The Hour of the Dragon

  4

  'From What Hell Have You Crawled?'

  Of that long ride in the chariot of Xaltotun, Conan knew nothing. He laylike a dead man while the bronze wheels clashed over the stones ofmountain roads and swished through the deep grass of fertile valleys,and finally dropping down from the rugged heights, rumbled rhythmicallyalong the broad white road that winds through the rich meadowlands tothe walls of Belverus.

  Just before dawn some faint reviving of life touched him. He heard amumble of voices, the groan of ponderous hinges. Through a slit in thecloak that covered him he saw, faintly in the lurid glare of torches,the great black arch of a gateway, and the bearded faces of men-at-arms,the torches striking fire from their spearheads and helmets.

  'How went the battle, my fair lord?' spoke an eager voice, in theNemedian tongue.

  'Well indeed,' was the curt reply. 'The king of Aquilonia lies slain andhis host is broken.'

  A babble of excited voices rose, drowned the next instant by thewhirling wheels of the chariot on the flags. Sparks flashed from underthe revolving rims as Xaltotun lashed his steeds through the arch. ButConan heard one of the guardsmen mutter: 'From beyond the border toBelverus between sunset and dawn! And the horses scarcely sweating! ByMitra, they--' Then silence drank the voices, and there was only theclatter of hoofs and wheels along the shadowy street.

  What he had heard registered itself on Conan's brain but suggestednothing to him. He was like a mindless automaton that hears and sees,but does not understand. Sights and sounds flowed meaninglessly abouthim. He lapsed again into a deep lethargy, and was only dimly awarewhen the chariot halted in a deep, high-walled court, and he was liftedfrom it by many hands and borne up a winding stone stair, and down along dim corridor. Whispers, stealthy footsteps, unrelated sounds surgedor rustled about him, irrelevant and far away.

  Yet his ultimate awakening was abrupt and crystal-clear. He possessedfull knowledge of the battle in the mountains and its sequences, and hehad a good idea of where he was.

  He lay on a velvet couch, clad as he was the day before, but with hislimbs loaded with chains not even he could break. The room in which helay was furnished with somber magnificence, the walls covered with blackvelvet tapestries, the floor with heavy purple carpets. There was nosign of door or window, and one curiously carven gold lamp, swingingfrom the fretted ceiling, shed a lurid light over all.

  In that light the figure seated in a silver, throne-like chair beforehim seemed unreal and fantastic, with an illusiveness of outline thatwas heightened by a filmy silken robe. But the features weredistinct--unnaturally so in that uncertain light. It was almost as if aweird nimbus played about the man's head, casting the bearded face intobold relief, so that it was the only definite and distinct reality inthat mystic, ghostly chamber.

  It was a magnificent face, with strongly chiseled features of classicalbeauty. There was, indeed, something disquieting about the calmtranquility of its aspect, a suggestion of more than human knowledge, ofa profound certitude beyond human assurance. Also an uneasy sensation offamiliarity twitched at the back of Conan's consciousness. He had neverseen this man's face before, he well knew; yet those features remindedhim of something or someone. It was like encountering in the flesh somedream-image that had haunted one in nightmares.

  'Who are you?' demanded the king belligerently, struggling to a sittingposition in spite of his chains.

  'Men call me Xaltotun,' was the reply, in a strong, golden voice.

  'What place is this?' the Cimmerian next demanded.

  'A chamber in the palace of King Tarascus, in Belverus.'

  Conan was not surprised. Belverus, the capital, was at the same time thelargest Nemedian city so near the border.

  'And where's Tarascus?'

  'With the army.'

  'Well,' growled Conan, 'if you mean to murder me, why don't you do itand get it over with?'

  'I did not save you from the king's archers to murder you in Belverus,'answered Xaltotun.

  'What the devil did you do to me?' demanded Conan.

  'I blasted your consciousness,' answered Xaltotun. 'How, you would notunderstand. Call it black magic, if you will.'

  Conan had already reached that conclusion, and was mulling oversomething else.

  'I think I understand why you spared my life,' he rumbled. 'Amalricwants to keep me as a check on Valerius, in case the impossible happensand he becomes king of Aquilonia. It's well known that the baron of Toris behind this move to seat Valerius on my throne. And if I knowAmalric, he doesn't intend that Valerius shall be anything more than afigurehead, as Tarascus is now.'

  'Amalric knows nothing of your capture,' answered Xaltotun. 'Neitherdoes Valerius. Both think you died at Valkia.'

  Conan's eyes narrowed as he stared at the man in silence.

  'I sensed a brain behind all this,' he muttered, 'but I thought it wasAmalric's. Are Amalric, Tarascus and Valerius all but puppets dancing onyour string? Who are you?'

  'What does it matter? If I told you, you would not believe me. What if Itold you I might set you back on the throne of Aquilonia?'

  Conan's eyes burned on him like a wolf.

  'What's your price?'

  'Obedience to me.'

  'Go to hell with your offer!' snarled Conan. 'I'm no figurehead. I wonmy crown with my sword. Besides, it's beyond your power to buy and sellthe throne of Aquilonia at your will. The kingdom's not conquered; onebattle doesn't decide a war.'

  'You war against more than swords,' answered Xaltotun. 'Was it amortal's sword that felled you in your tent before the fight? Nay, itwas a child of the dark, a waif of outer space, whose fingers were afirewith the frozen coldness of the black gulfs, which froze the blood inyour veins and the marrow of your thews. Coldness so cold it burned yourflesh like white-hot iron!

  'Was it chance that led the man who wore your harness to lead hisknights into the defile?--chance that brought the cliffs crashing downupon them?'

  Conan glared at him unspeaking, feeling a chill along his spine. Wizardsand sorcerers abounded in his barbaric mythology, and any fool couldtell that this was no common man. Conan sensed an inexplicable somethingabout him that set him apart--an alien aura of Time and Space, a senseof tremendous and sinister antiquity. But his stubborn spirit refused toflinch.

  'The fall of the cliffs was chance,' he muttered truculently. 'Thecharge into the defile was what any man would have done.'

  'Not so. You would not have led a charge into it. You would havesuspected a trap. You would never have crossed the river in the firstplace, until you were sure the Nemedian rout was real. Hypnoticsuggestions would not have invaded your mind, even in the madness ofbattle, to make you mad, and rush blindly into the trap laid for you, asit did the lesser man who masqueraded as you.'

  'Then if this was all planned,' Conan grunted skeptically, 'all a plotto trap my host, why did not the "child of darkness" kill me in mytent?'

  'Because I wished to take you alive. It took no wizardry to predict thatPallantides would send another man out in your harness. I wanted youalive and unhurt. You may fit into my scheme of things. There is a vitalpower about you greater than the craft and cunning of my allies. You area bad enemy, but might make a fine vassal.'

  Conan spat savagely at the word, and Xaltotun, ignoring his fury, took acrystal globe from a near-by table and placed it before him. He did notsupport it in any way, nor place it on anything, but it hung motionlessin midair, as solidly as if it rested on an iron pedestal. Conan snortedat this bit of necromancy, but he was nevertheless impressed.

  'Would you know of what goes on in Aquilonia?' he asked.

  Conan did not reply, but the sudden rigidity of his form betrayed hisinterest.

  Xaltotun stared into the cloudy depths, and spoke: 'It is now theevening of the day after the battle of Valkia. Last night the main bodyof the army camped by Valkia, while squadrons of knights harried thefleeing Aquilonians. At dawn the host broke camp and pushed westwardthrough the mountains. Prospero, with ten thousan
d Poitanians, was milesfrom the battlefield when he met the fleeing survivors in the earlydawn. He had pushed on all night, hoping to reach the field before thebattle joined. Unable to rally the remnants of the broken host, he fellback toward Tarantia. Riding hard, replacing his wearied horses withsteeds seized from the countryside, he approaches Tarantia.

  'I see his weary knights, their armor gray with dust, their pennonsdrooping as they push their tired horses through the plain. I see, also,the streets of Tarantia. The city is in turmoil. Somehow word hasreached the people of the defeat and the death of King Conan. The mob ismad with fear, crying out that the king is dead, and there is none tolead them against the Nemedians. Giant shadows rush on Aquilonia fromthe east, and the sky is black with vultures.'

  Conan cursed deeply.

  'What are these but words? The raggedest beggar in the street mightprophesy as much. If you say you saw all that in the glass ball, thenyou're a liar as well as a knave, of which last there's no doubt!Prospero will hold Tarantia, and the barons will rally to him. CountTrocero of Poitain commands the kingdom in my absence, and he'll drivethese Nemedian dogs howling back to their kennels. What are fiftythousand Nemedians? Aquilonia will swallow them up. They'll never seeBelverus again. It's not Aquilonia which was conquered at Valkia; it wasonly Conan.'

  'Aquilonia is doomed,' answered Xaltotun, unmoved. 'Lance and ax andtorch shall conquer her; or if they fail, powers from the dark of agesshall march against her. As the cliffs fell at Valkia, so shall walledcities and mountains fall, if the need arise, and rivers roar from theirchannels to drown whole provinces.

  'Better if steel and bowstring prevail without further aid from the_arts_, for the constant use of mighty spells sometimes sets forces inmotion that might rock the universe.'

  'From what hell have you crawled, you nighted dog?' muttered Conan,staring at the man. The Cimmerian involuntarily shivered; he sensedsomething incredibly ancient, incredibly evil.

  Xaltotun lifted his head, as if listening to whispers across the void.He seemed to have forgotten his prisoner. Then he shook his headimpatiently, and glanced impersonally at Conan.

  'What? Why, if I told you, you would not believe me. But I am wearied ofconversation with you; it is less fatiguing to destroy a walled citythan it is to frame my thoughts in words a brainless barbarian canunderstand.'

  'If my hands were free,' opined Conan, 'I'd soon make a brainless corpseout of you.'

  'I do not doubt it, if I were fool enough to give you the opportunity,'answered Xaltotun, clapping his hands.

  His manner had changed; there was impatience in his tone, and a certainnervousness in his manner, though Conan did not think this attitude wasin any way connected with himself.

  'Consider what I have told you, barbarian,' said Xaltotun. 'You willhave plenty of leisure. I have not yet decided what I shall do with you.It depends on circumstances yet unborn. But let this be impressed uponyou: that if I decide to use you in my game, it will be better to submitwithout resistance than to suffer my wrath.'

  Conan spat a curse at him, just as hangings that masked a door swungapart and four giant negroes entered. Each was clad only in a silkenbreech-cloth supported by a girdle, from which hung a great key.

  Xaltotun gestured impatiently toward the king and turned away, as ifdismissing the matter entirely from his mind. His fingers twitchedqueerly. From a carven green jade box he took a handful of shimmeringblack dust, and placed it in a brazier which stood on a golden tripod athis elbow. The crystal globe, which he seemed to have forgotten, fellsuddenly to the floor, as if its invisible support had been removed.

  Then the blacks had lifted Conan--for so loaded with chains was he thathe could not walk--and carried him from the chamber. A glance back,before the heavy, gold-bound teak door was closed, showed him Xaltotunleaning back in his throne-like chair, his arms folded, while a thinwisp of smoke curled up from the brazier. Conan's scalp prickled. InStygia, that ancient and evil kingdom that lay far to the south, he hadseen such black dust before. It was the pollen of the black lotus, whichcreates death-like sleep and monstrous dreams; and he knew that only thegrisly wizards of the Black Ring, which is the nadir of evil,voluntarily seek the scarlet nightmares of the black lotus, to revivetheir necromantic powers.

  The Black Ring was a fable and a lie to most folk of the western world,but Conan knew of its ghastly reality, and its grim votaries whopractise their abominable sorceries amid the black vaults of Stygia andthe nighted domes of accursed Sabatea.

  He glanced back at the cryptic, gold-bound door, shuddering at what ithid.

  Whether it was day or night the king could not tell. The palace of KingTarascus seemed a shadowy, nighted place, that shunned naturalillumination. The spirit of darkness and shadow hovered over it, andthat spirit, Conan felt, was embodied in the stranger Xaltotun. Thenegroes carried the king along a winding corridor so dimly lighted thatthey moved through it like black ghosts bearing a dead man, and down astone stair that wound endlessly. A torch in the hand of one cast thegreat deformed shadows streaming along the wall; it was like the descentinto hell of a corpse borne by dusky demons.

  At last they reached the foot of the stair, and then they traversed along straight corridor, with a blank wall on one hand pierced by anoccasional arched doorway with a stair leading up behind it, and on theother hand another wall showing heavy barred doors at regular intervalsof a few feet.

  Halting before one of these doors, one of the blacks produced the keythat hung at his girdle, and turned it in the lock. Then, pushing openthe grille, they entered with their captive. They were in a smalldungeon with heavy stone walls, floor and ceiling, and in the oppositewall there was another grilled door. What lay beyond that door Conancould not tell, but he did not believe it was another corridor. Theglimmering light of the torch, flickering through the bars, hinted atshadowy spaciousness and echoing depths.

  In one corner of the dungeon, near the door through which they hadentered, a cluster of rusty chains hung from a great iron ring set inthe stone. In these chains a skeleton dangled. Conan glared at it withsome curiosity, noticing the state of the bare bones, most of whichwere splintered and broken; the skull which had fallen from thevertebrae, was crushed as if by some savage blow of tremendous force.

  Stolidly one of the blacks, not the one who had opened the door, removedthe chains from the ring, using his key on the massive lock, and draggedthe mass of rusty metal and shattered bones over to one side. Then theyfastened Conan's chains to that ring, and the third black turned his keyin the lock of the farther door, grunting when he had assured himselfthat it was properly fastened.

  Then they regarded Conan cryptically, slit-eyed ebony giants, the torchstriking highlights from their glossy skin.

  He who held the key to the nearer door was moved to remark, gutturally:'This your palace now, white dog-king! None but master and we know. Allpalace sleep. We keep secret. You live and die here, maybe. Like him!'He contemptuously kicked the shattered skull and sent it clatteringacross the stone floor.

  Conan did not deign to reply to the taunt, and the black, galled perhapsby his prisoner's silence, muttered a curse, stooped and spat full inthe king's face. It was an unfortunate move for the black. Conan wasseated on the floor, the chains about his waist; ankles and wristslocked to the ring in the wall. He could neither rise, nor move morethan a yard out from the wall. But there was considerable slack in thechains that shackled his wrists, and before the bullet-shaped head couldbe withdrawn out of reach, the king gathered this slack in his mightyhand and smote the black on the head. The man fell like a butchered ox,and his comrades stared to see him lying with his scalp laid open, andblood oozing from his nose and ears.

  But they attempted no reprisal, nor did they accept Conan's urgentinvitation to approach within reach of the bloody chain in his hand.Presently, grunting in their ape-like speech, they lifted the senselessblack and bore him out like a sack of wheat, arms and legs dangling.They used his key to lock the door behind them, but did not remov
e itfrom the gold chain that fastened it to his girdle. They took the torchwith them, and as they moved up the corridor the darkness slunk behindthem like an animate thing. Their soft padding footsteps died away, withthe glimmer of their torch, and darkness and silence remainedunchallenged.