Terror twisting her face, Davinia raised the silver-bladed dagger once more. Her eyes bulged when they strayed to the deformed creatures battling Conan, but her hand was steady. Jhandar began again his invocation of the Power.
Raging, Conan tried to clear a path to the altar with his sword, but for each diabolic attacker he hewed to the floor, it seemed that two more appeared.
There was a commotion behind the Cimmerian, and a saffron-robed man staggered into his view, blood streaming down his face, weakly attempting to lift his sword. After him followed Sharak. Conan was so amazed that he hesitated with sword raised, staring. In that momentary respite the creatures tightened their circle about him, and he was forced to redouble his efforts to stop their advance.
Sharak’s staff cracked down on his opponent’s head; blood splattered from that shaven skull, and its owner fell, his sword sliding across the floor to stop against the altar. Irritably Jhandar looked over his shoulder, but did not stop his chant.
Conan lopped off a fang-mouthed head and kicked the headless body, now clawing blindly, into the path of another creature. His sword took an arm, then a leg, sliced away half of a skull, but he knew his sands had almost run out. There were just too many.
Abruptly Sharak was capering beside him, waving his staff wildly.
“Be gone from here,” Conan shouted. “You are too old to—”
Sharak’s staff thumped a leathery skull, and the creature screamed. At the altar Jhandar jerked as if he had felt the blow. Even the other beings froze as sparks ran along the struck creature’s blue-gray skin. With a clap, as of thunder, it was gone, leaving only oily, black smoke that drifted upward.
“I told you it had power!” the old astrologer cried wildly. He struck out again; more greasy smoke rose toward the vaulted ceiling.
Now those hell-born backed warily from Conan and Sharak, rolling fearsome red eyes at Jhandar. For that moment at least, the way to the altar was clear, and Conan dashed for the black stone.
For but a heartbeat Jhandar faced that charge, then howled, “There are Powers you have not seen in your nightmares! Now face them!” and darted across the floor and down a small arched passage. With his departure the creatures, yet whole, seemingly freed of his command, vanished also.
Indecision racked Conan. For all he had sworn the necromancer would be dealt with first, Yasbet lay chained before him, with Davinia … .
As his gaze fell on her, the lithesome blonde backed away, wetting her lips nervously. “I heard you had sailed away, Conan,” she said, then quickly abandoned that line as his face did not soften. “I was forced, Conan. Jhandar is a sorcerer, and forced me to this.” She held the dagger low in the thumb-and-forefinger grip of one who knew how to gut a man, but she did not move toward Conan.
One eye on Davinia, Conan stepped up to the altar. Yasbet writhed in her chains. Four times his blade rang against her bonds, and steel conquered iron.
Ripping the gag from her mouth, Yasbet scrambled from the altar and plucked the dead Cult member’s sword from the floor. Her hair lay wildly on her shoulders and breasts; she looked a naked goddess of battles. “I will deal with this … .” Words failed her as she glared at Davinia.
“Fool wench,” Conan snapped. “I did not free you to see you stabbed!”
“’Tis a Cimmerian fool I see,” Sharak called. He still leaped about like a puppeteer’s stick figure, disposing with his staff of the portions of creatures that littered the chamber floor. “The necromancer must be slain, or all this is for naught!”
The old man spoke true, Conan knew. With a last look at Yasbet, closing grimly in on a snarling Davinia, he turned into the small passage Jhandar had taken.
It was not long, that narrow corridor. Almost immediately he saw a glow ahead, the same silver blue that had shone about the altar, yet a thousand times brighter. Quickening his pace, he burst into a small, unadorned chamber. In its center, surrounded by plain columns, a huge bubble of roiling mist burned and pulsed. Barely, through the brightness, Conan could make out Jhandar beyond the pool, arms outspread, his voice echoing like a bronze bell in words beyond understanding. Yet it was the brilliantly shining mass that held his eye, and hammered at him as it did. From those pulsating mists radiated, neither good nor evil, but the antithesis of being, beating at his mind, threatening to shatter all that was in him into a thousand fragments.
Pale images, washed out by the blinding glow, moved at the edge of his vision, then resolved themselves into two of the leather-skinned beings from the grave, sidling toward him along the wall as if they feared that shining. He knew that he must deal with the creatures and reach Jhandar, reach him quickly, before he completed whatever sorceries he was embarked upon, yet within the Cimmerian there was struggle. Never had he given in while he had strength or means to resist, but a thought strange to him now crept into his mind. Surrender. The mist was overpowering. Then, as if the words were a spark, rage flared in him. As a boy in the icy mountains of Cimmeria he had seen men, caught in an avalanche, hacking at towering waves of snow and dirt as they were swept away, refusing to accept the thing that killed them. He would not surrender. He—would—not—surrender !
A wordless scream of primal rage burst from Conan’s throat. He spun, swinging his sword like an axe. Head and trunk of the foremost creature toppled, sliced cleanly from its hips and legs. Jhandar, rang in the Cimmerian’s brain, and he was moving even as his steel broke free of that unnatural flesh.
But such a creature could not be slain like a mortal. The upper portion twisted as it fell, seized Conan about the legs, and together they crashed to the stone floor. Jagged teeth slashed Conan’s thigh, yet in the beserker rage that gripped him he was as much beast as that he fought. His fisted hilt smashed into the creature’s skull, again and again, till he pounded naught but slimy pulp. Yet those mindless arms gripped him still.
And Jhandar’s chant continued unabated, as if he were too enmeshed in the Power to even be aware of another’s presence.
Claws clattering on marble warned the Cimmerian that the second creature drew near. Wildly, half-blinded by the ever-brightening glow, Conan struck out. His blade caught but an ankle, yet the thing stumbled, flailed for balance … and fell shrieking against the shining dome. Lightnings arcked and crackled, and the creature was gone.
The way to Jhandar was open. Grim determination limning his icy eyes, Conan crawled. Animal fury burned in his brain. Now the sorcerer would die, if he had to rip out his throat with bared teeth. Yet in a small, sane corner of his mind there was despair. Jhandar’s ringing incantation was rising to a crescendo. The necromancer’s foul work would be done before Conan reached him. Powers of darkness would be loosed on the land.
Something about the way the last beast had disappeared tugged at him. It reminded him of … what? The barrier to the Blasted Lands. Feverishly he dug into his pouch—it had to be there!—and drew out the small leather bag of powder Samarra had given him. Almost did he laugh. If nightmares were loosed to walk, still this time Jhandar would not escape. Undoing the rawhide strings that held the bag closed, he carefully tossed it ahead of him, toward the oblivious, chanting sorcerer. On the very edge of the burning dome the bag fell, open, contents spilling broadly. It had to be enough.
“Your vengeance, Samarra,” Conan murmured, and slowly, coldly, spoke the words the shamaness had taught him. As the last syllable was pronounced, a shimmer sprang into being above the powder.
Jhandar’s words of incantation faltered. For a brief moment he stared at the shimmer. Then he screamed. “No! Not yet! Not till I am gone!”
Through that shimmer, that weakened area of the wards that held the Pool of the Ultimate, flowed something. The mind could not encompass it, the eye refused to see it. Silver flecks danced in air that was too azure. No more did it seem, yet an ever-deepening channel was etched into the marble floor as it came from the pool. It touched pillars about the circumference of the pool; abruptly half pillars dangled in the air. The ceiling creaked. It washed against a wall, and stones ceased to exist. The wall and part of the ceiling above collapsed. The rubble fell into that inexorable tide of nonexistence, and was not.
Some measure of sanity returned to Conan in the face of that horror. Part of it moved toward him, now. Desperately he sliced with his broadsword at the undying arms that gripped his legs.