Ela Shan joined him. “It looks as if they are bound for that mountain. We can get there easily enough, but look at the companies he has arrayed on the road. We couldn’t possibly slaughter them all.”
Conan turned and clasped the thief on both shoulders. “Our debt is settled.”
The thief chuckled. “Do not think you can abandon me in the midst of an adventure, Cimmerian. I, too, am not without honor.”
“And I have a favor to ask of you.”
“Yes?”
“You said this place was full of traps and dangers.”
“More of those than there is treasure.”
“Good.” Conan glanced out the window again. “I can get to that mountain. I can slip past those guards. I will destroy Khalar Zym and his mask. But . . .”
“But were the unthinkable to happen, you want him to return to a stronghold that will consume him.”
Conan nodded grimly. “Make this a place of death.”
“It would make me more of an assassin than a thief, but that old career is getting boring.” Ela Shan smiled. “I shall do as you ask, friend Conan. I likely won’t kill him, but I shall slow him down. And that might give the world a chance to make this his mausoleum.”
CHAPTER 32
FROM HER PLACE
of honor Marique studied those working below her. Four acolytes had bound Tamara to the ceremonial oaken wheel, linking her chains to it. She hung there as Maliva had once hung.
As she will again
. Displaying strength that belied their slender forms, the acolytes lifted the wheel and settled it in a wooden collar that had been fitted across a ragged split through the heart of the skull mountain. Scaffolding had been constructed around it to provide a platform for the ceremony, but down through the opening and off into the distance, one could easily see the river of fire that rose to pour out of the skull’s mouth.
Marique felt especially proud, for in the lava’s red-gold glow could be seen ruins, ancient ruins that dated back to the Acheronian period. The coast where Khor Kalba now rose had once been home to a grand city in the heart of a plain. The shattering of Acheron’s power had fractured the land as well. The sea had greedily devoured what it could, and men supposed that the city had been completely consumed, but much of it had been preserved. Marique’s researches had located it, and she had convinced her father to excavate the ruins near Khor Kalba. Within the ruins Marique had uncovered material the existence of which her mother had only dreamed about, and with this material, she had been able to construct the ritual that would bring Maliva back to life.
She had spent much time in those ruins, fearing at first that she might have been wrong, and later because the voices that spoke to her did not like the ruins. Despite this, Marique directed the recovery of the statuary and mosaics that filled her father’s throne room. He had seen her delivery of them as an act of homage to the god he would become. While she was still subject to his rages, he always forgave her because she was, after all, the first to worship him.
Marique wondered, at times, what he would think if he knew that she had recovered many more things within the ruins. Dark things. Foul things. Things that defied description. Things that had moved through dimensions untouched by time, to somehow become lodged in the sea-gnawed city. She collected them, arranging them in the largest of the galleries that lay hidden in shadow. She could only guess at some of their names, and at the unspeakable relationships that existed among them. And though she recognized most as gods, Lesser and Elder, Great and Hidden, she refrained from worshipping them.
Instead she arranged them to be
her
first worshippers. For while her father would be made a god, he would only ever see her as a princess. That was an error he would not be the first god to make; and her taking her rightful place in the pantheon would not be the first act of divine rebellion. Though she loved her mother and father dearly, she was fully aware that they had used her as a means to achieving their own ends, and so she would use them as a means for her to become that which she had always been meant to be.
Below, two acolytes blew on ivory horns carved from mastodon tusks. The bass call reverberated through the sacrificial cavern. Marique felt a familiar thrill running through her belly. Outside, warriors snapped to attention. They stood on either side of the roadway, ready to welcome their new queen. Maliva would make them over into the creatures Acheron had relied upon for centuries. Their limbs would be straightened, the forms made more powerful. They would cease to be human, and would not notice or care. They would be handsome, if the shadowed murals below were any clue, and alien.
She thought briefly of Remo, whom she had seen skulking through the ruins from time to time. He’d seen the murals. It was his wish to be transformed. He believed—or at least had presumed to hope—that Khalar Zym would choose him as Marique’s consort. And the true pity was that his wish might have come true, though his transformation would have rendered any conventional understanding of their relationship moot.
Her father appeared and the horns blasted again. He had donned golden armor, which shone with unnatural brightness within the cavern. It had been modeled on that worn by the last priest-king of Acheron, and the ruins themselves imparted energy to it—the tribute of ghosts who longed to honor near-forgotten glories. His twinned serpentine blades rode in the scabbard at his left hip. He walked to the platform, his steps sure, his eyes bright—every bit a warrior and a ruler. He took up his place at Tamara’s left hand, his back toward Khor Kalba, then surveyed the gathered faithful as a god might survey an assembly of his high priests.
He opened his hands. “Now is the time in which great wrongs are righted. Through this woman and her sacrifice, my wife shall return, and through her shall we return Acheron to its glory. All of you, whether from far Nemedia or Turan, from the deserts of Stygia, the dank jungles of Keshan, or the jeweled cities of Aquilonia, you all have shared with me a secret. The blood of Acheron runs through our veins. Some of us had it introduced by rapine. Others of us fled when Acheron fell. Some of us never knew until recent times of our heritage, and others have worked for centuries to bring this day to fruition.
“The day of our redemption is at hand!”
That statement was Marique’s cue. She turned to an acolyte and accepted from his hands the red silk-wrapped Cimmerian sword. She descended a short set of stone stairs and approached her father’s left side. She could not keep a smile from her face, but whether it arose from pride in her father, or because she knew that all of them would soon be on bended knee before her, she could not say.
Marique unwrapped the blade and raised it high, red silk hiding her hand and flowing, bloodlike, down her arm. “As a victorious barbarian’s sword once shattered the Mask of Acheron, a vanquished barbarian’s sword—one made by the hand of the last guardian of a mask shard—shall revive it.”
Khalar Zym took the naked blade from her, and as he did so, her smallest finger brushed the sword’s bronze pommel. It stung, as if a metal burr had slid into her flesh . . . but she knew it was not that at all.
The barbarian is close
. She smiled. He was not close enough. Nothing could stop her father now.
Khalar Zym studied the blade, then washed it in the smoke of a censer. As the acolyte bearing that censer moved to waft smoke over Tamara, two other acolytes tipped the wheel forward. Tamara hung by her chains above the fiery river far below, her long hair idly buffeted by rising currents. The last acolyte moved onto the platform, bearing the mask on a golden ceremonial tray. Marique took the tray from him, and moved to her father’s right hand.
Again he raised the sword above his head. “By lusty Derketo and the serpent lord Set, by Dagon and Nergal and gods we shall return to their rightful places . . . with this blade I do seed the mask with the blood of its ancient master.”
With the delicacy of a parent brushing an errant lock from a child’s cheek, Khalar Zym laid the sword’s edge against Tamara’s collarbone and slid it forward. The woman gasped and blood flowed. It trailed down from the cut to the fullness of her breast, then dripped off, hot and red.
On bended knee, Marique raised the tray and let the blood splash over the mask. The droplets did not spatter as might have been expected, but were sucked into the mask as if it were thirsty silk. What had been a hard-edged puzzle of bone and reptilian leather drank the blood. Tiny bubbles frothed along the breaks caused by the shattering, then those fissures sealed themselves. Desiccated flesh grew more supple. Tissue swelled, taking on a deeper luster. The patina of age faded and vitality suffused the mask.
And there, for the first time, one of the tentacles twitched. It was not a strong motion, but it was not a trick of the eye either. Then another one moved, and another. The motions became deliberate. One tentacle tested itself against the tray, lifting the mask for a heartbeat, then letting it thump down again. Marique felt it through the gold, and heard it, and when she looked up, in her reflection on the golden tray’s edge, she spied a goddess.
She turned, and her father, bloody sword in one hand, secured the mask in the other. The tentacles caressed his hand. Marique did not know which she envied more: the tentacles for being able to touch her father in way that lit his face so, or her father, for holding, pulsing and alive there in his hand, the culmination of his dreams,
“Ancient ones which burn beneath us, unspeakable art thy names.” Ecstasy in full possession of his expression, Khalar Zym lifted his face to the heavens and laughed aloud. “Behold your new master, and despair in his lack of mercy.”
He stared at the mask in his left hand, then slowly raised it to his face. The tentacles, as if feeling his breath, bent themselves toward him. As he pressed the mask against his flesh, they wrapped around his head. Their tips plunged into his skin, through his scalp and cheeks, along his jaw. No blood welled from the wounds because the mask’s flesh and his flesh became as one.
“Yes, of course, yes.” Khalar Zym turned toward Marique. She rose and held the tray between them as if it were a shield. “Fear not, daughter. I have always loved you. I always shall. I can forgive you anything.”
A chill ran through Marique. She bowed her head. “My father is most kind.”
“He is.” Khalar Zym’s voice grew slightly distant. “But I shall not always be your father.”
He turned, extending his open hand toward Tamara. “Maliva, my queen, hear my call! I summon you from the depths of the deepest hell. Swiftly return, my love, and bring with you all knowledge forgotten and damned. Now is the time for our eternal rule to begin.”
On the other side of the wheel, the censer clanked to the decking. The acolyte’s body fell one way. His head rolled and bounced off the platform. The acolyte beside him began to bleed from the forehead, in a line that ran down his nose. His eyes rolled up as if he were attempting to see what had happened, then he jerked forward, rebounding off the wooden collar, having been propelled by a booted foot.
Khalar Zym snarled. “Who dares?”
“That mask is not yours, Khalar Zym. Nor is the power that goes with it.” The Cimmerian crouched low, blood running from his blade. “I’ve come to take the piece that is mine, and to send you to join your wife in hell.”
CHAPTER 33
CONAN FLICKED BLOOD
from his blade and stalked across the platform toward the man who would be a god. One of the acolytes let loose with a blast on his ivory horn—a blast Conan aborted with a harsh glance. The other acolyte pulled back, and his retreat spurred the ritual’s observers to join him, giving the fighters ample room to engage each other.
Khalar Zym raised the Cimmerian great sword and struck a guard, as if he were once again a minor Nemedian prince dueling at court. Conan came at him directly, both hands on his long sword’s hilt. He did not feint or waver; he came on directly. When Khalar Zym lunged, hoping to spit him, Conan battered aside the blade his father had made and struck. He caught Khalar Zym above the right ear, striking sparks from the mask and drawing blood that the mask greedily drank in.
Foul green energy pulsed forth, sending a cold wave of numbness down Conan’s arm. Khalar Zym fell back and the very earth itself shook. Planks snapped. The platform sagged, spilling half the visitors off into the fiery abyss. Stones crumbled and began to fall, then a loud crack sounded from behind the Cimmerian.
“Conan!”
The Cimmerian turned and leaped toward the ceremonial wheel. The wooden collar around it had broken. His gaze met Tamara’s for a heartbeat, then the wheel dropped down, as if falling down a chimney, taking her with it. Conan ran to the edge, fearing all he would see was her body dwindling in the distance, a blackened shadow against the molten river below.
But there, twenty feet down, the wheel’s pins caught. On either side of the crevasse two statues faced each other, kneeling, arms spread. The black basalt figures, one male, the other female, regarded Tamara with blind, pitiless eyes. The wheel slowly spun in the space between the statues, Tamara’s fate resting in the laps of forgotten gods.
Conan leaped down and landed with feline precision, one foot on a god and the other on the wheel. He hammered a manacle with his sword’s pommel, popping it open, then slashed the chain binding Tamara in half.
“I will have you out in a heartbeat.”
She smiled at him. “And then for getting us out of here, you have a plan?”
Before he could reply or reach her other manacle, the Cimmerian looked up. Khalar Zym landed across from him and stomped on the wheel. It came up and over, spilling Conan back against the basalt goddess’s breasts. “Tamara!”
A chain slithered through a bolt. “I’m free, Conan. There’s a ledge.”
“Find a way out.”
“I won’t leave you.”
“I won’t be far behind.”