The groggy reptile came to earth with a thunder of batlike wings. Conan hastily untied the thongs that bound him to the saddle and sprang to the grassy ground below, shaking his head to clear his groggy wits. Had the wyvern flown through some updraft of noxious gas?
He peered aloft. The others of his scouting force had encountered the same aerial barrier. One by one, their stunned mounts tumbled from the sky. Foremost among these was Prince Conn. He dangled limply from the saddle-thongs, white face blank and senseless.
Conan’s gut muscles tightened. The taste of fear was like vile brass on his tongue, oily and sour. Sweat started in cold globules from his brows as he watched his son plummet with his steed towards the ground. The aging king growled a wordless, beseeching cry, scarred fist clutching and closing helplessly on empty air.
Then the rush of clean air seemed to rouse the fainting lad; his dulled eyes took in the blurred vista of dead earth swooping up towards him, then they blazed with the unquenchable fires that flamed in the gaze of his mighty sire. Recognizing his danger in an instant, the boy flung every ounce of vigor his lithe young thews contained, jerking back the reins, snapping the winged reptile to semi-alertness even as Conan had done a moment earlier.
Relief gusted through the king of Aquilonia as he watched his son bring the reptile lurching drunkenly—but safely—to earth. He sprinted to where Conn slumped in the saddle, shaken but safe. Conan ripped loose the thongs, helped Conn to earth, and crushed the boy in a fierce, inarticulate embrace.
Not all of the aerial party were so fortunate. Two of Mbega’s guardsmen failed to recover from the effects of the wizardly sky barrier. They crashed to earth with a sickening crunch of snapping bones. The rest, however, managed to bring their numbed reptiles floundering to earth, though sometimes with bone-shaking impacts.
Conan’s wits sharpened as the lingering effects of the uncanny barrier faded. He became aware of something wrong. Conn sensed the strangeness, too, and pointed in wordless amazement.
From aloft they had seen a dead plain of sterile earth or sand stretching to meet the face of the white mountain which was grotesquely hewn into the likeness of a grinning skull. Now they stood knee-deep in the lush grass of a velvety meadow, spangled with small flowers, white and blue and scarlet. In the middle distance, a herd of long-horned cattle placidly cropped the herbage. The meadow sloped away up to the cliff as before.
But now that cliff presented a wholly different aspect. Conan’s volcanic gaze narrowed and a tingle of supernatural awe prickled his nape. For the cliff, which from the air seemed to have been carven into the form of a skull, now appeared as the facade of a splendid, ornate palace.
Across the front of the cliff marched a row of slender pilasters. These upheld a broad architrave carved in reliefs of nymphs and satyrs and many-headed gods. From the center of this architectural mass jutted a shady portico, in back of which a tall portal led into the interior of the cliff.
Conan’s face mirrored his disbelief. The burly barbarian trusted his senses; but now he wondered which was the illusion: the skull-shape seen from aloft, or the exotic, ornate splendor that now confronted him. He asked himself whether the barrier into which he had flown might not have been made of some mephitic gas, which blurred his sight or cast illusions upon his mind.
Behind him, Mbega’s blacks, having recovered from the effects of the aerial barrier, were dismounting and hobbling their reptilian mounts.
Still doubtful, Conan bent to touch the swaying grasses, his massive scarred hands awkwardly gentle with the small, starry flowers. He lifted his head, drawing the clean air deeply into his lungs. The heavy smell of perfumed flowers and of lush grass was strong in his nostrils.
He peered at the cliff. In the ruddy light of the setting sun, veins of quartz sparkled; the ornate white-marble facade was clear and distinct to his eyes. Every detail was sharp and unambiguous.
He shrugged. It may have been a zone of poisonous vapor that had stimulated fantastic visions; or else…But nothing was to be gained by standing here in speculation. Conan’s bent was to resolve such puzzles not by arguing theories with himself, but by investigating the source of the enigma at first hand.
As he started forward, a sharp cry of “Angalia!” made him turn. It was Mkwawa, the officer in command of the guardsmen, pointing. Spear points came up, their blades flashing redly in the setting sun as the warriors snapped to alertness.
Figures were drifting through the pillar-fronted palace, coming toward them through the swaying grass. They were women: dusky, sinuous, with smiling red lips and eyes like black jewels. Little crystal bells were woven through the coils of their hair, so that each lithe figure was surrounded by a faintly chiming music. They were young, well formed, and thinly veiled.
Mkwawa looked a question at Conan. The king frowned, then shrugged.
“The beasts are still groggy from the bad air we flew through,” he said. “Let us give them a rest ere we venture aloft again. Meanwhile, perchance we can learn something from these women, who do not seem dangerous. Tell half your men to go with me as a guard, whilst the rest care for the wyverns. Detail one man to fly back to the army, to set them on our trail.”
The black officer snapped out his orders. Presently Conan, Conn, and their dozen guardsmen started for the enigmatic cliffside palace. Conan tugged the ends of his fierce mustache in thought. His face settled into an impassive bronzen mask, but inwardly he was troubled. Was this an elaborate trap? He had not lived to reach his late fifties without acquiring a strong vein of wary suspiciousness. Something, certainly, was wrong about a place that changed its entire appearance in a few heartbeats.
FOUR: Golden Wine
It was the evening of the third day after Conan’s arrival at the rock-cut palace—actually, a small cave-city. Its name, he had learned, was Yanyoga. Queen Lilit had promised the visitors a splendid feast as soon as she could make the arrangements, and the time of the feast had come.
On the marble floor of a great hall, among a select company of the queen’s kinsmen and ministers, Conan sprawled on a nest of silken cushions and worked away at a horn of honey-hearted wine. The barbarian felt curiously lazy and relaxed. His belly was filled with subtly flavored viands. The golden wine was thin and cold, and through his veins it sang its heady song. To one side of the hall, Conan’s black guardsmen also feasted.
Beyond, wearing his meticulously polished cuirass, young Conn sprawled on the cushions. He ogled a troop of dancing girls whose sinuous bodies wove a graceful sequence of suggestive postures. Their only garments were strings of beads about their waists and loins. Conan grinned indulgently at his son’s fixed gaze but said nothing. ’Twould be only a matter of time before the lad broached his first maidenhead. Conan had not been much older when he began his roamings, in the course of which he had quickly shed the grim puritanism of a Cimmerian village.
The queen of this cavern-palace, Lilit, sat apart from her guests on an onyx dais. Although Conan had questioned her at length, she professed to know nothing of Thoth-Amon or of the skull-like appearance of the cliff as seen from the air. This land, she explained, had many geysers and fumaroles, whence noxious vapors seeped into the air from underground chambers.
That explanation, Conan thought, would have to serve for the time being, albeit his suspicions were not altogether lulled. Still, Queen Lilit, speaking the Shemish trade language current among the black nations, had told a plausible story of how she and her subjects came to be there.