Roland Green: Conan and The Gods of The Mountains

Flames puffed up, of the same virulent purple hue as the torch-flame. Thick smoke of similar color rose above them. The Golden Serpent quivered from nose to tail, then flung its head up as if trying to pierce the ceiling to seek the open sky.

It failed. As the monster rose, Conan saw that smoke and flames were pouring from those wounds still open. Green blood turned black; then golden scales around the wounds also blackened. Smoke rose up from throat and body, and at last began pouring from the eyes.

When smoke belched from the serpent's mouth, Conan threw an arm around Valeria's shoulders and drew her close. He could feel her shuddering. He sheathed his sword, dropped his spear, and drew Emwaya close with his other arm.

They stood that way as the flames they had kindled with the aid of Dobanpu's magic devoured both the fungi and the Golden Serpent. The brute was tenacious of its life to the end. Not until the scales were mostly fallen from the flesh did it stop writhing. Even then Conan thought he heard a faint scraping in the middle of the roaring flames, as if the serpent were still twitching feebly.

That was the Golden Serpent's last sign of life. Smoke was rising so thickly now that Conan and others were binding strips of cloth across their mouths and noses. Some wetted the strips as well. Emwaya stared into the smoke, with it plain on her face that she feared for her father.

Then the smoke eddied and disgorged the staggering figure of Dobanpu. He was coughing like a man in the grip of lung-fever, and so nearly blind that he all but spitted himself on Valeria's sword as he rushed up. Valeria and Emwaya held the Spirit-Speaker while he coughed his lungs clear, then gave him water. When he could speak, he nodded his thanks and then gasped:

"We must hasten from here! I do not know how long this fire will burn, nor how much smoke it will yield. The whole underground may become unfit for life."

"I rejoice!" Valeria cried. "We are saved from the Golden Serpent only to stifle like rabbits in a burrow!"

"Save your breath for running," Emwaya said, "and you may not find yourself short of it!" It was the first time in a long while that she had spoken with her old sharpness. Conan took that as a favorable omen; Valeria seemed to think otherwise.

She did follow Emwaya's advice nonetheless. Like the others, she was silent as they hurried back up the tunnel, the smoke thickening behind them.

"Wobeku," the Kwanyi warrior said, "a messenger has come from the watchers of the great crack in the earth."

Wobeku sat up and shook sleep from his head. One of these days, they might use some honorific for him. At least they had given over calling him "the chief's Ichiribu."

"What is the message?"

"He smells smoke."

"Smoke, as from a fire?"

"So he said."

Wobeku rose and girded himself for battle. When that was done, he was fully awake. It was also then that he noticed that the jungle was more silent than usual. Many of the common night birds and insects did not live down by the Kwanyi shore, but the jungle was neither lifeless nor silent under the moon.

Until now. Wobeku felt a chill in his loins. He sensed that he was about to be called on to fight a foe not wholly of this earth.

"See that the drums warn Chabano and Ryku," he ordered. "Have the guards at the lesser crack drive the logs we have ready into it." That would be of no avail against unearthly foes, but if anyone human tried to come through that crack, he would face a long night of ax-work before he succeeded.

"Gather the guards about the great crack," he concluded. "Not too close, but every man is to be fully armed. The baggage boys and the women are to take the trail back to the villages. At once!"

The man almost made the gesture of respect to a chief before he remembered to whom he was making it. Instead, he nodded and ran off.

Wobeku did not run, but he moved at a brisk trot as he headed down the trail toward what he knew might be his last battle. The drums were talking before he was halfway to his post.

SIXTEEN

Conan's band would have gladly run from the smoke faster than they had run from the Golden Serpent. There was no need to stop and thrust a spear at the swirling purple wall hard on their heels.

If only they could breathe! Heat followed the smoke, and long tendrils of both smoke and heat seemed to clutch at the fleeing men like jungle vines. Conan ventured a look behind him, took one of the tendrils squarely in the face, and nearly coughed himself into a fit.

His feet kept moving by a will of their own, however, until his wits ruled them again. He did not falter or fall, and neither did most of the band. Those who did, their comrades lifted and carried along.

No one wanted to see a comrade overtaken by this new peril. It was impossible to imagine living within that purple murk, even had not strange shapes lurked there. Conan had seen them, Valeria had seen them, and even Emwaya and Dobanpu admitted they were there.

The two Spirit-Speakers did not, however, say what those shapes might be. That was about as much as Conan expected of any sorcerer, and he was not much for being rude to those who had saved his life. So he followed Emwaya's advice to keep his breath for running.

"Here we turn," Dobanpu called. He pointed at a narrow slit in the wall to the right. Dried mud lay on the floor about it, and a smell of jungle rot warred with the smoke-reek.

As an escape route, it looked unpromising. But Dobanpu seemed confident, and so far, he had proven trustworthy. Also, Conan had no wish to wait for the fire to burn itself out. Already there was more smoke and heat than all the fungi in all these caves could have produced. Magic was in this fire, magic of a kind that sensible men escaped as quickly as possible, even if they did have a momentarily friendly sorcerer in company.

"Up!" Conan shouted, pointing at the gap. It was a measure of his authority, or of their desperation, that four warriors plunged in without hesitation. Four more followed, carrying the rope ladders and other climbing gear. Before any more could go, Emwaya darted in.

Dobanpu's howl caused her to thrust her head back into view. "Father, I can climb faster than you. Who knows what lies above, or what arts we may need against it? Be ready to help me if I call."

Then she vanished. Dobanpu looked about wildly, no longer a sorcerer, but a father seeing his child plunge into danger. "Valeria!" Conan called. "I'll take the rear. You join the vanguard and see to Emwaya!"

Valeria left with the next handful of warriors. The men were, in fact, now disappearing so fast that Conan wondered if the way to the surface was easier than he had dared believe. If they found stairs—

"Conan!" Valeria called. "There are stairs up to the surface, and open sky above! Make haste!"

Conan needed no urging. The tendrils of smoke seemed to curl about his ankles, then his knees, then his waist. He drew his sword and hacked at them as if they were living foes, and saw them retreat. But his sword was growing hot to his touch, and he knew that if the main mass of smoke surrounded him, he was lost.

Dobanpu shouted three harsh syllables, then reeled against the wall as if the blood had rushed from his head. Conan watched the wall of smoke draw back as the Golden Serpent had done, and felt the heat diminish. Then he all but flung the Spirit-Speaker through the gap and followed him.

The stairs were there, and—incredibly—the Cimmerian could indeed see stars shining above. He dragged Dobanpu toward the rise, but the Spirit-Speaker held back.

"I must restore the guardian spells on these stairs," he gasped, "or the smoke-bringer will follow us, catch us halfway up, burn us in mid-stride—"

"As you wish," Conan said. Arguing with a sorcerer was more futile than fighting with one. The Cimmerian had won battles with many sorcerers, but had won arguments with few.