Conan handed his guttering torch to Trocero and folded his mighty arms upon his chest. His face impassive, he bent his lionlike glowering gaze upon Thoth-Amon.
“Speak your piece, Stygian,” he rumbled. “You have gone to immense effort and exhausted your cunning to trick me into this trap. You might as well have your say.”
A susurration, like the hissing of a nest of angry serpents, ran through the black-robed throng. Thoth-Amon laughed sardonically.
“Well said, dog of a northlander savage! I admire your coolness as much as my fellow sorcerers deplore your effrontery! But now, neither will help you to escape your long overdue punishment. You have crossed my path once too often, and this is the last act of our little drama. I have trapped Aquilonia’s host as well as its king. As we exchange pleasantries, my warriors beleaguer your camp. Aquilonia’s tall knights are falling to our swords like ripe wheat before the scythe. More than a dynasty ends here tonight; the armed might of a kingdom perishes as well.”
Conan shrugged. “Mayhap. But I fear your slinking serpents little, and my tall knights will draw their crooked fangs with ease. My warriors, I doubt me not, are reaping a red harvest this hour …”
“I do not fight with swords alone …”
Thoth-Amon smiled, gesturing with the fingers of one hand. A bolt of emerald fire sprang from his fingertips. It lanced across the arena and struck the naked sword in the hand of Trocero. The steel, bathed in the green ray, glowed red. Trocero dropped the smoking sword with an oath and put his blistered fingers in his mouth.
”—but with sorcery as well,” Thoth-Amon concluded.
Conan continued to hold the glinting eyes of Thoth-Amon with his own somber gaze. “The only way to fight sorcery,” he grunted, “is with sorcery.”
The slight, hooded figure at Conan’s side stepped forth, throwing off its dark cloak to reveal a white robe and an oakleaf chaplet. The black magicians recoiled, hissing.
“It is a White Druid out of Pictland!” said a voice above the murmur.
“It is indeed,” said Thoth-Amon grimly. “Unless my senses deceive me, it is none other than Diviatix.”
“Diviatix!” The cry arose from a hundred throats. At a signal from the prince of sorcerers, they fell silent. The pressure of hundreds of eyes poured down upon Conan and his companions. The silent, concentrated power of those black, glittering eyes was unnerving.
Conan’s skin crept. A coldness like a small, bleak wind from one of his frozen northern hells blew upon his heart. He felt a numbness creeping through his flesh. His vision blurred; his heart faltered. Behind him, young Conn gasped and staggered.
“S-sorcery!” breathed Conan. A malignant power beat down upon him from those intense, glittering eyes. His head swam. In a moment, he thought, the iron would drain from his muscles and he would slump to the floor of the arena.
TEN: White Druid and Black Magician
Then tine druid broke the spell. He spread his arms and brandished his oaken staff. Conan was astounded to see fresh young leaves sprout from the dead wood of the staff. Diviatix stood at the center of a pulsing aura of golden light. From his staff wafted the smell of healthy earth and green growing things. The warm light and the good smell beat back the artificial witchlight and the dank, moldering stench that permeated these subterranean labyrinths of ancient stone.
The wizards of the Black Ring sagged back, their concentration broken. Some mopped sweat from their brows. Diviatix swayed, chuckling, as if all the wine he had drunk that night had at last caught up with him. But small and unprepossessing though he was, there was no question but that he dominated this assembly.
Thoth-Amon laughed no longer; his wrinkled brow was drawn together in a scowl of concentration. Drawing himself up to his full regal height, he smote the White Druid with a second beam of crackling green flames. Diviatix fended it off with his staff, and it broke into a shower of hissing sparks.
Thoth-Amon hurled another, and another, and another. Taking heart from their leader, the prime sorcerers of the Black Ring came to their feet, adding their own beams of green force to the shower of deadly bolts that beat down upon Conan’s party. For a few moments, the pulsing aura staved them off like a golden shield. Then Diviatix began to weaken. While he still held the golden glow intact, some shafts of cold green fire leaked through to plow smoking furrows in the sand near where Conan and his comrades stood.
“White magic fails in the contest of strength, Cimmerian!” Thoth-Amon called.
“Well, then, perhaps it is time to strengthen it.”
Conan drew from his girdle the small box of gleaming orichalc. From the box he took a great red many-faceted jewel. From it emanated a dazzling glow which pulsed and shimmered and seemed to drip flakes of quivering golden fire on the trampled sands. This sparkling gem Conan handed to Diviatix, who seized it as a drowning man might grasp at a helping hand.
As the druid took the jewel, the protective shield of golden light about them strenghened; a golden fire like that of the sun itself blazed up and smote the black magicians. They fell back shrieking; some pawed at their eyes, while others slumped in unconsciousness or death. The golden glory beat about the white-robed druid, who now seemed superhumanly tall and commanding. A wailing cry arose from the benches. Some black-clad forms struggled madly with each other, while some sought to flee by the smaller portals on the far side.
“The Heart!” gasped Thoth-Amon, sinking back in his black throne with his face pale, drawn, and gaunt. Suddenly the great sorcerer looked like an old, old man.
“The Heart of Ahriman!” he croaked.
Conan laughed heartily. “Thought you that I would venture into your den without the world’s mightiest talisman? You must deem me still that raw, reckless, foolish youth who came out of the North forty years ago!
“For all these years, the Heart has slumbered in the vault of the Mitraeum. When the druid apprised me of your plot against it, I sent heralds to fetch both it and my son. With this amulet, old Diviatix has the power of a thousand of your wizards.
“That is why you so lusted for the gem—not to augment your own great magic, but to keep another from using it against you. That is why the Gods of the West drew this druid from his grove, hither across the wide world to the sandy wastes of shadow-haunted Stygia. No other white magician could stand against the temptation such power holds out to him who wields it—the power to make oneself a very god—save this drink-befuddled little man, this sanctified and holy vessel of the will of the gods!”
His visage curiously shrunken and pale, skull-like in the fierce golden fire that shone up from the figure of the druid, Thoth-Amon wilted. Of the lesser mages of the Black Ring, some lay dead or senseless; some gibbered and frothed in madness; some jammed the exits, clawing at one another in their frenzy to be gone. Diviatix held up the mighty arch-talisman, which focused stupendous forces like a lens. Beam after beam of glory flashed across the arena, and with each bolt a wizard died.
By now, Thoth-Amon alone still lived and had full possession of his faculties. Conan’s nape prickled as he saw a shadow gathering about the Stygian—a clot of gloom, which wound about the sorcerer like the coils of a gigantic serpent. Had Father Set himself come to claim his chief votary? Thoth-Amon panted: