Conan and the Shaman's Curse (19 page)

“Ngomba has ever been one to act out of passion,” she said defensively. “He and my father... they are both stubborn, and my father can be a fool. Ngomba may have stolen what was yours, but you have it back now. He did it to save us, or at least that is what he would believe. He risked death to defend the villager and would do so again. Of that I am certain. Were it not for the Kezati threat, you and he might have become friends.”

“I shall have no friend who deserts his comrade,” Conan said sullenly. “You have forgiven him for trying to kill your father?”

‘Toward Ngomba, my father’s heart has hardened like stone. Their wills oppose each other, but they must work together for the good of our people. The elders once told us a story in which two serpents try to devour each other by the tail, but in doing so devour themselves. Jukona and Ngomba are like those serpents. They have each other by the tail, but that is as far as they will go.” At that, Sajara lapsed back into silence, letting go of Conan’s arm.

“Do the anansi not attack when the face of Asusa is in the sky?” Avrana asked, the suddenness of her question and the harshness of her voice startling Conan.

“Asusa’s light scarcely pierces this place,” Makiela retorted. In truth, as they ventured farther inward, the jungle had darkened considerably. Only a few slivers of blue sky were visible overhead, where a chance parting of leaf and frond permitted them to shine through.

“They were eager enough to gnaw my bones,” Conan grumbled, his suspicions roused by the absence of the eight-legged abominations. “With these eggs, would they hide from us out of sight, or simply let us pass unhindered?”

“All we know is that they do not attack one who bears an egg,” Sajara said, peering upward.

“The barrier of trees is this way.” Conan crouched, examining signs of his earlier passage. He had also found tracks made by either Ngomba, Jukona, or both. Studying the trees around them for signs of ambush, he crept through the foliage, slowing to check every nook of forest for a slavering spider that might be lurking behind leafy cover.

Tension gripped everyone as they crossed the sward, drawing nearer to the place Conan had narrowly escaped. Steadily they moved among the trees, and with every step the trunks grew closer together, their limbs intertwining in thick coils of dark wood. Vines and leaves thickened until the jungle became a cloying, humid mass of vegetation. Visibility worsened, slowing their progress to a crawl.

“It was not packed so closely before,” Conan grumbled. “We must have strayed... no, here is where Jukona lay senseless. Well, at least those blasted spiders will have trouble moving through here.” He walked onward, coming to a place where the clot of flora broke up. “Hah! Over there is where I squeezed through, into the clearing beyond.” He gestured toward two trees, at whose trunks were heaped the viscera of the spider crushed between them. “Follow me.” He stuffed the anansi egg into the pouch that would eventually hold his looted rubies. Avrana and Kanitra placed the remaining eggs into their hip-slung sacks.

Visibility was better without the thick clustering of plants. He took a few steps before stopping in his tracks. Sajara and Makiela froze beside him, drawing in their breath as they caught sight of what lay nearby. It was a dead anansi, but one only barely recognizable as such. Its remains were a headless bag of hide, as though someone—or some thing—had neatly scooped out its innards. The thing’s hairy flesh was not shredded where the neck had been; it was as if a headsman had decapitated the beast with a sharpened axe. “By the bones of Badb, what did this?” he murmured.

Sajara bit her lower lip. “I do not know... I do not want to know. Let us hope that we do not find out.”

Avrana poked the flesh with her spear, lifting it up and examining it, her nose wrinkling in disgust. Its spiny legs dangled limply. She let the loose, sagging mass drop back to the sward, wiping her shell-tip on some leaves.

“Aye,” Conan nodded. “The sooner we enter the wall and leave this place, the better.” Running toward the trees, Conan leaped high, wrapping his hands around a low-hanging limb. He swung himself upward, balancing atop it. A tigerish leap carried him through the air until the gripped a besmeared trunk, the same one he had scaled to escape from the spiders.

Sajara and Makiela did the best they could, although it was evident to Conan that they were unaccustomed to climbing.

Makiela hissed. “There,” she said, looking at something directly above her.

Conan followed her gaze upward to a broad, curving limb that intersected with the trunk to which they clung. There the body of another spider dangled, headless, an empty sack of hide. Its legs swayed faintly, the motion so small it was almost imperceptible. But there was no question that the beast was dead.

The Cimmerian looked around for signs of a struggle or smears of ichor on the branches, finding not a trace. In spite of the day’s wilting heat, a chill crept along his spine, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. These anansis had been masters of the ambush, nimble and many-eyed creatures of cunning.

A fat droplet of fluid splattered into a leaf an arm’s length from Conan’s face. He sniffed at its faint but foul smell.

Fresh blood from the spider... and there was not even a breeze, but the legs had been swaying on the branch.

“Hurry,” he called down to the others. He peered into the leaves around them, his eyes gleaming like blue sapphires in the shadowy jungle, fingers twitching near his sword-hilt.

Avrana and Kanitra handed up their spears and followed, stopping when they were directly below Sajara and Makiela.

Gritting his teeth, Conan began wedging himself through the small gap in the trunks, placing his back against one and pushing outward against the other, flexing his muscles as he strained to spread apart the trees. Sajara grappled one of the trunks, throwing her considerable strength into the effort while Makiela held onto the spears. After an eternity of straining and heaving, wood gave way to bone and sinew.

Makiela jumped through first, diving and rolling on the ground in the clearing beyond the trees. Next, Avrana and Kanitra slipped through the opening and thumped onto the damp soil below.

“Go!” Conan growled between clenched teeth, his arms shaking from the effort of holding apart the trunks.

Sajara pressed her feet against one trunk and her back against the other. When she swung her legs outward and leapt, Conan pushed off against the tree with his hands. They landed side-by-side, rolling to lessen the impact on their joints as Makiela had done. Sajara wound up atop Conan, flashing him a smile before getting to her feet.

Turning, all five of them fell silent, awestruck by the immense stone structure that loomed before them. As if by design, its cracked walls curved in the same line as the trees surrounding the clearing, and their crumbling bricks rose to just below the treetops. From where Conan and the Ganaks stood gaping, the edifice was but a stone’s throw away. Conan immediately averted his gaze before remembering that the insidious image had been chiselled into a different section of the wall, an area not visible from where they stood.

“The outer wall,” Sajara said reverently. “Built by our ancestors. It is—ungh!” she groaned as Makiela slammed into her.

Conan roared in surprise. The Ganak hunter must have sensed something a heartbeat before he had. Before Makiela and Sajara hit the ground, the Cimmerian whirled, sword in hand.

As quiet as the rustle of leaves in a breeze, the enormous creature sprang from the tangle of limbs above them, bearing right for Conan. For a moment he thought it was a part of the tree; its shiny body was of similar greenish-brown hue, its abdomen as thick as Conan was tall, tapering to a neck the diameter of a tree trunk. Its four powerful back legs were long and slender, bending behind it as it dived. Translucent green wings beat the air silently, propelling it downward toward its prey.

Out-thrust forelegs were folded in a hideous mockery of a suppliant priest praying to his god. Dagger-like spines bristled on these appendages, which opened like a trap as they rushed toward Conan. But more horrifying than these was its head; tapering antennae swept backward, rising between its bulbous eyes. Those multifaceted orbs glimmered wickedly, lusting for the blood of its victim.

“Stalker!” Sajara cried out, rising to one knee and whipping her shell-spike from her girdle.

Kanitra and Avrana tried to set their spears in its path, but the stalker struck more swiftly than a diving hawk. Conan aimed a brutal overhead slash for its head, but the thing’s forelegs blocked his blade. Tempered steel rebounded, blocked by armour as hard as adamantine plate. The beast sprang its trap, its forelegs snapping shut before Conan could blink his eyes. But the Cimmerian had flung himself aside as he struck; the spines brushed his shoulder, missing his head. The sound rang in his ear as the air from the impact rushed past him.

The stalker bounded away, wings flexing. Conan was awed by its speed; the thing was the height of a horse and easily twice the length. Head swivelling on its slender neck, the stalker’s antennae twitched as it measured the distance between itself and Conan. Like a bolt of lightning it struck again before he regained his balance. Stumbling, Conan cursed defiantly as the thing’s forelegs clamped together.

Spines raked his face. Wrenching his head backward, he narrowly evaded the stalker’s deadly embrace. But his upraised sword was trapped between those powerful limbs, though he still gripped its hilt. He tugged to free it, but it may as well have been wedged between two millstones.

Kanitra and Avrana had been ready for the stalker’s second strike. With fierce cries they jumped toward it, jabbing its swollen abdomen with their spears and ripping them free. Droplets of yellow ooze flew from the shells atop the sticks and dribbled from the stalker’s punctured belly.

The creature opened its mouth, issuing a weird wail that no human throat could have mimicked. Its teeth flashed in the sunlight, deadly curving rows that could decapitate a man—or an anansi—in a single bite.

Sajara and Makiela flanked the stalker, shell-knives in hand, slashing at the expansive underside.

Beating its wings furiously, the gigantic insect flew into the air, beyond the reach of knife and spear.

Conan felt himself rising into the air, but his weight was slowing the creature’s ascent. In the span of a breath, he considered letting go of his sword; mayhap the stalker would let it drop. Then he realized that while those forelegs were closed, the advantage was his. Hanging onto the hilt with one hand, he grasped the stalker’s neck.

Laboriously, its huge wings fluttered. It stubbornly held onto Conan’s blade, unaware that the weapon was not part of its victim’s body. Head turning and lunging, it gnashed its teeth. Unfazed, the Cimmerian maintained his grip— one hand clutching the sword, the other locked behind the stalker’s head. He squeezed, bearing down with enough force to crush a man’s windpipe, but the stalker’s tough neck gave no more than a wooden pole.

From below, Avrana and Kanitra cast their spears. One fleshed Conan’s already-raw calf, eliciting a grunt and a curse. The other skewered the stalker’s underbelly, passing through it to jut an arm’s length from the creature’s back. Unfortunately, it missed the madly flexing wings. Ochre slime flowed down the stick, streaming from the wound. The defiant creature flew on, already halfway between the ground and the treetops. Below, Sajara and the others were shrinking from view.

If the stalker set down in the trees from which it had attacked, all Conan had to do was pull the spear from its body and impale the bulbous head. His sword would either stay locked between those forelegs or fall to the swaid. The thing could not quite reach him with its teeth, and its wounds would surely slow it down. Grimly, Conan held on. The beast had to land sometime.

He was level with the top of the wall now. Though the stalker was flying toward the edge of the clearing, his altitude afforded him a view of what lay beyond that impressive brickwork. Glancing downward, he saw the crumbling ruins of the Rahaman village. Earlier, he had thought the structure to be a castle, but it was clearly more of a shield wall. Oval in shape, its diameter was incredible, larger than the outer walls of many civilized capital cities.

Several buildings seemed to be intact, spared from the elements by the surrounding curtain of stone. At the centre of the ruins was the minaret he had seen before. It rose from the scattered cylindrical buildings, narrow but reaching to an incredible height. Conan supposed that it afforded a view of the entire island. Aside from the worn spire, it looked untouched by the decaying effects of time. He guessed that it had been built to enclose the fountain of the gods.

But his time for gawking was up. The stalker showed no signs of landing in the treetops. Mindlessly, it kept drifting upward. It swerved erratically, its back legs beginning to twitch. Shrieking again, it suddenly opened its forelegs, releasing Conan’s sword.

He snatched it back immediately, swinging his legs around as if he intended to ride the stalker bareback. Faltering, the stalker groped at him with its spiny appendages but was unable to bring them to bear. Conan slashed at a wing, hoping to force the thing to land.

For a moment, his plan worked. The stalker spiralled away from the trees in a slow descent, unable to control its direction. Then it shuddered, its limbs thrashing spasmodically, its wings no longer beating. It spun toward the treetops before plummeting down.

Conan’s string of curses was drowned out by the rush of wind. Thrusting his sword into his belt, he took a deep breath and dived from the dying stalker’s back, angling toward the treetops. The limbs and leaves rushed up at him in a speeding blur. He extended his hands, elbows and knees bent, pulse racing. He would have only one chance.

He had seen the trick done once in a Zamoran circus act; the acrobat, a nimble Khitan who leapt from the roof of a tall building, grabbed a series of horizontal poles built especially for the act. By swinging around these poles, he gradually slowed his momentum until he was able to drop from the lowermost pole.