Conan and the Death Lord of Thanza (17 page)

Somewhere above him laired the flying snakes. Whether they were newly come by magic or were ancient dwellers in this land, Conan could think of only one reason for their presence. They were here to defend the Soul of Thanza.

If so, those scaly creatures were about to start earning their keep!

Conan stripped off his boots, sword, and most of his clothes. Then he bundled them up inside his oiled-leather cloak. With the weight of the sword, the bundle would barely float, but tied to Conan’s waist, it did well enough that he would have both hands free.

That he would need. He could hold his breath longer than most men, save only the pearl divers of Vendhya, but he could not know how far the river ran between caves. He would be swimming for his life the moment he entered the river, with little chance of retracing his course against the current before he ran out of breath.

So be it. He hoped that if the gods did care anything for men, they would be kind to Dutulus and also give Lysinka either victory or a fleet pair of heels, if he could not be found at her side.

Then he slipped into the stream, gritting his teeth at the bite of the cold and vanished into the bowels of the mountain.

The scouts who had not climbed the mountain with Conan brought Regius Panon to Lysinka the moment they returned to the citadel.

Shaken as he was, he had kept his wits about him, and neither told the tale of Conan’s vanishing nor allowed the other scouts to do so. Luckily there had been no further sign of the flying snakes.

Of them he spoke freely, with Lysinka’s approval. The men would have to defend themselves against this new menace; they had the right to know. Keeping such a secret from them would sow distrust between captains and fighters, and if that came to the citadel, they would have no need for other enemies.

Reluctantly, Klarnides agreed with her on that matter. Still more reluctantly, he agreed to follow her as he would Conan.

“A divided command is worse than none at all, which is what we might otherwise have,” Klarnides said. “Curse that Cimmerian! I trusted him not to fling himself off cliffs or whatever else he’s contrived to do!”

“War is the realm of chance,” Lysinka murmured.

“You need not quote scribes to me,” Klarnides said, his voice as sour as his face. “Just as long as you can make the Rangers follow you, that will be enough.”

“I can probably do better by the Rangers than you could with my folk,” Lysinka said with a thin smile. “They are all bandits, and we have neither Conan nor Tharmis Rog with us to keep them within lawful bounds.”

“Again, tell me what I do not already know, which is not as little as you think,” Klarnides said. “For example, I know that we must guard the mountain where Conan vanished even before we seek him within it.

“The guards must be able to send messages to the citadel faster than a man can walk. I know the Aquilonian host’s torch signals. Shall I teach a few of them to our men?”

“With my blessing, for what that is worth,” Lysinka said. She tried to hide the fact that Klarnides’s loyalty truly moved her, surly and reluctant as it might be.

“Your blessing might not be worth much in Tarantia or Shamar,” Klarnides said. “Here in your homeland, it earns my deepest gratitude.” Now he did not sound surly at all.

XI

Conan’s head rose and bumped the roof of the cave. It barely deserved the name—but as long as it held enough air to let him fill his lungs...

Five times the Cimmerian’s lungs had been near to bursting before he found air above him. Three other times he had an easy passage. After one of these he had found a cave so large it might have been worth exploring. But the luminous moss that grew so abundantly elsewhere was scanty in that cave, shedding just enough light to hint of its size without revealing more.

Conan did not hope for much after groping blindly in the dark. The cave offered no better chance of escape and hardly less peril than riding the river. The only thing the cave offered him was a brief respite from the chill water.

Then he plunged in again and now was in his ninth (or was it tenth?) breathing space. Another round won in this deadly game he was playing with the river, the darkness, and the mountain.

It was a game with the gods themselves perhaps throwing dice to determine the Cimmerian’s fate, as he had heard some irreverent souls suggest late at night when much wine had gone around. The notion made as much sense to the Cimmerian as anything else he had heard said of the gods, who surely gave less thought to men than the priests would have fools believe.

Meanwhile, Conan’s lungs were filled again, and his vision cleared of the sparks of gold and silver fire that broke the blackness when his breath grew short. He turned in a circle, treading water as best he could in the current while he studied what he could see.

In three directions that was little enough. At its highest point, this cave rose barely an arm’s length above the water. But downstream, a faint arc of light broke the darkness.

It had the same pallid, dubious quality as the glow from the moss in other caves, although it was much brighter. Conan did not dare hope it was daylight, unless he had been within the mountain so long that he was about to be carried out of it into the dawn.

The force of the current saved him much swimming. Soon he could see that the arch was too low above the water to allow him to remain on the surface. He braced himself against the rock, sucked in air until his head swam, then dove and began thrashing his way downstream once more.

The passage between the low cave and the next one was among the shortest of Conan’s underground journey. He had barely dived when the water above turned distinctly lighter in hue. It was not an agreeable colour. It reminded Conan of a singularly foul stew he had once choked down while on campaign with the hosts of Turan. But it was light, and where there was light there would be air.

Conan burst to the surface. The splash alone raised echoes, which informed the barbarian that he was in the largest cave yet. Unlike the previous large caves, however, this cave was not lost in impenetrable shadows that might hide any sort of menace.

The floor of this cave was a broad pool, in which the swift current of the underground river slowed perceptibly. On one side lay only a narrow ledge. On the other stood a broader shelf, stretching away into shadows as the roof lowered. As best Conan could judge, at the far end of the shelf a low archway, too regular to be natural, led into a further cave. The archway seemed to be partly blocked on either side by piles of white stones.

The edge of the shelf appeared to be scored in two or three places as if by a giant’s chisel. Conan also saw what seemed to be scattered bones around each of these scorings. The bones did not look like fish bones: sheep or goats would have been the Cimmerian’s guess.

Cautiously, taking care to use steady, even strokes without breaking the water’s surface or making any other avoidable noise, the Cimmerian swam toward the shelf. He remembered now that he had not seen a single fish, skeletal or living, since he had entered the river for the first time.

The experienced wariness of both warrior and hunter painted an unpleasant picture for the Cimmerian. Add the absence of fish to those scorings in the rocks and the littered bones of animals who had tumbled through crevices into the depths of the mountains...

Add these together and the sum suggested that a large flesh-eater was living in the river, perhaps sharing the pool with Conan at this very moment.

The Cimmerian did not alter his stroke in the least, save to reach down to make sure that his dagger was still in his belt and his bag still towing behind him. Fifty paces to the shelf, forty, thirty—

Something rose from the depths behind the Cimmerian. He felt the wake of its passage against his skin. Then he felt a sharp tug at his waist as the intruder seized the bag.

The water dragon that inhabited the underground river had been hatched as a pet of the last Death Lord of Thanza. That was in the days when the magic of Acheron and other powers that had justly earned equally vile reputations clung to the Thanzas, like a swarm of flies circling a dunghill.

This made the water dragon one of the oldest of its kind yet living in Hyborian lands. Yet in its early days, the magic surrounding it had so thoroughly strengthened it that it hardly noticed at first when the magic departed.

Centuries passed, the Death Lords became tales told to frighten children, and still the water dragon swam blithely through the dark waters. At times decent, warm-blooded prey, some with two legs and some with four, found its way into the subterranean warrens. Then the dragon fed its body, if not its essence.

But the essence needed feeding too, and for that it needed magic that was nowhere to be found. So like others of its kind, the dragon at last fell into a profound sleep, which lasted for hundreds of years.

When the dragon fell asleep, the land of Aquilonia had not yet earned the title of “kingdom.” When it awoke, it was because of the flight of the Soul of Thanza from the caravan and the magical storm this raised.

The storm passed, the dragon awoke, and both its body and its essence hungered. There was enough magic to give the essence vitality for a while, but as for food, it faced a different fate.

It could not climb the shafts within the mountain to raid the nests of the flying snakes. Many of those shafts in any case had crumbled over the centuries, so that fewer animals found their way below ground. Those beasts and all the fish in the river under the mountain were not enough to feed its body.

The water dragon’s body began feeding on itself. Yet, dim as its mind was, it knew enough not to flee beyond the Mountain of Skulls. Then the magic that fed its essence would no longer reach it, and the essence would begin to devour the dragon’s flesh to sustain itself.

The dragon grew famished, likewise savage of temper. It also grew cunning, so that in spite of its hunger it did not at once fling itself upon the mortal who swam into its home water.

It waited, instead, until the mortal was close to the imagined safety of the rock, and had all its attention turned ahead.

Then the dragon struck from behind.

Had the dragon not been dim-eyed from age and hungry in both body and essence, Conan would have died the moment after it struck.

As it was, the dragon’s jaws slammed shut on the bag floating behind him. Those jaws were also weakened and missing more than a few teeth, but they were nearly as long and as broad as the Cimmerian’s torso, and still strong enough to snap rope like thread.

The bag, however, was too large to be swallowed in one gulp. The dragon shifted its grip on this unexpectedly awkward prey, and bit down again. This time its upper jaw encountered the point of the Cimmerian’s sword.

As Conan scrambled on to the rocky shelf, the dragon’s head broke water. Its bellow mingled pain, rage, frustration, and hunger. The mouth gaped, showing Conan an array of yellowed, broken, and missing teeth. The gape also revealed the barbarian’s sword rammed deep into the creature’s upper jaw.

Conan supposed that it might do him some good there, although he would much rather have held it in his hand. At the moment, it seemed only to enrage a creature who needed no help in this matter.

Conan drew his dagger, then held himself as motionless as a statue, even making his breathing shallow. Movement could well be the only thing the water dragon could sense. If its rheumy yellow eyes saw nothing moving—

But the water dragon was craftier than the barbarian expected. Somewhere within the reptilian brain, a thought formed: the bag was unfit to eat and dangerous beside. But there had been a second prey swimming with the bag, who might now be resting on the shelf.

The dragon sank out of sight. Conan remained motionless. The dragon might be swimming off to free its mouth of his sword. Its departure might also be a ruse—

Ten paces from where Conan stood, the water dragon lunged out of the pool. It lunged so hard and so accurately that its rough-scaled snout grazed the Cimmerian’s ankle.

He still did not move, even as the scales ripped skin from flesh. Blood flowed—practically in front of the dragon’s nose. Its powers of scent had declined along with everything else, but it could still smell fresh blood.

Its tail lashed, driving more of its body out of the water. Conan had to move now, before those jaws clamped on his ankle in a grip not to be broken even by the Cimmerian’s strength.

Instead of moving back, he moved forward. The water dragon saw something vast and dark looming up in its vision and jerked its head aside. A dagger thrust meant to drive through to the dragon’s brain took only one eye.

The dragon, howled, screamed, and hissed so furiously that Conan half expected the cave to collapse and bury him under the rubble. The creature thrashed about so wildly that Conan had to retreat farther to avoid the swinging tail.

Then head, tail, and all four clawed legs were flailing about, driving the dragon up the shelf. Conan had no choice but to move toward the opening at the rear of the shelf. It was partly blocked, which might not keep the creature from passing through but would certainly slow it enough to let the Cimmerian strike a few telling blows.

He might even be lucky enough to regain his sword before the dragon’s jaws bent it double!

Then Conan had a clear look at the archway— and that look shook not only his confidence but his very soul.

The archway was partly blocked on either side by skeletons. Human skeletons, standing erect like soldiers of a royal guard on palace duty. Each had armour and weapons piled at its feet, but wore only a crumbling leather belt.

Conan counted close to thirty skeleton guards in the archway alone. Beyond them, in the passage, he saw more, too many to count as they faded away into the shadows.

His retreat lay past an army of skeletons.

The Cimmerian did not hesitate. It was either retreat past the skeletons, or stand a good chance of making his last journey down the water dragon’s maw. Those skeletons had to be nothing except brittle bone; one good lunge by the dragon would reduce them to dust.