Conan the adaptable, p.7
Conan the Adaptable, page 7
That hall was three hundred feet in length, and half as many wide. It was floored with polished mahogany, half covered with thick rugs and leopard-skins. The walls were of carven stone, pierced by many arched, mahogany-panelled doors, and towering up to a lofty arching ceiling, and half covered with velvet tapestries. On a throne at the back of the hall, Khemu sat, looking down at the revelry from a raised dais, with files of plumed spearmen on either side. At the great board which ran the full length of the hall, the Æsir in their battered, stained, dusty garments and corselets, many with bloody bandages, drank and roared and gorged, served by bowing slaves, both men and women,
Chiefs and nobles and warriors of the city in their burnished harness sat among their allies, and for each Æsir it seemed to Conan there were at least three or four girls, laughing, jesting, submitting to their rude caresses. Their laughter rose shrill and strident above the clamour. There was an unreality about the scene – a strained levity, a forced gaiety. But he did not see Aluna, so he turned and, passing through one of the mahogany arched doors, crossed a silken-hung chamber, and entered another. It was dimly lighted, and he almost ran into old Shakkaru. The man recoiled, and seemed much put out at meeting Conan, for some reason or another. The barbarian noted that the man's hand clutched at his robe, which, Khemu had told them, all the priests wore that night in their honour.
A thought occurred to him and he voiced it.
‘I wish to speak with Aluna,’ he said. ‘Where is she?’
‘She is at present occupied with her duties and can not see you,’ he said. ‘Come to the temple tomorrow—’
He edged away from the young warrior, and in a vague pallor underlying his swarthy complextion, in a tremor behind his voice, Conan sensed that the man was in deadly fear of him and wished to be rid of him. The suspicions of the barbarian flashed up in him. In an instant he had him by the throat, wrenching from his hand the long, wicked blade he drew from beneath his robe.
‘Where is she, you jackal?’ Conan snarled. ‘Tell me—or—'
The man was dangling like a puppet in his grasp, his kicking heels clear of the floor, his head bent back almost to the snapping point. With the fear of death in his distended eyes, he jerked his head violently, and he eased his grasp a trifle.
‘In the shrine of Ishtar,’ he gasped. ‘They sacrifice her to the goddess – spare my life – I will tell you all – the whole secret and plot—’
But he had heard enough. Whirling him on high by girdle and knee, he dashed out his brains against a column, and leaping through an outer door, raced between rows of massive pillars, and gained the street.
A breathless silence reigned over all. No throngs were abroad that night, as one would have thought, celebrating the destruction of their enemies. The doors were shut, the windows shuttered. Hardly a light shone, and he did not even see a watchman. It was all strange and unreal; the silent, ghostly city, where the only sound was the strident, unnatural revelry rising from the great feast hall. Conan could see the glow of torches in the market place where their wounded lay. He had seen old Asgrimm sitting at the head of the board, with his hands stained with dried blood, and his hacked and dusty mail showing under the silken cloak he wore; his gaunt features shadowed by the great black plumes that waved above him. All up and down the board the girls were embracing and kissing the half-drunken Æsir, lifting off their heavy helmets and easing them of their mail as they grew hot with wine.
Near the foot of the board, Kelka was tearing at a great beef-bone like a famished wolf. Some laughing girls were teasing him, coaxing him to give them his sword, until suddenly, infuriated by their sport and importunities, he dealt his foremost tormentor such a blow with the bone he was gnawing that she fell, dead or senseless, to the floor. But the high pitched laughter and wild merriment did not slacken. Conan likened them suddenly to vampires and skeletons, laughing over a feast of dust and ashes.
He hurried down the silent street, crossing the court and passing the houses of the priests, which seemed deserted except for slaves. Rushing into the lofty-pillared portico of the temple, he ran through the deep-lying gloom, groping in the darkness – burst into the vaguely lighted inner shrine – and halted, frozen. Lesser priests and naked women stood about the altar in positions of adoration, chanting the sacrificial song, holding golden goblets to catch the blood that ebbed down the stained grooves in the stone. And on that altar, whimpering softly, as a dying doe might whimper, lay Aluna.
Shadowy was the cloud of incense smoke which gloomed the shrine; crimson as hell fire the cloud which veiled his sight. With one inhuman yell that rang hideously to the vaulted roof, he rushed, and skulls splintered beneath his madly lashing sword. Conan's memories of that slaughter are frenzied and chaotic. There were frenzied screams, the whir of steel and the chop and crunch of murderous blows, the snapping of bones, spattering of blood, and the gibbering flight of figures that tore their hair and screeched to their gods as they ran – and he among them, raging in silent deadliness, like a blood-mad wolf among sheep. Some few escaped.
Clear etched against a murky red background of madness, a lithe, naked woman stood close to the altar, frozen with horror. A goblet at her lips, her eyes flaring, he caught her up with his left hand and dashed her against the marble steps with a fury that must have splintered every bone in her body. There was a brief, mad whirling blast of ferocity that littered the shrine with mangled corpses. Then he stood alone among the dead, in a shrine that was a shambles, with streaks and dots and pools of blood and human fragments scattered hideously and obscenely about the dark, polished floor.
Conan's sword trailed in a suddenly nerveless hand as he approached the altar with dragging steps. Aluna’s eyelids fluttered open as he looked down at her, his hands hanging limply, his entire body sagging helplessly.
She murmured, ‘Conan!’ Then her eyelids sank down, the long lashes shadowing the youthful cheek, and with a little sigh, she moved her flaxen head and lay like a child just settling to sleep. All his agonized soul cried out within me, but his lips were mute with the inarticulateness of the barbarian. He sank down upon his knees beside the altar and, groping hesitantly about her slender form with his arms, he kissed her dying lips, clumsily, falteringly, as a callow stripling might have done. That one act – that one faltering kiss – was the one touch of tenderness in the whole, hard life of Conan's journey among the Æsir.
Slowly he rose, and stood above the dead girl, and slowly and mechanically he picked up his sword. At the familiar touch of the hilt, there surged through his brain again the red fury of his race.
With a terrible cry he sprang to the marble stairs. Ishtar! They had sent her spirit shuddering up to the goddess, and close on the heels of that spirit should come the avenger! No less than the bloody goddess herself should pay for Aluna. His was the simple cult of the barbarian, and his god was Crom. The priests had told him that Ishtar dwelt above and the steps led to her abode. Vaguely he supposed it mounted through misty realms of stars and shadows. But up he went, to a dizzy height, until below him the shrine was but a vague play of dim lights and shadows, and darkness was all around.
Then he came suddenly, not into a broad starry expanse of the deities, but to a grill of golden bars, and beyond them he heard a woman sobbing. But it was not Aluna’s naked soul which wailed before some divine throne, for dead or alive, he knew her cry.
In mad fury he gripped the bars and they bent and buckled in his hands. Like straws he tore them aside and leaped through, his killing yell trembling in his throat. In the dim light that came from a torch set high in a niche, he saw that he was in a circular, domed chamber, whose walls and ceiling seemed to be of gold. There were velvet couches there, and silken cushions, and among these lay a naked woman, weeping. He saw the weals of a whip on her white body, and he halted, bewildered. Where was the goddess, Ishtar?
He must have spoken aloud in his barbaric smattering of Khemuri, for she lifted her head and looked at him with luminous dark eyes, swimming with tears. There was a strange beauty about her, something alien and exotic beyond his reckoning.
‘I am Ishtar,’ she answered him, and her voice was soft as distant golden chimes, though broken now with sobbing.
‘You—’ he gasped, ‘you – Ishtar – the goddess of Khemu?’
‘Yes!’ she rose to her knees, wringing her white hands. ‘Oh, man, whoever you are – grant me one touch of mercy, if there be mercy left in the world at all! Cut my head from my body and end this long agony!’
But he drew back and lowered his sword.
‘I came to slay a bloody goddess,’ he growled. ‘Not to butcher a whimpering slave girl. If you be Ishtar—who—where—in Ymir’s name, what madness is this?’
‘Listen, and I will tell you!’ she cried, hitching towards Conan on her knees and catching at the skirt of his corselet. ‘Only listen, and then grant me the little thing I ask – the stroke of your sword!
‘I am Ishtar, a daughter of a king in dim Lemuria, which the sea drank so long ago. As a child he was wed to Poseidon, god of the sea, and in the awesome mysterious bridal night, when he lay floating and unharmed on the breast of the ocean, the god gave to me the gift of life everlasting, which has become as a curse in the long centuries of his captivity.
‘But I dwelt in purple Lemuria, young and beautiful, while my playmates grew old and grey about me. Then Poseidon wearied of Lemuria and of Atlantis. He rose and shook his foaming mane, and his white steeds raced over the walls and the spires and the crimson towers. But he lifted me gently on his bosom and bore me unharmed to a far land, where for many centuries he dwelt among a strange and kindly race.
‘Then in an evil day he went upon a galley from distant Khitai, and in a hurricane it sank off this accursed coast. But as before he was borne gently ashore on the waves of his master, Poseidon, and the priests found me upon the beach. The people of Khemu claim descent from Lemuria, but they were a subject race, speaking a mongrel tongue. When he spoke to them in pure Lemurian, they cried out to the people that Poseidon had sent them a goddess and the people fell down and worshipped me. But the priests were devils then as now, necromancers and devil-worshippers, owning no gods save the demons of the Outer Gulfs. They pent me in this golden dome, and by cruelty they wrung his secret from me.
‘For more than a thousand years I have been worshipped by the people, who were sometimes given faint glimpses of me, standing on the marble stair, half-hidden in the sacrificial smoke, or were allowed to hear his voice speaking in a strange tongue as oracle. But the priests – oh, gods of Mu, what I have suffered at their hands! Goddess to the people – slave to the priests!’
‘Why do you not destroy them with your sorcery?’ he demanded.
‘I am no sorceress,’ she answered, ‘though you might deem me such, were I to tell you what mysteries the ages have unfolded to me. Yet there is one sorcery I might invoke – one terrible, overwhelming doom – if I might escape from this prison – if I might stand up naked in the dawn and call upon Poseidon. In the still nights I hear him roaring beyond the cliffs, but he sleeps and heeds not my cries. Yet if I might stand up in his sight and call upon him, he might hear and heed. The priests are crafty – they have shut me from his sight and hearing – for more than a thousand years I have not looked on the great blue monster—’
Suddenly they both started. From the city far below them welled up a strange wild clamour.
‘Treachery!’ she cried. ‘They are murdering your people in the streets! You destroyed the enemies they feared – now they turn on you!’
With a curse he raced down the stairs, cast one anguished glance at the still white form on the altar, and ran out of the temple. Down the street, beyond the houses of the priests, rose the clanging of steel, howls of death, yells of fury, and the thunderous war-cries of the Æsir. They were not dying alone. The Khemuri’s cries of hate and triumph were mingled with screams of fear and pain. Ahead of me the streets seethed with battling humanity, no more silent and deserted. From the doors of shops, hovels and palaces alike swarmed screeching city folk, weapons in hand, to aid their soldiers who were locked in mad battle with the yellow-haired aliens. Flame from a score of fires lighted the frenzied scene like day.
As he neared the court adjoining the king’s palace, along streets through which men ran howling, an Æsir warrior staggered toward him, drift of the storm of battle which was raging further down. He was without armour, bent almost double, and though an arrow stood out from his ribs, it was his belly he was gripping with his empty hands.
‘The wine was poisoned,’ he groaned. ‘We are betrayed and doomed! We drank deep, and in our cups the women coaxed from us our swords and armour. Only Asgrimm and the Pict would not give them up. Then suddenly the women slipped away, that old vulture Khemu left the feast hall – then the pangs took hold on them! Ah, Ymir, it twists my vitals like a knotted rope! Then the doors swarmed suddenly with archers who drove their arrows upon us – the warriors of Khemu drew their swords and fell upon us—the priests who swarmed the
hall tore hidden blades from their robes. Hark to the yelling in the market place where they cut the throats of the wounded! Ymir, cold steel a man may laugh at, but this—this—ah, Ymir!’
He sank to the pave, bent like a drawn bow, froth drooling from his lips, his limbs jerking in horrible convulsions.
Conan raced into the court. On the further side, and in the street in front of the palace, was a mass of struggling figures.
Swarms of dark-skinned men in armour battled with half-naked yellow-haired giants, who smote and rent like wounded lions, though their only weapons were broken benches, arms snatched from dying foes, or their naked hands, and whose lips were flecked with the froth of the agony that knotted their entrails. He swore by Crom, they did not die alone; mangled corpses were trodden under their feet, and they were like wild beasts whose ferocity is not quenched save with the extinguishing of the last, least spark of life.
The great feast hall was burning. In its light he saw, standing on the dais high above the conflict, old Khemu, shaking and trembling with terror at his own treachery, with two stalwart guards on the steps below him. The fighting scattered out over the court, and he saw Kelka. He was drunk, but this did not alter his deadliness. He was the centre of a struggling clump of thrusting, hacking figures, and his long knife flashed in the firelight as it ripped through throats and bellies, spilling blood and entrails on the marble pave.
With a low, sullen roar he charged into the thick of them, and in an instant they stood alone in a ring of corpses.
He grinned wolfishly, his teeth champing spasmodically.
‘There was the devil in the wine, Conan! It claws at my guts like a wildcat – come, let us kill some more of them before we die. Look – the Old One makes his last stand!’
He glanced quickly where, directly in front of the blazing feast hall, Asgrimm’s gaunt frame loomed among the swarming pack. He saw the flash of his sword and the dropping of men about him. An instant his black plumes waved over the horde – then they vanished and over the place he had stood rolled the dark wave.
The next instant Conan was leaping toward the marble stairs, with Kelka close at his heels. They smote the line of warriors on the lower steps, and burst through. They surged in behind to pull them down, but Kelka wheeled and his long blade made deadly play among them. They swarmed in on him from all sides, and there he died as he had lived, slashing and slaying in silent frenzy, neither asking quarter nor giving it.
Conan leaped up on the steps, and old Khemu howled at his coming. Conan's broken sword he had left wedged in a guardsman’s breastbone. With his naked hands he charged the two guardsmen at the upper steps. They sprang to meet him, stabbing hard. He caught the driving spear of one and hurled him headlong down the stairs, to dash out his brains at the bottom. The spear of the other tore through his mail and blood gushed over the shaft. Before his foe could tear it free for a second thrust, Conan gripped his throat and tore it out with his fingers. Then wrenching forth the spear and casting it aside, he rushed at Khemu, who screamed and sprang up, grasping the scrolled edge of the sloping stone roof behind the dais. Mad terror lent the old one strength and courage. Up the steep slope he clambered like a monkey, catching at the carved decorations with fingers and toes, and howling all the time like a beaten dog.
And Conan followed him. His life was ebbing out of the wound beneath his mail. It was soaked with blood, but his wild beast vitality was as yet undiminished. Up and up the king climbed, shrieking, and higher and higher they rose above the city, until they swayed precariously on the level roof-ridge, five hundred feet above the howling streets. And then they were frozen, the hunted and the hunter.
A strange, haunting cry rang above the hellish tumult that raged below them, above Khemu’s frenzied howling. On the great golden dome, high above all other towers and spires, stood a naked figure, hair blown in the dawn wind, etched in the red dawn glow. It was Ishtar, waving her arms and screaming a frenzied invocation in a strange tongue. Faintly it came to them. She had escaped from the golden prison he had burst open. Now she stood on the dome, calling upon the god of her fathers, Poseidon!
But Conan had his own vengeance to consummate. He poised for the leap that would carry them both crashing five hundred feet to death – and under his feet the solid masonry rocked. A new frenzy rang in Khemu’s screams. With a thunderous crash the distant cliffs fell into the sea. There was a long, rumbling, cataclysmic crash, like the shattering of a world, and to his startled gaze the entire vast plain waved like a surf, gave way, and dipped southward.
Great chasms gaped in the tilting plain, and suddenly, with an indescribable rumble, a grinding thunder, and a crashing of falling walls and buckling towers, the entire city of Khemu was in motion! It was sliding in a vast, chaotic ruin down to the sea which rose, rearing, to meet it! In that sliding horror, tower crashed against tower, buckling and toppling, grinding screaming human insects to red dust, crushing them to bits with falling stones. Where he had looked out upon an ordered city, with walls and spires and roofs, all was a mad, buckled, crumpled, splintering chaos of thundering stone, where spires rocked crazily above the ruins, and came thundering down.
