Conan and The Gods of The Mountains

CONAN AND THE GODS OF THE MOUNTAIN

by

Roland Green

THE DRAGON OF THE CAVES

It came—another screaming, thundering challenge. The echoes had not begun to die when it charged. Like a heavily laden ship in heavy seas, it labored through the fungi, trampling some, shredding others. It held its head low, horns thrusting forward like the ram of a galley. Valeria remained still as the beast surged between them.

In the next moment, Conan shot forward like a stone from a sling. His hands gripped the upper horn, and he vaulted clear over the beast's muzzle, aiming for its neck…

The Adventures of Conan

Published by Tor Books

Conan the Bold by John Maddox Roberts

Conan the Champion by John Maddox Roberts

Conan the Defender by Robert Jordan

Conan the Defiant by Steve Perry

Conan the Destroyer by Robert Jordan

Conan the Fearless by Steve Perry

Conan the Formidable by Steve Perry

Conan the Free Lance by Steve Perry

Conan the Great by Leonard Carpenter

Conan the Guardian by Roland Green

Conan the Hero by Leonard Carpenter

Conan the Indomitable by Steve Perry

Conan the Invincible by Robert Jordan

Conan the Magnificent by Robert Jordan

Conan the Marauder by John Maddox Roberts

Conan the Outcast by Leonard Carpenter

Conan the Raider by Leonard Carpenter

Conan of the Red Brotherhood by Leonard Carpenter

Conan the Relentless by Roland Green

Conan the Renegade by Leonard Carpenter

Conan the Rogue by John Maddox Roberts

Conan the Savage by Leonard Carpenter

Conan the Triumphant by Robert Jordan

Conan the Unconquered by Robert Jordan

Conan the Valiant by Roland Green

Conan the Valorous by John Maddox Roberts

Conan the Victorious by Robert Jordan

Conan the Warlord by Leonard Carpenter

CONAN AND THE GODS OF THE MOUNTAIN

BY

ROLAND GREEN

CONAN AND THE GODS OF THE MOUNTAIN

Prologue

The hunter was of the Leopard Clan of the Kwanyi. He had been born with eyes and ears almost as keen as those of the clan totem. He had sharpened both further by many years spent in the forests between the Gao River to the west and the forbidden city of Xuchotl to the east.

Neither eyes nor ears now told of any menace close to him. Nor was it likely that this stretch of the forest held any. It was near the foot of Thunder Mountain itself. The hunter had learned its paths and streams, its drinking holes and fallen trees, even before his manhood ceremony.

Yet the hunter fled as though all the kin of the dragon he had found in the forest near Xuchotl were ravening on his trail.

He had kept up this pace every waking moment for three days now. He had run until he could neither run, walk, nor stand, only fall senseless to the ground and sleep like a serpent with a pig in its belly. Then he would wake, to drink of the nearest clean water and run once more.

The pace had taken its toll. His dark skin was so caked with dirt that the hunter's tattoo of a leopard's paw on his right shoulder and the warrior's tattoo of a spear on his breast had all but vanished. Only the clan scarifications on both heels remained visible, to mark him and his footprints as of the Kwanyi.

His breath came in rasping sobs. His eyes stared ahead, next to blind, so that from time to time, a dangling vine slapped his skin. Once a stub of branch tore away his loinguard, leaving him to run on naked save for anklets of sodden feathers and the spear in his hand.

He could have run faster without the spear, for it was the stout weapon of the Kwanyi, a man's length of ironwood sapling with a triangular iron head as broad as a man's hand. Yet that thought never entered his mind. While he bore the spear, no warrior of the Kwanyi could doubt his courage.

The end of the hunter's run came suddenly, in the form of a jutting root. It caught his ankle, and even above the rasp of his tortured lungs, he heard bone snap. Then pain struck him twice, once as his head knocked against a rotten stump and once in the ankle as sundered bones cried out.

The hunter lay still until the pains eased and he knew that he would not at once become senseless. That would be death. This part of the forest held few dangers for a healthy hunter with both wits and weapons. It was otherwise for a man lying unaware of his surroundings.

When he dared move his head, the hunter rolled over and looked at his ankle. It was already swelling, and the pain was a spear of fire thrust up his leg. He would not be walking on that ankle again before the rains came—or ever if the God-Men of Thunder Mountain did not give him their healing. Poultices, purges, and the hands of village wise-women could do little against such ruin to bone and muscle.

In the next moment, the hunter began to doubt that he would even live to be spurned by the God-Men. Where he had seen only vines and thick-trunked trees, four men now stood. Each carried a spear; one carried a bow as well. Their loinguards, headbands, anklets, and tattoos alike named them warriors of the Monkey Clan.

This did nothing to raise the hunter's spirits. Chabano, Paramount Chief of the Kwanyi, was himself of the Monkey Clan. He would not have been chief for twelve years had he allowed his clansmen to feud at will with the Leopards, the Spiders, or the Cobras. Yet he had been known to turn a blind eye when those clans suffered some small hurt—such as the disappearance of a hunter whose fate neither gods nor men could learn.

The hunter twisted himself about again, ignoring the pain in his head and ankle as he drew up his legs and raised his spear.

"Ha, what have we here?" the tallest of the four Monkeys said. "One of the Little Cats, it seems."

The hunter bit back a reply of equal sharpness, on the order of "Speak for yourself, Gelded Baboon." It would be time to seek an honorable death when he had told the four warriors where he had been and what he had seen there.

"Brothers—" the hunter began.

Spear-butts thudded on mossy ground. "No brother to you," one of the spear-wielders growled.

"Chabano says otherwise," the hunter replied, then started his story before anyone else could find insults. He began with finding the dead dragon outside Xuchotl, slain by no cause the hunter could discover.

That gained him the tallest Monkey's attention. "There have been tales of a dragon in that part of the forest. Yet there are more tales that say nothing can kill a dragon. Perhaps the cause you could not discover was old age, or a bellyache!"

"Listen to the rest of what I have to say, then think that if you wish," the hunter said. "I will say only what I saw, and that as swiftly as I can."

The hint for silence was not lost on the Monkey leader. The next time one of his warriors tried to interrupt the hunter, a spear-butt came down sharply on the man's toes. A glare cut short his muttered ill wishes, and allowed the hunter to continue.

He told of wondering if accursed Xuchotl might be safe to approach, with its guardian dragon dead. All life seemed to have fled the city—human life, at least. He spoke of an open gate through which the jungle was already creeping, to claim Xuchotl the Accursed for its own.

"How far did you go?" the leader asked.

"Not as far as I wished," the hunter admitted. "I, too, had heard the tales of the fire-stones within the city. I sought them and found—" He swallowed. "—I found that Xuchotl's curse had at last destroyed its own people."

He spoke of the bodies of men and women slain no more than a handful of days before. Some bore the wounds of human weapons, swords and spears and knives, or even of teeth and nails. Others seemed to have been struck by lightning, and this in an underground chamber where no lightning could reach save by sorcery.

"It was then that I knew Xuchotl was still accursed, and that I might join the dead if I stayed longer within its walls," the hunter concluded. "I ran from the chamber and from the city. Yet as I ran, I saw that others had come forth by the same gate not long before."

"The slayers of the folk of Xuchotl?" It was the man who had been silenced who spoke. Now his tone held respect and curiosity, as well as more than a little fear. The hunter's pleasure at having won over his listeners almost made him forget the pain in his ankle.

"That I do not know. I can only say that one was a giant, another as large as a common warrior of the Kwanyi. Both seemed well-laden, and both wore boots."

The Monkey warriors stared at one another, then at the jungle around them. It seemed to the hunter that he could see into their very thoughts as he spoke.

"I think that is why the talking drums have not spoken of this. The sorcerers who ruined Xuchotl might have other enemies in our land. Warned that they were discovered…"

The leader nodded. The hunter wondered if he, too, had a throat too dry to let words pass. One of the other Monkeys loosened his drinking gourd from his belt and passed it to the hunter.

The hunter poured the ritual drops into his palm and scattered them to the earth, then drank. When his throat was fit for speaking again, he handed the gourd back.

"Brother, I hear truth in your words," the Monkey leader said to the hunter. He turned to his companions.

"Make a litter. We bear him to the God-Men. If the drums have not spoken, he must do their work, with our help."

"If the God-Men are as they say—" began a warrior.

"Guard your tongue, lest it wag you into the Cave of the Living Wind," the leader snarled.

"If the God-Men are as they say," the man persisted, "they likely enough know already."

"Then we can do no harm," the leader said. "Perhaps even a little good, by showing that we common warriors understand the evil that magic may do."

"And if—" the man began again.

"Then they have need of our help against sorcerers who can slay dragons and scour life from Xuchotl the Accursed."

This thought silenced the warrior, but did not seem to please him or his comrades. Thinking briefly upon the matter, the hunter decided that this was no shame to the Monkey warriors. The notion of sorcerers more powerful than the God-Men of Thunder Mountain did not please him either.

ONE

In the forest between dead Xuchotl and the foot of Thunder Mountain, the boot-wearers whose tracks the hunter had seen followed a game trail.

One was a woman, and no southern hills or forests had ever been birthplace to one so fair of skin and hair. She wore a shirt and trousers of silk that had once been whole and white, but were now neither. Rents in both displayed the fairness of her skin; and a rag of red silk bound up her hair. The garb, though tattered, still fitted snugly enough to display the splendor of her breasts and hips.

Her boots had the look of the sea about them. They were of supple leather, with wide-flaring tops, easily kicked off if one found one's self in the water. That they were not made for tramping game trails in the Black Kingdoms was evident by how often the woman gritted her teeth.

About her slender waist a silken sash upheld a well-used sword and two knives. One knife was a seaman's dirk, the other a keen-edged dagger whose hilt writhed with creatures out of nightmare.

The woman was tall and robustly formed, yet her companion overtopped her by more than a head, and his muscles told of a giant's strength to go with that stature. He was similarly clad, with the difference that his sword was stouter and hung from a broad leather belt, along with three knives. His hair was black, flowing freely across his broad shoulders, and his eyes were of an icy blue, with the look of the north to them.

Those eyes had been the last sight of more than a few men over the years. The tall man was Conan the Cimmerian, his companion Valeria of the Red Brotherhood. They owed their garb to having once been pirates in Baracha, and their companionship to many curious circumstances.

Most important of those was the battle they had fought for their lives within the walls of Xuchotl. It was waged against enemies both animal and human, armed with both steel and spells. In the end, it had cleansed the accursed city of the very last of its bloody, unnatural life.

It had also given each of them a dagger. Nothing else would they take from Xuchotl, knowing too many of the city's secrets to trust loot removed from its halls. Those halls reeked of blood shed and spells cast over many centuries, and terror that would echo in their green-lit vastness when the bones of the dead were dust on the floors of polished stone.

Conan had traveled in the Black Kingdoms before, if not in this jungle, then in others hardly less friendly. He feared neither man nor beast. Yet had the Kwanyi hunter seen the wanderer of Cimmeria, he would have laughed… for Conan also threw more than a few glances over his shoulder to see what remnant of Xuchotl's evil might be on his trail.

It was taboo among the Kwanyi to leave the dead in the place where they died, no matter how great the burden of removing the body. Left where the spirit departed from it, the body might be found again by that same spirit and become a yaquele, one of the "walking dead."

So from the time they could bear a burden, the folk of the Kwanyi learned to make litters of whatever came ready to hand. Saplings, vines, even the leaves of the smokebush, had their uses.

A litter able to bear the dead was also fit for the living who could not walk. The hunter was moving again in less time than it would have taken him to empty a gourd of beer. Two of the Monkey hunters bore him on level ground, trailed by the third, while the leader strode on ahead.

The hunter noted that the leader bore his spear in both hands, held across his chest ready to either throw or thrust. This was a hunting party, so the men bore no shields, but it seemed that the leader did not expect their visit to Thunder Mountain to be entirely peaceful.

It further seemed that he wanted their presence to be unnoticed. Twice he raised hand and spear to halt all movement. Once he used the hunters' hand signals to send them all into a thick stand of smoke-bush.

The hunter had no notion of what they were hiding from, or why, although at the first halt he heard the chatter of women and the clatter of jars in vine nets slung across their backs. No doubt it was a band of the brew-sisters, taking jars of grain to the brew-house, or perhaps beer down from it. So what made the leader as careful not to be seen by them as he would if they were a war party of the Ichiribu?

The hunter had no answer, or at least none to lift a man's spirits. He thought of reminding the leader that the God-Men might know that the hunter had asked to come to them.

Would the Monkey warriors presume to deny the wishes of the God-Men? Or where they carrying out the wishes of the God-Men by carrying him up the mountain in secret?

Valeria leaned back against a tree of a kind Conan had never seen before. Its bark was a nubbly mass of red-and-white stripes, with mold and mushrooms sprouting in cracks between the stripes. It looked unwholesome to the Cimmerian's eyes, but he reminded himself that might be merely because the tree was unknown to him.

He was not without experience in the Black Kingdoms. Indeed, he had sat on a throne in them and been hailed with the praise-name of Amra the Lion. But that was farther south and west than here, not a two-day march from Xuchotl. In time, they might reach lands that Conan knew, or even realms where he was known, but they faced a long journey before they did.

Meanwhile, the Cimmerian had less knowledge than he could wish of this land and its perils. To be sure, no peril of the jungle could equal what he and Valeria had faced and survived in Xuchotl. Nor did Conan lack any woods craft or hunting skills such that might keep a man alive though he were cast down naked in a desert.

But Valeria was like a fish out of water in this jungle, or rather, a sailor far from the sea. She would doubtless prefer the rack than admit it, but she was trusting Conan to lead them both to the sea once more.

She sighed and kicked off first one boot, then the other. Rubbing her battered feet, she looked about for a stream. None lay close, but a puddle of water from the last rain offered hope.

One slender foot was dipping toward the water when Conan laid a hand on Valeria's shoulder. "Best leave standing water alone. Those blisters might fester or draw leeches."

"They are my blisters, Conan."

"Yes, and it will be my back that bears your weight if you cannot walk. Or would you rather I left you behind?"

That was the Cimmerian's rough jest. From the way Valeria's hand darted toward her Xuchotl blade, it seemed that the jest was lost on her.

"Peace, woman. I was joking."

"Your wit smells no sweeter than the rest of you."

"Take a whiff of yourself, woman, before you complain of another's smell. Either of us walking into the Golden Anchor in Messantia would clear the place in a heartbeat."

Valeria smiled thinly and kept her feet clear of the puddle. Instead, she pulled a handful of leaves from a low-hanging branch and dipped them in the water.

"Best not do that either," Conan said. "A blind man looking at the branch could tell that people had passed by."

"And what would this blind man do with the knowledge?" Valeria snapped. At least she did not reach for steel this time.

"If I knew that, I would know which way we should go to keep him or his friends off our trail," the Cimmerian said. "It might slow us a trifle, but—"

"Would to Mitra it did slow us!" Valeria said. She looked at her boots as if they had offered her a mortal insult. "Anyone would think from the way you've been driving us along that a whole new tribe of those brown-skinned cutthroats and spellmongers was on our trail."

"I can't swear that they aren't," Conan said, then added hastily as Valeria's eyes flamed, "but I'd wager against it. If you hadn't insisted that we search for our clothes, we'd have been out of Xuchotl—"

"If I hadn't insisted on finding our clothes—you know how I was garbed."

The Cimmerian grinned. "More sightly than you are now, I swear. Of course—"

Valeria rolled her blue eyes toward the canopy of the jungle with the look of a woman tried beyond speech and endurance. Then she sighed. "Of course it was quite unsuitable for tramping about in the jungle." That was certainly true enough, as the garb had been a swathe of silken cloth about her hips and not a rag more.

"And the folk of Xuchotl had nothing much better in their wardrobes," she added. "What else could we have done?"

"Nothing, I admit. But it took us time we could have used to put distance between ourselves and the city. We still have that to do, and the sooner, the better."

"Is that a hint we should be on our way again?"

"With you, Valeria, I can only hint. Crom alone knows what you would do if you thought I was giving you an order!"

Valeria rolled her eyes again, and this time she stuck out her tongue as well. But she also lurched to her feet and eased into her boots. She could not entirely stifle a gasp of pain, but Conan paid her the compliment of letting her finish the work herself.

The Cimmerian added to the curses he had already heaped on the folk of Xuchotl, this one for their wretched footgear. Only sandals—suited to their polished floors—had been in use for more years than the Cimmerian had lived. The sailors' boots he and Valeria had worn going into Xuchotl had been the best things to bring them out again.

But no one could deny that those boots were not made for walking fast and far. In another day or two, he might well need to think of finding better footgear, a hiding place where they could let pursuit pass by, or a trail over which Valeria could walk barefoot.

The Cimmerian's own soles were leather-tough and had resisted the burning sands of the deserts of Iranistan, but Valeria of the Red Brotherhood was more at home on a ship's deck. Another day or two of tramping these trails in such footgear and she might truly need to be carried.

Nor was that the only matter preying on the Cimmerian's mind. They had taken no food from Xuchotl, fearing poison or sorcery. They would have to find victuals before long. A three-day fast was less than wise, even for the Cimmerian, when hard marching, and perhaps fighting, lay ahead.

At least he could be sure of the woman beside him. Her courage and skill with weapons she had amply demonstrated, and not only in Xuchotl. That she had survived at all for so many years in the Red Brotherhood proved her no common warrior. She might lack the Cimmerian's woods craft, but that could be learned, and again, Valeria's being alive at all was proof that she learned swiftly when need be.

Would she learn swiftly enough? Only the gods knew, and Conan had given up expecting answers from them in good season. A fine sword, a trustworthy companion—and stout boots—were worth all the priests' prayers that Conan had ever heard.

Ahead, sunlight broke through the forest's canopy to tint a patch of dead leaves the color of old gold. Conan shaded his eyes with one hand and stared upward. As best he could judge, it was not long past noon.

"We'll see about stopping well before twilight," he said without turning. "Sooner, if we find a good hiding place with clean water. I'll set snares, and we can forage for fruits and berries while we wait for the game to find its way to the traps. You're handy enough with knots, I trust?"

"A sailor so long, and clumsy with knots? Conan, you have seagull dung where other men have their wits!"

Yet he could hear beneath the indignation relief and gratitude. Valeria would die before admitting either, of course, so it was best if she never had to.

As for the Cimmerian, he would rather die than leave Valeria. He had snatched her from the nightmare halls of Xuchotl, saving her from becoming a sacrifice on behalf of the aged witch Tascela. He would not be done until they reached not merely the coast, but the sight of a Hyborian ship. Between them and that happy moment lay Crom only knew what perils.

Crom only knew—and of all the gods Conan had ever heard of, the cold, grim lord of the Cimmerians was the least likely to answer the questions of mewling humans.

It took all four Monkey warriors now to carry the hunter's litter. They were well up the slopes of Thun-der Mountain, although not on any trail the hunter remembered. This proved little, as he had been this far up the mountain only four times in his life, for ordeals and ceremonies that demanded the presence of God-Men.

He still would have gladly walked, even with the help of a staff, or with a tuqa leaf to ease the pain of his ankle. He cared little for the sweat and sore muscles of the Monkey warriors, but he cared very much about not being helpless. He thought of asking for the staff and a wad of the painkilling leaves, but one look at the grim face of the Monkey leader slew that thought at once. The Monkey warrior might have been the image of a yaquele, save for the sweat flowing down him.

Also, the hunter knew he could not walk far even with such aid without risking damage to his ankle beyond the powers of the God-Men to heal. The Kwanyi had small use for a hunter who could no longer hunt. He would be as a child so young that he had no right to anything—not even to food should it grow scarce. The worst that the God-Men or the Monkey leader—even Chabano himself—might do would be swifter, less painful, and more honorable than such a fate.

The hunter lay back and closed his eyes. Presently he felt the soft, cold touch of mist on his cheek and heard the cry of the mountain eagle as it soared in the chill sky found only above the tree line.

Conan's long arm whipped the sling up and over. At the high point of its arc, the slung stone leaped across the little stream and into the monkey-laden tree on the other side. The monkeys' chattering turned into shrieks of rage and fear. They scattered, leaves, twigs, and birds' nests tumbling in their wake.

One monkey neither cried out nor fled. Struck a deadly blow by the stone, it toppled from its branch, bounced from a second, then stuck firmly in the crotch of a third. From ground to the dead monkey was the height of six men taller than Conan.

The Cimmerian cursed the whole race of monkeys and the inventor of the sling. Then he saw that Valeria was kicking off her boots.

"Guard my back, Conan. I will have our dinner down in a trice."

Warned of leeches, Valeria leaped the stream, though Conan saw her wince at the pain this gave her feet. Then she was climbing the tree with almost the agility of the vanished monkeys, in the manner Conan had seen on the Black Coasts—body and legs at nearly right angles, arms gripping the tree as if it were a lover, well-formed hindquarters in the air.

She moved surely, fingers and toes seeking out the tiniest rough patches in the bark. The angle of the trunk was just enough to allow her to climb as she did, and it was not long before she reached the monkey. A slap to the branch did nothing; the branch was too thick. Valeria climbed another arm's length, crawled out onto the branch, and pushed the dead monkey off.

It thumped into a patch of ferns. Conan crossed the stream, thrust his sword into the patch, and withdrew it with the monkey spitted on the point.

"What is there to make you uneasy?" Valeria called.

"In this jungle, less than ferns can hide serpents. An asp bite won't kill as fast as the Apples of Derketa, but it's just as sure."

"You, Cimmerian, are as heartening as a priest of Set preparing me for sacrifice."

"Don't kill the bearer of bad news, good lady. It was not my advances that drove you from Sukhmet, nor my idea that you should flee into this jungle."

Perched where she was, Valeria could not draw her dagger. Instead, she made a face to frighten trolls and reached about her for something to throw. Finding nothing, she suggested that the Cimmerian harbored unlawful passions for sheep, then started back down.

She took the descent with more care and bent over farther—too far, as she learned, for her trousers. There was a sharp ripping sound, and Valeria suddenly had nothing between her rump and the jungle air.

She finished the descent with as much dignity as she could manage, then hastily backed against the tree. Her face dared Conan to so much as smile. He controlled the urge to roar with laughter with some difficulty.

"Thank you, Valeria," he said when he could trust his voice.

"You are welcome, I suppose," she replied. "A tree is not so far different from a mast, and I have been climbing those since before I was a woman." She glared at him. "Or do you think I was foolish, only to prove I could haul and draw my share?"

"I said nothing."

"Conan, you can say more with a moment's silence than most men can with talking from sunrise to nightfall." She glanced at the monkey. Its dead eyes stared back at her, and she looked away.

"If you will make the fire, I will skin it. I doubt it much differs from a fish."

"It does, but there'll be no fire."

"No… fire?" She said the word as if it were a solemn curse.

Conan shook his head. "We've nothing by which to strike a spark, nothing to burn if we struck it, and no knowledge of who might see the fire or smell the smoke."

"Eat the monkey raw?"

"Not uncommon in these lands. Monkeys eat much as we do, so their flesh is commonly wholesome."

"But… raw?"

"Raw."

Valeria gagged, but there was nothing in her stomach to come up. She leaned against the tree and braced one hand against it.

"If I had known that, Conan, I'd have left your cursed monkey for the kites and the ants!"

"Not wise, Valeria. Go hungry too long and the kites and the ants'll make their meal off of you."

This time she did bend over, heaving until her face was pale. Then she remained kneeling, sweat-sodden hair veiling her. Conan gently lifted her to her feet.

"Come, Valeria. Find somewhere to sit, and I will do the honors with a knife. I know which parts taste best uncooked, and I'll also do better work with the skin."

"The skin? Oh, to wear." To Conan's relief, she no longer seemed mazed in her wits.

"Just so, unless you'd rather walk bare-arse all the way through the jungle—"

She threw a stick at him.

The hunter knew that the voices he heard above him were those of the God-Men. In the last corner of his mind that remained human, he knew he should be afraid.

He was not, although he did remember having been afraid when the Monkey warriors carried him up the last few paces of the hill to the God House. The door of the house was of ironwood logs, planked with slabs of mahogany, and on the planks was painted the crimson-and-sapphire spiral of the God-Men.

The fear had gone briefly when the door opened and only common men came forth, in loincloths and headdresses dyed with the same spiral. They had lifted the hunter's litter and borne him within the God House, leaving the Monkey warriors standing in the evening rain.

Then the hunter had not only been unafraid; he had been ready to laugh… at the disappointment on the faces of the Monkey warriors. No doubt they had dreamed of being greeted as heroes.

It was when he saw the first of the God-Men that he was again afraid, but not for long. The eyes of the God-Man were entirely white, like those of a man struck blind with the eye-rot and doomed to be cast into the forest for the beasts to devour if no one would feed and shelter him.

Yet the God-Man moved as surely as if he could count every leg on an ant in the dimmest corner of the chamber where the hunter lay. He wore only a loinguard that might have been of snakeskin, figured in hues of rose and vermilion.

He carried in one hand a staff taller than himself, crowned with a golden spiral, and in the other hand, a gourd. A pungent odor rose from the gourd, sour, sweet, and sharp all at once.

Without letting go of the staff, the God-Man knelt beside the hunter and motioned that he should sit up. This the hunter did, and at once the gourd was thrust to his lips. The taste of the brew within was so vile that he wanted to spit it out. When he found himself swallowing, he wanted to gag; when the brew reached his stomach, he wanted to spew.

Then it seemed that he was no longer tasting something vile and tainted, but beer of the most cunning brewing from the best grain and seeds. It went straight to his head as such beer often did, and he no longer felt pain, not even in his foot and ankle.

He was not wholly at ease over this; the ankle had grown swollen, the flesh turning pallid and noisome matter oozing from it. It should have been hurting as if hot irons were at work upon it.

Yet it did not, and soon he was walking whole and hearty through the nightmarish halls of Xuchotl. He was not afraid, for the God-Man was with him and the magic in the staff would stand against any evil there, living or dead. As he walked, he told the God-Man all he had seen or guessed, and it seemed that the God-Man heard every word and planted it in his memory like a seed in a garden patch. In time, they came out of Xuchotl the same way they had entered, and walked into the jungle. The walls of the evil city faded into a green mist, and when the mist cleared, the hunter knew he still lay in the God House.

But his ankle still did not hurt.

It did not hurt even when the God-Man made a series of intricate motions over the hunter's body with the staff. Was it only a fever-fancy, or did the golden spiral of the staff seem to whirl, like a swirling eddy in a stream?

No matter. When the God-Man was done, the hunter found that he could rise and walk. He did so, and followed the God-Man where he was bidden, out of the chamber and down a long passage that seemed carved from living rock. The heads of the totemic animals of each clan of the Kwanyi hung thick on the walls. The hunter saw that where the rock showed, it was painted in colors for which he did not wish to find names, let alone utter them.

Then they passed a wall of rocks that seemed bound together more by magic than by mud. Beyond lay a chamber so vast that the hunter could barely make out the ceiling, and could not see the far wall at all.

As for what lay below, after one look, he turned his head away. It was not fear of the swirling smoke or what it might conceal. It was only that in his heart he knew it was taboo for him to gaze upon that smoke, and worse than that for him to see what the smoke hid.

The God-Man pointed to a seat carved from the rock at the very lip of the ledge where the hunter stood. The hunter sat down, dangling his legs over the abyss. From above, he heard more voices, and then he was alone and the voice of the God-Man who had led him there joined the others.

They chanted in a tongue the hunter did not know and beat on a drum that sounded unlike any he had ever heard. Or was it not a drum but their staves pounding on the rock floor? If those staves were shod with iron, they might sound much like that, striking the living rock—

The smoke reared up in a wall before him, like a cobra ready to strike. Indeed, it spread out in such a likeness of a cobra's head that the hunter wanted to cry out.

I am not of the Cobras. I am of the Leopards. Send a leopard for my spirit.

He knew in the same moment that he would not speak, nor would it matter if he cried out to all the gods of his people. This was a place where mere mortals were impotent in face of the older powers under the command of the God-Men.

Even then, the hunter did not fear. Nor did he fear when the smoke swirled around him and the scream of a mighty wind tearing at the treetops came with it. He felt himself lifted as gently as a babe in a sling on its mother's breast.

Then the smoke drew back. The hunter faced crimson-and-sapphire light, swirling like the smoke. He saw the light rise around him, taking away his sight, and all of his other senses as well. He never knew the moment when the life was sucked from his body and only an empty husk remained in the stone seat.

"What was that?" Conan muttered. He thought he had spoken only to himself, but Valeria was more wakeful than he had known.

"I heard nothing," she said. She rolled over and tried for the tenth time to find a spot where a root of their sheltering spicebush would not dig into her flesh.

"Ugh," she said. "The planks of a ship's bed are down cushions compared to this jungle."

Conan held up a hand for silence, and although Valeria looked sulky, she obeyed. The Cimmerian waited until he was sure that whatever had reached him on the night breeze would not come again.

"It may have been nothing. But I thought I heard… well, if a spell of evil magic made a sound, it might have been like that."

Valeria sat up and her shirt slipped from her shoulders. She ignored the display of her magnificent breasts and made several gestures of aversion.

"Are you a spell-smeller, as we call them at home?" she asked.

It seemed to Conan that she would not much care for any answer he might give. In truth, he also would be happy if he had not suddenly gained the power to detect magic. That was almost magic itself, and Conan loathed the idea of finding it within himself.

The Cimmerian had fought more sorcerers and wizards than he had fingers and toes. But when he had an honorable choice, he gave the whole accursed breed a berth many leagues wide.

"I've never been one yet," Conan said. "I'd as soon not be one now. Likely enough it was just some trick of the wind. I've been away from these lands for so long that I may not remember all that I thought I did."

Valeria had the look of one who doubts she is hearing the truth, but the Cimmerian's blue eyes were steady and he smiled. After a moment, the Aquilonian woman smiled back, turned on her side, and lay down. The display of breasts now gave way to a display of well-rounded buttocks.

Conan had no eye for them. He sat cross-legged, sword in his lap, waiting with the patience of one who has watched a Zamboulan counting house for three days to learn the comings and goings of its watchmen. He also waited with more knowledge of the jungle than he had admitted to Valeria. Nothing in nature had made that sound, and what was not in nature was, more often than not, dangerous.

In time, Valeria's breathing steadied as she slipped deep into sleep. Conan's breathing also slowed, until he might have seemed an iron statue in the jungle night. Only the relentless flickering of his eyes about him betrayed life.

Whatever stalked them would gain no help from him in its quest, and only sharp steel if it found them.

TWO

Seyganko, son of Bayu, was not the swiftest, strongest, or tallest of the warriors of the Ichiribu. He was the best swimmer, which was not a small matter in his people's wars against the Kwanyi.

He was also a longheaded sort of man, in spite of his lack of years. He thought before he used the speed, strength, and height that he had. Thus he made shrewder use of them than his better-endowed comrades.

This earned him some jealousy, and at least once a death-duel, from which he had emerged not merely victorious, but unhurt. It also earned him rather more respect from the day of his manhood ceremony to the day Dobanpu Spirit-Speaker read the signs and declared Seyganko worthy to be followed in battle.

From that day forward, Seyganko led. He always led in war when the whole manhood of the Ichiribu was called forth. He also led as often as not in raids and skirmishes, when no custom or taboo required that someone else lead.

Seyganko did not survive all this fighting as unscathed as he had the duel. No man could, against a foe such as the Kwanyi. Their Paramount Chief Cha-bano would have made his warriors formidable with his spear-and-shield art, even without the aid of the God-Men. With that aid, the chief might have swept the shores and islands of the Lake of Death clean of all tribes save his own, then marched downriver on a campaign of conquest.

It was as well for others besides Seyganko that the God-Men and Chabano could seldom work together for long, and often barely spoke to one another. It was necessary at all times for the Ichiribu to know of Chabano's schemes and whether or not he was on a friendly footing with the God-Men.

So that is how Seyganko came to the western shore of the Lake of Death on the night that Conan sat keeping watch beside the spicebush where Valeria slept.

He and the four men in the canoe paddled as silently as wraiths to within a hundred paces of the shore. They drove the canoe forward with steady, practiced strokes, lifting their paddles so skillfully that no splash or drip betrayed their presence. Clouds veiled the moon, and this was not the season for the lampfish, whose glow when disturbed often betrayed canoe-borne warriors.

A hundred paces from the shore, all five men lifted their paddles as one. The canoe glided forward on its own momentum for another fifty paces. By then, its bow was sliding in among the weeds that grew so thick in places that a child might walk upon them.

Seyganko led his comrades over the side of the craft with as little noise as they had made in paddling. Gripping the sides, they kicked silently until they could sink their feet into the oozy bottom.

Each man wore only his headdress and a snake-skin loinguard, besides his weapons: a club or a trident, a knife of stone chips set in wood, and a net. Each also wore a generous coating of rancid fish oil. Its reek made any except the Ichiribu gag. It also hid the odor of living flesh from the small fish known as the eunuch-maker which swarmed along the shores of the Lake of Death.

"Remember," Seyganko whispered, "we need no women prisoners. If they flee, do not chase them."

"And if they stay?" one warrior asked with a grin that showed even in the darkness.

"Remember, too, that a man taking a woman turns his back on the world," Seyganko said.

"He—" the largest of the warriors said. "You need not think where to find your next woman, Seyganko. Not when—"

"Hold your tongue, Aondo," a third man said. "Or if Seyganko does not challenge you, I will. You are jealous as well as foolish."

Seyganko could add nothing to those words of wisdom, although he knew that his betrothal to the shaman's daughter Emwaya had indeed aroused much jealousy. Emwaya was the finest woman of the Ichiribu and deserved nothing less than their finest warrior, but not all men saw that as clearly as she did.

The young chief vowed to look to his back when the huge Aondo was near, then crept to the left to his chosen hiding place. The other warriors followed, with only the faintest rustling of the damp grass and the soft chrrr of insects to mark their passage.

They had been in hiding barely long enough for the grass to rise again when they heard voices and footfalls on the trail. As was most often the case, the sounds were those of women and men together— warriors guarding a band of women, taking food and other comforts to the camp where the Gao River flowed out of the Lake of Death.

The Kwanyi also kept warriors in the south, guarding their herdlands and grain fields on the other side of the lake. Chabano would gladly have kept much more strength there, to raid through the pass into the riverlands beyond the mountains. That the Ichiribu ruled the Lake of Death with their canoes stood in his way and made his hatred for them burn like a live coal.

Now someone among the Kwanyi on the trail, wiser than his fellows, called for silence. But he called for it in a voice as loud as the others'. Seyganko's keen ears let him measure the distance to the speaker almost as if he had stretched a length of vine between them. If the enemy advanced another twenty paces farther, they were as doomed as a dog in the jaws of a leopard.

The, Kwanyi advanced that distance, and Seyganko let them go another twenty paces before he put the bone whistle to his lips and blew. If the women could run in either direction up the trail, there would be fewer of them at hand to distract men like Aondo.

The high-pitched shriek of the bone whistle silenced human foes and jungle creatures alike for a moment. In that moment, the five Ichiribu warriors leaped from their hiding places and flung themselves at their enemies.

Seyganko had just enough time to see that none of his comrades were holding back before he faced two men. Both had the heavy hide shield and three spears Chabano had given each of the Kwanyi. On open ground, by daylight, they would have been the Ich-iribu warriors match, and even now they were no foe to despise. It was not in Seyganko to despise any foe, for which reason he still lived and his foes mostly did not.

He feinted with his club to draw one man's shield up, then flung his net over the top of the other's shield and pulled hard. The spiked weights on the edge of the net caught in both flesh and hide. The man howled and stumbled forward, his shield dropping until it no longer protected him.

This time, Seyganko's stroke with his club was no feint. It splintered the man's wooden headdress and the skull beneath it. Instantly Seyganko whirled to stamp on the shaft of a spear thrust at him by the second warrior, then closed until his chest was hard against the man's shield.

The warrior was strong; he pushed hard, flinging Seyganko backward. Seyganko pretended to lose his balance and fall on his back. The warrior charged forward, his second spear poised to thrust downward.

It thrust, but struck only grass and earth. Seyganko had rolled sideways, and as he rolled, he lashed out with both feet. The warrior stumbled, abandoning his spear in a fight for balance, and had no attention to spare for Seyganko's club. Sweeping in a vicious, low arc, the club darted under the shield and crushed a knee.

The man reeled again, and this time there was no regaining his balance. Seyganko himself was in behind the shield, and a moment later the shield fell as the arm holding it shattered under another blow of the club.

With no foes ready to hand, Seyganko could spare attention for his comrades. It was hard to pick them out from among the mass of screaming, fleeing

Kwanyi women and bearers. Most of them were, as he had hoped, running off inland. Not a few of the Kwanyi warriors were following.

Seyganko called the spirits of his ancestors to curse those Kwanyi cowards. Or were they cowards? Might they not be obeying the commands of Chabano, who could have guessed that such Ichiribu raids had as their purpose the taking of captives ?

Seyganko added Chabano to those he cursed. The enemy chief was shrewd enough to be dangerous even when he could hold few secrets. If he could teach his warriors to prefer flight to capture, he might keep many of them, and each one deadly to the Ichiribu.

An outcry like that of mating leopards returned Seyganko's attention, to the trail. A spear's length away, Aondo had a woman backed against a tree. He had jerked her waistcloth from her and was now stuffing it into her mouth. And just as he had been warned not to do, he had turned his back on all else but the woman. A Kwanyi warrior lying bloody on the ground rolled over, gripped a spear, and thrust upward.

The thrust failed to be deadly, because at the last moment, Seyganko tapped the warrior lightly with his club. The spear's point sank only a thumb's width into Aondo's buttocks. He leaped into the air with a cry more of surprise than of pain, clapping a hand to his wound.

One hand was not enough to hold the woman. Disdaining any thought of garbing herself, she fled into the night. Aondo started in pursuit, dashed head-on into the shield of a Kwanyi warrior too surprised to raise a spear, and found himself in a bare-handed fight for his life.

Seyganko snatched up the fallen spear, the only.

weapon that could reach the pair in time. It was the kind of weapon ill-balanced for throwing; he could have done better with a fishing trident. But his arm was strong and his eye was true. Also, he did not need to kill.

The spear drove through the Kwanyi's thigh with such force that the point burst out on the other side. The man howled as if stung by fire ants and flung Aondo away. Seyganko closed the distance to the man, gripped the spear-shaft with one hand, and swung his club with the other. The man toppled, Seyganko jerked the spear loose, and Aondo regained his wits enough to start bandaging his prisoner's thigh with the fallen waistcloth.

With two captives who would live until Dobanpu could speak to them, the raid was already a victory. Seyganko blew the whistle again and promised the spirits a generous sacrifice when the other men of his band answered.

They not only answered, they came swiftly, and with two more prisoners, one of them a woman who seemed not unwilling. She was hardly more than a girl, the tattoos of womanhood barely healed on her arms and throat. She wore nothing but those tattoos and a feather that was bound into her hair behind one ear.

Aondo had already plunged into the water to bring the canoe in close enough to allow the lifting of the senseless captives into it. He seemed to wish to stay as far from Seyganko as possible.

The canoe rode noticeably lower in the water when the last captive was aboard. Seyganko looked at it, seeking to keep doubt off his face. The next time he led such a raid, he vowed, there would be a second canoe lying off, to bring help if needed, and to carry captives. As it was—

"We have no need of you," he told the girl. "Take a garment from one of the dead and rejoin your people."

The girl's face twisted in horror and rage, and for the first time, Seyganko had a clear look at her tattoos. They were none he had seen before among Kwanyi women.

"You are not of the Kwanyi?" he asked.

The girl seemed to understand nothing except the last word, but at that word, she made a gesture none could mistake. If all the Kwanyi in the world had their hearts eaten by leopards and the manhood of all the warriors devoured by jackals, it would gladden her heart.

Seyganko decided that the girl could come after all. He would not have on his spirit the memory of leaving her to the vengeance of her captors.

Also, she was rather more comely than most, although far from equal to Emwaya. It would not please Emwaya if he kept the girl himself, but the Spirit-Speaker's daughter had spoken of needing a new maidservant. The girl would do well enough for that, and in time she could be dowered and offered in marriage to a warrior who might not otherwise be able to offer bride-price.

He motioned toward the canoe. The girl looked at the water, no doubt fearing what it might hide. Then she looked back at the land, and her face showed far more fear of what might wait for her there. She splashed into the water, arose dripping, and leaped into the canoe so eagerly that she nearly capsized it.

The canoe remained upright, however. It even remained above water after Seyganko climbed aboard with the care of a woman sewing bark for a headdress. With no need for silence, the paddles were swiftly at work, and the laden craft was soon well away from shore.

By then, the warriors were beginning to babble in triumph and relief. All except Aondo. He sat amidships, wielding his paddle with the best but saying no more than did the senseless captives lying in the slimy water in the bottom of the boat.

That sight made Seyganko uneasy, and to hide this, he gave only short answers to his comrades. They were halfway back to the island before he could bring himself to join in the banter. Even then, it was mostly out of prudence; too long a silence and his warriors would think he was displeased with their work this night. This would shame and anger them, until they might be less willing to follow him. Leave the loyal unrewarded for long enough and there would be no more loyal warriors. Then such as Aondo would have their moment—nor would they likely be honorable enough to offer an open challenge.

"He," Seyganko said. "I have never seen the women run off like that. Do you suppose it was catching sight of Aondo that drove them away?"-

"If so, I will go without my loinguard next time. They will run to me then, not from me," Wobeku the Swift said. He patted the girl on the shoulder, and did not appear to notice that she stiffened at his touch.

Seyganko hoped that her time among the Kwanyi had not turned her witless. Emwaya would have enough to do, tending her father after he had worked his magic on the captives. She would not thank her betrothed for casting the girl at her hut door like an abandoned puppy—and when Emwaya was not grateful, Seyganko and half of his tribe knew it!

Valeria awoke from a pleasant dream of being once again aboard a ship at sea. The touch of the Cimmerian's mighty hand on her shoulder was an intrusion. She wanted to shake it off, go back to sleep, and try to find the dream again.

Instead, she put the memory of sun-dappled water and a salt-tangy breeze from her and sat up. She saw Conan's eyes roving and knew that she was still as near to unclothed as made no difference.

A brief pass of her fingers through her hair told her that comb and brush would have been useless even had she possessed either one. A stout knife, or perhaps a small ax, would be needed to reduce her hair to order.

"Are you well, Valeria?" '

"Awake and ready to take my watch, Conan. Is that not well enough?"

"If you doubt—"

"I do not doubt my fitness to mount guard. I may doubt your reasons for wishing me asleep and helpless."

Even in the darkness, she could see Conan's massive shoulders quiver as he tried not to laugh. She realized that in truth she had been sharp-tongued with little cause… and this in reply to an offer made out of kindness.

Or was it kindness? Valeria had not risen as high as she had in the ranks of the Red Brotherhood with-' out knowing much of the ways of intrigue between men and women, even when the prize was no more than bedsport. When the prize could be gold enough to buy a ship, or fifty women, the intrigues soon grew bloody, and those who did not learn swiftly, died— as often as not, anything but swiftly.

One thing she had learned: a man who offered to spare a woman her share of needful duties was apt to have a price in mind for this favor. It was a price she had no mind to pay to the Cimmerian.

Unless he was unlike other men? She had truly met none like him—so far from home, yet seemingly equal to any danger, as if he were at home everywhere. Which was perhaps not far from the truth, if half the tales he told were so.

No. In such matters, the Cimmerian would be as other men. Unless he was a eunuch, and Valeria was quite sure he was nothing of the kind. The witch Tascela had made that plain enough; she would never have pursued a eunuch as she had pursued Conan.

Valeria stood up, which did further mischief to her trousers. She looked down at herself in disgust, then wrinkled her nose at the odor of the monkey's hide.

"How long will it take that hide to be fit for a garment?"

"In this damp heat, curing goes slow. We might have to take it with us, let it cure on the march. Unless we can find a salt lick—"

Valeria spat, not quite hitting the pegged-out monkey hide. Then she peeled off her trousers and shirt and stood nude for a moment while she arranged the shirt into a loincloth.

"There," she said. "If we'll be in the forest for the most part, the trees will guard my skin."

She could not mistake the admiration in Conan's voice and eyes. "There are insects as well as sun, Valeria."

"What of the spicebush? I thought you said the berries kept away both fliers and crawlers."

"Rubbed on your skin, yes, it does. But it brings some folk out in blisters."

"Better blisters than insect bites everywhere," she said.

Conan shrugged. "You choice, woman. Make yourself a smelly armful, for all that I care. Best be about it quickly, though. I'd like a trifle of sleep after you're done."

Valeria wished that Conan had not seemed quite so determined not to embrace her. She remembered the moment of their final victory in Xuchotl, when his massive arm's around her had seemed not only proper, but pleasant.

If a time like that ever came again, it would certainly not come tonight. She began plucking berries, crushing them and rubbing the juice on her skin, not excepting those parts of her body that would be guarded, she hoped, by the shirt-turned-loincloth.

Exposed to the air, the juice of the spiceberries stank like an untended midden. It certainly kept both flying and crawling creatures from her, though. It also stung like bees on her blistered feet, then swiftly soothed them.

By the time she had garbed herself as best she could and sat down, Conan was lying under the bush. There was barely room for him; his feet thrust into the open at one end and his shoulders brushed the lower branches.

A scream like that of some wretched soul being obscenely sacrificed brought Valeria to her feet. The loincloth nearly parted company; she ignored it and drew her sword.

The scream came again, but this time a faint chattering and squeaking followed it. Some night-prowler finding prey, or perhaps a mate? Neither was any peril to her… she had seen the Cimmerian come awake in an eye blink, ready to fight a moment later. Even now his hand was on the hilt of his sword, although he had the weapon sheathed to protect it from the dampness of the jungle night.

She gazed at that massive hand for some moments, until the dream of sun and a ship at sea gave way to an image of a silk-draped couch in a perfumed chamber, with wine ready to hand—except that both her hands and Conan's were more pleasantly occupied.

Her stomach twitched, and for a moment, she feared that the monkey meat was finally going to take its revenge for her hunger. Then the queasiness passed, and her former fierce pride took its place.

She was Valeria of the Red Brotherhood; she had eaten worse than raw monkey meat and kept it down in earning her name and fortune. She would not let this wretched jungle defeat her, not while that cursed Cimmerian was anywhere in sight to laugh at her!

Dobanpu Spirit-Speaker had for himself room enough for half a score of families of the Ichiribu. Few among the tribe grudged it to him, for all that the land was growing scarce on the island.

No one had sweated to build Dobanpu's house; it was a cave burrowing deep into the hill at the southern end of the island. None doubted that for much of his work with the spirits—and with other beings mentioned only in whispers, if at all—he needed more space than a basket-weaver or a trident-maker. None wished, either, to see or hear much of what Dobanpu did.

Nor did Seyganko, for all that bringing the prisoners to Dobanpu had meant a wearying journey for already tired men to the southern end of the island, then over the beach and uphill to the cave. It was as well that few knew how much of the art of Spirit-Speaking he was learning at Dobanpu's hands.

Already among the people there were mutterings that a woman such as Emwaya should not learn Spirit-Speaking, which they said was a man's wisdom. If she did, then she should not also wed a war chief, to give him her powers as any woman could if she lay with a man.

What would the wagging tongues say if they learned that Dobanpu himself was teaching Seyganko? The warrior knew it would be even harder then to avoid death-duels, or poison in his porridge.

Seyganko sat in the cave with Dobanpu and Emwaya. All three wore headdresses of feathers and crocodile teeth and amulets of fire-stones. The fire-stones pulsed like beating hearts, growing stronger each moment as Dobanpu and Emwaya chanted the spirits into them.

None of them wore other garb, save a coating of scented oil. To Seyganko's mind, such garb best suited Emwaya. She was of an age to have borne at least two children, and would doubtless bear many fine sons when she and the warrior at last wed. Now, however, her waist remained supple, her breasts high, her long legs well-muscled and strong to wrap about a man—

A thought entered Seyganko's mind.

Is this the time for such?

The thought held amusement and pleasure rather than anger. Even had Seyganko not seen the smile on Emwaya's face, he would have known from whence the thought came.

He replied as he had learned, without moving his lips save to return her smile.

It has been some while.

Dignity before the spirits!

None could mistake the source of that thought, although Dobanpu's face bore all the expression of a carved lodge mask. The two lovers instantly straightened backs and composed faces, then gave ear to Dobanpu's chant as it rose higher.

The chant was drawing echoes from deep within the nighted recesses of the cave, far beyond the lamplight, when Dobanpu snapped his fingers at his daughter. Lithe and gleaming in the light, she ran swiftly to a niche behind her father and brought out a basket of small clay pots. The basket was of reeds soaked in spiceberry juice, the odor intended to drive insects from the herbs, dried fruits, and oils in the pots. Seyganko had no doubt of its success; it nearly drove him away from the fire.

He drew on a warrior's courage to sit cross-legged and watch as Emwaya drew forth several of the small pots, including an empty one. With pinches of herbs and fruit and a few drops of oil, she concocted a potion and handed it to her father. He dipped a finger in, then licked it off, for all the world like a brew-sister testing her beer. Emwaya smiled, and this time Dobanpu returned the smile without missing a beat of the chant.

To the rest of the Ichiribu, Dobanpu was a figure of awe, even of terror. His daughter knew him too well for that—and he knew that she knew. It was one of many reasons that Seyganko blessed whatever had contrived that he and Emwaya be matched one with the other. He need have no fear of his wife's father.

Now Dobanpu stood and spread his arms wide, then raised them high over his head. Smoke began to curl from the pot, foul-smelling and filled with nightmare shapes dancing on the remote edge of Seyganko's vision. Emwaya lifted the pot, and the warrior wanted to cry out as the shapes seemed to surround her like a hedge of thorns around a cattle pen. For a moment, she was altogether lost to sight, and to Seyganko, it seemed that even her father's face went taut.

He told himself that the deadliest of the spirits had no visible forms, that these were only little spirits of the woods and waters that Dobanpu had conjured up to reach the captive's mind. He knew he might even believe this after he saw Emwaya safe and whole.

In the next moment, she darted from the smoke and knelt beside her father. Her breasts rose and fell with quick breathing as she gripped her father's shoulder and joined her strength to his. The shapes left the smoke; now they danced in the air above the prostrate form of the Kwanyi captive on the black stone.

The man was too near death to speak, but the other captive, who had not been so badly hurt, had said he served the God-Men. He also said that the God-Men had learned something that put even their servants in fear.

He had not said much of this without some persuasion, but the Ichiribu had men and women expert in such, means. The powers of Dobanpu and his daughter could be saved for times of greater need.

Thunder burst in the cave. The smoke vanished in a brief scream of wind. For a last moment, the smoke was so thick about Seyganko that he fought the urge to claw at it. He held his breath that he might not disturb the spirits by coughing, and his chest grew tight.

The smoke vanished before Seyganko had to breathe. So did the shapes. The warrior watched them whirl downward into the Kwanyi prisoner. Then he gripped one hand with the other so he might not make a gesture of aversion as the dying captive sat upright and began to speak.

With no voice of his own left, he spoke in the spirit-tongue, which Seyganko did not yet understand. Whatever the spirits were saying had Dobanpu's face twisting in horror, for all that he fought for self-command. Emwaya's eyes were wide, and her hand on her father's shoulder gripped so tight that her nails scored his flesh and her knuckles were pallid.

Thunder came again, this time a distant rumble. Seyganko gazed up at the ceiling of the cave because he could no longer bear to look at the captive. He saw a drop of water fall, to raise a puff of dust from the cave floor. Another drop followed it, then several more, then a steady stream.

No spirits were in that thunder. It was not the rainy season, but seldom did more than two or three nights pass about the Lake of Death without rain. Seyganko resisted the urge to leap forward and stand in the rain streaming down through the smoke hole.

It was as well that he did. Dobanpu's work was not done yet. Indeed, Seyganko could have stalked and slain a wild pig in the time the Spirit-Speaker needed to finish with the captive.

The warrior knew when the end came, though. The captive turned slowly toward Dobanpu. He took a single faltering step forward, then two surer ones before leaping at Dobanpu as would a leopard on its prey.

He never completed the leap. Dobanpu stood like the doorpole of a lodge, but Emwaya flung herself before her father. She moved so swiftly that Seyganko was barely on his feet before she and the dying, vengeance-driven Kwanyi grappled.

It was a short grapple, for all that the Kwanyi had in life been half again Emwaya's size and strength. He could not feel pain, but he could be knocked down. Emwaya sent him sprawling, then gripped one arm. He reached over with the other, groping for a handhold in her hair, meeting only the headdress.

He was still groping when Seyganko brought his club down on the Kwanyi's already battered head. The last spirit-given life fled, and the spirits followed. Thunder rolled again as they leaped from the body and fled up the smoke hole, defying the rain.

Seyganko saw what might have been a bird with four wings and the head of a snake, or something even more unnatural. Then he saw Emwaya turn, eyes widening—and was just in time to help her catch her father as he fell, to all appearances as lifeless as the Kwanyi.

They laid Dobanpu on a bed of rushes; a raised part of the cave floor kept him safe from the growing puddle of rainwater. Emwaya drew a bark-cloth blanket over her father and signed to Seyganko that he should leave them.

Seyganko desperately wished to ask why, but the answer came in the same moment as the question. In the Kwanyi warrior, there had been no common magic. Only arts that Seyganko did not yet have might heal Dobanpu and save his knowledge for his people. Seyganko's duties now lay among the warriors, to lead them if need be, or at least to keep them silent until Dobanpu spoke again.

Seyganko turned back to make sure that the Kwanyi warrior was dead, or to bind him if life was still in him. Then he fought the urge to make gestures of aversion, or even to flee wildly to the open air.

The Kwanyi warrior was gone. Only the outline of his body in the muddy dust remained. No footprints showed his passing; it was as if he had become dust himself.

Seyganko looked at Emwaya, and she glanced up from her father long enough to shrug. When I know, I will tell you was in that shrug, and also the pride he knew so well.

I will come when I am needed, Seyganko replied.

He thought he saw her smile as he backed out of the cave. He would rather not have gone at all. Leaving Emwaya there with what had stolen away the Kwanyi's body was harder than leaving her in the face of a hungry leopard.

He also knew that a warrior who courts a Spirit-Speaker's daughter must learn more than most men about the arts of keeping peace with his woman.

Conan awoke to find a sharp root jabbing him in the ribs. He thought he must have rolled over in the night.

Then he reached full wakefulness and knew that the root was warm, and not as sharp as he had thought. He shifted and looked up… from the strong, shapely ankle beside him all the way along the finely turned leg, to the shirt bound as a loincloth about well-rounded hips, and onward to the rest of Valeria.

She left off prodding him with a bare toe and seemed about to smile, Then she shrugged.

"If you think I woke you up for—"

Conan was tempted to grip that ankle and see if Valeria's loincloth survived a tumble to the ground. He set the temptation aside. Valeria had belted on both sword and dagger over her new garb and looked as ready as ever to repay such a rough jest with steel.

Now and for some days to come, Conan had more need of a trustworthy comrade at his back than a woman in his arms. "You woke me because it's dawn and time we were on the march. True?"

A jerk of the head might have been a nod.

"Any visitors?"

"None I could not face myself, Cimmerian."

"Ah, so you did not slay the seven warriors. You only drained them of their power with a woman's—"

The toe jabbed hard into his ribs, and for a moment, Conan was ready to roll clear of a downward slash of her sword. Then the hand left the sword-hilt, her mouth twisted, and a giggle escaped before turning into a laugh. She sat down and began combing leaves and the odd twig from her hair.

"I've killed men for lesser jests, Conan. Remember that."

"Oh, I shall. But if you kill men for small jests, then I may as well die for the bull as for the calf."

She made a small-girl's face at him and went on combing. In a few more moments, she had done as much as anyone could without a comb, or without hacking her hair off short at the neck.

"As you say, best we were on the march." She licked her lips. "Although I would not refuse some water—"

"We'll stop at the first clear stream we find and drink our fill. If there are gourds to be had, we can hollow out a few and fill them, too. But for now, we'd do better away from here."

"You think we're being followed?"

"I've no way to know, but why make ourselves easy prey? The jungle's much like the sea—he lives longest who's not to be found where his enemies expect him."

"So wise in war, Cimmerian?"

Conan was about to make some gruff reply when he realized that there had been less than the usual mockery in Valeria's voice. He looked at her; she flushed all the way to her breasts and then began muttering curses at the lack-witted, effete fools of Xuchotl, who kept jewels and finery in plenty but not a single decent water bottle!

THREE

Ge-qah!"

Seyganko cried the Ichiribu ritual word for death and flung his trident. It pierced the morning air, then the blue-green water of the Lake of Death.

The vine rope tying it to Seyganko's waist had run out perhaps twice a man's length when the trident also pierced the lionfish below the canoe. Instantly, ripples spread about the canoe; then bubbles and blood joined the ripples.

The lionfish rose, as long and thick as the canoe, with jaws that could, and sometimes did, swallow a child. Blood and body juices the hue of old gold gushed from the trident wound.

Those massive jaws still snapped, and teeth as long as a man's finger clanged together with a noise like a Kwanyi spear on a wooden shield. The scaly neck plates—with the look of a lion's mane, which gave the fish its name—flapped, as did the gills.

Seyganko waited until the fish's instinct to attack the first thing it saw was aroused. That first thing was the canoe, and the long teeth sank into the hard wood of the dugout. They so nearly met that the warrior knew the canoe would need patching after this day's work.

The wildly thrashing fish jerked at the rope and sent the trident handle whipping about. Seyganko ignored bruises as he raised his club, tossed it, caught it in both hands, and brought it down hard between the two plates over the fish's left eye.

"Ge-qah!"

He spoke the truth. The blow to its most vulnerable spot was death for the lionfish. A shudder went through it from teeth to tail, and its jaws let go their grip on the canoe. Had Seyganko been fool enough to pull the trident loose, it might have slipped away into the depths of the lake and been lost.

As it was, he would have a fine trophy, and a score of the Ichiribu would feast. Any lionfish this large was not the best delicacy, but it was a menace to men; eating it would bring some of its strength and fierceness to those who ate, and avenge any it had slain.

Seyganko tied the fish to the stern of his canoe with the trident cord, sat down, and began paddling toward shore. Even his strength was not equal to bringing the catch aboard, but in water too shallow for other lionfish, it would not be attacked before he could summon help.

Seyganko paddled directly for shore, although this meant landing not far from Dobanpu's cave. He had heard nothing of the man for three days, save that he yet lived and that spirits sent by the God-Men might yet be a danger to him. For these reasons— and also, Seyganko thought, out of pride—Emwaya had nursed him herself and sent the curious about their affairs.

What she would not say to the curious, Seyganko decided, she might say to her future husband. And the lionfish was worth saving even if he learned nothing from Emwaya. Paddling around the point of the island would give other lionfish time to gather, scent the blood trail, and follow it. In strength, they had been known to attack a canoe.

It was as well that for the most part, lionfish were solitary creatures, each claiming its portion of the lake and driving off all comers save for females in the mating season. Had they commonly hunted in schools like the eunuch-makers did, they would have eaten the lake bare of all life, probably including human.

The canoe was heavy and clumsy with the lionfish trailing astern, but Seyganko's strong arms and well-balanced paddle drove it swiftly toward shore. As the sun rose, it burned off the morning mist, and soon he could see the hill rising from amid the last gray wisps. At last he saw the reed enclosure that let Emwaya draw water, safe from lionfish and crocodiles, and even allowed her to swim when the spirit took her.

Dobanpu must have healed; a dark head broke the water in the enclosure. Seyganko smiled. If Emwaya was in a good frame of mind, she might let him join her. After they swam together, the most common end was rolling together in the grass.

Then the head grew shoulders and arms, and Seyganko saw that it was the form of a woman, but not of Emwaya. The Kwanyi slave girl was making free with the swimming place, as bare as a babe. In the light of day, and not frightened half out of her wits, she was even a greater pleasure to see than on the night of the raid.

"Where is your mistress?" he called in the True Tongue. She might hate her old masters with a passion, but she could hardly have been among them for long without learning at least a little of their speech.

The girl stood up, shook herself like a dog, then pointed toward the cave. Drops of water silvered by the morning sun sparkled in her hair and trickled down her breasts as she moved about. Seyganko would have thought her unaware of how well she appeared had he not caught a sly look from the corner of one brown eye.

He grinned. Apart from his oaths to Emwaya, which did not allow him another woman save with her permission, he doubted the wisdom of tumbling his betrothed's maidservant. He also knew a sure way of putting an end to her tricks.

"Ho! Woman of Emwaya, I have work for you." Seyganko heaved on the rope until the lionfish's tail was above water. "Come and help me haul this brute ashore!"

The girl took one look at the lionfish, another at Seyganko, then fled toward the mouth of the cave, still bare. Seyganko pulled the canoe ashore, sat down on the girl's waistcloth, and was whetting his trident with a piece of ironstone when Emwaya came down to him.

When he could free himself from her grip and let go of her, Seyganko held her at arm's length. He saw that she seemed paler and thinner than three days of any ordeal would warrant. Or at least any ordeal save one.

"Your father—"

"Dobanpu Spirit-Speaker lives. His sleep is now healthy, his dreams clean. I have fed him porridge and water, and they rest well in his belly."

She spoke as if still in a ritual, but he saw unaccustomed moisture in the corners of her eyes. He reached up to brush away the tears, and she gripped his wrists as if they were the last things between her and drowning.

"Seyganko, forgive my weakness. I did not mean you to see me this way—"

"No, you are not like that wench you have taken into your service. She meant me to see her as she was swimming."

"I thought as much when she came uphill bare. What did you say to her?"

Seyganko told the truth, and Emwaya rewarded him with a laugh that held some of her usual good cheer. "I will help you with the fish and then have words with Mokossa."

"Is that her name?"

"I think it is the name of her tribe, one living beyond the lands of the Kwanyi. She is not child-minded, but living among the Kwanyi frightened her out of most of the wits she had."

"Not so much that she cannot have eyes for a warrior, I warn you."

"Any woman with sense will have eyes for you, Seyganko. I have just told you that Mokossa is a woman of sense."

"Do you seek to flatter me, Emwaya?"

"I have done so often enough that I do not need to try again."

If she was able to banter like this, she could hardly have dire news. It was in Seyganko's mind to slip his hands under the waistcloth and undo its knot, and the spirits take the lionfish!

Yet something in her voice—

"Did your father learn anything from the servant of the God-Men?"

"I think I can do as well drawing lionfish ashore as Mokossa. Since I do not wish a sodden waist-cloth—"

"Emwaya." He held her by the shoulders, so tightly that he half feared she would slap him. "Your father brought strong spirits, and he is not one to do that lightly. What did he learn?"

Emwaya shuddered but did not weep or try to pull away. After a moment, she reached up and gently lifted Seyganko's hands from her bare shoulders.

"The spirits were angry at fighting the protection the God-Men put on their servants. Also, I think some of them were hurt."

Spirits could be injured, though not as easily or in the same way as men. Seyganko knew enough of Dobanpu's art to have learned that. If the God-Men had power to put that kind of guarding on their servants—

"Are they angry with your father?"

"He said he thought not. Some spirits are friends of the God-Men, others their enemies, or at least enemies of the spirits they command."

Tribal feuds among the spirits! Seyganko silently cursed the spirits, those who made them, those who served them—

"The God-Men have learned that Xuchotl the Accursed has fallen."

The words came out as if Emwaya were purging herself of something foul. Indeed, her face seemed more content, and she leaned against Seyganko and pressed her face into his shoulder. He rested an arm across her back, feeling the fine skin and the strength within, but not seeking anything further now.

"How did it fall?"

"It was hard to tell. It seems that a Kwanyi hunter was seeking game far to the east at the time the city fell. He entered unharmed, explored it, saw that all within were dead, then fled, fearing that its destroyers would come for him. The God-Men learned his tale and gave him to the Living Wind. They seek to hide this knowledge until they know what use to make of it."

If the God-Men had the wits of a leech, they would be asking Dobanpu to join his knowledge to theirs to fight whatever had the power to cast down the Accursed City. Any such being could eat the tribes of the forest as a lionfish ate fingerlings.

The God-Men lacked such wisdom, however. Even if they found it now, Chabano of the Kwanyi would not let them spoil his dreams of conquest. And Dobanpu would most likely refuse to trust the God-Men even if they and Chabano both asked for his aid. Sey-ganko hoped he would not have to say the last in Emwaya's hearing. She knew her father could be proud and obstinate, but she had not granted her betrothed the right to say so.

"Who else knows of this among the common folk of either tribe?"

"That, my father could not learn. Do you think the God-Men might try to keep this knowledge from Chabano?"

"It might serve them well if they could," Seyganko answered. "It is said that Chabano is jealous of the power of the God-Men and seeks to wage his wars without them. If the God-Men joined with the power that destroyed Xuchotl, Chabano would be a babe against them."

"They would be mad to think that such a power could serve them!"

"I know that a shaman can do only so much. You know that as well. Both of us learned it from your father, who was born with the knowledge." Seyganko shrugged. "The God-Men were not so fortunate."

"Curse the God-Men!" Emwaya said fervently. Then it was her hands that danced down Seyganko's back and under his garments, so that it was not she who was the first of them unclothed.

Sun-curing would be needed to finish the work on the monkey's hide to make it a fit garment. Conan held out no great hope of that much sun and offered Valeria his shirt.

She held it against her, then laughed. "As a night-shift, I might accept it."

"My hide's thicker than yours, Valeria, and not bred in Aquilonia."

"If I've survived the sun and salt wind at sea, I'll not broil before this hide cures."

"Or rots."

"Does Crom tell you to look always for the worst, Conan?"

"Groin's not a god to tell anyone anything, at least not for the asking," Conan replied. His grim Cimmerian god was not a jesting matter for him, or for anyone else born in the Northlands, where the name was mighty.

"Is that why you're so often closemouthed?" Valeria asked. Seeing no answer forthcoming, she threw up her hands and fell in behind the Cimmerian.

They had not gone far from their night's camp before a brief but heavy shower soaked them both and left pools of clean water everywhere. They drank, then cut still-green branches from a fallen tree with which to make staffs. With these aiding them, especially the sore-footed Valeria, they made good progress the rest of the morning.

Noon brought them hungry to the bank of a river too deep to wade. Conan studied its surface, eyeing the swirls in the murky water. He studied with equal care the banks of the river, including places where animal tracks ended in patches of churned mud and scattered leaves.

"Crocodiles," he said briefly.

Valeria glowered at the water. "I was thinking we could make a raft and let the river do the work."

"It flows south and west, which is the way we want to go. But we've no tools, and the crocs would have us off a floating log before we'd gone half a league." Conan looked beyond the banks, seeing fallen tree trunks. He saw too few for a raft, and some of those too large for even his strength to roll to the water.

"No, I was thinking we should be hunting for a meal, anyway. Share a beast with the crocodiles, and they may give us safe passage."

Valeria shrugged. "If it works with sharks, it may work with crocodiles. But, oh, that I'd ever be ready to sell my soul for a canoe."

"Sell your body for an ax, and we'd have the canoe," Conan said, then ducked as Valeria lashed at him with a length of vine.

Hunger and the need for silence ended the banter. They found hiding places that commanded two of the low spots on the bank, where the jungle creatures came to drink. Conan suspected they might well have a long wait, as the pools of rainwater would doubtless content the beasts as well as themselves. It might be dark before the animals came, and Conan did not care to match wits with a crocodile after dark.

As a prophet, Conan failed. It was not yet mid-afternoon when a family of wild pigs came huffling and snorting through the bushes. There were five in all: an old boar, a sow, and three piglets following in the wake of their elders.

Using the hand signals of the Barachan pirates, Conan told Valeria to take the sow, or failing that, a piglet. That would do for their own food. He himself would face the boar—and any crocodile not sated with that much raw pork was no creature of nature.

Conan thrust that thought aside with the same distaste he felt for all wizardry. Yet he could not forget last night. Had he sensed powerful magic at work not far off ?

It would not have surprised the Cimmerian to learn of such magic. The tales he had heard in Xuchotl suggested that those who built the city might have left magic, as well as stones, behind. Old, evil, tainted magic, perhaps drawing on the lore of the nightmare empire of Acheron. Even legends did not agree on how far that lore had spread, how long it had lasted, or how deep it had sunk roots into the minds of men.

Nor did legends agree on how a man became a spell-smeller—the name in the north for those who had some further sense beyond the common five— allowing him to discover the working of magic. They did not even agree that such men existed. Some said that it was only a matter of recognizing subtle changes in the natural world, changes that any spell always made.

Conan had never thought much of such arguments, and less than most of that one. If such talk could have made sorcerers forsake their craft and turn into honest men, he would have gladly joined it until his throat was dry. As matters were, he chose not to let his throat dry out in the first place!

Now the boar was sniffing the air with the care of the scout of a host seeking an ambush. It scented nothing. The scant breeze was flowing from it toward the hunters, and both Conan and Valeria had been in the jungle long enough for its smell to partly disguise theirs.

Conan nodded, and Valeria drew her sword. It caught briefly in the scabbard, and the faint scraping as it came free made the boar raise its head. Again it sniffed the wind, and this time the sow moved to stand between her piglets and danger.

The danger that struck first was not the human hunters. Conan did not see the ripple in the stream, but he saw the dripping, tooth-studded jaws burst from the water and close on the sow.

Her squeals raised echoes and sent birds flying and monkeys leaping from every tree within a long bowshot. Valeria leaped from cover, heedless of the boar, sword slashing down at one of the piglets as they scattered.

The boar paid her no attention at first as it lowered its head and tried to gore the crocodile. The reptile, a patriarch of the breed, had flung itself so far up the bank that it could not return at once to the water. Its claws gouged mud, and its tail lashed as it tried to fend off the boar, hold on to the dying sow, and reach the refuge of the river.

At last it succeeded in all three. A bloody swirl in the water marked its escape. Valeria had just sheathed her sword in the neck of a second piglet when the boar turned on her.

Had the boar been a little quicker, the songs sung in later days about Valeria of the Red Brotherhood would have been rather shorter. But she turned, freeing her sword, drawing her dagger, and leaping aside from the boar's rush with a speed that rivaled Conan's. The Cimmerian remembered how deadly she had been in the battles in Xuchotl as her dagger slashed the boar's muzzle.

The great pig squealed in rage and pain and drew back. Its hooves churned up almost as much mud as the crocodile had. It tried to gain footing on the slippery bank for launching a charge, but again it was a trifle too slow. Conan was within sword's reach before the boar could charge. There was no subtlety or art in the way his sword came down on the boar's thick neck. Swordmasters from Zingara to Vanaheim would have cringed at the brutal strength of the blow, more suited to an executioner than a swordsman.

It did not matter to Conan who struck the blow, or to the boar, who fell dead, or to Valeria, who found the boar lying at her feet.

Valeria turned, the battle-light in her eyes, and brushed her hair from her face. The movement of her arm lifted her breasts. Altogether she was a sight to make a man's blood seethe in his veins, the huntress among her prey, silhouetted against the sun-dappled river.

She stood so that once again Conan did not see the warning ripples in the stream. The second crocodile was as large as the first, but not as swift. Also, it exhaled a great, foul, hissing breath as it slid up the bank.

Valeria jumped to safety as the jaws thudded shut an arm's length from her leg. Not watching where she leaped, she landed on a slippery patch, reeled, and staggered hard against the Cimmerian. He clutched at her, drawing her backward with him.

His back came up hard against a red-barked tree. The tree shook and made a rumbling sound like a mill wheel. Instantly sensing a new danger, Conan stepped away from the tree, turning and loosing his grip on Valeria as he did so.

The next moment, the ground vanished from under his feet. He plunged into darkness, taking with him one memory and one hope. The memory was of Valeria's horror-stricken face staring after him. The hope was that she would remember the crocodile at her back rather than fret herself about him.

Geyrus, first among the God-Men—or First Speaker to the Living Wind, as he was named in ritual—shook his staff. That was not enough to ease his wrath, so he struck the rod hard upon the silver-shot rock at his feet.

The three Cobra Clan warriors cringed, as if they expected the rock to open up at Geyrus's command and swallow them. Their eyes showed only whites, and they held their shaking hands over their mouths in the ritual gesture of supplication.

They would find no mercy from Geyrus, and deserved none.

"Six slain, three taken, and one of my handmaids as well!" he roared. He could make his voice as loud as a lion's if he chose, though not as easily as he had done in his youth. Then he could have brought Cha-bano himself to his knees with mouth-magic!

"Forgive—" muttered one of the warriors.

"There is no forgiveness for such folly!" Geyrus stormed. "Folly enough in taking her on such a journey at all. Folly ten times worse in losing her to the lake-swimmers!"

He did not use the lion-voice this time. He needed to save his strength, and also, he did not wish all he said to be overheard.

Even in the very house of the Speakers to the Living Wind, there were those whose hearts lay first with Chabano of the Kwanyi. They would not hesitate to tell him any secret of the Servants if they thought it would earn them his goodwill.

"You are dead men," he said more softly. "Yet I am disposed to grant you as much mercy as you deserve. You may choose your death. Shall I give you to the Living Wind? Or shall I give you some other death, of my own choosing?"

The mere mention of the Living Wind made one warrior drop to his knees, a posture he would rather have died than have assumed before a human foe. Geyrus smiled tightly so as to reveal only those of his teeth that still shone white and perfect.

Geyrus understood the warriors' terror. The Living Wind played with those who came to it with unclouded minds, harassing them like a cat with a mouse. Madness and agony came swiftly, and lasted long enough to make death a craved release.

"So be it. You shall meet the fate of any cobra when it crawls too close to the leopard's cubs."

Geyrus did not produce a thunderclap as he completed the spell. The first sound the men heard was the growl as the spell-borne leopards scented prey. Then claws struck golden sparks from the stone as the leopards hurled themselves upon the warriors.

Geyrus had kept his promise. The leopards killed more swiftly than the Living Wind commonly did. Fangs tore out throats, claws ripped bellies, and screams of fear and agony echoed only briefly about the tunnels. The leopards were feeding lustily on the corpses as Geyrus dropped the stout net across the tunnel.

A time had been when he could have raised a barrier against the leopards entirely by magic. That time of youthful strength was gone, and would not come again. His best now was bringing the leopards when they were needed, and returning them when they slept, sated on human flesh.

Geyrus did not pray to any god who had a name among living men. Nor did he pray to the Living Wind—it was no god; that had been plain from the earliest days of its Servants.

Instead, he hoped that his not keeping the secret of Xuchotl's fall would do no harm. It was probably a vain hope, inasmuch as neither Chabano nor Dobanpu were fools. Geyrus consoled himself with the thought that if they had been, there would be no challenge, no pride for him in besting them. Both a man's first battles and his last should be against worthy foes.

But that girl—lost! She alone would earn Seyganko the slowest death any man had ever suffered, after he had watched Emwaya die just as slowly. Or would it be better to make Dobanpu's unnatural daughter watch her betrothed's death before her own?

Time to decide when he had them both in his hands. Either way would ensure the girl's obedience for the rest of his days. The First Speaker to the Living Wind would sleep in a well-warmed bed, as befitted a victor.

The disappearance of Valeria's Cimmerian companion was swift and silent. One moment, Valeria sensed him at her back; the next moment, her fine-honed battle instincts told her that he was not.

She leaped again, nearly losing her last garment. The crocodile hissed like a pot of stew overflowing into a cook fire and wriggled forward. Its jaws—as long as a child of twelve—gaped, then shut again with a clang as if made of iron instead of bone.

Valeria knew something of saltwater crocodiles, having once anchored in a river mouth where they swarmed. She had never been so far from the sea in a land where the rivers also spawned them, but she judged this beast to be much like its seafaring cousins. It would be swift in the water, slow on land, tenacious of life, and slow of wits. Doubtless it was cudgeling those wits for some new way of dealing with her, now that its first lunge had failed.

She could be long gone from the riverbank and any danger from the crocodile if she was ready to abandon Conan to whatever fate had befallen him. Or that he has fallen into, she surmised, seeing as the very earth itself seemed to have swallowed him.

This thought made her next leap cautious, and she thanked Mitra when she landed on solid ground. Then she kicked off her boots. Blisters or no, she had a better feel for any surface under her—ship's deck or jungle riverbank—when she was unshod. .

She drew dagger to match sword and studied her opponent. It was impossible for her to seek safety at the price of leaving Conan. Not impossible in the sense of against nature, as it would have been impossible for her to grow wings and fly—but against her nature and all she had lived by since before she was a woman.

She and the Cimmerian were battle-bound, as surely as by any tie of blood or by oath sworn before a score of priests of as many gods. She would return to serving in a barber's house, or even dance in taverns, before she broke such a bond as she had with Conan.

That he desired her was an annoyance, as a fly buzzing about her head might have been. But one did not strike oneself on the head with a hammer to swat such a fly!

The crocodile hissed again and lumbered forward. Valeria shifted on nimble feet so that she could watch the whole riverbank as well as her immediate foe. The one thing she dreaded most was another crocodile. The first one would most likely be off gorging itself on the sow, but where there were two of the monsters, there could be three.

She saw no sign of another reptile, but she did see a shallow depression in the ground where the leaf mold and tangled dead vines seemed to sag. If that place had swallowed Conan, perhaps it might be persuaded to swallow the crocodile.

Then the monster lunged forward with a speed that startled her. Surprise did not slow her, or make her forget that no creature's brain can be far from its eyes.

As the crocodile lunged, Valeria leaped, and more. She twisted in midair, with the grace that had caused more than a few to throw silver, even gold her way in years past. She came down astride the crocodile's spiny back, just behind the massive neck.

Before the crocodile realized that its prey was no longer in sight, Valeria struck. Her dagger drove hard into the scaly hide, seeking a chink, sinking in deep enough to hold her. Then she lifted her sword, reversed the blade, and drove it deep into the crocodile's right eye.

The sword was awkward for stabbing, and nowhere else on the beast would its point have gained entrance. Striking where it did, it reached the crocodile's life.

The hiss turned into a screaming bellow as Valeria leaped free of the creature, as desperately as ever she had leaped from shark-infested water into a boat. The crocodile's tail thrashed wildly, splintering bushes and scoring the bark of stout trees. The legs spasmed, claws frenziedly spraying earth and leaves all over Valeria. Then it gave a final lurch, rolled over, and slammed its head down in the depression Valerian had noted before.

In an uncanny silence, the earth gaped. With a tearing of vines and a snapping of roots, the crocodile upended. For a moment, its tail waved again, as if in its final convulsion the beast was bidding farewell to its slayer. Then the crocodile vanished.

This time the hole did not. Whatever device or spell had closed it previously seemed to be exhausted. It gaped the width of a man's height at Valeria's feet. She looked down into twilight, then into a darkness as complete as the deepest abyss of the sea.

She swallowed. She could not drive out of her thoughts the notion that not even Conan could have survived such a fall… or that if he had, the crocodile might have finished what the fall began.

She would never know, however, save by going down herself and finding the Cimmerian, or his body. She refused to contemplate what she would face if he were alive but helpless from hurts taken in the fall.

"Conan," she muttered, "my life might have been simpler had you never left Cimmeria."

Yes, and doubtless shorter as well.

The voice in her mind was not altogether Conan's, but close enough to make her start.

So be it. She had been a climber from childhood, and once a sailor had said of her that she had eyes in her fingers and toes. That would help. So would a stout length of vine, or several lengths bound and braided to support her weight.

The dead vines were too rotted for such work, but there was no shortage of live ones. Valeria had her vine rope before the sun-dappling of the river had greatly changed. She finished her labors by tying a slipknot in one end of the rope, slinging her boots by their laces about her neck, and making a sword-thong of vine.

The vine would not serve well for either rope or thong as would good Shemite leather, but Valeria was no stranger to making-do. For the climb, she would use the thong to bind her sword across her back, but once on solid ground, the weapon would come into service.

She had finished all the work she could do in the gods' own daylight, on a jungle riverbank that now seemed a pleasant vantage compared to the blackness at her feet. The rest of her duty lay below.

She breathed deeply until she was as calm as could be hoped. Then she lowered her feet over the edge of the hole and began her downward climb.

FOUR

Conan's fall began with ill fortune, which swiftly changed for the better. Had it been otherwise, the stories of many men and not a few realms would have been vastly altered.

He was no spell-smeller, or he might have sensed the magic binding the ground at the mouth of the pit. Then again, perhaps not. It was old earth-magic, and the names of those who discovered it had been lost to human memory long before Atlantis was even built, let alone before the oceans swallowed it.

The art had not been lost, however. The sorcery known to the builders of Xuchotl partook of it. Nor was the doomed city the only creation to which they had turned their magical arts. Deep within the jungle they also built and wrought mighty works, at a time when the Black Kingdoms were but bands of feuding tribesmen.

It was one of these leavings that Conan had en-countered. The earth gaped beneath his feet, he plunged down into darkness briefly lit from above, then continued his plunge in darkness deeper yet as the pit closed above him.

Thrice he struck earthen walls that yet seemed too solid and smooth to be altogether natural. These blows slowed his fall somewhat, but also drove the breath from his lungs. He had just regained it when he struck for a final time, where the wall of the pit had crumbled under the inexorable thrust of the roots of some forest giant. The blow took him across the chest and would have cracked, or even crushed the ribs of any lesser man.

With the Cimmerian, it drove out the barely regained breath and tossed him like a child's ball into the mouth of a tunnel entering the other side of the pit. He struck, half slid and half bounced ten paces, then lay there while earth quivered, rumbled, and fell from the mouth of the tunnel.

He would gladly have lain until his breath returned, but instinct told him that the mouth of the tunnel was only precariously bound by whatever magic ruled here. Lying thus in momentary comfort could end in swift and final burial.

Iron fingers seemed to clutch his chest as he crawled, but the sound of still-falling earth drove him onward. He was sweating with more than his exertions when at last silence fell again, broken only by his harsh breathing.

Probing his ribs with his fingers, he found nothing broken, although he would wager the price of a good inn that he would have the mother and father of all bruises by morning. His breathing had slowed, and cautiously he sat up.

Then a rumble and a series of thuds sounded from the mouth of the tunnel. They rose to a crescendo, but faded as swiftly as they came. Something large had followed him into the pit and plummeted all the way to its distant bottom, as he had not.

He told himself that the sound was too heavy to be Valeria. That kept the ill-luck thought from his mind that she would surely follow him down if she bested the crocodile. She had that loyalty to a battle comrade that defies common sense, and that Conan himself also lived by.

The mouth of the tunnel was now two-thirds blocked by fallen earth—and Conan was thunderstruck to realize that he could see this. He was no longer in utter darkness worthy of the deepest slave-pits of Stygia.

He turned and looked down the tunnel. It sloped away into shadow but was clearly visible for some fifty paces or more. At the very edge of the Cimmerian's vision, the walls seemed to turn from earth into stone, and carved stone at that.

Over all played a subtle light that at one moment seemed sapphire-hued, at the next, as crimson as a fine ruby. Trying to follow the changes of color made Conan dizzy, and in time he ceased his efforts. The light was magic, no doubt, and he was uneasy in the presence of magic. But he would be a cursed deal uneasier in total darkness, and that light might give him a way out of here without Valeria's risking her neck to climb down to him!

Now, if he had some way to tell her that…

Valeria knew that the air had to be cooler this deep in the earth. It only seemed hotter, as though she were climbing down the throat of a volcano toward the molten rock bubbling far below, ready to turn her to ashes should her grip fail for a moment.

"By Erlik's thews!" she muttered. "Forget what you've learned about not letting your fancies run wild, you silly wench, and you will fall."

It was not a fancy that sweat covered every bit of exposed skin, turning into slimy mud where earth had fallen on her from the walls. Her loincloth clung to her, as sodden as a jellyfish, and even her boots seemed to have become heavier with the dampness of the air in this pit.

Truth was, she had never climbed so long and with such precarious holds for hands and feet. Compared to this climb, the time she had raced a shipmate from bow to stern over the masthead on a wager was a child's game. It did not-help, either, that her life had not been at stake in that race.

Groping feet touched a flatter surface. A ledge? Something besides the wall of the pit, anyway… but test it first before putting full weight on it, let alone undoing the rope from its moorings above.

"Hooaaa!" The voice seemed more a specter's than a man's as it floated up from below like smoke. Valeria's feet groped for purchase on the ledge, until at last she found a spot whereupon to stand. She left the vine rope in place, though, as she stared downward.

The mouth of the pit was now so far above her that its light barely let her count the fingers of a hand held in front of her face. Beneath, all was blackness. Or was it? From well below, on the far side of the pit, a dim glow seemed to battle the darkness, like distant fireflies on a moonless night.

Except that no firefly ever blinked in those hues of blue and red—no natural firefly, at least. But the laws of nature might not bind whatever lived down here.

Valeria shuddered. She had no more taste for magic than the Cimmerian did, if the truth were known, and for much the same reasons. Magic made honest war skills useless, and made its users more often than not as twisted as the street of her native village in Aquilonia! Tascela was the worst sorceress she had seen, which made her thank the gods that she had not seen some of the wizards Conan said he had fought.

There would be time to fret over whether Conan had been spinning tales when she knew that the voice below was his… and when she had rejoined him.

"The sea frees us," she called. It was a password of the Red Brotherhood. Only Conan in this jungle was likely to know the reply.

"The land binds us," came the reply. Valeria's knees quivered with relief, but she did not move otherwise.

"Conan! Where are you?"

"In a tunnel, beyond where you see the light. I—"

A clod of earth bounced off Valeria's head and spun away into the abyss. She looked up. Was it her fancy, or was the hole above smaller, the light from it dimmer?

The light was surely fading; her hand was now only a blurred, fingerless shape. The glow from below was holding steady, but it could not take the place of the trickle of daylight from overhead.

"Conan! Something's happening to the light. I'll try to climb down until I'm opposite you, then throw my rope across. How wide is the pit where you are?"

"Wide enough that your pet crocodile didn't stick in its gullet when you sent it down to join me," the reply came. "Best you move quickly, though, if the light's going."

She heard hints of more danger than that in his voice, and was briefly angry at his hiding the truth from her. Reason replaced anger and told her that he might not know all the truth himself. If he did, he would tell it to woman, king, or god!

The rope was near its end when Valeria found a foothold on a huge curving root opposite the mouth of the tunnel. At least she felt the bark under her feet; the light from above was almost gone. Then Conan's head and massive shoulders nearly blocked the light from the tunnel below. She saw now that the mouth of the tunnel was heaped with freshly fallen earth, and understood what Conan feared.

She had not been so desperate for silence since her brief days as a cutpurse. Even the faint hiss as the slipknot loosened and the rope came free seemed to batter her ears like thunder. The end of the rope flew past her, down into the pit; then she gripped her end and began hauling it in.

She was hauling vigorously when the rope suddenly went taut in her hands. Caught on another root, she thought. Then it began jerking up and down. Caught it was, but by something alive in the depths of the pit—and, she would wager, not by anything as innocent as a crocodile.

Valeria would gladly have faced a score of crocodiles rather than what might even now be climbing from the depths. She did not let fingers or voice shake, however, to give any hint of her fear. She flung her end of the rope across the pit, saw Conan grip it firmly, then heaved with all her strength on the bight of the vines.

For the longest moment of Valeria's life, it was an even contest which would break first—the vine or the grip of whatever lay below. Then, suddenly, the rope shot up like a flying fish. Valeria seized the free end and hastily bound it about her waist.

The rope was covered with a foul ichor that might have oozed from a vast pustule, and now she heard slobbering and gulping noises from below. Not far below, either, and she would have to swing down to cross the pit. The root offered no foothold fit for a leap.

"Conan!" she called.

"I hear it, too. Jump, Valeria!"

She would drop no farther if she missed her jump than if she swung down, then climbed. Not as far, indeed, for Conan was drawing in the rope until it stretched taut across the gap.

Valeria braced herself, flexed her legs, pressed her hands hard against the wall, and thereby dislodged several more clods of earth. They fell into darkness, and it seemed that the slobbering and gulping grew louder yet.

The pirate woman took the deepest breath of her life, as if enough oxygen in her body would float her over the nightmare gap. Then she leaped.

She was in midair for only a heartbeat, but that was long enough for something to reach up from below and pat her. Its touch was as light as a kitten's, yet it burned like a hot iron.

Then she was on the far side, clawing up over the tumbled earth, listening to the howl of a hunter balked of prey echo up and down the pit and into the tunnel. More earth fell from the walls and ceiling. Conan dragged her the rest of the way over the pile by one arm and her hair.

In the process, her loincloth at last deserted her, and she was bare except for weapons and boots as she tumbled at the Cimmerian's feet. For once he seemed to ignore that state, dragging her upright.

"Can you walk?"

"I can run, to get away from that!"

The howling in the tunnel had not diminished, and now Valeria heard another fierce sound joining it.

The walls of the pit were shuddering, as she wanted to do, and she saw masses of earth the size of a man plunge past. She also heard them strike something not far below with an ugly, sodden sound.

Then the roof of the tunnel mouth joined the shuddering, and neither Cimmerian nor Aquilonian needed any further warning. They scrambled down the tunnel, slowing only when they felt stone under their feet, not stopping until they heard the rumble of great masses of falling earth behind them.

A mephitic breeze wafted from the mouth of the tunnel—or rather, from where the mouth of the tunnel had been. Whether the whole pit had collapsed, they could not say. But the way back was now blocked by a solid mass of earth that seemed to glare at them in defiance of any puny efforts they might make to shift it and escape.

Not that Valeria had the slightest intention of returning by way of the pit, when its inhabitants might still be alive and hungry. Perhaps that wall of earth between her and them was not so dire a fate as she had thought—unless the pit creatures could carve a path through it, or they had kin somewhere in the tunnel beyond.

As to the first, the best course was swift flight. As to the second, keen eyes and keen steel would have to be enough—that, and a prayer or two, if any god could hear them from these deeps.

She pointed a bare arm down the tunnel. Conan nodded and fell in at the rear, for the moment the post of greater danger. Valeria recognized this, and also that Conan's eyes now roamed over her with concern for any hurts she might have taken.

But there was hardly a price she would not have paid to be able to climb into a hot bath!

Conan took the rear guard until they reached a place where the tunnel divided; there were no sounds of pursuit behind or of life ahead. That this was no natural tunnel was by now made plainer than ever by the remains of incredibly ancient tool marks and patches of stain and corrosion that might once have been bronze or iron.

At the dividing point, Conan examined Valeria's ankle. It showed an ugly dark mark, like the worst sort of burn, but the pain was fading and the ankle would support her weight. Like his ribs, it would slow neither weapons nor feet, depending on what seemed the best way of meeting any danger.

"Now, you will take the shirt off my back, or I'll know why," he said. "Garbed as you are, you'd adorn a royal palace, but I doubt we'll be finding many palaces down here. Their dungeons, perhaps, and the bones of those held in them, but little else."

"You need not soothe me, you son of a he-goat."

"Ha! You've your spirits back. Perhaps you need no clothes then, since without them, you're double-armed, steel and womanhood!"

"Give me that shirt," she snapped, then laughed loud enough to raise echoes. She looked about her while the echoes died, then almost snatched the garment the Cimmerian held out to her.

It came down to mid-thigh. Conan cut the sleeves into strips and bound them around Valeria's feet to protect the blisters until further walking toughened the skin. So clad, with her hair a tangle any honest bird would have disdained to nest in, and her boots dangling from a thong about her neck, Valeria would have been flung into the street from the cheapest waterfront tavern.

Or she would have been but for her sword and daggers—and also for the look in her eyes that said any hand touching her against her will would not return to its owner intact, if at all.

Conan needed no further warnings in that matter. Indeed, he was grateful for the skill and luck that had allowed her to keep her weapons. They would be fighting again before they ever saw daylight, even if the battle was against foes where steel could do no more than give man or woman a clean death.

Valeria found little pleasure in her present situation save being alive. Also, the Cimmerian's presence might well keep her so longer than otherwise. He had been as formidable against natural foes as against magical ones, and for rather more years than she had followed the warrior's path.

Where the tunnel divided, one way sloped upward, the other down. They halted, Valeria set her back against the wall and looked to the rear, and Conan briefly explored in both directions.

Valeria did not enjoy being even briefly alone here in the bowels of the earth. But she could master her fancies now; she would wait for real monsters to leap from the shadows before she let herself fear. She passed the brief time of waiting by unrolling the sword-thong from about her waist and linking sword and wrist securely. She hoped she would have no call for more climbing, and likewise that the damp air would keep the vine supple and strong should she need it.

Conan returned swiftly. "The way down leads to water, deeper than I'd care to try. And that's leaving out what might be in the water."

Valeria held her nose. "Something that reeks like a days-old battlefield, from what's on you."

"That, and more. I saw statues, kin to the oldest idols I saw in the Black Kingdoms. I'm more than ever certain that someone built this warren."

"But why?"

"Like as not, to save a trek through the jungle. Let's hope it's fit to do the same for us." He looked at .the upward-sloping way. "If I'm not altogether turned about, that leads back the way we came."

"Better the jungle we know than what might be down here," Valeria said fervently. "That beast in the pit sounded like something that could have eaten Xuchotl's Crawler for lunch and the dragon in the forest for dinner."

Conan said nothing, but took the lead. For three hundred paces, the tunnel sloped upward. Valeria began to hope that it might rise so close to the surface that they could make a way for themselves. If another tree had thrust a root down—

Disappointment came swiftly. Not only were the tunnel walls intact, save for one place where a niche had crumbled, but the floor began to slope downward as steeply as it had risen. It also grew as slick as if it had been oiled.

The light did not fade, and Valeria now began to make out paintings on the wall. Or at least they might have been paintings. They also might have been patterns of tiny jewels set into the stone; they seemed to sparkle. Trying to see which, Valeria looked closely at one pattern—and found that it changed before her eyes, from one beast to another, and then to yet others.

One beast was a lion, another a great fish, and she hoped that the third was a dragon. The rest were things that she decided she would not care to look at too closely, let alone meet.

Although the light did not fade, Valeria began to feel moving air brush against her skin. Her nose wrinkled at the growing reek of something long dead and thoroughly rotten. She tore another strip from Conan's shirt and bound it over her nose, and the Cimmerian did likewise.

Past a curve where a slab of wall had fallen to half block the tunnel, they came to a cavern the size of a royal hall. The light seemed to cling to the floor, so that the roof of the cavern was lost in shadow. The far wall, a good bowshot away, was likewise dimmed.

The floor of the cavern was almost lost under a carpet of fungi. They grew in great slabs, rising as high as Valeria's waist; for the most part, they were pale and flabby but with streaks of a more wholesome brown color running through them. From their stems dripped a greasy fluid that turned the soil beneath to a noisome muck, and more than a few of them had the appearance of being half-eaten.

This time the two explored together. Unspoken but plain was the agreement that no one should go with unguarded back in this cavern.

As they circled the walls, they found more fungi that looked as if they had been gnawed at. One entire patch of soil had been eaten bare, with fresh fungi already sprouting among the rotting fragments of the old ones.

"These things grow fast," Conan observed. "Fast enough, I wager, for something to browse on them."

Halfway around the cavern, they found the fungi growing thicker than ever, and the smell of decay the strongest. Valeria stepped forward and slashed at the largest slab with her sword. It fell apart in a crumbling mass of dust and spores, revealing a massive rib—part of the remains of some unearthly creature.

"Something did browse on them, Conan," she said.

She could not help looking about the cavern. "Now they're eating it."

"If beasts can eat them—" he said.

Valeria's stomach twisted, and the last of the monkey nearly left her. "Birds and monkeys are a good test. Whatever that creature was, it might have been born of magic, left over from the days of the tunnel-builders. Who knows what it could stomach that would kill us?"

"True enough, but we've found nothing else to eat, and no water fit to drink. These look like they might have water inside."

"Ah…"

"I'll try a bit first. If my fingers and toes don't turn green and fall off—"

"Ha! A Cimmerian's no better than this beast for testing what common folk can eat. I've seen you eating what they served at the soldiers' taverns in Sukhmet!"

"Better fare than the rations, I'd say."

Valeria threw up her hands in mock disgust. "If you've a belly and bowels of iron, perhaps. I'd rather eat salt beef three years in the cask. By Erlik, I'd rather eat the cask!"

"A trifle hard on the teeth, for my taste," Conan said.

Valeria noted with amusement that he still approached the fungus as if it were a venomous snake, probing with his dagger, and only then slicing. He was also careful to catch the slice before it struck the ground. When he put it to his mouth, he bit off a portion that might have fit in a thimble with room to spare.

After a moment's chewing, he swallowed. "Greasy as a Stygian harlot's hair," he said. "Otherwise, I've eaten worse."

"How long would it take you to remember when and where?"

"Oh, give me a year or so—" He broke off and cupped a hand to one ear. Valeria imitated him, her other hand on her sword, but heard nothing.

"Could be a trick of the echoes in this tomb," Conan said at last. Valeria wished he had not used that word.

The Cimmerian cut off another, slightly larger piece of the fungus and disposed of it as he had the first. When it went down, he licked his lips.

"Greasier than the first, but nothing else against it," he said. "Wait a bit, to see how it sits in my stomach—"

The sound was half growl, half scream, and altogether ghastly. The cavern picked it up, hurling echoes back and forth until it seemed to Valeria that they might be inside a giant drum beaten by a madman.

She would almost rather have been mad than to have seen what came lumbering into the cavern from another tunnel. It was as high as a man at the shoulders, with great plates of bone jutting from behind its eyes to guard its thick neck. Crimson orbs the size of melons glared at them past two stout horns thrusting forward from the beaked muzzle. With its tail, it was longer than a ship's boat, and from the way it sank into the ground, it was as heavy as an elephant.

Another dragon, and no Apples of Derketa to slay it. That was Valeria's first thought. A brighter one followed on its heels. I have good company for a last battle.

As if they had been fighting-partners for years, Valeria and Conan spread apart so that the creature could not attack both of them at once. Valeria stud-led the horns and headplates. If neither were too sharp, they offered handholds. Then a good thrust with sword or dagger might serve this beast as it had the crocodile.

Instead of attacking, the beast cried out again. It seemed to wait for an answer, or perhaps for the echoes to die. Then it still did not attack. It lumbered forward to the edge of the fungi, lowered its broad muzzle, and bit off a clump.

"That brute's no dragon," Conan called. "It's the fungus-eater."

"Then what killed the other—" Valeria began.

In the next moment, she had what might have been the answer to her question. Dim-sighted it might be, but the creature's hearing was keen enough. It turned toward the voices, and Conan signaled urgently for silence.

Valeria needed no urging. She opened the distance between her and her comrade still wider. If dim enough of sight, the beast might not be able to see two foes, let alone attack them. Then one of them might die, but the other would have a chance at the kill.

If the creature saw them, it gave no sign of it. Valeria wondered if it was so scant of sight that it could spy only movement. After a moment, it lowered its head and resumed feeding.

The creature was no dainty eater. It slobbered and crunched its way through a patch of fungus as large as an Aquilonian kitchen garden. Its eating, it belches, and its footfalls raised more echoes. A cavalry trumpet in its ear might have won its attention, but scarcely any lesser sound.

Sated, it lifted its head and lumbered toward the body of the other creature—its victim, perhaps, in a battle to the death over this caveful of food. It reached the body, snuffled noisily about it, then lifted its head again and gave its challenge louder than before.

Valeria felt as if hot nails were driving into her ears, but she did not take her eyes off the creature. It might be dim of sight and unable to hear much over the sound of its own feeding, but it seemed able to scent the trace of a stranger.

Silently, Conan waved at her to come closer. Still watching their visitor, she knelt, then crawled on hands and knees through the fungi. The Cimmerian stood as still as a temple image, watching the beast make the rounds of the wall, until she reached him.

"We'll have to face him now," he whispered. "He's caught the scent of some stranger on his territory. If we don't kill him, he'll hunt us until he catches us off guard."

Valeria was ready to agree. The beast's jaws were flat, bony plates, with no more teeth than a chicken's beak. They were also large enough to swallow her whole, and strong enough to crack Conan's bones like twigs.

They separated again. They were forty paces apart when a puff of air wafted from the tunnel by which they had entered the cavern. It blew past them, and Valeria willed limbs, and even breath to stillness as she waited for the beast's reply.

It came—another screaming, thundering challenge. The echoes had not begun to die when it charged. Like a heavily laden ship in heavy seas, it labored through the fungi, trampling some, shredding others. It held its head low, horns thrusting forward like the ram of a galley. Valeria remained still as the beast surged between them.

In the next moment, Conan shot forward like a stone from a sling. His hands gripped the upper horn, and he vaulted clear over the beast's muzzle, aiming for its neck.

Somehow, his iron grip failed him. The leap sent him sprawling across the neck instead of landing safely astride. He slid off and landed rolling, parting company with his sword in midair.

Valeria filled her lungs in a single desperate breath and let out the shriek of a soul in torment. The beast's head turned toward her. The gods might be thinking it was Conan's day to die and hers to kill, but Valeria of the Red Brotherhood let neither man nor god decide such matters for her.

Clearly, the sensing of two enemies was more than the beast's dim wits could endure. It cried challenge again, and began to back away.

"Together—now!" Conan roared.

That drew the beast toward him, but he was on his feet and fully armed again. Valeria had seen before that the Cimmerian could move forward and backward with equal speed; now she saw him do it again. As he gave ground, he drew the beast after him, and it seemed to forget that it had ever sensed a second opponent. Against Valeria, that was a death sentence.

She sprang forward, light-footed as a cat, leaping successfully where Conan had failed. She ended straddling the neck. She gripped the edge of the neckplates and lunged to her feet, ready to stab.

As she did, the beast reared up on its hind legs. With the swiftness and agility learned high in the rigging of half a score of ships, Valeria entrusted her sword to the wrist-thong and gripped the neckplates with both hands. Both thong and hands did their duty as Valeria dangled from the neckplates like a puppet. The beast hissed, growled, and screamed all at once, then tossed its head, trying to rid itself of the distracting nuisance.

This gave the Cimmerian his chance for a stroke at the beast's unprotected throat. His sword sang as it parted air, hand-sized scales, and the flesh beneath. Driven by all the strength of two brawny arms, the sword slashed clean through to the beast's life.

Its next cry bubbled and hissed, and sprayed a mist of blood everywhere. It did not fall, though, and Valeria heaved herself onto the neckplates. For a moment, she balanced there as if atop a mast swaying in a storm, displaying the grace of one who had done that many times.

Then her sword slashed at thin bone between the crimson eyes. The next moment, she was flying through the air as if the mast had snapped. She landed among the fungi, which broke her fall and coated her in their grease.

As she struggled to her feet, she saw Conan leading the beast away from her. It was bleeding generously now, and clearly all but blind, yet it would not fall! Valeria cursed whatever misbegotten sons of flea-bitten apes had conjured up this creature with its unnatural life.

As if her curse had been a spell, the thing seemed to find new strength. It lunged at Conan, and the Cimmerian had to break into a run to stay ahead of it. The jaws clanged and clashed, and the beast swung toward the tunnel from which Conan and Valeria had entered the cavern.

It swung toward the opening, then charged with single-minded frenzy, as if the answer to all of its woes lay in that tunnel. The charge carried it across the cavern faster than Valeria could have run, and she caught only a brief glimpse of Conan staying ahead of the jaws.

Then Cimmerian and monster together reached the mouth of the tunnel. Conan's war cry, the creature's last challenge, and the rumble of falling rock blended into one ear-torturing din. Echoes stormed about the cavern, doubling and redoubling themselves.

Valeria knelt and watched a vast cloud of dust belch from the tunnel. Nothing remained visible outside it but the tip of the beast's tail, thrashing feebly. Then the thrashing subsided to a twitching, and even the twitching ended.

Valeria commanded her hands to stop shaking and her knees to hold her up, and walked toward the fallen tunnel. She had no clear idea of what she would do when she reached it, other than seek Conan's body. If it was only caught under the beast and not under the fallen stones, she might be able to carve a way through the beast's flesh—

A massive, dark form took shape out of the dust cloud.

Valeria crammed her free hand into her mouth to stifle a scream. Her sword rose in the other, as much good as it might be against a spirit—

"Valeria!"

Valeria's mouth opened, but no sound came out. She did not drop her sword, and she was still rooted to the spot when Conan reached her.

His arms around her were so comforting that she wondered by she had not asked for them many times already. After a little while, she stopped shaking, and after a while longer, she found her voice again.

"It's as well I didn't need to go after you a second time. I've hardly a rag to spare, and that beast's hide looks too tough to cut up for garments."

Conan shrugged. "I've told you what your best garb is. If you won't believe me, that's only proof that you don't trust men."

"I give men all the trust they deserve," Valeria said with dignity. She held her thumb and forefinger about a hairbreadth apart. "At least that much." She was relieved to see that her hand was steady.

"We'd best be on our way before this uproar draws all our friend's kin," Conan said. "But there's no going back the way we came. It's solid with fallen stone where it isn't solid with dead beast."

It did nothing for Valeria's spirits to see that the only other way out of the cavern sloped sharply downward. But at least there was light as far ahead as she could make out, and a dampness in the air that hinted of water.

She turned, to see Conan slicing off a clump of fungi as large as a hunting dog. "Rations for the journey?" she asked. Her stomach wanted to heave at the thought, but she was hungry enough that it rumbled instead.

"Why not?" Conan replied, tossing the fungi to her. "If it killed quickly, I'd be dead along with that beast. If I'm still alive at our next halt, I'll say it doesn't kill at all."

Valeria tucked the mass of fungi under her arm and sheathed her sword. "Conan, you have too cursed many ways of making a woman wish to keep you alive!"

FIVE

Conan led the way down the tunnel. If danger should arise, it would most likely come from another beast, drawn by the din of the first one's death. It could also come with the Cimmerian's blessing, if it waited until he and Valeria were safely out of its path!

The tunnel sloped steadily downward, and the air grew damper. It was not as foul as one would have expected, though, as far underground as it lay, and with so much death and rottenness about.

Conan found small relief in that. Ancient magic must be all about them here, shedding light, cleansing the air, and giving life to who-knew-what monstrosities besides those they had already met. A sword and the untamed jungle before him would be his choice, but every step they took seemed to take them farther into the bowels of this warren.

Clearly, the beast and its kin had passed this way many times. Even the hardest rock of walls and floor was scored by claws and scales. Loose scales in half a score of hues had drifted like autumn leaves into crannies and windings of the tunnel. In one place, a bronze post the thickness of Conan's arm had bent almost double under the onrush of something swift, strong, and massive.

Once the tunnel branched, and Conan thought he saw a slight upward slope in the floor of the branch, at the very limits of his vision. This proved no trick of the light, but fifty paces farther on came a bend, and just beyond that, a dead end.

Nor was the dead end a natural rockfall. An enormous door of stone slabs set in what seemed to be a frame of gilded bronze blocked the way. Conan saw that it slid to and fro in bronze grooves that led into niches on either side of the tunnel.

The least of the slabs had to weigh more than the Cimmerian, and the thinnest metal rods of the frames were thicker than Valeria's legs. Some of the rods were wrought in the shape of serpents, and more serpents writhed across the slabs, some of them painted in tiny jewels, others cunningly carved.

Conan did not care to think what spells might be needed to move this door. Spells, or perhaps some device that would rival those of drowned Atlantis and make a siege-engine of Khitai seem a child's toy.

"Some of those serpents have green eyes," Valeria whispered. The awe of this place and its ancient works was in her, too. "Are they meant to be the Golden Serpents?"

Conan studied the shapes. The gilding was worn in places and tarnished in more, but, in truth, the eyes of all the serpents, carved or painted, were tiny green jewels. Studying them yet more closely, he saw that the jewels seemed to glow from within like the fire-stones they had seen in Xuchotl.

"Ha! Perhaps we've found where the Golden Serpents laired in ancient times," he said. "They would be cause enough for a door like this. It would stop a galley's ram."

"Then let us hope it does its work until we are out of these caves," Valeria said.

"Woman, where is a true pirate's heart?" Conan scoffed. He thrust a forefinger against Valeria's ribs.

She lightly batted his hand away. "Down in her boots, I confess, although I'll geld you if you breathe a word of it." She rubbed her stomach. "Her stomach's about to follow." She looked at the fungi under her arm. "Are these really fit to eat?"

"They haven't killed me yet."

"Just let me eat my fill, and no doubt you will writhe and die the moment afterward."

The bronze door would have guarded their backs nicely, but who could say what lay on the other side? Also, if one of the beasts should catch their scent and come down the branch tunnel, they would be trapped.

So they returned to the junction of the tunnels to eat. "Tastes like raw sea slugs," Valeria said after a few mouthfuls.

"And how are they? I've heard of them, but also that they're poison if not cooked."

"It's not the cooking that takes out the poison. There's a spot in the head that needs cutting out, or one slug can kill a ship's crew. A cunning hand with a knife can do the work, though, and then the slug's called a rare treat in some lands. Mostly farther south than we've sailed, but during one hot summer, the slugs spawned farther north than usual."

They finished as much fungus as seemed wise, in a silence that was almost companionable. Conan vowed that if he and Valeria lived to reach a land with civilized eating-houses, he would buy her a meal she would not soon forget.

Meanwhile, they had traveled long enough and far enough to be weary. They tossed a piece of fungus for who kept first watch, and Conan won the honor.

"Need we keep watches at all?" Valeria asked. She pressed a hand lightly against the Cimmerian's battered ribs. He drew a deep breath, but not from any pain her touch gave him.

"I've no wish to end up in the belly of one of those beasts, or to be trampled by one, either. And they may not be all that roam down here."

"Now you have made it certain that I will not sleep for the waking nightmares you just gave me!" Her pouting, though, was largely pretense.

Conan gripped Valeria's hand and gently thrust it away. "Lose no sleep over me, at least. I've had worse hurts as a boy, falling off a roof my father and I were thatching."

"As you wish, Conan," Valeria said. She turned and settled down from where she could watch in all directions. Conan allowed himself a moment to admire the fine, straight back that plunged down from the long neck to the well-rounded hips. Then he placed his steel ready to hand, kicked off his boots, and lay down to seek as much slumber as a man might win from a cold stone floor with magic all about him.

The hut where Dobanpu Spirit-Speaker slept when he visited the largest Ichiribu village was a place of shadows and subtle odors. It almost seemed to Seyganko that a tame spirit lurked in the grass of the roof, driving out the light.

The odors mingled grass, cooking smoke, the smoke of fires made with herbs, and the oil that Emwaya rubbed into her skin. Seyganko remembered the first time she had allowed him the honor of rubbing it in. His body tautened with remembered and anticipated desire.

In her corner of the hut, Emwaya sat like a carved image. She wore the plainest of waistcloths and only a single bone ornament in her hair, and her face was somber as she shifted her gaze from her father to her betrothed.

"You asked what we must do, Father?" she asked.

"In plain words," Dobanpu replied. His voice was the strongest part of him remaining, although he had not wholly lost the stout thews and broad shoulders of his youth. He had seen nearly sixty turns of the seasons and outlived all the children of his first wives, and all but Emwaya from his second family.

Some said he had suffered these losses as the price of all the time he had spent in the spirit world. Even those who said this whispered it. When they spoke aloud, they praised the courage with which he had borne his losses. They did doubt aloud the wisdom of his teaching his daughter the art of Spirit-Speaking, but only when Emwaya was not in hearing. Some called her tongue the deadliest weapon among the Ichiribu.

Dobanpu rose, stretching limbs cramped by long sitting. "Very surely, I want to know your thoughts as to what we must do," he said. "I did not go against all custom in teaching you my arts to have you sit as mute as the frog-queen in the tale of Myosta!"

"You asked, I answer," Emwaya said. "We must watch Aondo. Or better yet, find a way to take his weapons."

"Aondo is needed among the warriors," Seyganko said.

"Even at your back?"

"Properly watched, even at my back," the warrior asserted. "We can do nothing against him without dishonor and insult."

"If he feels insult, he can challenge you. That will be the end of him."

Dobanpu laughed softly. "Daughter, you have more faith in your betrothed's prowess than is wise. Aondo is so strong that it might not matter if he is as slow as a mired hippopotamus. Remember that when the great-jawed one reaches its victim, it is certain death."

"Indeed," Seyganko said. "Also, any man's foot may slip if his luck is out and the spirits not with him. They might well desert me if I dishonored a proven warrior like Aondo by trapping him into a death-duel."

"You speak of what the spirits might do?" Emwaya snapped.

"Yes, and if it is not to your liking, you may ask your father to end his teaching of me!"

Warrior and woman glared at each other for a moment, while Dobanpu raised his eyes to the shadowed ceiling and seemed to be asking the spirits for a brief moment of deafness, that he might not hear two whom he loved making fools of themselves. At last it was Emwaya who lowered her eyes.

That, Seyganko knew, was as much of an apology as he was likely to receive. But Emwaya was now of a mind to listen, and he could speak more freely.

"Also, I do not think that Aondo is the first of our enemies among the warriors. The loudest, I grant you. But first? No, I think more danger comes from one whose name I do not know, but whose presence I can guess."

"A spy for Chabano?" Emwaya asked.

"For him, for the God-Men, or perhaps for both."

"A bold one, if he thinks to serve both," Dobanpu said almost meditatively. "One hears tales, and more than a few of them, that the friendship of Paramount Chief and God-Men is a frail thing."

"All the more reason, then, to keep the spy alive," Seyganko said. "A man who tells tales can be made to bear false ones, to set his masters at each other's throats."

"You play stickball with lives," Emwaya said, her voice brittle.

"How not, daughter?" Dobanpu asked. "Learn a little more of my art and you will understand why this must sometimes be so. Or else give over learning Spirit-Speaking, wed Seyganko, bear his sons, govern his house and lesser wives—"

"And die when the Kwanyi and the God-Men strike, plowing our ashes into the fields before they sail south to carry all before them!" Emwaya shouted. Seyganko thought her about to weep.

Her storms were violent but swift, like those of the Lake of Death. She blinked hard, then contrived a smile. "Father, Seyganko. I know the price of any choice other than the one I have made. It may be the price even if I walk the way you bade me. But I do not have to rejoice in what the gods have sent to the Ichiribu."

"No one but a fool would ask you to," Seyganko said gently. He wished to take her in his arms, but thought the moment unfit. "Do you see any fools here about you?"

Emwaya laughed aloud. "Not yet."

"Then we go on as we have begun," Dobanpu said. "Indeed, I think this spy gives us yet more cause to leave Aondo alive. He can hardly be the spy, but I would wager a hutful of mealies and a new canoe that he knows who that man is. Following the leopard's cub has been known to lead a hunter to the leopard's lair."

Valeria had lost all notion of how long they had been tramping these endless underground passages. It was not merely an underground city they had entered, it was near to an underground kingdom. Already they had traversed thrice the distance from one side of Xuchotl to the other.

At least they had done so had they traveled in anything like a straight line. Valeria had barely more notion of their direction than she had of the passage of time. For all she could say, they might be wandering in circles.

No, that could not be altogether true. Except where they found blind tunnels or stairs leading up to impassable barriers, they had yet to retrace their steps. They were moving onward, but toward what destination, only the gods knew.

This place of cunningly wrought rock, and both beasts and spells of incredible antiquity, seemed as remote from the sight of the gods as it was from the sight of the sun. If any answers were to be found, she and Conan would have to find them unaided.

As always when Valeria found her thoughts thrashing about thus, like a cat in a sack, she eased herself by taking the lead. The need to be keenly alert to hidden dangers cudgeled her wits into some sort of order. The Cimmerian doubtless knew her reasons, but courtesy to a battle-comrade had so far curbed his tongue.

Another cave opened before them. Or chamber, rather. It might have been a cave once, carved from the rock over the eons by oozing, then dripping, then gushing water. Now the underground stream that had done the work flowed through a channel carved in a floor of pale, rose-hued stone, polished until it was silken-smooth to the touch and lightly shining even in the pale magic-light.

Walls and ceiling were of the natural rock, but squared off, every corner a right angle as neat as any mason could have made. But then, masons had made them, even if they had doubtless worked with magic instead of mallets and chisels.

Conan knelt beside the channel and reached down to dip a finger in the water. "Fresh, as cold as a Hyperborean's arse, and flowing swiftly. Anyone for a bath before we drink our fill?"

Valeria had doffed her garments ere the Cimmerian had finished speaking. She no longer feared Co-nan's eyes upon her, but found them, rather, a trifle flattering. Since they had left Xuchotl, she had grown somewhat thin-flanked, yet Conan seemed not to notice. Or perhaps pretending not to notice such matters was another courtesy between battle-comrades ?

They both splashed merrily about in the channel, deep enough to sit in up to their necks had it not been too cold for sitting at all. Then they drank, until Valeria could feel her empty stomach filled at least with water.

Valeria knelt by the channel, clad only in goose-flesh and drops of water, to rinse out her garments as best she could. When she had wrung them dry enough to wear, she stretched and began retying her boot bindings.

"How long have we been down here?" she asked as she finished the left foot.

"If our sleeping's any guide, for three days, four at the outside."

"By Set's fangs, it feels longer!"

"That it might, but don't let yourself be careless of judging the time. That way lies madness."

"Tell me what I do not know, Conan! Have you ever been out of the sun so long?"

"Yes."

His tone did not encourage her to ask further. She let it pass. She knew by now that some of his adventures he would boast of in taverns, and others he would carry as secrets to his grave. She only prayed that neither his grave nor hers might be in this godless wilderness beneath the earth.

He stood up and for a moment held her at arm's length, his massive hands almost covering her shoulders. "We can take heart from this much: We've not gone in circles, and we've come far enough to be well beyond the river. Also, there are more worked and finished passages every day."

"We're closer to the heart of this city?"

"If city it be, I'd wager we are. And where the heart of any city lies, there will be the treasures and pleasures. Perhaps, in this city, even ways to the surface!"

His hands lifted from her shoulders, and Valeria knew a moment's urge to grab them and pull them back to where they had been, or even to other places. She laughed at this picture of herself and Conan tumbling on the hard stone until they rolled into the channel again and cooled their ardor!

"If you can find that much to laugh about in our case, woman, I'll take you anywhere!"

Valeria almost replied, "And I will follow." But those would be ill-omened words, a promise she could hardly expect to keep. She was of the Red Brotherhood, and she had acknowledged no master for too long to change now.

"Let us see where we have to go to leave this place first, Conan," she said. Then she sat and began binding her other foot.

"On them!"

Chabano, Paramount Chief of the Kwanyi, stood at the edge of the platform in the tree and shouted to the hundred warriors below. The underchiefs raised their hands in salute, while the warriors clashed their spears against their shields.

Then the Kwanyi warriors leaped forward at the enemy. The "enemy" was only a field of stumps, but the charge was not without peril. Chabano had seen to that.

The first warrior fell even before the charge reached the stumps. The grass covering a pit gave under his pounding feet. He did not fall all the way in to impale himself on the dung-poisoned stake at the bottom, however. He flung himself forward desperately, reached the far edge of the pit, and rolled clear. A moment later, he was on his feet and running to rejoin his comrades. They were now well ahead of him, but Chabano found no fatal fault in that.

The warrior's eyes had not been as keen as they might have been, but his limbs and wits had come to his rescue. He had not even dropped his spear or shield, a dereliction that would have earned him a beating.

Two more warriors fell at the tangle of vines stretched among the stumps. One of them did not rise swiftly enough. Chabano watched the warrior's underchief run up behind him and slash him fiercely across the shoulder with the snakeskin mboqa. The warrior leaped up, made the briefest gesture of supplication, and ran on.

The other fallen warrior did not rise at all, but there was reason for his lying among the vines. Trying desperately to keep his feet, he had rammed his head into one of the stumps. Doubtless he was senseless; he might even be dying, and small loss if he were. Had he thought less of the shame of the mboqa and more of how his tribe needed all of its warriors, he might have done otherwise and still be running.

The remaining warriors reached the far side of the field of stumps in a double line more ragged than Chabano cared to see. The underchiefs, he decided, would face one of the lesser ordeals tonight.

Now the warriors went furiously through the rite of shield and spear, throwing the small spear, hooking an opponent with the shield, then lunging with the great spear as the shield-hooking exposed the other and drew him close. They knew it meant more than pleasing the gods, or even Chabano, who was closer than the gods and therefore perhaps more to be feared. It meant victory, on the day when the Lake of Death was no longer closed to the Kwanyi by the Ichiribu. Victory, over every tribe in their path for as far as they chose to march.

All the Kwanyi would then have their pick of slaves and food, huts worthy of a chief, and honor among gods and men alike. They would also have honor in the eyes of Chabano, who had made them what they were and would lead them when they became still greater.

Chabano sprang down from his platform. Although he had seen just short of forty turns of the seasons, his eyes and his wind were those of a man far younger. His feet, painted the red that marked his chieftaincy, danced in the dust as he approached his warriors.

"Hail, Chabano!" the underchiefs called. The warriors repeated the greeting, then clashed shield and spear again.

"Well done," Chabano said. "Not perfect, but only the gods are perfect."

"Thus say the God-Men," a warrior shouted. One had to be of the Kwanyi oneself to catch the note of mockery in the man's voice. The God-Men were not Kwanyi, and to them, these words would seem full of honor.

Empty honor, as empty as their heads.

Only if a Kwanyi warrior had grown so foul of spirit as to spy for the God-Men would they learn they had been mocked. Chabano refused to believe that any of the men he had sworn, taught, and led in ordeal, battle, or rite could be so corrupt.

Even if one had turned, Chabano still had the advantage. He had found eyes and ears among the God-Men before the God-Men could have found any among his warriors.

The height of the»sun above the trees reminded him that this day's war rites were almost done but his work was not. He slung his shield across his back with the ritual three twists of the thong and held his spear across his chest with both hands in the customary manner.

"Warriors of the Kwanyi, I must go speak with the gods. This day you have pleased me. This night you may please yourselves."

That meant an ordeal for the slave women, perhaps for a few unlucky free women as well. It would also be an ordeal for the brew-sisters, who would have to work very hard to keep the warriors from growing thirsty. Thirsty warriors had been known to ignore the fact that a woman wore a headdress of the free Kwanyi.

"Let us go with you as far as the gods allow," said an underchief.

It was a moment to give fear, but not to shed blood.

Chabano slowly lowered his spear until its butt sank into the earth. Without seeming to exert himself, he drove the butt half an arm's length into the jungle floor.

Then he whipped his shield off his back, hooked his spear loose, and caught it as it flew high. He ended with the spear aimed at the chest of the un-derchief who had spoken.

The man knew that any outward sign of the fear thundering within him would send the spear leaping into his chest. He did not even make the gesture of supplication, although his eyes did not leave Chabano.

"The gods command that we stay here?" the man said. It showed high courage to make it a question.

"They do," Chabano said. "Do you doubt their word?"

"The gods speak, but do they always speak plainly?" the man persisted. Chabano decided that such courage deserved the reward of an end to these fear-jests.

"You have wisdom, more than some I could name, who think that the gods' messages bear only one meaning."

That was mockery of the God-Men which might be dangerous even for Chabano should it reach their ears. The chief did not overly much care.

"But when the gods wish me dead, they will have me if all the warriors of the Kwanyi march with me. If the gods wish me safe, I may go to this day's speaking alone. Go, and find better company than I shall enjoy for a while!"

The warriors grinned at one another, hearing the boldness of a chief who dared mock even the gods themselves, not merely the God-Men. Then they tossed their spears, gave a war cry, and strode off into the jungle.

Chabano waited until the last was gone before he turned onto the path he intended to follow. Even after that, he waited for a space, hiding, and listening to be sure that he alone was taking this path. He did not speak to the gods, but his eye and ear among the God-Men could tell him more than the gods ever had.

Conan thought he heard a sound to their rear. He dropped back, looked for a place from which to watch unseen, and found none that would hide a mouse, let alone a Cimmerian. He contrived to flatten himself against the wall and keep the silence of a cat stalking that mouse.

Then he heard Valeria signaling with the beat of dagger-hilt against stone wall. Conan listened. He heard the code that said, "Come as soon as you can, but there is no danger here." To any ear but his and Valeria's, it would seem a natural sound of these haunted depths, or at least nothing that spoke of human presence.

Conan waited, for about as long as a skilled tavern dancer might take to shed her garments when the watchers bid eagerly in silver coin for each piece of silk. Then he decided that once again this city of the dead could play tricks with even the ears of a seasoned warrior.

He still walked cat-footed as he came up behind Valeria. She did not start or make a sound, though; her ears seemed keener now than when she had first gone underground. Instead, she pointed down the tunnel. Her gesture was more eloquent than words, which were not needed. Conan saw that a hundred paces farther on, the light turned green.

Now both were as silent as hunting creatures, or prey seeking to escape, as they crept forward, one against either wall. Both bore steel in their hands, both set feet down as if they trod on shards of glass, or on sleeping serpents.

They reached the turning where the light changed, and looked beyond it. For a moment, Conan thought they had stumbled upon a sleeping serpent—a monster such as he had fought too often to care to meet again.

Then he saw that it was but a trick of the light that made the serpent seem whole. Only a skeleton remained, although that skeleton stretched twenty paces from the tooth-studded skull to the delicate bones of the tail.

It was the light that had deceived Conan, a light that flooded the cave. A light that seemed to rise like smoke from green jewels piled deep inside the circle formed by the skeleton. The light of a greater mass of fire-stones than Conan had ever dreamed existed.

In the Black Kingdoms, Conan had heard the legend of the Dying Place of the Elephants. There, it was said, the great gray beasts went to end their days. There, ivory to buy a kingdom lay, waiting for some bold adventurer to stumble upon it.

He had never heard of such a tale about the Golden Serpents. Indeed, he had never heard of anyone who had seen more of a Golden Serpent than its fire-stone eyes—and it was only a tale that Golden Serpents' eyes and fire-stones were one and the same.

Rather, it had been a tale. Now Conan knew it for the truth. In the skull, as large as a horse's, two vast, green orbs flashed. Their glow was identical to that of the jewels on the floor.

Conan softly let out his breath and stalked forward. Nothing living could have been more silent. In that silence, he reached the skeleton and knelt beside it, studying the eyes.

Now he understood why even such vast creatures as the Golden Serpents yielded so many fire-stones. Each eye was the size of a platter, and each one was made of twoscore or more stones. Some were as small as acorns, others as large as the finest Bosson-ian cider apples. All glowed with that unnatural light.

Conan also understood why the light had nothing of nature in it. No natural creature had such eyes; the Golden Serpents were magicians' work. The same magicians who had wrought this maze in the rock, where he and Valeria might yet end their days? Perhaps. If so, they were long dead, and their creations likewise.

Then even that small comfort left Conan. A wind colder than any that ever blew in Cimmeria seemed to play upon his spine. Shreds of flesh still clung to the serpent's bones. Golden scales still covered a few of those shreds, and a faint miasma of decay rose from the greater part of them.

Had it been here since the time of its creators, this Golden Serpent's bones would have been fleshless, or the shreds of flesh mummified by the subterranean air. This creature had been living while Conan walked the earth above, perhaps even while he had fought and caroused with the Barachan pirates.

Conan motioned Valeria forward, then moved to where he could look both ways. He waited, steel at the ready, for her to study the bones and see what he had seen.

Chabano's eyes and ears were those of a warrior half his age. He did not need these to warn him of his spy's coming, for Ryku seemed as careless as a

child of being seen or heard. He was first among the lesser God-Men, the Silent Brothers, but his lack of jungle craft made him anything but silent.

Chabano used the time he gained to place himself high on a branch above the trail. When the young God-Man came stamping into view like a warthog in rut, Chabano slung both spear and shield, then gripped a stout vine and leaped from his perch.

The other threw up his hands in dismay as Chabano seemed to fly down on him out of the sky. Then he flung himself back against the mossy bark of a forest tree and began silently mouthing curses.

"Cease," Chabano said. He put the tip of his spear under the man's chin and gently raised the weapon until the man closed his mouth. "Or do you think the gods will hear you without your masters also hearing?" the chief added. "Surely you came as if you feared no human foe."

"I do not," Ryku said. "I am in the land of friends."

Chabano laughed longer than was good for Ryku's pride, but he did not take the spear away. By the time the chief was done laughing, a drop of blood showed on Ryku's chin.

"Is friendship then a jest?" Ryku asked. He stood without trying to wipe away the blood, and met Chabano's eyes.

Again the chief decided there was enough courage here to deserve some reward. "It is not. Nor is it found among all the Kwanyi. At least not toward you, if it were known why you are here."

"Who would tell?"

"You would, if someone heated a spear and applied it to sufficient parts of your body to unman or blind you," Chabano said. "Do not deny it."

"I do not," Ryku said sturdily, but seeming a trifle bemused.

"As well. Do not, then, tread like an elephant when you come to our meetings. Even if you have no enemies, I do, and they might follow you to me."

"As you wish." Then Ryku took a more defiant tone. "One would think you feared that the over-throwers of Xuchotl were abroad in the land instead of your own warriors!"

"They could well be. Or do your masters know otherwise?"

"I came to tell you that they do not know one way or the other. They cannot even be sure what magic was wrought to bring down the Accursed City."

To Chabano, it seemed likely as not that it was the city folk's own magic that had finally sent them mad, and not outsider's spells. If they had then fallen on one another and cleansed the city of their foul and useless lives, so much the better.

The folk of Xuchotl had bred for too long, and to little purpose. Now they had left what would be a fine city from which to rule these lands when the Kwanyi under him had done with all their enemies.

That was a dream he would not dwell on, however. Not while this close to Ryku, who had the rank of Silent Brother but more of the God-Men's knowledge than a wise man would offend without good cause.

"Then what do the God-Men wish of the Kwanyi?"

"Who-says they wish anything?"

"I, Paramount Chief of the Kwanyi, say so. When have you come to me without telling me some wishes of your masters? They know not what you bear to me, but you do it nonetheless."

"The First Speaker wishes as before to learn anything you discover of how Xuchotl was overthrown," Ryku said. "He also wishes the return of the slave girl taken by the Ichiribu on the night of their raid."

This last demand was new. "Nothing more?"

"It is enough for the First Speaker."

Chabano laughed coarsely. "I should say that a wench of that age is more than adequate for such an old man. What does he want of her?"

Ryku had enough courage, or enough fear of his leader to glare at Chabano, a thing few did and lived. "Know you not what it is to be a man with a woman? It will make a fine tale, that the great chief of the Kwanyi—"

"—dashed out the brains of a God-Man whose tongue flew too far too long," Chabano finished. He returned the glare, and Ryku fell silent.

"I shall discover what may be done prudently to return the girl, and then find men to do it. This is not to be doubted."

"I do not doubt it," Ryku said. He was wise enough to make no promises for the masters who did not know of his divided loyalties. "What of Xuchotl's fate?"

"What of it?" Chabano retorted. "To ask me to seek wielders of mighty magic is to ask the snake to hunt the leopard. Only by great good fortune will I win any knowledge worth having."

Ryku's gestures and face told Chabano that matters were unchanged. The God-Men would not put into Kwanyi hands any of their power, not even to seek the cause of Xuchotl's doom. They would rather remain in ignorance than risk giving others too much knowledge.

There lay the difference between the First Speaker of the Living Wind and the Paramount Chief of the Kwanyi. For knowledge, Chabano had given much, and might yet give more. There was another difference, too. The chief knew that the God-Men would use the magic of Xuchotl's foes against even the

Kwanyi. He would not, if he could help it, give them the power to doom his people.

Ryku went through the rituals of farewell from hunter to chief, then withdrew. He could be heard for a shamefully long distance, but at least he seemed to be attempting silence.

Valeria knelt beside the skeleton and the glowing mass of fire-stones until she saw what Conan had wished her to see. Then she rose. It seemed that every movement of her joints, every breath she took, had to be loud enough to raise echoes and warn whatever lurked farther within this nightmare of stone.

She wanted to whisper, but when she tried to speak thus, no sound came out. Then she took a deep breath, bid fear kiss her hindquarters, and laughed aloud.

"So the Golden Serpents are no legend after all? This brute lost its scales a while back, I judge, but the eyes tell the tale."

Conan nodded. "And I'm thinking that it hasn't been dead for as long as the beast we found dead in the fungus cave."

"I wish it had been," Valeria said. "Even a slab of that fungus would seem like a banquet." She looked at the Cimmerian. "What are you staring at? The hew shape of my stomach, after being so near empty these past days?"

The Cimmerian grinned. "You take it lightly, our sharing these tunnels with the Golden Serpents."

Valeria blinked—and realized that her eyes were not quite dry. She turned away, and Conan did her the courtesy of letting her stand thus until she had command of herself again.

"How should I take it?" she said at last. "We are, I think, at that time of an ordeal when one can either run mad or laugh. I'll laugh, if it's all the same to you."

Conan's roar raised echoes and made stones fall from the pile. He kissed her roundly on both cheeks, then on the lips, and finished with a smart slap to her rear.

"I'll have to buy that pox-ridden captain a drink the next time I see him. How else would I have won such a comrade if he hadn't driven you into flight?"

"The gods only know. I'd rather voyage with a bog-troll, as often as not." She knelt and set her boots on the floor.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Conan, this may be our last hoard of fire-stones. Have you forgotten that I am of the Red Brotherhood, that you have a name among the Barachans, and that good pirates do not leave fine loot to gather dust?"

Conan laughed shortly and joined her at her work. The fire-stones were light for their size, and enough to fill the toes of their boots was no great burden.

Magic might be in the stones, of course, magic as evil as any in Xuchotl. They might even draw other Golden Serpents, living ones, to avenge the theft of their dead mates' treasures.

Valeria did not care. The magic here would slay her and the Cimmerian or not, as fate would have it. It would no longer put her in fear.

As for the Golden Serpents, let them come. A day or two more and she would be ready not only to spit one on her sword, but to eat it raw afterward!

SIX

"Conan," Valeria whispered, "I smell cooking fat. Or else my wits have finally parted their mooring lines."

Conan sniffed the air, more damp and mephitic of late than before. They had come, he judged, half a league through scum-coated water that seemed to both ooze from below and drip from above. He wondered if they were under a river, or more likely, a lake.

At times, the water was no more than a thin coating of slime on the stone, which made footing treacherous even for two nimble warriors like the Cimmerian and his companion. At other times, it rose to their ankles, or even to their knees. After the first such place, Valeria slung her jewel-laden boots about her neck. The Cimmerian's greater stature allowed him to keep his treasure riding at his waist. Neither needed the boots to guard leather-tough feet, and indeed, preferred bare toes by which to feel out lurking menaces.

When knee-deep, the water seemed sometimes almost solid with plant and animal matter that the ancient magic of these tunnels had been unable to keep alive. In those places, it exhaled a noisome stench that made even the hardened Cimmerian wish for something to bind over his mouth and nose.

He wished even more to know what sort of creature had risen to attack Valeria on the day they had entered this maze. Was it a water-dweller, and were they perhaps approaching the lair of more of the breed? Well-wielded steel was an answer to most creatures, but if the water grew much deeper, swordplay would be sadly slowed… to say nothing of what this muck could hardly fail to do to their blades—

Conan finished his sniffing. "Your wits are as sound as ever. I smell it, too. Fish oil, I'd wager."

"What do you have to wager with, Cimmerian?"

"Not as much as you, I'll be bound, but—"

It was Valeria who held up one hand and pointed with the dagger in the other. "Stairs?"

Conan's eyes followed the gesture. "If they're not, my eyes are failing me."

Valeria grimaced. "It does seem darker along here." Even her courage was not proof against the thought of the light abandoning them. Magical as it was, they owed their lives to it.

"All the more reason to start climbing the stairs, then."

Between them and the entry to the stairs, the water deepened almost to Valeria's waist. They pushed forward through the filth, greasy whorls of floating muck drifting to either side as they advanced. Conan had both sword and dagger drawn now, and held the weapons clear of the water, ready to strike down at the slightest hint of alien presence.

Nothing except muck and foul odors impeded their passage, although they were black and dripping from thighs to feet when they reached dry stone. Conan climbed the first few steps, reached a spot where the wall had cracked and now sagged across his path, and went to his hands and knees.

He could barely creep under the stone. Ten paces farther along, he could barely move at all—but the sight ahead made his heart leap with hope.

The stairs wound up into natural darkness that reeked of fish oil, animal fat, and burned grain. In places, the steps had crumbled and would offer precarious footing, even without the darkness. In one place, the stairs seemed to rise up a vertical chimney that would need to be climbed with back against one wall and feet against the other.

Far above, like a single star shining on a rainy night, a dim yellow light glowed. Firelight, to Conan's eyes, with no magic about it. Rather, it told of human presence.

The only problem was that he was just a finger's breadth too large to pass through the gap and begin the ascent. Even his strength might not be equal to shifting the fallen slab, and could well bring the mass down on top of them if he succeeded.

Thank Mitra, there was another way, or at least another hope. Groping into the open, Conan's hand touched a puddle of congealed grease. Clearly, it had dripped down from above, where what must be a cook fire burned cheerfully.

Conan started retracing his steps. For a moment, he feared he would become wedged; then he felt Valeria tugging at his ankles. Her lithe strength made the difference. Conan slid free, coughed dust from his throat, and stood up.

"You'll have to go first. Slip through the gap, then pass all the grease you'll find—"

"Grease?"

"Somebody's done years of cooking up above. The grease must have been dripping—"

"Grease?"

"If I want an echo, woman, I'll shout! Go up and see for yourself if you doubt me."

Valeria shook her head hastily, then grinned. "In truth, why should I be surprised? This is the maddest quest I've ever been on. It would disappoint me if it did not stay so to the end."

Conan kept to himself the thought that the quest might be far from over. They could not be out of the jungle yet, or even into the borderlands of the Black Kingdoms, where the name of Amra carried some weight. The people above might be friendly and welcoming; they might also greet him and Valeria with spears, or even with that cook fire that now seemed so merry. There were not as many cannibals in this land as legend had it, but there were enough.

"Well, then. Let's not stand about scratching each other's fleas like a pair of apes. Up!"

Valeria scrambled up the stairs and vanished ahead. Conan followed, to see Valeria's boots and sole garment lying on the stone. She herself was nowhere to be seen, but from the far side of the gap came the sound of someone desperately trying not to spew.

"You mean to smear yourself with this to pass through the gap?"

"Do you see any perfumed oil about?"

"Ask a foolish question…" Valeria muttered. Then Conan saw her, nude and pale in the darkness, kneeling to smear grease on the stone at the narrowest passage. Only when she had finished that work did she begin tossing handfuls of the grease through the passage to the Cimmerian.

The stuff reeked like a kitchen-midden, and its touch made Conan's flesh crawl. Still, he went to work vigorously, smearing the grease on his skin as fast as Valeria passed it through to him.

"What happens if you still can't make your way past?" Valeria asked.

"Then you climb up yourself and ask the folk above to come down and chip away a passage for me. I'm no more than a finger's breadth too large. It will be no great matter."

He thought he heard Valeria mutter again. "If they don't think I'm a witch or a madwoman, no doubt it will." Then the Cimmerian tossed his weapons and garments through the gap, lay down, and began his passage. The grease helped. He was almost through this time before he became wedged firmly in place. He stretched out both arms for Valeria to grip, and she added her strength and weight to his. He did not budge.

Conan groped with his feet, seeking a stout rest that would let him use the full power of his massive legs. One foot flailed in the air; the other found the wall. Conan willed all the strength of his body into the muscles of that leg, felt himself moving even as the rock flayed skin from his back and shoulders, then felt the rock itself move.

If he had summoned all his strength before, he now summoned that and half again as much. He heaved upward and forward, ignoring the wrenching of muscles and the creaking of bones. More skin vanished, and his lungs seemed filled with red-hot sand as he fought for the breath not merely to live by, but that he might fight and prevail.

The Cimmerian's strength was equal to the task. The stone did not slip and crush him. Instead, it held firm for a moment—then, incredibly, it opened wider.

Conan thought he heard Valeria utter what might have been either a prayer or an oath. He knew he felt her long fingers gripping his wrists again, and as the grip tightened, she flung herself backward.

For one more moment, the rock held Conan, and he was not sure which would happen first—his pulling free, or his arms wrenching out of their sockets. Then the tiny widening of the opening, the grease on skin and rock, his own strength, and Valeria's desperate efforts all joined to send him flying out of the gap-He landed almost on top of Valeria, and it was a while before either of them caught their breath enough to notice it. Even then, the woman did not protest. She only smiled and threw an arm around Conan's neck.

He returned the smile and rolled off, then fought breath back into his lungs and stood up. He felt as if he had been wrestling one of the Golden Serpents. His skin was scraped from flesh in half a score of places, and muscles and joints were cursing him roundly. The filth from the tunnel itched and stung wherever it fell on raw places, and altogether he had hardly felt worse during some of the times he had escaped from slavery.

But he had ignored pain even then because he was free, and now he did the same for much the same reason. That magic-haunted maze and its monsters had done their best to make an end of him, or at least to make the maze his and Valeria's tomb. Now they were free of it, even if to do no more than to die on their feet, their blades in hand.

Conan judged that all of his limbs were still attached and could perform their duties. Then he resumed his garments, except for his boots, which he hung about his neck as Valeria carried hers.

Valeria meanwhile had propped her head on one elbow and was contemplating him with what appeared to be amusement. Conan returned her contemplation, although with more than amusement as she had not yet donned even her one scanty garment.

"If you've done looking at me like a buyer at a donkey—" Conan said at last.

"I'd have you bathed before I bought you," Valeria replied. She held her nose. "Or maybe boiled."

"You could put a he-goat to flight yourself," Conan said. He reached down. "Up, woman. We're not done yet."

While standing in the open on the far side of the gap, he had seen at least two more tunnels leading off from the chamber. The magic light seemed to glow dimly far down one of them; the other was dark and no higher than Conan's waist. The stone at its mouth also seemed curiously worked, not so much carved as eaten, as if by the acids that the sword-makers of Khitai were said to use upon fine blades to etch cunning patterns upon them.

He thought of acids that could eat stone, and he remembered what had nearly taken Valeria, leaving its mark on her ankle. The mark was still there, beneath the filth. The thing that had made it might have also made the tunnel. No, he and Valeria were not done with this ancient maze until they stood in the sunlight again.

The first sign that Seyganko had of anything amiss was Emwaya's stumbling. That would not have told another man much, for Emwaya was dancing in a circle in the center of Seyganko's hut. It was, moreover, a dance so swift and complex that her feet seemed to spurn the earth; even the warrior's keen eye could hardly follow their movements.

She leaped—and instead of landing on her toes, she went to hands and knees. Seyganko sprang forward to help her rise. She shook off his hand and remained kneeling, then stretched her full length on the reed-strewn floor of the hut.

Again Seyganko offered aid; again Emwaya spurned it. Then she turned her head so that one ear was against the floor, and stretched out both arms. Her fingers writhed in gestures the warrior knew came from the Spirit-Speaking rituals.

Emwaya was not sick or hurt, it seemed. But if she had sensed some threat to the Ichiribu from deep within the spirit world, this was small consolation. Seyganko gripped his club and measured the distance to his spears, although reason told him that mere wood and iron could do nothing against such menaces as Emwaya might have heard.

At last she stood, brushing dried reeds from her breasts. Now she allowed Seyganko to support her, lead her to a sleeping mat, pour beer from a jug and offer it. But she sat with the wooden cup in her hand, licking her lips, eyes staring beyond Seyganko into places where he knew he could not follow.

"From below," she said. "It comes from below."

"What is it?"

"Have you never heard of the Stone City?"

"That legend?"

"I begin to think it is no legend. It could lie beneath this very village, with spirits from before men were men guarding it."

"It could. But then, it might not—" The wish to banter left Seyganko as he saw Emwaya's face harden.

"Something has made the spirits uneasy. I cannot say which spirits, or where, but I feel danger to the Ichiribu."

"I shall call out the fanda," Seyganko said. The fanda consisted of six warriors of each clan, who took turns being armed, girded, and painted for war. Seyganko was not painted, but his war luck was so proverbial that no one thought he needed the adornment except in great battles.

"Send a messenger," Emwaya said. "You must stay here while I paint you."

"There is need for haste more than for paint."

"Not when the enemy is unknown spirits."

"If the spirits are coming, then you and your father are needed, not the fanda."

"We will be needed before long, but the fanda has work, too. They must guide folk away from danger, keep them from panic, watch for thieves who might find untended huts a temptation—"

"Perhaps I should do your work and you mine, since you know it so well."

Emwaya looked hurt, as she seldom did when reminded of the sharpness of her tongue. Then she actually clung to him. "We each have our duties, I fear. Now, have you your war paint about here?"

"Yes. You are going to paint all of me?"

Emwaya lowered her eyes. "All. Do not hope that we will have time, though."

Seyganko grinned and began undoing his loincloth. The full ritual battle-paint included a warrior's loins and manhood. In times past, Emwaya's painting him had ended with much pleasure to both.

Yet something told him that this would not be one of those times. Emwaya spoke of spirits she had not encountered; Seyganko had little doubt that she spoke the truth.

"Hold on, Conan. My grip is slipping."

Valeria felt the Cimmerian's massive shoulders tighten under her feet. Free to move one hand without falling, she groped for a better purchase on the stone. It was slick with her own blood, issuing from where her first grip had gashed the hand.

At last she thought she had found what she sought. Many years of swordplay and climbing rigging had given her long arms more strength than commonly found in a woman. She did not fear falling as long as she had a good grip.

She had judged correctly, but she was dripping sweat by the time she rolled onto the ledge above. For the tenth time since they had begun their climb, she had to brush her hair out of her eyes. Yet she was perched on the ledge as securely as its crumbling stone allowed. Beyond her lay only the chimney, which both of them could climb with little trouble, and then solid stairs began again.

She tore a strip from her garment and bound her hair with it. This reduced the already tattered covering to hardly more than a shred of cloth about her loins. She had, however, quite ceased to care about her garb as long as it included a sword-belt and her steel.

Having done with Valeria, Conan handed up his boots and weapons, then sprang high and found purchase for both fingers and toes. A moment later, he was beside the woman on the ledge.

"We'd do better with a thong or a rope to tie to all this," he said, waving a bruised and filthy hand at their scanty gear and the boots holding a lord's ran-som in each toe. "Then we could draw it up afterward."

"There's not enough left of my garment for that," Valeria said. "Of course you could always sacrifice the rest of your breeches—"

"Or we could forget about those—"

Valeria put one hand protectively over the boots and the other on the hilt of her heavy dagger. Conan drew back in mock fear.

"By Erlik's untiring tool, woman, don't you know a jest when you hear one?"

"When I hear one, I do. I know not what I heard from you just now."

Conan shrugged and said no more. Valeria hoped he had heard her true meaning—that she would leave those fire-stones only to save her life. That a dead pirate had no use for loot, she would gladly admit, but she was not dead yet. Dusty-throated from thirst, hollow-bellied from hunger, filthy, all but naked, and far from home, or even from safety, she surely was— but not dead.

Then from above they heard a sound, familiar to anyone who had traveled this far south, yet strange, even unearthly in these surrounds.

Close to the cook fire, someone was beating a war drum. As another drum joined the first, the warm yellow glow of the cook fire died and darkness engulfed the voyagers in the depths.

One drum began the call to the Ichiribu of the Great Village. A second joined it, then a third.

Seyganko stood by the hearthstone as the cook-women emptied pots, gourds, and jugs of water onto the flames. They did this with sour looks at him. Not only was quenching the cook fire a dirty task, it was an evil omen. The women feared the spirits… as well as what their kin would say to cold meals.

Fortunately, they also feared Seyganko and his warriors of the fanda too much to disobey. Or was it Emwaya they feared? She stood by a hut on the edge of the hearthfield, arms crossed over her breasts, watching the work with an unsmiling face.

Indeed, she had not smiled since she had stumbled. Since she had told Seyganko that the hearth-field was the heart of the danger, she had looked almost an evil spirit herself. Fine work it would be if her face drove folk into the panic she feared and made more enemies for Seyganko.

Do you then think unknown spirits are nothing to be feared?

He heard the question in his mind, but used his body to reply, shaking his head. He did not wish to reply mind-to-mind when so many other folk might suddenly demand his attention. Aondo, for one.

Aondo was a warrior in the fanda, and beside him stood another—what was his name? Oh, Wobeku the Swift, one who had gone with Seyganko on the raid that brought back those Kwanyi captives, who told such dire tales. Wobeku was one of the fastest runners among the Ichiribu, as well as a friend of Aondo.

Today Wobeku was not running. He stood lightly on his long legs, and it seemed to Seyganko that his eyes roved about more than was customary. Now he looked at Seyganko, now at the hearthstone— especially the lower end, where the channel fed melted fat into the earth to nourish the spirits there—and now at Emwaya. «A man could not be blamed for wondering what Wobeku was seeking.

Seyganko realized that he was about to do what he had just thought unwise in Emwaya. Nonetheless—

Have you warned your father?

He needed no warning. He knows what the spirits do, as much as any man.

Seyganko's reply was a broad smile. Then he waved at Wobeku.

"Your wish, Honored One?"

"A messenger has gone to Dobanpu Spirit-Speaker. Yet he was not as swift on his feet as you. Will you take another message?"

Wobeku's smile was a mask of obedience and pleasure covering discontent that a child could have seen. Seyganko did not smile back. Whatever Wobeku had in mind, it demanded his presence here—which did not prove it unlawful, of course.

It was part of the price for the title of Honored One among the warriors of the Ichiribu. Baring one's back to treachery lest one do injustice to loyal warriors was a sacred duty. Spirits, as well as wronged kin, might avenge neglecting it.

"Good. Emwaya, daughter of Dobanpu, will tell you what to say."

Emwaya's message was short—just long enough, Seyganko judged, not to make Wobeku suspicious. The warrior saw the messenger nod, then unbind his feet, set aside all garb and girding save for his headdress, loinguard, and paint, then run. He was beyond the huts in a few breaths, outside the village wall in a few more, and out of sight before the drumming stopped.

By then, the hearthfield was empty of all but the fanda, Seyganko, and Emwaya. From cracks in the nearest huts, children peered, too curious to be frightened even if the earth was spewing spirit-serpents. More young ones seemed to be perched in trees and on the wall, and Seyganko heard their mothers calling them down.

Then he heard nothing more, save a swelling rumble from underfoot as the earth trembled and the hearthstone that had stood for five men's lives began to crack apart.

Even Conan's eyes took a moment to respond to the sudden darkness. For a moment, he could hear only Valeria's breathing, coming in quick pants like those of a thirsty dog. She was commanding herself well in the face of this new menace, but could not hide all of her disquiet.

Crom did not love the fearful, nor did they live long in Cimmeria. Otherwise, Conan himself might have volleyed oaths. It seemed that someone or something was toying with them, snatching away each promise of escape the moment they had come to trust themselves to it.

"Mitra's crown!" Valeria snapped. "If this is the work of the folk above, they'd best be very friendly when we appear. Otherwise, I'll not be."

Conan only grunted. She had spoken for both of them, and any more noise might be unwise. The folk above might not only be unfriendly, they might have listeners giving ear to what lay below.

He also did not trust this pit's walls to stand firm if shaken by loud noises. Not that they would remain unshaken if he and Valeria continued to climb—as they must—the road back now being closed. But it made little sense to shake them otherwise.

A moment later, Conan knew that his caution had had no purpose. A thunderclap tore at his ears, earth streamed down about him, and light reappeared above. Then a chunk of stone the size of a good ale barrel plummeted past him.

Without a word, Conan snatched Valeria back against his chest, then flung himself hard against the wall. Even a shallow niche might save them from being crushed like grapes in a winepress by the next stone.

The wall that had seemed to be raw earth was as unyielding as the stone of the tunnels below. Conan groped with a free hand and felt more of the same under his fingers.

Perhaps there was rock under the soil. Perhaps roots had bound the soil as hard as rock. And perhaps the binding was magical, and if the spells vanished, the whole shaft would come down on their heads.

Another, smaller piece of stone came down, and after that, hardly more than coarse gravel. It came in a steady stream, though, mingled with clods of earth. Dust filled the shaft; Conan clapped his free hand over his face, and Valeria tried to make a mask of her hair.

It was not enough; the dust set her to coughing desperately. Nothing more fell, but Conan had guessed the truth about the listeners above. A head appeared, silhouetted against the blessed sunlight shining through the enlarged hole.

"Who goes there? Name yourselves, or be called enemies of the Ichiribu."

The tongue was close enough to what Conan had learned in the Black Kingdoms that he could understand the meaning. The voice was that of a leader and a warrior, accustomed to being obeyed. Conan saw no reason to argue at length, not when the shaft might yet come down on his head.

But he and Valeria would not begin well by seeming to be beggars. In this land, only beggars or weaklings gave their true names for the asking. Wise men knew not to give that precious knowledge to those who might work magic with it.

"We are no enemies to the Ichiribu, whatever our names. Let us climb up to you, and you may see for yourselves."

Conan could not make out the man's look, but his reply was to silently draw his head back from the opening. The brighter light showed the upper portion of the shaft clearly, in spite of the drifting dust. The mouth lay a distance a good ten times the Cimmerian's height, and the shaft offered few handholds.

Once there had been a stairway spiraling up to the surface. Conan saw the holes where its beams had been thrust into the walls, and even the remnants of one or two of the beams themselves. None of this was of the slightest use to him and Valeria as long as the magic binding the shaft walls did not weaken. When it did, the shaft would doubtless fall on their heads, with more stones from above to mark their tomb.

"Conan," Valeria whispered, "do we go back?"

"How?" Conan asked. "Even if we could, the folk up there have heard us, likely enough seen us, too. They'll think we were demons and block the pit. What would you wager on finding another way out before we starve?"

"And if the folk up there are cannibals—"

"They'll have to eat a fair amount of steel before they eat us," Conan said. Valeria replied with a grin, then reached into her boots and pulled out a handful of the fire-stones.

"Would it help to throw a few of these up to the watchers?" she asked.

"It couldn't hurt," Conan said. He returned the grin. "But I thought these were your hoard."

"And I thought we wouldn't need the help of the—

Ichiribu, they said—to simply climb out of this demon-spawned pit!"

Conan took the largest of the stones in his hand, balanced it, then shifted slightly so that he could throw freely without falling back down the pit. Legs braced, he swung his arm in three great circles. On the fourth, his hand opened and the stone soared up the pit, a blazing green star as the sunlight struck it.

It fell outside the mouth of the pit, unheard and unseen by the Cimmerian. He knew the moment the watchers by the pit mouth saw it, however, from the outcry they raised. Hyenas fighting over carrion would have been quieter.

Conan could make out no words in that din. He could only discern what was most likely the voice of the leader, rising above the others and at last beating them down. He also heard what sounded like a woman, or a youth, apparently speaking with the leader.

Then Valeria cried out, blinking away tears, and even the Cimmerian felt lighter at heart. A stout oxhide rope with a loop at one end was dangling from the mouth of the pit.

It slid down to within a spear's length above Conan's fingertips. He cupped his hands and called up. "Too short, I fear. Another man's length will be enough."

"I'd best go up first," he told Valeria. "I speak their tongue, and some of the tribes think a woman warrior's bad luck."

"If they fill you with spears—"