Conan the Destroyer (Robert Jordan's Conan Novels 6)

Conan found he was no longer interested in whether the door held or not. “Where is Jehnna?” he demanded. “And Bombatta?”

Zula spun to stare down the dark hall. “I was so worried about you,” she whispered, “that I did not … . If he has hurt her … .”

Conan did not wait to hear the rest. He sped toward the chamber of the great stone head as fast as his legs would carry him. It was empty. Without hesitation he took the one way out other than the way he had come, the unblocked, third corridor.

Grim thoughts filled the Cimmerian’s head. Perhaps Bombatta meant to try spiriting Jehnna back to Shadizar without him, to cheat him of his reward. It would be like the Zamoran, he thought, to rob Valeria of a chance at rebirth just to strike at him. There would be no waiting until Shadizar now. The time for accounting had come.

The corridor ran straight as an arrow, without bend or fork, without a doorway leading to another chamber. Like a tunnel, the corridor had been carved from the living rock of the mountain, its walls, ceiling and floor polished as smooth as marble. Dust dulled and covered all, now, and it was in that dust that the light of his torch showed the traces of those he followed, signs as plain to his keen eyes as ruts in a wagon road. The spaces between the tracks told him they, too, were running.

Suddenly the hallway spilled into a large, square chamber filled with thick, fluted columns set close together and supporting a ceiling lined with cracks and fissures. Many of the columns were filled with cracks as well, some seeming to need only a breath to topple. Dust-covered implements lay among them, fallen braziers with high, tripod legs, things that might have been tall stands to hold torches, others the purposes of which he could not guess.

Conan’s torch was enough for him to make another door ahead, a deeper black rectangle in the shadows. The tracks in the dust led toward that door as well, but he stopped his headlong dash. Bombatta could be hidden anywhere among those myriad columns, and tracks so plain could lead to an ambush. In a cautious crouch, poised to spring in any direction, broadsword at the ready, the big Cimmerian advanced. His eyes probed the dark about him for the slightest hint of movement.

“Jehnna,” he called softly, then louder, “Jehnna!” The name echoed, and he shouted over it, louder still, “Jehnna!”

Then he saw Bombatta, standing beside the far doorway with a thick rod of rusted iron, a good three paces long, in his hands. The Zamoran moved quickly for such a big man. He thrust the rod crossways between two cracked pillars like a lever and heaved.

Time seemed to slow for Conan as the columns bowed outwards in opposite directions, began to fall in chunks. The ceiling above him groaned; bits of stone and dirt pelted him.

In one smooth motion the Cimmerian turned and threw himself back the way he had come, away from collapsing stone. The roar of falling rock reverberated through the chamber. Something struck Conan’s head, and darkness swallowed him.

Jehnna crouched where Bombatta had left her, peering down the corridor down which they had fled. He had fled, she thought angrily. She had been dragged behind him like a bundle. Until reaching this spot he had refused to listen to her pleas that he help the others, then he told her to wait and dashed back. It was all very well that he put her safety first, but he should have listened to her sooner. Golden-red sunlight shone through a crack at the top of a huge stone slab behind her, but she did not look at it. Daylight and the way back to Shadizar lay on the other side of that thick slab, but Conan was still behind her, in the depths of the mountain. What if he were injured, and needed her? What if … .

Running footsteps announced Bombatta’s return. He scrambled up the slope of the corridor in haste.

“Is he unharmed?” she demanded

Dust and dirt covered the scar-faced man, and

blood trickled from a scratch on his cheek. He started past her, then stopped suddenly, his face paling. “Where’s the horn, child?” he demanded. “Zandru’s Nine Hells, if you’ve lost it … .”

“It is here.” She showed him the bundle she had made, wrapped in strips torn from her cloak. It was her destiny, she knew, this quest for the Horn of Dagoth, but there was something about the golden object that made her want not to touch it. The Heart of Ahriman and the Horn of Dagoth were together, swathed in layers of white wool, and she truly wished there were more layers. Many more. “Where is … where are the others?”

“Dead,” Bombatta replied curtly. Huge muscles straining, he threw his weight against the massive slab of stone.

Jehnna sat as if poleaxed. Dead? Conan could not be dead. She could not imagine him as dead. Or the others, she told herself quickly. Zula, Akiro, even Malak, had taken on special meaning to her. She did not want to think of any of them being harmed. But the tall youth with the strange sapphire eyes and the hands that were so gentle when they did not hold a sword, he was more than special. “I cannot believe it,” she whispered. The great slab fell outwards with a crash, raising a cloud of dust and letting in a flood of fading sunlight. “I heard him call my name. I know that I did.”

“Come, Jehnna. We have little time, child.”

Bombatta seized her wrist in his huge hand, pulling her after him through the opening. They were on the very edge of the large courtyard before the temple. The sun sat crimson on the mountaintops to the west. With a wary eye on the tall bronze temple doors and cursing under his breath, Bombatta hurried her into the maze of high stone fingers and spires.

“I will not believe Conan is dead,” she told him.

“One of the marks,” the black-armored man said, pointing to an arrow scratched in the rock. “Now to find the horses. We can cover leagues before full dark.”

“Bombatta, I will not believe it. Did you see him fall?”

“I saw,” Bombatta said harshly. He did not slow his pace, and his iron grip on her wrist made certain she kept up. “He was running, like the thief and dog that he was, and the black warriors cut him down. Him, and the others, as well. I had to pull down the ceiling to block them off from us. Ah, the horses.”

The hobbled animals were still bunched together. Jehnna could not have told whether they had wandered from where they were left even had she thought of it, and her mind was on other matters.

“Perhaps he was only wounded,” she began, then cut off at the strange look Bombatta was giving her. His eyes burned with intensity.

“We could go anywhere,” he said softly. “We could go to Aghrapur. A Turanian wizard, or even King Yildiz himself, would give enough for those things you carry to keep us in luxury for the rest of our lives.” Abruptly he lifted her onto a saddle. “Guard them well, Jehnna,” he said, and began loosing the horses’ hobbles. He tied the reins of each horse he freed to those of the next, and when he mounted he had the other four animals on a long lead.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “We cannot take those.”

“We will need them,” Bombatta said. “It is a long way to Aghrapur.”