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 cal of Asura!” whispered Xaltotun, and his voice was like the hiss of an angered serpent ”Are you mad, that you seek your doo of Acheron!” said the other, and laughed ”Summon them loudly They will not heal, unless your shouts reverberate in hell”
Froe of the crest ca over her shoulders, a great gray wolf following at her heels
”Witch, priest, and wolf,” hed
”Fools, to pit your charlatan's ainst my arts! With a wave of my hand I brush you fro of Python,” answered the Asurian ”Have you wondered why the shi+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- wizardry had failed”
”You lie!” cried Xaltotun, but the confidence in his voice was shaken
”I have felt the iainst ic, once made, unless he possessed the very heart of sorcery”
”But the flood you plotted did not come to pass,” answered the priest ”Look at your allies in the valley, Pythonian! You have led thes of the trap, and you cannot aid thee of the upper valley, behind the Poitainians, a horse 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 shi+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 rely on the golden scales of a serpent that writhed thereon
”Valerius is dead!” cried Hadrathus ringingly ”A fog and a dru of Python, and I dispersed it! I, with ic!”
”What ht, 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 reat days to be, rather than employ them in a hill-country brawl But now, by Set, I shall loose the of Asura, false priest of an outworn God, and see a sight that shall blast your reason for everhed, and hell was in his laughter
”Look, black devil of Python!”
His hand ca that flaolden glohich 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 Ahrireater than your power!”
Xaltotun seerow old Suddenly his beard was shot with snow, his locks flecked with gray
”The Heart!” he ! Thief!”
”Not I! It has been on a long journey far to the southward But now it is in ainst 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 eend and a black ain And the Heart of Ahrio back into the cavern below the temple of Mitra, to bum as a symbol of the power of Aquilonia for a thousand years!”