The Conan Compendium Page 29

  Taking the sword had given the young Cimmerian the glimmer of an idea. The corpse, for all its activity after the blade had been removed from its skeletal embrace, had no further use for the weapon, while Conan certainly had. There existed many rich men who had much more gold than they could ever use; therefore, taking a portion of it here and there would hardly inconvenience them. There was, Conan had heard, a city to the south, in Zamora, where many rich merchants lived, along with their stores of treasure. A thief might do well for himself there, and Conan meant to travel to the city, called Shadizar, and test the theory.

  How far it was to Shadizar, the Cimmerian did not know. He would travel south until he found it. Since leaving the mysterious crypt he had fallen into while pursued by the wolves, Conan had not set gaze upon another human being. He had seen rabbits, bears, and even a great cat prowling the mountains; unfortunately, he was not apt to get directions from beasts. He smiled at the thought.

  A scream broke into the young man's smile, and he leaped to his feet, the sword held ready to strike.

  The sound echoed from down the mountain, in the direction he intended to travel. He was curious, but not foolish. His capture into slavery had not lessened his bravery; however, it had taught him caution. One who always leaped without first looking was an imbecile, and Conan of Cimmeria was no man's fool. He moved toward the sound quickly but cautiously, alert for signs of danger.

  At first glance, it appeared that a single swordsman stood against five antagonists, themselves armed with swords, long dirks, and spears. The single man, dressed in a dark robe, had his back protected by the steep slope of the mountain and faced the others across a short stretch of rocky ground, angled slightly downward. The robed figure was outnumbered, certainly, but he had the high ground and the others could not get behind him.

  Conan's first thought was to leap into the fray, and he nearly did so, on the side of the single man, simply because of the odds. He held back at the last instant. Perhaps it was better to watch a moment and see what transpired. The big Cimmerian did move closer, still unseen by the combatants.

  One of the five darted in, swinging his curved sword downward at the head of the robed man. The defender leaped to his left and brought his own weapon down in an angular slash, catching the curved-sword wielder on the right ribs.

  There came a sound like a ripe melon dropped upon flagstones.

  Conan blinked, surprised. It was no sword the robed man held, but a short wooden stick, a slightly curved cane of sorts.

  The attacker groaned and fell back, tripping over one of his comrades and dropping his blade to clutch at his battered torso.

  A second attacker thrust a spear at the robed man's side, and Conan was surprised again, at the speed of the parry. The robed figure spun tightly and cut downward with the cane, blocking the spear. He continued the circular motion upward, shoved the spear away, then followed through with a crack upon the spearman's shoulder. Conan heard the wet snap of bone.

  The third attacker managed to get his spear between the legs of the cane fighter then, and tripped him. The fourth and fifth men moved in for the kill.

  Conan yelled to distract the attackers, and leaped at them, his newly sharpened blade whistling as he swung it back and forth. What they thought of this fur-covered apparition he did not know, but the men gave ground.

  The spearman who had tripped the cane fighter thrust his weapon's point at Conan's breast, and the young Cimmerian chopped the wooden shaft in half with a single stroke.

  A large man slashed at Conan with a wicked-looking dirk, tearing a gaping hole in his furs and raising a bloody furrow over Conan's hip. Enraged, Conan turned and swung his blade. The sharp iron sang, then tore a path through the man's face at the eyes, slinging the resulting gore across his nearest companion. The cut man was dead where he stood, and his soul fled before he finished his fall to the stony ground.

  In a moment the cane fighter was up, and seeing that the odds were so changed, the remaining men fled, leaving the dead one behind.

  Conan stood watching them run, breathing great clouds of vapor into the cool air. Next to him the robed man stood tall in a ready position, the tip of his cane held at throat-level, also watching the attackers flee. After a moment he thrust the cane under his belt and bent to examine the fallen man.

  "Dead," he pronounced. Conan thought he heard a tinge of regret in the man's deep voice.

  "Aye," the Cimmerian said. "I hope I chose the right side. "

  "Such would depend upon one's viewpoint," the man said. "From mine, you certainly chose well." He glanced down at the fallen man. "From his, I cannot say, but I suspect he would be most unhappy." The man held his hands out, to show that both were empty. "I am called Cengh, a poor priest of the Suddah Oblates." He was a tall man, though not so tall as Conan, with light hair and a short beard. He was perhaps thirty years old.

  "I am Conan, of Cimmeria, late of Hyperborea. "

  "Well met, Conan. Tell me, what prompted you to join my side instead of that of the assassins?"

  "Five against one seemed unfair." Conan pointed at the cane through Cengh's belt. "Had you a real blade, you might have killed them and won the fight on your own."

  "We do not hold with killing men," Cengh said. "Even mountain bandits who have no such scruples."

  "But you have nothing against breaking their bones."

  "Ah, no."

  Conan shrugged. His business finished, he turned to depart.

  "But wait," Cengh called. "Where are you going?"

  "I travel to Zamora."

  "You have saved my life. You must allow me to repay you. "

  "You could tell me if I am on the right track to Shadizar."

  "A wicked place," Cengh said. "Full of thieves and trulls. Why would you wish to go there?"

  Conan grinned. "A business opportunity."

  "But you are wounded." He pointed at the cut on Conan's hip.

  "A scratch. It will heal."

  "Shadizar is a month's journey from here on foot. I travel to the Temple That Will Not Fall, the center of the Suddah Oblates, only two days from here. Come with me, so that we may extend our hospitality and replace your clothes, if nothing else."

  Conan's first inclination was to refuse. He wanted nothing to do with priests or temples; still, the stinking furs he wore were about to rot away. And, the idea of a hot meal and a sheltered bed for a few days was not repulsive. He had saved the man's life, after all, and in his position, Conan would certainly wish to offer some means of repayment. A man paid his debts. It was only fitting that he give the priest a way to offer his gratitude.

  "Aye. I suppose a few days delay would not be amiss."

  The region in which they traveled continued rocky and mountainous. Cengh told Conan that the Kenzankian Range ran the entire way along the eastern borders of Brythunia and Zamora, to Khauran. Once across the high hills between Hyperborea and Brythunia, there was a north-south road which was more than a little easier to tread than the snowy wastes.

  Conan was curious about Cengh's use of the cane, and expressed it so.

  The priest smiled. "Ah, while we oppose violence, there are, unfortunately, times when nothing else will suffice. Wild beasts seldom listen to reason, and there are some men who seem little better than animals. Our founders, being a pragmatic lot, decided to devise some forms of protection. Thus, we have weapons-canes, staves, certain kinds of nets, ropes-but we try to avoid using even those."

  The path rose steeply, and Conan found himself occupied with his footing upon the ice-slicked rocks. "How then," he said, after reaching a fairly level area, "do you take game?"

  "We do not. We eat no meat or fowl. Nothing with warm blood. We do consume fish."

  Conan shook his head, but did not speak. No meat? How did a man keep his blood red without meat? Of course, he had not eaten much of that himself of late, but that was through no lack of desire. Then again, Cengh seemed no less of a man than many Conan had met in his young life. Certainly
at least two of the brigands who had attacked him had reason to know as much.

  "In any event," Cengh said, "I am but a novice with the fimbo." He patted the curved cane. "At The Temple That Will Not Fall, Oblate Kensash, who wears sixty-five winters and hair as white as hoarfrost, demonstrates real proficiency."

  Conan nodded. As a warrior, he looked forward to seeing that.

  The pair still had a day's journey ahead of them when the Temple That Would Not Fall came into view. Conan immediately saw how the place came to be so named: it was a massive stone structure perched impossibly on a thin spire of rock. It seemed to Conan nothing so much as a plate heaped with mounds of fruit, balanced on a straw. He felt a chill as he stared at the temple. Surely no natural structure could exist in such a manner. And to the young Cimmerian, anything unnatural was linked with magic, as surely as ancient Atlantis had been swallowed by the oceans.

  Cengh smiled at the vision, and Conan held his own face in an expressionless mask. He would not reveal fear to this man.

  The path became steeper, ceasing to be a walk for a climb at stretches. Climbing presented no obstacle to a Cimmerian, however, and Cengh even made to remark upon Conan's prowess.

  "In Cimmeria we send children to gather firewood on steeper slopes," Conan said. That was not strictly true, since few parents had children to spare to the falling death, but often children would ascend rocky spires on their own. He had done so often enough as a boy.

  As the pair began walking a flatter stretch of ground, Cengh stopped suddenly, as if listening.

  Conan strained his own ears, searching for any unusual sound. Just ahead stood a snow-shrouded jumble of large boulders, with scraggly, dark green bushes obscuring the bases of several of the rocks. The path then wound off to the left, and seemed to change into a series of hand-and footholds as it ascended once again. He listened, and there came to him only the wind, moaning across rocky hollows; a distant bird crawed; nothing else-wait. There was something. A kind of high-pitched rattle. He had heard something similar before-a serpent he had seen in the desert, winding sideways across the evening sands. It, too, had made a sound much like this one. When the snake had made for Conan, he had flattened its head with a stone and discovered the source of the noise: a series of horny chambers on the snake's tail, containing tiny beads.

  "Is it a serpent?" Conan asked.

  "Worse." He drew his cane and straightened.

  In a moment, Conan saw what the priest meant.

  From behind the largest of the boulders emerged something unlike anything Conan had ever seen. Tall it was, at least his own height, and it had two arms and two legs. This beast, however, had never seen the inside of a human womb. It was some form of reptile, scaled and grayish-green, and it dragged a tail as thick as Conan's thigh where it joined the body, tapering to a point thinner than a man's fingertip. It had the face of a lizard, slits for nostrils, and yellow eyes, with fleshy, oddly puckered lips. It looked as if it meant to whistle with those lips. On top of its bony head was the compartmented plate that rattled as it moved, much as the thing had been on the serpent's tail. It had short arms, with three claws on each. It seemed to smile, and in so doing, revealed pointed teeth the size and shape of a child's dagger.

  "It's a stith," Cengh said, answering Conan's unasked question. "Do not allow it to spit on you."

  Conan unlimbered his sword, never taking his gaze from the stith. "Will it attack an armed man?"

  "Aye. It will attack fifty armed men. And kill more than it can eat, for sport. A hellish beast."

  "How fast is it?"

  The stith's smile faded and it pursed its lips again.

  "Too fast to run from," Cengh said.

  The stith shuffled toward the two men, lashing its tail back and forth, catlike.

  Conan took a tighter grip upon the stained leather handle of his sword. "To the left," he ordered. "I will take the right."

  But before the two could move, the stith gathered itself and sprang, bounding toward Conan in great hops, like a rabbit, using its fat tail for balance.

  Fast it was, and no mistake about that! Conan leaped to his right and raised his sword, just as the stith spat a stinking stream of glowing emerald liquid at where the man had just been. The effulgent lance spattered upon the rocky ground, and the expectoration raised dank smoke where it touched.

  "Crom!" Conan swung his sword, chopping downward as the stith bounded past, but his reaction to the acidic sputum slowed his reflexes. Instead of bisecting the stith's head, he merely hacked off the tip of its tail.

  The stith was unhappy with the action. It screamed, a sound like a child touching a hot kettle, and spun, spraying another line of vivid green at its tormentor.

  Conan dodged, twisting so the brilliant stream passed his shoulder and chest by less than a thumb's thickness. He shuffled backward, cocking his blade by his ear.

  The stith turned and inhaled deeply, prepared to spit again, Conan did not doubt.

  "Hai!"

  Cengh's yell was followed by the thwack! of his cane across the spine of the stith.

  The monster coughed, and blew a mist of somewhat duller green instead of the thin jet. Conan felt a stinging on his face and bare arms, but he twirled away from the malignant fog and recocked his blade over his shoulder.

  The stith spun toward Cengh and inhaled sharply.

  Conan leaped and swung his sword in a flat horizontal arc. The newly sharped edge sliced through the scaled neck, slowed briefly as it passed between two vertebrae, and exited opposite the point of its entry. Blood gouted and fountained as the stith's head tumbled from its body and smacked into the hard ground. The quivering, headless body leaped once, reflexively, then fell.

  The young Cimmerian stared at the dead beast in wonder. If the priests knew these things stalked the mountain crags and yet went armed only with sticks, they were either brave men or fools. Perhaps both.

  Chapter Two

  "Snow!" Cengh yelled.

  Conan stared at the priest. Had the man taken leave of his senses?

  "Get to the snow, over by the rocks," Cengh commanded. "Quickly."

  At first Conan thought perhaps the stith had a mate; or mayhaps the beasts somehow feared snow, but that thought was erased after a moment. When the two men reached the crusty summer snow maintained by the shadows of the boulders, the priest gathered up a double handful and made as if to shove it into Conan's face. The young Cimmerian took a step backward, bringing his gore-smeared blade up. "What foolishness is this?"

  "The stith's poison," Cengh said. "We must wash it from your skin. Even a small dose brings illness or death."

  The younger man recalled the stinging he had felt when the now-dead beast had coughed at him. Ah. He put his sword on the ground and scooped at the cold whiteness surrounding his ankles. He scrubbed at his face, feeling the blood rush to his cheeks as the crystals abraded his skin.

  After three such applications, Cengh seemed satisfied. But he pointed to a smoking patch on the furs Conan wore near his shoulder. "It will eat through to the skin," the priest said. "Best you remove that portion."

  Conan reached for his sword, but Cengh produced a short, curved knife shaped much like a tooth. "Here, use this. "

  The Cimmerian took the knife, tested the edge with his thumb, and nodded. The priest kept his blade shaving-sharp. It was but the work of a moment to excise the tainted section of fur.

  Cengh then examined Conan's face carefully. "It should serve," he pronounced. "A concentrated splash of the venom is nearly always fatal, but it appears you were dusted only lightly."

  Conan used a portion of the contaminated fur just removed from his clothing to wipe the blood from his sword. He also returned the curved knife to Cengh. "No rules against knives in your order, eh?"

  Cengh grinned as the knife vanished beneath his robe. "Roots must be sliced and fruit sometimes peeled."

  Conan did not return the grin. These Oblates might be peaceful, but they were also apt to be dangerous to
anyone foolish enough to presume too much on that peacefulness.

  "Are there apt to be any more like that one?" Conan waved toward the dead stith.

  "Likely not. They are solitary and territorial."

  "Considering the terrain, the bandits, and creatures, I suspect your order is not bothered overmuch by visitors," Conan said dryly.

  "Very true," Cengh said, just as dryly.

  On closer examination, the Temple That Will Not Fall seemed much less magical than Conan had first thought. The rock spire upon which the main bulk of buildings balanced was much thicker than it had seemed at a distance; more, this close the young barbar could see that support struts extended from the spire to the base of the manmade structures. And the struts bore a number of arches, a form that Conan knew added strength. So, perhaps it was clever construction and not magic which kept the temple perched on the rock, though the latter could not be totally discounted. The place was huge, easily the size of a small town or large village.

  The priest and the Cimmerian wound up a set of narrow steps cut into the mountain's rock. Ahead loomed a split wooden gate set into a mortared rock wall; both gate and wall were easily thrice the height of a tall man.

  Standing outside the gate, Cengh hailed the watch.

  "Ho, will the temple allow one of its children entrance?"

  A hooded face appeared over the top of the wall and peered down at the two men. "Which child might that be?" the man called back.

  "Cengh the Messenger," Conan's companion returned. He pushed his cowl back, revealing his face.

  "Ho, Cengh! Welcome! And who might this fur-clad giant with you be?"

  "He is Conan of Cimmeria, to whom I owe my life."

  "Ah, welcome to you as well, Conan of far Cimmeria."

  The man vanished, and in a moment, half of the gate swung inward. The wood was as thick as Conan's chest, and with the movement came the creaks of heavy iron hinges. The rich smells of people, animals, and cooking flowed out with the temple air. The young Cimmerian took in the scents, realizing how long it had been since he had been in civilization.