Conan and the Gods of the Mountain Part 17

"What do you have to wager with, Cimmerian?"

"Not as much as you, I'll be bound, but-"

It was Valeria who held up one hand and pointed with the dagger in the other. "Stairs?"

Conan's eyes followed the gesture. "If they're not, my eyes are failing me."

Valeria grimaced. "It does seem darker along here." Even her courage was not proof against the thought of the light abandoning them. Magical as it was, they owed their lives to it.

"All the more reason to start climbing the stairs, then."

Between them and the entry to the stairs, the water deepened almost to Valeria's waist. They pushed forward through the filth, greasy whorls of floating muck drifting to either side as they advanced. Conan had both sword and dagger drawn now, and held the weapons clear of the water, ready to strike down at the slightest hint of alien presence.

Nothing except muck and foul odors impeded their pa.s.sage, although they were black and dripping from thighs to feet when they reached dry stone. Conan climbed the first few steps, reached a spot where the wall had cracked and now sagged across his path, and went to his hands and knees.

He could barely creep under the stone. Ten paces farther along, he could barely move at all-but the sight ahead made his heart leap with hope.

The stairs wound up into natural darkness that reeked of fish oil, animal fat, and burned grain. In places, the steps had crumbled and would offer precarious footing, even without the darkness. In one place, the stairs seemed to rise up a vertical chimney that would need to be climbed with back against one wall and feet against the other.

Far above, like a single star s.h.i.+ning on a rainy night, a dim yellow light glowed. Firelight, to Conan's eyes, with no magic about it.

Rather, it told of human presence.

The only problem was that he was just a finger's breadth too large to pa.s.s through the gap and begin the ascent. Even his strength might not be equal to s.h.i.+fting the fallen slab, and could well bring the ma.s.s down on top of them if he succeeded.

Thank Mitra, there was another way, or at least another hope. Groping into the open, Conan's hand touched a puddle of congealed grease.

Clearly, it had dripped down from above, where what must be a cook fire burned cheerfully.

Conan started retracing his steps. For a moment, he feared he would become wedged; then he felt Valeria tugging at his ankles. Her lithe strength made the difference. Conan slid free, coughed dust from his throat, and stood up.

"You'll have to go first. Slip through the gap, then pa.s.s all the grease you'll find-"

"Grease?"

"Somebody's done years of cooking up above. The grease must have been dripping-"

"Grease?"

"If I want an echo, woman, I'll shout! Go up and see for yourself if you doubt me."

Valeria shook her head hastily, then grinned. "In truth, why should I be surprised? This is the maddest quest I've ever been on. It would disappoint me if it did not stay so to the end."

Conan kept to himself the thought that the quest might be far from over. They could not be out of the jungle yet, or even into the borderlands of the Black Kingdoms, where the name of Amra carried some weight. The people above might be friendly and welcoming; they might also greet him and Valeria with spears, or even with that cook fire that now seemed so merry. There were not as many cannibals in this land as legend had it, but there were enough.

"Well, then. Let's not stand about scratching each other's fleas like a pair of apes. Up!"

Valeria scrambled up the stairs and vanished ahead. Conan followed, to see Valeria's boots and sole garment lying on the stone. She herself was nowhere to be seen, but from the far side of the gap came the sound of someone desperately trying not to spew.

"You mean to smear yourself with this to pa.s.s through the gap?"

"Do you see any perfumed oil about?"

"Ask a foolish question..." Valeria muttered. Then Conan saw her, nude and pale in the darkness, kneeling to smear grease on the stone at the narrowest pa.s.sage. Only when she had finished that work did she begin tossing handfuls of the grease through the pa.s.sage to the Cimmerian.

The stuff reeked like a kitchen-midden, and its touch made Conan's flesh crawl. Still, he went to work vigorously, smearing the grease on his skin as fast as Valeria pa.s.sed it through to him.

"What happens if you still can't make your way past?" Valeria asked.

"Then you climb up yourself and ask the folk above to come down and chip away a pa.s.sage for me. I'm no more than a finger's breadth too large. It will be no great matter."

He thought he heard Valeria mutter again. "If they don't think I'm a witch or a madwoman, no doubt it will." Then the Cimmerian tossed his weapons and garments through the gap, lay down, and began his pa.s.sage.

The grease helped. He was almost through this time before he became wedged firmly in place. He stretched out both arms for Valeria to grip, and she added her strength and weight to his. He did not budge.

Conan groped with his feet, seeking a stout rest that would let him use the full power of his ma.s.sive legs. One foot flailed in the air; the other found the wall. Conan willed all the strength of his body into the muscles of that leg, felt himself moving even as the rock flayed skin from his back and shoulders, then felt the rock itself move.

If he had summoned all his strength before, he now summoned that and half again as much. He heaved upward and forward, ignoring the wrenching of muscles and the creaking of bones. More skin vanished, and his lungs seemed filled with red-hot sand as he fought for the breath not merely to live by, but that he might fight and prevail.

The Cimmerian's strength was equal to the task. The stone did not slip and crush him. Instead, it held firm for a moment-then, incredibly, it opened wider.

Conan thought he heard Valeria utter what might have been either a prayer or an oath. He knew he felt her long fingers gripping his wrists again, and as the grip tightened, she flung herself backward.

For one more moment, the rock held Conan, and he was not sure which would happen first-his pulling free, or his arms wrenching out of their sockets. Then the tiny widening of the opening, the grease on skin and rock, his own strength, and Valeria's desperate efforts all joined to send him flying out of the gap. He landed almost on top of Valeria, and it was a while before either of them caught their breath enough to notice it. Even then, the woman did not protest. She only smiled and threw an arm around Conan's neck.

He returned the smile and rolled off, then fought breath back into his lungs and stood up. He felt as if he had been wrestling one of the Golden Serpents. His skin was sc.r.a.ped from flesh in half a score of places, and muscles and joints were cursing him roundly. The filth from the tunnel itched and stung wherever it fell on raw places, and altogether he had hardly felt worse during some of the times he had escaped from slavery.

But he had ignored pain even then because he was free, and now he did the same for much the same reason. That magic-haunted maze and its monsters had done their best to make an end of him, or at least to make the maze his and Valeria's tomb. Now they were free of it, even if to do no more than to die on their feet, their blades in hand.

Conan judged that all of his limbs were still attached and could perform their duties. Then he resumed his garments, except for his boots, which he hung about his neck as Valeria carried hers.

Valeria meanwhile had propped her head on one elbow and was contemplating him with what appeared to be amus.e.m.e.nt. Conan returned her contemplation, although with more than amus.e.m.e.nt as she had not yet donned even her one scanty garment.

"If you've done looking at me like a buyer at a donkey-" Conan said at last.

"I'd have you bathed before I bought you," Valeria replied. She held her nose. "Or maybe boiled."

"You could put a he-goat to flight yourself," Conan said. He reached down. "Up, woman. We're not done yet."

While standing in the open on the far side of the gap, he had seen at least two more tunnels leading off from the chamber. The magic light seemed to glow dimly far down one of them; the other was dark and no higher than Conan's waist. The stone at its mouth also seemed curiously worked, not so much carved as eaten, as if by the acids that the sword-makers of Khitai were said to use upon fine blades to etch cunning patterns upon them.

He thought of acids that could eat stone, and he remembered what had nearly taken Valeria, leaving its mark on her ankle. The mark was still there, beneath the filth. The thing that had made it might have also made the tunnel. No, he and Valeria were not done with this ancient maze until they stood in the sunlight again.

The first sign that Seyganko had of anything amiss was Emwaya's stumbling. That would not have told another man much, for Emwaya was dancing in a circle in the center of Seyganko's hut. It was, moreover, a dance so swift and complex that her feet seemed to spurn the earth; even the warrior's keen eye could hardly follow their movements.

She leaped-and instead of landing on her toes, she went to hands and knees. Seyganko sprang forward to help her rise. She shook off his hand and remained kneeling, then stretched her full length on the reed-strewn floor of the hut.

Again Seyganko offered aid; again Emwaya spurned it. Then she turned her head so that one ear was against the floor, and stretched out both arms. Her fingers writhed in gestures the warrior knew came from the Spirit-Speaking rituals.

Emwaya was not sick or hurt, it seemed. But if she had sensed some threat to the Ichiribu from deep within the spirit world, this was small consolation. Seyganko gripped his club and measured the distance to his spears, although reason told him that mere wood and iron could do nothing against such menaces as Emwaya might have heard.

At last she stood, brus.h.i.+ng dried reeds from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Now she allowed Seyganko to support her, lead her to a sleeping mat, pour beer from a jug and offer it. But she sat with the wooden cup in her hand, licking her lips, eyes staring beyond Seyganko into places where he knew he could not follow.