Conan the Barbarian (16 page)

Pausing, he turned his hypnotic gaze on the entranced laces, upturned in ecstasy. “Doom!” they moaned, swaying in rhythm to the beat of his utterances. “Doom! Doom!” The catechism went on. “Will you slip the silken noose over the heads of Set’s enemies? In the wide world, will you stay true, ignoring the blandishments of the leaders, judges, and parents who have taught you falsely? Will you clutch the hilts of your daggers and spill the heart’s blood of the infidels, to give them the infinite benison of eternal peace?”

Doom’s magnetic eyes darted from face to face and held each follower in thrall. Now the questions ceased and the litany began.

“You will feel naught but joy when you perform your duty to your god and lord, when you strike for Set and Doom, when the infidel bows before the blade, the cord, or the bowstring, accepting the inevitable. You will grow in love of the Dark Master, the Wise Serpent, in the embrace of whose coils lies eternal life and bliss unutterable; for the day of Doom is at hand, the day of the Great Cleansing.” As the discourse proceeded, Doom’s voice gained in intensity. He moved slowly down the dais steps and closer to his audience. With eyes transfixed, the votaries followed their leader’s every move, until their unseeing gaze came to rest on Conan. The barbarian’s primitive instincts alerted him to action, and he gathered himself for a leap to freedom.

“Your parents deceived you; your teachers deceived you. Fool others as they seek to fool you!”

Glaring directly at Conan, with hate-filled eyes, Doom shot out an accusing finger and addressed him:

“Infidel, you are deceived as you sought to deceive me. On this day you shall die.”

Conan sprang to his feet, his teeth bared in a snarl. As lie rose, footsteps crunched on the marble pave behind him; and alerted to danger, he whirled. Catlike though his movement was, it was not quite swift enough; for even as he pivoted, a heavy cudgel crashed down.

The blow, aimed at the nape of his neck, went slightly awry and struck him on the temple. Although death was thwarted, the massive impact sent the barbarian hurtling into a spinning vortex of blackness, beyond the reach of pain. He never felt the crushing blows that struck his inert 1 body, as the guards leaped upon him, snarling like wild dogs. Boots thudded against Conan’s ribs and belly while merciless cudgels rose and fell, bludgeoning his face, his ' torso, his helpless limbs. But he knew it not.

Consciousness returned haltingly, like an unwilling schoolboy bending slow steps towards school. Each muscle 5 throbbed, as if every inch of flesh were one vast bruise. I Through half-open eyes, Conan saw the sun was shining and dimly realized that a new day had dawned. Clenching his jaw, he forced himself to test each limb and, half-astonished, discovered none was broken. Although the beating had been expert and thorough, it had not maimed or crippled him.

At last he dared to open his swollen eyes. So blurred was his vision that he mistook the sculptured fountain, splashing its sprays of crystal water into rainbows, for a dream. But as he glared from under tangled locks matted with sweat and dried blood, he perceived paths of mosaics meandering among beds of daffodils and tulips and all manner of flowers that defied the painter’s palette. Then he knew he was lying in a garden in the sun. He noticed that a high wall surrounded the garden and defined it, setting off its colour from the paler stone of the temple lieu beyond, the so-called Mountain of Power, the stronghold of Doom.

With great effort, the Cimmerian raised his head an inch or two above the pavement on which he lay. He saw that the garden was tenanted by groups of youths and maidens, some lounging atop the wall, some strolling among the shrubs and flowers, and some seated by the fountain at the feet of a towering figure who was busy eating a ripe fruit. It came to Conan with a shock of recognition that the man was Rexor, chief in command under the supreme leader Doom.

A wave of nausea overcame the barbarian youth. He forced his aching body to its knees; the world swung dizzily about him; and he vomited. As he struggled to regain his feet, the clatter of chains made manifest to him that he was shackled, confined as he had been as a slave of the Wheel, and later as a Pit fighter. From broad bracelets and anklets locked about his limbs, strong chains were fixed to a bronzen ring set into the pavement.

Trembling with weakness, and overcome by despair, the once-mighty Cimmerian slumped to the ground and lay in his vomit. A pair of young votaries paused to look at the huddled form with an expression of distaste; the others continued past him, averting their indifferent gaze. As from a great distance, Conan heard their laughter carried on the gentle breeze.

How long he lay thus, Conan did not know; but at length Rexor strode over to him and barked: “The Master would speak to you now; and you, filthy swine, are unfit to come before him.” So saying, Rexor stooped to unlock the manacles and, straightening up, pitched the half-conscious prisoner into the fountain. The sting of the icy water revived the battered youth enough so that, upon Rexor’s command, he managed to crawl out of the basin to collapse on a marble bench.

A moment later the sibilant voice of Doom hissed in his ear; and looking up, Conan found the snake medallion suspended before his eyes.

“How came this plaque into your possession?” Doom asked in his sonorous voice. “Was it you who stole it from my house in Shadizar? And what befell the Eye of the Serpent—do you know who bore it off? Speak truth, and no further harm shall be your lot. Refuse, and pain—exquisite, ravishing—will carry your spirit into the ultimate ecstasy of death itself.”

Conan spat a gobbet of bloody spittle, then, setting his jaw, stared in silence at his enemy. Doom considered him, his uncanny gaze boring into the barbarian’s rebellious eyes as if to probe his very soul. At last, the cult leader sighed, shook his head, and pocketed the talisman.

Turning to his watchful lieutenant, Doom said: “His mind informs me that he gave the great jewel to some woman. For a few moments of pleasure, I have no doubt, caring not that it holds the key to the power of the world. Such a loss! Such animals have no understanding—no sense of the consequences of their actions.”

Rexor growled, his voice thick with hidden anger, “I’ll kill him for you, Master.”

Doom shook his head, then turned back to the crouched and bloody form before him. In a voice devoid of anger, he said: “You broke into the house of my god, stole my property, murdered my servants, and slew my pets. You disrupted a ritual of importance to my followers; this grieves me most of all.”

A spasm of some strange emotion briefly contorted the dark face of Doom, and the weird light of a nameless sorrow flickered within the depths of his burning eyes.

“You slew the great serpent coiled about my altar. Yaro and I are desolated by his loss; for we, ourselves, nurtured him from the egg. Why? Why did you steal my possessions and rob me of living things so precious to me? Why did you violate the sanctity of my temple and tamper with a ceremony your brutish mind could never grasp? Why have you invaded my very stronghold, and taken the life of a priest whom I called brother?”

“Had Crom granted me a few more minutes, I would have taken your life, too!” growled Conan through cracked and swollen lips.

“Why such hatred? Why?”

“You murdered my father and my mother. You slaughtered my people,” muttered the barbarian. “You stole my father’s sword of finely tempered steel....”

“Ah, steel,” Doom nodded, deep in meditation. “Many years ago I searched the world over for steel, for the secret of steel, which then I thought more precious than gold or jewels. Yes, I was obsessed by the mystery of steel.”

“The riddle of steel,” murmured Conan, remembering the words of his father, the Cimmerian smith.

“Yes, you know that riddle, do you not?” The cult leader’s voice was intimate, persuasive. Speaking as to a friend, Doom’s words continued emotionless, hypnotic, brimming with deceit. “In those days, I deemed steel stronger than all things, even than human flesh and spirit. Hut I was wrong, boy! I was wrong! The soul of man or woman can master everything, even steel! Look you,

hoy—”

Doom pointed to the walk along the top of the garden wall, whereon a lovely golden-haired girl held hands with a handsome youth.

“Fair, is she not, that beautiful creature? And the splendid boy beside her is her lover. Do you know what it is to love a girl, barbarian? Or to be truly loved by one?”

Remembering Valeria, from whom he had parted with such pain so many days ago, Conan’s lips tightened, and he growled an assent deep within his throat.

“Perhaps you do,” said Doom with the ghost of a smile. “Perhaps you think that love conquers all. But I will show you a force stronger than steel, or even than love. Watch closely now—”

Raising his hypnotic eyes, he fixed them upon the sweet face of the smiling girl above them on the wall.

“Come to me, child,” he hissed, his sibilant voice scarcely above a whisper.

The childish face became suffused with joy. She poised for a moment at the edge of the embankment; then, without ii glance at the youth beside her, she leaped from the wall and fell with a heavy thud on the tiles of the garden walk below.

Conan averted his eyes from the doll-like broken body near their feet. Doom laughed, the music of his laughter spun through with a note of triumph. Then he said: “That is strength, boy—that is power! It is strength against which l he hardness of steel or the resilience of human flesh are as naught. What is steel, compared to the hand that wields it; what is the hand, without a mind to command it? There is the secret of strength. Steel, bah!”

Thulsa Doom paused and stared at Conan’s impassive lace. The barbarian’s closed countenance, the set of his bruised shoulders seemed to the cult leader to diminish his power, to offer an unspoken insult to one unused to insults. I le made one more attempt to reassert his authority and to impress the stubborn youth, whose body was in chains but whose soul remained free.

Doom raised a hand and caught the attention of the weeping lad who stood immobile, looking down at the broken body of the girl he loved. Doom’s cruel lips curled, a movement noticed only by the keen-eyed Cimmerian, and a false smile lit his dark visage, as he whispered a command.

“Join her in Paradise, my son.”

Without hesitation, moving like one walking in a dream, the boy unsheathed a small, jewelled dagger and plunged the sharp blade into his heart. The sun sparkled on the fountaining blood that poured from the wound, as the boy posed, statue-like, atop the wall. Then suddenly he crumpled and, pitching forward, fell dying on the body of the girl.

There was a look of triumph on the face of Thulsa Doom as he turned to regard the barbarian. “I have,” he smiled, “a thousand more like them.”

Conan, unimpressed, stared at him dourly. “What is it to me that you have power over fools and weaklings? You have never met a real man on equal terms and fought him face to face or hand to hand.”

Fires of hate glowed in Doom’s eyes, and something akin to shame flared for an instant and subsided under almost superhuman control. Conan, unheeding, continued: “You slaughtered my people. You chained me to the Wheel of Pain, under the lash of the Vanir. You doomed me to be a slave fighting in the Pit, wondering whether each day would be my last....”

Doom raised his dark head proudly. “Aye! And see what I have made of you, how life has toughened your flesh and hardened your spirit! Look at the strength of your will, your courage, your resolve to slay me to revenge your kin. You have followed me across the world, here to my innermost citadel of power, to avenge wrongs you fancy I have done you; whereas in reality I have made you a champion, a hero, a veritable demigod. And now, this gift of mine—this strength and courage and will, which I bestowed upon you through pain and suffering—you wish to waste on mere revenge. Such a waste! Such a pity!”

Doom, seeming truly grieved, chewed his underlip before continuing. “I will vouchsafe you one last chance for life and liberty. Answer two questions: Whence got you the plaque of the twin snakes? Where is the Eye of the Serpent?

Speak.”

Conan silently shook his tousled head.

“Very well,” Doom said at last. “You shall contemplate the fruits of your insolence on the Tree of Woe.”

Turning abruptly on his heel, he started to leave the garden, while Rexor reappeared to take charge of the prisoner. Reaching the gate, Thulsa Doom turned once more to fling a command at his faithful lieutenant in his low, melodious voice.

“Crucify him,” he said casually.

XI

The Tree

A red sun glared down upon a scene of desolation. A level plain of chalky soil, as white as new-fallen snow, stretched away in all directions. Above the ground, like sheeted ghosts, waves of heat danced a dance of death, shimmering in the motionless air; while from the barren soil, the traveller—had any ventured along this trackless waste—would have found his natural repugnance reinforced by the metallic smell of unfamiliar compounds.

Above this stark wasteland towered the Tree of Woe, a twisted, black monstrosity, with leafless branches clawing at the sky. Once, perhaps, it has been a noble shade tree, gentle to man and beast. Now it was a gaunt and spiny skeleton, a thing of evil.

High on the black trunk hung Conan the Barbarian. His naked body bore a powdering of chalk dust and dried blood, through which runnels of sweat carved their way. His tangled hair fell rope-like around his battered face, a cracked and sunburnt mask in which only the eyes lived. They were the angry, burning eyes of a trapped and dying beast.

Ropes, tightly bound, confined his arms to a pair of widespread boughs. Other ropes held his legs and thighs firmly against the rough bark of the tree. Cruel as were these thongs, far crueller were the pair of slender nails, whose square-cut heads pinioned the palms of his hands to the branches against which his arms were bound.

How many hours had passed since Doom’s guards had inflicted this savage punishment upon him, Conan did not know. His mind was numbed by pain; his periods of rational consciousness intermittent. Thirst tormented him without respite; and the relentless rays of the sun tore at his burning flesh. Nothing broke the monotony of his agony save the shadows of vultures, drifting on lazy wings against the merciless sun, as they waited for him to die and furnish them a feast. These birds of prey seemed to be the only other living creatures in all the chalky waste.