Conan of the Isles Part 9

He gazed about the sunbaked square. On all four sides of this forum rose tiers of stone benches, and on these benches sat thousands of the richer cla.s.ses among the Antillians, brave in gold and jade and feathers. The common folk, mainly clad in simple loincloths, stood about the square between the benches and the base of the pyramid. The Antillians stood or sat in tense silence absorbed in the somber spectacle taking place on top of the pyramid.

At the base of the pyramid., the priesthood of Ptahuacan stood in swaying ranks. Their voices rose like distant waves in a slow, antiphonal song, punctuated by the rumble of huge drums bound in human hide, which thumped and throbbed like the beating of a gigantic heart. The drummers sat in a bay in the side of the pyramid. The vertical walls of this recess were covered with white plaster, on which were painted bright-colored likenesses of the G.o.ds and demons of this exotic land.

Sigurd looked up. High above the throng, silhouetted in black against the azure sky, the hierarch, wrapped in his robe of gleaming emerald feathers and gesticulating skywards with gaunt, bare brown arms, sat on a lofty throne to one side of the platform atop the pyramid. The throne glittered blindingly with gems and mother-of-pearl.

On the platform before the throne stood an altar of s.h.i.+ny black stone. The small temple on the pyramid faced the hierarch's throne across the altar. Around the altar, a sacrificial priest and several a.s.sistants were at work. Otherwise stripped to loincloth and sandals, the sacrificer wore a fantastically plumed headdress, whose golden bangles splintered the sunrays into dazzling wheels of light and which hid his head.

At this instant, a slave woman was undergoing the ancient Atlantean rite. While the a.s.sistants, gripping her bare brown limbs, held her supine upon the altar, the obsidian blade flashed in the sun as it descended. A moment later, the sacrificer's hand held aloft a dripping heart.

Sigurd's jaw dropped; for, even as he watched, the Feaster on the Pyramid came into view. It materialized out of empty air.

A shadow dimmed the sun. A cold gloom fell over the square. The air bit with the chill of interstellar s.p.a.ce. Hovering over the ziggurat, the Demon of Darkness took shape.

Behind him, Sigurd heard a mutter of prayers from the pirates, who were not otherwise a notably pious crew.

Above the pyramid., the Thing solidified and thickened, like darkness with weight and shape, or like a shadow with substance and form. From it a cold, fetid wind blew unceasingly. It looked like a black cloud that had taken the shape of some amorphous sea creature. Its roiling center was fringed with lazily unfolding veils of shadow-stuff. It seethed and swirled like the legendary Maelstrom, supposed to gyrate somewhere off the Arctic coasts of Sigurd's Vanaheitn.

Rapt with fascination and dread, Sigurd watched the Thing. It held his gaze with hypnotic fixity, as the cold eye of the serpent was fabled to fascinate the pa.s.sing bird.

With a chill of horror, the old seafarer realized that this thing of darkness fed upon the life-force released from the bodies of the sacrificial victims. Somehow it drank up and put to use the vitality released by the knives of the red-armed priests. He watched as the high priest fed it, lifting heart after heart toward the smoky cloud.

Then, too, Sigurd realized the meaning of the cryptic symbolism of the ancient Atlanteans. Their emblem of the Black Kraken, which the simple thought to represent a mere giant devilfish, actually depicted this pulsing, growing, black cloud of terror. He remembered the symbol of the Black Kraken that had adorned the prow of the green Antillian galley, which they had destroyed on their way to this accursed isle. The Black Kraken was Xotli, the Demon of Darkness, whereof the old myths whispered!

Sigurd grimly squared his jaw, but within him his courage withered. Had he but guessed the secret hidden behind that grim symbolism, never would he have come so blithely hither on this rash voyage, to end atop a blood-soaked altar beneath a hovering, vampiric Thing from beyond.

One by one, the line of silent men dully shuffled forward. The steep stone stair that led up the side of the ziggurat grew nearer and nearer. Above, the hovering shape of darkness pulsed. It grew larger and larger, darker and darker.

Strangely, none of the sacrificial victims so much as tried to escape. They stood in line with heads bowed or thrown back to stare upwards, shuffling forward. A dull, drugged weariness hung over their spirits.

Not that a break for freedom would have accomplished anything. They were chained at neck and wrist with unbreakable gla.s.s bonds and guarded by lines of wary brown warriors with whips and gla.s.s-bladed pikes and swords. Lethargically, they moved like sheep to the slaughter.

Perhaps it was some psychic force exerted by the demon above, or some enchantment cast over them by the swaying chorus of priests, who stared up with glazed eyes and slack jaws at their demon-G.o.d. Whatever the reason, none sought to elude the b.l.o.o.d.y knife, which endlessly rose and fell beneath the shadow of the watchful cloud.

Body after body, its chest a gory hole and its limbs flopping, was dragged from the altar stone and dropped by acolytes into the dark mouth of a shaft, which opened to one side of the top of the pyramid. As this was done, a new sacrifice was siezed. Four priests took hold of his limbs. A fifth unlocked his bonds, while the sacrificer leaned over to dedicate the victim's life to Xotli. The knife-bearing arm rose and fell; the blood fountained; the heart was held up; another flopping corpse was dragged away to the mouth of the well.

At the head of the line of the pirates, Sigurd, as he slowly climbed the stair, did not regret being the first to go. Since Conan had gone, the responsibilities of command had fallen to him; and it behoved the chief to set an example of grim courage to his men.

At last came Sigurd's turn. The black vortex was terribly near. He could feel its cold radiance, and deep in his soul he sensed the probing gaze of its hidden eye, l.u.s.ting for his life and manhood.

The masked priests confronted him. They were stripped to the waist; their lean, brown torsos were splashed with crimson. Their talon-like hands sank into his flesh as they dragged his ponderous bulk across the wet stone. Their eyes were glazed and dull, their look withdrawn.

Lying on his back and staring up at the hovering darkness, Sigurd heard the click as his manacles and neck-ring were unlocked. Hard claws clutched his wrists and ankles. Now the sacrificer came into view, his face masked by a carven devil's head, leering out of a ma.s.s of brilliant emerald feathers. The gaunt, bloodsoaked arm reached down to mark his hairy chest. Then the other hand rose into sight, clutching the haft of the gla.s.sy knife. The arm swung up against the ebon ma.s.s. It started down ...

Then it stopped. In a hissing puff, Sigurd expelled the breath he had unconsciously held.

The priest stood stiffly against the sky, his plumed head turned like that of a startled hawk. Strange sounds came up to Sigurd from below - sounds like the thunder of an enormous bell, tolling notes of doom. From his throne, the hierarch stopped his incantation to shout down a question. Then came a loud rustle, as if all the AntiUians had sucked in their breath at once. This was followed by an outburst of shrieks.

The sacrificial priest wavered, staring downward at something in the square below. Sigurd heard a deep, groaning, sonorous bellow - a sound like the grunt of a bull crocodile in one of the coastal rivers of Kush, but longer and louder.

The four priests holding Sigurd released his limbs to gawk at the spectacle below, s.n.a.t.c.hing at one another's arms, pointing, and gabbling excitedly. As they did so, the pirates snapped out of their trancelike state. Whether this resulted from the sudden cessation of the hymns wafting up from below, or from the distraction of the archpriest's attention, or even from the wavering of the concentration of the black thing above, none could say. But, whatever the cause, the hypnotic spell that bound them was shattered.

Sigurd rolled off the sacrificial altar. Yasunga, white teeth flas.h.i.+ng in his black face, swung his heavy manacles in a glittering curve, which caught the distracted sacrificer on the side of the head and hurled him, bleeding and unconscious., to the pavement.

Meanwhile Sigurd, thinking faster than he ever had in his life, hurled himself upon the priest who held the keys to the manacles. The northerner's hairy hands fastened upon the scrawny neck. As he bore the befeathered figure to the ground, his fingers dug into the priest's throat and shut off his windpipe.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

GATES OF DOOM.

They lift the gory, dripping fruit Before the seething ebon cloud; The silent and adoring crowd is numb, bewildered, dazed, and mute.

- The Visions of Epemitreus

Springing forward, Conan swung his long stone club with the courage of desperation. With a thud, it caught the foremost of the giant reptiles on its scaly snout. The stalact.i.te broke in half with a loud crack, and the thick end fell to the ground with a thump.

Hissing furiously, the dragon started back, baring its fangs and las.h.i.+ng its tail. In all the centuries that it had dwelt under Ptahuacan, never had one of its victims turned upon it, let alone given it a painful clout on the nose. The dragon was out of practice at overcoming live prey, and Oman's blow astonished and bewildered its small, reptilian mind as much as it angered it.

Conan's weapon was now reduced to a two-foot spike of limestone. Still, he thought, it was sharp enough to thrust into one of the great, green eyes that blinked at him from the semicircle of scaly heads. And if he could thrust it up to the end, it might reach the sluggish little brain behind the eye. Not, he knew, that this would save him; for such creatures took a long time to realize that they were dead.

But, at least, the dragons would know they had been in a fight. As a couple of the giant lizards. .h.i.tched themselves closer - practically within snapping distance - Conan rose on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, holding the spike like a dagger. In an instant he would hurl himself at the head of the nearest dragon...

Then came an interruption. Down through the shaft in the ceiling, whence came the beam of light that shone down upon a spot of floor and illumined the entire chamber, something fell to land with a thud on the illuminated spot. It was a naked corpse, whose chest cavity gaped with a huge, ghastly wound.

Grunting, the dragon that Conan had struck wheeled around and waddled quickly over to the corpse. Such unresisting food was more to its taste than creatures that gave it a rap on the nose, merely because it tried to eat them. As the first dragon turned away, another and then another imitated its action, until they were all brainlessly streaming away across the cavern floor.

As the first dragon reached the corpse, it scooped the upper part of the dead man's body up into its vast jaws, turning its head sideways to do so. But, as it raised its head, a second dragon grabbed the dangling legs of the corpse. The two reptiles engaged in a grisly rug-of-war, grunting and wagging their ma.s.sive heads from side to side, while others crowded round, trying to s.n.a.t.c.h a piece of the corpse.

Presently, the body tore in half with a rending sound. The two dragons that had first seized it backed away to gulp down their portions, while the others scrambled for the entrails that had spilled out on the ground.

In a flash of insight, Conan understood much that had puzzled him. For one thing, he had wondered what such huge flesh-eaters could find to live on in this maze of caverns. Bats and luminous grubs would surely not sustain them, but a steady supply of sacrificial victims would support them in draconian luxury. The girl Catlaxoc and the arch-thief Metemphoc had both described the ma.s.s sacrifices to Xotli, and the corpses had to be disposed of somehow. This arrangement explained the fact that, when he had first entered the cavern, Conan had found a half-dozen dragons crouched in a circle beneath the shafts with heads expectantly raised.

Then, too, Conan realized what must have happened to him. His travels through this underground realm had taken him round in a circle. He had originally planned to emerge from the subterranean labyrinth under the Vestibule of the G.o.ds. This grim gray edifice rose on the square of the temple pyramid, and in it the slaves and captives destined for sacrifice, including his own crew, were held.

Instead, the battle with the rats had driven him off his course, and his fall into the underground river had resulted in his being carried still farther away from his memorized route. But some whim of fate or of the G.o.ds had brought him around in a loop, returning him at length to the place he first meant to reach, or at least very near it.

The falling body, Conan was sure, was part of the exhausted surplus of the sacrifice, in which hearts were torn from living victims. The shaft down which the corpse had fallen probably extended up through the pyramid to an opening near the top. Therefore, he reasoned, he must be directly beneath the pyramid - or at least under the square surrounding it.

All this flashed through Conan's mind in the s.p.a.ce of three heartbeats. As the monsters turned away from him, he dashed around the perimeter of the chamber to the vertical ladder, made of pegs driven into holes in the wall, which led from the floor of the cave up to the platform on which the Antillian guard was stationed. This guard no longer lounged lethargically; he pointed at Conan with astonishment and shouted unintelligible questions.

Conan reached the foot of the ladder. The guard was armed, and it would not be easy to climb to the platform in the face of his weapons. But then a dragon, who had failed to get a piece in the scramble for the corpse, turned back toward Conan, its long, forked tongue flicking out. Conan decided to chance the guard rather than again face the horde of giant lizards.

With the speed of a monkey scrambling out of the way of a lion, Conan went up the ladder. By the time the first of the reptiles had reached its foot, he was twenty feet up3 well out of their reach.

Next, he had to cope with the guard. He drew the dirk from the sheath at his back and put the blade between his teeth. Then he resumed his climb.

Soon he found himself staring up into the astonished brown face of the guard, who squatted at the edge of his platform. The man jabbered at Conan and threateningly waved his gla.s.s-bladed sword.

Holding a rung just out of the guard's reach with his left hand, Conan hooked a knee around a rung to give himself purchase. Then he took the dirk from between his teeth. Closing one eye to sight on the guard's form, he brought his right arm slowly back - then sharply forward. The dirk flashed through the air, struck the guard in the hollow at the base of his throat, and buried itself halfway to the hilt.

With a choking gurgle, the guard staggered to his feet. He dropped his sword with a clatter to clutch at the blade buried in his throat. Then he teetered forward and plunged off the platform. Conan had to fend off his falling body to keep from being knocked off the ladder himself. The guard struck the floor of the chamber with a thud. A strangled shriek was cut off by the crunch of a pair of dragon's jaws. From below., sounds of another reptilian feast wafted up.

Breathing hard, Conan hauled himself up to the platform and sat down on the edge with his booted feet dangling. The last hour had seen him through some of the closest calls of an adventurous life.

Some dragons remained at the foot of the ladder, gazing hopefully up at him. Little by little they trailed away. Those that had failed to fill their bellies from the recent windfalls resumed their circle around the bright spot in the center of the floor. Presently, with a whistle and a thump., another mutilated corpse fell down the shaft, to be pounced upon and squabbled over by the scaly reception committee.

Having recovered from his exertions, Conan got up and explored. Behind the platform was a tunnel closed by a bronze grille. Beyond the grille, steps led up into the gloom. The grille opened at Conan's touch. Inside this gate was a large recess in the wall, and in this recess a gigantic bronze wheel was mounted. The spokes projected beyond the rim to form handles, so that it resembled, on a larger scale, one of the tiller wheels that Conan had seen on large Zingaran galleons. The wheel was thick with the green, waxy coating of verdigris. It must have stood there for ages since last being turned.

Conan frowned in thought. His gaze wandered to the huge bronze doors across the chamber, beyond the circle of ghoulishly waiting dragons. Why should those doors have been put there in the first place? They must have cost the folk of Ptahuacan a tremendous lot of labor to install. Presumably, a pa.s.sage led from the other side of them to the world above. But all they were good for was to loose the horde of dragons upon the citizens. Why should the hierarch wish any such thing?

The answer came to Conan's mind with a snap. The dragons served a double purpose. Not only did they dispose of the remains of the sacrificial victims., but also they served as a last-ditch secret weapon, in case the downtrodden populace should rise in rebellion against the priesthood.

And how were they opened? Conan could not be sure, but his glance strayed back to the ancient bronze wheel.

Out in the square, the sacrifice to Xotli must be taking place. Perhaps it had been going on for hours. The square would be packed with people, with the place of honor, nearest to the dragon gates, reserved for the priestly hierarchy. A glorious plan took form in Conan's brain...

Conan stepped through the grille and confronted the wheel. He drew a deep breath, set his burly shoulders to it, and put a surge of strength behind it. Metal groaned under pressure. Conan's boots slid and grated on the stone floor.

He relaxed, took several deep breaths, and tried again. The sinews writhed across his back and shoulders. Somewhere on the other side of the wall, tortured metal squeaked and groaned. Dust and dislodged particles of dirt pattered down. The wheel moved a fingerbreadth, then a fingerbreadth more, with a shriek of metal forced into motion after aeons of inactivity.

Again Conan strained at the wheel., gripping the spokes so fiercely that it almost seemed as if his white-knuckled fingers would sink into the bronze. He heaved until the blood pounded in his temples and roared in his ears. The wheel lurched and revolved several inches. Within the wall somewhere, ponderous counterweights boomed into motion.

Across the chamber, a crack of light appeared between the valves of the great bronze door.

Another heave, and the motion of the wheel became suddenly easier. From beyond the wall came the growl and rumble of the ancient mechanism, forced into motion after so many quiet centuries.

The crack between the doors widened. With a clank of engaging machinery, the wheel began to spin of its own accord, faster and faster. The valves of the bronze door swung wide on screaming hinges. The dragons, which had been peering and shuffling about uneasily as these unaccustomed noises came to their ears, turned toward the opening doors.

Beyond the doors, a steep ramp led up, then turned sharply out of sight. Light came down from above - good, strong daylight. Conan inferred that another pair of doors at the top of the ramp had opened at the same time. These must be in the base of the pyramid or in one of the buildings surrounding the square.

As Conan, gasping for breath, collapsed over the wheel, the dragons, emitting excited bellows, waddled through the open doors. With claws sc.r.a.ping and slipping on the ramp, they poured up the slope and out of sight. From the dark mouths of the tunnels that opened into the chamber, more dragons appeared, roused from their long slumbers by the noise of the mechanism and the roars of their fellows. These joined the procession up the ramp, until forty-odd of the creatures had pa.s.sed out of sight on their way to the upper world whence a sudden chorus of horrified shrieks wafted faintly down into the chamber.

Still panting, Conan lay against the bottom of the bronze wheel, waiting for his heart to slow down from its wild pounding and smiling grimly through his stiff, gray beard.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

THE CRYSTAL TALISMAN.

The horror from the primal slime lived on to slake its fiendish l.u.s.t, When bright Atlantis fell to dust beneath the trampling hooves of time.

- The Visions of Epemitreus

As Conan heaved on the great bronze wheel in the pa.s.sage below the square of the pyramid, a crack appeared in the painted plaster that covered the vertical wall of the bay in the side of the pyramid. The plaster broke into fragments which showered down on the pavement at the feet of the drumming, chanting priests. The bronze doors, which the plaster had masked, groaned and squealed as they swung slowly outwards, even as their mates, the similar doors in the chamber of the dragons below, were opening.

The chant died away to silence as the priests backed away from the opening door valves. They stared at one another; questions flew back and forth. Behind the priests, the thousands of Antillians, from the humble artisans standing in the square to the n.o.bility on the tiers of benches, also s.h.i.+fted uneasily. They stood on tiptoe, peered, and questioned.

On top of the pyramid, the sacrificer paused in the midst of his sacrifices, just as he was about to decardiate the stout foreign ruffian with the graying reddish beard. He leaned over and shouted down a question, which was lost in the gathering hubbub.

A tremendous hiss came from the dark interior behind the opening doors. Out into the sunlight shambled the first of the dragons to reach the top of the ramp - fifty feet of slate-gray scales, waddling briskly on bowed, muscular legs and splayed., long-toed feet. Its raised head swiveled from side to side as its great, green eyes, their pupils contracted to slits by the glare, took in the scene around it. From the tip of its long, crocodilian snout, a yard of pink, forked tongue flicked out.

Screaming, the ranks of the chanting priests broke. The priests fought their way into the crowd of common An-tillians, who in turn surged away from the doors. In the panic push, men and women were thrown down and the life was trampled out of them.

One priest tripped on his feathered robe and fell. Before he could recover, the jaws of the dragon slammed shut upon him. The reptile raised its head. Then it jerked its head back several times, while the elastic skin of its throat swelled and shrank with gulping motions. With each jerk, the priest slid further into its jaws, until only his feet, still wearing their gilded stilt shoes, were visible. A final jerk and gulp, and the dragon's throat bulged as its prey slid down its gullet.

Meanwhile other dragons, with tongues flickering and jaws opening to emit their groaning roars, crowded past the first. There seemed to be no end to the procession. They scrambled across the pavement and plunged into the screaming, clawing ma.s.s of Antillians. Some people were crushed beneath the monsters' clawed feet; others were knocked about like dolls by casual swings of huge, scaly tails. Blood lay in puddles and ran into the gutters in sticky scarlet streams. Everywhere., dragons paused to raise their heads and gulp down their prey before plunging on after another mouthful.

Meanwhile, high up od the side of the red-and-black pyramid, a small door opened. Conan stepped out, carrying the sword of black gla.s.s with which the guard had been armed. The salt wind from the sea whipped his s.h.a.ggy gray mane. He expanded his huge chest to take in a lungful of clean, fresh air, welcome after the stenches of the charnel cavern world below.

After he had opened the gates that loosed the reptilian horde upon the people of Ptahuacan, he had mounted the stone stair that slanted up from the platform in the wall of the dragon chamber. Other pa.s.sages branched off horizontally from this tunnel. But Conan, reasoning that the sacrifice should be taking place on top of the pyramid and that the steepest pa.s.sageway would bring him out closest to that place, continued on up, until he had come to the door from which he just emerged.

For an instant he stood staring down, watching with grim satisfaction the scene of havoc and madness below. Some of the dragons had reached the tiers of stone benches where the n.o.bles and higher priests had sat. They were lurching up and down these benches, pursuing and capturing screaming, befeathered fugitives.

From his height, Conan could see along the streets that let out of the square. Each of these streets now bore a stream of madly running fugitives. Some darted into the first open door they reached, to slam and bar it against later arrivals. Others kept running until they pa.s.sed through the city gates and straggled out into the countryside.

Craning his neck in the other direction, Conan looked up to the top of the pyramid. Here, where rose the temple of Xotli, knots of men struggled. The colors of their skins told Conan that some of these were his own crew, battling with priests and guards.

Then Conan became aware of a figure standing near him on one of the stairways that led to the top of the pyramid. This was the gaunt old hierarch himself, recognizable by the splendor of his feathered robe - now torn -and his golden ornaments. His plumed headpiece was gone, and blood ran down one side of his head. Leaning forward, he gesticulated frantically with his skinny brown arms, screaming commands to the milling soldiers and priests below.

At the base of the pyramid directly below the hierarch, one of the dragons looked up, its pink tongue feeling the air. Then the monster began to claw its way up the stair.

A wicked grin wrinkled Oman's bearded face. Thrusting his gla.s.s sword through his belt, he vaulted to the next higher level of the yard-high steps that made up the pyramid. He stepped softly along the step until he came to the stair on which the hierarch stood, behind and above that personage. Without a word, he placed both hands on the small of the archpriest's back and gave a terrific shove.

The hierarch shot out from the surface of the pyramid in an arc and struck the steps lower down. He rolled over and over in a whirl of brown limbs and green feathers, until he reached the dragon coming up from below. A loud chomp, and the jaws dosed upon the age-old master of Antillia.

The high priest's skull-like head jerked frantically; his bony fists beat futilely against the scaly jaws. Then, as one of the saber-like fangs reached a vital organ, the body relaxed. The high priest's screams ceased; his head and limbs hung limply. Squatting at the base of the pyramid, the dragon settled down to the agreeable task of swallowing its catch whole.