The Phoenix on the Sword Displayed

  Chapter IV

  When the world was young and women were weak, and the fiends of the night walked free,

  I strove with Set by fire and steel and the juice of the upas-tree;

  Now that I sleep in the mount's black heart, and the ages take their toll,

  Forget ye her who fought with the Snake to save the human soul?

  Alone in the great sleeping-chamber with its high golden dome Queen Conyn slumbered and dreamed. Through swirling gray mists she heard a curious call, faint and far, and though she did not understand it, it seemed not within her power to ignore it. Sword in hand she went through the gray mist, as a woman might walk through clouds, and the voice grew more distinct as she proceeded until she understood the word it spoke -- it was her own name that was being called across the gulfs of Space or Time.

  Now the mists grew lighter and she saw that she was in a great dark corridor that seemed to be cut in solid black stone. It was unlighted, but by some magic she could see plainly. The floor, ceiling and walls were highly polished and gleamed dull, and they were carved with the figures of ancient heroes and half-forgotten gods. She shuddered to see the vast shadowy outlines of the Nameless Old Ones, and she knew somehow that mortal feet had not traversed the corridor for centuries.

  She came upon a wide stair carved in the solid rock, and the sides of the shaft were adorned with esoteric symbols so ancient and horrific that Queen Conyn's skin crawled. The steps were carven each with the abhorrent figure of the Old Serpent, Set, so that at each step she planted her heel on the head of the Snake, as it was intended from old times. But she was none the less at ease for all that.

  But the voice called her on, and at last, in darkness that would have been impenetrable to her material eyes, she came into a strange crypt, and saw a vague white smooth figure sitting on a tomb. Conyn's hair rose up and she grasped her sword, but the figure spoke in sepulchral tones.

  'Oh woman, do you know me?'

  'Not I, by Crom!' swore the queen.

  'Woman,' said the ancient, 'I am Epemitreya.'

  'But Epemitreya the Sage has been dead for fifteen hundred years!' stammered Conyn.

  'Harken!' spoke the other commandingly. 'As a pebble cast into a dark lake sends ripples to the further shores, happenings in the Unseen world have broken like waves on my slumber. I have marked you well, Conyn of Cimmeria, and the stamp of mighty happenings and great deeds is upon you. But dooms are loose in the land, against which your sword can not aid you.'

  'You speak in riddles,' said Conyn uneasily. 'Let me see my foe and I'll cleave her skull to the teeth.'

  'Loose your barbarian fury against your foes of flesh and blood,' answered the ancient. 'It is not against women I must shield you. There are dark worlds barely guessed by woman, wherein formless monsters stalk -- fiends which may be drawn from the Outer Voids to take material shape and rend and devour at the bidding of evil magicians. There is a serpent in your house, oh queen -- an adder in your kingdom, come up from Stygia, with the dark wisdom of the shadows in her murky soul. As a sleeping woman dreams of the serpent which crawls near her, I have felt the foul presence of Set's neophyte. She is drunk with terrible power, and the blows she strikes at her enemy may well bring down the kingdom. I have called you to me, to give you a weapon against her and her hell-hound pack.'

  'But why?' bewilderedly asked Conyn. 'Women say you sleep in the black heart of Golamira, whence you send forth your ghost on unseen wings to aid Aquilonia in times of need, but I -- I am an outlander and a barbarian.'

  'Peace!' the ghostly tones reverberated through the great shadowy cavern. 'Your destiny is one with Aquilonia. Gigantic happenings are forming in the web and the womb of Fate, and a blood-mad sorceress shall not stand in the path of imperial destiny. Ages ago Set coiled about the world like a python about its prey. All my life, which was as the lives of three common women, I fought her. I drove her into the shadows of the mysterious south, but in dark Stygia women still worship her who to us is the arch-demon. As I fought Set, I fight her worshippers and her votaries and her acolytes. Hold out your sword.'

  Wondering, Conyn did so, and on the great blade, close to the heavy silver guard, the ancient traced with a bony finger a strange symbol that glowed like white fire in the shadows. And on the instant crypt, tomb and ancient vanished, and Conyn, bewildered, sprang from her couch in the great golden-domed chamber. And as she stood, bewildered at the strangeness of her dream, she realized that she was gripping her sword in her hand. And her hair prickled at the nape of her neck, for on the broad blade was carven a symbol -- the outline of a phoenix. And she remembered that on the tomb in the crypt she had seen what she had thought to be a similar figure, carven of stone. Now she wondered if it had been but a stone figure, and her skin crawled at the strangeness of it all.

  Then as she stood, a stealthy sound in the corridor outside brought her to life, and without stopping to investigate, she began to don her armor; again she was the barbarian, suspicious and alert as a gray wolf at bay.