Now the stony monster that dominated these wastes loomed up before them, blotting out the stars which outlined its hyena’s head. The black-cloaked form flitted silently between the outstretched paws of the gigantic monster. For an instant they dimly discerned it against the breast of the towering sphinx; then it merged with the stone and vanished.
“Crom!” breathed Conan, his nape hairs rising with a barbarian’s awe of the supernatural.
The mystery, however, was soon solved. As they neared the stony breast, they observed, barely visible in the starlight, a black crack in the smooth stone. It was a huge doorway, thrice the height of a man, cunningly made so that when shut, it would blend with the solid stone of the monster. As they approached, the door was slowly closing on unseen hinges, and the black crack was narrowing to a hairline.
Conan sprinted forward and jammed his sword hilt into the crack. The closing stopped. Then the king inserted his fingers into the crack and heaved. Sweat burst out on his brow, and the massive muscles of his arms, back, and shoulders stood out beneath his mail.
The portal opened with a squeal. Conan snatched up his sword from where it had fallen and, brandishing naked steel, sprang without a moment’s hesitation into the gaping black maw. The others followed, although the druid hesitated.
To the remaining Gunderman, Conan said: “Give me your torch, what’s your name—Thorus, is it not? Plant your pike so it holds this door open, and run back to the camp. Tell Pallantides to send a whole company after us. Yare, now! The rest of you, follow me!”
Within the sphinx they followed a high, wide corridor of solid stone. The torch guttered, stretching misshapen black shadows over the rough stone walls. Wary of traps and pitfalls, Conan and his companions traced the corridor, descending by a broad stone stair to the second level, beneath the sands of the desert.
“By Mitra, no wonder we found no one in the city,” breathed Trocero. “The black magicians were all hiding down in this maze!”
In truth, it was a maze. Corridors branched off at intervals, multiplying until they became a labyrinth. Conan smeared a dab of pitch from the hissing torch at every change of direction, so that they could retrace their steps and regain the surface. But all the chambers they searched were untenanted and bare of furnishings. Where were the wizards of the Black Ring?
“Crom!” Conan wondered aloud. “Are there levels even deeper than this? If that philosophers’ notion be true, that the world is round, meseems we shall soon come out the other side!”
As they descended another stair, Trocero urged: “Sire, should we not go back for help?”
“Mayhap; but I’ve a notion to search this place first,” Conan growled. “The lads should be coming up behind us soon, and thus far we’ve found nought to beware of. Let us go on!”
At the foot of that last flight of stone stairs, they entered a gigantic chamber, huge as an arena, ringed with tiers of stone benches. Lifting his torch, Conan searched the nearby benches with its wavering light which illumined only a small fraction of the vast area. The place reminded Conan of the great hippodrome of Tarantia, save that the latter was out in the clean open air, not buried deep down in the fetid blackness below the world’s crust.
“What do you suppose they use this place for?” he muttered.
Trocero opened his mouth to reply, but another voice broke in. It was a deep, strong, quiet voice, informed with the ring of triumph.
“We use it to dispose of our enemies, Conan of Aquilonia!”
Conan tensed. Before he could move, cold artificial light flared up, filling the vast arena with an uncanny and sourceless illumination almost as brilliant as daylight. By this illumination, the Cimmerian saw that the circling stone benches, on the further side, were occupied by hundreds of human figures, robed and cowled in black. To the right yawned a huge open portal, a yawning gulf of darkness, as large as that in the breast of the sphinx far above.
Directly before them, enthroned in a great chair of black stone above the lower rows of magicians, sat a tall, strongly built figure wearing a simple, unadorned green robe. This man had the shaven pate, swarthy skin, slitted dark eyes and hawklike features of a pure-blooded Stygian.
“Welcome to my empire,” said Thoth-Amon, laughing.
Meanwhile, the second Gunderman, Thorus, whom Conan had dispatched to fetch reinforcements from the camp, lay silently on the sands beneath the wheeling stars, a bare hundred paces from the Sphinx of Nebthu, with a Stygian arrow through his throat.
NINE: Red Swords of Stygia
Pallantides yelled commands at running men. Trumpets brayed and hoofbeats thudded on the hissing sands.
Things had started going wrong at just the time that Conan and his companions entered the black sphinx. First came the desertion of the troops levied from Koth and Ophir. They had encamped on the far side of the site, and sentries came flying to the general to report that the entire force had fled under cover of darkness, either in mass panic or by some prearranged plan.
Pallantides swore sulfurously. He ordered a squadron of horse to pursue the runaways, but then it transpired that the Aquilonians had no horses. The mounted Kothians and Ophireans had taken their own horses, while the Kothian and Ophidian foot had commandeered the mounts of the Aquilonians. The few remaining animals had been turned loose and had galloped off into the desert with the deserters.
Then the first of the two soldiers who had accompanied Conan arrived, to pass on the king’s request for a squad of troopers to follow on his track. Pallantides was picking his squad and giving them the news to pass to the king, when another sentry rushed in to cry:
“To arms, my lord! We are beset! The hordes of Stygia are upon us!”
All around the camp, the somber dunes began erupting men, mostly archers on horse and camel. The darkness made it impossible to ascertain their number. They rode round the camp in a vast swirl, plying their bows. Although the darkness prevented accurate archery, the Aquilonians still suffered a rain of arrows, discharged at random into the camp. Here and there a man yelled or cursed as a shaft found him.
Atop the dunes, other Stygian soldiery appeared, shooting fire arrows into the camp. The missiles tore cometlike paths through the dark; a tent blazed up, and another.
Most of the Aquilonian soldiers had already been aroused by the commotion caused by the desertion of the auxiliaries. Summoned by the trumpets’ blare and the war cries of the Stygians, they stumbled out of their tents, red faced and coughing from the smoke, pulling on helmets and buckling baldrics and chin straps.
“Put out the fires!” shouted Pallantides. “Strike the tents! Cenwulf! Where in hell are you?”
“Here,” said the captain of the Bossonian archers, staggering up to the general. “Where is the king?”
“Mitra knows; he went off into the desert, tracking a spy. Spread your men around the perimeter and pick off some of these flitting black-cloaks. Detail a squad to beat down those bastards on the dune, with the fire arrows. Amric!”
“Here, general.”
“Spread the men around in a circle outside the Bossonians, kneeling with pikes ready to stop a charge. Pile baggage before them and heap sand upon it for a breastwork…”
Thoth-Amon smiled grimly down from his place of power in the underground arena.
“For too long, Cimmeria… have you stood in my path,” said the earth’s greatest black magician. “I saw you venture into these southern lands from your frozen north, forty years ago. I ought to have crushed you then, when you were small and weak. Had I but known how your power would grow, I should have struck you down with a blast of magic—that first time, when you meddled in my affairs in the house of Kallian Publico; or again when you spoiled my schemes to wrest the kingdom of Zingara from King Ferdrugo’s feeble grasp; or when I first glimpsed you in Count Valenso’s stronghold on the Western Ocean; or in your early years of kinging it in Aquilonia when I was Ascalante’s slave in Tarantia. These lapses, however, shall now be corrected.”