He carried in one hand a staff taller than himself, crowned with a golden spiral, and in the other hand, a gourd. A pungent odor rose from the gourd, sour, sweet, and sharp all at once.

Without letting go of the staff, the G.o.d-Man knelt beside the hunter and motioned that he should sit up. This the hunter did, and at once the gourd was thrust to his lips. The taste of the brew within was so vile that he wanted to spit it out. When he found himself swallowing, he wanted to gag; when the brew reached his stomach, he wanted to spew.

Then it seemed that he was no longer tasting something vile and tainted, but beer of the most cunning brewing from the best grain and seeds. It went straight to his head as such beer often did, and he no longer felt pain, not even in his foot and ankle.

He was not wholly at ease over this; the ankle had grown swollen, the flesh turning pallid and noisome matter oozing from it. It should have been hurting as if hot irons were at work upon it.

Yet it did not, and soon he was walking whole and hearty through the nightmarish halls of Xuchotl. He was not afraid, for the G.o.d-Man was with him and the magic in the staff would stand against any evil there, living or dead. As he walked, he told the G.o.d-Man all he had seen or guessed, and it seemed that the G.o.d-Man heard every word and planted it in his memory like a seed in a garden patch. In time, they came out of Xuchotl the same way they had entered, and walked into the jungle. The walls of the evil city faded into a green mist, and when the mist cleared, the hunter knew he still lay in the G.o.d House.

But his ankle still did not hurt.

It did not hurt even when the G.o.d-Man made a series of intricate motions over the hunter's body with the staff. Was it only a fever-fancy, or did the golden spiral of the staff seem to whirl, like a swirling eddy in a stream?

No matter. When the G.o.d-Man was done, the hunter found that he could rise and walk. He did so, and followed the G.o.d-Man where he was bidden, out of the chamber and down a long pa.s.sage that seemed carved from living rock. The heads of the totemic animals of each clan of the Kwanyi hung thick on the walls. The hunter saw that where the rock showed, it was painted in colors for which he did not wish to find names, let alone utter them.

Then they pa.s.sed a wall of rocks that seemed bound together more by magic than by mud. Beyond lay a chamber so vast that the hunter could barely make out the ceiling, and could not see the far wall at all.

As for what lay below, after one look, he turned his head away. It was not fear of the swirling smoke or what it might conceal. It was only that in his heart he knew it was taboo for him to gaze upon that smoke, and worse than that for him to see what the smoke hid.

The G.o.d-Man pointed to a seat carved from the rock at the very lip of the ledge where the hunter stood. The hunter sat down, dangling his legs over the abyss. From above, he heard more voices, and then he was alone and the voice of the G.o.d-Man who had led him there joined the others.

They chanted in a tongue the hunter did not know and beat on a drum that sounded unlike any he had ever heard. Or was it not a drum but their staves pounding on the rock floor? If those staves were shod with iron, they might sound much like that, striking the living rock-

The smoke reared up in a wall before him, like a cobra ready to strike.

Indeed, it spread out in such a likeness of a cobra's head that the hunter wanted to cry out.

I am not of the Cobras. I am of the Leopards. Send a leopard for my spirit.

He knew in the same moment that he would not speak, nor would it matter if he cried out to all the G.o.ds of his people. This was a place where mere mortals were impotent in the face of the older powers under the command of the G.o.d-Men.

Even then, the hunter did not fear. Nor did he fear when the smoke swirled around him and the scream of a mighty wind tearing at the treetops came with it. He felt himself lifted as gently as a babe in a sling on its mother's breast.

Then the smoke drew back. The hunter faced crimson-and-sapphire light, swirling like the smoke. He saw the light rise around him, taking away his sight, and all of his other senses as well. He never knew the moment when the life was sucked from his body and only an empty husk remained in the stone seat.

"What was that?" Conan muttered. He thought he had spoken only to himself, but Valeria was more wakeful than he had known.

"I heard nothing," she said. She rolled over and tried for the tenth time to find a spot where a root of their sheltering spicebush would not dig into her flesh.

"Ugh," she said. "The planks of a ship's bed are down cushions compared to this jungle."

Conan held up a hand for silence, and although Valeria looked sulky, she obeyed. The Cimmerian waited until he was sure that whatever had reached him on the night breeze would not come again.

"It may have been nothing. But I thought I heard... well, if a spell of evil magic made a sound, it might have been like that."

Valeria sat up and her shirt slipped from her shoulders. She ignored the display of her magnificent b.r.e.a.s.t.s and made several gestures of aversion.

"Are you a spell-smeller, as we call them at home?" she asked.

It seemed to Conan that she would not much care for any answer he might give. In truth, he also would be happy if he had not suddenly gained the power to detect magic. That was almost magic itself, and Conan loathed the idea of finding it within himself.

The Cimmerian had fought more sorcerers and wizards than he had fingers and toes. But when he had an honorable choice, he gave the whole accursed breed a berth many leagues wide.

"I've never been one yet," Conan said. "I'd as soon not be one now.

Likely enough it was just some trick of the wind. I've been away from these lands for so long that I may not remember all that I thought I did."

Valeria had the look of one who doubts she is hearing the truth, but the Cimmerian's blue eyes were steady and he smiled. After a moment, the Aquilonian woman smiled back, turned on her side, and lay down. The display of b.r.e.a.s.t.s now gave way to a display of well-rounded b.u.t.tocks.

Conan had no eye for them. He sat cross-legged, sword in his lap, waiting with the patience of one who has watched a Zamboulan counting house for three days to learn the comings and goings of its watchmen.

He also waited with more knowledge of the jungle than he had admitted to Valeria. Nothing in nature had made that sound, and what was not in nature was, more often than not, dangerous.

In time, Valeria's breathing steadied as she slipped deep into sleep.

Conan's breathing also slowed, until he might have seemed an iron statue in the jungle night. Only the relentless flickering of his eyes about him betrayed life.

Whatever stalked them would gain no help from him in its quest, and only sharp steel if it found them.

TWO.

Seyganko, son of Bayu, was not the swiftest, strongest, or tallest of the warriors of the Ichiribu. He was the best swimmer, which was not a small matter in his people's wars against the Kwanyi.

He was also a longheaded sort of man, in spite of his lack of years. He thought before he used the speed, strength, and height that he had.

Thus he made shrewder use of them than his better-endowed comrades.

This earned him some jealousy, and at least once a death-duel, from which he had emerged not merely victorious, but unhurt. It also earned him rather more respect from the day of his manhood ceremony to the day Dobanpu Spirit-Speaker read the signs and declared Seyganko worthy to be followed in battle.

From that day forward, Seyganko led. He always led in war when the whole manhood of the Ichiribu was called forth. He also led as often as not in raids and skirmishes, when no custom or taboo required that someone else lead.

Seyganko did not survive all this fighting as unscathed as he had the duel. No man could, against a foe such as the Kwanyi. Their Paramount Chief Chabano would have made his warriors formidable with his spear-and-shield art, even without the aid of the G.o.d-Men. With that aid, the chief might have swept the sh.o.r.es and islands of the Lake of Death clean of all tribes save his own, then marched downriver on a campaign of conquest.

It was as well for others besides Seyganko that the G.o.d-Men and Chabano could seldom work together for long, and often barely spoke to one another. It was necessary at all times for the Ichiribu to know of Chabano's schemes and whether or not he was on a friendly footing with the G.o.d-Men.

So that is how Seyganko came to the western sh.o.r.e of the Lake of Death on the night that Conan sat keeping watch beside the spicebush where Valeria slept.

He and the four men in the canoe paddled as silently as wraiths to within a hundred paces of the sh.o.r.e. They drove the canoe forward with steady, practiced strokes, lifting their paddles so skillfully that no splash or drip betrayed their presence. Clouds veiled the moon, and this was not the season for the lampfish, whose glow when disturbed often betrayed canoe-borne warriors.

A hundred paces from the sh.o.r.e, all five men lifted their paddles as one. The canoe glided forward on its own momentum for another fifty paces. By then, its bow was sliding in among the weeds that grew so thick in places that a child might walk upon them.

Seyganko led his comrades over the side of the craft with as little noise as they had made in paddling. Gripping the sides, they kicked silently until they could sink their feet into the oozy bottom.

Each man wore only his headdress and a snake-skin loinguard, besides his weapons: a club or a trident, a knife of stone chips set in wood, and a net. Each also wore a generous coating of rancid fish oil. Its reek made any except the Ichiribu gag. It also hid the odor of living flesh from the small fish known as the eunuch-maker which swarmed along the sh.o.r.es of the Lake of Death.

"Remember," Seyganko whispered, "we need no women prisoners. If they flee, do not chase them."

"And if they stay?" one warrior asked with a grin that showed even in the darkness.

"Remember, too, that a man taking a woman turns his back on the world,"

Seyganko said.

"Ho-" the largest of the warriors said. "You need not think where to find your next woman, Seyganko. Not when-"