“Fascinating,” Akiro murmured, stroking his fingertips over the crystal wall. “There are no joins. It is truly one single gem. All of it. Fascinating.”
“Better it were ordinary marble,” Conan said roughly. “I could contrive a means to scale that. Come. We must find a doorway of some sort.”
“There is none,” Akiro said without breaking his abstract reverie.
“How,” Conan began, then thought better of asking how the wizard knew there were no doors. “Then how in Zandru’s Nine Hells do we get in?” he asked instead.
Akiro blinked in surprise. “Oh, that part is easy.” He walked to the edge of the landing and pointed to the water. “Down there is an opening. I could sense it the very first time I tried, perhaps because it is the only opening I found. It is big enough for our uses.”
“A means of getting water from the lake?” Zula said doubtfully.
“I do not like water,” Malak grumbled, but it was the palace he eyed nervously.
Conan knelt beside the round-bellied mage and peered at the water’s surface. It was unruffled once more, and he could see nothing but his own image. It could not be possible, he told himself, that this Amon-Rama would build a palace with no way in, then leave such a simple entrance as this. A trap, he thought, with Jehnna for bait. Then let the trapper discover what manner of creature it was he meant to snare. He breathed deeply to flush his lungs with air, and dove into the lake. Only a small splashed marked his entrance
There was a grayish clarity to the water below the surface. The Cimmerian took himself deeper with powerful strokes, searching along the face of the landing. The crystal surface was unmarked by the slimes and green things that grew on normal stonework immersed so.
Quickly he found the opening, a great pipe nearly as wide as his out-stretched arms, with a crosshatch of thick iron bars across it. Seizing the bars, he braced his feet against the wall beside the pipe and heaved. Nothing gave, not even the slightest. Harder he pulled, till his sinews creaked, and still to no avail. Abruptly he was startled to see other hands beside his own. He looked up and stared into the straining face of Bombatta, stripped of his black armor. Conan threw himself into redoubled effort. Bone and thew quivered, and lungs burned.
Suddenly, with a sharp crack, one bar tore loose in a shower of jewel-like shards. The grating shifted in Conan’s hands, and he found he had more leverage. Crystal splintered and broke, and one by one the other bars came free.
Letting the grate fall, the Cimmerian sped back to the surface. As his head broke water he gulped air. He did not look around when Bombatta surfaced beside him. From the landing’s edge three anxious faces peered down.
“The way is open,” Conan said between pants. “Come.”
“Wait but a moment,” Akiro said. “Regain your breath. We must make a plan.”
“No time,” Conan replied. One last breath he drew, then rolled over and swam downward again.
With a quick twist he turned into the pipe, powerful strokes carrying him deeper. The light faded behind him, and he swam in darkness. Thirty paces, now. Forty, and his lungs demanded air. Fifty. And suddenly there was a glow ahead. Swiftly he swam toward it, then turned upward toward the light’s source, moving arms and legs to slow his ascent. He broke the surface with only the sound of a droplet falling.
He was in a well, he saw, walled with the same smooth crystal as made up the palace. A wooden bucket was sunk in the water next to him, its rope pulled taut. Carefully he tugged the rope. It did not give.
A deadly smile came onto his face. Amon-Rama no doubt thought himself secure, and his trap subtle. In the northlands, though, there was an ancient saying. To trap a Cimmerian is to trap your own death.
Someone surfaced beside him with a splash that echoed from the well’s walls, but he did not look to see who it was. He would allow only one thought, now. Grasping the rope, he climbed hand over hand with a grim face. The Cimmerian had entered the trap, and he hunted.
In the chamber of mirrors Amon-Rama thoughtfully tapped his pointed chin with a long, thin finger. They were inside the palace. He had forgotten the pipe that brought water to his well, and they had found his oversight quickly. Good sport was indicated.
With a malevolent smile he lightly touched a mirrored wall. It was not, of course, as if these interlopers had some chance of escape or—all the powers of darkness forfend!—victory. This palace was his in ways no king could dream of. The shriek of the crystal as the bars were torn free. That had come to him. The tread of their feet in the corridors, the disturbing of the air by their breath, all came to him. But then, he found sport in other ways than offering true hope to his prey. Their false belief in false hope sufficed, and even greater sport came when all hope was stripped away.
Now was time for preparations. He spoke a word, raised his hands, and the golden draperies shrouding the walls rolled neatly upwards revealing the five score great mirrors that surrounded the chamber. Each mirror reflected the clear plinth that held the glowing Heart of Ahriman, but none showed Amon-Rama. A lifetime drenched in darkest thaumaturgies had many peculiar effects on the earthly body of the practitioner. He had no reflection to be shown in any surface.
Only two breaks were there in the phalanx of mirrors. One was the door to the corridor. Through the other he could see endless dark and the bed on which Jehnna’s still sleeping form lay. It was through this last that Amon-Rama moved. A sound rolled round the chamber, like the splash of a rock in a pool of water, and there was but a single gap unmirrored in the wall. Five score and one reflections of the Heart of Ahriman waited with the original.
Akiro pulled himself from the well with a grunt and, ignoring the water that dripped from him, stood staring at gem-like walls and ornaments of gold and silver so finely wrought that it seemed the mind of man could not have conceived them. Everywhere were tapestries of other-worldly scenes and carpets that changed in infinite variety of color and pattern as he watched.
“Akiro?” Malak said.
The rotund wizard shook his head admiringly. All done with sorcery; no one of these things had ever been crafted by a human hand. It was magnificent.
“Akiro?”
Irritably the mage turned to regard the small thief. Malak’s hair hung in his face, and a pool of water about his feet splashed with a rain of drops from his garments. He looked like a drowned rat, Akiro thought, then quickly scrubbed his own dripping hair from his face. “Yes?” he snapped.
“They are going,” Malak said.
Akiro looked in the direction the other pointed, and bit back an oath that would have curdled the air. Bombata and Zula were disappearing around a bend in the corridor, and Conan was no longer to be seen. “Fools,” he muttered. “Wait!” As swiftly as he could make his old bones move, he ran after them, with Malak dogging his heels. “Half-wits!” the old mage growled. “You do not wander about a wizard’s lair as if it were a merchant’s garden! Here, anything can happen!”
As he rounded the corner, Akiro saw the others ahead, with Conan far in the lead. Sword in hand, the Cimmerian darted through a doorway at the end of the corridor, and in the same instant a door slid down with a clang, sealing the passage behind him. Bombatta and Zula rushed forward to pound on the door, he with his sword hilt, she with her staff.
Cursing under his breath Akiro ran to help, but for moments after reaching them he could only stare. The door was as transparent as glass—clearly they could see Conan, looking warily about a mirrored chamber, his broadsword at the ready—yet the blows of Bombatta and Zula rebounded as if from an iron-bound castle gate. As if to add to the hollow booming, all began to shout at once.
“Can he not hear us?” Malak cried. “Conan! Ogun’s Toenails! Conan!”
Zula dropped to her knees, feeling along the bottom of the door. “If we can lift … there is no crack! None!”
“Stand back,” Bombatta roared, taking a two-handed grip on his sword. “I’ll break it if it can be broken.”
“All of you
stand back,” Akiro shouted over them. “And be quiet,” he added. He rummaged in his pouch, sighing as he tossed aside powders ruined by the wet, yet continued to speak hastily the while. “This is no tavern brawl, to be settled with brute might. This Stygian is a sorcerer of puissance. Treat him as such, or we will all … ah, here it is.” Smiling in satisfaction, he brought out a small vial covered entirely with purest beeswax and marked with a seal of power.
“I do not see Jehnna,” Bombatta said suddenly. “The thief must be left to his fate. Jehnna must be found.”
“She is here,” Akiro said, not looking up from the task of peeling away the wax. The peeling must be done properly, or the contents would be useless. “Can you not sense … of course you cannot. The nexus is here, the center of all the powers of this palace.”
The last of the wax fell away, revealing a darkly shimmering compound that seemed at once grease and smoke. To this he touched the tip of the smallest finger of his left hand, and scribed a rune on the right-hand side of the transparent door. With the smallest finger of his right hand he drew the same symbol on the left-hand side of the door.
Akiro frowned as the runes began to hiss, as if boiling, but there was nothing to be done for it. Quickly he began to chant in silence. There were powers invoked with words spoken aloud, but he had found those dangerous, unreliable or foul, and often all three. Pressure built; he could feel it inside his head. They were spirits he summoned, spirits concerned with opening things that could not be opened, spirits concerned with lifting what could not be lifted. The pressure grew, and he knew they obeyed the calling. The pressure grew, and sweat beaded on his forehead. The pressure grew, and grew, and … .
With a gasp, he slumped and would have fallen had he not caught himself against the door.
“Well?” Bombatta demanded.
Shaking, Akiro stared at the door in wonder. The pressure was still there, enough to burst the gate of a castle, and to no effect. “A wizard most puissant,” he whispered, then added as he peered into the mirrored chamber, “If you believe in gods, then pray.”
xiii
Slowly Conan moved around the mirrored chamber, broadsword held ready for any attack. The huge mirrors cast back his stalking form, multiplied ten thousand times as reflections of reflections were in turn reflected, and that of the glowing crimson gem that stood on a slim crystalline spire in the center of the room. Without break was the wall of grim images, and he realized that he was no longer certain which had fallen to hide the door through which he had entered.
He had avoided the gem before. The glow and its color told him all he needed of its nature. Never had he seen anything so scarlet; the hue alone made him want to squint. Such items of sorcerous power were dangerous when not understood—as he had learned in hard lessons—and scarcely less so when comprehension was complete. Still, it was the only thing in the chamber other than himself. Slowly he approached the narrow plinth, and stretched forth a hand.
“You provide little sport, barbarian.”
Spinning, the big Cimmerian searched for the source of the words, and when he found it he was hardly less surprised than at hearing them in the first place.
One tall mirror no longer depicted him, but rather a man in hooded, blood-red robes. At least, he assumed it was a man from the voice and the size. The deep hood hid the face in shadow, while the robe hung in vermilion folds to the floor and even the hands were covered by long sleeves that depended to points.
“I will provide no sport at all for you, Stygian,” Conan said. “Release the girl, or—”
“You become tiresome.” A score of voices behind him spoke the words, and all were the Stygian’s voice. Suspecting some form of trick to divert him, Conan risked a glance back. And stared. Twenty mirrors now held the hooded form.
“I will keep the girl, and you can do nothing.”
“She is the One, and the One is mine.”
“Muscles and steel avail you naught against my power.”
Conan felt as if his head were whirling. Each time there were more scarlet-robed images in the mirrors, chorusing the words, until he was surrounded by the mage, multiplied more than a hundred times. Hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stirred, and his teeth bared in a snarl. Yet many times had he met fear, and that stealer of will and strength was as familiar to him as the dark form of death. If the latter would one day surely conquer him, the former had no power he had not defeated a thousand times before.
“You think to frighten me, sorcerer? I spit on your power, for you hide behind it like a cowering dog. You have not the courage to face me like a man.”
“Brave words,” the multitudinous reflections murmured in oily tones. “Perhaps I shall face you.” Abruptly two of the images split in twain. From each of those mirrors one shape streaked in a blur of scarlet; the two blurs struck, merged, and the shape of the mage stood at one end of the chamber as well as in the mirrors. “Perhaps you will give some small sport, after all. You will not like it, barbar. I will kill you slowly, and you will scream for death long before it comes. Your strength will be as that of a child against me.”
With every word more of the mirrored forms divided, more flashes of crimson blazed across the chamber to sink into the hooded figure, and with each the figure grew slightly larger.
Twice, as blood-red streaks passed close to him, Conan struck at them with his sword. The steel whistled through them as through the air, with only a tingling along his arms to tell him the blade had met anything. The Cimmerian stood then, waiting rather than waste his effort in futility, until at last each mirror had given up its portion of the red-robed form that faced him. Taller than he by a head, it was, and twice as broad.
“This you call facing me?” Conan sneered. “Well, come then.”
The huge shape stripped back its hood, and as Conan started in spite of himself, hundred-fold laughter rolled from the mirrors. An ape’s head glared at him from atop the scarlet robes, as black as pitch and with gleaming white fangs made for the ripping of flesh. Its eyes held malevolent ebon fire. A tiger’s claws tipped its thick, hairy fingers. Slowly it shredded the robes, revealing a massive, ebon-haired body and heavy, bowed legs. No sound came from it, not even that of breathing.
A creation of sorcery it most certainly was, Conan thought, but perhaps it still could bleed. With a roar he bounded the length of the chamber, his broadsword a razor-edged windmill. Like a leopard the creature danced away from him, moving faster than he would have believed anything of that bulk could possibly move. And even in its dodging it struck—almost casually, it seemed—opening four crimson-welling slashes across his chest.
Grimly Conan followed. Three more times he struck at the great beast. Three more times, with silent snarls, it avoided his steel like quicksilver, and blood now dripped from his thigh, his shoulder, and his forehead. Full-throated laughter flowed from the mirrors in counterpoint to the frustrated curses the Cimmerian muttered under his breath. The creature’s every move was lightning, exhibiting none of the clumsiness of its shape. He had not so much as touched it yet.
Abruptly the monstrous sable ape charged, seized him in an instant, lifted him toward that slathering fanged mouth. He was too close to hack or stab with his sword, yet he slashed his blade sideways across the snarling face, slicing a gash through eye and nose and mouth. Claws dug into his ribs as green ichor rose in the wound, and the one remaining bulged in agony. With a heave of its massive arms Conan was sent hurtling across the chamber.
It could be hurt, flashed through the Cimmerian’s mind, and then he slammed into the wall, all the air leaving his lungs, and slid to the floor. Desperately he struggled to breathe, fought to regain his feet before the beast could reach him. He staggered to his feet … and stared in amazement.
The huge ape had sunk to all fours, and its mouth hung open as if it would moan if it were not mute. Yet that agonized sound was supplied a hundred times over by the images of the mage. In every mirror the form of the necromancer sagged a
nd groaned in pain.
Not in every mirror, Conan realized suddenly. The mirror he had struck in his flight was crossed by a web of cracks and showed only shattered reflections, including, now, his own once more. He swung his blade against the next mirror. As the silvery surface fragmented beneath the blow, the figure of Amon-Rama within vanished, and the groans of the others became cries.
“I have you, sorcerer!” Conan shouted above the shrill ululations.
Along the wall he ran as fast as he could, pausing only to smash at each mirror as he passed. Image after image of the thaumaturge disappeared to the splintering of glass, to cries becoming howls, then shrieks.
The skittering of claws on the crystal floor warned the Cimmerian, and he threw himself into a roll just as the ape-creature lunged at him. His broadsword flashed as he came to his feet. A gash ran down the beast’s ribs, while he had gained another along his own ribs. It was slower, he thought; no faster, now, than a fast man. Still, he ran across the chamber, ignoring the monstrous form. Defeating the creature was no part of defeating Amon-Rama.
At the far wall Conan stabbed his sword viciously at the image of the necromancer in mirror after mirror. The screams now spoke of pain beyond knowing, and of desperation, as well. From the corner of his eye, Conan saw the huge ape scrambling toward him again, its lone black eye burning with a frantic light. Yet even in its haste, he noted, it circled wide around the glowing red gem.
Abruptly, with a splashing sound as if he had stabbed into water, Conan’s sword pierced the surface of a mirror. He could only stare. His blade went into the mirror, and into, as well, the image of Amon-Rama within. Silence was thick in the chamber, broken only by an occasional tinkling as a bit of broken mirror fell to the crystal floor. All of the unbroken mirrors save the one his sword transfixed now showed only normal reflections. The ape-beast was gone as if it had never been, though the burning of his gashes told him it most assuredly had been real.