Conan the Barbarian

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Conan brought his horse to the crest of the ridgeline and looked down toward the Red Wastes. A barren land in which twisted black trees sprouted like thorns from the earth, it had not earned its name from the color of the soil. Men called it the Red Waste because of the blood it had drunk.

  Somewhere out there, Khalar Zym hunted.

  Conan would find him.

  He hoped the land was still thirsty.

  CHAPTER 17

  ALONE IN HER cabin aboard her father’s land ship, Marique knelt naked before a three-paneled mirror. The warm golden light of the swaying oil lamps that hung from the ceiling caressed her alabaster flesh. The woman staring back at her from the mirrors would be judged flawless by any who dared render judgment. Others would declare her perfect, and were she to truly study her reflection, she might agree.

  But those others used mirrors to reveal what was. In them Marique sought what would be. She never had a clear vision. Just as the voices that whispered to her never made their messages distinct or crisp, so the shadows reflected upon her by the future suggested instead of proclaiming, hinted and seduced instead of explaining, and coaxed instead of commanding. She watched, she took it all in, every nuance, letting pleasure and fear mingle within her breast, but never letting them overwhelm her.

  Some of what she saw pleased her. Ghost images matched the arcane tattoos which ran from shoulder to shoulder, up her neck, past her ears, and along her high hairline. She’d only seen bits and pieces of them before, but had tracked them down through endless researches in tomes long thought lost by those who should have known better. She’d drawn the images she wanted and showed a legion of tattooists where to place each individual design, then had her father’s men slay the tattooists so they could never re-create the designs again.

  As she transformed herself to match the spectral visions, her power grew. A smart woman, she realized that she was creating in her own flesh what Acheron’s long-dead priest-kings had done in order to create her father’s obsession. She did not do this out of greed or lust for power. She did not do it to harness the sorcery that would allow her to rival her father. No, she did it because Khalar Zym would need her if his own efforts failed. When she could do for him what the mask could do, he would not longer need it.

  He will need no one but me.

  She smiled at that thought, her nipples stiffening, but her smile did not carry to her further reflection. For a heartbeat a dark line drew itself between her breasts. Marique studied its strength and the way smaller, jagged lines shot out from it. She wondered that she felt no pain, and then reminded herself that the mirrors reflected what might be, not what would be.

  She traced a finger over the shadow and it vanished in the wake of her caress. This pleased her, and her smile did shine in the mirror. She forgot herself for a moment, allowing satisfaction to seize her. She reveled in it, throwing her head back in a silent laugh, then she caught sight of it and turned slowly like a snake coiling.

  The land ship rode on the backs of eight elephants and rocked gently as it was carried along. Most assumed that her father had ordered the titanic vehicle built as a gross display of his power. That he had was true, in part. He also did it to fulfill obscure prophecies—of which there were far more than there were stars in sky. She always thought of the elephants as the elephant upon which the world rested, according to countless faiths and creation stories. It meant her father would be the master of this world, and perhaps more.

  Silken curtains covered her cabin’s walls and one had slipped to reveal a prize she had almost forgotten. She’d taken it long ago in a Cimmerian village, from a smith and his half-witted, feral child. She’d not thought of the two in many years, and yet suddenly the taste of the child flooded back to her tongue, salty and sharp. The voices had warned her against it, but she’d licked him in defiance. It had been before she had learned that the voices were not just her mother’s postmortem mumblings.

  Marique rose fluidly and crossed to where the sword hung. Even as her hand approached, before she actually caressed the cool metal, she sensed something. It was almost as if nettles had stung her fingertips. She peered at them to see if her eyes would confirm that explanation. They did not, and when she reached out for the sword again, she encountered no resistance or discomfort.

  She was not so foolishly indulgent as to play a finger along the edge. Crude and savage though the Cimmerians might have been, they took pride in their steel and its manufacture. Though she had not cared for the blade at all, it showed no sign of tarnish or rust. She might have plucked it from the village ruins a day ago, or ripped it newly born, directly from the hands of the swordsmith himself.

  She did not ask herself why she had taken the sword. Her father—if he noticed at all—had not questioned her about it. He hadn’t noticed, of course, since in Cimmeria he had found the piece that completed the Mask of Acheron. At the time she stole the sword, he was basking in the glory of his greatest triumph.

  A triumph that had tarnished quickly, unlike the sword.

  Reconstruction of the mask had been the goal upon which her father had focused for two reasons. First, it had been an obsession he had shared with Maliva, his wife and Marique’s mother. Maliva had brought him knowledge of it through her studies of Acheronian lore. She promised him that the mask, once reconstructed, would provide power beyond imagining, allowing him to raise long-dead legions that would again establish the reign of Acheron upon the earth.

  But barbarians akin to those who had created the sword had shattered Acheron and its mask. They had caused the name Acheron to be struck from every monument, for Acheronian cities to be buried and their libraries burned. Barbarians who had no use for sorcery did their utmost to make certain no one else could use it. Had they pursued that course for another year or decade, perhaps they would have succeeded.

  Maliva had collected many volumes of Acheronian lore, copies of which traveled in the land ship’s hold, while the originals resided at Khor Kalba. Had her mother been less of a dreamer and more diligent a student, she would have understood that gathering the pieces of the mask were not enough. If she did know that, she never communicated it to Khalar Zym because, after Maliva had been burned as an Acheronian witch, her husband had vowed to complete the mask and raise her from the dead.

  Marique still recalled the depths of her father’s depression when fitting the last piece into the mask had failed to activate it. She had already begun to study the books her mother had so treasured, and was the first to confirm the necessity of a blood infusion to waken the magick, not just, as her mother had believed, enhance it. She’d told her father, and villages were drained dry in the hopes that bathing the mask in gallons of blood would revivify it. He preferentially sought those of Acheronian blood, promising to raise them when he was a god, but it was to no avail.

  When that effort failed, her father sat slumped in his throne, holding the mask in both hands, staring at it, asking why it mocked him. Marique, who watched from the shadows, first heard the whispers then. She furthered her studies, an innocent drinking in knowledge so foul it had soured souls which were already as black as night, and driven mad those who had only heard rumors of such things. She pursued clues found in scrolls and by fitting together shattered tablets. And finally she uncovered the truth.

  Yes, blood would reactivate the mask, but it had to be specifically from the line of the last priest-king to wear the mask and wield its fearsome power. This knowledge seemed to have little effect on her father at first, but over the weeks he returned to himself. He dismissed his armies, promising to recall them when the portents were propitious, and began his long search for the scion of the last Acheronian priest-king.

  “Marique. I need you! They have failed me again!”

  The urgency in her father’s voice sped her heart. She’d have run immediately to him, naked though she was, but it would not do for her to appear so before subordinates. She sat and drew on scarlet boots that covered her to her knees. Then she selec
ted a hooded cloak and closed the clasp at her throat. Its silk lining felt cool against her flesh, while the scarlet wool wrapped her in heavy warmth.

  She tucked a short dagger into the top of the right boot and prepared to leave her cabin. She glanced again in the mirror and admired herself, then caught a distorted reflection in the Cimmerian blade. She took it from the wall, holding it as she might a short staff, and made her way onto the land ship’s main deck.

  Her father, tall and terrible, towered over two half-naked men who groveled before him. Bloodstains marked where they had clawed at the deck, and a pale rivulet of urine betrayed the true depth of one’s terror.

  Khalar Zym turned toward his daughter, his dark eyes flashing. “They say they cannot find her. They claimed to be the best, but they fail me.”

  Marique moved to her father’s side and slipped a hand from within the cloak to lay it on his sword arm. If any glimpsed her nakedness within the shadows, none gave sign, not even the mishappen wretch Remo, who had watched her for years when he believed he was unwatched.

  “It is not their fault, Father.” She smiled carefully. “We know the trail is cold, two decades cold.”

  “But they have come this far.”

  “And now there are elements which work against them.” She turned and made for the gangway. “Remo, bring them.”

  Her father’s subordinate grumbled, but did as he was bidden. Guards hastened down the gangway ahead of Marique and the elephant trainers calmed beasts as heavy, booted feet thundered down the wooden planking. Marique made certain to step lightly and to move carefully so it could seem as if all she did was float. Her father, stern and strong, trailed behind her but stopped halfway down, where the gangway twisted back. Arms folded tight to his chest, he would watch from there, so Marique made certain to position herself to great advantage.

  Even before she reached the ground, she could feel the magick. She had long since learned all her mother had known, and had studied it all far more carefully than Maliva had been capable of doing. She knew that was a harsh assessment, but she had read her mother’s journals and seen her errors in translation and transcription. Had her mother not been so careless, she would have found other ways to grant Khalar Zym the power he sought, but instead her mistakes had doomed his quest.

  Marique stabbed the Cimmerian sword into the earth and rested a hand on it. It would anchor her. Though she sensed no immediate malice in the enchantments blanketing the Red Wastes, many were the sorcerers who concealed the lethal in the benign, and many more were the foolish who died because they failed to take precautions. The Cimmerian steel would not ward her per se, but could supply an element to her magick which she doubted another sorcerer would have anticipated.

  She crouched, allowing the cloak to puddle around her. Cool air rushed in, exciting her flesh. She slowly reached out with her right hand, fingers splayed, then tucked them in toward her palm as if plucking the warp and weft of some arcane weaving. She felt vibrations, and the voices began to whisper in her head.

  As always, they remained annoyingly vague, but none hissed a warning about immediate danger. Marique did not take this as a sign that she was safe, but more as a sign of the enchantment’s beguiling nature. That it could fool the voices was proof of its strength, and that others failed to notice it revealed its subtlety.

  She clutched the sword’s pommel with her left hand. “She has protectors, Father, powerful patrons who deny her to you.”

  “I am not to be defied, Marique.” Khalar Zym raised his face to the heavens. “Your mother has waited too long for her resurrection. We can afford no further delays.”

  “And you shall have none, Father.”

  Again Marique played her fingers through the air and encountered more strands of eldritch energy. Some swirled and eddied, like currents in a stream that trapped debris in stagnating pools. These numbered in the dozens, and were the most powerful. She found them rather attractive. They beckoned her on like a melody, to spin her about and out and away, without her ever realizing she had not gone in the direction she desired.

  But there were other strands, tiny strands, more fragile than a whisper, as fleeting as a dream upon wakening, and she found them, too. They shied away from her, recoiled, became dead at her touch. The sharp scent of decay filled her head.

  Only her grip on the sword prevented her from falling over, nauseous and dizzy. She steadied herself, then smiled. If this is the game you wish to play. “We have them, Father.”

  “Yes, child?”

  “These patrons, they are fools. They help the one you seek, and they help others. Had they barred the way to all, we should have been reduced to a pack of curs howling beyond their walls.” Marique reached down and gathered a handful of dust. “Because they allow others to seek them, we may find them.”

  She straightened up and spat into her hand. She mixed the dust and spittle into a muddy paste, then shot a glance at Remo. “Bring the scouts.”

  The misshapen man wrestled them before her. She dabbed a finger in the mud and used it to draw a sigil over each of their closed eyelids. “If you open your eyes, the magick will be broken. You will die. Do you understand?”

  They both nodded.

  She stepped between them and Remo and threw her cloak back past her shoulders. She grasped the scouts and turned each to face into the Waste, then smeared another sigil in mud between their shoulder blades. She pressed a finger to the heart of each design, right over the scouts’ spines, then whispered a word which, when said louder and with malice, could age a man twenty years before its echoes dwindled to silence.

  “Eyes closed. Tell me what you see.”

  One man shook his head, but the other pointed a quivering finger toward the south. “There, it’s beckoning. Blue, a soft blue, tendrils, weaving and flowing. Inviting. Mingling.”

  Marique lowered her arms, shrouding herself with the cloak. “Do not look where they conjoin, but follow the lines. Ignore the knots, do not get lost in the knots, follow the skein.”

  The scout who had spoken nodded and started off.

  The other, head bowed, half turned back toward her. “But I see nothing.”

  “I know.” Marique nodded solemnly. “One of you had to be blinded so the other could see. Remo, kill him.”

  Above, her father pointed south. “Do not lose him. Before day flows again into night, we shall have our prize.”

  CHAPTER 18

  CONAN STOOD ON the hillside, shading his eyes with a hand. His horse, reins drooping on the ground, pawed the earth in an attempt to uncover anything even the least bit edible. The barbarian grunted.

  He’d spent the night at the top of the hill, and had risen before dawn. He and the horse set off, but as it became light, they’d not gotten very far. Conan could see the tracks leading down the hill and then tracking back around it, but couldn’t, for the life of him, remember making any of the turns.

  He spat. Sorcery. As magework went, it’s wasn’t the nastiest he’d ever run into. It didn’t try to scare him from entering the Wastes. He and the horse could ride into them without feeling any pain. It was just that he got a vague sense of frustration followed by a wave of exhaustion. Trying to go further just didn’t seem worth the effort. And, curiously enough, when he let the horse go, they ended up near his hill, with good water and the view of a road that would carry them far from the Wastes themselves.

  He suspected, in fact, that if he followed the road and tried to enter the Wastes from another direction, he’d end up near some other campsite of relative safety. It was akin to when his father had placed a sword at his throat, keeping him back from any potential harm in their first duels. Frustrating, yes, but his father wasn’t going to let him hurt himself.

  But it is worth the effort. Conan took a deep breath and faced himself due west. He spotted a stone twelve feet in front of him. His shadow touched it. He deliberately put one foot in front of the other and in two strides had reached it. Something tried to convince him that he�
�d gone far enough, but he picked another target and moved to it.

  With each step, the Red Waste tried to fight back. It tried to convince him that he need not go any further. But its argument melted in the face of his conviction that he did need to go further. In fact, its every attempt to discourage him just encouraged him more. He pitted his determination against that of the sorcery protecting the land, and refused to be stopped.

  He glanced at his back trail. It looked as if he’d not gotten very far at all. Hopelessness slammed into him. He snarled. Indulging it was as bad as a warrior indulging in revenge. He would not. It was not part of him or his tradition, so it would find no purchase in his mind or upon his soul.

  He turned back to the west and pushed hard, then something broke. He stumbled forward, all opposition gone. Conan wasn’t certain what had happened, but he figured it was not good. Drawing his sword, he whistled for his horse, mounted up, and headed west as fast as he could.

  TAMARA GREETED THE sun as she always did on the eastern battlements, but found it difficult to find peace. Master Fassir’s vision and explanation had confused her. She’d known, of course, about the world beyond the monastery’s walls. She’d met monks from Hyrkania and someday imagined being sent on a mission into the outer world. Even so, her very existence had been defined through her relationship to the monastery and her service within the order.

  Fassir had left her wondering who she was and why someone might be seeking her. Yes, he had told her it was a madman who wanted her so he could garner power, but that explanation could cover a multitude of possibilities. Unbidden had come to her the idea that somehow she had been a princess, perhaps the twin of some other princess. She’d been stolen and hidden to prevent a civil war. The madman was some renegade prince, perhaps her father’s disgruntled brother, come to raise her up and claim that she was the true princess.