Conan the Barbarian: The Complete Collection

“I will lead you to him,” she volunteered, so promptly that his suspicions were instantly aroused.

“Don’t play with me, girl,” he growled.

“I do not play with you. I have no love for Thutothmes.” He hesitated, then made up his mind; after all, he was in her power as she was in his. “Walk beside me,” he commanded, shifting his grasp from her throat to her wrist. “But walk with care. If you make a move —”

She led him down the slanting corridor, down and down, until there were no more cressets, and he groped his way in darkness, aware less by sight than by feel and sense of the woman at his side. Once when he spoke to her, she turned her head toward him and he was startled to see her eyes glowing like golden fire in the dark. Dim doubts and vague monstrous suspicions haunted his mind, but he followed her, through a labyrinthine maze of black corridors that confused even his primitive sense of direction. He mentally cursed himself for a fool, allowing himself to be led into that black abode of mystery; but it was too late to turn back now. Again he felt life and movement in the darkness about him, sensed peril and hunger burning impatiently in the blackness. Unless his ears deceived him he caught a faint sliding noise that ceased and receded at a muttered command from the girl.

She led him at last into a chamber lighted by a curious seven-branched candelabrum in which black candles burned weirdly. He knew they were far below the earth. The chamber was square, with walls and ceilings of polished black marble and furnished after the manner of the ancient Stygians; there was a couch of ebony, covered with black velvet, and on a black stone dais lay a carven mummy-case.

Conan stood waiting expectantly, staring at the various black arches which opened into the chamber. But the girl made no move to go farther. Stretching herself on the couch with feline suppleness, she intertwined her fingers behind her sleek head and regarded him from under long, drooping lashes.

“Well?” he demanded impatiently. “What are you doing? Where is Thutotomes?”

“There is no haste,” she answered lazily. “What is an hour — or a day, or a year, or a century, for that matter? Take off your mask. Let me see your features.”

With a grunt of annoyance Conan dragged on the bulky headpiece, and the girl nodded as if in approval as she scanned his dark scarred face and blazing eyes.

“There is strength in you — great strength; you could strangle a bullock.”

He moved restlessly, his suspicion growing. With his hand on his hilt he peered into the gloomy arches.

“If you’ve brought me into a trap,” he said, “you won’t live to enjoy your handiwork. Are you going to get off that couch and do as you promised, or do I have to —”

His voice trailed away. He was staring at the mummy-case, on which the countenance of the occupant was carved in ivory with the startling vividness of a forgotten art. There was a disquieting familiarity about that carven mask, and with something of a shock he realized what it was; there was a startling resemblance between it and the face of the girl lolling on the ebon couch. She might have been the model from which it was carved, but he knew the portrait was at least centuries old. Archaic hieroglyphics were scrawled across the lacquered lid, and, seeking back into his mind for tag-ends of learning, picked up here and there as incidentals of an adventurous life, he spelled them out, and said aloud: “Akivasha!”

“You have heard of Princess Akivasha?” inquired the girl on the couch.

“Who hasn’t?” he grunted. The name of that ancient, evil, beautiful princess still lived the world over in song and legend, though ten thousand years had rolled their cycles since the daughter of Tuthamon had reveled in purple feasts amid the black halls of ancient Luxur.

“Her only sin was that she loved life and all the meanings of life,” said the Stygian girl. “To win life she courted death. She could not bear to think of growing old and shriveled and worn, and dying at last as hags die. She wooed Darkness like a lover and his gift was life — life that, not being life as mortals know it, can never grow old and fade. She went into the shadows to cheat age and death —”

Conan glared at her with eyes that were suddenly burning slits. And he wheeled and tore the lid from the sarcophagus. It was empty. Behind him the girl was laughing and the sound froze the blood in his veins. He whirled back to her, the short hairs on his neck bristling.

“You are Akivasha!” he grated.

She laughed and shook back her burnished locks, spread her arms sensuously.