An uncanny ritual now took place. Two Witchmen knelt and secured the captive’s feet with a thong suspended from a rafter. Then they slowly drew the naked man up until he hung head-downward above the copper bowl of simmering coals. The man writhed and screamed to no avail.
Then they cut his throat from ear to ear.
The victim wriggled and flopped, then slowly went limp. Conn watched, eyes wide with horror. Blood gushed down upon the coals and exploded in a cloud of smoke. A nauseous stench arose.
All this time, the witch stared sightlessly ahead. Conn observed that she was swaying from side to side, humming a tuneless air. The black-clad men stood motionless about the dais. The coals crackled and snapped. The corpse hung dripping. The thin, eerie moan of the witch’s song droned on, punctuated by the monotonous rhythm of the gong. Conn stared with helpless fascination.
The stinking smoke hung in a greasy pall above the dais, eddying to and fro as if to the touch of invisible hands. Then the white-faced boy repressed a start.
“Crom!” he gasped.
The roiling cloud of smoke was taking on the shape of a man: a large, broad-shouldered, powerful man, draped in some Eastern robe whose cowl was thrust back to reveal a shaven pate and a grim, hawklike face.
The illusion was uncanny. The witch droned on. Her rasping song rose and fell like a cold wind moaning through the timbers of a gibbet.
Now color flushed through the man-shaped phantom: the folds of the robe darkened to a shade of green and the stolid visage became a swarthy, ruddy brown, like the face of a Shemite or a Stygian. Frozen with fear, the boy searched the translucent phantom with wide eyes. The illusion had a face he dimly remembered seeing, or hearing described—those aloof, aquiline features, that grim, lipless mouth. Where the eyes should have been were two sparks of emerald fire.
The lips moved, and the distant echo of a voice resounded through the shadowy hall.
“Hail, O Louhi!” said the phantom. And the witch answered:
“Greetings, Thoth-Amon.”
Then, in truth, did the chilly claws of fear close around Conn’s heart, for he knew he was in the grip of no casual kidnapper: He was in the clutches of the most deadly and tenacious foe of his race, the earth’s mightiest black magician, the Stygian sorcerer who had long ago sworn by his evil gods to bring Conan the Cimmerian down to a terrible death and to crush Aquilonia into the mire.
SIX: Beyond Skull Gate
Toward sunrise, Conan struggled groggily to consciousness. His head ached abominably, and blood from a torn scalp had dried down his face. But he still lived.
As for the shaggy beast-men of the swamp country, there was no sign of them. They had fled into the night, bearing off their dead and their loot. Groaning he sat up, nursing his throbbing head in his hands. He was naked save for boots and a ragged clout. Horse, mail, provision, and weapons had been stripped from him. Had the beast-men left him for dead? Perhaps; and only the thickness of his skull had kept the Cimmerian from that ending.
Legend whispered that the beast-men were the degenerate spawn of generations of escaped criminals and runaway slaves who had fled hither for sanctuary. Centuries of inbreeding had debased them to little above the level of animals. Odd, then, that they had left his body untouched; for men reduced to their primitive level often developed a lust for human flesh. Not until Conan had staggered to his feet did he discover what had driven the beast-man away.
Seared into muddy grasses, near where he had been struck down, was the imprint of the White Hand.
There was naught else to do but go on afoot. Fashioning a rude cudgel from the branch of a twisted tree, the burly Cimmerian struck out for the northeast, following the trail blazoned for him by the White Hand.
As a savage boy in his wintry homeland, he had learned how to live off the land. As king of proud Aquilonia, it had been many years since last he had been forced to hunt and kill to live. Now he was glad old skills died hard. With stones hurled from a rude sling improvised from a strip of cloth ripped from his clout, he brought down marsh birds. Lacking the means to make fire in these sodden bogs, he plucked the fowl and devoured them raw. With the cudgel, swung with all the iron strength of massive thews, he beat off wild dogs that attacked him. With sharpened sticks he probed for frogs and crayfish in muddy pools. And ever he kept moving north and east.
After an endless time, he came to the edge of the Border Kingdom. The entrance to Hyperborea was marked by a curious monument calculated to strike fear into the hearts of men. Under a lowering sky, hills rose in a grim rampart. The trail wound through a narrow pass between two rounded knolls. Embedded in the nearer flank of one hill was a weird marker. It shone gray-white through the gloom and damp of Hyperborea. As he came near enough to make it out, he stopped short and stood, massive arms folded.
It was a skull, manlike in shape but many times larger than that of a man. The sight raised Conan’s nape-hairs with primal awe and stirred to life shadowy myths of ogres and giants. But as he studied the vast shield of naked bone with narrowed eyes, a grim smile tugged at his lips. He had traveled far in his years of adventuring, and he recognized the grisly relic for the skull of a mammoth. The skulls of beasts of the elephant tribe bear a superficial resemblance to those of men, save, of course, for the curving tusks. In this case, the telltale tusks had been sawn away.
Conan grinned and spat. He felt heartened; those who use trickery to inspire superstitious fear are not invulnerable.
Across the brow of the mammoth skull, enormous Hyperborean runes were painted.
In his travels, Conan had picked up a smattering of many tongues. With some difficulty he could read the warning written in those uncouth characters.
“The Gate of Hyperborea is the Gate of Death to those who come hither without leave,” ran the warning.
Conan grunted contemptuously, strode on through the pass, and found himself in a haunted land.
Beyond Skull Gate, the land fell away in a bleak plain broken by naked hills. Crumbling stones lay bare under a brooding sky. Conan went forward through clammy mists, every sense alert. But for all he could tell, naught lived or moved in all this shadowy land of unseen peril.
Few dwelt in this cold realm of fear, where the wintry sun shone but briefly. They who ruled here reigned from high-towered keeps of cyclopean stone. As for the common folk, a few miserable, terror-haunted serfs in clusters of dilapidated hovels eked out a drab life from the barren soil.
The gaunt gray wolves of the north roamed these desolate prairies in savage hunting bands, he knew; and the ferocious cave bear made its home in stony caves under the dripping skies. But little else could dwell in this inhospitable waste, save a rare band of reindeer, musk ox, or mammoth.
Conan came at length to the first of the stone-built keeps; this he knew to be Sigtona. In Asgard they whispered grim tales of its sadistic queen, rumored to live on human blood. He skirted it widely, searching for the next mountainous citadel.
After an interminable time he espied the grim pile of Pohiola, lifting its crest of squat turrets against the stars. Naked, famished, filthy, and unarmed, the indomitable Cimmerian gazed upon the stronghold of the Witchmen with burning eyes. Somewhere within that fortress of dark stone, his elder son huddled. Somewhere within that lightless and labyrinthine edifice, perhaps, his doom awaited him. Well, he had crossed swords with Death ere this, and from that desperate contest had emerged the victor.
Head high, he went through the darkness to the portals of Pohiola.