XV
The valleys were purple with the shadows of mountains when finally Conan drew rein. He had not galloped all that time—the horses could not have stood such a pace for so long on flat ground, let alone in a maze of twisting valleys—but the animals could not travel forever even at a sensible speed. Besides, he was of a mind to find a place for the night before it was too dark to see.
He glanced back at Jehnna, to see how she was bearing up. The slender girl’s cheeks were stained with dust and tear-tracks, and she was sunk in the wide-eyed silence with which she had first greeted him. She held to her saddle with both hands, and showed no more desire to take her own reins now than she had at any time during their flight. She had replied to his few comments only with shakes or nods of her head, though he reluctantly admitted his gruffness of the past few hours might have had something to do with that. All she appeared to want to do was stare at him, and it was beginning to make him nervous. If being in the middle of a battle had driven her mad …
“Are you all right?” he demanded roughly. “Well? Speak to me, girl!”
“You were … terrible,” she said softly. “They might as well have held switches instead of swords.”
“It was not a sport,” he muttered, “not the game you still seem to think it.” Wondering why he suddenly felt so angry, he resumed looking for a place for camp.
“It is just that I have never seen such a thing before,” she continued. “What Zula did, in the village, what happened at Akiro’s hut, they were different. I … I was apart from them. They were like entertainments, like jugglers or a dancing bear.”
He could not help growling his reply. “Men died in those … entertainments. Better that they should die than we should, but that does not change the fact of it. No man should die for entertainment.” He saw a likely spot, half a score boulders, taller than a man on horseback, set close together and near to a steep slope. Twitching his reins, he turned toward them.
“I did not mean to offend you, Conan.”
“I am not offended,” he replied sharply.
He led her horse between two of the boulders, just far apart enough to admit him, and found a space between the great stones and the precipitous slope that was more than large enough for them and the animals. The boulders would keep off the worst of the mountain winds and, more importantly, shield them from searchers. Dismounting, he helped Jehnna down and set about unsaddling the horses.
“Build a fire,” she said, hugging her cloak about her. “I am cold.”
“No fire.” Even had there been anything to burn he would not have risked giving away their hiding place. “Here,” he said, and tossed the saddle blankets at her.
“They smell,” she sniffed, but as he squatted to check their meager supplies he saw that she had draped them about her shoulders over the cloak of white wool, albeit with much wrinkling of her nose.
He had had a waterskin and a pouch of dried meat tied behind his saddle, and there was enough of the meat for several days. Water, however, could be a problem. The skin was only half full.
“Do you think they got away, too?” she asked suddenly. “Bombatta, I mean, and Zula, and the others?”
“Perhaps.” Abruptly he tore the bandage from his head, and began unwinding the one about his chest.
“No!” Jehnna cried. “You must leave them. Akiro says—”
“Akiro and the others could be dead because of these,” he growled. “Because of me.” He used the bandages to wipe off the wizard’s greasy ointment. To his surprise the gashes were only slightly swollen pink lines, as if they had had days of healing already. “I was worrying about these, about the itching and the stink. If I had had my mind about me those Corinthians would never have been able to take us by surprise so easily.” With an oath he tossed the wadded cloth aside.
“It was not your fault,” she protested. “It was me. I was sulking like a child when I should have been telling you the way to go. Had I not been, we would have turned aside before they attacked us.”
Conan shook his head. “ ’Tis foolishness, Jehnna. In this twisted maze you could have seen the true way but moments sooner, at best, and the Corinthians would have attacked as soon as we turned away from them.” He chewed on a strip of dried mutton, as tough as ill-tanned leather and of equal taste, while she frowned pensively.
“Perhaps I could not have done anything more,” she said at last, “but. I see your point concerning yourself. You, of course, can see around corners and through stone, and so should have warned us. It is quite wonderful to know we had two wizards in our party. But why did you not give us wings, so we could fly away?”
Conan choked on a bit of mutton. Regaining his breath, he glared at her, but she looked back as a wide-eyed vision of innocence. It was possible, he thought, that she was innocent enough to mean exactly what she said, to actually believe that he … No! He was not fool enough to believe that of anyone. He opened his mouth for a retort, and closed it again with the certainty that anything he said would only end in making him feel truly the fool.
“Eat,” he said sourly, throwing the pouch of dried meat at her feet.
She chose a piece delicately. He could not be sure, but he thought, as she nibbled at it with small white teeth, that he detected the edges of a smile. It did little for his disposition.
Light faded from the sky, and amethyst twilight descended on the mountains. Finishing the meager meal, Jehnna began to shift about as if seeking for a more comfortable spot on the stony ground. She hitched the blankets this way and that, finally complaining, “I am cold, Conan. Do something.”
“No fire,” he said curtly. “You have the blankets.”
“Well, get beneath them with me, then. If you’ll not allow me a fire, at least you can share the warmth of your body.”
Conan stared. More innocent than any child, he thought. “I cannot. That is, I will not.”
“Why not?” she demanded. “I am freezing. Did not my aunt send you along to protect me?”
Conan laughed and groaned at the same time. Ask the wolf to protect the sheepfold. He shook his head to rid it of unwanted thoughts. “You must have a care of Taramis, Jehnna, when you are back in Shadizar.”
“Of my aunt? But why?”
“I have no true reason,” he said slowly. “But kings and queens, princes and princesses, do not think as do ordinary folk. They do not see right or wrong the same way.”
“Are you troubled by the dream I had? Bombatta was right. It was just a dream, Conan. Anyone could have bad dreams in a place like that crater. Taramis loves me. She has cared for me since I was a child.”
“Be that as it may, Jehnna, should you ever have need for help, send word to the tavern of Abuletes, in Shadizar, and I will come. I know many places where you would be safe.”
“I will,” she said, but he knew she did not believe in even the possibility of it. “I am still cold,” she went on, smiling and lifting a corner of one blanket.
A moment longer the big Cimmerian hesitated. Then, telling himself that it was indeed becoming colder, that a sharing of warmth could harm nothing, he removed his sword belt and seated himself next to her. She pulled not only a saddle blanket, smelling strongly of horse, over his shoulders, but part of her cloak as well. The blankets began to slide from them, and as they shifted to secure them he realized that she was leaning against him. Instinctively he put an arm around her. His hand landed on the warm curve of her hip, jumped away as if burned, brushed the soft roundness of a breast, then settled on the indentation of her waist.
“ ’Tis warmer than I thought,” he muttered. There was sweat on his forehead. “Perhaps I should move.” How much forbearance, he wondered, could even the gods ask of a man?
Jehnna snuggled herself more firmly against him, touching the golden dragon at his chest with a single finger. “Tell me of Valeria.” He stiffened, and she glanced up at him. “I overheard you and Malak. And Akiro. I am not deaf, Conan. What kind of woman was she?”
/> “A woman,” he replied. But the off-handedness of that would not let him leave it. “She was a woman in thousands upon thousands, perhaps the only one of her kind in the world. She was a warrior, friend, companion …”
“… And lover?” she supplied when he let his words trail off. He drew breath, but she hurried on before he could speak. “Can there be room in your life for another woman?”
How to explain about Valeria and him, he thought. Valeria, a woman who would neither own nor be owned, a woman who could come to his bed with the passion of a tigress and two hours later nudge him so he did not miss eyeing a particularly toothsome serving wench. “There are things about men and women,” he found himself saying, “that you simply would not understand, girl.”
“Much you know,” she retorted hotly. “Zula and I had long talks about the proper methods of … of handling a man.”
Abruptly she seized his free hand and thrust it beneath her robes. Involuntarily he cupped a warm, hard-tipped mound. The thought returned to him, made to nestle in the palms of a man’s hands.
“You know not what you are doing,” he said hoarsely.
Before the words were out of his mouth she threw herself on him. So great was his surprise that he toppled over backwards, so that she lay atop him.
“Then show me,” she murmured, and honey lips drove rational thoughts from his head.
The cold night wind swept hard out of the plain across Shadizar, as if seeking to scour the city of its corruption.
It was an omen that the wind blew so, Taramis thought. A symbol of the sweeping away of old ways, and the coming of a new dawn. Her robes of sky blue slashed with gold had been chosen as well to speak of that new sunrise, that inexorable new coming.
Her dark eyes surveyed the courtyard, the largest in her palace. Tiled with huge blocks of pale, polished marble, it was surrounded by an alabaster colonnade. The balconies overlooking the court were empty, and no light showed at any window. Guards within the palace made sure no slave’s curious eye fell on what occurred there this night.
Before her rested the great form of Dagoth on its couch of crimson marble. More perfect than any mere mortal male born of woman, she thought. In a circle about her and the massive shape of the Sleeping God stood the priests of the new religion, of the ancient religion reborn. Shimmering golden robes covered the priests to their sandled feet, and on each head was a golden crown with a single point above the brow graven with an open eye, symbol that though the god slept, never did they sleep in his service.
The crown with the tallest point was on the head of he who stood by her right hand, his snowy beard fanning over his chest, his parchment-skinned face the very picture of kindly mildness. His tall staff of gold was topped with a blue diamond carved into an eye of twice human size. He was Xanteres, the high priest. And highest indeed he was, Taramis thought, after herself.
“ ’Tis the third night,” she said suddenly, and a sigh as of exultation rose from the circle of priests. “The third night from the Night of Awakening.”
“Blessed be the Night of Awakening,” intoned the priests.
“The Sleeping God will never die,” she called, and their reply came back to her.
“Where there is faith, there is no death!”
Taramis held her arms straight out to either side. “Let us anoint our god with the first of his anointings.”
“All glory to she who anoints the Sleeping God,” they chanted.
Flutes began to play, softly and slowly at first, then quickening, rising higher. Two more crowned priests appeared from the colonnade. Between them was a girl, her raven hair pinned in tight coils about her small head, her body swathed in robes of pristine white. At the circle the two priests slipped the robes from her, and she entered, unashamed in her slender nakedness. Her eyes, on the form of Dagoth, bore a look of purest rapture as she stopped at the god’s head. Taramis and Xanteres moved together, one to either side of the girl.
“Aniya,” Taramis said. The naked girl reluctantly tore her gaze from the Sleeping God. “You,” Taramis said, “are the first chosen, above your sisters, for your purity.”
“This poor one is honored greatly,” the girl whispered.
“At your birth were you sealed to the Sleeping God. Do you now willingly serve him?” Taramis knew the answer even before the light of ecstacy appeared in the girl’s eyes. The cruel-eyed noblewoman had prepared both long and well.
“This poor one begs to serve,” the girl replied, her voice soft yet eager.
The flutes now shrieked in frenzy.
“O great Dagoth,” Taramis cried, “accept this, our offering and pledge to thee. Accept thy first anointing, against the Night of thy Return.”
His face still a portrait of gentleness, Xanteres’ clawed fingers gripped Aniya’s hair, bent her forward over the head of the alabaster form, then bent back her head so that her neck was a tight curve of smooth skin. From within his robes he produced a dagger with a gilded blade, and the gilded steel bit smoothly into the smooth curve. A crimson fountain splashed over the god’s face.
“O great Dagoth,” Taramis shouted, “thy servants anoint thee!”
“O great Dagoth,” the priests echoed, “thy servants anoint thee!”
Taramis sank to her knees, bowed her head to the marble. Wrapped in her own intentness, she was unaware of the rustle as the priests knelt and bowed as well. “O great Dagoth,” she prayed, “thy servants await the Night of thy Coming! I await the Night of thy Coming.”
The massed voices of the priests followed fervently on hers. “O great Dagoth, thy servants await the Night of thy Coming.”
Aniya’s body jerked one last time and was still where it had fallen, forgotten, her glazing eyes staring at the no longer spreading pool of her blood on the pale tiles.
XVI
Conan’s horse picked its way along the stony valley floor, its rider wearing a stony expression. He kept his mind focused on the way before him, not allowing thoughts to stray.
“We must go on,” Jehnna told him, and his face hardened more. “I know the way, and we must go on.”
He waited until they topped a notch, its far slope leading into another valley, before speaking. “I can have you safe in Shadizar in two days. One, if we near kill the horses.” From that rise he could see out of the mountains toward the rising sun, out onto the Zamoran plain. Two days, he thought, without pushing the animals too hard. No thoughts but how far the horses could travel, and how fast.
“It is my destiny!” she protested.
“Your destiny is not to die in these mountains. I will return you to your aunt’s palace.”
“You cannot interfere with my destiny!”
“Erlik take your destiny,” he growled.
She drew alongside of him. “What of Valeria?” she demanded. “Yes, I heard that, too. I know what reward my aunt promised you.”
It was a titanic effort to keep his face free of emotion, but Conan did it. A debt to be repaid, no matter the cost. But cost to himself, not to Jehnna. “I can protect you as we travel, but not if we hunt danger. Or do you think this treasure will simply be lying about unguarded?”
“Valeria—”
“She’d not ask me to trade your life for hers,” he snapped. “Now be quiet, and follow me.”
For a time she was indeed silent, though sulking and muttering angrily under her breath. Occupied with his own troubles, Conan refused to acknowledge her anger.
Abruptly she said, “It is there. I know it is, Conan. We must go there. Please!”
Despite a resolve not to, he looked where she was pointing. The gray-sloped mountain was not high, but near the base its stone flanks split unnaturally into hundreds of granite fingers and spires. A maze, he remembered Jehnna calling this journey. That was a maze in truth, where an army could lie in wait unseen until you were in their midst. It was no place to take a young girl, not in the Karpash Mountains, not even if the treasure Taramis wanted was in there. They would circle to t
he south, he decided, giving that particular mountain a wide berth. He rode on in silence.
“Conan!”
He closed his ears, refused to hear.
“Conan!”
Suddenly it impinged on the Cimmerian’s mind that it was not Jehnna’s voice he heard. His hand went to the worn hilt of his broadsword. That the caller knew his name could mean much or little. Then, from where a fold of land had momentarily hidden it, a horse appeared, with a Corinthian military saddle and a wiry, dark-eyed rider.
A broad grin split Conan’s face. “Malak!” he shouted. “I feared you were dead.”
“Not I!” the small thief roared back. “I am too handsome to die!”
On Malak’s heels the others came, Bombatta and Zula, Akiro easing his seat in his saddle and complaining about his old bones. The black woman rode straight to Jehnna, and the two of them put their heads together for talk pitched not to travel to any ears but their own.
“What happened with the Corinthians?” Conan demanded. “And how did you find us?”
Akiro opened his mouth, but Malak rushed in. “When they saw you two topping the pass, about half the fools rode off shouting about being first to ride the girl. Don’t you all glare at me! Mitra, they said it, not me! In any case, cutting the numbers down gave Akiro a chance to work. Tell them what you did, Akiro.”
Akiro opened his mouth again.
“He made a tiger appear,” Malak laughed. “It was as big as an elephant! Fidesa witness my words! The horses went mad.” He caught the old wizard’s gaze on him, and subsided with a weak, “You tell the rest, Akiro.”
“It was a small illusion,” Akiro said. He did not take his eyes off Malak as he spoke, as if afraid that did he look away the wiry man would cut him off again. “Even with fewer of the Corinthians, I had no time for more. It was of sight and smell only, and could not even move, but the horses, to our great luck, did not know that. They did indeed go mad. Ours as well. But it enabled us to escape. Without the packhorse, as you see, but with our skins in one piece.”
Conan Chronicles 2 Page 52