The Hour of the Dragon
candelabrum in which black candles burned weirdly. He knew they were far
below the earth. The chamber was square, with walls and ceiling of
polished black marble and furnished after the manner of the ancient
Stygians; there was a couch of ebony, covered with black velvet, and on
a black stone dais lay a carven mummy-case.
Conan stood waiting expectantly, staring at the various black arches
which opened into the chamber. But the girl made no move to go farther.
Stretching herself on the couch with feline suppleness, she intertwined
her fingers behind her sleek head and regarded him from under long
drooping lashes.
'Well?' he demanded impatiently. 'What are you doing? Where's
Thutothmes?'
'There is no haste,' she answered lazily. 'What is an hour--or a day, or
a year, or a century, for that matter? Take off your mask. Let me see
your features.'
With a grunt of annoyance Conan dragged off the bulky headpiece, and the
girl nodded as if in approval as she scanned his dark scarred face and
blazing eyes.
'There is strength in you--great strength; you could strangle a
bullock.'
He moved restlessly, his suspicion growing. With his hand on his hilt he
peered into the gloomy arches.
'If you've brought me into a trap,' he said, 'you won't live to enjoy
your handiwork. Are you going to get off that couch and do as you
promised, or do I have to--'
His voice trailed away. He was staring at the mummy-case, on which the
countenance of the occupant was carved in ivory with the startling
vividness of a forgotten art. There was a disquieting familiarity about
that carven mask, and with something of a shock he realized what it was;
there was a startling resemblance between it and the face of the girl
lolling on the ebon couch. She might have been the model from which it
was carved, but he knew the portrait was at least centuries old. Archaic
hieroglyphics were scrawled across the lacquered lid, and, seeking back
into his mind for tag-ends of learning, picked up here and there as
incidentals of an adventurous life, he spelled them out, and said aloud:
'Akivasha!'
'You have heard of Princess Akivasha?' inquired the girl on the couch.
'Who hasn't?' he grunted. The name of that ancient, evil, beautiful
princess still lived the world over in song and legend, though ten
thousand years had rolled their cycles since the daughter of Tuthamon
had reveled in purple feasts amid the black halls of ancient Luxur.
'Her only sin was that she loved life and all the meanings of life,'
said the Stygian girl. 'To win life she courted death. She could not
bear to think of growing old and shriveled and worn, and dying at last
as hags die. She wooed Darkness like a lover and his gift was life--life
that, not being life as mortals know it, can never grow old and fade.
She went into the shadows to cheat age and death--'
Conan glared at her with eyes that were suddenly burning slits. And he
wheeled and tore the lid from the sarcophagus. It was empty. Behind him
the girl was laughing and the sound froze the blood in his veins. He
whirled back to her, the short hairs on his neck bristling.
'You are Akivasha!' he grated.
She laughed and shook back her burnished locks, spread her arms
sensuously.
'I am Akivasha! I am the woman who never died, who never grew old! Who
fools say was lifted from the earth by the gods, in the full bloom of
her youth and beauty, to queen it for ever in some celestial clime! Nay,
it is in the shadows that mortals find immortality! Ten thousand years
ago I died to live for ever! Give me your lips, strong man!'
Rising lithely she came to him, rose on tiptoe and flung her arms about
his massive neck. Scowling down into her upturned, beautiful countenance
he was aware of a fearful fascination and an icy fear.
'Love me!' she whispered, her head thrown back, eyes closed and lips
parted. 'Give me of your blood to renew my youth and perpetuate my
everlasting life! I will make you, too, immortal! I will teach you the
wisdom of all the ages, all the secrets that have lasted out the eons in
the blackness beneath these dark temples. I will make you king of that
shadowy horde which revels among the tombs of the ancients when night
veils the desert and bats flit across the moon. I am weary of priests
and magicians, and captive girls dragged screaming through the portals
of death. I desire a man. Love me, barbarian!'
She pressed her dark head down against his mighty breast, and he felt a
sharp pang at the base of his throat. With a curse he tore her away and
flung her sprawling across the couch.
'Damned vampire!' Blood was trickling from a tiny wound in his throat.
She reared up on the couch like a serpent poised to strike, all the
golden fires of hell blazing in her wide eyes. Her lips drew back,
revealing white pointed teeth.
'Fool!' she shrieked. 'Do you think to escape me? You will live and die
in darkness! I have brought you far below the temple. You can never find
your way out alone. You can never cut your way through those which guard
the tunnels. But for my protection the sons of Set would long ago have
taken you into their bellies. Fool, I shall yet drink your blood!'
'Keep away from me or I'll slash you asunder,' he grunted, his flesh
crawling with revulsion. 'You may be immortal, but steel will dismember
you.'
As he backed toward the arch through which he had entered, the light
went out suddenly. All the candles were extinguished at once, though he
did not know how; for Akivasha had not touched them. But the vampire's
laugh rose mockingly behind him, poison-sweet as the viols of hell, and
he sweated as he groped in the darkness for the arch in a near-panic.
His fingers encountered an opening and he plunged through it. Whether it
was the arch through which he had entered he did not know, nor did he
very much care. His one thought was to get out of the haunted chamber
which had housed that beautiful, hideous, undead fiend for so many
centuries.
His wanderings through those black, winding tunnels were a sweating
nightmare. Behind him and about him he heard faint slitherings and
glidings, and once the echo of that sweet, hellish laughter he had heard
in the chamber of Akivasha. He slashed ferociously at sounds and
movements he heard or imagined he heard in the darkness near him, and
once his sword cut through some yielding tenuous substance that might
have been cobwebs. He had a desperate feeling that he was being played
with, lured deeper and deeper into ultimate night, before being set upon
by demoniac talon and fang.
And through his fear ran the sickening revulsion of his discovery. The
legend of Akivasha was so old, and among the evil tales told of her ran
a thread of beauty and idealism, of everlasting youth. To so many
dreamers and poets and lovers she was not alone the evil princess of
Stygian legend, but the symbol of eternal youth and beauty, shining for
ever in some far realm of the gods. And this was the hideous reality.
This foul perversion was the truth of that everlasting life. Through his
physical revulsion ran the sense of a shattered dream of man's idolatry,
its glittering gold proved slime and cosmic filth. A wave of futility
swept over him, a dim fear of the falseness of all men's dreams and
idolatries.
And now he knew that his ears were not playing him tricks. He was being
followed, and his pursuers were closing in on him. In the darkness
sounded shufflings and slidings that were never made by human feet; no,
nor by the feet of any normal animal. The underworld had its bestial
life too, perhaps. They were behind him. He turned to face them, though
he could see nothing, and slowly backed away. Then the sounds ceased,
even before he turned his head and saw, somewhere down the long
corridor, a glow of light.
19
In the Hall of the Dead
Conan moved cautiously in the direction of the light he had seen, his
ear cocked over his shoulder, but there was no further sound of pursuit,
though he _felt_ the darkness pregnant with sentient life.
The glow was not stationary; it moved, bobbing grotesquely along. Then
he saw the source. The tunnel he was traversing crossed another, wider
corridor some distance ahead of him. And along this latter tunnel filed
a bizarre procession--four tall, gaunt men in black, hooded robes,
leaning on staffs. The leader held a torch above his head--a torch that
burned with a curious steady glow. Like phantoms they passed across his
limited range of vision and vanished, with only a fading glow to tell of
their passing. Their appearance was indescribably eldritch. They were
not Stygians, not like anything Conan had ever seen. He doubted if they
were even humans. They were like black ghosts, stalking ghoulishly along
the haunted tunnels.
But his position could be no more desperate than it was. Before the
inhuman feet behind him could resume their slithering advance at the
fading of the distant illumination, Conan was running down the corridor.
He plunged into the other tunnel and saw, far down it, small in the
distance, the weird procession moving in the glowing sphere. He stole
noiselessly after them, then shrank suddenly back against the wall as he
saw them halt and cluster together as if conferring on some matter. They
turned as if to retrace their steps, and he slipped into the nearest
archway. Groping in the darkness to which he had become so accustomed
that he could all but see through it, he discovered that the tunnel did
not run straight, but meandered, and he fell back beyond the first turn,
so that the light of the strangers should not fall on him as they
passed.
But as he stood there, he was aware of a low hum of sound from somewhere
behind him, like the murmur of human voices. Moving down the corridor in
that direction, he confirmed his first suspicion. Abandoning his
original intention of following the ghoulish travelers to whatever
destination might be theirs, he set out in the direction of the voices.
Presently he saw a glint of light ahead of him, and turning into the
corridor from which it issued, saw a broad arch filled with a dim glow
at the other end. On his left a narrow stone stair went upward, and
instinctive caution prompted him to turn and mount the stair. The voices
he heard were coming from beyond that flame-filled arch.
The sounds fell away beneath him as he climbed, and presently he came
out through a low arched door into a vast open space glowing with a
weird radiance.
He was standing on a shadowy gallery from which he looked down into a
broad dim-lit hall of colossal proportions. It was a hall of the dead,
which few ever see but the silent priests of Stygia. Along the black
walls rose tier above tier of carven, painted sarcophagi. Each stood in
a niche in the dusky stone, and the tiers mounted up and up to be lost
in the gloom above. Thousands of carven masks stared impassively down
upon the group in the midst of the hall, rendered futile and
insignificant by that vast array of the dead.
Of this group ten were priests, and though they had discarded their
masks Conan knew they were the priests he had accompanied to the
pyramid. They stood before a tall, hawk-faced man beside a black altar
on which lay a mummy in rotting swathings. And the altar seemed to stand
in the heart of a living fire which pulsed and shimmered, dripping
flakes of quivering golden flame on the black stones about it. This
dazzling glow emanated from a great red jewel which lay upon the altar,
and in the reflection of which the faces of the priests looked ashy and
corpse-like. As he looked, Conan felt the pressure of all the weary
leagues and the weary nights and days of his long quest, and he trembled
with the mad urge to rush among those silent priests, clear his way with