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

me!” she whispered, her head thrown back, eyes closed and lips

parted. “Give me of your blood to renew my youth and perpetuate my

everlasting life! I will make you, too, immortal! I will teach you the

wisdom of all the ages, all the secrets that have lasted out the eons

in the blackness beneath these dark temples. I will make you king of

that shadowy horde which revel among the tombs of the ancients when

night veils the desert and bats flit across the moon. I am weary of

priests and magicians, and captive girls dragged screaming through the

portals of death. I desire a man. Love me, barbarian!”

 

She pressed her dark head down against his mighty breast, and he felt

a sharp pang at the base of his throat. With a curse he tore her away

and flung her sprawling across the couch.

 

“Damned vampire!” Blood was trickling from a tiny wound in his throat.

She reared up on the couch like a serpent poised to strike, all the

golden fires of hell blazing in her wide eyes. Her lips drew back,

revealing white pointed teeth.

 

“Fool!” she shrieked. “Do you think to escape me? You will live and

die in darkness! I have brought you far below the temple. You can

never find your way out alone. You can never cut your way through

those which guard the tunnels. But for my protection the sons of Set

would long ago have taken you into their bellies.”

 

“Fool, I shall yet drink your blood!”

 

“Keep away from me or I’ll slash you asunder,” he grunted, his flesh

crawling with revulsion. “You may be immortal, but steel will

dismember you.”

 

As he backed toward the arch through which he had entered, the light

went out suddenly. All the candles were extinguished at once, though

he did not know how; for Akivasha had not touched them. But the

vampire’s laugh rose mockingly behind him, poison-sweet as the viols

of hell, and he sweated as he groped in the darkness for the arch in a

near-panic. His fingers encountered an opening and he plunged through

it. Whether it was the arch through which he had entered he did not

know, nor did he very much care. His one thought was to get out of the

haunted chamber which had housed that beautiful, hideous, undead fiend

for so many centuries.

 

His wanderings through those black, winding tunnels, were a sweating

nightmare. Behind him and about him he heard faint slitherings and

glidings, and once the echo of that sweet, hellish laughter he had

heard in the chamber of Akivasha. He slashed ferociously at sounds and

movements he heard or imagined he heard in the darkness near him, and

once his sword cut through some yielding tenuous substance that might

have been cobwebs. He had a desperate feeling that he was being played

with, lured deeper and deeper into ultimate night, before being set

upon by demoniac talon and fang.

 

And through his fear ran the sickening revulsion of his discovery. The

legend of Akivasha was so old, and among the evil tales told of her

ran a thread of beauty and idealism, of everlasting youth. To so many

dreamers and poets and lovers she was not alone the evil princess of

Stygian legend, but the symbol of eternal youth and beauty, shining

for ever in some far realm of the gods. And this was the hideous

reality. This foul perversion was the truth of that everlasting life.

Through his physical revulsion ran the sense of a shattered dream of

man’s idolatry, its glittering gold proved slime and cosmic filth. A

wave of futility swept over him, a dim fear of the falseness of all

men’s dreams and idolatries.

 

And now he knew that his ears were not playing him tricks. He was

being followed, and his pursuers were closing in on him. In the

darkness sounded shufflings and slidings that were never made by human

feet; no, nor by the feet of any normal animal. The underworld had its

bestial life too, perhaps. They were behind him. He turned to face

them, though he could see nothing, and slowly backed away. Then the

sounds eased, even before he turned his head and saw, somewhere down

the long corridor, a glow of light.

 

Chapter 19: In the Hall of the Dead

 

CONAN MOVED CAUTIOUSLY in the direction of the light he had seen, his

ear cocked over his shoulder, but there was no further sound of

pursuit, though he felt the darkness pregnant with sentient life.

 

The glow was not stationary; it moved, bobbing grotesquely along. Then

he saw the source. The tunnel he was traversing crossed another, wider

corridor some distance ahead of him. And along this latter tunnel

filed a bizarre procession-four tall, gaunt men in black, hooded

robes, leaning on staffs. The leader held a torch above his head-a

torch that burned with a curious steady glow. Like phantoms they

passed across his limited range of vision and vanished, with only a

fading glow to tell of their passing. Their appearance was

indescribably eldritch. They were not Stygians, not anything Conan had

ewr seen. He doubted if they were even humans. They were like black

ghosts, stalking ghoulishly along the haunted tunnels.

 

But his position could be no more desperate than it was. Before the

inhuman feet behind him could resume their slithering advance at the

fading of the distant illumination, Conan was running down the

corridor. He plunged into the other tunnel and saw, far down it, small

in the distance, the weird procession moving in the glowing sphere. He

stole noiselessly after them, then shrank suddenly back against the

wall as he saw them halt and cluster together as if conferring on some

matter. They turned as if to retrace their steps, and he slipped into

the nearest archway. Groping in the darkness to which he had become so

accustomed that he could all but see through it, he discovered that

the tunnel did not run straight, but meandered, and he fell back

beyond the first turn, so that the light of the strangers should not

fall on him as they passed.

 

But as he stood there, he was aware of a low hum of sound from

somewhere behind him, like the murmur of human voices. Moving down the

corridor in that direction, he confirmed his first suspicion.

Abandoning his original intention of following the ghoulish travelers

to whatever destination might be theirs, he set out in the direction

of the voices.

 

Presently he saw a glint of light ahead of him, and turning into the

corridor from which it issued, saw a broad arch filled with a dim glow

at the other end. On his left a narrow stone stair went upward, and

instinctive caution prompted him to turn and mount the stair. The

voices he heard were coming from beyond that flame-filled arch.

 

The sounds fell away beneath him as he climbed, and presently be came

out through a low arched door into a vast open space glowing with a

weird radiance.

 

He was standing on a shadowy gallery from which he looked down into a

broad dim-lit hall of colossal proportions. It was a hall of the dead,

which few ever see but the silent priests of Stygia. Along the black

walls rose tier above tier of carven, painted sarcophagi. Each stood

in a niche in the dusky stone, and the tiers mounted up and up to be

lost in the gloom above. Thousands of carven masks stared impassively

down upon the group in the midst of the hall, rendered futile and

insignificant by that vast array of the dead.

 

Of this group ten were priests, and though they had discarded their

masks Conan knew they were the priests he had accompanied to the

pyramid. They stood before a tall, hawk-faced man beside a black altar

on which lay a mummy in rotting swathings. And the altar seemed to

stand in the heart of a living fire which pulsed and shimmered,

dripping flakes of quivering golden flame on the black stone about it.

This dazzling glow emanated from a great red jewel which lay upon the

altar, and in the reflection of which the faces of the priests looked

ashy and corpse-like. As he looked, Conan felt the pressure of all the

weary leagues and the weary nights and days of his long quest, and he

trembled with the mad urge to rush among those silent priests, clear

his way with mighty blows of naked steel, and grasp the red gem with

passion-taut fingers. But he gripped himself with yon control, and

crouched down in the shadow of the stone balustrade. A glance showed

him that a stair led down into the hall from the gallery, hugging the

wall and half hidden in the shadows. He glared into the dimness of the

vast place, seeking other priests or votaries, but saw only the group

about the altar.

 

In that great emptiness the voice of the man beside the altar sounded

hollow and ghostly:

 

” And so the word came southward. The night wind whispered it, the

ravens croaked of it as they flew, and the grim bats told it to the

owls and the serpents that lurk in hoary ruins. Were-wolf and vampire

knew, and the ebon-bodied demons that prowl by night. The sleeping

Night of the World stirred and shook its heavy mane, and there began a

throbbing of drums in deep darkness, and the echoes of far weird cries

frightened men who walked by dusk. For the Heart of Ahriman had come

again into the world to fulfill its cryptic destiny. “Ask me not how

I, Thutothmes of Khemi and the Night, heard the word before Thoth-Amon

who calls himself prince of all wizards. There are secrets not meet

for such ears even as yours, and Thoth-Amon is not the only lord of

the Black Ring.”

 

“I knew, and I went to meet the Heart which came southward. It was

like a magnet which drew me, unerringly. From death to death it came,

riding on a river of human blood. Blood feeds it, blood draws it. Its

power is greatest when there is blood on the hands that grasp it, when

it is wrested by slaughter from its holder. Wherever it gleams, blood

is spilt and kingdoms totter, and the forces of nature are put in

turmoil.

 

“And here I stand, the master of the Heart, and have summoned you to

come secretly, who are faithful to me, to share in the black kingdom

that shall be. Tonight you shall witness the breaking of Thoth-Amon’s

chains which enslave us, and the birth of empire. Who am I, even I,

Thutothmes, to know what powers lurk and dream in those crimson deeps?

It holds secrets forgotten for three thousand years. But I shall

learn. These shall tell me!” He waved his hand toward the silent

shapes that lined the hall. “See how they sleep, staring through their

carven masks! Kings, queens, generals, priests, wizards, the dynasties

and the nobility of Stygia for ten thousand years! The touch of the

Heart will awaken them from their long slumber. Long, long the Heart

throbbed and pulsed in ancient Stygia. Here was its home in the

centuries before it journeyed to Acheron. The ancients knew its full

power, and they will tell me when by its magic I restore them to life

to labor for me. “I will rouse them, will waken them, will learn their

forgotten wisdom, the knowledge locked in those withered skulls. By

the lore of the dead we shall enslave the living! Aye, kings, and

generals and wizards of old shall be our helpers and our slaves. Who

shall stand before us? “Look! This dried, shriveled thing on the altar