There on the ledge stood the temple, gleaming in the rising sun. It was carved out of the sheer rock of the cliff, its great portico facing them. The ledge led to its great bronzen door, green with age.
What race or culture it represented Conan did not try to guess. He unfolded the map and glanced at the notes on the margin, trying to discover a method of opening the door.
But Sassan slipped from his saddle and ran ahead of them, crying out in his greed.
“Fool!” grunted Zyras, swinging down from his horse. “Ostorio left a warning on the margin of the map; something about the god's taking his toll.”
Sassan was pulling at die various ornaments and projections on the portal. They heard him cry out in triumph as it moved under his hands. Then his cry changed to a scream as the door, a ton of bronze, swayed outward and fell crashing, squashing the Iranistani like an insect. He was completely hidden by the great metal slab, from beneath which oozed streams of crimson.
Zyras shrugged. “I said he was a fool. Ostorio must have, found some way to swing the door without releasing it from its hinges.”
One less knife in the back to watch for, thought Conan. “Those hinges are false,” he said, examining the mechanism at close range. “Ho! The door is rising back up again !”
The hinges were, as Conan had said, fakes. The door was actually mounted on a pair of swivels at the lower corners so that it could fall outward like a drawbridge, From each upper corner of the door a chain ran diagonally up, to disappear into a hole near the upper comer of the door-frame. Now, with a distant grinding sound, the chains had tautened and had starte4 to pull the door back up into its former position.
Conan snatched up the lance that Sassan had dropped, Placing the butt in a hollow in the carvings of the inner surface of the door, he wedged the point into the corner of the door frame. The grinding sound ceased and the door stopped moving in a nine-tenths open position.
“That was clever, Conan,” said Zyras. “As the god has now had his toll, the way should be open.”
He stepped up on to the inner surface of the door and strode into the temple. Conan followed. They paused on the threshold and peered into the shadowy interior as they might have peered into a serpent's lair. Silence held the ancient temple, broken only by the soft scuff of their boots.
They entered cautiously, blinking in the half-gloom. In the dimness, a blaze of crimson like the glow of a sunset smote their eyes. They saw the god, a thing of gold crusted with flaming gems.
The statue, a little bigger than life size, was in the form of a dwarfish man standing upright on great splay feet on a block of basalt. The statue faced the entrance, and on each side of it stood a great carven chair of dense black wood, inlaid with gems and mother-of-pearl in a style unlike that of any living nation.
To the left of the statue, a few feet from the base of the pedestal, the floor of the temple was cleft from wall to wall by a chasm some fifteen feet wide. At some time, probably before the temple had been built, an earthquake had split the rock. Into that black abyss, ages ago, screaming victims had doubtless been hurled by hideous priests as sacrifices to the god. The walls were lofty and fantastically carved, the roof dim and shadowy above.
But the attention of the men was fixed on the idol. Though a brutish and repellant monstrosity, it represented wealth that made Conan's brain swim.
“Crom and Ymir!” breathed Conan. “One could buy a kingdom with those rubies!”
“Too much to share with a lout of a barbarian,” panted Zyras.
These words, spoken half-unconsciously between the Corinthian's clenched teeth, warned Conan. He ducked just as Zyras' sword whistled towards his neck; the blade sliced a fold from his headdress. Cursing his own carelessness, Conan leaped back and drew his scimitar.
Zyras came on in a rush and Conan met him. Back and forth they fought before the leering idol, feet scuffing on the rock, blades rasping and ringing. Conan was larger than the Corinthian, but Zyras was strong, agile, and experienced, full of deadly tricks. Again and again Conan dodged death by a hair's breadth.
Then Conan's foot slipped on the smooth floor and his blade wavered. Zyras threw all his strength and speed into a lunge that would have driven his saber through Conan.
But the Cimmerian was not so off balance as he looked With the suppleness of a panther, he twisted his powerful body aside so that the long blade passed under his right armpit, plowing through his loose khilat. For an instant, the blade caught in the cloth. Zyras stabbed with the dagger in his left hand. The blade sank into Conan's right arm, and at the same time the knife in Conan's left drove through Zyras' mail shirt, snapping the links, and plunged between Zyras' ribs, Zyras screamed, gurgled, reeled back, and fell limply.
Conan dropped his weapons and knelt, ripping a strip of cloth from his robe for a bandage, to add to those he already wore. He bound up the wound, tying knots with his fingers and teeth, and glanced at the bloodstained god Jeering down at him. Its gargoyle face seemed to gloat. Conan shivered as the superstitious fears of the barbarian ran down his spine.
Then he braced himself. The red god was his, but the problem was, how to get the thing away ? If it were solid it would be much too heavy to move, but a tap of the butt of his knife assured him that it was hollow. He was pacing about, his head full of schemes for knocking one of the carven thrones apart to make a sledge, levering the god off its base, and hauling it out of the temple by means of the extra horses and the chains that worked the falling front door, when a voice made him whirl.
“Stand where you are!” It was a shout of triumph in the Kezankian dialect of Zamoria.
Conan saw two men in the doorway, each aiming at him a heavy double-curved bow of the Hyrcanian type. One was tall, lean and red-bearded.
“Keraspa!” said Conan, reaching for the sword and the knife he had dropped.
The other man was a powerful fellow who seemed familiar.
“Stand back!” said the Kezankian chief. “You thought I had ran away to my village, did you not? Well, I followed you all night, with the only one of my men not wounded.” His glance appraised the idol. “Had I known the temple contained such treasure I should have looted it long ago, despite the superstitions of my people. Rustum, pick up his sword and dagger.”
The man stared at the brazen hawk's head that formed the pommel of Conan's scimitar.
“Wait!” he cried. “This is he who saved me from torture in Arenjun! I know this blade!”
“Be silent!” snarled the chief. “The thief dies!”
“Nay! He saved my life! What have I ever had from you but hard tasks and scanty pay? I renounce my allegiance, you dog!”
Rustum stepped forward, raising Conan's sword, but then Keraspa turned and released his arrow. The missile thudded into Rustum's body. The tribesman shrieked and staggered back under the impact, across the floor of the temple, and over the edge of me chasm. His screams came up, fainter and fainter, until they could no longer be heard.
Quick as a striking snake, before the unarmed Conan could spring upon him, Keraspa whipped another arrow from his quiver and notched it. Conan had taken one step in a tigerish rush that would have thrown him upon the chief anyway when, without the slightest warning, the ruby-crusted god stepped down from its pedestal with a heavy metallic sound and took one long stride towards Keraspa.
With a frightful scream, the chief released his arrow at the animated statue. The arrow struck the god's shoulder and bounced high, turning over and over, and the idol's long arms shot out and caught the chief by an arm and a leg.
Scream after scream came from the foaming lips of Keraspa as the god turned and moved ponderously towards the chasm. The sight had frozen Conan with horror, and now the idol blocked his way to the exit; either to the right or the left his path would take him within reach of one of those ape-long arms. And the god, for all its mass, moved as quickly as a man.