Murzio produced a length of bent wire and began working on the mechanism of the lock. The distant torches made the beads of perspiration of the Zingaran knight’s forehead shine. For a time there was no sound save that of human breath and the faint click of metal on metal.
At last Murzio looked up, despair again overlying his features. “Father Ninus himself could not spring this lock, sire! I think it accursed.”
Conan grunted. “That may well be true. Trust the jackal of Stygia to have enchanted the lock of my cell! That crafty devil knows that I have escaped from more than one lockup. What of the lock on the cell to my left? The prisoner therein is a friend.”
The black-clad figure set to work on the lock of Mbega’s cell. The chained black watched in silence with impassive features. Presently the lock clicked open. Conan released a long-pent breath in a sigh of relief.
Murzio entered Mbega’s cell and soon released the dethroned king of Zembabwei from his chains. The knight helped the majestic Negro to limp out into the corridor, his slim form bent under Mbega’s great weight. Conan watched in grim silence as the kingly black massaged life back into his numb extremities.
Again Murzio tried, in vain, to open the lock on Conan’s cell. Again Conan essayed, with the help of the other three, to bend the bars of his cell, but without success.
“You Zembabwans build a stout cell door,” he gasped. “No matter. What cannot be cured must be endured.”
“But you face death,” said Mbega heavily.
Conan shrugged with a wolfish grin. “Not for the first time, my friend.”
“What can I do?” asked Murzio.
“First, slip me yon poniard at your belt. The blacks have stripped me nigh naked, but at least they left me my boots.” Conan slid the long blade into his right boot.
“Now help Mbega out of here. Perchance he knows a route through this maze to the surface. Help him to find haven with such of his supporters as still live. Mbega, this is your last chance. If your friends can rise before the hour of sacrifice and open the south gate to my army, we may yet outlive the dawn.
“Murzio, whether we succeed or fail, you have my thanks. You are a brave and loyal man. If we survive tonight’s perils, ask me for the barony of Castria. Fare you well! Go swiftly, and Crom and Mitrago with you.”
The two dark figures merged with the denser shadows beyond the lighted area and were gone. Conan clapped Conn’s shoulder.
“Be of good cheer, son,” he growled. “A friend within the walls is worth ten thousand locked outside them.”
He fell silent again as he heard the pad of naked feet approaching long the corridor from the other direction. He knew then that their hour was upon them—the hour that would mean either the fulfillment of Thoth-Amon’s revenge, or the fall of a kingdom.
TEN: The Slithering One
Conan and his son were bound with massive leathern thongs and escorted from the pits by a party of black warriors. They came out into the great plaza between the palace and the temple. The silver buckler of the full moon already rode high in the sky, its brilliant light rendering the stars few and wan.
The plaza was ringed with standing stones crudely chiseled with strange glyphs in an unknown symbology. Whether this had been done by Zembabwan wizards or by their prehuman predecessors, Conan could not say.
To one side, before the temple of Damballah, a sinister idol rose against the sky. Carven of black basalt, it rose to thrice the height of a man, as tall as the sinister ring of monoliths. As Conan was led towards this eidolon, he perceived that it had been fashioned into the likeness of a tremendous serpent coiled into a conical shape. The wedge-shaped ophidian head stared down from the top of the cone. For an instant the thing seemed to live, as its scarlet eyes gleamed with cold malignancy. But then Conan saw that the eyes of the Serpent God were merely gigantic rubies, and that their lifelikeness was due to the reflection of the flickering torchlight.
Conan repressed a shudder. The idol of Set—or Damballah, as the Zembabwans called it—had from time immemorial represented the forces of darkness and evil on earth. He muttered a prayer to Crom. That aloof Cimmerian god meddled but seldom in the ways of men and cared little for worship by men. But when the demon of the Ultimate Abyss glares down with eyes of lambent scarlet flame from its height, any god i,s better than none.
The altar of Damballah was like a great bowl of black marble set into the pavement before the idol. Bronze rings were sunk into the marble. Conan and Conn were bound at the bottom of the depression by chains in such a fashion that they were helpless but standing upright. Their leathern thongs were removed.
Conan studied the situation. His chains and wristcuffs were of new bronze and presumably unbreakable. But the rings set in the marble looked to be centuries old and deeply eaten by corrosion.
When the captives had been tethered, the black priests of Set withdrew. Silence fell. The night wind from the jungle moaned through the circle of standing stones and made the torches flutter. The red eyes of the statue burned through the gloom with an uncanny semblance of life.
Across the square, the bowed, wasted figure of Thoth-Amon stood beside King Nenaunir. The black monarch was in full regalia, with a purple robe to his feet and his face concealed by a serpent mask. His right hand, flashing with talismanic rings, grasped his serpent-headed staff of conjuration.
The silence lengthened. Then thousands of heads turned upwards, and a long-drawn “Ah-h-h!” came from the throats of the massed Zembabwans. Conan looked up, too. A red shadow with a curved leading edge had begun to creep across the face of the moon.
The drums, which had been silent, began again, beating a complex, febrile rhythm. They thudded like a giant’s pulse. The jungle mists, curling overhead, seemed to writhe and coil in time with the beat. The jeweled eyes of the Serpent God appeared to blink and flash in time with the same throbbing. The red shadow spread further. It was time to act.
Locking his hands about the chain that secured his right wrist, Conan whipped about and threw all his weight against the chain. Ten thousand blacks watched him with bleak, indifferent eyes. Bands of muscle stood out along his shoulders, back, and arms in one great effort. The chain held, but the old ring sunk in the marble elongated and snapped.
One hand free, Conan spun, slamming his full weight against the other chain. His brows congested, knotting with effort. His eyes seemed ready to burst from their sockets; his lips drew back in a bestial snarl. The second ring, distorted, broke with a ringing crack.
At any instant now, Conan expected to feel the thudding blow of an arrow or a javelin in his back. But naught occurred. The blacks watched him free himself with stolidly indifferent faces.
With his pulse pounding in his ears, Conan turned to Conn. The red shadow crept further, the drumming changed its beat, and a booming chant arose from the massed thousands.
Emulating his father, young Conn strained at his shackles—but without effect. Conan bent to his son’s aid, conscious of a sudden arctic chill. A breath of icy wind blew against his nape. So cold was it that the sheen of perspiration on his back froze on the instant into icy granules.
Conscious of this uncanny icy breath upon him, Conan saw a strange sight. The scarlet shadow had now overspread much of the moon’s disk. But above the plaza the steamy vapors swirled, congealing from the breath of interstellar cold that blew down from the sky where the Red Moon blazed like a cyclopean eye. The vapors thickened, taking on shape and substance—the shape and substance of a tremendous, writhing serpent.