and the ages take their toll,
Forget ye him who fought with the Snake to
save the human soul?
Alone in the great sleeping-chamber with its high golden dome King Conan slumbered and dreamed. Through swirling gray mists he heard a curious call, faint and far, and though he did not understand it, it seemed not within his power to ignore it. Sword in hand he went through the gray mist, as a man might walk through clouds, and the voice grew more distinct as he proceeded until he understood the word it spoke – it was his own name that was being called across the gulfs of Space or Time.
Now the mists grew lighter and he saw that he was in a great dark corridor that seemed to be cut in solid black stone. It was unlighted, but by some magic he could see plainly. The floor, ceiling and walls were highly polished and gleamed dully, and they were carved with the figures of ancient heroes and halfforgotten gods. He shuddered to see the vast shadowy outlines of the Nameless Old Ones, and he knew somehow that mortal feet had not traversed the corridor for centuries.
He came upon a wide star carved in the solid rock, and the sides of the shaft were adorned with esoteric symbols so ancient and horrific that King Conan’s skin crawled. The steps were carven each with the abhorrent figure of the Old Serpent, Set, so that at each step he planted his heel on the head of the Snake, as it was intended from old times. But he was none the less at ease for all that.
But the voice called him on, and at last, in darkness that would have been impenetrable to his material eyes, he came into a strange crypt, and saw a vague white-bearded figure sitting on a tomb. Conan’s hair rose up and he grasped his sword, but the figure spoke in sepulchral tones.
‘Oh man, do you know me?’
‘Not I, by Crom!’ swore the king.
‘Man,’ said the ancient, ‘I am Epemitreus.’
‘But Epemitreus the Sage has been dead for fifteen hundred years!’ stammered Conan.
‘Harken!’ spoke the other commandingly. ‘As a pebble cast into a dark lake sends ripples to the further shores, happenings in the Unseen World have broken like waves on my slumber. I have marked you well, Conan of Cimmeria, and the stamp of mighty happenings and great deeds is upon you. But dooms are loose in the land, against which your sword can not aid you.’
‘You speak in riddles,’ said Conan uneasily. ‘Let me see my foe and I’ll cleave his skull to the teeth.’
‘Loose your barbarian fury against your foes of flesh and blood,’ answered the ancient. ‘It is not against men I must shield you. There are dark worlds barely guessed by man, wherein formless monsters stalk – fiends which may be drawn from the Outer Voids to take material shape and rend and devour at the bidding of evil magicians. There is a serpent in your house, oh king – an adder in your kingdom, come up from Stygia, with the dark wisdom of the shadows in his murky soul. As a sleeping man dreams of the serpent which crawls near him, I have felt the foul presence of Set’s neophyte. He is drunk with terrible power, and the blows he strikes at his enemy may well bring down the kingdom. I have called you to me, to give you a weapon against him and his hell-hound pack.’
‘But why?’ bewilderedly asked Conan. ‘Men say you sleep in the black heart of Golamira, whence you send forth your ghost on unseen wings to aid Aquilonia in times of need, but I – I am an outlander and a barbarian.’
‘Peace!’ the ghostly tones reverberated through the great shadowy cavern. ‘Your destiny is one with Aquilonia. Gigantic happenings are forming in the web and the womb of Fate, and a blood-mad sorcerer shall not stand in the path of imperial destiny. Ages ago Set coiled about the world like a python about its prey. All my life, which was as the lives of three common men, I fought him. I drove him into the shadows of the mysterious south, but in dark Stygia men still worship him who to us is the arch-demon. As I fought Set, I fight his worshippers and his votaries and his acolytes. hold out your sword.’
Wondering, Conan did so, and on the great blade, close to the heavy silver guard, the ancient traced with a bony finger a strange symbol that glowed like white fire in the shadows. And on the instant crypt, tomb and ancient vanished, and Conan, bewildered, sprang from his couch in the great golden-domed chamber. And as he stood, bewildered at the strangeness of his dream, he realized that he was gripping his sword in his hand. And his hair prickled at the nape of his neck, for on the broad blade was carven a symbol – the outline of a phoenix. And he remembered that on the tomb in the crypt he had seen what he had thought to be a similar figure, carven of stone. Now he wondered if it had been but a stone figure, and his skin crawled at the strangeness of it all.
Then as he stood, a stealthy sound in the corridor outside brought him to life, and without stopping to investigate, he began to don his armor; again he was the barbarian, suspicious and alert as a gray wolf at bay.
5
What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the
craft and the lie?
I, who was born in a naked land and bred
in the open sky.
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail
when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs -I was a man before I
was a king.
The Road of Kings
Through the silence which shrouded the corridor of the royal palace stole twenty furtive figures. Their stealthy feet, bare or cased in soft leather, made no sound either on thick carpet or bare marble tile. The torches which stood in niches along the halls gleamed red on dagger, sword and keen-edged ax.
‘Easy all!’ hissed Ascalante. ‘Stop that cursed loud breathing, whoever it is! The officer of the night-guard has removed most of the sentries from these halls and made the rest drunk, but we must be careful, just the same. Back! Here comes the guard!’
They crowded back behind a cluster of carven pillars, and almost immediately ten giants in black armor swung by at a measured pace. Their faces showed doubt as they glanced at the officer who was leading them away from their post of duty. This officer was rather pale; as the guard passed the hidingplaces of the conspirators, he was seen to wipe the sweat from his brow with a shaky hand. He was young, and this betrayal of a king did not come easy to him. He mentally cursed the vainglorious extravagance which had put him in debt to the moneylenders and made him a pawn of scheming politicians.
The guardsmen clanked by and disappeared up the corridor.
‘Good!’ grinned Ascalante. ‘Conan sleeps unguarded. Haste! If they catch us killing him, we’re undone – but few men will espouse the cause of a dead king.’
‘Aye, haste!’ cried Rinaldo, his blue eyes matching the gleam of the sword he swung above his head. ‘My blade is thirsty! I hear the gathering of the vultures! On!’
They hurried down the corridor with reckless speed and stopped before a gilded door which bore the royal dragon symbol of Aquilonia.
‘Gromel!’ snapped Ascalante. ‘Break me this door open!’
The giant drew a deep breath and launched his mighty frame against the panels, which groaned and bent at the impact. Again he crouched and plunged. With a snapping of bolts and a rending crash of wood, the door splintered and burst inward.
‘In!’ roared Ascalante, on fire with the spirit of the deed.
‘In!’ yelled Rinaldo. ‘Death to the tyrant!’
They stopped short. Conan faced them, not a naked man roused mazed and unarmed out of a deep sleep to be butchered like a sheep, but a barbarian wide-awake and at bay, partly armored, and with his long sword in his hand.
For an instant the tableau held – the four rebel noblemen in the broken door, and the horde of wild hairy faces crowding behind them – all held momentarily frozen by the sight of the blazing-eyed giant standing sword in hand in the middle of the candle-lighted chamber. In that instant Ascalante beheld, on a small table near the royal couch, the silver scepter and the slender gold circlet which was the crown of Aquilonia, and the sight maddened him with desire.
‘In rogues!’ yelled the outlaw. ‘He is one to twenty and he has no helmet!’
True; there had been lack of time to don the heavy plumed casque, or to lace in place the side-plates of the cuirass, nor was there now rime to snatch the great shield from the wall. Still, Conan was better protected than any of his foes except Volmana and Gromel, who were in full armor.