SEVEN: The Witch-woman
The iron fangs of the portcullis hung above the stone-paved way that led to the great gate. The gate itself was a mighty door of black wood, studded with the heads of iron nails. These nails spelt out some protective rune in a tongue even the burly Cimmerian did not know. The door was open.
Conan strode within. The stone walls, he grimly noted, were twenty paces thick. He passed into the central hall of the great keep. It was deserted, save for an old woman with lank gray hair. She squatted atop a circular stone dais, staring into the flickering flames of a dish of red coals. This he knew for Louhi, priestess-queen of the Witchmen, who regarded her as the living avatar of their death-goddess. Boot heels ringing on the stone pave, the half-naked giant strode the breadth of the mighty hall and took a bold stance before the dais, arms folded upon his breast.
After a while, she shifted her cat-green glare from the simmering coals to his face, and Conan felt the impact of her gaze. She was old, lean, and withered, but he sensed an extraordinary personality behind that wrinkled mask.
“Thoth-Amon says I should slay you on the spot, or at very least load you with chains heavy enough to bind ten men,” she began. Her voice was throaty and metallic.
No flicker of emotion touched Conan’s stern visage. “Let me see my son,” he growled.
“Thoth-Amon says you are the most dangerous man in the world,” she continued calmly, as if he had not spoken.
“But I have always thought that Thoth-Amon was himself more dangerous than any other man living. It is odd. Are you really so dangerous?”
“I want to see my son,” he repeated.
You do not look so very dangerous to me,” she went on serenely. “You are strong, yes, and you have great powers of endurance. I doubt not that you are brave enough, as mortal men count bravery. But you are only a man. I cannot understand what there could be about you that moves Thoth-Amon to fear,” she mused.
“He fears me because he knows that I am his doom,” said Conan. “As I shall be yours, unless you take me to my son.”
Her wrinkled face froze, and eyes of lambent green glared coldly into Conan’s. He glowered at her, his gaze of smoldering volcanic blue blazing under black, scowling brows. Her gaze intensified, cold and piercing. His glare did not falter, and it was the green eyes that fell at last and looked away.
Inhumanly tall, impossibly slim, a lantern-jawed, milk-faced man with flaxen hair, clothed in glove-tight black, appeared at Conan’s side as if in response to an unspoken call. The Witchwoman did not look up, and some of the calm strength had left her rasping voice when she spoke.
“Take him to his son,” she said.
They had immured Prince Conn at the bottom of a stone-lined pit sunk deep in the floor of the vast, echoing hall. It was like a dry well, built of the same unmortared stone as the rest of the keep, and it was an effective cell for a prisoner. They lowered Conan into the depths of the hole by a rope which was drawn up after he reached the bottom.
The boy was huddled at one side, against the wall of the shaft, on a pile of damp sacking. He sprang to his feet and flung himself into his father’s arms as soon as he recognized the half-naked giant. Conan crushed the boy to him in a fierce hug, growling sulfurous curses to disguise the unmanly tenderness he felt. Ending the embrace, he seized the boy by the shoulders and shook him, promising him a caning he would never forget if ever again he acted so stupidly. The words were threatening and their tone was gruff, but tears were running down his scarred face.
Then he held the boy at arm’s length, looking him over carefully. The boy’s raiment was torn and dirtied, his face pale and hollow-cheeked, but the king could see that his son was unharmed. He had come through an experience that would have left most other children of his years hysterical. Conan grinned and gave him an affectionate hug.
“Father, Thoth-Amon is in this,” Conn whispered excitedly.
“I know,” grunted Conan.
“Last night the old witch conjured him up,” Conn went on eagerly. “They hung a savage by his heels over the fire and cut his throat and let the blood run down on the coals!! Then she conjured Thoth-Amon’s spirit out of the smoke!”
“What did they talk about?”
“When Thoth-Amon heard that you were crossing the Border Kingdom alone, he wanted her to kill you with her magic! She asked why do that, and he said you were too dangerous to live. They argued for a long time about that.”
Conan rubbed a big hand over his stubbled jaw. “Any idea why the witch refused to kill me?”
“I think she wants to keep you and me alive as a sort of way of keeping Thoth-Amon under her control,” the boy confided. “They are in some sort of plot together, with a lot of other magicians all over the world. Thoth-Amon is a lot stronger and more important than the old witch, but so long as she has you he doesn’t dare try to boss her too much.”
“You may well be right, son,” Conan mused. “Did you overhear anything more about this plot? Plot against what?”
“Against the kingdoms of the West,” Conn said. “Thoth-Amon is the chief of ail the wicked magicians in the South, Khem and Stygia and Kush and Zembabwei, and the jungle countries. There’s a sort of wizard’s guild or something down there called the Black Ring …”
Conan started, voicing an involuntary grunt. “What about the Black Ring?” he demanded.
The boy’s voice rose with excitement. “Thoth-Amon is the high chief of the Black Ring, and he’s trying to league with the White Hand here in the north, and with something way out in the Far East called the Scarlet Circle!”
Conan groaned. He knew of the Black Ring, that ancient brotherhood of evil. He knew of the abominable sorceries practiced by the votaries of the Ring in the shadow-haunted crypts of accursed Stygia. Years ago Thoth-Amon had been a powerful prince of that order, but he had fallen from power and his place had been taken by another, one Thutothmes.Thutothmes was dead, and now it seemed that Thoth-Amon had arised to supremacy at last, at the head of the age-old fraternity of black magicians. That boded ill for the bright young kingdoms of the West.
They talked until Conn had told his father all he knew. Then, worn out by his adventures, the boy fell asleep, pillowed against Conan’s brawny torso. His arm about the shoulders of his son in a gently protective embrace, Conan did not sleep. He stared grimly into the darkness, wondering what the future would bring.
EIGHT: Adepts of the Black Ring
Three men and a woman sat in thronelike chairs of black wood atop the huge stone dais which rose amidst the great hall of Pohiola. The chairs were ranged in a half-circle about a vast copper bowl filled with glowing coals.
Beyond the walls of the cavernous keep, a thunderous storm raged wildly. Lightning slashed through boiling black clouds like knives of flame. Sleety rain whipped against the looming stone pile. The earth shuddered to the peals of thunder, which exploded amidst the storm clouds.
Within the hall, however, the din of the storm was stilled to a murmur. Gloom shrouded the vastness of the mighty keep. The air was dank and cold. The four sat silently, and between them was stretched an ominous tension. They watched one another out of the corners of their eyes.
From far off in the echoing darkness, a double file of the black-clad servants of the White Hand approached. Among them the majestic figure of Conan towered. His dark face was impassive, and firelight gleamed on his naked chest. At his side strode his son, head high. The Witchmen brought them to the foot of the dais.
Conan lifted his glowering gaze to stare directly into the cold black eyes of a powerfully built man in a dark-green robe, with a shaven pate and flesh of dark copper.