Conan and the Death Lord of Thanza (28 page)

Conan knew that baleful looks were aimed at the Slayer. But the worst he heard was, “I hope the stone-head can do more than dance from Tolos’s blood when it comes to the fight.”

Conan felt likewise.

The cave that Iom said was the seat of the Death Lord was just below the summit. It seemed to have three or four entrances. Conan considered dividing his force to launch the attack at the Death Lord from various directions.

Ruks shook his head. “We must all stay together to protect one another. The wisdom of war against men is not the wisdom of war against the Death Lord.”

“I am grateful for that knowledge,” Klarnides said. “But I pray that I will have only this one opportunity to use it.”

“Who knows?” Iom said. “Perhaps Aquilonia—the new name of this land, I am told—perhaps it will face a Death Lord once every ten years for the rest of your life. Consider, Klarnides, how far advanced you are in learning, now ready to become leader of the new Slayers of Death.”

Klarnides turned from pale to red before he realized that a living skeleton was making a joke at his expense. Then he laughed.

“I would rather celebrate the life of Slayers at a grand party,” he said. “My father’s cellars are famous.” “No doubt, among those who can drink potions other than blood,” Ruks said. “We, on the other hand-------”

“—have serious business on all our hands, be they ever so many,” Lysinka put in, with mock severity. Both Iom and Ruks slapped her on the shoulder checking their blows, Conan noticed, so that they neither bruised her nor disturbed her balance.

She gripped their hands, and looked almost ready to kiss the fleshless skulls where their cheeks had been.

Then the mountain shook again, a man went down, and a Slayer snatched him to his feet.

“Run!” the leaders shouted in chorus and began the trek themselves. Weary as they were, fighters in both flesh and stone followed.

The shaking returned, and this time it did not cease. As Conan tried to keep his balance at a dead run uphill over ground that would not remain still, he saw the town off to his left. The mountain had changed its course. Now it seemed bound for the lake.

That might save the town, but it gave no help to those on the mountain.

Conan continued to run, and now even his breath came rasping and hot within his massive chest.

The Death Lord knew that the last battle was close at hand, for his sense revealed that the enemy was closing in around his cave. Soon they would try to enter.

Then he must fight and win. It would be the last battle whether he won or not, but he would surely win.

Then, with the Slayers slain, nothing less than a god could oppose him.

He pressed both hands against the Soul of Thanza— lightly, almost caressingly, as if he were reassuring a nervous puppy on its first night in a new home. He thought he felt warmth radiating from the Soul.

At least they would not go into the battle at odds with each other. Death Lords and whatever kind of being the Soul of Thanza might be lacked friends, but they need not fight alone.

Then the Death Lord knew his enemies were entering the cave. By a single entrance, which was both good and bad—but he would have to fight them however and wherever they came.

The body took a deep breath. The Death Lord cleared his mind of doubt and fear, leaving only battle skill and rage.

The Soul of Thanza glowed more brightly.

It was the glow that Lysinka saw first, as she stormed into the cave at the head of her fighters. She saw just behind Conan and just ahead of Klarnides. They would have gone in abreast had the cave mouth been wider.

Iom, Ruks, and the blood-strengthened Slayer entered ahead of Conan. They met the first blast of the Death Lord’s magical energy, which sent light and heat pouring out of the cave until Lysinka felt as if she had been dipped in boiling water. She closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, she found that her feet had carried her into the cave. The blood-strengthened Slayer flung himself at a glowing crimson figure with the most appalling eyes Lysinka had ever seen. The eyes were jet black with silver tints swirling in them— and now the silver orbs formed long glowing threads and streamed out to surround the Slayer.

They did not grip tightly but neither did they recoil as the whirlwind had done. They enveloped the Slayer without slowing his rush toward the Death Lord.

The Slayer came within a mace-length of his enemy and swung. The mace melted as it struck, and Lysinka heard screams as molten metal tore into living flesh. It also fell on animate bone, and she saw one Slayer collapse with his leg completely incinerated.

She turned her eyes away as he crumbled into dust. She led her people forward.

Death met death in a rock-walled chamber not much larger than the common room of the Golden Lion in Shamar. That gave the attackers an advantage, for the Death Lord could not strike at vulnerable humans without his powers meeting at least one Slayer.

Each time those powers met a Slayer, they returned to the Death Lord somewhat diminished. The Slayer was hardly touched at all.

Still, the sheer physical impact of the Death Lord’s power would hurl a Slayer against the wall hard enough to shatter bones. Thus, it was not long before dust deep enough to show footprints lay on the floor of the cave.

That same dust soon mingled with blood. Five humans were down and more were out of the fight. But the Slayers found no one opposing their taking blood now. They took so much that indeed one Slayer with a broken arm healed himself and returned to the fight.

Iom had long since gained blood-strength. Now Ruks was pushed back until he was face-to-face with Rasha at the moment when another pulse of raw magical energy streamed from the Death Lord.

It took Rasha with all its force, tearing her apart from throat to belly so savagely that she had no time to feel pain, or even to scream. Ruks not merely took her blood, he was almost bathed in it.

Lysinka screamed one curse at Rasha’s death, then another at Ruks. She screamed a third time as Ruks seemed to grow still more. She could have sworn that he was glowing.

He rushed forward with unstoppable fury. The magic of the Death Lord threw him to one side, hard enough to have shattered him moments before. But now he merely bounced off the wall, flung himself on the Death Lord from behind, and gripped the magic-wielder in bonds that seemed forged from the mountain itself.

“Strike!” Lysinka thought she heard Ruks cry.

She saw Iom stagger and realized that he was standing on one leg, the other shattered beyond even the power of blood-strength to repair. She saw him grip his right arm with his left, and pull it out of its socket.

The arm fell apart as it came free, but Conan snatched up both the upper and lower bones. He dropped his sword, swung the upper arm bone at the Soul of Thanza, and stabbed with one of the lower bones straight at those silver-shot jet eyes.

The Death Lord of Thanza spasmed. The Soul of Thanza shattered like a glass goblet flung down upon a stone floor. Smoke poured from the eye socket that Conan had emptied. Lysinka gagged at the smell.

Then the Death Lord spasmed again. He flung himself backward against the wall of the cave, catching Ruks between his body and the stone. Ruks disintegrated into bone fragments and dust—but the dust rose to the roof of the cave as the Death Lord fell.

The dust floated down on the Death Lord’s body as it continued to spasm—and burst into flame as it touched the Death Lord’s wounds. No smoke arose with the flames, but another gagging stench filled the air as it burned into the Death Lord’s body.

At last the Death Lord stopped moving—and with him, his magic died, and the mountain fell out of the sky.

Had the mountain fallen elsewhere than in the lake, it would surely have shattered, crushing everyone under falling rock. But the lake bottom was composed of ooze that sank as far below the surface as the mountain’s tip rose above it. That was enough to cushion the fall of even such cosmic masses as the Death Lord’s flying mountain.

The waves stirred up by the mountain’s fall scoured the lake shores clean of life. But those within the cave of the mountain’s late master, the Death Lord of Thanza, survived. A few lay senseless. All were battered and bruised; but most were fit and well.

Lysinka struck her head and was one of the senseless for a while. When she awoke to find Conan bending over her, her eyes stung. Not only from the stench and the dust but from knowing that even if she had survived, anyone outside the mountain must be gone. Even if her wounded followers had survived thus far...

“Come on, Lysinka,” Conan said, lifting her to her feet. “You can nurse your headache once we’re safely hidden in the forest.”

“Safe?” To Lysinka, it was a word without meaning, or at least past belief.

“The Death Lord’s gone to meet his namesake,” Conan said. “And when the mountain came down, it made a thorough mess of the lake shore. I doubt the kin of those who have drowned will come bearing garlands.”

Lysinka pressed her face into his shoulder a moment then jerked it back at the smell of the soot and filth that covered him.

“We all need baths, Lysinka. You’d clear a whole market square if you stripped down now. And the lake’s not going to help much, with all the mud we’ve stirred up.

“But Klarnides is out there, and he’s got men at work pulling in floating logs and overturned boats. We’ll be off before anyone comes to trouble us, if you don’t dawdle.”

Lysinka looked about the cave. She saw more bodies than she could count, including Rasha’s. But the dead were all human, none of them Slayers.

“Our comrades started crumbling to dust the moment the mountain struck,” Conan said quietly. “They were all gone before you regained your senses. I’ve never fought beside better comrades, and I wouldn’t have had it end that way.” He paused then added “But their work was done. The magic that bound them let them go.”

Lysinka looked up at the Cimmerian, whose ice-blue eyes still blazed in the darkened face.

“Will you bind me, Conan, and not let me go?” “That’s the sort of thing that ought to be done in private, you perverse wench! But if you wish, I’ll buy only the best Khitan silk for the cords, and bind you as you’ve never been bound before!

“Now you’d better ready yourself to walk, because I doubt I can carry you without cracking your head against the cave roof, and small gratitude that would show!”

Lysinka turned and leaned against the wall, gazing at the open air and the sunshine, neither of which she had expected to see again. Only after she dried her tears did she have the strength to walk into the sunshine ahead of Conan.

XVI

It took enough time to strain tempers before it was known who lived and who had died.

Fortunately, most of the surprises were pleasant ones.

Tharmis Rog and the rest of his people saw smoke in the sky, felt earth tremors, and observed what they later learned was the flying mountain. This they learned from panic-driven fugitives who poured past the camp, mostly bandits and hunters. A few of the hunters offered to remain with the camp and provide it with food, and without their aid the wounded might have been in dire straits.

Meanwhile, Fergis and the garrison of the late Lord Grolin’s citadel had a fine view of the mountain’s departure. As soon as he felt it was safe, Fergis sent scouts to the mountainside. They found the survivors of Lysinka’s wounded and summoned help.

Before Conan and Lysinka waded ashore, her wounded men were safely in the citadel. As soon as these could travel, Fergis set out for Tharmis Rog’s camp.

Meanwhile, Conan, Lysinka, and Klarnides were leading their fighters home. They had farther to travel even though they were less burdened by wounded, so arrived only hours before Fergis did.

They had been delayed by the need to move mostly at night. The countryside farther west was swarming with people, both soldiers and the curious, who wished to learn why mountains had suddenly gone wandering across the sky instead of remaining on the ground where the gods had placed them.

After the first celebration, the leaders realized that this was indeed a question for which people would be seeking answers for some time.

Klarnides offered what seemed to be the best solution.

“The governor of the province is an old friend of my mother’s,” he said. The look on his face dared anyone to ask for details, so he continued in silence.

“I can gain his ear and, I trust, keep the Rangers in force without questions being asked. I will appeal to him for a pardon for anyone who needs it and wishes to take it. Anyone else, I advise to lie low, preferably on the Nemedian side of the Thanzas. Ophir seems a trifle chancy right now.”

Conan confirmed that last remark, then added, “And what if you fail?”

Klarnides shrugged. “Let us set a meeting place, to which I can come with the message. If I come lightly accoutred, all will be well. If I come with my baggage packed for flight, march for the border, and be assured that I will be with you.”

He smiled, a man’s smile rather than a boy’s. “If I am to spend my life in exile, I am fortunate. I have already met men and women with whom I could spend that life.”

“Three cheers for Captain Klarnides!” Rog shouted.

The cheers lasted much longer than that, and if anyone had been looking for the camp, their search would have been at an end.

Conan and Lysinka saw off those who were border-bound, then retired to an inn in a small town not far from the intended meeting place.

Lysinka received her Khitan silk—in the form of a bed robe so thin it hardly seemed worth putting on at all. But she loved the feel of it on her healing skin, only a trifle less than she loved the feel of Conan’s hands removing it at night.

She wondered where he had acquired it, having always doubted his tales about being so bumbling a thief that he had given up the trade. But then, if she did not ask about where he won the silk, she would not have to tell him where she found the silver flask of scented oil.

Conan refused the oil but made no objection to rubbing it into her skin. That became a bedtime ritual for three nights in a row.