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.

The last of the fifty warriors vanished into the jungle just as dawn touched the hills to the east. Wobeku looked after them, his face set. He doubted that he would deceive Chabano, and indeed, he did not.

"So fearful of the lives of men not of your tribe?" the chief asked. The note of mockery was plain. So was his real intent.

"The Kwanyi are my tribe now," Wobeku said. "Does its chief doubt oaths sworn to him in the presence of Ryku the First Speaker?"

"No."

There was nothing else that Chabano could say. He might doubt Ryku, as Wobeku certainly did. To put these doubts into words that others might hear was not a chief's wisdom.

"I trust the men you are sending against the herd-lands and grainlands of the Ichiribu," Wobeku said. "They will do the work of far more than their num-bers in confusing the enemy. They can neither lose those lands without starving, nor defend them without so many of them at hand that they can defend nothing else.

No, what grieves me is that I cannot go with them."

"You are needed here, Wobeku." Left unsaid was that Wobeku was not yet so trusted by the Kwanyi warriors that he would be safe out of the chief's sight.

"I was a bidui boy for years, in the herdlands," Wobeku insisted. "Then I was of the fanda that guarded the grainlands. I know every hut, every valley, every spring in those lands. If I went, even as a simple guide, the men you have sent will do better work. More of them will also live to boast of it to their women."

"Wobeku, when we have won, there will not be enough women to hear all the boasting we shall do. Nor will there be enough beer to keep our throats wet for it."

Wobeku knelt, rose when dismissed, and turned away. Not until he was out of the chief's sight did he dare make even the smallest gesture of aversion.

Chabano might tempt the G.o.ds. That was a chief's right. Wobeku was no chief, and much doubted that he ever would be, even if Chabano came to rule all the lands to the Salt Water. He had dreamed of such things when he had agreed to serve Chabano, but those were the dreams of a younger man.

Now he had seen more years, and more truths about the world. Wobeku would be quite content to end his life with sons to sing the death-song for him, women to wash his body, and cattle and fields enough to provide a feast for his friends when the smoke of his burning had risen to the G.o.ds.

He thought he would ask for the woman Mokossa as his first prize of the victory.

She seemed not only a pleasure to the eye, but intelligent and healthy, a breeder of worthy sons.

Conan was inspecting the warriors of the tunnel band when a bidui boy came to summon him to Seyganko. From the boy's face, it was urgent that the Cimmerian lose not a moment.

He motioned to Valeria, and she laid her pouches on her shield and ran over.

Even after a night spent with little sleep, Conan took pleasure in her lithe grace and sure movements. He took even more pleasure in the knowledge that she would be at his back when they plunged into the magic-haunted pa.s.sages beneath the lake once again.

"Valeria, can you finish my work here? Will you see that all the men have what they were ordered to bring and are sober, not astray in their wits and the like?"

"I think that only a drunkard or a madman would have offered himself to this quest," she said with a wry smile.

"Or men who think Dobanpu speaks the truth," Conan said.

"I am surprised to find you among them," Valeria whispered.

Conan shrugged. "Call me one who has not caught Dobanpu or his daughter in a lie as yet. That puts them leagues ahead of most of the sorcerers I've met." He patted her shoulder. "Just pretend to know what you are doing-"

"The way you do on the mats?"

"Woman, was it my pretending that made you howl like a she-wolf last night? Half the village heard you, or so I've been told."

Valeria made a sound that was half curse, half laugh, and turned away. Conan saw her bare shoulders quivering as silent laughter took her. Then he hurried off to Seyganko.

He found the war leader on hands and knees beside an upturned canoe, studying the bottom as though the secrets of the G.o.ds, or at least of victory over the Kwanyi might be found there.

Seyganko seemed drawn with doubt as he led Conan aside. Part of it had to be the burden of leading so many men into a war that neither they nor their tribe might survive. Conan was not vastly older than Seyganko, but he had borne that burden more often than the other, and knew that it grew no lighter with the years.

The other part of Seyganko's unease came out swiftly. "We have seen Kwanyi warriors in the forest on the edge of the herdlands and grainlands. Goats have been found slain, and at least one herdsman has vanished."

Conan nodded. This was a matter of the higher art of war, of which he knew more than he cared to admit, less than he wished. What he both knew and could admit to, however- "Never fight a war believing that the enemy will wait for you to descend on him like a chamber pot from a high window. Chabano seeks to draw warriors away from the attack on him."

"He will do so if we are not to leave our herds and fields defenseless."

"Herds can walk, can they not?"

"Yes, but-"

"Send enough warriors to protect the herdsmen while they drive the herds and flocks south into the hills by the river. Then the Kwanyi will have to make a two-day march across open ground to come at them. You have archers, and they do not. How many of the Kwanyi do you think will reach the hills alive?"

"Ah." Seyganko's smile was brief. "But the fields are not yet harvested. If they are burned-"

"And are the burners to be allowed to do their work without having their throats slit by night?" Conan asked, acting more patient than he felt. He hoped that the burden of leadership had not fuddled Seyganko's wits.

"That also can be done," Seyganko said. This time, his smile lasted. "Some of the grain, indeed, we can harvest and carry off to feed the herds and flocks. We shall eat it in one form or another, and perhaps also the herds and flocks of the Kwanyi."

Conan clapped Seyganko on both shoulders, and the two men exchanged vows to guard each other's women if one of them did not survive the war. Then Conan returned to the shaft more swiftly than he had gone, and just in time to see Emwaya fall in line with the warriors about the hole.

Conan rolled his eyes up to the sky, muttered something that might have been "Women!" and frowned at Valeria. She shrugged and made a gesture eloquent of the futility of arguing with either her or Emwaya.

"Very well," Conan growled. He turned to face the troop, forty stout warriors and Emwaya.

"I'll go down first. Anything that will support my weight or let me pa.s.s will be enough for any of you. Aondo was the only one among you bigger than I, and he's now food for the crocodiles."

"I never thought I'd feel sorry for a crocodile," a warrior called, "but the creature's doubtless died by now."

The men's laughter was good to hear. "No one else start down until I call and the ladders and ropes are in place," Conan added. "If I catch anyone using the bracing timbers for a ladder, I'll pluck him off them myself and throw him down.

Then anyone who slips will have a soft cushion on which to land!"

The men were still laughing as Conan knotted the rope about his waist and began his climb down into the darkness.

It had come again, the presence that meant both flesh and life-force for the Golden Serpent. It was, as far as the serpent could judge, in the same place as before. But it seemed stronger, as if the creature were larger.

Or could there be more of the two-legs? Were they coming down from above to offer themselves to the hunger of the Golden Serpent? Or could they perhaps be coming down to hunt the Golden Serpent itself?

The serpent did not have a mind that could hold . thoughts shaped into such words. But it knew the difference between prey and enemies.

It also knew that when the time came for it to strike, even those who came to hunt would find themselves the hunted. This had been so for as long as it could remember-and those memories went back to before it lived in these burrows far below the earth.

One of the warriors, with instincts sharpened in the jungle, hunting and fighting, began gathering up the fallen clods of earth. Conan held up a hand to stop him.

"Leave be, friend. There are no Kwanyi down here to track us by what we leave behind. If anything lives down here, it will have other ways of finding us. Save your strength to see that we find it first."

The magic light still illuminated the tunnels. It seemed dimmer, though. Or was that merely because the light below the stairs had died along with their guardian spells? Farther along the tunnel, the glow seemed as bright and unnatural as ever.

Conan and Valeria were the only ones of the band who looked to be at ease. The Cimmerian saw hands clenched on spears, or fingering amulets, or even held behind backs to make gestures of aversion in the hope that the Blue-Eyed Chief; as they called him, would not see.

Conan coughed dirt and dust from his throat and stood before the men. "I won't say there's nothing to be afraid of. That's calling you fools, which you are not. What you are is stout warriors of the Ichiribu, a folk who are among the best fighters I've ever seen."

That would not pa.s.s any spell of truth-sensing, but n.o.body down here except Emwaya was fit to cast one, and she would hold her peace.