The two fighters met with a grating, scraping clash that rattled the curios in far comers of the chamber. The two blades were equally short and keen, well-chosen for battling in close quarters. Conan’s near nudity gave him a disadvantage; he was wrapped only in short, flimsy breeks from Yasmela’s guest closet, while Armiro appeared to be sheathed in soft leather under his cloak. But this did not keep the Aquilonian from pressing the attack, raining energetic slashes and thrusts which drove his adversary back and forced his henchmen to step aside and allow room.
Then, in a sudden turn of events, Conan’s deft skein of attack began to unwind just as swiftly. Armiro, with his back to the wall, snatched his cape loose from its fastening at his throat and whipped it expertly over his free arm. Using it as a shield to deflect the Aquilonian’s sword-cuts, the smaller, leaner man fought his way to the centre of the room and beyond. Conan had to give ground, darting gingerly to keep his unprotected skin clear of a casual but potentially fatal brush with steel.
The prince, leading with his swathed arm, lashed out viciously from under its cover with his flashing, clanging blade. Conan, for his part, never quite gained the balance and momentum to deliver a blow that would shear through cape and arm alike. His retreat led the fight away from the bed, where Yasmela sat gasping with each stroke. Her bright eyes shone with fear as they followed the duel—on whose behalf, it was not entirely clear.
Then Conan was forced back against the wall—and with a roar and a clang, the fight turned again. The Aquilonian king snatched up not a cloak but a side-table, swinging it against Armiro’s sword-arm with a force that propelled the younger man bodily into the centre of the room. There the prince staggered and fell to one knee, not visibly injured but clearly overcome, his blade raised defensively in a jarred, unsteady hand. Meanwhile Conan dashed forward, throwing aside the broken table. His skin shone pale in the lamplight as his back arched for a killing thrust.
“No, Conan, spare him! He is my son!”
Yasmela’s cry, ringing out in the gloom, may have stayed her lover’s hand for a fateful instant. In any event it did not matter—for even before her plea could echo in the close chamber, Armiro’s men had rushed forward on all sides, seizing hold of Conan and rescuing their prince. At the onslaught, the savage king’s blade lashed powerfully to one side, chopping into bone and flesh; but its maimed victim must have had the unheard-of courage to grasp the weapon and bear it down with him. In moments the king was unarmed, pressed to the floor by the remaining half-dozen guards. There he lay pinioned and gasping, with a pair of Kothian blades crossed at his throat.
“Why, thank you, dear Mother,” Armiro told Yasmela as he arose to his feet. “Your intercession on my behalf softens my heart toward you. I shan’t entertain such drastic remedies for your... malfeasances... as I was considering before. Though this unseemly alliance of yours”—he pointed with his sword to the still-struggling man on the floor—“is hardly a small indiscretion. ’
“Spare him, Armiro, please!” Yasmela cried. “Show him the same forbearance he would have shown you, for my sake.” Clutching her bedclothes pathetically against her breast, she leaned forward across the mattress and raised tear-stained eyes and a supplicating hand to her son. “Conan and I are dear friends of old. In truth, he did not force himself on me!”
Armiro laughed—a brittle, supercilious note. “No great surprise, Mother,” he said with chilly levity. “But tell me no more, I caution you. Remember, I have not always shown kindness or mercy to your ‘dear old friends!’”
He glanced down again to the thrashing figure on the floor, hedged in by the tight-ranked knot of his bodyguards. These men did not make the mistake of laughing along with their prince at such delicate personal matters; in any event they were too busy with their captive, whom they managed to pin down ruthlessly and efficiently.
“But this one,” the prince decided, “is too useful to kill, at least for now. He will make a valuable hostage or lure—perhaps even a manageable puppet king,” he added tauntingly, “someday. Marius, strings for our puppet!” He issued the command with a hard snap of his fingers.
Obediently a soldier, one of the two whose swords were crossed at Conan’s throat, reached to his belt and produced a coil of rawhide thongs. These he shook out into long loops. His fellow guards undertook the formidable task of forcing their captive’s wrists together behind his back.
“For your part, Mother,” Armiro went on, “I fear that your sojourn here is ended. You must continue your retreat from Khorajan state affairs, and your own fleshly ones, in some stronghold more remote and secure than this. I will undertake to see that your physical comfort is not greatly diminished.” The prince sheathed his sword and continued speaking in cold, authoritative accents. “The Tarnhold, henceforth, will be more heavily guarded. It will serve as a prison for this captive, and a trap for any venturesome souls who essay his rescue. Marius, once he is securely bound, have the servants ready one of the cells on the lower floor for him. And tell them to pack my mother’s things for a journey.” Armiro laid a hand tentatively on Yasmela’s tousled brow, then let it drop. “Mother, dear, you may dress yourself, but pray do so in the next room. Come.” Motioning briskly to her, he turned and quitted the room himself.
“Conan, I am sorry! I did not mean for you to be caught....” Yasmela’s voice dissolved into sobs, which retreated from him unseen as she took her leave. A moment later he heard her give a sharp cry of anguish, presumably on seeing the fallen Vateesa in the next room. Of the maidservant’s fate Conan could hear nothing. The intervening door slammed sharply, and the voices beyond were reduced to a murmur.
The king himself was trussed face-down on the floor, wrists and ankles bound together and both knots anchored to the heavy wooden bedstead. The hard, sharp thongs were knotted expertly, Conan could tell. With each loop cross-braided to the next in a sort of cuff, they restrained him securely, while only mildly numbing his hands and feet.
When the task was finished, the guard named Marius felt safe in leaving his captive untended on the floor. He departed the room with some of his fellows, telling off a pair of them to remain and keep watch. The voices of these two could shortly be heard from the balcony, commenting idly on the approach of sunrise over the lake.
Conan, lying in the chamber’s interior gloom, struggled futilely, tugging and prying at his bonds. While keeping as silent as he could, he inwardly cursed Yasmela, the Tarnhold, Armiro, his guardsmen, and most vehemently of all, himself. He had been a great fool to trust the princess-regent, who had always been a slave to her high-born family and kingdom. Now, it appeared, one of her high courtly liaisons had saddled her with a scheming offspring—complete with false pedigree, no doubt, and a boundless lust for true rank and power. Out of her years of bitter experience, Yasmela must have trained him well; the princeling’s resources, his energy, his cunning and cruelty in pursuit of conquest all seemed limitless.
Even his fencing, as it happened, was not bad; Conan had to yield him a grudging ounce of respect on that score. Though for a shameless whelp first to hide behind the skirts of his mother, and then publicly to scorn and revile her, was most reprehensible of all! If Conan could but escape this place and arm himself, why, nothing would keep him from maiming and flaying the wretched miscreant, be he Yasmela’s son or her pampered fancy-boy!
But that was mere bluster, he told himself, lying weaponless and hog-tied as he was. The wine of revenge against a foe as cunning as Armiro might have to be aged far longer, and savoured chill. For the moment he knew, more realistically, that if he could break free of these bonds, no earthly force could keep him from the balcony and the lake beyond. Now was the best time for it; in darkness he could certainly get clear of the Tarnhold.
But what stratagem could avail him? He had no weapon, and none was in reach. Teeth and toes were his only free-ranging digits, and neither could grasp the hard, tight knots which held him. The bed itself could scarcely be made to inch across the floor, at least
not without noise. He had no wish to amuse and edify his captors with clumsy, futile efforts.
The one object he had on his person, he remembered now, was the neck-charm he had taken from Yasmela. It nestled in a pouch at the front of his waist. Unthinkingly, he began straining his lashed wrists sideways around his hips, trying to reach it with a hooked forefinger. But what might he do with it, even so? Offer it as a bribe to his guards? Call on its magical powers, perhaps, to disguise himself, by making his bluff, battle-scarred features look as comely and persuasive as those of the effete prince? He snorted in disdain at the thought of such a wizardly ploy.
Nevertheless, the charm might be of use. By arching and twisting his shoulders as far as he could, he brought his finger to the lip of the narrow pouch. Its end probed inside and hooked the slender gold chain, which, by careful inches, he withdrew. The jewelled pendant stuck in the seam, then came free; in a moment it trailed loosely from his hand.
By inexorable logic the thought came to him. He arched his elbows away from his body and flipped the chain up over the bonds that held his wrist. Then he waited. The wait was a tense, uncertain thing—can mortal flesh sense magic at work, by some tingle or warmth? Could he feel it acting behind his back, even close up against his bare skin?
In moments he felt the change: the thongs about his wrists began to stretch and soften under the charm. As the hard cowhide slackened and became more supple and youthful, he worked tirelessly at it, methodically flexing and twisting his powerful arms. Over long moments the hide gave way; his hands pulled free, and he set to work on the bonds at his ankles.
XI
The Thing from the Pit
Immortal Kthantos, I am here—” In a far, twilit place the dwarf Delvyn stood at the edge of a softly lapping black fountain. “As well you know, O Godling! What do you wish of me this time?”
The pond’s dark substance stirred, not in any discernible wind. Yet it shivered perceptibly from rim to rim as if in mild distaste.
“Not wish, but require.” The deep, bodiless voice bubbled up from the pond’s centre. “I require, first, that you use a more worshipful term of address for me than ‘Godling’—something commensurate with my divinity and limitless power.”
“Very well, Demigod! But I hope that is not all you have summoned me here for.” With an air of impatience, the jester shifted his weight from one foot to the other at the pond’s stone curb. “I gather that your power continues to grow. In fact, I see that you have made repairs hereabouts—most tasteful ones, too.” His gaze surveyed the monumental stonework surrounding the pool. The fluted columns and stately entablatures were no longer ragged and crumbing; their dark silhouettes jutted up knife-edged, in stark perspective against the starless, paling sky. “Even so,” Delvyn ventured, “I would hardly call your powers limitless.”
“Limits are but a fleeting thing,” the bubbling voice replied. “Although from your low vantage they may seem insurmountable, to a god’s lofty perspective they are slight.”
“Low as my perspective may be, O godly Kthantos, ’tis loftier than yours.” The dwarf stood calmly regarding the pond at his feet. “If you seek respect from your worshippers, you might consider clothing your divinity in some shape more prepossessing than an oily puddle.”
“Something more tangible, you mean,” Kthantos answered warningly. “Some emblem or eidolon, perhaps, such as can easily fit into the puny minds and imaginations of earthbound mortals.” As the demigod spoke, a localized stirring occurred beneath the pond’s surface. Delvyn, feeling a sudden chill of unease, watched dark eddies moving and swirling closer to his place on the pond’s rim.
“Some symbol they can whittle copies of,” the god rumbled on, “to carry about in their grimy shirt waists, or house in humble shrines by the roadside. Would such a shape as this serve?”
Against the deep, sardonic bubbling of the voice, a dripping, trickling object raised itself up abruptly from the mire: a manlike form, yet skeletally thin, it glistened all over with the black, oily substance of the pond—or at least of its thicker bottom-muck. Rising up directly before the dwarf, it towered menacingly over him at a height several times his own.
“Is this incarnation lofty enough for you, little man?” While the godly voice blurted forth die question, the tarry skeleton’s lower jaw wagged along with it in a crude parody of speech.
Delvyn backed judiciously away from the looming shape; at this, the creature’s gaunt arms lifted from its sides. They unfolded, extended, then continued impossibly to unfold and extend far beyond the reach of any naturally formed being. At a point well behind the dwarf’s faltering steps, the hands drew together and almost met, effectively blocking his path of retreat with their bony, encircling clutch.
Each skeletal arm, the jester saw on uncomfortably close examination, was composed of a dozen or more ordinary human arm-bones jointed rudely together. Each long-taloned finger and thumb was a similar unlikely amalgam of human-looking joints. The limbs, though ungainly, did not seem to be impaired in leverage or dexterity by their unnatural structure; they flexed and twitched, as if eager to close on soft, mortal substance.
“Well, what think you?” Kthantos asked, bubbling forth copious amusement. “Is this a fitting emblem of my godhood?”
“Most impressive, Immortal One,” Delvyn responded carefully, “especially if it is intended as a threat to our enemies or a scourge of sinners. "It were better, perhaps, if such a frighting face were shown to unbelievers, rather than to our faithful adherents.”
“No matter, ’tis but a toy! I keep these mortal remains and other oddments here for my amusement.” Noiselessly, swiftly, the freakish skeleton folded in its extremities and settled back beneath the surface. “There has been precious little else to occupy me,” Kthantos said, “during the weary millennia my power has been confined to this pool.” At the godling’s whim, skeletal parts reassembled themselves at the surface of the pool and danced in random patterns there. Bony, disembodied hands slapped together in rhythm, and legs splashed to the clacking of oily black skeletal jaws. Meanwhile, spines and rib-cages swam and dove like schools of frolicking dolphins.
“Truly,” Kthantos continued, “this is but idle exercise. When in time I bestir myself to command the world from this puddle, there will be no question of my godliness. Speaking of that, acolyte, how goes our campaign?”
Delvyn, called thus suddenly to account, nodded with a careful appearance of satisfaction. “It goest well, Immortal One. The king whom I have chosen is a swift and furious fighter, a commander able to hold his own against any rival on earth. Thus far he has overrun half of one kingdom and unleashed war on a second, posing a formidable challenge to his enemy’s flank.”
“Which king, then, are you referring to?” the godly voice asked. “The barbarous brute Conan or the sly Armiro?”
“Why, King Conan of Aquilonia, O Immortal One!” In replying to his master, the jester sounded somewhat startled and unsure. “Though ’tis true, if the Aquilonian were bested in this world-spanning conflict, our hopes would then ride on the one named Armiro. I would swiftly gain his ear and use my persuasions on him, but I doubt that he would prove as tractable as the northern monarch.” The supplicant stood thoughtfully silent a moment before he spoke again. “Since you have so much knowledge, Immortal One, regarding a matter I have not heretofore troubled you with, ’tis evident that you have other, varied sources of information.”
“Varied enough to know that your champion’s glorious quest for world conquest has been halted this past fortnight, with your king vanished from his subjects’ sight. Abdicated, captured, or, as the ever-spreading whisper has it, dead—such a state bodes not well for his hope of empire.”
“Nay, Immortal Kthantos,” the dwarf protested, “King Conan is not dead! I would know if he were! Remember, he is a great leader, a man of truly royal whims. He is entering upon a time of turbulent passions—standing as he does, at my urging, on the threshold of world dominion.” The dwarf shrugg
ed as if to minimize the king’s absence. “So he betakes himself where he will without warning, delegating his great projects to his followers, who are unfailingly capable, unquestioningly loyal. All this has been foreseen, and is merely a part of my great strategy.” Delvyn gestured theatrically, building an eloquent defence. “’Tis consistent with our plans that he seize every chance, and for the best—after all, the last time he did so, a great city fell into his outstretched hand like an overripe plum.”
“You are a glib mortal!” Kthantos said. “And yet, can you honestly claim that his long absence from the battlefront and from your control does not endanger our purpose?” From the dark surface of the pond, a crowd of skeletal arms now raised stubs of frail, rotted swords and fenced with one another in mock combat. “If he is off spying or adventuring, why are you not with him? What if he is slain or captured? How can you possibly hope to protect him—or else betray him timely, and fall in with his vanquished?”
“Aye, great Kthantos, I must admit”—the dwarf allowed his shoulders to slump with an air of confession—“my control is less than complete. True, he is a slave of his own pride and lust, as befits a king; and he seems fully enamoured of the goals I have set for him. His sudden whims and excesses, as a rule, only serve to strengthen my hand. But down the course of his life, if I gather correctly, his path has oft been unduly swayed by women. There is his queen, Zenobia, always a threat—her I plan to counterbalance with the wanton Amlunia, who is a safe, predictable force, a player of our own sort. But now emerges another female, a queen in the enemy camp, named Yasmela. How great her role may be, I cannot say; but I do not like it. It is to her rescue that Conan has flown—”
“Would it help your scheming,” Kthantos’ bubbling voice insinuated, “if I told you that the woman Yasmela is Prince Armiro’s mother?”
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