Conan and the Death Lord of Thanza (26 page)

Both Iom and Ruks shook their heads eloquently.

XVI

It had not been easy for the Death Lord of Thanza— who now thought of Baron Grolin as a man who had died to bring the Death Lord to life—to decide what to do next with his powers.

Once he made the decision, however, it was easy to wield the power to turn the thought into a reality.

He merely imagined rock splitting all around and all through the mountain, far enough down so that a large solid mass would rise into the sky. He also wished to divide the mountain high enough so that perhaps some of its unwanted visitors would not go with him.

He was not, after all, a trail guide giving rich city folk a safe view of the forest. He was the Death Lord of Thanza. He flew over forests, so that no one had a safe view of him; and what he wished, he asked for— his flying mountain would descend and crush the obdurate until wiser survivors yielded.

What should he ask for first? It was unimaginable that he should need to eat, drink, sleep, or perform other merely human actions. That also made it needless to ask for women.

Silver, gold, jewels? Toys, all of them.

The Death Lord allowed the mountain to rise slowly and drift on the wind while he pondered his needs. At last he decided that he most needed more living folk to give up their lives to increase the power of the Death Lord.

A few hundred would do, and of course they would require food, water, quarters, and discipline while waiting for death. He would demand the first two from the worms below, offer caves for the third, and see to it that the victims provided their own discipline. There were always folk who would play tyrant over their fellows, even in the most hopeless of situations, merely to gain the privilege of being the last to be destroyed.

Or they might gain the privilege of watching their fellows die exotic and horrible deaths. That too would be a simple matter to contrive. Perhaps that would give the Death Lord a hold over certain humans, so strong that they would raid the ground for their master’s prey.

If he wanted several hundred people, however, the mountain would need to leave its native Thanzas. He trusted that his power would still work outside the range; if not it was hardly worth having.

Before Grolin died, he had held a map of this borderland region in his mind. His memories had gone to the Death Lord when Grolin ceased to be. They told the Death Lord that there was a town about a day’s ride to the north-west, that held enough people to provide the first few hundred inhabitants after the inevitable death of the others in the destruction of the town.

The town would have to be destroyed, of course. No one would believe that the Death Lord really meant what he threatened, unless he used his power at least once.

He could, when appropriate, slay many more for his own pleasure, but this first destruction of a town was a matter of stem duty.

Lysinka, Klarnides, and their fighters had a much better view of the mountain’s rise than had the Cimmerian. They saw the cracks girdle the mountain then turn into crevices that swallowed slabs of rock the size of small temples. Lysinka crammed her hand into her mouth to keep out the dust.

When she finally pulled her fingers out, she saw that she’d bitten her knuckles bloody. She flexed her wrists, drew her sword, and looked downhill.

The dust was still rising too thickly from the gaping cavity where the mountain had stood for her to see the place where she had left the wounded. She only hoped that they had been lying below the crack, so that they had not been ground to bits by falling rock or carried off on the moving stone. Since she herself and those around her were clinging to the shaking rock by their fingertips, the wounded fighters would surely lose their grip and fall to their doom.

Presently the shaking ended, and the dust blew away. But by now the mountain—mountaintop, as she now saw it—was moving away from its original resting place, She could no longer make out the spot where she had left the wounded clearly enough to tell whether or not they were safe.

One small blessing, though: the mountain was moving away from Lord Grolin’s citadel, instead of returning to crush it. Fergis and those left behind would be safe—until the mountain finished whatever tasks its new master had in mind.

“It seems we are going for a ride with the Death Lord of Thanza,” Klarnides said. He was sitting up, polishing his helmet with the sleeve of his tunic. Only the fact that his face was the colour of chalk spoiled the impression of his complete self-control.

“Yes,” Lysinka managed to say. “I agree. So the first thing to do is to find out if we have any fellow passengers and if they are friends or foes.”

She found that she could not utter the name “Conan,” any more than she could say “Death Lord.” “Then we go hunting the master of this mountain,” she concluded.

“What if he is down below, sending this rock on its wild flight?” Klarnides asked.

Sometimes Klarnides’s habit of expounding on the tactical possibilities annoyed her. There were times to parade new knowledge and times to keep to the point at hand. She said shortly: “Then we jump off and go hunting for him on the ground.”

She felt like laughing at Klarnides’s face, as he plainly wondered if she was jesting or not. It was the first time she had felt like laughing in a long while, so on impulse she bent over and kissed him. His face turned from white to red, and he seemed to have inhaled a cloud of dust. Then he too laughed.

Lysinka wondered if this was to be her last laugh in the world. If so, she could have had worse company for it. And now her thoughts flowed again, so that at least she would not die with anyone thinking her a witling or a coward.

“Up!” she shouted. “We still have a mountain to climb, even if we can’t climb down again!”

Conan, Iom, and Ruks led some fifty skeleton warriors to the mountainside. Conan wanted to march straight to the top, but Ruks reminded him that they should search for friends and foes while the Death Lord was occupied with his magic.

“Unless all we were taught about him is false, this levitation of a mountain must be a burden for the Death Lord,” the leader said. “We may not have another such chance, before he grows into his power like a root growing into a crack in the rock.”

Conan could see that Iom and Ruks were hoping— in vain, he thought—to find more of their animated or at least intact comrades and give them the honour of joining in the final battle. It went against his notions of war to give a foe as powerful as the Death Lord one unnecessary heartbeat’s worth of time, but Iom and Ruks clearly had made their decision.

Also, while they were searching for their comrades, Conan might be able to learn the fate of any of his followers who had come in search of him.

At least he could, if they had climbed high enough on the mountain before it rose to the sky.

After a while, commanding the flight of the mountain became such a simple task that the Death Lord grew bored. He glazed one wall of his chamber into a mirror and studied himself in it.

He appeared to be a larger and stronger version of Grolin, except that he was clad all in crimson—if he was clad at all. It was hard to tell whether the shimmering substance that covered him from crown to toe was clothing, armour, skin, or a shell like that of a lobster.

Only in two places did other hues intrude on the blazing crimson. In the centre of his chest was a space that he could cover with his two hands, that pulsed a virulent green. He knew without being told that there the Soul of Thanza had taken its seat.

His eyes were also something other than crimson. At times they glowed the same green as the Soul. At other times they took on the hue of tarnished gold or shone jet black flecked with silver.

The Death Lord wished the mirror out of existence. He did not much care to look into his own eyes or at what his chest now held.

Grolin, when a living man, had sought the Soul to gain power that would be his alone. It displeased the Death Lord to have to wonder if Grolin had died in vain.

But the power was real. He toyed with it, making the mountain rock gently, like a boat on a river. Then he sent it out searching the mountainside for signs of life. If there were persons riding the mountain through the sky, they could scarcely harm him.

But their lives might feed and strengthen him while the mountain journeyed toward the first town it would destroy.

Lysinka did not cry out when she saw the armed, walking skeletons emerge from behind a rocky outcrop. Some of those behind her had less fortitude.

The skeleton warriors halted, formed a line with their weapons at the ready, but made no hostile move. One of their number turned and withdrew briskly. Lysinka’s gaze followed it until it was out of sight.

Meanwhile, her fighters had formed their own line, with Klarnides on the other flank. She saw many pale and sweating faces, suspected that hers was among them, and knew that fear needed little encouragement to rampage through her as well.

These had to be creatures of the Death Lord, sent to scour the mountainside. Who else would send out as soldiers those from whom life had departed so long ago that nothing remained of them but bones?

Then the messenger returned, with two more skeletons and between the skeletons—

If Rasha had not held her upright, Lysinka might have fallen. As it was, she swayed, blinked, and only then allowed herself to believe that what she saw was reality.

Conan. Her comrade of bed and battle, Conan the Cimmerian. He stood between the two skeletons, staring at her as if contemplating a ghost. She saw that he seemed on easy terms with the two skeletons, as if they were three soldiers who had met the night before at a tavern and were now new friends back on duty.

“Crom!” the Cimmerian exclaimed and rushed forward to embrace her. His arms nearly lifted her off her feet, while she could have sworn that the fleshless faces were smiling.

Then he introduced the two skeletons with him as Iom and Ruks.

“They lead these warriors, who are sworn to the destruction of the Death Lord of Thanza. They can tell you more about what they and I have been doing. Then you can explain what brought you to the mountain, and we can all go hunting.”

The Cimmerian looked around. “Oh, good day, Klarnides. How fare you?”

Lysinka wanted to giggle, but feared she could not stop. Klarnides was looking at Conan as if doubting his own eyes. At last he stepped forward and gripped the Cimmerian’s forearm.

“No stone there, or even between my ears, as you once thought,” Conan said, with a gusty laugh. “I’m as much flesh and blood as I ever was.”

“If you’ve lived to meet us here, you’re something more,” the young captain said. “Will it suffice if I believe in you enough to follow you?”

“Fair enough,” Conan replied. “Now, Iom and Ruks can tell their tale while we move. We’ve a bit of shelter yonder; a cave that didn’t fall when the mountain rose. But we can’t stay long. It looks to us as if the Death Lord’s bound for somewhere and meaning no good when he reaches it.”

Lysinka forced herself to look downhill. Beyond where the mountainside ended abruptly, she saw tree-tops—so far below that they looked like a green carpet. She shuddered at the thought of being so high in the air, sustained by nothing save evil magic.

Then she shuddered again at the thought of this mountain descending on some peaceful town and holding it for ransom by the threat of crushing it to rubble. She could no longer think of stepping out of the Death Lord’s path and letting him do as he pleased if he did not harm her and her band.

Somehow she knew that she would not leave the mountain alive without destroying the Death Lord.

It made it still easier to know that Conan—yes, and those skeleton warriors—would be fighting beside her. They might even have some notion of how to fight a Death Lord.

The warrior Conan had introduced as Ruks stepped up to her and bowed with a good deal of scraping and grating. He must have been at least Conan’s size in life, and retained a courtly grace even in his skeletal form.

“Lady Lysinka, comrade of our leader Conan, let us march while I tell you the tale of the Death Lords of Thanza.”

Conan listened almost as intently as Lysinka when Ruks told his tale. He did his best to listen with more outward calm.

Truth to tell, he was hardly more pleased than Lysinka to be challenging such magic as the Death Lord could command. Nor was he overly hopeful that this would not be his last battle.

But no one else seemed able to fight it at all. Nor was it in Conan to leave folk like the Death Lord to wreak havoc with their magic. A man who did that was no warrior but instead the sort of murderous wastrel who butchered women and roasted babies on spits over the burning timbers of ruined villages. Conan had never been one of those who even cared to consort with such, and it would be a pleasure so to end the career of the Death Lord of Thanza.

The Death Lord’s extended senses had encompassed the greater part of the mountainside before he realized that he was not alone in the sky.

Life was there, moving in a way that suggested a human presence. There was too much strength for it to be anything but the largest flock of birds, and he thought he sensed minds far beyond the level that birds possessed.

Not that human beings were worth so much more than birds when one looked at them from the position of a Death Lord. But they could give service that birds could not, and their life was stronger than that of birds and strengthened him more.

If they were on the mountain, it was likely that they had come with hostile intent. Therefore he had no reason to doubt that they would come within easy reach long before he needed to deal with the town.

Attacking him, they could be destroyed at close range, as he drew their lives into himself with little exertion.

He might even be able to fly past the town, panicking the people but not otherwise harming them. Could he fly on to a larger, richer source of lives? It was worth contemplating.

At the extreme limit of his senses, the Death Lord felt something else. It was movement but not living movement. It was also curiously familiar, and he spent a frustrated moment realizing that he ought to know what it was.