The City of Skulls

SEVEN: When the Green God Wakes

The hairs lifted on Conan's nape, and he felt as if the blood in his veins had congealed to ice. Whimpering, Zosara pressed her face into the hollow of his shoulder and clung to his neck. On the black dais that upheld the throne of skulls, Juma also froze, the whites of his eyes showing as the superstitious terrors of his jungle heritage rose within him. The statue was coming to life.

As they watched, powerless to move, the image of green stone shifted one of its huge feet slowly, creakingly. Thirty feet above their heads, its great face leered down at them. The six arms moved jerkily, flexing like the limbs of some gigantic spider. The thing tilted, shifting its monstrous weight. One vast foot came down on the altar on which Zosara had lain. The stone block cracked and crumbled beneath the tons of living green stone.

"Crom!" breathed Conan. "Even stone lives and walks in this mad place!

Come, girl—" He picked Zosara up and leaped down from the dais to the floor of the temple. From behind him came an ominous scraping sound of stone on stone. The statue was moving.

"Juma!" yelled Conan, casting a wild eye about for the Kushite. The black still crouched motionless beside the throne. Upon the throne, the little god-king pointed an arm, thick with fat and bright with jewels, at Conan and the girl.

"Kill—Yama! Kill—kill—kill!" he screamed.

The many-armed thing paused and peered about with its ruby eyes until it sighted Conan. The Cimmerian was nearly mad with the primitive night-fears of his barbarian people. But, as with many barbarians, his very fear drove him into combat with that which he dreaded. He put down the girl and heaved up a marble bench. Sinews creaking with the effort, he strode forward towards the lumbering colossus.

Juma yelled: "No, Conan! Get away! It sees you!"

Now Conan stood near the monstrous foot of the walking idol. The stone legs towered above him like the pillars of some colossal temple. His face congested with the effort, Conan raised the heavy bench over his head and hurled it at the leg. It crashed into the carven ankle of the colussus with terrific impact. The marble of the bench clouded with a web of cracks, which shot through it from end to end. He stepped even closer, picked up the bench again, and again swung it against the ankle. This time the bench shattered into a score of pieces; but the leg, though slightly chipped, was not materially damaged. Conan reeled back as the statue took another ponderous step toward him.

"Conan! Look out!"

Juma's yell made him look up. The green giant was stooping. The ruby eyes glared into his. Strange, to stare into the living eyes of a god!

They were bottomlessly deep—shadow-veiled depths wherein his gaze sank endlessly through red eons of time without thought. And deep within those crystalline depths, a cold, inhuman malignancy coiled. The god's gaze locked on his own, and the young Cimmerian felt an icy numbness spread through him. He could neither move nor think…

Juma, howling with primal rage and fear, whirled. He saw the many mighty hands of stone swoop toward his comrade, who stood staring like one entranced. Another stride would bring Yama upon the paralyzed Cimmerian.

The black was too far from the tableau to interfere, but his frustrated rage demanded an outlet. Without conscious thought, he picked up the god-king, who shrieked and wriggled in vain, and hurled him toward his infernal parent Jalung Thongpa whirled through the air and thudded down on the tessalated pave before the tramping feet of the idol. Dazed by his fall, the little monarch stared widly about with his good eye. Then he screamed hideously as one titanic foot descended upon him.

The crunch of snapping bones resounded in the ringing silence. The god's foot slid on the marble, leaving a broad, crimson smear on the tiles. Creaking at the waist, the titanic figure bent and reached for Conan, then stopped.

The groping, green stone hands, fingers outspread, halted in mid-air.

The burning crimson light faded from the ruby eyes. The vast body with its many arms and devil's head, which a moment before had been flexible and informed with life, froze into motionless stone once more.

Perhaps the death of the king, who had summoned this infernal spirit from the nighted depths of nameless dimensions, cancelled the spell that bound Yama to the idol. Or perhaps the king's death released the devil-god's will from the domination of his earthly kinsman. Whatever the cause, the instant the Jalung Thongpa was crushed into bubbling gore, the statue reverted to lifeless, immobile stone.

The spell that had gripped Conan's mind also broke. Numbly, the youth shook his head to clear it. He stared about him. The first thing of which he was aware was the princess Zosara, who flung herself into his arms, weeping hysterically. As his bronzed arms closed about her softness and he felt the feathery touch of her black, silken hair against his throat, a new kind of fire flared up in his eyes, and he laughed deeply.

Juma came running across the floor of the temple. "Conan! Everybody either is dead or has ran away! There should be horses in the paddock behind the temple. Now is our chance to quit this accursed place!"

"Aye! By Crom, I shall be glad to shake the dust of this damned land from my heels," growled the Cimmerian, tearing the robe from the body of the Grand Shaman and draping it over the princess's nakedness. He snatched her up and carried her out, feeling the warmth and softness of her supple young body against his own.

An hour later, well beyond the reach of pursuit, they reined in their horses and examined the branching roads. Conan looked up at the stars, pondered, and pointed. "This way!"

Juma wrinkled his brow. "North?"

"Aye, to Hyrkania." Conan laughed. "Have you forgotten that we still have this girl to deliver to her bridegroom?"

Juma's brow wrinkled with greater puzzlement than before, seeing how Zosara's slim, white arms were wound around his comrade's neck and how her small head was nestled contentedly against his mighty shoulder. To her bridegroom? He shook his head; never would he understand the ways of Cimmerians. But he followed Conan's lead and turned his steed toward the mighty Talakma Mountains, which rose like a wall to sunder the weird land of Mem from the windy steppes of Hyrkania.

A month later, they rode into the camp of Kujula, the Great Khan of the Kuigar nomads. Their appearance was entirely different from what it had been when they fled from Shamballah. In the villages on the southern slopes of the Talakmas, they had traded the links from the golden chains that still dangled from Zosara's wrists and ankles for clothing suitable to snowy mountain passes and gusty plains. They wore fur caps, sheepskin coats, baggy trousers of coarse wool, and stout boots.

When they presented Zosara to her black-bearded bridegroom, the khan feasted and praised and rewarded them. After a carousal that lasted for several days, he sent them back to Turan loaded with gifts of gold.

When they were well away from Khan Kujula's camp, Juma said to his friend: "That was a fine girl. I wonder you didn't keep her for yourself. She liked you, too."

Conan grinned. "Aye, she did. But I'm not ready to settle down yet. And Zosara will be happier with Kujula's jewels and soft cushions than she would be with me, galloping about the steppes and being roasted, frozen, and chased by wolves or hostile warriors." He chuckled.

"Besides, though the Great Khan doesn't know it, his heir is already on the way."

"How do you know?"

"She told me, just before we parted."

Juma made clicking sounds from his native tongue. "Well, I will never, never underestimate a Cimmerian again!"