Conan the Buccaneer

Chapter Five: AT THE WORLD'S EDGE

All night, the two caracks plied the warm southern waves. With dawn, the Wastrel, as she had done for the past five days, took in sail to drop back, so as not to be seen from the Petrel in the waxing light. With nightfall, if they had not yet reached the Nameless Isle, she would make up the time, since her slimmer hull and hollowed bow gave her an advantage in speed over the blunter, beamier Petrel.

Meanwhile, the Wastrel's sharp stem cut through the endless hillocks of blue-green. Flying fish leaped from her forefoot to hurl themselves aloft, soar for half a bowshot, and plunge back into the sea. Neither carack had sighted another ship since taking the southerly course.

Presently, a cluster of cloudlets appeared in an otherwise clear sky. The Petrel altered course to starboard, and in a few hours an island hove into view on the horizon, beneath the clouds.

From the Petrel's forecastle, Zarono thoughtfully scanned the unknown island. It looked innocuous enough: a tawny-sanded beach; tall, slender palms with emerald fronds. What lay beyond the fence of palm trunks, none could say as yet.

Menkara, a black cloak wrapped about his lean shoulders, joined Zarono. "It is the island," he said tonelessly.

Zarono's white teeth showed in his sallow face as he smiled. "Aye, priest, so it is! Now about this treasure: how is it guarded? Ghosts, demons, or merely a few dragons? I count on your supernatural powers to shield us from harm whilst we loot the tombs or crypts or whatever they are. Vancho! Take her into yonder bay, if it prove deep enough…"

A quarter-hour later, Zarono commanded: "Let go the anchor! Trice up all sails! Vancho, lower the first longboat and pick a landing party … all stout men, well armed."

With much bustle and clatter, the boat was lowered and a dozen Zingarans, clanking with arms, swarmed down ropes to take their places on the thwarts. They pulled away from the Petrel to the beach. There they ran the boat's nose up on the sand, then piled out into shallow water to haul the boat farther up on the strand. Under the boatswain's command, they spread out along the beach, swords drawn and fingers on the triggers of crossbows, warily watching the palms. A small group pushed into the trees out of sight and presently reappeared, waving an all-clear signal to the Petrel.

"Lower the other boat," said Zarono. He and Menkara took their places, together with eight more sailors. Vancho remained aboard the Petrel.

The second boat reached the shore without incident. Zarono mustered his men. In a few minutes he, Menkara, and the bulk of the landing parties had vanished into the palms. Three buccaneers were left to guard the longboats: a swart, hook-nosed Shemite, a giant black from Kush, and a bald, red-faced Zingaran.

All of this Conan, in the main top of the Wastrel, observed with keen interest.

His ship lay just over the horizon, hove to with her foresail backed and rolling uneasily in the long oceanic swells.

For a time, Zarono's party hacked its way through dense, tropical undergrowth.

There was no sound save the grunts and heavy breathing of laboring men, the chopping sound of the blades of broadswords and cutlasses as they sheared through the stems of vines and saplings, and the rustle of leaves as the pirates pushed their way through the jungle.

The air was hot and steamy. Sweat glistened on muscular arms, matted bare chests, and scarred brows. The smell of decaying vegetation blended with that of exotic flowers, which blazed in gold and crimson and white against the dark green of the forest.

Zarono became aware of another odor, as well. It took him some time to recognize it. At last he realized, with a prickle of revulsion, that it was the musky stench of snakes. With a muttered curse, he pressed to his nostrils a gilded pomander ball, wherein scraps of citron peel and bits of cinnamon yielded a spicy scent. But, even above the soothing smell of the pomander, he could still detect the odor of snakes. This puzzled him, when he thought about the matter.

In his piratical career he had visited many small oceanic islands, and never had he known any to harbor serpents.

It was sweltering; the close-set palm trunks, draped with loops and curves of flowering lianas, cut off the fresh sea breeze. Soaked with sweat, Zarono probed the greenery about them with sharp black eyes. He spoke to Menkara:

"Save for this damnable stink of serpents, Stygian, I sense naught dangerous about your Nameless Isle."

Menkara gave a wan, thin-lipped smile. "Do you truly notice nothing, then?"

Zarono shrugged. "Outside of the stench and the heat, no. I had expected supernatural terrors, and I am disappointed. No ghouls or specters … not even a gibbering, drooling thing from a tomb? Ha!"

Menkara gave him a coldly meditative stare. "How dull are you Northerners' senses! Do you not even feel the silence?"

"Hm," grunted Zarono. "Now that you mention …''

A cold prickling crawled over Zarono's flesh. Truly, the jungle was ominously silent. One would not expect large beasts on a small island; but still, there should have been the whir of birds, the rustle of scuttling lizards and land crabs, and the rattle of the fronds of the palms overhead as the breeze stirred them. But there was no sound at all, as if the jungle held its breath and watched them with unseen eyes.

Zarono muttered a curse but controlled his feelings. Busy hacking their way through the brush, the men had not yet noticed anything. Zarono signed Menkara to hold his tongue and plodded after his crew into the interior. But the sensation of being watched did not cease.

Toward midday, the buccaneers reached their goal. It was strange: pushing through a dense tangle, they suddenly found themselves in an open glade. The jungle ended abruptly, as if the foliage dared not cross an invisible boundary.

Beyond that unseen circular barrier, flat, sandy soil stretched away, bearing only a few withered-looking patches of lank, pale, colorless grass. Menkara and Zarono exchanged a meaningful glance.

Amidst this dead zone rose the mysterious edifice they had come to ravish.

Zarono could not decide on the purpose of this structure; it might equally well be a tomb, a shrine, a temple, or a storehouse. It was a squat, heavy building of a dull, lusterless black stone, which seemed to soak up all the light that fell upon it, so that its physical outlines were difficult to discern.

The structure was of roughly cubical shape; but its surfaces, instead of being simple squares, were made up of a multitude of planes and curves of irregular form, oriented every which way. There was no symmetry to the structure. It was as if every part of the building had been designed by a different architect, or as if the building had been assembled from parts of a score of other structures chosen at random from many lands and eras.

The black temple —if such it was— loomed before them in the hazy light.

Zarono felt the icy touch of an awe he had never before experienced. An aura of fear, radiating from the squat black thing, unmanned even that tough, steel-nerved ruffian. Blinking, he glared at it, striving to discover the source of the terror that made his breath come in quick gasps and caused his heart to pound.

The temple looked wrong. The style was like nothing he had seen in his far voyaging. Even the ghoul-haunted tombs of Stygia were not so alien as this irregular block of black stone. It was as if the builders had followed some inhuman geometry of their own … some unearthly canon of proportion and design.

Menkara's face was gray and pearled with sweat. He muttered, half to himself:

"It is as I thought. The Z'thoum Ritual has been enacted here." He shivered. "I had not thought that darksome rite had been uttered aloud these three thousand years…"

"What is it, yellow dog?" snarled Zarono, fear making him vicious.

The Stygian turned wide eyes upon him. "A protective spell," he whispered. "One of very great power. Were any man fool enough to enter the precincts of the temple without the counter-spell, his presence would awaken that which sleeps therein."

"Well? Have you this counter-spell?"

"Thanks be to a Father Set, I have. Little is known of the pre-human serpent-men of Valusia. But, from what little I know, I can weave the counter-spell, albeit I cannot maintain it for long."

"Long enough to loot that black thing, I hope," growled Zarono. "Best that you set about it, man."

"Then go back into the woods, you and your men, and face away from me," said Menkara.

Zarono herded his buccaneers back into the brush, where they formed a cluster, with their backs to the clearing. They listened with tight lips as Menkara's voice rolled on in an unknown tongue. What else he did, they did not know. But the light diffused through the foliage seemed to flicker, as of shadows passing and repassing overhead. The Stygian's voice seemed to be echoed from above by other, inhuman voices that spoke with a dry, rasping tone, as if their vocal organs were never designed for human speech. The earth trembled slightly, and the light dimmed as if a cloud had passed athwart the sun…

At last Menkara, in a weak voice, called: "Come!"

Zarono found the Stygian looking aged and bent. "Hasten," Menkara murmured. "The counter-spell will not hold for long."

Pale and sweating, Zarono and Menkara entered the temple. Within, there was little light save that which entered through the open portal, and the dull black stone absorbed this light with little reflection.

At the far end of the irregular chamber rose a huge black altar, and on top of this altar squatted an idol of gray stone. The idol was that of a being that combined the qualities of a man and a toad, with its male characteristics obscenely exaggerated. Toadlike, with a bloated, warty skin, it squatted on the altar. The surface of the gray stone had a rough, crumbly appearance, as if the stone itself were rotting and sloughing away.

The idol's toothless mouth was slightly open in a mirthless grin. Above the mouth, a pair of pits corresponded to nostrils, and above these a row of seven globular gems, set in a row, corresponded to eyes. The seven gems faintly reflected the light that came through the portal.

Shuddering at the aura of cosmic evil that radiated from the thing, Zarono tore his eyes away from it. Before the altar lay two small sacks of old leather. One had burst at the seam, and a glittering trickle of gems had poured from it to make a puddle of granulated splendor on the stone pave, shining in the dimness like a constellation sighted through a gap in the clouds.

Beneath the sacks of jewels was a huge book, bound in the hide of some reptile and fitted with clasps and hinges of bronze, green with age. The scales of the reptile whose skin formed the cover were of a size that no earthly beast had worn for eons.

The two men exchanged one wordless, triumphant glance.

Zarono gathered up the burst sack, carefully so as not to spill out any more of the gems. When he had cradled it in the crook of one arm, he picked up the other sack with his free hand. Then Menkara pounced upon the book, raised it, and clasped it to his bosom. His gaunt visage was flushed and his eyes humid with a strange, darkling ecstasy. Without a word or a backward glance, they tiptoed out of the temple, crossed the clearing almost at a run, and rejoined the buccaneers who awaited them uneasily at the edge of the jungle.

"Back to the ship, and yard" said Zarono.

All hastened back along the trail they had cut, eager to leave behind this seat of ancient evil, over which accursed forces still hovered, and regain the clean air and blessed sunlight of the open sea.