"Better fare than the rations, I'd say." Valeria threw up her hands in mock disgust. "If you've a belly and bowels of iron, perhaps. I'd rather eat salt beef three years in the cask. By Erlik, I'd rather eat the cask!"

"A trifle hard on the teeth, for my taste," Conan said.

Valeria noted with amus.e.m.e.nt that he still approached the fungus as if it were a venomous snake, probing with his dagger, and only then slicing. He was also careful to catch the slice before it struck the ground. When he put it to his mouth, he bit off a portion that might have fit in a thimble with room to spare.

After a moment's chewing, he swallowed. "Greasy as a Stygian harlot's hair," he said. "Otherwise, I've eaten worse."

"How long would it take you to remember when and where?"

"Oh, give me a year or so-" He broke off and cupped a hand to one ear. Valeria imitated him, her other hand on her sword, but heard nothing.

"Could be a trick of the echoes in this tomb," Conan said at last. Valeria wished he had not used that word.

The Cimmerian cut off another, slightly larger piece of the fungus and disposed of it as he had the first. When it went down, he licked his lips.

"Greasier than the first, but nothing else against it," he said. "Wait a bit, to see how it sits in my stomach-"

The sound was half growl, half scream, and altogether ghastly. The cavern picked it up, hurling echoes back and forth until it seemed to Valeria that they might be inside a giant drum beaten by a madman.

She would almost rather have been mad than to have seen what came lumbering into the cavern from another tunnel. It was as high as a man at the shoulders, with great plates of bone jutting from behind its eyes to guard its thick neck.

Crimson orbs the size of melons glared at them past two stout horns thrusting forward from the beaked muzzle. With its tail, it was longer than a ship's boat, and from the way it sank into the ground, it was as heavy as an elephant.

Another dragon, and no Apples of Derketa to slay it. That was Valeria's first thought. A brighter one followed on its heels. I have good company for a last battle.

As if they had been fighting-partners for years, Valeria and Conan spread apart so that the creature could not attack both of them at once. Valeria stud-led the horns and headplates. If neither were too sharp, they offered handholds. Then a good thrust with sword or dagger might serve this beast as it had the crocodile.

Instead of attacking, the beast cried out again. It seemed to wait for an answer, or perhaps for the echoes to die. Then it still did not attack. It lumbered forward to the edge of the fungi, lowered its broad muzzle, and bit off a clump.

"That brute's no dragon," Conan called. "It's the fungus-eater."

"Then what killed the other-" Valeria began.

In the next moment, she had what might have been the answer to her question.

Dim-sighted it might be, but the creature's hearing was keen enough. It turned toward the voices, and Conan signaled urgently for silence.

Valeria needed no urging. She opened the distance between her and her comrade still wider. If dim enough of sight, the beast might not be able to see two foes, let alone attack them. Then one of them might die, but the other would have a chance at the kill.

If the creature saw them, it gave no sign of it. Valeria wondered if it was so scant of sight that it could spy only movement. After a moment, it lowered its head and resumed feeding. The creature was no dainty eater. It s...o...b..red and crunched its way through a patch of fungus as large as an Aquilonian kitchen garden. Its eating, it belches, and its footfalls raised more echoes. A cavalry trumpet in its ear might have won its attention, but scarcely any lesser sound.

Sated, it lifted its head and lumbered toward the body of the other creature-its victim, perhaps, in a battle to the death over this caveful of food. It reached the body, snuffled noisily about it, then lifted its head again and gave its challenge louder than before.

Valeria felt as if hot nails were driving into her ears, but she did not take her eyes off the creature. It might be dim of sight and unable to hear much over the sound of its own feeding, but it seemed able to scent the trace of a stranger.

Silently, Conan waved at her to come closer. Still watching their visitor, she knelt, then crawled on hands and knees through the fungi. The Cimmerian stood as still as a temple image, watching the beast make the rounds of the wall, until she reached him.

"We'll have to face him now," he whispered. "He's caught the scent of some stranger on his territory. If we don't kill him, he'll hunt us until he catches us off guard."

Valeria was ready to agree. The beast's jaws were flat, bony plates, with no more teeth than a chicken's beak. They were also large enough to swallow her whole, and strong enough to crack Conan's bones like twigs.

They separated again. They were forty paces apart when a puff of air wafted from the tunnel by which they had entered the cavern. It blew past them, and Valeria willed limbs, and even breath to stillness as she waited for the beast's reply.

It came-another screaming, thundering challenge. The echoes had not begun to die when it charged. Like a heavily laden ship in heavy seas, it labored through the fungi, trampling some, shredding others. It held its head low, horns thrusting forward like the ram of a galley. Valeria remained still as the beast surged between them.

In the next moment, Conan shot forward like a stone from a sling. His hands gripped the upper horn, and he vaulted clear over the beast's muzzle, aiming for its neck.

Somehow, his iron grip failed him. The leap sent him sprawling across the neck instead of landing safely astride. He slid off and landed rolling, parting company with his sword in midair.

Valeria filled her lungs in a single desperate breath and let out the shriek of a soul in torment. The beast's head turned toward her. The G.o.ds might be thinking it was Conan's day to die and hers to kill, but Valeria of the Red Brotherhood let neither man nor G.o.d decide such matters for her.

Clearly, the sensing of two enemies was more than the beast's dim wits could endure. It cried challenge again, and began to back away.

"Together-now!" Conan roared.

That drew the beast toward him, but he was on his feet and fully armed again.

Valeria had seen before that the Cimmerian could move forward and backward with equal speed; now she saw him do it again. As he gave ground, he drew the beast after him, and it seemed to forget that it had ever sensed a second opponent.

Against Valeria, that was a death sentence.

She sprang forward, light-footed as a cat, leaping successfully where Conan had failed. She ended straddling the neck. She gripped the edge of the neckplates and lunged to her feet, ready to stab. As she did, the beast reared up on its hind legs. With the swiftness and agility learned high in the rigging of half a score of ships, Valeria entrusted her sword to the wrist-thong and gripped the neckplates with both hands. Both thong and hands did their duty as Valeria dangled from the neckplates like a puppet.

The beast hissed, growled, and screamed all at once, then tossed its head, trying to rid itself of the distracting nuisance.

This gave the Cimmerian his chance for a stroke at the beast's unprotected throat. His sword sang as it parted air, hand-sized scales, and the flesh beneath. Driven by all the strength of two brawny arms, the sword slashed clean through to the beast's life.

Its next cry bubbled and hissed, and sprayed a mist of blood everywhere. It did not fall, though, and Valeria heaved herself onto the neckplates. For a moment, she balanced there as if atop a mast swaying in a storm, displaying the grace of one who had done that many times.

Then her sword slashed at thin bone between the crimson eyes. The next moment, she was flying through the air as if the mast had snapped. She landed among the fungi, which broke her fall and coated her in their grease.

As she struggled to her feet, she saw Conan leading the beast away from her. It was bleeding generously now, and clearly all but blind, yet it would not fall!

Valeria cursed whatever misbegotten sons of flea-bitten apes had conjured up this creature with its unnatural life.

As if her curse had been a spell, the thing seemed to find new strength. It lunged at Conan, and the Cimmerian had to break into a run to stay ahead of it.

The jaws clanged and clashed, and the beast swung toward the tunnel from which Conan and Valeria had entered the cavern.

It swung toward the opening, then charged with single-minded frenzy, as if the answer to all of its woes lay in that tunnel. The charge carried it across the cavern faster than Valeria could have run, and she caught only a brief glimpse of Conan staying ahead of the jaws.

Then Cimmerian and monster together reached the mouth of the tunnel. Conan's war cry, the creature's last challenge, and the rumble of falling rock blended into one ear-torturing din. Echoes stormed about the cavern, doubling and redoubling themselves.

Valeria knelt and watched a vast cloud of dust belch from the tunnel. Nothing remained visible outside it but the tip of the beast's tail, thrashing feebly.

Then the thrashing subsided to a twitching, and even the twitching ended.

Valeria commanded her hands to stop shaking and her knees to hold her up, and walked toward the fallen tunnel. She had no clear idea of what she would do when she reached it, other than seek Conan's body. If it was only caught under the beast and not under the fallen stones, she might be able to carve a way through the beast's flesh- A ma.s.sive, dark form took shape out of the dust cloud.

Valeria crammed her free hand into her mouth to stifle a scream. Her sword rose in the other, as much good as it might be against a spirit- "Valeria!"

Valeria's mouth opened, but no sound came out. She did not drop her sword, and she was still rooted to the spot when Conan reached her.

His arms around her were so comforting that she wondered by she had not asked for them many times already. After a little while, she stopped shaking, and after a while longer, she found her voice again.

"It's as well I didn't need to go after you a second time. I've hardly a rag to spare, and that beast's hide looks too tough to cut up for garments."

Conan shrugged. "I've told you what your best garb is. If you won't believe me, that's only proof that you don't trust men."

"I give men all the trust they deserve," Valeria said with dignity. She held her thumb and forefinger about a hairbreadth apart. "At least that much." She was relieved to see that her hand was steady.

"We'd best be on our way before this uproar draws all our friend's kin," Conan said. "But there's no going back the way we came. It's solid with fallen stone where it isn't solid with dead beast."

It did nothing for Valeria's spirits to see that the only other way out of the cavern sloped sharply downward. But at least there was light as far ahead as she could make out, and a dampness in the air that hinted of water.

She turned, to see Conan slicing off a clump of fungi as large as a hunting dog.

"Rations for the journey?" she asked. Her stomach wanted to heave at the thought, but she was hungry enough that it rumbled instead.

"Why not?" Conan replied, tossing the fungi to her. "If it killed quickly, I'd be dead along with that beast. If I'm still alive at our next halt, I'll say it doesn't kill at all."

Valeria tucked the ma.s.s of fungi under her arm and sheathed her sword. "Conan, you have too cursed many ways of making a woman wish to keep you alive!"

FIVE.

Conan led the way down the tunnel. If danger should arise, it would most likely come from another beast, drawn by the din of the first one's death. It could also come with the Cimmerian's blessing, if it waited until he and Valeria were safely out of its path!

The tunnel sloped steadily downward, and the air grew damper. It was not as foul as one would have expected, though, as far underground as it lay, and with so much death and rottenness about.

Conan found small relief in that. Ancient magic must be all about them here, shedding light, cleansing the air, and giving life to who-knew-what monstrosities besides those they had already met. A sword and the untamed jungle before him would be his choice, but every step they took seemed to take them farther into the bowels of this warren.

Clearly, the beast and its kin had pa.s.sed this way many times. Even the hardest rock of walls and floor was scored by claws and scales. Loose scales in half a score of hues had drifted like autumn leaves into crannies and windings of the tunnel. In one place, a bronze post the thickness of Conan's arm had bent almost double under the onrush of something swift, strong, and ma.s.sive.

Once the tunnel branched, and Conan thought he saw a slight upward slope in the floor of the branch, at the very limits of his vision. This proved no trick of the light, but fifty paces farther on came a bend, and just beyond that, a dead end.

Nor was the dead end a natural rockfall. An enormous door of stone slabs set in what seemed to be a frame of gilded bronze blocked the way. Conan saw that it slid to and fro in bronze grooves that led into niches on either side of the tunnel.

The least of the slabs had to weigh more than the Cimmerian, and the thinnest metal rods of the frames were thicker than Valeria's legs. Some of the rods were wrought in the shape of serpents, and more serpents writhed across the slabs, some of them painted in tiny jewels, others cunningly carved.

Conan did not care to think what spells might be needed to move this door.

Spells, or perhaps some device that would rival those of drowned Atlantis and make a siege-engine of Khitai seem a child's toy.

"Some of those serpents have green eyes," Valeria whispered. The awe of this place and its ancient works was in her, too. "Are they meant to be the Golden Serpents?"

Conan studied the shapes. The gilding was worn in places and tarnished in more, but, in truth, the eyes of all the serpents, carved or painted, were tiny green jewels. Studying them yet more closely, he saw that the jewels seemed to glow from within like the fire-stones they had seen in Xuchotl.

"Ha! Perhaps we've found where the Golden Serpents laired in ancient times," he said. "They would be cause enough for a door like this. It would stop a galley's ram."

"Then let us hope it does its work until we are out of these caves," Valeria said.

"Woman, where is a true pirate's heart?" Conan scoffed. He thrust a forefinger against Valeria's ribs.

She lightly batted his hand away. "Down in her boots, I confess, although I'll geld you if you breathe a word of it." She rubbed her stomach. "Her stomach's about to follow." She looked at the fungi under her arm. "Are these really fit to eat?"

"They haven't killed me yet."

"Just let me eat my fill, and no doubt you will writhe and die the moment afterward." The bronze door would have guarded their backs nicely, but who could say what lay on the other side? Also, if one of the beasts should catch their scent and come down the branch tunnel, they would be trapped.

So they returned to the junction of the tunnels to eat. "Tastes like raw sea slugs," Valeria said after a few mouthfuls.

"And how are they? I've heard of them, but also that they're poison if not cooked."

"It's not the cooking that takes out the poison. There's a spot in the head that needs cutting out, or one slug can kill a ship's crew. A cunning hand with a knife can do the work, though, and then the slug's called a rare treat in some lands. Mostly farther south than we've sailed, but during one hot summer, the slugs sp.a.w.ned farther north than usual."

They finished as much fungus as seemed wise, in a silence that was almost companionable. Conan vowed that if he and Valeria lived to reach a land with civilized eating-houses, he would buy her a meal she would not soon forget.

Meanwhile, they had traveled long enough and far enough to be weary. They tossed a piece of fungus for who kept first watch, and Conan won the honor.

"Need we keep watches at all?" Valeria asked. She pressed a hand lightly against the Cimmerian's battered ribs. He drew a deep breath, but not from any pain her touch gave him.

"I've no wish to end up in the belly of one of those beasts, or to be trampled by one, either. And they may not be all that roam down here."

"Now you have made it certain that I will not sleep for the waking nightmares you just gave me!" Her pouting, though, was largely pretense.

Conan gripped Valeria's hand and gently thrust it away. "Lose no sleep over me, at least. I've had worse hurts as a boy, falling off a roof my father and I were thatching."

"As you wish, Conan," Valeria said. She turned and settled down from where she could watch in all directions. Conan allowed himself a moment to admire the fine, straight back that plunged down from the long neck to the well-rounded hips. Then he placed his steel ready to hand, kicked off his boots, and lay down to seek as much slumber as a man might win from a cold stone floor with magic all about him.

The hut where Dobanpu Spirit-Speaker slept when he visited the largest Ichiribu village was a place of shadows and subtle odors. It almost seemed to Seyganko that a tame spirit lurked in the gra.s.s of the roof, driving out the light.

The odors mingled gra.s.s, cooking smoke, the smoke of fires made with herbs, and the oil that Emwaya rubbed into her skin. Seyganko remembered the first time she had allowed him the honor of rubbing it in. His body tautened with remembered and antic.i.p.ated desire.

In her corner of the hut, Emwaya sat like a carved image. She wore the plainest of waistcloths and only a single bone ornament in her hair, and her face was somber as she shifted her gaze from her father to her betrothed.

"You asked what we must do, Father?" she asked.

"In plain words," Dobanpu replied. His voice was the strongest part of him remaining, although he had not wholly lost the stout thews and broad shoulders of his youth. He had seen nearly sixty turns of the seasons and outlived all the children of his first wives, and all but Emwaya from his second family.

Some said he had suffered these losses as the price of all the time he had spent in the spirit world. Even those who said this whispered it. When they spoke aloud, they praised the courage with which he had borne his losses. They did doubt aloud the wisdom of his teaching his daughter the art of Spirit-Speaking, but only when Emwaya was not in hearing. Some called her tongue the deadliest weapon among the Ichiribu.