Conan Of The Isles

CHAPTER TWO THE BLACK HEART OF GOLAMIRA

Alone and closely guarded in the great, gold-domed chamber of his palace, Conan slept. It was a haunted, restless slumber, for all that he had not slept a single hour in the last three days and nights while he struggled to cope with the weird plague that gripped his kingdom. Through desperate days and nights of endless council, he had sought the advice of the wisest men of the kingdom - hoary sages and learned doctors. He had asked the prayers of the priests of Mitra and Ishtar and Asura. He had listened to the tales of spies and studied the reports of police agents. He had solicited the spells and divinations of wizards and occultists - all in vain.

Now exhaustion had sapped even his iron vigor. The gray, gaunt old wolf lay sprawled in chain mail upon the silken coverlets, his great broadsword near his hand, in a drugged but restless slumber.

And in this sleep, he dreamed.

It seemed to Conan that he heard a distant voice. The echoing call was loud enough to rouse him but so fogged and unclear that he could not understand the repeated phrase that whispered eerily through his chamber.

He came to his feet, saw that his mighty limbs were bare, and knew that it was but a dream. Looking back, he saw his own body lying deep in slumber. As the deep chest rose and fell, mail glinted like silver in the moonlight that shone through the tall, narrow windows.

Again came that distant, murmuring call, and the note of urgency rang within it. And in a fashion he could never quite remember afterwards, the old king went forward from the moonlit darkness of his chamber, through barriers of space and time, until swirling mists as gray as his own grizzled beard closed about him, blotting everything from sight. Yet still he advanced, in some form of progress unlike the ways of the material world he had left behind -forward, through grayness that obscured his vision like the clammy embrace of a night-born fog.

Out of the shifting mists came, again and again, that haunting call that had summoned his spirit forth from its mansion of flesh and into this world of eery darkness.and phantom mists. Gradually the call of the voice, repeated over and over, became clearer: 'Conan of Cimmeria -Conan of Aquilonia! - Conan of the Isles!'

Yes, he could hear it distinctly now. But he was puzzled: what meant the name 'Conan of the Isles'? Never had this term been linked with his name in all the wide-ranging years of his wanderings.

Now he came to where he could stand on a solid footing. And it seemed, in his dream, that the gray fog cleared away. A dim, unearthly light struck through the blur of vapor. Now he stood in a hall of titanic proportions, whose ebon walls and lofty, vaulted roof seemed carved from the dead-black stuff of Old Night itself. The faint, mystic radiance seemed to shine from the very walls themselves, whereon he could dimly discern colossal carvings., which stretched from the floor to the arched ceiling far above.

Every inch of the black walls was cut and worked into a stupendous pageant of tiny figures - a vast, sweeping panorama peopled with millions of struggling, warring men. Peering closer, he marveled vaguely at the strangeness of their raiment and weaponry, derived from distant realms and remote aeons.

It was like a titanic tapestry of cold stone, a bird's-eye view of the history of man himself, from the forgotten days before the Cataclysm, when Atlantis and Lemuria, Valusia and old Grondar strove for the mastery of the earth; and even earlier, when the stooped and hairy ancestors of men slouched through the jungle, and black-winged Ka, the Bird of Creation, first flew out of the unknown East to lay the foundations of Time.

Above this straggling pageant of ancient kings and heroes loomed other shapes as well - malformed, uncouth, and terrible. In his soul, Conan knew them for the Nameless Old Ones, who had ruled the star-thronged universe a billion aeons before the birth of Gayomar the First of All Men.

Then Conan knew that he walked through a timeless dream, wherein his spirit had been summoned by an ancient Force which guarded and watched over the race of man. With an inward queasiness natural to his blunt, barbaric soul, he knew that the foot of mortal man had not stirred the impalpable dust that filmed this ebon floor . for ages beyond reckoning. Aye, he knew all this and more, for once in earlier years he had stood upon this very spot and passed down the yawning black throat of this colossal hall in a strange, magical dream.

More than a score of years had passed since that distant day, but what are the ephemeral generations of mortal men to him who sleeps forever in the black halls of timeless Golamira, the Mount of Eternal Time?

Conan came upon a broad, curving stair, which rose in steep ramps of black stone to unguessable heights. Here, the clifflike walls were adorned with cryptic symbols in some esoteric script, so ancient and so suggestive that they woke within him vestigial memories inherited from ancestors scarce risen above the primal, shambling beast-men of Time's dawn. And at the stir of these racial memories of Elder Time, the skin seemed to crawl on his naked flanks. He hastily averted his eyes from these enigmatic glyphs.

As he went up the mighty stair, he saw that every step was carven with the writhing coils of that abhorrent form of nightmare, Set the Old Serpent, eternal and malignant Demon of Darkness, in such a manner that with every stride he set his heel upon the blunt, questing serpent-head that lifted from the fluid, scaly neck. This the unknown builders had meant the wayfarer to do, in symbolic refutation of the forces of blind, evil chaos. Step by step, Conan mounted the curving stair.

At last he saw the tomb itself, hewn from one massive, glittering crystal that he could not name. If it were diamond - as in truth it seemed - then the gem whence the tomb was wrought had been vast beyond calculation. The cold crystal glittered with a thousand points of restless light, like a multitude of captive stars.

To either side, in the silent gloom of the nighted crypt, rose the terrible forms of two stupendous phoenixes, clawed and beaked, with wings outspread as if to shelter beneath their stony pinions him who slept within the diamond sepulcher.

From the ebon gloom emerged a titanic figure, robed and haloed in purest light. Conan stared silently into the majestic, bearded face.

'Speak, O mortal!' the face commanded, in a deep voice as resonant as trumpets. 'Know you who I am?'

'Aye,' growled Conan. 'By Crom and Mitra and all the gods of light, you are the prophet Epemitreus, whose flesh has been moldering dust these fifteen hundred years!'

'True, O Conan. It has been many years since last I summoned your sleeping spirit to stand before me here in the black heart of Golamira. In the years gone by since that day, my undying sight has followed you through all your wandering ways and wars across the earth, and it is well. All has been done as the Eternal Ones who set me here as man's guardian would wish. But now a darkness hovers over all the lands of the West - a Shadow that you alone of all mortal men can dispel.'

Conan started at these unexpected words and would have spoken, but the bony hand of the ancient sage lifted, commanding silence.

'Harken well, O Conan! In olden time, the Lords of Life gave me powers and wisdom beyond those granted to other men that I might wage war against the infernal and malignant Serpent, Old Set, whom I strove against and slew, and in the slaughter gained my own death as well. These things you know.'

'So the old books and legends tell’ Conan growled.

'And so it was.' The radiant figure nodded. 'You know, O child of man, that from the beginning the gods of eternity marked you for great deeds and undying fame, and many and perilous have been the grim dangers through which your path has led, and many dark and evil men and superhuman forces have gone down before your sword. And the gods are pleased.'

His grim face impassive, Conan made no reply to this praise. After a pause, the deep, ringing voice of Epemi-treus spoke on.

'One last task awaits you, O Cimmerian, ere you may go to your well-earned rest. For this task, your spirit was destined from before the beginning of time itself. One last and Mightiest victory awaits you - but the price to be paid is a bitter one.'

'What is the task, and what the price?' bluntly demanded Conan.

'The task is to save the West of the world from the Terror that even now stalks your green land. A terrible doom hovers over the lands of men, a doom darker than your mind can grasp - a Terror that strikes down and enslaves the very souls of your people, whilst their poor bodies are rent asunder in hideous and bestial torment by hands that should have fallen into dust eight thousand years ago!’

The prophet fixed Conan's sullen face with the splendor of his blazing eyes.

'But, to accomplish this, you needs must render up your throne and kingly crown to your son and venture forth alone to the dim horizons of the uttermost reaches of the Western Ocean, where never mortal man of your race has ventured since doomed Atlantis sank beneath the glittering waves. This very night must you set forth alone from your kingdom, in stealth and secrecy, never more to gaze upon it in the flesh, leaving behind your crown and realm and a writ of abdication.

'The way into the unknown seas is long and hard, and many perils stand between you and your ultimate goal -perils whence not even the gods can shield you. But only you, of all men, can tread that path with a chance of victory. Yours alone are the perils and the glory; for it is given to few mortals to save their world!'

The sage smiled down at the king from the cloudy light. 'One gift alone I may give you. Bear it through every trial, for in your hour of greatest need it will be your salvation. Nay, I can tell you naught more. In time of need, your heart will instruct you how to use this talisman.'

A mist of glittering light, like the dust of stars, drifted from the prophet's outstretched palm. Something tinkled glassily at Conan's feet. Without looking, he bent to pick it up.

'One last word,' said Epemitreus. 'The sorcerer-kings of old Atlantis used the emblem of the Black Kraken. This emblem is still displayed. Beware of it!

'Go now, child of Crom,' continued the sage. 'It were not wise for mortals to stray too long into these shadowy realms whereinto I have called your spirit. Return, O Conan, to your fleshly abode, and the blessing of the eternal gods of light go with you, to lighten your dark and dreadful path! Never again shall you behold the face of Epemitreus - not in this world, nor yet in the many worlds to come, through which your soul, reborn, shall venture and struggle in lives beyond this one. Farewelll’

Gasping with shock, Conan came instantly awake. He found himself sprawled on the silken bed, clad in light mail and bathed in sweat. So it had been a dream! The drugged wine and his own troubled thoughts had combined to form a fearful vision ...

And then he looked at the thing clenched in his sweaty palm, the phoenix-shaped talisman hewn from the heart of a giant, glittering diamond, and knew that it had been more than a mere dream.

Three hours later, while a drenching summer storm flashed and rumbled about the towers of the palace, a giant, mail-clad form swathed in a vast black cloak and with its face half hidden by a wide-brimmed black slouch hat stole forth from the little used secret sally port in Tarantia's outer wall. After it came another tall, hulking figure, leading a mettlesome stallion. They halted while the second man tested the girth and checked the length of the stirrups,

'Curse it!' growled Prince Conn's young voice. ' Tis unfair! If any man has the right to go with you, it is I!’

Conan somberly shook his head, scattering drops of water from his hat brim. 'Crom knows, son, that if I might take any man with me, it would be you. But we are no mere pair of penniless adventurers, to do as the whim moves us. We cannot have the power and the glory without the responsibility. It took me years to learn this lesson, and a hard one at times I found it. I go, perchance to my death; you shall remain to rule this land as justly as you can. Thus the gods have willed.

'Trust no man fully, but give the most trust to those whom I have found worthy of trust. Discount all praise by nine-tenths, since a king draws flatterers as offal does flies. Pay closer heed to men's deeds than to their words. Never punish the bearer of bad tidings, or frown upon him who submits an unwelcome opinion, lest men think they dare not tell the king the truth. Farewell!'

Conan grasped his son's hand in a crushing grip, and the two exchanged a short, fierce hug. Then, while Conn held the stallion's rein and the high stirrup, Conan swung into the saddle. For a few heartbeats, the cloaked-figure looked back at the looming towers of golden Tarantia, starry gem of the West. Then, with a final wave, Conan spurred the horse southward and rode off through the pouring rain and the lightning-litten dark down the long road to Argos and the sea. And thus the world's mightiest warrior set forth upon the last and strangest of his adventures.