A water clock of gold and crystal, set on a nearby taboret, chimed with a silvery tinkle. Thulandra Thuu once more looked deep into the casket. The tight-lipped expression on his dark visage bore wojrdless testimony to the failure of his undertaking. The rich red bath of blood was darkening; the surface became dull with scum as vitaHty faded from the cooHng fluid.
Abruptly the sorcerer rose and, with an angry gestiu-e of frustration, hiu-led the book aside. It struck the hangings on the wall and fell open, face down
Upon the marble floor. Had anyone been present to study the inscription on the spine and understand its cryptic signary, he would have discovered that this arcane volume was entitled: The Secrets of Immortality, According to Guchupta of Shambalkih.
Awakened from his hypnotic trance. King Ntunedides clambered out of the sarcophagus and stepped into a tub of flower-scented water. He wiped his coarse features with a thirsty towel while Thulandra Thuu sponged the blood from his heavy body. The sorcerer would allow no one, not even the king’s tiring men, into his oratory during his magical operations; therefore he must himself attend to the cleansing and tiring of the monarch. The king stared into the brooding, hooded eyes of the magician.
WHEN MADNESS WEARS THE CROWN
‘Well?” demanded Numedides hoarsely. ‘What were the results? Did the signum vitalis enter my body when drained from that little brat?”
“Some, great king,” replied Thulandra Thuu in a toneless, staccato voice. “Some—but not enough.”
Numedides grunted, scratching a hairy paunch with an unpared fingernail. The thick, curly hair of his belly, like that of his short beard, was rusty red, fading into gray. “Well, shall we continue, then? Aquilonia has many girls whose Idn would never dare report their loss, and my agents are adept.”
“Allow me to consider, O King. I must consult the scroll of Amendarath to make certain that my partial failure lies not in an adverse conjunction or opposition of the planets. And I fain would cast your horoscope again. The stars foretoken ominous times.”
The king, who had struggled into a scarlet robe, picked up a beaker of empurpled wine, upon which floated the crimson buds of poppies, and downed the exotic drink.
“I know, I know,” he growled. “Troubles flaring at the border, plots afoot in half the noble houses… . But fear not, my trepidations thaumaturge! This royal house has lasted long and will survive long after you are dust.”
The king’s eyes glazed and a small smile played at the comers of his mouth as he muttered: “Dust—dust —all is dust. All save Numedides.” Then seeming to recover himself, he demanded irritably: “Can you not give answer to my question? Would you have another girl-child for your experiments?”
“Aye, O King,” replied Thulandra Thuu after a moment of reflection. “I have bethought me of a refinement in the procedure that, I am convinced, will bring us to our goal.”
The king grinned broadly and thumped a hairy hand against the sorcerer’s lean back. The unexpected blow staggered the slender mage. A flicker of anger
CONAN THE LIBERATOR
danced across the alchejnist’s dark features and was instantly extinguished, as by an unseen hand.
"Good, sir magician!” roared Numedides. “Make me immortal to rule forever this fair land, and I will give you a treasury of gold. Already I feel the stirrings of divinity—albeit I will not yet proclaim my the-ophany to my steadfast and devoted subjects."
'‘But Majesty!” said the startled sorcerer, recovering his composure. “The country’s plight is of more moment than you appear to know. The people grow restless. There are signs of insurrection from the south and from the sea. I understand not— '’
The king waved him aside. “I’ve put down treasonous rascals oft ere this, and I shall counter them again."
What the king dismissed as trifling inconveniences were, in truth, matters worthy of a monarch’s grave concern. More than one revolt simmered along the western borders of Aquilonia, where the land was rent asunder by wars and rivalries among the petty barons. The populace groaned beneath their ruler’s obduracy and cried out for relief from oppressive taxation and monstrous maltreatment by agents of the king. But the worries of the common folk concerned tlieir monarch little; he turned a deaf ear to their cries.
Yet Numedides was not so wedded to his peculiar pleasures that he failed to mark the findings of his spies, collected for him by his able minister, Vibius Latro. The chancellor reported rumors of no less a leader of the commons than the rich and powerful Count Trocero of Poitain. Trocero was no man idly to be dismissed—not with his peerless force of armored cavalry and a warHke, fiercely loyal people ready to rise at his beckoning.
“Trocero,” moused the king, “must be destroyed, it’s true; but he’s too strong for open confrontation. We must needs seek out a skillful poisoner… . Meanwhile, my faithful, hard-fisted Amulius Procas is stationed in
WHEN MADINTESS WEARS THE CROWN
the southern border region. He has crushed more than one arrogant landowner who dared turn revolutionary.”
Inscrutable were the cold black eyes of Thulandra Thuu. “Omens of danger overwhehning to your general I read upon the face of heaven. We must concern ourselves^—”
Numedides ceased to listen. His trancehke slumber, together with the stimulus of the poppied wine, had flogged his sensual appetite. His harem newly housed a delectable, full-breasted Kushite girl, and a torture—^yet unnamed—was forming in his twisted brain.
“I m off,” he said abruptly. “Detain me not, lest I blast you wdth my shafts of lightning.”
The king pointed a taut forefinger at Thulandra Thuu and made a guttural sound. Then, roaring with boorish mirth, he pushed aside a panel behind the piuple arras and slipped through. Thence a secret passage led to that part of the harem whispered of, with loathing, as the House of Pain and Pleasure. The sorcerer watched him go vdth the shadow of a smile and thoughtfully snuflFed out the nineteen massive candles.
“O King of Toads,” he muttered in his unknov^ni tongue. "You speak the very truth, save that you have the characters reversed. Numedides shall crumble into dust, and Thulandra Thuu shall rule the West from an eternal throne, when Father Set and Mother Kali teach their loving son to v^est from the dark pages of the vast Unknown the secret of eternal life… .”
The thin voice pulsed through the darkened chamber like the dry rustle of a serpent’s scales, slithering over the pallid bones of murdered men.
THE LIONS FATHER
Far south of Aquilonia, a slender war galley cleft the stormy waters of the Western Ocean. The ship, of Argossean lines, was headed shoreward, where the lights of Messantia glimmered through the twiHght. A band of luminescent green along the western horizon marked the passing of the day; and overhead, the first stars of evening bejeweled the sapphire sky, then paled before the rising of the moon.
On the forecastle, leaning upon the rail above the bow, stood seven persons cloaked against chill bursts of spray that fountained as the bronzen ram rose and dipped, cleaving the waves asunder. One of the seven was Dexitheus, a calm-eyed, grave-faced man of mature years, dressed in the flowing robes of a priest of Mitra.
Beside him stood a broad-shouldered, slim-hipped nobleman with dark hair tinged with gray, who wore a silvered cuirass, on the breast of which the three leopards of Poitain were curiously worked in gold. This was Trocero, Count of Poitain, and his motif of three crimson leopards was repeated on the banner that fluttered from the foremast high above his head.
At Count Trocero’s elbow, a younger man of aristocratic bearing, elegantly clad in velvet beneath
THE LIONS GATHER
a silvered shirt of mail, fingered his small beard. Hp moved quickly, and his ready smile masked with gaiety the metal of a seasoned and skillful soldier. This was Prospero, a former general of the Aquilonian army. A stout and balding man, wearing neither sword nor annor and unmindful of the failing light, worked sums with a stylus on a set of waxed tablets, braced against the rail. Publ
ius had been the royal treasurer of Aquilonia before his resignation in despairing protest against his monarch’s policies of unlimited taxation and unrestrained expenditure.
Nearby, two girls clutched the inconstant rail. One was Belesa of Korzetta, a noblewoman of Zingara, slender and exquisite and but recently com.e to womanhood. Her long black hair streamed in the sea-wind like a silken banner. Nestled against her in the curve of one arm, a pale, flaxen-haired child stared wide-eyed at the lights that rimmed the waterfront. An Ophirean slave, Tina had been rescued from a brutal master by the Lady Belesa, niece of the late Count Valenso. Mistress and slave, inseparable, had shared the moody count’s self-exile in the Pictish wilderness.
Above them towered a grim-faced man of gigantic stature. His smoldering eyes of volcanic blue and the black mane of coarse, straight hair that brushed his massive shoulders suggested the controlled ferocity of a lion in repose. He was a Cimmerian, and Conan was his name.
Conan s sea boots, tight breeches, and torn silken shirt disclosed his magnificent physique. These garments he had looted from the chests of the dead pirate admiral. Bloody Tranicos, where in a cave on a hill in Pictland, the coipses of Tranicos and his captains still sat around a table heaped with the treasure of a Stygian prince. The clothes, small for so large a man, were faded, ripped, and stained with dirt and blood; but no one looking at the towering Cimmerian and the
CONAN THE LIBERATOR
heavy broadsword at his side would mistake him for a beggar.
"!£ we oflFer the treasure of Tranicos in the open marketplace,” mused Count Trocero, “King MHo may regard us with disfavor. Hitherto he has entreated us fairly; but when rumors of our hoard of rubies, emeralds, amethysts, and such-like trinkets set in gold do buzz about his ears, he may decree that the treasure shall escheat to the crown of Argos.’'
Prospero nodded. “Aye, Milo of Argos loves a well-filled treasury as weU as any monarch. And if we approach the goldsmiths and moneylenders of Messantia, the secret will be shouted about the town within an hour’s time.”
"To whom, then, shall we sell the jewels?” asked Trocero.
“Ask our commander-in-chief,” Prospero laughed slyly. “Correct me if I’m wrong, General Conan, but did you not once have acquaintance with—ah—”
Conan shrugged. “You mean, was I not once a bloody pirate with a fence in every port? Aye, so I was; and that I might have once again become, had you not arrived in time to plant my feet on the road to respectability.” He spoke Aquilonian fluently but with a barbarous accent.
After a moment’s pause, Conan continued: "My plan is this. PubHus shall go to the treasurer of Argos and recover the deposit advanced upon the usage of this galley, minus the proper fee. Meanwhile, I’ll take our treasure to a discreet dealer whom I knew in former days. Old Varro always gave me a fair price for plunder.”
“Men say,” quoth Prospero, “that the gems of Tranicos have greater worth than all the other jewels in all the world. Men such as he of whom you speak would give us but a fraction of their value.”
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Trepare for disappointment/’ said Publius. ‘'The value of such baubles ever gains in the telling but shrinks in the selling.”
Conan grinned wolfishly. “I’ll get what I can, fear not. Remember I have often dealt beneath the counter. Besides, even a fraction of the treasure is enough to set swinging all the swords in Aquilonia/’ Conan looked back at the quarterdeck, where stood-the captain and the steersman.
'‘Ho there, Captain Zenol” he roared in Argossean. "rell your rowers that if they put us ashore ere the taverns shutter for the night, it’s a silver penny apiece for them, above their promised wagel I see the Hghts of the pilot boat ahead.”
Conan turned back to his companions and lowered his voice. “Now, friends, we must guard our tongues as concerns our riches. A stray word, overheard, might cost us the wherewithal to buy the men we need. Forget it noti”
The harbor boat, a gig rowed by six burly Argosseans, approached the galley. In the bow a cloak-wrapped figure wagged a lantern to and fro, and the captain waved an answer to the signal. As Conan moved to go below and gather his possessions, Belesa laid a slender hand upon his arm. Her gentle eyes sought his face, and there was anguish in her voice.
“Do you stQl intend to send us to Zingara?” she asked.
“It is best to part thus. Lady. Wars and rebellions are no places for gentlewomen. From the gems I gave you, you should realize enough to Hve on, with enough to spare for your dowry. If you wish, I’ll see to converting them to coin. Now I have matters to attend to in my cabin.”
Wordlessly, Belesa handed Conan a small bag of soft leather, containing the rubies that Conan had taken from a chest in the cave of Tranicos. As he
Strode aft along the catwalk to his cabin in the poop, Belesa watched him go. All that was woman within her responded to the virihty that emanated from him, like heat from a roaring blaze. Could she have had her unspoken wish, there would have been no need for a dowry. But, ever since Conan had rescued her and the girl Tina from the Picts, he had been to them no more than a friend and protector.
Conan, she realized with a twinge of regret, was wiser than she in such matters. He knew that a delicate, high-bom lady, imbued with Zingaran ideals of womanly modesty and purity, could never adapt herself to the wild, rough Hfe of an adventiu-er. Moreover, if he were slain or if he tired of her, she would become an outcast, for the princely houses of Zingara would never admit a barbarian mercenary’s drab into their marble halls.
With a small sigh, she touched the girl who nestled beside her. "Time to go below, Tina, and ‘gather our belongings/’
Amid shouts and hails, the slender galley inched up to the quay. Publius paid the harbor tax and rewarded the pilot. He settled his debt to Captain Zeno and his crew and, reminding him of the secrecy of the mission, bade the Argossean skipper a ceremonious farewell.
As the captain barked his orders, the sail was lowered to the deck and stowed beneath the catwalk; the oars were shipped amid oaths and clatter and placed under the benches. The crew—officers, sailors and rowers—streamed merrily ashore, where bright lights blazed in inns and taverns; and painted slatterns, beckoning from second-story windows, exchanged raillery and cheerful obscenities with the expectant mariners.
Men loitered about the waterfront street. Some lurched drunkenly along the roadway, while others
THE LIONS GATHER
snored in doorways or relieved themselves in the dark, mouths of alleys.
One among the loiterers was neither so drunk nor so bleary-eyed as he appeared. A lean, hatchet-faced Zingaran he was, who called himself Quesado. Limp blue-black ringlets framed his narrow face, and his heavy-hdded eyes gave him a deceptive look of sleepy indolence. In shabby garments of sober black, he lounged in a doorway as if time itself stood still; and when accosted by a pair of diunken mariners, he retorted with a well-worn jest that sent them chuckling on their way.
Quesado closely observed the galley as it tied up to the quay. He noted that, after the crew had roistered oflF, a small group of armed men accompanied by two women disembarked and paused as they reached the pier, until several loungers hurried up to proffer their services. Soon the curious party disappeared, followed by a Hne of porters with chests and sea bags slung across their shoulders or balanced on their heads.
When darkness had swallowed up the final porter, Quesado sauntered over to a wineshop, where several crewmen from the ship had gathered. He found a cozy place beside the fire, ordered wine, and eyed the seamen. Eventually he chose a muscular, sunburned Argossean rower, already in his cups, and struck up a conversation. He bought the youth a jack of ale and told a bawdy jest.
The rower laughed uproariously, and when he had ceased chuckling, the Zingaran said indifferently: “Aren’t you from that big galley moored at the third pier?’'
The Argossean nodded, gulping down his ale.
“Merchant galley, isn’t she?”
T
he rower jerked back his tousled head and stared contemptuously. “Trust a damned foreigner not to know one ship from another!” he snorted. ”She’s a ship-o'-war, you spindle-shanked fooll That’s the Arianus, pride of King Milo’s navy.”
Quesado clapped a hand to his forehead. “Oh, gods, how stupid of me! She’s been abroad so long I scarce recognized her. But when she put in, was she not flying some device with lions on it?”
“Those be the crimson leopards of Poitain, my friend,” the oarsman said importantly. “And the Count of Poitain, no less, hired the ship and himself commanded her.”
“I can scarcely credit it!" exclaimed Quesado, acting much amazed. “Some weighty diplomatic mission, that rU warrant… /'
The drunken rower, puffed up by the wind of his hearer’s rapt attention, rushed on: “We’ve been on the damndest voyage—a thousand leagues or more—and it’s a wonder we didn’t get our throats cut by the savage Picts—”
He broke off as a hard-faced officer from the Arianus clapped a heavy hand upon his shoulder.
THE LIONS GATHER
"Hold your tongue, you babbling idiot!" snapped the mate, glancing suspiciously at the Zingaran. “The captain warned us to keep close-mouthed, especially with strangers. Now shut your gobl”
“Aye, aye,’' mumbled the rower. Avoiding Quesado’s eye, he buried his face in his jack of ale.
“It’s naught to me, mates,’' yawned Quesado with a careless shrug. “Litde has happened in Messantia of late, so I but thought to nibble on some gossip.” He rose lazily to his feet, paid up, and sauntered out the door.
Outside, Quesado lost his air of sleepy idleness. He strode briskly along the pierside street until he reached a seedy roominghouse wherein he rented a chamber that overlooked the harbor. Moving Hke a thief in the night, he climbed the narrow stairs to his second-story room.
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