Roland Green - Conan and The Gods of The Mountains

But even if they came forth from the globe as living flesh, he must face them open-eyed and unflinching. How otherwise could he hope for the power of a Speaker, that would gain him what he most craved?

The smoke was rising from the bowl, and from the eight legs. The legs seemed to glow as if they had been heated over a forge, and Ryku thought he saw one of them bending. Had the weight of the globe suddenly increased out of all measure, because of the Living Wind entering it?

The eight Speakers certainly saw the smoke, and from their looks, it was obvious they knew that it meant something fearful. Or perhaps it was only the smell; when a whiff blew past Ryku, he nearly spewed.

He had barely commanded his stomach when all eight legs of the bowl seemed to melt at once. Smoke disgorged from the dissolving supports, from the bowl, and, as it seemed, from the globe itself.

Courage worthy of front-rank warriors and a lifetime of dedication held the Speakers to their task about the globe. Neither availed them against the Living Wind run wild.

The smoke vanished as if a giant mouth had sucked it all in at one gulp. The bowl and the eight legs became a bubbling pool of molten bronze, searing the eyes as would the mouth of a volcano. The globe wavered, impossibly enough held in midair by powers Ryku dared not imagine.

Then the Speakers or their powers, or both, failed, and the globe fell. It splashed into the molten metal, and gobs of liquid bronze flew about. The Speakers' discipline could not hold against such pain. They screamed and leaped like monkeys beset by bees, or like warthogs attacked by driver ants.

The globe wavered again. The shadow shapes within took a more solid form—two humans, a man and a woman—and then vanished. By this time, the substance of the globe was melting down into the searing metal and feeding a great tongue of liquid fire that reached out toward the circle of Speakers.

The Speakers' silence had broken; now their courage faltered. Yet still they did not run. They opened their circle wider and held their staves with both hands at waist level. Their chanting grew louder, for all that it came from throats raw with pain and fear.

The tongue of fire gathered itself and leaped. Crimson flames as thin as the air wrapped themselves about one of the Speakers' staves. The Speaker dropped it with a cry, but it did not fall.

Instead, the flames whirled the stave up to the ceiling of the cave and held it there while they consumed it. Not even an ash drifted to the floor—but when the flames fell back, they seemed sated, like a well-fed animal.

Far worse was the feeding of the liquid metal. It, too, leaped, to land in a spreading pool about the feet of another Speaker. In a moment, the man had no feet; in another moment, no legs.

In the moment after that, knowledge of what was happening reached the Speaker's brain, as did the agony of being burned alive. Burned? Ryku wished that so innocent a word could describe what was happening to the Speaker.

The Living Wind had this much mercy: the Speaker did not take long to die. Before he began to scream, the fire had already eaten him almost to the waist. Then it swept up past his belly and to his chest, and when it ate his lungs, he fell silent.

His head bobbed briefly on the surface of the liquid fire, now shot with streaks of black as well as crimson. Then it vanished, too, and smoke in a dozen colors swirled over the metal, hiding any bubbles.

Like the flames, the liquid fire made Ryku think of a sated animal as it withdrew toward the tunnel. The crimson flames followed, and as both elements vanished from the cave, the wind died.

The seven living Speakers stumbled out the way they had come. Some seemed blinded; they gripped the shoulders of those ahead to guide their stumbling feet. Others coughed as if mortally sick in the lungs.

Half-blinded, stifled, his own eyes and lungs assaulted by inconceivable stenches and smoke, Ryku clung to his perch until the last Speaker was gone. It would have been much simpler to let go, fall to the floor of the cave, and die a clean and natural death by breaking his head.

Simpler, and very foolish. Now there was something he had not dared to hope for: a vacant place among the Speakers. Add to this the loss of the scrying globe, with little knowledge gained from its use, and even the First Speaker would know that peril unseen in years faced the God-Men of Thunder Mountain.

If Ryku came forward to show how he might prevent Chabano from using this peril against the Speakers, he might receive a hearing. He might even receive initiation as a Speaker. Then it would be his right to wield the power of the Living Wind.

He barred his mind to the thought that in spite of all the forbidden lore he had studied, he might do no better than the Speaker who had died so brutally. If he let himself dwell on that, he would fall from his perch and die!

Valeria was as fine a woman as the Cimmerian had ever held this close. But he did not hold her out of passion, and what he whispered in her ear was most likely not going to make her warm for him.

"We've been guested with food and shelter," he said. "That means we're not likely to be slain by treachery."

"You leave much unsaid," Valeria replied.

"So do the Ichiribu. I know more of their speech than I have let on, so there've been wagging tongues where I could hear. They're none too happy about where we came from, or the magic in our coming."

"What magic? Neither of us could cast a spell to so much as trim a babe's nails."

"We broke the guardian spells on the entrance to the tunnel under the hearthstone. Then we broke the hearthstone—we, or the spells as they went awry. There's too much power about us for their peace of mind."

"Sea demons drown their peace of mind! We're no danger to them. Unless they turn us into one by trying to kill us—"

She broke off as Conan's grip tightened like iron, and he laid a finger across her full lips. "Don't even think that for long. There's a smell of their having a Spirit-Speaker among them."

"A what?"

Conan explained. Spirit-Speakers were no more to his taste than any other sort of magic-wielder. During his time in the Black Kingdoms, he had learned something of them, as he had learned something of every other kind of man who could be friend or foe. He owed it to this as much as to anything else that he had survived being a ruler in the Black Kingdoms, an occupation that often killed men born and bred in these lands.

"Now," he finished, at last relinquishing his grip on her, "this man's not yet our enemy. He may hope to make us friends, to him, to his tribe, or even to both. The way they talk of him, he seems to be a shrewd old fellow."

"Let him be shrewd enough to learn that we mean him no harm, and I'll praise his wisdom in songs."

"Valeria, I've heard you sing. Do you want us at blood feud with these folk, after all their cattle fall dead?"

Valeria growled. It sounded like a she-badger defending her young. Conan laughed softly. "If I said you shame the nightingale, you'd call me astray in my wits. But the truth is, our Spirit-Speaker will surely want us to help him or his folk against some foe they call the Kwanyi. I'd wager these Kwanyi hold the shores of this… Lake of Death, or so it's called."

"Do you know why?"

"No, and I'd be easier in my mind if I did. But if I start asking questions outright, I'll make these folk believe we're spies. If I tell them about where we came from, they'll think we're the ones who overthrew Xuchotl."

"We are, and not ashamed of it! Or are these folk fool enough to think that city of madmen was so great a loss?"

"Who said a word about their missing it? No, they'd no use for it, and shunned it as we might have. But they can't help wondering what magic cast it down. We speak of what we did, and… Do you want to learn what they do to witches in this land?"