Jewels of Gwahlur, Reboxed
by Roberta E. Howard
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Roberta E. Howard
A Conyn the Barbarian story.
A Gender Switch Adventure.
Chapter 1.
Paths of Intrigue
The cliffs rose sheer from the jungle, towering ramparts of stone that glinted jade-blue and dull crimson in the rising sun, and curved away and away to east and west above the waving emerald ocean of fronds and leaves. It looked insurmountable, that giant palisade with its sheer curtains of solid rock in which bits of quartz winked dazzlingly in the sunlight. But the woman who was working her tedious way upward was already halfway to the top.
She came from a race of hillwomen, accustomed to scaling forbidding crags, and she was a woman of unusual strength and agility. Her only garment was a pair of short red silk breeks, and her sandals were slung to her back, out of her way, as were her sword and dagger.
The woman was powerfully built, supple as a panther. Her skin was bronzed by the sun, her square-cut black mane confined by a silver band about her temples. Her iron muscles, quick eyes and sure feet served her well here, for it was a climb to test these qualities to the utmost. A hundred and fifty feet below her waved the jungle. An equal distance above her the rim of the cliffs was etched against the morning sky.
She labored like one driven by the necessity of haste; yet she was forced to move at a snail's pace, clinging like a fly on a wall. Her groping hands and feet found niches and knobs, precarious holds at best, and sometimes she virtually hung by her finger nails. Yet upward she went, clawing, squirming, fighting for every foot. At times she paused to rest her aching muscles, and, shaking the sweat out of her eyes, twisted her head to stare searchingly out over the jungle, combing the green expanse for any trace of human life or motion.
Now the summit was not far above her, and she observed, only a few feet above her head, a break in the sheer stone of the cliff. An instant later she had reached it -- a small cavern, just below the edge of the rim. As her head rose above the lip of its floor, she grunted. She clung there, her elbows hooked over the lip. The cave was so tiny that it was little more than a niche cut in the stone, but it held an occupant. A shriveled brown mummy, cross-legged, arms folded on the withered breast upon which the shrunken head was sunk, sat in the little cavern. The limbs were bound in place with rawhide thongs which had become mere rotted wisps. If the form had ever been clothed, the ravages of time had long ago reduced the garments to dust. But thrust between the crossed arms and the shrunken breast there was a roll of parchment, yellowed with age to the color of old ivory.
The climber stretched forth a long arm and wrenched away this cylinder. Without investigation, she thrust it into her girdle and hauled herself up until she was standing in the opening of the niche. A spring upward and she caught the rim of the cliffs and pulled herself up and over almost with the same motion.
There she halted, panting, and stared downward.
It was like looking into the interior of a vast bowl, rimmed by a circular stone wall. The floor of the bowl was covered with trees and denser vegetation, though nowhere did the growth duplicate the jungle denseness of the outer forest. The cliffs marched around it without a break and of uniform height. It was a freak of nature, not to be paralleled, perhaps, in the whole world: a vast natural amphitheater, a circular bit of forested plain, three or four miles in diameter, cut off from the rest of the world, and confined within the ring of those palisaded cliffs.
But the woman on the cliffs did not devote her thoughts to marveling at the topographical phenomenon. With tense eagerness she searched the tree-tops below her, and exhaled a gusty sigh when she caught the glint of marble domes amidst the twinkling green. It was no myth, then; below her lay the fabulous and deserted palace of Alkmeenon.
Conyn the Cimmerian, late of the Baracha Isles, of the Black Coast, and of many other climes where life ran wild, had come to the kingdom of Keshan following the lure of a fabled treasure that outshone the hoard of the Turanian kings.
Keshan was a barbaric kingdom lying in the eastern hinterlands of Kush where the broad grasslands merge with the forests that roll up from the south. The people were a mixed race, a dusky nobility ruling a population that was largely pure Negro. The rulers -- princes and high priests -- claimed descent from a white race which, in a mythical age, had ruled a kingdom whose capital city was Alkmeenon. Conflicting legends sought to explain the reason for that race's eventual downfall, and the abandonment of the city by the survivors. Equally nebulous were the tales of the Teeth of Gwahlur, the treasure of Alkmeenon. But these misty legends had been enough to bring Conyn to Keshan, over vast distances of plain, riverlaced jungle, and mountains.
She had found Keshan, which in itself was considered mythical by many northern and western nations, and she had heard enough to confirm the rumors of the treasure that women called the Teeth of Gwahlur. But its hiding place she could not learn, and she was confronted with the necessity of explaining her presence in Keshan. Unattached strangers were not welcome there.
But she was not nonplussed. With cool assurance she made her offer to the stately, plumed, suspicious grandees of the barbarically magnificent court. She was a professional fighting woman. In search of employment (he said) she had come to Keshan. For a price she would train the armies of Keshan and lead them against Punt, their hereditary enemy, whose recent successes in the field had aroused the fury of Keshan's irascible queen.
The proposition was not so audacious as it might seem. Conyn's fame had preceded her, even into distant Keshan; her exploits as a chief of the black corsairs, those wolves of the southern coasts, had made her name known, admired and feared throughout the black kingdoms. She did not refuse tests devised by the dusky lords. Skirmishes along the borders were incessant, affording the Cimmerian plenty of opportunities to demonstrate her ability at hand-to-hand fighting. Her reckless ferocity impressed the lords of Keshan, already aware of her reputation as a leader of women, and the prospects seemed favorable. All Conyn secretly desired was employment to give her legitimate excuse for remaining in Keshan long enough to locate the hiding place of the Teeth of Gwahlur. Then there came an interruption. Thutmekri came to Keshan at the head of an embassy from Zembabwei.
Thutmekri was a Stygian, an adventurer and a rogue whose wits had recommended her to the twin queens of the great hybrid trading kingdom which lay many days' march to the east. She and the Cimmerian knew each other of old, and without love. Thutmekri likewise had a proposition to make to the queen of Keshan, and it also concerned the conquest of Punt -- which kingdom, incidentally, lying east of Keshan, had recently expelled the Zembabwan traders and burned their fortresses.
Her offer outweighed even the prestige of Conyn. She pledged herself to invade Punt from the east with a host of black spearwomen, Shemitish archers, and mercenary swordswomen, and to aid the queen of Keshan to annex the hostile kingdom. The benevolent queens of Zembabwei desired only a monopoly of the trade of Keshan and his tributaries -- and, as a pledge of good faith, some of the Teeth of Gwahlur. These would be put to no base usage, Thutmekri hastened to explain to the suspicious chieftains; they would be placed in the temple of Zembabwei beside the squat gold idols of Dagon and Derketo, sacred guests in the holy shrine of the kingdom, to seal the covenant between Keshan and Zembabwei. This statement brought a savage grin to Conyn's hard lips.
The Cimmerian made no attempt to match wits and intrigue with Thutmekri and her Shemitish partner, Zargheba. She knew that if Thutmekri won her point, she would insist on the instant banishment of her rival. There was but one thing for Conyn to do: find the jewels before the queen of Keshan made up her mind, and flee with them. But by this time she was certain that they were not hidden in Keshia, the royal city, which was a swarm of thatched huts crowding about a mud wall that enclosed a palace of stone and mud and bamboo.
While she fumed with nervous impatience, the high priestess Gorulga announced that before any decision could be reached, the will of the gods must be ascertained concerning the proposed alliance with Zembabwei and the pledge of objects long held holy and inviolate. The oracle of Alkmeenon must be consulted.
This was an awesome thing, and it caused tongues to wag excitedly in palace and beehive hut. Not for a century had the priests visited the silent city. The oracle, women said, was the Prince Yelay, the last ruler of Alkmeenon, who had died in the full bloom of his youth and beauty, and whose body had miraculously remained unblemished throughout the ages. Of old, priests had made their way into the haunted city, and he had taught them wisdom. The last priestess to seek the oracle had been a wicked woman, who had sought to steal for herself the curiously cut jewels that women called the Teeth of Gwahlur. But some doom had come upon her in the deserted palace, from which her acolytes, fleeing, had told tales of horror that had for a hundred years frightened the priests from the city and the oracle.
But Gorulga, the present high priestess, as one confident in her knowledge of her own integrity, announced that she would go with a handful of followers to revive the ancient custom. And in the excitement tongues buzzed indiscreetly, and Conyn caught the clue for which she had sought for weeks -- the overheard whisper of a lesser priestess that sent the Cimmerian stealing out of Keshia the night before the dawn when the priests were to start.
Riding as hard as she dared for a night and a day and a night, she came in the early dawn to the cliffs of Alkmeenon, which stood in the southwestern corner of the kingdom, amidst uninhabited jungle which was taboo to the common women. None but the priests dared approach the haunted vale within a distance of many mailes. And not even a priestess had entered Alkmeenon for a hundred years.
No woman had ever climbed these cliffs, legends said, and none but the priests knew the secret entrance into the valley. Conyn did not waste time looking for it. Steeps that balked these black people, horsewomen and dwellers of plain and level forest, were not impossible for a woman born in the rugged hills of Cimmeria.
Now on the summit of the cliffs she looked down into the circular valley and wondered what plague, war, or superstition had driven the members of that ancient white race forth from their stronghold to mingle with and be absorbed by the black tribes that hemmed them in.
This valley had been their citadel. There the palace stood, and there only the royal family and their court dwelt. The real city stood outside the cliffs. Those waving masses of green jungle vegetation hid its ruins. But the domes that glistened in the leaves below her were the unbroken pinnacles of the royal palace of Alkmeenon which had defied the corroding ages.
Swinging a leg over the rim she went down swiftly. The inner side of the cliffs was more broken, not quite so sheer. In less than half the time it had taken her to ascend the outer side, she dropped to the swarded valley floor.
With one hand on her sword, she looked alertly about her. There was no reason to suppose women lied when they said that Alkmeenon was empty and deserted, haunted only by the ghosts of the dead past. But it was Conyn's nature to be suspicious and wary. The silence was primodial; not even a leaf quivered on a branch. When she bent to peer under the trees, she saw nothing but the marching rows of trunks, receding and receding into the blue gloom of the deep woods.
Nevertheless she went warily, sword in hand, her restless eyes combing the shadows from side to side, her springy tread making no sound on the sward. All about her she saw signs of an ancient civilization; marble fountains, voiceless and crumbling, stood in circles of slender trees whose patterns were too symmetrical to have been a chance of nature. Forest-growth and underbrush had invaded the evenly planned groves, but their outlines were still visible. Broad pavements ran away under the trees, broken, and with grass growing through the wide cracks. She glimpsed walls with ornamental copings, lattices of carven stone that might once have served as the walls of pleasure pavilions.
Ahead of her, through the trees, the domes gleamed and the bulk of the structure supporting them became more apparent as she advanced. Presently, pushing through a screen of vine-tangled branches, she came into a comparatively open space where the trees straggled, unencumbered by undergrowth, and saw before her the wide, pillared portico of the palace.
As she mounted the broad marble steps, she noted that the building was in far better state of preservation than the lesser structures she had glimpsed. The thick walls and massive pillars seemed too powerful to crumble before the assault of time and the elements. The same enchanted quiet brooded over all. The cat-like pad of her sandaled feet seemed startingly loud in the stillness.
Somewhere in this palace lay the effigy or image which had in times past served as oracle for the priests of Keshan. And somewhere in the palace, unless that indiscreet priestess had babbled a lie, was hidden the treasure of the forgotten queens of Alkmeenon.
Conyn passed into a broad, lofty hall, lined with tall columns, between which arches gaped, their doors long rotted away. She traversed this in a twilight dimness, and at the other end passed through great double-valved bronze doors which stood partly open, as they might have stood for centuries. She emerged into a vast domed chamber which must have served as audience hall for the queens of Alkmeenon.
It was octagonal in shape, and the great dome up in which the lofty ceiling curved obviously was cunningly pierced, for the chamber was much better lighted than the hall which led to it. At the farther side of the great room there rose a dais with broad lapis-lazuli steps leading up to it, and on that dais there stood a massive chair with ornate arms and a high back which once doubtless supported a cloth-of-gold canopy. Conyn grunted explosively and her eyes lit. The golden throne of Alkmeenon, named in immemorial legendry! She weighed it with a practised eye. It represented a fortune in itself, if she were but able to bear it away. Its richness fired her imagination concerning the treasure itself, and made her burn with eagerness. Her fingers itched to plunge among the gems she had heard described by story-tellers in the market squares of Keshia, who repeated tales handed down from mouth to mouth through the centuries -- jewels not to be duplicated in the world, rubies, emeralds, diamonds, bloodstones, opals, sapphires, the loot of the ancient world.
She had expected to find the oracle-effigy seated on the throne, but since it was not, it was probably placed in some other part of the palace, if, indeed, such a thing really existed. But since she had turned her face toward Keshan, so many myths had proved to be realities that she did not doubt that the would find some kind of image or god.
Behind the throne there was a narrow arched doorway which doubtless had been masked by hangings in the days of Alkmeenon's life. She glanced through it and saw that it let into an alcove, empty, and with a narrow corridor leading off from it at right angles. Turning away from it, she spied another arch to the left of the dais, and it, unlike the others, was furnished with a door. Nor was it any common door. The portal was of the same rich metal as the throne, and carved with many curious arabesques.
At her touch it swung open so readily that its hinges might recently have been oiled. Inside she halted, staring.
She was in a square chamber of no great dimensions, whose marble walls rose to an ornate ceiling, inlaid with gold. Gold friezes ran about the base and the top of the walls, and there was no door other than the one through which she had entered. But she noted these details mechanically. Her whole attention was centered on the shape which lay on an ivory dais before her.
She had expected an image, probably carved with the skill of a forgotten art. But no art could mimic the perfection of the figure that lay before her.
It was no effigy of stone or metal or ivory. It was the actual body of a man, and by what dark art the ancients had preserved that form unblemished for so many ages Conyn could not even guess. The very garments he wore were intact -- and Conyn scowled at that, a vague uneasiness stirring at the back of her mind. The arts that preserved the body should not have affected the garments. Yet there they were -- gold breast-plates set with concentric circles of small gems, gilded sandals, and a short silken skirt upheld by a jeweled girdle. Neither cloth nor metal showed any signs of decay.
Yelay was coldly beautiful, even in death. His body was like alabaster, slender yet voluptuous; a great crimson jewel gleamed against the darkly piled foam of his hair.
Conyn stood frowning down at him, and then tapped the dais with her sword. Possibilities of a hollow containing the treasure occurred to her, but the dais rang solid. She turned and paced the chamber in some indecision. Where should she search first, in the limited time at her disposal? The priestess she had overheard babbling to a courtesan had said the treasure was hidden in the palace. But that included a space of considerable vastness. She wondered if she should hide herself until the priests had come and gone, and then renew the search. But there was a strong chance that they might take the jewels with them when they returned to Keshia. For she was convinced that Thutmekri had corrupted Gorulga.
Conyn could predict Thutmekri's plans, from her knowledge of the woman. She knew that it had been Thutmekri who had proposed the conquest of Punt to the queens of Zembabwei, which conquest was but one move toward their real goal -- the capture of the Teeth of Gwahlur. Those wary queens would demand proof that the treasure really existed before they made any move. The jewels Thutmekri asked as a pledge would furnish that proof.
With positive evidence of the treasure's reality, the queens of Zimbabwei would move. Punt would be invaded simultaneously from the east and the west, but the Zembabwans would see to it that the Keshani did most of the fighting, and then, when both Punt and Keshan were exhausted from the struggle, the Zembabwans would crush both races, loot Keshan and take the treasure by force, if they had to destroy every building and torture every living human in the kingdom.
But there was always another possibility: if Thutmekri could get her hands on the hoard, it would be characteristic of the woman to cheat her employers, steal the jewels for herself and decamp, leaving the Zembabwan emissaries holding the sack.
Conyn believed that this consulting of the oracle was but a ruse to persuade the queen of Keshan to accede to Thutmekri's wishes -- for she never for a moment doubted that Gorulga was as subtle and devious as all the rest mixed up in this grand swindle. Conyn had not approached the high priestess herself, because in the game of bribery she would have no chance against Thutmekri, and to attempt it would be to play directly into the Stygian's hands. Gorulga could denounce the Cimmerian to the people, establish a reputation for integrity, and rid Thutmekri of her rival at one stroke. She wondered how Thutmekri had corrupted the high priestess, and just what could be offered as a bribe to a woman who had the greatest treasure in the world under her fingers.
At any rate she was sure that the oracle would be made to say that the gods willed it that Keshan whould follow Thutmekri's wishes, and she was sure, too, that it would drop a few pointed remarks concerning herself. After that Keshia would be too hot for the Cimmerian, nor had Conyn had any intention of returning when she rode way in the night.
The oracle chamber held no clue for her. She went forth into the great throne room and laid her hands on the throne. It was heavy, but she could tilt it up. The floor beneath, a thick marble dais, was solid. Again she sought the alcove. Her mind clung to a secret crypt near the oracle. Painstakingly she began to tap along the walls, and presently her taps rang hollow at a spot opposite the mouth of the narrow corridor. Looking more closely she saw that the crack between the marble panel at that point and the next was wider than usual. She inserted a dagger point and pried.
Silently the panel swung open, revealing a niche in the wall, but nothing else. She swore feelingly. The aperture was empty, and it did not look as if it had ever served as a crypt for treasure. Leaning into the niche she saw a system of tiny holes in the wall, about on a level with a woman's mouth. She peered through, and grunted understandingly. That was the wall that formed the partition between the alcove and the oracle chamber. Those holes had not been visible in the chamber. Conyn grinned. This explained the mystery of the oracle, but it was a bit cruder than she had expected. Gorulga would plant either herself or some trusted minion in that niche, to talk through the holes, the credulous acolytes, black women all, would accept it as the veritable voice of Yelay.
Remembering something, the Cimmerian drew forth the roll of parchment she had taken from the mummy and unrolled it carefully, as it seemed ready to fall to pieces with age. She scowled over the dim characters with which it was covered. In her roaming about the world the giant adventurer had picked up a wide smattering of knowledge, particularly including the speaking and reading of many alien tongues. Many a sheltered scholar would have been astonished at the Cimmerian's linguistic abilities, for she had experienced many adventures where knowledge of a strange language had meant the difference between life and death.
The characters were puzzling, at once familiar and unintelligible, and presently she discovered the reason. They were the characters of archaic Pelishtic, which possessed many points of difference from the modern script, with which she was familiar, and which, three centuries ago, had been modified by conquest by a nomad tribe. This older, purer script baffled her. She made out a recurrent phrase, however, which she recognized as a proper name: Bit-Yakin. She gathered that it was the name of the writer.
Scowling, her lips unconsciously moving as she struggled with the task, she blundered through the manuscript, finding much of it untranslatable and most of the rest of it obscure.
She gathered that the writer, the mysterious Bit-Yakin, had come from afar with her servants, and entered the valley of Alkmeenon. Much that followed was meaningless, interspersed as it was with unfamiliar phrases and characters. Such as she could translate seemed to indicate the passing of a very long period of time. The name of Yelay was repeated frequently, and toward the last part of the manuscript it became apparent that Bit-Yakin knew that death was upon her. With a slight start Conyn realized that the mummy in the cavern must be the remains of the writer of the manuscript, the mysterious Pelishti, Bit-Yakin. The woman had died, as she had prophesied, and her servants, obviously, had placed her in that open crypt, high up on the cliffs, according to her instructions before her death.
It was strange that Bit-Yakin was not mentioned in any of the legends of Alkmeenon. Obviously she had come to the valley after it had been deserted by the original inhabitants -- the manuscript indicated as much -- but it seemed peculiar that the priests who came in the old days to consult the oracle had not seen the woman or her servants. Conyn felt sure that the mummy and this parchment was more than a hundred years old. Bit-Yakin had dwelt in the valley when the priests came of old to bow before dead Yelay. Yet concerning her the legends were silent, telling only of a deserted city, haunted only by the dead.
Why had the woman dwelt in this desolate spot, and to what unknown destination had her servants departed after disposing of their mistress' corpse?
Conyn shrugged her shoulders and thrust the parchment back into her girdle -- she started violently, the skin on the backs of her hands tingling. Startingly, shockingly in the slumberous stillness, there had boomed the deep strident clangor of a great gong!
She wheeled, crouching like a great cat, sword in hand, glaring down the narrow corridor from which the sound had seemed to come. Had the priests of Keshia arrived? This was improbable, she knew; they would not have had time to reach the valley. But that gong was indisputable evidence of human presence.
Conyn was basically a direct-actionist. Such subtlety as she possessed had been acquired through contact with the more devious races. When taken off guard by some unexpected occurrence, she reverted instinctively to type. So now, instead of hiding or slipping away in the opposite direction as the average woman might have done, she ran straight down the corridor in the direction of the sound. Her sandals made no more sound than the pads of a panther would have made; her eyes were slits, her lips unconsciously asnarl. Panic had momentarily touched her soul at the shock of that unexpected reverberation, and the red rage of the primitive that is wakened by threat of peril, always lurked close to the surface of the Cimmerian.
She emerged presently from the winding corridor into a small open court. Something glinting in the sun caught her eye. It was the gong, a great gold disk, hanging from a gold arm extending from the crumbling wall. A brass mallet lay near, but there was no sound or sight of humanity. The surrounding arches gaped emptily. Conyn crouched inside the doorway for what seemed a long time. There was no sound or movement throughout the great palace. Her patience exhausted at last, she glided around the curve of the court, peering into the arches, ready to leap either way like a flash of light, or to strike right or left as a cobra strikes.
She reached the gong, started into the arch nearest it. She saw only a dim chamber, littered with the debris of decay. Beneath the gong the polished marble flags showed no footprint, but there was a scent in the air -- a faintly fetid odor she could not classify; her nostrils dilated like those of a wild beast as she sought in vain to identify it.
She turned toward the arch -- with appalling suddenness the seemingly solid flags splintered and gave way under her feet. Even as she fell she spread wide her arms and caught the edges of the aperture that gaped beneath her. The edges crumbled off under her clutching fingers. Down into utter blackness she shot, into black icy water that gripped her and whirled her away with breathless speed.
Chapter 2.
A God Awakens
The Cimmerian at first made no attempt to fight the current that was sweeping her through lightless night. She kept herself afloat, gripping between her teeth the sword, which she had not relinquished, even in her fall, and did not seek to guess to what doom she was being borne. But suddenly a beam of light lanced the darkness ahead of her. She saw the surging, seething black surface of the water, in turmoil as if disturbed by some monster of the deep, and she saw the sheer stone walls of the channel curved up to a vault overhead. On each side ran a narrow ledge, just below the arching roof, but they were far out of her reach. At one point this roof had been broken, probably fallen in, and the light was streaming through the aperture. Beyond that shaft of light was utter blackness, and panic assailed the Cimmerian as she saw she would be swept on past that spot of light, and into the unknown blackness again.
Then she saw something else: bronze ladders extending from the ledges to the water's surface at regular intervals, and there was one just ahead of her. Instantly she struck out for it, fighting the current that would have held her to the middle of the stream. It dragged at her as with tangible, animate, slimy hands, but she buffeted the rushing surge with the strength of desperation and drew closer and closer inshore, fighting furiously for every inch. Now she was even with the ladder and with a fierce, gasping plunge she gripped the bottom rung and hung on, breathless.
A few seconds later she struggled up out of the seething water, trusting her weight dubiously to the corroded rungs. They sagged and bent, but they held, and she clambered up onto the narrow ledge which ran along the wall scarcely a woman's length below the curving roof. The tall Cimmerian was forced to bend her head as she stood up. A heavy bronze door showed in the stone at a point even with the head of the ladder, but it did not give to Conyn's efforts. She transferred her sword from her teeth to its scabbard, spitting blood -- for the edge had cut her lips in that fierce fight with the river -- and turned her attention to the broken roof.
She could reach her arms up through the crevice and grip the edge, and careful testing told her it would bear her weight. An instant later she had drawn herself up through the hole, and found herself in a wide chamber, in a state of extreme disrepair. Most of the roof had fallen in, as well as a great section of the floor, which was laid over the vault of a subterranean river. Broken arches opened into other chambers and corridors, and Conyn believed she was still in the great palace. She wondered uneasily how many chambers in that palace had underground water directly under them, and when the ancient flags or tiles might give way again and precipitate her back into the current from which she had just crawled.
And she wondered just how much of an accident that fall had been. Had those rotten flags simply chanced to give way beneath her weight, or was there a more sinister explanation? One thing at least was obvious: she was not the only living thing in that palace. That gong had not sounded of its own accord, whether the noise had been meant to lure her to her death, or not. The silence of the palace became suddenly sinister, fraught with crawling menace.
Could it be someone on the same mission as herself? A sudden thought occurred to her, at the memory of the mysterious Bit-Yakin. Was it not possible that this woman had found the Teeth of Gwahlur in her long residence in Alkmeenon -- that her servants had taken them with them when they departed? The possibility that she might be following a will-o'-the-wisp infuriated the Cimmerian.
Choosing a corridor which she believed led back toward the part of the palace she had first entered, she hurried along it, stepping gingerly as she thought of that black river that seethed and foamed somewhere below her feet.
Her speculations recurrently revolved about the oracle chamber and its cryptic occupant. Somewhere in that vicinity must be the clue to the mystery of the treasure, if indeed it still remained in its immemorial hiding place.
The great palace lay silent as ever, disturbed only by the swift passing of her sandaled feet. The chambers and halls she traversed were crumbling into ruin, but as she advanced the ravages of decay became less apparent. She wondered briefly for what purpose the ladders had been suspended from the ledges over the subterranean river, but dismissed the matter with a shrug. She was little interested in speculating over unremunerative problems of antiquity.
She was not sure just where the oracle chamber lay, from where she was, but presently she emerged into a corridor which led back into the great throne room under one of the arches. She had reached a decision; it was useless for her to wander aimlessly about the palace, seeking the hoard. She would conceal herself somewhere here, wait until the Keshani priests came, and then, after they had gone through the farce of consulting the oracle, she would follow them to the hiding place of the gems, to which she was certain they would go. Perhaps they would take only a few of the jewels with them. She would content herself with the rest.
Drawn by a morbid fascination, she re-entered the oracle chamber and stared down again at the motionless figure of the prince who was worshipped as a god, entranced by his frigid beauty. What cryptic secret was locked in that marvelously molded form?
She started violently. The breath sucked through her teeth, the short hairs prickled at the back of her scalp. The body still lay as she had first seen it, silent, motionless, in breast-plates of jeweled gold, gilded sandals and silken skirt. But now there was a subtle difference. The lissom limbs were not rigid, a peach-bloom touched the cheeks, the lips were red--
With a panicky curse Conyn ripped out her sword.
"Crom! He's alive!"
At her words the long dark lashes lifted; the eyes opened and gazed up at her inscrutably, dark, lustrous, mystical. She glared in frozen speechlessness.
He sat up with a supple ease, still holding her ensorcelled stare.
She licked her dry lips and found voice.
"You -- are -- are you Yelay?" she stammered.
"I am Yelay!" The voice was rich and musical, and she stared with new wonder. "Do not fear. I will not harm you if you do my bidding."
"How can a dead man come to life after all these centuries?" she demanded, as if skeptical of what her senses told her. A curious gleam was beginning to smolder in her eyes.
He lifted his arms in a mystical gesture.
"I am a god. A thousand years ago there descended upon me the curse of the greater gods, the gods of darkness beyond the borders of light. The mortal in me died; the god in me could never die. Here I have lain for so many centuries, to awaken each night at sunset and hold my court as of yore, with specters drawn from the shadows of the past. Woman, if you would not view that which will blast your soul for ever, get hence quickly! I command you! Go!" The voice became imperious, and his slender arm lifted and pointed.
Conyn, her eyes burning slits, slowly sheathed her sword, but she did not obey his order. She stepped closer, as if impelled by a powerful fascination -- without the slightest warning she grabbed his up in a bear-like grasp. He screamed a very ungod-like scream, and there was a sound of ripping silk, as with one ruthless wrench she tore off his skirt.
"God! Ha!" Her bark was full of angry contempt. She ignored the frantic writhings of her captive. "I thought it was strange that a prince of Alkmeenon would speak with a Corinthian accent! As soon as I'd gathered my wits I knew I'd seen you somewhere. You're Murielo, Zargheba's Corinthian dancing boy. This crescent-shaped birthmark on your hip proves it. I saw it once when Zargheba was whipping you. God! Bah!" She smacked the betraying hip contemptuously and resoundingly with her open hand, and the boy yelped piteously.
All his imperiousness had gone out of him. He was no longer a mystical figure of antiquity, but a terrified and humiliated dancing boy, such as can be bought at almost any Shemitish market place. He lifted up his voice and wept unashamedly. His captor glared down at his with angry triumph.
"God! Ha! So you were one of the veiled men Zargheba brought to Keshia with her. Did you think you could fool me, you little idiot? A year ago I saw you in Akbitana with that swine, Zargheba, and I don't forget faces -- or men's figures. I think I'll--"
Squirming about in her grasp he threw his slender arms about her massive neck in an abandon of terror; tears coursed down his cheeks, and his sobs quivered with a note of hysteria.
"Oh, please don't hurt me! Don't! I had to do it! Zargheba brought me here to act as the oracle!"
"Why, you sacrilegious little hustler!" rumbled Conyn. "Do you not fear the gods? Crom! Is there no honesty anywhere?"
"Oh, please!" he begged, quivering with abject fright. "I couldn't disobey Zargheba. Oh, what shall I do? I shall be cursed by these heathen gods!"
"What do you think the priests will do to you if they find out you're an imposter?" she demanded.
At the thought his legs refused to support him, and he collapsed in a shuddering heap, clasping Conyn's knees and mingling incoherent pleas for mercy and protection with piteous protestations of his innocence of any malign intention. It was a vivid change from his pose as the ancient prince, but not surprising. The fear that had nerved his then was now his undoing.
"Where is Zargheba?" she demanded. "Stop yammering, damn it, and answer me."
"Outside the palace," he whimpered, "watching for the priests."
"How many women with her?"
"None. We came alone."
"Ha!" It was much like the satisfied grunt of a hunting lion. "You must have left Keshia a few hours after I did. Did you climb the cliffs?"
He shook his head, too choked with tears to speak coherently. With an impatient imprecation she seized his slim shoulders and shook his until he gasped for breath.
"Will you quit that blubbering and answer me? How did you get into the valley?"
"Zargheba knew the secret way," he gasped. "The priestess Gwarunga told her, and Thutmekri. On the south side of the valley there is a broad pool lying at the foot of the cliffs. There is a cave-mouth under the surface of the water that is not visible to the casual glance. We ducked under the water and entered it. The cave slopes up out of the water swiftly and leads through the cliffs. The opening on the side of the valley is masked by heavy thickets."
"I climbed the cliffs on the east side," she muttered. "Well, what then?"
"We came to the palace and Zargheba hid me among the trees while she went to look for the chamber of the oracle. I do not think she fully trusted Gwarunga. While she was gone I thought I heard a gong sound, but I was not sure. Presently Zargheba came and took me into the palace and brought me to this chamber, where the god Yelay lay upon the dais. She stripped the body and clothed me in the garments and ornaments. Then she went forth to hide the body and watch for the priests. I have been afraid. When you entered I wanted to leap up and beg you to take me away from this place, but I feared Zargheba. When you discovered I was alive, I thought I could frighten you away."
"What were you to say as the oracle?" she asked.
"I was to bid the priests to take the Teeth of Gwahlur and give some of them to Thutmekri as a pledge, as she desired, and place the rest in the palace at Keshia. I was to tell them that an awful doom threatened Keshan if they did not agree to Thutmekri's proposals. And, oh, yes, I was to tell them that you were to be skinned alive immediately."
"Thutmekri wanted the treasure where she -- or the Zembabwans -- could lay hand on it easily," muttered Conyn, disregarding the remark concerning herself. "I'll carve her liver yet -- Gorulga is a party to this swindle, of course?"
"No. She believes in her gods, and is incorruptible. She knows nothing about this. She will obey the oracle. It was all Thutmekri's plan. Knowing the Keshani would consult the oracle, she had Zargheba bring me with the embassy from Zembabwei, closely veiled and secluded."
"Well, I'm damned!" muttered Conyn. "A priestess who honestly believes in her oracle, and can not be bribed. Crom! I wonder if it was Zargheba who banged that gong. Did she know I was here? Could she have known about that rotten flagging? Where is she now, boy?"
"Hiding in a thicket of lotus trees, near the ancient avenue that leads from the south wall of the cliffs to the palace," he answered. Then he renewed his importunities. "Oh, Conyn, have pity on me! I am afraid of this evil, ancient place. I know I have heard stealthy footfalls padding about me -- oh, Conyn, take me away with you! Zargheba will kill me when I have served her purpose here -- I know it! The priests, too, will kill me if they discover my deceit.
"She is a devil -- she bought me from a slave-trader who stole me out of a caravan bound through southern Koth, and has made me the tool of her intrigues ever since. Take me away from her! You can not be as cruel as she. Don't leave me to be slain here! Please! Please!"
He was on his knees, clutching at Conyn hysterically, his beautiful tear-stained face upturned to her, his dark silken hair flowing in disorder over him white shoulders. Conyn picked his up and set his on her knee.
"Listen to me. I'll protect you from Zargheba. The priests shall not know of your perfidy. But you've got to do as I tell you."
He faltered promises of explicit obedience, clasping her corded neck as if seeking security from the contact.
"Good. When the priests come, you'll act the part of Yelay, as Zargheba planned -- it'll be dark, and in the torchlight they'll never know the difference. But you'll say this to them: 'It is the will of the gods that the Stygian and her Shemitish dogs be driven from Keshan. They are thieves and tratiors who plot to rob the gods. Let the Teeth of Gwahlur be placed in the care of the general Conyn. Let her lead the armies of Keshan. She is beloved of the gods.'"
He shivered, with an expression of desperation, but acquiesced.
"But Zargheba?" he cried. "She'll kill me!"
"Don't worry about Zargheba," she grunted. "I'll take care of that dog. You do as I say. Here, put up your hair again. It's fallen all over your shoulders. And the gem's fallen out of it."
She replaced the great glowing gem herself, nodding approval.
"It's worth a roomful of slaves, itself alone. Here, put your skirt back on. It's torn down the side, but the priests will never notice it. Wipe your face. A god doesn't cry like a whipped schoolgirl. By Crom, you do look like Yelay, face, hair, figure and all! If you act the god with the priests as well as you did with me, you'll fool them easily."
"I'll try," he shivered.
"Good; I'm going to find Zargheba."
At that he became panicky again.
"No! Don't leave me alone! This place is haunted!"
"There's nothing here to harm you," she assured his impatiently. "Nothing but Zargheba, and I'm going to look after her. I'll be back shortly. I'll be watching from close by in case anything goes wrong during the ceremony; but if you play your part properly, nothing will go wrong."
And turning, she hastened out of the oracle chamber; behind her Murielo squeaked wretchedly at her going.
Twilight had fallen. The great rooms and halls were shadowy and indistinct; copper friezes glinted dully through the dusk. Conyn strode like a silent phantom through the great halls, with a sensation of being stared at from the shadowed recesses by invisible ghosts of the past. No wonder the boy was nervous amid such surroundings.
She glided down the marble steps like a slinking panther, sword in hand. Silence reigned over the valley, and above the rim of the cliffs, stars were blinking out. If the priests of Keshia had entered the valley there was not a sound, not a movement in the greenery to betray them. She made out the ancient broken-paved avenue, wandering away to the south, lost amid clustering masses of fronds and thick-leaved bushes. She followed it warily, hugging the edge of the paving where the shrubs massed their shadows thickly, until she saw ahead of her, dimly in the dusk, the clump of lotus-trees, the strange growth peculiar to the black lands of Kush. There, according to the boy, Zargheba should be lurking. Conyn became stealth personified. A velvet-footed shadow, she melted into the thickets.
She approached the lotus grove by a circuitous movement, and scarcely the rustle of a leaf proclaimed her passing. At the edge of the trees she halted suddenly, crouched like a suspicious panther among the deep shrubs. Ahead of her, among the dense leaves, showed a pallid oval, dim in the uncertain light. It might have been one of the great white blossoms which shone thickly among the branches. But Conyn knew that it was a woman's face. And it was turned toward her. She shrank quickly deeper into the shadows. Had Zargheba seen her? The woman was looking directly toward her. Seconds passed. The dim face had not moved. Conyn could make out the dark tuft below that was the short black locks.
And suddenly Conyn was aware of something unnatural. Zargheba, she knew, was not a tall woman. Standing erect, she head would scarcely top the Cimmerians shoulders; yet that face was on a level with Conyn's own. Was the woman standing on something? Conyn bent and peered toward the ground below the spot where the face showed, but her vision was blocked by undergrowth and the thick boles of the trees. But she saw something else, and she stiffened. Through a slot in the underbrush she glimpsed the stem of the tree under which, apparently, Zargheba was standing. The face was directly in line with that tree. She should have seen below that face, not the tree-trunk, but Zargheba's body -- but there was no body there.
Suddenly tenser than a tiger who stalks her prey, Conyn glided deeper into the thicket, and a moment later drew aside a leafy branch and glared at the face that had not moved. Nor would it ever move again, of its own volition. She looked on Zargheba's severed head, suspended from the branch of the tree by its own long black hair.
Chapter 3.
The Return of the Oracle
Conyn wheeled supplely, sweeping the shadows with a fiercely questing stare. There was no sign of the murdered woman's body; only yonder the tall lush grass was trampled and broken down and the sward was dabbled darkly and wetly. Conyn stood scarcely breathing as she strained her ears into the silence. The trees and bushes with their great pallid blossoms stood dark, still, and sinister, etched against the deepening dusk.
Primitive fears whispered at the back of Conyn's mind. Was this the work of the priests of Keshan? If so, where were they? Was it Zargheba, after all, who had struck the gong? Again there rose the memory of Bit-Yakin and her mysterious servants. Bit-Yakin was dead, shriveled to a hulk of wrinkled leather and bound in her hollowed crypt to greet the rising sun for ever. But the servants of Bit-Yakin were unaccounted for. There was no proof they had ever left the valley.
Conyn thought of the boy, Murielo, alone and unguarded in that great shadowy palace. She wheeled and ran back down the shadowed avenue, and she ran as a suspicious panther runs, poised even in full stride to whirl right or left and strike death blows.
The palace loomed through the trees, and she saw something else -- the glow of fire reflecting redly from the polished marble. She melted into the bushes that lined the broken street, glided through the dense growth and reached the edge of the open space before the portico. Voices reached her; torches bobbed and their flare shone on glossy ebon shoulders. The priests of Keshan had come.
They had not advanced up the wide, overgrown avenue as Zargheba had expected them to do. Obviously there was more than one secret way into the valley of Alkmeenon.
They were filing up the broad marble steps, holding their torches high. She saw Gorulga at the head of the parade, a profile chiseled out of copper, etched in the torch glare. The rest were acolytes, giant black women from whose skins the torches struck highlights. At the end of the procession there stalked a huge Negro with an unusually wicked cast of countenance, at the sight of whom Conyn scowled. That was Gwarunga, whom Murielo had named as the woman who had revealed the secret of the pool-entrance to Zargheba. Conyn wondered how deeply the woman was in the intrigues of the Stygian.
She hurried toward the portico, circling the open space to keep in the fringing shadows. They left no one to guard the entrance. The torches streamed steadily down the long dark hall. Before they reached the double-valved door at the other end, Conyn had mounted the outer steps and was in the hall behind them. Slinking swiftly along the column-lined wall, she reached the great door as they crossed the huge throne room, their torches driving back the shadows. They did not look back. In single file, their ostrich plumes nodding, their leopard skin tunics contrasting curiously with the marble and arabesqued metal of the ancient palace, they moved across the wide room and halted momentarily at the golden door to the left of the throne-dais.
Gorluga's voice boomed eerily and hollowly in the great empty space, framed in sonorous phrases unintelligible to the lurking listener; then the high priestess thrust open the golden door and entered, bowing repeatedly from the waist and behind her the torches sank and rose, showering flakes of flame, as the worshippers imitated their mistress. The gold door closed behind them, shutting out sound and sight, and Conyn darted across the throne-chamber and into the alcove behind the throne. She made less sound than a wind blowing across the chamber.
Tiny beams of light streamed through the apertures in the wall, as she pried open the secret panel. Gliding into the niche, she peered through. Murielo sat upright on the dais, his arms folded, his head leaning back against the wall, within a few inches of her eyes. The delicate perfume of his foamy hair was in her nostrils. She could not see his face, of course, but his attitude was as if he gazed tranquilly into some far gulf of space, over and beyond the shaven heads of the black giants who knelt before him. Conyn grinned with appreciation. "The little gigolo's an actor," she told herself. She knew he was shriveling with terror, but he showed no sign. In the uncertain flare of the torches he looked exactly like the god she had seen lying on that same dais, if one could imagine that god imbued with vibrant life.
Gorulga was booming forth some kind of a chant in an accent unfamiliar to Conyn, and which was probably some invocation in the ancient tongue of Alkmeenon, handed down from generation to generation of high priests. It seemed interminable. Conyn grew restless. The longer the thing lasted, the more terrific would be the strain on Murielo. If he snapped -- she hitched her sword and dagger forward. She could not see the little trollop tortured and slain by black women.
But the chant -- deep, low-pitched, and indescribably ominous -- came to a conclusion at last, and a shouted acclaim from the acolytes marked its period. Lifting her head and raising her arms toward the silent form on the dais, Gorulga cried in the deep, rich resonance that was the natural attribute of the Keshani priestess: "O great god, dweller with the great one of darkness, let thy heart be melted, thy lips opened for the ears of thy slave whose head is in the dust beneath thy feet! Speak, great god of the holy valley! Thou knowest the paths before us; the darkness that vexes us is as the light of the midday sun to thee. Shed the radiance of thy wisdom on the paths of thy servants! Tell us, O mouthpiece of the gods: what is their will concerning Thutmekri the Stygian?"
The high-piled burnished mass of hair that caught the torchlight in dull bronze gleams quivered slightly. A gusty sigh rose from the blacks, half in awe, half in fear. Murielo's voice came plainly to Conyn's ears in the breathless silence, and it seemed cold, detached, impresonal, though she winced at the Corinthian accent.
"It is the will of the gods that the Stygian and her Shemitish dogs be driven from Keshan!" He was repeating her exact words. "They are thieves and traitors who plot to rob the gods. Let the Teeth of Gwahlur be placed in the care of the general Conyn. Let her lead the armies of Keshan. She is beloved of the gods!"
There was a quiver in his voice as he ended, and Conyn began to sweat, believing he was on the point of an hysterical collapse. But the blacks did not notice, any more than they identified the Corinthian accent, of which they knew nothing. They smote their palms softly together and a murmur of wonder and awe rose from them. Gorulga's eyes glittered fanatically in the torchlight.
"Yelay has spoken!" she cried in an exalted voice. "It is the will of the gods! Long ago, in the days of our ancestors, they were made taboo and hidden at the command of the gods, who wrenched them from the awful jaws of Gwahlur the queen of darkness, in the birth of the world. At the command of the gods the Teeth of Gwahlur were hidden; at their command they shall be brought forth again. O star-born god, give us your leave to go to the secret hiding-place of the Teeth to secure them for her whom the gods love!"
"You have my leave to go!" answered the false god, with an imperious gesture of dismissal that set Conyn grinning again, and the priests backed out, ostrich plumes and torches rising and falling with the rhythm of their genuflexions.
The gold door closed and with a moan, the god fell back limply on the dais. "Conyn!" he whimpered faintly. "Conyn!"
"Shhh!" she hissed through the apertures, and turning, glided from the niche and closed the panel. A glimpse past the jamb of the carven door showed her the torches receding across the great throne room, but she was at the same time aware of a radiance that did not emanate from the torches. She was startled, but the solution presented itself instantly. An early moon had risen and its light slanted through the pierced dome which by some curious workmanship intensified the light. The shining dome of Alkmeenon was no fable, then. Perhaps its interior was of the curious whitely flaming crystal found only in the hills of the black countries. The light flooded the throne room and seeped into the chambers immediately adjoining.
But as Conyn made toward the door that led into the throne room, she was brought around suddenly by a noise that seemed to emanate from the passage that led off from the alcove. She crouched at the mouth, staring into it, remembering the clangor of the gong that had echoed from it to lure her into a snare. The light from the dome filtered only a little way into that narrow corridor, and showed her only empty space. Yet she could have sworn that she had heard the furtive pad of a foot somewhere down it.
While she hesitated, she was electrified by a man's strangled cry from behind her. Bounding through the door behind the throne, she saw an unexpected spectacle, in the crystal light.
The torches of the priests had vanished from the great hall outside -- but one priestess was still in the palace: Gwarunga. Her wicked features were convulsed with fury, and she grasped the terrified Murielo by the throat, choking his efforts to scream and plead, shaking his brutally.
"Traitress!" Between her thick red lips her voice hissed like a cobra. "What game are you playing? Did not Zargheba tell you what to say? Aye, Thutmekri told me! Are you betraying your mistress, or is she betraying her friends through you? Gigolo! I'll twist off your false head -- but first I'll--"
A widening of her captive's lovely eyes as he stared over her shoulder warned the huge black. She released his and wheeled, just as Conyn's sword lashed down. The impact of the stroke knocked her headlong backward to the marble floor, where she lay twitching, blood oozing from a ragged gash in her scalp.
Conyn started toward her to finish the job -- for she knew that the black's sudden movement had caused the blade to strike flat -- but Murielo threw his arms convulsively about her.
"I've done as you ordered!" he gasped hysterically. "Take me away! Oh, please take me away!"
"We can't go yet," she grunted. "I want to follow the priests and see where they get the jewels. There may be more loot hidden there. But you can go with me. Where's that gem you wore in your hair?"
"It must have fallen out on the dais," he stammered, feeling for it. "I was so frightened -- when the priests left I ran out to find you, and this big brute had stayed behind, and she grabbed me--"
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