Too, entering on the upper levels meant that every step took a man closer to the ground and his route to escape. Escape was especially important this night, for the two women if not for him.
Cornices, friezes and a hundred elaborate workings of alabaster stone made a swift path for the big Cimmerian. Slipping through a narrow window just below the roof, he found himself in a pitch-dark stuffy room. By touch he quickly ascertained that it was a storeroom for carpets and bedding. The narrow door opened onto a corridor dimly lit by brass lamps. No gold hangings or fine tapestries here, for these upper floors were servants' quarters. Snores drifted from some of the rooms. As silent and grim as a hunting cat, Conan padded into the hall.
Stairs led him down.
Sounds floated from other parts of the palace-an indistinguishable murmur of voices, the thrum of a cithern. Once the single deep toll of a gong echoed mournfully. The Cimmerian let them pass all but unnoticed, his eyes and ears straining instead for the flicker of shadow or hint of a soft footfall that might betray any who could give an alarm.
It was a bedchamber he sought, he was sure of that. From what he knew of Kandar, such would have been his first stop with the women, and it would no doubt suit his fancy to have them awaiting his return were he not still with them. Conan hoped that he was. Karim Singh and Naipal would certainly escape him this night but it would be good to deal with Kandar at least.
The first three bedchambers he found were empty, though golden lamps cast soft light in wait for their eventual occupants. As he stepped into the fourth, only a sense below the levels of understanding threw him into a forward roll an instant before razor steel slashed through the place where his head had been.
Conan came to his feet with broadsword in hand, and a vigorous cut made his attacker leap back. The Cimmerian stared at his opponent, for he had not seen the man's like before, not even in this strange land. A nasaled helm with a thick spike topped his dark expressionless face, and his armor was of leather studded with brass. A long straight sword was in his gauntleted right hand, a shorter curved blade in his left, and he moved as though he knew well the use of each.
"I am here for the women," Conan said in a taunting voice. If he could make the man exchange words with him, the other might not think to give an alarm even while they strove to slay each other. "Tell me where they are, and I'll not kill you." The man's silent rush forced him to throw up his blade in defense.
And it was defense, the Cimmerian realized in shock. His broadsword flashed and darted as swiftly as ever it had, but it was all in a desperate effort to keep the other's steel from striking him. For the first time in his life he faced a man faster than himself. Slashes with the speed of a striking viper forced him back. Snarling, he gambled, continuing the motion of a block with a smash of his fisted hilt to his opponent's face.
The strangely armored man was thrown back, an inlaid table crushed to splinters by his fall, but before Conan could take more than a single step to follow up his attack, the other sprang to his feet. Conan met him in the center of the room, and sparks were struck as steel wove a deadly lace between them. The Cimmerian poured all of his rage-at Kandar, at Naipal, at Karim Singh-into his attack, refusing this time to yield a step. Abruptly a slicing blow of his broadsword sheared through flesh and bone, but even as it did, he was forced to jump back to avoid a decapitating stroke.
Landing on guard and ready to continue, Conan felt the hair on the back of his neck stir. His last blow had stopped his opponent-and indeed it should have, as the short curved sword now lay on the carpet along with the hand that gripped it-but it was obviously only a temporary halt.
That expressionless face had not changed in the least, and the dark flat eyes did not so much as glance at the severed wrist, a wound that gave not a single drop of blood. Sorcery, the Cimmerian thought.
Suddenly the silence in which the other had fought took on eerie quality. And then the murderous assault began anew.
If the sorcerous warrior was accustomed to fighting with two swords, he seemed little less able with only one. Conan met each lightning stroke but his own were met as well. He could match the other now, the Cimmerian knew, one blade against one blade, but could mortal flesh outlast the endurance of sorcery?
Abruptly the severed stump struck the side of Conan's head with a force greater than he would have believed possible, flinging him back as though he were a child. It was his turn to find himself on his back amidst the ruins of a table, but before he could rise, his attacker was on him. Desperately Conan blocked a downward blow that would have split his skull. Among the wreckage of the table his hand closed on a hilt, and he thrust. The other man twisted like a serpent, and the blade cut through his leather armor, slicing across his ribs. As though his bones had melted, the dark warrior collapsed atop Conan.
Quickly the Cimmerian heaved the body from him and sprang to his feet with sword ready, fearing some trick. The leather-armored figure did not move; the flat black eyes were glazed.
In wonder Conan looked at the weapon he had taken up and almost dropped it as he cursed. It seemed a short-sword but the hilt was long enough for two hands, and blade and hilt alike were wrought of some strange silvery metal that glowed with unearthly light.
A smell made his nose twitch and he cursed again. It was the stink of putrefaction. Within the leather armor the corpse of his opponent was already half-decayed, white bone showing through rotted flesh. An ensorcelled warrior slain by an obviously ensorcelled blade. Part of his mind urged Conan to leave the foul thing but another part whispered that such might be useful against a sorcerer like Naipal. Mages were not always so easily slain as other men.
Sheathing his broadsword, he hastily tore silk from the coverlets on the bed and wrapped the silvery weapon, thrusting it behind his swordbelt. As he did so, he heard pounding boots approaching, many of them. The splintered tables, with scattered chests and broken crystal and shattered mirrors, were mute evidence that the battle had not been silent after all. Muttering imprecations, he ran for the windows, climbing through just as a score of Vendhyan soldiers poured into the room.
Once more alabaster ornamentations were his roadway along the wall, but behind him he heard cries of alarm. Upward he climbed, grasping a balustrade to pull himself onto a balcony ... and stopping with one foot over at the sight of another dozen men in turbaned helms. A thrown spear streaked by his head and he threw himself desperately back as other arms were cocked.
Even with knees bent, the force of landing shook him to the bone. More voices took up the cry of alarm, and the thud of running boots came from both left and right. A spear lanced from above to quiver in the ground not a pace from him. He leaped away from the wall, and another spear shivered where he had stood. Bent double, he ran into the garden between the reflecting pools, becoming one with the shadows.
"Guards!" the cries rose. "Guards!" "Beat the gardens!"
"Find him!"
From the edge of the trees Conan watched, teeth bared in a snarl.
Soldiers milled about the palace like ants about a kicked anthill.
There would be no entering that palace again tonight.
Pain ripped through him, muscles spasming, doubling him over. Gasping for breath, he forced himself erect. His hand closed on the silkshrouded hilt of the strange weapon. "I am not dead yet," he whispered, "and it will not be over until I am." With no more sound than the wind in the leaves, he faded into the darkness.
Naipal stared at the ruin of his bedchamber in shocked disbelief, willing himself not to breathe the smell of decay that hung in the air.
The shouts of searching soldiers did not register on his ear. Only the contents of that chamber were real at that moment, and they in a way that turned his stomach with fear and sent blinding pains through his head.
The leather armor held his eye with sickly fascination. A skull grinned up at him from the ancient helm. Bones and dust were all that was left of his warrior. His warrior who could not die. The first of an army t
hat could not die. In the name of all the gods, how had it happened?
With an effort he pulled his gaze from the leather-clad skeleton, but inexorably it fell on the long golden coffer, now lying on its side amid splinters of ebony that had been a table, lying there open and empty. Empty! Shards of elaborately carved ivory were all that was left of the mirror of warning, and naught but a hundred jagged pieces remained of the mirror itself.
Grunting, he bent to pick up half a dozen of the mirror fragments.
Each, whatever its size, was filled by an image, an image that would be on all the other pieces as well, an image that would never change now.
Wonderingly, he studied that grim face in the fragments, a square-cut black mane held back by a leather cord, strange eyes the color and hardness of sapphire, a feral snarl baring white teeth.
He knew who it had to be. The man who called himself Patil. Karim Singh's simple barbarian. But the mirror, even now at the last, would show only what threatened his plans. Could a simple barbarian do that?
Could a simple barbarian seek him out so quickly? Know to break the mirror and steal the demon-wrought dagger? Slay what could not be slain? The pieces fell from Naipal's fingers as he whispered the word he did not want to believe. "Pan-kur-."
"What was that?" Karim Singh asked as he entered the room. The wazam carefully kept his eyes from the thing in leather armor on the floor.
"You look exhausted, Naipal. Kandar's servants will clean this mess, and his soldiers will deal with the intruder. You must rest. I will not have you collapse before you can serve me as king."
"We must go immediately," Naipal said. He rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers. The strain of the past days wore at him, and he would not now take the effort to feign servility. "Tell Kandar to gather his soldiers."
"I have been thinking, Naipal. What will it matter if we wait a few days? Surely it will rain soon, and the stinging flies are said to be better after a rain."
"Fool!" the wizard howled, and Karim Singh's jaw dropped. "You will have me serve you as king? Wait and you will not be king, you will be meat for dogs!" Naipal's eyes went to the scattered fragments of mirror and slid away. "And tell Kandar we must have more soldiers. Tell him to strip the fortress if need be. A simple spell will divert your fearsome flies."
"The governor is uneasy," Karim Singh said shakily. "He obeys but I can tell that he does not believe my reasons for ordering the street children arrested. Given the mood of the city, he might refuse such a command and even if he obeys, he will doubtless send riders to Ayodhya, to Bhandarkar."
"Do not fear Bhandarkar. If you must fear someone . . ." Naipal's voice was soft, but his eyes burned so that Karim Singh took a step back and seemed to have trouble breathing. "Tell the governor that if he defies me, I will wither his flesh and put him in the streets as a tongueless beggar to watch his wives and daughters dragged away to brothels. Tell him!" And the wazam of Vendhya fled like a servant. Naipal forced his gaze back to the fragments of mirror, back to the hundred-times repeated image.
"You will not conquer, pan-kur-," he whispered. "I will yet be victorious over you."
Chapter XXI
Hordo had been right about the Street of Dreams, Conan thought when he first saw it in the gray light of dawn. The stallion picked its way along the dirt roadway between muddy pools of offal and piles of rubble overgrown with weeds. The buildings were skulls, with empty windows for eye sockets. Roofs sagged where they had not fallen in. Walls leaned and some had collapsed, spewing clay bricks across the dirt of the Street, revealing barren, rat-infested interiors. Occasional ragged, furtive shapes appeared in a doorway or darted across the street behind him. The people of the Street of Dreams were like scurrying rodents, fearful to poke their noses into the light. The stench of decay and mold filled the air. Ill dreams indeed, Conan thought. Ill dreams indeed.
The abandoned temple was not hard to find, a domed structure with pigeons fluttering through gaping holes in the dome. Once eight fluted marble columns had stood across its front, but now three had fallen.
Two lay in fragments across the street, weeds growing thickly along their edges. Of the third only a stump remained. Part of the front wall had fallen too, revealing that what must have once seemed to be marble blocks were in truth only a stone facing over clay bricks. The opening widened and heightened the temple door enough for a man to enter on horseback. There was no sign of the smugglers but the gloomy interior could have hidden them easily. Or ten times their number of the area's denizens. Conan drew his sword. He had to duck his head as he rode through the gap in the wall.
Within was a large dim room, its cracked floor tiles covered with dust and broken bricks. The thick pillars here were of wood, all splintered with rot. At the far end of the chamber there was a marble altar, its edges chipped and cracked, but of whatever god it had been raised to, there was no evidence.
Before the stallion had taken three paces into the room, Hordo appeared from behind a pillar. "It is about time you got here, Cimmerian. I was all but ready to give you up for dead this time."
Enam and Shamil stepped out, too, with arrows nocked but not drawn.
Both had bandages showing. "We did not know it was you," the young Turanian said. "There are pigeons roasting on a spit in the back, if you are hungry."
"We try to hide the smell of them," Enam said, spitting. "The people here are like vermin. They look ready to swarm over anyone with food like a pack of rats."
Conan nodded as he stepped down from the saddle. Once on the ground, he had to hold onto the stirrup leather for a moment; the pains and dizziness had not returned, but weakness had come in their place. "I have seen nothing like them," he said. "In Turan or Zamora it is a far cry from palace to beggar, but here it seems two different lands."
"Vendhya is a country of great contrasts," Kang Hou said, approaching from the rear of the ruined structure.
"It is like a melon rotting from within," Conan replied. "A fruit overripe for plucking." The weakness was lessening. It came in cycles.
"Someday perhaps I will return with an army and pluck it."
"Many have said as much," the Khitan replied, "yet the Kshatriyas still rule here. Forgive my unseemly haste, but Hordo has told us you sought Prince Kandar's palace last night. You could not find my niece? Or Lady Vyndra?"
"I could not reach them," Conan said grimly. "But I will before I am done."
Kang Hou's face did not change expression, and all he said was, "Hasan says the pigeons must be taken from the fire. He suggests they be eaten before they grow cold."
"The man must have a heart like stone," Hordo muttered as the other two smugglers followed the Khitan out.
"He is a tough man for a merchant," Conan agreed. He tugged the silk-wrapped weapon from his belt and handed it to his friend. "What do you make of this?"
Hordo gasped as the cloth fell away, revealing the faintly glowing silvery metal. "Sorcery! As soon as I heard there was a wizard in this, I should have turned my horse around." His eye squinted as he peered at the weapon. "This design makes no sense, Cimmerian. A two-handed hilt on a short-sword?"
"It slew a man, or a thing, that my sword did not slow," Conan said.
The one-eyed man winced and hastily rebundled the silk about the weapon. "I do not want to know about it. Here. Take it." He chewed at nothing as the Cimmerian returned the weapon to its place tucked behind his swordbelt, then said, "There has been no sign of Ghurran. How did you pass the night without his potion?"
"Without missing the foul thing," Conan grunted. "Come. I could eat a dozen of those pigeons. Let us get to them before they are gone." There were two large windowless rooms at the back of the temple, one without a roof. In that room was the fire; the other was used as a stable. Enam and Shamil squatted by the fire, wolfing down pigeon. The Khitan ate more delicately, while Hasan sat against a wall, clasping his knees and scowling at the world.
"Where is Kuie Hsi?" Conan wanted to know.
"Sh
e left before first light," Hordo told him around mouthfuls of roast pigeon, "to see what she could discover."
"I have returned," the Khitan woman said from the door, "again learning much and little. I was slow in returning because the mood of the city is ugly. Angry crowds roam the streets and ruffians take advantage. A woman alone, I was twice almost assaulted."
"You have a light step," Conan complimented her. He would wager that the men who had "almost" assaulted her rued the incident if they still lived. "What is this much and little you have learned?"
Still in her Vendhyan garb, Kuie Hsi looked hesitantly at Kang Hou, who merely wiped his lips with a cloth and waited. "At dawn," she began slowly, "Karim Singh entered the city. The wizard, Naipal, was with him, and Prince Kandar. They took soldiers from the fortress, increasing the number of their escort to perhaps one thousand lances, and left the city, heading west. I heard a soldier say they rode to the Forests of Ghelai. The chests in which you are so interested went with them on mules."
For an instant Conan teetered on the horns of decision. Karim Singh and Naipal might escape him. There was no way to tell how much time he had left before the poison overtook him completely. Yet he knew there was only one way to decide. "If they took so many soldiers," he said, "few can remain at Kandar's palace to guard Vyndra and Chin Kou."
Kuie Hsi let her eyes drop to the floor, and her voice became a whisper. "There were two women with them, veiled but unclothed, and bound to their saddles. One was Chin Kou, the other the Vendhyan woman.
Forgive me, uncle. I could see her but could do nothing."
"There is nothing to forgive," Kang Hou said, "for you have in no way failed. Any failure is mine alone."
"Perhaps it is," Conan said quietly, "but I cannot feel but that neither woman would be where she is except for me. And that means it is on me to see them safe. I will not ask any of you to accompany me.
The Conan Compendium Page 232