"Not from a Cimmerian," Conan said confidently.
"Why not return with me to the city?" Kailash offered. "We need a new captain, and the pay is better than you may think." He pointed at the bag of coins tied to Conan's belt. "You already have seen how generous Eldran can be, and the women"
Conan shook his head. "Nay. There are women in Zamora, too. Caged in your city, I would grow restless, with nothing to do but crack together a few drunken skulls every day and yell at witless city guardsmen. A ten-year-old boy from my clan could best any of them!"
Kailash was about to protest, but his esteem of the guards was only a little higher than Conan's. He gave up the conversation and chanced to glance down. He nearly fell off his horse in surprise at what he saw, "Look!"
Conan reined in and turned his mount back. A fresh mound of horse droppings lay on the path near Kailash's horse.
"Lamici's mount?" Kailash conjectured.
"Or the spoor of some other traveler's beast," Conan said, but without conviction.
Both men kicked their horses into a trot, believing that they had picked up Lamiei's trail again. They strained to watch the path, maintaining as much vigilance as possible under the moon's faint light.
When the clouds dissipated completely, they could see a few of the brighter stars, looking down on them from the black sky.
They rode on for hours, pushing forward with all the speed they could muster. They saw nothing else to confirm that Lamici had passed through, but they stubbornly continued. Finally they agreed to stop and sleep for a few hours, to let the horses rest. Laying down their saddle-blankets, they flung themselves to the ground and were fast asleep in moments.
They were closer to Lamici than they realized. The eunuch had ridden hard after fleeing the village. Half-blinded by the light from the priest's strange amulet, Lamici had panicked. He had wondered if Conan would pursue him; if he had not been blinded, he would have crouched by the door and waited for the stupid barbarian to come out and feel the deadly sting of his stiletto. His vision had been slow to return, and he had stumbled along the outer wall of the tavern, searching in the dark for the tree where he had tied his horse.
When he had found it, his nerves were screaming in raw fear. He had taken too long; the Cimmerian would be on him like a bloodhound!
Frantically, he had mounted the horse and kicked it into a full gallop.
He had ridden east for several hours before realizing in what direction he was going. His vision had returned, but not his nerve. If he turned around, he risked a head-on confrontation with Conan and any allies the Cimmerian may have with him.
On the other hand, if he continued east, he might find a place wherein to conceal himself. If the Cimmerian passed by, Lamici could hide in silence until Conan was safely gone. Satisfied with this plan, he had continued eastward. He soon discovered the problem with this, though: the path afforded no hiding places. On all sides were rocks or closely clustered trees; he had not the strength to climb or break through them. Frustrated, he had kept going, clinging to the idea of finding a safe place in which to hide.
The eunuch made slower progress than Conan and Kailash had; he had far less skill in navigating the difficult path. He still kept his lead, however, since he was not pausing to track as were the other two. He was glad that the rocky trail left few traces of his passing, and was careful to steer away from any dirt that would leave a telltale hoofprint.
Now, less than three leagues away from Conan and Kailash, Lamici slept.
Unlike the sound sleep of his pursuers, his rest was troubled by a strange dream. In the dream, he was a small gray mouse in the middle of an open field. The field surrounded him for as far as he could see, affording no cover.
He was being chased. It was nighttime, so he could not discern what was hunting him, but it flew overhead, seeking him out. He heard the leathery sound of its flapping wings, and its shrill, far-off cry. He froze in terror and gazed upward, trying to fathom what pursued him.
All he could see was a huge single eye, bearing down on him. It was dark red, with a black slit of a pupil in the center. He waited for the inevitable doom to descend upon him, unable to move. He felt sharp claws and jagged teeth sinking into his frail form, tearing him to pieces.
Lamici awoke with a scream. He looked up, as he had in the dream, but there was no eye, just the bone-white, neutral orb of the moon.
Trembling, he breathed a sigh of relief. Looking around, he saw only his horse, tethered to a tree. He was about to lie down again when a strange, azure-blue glow caught the corner of his eye.
It came from inside his leather pouch, which lay on the ground beside him. He unwound the cord that secured the pouch's closing and peered inside. The priest's amulet was glowing faintly. Lamici frowned, rummaged through his gear for some dark cloth, and wound it around the amulet in several layers. Having stifled the glow, he tucked the strange object back into the pouch. He had just finished tying the cord when he heard a familiar voice behind him.
"Good evening, Lamici." A strangely echoing female voice filled his ears. He whirled around to face her.
"Azora!" he cried out in shock. "Here? Howh"
"'How' is not important. Listen closely to me, and do as I tell you."
The Mutare stood before him, cloaked in black, barely visible in the dark of night. The moon shone on the pale skin of her face, partially shadowed by her cloak's hood. Beneath the darkness of her hood, he could see her dark red eyes. Her lips gleamed redly in the moonlight, as if smeared with fresh blood. The long sleeves of her cloak covered her hands, and the hem of the cloak rested on the ground.
"Of course, Priestess. I am at your service, as always. I beg of you to answer me one question. Why does Eldran still live?"
"Strong are the forces that protect him. The priest, Madesus, bears a talisman that interferes with my magic."
"No longer, Priestess. I have slain him! Last night, in the village, I struck him down with my envenomed dagger."
"Truly?" Her eyes bored into his, as if she was fathoming the depths of his memory to see if he lied. Then her lips parted in a grim smile of victory, and she laughed chillingly. "Well done, eunuch! Then only one task remains for you. Bring his talisman to mehthe amulet he bore. Its powers are ancient and deadly. Without its power, no onehnot even a priest of accursed Mitrahcan stand before me!"
Lamici smiled. "I have it with me, Priestess. I took it from his dead hand." Triumphantly, he picked up his leather pouch and extracted the cloth-wrapped amulet.
Azora backed away a few paces. "Wait! I cannot look upon it now. It has powers of its own, even without the priest to wield it against me. You must continue along the path you are on, and bear south when you reach the eastern slopes of the Kezankians. Guard the talisman! Bring it to my fortress in the Shan-e-Sorkh. There, I have the power to destroy it."
Lamici's expression revealed his confusion.
"I am not here in the flesh, you fool!" Azora explained impatiently.
She reached out her hand to the eunuch and passed a black-nailed finger completely through him. "You see only a reflection. So vast is my power that I cast it from far away."
Lamici struggled to grasp the idea, then spoke again. "How will I find your fortress? I have never traveled so far south or east."
"I shall send my reflection again when you bear south. Bring me the talisman, and tarry not. After I destroy it, Eldran will die. This time nothing will prevent his death!"
"There is one more problem, Priestess. Conan and Kailash still live.
They escaped from the trap in the temple, and even now, they follow me."
A flicker of annoyance crossed Azora's face. In better light, the eunuch would have also seen her momentary expression of doubt. "They must not catch you. There is little I can do to protect you from them until you are closer to my fortress. Ride swiftly! Hundreds of leagues still separate us, and you must close the distance. Keep the talisman hidden!"
The image of Azora vanished, as
the moon was blocked by a thin layer of clouds drifting into the night sky. Lamici rubbed his eyes, yawned, and gathered his gear. He would reach Azora with the amulet. He would salvage his hopes with her help. No matter the cost to him, he would stay ahead of his pursuers and lead them to their doom. Laughing, he galloped eastward, leaving the two sleeping warriors many leagues behind him.
Eighteen
The Sleeper in the Sand
Azora was levitating a few feet above the floor of the library within Skauraul's fortress. Languidly she lowered herself to the plushly carpeted but cold floor. She sat there motionless, looking more like a figure in a painting than one in real life.
For some hours she had floated thusly, searching the ethereal spirit world for signs of Madesus's amulet. Her body, left behind in the material world, did not inhale or exhale, nor did her crimson eyes blink even once. Her mortal shell had simply hovered mindlessly, serving only as a tether for the intangible cord of her spirit.
Eventually she had returned from the ethereal lands, having found what she sought.
She had learned the ways of ethereal travel from the tomes in Skauraul's vast arcane library. There were hundreds of volumes there, filled with long-forgotten secrets of dark, sorcerous arts. Her first sight of the library had struck her with awe. It was the greatest she had ever seen, a storehouse of arcane knowledge. She had gleaned from Xim that many treasure-vaults were hidden in Skauraul's stronghold, but these had not interested her. To her, the library's worth was far greater than that of all the gems and gold in the fortress.
Xim had refused to accompany her into the repository. Anxious to explore the works within, she had not cared what Xim did. She had left him in the hall outside, dismissing him as she had looked over the many shelves full of ancient books, and the neatly organized racks of scrolls. The library was vast, with a ceiling over twenty feet high and every inch of wall space taken up by shelves and racks. A dozen storehouses in darkest Stygia would not equal it.
The first volume she had chosen to study was Skauraul's personal grimoire. The immense tome rested on an oddly shaped table, built entirely of human bones. Its covers had been made of beaten copper, now badly tarnished with age. The gilt-edged pages inside were thick and yellowed, but not yet crumbling. The first two thirds of the volume were tightly packed with script written in Skauraul's spidery hand.
Thousands of words filled each expansive page, but unlike similar texts she had perused, this one contained no drawings or diagrams. The pages themselves had given off a queer glow, dim but bright enough to read by, even if the room was pitch black. Curiously, the remaining third of the book had been empty.
She had scanned through the last few pages before this empty section.
They were written in a language unknown to her. Exasperated, she had flipped back through the book until she had found a section she could read. For hours she had pored eagerly over Skauraul's writings.
Eventually her deep thirst had been temporarily quenched, and she had decided to practice some of the arts described in the vast tome.
The most intriguing of these had been the art of ethereal travel.
Physical distances meant nothing in the strange world of the ethereal, where she could send her spirit thousands of leagues away in the wink of an eye. Carefully, she had made the incantations necessary to free her spirit from her body. At first the spell had not worked, but after repeated attempts, she had begun her journey into the dreamy, intangible realm of the ethereal.
Skauraul had written that one's ethereal spirit could look upon events in the material world and yet remain unseen to those in that world.
Azora had decided to see what had become of the fool Madesus and the two bumbling warriors in the temple, where she had laid a trap. Where she should have found their torn, gashed bodies, there had been nothing. Perturbed, she had next sought Balberoth, to see if he had utterly destroyed them. As she willed her spirit to seek him, she had been taken on a terrifying journey through the dark, chaotic layers of the abyss itself.
Balberoth's formless spirit had been sent to a special pit in hell, reserved for demons who are banished from the physical world. She had read of the existence of such a pit, but words had not done it justice.
The place was a mind-numbing chaosium, filled with endlessly screaming, tormented wraiths, who would writhe in impotent fury for all eternity.
Shuddering, Azora had withdrawn her spirit from the pit, back to the library.
How could Balberoth have failed? The priest Madesus had not the strength to resist a demon of the Elder Night, who was nearly as powerful as a lesser god. Shaken, Azora turned the question over in her mind, seeking an answer. Mitra himself must have intervened, for only a god had the power to banish a demon of the Elder Night. If Mitra was with Madesus, the priest posed more of a threat than she had originally thought. Determined to find him, she had reentered the ethereal world and begun searching.
Instead of finding Madesus, her spirit had located Lamici. The insane old fool was sleeping beside a road that cut through the Karpash Mountains. Azora did not understand why her spirit had been drawn to the eunuch, but she decided to enter his dreaming mind and awaken him, a fascinating technique that Skauraul had described in great detail.
When the screaming eunuch had risen, she had decided to question him.
What she had learned both gratified and confounded her. At least the priest was dead; the eunuch had stopped his heart with a deadly poison.
She had used the potion herself in the past, and knew that its effects were irreversible. By luck, the eunuch had also seized the priest's amulet.
She was uncertain of what role the amulet had played in this affair, but she knew how dangerous the talisman was to her. It was the last magic remnant of Xuoquelos, one of the Mutare's most bitter enemies.
She was certain that the amulet had prevented her death-spell from striking down Eldran, and perhaps it had even kept the priest safe from Balberoth.
Lamici would bring her the amulet. She dared not touch it herself, nor even look upon it, but she did know how to render it harmless. When immersed in the blood of a man with no soul, the talisman would lose its power. Lamici would serve this purpose; when she had first met him, she had begun to take his soul away. Since a man thus deprived fears nothing, she had left him a little of his soul, intending to extract all the torment she could from him when he had become useless to her.
His fear would bring him to her. Her only concern was over the two warriors. If they managed to catch the eunuch, they might use the amulet against her, or bring it to one who knew the extent of its powers. As long as Lamici kept ahead of them, she was safe. She could do nothing to the warriors when they were so far away, but soon they would come within her sphere of influence.
Without the priest or the amulet to protect them, she would easily cut them down. They could not harm her for she could not be slain by ordinary steel. She would torment and weaken them, and feed them to the spiders in the chamber far below. She had decided to keep these children of Zath as pets. Xim, however, she did not trust. She would eventually dispose of him, too, but at present, he was the least of her concerns.
Time was on her side. At full gallop, Lamici and his pursuers would not enter the Shan-e-Sorkh for a week. She would put the time to good use, to absorb Skauraul's magical writings. She would avidly seek the most powerful of the ancient Mutare's secrets: immortality. Of all the mages who had searched for this most precious secret, only Skauraul had ever unearthed it. The historical accords she had read told of his being vanquished before he could complete the rituals required to attain immortality. She would not suffer a similar fate; there was no one alive to stand in her way.
Returning to the bone-table and the dire volume resting upon it, Azora began reading fervently, as if in a trance. Inscribed somewhere within its copper-bound pages was the key to eternal life. She started with the first page. She would not rest until she found it.
Xim crouched outside the l
ibrary's door, waiting. Scar, the ancient master, had told him that one day the female would come.
"She will have eyes like mine," he had said. "Show her the secret way past the old ones, and take her to the top of the long stair. Follow her not into the Thalamus Arcanus! Hide yourself in the hollow above the door and await my return. So that you may show her the way when she comes, I grant you the power of speech."
When he had finished speaking, Scar had touched Xim with a long, black-nailed finger, altering the arachnid's mind and body to give him the use of words.
Later that same day, a strange, white-haired man had come to the fortress, calling out the ancient master's name. The man carried with him a long, silver spike. Xim remembered the master's words as he had opened the door and gone out to confront the visitor: "The fool thinks I can be killed," Scar had muttered. "He knows not how deeply I have dug my roots. Even if his ill-conceived plan works, he cannot destroy me utterly. In a few centuries, when he is but dust in a forgotten crypt, I shall return to trouble the world again."
Scar had charged Xim to remain in the fortress's antechamber until the female came. Without further words, the master had left the fortress and gone out into the desert to confront the white-haired man.
Through the open fortress door, Xim had impassionately watched their brief and terrible struggle. Eventually the white-haired stranger had impaled Scar upon the silver spike. As he did so, Scar's body had simply turned to dust, which had quickly been scattered by the continually blowing desert wind. The force of the wind had increased until it had become a howling gale. The stinging sand forced the stranger to back away from the fortress; it shut the heavy stone door that Xim had been looking through. The sand storm blew about the fortress for many months, keeping away looters and curious explorers.
When the wind had died down, the fortress had been completely covered.
No trace of its existence remained.
Throughout the centuries, the ageless Xim had patiently waited for the female to arrive, faithfully keeping his sleepless vigil at the fortress's doorway. Slowly the xanthuous dunes had shifted, lifting the sandy shroud that had draped the fortress for so long. By then, its existence was remembered only in a few dusty scrolls or seldom-read books. Some considered it mere legend, as no one living had ever claimed to have seen it.
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