His hand came from under his robe holding something that flamed and burned in the sun, changing the light to a pulsing golden glow in which the flesh of Xaltotun looked like the flesh of a corpse. Xaltotun cried out as if he had been stabbed. 'The Heart! The Heart of Ahriman!' 'Aye! The one power that is greater than your power!' Xaltotun seemed to shrivel, to grow old. Suddenly his beard was shot with snow, his locks flecked with gray. 'The Heart!' he mumbled. 'You stole it! Dog! Thief!' 'Not I! It has been on a long journey far to the southward. But now it is in my hands, and your black arts cannot stand against it. As it resurrected you, so shall it hurl you back into the night whence it drew you. You shall go down the dark road to Acheron, which is the road of silence and the night. The dark empire, unreborn, shall remain a legend and a black memory. Conan shall reign again. And the Heart of Ahriman shall go back into the cavern below the temple of Mitra, to burn as a symbol of the power of Aquilonia for a thousand years!' Xaltotun screamed inhumanly and rushed around the altar, dagger lifted; but from somewhere--out of the sky, perhaps, or the great jewel that blazed in the hand of Hadrathus--shot a jetting beam of blinding blue light. Full against the breast of Xaltotun it flashed, and the hills re-echoed the concussion. The wizard of Acheron went down as though struck by a thunderbolt, and before he touched the ground he was fearfully altered. Beside the altar-stone lay no fresh-slain corpse, but a shriveled mummy, a brown, dry, unrecognizable carcass sprawling among moldering swathings. Somberly old Zelata looked down. 'He was not a living man,' she said. 'The Heart lent him a false aspect of life, that deceived even himself. I never saw him as other than a mummy.' Hadrathus bent to unbind the swooning girl on the altar, when from among the trees appeared a strange apparition--Xaltotun's chariot drawn by the weird horses. Silently they advanced to the altar and halted, with the chariot wheel almost touching the brown withered thing on the grass. Hadrathus lifted the body of the wizard and placed it in the chariot. And without hesitation the uncanny steeds turned and moved off southward, down the hill. And Hadrathus and Zelata and the gray wolf watched them go--down the long road to Acheron which is beyond the ken of men. * * * * * Down in the valley Amalric had stiffened in his saddle when he saw that wild horseman curvetting and caracoling on the slopes while he brandished that blood-stained serpent-banner. Then some instinct jerked his head about, toward the hill known as the King's Altar. And his lips parted. Every man in the valley saw it--an arching shaft of dazzling light that towered up from the summit of the hill, showering golden fire. High above the hosts it burst in a blinding blaze that momentarily paled the sun. 'That's not Xaltotun's signal!' roared the baron.