The Hour of the Dragon - Robert E. Howard (great reads .TXT) 📗

class="calibre2">black stone stood a curious golden vessel, shaped like the shell of a

scallop. Into this cavern came some of the same dark, wiry men who had

borne the mummy-case. They seized the golden vessel, and then the

shadows swirled around them and what happened he could not say. But he

saw a glimmer in a whorl of darkness, like a ball of living fire. Then

the smoke was only smoke, drifting up from the fire of tamarisk

chunks, thinning and fading.

 

“But what does this portend?” he demanded, bewildered. “What I saw in

Tarantia I can understand. But what means this glimpse of Zamorian

thieves sneaking through a subterranean temple of Set, in Stygia? And

that cavern-I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it, in all my

wanderings. If you can show me that much, these shreds of vision which

mean nothing, disjointed, why can you not show me all that is to

occur?”

 

Zeiata stirred the fire without replying.

 

“These things are governed by immutable laws,” she said at last. “I

can not make you understand; I do not altogether understand myself,

though I have sought wisdom in the silences of the high places for

more years than I can remember. I cannot save you, though I would if I

might. Man must, at last, work out his own salvation. Yet perhaps

wisdom may come to me in dreams, and in the morn I may be able to give

you the clue to the enigma.”

 

“What enigma?” he demanded.

 

“The mystery that confronts you, whereby you have lost a kingdom,” she

answered. And then she spread a sheepskin upon the floor before the

hearth. “Sleep,” she said briefly. Without a word he stretched himself

upon it, and sank into restless but deep sleep through which phantoms

moved silently and monstrous shapeless shadows crept. Once, limned

against a purple sunless horizon, he saw the mighty walls and towers

of a great city of such as rose nowhere on the waking earth he knew.

Its colossal pylons and purple minarets lifted toward the stars, and

over it, floating like a giant mirage, hovered the bearded countenance

of the man Xaltotun.

 

Conan woke in the chill whiteness of early dawn, to see Zelata

crouched beside the tiny fire. He had not awakened once in the night,

and the sound of the great wolf leaving or entering should have roused

him. Yet the wolf was there, beside the hearth, with its shaggy coat

wet with dew, and with more than dew. Blood glistened wetly amid the

thick fell, and there was a cut upon his shoulder.

 

Zeiata nodded, without looking around, as if reading the thoughts of

her royal guest.

 

“He has hunted before dawn, and red was the hunting. I think the man

who hunted a king will hunt no more, neither man nor beast.”

 

Conan stared at the great beast with strange fascination as he moved

to take the food Zelata offered him.

 

“When I come to my throne again I won’t forget,” he said briefly.

“You’ve befriended me-by Crom, I can’t remember when I’ve lain down

and slept at the mercy of man or woman as I did last night. But what

of the riddle you would read me this morn?”

 

A long silence ensued, in which the crackle of the tamarisks was loud

on the hearth.

 

“Find the heart of your kingdom,” she said at last. “There lies your

defeat and your power. You fight more than mortal man. You will not

press the throne again unless you find the heart of your kingdom.”

 

“Do you mean the city of Tarantia?”

 

She shook her head. “I am but an oracle, through whose lips the gods

speak. My lips are sealed by them lest I speak too much. You must find

the heart of your kingdom. I can say no more. My lips are opened and

sealed by the gods.”

 

Dawn was still white on the peaks when Conan rode westward. A glance

back showed him Zelata standing in the door of her hut, inscrutable as

ever, the great wolf beside her.

 

A gray sky arched overhead, and a moaning wind was chill with a

promise of winter. Brown leaves fluttered slowly down from the bare

branches, sifting upon his mailed shoulders.

 

All day he pushed through the hills, avoiding roads and villages.

Toward nightfall he began to drop down from the heights, tier by tier,

and saw the broad plains of Aquilonia spread out beneath him.

 

Villages and farms lay close to the foot of the hills on the western

side of the mountains for, for half a century, most of the raiding

across the frontier had been done by the Aquilonians. But now only

embers and ashes showed where farm huts and villas had stood.

 

In the gathering darkness Conan rode slowly on. There was little fear

of discovery, which he dreaded from friend as well as from foe. The

Nemedians had remembered old scores on their westward drive, and

Valerius had made no attempt to restrain his allies. He did not count

on winning the love of the common people. A vast swath of desolation

had been cut through the country from the foothills westward. Conan

cursed as he rode over blackened expanses that had been rich fields,

and saw the gaunt gable-ends of burned houses jutting against the sky.

He moved through an empty and deserted land, like a ghost out of a

forgotten and outworn past.

 

The speed with which the army had traversed the land showed what

little resistance it had encountered. Yet had Conan been leading his

Aquilonians the invading army would have been forced to buy every foot

they gained with their blood. The bitter realization permeated his

soul; he was not the representative of a dynasty. He was only a lone

adventurer. Even the drop of dynastic blood Valerius boasted had more

hold on the minds of men than the memory of Conan and the freedom and

power he had given the kingdom.

 

No pursuers followed him down out of the hills. He watched for

wandering or returning Nemedian troops, but met none. Skulkers gave

him a wide path, supposing him to be one of the conquerors, what of

his harness. Groves and rivers were far more plentiful on the western

side of the mountains, and coverts for concealment were not lacking.

 

So he moved across the pillaged land, halting only to rest his horse,

eating frugally of the food Zeiata had given him, until, on a dawn

when he lay hidden on a river bank where willows and oaks grew

thickly, he glimpsed, afar, across the rolling plains dotted with rich

groves, the blue and golden towers of Tarantia.

 

He was no longer in a deserted land, but one teeming with varied life.

His progress thenceforth was slow and cautious, through thick woods

and unfrequented byways. It was dusk when he reached the plantation of

Servius Galannus.