The sun was climbing into the eastern sky, its rays casting pale beams upon the stony, pine-clad slopes of the mountains west of Xlantlantaca, as Conan and Huitzil trudged along the narrow path. The air was cool and thin, almost with an edge of frost, for it was late in the year – though mayhap there was more frost between the Cimmerian and his bride, neither of whom had any more trust or love for the other after the events of the prior night. Theirs was an alliance of convenience now.
"Did you leave your sealed commands to my brother?" she asked, pausing briefly to take a pull of water from her leathern flask.
"Aye, I did, just after I woke up this morning," grunted Conan in reply, resting his weight on his staff, bearing as ever by the Crystal Skull, as clear and quiet as it had been for many years now.
"Though I had a devil of a time remembering how to write in the pictograms of this land. But be that as it may, Tlaloch rules as regent in my place, and as guardian to our daughter. We'll see if the citizens of Xlantlantca let him keep his head on his shoulders in my absence. I'm sure General Xipe fancies himself a better regent!"
"My brother is not such a fool as you think," replied Huitzil, replacing the cap of carved bone on her flask which she slung over the shoulder of her short azure blouse and dress, and resuming her trudging up the hill. "If nothing else, he values his hard-won comforts too much to lose them easily."
"We shall see," replied Conan with a shrug, keeping pace with her in spite of his much longer stride. "I had greater trouble convincing my bodyguard not to follow me, for they swore to do so in spite of my commands when they heard I planned to journey to the shores of the Western Sea alone – or almost alone. Some relic of their faith in the Feathered Serpent, no doubt – their living god must be protected at all times, and suchlike foolishness. I asked them how they thought they could protect me if the Crystal Skull couldn't, but none of them had an answer of course. Then they left me alone, with much ritual weeping as the strange habit amongst men of this land – I cannot stomach it myself – and they left me on my way."
"Old habits die hard," she replied with a trace of a smile.
"Indeed," replied Conan. "Here we are, talking as husband and wife, when neither of us even sees any meaning to those titles anymore. Or at least I do not, having married a witch."
"This will be a long journey if you do not mind your manners," she replied, showing no visible reaction to his barb. "And longer still if I go on at length over how much I regret marrying an ignorant drunken fool, as would most wives faced with such a husband."
"It would be less long of a journey if I snapped your neck as you deserve, and let the Crystal Skull lead me to this temple of yours, or wherever we are going," replied Conan, though his tone was half in jest, and half with menace.
"Do so, if you wish," replied Huitzil with a shrug. "Most likely I will die soon anyway, as will all men thanks to your stupidity, unless our Cult can find a way to save us from what you have done."
"If that's how you feel," replied Conan, picking up his pace, "then I think I won't oblige you. A more deserved fate for you is to have share my fine company, day in, day out, for who knows who many long moons before the end."
Huitzil swore quietly under her breath, and then fell silent. Conan, sensing she was tired of their game, likewise ceased his banter and continued to stride up the slopes with the long, measured tread of a Cimmerian hillman that eats up the miles, while his more diminutive wife followed in his wake.
Some weeks passed uneventfully, passing from one small hill village to another. Each of the inhabitants of these miserable hovels of mud-brick huts was in awe at the sight of Conan, who aside from his regal traveling garb of brightly coloured feathers and pieces of gold and jade woven into his wool tunic, was as recognizable by his stature and his volcanic blue eyes as by the infamous totem he carried on his staff. They would fall to the ground and worship Conan, who in spite of his long years on the Dragon Throne felt embarrassment and their grovelling obeisance, only for Huitzil to whisper in his ear, again and again, "Imagine how they would greet you if they knew the truth of what you have done to them!" And again and again, Conan would restrain his simmering anger with her, and say nothing in reply.
At length they left the pine-clad slopes behind them, and descended into the flat, arid lands that girdled the Western Sea in those parts. It was here that the direct rule of the Feathered Serpent had, until Conan's time, faded before that of the mysterious folk of Quechaloc, who even this far north of the vast southern continent that was their homeland maintained a presence along the coast. Since Conan's spectacular coronation during the Battle of the Reeds over eleven years before, those Quechalnti who dwelt by the western shores of Mayapan were at least nominally Conan's willing subjects, if only by virtue of his possession of the Crystal Skull.
As the setting Sun sank into the west, Conan and Huitzil could hear the sea from afar, crashing against the rocky shore in monotonous rhythm as it had since the dawn of time. Somehow the sound was vaguely menacing, a feeling that surprised Conan who after all was no stranger to the ocean in spite of his origins in the landlocked Cimmerian hill country. Hutzil was from a people who had long feared and shunned the sea – and yet her dark eyes glittered in the fading light as every step they took led them closer to the font of the cult to which she had long since given up her soul.
At length, they arrived by the shore, its ochre cliffs tumbling unevenly into the darkening sea, while beyond the crimson disk of the Sun hung as if from a thread over the western horizon, throwing up fantastic hues of indigo and tangerine against the tattered clouds as it died its nightly death in a blaze of glory. Then it was gone, and the ebon cloak of night closed in swiftly about them.
"Shall we camp here for the night, then?" grunted Conan, adjusting the heavily-laden traveler's pack which he had slung over his broad shoulders. "I've no idea where this cult of yours is, but at my age I've no desire to stumble forward in the dark."
"Or stumble into a trap from which you can't easily escape in the dark," she teased.
"I'm sure this fellow will take care of any treachery on the part of your inbred clan of fish-worshippers," replied Conan, waving his staff expansively, though the Crystal Skull lay dormant as it had for many long moons.
"Mayhap," she shrugged, ignoring his blasphemous insult. "But we are almost at our destination now. I would not quit so close to our goal, not when every day that passes brings us one day closer to the expiry of your accursed pact."
Conan was about to reply, when to his surprise the Crystal Skull began to glow with a pale inner light. "It seems the Skull has chosen for you," Huitzil said with a smile.
"Crom!" replied Conan, who could never become used to the strange and unpredictable powers displayed by the talisman that had sent his remarkable career onto such an unexpected path. His heart still forbore his entering into a lair of the Cult of Kuthlan in the dark, but over time Conan had learned against his better judgment to trust the actions of the Crystal Skull, which thus far had not led him astray. Without further word, he strode forward along the cliffs, following an inward prompting as to the path to take.
"It is not far now," whispered Hutzil as she strode behind him in the gathering gloom. "I know the way by rote memory as taught to me by my Sisters, now that we are hear. Soon we will come upon a narrow ravine down which heads a path. Follow the path, and we will make our way to the doorway we seek, cut into the living rock."
Conan grunted wordlessly, and continued his steady stride, his hillman's sure tread serving him well even on an unfamiliar path with only a single unnatural light to guide his way. And after the passage of a perhaps a quarter turn of the glass, the barren ground opened up before him into a narrow gulch or ravine, just as Huitzil had said. His keen eyes soon caught the path, leading its way down into the ravine and it seemed towards the sea below, though a lesser man might not have noticed it even in broad daylight.
"Down we go, it seems," said Conan. "And a perfect place for an ambush too."
"No doubt you are expected," said Huitzil, "but I will stake my life there is no ambush. You have only friends here – or, at least allies."
"I begin to doubt I have either n this accursed land," replied Conan, who swiftly strode towards the beginning of the path, and then began to tread carefully down its twisting course into the ravine, Hutzil close on his heels.
The crashing of waves against rock, endless and monotonous, which Conan had of course heard clearly if from afar since before he came in sight of the sea, was greatly amplified in this narrow, rocky place. Again and again crashed the waves against the shore, and to Conan the sound was both oddly menacing and almost hypnotic.
Conan's every sense was on alert for a trap, and yet just as Huitzil had said it seemed no trap awaited them – or, at least, none in the valley. Conan paused for a moment to take stock of his surroundings, but saw nothing beyond the narrow light cast by the Crystal Skull other than the dark walls of the ravine, and the narrow passage beyond where it opened onto the sea, now almost ebon black beneath a deep indigo sky. Conan glanced upward for a moment at the stars, and yet in this lonely place they did not seem familiar or reassuring to him, but alien and indifferent to the fate of man. A cool wind surged up from the sea, and Conan shivered involuntarily.
"It is not much farther now," urged Huitzil, her voice barely audible above a whisper amid the crashes and echoes of the waves. "Now is not the time to lose your nerve."
"Remind me again why I haven't killed you, now that you've lead me to this cult of yours?" replied Conan, with a bluff bravado that belied his grim thoughts.
"Because you want me to lead you inside the gathering place, and not just to its doorway," replied Hutizil, with what Conan imagined was one of the mocking smiles she had showed him so often of late. "And no doubt you still enjoy the company of a beautiful woman, even in your dotage."
"I must be in my dotage not to cast you into the sea at once!" shot back Conan. "But enough talk."
A few minutes more, and Conan and Huitzil found themselves at the bottom of the path, which came to an abrupt end at the ravine's mouth, some fifty feet or so above the waves as it seemed in the dark. To his left, Conan saw a branch off the past led off the path and straight into a narrow crack in the rocky wall, its depths black as pitch.
"And you mean for us to go in there, in the dark?" gestured Conan with his staff. "Now I know I should not have listened to you, or the promptings of this glowing bauble of mine. Only a fool would enter into such a place in the dark of night, an he knew a hundred willing virgins awaited him at the other end."
"What a curious remark," replied Huitzil, "considering how many virgins have taken unwillingly this same path in the dark - or so I am told."
Conan ignored the shiver down his spine, his attention caught by the Crystal Skull. He had become so used to it over the past decade and more that he sometimes forgot how strange and fearsome it was in itself. Yet as he stared at it, he felt that it almost spoke wordlessly inside his mind, urging him onward in spite of all his instincts to the contrary.
"Devils be damned," cried Conan in a loud voice the echoed throughout the gulch. "Conan is here, Conan of Cimmeria, Conan of Aquilonia, Conan of the Isles, Conan the Feathered Serpent, God-King of Xlantlantaca, Quechaloc and Mayapan!"
There was no reply, but Conan felt now that a thousand unseen eyes watched him in the dark. Even so, his mood was much improved, and he was doubly satisfied by Huitzil's silence – for once she seemed at a loss for words.
Conan spoke no more, but strode swiftly down the branch off the path, striding up to the narrow gap in the rock face before coming to a firm stop just short of it. It was but a few inches wider and higher than Conan himself, but the light from the Crystal Skull shone far down the corridor that led deep, deep down into the rock, seemingly without end, surely far below the level of the sea.
"And you have never been inside before, you say?" asked Conan.
"I have never been to this place before, far from my homeland to south," she reminded him. "I told you that I knew the route by rumour and instruction by my Sisters. All members of the Sisterhood are taught the route, lest they have need of it someday. But, no man or woman comes here save by will of the Priests of Kuthlan. Surely though they will give you welcome."
"I feel not so," said Conan. "But now I see there is nothing to be gained by delay, for the arrival of daylight would make no difference down there. Let us go onward."
And without further word, they stepped over the threshold, Conan leading the way by the light of the Crystal Skull, with Huitzil close on his heels. Instantly, a chill crept down his spine, and his sense of foreboding increased tenfold once inside the narrow passageway, the living rock hemming in him on all sides.
After a score or so paces, the narrow passage widened slightly, the walls became smooth and polished, and the passage took a sharp turn downward – how far down, Conan could not see, even by the light of the Crystal Skull. The air became damp and cool, and scented with a strong incense masking a deeper, sickly-sweet smell of decay, which Conan found unsettling.
Down, down they descended into the passage, the Crystal Skull their only light in the otherwise unfathomable blackness. Conan wondered uneasily what would happen if the Skull was suddenly extinguished, leaving them in the dark in that grim place, and some part of him began to wonder if his treacherous wife had not led him into a trap.
Moreover, he had never entirely trusted the Skull itself, a strange object beyond his ken and with a mind of its own, albeit that he owed the Dragon Throne of Xlantlantaca to its power. The Conan of old, he reflected, would never have entrusted his fate wholesale to some dark talisman of a bygone age. He began to wonder if he had taken leave of his senses, and was on the edge of his dotage now that he was past his seventieth year.
His instincts then snapped his mind back to the present, as at length the passage levelled out and became still broader, a doorway it seemed on the edge of his vision leading to a far larger chamber beyond.
"It appears we are almost there, at least at the uppermost chambers, from what lore I have learned," whispered Huitzil in his ear.
"I'll be damned if I descend into the lowermost chambers," Conan replied. "Any man who wishes to meet me can do so in yon chamber ahead of us, which at least appears large enough for more than two men to stand abreast.
"Far larger than that, if rumor be true," she said. "But you will soon see for yourself."
And with that they left the passage behind them, and entered into the broad chamber beyond.
At first, Conan could not see clearly beyond the sphere of light cast from the Skull. But then after a few moments, he began to see the outlines of a broad dome, with squat pillars supporting the base, and many passages leading off to who knew what dark places far from the light of the Sun. A stirring caught the corner of this eye, and then he knew they were not alone.
All about them, from the shadows, came forth dark robed figures, their faces veiled in shadow. For all her knowledge of the cult, Hutzil instinctively drew nearer to Conan, while Conan for his part felt a chill hand grip his spine, as had happened to him on so many occasions before when fate brought him into the presence of an ancient evil.
"Welcome, Conan of the Isles," intoned one of the dark ones in a deep, sonorous voice, his words uttered in the speech of Mayapan marred by the accent of the Quechalnti. "I will not utter your other names and titles here."
"Who are you?" asked Conan bluntly, always quick to drop the veneer of royal formality.
"I am no one," replied the man, who strode silently towards Conan along with his fellows, stopping some paces short. "Our names are long forgotten. But together we are the Priests of the Dreaming God, he who is dead and yet cannot die, and we have long awaited you."
"Then you know what I want, and why I am here?" asked Conan.
"Of course," replied the man, whose face remained veiled in shadow. "We have scryed you from afar, and have discerned your purpose."
"Then can you help me or not?" asked Conan.
"We can," replied the man. "But there is a price."
"Why am I not surprised?" asked Conan sourly, before turning to Huitzil. "You said nothing of any price, girl. If you have betrayed me…"
"There is always a price when dealing with any god, my outlander husband," replied Huitzil softly – Conan thought he heard a tremor in her voice. "Surely even you know that."
"Before we discuss the price," replied Conan, turning back to the man, "first you will tell me what you will do to help. How can I stop Kukulkan from…"
"Utter not his foul name here!" shrieked another of the veiled figures, and they all recoiled and hissed as the dim, clear light of the Crystal Skull grew brighter for a moment.
"Then how can I stop our enemy from taking yon bauble, this Crystal Skull for himself, as I have pledged to him he may do in some months' time hence in exchange for my place upon the Dragon Throne?"
"Such a pledge cannot be broken," replied the first man, who seemed to have regained his composure along with his fellows. "You must fulfil your oath, and you are powerless to break it."
"Then what help can you offer?" barked Conan angrily. "Have I come here for nothing, or to be mocked by your inbred clan of fish-worshippers?"
"Do not mock the Dreaming God!" cried the nameless man, his temper suddenly changed as his voice cracked with anger. The aura of menace from the priests of Kuthan was palpable, and yet Conan did not give an inch.
"I care not a jot for your god or your cult," replied Conan. "Tell me know how you will help me, if you can at all, or I will cast the Skull into the sea and have done with it. I am an old man doubtless soon to die in any event, and care little for my fate."
"Men have died screaming on the altars of Kuthlan for far less than the insult you have given," replied the priest. "You are foolish to mock him here in his temple amid these lands."
"Then take the Skull for yourself, if you can," replied Conan. "Or perhaps that is what you mean to do anyway? Mayhap you think you can keep it safe here in your cave."
"I have told you the bargain you made with our enemy must be fulfilled, you witless worm!" hissed the man. "You are indeed stupid, even for a barbarian outlander."
"Men have died screaming on my blade for far less than the insult you have offered me!" snarled Conan, his voice laden with menace. "You will talk now, or I will collect the skulls of you and all your lackeys and throw them into the sea, along with the Crystal Skull, and to hell with the lot of you!"
"Wisdom out of the mouths of babes!" replied the man, with another sudden change of tone, his voice now tinged with something close to amusement - if indeed there were any mirth to be had in that grim place.
"Will you speak to me in riddles all evening, or plainly!" demanded Conan, shifting his staff in his hands into a stance of combat.
"We implore your aid, O High Priest of Kuthlan!" intoned Huitzil solemnly. "As a member of the Sisterhood of the Kraken, I am willing to pay the price."
"Thank you, my child," replied the High Priest of Kuthlan – for so he was. "Had you intoned the proper formula earlier, I would have answered sooner."
Turning to Conan, he then said, "We know not the answer, which is known only to the Dreaming God himself. First the price must be paid, then he will offer you his aid – such is the way of the world."
"And I ask again, what is the price?" said Conan.
"Your lovely young bride knows the answer, do you not my dear?" asked the high priest, turning now to Huitzil again. "You must first confirm to us all that as a member of the Sisterhood, under no obligation to offer yourself against your will, yet you offer yourself freely to the Dreaming God?"
"I wait the embrace of the Dreaming God!" cried Huitzil, her voice tremulous now, and yet strong with purpose. "When he arises from his tomb, so shall I from mine, and so shall all those who sacrifice themselves for him, to revel and raven and delight in freedom and wonder and abandon forever and ever. Ia Cuthulu!"
"Ia Cuthulu!" cried the priests, as high priest produced from his black robes a long, slender blade of bronze, clutched in a hoary and withered hand. Faster than the eye could see, the razor sharp blade slashed across her throat, letting out a crimson torrent of hot, steaming blood as her slender body crashed to the ground, stone dead!
Shocked beyond words, instinctively Conan raised up his staff to dash the out the brains of the High Priest – only to find his hand stayed and his body frozen like a statue as the Crystal Skull glowed brightly from within. He had never fully trusted it, for all the aid it had offered him over the years, and now it had chosen this time and place to betray him!
But the horror had only begun. For some moments, the tableau seemed frozen in time as the priests of Kuthlan hovered over the ruined form of Huitzil like vultures before a carcass as the blood drained from her slender body over the ebon floor in a scene from Hell itself, as it appeared to Conan's tortured mind.
Would that had been all, and the Cimmerian had fallen into merciful oblivion! But it was not to be. All time seemed frozen in that grim place, and yet the tableau was broken as the body of Huitzil began to move! Not in the natural, fluid motions of a living man or woman, but stiffly and jerkily, as if her body were a broken puppet moved by invisible strings. Slowly but surely, her body awkwardly lifted itself off the floor, its head thrown back at an unnatural angle as the red wound in its throat offset the pale, slack lips in a vile mockery of a smile, and then turned about awkwardly to face directly at Conan, who even now could not move his arms or legs an inch.
"Crom!" whispered Conan, a thousand centuries of his superstitious Cimmerian heritage freezing his soul in horror as Huitzil's dead, unfocused eyes suddenly shot open!
Despite the gash in her throat she then spoke in a voice not her own, infinitely deep, dark, cold, and resonant with ancient power and ancient evil:
"Conan of Cimmeria!" said the voice. "You have treated before with my rival, Set the Thrice-Accursed as he is known to you. Now you will treat with me!" Conan's blood turned to icewater as he realized that, through murder and foul necromancy, Kuthlan himself spoke to him through Huitzil's undead form!
"My priests have told you that you must fulfil your bargain with Set," continued the voice. "This is true, and yet it is also not so. You must fulfil the form of the bargain, and yet not the substance. Through treachery and deceit, the favoured weapons of Set, you will cheat him of his due!"
"Far from this land, in the steaming swamps of the north, there is another place that is sacred to me," continued Kuthlan. "You will journey there, guided by the Crystal Skull which understands my words even as do you. In that place amid a circle of broken stones, you will find in an ancient grove a fountain of purest water that flows from a rock of pure crystal. Carved into this, an ancient mirror, a relic of another time long before the dawn of men. Stand before the mirror, and the solution will begin to reveal itself to you. For I foresee that Set shall both receive his due, and be cheated of it until the end of time!"
"Go now!" concluded the voice. "And remember, there is nothing you can do or say that will not come to my knowledge in the fullness of time. My eyes are upon you. Do not forget!"
Then Huitzil's eyes snapped shut, and her form dropped again to the ground – this time to remain there, still and quiet in the sleep of true death, which seemed to Conan's eyes a mercy after the horrors he had witnessed.
"The Dreaming God has spoken," intoned the High Priest calmly. "Leave this place now, and return to the world of the living. The Crystal Skull will guide you to the place you seek. Go now, for it is far from here, and the time runs short before your bargain with our enemy must be fulfilled!"
Conan felt life in his arms and legs once again. Every fibre of his being wished to slay the High Priest and his foul companions and avenge his wife, for all that she was a witch who had hidden her true self from him and doubtless many others, including her brother, for many years. And yet somehow a voice whispered in the back of his mind that the Crystal Skull, though for what reasons he could not fathom, would not allow him to take this revenge, not at least at this time and place.
Besides, had not Huitzil gone willingly, even joyfully to her death? He found it beyond comprehension, and began to wonder if he would ever truly understand this land and its people, all of whom seemed caught in a nightmare world beyond the ken of the men of Hyboria. Truly, for the first time since setting foot on the shores of Mayapan over eleven years before, Conan felt a stranger in a strange land on the edge of the world, where he did not belong. The first stirrings of longing for his true home, the Hyborian and kindred lands beyond the Eastern Sea, began to stir inside his troubled heart.
Wordlessly, Conan turned his back on that evil place and strode with purpose through the narrow passage, up, up towards the world of men. There was a light far ahead and above, and as the light from the Crystal Skull faded and then ceased entirely, Conan realized that he must have been in that terrible place of shadows for far longer than he had thought.
In due time Conan exited the narrow passage, and breathed deeply of the fresh, clean air as his eyes blinked in the bright sunlight, taking in the barren, rocky, ochre slopes of the narrow ravine, a ribbon of bright blue cloudless sky far above, and to his left the deep indigo of the Western Sea, its long, low waves crashing monotonously against the rocky shore in endless echoes. Yet to Conan, that sea was now a place of horror, for he knew that somewhere far beneath its vast waters was rumoured to dwell the dark god of the deeps through whose aid he sought to undo the substance of his ill-conceived bargain with his enemy of old, Set – with what wisdom, he did not yet know.
Moved by the depths of his horror and despair at all that he had witnessed, forsaken by all men as it seemed to him in that lonely place, he cried out in a harsh and pitiless voice that echoed up and down the valley and over the waves of the Western Sea beyond:
"I curse and renounce this land and all who dwell herein! I curse it, and the faithless witch who called herself my wife, and all her kin - yea, even my daughter of her own loins and mine! No witch's brood and heir to the cold black blood of a witch is any true child of mine! Would that my true heir, Conn, could hear me and come to my aid, and I to his, though all the long leagues of the Eastern Sea and the lands on both its shores lie between us!"
Feeling no better for his angry screed, Conan tightened the strings of his traveller's pack, turned his back on that strangest of all seas, and trod swiftly up the footpath toward the head of the ravine - there to begin his journey towards the vast and mysterious lands that lay to the north of Mayapan. With only the Crystal Skull as his dubious guide, it seemed fate had left him no choice but to seek out the mysterious fountain and mirror spoken of by the avatar of Kuthlan, to whatever end awaited him.