Michael Stackpole - Conan the Barbarian

Tamara looked up. “But if you kill me, you kill your mother!”

Marique laughed. “Who do you think it was who let my mother’s enemies take her in the first place?”

The monk gasped in horror.

Marique grinned.

Her hand rose high and descended . . .

. . . And the Cimmerian great sword took it off cleanly at the wrist.

Marique spun, staring at the blood spurting from the stump, and the barbarian crouched with his back to the gods. She started to say something, but then the monk was again on her feet. Tamara spun and caught Marique with a kick to the belly. The witch flew from the garden, plummeting toward the river, but a stone post one level down stopped her. It snapped her spine, crushing her heart against her breastbone, then burst up through her chest. Impaled, she slid down its glistening length and stared up into the darkness.

Conan and Tamara appeared above her, having descended to that level. They wore pitiless expressions. Marique would have smiled at that if she could. Then they vanished.

Then her father came into view, blood smeared on the side of his face, his sword in hand. The mask displayed shock when he saw her. He jogged over and sank to a knee. “Oh, Marique.”

She tried to smile. You can resurrect me. You can make me whole. Please, Father.

Khalar Zym looked down. “I have loved you always, daughter mine. I would have loved you forever, but this proves that things were as I feared. Unlike your mother, you are simply too weak and, therefore, must be surrendered to Death’s embrace.”

CONAN FOLLOWED TAMARAthrough the labyrinthine Acheronian ruins. They descended another level to get past a point of collapse, then worked their way up two more as the crevasse turned inland. And there, on the other side, he caught sight of what he took to be a sliver of night sky.

“We have to get across.”

Tamara pointed to a bridge. “There.”

Hope speeding them, they raced to the wooden bridge. It consisted of three spans, the middle resting on two columns that the river had not yet eroded. They darted across the first span, which, while a bit rickety, held them above the molten rock. Heat rose from it, but the wood had not charred. Odd sigils had been worked into the wood, and Conan wondered if it had been sorcery which had preserved it.

They had gingerly made their way over the second span when Khalar Zym appeared at the far end. Conan turned to Tamara. “Go. Get free. I’ll stop him.”

“No, Conan, come.” She grabbed his hand. “We can get away.” She pulled and her hand slipped from his as she stepped on the third span.

A board cracked and she fell.

Conan lunged and caught the chain as it unspooled from her forearm. The chain jerked tight, grinding his shoulder socket. He felt her strike the stone column twice. He pulled back and looped a length of chain around his wrist, but the slat he was using for leverage began to splinter.

“Tamara.”

“I’m here, Conan. My shoulder. I can’t pull myself up.”

“I have you.”

“But for how long, Cimmerian?” Khalar Zym sheathed his swords and approached with arms wide. “Beside me, none are equal. Beneath me, all must submit. Before me, all are sacrifices to my glory!” He closed his eyes, basking in the sound of his own voice as it echoed through the ruins. “Maliva, I summon you here!”

Tamara jerked at the end of the chain. An ill wind rose off the lava, lifting clouds of bright embers to swirl like stars through the air. They fell on Conan’s hands and face, singed his hair, and sizzled against his flesh. “Tamara?”

“He’s summoned her, Conan. I can feel her entering me.”

Khalar Zym chuckled and the mask glowed a malevolent green. “Once again, a Cimmerian boy is caught holding a chain.”

“Let me go, Conan. Drop me. I cannot fight her.”

“No!” Conan, on one knee, stabbed the great sword into the railing at the base of the second span. It sank through the wood, splitting a sigil, and struck stone, anchoring him. Muscles bunched and quivered. Pain shot through his shoulders. “His evil kills no more.”

“You’re on one knee already, Cimmerian.” The man-god pressed his hands together. “I offer you what I offered your father. Kneel before me and you shall live.”

“Conan, I can feel her. She’s mad. Worse than the daughter. Drop me!”

“What will it be, Cimmerian?”

Conan, chest heaving, looked at Khalar Zym through sweaty locks of black hair. “Do you want to know why I could beat you when you wielded my father’s sword?”

Khalar Zym’s eyes tightened. “Tell me.”

“He did not make this sword for a boy . . . or a god. He made it for a man.” Conan tightened his hand on the hilt. “A Cimmerian, born to war, who would someday slay a god !”

Conan jammed the blade toward the far side of the bridge. As his father had done when levering ice to cool off a hotheaded son, so Conan levered an aged span of bridge off a tall pillar, and spilled a god toward a hell from which he would never escape. Yet even before Khalar Zym could fall, the realization of doom trapped in his horror-filled eyes, that same blade came up and around in a silver blur. It caught Khalar Zym one last time over the right ear and passed fully through his skull. It shattered the Mask of Acheron as it went, consigning master and device to the molten stone below.

The sword stroke released more magickal energy, which shook the ruins to their heart. Lava splashed below, overrunning what had been the river’s banks. Stones fell. Terraces collapsed. A huge boulder tumbled down and smashed the bridge’s first span to flinders.

Conan stood and hauled Tamara up from the hole. He held tightly for a moment, then retrieved his father’s sword. Together, they tested the planking on the remaining span, but soon gave this up as pointless since falling rocks posed more of a threat to the bridge than breaking boards did to them. At the far side they had to cut back toward the platform as collapsing terraces cut them off from the opening they’d seen.

They burst from the cavern mouth and Conan immediately moved Tamara behind him for cover. While most of Khalar Zym’s troops were fleeing back toward Khor Kalba, two companies had remained. The man-god’s elite guard stood poised with swords drawn to oppose Conan, while fresh recruits huddled in their shadows much as Tamara sheltered in Conan’s.

Conan shook his head. “Your master is dead. His dreams are lost. How many of you wish to die for promises that will never be kept?”

The elite guards’ captain took a step forward. “Some of us fight for duty and honor, not plunder or power.”

A soldier who had lurked behind him stepped halfway around, then pressed a dagger to the throat of Khalar Zym’s man. “And some of us, Captain, fight for our friends.” Behind him, the other recruits similarly threatened Khalar Zym’s last company.

Conan roared with laughter. “Artus! What are you doing here? You were supposed to be warning the world about Khalar Zym.”

“I whispered in the ear of one Shemite merchant, so the rumor is halfway round the world by now.” The Zingaran shrugged. “We actually hadn’t intended on fighting, you see . . . We just wanted to let you know we sail for Hyrkania with the tide, and didn’t want you to be late.”

EPILOGUE

CONAN STOOD ONa hill overlooking a desolate Hyrkanian plain. Tamara stood beside him and Artus waited at the base with the horses. The sun beat down mercilessly, and heat made the land shimmer—though the Cimmerian was certain that the shimmer was not from heat alone.

Tamara smiled. “Yes, Conan, the monastery is out there. I can feel it. I can find my way through the wards.”