Yet in one quarter of the spacious court, food and drink were briskly in demand. In that small corner, in a railed box close alongside the dais reserved for the more public phases of state business, there reigned a mood contrary to the prevalent atmosphere of bored resolution. There sat Conan with Irilya, now obviously and unabashedly his intimate. These two were among the earliest arrivals, certainly the noisiest. Around them flitted servants attending to their needs, bowing and smirking politely at their jests and antics; around them too flitted the eunuch Sempronius.
"I am glad to see you enjoying yourself here at court, Sergeant, and that you have found yourself an… admirer." With an air of dubiety, Sempronius eyed Irilya's abandoned posture as she lay against the sprawling Conan, both arms and one leg tangled among his own disheveled limbs. "I hope you will appreciate, too, the solemnity and dignity of this event, as Aghrapur and her immortal emperor honor a hero."
"Aye, in sooth, I do appreciate it," Conan rumbled good-naturedly, meanwhile twining the fingers of one hand through his lover's blond tresses and making her purr in contentment. " 'Tis truly a hero's welcome, one that any of my brother troopers would crave! I thank you for it heartily, gelding!" He adjusted his posture on the low-backed couch, drawing Irilya closer. "Now, you mentioned something about finding us new tunics to replace these damp, shredded ones?"
"Yes, to be sure! That would improve your appearance, and perhaps make it less necessary for you to… huddle together for warmth. I will see to it at once!" Officiously the eunuch turned away, sending servants scattering left and right before him.
When Sempronius had gone, Irilya drew herself up at Conan's side.
With a languorous sigh she watched him drain his silver beaker of kumiss and replace it on a lacquered tray for refilling by attentive slaves.
"He is right, you know," she murmured in his ear. "Though we delight in one another, and though I cannot keep my hands from you"―this she demonstrated with a gesture rendered invisible by the rumpled pleats of his tunic―"we must remember the seriousness of the day and the perils
that range around us." Coolly her glance swept the gallery, the servants, the still-arriving courtiers, and the guards standing rigid by the archways.
"I credit your good faith in wanting to warn Yildiz, Conan, though likely your plan will not work. In any event, we must not become too drunk or too lovestruck to seize the moment―or at least, save ourselves."
"Aye, Irilya, you are right; I will drink only kvass henceforth." Conan waved accordingly, dismissing one pair of servants and beckoning another. Then he looked around to her with a smile. "But I warn you, I cannot vouch for my friend Juma, yonder; judging by his bleary look, he may require the strongest liquor."
As Irilya took in the black warrior, he approached the box, not in fact seeming even slightly fatigued. On either hand clung his two courtly escorts of the previous evening, both looking distinctly contented, even radiant. Juma, after stepping over the wooden railing of the box, assisted the women across, with much patting and giggling. Irilya accepted the three with equanimity, and so they seated themselves beside the couple on the curving, upholstered couch.
Their arrival renewed the festive atmosphere of the booth and drew more stares from idle watchers elsewhere in the hall―especially when Sempronius arrived with new garments for Conan and Irilya to try on.
They did so with hilarity, screened from general view by a silk canopy held upright by servants. Afterward the small party set the slaves scurrying even faster for food and drink, while exchanging droll anecdotes of the previous night's food battle.
"Tell me then, Juma," Irilya asked the Kushite, "does Conan have a woman in Venjipur?" Her sudden question brought giggles from the other females, instant silence from the men.
"Truly, milady," Juma answered with hardly a stumble, "there is no shortage of women in Venjipur! Camp followers, tavern girls, peasant daughters whose kisses can be had for a brass arrowpoint. But Conan, as you know, is a man of rectitude, a steadfast warrior who would not squander himself on such―"
"Yes, I have a Venji woman," Conan said, interrupting his friend with a frank look at Irilya. "Her name is Sariya; I rescued her from death in a pagan rite."
"You keep her safe, then?"
"Yes, we live together in a bamboo hut. Sariya is a wise, able girl, schooled far beyond my own meager learning… but I confess, at times I do not know her heart."
Irilya's answering gaze was quiet and deep, her bearing steady. Juma and his companions quickly raised a distraction, pointing to new activity at the front of the dais.
But this was of slight importance, just another of the innumerable false starts which attend such gatherings. Four male slaves carried in a litter containing the Venji potted tree; having set it down on the dais, they slid the earthenware pot clear, took up their litter, and departed. It was not, after all, a final prelude to the ceremony; the tree was left there by itself, looking slightly ridiculous. Its potbellied trunk and glossy, bedraggled leaves drew a few disparaging comments from the assembly.
Nevertheless, this bit of preparation kindled expectations and seemed to reawaken everyone's doubts and fears regarding the gathering. Talk in the slowly filling chamber murmured low and earnest. Conan confided his own intentions and misgivings to Juma, and both men surreptitiously checked the readiness of their gold-hilted ceremonial sabers. They watched the arrival of more lofty court personages, some of whom Irilya named to them or waved greetings to from afar.
With more forebodings, they saw the arrival of a special contingent of twenty Imperial Honor Guards, whom General Abolhassan marched in a file before the dais and stationed there, rigidly outward-facing. The general, tall and imposing in his black uniform, did not greet Conan's party, nor even glance their way. But he spent much time elsewhere in the gallery, clasping shoulders and whispering in the ears of petty functionaries and potentates alike.
Conan saw much around him to unease his spirit: the taut, wary looks on the most noble faces; the fact that the eunuchs, almost equaling the guards in number, went armed with long daggers; and the sudden, awkward restraint of their guide Sempronius, evident only after his private conversation with the chief eunuch he called Euranthus. The Cimmerian had sensed that his attendant's frequent, noisy pronouncements of loyalty to the emperor did not sit well with his fellows; now, abruptly, these protestations ceased. The eunuch uncharacteristically
left off fretting over his heroic charges and stood well apart from them.
Abruptly, an exultation of trumpets thrilled the room. In the hush that ensued came the shuffling of boots and the rattling of scabbards; then in through the tall central door strode Emperor Yildiz. Resplendent as his imperial title implied, he nevertheless looked squat and plump between General Abolhassan and another towering, gray-turbaned officer. Behind them, fetchingly caped and pantalooned, trooped two smiling harem maids whose height and robustness also tended to dwarf their emperor; obviously, Yildiz did not select his attendants for scantness of size or physique.
The two officers parted from their emperor on the dais, marching away to either side as Yildiz proceeded toward the front. His pair of houris followed, to sink down adoringly at either hand. Seating themselves on the floor, they left their resplendent lord standing as the foremost, loftiest object before the crowd, taller even than the potted Venji tree.
"Loyal subjects," Yildiz began in a grandiloquent, surprisingly resonant voice, "I have decreed these feast days and commanded your presence here to honor a hero! Nay, more than just a single hero, a whole host of them: the brave, able Turanian sons and converts who fight for our Imperial cause in far-off Venjipur and elsewhere along our restless borders."
"Doubt not that they are heroes, each and every one; for they spread the light of empire to obscure corners of the map. They broaden our sources of trade and tribute, helping to make Aghrapur the principal city of the known world! They kindle the bright dawn of civilization amid the murky night of barbarism. Above all, r
emember, they fight a religious war, for a holy cause―the struggle of our enlightened, all-embracing Turanian faith against ancient and primitive idols, of whose evil rites and manifestations you have heard. In doing so, these heroes face perils, even death―but remember, in the words of the Prophet Tarim, the death of the body can mean the birth of the soul into righteousness!"
"They fight for Tarim, and for our greatness; nevertheless, there are those among my subjects who bridle and fret at the burden of this holy war. They mourn the loss or removal of their beloved sons; they cry and rail against the inexorable force of destiny, as all bereaved kin must. To them I offer this reminder, again in Tarim's immortal words, that a man is judged by the worth of his enemies as well as by that of his friends. Of what merit, I ask you, is a man without foes, or an empire without wars?
"For all of you, I intended this day of heroes to be a renewal of spirit, a fresh inspiration toward our Imperial cause. I hope that my subjects will begin to ask less of their empire and more of themselves, in advancing our mutual destiny. And now"―at the casual gesture of his hand, a servant hurried forward bearing a gold goblet on a golden tray―"for those of you who have drink ready to hand, I commend a toast!" He raised his cup to the crowd in salute, across the rigid backs and red-swaddled heads of the line of guards. "To Conan, the hero, and Juma"―Yildiz pivoted where he stood, doffing his drink toward the box containing the two foreigners―"and to all the heroes who serve our empire, in Venjipur and other far climes!"
He sipped sparingly from the goblet, or pretended to, certainly mindful of the risk of poison. "And after the toast, a libation"―glancing around the patterned floor of the dais, immaculate beneath the dimpled knees of his harem maids, Yildiz quickly settled on the pot of the jungle plant as the only handy receptacle―"to our mighty god, and to the soil of Venjipur that cradles this tree, which we now declare to be part of our own land. Hail, Tarim!" So saying, he emptied his goblet over the tree's roots, then tossed the cup aside on the dais.
All across the gallery the toast was reciprocated, though not the libation, except by a few who unintentionally splattered their draughts as they raised them high. Conan heard his name and Juma's given back in a scattered murmur by scores of throats; in all, the crowd's reaction to their emperor's speech seemed tolerant. Yildiz, in his personable, plain-spoken way, had evidently won over some of his listeners and soothed others' fears of civil turmoil. In the babble of comment exchanged by the audience, Conan sensed for the first time a note of acceptance and relief.
"And now," His Resplendency was saying, "if the heroes will come forward so that we may honor them in person…" Signaled by Sempronius, Conan and Juma arose and stepped to the gate of their railed enclosure.
"The good General Abolhassan bears tokens of our favor―but what is this, a miracle?"
Conan had been watching the scowling general march forward, aglitter with gold trim and weaponry, holding before him a tasseled pillow to which a pair of gleaming trinkets were pinned. But Yildiz's sudden exclamation diverted the Cimmerian's attention; looking to the center of the dais, he saw with surprise an odd, unnatural agitation in the leaves of
the potted jungle tree. It moved squirmingly, shudderingly, its limbs and glossy foliage shifting in a restlessness no earthly wind could have induced.
An agony of sudden growth it seemed to be, massive and impossibly accelerated; in the time it took Conan's jaw to sag in wonder, the tree nearly doubled its height and width, jostling and overshadowing Yildiz and his concubines as it swelled greedily into the sunrays streaming down from the overhead vents.
The growth looked eerily natural, except for its uncanny speed; Conan could see branches extruding at the ends like blind, questing worms, and baby-green foliage exploding from fresh buds along the way. Yet there was a devious directionality to it; as the Cimmerian watched, frozen in his tracks, long shoots propagated out and downward from the thickening shoulders of the tree's main limbs. Widening in a parody of long, grasping fingers, these branches managed to seize sudden hold of Emperor Yildiz and one of his quailing concubines. It happened impossibly fast, before the gaping monarch could even flinch; the second maiden escaped only by throwing herself flat on the floor. Squirming and wriggling, using all her skills as a harem-dancer, she managed to evade the fronds and tendrils that groped forth to ensnare her.
The clutching growth was lightning-swift and deceptive; in the space of a single, startled breath, Yildiz and his houri were hoisted clear of the floor to hang helpless, struggling in the tree's twining grip. New tendrils snaked forth to enfold their necks and faces; yet once they had been snared, the darting urgency of the first growth was gone―transferred outward, it seemed; for the tree still grew on all sides, expanding ever faster.
So it went; one moment the wild-eyed harem wench was clawing past Conan, to pelt away on bare feet; the next, nearly all the guards along the front of the dais were entangled with grasping branches, their weapons half-drawn, their orders and military decorum forgotten in a clawing struggle for survival. That same moment Abolhassan threw aside his spangled pillow and drew his saber, to hack furiously at fast-spreading limbs; Conan, for reasons he scarcely paused to examine, found himself advancing with sword drawn, stalking toward the tree's center and its slowly strangling victims.
By the time he had taken two steps he was embattled, greedy tendrils snaking down at him from the ever-thickening mass overhead. He hacked them off with the skill of an old jungle hand, plying his gold-hilted sword
like an oversized brush knife. Yet the silent, insidious creepers also snaked down behind him, entwining his neck and shoulders in their rough, leafy clutch before he could twist free. Their grip was surprisingly tight, and Conan soon felt the reach of his sword-arm dangerously hampered.
Struggling vainly against the tough, constricting foliage, he watched supple vines race the length of his extended sword-arm, there to branch upward toward new fronds threading down from above.
Of a sudden, a blade flickered near the corner of his eye, and heavy chopping noises sounded about his ears, together with gasps and curses.
"Blast this weed, 'tis an abomination under Ito, a sending of the fierce jungle itself!" Juma's gruff voice panted in his ear.
Feeling the tight, dragging restraint on his body suddenly loosen, Conan tore free, muttering half-choked thanks at the Kushite.
To his surprise, as he shook off the last of the clinging fronds, he blundered up against Irilya; she stood close beside Juma, slashing at the tree's leafy overburden with a hook-headed pike she must have retrieved from one of the dangling guards.
"Woman, what are you doing here?" Conan demanded of her, even as he raised his sword to prune back new, probing tendrils of the demon tree.
"What? Why, rescuing you, you thankless clout!" Her bill-hook slashed perilously close to his face as it chopped down an insinuating frond. "Why, where should I be?"
"You… uh…"Conan was about to order her off to safety, but a glance around the hall showed him that safety did not exist.
Everywhere, even among the frenzied crowds clawing toward the archways, the devilish fronds and creepers plucked and insinuated themselves freely. From its puny original size the tree had burgeoned impossibly wide, filling the entire Court of Protocols; its height beneath the spacious dome was unguessable, except by the leaf-filtered dimness of jungle light trickling down from above. Many of the onlookers, especially those in favored places on or near the dais, already depended from the tree's crooked limbs, furiously battling or slowly strangling. Vine-swathed, they resembled frantic insects wrapped in spider-silk or strange, writhing fruit.
Whether such a death was worse than a fatal trampling in the exits, Conan was no judge. So, slashing tirelessly at the menacing vines, he turned to Irilya and Juma. "Come, stay together then, and follow me! We will fell this sorcerous tree like a worm-eaten forest snag!"
The task did not promise to be an easy one, for the tree's trunk had grown almost in proportion t
o its girth. Its planting-pot had long since shattered to fragments; now the massive overhead limbs radiated from a knotty labyrinth above a rough, potbellied trunk. Thick, gnarled roots plunged downward into the very stones of the palace, clenching its foundation like talons and forcing up long ridges of inlaid tile that mapped their tortuous windings beneath the floor. Hard as thick-knotted cables, the roots seemed almost to pulsate with the strength of their grip on the stony substrate.
"Ah well, at least we jungle hands are better at hewing shrubbery than city or desert troops!" So saying, Conan protected the others' backs as they slashed at the tough vines enwrapping Yildiz and his houri, suspended close before the trunk. Soon the latter's faces hung visible once again, blue and fish-mouthed with strangulation, yet thirstily gasping in air.
Then Conan and Juma attacked the trunk of the tree, swinging sharp-bladed axes dropped by the illfated household guards. They alternated strokes in swift, expert rhythm, hacking through the tough outer bark and its oozing green underlayer, then deep into the tree's damp, pale flesh. In unspoken agreement they concentrated on the widest part of the trunk: the swollen, sinister belly. From its gravid fullness they sent thick chunks of wood flying with tireless blows. They trusted to Irilya to chop and slash away encroaching vines with her bill-hook, which she plied at their backs with desperate energy.
"Watch beneath―beware the roots!" Conan heard Juma grunt between ax-strokes.
He looked down to see the tree, in diligent self-defense, sending up pale, hairy tendrils from beneath the shattered floor-tiles. These grew swiftly, threading snakily up over the men's ankles. Yet Conan scarcely shifted his footing as Irilya desperately alternated her chopping above and below, slicing perilously close to his feet with her halberd. Instead, in silent accord with Juma, he leaned harder into his ax-strokes, hewing rhythmically at the great trunk, whose bulbous belly now echoed thuddingly with each blow.
"Hollow, by Crom!" Conan exclaimed, prying out blackened splinters of wood from the heart of the trunk with a twist of his ax. "And, faugh, smell that stench! Can it be rotten already?"
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