Men—no, beings—with minds and skilled hands had dwelled in this and other caves in the Kezankian Mountains when other men were laying the foundations of Atlantis. "Kull of Atlantis" was a name that conjured up vistas of unbelievable antiquity, but when these carvings took shape, Kull's most remote ancestor had yet to see the light of day.
The chill breath of the cave wafting from the bowels of the mountains had no power against the Lady, for all that she remained as bare as ever. The thought of the weight of years pressing down upon her did give her a chill, the kind of chill to the heart and soul that neither hearth-fire nor posset cup can ease.
None of this showed in her steady pace or her straight back. She might have been a figure of ivory or alabaster in some buried temple.
Then the five women came out of the darkness into the light—the light of the Eye. It was a crimson light, subtly different from the light within the cup, as two rubies may differ one from the other. It flowed upward as if it had been a liquid from a hole in the floor of a rock chamber some thirty paces wide.
The hole was half a man's height in width, and the rock around its rim was worn away to glassy smoothness that made for treacherous footing. This did not halt or even slow the steady pace of the five women. They marched straight up to the rim. The Lady raised a hand, and the Maidens halted, then turned to stand two on each side of the hole.
Now the cup hung suspended over the hole—and was the lid rattling faintly, like distant bones tossed by the wind? Did what lay within the Eye call to what lay within the cup? The Lady knew that in this place it was both easy and perilous to imagine sounds beyond the ear and sights beyond the eye.
Another gesture seemed to turn the Maidens to statues. Only the slightest rise and fall of their breasts said that they yet lived. A third gesture, and the cup lifted from the leather net and rose into the air.
It had barely risen above the Maidens' heads when they came to life, drawing aside and back with more haste than dignity. No command reached them; none was needed. They had not been among those who saw the fate of a Maiden who was a laggard in drawing away from the Eye, but all of the Maidens had heard the tale.
They had heard how the Mist rose from the Eye before the Maiden was beyond its reach. They had heard of how obscenely it dealt with her, as though it had the mind of a mad executioner. They had, above all, heard how she screamed as she died.
The Maidens withdrew all the way to the mouth of the tunnel, leaving the Lady alone with the cup and the crimson incandescence from the Eye. She sat down, cross-legged, as ever insensible of cold stone against her flesh, and raised both hands. She also closed her eyes. Even guarded by sorcery, mortal eyes were not meant to see what came next.
The crimson light grew stronger. Now it gave a demonic hue to the flesh of the Lady and her Maidens. There were no words in lawful tongues to describe what it did to the cup and above all to the sigil-bearing lid.
The light also drove every vestige of darkness from the chamber. In that hellish illumination, one might have seen that the walls of the chamber were as bare as the Lady, but too smooth to be the work of nature. Here again was the work of races long dead, and perhaps leaving the world the better for their passing.
The light began to dance, and at the same time turn color. The crimson faded, and an unwholesome shade of purple took its place. Then the purple faded to a livid blue that might have seemed natural had it not swirled and danced like a mist being blown away by a strong wind. The Mist rose the height of two men from the Eye, but did not reach a finger's breadth over the edge of the hole.
The Mist might have been held within a bottle of marvelously clear glass, except that nothing confined it save the Lady's magic—and perhaps the will of the Mist of Doom.
The Lady was now as devoid of the power to move or speak as the Maidens were. In this moment her magic passed directly from her mind to the Mist, or not at all. With arts learned long ago and in great suffering, she drove down to the lowest levels of her mind any fear of what might happen if the Mist did not respond as it had in the past.
In the next moment, the Lady's fear and the cup alike were gone. The Mist whirled until it seemed only a column of blue light rising from the Eye. Then it shot up until it reached the ceiling and sprayed across it, more like a jet of water than something as intangible as mist.
The cup burst aloft with the rising Mist. It was still beyond the Lady to move, but she turned the focus of her mind from the Mist to the cup. She shaped her will into invisible fingers, slid them under the cup, and held it as the Mist drew back into the Eye.
Only then was the bond broken, and the Lady able to use her body, limbs and mouth alike, to conjure the cup to a gentle landing. It was some while before the Maidens came out to pick it up, because they had to wait until the Lady herself ceased trembling.
When they had the cup safely within the net again, they gathered around their mistress. They did not need to speak, only lift her gently and guide her back to the tunnel. Perhaps one of them might have looked at the rock pressing down overhead and uttered a short prayer to her patron gods that they all live to stand under the open sky again.
If they did, it did not concern the Mist of Doom.
Enough time for a hasty meal had already crawled by, the slower for the sun. Soon it would be long enough for a banquet since the Turanians at Conan's rear had attacked, and still those before him remained low or out of bowshot.
Conan wondered if some cunning climber among the Turanians had found a way up the far side of the rocks and led his comrades into a battle at close quarters. Or at least high enough to lie in wait, ready to swarm forward when their comrades attacked from the south.
They would learn a harsh lesson about attacking hillmen among rocks if they had been so bold. But teaching that lesson might well keep the Afghulis too busy to help Conan.
He was about to call up to Farad, to bid him scout the north face of the rocks, when a trumpet sounded far to the Turanian right, out of Conan's sight. A brazen reply floated on the breeze from the left, the trumpeter as invisible as his comrade.
Plain to anyone but a blind man was a score or more of Turanians gathering themselves to plunge forward in a desperate attack. Conan had barely finished counting them when he saw a half-score of horsemen caracoling just outside bowshot. At first he thought the reinforcements had arrived. Then he recognized some of the Turanians' headdresses.
The mounted men, it seemed, were a second wave, to follow on the heels of the first one. Conan's respect for the enemy captain rose higher. A good plan—if the first wave could ever be persuaded to move forward.
Then in the next moment that work of persuasion was done, and the Turanians leaped from cover and ran toward the rocks. Conan nocked an arrow, shot, nocked another, shot it, and was nocking a third when arrows from above tumbled two more Turanians in the sand.
That made one in five down before they even reached close quarters, but no more arrows came from above and the Turanians came on as if a purse of gold lay ahead or demons snapped at their heels. Conan continued shooting. The Turanians were coming as straight toward him as if the rocks were glass or a tavern dancer's veils, covering all, concealing nothing.
One more Turanian fell, but to no mortal hurt; he unslung his bow and began scattering arrows about the rocks above Conan's head. His comrades ran on—and now from above, Conan heard familiar Turanian war cries, Afghuli curses, and oaths in the tongues of more than a few other folk.
The Turanian host was like the gallows—it refused no man who came to it. Conan owed his own career in Turan to that habit.