Conan had to control a desire to reach for his sword as a S'tarra fully as large as he suddenly stepped from a side passage. He wondered if the mage had some means of communicating with his servants without words. Such a thing could be dangerous to a thief.
The big S'tarra gestured with a long, claw-tipped hand. "This way," it hissed. There was no subservience in its manner toward them, but rather a touch of arrogance in those red eyes.
Conan could feel the eyes of the sorcerer on his back as he followed the dark-eyed man's minion. At the portcullis Sitha gestured without speaking for the heavy iron grate to be raised. From within the barbican came the creak of the windlass. Clanking chains pulled the grate to chest height on Karela. Sitha gestured abruptly, and the creak of the windlass ceased. The S'tarra's fanged mouth cracked in a mocking smile as it gestured for them to go.
"Do you not realize we are your master's guests?" Karela demanded hotly. "I'll-"
Conan grabbed her arm in his huge hand and pulled her protesting under the grate after him. It began to clank down at the very instant they were clear.
"Let's just be thankful to be out," Conan said, starting down the ramp. He saw Hordo waiting at the foot of it.
Karela strode angrily beside him, rubbing her arm. "You muscle-bound oaf! I'll not take much more of this from you. I intend to see that Amanar punishes that big lizard. These S'tarra must learn proper respect for us, else my hounds will constantly be goaded into fighting them. I might even carve that Sitha myself."
Conan looked at her in surprise. "You intend to accept this offer? The Red Hawk will wear this sorcerer's jesses and stoop at his command?"
"Have you no eyes, Conan? Five hundred of the scaled ones he commands, perhaps more. My hounds could not take this keep were they ten times their number, and I will not waste them against its walls in vain. On the other hand, if all the gold that you and I and all my pack have ever seen in our lives were heaped in one pile it would not equal the hundredth part of what I saw within."
"I've seen a lot of gold," Conan snorted. "How much of it stuck to my fingers, and how much of this would, is another matter. This Amanar prates of a better way for mankind, but I've never met a sorcerer who did not tread a black path. Think you what he will ask you to do for his payment."
"A safe haven," she snapped back, "close to the caravan route. No longer will I need to send my men off to hide as caravan guards when the army hunts us too closely. No longer must I play the fortuneteller while I wait to rejoin them. These things are worth much to me."
The Cimmerian snarled deep in his throat. "They mean naught to me. The Desert is haven enough. I came here to steal five pendants, not to serve a practitioner of the black arts."
They reached the bottom of the ramp, and Hordo looked from one to the other of them. "You two arguing again?" the one-eyed man growled. "What had this Amanar to say?"
The two ignored him, squaring off at one another.
Karela bit off her words. "He does not have the pendants. Remember, it was he who first mentioned them. And I saw no more than a handful of women among his servants, not one of whom looked to be your dancing girl."
"You talked of the pendants?" Hordo said incredulously.
Conan spared the bearded bandit not a glance. "You believe the man? A sorcerer? He'd have us think the mountains filled with tribes of S'tarra, whole nations of them, but that wounded one we followed was coming here. He knows of the pendants because his minions stole them."
"Sorcerer!" Hordo gasped. "The man's a sorcerer?"
Karela's green eyes flashed to the one-eyed man, the blaze in them so fierce that he took a step back.
"Show me where you've camped my hounds," she snapped. "I'll see they're bedded properly." She stalked away without waiting for a reply.
Hordo blinked at Conan. "I'd best go after her. She's going the wrong way. We'll talk later." He darted after the red-haired woman.
Conan turned to look back up at the fortress. Dimly, through the grate of the portcullis, he could make out a shape, a S'tarra, watching him. Though he could distinguish no more than it was there, he knew it was Sitha. Fixing what he could remember of the keep's interior in his head, he went in search of the others.
Chapter XX
A gibbous moon crept slowly over the valley of the Keep of Amanar while purple twilight yielded to the blackness of full night. And blackness it was, except about the fires where the bandits huddled well away from the keep, for the pale light of the moon seemed not to enter that maleficent vale.
"I've never seen a night like this," Hordo grumbled, tipping a stone jar of kil to his mouth.
Conan squatted across the fire from the one-eyed brigand. It was a larger blaze than he would have built, but Hordo as well as the others appeared to be trying to keep the night at bay.
"It is the place, and the man," the Cimmerian said, "not the night."
His eyes followed Karela for a moment, where she moved among the other fires stopping at each for a word, and a swallow of kil, and a laugh that more often than not sounded strained on the part of the men.
She had decked herself in her finest, golden breastplates, emerald girdle, a crimson cape of silk and her scarlet thigh-boots. Conan wondered whether her attire was for the benefit of the others, or if she, too, felt the oppression of the darkness that pressed against their fires.
Hordo scrubbed his mouth with the back of his hand and tossed another dried dung-chip on the fire. "A sorcerer. To think we would ever serve such. She won't let me tell them, you know. That this Amanar's a mage, I mean." He added yet another chip to the blaze.
Conan edged back from the heat. "Soon or late, they'll find out." He checked the position of the moon, then laughed to himself. In that valley there might as well be no moon and sky full of rain clouds. A good night for a thief.
"More kil, Cimmerian? No? More for me, then." The one-eyed man turned the stone jar up and did not lower it until it was dry. "It'd take vats of this to comfort my bones this night. A mage. Aberius darts his eyes like a ferret. He'll bolt the first chance he sees. And Talbor says openly he'd ride out on the instant, could he find two coppers to steal."
"Why wait for the coppers?" Conan asked. "You like this thing as little as Aberius or Talbor. Why not ride out on the morrow?" It was in his mind that by dawn Amanar might not be so friendly toward the bandits. "You can persuade her if anyone can, and I think a night like this would be halfway to convincing her for you."
"You do not know her," Hordo muttered, avoiding the Cimmerian's blue-eyed gaze. "Once a thing is in her mind to do, she does it, and there an end to it. And what she does, I do." He did not sound particularly happy about that last.
"I think I'll take a walk," Conan said, rising.
Hordo's lone eye stared at him incredulously. "A walk! Man, it's black as Ahriman's heart out there!"
"And it's hot as the gates of Gehanna here," Conan laughed. "If you build that fire any higher, you'll melt."
He walked into the night before the other man could say more.
Once away from the pool of light cast by the fires-not far in that strange, malevolent night he stopped to let his eyes adjust as best they could. By touch he checked the Karpashian dagger on his left forearm, and slung his sword across his back. He had no rope or grappel, but he did not think he would need either.
After a time he realized that he could see, in a fashion. The full moon, glowing blue-green in the sky, should have lit the night brightly. The thin, attenuated light that in truth existed flickered unnaturally.
Objects could only be detected by gradations of blackness, and in that dark lambence all appeared to quiver and move.
Quickly he started toward the fortress, biting back a string of oaths as rocks turned beneath his feet on the slope and boulders loomed out of the black, often to be detected first by his outstretched hands.
Then the wall of the keep reared before him, as if the black of the night had been concentrated and solidified.
The g
argantuan stones of that wall seemed to form an unbroken vertical plane, yet were there finger- and toe-holds to be found by a man who knew where to look. Conan moved up that sheer escarpment heedless of the infinite darkness beneath him, and the rocks that would dash his life out if his grasp slipped.
Short of the top of the wall he stopped, clinging like a fly, massive body flattened tightly against the ebon stone. Above him the S'tarra sentries' boots grated closer, and past. In an instant he scrambled through the embrasure, across the parapet, and let himself down over the inner edge. The climb down into the other bailey was easier, for that side of the wall had not been designed with the intent of stopping anyone from scaling it.
His feet found the paving stones, and he squatted against the wall to get his bearings. Scattered lamps, brass serpents with wicks burning in their mouths, cast occasional pools of light within the fortress. The heavy iron-strapped gates letting into the inner bailey stood open, and apparently unguarded. But that would be a dangerous assumption to make. He was choosing a spot to scale the inner rampart when a movement caught his eye.
From the shadows to his left down the wall a man darted across the bailey. As he passed through the meager light cast by a serpent lamp Conan recognized Talbor. So the man was not waiting to find his two coppers to steal. The Cimmerian only hoped the other raised no alarm to make his own task more difficult. Talbor ran straight to the open gate into the inner bailey and passed through.
Conan forced himself to wait. If Talbor was taken it would be no time for him to be halfway up the inner wall. No alarm was raised. Still he waited, and still there was no sound.
The Cimmerian uncoiled from his crouch and walked across the bailey, carefully avoiding the sparse pools of light from the serpent lamps. If glimpsed, he would be no more than another moving shadow, and it was rapid motion that drew the eye at night. He slowed, examining the gateway carefully. The guardpost was empty.
He went through the gate at the same slow walk and crossed the inner bailey. From the walls behind he could hear the tread of sentries' boots, their pace unchanging.
As he approached the huge cube of the donjon he chose his entry point. Best, because highest, would have been the single-black tower that rose into the darkness at one corner, but he had seen in the daylight that whatever mason had constructed it had been a master. He had been able to detect no slightest crack between the carefully fitted stones. It reminded him uncomfortably of the Elephant Tower of the necromancer Yara, though that had glittered even in the dark where this seemed one with the night.
The walls of the donjon itself presented no such problem, though, and he quickly found himself squeezing with difficulty through an overly broad arrowslit on the top level. Once inside he swiftly drew his sword.
A single oil lamp on the wall was lit; he began to examine his surroundings.
The purpose of the room he could not fathom. Its only furnishing, other than tapestries on the walls, seemed to be a single high-backed chair of carved ivory set before a gameboard, one hundred squares of alternating colors set in the floor. Pieces in the shapes of bizarre animals, each as high as his knee, were scattered about the board. He hefted one, and grunted in surprise. He had thought it gilded, but from its weight it had to be of solid gold. Could he depart with two or three of those, he would have no need of the pendants. Even one might do.
Regretfully he set the piece, a snarling, winged ape-creature back on the board. He must yet find Velita, and to attempt to do so burdened with that weight would be madness. With great care he cracked the door. The marble-walled hall was brightly lit by silver lamps. And empty. He slipped out.
As he moved along that corridor, its floor red-and-white marble lozenges in an intricate pattern, he realized that he moved through a strange silence. He had entered many great houses and palaces in the dead of night, and always there was some sound, however slight. Now he could have moved through a tomb in which no thing breathed. Indeed, as he cautiously examined room after room he saw no living thing. No S'tarra. No human servant. No Velita. He hurried his pace, and went down curving alabaster stairs to the next floor.
Through two more floors he searched, and the opulence he saw paled the golden figures to insignificance.
A silver statue of a woman with sapphires for eyes, rubies for nipples and pearls for the nails of her fingers. A table encrusted with diamonds and emeralds till it cast back the light of silver lamps a hundredfold. A golden throne set with a king's ransom in black opals.
And then he was peering into a room, plain beside the others for merely being paneled in amber and ivory, peering at a pair of rounded female buttocks. Their owner knelt, naked, with her back to the door and her face pressed to the floor. The muscular youth found himself smiling at the view, and sternly drew his mind back to the matter at hand. She was the first living soul he had seen, and human rather than S'tarra.
One quick stride took him to the bent form; a big hand clasped over her mouth lifted her from the floor.
And he was staring into Velita's large, liquid brown eyes.
"Come, girl," he said, loosing his hold, "I was beginning to think I'd never find you."
She threw her arms around him, pressing her soft breasts against his broad chest. "Conan! You did come. I never really believed, though I hoped and prayed. But it's too late. You must go away before Amanar returns." A shudder went through her slim form as she said the name.
"I swore to free you, didn't I?" he said gruffly. "Why are you kneeling here like this? I've seen no one else at all, neither S'tarra nor human."
"S'tarra are not allowed in the donjon when Amanar isn't here, and humans are locked in their quarters unless he desires them." She tilted her head up, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "I didn't betray you, Conan. Not even when Sitha whipped me. I would not tell Amanar who you are."
"It's over, Velita," he said.
She seemed not to hear. Tears trembled on her long lashes. "He became enraged. For my punishment several times a day, without warning, I am commanded to come to this room and kneel until I am told to leave. When I hear footsteps I never know if I am to be sent back to my mat, or if it is Amanar.
Sometimes he merely stands, listening to me weep. I hate him for making me fear him so, and I hate myself for weeping, but I can't help it. Sometimes he beats me while I kneel, and if I move the punishment begins again."
"I'll kill him," Conan vowed grimly. "This I swear to you on pain of my life. Come, we'll find the pendants, and I'll take you away this night."
The lithesome naked girl shook her small head firmly. "I cannot go, Conan. I am spell-caught."
"Spell-caught!"
"Yes. Once I tried to escape, and my feet carried me to Amanar. Against my will I found myself telling him what I intended. Another time I tried to kill myself, but when the dagger point touched my breast my arms became like iron. I could not move them, even to set the knife down. When they found me Amanar made me beg before he would free me."
"There must be a way. I could carry you away" But he saw the flaw in that even as she laughed sadly.
"Am I to remain bound the rest of my life for fear of returning to his place? I don't know why I even tried to take my life," she sighed heavily. "I'm sure Amanar will kill me soon. Only Susa and I remain. The others have disappeared."
The big Cimmerian nodded. "Mages are not easily killed-this I know for truth-but once dead their spells die with them. Amanar's death will free you."
"Best you take the pendants and go," she said. "I can tell you where they are. Four are in the jeweled casket, in a room I can show you. The fifth, the one I wore, is in the chamber where he works his magics." She frowned and shook her head. "The others he tossed aside like offal. That one he wrapped in silk and laid in a crystal coffer."
The memory of the stone came back to Conan. A black oval the length of his finger joint, with red flecks that danced within. Suddenly he seized Velita's arms so hard that she cried out. "His eyes," he said urgently. "That s
tone is like his eyes. In some way it is linked to him. He'll free you rather than have it destroyed. We'll go down to his thaumaturgical chamber-"
"Down? His chamber is in the top of the tower above us. Please release me, Conan. My arms are growing numb."
Hastily he loosed his grip. "Then what lies at the end of that passage that seems to lead into the mountain?"
"I know not," she replied, "save that all are forbidden to enter it. His chamber is where I said. I've been taken to him there. Would the gods had trade him like Tiridates," she added bitterly, "a lover of boys."
"Then we'll go up to his chamber," Conan said. She shook her head once more. "What's the matter now?" he asked.
"There is a spell on the stairway in the tower whenever he is out of the donjon. Truly he trusts no one, Conan. One of the human servants climbed that stair while Amanar was gone to meet you." She shivered and buried her face against his chest. "He screamed forever, it seemed, and none could get close even to end his misery."
He smoothed her hair awkwardly with a big hand. "Then I must enter the donjon when he is here. But if he isn't here now, Velita, where is he?"
"Why, in your camp of bandits. I heard him say that the night might affright them, so he has taken them rare wines and costly viands for a feasting."
Conan raised his hand helplessly. It seemed the gods conspired against him at every turn. "Velita, I must go back to the camp. If he suspects I'm here ...."
"I know," she said quietly. "I knew from the first you could not take me with you."
"Does not my standing here tell you my oath-sworn word is good? I will see Amanar dead, and you free."
"No!" she cried. "Amanar is too powerful. You'll die to no purpose. I release you from your oath, Conan.
Leave these mountains and forget that I exist."
"You cannot release me from an oath sworn before gods," he said calmly, "and I will not release myself from one sworn on my life."
"Then you will die. Yet I do pray that somehow you will find a way. Please go now, Conan. I must await Amanar's return, and I don't want you to see me...." The slender girl's head dropped, and her shoulders quivered with sobs.
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