Conan rose to his feet, one hand going to his sword hilt, but Tamira laid both of her small hands atop his. “Do nothing,” she said softly.
The big Cimmerian frowned down at her. “Do you hate her so?”
Tamira shook her head, smiling. “You would have to be a woman to understand. Her choice is to return to being a wealthy outcast, scorned for her blood, or to be the captive of a man who loves her. And whom she loves, though she cannot bring herself to admit it. It is a choice any woman could make in an instant.”
Conan admitted to himself that Jondra did not seem to be struggling as hard as she might, though she almost made up for it with her tirade.
“You Brythunian oaf! Erlik blast your soul! Unhand me! I’ll have your head for this! Derketo shrivel your manhood! I will see you flayed alive! Ouch! My ransom will be more wealth than you’ve ever seen if I am unharmed, Mitra curse you!”
Eldran straightened from her with a grin. She was a neat bundle in the cloak, now, snugly tied from shoulders to ankles with the leather thongs. “I would not take all the wealth of Zamora for you,” he said.
“Besides, a slave in Brythunia can have no interest in gold in Shadizar.” He turned his back on her indignant gasp. “You understand, Cimmerian?”
Conan exchanged a glance with Tamira; she nodded. “I have had it explained to me,” he answered. “But now it is time to take my leave.”
“Wiccana watch over you, Cimmerian,” Eldran said. Frydan and Haral echoed the farewell.
Conan swung into the saddle of one of the two horses. “Tamira?” he said, reaching down both hands. As he lifted her up behind him, her cloak became disarrayed, exposing soft curves and satin skin, and she had to press herself to his back to preserve her modesty.
“Be more careful,” she complained.
The big Cimmerian only smiled, and spoke to the others. “Fare you well, and take a pull at the hellhorn for me if you get there before me.”
As their shaggy mount carried them away from the small camp, Tamira said, “Truly you do not have to worry for her, Conan. I’ll wager by the end of the year she has not only managed to make him free her, but that they are wed as well.”
Conan only grunted, and watched for the first appearance of the lowlands through the gap ahead.
“It is a pity we must go back to Shadizar empty handed, is it not?”
Still Conan did not reply.
“No doubt some hillman has the rubies, now,” Tamira sighed heavily.
“You must understand, I do not hold it against you. I would like to see you once we return to Shadizar. Perhaps we could meet at the Red Lion.”
“Perhaps we could.” Delving into the pouch at his belt Conan drew out the two great rubies from Jondra’s regalia. They seemed to glow with a crimson light on his calloused palm. “Perhaps I might spend some of what I receive for these on you.” Tamira gasped; he felt her rumaging within the cloak, and smiled. “Did you think I would not know of the pouch sewn inside my own cloak?” he asked. “I may not have been raised as a thief, but I have some skill with my fingers.”
A small fist pounded at his shoulder. “You said you would not steal from her,” the slender thief yelped.
“And so I did not,” he answered smoothly. “I stole them from you.”
“But you would not steal from her because you slept with her, and you .
. . I … we…”
“But did you not say that should not trouble a thief?” he chuckled.
“Do not go to sleep,” Tamira said direly. “Do not even close your eyes.
Do you hear me, Cimmerian? You had better heed my words. Do you think I’ll allow…”
Conan tucked the rubies back into his pouch, then thoughtfully moved the pouch around on his belt where it would be harder for her to reach.
He might not receive the triumphal parade that Tenerses would get, but his would not be a bad return to Shadizar. Laughing, he booted his horse into a gallop.
Conan the Invincible
Chapter I
The icy wind whipping through the brown, sheer-walled chasms of the Kezankian Mountains seemed colder still around the bleak stone fortress that grew from the granite flank of a nameless mountain in the heart of the range. Fierce hillmen who feared nothing rode miles out of their way to go around that dark bastion, and made the sign of the horns to ward off evil at its mention.
Amanar the Necromancer made his way down a dim corridor that violated the very heartstone of the mountain, followed by those no longer human. He was slender, this thaumaturge, and darkly handsome, his black heard cropped close; but a vaguely serpentlike streak of white meandered through his short hair, and the red flecks that danced in his eyes drew the gaze, and the will, of anyone foolish enough to look deeply. His henchmen looked like ordinary men, at first glance and from a distance, but their faces were vaguely pointed, their eyes glinted red beneath ridged helmets, and their skins bore reptilian scales.
The fingers of the elongated hands that held their spears ended not in nails, but in claws. A curved tulwar swung at the hip of every one except for hire who marched close behind Amanar. Sitha, Warden of the S'tarra, Amanar's Saurian henchman, bore a great doubleedged ax. They came to tall doors set in the stone, both doors and stone carved with serpents in endless arabesques.
"Sitha," Amanar said, and passed through the doors without pausing.
The reptiloid warden followed close behind, closing the massive doors after his master, but Amanar barely noticed. He spared not a glance for the naked captives, a man and a woman, bound hand and foot, who lay gagged at one side of the column-circled room. The mosaicked floor bore the likeness of a golden serpent, surrounded by what might have been the rays of the sun. The mage's black robe was wound about with a pair of entwined golden serpents, their heads finally coming over his shoulders to rest on his chest. The eyes of the embroidered serpents glittered with what would not possibly be life. He Spoke.
"The sacrifice, Sitha."
The prisoners writhed in a frenzy to break their bonds, but the scaled henchman, muscles bulging like a blacksmith's, handled the man easily. In minutes the captive was spreadeagled atop a block of red-streaked black marble. A trough around the rim of the dark altar led to a spout above a large golden bowl. Sitha ripped the gag away and stepped back.
The bound man, a pale-skinned Ophirian, worked his mouth and spat. "Whoever you are, you'll get naught from me, spawn of the outer dark! I'll not beg! Do you hear? No plea will crack my teeth, dog! I will not...."
Amanar heard nothing. He felt beneath his robe for the amulet, a golden serpent in the clutches of a silver hawk. That protected him, that and other things he had done, yet each time there was the realization of the power he faced. And controlled.
Those fools of Stygia, those who called themselves mages of the Black Ring, had so condescendingly allowed him to study at their feet, confident of his worshipful admiration. Until it was too late, none of them knew the contempt that festered in his heart. They prated of their power in the service of Set, Lord of the Dark, yet no man of them dared so much as lay a finger on the dread Book of Typhon. But he had dared.
He began to chant, and behind the altar a mist formed, red and golden, as a mist of flames. Beyond the mist blackness stretched into infinity. The Ophirian's tongue was stilled, and his teeth chattered in their place.
It was said that no human mind could comprehend the terrible knowledge contained in the book, or hold a single word of it without madness and death. Yet Amanar had learned. But a single page, it was true, before the numinous powers of it, wrenching at his mind, turning his bones to jelly, sent him grievously wounded and howling like a dog out of the city of Khemi into the desert. And in his madness, in that waterless waste beneath a burning sun, he had remembered that page still. Death could not come near him.
In the mists, from the mists, a shape coalesced. The Ophirian's eyes bulged in silence-stricken terror. The woman screamed into her gag. The golden head that reared above them
in the swirling vapors-neither quite serpent nor lizard-was surrounded by a halo of a dozen tentacles longer than a man. The serpentine, golden-scaled body stretched back into the darkness, on beyond the reach of eye to see or mind to know. A bifurcate tongue flickered between fangs, and eyes holding the flames of all the furnaces that ever were regarded Amanar. Greedily, the mage thought, and fingered his amulet once more.
Across the sands he had stumbled, burning, drying, thirsting, remembering that page and unable to die. At last he came on Pteion the Accursed, fear haunted and abandoned. In the days of dark Acheron, before Stygia was aright but a stretch of sand. In the nameless, forgotten cavern beneath that city he had found Morath-Aminee, bound there for rebellion against Set when those who now called themselves then walked on all fours and rooted beneath stones for grubs. With his memories of that page-would they never stop burning at him?-he found the means to release the god-demon, the means to keep it in rein, however tenuously, and the means of his own protection. He had found power.
"Morath-Aminee," he half-chanted, half hissed. "O Eater of Souls, whose third name is death to hear, death to say, death to know, thy servant Amanar brings these offerings to thy sacrifice."
He held out his hand. Sitha placed a golden-hilted knife, its blade gilded, in his grasp. The Ophirian opened his mouth to scream, and gurgled horribly as Amanar slit his throat. At that instant the golden tentacles of the god-demon struck at the man on the altar, clutched him where he lay amid the spreading pool of his own blood. The tentacles avoided the proximity of Amanar.
"Eat, O Morath-Aminee," the mage chanted. He stared into the eyes of the sacrifice, waiting the proper moment.
Horror grew on the Ophirian's face as he realized he was dying. And yet he did not die. His heart pumped; his life blood poured from his ruined throat, the rubiate liquor flowing over ebon marble, channeled to the golden vessel at the foot of the altar for later necromancies. But he was not allowed to die.
Amanar heard in his mind the satisfied sibilation of the god-demon feeding. The Ophirian's pale eyes filled with desolation as the man realized what was being taken from him besides his life. The mage watched those eyes become lifeless though yet alive, empty windows on a soulless depth. With care he made a precise slit in the twitching chest. His hand poised above it, and he met the Ophirian's despairing gaze.
"Thank me for the release of death," he said.
The Ophirian's lips labored to form the words, but no sound emerged. Only horrendous bubbles in the diminishing flow of blood from the chasm that had been his throat.
Amanar smiled. His hand thrust into the slit, caught the pulsing heart, and ripped it free. It beat one last time as he held it before the Ophirian's eyes.
"Die," the mage said. The god-demon released its hold, and the husk on the altar slumped at last in death.
Sitha appeared beside the mage with a golden plate, on which Amanar placed the heart. That, too, had its uses in his magicks. He took the linen cloth the reptilian offered, and wiped his blood-stained hands.
Sitha turned away.
"Amanar." The god-demon's susurration rolled against the walls. "Thou useth my sacrifice, soulless one, for thine own pleasure."
Amanar glanccd hurriedly about him before answering. The woman writhed in her bonds on the edge of insanity. She heard nothing beyond the shrieks her gag choked back. Sitha continued out of the sacrificial chamber as if he had not heard. The S'tarra had little capacity to think for themselves, but they could obey orders. Sitha would place the heart in a golden bowl prepared beforehand with spells to keep its contents fresh. Only then would he be able to consider anything else, if his soulless mind were ever capable of considering anything.
The mage dropped his head on his chest and bowed in his most humble fashion. "O, great Morath-Aminee, I am but thy humble servant. Thy servant who freed thee from the bonds set upon thee by the Dark One." Gods and demons could not forget, not as men forget, but oft did they prefer not to remember debts in their dealings with men. The reminder could not be amiss.
A golden-scaled tentacle reached toward Amanar-it was all he could do not to flinch away-then jerked back as if from a great heat. "Thou wearest the amulet still."
"O Most High among the Powers and Dominions, this one is so insignificant beside thee that thou mightest destroy him without noticing such a speck in thy path. I wear this merely that thou mayst be aware of me, and spare me to thy service and greater glory."
"Serve me well, and in that day when Set is bound where I was bound, in that day when I rule the Outer Dark, I will give thee dominion over my herds, over those who call themselves men, and thou shalt bring the multitudes to my feeding."
"As thy word is, so shall it be, great Morath-Aminee." Amanar became aware that Sitha had returned with two other S'tarra. The necromancer flicked his hand in a summoning gesture, and the two scurried toward the bloodstained altar, dropping to all fours as they came near the black marble slab. Their eyes did not rise to the god-demon towering over them as, half-groveling, they unfastened the sacrifice and bore it away.
A different tap jerked Amanar around to stare at the tall cavern doors. No one dared disturb these ceremonies. The tap came again. He twitched as the voice of the god-demon hissed in his mind.
"Go, Amanar. This concerneth thee most vitally."
He glanced back at the great golden serpent-shape, rearing motionless above the black altar. The flame-filled eyes watched him with-what?-amusement? "Prepare the next sacrifice, Sitha."
The bound woman spasmed in ever greater frenzy as scaly hands lifted her from the tiled floor. Amanar hurried from the chamber.
A Turanian with a pointed beard stood eyeing the S'tarra nervously, his slight plumpness and loose yellow robes contrasting sharply with the empty red eyes and ring mail of the guards. The man craned to look beyond the mage into the sacrificial chamber, and Amanar closed the door firmly. He had few human servants who could be trusted beyond the Keep; it was not yet time for them to learn what they served.
"Why have you left Aghrapur, Tewfik?" he snapped.
The plump man put on a fawning smile and washed his hands in front of his chest. "It was not my fault, master, I beg you to understand that."
"What do you babble about, man?"
"That which you set me to watch, master. It is no longer in the strongrooms of King Yildiz."
Amanar blanched. Tewfik, taking it for rage, cringed, and the S'tarra guardsmen stirred uneasily, but the thaumaturge was quaking inside. He gripped the Turanian's robes with iron fingers, pulling the man erect.
"Where is it now? Speak, man, for your life!"
"Shadizar, master! I swear!"
Amanar glared at him and through him. Morath-Aminee had known the import of this message. The god-demon must know of what was now in Shadizar. A new hiding place must be found, but first he must secure within his power that which was gone. That which must be kept from Morath-Aminee at all costs. And to do that, he must risk bringing it within the very grasp of the god-demon. The risk! The risk!
He was not aware that he still carried the sacrificial knife until he slid it into the Turanian's ribs. He looked into the face that now stared open hate at him, and felt regret. Human servants were useful in so many ways that S'tarra could not be. Too useful to be thrown away casually.
The mage felt something thump against his chest and looked down. Jutting from his black robe was a knife hilt from which Tewfik's hand fell away. Contemptuously Amanar hurled the dying man from him.
He plucked the knife free, held up its bloodless blade before the man on the stone floor, whose mouth was filling with his own blood.
"Fool," Amanar said. "You must kill my soul before mortal weapon can harm me."
He turned away. The guards' desire for fresh meat would dispose of what remained of Tewfik. If Amanar were to have the time he needed, Morath-Aminee must be kept satiated. More prisoners must be brought. More sacrifices for the Eater of Souls. He reentered the sacrificial chamber to
attend to the first of these.
Chapter II
The purple-domed and many-spired city of Shadizar was known as 'the Wicked,' but the debauches of its high-chinned nobles, of their cruel-eyed wives and pearl-draped daughters, paled beside the everyday life of that part of the city known as the Desert. In those narrow, twisting streets and garbage-strewn alleys, haven of thief, kidnapper, murderer, and worse, the price of a body was silver, the price of a life copper, the price of a soul not worth speaking of.
The big youth lounging on the bed upstairs in the tavern of Abuletes, in the heart of the Desert, had no thought of those who might be coughing out their lives in the fetid squalor outside. His eyes, sapphire blue beneath a square-cut black mane, were on the olive-skinned woman across the small room, who was adjusting the gilded brass breastplates that displayed rather than concealed her swelling bilobate chest.
The rest of her attire consisted of transparent pantaloons, slashed from waist to ankle, and a gilded girdle of no more than two fingers' breadth, slung low on her rounded hips. She wore four rings, green peridot and red almandine on her left hand, pale blue topaz and red-green alexandrite on her right.
"Do not say it, Conan," she said without looking at him.
"Say what?" he growled. If his unlined face proclaimed that he had seen fewer than twenty winters, his eyes at that moment said they had been Winters of iron and blood. He tossed aside his fur covering with one massive hand and rose to dress, as always first seeing that his weapons were close to hand, the ancient broadsword in its worn shagreen sheath, the black-bladed Karpashian dagger that he strapped to his left forearm.
"I give to you freely what I sell to others. Can you not be satisfied with that?"
"There is no need for you to follow your profession, Semiramis. I am the best thief in Shadizar, in all Zamora." At her laugh, his knuckles whitened on his leather-wrapped sword hilt. He had more reason for his pride than she knew. Had he not slain wizards, destroyed liches, saved one throne and toppled another? What other of his years could say half so much? But he had never spoken of these things even to Semiramis, for fame was the beginning of the end for a thief.
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