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Conan the Triumphant
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By Robert Jordan


Prologue

The great granite mound called Tor Al'Kiir crouched like a malevolent
toad in the night, wearing a crown of toppled walls and ruined columns,
memories of failed attempts by a score of Ophirean dynasties to build
there. Men had long since forgotten the origin of the mountain's name,
but they knew it for a place of ill luck and evil, and laughed at the
former kings who had not had their sense. Yet their laughter was tinged
with unease for there was that about the mountain that made it a place
to avoid even in thought.

The roiling black clouds of the storm that lashed Ianthe, that
sprawling golden-domed and alabaster-spired city to the south, seemed
to center about the mountain, but no muffled murmur of the thunder that
rattled roof-tiles in the capital, no flash of light from lightnings
streaking the dark like dragons' tongues, penetrated to the depths of
Tor Al'Kiir's heart.

The Lady Synelle knew of the storm, though she could not hear it. It
was proper for the night. Let the heavens split, she thought, and
mountains be torn asunder in honor of his return to the world of men.

Her tall form was barely covered by a black silk tabard, tightly belted
with golden links, that left the outer curves of breasts and hips bare.
None of those who knew her as a princess of Ophir would have recognized
her now, dark eyes glittering, beautiful face seemingly carved from
marble, spun-platinum hair twisted about her head in severe coils and
bearing a coronet of golden chain. There were four horns on the brow of
that coronet, symbol that she was High Priestess of the god she had
chosen to serve. But the bracelets of plain black iron that encircled
her wrists were a symbol as well, and one she hated, for the god
Al'Kiir accepted only those into his service who admitted themselves to
be his slaves. Ebon silk that hung to her ankles, the hem weighted by
golden beads, stirred against her long, slender legs as, barefoot, she
led a strange procession deeper into the mountain through rough hewn
passages, lit by dark iron cressets suggesting the form of a horrible,
four-horned head.

A score of black-mailed warriors were strange enough, their faces
covered by slitted helmets bearing four horns, two outthrust to the
sides and two curling down before the helmet, making them seem more
demons than men. The quillons of their broadswords were formed of four
horns as well, and each wore on his chest, picked out in scarlet, the
outline of the monstrous horned head only hinted by the fiery iron
baskets suspended by chains from the roof of the tunnel.

Stranger still was the woman they escorted, clothed in Ophirean bridal
dress, diaphanous layers of pale cerulean silk made opaque by their
number, caught at the waist with a cord of gold. Her long hair, black
as a raven's wing, curling about her shoulders, was filled with the
tiny white blossoms of the tarla, symbol of purity, and her feet were
bare as a sign of humility. She stumbled, and rough hands grasped her
arms to hold her erect.

"Synelle!" the black-haired woman called woozily. A hint of her natural
haughtiness came through her drug-induced haze. "Where are we, Synelle?
How did I come here?"

The cortege moved on. Synelle gave no outward sign that she had heard.
Inwardly her only reaction was relief that the drug was wearing off. It
had been necessary in order to remove the woman from her palace in
Ianthe, and it had made her easier to prepare and bring this far, but
her mind must be clear for the ceremony ahead.

Power, Synelle thought. A woman could have no real power in Ophir, yet
power was what she craved. Power was what she would have. Men thought
that she was content to order the estates she had inherited, that she
would eventually marry and give stewardship of those landsownership in
all but name-to her husband. In their fools' blindness they did not
stop to think that royal blood coursed in her veins. Did ancient laws
not forbid a woman taking the crown, she would stand next in succession
to the childless King now on the throne in Ianthe. Valdric sat his
throne, consumed with chiwing his retinue of sorcerers and physicians
to find a cure for the wasting sickness that killed him by inches, too
busy to name an heir or to see that, for this failure to do so, the
noble lords of Ophir struggled and fought to gain the seat his death
would vacate.

A dark, contented smile touched Synelle's full red lips. Let those
proud men strut in their armor and tear at one another like starving
wolfhounds in a pit. They would wake from their dreams of glory to find
that the Countess of Asmark had become Queen Synelle of Ophir, and she
would teach them to heel like whipped curs.

Abruptly the passage widened into a great, domed cavern, the very
memory of which had passed from the minds of men. Burning tapers on
unadorned walls hacked from the living stone lit the smooth stone
floor, which bore only two tall, slender wooden posts topped with the
omnipresent four-horned head. Ornament had been far from the minds of
those who had burrowed into a nameless mountain in a now forgotten age.

They had meant it as prison for the adamantine figure, colored like old
blood, that stood dominating the grotto, as it would have dominated the
greatest place ever conceived. A statue it seemed, yet was not.

The massive body was as that of a man, though half again as tall as any
human male, save for the six claw-tipped fingers on each broad hand. In
its malevolent, horned head were three lidless eyes, smouldering
blackly with a glow that ate light, and its mouth was a broad, lipless
gash filled with rows of needle-sharp teeth. The figure's thick arms
were encircled by bracers and armlets bearing its own horned likeness.
About its waist was a wide belt and loinguard of intricately worked
gold, a coiled black whip glistening metallically on one side, a
monstrous dagger with horned quillons depending on the other.

Synelle felt the breath catch in her throat as it had the first time
she had seen her god, as it did each time she saw him. "Prepare the
bride of Al'Kiir," she commanded.

A choking scream broke from the bridal-clothed woman's throat as she
was hurried forward by the guards who held her. Quickly, with cords
that dug cruelly into her soft flesh, they bound her between the twin
posts on widely straddled knees, arms stretched above her head. Her
blue eyes bulged, unable to tear themselves away from the great form
that overtowered her; her mouth hung silently open as she knelt, as if
terror had driven even the thought of screaming from her.

Synelle spoke. "Taramenon."

The bound woman started at the name. "Him, also?" she cried. "What is
happening, Synelle? Tell me! Please!" Synelle gave no answer. One of
the armored men came forward at the summons, carrying a small,
brass-bound chest, and knelt stiffly before the woman who was at once a
princess of Ophir and a priestess of dark Al'Kiir.

Muttering incantations of protection, Synelle opened the chest and drew
out her implements and potions, one by one.

As a child had Synelle first heard of Al'Kiir, a god forgotten by all
but a handful, from an old nurse-maid who had been dismissed when it
was learned what sort of evil tales she told. Little had the crone told
her before she went, but even then the child had been enraptured by the
power said to be given to the priestesses of Al'Kiir, to those women
who would pledge their bodies and their souls to the god of lust and
pain and death, who would perform the heinous rites he demanded. Even
then power had been her dream.

Synelle turned from the chest with a small, crystal-stoppered vial, and
approached the bound woman. Deftly she withdrew the clear stopper and,
with its damp end, traced the sign of the horns on the other woman's
forehead.

"Something to help you attain the proper mood for a bride, Telima." Her
voice was soft and mocking.

"I don't understand, Synelle," Telima said. A breathy quality had come
into her voice; she tossed her head with a gasp, and her hair was a
midnight cloud about her face. "What is happening-" she whimpered.

Synelle returned the vial to its resting place in the chest. Using
powdered blood and bone, she traced the sign of the horns once more,
this time in broad strokes on the floor, with the woman at the posts at
the horns' meeting. A jade flask contained virgin's blood; with a brush
of virgin's hair she anointed Al'Kiir's broad mouth and mighty thighs.
Now there was naught left save to begin.

Yet Synelle hesitated. This part of the rite she hated, as she hated
the iron bracelets. There were none to witness save her guards, who
would die for her, and Telima, who would soon, in one way or another,
be of no import to this world, but she herself would know. Still it
must be done. It must.

Reluctantly she knelt facing the great figure, paused to take a deep
breath, then fell on her face, arms outspread.

"O, mighty Al'Kiir," she intoned, "lord of blood and death, thy slave
abases herself before thee. Her body is thine. Her soul is thine.
Accept her submission and use her as thou wilt."

Trembling, her hands moved forward to grasp the massive ankles; slowly
she pulled herself across the floor until she could kiss each clawed
foot.

"O, mighty Al'Kiir," she breathed, "lord of pain and lust, thy slave
brings thee a bride in offering. Her body is thine. Her soul is thine.
Accept her submission and use her as thou wilt."

In ages past, before the first hut was built on the site of Acheron,
now eons gone in dust, Al'Kiir had been worshipped in the land that
would become Ophir. The proudest and most beautiful of women the god
demanded as offerings, and they were brought to him in steady streams.
Rites were performed that stained the souls of those who performed them
and haunted the minds of those who witnessed them.

At last a band of mages vowed to free the world of the monstrous god,
and had the blessings of Mitra and Azura and gods long forgotten placed
on their foreheads. Alone of that company had the sorcerer Avanrakash
survived, yet with a staff of power had he sealed Al'Kiir away from the
world of men. That which stood in the cavern beneath Tor Al'Kiir was no
statue of the god, but his very body, entombed for long ages.

Two of the guards had removed their helmets and produced flutes. High,
haunting music filled the cavern. Two more stationed themselves behind
the woman kneeling between the posts. The rest unfastened their
scabbarded broadswords from their belts and began to pound the stone
floor in rhythm to the flutes.

With boneless sinuosity Synelle rose and began to dance, her feet
striking the floor in time with the pounding of the scabbards. In a
precise pattern she moved, cat-like, each step coming in an ancient
order, and as she danced she chanted in a tongue lost to time. She
spun, and weighted black silk stood straight out from her body, baring
her from waist to ankles. Sensuously she dipped and swayed from the
looming shape of the god to the kneeling woman.

Sweat beaded Telima's countenance, and her eyes were glazed. She seemed
to have lost awareness of her surroundings and she writhed
uncontrollably in her bonds. Lust bloomed on her face, and horror at
the realization of it.

Like pale birds Synelle's hands fluttered to Telima, brushed damp dark
hair from her face, trailed across her shoulders, ripped away one
single layer of her bridal garb.

Telima screamed as the men behind her struck with broad leather straps,
again and again, criss-crossing from shoulders to buttocks, yet her
jerking motions came as much from the potion as from the lashing. Pain
had been added to lust, as required by the god.

Still Synelle danced and chanted. Another layer of diaphanous silk was
torn from Telima, and as her shrieks mounted the chant wove into them,
so that the cries of pain became part of the incantation.

The figure of Al'Kiir began to vibrate.

Where neither time, nor place, nor space existed, there was a stirring,
a half awakening from long slumber. Tendrils of pleasurable feeling
caressed, feeble threads of worship that called. But to where? Once
appetites had been fed to satiation. Women had been offered in
multitudes. Their essences had been kept alive for countless centuries,
kept clothed in flesh forever young to be toys for the boundless lusts
of a god. Memories, half dreams, flickered. In the midst of eternal
nothingness was suddenly a vast floor. A thousand women born ten
thousand years before danced nude. But they were merely shells, without
interest. Even a god could not keep frail human essence alive forever.
Petulance, and dancers and floor alike were gone. From whence did these
feelings come, so frequently of late after seemingly endless ages of
absence, bringing with them irritating remembrance of what was lost?
There was no direction...shield was firmed and blessed peace descended.
Slumber returned.

Synelle slumped to the stone floor, panting from her exertions. There
was no sound in the cavern except for the sobs of the midnight-haired
beauty kneeling in welted nudity.

Painfully the priestess struggled to her feet. Failure again. So many
failures. She staggered as she made her way to the chest, but her hand
was steady as she removed a dagger that was a normal sized version of
the blade at the god's belt.

"The bowl, Taramenon," Synelle said. The rite had failed, yet it must
continue to its conclusion.

Telima moaned as Synelle tangled a hand in her black hair and drew her
head back. "Please," the kneeling woman wept.

Her sobs were cut off by the blade slashing across her throat. The
armored man who had borne the chest thrust a bronze bowl forward to
catch the sanguinary flow.

Synelle watched with disinterest as final terror blazed in Telima's
eyes and faded to the glaze of death. The priestess's thoughts were on
the future. Another failure, as there had been so many in the past, but
she would continue if a thousand women must die in that chamber. She
would bring Al'Kiir back to the world of men. Without another glance at
the dead woman, she turned to the completion of the ceremony.


Chapter I

The long pack train approaching the high crenellated granite walls of
Ianthe did not appear to be moving through a country, officially at
peace. Two-score horsemen in spiked helms, dust turning their dark blue
wool cloaks gray, rode in columns to either side of the long line of
sumpter mules. Their eves constantly searched even here in the very
shadow of the capital. Half carried their short horsebows at the ready.
Sweaty-palmed mule-drivers hurried their animals along, panting with
eagerness to be done now that their goal was in sight.

Only the leader of the guards, his shoulders broad almost to the point
of busting his metal jazeraint hauberk, seemed unconcerned. His icy
blue eyes showed no hint of the worry that made the others' eyes dart,
yet he was as aware of his surroundings as they. Perhaps more so. Three
times since leaving the gem and gold mines on the Nemedian border, the
train had been attacked. Twice his barbarian senses had detected the
ambush before it had time to develop, the third time his fiercely
wielded broadsword smashed the attack even as it began. In the rugged
mountains of his native Cimmeria, men who fell easily into ambush did
not long survive. He had known battle there, and had a place at the
warriors' fires, at an age when most boys were still learning at their
father's knees.

Before the northeast gate of Ianthe, the Gate of Gold, the train
halted. "Open the gates!" the leader shouted. Drawing off his helm, he
revealed a square-cut black mane and a face that showed more experience
than his youth would warrant. "Do we look like bandits? Mitra rot you,
open the gates!"

A head in a steel casque, a broken-nosed face with a short beard,
appeared atop the wall. "Is that you, Conan," He turned aside to call
down, "Swing back the gate!"

Slowly the right side of the iron-bound gate creaked inward. Conan
galloped through, pulling his big Aquilonian black from the road just
inside to let the rest of the train pass. A dozen mail-clad soldiers
threw their shoulders behind the gate as soon as the last pack-laden
mule ran by. The huge wooden slab closed with a hollow boom, and a
great bar, thicker than a man's body, crashed down to fasten it.

The soldier who had called down from the wall appeared with his casque
beneath his arm. "I should have recognized those accursed eastern
helmets, Cimmerian," he laughed. "Your Free-Company makes a name for
itself."

"Why are the gates shut, Junius?" Conan demanded. "Tis at least three
hours till dark."

"Orders, Cimmerian. With the gates closed, perhaps we can keep the
troubles out of the city." Junius looked around, then dropped his
voice. "It would be better if Valdric died quickly. Then Count Tiberio
could put an end to all this fighting."

"I thought General Iskandrian was keeping the army clear," Conan
replied coolly. "Or have you just chosen your own side?"

The broken-nosed soldier drew back, licking his thin lips nervously.
"Just talking," he muttered. Abruptly he straightened, and his voice
took on a blustering tone. "You had better move on, Cimmerian. There's
no loitering about the gates allowed now. Especially by mercenary
companies." He fumbled his casque back onto his head as if to give
himself more authority, or perhaps simply more protection from the
Cimmerian's piercing gaze.

With a disgusted grunt Conan touched boot to his stallion's ribs and
galloped after his company. Thus far Iskandrian-the White Eagle of
Ophir, he was called; some said he was the greatest general of the
age-had managed to keep Ophir from open civil war by holding the army
loyal to Valdric, though the King seemed not to know it, or even to
know that his country was on the verge of destruction. But if the old
general's grip on the army was falling ...

Conan scowled and pressed on. The twisted maze of maneuverings for the
throne was not to his liking, yet he was forced to keep an
understanding of it for his own safety, and that of his company.

To the casual observer, the streets of Ianthe would have showed no sign
that nobles' private armies were fighting an undeclared and
unacknowledged war in the countryside. Scurrying crowds filled narrow
side streets and broad thoroughfares alike, merchants in their
voluminous robes and peddlers in rags, silk-clad ladies shopping with
retinues of basket-carrying servants in tow, strutting lordlings in
satins and brocades with scented pomanders held to their nostrils
against the smell of the sewers, leather-aproned apprentices tarrying
on their errands to bandy words with young girls hawking baskets of
oranges and pomegranates, pears and plums. Ragged beggars, flies
buzzing about blinded eyes or crudely bandaged stumps, squatted on
every corner-more since the troubles had driven so many from their
villages and farms. Doxies strutted in gilded bangles and sheer silks
or less, often taking a stance before columned palaces or even on the
broad marble steps of temples.

Yet there was that about the throng that belied the normalcy of the
scene. A flush of cheek where there should have been only calm. A
quickness of breath where there was no haste. A darting of eye where
there was no visible reason for suspicion. The knowledge of what
occurred beyond the walls lay heavily on Ianthe even as the city denied
its happening, and the fear that it might move within the walls was in
every heart.

When Conan caught up to the pack train, it was slowly wending its way
through the crowds. He reined in beside his lieutenant, a grizzled
Nemedian who had had the choice of deserting from the City Guard of
Belverus or of being executed for performing his duty, too well, to the
fatal detriment of a lord of that city.

"Keep a close watch, Machaon," the Cimmerian said. "Even here we might
be mobbed if this crowd knew what we carried."

Machaon spat. The nasal of his helm failed to hide the livid scar that
cut across his broad nose. A blue tattoo of a six-pointed Kothian star
adorned his left cheek. "I'd give a silver myself to know how Baron
Timeon comes to be taking this delivery. I never knew our fat patron
had any connections with the mines."

"He doesn't. A little of the gold and perhaps a few gems will stay with
Timeon; the rest goes elsewhere."

The dark-eyed veteran gave him a questioning look, but Conan said no
more. It had taken him no little effort to discover that Timeon was but
a tool of Count Antimides. But Antimides was supposedly one of the few
lords of Ophir not maneuvering to ascend the throne at the death of the
King. As such he should have no need of secret supporters, and that
meant he played a deeper game than any knew. Too, tlntimides also had
no connection with the mines, and thus as little right to packsaddles
loaded with gold bars and chests of emeralds and rubies. A second
reason for a wise man to keep his tongue behind his teeth till he knew
more of the way things were, yet it rankled the pride of the young
Cimmerian.

Fortune as much as anything else had given him his Free-Company in
Nemedia, but in a year of campaigning since crossing the border into
Ophir they had built a reputation. The horse archers of Conan the
Cimmerian were known for their fierceness and the skill of him who led
them, respected even by those who had cause to hate them. Long and hard
had been Conan's climb from a boyhood as a thief to become a captain of
mercenaries at an age when most men might only dream of such a thing.
It had been, he thought, a climb to freedom, for never had he liked
obeying another's commands; yet here he played the game of a man he had
never even met, and it set most ill with him. Most ill, indeed.

As they came in sight of Timeon's palace, a pretentiously ornamented
and columned square of white marble with broad stairs, crowded between
a temple of Mitra and a potter's works, Conan suddenly slid from his
saddle and tossed his reins and helmet to a surprised Machaon.

"Once this is all safely in the cellars," he told his lieutenant, "let
those who rode with us have until dawn tomorrow for carousing. They've
earned it."

"The baron may take it badly, Conan, you leaving before the gold is
safely under lock and key."

Conan shook his head. "And I see him now, I may say things best left
unsaid."

"He'll likely be so occupied with his latest leman that he'll not have
time for two words with you."

One of the company close behind them laughed, a startling sound to come
from his sephulcral face. He looked like a man ravaged nearly to death
by disease. "Timeon goes through almost as many women as you, Machaon,"
he said. "But then, he has wealth to attract them. I still don't see
how you do it."

"If you spent less time gaming, Narus," Machaon replied, "and more
hunting, perhaps you'd know my secrets. Or mayhap it's because I don't
have your spindly shanks."

A dozen of the company roared with laughter. Narus' successes with
women came with those who wanted to fatten him up and nurse him back to
health; there seemed to be a surprising number of them.

"Machaon has enough women for five men," laughed Taurianus, a lanky,
dark-haired Ophirean, "Narus dices enough for ten, and Conan does
enough of both for twenty." He was one of those who had joined the
company since its arrival in Ophir. But nine of the original score
remained. Death had done for some of the rest; others had simply tired
of a steady diet of blood and danger.

Conan waited for the laughter to subside. "If Timeon's got a new
mistress, and it's about time for him to if he's running true to form,
he'll not notice if I'm there or no. Take them on in, Machaon." Without
waiting for a reply the Cimmerian plunged into the crowd.

Other than staying away from Timeon until he was in better temper,
Conan was unsure of what he sought. A woman, perhaps. Eight days the
journey to the mines and back had taken, without so much as a crone to
gaze on. Women were forbidden at the mines; men condemned to a life
digging rock were difficult enough to control without the sight of soft
flesh to incite them, and after a year or two in the pits the flesh
would not have to be that soft.

A woman, then, but there was no urgency. For a time he would simply
wander and drink in the bustle of the city, so different even with its
taint from the open terror that permeated the countryside.

Ophir was an ancient kingdom; it had coexisted with the mage-ridden
empire of Acheron, gone to dust these three millenia and more, and had
been one of the few lands to resist conquest by that dark empire's
hordes. Ianthe, its capital, might have been neatly planned and divided
into districts at some time in its long history, but over the centuries
the great city of spired towers and golden-domed palaces had grown and
shifted, winding streets pushing through haphazardly, buildings going
up wherever there was space. Marble temples, fronted by countless rows
of fluted columns and silent save for the chants of priests and
worshippers, sat between brick-walled brothels and smoking foundries
filled with the clanging of hammers, mansions and alabaster between
rough taverns and silversmiths' shops. There was a system of sewers,
though more often than not the refuse thrown there simply lay, adding
to the effluvia that filled the streets. And stench there was, for some
were too lazy even to dispose of their offal in the sewers, emptying
chamber pots and kitchen scraps into the nearest alley. But for all its
smells and cramped streets, for all its fears, the city was alive.

A trull wearing a single strip of silk threaded through her belt of
coins smiled invitingly at the big youth, running her hands through her
dark curls to lift well-rounded breasts, wetting her lips for the
breadth of his shoulders. Conan answered her inviting smile with one
that sent a visible shiver through her. Marking her as likely for
later, though, he moved on, the doxy's regretful gaze following him. He
tossed a coin to a fruit-girl and took a handful of plums, munching as
he went, tossing the seeds into a sewer drain when he saw one.

In the shop of a swordsmith he examined keen blades with an expert eye,
though he had never found steel to match that of his own ancient
broadsword, ever present at his side in its worn shagreen scabbard. But
the thought of a woman rose up in him, the memory of the whore's
thighs. Perhaps there was some small urgency to finding a woman after
all.

From a silversmith he purchased a gilded brass necklace set with amber.
It would go well on the neck of that curly-head wench, or if not her,
about the neck of another. Jewelry, flowers and perfume, he had
learned, went further with any woman, be she the most common jade of
the streets or a daughter of the noblest house, than a sack of gold,
though the trull would want her coins as well, of course. The perfume
he obtained from a one-eyed peddler with a tray hung on a strap about
his scrawny neck, a vial of something that smelled of roses. Now he was
ready.

He cast about for a place to throw the last of his plum pits, and his
eye fell on a barrel before the shop of a brass smith, filled with
scraps of brass and bronze obviously ready for melting down. Lying atop
the metallic debris was a bronze figure as long as his forearm and
green with the verdigris of age. The head of it was a four-horned
monstrosity, broad and flat, with three eyes above a broad, fang-filled
gash of a mouth.

Chuckling, Conan straightened the statuette in the barrel. Ugly it was,
without doubt. It was also naked and grotesquely male. A perfect gift
for Machaon.

"The noble sir is a connoisseur, I see. That is one of my best pieces."
Conan eyed the smiling, dumpy little man who had appeared in the
doorway of the shop, with his plump hands folded over a yellow tunic
where it was strained by his belly. "One of your best pieces, is it,"
Amusement was plain in the Cimmerian's voice. "On the scrap heap-"

"A mistake on the part of my apprentice, noble sir. A worthless lad."
The dumpy fellow's voice dripped regretful anger at the worthlessness
of his apprentice. "I'll leather him well for it. A mere two gold
pieces, and it is-"

Conan cut him off with a raised hand. "Any more lies, and I may not buy
it at all. If you know something of it, then speak."

"I tell you, noble sir, it is easily worth-" Conan turned away, and the
shopkeeper yelped. "Wait! Please! I will speak only the truth, as Mitra
hears my words!"

Conan stopped and looked back, feigning doubt. This fellow, he thought,
would not last a day among the peddlers of Turan.

There was sweat on the shopkeeper's face, though the day was cool.
"Please, noble sir. Come into my shop, and we will talk. Please."

Still pretending reluctance, Conan allowed himself to be ushered
inside, plucking the figure from the barrel as he passed. Within, the
narrow shop was crowded with tables displaying examples of the smith's
work. Shelves on the walls held bowls, vases, ewers and goblets in a
welter of shapes and sizes. The big Cimmerian set the statuette on a
table that creaked under its weight.

"Now," he said, "name me a price. And I'll hear no more mention of gold
for something you were going to melt."

Avarice struggled on the smith's plump face with fear of losing a
purchaser. "Ten silvers," he said finally, screwing his face into a
parody of his former welcoming expression.

Deliberately Conan removed a single silver coin from his pouch and set
it on the table. Crossing his massive arms across his chest, he waited.
The plump man's mouth worked, and his head moved in small jerks of
negation, but at last he sighed and nodded. "Tis yours," he muttered
bitterly. "For one silver. It's as much as it is worth to melt down,
and without the labor. But the thing is ill luck. A peasant fleeing the
troubles brought it to me. Dug it up on his scrap of land. Ancient
bronzes always sell well, but none would have this. Ill favored, they
called it. And naught but bad luck since it's been in my shop. One of
my daughters is with child, but unmarried; the other has taken up with
a panderer who sells her not three doors from here. My wife left me for
a carter. A common carter, mind you. I tell you, that thing is . . ."
His words wound down as he realized he might be talking himself out of
a sale. Hurriedly he snatched the silver and made it disappear under
his tunic. "Yours for a silver, noble sir, and a bargain greater than
you can imagine."

"If you say so," Conan said drily. "But get me something to carry it
through the streets in." He eyed the figure and chuckled despite
himself, imagining the look on Machaon's face when he presented it to
him. "The most hardened trull in the city would blush to look on it."

As the smith scurried into the back of his shop, two heavy-set men in
the castoff finery of nobles swaggered in. One, in a soiled red brocade
tunic, had had his ears and nose slit, the penalties for first and
second offences of theft. For the next he would go to the mines. The
other, bald and with a straggly black beard, wore a frayed wool cloak
that had once been worked with embroidery of silver or gold, long since
picked out. Their eyes went immediately to the bronze figure on the
table. Conan kept his gaze on them; their swords, at least, looked well
tended, and the hilts showed the wear of much use.

"Can I help you?" the shopkeeper asked, reappearing with a coarsely
woven sack in his hand. There was no 'noble sir' for this sort.

"That," slit-ear said gruffly, pointing to the statuette. "A gold piece
for it."

The smith coughed and spluttered, glaring reproachfully at Conan. "It's
mine," the Cimmerian said calmly, "and I've no mind to sell."

"Two gold pieces," slit-ear said. Conan shook his head.

"Five," the bald man offered.

Slit-ear rounded on his companion. "Give away your profit, an you will,
but not mine! I'll make this ox an offer," he snarled and spun, his
sword whispering from its sheath.

Conan made no move toward his own blade. Grasping the bronze figure by
its feet, he swung it sideways. The splintering of bone blended with
slit-ear's scream as his shoulder was crushed.

The bald man had his sword out now, but Conan merely stepped aside from
his lunge and brought the weighty statuette down like a mace,
splattering blood and brains. The dead man's momentum carried him on
into the tables, overturning those he did not smash, sending brass
vases and bowls clattering across the floor. Conan whirled back to find
the first man thrusting with a dagger held left-handed. The blade
skittered off his hauberk, and the two men crashed together. For the
space of a breath they were chest to chest, Conan staring into
desperate black eyes. This time he disdained to use a weapon. His huge
fist traveled more than half the length of his forearm, and slitear
staggered back, his face a bloody mask, to pull shelves down atop him
as he crumpled to the floor. Conan did not know if he was alive or
dead, nor did he care.

The smith stood in the middle of the floor, hopping from one foot to
the other. "My shop!" he wailed. "My shop is wrecked! You steal for a
silver what they would have given five gold pieces for, then you
destroy my place of business!"

"They have purses," Conan growled. "Take the cost of your repairs
from-" He broke off with a curse as the scent of roses wafted to his
nose. Delving into his pouch, he came out with a fragment of vial.
Perfume was soaking into his hauberk. And his cloak. "Erlik take the
pair of them," he muttered. He hefted the bronze figure that he still
held in one hand. "What about this thing is worth five gold pieces? Or
worth dying for?" The shopkeeper, gingerly feeling for the ruffians'
purses, did not answer.

Cursing under his breath Conan wiped the blood from the figure and
thrust it into the sack the smith had let drop.

With a shout of delight the smith held up a handful of silver, then
drew back as if he feared Conan might take it. He started, then stared
at the two men littering his floor as if realizing where they were for
the first time. "But what will I do with them?" he cried.

"Apprentice them," Conan told him, "I'll wager they won't put anything
valuable in the scrap barrel."

Leaving the dumpy man kneeling on the floor with his mouth hanging
open, Conan stalked into the street. It was time and more to find
himself a woman.

In his haste he did not notice the heavily veiled woman whose green
eyes widened in surprise at his appearance. She watched him blend into
the crowd then, gathering her cloak about her, followed slowly.


Chapter II

The Bull and Bear was almost empty when Conan entered, and the
half-dread silence suited his mood well. The curly-haired trull had
been leaving with a customer when he got back to her corner, and he had
not seen another to compare with her between there and this tavern.

An odor of stale wine and sweat hung in the air of the common room; it
was not a tavern for gentlefolk. Half a dozen men, carters and
apprentices in rough woolen tunics, sat singly at the tables scattered
about the stone floor, each engrossed in his own drinking. A single
doxy stood with her back to a corner, not plying her trade but seeming
rather to ignore the men in the room. Auburn hair fell in soft waves to
her shoulders. Wrapped in layers of green silk, she was more modestly
covered than most noble ladies of Ophir, and she wore none of the gaudy
ornaments such women usually adorned themselves with, but the elaborate
kohl of her eyelids named her professional, as did her presence in that
place. Still, there was a youthful freshness to her face that gave him
cause to think she had not long been at it.

Conan was so intent on the girl that he failed at first to see the
graying man, the full beard of a scholar spreading over his chest, who
muttered to himself over a battered pewter pitcher at a table to one
side of the door. When he did, he sighed, wondering if the wench would
be worth putting up with the old man.

At that moment the bearded man caught sight of Conan, and a drunken,
snaggle-toothed grin split his wizened face. His tunic was patched in a
rainbow of colors, and stained with wine and food.

"Conan," he cried, gesturing so hard for the big youth to come closer
that he nearly fell from his stool. "Come. Sit. Drink."

"You look to have had enough, Boros," Conan said drily, "and I'll buy
you no more."

"No need to buy," Boros laughed. He fumbled for the pitcher. "No need.
See? Water. But with just a little . . ." His voice trailed off into
mumbles, while his free hand made passes above the pitcher.

"Crom!" Conan shouted, leaping back from the table. Some in the room
looked up, but seeing neither blood nor chance for advantage all went
back to their drinking. "Not again while you're drunk, you old fool!"
the Cimmerian continued hastily. "Narus still isn't rid of those warts
you gave him trying to cure his boil."

Boros cackled and thrust the pitcher toward him. "Taste. 'S wine.
Naught to fear here."

Cautiously Conan took the proffered pitcher and sniffed at the mouth of
it. His nose wrinkled, and he handed the vessel back. "You drink first,
since it's your making."

"Fearful, are you?" Boros laughed. "And big as you are. Had I your
muscles . . ." He buried his nose in the pitcher, threw back his head,
and almost in the same motion hurled the vessel from him, gagging,
spluttering and spitting. "Mitra's mercies," he gasped shakily,
scrubbing the back of a bony hand across his mouth. "Never tasted
anything like that in my life. Must have put a gill or more down my
gullet. What in Azura's name is it?"

Conan suppressed a grin. "Milk. Sour milk, by the smell."

Boros shuddered and retched, but nothing came up. "You switched the
pitcher," he said when he could speak. "Your hands are swift, but not
so swift as my eye. You owe me wine, Cimmerian."

Conan dropped onto a stool across the table from Boros, setting the
sack containing the bronze on the floor at his side. He had little
liking for wizards, but properly speaking Boros was not such a one. The
old man had been an apprentice in the black arts, but a liking for
drink that became an all-consuming passion had led him to the gutter
rather than down crooked paths of dark knowledge. "When sober he was of
some use in curing minor ills, or providing a love philtre; drunk, he
was sometimes a danger even to himself. He was a good drinking
companion, though, so long as he was kept from magic.

"Here!" the tavernkeeper bellowed, wiping his hands on a filthy
once-white apron as he hurried toward them. With his spindly limbs and
pot belly, he looked like a fat spider. "What's all this mess on the
floor? I'll have you know this tavern is respectable, and-"

"Wine," Conan cut him off, tossing coppers to clatter on the floor at
his feet. "And have a wench bring it." He gestured to the strangely
aloof doxy. "That one in the corner will do."

"She don't work for me," the tavernkeeper grunted, bending to collect
the pitcher and the coins. Then he got down on hands and knees to fetch
one copper from under the table and grinned at it in satisfaction. "But
you'll have a girl, never fear."

He disappeared into the rear of the building, and in short moments a
plump girl scurried out, one strip of blue silk barely containing her
bouncing breasts and another fastened about her hips, to set a pitcher
of wine and a pair of dented tankards before the two men. Wriggling,
she moved closer to Conan, a seductive light in her dark eyes. He was
barely aware of her; his eves had gone back to the auburn-haired jade.

"Fool!" the serving wench snapped. "As well take a block of ice in your
arms as that one." And with a roll of her lips she flounced away. Conan
stared after her in amazement. "What is Zandru's Nine Hells got into
her?" he growled.

"Who understands women?" Boros muttered absently. Hastily he filled a
tankard and gulped half of it. "Besides," he went on in bleary tones
once he had taken a deep breath, "now Tiberio's dead, we'll have too
much else to be worrying about. . ." The rest of his words were drowned
in another mouthful of wine.

"Tiberio dead?" Conan said incredulously. "I spoke of him not too hours
gone and heard no mention of this. Black Erlik's Throne, stop drinking
and talk. What of Tiberio?"

Boros set his tankard down with obvious reluctance. "The word is just
now spreading. Last night it was. Slit his wrists in his bath. Or so
they say."

Conan grunted. "Who will believe that, and him with the best blood
claim to succeed Valdric?"

"Folk believe what they want to believe, Cimmerian. Or what they're
afraid not to believe."

It had had to come, Conan thought. There had been kidnappings in
plenty, wives, sons, daughters. Sometimes demands were made, that an
alliance be broken or a secret betrayed; sometimes there was only
silence, and fear to paralyze a noble in his castle. Now began the
assassinations. He was glad that a third of his Free-Company was always
on guard at Timeon's palace. Losing a patron in that fashion would be
ill for a company's reputation.

"'Tis all of a piece," Boros went on unsteadily. "Someone attempts to
resurrect Al'Kiir. I've seen lights atop that accursed mountain, heard
whispers of black knowledge sought. And this time there'll be no
Avanrakash to seal him up again. We need Moranthes the Great reborn. It
would take him to bring order now."

"What are you chattering at? No matter. Who's next in line after
Tiberio? Valentius, isn't it?"

"Valentius," Boris chuckled derisively. "He'll never be allowed to take
the throne. He's too young."

"He's a man grown," Canon said angrily. He knew little of Valentius and
cared less, but the count was a full six years older than he.

Boros smiled. "There's a difference between you two, Cimmerian. You've
put two hard lifetimes' experience into your years. Valentius has led a
courtier's life, all perfumes and courtesies and soft words."

"You're rambling," Conan barked. How had the other man read his
thoughts? A fast rise had not lessened his touchiness about his
comparative youth, nor his anger at those who thought him too young for
the position he held. But he had better to do with his time than sit
with a drunken failed mage. There was that auburn-haired wench, for
instance. "The rest of the wine is yours," he said. Snatching up the
sack with the bronze in it, he stalked away from the table, leaving
Boros chortling into his wine.

The girl had not moved from the corner or changed her stance in all the
time Conan had been watching her. Her heart-shaped face did not change
expression as he approached, but her downcast eyes, blue as a northland
sky at dawn, widened like those of a frightened deer, and she quivered
as if prepared for flight.

"Share some wine with me," Conan said, motioning to a table nearby. The
girl stared at him directly, her big eyes going even wider, if such
were possible, and shook her head.

He blinked in surprise. That innocent face might belie it, but if she
wanted directness . . . "If you don't want wine, how does two silvers
take you?"

The girl's mouth dropped open. "I don't ... that is, I ... I mean . .
." Even stammering, her voice was a soprano like silver bells.

"Three silvers, then. A fourth if you prove worth it." She still
stared. Why was he wasting time with her, he wondered, when there were
other wenches about? She reminded him of Karela, that was it. This
girl's hair was not so red, nor her cheekbones so high, but she
recalled to him the woman bandit who had shared his bed-and managed to
disrupt his life-every time their paths had crossed. Karela was a woman
fit for any man, fit for a King. But what use raking up old memories?
"Girl," he said gruffly, "if you don't want my silver, say so, and I'll
take my custom elsewhere."

"Stay," she gasped. It was an obvious effort for her to get the word
out.

"Innkeeper," Conan bellowed, "a room!" The wench's face went scarlet
beneath the rouge on her cheeks.

The spidery tapster appeared on the instant, a long hand extended for
coin. "Four coppers," he growled, and waited until Conan had dropped
them into his palm before adding, "Top of the stairs, to the right."

Conan caught the furiously blushing girl by the arm and drew her up the
creaking wooden stairs after him.

The room was what he had expected, a small box with dust on the floor
and cobwebs in the corners. A sagging bed with a husk-filled mattress
and none-too-clean blankets, a three-legged stool, and a rickety table
were all the furnishings. But then, What he was there for went as well
in a barn as in a palace, and often better.

Dropping the sack on the floor with a thump, he kicked the door shut
and put his hands on the girl's shoulders. As he drew her to him he
peeled her silken robes from her shoulders to her waist. Her breasts
were full, but upstanding, and pink-nippled. She yelped once before his
mouth descended on hers, then went stiff in his arms. He could as well
have been kissing a statue.

He drew back, but held her still in the circle of his arms. "What sort
of doxy are you?" he demanded. "A man would think you'd never kissed a
man before."

"I haven't," she snapped, then began to stammer. "That is, I have. I've
kissed many men. More than you can count. I am very ... experienced."
She bared her teeth in what Conan suspected was meant to be an inviting
smile; it was more a fearful rictus.

He snorted derisively and pushed her out to arms' length. Her hands
twitched toward her disarrayed garments, then were still. Heavy
breathing made her breasts rise and fall in interesting fashion, and
her face slowly colored again. "You don't talk like a farm wench," he
said finally. "What are you? Some merchant's runaway daughter without
sense enough to go home?"

Her face became a frozen mask of arrogant pride. "You, barbarian, will
have the honor of taking a noblewoman of Ophir to ... to your bed."
Even the stumble did not crack her haughty demeanor.

Taken together with her manner of dress-or undress, rather-it was too
much for the Cimmerian. He threw back his head and bellowed his
laughter at the fly-specked ceiling.

"You laugh at me?" she gasped. "You dare?"

"Cover yourself," he snapped back at her, his mirth fading. Anger
sprouted from stifled desires; she was a tasty bit, and he had been
looking forward to the enjoyment of her. But a virgin girl running away
from a noble father was the last thing he needed, or wanted any part
of. Nor could he walk away from her if she needed help, either. That
thought came reluctantly. Softhearted, he grumbled to himself. That was
his trouble. To the girl he growled, "Do it, before I take my belt to
your backside."

For a moment she glared at him, sky-blue eyes warring with icy
sapphire. Ice won, and she hastily fumbled her green robes back into
place, muttering under her breath.

"Your name," he demanded. "And no lies, or I'll pack you to the Marline
Cloisters myself. Besides the hungry and the sick, they take in wayward
girls and unruly children, and you look to be both."

"You have no right. I've changed my mind. I do not want your silver."
She gestured imperiously. "Stand away from that door."

Conan gazed back at her calmly, not moving. "You are but a few words
away from a stern-faced woman with a switch to teach you manners and
proper behavior. Your name?"

Her eyes darted angrily to the door. "I am the Lady Julia," she said
stiffly. "I will not shame my house by naming it in this place, not if
you torture me with red-hot irons. Not if you use pincers, and the
knout, and ... and . . ."

"Why are you here, Julia, masquerading as a trull, instead of doing
needlework at your mother's knee?"

"What right have you to demand ... ? Erlik take you! My mother is long
dead, and my father these three months. His estates were pledged for
loans and were seized in payment. I had no relations to take me in, nor
friends who had use for a girl with no more than the clothes on her
back. And you will call me Lady Julia. I am still a noble-woman of
Ophir."

"You're a silly wench," he retorted. "And why this? Why not become a
serving girl? Or a beggar, even?"

Julia sniffed haughtily. "I would not sink so low. My blood-"

"So you become a trull?" He noted she had the grace to blush. But then,
she did that often.

"I thought," she began hesitantly, then stopped. When she resumed her
voice had dropped to a murmur. "It seemed not so different from my
father's lemans, and they appeared to be ladies." Her eyes searched his
face, and she went on urgently. "But I've done nothing. I am still ...
I mean ... Oh, why am I telling any of this to you?"

Conan leaned against the door, the crudely cut boards creaking at his
weight. If he were a civilized man, he would abandon her to the path
she was following. He would have his will of her and leave her weeping
with her coins-or cheat her of them, for that was the civilized way.
Anything else would be more bother than she was worth. The gods alone
knew what faction she might be attached to by blood, for all they had
not helped her so far, or what faction he might offend by aiding her.

His mouth twisted in a grimace, and Julia flinched, thinking it was for
her. He was thinking too much of factions of late, spending too much
time delving the labyrinthine twists of Ophirean politics. This he
would leave to the gods. And the wench.

"I am called Conan," he said abruptly "and I captain a Free-Company. We
have our own cook, for our patron's kitchens prepare fussed-over viands
not fit for a man's stomach. This cook, Fabio, needs a girl to fetch
and serve. The work is yours, an you want it."

"A pot girl!" she exclaimed. "Me!"

"Be silent, wench!" he roared, and she rocked back on her heels. He
waited to be certain she would obey, then nodded in satisfaction when
she settled with her hands clasped at her throat. And her mouth shut.
"Do you decide it is not too far beneath you, present yourself at Baron
Timeon's palace before sunfall. If not, then know well what your future
will be."

She let out one startled squeak as he took the step necessary to crush
her to his chest. He tangled his free hand in her long hair, and his
mouth took its pleasure with hers. For a time her bare feet drummed
against his shins, then slowly her kicking stopped. When he let her
heels thud to the floor once more, she stood trembling and silent,
tremulous azure eyes locked on his face.

"And I was gentle compared to some," he said. Scooping up the sack
containing the bronze, he left her standing there.


Chapter III

Boros was gone from the common room when Conan returned below, for
which the Cimmerian was just as glad.

The spidery innkeeper rushed forward, though, rubbing his hands
avariciously. "Not long with the girl, noble sir. I could have told you
she'd not please. My Selina, now. . ."

Conan snarled, and the fellow retreated hastily. Crom! What a day, he
thought. Go out searching for a wench and end up trying to rescue a
fool girl from her own folly. He had thought he had out-grown such
idiocy long ago.

Outside the street was narrow and crooked, little more than an alley
dotted with muddy potholes where the cracked paving stones had been
pried up and carried away, yet even here were there beggars. Conan
tossed a fistful of coppers into the nearest out-thrust bowl and
hurried on before the score of others could flock about him. A stench
of rotted turnip and offal hung in the air, held by stone buildings
that seemed to lean out over the way.

He had not gone far when it dawned on him that the mendicants, rather
than chasing after him crying for more, had disappeared. Such men had
the instincts of feral animals. His hand went to his sword even as
three men stepped into the cramped confines of the street before him.
The leader had a rag tied over where his right eye had been. The other
two wore beards, one no more than a straggly collection of hairs. All
three had swords in hand. A foot grated on paving stone behind the
Cimmerian.

He did not wait for them to take another step. Hurling the bag
containing the bronze at the one-eyed man, he drew his ancient
broadsword and dropped to a crouch in one continuous motion. A blade
whistled over his head as he pivoted, then his own steel was biting
deep into the side of the man behind. Blood spurting, the man screamed,
and his legs buckled.

Conan threw himself into a dive past the collapsing man, tucking his
shoulder under, and rolled to his feet with his sword at the ready just
in time to spit one-eye as he rushed forward with blade upraised. For
an instant Conan stared into a lone brown eye filling with despair and
filming with death, then one of the others was crowding close,
attempting to catch the big Cimmerian while his sword was hung up in
the body. Conan snatched the poignard from one-eye's belt and slammed
it into his other attacker's throat. The man staggered back with a
gurgling shriek, blood pumping through the fingers clutching his neck
to soak his filthy beard in crimson.

All had occurred so quickly that the man impaled on Conan's blade was
just now beginning to fall. The Cimmerian jerked his blade free as
one-eye dropped. The first attacker gave a last quiver and lay still in
a widening sanguinary pool.

The man with the straggly beard had not even had time to join the
fight. Now he stood with sword half-raised, dark eyes rolling from one
corpse to another and thin nose twitching. He looked like a rat that
had just discovered it was fighting a lion. "Not worth it," he
muttered. "No matter the gold, it's not worth dying." Warily he edged
backwards until he came abreast of a crossing alley; with a last
frightened glance he darted into it. In moments even the pounding of
his feet had faded.

Conan made no effort to follow. He had no interest in footpads, of
which the city had an overabundance. These had made their try and paid
the price. He bent to wipe his sword, and froze as a thought came to
him. The last man had mentioned gold. Only nobles carried gold on their
persons, and he was far from looking that sort. Gold might be paid for
a killing, though the life of a mercenary, even a captain, was not
usually considered worth more than silver. Few indeed were the deaths
that would bring gold. Except ... assassination. With a shout that rang
from the stone walls Conan snatched up the sack-wrapped statuette and
was running in the same motion, encarmined blade still gripped in his
fist. With him out of the way it might be easier to get through his
company to Timeon. And that sort of killing had already begun. His
massive legs pumped harder, and he burst out of the alley onto a main
street.

A flower-girl, screeching at the giant apparition wielding bloody
steel, leaped out of his way; a fruit peddler failed to move fast
enough and caromed off Conan's chest, oranges exploding from his basket
in all directions. The peddler's imprecations, half for the huge
Cimmerian and half for the apprentices scurrying to steal his scattered
fruit, followed Conan down the crowded street, but he did not slow his
headlong charge. Bearers, scrambling to move from his path, overturned
their sedan chairs, spilling cursing nobles into the street. Merchants
in voluminous robes and serving girls shopping for their masters'
kitchens scattered screaming and shouting before him.

Then Timeon's palace was in sight. As Conan pounded up the broad
alabaster stairs, the two guards he had set on the columned portico
rushed forward, arrows nocked, eyes searching the street for what
pursued him.

"The door!" he roared at them. "Erlik blast your hides! Open the door."

Hurriedly they leaped to swing open one of the massive bronze doors,
worked with Timeon's family crest, and Conan rushed through without
slowing.

He was met in the broad entry hall by Machaon and half a score of the
company, their boots clattering on polished marble tiles. Varying
degrees of undress and more than one mug clutched in a fist showed they
had been rousted from their rest by his shouts, but all had weapons in
hand.

"What happens?" Machaon demanded. "We heard your shouts, and-"

Conan cut him off. "Where is Timeon- Have you seen him since arriving?"

"He's upstairs with his new leman," Machaon replied. "What-"

Spinning, Conan raced up the nearest stairs, a curving sweep of
alabaster that stood without visible support. Pausing only an instant
Machaon and the others followed at a dead run. At the door to Timeon's
bedchamber, tall and carved with improbable beasts, Conan did not
pause. He slammed open the door with a shoulder and rushed in. Baron
Timeon leaped from his tall-posted bed with a startled cry, his round
belly bouncing, and snatched up a long robe of red brocade. On the bed
a slender, naked girl clutched the coverlet to her small yet shapely
breasts. Ducking her head, she peered shyly at Conan through a veil of
long, silky black hair that hung to her waist.

"What is the meaning of this?" Timeon demanded, furiously belting the
robe about his girth. After the current fashion of the nobility, he
wore a small, triangular beard on the point of his chin. On his moon
face, with his found, protuberant eyes, it made him look like a fat
goat. An angry goat, now. "I demand an answer immediately! Bursting
into my chambers with sword drawn." He peered suddenly at the blade in
Conan's hand. "Blood!" he gasped, staggering. He flung his arms around
one of the thick intricately carved posts of his bed as if to hold
himself erect, or perhaps to hide himself behind. "Are we attacked? You
must hold them off till I escape. That is, I'll ride for aid. Hold
them, and there'll be gold for all of you."

"There's no attack, Lord Timeon," Conan said hastily "At least, not
here. But I was attacked in the city."

Timeon glanced at the girl. He seemed to realize he had been far from
heroic before her. Straightening abruptly, he tugged at his robe as if
adjusting it, smoothed his thinning hair. "Your squabbles with the
refuse of Ianthe have no interest for me. And my pretty Tivia is too
delicate a blossom to be frightened with your tales of alley brawls,
and your gory blade. Leave, and I will try to forget your ill manners."

"Lord Timeon," Conan said with forced patience, "does someone mean you
harm, well might they try to put me out of the way first. Count Tiberio
is dead this last night at an assassin's hand. I will put guards at
your door and in the garden beneath your windows."

The plump noble's water blue eyes darted to the girl again. "You will
do no such thing. Tiberio took his own life, so I heard. And as for
assassins-" he strode to the table where his sword lay, slung the
scabbard into a corner and struck a pose with the weapon in
hand-"should any manage to get past your vigilance, I'll deal with them
myself. Now leave me. I have . . ." he leered at the slender girl who
still attempted unsuccessfully to cover herself, "matters to attend
to."

Reluctantly Conan bowed himself from the room. The instant the door was
shut behind him, he growled, "That tainted sack of suet. An old woman
with a switch could beat him through every corridor of this palace."

"What are we to do?" Machaon asked. "If he refuses guards..."

"We guard him anyway," Conan snorted. "He can take all the chances he
wants to with us to protect him, and he will so long as there's a woman
to impress, but we cannot afford to let him die. Put two men in the
garden, where he can't see them from his windows. And one at either end
of this hall, around the corners where they can hide if Timeon comes
out, but where they can keep an eye on his door."

"I'll see to it." The scarred warrior paused. "What's that you're
carrying?"

Conan realized he still had the bronze, wrapped in its sack, beneath
his arm. He had forgotten it in the mad rush to get to Timeon. Now he
wondered. If the men who had attacked him had not been trying to open a
way to the baron-and it now seemed they had not-perhaps they had been
after the statuette. After all, two others had been willing to kill,
and die, for it. And they had thought it worth gold. It seemed best to
find out the why of it before giving Machaon a gift that might bring
men seeking his life.

"Just a thing I bought in the city," he said. "Post those guards
immediately. I don't want to take chances, in case I was right the
first time."

"First time?" Machaon echoed, but Conan was already striding away. The
room Conan had been given was spacious, but what Timeon thought
suitable for a mercenary captain. The tapestries on the walls were of
the second quality only, the lamps were polished pewter and brass
rather than silver or gold, and the floor was plain red tiles. Two
arched windows looked out on the garden, four floors below, but there
was no balcony. Still, the mattress on the big bed was goose down, and
the tables and chairs, if plain varnished wood, were sturdy enough for
him to be comfortable with, unlike the frail, gilded pieces in the
rooms for noble guests.

He tossed the rough sacking aside and set the bronze on a table. A
malevolent piece, it seemed almost alive. Alive and ready to rend and
tear. The man who had made it was a master. And steeped in abomination,
Conan was sure, for otherwise he could not have infused so much evil
into his creation.

Drawing his dagger, he tapped the hilt against the figure. It was not
hollow; there could be no gems hidden within. Nor did it have the feel
or heft of bronze lavered over gold, though who would have gone to that
much trouble, or why, he could not imagine.

A knock came at the door while he was still frowning at the horned
shape, attempting to divine its secret. He hesitated, then covered it
with the sack before going to the door. It was Narus.

"There's a wench asking for you," the hollow-cheeked man said. "Dressed
like a doxy, but her face scrubbed like a temple virgin, and pretty
enough to be either. Says her name is Julia."

"I know her," Conan said, smiling.

Narus' mournful expression did not change, but then it seldom did. "A
gold to a silver there's trouble in this one, Cimmerian. Came to the
front and demanded entrance, as arrogant as a princess of the realm.
When I sent her around back, she tried to tell me her lineage. Claims
she's noble born. The times are ill for dallying with such."

"Take her to Fabio," Conan laughed. "She's his new pot girl. Tell him
to put her peeling turnips for the stew."

"A pleasure," Narus said, with a brief flicker of a smile, "after the
way her tongue scourged me."

At least one thing had gone well with the day, Conan thought as he
turned from the door. Then his eye fell on the sacking covered bronze
on the table, and his moment of jollity faded. But there were other
matters yet to be plumbed, and the feeling at the back of his neck told
him there would be deadly danger in doing so.


Chapter IV

The sly-faced man who called himself Galbro wandered nervously around
the dusty room where he had been told to wait. Two great stuffed eagles
on perches were the only decoration, the amber beads that had replaced
their eyes seeming to glare more fiercely than ever any living eagle's
eyes had. The lone furnishings was the long table supporting the
leather bag in which he had brought what he had to sell. He did not
like these meetings; despite all the silver and gold they put in his
purse, he did not like the woman who gave him the coin. Her name was
unknown to him, and he did not want to know it, nor anything else about
her. Knowledge of her would be dangerous.

Yet he knew it was not the woman alone who made him pace this time.
That man. A northlander, lirian said he was. From whencever he came, he
had slain five of Galbro's best and walked away without so much as a
scratch. That had never happened before, or at least not since he came
to Ophir. It was an ill omen. For the first time in long years he
wished that he was back in Zingara, back in the thieves' warren of
alleys that ran along the docks of Kordava. And that was foolish, for
if he was not shortened a head by the guard, his throat would be slit
by the denizens of those same alleys before he saw a single nightfall.
There were penalties attached to playing both sides in a game,
especially when both sides discovered that you cheated.

A light footstep brought him alert. She stepped into the room, and a
shiver passed through him. No part of her but her eyes, dark and devoid
of softness, was visible. A silver cloak that brushed the floor was
gathered close about her. A dark, opaque veil covered the lower half of
her face, and her hair was hidden by a white silk head-cloth, held by a
ruby pin, the stone as large as the last joint of his thumb.

The ruby invoked no shreds of greed within him. Nothing about her
brought any feeling to him except fear. He hated that, fearing a woman,
but at least her coin was plentiful. His taste for that was all the
greed he dared allow himself with her.

With a start he realized she was waiting for him to speak. Wetting his
lips-why did they dry so in her presence?-he opened his bag, spread his
offerings on the table. "As you can see, my lady, I have much this
time. Very valuable."

One pale, slender hand extended from the cloak to finger what he had
brought, object by object. The brass plaque, worked with the head of
the demon that so fascinated her, was thrust contemptuously aside. He
schooled his face not to wince. Leandros had labored hard on that, but
of late she accepted few of the Corinthian's forgeries. Three fragments
of manuscript, tattered and torn, she studied carefully, then lay to
one side. Her fingers paused over a clay head, so worn with age he had
not been certain it was meant to be the creature she wanted. She put it
with the parchments.

"Two gold pieces," she said quietly when she was done. "One for the
head, one for the codexes. They but duplicate what I already have." A
gold for the head was good-he had hoped for no more than coppers at
best-but he had expected two for each of the manuscripts. "But, my
lady," he whined, "I can but bring you what I find. I cannot read such
script, or know if you already possess it. You know not what
difficulties I face, what expenses, in your service. Five of my men
slain. Coin to be paid for thefts. Men to be-"

"Five men dead?" Her voice was a whipcrack across his back, though she
had not raised it.

He squirmed beneath her gaze; sweat rolled down his face. This cold
woman had little tolerance for failure, he knew, and less for men who
drew attention to themselves, as by leaving corpses strewn in the
streets. He had Baraca as example for that. The Kothian had been found
hanging by his feet with his skin neatly removed, yet still alive. For
a few agonized hours of screaming.

"What have you been into, Galbro," she continued, her low words
stabbing like daggers, "to lose five men?"

"Naught, my lady. A private matter. I should not have mentioned it, my
lady. Forgive me, please."

"Fool! Your lies are transparent. Know that the god I serve, and whom
you serve through me, gives me the power of pain." She spoke words that
his brain did not want to comprehend; her hand traced a figure in the
air between them.

Blinding light flashed behind his eyes, and agony filled him, every
muscle in his body writhing and knotting. Helpless, he fell, quivering
in every limb, bending into a backbreaking arch till only his head and
drumming heels touched the floor. He tried to shriek, but shrieks could
not pass the frozen cords of his throat, nor even breath. Blackness
veiled his eyes, and he found a core within him that cried out for
death, for anything to escape the all-consuming pain.

Abruptly the torment melted away, and he collapsed in a sobbing heap.

"Not even death can save you," she whispered, "for death is one of the
realms of my master. Behold!" Again she spoke words that seared his
mind.

He peered up at her pleadingly, tried to beg, but the words stuck in
his throat. The eagles moved. He knew they were dead; he had touched
them. But they moved, wings unfolding. One uttered a piercing scream.
The other swooped from its perch to the table, great talons gripping
the wood as it tilted its head to regard him as it might a rabbit.
Tears rolled uncontrollably down his thin cheeks.

"They would tear you to pieces at my command," the veiled woman told
him. "Now speak. Tell me all."

Galbro began to babble. Words spilled from his mouth like water from a
fountain. The bronze figure, described in minute detail. How he learned
of it, and the attempts to secure it. Yet even in his terror he held
back the true description of the giant northlander. Some tiny portion
of him wanted to be part of killing this man who had endangered him; a
larger part wanted whatever the veiled woman might pay for the piece.
Did she know how to obtain it without him she might decide his
usefulness was at an end. He knew she had others like him who served
her, and Baraca reminded him of the deadliness of her wrath. When his
torrent of speech ended, he lay waiting in dread.

"I dislike those who keep things from me," she said at last, and he
shivered at the thought of her dislike. "Secure this bronze, Galbro.
Obey me implicitly, and I will forgive your lies. Fail. . ."

She did not have to voice the threat. His whirling mind provided a
score of them, each worse than the last. "I will obey, my lady," he
sobbed, scrubbing his face in the dust of the floor. "I will obey. I
will obey."

Not until her footsteps had faded from the room could he bring himself
to stop the litany. Raising his head he stared wildly about the room,
filled with joyous relief that he was alone and still alive. The eagles
caught his eye, and he moaned. They were still again, but one leaned
forward with wings half raised as if ready to swoop at him from its
perch. The other still clung to the table, head swiveled to pierce him
with its amber gaze.

He wanted to flee, yet he knew with a sinking feeling that he could not
run far enough or fast enough to escape her. That accursed northlander
was responsible for this. If not for him everything could have gone on
as before. Rage built in him, comforting rage that overlaid his terror.
He would make the northlander pay for everything that had happened to
him. That big man would pay.

Synelle waited until she was in her palanquin-unadorned for
anonymity-with the pale gray curtains safely drawn before lowering her
veil. The bearers carried her from the courtyard of the small house
where she had met Galbro without a word needed from her. Tongueless, so
they could not speak of where they had borne her, they knew the need to
serve her perfectly as well as did the sly-faced thief..

It was well she always went to these meetings prepared. A cloth on
which Galbro had wiped his sweat, obtained by another of her minions, a
few feathers plucked from the eagles, these had given her the means to
quell the thief. She could rest at her ease knowing the man's soul was
seared with the need for absolute obedience. And yet for once the
gentle swaying of the platform did not lull her as she lolled on silken
cushions.

Something about the sly little man's description of the bronze produced
an irritating tickle in the back of her mind. She had encountered many
representations of Al'Kiir's head, many medalions and amulets embossed
with his head or the symbol of the horns, but never before a complete
figure. It sounded so detailed, perhaps an exact duplicate of the
actual body of the god. Her face went blank with astonishment. In one
of the manuscript fragments she had gathered there was ... something.
She was sure of it.

She parted the forward curtains a slit. "Faster!" she commanded. "Erlik
blast your souls, faster!"

The bearers increased their pace to a run, forcing their way through
the crowds, careless of the curses that followed them. Synelle would do
more than curse if they failed to obey. Within, she pounded a small
fist against her thigh in frustration at the time it took to cross the
city.

As soon as the palanquin entered the courtyard of her mansion, before
the bearers could lower it to the slate tiles, Synelle leaped out. Even
in her haste hate flickered through her at the sight of the house. As
large as any palace in the city, it still was not a palace. The white
stuccoed walls and red-tiled roof were suitable for the dwelling of a
merchant. Or a woman. By ancient law no woman, not even a princess,
could maintain a palace within the walls of Ianthe. But she would
change that. By the gods, if what she thought were true she would
change it within the month. Why wait for Valdric to die? Not even the
army could stand against her. Iskandrian, the White Eagle of Ophir,
would kneel at her feet along with the great lords of Ophir.

Dropping her cloak for a serving maid to tend to, she raised her robes
to her hips and ran, heedless of servants who stared at bare, flashing
limbs. To the top floor of the mansion she ran, to a windowless room
where only one other but herself was allowed, and that one with her
mind ensorceled to forget what lay within, to die did anyone attempt to
force the awful knowledge from her.

Golden sconces on the walls held pale, perfumed candles, yet all their
light could not thrust back an air of darkness, the feel of a shrine to
evil. Shrine it was, in a way, though there was no idol, no place for
votive offerings. Three long tables, polished till they gleamed, were
all the furnishings the room contained. On one were flasks of liquids
that bubbled in their sealed containers or glowed with eery lights,
vials of powders noxious and obscene, the tools of her painfully
learned craft. The second was covered with amulets and talismans; some
held awesome powers she could detect but not yet wield. Al'Kiir would
give them to her.

It was to the third table she hurried, for there were the fragments of
scroll, the tattered pages of parchment and vellum that she had slowly
and carefully gathered over the years. There was the dark knowledge of
sorceries the world had attempted to forget, sorceries that would give
her power. Hastily she pawed through them, for once careless of flakes
that dropped from ancient pages. She found what she sought, and easily
read in a language dead a thousand years. She was perhaps the last
person in the world capable of reading that extinct tongue, for the
scholar who had taught her she had had strangled with his own beard,
his wife and children smothered in their beds to be doubly sure. Death
guarded secrets far better than gold.

An eager gleam lit her dark eyes, and she read again the passage she
had found.

Lo, call to the great god, entreating him, and set before the image,
the succedaneum, the bridge between worlds, as a beacon to glorify the
way of the god to thee.

She had thought this spoke of the priestess as bridge and beacon,
placing herself before the image of Al'Kiir, but that which lay beneath
the mountain was not an image. It was material body of the god. It must
be the image that was to be placed before the priestess during the
rites. The image. The bronze figure. It had to be. A thrill of triumph
coursed through her as she swept from the room.

In the corridor a serving girl busily lighting silver lamps hung from
the walls awkwardly made obeisance clutching her coal-pot and tongs.
Synelle had not realized how close the fall of darkness came. Twilight
was almost on the city; precious time wasted away as she stood there.
"Find Lord Taramenon," she commanded, "and bid him come to my dressing
chamber immediately. Run, girl!" The serving girl ran, for the Lady
Synelle's displeasures brought punishments best not thought of.

There was no need to ask if the handsome young lord was in her mansion.
Taramenon wished to be king, a foolish desire for one with neither the
proper blood lines nor money, and one he believed he had hidden from
her. It was true he was the finest sword in Ophir-she had made a point
of binding the best bladesmen of the land to her service-but that
counted little in the quest for a throne. He followed Synelle in her
own seeking because he believed in his arrogance that she would find it
impossible to rule without a husband by her side, because he thought in
his pride that he would be that husband. Thus he would gain his crown.
She had done nothing to dissuade him from the belief. Not yet.

Four tirewomen, lithe matched blondes in robes that seemed to be but
vapors of silk, paused only to bend knee before hurrying forward,
moving as gracefully as dancers, as Synelle entered her dressing
chamber. Her agents had gone to great efforts to find the four sisters
of noble Corinthian blood with but a year separating each from the
next; Synelle herself had seen to the breaking and training of them.
They followed her submissively and silently as she strolled about the
room, removing her garments without once impeding her progress in any
way. In nakedness more resplendant than any satins or silks,
long-limbed, full-breasted and sleek, Synelle allowed them to minister
to her. One held an ivory-framed mirror while another used delicate fur
brushes to freshen the kohl on Synelle's eyelids and the rouge on her
lips. The others wiped her softly with cool, damp clothes, and
annointed her with rare perfume of Vendhya, priced at one gold coin the
drop.

The heavy tread of a man's boots sounded in the antechamber, and the
tirewomen scurried to fetch a lounging robe of scarlet velvet. Synelle
refused to hold out her arms for them to slip it on until the steps
were at the very door.

Taramenon gasped at the tantalizing flash of silken curves, quickly
sheathed, that greeted his entrance. He was tall, broad of shoulders
and deep of chest, with an aquiline nose and deep brown eyes that had
melted the hearts of many women. Synelle was glad that he did not
follow the fashion in beards, being rather clean shaven. She was also
pleased to note the quickening of his breath as he gazed at her.

"Leave me," she commanded, belting tight the red satin sash of her
robe. The girls filed obediently from the room.

"Synelle," Taramenon said thickly as soon as they were gone, and
stepped forward as if to take her in his arms.

She stopped him with an upraised hand. There was no time for such
frivolity, no matter how amusing it might usually be to make him writhe
with a desire she had no intention of slaking. Her studies told her
there were powers to be gained from allowing a man to take her, and
dedicating that taking to Al'Kiir, but she knew Taramenon's plans for
her. And she had seen too many proud, independent women give themselves
to a man only to discover they had given pride and independence as
well. Not for her listening breathlessly for a lover's footstep,
smiling at his laughter, weeping at his frowns, running to tend to his
wants like the meanest slave. She would not risk such an outcome. She
would never give herself to any man.

"Send your two best swordsmen after yourself to find and follow
Galbro," she said, "without allowing him to become aware of it. He
seeks a bronze, an image of Al'Kiir the length of a big man's forearm,
but it is too important to trust to him. When he has located it for
them, they are to secure it and bring it to me at once. Do you
understand, Taramenon? Are you listening?"

"I listen," he said hoarsely, a touch of anger in his voice. "When you
summoned me to your dressing chamber, at this hour, I thought something
other than an accursed figure was on your mind."

A seductive smile caressed her full lips, and she moved closer to him,
until her breasts were pressed against him. "There will be time for
that when the throne is secure," she said softly. Her slender fingers
brushed his mouth. "All the time in the world." His arms began to come
up around her, but she stepped smoothly out of his embrace. "First the
throne, Taramenon, and this bronze you call accursed is vital to
attaining that. Send the men tonight. Now."

She watched a multitude of emotions cross his face, and wondered yet
again at how transparent were the minds of men. No doubt he thought his
features unreadable, yet she knew he was adding this incident to a host
of others, cataloguing the ways he would make her pay for them once she
was his.

"It will be done, Synelle," he growled at last.

When he was gone her smile turned to one of ambition triumphant. Power
would be hers. The smile became full-throated laughter. It would be
hers, and hers alone.


Chapter V

The night streets of Ianthe were dark and empty, yet near the palace of
Baron Timeon a shadow moved. A cloaked and hooded figure pressed itself
to the thickly-ornamented marble walls, and cool green eyes, slightly
tilted above high cheekbones, surveyed the guards marching their rounds
among the thick, fluted columns of alabaster. All very well, those
guards, but would he who lay sleeping within remember his own thief's
tricks?

The cloak was discarded, revealing a woman in tight-fitting tunic and
snug breeches of buttery leather, with soft red boots on her feet.
Moonlight shimmered on titian hair tied back from her face with a cord.
Quickly she undid her sword belt and refastened it with her Turanian
scimitar hanging down her back, then checked the leather sack hanging
at her side. Strong, slender fingers tested the niveous marble carvings
of the wall, and then she was climbing like a monkey.

Below the edge of the flat roof she paused. Boots grated on slate
tiles. He remembered. Yet for all the reputation this Free-Company was
building in the country, they were yet soldiers. Those on the roof
walked regular paths, as sentries in a camp. The measured tread came
closer, closer. And then it was receding.

As agile as a panther, she was onto the roof, running on silent feet,
losing herself in the shadows of two score chimneys. At the drop of the
central garden around which the entire palace was arranged, she fell to
her belly and peered down. There were the windows of his sleeping
chamber. They were dark. So he did sleep. She would have expected him
to be carousing with yet another in a long line of all too willing
wenches. It was one of the things she remembered most about him, his
eye for women and theirs for him.

Knowledge had been easily come by. Not even bribes had been necessary.
All that had been required was for her to pretend to be a serving
woman-though that had been no small a task in itself, given her lush
beauty; serving maids with curves like hers soon found themselves
promoted to the master's bed-and chat to the women of Baron Timeon's
palace in the markets. They had been eager to tell about the great
house in which they served, about their fat master and his constantly
changing parade of women, about the hard-eyed warriors who had hired
themselves to him. Especially about the warriors they had been willing
to talk, giggling and teasing each other about returning from the
stable with hay covering the back of a robe and stolen moments in
secluded corners of the garden.

She would have wagered there were guards in that garden as well as on
the roof, but those did not worry her. From the leather sack she
produced a rope woven of black-dyed silk, to the end of which was
fastened a padded grapnel. The metal prongs hooked on the scrollwork
along the roof-edge; the rope fell invisibly into the darkness below.
It was just long enough to reach the window she sought.

A short climb downward, and she was inside the room. It was as black as
Zandru's Seventh Hell. A dagger found its way into her hand ... and she
stopped dead. What if there were some error in her information? She did
not want to kill the wrong man. She had to be sure.

Mentally cursing her own foolishness, she felt in the darkness for a
table, for a lamp ... and yes, a coal-box and tongs. She puffed softly
on the coal till it glowed, held it to the wick. Light bloomed, and she
gasped at the apparition on the table beside the brass lamp. Horned
malevolence glared at her. It was but a bronze figure, yet she sensed
evil in the thing, and primeval instinct deep within her told her that
evil was directed at women. Could the man she sought have changed so
much as to keep such monstrosity in his chamber. The man she sought!

Heart pounding, she spun, dagger raised. He still slept, a young giant
sprawled in his slumber. Conan of Cimmeria. Soft-footed she crept
closer to his bed, her eyes drinking him in, the planes of his face,
the breadth of his shoulders, the massive arms that had ...

Stop, she commanded herself. How many wrongs had this man committed
against her? She had lived on the plains of Zamora and Turan with the
freedom of the hawk till Conan had come, and brought with him the
destruction of her band of brigands. For his stupid male honor and the
matter of a silly oath she had made him swear in a moment of anger, he
had allowed her to be sold into slavery, into a zenana in Sultanapur.
Every time the switch had kissed her buttocks, every time she had been
forced to dance naked for the pleasure of the fat merchant who had been
her master and his friends, all these could be laid at Conan's feet.

When at last she had escaped and fled to Nemedia, become the queen of
the smugglers of that country, he had appeared again. And before he was
done she must needs pack her hard-acquired wealth on sumpter animals
and flee again.

She had escaped him, then, but she could not escape his memory, the
memory of his building fires in her, fires that she came to crave like
the smoker of the yellow lotus craved his pipe. That memory had hounded
her, driven her into riotous living and excesses that shocked even the
jaded court of Aquilonia. Only when all her gold was gone had she known
freedom again. Once more she had taken up the life she lowed, living by
her wits and her sword. She had sought a new country, Ophir, and raised
a new band of rogues.

How many months gone had the first rumors come to her of a huge
northerner whose Free-Company was a terror to all who opposed him? How
long had she tried to convince herself that it was not the same man who
always brought ruin to her? Once more she found herself within the same
borders as he, but this time she would not flee. She would be free of
him at last. With a sob she raised the dagger high and brought it down.

A strange sound penetrated Conan's dreams-a woman's sob, he thought
drowsily-and brought him awake. He had just time to see a shape beside
his bed, see the descending dagger, and then he was rolling aside.

The dagger slashed into the mattress where his chest had been, and the
force of the missed stab brought his attacker down on top of him.
Instantly he seized the shape-the back of his brain noted a curious
softness-and hurled it across the room. In the same motion he leaped
from the bed, seized the worn leather-wrapped hilt of his broadsword
and slung the scabbard aside. It was then that he saw his assailant
clearly for the first time. .

"Karela!" he exclaimed.

The auburn-haired beauty rising warily from the floor near the wall
snarled at him. "Yes, Derketo blast your eyes! And would she had made
you sleep just one moment more."

His gaze went to the dagger thrust into his mattress, and his eyebrows
raised. But all he said was, "I thought you went to Aquilonia to live
the life of a lady."

"I am no lady," she breathed. "I am a woman! And woman enough to put an
end to you once and for all!" Her hand went to her shoulder, and
suddenly she, was rushing at him, brandishing three feet of curved
razor-sharp steel.

Anger blazed in Conan's icy blue eves, and he swung his sword to meet
hers with a crash. Shock appeared on Karela's face, her mouth dropping
open with incredulity as her blade was nearly wrenched from her grasp.
She took a step back, and from that moment was ever defending from his
flashing edge. He did not force her back, but every pace backwards she
took, he followed. And she could not but move backwards, away from the
force of those blows, panting, desperate to attack yet with no
slightest opportunity. If he made certain that his sword struck only
hers, he also made certain that every blow had his full strength behind
it, rocking her to her heels. The cool smile on his face, calm even as
he battled her, struck to her heart. It mocked her, wounding more
deeply than ever steel could. "Derketo take you, you over-muscled
barbar," she rasped.

With a sharp ring her scimitar was hurled from her. For a breath she
froze, then dove for the fallen blade.

Conan tossed his broadsword aside and seized the back of her tunic as
she leaped. Fabric already strained by more than generous callimastian
curves split down the front; her momentum carried her partly out of her
tunic, stripping her half-way to the waist. In an instant Conan had
twisted his fistful of cloth, trapping her arms at her sides. He found
he had caught a spitting, kicking wildcat. But, he noted, a wildcat who
still had the finest, roundest set of breasts he had seen in many a
day.

"Coward!" she shouted. "Spawn of a diseased goat! Fight me blade to
blade, and I'll spit you like the capon you are!"

Easily he pulled her over to the bed, seated himself, and jerked her
across his knees. Easily he controlled her frenzied thrashings.

"Oh, no!" she gasped. "Not that! Cimmerian, I'll cut your heart out!
I'll slice your manhood for-"

Her diatribe was cut off with a howl as his big hand landed forcefully
on her taut-breeched buttocks.

A fist thumped against the heavy wooden door, and Alachaon's voice
sounded from the corridor. "What's happening in there, Conan? Are you
all right?"

"All is well," Conan replied. "I'm tending to an unruly wench."

That provoked furious struggles from Karela, futile against his iron
grasp. "Release me, Cimmerian," she growled, "or I'll see you hanging
by your heels over a slow fire. Unhand me, Derketo shrivel your
manhood!"

Conan answered her with a smack that brought another howled curse. "You
tried to kill me, wench," he said slowly, punctuating each word with
his calloused palm. "You've been untrustworthy from the first day I
laid eyes on you. In Shadizar you'd have let me be slain without a word
of warning." Karela's shrieked imprecation became incoherent; she
kicked frantically at the air, but he did not pause. "In the Kezankian
Mountains you betrayed me to a sorcerer. I saved your life there, but
in Nemedia you bribed my jailors with gold to torture me. Why? Why a
knife for my heart while I lay sleeping? Have I ever harmed you? Is
your soul filled with treacherv, woman?"

A half-formed plea among her cries penetrated his rage, killing his
anger and staying his hand. Karela pleading? Whatever she had done or
tried to do, that was not right. As he could not kill her, neither
could he bring himself to break her pride completely. He pushed her off
his lap to fall with a thump to her knees.

Her tear-streaked face twisted with sobs, Karela's slender hands stole
back gingerly to her buttocks. Then, as if suddenly remembering Conan's
presence, she tore them away again; moist green eyes glared daggers at
him. "May Derketo blast your eyes, Cimmerian," she said jerkily, "and
Erlik take your soul for a plaything. No man has ever treated me as you
do and lived."

"And no one," he said quietly, "man or woman, has ever dealt with me as
treacherously as you have without incurring my enmity. And yet I cannot
find it in me to hate you. But this! Murder was never your way, Karela.
Was it for gold? You've always loved gold above all else."

"It was for me!" she spat at him, pounding a small fist on her thigh.
Her eyes squeezed shut, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "Your
presence turns my muscles to wine. Your eyes on me sap my will. How can
I not want you dead?"

Conan shook his head in wonderment. Never had he pretended to
understand women, least of all this fierce female falcon. Once more he
was convinced that whatever gods had created men had not been the gods
who created women.

As she knelt there in disarray, naked to the waist, Conan felt other
stirrings than amazement. She was a woman of marvelous curves to
brighten the eye, a wonderful blend of softness and firmness to delight
the touch. Always she had been able to rouse his desire, though she
often attempted to use that to bend him to her will. Abruptly he
decided that learning why and how she had come to Ophir could wait.
Gently he drew her between his knees.

Her clear green eyes, still tremulous, fluttered open. "What are you
doing?" she demanded unsteadily.

He lifted the tattered tunic from her and threw it aside.

Small white teeth bit into her full underlip, and she shook her head.
"No," she said breathlessly. "I will not. No. Please."

Easily he lifted her to the bed, disposed of her soft boots, peeled the
tight breeches from her long legs.

"I hate you, Conan." But there was a curious note of pleading in her
voice for such a statement. "I came to kill you. Do you not realize
that?" He plucked her dagger from his mattress and held it in two
fingers before her gaze. "Take it, if you truly wish me dead."

For the space of three breaths his eyes held hers. Convulsively she
turned her face aside. Conan smiled and, casually tossing the dagger to
the floor, set about producing cries from her that had naught to do
with pain.


Chapter VI

Sunlight steaming through the windows woke Conan. He opened his eyes
and found himself staring at Karela's dagger, once more driven to the
hilt into his mattress. The blade held a fragment of parchment. Karela
was gone.

"Blast the woman," he muttered, ripping the parchment free. It was
covered with a bold, sprawling hand.

Another debt added to those you already owe me. The next time you will
die, Cimmerian. I will not run from another country because of YOU. By
the Teats of Dezketo I swear, I will not.

Frowning, he crumpled the parchment in his fist. It was like the woman,
leaving before he woke, with threats but without answers to any of his
questions. He had thought she was done with threats altogether; she had
enjoyed the night as well as he, of that she had left no doubt.

Hurriedly he dressed and headed into the bowels of the palace. He was
still settling his swordbelt about his waist when he entered the long
room where his company took their meals, near the kitchen Timeon had
given over to them. The simple hearty provender Fabio prepared offended
his own cooks, so the lord said. Some score and a half of the
mercenary, warriors, unarmored but weapons as always belted on, were
scattered among crude trestle-tables that had been rooted out of
storage in the stables. Wachaon and Narus sat by themselves, their
attention to the leather jacks of ale in their fists and the wooden
bowls of stew before them not so great that they did not note his
entrance.

"Ho, Cimmerian," Machaon called out loudly. "How was that, ah, unruly
wench last night?" A sprinkling of rough laughter made it clear he had
shared his story with the rest.

Could not the accursed fool keep his tongue behind his teeth, Conan
thought. Aloud he said, "Double the guards on the roof, Machaon. And
see they keep eyes and ears open. A parade of temple virgins would be
undetected up there as it is."

Narus laughed dolefully into his ale as Conan straddled a bench across
from them. "The wench was too unruly, was she? 'Tis the way of all
women, to be least accomodating when you want them most."

"Do you have to beat all of them?" Taurianus called, a jealous edge to
his bantering tone. "I thought her shrieks would bring the roof down."

"Food!" Conan bellowed. "Must I die of hunger?"

"There's a morsel in that kitchen," Machaon chuckled, "I could consume
whole." He nudged Narus as Julia hurried from the kitchen, balancing
with some difficulty a bowl of stew, a loaf of bread and a mug of ale.

She was much changed from the last time Conan had seen her. Her long
auburn hair was tied with a green ribbon, and pulled back from a face
bare of rouge or kohl but streaked with sweat from the heat of the
kitchen fires. Her long robe of soft white wool, soot smudged and damp
with soapy water, was meant to be modest, he assumed, but it clung to
her curves in a way that drew the eye of every man in the room.

"You must speak to that man," she said as she set Conan's meal before
him. He stared at her questioningly, and she flung out an arm
dramatically toward the kitchen. "That man. Fabio. He threatened me . .
. with a switch. Tell him who I am."

Conan scooped up a horn spoon full of stew. In one form or another it
served the men of the company for both meals of the day, morning and
night. "You work in the kitchens," he said. "That is Fabio's domain.
Did a queen somehow come to scrub his pots he'd switch her an she did
it badly. You'd best learn to do as he tells you."

Julia sputtered in indignation, the more so when Machaon laughed.
"You've too many airs, wench," the grizzled veteran chortled. "Besides,
you're well padded for it." And he applied a full-fingered pinch to
punctuate his claim.

Squealing, the auburn-haired girl leaped. To seize Conan's bowl and
upend it over Machaon's head. Narus convulsed with laughter so hard
that he began coughing.

"Fool girl," Conan growled. "I was eating that. Fetch me another, and
quick about it."

"Fetch your own," she snapped back. "Or starve, if you wish to eat with
the likes of him." Spinning on her heel, she stalked into the kitchen,
her back rigid.

A stunned Machaon sat raking thick gobbets of stew from his face with
his fingers. "I've a mind to take a switch to that conceited jade
myself," he muttered.

"Go easy with her," Conan said. "She'll learn in time, whether she will
or no. She is used to a gentler way of life than that which faces her
now."

"I'd like to gentle her," Machaon replied. "But I'll keep my hands from
her as she's yours, Cimmerian."

Conan shook his head. "She's not mine. Nor yours either, till she says
she is. There are bawds aplenty in the town, is that your need." The
two men stared at him perplexedly, but they nodded, and he was
satisfied. They might think he was in truth laying claim to the
girl-though doubtless wondering why he wished to make a secret of
it-but they would not demand more of her than she was willing to give.
And they would speak it among the company, giving her protection with
the others as well. He was not sure why he did not, save for Karela. It
was difficult for him to think too much of other women when that fiery
wench was about.

In any case, she was likely to give him ten times the trouble Julia
did, and without trying half so hard. Karela was a woman who kept her
word. If he did not find a way to stop her she would put steel between
his ribs yet. Worse, she had a mind for vengeance like a Stygian. It
would be like her to destroy the Free-Company, if she could, before
killing him.

"Have either of you heard rumors of a woman bandit?" he asked in a
carefully casual tone.

"I'll have to bathe to get clean of this," Machaon growled, picking a
lump of meat from his hair. He popped it into his mouth. "I've heard no
such tales. Women are meant for other things than brigands."

"Nor I," Narus said. "Women are not suited to the violent trades.
Except perhaps that red-haired jade we encountered in Nemedia. She
claimed to be a bandit, though I'd never heard of her. The buxom trull
was offended I did not know her fame. Remember?"

"She's no trull," Conan said, "and she'll carve your liver does she
hear you name her so." Immediately the words were gone he wished he had
held his tongue.

"She's here!" Machaon exclaimed. "What was her name?"

"Karela," Narus said. "A temper like a thornbush, that one has."

Machaon laughed suddenly. "She was the wench last night." He shrugged
at Conan's glare. "Well, there's no woman in the palace who'd need her
bottom warmed to crawl into your blankets. It must have been her. I'd
not bed her without my sword and armor, and mayhap a man to watch my
back."

"It was her," the Cimmerian said, and added grudgingly, "She tried to
put a dagger in me."

"That sounds like the woman I remember," Narus chortled. "From the
yells, I'd say you taught her better manners."

"'Twould be sport," Machaon crowed, "to stuff her and our Julia into a
sack together."

Tears ran down Narus' face from his laughter. "I would pay coin to see
that fight."

"Erlik take the pair of you," Conan snarled. "There's more danger in
that woman than sport. She thinks she has a grievance against me, and
she will cause trouble for the company if she can."

"What can a woman do?" Narus said. "Nothing."

"I would not like to wager my life on that," Conan told him. "Not when
the woman is Karela. I want you to ask questions in the taverns and the
brothels. 'Tis possible she's changed her name, but she cannot change
the way she looks. A red-haired woman bandit with a body like one of
Derketo's handmaidens will be known to someone. Tell the others to keep
their eyes open as well."

"Why can you not manage her grievance as you did last night?" Machaon
asked. "A smack on the bottom and to bed. Oh, very well-" he raised his
hands in surrender as Conan opened his mouth for more angry words-"I
will ask questions in the brothels. At least it gives me an excuse to
spend more time at the House of the Doves."

"Forget not the House of the Honeyed Virgins," Narus added. Conan
scowled wordlessly. The fools did not know Karela as he did. He hoped
for the sake of the company that they had time to learn before it was
too late. Abruptly he became aware of the horn spoon of stew he still
held, and put it in his mouth. "Fabio's cooking horse again," he said
when he'd swallowed.

Narus froze with his own spoon half lifted. "Horse?" he gasped. Machaon
stared at his bowl as if he expected it to leap from the table at him.

"Horse," Conan said, tossing his spoon to the rough planks. Narus
gagged. Not until he was out of the room did the Cimmerian permit a
smile to grow on his face. The meat tasted like beef to him, but those
two deserved the worrying they were going to do over what Fabio was
feeding them.

"Conan!" Julia ran out of the door he had just exited, bouncing off his
chest as he turned. Her hands clutched her robe at the waist, twisting
nervously. "Conan, you didn't ... that is, last night ... I mean. .."
She stopped and took a deep breath. "Conan, you must speak to Fabio. He
struck me. Look." Half-turning she lifted her robe to expose the
alabastrine rounds of her buttocks.

Conan was barely able to make out a pink stripe across the undercurve.
He raised his gaze to her face. Her eyes were closed; the tip of her
tongue continually wetted her full lips.

"I'll speak to him," he said gravely. Her eyes shot open, and a smile
blossomed on her face. "I'll tell him he must strike harder than that
to make any impression on a stubborn pot-girl."

"Conan!" she wailed. Hastily she covered herself, smoothing the pale
wool over her hips. Her eyes became as hard as sapphires. "You had a
woman in your ... your chamber last night. I ... I was passing in the
corridor, and I heard."

He smiled, and watched a blush spread over her cheeks. So she had had
her ear pressed to his door, had she? "And what concern is that of
yours?" he asked. "You are here to scrub pots and stir the stew, to
fetch and carry for Fabio. Not to be wandering parts of the palace
where you have no business."

"But you kissed me," she protested. "And the way you kissed me! You
cannot make me feel like that, then calmly walk away. I'm a woman,
curse you! I'm eighteen! I will not be dismissed like a plaything."

For the second time in the space of hours, he mused, a woman was
protesting her womanhood to him. But what a contrast between them.
Karela was bold and defiant even as she melted with passion; Julia
frightened despite her bluff front. Karela knew well the ways of men
and women; Julia was ravaged by a kiss. Karela knew who she was and
what she wanted; Julia ...

"Do you want to come to my bed?" he said softly, taking her chin in his
hand and tilting her face up. Scarlet suffused her face and neck, but
she did not try to wrench free. "Say yes, and I'll carry you there this
moment."

"The others," she whispered. "They'll know."

"Forget them. 'Tis you must chose."

"I cannot, Conan." She sobbed when he released her, and leaned toward
him as if seeking his touch. "I want to say yes, but I fear to. Can you
not just ... take me? Men do such things, I know. Why must you put this
burden I do not want on me?"

Barely four years seperated them, yet at that moment he felt it could
as well be four hundred. "Because you are not a slave, Julia. You say
you are a woman, but when you are truly a woman you will be able to say
yes or no, and know it is what you mean to say. But till then ... well,
I take only women to my bed, not frightened girls."

"Erlik curse you," she said bitterly. Instantly she was contrite, one
hand raised to touch his cheek. "No, I didn't mean that. You confuse me
so. When you kissed me you made me want to be a woman. Kiss me again,
and make me remember. Kiss me, and give me the courage I need."

Conan reached for her, and at that instant a bellow of pain and rage
echoed down the halls. He spun, grabbing instead for the leatherwrapped
hilt of his sword. The cry came again, from above he was certain.

"Timeon," he muttered. His blade came into his hand, and he was
running, shouting as he ran. "Rouse yourselves, you poxed rouges! 'Tis
the baron screaming like a woman in birth! To arms, curse you!"

Servants and slaves ran hysterically, shrieking and waving their arms
at his shouts. Men of the company knocked them aside without
compunction as they poured out of the corners where they had been
taking their ease. Helmets were tugged on and swords waved, as a
growing knot of warriors followed the big Cimmerian up marble stairs.

In the corrider outside Timeon's chamber the two guards Conan had
caused to be set there stood staring dumbfounded at the ornately carved
door. Conan slammed into that door at a dead run, smashing it open.

Timeon lay in the middle of a multi-hued Iranistani carpet, his body
wracked by convulsions, heels drumming, plump hands clawing at his
throat. His head was thrown back, and every time he managed to fight a
breath he loosed it again in a scream. Tivia, his leman, stood with her
back to a wall, clutching a cloak about her tightly, her eyes, large
and dark fixed on the helplessly jerking man in an expression of
horror. An overturned goblet lay near Timeon, and a puddle of wine
soaking into the rug.

"Zandru's Hells!" Conan growled. His eye lit on Machaon, forcing his
way through the men crowding the hall. "A physician, Machaon. Quickly!
Timeon's poisoned!"

"Boros is in the kitchens," the tattoed man called back. Conan
hesitated, and the other saw it. "Curse it, Cimmerian, it'll take half
the day to get another."

Timeon's struggles were growing weaker; his screams had become moans of
agony. Conan nodded. "Fetch him, then."

Machaon disappeared, and Conan turned back to the man on the floor. How
had the fool gotten himself poisoned? The answer might mean life or
death to him and the rest of the company. And he had to have the answer
before the matter was turned over to the King's torturers. Valdric
might ignore the great part of what was happening in his country, but
he would not ignore the murder of a noble in the very shadow of his
throne.

"Narus!" Conan shouted. The hollow-faced man stuck his head into the
room. "Secure the palace. No one leaves, nor any message, till I say.
Hurry, man!"

As Narus left Machaon hurried Boros into the room. The former mage's
apprentice looked sober at least, Conan was glad to see.

"He's poisoned," the Cimmerian said.

Boros looked at him as he might at a child. "I can see that." Fumbling
in his pouch the gray-bearded man knelt beside Timeon. Quickly he
produced a smooth white stone the size of a man's fist and a small
knife. With difficulty he straightened one of the baron's arms, pushed
up the sleeve of his robe, and made a deep cut. As blood welled up he
pressed the white stone to the cut. When he took his hands away the
stone remained, tendrils of black appearing in it.

"Bezoar-stone," Boros announced to the room. "Sovereign for poison. A
physician's tool, strictly speaking, but I find it useful. Yes."

He tugged at his full beard and bent to study the stone. It was full
black, now, and as they watched it became blacker, as a burned cinder,
as a raven's wing, and blacker still. Suddenly the stone shattered. In
the same moment a last breath rattled in Timeon's throat, and the fat
baron was still.

"He's dead," Conan breathed. "I thought you said that accursed stone
was sovereign for poison!"

"Look at it!" Boros wailed. "My stone is ruined. 'Twould take poison
enough to kill ten men to do that. I could not have saved him with a
sack full of bezoar-stones."

"It is murder, then," Narus breathed. A murmur of disquiet rippled
through the men in the corridor.

Conan's hand tightened on his sword. Most of the three-score who
followed him now he had recruited in Ophir, a polyglot crew from half a
dozen lands, and their allegiance to him was not as strong as that of
the original few. They had faced battle with him often-such was the way
of the life they led, and accepted by them-but unless he found the
murderer quickly fear of being put to the question would do what no
enemy had ever been able to. Send them scattering to the four winds.
"Do you want me to find who put the poison in the wine?" Boros asked.

For a moment Conan could only gape. "You can do that?" he demanded
finally. "Erlik blast you, are you sober enough? An you make some
drunkard's mistake, I'll shave your corpse."

"I'm as sober as a priest of Mitra," Boros replied. "More so than most.
You, girl. The wine came from that-" He pointed to a crystal flagon,
half-filled with ruby wine, on a table near the bed. Tivia's mouth
opened, but no words came out. Boros shook his head. "No matter. I see
no other, so the wine must have come from there." Climbing to his feet
with a grunt, he delved into his pouch once more.

"Is he truly sober?" Conan said quietly to Machaon.

The grizzled man tugged nervously at the three thin gold rings dangling
from the lobe of his right ear. "I think so. Fabio likes his company,
but doesn't let him drink. Usually."

The Cimmerian sighed. Avoiding the hot irons meant trusting a man who
might give them all leprosy by mistake.

With a stick of charcoal Boros scribed figures on the tabletop around
the flagon of wine. Slowly he began to chant, so softly that the words
were inaudible to the others in the room. With his left hand he
sprinkled powder from a twist of parchment over the flagon; his right
traced obscure patterns in the air. A red glow grew in the crystal
container.

"There," Boros said, dropping his hands. "A simple thing, really." He
stared at the flagon and frowned. "Cimmerian, the poisoner is close by.
The glow tells."

"Crom," Conan muttered. The men who had been in the doorway crowded
back into the hall.

"The closer the wine is the one who poisoned it," Boros said, "the more
strongly it will glow."

"Get on with it," Conan commanded.

Picking up the flask, Boros moved closer to Machaon. The glow remained
unchanged. As he moved past the door, briefly thrusting the flask
toward the men outside, it dimmed. Abruptly the bearded man pressed the
wine-filled vessel against Narus' chest. The hollow-cheeked man started
back; the glow did not brighten.

"A pity," Boros murmured. "You look the part. And that leaves only. .
."

All eyes in the room went to Tivia, still standing with her back
pressed against the wall. Under their gaze she started, then shook her
head vigorously, but still said nothing. Boros padded toward her,
holding the flagon of glowing wine before him. With each step the light
from the wine became brighter until, as he stopped not a pace from the
girl, the crystal he held seemed to contain red fire.

She avoided looking at the luminous vessel. "No," she cried. "'Tis a
trick of some sort. He who placed the poison in the wine put a spell on
it."

"Sorcerer as well as poisoner?" Boros asked mildly.

With an oath Conan strode across the room. "The truth, girl! Who paid
you?" She shook her head in denial. "I've no stomach for torturing
woman," he continued, "but mayhap Boros has some spell to force the
truth from you."

"Well, let me see," the old man mused. "Why, yes, I believe I have just
the thing. Aging. The longer you take to tell the truth, the older
you'll become. But it works rapidly, child. I should speak quickly,
were I you, or you may well leave this room a toothless crone. Pity."

Tivia's eyes swiveled desperately from the grim-faced Cimmerian to the
kindly-appearing man, calmly stroking his beard, who had voiced the
awful threat. "I do not know his name," she said, sagging against the
wall. "He wore a mask. I was given fifty pieces of gold and the powder,
with fifty more to come when Timeon was dead. I can tell you no more."
Sobbing, she slid to the floor. "Whatever you do to me, I can tell you
no more."

"What do we do with her now?" Machaon asked. "Give her over to the
judges?"

"They'll have her beheaded for slaying a noble," Narus said. "A shame,
that. She's too pretty to die like that, and it should hardly count a
crime to kill a fool like Timeon."

"Giving her to the judges won't help us," Conan said. He wished he
could carry on this conversation with Machaon and Narus in privacy, but
the door was open and most of the company had jammed themselves into
the corridor. Shut them out now and there might not be a dozen left
when the door was opened again. He took a deep breath and went on.
"We've lost our patron to an assassin. Ordinarily that would be the
death knell for a Free-Company." Uneasy mutters rose in the hall, and
he lifted his voice to a roar. "Ordinarily, I said. But Timeon was a
supporter of Count Antimides to succeed Valdric. Perhaps we can take
service with Antimides, if I deliver the murderer to his hands." At
least it was a chance, he thought. Antimides might well find them
employment simply to keep secret his own ambitions.

"Antimides?" Machaon said doubtfully. "Cimmerian, 'tis said he's one of
the few nobles who does not seek the throne at Valdric's death." There
were murmured agreements from the hall.

"Timeon spoke too freely in his cups," Conan said. "Of how Antimides
was so clever he had fooled everyone. Of how he himself would be one of
the most powerful lords of Ophir once Antimides took the throne."

"Well enough," Machaon said, "but will Antimides take us in service? If
he pretends to be aloof from the struggle to succeed Valdric, how will
he have need for a Free-Company?"

"He'll take us," Conan said with more confidence than he felt. "Or find
us service. I'll take oath on it." Besides, he thought, it was the only
course they had open.

"That aging spell," Narus said suddenly. "It seems a strange sort of
spell, even for folk as strange as sorcerers are reputed to be. Why
would you learn a thing like that?"

"Cheese," Boros replied with a chuckle. "I had a taste for well-aged
cheese when I was young, and I created the spell for that. My master
flogged me for wasting time. In truth, I doubt it would work on a
human."

"You tricked me," Tivia gasped. "Whoreson dog!" she shrieked, launching
herself at the bearded man with fingernails clawed. Conan caught her by
the arms, but she still struggled to get to the old man, who stared at
her in amazement. "I'll pluck your eyes, you old fraud! You dung
beetle's offspring! I'll take your manhood off in slices! Your mother
was a drunken trull, and your father a poxed goat!"

"Get me a cord to tie her wrists," Conan said, then added, "And a gag."
Her tirade was becoming obscene to the point where Machaon was
listening with interest. The Cimmerian glared at Narus, who looked
abashed as he hurried to fetch what Conan required. It was all he
needed, to have to carry a shrieking girl through the streets. Narus
returned with strips of cloth, and, muttering to himself, Conan bound
his writhing prisoner.


Chapter VII

Conan drew few stares as he made his way through Ianthe, even with a
wiggling, cloak-wrapped woman over his massive shoulder. Or because of
the woman. In the streets of the capital, eaten by fear and riddled
with suspicion, no one wanted to interfere in something that might even
possibly involve them in the troubles beyond the walls of the city.
They could see a kidnapping take place or murder done and walk by
looking the other way. Who the young giant might be, or why he carried
a woman like a sack of grain, no one wanted to know. It could be
dangerous to know. It could be dangerous even to appear curious.
Therefore none looked too closely at the big Cimmerian or his burden.

He had already been to Antimides' palace. With more than a little
difficulty-for the well-fed chamberlain, as proud in his manner as any
noble of the land, had seen no reason to give any information
whatsoever to a stranger, and a barbarian at that-he learned that the
count was a guest of the King. King Valdric liked Antimides'
conversation, claiming it was better tonic than any of his physicians
or sorcerers could compound. Lord Antimides would be remaining at the
royal palace for several days. It was remarkable how free the
chamberlain had become with his tongue once a big hand had lifted him
until his velvet shoes dangled clear of the floor.

The royal palace of Ophir was a fortress rather than the marble and
alabaster edifices erected in the city by nobles. It was not by chance
that the King dwelt behind massive granite walls while his lords spent
their days in the capital in manors more suited to pleasure than
defense. More than once the throne of Ophir had only been held secure
by a King taking refuge behind those walls, betimes even refuge from
his own nobles. They, having no strong points within Ianthe, had always
been forced to abandon the city to the King. And as control of Ianthe
was the key to keeping the crown, it was said that whoever held the
royal palace held Ophir.

The guards at the towering barbican gate before the royal palace
stirred themselves at Conan's approach. A paunch-bellied sergeant, the
small triangular beard that was in favor among the nobles waggling on
his chins, stepped forward and raised a hand for the Cimmerian to halt.

"What's this, then? Do you mercenaries now think to give us your
leftover women?" He chuckled over his shoulder to the pikemen behind
him, enjoying his own wit. "Off with you. The royal palace is no place
for your drunken carousing. And if you must bind your women, keep them
from sight of the army or we will be forced to take cognizance of it."

"She's a gift for Count Antimides," Conan replied, and managed a
conspiratorial wink. "A tasty pastry from my patron. Perhaps he wishes
to curry favor with a great lord." Tivia redoubled her squirming;
unintelligible noises came from behind the twist of rag gagging her.

"She seems not to like the idea," the sergeant chortled.

Conan grinned back at him. "I wager Lord Antimides will know what to do
with her, whether she likes it or not."

"That he will. Wait you here." Belly shaking with mirth, the soldier
disappeared through the gate. In a few moments he was back with a
slender man, his black hair streaked with gray, in a tabard of gold and
green, Antimides' colors.

The slender man turned a supercilious gaze on the big Cimmerian. "I am
Ludovic," he said sharply, "Count Antimides' steward. You've come to
see the count, Who are you?" He appeared to ignore Conan's burden.

"I am Conan of Cimmeria, Captain of the Free-Company in service to
Baron Timeon."

Ludovic stroked his beard thoughtfully with a single finger, his eyes
traveling to the wriggling girl over Conan's shoulder, then nodded.
"Follow me," he commanded. "Perhaps the count will grant you a brief
time."

Conan's mouth tightened. All this obsequiousness and play-acting was
enough to turn his stomach. But he followed the slender man under the
portcullis and into the royal palace.

If a fortress from the outside, the seat of the Kings of Ophir was
still a palace within. Gleaming white marble walls, floors covered with
a profusion of many-hued mosaicks, fluted alabaster columns. Golden
lamps depending on silver chains from high vaulted ceilings, painted
with scenes from Ophir's glorious history. Gardens, surrounded by
shaded colonnades and filled with rare blossoms from the far corners of
the world. Courtyards, tiled with greenstone, where ladies of the court
in diaphanous gowns that concealed little of their curves dabbled pale
fingers in the babbling waters of ornate fountains.

Their passage left a wake of giggles and murmurs, and stares at the
towering Cimmerian and the burden across his broad shoulder. No fear
was there here in noticing the unusual, and commenting on it. Highborn,
hot-eyed women speculated loudly on the pleasures to be found in being
carried so-without the cords, of course.

The slender man scowled and increased his pace, muttering under his
breath. Conan followed and wished the steward would go faster still.
Finally Ludovic stopped before a wide door carved with the ancient arms
of Ophir. "Wait," he said. "I will see if the count will give you
audience."

Conan opened his mouth, but before he could speak, the slender man
disappeared through the door, carefully closing it behind him.
Audience, he thought disgustedly. Antimides already acted as if he wore
the crown.

The door swung open, and Ludovic beckoned him. "Hurry, man. Count
Antimides can spare you but a few moments."

Muttering to himself Conan bore his burden within. Immediately he saw
the room, his eyebrows lifted in surprise. Perhaps to the casual
observer the room would not seem odd, but to one who knew Antimides'
ambitions it was clearly a small throne room. An arras depicting a
famous battle scene, Moranthes the Great defeating the last army of
Acheron in the passes of the Karpash Mountains, hung across one wall.
On a dais before the great tapestry was a massive chair with a high
back, its dark wood carved with a profusion of leopards and eagles, the
ancient symbols of Ophirean Kings.

If the chair seemed not grand enough by itself for a throne, the man
seated there made it so. Deep-seated, piercing black eyes flanked a
strong, prominent nose. His mouth was hard above a firm chin with its
precisely trimmed fashionable beard. Long fingers bearing swordsman's
callouses played with a ruby chain hanging across the chest of a robe
of cloth-of-gold, slashed to show emerald silk beneath.

"My lord count," Ludovic said, bowing to the man on the dais, "this is
the man calling himself Conan of Cimmeria."

" 'Tis my name," Conan said. He lowered Tivia to the thick-carpeted
floor, layered in costly multi-colored rugs from Vendhya and Iranistan.
She crouched there silently, fright seeming at last to have stilled her
rage.

"Count Antimides," Ludovic pronounced grandly, "wishes to know why you
have come to him."

"The girl is Tivia," Conan replied, "late mistress of Baron Timeon.
Until she did poison him this morn."

Antimides raised a finger, and Ludovic spoke again. "But why have you
brought her to him? She should be given to the King's justices." Conan
wondered why the count did not speak for himself. But the ways of
nobles were as strange as those of sorcerers. And there were more
troublesome matters to concern him. Time for his gamble had come. "As
Baron Timeon supported Count Antimides in his quest to succeed Valdric,
it seemed proper to bring her before the count. My Free-Company is now
without a patron. Perhaps the count can find-"

"My quest!" Antimides burst out, his face choleric with rage. "How dare
you accuse me of. . ." He broke off, grinding his teeth. Ludovic stared
at him in obvious surprise. Tivia, her mouth working futilely at her
gag, seemed transfixed by his gaze. "You, jade," he breathed. "So you
poisoned your master, and were caught at it by this barbar mercenary.
Pray that justice is mercifully swift for you. Take her away, Ludovic."

Desperately and futilely Tivia attempted to force words past the cloth
gagging her. She flung herself against her bonds as the steward seized
her, but the slender man bore her behind the arras with little effort.
A door opened and closed behind the hanging, and her cries were cut
off.

The Cimmerian reminded himself that Tivia was a self-confessed
murderer, and for gold. Still, it pained him to have a hand in a
woman's death. In his belief women were not meant to die violently;
such was for men. He forced himself to stop thinking of her, and put
his attention on the hawk-eyed man on the dais. "Count Antimides, there
is still the matter of my Free-Company. Our reputation is well known,
and-"

"Your reputation!" Antimides snarled. "Your patron assassinated, and
you speak of your reputation. Worse, you come to me with vile
accusations. I should have your tongue torn out!"

"Pray, Antimides, what accusations are these to put you in such a
rage?"

Both men started at the questions; so intent had they been on each
other that neither had noticed the entrance of another. Now that Conan
saw her, though, he drank her in appreciatively. Long of leg and full
of breast, an exotic beauty blending the extraordinary combination of
hair like fine, spun silver and large, dark eyes that spoke of deep
wells of untapped passion, she moved with sinuous grace, her shimmering
scarlet robe, barely opaque and slit up one thigh to a rounded hip,
clinging to the curves of breast and thigh.

"Why do you come here, Synelle?" Antimides demanded. "I will not be
bothered by your sharp tongue today."

"I have not seen this chamber since you came to the royal palace,
Antimides," she said with a dangerous smile. "Seeing it, a suspicious
mind might think you sought the crown after all, no matter your public
pronouncements of disdain for those who strive beyond the city walls."
Antimides' face darkened, and his knuckles grew white on the arms of
the chair; Synelle's smile deepened. "But as to why I came. It is said
in the palace that a giant northlander came to you bearing a woman
wrapped like a package from a fish-monger. Surely I could not miss
seeing that? But where is this gift? She is a gift, is she not?"

"This does not concern you, Synelle," Antimides grated. "Go back to
your woman's concerns. Have you not needlework waiting?" Synelle merely
arched her eyebrows and moved closer to Conan. "And this is the
barbarian? He is certainly as large as was reported. I have a liking
for big men." Shivering ostentatiously, she fingered the small,
overlapping steel plates on his hauberk. "Are you a mercenary, my
handsome northlander?"

He smiled down at her, preening under her sultry look despite himself
"I am captain of a Free-Company, my lady. My name is Conan."

"Conan." Her lips caressed the name. "And why do you come to Antimides,
Conan?"

"Enough, Synelle," Antimides barked. "That lies between me and this
barbar." He had shot a hard look at the big Cimmerian, a warning to
silence.

Conan bristled, and glared back. "I came seeking employment for my
company, my lady, but the count has nothing for us." Did the fool think
he had no sense? Speaking of Timeon, and the baron's connection to
Antimides, would gain him naught and perhaps cost much.

"Nothing?" Pity dripped from Synelle's voice. "But why do you not enter
my service?" She raised her eyes boldly to his, and he thought he read
a promise in them. "Would you not like to ... serve me?"

Antimides snorted derisively. "You outdo yourself, Synelle. Are you not
satisfied with Taramenon? Do you need an entire company of rogues to
satisfy you? Or do you think to contend for the throne yourself?" He
roared with laughter at his own wit, but jealous anger colored his
glare at Conan.

Synelle's face hardened, and Conan thought she bit back words. At last
she spoke in icy tones. "My house is as ancient as yours, Antimides.
And did the succession depend on blood alone, I would stand first after
Valdric." She drew a deep, shuddering breath, and her smile returned.
"I will take your company in service, Conan. At twice the gold
Antimides would give."

"Done," Conan said. It was not the sort of service he had sought, but
the men of his company would at least be pleased with the gold. The
stern-faced count seemed bewildered over what had happened. "Can you be
serious, Synelle?" he asked incredulously. "What use have you for such
men? You throw your gold away like a foolish girl, on a whim."

"Are not my holdings subject to bandit attacks as others are, now that
the army keeps to the cities? Besides," she added with a smouldering
look at the Cimmerian, "I like his shoulders." Her voice hardened. "Or
do you try to deny me even the right to take men-at-arms in service?"

"Women who need men-at-arms," Antimides replied hotly, "should make
alliance with a man who can provide them."

"Why, so I have," she said, her mercurial mood becoming all gaiety.
"Come with me, Conan. We have done here."

Conan followed as she moved from the chamber, leaving a fuming
Antimides on his wooden throne.

In the corridor she turned suddenly, her mouth open to speak. Conan,
caught by surprise, almost walked into her. For a moment she stood,
words forgotten and dark eyes wide, staring up at him. "Never have I
seen such a man," she whispered then, as if to herself. "Could you be
the one to . . ." Her words trailed off, but she still stood gazing at
him as if in a trance.

A woman-wise smile appeared on Conan's face. He had not been sure if
her flirting in the other room had been for his benefit or Antimides,
but of this he had no doubt. Lifting her into his arms, he kissed her.
She returned his kiss with fiery, lips, cupping his face with both
hands, straining her body to him.

Abruptly she pulled back, horror filling her eyes; her hand cracked
against his face. "Loose me!" she cried. "You forget yourself?"
Confused, he set her feet back on the floor. She took two quick steps
back from him, one trembling hand to her lips.

"Your pardon, my lady," he said slowly. Did the woman play a game with
him?

"I will not have it," she breathed unsteadily. "I will not." Slowly her
composure returned, and when she went on her voice was as coldy as it
had ever been for Antimides. "I will forget what just happened, and I
advise you to do the same. I have a house on the Street of Crowns where
you may quarter your company. There are stables behind for your horses.
Ask for it, and you will be directed. Go there, and await my
instructions. And forget, barbarian, as you value your life."

Did women ever know their own minds, Conan wondered as he watched her
stiff back recede down the corridor. How then did they expect men to
know them? His consternation could not last long, however. Once more he
had managed to save his company. For a time, at least, and that was all
a man could ask. All that was left was to convince them there was no
disgrace in taking service with a woman. Thinking on that he set about
finding his way out of the palace.


Chapter VIII

The massive walls and great outer towers of the royal palace had stood
for centuries unchanged, but the interior had altered with every
dynasty till it was a warren of corridors and gardens. Soon Conan felt
he had visited all of them without making his way to the barbican gate.

Servants rushing through the halls on their duties would not even pause
at question from the young barbarian in well-used armor. They were
nearly as arrogant as the nobles who lounged in the fountained courts,
and inquiries made to richly-clad folk got him little from the haughty
men except gibes that brought him close to drawing his sword a time or
two. The sleek, languorous women gave inviting smiles and even offers
as open as those of any trull on the streets. Such might have appealed
had he not been in haste to return to the Free-Company, but even they
had only amusement for his ignorance of the palace, tinkling laughter
and directions that, followed, sent him in circles.

Conan stepped into yet another courtyard, and found he was staring at
King Valdric himself, trailing his retinue as he crossed the greenstone
tiles. The King looked worse than Narus, the young Cimmerian thought.
Valdric's gold-embroidered state robes hung loosely on a shrunken body
that had once weighed half again as much as it did now, and he used the
tall, gem-encrusted scepter of Ophir as a walking staff. His golden
crown, thickly set with emeralds and rubies from the mines on the
Nemedian border, sat low on his brow; and his eyes, sunken deep in a
hollow-cheeked face, held a feverish light.

The retinue consisted mainly of men with the full beards of scholars,
leavened with a sprinkling of nobles in colorful silks and soldiers of
rank in gilded armor, crested helms beneath their arms. The bearded men
held forth continuously, competing loudly for Valdric's ear as the
procession made its slow way across the court-yard.

"The stars will be favorable this night for an invocation to Mitra,"
one cried.

"You must be bled, your majesty," another shouted. "I have a new
shipment of leeches from the marshes of Argos."

"This new spell will surely cast the last of the demons from you," a
third contributed.

" 'Tis time for your cupping, my King."

"This potion . . ."

"The balance of fluxes and humors . . ."

Conan made an awkward bow, though none of them seemed to notice him.
Kings, he knew, were particular about such things.

When he straightened, King and retinue had gone; but one, a whitehaired
soldier, had stayed behind and was looking at him. Conan knew him
immediately, though he had never met the man. Iskandrian, the White
Eagle of Ophir, the general who kept the army aloof from the struggle
to succeed Valdric. Despite his age and white hairs, the general's
leathery face was as hard as the walls of the palace, his bushybrowed
gray eyes clear and sharp. The calloused hand that rested on his sword
hilt was strong and steady.

"You're the one who brought the girl to Antimides," the white-haired
general said abruptly. "What is your name?"

"Conan of Cimmeria."

"Mercenary," Iskandrian said drily. His attitude toward mercenaries was
well known. To his mind no foreign warrior should tread the soil of
Ophir, not even if he was in service to an Ophirean. "I've heard of
you. That fat fool Timeon's man, are you not?"

"I am no one's man but my own," Conan said hotly. "My company did
follow Baron Timeon, but we have lately taken the Lady Synelle's
colors." At least, they would once he drummed the fact into their
heads.

Iskandrian whistled between his teeth. "Then, mercenary, you have
gotten yourself a problem along with your lady patron. You've a set of
shoulders like an ox, and I suppose women account you handsome. 'Twill
light a fire in Taramenon's head to have a man like you near Synelle."

"Taramenon?" Conan remembered Antimides mentioning that name as well.
The count had implied this Taramenon had some interest in Synelle, or
she in him.

"He is the finest swordsman in Ophir," Iskandrian said. "Best sharpen
your blade and pray to your gods for luck."

"A man makes his own luck," Conan said, "and my sword is always sharp."

"A good belief for a mercenary," Iskandrian laughed. "Or a soldier." A
frown quickly replaced his mirth. "Why are you in this part of the
palace, barbarian? You are far from the path from Antimides' chambers
to the gate."

Conan hesitated, then shrugged ruefully. "I am lost," he admitted, and
the general laughed again.

"That does not sound like what I've heard of you. But I'll get you a
guide." With a wave of his hand he summoned a servant, who bowed low
before Iskandrian and ignored Conan. "Take this man to the barbican
gate," the general commanded.

"My thanks," the Cimmerian told him. "Yours are the first words I have
heard in some time that were neither mocking nor lies."

Iskandrian eyed him sharply. "Make no mistake, Conan of Cimmeria. You
have a reputation for daring and tactical sense, and were you Ophirean,
I'd make you one of my officers. But you are a mercenary, and an
outlander. Do I have my way, the day will come when you'll leave Ophir
with all the haste you can muster or have your ashes scattered here."
With that he stalked away.

By the time Conan got back to Timeon's palace, he was uncertain if he
had ever had so many opposed to him before. Iskandrian seemed to like
him personally, and would see him dead given the chance. Antimides
hated him to the bone, and without doubt would like to put him on his
funeral fires whether he went to them alive or dead. Synelle he was
unsure of; what she said she wanted and what her body said she wanted
were opposites, and a man could be shaved at the shoulders for
involving himself with such a one as that. Karela claimed that she
desired him dead, for all she had not taken the opportunity granted
her, and she had a knack of making her desires come true that would
make a statue sweat in the circumstances. Then there was the
thrice-accursed horned figure. Had the second group of attackers been
after it, as those first two had been? If they were, he could wager
good coin on future attempts, though he still had no clue as to why.

Of course, he could rid himself of the threat of attack by ridding
himself of the bronze, but that smacked too much of fright to suit him.
Let him but discover why it was worth killing and dying for, and he
would willingly shed himself of it, but it was not his way to run from
trouble. The Cimmerian almost laughed when he realized that the murder
of Timeon was the only trouble to come his way of late that had been
resolved.

The guards on the white-columned portico looked at him expectantly, and
he put on a smile for their benefit. "All is well," he told them. "We
have a patron, and gold to tempt the wenches."

He left them slapping each other's back in relieved laughter, but once
he was inside his own smile disappeared. Did they know half of what
faced them, they would likely throw down their bows on the spot and
desert.

"Machaon!" he called, the name echoing in the high-ceilinged entry
hall.

Narus, on the balcony above, shouted down. "He's in the garden. How
went matters with Antimides?"

"Assemble the men here," Conan told him, hurrying on.

The tattooed veteran was in the garden as Narus had said, on a bench
with a girl, his arms wrapped around her and hers around him. Trust
Machaon, the Cimmerian thought with a chuckle, even when waiting to see
if they must flee the country. It was about time he found something for
merriment in the day.

"Leave her be," he said jovially. "There'll be time for wenches lat-"
He broke off as the girl leaped to her feet. It was Julia, cheeks
scarlet and breasts heaving.

Clutching her skirts with both hands she looked helplessly at him,
turned suddenly tear-filled eyes on Machaon, then ran wailing past the
Cimmerian into the palace.

Machaon flung up his hands as Conan rounded on him angrily. "Hear me
out before you speak, Cimmerian. She came about me, teasing, and
taunted me about kissing her. And she did not try to run when I did it,
either."

Conan scowled. He had saved her from a life as a trull, given her
honest employment, for this? "She's no camp-follower, Machaon. If you
want her, then court her. Don't grab her like a doxy in a tavern."

"Mitra's mercies, man! Court her? You speak as if she were your sister.
Zandru's Hells, I've never taken a woman against her will in my life."

The young Cimmerian opened his mouth for an angry retort, and found
that none came. If Julia wanted to be a woman fully-fledged, who was he
to say her nay? And Machaon was certainly experienced enough to make
her enjoy her learning.

"I'm trying to protect someone who apparently doesn't want it any more,
Machaon," he said slowly. His reason for seeking out the grizzled man
returned to him. "Events have turned as I said they would. We have our
patron." Machaon barked a laugh and shook a fist over his head in
triumph. "Narus is bringing some of the men to the entry hall. You
fetch the rest, and I'll tell the company."

The wide, tapestry-hung hall filled rapidly, three-score men-less the
guards posted, for there was no reason to be foolish-crowding it from
wall to wall. All looking expectantly to him, Conan thought as he
watched them from a perch on the curving marble stair. Boros was among
them, he saw, but after the gray-bearded man had ferreted out Tivia for
him, he was willing to let him remain. So long as he remained sober and
stayed away from magic, at least.

"The company has a new patron," he announced, and the hall exploded in
cheers. He waited for the tumult to subside, then added, "Our payment
is twice what we were getting." After all, he thought while they
renewed their shouts of glee, Synelle had offered to double Antimides'
best offer; why would she not do the same for Timeon's? "Listen to me,"
he called to them. "Quiet, and listen to me. We'll be quartering in a
house on the Street of Crowns. We leave here within the hour."

"But whom do we serve?" Taurianus shouted. Others took up the cry.

Conan drew a deep breath. "The Lady Synelle." Flat silence greeted his
words.

At last Taurianus muttered disgustedly, "You'd have us serve a woman?"

"Aye, a woman," the Cimmerian answered. "Will her gold buy less when
you clink it on the table in a tavern? And how many of you have worried
as to how we'd fare if, when someone does succeed Valdric, it turned
out we followed the wrong side? We'll be out of that. A woman cannot
succeed to the throne. There'll be naught to do but guard her holdings
from bandits and spend her gold."

"Twice as much gold?" Taurianus said.

"Twice as much." He had them, now. He could see it in their faces. "Get
your belongings together quickly. And no looting! Timeon has heirs
somewhere. I want none of you rogues hauled before the justices for
theft."

Laughing again, the company began to disperse, and Conan dropped to a
seat on the stair. At times it seemed as much of a battle to hold the
company together as to fight any of the foes they had been called on to
face.

"You handled that as well as any king," Boros said, creakily climbing
the stairs.

"Of kings I know little," Conan told him. "All I know are steel and
battle."

The gray-bearded man chuckled drily. "How do you think kings get to be
kings, my young friend?"

"I neither know nor care," the Cimmerian replied. "All I want is to
keep my company together. That and no more."

Sweat glistened on the body of the naked woman stretched taut on the
rack, reflecting the flames of charcoal-filled iron cressets of the
dampstreaked stone walls of the royal palace dungeon. Nearby, the
handles of irons thrust from a brazier of glowing coals, ready in case
they were called for. From the way she babbled her tale, punctuating it
periodically with screams as the shaven-headed torturer encouraged her
with a scourge, they would not be needed.

She had taken money to poison Timeon, but she did not know the man who
paid her. He was masked. She became frightened when the first dose of
poison showed no effect on the baron, and had placed all she had been
given in his wine at once. Before all the gods, she did not know who
had paid her.

Antimides listened quietly as the torturer did his work. It amazed him
how the struggle for even a chance at life could continue when the
person involved had to know there was no hope of it. Time and again,
with men and women alike, had he seen it. As soon as he had spoken and
seen the expression on Tivia's face, he was aware that she recognized
his voice, that she knew him for the man behind the black silk mask.
Yet even with the rack and the whip she denied, praying that he would
spare her if he thought his secret was safe.

It was odd, too, how dangers suddenly multiplied just when he was in
sight of his goal. Had the girl administered the poison in daily doses
as directed the finest physician would have said Timeon died of natural
causes, and he would have been free of a fool who drank too much and
talked too freely when drunk. Then there was the barbarian with the
outlandish name, bringing her to him, drawing attention to him when he
least wanted it. No doubt that could be laid to Timeon's tongue. But
what were the chances the man would fail to tell Synelle what he knew
or suspected?

He, Antimides, had been the first to learn of Valdric's illness, the
first to prepare to take the throne at his death, and all, he was
certain, without being suspected by anyone. While the others fought in
the countryside, he remained in Ianthe. When Valdric finally died, they
who thought to take the throne, those few who managed to survive his
assassins, would find that he held the royal palace. And he who held
the royal palace held the throne of Ophir. Now all of his careful plans
were endangered, his secrecy threatened.

Something would have to be done about Synelle. He had always had plans
for that sharp-tongued jade. Prating about her bloodlines. Of what use
were bloodlines in a wench, except with regard to the children she
could produce? He had planned to take great pleasure in breaking her to
heel, and in using those bloodlines she boasted of to make heirs with
an even stronger claim to the throne than himself. But now she had to
be done away with, and quickly. And the barbarian as well.

He perked an ear toward Tivia. She was repeating herself. "Enough,
Raga," he said, and the shaven-headed man desisted. Antimides pressed a
gold coin into the fellow's thick-thingered hand. Raga was bought long
since, but it never hurt to ensure loyalties. "She's yours," Antimides
told the man. Raga beamed a gap-toothed smile. "When you are done,
dispose of her in the usual fashion."

As the count let himself out of the dungeon Tivia's shrieks were rising
afresh. Lost in his planning for Synelle and the barbarian, Antimides
did not hear.


Chapter IX

The house on the Street of Crowns was a large square, two stories high,
around a dusty central court, with the bottom floor of the two sides
being given over to stables. A wooden-roofed balcony, reached by stairs
weakened from long neglect, ran around the courtyard on the second
level. Dirty red roof tiles gleamed dully in the late afternoon sun;
flaking plaster on the stone walls combined with shadows to give the
structure a leprous appearance. An arched gate, its hinges squealing
with rust, led from the street to the courtyard, where a dusty fountain
was filled with withered brown leaves.

"Complete with rats and fleas, no doubt," Narus said dolefully as he
dismounted.

Taurianus sat his horse and glared about him. "For this we left a
palace," A flurry of doves burst from an upper window. "See! We're
expected to sleep in a roost!"

"You've all grown too used to the soft life in a palace," Conan growled
before the mutters could spread. "Stop complaining like a herd of old
women, and remember the times you've slept in the mud."

"'Twas better than this, that mud," Taurianus muttered, but he climbed
down from his saddle.

Grumbling men began carrying blanket rolls and bundles of personal
belongings in search of places to settle themselves. Others led their
horses into the stables; curses quickly floated out as to the number of
rats and cobwebs. Rotund Fabio hurried in search of the kitchens,
trailed by a half-running Julia, her arms full of soot-blackened pots
and bundles of herbs, strings of garlic and peppers dangling from her
shoulders.

Boros stood at the gate staring about him in amazement, though he
certainly slept in little better as a matter of course. Synelle, Conan
thought, had much to learn about what was properly provided a
Free-Company.

They had attracted entirely too much attention for Conan's taste during
their search for the house. Three-score armored men on horseback, laden
with sacks and cloak-wrapped bundles till they looked like a procession
of country peddlers, could not help but draw eves even in a city that
assiduously attempted to avoid seeing anything that might be dangerous.
The Cimmerian would just as soon they could all have become invisible
till the matter of Timeon's death was forgotten. And he was none too
eager to look into any of those bundles, most of which clinked and
seemed heavier than they had a right to be. For all his injunction
against looting he was sure they were filled with silver goblets and
trinkets of gold. More of those following him than not, the Ophireans
most certainly, were light-fingered at the best of times.

Giving his horse over to one of the men, the big Cimmerian went in
search of a room for himself, his blanket roll over one shoulder and
the sack containing the bronze under his arm. Save for weapons and
armor, horse and change of clothes, they were all the possessions he
had.

Soon he found a large, corner room on the second floor, with four
windows to give it light. A wad of straw in one corner showed that a
rat had been nesting there. Two benches and a table stood in the middle
of the floor, covered with heavy dust. A bed, sagging but certainly
large enough even for his height, was jammed against a wall. The
mattress crackled with the sound of dried husks when he poked it, and
he sighed, remembering the goose-down mattress in Timeon's palace.
Think of the mud, he reminded himself sternly.

Machaon's voice drifted up from the courtyard. "Conan, where are you?
There's news!"

Tossing his burdens on the bed, Conan hurried out onto the balcony.
"What word? Has Synelle summoned us?"

"Not yet, Cimmerian. The assassins were busy last night. Valentius fled
his palace after three of his own guards turned their blades on him.
'Tis said others of his men cut them down, but the lordling now seems
affrightened of his own shadow. He has taken refuge with Count
Antimides."

Conan's eyebrows went up. Antimides. The young fool had unknowingly put
himself in the hands of one of his rivals. Another lord removed from
the race, this one by his own hand, in a manner of speaking. Who stood
next in the blood-right after Valentius? But what occurred among the
contending factions, he thought, no longer concerned him or his
company.

"We're done with that, Machaon," he laughed. "Let them all kill each
other."

The grizzled veteran joined his laughter. "An that happens, mayhap we
can make you King. I will settle for count, myself."

Conan opened his mouth to reply, and suddenly realized a sound that
should not be there had been impinging on his brain. Creaking boards
from the room he had just left. No rat made boards creak. His blade
whispered from its sheath, and he dove through the door, followed by
Machaon's surprised shout.

Four startled men in cast-off finery, one just climbing in the window,
stared in shock at the appearance of the young giant. Their surprise
lasted but an instant; as he took his first full step into the room,
swords appeared in their fists and they rushed to attack.

Conan beat aside the thrust of the first to reach him, and in the same
movement planted a foot in the middle of his opponent's dirty gray silk
tunic. Breath left the man in an explosive gasp, and he fell in a heap
at the feet of a thick-mustached man behind him. The mustached man
stumbled, and the tip of Conan's blade slashed his throat in a fountain
of blood. As the dying man fell atop the first attacker, a man with a
jagged scar down his left cheek leaped over him, sword hacking wildly.
Conan dropped to a crouch-whistling steel ruffled the hair atop his
head-and his own blade sliced across scar-face's stomach. With a shriek
the man dropped in a heap, both hands clutching at thick ropes of
entrails spilling from his body. A sword thrust from the floor slid
under the metal scales of Conan's hauberk, slicing his side, but the
Cimmerian's return blow struck through gray-tunic's skull at the eyes.

"Erlik curse you!" the last man screamed. Sly-faced and bony, he had
been the last into the room, and had not joined in the wild melee.
"Eight of my men you've slain! Erlik curse all your seed!" Shrieking,
he dashed at Conan with frenzied slashes.

The Cimmerian wanted to take this man alive, in condition to answer
questions, but the furious attack was too dangerous to withstand for
long. A half-mad light of fear and rage gleamed in the man's sweaty
face, and he screamed with every blow he made. Three times their blades
crossed, then blood was spurting from the stump of sly-face's neck as
his head rolled on the floor.

With a clatter of boots mercenaries crowded into the room, led by
Machaon, all with swords in hand. "Mitra, Cimmerian," the tattooed man
said, scanning the scene of carnage. "Couldn't you have saved just one
for us?"

"I didn't think of it," Conan replied drily.

Julia forced her way through the men. When she saw the bodies her hands
went to her face, and she screamed. Then her eyes lit on Conan, and her
composure returned as quickly as it had gone. "You're wounded!" she
said. "Sit on the bed, and I will tend it."

For the first time Conan became aware of a razor's edge of fire along
his ribs, and the blood wetting the side of his hauberk. " 'Tis but a
scratch," he told her. "Get these out of here," he added to Machaon,
gesturing to the corpses.

Machaon told off men to cart the dead away.

Julia, however, was not finished. "Scratch or not," she said firmly,
"if it is not tended you may grow ill. Fetch me hot water and clean
clothes," she flung over her shoulder, as she attempted to press Conan
toward the bed. "Clean, mind you!" To everyone's surprise two of the
mercenaries rushed off at her command.

Amused, Conan let her have her way. Muttering to herself she fussed
over getting his metal-scaled leather tunic off. Gently she palped the
flesh about the long, shallow gash, a thoughtful frown on her face. She
seemed unconcerned about his blood on her fingers.

"It seems you are ahead once more," Machaon said ruefully, before
leaving them alone.

"What did he mean by that?" she asked absently. "Don't talk. Let the
wound lie still. There are no ribs broken, and I will not have to sew
it, but after it is bandaged you must take care not to exert yourself.
Perhaps if you lie-" She broke off with a gasp. "Mitra protect us, what
is that evil thing?"

Conan followed her suddenly frightened gaze to the bronze figure, lying
on the bed and now out of the sack. "Just something I bought as a gift
for Machaon," he said, picking it up. She backed away from him. "What
ails you, girl? The thing is but dead metal."

"She is right to be affrighted," Boros said from the door. His eyes
were fixed on the bronze as on a living demon. "It is evil beyond
knowing. I can feel the waves of it from here."

"And I," Julia said shakily. "It means me harm. I can feel it."

Boros nodded sagely. "Aye, a woman would be sensitive to such. The
rites of Al'Kiir were heinous. Scores of men fighting to the death
while the priestesses chanted, with the heart of the survivor to be
ripped from his living body. Rites of torture, with the victim kept
alive and screaming on the altar for days. But the most evil of all,
and the most powerful, was the giving of women as sacrifices. Or as
worse than sacrifices."

"What could be worse than being sacrificed?" Julia asked faintly.

"Being given to the living god whose image that is," Boros answered,
"to be his plaything for all eternity. Such may well have been the fate
of the women given to Al'Kiir."

Julia swayed, and Conan snapped, "Enough, old man! You frighten her. I
remember now that you mentioned this Al'Kiir once before, when you were
drunk. Are you drunk now? Have you dredged all this from wine fumes in
your head?"

"I am deathly sober," the gray-bearded man replied, "and I wish I were
pickled in wine like a corpse. For that is not only an image of
Al'Kiir, Cimmerian. It is a necessary, a vital part of the worship of
that horrible god. I thought all such had been destroyed centuries ago.
Someone attempts to bring Al'Kiir again to this world, and did they
have that unholy image they might well succeed. I, for one, would not
care to be alive if they do."

Conan stared at the bronze gripped in his big hand. Two men had died
attempting to take it from him in the shop. Three more perished in the
second attack, and that that had been for the same thing he no longer
doubted. Before he himself died, sly-face had accused Conan of slaying
about eight of his men. The numbers were right. Those who wanted to
bring back this god knew the Cimmerian had the image they needed. In a
way he was relieved. He had had stray thoughts that some of these
attacks, including the one just done, were Karela's work.

The men fetching the hot water and bandages entered the room; Conan
thrust the image under his blanket roll and signed the others to
silence until they were gone.

When the three were alone again, Julia spoke. "I'll tend your wound,
but not if you again remove that evil thing from its hiding. Even there
I can sense it."

"I'll leave it where it is," the young Cimmerian said, and she knelt
beside him and busied herself with bathing and bandaging his wound. "Go
on with your telling, Boros," he continued. "How is it this god cannot
find his own way to the world of men? That seems like no god to fear
greatly, for all his horns."

"You make jokes," Boros grumbled, "but there is no humor in this. To
tell you of Al'Kiir I must speak of the distant past. You know that
Ophir is the most ancient of all the kingdoms now existing in the
world, yet few men know aught of its misty beginnings. I know a little.
Before even Ophir was, this land was the center of the worship of
Al'Kiir. The strongest and handsomest of men and the proudest and most
beautiful of women were brought from afar for the rites of which I have
spoken. But, as you might imagine, there were those who opposed the
worship of Al'Kiir, and foremost of these were the men who called
themselves the Circle of the Right-Hand Path."

"Can you not be shorter about it?" Conan said. "There's no need to
dress the tale like a story-teller in the marketplace."

Boros snorted. "Do you wish brevity, or the facts? Listen. The Circle
of the Right-Hand Path was led by a man named Avanrakash, perhaps the
most powerful practitioner of white magic who has ever lived."

"I did not know there was such a thing as white magic," Conan said.
"Never have I seen a sorcerer who did not reek of blackness and evil as
a dunghill reeks of filth."

This time the old man ignored him. "These men made contact with the
very gods, 'tis said, and concluded a pact. No god would stand against
Al'Kiir openly, for they feared that in a war between gods all that is
might be destroyed, even themselves. Some-Set, supposedly, was
one-declared themselves apart from what was to happen. Others, though,
granted those of the Right-Hand Path an increase in powers, enough so
that they in concert could match a single god. You can understand that
they would not give so much to a single man, for that would make him a
demigod at the least, nor enough to all of them that they could not be
vanquished easily by as few as two of the gods in concert."

Despite himself Conan found himself listening intently. Julia, her
mouth hanging open in wonderment, held the ties of the Cimmerian's
bandages forgotten as she followed Boros' words.

"In the battle that followed, the face of the land itself was changed,
mountains raised, rivers altered in their courses, ancient seas made
desert. All of those who marched against Al'Kiir, saving only
Avanrakash, perished, and he was wounded to the death. Yet in his dying
he managed with a staff of power to sever Al'Kiir from the body the god
wore in the world of men, to seal the god from that world.

"Then came rebellion among the people against the temples of Al'Kiir,
and the first King of Ophir was crowned. Whole cities were razed so
that not even their memory remains. All that kept so much as the name
of Al'Kiir in the minds of men was destroyed.

"The earthly body of the god? Men tried to destroy that as well, but
the hottest fires made no mark, and the finest swords shattered against
it. Finally it was entombed beneath a mountain, and the entrances
sealed up, so that with time men should forget its very existence.

"They both succeeded and failed, they who would have destroyed the
god's name and memory, for the name Tor Al'Kiir was given to the
mountain, but for centuries gone only a scattered few have known the
source of that name, though all men know it for a place of ill luck, a
place to be avoided.

"I believed I was the last to have the knowledge I possess, that it
would go to my funeral fires with me. But I have seen lights in the
night atop Tor Al'Kiir. I have heard whispers of knowledge sought.
Someone attempts to bring Al'Kiir back to this world again. I was sure
they would find only failure, for the lack of that image or its like,
but do they get their hands on it, blood and lust and slavery will be
the portion of all men."

Conan let out a long breath when the old man at last fell silent. "The
answer is simple. I'll take the accursed thing to the nearest
metalworker's shop and have it melted down."

"No!" Boros cried. A violent shudder wracked him, and he combed his
long beard with his fingers in agitation. "Without the proper spells
that would loose such power as would burn this city from the face of
the earth, and perhaps half the country as well. Before you ask, I do
not know the necessary spells, and those who do would be more likely to
attempt use of the image than its destruction."

"That staff," Julia said suddenly. "The one Avanrakash used. Could it
destroy the image?"

"A very perceptive question, child," the old man murmured. "The answer
is, I do not know. It might very well have that power, though."

"Much good that does," Conan muttered. "The staff is no doubt rotted to
dust long ago."

Boros shook his head. "Not at all. 'Tis a staff of power, after all,
that Staff of Avanrakash. Those men of ancient times revered its power,
and made it the scepter of Ophir, which it still is, though covered in
gold and gems. It is said 'twas the presence of that scepter, carried
as a standard before the armies of Ophir, that allowed Moranthes the
Great to win his victories against Acheron. If you could acquire the
scepter, Conan . . ."

"I will not," Conan said flatly, "attempt to steal King Valdric's
scepter on the off chance that it might have some power. Zandru's Nine
Hells, the man uses the thing as a walking staff. It's with him
constantly."

"You must understand, Cimmerian," Boros began, but Conan cut him off.

"No! I will put the thrice-accursed beneath the floor boards yonder
until I can find a place to bury it where it will never be found. Crack
not your teeth concerning any of this until I can do so, Boros. And
stay away from the wine till then as well."

Boros put on a cloak of injured dignity. "I have been keeping this
particular secret for nearly fifty years, Cimmerian. You've no need to
instruct me."

Conan grunted, and let Julia lift his arm to finish her bandaging. It
was yet another rotten turnip to add to the stew before him. How to
destroy a thing that could not be destroyed, or as well as could not,
given the lack of trustworthy sorcerer, and such were as rare as virgin
whores. Still, he was worried more about Karela than any of the rest.
What, he wondered, was that flame-haired wench plotting?


Chapter X

Karela reined in her bay mare at the edge of the tall trees, thick with
the shadows of the setting sun, and studied the small peakroofed hut in
the forest clearing. A single horse was tethered outside, a tall black
warmount colorfully caprisoned for a noble, though its scarlet and
black bardings bore the sign of no house. A lone man was supposed to
meet her there, but she would wait to make sure.

The snap of a fallen twig announced the arrival of a man in coarse
woolen tunic and breeches of nondescript brown that blended well with
the shadows. The sound was deliberate, she knew, that she, being
warned, would not strike with the Turanian scimitar she wore on her
belt at his sudden appearance; Agorio could move in the woods as
silently as the fall of a feather, did he choose. Both the man's ears
had been cropped for theft, and his narrow face bore a scar that pulled
his right eye into a permanent expression of surprise. "He came alone,
my lady, as you instructed," he said.

Karela nodded. They were not so good as her hounds of the Zamoran
plains, the men who followed her now. Most had been poachers, and petty
thieves if the opportunity presented itself, when she found them, and
they had little liking for the discipline she forced on them, but given
time, she would make them as good and as feared as any band of brigands
that ever rode.

She rode slowly into the clearing, sitting her saddle as proudly as any
queen. She disdained to show more caution than she had already. As she
dismounted she drew her curved sword, and pushed open the crude plank
door of the hut with the blade.

Within was a single room with the rough furnishings to be expected in
such a place, dimly lit by a fire on the hearth. Dust covered
everything, and old, dried cobwebs hung from the bare, shadowed
rafters. A man with a plain scarlet surcoat over his armor stood in the
center of the dirt floor, his thumbs hooked casually in the wide,
low-slung belt that supported his scabbarded longsword. He was almost
as tall as Conan, she noted, with shoulders nearly as broad. A handsome
man, with an eye for women from the smile that came to his lips when
she entered.

She kicked the door shut with her heel and waited for him to speak. She
did not sheath her blade.

"You are not what I expected, girl," he said finally. His dark eves
caressed the curves beneath her snug-fitting jerkin and breeches. "You
are quite beautiful."

"And you've made your first mistake." There was danger in her voice,
though the man did not seem to realize it. "No man calls me girl. I'll
have the answers to some questions before we go further. Your message
came to me through ways I thought known only to a trusted few. How did
you come to know of them? Who are you, and why would you send me fifty
golds, not knowing if I'd come or not?" For that was the amount that
had accompanied the message.

"Yet you did come," he said, radiating cool confidence. From beneath
his surcoat he produced two bulging leather purses and tossed them to
the table. They clinked as they landed. "And here are a hundred more
pieces of gold, if you will undertake a commission for me, with as many
to follow at its completion."

Her tone hardened. "My questions."

"Regrettably I cannot answer," he said smoothly. "You need have no fear
of being seized, my inquisitive beauty. I came alone, as I said I
would. There are no men in the trees about us."

"Except my own," she said, and was pleased to see surprise flicker
across his face.

He recovered his aplomb quickly. "But that is to be expected. When I
heard of a bandit band led by a ... a woman, I knew they must be very
good indeed to long survive. You see, you're becoming famous. Put up
your blade. Eastern, is it not? Are you from the east, my pretty
brigand? You have not the coloring of the eastern beauties I have
known, though you are as lovely as all of them together."

His smile deepened, a smile she was sure sent he expected to send
tingles through every woman favored with it. And likely had his
expectations met, she admitted. She also knew that only her danger at
his manner-girl, indeed! My pretty brigand. Ha!-armored her against it.
She held hard to that anger, prodded at it. She did, however, sheathe
her sword.

"I'll not tell you my history," she growled, "when I get not even your
name in return. At least you can tell me what I am to do for these two
hundred gold pieces."

His smoldering-eyed study of her did not end, but at least it abated.
"Baron Inaros is withdrawing from his keep to his palace in Ianthe. He
is not involved in the current struggles. Rather, he is afraid of them.
'Tis the reason for his move, seeking the safety of the capital. His
guards will be few in number, not enough to trouble a bold band of
brigands. For the two hundred you will bring me his library, which he
brings with him in two carts. And of course you may keep anything else
you take from his party."

"A library!" Karela burst out. "Why would you pay two hundred pieces of
gold, two hundred and fifty, in truth, for a collection of dusty
scrolls?"

"Let us simply say I am a collector of rarities, and that there are
works in Inaros' possession I am willing to pay that price for."

Karela almost laughed. This man as a collector of rare parchments was
one thing she would not believe. But there was no profit in calling him
liar. "Very well," she said, "but I will have two hundred gold pieces
upon delivery of these, ah, rarities." It was her turn to smile. "Are
you willing to pay that price?"

He nodded slowly, once more eyeing her up and down. "I could almost
consider it cheap, though you'd best not press me too far, or I may
take my commission to another who, if not so pretty, is also not so
greedy. Now let us seal the bargain."

"What," she began, but before she could finish he took a quick step and
seized her. Roughly he crushed her against him; she could not free an
arm enough to draw her sword.

"I have a special way of sealing pacts with women," he chuckled.
"Struggle if you wish, but you will enjoy it before 'tis done."
Suddenly he froze at the sharp prick of her dagger point against his
neck.

"I should slit your throat," she hissed, "like the pig you are. Back
away from me. Slowly."

Obediently he stepped backwards, his face a frozen mask of rage. As
soon as he was clear of her dagger stroke, his hand went to his sword.
She flipped the dagger, catching it by the point.

"Will you wager your life that I cannot put this in your eye?" His hand
fell back to his side.

Desperately Karela fought her own desire to kill him. He deserved it
clearly, to her thinking, but how could she keep it secret that she had
slain a man come to hire her- Such things never remained buried long.
All who heard the tale would think she had done it for the coins on the
table, and there would be no more offers of gold.

"You codless spawn of a diseased camel!" she spat in frustration. "But
recently I saw a figure that reminds me of you. An ugly thing to curdle
any woman's blood, as you are. All horns and fangs, with twice as much
manhood as any man, and like to think with that manhood, as you do,
were it alive. If you have any manhood."

He had gone very still as she spoke, anger draining from his face, and
there was barely contained excitement in his voice as he spoke. "This
figure? How many horns did it have? How many eyes? Was it shaped
otherwise like a man?"

Karela stared at him in amazement. Was this some attempt to draw her
off guard, it was most surely a strange one. "What interest can you
have in it?"

"More than you can possibly know. Speak, woman."

"It was like a man," she said slowly, "except that it had too many
fingers and toes, and claws on all of them. There were four horns, and
three eyes. And a reek of evil as strong as yours."

His smile returned, but not for her this time. To her surprise it was a
smile of triumph. "Forget Inaros," he said. "Bring me that figure, and
I will give you five hundred pieces of gold."

"Think you I'd still take your gold," she said incredulously, "after
this?"

"I think you'd take five hundred pieces of it if it came from Erlik
himself. Think, woman. Five hundred."

Karela hesitated. It was a tempting amount. And to think she could earn
it at the Cimmerian's expense made it more so. But to deal with this
one. "Done," she was surprised to hear herself say. "How shall we meet
again, when I have the thing?"

He tugged off his brilliant red surcoat, revealing gilded armor
beneath. "Have a man wearing this over his tunic stand before the main
gate of the royal palace when the sun is at its zenith, and on that day
at dusk I will come to this hut with the gold."

"Done," Karela said again. "I will leave you, now, and I advise you to
wait the time it takes to count one thousand-an you can count-before
following, else you will discover whether that pretty armor will avail
you against crossbow bolts." With that she backed from the hut, and
scrambled into her saddle.

As she rode into the forest she found that she almost felt like
singing. Five hundred pieces of gold and another stroke against the
Cimmerian, if a small one. But there would be greater, the first
already under way. This time it would be Conan who was forced to flee,
not her. He would flee, or he would die.

Synelle paced the floor of her sleeping chamber like a caged panther,
hating her agitation yet unable to quell it. Silver lamps lit the room
against the night at the windows, lending a sheen to the gossamer
hangings about her bed. Her pale hair hung damp with sweat, though the
night was cool. Normally she guarded her exotic beauty jealously, never
allowing a curl to be out of place or the slightest smudging of rouge
even when she was alone, but now turmoil filled her to the exclusion of
all else.

For the hundreth time she stopped before a mirror and examined her
full, sensuous lips. They looked no different than they always had, but
they felt swollen. With a snarl of rage she resumed her pacing, her
long robe of canescent silk clinging to every curve of her body. She
was aware of every particle of the sleek gray material sliding on the
smoothness of her skin.

Ever since that ... that barbarian had kissed her she had been like
this. She could not stop thinking about him. Tall, with shoulders like
a bull and eyes like a winter lake. A crude, unmannered lout. Wild and
untamed, like a lion, with arms that could crush a woman in his
embrace. She felt like bubbling honey inside. She could not sleep;
already this night she had tossed for hours in torment, filled to the
brim with feelings she had never before experienced.

Why had she even taken the Free-Company in service? Only to spite
Antimides, as had always given her pleasure in the past. There was no
reason to keep it, except that Antimides would certainly think he had
won in some fashion if she dismissed them. And there was the barbarian.

Desperately she tried to force her mind away from Conan. "I will not
give myself to him!" she cried. "Not to any man! Never!"

There were other things to think about. There had to be. The women.
Yes. Of the bronze image of Al'Kiir, she was certain now. The men
Taramenon had sent after Galbro would bring it to her. But she needed a
woman for the rite, and not any woman would do. This woman must be
beautiful above all others about her, proud to the point of fierceness.
Proud women there were, but plain or old or disqualified on a score of
other points. Beautiful women abounded, and some had pride, but where
was the fierceness? Without exception they would tremble at a man's
anger, give way to his will eventually, for all they might resist a
time.

Why did they have to be so? Yet she could understand a little now. What
woman could resist a man like the barbarian. Him again! She pounded a
small fist on her sleek thigh in frustration. Why did he continually
invade her thoughts?

Suddenly her face firmed with determination. She strode to a
marbletopped table against the tapestried wall, touched her fingers to
a twist of parchment there. Within were three long, black, silky hairs,
left on her robe when the barbarian ... Her hand trembled. She could
not think of that now; her mind must be clear. It must be.

Why did it have to be him? Why not Taramenon? Because he had never
affected her as Conan did? Because she had toyed with him so long that
only the pleasure of toying remained?

"It will be Conan," she whispered. "But it will be as I wish." Her hand
closed on the parchment, and she swept from the room.

Slaves, scrubbing floors in the hours when their mistress was not
usually about, scrambled from her path, pressing their faces to the
marble tiles in obeisance. She took no more notice of them than she did
of the furnishings.

Straight to her secret chamber she went, closing the door behind her
and hurriedly lighting lamps. Triumph sped her movements, the certainty
of triumph soon to be realized.

At the table covered with beakers and flasks she carefully separated
one hair from the packet. One would be enough, and that would leave two
in case further magicks must be worked on the huge barbarian.

On a smooth silver plate she painted the sign of the horns, the sign of
Al'Kiir, in virgin's blood, using a brush made from the hair of an
unborn child and handled with a bone from its mother's finger. Next two
candles were affixed to the plate one on either side, and lit. Black,
they were, made from the rendered tallow of murdered men, stolen from
their graves in blessed ground.

Haste was of the essence, now, but care, too, lest disaster come in
place of what she sought. Gripping her tongue between her teeth, she
painted the final symbols about the edge of the plate. Desire. Lust.
Need. Wanting. Passion. Longing.

Quickly she threw aside the brush, raised her hands above her head,
then lowered them before her, palms up, in a gesture of pleading. In
the arcane tongue she had learned so painfully, Synelle chanted, soft
spoken words that rebounded from the pale walls like shouts, invoking
powers linked to Al'Kiir yet not of him, powers of this world, not of
the void where he was imprisoned. In the beginning she had attempted to
use those powers to make contact with Al'Kiir. The result had been a
fire that gutted a tower of her castle, lying halfway to the Aquilonian
border, a burning with flames that no water could extinguish, flames
that died only when there was not even a cinder left to burn. For long
after that she had feared to try again, not least for the stares
directed at her and the whispers of sorcery at the castle of Asmark. To
cover herself she had brought charges of witchcraft against a woman of
the castle, a crone of a scullery maid who looked the part of a witch,
and had her burned at the stake. Synelle had learned care from that
early mistake.

Slowly the candles guttered out in pools of their own black tallow, and
Synelle lowered her hands, breathing easily for the first time in
hours. The painted symbols on the plate, the hair, all were ash. A
cruel smile touched her lips. No more was there need to fear her
desires. The barbarian was hers, now, to do with as she would. Hers.


Chapter XI

Conan's skin crawled as he walked across the dusty courtyard of the
house where his company was quartered. The hairs on his body seemed to
move by themselves. Bright sunlight streamed from the golden globe
climbing into the mourning sky; chill air seemed to surround him. It
had been so ever since he woke, this strangeness, and he had no
understanding of why.

Fear the big Cimmerian dismissed as a cause. He knew his fears well,
and had them well in hand. No fear could ever affect him so, who had,
in his fear years, faced all manner of things that quelled the hearts
of other men. As for the image, and even Al'Kiir, he had confronted
demons and sorcerers before, as well as every sort of monster from huge
flesh-eating worms to giant spiders dripping corrosive poison from
manibles that could pierce the finest armor to a dragon of adamantine
scales and fiery breath. Each he had conquered, and if he was wary of
such, he did not fear them.

"Cimmerian," Narus called, "come get yourself a cloak."

"Later," Conan shouted back to the hollow-faced, who was rooting with
others of the company in the great pile of bales and bundles that had
been delivered by carts that morning.

Synelle had finally seen to the needs of the Free-Company she had taken
in service. Bundles of long woolen cloaks of scarlet, the color of her
house, had been tumbled into the courtyard, along with masses of fresh
bedding and good wool blankets. There had been knee-high Aquilonian
boots of good black leather, small mirrors of polished metal from
Zingara, keen-bladed Corinthian razors, and a score of other things,
from a dozen countries, that a soldier might need. Including a sack of
gold coin for their first pay. The mercenaries had turned the morning
into a holiday with it all. Fabio had kept Julia running all morning,
staggering under sacks of turnips and peas, struggling with quarters of
beef and whole lamb carcasses, rolling casks of wine and ale to the
kitchens.

Fabio found Conan by the dry fountain. The fat, round cook was mopping
his face with a rag. "Conan, that lazy wench you saddled me with has
run off and hidden somewhere. And look, she hasn't swept a quarter of
the courtyard yet. Claims she's a lady. Erlik take her if she is! She
has a mouth like a fishwife. Flung a broom at my head in my own
kitchen, and swore at me as vilely as I've ever heard from any man in
the company."

Conan shook his head irritably. He was in no mood to listen to the
man's complaints, not when he felt as if ants were skittering over his
body. "If you want the courtyard swept," he snapped, "see to it
yourself."

Fabio stared after him, open-mouthed, as he stalked away.

Conan scrubbed is fingers through his hair. What was the matter with
him? Could that accursed bronze, the evil of it that Julia claimed to
sense, have affected him from beneath the floor while he slept?

"Cimmerian," Boros said, popping out of the house, "I've been seeking
you everywhere."

"Why?" Conan growled, then attempted to get a hold of himself. "What do
you want?" he asked in a slightly more reasonable tone.

"Why, that image, of course." The old man looked around, then lowered
his voice. "Have you given any thought to destroying it? The more I
think on it, the more it seems the Staff of Avanrakash is the only
answer."

"I am not stealing the Erlik-accursed scepter," Conan grated. When he
saw Machaon approaching, the Cimmerian felt ready to burst.

The grizzled mercenary eyed the bigger man's grim face quizzically, but
said only, "We're being watched. This house, that is."

Conan gripped his swordbelt tightly with both hands. This was business
of the company, perhaps important business, and he had worked too long
and too hard for that to allow even his own temper to damage it.

"Karela's men?" he asked in what was almost his normal voice. It took a
great effort to maintain it.

"Not unless she's begun taking fopling youths into her band," Machaon
replied. "There are two of them, garbed and jeweled for a lady's
garden, with pomanders stuck to their nostrils, wandering up and down
the street outside. They show an especial interest in this house."
Young nobles, Conan thought. They could be Antimides' men, if the count
was concerned as to how much Conan was talking of what he knew. Or they
could be seeking the image, though nobles hardly meshed with the sort
who had tried for it thus far. They might even be this Taramenon,
Synelle's jealous suitor, and a friend, come to see for themselves what
manner of man the silvery-haired beauty had taken in service. Too many
possibilities to reason out, certainly not in his present state of
mind.

"If we seize them when next they pass," he began, and the two listening
to him recoiled.

"You must be mad," Boros gasped. "'Tis the image, Cimmerian. It affects
you ill. It must be destroyed quickly."

"I know not what this old magpie is chattering about," Machaon said,
"but seizing nobles ... in broad daylight from a street in the middle
of Ianthe ... Cimmerian, it would take more luck than ten Brythunian
sages to get out of the city with our heads still on our shoulders."

Conan squeezed his eyes shut. His brain whirled and spun, skittering
through fogs that veiled reason. This was deadly dangerous; he must be
able to think clearly, or he could lead them all to disaster.

"My Lord Conan?" a diffident voice said.

Conan opened his eyes to find a barefoot man in the short white tunic
of a slave, edged in scarlet, had joined them. "I'm no lord," he said
gruffly.

"Yes, my lor ... uh, noble sir. I am bid tell you the Lady Synelle
wishes your presence at her house immediately."

Images of the sleek, full-breasted noblewoman flickered into Conan's
mind, clearing aside all else. His unease was washed away by a warm
flow of desire. Sternly he reminded himself that she no doubt wanted to
consult with him about the company's duties, but the reminder could as
well have been whispered into a great storm of the Vilayet Sea. When
first he kissed her, she had responded. Whatever her words said, her
body had told the truth of her feelings. It must have.

"Lead on," Conan commanded, then strode through the gate and into the
street without waiting. The slave had to scurry after him. Conan gave
little heed to the man half-running beside him to keep up as he moved
swiftly through throng-filled streets. With every stride his visions of
Synelle grew stronger, more compelling, and his breath came faster.
Each line of her became clear in his mind, the swell of round breasts
above a tiny waist his big hands could almost span, the curve of sleek
thighs and sensuously swaying hips. She filled his mind, clouded his
eyes so that he saw none of the teeming crowds nor remembered anything
of his journey.

Once within Synelle's great house the man in the short tunic rushed
ahead to guide Conan up stairs and through corridors, but the Cimmerian
was certain he could have found the way by himself. His palms sweated
for the smooth satin of her skin.

The slave bowed him into Synelle's private chamber. The pale-skinned
beauty stood with one small hand at her alabaster throat, dark eyes
seeming to fill a face surrounded by silken waves of spun-platinum
hair. Diaphanous silk covered her ivory lushness, but concealed
nothing. "Leave us, Scipio," she said unsteadily.

Conan was unaware of the slave leaving, closing the door behind him.
His breath was thick in his throat; his nails dug into calloused palms.
Never had he taken a woman who did not want him, yet he knew he was at
the brink. One gesture from her, one word that he might take as
invitation; it would be enough. Battle raged within the giant
Cimmerian, ravening lust warring with his will. And for the first time
in his life he felt his will begin to bend.

"I called you here, barbarian," she began, then swallowed and began
again. "I summoned you to me. .. ."

Her words faded away as he covered the floor between them. His hands
took her shoulders gently; how great the struggle not to rip that
transparently mocking garment from her. As he gazed down at her
upturned face, he read fear there, and longing. Her melting eyes were
bottomless pools into which he could fall forever; his were azure
flames. "Do not fear me," he said hoarsely. "I will never harm you."

She pressed her cheek to his chest, crushing her full breasts against
him. Unseen by him a small smile curved her lips, softening, though not
supplanting, the fear in her eyes. "You are mine," she whispered.

"When first I kissed you," Conan panted, "you wanted me. As I want you.
I knew I had not imagined it."

"Come," she said, taking his hand as she backed from him. "My bed lies
beyond that archway. I will have wine brought, and fruits packed in
snow from the mountains."

"No," he growled. "I can wait no longer." His hand closed on sheer
silk; the robe shredded from her ripe nakedness. Careless of her
protests of servants who might enter, he pulled her to the floor. Soon
she protested no more.


Chapter XII

The sun was rising toward its height once more as Conan left Synelle's
house, and he wondered wearily at the passing of unnoticed hours. But
she had so occupied him with herself that there had been no room for
time. Had she not been gone from her bed at his waking, he might not be
leaving yet. For all of a day and a night together, and little sleeping
in it, a knot of desire still burned in his belly, flaring whenever he
thought of her. Only the need to see to his Free-Company, and her
absence, had stirred him to dress and go.

Bemused he strode through the crowded streets as if they were empty of
all but him, seeing only the woman who still held his mind in thrall
with her body. Merchants in voluminous hooded robes and tarts in little
save gilded bangles scurried from his way lest they be trampled;
satin-clad nobles and long-bearded scholars abandoned dignity to leap
aside when they incredulously saw he would not alter his path. He heard
the curses that followed him, but the stream of abuse from scores of
throats did not register. It was so much meaningless babble that had
naught to do with him.

Suddenly a man who had not stepped aside bounced off Conan's chest, and
the Cimmerian found himself staring into an indignant face as the
memory of Synelle's silken thighs dimmed, but did not fade. The man was
young, no older than he himself, but his tunic of blue brocade slashed
with yellow, the golden chain across his chest, his small, fashionable
beard, the pomander clutched in his hand, all named him nobly born.

"You there, thief," the youthful lord sneered. "I have you now."

"Get out of my way, fool," Conan growled. "I've no time or desire to
play lordlings' games." The man wore a sword strapped around his waist,
the Cimmerian noted, unusual with the garb he wore.

Conan tried to step around the brocaded youth, but another young noble,
with thin mustachios in addition to his beard, stepped in front of him
with a swagger. Jeweled rings bedecked all his fingers, and he, too,
wore a sword. "This outlander," he said loudly, "has robbed my friend."

Conan wondered for whose benefit he was speaking so; no one in the
teeming street paid the three any mind. In fact, a large space had
opened about them as passersby studiously avoided their vicinity.
Whatever sport these two sought, he wanted none of it. He wished only
to see that all was well with his company and return as quickly as
possible to Synelle. Synelle of the alabaster skin as soft as satin.

"Leave be," he said, doubling a massive fist, "or I'll set your ears to
ringing. I've stolen nothing."

"He attacks," the mustachioed lordling cried, and his sword swept from
its sheath as his fellow flung his rose-scented pomander at Conan's
face.

Even with his brain fogged by a woman's memory the big Cimmerian had
survived far too many battles to be taken so easily by surprise. The
blade that was meant to take his head from his shoulders passed through
empty air as he leaped aside. Anger washed his mind clean of all but
battle rage. The sport these fops sought was his death, a killing for
which, with the times as they were and the fact that he was an
outlander, they would not be brought to book. But they had chosen no
easy meat. Even as Conan's own steel was coming into his fist, he
booted the first young noble who had accosted him squarely in the
crotch; the youth shrieked like a girl and crumpled, clutching himself.

Whirling, Conan beat aside the thrust the mustachioed lordling had
meant for his back. "Crom!" he bellowed. "Crom and steel!" And he waded
ferociously into the combat, his sword a flashing engine of
destruction.

Step by step his opponent was forced back, splashes of blood appearing
on his tunic as his desperate defenses failed to turn aside the
Cimmerian's blade quickly enough. Disbelief grew on his face, as if he
could not understand that he faced a man better with the sword than he.
Recklessly he attempted to go over to attack. Only once more did
Conan's steel strike, but this time it split the lordling's skull to
his black mustachios.

As the body fell the grate of the boot on pavement gave Conan warning,
and he turned to block the first noble's slash. Chest to straining
chest they stood, blades locked.

"I am better than ever Demetrios was," his youthful attacker sneered.
"In this hour you will meet your gods, barbar."

With a heave of his mighty shoulders Conan sent the other staggering
back. "Run to your mother's breast, youngling," he told him, "and live
to do your boasting to women. If you know their use."

With a cry of fury the man rushed at Conan, a blur of steel before him.
Eight times their blades met, striking sparks with the force of the
blows, filling the street with a ringing as of a blacksmith's hammer
and anvil. Then the Cimmerian's broadsword was slicing through ribs and
flesh to the heart beneath.

Once more, for a moment, Conan stared into those dark eyes. "You were
better," he said, "but not by enough."

The young lord opened his mouth, but blood spilled out instead of
words, and death dulled his eves.

Hastily Conan freed his blade and cleaned it on the tunic of blue
brocade. The space about them still was clear, and as if an invisible
wall separated him and the two dead from those hurrying by, no one so
much as glanced toward them. Given the mood of the city, it was more
likely than not that no one of them would admit to what he had seen,
short of being put to the question by the King's torturers, but there
was no point in standing there until a score of Iskandrian's warriors
appeared. Sheathing his sword, Conan melded into the crowd. Within a
few paces they had closed around him, cloaking him in their number.

No more did thoughts of Synelle clog his mind. With the death of the
second of his attackers he had remembered Wachaon telling him of two
young nobles watching the house where the Free-Company was quartered.
That two different lordlings should attack him on the day was beyond
his belief. The one had called loudly that Conan had robbed the other,
as if inviting witnesses. Hardly the act of one intending murder, but
perhaps slaying him had been but part of their plan.

Had they succeeded, who in Ianthe would have taken the part of a dead
barbarian over that of two from noble houses? The people rushing by had
done their best to ignore what happened, but if collared by a noble and
pressed, which of them would not remember that Conan had been accused
of theft and had then attacked the two, proving his guilt? With a
King's Justice and a column of Ophirean infantry, Demetrios and his
friend could have descended on the Free-Company, demanded the object
they claimed had been stolen-and which they could no doubt describe as
well as Conan-and have the house torn apart to find it. The bronze
would have been in the hands of those who sought to use it. Boros might
try to speak of evil gods and rites beneath Tor Al'Kiir, or Julia, but
no ear would pay heed to the pratings of a drunken former apprentice
mage, nor the babblings of a pot-girl.

Conan quickened his pace, brimming with an urgent need to assure
himself that the image still lay beneath the floorboards of his
sleeping chamber. He had become convinced of one thing. He would not
have another night of rest in Ophir until that malevolent figure was
beyond the reach of men.

The black candles guttered out, and Synelle lowered her hands with a
satisfied sigh. The spell binding the barbarian had been altered. He
was still held, but with more subtle desires than before.

With a weary groan she sagged to a low stool, wincing with the
movement, and brushed spun silver hair back from her face. She pulled
her cloak-that unadorned covering of scarlet wool had been all she had
taken time to snatch in her flight, and it had been flight-about her
nakedness. Her breasts were swollen and tender, her thighs and bottom
bruised by Conan's fierce desires.

"How could I have known what would be unleashed in him?" she whispered.
"Who could have thought a man could be so . . ." She shivered
uncontrollably.

In the barbarian's arms she had felt gripped by a force of nature as
irresistable as an avalanche. Fires he had built in her, feeding them
till they raged out of control. And when the leaping flames had
consumed all before them, when he had quenched and slaked what he had
aroused, he stoked still new fires. She had tried to bring that endless
cycle to a halt, more than once she had tried-memories flooded her,
memories of incoherent cries when words could not be formed and reason
clung by the slenderest of threads to but a single corner of her
passion-drugged mind-but her sorcery had not only wakened lust in him,
it had magnified that lust, made it insatiable, overwhelming. His
powerful hands had handled her like a doll. His hands, so strong, so
knowing and sure of her.

"No," she muttered angrily.

She would not think of his hands. That way led to weakness. She would
remember instead the humiliation of crawling weakly from her own bed
when the barbarian fell at last to slumber, slinking like a thief for
fear of waking him, of waking the desire that would bloom in him when
his eyes touched her. On the floor of her secret chamber she had slept,
curled on the hard marble with only the cloak for covering and lacking
even the mat the meanest of her slaves would have, too exhausted to
think or dream. Remember that, she told herself, and not the pleasures
that sent tendrils of heat through her belly even in remembrance.

A ragged cry broke from her throat, and she staggered to her feet to
pace the room. Her eye fell on the silver plate, black tallow hardening
at its edges, the ash of blood and hair lying on its surface. The spell
was altered. Not again would she have to face a night where she was a
mote caught in the stormwind of the giant barbarian's desires. Her
breathing slowed, grew more normal. He was still hers, he would still
bring her to rapture, but his lusts would be more controllable.
Controllable by her, that is.

"Why did I fear it so long?" she laughed softly. Taken altogether, this
thing of men was quite wonderful. "They must simply be controlled, and
then their vaunted strength and power can avail them nothing."

That was the lesson women had not learned, that she had only just come
to. If women would not be controlled by men, then they must rather
control men. She had always coveted power. How strange and beautiful
that power should be the key to safety in this as well!

A knock at the door shattered her musings. Who would dare disturb her
there? The rapping came again, more insistent this time. Gathering her
cloak across her breasts with one hand, she flung open the door, tongue
ready to flay whoever had violated her sanctorum.

A surprised, "You!" slipped out instead.

"Yes, me," Taramenon said. His face was tight with barely controlled
anger. "I came to speak to you last night, but you were ... occupied."
Laying a hand gently on his chest, she pushed him back-how easily he
moved, even in his rage-and closed the door firmly behind her. No man,
not even he, would ever enter that chamber.

"It is well you are here," she said as if he had had no accusation in
his words. "There are matters of which we must speak. A woman must be
found-"

"You were with him," the tall nobleman grated. "You gave that barbarian
swine what was promised to me."

Synelle drew herself to her full height, and flung cold fury at him
like a dagger. "Whatever I gave was mine to give. Whatever I did was
mine to do, and none with right to gainsay me."

"I will slay him," Taramenon moaned in anguish, "like a dog in the
dirt."

"You will slay whom I tell you to slay, when I tell you to slay them."
Synelle softened her voice; shock had driven anger from Taramenon's
face. There was still uses for the man, and she had long since learned
means of controlling him that had naught to do with sorcery. "The
barber will be useful for a time. Later you may kill him if you wish."

The last had been a sudden thought. Conan was a wonderful lover, but
why limit herself to one? Men did not limit themselves to one woman.
Yet the young giant would always hold a place in her affections for the
vistas of pleasure he opened to her; when she was Queen of Ophir she
would have a magnificent tomb erected for him.

"I found the brigand you wanted," Taramenon muttered sullenly. "A
woman."

Synelle's eyebrows arched. "A woman bandit. A hardened trull, no doubt,
with greasy hair and gimlet eye."

"She is," he replied, "the most beautiful woman I have ever seen."

Synelle flinched, and her jaw tightened. Why had the fool forced his
presence on her before her tire-maids could see to her toilet? "So long
as she brings me the scrolls from Inaros' library, I care not what she
looks like." He chuckled, and she stared at him.

Suddenly he was more relaxed, as if he thought he was in command. "If
you think to make sport of me," she began dangerously.

"I did not send her after Inaros' scrolls," Taramenon said.

Words froze in her throat. When she found speech again she hissed at
him. "And pray tell me why not?"

"Because I sent her after the image of Al'Kiir that you speak. She
knows where it is. She described it to me. It will be I who provide you
with what you so desperately need. Did you think you could hide your
impatience, your eagerness beyond that you've ever shown for all the
parchments and artifacts you have gathered placed together? I bring it
to you, Synelle, not that barbar animal, and I expect at least the
reward that he got."

Her pale, dark-eyed beauty became icy still. She let her cloak gap open
to the floor; Taramenon gasped, and sweat beaded his forehead. "You
will come to my bed," she began softly, but abruptly her words became
lashes of a whip tipped with steel, "when I summon you there. You will
come, yes, perhaps sooner than you dream, certainly sooner than you
deserve, but at my command." Slowly and calmly she covered herself once
more. "Now when will the image be delivered to your hand?"

"The signal that she has it," he mumbled sulkily, "will be a man in my
red surcoat standing before the main gate of the royal palace at noon.
That night at dusk I will meet her at a hut in the forest."

Synelle nodded thoughtfully. "You say this woman is beautiful? A
beautiful woman who does what men do, who leads men rather than
belonging to them. She must have great pride. I shall be at that
meeting with you, Taramenon." From the corner of her eye she saw a
slave creeping down the corridor toward them, and rounded on him,
furious at the interruption. "Yes?" she snapped.

Falling to his knees, the man pressed his face to the marble tiles. "A
message, my gracious lady, from the noble Aelfric." Without lifting his
head he held up a folded parchment.

Synelle frowned and snatched the message. Aelfric was Seneschal of
Asmark, her ancestral castle, a man who served her well, but who liked
as well the fact that she seldom visited or troubled him. It was not
his way to invite her attention. Hastily she broke the lump of wax
sealed with Aelfric's ring.

To My Most Gracious Lady Synelle,

With pain I send these tidings. In the day past have vile brigands most
cowardly struck at my Lady's manor-farms, burning fields, touching
barns, driving oxen and cattle into the forests. Even as your humble
servant writes these dire words, the night sky glows red with new
fires. I beseech my Lady to send aid, else there will be no crops left,
and starvation will be the lot of her people.

I remain obediently, your faithful servitor, Aelfric

Angrily she crumpled the letter in her fist. Bandits attacking her
holdings? When she held the throne she would see every brigand in the
country impaled on the walls of Ianthe. For now Aelfric would have to
fend for himself.

But wait, she thought. With the power of Al'Kiir she could seize the
throne, overawe both lords and peasants, yet would it not be even
better had she some incident to point to that showed she was more than
other women? Did she take Conan's warriors into the countryside and
quell these bandits herself ...

She prodded the slave with her foot. "I am leaving for the country.
Tell the others to prepare. Go."

"Yes, my lady," the slave said, backing away on his knees. "At once, my
lady." Rising, he bowed deeply and darted down the hall.

"And you, Taramenon," she went on. "Set a man to watch for this woman's
signal and bring me word, then ride you for Castle Asmark. Await me
there, and this night your waiting will be ended." She almost laughed
at the lascivious anticipation that painted his visage. "Go," she said,
in the same tone she had used with the slave, and Taramenon ran as
quickly as the other had.

It was all a matter of maintaining proper control she told herself.
Then she went in search of writing materials, to send a summons to the
barbarian.


Chapter XIII

Conan straightened from checking his saddle girth and glared about him
at the assemblage pausing for yet another rest at Svnelle's command.
Three and twenty high-wheeled carts, each drawn by two span of yoked
oxen, were piled high with what the Countess of Asmark considered
necessary for removing to her castle in the country, rolled feather
mattresses and colorful embroidered silk cushions casks of the rarest
wines from Aquilonia and Corinthia and even Khauran, packages of
delicate viands that might not be readily available away from the
capital, chests upon chests of satins and velvets and laces.

Synelle herself traveled in a gilded litter, borne by eight muscular
slaves and curtained with fine silken net to admit the breeze yet keep
the sun from her alabastrine skin. Her four blonde tire-women crouched
in the shade of a cart, fanning themselves against the midday heat.
Their lithe sleekness drew many eyes among the thirty mercenaries
surrounding the carts, but the women were attuned only to listening for
the neat command from the litter. Nearly three score other servants and
slaves hunkered out of the sun or tended to errands, drivers for the
oxen, maids, seamstresses, even two cooks who were at that moment
arguing vociferously over the proper method of preparing hummingbirds'
tongues.

"Watch the trees, Erlik take you!" Conan shouted. Abashedly the
mercenaries tore their eyes from the blondes to scan the forest that
ran along two sides of the broad, grassy meadow where they had halted.

The Cimmerian had opposed halting; he had opposed each stop they had
made thus far. Slowed by the ox-carts, they would not arrive at
Synelle's castle until the following afternoon did they make the best
speed the lumbering animals were capable of. Even one night in the
forests with this strange cortege was more than he might wish for, much
less risking a second such camp. A pavilion would have to be erected
for Synelle to sleep in, another in which she would bathe, and yet a
third for her tire-women's mats. There would be a fire to warm Synelle,
fires for the cooks, fires to keep the maids from becoming affrighted
of the night, and all no doubt large enough to announce their presence
and location to anyone with eyes.

Machaon led his horse over to Conan. "I've word of Karela, Cimmerian,"
he said. "I crossed paths last night at the Blue Bull with a weedy
scoundrel, a panderer who lost his women, and thus his income, to
another, and whose tongue was free after his third pitcher of ale. I
meant to speak of it earlier, but what with our patron's summons
arriving hard on your heels this morn I forgot."

"What did you hear?" Conan asked eagerly.

"She uses her own name again, for one thing. She has not been long in
Ophir, but already some twenty rogues follow her, and she is making
reputation enough that Iskandrian has put twenty pieces of gold on her
head."

"Such a small price must anger her," Conan laughed. "I fear not it will
remain so low for long. But what of getting a message to her, or
finding her? What did he say of that?"

"After a time the fellow seemed to realize he was babbling, and shut
his teeth." At the Cimmerian's look of disappointment Machaon smiled.
"But he let fall enough for me to question others. North of Ianthe, an
hour's ride on a good horse, part of an ancient keep still stands,
overgrown by the Sarelian Forest. There Karela camps her band on most
nights. I am sure of it."

Conan grinned broadly. "I'll make her admit she has no grievance
against me if I have to paddle her rump until she does."

"A treatment I could recommend for others," the tattooed man said with
a significant look at the litter.

Conan followed his look and sighed. "We have been halted long enough,"
was all he said.

As the young Cimmerian walked toward the net-curtained palanquin he
tried to make some slight sense of these last two days, not for the
first time that morning. The previous day and night seemed like a
dream, but a fever-born dream of madness, with lust burning all else
from his mind. Had what he remembered-Synelle's sweat-slicked thighs
and wanton moans flashed in his mind-actually happened? It all seemed
distant and dim.

When he answered her summons this morn, he had felt no such
all-consuming desire. He wanted her, wanted her more than he had ever
wanted any woman, more than he had wanted all the many women of his
life together, but there had been a sense of restraint within him,
strictures unnatural to his nature holding him in check. He did not
lose control of himself with women-were his memories of the day before
true?-but neither did he face them feeling bound with stout ropes.

And he had deferred to her! When, as haughty and regal as any queen,
she commanded him as to how to order his men on the march, his urge had
been to snort and tell her brusquely that such matters were his
province. Instead he had found himself almost pleading with her,
painfully convincing her that she should leave the command of his
company to him. He had met kings and potentates and not acted so. How
did this woman affect him in this manner? This time, he vowed, it would
be different.

He stopped before Synelle's curtained litter and bowed. "If it pleases
my lady, we should be moving on." Inwardly he snarled at himself. He
was no man to break vows, and this had gone as swiftly as if it had
never been made. What was the matter with him? Yet he could change
nothing. "It is dangerous, my lady, to stay still so long with bandits
and worse about."

A delicate hand parted the mesh curtain, and Synelle looked out at him
calmly, a small smile curling her full lips. Her traveling garb of cool
linen clung to her, revealing the curves and shadows of her. Conan's
mouth went dry, and his palms dampened, at the sight.

"It would not be so dangerous," she said, "had you obeyed me and
brought your entire company."

Conan gritted his teeth. Half of him wanted to tell this fool woman
that she should leave the trade of arms to those who knew it; the other
half wanted to stammer an apology. "We must be moving, my lady," he
said finally. It had been an effort to say only that, and he feared he
did not want to know what else he might have said.

"Very well. You may see to it," she said, letting the curtain fall.
Conan bowed again before turning away.

His stomach roiled as he strode back to his horse. Perhaps he was going
mad. "To horse!" he roared, swinging into his saddle. "Mount and
prepare to move! Oxdrivers to your animals!" Chattering men and
giggling women darted along the row of carts. "Keep those maids off the
carts!" he shouted. "We need what speed we can manage, and no extra
weight for the animals! Move you!"

Harness creaked as massive beasts took up the strain; mercenaries
scrambled to their mounts in a rattle of armor.

Conan raised his arm to signal the advance, and at that instant a mass
of horsemen in chain-mail charged from the trees. Shrieks rose from
terrified women, and the oxen, sensing the humans' fear, bellowed
mournfully. This was what the Cimmerian had feared since leaving
Ianthe, but for that reason he was ready for it.

"Bows!" he commanded, and short, curved horse-bows came into thirty
hands beside his own.

Those powerful bows, unknown in the west except for Conan's
Free-Company, could not be drawn as ordinary bows were. Nocking an
arrow with a three-fingered grip on the bowstring, the huge Cimmerian
placed those fingers against his cheek and thrust the bow out from him.

There were close to a hundred of them, he estimated as he drew, wearing
the sign of no house and carrying no banners or pennons, yet armored
too well for bandits. He loosed, and thirty more shafts flew after his.
They were still too distant to pick individual targets, but the mass of
them made target enough. Saddles emptied, but the onrushing
men-at-arms, their wordless battle cries rising, came on. By the time
Conan let his third arrow fly-the feathered shaft lanced through the
eye-slit of the foremost horseman's white-plumed helmet; the man threw
his hands to his face and rolled backwards over the rump of his still
racing horse-the enemy had closed too much for bows to be of further
use.

"Out swords!" he called, thrusting his bow back into its lacquered
wooden scabbard behind his saddle. As he drew sword and thrust his left
arm through the leather straps of his round shield with its spiked
boss, he realized his helm still hung from his pommel. Battle rage was
on him; let them see who killed them, he thought. "Crom!" he shouted.
"Crom and steel!"

At the pressure of his knees, the big Aquilonian black burst forward
into a gallop. Conan caught sight of Synelle, standing by her litter
with her mouth open in a scream he could not hear for the blood
pounding in his ears, then his mount was smashing into another horse,
riding the lighter animal down, trampling its armored rider beneath
steel-shod hooves.

The huge Cimmerian caught a blade on his shield, and his answering
stroke severed the arm wielding it at the shoulder. Immediately he
reversed to a backslash that cut deep into the neck of another foe.

Dimly he was aware of others of his men about him in the frenzied
melee, but such were of necessity a series of individual combats; only
when the vagaries of battle drew two comrades together did men of one
side or the other stand together against their enemy.

A chain-mailed man rode close with broad-sword raised high to chop, and
Conan drove the spike on his shield into the man's chest, ripping him
from the saddle with one jerk of a massive arm. War-trained, his big
black lashed out with flashing fore-hooves at foemen's horses as he
hacked deeper into the press with his murderous steel.

From beyond the swirling frenzy of slashing, shouting, dying men came a
cry. "Conan! For the Cimmerian!"

About time, a cool corner of Conan's brain thought, and Narus, with
twenty more mercenaries following, charged into the rear of the enemy.
There was no time for more thought, for he was trading furious
swordstrokes with a man whose chain-mail was splashed with blood not
his own. He saw one of his men go down, head half-severed. The killer
came galloping past, waving his gory blade and screaming a war-cry.
Conan kicked a foot free of its stirrup and booted the shouting man
from his horse. The Cimmerian's blade freed itself from his opponent's
and thrust under the other's chin, shattering the steel links of his
mail coif and bringing a scarlet gout from his ruined throat. The man
Conan had kicked from his saddle scrambled to his feet as his fellow
fell, but the young giant's broadsword struck once, battering down his
upraised steel, twice, and his headless corpse dropped across his
comrade's body. "Crom and steel!"

"Conan! Conan!"

"For the Cimmerian!"

It was too much for the mailed attackers, embattled before and behind,
a huge northland beserker in their midst and no knowing in the fog of
battle how many it was they faced. First a single man fled the combat,
then another. Panic rippled through them, and cohesion was gone. By
twos and threes they fought to get away. As they scattered some of the
mercenaries set out in pursuit, echoing the halloing cry of hunters
riding down deer.

"Back, you fools!" Conan bellowed. "Back, Black Erlik rot you!"
Reluctantly the mercenaries gave over the chase, and in moments the
last of the mailed men still able to flee had melted into the forest.
The men of the company who had pursued trotted back, waving gory swords
and rasing shouts of victory.

"A most excellent plan, Cimmerian," Narus laughed as he galloped up,
"having us trail behind as a surprise for unwelcome guests." His
jazeraint hauberk was splattered with blood, no drop of which was his.
The gaunt-faced man, disease-riddled though he appeared, was equal to
Machaon with a blade, and none but Conan was their master. "Ten to one
in gold they never knew how many hit them."

"A difficult wager to settle," Conan said, but half his mind on the
other. "Machaon," he called, "what's the butcher's price?"

"I'm taking a count, Cimmerian." Quickly the tattooed veteran finished
and rode to join them. "Two dead," he retorted, "and a dozen who'll
need the carts to get back to Ianthe."

Conan nodded grimly. Well over a score of the enemy lay on the
hoof-churned ground, meadow grass and soil now seeming plowed, and only
a few moved weakly. As many more were scattered back to the trees,
sprouting feathered shafts. In the grim world of the mercenary it was
little better than an even trade, for enemies were always there and
easily found, but new companions were hard to come by.

"See if one of them lives enough to answer questions," the Cimmerian
commanded. "I would know who sent them against us, and why." Hurriedly
Machaon and Narus dismounted. Moving among the bodies, stopping
occasionally to heave one over, they returned supporting between them a
bloodstreaked man with a wicked gash down the side of his face and
neck.

"Mercy," he gasped faintly. "I cry mercy."

"Then name he who sent you," Conan demanded. "Were you to kill us all,
or one in particular?"

The Cimmerian had no intention of slaying a wounded and helpless man,
but the prisoner clearly feared the worst. Almost eagerly he said,
"Count Antimides. He bid us slay you and seize the Lady Synelle. Her we
were to bring to him naked and in chains."

"Antimides!" Synelle hissed. The men shifted uneasily to see her
picking her way across the bloody ground; such sights as lay about
them, men hacked and torn by the savagery of battle, were not for
women's eyes. Synelle did not seem to notice. "He dares so much against
me?" she continued. "I will have his eyes and his manhood! I will-"

"My lady," Conan said, "those who attacked us may rejoin and seek you
again," And he also, he added to himself, though that did not concern
him as much as the other. "You must return to Ianthe, and quickly. You
must ride one of the horses."

"Back to the city?" Synelle nodded vigorously. "Yes. And when I get
there Antimides will learn the price of an attack on my person!" Her
eyes were bright with eagerness for that teaching.

Conan began seeing to preparations, ordering men who hurried to obey.
The warriors, at least, knew their vulnerability should the enemy
return, perhaps with reinforcements. "Machaon, tell off ten men to ride
with the carts. Unload everything except the Lady Synelle's jewelry and
clothes to lighten the oxen's loads. Leave the litter here, so they can
see she's no longer with the carts. Crom, of course we bring in our
dead! Spread the wounded among the carts so they're not crowded, and
have the maids tend them. Yes, their wounded as well."

"No!" Synelle snapped. "Leave Antimides' men! Fetch me naked and
chained, will they? Let them die!"

Conan's hands tightened on his reins until his knuckles were white. His
temples throbbed like drums. "Load their wounded, too," he said, and
drew a shuddering breath. Almost he had not been able to get the words
out.

Synelle looked at him strangely. "A strong will," she said musingly.
"And yet there could be pleasure in-" Abruptly she stopped, as if she
thought she had said too much, but the Cimmerian could understand
nothing of it.

"My lady," he said, "you must ride astride. We have no side-saddle."

She held out a hand to him. "Your dagger, barbarian."

When she took it from him it felt as though sparks jumped from her hand
to his. Deftly she slit the front of her robe. Narus led forward a
horse, and she mounted with flashing limbs, exposed to the tops of her
pale thighs, nor did she do anything to cover them once in the saddle.
Conan could feel her eyes on him as solidly as a touch, but of which
sort he could not tell. He tore his gaze from her long legs, and heard
a laugh softly, the sound burning in his brain.

"We ride!" he commanded hoarsely, and galloped toward Ianthe, the rest
streaming behind.


Chapter XIV

Karela kept the hood of her dark blue woolen cloak pulled well forward;
there were those about her in the crowd-filled streets of Ianthe who
would put aside their habit of ignoring what occurred around them for a
chance at Iskandrian's reward.

She snorted at the thought. Twenty pieces of gold! A thousand times so
much had been placed on her head by the Kings of Zamora and Turan. The
merchants of those countries had offered more, and would have
considered it cheap to rid their caravans of her depredations at the
price. High Councils had had debated methods of dealing with her,
armies had pursued her, and no man took passage from one city to
another without offering prayers that she would spare his purse, all
with equal futility. Now, she found herself reduced to an amount of
coin that spoke of petty irritation. The humiliation of it was so great
that barely could she keep her mind on her purpose for entering the
city.

The house where Conan's company of rogues was gathered lay just ahead.
That morning she had watched him ride out with half his company. A
short time later another large contingent of his men had departed by
another gate and trailed after the first. Wily Cimmerian! She had long
since gotten over the foolishness of failing to respect his abilities.
He would be taken in no ordinary trap. But then she was no ordinary
woman.

Unbidden, her thoughts went back to that woman of the nobility he had
been escorting. Did she know him, he had already visited the wench's
bed. He had always had an eye for willing wenches, and few were those
who were not willing did he once smile at them. The red-haired woman
wished she could get her hands on this Synelle. Lady, indeed. She would
not soil her hands with the like of those who called themselves ladies.
Karela would show her what a real woman looked like, then send her back
to Conan as a present, stuffed naked into a sack. When someone had
offered her gold to burn the jade's farms, she had not stopped to ask
why or query who the man with the deep-set, commanding eyes was behind
his mask of black silk. It had been a chance to strike at Conan, and
his precious Synelle, and she leaped at it. She would prick him and
prick him until he was forced to flee, and if he would not ...

Angrily she pulled her mind back to the matter at hand. She no longer
cared what women he took, she told herself. Such interest in the man
had brought her naught but grief. With the men he had taken to protect
his new trull, he could not have left many behind. She looked through
the arched gateway as she passed. Yes. There were only a handful to be
seen, playing at dice against the side of the fountain in the
courtyard. He who had made the cast cursed, and the others laughed as
they scooped up his losings.

Karela raised a hand to her face as if brushing away a fly, and two men
pushing a handcart toward her, its flat bed piled high with wooden
boxes held in place by ropes, suddenly turned it into the alley beside
the house. Karela followed them. The men glanced at her questioningly;
she nodded, and they turned to watch the street.

One, a dark-faced Zamoran with drooping mustaches, whom she had taken
on out of memory of better days, said softly, "No one looks."

In the space of two breaths Karela scrambled up the carefully arranged
boxes and into a window on the second floor. It was Conan's room. Her
sources of information had discovered that for her easily enough.

Her lip curled contemptuously as she looked around the bare chamber. So
this was what he had come to since forsaking a palace in Nemedia. She
had never heard the straight of his departing that land when he had
been offered honors and wealth by the King, but it brought a measure of
continuing satisfaction that he had not profited from the adventures
which ended in her flight. It did her good to think of him brought low.
Yet the blankets were folded neatly on the bed. There were no cobwebs
on the ceiling, no dust in the corners, and the floor had been freshly
swept. A woman, she thought, and not likely it was his fine Synelle.
The Cimmerian gathered a zenana about him like an easterner.

Sternly she reminded herself of her lack of interest in Conan's women.
She had come for that obscene bronze figure, and nothing more. But
where to begin searching? There did not look to be many places for
hiding. Beneath the bed, perhaps.

Before she could take a step, the door opened and a girl wearing plain
white robes walked in. There was something oddly familiar about her
face and hair, though Karela could swear she had never seen the girl
before.

"Keep your silence, wench," Karela commanded. "Close the door and
answer my questions quickly, and you'll come to no harm."

"Wench!" the girl said, her eyes flashing indignantly. "What are you
doing here ... wench? I think I'll let you see if you like Fabio's
switch. Then you can answer questions for me."

"I told you," Karela began, but the girl was already turning back to
the door. With a curse the woman bandit jumped across the room and
grappled with her, managing to kick the door shut as she did.

She expected the girl to surrender, or try to scream for help at most,
but with a sqawl of rage the other woman buried her hands in Karela's
red hair. The two women fell to the floor in a kicking, nail-clawing
heap.

Derketo, Karela thought, she did not want to kill the jade, but she had
defended herself too long with a sword to remember well this
woman-fighting. She almost screamed as the other sank teeth into her
shoulder; handfuls of her hair were at the point of being ripped from
her head. Desperately she slammed a knee into the girl's belly. Breath
left the other woman in a gasp, and Karela wriggled forward to kneel on
her arms. Her dagger slipped into her hand, and she held it before the
girl's face.

"Now be silent, Derketo take you!" she panted. The girl glared up at
her defiantly, but held her tongue.

Abruptly Karela realized what was familiar about the girl. The eyes
were different, but the color of her hair, the shape of her face. Conan
had found himself an imitation of herself. She could not think whether
to laugh, or cry, or slit the wench's throat. Or wait for the Cimmerian
and slit his. No interest, she told herself again. No interest at all.

"What is your name?" she grated. That would never do. She made an
effort to sound more friendly, if that was possible while brandishing a
dagger in the wench's face. "What's your name, girl? I like to know who
I'm talking to."

The woman beneath her hesitated, then said, "Julia. And that is all you
will get from me."

Karela dressed her face with a smile. "Julia, Conan has a bronze figure
that I must have, a filthy thing with horns. An you've seen it, you'll
not have forgotten. No woman could. Tell me where it is, and I'll leave
you unharmed when I go."

"I'll tell you nothing!" Julia spat. But her eyes had flickered to a
corner of the room. There was nothing there at all that Karela could
see. Still...... Very well, Julia, I must search without your help
then. But I'll have to bind you. Now hear my warning well. Do you try
to fight or flee, either one, this," she gestured with her blade, "will
find a home in your heart. Do you understand?"

Julia's face was still filled with fury, but she nodded, albeit with
obvious reluctance.

Carefully Karela cut away Julia's robe. The girl flinched, but
otherwise did not change her hate-filled expression. As Karela was
slicing strips from the robe with her dagger she could not help
noticing her naked prisoner's body. The Cimmerian always had had a
liking for full-breasted women, she thought sourly. But hers were
better. That was, if she had still been interested in him in that way,
which she was not.

"Roll over," she commanded, nudging Julia with her foot. When the girl
obeyed, Karela swiftly tied her hands and feet. The wench groaned
through clenched teeth as she pulled the bindings together in the small
of the naked woman's back, but the threat of the dagger was enough to
keep the protest muted. Not comfortable, Karela thought savagely, but
then the girl had not truly answered her question. A wadding of cloth
fastened with another strip of cloth did her a gag, but before Karela
left she lifted Julia's face by a handful of hair. "Conan likes round
bottoms," she said with a biting smile. "You have a bottom like a boy."

Julia jerked wildly at her bonds and made angry sounds behind her gag,
but Karela was already studying the corner the girl's eyes had
indicated. There was nothing there. Neither crack in the plaster nor
new work gave sign that anything had been hidden behind the wall, and
no opening in the fly-specked ceiling ... A board sagged beneath her
foot, and she smiled.

Swiftly she knelt and levered up the floorboard with her dagger. The
malevolent bronze lay beneath, nestled in decades of dirt and rat
droppings. Fitting, she thought. She reached for the horned figure, but
her fingers stopped, quivering, a handsbreadth awav. She could not
bring herself to touch it. The evil she had felt before still radiated
from it, twisting her stomach. Contact with it would surely have her
wretching. Hastily she fetched a blanket from the bed, folded it around
the bronze, and gathered it up like a sack, holding the weighty burden
well away from her. Even so she could sense the abomination of the
thing, but so long as she did not have to look at it she could stand
carrying it.

At the window she paused. "Thank Conan for me," she told the struggling
girl. "Tell him I thank him for five hundred pieces of gold." With that
she dropped through the window and scampered down the boxes. In the
alley she hid the blanket-wrapped figure inside a box on the cart. And
the relief it was to get rid of it, she thought, even after so brief a
contact.

"We'll meet in one turn of the glass," she told the mustached Zamoran,
"at the Carellan Stables."

As she slipped back into the crowded street, the hood of her cloak once
more shielding her face, she glanced regretfully at the sun. Too late
today to post a man before the royal palace. On the morrow, though, the
signal would be sent, and by nightfall she would have her five hundred
pieces of gold. She wished fervently that she could see the Cimmerian's
face when he learned how much he had lost.


Chapter XV

Silvery hair and slit robe alike flowing behind her, Synelle raced
through the wide corridors of her great house, heedless of the
horrified cries of servants and slaves at her dusty dishevelment,
unhearing of their pleas after her welfare and concern for her
precipitate return. Conan had left ten of his archers, now standing
watch at the entrances, to protect her, then rode off before she could
stop him. To deal with Count Antimides, one of those left behind had
told her. But she would not wait for him to deal with the
Mitra-accursed wretch. Antimides had struck at her-at her!-and his
destruction, utter and complete, was her right and hers alone. The
means of it must be exquisite, so that when the truth of it could at
last be proclaimed to the world the expunging of that excresence would
be told and retold for centuries. His desire for the crown and and
chains he had meant to emprison her in, that was it.

From a wall she snatched a mirror of silvered glass. With that under
her arm, she swept into her secret chamber. From amidst the scintillant
flasks and seething beakers of vile substances she took a vial of
Antimides' blood. He had been a useful, if unknowing, tool until now,
adding to the confusion and weakening those she would eventually have
to cow, but always had she been aware that he might become dangerous to
her. That blood had been obtained from an ensorceled serving girl, one
who often shared Antimides' bed and passed on to Synelle, for the
bewitchment that held her, all she learned of the great lord's plans,
and kept against just such a day as this. Necromantic spells that could
hold a corpse incorruptible for a thousand years kept it liquid.

With great care she sketched the crown of Ophir on the mirror in the
count's blood. Below that she drew a sanguine chain.

"See yourself with the crown you seek upon your head, Antimides," she
whispered. "But only for a time. A brief, painful time." Laughing
cruelly, she bent back to her dark work.

"We attract attention," Machaon announced to no one in particular.

The file of nineteen armored horsemen in spiked helms with round
shields slung on the arms, led by Conan, made its way slowly through
the streets of Ianthe, and the crowds who parted before them did indeed
stare. Deadly intensity hung about them like a cloud, stunning even
those who would have looked away, numbing their reticence to see.

"There will be trouble for this," Narus said dolefully. He rode next in
line behind Machaon. "Even can we slay Antimides-and the gods alone
know how many guards he has-Iskandrian will not look the other way for
our killing of a noble within the very walls of the capital. We shall
have to flee Ophir, if we can."

"And if we do not slay him," Conan said grimly, "then still we must
flee. Or would you ever be sitting with your back to a wall for
protection, ever looking across your shoulder for his next attack?"

And more attacks there would be, the Cimmerian was sure. Whatever
Antimides' reason for wanting to seize Synelle, he could only be
seeking Conan's death to still his tongue. The attacks would continue
until Conan was dead, or Antimides was.

"I didn't say we should not kill him," Narus sighed. "I simply said we
must flee afterwards."

"If we must flee in any case," Taurianus demanded, "why should we then
take this risk? Let the lord live, and let us be gone from Ianthe with
all our blood in us." The lanky man looked more glum even than Warus,
and the dark hair that straggled from under his helm was damp with
anxious sweat.

"You'll never make a captain, Ophirean," the gaunt-faced mercenary
replied. "A Free-Company lives by its name, and dies by it, as well.
Can we be attacked with impunity, then the company is as dead as if we
have all had our weazands slit, and we are no better than vagabonds and
beggars."

Taurianus muttered under his breath, but spoke no more complaints
aloud.

"There is Antimides' palace," Machaon said abruptly. He frowned
suspiciously at the sprawling, golden-domed edifice of marble and
alabaster. "I see no guards. I do not like this, Cimmerian."

Antimides' palace was second in size within Ianthe only to the royal
palace itself, a massive structure of columns and terraces and spired
towers, with broad, deep steps leading up from the street. There were
no guards in sight on those steps, and one of the great bronze doors
stood ajar.

A trap perhaps, Conan thought. Had Antimides learned of his failure
already? Was he inside with his guards gathered close about him for
protection? Such would be a foolish move, sure to have been protested
by any competent captain. Yet a lord with Antimides' arrogance might
well have bludgeoned his guard commander into complacent compliance
long since.

He turned in his saddle, studying the men behind. The seven besides
Machaon and Narus who had crossed the border from Nemedia with him were
there. They had followed him far, and loyally.

Long and hard had he labored to build this company, and to keep it, yet
fairness made him say, "What numbers we face inside I do not know. Does
any man wish to leave, now is the time."

"Speak not foolishness," Machaon said. Taurianus opened his mouth, then
closed it again without speaking.

Conan nodded. "Four men to hold the horses," he ordered as he
dismounted.

With steady, purposeful tread they climbed the white marble steps,
drawing swords as they did. Conan stepped through the open door, its
broad bronze face scribed hugely with the arms of Antimides' house, and
found himself in a long, dome-ceilinged hall, with grand, alabaster
stairs sweeping up to a columned balcony that encircled the hall.

A buxom serving girl in plain green robes that left her pretty legs
bare to the tops of her thighs dashed out of a door to one side of the
hall, a large, weighty bag over her shoulders. A scream bubbled out of
her when she saw the armed and armored men invading the palace.
Dropping the bag, she sped wailing back the way she had come.

Narus thoughtfully eyed the array of golden goblets and silver plate
that had spilled out of the bag. "A guess as to what happens here?"

"Antimides fleeing our righteous wrath?" Machaon hazarded hopefully.

"We cannot afford let him escape us," Conan said. He did not believe
the count would flee, but there was strangeness here that worried him.
"Spread out. Find him."

They scattered in all directions, but warily, swords at the ready. Too
many battles had they faced, too many traps had been sprung around
them, for complacency. The continued survival of a mercenary lay in his
readiness to give battle on an instant. Any instant.

A lord's chambers would be above, the Cimmerian thought. He took the
curving stairs upward.

Room by room he searched, finding no one, living or dead. Everywhere
there were signs of hasty flight, and of a desire to carry away
everything of value. Marks where tapestries had been pulled from the
walls and carpets taken up. Tables overturned, whatever they had borne
gone. Golden lamps wrenched halfway from brackets that had resisted
being pried from the walls. Oddly, every mirror he saw was starred with
long cracks.

Then he pushed open a door with his sword, and looked into a room that
seemed untouched. Furniture stood upright, golden bowls and silver
vases in place, and tapestries depicting heroic scenes of Ophir's past
hung from the walls. The one mirror in the room was cracked, however,
as the others were. An intricately carved chair was set before it, the
high back to the door, but the voluminous, gold-embroidered green silk
sleeve of a man's robe hung over one gilded wooden arm.

With the strides of a great hunting cat the giant Cimmerian crossed the
room, presented his sword to the throat of the man seated there. "Now,
Antimides-" Conan's words died abruptly, and the hairs on the back of
his neck stirred.

Count Antimides sat with eyes bulging from an empurpled face and
blackened tongue protruding between teeth clenched and bared in a
rictus of agony. The links of a golden chain were buried in the swollen
flesh of his neck, and his own hands clutched the ends of that chain,
seeming even in the iron grip of death to strain at drawing it tighter.

"Crom!" Conan muttered. He would not believe that fear of his vengeance
had been enough to make Antimides sit before a mirror and watch as he
strangled himself. The Cimmerian had met sorcery often enough before to
know the smell of it.

"Conan! Where are you?"

"In here!" he replied to the shout from the hall.

Machaon and Narus entered with a slender, frightened youth in filthy
rags that had been fine satin robes not long past. His wrists bore the
bloody marks of manacles; the palor of his skin and the thinness of his
face spoke of long days in darkness and missed meals.

"Look what we found chained below," the tattooed man said.

Not so much of a youth, Conan saw at second glance; there was that in
the man's manner-a petulant thrust of a too-full lower lip; a sulkiness
of eye and stance-that gave an air of boyishness.

"Well, who is he?" the Cimmerian asked. "You speak as if I should know
him."

The youthful appearing man lifted his chin with almost feminine
hauteur. "I am Valentius," he said in a high voice that strained for
steadiness, "count now, but King to be. I give you my thanks for this
rescue." His dark eyes flickered uncertainly to Narus and Machaon. "If
rescue it indeed is."

Narus shrugged. "We told him why we are here," he said to Conan, "but
he does not believe. Or not fully."

"There are two guards below with their gullets slit," Machaon said,
"but we've seen no one living. There is madness in this place,
Cimmerian. Has Antimides truly fled?"

For an answer Conan jerked his head toward the high-backed chair. The
other three hesitated, then moved quickly to look.

Shockingly, Valentius giggled. "However did you make him do this? No
matter. 'Tis fitting for his betrayal of my trust." His fine-featured
face darkened quickly. "I came to him for aid and shelter, and he
laughed at me. At me! Then he clapped me in irons and left me to rot
and fight rats for my daily bowl of swill. So pious, he was. So
unctuous. He would not have my blood on his hands, he said, and
laughed. He would leave that to the rats."

"I've seen death on many fields, Conan," Machaon said, "but this is an
ugly way to slay a man, for all he deserved killing." His knuckles were
white on his sword hilt as he gazed on the corpse. Narus formed his
fingers into a sign to ward off evil.

"I did not kill him," Conan told them. "Look at his hands on the chain.
Antimides slew himself."

Valentius laughed again, shrilly. "However 'twas done, it was done
well." Moods shifting like quicksilver, his face screwed up viciously,
and he spat in the corpse's bloated face. "I but regret I could not see
the doing."

Conan exchanged glances with his two friends. This was the man with the
best blood claim to succeed Valdric on the throne of Ophir. The young
Cimmerian shook his head in disgust. The urge to be rid of the youth
quickly was strong, but did he simply leave him the fool would have his
throat cut in short order. Perhaps that would be the better for Ophir,
but such was not his decision to make.

To Valentius he said, "We will take you to the royal palace. Valdric
will give you protection."

The slender young man stared at him, wild-eyed and trembling. "No! No,
you cannot! Valdric will kill me. I am next in line for the throne. He
will kill me!"

"You speak foolishness," Conan growled. "Valdric has no care for aught
but saving his own life. 'Tis likely in a day he'll not even remember
you are in the palace."

"You do not understand," Valentius whined, wringing his hands. "Valdric
will look at me, knowing that he is dying, knowing that I will be King
after. He will think of the long years I have before me, and he will
hate me. He will have me slain!" He looked desperately from one face to
the next, and finished with a sullenly muttered, "'Tis what I would do,
and so will he."

Machaon spat on the costly Turanian carpet. "What of blood kin?" he
asked gruffly "What of friends, or allies?"

The cringing man shook his head. "How can I know who among them to
trust? My own guards turned on me, men who have served my house
faithfully for years." Suddenly his voice quickened, and his dark eyes
took on a sly light. "You protect me! When I am King, I will give you
wealth, titles. You shall have Antimides' palace, and be count in his
stead. You and your men shall be the King's personal bodyguard. Riches
beyond imagining I shall grant you, and power. Choose a woman, noble or
common, and she will be yours. Two, do you wish them, or three! Name
the honor you desire! Give it name, and I shall grant it!"

Conan grimaced. It was true that there could be no better service for a
Free-Company than what Valentius offered, but he would sooner serve a
viper. "What of Iskandrian?" he said. "The general takes no part in
these struggles, follows no faction."

Valentius nodded reluctantly. "If you will not serve me," he said
sulkily.

"Then let us leave this place," Conan said, "and quickly. It would be
ill to be found standing over Antimides' corpse." As the others hurried
from the room, though, he paused for one last look at the dead man.
Whatever sorcery Antimides had enmeshed himself in, the Cimmerian was
glad it did not touch him. With a shiver he followed the others.


Chapter XVI

Dusk was falling as Conan returned to the house where his company was
quartered, and the gray thickening of the air, the coming blackness,
fitted his mood well. Iskandrian had taken Valentius under his
protection at the army's barracks readily enough, but the old general
had listened to their story with a suspicious eye on the Cimmerian.
Only for Valentius' agreement that Antimides appeared to have strangled
himself had the mercenaries left those long, stone buildings unchained,
and the petulant glare the young lord gave Conan as he said the words
was as clear as a statement that he would have spoken differently could
he but be sure he would not himself be implicated.

And then there had been Synelle. Conan had found her in a strange
mixture of fury and satisfaction. She already knew of Antimides' death,
though he was not aware the word had spread so quickly; that accounted
for her contentment. But she had upbraided him savagely for riding away
without her permission, and for taking the time to bring Valentius to
Iskandrian's care.

The last seemed to infuriate her more than the first. He was in her
service, not that of the fopling Valentius, and he would do well to
remember it. To his own amazement he had listened meekly, and worst of
all had had to fight with himself to stop from begging her forgiveness.
He had never begged anything from man or woman, god or demon, and it
made his stomach turn to think how close he had come.

He slammed open the door of his room, and stopped dead. In the dimness
Julia, naked and bound hand and foot, frowned up at him with her mouth
working frantically at a gag.

"Machaon!" he shouted. "Narus!" Hastily he untied her gag. Her bonds
had been tightly tied, and she had pulled them tighter with her
struggles. He had to wield his dagger carefully to cut only the strips
of cloth and not her flesh. "Who did this?" he demanded as he labored
to free her.

With a groan she expelled a damp wad of cloth from her mouth, and
worked her jaw before speaking. "Do not let him see me like this," she
pleaded. "Hurry! Hurry!"

Machaon, Narus and Boros tumbled through the door, all shouting
questions at once, and Julia screamed. As Conan severed the last
binding, she jerked free of him and scrambled to the bed, snatching a
blanket to cover herself.

"Go away, Machaon!" she cried, cowering back. Rubiate color suffused
her cheeks. "I will not have you see me so. Go away!"

"'Tis gone," Boros said drunkenly, pointing to the corner where Conan
had hidden the bronze figure.

For the first time the Cimmerian realized the board was lifted aside,
and the space beneath it empty. A chill as of death oozed through him.
It seemed meet that this day should end so, with disaster peering at
him like the vacant eve-sockets of a skull.

"Mayhap," Boros muttered, "do we ride hard, we can be across the border
before it's used. I've always wished to see Vendhya, or perhaps Khitai.
Does anyone know a land more distant?"

"Be quiet, you old fool," Conan growled. "Julia, who took the bronze?
Crom, woman, stop worrying about that accursed blanket and answer me!"

Not ceasing her efforts to make the blanket cover all of her bountiful
curves, and less precariously, Julia glared at him and sniffed. "'Twas
a trull in men's breeches and wearing a sword." She glanced at Machaon
out of the corner of her eye. "She said I have a boy's bottom. My
bottom is as round as hers, only not so big."

Conan ground his teeth. "Her eyes," he asked impatiently. "They were
green? Her hair red? Did she say anything else?"

"Karela?" Machaon said. "I thought she meant to kill you, not steal
from you. But why is Boros so affrighted by this thing she took? You've
not got us meddling with sorcerers again, Cimmerian?"

"You know her," Julia said accusingly. "I thought so from what she said
about my. . ." She cleared her throat and began again. "All I remember
of what she said is that she swore by Derketo and thanked you for five
hundred pieces of gold. Have you truly given her so much? I remember my
father's lemans, and I'd not think this Karela was worth a silver."

Conan pounded a huge fist on his thigh. "I must find her, Machaon,
without delay. She has stolen a bronze figure that came to me by
happenstance, a thing of evil power that will wreak destruction
undreamed of, does she sell it to those I fear she will. Give me
precise directions to find that ruined keep."

Julia moaned. "That is what she meant about gold? She takes the hellish
thing to those Boros spoke of? Mitra protect us all, and the land!"

"I understand not a word of all this," Machaon said, "but one thing I
do know. An you enter the Sarelain Forest in the night, you'll break
your neck. That tangle is bad enough to travel in daylight. 'Twould
take a man born there to find his way in the dark."

"I can find her," Boros said, swaying, "so long as she has the bronze.
Its evil is in truth a beacon." He pushed his sleeves up bony arms. "A
simple matter of-"

"An you attempt magic in your condition," Conan cut him off, "I'll put
your head on a spike over the River Gate with my own hands." The
gray-bearded man looked hurt, but subsided, muttering under his breath.
Conan turned to Machaon. "There is no time to waste. Daylight may be
too late."

Machaon nodded reluctantly, but Narus said, "Then take a score of us
with you. Her band-"

"-would hear so many coming and melt away," the Cimmerian finished for
him. "I go alone. Machaon?"

Slowly the tattooed veteran spoke.

Machaon was right. Conan thought as an unseen branch whipped across his
face for what seemed the hundredth time. A man could easily break his
neck in that blackness. He forced his horse on through the heavy
thicket of vines and undergrowth, hoping he moved in the right
direction. As a boy he had learned to guide himself by the stars, but
the sky was seldom visible, for the forest was ancient, filled with
huge oaks whose thick interwoven branches formed a canopy with few
openings above his head.

"You've come far enough," a voice called from the dark, "unless you
want a quarrel in your ribs!"

Conan put a hand to his sword.

"None of that!" another man said, then chuckled. "Me and Tenio grew up
in this forest, big man, poaching the King's deer by night. He sees
better than I do, and you might as well be standing under a full moon
for all of me."

"I seek Karela," Conan began, but got no further.

"Enough talk," the first voice said. "Take him!"

Suddenly rough hands were pulling the big Cimmerian from his horse,
into the midst of a knot of men. He could not even see well enough to
count how many, but he seized an arm and broke it, producing a scream.
There was no room to draw his sword, nor light to see where to strike;
he snatched his dagger instead and laid about him, bringing yells and
curses when he slashed flesh. In the end their numbers were too great,
and he was pressed to the dirt by the weight of them, his wrists bound
behind him and a cord tied between his ankles for a hobble.

"Anybody hurt bad?" panted the man who had chuckled earlier. "My arm,"
someone moaned, and another voice said, "Bugger your arm! He near as
cut my ear off!"

Cursing the dark-not all had cat's eyes-they pulled Conan to his feet
and pulled him through the trees, dragging him, when the hobble caught
roots and tripped him, until he managed to get his feet under him
again.

Abruptly a blanket was pulled aside before him, and he was thrust into
a stone-walled room lit by rush torches in rusted iron sconces on the
walls. A huge hearth with a roaring fire of logs as big as a man's leg,
a great iron pot suspended on pivoting arm above it, filled one wall.
Blankets at the windows-narrow arrow-slits, in fact-kept the light from
spilling into the surrounding forest. A dozen men, as motley a
collection of ruffians as Conan had ever seen, sprawled on benches at
crude trestle tables, swilling wine from rough clay mugs and wolfing
down stew from wooden bowls.

Karela got to her feet as Conan's captors crowded in after him,
complaining loudly about their wounds and bruises. Her dark leather
jerkin, worn over tight breeches of pale gray silk tucked into red
boots, was laced snugly, yet gaped enough at the top to reveal the
creamy upper slopes of her full, heavy breasts. A belt worn low on her
well-rounded hips supported her scimitar.

"So," she said, "you're more fool than I thought you, Cimmerian. You'll
force me to kill you yet."

"The bronze, Karela," he said urgently. "You must not sell it. They're
trying-"

"Silence him!" she snapped.

"-to raise Al'Kiir," he managed to get out, then a club smashed against
the back of his head, and darkness claimed him.


Chapter XVII

The fool, Karela thought as she stared at Conan's huge prostrate form.
Was his masculine arrogance so great that he could believe all he must
needs do to retrieve the figure was ride up and take it? She knew him
for a prideful man, and knew as well that the pride was justified. By
himself, with naught but his broadsword, he was more than a match for
...

Abruptly she cursed to herself. The Cimmerian was no longer the same
man who had emprisoned a part of her and carried it away with him. She
had been thinking of him as he was when she first knew him, a thief and
a loner with naught but his wits and the strength of his sword arm. Now
he commanded men, and men who, she reluctantly admitted, were a more
dangerous pack than the hounds she led.

"Was he alone?" she demanded. "An you've led his Free-Company here,
I'll have your hides for boots!"

"Didn't see nobody else," Tenio muttered. "That means there weren't
nobody else." A small, ferrery man with a narrow face and sharp nose,
he spat a tooth into his palm and glared at it. "I say kill him." Some
of those nursing broken ribs and knife gashes growled assent.

Marusas, her Zamoran, produced a dagger in his long, calloused fingers.
"Let us wake him, instead. He looks strong. He would scream a long time
before he died."

Instantly all of the men were shouting, arguing for one course or the
other.

"Kill him now! He's too dangerous!"

"He's just a man. Flay him, and he'll scream like any other."

"You didn't fight him out there! You don't know!"

"He cut me to the bone with ten of us on him, and broke Agorio's arm!"

"Silence, you dogs!" Karela roared, and the bickering ceased as they
turned to stare at her. "I say who dies, and I say he doesn't. Not yet,
at least! Do any of you mangy curs care to dispute me? To your
kennels!"

She put a hand to her scimitar hilt, and a dangerous light glowed in
her green eyes. One by one they dropped their eyes from hers, muttered,
and shuffled back to their drinking or to tend their wounds. Jamaran, a
huge, shaven-headed Kushite with shoulders broader than Conan's and the
thick fingers of a wrestler, was the last to remain glowering at her,
his dark face twisted with anger. A split of his cheek showed where
Conan's fist had landed in the struggle.

"Well, Jamaran?" she said. She knew he wanted to replace her, and take
her to his bed as well, though he did not know she was aware of his
desires. He had thoughts about the proper place for women; sooner or
later she would have to show him the error of his ways or slay him.
"Are you ready to dispute my rule?"

Surprise glimmered on his face, and was quickly supplanted by a
sneering smile. "Not yet," he growled. "I will tell you when, my
red-haired pretty." His black eves ran over her body like a caress,
then with incredible lightness on his feet for a man of his size he
stalked to the nearest table and snatched up a mug, tossing back his
head to drink deeply.

Karela quivered in shocked outrage as she glared at his broad back.
Never before had he been so open. She would have to kill him, she
thought, after this. But it could not be done now. The temper of her
band was too delicately balanced. As much as she hated admitting it, a
wrong move now could wreck all she had labored for. With a snarl she
released her sword.

It was not like the days in Zamora, she thought grimly. Then none of
her band dared to challenge her word, or to think of her as a woman. It
was all Conan's fault. He had changed her in some way she did not
understand, some way she did not want to be changed. He had woven a
thread of weakness into her fabric, and other men could sense it.

As if her thoughts of him had been a call the Cimmerian groaned and
stirred.

"Gag him," she ordered. "Wove, Derketo curse you! I'll not be bothered
by his babblings!"

Conan shook himself as Tenio and Jamaran knelt beside him. "Karela," he
said desperately, "listen to me. These men are dangerous. They mean to
bring an evil-"

Tenio tried to shove a rag into his mouth, and screamed as the
Cimmerian sank teeth into his hand. Jamaran smashed a fist into Conan's
jaw; the ferret-faced man jerked his hand free, sprinkling drops of
blood as he shook it. Before Conan could speak again Jamaran had thrust
the wadding home and bound it. As he got to his feet the shaven-headed
man kicked Conan in the ribs and pulled back his booted foot for
another. Tenio drew his dagger with his undamaged hand, a murderous
gleam in his eyes.

"Stop that," Karela commanded. "Did you hear me? Leave him!" Slowly,
reluctantly, the two drew away from the Cimmerian.

She could feel those sapphire eyes on her. He shook his head furiously,
fighting the gag, making angry noises behind it. Shivering, she turned
her back to stare into the fire.

Karela knew she could not afford to let herself listen to the young
giant. He had always been able to talk her into anything. Did he put
his hands on her, her will melted. This time, she told herself, this
time it would be different.

The night went slowly for her, and she was aware that it was because of
Conan's eyes on her back. The rest of the bandits took themselves off
to sleep, most simply pulling blankets about them on the stone floor,
but sleep would not come near Karela. Like a leopard in a cage she
paced, and the goad that made her pace was an unblinking icy blue gaze.
She would have had him blindfolded, except that she would not admit
even to herself that simply his eyes on her could affect her so
greatly.

Finally the titian-haired beauty settled before the great hearth and
studied the leaping flames as if they were the most important thing in
the world. Yet even then she could not escape the Cimmerian, imagining
him writhing in the fire, imagining him suffering all the tortures of
the damned, all the tortures he so richly deserved. She could not
understand why that seemed to make her feel even worse, or why from
time to time she had to surreptitiously wipe tears from her cheeks.

At first light she sent Tenio riding for Ianthe with the scarlet
surcoat. The rest of the day she spent in ignoring Conan. Food and
drink she denied him.

"Let him eat and drink when I have gone," she commanded.

The men scattered about the room, most devoting their energies to dice
or cards, gave her muttered assent and strange looks. She did not care.
Not for the briefest moment would she allow the Cimmerian to be
ungagged in her presence. Not until she had the five hundred pieces of
gold in her hands to taunt him with. Not until she managed to settle
herself, and that seemed strangely difficult to do.

Then the sun was making its downward journey. Time for Karela to leave
for the hut. The bronze she had left, still wrapped in the blanket from
Conan's bed, outside beneath a tree. There was no one about to steal
it, and she would not have it under the same roof with her could she
avoid it.

As she was tying the blanket-swathed bundle behind her saddle-and
muttering to herself for the sickness it made her feel in the pit of
her stomach Jamaran came out of the lone tower that remained of the
ancient keep.

"That thing is valuable," he said challengingly. "Five hundred gold
pieces, you say."

Karela did not answer him. This morning was no better time to kill him
than last night had been.

"I should go with you," the huge man went on when she remained silent.
"To make certain you return safely with the gold. This noble you go to
may prove treacherous. Or perhaps something else might delay you, a
woman alone with so much gold."

Karela's face tightened. Did the fool think she planned to run off with
the coin? Or did he think to take the gold and her both? "No!" she
snapped as she swung into the saddle. "You are needed here to help
guard the prisoner."

"There are a score to watch him. So much gold-"

"Fool!" She made the word a sneering whiplash. "You must learn to think
if you would lead men. That one inside, bound as he is, is more
dangerous than any man you've ever seen. I but hope there are enough of
you to keep him till I return."

Before Jamaran could speak the furious words she could read plainly on
his face, Karela put spurs to her fleet eastern bay, and darted down a
narrow path that was little more than a deer track. Many such crossed
and criss-crossed in the thick forest, and she was soon gone beyond
following.

In truth, she did not think all of her followers were necessary to keep
Conan imprisoned. What she had told the big Kushite was true. The
Cimmerian giant was dangerous enough to make even her wary, and she
prided herself on walking carefully about no man. She had seen him
struggle when defeat was inevitable, slay when his own death was
certain, win when only doom lay ahead. Bound hand and foot, however,
and guarded by twenty men, she did not doubt Conan would be waiting as
she had left him when she returned.

Nor did she think Jamaran could take the gold-or what else he wanted
from her-without her steel drinking his life in the attempt. But her
pride would not allow the nameless noble to see the open disrespect the
shaven-headed man now showed her. Besides, this noble would certainly
have other commissions-he had already offered one, though changing it
to acquiring the bronze-but he would not likely offer them if he
thought she could not keep discipline in her own band.

When Karela reached the clearing where the rude hut stood, the sun was
a bloody ball half-obscured by the treetops, and long shadows stretched
toward the east. The scarlet-and-black caprisoned warhorse stood alone
as before. Slowly she made a circuit of the clearing, within the shaded
shelter of the trees. It was a desultory search, she was well aware,
but she was also aware of the bronze tied behind her. More than once
had she found herself riding forward on her saddle to avoid the brush
against her buttocks of the rough wool that contained it. She knew a
desperate urgency to be rid of the figure.

With a snorted laugh for her own sensitivity, Karela galloped into the
clearing and dismounted. She carried the blanket gripped like a sack,
and kicked open the rough door of planks. "Well, Lord Nameless, do you
have my. . . ." Her words trailed away in surprise.

The tall nobleman stood as he had at the first meeting, but this time
he was not alone. A woman with a scarlet cloak pulled around her, the
hood pulled well forward, stood beside him, cool dark eyes studying
Karela over a veil of opaque silk.

Karela stared back boldly, tossing the blanket to the dirt floor at
their feet. "Here is your accursed image. Now where is my gold?"

The veiled woman knelt, hastily pulling aside the folds of coarse wool.
A reverent sigh came from her as the horned figure was revealed. With
delicate hands she lifted it to the crude table. Karela wondered how
she could bear to touch it.

"It is Al'Kiir," the veiled woman breathed. "It is what I sought,
Taramenon."

Karela blinked. Lord Taramenon? If half what she had heard of his
swordplay were true, he would be no easy opponent. She let her hand
drift to the hilt of her scimitar. "There are five hundred pieces of
gold to be handed over before it is yours."

The other woman's eyes swiveled to her.

"Is she what you seek also?" Taramenon asked.

The veiled woman nodded thoughtfully. "She seems so. How are you
called, wench?"

"I am Karela, wench!" the red-haired bandit snapped, emphasizing the
last word. "Now let me tell your fates, if you have not brought the
coin agreed on. You, my fine lordling, I will sell into Koth, where
your pretty face may please a mistress." Taramenon's face darkened, but
the veiled woman laughed. Karela turned her attention to her. "And you
I will sell into Argos, where you may dance naked in a tavern in
Messantia, and please the patrons one by one for the price of a mug of
ale."

"I am a princess of Ophir," the veiled woman said coldly, "who can have
you impaled on the walls of the royal palace. Do you dare speak so to
one before whom you should tremble?"

Karela sneered. "I not only dare speak so, by Derketo's Teats, if my
gold is not forthcoming I'll strip you on the spot to see if an
Argossean tavern will have you. Most Ophirean noblewomen are bony
wenches who could not please a man did they try with all their might."
Steel whispered across leather as her blade left its scabbard. "I'll
have my gold now!"

"She will indeed do," the scarlet-cloaked woman said. "Take her."
Karela spun toward Taramenon, had an instant to see him watching with a
bemused smile on his face, making no move toward her or his sword, then
two men in the leather armor of light cavalry dropped from the dark
rafters atop her. In a struggling heap she was borne to the
packed-earth floor.

"Derketo blast you!" she howled, writhing futilely in their grip. "I'll
spit you like capons! Codless jackals!"

Taramenon plucked her sword from her hand and tossed it into a corner.
"You'll not be needing that any longer, girl."

Despite her frenzied striving, the cavalrymen dragged Karela to her
feet. Fool! she berated herself. Taken like a virgin in a kidnapper's
nets! Why had she not wondered why there was no horse for the woman?

"I suppose it's too much to hope for that she's a maiden," the woman
said.

Taramenon laughed. "Much too much, I should say."

"Treacherous trull!" Karela snarled. "Catamite fopling! I'll peel your
hides in strips! Release me, or my men will stake you out for the
vultures! Are you fool enough to think I came alone?"

"Perhaps you did not," Taramenon said calmly, "thought I saw no one the
last time you claimed to have men about this hut. In any case, my shout
will bring fifty men-at-arms. Shall we see what your miserable brigands
can do against them?"

"Enough, Taramenon," the veiled woman said. "Do not bandy words with
the baggage. There was talk of stripping." She eyed Karela's tight
breeches and snug-laced leather jerkin, and a note of malicious
amusement entered her voice. "I would see that she is not ... too bony
for my purpose."

Taramenon laughed, and the three men set to with a will. Karela fought
furiously, and when they were done there was blood on her nails and
teeth, but she stood naked, heavy round breasts heaving with her
effort. Lecherous male eyes probed her beauty, slid along the curves of
lush thighs and narrow waist. Dark feminine eyes regarded her more
coldly, and with a touch of jealousy lighting them. Pridefully the
green-eyed woman stood as erect as the twisting of her arms behind her
back would allow. She would not cringe like a shrinking girl on her
wedding night for these of any others.

The tall nobleman touched his cheek, now decorated by four parallel
sanquinary streaks, and examined the blood on his fingertips. Suddenly
his hand flashed out; the force of his slap was such that Karela and
the two men holding her all staggered.

"Do not damage her!" the veiled woman said sharply. "Your beauty is not
ruined, Taramenon. Now bind her for transport."

"A taste of the strap will do her no damage, Synelle," the darkly
handsome lord growled, "and I would teach her her proper place." The
name so shocked Karela that she missed the veiled woman's retort.
Conan's patroness! Could the woman have learned of her own connection
with the Cimmerian and be thinking to dispose of a rival? Well, she had
the Cimmerian to bargain for her release, and if Derketo favored her
she would have this treacherous noblewoman to hang by her heels beside
him.

Karela opened her mouth to make her offer-Conan's freedom in return for
her own-and a wadded rag pushed the words back into her throat. Like a
starving panther she struggled, but three men were too much for her.
With ease that seemed to mock her they corded her into a neat package,
wrists strapped to ankles, knees beneath her chin, thin straps laced
around and around her, digging deep into her flesh. When one of the
cavalrymen produced a large leather sack the memory of her plans for
Synelle, including her method of returning her to Conan, flooded her
face with scarlet.

"At least she can still blush," Synelle laughed as Karela was stuffed
into the sack. "From her language, I thought she was lost to all
decency. Carry her to the horses. We must hurry. Events proceed more
quickly than I would like, and we must meet them."

"I must return to the palace to pay my respects," Taramenon said. "I
will join you as quickly as I can."

"Do so quickly," Synelle said smoothly, "or I may put Conan in your
place."

As Karela's dark prison was heaved swaying into the air, she felt tears
running down her cheeks. Derketo curse the Cimmerian! Once again he had
brought her humiliation. She hoped Jamaran would slit his throat.
Slowly.


Chapter XVIII

Conan lay on the dirt-strewn stone floor as he had for a day and a
night now, bound and biding his time with the patience of a jungle
predator, all of his mind and energies given over to waiting and
watching. Karela's injunction to give him food and water had been
ignored, and he was dimly aware of hunger and thirst, but they affected
him little. He had gone longer without either, and he knew he would
have both once the men who guarded him were dealt with. Soon or late a
mistake would be made, and he would take advantage. Soon or late, it
would come.

Brass lamps had been lit against the deepening night, but with Karela
gone no one had rehung blankets to cover the tall, narrow arrow slits.
Rough clay jars of wine had been passed more freely with the red-haired
woman's departure, and the four brigands who had not already staggered
to one of the upper rooms of the tower for drunken sleep were engrossed
in drinking more and gaming with dice. The fire on the long hearth
burned low; the last of the thick logs that had been stacked against
the wall had long since gone into the flames, and no more had been
brought from outside. None of them had thought to tend the iron kettle
suspended over the flames, and the smell of burning stew blended with
the unwashed stench of bandits.

Abruptly Tenio hurled dice and leather dice-cup aside. "She should have
returned by now," he muttered. "What keeps her?"

"Perhaps she keeps herself," Jamaran growled. His black eyes went to
Conan, and he bared large, yellow teeth in a snarl. "Leaving us with
this one she seems so affrighted of."

Marusas paused in the act of scooping up the dice. "You think she has
run away with the gold? It sounds a tidy sum, but her share of our
raids has been as much in the last month alone."

"Erlik take you, play!" snapped a man with a slitted leather patch tied
over where his nose had been cut off. His pale eyes had a permanent
look of suspicious anger, as if he knew and hated what men thought when
they saw his disfigurement. "I'm twenty silvers down with coin on the
table. Play, curse yo" The three ignored him.

Jamaran slammed a fist the size of a small ham on the table top. "And
that's another thing. Why should a woman receive ten times the share
that the rest of us do? Let her in our work alone and see what sport
the men she tries to rob will have with her. Without us, she'd be no
more than a cut-purse, bargaining when she was caught to escape having
her cheek branded for a grant of the favors she is so stings with now."

"Without her," Tenio rebutted, "what are we? How much did we get on our
own? Now you moan about only fifty golds in a month, but you didn't
never get ten before her."

"She's a woman!" the huge Kushite said. "A woman's place is in a man's
bed, or cooking for him, not giving orders."

Marusas laughed and tugged at his drooping black mustaches. "I would
like riding her myself. Much fun in breaking that one to bridle, eh?"

" 'Tis more than the pair of you could do together," Tenio sneered. "I
don't like taking orders from a woman no better than you, but she puts
gold in my purse, more than I've seen before. And I know I'd have to
keep her tied hand and foot or risk waking with my own dagger in my
throat. Or worse."

"No cods at all on you." Jamaran snorted. He nudged the Zamoran with a
huge elbow. "I always knew there was more woman than man in him. Likely
spends all his hours in Ianthe at the House of the Yearling Lambs." The
two of them roared with laughter and patch-nose joined in as if despite
himself.

All the blood left Tenio's face, and his narrow-bladed dagger flickered
into his hand. "I don't take that from nobody," he snarled.

"From me you take what I give." Jamaran said, all mirth gone from his
voice, "or I'll use that blade of yours to make since you've no cods."

"Curse the lot of you for chattering old women." patch-nose shouted.
"Am I suddenly not good enough to dice with-"

Conan made a sound behind his gag; had his throat not been parched it
would have been a chuckle. A while longer and they would kill each
other, leaving him only his bonds to worry about.

Flinging his mug across the room in a spray of wine, Jamaran heaved
himself from his bench and strode on legs as big around as a normal
man's waist to stand over the Cimmerian. Conan's icy azure gaze calmly
met the dark glower directed at him.

"Big man," Jamaran said contemptuously, and his foot thudding into
Conan's ribs lifted the Cimmerian from the stone floor. "You seem not
so big to me." Again his foot drove Conan back. "Why does Karela want
you kept safe? Is she afraid of you? Or maybe she loves you, huh?
Perhaps I'll let you watch while I enjoy her, if she comes back." Each
sentence he punctuated with a massive booted foot, until Conan lay
struggling for breath on the very edge of the hearth. The Cimmerian
glared at Jamaran as the shaven-headed man squatted beside him,
doubling a heavy fist. "Ten men have I beaten to their death with this.
You will be number eleven. I do not think Karela will return-she's been
gone too long already-but I'll wait a bit longer. I want her to see it.
Watching a man killed that way does something to a woman." Laughing,
the huge Kushite straightened. With a last kick he turned back to the
table. "Where's my mug?" he roared. "I want wine!"

Cursing behind his gag Conan jerked himself out of the coals he had
landed in, but his mind was not on his burns. So intent had he been on
awaiting his chance for escape that their talk of Karela's lateness had
barely impinged on his thoughts. He knew her well enough to be sure she
had not fled with the gold. Boros' words came back to him. The most
beautiful and proudest women of the land were sacrificed to Al'Kiir.
Few were the women more beautiful than Karela, and to her pride he
could well attest. The fool wench had not only taken those who wanted
to raise the god the means to do so, she had delivered herself as a
sacrifice. He was sure of it. Now he must rescue her from her own
folly. But how? How even to free himself?

He shifted to ease his weight on a burn on his arm, and suddenly his
lips curled in a smile around his gag. Careless of searing flame he
thrust his bound wrists into the fire. Gritting his teeth on his gag
against fiery agony, he strained mighty arms against the ropes, massive
muscles knotting and writhing. Sweat beaded his face.

The reek of burning hemp came to him; he wondered how the others could
fail to be aware of it, but none of the four so much as looked in his
direction. They were immersed in their mugs of wine, and patchnose kept
up his arguing for a chance to win back his loses. Abruptly, the ropes
parted, and Conan pulled his half-cooked wrists from the flames,
careful to keep them yet behind his back. His gaze sought his ancient
broad-sword, leaning against the wall behind the drinking men.

There would be no chance to grasp it before he came to grips with the
men between him and his steel.

With a crash patch-nose kicked over his bench. Conan froze. Snarling
the man snatched up his mug and began to stalk back and forth across
the room, muttering angrily about men who won and then would not
gamble, and shooting dark glances at the other three, still intent on
their drink. His eyes did not stray to the Cimmerian, lying rigid on
the hearth-stone.

Slowly, so as to draw no attention, Conan slid his booted feet back
until he could feel the heat of flames licking about them. To the smell
of burning rope was added that of scorching leather, but the latter was
no more noticed than the first. Then those cords were burned through as
well. There was no time to waste on the gag. Rolling to his feet the
big Cimmerian snatched a long, black fire-iron from the hearth.

Patch-nose was the first to see Conan free of his bonds, but the man
had only time to goggle before wine sprayed out of his mouth and his
skull was crushed by the fire-iron. Shouting, the others scrambled to
their feet. Tenio produced his dagger, but Conan drove the fire-iron
point-first through the ferret-faced man's chest and caught the blade
as it dropped from the transfixed man's nerveless fingers. Marusas'
sword leaped into his hand, then the Zamoran was staggering back,
trying to scream around the dagger that had blossomed in fountains of
scarlet in his throat.

Roaring, Jamaran leaped to grapple with the Cimmerian, throwing
bearlike arms about his waist, heaving him into the air. Conan felt the
man's huge fists locked in the small of his back, felt his spine begin
to creak. Conan smashed his linked hands down on the nape of the huge
man's bull neck, once, twice, thrice, to no effect. Jamaran's grip
tightened inexorably. In moments, the Cimmerian knew, his back would
snap. Desperately he slammed his palms against the other's ears.

With a scream Jamaran let him drop. Even as his heels hit the stone
floor, Conan's bladed hand struck the huge Kushite's throat. Jamaran
gagged, yet lashed out with a massive fist in the same instant. Conan
blocked the blow, winding his arm around the shaven-headed man's to
pull him close. With hammer-like blows the Cimmerian pounded the big
man's body, feeling ribs splinter beneath his fist.

In the night a trumpet sounded the Ophirean army call for the attack.
"Company one, ready torches!" a voice called. "Company two, attack!
Take no prisoners!" Feet pounded on the floors above; frantic yells
rose.

In his desperate struggle Conan had no time to worry about the new
danger. Jamaran smashed his head against the Cimmerian's; Conan
staggered, clinging to consciousness. The huge Kushite tried to enfold
Conan once more in his crushing embrace, but Conan rammed a knee into
his crotch, lifting the man to his toes with bulging eyes. Like
thunderbolts the heels of Conan's hands struck Jamaran's chin. The
shaven head went back with a loud crack as the Kushite's neck broke,
and he fell in a boneless heap.

Conan ripped the gag from his mouth and threw it atop the body of the
man who had threatened to beat him to death. A torch was thrust through
one of the arrow slits, then another. Putting a hand on the table top
Conan vaulted across it to grab his sword hilt, baring the blade by
slinging the worn shagreen scabbard away. Then soldiers spoke of taking
no prisoners they generally slew whatever moved, without questioning
whether it was enemy or captive. Conan did not mean to die easily.

A man darted in at the door, sword ready; Conan swung his steel ... and
stopped a hands-breadth away from splitting Machaon's skull. Narus
rushed in behind the grizzled veteran, and two more of the company.
"You!" Conan exclaimed. "You are the Ophirean army?"

Narus shrugged and held up a battered brass trumpet. "An odd talent of
mine, but useful from time to time." He looked around at the bodies on
the stone floor. "Once more you leave nothing for the rest of us."

"There are more above," Conan said, but Narus shook his head. "They
lept from breaks in the walls, thinking we were who we claimed, and
fled into the night."

"We've still bloody work to do," Conan told him. "Karela has been taken
prisoner, and I mean to rescue her." Atop Tor Al'Kiir, he thought.
Boros said he had seen lights there, and he had no other clue. "We must
move quickly, if you will come with me."

"Mitra, Conan," Machaon growled, "will you let me say a word? There's
no time for wenches, not even her. We came after you because Zandru's
Hells have come to sup in Ophir."

"Al'Kiir." Conan's heart sank. "They've raised the god already."

"I know naught of gods," Machaon muttered, "but Valdric lies dead of
the sickness that consumed him, and Iskandrian has seized the royal
palace."

Conan started in surprise. "Iskandrian!"

"The old general has declared for Valentius," Narus explained. "And
that young coxcomb has taken the name Maranthes II, as if a name could
make him a great king. I hear he didn't wait for funeral rites or even
a priest, but took the crown from Valdric's corpse before it was cold
and put it on his own head."

"Will you stop your nattering, Narus!" Machaon barked. "Most of the
nobles think as you did, Cimmerian. They gather their forces, but
Iskandrian moves to put them down before they can. He marched with most
of the Ianthe garrison an hour after he put Valentius on the throne. If
that isn't enough, Taurianus is talking loudly that the company should
join the nobles. He's telling everyone if Iskandrian wins it means the
end of Free-Companies in Ophir." His tattooed face grew grim. "I'll
tell you, Conan, he's right on that. Iskandrian will give short shrift
to mercenaries."

"We'll worry about Iskandrian later," Conan said. "Karela comes first,
and matters even more important than her. How many of the company did
you bring, Machaon-"

"Seven, including Narus and myself, all of whom crossed the Nemedian
border with us. Two I left to guard Julia. The mood of the others is
bad, Cimmerian. You must return now if you mean to hold them together.
Karela can take care of herself for a time if any woman can."

"We found your black picketed with this lot's mounts," Narus added.

"Crom!" Conan muttered. The numbers were not enough if they faced what
he feared atop Tor Al'Kiir. "We ride for Ianthe, to gather the company
and ride out again. No, not to join the nobles. To Tor Al'Kiir.
There'll be time for questions later. To horse, Erlik blast your hides.
To horse, and pray to whatever gods you can think of that we are in
time."


Chapter XIX

Iron-shod hooves struck sparks from paving stones as Conan galloped
through the dark and empty streets of Ianthe, seven men trailing behind
with their cloaks standing out in the wind of their charge. Atop the
malevolent granite hump of Tor Al'Kiir torches flickered, distant
points of light in the moonless sky mocking his efforts at haste. He
cursed to himself, regretting even the time it had taken to bribe the
gate-watch for entry.

He wanted to shout at the sleepers who felt a momentary safety behind
their walls of brick and stone. Mourning cloths draped from shuttered
windows and shrouded public fountains; sprigs of sa'karian, black and
white berries intermixed as symbol of death and rebirth, adorned every
door. The capital of Ophir mourned its dead King in fear and
uncertainty, yet none in that city knew that what they felt was as a
flickering lamp flame to the storm-lashed fire-death of a great forest
beside the terror that awaited their wakening.

As he galloped through the archway of the house where his company was
quartered, Conan bellowed. "To me! Out with you, and to horse! Move,
damn you to Zandru's Hells!" Stillness lay heavily on the blackened
building; his words echoed hollowly from the courtyard walls as the
others clattered in behind him. "Taurianus!" he called. "Boros!"

A door open with the protest of rusty hinges, showing a tiny light, and
four figures moved into the court. Slowly the shadowy shapes resolved
into Boros, Julia, and two of his company holding shielded lanterns.
The armored men were the two remaining besides those behind him who had
come with him from Nemedia.

"Where are the others?" Conan demanded.

"Gone," Boros answered hollowly. "Taurianus-Erlik roast his soul for
eternity-convinced most of them you were dead, since you didn't return.
Half followed him to join the nobles against Iskandrian. The rest?" His
thin shoulders shrugged. "Faded away to hide as best they can. Without
you, fear corroded their hearts."

Conan fought the urge to rain curses upon Taurianus' head. There was no
time; the torches still burned atop the mountain. What must be done,
must be done with the men he had. But he would lead no man blind to
face sorcerers, and perhaps a god.

"Boros," he said grimly, "tell of Al'Kiir. But briefly, old man. The
time of his coming is near, perhaps before first light, if we do not
stop it."

Boros gasped and, tugging at his beard, spoke in a quavering voice,
filled with all his years, of days before even ancient Ophir existed
and the rites of Al'Kiir, of the Circle of the Right-Hand Path and the
imprisonment of the demonic god, of those who would bring the
abominable worship again into the world and the god whose horror they
celebrated. When he was done there was silence, broken only by the call
of an owl. Each man's breath was audible, and they all spoke of fear.

"If we go to Iskandrian with this tale," Conan said finally, "he will
think it a ruse of the nobles and slay us, or emprison us for madmen
until it is too late. But even word is as true and as dire as a spear
thrust to the heart. Boros has told you what comes, what fate may lie
in store for your sister, or wife or daughter, because she is comely
and spirited. I ride to Tor Al'Kiir to stop it. Who rides with me?"

For a long moment only silence answered him, then Julia stepped
forward, her chin held high. "If there is no courage among these who
call themselves men, at least I will go with you."

"You will go to your sleeping mat," Machaon growled, "or I'll bind you
in such a package as Karela made of you, to keep you safe against my
return." The girl moved hurriedly behind Boros, eyeing the grizzled
mercenary warily as if unsure how much of his threat he meant. Machaon
nodded with satisfaction, then turned in his saddle to Conan. "I've
seen more of wizards following you, Cimmerian, than one man has a right
to expect in a lifetime. But I cannot see that once more will make any
difference."

"An owl calling on a moonless night means death," Narus said glumly,
"but I've never seen a god. I, too, ride with you, Cimmerian." One by
one, then, the other seven mercenaries pledged to follow also, voices
cold with humiliation at being surpassed in courage by a girl, with
anger and determination to protect some particular woman from the
bloody rites. And still with fear. Yet they would come.

Conan eyed their scant number in the pale light of the lanterns and
sighed. "We will be enough," he said, as much to convince himself as
anything else, "because we must. We must. Caaran, Memtes, get your
horses." The two men named set their lanterns on the ground and ran for
the stables. "We ride as soon as they return," he went on. "We must
needs scale the mountain afoot, for our horses cannot climb those
slopes, but-"

"Wait, Conan," Boros broke in. "Make haste slowly, or you but hasten to
your death. You must acquire the Staff of Avanrakash."

"There is no time, old man," Conan said grimly. He twisted impatiently
in his saddle to peer through the night toward the deeper blackness of
Tor Al'Kiir. The torch lights still were there, beckoning him, taunting
him to his core. What befell Karela while he sat his horse like a
statue?

"Do you go forth to confront a lion," the bearded man chided, "would
you then say there was no time to fetch spear or bow? That you must
face it with bare hands? You go to face Al'Kiir. Think your courage and
steel will avail you against a god? As well slit your own throat right
here."

Conan's massive hands tightened on the reins in frustration until his
knuckles cracked. He did not fear death, though he sought it no more
than any other man, but his death would be of no use if Karela were
still sacrificed, if Al'Kiir was freed again. Decision came swiftly,
spurred by necessity. He tossed his reins to Machaon and dismounted.

"Take my horse with you to the mountain," he commanded as he tugged his
hauberk off over his head. Such work as he had now to do was not best
done in armor. He dropped to the ground to pull off his boots. "I will
meet you at the crossroads at the foot of the mountain."

"Do you know where this staff the old man speaks of is to be found?"
Machaon asked.

"In the throne room," Boros said. "By ancient law, at the death of a
King the scepter and crown must be left on the throne for nine days and
nine nights. Valentius has usurped custom by donning the crown so
quickly, but he will not dare flout it altogether."

"The royal palace!" Machaon exclaimed. "Cimmerian, you are mad to think
you can enter there. Come! We will do the best we can with honest
steel."

"I was a thief once," Conan replied. "Twill not be the first palace
I've entered by ways other than the door." Stripped now to his
breech-cloth, he slung his swordbelt across his massive chest so that
his sword hung down his back, dagger and pouch beneath his left arm.
Claran and Memtes trotted their horses from the stable, hooves ringing
on the thick slates of the court. "I will be at the crossroads, with
the staff," the Cimmerian said, "without fail. Be you there also."

With ground-eating pantherish strides, Conan loped into the night.
Behind him Machaon and the others clattered out of the courtyard and
turned their mounts in the other direction, toward the North Gate, but
he was already one with the darkness, a deadly ghost racing through
unlit streets that were empty of other human forms. Every door was
barred, every window shuttered, as the inhabitants of the city cowered
in fear of what might come; only occasional scavenging dogs,
gaunt-ribbed and half-wild, prowled the moonless streets, and they
shied away from the huge shape that shared the way with them. Beneath
his leathery-soled feet the paving stones felt like the rocks of his
native Cimmeria, and the feel gave wings to his stride as when he raced
up mountains as a boy. His great lungs pumped with the effort of his
running, for this time he raced not for the pride of winning, but for
Karela, and for even, woman who would lose life or more if he failed.

Again an owl cried, and Conan's mind went to Narus' words. Perhaps the
cry did mean death, his or someone else's. Crom, the fierce god of the
harsh and icy land where he was born, gave a man life and will, but the
grim Lord of the Mound never promised that life would be long, nor that
will would always prevail. A man could but fight, and keep fighting so
long as breath or life remained.

The Cimmerian did not slow until the massive walls of the royal palace
loomed before him, crenelations and towertops only shadows against the
ebon sky. The thick, iron-sheathed gates were closed and barred, the
portcullis down, but he spared not a glance in that direction. Such was
not his means of entry this night.

His fingers felt across the surface of the wall, featureless in the
blackness. Long centuries past had the great wall been built, of stones
each weighing more than twenty times as much as a big man. Only the
largest trebuchet could hurl boulders weighty enough to trouble its
solidity, but Conan did not mean to batter a way through. Those years
had leeched at the mortar between the great stones, leaving gaps that
made an easy path for one mountain-born.

With agile sureness Conan climbed, fingers and toes searching out the
grooves where wind and rain and time had worn away the mortar, mighty
muscles straining to pull him up where there was but room for
fingernails to grip. Below was only the long, bone-shattering drop to
pavement now swathed in the night, yet he did not slow in his swift
ascent of that sheer wall. Time pressed on him too greatly to allow
room for caution.

At the top of the wall he paused between two tall merlons topped with
stone leopards, ears straining for the scuff of boots on the rampart,
the creak of leather and armor. A combat there with guards would surely
doom his quest before it had truly begun. There was no sound. Conan
drew himself through the crennel. No guards were atop the wall. The
palace was silent as a tomb. It seemed Iskandrian had left only men for
the gates; the White Eagle would strike hard, as was his wont.

From the rampart a curving ramp led down toward the outer bailey.
There, however, he would surely be seen, no matter how few guards had
been left behind or how many servants hid in fear that too-ardent
service to him who now wore the crown might be punished if he lost it.
Rooftops must be his path. The nearest, a wing of the palace, lay but
an easy jump from the ramp for a vigorous man. Easy if the approaching
run could be made on level ground rather than down a steep ramp, and if
a three-story drop to the granite paving of the bailey were ignored.

Conan measured distances and angles, then took a deep breath and
sprinted down the ramp. At the sixth great stride he flung himself
across the chasm. Fingertips caught at the edge of the roof. One tile
broke free, spiraling into the dark to shatter on the stones below; for
an instant the Cimmerian hung by one hand. Slowly he hauled himself up,
swung to hook a leg over the edge. The tile he held to shifted under
his hand. Then he was flat on the roof, carefully setting aside the
loose tile and quieting his breath as he waited to see if the noise of
the first tile's fall drew attention. Still nothing stirred.

Like a jungle beast Conan was up and running, feet sure on the slanting
tiles, climbing granite gargoyles to a higher level, leaping from a
balcony tiled in black and white marble to clutch at a high peaked
gable, edging with chest pressed flat against smooth granite along a
ledge wide enough only for the balls of his feet, then climbing again,
past mullioned windows and trefoils, until at last he scrambled through
a narrow ventilation arch and looked down from great height on the vast
throne room of the royal palace.

Great golden lamps hung on thick chains of the same metal from the
vaulted ceiling, their bright flames lighting well the floor far below,
a floor mosaicked in huge representations of the leopards and eagles
that were the royal symbols of Ophir. In the middle of that floor was a
black-shrouded bier on which Valdric's body lay in state, clothed in
ornate robes of gold embroidered purple set with pearls. No living man
was there to keep vigil over the dead King.

Conan's eyes sought the throne. Like unto the great chair in which
Antimides had sat it was, covered in leopards and eagles, but larger
still and of solid gold. The beasts' eyes were rubies, and claws and
talons clutched emeralds as large as the joint of a man's thumb. Of the
crown there was no sign. Ancient law or no, the Cimmerian thought,
Valentius had not found it in himself to part with the royal diadem for
even nine days once he had gained it. Yet what he sought was there.
Across the arms of the throne lay the scepter of Ophir, its golden
length glittering with an encrustation of all manner of gems.

Carefully Conan let himself down inside the throne room, using the
scrolls and arabesques carved in the marble walls to climb down until
he reached their end, some twenty feet above the floor. Here great
tapestries hung. He ripped loose a corner of one-a scene of a crowned
King hunting deer from horseback-and let himself drop, swinging on it
as at the end of a rope. His feet brushed the floor, and he released
the tapestry to run to the throne.

Almost hesitantly he hefted the long scepter. So much had he risked on
the word of a drunk, and so much depended on it. Hastily he produced
his dagger and began prying away soft gold and sparkling jewels,
letting them fall to the purple velvet cushion of the throne. At the
sight of wood beneath he grunted in satisfaction, but continued until
he had stripped away all the outer sheath. He was left with a plain
wooden staff as long as his outstretched arms and as thick as his two
thumbs together.

Yet could it be in truth the Staff of Avanrakash, he wondered. He felt
no magical qualities in it, and it showed no signs of its supposed
great age. In fact, had it been a walking staff he would have thought
it cut no more than a few days previous.

"But it was within the scepter," he breathed, "and it is all I have."
For luck he scooped a handful of gems from the cushion, not bothering
to see what they were, and stuffed them into his pouch.

"A common thief," Taramenon said from the door to the throne room.
"Will not Synelle be surprised when she returns to find your head on a
spike atop the River Gate-"

Conan reached over his shoulder; his sword slid easily into his grasp.
The staff clutched in his left hand, he strode toward the tall noble.
He had no words to say, no time for words. Even so in a corner of his
mind lust flared at the mention of the woman's name. Synelle. How could
he have gone so long without thinking of her? How could he have gone so
long without touching her? The frozen rage of battles forced the
thoughts down, smothered them.

Taramenon threw aside his fur-trimmed scarlet cape and drew his own
blade. "I but stepped in here a moment to spit in Valdric's face. To
offer obeisance to a corpse that was half-rotted before even it died
turned my stomach. Finding you is a pleasant surprise I did not
expect." Abruptly rage contorted his face into an ugly mask. "I will
tell her of your death when I see her this night. Your filthy hands
will never touch her again, you barbarian swine!" Snarling he rushed
forward, swinging his blade in a mighty chop at Conan's head.

The Cimmerian's broadsword met Taramenon's with a tremendous clash. The
Ophirean's eyes widened at the force of the blow but on the instant he
struck again. Again Conan's blade met his in a shower of sparks.
Taramenon fought with all the deadly finesse of one who was the finest
swordsman in Ophir, his longsword as agile and swift and deadly as a
Kothian viper; Conan fought with the cold ferocity of a northland
berserker, his steel the lightning of the Cimmerian crags. Conan had no
time to waste in defense-he must conquer, and quickly, or the noise of
the fight would draw others, and he might well be overwhelmed by sheer
numbers-but his constant attack left no room to Taramenon for aught but
defense.

Sweat rolled down the face of the finest blade in Ophir as he found
himself forced back, ever back, by an implacable demon with a face of
stone and icy blue eves, eyes in which depths he could read his own
death. Panic clouded Taramenon's face, and for the first time in his
life he knew fear. "Guards!" he screamed. "A thief! Guards!"

In that brief instant of divided attention Conan's blade engaged that
of the tall Ophirean, brought it down, around, thrust under it. Chain
mail links snapped, razor steel sliced through muscle and bone, and the
Cimmerian's sword hilt slammed against Taramenon's chest.

Conan stared into dark incredulous eyes. "Synelle is mine," he grated.
"Mine!"

Blood bubbled from Taramenon's mouth, and he fell. Conan stared at the
body in wonder before remembering to pull his sword free. Why had he
said such a thing? Synelle was of no import in this. Karela was
important, Al'Kiir and the staff and getting to the crossroads quickly.
Yet images suppressed by events rose unbidden, sleek thighs and satin
skin and swelling breasts and ... Shaking his head woozily he
halfstaggered to Taramenon's discarded cape to clean his bloody blade
and cut strips to bind the staff across his back. Was he going mad, he
wondered. Visions of Synelle kept crowding his brain, as if time spent
not thinking of her had to be made up. Desperately he forced them back.
The crossroads, he thought. The crossroads, and no time.

Running to the half-torn-down tapestry, he began to climb. Synelle. The
crossroads, and no time.


Chapter XX

Karela grunted as the sack in which she was carried was upended,
dumping her, still bound and naked, onto cold stone. After the darkness
light blinded her, filling her eyes with tears. The tears infuriated
her; she would not have those who had taken her prisoner think they had
reduced her to crying. Blinking, she was at last able to make out the
roughly cut stone walls of what seemed to be a small cave, lit by rush
torches in black iron sconces.

She was not alone, she realized. Synelle was there, and four other
women, alabastrine-skinned blondes who seemed to wear variations of one
face. The noblewoman was not dressed as when last Karela had seen her.
Now she wore bracelets of black iron chain on each wrist, and two
narrow strips of ebon silk, before and behind, leaving the outer curves
of hips and breasts bare, were all her garb save for a belt of golden
links. Karela stared when she saw the buckle. It was the head of the
malevolent bronze she had sold-tried to sell, she thought ruefully-but
rendered in gold. A chaplet of gold chain encircled Synelle's silvery
tresses, severely braided into a coronet, and on that golden band, too,
were the four horns of that demonic figure.

The other women were dressed as was Synelle, but the narrow belts
cinching their waists were of black iron, and dark metal enclosed their
ankles and necks as well. Their hair, neatly coiled about their heads,
bore no headdress. With bowed heads their humbly alert eves watched the
exotically beautiful noblewoman.

Karela swallowed hard, and was reminded again how dry was her throat.
Had she the use of her mouth she would tell this Synelle she could have
Conan. It would be a lie-she would not be driven from her business with
the Cimmerian by this pale-haired trull who called herself a lady-but
lying seemed much the better part of valor at the moment.

Synelle nodded, and the four women in iron belts produced leather
straps. Karela jerked futilely at her bonds despite herself. If only
she had a dagger, or but a single hand free, or even her tongue to
shout her defiance at them.

"Listen to me, wench," Synelle said. "These women will prepare you. If
you fight, they will beat you, but in any event they will carry out my
orders. I would have you as little marked as possible, so if you will
submit, nod your head."

Karela tried to shout through her gag. Submit! Did this fool woman
think she was some milksop maiden to be frightened by threats? Her
green eyes hurled all her silent fury at Synelle.

Abruptly Synelle moved, placing a foot on Karela's knees, bound beneath
her chin, to roll her onto her back and hold her there. "A taste, then.
Cut well in."

The other women darted forward, their leather straps slicing beneath
Karela's corded heels, raining blows on her helpless buttocks, drawn
taut by her trying.

Her green eyes bulged in her head, and she had an instant to be
grateful for the gag that held back her cries, then her head was
nodding frantically. Derketo! There was no use in being beaten while
lying trussed like a pig for market.

Synelle motioned the women back. "I was sure you would be reasonable."

Karela tried to meet the dark eyes staring down at her, then closed her
own in humiliation. It was clear from the look on Synelle's face that
she had never doubted that the red-haired woman could be brought to
heel. Let them free her, Karela prayed, and she would show them the
worth of pledge wrung from whips. She would ...

Suddenly the cords binding her were severed. Karela caught a flash of a
dagger. She moved to grab it ... and sprawled in boneless agony on the
stone floor, muscles stiff from long confinement barely able to do more
than twitch. Slowly, painfully, she brought a hand up to drag the gag
from her mouth. She wanted to weep. The dagger was gone from sight, and
she had neither seen who had held it nor where it was hidden.

Even as she dropped the wadded cloth two of the women pulled her to her
feet. She gasped with the pain; had they not supported her she could
not have stood. One of the others began drawing an ivory comb through
her tangled locks, while the last wiped her sweat away with soft, damp
clothes.

Karela worked her mouth for the moisture to speak. "I'll not sell you
to a tavern," she managed. "I'll tear your heart out with my bare
hands."

"Good," Synelle said. "I feared your spirit might have been broken.
Often the journey here, bound, is enough for that. It is well that it
was not in your case."

Karela sneered. "You want the pleasure of breaking me yourself, then?
You will not have it, because you cannot do it. And if you want Conan
back-"

"Conan!" the noblewoman cut her off, dark eyes widening in surprise.
"How do you come to know of the barbarian?"

"We were once," Karela began, then spluttered to a halt. She was tired,
and spoke of things of which she had no wish to speak. "No matter how I
know of him. If you want him, you'll cease your threats and bargain."

Synelle trilled with laughter. "So you think I merely attempt to
dispose of a rival. I should be furious that such as you could think of
yourself as my rival, but I find it merely amusing. I expect he is a
man who has known many women in his time, and if you are one of that
number I see he has little discrimination in his choosing. That is at
an end, now." She held out a slender palm. "I hold the barbarian there,
wench. He will crawl to me on his belly when I call him, dance like a
bear for a tin whistle at my command. And you think to be my rival?"
She threw back her head and laughed even harder.

"No woman could treat Conan so," Karela snapped. "I know, for I have
tried, and by Derketo, I am ten times the woman you are."

"You are suitable for the rites," the silver-haired woman said coolly,
"but I am High Priestess of Al'Kiir. Yet were I not, you would still
not be woman enough to serve as my bowermaid. My tirewomen were nobly
born in Corinthia, and she who draws my bath and rubs me with oils was
a princess in far Vendhya, yet to obey my slightest wish is now the
whole of their lives. What can a jade of a bandit be beside such as
they, who are but my slaves?"

Karela opened her mouth for another retort, and gasped when a
black-armored man in a horned helmet appeared in the entrance to the
cavern. For an instant she had thought it was the creature the bronze
represented. Foolishness, she berated herself. Such a creature could
not exist.

"Has Taramenon come yet?" Synelle demanded of the man. "No, my lady.
Nor any message of him."

"He will suffer for this," Synelle said heatedly. "He defies me, and I
will see him suffer for it!" Drawing a deep breath, she smoothed the
already taut black silk over her rounded breasts. "We will proceed
without him. When he comes, he is to be seized and bound. There are
rites other than the gift of women."

"Taramenon, my lady," the man said in shocked tones.

"You heard my command!" Synelle made a brusque gesture, and the armored
figure bowed himself from her presence.

Karela had been listening intently, hoping for some fragment of
information that might help her escape, but now she became aware of how
the four women were dressing her, the tiny white tarla blossoms woven
into her hair, the diaphanous layers of blue silk meant to be removed
one by one for the titillation of a groom.

"What travesty is there?" she growled. "You do think me a rival, but if
you mean to rid yourself of me in this way, you are mad! I'll marry no
man! Do you hear me, you pasty-faced trull-"

A cruel smile curled Synelle's lips, and the look on her face sent a
chill through Karela's blood. "You will marry no man," the haughty
noble-woman said softly. "Tonight you will wed a god, and I will become
ruler of Ophir."

The tall white marker at the crossroads, a square marble pillar
inscribed with the distances to the borders of Nemedia and Aquilonia,
loomed out of the night ahead of Conan. No sound broke the silence save
his labored breath and the steady slap of his running feet on the
paving stones. Beyond the marker reared the dark mass of Tor Al'Kiir, a
huge granite outcropping dominating the flat country about it.

The big Cimmerian crouched beside the marble plinth, eyes straining at
the blackness. There was so sign of his men. Softly he imitated the cry
of a Nemedian nighthawk.

The muted jingle of tight-strapped harness announced the sudden
appearance of Machaon and the rest, leading their horses. Memtes,
bringing up the rear, gripped the reins of Conan's big Aquilonian black
as well as those of his own mount. Bows and quivers were slung on their
backs.

"I thought it best to keep from sight," the tattooed veteran told Conan
quietly. "As we arrived, two score men-at-arms passed, chasing another
band as large, and twice parties of light cavalry have gone by at the
gallop. Scouts, the last, no doubt."

"Unless I miss my guess," Narus added in a low voice that would not
travel far, "Iskandrian seeks action this night, and the nobles seek to
avoid him until their strength is gathered. Never did I think that when
the final battle for Ophir occurred, I would be scaling a mountain."

"Go to Taurianus, then," Conan growled, "if you seek glory!" Irritably
he shook his black-maned head. Such edginess was not his usual manner,
but his thoughts scarcely seemed his own. With a desperation foreign to
him he fought to cling to his purpose of mind, struggled against images
of Synelle and lust that threatened to overwhelm him.

"Is that the famous staff?" Machaon asked. "It has no look of magic to
me."

"It is," the Cimmerian replied, "and it has." He hoped he did not lie.
Unfastening the strips of cloth that held the length of wood, he
clutched it in one hand and drew his sword with the other. "This is the
last chance to change your minds. Let any man unsure of what he does
step aside." The soft and deadly susuration of steel sliding from
scabbards was his answer. Conan nodded grimly. "Then hide the horses in
yon copse of trees and follow me."

"Your armor," Machaon said. " 'Tis on your saddle."

"There is no time," Conan said, and without waiting for the others he
started up the stony slope.

Crom was not a god men prayed to; he gave nothing beyond his first
gift. But now Conan offered a prayer to any god that would listen. If
he died for it, let him be in time.

A silent file of purposeful men fell in behind him in his climb, on
their way to beard a god in his den.

The lash struck across her shoulders again, and Karela gritted her
teeth against the howl she wanted to let pass. Bound between posts
topped with the obscene head of Al'Kiir, she knelt, all but the last
layer of thin blue silk torn away from her sweat-slick body. It was not
the pain from the incessant bite of leather that made her want to cry
out, or not alone; she would have died before giving her tormentors the
satisfaction of acknowledging that. But the burning stripes that made
scarlet lattices on her body were as pin-pricks beside the flaming
desire the ointment with which Synelle had anointed her brought
unbidden. Uncontrollably Karela writhed, and wept for the humiliation
of it.

The silvery-haired noble-woman danced before her, spinning and dipping,
chanting words that defied hearing in rhythm to haunting flutes and the
pounding of scabbarded swords on the stone floor of the vaulting
cavern. Between Synelle and Karela stood the bronze she had stolen from
Conan, but its evil was overpowered by the waves of horror that
radiated from the huge sanguinary image that dominated the chamber.
Three ebon eyes that seemed to drink in light held her own. She tried
to tear her eyes from that hellborn gaze, she prayed for the strength
to pull away, but like a bird hypnotized by a serpent she had no will
left.

The lashes struck, again and again. Her hands quivered in her bonds
with the effort of not shrieking, for that demonic scarlet figure had
begun to vibrate, giving off a hum that blended with the flutes and
wrenched at the core of her that made her a woman. Conan, she cried
silently, where are you?

Stirring where neither time nor space existed, where endless nihility
was all. Awakening, almost full, as pleasure overwhelming lanced
through the impenetrable shield. Irritation, vaster than the minds of
all men together could encompass, flared. Would these torments never
cease, these returnings of ancient memories near gone and better
forgotten? Would not.... Full awareness for the first time in eons,
awareness cold enough to freeze suns and stay worlds in their motion.
There was direction. A single pristine strand of crystalline desire and
pain stretching into the infinite. Slowly, with a wariness born of long
centuries of disappointment, from the midst of nothingness the gleaming
thread of worship was followed.

Conan peered around the edge of a huge, moss-covered block of marble
which had once been intended for construction. Crickets chirped in the
dark, and a nightbird gave a haunting cry. All else was still.

Roofless walls of niveous stone and truncated alabaster columns, never
completed and now wreathed by thick vines, covered the leveled top of
the mountain. Among the columns were more than a score of men in black
armor and horned helms, the torches a third of them carried casting
flickering shadows over the weather-beaten ruins. He wanted to sigh
with relief at the symbol picked out in scarlet on their chests. It was
clearly the head of the image Karela had stolen, the head of Al'Kiir.
Not until that moment had he allowed himself to fear he might be coming
to the wrong place.

The black-armored man had to be guarding an entrance to chambers below,
Conan thought, where the horrible rite was to take place. Boros had
said the tomb lay buried in the heart of the mountain. At least, then
were supposed to be standing guard. The sinister reputation of Tor
Al'Kiir made it unlikely anyone would come there, most especially in
the night, and that made them careless. Some leaned against pale fluted
marble. Others sat and talked among themselves. No eye was directed
outward to watch for intruders.

Conan signaled with his hands; long practiced, the nine men behind him
slid soundlessly away. The Cimmerian counted silently, knowing how long
it would take each man to reach his place.

"Now!" he shouted, and burst from concealment to hurl himself at the
guards. As he had known it would, his shout and the appearance of a
lone man charging froze them for an instant, long enough for nine
bowstrings to twang, for nine feathered shafts to drink life.

The guards of Al'Kiir had been chosen for their skill, though, and even
as their comrades were falling the survivors darted for cover behind
the columns. But then Conan was among them. Thrusting the staff like a
lance he took a man under the chin; throat cartiledge snapped loudly,
and blood spilled from a mouth that could no longer scream.

"For Conan!" he heard behind him. "Conan!"

A blade thrust at him, and his ancient steel severed the arm that held
it. He ducked beneath a decapitating cut and, wielding his broadsword
like an axe, chopped through his attacker's mid-section almost to the
spine. Kicking the body away, he straightened to find no black-armored
man standing. His mercenaries stood among the bodies, gripping bloody
swords and warily watching for more of the enemy.

"Are they all dead"' Conan demanded.

Machaon shook his head. "Two managed to run down there." He pointed to
a dark opening where steps had led down into the mountain.

"Crom!" the Cimmerian muttered. With quick strides he moved to the
opening and started down. Wordlessly the others followed.

Sweat trickling down her sleek form, Synelle moved in the ancient forms
and patterns, her body swaying and bending in an exaltation of lust and
pain. Time-forgotten words spilled from her mouth, echoed against the
walls, supplicating and glorifying her dire god. The monstrous horned
malevolence before which she danced pulsated like the string of a harp.
The drone that came from it now drowned out the flutes and the pounding
scabbards and even the slap of leather on flesh, yet seemed to merge
with and amplify her voice.

A part of her mind noted that the auburn-haired woman, naked now to the
lash, sagged in her bonds, but struggled still against surrender. Not
once had a cry passed her lips. That was well, Synelle thought, not
pausing an instant in either movements or incantation. She was certain
that the success she seemed to be having was as much due to the
stubborn pride of this Karela as to the bronze image. Much better than
any of the haughty noblewomen, who in the end always wept and begged
and offered their bodies to the men whipping them in exchange for even
a moment's surcease.

One of her guards, his chain-mail rent and bloodied, burst into the
chamber. "We are attacked, my lady!" he gasped. "Hundreds of them! They
cry, for Conan!"

Synelle faltered, then desperately continued with dance and invocation.
To stop now would mean disaster, doom better undreamed of. Yet her mind
spun. Conan? It was impossible. But then it was impossible that any
should dare brave the night slopes of Tor Al'Kiir. Then who...

Thoughts and words and movement died as one. All sound stopped as the
great horned head turned toward her and three lidless eyes, black as
death, regarded her like dark flames of unholy life.

Men in black chain-mail, their horned helmets making them seem more
demons than men in the dim light of fires burned low in iron cressets,
appeared as if from the walls to defend the rough-cut stone passage.
Demons they might appear, yet they died like men. Into the midst of
them Conan waded, his ancient broadsword tirelessly rising and falling
in furious butchery, till its length was stained crimson and blood fell
from it as if the steel itself had wounds. A charnel house he made, and
those who dared confront him died. Many could not face that great blade
nor the deathly cold eyes of he who wielded it, and darted past the one
man to face instead the nine behind.

The Cimmerian spared no thought for those who refused him combat. What
they guarded and what he sought lay ahead, and he did not cease his
slaying until he had hacked his way into a huge cavern. The blood
chilled in his veins at what he saw.

Twenty more of the black-armored men stood there, but they were as
frozen as he, and seemed as insignificant as ants beside what else the
chamber contained. Karela, her lush nakedness welted, hanging by her
wrists from two wooden pillars. Synelle, oddly garbed in black silk
that clung damply to her, a horned chaplet on her brow. And beyond her
a shape out of madmen's nightmares, its skin the color of dead men's
blood. Al'Kiir awakened threw back his head, and from a broad fanged
gash of a mouth came laughter to curdle the heart of heroes.

Even as the evil god's laughter stunned Conan's mind, Synelle's
presence filled it. The staff fell from his fingers, and he took a step
toward her.

The dark-eyed noblewoman pointed a slender finger at the young giant.
As if commanding more wine she said, "Kill him."

The strange lethargy that had affected him of late when he was about
her slowed Conan's hand, but his sword took the head of the first man
to turn toward him before that man had his blade half-drawn. Nobles
could prate while they lounged at their ease of chivalry in battle,
though they rarely practiced it; a son of the bleak northland knew only
how to fight to win.

The others came at him then, but he retreated to the entrance, wide
enough for only three at a time to get near. With a frenzy-approaching
madness he fought, and his steel did murderous work among them. Synelle
filled his brain. He would get to Synelle if he must wade to his waist
in blood.

A scream drew his eye beyond the men struggling to slay him. Al'Kiir
had seized Synelle in a clawed hand that almost encircled her narrow
waist, lifting her before that triad of ebon eyes for inspection.

Conan redoubled his efforts, and the fury of his attack, seeming
reckless of death, forced the mail-clad men to fall back before him.

"Not me!" Synelle screamed, her face contorted in terror. "I am thy
faithful slave, o mighty Al'Kiir! Thy priestess! She is the one brought
for thy delight!"

Al'Kiir turned his horned head to Karela, and his lipless mouth curled
in a fanged smile. He took a step toward her, reaching out.

"No!" Conan roared, desperation clawing at him. "Not Karela!" His foot
struck something that rolled with the sound of wood on stone. The Staff
of Avanrakash.

Ignoring the men who still faced him, Conan seized the staff from the
floor and hurled it like a javelin. Straight to the chest of the
monstrous figure the plain wooden staff flew, struck, and pierced.
Al'Kiir's free hand tugged at the length of wood, but it could as well
have been anchored with barbs. Black ichor poured out around it, and
the horned god shrieked, a piercing cry that went on without end,
shattering thought and turning muscles to water.

Steel clattered to the stone floor as blackmailed men dropped their
swords and fled, pushing past Conan as if he held no weapon at all. And
he, in turn, paid them no heed, for the scream that would not stop
allowed room for awareness of nothing else.

Around the staff drops of ichor hardened like beads of obsidian, and
the hardening widened, spreading steadily, through the malevolent
shape.

Synelle plucked frantically at the claw-tipped fingers that held her;
her long legs kicked wildly. "Release me," she pleaded. "Release thy
faithful priestess, o mighty Al'Kiir." Now she struggled with fingers
of stone. Slowly, as if it moved with difficulty, the horned head
turned to look at her. "Release me!" she screamed. "Release me! No!
Mitra, save me!" Her kicking slowed, then her legs were frozen, her
cries stilled. Her pale skin gleamed like polished marble in the light
from the torches. There was silence.

Flight. Flight from pain great enough to slay a thousand worlds. Flight
back to the hated prison of nothingness. Yet something had been brought
along. It was clothed in the flesh it had once worn, and a beautiful,
naked woman, dark of eye and silvery of hair, floated in the void,
mouth working with screams that were not worth hearing. Evil joy, black
as the depths of the pit. Long centuries of delight would come from
this one before the pitiful spark that was human essence faded and was
gone. But the pain did not end. It grew instead. The crystalline thread
that linked this place of nonexistence with that other world was still
intact, unseverable. Yet it must be ended, least endless eons of agony
follow. It must be ended.

Conan shook his head as if waking from a fever dream, and ran to
Karela. Quickly he severed her bonds, caught her as she would have
fallen.

The beautiful red-haired bandit turned her sweat-streaked face up to
him. "I knew you would come," she whispered hoarsely. "I prayed for you
to rescue me, and I hate you for it."

The Cimmerian could not help smiling. Whatever had happened to her,
Karela was unchanged. Sheathing his sword, he picked her up in his
arms. Sighing weakly, she put her arms around his neck and pressed her
face to his chest. He thought he felt the wetness of tears.

His gaze went to the stone shape pierced by the wooden staff, the
sanguinary horned monstrosity clutching the alabaster figure of a
struggling woman, her face frozen in horror for eternity. All the
raging feelings and confusions that had filled him were gone as if they
had never been. Bewitched, he thought angrily. Synelle had ensorceled
him. He hoped that wherever she was she had time for regret.

Machaon and Narus ran into the chamber, bloody swords in hand, and
skidded to a halt, staring in awe. "I'll not ask what happened here,"
the gaunt-faced man said, "for I misdoubt I'd believe it."

"They flee from us, Cimmerian," Machaon said. "Ten of them together,
and they ran down a side passage at the sight of us. Whatever you did
took all the heart right out of them."

"The others?" Conan asked, and the tattooed mercenary shook his head
grimly.

"Dead. But they collected their ferryman's fees and more." Suddenly
Narus pointed at the huge stone figure. "It's-it's-" He stammered,
unable to get any more words out.

Conan spun. The petrified body of the god was quivering. A hum came
from it, a hum that quickly rose in pitch until it pierced the ears
like driven nails.

"Run!" the Cimmerian shouted, but could not hear his own words through
the burning pain that clawed at his skull.

The other two men needed no urging, though. The three of them sped
through the rough-hewn stone passages, Conan keeping up easily despite
carrying Karela. In their headlong flight they leaped over the bodies
of the dead, but saw no one living. And the mind-killing vibration
followed them up sloping tunnels, level after level, up the stone steps
to the ruins.

As the Cimmerian dashed out among the overgrown columns, the
skull-piercing sound ceased. Birds and crickets had fled; the loudest
noise to be heard was their own blood thrumming in their ears. Before a
breath could be drawn in the silence, the mountain shook. Half-built
columns toppled and mossy walls collapsed, blocks of marble large
enough to crush a man splashing dirt like water, but the sound of their
fall was swallowed by the rumbling that rose from the granite bowels of
Tor Al'Kiir.

Dodging through clouds of dust and flying chips of shattered rock,
Conan hurtled down the slope, Karela's naked form clutched to his
chest. The side of a mountain in the night was no place to be during an
earthquake, but neither was the midst of crumbling marble walls. He had
a feeling the only safe place to be in this earthquake was as far from
Tor Al'Kiir as it was possible to run. And run he did, over ground that
danced like the deck of a ship in a storm, fighting to keep his balance
for rocks bouncing beneath his feet and stones flying through the air
like hail. He no longer knew if Machaon and Narus ran with him, nor
could he spare a thought for them. They were men, and must take their
risks. Conan had to get Karela to safety, for some primal instinct
warned him that worse was to come.

With a sound like the splitting of the earth, the peak of Tor Al'Kiir
erupted in fire, mountaintop and alabaster columns and marble walls
alike flung high into a sky now lit by a fiery glow. The blast threw
Conan into the air; he twisted so that his own huge frame took the
bone-jarring impact of landing. It was no longer possible to gain his
feet. He put his body over that of Karela, sheltering her from the
stones that filled the air. As he did one image remained burned into
his brain, a single flame towering a thousand paces from the destroyed
top of Tor Al'Kiir, a single flame that took the form of the Staff of
Avanrakash.


Epilogue

In the paleness before full dawn Conan peered toward Ianthe, towers
thrusting into the early morning mist, glazed red roof tiles beginning
to gleam with the light of a sun not yet risen. An army approached the
city, men-at-arms with gaily colored pennons streaming, long columns of
infantry with shields slung on their backs, tall plumes of dust rising
beneath thousands of pacing hooves and tramping feet. A victorious
army, he thought. But whose?

Avoiding looking at the steaming, cratered top of Tor Al'Kiir, he
picked his way through the huge, misshapen boulders that now littered
the mountain slope. A quarter of its height had the great granite mound
lost in the night, and what lay at its new peak the Cimmerian neither
knew nor wanted to know.

Narus voice came to him, tinged with a bitter note. "Women should not
be allowed to gamble. Almost I think you changed dice on me. At least
let my buy back-"

"No," Karela cut him off as Conan rejoined his three companions. She
wore Narus' breeches, tight across the curves of her hips and
voluminous in the legs, with his scarlet cloak wrapped about her
shoulders and his sword across her knees. The inner slopes of her full
breasts showed at the gap in the cloak. "I have more need of something
to wear than of gold. And I did not switch the dice. You were too busy
filling your filthy eyes and leering at the sight of me uncovered to
pay mind of what you were doing."

Machaon laughed, and the gaunt man grunted, attempting to pull his
hauberk down far enough to cover his bony knees.

"We must be moving," Conan announced. "There has been a battle, it
seems, and whoever won there will be mercenaries without patrons or
leaders, men to reform the company. Crom, there may be enough for you
each to have your own Free-Company."

Machaon, sitting with his back against one of the building stones that
had once stood atop the mountain, shook his head. "I have been longer
in this trade, Cimmerian, than you have lived, and this night past has
at last given me my full. I own some land in Koth. I shall put up my
sword, and become a farmer."

"You?" Conan said incredulously. "A month of grubbing in the dirt, and
you'll tear apart the nearest village with your bare hands, just for
the need of a fight."

"'Tis not quite as you imagine," the grizzled veteran chuckled. "There
are ten men working the land now. I will be a man of substance, as such
as counted among farmers. I shall fetch Julia from the city, and marry
her if she will have me. A farmer needs a wife to give him strong sons.

Conan frowned at Narus. "And do you, too, intend to become a farmer?"

"I've no love of dirt," the hollow-faced man replied, snatching the
dice from Karela, who had been examining them idly, "but ... Conan,
wizards I did not mind so much, and those men who looked like a snake
had been at their mothers were no worse than a horde of blood-drunk
Picts, but this god you found us has had my heart in my mouth more than
I can remember since the Battle of Black River, when I was a fresh
youth without need of shaving. For a time I seek a quiet city, with
buxom wenches to bounce on a bed and," he rattled the dice in cupped
hands, rolled them on the ground, "young lads with more coin than
sense."

"They had best be very young," Karela laughed. "Do you intend to gain
any of their coin. Eh, Cimmerian?" Narus glared at her and grumbled
under his breath.

As Conan opened his mouth, a flash of white caught his eye, cloth
fluttering in the breeze down slope. "Crom!" he muttered. It was Boros
and Julia. "I'll wring his scrawny neck for bringing her here," he
growled. The others scrambled to their feet to follow him down the
mountainside.

When Conan reached the girl and the old man, he saw they were not
alone. Julia knelt beside Taurianus, tearing strips from her white
robes to try to staunch the blood oozing from a dozen rents in the
Ophirean's hauberk. The man's hair was matted with dirt and blood, and
a bubble of scarlet appeared at his lips with each labored breath.

Boros flung up his hands as soon as he saw Conan. "Do not blame me. I
tried to stop her, but I have not your strength. I thought it best to
come along and protect her as best I could. She said she was worried
about Machaon."

"About all of them," Julia said, her face reddening. "Conan, we found
him lying here. Can you not help him?"

The Cimmerian needed no close examination of Taurianus' wounds to see
the man would not survive them. The ground about him was already
blackened with his blood. "So the nobles lost," he said quietly. A
mercenary fighting on the victorious side would not have crawled away
to die.

The Ophirean's eyes fluttered open. "We caught the Eagle," he rasped,
and continued with frequent pauses to struggle for breath. "We left our
camp-with fires lit-and Iskandrian-fell on it-in the night. Then we
took him-in the rear. We would have-destroyed him-but a giant
flame-cleft the sky-and the white-haired devil-shouted the gods-were
with them. Some cried-it was the Staff-of Avanrakash. Panic seized
us-by the throat. We fled-and his warriors cut us down. Enjoy your
time-Cimmerian. Iskandrian-is impaling-every mercenary-he catches."
Suddenly he lurched up onto one elbow and stretched out a clawed hand
toward Conan. "I am a better man-than you!" Blood welled in his mouth,
and he fell back. Once he jerked, then was still, dull eyes staring at
the sky.

"A giant flame," Narus said softly. "You are a man of destiny,
Cimmerian. You make kings even you do not mean to."

Conan shrugged off the words irritably. He cared not who wore the crown
of Ophir, except insofar as it affected his prospects. With Iskandrian
at Valentius' side-perhaps, he thought, it was time to start thinking
of the fopling as Moranthes II-there would be no chance to gather more
men, and possibly no men left alive to gather. "'Twill be Argos for
me," he said.

"You!" Machaon snapped abruptly, and Julia jumped. "Did I not tell you
to remain in Ianthe? Must I fetch a switch for you here and now? The
life of a poor farmer's wife is hard, and she must learn to obey. Would
you have our only pig die because you did not feed it when I told you?"

"You have no right to threaten me," the auburn-haired girl burst out.
"You cannot. . ." Her words trailed off, and she sat back on her heels.
"Wife? Did you say wife?" Taking a deep breath, she said earnestly,
"Machaon, I will care for your pig as if it were my beloved sister."

"There's no need to go so far as that," Machaon laughed. His face
sobered as he turned to Conan. "A long road we've traveled together,
Cimmerian, but it has come to its ending. And as I've no desire to let
Iskandrian rummage in my guts with a stake, I'll take my leave now. I
wish to be far from Ianthe before this day is done."

"And I," Narus added. "'Tis Tarantia for me, for they do say the nobles
of Aquilonia are free with their coin and love to gamble."

"Fare you well," Conan told them. "And take a pull at the hellhorn for
me, if you get there before me."

Julia ran to clasp Machaon's arm, and, with Narus, they started down
the mountain.

"After that fool wench's display," Karela muttered, "I need a drink, or
I'll be sick to my stomach."

Conan eyed her thoughtfully. "Events hie me to Argos, for 'tis said
Free-Companies are being hired there. Come with me, Karela. Together,
in a year, we'll rule the country."

The red-haired beauty stared at him, stricken. "Do you not understand
why I cannot, Cimmerian? By the Teats of Derketo, man, you wake in me
longings to be like that simpering wench, Julia! You make me embrace
weakness, make me want to let you protect me. Think you I'm a woman to
fold your blankets and cook your meals?"

"I've never asked such of you," he protested, but she ignored him. "One
day I would find myself walking a pace behind you, silent lest I should
miss your words, and I'd plant a dagger in your back for it. Then I
would likely weep myself to madness for the doing of what you brought
on yourself. I will not have it, Conan. I will not!"

A sense of loss filled him, but pride would not allow it to touch his
face. "At least you have gained one thing. This time I flee, and you
remain in Ophir."

"No, Conan. The vermin that formed my band are not worth the effort of
gathering them again. I go to the east." Her head came up, and her eyes
glowed like emeralds. "The plains of Zamora shall know the Red Hawk
again."

He fumbled in his pouch and drew out half the gems he had taken from
the scepter of Ophir. "Here," he said gruffly. Karela did not move.
"Can you not take a parting gift from a friend?" Hesitantly a slender
hand came to his; he let the gems pour into it.

"You are a better man that you know, Cimmerian," she whispered, "and I
am a fool." Her lips brushed his, and she was gone, running with the
cloak a scarlet banner behind her.

Conan watched until she passed out of sight below.

"Even the gods cannot understand the brain of a woman," Boros crackled.
"Men, on the other hand, rarely think with their brains at all." Conan
glared at the bearded man. He had forgotten Boros was still there.

"Now you can return to the taverns and your drinking," he said sourly.

"Not in Ophir," Boros said. He tugged at his beard and glanced
nervously toward the ruined mountaintop. "A god cannot be killed as if
it were an ordinary demon. Al'Kiir still lives-somewhere. Suppose his
body is buried yet up there, Suppose another of those images exists. I
will not be in this country if someone else attempts to raise him.
Argos, I think. The sea air will be good for my lungs, and I can take
ship for distant lands if I hear evil word from Ophir."

"Not in my company," Conan growled. "I travel alone."

"I can work magicks to make the journey easier," Boros protested, but
the Cimmerian was already making his way down the mountain. Chattering
continuously the gray-bearded man scrambled after Conan, who refused to
respond to his importunings.

Once more he was on his own, Conan thought, with only his sword and his
wits, but he had been so often before. There were the gems in his
pouch, of course. They would fetch something. And Argos lay ahead,
Argos and thoughts he had never entertained before. If chance could
bring a fool like Valentius to a throne, why could he not find a path?
Why indeed? Smiling, he quickened his pace.
