Conan shrugged. "I knew that something was afoot, but I heard little of it. Most of the political criminals were kept below, in the torture-rooms. By the time they were brought to my cell, they were in no state to give fiery speeches."
"Yes." Lothian nodded to himself thoughtfully. "The revolutionary fervor is not truly abroad in the populace; a few incautious, half-mad troublemakers never pose a real threat. To hear Counselor Svoretta talk, every poacher is a rebel forager, every tavern-gossip a slinking propagandist. Dangerous prophecies to be whispered in the ear of a suspicious baron! Ah well!" The sage waved away his annoyance with a frail white hand, absorbed for the moment in thought.
Then, hearing a servant rattling crockery in the hall outside, the old man silently reminded himself of the need for discretion. Spymaster Svoretta's eyes and ears were posted everywhere, after all. He now glanced to the partly open door with a sensation of regret.
"In any case," he resumed, "the rebels seem to believe that if they throw off what they regard as a tyranny, they can somehow curry favor with King Laslo and be granted control of Dinander." He shrugged righteously. "Drivel, of course; nothing would have the Imperial Army down on us faster. But 'tis dangerous drivel if it weakens the people's belief in the men of Einharson and their supernatural warranties."
Conan propped himself up with an elbow against the carved wooden grapevines of the sofa's arm. "It is true, then, that the Einharsons claim some sorcerous title to their rule? I heard Baldomer say aught of it."
Lothian shrugged ever so slightly, with a glance to the doorway. "There are stories, yes. Whether they have a kernel of truth or are mere superstitions exploited by the family, it scarcely matters." The sage looked levelly at Conan. "If I were the baron, I would not rely too heavily on such beliefs to secure my rank. Adroit policy is more important."
"Aye . . . and a swift sword-arm." Conan clapped a hand on his own bicep to massage some of the recent kinks from it.
His tutor shot him a sudden, impatient look from under snowy brows. "Wrong, my child. A sword too swift will bring a man to ruin faster than anything else." He shook his ruffled locks, glancing disapprovingly at Conan's powerful body. "Better that some thought and wealth were given to learning and addressing the needs of the inhabitants of this barony, rather than to the hiring of additional sword-arms!"
Lothian turned back to his scroll with new energy. Perhaps this task would be tolerable after all; the young outlander seemed fairly tame and not entirely an inept pupil. He cleared his throat. "Now then. In street processions, the royal entourage will be headed by an honor guard of at least seven men, or if on horseback, by at least five. When a favored baron or knight accompanies the king, his own guards will nevertheless yield precedence. ..."
As the sage counselor droned on, Conan lay in the creeping ribbon of sunlight and thought of Ludya. The cushioned divan beneath him had some of the marvelous softness of her skin, though it lacked her smooth silkiness. The prospect of further trysting with her was enough to dull his restless yearning for escape. Why not bide here in the Manse a while longer and restore his strength?
Yet it was important to be watchful and to spy out the devious workings of the place. Ludya herself was the best means to that, a simple, spirited girl after his own heart, yet well-placed and full of knowledge of the court. And, ah, the loving ways of these southern lasses! He settled back deep into the upholstery, lulled by memories of her caresses. His mind grazed warmly in remote, sunlit pastures.
Suddenly a harsher touch prodded him, and he jerked instantly awake. His hand shot out to intercept the one that menaced him, even before his blurred eyesight could focus on his looming foe.
Blinking, he saw that the hand in his grasp held nothing more deadly than a plumed writing quill. He glanced up to the startled, pained face leaning over him, that of Lothian, the scholar. Gingerly Conan relinquished his grip on the thin old wrist lest the birdlike bones snap in his clutch. He hauled himself upright in the clumsy seat, slightly abashed.
The sage counselor backed away, rubbing his chafed limb and gathering his flustered dignity about him. "As I thought, napping in class! Well, young ruffian, be assured that tomorrow I shall test you thoroughly. Then we shall repeat however much of today's lesson you slept through." He waved his unimpaired hand sharply in the air. "Now, off with you! Go!"
Conan left the tutor massaging his wrist, and headed for the lower precincts of the Manse. While treading the worn spiral steps, he pondered. In spite of its lack of bodily strains and bruises, Lothian's teaching would be the hardest of all his duties to face. What a sledge-load of manure!
His weapon training, by contrast, had grown routine, even interesting, since being taken over by Durwald. And his horse pacing was tolerable under the lax supervision of Arga, the farrier. After the perils of the first days, Conan was beginning to feel more at ease among these Nemedians, vain as they were of their petty local crotchets and customs. It might do to linger here at the Manse, but not without a ready escape route and some material provision for his survival. He glanced carefully through the arch before entering the ground-floor corridor. He assumed that his movements around the place were watched.
Going to the kitchen, he did his share in helping to lay out the servants' dinner, then did more than his share in consuming it. The other menials had grown to accept him, even to like him. This was especially true of Velda, the fat, bawdy chief cook; the sly tow-headed boy, Glin; and Lokey, the half-witted kitchen hand whose forehead was still flat on one side from a mule kick received in childhood.
Conan's preemptive appetite posed no threat to any of them since food was ever-plentiful in the lower reaches of the house, as it was wasted royally by the nobles above. And in these gatherings, Ludya's familiarity helped to draw the stolid Cimmerian forth. She teased him merrily during the meal, as usual, and he enthralled the diners with heroic legends and gruesome accounts of northern ogres and trolls.
Later, when all were abed-and after a brief, restless wait in his own sleeping-closet for discretion's sake-Conan went to Ludya's side. They embraced, and conversed in whispers while lying close together, and embraced again. Ludya confided her fondest ambitions to him.
"Even in class-bound Nemedia, Conan, it happens from time to time that a girl of lowly station is favored by a man of position and taken by him to wife. Here, unlike some of the southern kingdoms where queens and priestesses hold sway, rank accrues only to the male. But a woman, if she is both beautiful and strong in spirit, can rise greatly. Like the Lady Heldra." Ludya's voice was a sighing warmth in Conan's ear.
"Great good fortune," he murmured back, "as long as one doesn't end as she did, with poison in her craw or a dagger in her back!"
"I serve the baron's table, Conan, and of late I have felt the young Lord Favian's eyes on me. He is an impulsive fellow, and yet he nears marrying age."
Conan's voice rumbled in the narrow bunk. "I would warn you against Favian. He is an intemperate chap, and violent in his cups."
"Not like you in the least, is he, Conan?" Ludya teased. "But truly, nobles must not be judged by the same mete as ordinary men. Rank and responsibility weigh heavily on them and impel them to excess. Favian merely bridles under his father's strictness, as any son would."
"Now there is a thought! If you want to rise in the world, why not catch the watery eye of the old man himself? Go straight to the top, marry the baron and make yourself Favian's mother!" Conan's husky whisper managed to convey a cynical distaste.
"Oh no, Conan! 'Tis a well-known state secret that Baldomer has no use for women." Ludya's voice shifted from protest back to confidentiality. "In the last Brythunian border war, just before Favian was born, he sustained two grave wounds: the one to his face and another lower down, here!" Ludya's hand moved expressively beneath the bedclothes. "'Tis a dangerous custom, the wearing of kilts by Nemedian nobles. He was sorely impaired; that is why he so cherishes Favian as the last Einharson heir.
"But I know you were jestin
g. Really, Conan, how could you suggest such a thing? Me seduce the baron, indeed!" She laid a hand on her bedmate's cheek in a mock slap. "Baldomer is mad and old, and not nearly so good-looking as Favian." She pecked a kiss on Conan's cheek. "Why, Favian is just as beautiful as you are ... maybe even handsomer. I can't make up my mind!"
Late that night, groggy with sleep and ebbed tides of pleasure, Conan raised himself from the warmth of Ludya's bed. He crawled to the end of the stall and drew on his clothes quietly to avoid waking her. He peered through the drapery, then went silent into the dim moonlit common-room.
His destination was not the burlap and hay of his own pallet. For that he would not willingly have abandoned the Nemedian girl's linen and soft furs, nor the fragrant warmth of her body.
He padded to the kitchen archway and felt his way cautiously through the room beyond, lit by the faint red glow of banked cook fires. An almost imperceptible fringe of light outlined the half-open door to the corridor; when Conan edged up to the opening and eased his head through, he saw the night sentry standing against the wall beside the Manse's rear entry.
The guard was a veteran in full uniform, including steel helmet and breastplate. Burdened so uncomfortably, he would not stand motionless for long Conan knew. He stepped back inside the kitchen and waited.
Indeed, in a little while he heard the scuff of leather soles in the corridor. They passed the kitchen, turned around and passed it again. Conan chose that moment to steal into the passage. Before the guard ended his circuit and turned back to face the corridor, the youth had flitted behind him through another archway.
The Cimmerian made his way slowly and noiselessly through pitch-black storerooms, using skills honed in night-stalking panther and minx through northern woods. Now he employed these talents in pursuit of a more fabled reward: the vast treasure that all castles harbored and all barons hoarded. Legendry told him it was so; he believed unquestioningly, and the promise of claiming his share of it made him bear all the vexations of the place.
Another hope was to find some escape route that might prove safer, when at length he needed it, than a desperate dash through the open palace gates by daylight. Although he had found no hint of such a route yet, a previous night's wanderings had taken him to the highest roof of the Manse, to an aerie above the very helmets of the pacing sentries. There he had breathed the heady airs of summer night, smelled the perfume of blooming jasmine, and gazed out over the slate and thatch of the town roofs to the moonlit band of river. Close beneath him, he had seen how tightly secured and well-patrolled was the baron's keep during the dark hours. Still, there would be a way.
The once-glimpsed stair, which Conan now found by touch, ascended toward an unexplored quarter of the Manse. But as he started up the narrow steps, he heard the scrape of a door at the top. A crease of light appeared and widened, sending forth yellow rays to pierce the dusty expanse of the storeroom; Conan ghosted off to take refuge behind a bale of coarse cloth.
The source of the light proved to be tapers of crimson wax, set in two of the three sockets of a gleaming silver candelabrum. As the wavering rays descended toward Conan, he was forced to crouch low out of sight. But the scuff of feet on the steps bespoke the presence of only one person, and so, as the light passed him by, Conan risked a look. The candles' glare illuminated an heroic if worn and war-ravaged profile: Baldomer's.
After the baron's passing, Conan glanced up to see that the door was shut. Then, moving silently and lurking among the shifting shadows thrown back by the swaying double flame, he followed. The Cimmerian felt intense curiosity over Baldomer's presence in the castle's nether rooms at this eerie hour. The nobleman's garb was strange for the excursion, consisting of a long, pale nightshirt, his leather kilt belted over it, and upon his breast a heavy, gleaming amulet in the form of a star, with six dagger-pointed blades.
The night-walker moved on steadily, as if sure of his purpose; yet Conan wondered that he seemed to be heading for the blank end of the vast, vaulted storeroom. No passage was visible in the wavering light. Was Baldomer going to visit a treasure-hoard secreted inside one of these dusty bales or kegs, or mayhap beneath the heavy flags of the cellar floor?
Walking straight to the back wall of the chamber, the baron set down his candelabrum on a crate at one side; then he laid his hands on a cobwebbed wooden loom across which a dusty, half-finished tapestry stretched like the sagging web of a titanic spider. Leaning and straining, the nobleman shoved the heavy frame aside to reveal a breach in the wall beyond a low, dark archway barred by a metal grating.
Without working any lock or bolt that Conan could see, Baldomer grasped the metal crossbar and pulled; as the grating swung open, it sent a rusty, rasping groan echoing through the dim emptiness. The baron picked up his candlestick and stooped to enter the cramped tunnel, the light sinking and dwindling immediately. It was almost out of sight when Conan ventured forward to follow.
He nearly tumbled down the steep, uneven steps waiting inside the archway, but he caught himself by wedging his palms between the narrow walls. He descended swiftly and silently, anxious to overtake the last faint glim of candlelight disappearing beneath.
The level corridor at the bottom was a burial crypt lined with open alcoves. Reflections of retreating candle-flame gleamed against its wet, slimy cobbles, and the joints of the masonry walls were green-bearded with sparkling nitre. Conan feared that the baron might look back at any moment and see him skulking along the straight, narrow passage; fortunately, stone monuments bulked out of the alcoves at intervals, large enough for him to hide behind.
These were the sarcophagi of Dinander's past rulers, Conan surmised. Involuntary contact with the marble casks confirmed the impression gained from the light of the distant candle-beams, that the sides of each one were intricately carved with runes and heraldic symbols. Laid atop each coffin were a rusting sword and suit of mail, probably once the favorite battle-dress of the noble cadaver tucked away inside.
Conan felt uneasy about these relics; he avoided touching them, for he possessed the primitive's dread of tombs and anything that lingers in them. Though some of the armor might be inlaid with silver or gold, this foul grave-trash was scarcely the treasure he sought. Nevertheless, each time the light was raised high in the passage ahead, he found it necessary to shelter behind the coffins and press up close against them.
After a long, tense stalk down the arrow-straight corridor, Conan began to wonder just where beneath the Manse or its grounds he was; the tunnel seemed to extend too far to be a part of the building's foundation. Then he saw an end to the journey, for the will-o'-the-wisp candlestick came to rest. It was deposited atop an especially large, ornate sarcophagus. The box lay transverse across the corridor where it abutted a wall just ahead.
Halting, the baron knelt with a genuflection that was screened by his body and invisible to Conan. Then he reached forward among the armor debris laid on that largest box-lid, taking up what looked like the rust-eaten skeleton of a great longsword. With careful reverence he propped it against the wall behind the sarcophagus. When it was placed thus, its hilt, star-shaped because of its crossed double hand-guard, stood up behind the marble coffin lid like a holy fetish above an altar. It resembled the amulet around Baldomer's neck, Conan realized; indeed, it was probably the model after which the charm was fashioned.
The baron took up the candelabrum and placed it in front of the hilt, so that the star was visible through the vacant center of the silver-branched utensil. The flickering tapers at either side illumined it, their flames playing brightly within the gems still gleaming from the ornate, decaying hilt.
The light in the gloomy passage seemed to grow brighter by virtue of Baldomer's careful placement of the sword. To Conan the weapon seemed inhabited by a radiance of its own; there was something uncanny in the way the flames danced and shimmered on the ancient metal, and for a moment he could not tell whether the sword he gazed on was old or new, corroded or freshly polished. He blinked repeat
edly, squinting at the odd illusion.
Baldomer knelt before the tomb as before an altar, folding his kilt beneath his bare knees on the stone. Meanwhile, Conan crept forward for a better view, until he was lurking behind the last sarcophagus short of the candlelit one, mere paces from the baron. He peered over the coffin carefully so as not to disturb the debris atop it; some of the armor in this deeper and older part of the crypt was more intact than was the newer rusted plate. Fashioned of heavy bronze rather than of steel, it was tarnished bright green, but still serviceable.
Baldomer now spoke in a prayerful chant that reverberated along the narrow confine. His utterance was couched in archaic dialect containing obscure hints and allusions, but Conan could follow the gist of the ritualized statement.
"Sacred sword of Einhar! Blade of my father's father's first father, I commend myself and mine unto thy power! Still we sing the storied times when they wielder was king. Still we remember the old days, and honor the old ways. Kin of thine shall never brook the insolent eye, nor the treasonous tongue, nor the hand that moveth sluggishly to obey. All such are the rightful prey of the blades of Einhar's sons!
"O Sword of my father, our rule is by thy license. I pray thee, keep vigilant on our behalf. Watch over our clan; temper our spirits harshly with thine iron strength. Stand thee ready to lead us in the exercise of our noble privilege, carved aforetimes from the bones and blood of men!"
As Baldomer spoke this sanguinary chant, the hallowed sword appeared to blush ever brighter, Conan could now distinctly see candle-flickers playing along a gleaming blade, where before had stood a mere rust-eaten twig. The undeniable evidence of sorcery made him restless, and he glanced nervously over his shoulder to spy for other lurking shapes among the crypt's huddled shadows.
The Conan Compendium Page 195
