“How so?” he asked, knowing he would not relish the answer.
“Preserving ourselves from the Powers, and then from the curse of the sun, solved only our most immediate problem,” she said. “What we had done to ourselves hi our pursuit of wizardly knowledge needed undoing.”
“You mean mixing human blood with inhuman?” he asked.
“Exactly. The folk who first burrowed here beneath the earth would not look to you like your near kin, to say the least”
His flesh crept at the thought. “That I can well imagine.”
“What was needed first was a strict breeding program, to eliminate all trace of the nonhuman from among us. It took hundreds of generations, but at last the deed was accomplished and at last the people of Janagar became truly human once more.”
This, the Cimmerian gravely doubted. There was more to humanity than appearance, and a bloodline so utterly polluted could never be rendered truly human again. He suspected that they had
achieved no more than to regain the look of humanity.
“Once again,” she said, “our great accomplishment came at an equally great price. Our pool of human blood was too restricted from the beginning. For reasons both supernatural and alchemical, there are undesirable consequences to be met when building from so narrow a base.”
“A lot of words,” Conan said, “to say that inbreeding produces degeneracy.”
“You oversimplify,” she said, frowning. “We are not breeding animals here, but human beings. In any case, it has been our policy that whenever human stock of exceptional merit should happen our way, we introduce it into our bloodlines. The desert being what it is, this does not happen often.”
“Why do you not go out and find fresh blood on your own?” he demanded.
“You forget that we cannot abide the rays of the accursed sun. No. here we stay, and any new stock must come to us. Long ago, we exhausted the possibilities of the desert nomads. For a while, a single nomadic tribe brought us captives of exceptional merit, but the desert grew too vast In the end, they could no longer carry enough water Co keep themselves and their captives alive for the journey.
They were the last outside people to know the location of Janagar.”
Conan guessed that this tribe must be the Wadim of whom the old man had told him. Their strange, fragmentary, twisted tale had been the last flickering ancestral memory of a time when their tribe was young and the desert was smaller and less forbidding.
“But you have contact with the outside world by means of the river,” he said, speaking very slowly and deliberately, like a man on the border of drunkenness. He poured himself another goblet. “You cannot gull me. These fruits―” he waved a hand, almost oversetting the pitcher “―these are from outside. And I have seen things of Stygian make down here.”
“We have some contact,” she said, “with a small tribe of river-men who live near the place where our river reenters the world of the accursed sun. The river-folk are a small, malformed people who do not interest us, and they are too weak to take desirable captives to trade. They keep our existence silent lest other tribes learn their secret and slay mem all to seize the trade for themselves.”
Conan nodded ponderously. “I can well see how you desire us as breeding stock,” he said, deliberately slurring his words. He smote himself upon his brawny chest. “I am of the pure blood of Cimmeria, home of the greatest warriors in the world. Achilea is a magnificent woman, stronger than almost any man. Her three women are splendid, strapping wenches, much finer than the women here.”
He pondered for a while, as if not fully aware of what he had said. “Yourself excepted, of course,” he amended.
At this, she shook her head and laughed. “Barbarian, do you truly think that it is for your strength and looks that we wish to mingle your blood with ours?”
“Is it not?” he said, truly puzzled this time.
“By no means. When we lost our empire and were forced to breed the nonhuman from among ourselves, we lost as well our capacity for working magick. We have much knowledge and no way to use it. It is as if we were the greatest of miners, yet had no picks or shovels or sledges.”
She smiled strangely, and in that smile Conan detected the lingering taint of the nonhuman. “With your clean, barbaric blood, the blood of a younger race, we may regain our power to wield the great spells of our ancestors. Janagar may once again rise to her rightful place as queen of the world!”
Of all the reasons she could have for desiring him, this was the last one Conan would have chosen.
“So you want me to breed with, eh?” he said.
“Yes,” she replied. “And I see no need for further discussion of the matter.” Lazily, she began to push herself up from her recumbent posture. Her sheer robe fell away, revealing even more of her ripe contours.
“Aye!” he agreed heartily. “Let’s be about it.” He grasped her beneath the arms and lifted her without effort. With one hand, he peeled away her veil and then he planted a sloppy kiss upon her lips.
Still holding the woman, he lurched to his feet “Wait!” she cried in exasperation. “You are too―”
“Too what?” he demanded, fumbling at her cape as if the knot that bound it at her throat were too complex for his dexterity. Finally, he simply ripped the garment away, She pounded at his face with her fists. “Slowly, you drunken oaf!”
Abruptly, Conan dropped her and she landed with a thump upon the cushions. “I think …” he mumbled, swaying back and forth as if his ankles were poorly designed hinges. “I think …” Slowly, majestically, like a great tree falling, the Cimmerian toppled over and landed on his face, not putting forth his bands to slow his fall. With a cry, Omia scrambled away from his trajectory, but not swiftly enough to prevent her feet from being pinned beneath his great torso.
With a jerk, the woman got her feet free and stood. She then employed them in locking her fallen, would-be paramore. “Wretch! Sot! Drunken brute!” Each epithet was punctuated by a sound kick to the ribs. She elicited but a few grunts from the collapsed warrior and discovered that she was accomplishing nothing but the bruising of her delicate feet.
Conan did not change expression during her frustrated tirade, thinking only that these people had grown truly degenerate in their antlike existence. Achilea would have smashed his ribs in half with one kick. In time, soreness of foot and shortness of wind caused her to desist. She clapped her hands and Conan heard someone enter the room. By the lightness of the tread, he guessed that it was one of the slave girls. Words were whispered and the slave left. While she was waiting, Omia assayed a kick to his head. It made his ear sting, but from her outcry, he knew that it hurt her foot far worse.
Heavier steps announced a newcomer of greater heft. “This is the great warrior who slew the crocodile?” The voice belonged to Abbadas.
“He had the woman’s help,” she answered. “This one is an animal, and a stupid one at that! What sort of man prefers wine to the body of a queen?” The scorn in her voice would have raised blisters on the back of a man more sensitive than Conan.
“After all. Omia,” Abbadas said, sounding vastly amused, “it was not for their great culture and polish that we wanted them. I am sure that I will waste neither time nor wine trying to get the big woman into a receptive frame of mind.”
“Of that I had no doubt. I had thought this one more intelligent, at first.”
“I had not thought you brought him here for conversation.” The sneer was plain in his voice, “How often do I find someone new to speak with?” she asked peevishly. She gave him a brief summation of their talk.
“You told him far more than necessary,” Abbadas chided. “This snoring hulk did not need to know all that. Now I must keep even closer watch upon him.”
“Why?” she asked. “We will have our way with him and then dispose of him. What little may have lodged in that thick skull will be of no use to him.”
“Still, I do not like it,” Abbadas said. “Hopelessness of e
scape is the best shackle for binding a prisoner. Best he were not to harbor futile thoughts.”
“Away with him,” she ordered. “He defiles my chambers. I shall try him again when he is sober.
Next time, I’ll not waste words upon him. Haul this vast carcass out of here.”
“As my queen commands,” Abbadas said insolently. “Guards!”
Moments later, the chamber filled with footsteps and the Cimmerian was rebound. Then, amid much puffing and groaning, he was lifted and carried through the labyrinthine warren that was underground Janagar. A short time subsequent, he was dumped unceremoniously upon the floor of his cell and his wall chain reattached. Then the guards shuffled out. Unsure of the cell’s occupancy, Conan waited.
“Your friend provided us little entertainment this time,” Abbadas taunted. “Best you be not so remiss, else you shall suffer for it. Be ready for my summons, woman. Soon.” The only reply was a spitting sound. Then he heard Abbadas leave the cell, and the further sound of his steps diminishing down the hallway without.
“Conan, have they slain you?” Achilea queried, her voice full of concern. “Nay, I can see you breathing. But they must have tortured you sorely to render you senseless. Oh!” He heard her chains
rattle and felt the frustration in her voice.
“These will not let me reach you. Oh, Conan, I …” Her voice hesitated and trailed off. Then he heard the sound of sniffing. “What is this?” Concern changed to anger as if by magic. “Wine? You are drunk! You Cimmerian fool, did you get hauled away to a tavern instead of a torture chamber? Only you could accomplish such a thing!”
An edge of suspicion crept into her voice. “That evil woman wants to breed, eh? So she plied you with wine to overcome scruples she fancied you to have? Well, she needn’t have bothered! Wake up, damn you! I want you to hear me cursing you!”
Abruptly he sat up and she jerked back.
“Actually. I am not even drunk. It does me good to know that you were worried about me.” He grinned insolently and her beautiful face flushed scarlet.
“You think I care about your miserable hide and its welfare?” she said lamely. “I but need you to help get us out of here!”
“Aye, I’ll believe that”
“If you will,” she said, hissing, her eyes narrowed, “then I will agree to believe you when you tell me what happened between you and the queen of the degenerates.”
Stretching out on his pallet and pillowing his head upon his interlaced fingers, Conan recited the tale of Janagar as he had heard it from Omia, This he interlarded with descriptions of the queen and her slaves and the furnishings of her chambers. With sidelong glances, he satisfied himself that Achilea was clenching her teeth each time he mentioned the queen’s beauty.
“And so you feigned drunkenness,” she said at last, “and naught else passed between you? Not that it means anything to me.”
“Aye, it is true,” he said, amused.
“Very well then. Now we know that the river is truly here someplace and that by means of it, we can reach the outside world.”
“One other thing bothers me,” Conan said.
“What is that?”
“The crocodile. What did they do with it?”
The crocodile?” she said, exasperated. “What care we, so long as it is dead?”
“Truly, it is the crocodile’s tail that plagues my thoughts,” he told her.
“Its tail? Did the queen put something in your wine that weakened what little wit you have? What care you about its tail?”
He went on, unperturbed. “Skinned and properly cooked, crocodile tail makes fine eating. Crom’s bones, but I am weary of the food in this wretched place!”
Thirteen
Time did not weigh heavily upon them. When Conan awoke, he knew instantly that he had been asleep for little more than two hours. Even in this underworld where night and day did not exist, his time sense had not deserted him. A sound had disturbed his slumber, and he waited in utter stillness to hear it again. Nearby, Achilea lay on her side, breathing deeply and steadily, sound asleep. He doubted that her instincts were less sharp than his own. But she had never spent time in a dungeon before. Like most inexperienced persons, she probably assumed that thick walls, bars and chains meant that at the very least, she could sleep without danger.
Conan, with his broad experience of dungeons, jails, village lockups, ships’ brigs, slave-pits, coffles, chain gangs and other means of confinement, knew that all prisons were savage places, where men confined like animals under the care of brutal guards and whimsical wardens could turn on one another like starving rats in a cage. And a man was most vulnerable in his sleep. Conan could scarcely count the times he had awakened to find a fellow prisoner stabbed in his sleep with a makeshift dagger, strangled with his own chains, brained with a rock or pitched overboard for the sharks, and the murder always
committed by enemies within the prison. He had frequently awakened in such places to find disgruntled brothers of the chain thirsty for his own blood. Thus he knew to sleep even more lightly than usual when he wore shackles.
He heard the sound again. Someone was in the hall outside the cell. He knew by the trod of the steps that it was not one of the regular guards, nor was it Abbadas returning. His ears were sensitive to such subtleties. The tread was light, stealthy. Even before the figure appeared in the door of the cell, the Cimmerian was almost sure who it was.
He lay nearly as still as a corpse, his breathing as deep and steady as Achilea’s. He knew better than to try faking a snore. Such ruses were rarely convincing to an experienced trickster, and he knew this one to be a veteran. Through slitted eyes he saw me figure crouch and come into the cell on all fours. The flickering light of the smokeless torch outside gleamed momentarily upon something in its right hand: an object of bright metal.
The figure drew nearer, nearer yet, and then the Cimmerian’s brawny left arm shot out and powerful fingers snapped around a sinewy neck so swiftly that the movement would have been a mere blur in broad daylight. In the gloom of the cell, it was wholly invisible. A high-pitched squawk was cut off abruptly by the pressure of Conan’s thumb.
Achilea jolted to a sitting position amid a rattle of chains. “Conan! What … who is that?” She blinked rapidly,
“Why, this is our old friend, Amram. As to why he is here, he is about to tell us. Of course, it may be that he would rather die than speak. He is about to make that choice!” Amram’s frantically flailing hands pantomimed a deep desire to speak. Conan relaxed his grip fractionally, allowing the man to drag a little air into his shocked lungs.
“My friends!” he squealed, the wind whistling through his constricted windpipe. “I mean you no harm! I am here to offer you salvation!”
“Yon do this by creeping like a reptile?” Conan asked coldly. “You do this by sneaking up to my side with a weapon in your fist?” His hand began to tighten again.
“No weapon! Look?” He held forth his right hand. Indeed, in its palm lay not a dagger, but a key shining in the uncanny light.
“Much better,” Conan growled “But still not good enough. Why did you desert us in the sandstorm, you rogue? Where are the twins? What are you to these ant-people, and why did you lure us here with your lying story?”
“Please, my friend, these is no time!” Amram wailed.
“Oh, but a prisoner has little but time,” Conan said. “I am eager to hear your story. Only now, I shall be alert for lies. The first lie I think I hear, I shall break your scrawny neck!”
“But, my Cimmerian companion,” Amram said, “I had not thought you to be a man so fond of talk!”
“I care not what his story is,” Achilea said impatiently. “Just loose us, little man!”
“I do not like this,” Conan said sullenly. “What does this insect ever do except lead people into traps?”
Achilea glared at him in exasperation. “Traps? We are chained in a dungeon, you dolt! What is he going to do to us that is worse?”
“My good friends,” Amram said soothingly, his voice obsequious, “let us not bicker. I can see that you two have a certain difference of opinion, but this is not the time or the place to sort things out. Allow me to present you with your freedom, and you may discuss matters at greater length when you have the leisure.”
“Very well,” Conan said, “but I am not deceiving myself.
In this place, being without chains does not mean freedom. We wore no chains in the pit when we fought the crocodile.”
“I think it will mean an improvement in our condition,” Achilea said, almost frantic with impatience.
“Unlock these bonds, Amram, before I go mad!”
“At once, my lady. Thai is, if my good friend the Cimmerian will be so good as to release me.”
“Conan!”
“Oh, very well.” With ill grace, he relaxed his grip, only to clamp his hand around the man’s bony ankle. “You get your foot back when we are out of these chains,” he said with a dangerous frown.
Amram clucked. “Such a hard man to please. And here I expected gratitude. Kind words at the very least”
“When we are free and well away from here,” Conan said, “I will sing your highest praises. I will name a son after you if you want, but do not betray us again.”
For a few minutes, Amram was busy with the locks on their various neck rings and shackles.
Apparently his key was not made specifically for their fastenings, but was a skeleton type that required considerable skill to manipulate.
“Good thing they didn’t use rivets on these things,” Conan groused. But soon the chains fell away and they were on their feet, rubbing at sore flesh, flexing their freed limbs.
“Now we go and release my women,” Achilea said.
“There is no time,” Amram said, shaking his head emphatically. “They are just servants. Leave them.”
Now it was Achilea’s turn to be unreasonable. She grasped him by the neck as Conan had. “If I were not a queen and therefore conscious of every debt of gratitude, I would wring your neck this very second. My companion here is more than familiar with things like locks and shackles. I would wager that he knows how to use your key.”
The Conan Compendium Page 517