Conan hesitated only an instant. To remain where they were meant a battle they could not in all probability win. To rush ahead meant running headlong into the gods alone knew what. “Scatter,” he ordered the others. “Each must find his way as he can. And Hanuman’s own luck go with us all.”

The big Cimmerian waited only long enough to see each man disappear down a separate dark passage, then chose his own. The last glimmers of light faded behind him quickly. He slowed, feeling his way along a smooth wall, placing each foot carefully on a floor he could no longer see. With the blade of his sword he probed the blackness ahead.

Yet abruptly that blackness did not seem as complete as it had. For a moment he thought his eyes might be adapting, but then he realized there was a light ahead. A light that was approaching him. Pressing his back against the wall, he waited.

Slowly the light drew closer, obviously bobbing in someone’s hand. The shape of a man became clear. It was no torch he carried, though he held it like one, but rather what seemed to be a metal rod topped by a glowing ball.

Conan’s jaw tightened at this obvious sorcery. But the man coming nearer looked nothing at all like the one he had seen at Kandar’s palace, the man he had thought was Naipal. Recognition came to him in the same instant that the man stopped, peering into the darkness toward Conan was though he sensed a presence. It was Ghurran, but a Ghurran whose apparent age had been halved to perhaps fifty.

“It is I, herbalist,” the Cimmerian said, stepping away from the wall. “Conan. And I have questions for you.”

The no-longer-so-old man gave a start, then stared at him in amazement. “You actually have one of the daggers! How—? No matter. With that I can slay the demon if need be. Give it to me!”

A part of the silk wrapping had scraped loose against the wall, Conan realized, revealing the faintly glowing hilt of silvery metal. With one hand he pushed the cloth back into place. “I have need of it, herbalist. I will pass over how you have made yourself younger, and how that torch was made, but what do you do in this place, at this time? And why did you abandon me to die from the poison after coming so far?”

“There is no poison,” Ghurran muttered impatiently. “You must give me the dagger. You know not what it is capable of.”

“No poison!” Conan spat. “I have suffered agonies of it. Not a night gone but the pain was enough to twist my stomach into knots and send fire through my muscles. You said you sought an antidote, but you left me to die!”

“You fool! I gave you the antidote in Sultanapur! All you have felt is your body purging itself of the potions I gave you to make you think you were still poisoned.”

“Why?” was all Conan said.

“Because I had need of you. My body was too frail to make this journey alone, but as soon as I saw the contents of those chests, I knew I must. Naipal prepares to loose a great evil on the world, and only I can stop him. But I must have that dagger!”

A widening of Ghurran’s eyes warned Conan as much as did the increase in light. The Cimmerian dropped to a crouch and threw himself to one side, twisting and stabbing as he did. A Vendhyan tulwar sliced above his head, but his own blade went through the soldier’s middle. The dying man fell, and his two fellows, rushing at his heels, went down in a heap atop Conan. The big Cimmerian grappled with them in the light of their fallen torch. Ghurran and his glowing rod had vanished.

In a struggling pile the three men rolled atop the torch. One of the Vendhyans screamed as the flames were ground out against his back, then screamed again as a dagger found his flesh. Conan’s hands closed on the head of the soldier who had slain his companion by mistake. The sound of a neck breaking was a loud snap in the dark.

But it need not be total dark Conan thought as he climbed to his feet. Without hesitation he unwrapped the strange weapon. A dagger, Ghurran had called it, but what monstrous hand could use it so, the Cimmerian wondered. And it could slay the demon. What demon? But for whatever hand or purpose the silvery blade had been wrought, its faint glow was light of a sort in the blackness of the tunnel, if light of an eerie grayish-blue. By it Conan recovered his broadsword and again began a slow progress through the tunnels. Soon he heard voices, hollow echoes in the distant passages. With difficulty he determined a direction. Grimly he moved toward the source.

Thunder smote the chamber, and the obsidian form of Masrok floated in the void of its fiery cage. The silvery weapons held in five of its eight arms looked no different, yet in some fashion they had an aura of having been used recently, a pulsation that reached into the back of a human mind and whispered of violence and death. Karim Singh and Prince Kandar edged back from the huge figure, no matter that it was confined. The bound women seemed frozen with shock and fear.

“You slice matters too finely, O man,” Masrok boomed. Crimson eyes flickered to the blazing pentagram in what could not possibly have been nervousness. “A delay of but another beat of a human heart and my other selves would have been on me. Who would serve you then, O man?”

“Masrok, I command you—” Naipal began when half a score of Vendhyan soldiers burst into the chamber.

“Prince Kandar!” one of them cried. “Someone has—”

“You dare intrude!” Naipal howled. He spoke a word that made even him shiver, and lightning flared from the largest of the khorassani. A single shriek rent the air, and a cinder, only vaguely resembling the soldi

er who had shouted, fell and shattered into charred chunks on the stone floor. Turban-helmed men ran, screaming with terror.

Karim Singh and Prince Kandar both tried to speak at once.

“My men are not to be slain out of hand,” Kandar shouted.

“The message could have been important,” the wazam cried.

Both men clamped their teeth on further words as Naipal’s dark eyes came to rest on them. “He dies whom I wish to die, and what is important is what I say is important. This is important!” The wizard turned his attention back to the demon, which had watched what had happened impassively. “You will open the way to the tomb for me, Masrok. I care not how.”

“From within this cage?” Masrok replied with a hint of its former sarcasm.

“Open it!”

For a moment scarlet eyes met those of ebon, then the demon’s mouth opened, and the sound that emerged sent shudders through human flesh. Only for an instant, however. The sound rose with blinding speed to send a stabbing pain in the ears, and beyond. Yet still Masrok’s straining jaws told of a cry continuing.

Suddenly that call was answered. Suddenly there were—things in the chamber. What exactly or how many it was impossible to tell, for it pained the eye to gaze on them directly, and under a sidelong glance, the numbers and forms seemed to shift constantly. Impressions were all that could be made out, and they enough to bring a lifetime of nightmares. Fangs dripping spittle that bubbled and hissed on the stone. Razor claws gleaming like steel and needle spines glittering like crystal. Sparkling scales in a thousand hues and leathery wings that seemed to stretch farther than the eye could see, farther surely than the walls of the chamber.

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