Part 62 (2/2)

”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 had cried out, and his face was ashen. Conan threw up his head like a lion tossing back its mane, and his eyes blazed.

”And who are you to shut my mouth?” his voice was thick with the snarl of a maddened tiger.

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

”Lord king, this is a matter beyond human knowledge. Only the inner circle of the priest-craft know of the black stone corridor carved in the black heart of Mount Golamira, by unknown hands, or of the tomb with the phoenix brooding over it, 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 so 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, do the inner circle of Mitra's neophytes know of the resting-place of Epemitreus in the black heart of Golamira.”

”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, and though the blade broke on Gromel's helmet, the fragment was long enough to kill the monster. And it died there on the floor.”

346.

Then silence fell shudderingly over the people as they looked closer, and some fell on their knees calling on Mitra, and some fled screaming from the chamber.

For 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 a being which could have been neither man nor beast, nor any being of a sane or normal world.

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

Conan held out the weapon, and the high-priest cried out and fell to his knees. ”Mitra guard us against the powers of darkness!” he gasped, ashy-faced. ”You have surely talked with Epemitreus this night! It is the secret sign none might make but he the sign of the immortal phoenix which broods forever over his tomb!”

Conan scowled bewilderedly.

”How could that mark make demons vulnerable to my sword?”

The high-priest shook his head as he rose.

”The mysteries of the shadows are beyond our grasp. Symbols are but the external signs of hidden powers. We only see the outward evidences; we do not see the eternal play of the forces which lie behind; the powers of Light opposed to the powers of Darkness. By a symbol of evil, a sorcerer calls forth nightmare shapes from the abyss; by a symbol of Light, they are hurled back again. Dark wings shadow our souls; other unseen wings are spread protectingly over us.

The wisest of us are but blind children groping in the darkness.”

”By Crom,” said Conan, ”the G.o.ds and demons of civilization are as complex and mysterious as everything else pertaining to it. I am indeed a blind man groping in the night. But this much I understand there is a wizard in the kingdom to be run down. But this this stain on the floor, what was it?”

The high-priest shuddered as he took the sword with uncertain hands.

”Mitra only knows what shapes brood in the Outer Darkness, or stalk the world unseen. But I see the hand of Set behind this. Look for a Stygian when you hunt your wizard, lord king. This stain on the floor unless we be all madmen it is a counterpart of the shadow that would be cast by a carven apish G.o.d which I saw long ago, squatting on the altar of a dim temple of the shadows in a far land that bordered the dark country of Stygia.”

347.

Notes on Various Peoples of the Hyborian Age

Notes on Various Peoples of the Hyborian Age

Aquilonians. This was a more or less pure-blooded race, though modified by contact with the Zingarans in the south, and, much less extensively, with the Bossonians of the west and north.

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