Can you do nothing but wag your idiotic heads when I speak of ousting these dogs?'

Hadrathus sighed and answered slowly: 'My lord, it is ill to say, and I fain would say otherwise. But the freedom of Aquilonia is at an end.

Nay, the freedom of the whole world may be at an end! Age follows age in the history of the world, and now we enter an age of horror and slavery, as it was long ago.'

'What do you mean?' demanded the king uneasily.

Hadrathus dropped into a chair and rested his elbows on his thighs, staring at the floor.

'It is not alone the rebellious lords of Aquilonia and the armies of Nemedia which are arrayed against you,' answered Hadrathus. 'It is sorcery--grisly black magic from the grim youth of the world. An awful shape has risen out of the shades of the Past, and none can stand before it.'

'What do you mean?' Conan repeated.

'I speak of Xaltotun of Acheron, who died three thousand years ago, yet walks the earth today.'

Conan was silent, while in his mind floated an image--the image of a bearded face of calm inhuman beauty. Again he was haunted by a sense of uneasy familiarity. Acheron--the sound of the word roused instinctive vibrations of memory and a.s.sociations in his mind.

'Acheron,' he repeated. 'Xaltotun of Acheron--man, are you mad? Acheron has been a myth for more centuries than I can remember. I've often wondered if it ever existed at all.'

'It was a black reality,' answered Hadrathus, 'an empire of black magicians, steeped in evil now long forgotten. It was finally overthrown by the Hyborian tribes of the west. The wizards of Acheron practised foul necromancy, thaumaturgy of the most evil kind, grisly magic taught them by devils. And of all the sorcerers of that accursed kingdom, none was so great as Xaltotun of Python.'

'Then how was he ever overthrown?' asked Conan skeptically.

'By some means a source of cosmic power which he jealously guarded was stolen and turned against him. That source has been returned to him, and he is invincible.'

Albiona, hugging the headsman's black cloak about her, stared from the priest to the king, not understanding the conversation. Conan shook his head angrily.

'You are making game of me,' he growled. 'If Xaltotun has been dead three thousand years, how can this man be he? It's some rogue who's taken the old one's name.'

Hadrathus leaned to an ivory table and opened a small gold chest which stood there. From it he took something which glinted dully in the mellow light--a broad gold coin of antique minting.

'You have seen Xaltotun unveiled? Then look upon this. It is a coin which was stamped in ancient Acheron, before its fall. So pervaded with sorcery was that black empire, that even this coin has its uses in making magic.'

Conan took it and scowled down at it. There was no mistaking its great antiquity. Conan had handled many coins in the years of his plunderings, and had a good practical knowledge of them. The edges were worn and the inscription almost obliterated. But the countenance stamped on one side was still clear-cut and distinct. And Conan's breath sucked in between his clenched teeth. It was not cool in the chamber, but he felt a p.r.i.c.kling of his scalp, an icy contraction of his flesh. The countenance was that of a bearded man, inscrutable, with a calm inhuman beauty.

'By Crom! It's he!' muttered Conan. He understood, now, the sense of familiarity that the sight of the bearded man had roused in him from the first. He had seen a coin like this once before, long ago in a far land.

With a shake of his shoulders he growled: 'The likeness is only a coincidence--or if he's shrewd enough to a.s.sume a forgotten wizard's name, he's shrewd enough to a.s.sume his likeness.' But he spoke without conviction. The sight of that coin had shaken the foundations of his universe. He felt that reality and stability were crumbing into an abyss of illusion and sorcery. A wizard was understandable; but this was diabolism beyond sanity.

'We cannot doubt that it is indeed Xaltotun of Python,' said Hadrathus.

'He it was who shook down the cliffs at Valkia, by his spells that enthrall the elementals of the earth--he it was who sent the creature of darkness into your tent before dawn.'

Conan scowled at him. 'How did you know that?'

'The followers of Asura have secret channels of knowledge. That does not matter. But do you realize the futility of sacrificing your subjects in a vain attempt to regain your crown?'

Conan rested his chin on his fist, and stared grimly into nothing.

Albiona watched him anxiously, her mind groping bewildered in the mazes of the problem that confronted him.

'Is there no wizard in the world who could make magic to fight Xaltotun's magic?' he asked at last.

Hadrathus shook his head. 'If there were, we of Asura would know of him.

Men say our cult is a survival of the ancient Stygian serpent-worship.

That is a lie. Our ancestors came from Vendhya, beyond the Sea of Vilayet and the blue Himelian mountains. We are sons of the East, not the South, and we have knowledge of all the wizards of the East, who are greater than the wizards of the West. And not one of them but would be a straw in the wind before the black might of Xaltotun.'

'But he was conquered once,' persisted Conan.

'Aye; a cosmic source was turned against him. But now that source is again in his hands, and he will see that it is not stolen again.'

'And what is this d.a.m.nable source?' demanded Conan irritably.

'It is called the Heart of Ahriman. When Acheron was overthrown, the primitive priest who had stolen it and turned it against Xaltotun hid it in a haunted cavern and built a small temple over the cavern. Thrice thereafter the temple was rebuilt, each time greater and more elaborately than before, but always on the site of the original shrine, though men forgot the reason therefor. Memory of the hidden symbol faded from the minds of common men, and was preserved only in priestly books and esoteric volumes. Whence it came no one knows. Some say it is the veritable heart of a G.o.d, others that it is a star that fell from the skies long ago. Until it was stolen, none had looked upon it for three thousand years.

'When the magic of the Mitran priests failed against the magic of Xaltotun's acolyte, Altaro, they remembered the ancient legend of the heart, and the high priest and an acolyte went down into the dark and terrible crypt below the temple into which no priest had descended for three thousand years. In the ancient iron-bound volumes which speak of the Heart in their cryptic symbolism, it is also told of a creature of darkness left by the ancient priest to guard it.

'Far down in a square chamber with arched doorways leading off into immeasurable blackness, the priest and his acolytes found a black stone altar that glowed dimly with inexplicable radiance.

'On that altar lay a curious gold vessel like a double-valved sea-sh.e.l.l which clung to the stone like a barnacle. But it gaped open and empty.

The Heart of Ahriman was gone. While they stared in horror, the keeper of the crypt, the creature of darkness, came upon them and mangled the high priest so that he died. But the acolyte fought off the being--a mindless, soulless waif of the pits brought long ago to guard the Heart--and escaped up the long black narrow stairs carrying the dying priest, who before he died, gasped out the news to his followers, bade them submit to a power they could not overcome, and commanded secrecy.

But the word has been whispered about among the priests, and we of Asura learned of it.'

'And Xaltotun draws his power from this symbol?' asked Conan, still skeptical.

'No. His power is drawn from the black gulf. But the Heart of Ahriman came from some far universe of flaming light, and against it the powers of darkness cannot stand, when it is in the hands of an adept. It is like a sword that might smite at him, not a sword with which he can smite. It restores life, and can destroy life. He has stolen it, not to use against his enemies, but to keep them from using it against him.'

'A sh.e.l.l-shaped bowl of gold on a black altar in a deep cavern,' Conan muttered, frowning as he sought to capture the illusive image. 'That reminds me of something I have heard or seen. But what, in Crom's name, is this notable Heart?'

'It is in the form of a great jewel, like a ruby, but pulsing with blinding fire with which no ruby ever burned. It glows like living flame--'

But Conan sprang suddenly up and smote his right fist into his left palm like a thunderclap.

'Crom!' he roared, 'What a fool I've been! The Heart of Ahriman! The heart of my kingdom! Find the heart of my kingdom, Zelata said. By Ymir, it was the jewel I saw in the green smoke, the jewel which Tarascus stole from Xaltotun while he lay in the sleep of the black lotus!'

Hadrathus was also on his feet, his calm dropped from him like a garment.

'What are you saying? The Heart stolen from Xaltotun?'

'Aye!' Conan boomed. 'Tarascus feared Xaltotun and wanted to cripple his power, which he thought resided in the Heart. Maybe he thought the wizard would die if the Heart was lost. By Crom--ahhh!' With a savage grimace of disappointment and disgust he dropped his clenched hand to his side.

'I forgot. Tarascus gave it to a thief to throw into the sea. By this time the fellow must be almost to Kordava. Before I can follow him he'll take ship and consign the Heart to the bottom of the ocean.'

'The sea will not hold it!' exclaimed Hadrathus, quivering with excitement. 'Xaltotun would himself have cast it into the ocean long ago, had he not known that the first storm would carry it ash.o.r.e. But on what unknown beach might it not land!'

'Well,' Conan was recovering some of his resilient confidence, 'there's no a.s.surance that the thief will throw it away. If I know thieves--and I should, for I was a thief in Zamora in my early youth--he won't throw it away. He'll sell it to some rich trader. By Crom!' he strode back and forth in his growing excitement. 'It's worth looking for! Zelata bade me find the heart of my kingdom, and all else she showed me proved to be truth. Can it be that the power to conquer Xaltotun lurks in that crimson bauble?'

'Aye! My head upon it!' cried Hadrathus, his face lightened with fervor, his eyes blazing, his fists clenched. 'With it in our hands we can dare the powers of Xaltotun! I swear it! If we can recover it, we have an even chance of recovering your crown and driving the invaders from our portals. It is not the swords of Nemedia that Aquilonia fears, but the black arts of Xaltotun.'

Conan looked at him for a s.p.a.ce, impressed by the priest's fire.

'It's like a quest in a nightmare,' he said at last. 'Yet your words echo the thought of Zelata, and all else she said was truth. I'll seek for this jewel.'