Conan and the Gods of the Mountain Part 35

Emwaya's head broke the surface. In a few strokes she was alongside, pulling herself half out of the water. Drops sparkled in her hair, sleeked down from the dousing, and glowed on her shoulders and b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Her countenance took away any thoughts of her beauty, however.

"Come and see for yourselves," she said. "Be warned. You will not like what you find."

"My life's been full of unpleasing sights and it's not over yet," Conan said. He swung his legs over the side of the canoe, slipped into the water, then held the craft steady while Valeria dove over the side.

"Stay close to me," Emwaya ordered when Valeria surfaced. "It is my intent to protect you from what lies down there."

Conan could not help but feel that he would rather be sure of more than her intent. But Emwaya had at least this virtue, rare in magic-wielders: she would not promise miracles.

Conan filled his lungs and plunged under the surface, Emwaya behind him and Valeria in the rear. They were a canoe's length below when Conan saw what Emwaya meant.

It was as if they were suddenly swimming through a vast globe of liquid crystal. The water was utterly transparent, utterly without color, all the way to the bottom of the lake.

That bottom, Conan judged, had to be twice the height of a s.h.i.+p's mainmast below them. No wonder the anchor had not found purchase.

Indeed, he could see the anchor stone dangling uselessly from its line, well clear of the bottom.

In that transparent void, nothing moved. Nothing lived, either-not the smallest fish, not even a sc.r.a.p of the weeds that choked some portions of the lake. Conan looked down at the bottom.

It, too, was bare of life. But it was not featureless. Across the Cimmerian's field of vision ran what looked like a deep trench. Into that trench had tumbled blocks of stone that showed the unmistakable signs of human shaping. Even from high above, Conan saw that much. He also thought that he saw carved on some of the stones the writhing serpent-shape he had seen rather too often in the tunnels.

That was as much as he could fathom before a burning in his lungs told him that it was time to seek air. He kicked toward the surface, and Emwaya and Valeria followed.

When Conan broke into the sunlight, Valeria was there before he had finished taking his first deep breath. Emwaya was nowhere to be seen, and as Conan filled his lungs, he began to think of diving back down to find her.

"Valeria, if Emwaya's in trouble-"

"She'll need us both even more now. And remember, I owe her my life."

"True enough. I was thinking more of the need for one of us to reach the island and tell of what happened."

Valeria looked less out of temper and seemed about to climb into the canoe when Emwaya broke the surface. Her arms flailed about wildly, and her breathing was a desperate rasp. Conan and Valeria each gripped an arm and upheld her with her head clear of the water.

The panic left her eyes as breath filled her lungs again. She lay back in the water, trusting her friends, and her gasping turned to steady breathing. At last she slipped out of their grasp and climbed into the canoe.

"What is it, Emwaya?" Conan asked.

"My father would know-would say it-better. But... under the lake bottom is one of those tunnels."

"That's the trench that collapsed?"

"Yes. But-in the tunnel-somewhere beyond where it collapsed, there is something."

"A flooded tunnel, I'd wager."

The jest seemed to frighten Emwaya. "Do not speak lightly of such matters, Conan. I-it seems to me that what is there lives."

"How can that be?" Valeria asked. She had finally caught the sense of the conversation. "Everything else in the water for a good thousand paces seems to be dead. Worse, driven away."

"Yes. What is in the tunnel-it lives by eating the- the word is taboo, but will you understand 'life-force'?"

"The life-force of everything that comes close to it?" Valeria had her hand on her dagger as she spoke.

"Such-beings-have lived. We, my father and I, thought they were all dead."

"It seems that at least one isn't," Conan said briskly. He picked up a paddle. "My thought is, let's return to the island and tell your father, if he hasn't already smelled it out for himself."

"I should dive again, to learn more of what it might be," Emwaya said.

Valeria hugged the Ichiribu woman. "You barely reached the surface after your second dive. Go down for the third time and it won't take any ancient magical monster to eat your life-force. You'll drown, and we will be left to explain to your father and Seyganko. I'd rather fight the monster, myself."

Valeria's words were clumsy and her accent harsh, but Emwaya understood the sense of them, and the goodwill in Valeria's embrace. "Then so be it," the young woman said. "Let us be off, before it senses us."

It was not the largest of the Golden Serpents, but it was the last and the oldest. It and one other had outlived all the rest of their kind, for the magic in the burrows they had found beneath the lake had changed them.

They had once eaten flesh. Now they ate the life-force that animated flesh, even including water-plants. They could draw it from a creature beyond the sight of their jeweled green eyes, and with it, feed their own strength.

Then it came about that the other ancient serpent grew weary, and its own life-force began to ebb. The last of the Golden Serpents had no sense of mercy, or of any human notion. It knew only that if the other was allowed to die, its life-force would not feed the one who survived.

So the Golden Serpents fought, and the last one killed its comrade. The life-force entered it, and it found new strength. But the battle had made great disorder in the magic that bound the tunnels, holding them up and lighting them. A long stretch of tunnel collapsed. Yet the magic held strongly enough that water did not pour in and drown the last of the Golden Serpents.

But the tunnel was fallen, and to find a way back through it would mean digging through much rock. The Golden Serpent was not a keen-witted creature, but it knew that neither its strength nor its teeth would be equal to that task. So it rested, drew life-force from the creatures of the waters above, and from time to time sought a way around the fallen stones.

It found one site that seemed likely to be easily made large enough for pa.s.sage. But there was no trace of anything living, of anything that would repay the effort to open the way.

At least not at first. Then a time came when the Golden Serpent sensed life-force again in the tunnel-strong life, too, like that of the two-legged creatures who had cast the ancient spells on these tunnels.

It was so faint that the creatures must be far away.

But if life had come once more into the depths, it would not leave. The Golden Serpent worked at the barrier so that it would be easily breached when there was prey worth having on the other side. They would walk up to the barrier and then there would be no escape. There would, however, be new strength for the Golden Serpent. Strength, perhaps, to let it leave this hiding place and be abroad in the world again, where life-force could be had everywhere.

Even those days might come again when the two-legs brought living creatures to the Golden Serpent, that it might feed on flesh. To have both the living flesh and the life-force from it- If one could use the word "ambition" of a creature without human wits, one might say that this wily scheme was the Golden Serpent's greatest ambition.

As he hauled the canoe onto the sh.o.r.e, Conan noticed that there were fewer people about than usual. He found nothing amiss in that, until he saw that the same was true all along the path leading up to the village.

When he saw what seemed half of the tribe around the hole where the hearthstone had been, he knew that something was wrong. Emwaya had been sweating and tight-lipped all the way up from the sh.o.r.e, but Conan had taken this as weariness after her strenuous swimming. Now he suspected worse.

He knew worse when he saw women and children loading stones and earth into baskets, and fanda warriors carrying the loaded baskets to the edge of the village. To ask a fanda warrior on duty to perform women's work could mean a death-duel, or at least a harsh judgment from the council of the tribe. Yet here was everyone old enough or young enough to stand on their feet unaided, digging out the shaft which led to the tunnels.

"I think Dobanpu has spoken," Valeria said, almost whispering.

"Likely enough," Conan agreed. "Are you game for another little ramble in the depths?"

"To go hunting Emwaya's life-force eater?" She looked both weary and disgusted with herself. "Ah, well. I have heard they have a proverb in Khitai: 'Be careful what you wish for. The G.o.ds may grant it.' It seems we wished a trifle too hard for the opening of the tunnels."

"It's done past undoing," Conan said. He unbuckled his belt and handed it and his weapons to Valeria. "Take these to the hut. I've some knowledge of this kind of work that the Ichiribu may find handy."

THIRTEEN.