Conan Pastiche - Conan Part 22

"Muntha.s.sem Khan?"

Atalis nodded wearily. "That I am no sorcerer has spared my life-thus far. For the satrap slew all wizards in Yaralet; I, being but a humble philosopher, he let live. Yet he suspects that I know something of the Black Arts and has cursed me with this deadly scourge. It withers up my body and tortures my nerves, and will end in a convulsion of death, ere long!" He gestured at the unnaturally twisted limb that lay lifeless across his lap.

Prince Than gazed with wild eyes at Conan. "I, too, have been cursed by this h.e.l.l-sp.a.w.n, for that I am next to Muntha.s.sem Khan in rank and he thinks I may desire his throne. Me he has tortured in another way: a sickness of the brain-spasms of blindness that come and go-which will end by devouring my brain and leaving me a mindless, sightless, mewling thing!"

"Crom!" Conan swore softly. The philosopher gestured.

"You are our only hope! You alone can save our city from this black-hearted devil that torments and plagues us!"

Conan stared at him blankly. "I? But I am no wizard, man! What a warrior can do with cold steel, I can do; but how can I combat this devil's magic?"

"Listen, Conan of Cimmeria. I will tell you a strange and awful tale..."

5. The Hand of Nergal

In the city of Yaralet (said Atalis) when night falls, the people bar their windows, bolt their doors, and sit shuddering behind these barriers, praying in terror with candles burning before their household G.o.ds till the clean, wholesome light of dawn etches the squat towers of the city with living fire against the paling skies.

No archers guard the gates. No watchmen stride the lonely streets. No thief steals nimbly through the winding alleys, nor do painted s.l.u.ts simper and beckon from the dark shadows. For in Yaralet, rogues and honest folk alike shun the night-shadows: thief, beggar, a.s.sa.s.sin, and bedizened wench seek haven in foul-smelling dens or dim-lit taverns.

From dusk to dawn, Yaralet is a city of silence, her black ways empty and desolate.

It was not always thus. Once this was a bright and prosperous city, bustling with commerce, with shops and bazaars, filled with happy people who lived under the strong hand of a wise and gentle satrap-Muntha.s.sem Khan. He taxed them lightly, ruling with justice and mercy, busy with his private collection of antiquities and in the study of these ancient objects which absorbed his keen, questing mind. The caravans of slow-pacing camels that wound from the Desert Gate bore always with them, amongst the merchants, his agents seeking for rare and curious oddities to purchase for their master's private museum.

Then he changed, and a terrible shadow fell over Yaralet. The satrap was like one under a powerful and evil spell. Where he had been kind, he became cruel. Where generous, greedy. Where just and merciful, secretive, tyrannical, and savage.

Suddenly, the city guard seized men-n.o.bles, wealthy merchants, priests, magicians-who vanished into the pits beneath the satrap's palace, never to be seen again.

Some whispered that a caravan from the far south had brought to him something from the depths of demon-haunted Stygia. Few had glimpsed it, and of those one said shudderingly that the thing was carven with strange, uncouth hieroglyphs like those seen on the dusty Stygian tombs. It seemed to cast an evil spell over the satrap, and it lent him amazing powers of black sorcery. Weird forces shielded him from those despairing patriots who sought to slay him. Strange crimson lights blazed in the windows of a tall tower of his palace, where men whispered that he had converted an empty suite into a grim temple to some dark and b.l.o.o.d.y G.o.d.

And terror walked the streets of nighted Yaralet, as if summoned from the realm of death by some awesome, devil-purchased lore.

Exactly what they feared at night, the people did not know. But it was no vain dream against which they soon came to bolt their doors. Men hinted at slinking, batlike forms glimpsed from barred windows-of hovering, shadowy horrors alien to human knowledge, deadly to human sanity. Tales spread of doorways splintered in the night, of sudden unearthly cries and shrieks torn from human throats-followed by significant, and utter, silence. And they dared to tell of the rising sun illuminating broken doors that swung in houses suddenly and unaccountably empty...

The thing from Stygia was the Hand of Nergal.

"It looks," said Atalis softly, "like a clawed hand carven of old ivory, worked all over with weird glyphs in a forgotten tongue. The claws clasp a sphere of shadowy, dim crystal. I know that the satrap has it: I have seen it here" -he gestured-"in my crystal. For, although no enchanter, I have learned some of the Dark Arts."

Conan stirred restlessly. "And you know of this thing?"

Atalis smiled faintly. "Know of it? Aye! Old books speak of it and whisper the dark legend of its b.l.o.o.d.y history. The blind seer who penned the Book of Skelos knew it well... Nergal's Hand they name it, shudderingly. They say it fell from the stars into the sunset isles of the uttermost west, ages upon ages before King Kull rose to bring the Seven Empires beneath his single standard. Centuries and ages beyond thought have rolled across the world since first bearded Pictish fishermen drew it dripping from the deep and stared wonderingly into its shadowy fires! They bartered it to greedy Atlantean merchants, and it pa.s.sed east across the world. The withered, h.o.a.ry-bearded mages of elder Thule and dark Grondar probed its mysteries in their towers of purple and silver. The serpent men of shadow-haunted Valusia peered into its glimmering depths. With it, Kom-Yazoth whelmed the Thirty Kings until the Hand turned upon and slew him. For the Book of Skelos says the Hand brings two gifts unto its possessor-first, power beyond all limit-then, death beyond all despair."

Only the calm voice of the philosopher droned through the hushed room, but the black-headed warrior thought he could hear, as in a dream, the faint echo of thundering chariots, the clash of steel, the cry of tormented kings drowned in the clangor of collapsing empires...

"When all of the elder world was broken in the Cataclysm and the green sea rolled in restless fathoms above the shattered spires of lost Atlantis, and the nations sank one by one in red ruin, the Hand pa.s.sed from the knowledge of men. For three thousand years the Hand slept, but when the young kingdoms of Koth and Ophir awoke and slowly emerged from the murk of barbarism, the talisman was found. The dark wizard-kings of grim Acheron plumbed its secrets, and when the l.u.s.ty Hyborians broke that cruel kingdom beneath their heel, it pa.s.sed southwards into dusty Stygia, where the b.l.o.o.d.y priests of that black land set it to terrible purposes in rites of which I dare not speak. It fell, when some swarthy sorceror was slain, and was buried with him, sleeping away the centuries... but now tomb robbers have roused the Hand of Nergal again, and it has come into the possession of Muntha.s.sem Khan. The temptation of ultimate and absolute power, which it holds out to all, has corrupted him, as countless others have been corrupted, who fell beneath its insidious spell. I fear me, Cimmerian, for all these lands, now that the Demon's Hand wakes and dark forces walk the earth again..."

Atalis' voice died away in whispering silence, and Conan growled uneasily, bristling.

"Well... Crom, man, what have I to do with such matters?" he rumbled.

"You alone can destroy the influence of the talisman over the satrap's mind!"

The smouldering blue eyes widened. "How?"

"You alone possess the counter-talisman."

"I? You are mad-I hold no truck with amulets and suchlike magical trash-!"

Atalis stilled him with a lifted palm. "Did you not find a curious golden object before the battle?" he queried, softly. Conan started.

"Aye, that I did-at Bahari, yestereve, as we lay in camp-" He plunged one hand into his pocket-pouch and drew out the smooth, glowing stone.

The philosopher and the prince stared at it, drawing in their breaths.

"The Heart of Tammuz! Yes, the counter-talisman in very truth-!"

Heart-shaped it was, and large as a child's fist, worked in golden amber or perhaps rare yellow jade. It lay there in the Cimmerian's hand, glowing with soft fires, and he remembered with a p.r.i.c.kling of awe how the healing, tingling warmth of it had driven from his body the supernatural chill of the bat-winged shadows.

"Come, Conan! We shall accompany you. There is a secret pa.s.sageway from this my chamber into the satrap's hall-an underground tunnel like that by which my slave, Hildico, led you under the city streets into my house. You, armed with the protection of the Heart, shall slay Muntha.s.sem Khan, or destroy the Hand of Nergal. There is no danger, for he lies deep in a magical slumber, which comes upon him whenever he has need to summon forth the Shadows of Nergal, as he has already done this night to overwhelm the Turanian army of King Yildiz. Come!"

Conan strode to the table and drained the last of the wine. Then, shrugging, muttering an oath to Crom, he followed the limping seer and the slim prince into a dark opening behind an arras.

In a moment they were gone, and the chamber lay empty and silent as a grave. The only motion came from flickering lights within the green, jagged crystal beside the chair. Within its depths one could see the small figure of Muntha.s.sem Khan, lying in a drugged sleep within his mighty hall.

6. The Heart of Tammuz

They strode through endless darkness. Water dripped from the roof of the rock-hewn tunnel, and now and then the red eyes of rats gleamed at them from the tunnel's floor, gleamed and were gone with squeaks of rage as the small scavengers fled before the footsteps of the strange beings who invaded their subterranean domain.

Atalis went first, trailing his one good hand along the wet, uneven cavern wall.

"I would not set this task on you, my young friend," he was saying in a low whisper. "But it was into your hands the Heart of Tammuz fell, and I sense a purpose-a destiny-in its choice. There is an affinity between opposed forces, such as the Dark Power we symbolize as 'Nergal' and the Power of Light we call Tammuz.' The Heart awoke and, in some manner beyond knowledge, caused itself to be found; for the Hand was also awake and working its dread purpose. Thus I commend you to this task, for the Powers seem to have singled you for this deed- hush! We are beneath the palace now. We are almost there-" He drew ahead and stroked one delicate hand over the rough surface of rock that closed off the pa.s.sage. A ma.s.s of rock swung silently aside on secret counterweights.

Light burst upon them.

They stood at one end of a vast, shadow-filled hall whose high, vaulted roof was lost in darkness overhead. In the center of the hall, which was otherwise empty save for rows of mighty columns, stood a square dais, and upon the dais, a ma.s.sive throne of black marble, and upon the throne-Muntha.s.sem Khan.

He was of middle years, but thin and wasted, gaunt to the point of emaciation. Paper-white, unhealthy flesh and shrunken upon his skull-like face, and dark circles shadowed his hollow eyes. Clasped across his chest as he lay sprawled in the throne, he held an ivory rod, like a sceptre. Its end was worked into a demon's claw, grasping a smoky crystal that pulsed like a living heart with slow fires. Beside the throne, a dish of bra.s.s smoked with a narcotic incense: the dream lotus whose fumes empowered the sorcerer to release the shadow-demons of Nergal. Atalis tugged at Conan's arm.

"See-he still sleeps! The Heart will protect you. Seize the ivory Hand from him, and all his power will be gone!" Conan growled reluctant consent, and started forward, his naked sword in one hand. There was something about this that he did not like. It was too easy...

"Ah, gentlemen. I have been expecting you."

On the dais, Muntha.s.sem Khan smiled down at them as they froze in astonishment. His tones were gentle, but a fury of mad rage flamed in his sick eyes. He lifted the ivory sceptre of power, he gestured...

The lights flickered eerily. And suddenly, shockingly, the limping seer screamed. His muscles contorted in a spasm of unendurable agony. He fell forward on the marble flags, writhing in pain.

"Crom!"

Prince Than plucked at his rapier, but a gesture of the magic Hand stayed him. His eyes went blank and dead. Icy sweat started from his paling brow. He shrieked and sank to his knees, clawing frantically at his brow as pangs of blinding pain tore through his brain.

"And you, my young barbarian!"

Conan sprang. He moved like a striking panther, burly limbs a blur of speed. He was upon the first step of the dais before Muntha.s.sem Khan could move. His sword flashed up, wavered, and fell from strengthless hands. A wave of arctic cold numbed his limbs. It radiated from the cloudy gem within the ivory claw. He gasped for breath.