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

himself into a reign of debauchery, as one who lives from

day to day, without thought or care for tomorrow.

 

Yet there was subtlety in his madness, so deep that not even Amalric

guessed it. Perhaps the wild, chaotic years of wandering as an exile

had bred in him a bitterness beyond common conception. Perhaps his

loathing of his present position increased this bitterness to a kind

of madness. At any event he lived with one desire: to cause the ruin

of all who associated with him.

 

He knew that his rule would be over the instant he had served

Amalric’s purpose; he knew, too, that so long as he continued to

oppress his native kingdom the Nemedian would suffer him to reign, for

Amalric wished to crush Aquilonia into ultimate submission, to destroy

its last shred of independence, and then at last to seize it himself,

rebuild it after his own fashion with his vast wealth, and use its men

and natural resources to wrest the crown of Nemedia from Tarascus. For

the throne of an emperor was Amalric’s ultimate ambition, and Valerius

knew it. Valerius did not know whether Tarascus suspected this, but he

knew that the king of Nemedia approved of his ruthless course.

Tarascus hated Aquilonia, with a hate born of old wars. He desired

only the destruction of the western kingdom.

 

And Valerius intended to ruin the country so utterly that not even

Amalric’s wealth could ever rebuild it. He hated the baron quite as

much as he hated the Aquilonians, and hoped only to live to see the

day when Aquilonia lay in utter ruin, and Tarascus and Amalric were

locked in hopeless civil war that would as com-petely destroy Nemedia.

 

He believed that the conquest of the still defiant provinces of

Gunderiand and Poitain and the Bossonian marches would mark his end as

king. He would then have served Amalric’s purpose, and could be

discarded. So he delayed the conquest of these provinces, confining

his activities to objectless raids and forays, meeting Amalric’s urges

for action with all sorts of plausible objections and postponements.

 

His life was a series of feasts and wild debauches. He filled his

palace with the fairest girls of the kingdom, willing or unwilling. He

blasphemed the gods and sprawled drunken on the floor of the banquet

hall wearing the golden crown, and staining his royal purple robes

with the wine he spilled. In gusts of blood-lust he festooned the

gallows in the market square with dangling corpses, glutted the axes

of the headsmen and sent his Nemedian horsemen thundering through the

land pillaging and burning. Driven to madness, the land was in a

constant upheaval of frantic revolt, savagely suppressed. Valerius

plundered and raped and looted and destroyed until even Amalric

protested, warning him that he would beggar the kingdom beyond repair,

not knowing that such was his fixed determination.

 

But while in both Aquilonia and Nemedia men talked of the madness of

the king, in Nemedia men talked much of Xaltotun, the masked one. Yet

few saw him on the streets of Belverus. Men said he spent much time in

the hills, in curious conclaves with surviving remnants of an old

race: dark, silent folk who claimed descent from an ancient Idngdom.

Men whispered of drums beating far up in the dreaming hills, of fires

glowing in the darkness, and strange chantings borne on the winds,

chantings and rituals forgotten centuries ago except as meaningless

formulas mumbled beside mountain hearths in villages whose inhabitants

differed strangely from the people of the valleys.

 

The reason for these conclaves none knew, unless it was Orastes, who

frequently accompanied the Pythonian, and on whose countenance a

haggard shadow was growing.

 

But in the full flood of spring a sudden whisper passed over the

sinking kingdom that woke the land to eager life. It came like a

murmurous wind drifting up from the south, waking men sunk in the

apathy of despair. Yet how it first came none could truly say. Some

spoke of a strange, grim old woman who came down from the mountains

with her hair flowing in the wind, and a great gray wolf following her

like a dog. Others whispered of the priests of Asura who stole like

furtive phantoms from Gunderiand to the marches of Poitain, and to the

forest villages of the Bossonians.

 

However the word came, revolt ran like a flame along the borders.

Outlying Nemedian garrisons were stormed and put to the sword,

foraging parties were cut to pieces; the west was up in arms, and

there was a different air about the rising, a fierce resolution and

inspired wrath rather than the frantic despair that had motivated the

preceding revolts. It was not only the common people; barons were

fortifying their castles and hurling defiance at the governors of the

provinces. Bands of Bossonians were seen moving along the edges of the

marches: stocky, resolute men in brigandines and steel caps, with

longbows in their hands. From the inert stagnation of dissolution and

ruin the realm was suddenly alive, vibrant and dangerous. So Amalric

sent in haste for Tarascus, who came with an army.

 

In the royal palace in Tarantia the two kings and Amalric discussed

the rising. They had not sent for Xaltotun, immersed in his cryptic

studies in the Nemedian hills. Not since that bloody day in the valley

of the Valkia had they called upon him for aid of his magic, and he

had drawn apart, communing but little with them, apparently

indifferent to their intrigues.

 

Nor had they sent for Orastes, but he came, and he was white as spume

blown before the storm. He stood in the gold-domed chamber where the

kings held conclave and they beheld in amazement his haggard stare,

the fear they had never guessed the mind of Orastes could hold.

 

“You are weary, Orastes,” said Amalric. “Sit upon this divan and I

will have a slave fetch you wine. You have ridden hard—”

 

Orastes waved aside the invitation.

 

“I have killed three horses on the road from Belverus. I cannot drink

wine, I cannot rest, until I have said what I have to say.”

 

He paced back and forth as if some inner fire would not let him stand

motionless, and halting before his wondering companions:

 

“When we employed the Heart of Ahriman to bring a dead man back to

life,” Orastes said abruptly, “we did not weigh the consequences of

tampering in the black dust of the past. The fault is mine, and the

sin. We thought only of our four ambitions, forgetting what ambitions

this man might himself have. And we have loosed a demon upon the

earth, a fiend inexplicable to common humanity. I have plumbed deep in

evil, but there is a limit to which I, or any man of my race and age,

can go. My ancestors were clean men, without any demoniacal taint; it

is only I who have sunk into the pits, and I can sin only to the

extent of my personal individuality. Out behind Xaltotun lie a

thousand centuries of black magic and diabolism, an ancient tradition

of evil. He is beyond our conception not only because he is a wizard

himself, but also because he is the son of a race of wizards.

 

“I have seen things that have blasted my soul. In the heart of the

slumbering hills I have watched Xaltotun commune with the souls of the

damned, and invoke the ancient demons of forgotten Acheron. I have

seen the accursed descendants of that accursed empire worship him and

hail him as their arch-priest. I have seen what he plots-and I tell

you it is no less than the restoration of the ancient, black, grisly

kingdom of Acheron!”

 

“What do you mean?” demanded Amalric. “Acheron is dust. There are not

enough survivals to make an empire. Not even Xaltotun can reshape the

dust of three thousand years.”

 

“You know little of his black powers,” answered Orastes grimly. “I

have seen the very hills take on an alien and ancient aspect under the

spell of his incantations. I have glimpsed, like shadows behind the

realities, the dim shapes and outlines of valleys, forests, mountains

and lakes that are not as they are today, but as they were in that dim

yesterday-have even sensed, rather than glimpsed, the purple towers of

forgotten Python shimmering like figures of mist in the dusk.

 

“And in the last conclave to which I accompanied him, understanding of

his sorcery came to me at last, while the drums beat and the beast-like worshippers howled with their heads in the dust. I tell you he

would restore Acheron by his magic, by the sorcery of a gigantic

blood-sacrifice such as the world has never seen. He would enslave the

world, and with a deluge of blood wash away the present and restore

the past!”

 

“You are mad!” exclaimed Tarascus.

 

“Mad?” Orastes turned a haggard stare upon him. “Can any man see what

I have seen and remain wholly sane? Yet I speak the truth. He plots

the return of Acheron, with its towers and wizards and kings and

horrors, as it was in the long ago. The descendants of Acheron will

serve him as a nucleus upon which to build, but it is the blood and

the bodies of the people of the world today that will furnish the

mortar and the stones for the rebuilding. I cannot tell you how. My

own brain reels when I try to understand. But I have seen! Acheron

will be Acheron again, and even the hills, the forests and the rivers

will resume their ancient aspect. Why not? If I, with my tiny store of

knowledge, could bring to life a man dead three thousand years, why

cannot the greatest wizard of the world bring back to life a kingdom

dead three thousand years? Out of the dust shall Acheron arise at his

bidding.”

 

“How can we thwart him?” asked Tarascus, impressed.

 

“There is but one way,” answered Orastes. “We must steal the Heart of

Ahriman!”

 

“But I—” began Tarascus involuntarily, then closed his mouth quickly.

 

None had noticed him, and Orastes was continuing.

 

“It is a power that can be used against him. With it in my hands I

might defy him. But how shall we steal it? He has it hidden in some

secret place, from which not even a Zamorian thief might filch it. I

cannot learn its hiding-place. If he would only sleep again the sleep

of the black lotus-but the last time he slept thus was after the

battle of the Valkia, when he was weary because of the great magic he

had performed, and—”

 

The door was locked and bolted, but it swung silently open and

Xaltotun stood before them, calm, tranquil, stroking his patriarchal

beard; but the lambent lights of hell flickered in his eyes.

 

“I have taught you too much,” he said calmly, pointing a finger like

an index of doom at Orastes. And before any could move, he had cast a

handful of dust on the floor near the feet of the priest, who stood

like a man turned to marble. It flamed, smoldered; a blue serpentine

of smoke rose and swayed upward about Orastes in a slender spiral. And

when it had risen above his shoulders it curled about his neck with a

whipping suddenness like the stroke of a snake. Orastes’ scream was

choked to a gurgle. His hands flew to his neck, his eyes were

distended, his tongue protruded. The smoke was like a blue rope about

his neck; then it faded and was gone, and Orastes slumped to the floor

a dead man.

 

Xaltotun smote his hands together and two men entered, men often

observed accompanying him-small, repulsively dark,