"He said he thought not. Some spirits are friends of the G.o.d-Men, others their enemies, or at least enemies of the spirits they command."

Tribal feuds among the spirits! Seyganko silently cursed the spirits, those who made them, those who served them- "The G.o.d-Men have learned that Xuchotl the Accursed has fallen."

The words came out as if Emwaya were purging herself of something foul. Indeed, her face seemed more content, and she leaned against Seyganko and pressed her face into his shoulder. He rested an arm across her back, feeling the fine skin and the strength within, but not seeking anything further now.

"How did it fall?"

"It was hard to tell. It seems that a Kwanyi hunter was seeking game far to the east at the time the city fell. He entered unharmed, explored it, saw that all within were dead, then fled, fearing that its destroyers would come for him. The G.o.d-Men learned his tale and gave him to the Living Wind. They seek to hide this knowledge until they know what use to make of it." If the G.o.d-Men had the wits of a leech, they would be asking Dobanpu to join his knowledge to theirs to fight whatever had the power to cast down the Accursed City. Any such being could eat the tribes of the forest as a lionfish ate fingerlings.

The G.o.d-Men lacked such wisdom, however. Even if they found it now, Chabano of the Kwanyi would not let them spoil his dreams of conquest. And Dobanpu would most likely refuse to trust the G.o.d-Men even if they and Chabano both asked for his aid. Sey-ganko hoped he would not have to say the last in Emwaya's hearing.

She knew her father could be proud and obstinate, but she had not granted her betrothed the right to say so.

"Who else knows of this among the common folk of either tribe?"

"That, my father could not learn. Do you think the G.o.d-Men might try to keep this knowledge from Chabano?"

"It might serve them well if they could," Seyganko answered. "It is said that Chabano is jealous of the power of the G.o.d-Men and seeks to wage his wars without them. If the G.o.d-Men joined with the power that destroyed Xuchotl, Chabano would be a babe against them."

"They would be mad to think that such a power could serve them!"

"I know that a shaman can do only so much. You know that as well. Both of us learned it from your father, who was born with the knowledge." Seyganko shrugged. "The G.o.d-Men were not so fortunate."

"Curse the G.o.d-Men!" Emwaya said fervently. Then it was her hands that danced down Seyganko's back and under his garments, so that it was not she who was the first of them unclothed.

Sun-curing would be needed to finish the work on the monkey's hide to make it a fit garment. Conan held out no great hope of that much sun and offered Valeria his shirt.

She held it against her, then laughed. "As a night-shift, I might accept it."

"My hide's thicker than yours, Valeria, and not bred in Aquilonia."

"If I've survived the sun and salt wind at sea, I'll not broil before this hide cures."

"Or rots."

"Does Crom tell you to look always for the worst, Conan?"

"Groin's not a G.o.d to tell anyone anything, at least not for the asking," Conan replied. His grim Cimmerian G.o.d was not a jesting matter for him, or for anyone else born in the Northlands, where the name was mighty.

"Is that why you're so often closemouthed?" Valeria asked. Seeing no answer forthcoming, she threw up her hands and fell in behind the Cimmerian.

They had not gone far from their night's camp before a brief but heavy shower soaked them both and left pools of clean water everywhere. They drank, then cut still-green branches from a fallen tree with which to make staffs. With these aiding them, especially the sore-footed Valeria, they made good progress the rest of the morning.

Noon brought them hungry to the bank of a river too deep to wade. Conan studied its surface, eyeing the swirls in the murky water. He studied with equal care the banks of the river, including places where animal tracks ended in patches of churned mud and scattered leaves.

"Crocodiles," he said briefly.

Valeria glowered at the water. "I was thinking we could make a raft and let the river do the work." "It flows south and west, which is the way we want to go. But we've no tools, and the crocs would have us off a floating log before we'd gone half a league."

Conan looked beyond the banks, seeing fallen tree trunks. He saw too few for a raft, and some of those too large for even his strength to roll to the water.

"No, I was thinking we should be hunting for a meal, anyway. Share a beast with the crocodiles, and they may give us safe pa.s.sage."

Valeria shrugged. "If it works with sharks, it may work with crocodiles. But, oh, that I'd ever be ready to sell my soul for a canoe."

"Sell your body for an ax, and we'd have the canoe," Conan said, then ducked as Valeria lashed at him with a length of vine.

Hunger and the need for silence ended the banter. They found hiding places that commanded two of the low spots on the bank, where the jungle creatures came to drink. Conan suspected they might well have a long wait, as the pools of rainwater would doubtless content the beasts as well as themselves. It might be dark before the animals came, and Conan did not care to match wits with a crocodile after dark.

As a prophet, Conan failed. It was not yet mid-afternoon when a family of wild pigs came huffling and snorting through the bushes. There were five in all: an old boar, a sow, and three piglets following in the wake of their elders.

Using the hand signals of the Barachan pirates, Conan told Valeria to take the sow, or failing that, a piglet. That would do for their own food. He himself would face the boar-and any crocodile not sated with that much raw pork was no creature of nature.

Conan thrust that thought aside with the same distaste he felt for all wizardry.

Yet he could not forget last night. Had he sensed powerful magic at work not far off ? It would not have surprised the Cimmerian to learn of such magic. The tales he had heard in Xuchotl suggested that those who built the city might have left magic, as well as stones, behind. Old, evil, tainted magic, perhaps drawing on the lore of the nightmare empire of Acheron. Even legends did not agree on how far that lore had spread, how long it had lasted, or how deep it had sunk roots into the minds of men.

Nor did legends agree on how a man became a spell-smeller-the name in the north for those who had some further sense beyond the common five- allowing him to discover the working of magic. They did not even agree that such men existed.

Some said that it was only a matter of recognizing subtle changes in the natural world, changes that any spell always made.

Conan had never thought much of such arguments, and less than most of that one.

If such talk could have made sorcerers forsake their craft and turn into honest men, he would have gladly joined it until his throat was dry. As matters were, he chose not to let his throat dry out in the first place!

Now the boar was sniffing the air with the care of the scout of a host seeking an ambush. It scented nothing. The scant breeze was flowing from it toward the hunters, and both Conan and Valeria had been in the jungle long enough for its smell to partly disguise theirs.

Conan nodded, and Valeria drew her sword. It caught briefly in the scabbard, and the faint sc.r.a.ping as it came free made the boar raise its head. Again it sniffed the wind, and this time the sow moved to stand between her piglets and danger.

The danger that struck first was not the human hunters. Conan did not see the ripple in the stream, but he saw the dripping, tooth-studded jaws burst from the water and close on the sow.

Her squeals raised echoes and sent birds flying and monkeys leaping from every tree within a long bowshot. Valeria leaped from cover, heedless of the boar, sword slashing down at one of the piglets as they scattered.

The boar paid her no attention at first as it lowered its head and tried to gore the crocodile. The reptile, a patriarch of the breed, had flung itself so far up the bank that it could not return at once to the water. Its claws gouged mud, and its tail lashed as it tried to fend off the boar, hold on to the dying sow, and reach the refuge of the river.

At last it succeeded in all three. A b.l.o.o.d.y swirl in the water marked its escape. Valeria had just sheathed her sword in the neck of a second piglet when the boar turned on her.

Had the boar been a little quicker, the songs sung in later days about Valeria of the Red Brotherhood would have been rather shorter. But she turned, freeing her sword, drawing her dagger, and leaping aside from the boar's rush with a speed that rivaled Conan's. The Cimmerian remembered how deadly she had been in the battles in Xuchotl as her dagger slashed the boar's muzzle.

The great pig squealed in rage and pain and drew back. Its hooves churned up almost as much mud as the crocodile had. It tried to gain footing on the slippery bank for launching a charge, but again it was a trifle too slow. Conan was within sword's reach before the boar could charge. There was no subtlety or art in the way his sword came down on the boar's thick neck. Swordmasters from Zingara to Vanaheim would have cringed at the brutal strength of the blow, more suited to an executioner than a swordsman.

It did not matter to Conan who struck the blow, or to the boar, who fell dead, or to Valeria, who found the boar lying at her feet. Valeria turned, the battle-light in her eyes, and brushed her hair from her face. The movement of her arm lifted her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Altogether she was a sight to make a man's blood seethe in his veins, the huntress among her prey, silhouetted against the sun-dappled river.

She stood so that once again Conan did not see the warning ripples in the stream. The second crocodile was as large as the first, but not as swift. Also, it exhaled a great, foul, hissing breath as it slid up the bank.

Valeria jumped to safety as the jaws thudded shut an arm's length from her leg.

Not watching where she leaped, she landed on a slippery patch, reeled, and staggered hard against the Cimmerian. He clutched at her, drawing her backward with him.

His back came up hard against a red-barked tree. The tree shook and made a rumbling sound like a mill wheel. Instantly sensing a new danger, Conan stepped away from the tree, turning and loosing his grip on Valeria as he did so.

The next moment, the ground vanished from under his feet. He plunged into darkness, taking with him one memory and one hope. The memory was of Valeria's horror-stricken face staring after him. The hope was that she would remember the crocodile at her back rather than fret herself about him.

Geyrus, first among the G.o.d-Men-or First Speaker to the Living Wind, as he was named in ritual-shook his staff. That was not enough to ease his wrath, so he struck the rod hard upon the silver-shot rock at his feet.

The three Cobra Clan warriors cringed, as if they expected the rock to open up at Geyrus's command and swallow them. Their eyes showed only whites, and they held their shaking hands over their mouths in the ritual gesture of supplication.

They would find no mercy from Geyrus, and deserved none.

"Six slain, three taken, and one of my handmaids as well!" he roared. He could make his voice as loud as a lion's if he chose, though not as easily as he had done in his youth. Then he could have brought Cha-bano himself to his knees with mouth-magic!

"Forgive-" muttered one of the warriors.

"There is no forgiveness for such folly!" Geyrus stormed. "Folly enough in taking her on such a journey at all. Folly ten times worse in losing her to the lake-swimmers!"

He did not use the lion-voice this time. He needed to save his strength, and also, he did not wish all he said to be overheard.

Even in the very house of the Speakers to the Living Wind, there were those whose hearts lay first with Chabano of the Kwanyi. They would not hesitate to tell him any secret of the Servants if they thought it would earn them his goodwill.

"You are dead men," he said more softly. "Yet I am disposed to grant you as much mercy as you deserve. You may choose your death. Shall I give you to the Living Wind? Or shall I give you some other death, of my own choosing?"

The mere mention of the Living Wind made one warrior drop to his knees, a posture he would rather have died than have a.s.sumed before a human foe. Geyrus smiled tightly so as to reveal only those of his teeth that still shone white and perfect.

Geyrus understood the warriors' terror. The Living Wind played with those who came to it with unclouded minds, hara.s.sing them like a cat with a mouse. Madness and agony came swiftly, and lasted long enough to make death a craved release. "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.