Then the coil of writhing vapor that was Thoth-Amon’s spirit stiffened and writhed in Conan’s impalpable clutch. Thoth-Amon shrieked soundlessly—an awful, hollow cry of agony and despair. The bodiless thing melted in his grasp. It disintegrated and faded into the cold mists of the void.
Conan floated for a time, panting as it were, while strength seeped back into his exhausted spirit. Somehow he knew that the life force of Thoth-Amon no longer existed.
After a time, Conan came to himself on the sandy shore by the nameless sea. A weeping boy clung to him, begging him to live. He blinked down at the dead thing that lay beneath him, still in the mechanical grip of his aching hands. Then he looked at what the boy had used, and then flung aside:
The sword, soaked to its hilt in black blood. The sword he had given to Conn for his latest birthday. The sword on whose blade, in an idle moment, the old White Druid, Diviatix, had scratched the Sign of Protection… the looped cross of Mitra, Lord of Light. . .the Cross of Life!
And thus it was that the Last Battle ended. For forty years, Conan of Cimmeria and Thoth-Amon of Stygia had faced each other across the great gaming-board of the western world. And now, at the world’s edge, the long duel was over and done.
“He was killing you, Father! I didn’t know what to do, so I stabbed him… And then I th-thought you were dead, you lay so still!” the boy stammered through his tears.
Conan embraced his son. “It’s all right, son. I yet live, though Crom knows I was close to the Black Gates of Death. But they have opened to swallow another’s soul, not mine. Look!”
He nodded at the dead man sprawled on the sands. As they watched, the years at last took their vengeance on the remains of the mightiest magician of shadow-haunted Stygia. Thoth-Amon’s flesh dried, withered, and flaked away into impalpable dust, till a fleshless skull grinned up at them. Then the skull itself became cracked and pitted, while the bones beneath the empty green robe crumbled to powder.
Conan climbed to his feet, turning his back on the remains. He picked up the glimmering gem with which Thoth-Amon had struck him and pitched it far out to sea.
“So end all magical mummery!” he growled. “May it stay at the bottom of the sea for a hundred thousand years!”
NINE: Swords Against Shadows
“The girl turned into a snake-headed monster and would have bitten me to death with her poison fangs,” Conn was explaining, “but I put my blade into her and she died. And when I came back into the hall to tell you, Thoth-Amon was there and the Queen was bending over you, and you were asleep. And then the Amazons came in. and the Princess threw a spear through the Queen, and she turned into a snake-thing, too. But Thoth-Amon and a servant—I couldn’t see him very well, but he had horns and was strong as a bull—carried you from the hall, and no one seemed to be able to see it except me, as if there was a spell on them that hid what was happening from their eyes.
“They took you through a secret panel behind a tapestry and down a long black tunnel cut right through the mountain. Then the other serpent-folk came pouring into the hall. I followed as soon as I could, but when I got outside under the stars I couldn’t tell where you were, because there were big rocks all around and I had to search and search… and then I found you, fighting Thoth-Amon on the sand, and it was like you were asleep, like you were fighting in your sleep…”
Conan nodded somberly, letting the boy talk it all out, while they retraced the way Conn had come. They found the entrance to the secret tunnel that led through the mountain and back into the skull-palace where the eerie powers of the serpent-folk had beclouded their minds with shadows and illusions. A distant clamor echoed faintly down the black length of the tunnel; a furious battle was being waged there in the hall of feasting.
Conan’s grim lips lightened in a huge grin, and his heart rose lustily within his burly breast. After these uncanny magical battles beyond the world, under the watchful gaze of strange black stars, it would be like food and drink to him to face a foe of flesh and blood, with clean steel in his hands!
Back there, he knew, Nzinga and her Amazons, with Trocero and the black warriors of Zembabwei, were battling the last of the serpent-people. They were few enough, Crom knew; but the Amazon girl was spoiling for a good fight, and so was he. And the serpent-folk, old and weary, had not fought mortal foes for untold ages, secure and confident in their remoteness from the lands of men.
With their Queen slain and with Thoth-Amon at last gone down to the cold hells of the unresting dead, they were few, and weaker than they might otherwise have been. No doubt it would be a good, long, hard fight, but Conan grinned at the thought of standing beside the black Amazons in one last battle against world-old foes. He glanced back briefly toward where Thoth-Amon had fallen, thinking: He was the greatest of all the foes I have overcome. I shall miss the old scoundrel, in a way.
“Do you still have your sword?” Conan growled.
“No, father, I left it on the beach.”
“Give me your dagger and go back and get it, then; I’ll wait for you here.” While the boy scampered off, Conan hunted around for a good-sized rock. He found a small, egg-shaped boulder about the size of a human skull, hard and flinty. He hefted it, a gleam of approval in his eyes. He hungered to smash in the heads of a few snake-men with it. Snakes die slow and hard, he knew. But they die at last.
Conn rejoined him, the sword gleaming in his capable young fist. Together, father and son entered the black tunnel and went to join their friends in the last battle against man’s oldest enemies.
The end.