A faint, rusty squeal, as if someone within were turning a key in the long-disused lock, made itself heard above the patter of rain. Conan pushed the door, but it failed to open.
Angrily, Conan threw his great weight against the door, striking it with his massive shoulder. Still it did not yield. Then he paused to think.
Perhaps the priests, not trusting in an ordinary lock alone, also warded the door with an inside bolt, like that outside the portal on the other side of the temple, into which the sheep had been driven. Pointing the silver arrow at various heights, Conan repeated
kapinin achilir genishi
several times. At last he was rewarded by the muffled clank of a bolt’s being thrown back. At his next push, the door opened.
The hall inside was dark, save for a rectangle of dim light thirty cubits away, where this passage joined the main circumferential corridor. Conan paused to listen; the temple was as silent as a Stygian tomb. The temple people from High Priest to slaves must be sleeping a sleep of exhaustion after the last three days’ activities.
Conan stole down the hall, alert for a sign of the Brythunian guards. Cautiously he peeked around corners at the end, but no guards did he see in the main corridor in either direction. As he had hoped, the guards were taking advantage of their employers’ fatigue to cluster somewhere, perhaps in the vestibule, for gaming and talk, rather than spend the night in lonely patrolling of the silent hallways.
The corridor into which Conan emerged was lit by a single bitumen lamp in a wall bracket. He turned right and, continuing his strides, walked to a door on the left. If his estimates of distance had been correct, this should be one of the side entrances to the naos.
Again he applied the Clavis of Gazrik to the door and whispered the incantation; again the lock unlocked itself, with no sound except a well-oiled click. When he opened the door, though, he recoiled. Instead of the naos, he found himself surveying a small bedchamber occupied by two narrow bunks, on which lay a pair of acolytes, one snoring. Conan softly closed the door and stole away.
The next door proved to be the one he sought. He slipped into the naos and hurried across the floor of the sanctum, fitfully illuminated by the flickering orange light of the eternal flame. He stopped at the black stone statue of Zath.
Again he was struck by the lifelike aspect of the carving. The work was a perfect replica of a giant arachnid, save that the sculptor, unable to reproduce in stone the hairs along the legs, had indicated them by crosshatching.
Conan stripped off his cloak and dropped it. Beneath it he wore his blacksmith’s apron, with pockets and loops holding the tools of his trade. He pulled out his blacksmith’s hammer and, holding his breath for instant flight, gingerly tapped the nearest leg. The sound was reassuringly like that of honest stone; the statue showed no sign of animation.
Conan moved closer to reach the front of the creature’s body. The four forward Eyes gleamed in the wavering light of the eternal flame, so that a six-rayed crimson star seemed to dance in the blue-green mistiness of each Eye.
Conan saw that he would need a stronger light than that of the burning bitumen to operate on the Eyes. Reaching under his apron, he brought out a stick of wood, a cubit in length, one end of which was wrapped in an oil-soaked rag. Moving to the luminous bowl that sheltered the eternal fire, he held the unguent-coated cloth on the end of his torch above the lambent flame until the oil caught fire and blazed up.
Conan returned to the statue and wedged his torch into the angle between two of Zath’s eight legs, so that it cast a wavering yellow light upon the Eyes on that side. He leaned forward to examine the Eyes, running his fingers over their smooth, spherical surfaces and feeling the retaining rings that held them in place. The Eyes were girasols as large as a small boy’s fist. The retaining rings were of lead. This, thought Conan, should make his task easy.
From a pocket of his apron he brought out a handful of drills and stylets. Among these he chose a flat drill with a narrow chisel point. Setting the point into the crack between one of the retaining rings and the surrounding stone, he gave a gentle tap with his hammer, then another. He rejoiced to see that the tool had sunk visibly into the lead; a few more taps and he should be able to pry the ring out.
Sounds from without snatched Conan’s attention away from the statue. Voices murmured, feet tramped, doors opened and shut. Amid the sounds, Conan thought he detected the clank of the Brythunians’ arms. Now what in the nine hells was arousing the temple at this hour?
Then a key clicked in the side door facing that through which he had come. Before he could retreat, the door swung open.
Snatching his tools away from the statue, Conan whirled, lips drawn back in a voiceless snarl. When he saw Rudabeh in the doorway, he growled: “What are you doing here, girl?”
At that instant the dancer, eyes dilated with apprehension, also spoke: “What do you here, Nial?”
Conan answered with feigned carelessness: “The priests told me to fix a loose fitting on the offering chest.”
“At this time of night? Which priest?” The girl’s voice was sharp with tension.
Conan shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“I do not believe you.”
“And why not, pray?” said Conan with an air of offended innocence.
“Because such orders would have come only through me as Mistress of the Properties. You came here to steal. That is sacrilege.”
“Now Rudabeh dear, you know what fakers and lechers these priests are—”
“But Zath is still a god, whatever the shortcomings of his—but Nial darling, whatever you came for, you must get you hence at once! The priests from Arenjun have just arrived. They were held up by a storm, which washed out the roads, and so missed the Festival of All Gods. Now Lord Feridun is showing them round the temple; they will soon be here. The new Vicar, Mirzes, sent me hither to see that the reservoir of the eternal flame was full, since we haven’t had time to fill it lately.”
To confirm her words, the sound of many men moving and talking outside the huge front doors of the naos smote Conan’s ears.
“Go quickly!” cried Rudabeh, “or you will be lost!”
“I’m going,” growled Conan. Instead of heading for a door, he gathered his tools and torch and ran to the far left corner of the sacred enclosure, where the oil pipe jutted out from the wall. Directly beneath it lay a large trapdoor.
As Conan stooped and shot back the bolt that held down the trapdoor, Rudabeh gave a cry of consternation. “What are you doing?”
“Going below,” grunted Conan as he grasped the handle and raised the trapdoor. An overpowering stench of carrion wafted up out of the square black opening.
“Do not go there!” cried Rudabeh in anguished tones, her voice rising with terror. “You know not what you—oh, gods, here come the priests!”
The handles of the great bronze front doors clanked, and the doors themselves began to creak open, as a confabulation of voices reached the chamber from the vestibule. With a rush of feet and a slam of the side door, Rudabeh dashed out of the naos; Conan, glaring about like a hunted animal, bounded down the stair that descended from the temple floor into the reeking darkness below. He dropped the trapdoor into place over his head, leaving himself in darkness save for the flickering orange light of the small torch.
The massive doors groaned open, and the swell of conversation rolled across the marble floor and through the thin planking of the trapdoor. Conan caught the deep, bell-like tones of High Priest Feridun, but he could not distinguish words through the babble. At least the murmur of conversation, bland and unctuous, betrayed no excitement, which it surely would have if any of those entering had caught sight of Rudabeh or himself.
Cautiously, Conan felt his way down the stone stair, peering ahead as far as the torch could throw its feeble beams. He found himself in a spacious passage, higher than his head and wider than his outstretched arms. No sound save the hiss of the flaring torch, so faint as to be barely audible even to his keen ears, dispelled the sepulchral silence. The smell of carrion rowelled his nostrils.
As Conan prowled along the rock-hewn floor of the passage, he stumbled over a large object of irregular shape. It proved to be the skull of a bovine—or rather such a skull to which scraps of flesh still adhered. Conan kicked this noisome bit of carrion aside and plodded on, stepping over more fragments of kine—legs, ribs, and other parts. Although no stranger to the stink of corpses and cadavers, the soft squilch of a patch of rotting entrails, on which he stepped, so revolted him that for an instant he almost vomited, and fought down a panicky urge to run screaming.
C
oming to a cross tunnel, Conan turned left and walked a few steps along that corridor, which sloped sharply up. He was, he reckoned, still beneath the temple. At the top of the slope, he thought, he would find the door on the west side, through which he had seen the flock of sheep driven.
He went back to the crossing and took the branch that ran straight from the steps down which he had come. This passage, he found, sloped down. Conan continued for some moments, spurning desiccated animal fragments with his moccasins. When the tunnel turned this way and that and sent out branches, so that Conan feared getting lost in the maze, he retraced his steps to the first crossing.
Then he tried the remaining passage, which had been the right-hand branch when he first reached the intersection. The corridor ran straight for a bowshot, then wavered and sent out side passages as the downward-sloping tunnel had done.
Conan began to worry about his torch. It would not last much longer, and to be lost in this catacomb in utter darkness might prove fatal. He had a spare torch thrust through his belt under the apron; but, if he let the first torch die completely before lighting the second from it, he would have the devil’s own time igniting the other with flint and steel in darkness. On the other hand, if he lit the second torch sooner than necessary, it, too, would be exhausted that much sooner.
Conan continued warily, thrusting the weak amber glow of the torch into openings in the sides of the tunnel and peering as far as the feeble light allowed his vision to range. He still came upon bones and other fragments of animals. Above the reek of carrion, another smell assailed his keen barbarian nostrils—the scent of a living creature, but one completely alien to him. The odor emanated from no beast or reptile that he knew of; nor yet from any plant or foodstuff with which he was familiar. The odor was unique—acrid but not altogether unpleasant.
As he moved stealthily, straining his eyes and ears, he thought he heard a faint repeated click, such as would be made by a horny object striking against the stone. He could not be sure that he heard aright, realizing that the horror of the tunnel had disoriented his senses and might be leading him to imagine things.
For one wild instant, he wondered whether the statue of Zath in the naos had, in fact, come to life and followed him down into the tunnels. Reason assured him that the onyx spider-god still squatted on its pedestal in the temple. If it had come to life while the High Priest was showing the place to his sacerdotal visitors, Conan would have heard some susurrant echo of the resulting hubbub in the sanctum above.
Still,
something—
and of gigantic dimensions—had devoured the animals whose remains littered the floor of the tunnels. Suddenly Conan, who feared little on the earth that he trod, or in the seas, or in the ambient air above, found himself trembling at the implications of this thought.
He took a few steps down one of the side tunnels, holding high his torch, but saw nothing save some ghostly, whitened bones of a sheep or a goat. He worked his way back to the main corridor and tried another branch, with no happier result; for this branch soon came to a blind end.
He was certain, now, that the clicking sounds were not born of his febrile imagination. The cadenced crepitation seemed to be coming closer, although from which direction he could not tell. With a horror of being cornered at the end of the short branch tunnel, he hastened back to the main corridor.
For an instant Conan stood statuelike, his torch upraised and his head turning from side to side as he strove to locate the source of the sound. It came, he was now convinced, from further on in this branch of the tunnel, and rapidly waxed in volume.
His skin crawled with nameless terror as the clicks became louder, although he could not perceive their source. Then, just beyond the limit of his torchlight, something moved. As this object approached, Conan saw, reflected in the light of his torch, four spots of brightness in the tunnel at about breast level.
As the unwavering lights grew larger, they seemed to spread out and become four great jewels, such as might decorate the breastplate of an approaching warrior-king. But they were no such ornaments. Behind the four lights loomed an indeterminate bulk. Unable to distinguish details, Conan drew his blacksmith’s hammer from its belt loop. Because of the need for silence, he had left his sword back in his quarters.
The lights seemed to halt at the periphery of his torchlight. The clicking stopped, then resumed; the lights drew closer, and behind them Conan caught a nightmarish impression of a vast hairy bulk propelled by many legs.