Part 4 (2/2)

”Had you seen what he and I saw,” growled the king, sitting up despite the protests of the leeches, ”you had not wondered. Blast your own gaze by looking at ” He stopped short, his mouth gaping, his finger pointing fruitlessly. Where the monster had died, only the bare floor met his eyes.

”Crom!” he swore. ”The thing's melted back into the foulness which bore it!”

”The king is delirious,” whispered a n.o.ble. Conan heard and swore with barbaric oaths.

”By Badb, Morrigan, Macha and Nemain!” he concluded wrathfully. ”I am sane! It was like a cross between a Stygian mummy and a baboon. It came through the door, and Ascalante's rogues fled before it. It slew Ascalante, who was about to run me through. Then it came upon me and I slew it how I know not, for my ax glanced from it as from a rock. But I think that the Sage Epemitreus had a hand in it ”

”Hark how he names Epemitreus, dead for fifteen hundred years!” they whispered to each other.

”By Ymir!” thundered the king. ”This night I talked with Epemitreus! He called to me in my dreams, and I walked down a black stone corridor carved with old G.o.ds, to a stone stair on the steps of which were the outlines of Set, until I came to a crypt, and a tomb with a phoenix carved on it ”

”In Mitra's name, lord king, be silent!” It was the high-priest of Mitra who cried out, and his countenance was ashen.

Conan threw up his head like a lion tossing back its mane, and his voice was thick with the growl of the angry lion.

”Am I a slave, to shut my mouth at your command?”

”Nay, nay, my lord!” The high-priest was trembling, but not through fear of the royal wrath. ”I meant no offense.” He bent his head close to the king and spoke in a whisper that carried only to Conan's ears.37.

”My lord, this is a matter beyond human understanding. Only the inner circle of the priestcraft know of the black stone corridor carved in the black heart of Mount Golamira, by unknown hands, or of the phoenix-guarded tomb where Epemitreus was laid to rest fifteen hundred years ago. And since that time no living man has entered it, for his chosen priests, after placing the Sage in the crypt, blocked up the outer entrance of the corridor so that no man could find it, and today not even the high-priests know where it is. Only by word of mouth, handed down by the high-priests to the chosen few, and jealously guarded, does the inner circle of Mitra's acolytes know of the resting-place of Epemitreus in the black heart of Golamira. It is one of the Mysteries, on which Mitra's cult stands.”

”I can not say by what magic Epemitreus brought me to him,” answered Conan. ”But I talked with him, and he made a mark on my sword. Why that mark made it deadly to demons, or what magic lay behind the mark, I know not; but though the blade broke on Gromel's helmet, yet the fragment was long enough to kill the horror.”

”Let me see your sword,” whispered the high-priest from a throat gone suddenly dry.

Conan held out the broken weapon and the high-priest cried out and fell to his knees.

”Mitra guard us against the powers of darkness!” he gasped. ”The king has indeed talked with Epemitreus this night! There on the sword it is the secret sign none might make but him the emblem of the immortal phoenix which broods for ever over his tomb! A candle, quick! Look again at the spot where the king said the goblin died!”

It lay in the shade of a broken screen. They threw the screen aside and bathed the floor in a flood of candle-light. And a shuddering silence fell over the people as they looked. Then some fell on their knees calling on Mitra, and some fled screaming from the chamber.

There on the floor where the monster had died, there lay, like a tangible shadow, a broad dark stain that could not be washed out; the thing had left its outline clearly etched in its blood, and that outline was of no being of a sane and normal world. Grim and horrific it brooded there, like the shadow cast by one of the apish G.o.ds that squat on the shadowy altars of dim temples in the dark land of Stygia.38.

The Frost-Giant's Daughter

The Frost-Giant's Daughter

The clangor of the swords had died away, the shouting of the slaughter was hushed; silence lay on the red-stained snow. The bleak pale sun that glittered so blindingly from the ice-fields and the snow-covered plains struck sheens of silver from rent corselet and broken blade, where the dead lay as they had fallen. The nerveless hand yet gripped the broken hilt; helmeted heads back-drawn in the death-throes, tilted red beards and golden beards grimly upward, as if in last invocation to Ymir the frost-giant, G.o.d of a warrior-race.

Across the red drifts and mail-clad forms, two figures glared at each other. In that utter desolation only they moved. The frosty sky was over them, the white illimitable plain around them, the dead men at their feet. Slowly through the corpses they came, as ghosts might come to a tryst through the shambles of a dead world. In the brooding silence they stood face to face.

Both were tall men, built like tigers. Their s.h.i.+elds were gone, their corselets battered and dinted. Blood dried on their mail; their swords were stained red. Their horned helmets showed the marks of fierce strokes. One was beardless and black-maned. The locks and beard of the other were red as the blood on the sunlit snow.

”Man,” said he, ”tell me your name, so that my brothers in Vanaheim may know who was the last of Wulfhere's band to fall before the sword of Heimdul.”

”Not in Vanaheim,” growled the black-haired warrior, ”but in Valhalla will you tell your brothers that you met Conan of Cimmeria.”

Heimdul roared and leaped, and his sword flashed in deathly arc. Conan staggered and his vision was filled with red sparks as the singing blade crashed on his helmet, s.h.i.+vering into bits of blue fire. But as he reeled he thrust with all the power of his broad shoulders behind the humming blade. The sharp point tore through bra.s.s scales and bones and heart, and the red- haired warrior died at Conan's feet.

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