Conan and the Death Lord of Thanza (20 page)

The sorcerer continued. “You may need to recognize it once you are within the mountain, for all the guidance I can give you on the way.”

“You cannot enter the Mountain of the Skull?”

“Perhaps not in the face of the new magic that may be unleashed within it before we reach it. Or should 1 say, old magic newly unleashed?”

Grolin’s thoughts must have told the sorcerer that he had no patience left with riddles. Suddenly the image of the Soul was gone, and another, far larger cave filled Grolin’s vision.

He saw the bloody carcase of something vast and reptilian, likewise without wings. He saw a man standing amid a half-circle of opponents and recognized the man. “Conan is within the Mountain of the Skull.”

“Did you expect me to lie to you?”

Grolin chose polite words. “Some sorcerers have been known to do so.”

“They may do as they please. I do as I please, which is to tell my allies the truth, or as much of it as merely human minds can face.”

Grolin heard only some of those words, for he had seen what the Cimmerian faced. Not who—that was still a mystery—but what.

Armed, animate skeletons—a score of them or more in the half-circle, others standing about at random. More bones on the floor, that might have been skeletons or might become skeletons when the right magic was applied.

“Did you do this?” Grolin asked, finding his voice at last.

“Not I, nor has Conan turned sorcerer,” the reply came.

The two truths balanced each other. The Cimmerian was no more potent than before—but within the Mountain of the Skull lay magic enough to make skeletons walk.

Grolin was suddenly prepared to believe in his ally’s weaknesses.

* * *

The fire in the storeroom was out in hardly more than moments. It was another fire that burned the next morning, staining the sky above the citadel as Lysinka led out what everyone called the “war party.”

It was Regius Panon’s funeral pyre, assembled at some cost in time and labour, but no one begrudged either. The Nemedian’s death had not perhaps thunderstruck the fighters into virtue or loyalty, but it had certainly done much to drive folly from their minds.

Forty fighters marched with Lysinka. The others remained in the citadel under Fergis. After Conan’s disappearance, it seemed unwise to leave the citadel unprotected in their rear.

Fergis turned as red as the coals on the pyre when Lysinka asked him to respect her wishes. He turned even redder after he agreed and she sealed the agreement with a long, public kiss, that made bawdy cheers echo around the rocks.

“A finer sound than death-cries, I suppose,” Fergis grumbled, wiping his face as if she had smeared it with ashes.

“The sound of fighters who will win or die,” Lysinka said, then signalled to the trumpeter to blow for the assembly.

She could not speak for all those who would march under her. For herself, she knew that she would return with a living Conan and Lord Grolin’s head, or failing that, with the knowledge of their fate.

If she achieved neither, she would be beyond the world of men—and she would then accost the gods and inquire of them what had befallen Conan and Grolin until they answered her or sent her back to the world to learn for herself!

XIII

Conan had faced stranger and deadlier opponents than the company of skeleton warriors. He had met the former without fear and outfought the latter without mortal hurt, although not without scars.

The skeletons, however, were enemies that he had not only never faced but also not even imagined that he could face: The intentness with which they looked upon him was disquieting—if one could say that eye sockets without eyes “looked” at anything.

He felt a chill down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold roughness of the stone against which he stood. He wondered, not altogether idly, how long his final combat would last, faced with opponents who might be impervious to the edge of his sword.

The Cimmerian had known swords that could cut stone, and smiths capable of forging them. Even his father might have been able to conjure such a blade out of the charcoal and bog iron that were the smith’s raw materials in Cimmeria.

Conan doubted, however, that his present blade was equal to the task of chopping through stone ribs, skulls, and limbs. It had not even survived unscathed its combat with the river dragon.

He therefore left the blade sheathed. He saw no bows or throwing weapons among his opponents. They would have to close in on foot, and he could draw steel long before they came within reach.

Meanwhile, not baring his steel first might be taken as a peaceful overture. He had fought side by side with one of these stone warriors. Through both his own blood and that of the dragon he had slain, he had been the instrument of bringing them back from—where they had been—to where they were now. (He would not use the words “death” and “life.” For not the first time, he was in a place where these ideas had small meaning.)

All that he had wrought for them should be worth something. Whether it would be worth enough to make them forsake his blood, the blood they doubtless needed to revive their remaining comrades—

Now the skeleton warriors were looking at one another. One whom Conan thought was his battle comrade stepped up to the half-circle around Conan, and put his skull close to that of one in the circle. The two leaders seemed to be discussing what to do next, even though they made no sound that Conan could hear nor opened lips that he could see moving.

No lips moved, but in the next moment the skeletons did. The half-circle opened outward, like a blooming flower, to make a space in the middle, directly in front of Conan. The skeletons by the wall remained where they stood, some now standing straighter than others.

Conan smiled. He would have laughed, except that a living sound seemed an intrusion here where only the click of stone on stone broke the silence.

It was still irresistibly funny to see how the soldiers who had in life slumped in ranks and the ones who had held themselves like spears, still retained their stance aeons after their flesh had perished. Suddenly the leader caught sight of the slumpers, snatched a spear from the nearest skeleton in the circle, and slammed the butt on the rock.

Echoes danced about the cave, almost drowning the Cimmerian’s gusty laughter. He could not help it. The more slovenly skeletons had suddenly snapped upright,, like newly-recruited Thanza Rangers when Tharmis Rog roared at them. He wondered how the master-at-arms was faring, commanding the encampment of cripples and he wondered also what Rog would have made of this underground encampment of the dead.

Probably he ’d have them practising forming squares before the day was done, the Cimmerian decided. Rog was a soldier to his fingertips, even if there had once seemed to be more bone than brain between his ears.

For a moment, the gap in the half-circle in front of Conan was large enough to allow his escape—if he could swerve fast enough to escape the leader and his companions, who stood just beyond the gap. The Cimmerian took the space of three heartbeats to consider that alternative, then forswore it.

He did not know how fast the skeleton warriors could run, nor did he care to learn. Being pursued through the dark warren of caves below this mountain by living bones seeking one’s flesh with ancient steel was a death too gruesome and too lacking in dignity for the Cimmerian to contemplate without a shudder.

What might come to him from these skeletons, he would face here and now.

Instead of ordering an attack, the leader now held the same spear overhead in both hands, then raised and lowered it three times. The other skeletons—his “men,” Conan had begun to call them in his mind—quickly formed a broader half-circle, with only a single narrow gap in front of the leader.

Then the leader stepped into the gap, knelt with some grace if not without the grating of stone on stone, and laid his spear on the rock at his feet.

Conan nearly drew his sword at that unexpected gesture, until wisdom overcame instinct in time to prevent such folly. Just as well—for now all the skeleton warriors were laying down their weapons at their feet.

Then they rose, all standing as straight as if Tharmis Rog’s eye was searching each of them for a twitching muscle or a strap out of place, and joined hands. Conan held back laughter with difficulty at the sight of these whitened bones imitating children at a festival. He half-expected them to start dancing or putting mushrooms in their ear holes instead of chaplets of flowers around their heads!

Instead, he heard a faint droning. It quickly ceased to be faint, but never became loud. Instead, it began to waver. Conan knew several battle languages; he wondered if he was hearing one.

Then the random wavering turned into a regular rhythm. The rhythm steadied, and Conan now heard sounds that with a little imagination might have been words.

Then he no longer needed imagination. Joined together, the skeletons were speaking.

Their first intelligible words were:

“Are you an enemy to the Death Lord of Thanza?”Lysinka and Klarnides had agreed not to divide the men they were leading in search of Conan—or of any other secrets these mountains might hide.

As for those secrets, Klarnides wanted to ferret them all out. Lysinka was more inclined to find Conan and go home, whether he wished to go there with her or not. Klarnides was thinking of his duty to Numedides. She was now hardly thinking beyond her duties to her band and to her comrade of battle and bed.

If a Death Lord of Thanza was dangerous to him or them, she would fight the lord, even at the cost of her own life. If a Death Lord would pass by her and hers, then he could do so, if not with her blessing, at least without her armed opposition.

She said nothing of this to Klarnides, however. There was still enough of the prickly boy within the newly fledged warrior and man to make matters difficult if he began to mistrust her.

They swung wide to the east of the mountain where Conan had vanished without seeing any signs of the flying serpents, the Cimmerian, or anything else they sought. (Or which might be seeking them, Lysinka reminded herself.)

One thing she and several others with sharp eyes did see: an alternative route up to the summit of the mountain. It was broader, easier for those not hillborn, and allowed both advance and retreat elsewhere than the actual trail.

Altogether, it seemed such a gift from the gods that Lysinka and Klarnides agreed that others must have seen it the same way.

“If there are any others, about, besides Grolin’s men.”

“Best be safe,” Klarnides suggested. “We know about the flying serpents. Perhaps they have gorged themselves into ten days’ slumber and perhaps not. With room to fight, we are fitter to stand against foes with fangs or hands.”

The chieftain looked at Klarnides with new respect. Apart from his courage, he was now uttering words that might have come from far more seasoned warriors, even though his teachers were both absent.

But then, much in fighting and war was merely good sense. She wondered if Klarnides was newly come to good sense, or had merely hidden it until good teachers and necessity (also a teacher, of sorts) brought it out.

“Very well,” she said. “We rest and water here for... oh, half a candle. Then we go up.”

And you be there in some other form than serpent-gnawed bones, my Cimmerian friend.

Conan knew that he was in the presence of magic, ancient, potent, mysterious (but then most magic was such to him, and he was as glad to leave matters thus).

He was not certain it was evil.

Had he been certain, he would have shattered the skeletons or his own bones in a fight to the finish—he could not say “to the death” when his foes were already dead!

But the magic that animated these warriors of bone-turned-stone had left with them something of the humanity they had possessed when they were flesh and blood. Perhaps they had enough of it left that he and they could find a common ground, one that did not leave either him or them in pieces on the cave floor.

It might even be one that would help their still-inanimate comrades, and allow him to escape these caves and continue his search for Grolin and the Soul of Thanza.

Certainly their first question had hinted of the right direction.

“There is no living Death Lord of Thanza,” Conan said. He spoke slowly, trying to make every syllable ring like a blacksmith’s hammer. It was hard to read expressions on fleshless faces, but he thought he succeeded.

He knew disappointment when he saw it, even in skeletons. Shoulders slumped and heads turned to look at one another.

Conan sensed deep grief, that a long sleep should have ended in a purposeless waking. He grinned mirthlessly. This was the first time that his telling someone evil sorcery was abroad in their land would be called good news!

“There is a man named Grolin, who seeks the Soul * of Thanza,” the Cimmerian said. “I think he has the aid of evil magic. Will this make him evil, if he finds the Soul of Thanza and becomes the Death Lord?”

“All Death Lords are evil,” the skeletons said. “If they were not before they joined with the Soul, they become so afterward. We are vowed to destroy all Death Lords, until the power of the Soul is exhausted and there can be no more.”

Conan forbore to point out that they might not be equal to the task or they would not have waited so long as bony skeletons instead of living men. Before he could choose words for a reply, the skeletons continued.

“It also is possible that the sorcerer might become the Death Lord. If he is evil, he will become more so through the Soul. We must fight him as well as the man you call Grolin. Has the sorcerer a name?”

Conan replied that he was tolerably sure of the sorcerer’s existence, but knew nothing else about him.

“Then it is time and past time for us to march to end the menace of the Death Lords of Thanza,” the skeletons said. Or rather, intoned. Each time they spoke, they sounded more like a chorus of priests chanting the praises of some obscure god.

“We need three things for the fight,” they went on.