Conan the Victorious Part 29

"Keep your mind to the matter at hand," Hordo growled, "or you'll not live long enough for worrying about gold." His eyes had a glitter though, as if he had calculated the weight of that crown to within a feather.

"I had thought it was but legend," Kang Hou breathed. "I had hoped it was but legend."

"What are you talking about?" Conan demanded. "This is not the first time you have indicated you knew something about this place. I think it is time to tell the rest of us."

This time the Khitan nodded. "Two millennia ago, Orissa, the first King of Vendhya, was interred in a tomb beneath his capital city, Maharastra. For five centuries he was worshiped as a G.o.d in a temple built over his tomb and containing a great figure of Orissa wearing a gold crown said to have been made by melting the crowns and scepters of all the lands he had conquered. Then, in a war of succession, Maharastra was sacked and abandoned by its people. With time the very location of the city was lost. Until now."

"That is very interesting," Conan said dryly, "but it has nothing to do with why we are here."

"On the contrary," Kang Hou told him. "If my niece dies, if we all die, we must slay the wizard Naipal before he looses what lies in the tomb beneath this temple. The legends that I know speak vaguely of horrors, but there is a prophecy a.s.sociated with all of them. 'The army that cannot die will march again at the end of time.' "

Conan looked again at the carved armor, then shook his head stubbornly.

"I am here for the women first. Then I will see to Naipal and the other two."

A boot crunched at one side of the chamber and Conan whirled, his broadsword coming up. A Vendhyan soldier, eyes bulging beneath his turbaned helm, clutched at the throwing knife in his throat and fell to lie still on the floor. Kang Hou hurried to retrieve his blade.

"Khitan merchants seem a tough lot," Hordo said incredulously. "Perhaps we should include him when we divide that crown."

"Matters at hand." Conan grunted. "Remember?"

"I do not say leave the women," the one-eyed man grumbled, "but could we not take the crown as well?"

Conan paid no heed. His interest lay in where the soldier had come from. Only one doorway on that side of the chamber, and that the nearest to the corpse, opened onto stairs leading beneath the temple.

At the base of those stairs he could see a glimmer of light, as of a torch farther on.

"Hide the Vendhyan," he commanded. "If anyone comes looking for him, they'll not think that wound in his throat was made by a monkey."

Impatiently hefting his sword, he waited for Hasan and Enam to carry the corpse into a dark corridor and return alone. Without a word, then, he started down.

Chapter XXIII.

In a huge high-ceilinged chamber far beneath the temple once dedicated to Orissa, Naipal again paused in his work to look with longing expectation at the doorway to his power. Many doorways opened into the chamber, letting on the warren of pa.s.sages that crossed and criss-crossed beneath the temple. This large marble arch, each stone bearing a cleanly incised symbol of sorcerous power, was blocked by a solid ma.s.s of what appeared to be smooth stone. Stone it might appear, but a sword rang on it as against steel and left less mark than it would have on that metal. And the whole of the pa.s.sage from the chamber to the tomb, a hundred paces in length, was sealed with the adamantine substance, so said the strange maps Masrok had drawn.

The wizard swayed with exhaustion, but the smell of success close at hand drove him on, even numbing the ache behind his eyes. Five of the khora.s.sani he placed on their golden tripods at the points of a carefully measured pentagon he had scribed on the marble floor tiles with chalk made from the burned bones of virgins. Setting the largest of the smooth ebon stones on its own tripod, he threw wide his black-robed arms and began the first incantation.

"Ka-my'een dai'el! Da-en'var hoy'aarth! Khora mar! Khora mar!" Louder the chant rose, and louder still, echoing from the walls, ringing in the ears, piercing the skull. Karim Singh and Kandar pressed their hands to their ears, groaning. The two women, naked save for their veils, bound hand and foot, wailed for the pain. Only Naipal reveled in the sound, gloried in the reverberations deep in his bones. It was a sound of power. His power. Eye-searing bars of light lanced from the largest khora.s.sani to each of the others, then from each of those smaller stones to each of its glowing brothers, forming a pentagram of burning brilliance. The air between the lines of fire shimmered and rippled as though flame sliced to gossamer had been stretched there, and the whole hummed and crackled with fury.

"There," Naipal said. "Now the guardian demons, the Sivani, are sealed away from this world unless summoned by name."

"That is all very well," Kandar muttered. Actually seeing the wizard's power had drained some of his arrogance. "But how are we to get to the tomb? My soldiers cannot dig through that. Will your stones' fire melt that which almost broke my blade?"

Naipal stared at the man who would lead the army that was entombed a hundred paces away-at least the man the world would think led it-and watched his arrogance wilt further. The wizard did not like those who could not keep their minds focused on what they were about. Kandar's insistence that the women should witness every moment of his triumph-his triumph!-irritated Naipal. For the moment Kandar was still needed, but, Naipal decided, something painfully fitting would make way for the prince's successor. At least Karim Singh, his narrow face pasty and beaded with sweat, had been cowed to a proper view of matters.

Instead of answering the question, Naipal asked one in tones like the caress of a razor's edge. "Are you sure you made the arrangements I commanded? Carts filled with street urchins should have arrived by now."

"They will come," Kandar answered sullenly. "Soon. I sent my body servant to see if they have come, did I not? But it takes time to gather so many carts. The governor might-"

"Pray he does only what he has been told," Naipal snarled.

The wizard rubbed at his temples fretfully. All of his fine plans, now thrown into a hodgepodge of haste and improvisation by that accursed pan-kur.

Quickly he took the last four khora.s.sani from their ebony chest and placed them on tripods of gold. So close to the demon's prison, they would do for the summoning. He was careful to put the tripods well away from the other five to avoid any interaction. A resonance could be deadly. But there would be no resonance, no failure of any kind. The accursed blue-eyed barbarian, the devil sp.a.w.n, would be defeated.

"E'las eloyhim! Maraath savinday! Khora mar! Khora mar!"

Conan was grateful for the pools of light from the distantly s.p.a.ced torches, each only just visible from the last. Seemingly hundreds of dark tunnels formed a maze under the temple but the torches made a path to follow. And at the end of that path must lie what he sought.

Suddenly the Cimmerian stiffened. From behind came the sound of pounding feet. Many pounding feet.

"They must have found the body," Hordo said with a disgusted glare that took in Hasan and Enam.

Conan hesitated only an instant. To remain where they were meant a battle they could not in all probability win. To rush ahead meant running headlong into the G.o.ds alone knew what. "Scatter," he ordered the others. "Each must find his way as he can. And Hanuman's own luck go with us all."

The big Cimmerian waited only long enough to see each man disappear down a separate dark pa.s.sage, then chose his own. The last glimmers of light faded behind him quickly. He slowed, feeling his way along a smooth wall, placing each foot carefully on a floor he could no longer see. With the blade of his sword he probed the blackness ahead.

Yet abruptly that blackness did not seem as complete as it had. For a moment he thought his eyes might be adapting, but then he realized there was a light ahead. A light that was approaching him. Pressing his back against the wall, he waited.

Slowly the light drew closer, obviously bobbing in someone's hand. The shape of a man became clear. It was no torch he carried, though he held it like one, but rather what seemed to be a metal rod topped by a glowing ball.

Conan's jaw tightened at this obvious sorcery. But the man coming nearer looked nothing at all like the one he had seen at Kandar's palace, the man he had thought was Naipal. Recognition came to him in the same instant that the man stopped, peering into the darkness toward Conan was though he sensed a presence. It was Ghurran, but a Ghurran whose apparent age had been halved to perhaps fifty.

"It is I, herbalist," the Cimmerian said, stepping away from the wall.

"Conan. And I have questions for you."

The no-longer-so-old man gave a start, then stared at him in amazement.

"You actually have one of the daggers! How-? No matter. With that I can slay the demon if need be. Give it to me!"

A part of the silk wrapping had sc.r.a.ped loose against the wall, Conan realized, revealing the faintly glowing hilt of silvery metal. With one hand he pushed the cloth back into place. "I have need of it, herbalist. I will pa.s.s over how you have made yourself younger, and how that torch was made, but what do you do in this place, at this time?

And why did you abandon me to die from the poison after coming so far?"

"There is no poison," Ghurran muttered impatiently. "You must give me the dagger. You know not what it is capable of."

"No poison!" Conan spat. "I have suffered agonies of it. Not a night gone but the pain was enough to twist my stomach into knots and send fire through my muscles. You said you sought an antidote, but you left me to die!"

"You fool! I gave you the antidote in Sultanapur! All you have felt is your body purging itself of the potions I gave you to make you think you were still poisoned."

"Why?" was all Conan said.

"Because I had need of you. My body was too frail to make this journey alone, but as soon as I saw the contents of those chests, I knew I must. Naipal prepares to loose a great evil on the world, and only I can stop him. But I must have that dagger!"

A widening of Ghurran's eyes warned Conan as much as did the increase in light. The Cimmerian dropped to a crouch and threw himself to one side, twisting and stabbing as he did. A Vendhyan tulwar sliced above his head, but his own blade went through the soldier's middle. The dying man fell, and his two fellows, rushing at his heels, went down in a heap atop Conan. The big Cimmerian grappled with them in the light of their fallen torch. Ghurran and his glowing rod had vanished.

In a struggling pile the three men rolled atop the torch. One of the Vendhyans screamed as the flames were ground out against his back, then screamed again as a dagger found his flesh. Conan's hands closed on the head of the soldier who had slain his companion by mistake. The sound of a neck breaking was a loud snap in the dark.

But it need not be total dark Conan thought as he climbed to his feet.

Without hesitation he unwrapped the strange weapon. A dagger, Ghurran had called it, but what monstrous hand could use it so, the Cimmerian wondered. And it could slay the demon. What demon? But for whatever hand or purpose the silvery blade had been wrought, its faint glow was light of a sort in the blackness of the tunnel, if light of an eerie grayish-blue. By it Conan recovered his broadsword and again began a slow progress through the tunnels. Soon he heard voices, hollow echoes in the distant pa.s.sages. With difficulty he determined a direction.

Grimly he moved toward the source.