The Hour of the Dragon Page 7

  7

  The Rending of the Veil

  Conan knew his only chance of escape lay in speed. He did not evenconsider hiding somewhere near Belverus until the chase passed on; hewas certain that the uncanny ally of Tarascus would be able to ferrethim out. Besides, he was not one to skulk and hide; an open fight or anopen chase, either suited his temperament better. He had a long start,he knew. He would lead them a grinding race for the border.

  Zenobia had chosen well in selecting the white horse. His speed,toughness and endurance were obvious. The girl knew weapons and horses,and, Conan reflected with some satisfaction, she knew men. He rodewestward at a gait that ate up the miles.

  It was a sleeping land through which he rode, past grove-shelteredvillages and white-walled villas amid spacious fields and orchards thatgrew sparser as he fared westward. As the villages thinned, the landgrew more rugged, and the keeps that frowned from eminences told ofcenturies of border war. But none rode down from those castles tochallenge or halt him. The lords of the keeps were following the bannerof Amalric; the pennons that were wont to wave over these towers werenow floating over the Aquilonian plains.

  When the last huddled village fell behind him, Conan left the road,which was beginning to bend toward the northwest, toward the distantpasses. To keep to the road would mean to pass by border towers, stillgarrisoned with armed men who would not allow him to pass unquestioned.He knew there would be no patrols riding the border marches on eitherside, as in ordinary times, but there were those towers, and with dawnthere would probably be cavalcades of returning soldiers with woundedmen in ox-carts.

  This road from Belverus was the only road that crossed the border forfifty miles from north to south. It followed a series of passes throughthe hills, and on either hand lay a wide expanse of wild, sparselyinhabited mountains. He maintained his due westerly direction, intendingto cross the border deep in the wilds of the hills that lay to the southof the passes. It was a shorter route, more arduous, but safer for ahunted fugitive. One man on a horse could traverse country an army wouldfind impassable.

  But at dawn he had not reached the hills; they were a long, low, bluerampart stretching along the horizon ahead of him. Here there wereneither farms nor villages, no white-walled villas looming amongclustering trees. The dawn wind stirred the tall stiff grass, and therewas nothing but the long rolling swells of brown earth, covered with drygrass, and in the distance the gaunt walls of a stronghold on a lowhill. Too many Aquilonian raiders had crossed the mountains in not toodistant days for the countryside to be thickly settled as it was fartherto the east.

  Dawn ran like a prairie fire across the grasslands, and high overheadsounded a weird crying as a straggling wedge of wild geese wingedswiftly southward. In a grassy swale Conan halted and unsaddled hismount. Its sides were heaving, its coat plastered with sweat. He hadpushed it unmercifully through the hours before dawn.

  While it munched the brittle grass and rolled, he lay at the crest ofthe low slope, staring eastward. Far away to the northward he could seethe road he had left, streaming like a white ribbon over a distant rise.No black dots moved along that glistening ribbon. There was no signabout the castle in the distance to indicate that the keepers hadnoticed the lone wayfarer.

  An hour later the land still stretched bare. The only sign of life was aglint of steel on the far-off battlements, a raven in the sky thatwheeled backward and forth, dipping and rising as if seeking something.Conan saddled and rode westward at a more leisurely gait.

  As he topped the farther crest of the slope, a raucous screaming burstout over his head, and looking up, he saw the raven flapping high abovehim, cawing incessantly. As he rode on, it followed him, maintaining itsposition and making the morning hideous with its strident cries,heedless of his efforts to drive it away.

  This kept up for hours, until Conan's teeth were on edge, and he feltthat he would give half his kingdom to be allowed to wring that blackneck.

  'Devils of hell!' he roared in futile rage, shaking his mailed fist atthe frantic bird. 'Why do you harry me with your squawking? Begone, youblack spawn of perdition, and peck for wheat in the farmer's fields!'

  He was ascending the first pitch of the hills, and he seemed to hear anecho of the bird's clamor far behind him. Turning in his saddle, hepresently made out another black dot hanging in the blue. Beyond thatagain he caught the glint of the afternoon sun on steel. That could meanonly one thing: armed men. And they were not riding along the beatenroad, which was out of his sight beyond the horizon. They were followinghim.

  His face grew grim and he shivered slightly as he stared at the raventhat wheeled high above him.

  'So it is more than the whim of a brainless beast?' he muttered. 'Thoseriders cannot see you, spawn of hell; but the other bird can see you,and they can see him. You follow me, he follows you, and they followhim. Are you only a craftily trained feathered creature, or some devilin the form of a bird? Did Xaltotun set you on my trail? Are youXaltotun?'

  Only a strident screech answered him, a screech vibrating with harshmockery.

  Conan wasted no more breath on his dusky betrayer. Grimly he settled tothe long grind of the hills. He dared not push the horse too hard; therest he had allowed it had not been enough to freshen it. He was stillfar ahead of his pursuers, but they would cut down that lead steadily.It was almost a certainty that their horses were fresher than his, forthey had undoubtedly changed mounts at that castle he had passed.

  The going grew rougher, the scenery more rugged, steep grassy slopespitching up to densely timbered mountainsides. Here, he knew, he mightelude his hunters, but for that hellish bird that squalled incessantlyabove him. He could no longer see them in this broken country, but hewas certain that they still followed him, guided unerringly by theirfeathered allies. That black shape became like a demoniac incubus,hounding him through measureless hells. The stones he hurled with acurse went wide or fell harmless, though in his youth he had felledhawks on the wing.

  The horse was tiring fast. Conan recognized the grim finality of hisposition. He sensed an inexorable driving fate behind all this. He couldnot escape. He was as much a captive as he had been in the pits ofBelverus. But he was no son of the Orient to yield passively to whatseemed inevitable. If he could not escape, he would at least take someof his foes into eternity with him. He turned into a wide thicket oflarches that masked a slope, looking for a place to turn at bay.

  Then ahead of him there rang a strange, shrill scream, human yet weirdlytimbred. An instant later he had pushed through a screen of branches,and saw the source of that eldritch cry. In a small glade below him foursoldiers in Nemedian chain-mail were binding a noose about the neck of agaunt old woman in peasant garb. A heap of fagots, bound with cord onthe ground near by, showed what her occupation had been when surprisedby these stragglers.

  Conan felt slow fury swell his heart as he looked silently down and sawthe ruffians dragging her toward a tree whose low-spreading brancheswere obviously intended to act as a gibbet. He had crossed the frontieran hour ago. He was standing on his own soil, watching the murder of oneof his own subjects. The old woman was struggling with surprisingstrength and energy, and as he watched, she lifted her head and voicedagain the strange, weird, far-carrying call he had heard before. It wasechoed as if in mockery by the raven flapping above the trees. Thesoldiers laughed roughly, and one struck her in the mouth.

  Conan swung from his weary steed and dropped down the face of the rocks,landing with a clang of mail on the grass. The four men wheeled at thesound and drew their swords, gaping at the mailed giant who faced them,sword in hand.

  Conan laughed harshly. His eyes were bleak as flint.

  'Dogs!' he said without passion and without mercy. 'Do Nemedian jackalsset themselves up as executioners and hang my subjects at will? Firstyou must take the head of their king. Here I stand, awaiting your lordlypleasure!'

  The soldiers stared at him uncertainly as he strode toward them.

  'Who is this madman?' growled a
bearded ruffian. 'He wears Nemedianmail, but speaks with an Aquilonian accent.'

  'No matter,' quoth another. 'Cut him down, and then we'll hang the oldhag.'

  And so saying he ran at Conan, lifting his sword. But before he couldstrike, the king's great blade lashed down, splitting helmet and skull.The man fell before him, but the others were hardy rogues. They gavetongue like wolves and surged about the lone figure in the gray mail,and the clamor and din of steel drowned the cries of the circling raven.

  Conan did not shout. His eyes coals of blue fire and his lips smilingbleakly, he lashed right and left with his two-handed sword. For all hissize he was quick as a cat on his feet, and he was constantly in motion,presenting a moving target so that thrusts and swings cut empty airoftener than not. Yet when he struck he was perfectly balanced, and hisblows fell with devastating power. Three of the four were down, dying intheir own blood, and the fourth was bleeding from half a dozen wounds,stumbling in headlong retreat as he parried frantically, when Conan'sspur caught in the surcoat of one of the fallen men.

  The king stumbled, and before he could catch himself the Nemedian, withthe frenzy of desperation, rushed him so savagely that Conan staggeredand fell sprawling over the corpse. The Nemedian croaked in triumph andsprang forward, lifting his great sword with both hands over his rightshoulder, as he braced his legs wide for the stroke--and then, over theprostrate king, something huge and hairy shot like a thunderbolt full onthe soldier's breast, and his yelp of triumph changed to a shriek ofdeath.

  Conan, scrambling up, saw the man lying dead with his throat torn out,and a great gray wolf stood over him, head sunk as it smelled the bloodthat formed a pool on the grass.

  The king turned as the old woman spoke to him. She stood straight andtall before him, and in spite of her ragged garb, her features,clear-cut and aquiline, and her keen black eyes, were not those of acommon peasant woman. She called to the wolf and it trotted to her sidelike a great dog and rubbed its giant shoulder against her knee, whileit gazed at Conan with great green lambent eyes. Absently she laid herhand upon its mighty neck, and so the two stood regarding the king ofAquilonia. He found their steady gaze disquieting, though there was nohostility in it.

  'Men say King Conan died beneath the stones and dirt when the cliffscrumbled by Valkia,' she said in a deep, strong, resonant voice.

  'So they say,' he growled. He was in no mood for controversy, and hethought of those armored riders who were pushing nearer every moment.The raven above him cawed stridently, and he cast an involuntary glareupward, grinding his teeth in a spasm of nervous irritation.

  Up on the ledge the white horse stood with drooping head. The old womanlooked at it, and then at the raven; and then she lifted a strange weirdcry as she had before. As if recognizing the call, the raven wheeled,suddenly mute, and raced eastward. But before it had got out of sight,the shadow of mighty wings fell across it. An eagle soared up from thetangle of trees, and rising above it, swooped and struck the blackmessenger to the earth. The strident voice of betrayal was stilled forever.

  'Crom!' muttered Conan, staring at the old woman. 'Are you a magician,too?'

  'I am Zelata,' she said. 'The people of the valleys call me a witch. Wasthat child of the night guiding armed men on your trail?'

  'Aye.' She did not seem to think the answer fantastic. 'They cannot befar behind me.'

  'Lead your horse and follow me, King Conan,' she said briefly.

  Without comment he mounted the rocks and brought his horse down to theglade by a circuitous path. As he came he saw the eagle reappear,dropping lazily down from the sky, and rest an instant on Zelata'sshoulder, spreading its great wings lightly so as not to crush her withits weight.

  Without a word she led the way, the great wolf trotting at her side, theeagle soaring above her. Through deep thickets and along tortuous ledgespoised over deep ravines she led him, and finally along a narrowprecipice-edged path to a curious dwelling of stone, half hut, halfcavern, beneath a cliff hidden among the gorges and crags. The eagleflew to the pinnacle of this cliff, and perched there like a motionlesssentinel.

  Still silent, Zelata stabled the horse in a near-by cave, with leavesand grass piled high for provender, and a tiny spring bubbling in thedim recesses.

  In the hut she seated the king on a rude, hide-covered bench, and sheherself sat upon a low stool before the tiny fireplace, while she made afire of tamarisk chunks and prepared a frugal meal. The great wolfdrowsed beside her, facing the fire, his huge head sunk on his paws, hisears twitching in his dreams.

  'You do not fear to sit in the hut of a witch?' she asked, breaking hersilence at last.

  An impatient shrug of his gray-mailed shoulders was her guest's onlyreply. She gave into his hands a wooden dish heaped with dried fruits,cheese and barley bread, and a great pot of the heady upland beer,brewed from barley grown in the high valleys.

  'I have found the brooding silence of the glens more pleasing than thebabble of city streets,' she said. 'The children of the wild are kinderthan the children of men.' Her hand briefly stroked the ruff of thesleeping wolf. 'My children were afar from me today, or I had not neededyour sword, my king. They were coming at my call.'

  'What grudge had those Nemedian dogs against you?' Conan demanded.

  'Skulkers from the invading army straggle all over the countryside, fromthe frontier to Tarantia,' she answered. 'The foolish villagers in thevalleys told them that I had a store of gold hidden away, so as todivert their attentions from their villages. They demanded treasure fromme, and my answers angered them. But neither skulkers nor the men whopursue you, nor any raven will find you here.'

  He shook his head, eating ravenously.

  'I'm for Tarantia.'

  She shook her head.

  'You thrust your head into the dragon's jaws. Best seek refuge abroad.The heart is gone from your kingdom.'

  'What do you mean?' he demanded. 'Battles have been lost before, yetwars won. A kingdom is not lost by a single defeat.'

  'And you will go to Tarantia?'

  'Aye. Prospero will be holding it against Amalric.'

  'Are you sure?'

  'Hell's devils, woman!' he exclaimed wrathfully. 'What else?'

  She shook her head. 'I feel that it is otherwise. Let us see. Notlightly is the veil rent; yet I will rend it a little, and show you yourcapital city.'

  Conan did not see what she cast upon the fire, but the wolf whimpered inhis dreams, and a green smoke gathered and billowed up into the hut. Andas he watched, the walls and ceiling of the hut seemed to widen, to growremote and vanish, merging with infinite immensities; the smoke rolledabout him, blotting out everything. And in it forms moved and faded, andstood out in startling clarity.

  He stared at the familiar towers and streets of Tarantia, where a mobseethed and screamed, and at the same time he was somehow able to seethe banners of Nemedia moving inexorably westward through the smoke andflame of a pillaged land. In the great square of Tarantia the franticthrong milled and yammered, screaming that the king was dead, that thebarons were girding themselves to divide the land between them, and thatthe rule of a king, even of Valerius, was better than anarchy. Prospero,shining in his armor, rode among them, trying to pacify them, biddingthem trust Count Trocero, urging them to man the wall and aid hisknights in defending the city. They turned on him, shrieking with fearand unreasoning rage, howling that he was Trocero's butcher, a more evilfoe than Amalric himself. Offal and stones were hurled at his knights.

  A slight blurring of the picture, that might have denoted a passing oftime, and then Conan saw Prospero and his knights filing out of thegates and spurring southward. Behind him the city was in an uproar.

  'Fools!' muttered Conan thickly. 'Fools! Why could they not trustProspero? Zelata, if you are making game of me, with some trickery----'

  'This has passed,' answered Zelata imperturbably, though somberly. 'Itwas the evening of the day that has passed when Prospero rode out ofTarantia, with the hosts of Amalric almost within sigh
t. From the wallsmen saw the flame of their pillaging. So I read it in the smoke. Atsunset the Nemedians rode into Tarantia, unopposed. Look! Even now, inthe royal hall of Tarantia----'

  Abruptly Conan was looking into the great coronation hall. Valeriusstood on the regal dais, clad in ermine robes, and Amalric, still in hisdusty, blood-stained armor, placed a rich and gleaming circlet on hisyellow locks--the crown of Aquilonia! The people cheered; long lines ofsteel-clad Nemedian warriors looked grimly on, and nobles long indisfavor at Conan's court strutted and swaggered with the emblem ofValerius on their sleeves.

  'Crom!' It was an explosive imprecation from Conan's lips as he startedup, his great fists clenched into hammers, his veins on his templesknotting, his features convulsed. 'A Nemedian placing the crown ofAquilonia on that renegade--in the royal hall of Tarantia!'

  As if dispelled by his violence, the smoke faded, and he saw Zelata'sblack eyes gleaming at him through the mist.

  'You have seen--the people of your capital have forfeited the freedomyou won for them by sweat and blood; they have sold themselves to theslavers and the butchers. They have shown that they do not trust theirdestiny. Can you rely upon them for the winning back of your kingdom?'

  'They thought I was dead,' he grunted, recovering some of his poise. 'Ihave no son. Men can't be governed by a memory. What if the Nemedianshave taken Tarantia? There still remain the provinces, the barons, andthe people of the countrysides. Valerius has won an empty glory.'

  'You are stubborn, as befits a fighter. I cannot show you the future, Icannot show you all the past. Nay, _I_ show you nothing. I merely makeyou see windows opened in the veil by powers unguessed. Would you lookinto the past for a clue of the present?'

  'Aye.' He seated himself abruptly.

  Again the green smoke rose and billowed. Again images unfolded beforehim, this time alien and seemingly irrelevant. He saw great toweringblack walls, pedestals half hidden in the shadows upholding images ofhideous, half-bestial gods. Men moved in the shadows, dark, wiry men,clad in red, silken loincloths. They were bearing a green jadesarcophagus along a gigantic black corridor. But before he could tellmuch about what he saw, the scene shifted. He saw a cavern, dim, shadowyand haunted with a strange intangible horror. On an altar of black stonestood a curious golden vessel, shaped like the shell of a scallop. Intothis cavern came some of the same dark, wiry men who had borne themummy-case. They seized the golden vessel, and then the shadows swirledaround them and what happened he could not say. But he saw a glimmer ina whorl of darkness, like a ball of living fire. Then the smoke was onlysmoke, drifting up from the fire of tamarisk chunks, thinning andfading.

  'But what does this portend?' he demanded, bewildered. 'What I saw inTarantia I can understand. But what means this glimpse of Zamorianthieves sneaking through a subterranean temple of Set, in Stygia? Andthat cavern--I've never seen or heard of anything like it, in all mywanderings. If you can show me that much, these shreds of vision whichmean nothing, disjointed, why can you not show me all that is to occur?'

  Zelata stirred the fire without replying.

  'These things are governed by immutable laws,' she said at last. 'I cannot make you understand; I do not altogether understand myself, though Ihave sought wisdom in the silences of the high places for more yearsthan I can remember. I cannot save you, though I would if I might. Manmust, at last, work out his own salvation. Yet perhaps wisdom may cometo me in dreams, and in the morn I may be able to give you the clue tothe enigma.'

  'What enigma?' he demanded.

  'The mystery that confronts you, whereby you have lost a kingdom,' sheanswered. And then she spread a sheepskin upon the floor before thehearth. 'Sleep,' she said briefly.

  Without a word he stretched himself upon it, and sank into restless butdeep sleep through which phantoms moved silently and monstrous shapelessshadows crept. Once, limned against a purple sunless horizon, he saw themighty walls and towers of a great city such as rose nowhere on thewaking earth he knew. Its colossal pylons and purple minarets liftedtoward the stars, and over it, floating like a giant mirage, hovered thebearded countenance of the man Xaltotun.

  * * * * *

  Conan woke in the chill whiteness of early dawn, to see Zelata crouchedbeside the tiny fire. He had not awakened once in the night, and thesound of the great wolf leaving or entering should have roused him. Yetthe wolf was there, beside the hearth, with its shaggy coat wet withdew, and with more than dew. Blood glistened wetly amid the thick fell,and there was a cut upon his shoulder.

  Zelata nodded, without looking around, as if reading the thoughts of herroyal guest.

  'He has hunted before dawn, and red was the hunting. I think the man whohunted a king will hunt no more, neither man nor beast.'

  Conan stared at the great beast with strange fascination as he moved totake 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 andslept at the mercy of man or woman as I did last night. But what of theriddle you would read me this morn?'

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

  'Find the heart of your kingdom,' she said at last. 'There lies yourdefeat and your power. You fight more than mortal man. You will notpress 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 godsspeak. My lips are sealed by them lest I speak too much. You must findthe heart of your kingdom. I can say no more. My lips are opened andsealed by the gods.'

  * * * * *

  Dawn was still white on the peaks when Conan rode westward. A glanceback showed him Zelata standing in the door of her hut, inscrutable asever, the great wolf beside her.

  A gray sky arched overhead, and a moaning wind was chill with a promiseof 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. Towardnightfall he began to drop down from the heights, tier by tier, and sawthe broad plains of Aquilonia spread out beneath him.

  Villages and farms lay close to the foot of the hills on the westernside of the mountains, for, for half a century, most of the raidingacross the frontier had been done by the Aquilonians. But now onlyembers and ashes showed where farm huts and villas had stood.

  In the gathering darkness Conan rode slowly on. There was little fear ofdiscovery, which he dreaded from friend as well as from foe. TheNemedians had remembered old scores on their westward drive, andValerius had made no attempt to restrain his allies. He did not count onwinning the love of the common people. A vast swath of desolation hadbeen cut through the country from the foothills westward. Conan cursedas he rode over blackened expanses that had been rich fields, and sawthe gaunt gable-ends of burned houses jutting against the sky. He movedthrough an empty and deserted land, like a ghost out of a forgotten andoutworn past.

  The speed with which the army had traversed the land showed what littleresistance it had encountered. Yet had Conan been leading hisAquilonians the invading army would have been forced to buy every footthey gained with their blood. The bitter realization permeated his soul;he was not the representative of a dynasty. He was only a loneadventurer. Even the drop of dynastic blood Valerius boasted had morehold on the minds of men than the memory of Conan and the freedom andpower he had given the kingdom.

  No pursuers followed him down out of the hills. He watched for wanderingor returning Nemedian troops, but met none. Skulkers gave him a widepath, supposing him to be one of the conquerors, what of his harness.Groves and rivers were far more plentiful on the western side of themountains, 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 Zelata had given him, until, on a dawn
whenhe lay hidden on a river bank where willows and oaks grew thickly, heglimpsed, afar, across the rolling plains dotted with rich groves, theblue 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 andunfrequented byways. It was dusk when he reached the plantation ofServius Galannus.