Conan and the Sorcerer

by Andrew J Offutt

  'Conan, you were born too low! Come with us; a man of your abilities and noble nature will soon be my superior in the Guard of Samara!'

  'Noble,' Isparana muttered-and both Arsil and Conan stared until she looked away.

  'I will never forget you or that offer of employment,' Conan said, and he paused to show his pantherish strength and suppleness by pouncing on to his horse. 'But I must get myself up north, now. My employer does have a certain... hold on me. "My lady" - you do think swiftly and you are good with a sword-too bad we cannot remain a team!'

  'Speaking of swords, do — uh, Conan —'

  He clapped a hand to his, which had been hers. 'Ah, you'll not need one, dear girl-these big Turanian soldiers will take care of you! Do fare well down in Zamboula. Oh-Arsil, my friend: get her to show you how well she swims!'

  And Conan urged his horse into a trot, with the other, a little more lightly laden, hurrying along behind at the end of his lead. Behind him swift-plodded Isparana's dromedary. All along the line of the caravan Conan rode, grinning, and paused only for a long, long moment in which he stared down at Iskul of Khawarizm.

  'Some day, fat one... some day I am going to come down to Khawarizm, and open up your belly to let the air nit, and burn down your whole rotten slaving city!'

  Then Conan galloped northward, and he made but one small divergence on his direct route to Arenjun. At a certain oasis, he paced a hundred steps eastward into the desert arid there dug up a nice little package he had buried.

  IX. Black Lotus and Yellow Death

  'So, Conan of Cimmeria! You are back in much less than a month,' Hisarr Zul said, his brows arching above exophthalmic eyes. 'You have succeeded in your mission, then?' The mage stood rocking on his toes, his hands clasped behind his back as Conan had first seen him.

  'Aye,' the Cimmerian said, and he glanced about the Green Room to which Hisarr's eerie guards had conducted him. Once again he was weaponless; those were down by the manse's rear door. Aye, there it was, he saw with a qualm and a renewal of that inner sensation of emptiness. There in the cupped hands of the statue of a black demon rested the little mirror containing his soul.

  Conan gestured. 'I'll have that mirror emptied, sorcerer.'

  'Will you! Nothing simpler-for me. But first the proof of your success in retrieving the amulet.'

  'I do hate to part with it,' Conan said. 'I've worn it for a week now.'

  'Hmm. And the copy I gave you?'

  'It has been in the hands of her who stole the real Eye from you. She is doubtless still on her way to Zamboula -with the five-man escort I arranged.'

  'How resourceful you are, Conan of Cimmeria!'

  'Not resourceful enough. I have no waters from that river down in Kush, or Stygian iron, and I am not the sort to slay a maiden for her hair!'

  The blood drained visibly from Hisarr's face. 'How did you-what sort of nonsense is this you speak?'

  'You have already slipped, sorcerer. It's true, then. Those are the means of your death. And all the souls you have stolen may be liberated by stuffing your dead skull with earth and burning it to ash, eh?'

  Hisarr Zul was shaken, and literally staggered: he backed a pace on watery knees while he stared into deadly blue eyes. 'You... but one person knows those things!'

  'And I am he. The other has been dead ten years. Ask no more, Hisarr Zul. Return to me my soul,' he said, fighting so as not to falter over the word, 'and I shall tell you where to find the amulet.'

  Regaining control though still pale, Hisarr shook his head. 'That will not do, Conan. I must see the Eye before I free you.'

  'And how will you know that it is the real Eye?'

  JI will know. So would the Khan of Zamboula – but he will never have the opportunity.'

  The Cimmerian thought of Isparana, on her journey over a thousand miles south to Zamboula. 'No?' He moved to place himself between his soul and its... keeper.

  'No.'

  Smiling, Hisarr moved to his long, high table. There, muttering the while, he took up a carven chest of russet-coloured wood. From it he took, showing each to Conan, a ruby and two black-barred yellow stones, and a quantity of gold dust; the components of the Eye of Erlik. He dropped them into a bowl that appeared to have been wrought from a single piece of amber larger than the Cimmerian's fist. He filled it with oil from a large stoppered jug, and struck spark to tinder. He lit the oil, which flared up bluely, with tongues of yellow.

  "When the oil is consumed and the flame out, the bauble I made will be but a blob of yellow metal in which three gems are embedded. True gems, mind; I made the copy to place here and confound thieves. As you should very well know, my northish lad, experienced thieves know gem-stones from glass!'

  Conan nodded. He reached within his tunic. 'This will not become slag.'

  The sorcerer's dark eyes brightened and seemed to bulge a whit more. 'No, no, it will not. You have accomplished your task indeed, my good servant! Do you fetch me yon mirror, and we will soon have you whole again. A soulless man is a sad thing.'

  Conan said nothing; his agreement need not be expressed. He went to the statue and from its clawed, cupped hands of black jade plucked the mirror. With great care he conveyed it to the sorcerer, who stood across the table from him. There Hisarr presided over his alembics and crucibles, his powders and liquids, statuary and strange tools and that potent oil of a man who had within him the means of gaining control of the world, via the systematic stealing of souls. His eyes were fixed on the amulet Conan wore on a simple thong around his neck. It would be Hisarr Zul's means of controlling his first ruler, and Zamboula. A mere start.

  Conan placed the mirror on the table before the wizard, with great gentleness. He gazed across the board at the mage, from sullenly threatening blue eyes. Smiling, Hisarr Zul hefted a rolled strip of parchment. It was bound with a cord at either end so that it formed the customary tube.

  'You are in some trouble with Arenjun's authorities, I now know. I have acquaintances among them; the magistrate, for instance. In this parchment lies the solution to all your problems, Conan of Cimmeria.'

  He held it high, balanced on his palm with his thumb atop, so that as Conan leaned forward to take it he was looking into the end of the tube. Conan took a deep breath...

  So did the mage. Swiftly Hisarr Zul's head bent and he set his puckering lips to his end of the tube. He blew.

  Conan knew instantly what the tube contained: death from far Khitai. Nor did he bother to cry 'Dog!' at Hisarr's trick. Having assured himself that his unwilling agent had returned the Eye of Erlik, the treacherous wizard would swiftly slay one who was manifestly dangerous to begin with and who now knew far too much. He blew hard into the tube-

  And Conan blew with all his might at the other end, just as the deadly powder started to emerge. Then he turned and ran as fleetly as ever he'd run, not tarrying or looking back to watch the cloud of the black lotus's yellow death envelop Hisarr Zul's face. Conan exited the room by the same door Isparana had used, and barred it just as she'd done.

  Conan sucked in a great breath-and grinned. He had blown all the deadly cloud back on the sorcerer – using Hisarr's own means against him as his dead brother had specified – and the Cimmerian felt no ill effects. He had

  blown so desperately in time.

  He saw that he had entered a room of dark portent and shudder-some occupancy; on various tables lay the corpses of those guards he and Ajhindar had slain in this keep of sorcery and death-and none had decomposed! The room also contained their clothing and weapons, and a horrid chemical odour.

  A new endeavour of that monster, Conan thought, but otherwise ignored the grim corpses. He seized on a sword, whished it through the air, tried another. First cutting off a goodly piece of thick drapery, he left the room by the corridor door. He grinned evilly at the single guard outside the Green Room. Mechanically, the soulless creature drew Ms sword, and again steel rang in the manse of Hisarr Zul. In less than a minute the guard bled from two wounds; the second wa
s fatal.

  'If all has gone well, your soul will soon be liberated to go – wherever the souls of the dead go,' Conan said, and he pressed the doubled scrap of velvet firmly over his mouth and nose. Then he kicked open the door to the Green Room.

  Hisarr Zul, having collapsed instantly into unconsciousness, had had no opportunity to get at his antidote. More than twice two minutes had passed since Conan had left him enveloped in the cloud of greenish-yellow death. The powder still dusted the wizard's face and robe, like golden pollen.

  He lay on his back, and though his eyes were closed for he'd been unconscious, he was dead.

  So much for a sorcerer's nasty tricks, the Cimmerian thought, and so much for world conquest. And what a hero I am; I have just laid to rest the demon-lich of the haunted gorge!

  An hour later, having used the sorcerer's own potent oil to burn his earth-stuffed skull to white ash, Conan left the keep of Hisarr Zul. He bore a huge pack, and two swords, and several daggers. Too, he wore an excellent cloak. In the pack was much valuable loot. And, wrapped many times in fine velvet, was a small and most valuable mirror under a thick glass dome.

  Conan had the Eye of Erlik, and the wherewithal to gain the attention of a ruler of men, and his soul. Behind him, flames danced higher in the manse of Hisarr Zul.