“What are you talking about?” Conan demanded. “This is not the first time you have indicated you knew something about this place. I think it is time to tell the rest of us.”
This time the Khitan nodded. “Two millennia ago, Orissa, the first King of Vendhya, was interred in a tomb beneath his capital city, Maharastra. For five centuries he was worshiped as a god in a temple built over his tomb and containing a great figure of Orissa wearing a gold crown said to have been made by melting the crowns and scepters of all the lands he had conquered. Then, in a war of succession, Maharastra was sacked and abandoned by its people. With time the very location of the city was lost. Until now.”
“That is very interesting,” Conan said dryly, “but it has nothing to do with why we are here.”
“On the contrary,” Kang Hou told him. “If my niece dies, if we all die, we must slay the wizard Naipal before he looses what lies in the tomb beneath this temple. The legends that I know speak vaguely of horrors, but there is a prophecy associated with all of them. ‘The army that cannot die will march again at the end of time.’ ”
Conan looked again at the carved armor, then shook his head stubbornly. “I am here for the women first. Then I will see to Naipal and the other two.”
A boot crunched at one side of the chamber and Conan whirled, his broadsword coming up. A Vendhyan soldier, eyes bulging beneath his turbaned helm, clutched at the throwing knife in his throat and fell to lie still on the floor. Kang Hou hurried to retrieve his blade.
“Khitan merchants seem a tough lot,” Hordo said incredulously. “Perhaps we should include him when we divide that crown.”
“Matters at hand.” Conan grunted. “Remember?”
“I do not say leave the women,” the one-eyed man grumbled, “but could we not take the crown as well?”
Conan paid no heed. His interest lay in where the soldier had come from. Only one doorway on that side of the chamber, and that the nearest to the corpse, opened onto stairs leading beneath the temple. At the base of those stairs he could see a glimmer of light, as of a torch farther on.
“Hide the Vendhyan,” he commanded. “If anyone comes looking for him, they’ll not think that wound in his throat was made by a monkey.”
Impatiently hefting his sword, he waited for Hasan and Enam to carry the corpse into a dark corridor and return alone. Without a word, then, he started down.
CHAPTER XXIII
In a huge high-ceilinged chamber far beneath the temple once dedicated to Orissa, Naipal again paused in his work to look with longing expectation at the doorway to his power. Many doorways opened into the chamber, letting on the warren of passages that crossed and criss-crossed beneath the temple. This large marble arch, each stone bearing a cleanly incised symbol of sorcerous power, was blocked by a solid mass of what appeared to be smooth stone. Stone it might appear, but a sword rang on it as against steel and left less mark than it would have on that metal. And the whole of the passage from the chamber to the tomb, a hundred paces in length, was sealed with the adamantine substance, so said the strange maps Masrok had drawn.
The wizard swayed with exhaustion, but the smell of success close at hand drove him on, even numbing the ache behind his eyes. Five of the khorassani he placed on their golden tripods at the points of a carefully measured pentagon he had scribed on the marble floor tiles with chalk made from the burned bones of virgins. Setting the largest of the smooth ebon stones on its own tripod, he threw wide his black-robed arms and began the first incantation.
“Ka-my’een dai’el! Da-en’var hoy’aarth! Khora mar! Khora mar!”
Louder the chant rose, and louder still, echoing from the walls, ringing in the ears, piercing the skull. Karim Singh and Kandar pressed their hands to their ears, groaning. The two women, naked save for their veils, bound hand and foot, wailed for the pain. Only Naipal reveled in the sound, gloried in the reverberations deep in his bones. It was a sound of power. His power. Eye-searing bars of light lanced from the largest khorassani to each of the others, then from each of those smaller stones to each of its glowing brothers, forming a pentagram of burning brilliance. The air between the lines of fire shimmered a
nd rippled as though flame sliced to gossamer had been stretched there, and the whole hummed and crackled with fury.
“There,” Naipal said. “Now the guardian demons, the Sivani, are sealed away from this world unless summoned by name.”
“That is all very well,” Kandar muttered. Actually seeing the wizard’s power had drained some of his arrogance. “But how are we to get to the tomb? My soldiers cannot dig through that. Will your stones’ fire melt that which almost broke my blade?”
Naipal stared at the man who would lead the army that was entombed a hundred paces away—at least the man the world would think led it—and watched his arrogance wilt further. The wizard did not like those who could not keep their minds focused on what they were about. Kandar’s insistence that the women should witness every moment of his triumph—his triumph!—irritated Naipal. For the moment Kandar was still needed, but, Naipal decided, something painfully fitting would make way for the prince’s successor. At least Karim Singh, his narrow face pasty and beaded with sweat, had been cowed to a proper view of matters.
Instead of answering the question, Naipal asked one in tones like the caress of a razor’s edge. “Are you sure you made the arrangements I commanded? Carts filled with street urchins should have arrived by now.”
“They will come,” Kandar answered sullenly. “Soon. I sent my body servant to see if they have come, did I not? But it takes time to gather so many carts. The governor might—”
“Pray he does only what he has been told,” Naipal snarled.
The wizard rubbed at his temples fretfully. All of his fine plans, now thrown into a hodgepodge of haste and improvisation by that accursed pan-kur.
Quickly he took the last four khorassani from their ebony chest and placed them on tripods of gold. So close to the demon’s prison, they would do for the summoning. He was careful to put the tripods well away from the other five to avoid any interaction. A resonance could be deadly. But there would be no resonance, no failure of any kind. The accursed blue-eyed barbarian, the devil spawn, would be defeated.
“E’las eloyhim! Maraath savinday! Khora mar! Khora mar!”
Conan was grateful for the pools of light from the distantly spaced torches, each only just visible from the last. Seemingly hundreds of dark tunnels formed a maze under the temple but the torches made a path to follow. And at the end of that path must lie what he sought.
Suddenly the Cimmerian stiffened. From behind came the sound of pounding feet. Many pounding feet.
“They must have found the body,” Hordo said with a disgusted glare that took in Hasan and Enam.