The Hour of the Dragon, Robert E. Howard [best ebook reader for laptop txt] 📗
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Then for a year I sought its hiding-place, and at last I found it.”
“Then why trouble to bring me back to life?” demanded Xaltotun, with
his piercing gaze fixed on the priests. “Why did you not employ the
Heart to further your own power?”
“Because no man today knows the secrets of the Heart,” answered
Orastes. “Not even in legends live the arts by which to loose its full
powers. I knew it could restore life; of its deeper secrets I am
ignorant. I merely used it to bring you back to life. It is the use of
your knowledge we seek. As for the Heart, you alone know its awful
secrets.”
Xaltotun shook his head, staring broodingly into the flaming depths.
“My necromantic knowledge is greater than the sum of all the knowledge
of other men,” he said; “yet I do not know the full power of the
jewel. I did not invoke it in the old days; I guarded it lest it be
used against me. At last it was stolen, and in the hands of a
feathered shaman of the barbarians it defeated all my mighty sorcery.
Then it vanished, and I was poisoned by the jealous priests of Stygia
before I could learn where it was hidden.”
“It was hidden in a cavern below the temple of Mitra, in Tarantia,”
said Orastes. “By devious ways I discovered this, after I had located
your remains in Set’s subterranean temple in Stygia.
“Zamorian thieves, partly protected by spells I learned from sources
better left unmentioned, stole your mummy-case from under the very
talons of those which guarded it in the dark, and by camel-caravan and
galley and ox-wagon it came at last to this city.
“Those same thieves-or rather those of them who still lived after
their frightful quest-stole the Heart of Ahriman from its haunted
cavern below the temple of Mitra, and all the skill of men and the
spells of sorcerers nearly failed. One man of them lived long enough
to reach me and give the jewel into my hands, before he died slavering
and gibbering of what he had seen in that accursed crypt. The thieves
of Zamora are the most faithful of men to their trust. Even with my
conjurements, none but them could have stolen the Heart from where it
has lain in demon-guarded darkness since the fall of Acheron, three
thousand years ago.”
Xaltotun lifted his lion-like head and stared far off into space, as
if plumbing the lost centuries.
“Three thousand years!” he muttered. “Set! Tell me what has chanced in
the world.”
“The barbarians who overthrew Acheron set up new kingdoms,” quoted
Orastes. “Where the empire had stretched now rose realms called
Aquilonia, and Nemedia, and Argos, from the tribes that founded them.
The older kingdoms of Ophir, Corinthia and western Koth, which had
been subject to the kings of Acheron, regained their independence with
the fall of the empire.”
“And what of the people of Acheron?” demanded Orastes. “When I fled
into Stygia, Python was in ruins, and all the great, purple-towered
cities of Acheron fouled with blood and trampled by the sandals of the
barbarians.”
“In the hills small groups of folk still boast descent from Acheron,”
answered Orastes. “For the rest, the tide of my barbarian ancestors
rolled over them and wiped them out. They-my ancestors-had suffered
much from the kings of Acheron.”
A grim and terrible smile curled the Pythonian’s lips.
“Aye! Many a barbarian, both man and woman, died screaming on the
altar under this hand. I have seen their heads piled to make a pyramid
in the great square in Python when the kings returned from the west
with their spoils and naked captives.”
“Aye. And when the day of reckoning came, the sword was not spared. So
Acheron ceased to be, and purple-towered Python became a memory of
forgotten days. But the younger kingdoms rose on the imperial ruins
and waxed great. And now we have brought you back to aid us to rule
these kingdoms, which, if less strange and wonderful than Acheron of
old, are yet rich and powerful, well worth fighting for. Look!”
Orastes unrolled before the stranger a map drawn cunningly on vellum.
Xaltotun regarded it, and then shook his head, baffled.
“The very outlines of the land are changed. It is like some familiar
thing seen in a dream, fantastically distorted.”
“Howbeit,” answered Orastes, tracing with his forefinger, “here is
Belverus, the capital of Nemedia, in which we now are. Here run the
boundaries of the land of Nemedia. To the south and southeast are
Ophir and Corinthia, to the east Brythunia, to the west Aquilonia.”
“It is the map of a world I do not know,” said Xaltotun softly, but
Orastes did not miss the lurid fire of hate that flickered in his dark
eyes.
“It is a map you shall help us change,” answered Orastes. “It is our
desire first to set Tarascus on the throne of Nemedia. We wish to
accomplish this without strife, and in such a way that no suspicion
will rest on Tarascus. We do not wish the land to be torn by civil
wars, but to reserve all our power for the conquest of Aquilonia.
“Should King Nimed and his sons die naturally, in a plague for
instance, Tarascus would mount the throne as the next heir, peacefully
and unopposed.”
Xaltotun nodded, without replying, and Orastes continued.
“The other task will be more difficult. We cannot set Valerius on the
Aquilonian throne without a war, and that kingdom is a formidable foe.
Its people are a hardy, war-like race, toughened by continual wars
with the Picts, Zingarians and Cimmerians. For five hundred years
Aquilonia and Nemedia have intermittently waged war, and the ultimate
advantage has always lain with the Aquilonians.
“Their present king is the most renowned warrior among the western
nations. He is an outlander, an adventurer who seized the crown by
force during a time of civil strife, strangling King Namedides with
his own hands, upon the very throne. His name is Conan, and no man can
stand before him in battle.
“Valerius is now the rightful heir of the throne. He had been driven
into exile by his royal kinsman, Namedides, and has been away from his
native realm for years, but he is of the blood of the old dynasty, and
many of the barons would secretly hail the overthrow of Conan, who is
a nobody without royal or even noble blood. But the common people are
loyal to him, and the nobility of the outlying provinces. Yet if his
forces were overthrown in the battle that must first take place, and
Conan himself slain, I think it would not be difficult to put Valerius
on the throne. Indeed, with Conan slain, the only center of the
government would be gone. He is not part of a dynasty, but only a lone
adventurer.”
“I wish that I might see this king,” mused Xaltotun, glancing toward a
silvery mirror which formed one of the panels of the wall. This mirror
cast no reflection, but Xaltotun’s expression showed that he
understood its purpose, and Orastes nodded with the pride a good
craftsman takes in the recognition of his accomplishments by a master
of his craft.
“I will try to show him to you,” he said. And seating himself before
the mirror, he gazed hypnotically into its depths, where presently a
dim shadow began to take shape.
It was uncanny, but those watching knew it was no more than the
reflected image of Orastes’ thought, embodied in that mirror as a
wizard’s thoughts are embodied in a magic crystal. It floated hazily,
then leaped into startling clarity-a tall man, mightily shouldered and
deep of chest, with a massive corded neck and heavily muscled limbs.
He was clad in silk and velvet, with the royal lions of Aquilonia
worked in gold upon his rich jupon, and the crown of Aquilonia shone
on his square-cut black mane; but the great sword at his side seemed
more natural to him than the regal accouterments. His brow was low and
broad, his eyes a volcanic blue that smoldered as if with some inner
fire. His dark, scarred, almost sinister face was that of a fighting-man, and his velvet garments could not conceal the hard, dangerous
lines of his limbs.
“That man is no Hyborian!” exclaimed Xaltotun.
“No; he is a Cimmerian, one of those wild tribesmen who dwell in the
gray hills of the north.”
“I fought his ancestors of old,” muttered Xaltotun. “Not even the
kings of Acheron could conquer them.”
“They still remain a terror to the nations of the south,” answered
Orastes. “He is a true son of that savage race, and has proved
himself, thus far, unconquerable.”
Xaltotun did not reply; he sat staring down at the pool of living fire
that shimmered in his hand. Outside, the hound howled again, long and
shudderingly.
THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON had birth in war and pestilence and unrest. The
black plague stalked through the streets of Belverus, striking down
the merchant in his stall, the serf in his kennel, the knight at his
banquet board. Before it the arts of the leeches were helpless. Men
said it had been sent from hell as punishment for the sins of pride
and lust. It was swift and deadly as the stroke of an adder. The
victim’s body turned purple and then black, and within a few minutes
he sank down dying, and the stench of his own putrefaction was in his
nostrils even before death wrenched his soul from his rotting body. A
hot, roaring wind blew incessantly from the south, and the crops
withered in the fields, the cattle sank and died in their tracks.
Men cried out on Mitra, and muttered against the king; for somehow,
throughout the kingdom, the word was whispered that the king was
secretly addicted to loathsome practises and foul debauches in the
seclusion of his nighted palace. And then in that palace death stalked
grinning on feet about which swirled the monstrous vapors of the
plague. In one night the king died with his three sons, and the drums
that thundered their dirge drowned the grim and ominous bells that
rang from the carts that lumbered through the streets gathering up the
rotting dead.
That night, just before dawn, the hot wind that had blown for weeks
ceased to rustle evilly through the silken window curtains. Out of the
north rose a great wind that roared among the towers, and there was
cataclysmic thunder, and blinding sheets of lightning, and driving
rain. But the dawn shone clean and green and clear; the scorched
ground veiled itself in grass, the thirsty crops sprang up anew, and
the plague was gone-its miasma swept clean out of the land by the
mighty wind.
Men said the gods were satisfied because the evil king and his spawn
were slain, and when his young brother Tarascus was crowned in the
great coronation hall, the populace cheered until the towers rocked,
acclaiming the monarch on whom the gods smiled.
Such a wave of enthusiasm and rejoicing as swept the land is
frequently the signal for a war of conquest. So no one was surprized
when it was announced that King Tarascus had declared the truce made
by the late king with their western neighbors void, and was gathering
his hosts to invade Aquilonia. His reason was candid; his motives,
loudly proclaimed, gilded his actions with something of the glamor of
a crusade. He espoused the cause of Valerius, “rightful heir to the
throne”; he came, he proclaimed, not
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