"So be it. You shall meet the fate of any cobra when it crawls too close to the leopard's cubs."

Geyrus did not produce a thunderclap as he completed the spell. The first sound the men heard was the growl as the spell-borne leopards scented prey. Then claws struck golden sparks from the stone as the leopards hurled themselves upon the warriors.

Geyrus had kept his promise. The leopards killed more swiftly than the Living Wind commonly did. Fangs tore out throats, claws ripped bellies, and screams of fear and agony echoed only briefly about the tunnels.

The leopards were feeding l.u.s.tily on the corpses as Geyrus dropped the stout net across the tunnel.

A time had been when he could have raised a barrier against the leopards entirely by magic. That time of youthful strength was gone, and would not come again. His best now was bringing the leopards when they were needed, and returning them when they slept, sated on human flesh.

Geyrus did not pray to any G.o.d who had a name among living men. Nor did he pray to the Living Wind-it was no G.o.d; that had been plain from the earliest days of its Servants.

Instead, he hoped that his not keeping the secret of Xuchotl's fall would do no harm. It was probably a vain hope, inasmuch as neither Chabano nor Dobanpu were fools. Geyrus consoled himself with the thought that if they had been, there would be no challenge, no pride for him in besting them. Both a man's first battles and his last should be against worthy foes.

But that girl-lost! She alone would earn Seyganko the slowest death any man had ever suffered, after he had watched Emwaya die just as slowly.

Or would it be better to make Dobanpu's unnatural daughter watch her betrothed's death before her own?

Time to decide when he had them both in his hands. Either way would ensure the girl's obedience for the rest of his days. The First Speaker to the Living Wind would sleep in a well-warmed bed, as befitted a victor.

The disappearance of Valeria's Cimmerian companion was swift and silent. One moment, Valeria sensed him at her back; the next moment, her fine-honed battle instincts told her that he was not.

She leaped again, nearly losing her last garment. The crocodile hissed like a pot of stew overflowing into a cook fire and wriggled forward.

Its jaws-as long as a child of twelve-gaped, then shut again with a clang as if made of iron instead of bone.

Valeria knew something of salt.w.a.ter crocodiles, having once anch.o.r.ed in a river mouth where they swarmed. She had never been so far from the sea in a land where the rivers also sp.a.w.ned them, but she judged this beast to be much like its seafaring cousins. It would be swift in the water, slow on land, tenacious of life, and slow of wits. Doubtless it was cudgeling those wits for some new way of dealing with her, now that its first lunge had failed.

She could be long gone from the riverbank and any danger from the crocodile if she was ready to abandon Conan to whatever fate had befallen him. Or that he has fallen into, she surmised, seeing as the very earth itself seemed to have swallowed him.

This thought made her next leap cautious, and she thanked Mitra when she landed on solid ground. Then she kicked off her boots. Blisters or no, she had a better feel for any surface under her-ship's deck or jungle riverbank-when she was unshod.

She drew dagger to match sword and studied her opponent. It was impossible for her to seek safety at the price of leaving Conan. Not impossible in the sense of against nature, as it would have been impossible for her to grow wings and fly-but against her nature and all she had lived by since before she was a woman.

She and the Cimmerian were battle-bound, as surely as by any tie of blood or by oath sworn before a score of priests of as many G.o.ds. She would return to serving in a barber's house, or even dance in taverns, before she broke such a bond as she had with Conan.

That he desired her was an annoyance, as a fly buzzing about her head might have been. But one did not strike oneself on the head with a hammer to swat such a fly!

The crocodile hissed again and lumbered forward. Valeria shifted on nimble feet so that she could watch the whole riverbank as well as her immediate foe. The one thing she dreaded most was another crocodile.

The first one would most likely be off gorging itself on the sow, but where there were two of the monsters, there could be three.

She saw no sign of another reptile, but she did see a shallow depression in the ground where the leaf mold and tangled dead vines seemed to sag. If that place had swallowed Conan, perhaps it might be persuaded to swallow the crocodile.

Then the monster lunged forward with a speed that startled her.

Surprise did not slow her, or make her forget that no creature's brain can be far from its eyes.

As the crocodile lunged, Valeria leaped, and more. She twisted in midair, with the grace that had caused more than a few to throw silver, even gold her way in years past. She came down astride the crocodile's spiny back, just behind the ma.s.sive neck.

Before the crocodile realized that its prey was no longer in sight, Valeria struck. Her dagger drove hard into the scaly hide, seeking a c.h.i.n.k, sinking in deep enough to hold her. Then she lifted her sword, reversed the blade, and drove it deep into the crocodile's right eye.

The sword was awkward for stabbing, and nowhere else on the beast would its point have gained entrance. Striking where it did, it reached the crocodile's life.

The hiss turned into a screaming bellow as Valeria leaped free of the creature, as desperately as ever she had leaped from shark-infested water into a boat. The crocodile's tail thrashed wildly, splintering bushes and scoring the bark of stout trees. The legs spasmed, claws frenziedly spraying earth and leaves all over Valeria. Then it gave a final lurch, rolled over, and slammed its head down in the depression Valerian had noted before.

In an uncanny silence, the earth gaped. With a tearing of vines and a snapping of roots, the crocodile upended. For a moment, its tail waved again, as if in its final convulsion the beast was bidding farewell to its slayer. Then the crocodile vanished.

This time the hole did not. Whatever device or spell had closed it previously seemed to be exhausted. It gaped the width of a man's height at Valeria's feet. She looked down into twilight, then into a darkness as complete as the deepest abyss of the sea.

She swallowed. She could not drive out of her thoughts the notion that not even Conan could have survived such a fall... or that if he had, the crocodile might have finished what the fall began.

She would never know, however, save by going down herself and finding the Cimmerian, or his body. She refused to contemplate what she would face if he were alive but helpless from hurts taken in the fall.

"Conan," she muttered, "my life might have been simpler had you never left Cimmeria."

Yes, and doubtless shorter as well.

The voice in her mind was not altogether Conan's, but close enough to make her start.

So be it. She had been a climber from childhood, and once a sailor had said of her that she had eyes in her fingers and toes. That would help.

So would a stout length of vine, or several lengths bound and braided to support her weight.

The dead vines were too rotted for such work, but there was no shortage of live ones. Valeria had her vine rope before the sun-dappling of the river had greatly changed. She finished her labors by tying a slipknot in one end of the rope, slinging her boots by their laces about her neck, and making a sword-thong of vine.

The vine would not serve well for either rope or thong as would good Shemite leather, but Valeria was no stranger to making-do. For the climb, she would use the thong to bind her sword across her back, but once on solid ground, the weapon would come into service.

She had finished all the work she could do in the G.o.ds' own daylight, on a jungle riverbank that now seemed a pleasant vantage compared to the blackness at her feet. The rest of her duty lay below.

She breathed deeply until she was as calm as could be hoped. Then she lowered her feet over the edge of the hole and began her downward climb.

FOUR.

Conan's fall began with ill fortune, which swiftly changed for the better. Had it been otherwise, the stories of many men and not a few realms would have been vastly altered.

He was no spell-smeller, or he might have sensed the magic binding the ground at the mouth of the pit. Then again, perhaps not. It was old earth-magic, and the names of those who discovered it had been lost to human memory long before Atlantis was even built, let alone before the oceans swallowed it.

The art had not been lost, however. The sorcery known to the builders of Xuchotl partook of it. Nor was the doomed city the only creation to which they had turned their magical arts. Deep within the jungle they also built and wrought mighty works, at a time when the Black Kingdoms were but bands of feuding tribesmen.

It was one of these leavings that Conan had encountered. The earth gaped beneath his feet, he plunged down into darkness briefly lit from above, then continued his plunge in darkness deeper yet as the pit closed above him.

Thrice he struck earthen walls that yet seemed too solid and smooth to be altogether natural. These blows slowed his fall somewhat, but also drove the breath from his lungs. He had just regained it when he struck for a final time, where the wall of the pit had crumbled under the inexorable thrust of the roots of some forest giant. The blow took him across the chest and would have cracked, or even crushed the ribs of any lesser man.

With the Cimmerian, it drove out the barely regained breath and tossed him like a child's ball into the mouth of a tunnel entering the other side of the pit. He struck, half slid and half bounced ten paces, then lay there while earth quivered, rumbled, and fell from the mouth of the tunnel.

He would gladly have lain until his breath returned, but instinct told him that the mouth of the tunnel was only precariously bound by whatever magic ruled here. Lying thus in momentary comfort could end in swift and final burial.

Iron fingers seemed to clutch his chest as he crawled, but the sound of still-falling earth drove him onward. He was sweating with more than his exertions when at last silence fell again, broken only by his harsh breathing.

Probing his ribs with his fingers, he found nothing broken, although he would wager the price of a good inn that he would have the mother and father of all bruises by morning. His breathing had slowed, and cautiously he sat up.

Then a rumble and a series of thuds sounded from the mouth of the tunnel. They rose to a crescendo, but faded as swiftly as they came.