Conan the Invincible Part 36

The Stygian had time for one horrified look, and then the great serpent struck faster than a lightning bolt. Those long, golden tentacles seized the screaming man, lifted him high. The tentacles seemed but to hold, almost caressingly, but Imhep-Aton's shrieks welded Conans'

joints and froze his marrow. The man sounded as if something irrevocably irretrievable were being ripped from him. Eater of Souls, Conan thought, and shuddered.

The tentacles s.h.i.+fted their grip, now encircling and entwining, covering Imhep-Aton from head to feet, tightening. His shrieks continued for a disturbingly long time, long after blood began to ooze between the tentacles like juice squeezed from a ripe fruit, long after there should have been no breath or lungs left to scream with. The b.l.o.o.d.y bundle was tossed aside, to strike the mosaic floor with a sound like a sack of wet cloth. Conan avoided looking at it. Instead, he concentrated on the pendant hanging from his fist.

"Thou commanded me," a voice hissed in Conan's head, and he knew it was the great serpent, G.o.d or demon, which mattered little at the moment, speaking to Amanar. "Thou growest above thyself."

Conan stared at the hand holding the pendant. The grim G.o.d of his Cimmerian northcountry, Crom, Lord of the Mound, gave a man only life and will. What he did with them, or failed to do, was up to him alone.

Life and will.

"Thy servant begs thee to forgive him," Amanar said smoothly, but the smoothness slipped as the serpent's mind-talk went on.

"No, Amanar. Thou has pa.s.sed thy time. Remove the amulet, and prostrate thyself for thy G.o.d's feeding."

Life and will. Will.

"No!" Amanar shouted. He clutched the chest of his black robe. "I wear the amulet still. You cannot touch me, Eater of Souls."

"Thou defieth me!" The serpent shape swayed toward Amanar, tentacles reaching, and recoiling.

Will. The soul pendant. Eater of Souls. Will.

"Crom!" Conan shouted, and convulsively he hurled the pendant toward the great serpent. Time seemed to flow like syrup, the pendant to float spinning in air.

A long scream burst from Amanar's throat. "Nooooo!"

The golden serpent head moved lazily, hungrily, the fanged mouth opening, bifurcate tongue flicking out to gather in the pendant, swallowing.

Despair drove Amanar's shriek up in pitch. Then another scream came, a hissing scream that sounded in the mind. On the altar Velita convulsed and went limp. Conan felt his bones turning to mush.

A bar of blue fire burst from the chest of the black-robed sorcerer, tearing his robe asunder, to connect him with the great golden G.o.d-demon. In unison their screams rose, Amanar's and Morath-Aminee's, higher, higher, drilling the brain, boring into bone and gristle. Then Amanar was a living statue of blue fire, but screaming still, and the great golden form of Morath-Aminee was awash with blue flame for all that length stretching into infinity. And that scream, too, continued, a sibilant shriek in the mind, wrenching !t the soul.

The man's cry ended, and Conan looked up to find that Amanar was gone, leaving but a few greasy ashes and a small pool of molten metal. But Morath-Aminee still burned, and now the great blue flaming form thrashed in its agony. It thrashed, and the mountains trembled.

Cracks opened across the ceiling of the room, and the floor tilted and pitched like a s.h.i.+p in a storm at sea. Fighting to maintain his balance, Conan hurried to the black marble altar, beneath the very burning form of the G.o.d-demon in its death-throes. Velita was unconscious. Swiftly the Cimmerian cut her loose and, throwing her naked form across his shoulder, he ran. The ceiling of the sacrificial chamber thundered down as he ran clear, and dirt filled the air of the pa.s.sage. The mountain shook still, ever more and more violently, twisting, yawing. Conan ran.

In the keep above, he found madness. Columns fell and dark towers toppled, long gaps were opened in the great outer wall, and in the midst of it all the S'tarra killed anything that moved, including each other.

The ma.s.sive Cimmerian ran for the gate, his s.h.i.+mmering blade working its murderous havoc among those S'tarra which dared face him. Behind him Amanar's tower, flame roaring from its top as from a furnace, cracked down one side and fell into a thousand shards of obsidian stone. The ground shook like a mad thing as Conan fought to the gate.

The portcullis stood open, and as Conan started through, the lissome dancing girl still suspended across his broad shoulder, the barbican door burst open. Haranides hurried out, tulwar in hand and dark face bloodied, followed by half a dozen men in Zamoran armor.

"I held the gate for a time," he shouted above the din of earthquake and slaughter, "but then it was all we could do to keep from being shaken into jelly. At least the accursed lizards became too busy killing each other to pay us any mind. What madness has taken them?"

"No time!" Conan shouted back. "Run, before the mountain comes down on us."

They pounded down the ramp as the barbican and portcullis collapsed in a heap of rubble.

The floor of the valley was a charnel house, the ground soaked with blood and the moans of the dying filling the air. Savagely hacked S'tarra lay tangled with bleeding hillmen corpses in a hideous carpet, here and there dotted with the body of a bandit. From the mountains around, despite the trembling of the earth, the sounds of battle floated, as those who fled the horror of the keep and the valley fought still.

Conan saw Hordo near the bandit campsite, sitting beside Karela's crumpled red-striped pavilion as if nothing had happened. With Velita still dangling over his shoulder, the Cimmerian stopped before the one-eyed brigand. Haranides, having left his men a short distance back, stood to one side. Rock slides rumbled loudly as the earth still shook.

But at least, Conan thought, the death screams of the G.o.d-demon had faded from his mind.

"Did you find her, Hordo?" he asked as quietly as the noise would allow. They were in the safest spot there, so far as the earthquake was concerned, well away from the danger of the mountain coming down on them.

"She's gone," Hordo replied sadly. "Dead, I don't know, gone."

"Will you search for her?"

Hordo shook his head. "After this shaking I could search for years and not find her if she was right under my nose. No, I'm for Turan, and a caravan guard's life, unless I can find an agreeable widow who owns a tavern. Come with me, Conan. I've about two coppers, but we can sell the girl and live off that for a while."

"Not this girl," Conan replied. "I promised to set her free, and I will."

"A strange oath," Haranides said, "but then you're a strange man, Cimmerian, though I like you for it. Look you, having decided there's no point to going back to Shadizar to lose my head, I, too, am going to Turan, with Resaro and such other few of my men as survived. Yildiz dreams of empire. He's hiring mercenaries. What I am trying to say is, join us."

"I cannot," Conan laughed, "for I'm neither soldier, nor guard, nor tavern keeper. I'm a thief." He studied his surroundings. Half of the black keep was covered beneath a mound ripped from the side of the mountains. The tremors had lessened too, till a man could stand with ease, and walk without too much difficulty. "And as I'm a thief," he finished, "I think it's time for me to steal some horses before the hillmen decide to return."

The reminder of the hillmen stirred them all to action. Quick farewells were said, and the three parted ways.

Epilogue.

Conan walked his mount back up the hill to where Velita sat her own horse, watching the caravan make ready to move below on the route to Sultanpur. This was the caravan that had been spoken of, the big caravan that would drive through despite those that had disappeared. It stretched out of sight along the winding path that led through the pa.s.s. Conan did not believe they would have any trouble at all.

"Your pa.s.sage is booked," he told Velita. She was swathed in white cotton from head to foot. It was a cool way to dress for travel in the hot sun, and they had decided it was best she not advertise her beauty until she got to Sultanapur. "I gave the caravan master a gold piece extra to look after you, and a threat to find him later should anything untoward befall."

"I still don't understand how you have the money for my way," she said.

"I seem to recall waking just enough to hear you tell a one-eyed man that you had no money."

"This," Conan said, pressing a purse into her hands, "I took from Amanar's chamber. Eighteen gold pieces left, after your pa.s.sage. If I had told the others of it-and I didn't lie, Velita, I just didn't tell them-they'd likely have wanted a share. I'd have had to kill them to keep it for you, and I liked them too much for that."

"You are a strange man, Conan of Cimmeria," she said softly. She leaned forward to brush her lips delicately against his. Holding her breath, she waited.

Conan brought his hand down on her horse's rump with a loud slap. "Fare you well, Velita," he shouted as her horse galloped toward the caravan.

"And I am likely a thrice-accursed idiot," he added to himself.

He turned his horse down the caravan, on the way that would lead him west out of the Kezankians into Zamora. He now had about enough coppers left for two jacks of sour wine when he got back to Abuletes.

"Conan!"

He pulled his horse around at the hail. It seemed to come from a slave coffle. The caravan contained sorts that would have formed their own if not for the fear of those caravans that had disappeared. As he rode closer, he began to laugh.

The slaver had arranged his male and female slaves separately, to avoid trouble. The women knelt naked in the slight shade of a long strip of cotton, linked to the coffle line by neck chains. And kneeling in the center of that line was Karela.

As he reined in before her, she leaped to her feet, her lightly sunburned b.r.e.a.s.t.s swaying. "Buy me out of here, Conan. We can go back and take what we want of Amanar's treasure. The hillmen will have gone by now, and I doubt they'll want anything of his."

Conan mentally counted the coppers in his purse again, and thought of an oath extracted not too many days before. Oaths were serious business. "How came you here, Karela? Hordo thought you dead."