth.

“For you know, puny mammals, I was god over races that existed aeons before man scrabbled into existence— over my vast Silurian domain, and all the later kingdoms, over the fiercest, lordliest creatures ever shaped in my image, the great lizard-kings who ruled the earth for a span of millennia against which your paltry history is but an eye-blink. But you too are made in my image, for you too stand erect. So I lay claim to you all!” While Zeriti and her beast-god ranted on, Conan made a survey of his surroundings. Since he had followed Caspius underground, the volcanoes had grown more active—particularly the nearest one, as if troubled by the abomination it had birthed. Clouds of soot and ash poured up out of the jagged crater; threads of lightning played where the black smoke warred with fast-gathering rain clouds; and distant thunder mingled with the mountain’s more personal rumblings, whose tremors could be felt running deep in the bedrock underfoot.

As Conan looked up the valley, the first of his Shemites came bounding downriver, carrying their spears and boat pikes. They must have heard Jukala’s croakings and glimpsed his fearsome shape over the rocks. With characteristic devotion, they had left off gathering lotus and rushed to their commander’s aid.

“Fan out, men of Baalur!” Conan shouted at them. “Keep your distance, for this slimy devil sups with a long spoon! If we rush him, we must do it all at once, in a half-circle! Spears at the ready—”

Jukala, with his stentorian croak, was effortlessly able to drown out Conan.

“So, an army of the faithful approaches!”

The human words coming from the monster echoed from the rocks, making most of the Shemites halt astonished in their tracks. “Let us see how faithful they remain to you, commander, once you become obedient to me!”

So saying, the great beast lumbered at Conan with dismayingly quick, deft strides of its clawed feet. Evidently the newborn thing had continued to develop and mature while standing before its temple, for now it moved a good deal faster. As it charged, its mouth slitted open and the unholy purple tongue came flitting out.

Conan, falling back from the behemoth, raised his spear to fend off the prehensile tentacle. Its force smote into him, nearly driving him off his feet, but he was able to knock the writhing purple filament aside. Then, with a clever twist, the appendage looped over and wrapped itself around the old man who had been standing near the Cimmerian.

“Caspius!”

Conan darted forward, thrusting out his spear. The old physician seized hold of it just below the spearhead and held on for dear life. But the sticky tongue, looped around his middle, drew him inexorably away; and the spear shaft, slimed with the gluey ichor from the monster’s tongue, slipped out of Conan’s grasp. It was carried off in the old man’s grim, futile clutch.

“May Crom’s hounds tear and gnaw your vitals, you slimy devil!” As the struggling physician was snapped up into the behemoth’s smug-looking maw, Conan drew his sword and started forward. “You men, ready on the attack! All together with me—Crom!”

As he ran forward, Conan saw a peculiar new development. A sharp horn seemed to be sprouting from the tip of Jukala’s nose. No, indeed, it was a spear point of gleaming steel, driven by the frail captive caught inside the monster’s jaws.

With a hideous blatting, Jukala opened his mouth and gave voice to his pain and fury. Caspius was spewed out onto the rocks, there to tumble and lie brokenly. The monstrous purple tongue, in a dexterous manoeuvre, wrapped around the spear shaft inside the creature’s open mouth and yanked it out, trailing a red stream. The monster ground its teeth and spat out the spear in three broken pieces, its bulbous eyes orbiting in wrath.

Conan’s men, where they converged on Jukala, were scattered like chaff as the beast lunged forward and trampled among them with its taloned feet and short tail. Some were crushed by its vast trundling weight, others wolfed up in the tooth-lined jaws or snared by the fast-darting tongue. A few hard-flung spears stuck in the leathery hide but did no visible injury. Jukala rampaged among them like a lizard among ants, and Conan soon saw that the terms of the fight were hopelessly unequal.

“Back! Retreat upstream!” Conan waved his sword futilely, knowing he could get never near enough to do Jukala harm.

Maybe higher up on the broken mountain slope he could find a way. There was no time to build war engines, or a trap capable to stopping the thing; all his siege hardware had been left downstream in camps and caches. There was not even timber here, only bare rock and wild flowers. The monster stood between him and the boats, as well. But the lotus was the most important thing. If need be, they could take it out over the snow, using spears as sled-runners.

As Conan and his men fell back, the beast Jukala paused in its attack and gave them a short breathing space. Trundling to the river and bending its great neck, it noisily siphoned up huge volumes of water, soothing its injured mouth. Then, having nearly drunk the Styx dry, it turned toward a broad ramp of stone that led past the next waterfall, trudging up the path of Conan’s retreat with its stilt-like, strutting gait.

If only he could roll stones down on it... but the valley’s sides here were not steep enough, and the rocks higher up were mostly light ash or hard flowstone welded to the mountainside. Nor could the monster itself easily be gotten to, where it waddled up between the stream course and a deep, smoking fissure that blocked any approach or attack from above.

Then at once, Conan had an idea. “Here, men, tumble these rocks!” he called out. “Loosen this rubble, throw it down and dam the river!”

Seizing a spear, he butted it behind a loose chunk of stone and bore down with all his strength. In moments, others followed his lead, and the broad slab of mountainside grated free; it slid down the rock apron to splash into a shallow part of the stream bed. More stones followed as dozens of legionnaires on the banks hove, pried, and lifted. At Conan’s direction a dam began to form, with the fast-running water building up steadily behind it. If Jukala knew or cared what they were doing, he did not show it, but continued to shuffle uphill toward them.

“Here now, unseat this whole ledge! Put your shoulders into it, men, and it will go!” Leaping across a narrow neck of the stream to the steeper bank, Conan marshalled a score of Shemites to pry loose a precarious overhang. He himself drove in his spear and struck up a sea chanty. The ledge began to loosen. Then, with a rattling roar, it went pouring down to fill in the existing dam. One or two of the toilers atop the bank slid down after it; the matter of whether they survived the fall or not was screened from view by the rising dust. But the blockade had an immediate effect.

The Styx’s waters, turned out of their well-worn course, flooded sideways across the gently sloping basalt. Like water-sprites set merrily free, they raced toward Jukala’s ponderous ascent. Short of him, they poured into the glowing, smoking fissure, where the mountain’s inner heat burst through the hard black basalt.

The result was an instant explosion. Hot gases and chunks of rock blasted forth in a skyward rain, causing a thunderclap that deafened those who looked on. Like wildfire, a curtain of live steam raced down the whole length of the fiery crevice, emitting a mad devil’s howling broken by loud reports. The earth itself screamed in agony, so it seemed to Conan, as if its open, burning wound had been staunched with bitter brine. Steam jetted forth in a ghostly white curtain before the men’s eyes, from which they ducked and scuttled back in superstitious fear.

The effect on Jukala, even amid the enfolding billows of cloud, was obvious. The frog god’s bellowing shriek rivalled that of the flooding crevasse. The great saurian body lurched and staggered away; as it turned, the watchers could see that a great expanse of leathery skin had been flayed loose by the scalding vapour. Desperate to escape the agonizing heat, the beast waddled side-wise and skidded down into the almost-dry riverbed.

“Now, lads, have at it! With stones, spears, anything you can find!”

Leading the baying pack of Shemites who swarmed and danced along the river’s far bank, Conan pried up great jagged stones and tumbled them down on Jukala’s flayed back. His own spear he then flung with all his strength, burying it deep in the monster’s neck, while others pelted and prodded the despised godling with rocks and weapons from above.

As the thing called Jukala shambled out of the gully and dragged itself from the river, Conan followed. He drew his sword and, with a howling battle-cry, carved and slashed at the beast’s nether parts. He drove his blade deep in, then hacked and shore away great sheets and folds of loose, scalded skin. The others followed, gouging and thrusting cruelly with their spears; but none of them ran between Jukala’s shuffling legs and danced in the bloody rain as their battle-maddened leader did. Conan’s taunts and curses followed the stricken monster as it retreated.

“Go, you great toad! Wallow back into your stinking pit, and cower there another million years! You are a god of worms, not men—of blind guppies and low, crawling newts!”

Indeed, the tormented god was bent on returning to its den, shambling now across the barren rocky threshold where it had stood and boasted so proudly. Near the end it could no longer walk, but flopped onto its lacerated belly to crawl and scrabble desperately; Conan, darting out barely in time from beneath it, stayed nearby to hack relentlessly at the beast’s stumpy tail. The monster squirmed and wriggled, struggling to squeeze its bloated trunk through the portal from which it had so recently emerged... then it succeeded, disappearing into the shadows of its odious cave.

“Now, men, to the stones! Get to work and tilt these doors back in place. We’ll seal up this foul temple, or rather, this tomb!”

The Shemites, raving and dancing with the joy of victory, rallied swiftly to the task. For some reason the odd-shaped tablets proved easy to roll and wedge back into position, though before they had seemed massively immovable.

Even as the door was tightly blocked, a plaintive voice assailed Conan.

“Devils! Inhuman fiends and heretics! You have done great injustice this day, and cruelly harmed a noble being!”

It was Zeriti, still in her cannibal garb; earlier, while Jukala launched his attack, she stood apart and watched, and later must have hidden herself to keep from being driven into his crypt with him. Now she strode forward unafraid, facing her Silurian godling’s tormentors.

The Shemites recognized her all too well; a half-dozen bloody spears whizzed overhead to clatter down on stone, narrowly missing her.

But Conan called out, “Hold! If you slay her, you will only be killing Hk!Cha! She is but an illusion come to taunt us.” He turned to Zeriti. “Begone, foul witch!”

The temptress laughed, displaying her filed teeth. “I will be gone, aye! But whether you will... well, that depends on the mountain djinni, does it not?” She cast her kohl-rimmed eyes up at the volcanoes, which were growing ever more restless. “If they permit it, I will see you again... in a year or maybe two, however long it takes to find your way home. By then I will have completed my dream-vengeance on Baalur, and you and your lotus will be too late. You are welcome to have whatever remains of the place.”

“Your god is dead, she-devil,” Conan spat back, “so what fate is left for you?” He knew that he spoke out of weakness and hated it. He felt suddenly powerless over this illusory demoness; his triumph over Jukala had already faded.

“My god, hah! That pathetic weakling!” Zeriti tossed her bare shoulders in disdain. “I will go back to Set, a younger, more vigorous deity who still has a following in my native land and elsewhere. His priests will welcome me into his charmed circle—and remember, Stygia’s lands and armies stand between you and Baalur!” She pushed back her black, tangled hair. “A priestess of Set, yes... the serpent, who values perfidy and betrayal. What a fine idea! But first I have business to attend to.”

So saying, Zeriti turned away and vanished. Hk!Cha was left standing there, to fall instantly to his knees and cover his face with trembling hands.

A short distance away over the rocks, Caspius was found. He was racked, bruised, and covered with demon spittle, yet he lived.

When he saw Conan bending over him, he mumbled in anguish. “I am sorry, Conan, so sorry... that a whole life of faithful service can end in betrayal! I was not strong enough.”

“You were strong, old man,” Conan assured him. “Count yourself a hero—Jukala is defeated, and you drew first blood.” Conan patted the physician gingerly on his less-crumpled shoulder. “And do not think your life is so easily ended. I order you to get well and help us complete our mission! You need not fear the dreams any longer, for there is lotus aplenty.”

After seeing the physician laid comfortably in the shade, and the dead Shemites blessed and thrown into a flaming crevice, Conan turned his attention to the survivors. His greatest fear was that the awakening volcanoes would spew out ash and hot gases and bum the lotus, or otherwise make the uplands uninhabitable.

“Now then, you men,” he commanded, “back to work plucking flowers! Bring them down to yonder caves, where we can roast them dry. You two, unpack the burlap and twine for making bales. The sooner we can ready a shipload, the sooner we head home.”

XXII

Brazen Chimes

Princess Ismaia awoke feeling deliciously rested. Morning sun poured in through the ruffled silk curtains of her chamber and fell across the foot of her pink satin coverlet. Playful sunbeams, dancing off the silver and crystal jars arrayed on her dressing table, scattered the room with rainbows and sparkles just like the inside of a jewellery box.

Arising and smoothing her nightgown, she went barefoot across the warm tiles to her tower window. The weather outside looked sunny and pleasant, all the more so when she pushed the gauzy curtains aside. From the palace garden, bright flowers wafted their sweet scents up to her, and brighter birds hopped from trellis-top to tree limb, greeting the day with their song. Across walls and roofs the sky shone brilliant blue, and the freshness of spring was in the air.

It had been long, so it seemed to her, since she had played outside. She thought of her parents—they were just a distant recollection, somehow, as if she had not been with them much lately. But they were beautiful and kind. She remembered their worried faces bending over her in the night. Her father, after all, was the king, and her mother a fine lady.

Somewhere downstairs in the lower palace, certainly, breakfast was being laid out. Her mother was making ready for the day and very likely waiting for her. There would be interesting things to do and learn. Turning from the window, she crossed to the door that led to the parapet. She undid the iron latch and flung the heavy door wide, then ran into the glorious outdoors.

As she skipped across the bright flagstones, the morning was darkened by black shadows of wings hovering overhead. Coarse, raucous cries and chuckling warbles descended, sounding a note of triumphant and of faintly female laughter. As Ismaia cried out in fear, sharp talons gripped her gown, her limbs, and her hair, dragging and lifting her in spite of her struggles. She rose steeply, out over the battlements and across the palace gardens at a dizzying height.

The birds that grasped her were foul-smelling creatures, their stench wafting over her with the beating of their heavy wings. When she looked up at them she screamed all the more, for they were horrid, their flesh decaying beneath tattered feathers, their eyes swollen and lolling half out of their heads. The rotting talons clutched painfully at her, knotting in her hair and cutting into the skin of her wrists and ankles. She dared not struggle for fear of falling to her death on the roofs below.

Looking down, she saw two figures run out onto the parapet: her mother and father. Gazing up after her, they waved vainly and called her name.

“Ismaia! Oh, my poor child, when will you waken?” Leaning over the pale, drawn princess, Queen Rufia looked up at her husband. The queen, too, looked worn and pale in the light of the oil lamps. Aphrates gazed down with an air of imperial helplessness, the same melancholy state that had been his for so many months. Faintly through the window, from the streets outside the palace, echoed the rasping of brass trumpets and clanging of bronze chimes. This racket went on night-long, the latest measure Aphrates had decreed to keep his subjects, both the musicians and their audience, awake and out of the clutches of dream. But nothing could restore his daughter; for days she had lain in a deathlike coma, with only the faintest reflection of unguessable terrors crossing her face from one moment to the next.

“How long can she hang on?” Rufia lamented, gently massaging and flexing her daughter’s thin limbs to keep them supple. “If only the legion would return or send further word! Then we would have hope; it has been so long.”

Aphrates turned to the window. “Would that they return with or without the lotus,” he said, “just to help me keep order in my city.” Gazing out into the night, he watched the glowing smoke of fires rising from two different places on the horizon, and heard occasional mad yells and wails above the clanging of the gongs.

“Oh, how can you speak so?” Rufia asked bitterly. “I know that they will bring back a cure! I know Conan too well.. She trailed off. “His men are the best, the very pick of our city. In truth, we could use them now.” Tidying the coverlet over her child’s thin body, she looked up solemnly at Aphrates. “But, husband, if they should not return—after so many months—have you given thought to any other alternatives?”

The king turned to her. “What, you mean dark wizardry? Enlist the aid of some rank evildoer to fight off our troubles? I have told you, the cost of such a bargain is too great. I will never sell my city, nor my family and dynasty, into the hands of necromancers.”

“But we are in a wizard’s hands now! What is Zeriti but a petty spell caster?” Rufia came around the princess’s bed to grasp her husband’s arm. “Aphrates, there are other resources—the cult of Set, for instance. I am told they have agents in Baalur even now, with ties to the lords of Stygia! If our own gods cannot protect us, maybe others can. Stygia lies along Conan’s route! They might search out our legionnaires in the south and help them return—”

“Enough!” the king said, pulling free of his wife’s grasp. “Baalur will not become Stygia’s tributary, never under my rule or Ismaia’s, should the child live! The Stygians pry and plot through their agents here, including some members of my own court, but I will not yield to them! I gave your champion Conan my best equipment and men. If he cannot return under his own power, without the aid of foreign sorcerers, then let him perish in the wilderness! And let this city bum, rather than bow to evil gods!”

XXIII

Astride the Serpent

While the expedition’s survivors toiled to gather the lotus and cure it for shipment, the river steadily rose. The Shemites’ night-long labours were lit by volcano flares and lightning-forks. As the craters fumed and rumbled, showers of fine ash spewed forth, their far-scattered heat rapidly melting the snowfields on the upper slopes. At the same time, rain showers assaulted the heights, sending up steam clouds from the fumaroles and adding to the swelling river flood.

Luckily the drying-caves were broad and deep, allowing the lotus to be spread over hot stone out of the rain showers. Parched dry, it was gathered up in minutes by perspiring workmen, who then bathed in the icy river to cool themselves. At Caspius’s direction, only the fragrant silver petals and buds were taken, to be dried and bundled tightly in burlap-lined bales. These in turn were sewn up in oilskins, and the stitches sealed with hot beeswax.

So extensive were the flower fields that enough blossoms were soon gathered to medicate a whole city. The principal danger to the pickers came from the flying volcano bombs that struck at random on the lava slopes, bursting into sharp stone fragments and setting clumps of lotus aflame with their heat; these caused injuries to some but claimed no lives.

By dawn’s light, which was sickly with yellow and brown plumes from the volcano crests, the bales were mounted on runners made of rope-bowed spears, to be hauled down slope by drag-ropes. The lotus had to be taken out over the snow pack; for the swollen Styx, having long since swept aside the makeshift dam above Jukala’s tomb, was rapidly melting away the ice cave. With every shudder of the awakening mountain, a new expanse of frozen snow buckled and caved in, adding to the roaring cataclysm that surged beneath.

Conan and his men set their course wide to avoid cave-ins and crevasses. Useless for hauling, the ropes instead were needed to restrain the headlong momentum of the bales, which tended to drag the men skidding and sliding on the snow’s frozen crust. Many a Shemite’s gloveless hands were abraded and frost-burned after clutching and clawing for life on the steep downhill track. But in the end, nearly all of them made it down to the head of the lake where the boats waited.

The handful of men left behind had spent a long, hard night preserving the ship and canoe from the river flood. By strengthening the moorings, and finally tying the lines to spars driven deep into the snow pack, they kept both vessels from being swept away. Now, heaving the larger craft in under, a rock cliff, Conan’s men were able to lower the bales directly into the ship’s open waist and secure them there for the voyage.

Crowding in along the side walls in the spaces that were left to them, the crew took up oars and made ready to navigate the lake. Those who could not find places in the cargo ship crossed from it into the long canoe. But mooring the two craft together for the voyage was judged too dangerous, since flood currents might entangle them or run them aground. Indeed, the lake’s glassy-black surface was now clouded with reddish volcano dust and scattered with ice floes.

Conan, taking his place ahead of the lotus bales in the bow, had already resigned himself to a long, arduous overland trek back to Shem. Though successful in finding the prize, they had missed the deadline imposed by nature; flood season was upon them, its rains and snow melts made all the worse by these fuming volcanoes. Zeriti’s rash threats assured Conan that Aphrates still ruled Baalur; but even so, with the plague continuing, how much longer could the royal family hold out? Returning the long way around Stygia could take a whole season’s march, with the river and its gorges rendered impassable. At the very least, it could mean waiting for the floods to end.

This lake voyage should, at least, take them out of the treacherous zone of ice and fire. At its end, if the boats were useless, they could be abandoned to the swollen river.

Yet as they proceeded, they found that the mountain lake was no longer a lake. Melting snow from the upper slopes thundered down in cascades and icy torrents, pouring into the tarn at frequent intervals. The water continued to rise alarmingly, its surface roiling in swirls and eddies, sweeping the ships along faster than the crews could row; and on its deep, turbulent bottom no anchor would hold. As Conan’s men were borne past the high granite cliffs toward the lakehead, they saw that it had overfilled its basin and climbed the steep canyon walls on either side. It poured forth now without interruption into the downriver gorges.

“Batten your gear, and tie your oars into their tholes,” Conan shouted back to his crew. “Tie down the wounded, too, and yourselves if you wish it.” He spoke urgently, climbing astern to fetch a long, heavy steering-sweep. “We’ll all float or sink together in this torrent!”

What followed, before the men could finish securing their gear, was a blinding, drenching, icy plunge. The ungainly vessel was sucked down a watery chasm; it shot up a precipice of maddened water, to soar almost free of the river. Then came another foaming, jarring trough immediately afterwards, and a new surging hillock. A sharp spin, a giddy dip, and a straight course of terrifying speed, with rock slopes hurtling past on either side. Curtains of frothing river crashed up over the bows, dousing the rowers along both sides of the ship. The men astern, including Hk!Cha and the recovering Caspius, who were too crowded to reach the oars or sweeps, bailed earnestly with pots and war helmets.

Conan, plying his paddle fiercely at the front of the bow, bellowed orders to be passed down the line. “To port, here... away from that cliff, and straighten her out! Now, dogs, paddle for your lives and skirt these rocks! Ready to fend off that snag... there, it’s past! Row to starboard, and we’ll have a straight run!”

The crew, facing forward in their seats, sculled with short, quick strokes. They obeyed their captain’s actions more than his words as the ship pitched up dizzily on the crest of each wave, then plunged sickeningly in each trough. At times the hull turned crab-wise and threatened to flip over or spun about in dizzying whirlpools; at other times it scraped over sandbars and whole submerged trees that sought to rend the wooden hull into pieces.

Yet the ungainly craft stayed afloat. The flood, fearsome though it was, had smoothed out the river course; falls and rapids that had been impassable on the upstream journey now swept unnoticed far beneath, or were felt as mere tangles in the twining, knotting currents. The crew’s job, under Conan’s hoarse-voiced direction, was to keep the ship near the middle of the channel, avoiding the countless hazards and shallows (hat had been high, dry landmarks on their upstream

trek.

The river’s speed was exhilarating, intoxicating. In mere hours they raced down valleys that had taken them many days to pole, row, and climb. Thinking back and measuring feverishly in his mind, Conan could not recall any of their former portages on this part of the river that would now provide a certain, fatal obstacle to their downstream run—no fall so steep, no crevice too narrow, at least not so far as he had been able to observe the river’s winding course. There might be a death trap ahead; if so, this giddy velocity made it seem worth the risk.

Then, as sunset piled up redly in the west, they were out on the plain. To the crewmen’s weary, thankful cheering, the sloping walls of the foothills opened before them to expose a broad, flooded river course. And there, emerging from the canyon a thousand paces in their wake, was the canoe full of comrades they thought to have been crushed and drowned long since. The hails and salutes that passed between the two vessels were hoarse and joyous.

Far behind them now, the volcanoes flared and murmured, their white-streaked slopes obscured by dark smoke and darker storm clouds. Ahead lay smooth water.

During their voyage over the veldt, the expedition took pains to repair and re-caulk the boats. By night they inspected and dried out their gear, using the ample firewood to be had from high up in the branches of flooded stream side trees. The lotus bales held up well, with only one of them partially dampened; the men wanted to make an infusion from the wet lotus and sip it as tea, but Conan ordered it dried, replaced, and stitched up tight. He had seen enough lotus fiends to want to protect his men from the plant’s unknown effects.

Caspius, though, recovered well both mentally and physically under the drug. He frequently sniffed a small sachet he had made of the fresh blossoms; although still troubled by guilt, he spoke more sensibly than he had on the upstream trek, and appeared to rest peacefully at night. The cannibal Hk!Cha, frankly overjoyed to be out of the mountains, showed no regret over the ignominious defeat of his tribe’s reptile god. Stringing his bow, he led ashore the nightly hunting parties that returned laden with meat—verifiably that of gazelles, not humans.

The pace, though not so headlong as the rush down the mountains, was swift nevertheless. Steering the ships through open water, it was easy to keep them in the fast-running central channel and redouble their speed with oar strokes. Seldom were they carried off course into flooded forests and jungle islets. When they were, it was necessary to keep eyes peeled and beat off the snakes and starving beasts that had taken refuge in isolated trees. Fish were scarce in the swollen river, and the water was even less appealing than usual; the profusion of reddish silt and decaying vegetable matter, not to mention timber snags and floating animal carcasses, made it necessary to settle out and boil the filthy soup before it could be drunk.

Where they came to the fork of the nameless river, the Styx promptly doubled in size. Flood season was well under way, and the west branch, whatever its source, was equally swollen. If the detachment under Lampridius had returned here and left some sign, or even an encampment, it could easily have been swept away on the still-rising flood, which poured and meandered widely through the grassy plain. Hoping to find survivors, Conan sent the canoe to scout the farther shore. He steered the big ship through the eddies of the nearer side as slowly as possible, knowing that somewhere ahead of them lay a cataract no earthly ship could hope to navigate.

After a morning of watching and drifting, a dull, remote murmuring signalled the nearness of the fall. Masses of silvery cloud rose ahead and floated in the morning sky, born of the great cataract’s steaming cauldron. Conan ordered the ship’s heavy stone anchor thrown overside in the shallows, and his men began signalling with clappers and horns to alert the canoe to the danger. It had been some minutes since the smaller craft was seen amid the islets and flooded thickets of the far bank.

Then, from some distance downstream, an answering trumpet was heard. Looking north, Conan saw a group of men waving from a hilltop on the far side, more men than had been aboard the canoe. “Raise anchor,” he told his crew. “They have found our fellows! We must row across briskly if we are to join them.”

Conan felt sure he had allowed himself enough leeway to get across the treacherous flood. But the river, especially at its centre, had swollen to a ravening monster. The muddy-black currents plucked and tore at the ship with a frenzy, in blind eagerness to arrive at their suicide-leap. Rowing furiously, Conan and his crew were carried well downriver. Before they had even reached midstream, they came abreast of the watchers on the hilltop. Whether they could get to the far bank, or any bank, without being swept over the unseen falls was in the hands of the gods.

From the trees just ahead, a canoe shot out to their aid. It was manned by their fellow Shemites and trailed behind it a line was made fast to a stout trunk ashore. The canoe, well-handled, raced swiftly through the shallows. Then, striking the heavier midstream currents, it began to be battered aside. The oarsmen doubled their efforts, digging in their paddles to fight the river and the downstream drag of the line. The two ships laboured together on their sagging courses, both sucked toward the falls which could now be seen in the distance, fuming and thundering at the drop off to nethermost hell.

Dragged toward the same fearsome death, the two vessels toiled slowly together. The line was passed forward, hurled, and caught by Conan, who instantly secured it around the keel post.

But the canoers, fighting the current, were too preoccupied to warp on a line of their own. As the cable drew taut, the river smote into the canoe’s broadside with redoubled fury. Then, to prove the callousness of the gods, a floating log smote the craft astern and passed underneath, heeling it over and partially filling it. The pale, desperate fists that clutched the rope were plucked loose from it one by one as the swamped canoe swung out of control toward the roaring falls.

Conan, prompted to action, cast about for a line. He seized the heavy stone anchor, normally handled by two men. With a heave of his massive shoulders, he flung it far out over the water.

It struck in the bows of the foundering craft, its metal prongs smashing through the planks and filling up the remainder of the hull with water. But the canoe, drawn relentlessly by the current, did not sink; it stood out at the end of the taut anchor line. Its crew, dragging themselves hand over hand through the foaming water, slowly made their way aboard Conan’s ship.

His men, meanwhile, hauled in the main cable and dragged both ships back upstream. The drowning foliage along the shore was an obstacle; but here the current was less fierce. By diligent hauling and poling they finally gained the inlet, only after the swamped canoe had been cut away astern.

On stepping ashore, Conan was greeted by cheers. About half the men he had dispatched up the river fork were here, along with his other clinker-built ship, several canoes, and Captain Lampridius prone on a cot, recovering from a leg wound.

The story the officer had to tell was of secondary interest, since the lotus had already been found. But Conan heard him out in due patience, ignoring the foul smell of his suppurating wound.

“We navigated a hundred leagues or so upriver,” the injured captain said. “We soon lost our horses to lions and jackals. The river was uninhabited, passing through grasslands and jungle, but then we began to see huts and farm fields, the outskirts of some kind of civilization. The locals fled when they saw us, and the few we caught spoke no language we could understand. But they had tools, and well-made garments—and boats, long canoes for trading up and down the river. Some of them must have raced ahead of us to spread the warning upstream, for the bigger farmsteads were all deserted by the time we reached them.

“Eventually we hove in sight of a city on the river— standing atop a bluff, with sturdy brick walls and high towers. All the inhabitants were black, or so it seemed, tall cloaked warriors and maids with metal-bladed knives and spears and wooden shields. From the way they looked at us, I do not think they had ever seen a white man.

“When- we came opposite the city, they blocked the river with canoes, a dozen or more, all full of warriors. It seemed clear that they did not want us to continue, or even go ashore. I tried to ply them with trade goods, which I displayed in the bow of my ship. They may have wanted to rob us or only drive us away; in any case, a fight began.

“We captured three of their boats, but we suffered heavy losses from the others which had closed in. I myself took a spear through this leg, and later suffered a fever from the wound.” He gestured down at his bandaged limb. “We withdrew downriver with our prizes, but we were harried for many leagues.” He waved from his open pavilion at the fine iron wood canoes that lay inverted on the shore. “Finally the water began rising, and they stopped following us. We arrived here not many days ago, and have had to move our camp uphill each day since to avoid the flood.” He shrugged, evidently weakened by his narrative. “I was waiting for my leg to heal, and planning a new campaign. If you had been unsuccessful in your quest, we would have combined forces—”

“But now,” Conan smiled, patting him on the shoulder, “there will be no more need. It is home to Baalur for us.” He glanced down at the swollen, purulent leg; Caspius would likely tell Lampridius that he could not keep it and live. A shame—the fellow was no military genius, but at least he had brought back some of his men and a second ship. That would give them more elbow room on the return journey.

The next few days were occupied in lowering the ships and cargo to the jungle river. It proved far easier to go down than up, and the local cannibal tribes did not trouble them overmuch, other than to peer out of the foliage at the Shemites and jabber excitedly at Hk!Cha.

The adoptee, however, showed no eagerness to return to his people; above all else he feared resuming the obligatory worship of the fierce god Jukala. Nor did he have any wish to sup with his gourmandizing cannibal chieftain Gwandula and relate at length what had happened in the mountains. His wanderlust, so it seemed, had grown permanent; he expressed the wish to return to Baalur with the expedition, or share whatever fate might await them.

So it was that, amid the fuming, surging, shuddering cataclysm at the foot of the great fall, the two small ships set out down the swollen jungle torrent. With the cargo bales distributed between them, there was more room amidships for oar-work. There was space too for sailcloth canopies to ward off jungle rains, monkey droppings, poison darts, and other nuisances and perils.

Along most of its course, however, the Styx kept them far from the jungle. It was like riding the undulating, scaly back of a giant serpent as it rolled through the forest, crushing aside the trees and habitations in its path. The greatest obstacles, indeed, were the mats of floating brush and logjams of uprooted trunks that surged downriver on the flood.

The papyrus swamp, in contrast, was obliterated. The floating islets, once such formidable and heartbreaking obstacles, had been sunk or scattered wide, leaving a vast roiling lake of muddy-black liquid and frothing scum. As for the margin of sparse forest at the head of the marsh, with its friendly inhabitants, Conan only hoped that, before the onset of this millennial flood, there had been time for the tribes to move their cattle kraals and vats of pombe to high ground. There certainly remained no sign of the residents amid the battered, half-submerged trees and heaps of flood-wrack.

The ravaged forest and rising desert mesa provided a mooring place. From there, a quick reconnaissance showed the band the condition of the river ahead, where it wound through its mile-deep, leagues-wide gorge. It was an invitation to death, pouring down through flooded valleys and knife-hewn canyons. Whether the frail ships could make such a run was highly uncertain.

The land route, alas, was just as much to be feared. There were always Zuagirs, and to attempt a desert crossing now, in lesser numbers than before—without pack animals and burdened by a tempting-looking cargo of lotus bales—would be foolhardy indeed. That they could make peace by convincing the nomads and their boy prophet that they had vanquished the god Erlik’s arch-nemesis Thutala, Conan also doubted. More likely, the pragmatic desert raiders would decide that the foreigner’s usefulness was ended and would casually strip them of their belongings and their lives.

“Must we trust the Styx, then,” Caspius lamented, “to spew us forth at the bottom of the great gorge together with our cargo? It seems an unwise gamble.” The oldster frowned and shook his grey head. “’Tis likely that no human has yet survived that river canyon, or seen all the hazards that lurk therein. Perhaps one or two of our number could try out the journey in a strengthened canoe, in hopes of reaching Furio’s base camp and summoning help—”

“Aye, mayhap,” Conan agreed, frowning. “Even so, ’twere best done overland.”

And so it was. A party of six experienced scouts stole forth by night to retrace the path the legion had used upriver. Two days later half of them returned, having contacted a westbound caravan. The caravan was guarded by Furio’s men from the base camp, still acting in accordance with Conan’s final orders.

After five days the rest of the scouts returned, leading a force from the downriver camp: two hundred grinning, boisterous Shemites, with horses for Conan’s men, and camels enough to bear the lotus and ample water for the trek. In all likelihood, such a large and well-armed band could brush aside any hastily assembled Zuagir force.

Furio’s camp had prospered, so it seemed, although this recent flooding had made the river crossings dangerous. The Shemites’ supply of ships and animals, and with it their control of the mid-river caravan trade, had grown as foreseen; they even employed some local half-Stygian fighters to ride as guards. This had forced the Zuagirs to leave off ravaging the river districts and seek their prey farther eastward. No previous word of Conan’s fortunes had come down to the camp, the men said, neither by way of dreams nor caravans, nor any straggling survivors. But Furio, so his officers said, was pleased to hear of his commander’s success, and waited eagerly to greet him.

In a single moment, the expedition was loaded on saddle back and pointed northward across the desert mesas.

The Zuagirs, as it happened, kept their distance. They watched the party’s progress from distant bluffs in bands of no more than a hundred or so. In a few days’ brisk ride, the lotus caravan descended to the shore downstream of the fort, and crossed the river in dahabiyahs steadied on ropes.

“The lower cataracts are far too treacherous; they have never yet been navigated. We will have to march out past them overland. Either we carry the dahabiyahs along with us, as before, or we obtain new ones.”

Furio, pacing on the trireme’s stem deck, spoke with the full authority he had enjoyed for months now. Though his command was not on shipboard and had only remotely to do with river navigation, he nevertheless spoke definitively on the subject. Conan, for his part, decided yet again to brook the whelp’s insubordination.

“Nonsense, fellow,” he answered, “your own scouts have told you it can be done.” “High up on the Styx we braved rougher waters in smaller, frailer boats. This flood will pave the river for us, smooth out the kinks and crannies and bear us along safely above the rocks!”

The stockade of the base camp lay behind them, and Furio’s successful command had terminated. In a few days, the whole expedition had been loaded aboard the three dahabiyahs and the centireme—weapons, horses, provisions, lotus bales, gear, and gold—and with breathless speed had swept downriver. The camels and smaller ferry craft were left to the local caravan guards, who wished to continue the thriving enterprise—though, as Furio complained to Conan, they were likely to turn into worse bandits than the Zuagirs. Now the expedition’s commander harangued his officers from the quarterdeck.

“Crom bless this flood, Captain Furio! It comes to us as a rare piece of luck, one that will enable our ships to breeze straight down the cataracts!”

The captain looked suddenly green-gilled at his commander’s frankly-spoken intent. Once afloat in the canyons, there would likely be no turning back. Changing his argumentative tact, Furio sought refuge in reason.

“Now, commander, sir, does such a plan really make any sense? Having led us all this way upriver and down, and having achieved such notable successes, should you really risk losing your cargo and your men’s lives all at once... all pointlessly, just by choosing an over-hasty expedient? With all the months this journey of ours has taken, can there really be such a hurry?”

Conan, remembering how this fellow had bedevilled and slandered him halfway up the Styx, decided not to spare the man’s dignity. “Aye, captain, there can be—if you consider that Set worshippers may not be so tolerant of us! Zeriti, the dream-bitch whom we all know too well, has sworn to me that she will seek their priesthood’s aid against us.” He paused, gazing around the lesser officers for effect. “If you and a few hundred Shemites go riding off through the hills, parading our cargo and negotiating to buy boats, you will give them plenty of advance notice, with ample time to deploy their navies and patrols. Instead of a boatload of dancing girls, they’ll send real ships to oppose us!” Conan let his words sink in before continuing.

“We have an advantage this time. They cannot predict our coming so soon, except by sorcery.” He glanced at the empty grey skies overhead. “And we no longer have Zeriti’s fowl shadowing us. On the breast of this flood, we may just make it through before they can catch us. If we tarry too long, mark me, we will end in their clutches.”

To lighten his ships, Conan finally allowed a compromise. The horses and the less river-hardy Shemites, along with half the lotus and part of the wares, were put ashore at the fork above the cataracts. This detachment’s trek overland was to be brief and unnoticed, for Furio consented to lead them down the little-used caravan trails east of the river. The dahabiyahs would wait below to meet them, having made the downstream run without mishap if the gods so willed it. If not, the cavalry force would try to find other ships or, failing that, strike out across the desert for home.

Before leaving, at Conan’s direction, all four vessels were girdled round with papyrus bundles roped securely in place. These reed buffers would cushion the ships against impact and increase their buoyancy— particularly that of the centireme with its low, slender hull. After securing everything and making prayers to Mitra and Dagon, they set out.

The run was easy at first—a swift, straight flume racing between wooden banks and ever-steepening cliffs. The currents were smooth, deceptively so, until a broken tree or moss-bearded boulder shot past, and one realized how incredibly fast the river was lashing the ships forward. It became evident just how supple and powerful the serpent had grown, swift and careless enough to toss even these large vessels about like windblown chaff.

At the spidery confluence of granite gorges, the Styx began to tie itself in knots, and its muddy-black water turned white. The river, furious at being held in check, piled up in foaming mountains, only to dash forward and shred itself on the jagged teeth of rapids. Down through vast thundering galleries, lightless canyons, and churning, frothing basins the angry titan dragged and hurled the puny vessels. They skirted past demon-drumming waterfalls, funeral pyres of flood-smashed trees and broken boats, and swirling, howling maelstroms so deep that their jagged rock-fangs could be seen gnashing and chattering at the bottom.

Yet no matter how tight and treacherous the spot, Conan in the lead ship seemed to find a way through. By a system of bright-coloured signal flags—since the river’s dinning voice was too loud for human shouts or trumpet-blasts to be heard—he relayed his instructions to the captains behind him. Following his example, they manoeuvred carefully past each menace, or else, in turn, blindly took the plunge—enduring the giddy drop, the frigid drenching, the bruising jolts and hair-raising near collisions—until, at the bottom of the run, before the next hazard a momentary lull and respite was gained.

There came a time when Conan’s signalmen ordered the ships behind him to halt, backwater oars, and wait at the top of a particularly steep and treacherous mill-race. His own vessel dove on ahead, corkscrewing wildly, leaping like a great fish almost out of the river, then jerking dizzily aside and wallowing past what looked like a bottomless hole in the black water... until, slowly spinning, it drifted out into the calm eddies below. From its deck, emphatically, the flags still signalled the following ships to continue waiting.

In moments the burly Cimmerian, slipping overside and swimming ashore, commenced working his way upstream. By an arduous route, over bluffs and down through rocky shallows, fighting the river bodily to resist being hurled back down, he fought his way to the next waiting ship, swam to the rail, and climbed aboard. He took personal charge of the steering, instructing the oarsmen at length, and then commanding them down the giddy pass, guiding the ship clear of the lethal whirlpool. No other officer, they knew, had the experience to make it through; but all watched and learned from their commander. Conan repeated the climb and descent until all four ships, last of all the centireme, had been piloted intact to the bottom.

After that, the lower cataracts seemed easy going. Racing down the last steep pass at twilight, the battered ships glided silently by the Stygian outpost, to anchor downstream in a flooded inlet. There they repaired and refitted while awaiting their companions. Furio and his cavalry arrived in two days, to load and re-embark on the third.

Before them stretched the broad and relatively flat expanse of the lower Styx. Yet their wild adventures and terrors had not ended. For the river, swollen in flood and sweeping out over the land, carried them into places where no ship full of sane men had ever been. They drifted through farmsteads, orchards, and abandoned river towns; past inundated desert canyons and floating forests of broken boats and shattered hovels, with their decomposing animal and human occupants.

Later, their ships rolled down the flooded avenues of a broad stone city, whose starving, diseased inhabitants called out to them from tenement roofs and fished eagerly for the casks and baskets of food they threw overboard. Rowing and sailing by gaunt moonlight, the Shemites navigated the crumbling, ghoul-haunted ruins of ancient cities as well as the newer, better-tended cities of the dead—the vast necropolises and clumps of towering tombs that housed the sacred mummies of Stygia.

Once, where the still-rising river passed close underneath tall, monumentally carved cliffs, the meandering currents tried to draw the lead ship in through a great carved archway, deep into the galleries of some vast underground temple or tomb. By desperate efforts the crews managed to row and pole free, and no vessel was sucked into the depths.

The inevitable confrontation came suddenly and unexpectedly. It occurred in the vastness of the southern valley, where the swollen Styx washed over the land like a vast inland sea. Here, however, its sweep from horizon to dim horizon was contained by high bluffs along the northern bank. No Shemitish port, tributary, or inlet was in view, so it seemed certain that the line of warships stretching out to block the river must be Stygian.

There were six of them, medium to heavy dromons of the standard serpent-prowed design. They mounted up to sixty oars on a side, two or three rowers to an oar—on the average, about three hundred men to drive the ramship and fight. They stood anchored in a line perpendicular to the river current, but now, at the appearance of Conan’s fleet, they began lifting anchor and plying oars. No doubt some warning had come to them of the expedition’s nearness; whether by carrier pigeon or prophetic dream, or by dim sorceries in smoky crypts, the priestlings of Set had heard and consulted their arcane masters. Obediently they had mobilized the men and ships that formed their church’s temporal power.

From all Conan knew of the Stygians, and especially his own past dealings with them, he thought death far preferable to capture by those snake-ships. Though his small squadron was outnumbered and out-manned, he had given thought to this moment. Standing on the stem-deck of his centireme, he was ready with orders for his crew and flag signals to the three dahabiyahs.

His first signal may have surprised some officers. “Raise sail,” the flagmen relayed to the fleet, even as his own sailors sprang to the halliards.

It was customary, after all, for ships entering battle to lower sails and even masts, so that spars and rigging would not be knocked down to tangle with the oars and impede movement. But in this case—the morning breeze blew out of the west, against the river current; so the instantaneous effect of raising sails was to slow the ships and hold them back from combat. The sailless dromons, by contrast, had to fight the current to keep from drawing away from the Shemites. Conan’s order marked the beginning of a long, weary effort for the Stygian oarsmen.

“Signal them all to bear south toward the left flank. You men back oars, and helms to port. Sailors, stand by to cut away the reed mats at my order. We need freedom to manoeuvre.”

“But Conan,” Caspius protested from his canvas seat on the stem deck, “Would it not be wiser to steer toward the right? The south bank is Stygia, after all. If we were

to ran aground there--------”

“If we go aground, we are as good as lost.” Conan

shrugged. “We can do better on the left-----------see there,

the southernmost enemy ships are the smaller ones.” He pointed, though it was doubtful whether the physician’s old eyes could tell the difference in the hazy glare of morning. “All right, lads, on my mark cut away the floats... now!”

The reed bundles, roped in place to cushion and support the hull in the river currents, were useful for floating downriver, but an impediment to swift movement under oar and sail. Cut free, the woven pontoons floated rapidly downstream from the turning ship. Conan had timed their release skilfully; he watched them drift afoul of one of the enemy dromon’s oars, causing the vessel to flounder for some moments in the current and fall back out of position.

“Now, helm hard a-port! Trim the sail and we’ll cut their line! Steer shy of the others.”

The drill and experience of the river legion promptly showed. With the current racing under their ship’s stem, the steering oars applied to port had the reverse effect, forcing the centireme’s ram around to the right. The heavier, ungainlier dahabiyahs meanwhile floated down faster and passed away to the port side. Conan’s ramship was left between them and the main force of attackers, but with the advantage of hanging back upstream, able to choose a target and run in quickly.

“Now, strike sails! Drummer, beat ram speed! Helm, bear downriver toward that dromon, the nearer one, and we’ll take her bow-on! Row lively, you sheep-herders, and outrace this poxy river!”

Freed of its sails and rowing briskly, the centireme ran down swiftly on the flood. It bore toward the centre-most two of the six dromons, the nearest one slightly to port and the other, now unfouled of flotsam, straggling up from behind. The two oar ships from the Shemitish side of the river laboured valiantly against the current, but it would be some minutes before they arrived, while the other pair near the Stygian bank closed in eagerly on the fleeing dahabiyahs.

“Row, you dogs, row till your eyes pop and your teeth crack! Light on the port oars there, we don’t want to gut our hull on her ram. Steersmen, put us right in between the two devils! We will pass close in for a rake—you know the drill. Port oars, ready!”

The two ships bore toward one another relentlessly, the Stygian’s high, gilded serpent-prow looming over the centireme’s dragon figurehead. In a head-on impact the heavier dromon would undoubtedly fare better, with the smaller ship jarred more severely, and possibly driven sideways onto the dromon’s ram by the force of the current. Yet Conan’s vessel was more manoeuvrable. It was fitted with a strong metal-edged keel post of its own; strong enough, as the light ship veered fractionally aside, to cut into the dromon’s port bank of oars with a rending crash. The keel sheared the wooden shafts right off at the tholes, causing havoc and injury inside the enemy’s thin-walled hull.

“Up now, port-side, raise your oars and stand ready to use them again!”

As the hulls ground together, Conan watched his left oar bank fan smoothly upright in a glistening wooden stockade, standing undamaged while the starboard rowers toiled to keep up the grating, splintering momentum of the rake. The manoeuvre had been practised many times against floating kegs and dinghies. The centireme’s lighter one-man oars were, after all, easier to haul in than the dromon’s long sweeps, which continued to snap off with hammering impacts.

“Enough, now,” Conan barked abruptly, “we’re losing way! Fend off before we’re grappled! Lively, lads, and increase speed! Drummer, double beats, here comes another foe man!”

Responding with spirit to the commands, cheering loudly and taunting the broken men in the half-crushed oar ship opposite, the Shemites toiled to push free of the cripple and regain steerage way. But there was scarcely room. Under their efforts, the small ramship careened straight out of one dromon’s way toward the second one racing tardily upstream to aid its fellow.

“Now, you starboard rogues, it’s your turn! Get ready to ship oars—helmsmen, bear in hard alongside!”

Again came the stuttering impacts, again the glassy curtain of tormented water, again the thudding groans and splintering shrieks as Conan’s ship rebounded from one enemy to the other, raking off the front section of starboard oars. The manoeuvre was not so clean, and its destructive force could not be sustained so well, even with the river driving the centireme forward, but the Shemites found it delightful, raising a savage cheer of victory as they pushed off into open water.

Yet their triumph was not yet complete, for their two crippled enemies, with most of the inner-facing oars shorn away, veered out of control toward one another. The upstream dromon, caught abeam by the current’s full force, was borne down sideways onto the trailing ship’s ram. There it lodged with a crushing impact, amid yells and curses in sharp Stygian followed by the cracking of oar masters’ whips. Fouled together, with one ship in danger of sinking if the other should pull free, the two craft swung ponderously downstream out of control.

Amid his men’s wild cheering, Conan looked over to see the fate of the dahabiyahs. That affair had evidently gone according to plan, for the next dromon in line, manoeuvring to ram and hole one of the three sail ships, had failed. The thick bundles of reeds, after all, were bound in place to prevent just such shocks to the hull from boulders and floating snags; but the waterlogged papyrus served admirably to foul and slow the dromon. It caused a crucial delay, giving the battle-trained Shemites a chance to throw on grapples and board. Meanwhile, the other two Shemite ships were quick to close in and join the attack. The hapless ramship, hopelessly out-crewed, was already surrendering—most of its rowers very likely being chained, unarmed slaves, from what Conan knew of the Stygian Navy.

The second and smaller dromon on the south end of the line, having unwisely driven in to aid its comrade, was likewise embattled. Conan could hear shouts and the clashing of sword blades over the water.

“Shall we close in and help?” Caspius proposed. “We could easily ram and hole the Stygian from astern.”

“Nay.” Conan shook his black mane. “Why sink a perfectly good dromon that is practically ours?” He shifted his gaze out over the river. “I am more troubled about those last two Stygians, who could sink us with rams and then bedevil the rest of our fleet.”

The dromons, rowing close in line, had ignored their disabled fellow ships and were just fighting clear of the river’s strong central currents. “We cannot expect to be so lucky with them,” Conan said. “Notice their size. Best to try and hold them off at a distance. You Shemites,” he ordered almost as an afterthought, “ready the catapult!”

A stone shot hurled amid the oar banks of the lead ship served to slow them both as Conan withdrew. By the time his centrieme came abreast of the dahabiyahs, the two grappled Stygian attackers had been fully subdued and cut free except for tow-lines. At Conan’s signal, the surviving Stygian marines were set adrift on the larger dromon without oars or weapons. The slave crews from both ships were combined aboard the smaller prize and set to work rowing, leaving their Shemite captors free as a fighting crew. In good order the fleet, now five in number, continued downstream, bearing in toward the Stygian shore.

“Send leadsmen into the bows with weighted lines,” Conan commanded. “And signal the others to watch their soundings. We do not want any of our ships aground.”

“Aye,” Caspius agreed. “Especially since the Stygian Army is waiting for us to stray too close inshore.”

It was true; on the river’s flooded southern bank, well-ordered detachments of horse and foot soldiers were moving downstream, their helmets and spear points glinting, ready to support the river fleet.

“An impressive show, but of little use,” Conan said. “Once we can run free downriver, they will have a devil’s own time keeping up with us.”

But in truth, they could not race downstream; for the two big dromons stood between them and the fast river currents. The Shemites, picking their way along the shore, had to proceed slowly, singing out depth soundings as they went. Conan’s ramship, followed by the captured dromon, took station toward midstream to protect the dahabiyahs from attack. But the serpent-ships, swift under oars, closed in rapidly.

And the centireme, with Conan standing sullenly astern, seemed to have run out of tricks. The dromons, fanning out abreast, protected each other closely. If the Cimmerian angled his ship to ram or rake one of them, the other would pin him sidelong, and the two could then board and overwhelm him. The captured warship gave him an equal number of rams, it was true, but he could scarcely expect the slave rowers to manoeuvre as skilfully and spiritedly in close combat as his own Shemites. To rely on them would be a mistake.

“Commander, the river is shoaling,” a lookout called from the bow. “We have barely two cubits now, with shallower water ahead. The land troops will soon be overtaking us.” The man pointed inshore, where the leading Stygians were starting to wade their horses toward the slow-drifting dahabiyahs.

“Hold this course,” Conan growled back. “We draw less than two cubits with a full load. If need be, we can drive some of our horses overboard and let those Stygian slaves wade home.”

“Conan, the ramships are closing in.” Caspius, keeping an uneasy eye river-ward, tugged at Conan’s arm in evident fear.

The two dromons’ tight-spaced rows of oars now churned the river at ramming speed, timed by brisk drumbeats and the cracking of slavers’ whips. The low, sinister vessels were sharply foreshortened, bearing straight at the centireme and the prize ship that followed it. The black-haired slaves toiled anonymously in the oar banks, their backs facing the targets toward which they blindly rowed. But along the narrow deck the Stygian marines crowded forward with long spears and donned their helmets, making ready for a fight.

“Surely we can pull out of their way,” Caspius suggested. “Or turn aside, or do something! We outran and outfought two such ships already—•”

“And leave our lotus ships at their mercy?” Conan asked the physician. “Nay, better to keep station here! You rowers, stay at your oars. Stand ready to pull faster when I give word.”

The oar crews looked just as frightened as Caspius, watching the two marauders drive straight at them. The gilded serpent figureheads arched ever higher in the sunlight, while at the river’s surface the dark water foamed. Guided inexorably over the water, the two great ships leaped and surged with each rhythmic oar stroke, like serpent-steeds drawing the chariot of the sea god Dagon.

Then, unhorseman-like, they stumbled and slewed giddily, churning great clouds of mud to the river’s black surface. The armoured troops, poised to race forward and board, tumbled onto their faces or were thrown straight overside as both ships lurched and jolted to a halt with rams thrusting up clear of the water. Meanwhile, all down the ships’ waists, oarsmen sprawled backward off their benches and oars flailed in air.

“At last, river dogs, the great overloaded tubs are aground,” Conan exulted to his howling crew. “Would that we could stay and fight, or nudge them free with our rams, but we must be off.” As he spoke, his two shallow-hulled warships continued steering downstream with the dahabiyahs, whose flat bottoms slid effortlessly through the shallows. Behind them, the land troops struggled slowly and clumsily along the muddy river-bank.

“Bear out to midstream, steersmen, away from these treacherous shallows! There lie the swift currents that will carry us homeward.” Watching the Stygian overseers lashing their crews, making them pole and chum up black mud with their oars, Conan judged that they would not be afloat again any time soon unless the water continued to rise.

“For you know,” he crowed to his hooting and jeering men, “this flood is the best friend we could have! It is the bountiful gift that renews and replenishes the rich bottomlands of our fertile Styx—the divine blessing of old Set!”

XXIV

The Thing in the Smoke

In Asgalun, the returning Baalur fleet was greeted with amazement and an impromptu holiday. Citizens flocked to the harbour front to witness the spectacle, and trumpets and banners soon flourished from the walls of Mazdak’s citadel. When the five ships hove up to the palace wharf, the king himself was there to meet them, along with such officers and ladies of his royal court as could be hastily assembled.

“Hail to the heroes,” Mazdak proclaimed to them, “and most especially to Conan, Lord of the Styx! Glory to you on the success of your mission, and welcome back to our city! I would have prepared a grander celebration, had I but received word of your coming.”

“Thanks, old friend.” Conan greeted Mazdak with a handclasp. He raised an arm to his cheering troops, who were swarming up out of their well-worn benches. “Having come some thousands of leagues now without sending any advance warning, I think I prefer it that way.” Beckoning to Caspius, he drew the old man up to clasp hands with Mazdak. Hovering near, watching wide-eyed, was the half-naked cannibal Hk!Cha. “We weathered many perils on our journey, but it is not over yet, and I like to be cautious.”

While the courtiers greeted Conan’s officers, and his crew was welcomed ashore to bathe and eat, the king took his guests aside. “Conan, I want to offer you the deepest apologies for the deeds of my perfidious servant, Guliazar. I heard from some pirate captives what befell him. Had I known he would deliver you to them, and that he was stealing from me as well, he never

would have lived to guide your voyage-------------”

“Enough said, Mazdak,” Conan reassured his host. “The help you gave us far outweighs the hindrance, for Guliazar’s scheme was weak with corruption, and my men’s fighting spirit was strong.” Turning back to the harbour, he pointed a finger. “See there, we have brought back your ships... most of them, anyway, in fairly good shape. And I hope you like the Stygian light dromon, there astern. It is yours as a thank-you gift, along with the oar crew, I freed from the Stygians.” Mazdak looked genuinely pleased at Conan’s open-handedness. “Excellent, then! Your wagons and oxen are still here, however many you may need. I was thinking of providing horses for those of your men who want them—and an escort, too, to help you past Nedrezzar’s thieving border posts. But all that can wait until we have heard the tale of your journey, and you have been properly feted and welcomed here in Asgalun.”

“Alas, King Mazdak,” Caspius humbly put in, “there

is still the question of time-------”

“True enough,” Conan affirmed. “We cannot tarry here in Asgalun, but must get back to Baalur with our cargo.”

“Aye then, ’tis wise, even if regrettable,” the king conceded. “I have heard that your city is still hard-pressed by plague. They will need your best offices, physician.”

“The lotus works splendidly,” the old man said. “I know it from personal experience, for I, too, was recently as mad as any raving plague victim. If only we could be certain that it will effect a full and permanent cure!” The sage glanced warily over his shoulder and shook his grey head. “For the demoness Zeriti still lurks out there, somewhere in this plane or a nether one. As long as she practices her enchantments, I know not if Baalur can ever truly be safe.”

“Aye, if I could but clap these hands around her scrawny neck...” Conan clasped his knuckles together. “But she is an efrit, like as not, and beyond the reach of luckless mortals.”

As they proceeded in through the broad gardens toward the grand hall, the savage Hk!Cha said nothing. He was no doubt aware of the topic they discussed, but his attention was drawn to the unfamiliar tailored landscape and architecture around him, which he seemed to regard with a wonder bordering on superstitious dread.

Late in the day, after a lavish meal and a lively recounting of many of the journey’s wonders, Conan and his officers relaxed in the Emerald Hall with Mazdak and his court. They were reluctant to get up from the banquet table, for they knew that night-long labours lay ahead. In the palace rooms and gardens below, the returning legionnaires were being wined and entertained by Mazdak’s servants—and by his harem, so Conan suspected from the tones of female laughter and flute music that floated up through the broad, gauze-screened windows.

Only one member of the party did not seem to be enjoying his well-earned rest. It was Hk!Cha, who stood in the restless breezes of the window, staring out over the palace roofs and defensive outworks of the citadel. His gaze seemed to rest in particular on one angular tower, the tall leaning pile that was so grimly reminiscent of old King Akhirom’s madness and death.

Arising suddenly from his seat, Conan went up beside the savage and bent over him. “What is it, man? Do you sense something in the air? What in blazes causes you to gape so?”

The reply, a single word muttered through the cannibal’s chisel-pointed teeth, was a name he had intimate reason to know and fear. “Zeriti,” he said, and rolled his round, fearful eyes at the tower.

Mazdak, who tried to stay informed of all occurrences in his kingdom, was not many steps behind Conan. “That place has been sealed up and deserted since the sorcerous king threw himself from it,” the monarch protested. “Look at it, it is ready to fall down!

Surely you do not think--------”

“If I did not,” Conan snarled, “it is because my brain was ensorcelled.” His big hand rattled the sword hilt at his belt. “Still, there may be nothing to it after all, so let us go see.” Thus saying, he strode to the broad, curving stair.

“Wait,” Mazdak insisted, “let me call out a dozen of my bodyguards. They can give the place a thorough sweep.”

“Will their swords cleave dark sorcery better than mine?” Conan demanded, going down the marble stairs three at a time. “I would rather know for myself.” Caspius, just reaching the stair head, called after Conan, “If you find her, look for some charm or talisman that is the source of her power. Destroy it, and she may go back to her natural state—which, if Mitra wills it, should be one of death.”

Striding through the palace halls and gardens, Conan drew with him a crowd of curious and excited followers. But none overtook him, and most hung back uncertainly as he strode straight up to the base of the sagging, crooked tower. Its foundation was overgrown by rank weeds and brush from the nearby canal, and its heavy timber door was sealed shut by a rusted iron band wedged in place across the stones of the arch.

Laying hold of the rusty steel with both hands, Conan tugged and strained with the full force of his thews. Wedging knee and shoulder against the door, he wrenched and twisted at the frozen metal. With a grating squeal it began to slip, then with a final scrape pulled free.

“I am with you,” Mazdak’s voice growled from close behind Conan. “If such an abomination has endured in my kingdom, it is my shame and duty to correct.” Wordlessly, Conan drove the iron bar into the jamb of the ancient door and pried mightily. Reluctant, protesting every heave with deep grunting shrieks, the panel was forced gradually outward. When it stood half-open on featureless darkness, Conan squeezed past it and disappeared.

“See, there is nothing here,” Mazdak said, easing reluctantly after Conan. “Phew, it stinks of bats and canal rot! No one has been through that door for a lustrum or two, that is certain. Should we bother to continue?” From the scuff of footsteps and scatter of falling dirt, it was clear that the Cimmerian had found his way to an upward stair. “I would not climb too high if I were you,” Mazdak cautioned him. “The canal’s dampness has made the foundations slip. The place might overbalance at any time, or some part of it could fall in.”

In spite of his own warnings, Mazdak groped his way to the stair steps and followed. At the top, beyond a shattered trap door, was another pitch-black chamber and a continuation of the stair; the king calculated to himself that there must be a dozen or more such levels in the lofty pile, with every window bricked-up or sealed tight so far as he knew. Never had a light been glimpsed here.

Turning downstairs again, he called after Conan, “Hold back but a moment, and I will have my men fetch torches. Otherwise, this is madness.”

Mounting to the seventh level of the tower, Conan thought he glimpsed a light. It was faint and indistinct, soon obscured by smoke that filled his eyes and rasped deep in his lungs. For some levels now the stench of the place had been changing, from musty dankness to a rank mammalian stink, and the eye-watering reek of fresh bat offal. The previous floor had been padded with nameless droppings and with small bones and carcasses that crunched underfoot. Here the smell was a familiar, undeniable one: that of sorcery. The sharp-scented smoke told him the level was occupied.

Conan cursed silently. Who would believe that such a lofty tower could be as pitch-black and suffocating as a temple catacomb? He groped forward, trying to wave aside some of the murk. There was none but the dimmest light playing through it, no real vision; yet he thought he could feel heat issuing from a source somewhere ahead.

Then, just beside and above him, the drifting haze thinned and a face glared down. It was grotesque, a semi-human parody, chisel-toothed and crusted with ridges of coarse bony armour. About it, amid the curling talons of smoke, lay a hint of someone or something familiar—Jukala!

In a flash, Conan’s arm bearing the heavy iron bar lashed out, obliterating the monstrous visage in a flurry of smoke and dust. He struck repeatedly at the dim torso and thick arms, flailing again and again until he was sure the thing had only been an effigy, a lifeless caryatid carved of none-too-sturdy stone.

Yet evidently it had supported the ceiling, for, as tin-statue crumbled and collapsed before him, pomlemus groans and stresses sounded from above. A huge chunk of heavy masonry fell in, staggering Conan and blowing the smoke aside. There suddenly, a few paces away, was Zeriti.

She stood before a smoky pyre ablaze on a stained altar, her pale body tautly clad in black haltar and harness for some unholy ritual. Seeing Conan, she hissed at him like a serpent and raised her black-webbed hands to cast a spell....

Even as the floor shuddered, the whole crypt-like room tilted crazily, and mad King Akhirom’s tower toppled headlong into the waters of the canal.

Of the onlookers and the torch-bearers in the lower levels, none was seriously hurt. King Mazdak himself staggered out of the doorway moments after the fall, for the breach had occurred higher up, and the first few stories remained standing. Observing the wreckage where it trailed away into the still-lapping water, the palace folk noticed only scattered bubbles and a nauseous stench. Then, near the middle of the canal, the water parted and a black-maned head emerged atop a pair of burly shoulders.

“Conan, you great blundering fool,” Mazdak shouted joyously, “I warned you the place could come tumbling down!” Abandoning royal dignity and wading out into the foul, turbid water, he extended a hand to assist the swimmer. “Well, man,” he demanded in a confidential tone, “what did you find?”

Pulling himself upright in the shallows, Conan strode toward the bank and the gathering crowd of Shemites, including Caspius and Hk!Cha.

“Whatever it was,” Conan told them, turning back and surveying the canal, whose waters were subsiding, “I think it is dead. Crom grant that it will stay buried.”

Epilogue

In the palace gardens at Baalur, King Aphrates and Queen Rufia sat with Conan and Caspius around a chalcedony table, sipping lotus tea from golden cups. It was a peaceful morning—the sun shone, sane ordinary birds chirped, and the air was free of drifting smoke and the clashing of gongs. The four looked hale and well-rested, for it had been some days since the Styx expedition returned, and both the crisis and the fervent homecomings were past.

“The lotus is a potent balm, I am sure of it,” Caspius was saying. “Insofar as my courtly duties permit, I hope to devote my remaining years to researching its full medicinal value. I brought back enough seeds to experiment with its cultivation.”

“Take as much time as you want, old friend." Aphrates said. “By your valiant labours you have more than earned it. Though you know, the fever dreams were already diminishing in frequency and severity before you returned with your cargo.”

“Aye, with the destruction of Zeriti,” Caspius said with a glance of acknowledgement to Conan. “Even so, the silver lotus has proven most beneficial in treating the plague’s after-effects, and those few severe cases that still persist. Having felt its power myself, I know it can be of help with other ailments.”

“It is a mild enough physic,” Conan said, sipping from his teacup, “compared with most of the lotus strains I have known. Yet it seems to have been a healthy tonic for Baalur.”

“Your courage and leadership can never be praised enough,” Queen Rufia said with emotion in her voice. “That you were able to confound Zeriti’s scheming on your return was obviously Mitra’s will, the god working through your hand. But your journey to the river’s source is the stuff legends are made of, an immortal triumph! Every man who returned, and every one who fell, is a hero who will live in Baalur’s history.”

“I feel lucky,” Conan admitted, “to have brought you back most of the thousand we started with.”

“Those men are our future,” King Aphrates said. “Such a tried, hardened corps of leaders will replace those who fell to the plague. They will rebuild our city better than before, and lead us into happier times.” “Those who stayed behind were tried and tested, too,” Conan pointed out. “You lost a good many— including Shalmanezer, so I hear.”

“Indeed,” Rufia said, “the general was killed when the Temple of Mitra in the city’s East Quarter collapsed,

but there was some hint of conspiracy-------”

“Faugh,” King Aphrates interrupted his wife, “the whole place was a den of snake worshippers, and Shalmanezer and his friends were selling us out to the Stygians! The priest Bandar-Hek had already been murdered—doubtless the fall of his corrupt temple was also Mitra’s will.” The king tossed down his herb tea impatiently. “The point is, we now have our best young men back to replace these sorry traitors.”

“Captain Furio is ripe for promotion,” Conan observed. “He would make a fitting successor to Shalmanezer.”

“Aye, perhaps,” the queen said. “If you would not

wish the post yourself-------”

“Indeed, Rufia, I- think not.” Conan set down his empty gold cup. “Having served with your Shemites, I would be proud to lead them on a military campaign sometime. But I think I would find your city’s peace burdensome, after marching and battling all the way to

the headwaters of the Styx--------”

“There is one thing I should mention.”

Caspius, who had been silent for some time, spoke now with an oddly restrained, abashed air. “I have been re-examining the maps and scrolls I consulted when we first planned our expedition. As you know, I was suffering from the plague’s baneful influence, and my brain was less than entirely clear.” The sage paused, stroking his grey beard nervously.

“In deciphering the ancient texts, I now find some uncertainty as to how the precise the course of the Styx is delineated. It may be that there was an error in interpretation.”

Conan laughed gruffly. “What do you mean, old fellow? You rowed and trudged just as far as I, did you not? And saw the same infernal country that lies at the source—unless, you mean to say...”

“Indeed, Conan,” Caspius said softly. “As to the river fork above the great cataract, there is some doubt whether the east or west branch is the true one.” “What you mean to say is, there is no doubt! My Crom, you doddering old fraud...” Half-arising from his seat, Conan balled his fist, but then abruptly checked his anger. Of Caspius’s mental collapse and near-betrayal under Zeriti’s curse, he had said nothing to Aphrates and Rufia, believing that the old physician had redeemed himself in the end. But now, by all the gods, he felt tempted. Thumping a hard hand on the gemstone table, he glowered at the meek-eyed old man. “You are telling us that, due to some falsity on your part, the river we traced to its source was not the Styx at all, but some piddling side stream...? And that now, instead of being heroes, we are mere misguided dupes?”

“Or that, more to the point,” King Aphrates put in with an intrigued expression, “the river course you have described was not the main one, and the true Styx may run yet farther south, into even stranger and more perilous realms? In short the age-old mystery is not solved.”

“Gentlemen and lady, would you like some more tea?”

The interruption was spoken in demure, youthful innocence of the matters under dispute. It came from a serving maid who bore a fresh, steaming pot of the lotus infusion... except that it was no servant, but Princess Ismaia herself, who had begged to play hostess to this morning’s guests. Clad in a frilly lace frock and apron, the child stood straight-limbed and clear-eyed, and poured for them with steady hands. In her fair young face there was no trace of illness, nor of the dark preoccupation that too much dreaming can bring. The refreshment she offered was accepted by all the adults at the table with smiles and grace.

“So after all,” Conan said, “it makes no difference what river we saw, in what remote part of the map. We accomplished what we set out to do,” he declared, raising his cup, “and that is all that matters.”

Table of Contents

Prologue

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

XXIV

Epilogue