Glowering at the Giant’s Notch, Conan cursed the loss. A vast cloud of dust obscured the pass, until a wind sprang up and swept it out. As the dust thinned, Conan saw that the Notch was now much wider than before and that its slopes were less than vertical. The flume was filled with a huge talus of broken rock—stones of all sizes, from pebbles to fragments as large as a tent. From time to time small slides continued to issue from the sloping walls and clatter down upon the talus. Any man caught beneath that fall of rock would be entombed forever.
One section to the left side of the cliff had curiously remained in place; it now rose from the slope like a narrow buttress. At the pinnacle of this strange formation, Conan saw a pair of small figures, black-robed and cowled. One tossed its arms on high, as if in supplication.
“That’s the king’s sorcerer, Thulandra Thuu, or I’m a Stygian!” rasped a voice nearby.
Conan turned to see Gromel at his elbow. "Think you he sent the earthquake?”
“Aye. And if he'd waited till we were all within the Notch, we’d all be dead. He’s too far for a bowshot; but if I had a bow, I'd chance it.”
An archer heard and handed up his bow, saying: try mine, sir!
Gromel dismounted, drew an arrow to the head, shifted aim by a hair’s breadth, and let fly. The arrow arched high and struck the cliff a score of paces below the top. The small figures vanished.
“A good try,” grunted Conan. “We should have set up a ballista. Gromel, there are broken bones in need of splints; see that the physicians do their work,”
Under lowering brows Conan stared at the talus. His barbarian instincts told him to rally his men, dismount the cavalry, and lead them all in a headlong charge up the steep incline, leaping from rock to rock with naked steel in hand. But experience warned him that this would be a futile gesture, throwing away men's lives to no good purpose. Progress would be slow and laborious; the struggling climbers would be raked by arrows from above; those who survived the climb would be too winded to do battle.
He looked around. "Ho there, Trocero! Prospero! Morenus, send a trooper to tell Publius and Paliantides that I want them here. Now, friends, what next?”
Count Trocero reined his horse closer to Conan’s and studied the mass of broken rock. “The army can in no way ascend the slope. Men afoot might slowly pick their way up—if Numitor did not assail them and the sorcerer cast no other deadly spell. But horses never, nor yet the wains."
“Could we build our own road, replacing the rock-ledge path that lies beneath the rocks?” suggested Prospero.
Trocero considered the idea. “With a thousand workmen, several months, and gold to spare, I’d build you as fine a road as you could wish.”
“We do not have such time, nor money either,' rumbled Conan. “If we cannot go through the Notch, we must go over, under, or around it. Order the men to march a quarter-league back along the road and pitch camp under the forest trees.”
In the royalist camp Thulandra Thuu confronted a furious prince. The exhausted sorcerer, looking much older than was his wont, leaned on Hsiao’s sturdy shoulder. The area on which his pentacle was marked had not fallen with the balance of the cliff, and he had walked the narrow bridge to safety.
"You fool necromancer!” grumbled Numitor. "Since you would resort to magic, you should have waited till the Notch was filled with rebels. Thus we had slain them all. Now they have fled with little scathe.”
“You do not understand these matters. Prince,” replied Thulandra coolly. “I withheld the final step of the enchantment until I saw that something—or someone—had warned the rebel leader of the trap and the rebels had begun to flee. Had I withheld my hand the longer, they would have all escaped scot-free. In any case the flume is blocked. The rebels must needs march east to the Khorotas or west to the Alimane, for they cannot now breach the escarpment.
“And now Your Highness must excuse me. The spell has drained my psychic forces, and I must rest.”
“I never did think much of miracle-mongers,” growled Nimiitor as he turned away.
In the sheltered forest camp that evening, Conan and his officers reviewed a map. “To bypass the escarpment,” said Conan, “we must return to the village of Pedassa, whence the roads depart for the two rivers. But that’s a lengthy march.”
“If there were some little-known break in the long cliff wall,” said Prospero wistfully, “we could, by moving quietly through the woods, steal a march on Numitor and fall upon him unawares."
Conan frowned. "This map shows no such pass; but long ago I learned not to trust mapmakers. You're lucky if they show the rivers flowing in the true direction. Trocero, know you any alternate route?”
Trocero shook his head. “Nay.”
“There must be streams other than the Bitaxa that cut a channel in the cliff.”
Trocero shrugged helplessly. Pallantides entered, saying: “Your pardon. General, but two men of Serdicus’ company have deserted.”
Conan snorted. “Every time we win, men desert from the royalists to join us; every time we lose, they desert us for the king. It is like a game of chance, following Fate’s decree. Send scouts to look for them and hang them if you catch them; but do not make a public matter of it. Order woodsmen at dawn to study the cliff face in both directions for the distance of a league to see if they can find a pathway to the top. And now, friends, leave me to ponder finiiier on the matter.”
Beside his camp bed Conan brooded over a flagon of ale. He restudied the map and cudgeled his braia for a way his army might surmount the escarpment.
Absently he fingered the half-circle of obsidian, which once had hung between the opulent breasts of the dancing girl Alcina, and which was now clasped around his massive neck. He stared down at the object, thinking how right had been his friend Trocero’s suspicion that she had caused the death of old Amulius Procas.
Little by little, the pieces of the puzzle fitted together. Alcina had been sent—either by the king’s spymaster or by the royal sorcerer—to try to murder him. Later she succeeded in slaying General Procas. Why Procas? Because with Conan in his grave, Procas was no longer needed to defend Aquilonia’s mad king. Hence, neither she nor her master knew, at the time of Procas’s death, that Conan had recovered from her deadly elixir.
Well, thought Conan, not without bitterness, he must hereafter be more cautious in choosing his bed-mates. But why should Procas die? Because Alcina's master, whoever he might be, wanted the old man out of his way. This thought led Conan to Thulandra Thuu, for the rivalry between the sorcerer and the general for the king’s favor was notorious.
Conan gripped the ebony talisman as this enlightenment burst upon him. And as he did so, he became aware of a curious sensation. It seemed that voices carried on a dialogue within his skull.
A shadowy form took shape before his eyes. As Conan tensed to snatch his sword, the vision solidified, and he saw a female figure sitting on a black wrought-iron throne. The vision was to some extent transparent—Conan could dimly see the tent wall behind the image—and too nebulous to recognize the woman’s features. But in the shadowy face burned eyes of emerald green.
With every nerve atingle, Conan watched the figure and hearkened to the voices. One was a woman’s dusky voice, and her words followed the movements of the shadow’s lips. The voice was Alcina’s, but she seemed unaware of Conan s scrutiny.
The other voice was dry, metallic, passionless, and spoke Aquilonian with a siblant slur. Conan had never exchanged a word with Thulandra Thuu, although he had seen the mage across the throne room during courtly functions in Tarantia when he was general to the king. But from descriptions of the wizard, he imagined the king’s favorite would speak thus. The voice proceeded: