L. Camp - Conan Of The Isles

Conan frowned in thought. His gaze wandered to the huge bronze doors across the chamber, beyond the circle of ghoulishly waiting dragons. Why should those doors have been put there in the first place? They must have cost the folk of Ptahuacan a tremendous lot of labor to install. Presumably, a passage led from the other side of them to the world above. But all they were good for was to loose the horde of dragons upon the citizens. Why should the hierarch wish any such thing?

The answer came to Conan's mind with a snap. The dragons served a double purpose. Not only did they dispose of the remains of the sacrificial victims., but also they served as a last-ditch secret weapon, in case the downtrodden populace should rise in rebellion against the priesthood.

And how were they opened? Conan could not be sure, but his glance strayed back to the ancient bronze wheel.

Out in the square, the sacrifice to Xotli must be taking place. Perhaps it had been going on for hours. The square would be packed with people, with the place of honor, nearest to the dragon gates, reserved for the priestly hierarchy. A glorious plan took form in Conan's brain...

Conan stepped through the grille and confronted the wheel. He drew a deep breath, set his burly shoulders to it, and put a surge of strength behind it. Metal groaned under pressure. Conan's boots slid and grated on the stone floor.

He relaxed, took several deep breaths, and tried again. The sinews writhed across his back and shoulders. Somewhere on the other side of the wall, tortured metal squeaked and groaned. Dust and dislodged particles of dirt pattered down. The wheel moved a fingerbreadth, then a fingerbreadth more, with a shriek of metal forced into motion after aeons of inactivity.

Again Conan strained at the wheel., gripping the spokes so fiercely that it almost seemed as if his white-knuckled fingers would sink into the bronze. He heaved until the blood pounded in his temples and roared in his ears. The wheel lurched and revolved several inches. Within the wall somewhere, ponderous counterweights boomed into motion.

Across the chamber, a crack of light appeared between the valves of the great bronze door.

Another heave, and the motion of the wheel became suddenly easier. From beyond the wall came the growl and rumble of the ancient mechanism, forced into motion after so many quiet centuries.

The crack between the doors widened. With a clank of engaging machinery, the wheel began to spin of its own accord, faster and faster. The valves of the bronze door swung wide on screaming hinges. The dragons, which had been peering and shuffling about uneasily as these unaccustomed noises came to their ears, turned toward the opening doors.

Beyond the doors, a steep ramp led up, then turned sharply out of sight. Light came down from above - good, strong daylight. Conan inferred that another pair of doors at the top of the ramp had opened at the same time. These must be in the base of the pyramid or in one of the buildings surrounding the square.

As Conan, gasping for breath, collapsed over the wheel, the dragons, emitting excited bellows, waddled through the open doors. With claws scraping and slipping on the ramp, they poured up the slope and out of sight. From the dark mouths of the tunnels that opened into the chamber, more dragons appeared, roused from their long slumbers by the noise of the mechanism and the roars of their fellows. These joined the procession up the ramp, until forty-odd of the creatures had passed out of sight on their way to the upper world whence a sudden chorus of horrified shrieks wafted faintly down into the chamber.

Still panting, Conan lay against the bottom of the bronze wheel, waiting for his heart to slow down from its wild pounding and smiling grimly through his stiff, gray beard.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE CRYSTAL TALISMAN

The horror from the primal slime lived on

to slake its fiendish lust,

When bright Atlantis fell to dust

beneath the trampling hooves of time.

- The Visions of Epemitreus

As Conan heaved on the great bronze wheel in the passage below the square of the pyramid, a crack appeared in the painted plaster that covered the vertical wall of the bay in the side of the pyramid. The plaster broke into fragments which showered down on the pavement at the feet of the drumming, chanting priests. The bronze doors, which the plaster had masked, groaned and squealed as they swung slowly outwards, even as their mates, the similar doors in the chamber of the dragons below, were opening.

The chant died away to silence as the priests backed away from the opening door valves. They stared at one another; questions flew back and forth. Behind the priests, the thousands of Antillians, from the humble artisans standing in the square to the nobility on the tiers of benches, also shifted uneasily. They stood on tiptoe, peered, and questioned.

On top of the pyramid, the sacrificer paused in the midst of his sacrifices, just as he was about to decardiate the stout foreign ruffian with the graying reddish beard. He leaned over and shouted down a question, which was lost in the gathering hubbub.

A tremendous hiss came from the dark interior behind the opening doors. Out into the sunlight shambled the first of the dragons to reach the top of the ramp - fifty feet of slate-gray scales, waddling briskly on bowed, muscular legs and splayed., long-toed feet. Its raised head swiveled from side to side as its great, green eyes, their pupils contracted to slits by the glare, took in the scene around it. From the tip of its long, crocodilian snout, a yard of pink, forked tongue flicked out.

Screaming, the ranks of the chanting priests broke. The priests fought their way into the crowd of common An-tillians, who in turn surged away from the doors. In the panic push, men and women were thrown down and the life was trampled out of them.

One priest tripped on his feathered robe and fell. Before he could recover, the jaws of the dragon slammed shut upon him. The reptile raised its head. Then it jerked its head back several times, while the elastic skin of its throat swelled and shrank with gulping motions. With each jerk, the priest slid further into its jaws, until only his feet, still wearing their gilded stilt shoes, were visible. A final jerk and gulp, and the dragon's throat bulged as its prey slid down its gullet.

Meanwhile other dragons, with tongues flickering and jaws opening to emit their groaning roars, crowded past the first. There seemed to be no end to the procession. They scrambled across the pavement and plunged into the screaming, clawing mass of Antillians. Some people were crushed beneath the monsters' clawed feet; others were knocked about like dolls by casual swings of huge, scaly tails. Blood lay in puddles and ran into the gutters in sticky scarlet streams. Everywhere., dragons paused to raise their heads and gulp down their prey before plunging on after another mouthful.

Meanwhile, high up od the side of the red-and-black pyramid, a small door opened. Conan stepped out, carrying the sword of black glass with which the guard had been armed. The salt wind from the sea whipped his shaggy gray mane. He expanded his huge chest to take in a lungful of clean, fresh air, welcome after the stenches of the charnel cavern world below.

After he had opened the gates that loosed the reptilian horde upon the people of Ptahuacan, he had mounted the stone stair that slanted up from the platform in the wall of the dragon chamber. Other passages branched off horizontally from this tunnel. But Conan, reasoning that the sacrifice should be taking place on top of the pyramid and that the steepest passageway would bring him out closest to that place, continued on up, until he had come to the door from which he just emerged.