"True. But even so, I thank you for your help. If it were put abroad that the adventuress was Princess of Qjara, the scandal would have simmered in more places than the temple quarter.” She looked up at him solemnly. "I know I can trust you to keep the secret... or is it still a secret? You did not seem overly surprised when I approached you. Is word of my identity abroad?”
“I heard it whispered by one of your temple guards. Even they were not certain.” Conan's own voice was scarcely above a whisper; no one nearby appeared to be watching them yet, and he wanted to keep it that way.
"Wonderful,” Afriandra sighed. "Oh well, the ploy is lost to me anyway, now that Zaius knows of it.”
"The great temple warrior is a stern guardian to you, it would seem," Conan said. "To me he seems but a pompous windbag—”
"He is more than a guardian.” Afriandra tossed her hair restlessly. "My parents have said they will give him my hand in marriage.”
"What?—” Conan had difficulty subduing his astonishment. “You mean, King Semiarchos and Queen Regula would hand over their daughter and their city to that prating priestly buffoon?”
"It is a tradition, as I said—the bloodline of the royal dynasty is renewed each generation by the merit system of the church hierarchy. This time there is no male heir—so instead I am to wed the highest male officer of the temple.”
"Will the ruling power pass to you, then, or to him?”
"He will be named King Zaius...” she shook her head. "But I, I must try to wield what power I can. I have my mother’s support, and Father's too, if not their true respect. In our city’s history there have been few reigning females. But with Saditha’s blessing, I can uphold my family’s power—”
"And your view of the future?" Conan interrupted her in a whisper. "What do your prophetic visions tell you when you look at Zaius?"
"I never saw him when I was under the charm of the narcinthe," Afriandra replied. "The other night at the caravansary, I avoided looking toward him... lest he recognize me.’’
"Does he love you?" Conan asked.
She shrugged uncaringly. "You have seen Zaius—can he love any but himself?” Suddenly her hand, which had lingered in the crook of his elbow, began playing more insistently at the inside of his arm. "Conan, I must talk to you... meet me tonight! Do you know the courtyard on the west side of the palace, just outside the high wall? The one with the fountain?” Her voice was hushed and urgent. "Come at moon-rise, I’ll be there, I promise!”
After a furtive glance at those nearby, the northerner narrowed his eyes suspiciously at her. "What, then—do you want me to smuggle you a flask of your dream-potion? I would not be your errand boy—”
“No, silly!” Emphatically she wagged her head no. “Just bring yourself. If I want to see you in armour. again, I’ll provide the helmet and the greaves... Nay,” she added at his uneasy recoil, “’twas only a joke! If you come, I will be able to speak more freely about something that is troubling me." Moving her hand to his neck and hauling his shaggy head irresistibly down toward her, she strained upward and planted a kiss on his lips. "Just come, will you?”
The moon shone down from the eastern hills, far away across the city rampart. Its fat up-tilted crescent seemed to pour out liquid radiance onto the bleak slopes, and on the walls and roof-edges nearer to hand. Quicksilver light pooled in the fountain at the centre of the square, outlining the lily pads and flower stems that broke its still surface.
Against the light a lone figure moved—a slim, graceful female form whose reflection flowed and melted from one lily pad to the next as she circled the fountain, searching. Her pinned-up hair and translucent gown were frosted white in the moonlight, and her pale skin gleamed; anywhere but in this thirsty desert land, she could have been judged a water nymph for her beauty and delicacy.
At length, where the arching branch of an olive tree overhung one side of the pond, she sank down onto the stone rim. She trailed one hand in the water in an attitude of waiting, glancing around from time to time with a sigh.
As she sat, a strange darkness gathered in the tree limbs above her. Silently it flowed, to congeal just over her head: a solid mass which blocked the moon and made a formless reflection among the lily pads. Then in utter silence, it dropped to a place just beside her on the curb of the pond.
“Afriandra! Nay, girl, don’t cry out, I am no gloar-fiend!” With a restraining hand on her shoulder, the figure kept her from darting away.
"Conan, where... how did you come here?” she asked, shaking off her startlement and embracing him impulsively in greeting.
"I had to come before moonrise, to slip past the guards at the various gates,” he told her, settling down on the cool stone next to her. " ’Tis not so easy to move about your town by night without arousing suspicion.”
“You brought your sword, I see.” She reached gingerly past him to brush the hilt of the Ilbarsi knife at his waist. "Did you fear a trap?”
"Not really.” Conan shrugged. “But I don’t want to fall afoul of your custom of temple justice. I would use this first, if I had to," he said, slapping the hilt.
"Is that the reason you dwell outside the city wall?” she added, looking up into his eyes. “So you won’t have to surrender your sword to the temple guards?”
“Mayhap; it is only temporary, anyway,” he said, his eyes scanning the square. "I am waiting for the first caravan northbound to Zamora. I had hoped to avoid trouble and entanglements in your city...” he glanced down at her hand on his arm "... but things seem to be conspiring to get me involved.”
"Oh, Conan, do not fear,” she said, caressing his shoulder. “I will not entangle you here or keep you from your caravan.” She edged closer to him under the moon. " 'Tis only that I am allowed so little contact with travellers and foreigners. A man of your wide experience might be able to... ah, instruct me better, in certain matters... than anyone from a small, unworldly city like Qjara.”
"You’re not asking me to murder someone, are you?” he asked, pulling back a little from her caresses. "One of your royal relatives, perhaps, or some temple schemer? I am many things, I admit, and a handy killer at times. But I am not for hire in courtly intrigues as some have thought.”
"Nay, Conan, nay!" she laughed softly, now almost sprawling against him. "I only meant to sound you out about some general aspects of city conduct and... religion.”
"Religion?” he muttered dubiously. "If you are bent on converting me—”
"No, no,” she laughingly assured him, placing the fingertips of one hand over his lips as if to silence him. "Just tell me: what think you of our worship of the One True Goddess? I know that goddesses are rare in this part of Shem....” she trailed off, removing her hand from his lips so that he could answer.
"They are rare in most parts," he assured her. "In the great empires of Hyborea, goddesses rule alongside gods, sometimes with greater power. In their conquests, mayhap,” he enlarged a moment later, on reflection, "those imperial lands have combined the deities of their various territories. But the Shemitish city-states generally worship only one god, and that generally a male—or a conspicuously male animal, or some hooved and hairy combination of man and beast. Why do you ask?”
Patting his lips daintily again, she shook her head at his question. "Just tell me this, Conan: how does the godly law of our Saditha compare with those other cities?”
Conan harrumphed. “To speak true, girl, I find your city’s ways almost tolerable. That is one reason I tread lightly in your town, because I respect your customs. In many Shemitish lands the king also holds the office of head priest. Often as not, he wields the power of both offices with a cruel hand.” Conan's voice grew harsher as he spoke. "Their laws are many, the penalties cruel—and their god itself is likely to be a senile tyrant with a bull’s horny temper and an insatiable appetite for babes or young virgins.” He shook his head in disgruntlement. "Not like Crom, my native god, who lets a man live out his life before he has to suffer judgement
! Or Mitra of the Hyborians, who teaches earthly wisdom. Worship of the southern gods is usually enforced on all the citizenry, often with shameful rites and mutilations....” Conan vented his mounting unease with a faint, shuddering sigh. "I steer clear of such when I can help it.”
Afriandra nodded understandingly. "But here, then, you do not find us as cruel?”
"Here? No! In Qjara I am accepted, if not overly trusted as a foreigner. You protect your own, but the powers and privileges of your leaders are not too irksome—except for somebody like Zaius, your betrothed. You yourself, the noblest girl of the city, are friendly enough to sit with me here, thus....” His arms found their way around her as he spoke.
"Ah, 'tis so, then! I feared as much.” Growing suddenly slack and pensive in his embrace, she nodded to herself. "Tell me, do you know anything of Votantha, god of the city of Sark, to the south-west of here?”
"No—nothing more than what I have already told you.” Resignedly, Conan let his arm settle loose around the girl. "I have never travelled there.”
"My royal parents have been approached— sent a letter in a gold scroll case, with golden ink,” the princess explained. "As a gesture of friendship from city’s king, the state temple of Sark wants to establish a religious mission here in Qjara. A school of priestly acolytes, it would be, with a shrine of worship near our own high temple of Saditha.”
"Beware,” Conan aid, "it could be a step toward conquest. The god of a foreign country is often the first trooper of their invading army.” "I fear as much,” Afriandra sighed. "But my father is taken with the idea, if only as a way of strengthening his hand with my mother. Zaius of the temple warriors has heard of it, too, and seems to favour it. They have even discussed the notion of marrying Saditha and Votantha together in a godly union and worshipping the two jointly, as a bond between our two cities.”
"Your mother, then, sticks up for her One True Goddess?” Conan questioned. "She looks to be a... formidable woman.”
"Alas...” Afriandra shook her head uncertainly "she dotes on Zaius, her temple champion. One thing is certain, she loves him better than I do. And his view of the matter may sway her.” She looked up to Conan. "But you are saying this foreign god would be a tyrant?”
"Yes, I doubt it not. And Zaius is just the one to crave the added power, if he is to be king of Qjara.” Conan looked her in the face. "You must fight it, girl, if you want to hold on to what you have."
“Aye, it is troublous,” she sighed again. "I think I can face him—but how it frightens me sometimes, to think that under Saditha’s law he will become my sole consort, the only man I can ever kiss! I have always craved a soft, feeling man, one who is not afraid to show emotion, yes, and passion—” in demonstration, she heaved herself up against Conan’s chest and placed a warm, probing kiss on his lips. “Ah, this is good,” she murmured. “How I dread the thought of Zaius's rigid embraces... his stiff, cold lips!”
Conan exhaled, his hands idly probing the extent of Afriandra’s lithe warm back. “You will find that stiffness is not entirely a fault in a man,” he ventured, adjusting her supple weight against him.
“Yes, but not in the wrong places,” she chided him. “Now, a man like you... I have no doubt that you can be stiff where and when it is needed, and soft and pliant otherwise.
Leaning back against the olive trunk, she drew him down against her. She commenced trying her best to smother him from beneath with eager, questing kisses, an effort that went on for some minutes.
"So, Afriandra! ” a harsh voice suddenly intruded. "Is this how you disport yourself at evening? First the taverns and brothels of the camel-drovers, and now a roll in the dirt with an unclean foreigner?”
The words rang out sharply and familiarly in a combination of wrath and righteous injury. They came from a tall, shadowy form who stalked around the curve of the fountain from a gate in the nearby wall. He stood gesticulating over the couple, but without drawing his sword—the very man they had been speaking of moments before, the temple warrior Zaius.
"This is how you dishonour me!” he raged on. "Me, designated High Champion of Saditha’s Temple! Am I then to wed a tarnished princess? Am I to accept, under the Goddess's sacred wedding canopy, the pawed-over leavings of a filthy infidel?”
"Die, wretch!" was Conan’s cry as he sprang up from Afriandra’s reclining form. As his long knife flicked out of its belt loop, he was stayed only by the extreme desperation of the princess’s clutch on his arm. Half-dragging her along with him, he halted some two steps from the motionless, indignant Zaius.
"Conan, you cannot slay him thus!” the princess pleaded on her knees behind him. "He is sacred to the Goddess!”
"True enough, foreigner,” Zaius agreed. "This is not your quarrel, so begone! It would be a high sin to soil a ceremonial sword on your unclean pelts and innards.” He thumped the heel of his hand on the ornate hilt at his waist. "And to cross my sacrosanct blade with such a black, filthy barb as yours—” he waved a hand distastefully at the Ilbarsi knife in Conan’s grip "—why, it would dishonour our entire city!” "The words of a coward," Conan said, “who hides behind a woman—or a goddess!”
“I hide behind none, but I stand before the Goddess,” Zaius proclaimed. “How would you, a savage foreigner, know anything of that—or of how to comport yourself among civilized men? I have never seen a northern cretin like you made into a decent offal-slave, much less a free citizen of a pious land—”
Conan sprang at him then with a throaty, inarticulate roar. Tearing his hand free of Afriandra's grip, letting his blade clatter loose on the paving stones, he was upon Zaius, pounding and buffeting him with clenched fists. A drub, a thump, a sweeping cross-stroke—all the blows connected, but only glancingly, with a retreating target. Had Zaius dodged and sidestepped with less than the spryness of an expert swordsman, any one of the strokes might have felled or killed him.
Zaius found himself unable to do more than struggle clear of his attacker. Having never before met with such savage fury in an opponent, he was spun and staggered by each stroke that caught him even in passing. The Cimmerian smote him, bruised him, and drove him back toward the corner of the court—until the princess once again overtook her protector.
“Conan, stop! It dishonours the Goddess, even to insult him thus...”
Rescued ignominiously again, Zaius stood before them—crouching, panting, his grey tunic rent and disarranged, his sacred sword drawn half out of its scabbard in a white-knuckled grip. But he was quick to regain the shredded remnants of his dignity before the club-fisted Cimmerian.
"Insult me!” he exclaimed, easing his fine sword back into its sheath. "How can a temple warrior possibly be insulted by one so low? My priestly fighting skills do not include the lofty art of rough-and-tumble on a taproom floor! If I were to face such a lout in a true test of swordsmanship, why, I would show him prowess he could not begin to appreciate—” At Conan’s growl of menace, he turned to the princess. "Afriandra, send away this ruffian, and come with me to do holy penance before Saditha's altar—”
"Zaius, you slack-spined coward,” Conan’s voice rumbled back at him low and murderous, "I will have your bleeding gizzard! I will not skewer you or bash you to pieces here in front of the girl alone, because it might unduly distress her. But I challenge you to a public fight, as is your holy custom! Single combat with swords, to the death, outside the temple of your vaunted goddess!”
"Ho,” Zaius marvelled. aloud, "you are the arrogant one indeed! Know you not, the sacred temple duels are only for those born faithful to Saditha! A foreign infidel can never participate. It would be an impious travesty. Now leave us!” "Yes, Conan, go, please!" Afriandra said, moving between the Cimmerian and his adversary. "I asked your help—now I ask it again, in this more than anything! For the sake of our city and our faith, leave Zaius and me to our miserable fate!”
VI
Forge of the Nether Gods
Exalted Priest Khumanos walked unshod up the slope of ja
gged, brittle volcanic ash. Long leagues of travel had left his feet hard and calloused, their tough edges abraded white with use. Where his soles were not thick enough to stand the punishment, they bled dark crimson with each step. The stains marked his path over the rubble of the rocky waste, making it easy for his disciples to follow; but the holy man plodded onward, never looking down or even noticing.
Hard as he drove himself, he demanded even more from his flock. Some of these were barefoot already, and the shoes of the rest were gradually being shredded from their feet by the razor-edges of black glass and frothy pumice that formed these new slopes. All the toilers, male and female, bore heavy pack-baskets laden with dusty greenish stone—burdens that bent some of them near-double, soaking up the dark sweat of their hard, unremitting labour. The Sarkad troops overseeing them moved heavily as well, with the weight of their arms and the stores of food and water they carried and guarded. The two acolytes under Khumanos went unladen; but they, bringing up the rear, had the burdensome duty of urging fallen slaves to renew their efforts, or of performing the death-rite for those who failed to rise.
Their crossing of the lowlands, coming from the mines in the hills above Shartoum, had been relatively uneventful. Protected by truce, they had seen no sign of the wily sheik's raiders, nor had their party been molested by any of the renegade bands and rival tribes that frequented the region of the inland sea. Most remarkable luck, this, since every slave believed that the metal ore they carried was of great rarity and value. Some whispered that, at the end of the journey, shares of the wealth would be parcelled out to them as a reward for faithful service.
But any talk of this, of their homeland by the Sea of Shartoum, and of all other topics grew scarce as the days wore on. More and more they followed Khumanos in silent submission, as they would a holy leader. If any cavilled or found fault with his cause, he had a near-miraculous way of winning them over to steadfast obedience by means of a single brief interview. The others, noting this, decided that he was holy, and tried to turn the harsh fact of their captivity into a stern virtue. They respected the example Khumanos set of privation and selflessness—and imitated it, since they were given no other choice.
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