In the corridor a serving girl busily lighting silver lamps hung from the walls awkwardly made obeisance clutching her coal-pot and tongs.
Synelle had not realized how close the fall of darkness came. Twilight was almost on the city; precious time wasted away as she stood there.
"Find Lord Taramenon," she commanded, "and bid him come to my dressing chamber immediately. Run, girl!" The serving girl ran, for the Lady Synelle's displeasures brought punishments best not thought of.
There was no need to ask if the handsome young lord was in her mansion.
Taramenon wished to be king, a foolish desire for one with neither the proper blood lines nor money, and one he believed he had hidden from her. It was true he was the finest sword in Ophir-she had made a point of binding the best bladesmen of the land to her service-but that counted little in the quest for a throne. He followed Synelle in her own seeking because he believed in his arrogance that she would find it impossible to rule without a husband by her side, because he thought in his pride that he would be that husband. Thus he would gain his crown.
She had done nothing to dissuade him from the belief. Not yet.
Four tirewomen, lithe matched blondes in robes that seemed to be but vapors of silk, paused only to bend knee before hurrying forward, moving as gracefully as dancers, as Synelle entered her dressing chamber. Her agents had gone to great efforts to find the four sisters of noble Corinthian blood with but a year separating each from the next; Synelle herself had seen to the breaking and training of them.
They followed her submissively and silently as she strolled about the room, removing her garments without once impeding her progress in any way. In nakedness more resplendant than any satins or silks, long-limbed, full-breasted and sleek, Synelle allowed them to minister to her. One held an ivory-framed mirror while another used delicate fur brushes to freshen the kohl on Synelle's eyelids and the rouge on her lips. The others wiped her softly with cool, damp clothes, and annointed her with rare perfume of Vendhya, priced at one gold coin the drop.
The heavy tread of a man's boots sounded in the antechamber, and the tirewomen scurried to fetch a lounging robe of scarlet velvet. Synelle refused to hold out her arms for them to slip it on until the steps were at the very door.
Taramenon gasped at the tantalizing flash of silken curves, quickly sheathed, that greeted his entrance. He was tall, broad of shoulders and deep of chest, with an aquiline nose and deep brown eyes that had melted the hearts of many women. Synelle was glad that he did not follow the fashion in beards, being rather clean shaven. She was also pleased to note the quickening of his breath as he gazed at her.
"Leave me," she commanded, belting tight the red satin sash of her robe. The girls filed obediently from the room.
"Synelle," Taramenon said thickly as soon as they were gone, and stepped forward as if to take her in his arms.
She stopped him with an upraised hand. There was no time for such frivolity, no matter how amusing it might usually be to make him writhe with a desire she had no intention of slaking. Her studies told her there were powers to be gained from allowing a man to take her, and dedicating that taking to Al'Kiir, but she knew Taramenon's plans for her. And she had seen too many proud, independent women give themselves to a man only to discover they had given pride and independence as well. Not for her listening breathlessly for a lover's footstep, smiling at his laughter, weeping at his frowns, running to tend to his wants like the meanest slave. She would not risk such an outcome. She would never give herself to any man.
"Send your two best swordsmen after yourself to find and follow Galbro," she said, "without allowing him to become aware of it. He seeks a bronze, an image of Al'Kiir the length of a big man's forearm, but it is too important to trust to him. When he has located it for them, they are to secure it and bring it to me at once. Do you understand, Taramenon? Are you listening?"
"I listen," he said hoarsely, a touch of anger in his voice. "When you summoned me to your dressing chamber, at this hour, I thought something other than an accursed figure was on your mind."
A seductive smile caressed her full lips, and she moved closer to him, until her breasts were pressed against him. "There will be time for that when the throne is secure," she said softly. Her slender fingers brushed his mouth. "All the time in the world." His arms began to come up around her, but she stepped smoothly out of his embrace. "First the throne, Taramenon, and this bronze you call accursed is vital to attaining that. Send the men tonight. Now."
She watched a multitude of emotions cross his face, and wondered yet again at how transparent were the minds of men. No doubt he thought his features unreadable, yet she knew he was adding this incident to a host of others, cataloguing the ways he would make her pay for them once she was his.
"It will be done, Synelle," he growled at last.
When he was gone her smile turned to one of ambition triumphant. Power would be hers. The smile became full-throated laughter. It would be hers, and hers alone.
Chapter V
The night streets of Ianthe were dark and empty, yet near the palace of Baron Timeon a shadow moved. A cloaked and hooded figure pressed itself to the thickly-ornamented marble walls, and cool green eyes, slightly tilted above high cheekbones, surveyed the guards marching their rounds among the thick, fluted columns of alabaster. All very well, those guards, but would he who lay sleeping within remember his own thief's tricks?
The cloak was discarded, revealing a woman in tight-fitting tunic and snug breeches of buttery leather, with soft red boots on her feet.
Moonlight shimmered on titian hair tied back from her face with a cord.
Quickly she undid her sword belt and refastened it with her Turanian scimitar hanging down her back, then checked the leather sack hanging at her side. Strong, slender fingers tested the niveous marble carvings of the wall, and then she was climbing like a monkey.
Below the edge of the flat roof she paused. Boots grated on slate tiles. He remembered. Yet for all the reputation this Free-Company was building in the country, they were yet soldiers. Those on the roof walked regular paths, as sentries in a camp. The measured tread came closer, closer. And then it was receding.
As agile as a panther, she was onto the roof, running on silent feet, losing herself in the shadows of two score chimneys. At the drop of the central garden around which the entire palace was arranged, she fell to her belly and peered down. There were the windows of his sleeping chamber. They were dark. So he did sleep. She would have expected him to be carousing with yet another in a long line of all too willing wenches. It was one of the things she remembered most about him, his eye for women and theirs for him.
Knowledge had been easily come by. Not even bribes had been necessary.
All that had been required was for her to pretend to be a serving woman-though that had been no small a task in itself, given her lush beauty; serving maids with curves like hers soon found themselves promoted to the master's bed-and chat to the women of Baron Timeon's palace in the markets. They had been eager to tell about the great house in which they served, about their fat master and his constantly changing parade of women, about the hard-eyed warriors who had hired themselves to him. Especially about the warriors they had been willing to talk, giggling and teasing each other about returning from the stable with hay covering the back of a robe and stolen moments in secluded corners of the garden.
She would have wagered there were guards in that garden as well as on the roof, but those did not worry her. From the leather sack she produced a rope woven of black-dyed silk, to the end of which was fastened a padded grapnel. The metal prongs hooked on the scrollwork along the roof-edge; the rope fell invisibly into the darkness below.
It was just long enough to reach the window she sought.
A short climb downward, and she was inside the room. It was as black as Zandru's Seventh Hell. A dagger found its way into her hand ... and she stopped dead. What if there were some error in her information? She did no
t want to kill the wrong man. She had to be sure.
Mentally cursing her own foolishness, she felt in the darkness for a table, for a lamp ... and yes, a coal-box and tongs. She puffed softly on the coal till it glowed, held it to the wick. Light bloomed, and she gasped at the apparition on the table beside the brass lamp. Horned malevolence glared at her. It was but a bronze figure, yet she sensed evil in the thing, and primeval instinct deep within her told her that evil was directed at women. Could the man she sought have changed so much as to keep such monstrosity in his chamber. The man she sought!
Heart pounding, she spun, dagger raised. He still slept, a young giant sprawled in his slumber. Conan of Cimmeria. Soft-footed she crept closer to his bed, her eyes drinking him in, the planes of his face, the breadth of his shoulders, the massive arms that had ...
Stop, she commanded herself. How many wrongs had this man committed against her? She had lived on the plains of Zamora and Turan with the freedom of the hawk till Conan had come, and brought with him the destruction of her band of brigands. For his stupid male honor and the matter of a silly oath she had made him swear in a moment of anger, he had allowed her to be sold into slavery, into a zenana in Sultanapur.
Every time the switch had kissed her buttocks, every time she had been forced to dance naked for the pleasure of the fat merchant who had been her master and his friends, all these could be laid at Conan's feet.
When at last she had escaped and fled to Nemedia, become the queen of the smugglers of that country, he had appeared again. And before he was done she must needs pack her hard-acquired wealth on sumpter animals and flee again.
She had escaped him, then, but she could not escape his memory, the memory of his building fires in her, fires that she came to crave like the smoker of the yellow lotus craved his pipe. That memory had hounded her, driven her into riotous living and excesses that shocked even the jaded court of Aquilonia. Only when all her gold was gone had she known freedom again. Once more she had taken up the life she lowed, living by her wits and her sword. She had sought a new country, Ophir, and raised a new band of rogues.
How many months gone had the first rumors come to her of a huge northerner whose Free-Company was a terror to all who opposed him? How long had she tried to convince herself that it was not the same man who always brought ruin to her? Once more she found herself within the same borders as he, but this time she would not flee. She would be free of him at last. With a sob she raised the dagger high and brought it down.
A strange sound penetrated Conan's dreams-a woman's sob, he thought drowsily-and brought him awake. He had just time to see a shape beside his bed, see the descending dagger, and then he was rolling aside.
The dagger slashed into the mattress where his chest had been, and the force of the missed stab brought his attacker down on top of him.
Instantly he seized the shape-the back of his brain noted a curious softness-and hurled it across the room. In the same motion he leaped from the bed, seized the worn leatherwrapped hilt of his broadsword and slung the scabbard aside. It was then that he saw his assailant clearly for the first time. .
"Karela!" he exclaimed.
The auburn-haired beauty rising warily from the floor near the wall snarled at him. "Yes, Derketo blast your eyes! And would she had made you sleep just one moment more."
His gaze went to the dagger thrust into his mattress, and his eyebrows raised. But all he said was, "I thought you went to Aquilonia to live the life of a lady."
"I am no lady," she breathed. "I am a woman! And woman enough to put an end to you once and for all!" Her hand went to her shoulder, and suddenly she, was rushing at him, brandishing three feet of curved razor-sharp steel.
Anger blazed in Conan's icy blue eves, and he swung his sword to meet hers with a crash. Shock appeared on Karela's face, her mouth dropping open with incredulity as her blade was nearly wrenched from her grasp.
She took a step back, and from that moment was ever defending from his flashing edge. He did not force her back, but every pace backwards she took, he followed. And she could not but move backwards, away from the force of those blows, panting, desperate to attack yet with no slightest opportunity. If he made certain that his sword struck only hers, he also made certain that every blow had his full strength behind it, rocking her to her heels. The cool smile on his face, calm even as he battled her, struck to her heart. It mocked her, wounding more deeply than ever steel could. "Derketo take you, you over-muscled barbar," she rasped.
With a sharp ring her scimitar was hurled from her. For a breath she froze, then dove for the fallen blade.
Conan tossed his broadsword aside and seized the back of her tunic as she leaped. Fabric already strained by more than generous callimastian curves split down the front; her momentum carried her partly out of her tunic, stripping her halfway to the waist. In an instant Conan had twisted his fistful of cloth, trapping her arms at her sides. He found he had caught a spitting, kicking wildcat. But, he noted, a wildcat who still had the finest, roundest set of breasts he had seen in many a day.
"Coward!" she shouted. "Spawn of a diseased goat! Fight me blade to blade, and I'll spit you like the capon you are!"
Easily he pulled her over to the bed, seated himself, and jerked her across his knees. Easily he controlled her frenzied thrashings.
"Oh, no!" she gasped. "Not that! Cimmerian, I'll cut your heart out!
I'll slice your manhood for-"
Her diatribe was cut off with a howl as his big hand landed forcefully on her taut-breeched buttocks.
A fist thumped against the heavy wooden door, and Alachaon's voice sounded from the corridor. "What's happening in there, Conan? Are you all right?"
"All is well," Conan replied. "I'm tending to an unruly wench."
That provoked furious struggles from Karela, futile against his iron grasp. "Release me, Cimmerian," she growled, "or I'll see you hanging by your heels over a slow fire. Unhand me, Derketo shrivel your manhood!"
Conan answered her with a smack that brought another howled curse. "You tried to kill me, wench," he said slowly, punctuating each word with his calloused palm. "You've been untrustworthy from the first day I laid eyes on you. In Shadizar you'd have let me be slain without a word of warning." Karela's shrieked imprecation became incoherent; she kicked frantically at the air, but he did not pause. "In the Kezankian Mountains you betrayed me to a sorcerer. I saved your life there, but in Nemedia you bribed my jailors with gold to torture me. Why? Why a knife for my heart while I lay sleeping? Have I ever harmed you? Is your soul filled with treacherv, woman?"
A half-formed plea among her cries penetrated his rage, killing his anger and staying his hand. Karela pleading? Whatever she had done or tried to do, that was not right. As he could not kill her, neither could he bring himself to break her pride completely. He pushed her off his lap to fall with a thump to her knees.
Her tear-streaked face twisted with sobs, Karela's slender hands stole back gingerly to her buttocks. Then, as if suddenly remembering Conan's presence, she tore them away again; moist green eyes glared daggers at him. "May Derketo blast your eyes, Cimmerian," she said jerkily, "and Erlik take your soul for a plaything. No man has ever treated me as you do and lived."
"And no one," he said quietly, "man or woman, has ever dealt with me as treacherously as you have without incurring my enmity. And yet I cannot find it in me to hate you. But this! Murder was never your way, Karela.
Was it for gold? You've always loved gold above all else."
"It was for me!" she spat at him, pounding a small fist on her thigh.
Her eyes squeezed shut, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "Your presence turns my muscles to wine. Your eyes on me sap my will. How can I not want you dead?"
Conan shook his head in wonderment. Never had he pretended to understand women, least of all this fierce female falcon. Once more he was convinced that whatever gods had created men had not been the gods who created women.
As she knelt there
in disarray, naked to the waist, Conan felt other stirrings than amazement. She was a woman of marvelous curves to brighten the eye, a wonderful blend of softness and firmness to delight the touch. Always she had been able to rouse his desire, though she often attempted to use that to bend him to her will. Abruptly he decided that learning why and how she had come to Ophir could wait.
Gently he drew her between his knees.
Her clear green eyes, still tremulous, fluttered open. "What are you doing?" she demanded unsteadily.
He lifted the tattered tunic from her and threw it aside.
Small white teeth bit into her full underlip, and she shook her head.
"No," she said breathlessly. "I will not. No. Please."
Easily he lifted her to the bed, disposed of her soft boots, peeled the tight breeches from her long legs.
"I hate you, Conan." But there was a curious note of pleading in her voice for such a statement. "I came to kill you. Do you not realize that?" He plucked her dagger from his mattress and held it in two fingers before her gaze. "Take it, if you truly wish me dead."
For the space of three breaths his eyes held hers. Convulsively she turned her face aside. Conan smiled and, casually tossing the dagger to the floor, set about producing cries from her that had naught to do with pain.
Chapter VI
Sunlight steaming through the windows woke Conan. He opened his eyes and found himself staring at Karela's dagger, once more driven to the hilt into his mattress. The blade held a fragment of parchment. Karela was gone.
"Blast the woman," he muttered, ripping the parchment free. It was covered with a bold, sprawling hand.
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