Thunder smote the chamber, and the obsidian form of Masrok floated in the void of its fiery cage. The silvery weapons held in five of its eight arms looked no different, yet in some fashion they had an aura of having been used recently a pulsation that reached into the back of a human mind and whispered of violence and death. Karim Singh and Prince Kandar edged back from the huge figure, no matter that it was confined.
The bound women seemed frozen with shock and fear.
"You slice matters too finely, O man," Masrok boomed. Crimson eyes flickered to the blazing pentagram in what could not possibly have been nervousness. "A delay of but another beat of a human heart and my other selves would have been on me. Who would serve you then, O man?"
"Masrok, I command you-" Naipal began when half a score of Vendhyan soldiers burst into the chamber.
"Prince Kandar!" one of them cried. "Someone has-"
"You dare intrude!" Naipal howled. He spoke a word that made even him shiver, and lightning flared from the largest of the khora.s.sani. A single shriek rent the air, and a cinder, only vaguely resembling the soldier who had shouted, fell and shattered into charred chunks on the stone floor. Turban-helmed men ran, screaming with terror.
Karim Singh and Prince Kandar both tried to speak at once. "My men are not to be slain out of hand," Kandar shouted. "The message could have been important," the wazam cried.
Both men clamped their teeth on further words as Naipal"s dark eyes came to rest on them. "He dies whom I wish to die, and what is important is what I say is important. This is important!" The wizard turned his attention back to the demon, which had watched what had happened impa.s.sively. "You will open the way to the tomb for me, Masrok. I care not how."
"From within this cage?" Masrok replied with a hint of its former sarcasm.
"Open it!"
For a moment scarlet eyes met those of ebon, then the demon"s mouth opened, and the sound that emerged sent shudders through human flesh.
Only for an instant, however. The sound rose with blinding speed to send a stabbing pain in the ears, and beyond. Yet still Masrok"s straining jaws told of a cry continuing.
Suddenly that call was answered. Suddenly there were-things in the chamber. What exactly or how many it was impossible to tell, for it pained the eye to gaze on them directly, and under a sidelong glance, the numbers and forms seemed to shift constantly. Impressions were all that could be made out, and they enough to bring a lifetime of nightmares. Fangs dripping spittle that bubbled and hissed on the stone. Razor claws gleaming like steel and needle spines glittering like crystal. Sparkling scales in a thousand hues and leathery wings that seemed to stretch farther than the eye could see, farther surely than the walls of the chamber.
Kandar stood ashen-faced, trembling almost as much as the women, who writhed against their bonds and wailed with frantic despair. Karim Singh"s lips moved rapidly and silently, and Naipal realized with considerable amus.e.m.e.nt that the wazam prayed. The wizard realized as well that those monstrous forms, so terrifying to human eyes, cowered beneath Masrok"s gaze. Perhaps, he thought, he had summoned and bound a greater power than he knew. It increased his resolve to see the demon returned to the prison it shared with its other selves.
Human skulls, dangling for ornament, swayed as Masrok raised one silvery, glowing spear and pointed with it to the blocked pa.s.sage.
Horrific forms flowed to the adamantine substance, clawing, gouging, devouring, a seething ma.s.s that slowly sank into the stone, leaving an open way behind it.
"Impressive," said a voice from one of the many entrances to the great room.
Naipal spun, ready to utter the word that drew lightning from the khora.s.sani, and it seemed his heart had turned to ice in his chest.
"Zail Bal," he gasped. "You are dead!"
"You never would believe your eyes, Naipal," the newcomer said, "when you wished to believe other than what you saw. Of course you have reason to believe as you do. You saw me carried off by rajaie while far from my implements." Zail Bal"s dark eyes narrowed. "And some of my amulets had been most cunningly tampered with. Still, I managed to slay the demons, though not without cost, it is true. I found myself deposited on the sh.o.r.es of the Vilayet in an age-riddled body, too frail to travel a league." His gaze went from the imprisoned Masrok, once again watching the humans in silence, to the pa.s.sage into which the summoned beings had now disappeared. "You have done well for me in my absence, apprentice. I had not managed to locate this place before my ... accident."
"I am no longer the apprentice," Naipal snarled. "I am the court wizard! I am the master!"
"Are you," Zail Bal"s chuckle was dry. "Karim Singh may have his throne, and Kandar may call himself general, but the army that lies below will march for me, Naipal, not for you. The demon will serve me."
Naipal"s eyes flickered to the khora.s.sani. Did he dare? He had never known that Zail Bal sought Orissa"s tomb, and that fact raised unpleasant possibilities. Could he risk that the former court wizard did not also know the words of power? Would the other have risked confronting him without that knowledge? So. If either began to speak the words, the other would also. The nature of the stones was to accept only one master at a time. If neither man gained control quickly enough, both would perish, as well as every living thing for leagues.
Naipal had no interest in taking the other man with him as he died. He wanted victory, not death.
"You said your body was age-riddled," Karim Singh said suddenly in a voice that quavered, "yet you appear younger than I. No more than forty. I remember you well, and you were older than that when . . ."
His voice trailed off at Zail Bal"s chuckle. It was dry this time as well, like the dust of the grave.
"Yes, I am younger than I was and I will be younger still. But what of you, Naipal? Do you suffer from exhaustion that sleep will not cure?
Are there pains behind your eves, splitting your skull?"
"What have you done-" Naipal whispered, then screamed it. "What have you done?"
The other wizard laughed and as he spoke, his voice never lost its sound of amus.e.m.e.nt. "Did you think I kept no cords to my apprentice, Naipal? They were useless over the distance from Turan but once I was across the Himelias ... aaah. Now I drain the vitality from you through those cords, Naipal, though not exactly as the rajaie drained it from me. You will not grow old. Merely tired. So tired you cannot stand or even hold your head up. But do not fear that I will let you die, Naipal. I would not do such to my faithful apprentice. No, I will give you eternal life. I will put you in a safe, dry place, with only the endless thirst to distract you from the pains in your head and the nibbles of the rats. Of course the rats will stop their nibbling when you wither sufficiently. You will be a desiccated husk, holding life until it crumbles to dust. And I a.s.sure you I will see that it takes a very long time."
Naipal had neither moved nor spoken during Zail Bal"s recitation. The fool should have lulled him, he thought. Now he would have to take the gamble. There would come a moment when the former court wizard let his attention lapse and then Naipal would begin the words, in a whisper. By the time Zail Bal realized what was happening, it would be too late. It must be too late.
A gasp from Karim Singh caught a corner of Naipal"s mind. The shifting ma.s.s of beings that Masrok had summoned had returned, flowing from the mouth of the pa.s.sage to the tomb.
"They are done, O man," the eight-armed demon announced. "The way is clear."
All eyes went to the pa.s.sage. Zail Bal stepped by the seething horror without looking at it, not as though the sight pained his eyes but rather as if he simply could not be bothered by it at the moment. Even Kandar and Karim Singh overcame their fear enough to move closer.
Naipal began to whisper furiously.
Crouching near the end of one of the pa.s.sages that let into the great underground chamber, Conan weighed the silvery weapon in his hand. A dagger, Ghurran had called it. Or Zail Bal, as he now named himself.
And the Cimmerian could see the weapon"s twin clasped by the huge eight-armed shape. Much had been said in that chamber that he would ponder later, but it was another thing that Ghurran/Zail Bal had said that was of interest now. The weapon he held could slay the demon, by which Conan a.s.sumed he had meant the towering obsidian form. Masrok, he had heard it called. Perhaps it could slay the others as well.
Once more Conan tried to look at the demons and found his eyes sliding away unbidden. Their sudden appearance from the other pa.s.sage, just when he was on the point of entering while the men argued, had been a shock. But now that all eyes peered into the pa.s.sage from which the monstrosities had come, it might just be possible for him to reach the women before he was even seen. As for what came then ... With a fatalistic grimness he hefted his broadsword in one hand and large silvery dagger in the other. Then he must bar pursuit long enough for the women to flee. Treading with light swiftness, he moved into the subterranean chamber.
His eyes shifted constantly from the women to the others. Vyndra and Chin Kou, naked and bound at wrists and ankles, lay trembling with eyes squeezed shut above their veils. Naipal appeared to be muttering under his breath, watching the other men, and they in turn had eyes only for the pa.s.sage. It led to an army, had Ghurran, or Zail Bal, claimed? Kang Hou"s army that would come at the end of time perhaps? Warriors like the one he had faced? He could not waste time in worry over that now.
The demons that had come from the tunnel seemed fixed on the huge ebon form floating in nothingness in the center of the chamber, while it-
Conan"s breath caught in his throat. Those crimson eyes now followed him. He quickened his pace toward the women. If the demon called a warning, he might still ... The ma.s.sive arms holding glowing spears moved back. Conan snarled silently. He could not dodge two thrown spears at once. Flipping the silvery weapon in his hand, he hurled it at the demon and threw himself toward the women.
A t.i.tanic blast rocked the chamber, and Conan landed atop the women as the earth heaved beneath his feet. Stunned, he fumbled desperately for his own dagger as he took in the horrific scene. The humans were staggering to their feet where the blast had flung them. Splintered shards of black stone lay in ten small pools of molten gold. And Masrok stood on the stone floor, the glowing dagger it had already held now mirrored by another.
"Free!" Masrok cried, and with gibbering howls of demonic terror, the beings it had summoned fled, flowing up into the ceiling, melting into the floor. Scarlet eyes that now glittered went to Naipal. "You threatened me with this blade, O man." The booming voice was heavy with mockery. "How I wished for you to strike. From the inside your barriers were impervious but from the outside ... Any unliving thing could cross from the outside easily, and the crossing of this demon-wrought blade, this metal of powers you never dreamed of, shattered all of your bonds.
All!"
The cords on the ankles first, Conan told himself as he found his knife. The women could run with hands tied if need be.
"I always intended your freedom," Naipal said hoa.r.s.ely. "We made a pact."
"Fool!" the demon snarled. "You bound me, made one of the Sivani your servant. And you!" The furious rubiate gaze pinned Zail Bal, who had been attempting to edge toward one of the pa.s.sages. "You intended the same. Know, then, the price for daring such!"
Both wizards shouted incantations, but the glowing spears sped from Masrok"s hands, transfixing each man through the chest. Almost in the same instant the silvery weapons leaped back to the demons" grasp, bearing their still-living burdens. Shrieks split the air, and futile hands clutched at glowing hafts now staining with blood.
"Know for all time!" Masrok thundered. And the demon spun, blurring into an obsidian whirlwind streaked with silver.
Then it was still once more and the wizards were gone. But a new skull dangled below the head of each spear, a skull whose empty sockets retained a glow of life, and the shrieks of the wizards, echoing faintly as though from a great distance, could yet be heard.
Slicing the last cord binding a wrist, Conan heaved the women to their feet. Weeping, they tried to cling to him, but he pushed them toward the one pa.s.sage that showed the light of a torch. The marked path lay there, one they could follow even without his aid.
"You also," Masrok growled, and Conan realized the demon"s eyes were now on him. Keeping his face to the creature, he began to follow the women, but slowly. If the worst happened, there must be distance between him and them. "You thought to slay me, puny mortal," the demon said. "You, also, will know-"
A sound like all the winds of the world crying through the maze of pa.s.sages filled the great room, but no breath of air stirred. The rushing howl died abruptly, and at its ending a mirror image of Masrok stood at either end of the chamber.
"Betrayer!" they shouted with one voice, and it was as though a thunderhead had spoken. "The way that was to open at the end of time is opened beforehand!"
Masrok shifted slightly, that monstrous ebon head swiveling from one form to the other.