'It's penned in Old Zamorian,' he said, 'a script thought clean out of use since Mithridates the First revised our system of writing. Perchance a priest in Yezud could decipher it; I cannot.'
'May I see it?' purred a soft, high-pitched voice with a peculiar accent. The Stygian, whom Conan had earlier beheld seated among his scrolls and tablets, now stood expectantly at his shoulder. 'I may be of some assistance to you, sir.'
Conan frowned. 'And who might you be?'
The shaven-headed one smiled. 'I am called Psamitek of Luxur, a poor student of arcane arts.'
With a grunt, Conan handed over the scroll, and the Stygian studied it in the flickering lamplight. 'Let me see! 'I, Tughril, High Priest of Erlik, do hereby swear to pay ten thousand pieces of gold for the head what is this name? Conan the Cimmerian.' What make you of it, sirs? Who is this Conan? Is any here so named?'
Catigern cast a fleet glance about the room; then he and Conan shook their heads. Bartakes spoke:
'I mind me that two years agone, when I visited Shadizar, I heard of a notorious thief, Conan. I had forgotten the story until yon parchment named him. ’twas said the fellow's vile predations were so outrageous that every guard and watchman in Zamora was sworn to seek him out. At last he fled the country and disappeared.'
The Stygian murmured: 'So? I doubt not there is some connection, however mysterious it seem. This Conan's head must have some singular quality, that a Turanian priest should offer a royal ransom for it. With such a sum, one could accumulate the greatest library of occult works in all of Stygia.' With a sigh, he rolled up the parchment and slipped it into his pouch. 'Since the message does not concern those present, none will object to my keeping this sheet, I am sure. Good parchment is costly, and this I can pumice off and use again. A good night to you all.'
The Stygian bowed obsequiously and withdrew. Conan opened his mouth to demand the return of the scroll; but realising that he could not make an issue of the matter without exposing his true identity, he ground his teeth in silent vexation. To cover his discomfiture, he turned to Catigern. 'Captain, let's have a drink together while our host cleans up. Methinks we've earned it, and what better way to spend this little treasure trove?'
'Good!' said Catigern. 'Tomorrow I shall have to report of his slaying to the Vicar. You may be called in to testify on my account.'
'Is not civilisation hell?' grunted Conan. 'You cannot even kill a man in honest self-defence without accounting for some damned nosy official!'
Later that night, the men of the Free Company on guard duty at the gates of Yezud were startled to see, by starlight, their captain and the town blacksmith, with arms around each other's necks, staggering up the cliff-side path. They were singing in powerful bass voices - singing not one song but two.
VII
Wine Of Kyros
Three days later, when Conan accompanied Lar to Amytis's house for supper, he found Rudabeh there. Lar said:
'Hail, sister! This is our new blacksmith, the mighty Master Corin. He lets me hold the work-piece on the anvil, to get the feel of the tools, whilst he smites the iron. And today he explained the colour change in the metal as it heats and cools. I shall be a smith yet.'
'That is good of you, Master Corin,' said Rudabeh with a radiant smile.
Conan's eyes burned a volcanic blue as he looked at the girl. She was tall for a Zamorian and handsome - not the sort of fabulous beauty that kings chose for their seraglios, but clean, healthy, and regular-featured. Nor did the plain tunic mid baggy pantaloons of the Zamorian woman's street attire entirely mask her supple, well-rounded dancer's body. She continued:
'Mother has repeated to me some of the tales of high adventure with which you have regaled my family. Are they indeed all true?'
'Close enough,' grinned Conan, 'albeit a good storyteller must stretch a few details for the sake of his art. Did I not see you dance before Zath at the last service in the temple?'
'If you were amongst the worshippers, you did.'
'You look more warmly clad now than you were then girl.'
She smiled, seemingly unperturbed. 'That is so. But let not my temple costume stir lascivious thoughts within your bosom. I will not become a feast for Zath to furnish any mar with momentary pleasure.'
Conan growled: 'Anyone who tried to feed you to that overgrown bug would answer to me!'
'Your words are fine and brave, Master Corin, but you could not forestall my fate if the priests decided upon it. She gave a little sigh. 'Sometimes methinks the holy father carry virtue to the point of vice; but, having chosen a route, I must travel it to the end.'
'When does your term of service run out?'
'Eight months hence.'
'What will you do then?' asked Conan as Amytis set the fleshpot on the table and the diners began spooning out portions of stew.
'Marry some local lad, I reckon. Several have made sheep's eyes at me, but I have given the matter little thought. My temple duties fully occupy my waking hours.'
'How do you pass your days?'
'As leader of the troupe, I lead the other girls in the sacred songs and dances and train the novices. When we are neither dancing nor singing, we act as handmaidens to the priest and clean the rooms within the temple.
'But these are not my only duties. The old Master of the Properties has lately died, and they have designated me Mistress of the Properties in his stead. The priests could no agree upon one of their own number for the post, so they pushed the task off on me.'
'What does the Mistress of the Properties do?'
'I am responsible for all the surfaces of the temple and al the movables therein. I count and polish ornaments and furniture and sacred vessels and the like, and keep lists. So busy am I that I scarce can visit Mother once a fortnight.
'Do you spend the night at home on such occasions?'
'Nay; I must return to the temple ere midnight.'
For a while, Conan ate in silence. When Amytis carried the plates and sent Lar to the well for a bucket of water to wash them with, Conan said:
'Have you ever been to Bartakes's Inn in Khesron, Kudabeh?'
'Once, years ago, when Father lived, he took us all there. I do not remember much about it.'
'They have a new harper, said to be good. May I escort you thither for the evening? I'll see you get back to the temple in ample time.'
She sighed again. 'How I should love it! But during my term of temple service, I am forbidden to set foot outside Yezud, unless accompanied by a priest. They would whip me if they caught me out of bounds.'
'Oh, come on! Wear a veil or a cloak with a hood, and do not show your face. A girl like you should have some life outside her duties.'
'You tempt me, sir; I have seen so little of the outer world. But still...'
In low voices, they argued back and forth. Eventually Rudabeh gave in. 'Wait here but a moment,' she said.
When she reappeared, she was bundled up to the eyes. 'Crom!' exclaimed Conan. 'You look like one of the mummies of Stygia they tell about. Well, come along; the night grows no younger.'
The common room of Bartakes's Inn throbbed with the sound of many voices. Conan's fierce blue eyes roved among the tables, seeking the face of anyone who might cause trouble for the girl or for himself, before he led the heavily veiled Rudabeh to a dark corner and seated her.
The Stygian scholar sat by himself, studying scrolls and tablets as before. A party of new arrivals occupied an adjacent table - four men in Hyrkanian travelling dress, their trews tucked into heavy boots, their sheepskin caps, with upturned brims, perched at jaunty angles on their shaved skulls. They were noisily throwing dice as they quaffed great jacks of ale.
Probably Turanians, thought Conan; certainly the fifth newcomer, seated at a small table by himself, was from Turan. Of all the branches of the Hyrkanian race, the Turanians, deeming themselves the most civilised, scorned their nomadic kinsmen, who roamed the boundless steppes east of the Vilayet Sea. Yet these same Turanians retained the physi
cal features and many of the customs and attitudes of their barbaric forebears and present kinsmen.
The solitary Turanian, hunched over several sheets of parchment, was short and squarely built, with a neatly-trimmed grey beard. Much finer than the clothing of the other four was his attire; and an embroidered black velvet skullcap, richly strewn with luminescent pearls, rested on his close-cut greying hair. He had pushed aside the platter with the cold remains of his dinner to make room for the documents on which he focused his attention.
Conan had a lingering impression that he had seen the man before, but he could not recall the circumstances. At least, he was sure it was not in Yezud, so he dismissed the matter from his mind. He snapped his fingers to summon Bartakes's daughter Mandana, who at the moment manned the wine counter. Keeping his voice low, he murmured:
'Wine for the lady and me - a fine wine, none of your ordinary slop. What have you?'
Mandana shot a hostile glance at the veiled figure and answered: 'We have Numalian red, and lanthic red, and white of Akkharia.'
'Are those the choicest in the house?'
Mandana gave a disdainful little sniff. 'Tis true we have a; cask of the white of Kyros, but that is for high-born ladies and gentlemen. You could never afford -'
'The contents of my purse are no concern of yours!' growled Conan, slapping down a handful of silver. 'Bring out the best.'
Mandana flounced off. For the moment, Conan enjoyed an unaccustomed prosperity, for he had made a discovery about his present situation. During the illness of Pariskas, smithery work had so piled up that Oman's patrons, eager to obtain their work out of its proper turn, thrust upon him sizeable sums, over and above the stipend paid him by the temple.
Soon two goblets of golden Kyrian appeared on his table. Instead of draining his goblet in three gulps, as was his usual wont, Conan endeavoured to pursue the civilised custom of sniffing the aroma and delicately savouring each sip. Considering the cost of the beverage, even Conan, careless though he was with money, wanted to make each drink last a while.
'This wine is wonderful!' whispered Rudabeh, who had partly raised her veil. 'I have never tasted aught like it in my life.'
'I thought you might enjoy it,' said Conan expansively, 'How go the intrigues at the te - at your place of employment?'
'Something is brewing,' she replied thoughtfully, barely above a whisper. 'When my master talks of cleansing the kingdom, he is not merely casting words upon the wind. He has some terrible plan in mind and hints that he will shortly act - perhaps within a month.'
Conan leaned forward to murmur: 'What sort of Wight is the High Priest?'
Rudabeh shuddered delicately. 'We all fear him,' she breathed. 'He is a stern, unbending taskmaster - just according to his reckoning, but without mercy when he deems himself in the right, and he always thinks himself in the right.'
Conan looked at Rudabeh through narrowed eyes, his heavy brows drawn in concentration. 'What action does he plan?'
'I know not. And then there is this visit by -' She nodded toward the tables whereat lounged the four in sheepskin caps and the lone grey-bearded scholar in the pearl-spangled cap.
'What do you know of those fellows?' asked Conan.
'They come from Aghrapur, sent by King Yildiz on some mission to the temple. I do not know the names of those four ruffians; but the older man is Lord Parvez, a Turanian diplomat.'
Conan clapped a large, muscular hand against his I forehead. 'Of course! I-' He checked himself in time to avoid blurting out that he had seen Parvez at Yildiz's court, a place where, according to his present story, he had never set foot. To cover his confusion, he signalled Mandana to refill their goblets. Rudabeh, noting Conan's discomfiture, whispered:
'Why, know you this Parvez?'
'Nay, I did but hear of him in Shadizar,' muttered Conan lamely. 'What can he want with Feridun? Kings send ambassadors to other kings, not to the priests of foreign lands.'
'Again, I know not; but it might have some connection with the veiled woman.'
'Veiled woman? What veiled woman?' asked Conan sharply. An idea was forming in his agile mind, just beyond the bounds of consciousness.
'Ere you came to Yezud, the Vicar returned from a lengthy journey, bringing with him a woman swathed in many-coloured veils. He hustled her into the temple, where she remains in a locked chamber, seen by none save the priests of the highest rank and a single slave. This servant, a swarthy wench, comes from some far country and speaks no tongue I know.'
Like a meteor, the idea burst upon Conan's consciousness: the woman must be the princess Jamilah, favourite wife of King Yildiz. He pressed his lips together lest he divulge his knowledge of Jamilah's abduction. Trying to seem casual, he said: 'This woman, now - might your priests have kidnapped her for ransom?'
Rudabeh shook her head. 'Nay; Zath and those who serve him are enormously rich. The coins in the offering chest are hut a token of the temple's wealth. The real treasures of Zath, the vessels of gold and silver, set with diamonds and emeralds and rubies; the stacks of bars of precious metal; the heaps of uncut gems - are held in triple-locked and guarded crypts. Besides the tithes of the faithful and the gifts of the king, the temple controls the traffic in bitumen, which bubbles from the ground hereabouts and lies in pools until the folk, under the watchful eyes of the priests, scoop it up to sell. Such are the riches of Zath that not even a king's ransom would tempt them to such an outrage. Perchance the woman is some well-born fugitive, who has fled a brutal husband.'
'Or poisoned him and now seeks sanctuary,' added Conan.
Although Rudabeh's words gave Conan material for furious thought and set his eyes agleam with avarice, he dared not pursue the subject of the temple's wealth and the sequestered queen lest he arouse suspicion in the mind of his companion or of the company around them. To mask his thoughts, he affected a careless smile, drained his goblet of wine, and signalled Mandana to refill the tumblers. When the sullen girl had fulfilled her task, she stared insolently at Rudabeh before withdrawing. The dancer drew down her half-raised veil and shrank back into the corner. Conan said:
'Pay the wench no heed. Her nose is out of joint with envy of your handsome cloak, no more. Now tell me how you spend the hours of your day.'
Rudabeh, he found, was a lively talker: intelligent, clear-sighted, and not without wit. The women he had known since leaving Cimmeria had all chattered foolishly, regarding talk only as a preliminary to love-making, or to refusal, as the case might be. He enjoyed Rudabeh's talk for its own sake, and the contact with her keen mind proved a new and stimulating experience. She told him softly:
'One of my tasks is to keep watch on the reservoir whence feeds the sacred flame.'
'How is that done?'
'The flame burns bitumen from a wick of braided fabric, set in oil in a hollow in the block of marble, beneath the chalcedony bowl. In the recess by the door whence the priests enter the naos for services, a pipe juts out, to which a bronze valve is affixed. I turn the valve to the left, and oil flows; to the right, and the flow ceases.'
'An ingenious device,' mused Conan. 'I have seen royal palaces that had been better off for such amenities. How is the reservoir filled?'
'Every day,' she continued, 'I must needs inspect the reservoir to see how low the oil has sunk. When it is low - say, after three days - I inform the priest whose duty it is. He fills a pitcher at the pipe and pours the bitumen into the reservoir.
'Last year, saying they had more work than they could accomplish, the priests appointed me to perform that task. But the first time I tried it, being new to the job, I spilled some bitumen, and the High Priest was furious. You'd have thought I had stolen one of the Eyes of Zath. Later he blamed me when the priest Mirzes set fire to his robe, claiming I had not cleaned up the oil sufficiently so that Mirzes slipped on the marble.'
'How could that start a fire?' asked Conan.
'Mirzes got careless during the Presentation of the Telesms - when they bring out the sacred key a
nd mirror and so on - and waved his arm across the eternal flame. His fluttery sleeve caught fire, and there was much dashing about and shouting ere they beat the fire out.'
'What was the upshot?'
'Mirzes had his arm in bandages for a fortnight. As soon as he was well, the High Priest gave him the task of filling the reservoir, saying that he, if anyone, would appreciate the need for care. I did not mind escaping that chore, albeit I resented Feridun's barbed comments on the stupidity of women.'
'Whence comes this oil?'
'I know not for certain, but one told me the pipe lies beneath the ground outside the temple and leads up to a gorge, wherein the bitumen seeps from the soil and forms a pool.'
Conan nodded his understanding. 'And speaking of the Eyes of Zath, they must be gems of some sort - at least when Zath is in his stony form. Do you know what sort?'
''Tis said they are eight matchless specimens of the Kambujan girasol, or, as some say, fire opal. Their value must be as great as all the rest of the treasure of Zath.' Dancing around, Rudabeh suddenly stiffened and caught Conan's hand in a convulsive grip. 'Corin! We must flee!'
'Why? What's up, lass?'
'See you that man who just entered?' She moved her head slightly to indicate direction. 'Nay, do not stare; but that man is Darius, one of the priests! If he sees me, I am undone!'
The individual indicated was one of the younger priests, a slim, ascetic-looking man not much older than Conan, clad in an amber robe and an emerald turban. Paying no attention to the other patrons, Darius walked quietly across the floor to where sat the Stygian scholar. The two greeted each other with bows and stately gestures before the priest pulled up a stool and sat facing Psamitek. The priest and the Stygian spoke in low voices, while Psamitek made notes on a waxed wooden tablet.
'I've heard of this Stygian,' murmured Rudabeh. 'He travels about, studying the cults of many gods; and now he I wishes instruction in the theology of Zathism. I suppose Darius is imparting it to him. Now shall we go?'
The Conan Chronology Page 160