With a firm tread Conan walked through the open doors; they swung shut almost on his heels with a thump of finality. The ceiling of the great room was a fluted dome, supported by massive columns of carved ivory. Across the mosaic floor Amanar sat on a throne made of golden serpents, while another burnished serpent reared behind it, great ruby eyes regarding all who approached. The mage’s robe, too, was gold, seemingly of ten thousand tiny scales that glittered in the light of golden lamps. Human musicians filed out by a side door as Conan entered. The only other present was Karela, standing beside Amanar’s throne and drinking thirstily from a goblet.
She lowered the goblet in surprise at the sight of Conan. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. The chamber was cool, yet perspiration dampened her face, and her breath came quickly.
“I was told you sent for me,” Conan said. Warily he placed a hand on his sword.
“I never sent for you,” she said.
“I took the liberty,” Amanar said, “of using your name, Karela, to ensure the man would come.”
“Ensure he’d come?” Puzzled, Karela swung her green eyes from Conan to the mage. “Why would he not?”
Amanar pursed his lips and touched them with his golden staff. His eyes on Conan seemed amused. “This night past were five of my S’tarra slain.”
Conan wondered from which direction the S’tarra would come. There could be a score of doors hidden behind those ivory columns.
“You think Conan did this killing?” Karela said. “I spoke to you of this matter this morning, and you said nothing.”
“Sometimes,” the dark sorcerer said, “it is best to wait, to let the guilty think they will escape. But I see you require proof.” He swung his staff against a small crystal bell that stood in a silver stand beside the throne.
At the chime the door through which the musicians had departed opened again. Aberius hesitantly entered the chamber, his eyes darting from Conan to the throne, as if measuring the distance to each. He rubbed his palms on the front of his yellow tunic.
“Speak,” Amanar commanded.
Aberius’ pointed face twitched. He swallowed. “Last night, before the gong sounded, I saw this Conan of Cimmeria leave our camp.” His beady black eyes avoided Karela. “This surprised me, for all of us think the darkness of the nights here strange, and none will go out in them. None other did, that night as before. Conan returned after the alarm, with a wound on his side. I’ll warrant there’s a bandage beneath that tunic.”
“Why did you not come to me, Aberius?” Karela said angrily. Her piercing gaze shifted to the Cimmerian. “I said, Conan, that I’d have the ears of any man involved, and I—”
“I fear,” Amanar interrupted smoothly, “that it is I who must set this man’s punishment. It is me he has offended against. You, Aberius,” he added in a sharper tone, “go now. The gold agreed upon will be given as you leave.”
The weasel-faced bandit opened his mouth as if to speak, closed it again, then suddenly scurried from the room. The small door closed behind him.
“Why, Conan?” Karela asked softly. “Is that girl worth so much to you?” She squeezed her eyes shut and turned away. “I give him to you,” she said.
Conan’s blade slipped from its sheath with a rasping whisper. “You reckon without me,” the Cimmerian said. “I give myself to no one.”
Amanar rose, holding the golden staff across his chest like a scepter. “Extend your life, Cimmerian. Prostrate yourself and beg, and I may have mercy on you.” He started forward at a slow walk.
“Dog of a sorcerer,” Conan grated, “come no closer. I know your mage’s tricks with powders that kill when breathed.” The golden-robed man came on, neither speeding nor slowing. “I warn you,” Conan said. “Die then!”
With the speed of a striking falcon the big Cimmerian youth lunged. Amanar’s staff whipped up; hissing, a citron vapor was expelled from its tip. Conan held his breath and plunged through the cloud. His sword struck Amanar’s chest, piercing to the hilt. For a bare moment Conan stood chest to chest and eye to eye with the mage. Then his muscles turned to water. He tried to cry out as he toppled to the mosaic floor, but there was no sound except the thud of his fall. His great chest labored for breath, and his every muscle twitched and trembled, but not at his command.
The sorcerer stood above him, viewing him with the same dispassion he might exhibit at a bird found dead in the keep. “A concentrated derivative from the pollen of the golden lotus of Khitai,” he said in a conversational tone. A thin smile curled his lips cruelly. “It works by contact, not by breathing, my knowledgeable thief. The paralysis grows if no antidote is applied, deeper and deeper until life itself is paralyzed. I am told one feels oneself dying by inches.”
“Amanar,” Karela gasped, “the sword!” She stood by the throne, a trembling hand pressed to her lips.
The sorcerer looked at the sword as if he had forgotten it pierced his chest. Grasping the hilt he drew it from his body. The blade was unbloodied. He seemed pleased with her shock. “You see, my dear Karela? No mortal weapon can harm me.” Contemptuously he dropped the sword almost touching Conan’s hand.
The Cimmerian strained to reach the leather-wrapped hilt, but his arms responded only with drug-induced tremors.
Amanar emitted a blood-chilling laugh and casually moved the sword even closer with his foot, until the hilt touched Conan’s twitching hand. “Even before Aberius betrayed you, Cimmerian, I suspected you in the slaying, though two of the dead displayed certain anomalies. You see, Velita betrayed you also.” His dark laugh was like a saw on bone. “The geas I placed on her commanded her to tell me if you saw her, and she did, though she wept and begged me to kill her rather than let her speak.” He laughed again.
Conan tried to curse, but produced only a grunt. The man would die, he vowed, if he had to return as a shade to do the deed.
The sorcerer’s cold, lidded eyes regarded him thoughtfully. The red flecks in their black depths seemed to dance. “You rage, but do not yet fear,” he said softly. “Still, where there is such great resistance, there must be great fear once the resistance is shattered. And you will be shattered, Cimmerian.”
“Please,” Karela said, “if he must die, then kill him, but do not torture him.”
“As you wish,” Amanar said smoothly. He returned to the throne and struck the crystal bell once more.
This time Sitha appeared from the small door through which Aberius had left. Four more S’tarra followed, bearing a litter. Roughly they lifted Conan onto the bare wood and fastened him with broad leather straps across his massive chest and thighs. As they were carrying him out Conan heard Amanar speak.
“There is much we must speak of, my dear Karela. Come closer.”
The door swung shut.
XXV
As the litter was carried through the donjon, one mailed S’tarra at each corner and Sitha leading, Conan lay seemingly quiescent. For the moment struggle was futile, but he constantly attempted to clench his right hand. If he could make even that beginning … . The hand twitched of its own volition, but no more. He fought to keep breathing.
The litter was carried from a resplendent corridor through an archway and down rough stone stairs. The walls, at first worked smooth, became raw stone, a passage hacked from the living rock beneath the dark fortress. Those who went thither no longer had a care for mosaics or tapestries.
The crude corridor leveled. Sitha pounded a huge fist against an iron-strapped door of rough wood. The door opened, and to Conan’s surprise, a human appeared, the first he had seen in the keep who did not keep his eyes on the ground.
The man was even shorter than Conan, but even more massive, heavy sloping muscles covered with thick layers of fat. Piggish eyes set deep in a round, bald head regarded Conan. “So, Sitha,” he said in a surprisingly high-pitched voice, “you’ve brought Ort another guest.”
“Stand aside, Ort,” Sitha hissed. “You know what is to be done here. You waste time.”
> Shockingly, the fat man giggled. “You’d like to cut Ort’s head off, wouldn’t you, Sitha, with that ax of yours? But Amanar needs Ort for his torturing. You S’tarra get carried away and leave dead meat when there’s questions yet to be asked.”
“This one is already meat,” Sitha said contemptuously. Casually the S’tarra turned to smash a backhand blow to Conan’s face. Ort giggled again.
Blood welled in Conan’s mouth. Chest heaving, he fought to get painful words out. “Kill—you—Sitha,” he gasped.
Ort blinked his tiny eyes in surprise. “He speaks? After the vapor? This one is strong.”
“Strong,” Sitha snarled. “Not as strong as I!” Its fist crashed into Conan’s face, splitting his cheek. For a moment the S’tarra stood with fist upraised, fangs bared, then lowered its claw-tipped hand with an obvious effort. “Put him in his cell, Ort, before I forget the master’s commands.”
Giggling, Ort led the procession into the dungeons. Grim ironbound doors lined the rough stone walls. Before one Ort stopped, undoing a heavy iron lock with a key from his broad leather belt. “In here,” he said. “There’s another in there already, but I’m filling up.”
Quickly, under Sitha’s direction, the other S’tarra unstrapped Conan from the litter and carried him into the cell, a cubicle cut in the rock as crudely as the rest of the dungeon. As chains were being fastened to the Cimmerian’s wrists and ankles he saw his fellow prisoner, chained in the same fashion to the far wall, and knew a second of shock. It was the Zamoran captain he had tricked into combat with the hillmen.
As the other S’tarra left, Sitha came to stand over Conan. “Were it left to me,” it hissed angrily, “you would die now. But the master has use of you yet.” From a pouch at its belt it took a vial and forced it between the Cimmerian’s teeth. Bitter liquid flowed across his tongue. “Perhaps, Cimmerian, when the master has your soul, this time he will let me have what remains.” With a sibilant laugh Sitha shoved the empty vial back into his pouch and strode from the cell. The thick door banged shut.
Conan could feel strength flowing slowly back into his limbs. Weakly he pushed himself to a sitting position and leaned against the cool stone of the cell wall.
The hook-nosed Zamoran captain watched him thoughtfully with dark eyes. There were long blisters on his arms, and others were visible on his chest where his tunic was ripped. “I am Haranides,” he said finally. “Whom do I share these … accommodations with?”
“I am called Conan,” the Cimmerian replied. He tested the chains that fastened his manacles to the wall. Three feet and more in length, the links of them were too thick for him to have burst even had he his full strength, and he was far from that as yet.
“Conan,” Haranides murmured. “I’ve heard that name in Shadizar, thief. Would I had known you when we met last.”
Conan shifted his full attention to the Zamoran. “You remember me, then, do you?”
“I’m not likely to forget a man with shoulders like a bull, especially when he brought me near ten score hillmen for a present.”
“Did you indeed follow us, then? I would not have done it save for that.”
“I followed you,” Haranides replied bitterly. “Rather, I followed the Red Hawk and the trinkets she took from Tiridates. Or was it you, thief, who entered the palace and slew like a demon?”
“Not I,” Conan said, “nor the Red Hawk. ‘Twas S’tarra, the scaled ones, who did it, and we followed them as you followed us. But how came you to this pass, chained to the wall in Amanar’s dungeon?”
“From continuing my pursuit of the red-haired wench when a wiser man would have returned to Shadizar and surrendered his head,” the captain said. “Half a mountain of rock poured into the gorge by those things—S’tarra, you call them? No more than twenty of my men escaped. We had a hillman for a guide, but whether he led us into a trap, or perished beneath the stone, or even got away entirely, I know not.”
“You got not those burns from falling rock.”
Haranides examined his blisters ruefully. “Our jailor, a fellow named Ort, likes to entertain himself with a hot iron. He’s surprisingly agile for one of his bulk. He’d strike and leap away, and in these,” he rattled his chains, “neither could I attack nor escape him.”
“If he comes again with his irons,” Conan said eagerly, “perhaps in dodging from the one he will come close enough for the other to seize.”
He pulled one of his chains to its fullest extent and measure with his eye. With a disgusted grunt he again slumped against the stone wall. There was room enough and more between him and the other man for Ort to leap and dodge as he would. The fat torturer could stand within a finger’s breadth of either man with impunity. He realized the other man was frowning at him.
“It comes to me,” Haranides said slowly, “that already I have told you more than I told Ort. How came you to be chained like an ox, Conan?”
“I misjudged the wiliness of a sorcerer,” Conan replied curtly.
It rankled still, the ease with which he had been taken. He seemed to remember once calling himself a bane of wizards, yet Amanar had snared him like a three-years child. While Karela watched, too.
“Then you were in his service?” Haranides said.
Conan shook his head irritably. “No!”
“Perhaps you are in his service still, put in here to extract information more easily than good Ort.”
“Are your brains moon-struck?” Conan bellowed, lunging to his feet. His chains left him paces short of the other man. At least, though, he had regained enough strength to stand. With a short laugh he sank back. “A cell is no place for a duel, and we can’t reach each other besides. I’ll ask you to watch your speaking, though. I serve no sorcerer.”
“Perhaps,” Haranides said, and he would say no more.
Conan made himself as comfortable as the bare stone floor and rough wall would permit. He had slept in worse conditions in the mountains as a boy, and of his own free will. This time he did not sleep, though, but rather set his mind to escape, and to the killing of Amanar, for that last he would do if his own life were extinguished in the same moment. But how to kill a man who could take a yard of steel through his chest and not even bleed? That was a weighty question, indeed.
Some men, he knew, had amulets which were atuned to them by magicks, so that the amulet could be used for good or ill against that man. The Eye of Erlik came to mind, which bauble had at last brought down the Khan of Zamboula, though not by its sorceries. That the pendant which Velita had worn nestled between her small breasts was a watch for Amanar’s evil eyes was to the Cimmerian proof that it too was such an amulet. It could be used to kill Amanar, he was sure, if he but knew the way.
But first must come escape. He reviewed what he had seen since being carried to the dungeon, what Ort had said, what Haranides had told him, and a plan slowly formed. He settled to wait. The patience of the hunting leopard was in him. He was a mountain warrior of Cimmeria. At fifteen he had been one of the fierce Cimmerian horde that stormed the walls of Venarium and sacked that border city of Aquilonia. Even before that had he been allowed his place at the warriors’ council fires, and since then he had traveled far, seen kingdoms and thrones totter, helped to steady some and topple others. He knew that nine parts of fighting was knowing when to wait, the tenth knowing when to strike. He would wait. For now. The hours passed.
At the rattle of a key in the massive iron lock Conan’s muscles tensed. He forced them to relax. His full strength was returned, but care must be taken.
The door swung outward, and two S’tarra entered, dragging Hordo unconscious between them. Straight to the third set of chains they took him, and manacled him there. Without looking at either of the other two men they left, but the door did not close. Instead, Amanar came to stand in the opening. The golden robe had been replaced by one of dead black, encircled with embroidered golden serpents. The mage fingered something on his chest through the robe as he surveyed the cell with cold blac
k eyes.
“A pity,” he murmured, almost under his breath. “You three could be more use to me than all of the rest together, with the sole exception of Karela herself, yet you all must die.”
“Will you imprison us all, then?” Conan said, jerking his head at Hordo. The one-eyed bandit stirred, and groaned.
Amanar looked at him as if truly realizing he were present for the first time. “No, Cimmerian. He meddled where he should not, as you did, as the man Talbor did. The others remain free. Until their usefulness ends.”
Haranides’ chains clinked as he shifted. “Mitra blast your filth-soaked soul,” the captain grated.
The ebon-clad sorcerer seemed not to hear. His strange eyes remained on Conan’s face. “Velita,” he said in a near whisper, “the slave girl you came to free, awaits in my chamber of magicks. When I have used her one last time, she will die, and worse than die. For if death is horrible, Cimmerian, how much more horrible when no soul is left to survive beyond?”
The big Cimmerian could not stop his muscles from tensing.
Amanar’s laugh curdled marrow in the bone. “Interesting, Cimmerian. You fear more for another than for yourself. Yes, interesting. That may prove useful.” His hellborn laugh came again, and he was gone.
Haranides stared at the closed door. “He fouls the air by breathing,” he spat.
“Twice now,” Conan said softly, “have I heard the taking of a soul spoken of. Once I knew a man who could steal souls.”
The captain made the sign of the horns, against evil. “How did you know such a man?”
“He stole my soul,” Conan said simply.
Haranides laughed uncertainly, not sure if this were a joke. “And what did you do than?”
“I killed him, and took back my soul.” The Cimmerian shivered. That reclaiming had not been easy. To risk the loss again, perhaps past reclaiming, was fearful beyond death. And the same would happen to Velita, and eventually to Karela, could he not prevent it.
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