Conan and The Gods of The Mountains

"Then they'll have no fire-stones," Conan reminded her. "From the din they raised, I'd say they'll do more than hold off their spears for that prize."

What Valeria clearly wanted was to believe that nothing would happen to Conan that would leave her alone in this noisome darkness. Just as clearly, Conan could give her no real assurance, and would not insult her with a false one.

Conan pulled the looped rope over his head and set it firmly under his armpits. "Pray that these are no pygmies," he said, "or I may be down again faster than I went up!"

Then, to the folk above: "Haul away!"

"Whoever is down there knows the True Tongue," Seyganko said. "That says human to me."

"Spirits can take human form, is that not so?" Aondo offered.

Emwaya looked as if she would prefer to lie, but nodded.

"Then why not speak so?" Aondo asked.

Emwaya frowned. She had explained to Seyganko the reasons why Spirit-Speaking did not use human tongues, so he knew that the folk below had to be human. She could not explain the same to Aondo without giving the whole fanda too much knowledge of Spirit-Speaking.

Then the man below shouted again: "Well, are you going to haul away or not?"

Seyganko raised his club and struck it against his shield three times. On the third blow, the men on the rope began to move back from the pit.

"Heavier than a man!" someone called, taking one hand from the rope to wipe his forehead.

"Either pull or let one who will take your place!" Seyganko snapped. The man looked ready to quarrel, then seemed to think better of it and returned to his work.

If what rose from the pit that yawned where the hearthstone had stood was a man, he was larger than any Seyganko had ever seen, save only Aondo.

A closer look told the warrior that the newcomer's skin was pale under its coating of filth, his hair straight, and his eyes an eerie blue. There were tales of lands to the north that were inhabited by such blue-eyed giants, a race considered human for all that. Here, no doubt, was such a one.

"Now will you tell us your name?" Seyganko ordered.

"When I have drunk, and you have brought up my woman," the giant replied.

"Your woman?" someone asked.

"You think I travel this forest with no comforts?" the man said, laughing. His teeth were very even and none of them filed into points. "Also, if you want more of these—" he pointed at the fallen jewel "—they are down there."

Someone clutched at Seyganko's arm. It was Em-waya, staring at the jewel as if it were a cobra about to strike. Seyganko put a hand on her shoulder and turned her around so that the giant could not see her face. Then he waved to the men to lower the rope again and shouted to the nearest hut for women to bring water.

"What is it, woman?" he whispered when he was sure that none paid him and Emwaya any attention.

"Those are Fire Eyes of the Golden Serpents," Emwaya said. Her breath seemed to come quickly, as if she had been running. "The man says they have more of them." .

"So? They are fine to look at, not as fine as you when oiled and lying on a pallet, but—"

"The Golden Serpents bred in Xuchotl. The tales of the city say the folk adorned themselves with the Fire Eyes."

"Then—"

"It could be that we have taken the destroyers of Xuchotl among us!"

"We have done no such thing," Seyganko protested.

"You think we can put them back in the hole and cover them up easily if you are wrong?"

Seyganko studied the man's heavily muscled limbs, his iron weapons, and the easy, alert way he stood. "No. If they are spirits, they would not go. If they are human, they might not go and it would be unlawful to force them."

"Then what—"

"Have your father summon the spirits to the dance-drum. At once, before these folk have spent a night among us. The man knows the True Tongue. He may know our ways as well."

For the first time in Seyganko's memory, Emwaya obeyed one of his orders without hesitating, let alone disputing him. She ran off, for this was no message to be given to one who might take it to others than Dobanpu.

Then Seyganko stepped forward to greet the woman who rose from the pit. She was even fairer than the man, with hair the color of fresh grain and a form that a goddess would not have disdained.

She had strange-looking footwear of leather slung about her neck, and from the way she unslung it, it was heavy. Then Seyganko and all of the fanda saw the Fire Eyes within the footwear and it made it seem like two tiny volcanoes bubbling with molten green stone.

The warriors sucked in their breath, and some gripped weapons. The woman bringing water did more; she halted in mid-stride and barely caught the water jug as it toppled from her head. The water itself made a puddle at her feet. She looked at it for a moment, then turned and ran.

The foreign woman looked ready to draw a weapon. The giant laid a hand on her bare shoulder and smiled thinly. "You kept your promise, up to the moment when the woman took flight. I'll keep mine." Then he turned to face Seyganko.

"I am Conan of Cimmeria, a free lance." He used the word for a warrior whose vows set him apart from any tribe or clan. It was an honorable status, and claiming it falsely was heavily punished.

"The woman is Valeria of the Red Brotherhood," Conan went on. "She is a free woman, oath-bound to me. She speaks not the True Tongue, save in her heart, which I know is good. We both ask for guest-friendship among the Ichiribu, and promise to aid them as far as it is in our power to do so."

Seyganko tried not to look at the Fire Eyes. If their power had been great enough to snatch those from Xuchotl…

It could be great enough to make the Ichiribu rulers of all the lands about the Lake of Death, even to the slopes of Thunder Mountain. It could also cast them down more completely than Chabano or the God-Men dreamed of.

Seyganko felt a chill, as of oncoming rain, when he next looked into Conan's blue eyes.

SEVEN

Ryku had often wished to be an insect upon the wall of a conclave of the Speakers to the Living Wind, as the God-Men called themselves. Now he had all but achieved that wish. He had at last attained the self-command that let a man's presence pass unnoticed by the Speakers—or even, it was said, by the Living Wind itself.

He clung like an ape on a branch to a pinnacle of rock that forked just enough to offer a man-sized niche. One side of the fork supported his back, the other hid him from what lay below.

Eight of the Speakers were gathered in a circle around a great globe of something that could be no natural substance. The globe was as tall as a man and as clear as water, likewise seeming as hard as rock. Yet it was also light enough that two of the Speakers' servants had borne it on a litter into this cave and placed it where it now stood.

It said much about the power which the Speakers expected from the globe that the servants were mute and deaf slaves, used only for the most secret matters. Once, it was said, the Living Wind had given the Speakers spells that would silence tongues and block ears, but could also be removed when the need for them had passed. Now that knowledge was lost, and hot knives and needles served in place of magic.

That meant there were fewer of the secret servants with each passing year. The Kwanyi gave up a fair number of stout young men and women, some came from the lesser clans, others had been slaves and prisoners—all of them now in the service of the God-Men on Thunder Mountain. The clans expected that at least the free tribesfolk would be returned alive and healthy, and they were not generous even with slaves to be mutilated or slain. They had become less generous in such matters since Chabano became the Paramount Chief.

A First Speaker who could wield the ancient knowledge might gain a stronger friendship from Chabano. Or if the Paramount Chief continued to insist that he himself rule in the alliance of wizards and warriors, the First Speaker might cause the Kwanyi to turn to another to lead them.

A breeze stirred the dank air of the cave. Ryku felt it blow cool on his skin, drying the sweat on his brow. He knew that the Living Wind could be called out from its cave by sufficient Speakers' magic. It was not lawful that he know this, being only a Silent Brother, but he did, and he knew much else of the Speakers' arts. Law had always lain lightly upon Ryku, called Son of Nkube.

Ryku had never seen the calling of the Living Wind, however. He would not have known that the Wind would be called had one Speaker not been in-discreet. Even now he wondered that the Speakers had no spells by which to learn of the presence of spies and eavesdroppers.

Perhaps that, too, was magic so ancient that living men no longer commanded it. Or perhaps the Living Wind was enough alive that it could seek out enemies itself, and punish them.

That thought so disturbed Ryku that he nearly toppled from his perch, and sweat broke out all over him though the wind grew stronger with each moment. He should not be here—and when the Wind had come and gone, he would not be here.

The tunnel on the far side of the cave began to glow in the crimson and sapphire hues of the Living Wind. The light did not flicker; the swirling essence of the Living Wind was not yet in the tunnel. It could not be far, though.

Ryku licked lips suddenly as dry as month-old porridge and fought his way back to some measure of self-command.

The serving wench held out two wooden bowls to Valeria. One held salted fish, scaled, gutted, and beheaded as deftly as Valeria had ever seen in the captain's room of a waterfront tavern. The other held a pungent stew of more fish, boiled together with grain and nuts that she had never tasted. Behind the wench, a boy held a third bowl, of piping hot yams.

"No more, thank you," Valeria said. She used some of what little she knew of the Black Kingdoms' tongue. The girl seemed not to understand, only smiling and shaking her head, then holding out the bowls again.

Valeria frowned. Had the Ichiribu sent a witling to serve her and the Cimmerian? She tried patting her stomach, then holding her hands together well out in front of it. She wanted to tell the girl that she had eaten of their excellent fare nearly to the bursting point.

The girl smiled and almost pushed the bowls into Valeria's lap. Valeria raised a hand to push the girl away, then felt her wrist seized with a familiar iron grip.

"Wait, Valeria."

The Cimmerian used more Black Kingdoms' speech, as well as hand language. The girl looked at Valeria and shook her head. Conan nodded. Then girl and Cimmerian both erupted in laughter.

Valeria flushed and covered her anger by holding out a hand for the salted fish. She probably would burst if she ate more, certainly if she drank any more of the Ichiribu beer to wash down the fish. She would still be cursed if she would seem loutish.

The girl served Valeria, kneeling gracefully. She wore a waistcloth that revealed nearly all of a long-legged, firm-breasted figure, with the supple waist and firm arms of a girl only just turned woman. Valeria noticed that Conan's eyes roved over the girl with unmistakable admiration.

She prodded him in the ribs, nearly spraining a finger against his layered muscles. "I thought you didn't care for black wenches," she whispered.

"Remember the ones about the fort? They file their teeth to points. These folk—their wenches look more like women and less like sharks."

"If you are so wise about woman, Conan, tell me what the wench was doing. I thought I said 'no more' plainly enough."

"Oh, you did. Then you used the gestures that said you were with child. The wench thought you needed more, for yourself and the babe."

"With child?" Valeria's jaw dropped so that she was not sure the words came out in sensible speech. Cdnan's grin told her that, unfortunately, they had. "I've not had a chance in years!"

"Small wonder, then, you're out of temper with men. None have shown they can tell a fine woman when they see one, so of course—"

"You clatterjawed Cimmerian oaf!" Or at least Valeria started to say that, with the intent of following it with a slap. Instead, she doubled up with laughter, upsetting her bowl. Conan patted her on the shoulder.

"Easy, woman. I was jesting."

Valeria almost wished he were not. She did wish that his hand would linger, so she reached up and held it with both of her own. She knew that Conan could break her grip as if she were a child, but she hoped he would do no such thing.

He did not. He left his hand on her bare shoulder long enough for the serving wench to raise her eyebrows, then wink at the boy. A moment later, Valeria and Conan were alone.

"They'll be listening," he whispered. "If you come closer, they'll hear nothing of what we say."

Valeria was ready to come as close as the Cimmerian could wish, but she sensed that this was not the time. She also heard a warning in his voice, and wanted to curse aloud in frustration. Had they, after all, not found safety among the Ichiribu?

Now the air in the cave whirled and moaned, as if it sought to flee the Living Wind and cried out in fear of its pursuer. Ryku clung to his perch with arms and legs alike, and could have wished for a tail like a monkey. All thought of concealment had long since left him.

It did not matter, for the Speakers had no care or thought to give to anything save the globe in the center of their circle. The globe… and the Living Wind they were bringing into it.

The light of the Living Wind now seemed an eye-searing flood, pouring from the tunnel like a stream in the rainy season. But no stream ever leaped like a fountain to pour downward and vanish into a globe that somehow remained as clear as a mountain pool for all the light that it swallowed.

Then Ryku saw the globe quiver, once, twice, three times. He looked at the eight-footed bronze bowl that held it, each foot of the bowl wrought in the form of a gilded fish, and saw that the bowl was also quivering. Then he blinked and spared a hand to rub his eyes, for he thought he saw pale green smoke rising from the vessel.

A moment later, the wind seemed to redouble, something that Ryku would not have believed possible. He came within a hair of losing his perch. He resumed a two-handed grip, closed his eyes… and opened them again when he smelled smoke.

Shadowy shapes now danced furiously within the clear globe, which was turning an angry crimson, with hardly a tint of sapphire. Some of the shapes might have been called human, others were serpents, still others things for which there was no name outside of nightmares… where Ryku most earnestly hoped they would remain.

But even if they came forth from the globe as living flesh, he must face them open-eyed and unflinching. How otherwise could he hope for the power of a Speaker, that would gain him what he most craved?

The smoke was rising from the bowl, and from the eight legs. The legs seemed to glow as if they had been heated over a forge, and Ryku thought he saw one of them bending. Had the weight of the globe suddenly increased out of all measure, because of the Living Wind entering it?

The eight Speakers certainly saw the smoke, and from their looks, it was obvious they knew that it meant something fearful. Or perhaps it was only the smell; when a whiff blew past Ryku, he nearly spewed.

He had barely commanded his stomach when all eight legs of the bowl seemed to melt at once. Smoke disgorged from the dissolving supports, from the bowl, and, as it seemed, from the globe itself.

Courage worthy of front-rank warriors and a lifetime of dedication held the Speakers to their task about the globe. Neither availed them against the Living Wind run wild.

The smoke vanished as if a giant mouth had sucked it all in at one gulp. The bowl and the eight legs became a bubbling pool of molten bronze, searing the eyes as would the mouth of a volcano. The globe wavered, impossibly enough held in midair by powers Ryku dared not imagine.

Then the Speakers or their powers, or both, failed, and the globe fell. It splashed into the molten metal, and gobs of liquid bronze flew about. The Speakers' discipline could not hold against such pain. They screamed and leaped like monkeys beset by bees, or like warthogs attacked by driver ants.

The globe wavered again. The shadow shapes within took a more solid form—two humans, a man and a woman—and then vanished. By this time, the substance of the globe was melting down into the searing metal and feeding a great tongue of liquid fire that reached out toward the circle of Speakers.

The Speakers' silence had broken; now their courage faltered. Yet still they did not run. They opened their circle wider and held their staves with both hands at waist level. Their chanting grew louder, for all that it came from throats raw with pain and fear.

The tongue of fire gathered itself and leaped. Crimson flames as thin as the air wrapped themselves about one of the Speakers' staves. The Speaker dropped it with a cry, but it did not fall.

Instead, the flames whirled the stave up to the ceiling of the cave and held it there while they consumed it. Not even an ash drifted to the floor—but when the flames fell back, they seemed sated, like a well-fed animal.

Far worse was the feeding of the liquid metal. It, too, leaped, to land in a spreading pool about the feet of another Speaker. In a moment, the man had no feet; in another moment, no legs.

In the moment after that, knowledge of what was happening reached the Speaker's brain, as did the agony of being burned alive. Burned? Ryku wished that so innocent a word could describe what was happening to the Speaker.

The Living Wind had this much mercy: the Speaker did not take long to die. Before he began to scream, the fire had already eaten him almost to the waist. Then it swept up past his belly and to his chest, and when it ate his lungs, he fell silent.

His head bobbed briefly on the surface of the liquid fire, now shot with streaks of black as well as crimson. Then it vanished, too, and smoke in a dozen colors swirled over the metal, hiding any bubbles.

Like the flames, the liquid fire made Ryku think of a sated animal as it withdrew toward the tunnel. The crimson flames followed, and as both elements vanished from the cave, the wind died.

The seven living Speakers stumbled out the way they had come. Some seemed blinded; they gripped the shoulders of those ahead to guide their stumbling feet. Others coughed as if mortally sick in the lungs.

Half-blinded, stifled, his own eyes and lungs assaulted by inconceivable stenches and smoke, Ryku clung to his perch until the last Speaker was gone. It would have been much simpler to let go, fall to the floor of the cave, and die a clean and natural death by breaking his head.

Simpler, and very foolish. Now there was something he had not dared to hope for: a vacant place among the Speakers. Add to this the loss of the scrying globe, with little knowledge gained from its use, and even the First Speaker would know that peril unseen in years faced the God-Men of Thunder Mountain.

If Ryku came forward to show how he might prevent Chabano from using this peril against the Speakers, he might receive a hearing. He might even receive initiation as a Speaker. Then it would be his right to wield the power of the Living Wind.

He barred his mind to the thought that in spite of all the forbidden lore he had studied, he might do no better than the Speaker who had died so brutally. If he let himself dwell on that, he would fall from his perch and die!

Valeria was as fine a woman as the Cimmerian had ever held this close. But he did not hold her out of passion, and what he whispered in her ear was most likely not going to make her warm for him.

"We've been guested with food and shelter," he said. "That means we're not likely to be slain by treachery."

"You leave much unsaid," Valeria replied.

"So do the Ichiribu. I know more of their speech than I have let on, so there've been wagging tongues where I could hear. They're none too happy about where we came from, or the magic in our coming."

"What magic? Neither of us could cast a spell to so much as trim a babe's nails."

"We broke the guardian spells on the entrance to the tunnel under the hearthstone. Then we broke the hearthstone—we, or the spells as they went awry. There's too much power about us for their peace of mind."

"Sea demons drown their peace of mind! We're no danger to them. Unless they turn us into one by trying to kill us—"

She broke off as Conan's grip tightened like iron, and he laid a finger across her full lips. "Don't even think that for long. There's a smell of their having a Spirit-Speaker among them."

"A what?"

Conan explained. Spirit-Speakers were no more to his taste than any other sort of magic-wielder. During his time in the Black Kingdoms, he had learned something of them, as he had learned something of every other kind of man who could be friend or foe. He owed it to this as much as to anything else that he had survived being a ruler in the Black Kingdoms, an occupation that often killed men born and bred in these lands.

"Now," he finished, at last relinquishing his grip on her, "this man's not yet our enemy. He may hope to make us friends, to him, to his tribe, or even to both. The way they talk of him, he seems to be a shrewd old fellow."

"Let him be shrewd enough to learn that we mean him no harm, and I'll praise his wisdom in songs."

"Valeria, I've heard you sing. Do you want us at blood feud with these folk, after all their cattle fall dead?"

Valeria growled. It sounded like a she-badger defending her young. Conan laughed softly. "If I said you shame the nightingale, you'd call me astray in my wits. But the truth is, our Spirit-Speaker will surely want us to help him or his folk against some foe they call the Kwanyi. I'd wager these Kwanyi hold the shores of this… Lake of Death, or so it's called."

"Do you know why?"

"No, and I'd be easier in my mind if I did. But if I start asking questions outright, I'll make these folk believe we're spies. If I tell them about where we came from, they'll think we're the ones who overthrew Xuchotl."

"We are, and not ashamed of it! Or are these folk fool enough to think that city of madmen was so great a loss?"

"Who said a word about their missing it? No, they'd no use for it, and shunned it as we might have. But they can't help wondering what magic cast it down. We speak of what we did, and… Do you want to learn what they do to witches in this land?"

Valeria's mouth opened without letting out a sound, but she shook her head. Conan wrapped his arm around her shoulders again. She eased herself back against his chest and closed her eyes.

"Most likely we'll be put to some kind of test. It could be as simple as my bedding you before all the tribe—"

"Another jest like that and you'll be bedding no woman anywhere!"

"—or something like dancing on a drum."

"There's not a drum in the world stout enough to bear you, Conan. Surely you mean a drum-smashing contest?"

"In these lands, they make their drums large enough and stout enough for me and another to dance upon. Each man tries to make the other fall, and the one who falls dies."

Conan felt Valeria go limp in his arms, and he cursed his wagging tongue for finally scaring her into a faint. Then he heard her breathing steadily, and gently he shifted her to one arm so he could see her face.

Her eyes had drifted shut, and her mouth was slack. A moment later, the Cimmerian heard a soft burble from the full lips. He lifted the sleeping Valeria and laid her on the sleeping mat to the right of the hut's door. Then he lay down on the mat opposite, kicked off his boots, and stretched like a cat.

The Spirit-Speaker would keep his own counsel until a time of his own choosing. Valeria had the right notion about what to do until that time.

EIGHT

Valeria did not know what a Spirit-Speaker commonly looked like. Nor was this the time and place to ask, even if Conan knew. Not when the Cimmerian was talking with Dobanpu, Spirit-Speaker to the Ichiribu.

Dobanpu was no longer young, but his presence almost made Valeria forget that he dealt in potent magic. Even more, he made her unaware that she was in a cave, when she had thought she would rather be impaled than again plunge beneath the earth!

Flanking Dobanpu were a young woman with the look of blood kin—a daughter, likely enough—and an Ichiribu warrior. Even one unfamiliar with the Black Kingdoms could tell that here was a man of rank. Iridescent feathers flowed from his spear and headdress, and he wore a necklace' of what seemed to be mother-of-pearl and what were most certainly leopard's teeth.

He was not of the same towering stature as the Cimmerian, but he did not need to be. Indeed, by the way he stood and moved, he made Conan seem almost uncouthly large. He also made Valeria aware, as she had not been before, that the Black Kingdoms produced some very comely folk.

The talk now seemed to be between Conan and the young chief—Seyganko, his name was, and the daughter was named Emwaya. Valeria glimpsed another figure in the shadows of the cave and recognized the girl who had attended them and who had thought Valeria was with child.

Conan had been right about their being spied on. But then, this hardly surprised Valeria. The folk of the Black Kingdoms might live a simple life compared to Aquilonians, but they were hardly simpletons!

She turned her attention back to the two warriors. As much as she could judge, when she understood perhaps one word in ten, a challenge was being offered. It seemed that it was from Conan to Seyganko, but was Seyganko accepting or refusing?

No, he was looking at Dobanpu. The woman Emwaya was trying to catch her father's eye and Seyganko's at once—and Valeria knew that she was betrothed, wed, or at least in love with Seyganko.

Dobanpu was not returning all the looks cast at him. Indeed, he sat as silent as if he had himself become a spirit. Then he said one word, which to Valeria seemed to be a name.

"Aondo."

Seyganko's face held what had to be displeasure. Emwaya, on the other hand, appeared to be struggling to hide her joy. Valeria looked away, to make the woman's task easier. Once in her life had she felt that way toward a man, but he was dead, his bones beneath a distant reef, with the surf and the starfish alone to mourn him.

The parley seemed to be done. Then Conan half turned and whispered to Valeria, "Bow, and stretch out your arms."

Mystified but trusting, .Valeria obeyed. She kept her eyes on the cave's floor long enough to count the trails left by snakes. They were the trails of small snakes, such as seers and wise-women in Aquilonia often kept about the house to give auguries and eat insects.

Seeing that bit of home in this distant land made Valeria easier in her mind, for all that she also remembered how long she had been gone from Aquilonia. She had been some years a woman and a wanderer even before she had met the man who now lay beneath the reef—and that was enough years ago that she needed two hands to count them.

Now as she knelt there with her arms stretched out, her sword-toughened muscles began to burn and her hands began to shake. Her knees also reminded her that the sand was harsh and that beneath it was hard, cold stone.

Then she felt a gentle touch at the back of her neck, draping something about her shoulders. She smelled what might have been a mixture of violets and ripe apples, if this land grew either.

"Rise," Conan said.

She rose, stretching as she did so as to ease her cramped muscles. She was proud to see that she did not tremble, let alone stagger. She also felt another kind of pride when she noticed that Seyganko was eyeing her rather as she had eyed him—and then she observed the frown on Emwaya's face as the woman saw where her man's gaze had wandered.

Dobanpu spoke again, this time calling another name—"Mokossa." The girl came from the back of the cave, and Dobanpu pointed at the cave's mouth. The girl ran to it, then seemed to halt and wait.

Conan put a hand at the small of Valeria's back and eased her along. Outside, they found that it was raining. They stopped under the overhang of the cliff to watch the rain beating the water of the lake into a vast gray expanse of tiny dancing splashes.

Valeria examined the wreath hanging around her neck. The flowers seemed dried and living at the same time, and even had it not come from Dobanpu, she would have smelled magic about it. She started to lift it over her head, but the girl Mokossa frowned and Conan put a hand on his companion's shoulder.

"Easy there, Valeria. It's safe enough, and better for you even if I lose."

"I might believe you if I knew what it was."

"It marks you as vowed to me, as this marks me the same to you."

"This" was a stout band of what appeared to be snakeskin about the Cimmerian's left wrist. By some quirk of the light, or perhaps of magic, it was in the same colors as Valeria's wreath.

"I see. Or at least I see what you are wearing. Will you tell me what you might win or lose, or leave me to guess it for myself ?"

Conan frowned. "It's not easy to tell it quickly—"

"Then take as much time as you need, and half the night besides. I have nothing better to do, of course, than listen to a Cimmerian's tales."

"No, you don't," Conan agreed with infuriating cheerfulness. Again the urge to geld him warred with the urge to laugh, and laughter won.

They sat on a fallen log that seemed to have once been roughly carved but was now half-rotted and altogether covered with moss and ferns. Conan drew a borrowed whetstone from a borrowed pouch at his borrowed belt and began to work on the edge of his sword. The blade, at least, was not borrowed.

It seemed that Conan was to submit to the gods' judgment of him by challenging an Ichiribu warrior to various contests. They would throw spears and tridents, duel with club and shield, run, jump, climb, swim, paddle canoes—

"No bedding wenches?"

"I doubt they could find enough, and a godless man is taboo to the women about here anyway."

"Is a godless woman taboo to the men?"

"You're not as godless as I am, it seems."

Valeria could think of no sufficient reply, so let the Cimmerian continue.

"I need not win every contest, but I must meet a picked warrior in every one and show skill in all. Otherwise, they may name me a man lacking the gods' favor, or even a coward."

"Small fear of that." Valeria had a sense of much left unsaid, and perhaps to remain so.

But the Cimmerian was honest, she would give him that. He frowned.

"If the gods favor me through the other contests, we end on the dance-drum. There the winner has the final blessing of the gods. The loser dies. If I win, all is well. If I lose—" he shrugged "—I suppose I'll not be king of a Hyborian realm, but that's not so great a loss."

"Not to be a king?" Had Dobanpu conjured away the Cimmerian's wits?

"A throne, woman, is something a man sits on.

You're an archer. You know how easy it is to shoot a sitting bird—or a sitting king."

"I've not been in the habit of shooting at kings, but you may have the right of it." Then her light tone broke. "So, Conan—if you lose—"

"I die. You live. If you don't fight to save me or avenge me—"

"I did not come here from an Iranistani harem!"

"Nor are you going to one. You must vow yourself to a new man, but you may choose him. I also think you may ask the help of Dobanpu and his daughter Emwaya. Seyganko, too, knows the warriors of the Ichiribu and seems to have a good head and heart. I'm glad I'm not to fight him. His folk will need him in the coming war."

"So who are you fighting?"

"Some stout fellow named Aondo. They say he's larger than I am—"

"They've matched you with an ape?"

"The ape would be the loser," Conan said. That again hinted of past battles against uncommon foes, but Valeria took no heart from it. What she wanted was assurance that she would not be at the mercy of the Ichiribu if Conan lost—and that assurance, she realized, was not to be forthcoming.

She took more comfort from an undoubted truth— that Aondo was not likely to best the Cimmerian in a fair battle. Was there anything she could do or leave undone to keep the fight fair?

Precious little, she realized, and some of the comfort washed away with the rain on her skin. Silently she cursed her folly in fleeing south when she had left the fort. The next time she had to flee from unwanted embraces, she would look where she was going and try not to end in a land where she knew neither law, tongue, nor custom… and was at the mercy of another's knowledge of all of them!

Ryku had not recognized the First Speaker among the circle of eight who had sought to conjure the Living Wind into the globe. Yet now the First Speaker showed signs of vast weariness in the way he slumped on his gilded stool. His eyes were cast on the lion's skin on the floor, but they seemed as vacant as if he had at last become truly blind.

—Or had seen what even those who were called God-Men were not meant to see.

As custom demanded of a Silent Brother, Ryku was prostrate before the First Speaker. He lay thus until the chill of the stone floor began to creep through his limbs toward his heart. It had to be only his fancy, but the stone seemed colder than ever before. It was as if the Living Wind had leeched the warmth of the earth from all about it.

It was as well that his face was to the floor when that thought passed through his mind.

"Arise, Ryku."

Ryku could not scramble to his feet quickly enough. The chill stone had stiffened his limbs, but he contrived to rise without loss of either balance or dignity.

"I have summoned you here because the Speakers to the Living Wind have need of you."

"This is an honor I have not dared hope—"

The First Speaker held up a hand. Ryku saw that the hand was thinner and paler than it had been the last time he had seen the man. It also seemed to tremble slightly.

"Spare me your modesty. You are not unknown to Chabano, Paramount Chief of the Kwanyi." It was not a question.

Ryku judged that this moment held opportunity as well as danger. He also judged that he should hold his tongue.

"Have you promised him anything in the name of the Speakers?" This time it was a question that demanded an answer.

"I have not." Which was entirely true, Ryku not being a fool.

"Will he believe you if you promise now?"

Ryku's confusion was not altogether feigned. "What am I to promise? Chabano is no fool, as I am sure you do not need telling, First Speaker."

"Indeed, I do not need to be told what I already know. You may promise him, in my name, some part of what he has asked for but not been granted."

"What must he give us?"

"You are bold, bargaining with me."

"I speak thus only to remind you of Chabano's ways, Master. He is as bold as a leopard slipping into a cattle pen to pluck the newborn calf from its mother's teat. He is as hungry, also, and as fierce when balked of what he seeks."

"If I thought that Chabano commanded spirits, I would say he has made himself your master. A praise-speaker could not have done better."

Ryku was silent. If the old man would spend both their time speaking in riddles—

"But if Chabano commanded spirits, he would have done for himself much of what he has asked of us in years past. So I do not doubt that you speak the truth as you believe it to be."

"No man can speak otherwise, Master."

The look the First Speaker gave him reminded Ryku that Chabano was not the only man who could quell disobedience or strike terror into the disloyal without raising his voice. He was tempted to prostrate himself again.

The First Speaker crossed his hands over a bronze medallion resting on his belly. "You may go to Cha-bano, Silent Brother Ryku. You may promise him aid from us, and ask that he tell us who has come among the Ichiribu."

"The conquerors of Xuchotl, perhaps?"

The First Speaker's look said that was something best not spoken aloud. Ryku tried to look humble.

"We have… ways… of learning this," the First Speaker went on. "Yet those who are masters of magic would know if we used these ways. They would know our powers, and that they might be in peril from us. Eyes that see and ears that hear without magic give no warning, and Chabano commands those."

Ryku now fought to look not merely humble, but surprised and admiring. In truth, he could admire one part of the First Speaker's pose. A more cunning way of pretending that nothing had happened to the seeing globe was hard to imagine.

Best I not take the First Speaker too lightly, even in this moment of triumph.

"Indeed, Chabano has often spoken of how no bird lays an egg without his knowing sooner or later," Ryku said. "I think he boasts, but he surely knows the use of spies and has them among the Ichiribu."

"Then go you and bid him use them for us," the First Speaker said. "Go, and if you return with the knowledge we seek, you may be raised to the rank of Speaker."

A new Speaker was chosen from the Silent Brothers only when an old Speaker died, and as yet there had been no word put out of such a death. Nor would there be, Ryku suspected, at least not until it became necessary to explain why Silent Brother Ryku was being honored.

It would be necessary, he swore. He would not fail, now that he had been offered as a free gift the opportunity for which he would have shed blood, and not only that of other men!

Ryku prostrated himself again until given leave to rise, then swiftly departed the First Speaker's chamber.

Chnggg!

Conan's spear sank deep into the stump that was his target in the spear-throwing contest. Sank so deep, the Cimmerian judged, that it struck a knot and rebounded. The shaft quivered so fiercely that it jerked the iron head from the wood. The spear dropped to the ground, kicking up dust.

Conan turned to Aondo and raised a hand in salute. The Ichiribu warrior had won the spear-casting contest, although by the slenderest of margins. Had it not been for that last cursed knot—

From behind Conan, Valeria strode to his side. She now wore an Ichiribu waistcloth and the wreath showing her to be his vowed woman, as well as the leather bindings on her feet. Much travel, then sunny days upon the island of the Ichiribu had darkened her northern fairness, but not otherwise marred her looks.

"What now, Conan?"

"Today, nothing more. Tomorrow, the canoe, the fish-hunting, and then at night, the drum-dance."

A shadow passed across Valeria's face. "Conan, I am as deft with a canoe paddle as any of these folk. More so than you, I think."

"Likely enough. But it's not life or death if I lose anything save the drum-dance. Aondo won the wrestling—"

"Because you let him win, to muddle his wits with false hopes."

"Woman!" the Cimmerian said, looming over her in mock fury. "Do I have no secrets from you?"

"No," Valeria replied with an impudent smile that made her look almost girlish. "After as much time as I've passed with you, I'd be a fool if it were otherwise."

"You're no fool, that's as certain as anything can be," Conan said. Then a disquieting thought made him frown. "Unless you've offered to paddle the canoe in my place?"

"And if I have?"

"Answer me. Have you offered to take my place in the canoe?"

"Yes."

"Crom! If only they had the wits to refuse—"

"They accepted."

Conan wanted to pick up Valeria and shake some sense into her, knew that he would shake their friendship to pieces if he did, and contented himself with a volley of oaths. It set all the birds calling, and not a few children wailing. Women, even warriors drew back from the Cimmerian, leaving him alone with Valeria, well out of anybody else's hearing.

"Did Emwaya suggest this?" he growled.

"This what?"

He struggled for fair words. "This… taking my place."

"No. She has ben not unfriendly, but we've not been among these folk long enough for me to give that kind of ear to one of them. Especially to a wizard's daughter."

"You've not lost all your wits, at least."

"What mean you by that, Cimmerian?" Valeria's voice held an edge,

"If they are letting you take my place in one of the contests, it means they regard you as a warrior."

"So?"

"A warrior of rank."

"Better still."

The Cimmerian lost the struggle to keep an edge from his own voice. "A warrior sworn to me as a blood-brother. Such may take another's place in the contest. That is the law."

"I knew—"

"Woman!" the Cimmerian bellowed. "Did you know that if you do that, you are judged along with me? That your fate marches in step with mine? If I lose the drum-dance, you die with me!"

Conan had expected anything but that Valeria would throw her arms around him, then pull his head down with a firm grip on his hair, and kiss him soundly.

"All the gods be praised! I did not know I could so easily avoid sitting and waiting to be thrown to some warrior like a bone to a dog!"

Conan decided that Valeria was actually saying what he had heard, and that neither of them had gone mad. He much doubted that if the drum-dance went against him, there would now be any tame submission to death. Valeria was not so made.

But that submission had never had any purpose, save keeping her alive. If it was her free choice to fling herself into a last battle at his side, then so be it—and the worse for the Ichiribu if they took the verdict of the drum-dance seriously!

NINE

Valeria still did not understand much of the Ichiribu tongue. She could read faces well enough, though, and she read in all around her the common thought that she was mad.

For the tenth time since she had sat down in the canoe, she raised her paddle, letting it find its own balance in her long-fingered hands. The morning sun gilded the drops of water that fell from the paddle blade into the lake.

This morning, Lake of Death seemed a monstrously false name for such fine water. The surface sparkled, emerald-tinted with flashes of azure, and rippled softly under the light breeze. Sun flashed from the rose- and snow-hued wings of whole flocks of birds beating their way high above the island of the Ichiribu toward the distant shore.

She put the paddle down and, again for the tenth time, gently rocked the canoe to test its balance. It was as fine and light a dugout as she had ever known, both the inside and the bottom scraped and oiled until they were as smooth as the back of her hand. Smoother, likely enough, with all that she had done since fleeing that captain's embraces.

Conan was not far wrong. She might have wasted years in that dismal border settlement, until time had taken the strength and grace from her and the Red Brotherhood would no longer have her back.

Or she might have died from a fever, from a fall from horseback, or by the arrow or blade of some bandit unworthy to scrub the bilges of a Red Brotherhood ship. Died, without ever feeling a deck under her feet, seeing a sail swell with the wind, hearing the chant of rowers as they took a ship out of harbor—

She blinked and thrust the past from her. For now, she could live only from one moment to the next, from one stroke of the paddle to the next. Otherwise, Conan would have a mark against him, those with doubts of the pale-skinned strangers would rejoice, and she would have thrown her life into the scales for nothing.

From twenty paces to starboard, Aondo bared misshapen teeth in a mocking grin. Then he raised his paddle and thrust it back and forth in an unmistakable gesture.

Valeria replied in kind, biting her thumb, then pretending to throw it overboard and spitting after it. Aondo's grin wavered, then vanished as the onlookers onshore laughed. Valeria even heard one or two besides Conan shout her name as if it were a war cry.

Fifty paces to port, the two older warriors judging the race sat in the sterns of their canoes. Each of the judges' canoes had four paddlers, although one of the boats was hardly larger than the stout craft Aondo was paddling alone.

Aondo, Valeria decided, was once more determined to strut and crow like a cock on a dunghill, and much good might it do him! She had chosen a canoe that she was sure she could handle over the whole length of the race. It did not matter where else Aondo might be ahead as long as she led him past the finishing mark!

Onshore, the drums began. The Ichiribu drums were the "talking" kind, able to send complex messages, but today they had no such task. They were to spur her and Aondo on to greater efforts—and their steady, deep rumble was already reaching down into her belly, filling her as if with strong wine.

Valeria tossed her head, her hair brushed her shoulders, and the two judges raised their tridents. When those tridents came down—

Spray jetted into rainbows as the judges flung their tridents. The rainbows had not faded when Valeria's paddle plunged into the water, driving her canoe forward.

She paddled as she had learned to, head up so that her arms had free play and all the muscles of her upper body could feed the arms. Aondo, she saw, was hunched over, as if that would urge his canoe faster through the water. His strokes were not as smooth as hers, but his stout thews made them formidable.

There was not a spear's length between the two canoes as they passed the first mark. Valeria already felt sweat streaming down her face and body, and her headband growing sodden. She thanked Mitra that she had worn only the briefest of loinguards, apart from binding her hands with leather against blisters.

The race spanned six marks, about a league or a trifle more in Valeria's judgment. She had fallen farther behind than she liked by the second mark, and by then, her hair was as sodden as her headband.

She was not gaining by the third mark—halfway along—but neither had she lost any more ground. Aondo also was dripping sweat, and his canoe seemed to be lower in the water than it had been. Was the water splashed from his vigorous strokes finding its way aboard?

The judges' canoes were keeping up well, but Valeria did not expect much of the judges. She was many things that were strange to the Ichiribu, and honor might not outweigh ignorance when it came to deciding her fate. She would do as she had done before—wager all on her own skill and strength and leave the rest to the gods.

Dip, thrust, lift, twist slightly to the other side, dip, thrust, lift, twist again. Her thigh and belly muscles joined her arms and shoulders in shrieking protests. Dip, thrust, lift, twist a little harder this time to shake sweat from her eyes, which had begun to burn as if they were filled with hot wax.

Aondo's canoe had been steering an uncertain course for some time now. His thrusts seemed almost frantic, but they had lost none of their power. His canoe was no longer settling. Had he somehow managed to bail it out when Valeria's eyes were elsewhere? Or had it been only her wishful fancy that it was low in the water?

It was no fancy that his steering was growing still more erratic. Valeria stared at the Ichiribu warrior. In a moment when he thought himself unobserved, she caught him staring back at her. The malice in that stare chilled her blood and seemed to turn the sweat upon her into ice. If he had any voice in her fate, she would be begging for death long before death took her.

Her sweat-dimmed eyes made out something else, too. Aondo was steering a course that was gradually taking him across her bow. Before they reached the next mark, she would have to either back water or strike him—and if she struck him, she would forfeit the race.

Rage did not blunt Valeria's wits. She had to surprise her opponent. Aondo was as strong as an ox, but not much quicker of thought. She wondered who had counseled him to this treachery, doubted she would learn, but knew one thing: the man was not in Aondo's canoe.

Valeria subtly altered the force and angle of her strokes so that her canoe began to drift quite as subtly to starboard. She felt a surge of strength as she saw Aondo actually slow his pace, and she knew that her deception was working. He thought she was exhausting her strength and would have no reply to his scheme.

As they approached the fourth mark, the canoes were barely a sword's length apart. Aondo was halfway across Valeria's bow now, paddling only hard enough to keep the distance. A few missed strokes and he would be lying across her path like a log.

But it was Valeria who missed a stroke, by intent, but making it seem the error of one at the end of her strength. She lost ground, but only by a few paces— then her paddle churned the water, and she shot under Aondo's stern.

Aondo screamed something that Valeria doubted was praise and stabbed wildly at the lake with his paddle. It struck the water on the wrong side, and he had completed his stroke before he realized this.

His canoe swerved sharply, until it had almost reversed its course.

Valeria was clear by then, past Aondo and into open water. She did not care if he spent the rest of the day spinning around in circles, or jumped overboard to be eaten by the lionfish and crocodiles. She only cared that the fourth mark was passing her to port, and now it was time to spend her strength freely. She would not allow herself even a moment's doubt that she still had that strength.

Her paddle seemed to dive now, then leap over the canoe to dive on the other side. Each thrust seemed to raise the canoe as well as thrust it forward. Water gurgled at the stern, spray made rainbows at the bow, and Valeria knew she was kneeling in a hand-breadth of water in the bottom of the craft.

She would not allow herself a moment to look back at Aondo, either. She was already giving the race everything that was in her. Aondo could no longer make any difference. The world shrank ever more swiftly to the endless rhythms of her paddle strokes, the water churning past, the fifth mark vanishing astern, the sixth and last now in sight—

Aondo was there again, to port now. He seemed to have no treachery left, but too much strength for Valeria's comfort. Comfort no longer mattered. Her world was no more than one stroke after another, and nothing else mattered as long as each stroke carried her toward the mark.

Was Aondo larger, meaning that he was closer? Valeria would not waste a single moment to even look. It would make no difference. None at all. She would dip the paddle, lift it, twist—and it had begun to seem that a white-hot band was locked about her waist and thighs—

"Hoaaaaa, Valeria!"

There was only one voice in the world like that. Valeria did not know if Conan was hailing her victory or urging her to greater efforts. She had not thought she had any more strength in her, but the Cimmerian's thunderous cry proved her wrong.

She raced along in a cloud of spray, her paddle flying from side to side and up and down, almost too fast for her eye to follow. She was only muscle and sinew, bone and breath, with no human senses left in her.

"Valeria!"

She heard Conan's voice again, but this time it was almost instantly lost in the din of other voices. They were shouting her name from the shore, from the lake, even, it seemed, from the sky.

"Valeria!" The Cimmerian cut through the din. "You won!"

Valeria wanted to join the shouting. Instead, she found that her mouth seemed packed with wool. She opened it, but only a frog's croak came out. She bent forward, cautiously because she feared that her eyes would pop from her head and roll about on the canoe's bottom.

The canoe rocked and spun about. She clawed for her dagger, in the half-mad notion that Aondo was seeking to avenge his defeat by murder in plain sight of all his tribe.

Then a large, sword-calloused hand gripped her wrist and pulled her around. Conan stood beside her canoe, up to his chest in the water. With his free hand, he plucked the paddle from her grip and tossed it into the bottom of the canoe. She saw it float.

Then she saw the cloud-flecked blue sky as the Cimmerian lifted her out of the craft and carried her in his arms toward the shore. She felt the cool water of the lake soothing her feet and arms, and found the breath for a long sigh.

They reached the shore. The servant girl Mokossa ran forward with a gourd of water. Valeria sipped, fearing that her throat and stomach would never be the same again. The water stayed down, however, and she drank thirstily.

By then, she could even stand, with Conan's help. She leaned comfortably against him as the Ichiribu began shouting her name again.

In the middle of the shouting, she heard a familiar growl in her ear. "You didn't have to go to such lengths to have me carry you ashore! Some women haven't the sense the gods gave a fly!"

It was too much effort to even think of gelding him, and as for biting or kicking him—there was a victor's dignity to think of.

Thoughts of that dignity also kept Valeria from falling senseless, as pleasant as the idea seemed. Instead, she held out her hand for another gourd, and this time emptied it over herself.

Wobeku entered Aondo's hut with care, hands in front of him and his weapons left at the door. Aondo was not easy-tempered at the best of times, and these were anything but that.

A slave girl leaped up and ran into the corner of the hut at the sight of Wobeku. She made the sign against the evil eye as she did so.

Casually, Aondo.sat up and reached for the girl. She squealed in unfeigned terror as his massive hand closed on her ankle. She did not dare fight, however, as Aondo drew her to him and across his lap.

"Wobeku does not have the evil eye. Repeat that ten times."

"Wobeku-u-u-u does n-n-not—aiyeee!"

Aondo's hand had come down hard on the girl's bottom. She squealed again and tried to wiggle free.

Wobeku cast his eyes up at the smoke-reeking shadows at the roof of the hut. It was no concern of his how Aondo treated his women. However, he did not have much time, even if the last rounds of the duel between Aondo and Conan the Tribeless had been put off until tomorrow.

The girl was rubbing her bottom with one hand and her eyes with the other when Aondo was done with her. She crawled into the farthest corner of the hut and cowered there. Wobeku wasted no sympathy on her. Had she seen any of several women who had seriously displeased the huge warrior, she would have called herself fortunate.

"She must go," Wobeku said.

"Who are you—" Aondo snarled. Then he frowned. "Only outside?"

"Yes. Did you think I was fool enough to come between you and one of your women?"

"You do not know as much as you do by being that big a fool, I must say." Aondo turned to the girl. "Go! I will send Wobeku to bring you back."

The girl did not seem much pleased at this prospect, but obeyed. Wobeku himself was hardly pleased at being called on to carry messages for this overgrown boy, whom the gods had given two men's strength and half a man's wits. Like the wench, though, he would obey, but out of hope rather than from fear.

"Aondo," he said when the two warriors were alone, "you were shamed today."

"You dare—"

"I dare repeat what all will say before tomorrow's sunset."

"Who cares what they say before sunset? After the next sunrise, no one will say anything against me. They will be too busy burning the witch-man Conan."

"You are confident."

"I am Aondo."

"Being Aondo did not make you faster than the woman Valeria."

"I know ways to slow any woman."

That much was truth. Aondo knew how to slow a woman so that she never moved again, save when her kin bore her to the burning ground.

"I know how to slow any man. Above all, the man who will dance on the drum with you tomorrow night."

"I need no such help."

"Who said anything of help? You are Aondo, who can win without help. What I offer is friendship."

"You, a friend to any man? I will tell all the Ichiribu that you have promised friendship. Then they will laugh until they choke."

Wobeku grew hot, and his hands became fists. He dared show no more anger before Aondo. He was indeed a man alone more often than not, and few would even think of avenging him should Aondo slay him here.

"If friendship is a word that rings false in your ear, call it a trading of favor for favor."

"I do not give up Valeria."

"Who said anything of asking mighty Aondo to give up his chosen vengeance?" Wobeku assumed a look of vast innocence. "She will not be harmed, I swear it. But without harming her, I can make your victory even more sure than it is already."

"Suppose you did this favor?" Aondo asked. "What do I do for you?"

Wobeku wanted to dance in triumph. The trident had sunk deep. Now to heave on the line and haul in this lionfish!

"There are many among the Ichiribu who will talk to you, but not to me."

Wobeku did not add that many of those did not talk as much to Aondo as in his presence, thinking the hulking warrior too foolish to remember what they merely said. There was truth in that thought, but not so much that Aondo would be useless as a fresh pair of eyes and ears.

"This is so."

"It is also true that sometimes I need to know about matters that people will not speak of before me. I will tell you when such matters arise. You will watch and listen, and tell me what you see and hear."

"Who else learns what I tell you?"

"The gods alone."

"Not Dobanpu?"

"Never the Spirit-Speaker, nor any of his kin!"

That was another truth. Aondo looked so relieved to hear that Wobeku was not spying for Dobanpu that Wobeku knew the big man would not think any further. The moon would turn to mealie porridge before Aondo wondered if Wobeku might be spying for the Kwanyi.

"Gods! Put me on the rack rather than let me endure this!"

Emwaya made soothing noises as Mokossa rubbed oil into Valeria's aching limbs. Conan laughed. Valeria glared.

"You'll not be laughing this time tomorrow night, Cimmerian. Aondo will take a deal of dancing down."

"Not more than I'm fit for, I'll wager."

"How much?"

"What are you wagering, woman?"

This time Valeria's glare ended in laughter. "I know what you would have me wager, Conan."

"Has Emwaya taught you the art of hearing thoughts?"

. "Conan, some of your thoughts make such a din a babe could hear them, and I'm well past that age!"

"Indeed you are," Conan said, running his eyes approvingly over Valeria's nude form. She might say that every one of her muscles ached as if she had been racked, but nothing of this showed on the clear skin.

"Pity you can't take my place on the dance-drum," he continued. "You dance better than I, and clad as you are now, you'd fuddle the wits of a better man than Aondo."

"I already have," Valeria snapped. "Or have you honestly forgotten that the drum-dance is man's magic among these folk? They would not take my dancing as a jest, I am sure."

Conan made a rude suggestion as to where the Ichiribu could take anything they did not like. Emwaya seemed to catch his tone, if not his meaning. She raised her eyebrows but could not hold back laughter.

At last Valeria—as slippery as an eel, her body laved with scented oil—was half-asleep on her pallet. The Ichiribu women departed; Conan sat down besiae Valeria and rested a hand on her hair.

Drowsily, she rolled over, and with eyes still half-closed, nipped his hand lightly. He snatched it away and glowered at her in mock fury.

"Oh, have it your way, woman. Anyone would have thought you cared about what happened to me tomorrow night!"

Valeria bit her lip. "Would you believe me if I said that I do?"

"Any man who believes a woman deserves to be bitten harder than I was."

"That would not be difficult to contrive, Conan."

The Cimmerian sat down on his own pallet and kicked off his boots. "Tomorrow night we can drink late and laugh long over these fears. Tonight I'm for a good sleep."

Valeria was snoring even before the Cimmerian lay down. As Conan rolled over on his pallet, he heard a distant murmur that swelled to an angry drumming of rain on the hut.

The sky had vanished twice over, once behind the clouds and a second time behind the rain, when Ryku slipped through the darkness to meet Chabano.

He had no fear of being tracked on such a night, save by the magic of the Speakers. The rain would do for any natural enemies, and the First Speaker should guard against any idle curiosity by his underlings. If he did not, or if Dobanpu Spirit-Speaker had become curious, then Ryku's hopes of realizing his ambitions would end before they were well begun.

Ryku told himself that this bleak mood was due only to the rain, not to the promptings of spirits. Then lightning flashed, illuminating a solid figure standing against a tree. So solid did the Kwanyi chief appear that it was hard to tell who upheld whom, the tree or the warrior.

"Hail, Chabano. You came swiftly."

"Your message came in good time. Now I am here. Speak."

"I have news. I may promise more aid to the Kwanyi—"

"You will have no place among us for mere promises, Ryku."

"That is not my hope. You asked me to speak. Will you listen if I am brief ?"

"You sing loudly for so small a bird."

"The honey-finder also has a loud song, and the bear does well to listen."

Chabano imitated a bear's growl, but thereafter was silent as Ryku explained what the First Speaker wished and what he was promising.

"My spies among the Ichiribu did not swear to serve the God-Men," Chabano said at last.

Ryku wished the spies' oaths devoured by lionfish, but aloud said only, "Then can they not swear new oaths? If they are wise enough to be your spies, they must also be wise enough to know that the God-Men mean the Kwanyi no harm."

"I myself do not know that," Chabano said. "Or do you say I lack wisdom?"

Ryku judged that almost any words he spoke now were likely enough to be his last. He shrugged instead.

Chabano laughed. It was laughter that drowned out the rain and even warred against the thunder. "I do not know much about the God-Men," he said at last. "But you will tell me more, true?"

Ryku nodded.

"I rejoice. And my spies swore oaths to me, so they will obey even if it aids the God-Men. Did. you not know that?"

Ryku confessed ignorance.

"Then you have as much to learn about the Kwanyi as I have about the God-Men. Perhaps more.

Remember that, and guard your tongue when next we meet."

Ryku was ready to swear potent oaths to do so when he realized that he was about to swear to the darkness. Chabano had vanished, as silently as a cobra for all that he more resembled the honey-seeking bear.

TEN

The verdant hills on the western shore of the Lake of Death had long since swallowed the sun. Now moon-silvered clouds were swallowing the stars. A wind blew from the lake onto the island of the Ichiribu, gentle for now, but with a hint of strength to come.

On the summit of the highest hill on the island, Conan stood on one side of the dance-drum, contemplating Aondo standing on the other side. Both wore no more than loinguards, leather braces on their ankles and wrists, and looks of grim determination.

At least Aondo had donned such a look. Conan had merely allowed his face to assume its natural expression, which others had told him was grim enough for any occasion.

"You look ready to challenge the gods themselves if they give you half an excuse," a woman had told him some years ago in a distant land. She had intended it as praise, being one who doubted the gods' very existence.

Conan's own beliefs did not go that far. He merely doubted everything the priests said about the gods, and waited for the gods to speak for themselves. As they had so far remained silent, he felt he had good cause to rely on his own skill and strength.

He took on a more lighthearted expression and studied Aondo. The man's wits were nothing to boast of, but his look of being as slow as a mired ox was deceptive. Conan had seen too much of Aondo's swiftness in their previous contests. Also, Aondo knew the art of the drum-dance from boyhood, while Conan's life—and now Valeria's, curse the woman!— hung upon the Cimmerian's learning it within a few moments.

There was nothing more to learn about Aondo. Conan turned his attention to the drum itself.

It was a monstrous creation, a rough circle a good twenty paces across. The drum-frame was made of timber stout enough for building a war galley or the roof of a temple. In the torchlight, the drumhead had the russet hue of well-tanned oxhide, but a sheen as of tiny scales hinted of some other origin. Knowing how many strange beasts this part of the jungle seemed to harbor, the Cimmerian refused to let this unsettle him. If the drumhead would support his weight until he had won life and freedom for himself and Valeria, he did not much care if it was made of the hide of creatures from the moon!

From behind the circle of onlookers, Dobanpu and Seyganko stepped forward. Conan though he saw Emwaya and Valeria somewhere in the circle, but the crowd was too thick for him to be certain. It seemed that everyone who could walk or be carried had contrived to be here tonight, from babes in arms to venerable grandsires.

The wind gusted, and the torches flared, their smoke coiling serpentlike about Conan. He smelled exotic resins and herbs, like nothing he had encountered in the Black Kingdoms. The tribes of the Lake of Death, he would wager, were apart even from their kinsfolk nearer the coast.

Time to learn more about them when he had won. He raised his arms and clasped his hands over his head in the signal that he .was ready. Aondo did the same.

From somewhere beyond the circle of torchlight, a drumming began. It was not that of one of the great talking drums, this one—it might have been a child tapping _;away. But it was the ritual signal for the dancers to take their place.

Conan found the notched timber that served for a ladder, but disdained it. Instead, he gripped the edge of the drum, flexed at the knees, and soared onto the drumhead in a single leap.

The drum boomed like all the drums of all the war galleys in all the fleets of the world sounding the stroke at once. It seemed to Conan that the flames of the torches themselves froze for a moment. Certainly he could read surprise on every face… including Aondo's.

The Ichiribu champion at least had the wits not to attempt Conan's feat. He climbed by way of his notched log, and only then leaped into the center of the drum.

Once more the thunderous booming rolled out across the hilltop until it was lost in the darkness over the lake. Conan rode the drumhead by again flexing his knees, for now the art seemed no more difficult than balancing oneself on a ship's deck, easier than standing on the back of a horse. He did not expect it to remain that easy.

Wobeku watched with a sober eye as the two dancers began the serious work of the night. He doubted that Aondo's greater experience would outweigh his natural arrogance. Nothing could keep him from underestimating his opponent—and against this Conan, that would be folly.

So much the better. The more Aondo owed to Wobeku, the more pliant a tool in the hands of Chabano's spy the warrior would be. The more tales Wobeku could bear to the Kwanyi chief, the higher his place when the other tribe at last ruled the lands about the Lake of Death.

Wobeku patted the pouch at his belt. It seemed the common warrior's pouch, which might contain a spoon and eating gourd, a bone needle and sinew for mending garments, or a few strips of sun-dried meat and salted fish.

It contained all of these things, to deceive the casual searcher. Below them, it also held the two lengths of a short blowgun and a fish-skin pouch of darts for it.

The blowgun was not the man-tall weapon of the tribes of the forests to the south. Its range was less than half that of a good spear-throw. But it would not need range tonight, when its victim suspected nothing.

Nor would it need to do more than pierce her bare skin for the poison to do its work. The art of keeping cobra venom potent in the air was known only to the God-Men, and the darts were part of their gifts to Chabano. A small part, considering that Wobeku had only three darts. Was the spell for preserving the venom so difficult to bring about, or were the God-Men merely being closefisted with their magic as was their custom? Yet when one dart would do the work, three should be ample. The prey would suspect nothing, and cobras were not so rare on the island that anyone would suspect more than ill fortune, until it was too late. Too late for both Wobeku's prey and her bond-mate on the dance-drum.

The breeze now held a chill hint of yet more rain. Conan was sweating in spite of this. So was Aondo, and the sweat of both men was pouring onto the already-smooth drumhead, causing their footing to be even less certain.

More than Aondo's sweat was making the Cimmerian fight to remain on his feet. At unpredictable intervals, the Ichiribu warrior would fling himself down on his knees, or even on his belly, then slap the drumhead with both massive hands to begin his rise. These gestures gave the drumhead whole new kinds of movement, also unpredictable.

Conan himself foreswore such tricks. He learned swiftly that no movement of the drumhead put him in much danger of losing his footing… as long as he was prepared for it, at least, which meant feet well spread and legs ready to be either loose or rigid, as the drumhead demanded.

The drum-dance was unlike anything the Cimmerian had done before. But it called on skills that he had honed for a good few years, until they were as keen as the edge of his broadsword. From the yarn of these skills, he could weave victory.

Or at least he could avoid defeat. With his fine tricks, Aondo was wasting strength that Conan was saving. Yet the warrior seemed no slower or weaker than he had at the beginning of the duel. What,

Conan wondered, would be the judgment of the Ichiribu if the drum-dance ended with both men still on the drum, unable to move a finger?

He laughed, and laughed again when he saw that this made Aondo frown. No doubt the man was cudgeling his wits to guess what trick the Cimmerian might be preparing. Conan laughed a third time, at Aondo's folly. The man would only take his attention from his opponent's next move, which was the surest way to lose.

For Conan, the world had shrunk to the drumhead and the man who stood on it with him. So had his concentration on his foe always been foremost in a fight for life, since he was old enough to win by skill rather than by sheer youthful strength, and perhaps with the favor of merciful gods. So it would be tonight.

Conan leaped high, twisted in the air, came down on all fours, and rolled. Rolling, he rolled again onto his hands and knees, thrust hands and feet hard against the drumhead, and rebounded into the air. When he landed, he was standing again.

He was also close to the edge of the drum. Aondo gave a ragged roar of triumph as he saw victory glimmering close. He, in turn, leaped insensately, making the drumhead dance madly.

Conan deliberately allowed the movement of the drumhead to shift him perhaps a spear's length toward the rim. He was in no danger from anything save the frame giving way. By custom, that ended the duel until the carpenters had finished repairing the timbers.

Aondo, however, was in danger of exhausting himself if he continued to leap about like a flea on a hot griddle without driving Conan off the drumhead. He seemed to have forgotten an ancient law of fighting: do not, if you can help it, wager your chances of victory on something you can do only once.

Just as deliberately, Conan shifted his footing, so that now the leaping drumhead slowly pushed him away from the rim. The thunder of the drum was outshouting the wind; soon it would outshout any thunder roaring down from above. Conan wondered how the folk watching could bear the sound, and saw that they had indeed widened their circle.

Valeria and Emwaya were standing side by side now, within arm's reach of one of the torches blazing atop poles thrust into the ground. Conan spared Valeria a glance and a wave, saw her return the wave, then whirled to see Aondo trying to close the distance between them,

It broke laws, customs, and taboos of every kind for one dancer to touch another. Yet crowding close to your opponent was allowed. If it gave him less space to move, it might even give you victory.

It might also provoke him into striking you, thereby losing. Conan would wager much that some such thought was in Aondo's mind. Yet the warrior had his face set in a sweat-dripping mask of such ferocity that it appeared he might be ready to strike the first blow.

Conan saw this plainly, then set the notion aside. Such a victory would not be honorable or give him and Valeria a sure place among the Ichiribu. Also, Aondo might be too good a warrior to die merely because he could not guard his temper.

If Valeria's fate had not been linked to his own, the Cimmerian would have utterly rejected the notion. As it was, he would leave such a trick for when he might truly need to save both himself and his companion.

Aondo had closed the distance still more in the time Conan had needed to decide. Now the Cimmerian could almost reach out and touch him. Aondo was too tall to leap over, so Conan waited until the warrior leaped.

Then he stamped hard, both feet thundering on the drumhead. Aondo came down on the vibrating hide, swayed, and in struggling for balance, turned away from Conan.

The moment his opponent's eyes were elsewhere, Conan took his longest leap of the duel. He came down six good paces on the other side of Aondo. Now it was the warrior who had his back to the edge of the drum.

Conan opened the distance still more, seeing Aondo again ready to lash out in madness and fury, thereby ending his life with dishonor. Then, just as the Cimmerian thought the madness seemed to be ebbing from the warrior's face, a woman's shrill scream pierced the drum-thunder.

Valeria was standing beside Emwaya, eyes fixed on the drum, when she felt rather than saw the young woman move. Emwaya seemed almost to float two or three paces without touching the ground. As she came into Valeria's sight, the pirate saw that Emwaya's face was drawn.

Then, suddenly, Dobanpu's daughter broke into a sweat equal to that of the two duelists, threw up a hand, seemed to pluck something from the air, and screamed.

Valeria drew sword and dagger with deadly speed and scant regard for those standing close. A circle opened around her and Emwaya, as if the Ichiribu wizard's daughter had suddenly burst into flames.

Instead, Emwaya was staggering, shaking her hand, and opening and shutting her mouth without making a sound. Valeria saw her eyes roll up until only the whites showed, then saw her fall to her knees, hands shaking uncontrollably, arms beginning to spasm.

"Snake!" someone shouted.

Valeria whirled, trying to look in all directions at once and slash to pieces anything that looked remotely like a serpent. As she did so, she saw a red, swollen patch on Emwaya's hand—the hand, she recalled, that Emwaya had used to pluck something from the air.

Instantly, Valeria altered the object of her search. She was not looking for a man or a weapon. Rather, she was looking for a certain cast of countenance. Assassins had a look that was hard to mistake for anything else. Assassins who had just struck down the wrong person had an even more distinctive look, unless they were adepts of a kind she did not expect to find among the Ichiribu.

She found a face that bore that look, a face she recognized, although she could not put a name to it. The man was frantically scrabbling to hide an object he held in his hands behind the women in front of him.

Valeria knew what fate awaited her and Conan if she slew an innocent from the ranks of the Ichiribu. So she reversed her dagger and threw it hilt-first. The hilt was of the best Nemedian artistry, with a weighted pommel intended to do just such work as she had put it to.

The man—Wobeku, she remembered his name now—saw his danger in time to avoid the worst of it. He ducked, the dagger struck a glancing blow and flew off into the crowd, and a cry warned Valeria of trouble to come. For the moment reckless of danger, she raised her sword and screamed curses and warnings in every tongue she could command.

The Ichiribu might not understand, but they knew a madwoman when they heard one. They made a path for Valeria, where she wanted it. She lunged forward just as Wobeku raised what had to be a blowgun.

Neither steel nor blowgun dart found its mark. Golden fire was suddenly all about her, raining from the sky like water. Her blade seemed to slice deep into a thick wall of honey, and eye-searing sparks flew from the steel.

At the same moment, the golden fire wrapped itself around something small, which had to be the dart hurled at Valeria. It had no metal in it, let alone good Aquilonian steel; it emitted a pale green flash and was gone.

Then the golden fire arched high, forming a bow linking Emwaya's hand to the blowgun held by Wobeku. It was Wobeku's turn to show the whites of his eyes, and also to drop the blowgun and take to his heels.

The golden fire brightened until Valeria had to first squint, then close her eyes. It brightened still more until she wanted to drop her sword and clap her hands over her face. She heard screams all around her, and hoped none of them were Emwaya's.

As the golden light poured over the hilltop, Conan was sure of two things: Aondo had known of the treachery; Dobanpu was at work fighting it.

The warrior danced all around Conan, maneuvering the Cimmerian so that he had to either face the light or turn his back on his opponent. That would have mattered little in most fights; the Cimmerian's hearing could all but pick out the fall of a single leaf.

Now the footfalls of his enemy were lost in a din that seemed like the end of the world: the drum booming, the crowd screaming in fear and rage, and thunder that seemed to rise from the earth as well as roll from the sky. Conan closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath, and judged Aondo's position from the reek of the man's sweat.

His judgment was flawed, but good enough. Aondo brushed the Cimmerian's arm. In that moment, he might have gripped and thrown Conan with none to see it. Aondo's wits were unequal to such a stratagem. He had been led to expect a helpless opponent, but had found Conan nothing of the kind, and his own vision dimmed as well.

Then the golden fire diminished until the human eye could endure it. Conan opened his eyes, sprang high and to one side, and deliberately dropped to his knees.

Aondo gave a bull roar, mingling fury and triumph, and hurled himself at the Cimmerian. A gasp of horror at the broken taboo rose from all around the drum.

Conan did not meet Aondo body to body. Instead, he dropped even farther, slamming the drumhead with his massive chest. Aondo's balance vanished. He tried to recapture it by flinging himself forward, on top of Conan, who turned a complete somersault that took him forward out from under the warrior's lunge.

The big tribesman saw that nothing would save him from going over the edge. This time his roar was pure fury. In turn, he somersaulted as he flew over the rim of the drum. He landed almost between two spear-armed warriors rushing forward to restrain him.

They might as well have tried to restrain a mad elephant. One gigantic fist broke a spear with a single blow, another stretched the other warrior senseless on the ground. Aondo kicked the fallen man in the ribs for good measure, then put his head down and plunged through the crowd.

Even the warriors gave way for him, but closed ranks again to bar Conan's path as the Cimmerian leaped down from the drum in pursuit. He raised a fist, ready to add to the numbers of those lying senseless.

Valeria pushed through the crowd from the other side, with some help from the hilt of her sword and a deftly wielded elbow. Then she yelped in surprise as Conan threw his arms around her.

"Gods above, Conan! You're worse than the rack or Mokossa with the oil!"

He held her at arm's length, staring into her eyes to be sure that reason and life still burned there. Then he laughed raggedly.

"That scream wasn't yours?"

"Not the first one, at least. It was Emwaya crying out. She caught a poisoned blowgun dart aimed at me."

Conan felt strength flowing back into his limbs, but his wits seemed as slow as Aondo's. "Darts?"

"It was Wobeku," Valeria said, then continued with an explanation that gradually penetrated Conan's understanding. By the time she was finished, he had regained not only strength, but breath.

"Where's my sword?"

"Conan—"

The Cimmerian picked Valeria up with a hand under each armpit and held her with her feet off the ground. "Woman, I asked for my sword. I wish to use it to kill Aondo and Wobeku. Is that so hard to understand, or have you taken something to addle your wits?"

Valeria threw her head back and laughed until Conan had to join her, which broke his grip. She landed lightly and turned.

"Conan, here is your sword."

It was Seyganko holding out the Cimmerian's blades, belt, and sheathes. Behind him stood a half dozen Ichiribu warriors, none of them carrying less than two spears and a trident, and many carrying clubs, throwing sticks, or cords with stones knotted into the end.

Conan's first thought was that he had forfeited his life in some way, and that they were handing his weapons back to him so that he might wage an honorable fight at the end. Then he saw that the bleak looks of the warriors were not aimed at him. All except Seyganko's, at least.

Conan prudently armed himself before speaking. "Seyganko, I hope I may join your warriors in pursuing those dishonorable—"

"The Ichiribu will judge their dishonor even more harshly than you, I swear," Seyganko said. Indeed, he swore several oaths that Conan knew well to be highly potent in the Black Kingdoms, and several more the Cimmerian did not know but which rang true.

His help in the pursuit would plainly be unwelcome. What else was there to do?"

"How fares Emwaya?"

Seyganko seemed to struggle for self-command. Then: "She is in the hands of her father and the gods. It would have been an easier matter to heal her had Wobeku not dropped the weapon that wounded her. It would also have been child's play to destroy him."

The fallen weapon of Wobeku was something the Cimmerian did not altogether understand. But then, the whole thing reeked of magic, so perhaps he lost nothing thereby. He resolved not to treat Wobeku as helpless prey merely because the man was weaponless, and continued his attention to Seyganko.

"As it stands, Wobeku has fled," Seyganko continued, "and Emwaya lies without suffering, but also in much danger in spite of her father's best skill. If you think your gods have power in this land, pray to them."

Conan nodded. Seyganko lifted a hand, and one of his warriors gave him a spear. "I swear by this weapon—this bringer of death to the treacherous— that I will not harm you or your shield-woman. Whatever comes of tonight, you and she may leave these lands unharmed. But if Emwaya dies, do not think to find a friend in me, or in any who follow me."

Seyganko whirled then, as lightly as a dust devil of the Kozaki steppes. The band strode off into the darkness, which seemed twice as deep now that the golden fire was gone.

Wobeku ran as though the Living Wind was howling at his heels. He knew that there would be no hiding on the island; the women and children would gladly join the hunt for him if necessary. Indeed, imagining what the women would do to him if Emwaya died nearly made him stumble.

He prayed, as much as he had the breath to do, that he would either reach his hidden canoe or that the warriors would catch him before the women did. He crossed the ridge above the north shore of the island before he realized that his prayer had been answered. Now it was all downhill to the canoe.

The easier going made it possible to trade speed for silence. It was hard to believe that any warriors could have crossed the island in time to be beating him to the shore, but men often died from what they did not believe. Wobeku kept away from the trails, and from slopes with loose stones or thick brush that might betray him with the sound of his passage.

It helped more than a little that halfway down the slope the rain began in earnest. The lightning flashed about him as brightly as the golden spirit-fire Dobanpu had hurled.

The God of Manhood deliver him! He had missed both victory and death so narrowly that he wanted to howl like a hyena at the thought. Had Emwaya not caught the dart, Valeria would now be dead. Dobanpu would never have spoken to the spirits for her, and her death would have been the end of Conan. Even had they not been spirit-bonded, clearly the two were vowed companions, and the heart would have gone out of the big man, leaving Aondo with an easy victory.

Had Wobeku not then dropped the blowgun, however, Dobanpu would have turned the death tearing through Emwaya's body back on him! He would be dying the death of the cobra's bite, knowing—if he knew anything—that when he breathed his last, the whole tribe would be cheering and drinking ale, Emwaya most of all!

He did stumble, in fear and fury, and nearly went full length on the rain-slick ground. The misfortune was his salvation, though.

From where the canoe was hidden, two boys sprang up, spears held ready. They were just old enough to guard the flocks and carry the lesser spears, the bidui boys, as the Ichiribu called them.

It was taboo for a full warrior such as Wobeku to slay them, or even to fight them. Wobeku had not broken any taboos as yet tonight, as Valeria was clanless, if not a witch. He also did not care to start making any transgressions now. Worse things than being given to the women would come to him if he slew these boys, and most of them would come after he died.

Wobeku crept forward with his hunter's skill, using the bushes for cover, and also to protect himself somewhat from the rain still pouring down. The thunder and rain drowned out any sound he made.

Closer to his canoe, he saw that the craft was safe, even if half filled with rainwater. A smaller canoe was drawn up on the shore next to it. The boys must have been caught in the downpour and paddled for shore, then seen the hidden canoe and thought it marked a secure landing place.

Bold boys, to be out on the lake after dark, especially on a night like this, with a drum-duel being fought on the hill. They would not frighten easily. Did he have anything with him—?

The brush crackled and crunched behind Wobeku, as if a great stone was rolling downhill. He looked behind him, nearly fell out from beneath the bush, and cursed aloud.

Aondo was stumbling down the hill, blood running from half a score of cuts. He must have run blindly into a thorn thicket at some point in his flight, for he was not only bloody, but next to naked. He held a spear in one bloody hand, and a club was thrust through the belt that was nearly his only garment.

The bidui leaped up as Aondo burst into the open. Both boys raised their spears, and one also unslung a stone-rope tied around his waist.

"Give me that canoe," Aondo said. At least that was what Wobeku thought he said; it sounded more like a beast's growl than a human's voice. The boys looked at the big man as if he were indeed less than human, and therefore something that they might have to fight.

It happened in the space between one breath and the next. The bidui with the stone-rope began to whirl it about his head, while his comrade stepped forward. He held his light spear aimed boldly at Aondo's chest, hoping to give his friend time for a good cast. Perhaps he also hoped to penetrate Aondo's madness and remind him of the taboos.

Aondo's fist smashed into the boy's face. The youth flew backward as if tossed by an ox. The sound of his skull striking a rock on the shore was even louder than the crashing of the thunder, or so it seemed to Wobeku.

The second boy made his cast, but the rope only caught Aondo's arm and the stone bounced harmlessly against the big man's chest. Aondo tossed his spear to his unhampered hand and flung it. The boy died, pinned to a tree like a mouse pierced by a snake's fangs.

Wobeku gave Aondo no time to savor victory or to lament the doom he had earned. The smaller man burst from his cover, covering the ground toward the shore in strides that were almost leaps.

Half-mad as he was, Aondo still sensed another's presence. Both strength and speed had left him, though. He could do no more than draw his club and begin to raise it before Wobeku flung his own spear.

It pierced Aondo's belly, and the warrior's breath hissed out of him. Then he gripped the spear-shaft and seemed to realize what it was, and where it was.

Wobeku, meanwhile, reached his canoe and slashed at the vine rope. It parted, he lifted the paddle and thrust at the water, and Aondo gave a cry such as the ears of men were not meant to hear, nor likely enough the ears of the gods, either. Then the big warrior leaped from the bank straight into the stern of Wobeku's canoe.

The canoe shattered like a stick struck with an ax. Aondo plunged under the water, then thrashed to the surface, blood and splinters spreading around him. Wobeku flew through the air, landing headfirst in water so shallow that he nearly dashed his brains out on the rocks at the bottom.

Aondo screamed now at the pain of his belly wound. Then he screamed again as something vast, dark, and long slipped out of the night and gripped him around the waist. He rose half out of the water, arms thrashing wildly at what held him; he even pulled the spear from his belly and thrust it down.

Nothing helped. Spray mingled with the rain as the crocodile thrashed its tail, moving away from the shore. Aondo went with it. For a moment, his chest and head were still above water, then only his head; then Wobeku heard a gurgle and saw nothing but a swirl of foam.

Wobeku staggered out of the water, knelt on the shore, and spewed. When he could stand, he could see only the rain and the biduis' canoe. It was small even for him, and would never have held Aondo, but Aondo would never again need a canoe.

Wobeku did. No one on the island, after the boys' bodies were found and no sign of Aondo was seen, would doubt that it was Wobeku who had cursed himself by the three deaths. Out on the lake, Wobeku would not need to submit to any judgment save the gods'. They knew that he was innocent, at least of the boys' blood.

If the gods knew anything, which was a question Wobeku did not expect to have answered tonight. He slid into the canoe, tested the balance of the boy-sized paddles, cast off the vine, and pushed hard away from the shore. By the time he had settled to a steady rhythm, sign of the shore itself was lost in the rain. Wobeku was alone with the lake, the gods, and his fear of what Chabano would say of this night's work.

The clay jug in the corner of the hut held good ale—almost as much as it did when it had first arrived this morning. Conan's throat was as dry as the Iranistani uplands, and he doubted that Valeria's was otherwise, but neither of them seemed ready for drink stronger than water.

A clear head for a fight was always as well, but had they to fear any more fighting tonight? Conan trusted Seyganko, who had sworn oaths it would shrivel a man to break that the Cimmerian and Valeria would not be harmed even if Emwaya died.

Conan was not much for prayers, but what few he remembered of how to remind the gods that somebody needed help, he was muttering to himself. Valeria had prayed aloud to all those gods lawful in her native Aquilonia, and was now embarked on prayers to the gods of Shem and Zingara.

Whether she believed or not, she was praying so fiercely that even a god could likely enough not tell the difference. Also, Conan thought that even a god would think twice before rejecting a prayer uttered by anyone with such a look upon her face.

Footfalls loud enough to challenge the rain thudded outside. A war party coming for them after all? Conan laid his sword across his knees, saw Valeria do the same, then realized that it was only two pairs of feet. The rain had slackened.

"Enter!" he called, his voice sounding like a dotard's. He pointed at the beer jug and the cups, and Valeria was filling the cups when the grass curtain at the door parted and Seyganko and Mokossa entered.

One look at their faces told Conan the news they brought. He leaped up, feeling as if he could dance down Aondo all over again and then hunt Wobeku all the way to the sea. He gripped the visitors' hands so hard that the girl squealed, and even Seyganko fought not to wince.

"Yes, it is true. Emwaya will live, heal, and be my bride."

"How fares her father?" Valeria asked. "I owe him my life, too."

"It will be as well if the Ichiribu need no Spirit-Speaking for some days," Seyganko said dryly. "This night has not ended as we had expected when it began."

"Meaning that Conan and I aren't dead?" Valeria snapped. Conan put a hand on her shoulder; she shook him off.

Seyganko looked genuinely ashamed. "My tongue fails me in my time of need. No. We wished Conan to win. But we did not wish such disorder among our folk." He seemed to need his spear as a staff for a moment.

"Aondo and Wobeku have both fled. In their flight, they killed two bidui boys and stole their canoe. We must find the taboo-breakers, or their spirits will curse the Ichiribu. Our fields on the island and the mainland alike will be barren. Our cows will go dry. The fish will swim downriver, beyond our reach."

He went on reciting a litany of disasters until Mokossa boldly gripped his arm. "Oh," Seyganko said as if suddenly awakened from a daze. "There can be no welcoming feast, not until the taboo-breakers are taken. But the gods will forgive us for offering you and your shield-woman companions, for this night and for any other nights as you may choose."

Conan held laughter inside; Seyganko was clearly in no merry mood. Now he knew why Mokossa had interrupted Seyganko's lamentations… and also whom she intended that Conan's partner should be tonight.

Then the Cimmerian could not hold back laughter, because Seyganko was gazing at Valeria as if she were a rather distasteful duty that he must perform for the good of his tribe. Mercifully, Seyganko had enough sense to join in the laughter instead of taking offense.

"My thanks to the Ichiribu, and I mean no insult to their fine women, not to any of them," Conan said. "But my shield-woman and I are vowed, as I have told you. Also, we know each other's ways."

"May we at least send more beer?" Seyganko seemed to be almost pleading as he looked at Valeria.

"As you wish," Conan replied. He glanced at the door-curtain, and in a moment he was alone with Valeria. A Valeria who had, while his back was turned, removed the waistcloth that was her only garment. He saw nothing he had not seen a score of times before… but now, for the first time, it made his blood sing.

He stepped forward; Valeria held up one hand. He gripped it, and she pressed her other hand hard against his chest.

"You are going to have to prove that, you know," she said as he drew her closer.

"Prove what?"

"That you know my ways."

He laughed and kissed her, and this time, her lips opened under his. "We have all night. If I don't know them at first, by Erlik's brass tool, I'll know them by morning!" He lifted her, and she nestled against his chest for a moment before raising her face for more kisses.

ELEVEN

Something's taken the bait," Conan said.

Valeria sat up in the stern of the canoe and reached for her trident. She was clad in an Ichiribu waistcloth, a necklace of lionfish teeth, and a broad hat made of leaves tied with vine to a reed frame.

Conan squatted amidships, letting the fishing line feed over the side. He wore a leather bin'ding to protect his hand from the flax-and-sinew line, a loin-guard, and a dagger. His sword and Valeria's, as well as her bow, lay in the bottom of the canoe, wrapped in fish skin, inside oiled leather, inside waxed linen.

Neither of them cared to leave their weapons ashore on such an expedition as today's. Nor did they care to risk them rusting or taking up dampness. Wobeku might not be the only traitor among the Ichiribu, and there were still warriors with doubts about the two strangers. The nearest smith who could replace, or even repair their blades was at least a month's travel from the Lake of Death.

At last the fish finished its run. Conan braced himself and began hauling it in. Valeria crouched, trident ready, its line coiled lightly in the stern and knotted firmly to a peg driven into the bottom of the canoe.

The fish was a fighter, but Conan wasted no time playing with it. He judged the line would bear any strain the fish could put on it, and hauled away with a will.

Ripples spread around the canoe as the fish's thrashing reached the surface. Valeria's eyes roved about, watching for the first patch of scales large enough to give her trident a mark. Her movements lifted her breasts in a way Conan would have found agreeable, had he spared attention for such matters now.

Suddenly, the fish leaped. The trident was as swift, and blood and foam took the place of the ripples as the fish thrashed out its life an arm's length from the boat. With Valeria gripping the tail and Conan the head, they heaved it aboard, a grisku, as the tribe called it—a third the length of the canoe and weighing as much as a newborn calf.

Valeria made a face as the grisku gave its last wriggle. "All that work for one of those? You know they taste like glue."

"The Ichiribu like them, so we won't have to eat it. Besides, you know well that the more fish we bring back, the less anybody will suspect us."

"I trust the Ichiribu. Don't you?"

"Most of them, yes, as much as I trust any foreigners when I'm nearly alone among them. It takes few enemies to make trouble then."

"In that case, let us make our enemies fewer,

Conan. You've been hammering the idea of our fighting the Kwanyi into my ears night and day."

"Not every night, Valeria. Some nights we've passed otherwise."

She sniffed. "If I do lower myself to take a great loutish Cimmerian to my bed, the least he can do is not to throw it in my face by daylight."

"Where would you have me throw it?"

Valeria made a vulgar gesture and gave an even more vulgar reply. Then she laughed. "I've no quarrel with the Ichiribu, and we'll reach the sea faster if we wait until the rains. A war with the Kwanyi seems as good a way of passing the time as any."

"Better than most. If half they say of Chabano is true, his eye is on an empire. That could bring him down on my old friends toward the coast if he goes unchecked."

"They're not my friends," Valeria protested, but to Conan the protest seemed feeble. Like him, she was one to think twice before walking away from a good fight, even more so when one owed a debt as she and he did to the Ichiribu.

Moreover—

"I've been thinking," he said. "If Dobanpu thinks it well, we can explore the tunnels beyond the Ichiribu island. If they reach to the Kwanyi shore of the lake, we can climb into Chabano's bedchamber some night."

"What of the Golden Serpents?"

"What of them?" Conan asked, shrugging. "With enough good men at our side, no serpent will pass. Besides, the more Golden Serpents, the more fire-stones."

"Indeed." For a moment, Valeria's blue eyes seemed to take on a greenish hue as her pirate's soul warmed to the thought of such booty.

Geyrus, the First Speaker, assumed the pose of meditation. Out of respect, Ryku did the same. He doubted that the gesture would deceive the First Speaker, but it might delay an open breach.

If the First Speaker really intended to come down from Thunder Mountain to meet Chabano, only a little delay would be needed. The presence of Kwanyi warriors, added to his own new skills, would make Ryku proof against anything untoward that Geyrus might intend for him.

The two men remained in the posture of mediation for so long that Ryku began to suffer from both impatience and stiffening limbs. The First Speaker had kept his promise, giving Ryku most of the knowledge of a full Speaker. What had not been taught, Ryku had contrived to learn on his own, as well as certain arts that not even the Speakers acknowledged.

This had taken its toll of his body, however. He had gone sleepless as of ten. as not, endured thirst, hunger, and both great and little pain, and driven his body to its uttermost limits. Or what he had believed were its uttermost limits, before he began the final steps to the Speakers' arts. Now he knew that he had been hardly more than a youth thinking himself a man.

It seemed that the moon must have turned from full to dark and back again to half-bright before the First Speaker broke the posture. When Ryku saw Geyrus's eyes, he wished it had indeed taken that long, or even longer.

"Ryku, I am not pleased with how little knowledge of the Ichiribu you have gathered from Chabano."

"I have been as zealous in seeking what the Kwanyi know as I have been in studying the Speakers' arts. You have praised my zeal in the second. I

ask for no praise in the first matter if my best has been less than you wished, but I swear—"

"Do not use vain oaths in the Cave of the Living Wind," Geyrus said sharply.

That was asking of Ryku what the other Speakers hardly seemed to ask of themselves. Did Geyrus mean to put fear in him by such childish bullying? Or did the First Speaker know something about the Living Wind that he had not told Ryku?

That second thought made the air of the caves seem even more chill than common. It also made Ryku ransack his memory and knowledge for some art that might let him find the answer to that question. He knew—as surely as he knew he was alive— that Geyrus would not tell him freely, if at all.

"If I can use no oaths, may I use my wits?"

"Your tongue has grown sharp, Ryku."

"I trust that my wits have not grown dull. I would beg the right to come with you when you go to meet Chabano. I believe he may speak more freely to me than to you, if he is given the opportunity to do so without his warriors knowing it."

"They still fear the God-Men?"

"Yes."

"As indeed they ought to," Geyrus said, rising to his feet. As always, he was taller than one expected, seeing his many years and believing they must have shrunk his limbs. "Very well. If Chabano thinks to trade rotten fish for fresh, he must be taught to think more clearly."

Geyrus departed, without bidding Ryku to follow. The Silent Brother returned to the posture of meditation, but with his thoughts very much elsewhere.

Had Chabano found himself knowing less of matters among the Ichiribu than he had expected to do? This seemed not unlikely. Doubtless he had spies in the herdlands and fieldlands, even on the island itself. Just as certainly, those spies might have fallen prey to the Ichiribu, or simply found it difficult to send messages to their master.

It would be as well to learn about this. Geyrus would not forever contain his wrath if he learned he had made a fool's bargain. If Ryku learned the truth before his master did, he could at least flee to the Kwanyi, offering silence in return for protection.

Ryku doubted that Geyrus would challenge Chabano himself over one fugitive, or indeed over anything else. Geyrus was old, and his judgment twisted by the loss of that wretched girl, but he was not yet a fool.

Which meant that Ryku should go to the meeting prepared to use the arts of a full Speaker, so that whichever side he chose to aid would have cause to be grateful to him.

The lamp bowl held mixed tallow and fish oil, with herbs crumbled into it. Valeria thought she had smelled sweeter middens, but Seyganko and Emwaya seemed to inhale the scent hungrily. Conan was as indifferent to it as he was to every other discomfort, great and small.

Valeria marveled that a man could learn such endurance. But then, Conan had learned in the harsh school of a life where one endured or died. Even when he was a free youth in his native Cimmeria, its stony fields and snowbound winters must have begun the lessons.

"Valeria and I will give the warriors of the Ichiribu any knowledge of our fighting arts that they wish to learn in order to make themselves a better match for the Kwanyi on land," Conan said. "You have also seen how much Valeria knows of the art of fighting from boats."

"We have," Seyganko said. "You used the words 'wish to learn'? Not 'need to learn.' "

"I have a pretty fair and wide experience of war, and much of it in the Black Kingdoms," Conan replied. "I did not win the name Amra by sitting on a golden stool and fondling my concubines."

"No doubt this displeased your concubines," Emwaya said. Valeria understood enough of the Ichiribu tongue now to smile at the young woman. Emwaya sometimes seemfed almost young enough to be Valeria's daughter, at other times old enough in wisdom, if not in years, to be her grandmother.

"The Kwanyi are there and I am here," Conan said. "And being here, I'm not one to insult my hosts by saying that they are children in war. Chabano has not made the Kwanyi invincible. But there are war skills that I can teach, those that will save the Ichiribu many warriors when we meet the Kwanyi in battle."

Seyganko nodded. "I am sure of that. Conan, I will proclaim that you speak with my voice in teaching war skills. I ask only one favor in return."

"What is it?"

"Give over this notion of marching through the tunnels, out of the gods' daylight and through who-knows-what evil magic, to strike the Kwanyi."

Emwaya turned and stared at her betrothed. Then she spoke sharply, words that Valeria did not understand but whose meaning she sensed as a woman. Seyganko had surprised Emwaya, and she was even more displeased at the surprise than at the suggestion.

Emwaya went on for some time. It seemed to Valeria that Conan was holding back laughter, that

Seyganko much wished to be elsewhere, and that Emwaya would slap her betrothed's head from his shoulders for a Shemite brass piece.

Neither Conan nor Valeria offered Emwaya any coin at all, so Seyganko went unmolested until the woman ran out of breath. Valeria remained uneasy until Emwaya at last collapsed into Seyganko's arms, tears running down her cheeks. Doubtless her anger had wearied her more than it had him; the poison was out of her body, but she had not yet regained her strength.

"Conan," Seyganko said. He took what seemed half the night before he found his next word. "It seems that Emwaya believes, as you do, in the matter of the tunnels."

The Cimmerian continued to feign a temple image. Judging that he had good reasons for this, Valeria sought to do likewise.

"She and I will submit this matter to her father," the warrior chief went on. "Will you abide by his judgment?"

Conan nodded. "I've no wish to insult you, Emwaya, but your father likely enough knows more of this than he has had time to teach you." He looked at Emwaya, and Valeria saw the Ichiribu woman try to meet those icy-blue eyes and not quite succeed.

"I trust we've no need to wait to begin my instructing the warriors?" the Cimmerian concluded.

Seyganko took Conan's meaning—that he might keep all his authority over the Ichiribu warriors to himself if he spoke against Conan again. Valeria shifted sideways so that she was within reach of Conan, and also faced Seyganko.

The Ichiribu warrior, being no fool, could recognize a battle that he had lost before it was joined. "Any oaths you need, I will give, Conan, that you may teach the Ichiribu to walk on their hands and hurl spears with their toes!"

"That night be no bad thing should it make the Kwanyi laugh so hard that other warriors could slit their bellies while they laughed," Conan said. "Come at dawn tomorrow, and tell me all you know of the Kwanyi way of fighting. Then I will be more sure of what the Ichiribu could most wisely learn from me."

"We can begin that tonight—" Seyganko began eagerly, then found Emwaya covering his mouth with two fingers in the ritual gesture for silence. She smiled and laid her other hand on his knee.

"We will begin tomorrow, when we are all rested and fit," Conan said, and the suggestion seemed to act as a command on the visitors.

When the curtain had fallen behind them, he let out his laughter in a roar that made the hanging billow as if in a gale. "There's a woman who hasn't been well-bedded in a while and who won't have it put off for talk of war!"

"And here is another," Valeria said, slipping an arm through Conan's.

"What, not well-bedded? You insult me, or was it some other woman wrapped around me like a vine last night?"

"You know as well as any man that one night is like one meal. Man or woman, you cannot live on it forever."

He turned to her, and she rose so that he could undo the waistcloth, throwing her arms around him as he did so.

This would not last, she knew. Neither of them could long endure a partnership in which they could not be sure who led and who followed. But for now, she could follow him with pleasure—and not only to the sleeping mat.

Wobeku wondered that the torches did not draw swarms of insects that would sting and bite, whether the pests flew or crawled. It was not the torches themselves, he was sure. They smelled and looked much the same as any others.

The God-Men—the Speakers to the Living Wind, as they called themselves—must have worked magic. Potent magic, too, when one considered how many insects a single torch could draw out of the jungle! That was one difference between the island and the mainland, and Wobeku would have to endure it until Chabano's victory took him home again.

Better gnawed by insects than dead, he told himself, then cast his face into a form suitable for receiving Spirit-Speakers, or whatever the God-Men were. As a fugitive among the Kwanyi, he had barely the right to ask such questions; he would have a long wait for answers.

At least Chabano's wrath had come and gone swiftly, and when it had departed, Wobeku had not lain dead on the floor of the Paramount Chief's hut. That Aondo had been a fool, and that Wobeku had not broken taboo, undoubtedly counted for much. It counted for more that Chabano killed fewer men out of hand these days, even when in one of his famous rages.

Now Wobeku stood among the twelve warriors surrounding Chabano, and all thirteen pairs of eyes were fixed on the torchlit path from whence six men were approaching. The newcomers wore the ceremonial garb of God-Men, with complete cloaks and headdresses of crimson and sapphire feathers, loin-guards of leather tooled and gilded, wrist braces of silver, and staves that seemed to be worth a good herd of cattle each.

One of the God-Men wore the less ornate garb of a Silent Brother but bore the First Speaker's oxhide shield, with its ornaments of Golden Serpents, eight of them forming a pattern it was best not to look upon for long. If one did, one began to think that the serpents lived, or at least that their eyes glowed green.

The five companions of the approaching First Speaker divided, three placing themselves on one side of their leader and two on the other. The First Speaker himself advanced toward Chabano. He seemed to have no fear of being within reach of so many spears, but then, perhaps his magic gave him good assurance.

What the Living Wind was, not even the Kwanyi wished to ask, lest they receive disquieting answers. That it made the God-Men powerful, all knew so well that there was no need for questions on that matter.

Wobeku followed the lead of Chabano and his companions in clashing his spear against his shield, in the salute of honor to a Paramount Chief. The First Speaker returned the salute by thrusting the butt of his staff deep into the earth—whereupon Wobeku felt as if the ground under his feet had turned for a moment red-hot.

Again Wobeku followed the lead of those around him; none of them so much as flinched. Yet he noticed that Chabano seemed more wary, and the First Speaker was unsmiling; it seemed that the man was displeased, and moreover, ready to make his displeasure felt.

"Hail, Geyrus, First Speaker to the Living Wind!" Chabano said, laying his spear and shield on the ground. For a moment, Wobeku thought the chief would prostrate himself, but he did not even kneel.

He rose to his full height and crossed his arms on his chest.

"Hail, Chabano," Geyrus said in a chill voice barely above a whisper.

"First Speaker," Chabano said sharply, "you have summoned me. I have come. You, it seems, are here in anger. What cause is there for this anger?"

"You have lied to me," Geyrus said.

Wobeku was not the only man to suck in his breath. Any common man calling Chabano a liar to his face would have thrown his life away. He would be fortunate to die on the spot, instead of suffering impalement or worse.

"If so, I have done so with good cause," Chabano snapped.

That seemed an equally grave insult to Geyrus. Staves rose, and the faces under the headdresses looked more like demon-lodge masks than Wobeku found pleasant. He had sometimes wondered which would have the victory in a contest of swiftly thrown spears and swiftly cast spells. He had not expected to learn the answer by being part of such a battle himself.

Geyrus seemed to struggle with the urge not to strike Chabano dead on the spot, and mastered it. His tone was still harsh when he replied.

"Oh. Am I worthy of the knowledge of what cause you claim for lying to the Speakers to the Living Wind?"

"Yes. There are those in your caves on Thunder Mountain whose eyes and ears serve our enemies. It is best we find ways of speaking the truth to each other without their hearing it."

To Wobeku, that made perfect sense. To Geyrus, however, it seemed to be an insult almost past bearing. Wobeku gripped his spear until his knuckles grew pale in fear of what he saw on the First Speaker's face.

Yet nothing passed the man's lips. At least not until the rage left his countenance. His shoulders sagged then, and he seemed to age ten years before Wobeku's eyes.

"Do you trust your own folk?" he asked, as one might ask the price of a goat.

"Yes," Chabano replied. One could almost see his chest swell with pride at the loyalty of the Kwanyi.

"Then let us go to your nearest village, and there we will see to this speaking of the truth. If there have been lies told—"

"Silence!" Chabano roared. Geyrus did not take offense; he seemed to realize, as did Wobeku, that the order was not aimed at him. It was aimed at the warriors around Chabano. Several of them were from that "nearest village," and their faces said plainly that they did not care to host God-Men.

Chabano's power, it seemed, was not without limits.

"Great Chief—" one warrior began.

Chabano turned and struck the man across the face with an open hand. Then he snatched the man's spear from his grip, broke it across his knee, and pointed at the ground. The man flung his shield on the jungle floor and prostrated himself on it.

Chabano did not lift a weapon. Instead, he brought one heavy foot down hard on the man's back, several times. Each time the breath huffed out of the man, and Wobeku saw him biting his lip until it bled.

"Be grateful for my mercy," Chabano said. "You will carry a spear again for the war, but avoid my sight until then."

The warrior rose, unaided, for his comrades drew back from him as if he carried pox on his skin. Bent and stumbling like one sick or aged, he lurched down the path and out of sight.

Wobeku did not watch him go. His instincts told him that this clash was not yet done, and that the heart of the matter was still Geyrus's will. He did not dare watch the First Speaker too closely, but he tried to follow the man's eyes from one warrior to another. If Geyrus raised his staff, or if his eyes lingered on one man longer than on the others…

Neither staff nor eyes gave Wobeku a clue. But he was fortunate nonetheless. He was well out to the left of Chabano and so could see the men behind the chief without appearing to look at them. There were three of them, and now one of them was breathing with unnatural slowness. His eyes seemed to have turned crimson and sapphire. His spear was rising into throwing position, as if drawing his arms with it.

Then suddenly the spear leaped up. The warrior leaped with it—or rather, his death-grip on the weapon drew him with it until his feet no longer touched the ground.

Those who saw the spectacle were mute from surprise, or perhaps from magic. All except Wobeku.

"Chief! Behind you!" he screamed. The warning did its work. Chabano whirled, flinging up his shield and thrusting with his spear.

The chief's spear only stabbed air. Wobeku, with more time to aim, struck home. His spear sank into the warrior's side, halfway up his rib cage. The man reeled, turned halfway toward Wobeku, and seemed about to laugh at the sight of the Ichiribu warrior cringing away.

Wobeku could not help it. The other's eyes were now pools of crimson-and-sapphire fire, and a faint mist in the same hues seemed to cling to both his weapon and his hands. Then the crimson of the God-Men's magic gave way to the crimson of blood, pouring from the man's side and mouth. He choked, reeled again, and fell with the spear still protruding from his side.

Wobeku knew that the man would shortly have company in death: Chabano and all his companions. Nor would Chabano seek to escape that fate by fleeing. It would be futile. Geyrus would have his life, no matter where he fled.

Wobeko himself also had fled once before. It was not in him to do so again, any more than he could have slain the bidui boys.

He was so concerned with meeting a warrior's death that he did not see Chabano step forward, perhaps with the same thought in his mind. The chief had his spear raised, and the muscles of his right arm tautened as he made ready to hurl it into Geyrus's throat.

Wobeku saw the First Speaker raise his staff in both hands, holding it out in front of him. He saw Chabano's spear stop as if it had encountered the rock of a mountain. He saw the iron point begin to smoke—and a chill hand seemed to grip his heart and bowels as he saw that the smoke was crimson and blue.

Then he saw the Silent Brother stride up, swing his staff high in both hands like a woman swinging a mortar, and bring it down across the First Speaker's staff.

Wobeku knew in the next moment that death had come for him. Flames shot up from the First Speaker's staff. They also rose from the Speaker himself, as if his body were a pile of straw. They were of all colors and no colors, without smoke but not without heat.

The leaves above the First Speaker turned brown and would have burned had they not been sodden with rain. Common, lawful smoke rose from the jungle floor where the heat seared the mat of dead leaves and vines. Somehow the color of the smoke consoled Wobeku for his coming death. He would not die in a place abandoned by the gods.

Then a moment came when he began to think that he might not die after all. Chabano staggered back, dropping his spear with its half-melted point but seeming otherwise unharmed. He stumbled over Wobeku's victim and nearly fell, but two of his warriors caught him.

Three others, Wobeku among them, saw that the flames enveloped the two staves and the First Speaker, but not the Silent Brother. They also saw that this did not please the other Speakers. Indeed, they were staring with their pale eyes at the spectacle as if it went against all they had been taught was possible.

It very likely was. Wobeku snatched a spear from a warrior too gape-jawed and wide-eyed to tell one end of it from another, raised the weapon, and threw it.

This time he took his victim, the Speaker just to the right of Geyrus, in the throat. The man dropped his staff, went to his knees, clawed at his torn throat and the spear in it, then bent so far forward that his headdress fell off. As it struck the jungle floor, so did he, toppling onto his side and kicking out what remained of his life.

Wobeku's swiftness seemed to restore life to the other warriors—that, and a few sharp words from Chabano in the tone that meant disobedience could yield death. In moments, the remaining Speakers were surrounded by warriors holding spear-points at their throats or stomachs. The warriors kept them motionless until the First Speaker was only ashes on the jungle floor.

The Silent Brother gathered the staves from the surviving Speakers' unresisting hands, then spoke to them in a tongue Wobeku did not understand. He only sensed in the voice age beyond anything he had dreamed of. It held echoes of times before Atlantis, of times even before the gods had judged that men, not beasts, should rule the earth.

This done, the Silent Brother turned and knelt to Chabano. It seemed to Wobeku that he would have prostrated himself had that not meant setting down his armful of staves or turning his eyes from the Speakers. The Ichiribu renegade also noticed for the first time that the Silent Brother's eyes had the pallid hue of a full Speaker's.

Chabano looked from Wobeku to the Silent Brother and nodded. Respect for a chief was all very well, yet keeping those Speakers bound by fear, never mind of what, was more needed now.

"I am Ryku," the Silent Brother said. Understanding came to Wobeku. Such a name had come to his ears without his knowing what it meant. So had tales of Chabano's spy on Thunder Mountain, although these were whispered. Ryku and the spy, it seemed, were one and the same.

"Hail, Ryku, friend to the Kwanyi," Wobeku said. It seemed the least foolish thing he could say.

"You are not of the Kwanyi," Ryku said. "Are you the eyes and ears of Chabano among the Ichiribu?"

"Before I answer that question," Chabano said with dangerous mildness, "you must answer one."

"Ask, my chief."

Chabano seemed to take the words at their value and to ignore Ryku's tone. "What did you say to your comrades?"

"I told them that if they did not swear obedience to me in all matters concerning aid to the Kwanyi, I would allow your warriors to slay them here and now."

"And did they swear?" Chabano waved a hand, and warriors' hands tightened on spear-shafts.

Whatever the Speakers swore, they swore it fervently and at length. Before the oath was half over, Ryku bade the Kwanyi warriors to lower their spears. When it was done, he spoke a sharp word and the Speakers scurried off up the trail as fast as their aged legs could carry them.

Chabano looked eloquently at his warriors, and they retreated with similar speed in the opposite direction. The chief, the God-Man, and the spy were alone in the jungle.

"My thanks to both of you," Chabano said. "A chief's thanks is worth much, and it will be worth more the longer I rule." He cast a sharp look at Wobeku. "Although had you been as swift some time ago as you were today, you would not be here."

Ryku asked that this be explained; Chabano acceded to the request with a mildness that amazed the fugitive warrior. But then, even a Paramount Chief did not stand upon rank with a God-Man who seemed to have made himself a full Speaker upon his own whim.

Or was it that becoming a God-Man was easier than the tribes had been led to believe? That would have been a cheering thought, had Wobeku wished to follow in Ryku's footsteps.

As his ambition was to be high among the Kwanyi when they ruled all this land, he was not so cheered. Fumble-fingered God-Men would not be of much use to the Kwanyi in the face of Dobanpu's Spirit-Speaking. Dobanpu's mastery was no tale, and the vengeance he would wreak on Wobeku would be no light one!

TWELVE

The Ichiribu and the Kwanyi took time to gird themselves for battle. This did not entirely arise because of each of their new allies, although those played a part.

Wobeku found that while the warriors kept their distance, few doubted him. He had, after all, saved Chabano, the Paramount Chief whom all had followed for twelve years. Even those who followed Chabano out of fear more than from love knew that the Kwanyi would be doomed without him. The man who saved him had placed the tribe greatly in his debt.

Ryku was also regarded with some gratitude, but likewise with more than a little fear. He also had saved Chabano, and moreover, had cast down the greatest of the God-Men. In so doing, however, he had made himself a yet greater God-Man.

It was as well for Ryku that he did not go among the warriors more often than when Chabano summoned him. He remained, nine days out of ten, in seclusion on Thunder Mountain, putting the Speakers, the Silent Brothers, and the servants and slaves in as much order as his powers and the time allowed. Had he come to the villages too often, someone might have served him as Wobeku had served one of the Speakers—which would have saved the Kwanyi a deal of trouble in days to come, but they were only a tribe of stout fighters, not seers who could foretell the future.

Conan had a busy time among the Ichiribu, for all that most of them thought him favored by the gods, if not in truth sent by them.

The Kwanyi had been invincible on land since Chabano had taught them the art of fighting in a line, with the tall shield and the great spear that a man could thrust as well as throw. It was not to be expected that the Ichiribu could learn that art, even from the Cimmerian, well enough and soon enough to face their foes in full array.

So Conan set about teaching them how to use their old weapons in new ways. They had a fair number of archers and slingers, who could gall and torment the flanks of the Kwanyi ranks. Their fishing tridents were not despicable weapons against the Kwanyi spear, either, if they could contrive to fight two warriors against one.

Valeria also taught them how to fight from their canoes with more skill than before. What she did not know about the handling of small boats, it was probably not given to men—or women—to know. Even the most seasoned fishermen of the Ichiribu soon said loudly that Conan's shield-woman and vowed lover was worth almost as much as the Cimmerian himself.

"We must be the ants, and the Kwanyi the warthog," Conan said, until even Seyganko wearied of hearing it for all that he knew it was true. "They are a bigger warthog than we can be. Fight them tusk to tusk, and we are doomed. Sting them a thousand times, and the doom will be theirs."

The skill the Ichiribu showed in learning what he taught left Conan in good heart. He would have been still more confident had the matter of marching through the tunnels not remained dangling in the wind.

Dobanpu agreed that if the spirits allowed, this would be a cunning and deadly trick, that of making warriors sprout from the ground. He would not say more, other than that he waited for a sign from the spirits.

He continued to demur, and Conan's temper grew short. "Is it the spirits who've turned mute?" he asked Emwaya one morning. "Or is it your father?"

"If I knew the answer to that, it would still not help us," the girl replied. "No man can force the spirits, and my father is almost as difficult to make speak when he chooses to be silent."

"If he chooses to be silent for too long, he may be choosing the end of his folk," Valeria snapped. Both the visitors could see that Emwaya herself was uneasy at her father's reluctance to speak. Neither doubted that she told the truth.

"He knows this also," Emwaya said, and withdrew with as much dignity as she could contrive,

"Wizards!" Conan said. He made the word sound like a particularly foul obscenity. Then he looked at the sky. The sun shone, although through a haze that promised rain for later in the day.

The rainy season drew closer with each sunrise, and Conan was of a mind to leave the tribes of the Lake of Death to their own devices if Dobanpu did not speak before the downpour began in earnest. The rivers would run high then, and the rain would make pursuit difficult.

"If you have no work before noon, let us take a canoe and go fishing," Valeria suggested. "One of the large ones, I think."

Conan laughed. The large canoes, they had discovered, were something of a burden for two paddlers. But they were also broad of beam. With a sleeping mat or two laid in the bottom, they made a good place for hot loving.

They paddled closer to the Kwanyi-held shore than usual on a fishing expedition. This was not Conan's notion, still less Valeria's. It had come from Emwaya, who had appeared at the shore as they were loading the fishing gear and mats into the canoe.

"May I come with you?" she had asked.

Conan and Valeria had frowned. They would have more gladly been alone, but neither wished to offend Dobanpu's daughter and Seyganko's betrothed. Also, Conan, at least, had heard in Emwaya's voice a hint of something more than wishing to amuse herself on a tedious day.

"Be welcome," Valeria had said, and had sent a bidui boy for an extra mat and water gourd.

Emwaya proved herself a strong if not an overly skilled paddler, and the canoe made good time to the usual fishing spot. As Conan and Valeria slackened their stroke, Emwaya pointed toward the Kwanyi shore.

"Can we go closer?"

This time, Conan did more than frown. "The Kwanyi are not complete landlubbers. If they see suspicious-looking folk bobbing about off their shore, they may find a canoe or two to fill with warriors."

"I will lie down, so that none may recognize me."

"What about us?" Valeria asked. "Or have Conan and I turned your hue from the sun without anyone's telling us?"

Emwaya might know potent magic herself, and to offend her was to offend a master of still more potent spells. But neither she nor her father seemed quite as wise in matters of war as Conan could wish.

They bargained, as Valeria said afterward, like a captain and a ship's chandler haggling over the price of a galley's fittings. In the end, they had drunk half the water to ease throats dry from talking, and agreed on where to go. It was nearer the shore than Conan liked, farther than Emwaya wanted, but would serve the purposes of both.

Above all, they could not readily be caught against the shore by canoes coming in from the lake. Canoes coming out from the land they could see in time to keep their lead, and having a third paddler would help.

"Remember, too, that I can summon aid from the island if we seem to be pursued too closely," Emwaya said. She said no more, and Conan did not ask further. He was still none too easy over having such as Dobanpu as a friend. Sorcerers, he had to admit, might remain friendly, or at least harmless—but he could count the ones who had done so on the fingers of one hand. Those who had sooner or later been deadly foes, on the other hand—all the fingers and toes in the canoe could hardly number them.

They reached their intended spot. Conan, having the sharpest eyes of the three, studied the shore. It showed no sign of human presence and precious little sign of any other animal life. Only a spit of sand with furrows where crocodiles had basked hinted that these placid waters might hold peril.

Conan and Valeria threw over their lines and readied their tridents. Emwaya lay down on her mat in the bow and appeared to fall asleep. To Conan, her breathing seemed less regular than sleep commonly yielded. The way her hands spread palm-down, fingers opened, against the hull of the canoe also hinted of an unrestful mood.

To the Cimmerian, she seemed to be listening for something. What, he did not know. Remembering that the tunnels might well honeycomb the bottom of the lake, holding the-gods-knew-what ancient evil, he chose not to try to guess.

The sun climbed to its peak, then began sinking. No fish had taken the bait. Indeed, Conan had seen no sign that anything at all lived in this part of the lake. That was not an agreeable thought, but one he kept to himself. Valeria, easier in her mind, had actually gone to sleep.

Suddenly Emwaya sat up, brushing tangled hair out of her eyes, one hand gripping the side of the canoe. She looked wildly about her, then seemed to discover something off to port. Conan looked where she did, but saw nothing save the lake's surface, unrippled by even a breath of wind or a leaping fish. He was still staring when Emwaya sprang up, threw off her waistcloth, and plunged over the side of the canoe.

Conan's roar would have stunned any fish within a good distance. It woke Valeria. Instantly alert, she took in the danger at a glance. She clutched the anchor stone, wriggled clear of the coiled line, then flung the stone overboard. "Two will be better at finding her than one, Conan. The canoe can fend for itself."

The anchor line hissed as it ran out, but when it reached its end, the canoe still drifted freely. Conan looked into the lake, sensing a depth there he had never before encountered. A depth into which Dobanpu's daughter had plunged, and into which Conan and Valeria had to follow her if they were to—

Emwaya's head broke the surface. In a few strokes she was alongside, pulling herself half out of the water. Drops sparkled in her hair, sleeked down from the dousing, and glowed on her shoulders and breasts. Her countenance took away any thoughts of her beauty, however.

"Come and see for yourselves," she said. "Be warned. You will not like what you find."

"My life's been full of unpleasing sights and it's not over yet," Conan said. He swung his legs over the side of the canoe, slipped into the water, then held the craft steady while Valeria dove over the side.

"Stay close to me," Emwaya ordered when Valeria surfaced. "It is my intent to protect you from what lies down there."

Conan could not help but feel that he would rather be sure of more than her intent. But Emwaya had at least this virtue, rare in magic-wielders: she would not promise miracles.

Conan filled his lungs and plunged under the surface, Emwaya behind him and Valeria in the rear. They were a canoe's length below when Conan saw what Emwaya meant.

It was as if they were suddenly swimming through a vast globe of liquid crystal. The water was utterly transparent, utterly without color, all the way to the bottom of the' lake.

That bottom, Conan judged, had to be twice the height of a ship's mainmast below them. No wonder the anchor had not found purchase. Indeed, he could see the anchor stone dangling uselessly from its line, well clear of the bottom.

In that transparent void, nothing moved. Nothing lived, either—not the smallest fish, not even a scrap of the weeds that choked some portions of the lake. Conan looked down at the bottom.

It, too, was bare of life. But it was not featureless. Across the Cimmerian's field of vision ran what looked like a deep trench. Into that trench had tumbled blocks of stone that showed the unmistakable signs of human shaping. Even from high above, Conan saw that much. He also thought that he saw carved on some of the stones the writhing serpent-shape he had seen rather too often in the tunnels.

That was as much as he could fathom before a burning in his lungs told him that it was time to seek air. He kicked toward the surface, and Emwaya and Valeria followed.

When Conan broke into the sunlight, Valeria was there before he had finished taking his first deep breath. Emwaya was nowhere to be seen, and as Conan filled his lungs, he began to think of diving back down to find her.

"Valeria, if Emwaya's in trouble—"

"She'll need us both even more now. And remember, I owe her my life."

"True enough. I was thinking more of the need for one of us to reach the island and tell of what happened."

Valeria looked less out of temper and seemed about to climb into the canoe when Emwaya broke the surface. Her arms flailed about wildly, and her breathing was a desperate rasp. Conan and Valeria each gripped an arm and upheld her with her head clear of the water.

The panic left her eyes as breath filled her lungs again. She lay back in the water, trusting her friends, and her gasping turned to steady breathing. At last she slipped out of their grasp and climbed into the canoe.

"What is it, Emwaya?" Conan asked.

"My father would know—would say it—better. But… under the lake bottom is one of those tunnels."

"That's the trench that collapsed?"

"Yes. But—in the tunnel—somewhere beyond where it collapsed, there is something."

"A flooded tunnel, I'd wager."

The jest seemed to frighten Emwaya. "Do not speak lightly of such matters, Conan. I—it seems to me that what is there lives."

"How can that be?" Valeria asked. She had finally caught the sense of the conversation. "Everything else in the water for a good thousand paces seems to be dead. Worse, driven away."

"Yes. What is in the tunnel—it lives by eating the— the word is taboo, but will you understand 'life-force'?"

"The life-force of everything that comes close to it?" Valeria had her hand on her dagger as she spoke.

"Such—beings—have lived. We, my father and I, thought they were all dead."

"It seems that at least one isn't," Conan said briskly. He picked up a paddle. "My thought is, let's return to the island and tell your father, if he hasn't already smelled it out for himself."

"I should dive again, to learn more of what it might be," Emwaya said.

Valeria hugged the Ichiribu woman. "You barely reached the surface after your second dive. Go down for the third time and it won't take any ancient magical monster to eat your life-force. You'll drown, and we will be left to explain to your father and Seyganko. I'd rather fight the monster, myself."

Valeria's words were clumsy and her accent harsh, but Emwaya understood the sense of them, and the goodwill in Valeria's embrace. "Then so be it," the young woman said. "Let us be off, before it senses us."

It was not the largest of the Golden Serpents, but it was the last and the oldest. It and one other had outlived all the rest of their kind, for the magic in the burrows they had found beneath the lake had changed them.

They had once eaten flesh. Now they ate the life-force that animated flesh, even including water-plants. They could draw it from a creature beyond the sight of their jeweled green eyes, and with it, feed their own strength.

Then it came about that the other ancient serpent grew weary, and its own life-force began to ebb. The last of the Golden Serpents had no sense of mercy, or of any human notion. It knew only that if the other was allowed to die, its life-force would not feed the one who survived.

So the Golden Serpents fought, and the last one killed its comrade. The life-force entered it, and it found new strength. But the battle had made great disorder in the magic that bound the tunnels, holding them up and lighting them. A long stretch of tunnel collapsed. Yet the magic held strongly enough that water did not pour in and drown the last of the Golden Serpents.

But the tunnel was fallen, and to find a way back through it would mean digging through much rock. The Golden Serpent was not a keen-witted creature, but it knew that neither its strength nor its teeth would be equal to that task. So it rested, drew life-force from the creatures of the waters above, and from time to time sought a way around the fallen stones.

It found one site that seemed likely to be easily made large enough for passage. But there was no trace of anything living, of anything that would repay the effort to open the way..

At least not at first. Then a time came when the Golden Serpent sensed life-force again in the tunnel—strong life, too, like that of the two-legged creatures who had cast the ancient spells on these tunnels. It was so faint that the creatures must be far away.

But if life had come once more into the depths, it would not leave. The Golden Serpent worked at the barrier so that it would be easily breached when there was prey worth having on the other side. They would walk up to the barrier and then there would be no escape. There would, however, be new strength for the Golden Serpent. Strength, perhaps, to let it leave this hiding place and be abroad in the world again, where life-force could be had everywhere.

Even those days might come again when the two-legs brought living creatures to the Golden Serpent, that it might feed on flesh. To have both the living flesh and the life-force from it— If one could use the word "ambition" of a creature without human wits, one might say that this wily scheme was the Golden Serpent's greatest ambition.

As he hauled the canoe onto the shore, Conan noticed that there were fewer people about than usual. He found nothing amiss in that, until he saw that the same was true all along the path leading up to the village.

When he saw what seemed half of the tribe around the hole where the hearthstone had been, he knew that something was wrong. Emwaya had been sweating and tight-lipped all the way up from the shore, but Conan had taken this as weariness after her strenuous swimming. Now he suspected worse.

He knew worse when he saw women and children loading stones and earth into baskets, and fanda warriors carrying the loaded baskets to the edge of the village. To ask a fanda warrior on duty to perform women's work could mean a death-duel, or at least a harsh judgment from the council of the tribe. Yet here was everyone old enough or young enough to stand on their feet unaided, digging out the shaft which led to the tunnels.

"I think Dobanpu has spoken," Valeria said, almost whispering.

"Likely enough," Conan agreed. "Are you game for another little ramble in the depths?"

"To go hunting Emwaya's life-force eater?" She looked both weary and disgusted with herself. "Ah, well. I have heard they have a proverb in Khitai: 'Be careful what you wish for. The gods may grant it.' It seems we wished a trifle too hard for the opening of the tunnels."

"It's done past undoing," Conan said. He unbuckled his belt and handed it and his weapons to Valeria. "Take these to the hut. I've some knowledge of this kind of work that the Ichiribu may find handy."

THIRTEEN

The last of the fifty warriors vanished into the jungle just as dawn touched the hills to the east. Wobeku looked after them, his face set. He doubted that he would deceive Chabano, and indeed, he did not.

"So fearful of the lives of men not of your tribe?" the chief asked. The note of mockery was plain. So was his real intent.

"The Kwanyi are my tribe now," Wobeku said. "Does its chief doubt oaths sworn to him in the presence of Ryku the First Speaker?"

"No."

There was nothing else that Chabano could say. He might doubt Ryku, as Wobeku certainly did. To put these doubts into words that others might hear was not a chief's wisdom.

"I trust the men you are sending against the herd-lands and grainlands of the Ichiribu," Wobeku said. "They will do the work of far more than their num-bers in confusing the enemy. They can neither lose those lands without starving, nor defend them without so many of them at hand that they can defend nothing else. No, what grieves me is that I cannot go with them."

"You are needed here, Wobeku." Left unsaid was that Wobeku was not yet so trusted by the Kwanyi warriors that he would be safe out of the chief's sight.

"I was a bidui boy for years, in the herdlands," Wobeku insisted. "Then I was of the fanda that guarded the grainlands. I know every hut, every valley, every spring in those lands. If I went, even as a simple guide, the men you have sent will do better work. More of them will also live to boast of it to their women."

"Wobeku, when we have won, there will not be enough women to hear all the boasting we shall do. Nor will there be enough beer to keep our throats wet for it."

Wobeku knelt, rose when dismissed, and turned away. Not until he was out of the chief's sight did he dare make even the smallest gesture of aversion.

Chabano might tempt the gods. That was a chief's right. Wobeku was no chief, and much doubted that he ever would be, even if Chabano came to rule all the lands to the Salt Water. He had dreamed of such things when he had agreed to serve Chabano, but those were the dreams of a younger man.

Now he had seen more years, and more truths about the world. Wobeku would be quite content to end his life with sons to sing the death-song for him, women to wash his body, and cattle and fields enough to provide a feast for his friends when the smoke of his burning had risen to the gods.

He thought he would ask for the woman Mokossa as his first prize of the victory. She seemed not only a pleasure to the eye, but intelligent and healthy, a breeder of worthy sons.

Conan was inspecting the warriors of the tunnel band when a bidui boy came to summon him to Seyganko. From the boy's face, it was urgent that the Cimmerian lose not a moment.

He motioned to Valeria, and she laid her pouches on her shield and ran over. Even after a night spent with little sleep, Conan took pleasure in her lithe grace and sure movements. He took even more pleasure in the knowledge that she would be at his back when they plunged into the magic-haunted passages beneath the lake once again.

"Valeria, can you finish my work here? Will you see that all the men have what they were ordered to bring and are sober, not astray in their wits and the like?"

"I think that only a drunkard or a madman would have offered himself to this quest," she said with a wry smile.

"Or men who think Dobanpu speaks the truth," Conan said.

"I am surprised to find you among them," Valeria whispered.

Conan shrugged. "Call me one who has not caught Dobanpu or his daughter in a lie as yet. That puts them leagues ahead of most of the sorcerers I've met." He patted her shoulder. "Just pretend to know what you are doing—"

"The way you do on the mats?"

"Woman, was it my pretending that made you howl like a she-wolf last night? Half the village heard you, or so I've been told."

Valeria made a sound that was half curse, half laugh, and turned away. Conan saw her bare shoulders quivering as silent laughter took her. Then he hurried off to Seyganko.

He found the war leader on hands and knees beside an upturned canoe, studying the bottom as though the secrets of the gods, or at least of victory over the Kwanyi might be found there.

Seyganko seemed drawn with doubt as he led Conan aside. Part of it had to be the burden of leading so many men into a war that neither they nor their tribe might survive. Conan was not vastly older than Seyganko, but he had borne that burden more often than the other, and knew that it grew no lighter with the years.

The other part of Seyganko's unease came out swiftly. "We have seen Kwanyi warriors in the forest on the edge of the herdlands and grainlands. Goats have been found slain, and at least one herdsman has vanished."

Conan nodded. This was a matter of the higher art of war, of which he knew more than he cared to admit, less than he wished. What he both knew and could admit to, however—

"Never fight a war believing that the enemy will wait for you to descend on him like a chamber pot from a high window. Chabano seeks to draw warriors away from the attack on him."

"He will do so if we are not to leave our herds and fields defenseless."

"Herds can walk, can they not?"

"Yes, but—"

"Send enough warriors to protect the herdsmen while they drive the herds and flocks south into the hills by the river. Then the Kwanyi will have to make a two-day march across open ground to come at them. You have archers, and they do not. How many of the Kwanyi do you think will reach the hills alive?"

"Ah." Seyganko's smile was brief. "But the fields are not yet harvested. If they are burned—"

"And are the burners to be allowed to do their work without having their throats slit by night?" Conan asked, acting more patient than he felt. He hoped that the burden of leadership had not fuddled Seyganko's wits.

"That also can be done," Seyganko said. This time, his smile lasted. "Some of the grain, indeed, we can harvest and carry off to feed the herds and flocks. We shall eat it in one form or another, and perhaps also the herds and flocks of the Kwanyi."

Conan clapped Seyganko on both shoulders, and the two men exchanged vows to guard each other's women if one of them did not survive the war. Then Conan returned to the shaft more swiftly than he had gone, and just in time to see Emwaya fall in line with the warriors about the hole.

Conan rolled his eyes up to the sky, muttered something that might have been "Women!" and frowned at Valeria. She shrugged and made a gesture eloquent of the futility of arguing with either her or Emwaya.

"Very well," Conan growled. He turned to face the troop, forty stout warriors and Emwaya.

"I'll go down first. Anything that will support my weight or let me pass will be enough for any of you. Aondo was the only one among you bigger than I, and he's now food for the crocodiles."

"I never thought I'd feel sorry for a crocodile," a warrior called, "but the creature's doubtless died by now."

The men's laughter was good to hear. "No one else start down until I call and the ladders and ropes are in place," Conan added. "If I catch anyone using the bracing timbers for a ladder, I'll pluck him off them myself and throw him down. Then anyone who slips will have a soft cushion on which to land!"

The men were still laughing as Conan knotted the rope about his waist and began his climb down into the darkness.

It had come again, the presence that meant both flesh and life-force for the Golden Serpent. It was, as far as the serpent could judge, in the same place as before. But it seemed stronger, as if the creature were larger.

Or could there be more of the two-legs? Were they coming down from above to offer themselves to the hunger of the Golden Serpent? Or could they perhaps be coming down to hunt the Golden Serpent itself?

The serpent did not have a mind that could hold . thoughts shaped into such words. But it knew the difference between prey and enemies.

It also knew that when the time came for it to strike, even those who came to hunt would find themselves the hunted. This had been so for as long as it could remember—and those memories went back to before it lived in these burrows far below the earth.

One of the warriors, with instincts sharpened in the jungle, hunting and fighting, began gathering up the fallen clods of earth. Conan held up a hand to stop him.

"Leave be, friend. There are no Kwanyi down here to track us by what we leave behind. If anything lives down here, it will have other ways of finding us. Save your strength to see that we find it first."

The magic light still illuminated the tunnels. It seemed dimmer, though. Or was that merely because the light below the stairs had died along with their guardian spells? Farther along the tunnel, the glow seemed as bright and unnatural as ever.

Conan and Valeria were the only ones of the band who looked to be at ease. The Cimmerian saw hands clenched on spears, or fingering amulets, or even held behind backs to make gestures of aversion in the hope that the Blue-Eyed Chief; as they called him, would not see.

Conan coughed dirt and dust from his throat and stood before the men. "I won't say there's nothing to be afraid of. That's calling you fools, which you are not. What you are is stout warriors of the Ichiribu, a folk who are among the best fighters I've ever seen."

That would not pass any spell of truth-sensing, but nobody down here except Emwaya was fit to cast one, and she would hold her peace.

"Watch where you put your feet. Hold your tongue and send messages with your hands. Drink lightly of your water, and eat sparingly. Do not wander off, even if you think you see a whole kingdom down that side tunnel.

"Remember above all that surprising the enemy doubles your strength. We'll be surprising the Kwanyi by coming from a place they don't even know exists. Imagine what that will do for our strength!"

The warriors imagined it, and the thought seemed pleasant. They were still looking above and to their rear as they formed their line of march, but they were also smiling. All except Emwaya.

The Golden Serpent set its teeth into the first of the stones in its path and began dragging it to one side. It sought to do this quietly, knowing that most of the prey beneath the earth were keen of hearing.

Except for the two-legs, of course. Its memories of those were not as sharp as of beasts who had shared the burrows with it more recently. It did remember that the two-legs were nearly blind without light, and almost deaf under any circumstance.

If the flesh and life-force it sensed belonged to two-legs, it could work swiftly. The stones could be moved about until, at the right moment, the serpent could strike even more swiftly. Again, the thoughts of the Golden Serpent did not take those exact words, but one such as Emwaya would have interpreted them so.

One such as Emwaya would also have discerned that the work of the Golden Serpent was agitating the spells in the tunnels beneath the lake. The agitation spread out like ripples around a thrown stone, to reach far along the tunnels in all directions, even to the shores of the Lake of Death.

Chabano was entangled with one of his slave women when the messenger entered. He intended to finish with the woman; then he saw the messenger's face. The man was a proven warrior, a leopard-tooth wearer, and what could give him such a countenance could not be a light matter.

He slapped the woman on the rump. "Go, and swiftly."

The woman looked stricken, perhaps with disappointment, and certainly with fear. Displeasing Chabano had meant death to slave women, even in the past year.

"Go!" he shouted and raised a hand for a less gentle slap. "It is not your fault that the gods have sent bad news!"

The woman could not depart swiftly enough. Even her necklace of beads and her waistcloth remained behind. Chabano sat up and glowered at the warrior. As befitted one of his rank, the man did not flinch.

"The earth has cracked in two places along the shore."

"I felt no earth-trembling."

"Nor did anyone else, my chief. I have sent for your principal warriors—"

"Wobeku?"

"No."

"Send for him at once!" The man turned to flee, now at last frightened. "Wait!" Chabano commanded. "How wide are the cracks?"

"One might be natural. It is no deeper than a man's height and no wider than a boy's arm. The other is wide enough to swallow an ox, and no one can see the bottom.' Yet…"

The man licked his lips. Chabano felt the urge to strike him but knew that would only make him more fearful.

"If they cannot see the bottom, what can they see?"

"Worked stone, perhaps—perhaps stairs."

"Stairs," echoed Chabano. He stood and girded on his loinguard, then pointed to his headdress. The warrior handed it to him, likewise spear and war club.

Accoutering himself gave Chabano time to think. There were legends of cities beneath the lake, or even below the jungle… and there was Dobanpu's power, no legend. Yet if the legends held a grain of truth, the magic of those old cities had made Dobanpu's magic seem that of a child.

This was not the Spirit-Speaker's work, likely enough. But it smelled of magic, and in matters of magic—

"Go and summon Wobeku to the council. Then you yourself go to Thunder Mountain and bear the news to Ryku. Take warriors you trust when you go to the mountain, so that if Ryku wishes to come among us, he will have proper guarding."

And so that any treachery he may be devising can be seen at once.

The messenger thumped his head five times on the floor, then ran as if all his kin would be impaled if he slowed.

Alone, Chabano took down his finest shield, the one with strips of gold and ivory woven into the ox hide. It soothed him to feel the richness under his hands, and his thoughts now came swiftly and clearly.

Gods or men might have opened these cracks. Both fissures would bear watching, and he would set warriors to that task. Meanwhile, the greater part of his warriors, as well as Ryku, would draw back to the slopes of the mountain. Then when the enemy showed himself, it would be time to strike—with Ryku's command of the Living Wind, or with the spears of the warriors, as might seem best.

A battle was certain, and in Kwanyi lands, which Chabano had hoped to avoid. But there was this to ease his mind: the lion bites more easily one who thrusts his head into the lion's jaws.

FOURTEEN

Beyond where the light began again, the tunnel broadened so much that Conan's band could trot four or five abreast. A spear held upright would hardly touch the ceiling, and the floor was of the familiar sullen, grayish rock, without beauty but as smooth as marble.

Conan cared for none of this. Such spaciousness hinted that they were coming to the heart of whatever lay beneath the Lake of Death. That also had to be the heart of whatever magic had for centuries kept the earth from taking back this underground maze.

The Cimmerian dropped back to speak to Emwaya, who was keeping up with the warriors, for all that she seemed to be sleepwalking for long stretches. She was so when Conan fell in beside her. He matched his stride to hers and left her in peace; no good ever came of disturbing even the most benign sorcerer at work.

After time enough to consume a small joint of mutton, Emwaya shook herself like a wet dog and looked at Conan with waking eyes. Then she nodded her head.

"It lives, and it is ahead of us. I think it has grown stronger than it was."

No need to ask what "it" was, or if it was dangerous. The life-force eater was about the only living thing that Emwaya would be sensing, and likely enough the thing most to be feared. But to forty warriors, a Golden Serpent—or one of those beasts that were kin to both dragon and rhinoceros—would be only healthy exercise.

Conan hurried back to the head of the line. Seeing him hasten thus, some of the warriors quickened their pace. He drew his sword and held it at arm's length across the front rank of Ichiribu.

"Pass that and you may get the flat of it across your thick skull!" he said, pitching his voice to carry without being loud. Even so, it raised echoes that made a few men look uneasily about them. It also caused the eager ones to slow their pace.

"Well and good," Conan said. "This tunnel may go straight under the lake to bring us out in the quarters of Chabano's women. It may also wind like the trail of a drunken crocodile. Reckon that we've a good way to go, and guard your wind!"

After that, Conan had no problem with the over-eager and was able to follow his own advice, stalking along in silence. Nothing seemed to hint of danger, but his eyes were never still and his hand never far from the hilt of his sword. From time to time, he also looked back to see if Emwaya had sensed anything else untoward.

The band's pace was that of the Ichiribu warrior when the ground was level and endurance rather than great speed was most urgently required. Conan judged that they must have covered a good two leagues before they halted for a brief rest.

The Cimmerian set guards and put those warriors carrying gear—ropes, hooks, torches, and heavy hunting spears—to inspecting their burdens. The others he allowed to sprawl at their ease. A black look or two discouraged broaching water gourds, and no one as yet was hungry.

"We must be a good halfway to the Kwanyi shore," Valeria whispered. "If we are marching in the direction I think we are."

"I think we're on that route myself," Conan said. "Of course, we could both be—"

He broke off as a sound that was neither sob nor scream but had something of both in it reached him. He whirled to see two warriors drop weapons and shields and leap to support Emwaya. Her legs were trembling, unable to hold her upright, her eyes were closed, and as Conan watched, she clapped both hands over her ears.

What she was hearing might have been heard with the ears of her magic. The next moment, everyone heard it with the ears of his body.

Stones cracked and crumbled, then fell with crashes that filled the tunnel with thundering echoes. Emwaya was not the only one now with hands held over ears.

Conan's bellow rose above the stone-noise and raised echoes of its own. "The next man who drops a weapon, I'll give it back sideways!" Warriors hastily slung shields and raised spears.

Then, without orders, they began taking battle formation. The baggage bearers dropped their loads and formed a circle around the gear. Emwaya was half carried, half dragged into that circle and deposited with little ceremony on a rolled-up rope ladder.

"See to Emwaya," Conan said. That was his last order for a time. None of his words could have been heard, and indeed, none were needed. Something far too close and far too large was slithering over rock, hissing as it came.

The messenger ran up to Seyganko as if his loin-guard had caught fire or a leopard swam the lake to pursue him. Before the man could speak, Seyganko saw what none among the Ichiribu had seen in many years—Dobanpu Spirit-Speaker running.

He ran up to Seyganko at a fine pace for a man his age and waited only long enough to catch his breath before speaking. "We must launch the canoes at once. There is more danger than I had thought."

"You do not think, father of Emwaya, if you believe we can launch the canoes now. Hardly half of them are loaded, and more than a third of the warriors are not yet on the shore."

"Then we set out with what is ready to hand."

Seyganko realized the depth of his anger only when he felt the shaft of the trident in his hand crack. He forced himself to speak more calmly.

"Who is in danger?"

"Those who have gone below. I must be closer to them than I am here, to aid Emwaya against the peril."

"What peril?" Seyganko did not have it in him to call his betrothed's father a liar, as Dobanpu did not have it in him to lie. But he would be cursed if he would fling the tribe half-ready into battle without knowing whither he flung it!

"What lives beneath the lake—where Emwaya found no life—it lives, wakes, and moves upon those who have gone below. Emwaya will need my aid if the warrior's weapons are to slay it."

Seyganko knew that these near riddles were as much as he would hear without forfeiting time he and his warriors might not have. Still—

"Dobanpu, take a canoe and six of the strongest paddlers ready to hand. Guide them where you wish. I will order the others to gather as swiftly as possible, then come after you with two more canoes."

Dobanpu also seemed to realize that he could expect no more. He departed at a brisk trot.

Seyganko raised his voice, calling the messengers and drummers of the fanda to him. As he ran down to the shore, Dobanpu's canoe was already pushing out into the lake, and the drummers were hard at work. The rattle and boom of the talking drums rolled across shore and water as Seyganko leaped into a canoe and seized the nearest paddle.

Twenty or thirty picked warriors would be enough to guard Dobanpu against any human foe. It was drawing on toward sunset, and the Kwanyi feared the lake even more by night than by day.

As for other foes—if Dobanpu was not their equal, then the fewer warriors the Ichiribu lost, the better. The tribe would not long outlive their Spirit-Speaker, but the warriors could still take a good toll of Chabano's men. That would give them honor among the gods, and the thanks of those tribes downriver whom the Kwanyi might then be too weak to conquer.

Seyganko's paddle dipped deep as he raised his voice in the oldest and most potent of the Ichiribu war chants.

Ryku heard the signal drums from the lookout post on what the Kwanyi called Great Gourd Hill. It neither grew large gourds nor had the shape of one, so Ryku had always wondered how it came by its name.

It was, however, the perfect spot for a keen-eyed watcher to look all the way to the island of the Ichiribu. With a trifle of aid from Ryku, some of the watchers had gained more than human sight; they could even see canoes putting out from the island.

This, the drums told him, was just what was happening. Ryku placed the wooden tablet he had been studying in the herb-steeped deer hide that protected it from both damp and magic alike. He wrapped the hide about the tablet and put it in the carved chest that stood in one corner of his chamber. That chest was the one thing he had brought with him when he came to Thunder Mountain. It was a gift from the man whom he had called Father, and always made him feel less clanless and kinless.

Now the very gods could not do that. He was First Speaker to the Living Wind, for all that he seldom used the title. His clan and his kin were alike not of this earth, and thus it must be. Had he risen to the rank of Speaker by other means, he might have felt some kinship with the other Speakers, but as matters stood, they also were alien and untrustworthy.

Ryku stepped out of his chamber, touched the pouch at his belt for good luck, and unbound the reed curtain over his door. The hanging fell back across the door as he turned and walked away, toward the Cave of the Living Wind.

The slithering ended in a crash that sounded like a battering ram striking a stone wall. In the next moment, Conan knew that his ears had not lied.

From a side tunnel to their rear, stones larger than a man rolled in dust and thunder. Smaller stones flew as if hurled from a siege-engine. Some crashed against the far wall, spraying shards in all directions. Others struck flesh. Shards and stones together left three warriors lifeless and two more limping or holding useless arms.

Those two were the first prey of the Golden Serpent as it lunged from its lair into the tunnel.

Its teeth sank into one, and the man howled in agony for a dreadful moment before going limp. The teeth were as long as Conan's fingers, set in a jaw the length of a horse's head, and it hardly mattered if they were venomous or not.

The other man died as a tail thicker than his own body swept him against the wall. He did not scream, but the cracking of skull and crunching of bones were loud enough to tell plainly of his fate.

Other men did cry out, though, at what they saw then. Around the two bodies a sickly green light flickered. It was what one might have seen over a noisome swamp, the sort said to be haunted, one to which wise men gave a wide berth. It was the color of the scum on the most stagnant water of such a swamp. If he had ever seen a less wholesome color in his life, Conan could not remember it.

What he did remember was that Emwaya was in the rear, and that her fate and that of all of them were entwined. He turned back, to reach her just as she leaped from the arms of the men holding her. She ran at the Golden Serpent, raising high overhead one hand and clutching the amulet about her neck with the other.

The creature hissed loudly enough to cause echoes, and its toothed jaws gaped so that Conan had much too clear a view of its mouth. The mouth was green and ridged, except where it was smeared with the blood of the serpent's first victim. Far back in the mouth, the swamp-glow flickered.

A brighter light blazed from the Golden Serpent's many-jeweled eyes. At another time and place, the jewel-light might have been lovely. Now it was only one more horror.

At Emwaya's gesture, the serpent reared half its length from the floor. Its horned muzzle crashed against the ceiling, shaking loose dust and pebbles. Its tail thrashed about, nearly striking down one man bolder than the rest in retrieving his baggage.

From nose to tail, the creature seemed longer than a small galley, and thicker around the middle than a good-sized tree. The golden scales were as large as good pewter serving platters and overlapped as cunningly as was the best Aquilonian plate armor. Some were faded to a pale yellow, even to a near white. Conan saw that many had been cracked, or had even broken clear across, then healed.

The boldest warrior of all ran past Emwaya, shield slung, spear in both hands. He leaped and thrust in a single fluid motion, and his spearhead vanished between two pallid scales.

The Golden Serpent shook like a tree in a gale. Still gripping his spear, the warrior flew into the air, legs waving. The serpent's head dipped, and the jaws closed on one of the man's feet. The warrior did not cry out. Instead, he mustered all his strength to drive the spear in deeper.

He succeeded, in the moment that the serpent's teeth severed his leg halfway up the calf. He screamed then, but did not fall. He remained suspended in the air, held up by nothing anyone could see, while the too-familiar greenish light played about the blood spraying from the stump of his leg.

At last he fell, still gripping the spear. His fall jerked the weapon from the serpent's neck, and greenish blood spurted forth. Where it struck the floor, smoke rose, and where it fell on the corpse of the man crushed by the tail, the flesh charred to ashes and crumbled from the bone.

If Conan had ever doubted the stark horror of the magic lurking in these depths, he doubted no longer. He also doubted that he would ever again put himself in danger for fire-stones.

Emwaya staggered back into his arms, her hands held in front of her in a warding gesture. "Quickly," she whispered. "Have another man throw a spear."

"You!" Conan called. The iron self-command in his voice steadied the warriors. The man addressed drew back and put all the force of his best throw behind the spear. It struck not far from the wound made by the first warrior.

A scale cracked across; this time the blood only oozed out. As Conan watched, the wound from the first spear closed. Only a smear of blood on the serpent's neck showed that it had ever taken any hurt. Another smear was already drying on the floor, not far from the corpse of the man who had lost his foot to the serpent. That man's bones were even now showing through his flesh, and through the green foulness that played over and around it.

Emwaya drew in a great, rasping breath. "We must keep it coming at us, and wound it each time it comes. We must keep our distance, too. It heals itself somewhat each time it is wounded, but not altogether. It will lose strength; I will see to that."

"How long will it take to die?"

The Golden Serpent hissed in challenge, pain, and defiance. The hiss again raised such echoes that Emwaya could not have made herself heard had she shouted into Conan's ear.

As the serpent withdrew some ten paces or so, Emwaya spoke urgently. "It will die swiftly if my father comes to join his Spirit-Speaking to mine. We can take from it the power to steal life-force, which is how it heals as it does."

Conan thought uncharitable words about sorcerers. It seemed that the breed was always with you when you did not want them and somewhere else when you did.

"Ho!" he shouted, raising his sword. "We've need to fight this beast by retreating before it. Baggage men, take the rear rank. The best spearmen, take the foremost. Guard Emwaya at all costs, and for the love of every god, don't close with the monster!"

Faces showed that the bravest warrior needed no urging on that last point. Conan snatched up a spear from the baggage and joined the rear rank as Valeria ran to stand beside Emwaya.

As if they were all of a single mind, the band drew back ten paces. Encouraged, the serpent lowered its head and came on, but it did not lunge so boldly this time. A spear and a trident flew. The spear sank deep, the trident glanced off the horn on the nose. The trident-thrower would have dashed forward to retrieve his weapon but for Conan's wordless roar that halted him in his tracks.

This was likely enough as strange a battle as Conan had ever fought. Overgrown snakes were not uncommon—too common by half if the wounds he had taken whilst battling them were any measure. But he had not before fought a serpent that had its own magic, nor fought one as leader of a band of warriors.

A good band, too, he thought as he saw one of the slingers wind up and hurl his stone. It flew true, striking one of the blazing green eyes. Conan expected the eye to shatter rather than burst, but it did neither. Instead, it merely quivered like jelly, turned misty and pale for a moment, then blazed green once more.

The creature hissed, and this time, anyone could tell that it was in pain. Emwaya bit her lip until blood came, then screamed out a warning.

"Be ready, everyone. He'll lunge again!"

The warning was life to at least three men. The great head crashed down where they would have been standing had they not joined the retreat. Twenty paces to the rear, the band stood again, save for two men who remained behind to thrust spears in deep. Again Conan's roar saved one from folly as the man struck at the beast's nose with his club. The warrior rejoined his comrades without his club or spear, but with a whole skin.

Then the band put another thirty paces between itself and the Golden Serpent, while Emwaya not only waved both arms, but chanted loud enough to drown out the sound of the creature's hissing. The two spears remained in the wounds longer than before, and the gush of blood that pushed them out also flowed longer.

Victory could be theirs, Conan realized, for all that this was a battle that only a madman could have dreamed. Victory might be the last man of the band standing beside the dead serpent, but they would have it!

Then the hissing raised echoes again, Emwaya called a sharp warning, and the deadly dance began once more.

FIFTEEN

The canoes were not the lightest or the swiftest among those of the Ichiribu, although their canoe-builders were honored among all the tribes around the Lake of Death for their skill. Nor were the paddlers the strongest and most skilled.

Seyganko had simply ordered the first score of paddlers into the first three canoes, and all of them had set out under Dobanpu's guidance. Before long, Seyganko thought he might have done better to have waited, picked the best paddlers and canoes, and then made swifter progress. If they were slow in reaching their destination, Emwaya might die�Dobanpu had made that plain.

A little while later, however, Seyganko saw that the canoes were flying across the water as if the paddlers were tireless gods who never missed a stroke. He looked back to the Spirit-Speaker, sitting in the stern of their canoe, and saw a faint smile on the man's face.

Seyganko felt shame that his mistake had been recognized, but also pride that Dobanpu considered him worthy of help in undoing it. Or was it entirely Emwaya's safety that moved her father?

The paddles indeed flew back and forth so swiftly that as with well-thrown spears, the eye could hardly follow them. Nor did the warriors seem to sweat or grow short of breath. Seyganko remembered uneasily that such spells as doubled a man's strength could also weaken him for some time afterward. These warriors would have to fight as well as paddle before another day's sun had set.

Meanwhile, they were crossing the Lake of Death at a speed never before known, save to birds. At a shout from Dobanpu, Seyganko raised his paddle, and the men of his canoe ceased their efforts. The other two canoes drew up alongside and also drifted to a stop.

Then, before Seyganko could speak or even move, Dobanpu stood up in the stern of the canoe, gripped the amulet about his neck tightly, and flung himself overboard. He cut the water without a sound, not even the faint clooop of a diving fisherbird. For a moment, they saw his legs thrusting him down into the depths; then those depths swallowed him.

A clamor arose from those warriors who had breath left with which to speak.

"Why, the old fool!"

"Where is he going?"

"He'll drown!"

"No, the lionfish will have him first!"

"He can't swim!"

Seyganko shouted for silence. "My woman's father can swim, that is certain. There are no hungry fish in this part of the lake, because of the very thing he has gone to fight. As for the rest—I would not call any Spirit-Speaker a fool. Not when I thought he might come back and remember what I said.

"And if you still think otherwise, keep your tongue between your teeth. Or have you forgotten who may be listening over there?" Seyganko pointed at the Kwanyi shore. Those who had not already fallen silent did so now.

The Golden Serpent had taken the lives of two more warriors before Conan's band mastered the art of fighting it. That made ten dead or hurt past fighting, and the rest were growing uneasy. Facing a foe who could not be gravely hurt, and—it seemed—not be killed, for all that Emwaya promised otherwise, was nothing to hearten a warrior.

Yet the warriors lost none of their speed or cunning. They darted about the serpent like flies about a horse's head, stinging with the same remorseless persistence. Some even sang war songs between lunges at the serpent, until Conan commanded them to save their breath.

This disciplined courage pleased Conan, although it did not altogether surprise him. He had known for years that the Black Kingdoms raised warriors fit to stand in battle anywhere in the world. He had not expected to find so many this far inland, but he rejoiced that he had. Perhaps there would be more than one man left standing when the Golden Serpent breathed its last.

A cry rose as Emwaya stumbled on the glassy floor. But Valeria was standing over her, sword in one hand, a borrowed spear poised to throw in the other. Five more warriors were in front of Emwaya before Conan was able to count them. The young woman herself shook her head and clenched her teeth, but her hair had saved her skull, and her hands continued their movements, fighting the Golden Serpent's unnatural life.

She was on her feet in the next moment, and Conan saw that the serpent had not lunged for her or her defenders. Was it learning the dangers of well-wielded iron, or was its strength finally ebbing?

Conan knew the perils of believing that a foe was weak or foolish. Yet he found it hard to believe that anything short of Thunder Mountain itself could resist the battering his band had given the Golden Serpent.

Suddenly thunder crashed once more through the tunnel. Conan swore that he saw the Golden Serpent rise a handbreadth from the floor. He knew that he saw shields snatched from warriors' arms and cracks appear in the ceiling. Then fragments of stone rattled down everywhere about them, and a dripping-wet Dobanpu stood before them—on the far side of the Golden Serpent.

The serpent might have been shaken. The warriors certainly were. Yet the beast was swift to coil and lunge at Dobanpu. The Spirit-Speaker stood to meet the assault, only fingering his amulet. Valeria and a half-score of warriors cried out in horror, and Conan himself was not silent.

The lunge fell short of Dobanpu. An arm's length from the man, the great fanged head was dragged to a stop, as if a noose had tightened about it or the air had turned solid. Dobanpu raised a hand, and coruscating golden light arched from Emwaya to him. It sank into him and vanished, leaving no trace except for perhaps an odd glow in his eyes, and Conan could not be sure that was not a trick of the light.

Then Dobanpu turned, and with a speed startling for a man of his age, ran down a side tunnel that no one had noticed before. Again men gasped in horror, but Emwaya only frowned.

"Has your father gone mad?" Valeria snapped. Conan shook his head. If Emwaya was not afraid, Dobanpu must have some scheme in mind. To make it succeed was another matter.

"What must we do?" he asked the girl.

"He will lead the creature to a place he has sensed, I think. He used much power in coming here, so he will not be able to kill it unaided. But in that place he seeks, he will find a way of ending its life."

Conan cursed himself for expecting a straight answer from any magic-wielder. Valeria glared at Emwaya.

"You want us to follow that thing down some burrow where it might turn and rend us? Trusting only to your father's wizardry?"

"Yes."

"Cimmerian—"

"Call me names afterward. Meanwhile, would you wager two hairs of your head on our surviving if Dobanpu dies?"

As always, Valeria saw reason. She leaped out in front of the warriors and waved her sword. "Come on, you dogs' leavings! It's turned its back to us, and that means it's fleeing!"

The warriors might not have understood all of Valeria's words. Those who understood might not have believed that she spoke the truth. All understood and believed that they should not let the Blue-Eyed Chief's shield-woman shame them by leading the charge. War cries echoed nearly as loud as the thunderclap of Dobanpu's appearance, and the Ichiribu warriors plunged after their foe.

Ryku gazed down into the whirlpool of light that was the Living Wind—or at least its outward form. He stood on the outermost rim of the ledge, rather than sitting in the First Speaker's seat.

He had never felt at ease in that seat, and now it was more important than ever that he do nothing to make himself feel uneasy. It might be only a tale that the Living Wind could sense when those in its presence were afraid, or unsure of themselves, but such tales often held bits of truth.

Also, Ryku did not altogether like what he saw now when he gazed down into the Living Wind. That it was unveiled by the smoke, long a tradition in the ritual, mattered little. Indeed, he had not called up the smoke, thinking it an outworn custom.

The hues of the Living Wind were still crimson and sapphire, swirling in patterns that both held and repelled the eye. But the crimson now seemed the color of old blood, while the sapphire was growing steadily paler.

Also, there was a distant sound that seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It was a sound hard to find words to describe. To Ryku, it seemed that if bees could chant war cries, the sound might be rather like what he was hearing.

Even the smell of the Cave of the Living Wind had altered. It had always been fresh and cool, in spite of being far below the slopes of Thunder Mountain, with few natural passages for air. Now the odor of the jungle seemed to be overtaking the cave, or at least the odor of some sort of life.

Why not? Ryku told himself that the Living Wind had earned its name fairly, so why should it not take on some of the qualities of life when it began to change?

He had to use all of the disciplines he had learned so as not to be uneasy at that thought, nonetheless. Yet again, why should it be a surprise? Mighty and ancient magic was being wielded in this land, magic left untouched for centuries, and the very gods of Thunder Mountain might be waking.

Ryku now thought he had calmed himself enough to sit down in the chair of the First Speaker. Let the gods wake, he told himself. Let them wake, and they will see that I am their friend and my enemies are theirs. Then I will not even need Dobanpu, not when I have gods for friends.

Emwaya seemed to be speaking to her father without words, and her gestures guided the war band on the trail of the Golden Serpent. They might not have needed that guidance, for the creature now hissed almost continuously, and left smears of blood that grew thicker as it writhed along.

Conan held his tongue. He would not allow his own hopes to rise, let alone those of the band. False hope made warriors careless, and careless warriors died in the face of less formidable foes than the Golden Serpent.

The band certainly ran faster with Emwaya guiding them than they would have dared otherwise. Indeed, Conan did not know how far they had come, or how much longer some of the warriors could keep up the pace. Those with baggage were beginning to breathe hard, and some of those with slight wounds clearly would need rest before long.

Conan did not like to think of dividing the band, leaving the baggage and the lightly wounded behind. Once divided in these depths, could the band ever unite again? Also, the Golden Serpent might have ways of doubling back on its tracks, to fall on such easy prey.

A familiar smell began to tickle the Cimmerian's nostrils. Not one he remembered with pleasure, on the whole, although the giant fungi had certainly saved him and Valeria on their first journey underground. But when one has fed off something for so long, the smell lingers in memory.

They were approaching another cave full of the giant fungi. Conan wondered what purpose that might serve, as the Golden Serpent was plainly a meat-eater. Emwaya was too lost in speaking with her father to answer to anything save a shout in her ear, and Conan had no wish to break her bond with Dobanpu.

The floor sloped more sharply downward now, and the patches of green blood were not only thicker, but fresher. The warriors had to slow their onrush, to avoid stepping in the still-fuming green patches of death and agony. One warrior was unlucky enough to go down nonetheless, but leaped up at once, holding a blistered hand over his head like a trophy.

"It bleeds! It bleeds, and does not stop! Come, brothers, and we shall make it bleed to death!"

Then the tunnel bent sharply, and now the blood smeared the walls as well as the floor. Conan took the lead again, with Valeria just behind him. Around this bend, the serpent might be lying in wait, even if Dobanpu was alive and well, as he seemed to be, judging by the way Emwaya looked.

Then a sudden battering-ram stroke of the serpent's head caught an unsuspecting warrior to Conan's left. No teeth pierced the man, but the horn caught his shoulder and hurled him against the wall. Conan heard his skull crack.

The Cimmerian leaped and thrust in the same motion. His sword slashed deep through scales into the flesh under the serpent's throat. The scales parted, and blood spurted from a gash a sword's length wide, deeper than any wound the beast had taken thus far.

This time, the hiss was nearly a roar, with an ugly, bubbling note. Blood sprayed Conan, Valeria, Emwaya, and several warriors. As it had not done before, it stung. Conan blinked his eyes clear, wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand, and glanced at his sword-blade. There was no harm to it as far as he could see.

Then they heard Dobanpu calling from beyond the serpent, "Have fire ready! When I lead the beast among the earth-fruits, you must cast fire upon them!"

Conan and Valeria spent no time in wondering at the sense of Dobanpu's call. The serpent now writhed in a broader patch of tunnel, half-choked with the fungi. Emwaya's eyes also discouraged questions.

"Flint and steel to the fore! And a torch! Hurry!" Valeria shouted.

A man ran up from the baggage bearers. Valeria struck a spark with flint and steel into the dried, oil-soaked grass at the head of one of the torches. It blazed up, with flame that was no natural yellow or orange, but a violet hue as sickening as the serpent's blood, as sickening as the magic the creature used for eating life-force.

Valeria held the torch at arm's length as the serpent backed slowly deeper into the fungus. Conan stood beside her, sword and spear alike ready. He saw Dobanpu raise a hand and fling what seemed to be a gobbet of the serpent's own blood into its face. He saw the serpent lunge forward, then halt, its head buried deep in a mass of the fungi as tall as two men.

Before Dobanpu or Emwaya could speak, Valeria flung the torch. It soared over the serpent's back and plunged into the piled fungi.

Flames puffed up, of the same virulent purple hue as the torch-flame. Thick smoke of similar color rose above them. The Golden Serpent quivered from nose to tail, then flung its head up as if trying to pierce the ceiling to seek the open sky.

It failed. As the monster rose, Conan saw that smoke and flames were pouring from those wounds still open. Green blood turned black; then golden scales around the wounds also blackened. Smoke rose up from throat and body, and at last began pouring from the eyes.

When smoke belched from the serpent's mouth, Conan threw an arm around Valeria's shoulders and drew her close. He could feel her shuddering. He sheathed his sword, dropped his spear, and drew Emwaya close with his other arm.

They stood that way as the flames they had kindled with the aid of Dobanpu's magic devoured both the fungi and the Golden Serpent. The brute was tenacious of its life to the end. Not until the scales were mostly fallen from the flesh did it stop writhing. Even then Conan thought he heard a faint scraping in the middle of the roaring flames, as if the serpent were still twitching feebly.

That was the Golden Serpent's last sign of life. Smoke was rising so thickly now that Conan and others were binding strips of cloth across their mouths and noses. Some wetted the strips as well. Emwaya stared into the smoke, with it plain on her face that she feared for her father.

Then the smoke eddied and disgorged the staggering figure of Dobanpu. He was coughing like a man in the grip of lung-fever, and so nearly blind that he all but spitted himself on Valeria's sword as he rushed up. Valeria and Emwaya held the Spirit-Speaker while he coughed his lungs clear, then gave him water. When he could speak, he nodded his thanks and then gasped:

"We must hasten from here! I do not know how long this fire will burn, nor how much smoke it will yield. The whole underground may become unfit for life."

"I rejoice!" Valeria cried. "We are saved from the Golden Serpent only to stifle like rabbits in a burrow!"