Part 22 (1/2)
He halted short, dagger lifted. In the tense silence the roar of the hosts rose beneath him, borne on the wind.
On the other side of the altar stood a man in a black hooded robe, whose coif shadowed pale delicate features and dark eyes calm and meditative.
”Dog of Asura!” whispered Xaltotun, and his voice was like the hiss of an angered serpent. ”Are you mad, that you seek your doom? Ho, Baal!
Chiron!”
”Call again, dog of Acheron!” said the other, and laughed. ”Summon them loudly. They will not heal, unless your shouts reverberate in h.e.l.l.”
From a thicket on the edge of the crest came a somber old woman in peasant garb, her hair flowing over her shoulders, a great gray wolf following at her heels.
”Witch, priest, and wolf,” muttered Xaltotun grimly, and laughed.
”Fools, to pit your charlatan's mummery against my arts! With a wave of my hand I brush you from my path!”
”Your arts are straws in the wind, dog of Python,” answered the Asurian. ”Have you wondered why the s.h.i.+rki did not come down in flood and trap Conan on the other bank? When I saw the lightning in the night I guessed your plan, and my spells dispersed the clouds you had summoned before they could empty their torrents. You did not even know that your rain-making wizardry had failed.”
”You lie!” cried Xaltotun, but the confidence in his voice was shaken.
”I have felt the impact of a powerful sorcery against mine-but no man on earth could undo the rain-magic, once made, unless he possessed the very heart of sorcery.”
”But the flood you plotted did not come to pa.s.s,” answered the priest ”Look at your allies in the valley, Pythonian! You have led them to the slaughter! They are caught in the fangs of the trap, and you cannot aid them. Look!”
He pointed. Out of the narrow gorge of the upper valley, behind the Poitainians, a horseman came flying, whirling something about his head that flashed in the sun. Recklessly he hurtled down the slopes, through the ranks of the Gundermen, who sent up a deep-throated roar and clashed their spears and s.h.i.+elds like thunder in the hills. On the terraces between the hosts the sweat-soaked horse reared and plunged, and his wild rider yelled and brandished the thing in his hands like one demented. It was the torn remnant of a scarlet banner, and the sun struck dazzlingly on the golden scales of a serpent that writhed thereon.
”Valerius is dead!” cried Hadrathus ringingly. ”A fog and a drum lured him to his doom! I gathered that fog, dog of Python, and I dispersed it! I, with my magic which is greater than your magic!”
”What matters it?” roared Xaltotun, a terrible sight, his eyes blazing, his features convulsed. ”Valerius was a fool. I do not need him. I can crush Conan without human aid!”
”Why have you delayed?” mocked Hadrathus. ”Why have you allowed so many of your allies to fall pierced by arrows and spitted on spears?”
”Because blood aids great sorcery!” thundered Xaltotun, in a voice that made the rocks quiver. A lurid nimbus played about his awful head.
”Because no wizard wastes his strength thoughtlessly. Because I would conserve my powers for the great days to be, rather than employ them in a hill-country brawl. But now, by Set, I shall loose them to the uttermost! Watch, dog of Asura, false priest of an outworn G.o.d, and see a sight that shall blast your reason for evermore!”
Hadrathus threw back his head and laughed, and h.e.l.l was in his laughter.
”Look, black devil of Python!”
His hand came from under his robe holding something that flamed and burned in the sun, changing the light to a pulsing golden glow in which the flesh of Xaltotun looked like the flesh of a corpse.
Xaltotun cried out as if he had been stabbed.
”The Heart! The Heart of Ahriman!”
”Aye! The one power that is greater than your power!”
Xaltotun seemed to shrivel, to grow old. Suddenly his beard was shot with snow, his locks flecked with gray.
”The Heart!” he mumbled. ”You stole it! Dog! Thief!”
”Not I! It has been on a long journey far to the southward. But now it is in my hands, and your black arts cannot stand against it. As it resurrected you, so shall it hurl you back into the night whence it drew you. You shall go down the dark road to Acheron, which is the road of silence and the night The dark empire, unreborn, shall remain a legend and a black memory. Conan shall reign again. And the Heart of Ahriman shall go back into the cavern below the temple of Mitra, to b.u.m as a symbol of the power of Aquilonia for a thousand years!”