Conan had been wrong, earlier. The last battle was not here among the topless towers of forbidden Zembabwei. It would be fought on a nameless beach at the World’s Edge.
Hugging Conn to him, soothing his hysterical tears, Conan staggered out of the altar-bowl and stood, deeply wearied but smiling, to await the approach of Pallantides and Trocero. Before dawn reddened the eastern sky, a king would return to his throne and the last followers of the prophet and vicar of Damballah would perish. Conan would crown Mbega with his own hands; then the army must rest here in Zembabwei a while and lick its wounds, until it was restored to full fighting vigor after the long trek through swamp and jungle.
Then south—south to the World’s Edge—and the final battle with Thoth-Amon.
Conan grinned, deep chest expanding, drinking in the fresh night air, feeling the blood surge through his mighty frame and the vigor well up in him again.
Crom, but it felt good to be alive!
SHADOWS IN THE SKULL
ONE: Visions in Smoke
A wisp of green smoke crawled from the bed of glowing coals whereon Rimush, the royal soothsayer of Zembabwei, had cast the throbbing heart of an ibis, the blood of a bull ape, and the forked tongue of an adder.
The coals shed a wavering crimson glow. This dim light turned the grim, heavy features of Conan, king of Aquilonia, into a brooding copper mask. As for the black visage of his companion, Mbega, the newly crowned king of the jungle city, the ruddy, flickering luminance transformed his features into the face of a primitive idol of polished ebony.
There was no sound in the dank, stone-walled chamber, save for the hiss and crackle of the coals and the mumblings of the gaunt old Shemitish conjurer. Rimush huddled in his worn, patched astrologer’s robe, embroidered with the mystic symbols of his craft, above the brazier. The firelight gave his aged head the semblance of a white-bearded skull wherein only the deep-set eyes lived and moved.
Conan stirred restlessly. He disliked all meddling with magic and divination and witchery. His simple faith was long since given to the grim, barbaric god of his distant northern home: Crom, who made few demands upon his followers but who breathed into them the strength to slay their enemies.
“Enough of this mummery!” he growled to Mbega. “Give me a legion of your warriors and I’ll comb the jungles for Thoth-Amon myself, without wizardry!”
The giant black warningly touched Conan’s shoulder, nodding at the aged astrologer. The soothsayer convulsively stiffened, champing his jaws. The whorl of green vapor climbed, eddied, and formed an arabesque the color of jade. Beads of foam appeared at the corners of Rimush’s mouth.
“Any moment, now,” grunted Mbega.
A whisper came from the old Shemite, in which words gradually became audible: “South…south…beating wings in the jungle night… to the great waterfall… then east, to the Land Of No Return… to the great mountains… to the Great Stone Skull…”
The whisper was cut off short as the soothsayer stiffened as if stabbed.
“You will find him at the end of the world, where the serpent-folk ruled of old, ere the coming of men,” said the Shemite in a clear voice. Then he crumpled, sprawling lifelessly at the foot of the smoldering brazier.
“Crom!” growled Conan, the flesh on his corded forearms creeping.
Mbega knelt and fumbled at the old man’s breast. After a moment he stood up, brow wrinkled.
“What’s wrong?” demanded Conan, glimpsing a somber fear in the black monarch whom he had helped to raise to sole rulership after Zembabwei had for centuries been ruled by pairs of twins.
“Dead,” said Mbega slowly. “As if struck by lightning—or as if bitten by a deadly serpent.”
Pallantides was as near to open defiance of his lord as he had ever come in his many years of service to the king of Aquilonia. The old soldier cursed luridly as he struggled to rise from the silken couch whereon he lay with his left leg swathed in bandages.
“Head of Nergal, sire, I’ll not have you larking off into the jungles alone without a company of stout Aquilonians at your back! Guts of Dagon, how can you trust these blacks not to break and run at the first flash of steel? Or not to roast and eat you the first time the provisions run short? If I cannot march with this damned leg I can at least ride …”
Conan caught the general of his host by the shoulder and thrust him back on the couch.
“Crom’s blood, old friend, I like it none too well myself,” he growled. “But what is, is; and what must be, must! My Aquilonians are worn out from hacking a road through leagues of stinking jungle. Half are out of action from wounds got in taking the city, and the other half from fever and dysentery. I can wait no longer. King Mbega offers me the pick of his troops. If I stay here in Zembabwei waiting for my own lads to get back on their feet, Thoth-Amon may have crept back to his Stygian lair by then—or perchance fled to Vendhya or Khitai, or the World’s Edge, for aught I know! The old sorcerer hasn’t lost all his magic, you know. So I can wait no longer!”
“But, sire, these black savages …”
“Are mighty warriors, Pallantides, and let none tell you otherwise!” Conan growled in irritation. “I’ve lived amongst them, fought with them, and fought against them, until they call me ’the black king with a white skin.’ None surpasses them in manhood; my old comrade Juma could take on three of your Aquilonian knights with his bare hands and come out of it grinning. Besides, there are the Amazons.”
Pallantides grunted, too wise to argue further. Two weeks before, a company of black women warriors had appeared at the gates of Great Zembabwei to represent Queen Nzinga at the enthronement of Mbega. They were led by Nzinga’s daughter, a handsome, swaggering, full-breasted brown girl of twenty, lithe as a lioness and half a head taller than the tallest of the Aquilonians.
Pallantides knew that more than twenty years before, when Conan had been a Zingaran buccaneer, he had visited the country of the Amazons. There he had known Queen Nzinga—in all senses of the word. Pallantides also knew that Conan suspected the Amazonian princess (who bore the name Nzinga, like all the queens and heirs apparent of her line) of being his own daughter. So the general, wise in the ways of kings and knowing Conan’s temper, held his tongue.
Hearing of Conan’s plan for an expedition to the remotest regions of the unknown south, where the world came to an end, the younger Nzinga threw down her feather-tufted spear at Conan’s feet, offering herself and her woman warriors as allies. Conan had readily accepted.
“But,” said Pallantides, trying another tack, “it might be a thousand leagues ere you reach this land of no return, whereof the old astrologer told you. Even Mbega has no maps of that region, nor has any of his folk gone thither and returned to tell about it.”
Conan flashed a somber smile. “Right enough, but we’re not only marching. We shall ride the wyverns —myself, Conn, and the pick of Mbega’s royal guard. When Thoth-Amon escaped on one of the brutes, not all were turned loose; enough of the flying devils were left behind in the topless towers to bear a score of us. We’ll fly ahead on wyvern-back while Nzinga leads her war-women and Trocero commands a company of Mbega’s regular spearmen on foot. We’ll scout ahead for the best routes. When we sight this Great Stone Skull whereof the Shemite spoke, we’ll turn back, await the arrival of our ground force, and strike at once from the sky and the jungle.”