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The Conan Chronology

Page 297

by J. R. Karlsson


  . Along the wall across from the chair was a long table covered with a tent-like drape of thick black velvet. Heng Shih approached the shroud of dark fabric. The sharp tip of his scimitar lifted the fabric from the table and a brilliant ray of golden light shone out, stinging his eyes. It was as though he revealed the desert sun itself. The table beneath was set with a number of unrecognizable plants growing from ceramic pots full of soil. The velvet cowl was draped over a framework of thin metal struts that also held, at measured intervals, several extraordinarily bright light-globes.

  Heng Shih let the cowl fall back into place and the golden light faded abruptly, like the sun falling behind a storm cloud. He turned to see Conan standing beside a. small table. The Cimmerian had laid the light-globe on the tabletop. He was fastening his backpack and adjusting it beneath his dusty cloak. The barbarian gestured to the black and empty doorway across the room.

  'We've tarried long enough.'

  The portal opened upon yet another dark and deserted hall. Conan held the light-globe muffled beneath his cloak, so that only a dim glow lit their way. They turned to the right, moving deeper into the palace's stone heart. The silence was as heavy as lead, weighting them down.

  Ahead, the hallway ended in a high arch unlike anything they had seen thus far. Conan stopped, and drew from his belt the silken shirt he had used as a mask against the storm. He wrapped the light-globe in the shirt and set it against a wall. A gentle, yellow radiance shone faintly through the bundle of cloth. Heng Shih watched with a concealed impatience that the barbarian seemed to sense.

  'Come,' said the Cimmerian. 'This room is different.'

  Conan passed beneath the open arch, stepping into an even deeper darkness. The stone floor of the hall ended at the arch. Within the circular room beyond there was no true floor, but rather a ring-like balcony made of a lusterless black metal. The balcony ran around the room's perimeter, encircling an open shaft of uncertain depth.

  Heng Shih followed Conan into the strange chamber, pacing soundlessly a step behind and to the right. The pair . drew to a halt on the metal balcony, straining their eyes into the dark, trying to see across the room's empty centre. Conan laid a hand on the low railing and spoke in a harsh whisper.

  'We can reach the other door from either side. But what is that scent?'

  Heng Shih frowned in frustration. His dilated eyes could scarcely discern a darker smudge against a featureless background that had to be the far wall. It made sense that both branches of the balcony would meet at a doorway across from the one they had entered, but he could see nothing of it. The Cimmerian's vision was uncanny. Then Heng Shih noticed the scent.

  The balcony, only wide enough for two men to walk abreast, bracketed a well of absolute darkness. And from the unfathomed depths below rose a faint odor, reminiscent of stale perfume. After a few breaths, Heng Shih found that its apparent sweetness masked a cloying undercurrent of decay. His hands ached to spell out questions in sign language, but he knew that Conan would not understand.

  The barbarian stood rigidly at the balcony's lip, all of his senses focused into the darkness before him. The hair on his forearms prickled. There was something wrong about this room. Heng Shih stared at Conan in dismay, noting the Cimmerian's animal wariness and unable to account for it. The Khitan put his hand on the worn hilt of his scimitar.

  Conan's sword lashed from its scabbard, hissing sharply as it cut the air.

  'Soldiers. More than four of them, coming to the other door.'

  Heng Shih started in surprise, drew his sword from his sash and stared in vain across the lightless room. He waited a suspended moment, every sense awakening. A faint and wavering yellow glow illuminated the opposite arch, revealing the room to be about twenty paces across. The scuff of boots on stone came to his ears. He tugged the wooden mace from his belt and looked to Conan. The Cimmerian cocked his head and grinned wolfishly at his comrade.

  'No better time to shift the odds in our favour. Here we can take them one at a time. Are you game?'

  The Khitan nodded his shaven head, stepping to the right branch of the balcony even as Conan moved onto the left. The pair advanced slowly, weapons at the ready. And then the opposite arch was abruptly full of light and armed men.

  'They're here!'

  Hands gripping luminous spheres of crystal were thrust into the room's darkness as twelve armoured Stygians pushed out onto the balcony. They reacted smoothly, drawing blades and splitting into two groups without orders, moving like professional warriors who had trained long together.

  Conan cursed under his breath. There were too many of them, and they were too good. The balcony forced the Stygians to advance in single file. The last man in each line held a light-globe high, so that his comrades could see.

  'Intruders,' cried the light-bearer on Heng Shih's side, 'cast down your blades and be spared!'

  Conan's reply was to charge his first challenger. A barbaric war cry resounded in the vaulted chamber as the Cimmerian sprinted forward, closing the distance between himself and his foe with terrible speed.

  The Stygian mercenary was astonished by this unexpected tactic, recoiling into the soldier to his rear. Conan brought his scimitar down with all the power of his shoulders behind it. His blow dashed aside the attempted parry, cleaving through the steel helmet to split the Stygian's skull. The man fell back among his fellows, dead on his feet.

  The second mercenary stumbled over the sprawling body, an outhrust hand catching at the balcony's rail. Stepping forward, Conan reversed his blade. His return cut brought the sword back up in a murderous swath that passed inside the staggering man's failing guard and up through the breastplate to split his sternum. The shattering impact of the blow lifted the man from his feet and sent him hurtling over the balcony in a shower of blood and a mad flurry of flailing limbs.

  'Come ahead, dogs!' roared the barbarian. The battle-madness of the berserker raged through Conan's veins, driving him forward with such raw fury that his more numerous opponents found themselves drawing backward in an involuntary retreat.

  Across the pit, Heng Shih feinted with his wooden mace. When the mercenary facing him parried the blow, the Khitan's scimitar lashed out with such strength that the man's head sprang from his shoulders and rebounded from the ceiling. The body collapsed like a dropped wineskin, sending a wash of crimson vintage spilling over the balcony's rim. The next Stygian lunged in, only to find his thrust blocked by a precise movement of the mace, and his belly laid open by a sudden slash of the scimitar.

  Conan saw none of this, for his third opponent was a man of some ability. Cursing steadily in the name of Set and Bubastis, the warrior traded cuts with the Cimmerian, closing with him over the sprawled body of Conan's first kill. The barbarian's boot skidded on blood-smeared metal, and the Stygian drove forward, his thrust tearing through the patched portion of Conan's mail and searing along his ribs. Conan grunted in pain and, hooking the point of his scimitar in above his foe's gorget, thrust the mercenary through the throat. The blade burst through the man's neck, splintering his spine and lodging in the bone.

  The luckless Stygian reeled backward with a gurgling cry, tearing the blade from Conan's hand and tumbling headlong over the railing to disappear in the darkness below.

  The Cimmerian drew his dagger even as he watched his sword go. The fourth mercenary gave a hoarse shout of triumph to see the fearsome barbarian disarmed. The shout's timbre shifted as Conan dove headfirst into his oncoming foes, slamming bodily into the leading Stygian and bearing both of those following to the balcony in a cursing, writhing heap. No sooner had they struck the metal flooring than Conan was struggling up, wrenching his dagger from the entrails of his fourth opponent. The fifth, fighting for position, came to his knees and awkwardly brought his shortsword down on the head of the rising Cimmerian. The leather helmet saved his skull, but couldn't keep his scalp from splitting under the impact. Fire-shot blackness rolled across Conan's vision. Stunned by the blow, the barbarian half lunged
and half fell forward, driving a clenched fist into the swordsman's face. The blow landed with a meaty crunch and the man spilled over backward with a broken jaw.

  Conan's sole remaining opponent scrambled up from the balcony and turned to flee. Hurling himself forward across the flooring, the Cimmerian caught at the mercenary's flying ankle, snagging a strap of his sandal. With a cry of terror, the man twisted in midstride, desperate to escape the barbarian's grip. The Stygian tore free of Conan's fist, but in doing so spun wildly into the railing, which struck him just below the waist. He upended, all but flying over the rail, and fell into the shaft with a horrible scream. There was a muffled crunch from below, as though the man had fallen into a dry thicket.

  Conan seized a fallen shortsword in a bloodied fist. Gripping the railing with his other hand, he pulled himself slowly to his feet. The breath whistled between his clenched teeth, and sweat ran freely along his limbs. He looked across the pit to see how Heng Shih fared.

  The Khitan stood splay-legged, holding the hilt of his scimitar against his broad belly with both hands. The point of the scimitar was embedded in the chest of the last Stygian mercenary, whose body hung as limply on the blade as an impaled rag. As Conan looked on, Heng Shih hoisted the body up, and with a powerful heave, hurled it into the pit.

  The last soldiers had laid their light-globes on the balcony before engaging the invaders. Now the two men looked at each other in the eerie yellow glow. The Cimmerian bared his teeth in a grotesque approximation of a smile. He drew a hand across his brow to wipe away the blood seeping from his scalp wound.

  'Crom and Ymir, that was as touchy a set-to as I have ever

  A terrible screaming arose from the shaft and silenced him. A single human voice strained in notes of an unknowable agony. The hair rose on Conan's head. He drew away from the balcony's rim, pressing his broad back to the cool stone wall, as the screaming intensified into an inhuman siren and was suddenly cut off.

  A new sound floated up from the hidden depths of the shaft. A subtle rustle that grew steadily in volume until it was a ragged rasping, as if the walls below were scraped by thousands of steel blades.

  Conan shot a glance at Heng Shin and saw that the Khitan was moving carefully toward the arch through which the soldiers had come. The Cimmerian stepped in that direction too, moving stealthily, and then hastening as the sounds in the pit grew louder and, horribly, nearer.

  Something was rising out of the shaft. It moved faster and faster, tearing at the walls around it, until it shot up past the balcony. To Conan's horrified eyes it resembled nothing so much as a tree of surging darkness, hurling its black branches aloft until they crunched against the domed ceiling. It paused there, suspended in the shaft, a tangled tower of rustling darkness, and then it fell down toward them.

  'Crom!' The curse was wrenched from the barbarian's throat. Conan ducked and ran for the door, almost slamming into Heng Shih as the Khitan came through on his heels. They ran for their lives down a darkened corridor, while behind them a soul-searing scream was ripped from the man whose jaw Conan had broken. The cry was mercifully short, but superseded by the even more chilling sound of the swift, rasping progress of the blood-sotted Emerald Lotus as it pursued its prey.

  XXXVI

  When Zelandra was a girl of twelve, she contracted a fever that came close to ending her life. When the disease reached its critical phase, and her young body was wracked with chills and delirium, her parents wrapped her in woollen blankets and laid her upon a couch on a balcony overlooking the grounds of their estate. There they left her to fight for her life.

  The strength of her youth, and the powerful Vendhyan medicines they had given her, gradually won out over the sickness. When she came to herself it was as though she was emerging from a long, winding tunnel of woven dreams. The events of the previous few days blurred into a fantastical skein of unfocused impressions, and she had no real idea of where she was or how she had come to be there. There was only a strong sensation of well-being: the sense that she was well at last and sitting safely in her home.

  Now Zelandra felt that old feeling anew, and her stirring consciousness believed that she was back on that balcony in the summer of her twelfth year. The sensation of emerging from a half-recalled maze of unreal events was the same. Zelandra licked her dry lips and opened her mouth to call for her mother, but found that her voice would not respond. As her vision began to clear, she noticed that someone was speaking to her in a familiar voice. It was a hateful voice. It planted a germ of unease that took root within her, growing and spreading until her emerging awareness focused upon a simple and disturbing certainty. She was not on that balcony now.

  Zelandra found herself looking down at her feet. There was a bitter, oddly familiar, taste in her mouth. A frown creased her high forehead as she noticed the dismal condition of her fine riding boots. How had they come to be so battered and dirty? The hateful voice droned on, sounding very pleased with itself. Zelandra looked up to see who would speak to her in such an annoying fashion.

  'Are you coming back to us now? Yes, I believe that you are. It is a great honour and a greater pleasure to have you as my guest, Lady Zelandra. First of all, you must tell me, how did you manage to use my lotus so slowly? Shakar, the poor fool, was dead within two days of finishing his supply. How is it that you still have some left after all this time?'

  Zelandra stood up straight and ran a hand through her tangled hair. She knew where she must be, though she remained uncertain as to how and when she had arrived. Saying nothing, the sorceress looked slowly and carefully around the huge room, taking in her captors, the black statue, and the bound form of Neesa. Her eyes met those of her scribe for a moment; then Zelandra made herself look away. She could not recall the last time that she had seen Heng Shih or the Cimmerian. She wondered if they were dead. Her lips parted again and when her voice came, it was like the creak of a rust-choked hinge.

  'Shakar must not have seen your lotus for the poison that it is. Either that or he took too much at once and found himself unable to lower the dosage. I felt the craving from the start and tried to stave it off immediately. I used whatever power the drug gave me to strengthen myself against it. Would that you had done the same.'

  'Ah.' Ethram-Fal was smiling at the spirit and cogency of her response.

  His thin lips drew back from green-stained teeth in a loathsome grin that gave his face the appearance of a withered skull.

  'Well done, milady. A small triumph of skill and determination. And yet, here you are now, a mere handful of hours from a painful death despite your best efforts. It seems most unjust, does it not? Perhaps this is the time to bargain?'

  'Bargain?' Zelandra's eyelids fluttered and she put her left hand to her brow. She had to buy time, both to remember what she could about how she came here and to plan some sort of action, however suicidal.

  Pretending greater weakness than she felt, the sorceress closed her eyes and rubbed at her forehead.

  'Yes, of course,' said Ethram-Fal with ill-concealed impatience, 'You must remember

  'You were Eldred the Trader?'

  'Yes, yes, I thought that you understood all of that. I came to both you and Shakar the Keshanian in that guise so as to test the effects of my lotus upon you.'

  'A spell of hypnotism?'

  'Ha! Hardly!' The little sorcerer puffed up like a preening sparrow.

  'Nothing so simplistic and easy to expose. It was a full-fledged glamour: a flawless illusion to any who might look upon it. Behold!'

  As the Lady Zelandra watched, Ethram-Fal's slight body began to shimmer like a desert mirage. His image blurred over swiftly, then cleared, revealing an astonishing transformation. Where the stunted Stygian in stained robes had been, now stood a plump and stately Shemite dressed in the elegant silks of a successful merchant. His black beard parted in a broad smile. The illusion winked out and there was Ethram-Fal, grinning just as broadly.

  'You see? Such mummery is nothing to me now.'

&nbs
p; 'But the time, the preparations¦' Zelandra dissembled. Feeling within for sorcerous strength, she was shocked by her own weakness. The bit of Emerald Lotus given to her by Ethram-Fal had apparently vented most of its strength in merely returning her to rational consciousness. A powerful offensive spell was out of the question. She had to conceive of a simple defensive tactic that would both take her captors by surprise and allow her adequate time to free Neesa and flee. Her mind raced frantically as she felt the borrowed power of the lotus fading, moment by moment.

  'You disappoint me, milady. Either you have used my lotus so sparingly as to be unaware of its true strength or you are much less perceptive than I had hoped. Such spells are little more than child's play to me.

  The Emerald Lotus has so enhanced my abilities that I daresay I'm more than a match for any of those arrogant, shortsighted pigs of the Black Ring.'

  Zelandra made her eyes go wide and took on a look of amazement. 'As powerful as that?' she murmured. Her aura of awed astonishment served its purpose. Ethram-Fal swelled visibly with pride and continued in more strident tones, while she settled upon a simple spell of blindness and strove to recall the precise and elaborate details of its casting.

  'Certainly! You are familiar with the spell called the Hand of Yimsha?

  It is a simple manipulator that can be performed by any apprentice of moderate talent to pick up small objects and move them about. It is a fine index of a sorcerer's skill. I have read that the creators of that spell were mighty enough to use it as a weapon, and heard it rumoured that Thoth-Amon employed it to build his palace at the Oasis of Khajar.

  Understand this well, Zelandra, I no longer even need to conjure it. It is with me always. And I have used it to kill. Thus far I have seen nothing to indicate that there is an upper limit to the power bestowed by the Emerald Lotus. The more I immerse myself in it, the mightier I become. If you join me, milady, all the power I describe and more shall be yours. Do you understand what it is that I am offering you?' The Stygian leaned forward and lifted his hands imploringly, his tainted eyes shining green as a cat's. 'We could become as gods!'

 

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