"By Crom and Ymir, I curse the day I invented this foul brew!" moaned Conan, clutching his greying skull as he lay on his bed of exotic plumage in the inmost chambers of his royal suite – a vast series of rooms carved from blocks of basalt, but painted in bold colours with fabulous and fantastical designs of men, gods, and animals of all kinds.
"I had thought that cactus sap had quite the bite to it," he continued, "and there was no liquor to be found in all this wretched land, but I've suffered wounds to my head in battle which hurt less the next morning than the headache caused by this vile stuff!"
"Shall I order all batches of it destroyed?" asked Tlaloch, a bemused air on his youthful, copper-skinned face, his dark eyes flashing with secret humor as he leaned casually on the wall opposite his liege.
"I'll have you flayed alive if you do!" grimaced Conan through his pain. "Better foul liquor in the evenings than none at all!"
"We knew nought of such things before your arrival, " observed Tlaloch, toying absently with one of the brilliant green feathers of his headdress. "We had our smoking weed, of course, but that is a stimulant to thought and speech, and did not cloud our minds as does this liquor of yours. Though truth to tell, many of our folk have grown fond of it, though none perhaps as much as you."
"I have my own reasons for taking to drink," replied Conan, more sombrely, "which are none of your concern."
"Surely they are," replied Tlaloch cautiously. "Both as your lieutenant, and as your brother by marriage."
"We share many burdens, it is true," acknowledged Conan. "Keeping the snapping curs of this city at bay for one, while maintaining the balance with the Quechanlnti along the western coast and the support of your own mountain folk into the bargain. But some burdens are mine alone, and I will not trouble others with them."
"Still, you could at least tell me what they are," pressed Tlaloch. "Or do you not trust me after all these years?"
"I said they were mine alone!" snapped Conan, his volcanic blue eyes blazing dangerously. "Crom and Mitra, man, the last thing I need with my head on fire is you pestering me with questions I have told you I won't answer! If you can't cure my headache on the spot, then get out and leave me to suffer in silence!"
"As His Majesty commands," replied Tlaloch with a bow, though his full lips curled with seeming displeasure – or was it disdain? He turned about with a flourish of his magnificent cloak of scarlet and sapphire feathers woven with tokens of jade and gold, and made his exit from Conan's chambers to the public halls of the palace beyond.
Conan heaved himself up from his bead, and took a long draught of cool, clean water from the intricately carved stone jar that lay by the foot of his bed. Then he crashed down on the bed again, turning on his side as his head spun, and sought refuge from the tortures of liquor in excess within the grey shadowlands of sleep.
He had drifted off for he knew not how many hours, when he was swept up from the shadows of deep sleep into the twilight land of dreams. Once again, he found himself in a vast hall of endless night, its heavy, squat ebon pillars stretching from the darkness below to that above, the only fitful illumination provided by a handful of bronze braziers squatting on the unseen floor. In front of Conan stood an ebon dais, upon which coiled a grim figure whom he now recognized only too well. Set the Accursed!
"And how fare you kinging it in Mayapan, O Conan the Great?" enquired Set mockingly, the sable coils of his serpent form churning endlessly as his scarlet forked tongue flicked in and out between sharp ivory fangs the size of broadswords, and his crimson, slitted eyes glowed ominously amid the dark.
"And what does a god care for the welfare of a mortal?" replied Conan, who noted that his waking torment had subsided entirely, and he felt as wide awake and alert as a tiger in a trap.
"Not at all," replied Set with a flicker of his forked tongue. "It was merely a polite nothing. In fact I have summoned you here in your mortal sleep on account of the unfinished business between us – I'm sure you recall well the terms of our bargain that put you on the Dragon T`hrone of Xlantlantaca."
"I do indeed," replied Conan stoutly. "And it is not yet twelve years since we made our bargain. One year yet remains, more or less."
"Less - and so it does, as time is measured on your feeble little planet," replied Set, his eyes narrowing ominously. "And to what good use you have put the time I have given you! Defiling my temple, and slaying my priests, and mocking my teachings, and denying me the sacrifices that were my due!"
"Surely a god as ancient and mighty as you does not go hungry?" replied Conan with a sneer.
"Oh, but I do, mortal!" replied Set, slithering off his dais towards Conan's form, so that he soon towered over the Cimmerian. "A thousand worlds offer me their sacrifices, and yet I begrudge the loss of even the least of them! And above all, I hunger for that foul bauble which you stole from the realm of my enemy, and now cling to unjustly yourself!"
"I did not steal it," replied Conan evenly. "It was unguarded, and I claimed it by the sweat of my brow. No man, and no god, has a higher claim to the Crystal Skull than do I!"
"Is that so?" replied Set. "My claim shall be higher than yours soon enough, by your own sworn oath! And even so, it was not unguarded as well you know. You evaded its shambling guard, the servant of my enemy, the first mortal ever to do so. How he would view your theft, well…even I can hardly imagine the torment he would inflict upon you, if he stirred to wakefulness from his slumber of the eons! You are lucky indeed to have entreated with me first."
"I do not fear the torment of that rotten fish, Kuthlan…" began Conan, but instantly the halls of Set were plunged into utter darkness, as the dark gods' voice cried out deafeningly,
"DO NOT SPEAK HIS NAME IN MY HALLS, FOOL!"
Set's glowing eyes, still visible in the dark, nearly froze Conan with their infinite malice, as if the old serpent were poised to strike, and Conan lurched away from him with a thousand generations of instinct…
…only to find himself falling, endlessly falling, in the limitless dark of the Void. For how long he fell, and how far, Conan could not tell, for time and space seemed to have no meaning in this eternal emptiness that lay beyond all light and life.
But then something changed, subtly, and Conan began to feel a resistance to his fall, his phantom limbs flailing as if in some pliable yet heavy fluid. There was also a shift in the appearance of his surroundings, which were lit almost as if with a dim, barely perceptible greenish light, that came from far above, and faded more and more into uttermost darkness below.
Conan's descent ended suddenly, yet seemingly without harm, as he found himself standing on a soft, yielding surface, as if it were mud or mire of some kind in which he sank halfway up to his knees. Then he realized that before him this strange place was not empty – in the shimmering, greenish light, he could barely see the bizarre and fantastical outline before him of what seemed a vast city, carved out of solid stone, into the most improbably and inconceivably twisted shapes and forms he could imagine.
Indeed, it was impossible even to describe in mortal speech what he saw, save that the immense monoliths, and towers, and bridges, and stairs, and halls were all wrong …their forms, their angles, how they stood opposed to each other, none of it made any sense, or could possibly have been conceived by the mind of man. What diseased mind did conceive of it, Conan cared not to contemplate.
As he stood in the mire, his long greying hair floating aimlessly in what he now recognized was water – though how he could breathe under such crushing depths, or at all, he knew not – he noticed the largest of the halls before him, its pitted, domed, surface writhing with twisted, knotted spirals carved into the rock. It was bisected by two vast, square doors, slanted acutely to the ground, carved with hideous shapes that were yet somehow strangely familiar to him. The most acute terror struck Conan to the core as he stared at those doors, possessed by the terrible fear that they might fall open, and blast his eyes with the sight of what lay within.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the doors began to open, Conan's eyes fixed on the darkness within, which he yet somehow knew was not empty, but seething with evil life, and power unimaginable. He let out a wordless scream…
…and found himself wide awake in his own chambers, drenched in sweat, as his wife Huitzil and a dozen of his guardsmen, clad in armour of the jaguar, the ocelot, the eagle and the snake, came rushing to his side.
"My husband, what is wrong?" cried Huitzil, throwing her slender form against his. "You cried out as if your soul had been wrenched from your body!"
"Aye, my liege!" said the lieutenant of the guard, an ocelot warrior. "We feared someone had secreted themselves in your chambers, and struck against you, mad though man must be to strike against a living god!"
"I am fine!" snapped Conan, brusquely pushing Hutzil away and turning squarely to his guards. "Stop fussing over me like a bunch of old women! I may be old myself, but I'm not at death's door yet."
"It is only out of our love for you that we fear for your safety!" reproached Hutzil, brushing her dark hair out of her face so that it fell over her thin blue gown. "You have slept half the day away, which is not your habit, and then we hear you cry out as if…"
"Enough!" shouted Conan again. "All of you, out! I would be alone."
"At once, my liege!" acknowledged the lieutenant, as he and the other guardsmen turned about and strode out of the room. Huitzil, however, remained behind, standing cautiously a few feet beside her husband.
"And I for one will defy your order," she replied. "You rebuffed my brother yesterday evening, but I still claim the rights of a wife!"
"Then you have the right to remain and be silent!" replied Conan sourly. "Crom! Is there no more liquor?"
"You've had enough of your liquor," she replied, her tone more insistent now. "I'll fetch you some water myself."
Hutzil slid gracefully out of the room, only to reappear a few moments later with a pitcher full of cold, fresh water, crudely carved from solid pumice, but decoratively inlaid with jade and gold. Conan took the pitcher from her abruptly and drained it in one gulp, before releasing a massive belch and then casting the pitcher across the room, where it landed on the basalt floor with a heavy thud.
"It seems you follow the manners of one of our hill villages, even in your royal palace!" she observed wryly.
"Can't a man act as one without insults from his wife?" replied Conan gruffly.
"It was hardly an insult," she demurred. "But I do wish you would tell me what is troubling you, instead of brushing me aside. I am the mother of your only child, of your infant daughter Huitzilipocthli, and yet you treat me as if I were nothing!"
"More like she is my five-hundredth child," replied Conan evenly, "mayhap I will grant you she is only my second legitimate one. I can't account for most of the rest of them."
"Is that so?" replied Hutzil, more coldly now, though despite Conan's refusal to disclose his past beyond the Eastern Sea she had not imagined at Conan's healthy age that she was the first woman he had ever known.
"What of it?" asked Conan with a shrug. "A man has needs. But as to your question…" He frowned for some moments, appearing almost hesitant in a way that was quite unusual for him, but then lowered his voice and looked into her eyes.
"Tell me of this, this god of the deeps, Kuthlan. What do you know of him?"
"Only what everyone in Mayapan knows," said Huitzil. "Kuthlan is the great enemy of Kukulkan. He is the Lord of the Deeps Below, of the Dark Waters, just as Kukulkan is the Lord of the Void Above, the Rushing Winds, the Dark and Empty Airs. So far as is known, only the Quechalnti worship Kuhtlan openly."
"So far as is known?" replied Conan, lowering his greying brows. "Do you mean there are those in Mayapan who worship him in secret?"
"There are rumours," she replied with a casual shrug. "I know nothing myself."
"And why are Kukulkan and Kuthlan such great enemies?" asked Conan. "Why do they even bother with each other at all, rather than keep their deeps below and voids above to themselves, and leave mortal folk alone?"
"How can a mortal scry the motives of gods?" asked Huitzil. "They have been enemies from time immemorial; it is not our lot to know more."
"And yet neither is a friend to man," replied Conan sourly. "Though I have never had any use for any of the gods myself."
"Either might be a great friend to a man of use to them," said Huitzil. "Kukulkan has certainly been a friend to you. He elevated you from leader of a gang of hill-tribes, to god-emperor of all of Mayapan, in a single day!"
"Because I am of use to him," replied Conan, only to realize with a silent curse that he had let down his guard.
"And how are you of use to him, my husband?" she asking, with only the slightest hint of insistence in her tone. "What attribute do you posses that led to your elevation in his esteem?"
"That is none of your concern," replied Conan, but she cut him off:
"No doubt it is all our concern," she replied, her face grim and serious, "and I am not such a fool as you think me, husband. Kulkulkan spared you and elevated you to your present lofty position because you were chosen by the Crystal Skull as its bearer in the lands of Men."
"You seem to know much for a mere woman," replied Conan, his deep blue eyes narrowing with the slightest trace of suspicion, "and no doubt far more than is good for you of such night-black sorcery."
"I know only what is known to all the women of this land," she replied with a trace of a smile. "But if you do not trust your own wife, and want to be left alone with your drink and your nightmares…"
"Crom girl, you sting me to the quick!" replied Conan sourly. "I am not yet an old doddard, even if I look like one."
Conan was silent for a few moments, and then said almost ashamedly, "I must tell someone or I will go mad…I can no longer deaden my nerves sufficiently with drink. I will tell you the facts plainly and simply then, though you must promise me they will not leave this room."
"I promise," she replied with a nod.
"Then listen carefully, for I shall not repeat myself," he began. "When I disappeared in plain view in the battle before the city walls, well over eleven years ago now, I appeared before Kukulkan himself! Not within the city, I deem, but somewhere far beyond it…"
Seeing his wife remain silent, and surprised that she did not appear shocked, he continued, "Kukulkan is known by another name in my homeland beyond the Eastern Sea – there, he goes by the name of Set, and there are other nations that worship him, as does this one. But be that as it may, Kukulkan or Set if you will sought to wheedle the Crystal Skull from my grasp. For some reason beyond my ken, he could not harm me while I bore it, at least not directly, nor could he take it for himself against my will."
"And yet plainly you did not give it to him," she replied. "For we have all seen you bear it in public many times since. Surely even now it resides in that obsidian chest of yours, deep in your private study, which you permit no man or woman to open on pain of death – not that any would dare, for all of your personal guards and servants and those of your couriers in the know suspect what lies therein, and none dares risk the wrath of the Crystal Skull. "
"Of course I didn't give it to him!" replied Conan, his voice rising louder. "At least," he said more hesitantly, "not yet…"
"What do you mean, 'not yet'?" she replied, her dark eyes narrowing, her hands it seemed suddenly clenched tightly into fists.
"What is the use of dissimulating, now that I have told you so much that should have remained hidden?" replied Conan. "I made a pact with Set…"
"A pact?" she replied, her lips white with tension, though Conan seemed unaware of the change in his wife's attitude, engrossed as he was in his own troubles.
"Yes, a pact!" replied Conan with a snarl. "He threatened to imprison me forever in the Outer Void, which lies beyond all – or some such mystical nonsense – but a threat I took seriously all the same. And so I made a pact with him, to my own advantage at least."
"Evidently to his advantage as well," replied Huitzil, her voice restrained as if with hidden anger. "And what were the terms of this pact?"
"Quite simply this," replied Conan,"he would return me to the world of the living for a dozen years under the bright sun of our world, to rule this land as the Feathered Serpent, his avatar on Earth, but with my mind and faculties intact, not enslaved to him body and soul like all my predecessors in that role, including my poor old comrade Sigurd of Vanaheim."
"And at the end of the twelve years?" she hissed.
"Well, naturally I am to give the Crystal Skull to Set, of my own free will and without let or hindrance," replied Conan darkly. "On the twelfth anniversary, which is well less than one year hence. What he plans to do with it after, I know not. He seems to feel that somehow the Skull is related to Kuthlan, his nemesis, and that by taking possession of it he can somehow gain the advantage over him…"
"You fool!" she shrieked, slapping him hard across the face. "You worthless outlander scum! Have you no mind at all, to do as you have done! The prophecy is in tatters now…" She breathed heavily, her dark eyes wide with rage and fear, as Conan, suppressing any visible expression of the surprise he felt at her violent reaction, stared at her grimly.
"An you were a man," growled Conan, rubbing his sore cheek with one palm as he raised the other menacingly in a clenched fist, "your head and shoulders would soon part company. Strike me again, woman, or speak to me again so, and so it shall surely pass!"
"What does it matter whether I die today or months from now?" she laughed, almost hysterically, as she backed away, a light near that of madness playing in her eyes. "You have damned and doomed us all! Aye, and you know it too! That is why you spend all day mired in drink…"
"Enough!" shouted Conan, his aged yet stentorian voice echoing throughout his private chambers and into the shadowy corridors beyond, where it set his guards and servants whispering in gossip.
"Aye, enough!" she laughed again, her voice hard and bitter. "Enough ramblings from your empty head! Now you will listen to me, husband, and I will add to your scanty store of knowledge of this land and its folk – much good that will do any of us now!"
Conan glowered at her, his volcanic blue eyes blazing dangerously, but did not lay hands on her – for in spite of his bloodcurdling words of moments before, it was against his personal code of honour to lay hands forcefully on a woman, unless in direst need. Huitzil meanwhile composed herself, her whole manner changing as her voice became calm and cold, and her dark eyes glittering wildly, though whether with wrath or the spark of madness he could not tell. Crom, he thought to himself, have I ever really known this woman, or her folk, or anything about this strange land at the edge of the world?
"You mock us women folk as stupid and weak," she told him, "as do all men. And yet you are wrong. The Mayapani have always been servants of Kukulkan at least in appearances, and the menfolk truly so even though they chafed under his yoke alongside us, and so in truth did many of us women worship him. So it was, at least, until you disrupted the ceremony of the new year not long after your coronation, over eleven years ago, and threw all the folk of this land into doubt and disbelief, save the Quechalnti servants of Kuthlan alone"
She smiled grimly. "Yet not all women accepted having our husbands, sons, daughters, sisters, and ourselves taken away in chains to die on the black, blood stained altars of Kukulkan here in this accursed city. And so, in silent and in secret, on caves and in mountaintops, in blackest night, and even by the shore of the ageless sea Western Sea, which our people fear, some women found a new god to worship! A god who someday would lead us and all of his followers into liberation from bondage to Kukulkan, a bright new age born in a holocaust of flame and ecstasy, an age of freedom and liberty unrestrained, and age of infinite pleasures and eternal life!"
"I've heard better promises from the worshippers of some dark gods beyond the Eastern Sea," Conan replied with a shrug. "No doubt equally false."
"You know nothing!" she replied scornfully. "It was men like you who put our people into bondage to Kukulkan in the first place! But no matter. His power on this Earth is coming to an end, and he knows it. The stars are changing, and the age of his dark void is at an end. Soon the age of the deeps shall begin!"
"The age of the deeps," replied Conan with a frown, remembering again his nightmare of that morning. "You mean…"
"Yes, even you have guessed it," she replied. "I am a members of the Sisterhood of the Kraken, the secret worshippers of Kuthlan amongst the slaves of Kukulkan! And long have we struggled in the shadows, with the secret aid of our Quechalnti allies, and watched and waited for our savour to appear from beyond the Eastern Sea, to bring the Age of Kukulkan to an end, and usher in the Age of Kuthlan!"
"It seems to me you propose to replace one shambling horror of a night-black bygone age with another," replied Conan, still remembering uneasily his terror at the climax of his dream, as the doors to the watery temple of the deeps had begun to open to reveal the being that watched and waited within.
"Because, as I have said, you are a fool!" she replied harshly. "But you are much worse than that. For in your sheer outlander, barbarian stupidity, you, Conan of the Isles, our savour, our liberator, he who by the will of destiny took possession of the Crystal Skull and bore it into battle against our ancient foes…in the greatest hour of our need, you betrayed us all! Aye, and you had not even the wit to realize it, until too late!"
"I betrayed no one," replied Conan sternly. "I am no servant of this Kuthlan of yours, for whom I care not one jot more than for Set. I bought myself time, time to think about how to put off Set, or Kukulkan as you call him, until I can think how to outwit him, or to…"
"Or to what?" she replied mockingly. "To prove yourself more clever and deceitful than the father of lies? Surely you jest. And only now, at the eleventh hour, do you reveal what you have done!"
"If you have nothing more to say than to mock me," replied Conan sourly, as he began pacing about the room, "then get yourself out of my sight! The 'Sisterhood of the Kraken', you say? A witches coven, more like! I never intended to marry a witch, nor do I intend to remain married to one! It chills my heart to think that your black witch's blood runs in our daughter's veins - will she grow up to become a foul harpy, and worshipper of evil, as are you?"
"Our fair flower Huitzilipocthli is not yet initiated into the Sisterhood, being short of her thirteenth year," replied Huitzil with a frown. "And yet I care not what you think of her or of me!" she spat contemptuously. "But if you wish to save us all from doom, then you have but one choice. You must seek the aid of the high priests of Kuthlan among the Quechalnti, for they alone could guess by what means you can unravel your pact, and save us all…"
"Save us all from what?" replied Conan. "You mean save your dark god of the deeps from destruction, perhaps! And what good will it do the race of men if he rules in place of Kukulkan? It might be out of the frying pan, and into the fire – or the water."
"Then shall I reveal to you still more hidden lore?" replied Hutzil. "I will tell you what I suspect of what shall happen, unless we can undo the damage you have done, and do it quickly, before the last of your dozen years is out. The Crystal Skull, as you know or may have guessed, is all that remains of a long-dead mage who was once in the service of Kuthlan, the dreaming god who yet can speak to mortal men in their dreams, and by other more direct means, even though his physical form has been entombed in his sunken city beneath the waves since time immemorial. This mage had sworn, in exchange for taking a good part Kuthlan's power into his own mortal frame, to use his powers and his skills to slay Kuthlan's mortal enemies, and by the power vested in him combined with his own mage's will to stir the dreaming god to waking life, so that his waking form could break the bonds of his imprisonment and rule this Earth once more, as he did at the dawn of time!"
"But for reasons known to none other than himself," she continued, "this mage of Kuthlan, whose name is long forgotten, betrayed our master! Instead of using his power in service of Kuthlan as sworn by his oath, instead he used it upon himself – seeking, it seems, to ensure that Kuthlan remained imprisoned beneath the waves forever."
"And mayhap he had good reason for so doing," observed Conan with a skeptical air.
"His mortal body could not contain such unimaginable power for long," continued Huitzil, ignoring the slight, "and so rather than discharging that power in service of Kuthlan, or having his mortal flesh and bone consumed by it, he directed his power within and turned his mortal frame into still, pure, incorruptible crystal, so to remain forever – or so he thought. Though even he underestimated the power of his spell, for legend says his temple and his city, and its inhabitants, also were all turned to crystal forever in the blink of an eye, in the days long before the great deluge swept the world. After the deluge, his temple alone remained above the waves to the present day – although I am told by our Quechalnti friends that it too sank beneath the seas at last, when you took the Crystal Skull yourself, or at least when it allowed you to take it."
"All very interesting. Still you have not told me what will happen if Kukulkan does get the Crystal Skull for himself," replied Conan, growing visibly impatient. "When will you end your babbling about ancient mummery and get to the point?"
"I am trying to fill your empty head with knowledge, so that you can understand the answer," she shot back. "It was long prophesied in Mayapan that a strange man would appear from beyond the Eastern Sea, who would take the Crystal Skull for himself, and use its power to defeat once and for all the darkness of Kukulkan! And with Kukulkan dispatched, and the Crystal Skull in the hands of the followers of Kuthlan, nothing would stand in the way of Kuthlan's return and his liberation of mankind!"
" For," she continued, "since Kuthlan was cast into his watery prison and his dream state eons ago by the thrice-accursed Elder Gods - for what selfish and cruel reasons we know not - the Elder Gods have long since retreated to the ethereal realms from whence they came, and Kuthlan's dark nemesis, Kukulkan, has had free reign upon this world. The skies and the surface of the land, he dominates, save in rare pockets and islands here and there where Kuthlan's power holds true. Only on and beneath the seas does Kukulkan fail to hold any sway."
"Never until the end of time," she intoned, "could Kukulkan have taken the Crystal Skull by force, charged as it is with the raw power of his nemesis. But now you have given him freely that which he could never have obtained by any means for himself! For the ancient and deepest magics that govern such things will bind you to your word, as surely as you live and draw breath this instant! There is nothing you can do, by your own power, to deny Kukulkan his due."
"And still you have not told me what may perchance, when he claims the Skull for himself," replied Conan with a weary sigh.
"No man could know, for certain," she replied, shaking her head. "But it seems beyond doubt that with the Crystal Skull in his power, Kukulkan at the very least will thwart the prophecy of his ruin, and consign his ancient foe to eternal imprisonment. And beyond that, who can say? For his own power and wisdom are very great. The priests of the Cult of Kuthlan would know better than I. But I fear that with such power in his scaly claws, Kukulkan's power will be magnified unimaginably – enough to plunge this world, perhaps even the entire universe, into eternal darkness and endless night, and he lording over the tombs of all the worlds as he as ever desired in his black heart."
"I feared as much myself," Conan admitted sombrely. "The followers of Set, as still I think of him, have ever been the darkest evil to afflict the lands I have known east of the sea. And time and again, it seems, Set has been the greatest foe behind my other foes, from the Stygian priest-sorceror Thoth-Amon, to the dark forces that spurred the Nemedian invasion of Aquilonia when I was in my prime…"
"I know not any of these names or places," replied Huitzil, a note of urgency in her voice," but it matters not. Your instincts are correct – you recognize as well as I that above all else, the Crystal Skull must not fall into the claws of Kukulkan, or as you name him, of Set! And only the Cult of Kuthlan can aid you to prevent that fate."
"And yet there we differ," replied Conan, his dark blue eyes narrowing with suspicion. "For I trust this Kuthlan of yours no more than I trust Kukulkan. Both I deem demons from the blackest pit."
"You blaspheme!" she cried, full of wrath again, her lips thin and face pale with suppressed rage.
"I can blaspheme far worse than that," he replied evenly, "and do so regularly. Would you like to know my views of their respective parentage?"
"The day will come when you will rue your insolence against our master!" she hissed. "But for now, his Cult has no choice but to make use of you as chosen bearer of the Crystal Skull, and you have no choice but to accept our aid. For if you have not conceived with your own addled wits a stratagem to cheat Kukulkan of his due in the past eleven years and more, how on earth do you imagine you shall do so in the final months that remain?"
"There you have me," acknowledged Conan with equanimity. "I had hoped to find the answer in draughts of liquor, but at this rate I'll own that I have failed."
"You must come with me to visit the priests of the Cult of Kuthlan, by the shore of the Western Sea in the lands of the Quechalnti," she pressed him urgently, drawing closer, "so that we may make common purpose against our common foe. And of course, you must bring the Crystal Skull with you!"
"I would not venture into such a nest of vipers without it," Conan replied, "though in the old days I would have trusted my sword arm to see me through any perils…"
"And yet now you are old, and tired," she said with a cryptical smile.
"Not so old nor so tired that I could not snap your neck like a twig, were I of a mind to do so!" replied Conan ominously. "I warn you now, woman – wife or no, you have kept far too many secrets from me to trust you any longer. It is against my code of honour to harm a woman, but in the direst need. Yet if you betray me, I'll deal with you as I would with any other foe – let our daughter be raised by your besotted fop of a brother in your absence!"
"And if you betray me," she replied with a smile, "not all the hells between us shall spare you from the wrath of Kuthlan – or mine own!"
"Greater foes than you have spoken direr threats, and yet today they are but dust," shot back Conan. "And besides, I'll not worry about Kuthlan as long as I have the Crystal Skull by my side. I know little of such things, but I deem some spark of the long dead mage you spoke of dwells still within – for it has a mind of its own, showing its power when it will, and hiding it when it will. Not blindly does it serve the will of Kuthlan!"
"We she see," she smiled again. "Rest then while you can, husband. For tomorrow we shall depart this palace and this city before the crack of dawn, leaving behind even your most trusted guardsmen, and travel alone to visit the Cult of Kuthlan by the shores of the Western Sea. No others would they admit to their sanctuary, on pain of death, nor would any of the dogs of Xlantlantaca wish to set foot within a hundred leagues of his altar, nor would the men of my own Mayapani folk dare to do so. You may leave instructions by your own hand and seal for my brother to sit as Regent on the Dragon Throne in your place, and to care for and instruct Huitzilipochtli, while we are gone."
"He will be aggrieved to hear such a burden has been thrust upon him, no doubt," replied Conan sourly, "for since he hung up his spear and bow upon our victory at the Battle of the Reeds long ago, he has done little but drink and revel with whores while dressing more gaudily than a woman."
"Then he will be a ruler after your own image," she shot back, sliding swiftly out of Conan's bedchamber and towards the doors to the outer halls beyond. "Sleep well then, my husband! For you shall need all your strength tomorrow, and I shall awake you myself before dawn!"
"Backstabbing slut," whispered Conan under his breath, as she departed beyond earshot. "Hard to believe our young daughter, who looks as pure as gold, could be the spawn of a black-hearted witch! But no doubt she'll be safe in Tlaloch's care – he's good for a babysitter, if nothing else."
Taking another long draught of cactus liquor, and disregarding his evening meal, and for the time being his written instructions for appointment of Tlaloch as regent in his absence, Conan sank back upon his bed to catch such fitful hours of sleep as he could before his dark and secret journey to the acolytes of the Cult of Kuthlan began on the morrow.
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