A few hours later, just after dawn, the same woman and her son returned to Shadizar. Though they were unscathed, they were forlornly bereft of horses and packs; even the woman's cloak was gone. The name she gave turned out to be false, and later no one was interested in scouring The Desert for her. Nor did the head-shaking gatemen who passed her within know that she was the fast friend of a certain huge northern hillman now assiduously sought throughout the city, and that she was considerably wealthier today than she had been on yester day.
Away from Shadizar, riding and leading those same four horses, wended Conan the Cimmerian and Khassek of Iranistan.
'A nicely worked out ruse and tryst, Conan,' Khassek said.
'Ah, Hafiza is a good woman and a good friend, Khassek. Once you added that nice little bag of pearls to Ferhad's silver pommel, she was doubly glad to help.'
'Trebly,' Khassek said. 'She emerged well ahead.'
'Aye, and took a risk to earn her profit. Your employer sent you well supplied with wherewithal, Khassek. All that coin you've been spending, and twenty of gold you left in the Red Lion, and those pearls… are we still wealthy?'
'We are not, my friend. I have been up here well over a month, seeking you in both Arenjun and Shadizar, and we will be poor men or worse by the time we reach Iranistan. But, once there—'
'Umm. Once there,' Conan grunted. 'Aye.'
And what am I doing, he mused, heading off this way on a trip of months? Ah well… why not? It's a big world, and as I told Khashtris in Khauran… I've a lot of it to see before I think about settling!
IV
The Monsters
'Your sword is ready, my lord.'
The khan smiled at his wizard, but only after bending his gaze on the sword rather in the manner of a merchant into whose stall has just wended a bumpkin with a fat purse, or of a peasant child looking at the banquet-laden board of a king.
'Ready,' he murmured, that satrap of the Empire of Turan who ruled Zamboula in the name of mighty Yildiz upon his carven throne. He feared for his life, this khan of Zamboula, and for his succession through his son Jungir, and he had reason. That men plotted, he was sure. That somewhere was the Eye of Erlik, he had no doubt.
'Aye,' Zafra said. 'Save only that as I have said, it must be blooded to complete the spell.'
He glanced downward, for neither man had given thought to the fact that ruler and mage were alone on the gloomy half-gallery that brooded over the doubly gloomy dungeon. 'One regrets that we did not… save one of the Iranistani spies.'
With his head slightly to one side, the khan looked at the slimmer, younger man around the great bony ridge of his accipital nose. The corners of his mouth twitched; it was a sensuous mouth. Abruptly he gave his head a swift downward jerk of decision.
'Aye,' he muttered, to himself only, and his red-purfled, gold-broidered house cloak of gossamery silk swirled and fluttered susurrantly as he turned quickly to the door.
On this side, the prisoner's side, the door was a massive sheet of iron thick as a maiden's finger and heavy enough to stagger an elephant from the nighted Southern lands. Nor was its dark surface relieved by a sign of handle or lock. Folding his left hand into a mallet, Zamboula's ruler struck the slab, and stepped aside. The door had given out a dull boom and yielded not at all and Akter Khan flexed his left hand several times.
The door swung inward. The older of his two guards looked questioningly at him.
'The girl those Shanki gave me a fortnight ago, Farouz: fetch her here.'
'My lord.' Yet Farouz hesitated.
'You know the maid I mean, Farouz?'
'Aye, my lord. Am… am I to fetch her as a prisoner, my lord?'
'Oh no, Farouz! Tell her that her lord and master has a gift for her. But fetch her here, now.'
'My lord!' The soldier gave his head the military jerk of acknowledgment, backed the minimal requirement of two steps, and whirled to hurry off along the brightly tiled, well-lit corridor that disguised the entrance to the second ugliest area of the khan's accursed domain; the squalid Squatter's Alley being the ugliest —a disgrace even to accursed Zamboula, built by Stygians and peopled by varicolored hybrids ruled by Hyrkanians.
Akter Khan turned back to Zafra, and almost he smiled; at least he looked pleased with himself.
'Little bitch! That bustling dog Akhimen 'Khan' of those grease-headed desert nomads brought me her as a gift and tribute, a lovely child of twelve, all virginal and formed like Stygia's sensual Derketo Herself!'
Zafra nodded. He had seen the maiden whose name his khan had instantly disregarded, to call her instead Derketari, after the pleasure-loving goddess of old Stygia. Her form and great dark eyes were enough to arouse lust in a statue, by Hanuman… by Derketo!
'And she acted as if she feared and hated all men, the dissemblingly formed, accursed little viper! Cower she did, and shriek when brought to my privy chamber—that very night! What an honour for a stupid uncompleted little daughter of the dunes whose mother doubtless had a moustache by the time she was eighteen! She…'
The khan went no further.
He would not tell Zafra the young mage or anyone else how, in the face of her cowering, her whimpering and pleading and crying out, he who was used to willing women, even actively participating ones proud and honored to be called by the khan himself, had disgraced himself and failed his manhood. Akter Khan had wanted to beat her, to put his two hands on her lovely throat and strangle her!
Instead, he had but sent her weeping from him and her too stupid to be disgraced. He called for his Argossean, Chia. Her he called Tigress, and with her he had proven himself man and khan. On the morrow he had bade his Tigress prepare and train the maiden of the Shanki—stupid child! And for a week of days she had seemed happy and was beautiful, beautiful. Lithe as a boneless serpent, she excelled at the dances those doubly damned nomads commenced teaching their girl-children when they were but three years in age. She was temptation itself, and wore the man-pleasing clothing provided her as though born to it, as if in love with it, flaunting her hips; all as if pleasing a man was her only desire. Yet Akter Khan had forced himself to wait for a full week, and then a day longer the more to sharpen his appetite. He treated her then to the honour of sharing a most private supper with him, and was kind and gentle. Solicitous even, he remembered now with embarrassment. And then… once he rose, his eyes told her of his emotions and wholly normal intent—she was again the cowering, whining, pleading, even screaming child.
Even so he had not sent her back to her father, in disgrace. But by Tarim and the very Lord of the Black Throne… how much could a man bear?
A man? A khan, by Hanuman's stones!
Khan and mage waited in silence, each occupied with his thoughts and only one wondering at the thoughts of the other. Between them lay the sword; Akter Khan's sword of the jewelled hilt and, though invisible, rune-scribed tang. Below sprawled the two Iranistani, stiffening in death. Zafra's sword stood from the one, nor did it quiver but stood above him like a sentinel of death.
With both hands Akter Khan drew over his head the silver chain that held the large pearl-bordered wheel on his chest; it was set with a sizable ruby of many facets, which was surrounded, in a six-pointed star, by twelve bright yellow topazes.
'Take you this below, and my sword,' he bade the mage so recently an apprentice, and him not yet thirty years of age. 'Thrust the sword into the floor. That will not affect the spell?'
'No, my lord.'
'Hang this then,' Akter said with a brief nod, 'from its guard, and fetch up the other sword.'
Without question Zafra took sword and pendant. Hitching up the left hem of his robe while he descended, stepping across the corpse of the second Iranistani slain, he paced to within a step of the other dead man. His first thrust failed to anchor the satrap's blade in the floor of hard-packed black earth, so long cemented by human blood. He used both hands on his second attempt, and the sword was fixed. He hung his ruler's chain and pendant over the guard,
prettily draped and glinting as it swung in air, tinging gently against the blade, yellow gold on silvery steel.
Both his hands and some exertion were required to force the other sword from the body of its victim, so deeply had the fell weapon imbedded itself. Zafra paused to stoop and wipe the blade, with care, in the dead man's long black hair. It was dirty, but removed blood and incidentally oiled the blade. A servant would give it proper attention, later.
The young mage mounted the steps. As he approached the landing that broadened rightward into the semi-gallery, he saw the girl appear in the door. The entirety of Farouz's unhandsome, helmet-surmounted face was visible behind her, even from Zafra's lack of vantage; so short was this beautiful maiden of twelve.
Akter Khan turned at the sound of her gasp.
'Ah,' he said, 'my lovely desert flower! Come you in, pretty Derketari, and see what I have for you.' He reached for her hand.
Beauties at twelve and raging beauties at thirteen, it was said of the daughters of the sands; and mothers at fifteen and raging hags at five-and-twenty. And this girl was twelve.
Zafra was unable not to stare at her. He took in her mass of shining black hair, laced with pearls so that it was as the night sky besprent with stars; her sweet oval face with its cavalry archer's bow of a mouth, stained crimson and shining; the great round beauty of her eyes that were like staring down into a well by night a moment after moonrise. And at least they had got those voluminous Shanki garments of scarlet off her!
Her breastplates were of gold, and from each cup the tiniest golden chains dangled so that pendent gems danced before her and gently thumped her tiny belly with her slightest movement. Well below her navel, her girdle consisted only of three strands of cloth-of-gold braided into a cord no thicker than her smallest finger. From it shimmered down an arm's length of snowy gauze sewn to white silk with pale blue thread; this pretense of a skirt was in width but the length of her hand. The strip of cloth was hemmed between her ankles, and the strip behind was only a little shorter. Cloth-of-gold straps climbed her lovely legs, criss-crossing, from soft little ankle boots of red felt sewn with pearls. The gaiters were tied off just at the lovely child's knees.
She might, Zafra mused, have been one of those tender young virgins with whose blood incantations had been writ on a sort of parchment made of serpents' skin; incantations Zafra had read, and committed to memory without his mentor's knowledge.
The twelve-year-old gift of the Shanki wore only two decorations: a garnet-set tribal rite-ring of camel's hair braided with one strand of her own tresses, and the little silver-and-opal pendant with which she had come to the satrap. On a silver chain of passing delicacy, the pendant hung in the centre of the slight swell of her breast.
She stared, huge-eyed, past Zafra at the two bodies below. She seemed unaware that her lord had taken her hand in his hairy one.
Reaching the landing, Zafra pressed his own sword into the hand of Farouz, that it might be outside the dungeon. Zafra stood back and seemed to blend into the wall at the head of the stair.
'M… my lord! To such a place—? Those men!' The Shanki maiden's voice quavered with her trembling.
'Rejoice!' the khan bade her. 'They are Iranistani, spies sent against us by a king whose mind is set on conquest! Yet one was a seer, and he made the happy prophecy that of you anon shall be born a beautiful boy who will grow up to rule not only Zamboula, but all the magnificent empire of Turan!'
She looked at him from black eyes surrounded by black cosmetic. Her hand remained in his, and she wondered, seeming enchanted by his words, in their thrall. Behind her, Farouz quietly closed the great door, paneled with wood on its outside.
'Below stood my very own sword, symbol of my rule. So overjoyed was I that I removed my own medallion of gold and pearl and topaz and the pigeon's egg from my mother's bosom, and hung it there. It was then that the spies made at me, and had to be slain by my loyal guards who fetched you here. For I set my hand on the pommel and made vow: She who retrieves this Gem of Zamboula shall by first among the women of Zamboula and all the land round about, that the way may be prepared for the ascension of the fruit of her loins.'
The stare of those great dark maiden's eyes had left the khan's face while he broidered thus, and was now fixed on the winking pendant that swung like a victor's waiting prise from the gem-hilted sword below.
'M-mer… my lord… I… I cannot go down there!'
'Why Derketari… Lotus of the sun-kissed desert… you must! Shall the prophecy of a dead man come to naught? Shall the proud tent-dwelling Shanki not then be elevated above all others and receive the favors of a great ruler-to-be—of Shanki blood?'
The child stared down at the dangling medallion. She looked again at the hawk-nosed man beside her. Now he held his honeyed tongue. She looked again upon the two corpses, and again at the pendant. It dangled, beckoned silently in flashes of gemmy fire through the flicker of smoky dungeon torches. Her tongue appeared to trace over her full lower lip.
She heard; she heard every word. Khan and mage knew she had thought of her poor desert-bound people, sun-wrinkled of face and hand ere they were twoscore years in age; of her father's pride and hopes—and doubtless his shame unto rage, did he learn she had robbed him and his people and incidentally herself of great glory and high honour because of a childish trepidation; merely a dungeon. Merely two dead men, and new-dead at that. None among the people of the desert but saw corpses long ere they were twelve. Most saw them at least once at their most hideous; sun-bloated, fly-bedecked and vulture-pecked.
'Hmp,' the child whose name was not Derketari muttered to herself, 'I have seen corpses afore. Hmp!'
And Akter, smiling, looked down at her over the bridge of his vulture's nose. He released her hand at the moment he felt the beginning of a tug. He wiped the hand on his multi-hued robe, for her palm was sweating.
In a gesture almost queenly, she bent her knees just a little to gather in one hand both ends of her 'skirt,' drawing the strip of white behind in between her legs. She descended, slowly. Her steeling herself was visible every step of her way downward.
Across the head of the steps, khan's eyes met those of mage. The khan spoke, quietly.
'You have a spell that wants completing, have you not?'
The maiden continued her descent without glancing back. The stair numbered five-and-twenty slabs of stone; she set her felt-shod foot on the nineteenth.
'Aye, my lord.'
Akter glanced down at the gift of the Shanki. She set her left foot on the twenty-first step.
'Complete it, then, wizard, and doubly happier will by my life, whilst for you… would you entertain a very tigress this night, Zafra? A Tigress, of Argos, whose claws are sheathed in silk?'
Below: the twenty-fourth step bore both the girl's feet, for she hesitated there, seeking a way around, rather than across, the naked corpse of a man she did not know had been one of nigh incredible bravery and daring.
'Aye, my good lord,' Zafra said, and his eyes seemed to glitter when he looked down at the girl's back, and then at the pendant-strung sword standing from the dungeon floor like a monument to two violent deaths.
Three, Zafra thought, and he said very quietly, his lips hardly moving, 'Slay him.'
Earth and water, fire and air had anointed the sword while the ancient words were said over it. Gold rang off steel as the sword of Akter Khan drew itself from the earthen floor. Without hesitation, it turned itself in air and rushed, like an arrow loosed by a strong-thewed archer of great skill, at the little daughter of the desert.
She had naturally glanced at it when she heard the ting of metal on metal—as Akter Khan had glanced at Zafra when he heard the pronoun the mage used. Her throat was frozen in awe and terror; the khan's was not.
'Him?' he demanded.
'Even a sword of sorcery knows no gender, my lord. Too, any against whom my lord presently employs it are almost sure to be men.'
Below, the girl's nascent cry broke off in a hor
rid indrawn gasp as the ensorcled blade proved it had no knowledge of gender or pronouns. Between and just beneath her golden breastplates it plunged, and just left of centre.
The khan drew a deep long breath through his nostrils. He expelled it from his mouth in a windy sigh.
'Ah, and to think she died a virgin,' he said, as though making paean at graveside, 'and to such a great cause! Nor will her people know this, for not for a month will we sadly send word that she died of a fever that also nigh took the life of her beloved lord—' the khan coughed— 'and was buried with honour and mourning in the Cemetery of Kings, doubtless bearing within her a royal son and taking him with her… to Hell!'
Even Zafra swallowed.
So recently wizard's apprentice; votary of abominable sorceries gained from the ancient Book of Skelos and the evil-reeking tomes of Sabatea of the golden peacock and envenomed ink; caller upon Set and dark Erlik and even those Pictish Children of Jhil of which those savages knew less than he… and recent slayer of his late master; all and each of these was Zafra, and yet more, for he dreamed of rule, and broad sway in future with kahns subject to him while he said 'my lord' to no man… and yet he swallowed at the sheer evil and toxin-laden words of his employer, if not at the murder of innocent beauty.
Villain! Zafra thought. So men will call me in times to come—and none will know that once I served the greatest villain since Thugra Khotan died in Khorshemish three thousand years agone!
Akter Khan, having vindicated his manhood, droned on in the same deadly voice. 'That sword will hang in new brackets of gold on the wall, behind my throne, Zafra, and I shall steel myself not to test it now and again. And you, O genius, are henceforth Wizard of Zamboula, advisor to the Khan, quartered in the second apartment of the palace, served by him of your choice from among mine own and a girl chosen by my very self. And… this night… visited by a Tigress!'
The Conan Chronology Page 38