'Followers of Mother Doorgah. Their leader is a priest who came here a couple of years ago and moved into the old Temple of Mitra on the Square. They're a nuisance, but harmless enough.'
'Is that allowed?' Conan asked. 'I thought that only state deities were permitted to have temples in a royal burgh.'
The man looked at him pityingly. 'It seems that this goddess has money. That is all that is required in Sicas.'
Moving on, Conan checked with the gate guard and found that Piris had not yet made an appearance. Where was the man? Already, Conan was impatient with the waiting. Sicas was a town where a man of courage, strength, and enterprise could grow very { rich, and the Cimmerian had thought of several ways that he might hasten his own growth in that direction. The eight hundred dishas he had yet to earn from Piris, which had seemed a goodly fortune just a few days before, now seemed a paltry sum. He decided to give Piris one more day to contact him; failing that, he would commence operations on his own.
There were still two hours of daylight remaining, so the Cimmerian went to the inn and saddled his horse. Both he and the animal needed the exercise. He wanted the beast to be in top shape should his leave-taking of Sicas be precipitate and not lacking in company.
Outside the city, he put the horse through its paces, finishing with a hard gallop and then a leisurely, cooling walk on the return to the city gate. Back at the inn, he oversaw the animal's currying and gave the stable boy specific instructions as to the mount's care and feeding, tipping the lad handsomely to be sure that his orders were carried out conscientiously.
As he walked from the stable, his stomach reminded him that lie had not eaten since breakfast. His relatively active day had left him ravenous. He was striding toward the public room when a man stood in his way.
'Your pardon, sir,' said the man, who, Conan realised, was not much more than a boy, and one with a weakly pretty face. By way of compensation he wore a brigantine of brown velvet studded with brass, and his open cloak revealed that he wore not one, but two swords.
'Yes?' Conan grumbled. Hunger always put him in an ill temper.
'My master would speak with you.'
'Boy,' Conan said, 'I do not know your master, and I do not know you, and you stand between me and my dinner. Stand aside, and if your master wishes to speak with me, he may come here and ask for me within.'
'I am sorry, sir, but I must insist. My master desires most urgently to speak with you, and in fact, he invites you to share dinner with him.'
'That is better, but still not good enough. Stand aside.' He pushed past the youth and walked toward the common room. 'Sir!'
This time Conan whirled. 'Curse you, boy. What do—' He stopped when he saw the small crossbow that the youth levelled at him. He must have had it hooked beneath his cloak, already drawn and with a bolt fitted to the string. 'Now, sir, will you come with me?'
'Are you as good as you think you are? That thing lacks the power to punch through this armour, and I have slain many men while badly wounded.' His hand went to his hilt.
The youth smiled. 'Perhaps so. But do you truly want to get a bolt through your leg, or your arm, or perhaps even through an eye? That is a great annoyance to endure just to turn down an offer of dinner.''
'Your master had better be a very, very generous man,' Conan said. 'Let's go.'
The youth walked just behind Conan and directed his route. From the inn they walked but a short distance, then went around to the rear of a fine stone house. The boy indicated that he should™ climb an exterior stair to the house's half-timbered second story and Conan complied, halting at a landing facing a heavy door. 'This is the place,' the boy said. 'Now, knock.'
Conan knocked. Then he whirled and snatched the crossbow I . from the youth's hands and tossed it to the ground below. Cursing, the lad reached for his swords, but his hands closed on Co-nan's, which already gripped the hilts.
Conan grinned at him. 'Men who are not confident in their swordsmanship sometimes think that two swords make them twice as dangerous.' Abruptly the Cimmerian yanked the two blades free of their scabbards. Before the youth could even think to move,; Conan was behind him, and the blades crossed just beneath his; chin. 'But it is not true,' Conan concluded.
At that moment the door began to open and Conan barged through, pushing the boy before him. A man sprang back as they! entered. Conan braced a knee against the boy's back and shoved' him forward just as the blades snapped away from the lad's neck.
'Your boy is too young to be allowed to play with dangerous! toys,' Conan said, casting the twin swords at the man's feet. The I youth sprawled in a corner, holding a hand to his head, which I had made violent contact with the wall.
The man Conan addressed was immense, not only tall, but enormously fat. If Bombas was a wreck of sagging, pallid flesh, this man was a majestic monument of billowing fat, appearing to be constructed of spheres stacked one atop another. His immensity, poised on incongruously tiny feet, seemed to float weightlessly as he moved. He was dressed in richly ornate garments and wore many jewels; his fat face was as pink and cherubic as a babe's. But his eyes were as hard and sharp as sword points. He walked over to the youth and looked down sadly.
'Gilmay, Gilmay,' he sighed. 'What am I to do with you? I give you simple instructions. I say: 'Gilmay, go and ask, respectfully, mind you, that this Cimmerian gentleman come to meet with me, that we may break bread and hold converse together.' Hut do you follow my instructions? No, indeed you do not. Instead, you must measure yourself against a tried warrior. Simple courtesy is not sufficient, for you must play with swords. Well, this gentleman has very properly chastised you, and you should be grateful that he did you no harm in the process. Now, Gilmay, I adjure you to apologise to this gentleman.'
The boy looked up, furious, but he saw something in the fat man's face that cowed him thoroughly. He turned to Conan and bowed. 'I beg your forgiveness, sir.'
Conan stood thunderstruck throughout the strange performance. 'You did all the suffering,' he said.
'And that being the case,' said the fat man, 'let us all be friends and sit down and have dinner like civilised men.'
'I am not a civilised man,' Conan said.
'And yet,' the other said, 'you displayed the true, the inner . . . that is to say, the spiritual . . . quality of civilisation and gentility. I cannot tell you, sir, how much I admire one who has not only the strength and spirit to conquer, but tempers these manly virtues with the qualities of compassion and the fine judgement, the delicate discrimination, to know when the proper amount of force has been applied and that no more need be exercised. I admire that, sir, indeed I do.'
Conan endured the torrent of words with equanimity. 'Get to the point.'
'The point? But, sir, is dinner not the very point of existence? Would any day be complete without it? And if not complete, how can any day be of profit? So let us to dinner, sir, and then we shall speak of other matters.'
'A bite of dinner would not come amiss,' Conan allowed.
'Gilmay, inform our host that we are to be served immediately.'
The fat man turned to Conan. 'And now, sir, that the air has been cleared between us, now that all hostility has been disperse, and an air of tranquillity prevails over all, I pray you be seated and allow me to pour you a cup of this excellent wine of Poitain,' laid down many years before either of us afflicted the ears of our fond parents with babyish squalls. This is a fine, full-spirited Altuga Red, its grapes grown on the southward-facing slopes of a vineyard of that province, brought to fullest maturity, picked by, stout yeomen and trampled by the shapely bare feet of the most beauteous peasant lasses of that fortunate land. Those feet, where they are not crumbled to dust, are now gnarled and cankered with age, but their former beauty remains enshrined in this most excellent vintage.' He poured two cups full and handed one to. Conan. The Cimmerian watched the other man drain his glass before doing likewise. It was splendid wine, he thought, even without all the build-up. He held out his glass and the
fat man refilled both.
'And now, sir,' the man said, 'I know that you are a Cimmerian and that your name is Conan.'
'You're better informed than I in that matter,' Conan said. 'Then let us correct that at the outset. Your humble servant whom you see standing before you, and eager to offer hospitality, is Casperus, a scholar and minor, I say very minor, wizard of Numalia, in Nemedia. Do you know the city?' 'I've been there,' Conan nodded.
'A wonderful city. A place of scholars and artists, where even such an inept fellow as I could study and gain a humble reputation as a mage. The arts of magic, of course, are terrible and mysterious and require, alas, that one who would be a true master begin his studies in earliest youth, enduring all the sufferings and privations of the ascetic. Alas, I did not have the opportunity to do this, but instead came to study the mysteries only after reaching full maturity and, as you have no doubt observed,' he gestured self-deprecatingly at his rotund form, 'I lack the qualities of true
self-denial. No, I was trained and spent much of my life as an appraiser in art objects, rarities of which most persons cannot even assess the value.'
The Cimmerian nodded, evincing polite interest, giving half an ear to the man's incredibly voluble words but far more attention to matters of gesture and expression. Once, as a naive barbarian youth adrift in the bewildering world of the great cities and city-states and empires, Conan had been gulled by appearances, taken in by words. That was no longer true. He had long ago learned to look beyond outward demeanour and make a far shrewder judgement of his fellow men, although by his own admission, he was a good deal less canny where women were concerned.
The man wanted to give the appearance of a fat, eccentric, rather foolish dabbler in magical arts. That he was indeed fat was unassailable fact. The rest was not. Behind the aspect of softness and the flood of words, Conan perceived a ruthless, brilliant mind at work, and a will as strong as any he had encountered in his life. He said nothing of this, and that, too, was a lesson he had learned early and at great cost.
'Despite my late and, if the truth be told, quite superficial studies,' Casperus continued, 'I acquired enough mastery of the arts thaumaturgic to be able to find a man of many rare qualities, just such qualities as I require, residing within a close radius of my own location. Allow me to show you, sir.'
He walked to a low table, gesturing tor Conan to follow. The Cimmerian did so. He disliked sorcery, but he scented something far more than sorcery here, something far sweeter and far more to his taste. Conan scented money, in large amounts.
On the table rested a wooden object resembling an open book. The hinged cover lay back, revealing strange characters carved into its inner surface. Set into the other half was a round mirror made of what appeared to be black glass.
'Know you what this is, sir?' asked Casperus with amazing brevity.
'A scrying glass,' Conan said. It was a common device, used by sorcerers to discern distant or hidden matters.
'Exactly, sir, exactly. An elementary thing, but truly indispensable. I had but to concentrate my thoughts upon my requirements, speak a simple spell or two, and behold! There did my scrying glass reveal, in this very city, sir, just such a man as met my requirements. To wit: a warrior of Cimmeria, a bold and hardy son of that most notably bold and hardy race.'
Before Conan could seek more explanation, the servers appeared, coming from belowstairs. They wore livery and per- I formed their task with the swiftness and efficiency of well-trained I domestics, setting up a trestle table, covering it with a snowy cloth and loading it with serving platters. When the last platter I had been laid and the candles lighted, the table looked ready to I collapse with the weight of opulence. There was a profusion of delicacies, but the centrepiece was an entire roast pig, its eyes I replaced by cherries and in its mouth an apple studded with cloves. I 'Where are the others?' Conan inquired. 'What others, sir?' asked Casperus, seating himself. 'The other diners, of course.' Conan seated himself likewise. 'Surely all this is not for just the two of us?' 'And wherefore not, sir?' the mage demanded. Conan accounted himself a trencherman of no mean capacity, but he was certain that he could not have made his way through this spread in a week.
'As I have said, sir, I am at best a third-rate wizard, and before that, a most humble and obscure purveyor of works of art. I am upon no account an accomplished warrior, and to my chagrin, I must confess that in the arts amatory, my deeds must be accounted laughable. However, in the feats of the table, I yield second place to no man, sir, to no man! You and I, sir, each in his own way, possess qualities that border upon the heroic, so why should we feel ourselves bound by the cautions and the appearances of lesser men? Would you practice at arms with an untried youth who is no match for your strength and skill? Well, sir, neither will I face such a meal as would satisfy the paltry
appetite of a common burgher or labourer. And you, I can see, are a man of abounding appetite for all the things that make life worth living, so let us set to, sir, let us set to!'
Forthwith, the fat man seized a bone-handled carving knife and removed from the roast pig a slab of flesh sufficient to feed a small family. Conan could bear the delectable smells no longer and began to heap his own plate. In silence the two men attacked the banquet, occasionally refilling their cups from the numerous flagons that dotted the table.
The Cimmerian made a substantial dent in the spread, but when at last he leaned back replete, the fat man still tore into the viands as if he had not seen food in weeks. He emptied plates, stripped bones and sopped up gravies, ingested mounds of pastries and devoured slabs of bread spread thick with herbed butter. Since his own hunger was now sated, Conan found the sight repulsive. He studied the chamber surrounding him to avoid the sight of the gorging Casperus.
It was an extremely long room, with windows in every wall. Apparently the merchant-mage had let the entire upper floor of the house. The furnishings were few, but rich: a huge bed, some chairs, the trestle table. Bundles of what looked like travelling gear were neatly stacked in a corner. Most oddly, considering what the man claimed to be, the only piece of wizardly paraphernalia in sight was the scrying glass. Usually the quarters of wizards were replete with astrolabes, ancient books, vials of strange liquids and powders, and bubbling retorts. This one was travelling, he reflected, and was by his own admission not much of a wizard.
At last Casperus sat back and released a mighty belch. The table was devoid of all but scraps of food. Daintily he wiped his lips with a silken napkin and dipped his fingers into a bowl of scented water in which floated rose petals.
'Monstrous fine, sir, monstrous fine,' the fat man proclaimed. 'It is a repast such as this that gives true meaning to life. That, and the search for the ancient, the hidden and the truly valuable. It is of such a matter that we must speak, sir. If you will join me now, we shall discuss our business.'
Casperus rose from the table, moving as lightly as a Poitainian dancer despite the vast meal now lodged in his belly. He took his former chair and sat. He clapped his hands loudly and the servants entered to clear away the ruins of the feast. '
Conan took the chair opposite, and the two men sipped at their wine in silence as the servants went about their work.
'Now,' Conan said when the servants were gone, 'what is this all about?'
'It is a long story, sir, but bear with me. It is worth hearing,! for there is much profit in it.' He leaned forward and spoke in a I voice that was a virtual whisper. 'Now, sir, what do you know of Selkhet?'
Conan shook his head. 'I never heard the word.'
'Few have, outside of Stygia. It is not a word, sir, but a name. The name of a goddess of the Stygian pantheon.'
Conan shifted uncomfortably. He disliked Stygia. He loathed its priest-kings, its wizards, and its infernal collection of gods.
'For many centuries,' Casperus went on, 'Selkhet has been I a minor deity, a mere protector of the grave, her image carved I upon the grave-markers of the poor, or set as a statue atop the tombs o
f the wealthier. Like all Stygian deities, she has a tutelary animal. Selkhet's is the scorpion. Know you much of magic or godcraft, sir?'
'As little as I can safely manage,' Conan assured him. 'Crom is my god. One god is enough for any man.'
'Ah, yes, Crom of the northlands, the rival of Ymir. An interesting deity, but one with whom little of magic is associated. Well, sir, doubtless you have learned in your travels that most peoples are not of your religious frame of mind. Most prefer a plethora, a veritable multitude of deities, and none of all the earth are as god-besotted as the people of Stygia.' He sat back and smiled. 'Now, sir, I have told you that I am a magician in my I humble way, but that does not mean that I am superstitious. Matters of sorcery and divinity work according to certain immutable laws. These are laws studied and understood only by the highest of mages and priesthoods. Gods are not at all what most people fondly think them to be. To the typical worshipper, a god is just a sort of extremely puissant human being who must be placated, but gods are nothing of the sort, I assure you.
'Take this matter of the tutelary animals. Gods have their origins not upon this earth, but in the vast and awful gulfs of space, so why should they be represented by, or even take the form of, earthly animals? I will tell you why: because men want lo give these unfathomable creatures a form that is familiar to them. Selkhet, for instance. Grave-robbers perform their unclean labours at night. In prying into tombs, one will encounter two sorts of noxious creatures: serpents and scorpions. Serpents are torpid at night and rarely bite then. Scorpions are at their most lively in the hours of darkness. Any tomb-robber will be stung by scorpions, and some of the scorpions of Stygia can slay with a single sting. Therefore, to the vulgar mind, the scorpion is sacred to Selkhet, the guardian of tombs. Do you follow me, sir?'
The Conan Chronology Page 547