L. Camp - Conan Of The Isles

'It helps to keep their subjects under control. If they believe there is no other land they could flee to, they will despair of escaping from the iron rule of the priests of Xotli.'

'Tell me of this demon-god and his rites.!’

Metemphoc explained that Xotli, Lord of Terror, was a demon-god of the Elder Night. He appeared unto his worshippers as a rolling cloud of ebony darkness, a vortex of ultimate, boreal cold like that of the winds that blow between the stars. He drank the living souls of those slain upon his towering, pyramidal altars. To sustain the linkages between the Hierarch of the Mysteries in this world and the Demon of Darkness in the nighted depths of its unknown dimensions beyond the universe, the raw life-force of the victims was projected into the other worldly abyss.

Calmly, the fat master thief told how naked captives by the thousands were immolated atop the sky-reaching black-and-crimson ziggurat that Conan had glimpsed amidst the upper tiers of the ancient city. There, on the altars of Ultimate Night, the priest-wizards tore upen the breasts of the living victims, ripped out their hearts with knives of volcanic glass, and offered up the life-force thereof to the whirling cloud of vampyric darkness that formed above the pyramid and hung there for hours, feeding on the living force of human souls. The corpses they dropped down a shaft into some unknown pit or cavern.

Conan growled and his eyes flashed dangerous fires as he listened. The mere idea of human sacrifice did not especially shock him. He had seen too much bloodshed in the course of his long life, and such practices were not unknown among the nations of Conan's own world in the Hyborian Age. But that his own friends and followers should be offered up in such barbarous rites - that was something else!

He sloshed down a mouthful of the pungent wine. 'What then of the Red Shadows ?'

Then Conan learned that the population of Antillia had become so depleted by the constant sacrifices that the wizard-priests had been forced to travel far afield to secure an adequate supply of captives to slake the dark thirsts of Xotli. First they raided the shores of Mayapan; then, when the coastal natives of that barbarous^ sparsely peopled land scattered into their impenetrable forests, the priests had begun to reach out in other directions.

'The Red Shadows, as you call them,' said Metemphoc, 'are the spirit-servants of the Dark One. I had not known until now that the Hierarch (may his spirit be reborn in a tapeworm!) had been raiding the unknown lands to the east. Black Xotli must be hungry indeed! Our own sacrifices have grown so numerous of late that the city is half empty, as you have seen. Whole squares and streets are depleted of people. Thousands have fled to the hills or to the adjoining isles; but the rule of the priests extends thither, too, and they hunt them down. That is the reason for the Sea Guard, which seized your own vessel. It watches the harbors to intercept any who, doubting the word of the priests, essay to flee to some hoped-for land beyond the seas.’

Conan's gaunt, scarred hands opened and closed on emptiness, as if they clenched a human throat between them. 'Now I understand the Red Shadows,' he growled.

'From what I have seen of sorcery in my own world, I know that once a dark force from beyond has obtained a foothold in the world of men, it needs ever-growing numbers of sacrifices to sustain it. The demons of the Elder Dark are - I know not how to put it in your tongue - they are negative; not nothing, but less than nothing. Life-force streams in to fill the void of their false existence. But their vacuum can never be filled and needs ever more and more life-force to sustain their illusion of life. Do you understand me?'

'I do,' said Metemphoc. 'Go on.’

'Why, man, do you know that, unchecked, the servants of Black Xotli would ravage all the lands of this world until the very planet is empty of man ? Nay more, they would then seize upon all higher forms of animal life, to leave the world to the fishes and the worms. It was this whereof the shade of Epemitreus sought to warn me - this perverted form of worship that should have sunk with Atlantis, eight thousand years ago.'

'From what the ghost of your wise man said,' replied Metemphoc, 'it would seem that the gods have chosen you to stand between the world of living men and the Shadow of Evil. Only you can tip the balance between life for the world and death.'

‘Aye’ muttered Conan.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE BLACK LABYRINTH

Red eyes flamed as the blood-mad horde

From the ebon mouth of the tunnel poured.

White fangs gleamed in the cavern black,

As after him swarmed the chittering pack.

- The Voyage of Amra

Down the dark tunnel went Conan. Stalactites hung down like stone drapery from the arched ceiling far above; an occasional drop of limewater fell from their tapering ends. The cavern floor was scummed with mud and be-slimed with the calcareous drippings of the mineral growths above. Here and there, the growth rose from the floor in glassy humps and soaring pillars, where stalagmites had formed.

The cold, moist air reeked with strange, repellent odors. A faint, sour breeze blew in Conan's face. Guided by it, the old Cimmerian paced through the black labyrinth, which stretched for miles beneath the age-old city of Ptahuacan.

Old Metemphoc, the master thief of Ptahuacan, had flatly told Conan that by no conceivable route could a single armed man gain entry into the triple-guarded citadel where Conan's Barachans lay immured, awaiting the Day of Sacrifice two days thence. Countless guards, gates and doors, locks and bars lay between the open streets and the secret heart of the priestly fortress.

Conan's agile mind, however, was not so easily lulled into abandonment of his design. In response to his endless queries the Lord of Thieves bethought him of the ancient labyrinth of caverns and tunnels beneath the city. Whence they had come, no man could say. But the city was built upon a massive outcropping of limestone, and perhaps ages of erosion by underground streams had hollowed them out.

The thieves well knew the tunnels of the highest level and used them often. But the deeper tunnels were shunned even by them; for doubtful, hair-raising rumors circulated of strange cries from these noisome depths, of shambling forms half-glimpsed, and of men who, having dared the deep tunnels, cried out and then vanished forever.

Under Conan's implacable questioning, Metemphoc had reluctantly owned that the deep tunnels might well connect with the dungeons of the Vestibule of the Gods. Still, he had urged Conan to find some more wholesome way into the forbidden citadel. But Conan had proved obdurate to all his well-meant urgings.

At length, Metemphoc had seen that Conan was adamant in his determination to try to rescue his comrades by means of the deep tunnels. With a heartfelt sigh, the fat master thief then called his henchmen into conference. They began to riffle through the archives of the thieves' guild. Ancient maps of the labyrinth of tunnels were unearthed. Conan pored over these, memorizing the twists and turns of the caverns and the landmarks by which he could find his way.

So here was Conan, stalking through the darkness of the deep tunnels, scrambling and leaping over irregularities in the floor of the cavern. In one hand he bore a lantern furnished him by the master thief. This device - a fine example of Antillian technical skill - was a little bronze lamp with a cylindrical reservoir for oil, a spout from which projected a sputtering wick, a disk-shaped reflector of silvered bronze behind the flame, and a handle in back. From long polishing, some of the silver had been worn away from the face of the reflector, revealing the bronze beneath. But the little lamp was still useful for Oman's purposes. It would, Metemphoc had said, burn for several hours before its fuel was exhausted.