Zula, sneering at both men, put her hands on Jehnna’s shoulders. “Will you tear her apart, then? Or perhaps crush her between you?”
Conan let his hand fall away, and Bombatta was only an instant behind. Zula drew the girl away, speaking softly in her ear. Conan met Bombatta’s glare unblinkingly.
“This will be settled, thief,” the scar-faced man said.
“In Shadizar,” Conan said, and the other jerked a nod of agreement.
When Conan reached the temple, Akiro was attempting to trace with his finger weather-worn carving in the pedestal on which the obsidian statue stood. Little was left.
“What are you trying to do?” Malak laughed at the old wizard. “Read decorative carving? And to speak of it, I’ve seen better scrollwork done by a one-eyed drunkard.”
Sighing, Akiro straightened and dusted his hands. “I could read it, in part at least, were it not so badly eroded. It is script, not scrollwork. This place is much older even than I believed. The last writings in this language were done more than three thousand years ago, and even then it was a dead tongue. Only scattered fragments remain. Perhaps I can find more inside.”
“We are not here to decipher old languages,” Bombatta growled.
Privately Conan agreed, but all he said was, “Let us get on with it, then.”
Rock doves burst from their nests high behind the massive columns, their wingbeats like an explosion in the stillness, as Conan strode to the tall bronze doors, covered with the verdigris of centuries. Through the thick green could be seen a huge open eye, worked deeply into the metal of each door. A large bronze ring hung below each eye.
“We’ll never get that open,” Malak said, eyeing the corrosion.
Conan grasped one thick ring for an experimental heave. To his surprise the door swung out with a squeal of hinges long ungreased. It was but chance that it opened so, he told himself. If men used those doors, they would grease the hinges. He did not like the relief he felt at that. Still, he told himself, he was there to see to Jehnna’s safety, not to flaunt his own bravery.
“Keep a sharp eye,” he commanded, “and your guard up.” Then he led the way inside.
Beyond the great doors the dust of centuries lay thick on the floor. Torches stood along the intricately carved walls in golden brackets, untarnished by the years but festooned in cobwebs. Above them the ceiling was lost in shadows, and the vast hall stretched before them into darkness.
Suddenly Zula screamed as a spider, its outstretched legs wide enough to cover a man’s hand, ran across her bare foot.
“Only a spider,” Malak said, crushing it beneath his foot. He kicked the pulped remains away. “No need to be afraid of a—” The wiry thief cut off with a yelp as Zula’s staff whistled toward his face and halted, quivering, no more than a fingerwidth from his nose. His eyes crossed staring at it.
“I am not afraid,” Zula hissed. “I simply do not like spiders.” Rustlings sounded deeper in the hall, and she peered in that direction nervously. “And rats. I especially do not like rats.”
Conan lifted a torch down from the wall and sheathed his sword to dig into his pouch for flint and steel. “If these still burn,” he began.
Akiro’s lips moved, and fire suddenly danced atop his bunched fingers. He touched it to the torch, which burst aflame with a crackle that was loud in the still hall. “It will burn,” he said.
“Can you not wait until you are asked?” Conan said drily as he stuffed the lighting implements back. Akiro shrugged apologetically.
Bombatta and Malak lit torches from Conan’s, and they started warily down the great hall. Their feet disturbed dust unmarked save for the small tracks of rats. The bones of small animals and birds lay scattered about, some buried in the dust, some atop it. Long had it been since anything had moved there save the rodents and their prey. The chittering of rats, held back by fire and the strange smell of humans, followed them, and the torches’ flames were reflected in hundreds of tiny, hungry eyes. Zula muttered and swiveled her head as if trying to watch all ways at once. Malak no longer made fun of her discomfort; he rigidly avoided looking at those glittering eyes, and mixed curses and prayers to a score of gods in a low monotone.
At the far end of the hall were broad stone steps leading up to a dais atop which sat a high-back throne of marble. Before that throne lay a small pile of age-dried bones, and on its seat another pile with a human skull in its midst, empty, shadowed eye-sockets staring at Conan and his companions. Armor, garments, a crown, whatever that man had once worn, were all long gone to dust.
Jehnna pointed to their right, to a wide, arched doorway half-hidden in the darkness. “There,” she said. “That is the way.”
Conan found himself relieved that the treasure—the horn, had not Jehnna called it?—was not on that throne. Many years before he had taken the sword he carried from a throne not too different from this one, and it had not been an experience he would care to repeat.
Bombatta had moved to the archway as soon as the girl spoke, and thrust his torch through it. “Stairs!” he muttered. “How much deeper into the bowels of this place must we go?”
“As deep as we must,” Conan said. And pushing Bombatta aside, he started down.
xviii
The wide stairs spiraled down into the depths of the mountain, and here Conan could see signs of the earthquake that had toppled the statues in front of the temple. Cracks spider-webbed the walls, and once there was a jog in the stairs, as if someone had cut neatly through them then pushed one part a handspan to the side. True spiders had been there once, as well. Thick cobwebs clogged the passage, but at the touch of the Cimmerian’s torch they hissed and flared and melted away.
“I do not like this, Conan,” Malak whispered loudly. “Ogon strike me, but I don’t.”
“Then wait above,” Conan replied.