Conan of Venarium

He warily approached the fane. The immense stones from which it was made, albeit only crudely carven, were fitted together with consummate skill; not even the blade of a knife could have slipped between one and another. What had been an entryway still offered ingress of sorts, though the lintel stone had fallen and partially blocked the way in.

With a boy's agility, Conan twisted past the fallen stone. No sooner had he done so than a strange, weird piping filled the air. He could not have said whether it came from a musical instrument or the throat of some curious bird. All he could have said was that it made the hair on his arms and at the nape of his neck rise with horror and dread at its intimations of ancient wickedness.

The entryway twisted left and then right before opening out on an immense courtyard paved with stones of the same dusky gray as the rest of the temple. They were joined as cunningly as all the other masonry, with the result that only a few bushes and saplings had managed to take root between them. In the center of the courtyard stood an altar of white marble made all the more dazzling and brilliant by contrast to its surroundings.

Strange figures and glyphs had been carved onto the altar; the pedestal of a statue rose from it. Only the feet and legs of that image now survived. One quick glance at them was enough to make Conan look away, dizzy and sick. If those remains did that to him, he shuddered to imagine what he would have felt had the statue survived in its entirety. Some things were well lost in the mists of time.

Behind the altar, one of the paving stones suddenly swung down on a clever pivot whose workings had defied the eons. Conan, intent on trying to make sense of the antediluvian carvings on the altar stone, did not notice the silent operation until a curious, hungry hiss forcibly brought it to his attention.

That sound sent him springing back. Even more than the roar of a hungry lion or panther, a serpent's hiss screamed danger! to all around. And, as the great snake issued forth from the den where it had slept since some forgotten age of the world, Conan's eyes went wide with dread. Serpents in Cimmeria were most of them small, slinking creatures that fed on frogs or mice. Even a viper that might steal a man's life would be no longer than his forearm.

This snake, though, could have devoured the blacksmith's son and scarcely shown the bulge he made. It had to be forty feet long, and broad in proportion. When it opened its mouth to taste the air, poison dripped from fangs longer than an index finger. Its lidless golden eyes held old, old knowledge and even older evil.

Those terrible eyes fixed on Conan. The snake hissed again, this time as if glad the opportunity to break its age-long fast was so thoughtfully provided. A tongue a foot and a half long flicked out—in the direction of the young Cimmerian. The fearsome serpent glided straight toward him.

With a cry of horror and abhorrence, a cry springing from the instinctive revulsion of warm-blooded life for the scaly, slimy primeval reptile, Conan let fly. His shaft struck the snake just to one side of a nostril, and bounced away after scraping an all but harmless scratch in the creature's armored hide. The serpent hissed furiously and reared on high, as if to crush the life from the man-thing that had presumed to resent being devoured. Yet it was not primarily a constrictor. Faster than a springing panther, it struck.

Conan, with the tigerish instincts of the barbarian, leaped back out of harm's way in the very nick of time. He was already fitting another arrow to his bow, and loosed again. This arrow stuck behind the snake's head: a wound, yes, but one more likely to enrage than to cripple. The snake's mouth gaped wider than ever. The sound that burst from it might have come from a bucket of water cast onto red-hot iron. It struck again, seeking to avenge itself with envenomed fangs.

Again, though, the stroke fell short. Conan had another arrow ready, too. This one pinned the serpent's tongue to its lower jaw, piercing the soft flesh that wide-spread maw had exposed. Now the snake's hiss came muffled, but its rage, if anything, redoubled. It slithered after the Cimmerian. If it could not strike him, it would smash him to jelly in its monstrous coils.

He drew back the bowstring to the ear and let fly once more — and at last found a vital spot, for the shaft pierced the serpent's left eye and penetrated deep into its tiny, savage brain.

The serpent's death throes went on for the next quarter of an hour, and came closer to killing Conan than anything it had done while alive. In its tormented thrashing, it overturned and smashed the ancient altar and everything that remained of the dreadful statue atop it. Whatever the creature depicted might have been, it was only shards of marble now.