He thought to hide his origins by hiding the accents of the slums of Belverus, and was unaware that everyone knew his deception.
'Such careful words to express your doubts, Vegentius,' Demetrio Amarianus said. The slender youth touched a perfumed pomander to his nose, but it could not hide the sneer that twisted his almost womanly mouth. 'But then you always use careful words, don't you? We all know you are here only to-'
'Enough!' Albanus snapped.
Both Demetrio and Vegentius, whose face had been growing more purple by the second, subsided like well-trained animals at the crack of the trainer's whip. These squabbles were constant, and he tolerated them no more than he was forced to. Today he would not tolerate them at all.
'All of you,' Albanus went on, 'want something. You, Vegentius, want the generalship you feel King Garian has denied you. You, Demetrio, want the return of the estates Garian's father took from your grandfather. And you, Sephana. You want revenge against Garian because he told you he liked his women younger.'
'As pleasantly stated as is your custom, Albanus,' the lone woman said bitterly. Lady Sephana Galerianus' heartshaped face was set with violet eyes and framed by a raven mane that hung below her shoulders. Her red silk robe was cut to show both the inner and outer slopes of her generous breasts, and slashed to expose her legs to the hip when she walked.
'And what do I want?' the fourth man in the room asked, and everyone started as if they had forgotten he was there.
It was quite easy to forget Constanto Melius, for the middle-aged noble was vagueness personified.
Thinning hair and the pouches beneath his constantly blinking eyes were his most prominent features, and his intelligence and abilities matched the rest of him.
'You want your advice listened to,' Albanus replied. 'And so it shall be, when I am on the throne.'
It would be listened to for as long as it took to order the man banished, the hawk-faced lord thought.
Garian had made the mistake of rebuffing the fool, then leaving him free in the capital to foment trouble.
Albanus would not make the same mistake.
'We seem to have passed by what Vegentius said,' Sephana said abruptly, 'but I, too, would like to see what help we can count on from you, Albanus. Demetrio and Vegentius provide information. Melius and I provide gold to buy disorders in the street, and to pay brigands to burn good grain. You keep your plans to yourself and tell us about the magicks that will make Garian give the throne to you, if we do these other things as well. I, too, want to see these magicks.'
The others seemed somewhat abashed that she had brought the promised sorcery out into the open, but Albanus merely smiled.
Rising, he tugged a brocade bellpull on the wall before moving to a table at the end of the room, a table where a cloth covered certain objects. Cloth and objects alike Albanus had placed there with his own hands.
'Come,' he told the others. Suddenly reluctant, they moved to join him slowly.
With a flourish he whisked the cloth aside, enjoying their starts. He knew that the things on that table-a statuette in sapphire, a sword with serpentine blade and quillons of ancient pattern, a few crystals and engraved gems-were, with one exception, practically useless. At least, he had found little use prescribed for them in the tomes he had so painfully deciphered. Items of power he kept elsewhere.
Ten years earlier, slaves on one of his estates north of Numalia had dug into a subterranean chamber.
Luckily he had been there at the time, been there to recognise it as the storehouse of a sorcerer, been there to see that the luckless slaves were buried in that chamber once he had emptied it.
A year it had taken him just to discover how ancient that cache was, dating back to Acheron, that dark empire ruled by the vilest thaumaturgies and now three millenia and more gone in the dust. For all those years he had studied, eschewing a tutor for fear any sorcerer of ability would seize the hoard for his own.
It had been a wise decision, for had he been known to be studying magicks he would surely have been caught up in Garian's purge of sorcerers from the capital. Garian. Thinking dark thoughts, Albanus lifted a small red crystal sphere from the table.
'I mistrust these things,' Sephana said, shuddering. 'Better we should rely on ways more natural. A subtle poison-'
'Would provoke a civil war for the succession,' Albanus cut her off. 'I don't want to tell you again that I have no intention of having to wrest the Dragon Throne from a half score of claimants. The throne will be given to me, as I have said.'
'That,' Vegentius grumbled, 'I will believe when I see it.'
Albanus motioned the others to silence as a serving girl entered. Blonde and pale of skin, she was no more than sixteen years of age. Her simple white tunic, embroidered about the hem with Albanus'
house-marls, was slashed to show most of her small breasts and long legs. She knelt immediately on the marble floor, head bent.
'Her name is Omphale,' the hawk-faced lord said.
The girl shifted at the mention of her name, but knew enough not to lift her head. She was but newly enslaved, sold for the debts of her father's shop, but some lessons were quickly learned.
Albanus held the red crystal at arm's length in his left hand, making an arcane gesture with his right as he intoned, 'An-naal naa-thaan Vas-ti noentei!'
A flickering spike of flame was suddenly suspended above the crystal, as long as a man's forearm and more solid than a flame should be. Within the pulsing red-and-yellow, two dark spots, uncomfortably like eyes, moved as if examining the room and its occupants. All moved back unconsciously except for Omphale, who cowered where she knelt, and Albanus.
'A fire elemental,' Albanus said conversationally. Without changing his tone he added, 'Kill Omphale!'
The blonde's mouth widened to scream, but before a sound emerged the elemental darted forward, swelling to envelop her. Jerkily she rose to her feet, twitching in the midst of an egg of flame that slowly opaqued to hide her. The fire hissed, and in the depths of the hiss was a thin shriek, as of a woman screaming in the distance. With the pop of a bursting bubble the flame disappeared, leaving behind a faint sickly sweet smell.
'Messy,' Albanus mused, scuffing with a slippered foot at an oily black smudge on the marble floor where the girl had been.
The others' stares were stunned, as if he had transformed into the fabled dragon Xutharcan. Surprisingly, it was Melius who first regained his tongue.
'These devices, Albanus. Should we not have some of them as well as you?' His pouchy eyes blinked uncomfortably at the others' failure to speak. 'As a token that we are all equals,' he finished weakly.
Albanus smiled. Soon enough he would be able to show them how equal they were. 'Of course,' he said smoothly. 'I've thought of that myself.' He gestured to the table. 'Choose, and I will tell you what powers your choice possesses.' He slipped the red crystal into a pouch at his belt as he spoke.
Melius hesitated, reached out, and stopped with his hand just touching the sword. 'What... what powers does this have?'
'It turns whoever wields it into a master swordsman.' Having found that such was the extent of the blade's power, Albanus had researched no further. He had no interest in becoming a warrior-hero; he would be King, with such to do his bidding. 'Take the blade, Melius. Or if you fear it, perhaps Vegentius....' Albanus raised a questioning eyebrow at the square-faced soldier.
'I need no magicks to make me a bladesman,' Vegentius sneered. But he made no move to choose something else, either. 'Demetrio?' Albanus said. 'Sephana?'
'I mislike sorcery,' the slender young man replied, openly flinching away from the display on the table.
Sephana was made of sterner stuff, but she shook her head just as quickly. 'If these sorceries can pull Garian from the Dragon Throne, 'tis well enough for me. And they can not....' She met Albanus' gaze for a moment, then turned away.
'I'll take the sword,' Melius said suddenly. He hefted the weapon, testing the balance, and laughed. 'I have
no such scruples as Vegentius about how I become a swordsman.'
Albanus smiled blandly, but slowly his face hardened. 'Now hear me,' he intoned, fixing each of them. in turn with an obsidian eye. 'I have shown but a small sampling of the powers that will gain me the throne of Nemedia, and grant your own desires. Know that I will brook no deviation, no meddling that might interfere with my designs. Nothing will stand between me and the Dragon Crown. Nothing! Now go!'
They backed from his presence as if he already sat on the Dragon Throne.
I
The tall, muscular youth strode the streets of Belverus, monument-filled and marble-columned capital of Nemedia, with a wary eye and a hand close to the well-worn leather-wrapped hilt of his broadsword.
His deep blue eyes and fur-trimmed cloak spoke of the north country. Belverus had seen many northern barbarians in better times, dazzled by the great city and easily separated from their silver or their pittance of gold-though often, not understanding the ways of civilisation, they had to be hauled away by the black-cloaked City Guard, complaining that they had been duped. This man, however, though only twenty-two, walked with the confidence of one who had trod the paving stones of cities as great or greater, of Arenjun and Shadizar, called the Wicked; of Sultanapur and Aghrapur; even the fabled cities of far-off Khitai.
He walked the High Streets, in the Market District, not half a mile from the Royal Palace of Garian, King of Nemedia, yet he thought he might as well be in Hellgate, the city's thieves' district. The open-fronted shops had display tables out, and crowds moved among them pricing cloth from Ophir, wines from Argos, goods from Koth and Corinthia and even Turin. But the peddlers' carts rumbling over the paving stones carried little in the way of foodstuffs, and their prices made him wonder if he could afford to eat in the city for long.
Between the shops were huddled beggars, maimed or blind or both, their wailing for alms competing with the hawkers crying their wares. And every street corner had its knot of toughs, hard-eyed, roughly dressed men who fingered swordhilts, or openly sharpened daggers or weighed cudgels in their fists as their gazes followed a plump merchant scurrying by or a lissome shopkeeper's daughter darting through the crowd with nervous eyes. All that was missing were the prostitutes in their brass and copper bangles, sheer shifts cut to display their wares. Even the air had something of the cloying smell he associated with a dozen slums he had seen, a mixture of vomit, urine and excrement.
Suddenly a fruit cart crossing an intersection was surrounded by half-a-dozen ruffians in motley bits of finery mixed with rags. The skinny vendor stood silent, eyes down and care-worn face red, as they picked over his goods, taking a bite of this and a bite of that, then throwing both into the street. Stuffing the folds of their tunics with fruit, they started away, swaggering, insolent eyes daring anyone to speak.
The well-dressed passersby acted as if the men were invisible.
'I don't suppose you'll pay,' the vendor moaned without raising his eyes.
One of the bravos, an unshaven man wearing a soiled cloak embroidered with thread-of-gold over a ragged cotton tunic, smiled, showing the black ened stumps of his teeth. 'Pay? Here's pay.' His backhand blow split the skinny man's cheek, and the pushcart man collapsed sobbing across his barrow.
With a grating laugh the bravo joined his fellows who had stopped to see the sport, and they shoved their way through the crowd of shoppers, who gave way with no more than a wordless mutter.
The muscular northern youth stopped a pace away from the pushcart, 'Will you not call the City Guard?'
he asked curiously.
The peddler pushed himself wearily erect. 'Please. I have to feed my family. There are other carts.'
'I steal not fruit, nor beat old men,' the youth said stiffly. 'My name is Conan. Will the City Guard not protect you?'
'The City Guard?' the old man laughed bitterly. 'They stay in their barracks and protect themselves. I saw three of these scum hang a Guardsman by his heels and geld him. Thus they think of the City Guard.'
He wiped his hands shakily down the front of his tunic, suddenly realizing how visible he was talking to a barbarian in the middle of the intersection. 'I have to go,' he muttered. 'I have to go.' He bent to the handles of his pushcart without another glance at the young barbarian.
Conan watched him go with a pitying glance. He had come to Belverus to hire himself as a bodyguard or a soldier-he had been both, as well as a thief, a smuggler and a bandit but whoever could hire his sword for protection in that city, it would unfortunately not be those who needed it most.
Some of the street-corner toughs had noticed his words with the peddler, and approached, thinking to have some fun with the outlander. As his gaze passed over them, though, cold as the mountain glaciers of his native Cimmeria, it came to them that death walked the streets of Belverus that day. There was easier prey elsewhere, they decided. In minutes the intersection was barren of thugs.
A few people looked at him gratefully, realizing he had made that one place safe for the moment. Conan shook his head, half angry with himself, half with them. He had come to hire his sword for gold, not to clear the streets of scum.
A scrap of parchment, carried by a vagrant breeze, fetched up against his boot. Idly he picked it up, read the words writ there in fine round hand.
King Garian sits on the Dragon Throne.
King Garian sits to his feast alone.
You sweat and toil for a scrap of bread,
And learn to walk the streets in dread.
He is not just, this King of ours,
May his reign be counted in hours.
Mitra save us from the Dragon Throne,
And the King who sits to his feast alone.
He let the scrap go with the breeze, joining still other scraps swirling down the street. He saw people lift one to read. Some let it drop, whitefaced, or threw it away in anger, but some read and furtively tucked the bit of sedition into their pouches.
Belverus was a plum ripe for the plucking. He had seen the signs before, in other cities. Soon the furtiveness would be gone. Fists would be shaken openly at the Royal Palace. Stronger thrones had been toppled by less.
Suddenly a running man pushed past him with horror-stricken eyes, and on his heels came a woman, her mouth open in a soundless scream. A flock of children ran past shrieking unintelligibly.
Down the street more screams and cries rose, and the crowd suddenly stampeded toward the intersection. Their fear communicated itself, and without knowing why others joined the stream. With difficulty Conan forced his way to the side of the street, to a shop deserted by its owner. What could cause this, he wondered.
Then the torrent of people thinned and was gone, and Conan saw that the street they had fled was littered with bodies, few moving. Some had been trampled; others, further away, were lacking arms or heads. And striding down the centre of the street was a man in a richly embroidered blue tunic, holding a sword with an odd, wavy blade that was encarmined for its entire length. A rope of spittle drooled from the corner of his mouth.
Conan put his hand to his sword, then firmly took it away. For gold, he reminded himself, not to avenge strangers on a madman. He turned to move deeper into the shadows.
At that instant a child broke from a shop directly in front of the madman, a girl no more than eight years old, wailing as she ran on flashing feet. With a roar the madman raised his sword and started after her.
'Erlik's Bowels and Bladder!' Conan swore. His broadsword came smoothly from its worn shagreen sheath as he stepped back into the intersection.
The child ran screaming past without slowing. The madman halted. Up close, despite his rich garb, thinning hair and pouches beneath his eyes gave him the look of a clerk. But those muddy brown eyes were glazed with madness, and the sounds he made were formless grunts. Flies buzzed about the fruit the bravos had scattered.
At least, Conan thought, the man had some reason left, enough not to run onto another's blade. 'Hold there,' he said. 'I'm
no running babe or shopkeeper to be hacked down from behind. Why don't you-'
Conan thought he heard a hungry, metallic whine. An animal scream broke from the man's throat, and he rushed forward, sword raised.
The Cimmerian brought his own blade up to parry, and with stunning speed the wavy sword changed direction. Conan leaped back; the tip of the other's steel slashed across his belly, slicing tunic and the light chain mail he wore beneath alike as if they were parchment. He moved back another step to gain room for his own attack, but the madman followed swiftly, bloody blade slashing and stabbing with a ferocity beyond belief. Slowly the muscular youth gave ground.
To his shock it came to him that he was fighting a defensive battle against the slight, almost nondescript man. His every move was to block some thrust instead of to attack. All of his speed and cunning were going into merely staying alive, and already he was bleeding from half a dozen minor wounds. It came to him that he might well die on that spot.
'By the Lord of the Mound, no!' he shouted. 'Crom and steel!' But with the clash of the blades ringing in his ears he was forced back.
Abruptly Conan's foot came down on a half-eaten plum, and with a crash he went down, flat on his back, silver-flecked spots dancing before his eyes. Fighting for breath he watched the madman's wavy blade go back for the thrust that would end his life. But he would not die easily. From his depths he found the strength to roll aside as the other lunged. The bloody blade struck sparks from the paving stones where he had been. Frantically he continued to roll, coming to his feet with his back against a wall. The madman whirled to follow.
The air was filled with a whir as of angry hornets, and the madman suddenly resembled a feathered pincushion. Conan blinked. The City Guard had arrived at last, a black-cloaked score of archers. They stayed well back, drawing again, for transfixed though he was, the madman still stood. His mouth was a gash emitting a wordless howl of bloodlust, and he hurled his sword at the big Cimmerian.
Conan's blade had no more than a hand's span to travel to deflect the strange blade to clatter in the street. The Guardsmen loosed their arrows once more. Pierced through and through the madman toppled. For a brief moment as he fell, the look of madness faded to be replaced by one of unutterable horror. He hit the pavement dead. Slowly, weapons at the ready, the soldiers closed in on the corpse.
The Conan Chronology Page 195