Conan the Great

by Leonard Carpenter

  “Of the monster you mention, Conan, I do not know; it may have been illusion.” Yasmela clung to him without apparent unease at his showing himself before the window. “Tarnhold has many secrets, and many wardings. Some are false, some may be only too real.” “Hmm.” Conan turned back into the room. “Maybe all of this, then, is false.” He moved to the wall and fingered the silky stuff of a tapestry, then hefted a jade um that stood on a side-table beneath it. “Perhaps all here in Tarnhold is really squalid ruin, and we inside are the bedazzled ones.”

  “I only know what I see and feel, Conan—what I am.” She touched the vase as he set it down, then the arm that held it, trailing her fingertips finally up to his naked chest. “Are you your same fierce, barbarous self?”

  He grunted thoughtfully, glancing down at his soiled, abraded limbs, his soggy breech-wrap, and his dust-caked feet. “Aye, I reckon so. I would wash myself in the lake, if I knew the water spiders were but wraiths.”

  “There is a steaming spring in the yard below. I will bathe you, Conan.” She clapped her hands together suddenly, sharply, and the sound was answered by the scraping of a door in the next room. Conan turned and waited warily for a servant or guard to appear. It turned out to be a woman, middle-aged and matronly, clad in a long, belted gown. She looked up once at Conan, wide-eyed, then discreetly lowered her eyes and bowed to her mistress.

  “Vateesa, gather up linens for a bath,” Yasmela instructed her. “And be sure that our evening meal is... ample enough for our guest.” She turned to Conan. “Come with me, and none will gainsay us.”

  Following the servant, Yasmela led him through two more rooms as sumptuous as the first, and then down a broad stairway to a vestibule. Conan hesitated before stepping into the castle yard, but Yasmela exited blithely and beckoned to him, so he ventured out. The few other servants who were in evidence, gardeners and stable-hands, seemed to vanish discreetly soon after their emergence. The courtyard was sunlit and pleasant, with garden plots and orchard trees cultivated along the base of the wall. Even the jumbled architecture of the keep was more appealing from this angle. Of sentries on the wall top there was no sign, and access to the lake was unobstructed via a low, stone-curbed terrace. In all, the place wore an utterly different aspect from within.

  Gushing at the far comer of the court, beneath an arbour of grapevines that fruited unseasonably due to its warmth, a mineral spring flowed through a pool of lime-encrusted marble. From its surface curled a haze of steam redolent of the same sulphurous perfume Conan had noted in the tarn’s water.

  At the smell, and at the noise of the water welling up from deep within the earth, Conan hesitated—but here the sound was seductive. He shed his damp clout and stepped into the spring, gasping at its scalding warmth. Moments later, once her maid had helped Yasmela remove her gown, she followed. She retained as raiment only the comb in her hair and the delicate neck chain, from which the gold pendant dangled down between her firm breasts.

  She met her guest in a tender embrace, which she then had some difficulty breaking free of—but together, at length, they sat down on the pool curb and began easing by slow degrees into the steaming cauldron. No sooner had they immersed themselves fully than they found it necessary to climb out again, to cool and rest themselves in the afternoon’s rising shadows. The patient Vateesa helped Yasmela lave Conan’s limbs and knead and pound his travel-weary, battle-sore thews as he lay stretched on the stone. Then the handmaid withdrew, leaving the two alone to minister more attentively to one another.

  On Yasmela’s balcony at sunset, over a table scattered with bread husks, nutshells, and razed remains of fruit and fowl, they continued their talk. Conan, belching in a thoughtful, restrained way, said to her, “From within the keep, I see no guards on the walls.”

  “No, the guards are few,” Yasmela replied. “As I told you, the Tarnhold relies on other wardings.” “Hmm. I see.” Conan nodded grudgingly. “With protectors like those, you do not need human guardians.” He looked closely at her. “You are not, then, a prisoner here?”

  “A prisoner?” She gave a slow shake of her head. “No, though some may put it forth that I am. I have merely retired from Khorajan political life.”

  “Retired, so meekly? That does not sound like you, Yasmela, to lay down arms and surrender the field.” “No, perhaps not. But, Conan,” she said, taking his hand across the table, “you should know that I am not the fiery princess-regent I once was. For so many years I lived in the shadow of my brother the king, trying to right the wrongs and mend the weaknesses his rule left in the fabric of our state. Even after his death, fickle Khoraja proved beyond the power of one woman to master. I remained a player in the web of royal intrigue at the palace—whether triumphantly or not, to this day I cannot say for sure. Such things can weary one over the years—the factions, the conspiracies, the consorts and liaisons. You have had many lovers, I take it?” Conan nodded. “Many,” he assured her.

  Yasmela sighed. “Well, you may not understand, but love is far less joyous when the coupling is freighted with political cares and dictated by expediencies. The courtly men I have known were glib-tongued, most of them, but even less loyal than the fickle mob of common folk. After years of such half dealings, there comes a time when one is grateful to leave the nation in the hands of someone who can guide it surely, someone strong and ruthless enough to—”

  “Armiro, you mean.” Conan shifted awkwardly in his seat. “Yasmela, does the prince keep you here as his concubine?”

  She laughed, surprised. “Prince Armiro? Why, no!” She flushed slightly, but assumed an attitude of thoughtfulness as she recollected herself. “I do not even know if the prince has time or inclination for affairs of the flesh, so fixed is he on securing and extending his power. If he did have such a hankering, ’twould be for a woman younger than myself, I am sure.”

  “You seem young enough to me, Yasmela,” Conan told her frankly. “But I warn you, this Armiro is my bounden enemy. No man who has played me so false as he has can be allowed to live.”

  Yasmela’s eyes registered faint alarm. “But, Conan, I caution you, Armiro is not one to be easily undone. And he is not an ill ruler, really. In truth, some say he is the greatest Khorajan leader since our land was carved out of the mountainous backside of Shem! He has done an able job of maintaining order in Koth, as you must have seen on your journey here.” Her hand earnestly pressed his across the table. “Unlike any Khorajan monarch of recent time, Armiro carries his ambitions and his wars outside our border, which in itself is a great relief. And I have not heard that his rule over the subject domains is unduly harsh.”

  “I know not,” Conan answered impatiently. “The fellow is a quick and sly commander, I’ll vouchsafe. But does that make up for treachery, I ask you? Or for cowardice?” He must have gripped Yasmela’s hand with too great a fraction of his vengeful strength, for she jerked it back across the table with an injured cry.

  “The wretch broke the rule of single combat,” Conan grated at her, hardly noticing her unease. “He set upon me with slinking assassins under the very eyes of his troops—who cheered and hailed him for the foul deed! One of his murdering dogs pricked me in the fundament—here, where no self-respecting warrior should bear a scar!” Conan half rose from the table and slapped himself demonstratively on the injured spot, though he did not lower his borrowed britches to prove the point.

  “I tell you,” he went on, seating himself righteously,“there is not room in all of Hyborea for him and me! I would be a-warring at him now, except for the rumour I heard that you were ill-used at his hands—Crom, the mortal despite it aroused in me!” The monarch scowled at her across the table. “If he were but a lowly clod or swineherd, I would still want to shred his living gizzard—all the more so a prince, who arrogates himself to be my equal!” Conan shook his black mane, frowning in contempt. “Where does he hail from, anyway?”

  Yasmela was evidently distressed by her lover’s wrath—indeed, he now saw, almost to
the point of tears. In answering, she chose her words carefully. “He is but an orphan of the cynical Khorajan court, made callous like so many others by its snubs and restraints.” She shook her head in evident melancholy. “Years ago, he was just one of a handful of pretenders pressing credible claims to the throne—but he was smarter and more industrious than the rest, and so he has outlived them all.” She shook her head and sighed, as at the untidiness of the table before her, and of her entire life. “But tell me, Conan, my worldly king, can you not see that the customs and manners of a foreigner might reasonably differ from your own? You too were reviled as a savage in your early days, remember! Can you not tolerate the same kind of harsh individuality in the ruler of a far-off realm?”

  Conan frowned, shaking his head. “Nay, Yasmela. For such as Armiro there is no room in my heart!” Scowling, he groped for words. “One of the things I have been shown as king is that the world is but a small place, really—a tiny village of kings, vying at arms and statecraft. In such a paltry village, it does not pay to tolerate a bad neighbour.”

  “You intend to be king of the village, then,” Yasmela concluded for him. “You have advisors who tell you this?”

  “Indeed.” Conan nodded frankly. “I have one friend in particular, a witty fellow named Delvyn, who has told me more about myself than I could have learned in a dozen lifetimes.”

  Yasmela nodded knowingly. “Many kings have such friends. But I would caution you to proceed carefully— Armiro has his advisors, too.”

  “At times I think you must be one of them,” Conan told her. “But I know you better than to believe that you would throw in your lot with one as treacherous as Armiro.”

  “Nay, you are right,” Yasmela conceded, “he is too deceitful for my liking.” She shook her head sadly. “Even so, if you will bide here with me this night, you may hear that which will change your estimation of Armiro.” She sighed wistfully, as if troubled by a related concern. “For my own part, I worry that I have been less than honest with you. For I must tell you, Conan, I am not as I seem.”

  At this Conan blinked. “Pray, girl, do not tell me I have bathed and bedded with some ancient, bearded sorcerer, or a deathless vampire who means to guzzle my lifeblood!” Though his remark was uttered lightly, as a jest, he could not keep a glint of real suspicion from his eyes, and a feathery-keen thrill of fear from his voice.

  “Oh, but that is practically true, my love,” Yasmela said in dismal seriousness. “For, in regard to what you said earlier about the deceptions of this place—whether the Tarnhold’s beauty is its true reality, or whether its ugliness is—I confess that I, too, am under such a charm! This amulet”—she pressed the object on the gold chain about her neck, which nested now in the none too voluminous twist of gossamer enfolding her bosom—“is enchanted from olden times. It was ensorcelled to bestow on its wearer a false appearance of youth. I must tell you, Conan, that beneath it, I am old! Lacking its spell, I would not seem so desirable to you.” Her speech ended with a faint catch in her voice. Clasping the pendant to her chest with one hand, she covered her eyes in shame with the other.

  “Now, girl!” Conan protested, rising from his bench and coming around the table to her. “Your years cannot be more plenteous than mine—at least, not by many.” He stopped and sat on the edge of the tabletop before her. “And know you, I am not old! Any liar who says I am, I challenge to a bout of swords or ale noggins!” Leaning forward, he ruffled Yasmela’s chestnut tresses and patted her cheek, whose softness dampened his fingers with tears.

  “Yes, Conan,” she answered, her voice faint and shy. “But everyone knows that men grow more winsome with age, while women shrivel and droop like spent weeds.”

  “Nonsense,” he told her gently. The light in the sky above the lake had faded to the purplest shadow of sunset. He reached beside him and moved the guttering oil lamp to the edge of the table, where it better illuminated Yasmela’s seated form. “You have no need of that amulet,” he said, holding forth his cupped hand. “Give it to me.”

  Sitting disconsolate with one elbow propped on the table, her hand still covering her eyes, Yasmela sat stubbornly clutching the charm with her other hand against the ribbon of filmy stuff across her bosom. This, and loose harem pants of the same diaphanous cloth, were the only garb she wore, or needed in the mild evening air. The pendant, as he knew from earlier, closer examination, was in the shape of a stone flower, the symbol of youth, embellished with blue-jewelled stamens.

  “Come,” he instructed her again, “hand it over.”

  Finally, at his urging, she stirred. With a brisk, careless motion that dislodged another sob from her throat, she lifted the chain over her head, held it out, and dropped it into his extended hand. He accepted it and stuffed it into a pocket at his waist. Meanwhile he kept his eyes fixed on his lover’s half-averted face and sylphlike body, feeling eerie anticipation and a trace of dread.

  The changes came subtly and slowly. Yasmela’s taut breasts, slung in their nets of gauzy blue fabric, seemed to soften and relax; they spread to rounder, more luxuriant shapes against her chest, even as the breastbone beneath heaved with pent-up anguish. Her flat belly swelled for a moment, almost as if ripening with child; but then it stopped, arrested in soft, dimpled convexity that balanced the gentle curves of her upper body. Her thighs and hips, seen plainly through the single layer of filmy cloth, now deepened and strengthened, lending vigour and a firmer foundation to the entire woman.

  Shoulders and neck filled in graciously, too; in all, her appearance changed from dollish, boyish youthfulness to vibrant queenliness. Her aspect, poised there in the backless chair, put Conan in mind of the unclothed demigoddesses carved in stone who fled, fought, and loved their way across the lofty architraves of the Temple of Mitra at Tarantia.

  Yasmela’s face, as she blinked up at Conan from beneath her shielding hand, was a more richly charactered portrait of her former one. Years had gone to rest there, as had sorrows, leaving their traces in the more melancholy curvature of her lips and the soft lines at the comers of her eyes. But Conan saw tracks of humour, too, at the sides of her mouth; a greater worldly wisdom, and a new capacity for lusty, fleshly abandon that seemed only to have been confirmed by its many trials.

  Her cheeks glistened now with tears; despair showed off her features, perhaps, to their worst advantage. Yet her eyes bore, if anything, a surer wit. Quicker to read his stare, perhaps, they gleamed at him now with what might be hope. In answer, still seated on the table edge, he extended an arm to her.

  “Up, woman, and come here to me... but first remove those flimsy shreds. And forget your enchanted bauble! This time I want you naked.”

  X

  Night Marauders

  Late each afternoon, when the weary sun god retires for his rest—so the legends chanted by tribes in the remote southern part of Stygia tell it—he unleashes his hungry black panther Night to prowl forth and guard his earthly domain. Most mortals, left lying in the beast’s ebon shadow, dare only cower in sleep. But others, notably thieves and lovers, undertake their greatest exertions as the shaggy black belly passes over.

  Yet no matter how patiently and tirelessly one may toil—even if one’s efforts are aided by others’ eager hands, and slaked by however many draughts of cooling wine—’tis hard to labour the long night through. Toward dawn, most inevitably, thieves of love and of less precious goods seek out a soft place to lay themselves down. They forsake their earthly cares, resting for the return of bright day. It was from such a rest that Conan and Yasmela, lying across their bed in a tangle of slack limbs and silken coverlets, were awakened by a scream.

  ’Twas Vateesa’s, they knew instantly, coming as it did from the adjoining room. Its shrill, frightened peal was silenced by a savage blow; whether dealt by flesh or steel, the stroke sounded mortal.

  In an instant Conan slipped from the bed and snatched up a bronze statuette for his defence. Simultaneously, the door banged open and a black-clad figure darted t
hrough. Another instant, and the intruder toppled dead to the floor, his brains spattered across a priceless tapestry by the heft of the figurine. The marauder’s wickedly edged short sword did not clatter to the floor; it already shaved the air in Conan’s grasp.

  A rush of footsteps signalled that the fight was not over, as a half-dozen more dim figures spilled into the room. Abruptly a dark lamp was unshuttered; it played a lurid, blinding beam on Conan, and on the half-draped figure of his royal mistress behind him.

  “So, Yasmela!” a hard, sharp voice proclaimed in aristocratic Kothian. “You now openly conspire with my enemies! A violation of our understanding, this, and a heinous treachery to me—”

  “Fault not the queen,” Conan interrupted. “She bears no blame if a foreign warrior bursts into her room uninvited! My arrival was no more heralded than yours, Armiro—for in sooth, the voice I hear sounds like Armiro's, though I know not how it comes here, by what sorcerous ploy or illusion—”

  “Sorcery? Illusion?” As the brittle voice erupted in spiteful laughter, its dark-clad owner edged forward into the fringe of lamp glare. “Do you not think I have spies, O Conan of Aquilonia—in embattled Ophir, and in your royal legions as well? Do you not think I have slaves, sedans, coaches, and good swift roads, to carry me here faster than any lone man on horseback?”

  “Very well then, rascal,” Conan barked back at him, “you are here! You have already shown that you are no duellist! Tell your dogs to have at me, and I will test their steel!”

  “I would not bid them sully their blades with such a small chore,” Armiro proclaimed, drawing his sword with a razory rasp. “Keep back, men, this fight is mine!” The prince sprang forward, a lean, crouching silhouette in the lamplight.