CONAN AND THE GODS OF THE MOUNTAIN
==================================


by


Roland Green
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CONTENTS
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Prologue, One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten,
Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen,

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THE DRAGON OF THE CAVES

It came—another screaming, thundering challenge. The echoes had not
begun to die when it charged. Like a heavily laden ship in heavy seas,
it labored through the fungi, trampling some, shredding others. It held
its head low, horns thrusting forward like the ram of a galley. Valeria
remained still as the beast surged between them.

In the next moment, Conan shot forward like a stone from a sling. His
hands gripped the upper horn, and he vaulted clear over the beast's
muzzle, aiming for its neck…

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The Adventures of Conan

Published by Tor Books

Conan the Bold by John Maddox Roberts

Conan the Champion by John Maddox Roberts

Conan the Defender by Robert Jordan

Conan the Defiant by Steve Perry

Conan the Destroyer by Robert Jordan

Conan the Fearless by Steve Perry

Conan the Formidable by Steve Perry

Conan the Free Lance by Steve Perry

Conan the Great by Leonard Carpenter

Conan the Guardian by Roland Green

Conan the Hero by Leonard Carpenter

Conan the Indomitable by Steve Perry

Conan the Invincible by Robert Jordan

Conan the Magnificent by Robert Jordan

Conan the Marauder by John Maddox Roberts

Conan the Outcast by Leonard Carpenter

Conan the Raider by Leonard Carpenter

Conan of the Red Brotherhood by Leonard Carpenter

Conan the Relentless by Roland Green

Conan the Renegade by Leonard Carpenter

Conan the Rogue by John Maddox Roberts

Conan the Savage by Leonard Carpenter

Conan the Triumphant by Robert Jordan

Conan the Unconquered by Robert Jordan

Conan the Valiant by Roland Green

Conan the Valorous by John Maddox Roberts

Conan the Victorious by Robert Jordan

Conan the Warlord by Leonard Carpenter

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CONAN AND THE GODS OF THE MOUNTAIN

BY


ROLAND GREEN

TOR™

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware
that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and
destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher
has received any payment for this "stripped book."

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in
this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events
is purely coincidental.

CONAN AND THE GODS OF THE MOUNTAIN Copyright (c)1993 by Conan
Properties, Inc.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or
portions thereof, in any form.

Cover art by Ken Kelly

Maps by Chazaud

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, N.Y. 10010

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

ISBN 0-812-51414-9

First edition: May 1993

Printed in the United States of America

0987654321

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CONAN AND THE GODS OF THE MOUNTAIN
==================================


Prologue
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The hunter was of the Leopard Clan of the Kwanyi. He had been born with
eyes and ears almost as keen as those of the clan totem. He had
sharpened both further by many years spent in the forests between the
Gao River to the west and the forbidden city of Xuchotl to the east.

Neither eyes nor ears now told of any menace close to him. Nor was it
likely that this stretch of the forest held any. It was near the foot
of Thunder Mountain itself. The hunter had learned its paths and
streams, its drinking holes and fallen trees, even before his manhood
ceremony.

Yet the hunter fled as though all the kin of the dragon he had found in
the forest near Xuchotl were ravening on his trail.

He had kept up this pace every waking moment for three days now. He had
run until he could neither run, walk, nor stand, only fall senseless to
the ground and sleep like a serpent with a pig in its belly. Then he
would wake, to drink of the nearest clean water and run once more.

The pace had taken its toll. His dark skin was so caked with dirt that
the hunter's tattoo of a leopard's paw on his right shoulder and the
warrior's tattoo of a spear on his breast had all but vanished. Only
the clan scarifications on both heels remained visible, to mark him and
his footprints as of the Kwanyi.

His breath came in rasping sobs. His eyes stared ahead, next to blind,
so that from time to time, a dangling vine slapped his skin. Once a
stub of branch tore away his loinguard, leaving him to run on naked
save for anklets of sodden feathers and the spear in his hand.

He could have run faster without the spear, for it was the stout weapon
of the Kwanyi, a man's length of ironwood sapling with a triangular
iron head as broad as a man's hand. Yet that thought never entered his
mind. While he bore the spear, no warrior of the Kwanyi could doubt his
courage.

The end of the hunter's run came suddenly, in the form of a jutting
root. It caught his ankle, and even above the rasp of his tortured
lungs, he heard bone snap. Then pain struck him twice, once as his head
knocked against a rotten stump and once in the ankle as sundered bones
cried out.

The hunter lay still until the pains eased and he knew that he would
not at once become senseless. That would be death. This part of the
forest held few dangers for a healthy hunter with both wits and
weapons. It was otherwise for a man lying unaware of his surroundings.

When he dared move his head, the hunter rolled over and looked at his
ankle. It was already swelling, and the pain was a spear of fire thrust
up his leg. He would not be walking on that ankle again before the
rains came—or ever if the God-Men of Thunder Mountain did not give him
their healing. Poultices, purges, and the hands of village wise-women
could do little against such ruin to bone and muscle.

In the next moment, the hunter began to doubt that he would even live
to be spurned by the God-Men. Where he had seen only vines and
thick-trunked trees, four men now stood. Each carried a spear; one
carried a bow as well. Their loinguards, headbands, anklets, and
tattoos alike named them warriors of the Monkey Clan.

This did nothing to raise the hunter's spirits. Chabano, Paramount
Chief of the Kwanyi, was himself of the Monkey Clan. He would not have
been chief for twelve years had he allowed his clansmen to feud at will
with the Leopards, the Spiders, or the Cobras. Yet he had been known to
turn a blind eye when those clans suffered some small hurt—such as the
disappearance of a hunter whose fate neither gods nor men could learn.

The hunter twisted himself about again, ignoring the pain in his head
and ankle as he drew up his legs and raised his spear.

"Ha, what have we here?" the tallest of the four Monkeys said. "One of
the Little Cats, it seems."

The hunter bit back a reply of equal sharpness, on the order of "Speak
for yourself, Gelded Baboon." It would be time to seek an honorable
death when he had told the four warriors where he had been and what he
had seen there.

"Brothers—" the hunter began.

Spear-butts thudded on mossy ground. "No brother to you," one of the
spear-wielders growled.

"Chabano says otherwise," the hunter replied, then started his story
before anyone else could find insults. He began with finding the dead
dragon outside Xuchotl, slain by no cause the hunter could discover.

That gained him the tallest Monkey's attention. "There have been tales
of a dragon in that part of the forest. Yet there are more tales that
say nothing can kill a dragon. Perhaps the cause you could not discover
was old age, or a bellyache!"

"Listen to the rest of what I have to say, then think that if you
wish," the hunter said. "I will say only what I saw, and that as
swiftly as I can."

The hint for silence was not lost on the Monkey leader. The next time
one of his warriors tried to interrupt the hunter, a spear-butt came
down sharply on the man's toes. A glare cut short his muttered ill
wishes, and allowed the hunter to continue.

He told of wondering if accursed Xuchotl might be safe to approach,
with its guardian dragon dead. All life seemed to have fled the
city—human life, at least. He spoke of an open gate through which the
jungle was already creeping, to claim Xuchotl the Accursed for its own.

"How far did you go?" the leader asked.

"Not as far as I wished," the hunter admitted. "I, too, had heard the
tales of the fire-stones within the city. I sought them and found—" He
swallowed. "—I found that Xuchotl's curse had at last destroyed its own
people."

He spoke of the bodies of men and women slain no more than a handful of
days before. Some bore the wounds of human weapons, swords and spears
and knives, or even of teeth and nails. Others seemed to have been
struck by lightning, and this in an underground chamber where no
lightning could reach save by sorcery.

"It was then that I knew Xuchotl was still accursed, and that I might
join the dead if I stayed longer within its walls," the hunter
concluded. "I ran from the chamber and from the city. Yet as I ran, I
saw that others had come forth by the same gate not long before."

"The slayers of the folk of Xuchotl?" It was the man who had been
silenced who spoke. Now his tone held respect and curiosity, as well as
more than a little fear. The hunter's pleasure at having won over his
listeners almost made him forget the pain in his ankle.

"That I do not know. I can only say that one was a giant, another as
large as a common warrior of the Kwanyi. Both seemed well-laden, and
both wore boots."

The Monkey warriors stared at one another, then at the jungle around
them. It seemed to the hunter that he could see into their very
thoughts as he spoke.

"I think that is why the talking drums have not spoken of this. The
sorcerers who ruined Xuchotl might have other enemies in our land.
Warned that they were discovered…"

The leader nodded. The hunter wondered if he, too, had a throat too dry
to let words pass. One of the other Monkeys loosened his drinking gourd
from his belt and passed it to the hunter.

The hunter poured the ritual drops into his palm and scattered them to
the earth, then drank. When his throat was fit for speaking again, he
handed the gourd back.

"Brother, I hear truth in your words," the Monkey leader said to the
hunter. He turned to his companions.

"Make a litter. We bear him to the God-Men. If the drums have not
spoken, he must do their work, with our help."

"If the God-Men are as they say—" began a warrior.

"Guard your tongue, lest it wag you into the Cave of the Living Wind,"
the leader snarled.

"If the God-Men are as they say," the man persisted, "they likely
enough know already."

"Then we can do no harm," the leader said. "Perhaps even a little good,
by showing that we common warriors understand the evil that magic may
do."

"And if—" the man began again.

"Then they have need of our help against sorcerers who can slay dragons
and scour life from Xuchotl the Accursed."

This thought silenced the warrior, but did not seem to please him or
his comrades. Thinking briefly upon the matter, the hunter decided that
this was no shame to the Monkey warriors. The notion of sorcerers more
powerful than the God-Men of Thunder Mountain did not please him
either.

----------------------------------------------------------------------


ONE

In the forest between dead Xuchotl and the foot of Thunder Mountain,
the boot-wearers whose tracks the hunter had seen followed a game
trail.

One was a woman, and no southern hills or forests had ever been
birthplace to one so fair of skin and hair. She wore a shirt and
trousers of silk that had once been whole and white, but were now
neither. Rents in both displayed the fairness of her skin; and a rag of
red silk bound up her hair. The garb, though tattered, still fitted
snugly enough to display the splendor of her breasts and hips.

Her boots had the look of the sea about them. They were of supple
leather, with wide-flaring tops, easily kicked off if one found one's
self in the water. That they were not made for tramping game trails in
the Black Kingdoms was evident by how often the woman gritted her
teeth.

About her slender waist a silken sash upheld a well-used sword and two
knives. One knife was a seaman's dirk, the other a keen-edged dagger
whose hilt writhed with creatures out of nightmare.

The woman was tall and robustly formed, yet her companion overtopped
her by more than a head, and his muscles told of a giant's strength to
go with that stature. He was similarly clad, with the difference that
his sword was stouter and hung from a broad leather belt, along with
three knives. His hair was black, flowing freely across his broad
shoulders, and his eyes were of an icy blue, with the look of the north
to them.

Those eyes had been the last sight of more than a few men over the
years. The tall man was Conan the Cimmerian, his companion Valeria of
the Red Brotherhood. They owed their garb to having once been pirates
in Baracha, and their companionship to many curious circumstances.

Most important of those was the battle they had fought for their lives
within the walls of Xuchotl. It was waged against enemies both animal
and human, armed with both steel and spells. In the end, it had
cleansed the accursed city of the very last of its bloody, unnatural
life.

It had also given each of them a dagger. Nothing else would they take
from Xuchotl, knowing too many of the city's secrets to trust loot
removed from its halls. Those halls reeked of blood shed and spells
cast over many centuries, and terror that would echo in their green-lit
vastness when the bones of the dead were dust on the floors of polished
stone.

Conan had traveled in the Black Kingdoms before, if not in this jungle,
then in others hardly less friendly. He feared neither man nor beast.
Yet had the Kwanyi hunter seen the wanderer of Cimmeria, he would have
laughed… for Conan also threw more than a few glances over his shoulder
to see what remnant of Xuchotl's evil might be on his trail.

It was taboo among the Kwanyi to leave the dead in the place where they
died, no matter how great the burden of removing the body. Left where
the spirit departed from it, the body might be found again by that same
spirit and become a yaquele, one of the "walking dead."

So from the time they could bear a burden, the folk of the Kwanyi
learned to make litters of whatever came ready to hand. Saplings,
vines, even the leaves of the smokebush, had their uses.

A litter able to bear the dead was also fit for the living who could
not walk. The hunter was moving again in less time than it would have
taken him to empty a gourd of beer. Two of the Monkey hunters bore him
on level ground, trailed by the third, while the leader strode on
ahead.

The hunter noted that the leader bore his spear in both hands, held
across his chest ready to either throw or thrust. This was a hunting
party, so the men bore no shields, but it seemed that the leader did
not expect their visit to Thunder Mountain to be entirely peaceful.

It further seemed that he wanted their presence to be unnoticed. Twice
he raised hand and spear to halt all movement. Once he used the
hunters' hand signals to send them all into a thick stand of
smoke-bush.

The hunter had no notion of what they were hiding from, or why,
although at the first halt he heard the chatter of women and the
clatter of jars in vine nets slung across their backs. No doubt it was
a band of the brew-sisters, taking jars of grain to the brew-house, or
perhaps beer down from it. So what made the leader as careful not to be
seen by them as he would if they were a war party of the Ichiribu?

The hunter had no answer, or at least none to lift a man's spirits. He
thought of reminding the leader that the God-Men might know that the
hunter had asked to come to them.

Would the Monkey warriors presume to deny the wishes of the God-Men? Or
where they carrying out the wishes of the God-Men by carrying him up
the mountain in secret?

Valeria leaned back against a tree of a kind Conan had never seen
before. Its bark was a nubbly mass of red-and-white stripes, with mold
and mushrooms sprouting in cracks between the stripes. It looked
unwholesome to the Cimmerian's eyes, but he reminded himself that might
be merely because the tree was unknown to him.

He was not without experience in the Black Kingdoms. Indeed, he had sat
on a throne in them and been hailed with the praise-name of Amra the
Lion. But that was farther south and west than here, not a two-day
march from Xuchotl. In time, they might reach lands that Conan knew, or
even realms where he was known, but they faced a long journey before
they did.

Meanwhile, the Cimmerian had less knowledge than he could wish of this
land and its perils. To be sure, no peril of the jungle could equal
what he and Valeria had faced and survived in Xuchotl. Nor did Conan
lack any woods craft or hunting skills such that might keep a man alive
though he were cast down naked in a desert.

But Valeria was like a fish out of water in this jungle, or rather, a
sailor far from the sea. She would doubtless prefer the rack than admit
it, but she was trusting Conan to lead them both to the sea once more.

She sighed and kicked off first one boot, then the other. Rubbing her
battered feet, she looked about for a stream. None lay close, but a
puddle of water from the last rain offered hope.

One slender foot was dipping toward the water when Conan laid a hand on
Valeria's shoulder. "Best leave standing water alone. Those blisters
might fester or draw leeches."

"They are my blisters, Conan."

"Yes, and it will be my back that bears your weight if you cannot walk.
Or would you rather I left you behind?"

That was the Cimmerian's rough jest. From the way Valeria's hand darted
toward her Xuchotl blade, it seemed that the jest was lost on her.

"Peace, woman. I was joking."

"Your wit smells no sweeter than the rest of you."

"Take a whiff of yourself, woman, before you complain of another's
smell. Either of us walking into the Golden Anchor in Messantia would
clear the place in a heartbeat."

Valeria smiled thinly and kept her feet clear of the puddle. Instead,
she pulled a handful of leaves from a low-hanging branch and dipped
them in the water.

"Best not do that either," Conan said. "A blind man looking at the
branch could tell that people had passed by."

"And what would this blind man do with the knowledge?" Valeria snapped.
At least she did not reach for steel this time.

"If I knew that, I would know which way we should go to keep him or his
friends off our trail," the Cimmerian said. "It might slow us a trifle,
but—"

"Would to Mitra it did slow us!" Valeria said. She looked at her boots
as if they had offered her a mortal insult. "Anyone would think from
the way you've been driving us along that a whole new tribe of those
brown-skinned cutthroats and spellmongers was on our trail."

"I can't swear that they aren't," Conan said, then added hastily as
Valeria's eyes flamed, "but I'd wager against it. If you hadn't
insisted that we search for our clothes, we'd have been out of
Xuchotl—"

"If I hadn't insisted on finding our clothes—you know how I was
garbed."

The Cimmerian grinned. "More sightly than you are now, I swear. Of
course—"

Valeria rolled her blue eyes toward the canopy of the jungle with the
look of a woman tried beyond speech and endurance. Then she sighed. "Of
course it was quite unsuitable for tramping about in the jungle." That
was certainly true enough, as the garb had been a swathe of silken
cloth about her hips and not a rag more.

"And the folk of Xuchotl had nothing much better in their wardrobes,"
she added. "What else could we have done?"

"Nothing, I admit. But it took us time we could have used to put
distance between ourselves and the city. We still have that to do, and
the sooner, the better."

"Is that a hint we should be on our way again?"

"With you, Valeria, I can only hint. Crom alone knows what you would do
if you thought I was giving you an order!"

Valeria rolled her eyes again, and this time she stuck out her tongue
as well. But she also lurched to her feet and eased into her boots. She
could not entirely stifle a gasp of pain, but Conan paid her the
compliment of letting her finish the work herself.

The Cimmerian added to the curses he had already heaped on the folk of
Xuchotl, this one for their wretched footgear. Only sandals—suited to
their polished floors—had been in use for more years than the Cimmerian
had lived. The sailors' boots he and Valeria had worn going into
Xuchotl had been the best things to bring them out again.

But no one could deny that those boots were not made for walking fast
and far. In another day or two, he might well need to think of finding
better footgear, a hiding place where they could let pursuit pass by,
or a trail over which Valeria could walk barefoot.

The Cimmerian's own soles were leather-tough and had resisted the
burning sands of the deserts of Iranistan, but Valeria of the Red
Brotherhood was more at home on a ship's deck. Another day or two of
tramping these trails in such footgear and she might truly need to be
carried.

Nor was that the only matter preying on the Cimmerian's mind. They had
taken no food from Xuchotl, fearing poison or sorcery. They would have
to find victuals before long. A three-day fast was less than wise, even
for the Cimmerian, when hard marching, and perhaps fighting, lay ahead.

At least he could be sure of the woman beside him. Her courage and
skill with weapons she had amply demonstrated, and not only in Xuchotl.
That she had survived at all for so many years in the Red Brotherhood
proved her no common warrior. She might lack the Cimmerian's woods
craft, but that could be learned, and again, Valeria's being alive at
all was proof that she learned swiftly when need be.

Would she learn swiftly enough? Only the gods knew, and Conan had given
up expecting answers from them in good season. A fine sword, a
trustworthy companion—and stout boots—were worth all the priests'
prayers that Conan had ever heard.

Ahead, sunlight broke through the forest's canopy to tint a patch of
dead leaves the color of old gold. Conan shaded his eyes with one hand
and stared upward. As best he could judge, it was not long past noon.

"We'll see about stopping well before twilight," he said without
turning. "Sooner, if we find a good hiding place with clean water. I'll
set snares, and we can forage for fruits and berries while we wait for
the game to find its way to the traps. You're handy enough with knots,
I trust?"

"A sailor so long, and clumsy with knots? Conan, you have seagull dung
where other men have their wits!"

Yet he could hear beneath the indignation relief and gratitude. Valeria
would die before admitting either, of course, so it was best if she
never had to.

As for the Cimmerian, he would rather die than leave Valeria. He had
snatched her from the nightmare halls of Xuchotl, saving her from
becoming a sacrifice on behalf of the aged witch Tascela. He would not
be done until they reached not merely the coast, but the sight of a
Hyborian ship. Between them and that happy moment lay Crom only knew
what perils.

Crom only knew—and of all the gods Conan had ever heard of, the cold,
grim lord of the Cimmerians was the least likely to answer the
questions of mewling humans.

It took all four Monkey warriors now to carry the hunter's litter. They
were well up the slopes of Thunder Mountain, although not on any trail
the hunter remembered. This proved little, as he had been this far up
the mountain only four times in his life, for ordeals and ceremonies
that demanded the presence of God-Men.

He still would have gladly walked, even with the help of a staff, or
with a tuqa leaf to ease the pain of his ankle. He cared little for the
sweat and sore muscles of the Monkey warriors, but he cared very much
about not being helpless. He thought of asking for the staff and a wad
of the painkilling leaves, but one look at the grim face of the Monkey
leader slew that thought at once. The Monkey warrior might have been
the image of a yaquele, save for the sweat flowing down him.

Also, the hunter knew he could not walk far even with such aid without
risking damage to his ankle beyond the powers of the God-Men to heal.
The Kwanyi had small use for a hunter who could no longer hunt. He
would be as a child so young that he had no right to anything—not even
to food should it grow scarce. The worst that the God-Men or the Monkey
leader—even Chabano himself—might do would be swifter, less painful,
and more honorable than such a fate.

The hunter lay back and closed his eyes. Presently he felt the soft,
cold touch of mist on his cheek and heard the cry of the mountain eagle
as it soared in the chill sky found only above the tree line.

Conan's long arm whipped the sling up and over. At the high point of
its arc, the slung stone leaped across the little stream and into the
monkey-laden tree on the other side. The monkeys' chattering turned
into shrieks of rage and fear. They scattered, leaves, twigs, and
birds' nests tumbling in their wake.

One monkey neither cried out nor fled. Struck a deadly blow by the
stone, it toppled from its branch, bounced from a second, then stuck
firmly in the crotch of a third. From ground to the dead monkey was the
height of six men taller than Conan.

The Cimmerian cursed the whole race of monkeys and the inventor of the
sling. Then he saw that Valeria was kicking off her boots.

"Guard my back, Conan. I will have our dinner down in a trice."

Warned of leeches, Valeria leaped the stream, though Conan saw her
wince at the pain this gave her feet. Then she was climbing the tree
with almost the agility of the vanished monkeys, in the manner Conan
had seen on the Black Coasts—body and legs at nearly right angles, arms
gripping the tree as if it were a lover, well-formed hindquarters in
the air.

She moved surely, fingers and toes seeking out the tiniest rough
patches in the bark. The angle of the trunk was just enough to allow
her to climb as she did, and it was not long before she reached the
monkey. A slap to the branch did nothing; the branch was too thick.
Valeria climbed another arm's length, crawled out onto the branch, and
pushed the dead monkey off.

It thumped into a patch of ferns. Conan crossed the stream, thrust his
sword into the patch, and withdrew it with the monkey spitted on the
point.

"What is there to make you uneasy?" Valeria called.

"In this jungle, less than ferns can hide serpents. An asp bite won't
kill as fast as the Apples of Derketa, but it's just as sure."

"You, Cimmerian, are as heartening as a priest of Set preparing me for
sacrifice."

"Don't kill the bearer of bad news, good lady. It was not my advances
that drove you from Sukhmet, nor my idea that you should flee into this
jungle."

Perched where she was, Valeria could not draw her dagger. Instead, she
made a face to frighten trolls and reached about her for something to
throw. Finding nothing, she suggested that the Cimmerian harbored
unlawful passions for sheep, then started back down.

She took the descent with more care and bent over farther—too far, as
she learned, for her trousers. There was a sharp ripping sound, and
Valeria suddenly had nothing between her rump and the jungle air.

She finished the descent with as much dignity as she could manage, then
hastily backed against the tree. Her face dared Conan to so much as
smile. He controlled the urge to roar with laughter with some
difficulty.

"Thank you, Valeria," he said when he could trust his voice.

"You are welcome, I suppose," she replied. "A tree is not so far
different from a mast, and I have been climbing those since before I
was a woman." She glared at him. "Or do you think I was foolish, only
to prove I could haul and draw my share?"

"I said nothing."

"Conan, you can say more with a moment's silence than most men can with
talking from sunrise to nightfall." She glanced at the monkey. Its dead
eyes stared back at her, and she looked away.

"If you will make the fire, I will skin it. I doubt it much differs
from a fish."

"It does, but there'll be no fire."

"No… fire?" She said the word as if it were a solemn curse.

Conan shook his head. "We've nothing by which to strike a spark,
nothing to burn if we struck it, and no knowledge of who might see the
fire or smell the smoke."

"Eat the monkey raw?"

"Not uncommon in these lands. Monkeys eat much as we do, so their flesh
is commonly wholesome."

"But… raw?"

"Raw."

Valeria gagged, but there was nothing in her stomach to come up. She
leaned against the tree and braced one hand against it.

"If I had known that, Conan, I'd have left your cursed monkey for the
kites and the ants!"

"Not wise, Valeria. Go hungry too long and the kites and the ants'll
make their meal off of you."

This time she did bend over, heaving until her face was pale. Then she
remained kneeling, sweat-sodden hair veiling her. Conan gently lifted
her to her feet.

"Come, Valeria. Find somewhere to sit, and I will do the honors with a
knife. I know which parts taste best uncooked, and I'll also do better
work with the skin."

"The skin? Oh, to wear." To Conan's relief, she no longer seemed mazed
in her wits.

"Just so, unless you'd rather walk bare-arse all the way through the
jungle—"

She threw a stick at him.

The hunter knew that the voices he heard above him were those of the
God-Men. In the last corner of his mind that remained human, he knew he
should be afraid.

He was not, although he did remember having been afraid when the Monkey
warriors carried him up the last few paces of the hill to the God
House. The door of the house was of ironwood logs, planked with slabs
of mahogany, and on the planks was painted the crimson-and-sapphire
spiral of the God-Men.

The fear had gone briefly when the door opened and only common men came
forth, in loincloths and headdresses dyed with the same spiral. They
had lifted the hunter's litter and borne him within the God House,
leaving the Monkey warriors standing in the evening rain.

Then the hunter had not only been unafraid; he had been ready to laugh…
at the disappointment on the faces of the Monkey warriors. No doubt
they had dreamed of being greeted as heroes.

It was when he saw the first of the God-Men that he was again afraid,
but not for long. The eyes of the God-Man were entirely white, like
those of a man struck blind with the eye-rot and doomed to be cast into
the forest for the beasts to devour if no one would feed and shelter
him.

Yet the God-Man moved as surely as if he could count every leg on an
ant in the dimmest corner of the chamber where the hunter lay. He wore
only a loinguard that might have been of snakeskin, figured in hues of
rose and vermilion.

He carried in one hand a staff taller than himself, crowned with a
golden spiral, and in the other hand, a gourd. A pungent odor rose from
the gourd, sour, sweet, and sharp all at once.

Without letting go of the staff, the God-Man knelt beside the hunter
and motioned that he should sit up. This the hunter did, and at once
the gourd was thrust to his lips. The taste of the brew within was so
vile that he wanted to spit it out. When he found himself swallowing,
he wanted to gag; when the brew reached his stomach, he wanted to spew.

Then it seemed that he was no longer tasting something vile and
tainted, but beer of the most cunning brewing from the best grain and
seeds. It went straight to his head as such beer often did, and he no
longer felt pain, not even in his foot and ankle.

He was not wholly at ease over this; the ankle had grown swollen, the
flesh turning pallid and noisome matter oozing from it. It should have
been hurting as if hot irons were at work upon it.

Yet it did not, and soon he was walking whole and hearty through the
nightmarish halls of Xuchotl. He was not afraid, for the God-Man was
with him and the magic in the staff would stand against any evil there,
living or dead. As he walked, he told the God-Man all he had seen or
guessed, and it seemed that the God-Man heard every word and planted it
in his memory like a seed in a garden patch. In time, they came out of
Xuchotl the same way they had entered, and walked into the jungle. The
walls of the evil city faded into a green mist, and when the mist
cleared, the hunter knew he still lay in the God House.

But his ankle still did not hurt.

It did not hurt even when the God-Man made a series of intricate
motions over the hunter's body with the staff. Was it only a
fever-fancy, or did the golden spiral of the staff seem to whirl, like
a swirling eddy in a stream?

No matter. When the God-Man was done, the hunter found that he could
rise and walk. He did so, and followed the God-Man where he was bidden,
out of the chamber and down a long passage that seemed carved from
living rock. The heads of the totemic animals of each clan of the
Kwanyi hung thick on the walls. The hunter saw that where the rock
showed, it was painted in colors for which he did not wish to find
names, let alone utter them.

Then they passed a wall of rocks that seemed bound together more by
magic than by mud. Beyond lay a chamber so vast that the hunter could
barely make out the ceiling, and could not see the far wall at all.

As for what lay below, after one look, he turned his head away. It was
not fear of the swirling smoke or what it might conceal. It was only
that in his heart he knew it was taboo for him to gaze upon that smoke,
and worse than that for him to see what the smoke hid.

The God-Man pointed to a seat carved from the rock at the very lip of
the ledge where the hunter stood. The hunter sat down, dangling his
legs over the abyss. From above, he heard more voices, and then he was
alone and the voice of the God-Man who had led him there joined the
others.

They chanted in a tongue the hunter did not know and beat on a drum
that sounded unlike any he had ever heard. Or was it not a drum but
their staves pounding on the rock floor? If those staves were shod with
iron, they might sound much like that, striking the living rock—

The smoke reared up in a wall before him, like a cobra ready to strike.
Indeed, it spread out in such a likeness of a cobra's head that the
hunter wanted to cry out.

I am not of the Cobras. I am of the Leopards. Send a leopard for my
spirit.

He knew in the same moment that he would not speak, nor would it matter
if he cried out to all the gods of his people. This was a place where
mere mortals were impotent in the face of the older powers under the
command of the God-Men.

Even then, the hunter did not fear. Nor did he fear when the smoke
swirled around him and the scream of a mighty wind tearing at the
treetops came with it. He felt himself lifted as gently as a babe in a
sling on its mother's breast.

Then the smoke drew back. The hunter faced crimson-and-sapphire light,
swirling like the smoke. He saw the light rise around him, taking away
his sight, and all of his other senses as well. He never knew the
moment when the life was sucked from his body and only an empty husk
remained in the stone seat.

"What was that?" Conan muttered. He thought he had spoken only to
himself, but Valeria was more wakeful than he had known.

"I heard nothing," she said. She rolled over and tried for the tenth
time to find a spot where a root of their sheltering spicebush would
not dig into her flesh.

"Ugh," she said. "The planks of a ship's bed are down cushions compared
to this jungle."

Conan held up a hand for silence, and although Valeria looked sulky,
she obeyed. The Cimmerian waited until he was sure that whatever had
reached him on the night breeze would not come again.

"It may have been nothing. But I thought I heard… well, if a spell of
evil magic made a sound, it might have been like that."

Valeria sat up and her shirt slipped from her shoulders. She ignored
the display of her magnificent breasts and made several gestures of
aversion.

"Are you a spell-smeller, as we call them at home?" she asked.

It seemed to Conan that she would not much care for any answer he might
give. In truth, he also would be happy if he had not suddenly gained
the power to detect magic. That was almost magic itself, and Conan
loathed the idea of finding it within himself.

The Cimmerian had fought more sorcerers and wizards than he had fingers
and toes. But when he had an honorable choice, he gave the whole
accursed breed a berth many leagues wide.

"I've never been one yet," Conan said. "I'd as soon not be one now.
Likely enough it was just some trick of the wind. I've been away from
these lands for so long that I may not remember all that I thought I
did."

Valeria had the look of one who doubts she is hearing the truth, but
the Cimmerian's blue eyes were steady and he smiled. After a moment,
the Aquilonian woman smiled back, turned on her side, and lay down. The
display of breasts now gave way to a display of well-rounded buttocks.

Conan had no eye for them. He sat cross-legged, sword in his lap,
waiting with the patience of one who has watched a Zamboulan counting
house for three days to learn the comings and goings of its watchmen.
He also waited with more knowledge of the jungle than he had admitted
to Valeria. Nothing in nature had made that sound, and what was not in
nature was, more often than not, dangerous.

In time, Valeria's breathing steadied as she slipped deep into sleep.
Conan's breathing also slowed, until he might have seemed an iron
statue in the jungle night. Only the relentless flickering of his eyes
about him betrayed life.

Whatever stalked them would gain no help from him in its quest, and
only sharp steel if it found them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------


TWO

Seyganko, son of Bayu, was not the swiftest, strongest, or tallest of
the warriors of the Ichiribu. He was the best swimmer, which was not a
small matter in his people's wars against the Kwanyi.

He was also a longheaded sort of man, in spite of his lack of years. He
thought before he used the speed, strength, and height that he had.
Thus he made shrewder use of them than his better-endowed comrades.

This earned him some jealousy, and at least once a death-duel, from
which he had emerged not merely victorious, but unhurt. It also earned
him rather more respect from the day of his manhood ceremony to the day
Dobanpu Spirit-Speaker read the signs and declared Seyganko worthy to
be followed in battle.

From that day forward, Seyganko led. He always led in war when the
whole manhood of the Ichiribu was called forth. He also led as often as
not in raids and skirmishes, when no custom or taboo required that
someone else lead.

Seyganko did not survive all this fighting as unscathed as he had the
duel. No man could, against a foe such as the Kwanyi. Their Paramount
Chief Chabano would have made his warriors formidable with his
spear-and-shield art, even without the aid of the God-Men. With that
aid, the chief might have swept the shores and islands of the Lake of
Death clean of all tribes save his own, then marched downriver on a
campaign of conquest.

It was as well for others besides Seyganko that the God-Men and Chabano
could seldom work together for long, and often barely spoke to one
another. It was necessary at all times for the Ichiribu to know of
Chabano's schemes and whether or not he was on a friendly footing with
the God-Men.

So that is how Seyganko came to the western shore of the Lake of Death
on the night that Conan sat keeping watch beside the spicebush where
Valeria slept.

He and the four men in the canoe paddled as silently as wraiths to
within a hundred paces of the shore. They drove the canoe forward with
steady, practiced strokes, lifting their paddles so skillfully that no
splash or drip betrayed their presence. Clouds veiled the moon, and
this was not the season for the lampfish, whose glow when disturbed
often betrayed canoe-borne warriors.

A hundred paces from the shore, all five men lifted their paddles as
one. The canoe glided forward on its own momentum for another fifty
paces. By then, its bow was sliding in among the weeds that grew so
thick in places that a child might walk upon them.

Seyganko led his comrades over the side of the craft with as little
noise as they had made in paddling. Gripping the sides, they kicked
silently until they could sink their feet into the oozy bottom.

Each man wore only his headdress and a snake-skin loinguard, besides
his weapons: a club or a trident, a knife of stone chips set in wood,
and a net. Each also wore a generous coating of rancid fish oil. Its
reek made any except the Ichiribu gag. It also hid the odor of living
flesh from the small fish known as the eunuch-maker which swarmed along
the shores of the Lake of Death.

"Remember," Seyganko whispered, "we need no women prisoners. If they
flee, do not chase them."

"And if they stay?" one warrior asked with a grin that showed even in
the darkness.

"Remember, too, that a man taking a woman turns his back on the world,"
Seyganko said.

"Ho—" the largest of the warriors said. "You need not think where to
find your next woman, Seyganko. Not when—"

"Hold your tongue, Aondo," a third man said. "Or if Seyganko does not
challenge you, I will. You are jealous as well as foolish."

Seyganko could add nothing to those words of wisdom, although he knew
that his betrothal to the shaman's daughter Emwaya had indeed aroused
much jealousy. Emwaya was the finest woman of the Ichiribu and deserved
nothing less than their finest warrior, but not all men saw that as
clearly as she did.

The young chief vowed to look to his back when the huge Aondo was near,
then crept to the left to his chosen hiding place. The other warriors
followed, with only the faintest rustling of the damp grass and the
soft chrrr of insects to mark their passage.

They had been in hiding barely long enough for the grass to rise again
when they heard voices and footfalls on the trail. As was most often
the case, the sounds were those of women and men together— warriors
guarding a band of women, taking food and other comforts to the camp
where the Gao River flowed out of the Lake of Death.

The Kwanyi also kept warriors in the south, guarding their herdlands
and grain fields on the other side of the lake. Chabano would gladly
have kept much more strength there, to raid through the pass into the
riverlands beyond the mountains. That the Ichiribu ruled the Lake of
Death with their canoes stood in his way and made his hatred for them
burn like a live coal.

Now someone among the Kwanyi on the trail, wiser than his fellows,
called for silence. But he called for it in a voice as loud as the
others'. Seyganko's keen ears let him measure the distance to the
speaker almost as if he had stretched a length of vine between them. If
the enemy advanced another twenty paces farther, they were as doomed as
a dog in the jaws of a leopard.

The, Kwanyi advanced that distance, and Seyganko let them go another
twenty paces before he put the bone whistle to his lips and blew. If
the women could run in either direction up the trail, there would be
fewer of them at hand to distract men like Aondo.

The high-pitched shriek of the bone whistle silenced human foes and
jungle creatures alike for a moment. In that moment, the five Ichiribu
warriors leaped from their hiding places and flung themselves at their
enemies.

Seyganko had just enough time to see that none of his comrades were
holding back before he faced two men. Both had the heavy hide shield
and three spears Chabano had given each of the Kwanyi. On open ground,
by daylight, they would have been the Ichiribu warriors match, and even
now they were no foe to despise. It was not in Seyganko to despise any
foe, for which reason he still lived and his foes mostly did not.

He feinted with his club to draw one man's shield up, then flung his
net over the top of the other's shield and pulled hard. The spiked
weights on the edge of the net caught in both flesh and hide. The man
howled and stumbled forward, his shield dropping until it no longer
protected him.

This time, Seyganko's stroke with his club was no feint. It splintered
the man's wooden headdress and the skull beneath it. Instantly Seyganko
whirled to stamp on the shaft of a spear thrust at him by the second
warrior, then closed until his chest was hard against the man's shield.

The warrior was strong; he pushed hard, flinging Seyganko backward.
Seyganko pretended to lose his balance and fall on his back. The
warrior charged forward, his second spear poised to thrust downward.

It thrust, but struck only grass and earth. Seyganko had rolled
sideways, and as he rolled, he lashed out with both feet. The warrior
stumbled, abandoning his spear in a fight for balance, and had no
attention to spare for Seyganko's club. Sweeping in a vicious, low arc,
the club darted under the shield and crushed a knee.

The man reeled again, and this time there was no regaining his balance.
Seyganko himself was in behind the shield, and a moment later the
shield fell as the arm holding it shattered under another blow of the
club.

With no foes ready to hand, Seyganko could spare attention for his
comrades. It was hard to pick them out from among the mass of
screaming, fleeing Kwanyi women and bearers. Most of them were, as he
had hoped, running off inland. Not a few of the Kwanyi warriors were
following.

Seyganko called the spirits of his ancestors to curse those Kwanyi
cowards. Or were they cowards? Might they not be obeying the commands
of Chabano, who could have guessed that such Ichiribu raids had as
their purpose the taking of captives ?

Seyganko added Chabano to those he cursed. The enemy chief was shrewd
enough to be dangerous even when he could hold few secrets. If he could
teach his warriors to prefer flight to capture, he might keep many of
them, and each one deadly to the Ichiribu.

An outcry like that of mating leopards returned Seyganko's attention,
to the trail. A spear's length away, Aondo had a woman backed against a
tree. He had jerked her waistcloth from her and was now stuffing it
into her mouth. And just as he had been warned not to do, he had turned
his back on all else but the woman. A Kwanyi warrior lying bloody on
the ground rolled over, gripped a spear, and thrust upward.

The thrust failed to be deadly, because at the last moment, Seyganko
tapped the warrior lightly with his club. The spear's point sank only a
thumb's width into Aondo's buttocks. He leaped into the air with a cry
more of surprise than of pain, clapping a hand to his wound.

One hand was not enough to hold the woman. Disdaining any thought of
garbing herself, she fled into the night. Aondo started in pursuit,
dashed head-on into the shield of a Kwanyi warrior too surprised to
raise a spear, and found himself in a bare-handed fight for his life.

Seyganko snatched up the fallen spear, the only weapon that could reach
the pair in time. It was the kind of weapon ill-balanced for throwing;
he could have done better with a fishing trident. But his arm was
strong and his eye was true. Also, he did not need to kill.

The spear drove through the Kwanyi's thigh with such force that the
point burst out on the other side. The man howled as if stung by fire
ants and flung Aondo away. Seyganko closed the distance to the man,
gripped the spear-shaft with one hand, and swung his club with the
other. The man toppled, Seyganko jerked the spear loose, and Aondo
regained his wits enough to start bandaging his prisoner's thigh with
the fallen waistcloth.

With two captives who would live until Dobanpu could speak to them, the
raid was already a victory. Seyganko blew the whistle again and
promised the spirits a generous sacrifice when the other men of his
band answered.

They not only answered, they came swiftly, and with two more prisoners,
one of them a woman who seemed not unwilling. She was hardly more than
a girl, the tattoos of womanhood barely healed on her arms and throat.
She wore nothing but those tattoos and a feather that was bound into
her hair behind one ear.

Aondo had already plunged into the water to bring the canoe in close
enough to allow the lifting of the senseless captives into it. He
seemed to wish to stay as far from Seyganko as possible.

The canoe rode noticeably lower in the water when the last captive was
aboard. Seyganko looked at it, seeking to keep doubt off his face. The
next time he led such a raid, he vowed, there would be a second canoe
lying off, to bring help if needed, and to carry captives. As it was—

"We have no need of you," he told the girl. "Take a garment from one of
the dead and rejoin your people."

The girl's face twisted in horror and rage, and for the first time,
Seyganko had a clear look at her tattoos. They were none he had seen
before among Kwanyi women.

"You are not of the Kwanyi?" he asked.

The girl seemed to understand nothing except the last word, but at that
word, she made a gesture none could mistake. If all the Kwanyi in the
world had their hearts eaten by leopards and the manhood of all the
warriors devoured by jackals, it would gladden her heart.

Seyganko decided that the girl could come after all. He would not have
on his spirit the memory of leaving her to the vengeance of her
captors.

Also, she was rather more comely than most, although far from equal to
Emwaya. It would not please Emwaya if he kept the girl himself, but the
Spirit-Speaker's daughter had spoken of needing a new maidservant. The
girl would do well enough for that, and in time she could be dowered
and offered in marriage to a warrior who might not otherwise be able to
offer bride-price.

He motioned toward the canoe. The girl looked at the water, no doubt
fearing what it might hide. Then she looked back at the land, and her
face showed far more fear of what might wait for her there. She
splashed into the water, arose dripping, and leaped into the canoe so
eagerly that she nearly capsized it.

The canoe remained upright, however. It even remained above water after
Seyganko climbed aboard with the care of a woman sewing bark for a
headdress. With no need for silence, the paddles were swiftly at work,
and the laden craft was soon well away from shore.

By then, the warriors were beginning to babble in triumph and relief.
All except Aondo. He sat amidships, wielding his paddle with the best
but saying no more than did the senseless captives lying in the slimy
water in the bottom of the boat.

That sight made Seyganko uneasy, and to hide this, he gave only short
answers to his comrades. They were halfway back to the island before he
could bring himself to join in the banter. Even then, it was mostly out
of prudence; too long a silence and his warriors would think he was
displeased with their work this night. This would shame and anger them,
until they might be less willing to follow him. Leave the loyal
unrewarded for long enough and there would be no more loyal warriors.
Then such as Aondo would have their moment—nor would they likely be
honorable enough to offer an open challenge.

"Ho," Seyganko said. "I have never seen the women run off like that. Do
you suppose it was catching sight of Aondo that drove them away?"

"If so, I will go without my loinguard next time. They will run to me
then, not from me," Wobeku the Swift said. He patted the girl on the
shoulder, and did not appear to notice that she stiffened at his touch.

Seyganko hoped that her time among the Kwanyi had not turned her
witless. Emwaya would have enough to do, tending her father after he
had worked his magic on the captives. She would not thank her betrothed
for casting the girl at her hut door like an abandoned puppy—and when
Emwaya was not grateful, Seyganko and half of his tribe knew it!

Valeria awoke from a pleasant dream of being once again aboard a ship
at sea. The touch of the Cimmerian's mighty hand on her shoulder was an
intrusion. She wanted to shake it off, go back to sleep, and try to
find the dream again.

Instead, she put the memory of sun-dappled water and a salt-tangy
breeze from her and sat up. She saw Conan's eyes roving and knew that
she was still as near to unclothed as made no difference.

A brief pass of her fingers through her hair told her that comb and
brush would have been useless even had she possessed either one. A
stout knife, or perhaps a small ax, would be needed to reduce her hair
to order.

"Are you well, Valeria?"

"Awake and ready to take my watch, Conan. Is that not well enough?"

"If you doubt—"

"I do not doubt my fitness to mount guard. I may doubt your reasons for
wishing me asleep and helpless."

Even in the darkness, she could see Conan's massive shoulders quiver as
he tried not to laugh. She realized that in truth she had been
sharp-tongued with little cause… and this in reply to an offer made out
of kindness.

Or was it kindness? Valeria had not risen as high as she had in the
ranks of the Red Brotherhood without knowing much of the ways of
intrigue between men and women, even when the prize was no more than
bedsport. When the prize could be gold enough to buy a ship, or fifty
women, the intrigues soon grew bloody, and those who did not learn
swiftly, died— as often as not, anything but swiftly.

One thing she had learned: a man who offered to spare a woman her share
of needful duties was apt to have a price in mind for this favor. It
was a price she had no mind to pay to the Cimmerian.

Unless he was unlike other men? She had truly met none like him—so far
from home, yet seemingly equal to any danger, as if he were at home
everywhere. Which was perhaps not far from the truth, if half the tales
he told were so.

No. In such matters, the Cimmerian would be as other men. Unless he was
a eunuch, and Valeria was quite sure he was nothing of the kind. The
witch Tascela had made that plain enough; she would never have pursued
a eunuch as she had pursued Conan.

Valeria stood up, which did further mischief to her trousers. She
looked down at herself in disgust, then wrinkled her nose at the odor
of the monkey's hide.

"How long will it take that hide to be fit for a garment?"

"In this damp heat, curing goes slow. We might have to take it with us,
let it cure on the march. Unless we can find a salt lick—"

Valeria spat, not quite hitting the pegged-out monkey hide. Then she
peeled off her trousers and shirt and stood nude for a moment while she
arranged the shirt into a loincloth.

"There," she said. "If we'll be in the forest for the most part, the
trees will guard my skin."

She could not mistake the admiration in Conan's voice and eyes. "There
are insects as well as sun, Valeria."

"What of the spicebush? I thought you said the berries kept away both
fliers and crawlers."

"Rubbed on your skin, yes, it does. But it brings some folk out in
blisters."

"Better blisters than insect bites everywhere," she said.

Conan shrugged. "You choice, woman. Make yourself a smelly armful, for
all that I care. Best be about it quickly, though. I'd like a trifle of
sleep after you're done."

Valeria wished that Conan had not seemed quite so determined not to
embrace her. She remembered the moment of their final victory in
Xuchotl, when his massive arm's around her had seemed not only proper,
but pleasant.

If a time like that ever came again, it would certainly not come
tonight. She began plucking berries, crushing them and rubbing the
juice on her skin, not excepting those parts of her body that would be
guarded, she hoped, by the shirt-turned-loincloth.

Exposed to the air, the juice of the spiceberries stank like an
untended midden. It certainly kept both flying and crawling creatures
from her, though. It also stung like bees on her blistered feet, then
swiftly soothed them.

By the time she had garbed herself as best she could and sat down,
Conan was lying under the bush. There was barely room for him; his feet
thrust into the open at one end and his shoulders brushed the lower
branches.

A scream like that of some wretched soul being obscenely sacrificed
brought Valeria to her feet. The loincloth nearly parted company; she
ignored it and drew her sword.

The scream came again, but this time a faint chattering and squeaking
followed it. Some night-prowler finding prey, or perhaps a mate?
Neither was any peril to her… she had seen the Cimmerian come awake in
an eye blink, ready to fight a moment later. Even now his hand was on
the hilt of his sword, although he had the weapon sheathed to protect
it from the dampness of the jungle night.

She gazed at that massive hand for some moments, until the dream of sun
and a ship at sea gave way to an image of a silk-draped couch in a
perfumed chamber, with wine ready to hand—except that both her hands
and Conan's were more pleasantly occupied.

Her stomach twitched, and for a moment, she feared that the monkey meat
was finally going to take its revenge for her hunger. Then the
queasiness passed, and her former fierce pride took its place.

She was Valeria of the Red Brotherhood; she had eaten worse than raw
monkey meat and kept it down in earning her name and fortune. She would
not let this wretched jungle defeat her, not while that cursed
Cimmerian was anywhere in sight to laugh at her!

Dobanpu Spirit-Speaker had for himself room enough for half a score of
families of the Ichiribu. Few among the tribe grudged it to him, for
all that the land was growing scarce on the island.

No one had sweated to build Dobanpu's house; it was a cave burrowing
deep into the hill at the southern end of the island. None doubted that
for much of his work with the spirits—and with other beings mentioned
only in whispers, if at all—he needed more space than a basket-weaver
or a trident-maker. None wished, either, to see or hear much of what
Dobanpu did.

Nor did Seyganko, for all that bringing the prisoners to Dobanpu had
meant a wearying journey for already tired men to the southern end of
the island, then over the beach and uphill to the cave. It was as well
that few knew how much of the art of Spirit-Speaking he was learning at
Dobanpu's hands.

Already among the people there were mutterings that a woman such as
Emwaya should not learn Spirit-Speaking, which they said was a man's
wisdom. If she did, then she should not also wed a war chief, to give
him her powers as any woman could if she lay with a man.

What would the wagging tongues say if they learned that Dobanpu himself
was teaching Seyganko? The warrior knew it would be even harder then to
avoid death-duels, or poison in his porridge.

Seyganko sat in the cave with Dobanpu and Emwaya. All three wore
headdresses of feathers and crocodile teeth and amulets of fire-stones.
The fire-stones pulsed like beating hearts, growing stronger each
moment as Dobanpu and Emwaya chanted the spirits into them.

None of them wore other garb, save a coating of scented oil. To
Seyganko's mind, such garb best suited Emwaya. She was of an age to
have borne at least two children, and would doubtless bear many fine
sons when she and the warrior at last wed. Now, however, her waist
remained supple, her breasts high, her long legs well-muscled and
strong to wrap about a man—

A thought entered Seyganko's mind.

Is this the time for such?

The thought held amusement and pleasure rather than anger. Even had
Seyganko not seen the smile on Emwaya's face, he would have known from
whence the thought came.

He replied as he had learned, without moving his lips save to return
her smile.

It has been some while.

Dignity before the spirits!

None could mistake the source of that thought, although Dobanpu's face
bore all the expression of a carved lodge mask. The two lovers
instantly straightened backs and composed faces, then gave ear to
Dobanpu's chant as it rose higher.

The chant was drawing echoes from deep within the nighted recesses of
the cave, far beyond the lamplight, when Dobanpu snapped his fingers at
his daughter. Lithe and gleaming in the light, she ran swiftly to a
niche behind her father and brought out a basket of small clay pots.
The basket was of reeds soaked in spiceberry juice, the odor intended
to drive insects from the herbs, dried fruits, and oils in the pots.
Seyganko had no doubt of its success; it nearly drove him away from the
fire.

He drew on a warrior's courage to sit cross-legged and watch as Emwaya
drew forth several of the small pots, including an empty one. With
pinches of herbs and fruit and a few drops of oil, she concocted a
potion and handed it to her father. He dipped a finger in, then licked
it off, for all the world like a brew-sister testing her beer. Emwaya
smiled, and this time Dobanpu returned the smile without missing a beat
of the chant.

To the rest of the Ichiribu, Dobanpu was a figure of awe, even of
terror. His daughter knew him too well for that—and he knew that she
knew. It was one of many reasons that Seyganko blessed whatever had
contrived that he and Emwaya be matched one with the other. He need
have no fear of his wife's father.

Now Dobanpu stood and spread his arms wide, then raised them high over
his head. Smoke began to curl from the pot, foul-smelling and filled
with nightmare shapes dancing on the remote edge of Seyganko's vision.
Emwaya lifted the pot, and the warrior wanted to cry out as the shapes
seemed to surround her like a hedge of thorns around a cattle pen. For
a moment, she was altogether lost to sight, and to Seyganko, it seemed
that even her father's face went taut.

He told himself that the deadliest of the spirits had no visible forms,
that these were only little spirits of the woods and waters that
Dobanpu had conjured up to reach the captive's mind. He knew he might
even believe this after he saw Emwaya safe and whole.

In the next moment, she darted from the smoke and knelt beside her
father. Her breasts rose and fell with quick breathing as she gripped
her father's shoulder and joined her strength to his. The shapes left
the smoke; now they danced in the air above the prostrate form of the
Kwanyi captive on the black stone.

The man was too near death to speak, but the other captive, who had not
been so badly hurt, had said he served the God-Men. He also said that
the God-Men had learned something that put even their servants in fear.

He had not said much of this without some persuasion, but the Ichiribu
had men and women expert in such, means. The powers of Dobanpu and his
daughter could be saved for times of greater need.

Thunder burst in the cave. The smoke vanished in a brief scream of
wind. For a last moment, the smoke was so thick about Seyganko that he
fought the urge to claw at it. He held his breath that he might not
disturb the spirits by coughing, and his chest grew tight.

The smoke vanished before Seyganko had to breathe. So did the shapes.
The warrior watched them whirl downward into the Kwanyi prisoner. Then
he gripped one hand with the other so he might not make a gesture of
aversion as the dying captive sat upright and began to speak.

With no voice of his own left, he spoke in the spirit-tongue, which
Seyganko did not yet understand. Whatever the spirits were saying had
Dobanpu's face twisting in horror, for all that he fought for
self-command. Emwaya's eyes were wide, and her hand on her father's
shoulder gripped so tight that her nails scored his flesh and her
knuckles were pallid.

Thunder came again, this time a distant rumble. Seyganko gazed up at
the ceiling of the cave because he could no longer bear to look at the
captive. He saw a drop of water fall, to raise a puff of dust from the
cave floor. Another drop followed it, then several more, then a steady
stream.

No spirits were in that thunder. It was not the rainy season, but
seldom did more than two or three nights pass about the Lake of Death
without rain. Seyganko resisted the urge to leap forward and stand in
the rain streaming down through the smoke hole.

It was as well that he did. Dobanpu's work was not done yet. Indeed,
Seyganko could have stalked and slain a wild pig in the time the
Spirit-Speaker needed to finish with the captive.

The warrior knew when the end came, though. The captive turned slowly
toward Dobanpu. He took a single faltering step forward, then two surer
ones before leaping at Dobanpu as would a leopard on its prey.

He never completed the leap. Dobanpu stood like the doorpole of a
lodge, but Emwaya flung herself before her father. She moved so swiftly
that Seyganko was barely on his feet before she and the dying,
vengeance-driven Kwanyi grappled.

It was a short grapple, for all that the Kwanyi had in life been half
again Emwaya's size and strength. He could not feel pain, but he could
be knocked down. Emwaya sent him sprawling, then gripped one arm. He
reached over with the other, groping for a handhold in her hair,
meeting only the headdress.

He was still groping when Seyganko brought his club down on the
Kwanyi's already battered head. The last spirit-given life fled, and
the spirits followed. Thunder rolled again as they leaped from the body
and fled up the smoke hole, defying the rain.

Seyganko saw what might have been a bird with four wings and the head
of a snake, or something even more unnatural. Then he saw Emwaya turn,
eyes widening—and was just in time to help her catch her father as he
fell, to all appearances as lifeless as the Kwanyi.

They laid Dobanpu on a bed of rushes; a raised part of the cave floor
kept him safe from the growing puddle of rainwater. Emwaya drew a
bark-cloth blanket over her father and signed to Seyganko that he
should leave them.

Seyganko desperately wished to ask why, but the answer came in the same
moment as the question. In the Kwanyi warrior, there had been no common
magic. Only arts that Seyganko did not yet have might heal Dobanpu and
save his knowledge for his people. Seyganko's duties now lay among the
warriors, to lead them if need be, or at least to keep them silent
until Dobanpu spoke again.

Seyganko turned back to make sure that the Kwanyi warrior was dead, or
to bind him if life was still in him. Then he fought the urge to make
gestures of aversion, or even to flee wildly to the open air.

The Kwanyi warrior was gone. Only the outline of his body in the muddy
dust remained. No footprints showed his passing; it was as if he had
become dust himself.

Seyganko looked at Emwaya, and she glanced up from her father long
enough to shrug. When I know, I will tell you was in that shrug, and
also the pride he knew so well.

I will come when I am needed, Seyganko replied.

He thought he saw her smile as he backed out of the cave. He would
rather not have gone at all. Leaving Emwaya there with what had stolen
away the Kwanyi's body was harder than leaving her in the face of a
hungry leopard.

He also knew that a warrior who courts a Spirit-Speaker's daughter must
learn more than most men about the arts of keeping peace with his
woman.

Conan awoke to find a sharp root jabbing him in the ribs. He thought he
must have rolled over in the night.

Then he reached full wakefulness and knew that the root was warm, and
not as sharp as he had thought. He shifted and looked up… from the
strong, shapely ankle beside him all the way along the finely turned
leg, to the shirt bound as a loincloth about well-rounded hips, and
onward to the rest of Valeria.

She left off prodding him with a bare toe and seemed about to smile,
Then she shrugged.

"If you think I woke you up for—"

Conan was tempted to grip that ankle and see if Valeria's loincloth
survived a tumble to the ground. He set the temptation aside. Valeria
had belted on both sword and dagger over her new garb and looked as
ready as ever to repay such a rough jest with steel.

Now and for some days to come, Conan had more need of a trustworthy
comrade at his back than a woman in his arms. "You woke me because it's
dawn and time we were on the march. True?"

A jerk of the head might have been a nod.

"Any visitors?"

"None I could not face myself, Cimmerian."

"Ah, so you did not slay the seven warriors. You only drained them of
their power with a woman's—"

The toe jabbed hard into his ribs, and for a moment, Conan was ready to
roll clear of a downward slash of her sword. Then the hand left the
sword-hilt, her mouth twisted, and a giggle escaped before turning into
a laugh. She sat down and began combing leaves and the odd twig from
her hair.

"I've killed men for lesser jests, Conan. Remember that."

"Oh, I shall. But if you kill men for small jests, then I may as well
die for the bull as for the calf."

She made a small-girl's face at him and went on combing. In a few more
moments, she had done as much as anyone could without a comb, or
without hacking her hair off short at the neck.

"As you say, best we were on the march." She licked her lips. "Although
I would not refuse some water—"

"We'll stop at the first clear stream we find and drink our fill. If
there are gourds to be had, we can hollow out a few and fill them, too.
But for now, we'd do better away from here."

"You think we're being followed?"

"I've no way to know, but why make ourselves easy prey? The jungle's
much like the sea—he lives longest who's not to be found where his
enemies expect him."

"So wise in war, Cimmerian?"

Conan was about to make some gruff reply when he realized that there
had been less than the usual mockery in Valeria's voice. He looked at
her; she flushed all the way to her breasts and then began muttering
curses at the lack-witted, effete fools of Xuchotl, who kept jewels and
finery in plenty but not a single decent water bottle!

----------------------------------------------------------------------


THREE

"Ge-qah!"

Seyganko cried the Ichiribu ritual word for death and flung his
trident. It pierced the morning air, then the blue-green water of the
Lake of Death.

The vine rope tying it to Seyganko's waist had run out perhaps twice a
man's length when the trident also pierced the lionfish below the
canoe. Instantly, ripples spread about the canoe; then bubbles and
blood joined the ripples.

The lionfish rose, as long and thick as the canoe, with jaws that
could, and sometimes did, swallow a child. Blood and body juices the
hue of old gold gushed from the trident wound.

Those massive jaws still snapped, and teeth as long as a man's finger
clanged together with a noise like a Kwanyi spear on a wooden shield.
The scaly neck plates—with the look of a lion's mane, which gave the
fish its name—flapped, as did the gills.

Seyganko waited until the fish's instinct to attack the first thing it
saw was aroused. That first thing was the canoe, and the long teeth
sank into the hard wood of the dugout. They so nearly met that the
warrior knew the canoe would need patching after this day's work.

The wildly thrashing fish jerked at the rope and sent the trident
handle whipping about. Seyganko ignored bruises as he raised his club,
tossed it, caught it in both hands, and brought it down hard between
the two plates over the fish's left eye.

"Ge-qah!"

He spoke the truth. The blow to its most vulnerable spot was death for
the lionfish. A shudder went through it from teeth to tail, and its
jaws let go their grip on the canoe. Had Seyganko been fool enough to
pull the trident loose, it might have slipped away into the depths of
the lake and been lost.

As it was, he would have a fine trophy, and a score of the Ichiribu
would feast. Any lionfish this large was not the best delicacy, but it
was a menace to men; eating it would bring some of its strength and
fierceness to those who ate, and avenge any it had slain.

Seyganko tied the fish to the stern of his canoe with the trident cord,
sat down, and began paddling toward shore. Even his strength was not
equal to bringing the catch aboard, but in water too shallow for other
lionfish, it would not be attacked before he could summon help.

Seyganko paddled directly for shore, although this meant landing not
far from Dobanpu's cave. He had heard nothing of the man for three
days, save that he yet lived and that spirits sent by the God-Men might
yet be a danger to him. For these reasons— and also, Seyganko thought,
out of pride—Emwaya had nursed him herself and sent the curious about
their affairs.

What she would not say to the curious, Seyganko decided, she might say
to her future husband. And the lionfish was worth saving even if he
learned nothing from Emwaya. Paddling around the point of the island
would give other lionfish time to gather, scent the blood trail, and
follow it. In strength, they had been known to attack a canoe.

It was as well that for the most part, lionfish were solitary
creatures, each claiming its portion of the lake and driving off all
comers save for females in the mating season. Had they commonly hunted
in schools like the eunuch-makers did, they would have eaten the lake
bare of all life, probably including human.

The canoe was heavy and clumsy with the lionfish trailing astern, but
Seyganko's strong arms and well-balanced paddle drove it swiftly toward
shore. As the sun rose, it burned off the morning mist, and soon he
could see the hill rising from amid the last gray wisps. At last he saw
the reed enclosure that let Emwaya draw water, safe from lionfish and
crocodiles, and even allowed her to swim when the spirit took her.

Dobanpu must have healed; a dark head broke the water in the enclosure.
Seyganko smiled. If Emwaya was in a good frame of mind, she might let
him join her. After they swam together, the most common end was rolling
together in the grass.

Then the head grew shoulders and arms, and Seyganko saw that it was the
form of a woman, but not of Emwaya. The Kwanyi slave girl was making
free with the swimming place, as bare as a babe. In the light of day,
and not frightened half out of her wits, she was even a greater
pleasure to see than on the night of the raid.

"Where is your mistress?" he called in the True Tongue. She might hate
her old masters with a passion, but she could hardly have been among
them for long without learning at least a little of their speech.

The girl stood up, shook herself like a dog, then pointed toward the
cave. Drops of water silvered by the morning sun sparkled in her hair
and trickled down her breasts as she moved about. Seyganko would have
thought her unaware of how well she appeared had he not caught a sly
look from the corner of one brown eye.

He grinned. Apart from his oaths to Emwaya, which did not allow him
another woman save with her permission, he doubted the wisdom of
tumbling his betrothed's maidservant. He also knew a sure way of
putting an end to her tricks.

"Ho! Woman of Emwaya, I have work for you." Seyganko heaved on the rope
until the lionfish's tail was above water. "Come and help me haul this
brute ashore!"

The girl took one look at the lionfish, another at Seyganko, then fled
toward the mouth of the cave, still bare. Seyganko pulled the canoe
ashore, sat down on the girl's waistcloth, and was whetting his trident
with a piece of ironstone when Emwaya came down to him.

When he could free himself from her grip and let go of her, Seyganko
held her at arm's length. He saw that she seemed paler and thinner than
three days of any ordeal would warrant. Or at least any ordeal save
one.

"Your father—"

"Dobanpu Spirit-Speaker lives. His sleep is now healthy, his dreams
clean. I have fed him porridge and water, and they rest well in his
belly."

She spoke as if still in a ritual, but he saw unaccustomed moisture in
the corners of her eyes. He reached up to brush away the tears, and she
gripped his wrists as if they were the last things between her and
drowning.

"Seyganko, forgive my weakness. I did not mean you to see me this way—"

"No, you are not like that wench you have taken into your service. She
meant me to see her as she was swimming."

"I thought as much when she came uphill bare. What did you say to her?"

Seyganko told the truth, and Emwaya rewarded him with a laugh that held
some of her usual good cheer. "I will help you with the fish and then
have words with Mokossa."

"Is that her name?"

"I think it is the name of her tribe, one living beyond the lands of
the Kwanyi. She is not child-minded, but living among the Kwanyi
frightened her out of most of the wits she had."

"Not so much that she cannot have eyes for a warrior, I warn you."

"Any woman with sense will have eyes for you, Seyganko. I have just
told you that Mokossa is a woman of sense."

"Do you seek to flatter me, Emwaya?"

"I have done so often enough that I do not need to try again."

If she was able to banter like this, she could hardly have dire news.
It was in Seyganko's mind to slip his hands under the waistcloth and
undo its knot, and the spirits take the lionfish!

Yet something in her voice—

"Did your father learn anything from the servant of the God-Men?"

"I think I can do as well drawing lionfish ashore as Mokossa. Since I
do not wish a sodden waist-cloth—"

"Emwaya." He held her by the shoulders, so tightly that he half feared
she would slap him. "Your father brought strong spirits, and he is not
one to do that lightly. What did he learn?"

Emwaya shuddered but did not weep or try to pull away. After a moment,
she reached up and gently lifted Seyganko's hands from her bare
shoulders.

"The spirits were angry at fighting the protection the God-Men put on
their servants. Also, I think some of them were hurt."

Spirits could be injured, though not as easily or in the same way as
men. Seyganko knew enough of Dobanpu's art to have learned that. If the
God-Men had power to put that kind of guarding on their servants—

"Are they angry with your father?"

"He said he thought not. Some spirits are friends of the God-Men,
others their enemies, or at least enemies of the spirits they command."

Tribal feuds among the spirits! Seyganko silently cursed the spirits,
those who made them, those who served them—

"The God-Men have learned that Xuchotl the Accursed has fallen."

The words came out as if Emwaya were purging herself of something foul.
Indeed, her face seemed more content, and she leaned against Seyganko
and pressed her face into his shoulder. He rested an arm across her
back, feeling the fine skin and the strength within, but not seeking
anything further now.

"How did it fall?"

"It was hard to tell. It seems that a Kwanyi hunter was seeking game
far to the east at the time the city fell. He entered unharmed,
explored it, saw that all within were dead, then fled, fearing that its
destroyers would come for him. The God-Men learned his tale and gave
him to the Living Wind. They seek to hide this knowledge until they
know what use to make of it."

If the God-Men had the wits of a leech, they would be asking Dobanpu to
join his knowledge to theirs to fight whatever had the power to cast
down the Accursed City. Any such being could eat the tribes of the
forest as a lionfish ate fingerlings.

The God-Men lacked such wisdom, however. Even if they found it now,
Chabano of the Kwanyi would not let them spoil his dreams of conquest.
And Dobanpu would most likely refuse to trust the God-Men even if they
and Chabano both asked for his aid. Seyganko hoped he would not have to
say the last in Emwaya's hearing. She knew her father could be proud
and obstinate, but she had not granted her betrothed the right to say
so.

"Who else knows of this among the common folk of either tribe?"

"That, my father could not learn. Do you think the God-Men might try to
keep this knowledge from Chabano?"

"It might serve them well if they could," Seyganko answered. "It is
said that Chabano is jealous of the power of the God-Men and seeks to
wage his wars without them. If the God-Men joined with the power that
destroyed Xuchotl, Chabano would be a babe against them."

"They would be mad to think that such a power could serve them!"

"I know that a shaman can do only so much. You know that as well. Both
of us learned it from your father, who was born with the knowledge."
Seyganko shrugged. "The God-Men were not so fortunate."

"Curse the God-Men!" Emwaya said fervently. Then it was her hands that
danced down Seyganko's back and under his garments, so that it was not
she who was the first of them unclothed.

Sun-curing would be needed to finish the work on the monkey's hide to
make it a fit garment. Conan held out no great hope of that much sun
and offered Valeria his shirt.

She held it against her, then laughed. "As a night-shift, I might
accept it."

"My hide's thicker than yours, Valeria, and not bred in Aquilonia."

"If I've survived the sun and salt wind at sea, I'll not broil before
this hide cures."

"Or rots."

"Does Crom tell you to look always for the worst, Conan?"

"Crom's not a god to tell anyone anything, at least not for the
asking," Conan replied. His grim Cimmerian god was not a jesting matter
for him, or for anyone else born in the Northlands, where the name was
mighty.

"Is that why you're so often closemouthed?" Valeria asked. Seeing no
answer forthcoming, she threw up her hands and fell in behind the
Cimmerian.

They had not gone far from their night's camp before a brief but heavy
shower soaked them both and left pools of clean water everywhere. They
drank, then cut still-green branches from a fallen tree with which to
make staffs. With these aiding them, especially the sore-footed
Valeria, they made good progress the rest of the morning.

Noon brought them hungry to the bank of a river too deep to wade. Conan
studied its surface, eyeing the swirls in the murky water. He studied
with equal care the banks of the river, including places where animal
tracks ended in patches of churned mud and scattered leaves.

"Crocodiles," he said briefly.

Valeria glowered at the water. "I was thinking we could make a raft and
let the river do the work."

"It flows south and west, which is the way we want to go. But we've no
tools, and the crocs would have us off a floating log before we'd gone
half a league." Conan looked beyond the banks, seeing fallen tree
trunks. He saw too few for a raft, and some of those too large for even
his strength to roll to the water.

"No, I was thinking we should be hunting for a meal, anyway. Share a
beast with the crocodiles, and they may give us safe passage."

Valeria shrugged. "If it works with sharks, it may work with
crocodiles. But, oh, that I'd ever be ready to sell my soul for a
canoe."

"Sell your body for an ax, and we'd have the canoe," Conan said, then
ducked as Valeria lashed at him with a length of vine.

Hunger and the need for silence ended the banter. They found hiding
places that commanded two of the low spots on the bank, where the
jungle creatures came to drink. Conan suspected they might well have a
long wait, as the pools of rainwater would doubtless content the beasts
as well as themselves. It might be dark before the animals came, and
Conan did not care to match wits with a crocodile after dark.

As a prophet, Conan failed. It was not yet mid-afternoon when a family
of wild pigs came huffling and snorting through the bushes. There were
five in all: an old boar, a sow, and three piglets following in the
wake of their elders.

Using the hand signals of the Barachan pirates, Conan told Valeria to
take the sow, or failing that, a piglet. That would do for their own
food. He himself would face the boar—and any crocodile not sated with
that much raw pork was no creature of nature.

Conan thrust that thought aside with the same distaste he felt for all
wizardry. Yet he could not forget last night. Had he sensed powerful
magic at work not far off ?

It would not have surprised the Cimmerian to learn of such magic. The
tales he had heard in Xuchotl suggested that those who built the city
might have left magic, as well as stones, behind. Old, evil, tainted
magic, perhaps drawing on the lore of the nightmare empire of Acheron.
Even legends did not agree on how far that lore had spread, how long it
had lasted, or how deep it had sunk roots into the minds of men.

Nor did legends agree on how a man became a spell-smeller—the name in
the north for those who had some further sense beyond the common five—
allowing him to discover the working of magic. They did not even agree
that such men existed. Some said that it was only a matter of
recognizing subtle changes in the natural world, changes that any spell
always made.

Conan had never thought much of such arguments, and less than most of
that one. If such talk could have made sorcerers forsake their craft
and turn into honest men, he would have gladly joined it until his
throat was dry. As matters were, he chose not to let his throat dry out
in the first place!

Now the boar was sniffing the air with the care of the scout of a host
seeking an ambush. It scented nothing. The scant breeze was flowing
from it toward the hunters, and both Conan and Valeria had been in the
jungle long enough for its smell to partly disguise theirs.

Conan nodded, and Valeria drew her sword. It caught briefly in the
scabbard, and the faint scraping as it came free made the boar raise
its head. Again it sniffed the wind, and this time the sow moved to
stand between her piglets and danger.

The danger that struck first was not the human hunters. Conan did not
see the ripple in the stream, but he saw the dripping, tooth-studded
jaws burst from the water and close on the sow.

Her squeals raised echoes and sent birds flying and monkeys leaping
from every tree within a long bowshot. Valeria leaped from cover,
heedless of the boar, sword slashing down at one of the piglets as they
scattered.

The boar paid her no attention at first as it lowered its head and
tried to gore the crocodile. The reptile, a patriarch of the breed, had
flung itself so far up the bank that it could not return at once to the
water. Its claws gouged mud, and its tail lashed as it tried to fend
off the boar, hold on to the dying sow, and reach the refuge of the
river.

At last it succeeded in all three. A bloody swirl in the water marked
its escape. Valeria had just sheathed her sword in the neck of a second
piglet when the boar turned on her.

Had the boar been a little quicker, the songs sung in later days about
Valeria of the Red Brotherhood would have been rather shorter. But she
turned, freeing her sword, drawing her dagger, and leaping aside from
the boar's rush with a speed that rivaled Conan's. The Cimmerian
remembered how deadly she had been in the battles in Xuchotl as her
dagger slashed the boar's muzzle.

The great pig squealed in rage and pain and drew back. Its hooves
churned up almost as much mud as the crocodile had. It tried to gain
footing on the slippery bank for launching a charge, but again it was a
trifle too slow. Conan was within sword's reach before the boar could
charge. There was no subtlety or art in the way his sword came down on
the boar's thick neck. Swordmasters from Zingara to Vanaheim would have
cringed at the brutal strength of the blow, more suited to an
executioner than a swordsman.

It did not matter to Conan who struck the blow, or to the boar, who
fell dead, or to Valeria, who found the boar lying at her feet.

Valeria turned, the battle-light in her eyes, and brushed her hair from
her face. The movement of her arm lifted her breasts. Altogether she
was a sight to make a man's blood seethe in his veins, the huntress
among her prey, silhouetted against the sun-dappled river.

She stood so that once again Conan did not see the warning ripples in
the stream. The second crocodile was as large as the first, but not as
swift. Also, it exhaled a great, foul, hissing breath as it slid up the
bank.

Valeria jumped to safety as the jaws thudded shut an arm's length from
her leg. Not watching where she leaped, she landed on a slippery patch,
reeled, and staggered hard against the Cimmerian. He clutched at her,
drawing her backward with him.

His back came up hard against a red-barked tree. The tree shook and
made a rumbling sound like a mill wheel. Instantly sensing a new
danger, Conan stepped away from the tree, turning and loosing his grip
on Valeria as he did so.

The next moment, the ground vanished from under his feet. He plunged
into darkness, taking with him one memory and one hope. The memory was
of Valeria's horror-stricken face staring after him. The hope was that
she would remember the crocodile at her back rather than fret herself
about him.

Geyrus, first among the God-Men—or First Speaker to the Living Wind, as
he was named in ritual—shook his staff. That was not enough to ease his
wrath, so he struck the rod hard upon the silver-shot rock at his feet.

The three Cobra Clan warriors cringed, as if they expected the rock to
open up at Geyrus's command and swallow them. Their eyes showed only
whites, and they held their shaking hands over their mouths in the
ritual gesture of supplication.

They would find no mercy from Geyrus, and deserved none.

"Six slain, three taken, and one of my handmaids as well!" he roared.
He could make his voice as loud as a lion's if he chose, though not as
easily as he had done in his youth. Then he could have brought Chabano
himself to his knees with mouth-magic!

"Forgive—" muttered one of the warriors.

"There is no forgiveness for such folly!" Geyrus stormed. "Folly enough
in taking her on such a journey at all. Folly ten times worse in losing
her to the lake-swimmers!"

He did not use the lion-voice this time. He needed to save his
strength, and also, he did not wish all he said to be overheard.

Even in the very house of the Speakers to the Living Wind, there were
those whose hearts lay first with Chabano of the Kwanyi. They would not
hesitate to tell him any secret of the Servants if they thought it
would earn them his goodwill.

"You are dead men," he said more softly. "Yet I am disposed to grant
you as much mercy as you deserve. You may choose your death. Shall I
give you to the Living Wind? Or shall I give you some other death, of
my own choosing?"

The mere mention of the Living Wind made one warrior drop to his knees,
a posture he would rather have died than have assumed before a human
foe. Geyrus smiled tightly so as to reveal only those of his teeth that
still shone white and perfect.

Geyrus understood the warriors' terror. The Living Wind played with
those who came to it with unclouded minds, harassing them like a cat
with a mouse. Madness and agony came swiftly, and lasted long enough to
make death a craved release.

"So be it. You shall meet the fate of any cobra when it crawls too
close to the leopard's cubs."

Geyrus did not produce a thunderclap as he completed the spell. The
first sound the men heard was the growl as the spell-borne leopards
scented prey. Then claws struck golden sparks from the stone as the
leopards hurled themselves upon the warriors.

Geyrus had kept his promise. The leopards killed more swiftly than the
Living Wind commonly did. Fangs tore out throats, claws ripped bellies,
and screams of fear and agony echoed only briefly about the tunnels.
The leopards were feeding lustily on the corpses as Geyrus dropped the
stout net across the tunnel.

A time had been when he could have raised a barrier against the
leopards entirely by magic. That time of youthful strength was gone,
and would not come again. His best now was bringing the leopards when
they were needed, and returning them when they slept, sated on human
flesh.

Geyrus did not pray to any god who had a name among living men. Nor did
he pray to the Living Wind—it was no god; that had been plain from the
earliest days of its Servants.

Instead, he hoped that his not keeping the secret of Xuchotl's fall
would do no harm. It was probably a vain hope, inasmuch as neither
Chabano nor Dobanpu were fools. Geyrus consoled himself with the
thought that if they had been, there would be no challenge, no pride
for him in besting them. Both a man's first battles and his last should
be against worthy foes.

But that girl—lost! She alone would earn Seyganko the slowest death any
man had ever suffered, after he had watched Emwaya die just as slowly.
Or would it be better to make Dobanpu's unnatural daughter watch her
betrothed's death before her own?

Time to decide when he had them both in his hands. Either way would
ensure the girl's obedience for the rest of his days. The First Speaker
to the Living Wind would sleep in a well-warmed bed, as befitted a
victor.

The disappearance of Valeria's Cimmerian companion was swift and
silent. One moment, Valeria sensed him at her back; the next moment,
her fine-honed battle instincts told her that he was not.

She leaped again, nearly losing her last garment. The crocodile hissed
like a pot of stew overflowing into a cook fire and wriggled forward.
Its jaws—as long as a child of twelve—gaped, then shut again with a
clang as if made of iron instead of bone.

Valeria knew something of saltwater crocodiles, having once anchored in
a river mouth where they swarmed. She had never been so far from the
sea in a land where the rivers also spawned them, but she judged this
beast to be much like its seafaring cousins. It would be swift in the
water, slow on land, tenacious of life, and slow of wits. Doubtless it
was cudgeling those wits for some new way of dealing with her, now that
its first lunge had failed.

She could be long gone from the riverbank and any danger from the
crocodile if she was ready to abandon Conan to whatever fate had
befallen him. Or that he has fallen into, she surmised, seeing as the
very earth itself seemed to have swallowed him.

This thought made her next leap cautious, and she thanked Mitra when
she landed on solid ground. Then she kicked off her boots. Blisters or
no, she had a better feel for any surface under her—ship's deck or
jungle riverbank—when she was unshod.

She drew dagger to match sword and studied her opponent. It was
impossible for her to seek safety at the price of leaving Conan. Not
impossible in the sense of against nature, as it would have been
impossible for her to grow wings and fly—but against her nature and all
she had lived by since before she was a woman.

She and the Cimmerian were battle-bound, as surely as by any tie of
blood or by oath sworn before a score of priests of as many gods. She
would return to serving in a barber's house, or even dance in taverns,
before she broke such a bond as she had with Conan.

That he desired her was an annoyance, as a fly buzzing about her head
might have been. But one did not strike oneself on the head with a
hammer to swat such a fly!

The crocodile hissed again and lumbered forward. Valeria shifted on
nimble feet so that she could watch the whole riverbank as well as her
immediate foe. The one thing she dreaded most was another crocodile.
The first one would most likely be off gorging itself on the sow, but
where there were two of the monsters, there could be three.

She saw no sign of another reptile, but she did see a shallow
depression in the ground where the leaf mold and tangled dead vines
seemed to sag. If that place had swallowed Conan, perhaps it might be
persuaded to swallow the crocodile.

Then the monster lunged forward with a speed that startled her.
Surprise did not slow her, or make her forget that no creature's brain
can be far from its eyes.

As the crocodile lunged, Valeria leaped, and more. She twisted in
midair, with the grace that had caused more than a few to throw silver,
even gold her way in years past. She came down astride the crocodile's
spiny back, just behind the massive neck.

Before the crocodile realized that its prey was no longer in sight,
Valeria struck. Her dagger drove hard into the scaly hide, seeking a
chink, sinking in deep enough to hold her. Then she lifted her sword,
reversed the blade, and drove it deep into the crocodile's right eye.

The sword was awkward for stabbing, and nowhere else on the beast would
its point have gained entrance. Striking where it did, it reached the
crocodile's life.

The hiss turned into a screaming bellow as Valeria leaped free of the
creature, as desperately as ever she had leaped from shark-infested
water into a boat. The crocodile's tail thrashed wildly, splintering
bushes and scoring the bark of stout trees. The legs spasmed, claws
frenziedly spraying earth and leaves all over Valeria. Then it gave a
final lurch, rolled over, and slammed its head down in the depression
Valerian had noted before.

In an uncanny silence, the earth gaped. With a tearing of vines and a
snapping of roots, the crocodile upended. For a moment, its tail waved
again, as if in its final convulsion the beast was bidding farewell to
its slayer. Then the crocodile vanished.

This time the hole did not. Whatever device or spell had closed it
previously seemed to be exhausted. It gaped the width of a man's height
at Valeria's feet. She looked down into twilight, then into a darkness
as complete as the deepest abyss of the sea.

She swallowed. She could not drive out of her thoughts the notion that
not even Conan could have survived such a fall… or that if he had, the
crocodile might have finished what the fall began.

She would never know, however, save by going down herself and finding
the Cimmerian, or his body. She refused to contemplate what she would
face if he were alive but helpless from hurts taken in the fall.

"Conan," she muttered, "my life might have been simpler had you never
left Cimmeria."

Yes, and doubtless shorter as well.

The voice in her mind was not altogether Conan's, but close enough to
make her start.

So be it. She had been a climber from childhood, and once a sailor had
said of her that she had eyes in her fingers and toes. That would help.
So would a stout length of vine, or several lengths bound and braided
to support her weight.

The dead vines were too rotted for such work, but there was no shortage
of live ones. Valeria had her vine rope before the sun-dappling of the
river had greatly changed. She finished her labors by tying a slipknot
in one end of the rope, slinging her boots by their laces about her
neck, and making a sword-thong of vine.

The vine would not serve well for either rope or thong as would good
Shemite leather, but Valeria was no stranger to making-do. For the
climb, she would use the thong to bind her sword across her back, but
once on solid ground, the weapon would come into service.

She had finished all the work she could do in the gods' own daylight,
on a jungle riverbank that now seemed a pleasant vantage compared to
the blackness at her feet. The rest of her duty lay below.

She breathed deeply until she was as calm as could be hoped. Then she
lowered her feet over the edge of the hole and began her downward
climb.

----------------------------------------------------------------------


FOUR

Conan's fall began with ill fortune, which swiftly changed for the
better. Had it been otherwise, the stories of many men and not a few
realms would have been vastly altered.

He was no spell-smeller, or he might have sensed the magic binding the
ground at the mouth of the pit. Then again, perhaps not. It was old
earth-magic, and the names of those who discovered it had been lost to
human memory long before Atlantis was even built, let alone before the
oceans swallowed it.

The art had not been lost, however. The sorcery known to the builders
of Xuchotl partook of it. Nor was the doomed city the only creation to
which they had turned their magical arts. Deep within the jungle they
also built and wrought mighty works, at a time when the Black Kingdoms
were but bands of feuding tribesmen.

It was one of these leavings that Conan had encountered. The earth
gaped beneath his feet, he plunged down into darkness briefly lit from
above, then continued his plunge in darkness deeper yet as the pit
closed above him.

Thrice he struck earthen walls that yet seemed too solid and smooth to
be altogether natural. These blows slowed his fall somewhat, but also
drove the breath from his lungs. He had just regained it when he struck
for a final time, where the wall of the pit had crumbled under the
inexorable thrust of the roots of some forest giant. The blow took him
across the chest and would have cracked, or even crushed the ribs of
any lesser man.

With the Cimmerian, it drove out the barely regained breath and tossed
him like a child's ball into the mouth of a tunnel entering the other
side of the pit. He struck, half slid and half bounced ten paces, then
lay there while earth quivered, rumbled, and fell from the mouth of the
tunnel.

He would gladly have lain until his breath returned, but instinct told
him that the mouth of the tunnel was only precariously bound by
whatever magic ruled here. Lying thus in momentary comfort could end in
swift and final burial.

Iron fingers seemed to clutch his chest as he crawled, but the sound of
still-falling earth drove him onward. He was sweating with more than
his exertions when at last silence fell again, broken only by his harsh
breathing.

Probing his ribs with his fingers, he found nothing broken, although he
would wager the price of a good inn that he would have the mother and
father of all bruises by morning. His breathing had slowed, and
cautiously he sat up.

Then a rumble and a series of thuds sounded from the mouth of the
tunnel. They rose to a crescendo, but faded as swiftly as they came.
Something large had followed him into the pit and plummeted all the way
to its distant bottom, as he had not.

He told himself that the sound was too heavy to be Valeria. That kept
the ill-luck thought from his mind that she would surely follow him
down if she bested the crocodile. She had that loyalty to a battle
comrade that defies common sense, and that Conan himself also lived by.

The mouth of the tunnel was now two-thirds blocked by fallen earth—and
Conan was thunderstruck to realize that he could see this. He was no
longer in utter darkness worthy of the deepest slave-pits of Stygia.

He turned and looked down the tunnel. It sloped away into shadow but
was clearly visible for some fifty paces or more. At the very edge of
the Cimmerian's vision, the walls seemed to turn from earth into stone,
and carved stone at that.

Over all played a subtle light that at one moment seemed sapphire-hued,
at the next, as crimson as a fine ruby. Trying to follow the changes of
color made Conan dizzy, and in time he ceased his efforts. The light
was magic, no doubt, and he was uneasy in the presence of magic. But he
would be a cursed deal uneasier in total darkness, and that light might
give him a way out of here without Valeria's risking her neck to climb
down to him!

Now, if he had some way to tell her that…

Valeria knew that the air had to be cooler this deep in the earth. It
only seemed hotter, as though she were climbing down the throat of a
volcano toward the molten rock bubbling far below, ready to turn her to
ashes should her grip fail for a moment.

"By Erlik's thews!" she muttered. "Forget what you've learned about not
letting your fancies run wild, you silly wench, and you will fall."

It was not a fancy that sweat covered every bit of exposed skin,
turning into slimy mud where earth had fallen on her from the walls.
Her loincloth clung to her, as sodden as a jellyfish, and even her
boots seemed to have become heavier with the dampness of the air in
this pit.

Truth was, she had never climbed so long and with such precarious holds
for hands and feet. Compared to this climb, the time she had raced a
shipmate from bow to stern over the masthead on a wager was a child's
game. It did not-help, either, that her life had not been at stake in
that race.

Groping feet touched a flatter surface. A ledge? Something besides the
wall of the pit, anyway… but test it first before putting full weight
on it, let alone undoing the rope from its moorings above.

"Hooaaa!" The voice seemed more a specter's than a man's as it floated
up from below like smoke. Valeria's feet groped for purchase on the
ledge, until at last she found a spot whereupon to stand. She left the
vine rope in place, though, as she stared downward.

The mouth of the pit was now so far above her that its light barely let
her count the fingers of a hand held in front of her face. Beneath, all
was blackness. Or was it? From well below, on the far side of the pit,
a dim glow seemed to battle the darkness, like distant fireflies on a
moonless night.

Except that no firefly ever blinked in those hues of blue and red—no
natural firefly, at least. But the laws of nature might not bind
whatever lived down here.

Valeria shuddered. She had no more taste for magic than the Cimmerian
did, if the truth were known, and for much the same reasons. Magic made
honest war skills useless, and made its users more often than not as
twisted as the street of her native village in Aquilonia! Tascela was
the worst sorceress she had seen, which made her thank the gods that
she had not seen some of the wizards Conan said he had fought.

There would be time to fret over whether Conan had been spinning tales
when she knew that the voice below was his… and when she had rejoined
him.

"The sea frees us," she called. It was a password of the Red
Brotherhood. Only Conan in this jungle was likely to know the reply.

"The land binds us," came the reply. Valeria's knees quivered with
relief, but she did not move otherwise.

"Conan! Where are you?"

"In a tunnel, beyond where you see the light. I—"

A clod of earth bounced off Valeria's head and spun away into the
abyss. She looked up. Was it her fancy, or was the hole above smaller,
the light from it dimmer?

The light was surely fading; her hand was now only a blurred,
fingerless shape. The glow from below was holding steady, but it could
not take the place of the trickle of daylight from overhead.

"Conan! Something's happening to the light. I'll try to climb down
until I'm opposite you, then throw my rope across. How wide is the pit
where you are?"

"Wide enough that your pet crocodile didn't stick in its gullet when
you sent it down to join me," the reply came. "Best you move quickly,
though, if the light's going."

She heard hints of more danger than that in his voice, and was briefly
angry at his hiding the truth from her. Reason replaced anger and told
her that he might not know all the truth himself. If he did, he would
tell it to woman, king, or god!

The rope was near its end when Valeria found a foothold on a huge
curving root opposite the mouth of the tunnel. At least she felt the
bark under her feet; the light from above was almost gone. Then Conan's
head and massive shoulders nearly blocked the light from the tunnel
below. She saw now that the mouth of the tunnel was heaped with freshly
fallen earth, and understood what Conan feared.

She had not been so desperate for silence since her brief days as a
cutpurse. Even the faint hiss as the slipknot loosened and the rope
came free seemed to batter her ears like thunder. The end of the rope
flew past her, down into the pit; then she gripped her end and began
hauling it in.

She was hauling vigorously when the rope suddenly went taut in her
hands. Caught on another root, she thought. Then it began jerking up
and down. Caught it was, but by something alive in the depths of the
pit—and, she would wager, not by anything as innocent as a crocodile.

Valeria would gladly have faced a score of crocodiles rather than what
might even now be climbing from the depths. She did not let fingers or
voice shake, however, to give any hint of her fear. She flung her end
of the rope across the pit, saw Conan grip it firmly, then heaved with
all her strength on the bight of the vines.

For the longest moment of Valeria's life, it was an even contest which
would break first—the vine or the grip of whatever lay below. Then,
suddenly, the rope shot up like a flying fish. Valeria seized the free
end and hastily bound it about her waist.

The rope was covered with a foul ichor that might have oozed from a
vast pustule, and now she heard slobbering and gulping noises from
below. Not far below, either, and she would have to swing down to cross
the pit. The root offered no foothold fit for a leap.

"Conan!" she called.

"I hear it, too. Jump, Valeria!"

She would drop no farther if she missed her jump than if she swung
down, then climbed. Not as far, indeed, for Conan was drawing in the
rope until it stretched taut across the gap.

Valeria braced herself, flexed her legs, pressed her hands hard against
the wall, and thereby dislodged several more clods of earth. They fell
into darkness, and it seemed that the slobbering and gulping grew
louder yet.

The pirate woman took the deepest breath of her life, as if enough
oxygen in her body would float her over the nightmare gap. Then she
leaped.

She was in midair for only a heartbeat, but that was long enough for
something to reach up from below and pat her. Its touch was as light as
a kitten's, yet it burned like a hot iron.

Then she was on the far side, clawing up over the tumbled earth,
listening to the howl of a hunter balked of prey echo up and down the
pit and into the tunnel. More earth fell from the walls and ceiling.
Conan dragged her the rest of the way over the pile by one arm and her
hair.

In the process, her loincloth at last deserted her, and she was bare
except for weapons and boots as she tumbled at the Cimmerian's feet.
For once he seemed to ignore that state, dragging her upright.

"Can you walk?"

"I can run, to get away from that!"

The howling in the tunnel had not diminished, and now Valeria heard
another fierce sound joining it.

The walls of the pit were shuddering, as she wanted to do, and she saw
masses of earth the size of a man plunge past. She also heard them
strike something not far below with an ugly, sodden sound.

Then the roof of the tunnel mouth joined the shuddering, and neither
Cimmerian nor Aquilonian needed any further warning. They scrambled
down the tunnel, slowing only when they felt stone under their feet,
not stopping until they heard the rumble of great masses of falling
earth behind them.

A mephitic breeze wafted from the mouth of the tunnel—or rather, from
where the mouth of the tunnel had been. Whether the whole pit had
collapsed, they could not say. But the way back was now blocked by a
solid mass of earth that seemed to glare at them in defiance of any
puny efforts they might make to shift it and escape.

Not that Valeria had the slightest intention of returning by way of the
pit, when its inhabitants might still be alive and hungry. Perhaps that
wall of earth between her and them was not so dire a fate as she had
thought—unless the pit creatures could carve a path through it, or they
had kin somewhere in the tunnel beyond.

As to the first, the best course was swift flight. As to the second,
keen eyes and keen steel would have to be enough—that, and a prayer or
two, if any god could hear them from these deeps.

She pointed a bare arm down the tunnel. Conan nodded and fell in at the
rear, for the moment the post of greater danger. Valeria recognized
this, and also that Conan's eyes now roamed over her with concern for
any hurts she might have taken.

But there was hardly a price she would not have paid to be able to
climb into a hot bath!

Conan took the rear guard until they reached a place where the tunnel
divided; there were no sounds of pursuit behind or of life ahead. That
this was no natural tunnel was by now made plainer than ever by the
remains of incredibly ancient tool marks and patches of stain and
corrosion that might once have been bronze or iron.

At the dividing point, Conan examined Valeria's ankle. It showed an
ugly dark mark, like the worst sort of burn, but the pain was fading
and the ankle would support her weight. Like his ribs, it would slow
neither weapons nor feet, depending on what seemed the best way of
meeting any danger.

"Now, you will take the shirt off my back, or I'll know why," he said.
"Garbed as you are, you'd adorn a royal palace, but I doubt we'll be
finding many palaces down here. Their dungeons, perhaps, and the bones
of those held in them, but little else."

"You need not soothe me, you son of a he-goat."

"Ha! You've your spirits back. Perhaps you need no clothes then, since
without them, you're double-armed, steel and womanhood!"

"Give me that shirt," she snapped, then laughed loud enough to raise
echoes. She looked about her while the echoes died, then almost
snatched the garment the Cimmerian held out to her.

It came down to mid-thigh. Conan cut the sleeves into strips and bound
them around Valeria's feet to protect the blisters until further
walking toughened the skin. So clad, with her hair a tangle any honest
bird would have disdained to nest in, and her boots dangling from a
thong about her neck, Valeria would have been flung into the street
from the cheapest waterfront tavern.

Or she would have been but for her sword and daggers—and also for the
look in her eyes that said any hand touching her against her will would
not return to its owner intact, if at all.

Conan needed no further warnings in that matter. Indeed, he was
grateful for the skill and luck that had allowed her to keep her
weapons. They would be fighting again before they ever saw daylight,
even if the battle was against foes where steel could do no more than
give man or woman a clean death.

Valeria found little pleasure in her present situation save being
alive. Also, the Cimmerian's presence might well keep her so longer
than otherwise. He had been as formidable against natural foes as
against magical ones, and for rather more years than she had followed
the warrior's path.

Where the tunnel divided, one way sloped upward, the other down. They
halted, Valeria set her back against the wall and looked to the rear,
and Conan briefly explored in both directions.

Valeria did not enjoy being even briefly alone here in the bowels of
the earth. But she could master her fancies now; she would wait for
real monsters to leap from the shadows before she let herself fear. She
passed the brief time of waiting by unrolling the sword-thong from
about her waist and linking sword and wrist securely. She hoped she
would have no call for more climbing, and likewise that the damp air
would keep the vine supple and strong should she need it.

Conan returned swiftly. "The way down leads to water, deeper than I'd
care to try. And that's leaving out what might be in the water."

Valeria held her nose. "Something that reeks like a days-old
battlefield, from what's on you."

"That, and more. I saw statues, kin to the oldest idols I saw in the
Black Kingdoms. I'm more than ever certain that someone built this
warren."

"But why?"

"Like as not, to save a trek through the jungle. Let's hope it's fit to
do the same for us." He looked at the upward-sloping way. "If I'm not
altogether turned about, that leads back the way we came."

"Better the jungle we know than what might be down here," Valeria said
fervently. "That beast in the pit sounded like something that could
have eaten Xuchotl's Crawler for lunch and the dragon in the forest for
dinner."

Conan said nothing, but took the lead. For three hundred paces, the
tunnel sloped upward. Valeria began to hope that it might rise so close
to the surface that they could make a way for themselves. If another
tree had thrust a root down—

Disappointment came swiftly. Not only were the tunnel walls intact,
save for one place where a niche had crumbled, but the floor began to
slope downward as steeply as it had risen. It also grew as slick as if
it had been oiled.

The light did not fade, and Valeria now began to make out paintings on
the wall. Or at least they might have been paintings. They also might
have been patterns of tiny jewels set into the stone; they seemed to
sparkle. Trying to see which, Valeria looked closely at one pattern—and
found that it changed before her eyes, from one beast to another, and
then to yet others.

One beast was a lion, another a great fish, and she hoped that the
third was a dragon. The rest were things that she decided she would not
care to look at too closely, let alone meet.

Although the light did not fade, Valeria began to feel moving air brush
against her skin. Her nose wrinkled at the growing reek of something
long dead and thoroughly rotten. She tore another strip from Conan's
shirt and bound it over her nose, and the Cimmerian did likewise.

Past a curve where a slab of wall had fallen to half block the tunnel,
they came to a cavern the size of a royal hall. The light seemed to
cling to the floor, so that the roof of the cavern was lost in shadow.
The far wall, a good bowshot away, was likewise dimmed.

The floor of the cavern was almost lost under a carpet of fungi. They
grew in great slabs, rising as high as Valeria's waist; for the most
part, they were pale and flabby but with streaks of a more wholesome
brown color running through them. From their stems dripped a greasy
fluid that turned the soil beneath to a noisome muck, and more than a
few of them had the appearance of being half-eaten.

This time the two explored together. Unspoken but plain was the
agreement that no one should go with unguarded back in this cavern.

As they circled the walls, they found more fungi that looked as if they
had been gnawed at. One entire patch of soil had been eaten bare, with
fresh fungi already sprouting among the rotting fragments of the old
ones.

"These things grow fast," Conan observed. "Fast enough, I wager, for
something to browse on them."

Halfway around the cavern, they found the fungi growing thicker than
ever, and the smell of decay the strongest. Valeria stepped forward and
slashed at the largest slab with her sword. It fell apart in a
crumbling mass of dust and spores, revealing a massive rib—part of the
remains of some unearthly creature.

"Something did browse on them, Conan," she said.

She could not help looking about the cavern. "Now they're eating it."

"If beasts can eat them—" he said.

Valeria's stomach twisted, and the last of the monkey nearly left her.
"Birds and monkeys are a good test. Whatever that creature was, it
might have been born of magic, left over from the days of the
tunnel-builders. Who knows what it could stomach that would kill us?"

"True enough, but we've found nothing else to eat, and no water fit to
drink. These look like they might have water inside."

"Ah…"

"I'll try a bit first. If my fingers and toes don't turn green and fall
off—"

"Ha! A Cimmerian's no better than this beast for testing what common
folk can eat. I've seen you eating what they served at the soldiers'
taverns in Sukhmet!"

"Better fare than the rations, I'd say."

Valeria threw up her hands in mock disgust. "If you've a belly and
bowels of iron, perhaps. I'd rather eat salt beef three years in the
cask. By Erlik, I'd rather eat the cask!"

"A trifle hard on the teeth, for my taste," Conan said.

Valeria noted with amusement that he still approached the fungus as if
it were a venomous snake, probing with his dagger, and only then
slicing. He was also careful to catch the slice before it struck the
ground. When he put it to his mouth, he bit off a portion that might
have fit in a thimble with room to spare.

After a moment's chewing, he swallowed. "Greasy as a Stygian harlot's
hair," he said. "Otherwise, I've eaten worse."

"How long would it take you to remember when and where?"

"Oh, give me a year or so—" He broke off and cupped a hand to one ear.
Valeria imitated him, her other hand on her sword, but heard nothing.

"Could be a trick of the echoes in this tomb," Conan said at last.
Valeria wished he had not used that word.

The Cimmerian cut off another, slightly larger piece of the fungus and
disposed of it as he had the first. When it went down, he licked his
lips.

"Greasier than the first, but nothing else against it," he said. "Wait
a bit, to see how it sits in my stomach—"

The sound was half growl, half scream, and altogether ghastly. The
cavern picked it up, hurling echoes back and forth until it seemed to
Valeria that they might be inside a giant drum beaten by a madman.

She would almost rather have been mad than to have seen what came
lumbering into the cavern from another tunnel. It was as high as a man
at the shoulders, with great plates of bone jutting from behind its
eyes to guard its thick neck. Crimson orbs the size of melons glared at
them past two stout horns thrusting forward from the beaked muzzle.
With its tail, it was longer than a ship's boat, and from the way it
sank into the ground, it was as heavy as an elephant.

Another dragon, and no Apples of Derketa to slay it. That was Valeria's
first thought. A brighter one followed on its heels. I have good
company for a last battle.

As if they had been fighting-partners for years, Valeria and Conan
spread apart so that the creature could not attack both of them at
once. Valeria studied the horns and headplates. If neither were too
sharp, they offered handholds. Then a good thrust with sword or dagger
might serve this beast as it had the crocodile.

Instead of attacking, the beast cried out again. It seemed to wait for
an answer, or perhaps for the echoes to die. Then it still did not
attack. It lumbered forward to the edge of the fungi, lowered its broad
muzzle, and bit off a clump.

"That brute's no dragon," Conan called. "It's the fungus-eater."

"Then what killed the other—" Valeria began.

In the next moment, she had what might have been the answer to her
question. Dim-sighted it might be, but the creature's hearing was keen
enough. It turned toward the voices, and Conan signaled urgently for
silence.

Valeria needed no urging. She opened the distance between her and her
comrade still wider. If dim enough of sight, the beast might not be
able to see two foes, let alone attack them. Then one of them might
die, but the other would have a chance at the kill.

If the creature saw them, it gave no sign of it. Valeria wondered if it
was so scant of sight that it could spy only movement. After a moment,
it lowered its head and resumed feeding.

The creature was no dainty eater. It slobbered and crunched its way
through a patch of fungus as large as an Aquilonian kitchen garden. Its
eating, it belches, and its footfalls raised more echoes. A cavalry
trumpet in its ear might have won its attention, but scarcely any
lesser sound.

Sated, it lifted its head and lumbered toward the body of the other
creature—its victim, perhaps, in a battle to the death over this
caveful of food. It reached the body, snuffled noisily about it, then
lifted its head again and gave its challenge louder than before.

Valeria felt as if hot nails were driving into her ears, but she did
not take her eyes off the creature. It might be dim of sight and unable
to hear much over the sound of its own feeding, but it seemed able to
scent the trace of a stranger.

Silently, Conan waved at her to come closer. Still watching their
visitor, she knelt, then crawled on hands and knees through the fungi.
The Cimmerian stood as still as a temple image, watching the beast make
the rounds of the wall, until she reached him.

"We'll have to face him now," he whispered. "He's caught the scent of
some stranger on his territory. If we don't kill him, he'll hunt us
until he catches us off guard."

Valeria was ready to agree. The beast's jaws were flat, bony plates,
with no more teeth than a chicken's beak. They were also large enough
to swallow her whole, and strong enough to crack Conan's bones like
twigs.

They separated again. They were forty paces apart when a puff of air
wafted from the tunnel by which they had entered the cavern. It blew
past them, and Valeria willed limbs, and even breath to stillness as
she waited for the beast's reply.

It came—another screaming, thundering challenge. The echoes had not
begun to die when it charged. Like a heavily laden ship in heavy seas,
it labored through the fungi, trampling some, shredding others. It held
its head low, horns thrusting forward like the ram of a galley. Valeria
remained still as the beast surged between them.

In the next moment, Conan shot forward like a stone from a sling. His
hands gripped the upper horn, and he vaulted clear over the beast's
muzzle, aiming for its neck.

Somehow, his iron grip failed him. The leap sent him sprawling across
the neck instead of landing safely astride. He slid off and landed
rolling, parting company with his sword in midair.

Valeria filled her lungs in a single desperate breath and let out the
shriek of a soul in torment. The beast's head turned toward her. The
gods might be thinking it was Conan's day to die and hers to kill, but
Valeria of the Red Brotherhood let neither man nor god decide such
matters for her.

Clearly, the sensing of two enemies was more than the beast's dim wits
could endure. It cried challenge again, and began to back away.

"Together—now!" Conan roared.

That drew the beast toward him, but he was on his feet and fully armed
again. Valeria had seen before that the Cimmerian could move forward
and backward with equal speed; now she saw him do it again. As he gave
ground, he drew the beast after him, and it seemed to forget that it
had ever sensed a second opponent. Against Valeria, that was a death
sentence.

She sprang forward, light-footed as a cat, leaping successfully where
Conan had failed. She ended straddling the neck. She gripped the edge
of the neckplates and lunged to her feet, ready to stab.

As she did, the beast reared up on its hind legs. With the swiftness
and agility learned high in the rigging of half a score of ships,
Valeria entrusted her sword to the wrist-thong and gripped the
neckplates with both hands. Both thong and hands did their duty as
Valeria dangled from the neckplates like a puppet. The beast hissed,
growled, and screamed all at once, then tossed its head, trying to rid
itself of the distracting nuisance.

This gave the Cimmerian his chance for a stroke at the beast's
unprotected throat. His sword sang as it parted air, hand-sized scales,
and the flesh beneath. Driven by all the strength of two brawny arms,
the sword slashed clean through to the beast's life.

Its next cry bubbled and hissed, and sprayed a mist of blood
everywhere. It did not fall, though, and Valeria heaved herself onto
the neckplates. For a moment, she balanced there as if atop a mast
swaying in a storm, displaying the grace of one who had done that many
times.

Then her sword slashed at thin bone between the crimson eyes. The next
moment, she was flying through the air as if the mast had snapped. She
landed among the fungi, which broke her fall and coated her in their
grease.

As she struggled to her feet, she saw Conan leading the beast away from
her. It was bleeding generously now, and clearly all but blind, yet it
would not fall! Valeria cursed whatever misbegotten sons of flea-bitten
apes had conjured up this creature with its unnatural life.

As if her curse had been a spell, the thing seemed to find new
strength. It lunged at Conan, and the Cimmerian had to break into a run
to stay ahead of it. The jaws clanged and clashed, and the beast swung
toward the tunnel from which Conan and Valeria had entered the cavern.

It swung toward the opening, then charged with single-minded frenzy, as
if the answer to all of its woes lay in that tunnel. The charge carried
it across the cavern faster than Valeria could have run, and she caught
only a brief glimpse of Conan staying ahead of the jaws.

Then Cimmerian and monster together reached the mouth of the tunnel.
Conan's war cry, the creature's last challenge, and the rumble of
falling rock blended into one ear-torturing din. Echoes stormed about
the cavern, doubling and redoubling themselves.

Valeria knelt and watched a vast cloud of dust belch from the tunnel.
Nothing remained visible outside it but the tip of the beast's tail,
thrashing feebly. Then the thrashing subsided to a twitching, and even
the twitching ended.

Valeria commanded her hands to stop shaking and her knees to hold her
up, and walked toward the fallen tunnel. She had no clear idea of what
she would do when she reached it, other than seek Conan's body. If it
was only caught under the beast and not under the fallen stones, she
might be able to carve a way through the beast's flesh—

A massive, dark form took shape out of the dust cloud.

Valeria crammed her free hand into her mouth to stifle a scream. Her
sword rose in the other, as much good as it might be against a spirit—

"Valeria!"

Valeria's mouth opened, but no sound came out. She did not drop her
sword, and she was still rooted to the spot when Conan reached her.

His arms around her were so comforting that she wondered why she had
not asked for them many times already. After a little while, she
stopped shaking, and after a while longer, she found her voice again.

"It's as well I didn't need to go after you a second time. I've hardly
a rag to spare, and that beast's hide looks too tough to cut up for
garments."

Conan shrugged. "I've told you what your best garb is. If you won't
believe me, that's only proof that you don't trust men."

"I give men all the trust they deserve," Valeria said with dignity. She
held her thumb and forefinger about a hairbreadth apart. "At least that
much." She was relieved to see that her hand was steady.

"We'd best be on our way before this uproar draws all our friend's
kin," Conan said. "But there's no going back the way we came. It's
solid with fallen stone where it isn't solid with dead beast."

It did nothing for Valeria's spirits to see that the only other way out
of the cavern sloped sharply downward. But at least there was light as
far ahead as she could make out, and a dampness in the air that hinted
of water.

She turned, to see Conan slicing off a clump of fungi as large as a
hunting dog. "Rations for the journey?" she asked. Her stomach wanted
to heave at the thought, but she was hungry enough that it rumbled
instead.

"Why not?" Conan replied, tossing the fungi to her. "If it killed
quickly, I'd be dead along with that beast. If I'm still alive at our
next halt, I'll say it doesn't kill at all."

Valeria tucked the mass of fungi under her arm and sheathed her sword.
"Conan, you have too cursed many ways of making a woman wish to keep
you alive!"

----------------------------------------------------------------------


FIVE

Conan led the way down the tunnel. If danger should arise, it would
most likely come from another beast, drawn by the din of the first
one's death. It could also come with the Cimmerian's blessing, if it
waited until he and Valeria were safely out of its path!

The tunnel sloped steadily downward, and the air grew damper. It was
not as foul as one would have expected, though, as far underground as
it lay, and with so much death and rottenness about.

Conan found small relief in that. Ancient magic must be all about them
here, shedding light, cleansing the air, and giving life to
who-knew-what monstrosities besides those they had already met. A sword
and the untamed jungle before him would be his choice, but every step
they took seemed to take them farther into the bowels of this warren.

Clearly, the beast and its kin had passed this way many times. Even the
hardest rock of walls and floor was scored by claws and scales. Loose
scales in half a score of hues had drifted like autumn leaves into
crannies and windings of the tunnel. In one place, a bronze post the
thickness of Conan's arm had bent almost double under the onrush of
something swift, strong, and massive.

Once the tunnel branched, and Conan thought he saw a slight upward
slope in the floor of the branch, at the very limits of his vision.
This proved no trick of the light, but fifty paces farther on came a
bend, and just beyond that, a dead end.

Nor was the dead end a natural rockfall. An enormous door of stone
slabs set in what seemed to be a frame of gilded bronze blocked the
way. Conan saw that it slid to and fro in bronze grooves that led into
niches on either side of the tunnel.

The least of the slabs had to weigh more than the Cimmerian, and the
thinnest metal rods of the frames were thicker than Valeria's legs.
Some of the rods were wrought in the shape of serpents, and more
serpents writhed across the slabs, some of them painted in tiny jewels,
others cunningly carved.

Conan did not care to think what spells might be needed to move this
door. Spells, or perhaps some device that would rival those of drowned
Atlantis and make a siege-engine of Khitai seem a child's toy.

"Some of those serpents have green eyes," Valeria whispered. The awe of
this place and its ancient works was in her, too. "Are they meant to be
the Golden Serpents?"

Conan studied the shapes. The gilding was worn in places and tarnished
in more, but, in truth, the eyes of all the serpents, carved or
painted, were tiny green jewels. Studying them yet more closely, he saw
that the jewels seemed to glow from within like the fire-stones they
had seen in Xuchotl.

"Ha! Perhaps we've found where the Golden Serpents laired in ancient
times," he said. "They would be cause enough for a door like this. It
would stop a galley's ram."

"Then let us hope it does its work until we are out of these caves,"
Valeria said.

"Woman, where is a true pirate's heart?" Conan scoffed. He thrust a
forefinger against Valeria's ribs.

She lightly batted his hand away. "Down in her boots, I confess,
although I'll geld you if you breathe a word of it." She rubbed her
stomach. "Her stomach's about to follow." She looked at the fungi under
her arm. "Are these really fit to eat?"

"They haven't killed me yet."

"Just let me eat my fill, and no doubt you will writhe and die the
moment afterward."

The bronze door would have guarded their backs nicely, but who could
say what lay on the other side? Also, if one of the beasts should catch
their scent and come down the branch tunnel, they would be trapped.

So they returned to the junction of the tunnels to eat. "Tastes like
raw sea slugs," Valeria said after a few mouthfuls.

"And how are they? I've heard of them, but also that they're poison if
not cooked."

"It's not the cooking that takes out the poison. There's a spot in the
head that needs cutting out, or one slug can kill a ship's crew. A
cunning hand with a knife can do the work, though, and then the slug's
called a rare treat in some lands. Mostly farther south than we've
sailed, but during one hot summer, the slugs spawned farther north than
usual."

They finished as much fungus as seemed wise, in a silence that was
almost companionable. Conan vowed that if he and Valeria lived to reach
a land with civilized eating-houses, he would buy her a meal she would
not soon forget.

Meanwhile, they had traveled long enough and far enough to be weary.
They tossed a piece of fungus for who kept first watch, and Conan won
the honor.

"Need we keep watches at all?" Valeria asked. She pressed a hand
lightly against the Cimmerian's battered ribs. He drew a deep breath,
but not from any pain her touch gave him.

"I've no wish to end up in the belly of one of those beasts, or to be
trampled by one, either. And they may not be all that roam down here."

"Now you have made it certain that I will not sleep for the waking
nightmares you just gave me!" Her pouting, though, was largely
pretense.

Conan gripped Valeria's hand and gently thrust it away. "Lose no sleep
over me, at least. I've had worse hurts as a boy, falling off a roof my
father and I were thatching."

"As you wish, Conan," Valeria said. She turned and settled down from
where she could watch in all directions. Conan allowed himself a moment
to admire the fine, straight back that plunged down from the long neck
to the well-rounded hips. Then he placed his steel ready to hand,
kicked off his boots, and lay down to seek as much slumber as a man
might win from a cold stone floor with magic all about him.

The hut where Dobanpu Spirit-Speaker slept when he visited the largest
Ichiribu village was a place of shadows and subtle odors. It almost
seemed to Seyganko that a tame spirit lurked in the grass of the roof,
driving out the light.

The odors mingled grass, cooking smoke, the smoke of fires made with
herbs, and the oil that Emwaya rubbed into her skin. Seyganko
remembered the first time she had allowed him the honor of rubbing it
in. His body tautened with remembered and anticipated desire.

In her corner of the hut, Emwaya sat like a carved image. She wore the
plainest of waistcloths and only a single bone ornament in her hair,
and her face was somber as she shifted her gaze from her father to her
betrothed.

"You asked what we must do, Father?" she asked.

"In plain words," Dobanpu replied. His voice was the strongest part of
him remaining, although he had not wholly lost the stout thews and
broad shoulders of his youth. He had seen nearly sixty turns of the
seasons and outlived all the children of his first wives, and all but
Emwaya from his second family.

Some said he had suffered these losses as the price of all the time he
had spent in the spirit world. Even those who said this whispered it.
When they spoke aloud, they praised the courage with which he had borne
his losses. They did doubt aloud the wisdom of his teaching his
daughter the art of Spirit-Speaking, but only when Emwaya was not in
hearing. Some called her tongue the deadliest weapon among the
Ichiribu.

Dobanpu rose, stretching limbs cramped by long sitting. "Very surely, I
want to know your thoughts as to what we must do," he said. "I did not
go against all custom in teaching you my arts to have you sit as mute
as the frog-queen in the tale of Myosta!"

"You asked, I answer," Emwaya said. "We must watch Aondo. Or better
yet, find a way to take his weapons."

"Aondo is needed among the warriors," Seyganko said.

"Even at your back?"

"Properly watched, even at my back," the warrior asserted. "We can do
nothing against him without dishonor and insult."

"If he feels insult, he can challenge you. That will be the end of
him."

Dobanpu laughed softly. "Daughter, you have more faith in your
betrothed's prowess than is wise. Aondo is so strong that it might not
matter if he is as slow as a mired hippopotamus. Remember that when the
great-jawed one reaches its victim, it is certain death."

"Indeed," Seyganko said. "Also, any man's foot may slip if his luck is
out and the spirits not with him. They might well desert me if I
dishonored a proven warrior like Aondo by trapping him into a
death-duel."

"You speak of what the spirits might do?" Emwaya snapped.

"Yes, and if it is not to your liking, you may ask your father to end
his teaching of me!"

Warrior and woman glared at each other for a moment, while Dobanpu
raised his eyes to the shadowed ceiling and seemed to be asking the
spirits for a brief moment of deafness, that he might not hear two whom
he loved making fools of themselves. At last it was Emwaya who lowered
her eyes.

That, Seyganko knew, was as much of an apology as he was likely to
receive. But Emwaya was now of a mind to listen, and he could speak
more freely.

"Also, I do not think that Aondo is the first of our enemies among the
warriors. The loudest, I grant you. But first? No, I think more danger
comes from one whose name I do not know, but whose presence I can
guess."

"A spy for Chabano?" Emwaya asked.

"For him, for the God-Men, or perhaps for both."

"A bold one, if he thinks to serve both," Dobanpu said almost
meditatively. "One hears tales, and more than a few of them, that the
friendship of Paramount Chief and God-Men is a frail thing."

"All the more reason, then, to keep the spy alive," Seyganko said. "A
man who tells tales can be made to bear false ones, to set his masters
at each other's throats."

"You play stickball with lives," Emwaya said, her voice brittle.

"How not, daughter?" Dobanpu asked. "Learn a little more of my art and
you will understand why this must sometimes be so. Or else give over
learning Spirit-Speaking, wed Seyganko, bear his sons, govern his house
and lesser wives—"

"And die when the Kwanyi and the God-Men strike, plowing our ashes into
the fields before they sail south to carry all before them!" Emwaya
shouted. Seyganko thought her about to weep.

Her storms were violent but swift, like those of the Lake of Death. She
blinked hard, then contrived a smile. "Father, Seyganko. I know the
price of any choice other than the one I have made. It may be the price
even if I walk the way you bade me. But I do not have to rejoice in
what the gods have sent to the Ichiribu."

"No one but a fool would ask you to," Seyganko said gently. He wished
to take her in his arms, but thought the moment unfit. "Do you see any
fools here about you?"

Emwaya laughed aloud. "Not yet."

"Then we go on as we have begun," Dobanpu said. "Indeed, I think this
spy gives us yet more cause to leave Aondo alive. He can hardly be the
spy, but I would wager a hutful of mealies and a new canoe that he
knows who that man is. Following the leopard's cub has been known to
lead a hunter to the leopard's lair."

Valeria had lost all notion of how long they had been tramping these
endless underground passages. It was not merely an underground city
they had entered, it was near to an underground kingdom. Already they
had traversed thrice the distance from one side of Xuchotl to the
other.

At least they had done so had they traveled in anything like a straight
line. Valeria had barely more notion of their direction than she had of
the passage of time. For all she could say, they might be wandering in
circles.

No, that could not be altogether true. Except where they found blind
tunnels or stairs leading up to impassable barriers, they had yet to
retrace their steps. They were moving onward, but toward what
destination, only the gods knew.

This place of cunningly wrought rock, and both beasts and spells of
incredible antiquity, seemed as remote from the sight of the gods as it
was from the sight of the sun. If any answers were to be found, she and
Conan would have to find them unaided.

As always when Valeria found her thoughts thrashing about thus, like a
cat in a sack, she eased herself by taking the lead. The need to be
keenly alert to hidden dangers cudgeled her wits into some sort of
order. The Cimmerian doubtless knew her reasons, but courtesy to a
battle-comrade had so far curbed his tongue.

Another cave opened before them. Or chamber, rather. It might have been
a cave once, carved from the rock over the eons by oozing, then
dripping, then gushing water. Now the underground stream that had done
the work flowed through a channel carved in a floor of pale, rose-hued
stone, polished until it was silken-smooth to the touch and lightly
shining even in the pale magic-light.

Walls and ceiling were of the natural rock, but squared off, every
corner a right angle as neat as any mason could have made. But then,
masons had made them, even if they had doubtless worked with magic
instead of mallets and chisels.

Conan knelt beside the channel and reached down to dip a finger in the
water. "Fresh, as cold as a Hyperborean's arse, and flowing swiftly.
Anyone for a bath before we drink our fill?"

Valeria had doffed her garments ere the Cimmerian had finished
speaking. She no longer feared Conan's eyes upon her, but found them,
rather, a trifle flattering. Since they had left Xuchotl, she had grown
somewhat thin-flanked, yet Conan seemed not to notice. Or perhaps
pretending not to notice such matters was another courtesy between
battle-comrades?

They both splashed merrily about in the channel, deep enough to sit in
up to their necks had it not been too cold for sitting at all. Then
they drank, until Valeria could feel her empty stomach filled at least
with water.

Valeria knelt by the channel, clad only in goose-flesh and drops of
water, to rinse out her garments as best she could. When she had wrung
them dry enough to wear, she stretched and began retying her boot
bindings.

"How long have we been down here?" she asked as she finished the left
foot.

"If our sleeping's any guide, for three days, four at the outside."

"By Set's fangs, it feels longer!"

"That it might, but don't let yourself be careless of judging the time.
That way lies madness."

"Tell me what I do not know, Conan! Have you ever been out of the sun
so long?"

"Yes."

His tone did not encourage her to ask further. She let it pass. She
knew by now that some of his adventures he would boast of in taverns,
and others he would carry as secrets to his grave. She only prayed that
neither his grave nor hers might be in this godless wilderness beneath
the earth.

He stood up and for a moment held her at arm's length, his massive
hands almost covering her shoulders. "We can take heart from this much:
We've not gone in circles, and we've come far enough to be well beyond
the river. Also, there are more worked and finished passages every
day."

"We're closer to the heart of this city?"

"If city it be, I'd wager we are. And where the heart of any city lies,
there will be the treasures and pleasures. Perhaps, in this city, even
ways to the surface!"

His hands lifted from her shoulders, and Valeria knew a moment's urge
to grab them and pull them back to where they had been, or even to
other places. She laughed at this picture of herself and Conan tumbling
on the hard stone until they rolled into the channel again and cooled
their ardor!

"If you can find that much to laugh about in our case, woman, I'll take
you anywhere!"

Valeria almost replied, "And I will follow." But those would be
ill-omened words, a promise she could hardly expect to keep. She was of
the Red Brotherhood, and she had acknowledged no master for too long to
change now.

"Let us see where we have to go to leave this place first, Conan," she
said. Then she sat and began binding her other foot.

"On them!"

Chabano, Paramount Chief of the Kwanyi, stood at the edge of the
platform in the tree and shouted to the hundred warriors below. The
underchiefs raised their hands in salute, while the warriors clashed
their spears against their shields.

Then the Kwanyi warriors leaped forward at the enemy. The "enemy" was
only a field of stumps, but the charge was not without peril. Chabano
had seen to that.

The first warrior fell even before the charge reached the stumps. The
grass covering a pit gave under his pounding feet. He did not fall all
the way in to impale himself on the dung-poisoned stake at the bottom,
however. He flung himself forward desperately, reached the far edge of
the pit, and rolled clear. A moment later, he was on his feet and
running to rejoin his comrades. They were now well ahead of him, but
Chabano found no fatal fault in that.

The warrior's eyes had not been as keen as they might have been, but
his limbs and wits had come to his rescue. He had not even dropped his
spear or shield, a dereliction that would have earned him a beating.

Two more warriors fell at the tangle of vines stretched among the
stumps. One of them did not rise swiftly enough. Chabano watched the
warrior's underchief run up behind him and slash him fiercely across
the shoulder with the snakeskin mboqa. The warrior leaped up, made the
briefest gesture of supplication, and ran on.

The other fallen warrior did not rise at all, but there was reason for
his lying among the vines. Trying desperately to keep his feet, he had
rammed his head into one of the stumps. Doubtless he was senseless; he
might even be dying, and small loss if he were. Had he thought less of
the shame of the mboqa and more of how his tribe needed all of its
warriors, he might have done otherwise and still be running.

The remaining warriors reached the far side of the field of stumps in a
double line more ragged than Chabano cared to see. The underchiefs, he
decided, would face one of the lesser ordeals tonight.

Now the warriors went furiously through the rite of shield and spear,
throwing the small spear, hooking an opponent with the shield, then
lunging with the great spear as the shield-hooking exposed the other
and drew him close. They knew it meant more than pleasing the gods, or
even Chabano, who was closer than the gods and therefore perhaps more
to be feared. It meant victory, on the day when the Lake of Death was
no longer closed to the Kwanyi by the Ichiribu. Victory, over every
tribe in their path for as far as they chose to march.

All the Kwanyi would then have their pick of slaves and food, huts
worthy of a chief, and honor among gods and men alike. They would also
have honor in the eyes of Chabano, who had made them what they were and
would lead them when they became still greater.

Chabano sprang down from his platform. Although he had seen just short
of forty turns of the seasons, his eyes and his wind were those of a
man far younger. His feet, painted the red that marked his chieftaincy,
danced in the dust as he approached his warriors.

"Hail, Chabano!" the underchiefs called. The warriors repeated the
greeting, then clashed shield and spear again.

"Well done," Chabano said. "Not perfect, but only the gods are
perfect."

"Thus say the God-Men," a warrior shouted. One had to be of the Kwanyi
oneself to catch the note of mockery in the man's voice. The God-Men
were not Kwanyi, and to them, these words would seem full of honor.

Empty honor, as empty as their heads.

Only if a Kwanyi warrior had grown so foul of spirit as to spy for the
God-Men would they learn they had been mocked. Chabano refused to
believe that any of the men he had sworn, taught, and led in ordeal,
battle, or rite could be so corrupt.

Even if one had turned, Chabano still had the advantage. He had found
eyes and ears among the God-Men before the God-Men could have found any
among his warriors.

The height of the sun above the trees reminded him that this day's war
rites were almost done but his work was not. He slung his shield across
his back with the ritual three twists of the thong and held his spear
across his chest with both hands in the customary manner.

"Warriors of the Kwanyi, I must go speak with the gods. This day you
have pleased me. This night you may please yourselves."

That meant an ordeal for the slave women, perhaps for a few unlucky
free women as well. It would also be an ordeal for the brew-sisters,
who would have to work very hard to keep the warriors from growing
thirsty. Thirsty warriors had been known to ignore the fact that a
woman wore a headdress of the free Kwanyi.

"Let us go with you as far as the gods allow," said an underchief.

It was a moment to give fear, but not to shed blood.

Chabano slowly lowered his spear until its butt sank into the earth.
Without seeming to exert himself, he drove the butt half an arm's
length into the jungle floor.

Then he whipped his shield off his back, hooked his spear loose, and
caught it as it flew high. He ended with the spear aimed at the chest
of the underchief who had spoken.

The man knew that any outward sign of the fear thundering within him
would send the spear leaping into his chest. He did not even make the
gesture of supplication, although his eyes did not leave Chabano.

"The gods command that we stay here?" the man said. It showed high
courage to make it a question.

"They do," Chabano said. "Do you doubt their word?"

"The gods speak, but do they always speak plainly?" the man persisted.
Chabano decided that such courage deserved the reward of an end to
these fear-jests.

"You have wisdom, more than some I could name, who think that the gods'
messages bear only one meaning."

That was mockery of the God-Men which might be dangerous even for
Chabano should it reach their ears. The chief did not overly much care.

"But when the gods wish me dead, they will have me if all the warriors
of the Kwanyi march with me. If the gods wish me safe, I may go to this
day's speaking alone. Go, and find better company than I shall enjoy
for a while!"

The warriors grinned at one another, hearing the boldness of a chief
who dared mock even the gods themselves, not merely the God-Men. Then
they tossed their spears, gave a war cry, and strode off into the
jungle.

Chabano waited until the last was gone before he turned onto the path
he intended to follow. Even after that, he waited for a space, hiding,
and listening to be sure that he alone was taking this path. He did not
speak to the gods, but his eye and ear among the God-Men could tell him
more than the gods ever had.

Conan thought he heard a sound to their rear. He dropped back, looked
for a place from which to watch unseen, and found none that would hide
a mouse, let alone a Cimmerian. He contrived to flatten himself against
the wall and keep the silence of a cat stalking that mouse.

Then he heard Valeria signaling with the beat of dagger-hilt against
stone wall. Conan listened. He heard the code that said, "Come as soon
as you can, but there is no danger here." To any ear but his and
Valeria's, it would seem a natural sound of these haunted depths, or at
least nothing that spoke of human presence.

Conan waited, for about as long as a skilled tavern dancer might take
to shed her garments when the watchers bid eagerly in silver coin for
each piece of silk. Then he decided that once again this city of the
dead could play tricks with even the ears of a seasoned warrior.

He still walked cat-footed as he came up behind Valeria. She did not
start or make a sound, though; her ears seemed keener now than when she
had first gone underground. Instead, she pointed down the tunnel. Her
gesture was more eloquent than words, which were not needed. Conan saw
that a hundred paces farther on, the light turned green.

Now both were as silent as hunting creatures, or prey seeking to
escape, as they crept forward, one against either wall. Both bore steel
in their hands, both set feet down as if they trod on shards of glass,
or on sleeping serpents.

They reached the turning where the light changed, and looked beyond it.
For a moment, Conan thought they had stumbled upon a sleeping serpent—a
monster such as he had fought too often to care to meet again.

Then he saw that it was but a trick of the light that made the serpent
seem whole. Only a skeleton remained, although that skeleton stretched
twenty paces from the tooth-studded skull to the delicate bones of the
tail.

It was the light that had deceived Conan, a light that flooded the
cave. A light that seemed to rise like smoke from green jewels piled
deep inside the circle formed by the skeleton. The light of a greater
mass of fire-stones than Conan had ever dreamed existed.

In the Black Kingdoms, Conan had heard the legend of the Dying Place of
the Elephants. There, it was said, the great gray beasts went to end
their days. There, ivory to buy a kingdom lay, waiting for some bold
adventurer to stumble upon it.

He had never heard of such a tale about the Golden Serpents. Indeed, he
had never heard of anyone who had seen more of a Golden Serpent than
its fire-stone eyes—and it was only a tale that Golden Serpents' eyes
and fire-stones were one and the same.

Rather, it had been a tale. Now Conan knew it for the truth. In the
skull, as large as a horse's, two vast, green orbs flashed. Their glow
was identical to that of the jewels on the floor.

Conan softly let out his breath and stalked forward. Nothing living
could have been more silent. In that silence, he reached the skeleton
and knelt beside it, studying the eyes.

Now he understood why even such vast creatures as the Golden Serpents
yielded so many fire-stones. Each eye was the size of a platter, and
each one was made of twoscore or more stones. Some were as small as
acorns, others as large as the finest Bossonian cider apples. All
glowed with that unnatural light.

Conan also understood why the light had nothing of nature in it. No
natural creature had such eyes; the Golden Serpents were magicians'
work. The same magicians who had wrought this maze in the rock, where
he and Valeria might yet end their days? Perhaps. If so, they were long
dead, and their creations likewise.

Then even that small comfort left Conan. A wind colder than any that
ever blew in Cimmeria seemed to play upon his spine. Shreds of flesh
still clung to the serpent's bones. Golden scales still covered a few
of those shreds, and a faint miasma of decay rose from the greater part
of them.

Had it been here since the time of its creators, this Golden Serpent's
bones would have been fleshless, or the shreds of flesh mummified by
the subterranean air. This creature had been living while Conan walked
the earth above, perhaps even while he had fought and caroused with the
Barachan pirates.

Conan motioned Valeria forward, then moved to where he could look both
ways. He waited, steel at the ready, for her to study the bones and see
what he had seen.

Chabano's eyes and ears were those of a warrior half his age. He did
not need these to warn him of his spy's coming, for Ryku seemed as
careless as a child of being seen or heard. He was first among the
lesser God-Men, the Silent Brothers, but his lack of jungle craft made
him anything but silent.

Chabano used the time he gained to place himself high on a branch above
the trail. When the young God-Man came stamping into view like a
warthog in rut, Chabano slung both spear and shield, then gripped a
stout vine and leaped from his perch.

The other threw up his hands in dismay as Chabano seemed to fly down on
him out of the sky. Then he flung himself back against the mossy bark
of a forest tree and began silently mouthing curses.

"Cease," Chabano said. He put the tip of his spear under the man's chin
and gently raised the weapon until the man closed his mouth. "Or do you
think the gods will hear you without your masters also hearing?" the
chief added. "Surely you came as if you feared no human foe."

"I do not," Ryku said. "I am in the land of friends."

Chabano laughed longer than was good for Ryku's pride, but he did not
take the spear away. By the time the chief was done laughing, a drop of
blood showed on Ryku's chin.

"Is friendship then a jest?" Ryku asked. He stood without trying to
wipe away the blood, and met Chabano's eyes.

Again the chief decided there was enough courage here to deserve some
reward. "It is not. Nor is it found among all the Kwanyi. At least not
toward you, if it were known why you are here."

"Who would tell?"

"You would, if someone heated a spear and applied it to sufficient
parts of your body to unman or blind you," Chabano said. "Do not deny
it."

"I do not," Ryku said sturdily, but seeming a trifle bemused.

"As well. Do not, then, tread like an elephant when you come to our
meetings. Even if you have no enemies, I do, and they might follow you
to me."

"As you wish." Then Ryku took a more defiant tone. "One would think you
feared that the over-throwers of Xuchotl were abroad in the land
instead of your own warriors!"

"They could well be. Or do your masters know otherwise?"

"I came to tell you that they do not know one way or the other. They
cannot even be sure what magic was wrought to bring down the Accursed
City."

To Chabano, it seemed likely as not that it was the city folk's own
magic that had finally sent them mad, and not outsider's spells. If
they had then fallen on one another and cleansed the city of their foul
and useless lives, so much the better.

The folk of Xuchotl had bred for too long, and to little purpose. Now
they had left what would be a fine city from which to rule these lands
when the Kwanyi under him had done with all their enemies.

That was a dream he would not dwell on, however. Not while this close
to Ryku, who had the rank of Silent Brother but more of the God-Men's
knowledge than a wise man would offend without good cause.

"Then what do the God-Men wish of the Kwanyi?"

"Who says they wish anything?"

"I, Paramount Chief of the Kwanyi, say so. When have you come to me
without telling me some wishes of your masters? They know not what you
bear to me, but you do it nonetheless."

"The First Speaker wishes as before to learn anything you discover of
how Xuchotl was overthrown," Ryku said. "He also wishes the return of
the slave girl taken by the Ichiribu on the night of their raid."

This last demand was new. "Nothing more?"

"It is enough for the First Speaker."

Chabano laughed coarsely. "I should say that a wench of that age is
more than adequate for such an old man. What does he want of her?"

Ryku had enough courage, or enough fear of his leader to glare at
Chabano, a thing few did and lived. "Know you not what it is to be a
man with a woman? It will make a fine tale, that the great chief of the
Kwanyi—"

"—dashed out the brains of a God-Man whose tongue flew too far too
long," Chabano finished. He returned the glare, and Ryku fell silent.

"I shall discover what may be done prudently to return the girl, and
then find men to do it. This is not to be doubted."

"I do not doubt it," Ryku said. He was wise enough to make no promises
for the masters who did not know of his divided loyalties. "What of
Xuchotl's fate?"

"What of it?" Chabano retorted. "To ask me to seek wielders of mighty
magic is to ask the snake to hunt the leopard. Only by great good
fortune will I win any knowledge worth having."

Ryku's gestures and face told Chabano that matters were unchanged. The
God-Men would not put into Kwanyi hands any of their power, not even to
seek the cause of Xuchotl's doom. They would rather remain in ignorance
than risk giving others too much knowledge.

There lay the difference between the First Speaker of the Living Wind
and the Paramount Chief of the Kwanyi. For knowledge, Chabano had given
much, and might yet give more. There was another difference, too. The
chief knew that the God-Men would use the magic of Xuchotl's foes
against even the Kwanyi. He would not, if he could help it, give them
the power to doom his people.

Ryku went through the rituals of farewell from hunter to chief, then
withdrew. He could be heard for a shamefully long distance, but at
least he seemed to be attempting silence.

Valeria knelt beside the skeleton and the glowing mass of fire-stones
until she saw what Conan had wished her to see. Then she rose. It
seemed that every movement of her joints, every breath she took, had to
be loud enough to raise echoes and warn whatever lurked farther within
this nightmare of stone.

She wanted to whisper, but when she tried to speak thus, no sound came
out. Then she took a deep breath, bid fear kiss her hindquarters, and
laughed aloud.

"So the Golden Serpents are no legend after all? This brute lost its
scales a while back, I judge, but the eyes tell the tale."

Conan nodded. "And I'm thinking that it hasn't been dead for as long as
the beast we found dead in the fungus cave."

"I wish it had been," Valeria said. "Even a slab of that fungus would
seem like a banquet." She looked at the Cimmerian. "What are you
staring at? The new shape of my stomach, after being so near empty
these past days?"

The Cimmerian grinned. "You take it lightly, our sharing these tunnels
with the Golden Serpents."

Valeria blinked—and realized that her eyes were not quite dry. She
turned away, and Conan did her the courtesy of letting her stand thus
until she had command of herself again.

"How should I take it?" she said at last. "We are, I think, at that
time of an ordeal when one can either run mad or laugh. I'll laugh, if
it's all the same to you."

Conan's roar raised echoes and made stones fall from the pile. He
kissed her roundly on both cheeks, then on the lips, and finished with
a smart slap to her rear.

"I'll have to buy that pox-ridden captain a drink the next time I see
him. How else would I have won such a comrade if he hadn't driven you
into flight?"

"The gods only know. I'd rather voyage with a bog-troll, as often as
not." She knelt and set her boots on the floor.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Conan, this may be our last hoard of fire-stones. Have you forgotten
that I am of the Red Brotherhood, that you have a name among the
Barachans, and that good pirates do not leave fine loot to gather
dust?"

Conan laughed shortly and joined her at her work. The fire-stones were
light for their size, and enough to fill the toes of their boots was no
great burden.

Magic might be in the stones, of course, magic as evil as any in
Xuchotl. They might even draw other Golden Serpents, living ones, to
avenge the theft of their dead mates' treasures.

Valeria did not care. The magic here would slay her and the Cimmerian
or not, as fate would have it. It would no longer put her in fear.

As for the Golden Serpents, let them come. A day or two more and she
would be ready not only to spit one on her sword, but to eat it raw
afterward!

----------------------------------------------------------------------


SIX
---

"Conan," Valeria whispered, "I smell cooking fat. Or else my wits have
finally parted their mooring lines."

Conan sniffed the air, more damp and mephitic of late than before. They
had come, he judged, half a league through scum-coated water that
seemed to both ooze from below and drip from above. He wondered if they
were under a river, or more likely, a lake.

At times, the water was no more than a thin coating of slime on the
stone, which made footing treacherous even for two nimble warriors like
the Cimmerian and his companion. At other times, it rose to their
ankles, or even to their knees. After the first such place, Valeria
slung her jewel-laden boots about her neck. The Cimmerian's greater
stature allowed him to keep his treasure riding at his waist. Neither
needed the boots to guard leather-tough feet, and indeed, preferred
bare toes by which to feel out lurking menaces.

When knee-deep, the water seemed sometimes almost solid with plant and
animal matter that the ancient magic of these tunnels had been unable
to keep alive. In those places, it exhaled a noisome stench that made
even the hardened Cimmerian wish for something to bind over his mouth
and nose.

He wished even more to know what sort of creature had risen to attack
Valeria on the day they had entered this maze. Was it a water-dweller,
and were they perhaps approaching the lair of more of the breed?
Well-wielded steel was an answer to most creatures, but if the water
grew much deeper, swordplay would be sadly slowed… to say nothing of
what this muck could hardly fail to do to their blades—

Conan finished his sniffing. "Your wits are as sound as ever. I smell
it, too. Fish oil, I'd wager."

"What do you have to wager with, Cimmerian?"

"Not as much as you, I'll be bound, but—"

It was Valeria who held up one hand and pointed with the dagger in the
other. "Stairs?"

Conan's eyes followed the gesture. "If they're not, my eyes are failing
me."

Valeria grimaced. "It does seem darker along here." Even her courage
was not proof against the thought of the light abandoning them. Magical
as it was, they owed their lives to it.

"All the more reason to start climbing the stairs, then."

Between them and the entry to the stairs, the water deepened almost to
Valeria's waist. They pushed forward through the filth, greasy whorls
of floating muck drifting to either side as they advanced. Conan had
both sword and dagger drawn now, and held the weapons clear of the
water, ready to strike down at the slightest hint of alien presence.

Nothing except muck and foul odors impeded their passage, although they
were black and dripping from thighs to feet when they reached dry
stone. Conan climbed the first few steps, reached a spot where the wall
had cracked and now sagged across his path, and went to his hands and
knees.

He could barely creep under the stone. Ten paces farther along, he
could barely move at all—but the sight ahead made his heart leap with
hope.

The stairs wound up into natural darkness that reeked of fish oil,
animal fat, and burned grain. In places, the steps had crumbled and
would offer precarious footing, even without the darkness. In one
place, the stairs seemed to rise up a vertical chimney that would need
to be climbed with back against one wall and feet against the other.

Far above, like a single star shining on a rainy night, a dim yellow
light glowed. Firelight, to Conan's eyes, with no magic about it.
Rather, it told of human presence.

The only problem was that he was just a finger's breadth too large to
pass through the gap and begin the ascent. Even his strength might not
be equal to shifting the fallen slab, and could well bring the mass
down on top of them if he succeeded.

Thank Mitra, there was another way, or at least another hope. Groping
into the open, Conan's hand touched a puddle of congealed grease.
Clearly, it had dripped down from above, where what must be a cook fire
burned cheerfully.

Conan started retracing his steps. For a moment, he feared he would
become wedged; then he felt Valeria tugging at his ankles. Her lithe
strength made the difference. Conan slid free, coughed dust from his
throat, and stood up.

"You'll have to go first. Slip through the gap, then pass all the
grease you'll find—"

"Grease?"

"Somebody's done years of cooking up above. The grease must have been
dripping—"

"Grease?"

"If I want an echo, woman, I'll shout! Go up and see for yourself if
you doubt me."

Valeria shook her head hastily, then grinned. "In truth, why should I
be surprised? This is the maddest quest I've ever been on. It would
disappoint me if it did not stay so to the end."

Conan kept to himself the thought that the quest might be far from
over. They could not be out of the jungle yet, or even into the
borderlands of the Black Kingdoms, where the name of Amra carried some
weight. The people above might be friendly and welcoming; they might
also greet him and Valeria with spears, or even with that cook fire
that now seemed so merry. There were not as many cannibals in this land
as legend had it, but there were enough.

"Well, then. Let's not stand about scratching each other's fleas like a
pair of apes. Up!"

Valeria scrambled up the stairs and vanished ahead. Conan followed, to
see Valeria's boots and sole garment lying on the stone. She herself
was nowhere to be seen, but from the far side of the gap came the sound
of someone desperately trying not to spew.

"You mean to smear yourself with this to pass through the gap?"

"Do you see any perfumed oil about?"

"Ask a foolish question…" Valeria muttered. Then Conan saw her, nude
and pale in the darkness, kneeling to smear grease on the stone at the
narrowest passage. Only when she had finished that work did she begin
tossing handfuls of the grease through the passage to the Cimmerian.

The stuff reeked like a kitchen-midden, and its touch made Conan's
flesh crawl. Still, he went to work vigorously, smearing the grease on
his skin as fast as Valeria passed it through to him.

"What happens if you still can't make your way past?" Valeria asked.

"Then you climb up yourself and ask the folk above to come down and
chip away a passage for me. I'm no more than a finger's breadth too
large. It will be no great matter."

He thought he heard Valeria mutter again. "If they don't think I'm a
witch or a madwoman, no doubt it will." Then the Cimmerian tossed his
weapons and garments through the gap, lay down, and began his passage.
The grease helped. He was almost through this time before he became
wedged firmly in place. He stretched out both arms for Valeria to grip,
and she added her strength and weight to his. He did not budge.

Conan groped with his feet, seeking a stout rest that would let him use
the full power of his massive legs. One foot flailed in the air; the
other found the wall. Conan willed all the strength of his body into
the muscles of that leg, felt himself moving even as the rock flayed
skin from his back and shoulders, then felt the rock itself move.

If he had summoned all his strength before, he now summoned that and
half again as much. He heaved upward and forward, ignoring the
wrenching of muscles and the creaking of bones. More skin vanished, and
his lungs seemed filled with red-hot sand as he fought for the breath
not merely to live by, but that he might fight and prevail.

The Cimmerian's strength was equal to the task. The stone did not slip
and crush him. Instead, it held firm for a moment—then, incredibly, it
opened wider.

Conan thought he heard Valeria utter what might have been either a
prayer or an oath. He knew he felt her long fingers gripping his wrists
again, and as the grip tightened, she flung herself backward.

For one more moment, the rock held Conan, and he was not sure which
would happen first—his pulling free, or his arms wrenching out of their
sockets. Then the tiny widening of the opening, the grease on skin and
rock, his own strength, and Valeria's desperate efforts all joined to
send him flying out of the gap. He landed almost on top of Valeria, and
it was a while before either of them caught their breath enough to
notice it. Even then, the woman did not protest. She only smiled and
threw an arm around Conan's neck.

He returned the smile and rolled off, then fought breath back into his
lungs and stood up. He felt as if he had been wrestling one of the
Golden Serpents. His skin was scraped from flesh in half a score of
places, and muscles and joints were cursing him roundly. The filth from
the tunnel itched and stung wherever it fell on raw places, and
altogether he had hardly felt worse during some of the times he had
escaped from slavery.

But he had ignored pain even then because he was free, and now he did
the same for much the same reason. That magic-haunted maze and its
monsters had done their best to make an end of him, or at least to make
the maze his and Valeria's tomb. Now they were free of it, even if to
do no more than to die on their feet, their blades in hand.

Conan judged that all of his limbs were still attached and could
perform their duties. Then he resumed his garments, except for his
boots, which he hung about his neck as Valeria carried hers.

Valeria meanwhile had propped her head on one elbow and was
contemplating him with what appeared to be amusement. Conan returned
her contemplation, although with more than amusement as she had not yet
donned even her one scanty garment.

"If you've done looking at me like a buyer at a donkey—" Conan said at
last.

"I'd have you bathed before I bought you," Valeria replied. She held
her nose. "Or maybe boiled."

"You could put a he-goat to flight yourself," Conan said. He reached
down. "Up, woman. We're not done yet."

While standing in the open on the far side of the gap, he had seen at
least two more tunnels leading off from the chamber. The magic light
seemed to glow dimly far down one of them; the other was dark and no
higher than Conan's waist. The stone at its mouth also seemed curiously
worked, not so much carved as eaten, as if by the acids that the
sword-makers of Khitai were said to use upon fine blades to etch
cunning patterns upon them.

He thought of acids that could eat stone, and he remembered what had
nearly taken Valeria, leaving its mark on her ankle. The mark was still
there, beneath the filth. The thing that had made it might have also
made the tunnel. No, he and Valeria were not done with this ancient
maze until they stood in the sunlight again.

The first sign that Seyganko had of anything amiss was Emwaya's
stumbling. That would not have told another man much, for Emwaya was
dancing in a circle in the center of Seyganko's hut. It was, moreover,
a dance so swift and complex that her feet seemed to spurn the earth;
even the warrior's keen eye could hardly follow their movements.

She leaped—and instead of landing on her toes, she went to hands and
knees. Seyganko sprang forward to help her rise. She shook off his hand
and remained kneeling, then stretched her full length on the
reed-strewn floor of the hut.

Again Seyganko offered aid; again Emwaya spurned it. Then she turned
her head so that one ear was against the floor, and stretched out both
arms. Her fingers writhed in gestures the warrior knew came from the
Spirit-Speaking rituals.

Emwaya was not sick or hurt, it seemed. But if she had sensed some
threat to the Ichiribu from deep within the spirit world, this was
small consolation. Seyganko gripped his club and measured the distance
to his spears, although reason told him that mere wood and iron could
do nothing against such menaces as Emwaya might have heard.

At last she stood, brushing dried reeds from her breasts. Now she
allowed Seyganko to support her, lead her to a sleeping mat, pour beer
from a jug and offer it. But she sat with the wooden cup in her hand,
licking her lips, eyes staring beyond Seyganko into places where he
knew he could not follow.

"From below," she said. "It comes from below."

"What is it?"

"Have you never heard of the Stone City?"

"That legend?"

"I begin to think it is no legend. It could lie beneath this very
village, with spirits from before men were men guarding it."

"It could. But then, it might not—" The wish to banter left Seyganko as
he saw Emwaya's face harden.

"Something has made the spirits uneasy. I cannot say which spirits, or
where, but I feel danger to the Ichiribu."

"I shall call out the fanda," Seyganko said. The fanda consisted of six
warriors of each clan, who took turns being armed, girded, and painted
for war. Seyganko was not painted, but his war luck was so proverbial
that no one thought he needed the adornment except in great battles.

"Send a messenger," Emwaya said. "You must stay here while I paint
you."

"There is need for haste more than for paint."

"Not when the enemy is unknown spirits."

"If the spirits are coming, then you and your father are needed, not
the fanda."

"We will be needed before long, but the fanda has work, too. They must
guide folk away from danger, keep them from panic, watch for thieves
who might find untended huts a temptation—"

"Perhaps I should do your work and you mine, since you know it so
well."

Emwaya looked hurt, as she seldom did when reminded of the sharpness of
her tongue. Then she actually clung to him. "We each have our duties, I
fear. Now, have you your war paint about here?"

"Yes. You are going to paint all of me?"

Emwaya lowered her eyes. "All. Do not hope that we will have time,
though."

Seyganko grinned and began undoing his loincloth. The full ritual
battle-paint included a warrior's loins and manhood. In times past,
Emwaya's painting him had ended with much pleasure to both.

Yet something told him that this would not be one of those times.
Emwaya spoke of spirits she had not encountered; Seyganko had little
doubt that she spoke the truth.

"Hold on, Conan. My grip is slipping."

Valeria felt the Cimmerian's massive shoulders tighten under her feet.
Free to move one hand without falling, she groped for a better purchase
on the stone. It was slick with her own blood, issuing from where her
first grip had gashed the hand.

At last she thought she had found what she sought. Many years of
swordplay and climbing rigging had given her long arms more strength
than commonly found in a woman. She did not fear falling as long as she
had a good grip.

She had judged correctly, but she was dripping sweat by the time she
rolled onto the ledge above. For the tenth time since they had begun
their climb, she had to brush her hair out of her eyes. Yet she was
perched on the ledge as securely as its crumbling stone allowed. Beyond
her lay only the chimney, which both of them could climb with little
trouble, and then solid stairs began again.

She tore a strip from her garment and bound her hair with it. This
reduced the already tattered covering to hardly more than a shred of
cloth about her loins. She had, however, quite ceased to care about her
garb as long as it included a sword-belt and her steel.

Having done with Valeria, Conan handed up his boots and weapons, then
sprang high and found purchase for both fingers and toes. A moment
later, he was beside the woman on the ledge.

"We'd do better with a thong or a rope to tie to all this," he said,
waving a bruised and filthy hand at their scanty gear and the boots
holding a lord's ransom in each toe. "Then we could draw it up
afterward."

"There's not enough left of my garment for that," Valeria said. "Of
course you could always sacrifice the rest of your breeches—"

"Or we could forget about those—"

Valeria put one hand protectively over the boots and the other on the
hilt of her heavy dagger. Conan drew back in mock fear.

"By Erlik's untiring tool, woman, don't you know a jest when you hear
one?"

"When I hear one, I do. I know not what I heard from you just now."

Conan shrugged and said no more. Valeria hoped he had heard her true
meaning—that she would leave those fire-stones only to save her life.
That a dead pirate had no use for loot, she would gladly admit, but she
was not dead yet. Dusty-throated from thirst, hollow-bellied from
hunger, filthy, all but naked, and far from home, or even from safety,
she surely was— but not dead.

Then from above they heard a sound, familiar to anyone who had traveled
this far south, yet strange, even unearthly in these surrounds.

Close to the cook fire, someone was beating a war drum. As another drum
joined the first, the warm yellow glow of the cook fire died and
darkness engulfed the voyagers in the depths.

One drum began the call to the Ichiribu of the Great Village. A second
joined it, then a third.

Seyganko stood by the hearthstone as the cook-women emptied pots,
gourds, and jugs of water onto the flames. They did this with sour
looks at him. Not only was quenching the cook fire a dirty task, it was
an evil omen. The women feared the spirits… as well as what their kin
would say to cold meals.

Fortunately, they also feared Seyganko and his warriors of the fanda
too much to disobey. Or was it Emwaya they feared? She stood by a hut
on the edge of the hearthfield, arms crossed over her breasts, watching
the work with an unsmiling face.

Indeed, she had not smiled since she had stumbled. Since she had told
Seyganko that the hearthfield was the heart of the danger, she had
looked almost an evil spirit herself. Fine work it would be if her face
drove folk into the panic she feared and made more enemies for
Seyganko.

Do you then think unknown spirits are nothing to be feared?

He heard the question in his mind, but used his body to reply, shaking
his head. He did not wish to reply mind-to-mind when so many other folk
might suddenly demand his attention. Aondo, for one.

Aondo was a warrior in the fanda, and beside him stood another—what was
his name? Oh, Wobeku the Swift, one who had gone with Seyganko on the
raid that brought back those Kwanyi captives, who told such dire tales.
Wobeku was one of the fastest runners among the Ichiribu, as well as a
friend of Aondo.

Today Wobeku was not running. He stood lightly on his long legs, and it
seemed to Seyganko that his eyes roved about more than was customary.
Now he looked at Seyganko, now at the hearthstone— especially the lower
end, where the channel fed melted fat into the earth to nourish the
spirits there—and now at Emwaya. A man could not be blamed for
wondering what Wobeku was seeking.

Seyganko realized that he was about to do what he had just thought
unwise in Emwaya. Nonetheless—

Have you warned your father?

He needed no warning. He knows what the spirits do, as much as any man.

Seyganko's reply was a broad smile. Then he waved at Wobeku.

"Your wish, Honored One?"

"A messenger has gone to Dobanpu Spirit-Speaker. Yet he was not as
swift on his feet as you. Will you take another message?"

Wobeku's smile was a mask of obedience and pleasure covering discontent
that a child could have seen. Seyganko did not smile back. Whatever
Wobeku had in mind, it demanded his presence here—which did not prove
it unlawful, of course.

It was part of the price for the title of Honored One among the
warriors of the Ichiribu. Baring one's back to treachery lest one do
injustice to loyal warriors was a sacred duty. Spirits, as well as
wronged kin, might avenge neglecting it.

"Good. Emwaya, daughter of Dobanpu, will tell you what to say."

Emwaya's message was short—just long enough, Seyganko judged, not to
make Wobeku suspicious. The warrior saw the messenger nod, then unbind
his feet, set aside all garb and girding save for his headdress,
loinguard, and paint, then run. He was beyond the huts in a few
breaths, outside the village wall in a few more, and out of sight
before the drumming stopped.

By then, the hearthfield was empty of all but the fanda, Seyganko, and
Emwaya. From cracks in the nearest huts, children peered, too curious
to be frightened even if the earth was spewing spirit-serpents. More
young ones seemed to be perched in trees and on the wall, and Seyganko
heard their mothers calling them down.

Then he heard nothing more, save a swelling rumble from underfoot as
the earth trembled and the hearthstone that had stood for five men's
lives began to crack apart.

Even Conan's eyes took a moment to respond to the sudden darkness. For
a moment, he could hear only Valeria's breathing, coming in quick pants
like those of a thirsty dog. She was commanding herself well in the
face of this new menace, but could not hide all of her disquiet.

Crom did not love the fearful, nor did they live long in Cimmeria.
Otherwise, Conan himself might have volleyed oaths. It seemed that
someone or something was toying with them, snatching away each promise
of escape the moment they had come to trust themselves to it.

"Mitra's crown!" Valeria snapped. "If this is the work of the folk
above, they'd best be very friendly when we appear. Otherwise, I'll not
be."

Conan only grunted. She had spoken for both of them, and any more noise
might be unwise. The folk above might not only be unfriendly, they
might have listeners giving ear to what lay below.

He also did not trust this pit's walls to stand firm if shaken by loud
noises. Not that they would remain unshaken if he and Valeria continued
to climb—as they must—the road back now being closed. But it made
little sense to shake them otherwise.

A moment later, Conan knew that his caution had had no purpose. A
thunderclap tore at his ears, earth streamed down about him, and light
reappeared above. Then a chunk of stone the size of a good ale barrel
plummeted past him.

Without a word, Conan snatched Valeria back against his chest, then
flung himself hard against the wall. Even a shallow niche might save
them from being crushed like grapes in a winepress by the next stone.

The wall that had seemed to be raw earth was as unyielding as the stone
of the tunnels below. Conan groped with a free hand and felt more of
the same under his fingers.

Perhaps there was rock under the soil. Perhaps roots had bound the soil
as hard as rock. And perhaps the binding was magical, and if the spells
vanished, the whole shaft would come down on their heads.

Another, smaller piece of stone came down, and after that, hardly more
than coarse gravel. It came in a steady stream, though, mingled with
clods of earth. Dust filled the shaft; Conan clapped his free hand over
his face, and Valeria tried to make a mask of her hair.

It was not enough; the dust set her to coughing desperately. Nothing
more fell, but Conan had guessed the truth about the listeners above. A
head appeared, silhouetted against the blessed sunlight shining through
the enlarged hole.

"Who goes there? Name yourselves, or be called enemies of the
Ichiribu."

The tongue was close enough to what Conan had learned in the Black
Kingdoms that he could understand the meaning. The voice was that of a
leader and a warrior, accustomed to being obeyed. Conan saw no reason
to argue at length, not when the shaft might yet come down on his head.

But he and Valeria would not begin well by seeming to be beggars. In
this land, only beggars or weaklings gave their true names for the
asking. Wise men knew not to give that precious knowledge to those who
might work magic with it.

"We are no enemies to the Ichiribu, whatever our names. Let us climb up
to you, and you may see for yourselves."

Conan could not make out the man's look, but his reply was to silently
draw his head back from the opening. The brighter light showed the
upper portion of the shaft clearly, in spite of the drifting dust. The
mouth lay a distance a good ten times the Cimmerian's height, and the
shaft offered few handholds.

Once there had been a stairway spiraling up to the surface. Conan saw
the holes where its beams had been thrust into the walls, and even the
remnants of one or two of the beams themselves. None of this was of the
slightest use to him and Valeria as long as the magic binding the shaft
walls did not weaken. When it did, the shaft would doubtless fall on
their heads, with more stones from above to mark their tomb.

"Conan," Valeria whispered, "do we go back?"

"How?" Conan asked. "Even if we could, the folk up there have heard us,
likely enough seen us, too. They'll think we were demons and block the
pit. What would you wager on finding another way out before we starve?"

"And if the folk up there are cannibals—"

"They'll have to eat a fair amount of steel before they eat us," Conan
said. Valeria replied with a grin, then reached into her boots and
pulled out a handful of the fire-stones.

"Would it help to throw a few of these up to the watchers?" she asked.

"It couldn't hurt," Conan said. He returned the grin. "But I thought
these were your hoard."

"And I thought we wouldn't need the help of the—Ichiribu, they said—to
simply climb out of this demon-spawned pit!"

Conan took the largest of the stones in his hand, balanced it, then
shifted slightly so that he could throw freely without falling back
down the pit. Legs braced, he swung his arm in three great circles. On
the fourth, his hand opened and the stone soared up the pit, a blazing
green star as the sunlight struck it.

It fell outside the mouth of the pit, unheard and unseen by the
Cimmerian. He knew the moment the watchers by the pit mouth saw it,
however, from the outcry they raised. Hyenas fighting over carrion
would have been quieter.

Conan could make out no words in that din. He could only discern what
was most likely the voice of the leader, rising above the others and at
last beating them down. He also heard what sounded like a woman, or a
youth, apparently speaking with the leader.

Then Valeria cried out, blinking away tears, and even the Cimmerian
felt lighter at heart. A stout oxhide rope with a loop at one end was
dangling from the mouth of the pit.

It slid down to within a spear's length above Conan's fingertips. He
cupped his hands and called up. "Too short, I fear. Another man's
length will be enough."

"I'd best go up first," he told Valeria. "I speak their tongue, and
some of the tribes think a woman warrior's bad luck."

"If they fill you with spears—"

"Then they'll have no fire-stones," Conan reminded her. "From the din
they raised, I'd say they'll do more than hold off their spears for
that prize."

What Valeria clearly wanted was to believe that nothing would happen to
Conan that would leave her alone in this noisome darkness. Just as
clearly, Conan could give her no real assurance, and would not insult
her with a false one.

Conan pulled the looped rope over his head and set it firmly under his
armpits. "Pray that these are no pygmies," he said, "or I may be down
again faster than I went up!"

Then, to the folk above: "Haul away!"

"Whoever is down there knows the True Tongue," Seyganko said. "That
says human to me."

"Spirits can take human form, is that not so?" Aondo offered.

Emwaya looked as if she would prefer to lie, but nodded.

"Then why not speak so?" Aondo asked.

Emwaya frowned. She had explained to Seyganko the reasons why
Spirit-Speaking did not use human tongues, so he knew that the folk
below had to be human. She could not explain the same to Aondo without
giving the whole fanda too much knowledge of Spirit-Speaking.

Then the man below shouted again: "Well, are you going to haul away or
not?"

Seyganko raised his club and struck it against his shield three times.
On the third blow, the men on the rope began to move back from the pit.

"Heavier than a man!" someone called, taking one hand from the rope to
wipe his forehead.

"Either pull or let one who will take your place!" Seyganko snapped.
The man looked ready to quarrel, then seemed to think better of it and
returned to his work.

If what rose from the pit that yawned where the hearthstone had stood
was a man, he was larger than any Seyganko had ever seen, save only
Aondo.

A closer look told the warrior that the newcomer's skin was pale under
its coating of filth, his hair straight, and his eyes an eerie blue.
There were tales of lands to the north that were inhabited by such
blue-eyed giants, a race considered human for all that. Here, no doubt,
was such a one.

"Now will you tell us your name?" Seyganko ordered.

"When I have drunk, and you have brought up my woman," the giant
replied.

"Your woman?" someone asked.

"You think I travel this forest with no comforts?" the man said,
laughing. His teeth were very even and none of them filed into points.
"Also, if you want more of these—" he pointed at the fallen jewel
"—they are down there."

Someone clutched at Seyganko's arm. It was Emwaya, staring at the jewel
as if it were a cobra about to strike. Seyganko put a hand on her
shoulder and turned her around so that the giant could not see her
face. Then he waved to the men to lower the rope again and shouted to
the nearest hut for women to bring water.

"What is it, woman?" he whispered when he was sure that none paid him
and Emwaya any attention.

"Those are Fire Eyes of the Golden Serpents," Emwaya said. Her breath
seemed to come quickly, as if she had been running. "The man says they
have more of them."

"So? They are fine to look at, not as fine as you when oiled and lying
on a pallet, but—"

"The Golden Serpents bred in Xuchotl. The tales of the city say the
folk adorned themselves with the Fire Eyes."

"Then—"

"It could be that we have taken the destroyers of Xuchotl among us!"

"We have done no such thing," Seyganko protested.

"You think we can put them back in the hole and cover them up easily if
you are wrong?"

Seyganko studied the man's heavily muscled limbs, his iron weapons, and
the easy, alert way he stood. "No. If they are spirits, they would not
go. If they are human, they might not go and it would be unlawful to
force them."

"Then what—"

"Have your father summon the spirits to the dance-drum. At once, before
these folk have spent a night among us. The man knows the True Tongue.
He may know our ways as well."

For the first time in Seyganko's memory, Emwaya obeyed one of his
orders without hesitating, let alone disputing him. She ran off, for
this was no message to be given to one who might take it to others than
Dobanpu.

Then Seyganko stepped forward to greet the woman who rose from the pit.
She was even fairer than the man, with hair the color of fresh grain
and a form that a goddess would not have disdained.

She had strange-looking footwear of leather slung about her neck, and
from the way she unslung it, it was heavy. Then Seyganko and all of the
fanda saw the Fire Eyes within the footwear and it made it seem like
two tiny volcanoes bubbling with molten green stone.

The warriors sucked in their breath, and some gripped weapons. The
woman bringing water did more; she halted in mid-stride and barely
caught the water jug as it toppled from her head. The water itself made
a puddle at her feet. She looked at it for a moment, then turned and
ran.

The foreign woman looked ready to draw a weapon. The giant laid a hand
on her bare shoulder and smiled thinly. "You kept your promise, up to
the moment when the woman took flight. I'll keep mine." Then he turned
to face Seyganko.

"I am Conan of Cimmeria, a free lance." He used the word for a warrior
whose vows set him apart from any tribe or clan. It was an honorable
status, and claiming it falsely was heavily punished.

"The woman is Valeria of the Red Brotherhood," Conan went on. "She is a
free woman, oath-bound to me. She speaks not the True Tongue, save in
her heart, which I know is good. We both ask for guest-friendship among
the Ichiribu, and promise to aid them as far as it is in our power to
do so."

Seyganko tried not to look at the Fire Eyes. If their power had been
great enough to snatch those from Xuchotl…

It could be great enough to make the Ichiribu rulers of all the lands
about the Lake of Death, even to the slopes of Thunder Mountain. It
could also cast them down more completely than Chabano or the God-Men
dreamed of.

Seyganko felt a chill, as of oncoming rain, when he next looked into
Conan's blue eyes.

----------------------------------------------------------------------


SEVEN

Ryku had often wished to be an insect upon the wall of a conclave of
the Speakers to the Living Wind, as the God-Men called themselves. Now
he had all but achieved that wish. He had at last attained the
self-command that let a man's presence pass unnoticed by the
Speakers—or even, it was said, by the Living Wind itself.

He clung like an ape on a branch to a pinnacle of rock that forked just
enough to offer a man-sized niche. One side of the fork supported his
back, the other hid him from what lay below.

Eight of the Speakers were gathered in a circle around a great globe of
something that could be no natural substance. The globe was as tall as
a man and as clear as water, likewise seeming as hard as rock. Yet it
was also light enough that two of the Speakers' servants had borne it
on a litter into this cave and placed it where it now stood.

It said much about the power which the Speakers expected from the globe
that the servants were mute and deaf slaves, used only for the most
secret matters. Once, it was said, the Living Wind had given the
Speakers spells that would silence tongues and block ears, but could
also be removed when the need for them had passed. Now that knowledge
was lost, and hot knives and needles served in place of magic.

That meant there were fewer of the secret servants with each passing
year. The Kwanyi gave up a fair number of stout young men and women,
some came from the lesser clans, others had been slaves and
prisoners—all of them now in the service of the God-Men on Thunder
Mountain. The clans expected that at least the free tribesfolk would be
returned alive and healthy, and they were not generous even with slaves
to be mutilated or slain. They had become less generous in such matters
since Chabano became the Paramount Chief.

A First Speaker who could wield the ancient knowledge might gain a
stronger friendship from Chabano. Or if the Paramount Chief continued
to insist that he himself rule in the alliance of wizards and warriors,
the First Speaker might cause the Kwanyi to turn to another to lead
them.

A breeze stirred the dank air of the cave. Ryku felt it blow cool on
his skin, drying the sweat on his brow. He knew that the Living Wind
could be called out from its cave by sufficient Speakers' magic. It was
not lawful that he know this, being only a Silent Brother, but he did,
and he knew much else of the Speakers' arts. Law had always lain
lightly upon Ryku, called Son of Nkube.

Ryku had never seen the calling of the Living Wind, however. He would
not have known that the Wind would be called had one Speaker not been
indiscreet. Even now he wondered that the Speakers had no spells by
which to learn of the presence of spies and eavesdroppers.

Perhaps that, too, was magic so ancient that living men no longer
commanded it. Or perhaps the Living Wind was enough alive that it could
seek out enemies itself, and punish them.

That thought so disturbed Ryku that he nearly toppled from his perch,
and sweat broke out all over him though the wind grew stronger with
each moment. He should not be here—and when the Wind had come and gone,
he would not be here.

The tunnel on the far side of the cave began to glow in the crimson and
sapphire hues of the Living Wind. The light did not flicker; the
swirling essence of the Living Wind was not yet in the tunnel. It could
not be far, though.

Ryku licked lips suddenly as dry as month-old porridge and fought his
way back to some measure of self-command.

The serving wench held out two wooden bowls to Valeria. One held salted
fish, scaled, gutted, and beheaded as deftly as Valeria had ever seen
in the captain's room of a waterfront tavern. The other held a pungent
stew of more fish, boiled together with grain and nuts that she had
never tasted. Behind the wench, a boy held a third bowl, of piping hot
yams.

"No more, thank you," Valeria said. She used some of what little she
knew of the Black Kingdoms' tongue. The girl seemed not to understand,
only smiling and shaking her head, then holding out the bowls again.

Valeria frowned. Had the Ichiribu sent a witling to serve her and the
Cimmerian? She tried patting her stomach, then holding her hands
together well out in front of it. She wanted to tell the girl that she
had eaten of their excellent fare nearly to the bursting point.

The girl smiled and almost pushed the bowls into Valeria's lap. Valeria
raised a hand to push the girl away, then felt her wrist seized with a
familiar iron grip.

"Wait, Valeria."

The Cimmerian used more Black Kingdoms' speech, as well as hand
language. The girl looked at Valeria and shook her head. Conan nodded.
Then girl and Cimmerian both erupted in laughter.

Valeria flushed and covered her anger by holding out a hand for the
salted fish. She probably would burst if she ate more, certainly if she
drank any more of the Ichiribu beer to wash down the fish. She would
still be cursed if she would seem loutish.

The girl served Valeria, kneeling gracefully. She wore a waistcloth
that revealed nearly all of a long-legged, firm-breasted figure, with
the supple waist and firm arms of a girl only just turned woman.
Valeria noticed that Conan's eyes roved over the girl with unmistakable
admiration.

She prodded him in the ribs, nearly spraining a finger against his
layered muscles. "I thought you didn't care for black wenches," she
whispered.

"Remember the ones about the fort? They file their teeth to points.
These folk—their wenches look more like women and less like sharks."

"If you are so wise about woman, Conan, tell me what the wench was
doing. I thought I said 'no more' plainly enough."

"Oh, you did. Then you used the gestures that said you were with child.
The wench thought you needed more, for yourself and the babe."

"With child?" Valeria's jaw dropped so that she was not sure the words
came out in sensible speech. Conan's grin told her that, unfortunately,
they had. "I've not had a chance in years!"

"Small wonder, then, you're out of temper with men. None have shown
they can tell a fine woman when they see one, so of course—"

"You clatterjawed Cimmerian oaf!" Or at least Valeria started to say
that, with the intent of following it with a slap. Instead, she doubled
up with laughter, upsetting her bowl. Conan patted her on the shoulder.

"Easy, woman. I was jesting."

Valeria almost wished he were not. She did wish that his hand would
linger, so she reached up and held it with both of her own. She knew
that Conan could break her grip as if she were a child, but she hoped
he would do no such thing.

He did not. He left his hand on her bare shoulder long enough for the
serving wench to raise her eyebrows, then wink at the boy. A moment
later, Valeria and Conan were alone.

"They'll be listening," he whispered. "If you come closer, they'll hear
nothing of what we say."

Valeria was ready to come as close as the Cimmerian could wish, but she
sensed that this was not the time. She also heard a warning in his
voice, and wanted to curse aloud in frustration. Had they, after all,
not found safety among the Ichiribu?

Now the air in the cave whirled and moaned, as if it sought to flee the
Living Wind and cried out in fear of its pursuer. Ryku clung to his
perch with arms and legs alike, and could have wished for a tail like a
monkey. All thought of concealment had long since left him.

It did not matter, for the Speakers had no care or thought to give to
anything save the globe in the center of their circle. The globe… and
the Living Wind they were bringing into it.

The light of the Living Wind now seemed an eye-searing flood, pouring
from the tunnel like a stream in the rainy season. But no stream ever
leaped like a fountain to pour downward and vanish into a globe that
somehow remained as clear as a mountain pool for all the light that it
swallowed.

Then Ryku saw the globe quiver, once, twice, three times. He looked at
the eight-footed bronze bowl that held it, each foot of the bowl
wrought in the form of a gilded fish, and saw that the bowl was also
quivering. Then he blinked and spared a hand to rub his eyes, for he
thought he saw pale green smoke rising from the vessel.

A moment later, the wind seemed to redouble, something that Ryku would
not have believed possible. He came within a hair of losing his perch.
He resumed a two-handed grip, closed his eyes… and opened them again
when he smelled smoke.

Shadowy shapes now danced furiously within the clear globe, which was
turning an angry crimson, with hardly a tint of sapphire. Some of the
shapes might have been called human, others were serpents, still others
things for which there was no name outside of nightmares… where Ryku
most earnestly hoped they would remain.

But even if they came forth from the globe as living flesh, he must
face them open-eyed and unflinching. How otherwise could he hope for
the power of a Speaker, that would gain him what he most craved?

The smoke was rising from the bowl, and from the eight legs. The legs
seemed to glow as if they had been heated over a forge, and Ryku
thought he saw one of them bending. Had the weight of the globe
suddenly increased out of all measure, because of the Living Wind
entering it?

The eight Speakers certainly saw the smoke, and from their looks, it
was obvious they knew that it meant something fearful. Or perhaps it
was only the smell; when a whiff blew past Ryku, he nearly spewed.

He had barely commanded his stomach when all eight legs of the bowl
seemed to melt at once. Smoke disgorged from the dissolving supports,
from the bowl, and, as it seemed, from the globe itself.

Courage worthy of front-rank warriors and a lifetime of dedication held
the Speakers to their task about the globe. Neither availed them
against the Living Wind run wild.

The smoke vanished as if a giant mouth had sucked it all in at one
gulp. The bowl and the eight legs became a bubbling pool of molten
bronze, searing the eyes as would the mouth of a volcano. The globe
wavered, impossibly enough held in midair by powers Ryku dared not
imagine.

Then the Speakers or their powers, or both, failed, and the globe fell.
It splashed into the molten metal, and gobs of liquid bronze flew
about. The Speakers' discipline could not hold against such pain. They
screamed and leaped like monkeys beset by bees, or like warthogs
attacked by driver ants.

The globe wavered again. The shadow shapes within took a more solid
form—two humans, a man and a woman—and then vanished. By this time, the
substance of the globe was melting down into the searing metal and
feeding a great tongue of liquid fire that reached out toward the
circle of Speakers.

The Speakers' silence had broken; now their courage faltered. Yet still
they did not run. They opened their circle wider and held their staves
with both hands at waist level. Their chanting grew louder, for all
that it came from throats raw with pain and fear.

The tongue of fire gathered itself and leaped. Crimson flames as thin
as the air wrapped themselves about one of the Speakers' staves. The
Speaker dropped it with a cry, but it did not fall.

Instead, the flames whirled the stave up to the ceiling of the cave and
held it there while they consumed it. Not even an ash drifted to the
floor—but when the flames fell back, they seemed sated, like a well-fed
animal.

Far worse was the feeding of the liquid metal. It, too, leaped, to land
in a spreading pool about the feet of another Speaker. In a moment, the
man had no feet; in another moment, no legs.

In the moment after that, knowledge of what was happening reached the
Speaker's brain, as did the agony of being burned alive. Burned? Ryku
wished that so innocent a word could describe what was happening to the
Speaker.

The Living Wind had this much mercy: the Speaker did not take long to
die. Before he began to scream, the fire had already eaten him almost
to the waist. Then it swept up past his belly and to his chest, and
when it ate his lungs, he fell silent.

His head bobbed briefly on the surface of the liquid fire, now shot
with streaks of black as well as crimson. Then it vanished, too, and
smoke in a dozen colors swirled over the metal, hiding any bubbles.

Like the flames, the liquid fire made Ryku think of a sated animal as
it withdrew toward the tunnel. The crimson flames followed, and as both
elements vanished from the cave, the wind died.

The seven living Speakers stumbled out the way they had come. Some
seemed blinded; they gripped the shoulders of those ahead to guide
their stumbling feet. Others coughed as if mortally sick in the lungs.

Half-blinded, stifled, his own eyes and lungs assaulted by
inconceivable stenches and smoke, Ryku clung to his perch until the
last Speaker was gone. It would have been much simpler to let go, fall
to the floor of the cave, and die a clean and natural death by breaking
his head.

Simpler, and very foolish. Now there was something he had not dared to
hope for: a vacant place among the Speakers. Add to this the loss of
the scrying globe, with little knowledge gained from its use, and even
the First Speaker would know that peril unseen in years faced the
God-Men of Thunder Mountain.

If Ryku came forward to show how he might prevent Chabano from using
this peril against the Speakers, he might receive a hearing. He might
even receive initiation as a Speaker. Then it would be his right to
wield the power of the Living Wind.

He barred his mind to the thought that in spite of all the forbidden
lore he had studied, he might do no better than the Speaker who had
died so brutally. If he let himself dwell on that, he would fall from
his perch and die!

Valeria was as fine a woman as the Cimmerian had ever held this close.
But he did not hold her out of passion, and what he whispered in her
ear was most likely not going to make her warm for him.

"We've been guested with food and shelter," he said. "That means we're
not likely to be slain by treachery."

"You leave much unsaid," Valeria replied.

"So do the Ichiribu. I know more of their speech than I have let on, so
there've been wagging tongues where I could hear. They're none too
happy about where we came from, or the magic in our coming."

"What magic? Neither of us could cast a spell to so much as trim a
babe's nails."

"We broke the guardian spells on the entrance to the tunnel under the
hearthstone. Then we broke the hearthstone—we, or the spells as they
went awry. There's too much power about us for their peace of mind."

"Sea demons drown their peace of mind! We're no danger to them. Unless
they turn us into one by trying to kill us—"

She broke off as Conan's grip tightened like iron, and he laid a finger
across her full lips. "Don't even think that for long. There's a smell
of their having a Spirit-Speaker among them."

"A what?"

Conan explained. Spirit-Speakers were no more to his taste than any
other sort of magic-wielder. During his time in the Black Kingdoms, he
had learned something of them, as he had learned something of every
other kind of man who could be friend or foe. He owed it to this as
much as to anything else that he had survived being a ruler in the
Black Kingdoms, an occupation that often killed men born and bred in
these lands.

"Now," he finished, at last relinquishing his grip on her, "this man's
not yet our enemy. He may hope to make us friends, to him, to his
tribe, or even to both. The way they talk of him, he seems to be a
shrewd old fellow."

"Let him be shrewd enough to learn that we mean him no harm, and I'll
praise his wisdom in songs."

"Valeria, I've heard you sing. Do you want us at blood feud with these
folk, after all their cattle fall dead?"

Valeria growled. It sounded like a she-badger defending her young.
Conan laughed softly. "If I said you shame the nightingale, you'd call
me astray in my wits. But the truth is, our Spirit-Speaker will surely
want us to help him or his folk against some foe they call the Kwanyi.
I'd wager these Kwanyi hold the shores of this… Lake of Death, or so
it's called."

"Do you know why?"

"No, and I'd be easier in my mind if I did. But if I start asking
questions outright, I'll make these folk believe we're spies. If I tell
them about where we came from, they'll think we're the ones who
overthrew Xuchotl."

"We are, and not ashamed of it! Or are these folk fool enough to think
that city of madmen was so great a loss?"

"Who said a word about their missing it? No, they'd no use for it, and
shunned it as we might have. But they can't help wondering what magic
cast it down. We speak of what we did, and… Do you want to learn what
they do to witches in this land?"

Valeria's mouth opened without letting out a sound, but she shook her
head. Conan wrapped his arm around her shoulders again. She eased
herself back against his chest and closed her eyes.

"Most likely we'll be put to some kind of test. It could be as simple
as my bedding you before all the tribe—"

"Another jest like that and you'll be bedding no woman anywhere!"

"—or something like dancing on a drum."

"There's not a drum in the world stout enough to bear you, Conan.
Surely you mean a drum-smashing contest?"

"In these lands, they make their drums large enough and stout enough
for me and another to dance upon. Each man tries to make the other
fall, and the one who falls dies."

Conan felt Valeria go limp in his arms, and he cursed his wagging
tongue for finally scaring her into a faint. Then he heard her
breathing steadily, and gently he shifted her to one arm so he could
see her face.

Her eyes had drifted shut, and her mouth was slack. A moment later, the
Cimmerian heard a soft burble from the full lips. He lifted the
sleeping Valeria and laid her on the sleeping mat to the right of the
hut's door. Then he lay down on the mat opposite, kicked off his boots,
and stretched like a cat.

The Spirit-Speaker would keep his own counsel until a time of his own
choosing. Valeria had the right notion about what to do until that
time.

----------------------------------------------------------------------


EIGHT

Valeria did not know what a Spirit-Speaker commonly looked like. Nor
was this the time and place to ask, even if Conan knew. Not when the
Cimmerian was talking with Dobanpu, Spirit-Speaker to the Ichiribu.

Dobanpu was no longer young, but his presence almost made Valeria
forget that he dealt in potent magic. Even more, he made her unaware
that she was in a cave, when she had thought she would rather be
impaled than again plunge beneath the earth!

Flanking Dobanpu were a young woman with the look of blood kin—a
daughter, likely enough—and an Ichiribu warrior. Even one unfamiliar
with the Black Kingdoms could tell that here was a man of rank.
Iridescent feathers flowed from his spear and headdress, and he wore a
necklace' of what seemed to be mother-of-pearl and what were most
certainly leopard's teeth.

He was not of the same towering stature as the Cimmerian, but he did
not need to be. Indeed, by the way he stood and moved, he made Conan
seem almost uncouthly large. He also made Valeria aware, as she had not
been before, that the Black Kingdoms produced some very comely folk.

The talk now seemed to be between Conan and the young chief—Seyganko,
his name was, and the daughter was named Emwaya. Valeria glimpsed
another figure in the shadows of the cave and recognized the girl who
had attended them and who had thought Valeria was with child.

Conan had been right about their being spied on. But then, this hardly
surprised Valeria. The folk of the Black Kingdoms might live a simple
life compared to Aquilonians, but they were hardly simpletons!

She turned her attention back to the two warriors. As much as she could
judge, when she understood perhaps one word in ten, a challenge was
being offered. It seemed that it was from Conan to Seyganko, but was
Seyganko accepting or refusing?

No, he was looking at Dobanpu. The woman Emwaya was trying to catch her
father's eye and Seyganko's at once—and Valeria knew that she was
betrothed, wed, or at least in love with Seyganko.

Dobanpu was not returning all the looks cast at him. Indeed, he sat as
silent as if he had himself become a spirit. Then he said one word,
which to Valeria seemed to be a name.

"Aondo."

Seyganko's face held what had to be displeasure. Emwaya, on the other
hand, appeared to be struggling to hide her joy. Valeria looked away,
to make the woman's task easier. Once in her life had she felt that way
toward a man, but he was dead, his bones beneath a distant reef, with
the surf and the starfish alone to mourn him.

The parley seemed to be done. Then Conan half turned and whispered to
Valeria, "Bow, and stretch out your arms."

Mystified but trusting, Valeria obeyed. She kept her eyes on the cave's
floor long enough to count the trails left by snakes. They were the
trails of small snakes, such as seers and wise-women in Aquilonia often
kept about the house to give auguries and eat insects.

Seeing that bit of home in this distant land made Valeria easier in her
mind, for all that she also remembered how long she had been gone from
Aquilonia. She had been some years a woman and a wanderer even before
she had met the man who now lay beneath the reef—and that was enough
years ago that she needed two hands to count them.

Now as she knelt there with her arms stretched out, her sword-toughened
muscles began to burn and her hands began to shake. Her knees also
reminded her that the sand was harsh and that beneath it was hard, cold
stone.

Then she felt a gentle touch at the back of her neck, draping something
about her shoulders. She smelled what might have been a mixture of
violets and ripe apples, if this land grew either.

"Rise," Conan said.

She rose, stretching as she did so as to ease her cramped muscles. She
was proud to see that she did not tremble, let alone stagger. She also
felt another kind of pride when she noticed that Seyganko was eyeing
her rather as she had eyed him—and then she observed the frown on
Emwaya's face as the woman saw where her man's gaze had wandered.

Dobanpu spoke again, this time calling another name—"Mokossa." The girl
came from the back of the cave, and Dobanpu pointed at the cave's
mouth. The girl ran to it, then seemed to halt and wait.

Conan put a hand at the small of Valeria's back and eased her along.
Outside, they found that it was raining. They stopped under the
overhang of the cliff to watch the rain beating the water of the lake
into a vast gray expanse of tiny dancing splashes.

Valeria examined the wreath hanging around her neck. The flowers seemed
dried and living at the same time, and even had it not come from
Dobanpu, she would have smelled magic about it. She started to lift it
over her head, but the girl Mokossa frowned and Conan put a hand on his
companion's shoulder.

"Easy there, Valeria. It's safe enough, and better for you even if I
lose."

"I might believe you if I knew what it was."

"It marks you as vowed to me, as this marks me the same to you."

"This" was a stout band of what appeared to be snakeskin about the
Cimmerian's left wrist. By some quirk of the light, or perhaps of
magic, it was in the same colors as Valeria's wreath.

"I see. Or at least I see what you are wearing. Will you tell me what
you might win or lose, or leave me to guess it for myself?"

Conan frowned. "It's not easy to tell it quickly—"

"Then take as much time as you need, and half the night besides. I have
nothing better to do, of course, than listen to a Cimmerian's tales."

"No, you don't," Conan agreed with infuriating cheerfulness. Again the
urge to geld him warred with the urge to laugh, and laughter won.

They sat on a fallen log that seemed to have once been roughly carved
but was now half-rotted and altogether covered with moss and ferns.
Conan drew a borrowed whetstone from a borrowed pouch at his borrowed
belt and began to work on the edge of his sword. The blade, at least,
was not borrowed.

It seemed that Conan was to submit to the gods' judgment of him by
challenging an Ichiribu warrior to various contests. They would throw
spears and tridents, duel with club and shield, run, jump, climb, swim,
paddle canoes—

"No bedding wenches?"

"I doubt they could find enough, and a godless man is taboo to the
women about here anyway."

"Is a godless woman taboo to the men?"

"You're not as godless as I am, it seems."

Valeria could think of no sufficient reply, so let the Cimmerian
continue.

"I need not win every contest, but I must meet a picked warrior in
every one and show skill in all. Otherwise, they may name me a man
lacking the gods' favor, or even a coward."

"Small fear of that." Valeria had a sense of much left unsaid, and
perhaps to remain so.

But the Cimmerian was honest, she would give him that. He frowned.

"If the gods favor me through the other contests, we end on the
dance-drum. There the winner has the final blessing of the gods. The
loser dies. If I win, all is well. If I lose—" he shrugged "—I suppose
I'll not be king of a Hyborian realm, but that's not so great a loss."

"Not to be a king?" Had Dobanpu conjured away the Cimmerian's wits?

"A throne, woman, is something a man sits on.

You're an archer. You know how easy it is to shoot a sitting bird—or a
sitting king."

"I've not been in the habit of shooting at kings, but you may have the
right of it." Then her light tone broke. "So, Conan—if you lose—"

"I die. You live. If you don't fight to save me or avenge me—"

"I did not come here from an Iranistani harem!"

"Nor are you going to one. You must vow yourself to a new man, but you
may choose him. I also think you may ask the help of Dobanpu and his
daughter Emwaya. Seyganko, too, knows the warriors of the Ichiribu and
seems to have a good head and heart. I'm glad I'm not to fight him. His
folk will need him in the coming war."

"So who are you fighting?"

"Some stout fellow named Aondo. They say he's larger than I am—"

"They've matched you with an ape?"

"The ape would be the loser," Conan said. That again hinted of past
battles against uncommon foes, but Valeria took no heart from it. What
she wanted was assurance that she would not be at the mercy of the
Ichiribu if Conan lost—and that assurance, she realized, was not to be
forthcoming.

She took more comfort from an undoubted truth— that Aondo was not
likely to best the Cimmerian in a fair battle. Was there anything she
could do or leave undone to keep the fight fair?

Precious little, she realized, and some of the comfort washed away with
the rain on her skin. Silently she cursed her folly in fleeing south
when she had left the fort. The next time she had to flee from unwanted
embraces, she would look where she was going and try not to end in a
land where she knew neither law, tongue, nor custom… and was at the
mercy of another's knowledge of all of them!

Ryku had not recognized the First Speaker among the circle of eight who
had sought to conjure the Living Wind into the globe. Yet now the First
Speaker showed signs of vast weariness in the way he slumped on his
gilded stool. His eyes were cast on the lion's skin on the floor, but
they seemed as vacant as if he had at last become truly blind.

—Or had seen what even those who were called God-Men were not meant to
see.

As custom demanded of a Silent Brother, Ryku was prostrate before the
First Speaker. He lay thus until the chill of the stone floor began to
creep through his limbs toward his heart. It had to be only his fancy,
but the stone seemed colder than ever before. It was as if the Living
Wind had leeched the warmth of the earth from all about it.

It was as well that his face was to the floor when that thought passed
through his mind.

"Arise, Ryku."

Ryku could not scramble to his feet quickly enough. The chill stone had
stiffened his limbs, but he contrived to rise without loss of either
balance or dignity.

"I have summoned you here because the Speakers to the Living Wind have
need of you."

"This is an honor I have not dared hope—"

The First Speaker held up a hand. Ryku saw that the hand was thinner
and paler than it had been the last time he had seen the man. It also
seemed to tremble slightly.

"Spare me your modesty. You are not unknown to Chabano, Paramount Chief
of the Kwanyi." It was not a question.

Ryku judged that this moment held opportunity as well as danger. He
also judged that he should hold his tongue.

"Have you promised him anything in the name of the Speakers?" This time
it was a question that demanded an answer.

"I have not." Which was entirely true, Ryku not being a fool.

"Will he believe you if you promise now?"

Ryku's confusion was not altogether feigned. "What am I to promise?
Chabano is no fool, as I am sure you do not need telling, First
Speaker."

"Indeed, I do not need to be told what I already know. You may promise
him, in my name, some part of what he has asked for but not been
granted."

"What must he give us?"

"You are bold, bargaining with me."

"I speak thus only to remind you of Chabano's ways, Master. He is as
bold as a leopard slipping into a cattle pen to pluck the newborn calf
from its mother's teat. He is as hungry, also, and as fierce when
balked of what he seeks."

"If I thought that Chabano commanded spirits, I would say he has made
himself your master. A praise-speaker could not have done better."

Ryku was silent. If the old man would spend both their time speaking in
riddles—

"But if Chabano commanded spirits, he would have done for himself much
of what he has asked of us in years past. So I do not doubt that you
speak the truth as you believe it to be."

"No man can speak otherwise, Master."

The look the First Speaker gave him reminded Ryku that Chabano was not
the only man who could quell disobedience or strike terror into the
disloyal without raising his voice. He was tempted to prostrate himself
again.

The First Speaker crossed his hands over a bronze medallion resting on
his belly. "You may go to Chabano, Silent Brother Ryku. You may promise
him aid from us, and ask that he tell us who has come among the
Ichiribu."

"The conquerors of Xuchotl, perhaps?"

The First Speaker's look said that was something best not spoken aloud.
Ryku tried to look humble.

"We have… ways… of learning this," the First Speaker went on. "Yet
those who are masters of magic would know if we used these ways. They
would know our powers, and that they might be in peril from us. Eyes
that see and ears that hear without magic give no warning, and Chabano
commands those."

Ryku now fought to look not merely humble, but surprised and admiring.
In truth, he could admire one part of the First Speaker's pose. A more
cunning way of pretending that nothing had happened to the seeing globe
was hard to imagine.

Best I not take the First Speaker too lightly, even in this moment of
triumph.

"Indeed, Chabano has often spoken of how no bird lays an egg without
his knowing sooner or later," Ryku said. "I think he boasts, but he
surely knows the use of spies and has them among the Ichiribu."

"Then go you and bid him use them for us," the First Speaker said. "Go,
and if you return with the knowledge we seek, you may be raised to the
rank of Speaker."

A new Speaker was chosen from the Silent Brothers only when an old
Speaker died, and as yet there had been no word put out of such a
death. Nor would there be, Ryku suspected, at least not until it became
necessary to explain why Silent Brother Ryku was being honored.

It would be necessary, he swore. He would not fail, now that he had
been offered as a free gift the opportunity for which he would have
shed blood, and not only that of other men!

Ryku prostrated himself again until given leave to rise, then swiftly
departed the First Speaker's chamber.

Chnggg!

Conan's spear sank deep into the stump that was his target in the
spear-throwing contest. Sank so deep, the Cimmerian judged, that it
struck a knot and rebounded. The shaft quivered so fiercely that it
jerked the iron head from the wood. The spear dropped to the ground,
kicking up dust.

Conan turned to Aondo and raised a hand in salute. The Ichiribu warrior
had won the spear-casting contest, although by the slenderest of
margins. Had it not been for that last cursed knot—

From behind Conan, Valeria strode to his side. She now wore an Ichiribu
waistcloth and the wreath showing her to be his vowed woman, as well as
the leather bindings on her feet. Much travel, then sunny days upon the
island of the Ichiribu had darkened her northern fairness, but not
otherwise marred her looks.

"What now, Conan?"

"Today, nothing more. Tomorrow, the canoe, the fish-hunting, and then
at night, the drum-dance."

A shadow passed across Valeria's face. "Conan, I am as deft with a
canoe paddle as any of these folk. More so than you, I think."

"Likely enough. But it's not life or death if I lose anything save the
drum-dance. Aondo won the wrestling—"

"Because you let him win, to muddle his wits with false hopes."

"Woman!" the Cimmerian said, looming over her in mock fury. "Do I have
no secrets from you?"

"No," Valeria replied with an impudent smile that made her look almost
girlish. "After as much time as I've passed with you, I'd be a fool if
it were otherwise."

"You're no fool, that's as certain as anything can be," Conan said.
Then a disquieting thought made him frown. "Unless you've offered to
paddle the canoe in my place?"

"And if I have?"

"Answer me. Have you offered to take my place in the canoe?"

"Yes."

"Crom! If only they had the wits to refuse—"

"They accepted."

Conan wanted to pick up Valeria and shake some sense into her, knew
that he would shake their friendship to pieces if he did, and contented
himself with a volley of oaths. It set all the birds calling, and not a
few children wailing. Women, even warriors drew back from the
Cimmerian, leaving him alone with Valeria, well out of anybody else's
hearing.

"Did Emwaya suggest this?" he growled.

"This what?"

He struggled for fair words. "This… taking my place."

"No. She has ben not unfriendly, but we've not been among these folk
long enough for me to give that kind of ear to one of them. Especially
to a wizard's daughter."

"You've not lost all your wits, at least."

"What mean you by that, Cimmerian?" Valeria's voice held an edge,

"If they are letting you take my place in one of the contests, it means
they regard you as a warrior."

"So?"

"A warrior of rank."

"Better still."

The Cimmerian lost the struggle to keep an edge from his own voice. "A
warrior sworn to me as a blood-brother. Such may take another's place
in the contest. That is the law."

"I knew—"

"Woman!" the Cimmerian bellowed. "Did you know that if you do that, you
are judged along with me? That your fate marches in step with mine? If
I lose the drum-dance, you die with me!"

Conan had expected anything but that Valeria would throw her arms
around him, then pull his head down with a firm grip on his hair, and
kiss him soundly.

"All the gods be praised! I did not know I could so easily avoid
sitting and waiting to be thrown to some warrior like a bone to a dog!"

Conan decided that Valeria was actually saying what he had heard, and
that neither of them had gone mad. He much doubted that if the
drum-dance went against him, there would now be any tame submission to
death. Valeria was not so made.

But that submission had never had any purpose, save keeping her alive.
If it was her free choice to fling herself into a last battle at his
side, then so be it—and the worse for the Ichiribu if they took the
verdict of the drum-dance seriously!

----------------------------------------------------------------------


NINE
----

Valeria still did not understand much of the Ichiribu tongue. She could
read faces well enough, though, and she read in all around her the
common thought that she was mad.

For the tenth time since she had sat down in the canoe, she raised her
paddle, letting it find its own balance in her long-fingered hands. The
morning sun gilded the drops of water that fell from the paddle blade
into the lake.

This morning, Lake of Death seemed a monstrously false name for such
fine water. The surface sparkled, emerald-tinted with flashes of azure,
and rippled softly under the light breeze. Sun flashed from the rose-
and snow-hued wings of whole flocks of birds beating their way high
above the island of the Ichiribu toward the distant shore.

She put the paddle down and, again for the tenth time, gently rocked
the canoe to test its balance. It was as fine and light a dugout as she
had ever known, both the inside and the bottom scraped and oiled until
they were as smooth as the back of her hand. Smoother, likely enough,
with all that she had done since fleeing that captain's embraces.

Conan was not far wrong. She might have wasted years in that dismal
border settlement, until time had taken the strength and grace from her
and the Red Brotherhood would no longer have her back.

Or she might have died from a fever, from a fall from horseback, or by
the arrow or blade of some bandit unworthy to scrub the bilges of a Red
Brotherhood ship. Died, without ever feeling a deck under her feet,
seeing a sail swell with the wind, hearing the chant of rowers as they
took a ship out of harbor—

She blinked and thrust the past from her. For now, she could live only
from one moment to the next, from one stroke of the paddle to the next.
Otherwise, Conan would have a mark against him, those with doubts of
the pale-skinned strangers would rejoice, and she would have thrown her
life into the scales for nothing.

From twenty paces to starboard, Aondo bared misshapen teeth in a
mocking grin. Then he raised his paddle and thrust it back and forth in
an unmistakable gesture.

Valeria replied in kind, biting her thumb, then pretending to throw it
overboard and spitting after it. Aondo's grin wavered, then vanished as
the onlookers onshore laughed. Valeria even heard one or two besides
Conan shout her name as if it were a war cry.

Fifty paces to port, the two older warriors judging the race sat in the
sterns of their canoes. Each of the judges' canoes had four paddlers,
although one of the boats was hardly larger than the stout craft Aondo
was paddling alone.

Aondo, Valeria decided, was once more determined to strut and crow like
a cock on a dunghill, and much good might it do him! She had chosen a
canoe that she was sure she could handle over the whole length of the
race. It did not matter where else Aondo might be ahead as long as she
led him past the finishing mark!

Onshore, the drums began. The Ichiribu drums were the "talking" kind,
able to send complex messages, but today they had no such task. They
were to spur her and Aondo on to greater efforts—and their steady, deep
rumble was already reaching down into her belly, filling her as if with
strong wine.

Valeria tossed her head, her hair brushed her shoulders, and the two
judges raised their tridents. When those tridents came down—

Spray jetted into rainbows as the judges flung their tridents. The
rainbows had not faded when Valeria's paddle plunged into the water,
driving her canoe forward.

She paddled as she had learned to, head up so that her arms had free
play and all the muscles of her upper body could feed the arms. Aondo,
she saw, was hunched over, as if that would urge his canoe faster
through the water. His strokes were not as smooth as hers, but his
stout thews made them formidable.

There was not a spear's length between the two canoes as they passed
the first mark. Valeria already felt sweat streaming down her face and
body, and her headband growing sodden. She thanked Mitra that she had
worn only the briefest of loinguards, apart from binding her hands with
leather against blisters.

The race spanned six marks, about a league or a trifle more in
Valeria's judgment. She had fallen farther behind than she liked by the
second mark, and by then, her hair was as sodden as her headband.

She was not gaining by the third mark—halfway along—but neither had she
lost any more ground. Aondo also was dripping sweat, and his canoe
seemed to be lower in the water than it had been. Was the water
splashed from his vigorous strokes finding its way aboard?

The judges' canoes were keeping up well, but Valeria did not expect
much of the judges. She was many things that were strange to the
Ichiribu, and honor might not outweigh ignorance when it came to
deciding her fate. She would do as she had done before—wager all on her
own skill and strength and leave the rest to the gods.

Dip, thrust, lift, twist slightly to the other side, dip, thrust, lift,
twist again. Her thigh and belly muscles joined her arms and shoulders
in shrieking protests. Dip, thrust, lift, twist a little harder this
time to shake sweat from her eyes, which had begun to burn as if they
were filled with hot wax.

Aondo's canoe had been steering an uncertain course for some time now.
His thrusts seemed almost frantic, but they had lost none of their
power. His canoe was no longer settling. Had he somehow managed to bail
it out when Valeria's eyes were elsewhere? Or had it been only her
wishful fancy that it was low in the water?

It was no fancy that his steering was growing still more erratic.
Valeria stared at the Ichiribu warrior. In a moment when he thought
himself unobserved, she caught him staring back at her. The malice in
that stare chilled her blood and seemed to turn the sweat upon her into
ice. If he had any voice in her fate, she would be begging for death
long before death took her.

Her sweat-dimmed eyes made out something else, too. Aondo was steering
a course that was gradually taking him across her bow. Before they
reached the next mark, she would have to either back water or strike
him—and if she struck him, she would forfeit the race.

Rage did not blunt Valeria's wits. She had to surprise her opponent.
Aondo was as strong as an ox, but not much quicker of thought. She
wondered who had counseled him to this treachery, doubted she would
learn, but knew one thing: the man was not in Aondo's canoe.

Valeria subtly altered the force and angle of her strokes so that her
canoe began to drift quite as subtly to starboard. She felt a surge of
strength as she saw Aondo actually slow his pace, and she knew that her
deception was working. He thought she was exhausting her strength and
would have no reply to his scheme.

As they approached the fourth mark, the canoes were barely a sword's
length apart. Aondo was halfway across Valeria's bow now, paddling only
hard enough to keep the distance. A few missed strokes and he would be
lying across her path like a log.

But it was Valeria who missed a stroke, by intent, but making it seem
the error of one at the end of her strength. She lost ground, but only
by a few paces— then her paddle churned the water, and she shot under
Aondo's stern.

Aondo screamed something that Valeria doubted was praise and stabbed
wildly at the lake with his paddle. It struck the water on the wrong
side, and he had completed his stroke before he realized this.

His canoe swerved sharply, until it had almost reversed its course.

Valeria was clear by then, past Aondo and into open water. She did not
care if he spent the rest of the day spinning around in circles, or
jumped overboard to be eaten by the lionfish and crocodiles. She only
cared that the fourth mark was passing her to port, and now it was time
to spend her strength freely. She would not allow herself even a
moment's doubt that she still had that strength.

Her paddle seemed to dive now, then leap over the canoe to dive on the
other side. Each thrust seemed to raise the canoe as well as thrust it
forward. Water gurgled at the stern, spray made rainbows at the bow,
and Valeria knew she was kneeling in a hand-breadth of water in the
bottom of the craft.

She would not allow herself a moment to look back at Aondo, either. She
was already giving the race everything that was in her. Aondo could no
longer make any difference. The world shrank ever more swiftly to the
endless rhythms of her paddle strokes, the water churning past, the
fifth mark vanishing astern, the sixth and last now in sight—

Aondo was there again, to port now. He seemed to have no treachery
left, but too much strength for Valeria's comfort. Comfort no longer
mattered. Her world was no more than one stroke after another, and
nothing else mattered as long as each stroke carried her toward the
mark.

Was Aondo larger, meaning that he was closer? Valeria would not waste a
single moment to even look. It would make no difference. None at all.
She would dip the paddle, lift it, twist—and it had begun to seem that
a white-hot band was locked about her waist and thighs—

"Hoaaaaa, Valeria!"

There was only one voice in the world like that. Valeria did not know
if Conan was hailing her victory or urging her to greater efforts. She
had not thought she had any more strength in her, but the Cimmerian's
thunderous cry proved her wrong.

She raced along in a cloud of spray, her paddle flying from side to
side and up and down, almost too fast for her eye to follow. She was
only muscle and sinew, bone and breath, with no human senses left in
her.

"Valeria!"

She heard Conan's voice again, but this time it was almost instantly
lost in the din of other voices. They were shouting her name from the
shore, from the lake, even, it seemed, from the sky.

"Valeria!" The Cimmerian cut through the din. "You won!"

Valeria wanted to join the shouting. Instead, she found that her mouth
seemed packed with wool. She opened it, but only a frog's croak came
out. She bent forward, cautiously because she feared that her eyes
would pop from her head and roll about on the canoe's bottom.

The canoe rocked and spun about. She clawed for her dagger, in the
half-mad notion that Aondo was seeking to avenge his defeat by murder
in plain sight of all his tribe.

Then a large, sword-calloused hand gripped her wrist and pulled her
around. Conan stood beside her canoe, up to his chest in the water.
With his free hand, he plucked the paddle from her grip and tossed it
into the bottom of the canoe. She saw it float.

Then she saw the cloud-flecked blue sky as the Cimmerian lifted her out
of the craft and carried her in his arms toward the shore. She felt the
cool water of the lake soothing her feet and arms, and found the breath
for a long sigh.

They reached the shore. The servant girl Mokossa ran forward with a
gourd of water. Valeria sipped, fearing that her throat and stomach
would never be the same again. The water stayed down, however, and she
drank thirstily.

By then, she could even stand, with Conan's help. She leaned
comfortably against him as the Ichiribu began shouting her name again.

In the middle of the shouting, she heard a familiar growl in her ear.
"You didn't have to go to such lengths to have me carry you ashore!
Some women haven't the sense the gods gave a fly!"

It was too much effort to even think of gelding him, and as for biting
or kicking him—there was a victor's dignity to think of.

Thoughts of that dignity also kept Valeria from falling senseless, as
pleasant as the idea seemed. Instead, she held out her hand for another
gourd, and this time emptied it over herself.

Wobeku entered Aondo's hut with care, hands in front of him and his
weapons left at the door. Aondo was not easy-tempered at the best of
times, and these were anything but that.

A slave girl leaped up and ran into the corner of the hut at the sight
of Wobeku. She made the sign against the evil eye as she did so.

Casually, Aondo sat up and reached for the girl. She squealed in
unfeigned terror as his massive hand closed on her ankle. She did not
dare fight, however, as Aondo drew her to him and across his lap.

"Wobeku does not have the evil eye. Repeat that ten times."

"Wobeku-u-u-u does n-n-not—aiyeee!"

Aondo's hand had come down hard on the girl's bottom. She squealed
again and tried to wiggle free.

Wobeku cast his eyes up at the smoke-reeking shadows at the roof of the
hut. It was no concern of his how Aondo treated his women. However, he
did not have much time, even if the last rounds of the duel between
Aondo and Conan the Tribeless had been put off until tomorrow.

The girl was rubbing her bottom with one hand and her eyes with the
other when Aondo was done with her. She crawled into the farthest
corner of the hut and cowered there. Wobeku wasted no sympathy on her.
Had she seen any of several women who had seriously displeased the huge
warrior, she would have called herself fortunate.

"She must go," Wobeku said.

"Who are you—" Aondo snarled. Then he frowned. "Only outside?"

"Yes. Did you think I was fool enough to come between you and one of
your women?"

"You do not know as much as you do by being that big a fool, I must
say." Aondo turned to the girl. "Go! I will send Wobeku to bring you
back."

The girl did not seem much pleased at this prospect, but obeyed. Wobeku
himself was hardly pleased at being called on to carry messages for
this overgrown boy, whom the gods had given two men's strength and half
a man's wits. Like the wench, though, he would obey, but out of hope
rather than from fear.

"Aondo," he said when the two warriors were alone, "you were shamed
today."

"You dare—"

"I dare repeat what all will say before tomorrow's sunset."

"Who cares what they say before sunset? After the next sunrise, no one
will say anything against me. They will be too busy burning the
witch-man Conan."

"You are confident."

"I am Aondo."

"Being Aondo did not make you faster than the woman Valeria."

"I know ways to slow any woman."

That much was truth. Aondo knew how to slow a woman so that she never
moved again, save when her kin bore her to the burning ground.

"I know how to slow any man. Above all, the man who will dance on the
drum with you tomorrow night."

"I need no such help."

"Who said anything of help? You are Aondo, who can win without help.
What I offer is friendship."

"You, a friend to any man? I will tell all the Ichiribu that you have
promised friendship. Then they will laugh until they choke."

Wobeku grew hot, and his hands became fists. He dared show no more
anger before Aondo. He was indeed a man alone more often than not, and
few would even think of avenging him should Aondo slay him here.

"If friendship is a word that rings false in your ear, call it a
trading of favor for favor."

"I do not give up Valeria."

"Who said anything of asking mighty Aondo to give up his chosen
vengeance?" Wobeku assumed a look of vast innocence. "She will not be
harmed, I swear it. But without harming her, I can make your victory
even more sure than it is already."

"Suppose you did this favor?" Aondo asked. "What do I do for you?"

Wobeku wanted to dance in triumph. The trident had sunk deep. Now to
heave on the line and haul in this lionfish!

"There are many among the Ichiribu who will talk to you, but not to
me."

Wobeku did not add that many of those did not talk as much to Aondo as
in his presence, thinking the hulking warrior too foolish to remember
what they merely said. There was truth in that thought, but not so much
that Aondo would be useless as a fresh pair of eyes and ears.

"This is so."

"It is also true that sometimes I need to know about matters that
people will not speak of before me. I will tell you when such matters
arise. You will watch and listen, and tell me what you see and hear."

"Who else learns what I tell you?"

"The gods alone."

"Not Dobanpu?"

"Never the Spirit-Speaker, nor any of his kin!"

That was another truth. Aondo looked so relieved to hear that Wobeku
was not spying for Dobanpu that Wobeku knew the big man would not think
any further. The moon would turn to mealie porridge before Aondo
wondered if Wobeku might be spying for the Kwanyi.

"Gods! Put me on the rack rather than let me endure this!"

Emwaya made soothing noises as Mokossa rubbed oil into Valeria's aching
limbs. Conan laughed. Valeria glared.

"You'll not be laughing this time tomorrow night, Cimmerian. Aondo will
take a deal of dancing down."

"Not more than I'm fit for, I'll wager."

"How much?"

"What are you wagering, woman?"

This time Valeria's glare ended in laughter. "I know what you would
have me wager, Conan."

"Has Emwaya taught you the art of hearing thoughts?"

"Conan, some of your thoughts make such a din a babe could hear them,
and I'm well past that age!"

"Indeed you are," Conan said, running his eyes approvingly over
Valeria's nude form. She might say that every one of her muscles ached
as if she had been racked, but nothing of this showed on the clear
skin.

"Pity you can't take my place on the dance-drum," he continued. "You
dance better than I, and clad as you are now, you'd fuddle the wits of
a better man than Aondo."

"I already have," Valeria snapped. "Or have you honestly forgotten that
the drum-dance is man's magic among these folk? They would not take my
dancing as a jest, I am sure."

Conan made a rude suggestion as to where the Ichiribu could take
anything they did not like. Emwaya seemed to catch his tone, if not his
meaning. She raised her eyebrows but could not hold back laughter.

At last Valeria—as slippery as an eel, her body laved with scented
oil—was half-asleep on her pallet. The Ichiribu women departed; Conan
sat down beside Valeria and rested a hand on her hair.

Drowsily, she rolled over, and with eyes still half-closed, nipped his
hand lightly. He snatched it away and glowered at her in mock fury.

"Oh, have it your way, woman. Anyone would have thought you cared about
what happened to me tomorrow night!"

Valeria bit her lip. "Would you believe me if I said that I do?"

"Any man who believes a woman deserves to be bitten harder than I was."

"That would not be difficult to contrive, Conan."

The Cimmerian sat down on his own pallet and kicked off his boots.
"Tomorrow night we can drink late and laugh long over these fears.
Tonight I'm for a good sleep."

Valeria was snoring even before the Cimmerian lay down. As Conan rolled
over on his pallet, he heard a distant murmur that swelled to an angry
drumming of rain on the hut.

The sky had vanished twice over, once behind the clouds and a second
time behind the rain, when Ryku slipped through the darkness to meet
Chabano.

He had no fear of being tracked on such a night, save by the magic of
the Speakers. The rain would do for any natural enemies, and the First
Speaker should guard against any idle curiosity by his underlings. If
he did not, or if Dobanpu Spirit-Speaker had become curious, then
Ryku's hopes of realizing his ambitions would end before they were well
begun.

Ryku told himself that this bleak mood was due only to the rain, not to
the promptings of spirits. Then lightning flashed, illuminating a solid
figure standing against a tree. So solid did the Kwanyi chief appear
that it was hard to tell who upheld whom, the tree or the warrior.

"Hail, Chabano. You came swiftly."

"Your message came in good time. Now I am here. Speak."

"I have news. I may promise more aid to the Kwanyi—"

"You will have no place among us for mere promises, Ryku."

"That is not my hope. You asked me to speak. Will you listen if I am
brief ?"

"You sing loudly for so small a bird."

"The honey-finder also has a loud song, and the bear does well to
listen."

Chabano imitated a bear's growl, but thereafter was silent as Ryku
explained what the First Speaker wished and what he was promising.

"My spies among the Ichiribu did not swear to serve the God-Men,"
Chabano said at last.

Ryku wished the spies' oaths devoured by lionfish, but aloud said only,
"Then can they not swear new oaths? If they are wise enough to be your
spies, they must also be wise enough to know that the God-Men mean the
Kwanyi no harm."

"I myself do not know that," Chabano said. "Or do you say I lack
wisdom?"

Ryku judged that almost any words he spoke now were likely enough to be
his last. He shrugged instead.

Chabano laughed. It was laughter that drowned out the rain and even
warred against the thunder. "I do not know much about the God-Men," he
said at last. "But you will tell me more, true?"

Ryku nodded.

"I rejoice. And my spies swore oaths to me, so they will obey even if
it aids the God-Men. Did. you not know that?"

Ryku confessed ignorance.

"Then you have as much to learn about the Kwanyi as I have about the
God-Men. Perhaps more.

Remember that, and guard your tongue when next we meet."

Ryku was ready to swear potent oaths to do so when he realized that he
was about to swear to the darkness. Chabano had vanished, as silently
as a cobra for all that he more resembled the honey-seeking bear.

----------------------------------------------------------------------


TEN
---

The verdant hills on the western shore of the Lake of Death had long
since swallowed the sun. Now moon-silvered clouds were swallowing the
stars. A wind blew from the lake onto the island of the Ichiribu,
gentle for now, but with a hint of strength to come.

On the summit of the highest hill on the island, Conan stood on one
side of the dance-drum, contemplating Aondo standing on the other side.
Both wore no more than loinguards, leather braces on their ankles and
wrists, and looks of grim determination.

At least Aondo had donned such a look. Conan had merely allowed his
face to assume its natural expression, which others had told him was
grim enough for any occasion.

"You look ready to challenge the gods themselves if they give you half
an excuse," a woman had told him some years ago in a distant land. She
had intended it as praise, being one who doubted the gods' very
existence.

Conan's own beliefs did not go that far. He merely doubted everything
the priests said about the gods, and waited for the gods to speak for
themselves. As they had so far remained silent, he felt he had good
cause to rely on his own skill and strength.

He took on a more lighthearted expression and studied Aondo. The man's
wits were nothing to boast of, but his look of being as slow as a mired
ox was deceptive. Conan had seen too much of Aondo's swiftness in their
previous contests. Also, Aondo knew the art of the drum-dance from
boyhood, while Conan's life—and now Valeria's, curse the woman!— hung
upon the Cimmerian's learning it within a few moments.

There was nothing more to learn about Aondo. Conan turned his attention
to the drum itself.

It was a monstrous creation, a rough circle a good twenty paces across.
The drum-frame was made of timber stout enough for building a war
galley or the roof of a temple. In the torchlight, the drumhead had the
russet hue of well-tanned oxhide, but a sheen as of tiny scales hinted
of some other origin. Knowing how many strange beasts this part of the
jungle seemed to harbor, the Cimmerian refused to let this unsettle
him. If the drumhead would support his weight until he had won life and
freedom for himself and Valeria, he did not much care if it was made of
the hide of creatures from the moon!

From behind the circle of onlookers, Dobanpu and Seyganko stepped
forward. Conan though he saw Emwaya and Valeria somewhere in the
circle, but the crowd was too thick for him to be certain. It seemed
that everyone who could walk or be carried had contrived to be here
tonight, from babes in arms to venerable grandsires.

The wind gusted, and the torches flared, their smoke coiling
serpentlike about Conan. He smelled exotic resins and herbs, like
nothing he had encountered in the Black Kingdoms. The tribes of the
Lake of Death, he would wager, were apart even from their kinsfolk
nearer the coast.

Time to learn more about them when he had won. He raised his arms and
clasped his hands over his head in the signal that he was ready. Aondo
did the same.

From somewhere beyond the circle of torchlight, a drumming began. It
was not that of one of the great talking drums, this one—it might have
been a child tapping away. But it was the ritual signal for the dancers
to take their place.

Conan found the notched timber that served for a ladder, but disdained
it. Instead, he gripped the edge of the drum, flexed at the knees, and
soared onto the drumhead in a single leap.

The drum boomed like all the drums of all the war galleys in all the
fleets of the world sounding the stroke at once. It seemed to Conan
that the flames of the torches themselves froze for a moment. Certainly
he could read surprise on every face… including Aondo's.

The Ichiribu champion at least had the wits not to attempt Conan's
feat. He climbed by way of his notched log, and only then leaped into
the center of the drum.

Once more the thunderous booming rolled out across the hilltop until it
was lost in the darkness over the lake. Conan rode the drumhead by
again flexing his knees, for now the art seemed no more difficult than
balancing oneself on a ship's deck, easier than standing on the back of
a horse. He did not expect it to remain that easy.

Wobeku watched with a sober eye as the two dancers began the serious
work of the night. He doubted that Aondo's greater experience would
outweigh his natural arrogance. Nothing could keep him from
underestimating his opponent—and against this Conan, that would be
folly.

So much the better. The more Aondo owed to Wobeku, the more pliant a
tool in the hands of Chabano's spy the warrior would be. The more tales
Wobeku could bear to the Kwanyi chief, the higher his place when the
other tribe at last ruled the lands about the Lake of Death.

Wobeku patted the pouch at his belt. It seemed the common warrior's
pouch, which might contain a spoon and eating gourd, a bone needle and
sinew for mending garments, or a few strips of sun-dried meat and
salted fish.

It contained all of these things, to deceive the casual searcher. Below
them, it also held the two lengths of a short blowgun and a fish-skin
pouch of darts for it.

The blowgun was not the man-tall weapon of the tribes of the forests to
the south. Its range was less than half that of a good spear-throw. But
it would not need range tonight, when its victim suspected nothing.

Nor would it need to do more than pierce her bare skin for the poison
to do its work. The art of keeping cobra venom potent in the air was
known only to the God-Men, and the darts were part of their gifts to
Chabano. A small part, considering that Wobeku had only three darts.
Was the spell for preserving the venom so difficult to bring about, or
were the God-Men merely being closefisted with their magic as was their
custom? Yet when one dart would do the work, three should be ample. The
prey would suspect nothing, and cobras were not so rare on the island
that anyone would suspect more than ill fortune, until it was too late.
Too late for both Wobeku's prey and her bond-mate on the dance-drum.

The breeze now held a chill hint of yet more rain. Conan was sweating
in spite of this. So was Aondo, and the sweat of both men was pouring
onto the already-smooth drumhead, causing their footing to be even less
certain.

More than Aondo's sweat was making the Cimmerian fight to remain on his
feet. At unpredictable intervals, the Ichiribu warrior would fling
himself down on his knees, or even on his belly, then slap the drumhead
with both massive hands to begin his rise. These gestures gave the
drumhead whole new kinds of movement, also unpredictable.

Conan himself foreswore such tricks. He learned swiftly that no
movement of the drumhead put him in much danger of losing his footing…
as long as he was prepared for it, at least, which meant feet well
spread and legs ready to be either loose or rigid, as the drumhead
demanded.

The drum-dance was unlike anything the Cimmerian had done before. But
it called on skills that he had honed for a good few years, until they
were as keen as the edge of his broadsword. From the yarn of these
skills, he could weave victory.

Or at least he could avoid defeat. With his fine tricks, Aondo was
wasting strength that Conan was saving. Yet the warrior seemed no
slower or weaker than he had at the beginning of the duel. What, Conan
wondered, would be the judgment of the Ichiribu if the drum-dance ended
with both men still on the drum, unable to move a finger?

He laughed, and laughed again when he saw that this made Aondo frown.
No doubt the man was cudgeling his wits to guess what trick the
Cimmerian might be preparing. Conan laughed a third time, at Aondo's
folly. The man would only take his attention from his opponent's next
move, which was the surest way to lose.

For Conan, the world had shrunk to the drumhead and the man who stood
on it with him. So had his concentration on his foe always been
foremost in a fight for life, since he was old enough to win by skill
rather than by sheer youthful strength, and perhaps with the favor of
merciful gods. So it would be tonight.

Conan leaped high, twisted in the air, came down on all fours, and
rolled. Rolling, he rolled again onto his hands and knees, thrust hands
and feet hard against the drumhead, and rebounded into the air. When he
landed, he was standing again.

He was also close to the edge of the drum. Aondo gave a ragged roar of
triumph as he saw victory glimmering close. He, in turn, leaped
insensately, making the drumhead dance madly.

Conan deliberately allowed the movement of the drumhead to shift him
perhaps a spear's length toward the rim. He was in no danger from
anything save the frame giving way. By custom, that ended the duel
until the carpenters had finished repairing the timbers.

Aondo, however, was in danger of exhausting himself if he continued to
leap about like a flea on a hot griddle without driving Conan off the
drumhead. He seemed to have forgotten an ancient law of fighting: do
not, if you can help it, wager your chances of victory on something you
can do only once.

Just as deliberately, Conan shifted his footing, so that now the
leaping drumhead slowly pushed him away from the rim. The thunder of
the drum was outshouting the wind; soon it would outshout any thunder
roaring down from above. Conan wondered how the folk watching could
bear the sound, and saw that they had indeed widened their circle.

Valeria and Emwaya were standing side by side now, within arm's reach
of one of the torches blazing atop poles thrust into the ground. Conan
spared Valeria a glance and a wave, saw her return the wave, then
whirled to see Aondo trying to close the distance between them.

It broke laws, customs, and taboos of every kind for one dancer to
touch another. Yet crowding close to your opponent was allowed. If it
gave him less space to move, it might even give you victory.

It might also provoke him into striking you, thereby losing. Conan
would wager much that some such thought was in Aondo's mind. Yet the
warrior had his face set in a sweat-dripping mask of such ferocity that
it appeared he might be ready to strike the first blow.

Conan saw this plainly, then set the notion aside. Such a victory would
not be honorable or give him and Valeria a sure place among the
Ichiribu. Also, Aondo might be too good a warrior to die merely because
he could not guard his temper.

If Valeria's fate had not been linked to his own, the Cimmerian would
have utterly rejected the notion. As it was, he would leave such a
trick for when he might truly need to save both himself and his
companion.

Aondo had closed the distance still more in the time Conan had needed
to decide. Now the Cimmerian could almost reach out and touch him.
Aondo was too tall to leap over, so Conan waited until the warrior
leaped.

Then he stamped hard, both feet thundering on the drumhead. Aondo came
down on the vibrating hide, swayed, and in struggling for balance,
turned away from Conan.

The moment his opponent's eyes were elsewhere, Conan took his longest
leap of the duel. He came down six good paces on the other side of
Aondo. Now it was the warrior who had his back to the edge of the drum.

Conan opened the distance still more, seeing Aondo again ready to lash
out in madness and fury, thereby ending his life with dishonor. Then,
just as the Cimmerian thought the madness seemed to be ebbing from the
warrior's face, a woman's shrill scream pierced the drum-thunder.

Valeria was standing beside Emwaya, eyes fixed on the drum, when she
felt rather than saw the young woman move. Emwaya seemed almost to
float two or three paces without touching the ground. As she came into
Valeria's sight, the pirate saw that Emwaya's face was drawn.

Then, suddenly, Dobanpu's daughter broke into a sweat equal to that of
the two duelists, threw up a hand, seemed to pluck something from the
air, and screamed.

Valeria drew sword and dagger with deadly speed and scant regard for
those standing close. A circle opened around her and Emwaya, as if the
Ichiribu wizard's daughter had suddenly burst into flames.

Instead, Emwaya was staggering, shaking her hand, and opening and
shutting her mouth without making a sound. Valeria saw her eyes roll up
until only the whites showed, then saw her fall to her knees, hands
shaking uncontrollably, arms beginning to spasm.

"Snake!" someone shouted.

Valeria whirled, trying to look in all directions at once and slash to
pieces anything that looked remotely like a serpent. As she did so, she
saw a red, swollen patch on Emwaya's hand—the hand, she recalled, that
Emwaya had used to pluck something from the air.

Instantly, Valeria altered the object of her search. She was not
looking for a man or a weapon. Rather, she was looking for a certain
cast of countenance. Assassins had a look that was hard to mistake for
anything else. Assassins who had just struck down the wrong person had
an even more distinctive look, unless they were adepts of a kind she
did not expect to find among the Ichiribu.

She found a face that bore that look, a face she recognized, although
she could not put a name to it. The man was frantically scrabbling to
hide an object he held in his hands behind the women in front of him.

Valeria knew what fate awaited her and Conan if she slew an innocent
from the ranks of the Ichiribu. So she reversed her dagger and threw it
hilt-first. The hilt was of the best Nemedian artistry, with a weighted
pommel intended to do just such work as she had put it to.

The man—Wobeku, she remembered his name now—saw his danger in time to
avoid the worst of it. He ducked, the dagger struck a glancing blow and
flew off into the crowd, and a cry warned Valeria of trouble to come.
For the moment reckless of danger, she raised her sword and screamed
curses and warnings in every tongue she could command.

The Ichiribu might not understand, but they knew a madwoman when they
heard one. They made a path for Valeria, where she wanted it. She
lunged forward just as Wobeku raised what had to be a blowgun.

Neither steel nor blowgun dart found its mark. Golden fire was suddenly
all about her, raining from the sky like water. Her blade seemed to
slice deep into a thick wall of honey, and eye-searing sparks flew from
the steel.

At the same moment, the golden fire wrapped itself around something
small, which had to be the dart hurled at Valeria. It had no metal in
it, let alone good Aquilonian steel; it emitted a pale green flash and
was gone.

Then the golden fire arched high, forming a bow linking Emwaya's hand
to the blowgun held by Wobeku. It was Wobeku's turn to show the whites
of his eyes, and also to drop the blowgun and take to his heels.

The golden fire brightened until Valeria had to first squint, then
close her eyes. It brightened still more until she wanted to drop her
sword and clap her hands over her face. She heard screams all around
her, and hoped none of them were Emwaya's.

As the golden light poured over the hilltop, Conan was sure of two
things: Aondo had known of the treachery; Dobanpu was at work fighting
it.

The warrior danced all around Conan, maneuvering the Cimmerian so that
he had to either face the light or turn his back on his opponent. That
would have mattered little in most fights; the Cimmerian's hearing
could all but pick out the fall of a single leaf.

Now the footfalls of his enemy were lost in a din that seemed like the
end of the world: the drum booming, the crowd screaming in fear and
rage, and thunder that seemed to rise from the earth as well as roll
from the sky. Conan closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath, and judged
Aondo's position from the reek of the man's sweat.

His judgment was flawed, but good enough. Aondo brushed the Cimmerian's
arm. In that moment, he might have gripped and thrown Conan with none
to see it. Aondo's wits were unequal to such a stratagem. He had been
led to expect a helpless opponent, but had found Conan nothing of the
kind, and his own vision dimmed as well.

Then the golden fire diminished until the human eye could endure it.
Conan opened his eyes, sprang high and to one side, and deliberately
dropped to his knees.

Aondo gave a bull roar, mingling fury and triumph, and hurled himself
at the Cimmerian. A gasp of horror at the broken taboo rose from all
around the drum.

Conan did not meet Aondo body to body. Instead, he dropped even
farther, slamming the drumhead with his massive chest. Aondo's balance
vanished. He tried to recapture it by flinging himself forward, on top
of Conan, who turned a complete somersault that took him forward out
from under the warrior's lunge.

The big tribesman saw that nothing would save him from going over the
edge. This time his roar was pure fury. In turn, he somersaulted as he
flew over the rim of the drum. He landed almost between two spear-armed
warriors rushing forward to restrain him.

They might as well have tried to restrain a mad elephant. One gigantic
fist broke a spear with a single blow, another stretched the other
warrior senseless on the ground. Aondo kicked the fallen man in the
ribs for good measure, then put his head down and plunged through the
crowd.

Even the warriors gave way for him, but closed ranks again to bar
Conan's path as the Cimmerian leaped down from the drum in pursuit. He
raised a fist, ready to add to the numbers of those lying senseless.

Valeria pushed through the crowd from the other side, with some help
from the hilt of her sword and a deftly wielded elbow. Then she yelped
in surprise as Conan threw his arms around her.

"Gods above, Conan! You're worse than the rack or Mokossa with the
oil!"

He held her at arm's length, staring into her eyes to be sure that
reason and life still burned there. Then he laughed raggedly.

"That scream wasn't yours?"

"Not the first one, at least. It was Emwaya crying out. She caught a
poisoned blowgun dart aimed at me."

Conan felt strength flowing back into his limbs, but his wits seemed as
slow as Aondo's. "Darts?"

"It was Wobeku," Valeria said, then continued with an explanation that
gradually penetrated Conan's understanding. By the time she was
finished, he had regained not only strength, but breath.

"Where's my sword?"

"Conan—"

The Cimmerian picked Valeria up with a hand under each armpit and held
her with her feet off the ground. "Woman, I asked for my sword. I wish
to use it to kill Aondo and Wobeku. Is that so hard to understand, or
have you taken something to addle your wits?"

Valeria threw her head back and laughed until Conan had to join her,
which broke his grip. She landed lightly and turned.

"Conan, here is your sword."

It was Seyganko holding out the Cimmerian's blades, belt, and sheathes.
Behind him stood a half dozen Ichiribu warriors, none of them carrying
less than two spears and a trident, and many carrying clubs, throwing
sticks, or cords with stones knotted into the end.

Conan's first thought was that he had forfeited his life in some way,
and that they were handing his weapons back to him so that he might
wage an honorable fight at the end. Then he saw that the bleak looks of
the warriors were not aimed at him. All except Seyganko's, at least.

Conan prudently armed himself before speaking. "Seyganko, I hope I may
join your warriors in pursuing those dishonorable—"

"The Ichiribu will judge their dishonor even more harshly than you, I
swear," Seyganko said. Indeed, he swore several oaths that Conan knew
well to be highly potent in the Black Kingdoms, and several more the
Cimmerian did not know but which rang true.

His help in the pursuit would plainly be unwelcome. What else was there
to do?"

"How fares Emwaya?"

Seyganko seemed to struggle for self-command. Then: "She is in the
hands of her father and the gods. It would have been an easier matter
to heal her had Wobeku not dropped the weapon that wounded her. It
would also have been child's play to destroy him."

The fallen weapon of Wobeku was something the Cimmerian did not
altogether understand. But then, the whole thing reeked of magic, so
perhaps he lost nothing thereby. He resolved not to treat Wobeku as
helpless prey merely because the man was weaponless, and continued his
attention to Seyganko.

"As it stands, Wobeku has fled," Seyganko continued, "and Emwaya lies
without suffering, but also in much danger in spite of her father's
best skill. If you think your gods have power in this land, pray to
them."

Conan nodded. Seyganko lifted a hand, and one of his warriors gave him
a spear. "I swear by this weapon—this bringer of death to the
treacherous— that I will not harm you or your shield-woman. Whatever
comes of tonight, you and she may leave these lands unharmed. But if
Emwaya dies, do not think to find a friend in me, or in any who follow
me."

Seyganko whirled then, as lightly as a dust devil of the Kozaki
steppes. The band strode off into the darkness, which seemed twice as
deep now that the golden fire was gone.

Wobeku ran as though the Living Wind was howling at his heels. He knew
that there would be no hiding on the island; the women and children
would gladly join the hunt for him if necessary. Indeed, imagining what
the women would do to him if Emwaya died nearly made him stumble.

He prayed, as much as he had the breath to do, that he would either
reach his hidden canoe or that the warriors would catch him before the
women did. He crossed the ridge above the north shore of the island
before he realized that his prayer had been answered. Now it was all
downhill to the canoe.

The easier going made it possible to trade speed for silence. It was
hard to believe that any warriors could have crossed the island in time
to be beating him to the shore, but men often died from what they did
not believe. Wobeku kept away from the trails, and from slopes with
loose stones or thick brush that might betray him with the sound of his
passage.

It helped more than a little that halfway down the slope the rain began
in earnest. The lightning flashed about him as brightly as the golden
spirit-fire Dobanpu had hurled.

The God of Manhood deliver him! He had missed both victory and death so
narrowly that he wanted to howl like a hyena at the thought. Had Emwaya
not caught the dart, Valeria would now be dead. Dobanpu would never
have spoken to the spirits for her, and her death would have been the
end of Conan. Even had they not been spirit-bonded, clearly the two
were vowed companions, and the heart would have gone out of the big
man, leaving Aondo with an easy victory.

Had Wobeku not then dropped the blowgun, however, Dobanpu would have
turned the death tearing through Emwaya's body back on him! He would be
dying the death of the cobra's bite, knowing—if he knew anything—that
when he breathed his last, the whole tribe would be cheering and
drinking ale, Emwaya most of all!

He did stumble, in fear and fury, and nearly went full length on the
rain-slick ground. The misfortune was his salvation, though.

From where the canoe was hidden, two boys sprang up, spears held ready.
They were just old enough to guard the flocks and carry the lesser
spears, the bidui boys, as the Ichiribu called them.

It was taboo for a full warrior such as Wobeku to slay them, or even to
fight them. Wobeku had not broken any taboos as yet tonight, as Valeria
was clanless, if not a witch. He also did not care to start making any
transgressions now. Worse things than being given to the women would
come to him if he slew these boys, and most of them would come after he
died.

Wobeku crept forward with his hunter's skill, using the bushes for
cover, and also to protect himself somewhat from the rain still pouring
down. The thunder and rain drowned out any sound he made.

Closer to his canoe, he saw that the craft was safe, even if half
filled with rainwater. A smaller canoe was drawn up on the shore next
to it. The boys must have been caught in the downpour and paddled for
shore, then seen the hidden canoe and thought it marked a secure
landing place.

Bold boys, to be out on the lake after dark, especially on a night like
this, with a drum-duel being fought on the hill. They would not
frighten easily. Did he have anything with him—?

The brush crackled and crunched behind Wobeku, as if a great stone was
rolling downhill. He looked behind him, nearly fell out from beneath
the bush, and cursed aloud.

Aondo was stumbling down the hill, blood running from half a score of
cuts. He must have run blindly into a thorn thicket at some point in
his flight, for he was not only bloody, but next to naked. He held a
spear in one bloody hand, and a club was thrust through the belt that
was nearly his only garment.

The bidui leaped up as Aondo burst into the open. Both boys raised
their spears, and one also unslung a stone-rope tied around his waist.

"Give me that canoe," Aondo said. At least that was what Wobeku thought
he said; it sounded more like a beast's growl than a human's voice. The
boys looked at the big man as if he were indeed less than human, and
therefore something that they might have to fight.

It happened in the space between one breath and the next. The bidui
with the stone-rope began to whirl it about his head, while his comrade
stepped forward. He held his light spear aimed boldly at Aondo's chest,
hoping to give his friend time for a good cast. Perhaps he also hoped
to penetrate Aondo's madness and remind him of the taboos.

Aondo's fist smashed into the boy's face. The youth flew backward as if
tossed by an ox. The sound of his skull striking a rock on the shore
was even louder than the crashing of the thunder, or so it seemed to
Wobeku.

The second boy made his cast, but the rope only caught Aondo's arm and
the stone bounced harmlessly against the big man's chest. Aondo tossed
his spear to his unhampered hand and flung it. The boy died, pinned to
a tree like a mouse pierced by a snake's fangs.

Wobeku gave Aondo no time to savor victory or to lament the doom he had
earned. The smaller man burst from his cover, covering the ground
toward the shore in strides that were almost leaps.

Half-mad as he was, Aondo still sensed another's presence. Both
strength and speed had left him, though. He could do no more than draw
his club and begin to raise it before Wobeku flung his own spear.

It pierced Aondo's belly, and the warrior's breath hissed out of him.
Then he gripped the spear-shaft and seemed to realize what it was, and
where it was.

Wobeku, meanwhile, reached his canoe and slashed at the vine rope. It
parted, he lifted the paddle and thrust at the water, and Aondo gave a
cry such as the ears of men were not meant to hear, nor likely enough
the ears of the gods, either. Then the big warrior leaped from the bank
straight into the stern of Wobeku's canoe.

The canoe shattered like a stick struck with an ax. Aondo plunged under
the water, then thrashed to the surface, blood and splinters spreading
around him. Wobeku flew through the air, landing headfirst in water so
shallow that he nearly dashed his brains out on the rocks at the
bottom.

Aondo screamed now at the pain of his belly wound. Then he screamed
again as something vast, dark, and long slipped out of the night and
gripped him around the waist. He rose half out of the water, arms
thrashing wildly at what held him; he even pulled the spear from his
belly and thrust it down.

Nothing helped. Spray mingled with the rain as the crocodile thrashed
its tail, moving away from the shore. Aondo went with it. For a moment,
his chest and head were still above water, then only his head; then
Wobeku heard a gurgle and saw nothing but a swirl of foam.

Wobeku staggered out of the water, knelt on the shore, and spewed. When
he could stand, he could see only the rain and the biduis' canoe. It
was small even for him, and would never have held Aondo, but Aondo
would never again need a canoe.

Wobeku did. No one on the island, after the boys' bodies were found and
no sign of Aondo was seen, would doubt that it was Wobeku who had
cursed himself by the three deaths. Out on the lake, Wobeku would not
need to submit to any judgment save the gods'. They knew that he was
innocent, at least of the boys' blood.

If the gods knew anything, which was a question Wobeku did not expect
to have answered tonight. He slid into the canoe, tested the balance of
the boy-sized paddles, cast off the vine, and pushed hard away from the
shore. By the time he had settled to a steady rhythm, sign of the shore
itself was lost in the rain. Wobeku was alone with the lake, the gods,
and his fear of what Chabano would say of this night's work.

The clay jug in the corner of the hut held good ale—almost as much as
it did when it had first arrived this morning. Conan's throat was as
dry as the Iranistani uplands, and he doubted that Valeria's was
otherwise, but neither of them seemed ready for drink stronger than
water.

A clear head for a fight was always as well, but had they to fear any
more fighting tonight? Conan trusted Seyganko, who had sworn oaths it
would shrivel a man to break that the Cimmerian and Valeria would not
be harmed even if Emwaya died.

Conan was not much for prayers, but what few he remembered of how to
remind the gods that somebody needed help, he was muttering to himself.
Valeria had prayed aloud to all those gods lawful in her native
Aquilonia, and was now embarked on prayers to the gods of Shem and
Zingara.

Whether she believed or not, she was praying so fiercely that even a
god could likely enough not tell the difference. Also, Conan thought
that even a god would think twice before rejecting a prayer uttered by
anyone with such a look upon her face.

Footfalls loud enough to challenge the rain thudded outside. A war
party coming for them after all? Conan laid his sword across his knees,
saw Valeria do the same, then realized that it was only two pairs of
feet. The rain had slackened.

"Enter!" he called, his voice sounding like a dotard's. He pointed at
the beer jug and the cups, and Valeria was filling the cups when the
grass curtain at the door parted and Seyganko and Mokossa entered.

One look at their faces told Conan the news they brought. He leaped up,
feeling as if he could dance down Aondo all over again and then hunt
Wobeku all the way to the sea. He gripped the visitors' hands so hard
that the girl squealed, and even Seyganko fought not to wince.

"Yes, it is true. Emwaya will live, heal, and be my bride."

"How fares her father?" Valeria asked. "I owe him my life, too."

"It will be as well if the Ichiribu need no Spirit-Speaking for some
days," Seyganko said dryly. "This night has not ended as we had
expected when it began."

"Meaning that Conan and I aren't dead?" Valeria snapped. Conan put a
hand on her shoulder; she shook him off.

Seyganko looked genuinely ashamed. "My tongue fails me in my time of
need. No. We wished Conan to win. But we did not wish such disorder
among our folk." He seemed to need his spear as a staff for a moment.

"Aondo and Wobeku have both fled. In their flight, they killed two
bidui boys and stole their canoe. We must find the taboo-breakers, or
their spirits will curse the Ichiribu. Our fields on the island and the
mainland alike will be barren. Our cows will go dry. The fish will swim
downriver, beyond our reach."

He went on reciting a litany of disasters until Mokossa boldly gripped
his arm. "Oh," Seyganko said as if suddenly awakened from a daze.
"There can be no welcoming feast, not until the taboo-breakers are
taken. But the gods will forgive us for offering you and your
shield-woman companions, for this night and for any other nights as you
may choose."

Conan held laughter inside; Seyganko was clearly in no merry mood. Now
he knew why Mokossa had interrupted Seyganko's lamentations… and also
whom she intended that Conan's partner should be tonight.

Then the Cimmerian could not hold back laughter, because Seyganko was
gazing at Valeria as if she were a rather distasteful duty that he must
perform for the good of his tribe. Mercifully, Seyganko had enough
sense to join in the laughter instead of taking offense.

"My thanks to the Ichiribu, and I mean no insult to their fine women,
not to any of them," Conan said. "But my shield-woman and I are vowed,
as I have told you. Also, we know each other's ways."

"May we at least send more beer?" Seyganko seemed to be almost pleading
as he looked at Valeria.

"As you wish," Conan replied. He glanced at the door-curtain, and in a
moment he was alone with Valeria. A Valeria who had, while his back was
turned, removed the waistcloth that was her only garment. He saw
nothing he had not seen a score of times before… but now, for the first
time, it made his blood sing.

He stepped forward; Valeria held up one hand. He gripped it, and she
pressed her other hand hard against his chest.

"You are going to have to prove that, you know," she said as he drew
her closer.

"Prove what?"

"That you know my ways."

He laughed and kissed her, and this time, her lips opened under his.
"We have all night. If I don't know them at first, by Erlik's brass
tool, I'll know them by morning!" He lifted her, and she nestled
against his chest for a moment before raising her face for more kisses.

----------------------------------------------------------------------


ELEVEN
------

Something's taken the bait," Conan said.

Valeria sat up in the stern of the canoe and reached for her trident.
She was clad in an Ichiribu waistcloth, a necklace of lionfish teeth,
and a broad hat made of leaves tied with vine to a reed frame.

Conan squatted amidships, letting the fishing line feed over the side.
He wore a leather binding to protect his hand from the flax-and-sinew
line, a loin-guard, and a dagger. His sword and Valeria's, as well as
her bow, lay in the bottom of the canoe, wrapped in fish skin, inside
oiled leather, inside waxed linen.

Neither of them cared to leave their weapons ashore on such an
expedition as today's. Nor did they care to risk them rusting or taking
up dampness. Wobeku might not be the only traitor among the Ichiribu,
and there were still warriors with doubts about the two strangers. The
nearest smith who could replace, or even repair their blades was at
least a month's travel from the Lake of Death.

At last the fish finished its run. Conan braced himself and began
hauling it in. Valeria crouched, trident ready, its line coiled lightly
in the stern and knotted firmly to a peg driven into the bottom of the
canoe.

The fish was a fighter, but Conan wasted no time playing with it. He
judged the line would bear any strain the fish could put on it, and
hauled away with a will.

Ripples spread around the canoe as the fish's thrashing reached the
surface. Valeria's eyes roved about, watching for the first patch of
scales large enough to give her trident a mark. Her movements lifted
her breasts in a way Conan would have found agreeable, had he spared
attention for such matters now.

Suddenly, the fish leaped. The trident was as swift, and blood and foam
took the place of the ripples as the fish thrashed out its life an
arm's length from the boat. With Valeria gripping the tail and Conan
the head, they heaved it aboard, a grisku, as the tribe called it—a
third the length of the canoe and weighing as much as a newborn calf.

Valeria made a face as the grisku gave its last wriggle. "All that work
for one of those? You know they taste like glue."

"The Ichiribu like them, so we won't have to eat it. Besides, you know
well that the more fish we bring back, the less anybody will suspect
us."

"I trust the Ichiribu. Don't you?"

"Most of them, yes, as much as I trust any foreigners when I'm nearly
alone among them. It takes few enemies to make trouble then."

"In that case, let us make our enemies fewer, Conan. You've been
hammering the idea of our fighting the Kwanyi into my ears night and
day."

"Not every night, Valeria. Some nights we've passed otherwise."

She sniffed. "If I do lower myself to take a great loutish Cimmerian to
my bed, the least he can do is not to throw it in my face by daylight."

"Where would you have me throw it?"

Valeria made a vulgar gesture and gave an even more vulgar reply. Then
she laughed. "I've no quarrel with the Ichiribu, and we'll reach the
sea faster if we wait until the rains. A war with the Kwanyi seems as
good a way of passing the time as any."

"Better than most. If half they say of Chabano is true, his eye is on
an empire. That could bring him down on my old friends toward the coast
if he goes unchecked."

"They're not my friends," Valeria protested, but to Conan the protest
seemed feeble. Like him, she was one to think twice before walking away
from a good fight, even more so when one owed a debt as she and he did
to the Ichiribu.

Moreover—

"I've been thinking," he said. "If Dobanpu thinks it well, we can
explore the tunnels beyond the Ichiribu island. If they reach to the
Kwanyi shore of the lake, we can climb into Chabano's bedchamber some
night."

"What of the Golden Serpents?"

"What of them?" Conan asked, shrugging. "With enough good men at our
side, no serpent will pass. Besides, the more Golden Serpents, the more
fire-stones."

"Indeed." For a moment, Valeria's blue eyes seemed to take on a
greenish hue as her pirate's soul warmed to the thought of such booty.

Geyrus, the First Speaker, assumed the pose of meditation. Out of
respect, Ryku did the same. He doubted that the gesture would deceive
the First Speaker, but it might delay an open breach.

If the First Speaker really intended to come down from Thunder Mountain
to meet Chabano, only a little delay would be needed. The presence of
Kwanyi warriors, added to his own new skills, would make Ryku proof
against anything untoward that Geyrus might intend for him.

The two men remained in the posture of mediation for so long that Ryku
began to suffer from both impatience and stiffening limbs. The First
Speaker had kept his promise, giving Ryku most of the knowledge of a
full Speaker. What had not been taught, Ryku had contrived to learn on
his own, as well as certain arts that not even the Speakers
acknowledged.

This had taken its toll of his body, however. He had gone sleepless as
often as not, endured thirst, hunger, and both great and little pain,
and driven his body to its uttermost limits. Or what he had believed
were its uttermost limits, before he began the final steps to the
Speakers' arts. Now he knew that he had been hardly more than a youth
thinking himself a man.

It seemed that the moon must have turned from full to dark and back
again to half-bright before the First Speaker broke the posture. When
Ryku saw Geyrus's eyes, he wished it had indeed taken that long, or
even longer.

"Ryku, I am not pleased with how little knowledge of the Ichiribu you
have gathered from Chabano."

"I have been as zealous in seeking what the Kwanyi know as I have been
in studying the Speakers' arts. You have praised my zeal in the second.
I ask for no praise in the first matter if my best has been less than
you wished, but I swear—"

"Do not use vain oaths in the Cave of the Living Wind," Geyrus said
sharply.

That was asking of Ryku what the other Speakers hardly seemed to ask of
themselves. Did Geyrus mean to put fear in him by such childish
bullying? Or did the First Speaker know something about the Living Wind
that he had not told Ryku?

That second thought made the air of the caves seem even more chill than
common. It also made Ryku ransack his memory and knowledge for some art
that might let him find the answer to that question. He knew—as surely
as he knew he was alive— that Geyrus would not tell him freely, if at
all.

"If I can use no oaths, may I use my wits?"

"Your tongue has grown sharp, Ryku."

"I trust that my wits have not grown dull. I would beg the right to
come with you when you go to meet Chabano. I believe he may speak more
freely to me than to you, if he is given the opportunity to do so
without his warriors knowing it."

"They still fear the God-Men?"

"Yes."

"As indeed they ought to," Geyrus said, rising to his feet. As always,
he was taller than one expected, seeing his many years and believing
they must have shrunk his limbs. "Very well. If Chabano thinks to trade
rotten fish for fresh, he must be taught to think more clearly."

Geyrus departed, without bidding Ryku to follow. The Silent Brother
returned to the posture of meditation, but with his thoughts very much
elsewhere.

Had Chabano found himself knowing less of matters among the Ichiribu
than he had expected to do? This seemed not unlikely. Doubtless he had
spies in the herdlands and fieldlands, even on the island itself. Just
as certainly, those spies might have fallen prey to the Ichiribu, or
simply found it difficult to send messages to their master.

It would be as well to learn about this. Geyrus would not forever
contain his wrath if he learned he had made a fool's bargain. If Ryku
learned the truth before his master did, he could at least flee to the
Kwanyi, offering silence in return for protection.

Ryku doubted that Geyrus would challenge Chabano himself over one
fugitive, or indeed over anything else. Geyrus was old, and his
judgment twisted by the loss of that wretched girl, but he was not yet
a fool.

Which meant that Ryku should go to the meeting prepared to use the arts
of a full Speaker, so that whichever side he chose to aid would have
cause to be grateful to him.

The lamp bowl held mixed tallow and fish oil, with herbs crumbled into
it. Valeria thought she had smelled sweeter middens, but Seyganko and
Emwaya seemed to inhale the scent hungrily. Conan was as indifferent to
it as he was to every other discomfort, great and small.

Valeria marveled that a man could learn such endurance. But then, Conan
had learned in the harsh school of a life where one endured or died.
Even when he was a free youth in his native Cimmeria, its stony fields
and snowbound winters must have begun the lessons.

"Valeria and I will give the warriors of the Ichiribu any knowledge of
our fighting arts that they wish to learn in order to make themselves a
better match for the Kwanyi on land," Conan said. "You have also seen
how much Valeria knows of the art of fighting from boats."

"We have," Seyganko said. "You used the words 'wish to learn'? Not
'need to learn.' "

"I have a pretty fair and wide experience of war, and much of it in the
Black Kingdoms," Conan replied. "I did not win the name Amra by sitting
on a golden stool and fondling my concubines."

"No doubt this displeased your concubines," Emwaya said. Valeria
understood enough of the Ichiribu tongue now to smile at the young
woman. Emwaya sometimes seemfed almost young enough to be Valeria's
daughter, at other times old enough in wisdom, if not in years, to be
her grandmother.

"The Kwanyi are there and I am here," Conan said. "And being here, I'm
not one to insult my hosts by saying that they are children in war.
Chabano has not made the Kwanyi invincible. But there are war skills
that I can teach, those that will save the Ichiribu many warriors when
we meet the Kwanyi in battle."

Seyganko nodded. "I am sure of that. Conan, I will proclaim that you
speak with my voice in teaching war skills. I ask only one favor in
return."

"What is it?"

"Give over this notion of marching through the tunnels, out of the
gods' daylight and through who-knows-what evil magic, to strike the
Kwanyi."

Emwaya turned and stared at her betrothed. Then she spoke sharply,
words that Valeria did not understand but whose meaning she sensed as a
woman. Seyganko had surprised Emwaya, and she was even more displeased
at the surprise than at the suggestion.

Emwaya went on for some time. It seemed to Valeria that Conan was
holding back laughter, that Seyganko much wished to be elsewhere, and
that Emwaya would slap her betrothed's head from his shoulders for a
Shemite brass piece.

Neither Conan nor Valeria offered Emwaya any coin at all, so Seyganko
went unmolested until the woman ran out of breath. Valeria remained
uneasy until Emwaya at last collapsed into Seyganko's arms, tears
running down her cheeks. Doubtless her anger had wearied her more than
it had him; the poison was out of her body, but she had not yet
regained her strength.

"Conan," Seyganko said. He took what seemed half the night before he
found his next word. "It seems that Emwaya believes, as you do, in the
matter of the tunnels."

The Cimmerian continued to feign a temple image. Judging that he had
good reasons for this, Valeria sought to do likewise.

"She and I will submit this matter to her father," the warrior chief
went on. "Will you abide by his judgment?"

Conan nodded. "I've no wish to insult you, Emwaya, but your father
likely enough knows more of this than he has had time to teach you." He
looked at Emwaya, and Valeria saw the Ichiribu woman try to meet those
icy-blue eyes and not quite succeed.

"I trust we've no need to wait to begin my instructing the warriors?"
the Cimmerian concluded.

Seyganko took Conan's meaning—that he might keep all his authority over
the Ichiribu warriors to himself if he spoke against Conan again.
Valeria shifted sideways so that she was within reach of Conan, and
also faced Seyganko.

The Ichiribu warrior, being no fool, could recognize a battle that he
had lost before it was joined. "Any oaths you need, I will give, Conan,
that you may teach the Ichiribu to walk on their hands and hurl spears
with their toes!"

"That might be no bad thing should it make the Kwanyi laugh so hard
that other warriors could slit their bellies while they laughed," Conan
said. "Come at dawn tomorrow, and tell me all you know of the Kwanyi
way of fighting. Then I will be more sure of what the Ichiribu could
most wisely learn from me."

"We can begin that tonight—" Seyganko began eagerly, then found Emwaya
covering his mouth with two fingers in the ritual gesture for silence.
She smiled and laid her other hand on his knee.

"We will begin tomorrow, when we are all rested and fit," Conan said,
and the suggestion seemed to act as a command on the visitors.

When the curtain had fallen behind them, he let out his laughter in a
roar that made the hanging billow as if in a gale. "There's a woman who
hasn't been well-bedded in a while and who won't have it put off for
talk of war!"

"And here is another," Valeria said, slipping an arm through Conan's.

"What, not well-bedded? You insult me, or was it some other woman
wrapped around me like a vine last night?"

"You know as well as any man that one night is like one meal. Man or
woman, you cannot live on it forever."

He turned to her, and she rose so that he could undo the waistcloth,
throwing her arms around him as he did so.

This would not last, she knew. Neither of them could long endure a
partnership in which they could not be sure who led and who followed.
But for now, she could follow him with pleasure—and not only to the
sleeping mat.

Wobeku wondered that the torches did not draw swarms of insects that
would sting and bite, whether the pests flew or crawled. It was not the
torches themselves, he was sure. They smelled and looked much the same
as any others.

The God-Men—the Speakers to the Living Wind, as they called
themselves—must have worked magic. Potent magic, too, when one
considered how many insects a single torch could draw out of the
jungle! That was one difference between the island and the mainland,
and Wobeku would have to endure it until Chabano's victory took him
home again.

Better gnawed by insects than dead, he told himself, then cast his face
into a form suitable for receiving Spirit-Speakers, or whatever the
God-Men were. As a fugitive among the Kwanyi, he had barely the right
to ask such questions; he would have a long wait for answers.

At least Chabano's wrath had come and gone swiftly, and when it had
departed, Wobeku had not lain dead on the floor of the Paramount
Chief's hut. That Aondo had been a fool, and that Wobeku had not broken
taboo, undoubtedly counted for much. It counted for more that Chabano
killed fewer men out of hand these days, even when in one of his famous
rages.

Now Wobeku stood among the twelve warriors surrounding Chabano, and all
thirteen pairs of eyes were fixed on the torchlit path from whence six
men were approaching. The newcomers wore the ceremonial garb of
God-Men, with complete cloaks and headdresses of crimson and sapphire
feathers, loin-guards of leather tooled and gilded, wrist braces of
silver, and staves that seemed to be worth a good herd of cattle each.

One of the God-Men wore the less ornate garb of a Silent Brother but
bore the First Speaker's oxhide shield, with its ornaments of Golden
Serpents, eight of them forming a pattern it was best not to look upon
for long. If one did, one began to think that the serpents lived, or at
least that their eyes glowed green.

The five companions of the approaching First Speaker divided, three
placing themselves on one side of their leader and two on the other.
The First Speaker himself advanced toward Chabano. He seemed to have no
fear of being within reach of so many spears, but then, perhaps his
magic gave him good assurance.

What the Living Wind was, not even the Kwanyi wished to ask, lest they
receive disquieting answers. That it made the God-Men powerful, all
knew so well that there was no need for questions on that matter.

Wobeku followed the lead of Chabano and his companions in clashing his
spear against his shield, in the salute of honor to a Paramount Chief.
The First Speaker returned the salute by thrusting the butt of his
staff deep into the earth—whereupon Wobeku felt as if the ground under
his feet had turned for a moment red-hot.

Again Wobeku followed the lead of those around him; none of them so
much as flinched. Yet he noticed that Chabano seemed more wary, and the
First Speaker was unsmiling; it seemed that the man was displeased, and
moreover, ready to make his displeasure felt.

"Hail, Geyrus, First Speaker to the Living Wind!" Chabano said, laying
his spear and shield on the ground. For a moment, Wobeku thought the
chief would prostrate himself, but he did not even kneel.

He rose to his full height and crossed his arms on his chest.

"Hail, Chabano," Geyrus said in a chill voice barely above a whisper.

"First Speaker," Chabano said sharply, "you have summoned me. I have
come. You, it seems, are here in anger. What cause is there for this
anger?"

"You have lied to me," Geyrus said.

Wobeku was not the only man to suck in his breath. Any common man
calling Chabano a liar to his face would have thrown his life away. He
would be fortunate to die on the spot, instead of suffering impalement
or worse.

"If so, I have done so with good cause," Chabano snapped.

That seemed an equally grave insult to Geyrus. Staves rose, and the
faces under the headdresses looked more like demon-lodge masks than
Wobeku found pleasant. He had sometimes wondered which would have the
victory in a contest of swiftly thrown spears and swiftly cast spells.
He had not expected to learn the answer by being part of such a battle
himself.

Geyrus seemed to struggle with the urge not to strike Chabano dead on
the spot, and mastered it. His tone was still harsh when he replied.

"Oh. Am I worthy of the knowledge of what cause you claim for lying to
the Speakers to the Living Wind?"

"Yes. There are those in your caves on Thunder Mountain whose eyes and
ears serve our enemies. It is best we find ways of speaking the truth
to each other without their hearing it."

To Wobeku, that made perfect sense. To Geyrus, however, it seemed to be
an insult almost past bearing. Wobeku gripped his spear until his
knuckles grew pale in fear of what he saw on the First Speaker's face.

Yet nothing passed the man's lips. At least not until the rage left his
countenance. His shoulders sagged then, and he seemed to age ten years
before Wobeku's eyes.

"Do you trust your own folk?" he asked, as one might ask the price of a
goat.

"Yes," Chabano replied. One could almost see his chest swell with pride
at the loyalty of the Kwanyi.

"Then let us go to your nearest village, and there we will see to this
speaking of the truth. If there have been lies told—"

"Silence!" Chabano roared. Geyrus did not take offense; he seemed to
realize, as did Wobeku, that the order was not aimed at him. It was
aimed at the warriors around Chabano. Several of them were from that
"nearest village," and their faces said plainly that they did not care
to host God-Men.

Chabano's power, it seemed, was not without limits.

"Great Chief—" one warrior began.

Chabano turned and struck the man across the face with an open hand.
Then he snatched the man's spear from his grip, broke it across his
knee, and pointed at the ground. The man flung his shield on the jungle
floor and prostrated himself on it.

Chabano did not lift a weapon. Instead, he brought one heavy foot down
hard on the man's back, several times. Each time the breath huffed out
of the man, and Wobeku saw him biting his lip until it bled.

"Be grateful for my mercy," Chabano said. "You will carry a spear again
for the war, but avoid my sight until then."

The warrior rose, unaided, for his comrades drew back from him as if he
carried pox on his skin. Bent and stumbling like one sick or aged, he
lurched down the path and out of sight.

Wobeku did not watch him go. His instincts told him that this clash was
not yet done, and that the heart of the matter was still Geyrus's will.
He did not dare watch the First Speaker too closely, but he tried to
follow the man's eyes from one warrior to another. If Geyrus raised his
staff, or if his eyes lingered on one man longer than on the others…

Neither staff nor eyes gave Wobeku a clue. But he was fortunate
nonetheless. He was well out to the left of Chabano and so could see
the men behind the chief without appearing to look at them. There were
three of them, and now one of them was breathing with unnatural
slowness. His eyes seemed to have turned crimson and sapphire. His
spear was rising into throwing position, as if drawing his arms with
it.

Then suddenly the spear leaped up. The warrior leaped with it—or
rather, his death-grip on the weapon drew him with it until his feet no
longer touched the ground.

Those who saw the spectacle were mute from surprise, or perhaps from
magic. All except Wobeku.

"Chief! Behind you!" he screamed. The warning did its work. Chabano
whirled, flinging up his shield and thrusting with his spear.

The chief's spear only stabbed air. Wobeku, with more time to aim,
struck home. His spear sank into the warrior's side, halfway up his rib
cage. The man reeled, turned halfway toward Wobeku, and seemed about to
laugh at the sight of the Ichiribu warrior cringing away.

Wobeku could not help it. The other's eyes were now pools of
crimson-and-sapphire fire, and a faint mist in the same hues seemed to
cling to both his weapon and his hands. Then the crimson of the
God-Men's magic gave way to the crimson of blood, pouring from the
man's side and mouth. He choked, reeled again, and fell with the spear
still protruding from his side.

Wobeku knew that the man would shortly have company in death: Chabano
and all his companions. Nor would Chabano seek to escape that fate by
fleeing. It would be futile. Geyrus would have his life, no matter
where he fled.

Wobeko himself also had fled once before. It was not in him to do so
again, any more than he could have slain the bidui boys.

He was so concerned with meeting a warrior's death that he did not see
Chabano step forward, perhaps with the same thought in his mind. The
chief had his spear raised, and the muscles of his right arm tautened
as he made ready to hurl it into Geyrus's throat.

Wobeku saw the First Speaker raise his staff in both hands, holding it
out in front of him. He saw Chabano's spear stop as if it had
encountered the rock of a mountain. He saw the iron point begin to
smoke—and a chill hand seemed to grip his heart and bowels as he saw
that the smoke was crimson and blue.

Then he saw the Silent Brother stride up, swing his staff high in both
hands like a woman swinging a mortar, and bring it down across the
First Speaker's staff.

Wobeku knew in the next moment that death had come for him. Flames shot
up from the First Speaker's staff. They also rose from the Speaker
himself, as if his body were a pile of straw. They were of all colors
and no colors, without smoke but not without heat.

The leaves above the First Speaker turned brown and would have burned
had they not been sodden with rain. Common, lawful smoke rose from the
jungle floor where the heat seared the mat of dead leaves and vines.
Somehow the color of the smoke consoled Wobeku for his coming death. He
would not die in a place abandoned by the gods.

Then a moment came when he began to think that he might not die after
all. Chabano staggered back, dropping his spear with its half-melted
point but seeming otherwise unharmed. He stumbled over Wobeku's victim
and nearly fell, but two of his warriors caught him.

Three others, Wobeku among them, saw that the flames enveloped the two
staves and the First Speaker, but not the Silent Brother. They also saw
that this did not please the other Speakers. Indeed, they were staring
with their pale eyes at the spectacle as if it went against all they
had been taught was possible.

It very likely was. Wobeku snatched a spear from a warrior too
gape-jawed and wide-eyed to tell one end of it from another, raised the
weapon, and threw it.

This time he took his victim, the Speaker just to the right of Geyrus,
in the throat. The man dropped his staff, went to his knees, clawed at
his torn throat and the spear in it, then bent so far forward that his
headdress fell off. As it struck the jungle floor, so did he, toppling
onto his side and kicking out what remained of his life.

Wobeku's swiftness seemed to restore life to the other warriors—that,
and a few sharp words from Chabano in the tone that meant disobedience
could yield death. In moments, the remaining Speakers were surrounded
by warriors holding spear-points at their throats or stomachs. The
warriors kept them motionless until the First Speaker was only ashes on
the jungle floor.

The Silent Brother gathered the staves from the surviving Speakers'
unresisting hands, then spoke to them in a tongue Wobeku did not
understand. He only sensed in the voice age beyond anything he had
dreamed of. It held echoes of times before Atlantis, of times even
before the gods had judged that men, not beasts, should rule the earth.

This done, the Silent Brother turned and knelt to Chabano. It seemed to
Wobeku that he would have prostrated himself had that not meant setting
down his armful of staves or turning his eyes from the Speakers. The
Ichiribu renegade also noticed for the first time that the Silent
Brother's eyes had the pallid hue of a full Speaker's.

Chabano looked from Wobeku to the Silent Brother and nodded. Respect
for a chief was all very well, yet keeping those Speakers bound by
fear, never mind of what, was more needed now.

"I am Ryku," the Silent Brother said. Understanding came to Wobeku.
Such a name had come to his ears without his knowing what it meant. So
had tales of Chabano's spy on Thunder Mountain, although these were
whispered. Ryku and the spy, it seemed, were one and the same.

"Hail, Ryku, friend to the Kwanyi," Wobeku said. It seemed the least
foolish thing he could say.

"You are not of the Kwanyi," Ryku said. "Are you the eyes and ears of
Chabano among the Ichiribu?"

"Before I answer that question," Chabano said with dangerous mildness,
"you must answer one."

"Ask, my chief."

Chabano seemed to take the words at their value and to ignore Ryku's
tone. "What did you say to your comrades?"

"I told them that if they did not swear obedience to me in all matters
concerning aid to the Kwanyi, I would allow your warriors to slay them
here and now."

"And did they swear?" Chabano waved a hand, and warriors' hands
tightened on spear-shafts.

Whatever the Speakers swore, they swore it fervently and at length.
Before the oath was half over, Ryku bade the Kwanyi warriors to lower
their spears. When it was done, he spoke a sharp word and the Speakers
scurried off up the trail as fast as their aged legs could carry them.

Chabano looked eloquently at his warriors, and they retreated with
similar speed in the opposite direction. The chief, the God-Man, and
the spy were alone in the jungle.

"My thanks to both of you," Chabano said. "A chief's thanks is worth
much, and it will be worth more the longer I rule." He cast a sharp
look at Wobeku. "Although had you been as swift some time ago as you
were today, you would not be here."

Ryku asked that this be explained; Chabano acceded to the request with
a mildness that amazed the fugitive warrior. But then, even a Paramount
Chief did not stand upon rank with a God-Man who seemed to have made
himself a full Speaker upon his own whim.

Or was it that becoming a God-Man was easier than the tribes had been
led to believe? That would have been a cheering thought, had Wobeku
wished to follow in Ryku's footsteps.

As his ambition was to be high among the Kwanyi when they ruled all
this land, he was not so cheered. Fumble-fingered God-Men would not be
of much use to the Kwanyi in the face of Dobanpu's Spirit-Speaking.
Dobanpu's mastery was no tale, and the vengeance he would wreak on
Wobeku would be no light one!

----------------------------------------------------------------------


TWELVE
------

The Ichiribu and the Kwanyi took time to gird themselves for battle.
This did not entirely arise because of each of their new allies,
although those played a part.

Wobeku found that while the warriors kept their distance, few doubted
him. He had, after all, saved Chabano, the Paramount Chief whom all had
followed for twelve years. Even those who followed Chabano out of fear
more than from love knew that the Kwanyi would be doomed without him.
The man who saved him had placed the tribe greatly in his debt.

Ryku was also regarded with some gratitude, but likewise with more than
a little fear. He also had saved Chabano, and moreover, had cast down
the greatest of the God-Men. In so doing, however, he had made himself
a yet greater God-Man.

It was as well for Ryku that he did not go among the warriors more
often than when Chabano summoned him. He remained, nine days out of
ten, in seclusion on Thunder Mountain, putting the Speakers, the Silent
Brothers, and the servants and slaves in as much order as his powers
and the time allowed. Had he come to the villages too often, someone
might have served him as Wobeku had served one of the Speakers—which
would have saved the Kwanyi a deal of trouble in days to come, but they
were only a tribe of stout fighters, not seers who could foretell the
future.

Conan had a busy time among the Ichiribu, for all that most of them
thought him favored by the gods, if not in truth sent by them.

The Kwanyi had been invincible on land since Chabano had taught them
the art of fighting in a line, with the tall shield and the great spear
that a man could thrust as well as throw. It was not to be expected
that the Ichiribu could learn that art, even from the Cimmerian, well
enough and soon enough to face their foes in full array.

So Conan set about teaching them how to use their old weapons in new
ways. They had a fair number of archers and slingers, who could gall
and torment the flanks of the Kwanyi ranks. Their fishing tridents were
not despicable weapons against the Kwanyi spear, either, if they could
contrive to fight two warriors against one.

Valeria also taught them how to fight from their canoes with more skill
than before. What she did not know about the handling of small boats,
it was probably not given to men—or women—to know. Even the most
seasoned fishermen of the Ichiribu soon said loudly that Conan's
shield-woman and vowed lover was worth almost as much as the Cimmerian
himself.

"We must be the ants, and the Kwanyi the warthog," Conan said, until
even Seyganko wearied of hearing it for all that he knew it was true.
"They are a bigger warthog than we can be. Fight them tusk to tusk, and
we are doomed. Sting them a thousand times, and the doom will be
theirs."

The skill the Ichiribu showed in learning what he taught left Conan in
good heart. He would have been still more confident had the matter of
marching through the tunnels not remained dangling in the wind.

Dobanpu agreed that if the spirits allowed, this would be a cunning and
deadly trick, that of making warriors sprout from the ground. He would
not say more, other than that he waited for a sign from the spirits.

He continued to demur, and Conan's temper grew short. "Is it the
spirits who've turned mute?" he asked Emwaya one morning. "Or is it
your father?"

"If I knew the answer to that, it would still not help us," the girl
replied. "No man can force the spirits, and my father is almost as
difficult to make speak when he chooses to be silent."

"If he chooses to be silent for too long, he may be choosing the end of
his folk," Valeria snapped. Both the visitors could see that Emwaya
herself was uneasy at her father's reluctance to speak. Neither doubted
that she told the truth.

"He knows this also," Emwaya said, and withdrew with as much dignity as
she could contrive,

"Wizards!" Conan said. He made the word sound like a particularly foul
obscenity. Then he looked at the sky. The sun shone, although through a
haze that promised rain for later in the day.

The rainy season drew closer with each sunrise, and Conan was of a mind
to leave the tribes of the Lake of Death to their own devices if
Dobanpu did not speak before the downpour began in earnest. The rivers
would run high then, and the rain would make pursuit difficult.

"If you have no work before noon, let us take a canoe and go fishing,"
Valeria suggested. "One of the large ones, I think."

Conan laughed. The large canoes, they had discovered, were something of
a burden for two paddlers. But they were also broad of beam. With a
sleeping mat or two laid in the bottom, they made a good place for hot
loving.

They paddled closer to the Kwanyi-held shore than usual on a fishing
expedition. This was not Conan's notion, still less Valeria's. It had
come from Emwaya, who had appeared at the shore as they were loading
the fishing gear and mats into the canoe.

"May I come with you?" she had asked.

Conan and Valeria had frowned. They would have more gladly been alone,
but neither wished to offend Dobanpu's daughter and Seyganko's
betrothed. Also, Conan, at least, had heard in Emwaya's voice a hint of
something more than wishing to amuse herself on a tedious day.

"Be welcome," Valeria had said, and had sent a bidui boy for an extra
mat and water gourd.

Emwaya proved herself a strong if not an overly skilled paddler, and
the canoe made good time to the usual fishing spot. As Conan and
Valeria slackened their stroke, Emwaya pointed toward the Kwanyi shore.

"Can we go closer?"

This time, Conan did more than frown. "The Kwanyi are not complete
landlubbers. If they see suspicious-looking folk bobbing about off
their shore, they may find a canoe or two to fill with warriors."

"I will lie down, so that none may recognize me."

"What about us?" Valeria asked. "Or have Conan and I turned your hue
from the sun without anyone's telling us?"

Emwaya might know potent magic herself, and to offend her was to offend
a master of still more potent spells. But neither she nor her father
seemed quite as wise in matters of war as Conan could wish.

They bargained, as Valeria said afterward, like a captain and a ship's
chandler haggling over the price of a galley's fittings. In the end,
they had drunk half the water to ease throats dry from talking, and
agreed on where to go. It was nearer the shore than Conan liked,
farther than Emwaya wanted, but would serve the purposes of both.

Above all, they could not readily be caught against the shore by canoes
coming in from the lake. Canoes coming out from the land they could see
in time to keep their lead, and having a third paddler would help.

"Remember, too, that I can summon aid from the island if we seem to be
pursued too closely," Emwaya said. She said no more, and Conan did not
ask further. He was still none too easy over having such as Dobanpu as
a friend. Sorcerers, he had to admit, might remain friendly, or at
least harmless—but he could count the ones who had done so on the
fingers of one hand. Those who had sooner or later been deadly foes, on
the other hand—all the fingers and toes in the canoe could hardly
number them.

They reached their intended spot. Conan, having the sharpest eyes of
the three, studied the shore. It showed no sign of human presence and
precious little sign of any other animal life. Only a spit of sand with
furrows where crocodiles had basked hinted that these placid waters
might hold peril.

Conan and Valeria threw over their lines and readied their tridents.
Emwaya lay down on her mat in the bow and appeared to fall asleep. To
Conan, her breathing seemed less regular than sleep commonly yielded.
The way her hands spread palm-down, fingers opened, against the hull of
the canoe also hinted of an unrestful mood.

To the Cimmerian, she seemed to be listening for something. What, he
did not know. Remembering that the tunnels might well honeycomb the
bottom of the lake, holding the-gods-knew-what ancient evil, he chose
not to try to guess.

The sun climbed to its peak, then began sinking. No fish had taken the
bait. Indeed, Conan had seen no sign that anything at all lived in this
part of the lake. That was not an agreeable thought, but one he kept to
himself. Valeria, easier in her mind, had actually gone to sleep.

Suddenly Emwaya sat up, brushing tangled hair out of her eyes, one hand
gripping the side of the canoe. She looked wildly about her, then
seemed to discover something off to port. Conan looked where she did,
but saw nothing save the lake's surface, unrippled by even a breath of
wind or a leaping fish. He was still staring when Emwaya sprang up,
threw off her waistcloth, and plunged over the side of the canoe.

Conan's roar would have stunned any fish within a good distance. It
woke Valeria. Instantly alert, she took in the danger at a glance. She
clutched the anchor stone, wriggled clear of the coiled line, then
flung the stone overboard. "Two will be better at finding her than one,
Conan. The canoe can fend for itself."

The anchor line hissed as it ran out, but when it reached its end, the
canoe still drifted freely. Conan looked into the lake, sensing a depth
there he had never before encountered. A depth into which Dobanpu's
daughter had plunged, and into which Conan and Valeria had to follow
her if they were to—

Emwaya's head broke the surface. In a few strokes she was alongside,
pulling herself half out of the water. Drops sparkled in her hair,
sleeked down from the dousing, and glowed on her shoulders and breasts.
Her countenance took away any thoughts of her beauty, however.

"Come and see for yourselves," she said. "Be warned. You will not like
what you find."

"My life's been full of unpleasing sights and it's not over yet," Conan
said. He swung his legs over the side of the canoe, slipped into the
water, then held the craft steady while Valeria dove over the side.

"Stay close to me," Emwaya ordered when Valeria surfaced. "It is my
intent to protect you from what lies down there."

Conan could not help but feel that he would rather be sure of more than
her intent. But Emwaya had at least this virtue, rare in
magic-wielders: she would not promise miracles.

Conan filled his lungs and plunged under the surface, Emwaya behind him
and Valeria in the rear. They were a canoe's length below when Conan
saw what Emwaya meant.

It was as if they were suddenly swimming through a vast globe of liquid
crystal. The water was utterly transparent, utterly without color, all
the way to the bottom of the lake.

That bottom, Conan judged, had to be twice the height of a ship's
mainmast below them. No wonder the anchor had not found purchase.
Indeed, he could see the anchor stone dangling uselessly from its line,
well clear of the bottom.

In that transparent void, nothing moved. Nothing lived, either—not the
smallest fish, not even a scrap of the weeds that choked some portions
of the lake. Conan looked down at the bottom.

It, too, was bare of life. But it was not featureless. Across the
Cimmerian's field of vision ran what looked like a deep trench. Into
that trench had tumbled blocks of stone that showed the unmistakable
signs of human shaping. Even from high above, Conan saw that much. He
also thought that he saw carved on some of the stones the writhing
serpent-shape he had seen rather too often in the tunnels.

That was as much as he could fathom before a burning in his lungs told
him that it was time to seek air. He kicked toward the surface, and
Emwaya and Valeria followed.

When Conan broke into the sunlight, Valeria was there before he had
finished taking his first deep breath. Emwaya was nowhere to be seen,
and as Conan filled his lungs, he began to think of diving back down to
find her.

"Valeria, if Emwaya's in trouble—"

"She'll need us both even more now. And remember, I owe her my life."

"True enough. I was thinking more of the need for one of us to reach
the island and tell of what happened."

Valeria looked less out of temper and seemed about to climb into the
canoe when Emwaya broke the surface. Her arms flailed about wildly, and
her breathing was a desperate rasp. Conan and Valeria each gripped an
arm and upheld her with her head clear of the water.

The panic left her eyes as breath filled her lungs again. She lay back
in the water, trusting her friends, and her gasping turned to steady
breathing. At last she slipped out of their grasp and climbed into the
canoe.

"What is it, Emwaya?" Conan asked.

"My father would know—would say it—better. But… under the lake bottom
is one of those tunnels."

"That's the trench that collapsed?"

"Yes. But—in the tunnel—somewhere beyond where it collapsed, there is
something."

"A flooded tunnel, I'd wager."

The jest seemed to frighten Emwaya. "Do not speak lightly of such
matters, Conan. I—it seems to me that what is there lives."

"How can that be?" Valeria asked. She had finally caught the sense of
the conversation. "Everything else in the water for a good thousand
paces seems to be dead. Worse, driven away."

"Yes. What is in the tunnel—it lives by eating the— the word is taboo,
but will you understand 'life-force'?"

"The life-force of everything that comes close to it?" Valeria had her
hand on her dagger as she spoke.

"Such—beings—have lived. We, my father and I, thought they were all
dead."

"It seems that at least one isn't," Conan said briskly. He picked up a
paddle. "My thought is, let's return to the island and tell your
father, if he hasn't already smelled it out for himself."

"I should dive again, to learn more of what it might be," Emwaya said.

Valeria hugged the Ichiribu woman. "You barely reached the surface
after your second dive. Go down for the third time and it won't take
any ancient magical monster to eat your life-force. You'll drown, and
we will be left to explain to your father and Seyganko. I'd rather
fight the monster, myself."

Valeria's words were clumsy and her accent harsh, but Emwaya understood
the sense of them, and the goodwill in Valeria's embrace. "Then so be
it," the young woman said. "Let us be off, before it senses us."

It was not the largest of the Golden Serpents, but it was the last and
the oldest. It and one other had outlived all the rest of their kind,
for the magic in the burrows they had found beneath the lake had
changed them.

They had once eaten flesh. Now they ate the life-force that animated
flesh, even including water-plants. They could draw it from a creature
beyond the sight of their jeweled green eyes, and with it, feed their
own strength.

Then it came about that the other ancient serpent grew weary, and its
own life-force began to ebb. The last of the Golden Serpents had no
sense of mercy, or of any human notion. It knew only that if the other
was allowed to die, its life-force would not feed the one who survived.

So the Golden Serpents fought, and the last one killed its comrade. The
life-force entered it, and it found new strength. But the battle had
made great disorder in the magic that bound the tunnels, holding them
up and lighting them. A long stretch of tunnel collapsed. Yet the magic
held strongly enough that water did not pour in and drown the last of
the Golden Serpents.

But the tunnel was fallen, and to find a way back through it would mean
digging through much rock. The Golden Serpent was not a keen-witted
creature, but it knew that neither its strength nor its teeth would be
equal to that task. So it rested, drew life-force from the creatures of
the waters above, and from time to time sought a way around the fallen
stones.

It found one site that seemed likely to be easily made large enough for
passage. But there was no trace of anything living, of anything that
would repay the effort to open the way.

At least not at first. Then a time came when the Golden Serpent sensed
life-force again in the tunnel—strong life, too, like that of the
two-legged creatures who had cast the ancient spells on these tunnels.
It was so faint that the creatures must be far away.

But if life had come once more into the depths, it would not leave. The
Golden Serpent worked at the barrier so that it would be easily
breached when there was prey worth having on the other side. They would
walk up to the barrier and then there would be no escape. There would,
however, be new strength for the Golden Serpent. Strength, perhaps, to
let it leave this hiding place and be abroad in the world again, where
life-force could be had everywhere.

Even those days might come again when the two-legs brought living
creatures to the Golden Serpent, that it might feed on flesh. To have
both the living flesh and the life-force from it— If one could use the
word "ambition" of a creature without human wits, one might say that
this wily scheme was the Golden Serpent's greatest ambition.

As he hauled the canoe onto the shore, Conan noticed that there were
fewer people about than usual. He found nothing amiss in that, until he
saw that the same was true all along the path leading up to the
village.

When he saw what seemed half of the tribe around the hole where the
hearthstone had been, he knew that something was wrong. Emwaya had been
sweating and tight-lipped all the way up from the shore, but Conan had
taken this as weariness after her strenuous swimming. Now he suspected
worse.

He knew worse when he saw women and children loading stones and earth
into baskets, and fanda warriors carrying the loaded baskets to the
edge of the village. To ask a fanda warrior on duty to perform women's
work could mean a death-duel, or at least a harsh judgment from the
council of the tribe. Yet here was everyone old enough or young enough
to stand on their feet unaided, digging out the shaft which led to the
tunnels.

"I think Dobanpu has spoken," Valeria said, almost whispering.

"Likely enough," Conan agreed. "Are you game for another little ramble
in the depths?"

"To go hunting Emwaya's life-force eater?" She looked both weary and
disgusted with herself. "Ah, well. I have heard they have a proverb in
Khitai: 'Be careful what you wish for. The gods may grant it.' It seems
we wished a trifle too hard for the opening of the tunnels."

"It's done past undoing," Conan said. He unbuckled his belt and handed
it and his weapons to Valeria. "Take these to the hut. I've some
knowledge of this kind of work that the Ichiribu may find handy."

----------------------------------------------------------------------


THIRTEEN

The last of the fifty warriors vanished into the jungle just as dawn
touched the hills to the east. Wobeku looked after them, his face set.
He doubted that he would deceive Chabano, and indeed, he did not.

"So fearful of the lives of men not of your tribe?" the chief asked.
The note of mockery was plain. So was his real intent.

"The Kwanyi are my tribe now," Wobeku said. "Does its chief doubt oaths
sworn to him in the presence of Ryku the First Speaker?"

"No."

There was nothing else that Chabano could say. He might doubt Ryku, as
Wobeku certainly did. To put these doubts into words that others might
hear was not a chief's wisdom.

"I trust the men you are sending against the herdlands and grainlands
of the Ichiribu," Wobeku said. "They will do the work of far more than
their numbers in confusing the enemy. They can neither lose those lands
without starving, nor defend them without so many of them at hand that
they can defend nothing else. No, what grieves me is that I cannot go
with them."

"You are needed here, Wobeku." Left unsaid was that Wobeku was not yet
so trusted by the Kwanyi warriors that he would be safe out of the
chief's sight.

"I was a bidui boy for years, in the herdlands," Wobeku insisted. "Then
I was of the fanda that guarded the grainlands. I know every hut, every
valley, every spring in those lands. If I went, even as a simple guide,
the men you have sent will do better work. More of them will also live
to boast of it to their women."

"Wobeku, when we have won, there will not be enough women to hear all
the boasting we shall do. Nor will there be enough beer to keep our
throats wet for it."

Wobeku knelt, rose when dismissed, and turned away. Not until he was
out of the chief's sight did he dare make even the smallest gesture of
aversion.

Chabano might tempt the gods. That was a chief's right. Wobeku was no
chief, and much doubted that he ever would be, even if Chabano came to
rule all the lands to the Salt Water. He had dreamed of such things
when he had agreed to serve Chabano, but those were the dreams of a
younger man.

Now he had seen more years, and more truths about the world. Wobeku
would be quite content to end his life with sons to sing the death-song
for him, women to wash his body, and cattle and fields enough to
provide a feast for his friends when the smoke of his burning had risen
to the gods.

He thought he would ask for the woman Mokossa as his first prize of the
victory. She seemed not only a pleasure to the eye, but intelligent and
healthy, a breeder of worthy sons.

Conan was inspecting the warriors of the tunnel band when a bidui boy
came to summon him to Seyganko. From the boy's face, it was urgent that
the Cimmerian lose not a moment.

He motioned to Valeria, and she laid her pouches on her shield and ran
over. Even after a night spent with little sleep, Conan took pleasure
in her lithe grace and sure movements. He took even more pleasure in
the knowledge that she would be at his back when they plunged into the
magic-haunted passages beneath the lake once again.

"Valeria, can you finish my work here? Will you see that all the men
have what they were ordered to bring and are sober, not astray in their
wits and the like?"

"I think that only a drunkard or a madman would have offered himself to
this quest," she said with a wry smile.

"Or men who think Dobanpu speaks the truth," Conan said.

"I am surprised to find you among them," Valeria whispered.

Conan shrugged. "Call me one who has not caught Dobanpu or his daughter
in a lie as yet. That puts them leagues ahead of most of the sorcerers
I've met." He patted her shoulder. "Just pretend to know what you are
doing—"

"The way you do on the mats?"

"Woman, was it my pretending that made you howl like a she-wolf last
night? Half the village heard you, or so I've been told."

Valeria made a sound that was half curse, half laugh, and turned away.
Conan saw her bare shoulders quivering as silent laughter took her.
Then he hurried off to Seyganko.

He found the war leader on hands and knees beside an upturned canoe,
studying the bottom as though the secrets of the gods, or at least of
victory over the Kwanyi might be found there.

Seyganko seemed drawn with doubt as he led Conan aside. Part of it had
to be the burden of leading so many men into a war that neither they
nor their tribe might survive. Conan was not vastly older than
Seyganko, but he had borne that burden more often than the other, and
knew that it grew no lighter with the years.

The other part of Seyganko's unease came out swiftly. "We have seen
Kwanyi warriors in the forest on the edge of the herdlands and
grainlands. Goats have been found slain, and at least one herdsman has
vanished."

Conan nodded. This was a matter of the higher art of war, of which he
knew more than he cared to admit, less than he wished. What he both
knew and could admit to, however—

"Never fight a war believing that the enemy will wait for you to
descend on him like a chamber pot from a high window. Chabano seeks to
draw warriors away from the attack on him."

"He will do so if we are not to leave our herds and fields
defenseless."

"Herds can walk, can they not?"

"Yes, but—"

"Send enough warriors to protect the herdsmen while they drive the
herds and flocks south into the hills by the river. Then the Kwanyi
will have to make a two-day march across open ground to come at them.
You have archers, and they do not. How many of the Kwanyi do you think
will reach the hills alive?"

"Ah." Seyganko's smile was brief. "But the fields are not yet
harvested. If they are burned—"

"And are the burners to be allowed to do their work without having
their throats slit by night?" Conan asked, acting more patient than he
felt. He hoped that the burden of leadership had not fuddled Seyganko's
wits.

"That also can be done," Seyganko said. This time, his smile lasted.
"Some of the grain, indeed, we can harvest and carry off to feed the
herds and flocks. We shall eat it in one form or another, and perhaps
also the herds and flocks of the Kwanyi."

Conan clapped Seyganko on both shoulders, and the two men exchanged
vows to guard each other's women if one of them did not survive the
war. Then Conan returned to the shaft more swiftly than he had gone,
and just in time to see Emwaya fall in line with the warriors about the
hole.

Conan rolled his eyes up to the sky, muttered something that might have
been "Women!" and frowned at Valeria. She shrugged and made a gesture
eloquent of the futility of arguing with either her or Emwaya.

"Very well," Conan growled. He turned to face the troop, forty stout
warriors and Emwaya.

"I'll go down first. Anything that will support my weight or let me
pass will be enough for any of you. Aondo was the only one among you
bigger than I, and he's now food for the crocodiles."

"I never thought I'd feel sorry for a crocodile," a warrior called,
"but the creature's doubtless died by now."

The men's laughter was good to hear. "No one else start down until I
call and the ladders and ropes are in place," Conan added. "If I catch
anyone using the bracing timbers for a ladder, I'll pluck him off them
myself and throw him down. Then anyone who slips will have a soft
cushion on which to land!"

The men were still laughing as Conan knotted the rope about his waist
and began his climb down into the darkness.

It had come again, the presence that meant both flesh and life-force
for the Golden Serpent. It was, as far as the serpent could judge, in
the same place as before. But it seemed stronger, as if the creature
were larger.

Or could there be more of the two-legs? Were they coming down from
above to offer themselves to the hunger of the Golden Serpent? Or could
they perhaps be coming down to hunt the Golden Serpent itself?

The serpent did not have a mind that could hold thoughts shaped into
such words. But it knew the difference between prey and enemies.

It also knew that when the time came for it to strike, even those who
came to hunt would find themselves the hunted. This had been so for as
long as it could remember—and those memories went back to before it
lived in these burrows far below the earth.

One of the warriors, with instincts sharpened in the jungle, hunting
and fighting, began gathering up the fallen clods of earth. Conan held
up a hand to stop him.

"Leave be, friend. There are no Kwanyi down here to track us by what we
leave behind. If anything lives down here, it will have other ways of
finding us. Save your strength to see that we find it first."

The magic light still illuminated the tunnels. It seemed dimmer,
though. Or was that merely because the light below the stairs had died
along with their guardian spells? Farther along the tunnel, the glow
seemed as bright and unnatural as ever.

Conan and Valeria were the only ones of the band who looked to be at
ease. The Cimmerian saw hands clenched on spears, or fingering amulets,
or even held behind backs to make gestures of aversion in the hope that
the Blue-Eyed Chief; as they called him, would not see.

Conan coughed dirt and dust from his throat and stood before the men.
"I won't say there's nothing to be afraid of. That's calling you fools,
which you are not. What you are is stout warriors of the Ichiribu, a
folk who are among the best fighters I've ever seen."

That would not pass any spell of truth-sensing, but nobody down here
except Emwaya was fit to cast one, and she would hold her peace.

"Watch where you put your feet. Hold your tongue and send messages with
your hands. Drink lightly of your water, and eat sparingly. Do not
wander off, even if you think you see a whole kingdom down that side
tunnel.

"Remember above all that surprising the enemy doubles your strength.
We'll be surprising the Kwanyi by coming from a place they don't even
know exists. Imagine what that will do for our strength!"

The warriors imagined it, and the thought seemed pleasant. They were
still looking above and to their rear as they formed their line of
march, but they were also smiling. All except Emwaya.

The Golden Serpent set its teeth into the first of the stones in its
path and began dragging it to one side. It sought to do this quietly,
knowing that most of the prey beneath the earth were keen of hearing.

Except for the two-legs, of course. Its memories of those were not as
sharp as of beasts who had shared the burrows with it more recently. It
did remember that the two-legs were nearly blind without light, and
almost deaf under any circumstance.

If the flesh and life-force it sensed belonged to two-legs, it could
work swiftly. The stones could be moved about until, at the right
moment, the serpent could strike even more swiftly. Again, the thoughts
of the Golden Serpent did not take those exact words, but one such as
Emwaya would have interpreted them so.

One such as Emwaya would also have discerned that the work of the
Golden Serpent was agitating the spells in the tunnels beneath the
lake. The agitation spread out like ripples around a thrown stone, to
reach far along the tunnels in all directions, even to the shores of
the Lake of Death.

Chabano was entangled with one of his slave women when the messenger
entered. He intended to finish with the woman; then he saw the
messenger's face. The man was a proven warrior, a leopard-tooth wearer,
and what could give him such a countenance could not be a light matter.

He slapped the woman on the rump. "Go, and swiftly."

The woman looked stricken, perhaps with disappointment, and certainly
with fear. Displeasing Chabano had meant death to slave women, even in
the past year.

"Go!" he shouted and raised a hand for a less gentle slap. "It is not
your fault that the gods have sent bad news!"

The woman could not depart swiftly enough. Even her necklace of beads
and her waistcloth remained behind. Chabano sat up and glowered at the
warrior. As befitted one of his rank, the man did not flinch.

"The earth has cracked in two places along the shore."

"I felt no earth-trembling."

"Nor did anyone else, my chief. I have sent for your principal
warriors—"

"Wobeku?"

"No."

"Send for him at once!" The man turned to flee, now at last frightened.
"Wait!" Chabano commanded. "How wide are the cracks?"

"One might be natural. It is no deeper than a man's height and no wider
than a boy's arm. The other is wide enough to swallow an ox, and no one
can see the bottom. Yet…"

The man licked his lips. Chabano felt the urge to strike him but knew
that would only make him more fearful.

"If they cannot see the bottom, what can they see?"

"Worked stone, perhaps—perhaps stairs."

"Stairs," echoed Chabano. He stood and girded on his loinguard, then
pointed to his headdress. The warrior handed it to him, likewise spear
and war club.

Accoutering himself gave Chabano time to think. There were legends of
cities beneath the lake, or even below the jungle… and there was
Dobanpu's power, no legend. Yet if the legends held a grain of truth,
the magic of those old cities had made Dobanpu's magic seem that of a
child.

This was not the Spirit-Speaker's work, likely enough. But it smelled
of magic, and in matters of magic—

"Go and summon Wobeku to the council. Then you yourself go to Thunder
Mountain and bear the news to Ryku. Take warriors you trust when you go
to the mountain, so that if Ryku wishes to come among us, he will have
proper guarding."

And so that any treachery he may be devising can be seen at once.

The messenger thumped his head five times on the floor, then ran as if
all his kin would be impaled if he slowed.

Alone, Chabano took down his finest shield, the one with strips of gold
and ivory woven into the ox hide. It soothed him to feel the richness
under his hands, and his thoughts now came swiftly and clearly.

Gods or men might have opened these cracks. Both fissures would bear
watching, and he would set warriors to that task. Meanwhile, the
greater part of his warriors, as well as Ryku, would draw back to the
slopes of the mountain. Then when the enemy showed himself, it would be
time to strike—with Ryku's command of the Living Wind, or with the
spears of the warriors, as might seem best.

A battle was certain, and in Kwanyi lands, which Chabano had hoped to
avoid. But there was this to ease his mind: the lion bites more easily
one who thrusts his head into the lion's jaws.

----------------------------------------------------------------------


FOURTEEN

Beyond where the light began again, the tunnel broadened so much that
Conan's band could trot four or five abreast. A spear held upright
would hardly touch the ceiling, and the floor was of the familiar
sullen, grayish rock, without beauty but as smooth as marble.

Conan cared for none of this. Such spaciousness hinted that they were
coming to the heart of whatever lay beneath the Lake of Death. That
also had to be the heart of whatever magic had for centuries kept the
earth from taking back this underground maze.

The Cimmerian dropped back to speak to Emwaya, who was keeping up with
the warriors, for all that she seemed to be sleepwalking for long
stretches. She was so when Conan fell in beside her. He matched his
stride to hers and left her in peace; no good ever came of disturbing
even the most benign sorcerer at work.

After time enough to consume a small joint of mutton, Emwaya shook
herself like a wet dog and looked at Conan with waking eyes. Then she
nodded her head.

"It lives, and it is ahead of us. I think it has grown stronger than it
was."

No need to ask what "it" was, or if it was dangerous. The life-force
eater was about the only living thing that Emwaya would be sensing, and
likely enough the thing most to be feared. But to forty warriors, a
Golden Serpent—or one of those beasts that were kin to both dragon and
rhinoceros—would be only healthy exercise.

Conan hurried back to the head of the line. Seeing him hasten thus,
some of the warriors quickened their pace. He drew his sword and held
it at arm's length across the front rank of Ichiribu.

"Pass that and you may get the flat of it across your thick skull!" he
said, pitching his voice to carry without being loud. Even so, it
raised echoes that made a few men look uneasily about them. It also
caused the eager ones to slow their pace.

"Well and good," Conan said. "This tunnel may go straight under the
lake to bring us out in the quarters of Chabano's women. It may also
wind like the trail of a drunken crocodile. Reckon that we've a good
way to go, and guard your wind!"

After that, Conan had no problem with the over-eager and was able to
follow his own advice, stalking along in silence. Nothing seemed to
hint of danger, but his eyes were never still and his hand never far
from the hilt of his sword. From time to time, he also looked back to
see if Emwaya had sensed anything else untoward.

The band's pace was that of the Ichiribu warrior when the ground was
level and endurance rather than great speed was most urgently required.
Conan judged that they must have covered a good two leagues before they
halted for a brief rest.

The Cimmerian set guards and put those warriors carrying gear—ropes,
hooks, torches, and heavy hunting spears—to inspecting their burdens.
The others he allowed to sprawl at their ease. A black look or two
discouraged broaching water gourds, and no one as yet was hungry.

"We must be a good halfway to the Kwanyi shore," Valeria whispered. "If
we are marching in the direction I think we are."

"I think we're on that route myself," Conan said. "Of course, we could
both be—"

He broke off as a sound that was neither sob nor scream but had
something of both in it reached him. He whirled to see two warriors
drop weapons and shields and leap to support Emwaya. Her legs were
trembling, unable to hold her upright, her eyes were closed, and as
Conan watched, she clapped both hands over her ears.

What she was hearing might have been heard with the ears of her magic.
The next moment, everyone heard it with the ears of his body.

Stones cracked and crumbled, then fell with crashes that filled the
tunnel with thundering echoes. Emwaya was not the only one now with
hands held over ears.

Conan's bellow rose above the stone-noise and raised echoes of its own.
"The next man who drops a weapon, I'll give it back sideways!" Warriors
hastily slung shields and raised spears.

Then, without orders, they began taking battle formation. The baggage
bearers dropped their loads and formed a circle around the gear. Emwaya
was half carried, half dragged into that circle and deposited with
little ceremony on a rolled-up rope ladder.

"See to Emwaya," Conan said. That was his last order for a time. None
of his words could have been heard, and indeed, none were needed.
Something far too close and far too large was slithering over rock,
hissing as it came.

The messenger ran up to Seyganko as if his loin-guard had caught fire
or a leopard swam the lake to pursue him. Before the man could speak,
Seyganko saw what none among the Ichiribu had seen in many
years—Dobanpu Spirit-Speaker running.

He ran up to Seyganko at a fine pace for a man his age and waited only
long enough to catch his breath before speaking. "We must launch the
canoes at once. There is more danger than I had thought."

"You do not think, father of Emwaya, if you believe we can launch the
canoes now. Hardly half of them are loaded, and more than a third of
the warriors are not yet on the shore."

"Then we set out with what is ready to hand."

Seyganko realized the depth of his anger only when he felt the shaft of
the trident in his hand crack. He forced himself to speak more calmly.

"Who is in danger?"

"Those who have gone below. I must be closer to them than I am here, to
aid Emwaya against the peril."

"What peril?" Seyganko did not have it in him to call his betrothed's
father a liar, as Dobanpu did not have it in him to lie. But he would
be cursed if he would fling the tribe half-ready into battle without
knowing whither he flung it!

"What lives beneath the lake—where Emwaya found no life—it lives,
wakes, and moves upon those who have gone below. Emwaya will need my
aid if the warrior's weapons are to slay it."

Seyganko knew that these near riddles were as much as he would hear
without forfeiting time he and his warriors might not have. Still—

"Dobanpu, take a canoe and six of the strongest paddlers ready to hand.
Guide them where you wish. I will order the others to gather as swiftly
as possible, then come after you with two more canoes."

Dobanpu also seemed to realize that he could expect no more. He
departed at a brisk trot.

Seyganko raised his voice, calling the messengers and drummers of the
fanda to him. As he ran down to the shore, Dobanpu's canoe was already
pushing out into the lake, and the drummers were hard at work. The
rattle and boom of the talking drums rolled across shore and water as
Seyganko leaped into a canoe and seized the nearest paddle.

Twenty or thirty picked warriors would be enough to guard Dobanpu
against any human foe. It was drawing on toward sunset, and the Kwanyi
feared the lake even more by night than by day.

As for other foes—if Dobanpu was not their equal, then the fewer
warriors the Ichiribu lost, the better. The tribe would not long
outlive their Spirit-Speaker, but the warriors could still take a good
toll of Chabano's men. That would give them honor among the gods, and
the thanks of those tribes downriver whom the Kwanyi might then be too
weak to conquer.

Seyganko's paddle dipped deep as he raised his voice in the oldest and
most potent of the Ichiribu war chants.

Ryku heard the signal drums from the lookout post on what the Kwanyi
called Great Gourd Hill. It neither grew large gourds nor had the shape
of one, so Ryku had always wondered how it came by its name.

It was, however, the perfect spot for a keen-eyed watcher to look all
the way to the island of the Ichiribu. With a trifle of aid from Ryku,
some of the watchers had gained more than human sight; they could even
see canoes putting out from the island.

This, the drums told him, was just what was happening. Ryku placed the
wooden tablet he had been studying in the herb-steeped deer hide that
protected it from both damp and magic alike. He wrapped the hide about
the tablet and put it in the carved chest that stood in one corner of
his chamber. That chest was the one thing he had brought with him when
he came to Thunder Mountain. It was a gift from the man whom he had
called Father, and always made him feel less clanless and kinless.

Now the very gods could not do that. He was First Speaker to the Living
Wind, for all that he seldom used the title. His clan and his kin were
alike not of this earth, and thus it must be. Had he risen to the rank
of Speaker by other means, he might have felt some kinship with the
other Speakers, but as matters stood, they also were alien and
untrustworthy.

Ryku stepped out of his chamber, touched the pouch at his belt for good
luck, and unbound the reed curtain over his door. The hanging fell back
across the door as he turned and walked away, toward the Cave of the
Living Wind.

The slithering ended in a crash that sounded like a battering ram
striking a stone wall. In the next moment, Conan knew that his ears had
not lied.

From a side tunnel to their rear, stones larger than a man rolled in
dust and thunder. Smaller stones flew as if hurled from a siege-engine.
Some crashed against the far wall, spraying shards in all directions.
Others struck flesh. Shards and stones together left three warriors
lifeless and two more limping or holding useless arms.

Those two were the first prey of the Golden Serpent as it lunged from
its lair into the tunnel.

Its teeth sank into one, and the man howled in agony for a dreadful
moment before going limp. The teeth were as long as Conan's fingers,
set in a jaw the length of a horse's head, and it hardly mattered if
they were venomous or not.

The other man died as a tail thicker than his own body swept him
against the wall. He did not scream, but the cracking of skull and
crunching of bones were loud enough to tell plainly of his fate.

Other men did cry out, though, at what they saw then. Around the two
bodies a sickly green light flickered. It was what one might have seen
over a noisome swamp, the sort said to be haunted, one to which wise
men gave a wide berth. It was the color of the scum on the most
stagnant water of such a swamp. If he had ever seen a less wholesome
color in his life, Conan could not remember it.

What he did remember was that Emwaya was in the rear, and that her fate
and that of all of them were entwined. He turned back, to reach her
just as she leaped from the arms of the men holding her. She ran at the
Golden Serpent, raising high overhead one hand and clutching the amulet
about her neck with the other.

The creature hissed loudly enough to cause echoes, and its toothed jaws
gaped so that Conan had much too clear a view of its mouth. The mouth
was green and ridged, except where it was smeared with the blood of the
serpent's first victim. Far back in the mouth, the swamp-glow
flickered.

A brighter light blazed from the Golden Serpent's many-jeweled eyes. At
another time and place, the jewel-light might have been lovely. Now it
was only one more horror.

At Emwaya's gesture, the serpent reared half its length from the floor.
Its horned muzzle crashed against the ceiling, shaking loose dust and
pebbles. Its tail thrashed about, nearly striking down one man bolder
than the rest in retrieving his baggage.

From nose to tail, the creature seemed longer than a small galley, and
thicker around the middle than a good-sized tree. The golden scales
were as large as good pewter serving platters and overlapped as
cunningly as was the best Aquilonian plate armor. Some were faded to a
pale yellow, even to a near white. Conan saw that many had been
cracked, or had even broken clear across, then healed.

The boldest warrior of all ran past Emwaya, shield slung, spear in both
hands. He leaped and thrust in a single fluid motion, and his spearhead
vanished between two pallid scales.

The Golden Serpent shook like a tree in a gale. Still gripping his
spear, the warrior flew into the air, legs waving. The serpent's head
dipped, and the jaws closed on one of the man's feet. The warrior did
not cry out. Instead, he mustered all his strength to drive the spear
in deeper.

He succeeded, in the moment that the serpent's teeth severed his leg
halfway up the calf. He screamed then, but did not fall. He remained
suspended in the air, held up by nothing anyone could see, while the
too-familiar greenish light played about the blood spraying from the
stump of his leg.

At last he fell, still gripping the spear. His fall jerked the weapon
from the serpent's neck, and greenish blood spurted forth. Where it
struck the floor, smoke rose, and where it fell on the corpse of the
man crushed by the tail, the flesh charred to ashes and crumbled from
the bone.

If Conan had ever doubted the stark horror of the magic lurking in
these depths, he doubted no longer. He also doubted that he would ever
again put himself in danger for fire-stones.

Emwaya staggered back into his arms, her hands held in front of her in
a warding gesture. "Quickly," she whispered. "Have another man throw a
spear."

"You!" Conan called. The iron self-command in his voice steadied the
warriors. The man addressed drew back and put all the force of his best
throw behind the spear. It struck not far from the wound made by the
first warrior.

A scale cracked across; this time the blood only oozed out. As Conan
watched, the wound from the first spear closed. Only a smear of blood
on the serpent's neck showed that it had ever taken any hurt. Another
smear was already drying on the floor, not far from the corpse of the
man who had lost his foot to the serpent. That man's bones were even
now showing through his flesh, and through the green foulness that
played over and around it.

Emwaya drew in a great, rasping breath. "We must keep it coming at us,
and wound it each time it comes. We must keep our distance, too. It
heals itself somewhat each time it is wounded, but not altogether. It
will lose strength; I will see to that."

"How long will it take to die?"

The Golden Serpent hissed in challenge, pain, and defiance. The hiss
again raised such echoes that Emwaya could not have made herself heard
had she shouted into Conan's ear.

As the serpent withdrew some ten paces or so, Emwaya spoke urgently.
"It will die swiftly if my father comes to join his Spirit-Speaking to
mine. We can take from it the power to steal life-force, which is how
it heals as it does."

Conan thought uncharitable words about sorcerers. It seemed that the
breed was always with you when you did not want them and somewhere else
when you did.

"Ho!" he shouted, raising his sword. "We've need to fight this beast by
retreating before it. Baggage men, take the rear rank. The best
spearmen, take the foremost. Guard Emwaya at all costs, and for the
love of every god, don't close with the monster!"

Faces showed that the bravest warrior needed no urging on that last
point. Conan snatched up a spear from the baggage and joined the rear
rank as Valeria ran to stand beside Emwaya.

As if they were all of a single mind, the band drew back ten paces.
Encouraged, the serpent lowered its head and came on, but it did not
lunge so boldly this time. A spear and a trident flew. The spear sank
deep, the trident glanced off the horn on the nose. The trident-thrower
would have dashed forward to retrieve his weapon but for Conan's
wordless roar that halted him in his tracks.

This was likely enough as strange a battle as Conan had ever fought.
Overgrown snakes were not uncommon—too common by half if the wounds he
had taken whilst battling them were any measure. But he had not before
fought a serpent that had its own magic, nor fought one as leader of a
band of warriors.

A good band, too, he thought as he saw one of the slingers wind up and
hurl his stone. It flew true, striking one of the blazing green eyes.
Conan expected the eye to shatter rather than burst, but it did
neither. Instead, it merely quivered like jelly, turned misty and pale
for a moment, then blazed green once more.

The creature hissed, and this time, anyone could tell that it was in
pain. Emwaya bit her lip until blood came, then screamed out a warning.

"Be ready, everyone. He'll lunge again!"

The warning was life to at least three men. The great head crashed down
where they would have been standing had they not joined the retreat.
Twenty paces to the rear, the band stood again, save for two men who
remained behind to thrust spears in deep. Again Conan's roar saved one
from folly as the man struck at the beast's nose with his club. The
warrior rejoined his comrades without his club or spear, but with a
whole skin.

Then the band put another thirty paces between itself and the Golden
Serpent, while Emwaya not only waved both arms, but chanted loud enough
to drown out the sound of the creature's hissing. The two spears
remained in the wounds longer than before, and the gush of blood that
pushed them out also flowed longer.

Victory could be theirs, Conan realized, for all that this was a battle
that only a madman could have dreamed. Victory might be the last man of
the band standing beside the dead serpent, but they would have it!

Then the hissing raised echoes again, Emwaya called a sharp warning,
and the deadly dance began once more.

----------------------------------------------------------------------


FIFTEEN

The canoes were not the lightest or the swiftest among those of the
Ichiribu, although their canoe-builders were honored among all the
tribes around the Lake of Death for their skill. Nor were the paddlers
the strongest and most skilled.

Seyganko had simply ordered the first score of paddlers into the first
three canoes, and all of them had set out under Dobanpu's guidance.
Before long, Seyganko thought he might have done better to have waited,
picked the best paddlers and canoes, and then made swifter progress. If
they were slow in reaching their destination, Emwaya might die. Dobanpu
had made that plain.

A little while later, however, Seyganko saw that the canoes were flying
across the water as if the paddlers were tireless gods who never missed
a stroke. He looked back to the Spirit-Speaker, sitting in the stern of
their canoe, and saw a faint smile on the man's face.

Seyganko felt shame that his mistake had been recognized, but also
pride that Dobanpu considered him worthy of help in undoing it. Or was
it entirely Emwaya's safety that moved her father?

The paddles indeed flew back and forth so swiftly that as with
well-thrown spears, the eye could hardly follow them. Nor did the
warriors seem to sweat or grow short of breath. Seyganko remembered
uneasily that such spells as doubled a man's strength could also weaken
him for some time afterward. These warriors would have to fight as well
as paddle before another day's sun had set.

Meanwhile, they were crossing the Lake of Death at a speed never before
known, save to birds. At a shout from Dobanpu, Seyganko raised his
paddle, and the men of his canoe ceased their efforts. The other two
canoes drew up alongside and also drifted to a stop.

Then, before Seyganko could speak or even move, Dobanpu stood up in the
stern of the canoe, gripped the amulet about his neck tightly, and
flung himself overboard. He cut the water without a sound, not even the
faint clooop of a diving fisherbird. For a moment, they saw his legs
thrusting him down into the depths; then those depths swallowed him.

A clamor arose from those warriors who had breath left with which to
speak.

"Why, the old fool!"

"Where is he going?"

"He'll drown!"

"No, the lionfish will have him first!"

"He can't swim!"

Seyganko shouted for silence. "My woman's father can swim, that is
certain. There are no hungry fish in this part of the lake, because of
the very thing he has gone to fight. As for the rest—I would not call
any Spirit-Speaker a fool. Not when I thought he might come back and
remember what I said.

"And if you still think otherwise, keep your tongue between your teeth.
Or have you forgotten who may be listening over there?" Seyganko
pointed at the Kwanyi shore. Those who had not already fallen silent
did so now.

The Golden Serpent had taken the lives of two more warriors before
Conan's band mastered the art of fighting it. That made ten dead or
hurt past fighting, and the rest were growing uneasy. Facing a foe who
could not be gravely hurt, and—it seemed—not be killed, for all that
Emwaya promised otherwise, was nothing to hearten a warrior.

Yet the warriors lost none of their speed or cunning. They darted about
the serpent like flies about a horse's head, stinging with the same
remorseless persistence. Some even sang war songs between lunges at the
serpent, until Conan commanded them to save their breath.

This disciplined courage pleased Conan, although it did not altogether
surprise him. He had known for years that the Black Kingdoms raised
warriors fit to stand in battle anywhere in the world. He had not
expected to find so many this far inland, but he rejoiced that he had.
Perhaps there would be more than one man left standing when the Golden
Serpent breathed its last.

A cry rose as Emwaya stumbled on the glassy floor. But Valeria was
standing over her, sword in one hand, a borrowed spear poised to throw
in the other. Five more warriors were in front of Emwaya before Conan
was able to count them. The young woman herself shook her head and
clenched her teeth, but her hair had saved her skull, and her hands
continued their movements, fighting the Golden Serpent's unnatural
life.

She was on her feet in the next moment, and Conan saw that the serpent
had not lunged for her or her defenders. Was it learning the dangers of
well-wielded iron, or was its strength finally ebbing?

Conan knew the perils of believing that a foe was weak or foolish. Yet
he found it hard to believe that anything short of Thunder Mountain
itself could resist the battering his band had given the Golden
Serpent.

Suddenly thunder crashed once more through the tunnel. Conan swore that
he saw the Golden Serpent rise a handbreadth from the floor. He knew
that he saw shields snatched from warriors' arms and cracks appear in
the ceiling. Then fragments of stone rattled down everywhere about
them, and a dripping-wet Dobanpu stood before them—on the far side of
the Golden Serpent.

The serpent might have been shaken. The warriors certainly were. Yet
the beast was swift to coil and lunge at Dobanpu. The Spirit-Speaker
stood to meet the assault, only fingering his amulet. Valeria and a
half-score of warriors cried out in horror, and Conan himself was not
silent.

The lunge fell short of Dobanpu. An arm's length from the man, the
great fanged head was dragged to a stop, as if a noose had tightened
about it or the air had turned solid. Dobanpu raised a hand, and
coruscating golden light arched from Emwaya to him. It sank into him
and vanished, leaving no trace except for perhaps an odd glow in his
eyes, and Conan could not be sure that was not a trick of the light.

Then Dobanpu turned, and with a speed startling for a man of his age,
ran down a side tunnel that no one had noticed before. Again men gasped
in horror, but Emwaya only frowned.

"Has your father gone mad?" Valeria snapped. Conan shook his head. If
Emwaya was not afraid, Dobanpu must have some scheme in mind. To make
it succeed was another matter.

"What must we do?" he asked the girl.

"He will lead the creature to a place he has sensed, I think. He used
much power in coming here, so he will not be able to kill it unaided.
But in that place he seeks, he will find a way of ending its life."

Conan cursed himself for expecting a straight answer from any
magic-wielder. Valeria glared at Emwaya.

"You want us to follow that thing down some burrow where it might turn
and rend us? Trusting only to your father's wizardry?"

"Yes."

"Cimmerian—"

"Call me names afterward. Meanwhile, would you wager two hairs of your
head on our surviving if Dobanpu dies?"

As always, Valeria saw reason. She leaped out in front of the warriors
and waved her sword. "Come on, you dogs' leavings! It's turned its back
to us, and that means it's fleeing!"

The warriors might not have understood all of Valeria's words. Those
who understood might not have believed that she spoke the truth. All
understood and believed that they should not let the Blue-Eyed Chief's
shield-woman shame them by leading the charge. War cries echoed nearly
as loud as the thunderclap of Dobanpu's appearance, and the Ichiribu
warriors plunged after their foe.

Ryku gazed down into the whirlpool of light that was the Living Wind—or
at least its outward form. He stood on the outermost rim of the ledge,
rather than sitting in the First Speaker's seat.

He had never felt at ease in that seat, and now it was more important
than ever that he do nothing to make himself feel uneasy. It might be
only a tale that the Living Wind could sense when those in its presence
were afraid, or unsure of themselves, but such tales often held bits of
truth.

Also, Ryku did not altogether like what he saw now when he gazed down
into the Living Wind. That it was unveiled by the smoke, long a
tradition in the ritual, mattered little. Indeed, he had not called up
the smoke, thinking it an outworn custom.

The hues of the Living Wind were still crimson and sapphire, swirling
in patterns that both held and repelled the eye. But the crimson now
seemed the color of old blood, while the sapphire was growing steadily
paler.

Also, there was a distant sound that seemed to be everywhere and
nowhere at the same time. It was a sound hard to find words to
describe. To Ryku, it seemed that if bees could chant war cries, the
sound might be rather like what he was hearing.

Even the smell of the Cave of the Living Wind had altered. It had
always been fresh and cool, in spite of being far below the slopes of
Thunder Mountain, with few natural passages for air. Now the odor of
the jungle seemed to be overtaking the cave, or at least the odor of
some sort of life.

Why not? Ryku told himself that the Living Wind had earned its name
fairly, so why should it not take on some of the qualities of life when
it began to change?

He had to use all of the disciplines he had learned so as not to be
uneasy at that thought, nonetheless. Yet again, why should it be a
surprise? Mighty and ancient magic was being wielded in this land,
magic left untouched for centuries, and the very gods of Thunder
Mountain might be waking.

Ryku now thought he had calmed himself enough to sit down in the chair
of the First Speaker. Let the gods wake, he told himself. Let them
wake, and they will see that I am their friend and my enemies are
theirs. Then I will not even need Dobanpu, not when I have gods for
friends.

Emwaya seemed to be speaking to her father without words, and her
gestures guided the war band on the trail of the Golden Serpent. They
might not have needed that guidance, for the creature now hissed almost
continuously, and left smears of blood that grew thicker as it writhed
along.

Conan held his tongue. He would not allow his own hopes to rise, let
alone those of the band. False hope made warriors careless, and
careless warriors died in the face of less formidable foes than the
Golden Serpent.

The band certainly ran faster with Emwaya guiding them than they would
have dared otherwise. Indeed, Conan did not know how far they had come,
or how much longer some of the warriors could keep up the pace. Those
with baggage were beginning to breathe hard, and some of those with
slight wounds clearly would need rest before long.

Conan did not like to think of dividing the band, leaving the baggage
and the lightly wounded behind. Once divided in these depths, could the
band ever unite again? Also, the Golden Serpent might have ways of
doubling back on its tracks, to fall on such easy prey.

A familiar smell began to tickle the Cimmerian's nostrils. Not one he
remembered with pleasure, on the whole, although the giant fungi had
certainly saved him and Valeria on their first journey underground. But
when one has fed off something for so long, the smell lingers in
memory.

They were approaching another cave full of the giant fungi. Conan
wondered what purpose that might serve, as the Golden Serpent was
plainly a meat-eater. Emwaya was too lost in speaking with her father
to answer to anything save a shout in her ear, and Conan had no wish to
break her bond with Dobanpu.

The floor sloped more sharply downward now, and the patches of green
blood were not only thicker, but fresher. The warriors had to slow
their onrush, to avoid stepping in the still-fuming green patches of
death and agony. One warrior was unlucky enough to go down nonetheless,
but leaped up at once, holding a blistered hand over his head like a
trophy.

"It bleeds! It bleeds, and does not stop! Come, brothers, and we shall
make it bleed to death!"

Then the tunnel bent sharply, and now the blood smeared the walls as
well as the floor. Conan took the lead again, with Valeria just behind
him. Around this bend, the serpent might be lying in wait, even if
Dobanpu was alive and well, as he seemed to be, judging by the way
Emwaya looked.

Then a sudden battering-ram stroke of the serpent's head caught an
unsuspecting warrior to Conan's left. No teeth pierced the man, but the
horn caught his shoulder and hurled him against the wall. Conan heard
his skull crack.

The Cimmerian leaped and thrust in the same motion. His sword slashed
deep through scales into the flesh under the serpent's throat. The
scales parted, and blood spurted from a gash a sword's length wide,
deeper than any wound the beast had taken thus far.

This time, the hiss was nearly a roar, with an ugly, bubbling note.
Blood sprayed Conan, Valeria, Emwaya, and several warriors. As it had
not done before, it stung. Conan blinked his eyes clear, wiped off his
mouth with the back of his hand, and glanced at his sword-blade. There
was no harm to it as far as he could see.

Then they heard Dobanpu calling from beyond the serpent, "Have fire
ready! When I lead the beast among the earth-fruits, you must cast fire
upon them!"

Conan and Valeria spent no time in wondering at the sense of Dobanpu's
call. The serpent now writhed in a broader patch of tunnel, half-choked
with the fungi. Emwaya's eyes also discouraged questions.

"Flint and steel to the fore! And a torch! Hurry!" Valeria shouted.

A man ran up from the baggage bearers. Valeria struck a spark with
flint and steel into the dried, oil-soaked grass at the head of one of
the torches. It blazed up, with flame that was no natural yellow or
orange, but a violet hue as sickening as the serpent's blood, as
sickening as the magic the creature used for eating life-force.

Valeria held the torch at arm's length as the serpent backed slowly
deeper into the fungus. Conan stood beside her, sword and spear alike
ready. He saw Dobanpu raise a hand and fling what seemed to be a gobbet
of the serpent's own blood into its face. He saw the serpent lunge
forward, then halt, its head buried deep in a mass of the fungi as tall
as two men.

Before Dobanpu or Emwaya could speak, Valeria flung the torch. It
soared over the serpent's back and plunged into the piled fungi.

Flames puffed up, of the same virulent purple hue as the torch-flame.
Thick smoke of similar color rose above them. The Golden Serpent
quivered from nose to tail, then flung its head up as if trying to
pierce the ceiling to seek the open sky.

It failed. As the monster rose, Conan saw that smoke and flames were
pouring from those wounds still open. Green blood turned black; then
golden scales around the wounds also blackened. Smoke rose up from
throat and body, and at last began pouring from the eyes.

When smoke belched from the serpent's mouth, Conan threw an arm around
Valeria's shoulders and drew her close. He could feel her shuddering.
He sheathed his sword, dropped his spear, and drew Emwaya close with
his other arm.

They stood that way as the flames they had kindled with the aid of
Dobanpu's magic devoured both the fungi and the Golden Serpent. The
brute was tenacious of its life to the end. Not until the scales were
mostly fallen from the flesh did it stop writhing. Even then Conan
thought he heard a faint scraping in the middle of the roaring flames,
as if the serpent were still twitching feebly.

That was the Golden Serpent's last sign of life. Smoke was rising so
thickly now that Conan and others were binding strips of cloth across
their mouths and noses. Some wetted the strips as well. Emwaya stared
into the smoke, with it plain on her face that she feared for her
father.

Then the smoke eddied and disgorged the staggering figure of Dobanpu.
He was coughing like a man in the grip of lung-fever, and so nearly
blind that he all but spitted himself on Valeria's sword as he rushed
up. Valeria and Emwaya held the Spirit-Speaker while he coughed his
lungs clear, then gave him water. When he could speak, he nodded his
thanks and then gasped:

"We must hasten from here! I do not know how long this fire will burn,
nor how much smoke it will yield. The whole underground may become
unfit for life."

"I rejoice!" Valeria cried. "We are saved from the Golden Serpent only
to stifle like rabbits in a burrow!"

"Save your breath for running," Emwaya said, "and you may not find
yourself short of it!" It was the first time in a long while that she
had spoken with her old sharpness. Conan took that as a favorable omen;
Valeria seemed to think otherwise.

She did follow Emwaya's advice nonetheless. Like the others, she was
silent as they hurried back up the tunnel, the smoke thickening behind
them.

"Wobeku," the Kwanyi warrior said, "a messenger has come from the
watchers of the great crack in the earth."

Wobeku sat up and shook sleep from his head. One of these days, they
might use some honorific for him. At least they had given over calling
him "the chief's Ichiribu."

"What is the message?"

"He smells smoke."

"Smoke, as from a fire?"

"So he said."

Wobeku rose and girded himself for battle. When that was done, he was
fully awake. It was also then that he noticed that the jungle was more
silent than usual. Many of the common night birds and insects did not
live down by the Kwanyi shore, but the jungle was neither lifeless nor
silent under the moon.

Until now. Wobeku felt a chill in his loins. He sensed that he was
about to be called on to fight a foe not wholly of this earth.

"See that the drums warn Chabano and Ryku," he ordered. "Have the
guards at the lesser crack drive the logs we have ready into it." That
would be of no avail against unearthly foes, but if anyone human tried
to come through that crack, he would face a long night of ax-work
before he succeeded.

"Gather the guards about the great crack," he concluded. "Not too
close, but every man is to be fully armed. The baggage boys and the
women are to take the trail back to the villages. At once!"

The man almost made the gesture of respect to a chief before he
remembered to whom he was making it. Instead, he nodded and ran off.

Wobeku did not run, but he moved at a brisk trot as he headed down the
trail toward what he knew might be his last battle. The drums were
talking before he was halfway to his post.

----------------------------------------------------------------------


SIXTEEN

Conan's band would have gladly run from the smoke faster than they had
run from the Golden Serpent. There was no need to stop and thrust a
spear at the swirling purple wall hard on their heels.

If only they could breathe! Heat followed the smoke, and long tendrils
of both smoke and heat seemed to clutch at the fleeing men like jungle
vines. Conan ventured a look behind him, took one of the tendrils
squarely in the face, and nearly coughed himself into a fit.

His feet kept moving by a will of their own, however, until his wits
ruled them again. He did not falter or fall, and neither did most of
the band. Those who did, their comrades lifted and carried along.

No one wanted to see a comrade overtaken by this new peril. It was
impossible to imagine living within that purple murk, even had not
strange shapes lurked there. Conan had seen them, Valeria had seen
them, and even Emwaya and Dobanpu admitted they were there.

The two Spirit-Speakers did not, however, say what those shapes might
be. That was about as much as Conan expected of any sorcerer, and he
was not much for being rude to those who had saved his life. So he
followed Emwaya's advice to keep his breath for running.

"Here we turn," Dobanpu called. He pointed at a narrow slit in the wall
to the right. Dried mud lay on the floor about it, and a smell of
jungle rot warred with the smoke-reek.

As an escape route, it looked unpromising. But Dobanpu seemed
confident, and so far, he had proven trustworthy. Also, Conan had no
wish to wait for the fire to burn itself out. Already there was more
smoke and heat than all the fungi in all these caves could have
produced. Magic was in this fire, magic of a kind that sensible men
escaped as quickly as possible, even if they did have a momentarily
friendly sorcerer in company.

"Up!" Conan shouted, pointing at the gap. It was a measure of his
authority, or of their desperation, that four warriors plunged in
without hesitation. Four more followed, carrying the rope ladders and
other climbing gear. Before any more could go, Emwaya darted in.

Dobanpu's howl caused her to thrust her head back into view. "Father, I
can climb faster than you. Who knows what lies above, or what arts we
may need against it? Be ready to help me if I call."

Then she vanished. Dobanpu looked about wildly, no longer a sorcerer,
but a father seeing his child plunge into danger. "Valeria!" Conan
called. "I'll take the rear. You join the vanguard and see to Emwaya!"

Valeria left with the next handful of warriors. The men were, in fact,
now disappearing so fast that Conan wondered if the way to the surface
was easier than he had dared believe. If they found stairs—

"Conan!" Valeria called. "There are stairs up to the surface, and open
sky above! Make haste!"

Conan needed no urging. The tendrils of smoke seemed to curl about his
ankles, then his knees, then his waist. He drew his sword and hacked at
them as if they were living foes, and saw them retreat. But his sword
was growing hot to his touch, and he knew that if the main mass of
smoke surrounded him, he was lost.

Dobanpu shouted three harsh syllables, then reeled against the wall as
if the blood had rushed from his head. Conan watched the wall of smoke
draw back as the Golden Serpent had done, and felt the heat diminish.
Then he all but flung the Spirit-Speaker through the gap and followed
him.

The stairs were there, and—incredibly—the Cimmerian could indeed see
stars shining above. He dragged Dobanpu toward the rise, but the
Spirit-Speaker held back.

"I must restore the guardian spells on these stairs," he gasped, "or
the smoke-bringer will follow us, catch us halfway up, burn us in
mid-stride—"

"As you wish," Conan said. Arguing with a sorcerer was more futile than
fighting with one. The Cimmerian had won battles with many sorcerers,
but had won arguments with few.

This spell called for more than three times three syllables. When
Dobanpu was done, the gap behind them was yet dark with smoke, but the
tendrils did not escape. The air in the stairwell remained musty but
clean as Conan and the Spirit-Speaker mounted.

They had just caught up with the rearmost warrior when, from above,
Emwaya screamed.

The scream floated across the dark lake to Seyganko's canoe. Everyone
in the three leading canoes heard it, but only Seyganko heard it in his
mind. He desperately sought a message in the scream.

Emwaya! What is the danger? Where are you?

No answer came. He knew that for her cry to reach him this far out in
the lake, she had to be close to the shore. Also, she had to be on or
close to the surface of the earth.

This gave neither knowledge nor consolation. He thrust his paddle in
deep and looked behind him. Then he gave his war cry with all the
breath in his body, and thrust again with his paddle.

Without magic, with nothing but their strength and their sweat, the
other warriors were overtaking him. A hundred of the Ichiribu's best
fighters had gone to the mainland, to defend the herds and crops. Of
the rest, four hundred had taken to their canoes to challenge the
Kwanyi on their own shore. Only a handful remained behind to guard the
island.

As if Seyganko's war cry had been a signal, torches sparked to life in
the bows of the oncoming canoes. It seemed as though a line of fire was
advancing across the lake behind Seyganko.

He held his paddle aloft like a spear until the leading canoes were
almost abreast of his craft. Then he tossed the paddle, caught it, and
gave his war cry again. This time, the warriors gave it back to him so
that it seemed to fill the night and the lake, from shore to shore. If
the Kwanyi had not known what was coming, they could hardly be ignorant
of it now.

Seyganko began paddling again. The brief sense of triumph left him as
he realized that he had heard nothing more from Emwaya, neither with
his ears nor with his mind.

Conan took the stairs two at a time, for all that they were crumbling
and moss-grown. Once he nearly missed his footing and fell back. He
gripped a root with one hand and caught himself in time so as not to
squash Dobanpu like a grape.

The stairs ended at a man's height from the surface, but to picked
Ichiribu warriors, that distance was but a child's leap; they had
already reached solid ground by the time Conan joined them.

The first thing he saw was a warrior falling with a Kwanyi spear in his
thigh. Conan snatched the man's shield and drew his own sword, then
whirled, searching for Emwaya and Valeria.

He found them by a tree lifted half off the ground by its gnarled,
twisted roots, each root thicker than the Golden Serpent. Valeria was
hacking at the spears of half a dozen Kwanyi warriors, while two other
warriors already had Emwaya. Had their comrades so eager to close with
Valeria not blocked them, they would have by now made off with the
girl.

The warriors whirled to face Conan, tangling their shields one with
another in their haste. This was fatal to one warrior left unshielded.
Conan brusquely slashed the man's head from his shoulders, then leaped
back to give him room to fall.

The rest of the Kwanyi formed their shield-line. In the next moment,
they learned that others besides themselves could master that art, and
not only by the tutelage of Chabano the Great. Conan beat down one
spear with his sword, hooked his shield around the edge of a second
man's spear, and kicked upward. He was barefooted, but his soles were
as tough as leather and the kick had all the power of his leg behind
it.

The man screamed and reeled against a comrade, who fell out of
position. Conan feinted at that man, forcing him to raise his shield.
Then he slashed under the shield, taking the man's leg below the knee.

A spear thrust past Conan's ribs, nearly gouging his side, and he
whirled again to chop the spear-shaft in two with his sword. Then he
charged the man like a bull, driving the shield back against his
opponent's chest until the man lowered it to see clearly. The man's
last sight was of Conan's broadsword descending to split his headdress,
hair, and skull.

Valeria cut down another opponent, and the last of the Kwanyi warriors
took only a brief look at the odds they faced after the death of their
friends before fleeing into the night. Conan swung his shield hard into
the back of one man holding Emwaya and heard the spine crack. Valeria
leaped on the other, jerked his head back with fingers twined in his
hair, and slashed his throat.

Emwaya stood free, clasping her arms across her breasts, her eyes on
the ground for a moment. Then she seemed to shrug a great weight from
her shoulders.

"Father?"

Dobanpu strode up and put out a hand to touch his daughter as if not
quite believing she was real. She gripped the hand and smiled.

"I am well, I think."

"Time to be sure later," Dobanpu said. He gripped his amulet with one
hand and his belt pouch with the other. "The God-Men may not be what
they were. I have sensed quarrels that perhaps have weakened them. But
if they still command the Living Wind—"

Kwanyi war cries interrupted him. Conan threw down the shield, wiped
his sword on it, and drew his dagger.

"The Living Wind can wait. Someone close at hand still commands
warriors!" He pushed Emwaya into her father's arms, then called to
Valeria.

"Find a path to the shore and see if we can draw back toward it. This
place is worthless now. We want our backs to the water!"

Fleet-footed as ever, Valeria vanished into the night. From the jungle
beyond, Kwanyi warriors came bursting through the undergrowth.

Wobeku led the warriors attacking the enemy who had sprung from the
earth. Not only his honor drove him forward to that place; he knew that
if the Kwanyi gained the victory with him at their head, he would have
a warrior's name among them.

Had he run faster, he might have plunged among the Ichiribu before they
could order their ranks. He would then have died but would have won
with his life sufficient time for his comrades to strike the scattered
enemy. Then not even the Cimmerian's swiftness, skill, and steel might
have saved them.

Wobeku instead brought his men to the field as Chabano had taught. He
put them into their proper line before he ordered the advance, and only
darted out ahead of it at the last moment.

Behind him, the Kwanyi line came out of the trees somewhat disordered
by encounters with the underbrush. The first volley of light spears
went mostly astray. One spear even gouged Wobeku's leg. He howled out
his fury at that fool in a war cry and let the Kwanyi come up with him.

A swung stone cracked against his shield. Wobeku stepped forward and
ducked his head. This time, the stone-swinger looped the line around
the top of Wobeku's shield and jerked. Wobeku did not let go of the
shield. Instead, he let himself be drawn forward, then leaped and
lunged. The stone-swinger died with Wobeku's spear in his belly.

"Yaygo!" Wobeku cried, the ritual proclamation of a man's first kill of
a battle.

The next moment, someone nearly won the right to cry that over him. The
Kwanyi at his right suddenly vanished, fallen into the crack in the
earth. An Ichiribu warrior darted forward in his place, locking shields
with Wobeku and thrusting desperately over, under, and around.

Wobeku took two minor flesh wounds before he was able to riposte with
his own spear. It gashed the Ichiribu's belly, but not mortally. The
man did not flinch from the pain, either. He kept on thrusting, less
skillfully with each passing moment, but with no diminished courage.

This was the kind of battle that to Wobeku showed Chabano to be a wise
chief. When engaged in an each-man-for-himself fight, Wobeku had often
been unable to press home for the kill. He had feared, with reason, for
his flanks and rear. In the Kwanyi shield-line, his flanks were safe,
even in such a small battle as this. Had there been the usual second
line behind him, his back would also have been guarded.

Wobeku thrust again—and nearly stumbled as his thrust encountered empty
air. He stared at the space where his opponent had been, then saw other
Kwanyi doing the same. As if by magic, the Ichiribu had vanished.
Before the Kwanyi sprawled only a few bodies and fallen weapons, barely
half of them Ichiribu.

Chabano's warriors lived, with no one to fight. Wobeku waved his great
spear, ordering a few men over to the crack in the ground to see what
might lie within. They found nothing, save footprints that made it
plain how the Ichiribu had come.

Come by magic? And if come by magic, had they vanished by the same way?
Wobeku knelt and began searching the ground with a hunter's skills. In
the dark it was not easy, but he knew that torches would only give any
lurking Ichiribu a mark.

His nightsight at last pierced the darkness, showing footprints leading
off toward the shore. There were many of them, and some showed the heel
scarifications of Ichiribu clans.

Wobeku called the best trackers forward, gave them fresh spears, and
sent them on. Their orders: to find where the Ichiribu had gone and
send word back, but to refrain from fighting them. A messenger also ran
back to the drummers, and soon the drums began talking again.

Whatever the Ichiribu had done below the earth, it was done. Now they
likely intended to hold the shore for their oncoming comrades. Wobeku
intended to show the enemy band that it needed more than its back to
the shore for safety.

A retreat at night over unknown ground was the hardest of all maneuvers
in war, or so Conan had heard claimed by those who had earned the right
to speak. He had also been both warrior and captain in enough such
affairs to believe this the truth.

With ill-ordered men, it was said to be impossible, but the Ichiribu
were not ill-ordered. Every man still on his feet when they broke off
the battle reached the shore. Some were stumbling, two were carried by
comrades, but all were present.

Of warriors fit to fight, however, Conan saw that he had barely twenty.
The battle with the Golden Serpent had taken its toll even before the
Kwanyi had struck. Many Kwanyi had also surely died, but nevertheless,
he did not doubt that his band faced heavy odds.

The plan for this battle called for the Ichiribu to command the trails
to the shore so that they might ambush Chabano's warriors as they
hurled themselves into battle. Coming to the shore in disarray,
Chabano's men would lack time to form their potent shield-line.

Plans, Conan sometimes thought, were for gods, priests, and clerks.
Warriors had to make do with luck and a keen edge on their blades.

A glance lakeward encouraged the Cimmerian. With torches blazing, the
Ichiribu canoes were racing toward the shore. They would be visible now
all across the Kwanyi land, even as far as to Thunder Mountain. The
Kwanyi would know what they faced, but that knowledge might drive them
to haste.

Haste in war was a two-edged sword. Be there first, and victory might
be yours. Be there first but disordered or weak, and your vanguard at
least was men thrown away.

A scraping sound made Conan whirl, sword ready to slash at the
darkness. A shape took form out of that darkness, and Conan lowered his
blade.

"Seyganko. Well met."

"As are you, Cimmerian. How fares Emwaya?"

Conan smiled. The war leader of the Ichiribu would ask for his woman
first. The Cimmerian wondered if he himself would have such a woman
again. There had not been one such since Belit—and Valeria was not the
sort to fill those shoes!

"Weary, but well. Valeria guards her. How came you here without our
seeing you?"

"The canoes with me doused our torches and paddled in silence, I have
brought thirty warriors. Surprise is worth much."

So it was, but the hundreds of other warriors now doubtless paddling in
circles while waiting for Seyganko's signal were also worth something.
Did Seyganko seek surprise or glory—glory bought with the Cimmerian's
blood?

No good ever came of a quarrel between chiefs on the verge of a battle
to the death. Conan held his tongue, knowing that if Seyganko had been
overbold, the young chief would also not see another sunrise.

"Good. Go ask Dobanpu how far forward it is wise for them to come."

"Dobanpu?"

"Also weary, but well. He fears that the gods of Thunder Mountain may
be taking a hand in matters tonight. Best not send your men beyond his
protection."

Seyganko clearly wanted to know more, but Conan urged him off to the
Spirit-Speaker, who could make more sense in relating the battle
underground than could the Cimmerian. Conan himself found a stump not
too rotten to support his weight and sat down to clean his steel.

It was not in nature for this lull to last. His band had thrown down a
challenge to both men and more than men, and both sorts of foe would be
coming on in strength before the night was much older. Conan knew,
however, that no man was ever the worse for facing any foe with a clean
sword.

----------------------------------------------------------------------


SEVENTEEN

The drums, the messengers, and the sightings of his own eyes were
giving Chabano uncertain tidings. He nonetheless kept his place at the
head of the warriors racing downhill toward the shore.

The drums and his eyes told him that the Ichiribu were on the way
across the lake. Messengers told him that by some treachery, or perhaps
by some magic, an enemy war band had sprung from the earth and was
holding a landing place for the main body of oncoming warriors.

Chabano hoped it was not treachery. It would make enemies for him among
the kin of those warriors who had died if trusting Wobeku had shed
Kwanyi blood. At least the dead could not number more than a handful,
even if Wobeku had contrived their demise.

At Chabano's back there trotted more than five hundred Kwanyi warriors.
Each bore the shield and three spears he had devised and taught them to
use so well. When they reached the shore, it would hardly be a battle
at all.

He did wonder that he had not heard from Ryku. The First Speaker
certainly had to know all that was happening, including the magic being
unleashed— and not all of it by that doddering Spirit-Speaker Dobanpu!

It did not matter greatly. Dobanpu might have power over Wobeku's
blowgun. He would hardly have as much power against five hundred of the
Kwanyi's best. There would be spears through the man's throat, heart,
and belly before he could speak enough spirits to slay a goat!

Conan had led the Ichiribu ambush party up the path from the shore. Now
he crouched under an arching root, trying to find the men he had led.
The fewer he found, the better they had learned the art of concealment.

He found one and whistled softly, then pointed to a bush that would
hide him better. The man thumped his head three times on the ground.
Conan was ready to curse him for putting courtesy before obedience, but
then the man half rolled, half slid into his new hiding place.

He had just vanished when the stamping of many fast-moving feet reached
the Cimmerian's ears. Conan drew his dagger and rested his free hand on
a pile of small stones he had chosen from a stream-bed.

This would be close work, too close for swords, and the more silent,
the better. If a few-score Kwanyi died before they even knew they faced
death, Chabano would have a busy time rallying those who survived
before Seyganko had all of his men ashore.

That would strain even Chabano's discipline, although the ambush party
would be all but juggling live vipers. But then, most battles ended
that way, no matter how one began them.

The sound of the Kwanyi on the march swelled, then began to fade. In
moments, silence had taken its place. Few ears but Conan's could have
heard the softer sound of many men breathing, and commands given in
whispers instead of in shouts.

"They're still coming," he murmured to the man next to him. "Pass the
word, and have every man look to his rear as well."

If Chabano had grown suspicious, he might well be halting his main
column while light-footed scouts beat the bushes ahead and on either
side. The Kwanyi would lose time that way, but they might save
warriors. They would certainly put Conan and his men in peril.

Conan whispered another command. "When you attack, forget silence!
Shout and scream, crack your lungs, burst your throats—"

"Make them think a score are a thousand?" his companion whispered back.
The Cimmerian nodded.

Now the sound of marching Kwanyi came again, this time a shuffle as the
warriors advanced at a walk. Conan gripped a stone and balanced it,
ready to throw.

The first Kwanyi appeared. Conan let him pass, and likewise the nine
men after him. The tenth man took the flung stone in the mouth. He
staggered back, spitting blood and teeth, into the reach of another
Ichiribu. This one held a short spear, which he thrust into the
Kwanyi's back.

"Yah-haaaaaa!" Conan roared as he leaped onto the path. He thrust over
a lunging spear-point and into a man's chest before the victim could
get his shield positioned. He snatched another stone and flung it far
up the path, into the shadowy mass of warriors now crowding forward to
the attack.

The faster the warriors crowded forward, however, the less room there
was for them to move and fight. Conan had done his best to find a place
where the trail was narrow and the ground to either side of it nearly
impassable. Chabano was helping by letting the need for haste rule his
judgment.

Conan and half a dozen companions kept the head of the column in play
for a good while. A moment came when Conan threw his last stone, heard
it strike a shield, and drew his sword. With sword and dagger both
leaping in his hands as if they had life of their own, he carved away
at the front rank of the Kwanyi.

Through the gap Conan made, his companions plunged, thrusting with
spears and lashing about with war clubs. Meanwhile, stones, tridents,
fallen branches, and any other weapon that came to hand also made their
mark on the Kwanyi flanks.

What Conan hoped the most now was that Chabano himself would come
forward. Tribal custom and the Paramount Chief's own temper would drive
him into a duel with Conan. For that duel, there could be only one
outcome.

The ambush could end the battle, and even the war, in an Ichiribu
victory. Conan drew back a trifle, keeping his guard up, shirting about
to make himself a difficult target for spears, and seeking for any sign
of Chabano.

At last he caught sight of a man who undoubtedly was the chief—in the
very same moment that the earth shook underfoot.

Ryku had performed all of the rituals for calling up the Living Wind as
if he had sucked them in with his mother's milk. Pride and courage
flowed through him. He knew he courted no danger in performing the
rituals alone, such was his power at last.

Yet the colors of the Living Wind had not returned to their normal
hues, save briefly. Again there was an umber tint in the crimson, a
paleness in the sapphire. The strange sounds and stranger scent were
gone, but the memory of them lingered in Ryku's thoughts. He had to
force these thoughts back, as one forced back a boar caught on one's
spear, lest they disturb his confidence.

Now came the most demanding ritual of all. Sending the power of the
Living Wind entirely outside Thunder Mountain had been done. It could
be done again. If it was done, the Living Wind would fall on the
Ichiribu and they would be gone without the wetting of a single Kwanyi
spear.

No, Ryku told himself, he would not allow the word "if" in his mind. He
would call up the Living Wind and send it forth.

He sat straighter and raised his staff in one hand, a gourd of
cunningly mixed herbs in the other. He hung the gourd from the end of
the staff and dipped into it, catching a pinch of the herbs between
thumb and forefinger.

Ritual and good sense alike told a Speaker to begin with only a small
measure of the herbs. Ryku leaned forward, opened thumb and forefinger
and let the herbs float out into space. They vanished almost at once,
lost against the swirling colors of the Living Wind, so that he did not
know when they reached it.

He did know, though, when the whole cave shook like a gourd flung
against a stone wall. He clutched his staff with one hand and reached
for the gourd to draw it to safety.

A whirling column of crimson and sapphire, as bright as ever, leaped
upward from the Living Wind. It approached the gourd, touched it, then
snatched it from the end of Ryku's staff.

Ryku cried out, rose to his feet and hastened to the ledge to see,
amazement bordering on fear sweeping through him, weakening the
discipline of his mind. He lunged for the gourd as the column began
sinking, taking the gourd with it.

He touched it, too—but the column rose again, and now it had become
crimson-and-sapphire flames that wrapped themselves around his wrist.
He cried out, an animal scream of agony, as the flames ate through his
wrist.

The pain and his all-encompassing fear made him forget that he stood on
the very brink of the ledge. He staggered, and one foot came down on
empty air. He threw out his remaining hand toward the stone, felt
fingernails scrabble and break, then plunged.

What Ryku had felt before was as nothing to what he felt when the
Living Wind swallowed him. But by then, the roaring of the tumult was
too loud for anyone to hear his screams.

"To me! Back down the trail! Now, you goats' bastards!"

Conan's shouts rallied the Ichiribu ambushers. Some of them plunged off
into the forest, their way back to the path barred by the enemy. At
least half of the survivors joined the Cimmerian.

With more speed than dignity, they sprinted down the trail, for all
that it was shaking beneath them. A tree toppled across their rear,
mercifully striking no one. Conan halted then, letting the others go on
while he studied the Kwanyi.

He had been afraid that in a panic to leave the hillside, the enemy
would rush his men, sweeping them away by sheer weight of numbers. Now
that was not to be, for all that Chabano had taken the lead. They were
coming on at a good pace, leaving older warriors and boys to gather up
the wounded and dead, and perhaps to protect their line of retreat.

Very surely, Chabano's death would take not merely the heart, but the
head from the Kwanyi… which would all be very well if Conan had the
faintest notion of how to bring it about. A personal challenge would
only end with the Cimmerian sprouting a score of spears before Chabano
even heard him!

The Cimmerian brought up the rear of the ambush party as it ran down
the trail to rejoin its comrades. He had never cared for running, but
there were times when a good pair of legs was a man's best weapon.

As the Ichiribu ran, they noticed that the earthquake seemed to have
passed, but a strange glow was rising into the sky from the direction
of Thunder Mountain.

Chabano let a dozen or so warriors go before him, leaping over the
fallen tree ahead. This was no time for him to risk a spear from some
desperate Ichiribu lying behind the tree.

No spears came. Chabano leaped high, as he had done when a boy. Landing
sent a sharp pain through one knee that reminded him he was not a boy,
but he did not stumble. His spear was over one shoulder and his shield
on the other arm, and he was well in front of his warriors when he saw
the sky change color.

It turned crimson and sapphire—and Chabano remembered that those were
the colors of the Living Wind. It seemed that Ryku had sent his powers
forth after all, and not a moment too soon! If the Kwanyi had to fight
all the way down the trail and then face the full strength of unshaken
foes, tonight's battle would leave neither tribe with enough men to
people a village!

"Waaa-yeh!" he shouted. The Kwanyi took up the cry and obeyed the
command. Feet drummed on hard earth, men screamed in sheer animal
delight, and spears clashed on shields.

Meanwhile, the glow above no longer covered half the sky. It was
shrinking as the colors grew clearer and brighter. It also seemed that
the colors whirled and danced, like an eddy in a stream. Then they
shrank still further, into a globe almost too dazzling to look at.

Chabano raised his spear and shield so that the Living Wind might see
his marks of rank and know who to obey. Ryku had done well indeed. He
was giving over the power of the Living Wind to Chabano himself! The
poor fool Ryku—he could not imagine how little hope there was of ever
having it returned.

Chabano's joy overcame him. He flung his spear straight into the sky as
the globe of whirling crimson and sapphire plunged for him. Light and
spear met—and where the spear had been, only charred splinters and
drops of melted iron remained. They showered down about Chabano, and
surprise as much as pain made him cry out when a drop of metal burned
through skin into the flesh of his shoulder.

The warriors behind him cried louder, and he knew that some of them
were turning to run. He whirled, unslinging his light throwing spear,
vowing to put it through the first man he saw breaking from the column.
But instead of one, he saw a dozen men running, and that was the last
thing he saw. Before he could throw his spear, the Living Wind was all
about him.

As Ryku had done, Chabano screamed while the Living Wind devoured him,
but no one heard his screams. With some, it was because they also were
dying, but with most, it was because they heard only the blood
thundering in their ears as they fled.

Most of Conan's men had reached the shore when they saw the fire on the
hill. The Cimmerian himself was still on the trail, with one companion.
He sent the man onward and sought a good hiding place to see what might
come next.

The earth shook again, more fiercely than before. Conan heard the
crackle of falling trees and the screams of Kwanyi warriors caught
under them. He also heard other Kwanyi crying out, and not with war
cries.

As little as he liked the thought of approaching potent magic, he liked
not knowing what enemy he faced even less. Sword in hand, he rose from
his hiding place—then knew he need not take a step to find the answer
to what was happening up the trail.

A being of crimson-and-sapphire light swirling together, with something
of a man's shape but as high as a temple, came striding down the path.
Where its—call them feet—struck the earth, smoke rose: the mephitic
purple smoke that Conan remembered from underground.

Those same powers from underground were now loose on Thunder Mountain.
Why, Conan neither knew nor cared. He hoped only that the Kwanyi,
enemies that they were, had fled for their lives. Death in such guise,
he would not wish upon a Stygian!

Conan plunged downhill from the trail, knowing that the being could
follow him at will if it chose, but hoping that it would follow the
easier path of the trail. The specter seemed solid enough not to wish
to plough through trees thicker than its legs all the way to the shore.

If Conan had been running for his own life, a Cimmerian's reluctance to
turn his back on a foe might have slowed him. Running for the lives of
Valeria and all of his Ichiribu friends, he plunged down the hill as if
it were level ground in daylight.

The magical light from the monster eased his way somewhat, but there
were still many shadows, and too many trees lurking in those shadows.
He nearly stunned himself twice, left patches of skin and more than
patches of his clothes on bark or twigs, but still had his weapons as
he staggered, bloody and cursing, onto the open shore.

He had reached the open a trifle to the north of where the Ichiribu
were now gathered. The light of their torches made it plain that they
were arrayed to meet a human foe.

Conan cursed louder than before. Spears snapped up and heads turned.

"Into the canoes!" he shouted. "You can't fight with spears what's
coming downhill. Seek the water, and hope the thing can't swim!"

A slim figure with smoke-darkened fair hair ran from the circle.
"Conan! We thought it had taken you!"

The Cimmerian and his shield-woman had time for only the briefest of
embraces before they broke apart, each to lead a band of warriors into
a rear guard.

Seyganko was shouting orders to the other warriors to run for the
canoes when Dobanpu stepped forward. From the way Emwaya was clutching
her father's arm, the old Spirit-Speaker was clearly about something of
which she did not approve. Seeing Conan, Dobanpu beckoned.

"Conan! Bid your shield-woman guard this foolish daughter of mine until
I have done my work."

"Your work?" Conan knew he must sound like a witling, but in this
matter, he understood no more than one.

"I cannot command the spirits to drive off the Living Wind, still less
to destroy it. I might have had that power once, or even now, had I not
fought the battle underground. But I can contrive a battle of the
spirits so that they will do the work for me, like elephants crushing
an enemy's village."

"He must—" Emwaya shrieked.

"You must be silent now, and afterward, a good Spirit-Speaker to the
Ichiribu," Dobanpu said. "Also, a good wife to Seyganko, who deserves
one."

Then Dobanpu cast aside his headdress and other garb. Clad only in
amulet, loinguard, and pouch, he walked with the dignity of a king of
kings toward the foot of the trail.

He reached the beginning of the rise a few heartbeats before the
monstrosity did. There was a moment when the man and the creation of
magic seemed to stare at one another. Then Dobanpu leaped, as lightly
as any bidui boy, soaring high.

He soared higher than any man could have done with unaided muscles,
spending the last of his magic to strike the specter in the chest.
Conan expected to see Dobanpu rebound from the being, to fall like a
torn doll to the ground, and to be crushed to pulp. Instead, he seemed
to stick to the being, like a fly caught in honey.

Then smoke swirled up around him… and he was gone. For a moment, Conan
thought he saw with half dazzled eyes the dark shape of a man within
the shape of the monster. Then even that vanished.

A moment later, so did the being itself. It vanished with a roar of
thunder that Conan did not doubt was heard in Bossonia. The windblast
it flung out snapped grown trees at the base, tossed canoes end over
end, and knocked nearly every man on the shore flat on the sand and
gravel.

Conan and Valeria dug in fingers and toes and clung to the beach as
they would have clung to the yard of a ship in a gale. Closing their
eyes against the hurled sand and gravel, they could only judge what
else might be happening by the noise, and most of that was the wind.

At last the wind died out. The shouts and cries did not, however. Conan
raised himself on hands and knees and saw the Ichiribu hastily running
from a stretch of the shore that was now covered with molten rock. The
lava was pouring from a gap in the earth where Conan judged the being
had stood in the moment of its destruction.

As the stream of lava reached the lake, steam erupted. More steam
seemed to be rising from inland, doubtless from the stairs where
Conan's band had climbed from the tunnels. Then Valeria gripped Conan's
arm and pointed out over the water.

The lake itself was in turmoil, whirlpools appearing and disappearing
within moments, spray rising, live fish thrashing and more than a few
dead ones bobbing on the surface before they were sucked out of sight.
Some of the Ichiribu canoes were ablaze, engulfed by the lava, while
others bobbed on the lake, swept away by the churning water.

Conan would wager a good deal that the tunnels far below had finally
lost their magic and were now losing their long battle against the
weight of the earth. That would put an end to the fire and any
air-breathing creatures alive down there, but what of those shadowy
water-dwellers? Would they also die with the magic, or live to infest
the Lake of Death?

Conan shouted to one fool of a warrior ready to dive into the lake to
swim to a fugitive canoe. Then he saw Seyganko striding along the
shore, waving men back from the water.

Conan brushed sand and gravel off Valeria and let her do the same for
him.

"You're bleeding," she said. "I think there are salves somewhere down
there."

"I'm better off bleeding, I think. I'm for staying well away from the
water until we've asked Emwaya what happened."

"If she knows."

"You saw her face. Her father told her what he was going to do to… to
the Living Wind, I'd wager."

Valeria shuddered. Then her sword was in her hand as a warrior with
Kwanyi headdress and Ichiribu tattoos rose slowly from the bushes.

"Wobeku!" Conan and Valeria said together.

The traitor kept his hands in plain sight. "Great chiefs, do with me as
you please when you have heard me out. I wish to yield the men under me
to the mercy of the Ichiribu and their chiefs. I can also name those
underchiefs of the Kwanyi who may listen to talk of peace between our
tribes."

Conan and Valeria looked at each other. They knew of the clan rivalries
among the Kwanyi. If Chabano was dead, as seemed likely, the Ichiribu
might use these rivalries to impose a victor's peace.

"Was it you or Aondo who slew the bidui boys?" Valeria asked.

"Aondo."

Somehow to Conan that had the ring of truth.

"This is a matter for Seyganko and Emwaya," he said. "Lie down on your
shield so none will put a spear through you until we return. Bid your
folk stay out of sight. And pray to the gods that you are telling the
truth!"

Wobeku swore several potent oaths with a certain dignity that Conan
thought did him some honor, then assumed the pose of submission. "Now
we'd best make haste to Seyganko, before someone skewers our would-be
peacemaker," the Cimmerian grumbled as he broke into a trot. "And here
I thought our work was done!"

"We can't seek out the river until the lake's fit to sail on," Valeria
reminded him. "Nor am I one for sitting idle while others work."

"But then—"

She slipped an arm around his waist. "Downriver to the Trading Coast.
I've still those fire-stones, and as long as no Golden Serpent comes
with them, they may buy us a ship."

"Buy you a ship," Conan said. Her touch was as warming to his blood as
ever, but he knew too much about the other sides of her nature. "Two of
us on one ship would divide the crew. I'm for turning landsman anyway,
until the Barachans have forgotten the name of Conan the Cimmerian."

"They may forget it," Valeria said with a complacent smile. "I will
not."
