The new year in many lands was a time of feasting, wenching, and merrymaking, when the cares of the old year were lightly tossed away and the fleeting hopes of the new year embraced by all.

In Xlantlantaca, it was a time of dread.

The dark god of that mighty and ancient city, Kukulkan – known by other names in other dark and sombre lands – had revealed long ago to his worshippers that creation was an ephemeral thing, which he had granted on a whim, and which he could take away on a whim. If his followers wished for life, for the world itself to continue, then they must buy another year's existence from him, for he was a jealous and a hungry god who sold his favours to mortals for a high price. And the price was to be paid in human blood.

Each new year's eve, from dusk until the crack of dawn on new year's day, the basalt-flagged streets of Xlantlantaca were lit with torches of dried reeds, by the thousands. Down the broad, straight lanes they led, like thousands of burning stars of scarlet and ochre, to the vast central square that encompassed the step-pyramid of the Temple of Kukulkan. Up the flights of steps to the pinnacle of the temple they continued, now in the form of solid braziers full of burning pitch.

And along those paths and up those stairs, also by the thousands and tens of thousands, were driven the naked, terrified victims destined satiate the bloodlust of Kukulkan. Some had been chosen by lot from amongst the citizens themselves, and they accepted their fate with resigned calm and quiet despair – at least until the moment when they were seized by the priests and shown the dull knife of sacrifice, and realized in terror how immediate and inescapable was their doom.

But by far the majority of victims were wretched slaves captured from the provinces of Xlantlantaca's vast empire, from the desert wastes of the north to the steaming jungles of the south, by its cruel soldiers and slavers. Only those from the tribes of southern Mayapan who had fought for Conan at the Battle of the Reeds were exempt from the selection, on Conan's express order - much to the chagrin of the warriors of Xlantlantaca.

Screaming, crying, laughing hysterically with the light of madness in their eyes, they were driven inexorably to their doom by whips and chains, and cruel blows – all under the watchful eyes of the citizens of Xlantlantaca, nobles and commoners alike, who observed the grim spectacle in silence and with satisfaction.

The pinnacle of the Temple was a broad, squat roof on which hunched a monolith of stone, as ancient as the world itself. Upon that evil place, victim after victim who had been driven up the stairs would be flung screaming on the cold stone of the monolith, which was in truth an altar, their hands and legs seized in the iron grip of the priests, as the head priest gashed a dull obsidian knife deep into the victims chest and ripped out the still-beating heart with his bare hands. The heart and its blood would then be flung into a stone brazier behind the altar, burned to ashes in an oily reek of flame, while the broken body of the victim was flung like a child's doll down the stairs of the far side of the Temple, there to be gathered-up and rendered into tallow and offal. A new victim would be sized from the long line which reached down the stairs, far out into the square, and into the alleys beyond, and the grim ritual would proceed again, victim after victim, from dusk to dawn.

Presiding over this bloody ritual of fear and pain was the Feathered Serpent himself, the lord and master of Xlantlantaca, known also as Kukulkan, for he was a living demigod who embodied the spirit of the dark god, a human avatar of the Lord of Darkness himself. It was he who supervised the grim work of the priests, and whose presence at the ceremony, inhaling the burned hearts and scorched blood of thousands of screaming victims, was essential to its success.

Only when the first light of dawn broke over the mountains to the east would he decree the ceremony successful, and the sacrifice of the victims to have been accepted by the dark god whose spirit he embodied. Then he would dismiss the crowd below – and those few fortunate living victims who had not yet met the sacrificial knife when dawn arrived – and return to his own vast palace for a day of feasting and revelry, full of cruel joy and grim satisfaction that his yearly task was complete.

Or so things had been every year, and year upon year, since time immemorial, since the long-forgotten days when the first stones of Xlantlantaca had been laid amid the steaming vapours and noxious weeds of the primal swampland in which it had been born. But this year, a very different figure presided over these grim festivities than had ever done so before.

He was the Feathered Serpent, and yet it seemed to some he was not – for he was neither of the race of Xlantlantaca, nor did he seem to embody the spirit of his dark god, rather being possessed of his own keen mind and fierce will as if he were still an ordinary man, beholden to no one. Stranger still, he bore in his right hand an ebon staff upon which was mounted a Skull of carven crystal, now dull, now glowing with its own strange, inner light. That it was possessed of its own inner power was well known, for its powers had vanquished the armies of Xlantlantaca sent against him by the previous avatar of the Feathered Serpent, whom he had later slain with his own bare hands.

Stranger still, the Crystal Skull was said to embody the power of Kuthlan, the dreaming god of the deeps, and the archrival and nemesis of Kukulkan, as if the Featherered Serpent now embodied the power of both of these divine enemies in his own person, and yet was beholden to neither. Rumours and prophecies swirled about him, and it was whispered by some that he was a long-promised figure who was fated to arrive in Mayapan on the wings of hope, and yet to plunge the world into a holocaust of flame and chaos.

Far to east, in a land undreamed of beyond the sundering seas, he would have needed no introduction – for he was none other than Conan of Cimmeria, immersed in what was perhaps the last, and beyond doubt the strangest, of his many adventures.

"The time is right, O King!" cried Acotl, the High Priest of Kukulkan. He was a tall, thin, stooped old man, his clean-shaven, hawk-featured face worn like old leather, but his eyes as dark and glinting as the obsidian blade he clutched in his hands. His garish costume of brightly-coloured feathers and dyed animal skins was in sharp contrast to his dark purpose.

"See, the last light of the Sun has faded in the west!" continued Acotl. "Give the command that the first sacrifice might begin!"

"Bring him forward, then," replied Conan impassively, his grey-bearded face an inscrutable mask. He was garbed also in a motely costume of garish feathers, and bore on his head a jade-carved helm in the shape of a serpent's fanged and grinning maw. The Crystal Skull was dark upon its ebon shaft, asleep it seemed for the time being.

"Kukulkan commands the sacrifice to begin!" cried the High Priest in a voice of astonishing strength and power, his weathered features twisted into a hideous grin. As his command echoed across the vast square, two of the lesser priests dragged forth the first victim. She was a young, dark-skinned girl, barely past the first flush of youth, and stark naked as were all the victims. She wept and sobbed pitifully as she was thrown down on the smooth slab of the altar, her arms and legs held securely by the High Priest's silent minions.

"By your life, we gain ours!" intoned the High Priest in the ritual saying he was to repeat thousands of times that night. Then he raised his obsidian dagger high above her chest, ready to strike. The girl had not even the strength to scream in her terror, and yet her dark eyes flashed at Conan, in fear and – perhaps something else?

Down came the High Priest's blade in a flashing arc, as…

"Stop!" cried Conan, rising off his ebon throne. "I command you to cease at once!"

Acotl froze, his blade a handsbreadth above his victim's glistening breast.

"What is this?" he hissed, his voice low and menacing. "My liege, the sacrifice must not be stopped! It must continue, this instant!"

"You will release the girl at once!" commanded Conan in his loud, booming voice, his volcanic blue eyes full of menace as he stared down the hierophant. "And you will release all of the captives of all the lands! All are free to return to their homes, be they near or far!"

As his words echoed across the square, there was at first dead silence. All present, citizens, warriors, priests and victims alike, were frozen with shock, in complete amazement at what they had just heard. Never in ten times a thousand years had such words been spoken in Xlantlantaca!

Then a low, rumbling roar, like an avalanche down a mountainside, began to roll across the mob, ebbing and following along the length and breadth of the square.

"It is treason!" cried some. "Is is blasphemy!" cried others. "The prophecy is true, he has come to bring the end of the world!" cried yet others still.

Or so spoke the citizens of Xlantlantaca. But among the victims, quite another sentiment soon took hold. "Can it be true? Are we to be spared then?" asked some, hardly believing their good fortune. "We knew Conan would not betray us!" cried others, those victims drawn from the mountain folk to the south, who had been the first and foremost amongst Conan's allies before he assumed the mantle of the Feathered Serpent for himself. "All hail Conan the liberator! All Hail Conan the great!"

"Fools!" spat back the citizens. "What good shall a few hours more of life and freedom do you, when the Sun shall never rise again! We shall all soon perish in an eternity of darkness and infinite cold!"

As their debate waxed back and forth, the High Priest, who had stood thunderstruck for some moments by his god-king's unimaginable blasphemy, suddenly sprang to life once more. Turning away from the pitiful girl struggling on the altar – who to his mind deserved no more thought than an insect – he pointed his obsidian blade squarely at Conan, shrieking and cursing in a harsh cry that echoed into the farthest corners of the square.

"Liar! Usurper!" cried Acotl, his dark eyes blazing wildly, a trail of spittle dribbling down his chin. "I see clearly now, you are not the Feathered Serpent at all! This is all the work of that vile bauble, that Crystal Skull, affixed upon your staff! You have used the dark magic of thrice-accursed Kuthlan, foul spawn of the abyss, to claim the place of our god's avatar while denying him an earthly home for his spirit!"

"Enough talk!" boomed Conan, waxing wroth. "You are my subject and shall do as I command, or die upon your own dark altar this night!"

"DIE NOW!" screamed Acotl, plunging straight at Conan's unarmoured chest with his sharp obsidian blade, heedless of his own danger. A whirl of Conan's staff, a sickening crack, and Acotl lay sprawled stone dead, his blood and brains smeared in equal measure on the Crystal Skull and on the basalt floor. The Crystal Skull began to glow dimly as if in hidden mirth.

"You have murdered the High Priest of Kukulkan!" cried one of the late hierophant's acolytes, releasing his hold on the girl, who swiftly broke free from the limp grasp of his counterpart and dashed down the steps to join her kinsmen below.

"Shall you be next?" smiled Conan grimly, as the two acolytes backed away, their dark faces turned pale. Then he raised his broad arms, and called out to the throngs below.

"Tonight you shall see how you have laboured in darkness and falsehood for years beyond counting!" cried Conan. "No matter what your lying priests have told you, their dark sacrifices were in vain. For there shall be no sacrifices this night – I count not my dispatch of yon bag of offal," he spat, gesturing towards the corpse of the High Priest.

"Tonight," he continued, "you all shall learn that the Sun has a mind of its own, and shall rise of its own accord tomorrow no matter what the acts of men may be! You shall spend this night in the square, maintaining silent vigil, and see for yourselves the rise of a new dawn!"

Silence fell across the square indeed, as those assembled passed the long, cold hours to see what would come – some in hope, others in fear. Slowly but surely, an ominous rumbling echoed up from the citizens of the city, as hour after hour went by, and the night remained chill and dark as ever.

Upon the eastern horizon, there was a brief flash of greenish light, tracing its fingers across the dark sky for a mere instant. Then, slowly, inexorably, a pale glow began to appear on the eastern horizon. There were more rumblings and murmurs amongst the crowd – some expressing hope, others fear.

"Look to the East, and see for yourselves!" boomed Conan. "The dawn arrives – there is the disc of the Sun!"

And just as Conan had said, the merest rim of a brilliant disc appeared above the summit of the snow-capped mountains to the east, as the dark sky suddenly was lit up into a deep, translucent blue, and the traces of clouds turned deep orange and blood red amid the growing dawn

"It is as our lord proclaimed!" cried the victms – though victims they were no longer. "The Sun has risen, and not a single sacrifice took place!"

"He sacrificed the High Priest!" cried others. "Perhaps one sacrifice alone sufficied…"

"Nay, that cannot be!" cried others. "That was no sacrifice – neither his heart nor his blood were offered to Kukulkan, as ritual requires."

"Then our god is false!" wailed the citizens, who, far from being glad at the sight of the dawn, were horrified to see that their rituals, their sacrifices, over the countless ages, had availed them not!

"Say rather your priests were false!" cried Conan – though he had known from the beginning that his own power might be challenged, if the dark god these strange folk worshipped, and in whose place he stood, were proven a liar.

"Yes, Kukulkan lives!" cried Conan. "And so does the Sun!"

"And what of these lying priests?" asked one of the would-be victims, a squat, powerfully built man who stood at the top of the steps upon the pyramid, and pointed his thick arm towards the cowering acolytes.

"Do with them as you will," shrugged Conan. "They are of no use to me."

Howling with bloodlust, the man who had spoken turned upon the priests and their acolytes who, too terrified and cowardly even to attempt to fight for their lives, meekly fell to the ground as the mob surged over them, tearing them to pieces in its wrath.

"Such is the fate of all liars, and all who oppose the will of Conan, the Feathered Serpen!" quoth Conan. "Now, to your homes, all of you! Enough time have you spent gawking about the square. Return to your homes, be they near or far, take up your tasks, embrace your wives and children, and return not to this place again for this or any other ceremony. Never again shall the blood of sacrifice stain the soil of Xlantlantaca. I, Kukulkan, the Feathered Serpent, have spoken!"

Conan turned about and strode toward the private steps that led toward to his palace, accompanied by his handful of stolid Jaguar warrior bodyguards, as the crowd did as he had bidden them – the liberated journeying to their homes in the deserts to the north or the mountains and jungles to the south with open joy, the warriors to their barracks in sullen silence, and the citizens to their homes, muttering darkly that no matter that the dawn had arrived, their world had come to an end.