The lord of Korveka wore a full-sleeved white blouse and a particularly loose scarlet riding- upon over leggings just as loose.
Both men watched her appreciatively. Though some slaves were left bare above the waist for the good of their spirits and the delectation of their masters, this was not true in the household of Sabaninus of Korveka. True, Nateela wore little. Just as true, that fact made her more interesting to look upon than had she been bare-chested. The yellow-trimmed halter of Kothian green swayed and jiggled with her steps, and the sway of her hips was sensuously visible above the low-slung drawstring of her long skirt of the same hue. Save for a copper bracelet and an amulet suspended on a simple cord about her neck, Nateela wore naught else.
'How beautifully made you are, my dear child,' the Khitan said, as if he were much older.
She flashed him a smile, her lashes lowered, while he took the large mug of cider from her tray.
He stepped back from her, one pace towards the baron. He spoke strange words in stranger inflections. Nothing he murmured was in any language she knew or knew of, but strangely fluid and not unlike a song.
'Thank you, Nateela,' the baron said in a quavery voice. He looked as if he were in mourning. 'You are loved, Nateela.'
'Thank you, my lord,' the Ophirean said while she felt her heart would burst with happiness. What a lovely thing for him to say! What a dear lord she had!'
I lairing a sound behind her, she took no note of how the Khitan swiftly knelt to draw a short arc; it completed the circle in which he and Baron Sabaninus stood. Nateela looked around. They were no longer alone in that underground chamber fitfully lit, and she was too fear-stricken even to shriek. Nor was the newcomer anything that approached the human form.
An awful croak boomed from the thing. Its bulk was missive, a huge dark form in which details were not clear; was a slice of night. All Nateela saw clearly were terrible alluring eyes and immense, gleaming fangs. It... hopped, twice, towards her. Only then did the Ophirean cry out and back away —
A hand set itself between her shoulder blades, and she was thrust violently forward.
'NO!' That from behind her; she recognised the baron's voice and though her brain was no longer working well, he knew gratitude that it could not have been he who pushed her.
'Hold, you fool!' the other man snapped. 'Move from this circle and you too will d-'
That was all Nateela heard. The thing blotted out all vision with the blackness of an utterly moonless, starless night, and then all sound too, and, after an instant of agony, all feeling as well; for it tore her in half before it bit her.
The Khitan had clamped a hand on one arm of the baron while he renewed the voicing of incantations. Abruptly the horrid thing vanished forever from the domain of Baron Sabaninus. Of Nateela there remained only the few splashes of blood the demon or Dark God had not had time to lap up, ere Khi Zang sent it back into whatever gulf of dreadful darkness it habited.
And then Baron Sabaninus, too, vanished.
The man who stood where he had been wore the baron's clothing, but on this erect, far younger man neither leggings nor jupon hung loose. Holding his arms crooked at the elbows, he stared at the hands he turned and turned before his face. Then his eyes lifted, to stare over his fingers at the Khitan.
'Ishtar's curls! I see you clearly!'
'And I see you clearly, Sergianus!'
'Every feature... oh ye gods! Oh Lady Ishtar of my fathers... I am I... and I am not!'
'I see what a mirror would show you,' the man from Khitai said. 'A man of thirty, tall and straight. Chest and calves bulge with firm young muscle that tunic can barely contain. A shock of rich brown hair from which the' morrow's sun will strike glints of red. A face far from homely and far from old, and keen young eyes. None will know you!'
'Ish... tar...'
'The goddess of that ivory image in your room of office? Only she might recognise you now! Remember that horses await. They await... whom?'
'Me! No-I mean yes. Aye! The horses await Sergianus, my nephew —the nephew of Baron Sabaninus of Korveka. Sergianus... am Sergianus.'
'So are you then, my young lord Sergianus.' Khi Zang's sweeping gesture encompassed more than the dim-lit subterranean chamber. 'Nothing interests or keeps us here, Sergianus. Let us away— a queen awaits!'
'Aye!'
And Nateela was forgot in that instant. 'Aye!' Sergianus repeated in a strong voice that was at once mature and far from old. 'A queen awaits!'
Laughing, trembling not with palsy but in excitement, Sergianus strode to the steps and mounted them. The smiling yellow wizard from Khitai followed. lie closed the door behind them.
The snowy ball of the moon moved but little before they were mounted. Accompanied by two young men whose ambition and greed would make them trustworthy long enough, they rode eastward across the nighted barony. Behind them they led, strangely, but two sumpter-beasts. All four men wore daggers, though only Khi Zang and Sergianus bore swords.
Eventually one of them would part to travel, somehow, the thousands of miles to his home, there to wait years for the accomplishment of his goal in Khauran: the future plantation of a ghastly god from the dark mists of Khitai's ancient most history. Of the other three, but one could complete the journey to the capital of Khauran of the unhappy Queens. By that time, three would have died for his dream.
I
Death in Shadizar
The tall youth walked the nighted streets lithe as a jungle cat on the hunt. The fingers of his big hands remained slightly curled, ready to draw sword or dagger or both. His eyes moved constantly in an effort to spy out the darkest shadows, pools of squid's ink on this poorly-lit street on the perimeter of the city's Watch-patrolled areas. For all his height and powerfully-constructed bulk, he moved almost silently. Eyes watched him from well back within a hallway dark as a well at midnight; the footpad appraised his probable lack of wealth, sized him up, and let the big youth pass.
The young man crossed that perimeter then, reaching the corner of Bazaar Way and, without hesitation, turning left into the Street of Erlik Enthroned. It was both narrower and darker.
The moment he'd rounded the corner, he grunted at impact of a rushing body. A lissome young woman had run full into him. Sleek and slippery, she jiggled wildly in a few strips of scarlet-dyed homespun and shameless gauze sewn with copper coins too small to tempt any but the very lowest of thieves. Her light panting and wild eyes told him she'd been running though not for long, all silent on bare, filthy-soled feet. His arms did not go around her; with a hand on each of her upper arms, he pushed her gently back a pace to look into her face.
'Here girl, where -'
Despite his big hands on her arms, the chestnut-skinned easterner writhed away, ducked, and hurried on past him. The youth did not even turn. With a little snort and a whimsical jerk of his head, he walked on. His hand left his dagger and his eyes squinted as he scanned upper-storey windows.
'Boy. Ho there, big one!'
He half turned to look back. A slim hunting panther to Ins black-maned lion, the girl stood in the centre of the mid-section, where it was safest. Her hands rode bare hips mid she faced him.
'Don't go that way unless you don't mind blundering into anyone else's trouble!'
A young male addressed a young female: 'You think I'm wearing this sword to pare my toenails?'
She snorted and tossed her head so that purplish-black hair flew. 'Huh! No, and you're big enough. It's just that smart folk avoid others' troubles, and you're headed for some. Three or four blades, at least. Where came you by that barbarous accent?'
'Not on the other side of the Vilayet like you, girl.' I le glanced around, a broad-shouldered near-giant whose massive chest strained the cloth of a tunic not made for him. lie was bronzed by the sun and the tunic was the colour f desert sand. 'Why warn me?'
He was wary, and justifiably. He knew Arenjun well, and Shadizar's reputation was little better. Such a helpful and tempting young woman could easil
y be distracting his attention whilst a silent confederate stole upon him with cudgel or club or worse. He saw no one. The Street of Erlik Unthroned was quiet and apparently untenanted. The cult's adherents either did not meet this night in that big building they had converted into a temple, or they were quiet about the conducting of their rites.
She shrugged. It was a jerky gesture, boyish save for the movement it imparted to her bosom, which was more bared than clothed; less clothed than adorned. Homespun and gauze indeed; she was poor as a temple cockroach!
'I ran into you, and you didn't grab me or try to pin me up against a wall. Why not?'
'Not because I did not find you attractive,' he said, perhaps hopefully, for the city was new to him and she was comely. 'Show me the way to a place to get better acquainted, then.'
Her reply was a scornful chuckle. You haven't that which attracts me, fellow!'
'I'm a year or so older than you, and strong enough to protect such a girl as you!' Even as his chest swelled a bit, he checked again down the Street of Erlik Enthroned. It remained empty, in the darkness.
'Huh! So are scores of others, hill-boy, and all with bid hot hands that want to roam like stray dogs! It's good coin, that I require.'
'Go your way then, and find a. fat grease-headed merchant with coins to spend on a girl so poor she can't afford silk.' I require good coin too.'
She started to say something else-perhaps to remind him that he was bent in a way opposite the city's moneyed area – but changed her mind. With another of those interesting shrugs and a toss of her long thick hair, she turned and padded away along Bazaar Way, towards the sprawling inner city plain that made up the Bazaar. He noted that she contrived to add an exaggerated sway and grind to her girlish hips.
'Women.' he muttered, in the manner of a man of experience, and he disregarded her advice. He resumed his prowl away from the better-lighted, patrolled area. He knew this city was wicked. Perhaps he was, too. He was confident.
The capital of Zamora was not idly called the City of Wickedness, Conan mused.
In the Bazaar that was the city's culmination of the great caravan route called Road of Kings, every commodity was available from produce to baubles both of stone and metal and flesh and blood. Above that sprawling market flanked by stalls and shops with brightly striped awnings, every manner of vice was readily available and even hawked like goods —for a price. Most of the vices were exotic and unbridled; the prices were high. No matter how curious he waxed, no matter how tempted by his eyes and the murmurs of extolling hawkers – and tales told in his inn – Conan eschewed the expensive esoterica of Shadizar the Wicked.
True, the strapping, almost hulking youth was a man of property, with two horses in a guarded stable behind the inn. Yet he cherished those possessions; they were hard-gained. Nor was his business in Shadizar to spend. Conan had other business. It involved his soul... and profit, rather than expenditures.
Having set up as a thief in Arenjun once he'd worked his way down here from the hills of Cimmeria, he had just spent the better part of two months to little profit. Indeed, he had suffered the loss of not only that fraction of his life, but of a prized part of himself as well. Though blessed with an easygoing barbarian insouciance and the open-eyed optimism of his few years, he was hardly the happiest in Shadizar of Zamora, or without cares.
I le had come here with ambivalent hopes and goals. While he cherished a desire to gain audience with the sorcerer-laiden king, he sought too to vanish. He'd soon learned that the lord King of Zamora was not seen by some foreign youth without the laying out of a good deal of money to various intermediaries in fine robes. Too, he'd not needed to investigate or query to know that he could not long I lord to stay in the Upper City. He'd found lodgings on the other side of the bazaar, in that area of the walled capital known as the Desert. He stopped at the inn under the sign of the Foaming Jack, as often called the Leering Jackal.
This night, as on the night before, he prowled.
His pacing was not aimless; Conan moved ever uptown, out of the Desert. Why then had he turned down Erlik Enthroned? He was not certain. Here were companions, and anonymity unto invisibility, but no real attractions for an ambitious thief. And so he must be, to gain the wherewithal to bribe the robed slime that oozed between king and those who hoped to gain his ear.
The winding, narrow streets of the Lower City were dim – even by day. The dingy human-constricted caves shadowing them were tenanted by refugees from the authorities and angry rulers of a dozen lands and other cities and city-states. Here were thieves whose activities had made other abodes far too unhealthy for their continued tenancy and newly-bearded mercenaries and deserters or newly-shaven, had they worn beards afore fighting off the shakes ere they sought new employment; here brooded shadowy, unworthy temples of a score of cults whose adherents would be unwelcome in most of the rest of the world. The cults of Shadizar were often artificial, manufactured to feature and support various vices in lascivious rites. In the Desert, night-companions ranged in age from the just-nubile to time-ravaged, pitifully old whores. They swayed among cultists and pleasure-seekers and the merely curious drawn by Shadizar's reputation; and deviants, refugees, and out-l laws of every ilk and persuasion, predilection, and unrepentant reputation. Cut-purses and armed bullies prowled the streets and infested hallways dark as their souls. So too did cult-shills, temptresses and others: women of all ages more than ready to sell themselves by the hour, or for the time necessary to travel elsewhere with a protector strong of thews, or purse, or guards and reputation. For many who remained in the City of Wickedness were not all that happy; they just could not or dared not seek to betake themselves somewhere else.
Last night the big Cimmerian youth had said nay to nine women one of whom was sixty if she was a day, while! another was surely not yet nubile, four boys and two men. One of the latter pair had been so obstreperously insistent that he'd had to be refused with vehemence and finally with strength. 'You should be flattered!' he had told Conan, who wasn't.
During the course of the same evening Conan had heard described the most abominable rites of the Temple of Set-Ishtar Reformed and United, and the unequivocally voluptuous ones of the Temple of Derketa Cloaca. Too, he had seen a swaggering big Nemedian mercenary neatly and swiftly knifed by a boy of no more than thirteen, and him face to face with his victim. Later Conan witnessed the upending and sound spanking, in a public inn, of a young woman attired first in wisps of violently red silk and then in nothing save her brace of bangles. Afterwards she was tossed – aye, literally tossed – easily to two sombre, black Stygians who swiftly hauled the blonde to their dingy quarters.
Conan had eschewed involvement. This was solemn resolve. He was here on important business: theft, and the regaining of his soul. He would not involve himself in the problems of others. And he would have care as to whom he sought to rob!
He had been too much involved in too much of late. A few too many persons down in Arenjun desired his company if not companionship. Events and his own straightforwardness had resulted in his reducing Arenjun's sorcerer population by two, and in destroying both their abodes. 'ensconced in the Mall where thieves held revel by night-which in Arenjun was only a lawless section, while it seemed to comprise half of Shadizar the Wicked-he had got word of those who sought him.
There were men of the City Watch, of whose number he had slain one, wounded another, and destroyed both dignity and commission of an officer, all on one night some two months ago. The former prefect and his friends quietly..left the huge hillman with his smouldering blue eyes and hurt temper. So did uniformed men of the Watch, and one in-uniformed agent. Next came intelligence that a trousered, dial-wearing man of far Iranistan was also asking guarded and knowledgeable questions as to a certain Cimmerian youth's habits and whereabouts.
At that point Conan decided that Arenjun had grown lamentably small.
With his new possessions, he had departed the city by night. He rode north to Shadizar. He could ha
ve bought willing a female friend, Conan did not share her willingness.
Oddly, he had taken a longish route, avoiding the Road of Kings that directly connected the two Zamoran cities.
Though Shadizar was the capital and its gate sentries suspicious, few questions were asked of anyone by anyone, once a newcomer was within the walls. Too many here had too much to conceal; 'Best not to ask, lest one be asked,' was a common phrase in Shadizar. In Arenjun one never knew who was plotting and who might be deadly danger. In Shadizar, one assumed: all plotted, all were lovers of vice and probably bent on wickedness. Conan preferred Shadizar. It was not difficult for him to be on his guard at all times. Walking now that city's nighted streets, he smiled grimly. Purely as practice, he let his right hand dart across his muscular midsection to snatch out his sword. It sheared the air before him within a second, and he returned the blade to its oiled home with another smile. All in the space of a few heartbeats.
'Nothing worth stealing here,' he muttered, in a sound that approached a growl, from the throat. 'Best head back uptown.'
He had come out of the affair of the Eye of Erlik – which was not finished – and of the mage Hisarr Zul – with some small wealth. He'd left the wizard's burning keep with several weapons and a bolt of good cloth, hastily snatched. Too, he had acquired two horses and a like number of camels, along with a few stolen goods from far Samara. The horses remained. A youngish girl of astonishing skills and an older, far more crafty woman of Arenjun had assisted the youthful mage-slayer in relieving himself of the surly camels and the silver they brought, along with a few other items. He was left with memories and a new philosophy concerning women, and a vow he honestly believed he would keep, as had many a youth and man before him.
The guards at Shadizar's gates and the proprietor of the Foaming Jack had accounted for the rest of the Samaratan, booty which Conan had gained as a result of defending himself against their possessor, who had stolen them. And now he had been in the City of Wickedness for two days. For two nights, departing his inn just after sundown, he had wandered the Zamoran capital.
Conan the Mercenary Page 2
