Author's note: this is my homage to Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, and also to some of the pastiches stories published over the years. I read them back in high school. Recently, I came across Modiphius Publishing's new 'Conan, Adventures in An Age Undreamed Of' role-playing gaming. It inspired me to go back, read REH's original stories, and begin writing this.
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"Tara, bring the rope, and the satchel of chalks and oils!"
"Yes, Father," said Tara. The maiden, raven-dark hair haloing creamy skin, leapt from the wagon's seat. She ran to the back, threw back its protective oilskin, and rummaged through bags and baskets. A gust blew a wisp that had escaped her braid into her face. She shook it from her gray eyes even while she shivered.
Meanwhile, her father Theophobus stiffly climbed down and tethered their horse to a stunted tree. He looked backward, ignoring his long whiskers blowing under the wind's grasp, over the overgrown track they had followed across the moor. Nothing moved but the wind thrashing the scrub and the first clouds darkening the sky.
Then he turned forward and looked at the knoll, at whose foot their wagon stayed, and above a storm newly brewing. From around the wagon came Tara, who when she reached Theophobus, stopped. Wide-eyes she stared at the knoll and the lumplike stones that crowned its peak. Her brow wrinkled and shook.
Swiftly Theophobus turned to her. "Give me those," he bade.
"What?" she stammered. "Have we been here before, Father?"
"No time for questions. Now fetch the candles, and also the bundle of faggots. And quickly!"
While she ran back and obeyed, the older man settled the rope and pack on his shoulders. He then opened a small case, wherein a coal glowed red when he blew on it. From its ember he lit a torch, which he raised against the fading daylight.
The gray-eyed maiden again came to his side, bearing with hardship the bulky bundle and bag. "Are we here to work a spell?" she asked.
Theophobus ignored her and instead began climbing the knoll. Tara scrambled to catch up.
They clambered up a slope strewn with odd shapes and tussock-covered stones, as if a giant had stricken a building and scattered its shards. Before they were halfway up, the old man was gasping breath. He handed Tara the coil of rope and bade her hasten upward while he toiled along. She raced to the crest, where stood a jagged, wall-like ledge that might once have marked a foundation, and laid their burden. Then she skipped back down the rough hillside, took the last pack from her father, and carried it up as well.
At the peak Theophobus shortly halted and caught breath. He eyed the storm building overhead, and the sun dying behind scudding clouds. The wind bit harsh and coldly. His torch guttered and almost died.
From further along the peak Tara came back. "Is here where we are going?" she pointed whence she came.
Theophobus lifted his pack and the rope and followed the peak's uneven ridge until he came to the spot she had shown. Not waiting for her to bring the rest, he started tying the rope to a stone like a broken shaft. By the time he finished the knot, Tara had brought the other things.
Together they looked downward into a broken stairwell whose buckled steps twisted with weeds. "We have been here before," said Tara, accusingly.
"Quiet," he growled. "I want us below and under shelter before the storm hits." He tossed the rope down the hole.
With the rope to steady them over crumbling steps, they clambered downward into the knoll's dark heart. The daylight faded even while the storm spread its reach overhead. Just when they reached bottom, the first raindrops pattered. Theophobus led her under an overhang, where their only light came from his torch casting shadows on the stones.
"Come, girl," he led the way forward. Under his torch the shadows hardened into a burrow, though one made with with flat floor, straight walls, and arched ceiling overhead. Hand and tool had carven this stone, which had stood long ages even while whatever stronghold or city atop the knoll had fallen and eroded. Here the wind did not penetrate, the rain did not reach, and the only light that pierced this hollow's blackness was borne by those who sought this place's secrets, such as themselves.
They trod a doorway whose lintels writhed as serpentine forms straining in anguish while upholding the earth's weight above, on whose almost-manlike shoulders lay a lintel carven as unnatural gargoyles; their twisted lips and fangs a warning against what waited beyond, or as guardians to its secrets. Tara stared at these zoomorphic shapes, overtaken by weirdness. Her father shoved past her and stepped within.
Beyond, the doorway widened to a hall-like room whose reaches faded from torchlight. Yet taller than any man-wrought space it domed. Though the floor lay flat, what walls they could see showed rough and cavelike. Even if man had touched this place, it was older than any who had ever come. All had left their mark on this place, and all had forgone, leaving something timeless down through the eons.
Tara followed her father into half-cave hall. Under the torch's flickers its shape swam before her eyes. Timelessness smote, and she saw more than merely now...
...Wild, groveling shapes, stooped in height and thick in brow and jaw, faces painted in blood and soot, danced caperingly in a ring, around something seemingly taking shape within fire and smoke...
...Dark-eyed, haughty men with waxen beards and ancient glyphs embroidered on their robes, mighty sorcerer-kings of dead Acheron, whirled golden staves and chanted mighty prayers while slaves led coffles of wailing women within the cavernous hall, and who danced, despite their screams, under their overseers' whips...
...Her father Theophobus, younger but not young, less gray in his beard, lighting candles in a ring, while in their midst a shackled woman crouched and wept...
Tara blinked the phantasms from sight. "Father, how did you know?"
Theophobus paused amid withdrawing vials from his pouch. "What?"
"How did you know there would be a storm upon the first new moon after the equinox?"
