Swiftly he retreated down the ravine. At a place where the wall had collapsed in a fan of rock, nearly blocking the way, he climbed up and out. Patient as a hunting cat he moved from boulder to boulder, twisted tree to twisted tree, following every fold and dip in the land.
Finally he found himself on the slope above the valley. Below him, crouched behind a jagged boulder with bow in hand, was a man. Conan grunted softly in surprise. Though he lacked fur leggings, the embroidered tunic marked the ambusher as a Brythunian. In fact, Conan knew him for the leader of those who had come to Jondra’s camp in the hills. Frowning, he eased silently down the incline. Just above the watcher he stopped, settled his cloak about his shoulders and sat with his spear leaning against his shoulder.
“Whom do you wait for, Eldran of Brythunia?” he asked conversationally.
The Brythunian did not start. Instead he looked calmly over shoulder. “You, Conan of Cimmeria,” he said. “Though I will admit. I did not know it was you who followed us.”
“Not you,” Conan said. “Hillmen. And you can tell the rest of your men to come out. Unless you think they really have need to watch my back.”
Grinning, Eldran sat up. “So we both know what we are about.” He waved his arm, and one by one seven men in fur-leggings and embroidered tunics appeared on the slope, trotting to join them. “Do you, too, seek to rescue Jondra, then, Cimmerian?”
Conan drew a long breath. “So she is in the hands of the hillmen. Yes, I seek her, though it was another woman, also a captive, I first set out to find. But you speak as if you also wish to rescue Jondra. This puzzles me, considering the warmth of your last meeting with her.”
“We have met since, she and I,” Eldran said ruefully, “and there was even less warmth on her part. Some time after, I found where she had fallen captive to hillmen.” He fingered his rough gray woolen cloak, dirty and torn; it was a hillman’s cloak, Conan saw, stained and dirty. “There are matters I must discuss sharply with that woman.”
One of the other Brythunians, a bony man with a pointed nose, spat. “I still say forget the woman. We came to slay the beast of fire, and we must do it if we all die. We have no time for foreign women.”
Eldran did not reply, though his face tightened. Another of them murmured, “Peace, Frydan,” and the bony man subsided, albeit with an ill grace.
“So you hunt the beast as Jondra did,” Conan said. “She learned better after twenty of her hunters died, torn apart or burned alive. Only she, myself and one other survived that enounter, and we barely. I would see the thing dead, too, Brythunian, but there are easier ways to kill yourself.”
“The Zamoran wench finds the beast,” Frydan muttered disgustedly, “while we find only tracks. Mayhap we do need her.”
Again Eldran ignored him. “Jondra hunted for a trophy,” he said. “We hunt to avenge dead kin, and to prevent more deaths. Your steel could not prevail against the beast of fire, Conan, nor any mortal-wrought metal. But this,” he laid a hand on the hilt of his broadsword, “was forged by mages for that very purpose.”
The big Cimmerian eyed the weapon with sudden interest. Objects of sorcery were not beyond his experience. Betimes he could feel the aura of their power in his hands. If this weapon was indeed as Eldran said, then his debt to Telades could yet be repaid. “I would heft the weapon that could slay that creature,” he said, but the gray-eyed Brythunian shook his head.
“Once it leaves my possession, Cimmerian, it will journey, Wiccana alone knows how, back to the place where it was given me, and I shall never regain it in this life. Such is the way of its ensorcelment.”
“I understand,” Conan said. Perhaps it was as the Brythunian said, and perhaps not, but did Eldran fall, he vowed, he would see that wherever the blade journeyed, it came first to his hand. One way or another, if he lived, the debt to Telades would be paid. “But before the beast, the women. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Eldran replied. “As our trails have converged, perhaps we will find both women together. Haral continued after the hillmen who have Jondra, and he will mark the way so we may follow quickly.”
Conan got to his feet. “Then let us tarry no longer if we would save them before they are harmed.” Yet as they filed down the slope his heart was grim. Women captives did not receive kind treatment from hillmen. Let them only have courage, he thought. Let them only survive till he could find them.
For the twentieth time Tamira examined her bonds, and for the twentieth time knew the futility of such study. Leather cuffs about her wrists and ankles were attached to stout chains fastened in the ceiling and floor of the windowless, stone-walled chamber, holding her rigidly spread-eagled in mid-air. The slender thief’s sweat-slick nudity glistened in the light from bronze lamps. The air was chill; the sweat came from fear, fear more of something half-sensed in the room than of her captivity.
Jondra hung suspended as she was, facing her, and Tamira exchanged glances with the noblewoman. The taller woman’s body also gleamed, every curve of breast and hip and thigh highlighted. Tamira hoped she also shared the other woman’s calmness of face, though it was slightly spoiled by Jondra’s constant wetting of her lips.
“I am the Lady Jondra of the House Perashanid of Zamora,” Jondra said, her voice quaking. “A generous ransom will be paid for my safe return, and that of my serving woman. But we must be clothed and well-treated. Did you hear me? I will give our weight in gold!”
The crimson-robed man who labored at their feet, drawing a strange pattern on the floor with powders poured from small clay bowls, did not glance up. He gave no sign at all that he had heard, as he had given no sign since they were brought to him. He murmured constantly as he drew, words that Tamira could barely hear, and could not understand at all.
Tamira tried not to listen, but the steady drone bored into her ears. She clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering. Basrakan Imalla, the men who had thrown her at his feet had called him. She would have wept for her belief that a holy man would protect her, but she feared that if she began she might never stop.
“I am the Lady Jondra of the House …” Jondra licked her lips nervously. Her head tossed as she attempted to jerk at her bonds; a quiver ran down the length of her, but no more. “I will give you twice our weight in gold.” Her voice was fringed with panic, and the tone of panic grew with every word. “Three times! Four! Any amount you wish! Anything! But whatever you intend, do not do it! Do not! Oh, Mitra protect me, do not!”
The beautiful noble sobbed and struggled wildly, and her fear sparked Tamira’s own to flame. The thief knew now what she sensed in the chamber, what she had not allowed herself to even think of Sorcery. The very walls reeked of sorcery. And something else, now that she let herself feel it. A malevolent hatred of women. Sobs wracked her, and tears streamed from beneath eyelids squeezed shut as if she could hide behind them.
“You are vessels of iniquity!” The harsh voice cut through Tamira’s weeping. Unwillingly she looked. Basrakan stood stroking his forked beard, and his black eyes glittered despite at them. “All women of the cities are unclean vessels of lust. The old gods themselves will prove it on your bodies. Then I will chastise you of your vileness, that you may go to the ancient gods of these mountains in purity.”
Shuddering, Tamira tore her eyes from him, and found herself looking down at the design he had drawn, an elongated diamond with concave sides. A short, black candle on one of the points flickered beneath her, another beneath Jondra. The configuration of lines within the diamond pulled at her gaze, drew it hypnotically. Her thoughts fragmented, became a maze, and unrecognizable images came into her mind, images that brought terror. Shrieking in the depths of her mind she tried to flee, to find a refuge, but all was chaos and horror.
Suddenly the maze itself shattered. Gasping, she found that she could look away from the diamond. The stern-faced Imalla had seated himself cross-legged at one end of the unholy pattern. He struck a small gong of burnished brass that stood by his side, and she reali
zed it had been that sound which had released her from the maze. Again the gong sounded, and he began a new chant. Once more the gong chimed. And again. Again.
She told herself that she would not listen, but her bones seemed to vibrate with his words, with the reverberations of the brass. The air within the chamber grew chill; it thickened and stirred. Its caress on her body was palpable, like the feathery stroking of soft hands that touched her everywhere at once. And the heat, rising.
In disbelief she stared down at the candle beneath her. The flame stood firm, untroubled by the breezes she felt stirring, yet it could not possibly be the source of the waves of heat that seemed to rise from it. But the heat came, from somewhere, licking through her limbs, making her belly roll and heave, changing. She tried to shake her head, tried to deny the desire that curled and coiled within her. Dimly she heard a groan of negation from Jondra. Vaguely she saw the noblewoman, head thrown back, hips jerking uncontrollably, and she knew that she writhed as well.
Her lips parted; a moan was wrenched from her. “Conan!” With the tattered shreds of reason left to her, she recognized an answering cry from Jondra. “Eldran!” It would not stop. Her blood boiled.
With a crash the doors of the chamber flew open. Tamira gasped as if plunged into icy water, all sensation of desire fled from her in an instant. Weeping replaced it, tears for the uncleanness that seemed to cover her.
Basrakan leaped to his feet. “Do you desire death, Jbeil?” he snarled. “Do you desire to join Sharmal?”
The gaunt man in the door bowed deeply. “Forgiveness, Basrakan Imalla,” he said hastily, “but it is the Eyes of the Fire.”
Basrakan pulled him erect by fistfuls of black robe. “Speak, fool! What of the Eyes?”
“Sharmal claims that a woman brings the Eyes into the mountains. And he describes her.” Jbeil flung a hand, pointing to Jondra.
Through her tears Tamira met the noblewoman’s eyes, and got a confused stare and a shake of the head in return.
Basrakan’s blood-red robes swirled as he spun. Tamira would have flinched from his gaze if she could. Before it had been malign. Now she could read in them skin being flayed, flesh stripped from bone. Her skin. Her flesh.
“Two camps of outsiders were destroyed this night past.” The Imalla’s voice was quiet, like the first brush of a knife against a throat. “This woman came from one of them, Jbeil. Find every scrap that was taken from that camp. Find the Eyes of Fire. Find them, Jbeil.”
Jbeil ran from the chamber as if his own throat had felt that blade’s caress.
Basrakan’s eyes, like ebon stones, were locked on Jondra, but Tamira could not break her own gaze from them. As she stared helplessly, she found herself praying to every god she knew that whatever Basrakan sought was brought to him. Quickly.
XX
From the scant shelter of a sparse dump of twisted trees above the hillman village, Conan frowned at a two-story stone structure in its center. Armed men swarmed in hundreds about the score of crude stone huts, but it was the slate-roofed building that held his eyes. Around him lay the Brythunians, and they, too, watched.
“I have never heard of a dwelling like that among hillmen,” Eldran said quietly. “For the Kezankians, it is a palace.”
“I have never heard of so many hillmen in one place,” Frydan said nervously. His eyes were not on the village, but on the surrounding mountains. Half a score camps were visible from where they lay, one close enough for the breeze to bring the sour smell of cooking and the shouts of men searching through the low tents. They had seen more clusters of the low, earth-colored tents in reaching their present vantage. “How many are there, Haral?”
“A score of thousands, perhaps.” The plump Brythunian’s voice was a study in casualness. “Perhaps more. Enough to go around, in any case.” Frydan stared at him, then closed his eyes wearily.
Through a gap between mountains Conan caught sight of crude stone columns. “What is that?” he asked, pointing.
Haral shook his head. “I have done little looking about, Cimmerian. I saw the woman, Jondra, taken into that building below, and since I have watched, and waited for Eldran.”
“Rescuing her will not be easy,” Conan sighed. “Are you sure you did not see another woman captive?” Once more Haral shook his head, and the Cimmerian resumed his study of what lay below.
“It would take an army to go down there,” Frydan protested. “Eldran, we did not come to the attempting to rescue a Zamoran wench. We seek the beast of fire, or do you forget? Let us be about it.” Some of the other Brythunians murmured agreement.
“I will have her out of there,” Eldran replied quietly, “or die in the trying.”
An awkward silence hung over them for a moment, then Haral abruptly said, “There is an army in these mountains.”
Frydan’s mouth twisted sarcastically. “The Zamorans? I am sure they would come to help us if we only asked.”
“Perhaps they would,” Conan said with a smile, “if they were asked properly.” The others looked at him doubtfully, obviously wondering if he made a joke, so he went on. “Their general is one Tenerses, I understand, a lover of glory and easy victories. He has been sent into the mountains to put down a gathering of the hill tribes. Well, here it is.”
Even Haral was skeptical. “Unless this Tenerses is a fool, Cimmerian, he’ll not attack here. Why, he’d be outnumbered four to one at the very least.”
“That is true,” Conan agreed. “But if he thought there were but a thousand or so hillmen, and they on the point of leaving before he could gain his victory …” He grinned at the others, and slowly, as the idea caught hold, they grinned back. All save Frydan.
“The tribesmen would all rush to meet his attack,” Eldran said, “giving us as good as a clear path to Jondra’s prison. Perhaps your woman—Tamira?—is there as well. Both sets of tracks came to this village.”
Conan’s smile faded. He had stopped counting hillman camps when he reached twenty, but Tamira could be in any one of ten thousand dingy tents. He could do nothing save rescue Jondra and hope to find the slender thief after. It was a faint hope at the moment, but he had no more. “Who will go to lure Tenerses?” he said grimly.
“Fyrdan has a silver tongue,” Eldran said, “when he wishes to use it so.”
“We should be about our charge. It is what we came for,” the bony man said stiffly.
Eldran put a hand on his shoulder. “I cannot leave this woman,” he said quietly.
Frydan lay still for a moment, then sighed and sat up. “If I can steal one of the sheep these hill scum call a horse, I will reach the Zamorans in half a turn of the glass. A moment to snare this general with my tale and get his block-footed soldiers marching.” He squinted at the sun, approaching its zenith. “The earliest I could get them here is mid-afternoon, Eldran. With luck.”
“Wiccana will give you her luck, and guide your words,” Eldran said.
Conan turned from the leavetaking among the Brythunians to resume his study of the stone building. “I will get you out,” he vowed under his breath. “Both of you.”
* * *
Pain had long since come and gone in Tamira’s shoulders, wracked by her suspension. Even the numbness that replaced pain had faded into the background, leaving only fear. She did not have to look at Jondra to know the noblewoman’s eyes were directed, as were hers, at Basrakan, the man who held their fate on the tip of his tongue. She could as soon have grown wings as taken her eyes from his dark presence.
The Imalla sat, now, on a low stool. Idly he stroked his forked beard and watched the two bound women with eyes as black as bottomless pits. For the first turn of the glass he had stalked the room, muttering dire threats and imprecations at those who moved slowly to obey him, to obey the will of the true gods, muttering about the Eyes of Fire. Twice so long he had sat quietly, and Tamira wished he would pace again, rant, anything but look at her. His eyes no longer glittered; they seemed devoid of life or even the barest shreds of hum
anity. In their depths she read tortures that did not even have names. That which called itself Tamira cowered in the furthest recesses of her mind in a vain attempt to escape that diabolic ebon gaze, but she could not look away.
At the doors came a scratching. It was like the slash of a knife in the dead silence. Tamira shuddered; Jondra whimpered and began to sob softly.
Basrakan’s scarlet robes rippled as he rose fluidly. His voice was filled with preternatural calmness. “Bring the Eyes to me.”
One door opened a crack, and Jbeil entered diffidently. “I have not your knowledge, Basrakan Imalla,” the gaunt man said as if he dared not breathe, “but these fit the description my poor ears heard.” The gems he extended in his hands gleamed in the lamp light.
Tamira’s eyes widened. The black-robed man held Jondra’s necklace and tiara.
Basrakan put out a hand; the jewelry was laid in his palm. From beneath his blood-red robes he produced a dagger. Almost delicately he picked at the settings around the two great rubies. Gold, sapphires and black opals he threw aside like trash. Slowly his hands rose before his face, each cupping one sanguine gem.
“They are mine at last,” he said as if to himself. “All power is mine.” His head swiveled—no other muscle moved—to regard the two naked women suspended in chains. “Before this sun sets the doubters will have their proof. Confine these women, Jbeil. This day they will be given to the old gods.”
Tamira shivered, and for an instant she teetered on the brink of unconsciousness. Given to the old gods. Sacrificed—it could mean no other. She wanted to cry out, to plead, but her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. Wildly she stared at the swarthy, turbaned men who appeared to take her from her bonds. Her limbs would not work; she could not stand unaided. As she was carried from the room, her eyes sought desperately for Basrakan, the man who had the power of life and death here, the man who could, who must change his edict. The stern-faced Imalla stood before a table on which rested the rubies, his long fingers busy among vials and flasks.
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