'The mage told us they were near almost an hour before Osman called to us from without...' 'Osman?' Conan said. 'He came there?' 'Aye, and he led them!' Ubo said. 'He called from outside the door and we would have killed him then, but the wizard needed more time to complete his spells, so we spoke with him a while. Then he cast a dagger at Chamik and the fun began!'
'I wish we could have seen more of what happened outside,' Mamos said, 'but arrows came in through the windows and it was unsafe to look out. It sounded as if they were being fed into a grinding mill!' At this, the others burst into renewed laughter. Even Auda managed a weak chuckle. 'We will have to stop soon to see to Auda's leg,' Layla said.
'A man of my tribe can ride day and night hurt worse than this,' the desert man protested.
'As soon as it is light enough, we will pause,' Conan told them. 'Their horses were driven off, so it will be a long time before they can mount a serious pursuit. By that time, we shall be past their finding.'
'Where to now, Chief?' Ubo asked.
'Into the trackless waste,' Conan said. 'We will keep to the stony places so as to leave little trace behind us. We will
camp at the smallest water holes and avoid inhabited places. This way, we will make our way back to our old hideout.'
'Is it time now to divide the loot, Chief?' asked Mamos, his evil face lighting up like a happy child's.
'Aye. And we must protect it as well, for the secret of its location is no longer safe. Osman has turned traitor and who knows what the rogue may be up to?' They rode on into the night.
XIII
Just before midday, Conan called a halt. They were far into the trackless country and had seen no sign of the passage of men for many hours. They dismounted and stretched the soreness from their muscles. Layla examined the bandage she had placed on Auda's leg that morning. The country was brushy semi-desert. They saw no sheep or other domestic animals, only the occasional desert gazelle, or the stately oryx—wary beasts who studied these strange, intruding creatures alertly, ready to spring away at first sign of danger.
'The wound could be worse,' Layla said, 'but it will not heal well while he has to ride. There are some herbs I know of that will help, if they grow around here. Have I time to go look for them?'
'Aye,' said Conan. 'We can wait out the heat of the day here and press on this evening. Just now, we are short of rations. If I had a bow, I would go out and bring us back a gazelle.'
'That sounds a good idea,' said Ubo, rubbing his sore backside. 'All this fighting and fleeing gives a man an appetite. I don't suppose the wizard could magic you up a bow and some arrows?'
Volvolicus sighed. 'No, but now that we are still for a few hours, I will study my books. When we go on, I think I can produce a few small whirlwinds to erase any signs of our passage.'
'That will be time well spent,' Conan approved. He bent and picked up a few fist-sized stones, placing them in the pouch at his belt. 'I will go with Layla as she hunts herbs. Perhaps I can knock over a few hares with stones. In Cimmeria, a ten-year-old boy is accounted a poor prospect if he cannot fetch his own dinner with a rock or two.'
'That is better than nothing, I suppose,' Chamik said as he spread his blanket and took his ease upon the ground. 'Woman, while you look for healing herbs, see if you can find some savoury ones to season our dinner with.'
'It is well that you are so good at stealing,' Layla observed, 'for the lot of you are too lazy to live otherwise. I should not be surprised upon our return to find you all dead, having forgotten to breathe.'
'A sharp-tongued woman is an abomination before the gods,' said Mamos as he rigged a cloth shelter to shade his head. 'But I will forgive you this time.'
'Auda,' said Conan, 'lend me your lance. If I come upon a larger beast unawares, I'll hazard a cast.'
'Take it,' said the desert man. 'I'll not be using it for a while.'
Conan and Layla left the camp. They walked for half a mile, the woman stopping from time to time to examine some plant. Each time she rejected it as the wrong variety or else at the wrong stage of its growth. Conan hurled a rock at a hare, but he missed by inches and struck a larger stone. With a loud crack, rock chips went humming through the air and the swift animal sped away unharmed.
'There must be some hungry boys in Cimmeria,' Layla
observed, 'if you are any example. You have alerted that hare's relatives for miles around.'
'I am out of practice,' Conan said, nettled. 'I... Crom! What is that?' He pointed toward the north-west. From that direction, a lone, tiny figure was striding straight toward them.
'At a guess,' Layla said, 'I would say it is a man.'
'Aye, but... but what is a lone man doing out here? He is walking straight toward us, as if he knew we were here.'
'Why not? We know he is here. It may be a hermit, or a wandering holy man. Such are not uncommon in the wastelands. They seek the vast solitudes in order to meditate far from the distractions of their fellow men.'
'I do not know,' Conan said, scratching at his bristly chin. 'There is something about him that I find disturbing.'
'We shall know soon enough,' she said. 'He will be here in a short while.'
They watched as the man drew closer. Something about the way he moved seemed wrong to the Cimmerian. He walked exactly as if there were perfectly level pavement beneath his feet, making no allowance for the unevenness of the ground, with its dips, mounds and shifting rocks. He wore robes Conan recognized as Khitain, and despite the fierce sun overhead, he wore no head covering other than his long, snow-white hair.
As the figure drew nearer, Conan realized with a start that the man walked with his eyes shut. Surely, he thought, a blind man could not walk with such assurance, without even a staff to feel ahead of himself. His wonderment turned to horror when he saw that the man's eyelids were sewn together with tiny stitches. The same silken thread stitched his lips tightly shut.
'Crom and Llyr!' Conan aid, raising the lance for a cast. The man gestured with his fingers, and a jolt of some powerful, nameless force shot from the steel lance through Conan's hand and arm, inducing a pain that was not like fire, but that sent his muscles into instant convulsion. With an involuntary cry, he dropped the spear to the ground.
'My apologies,' said the man, 'but you were about to make a serious error.' His face was utterly immobile, but his words were perfectly audible and sounded like a natural voice. 'My name is Feng-Yoon. I am a magician of Khitai, a senior master of the First Rank and Jade Personage of the Order of the White Phoenix. I come to confer with the Turanian wizard Volvolicus.'
'I am the daughter of Volvolicus,' Layla said, as if this sort of thing happened often to her. 'I will take you to see him, but I seek some well-dried Moon of Ashtaroth. We have a wounded man in our camp and I must dress his injury.'
'Ah, you need what we call Flower of the Red Sunrise. I passed some but a little way back. I will take you to it.'
'That would be a great kindness, venerable sir.'
Conan massaged the cramps from his tight arm, then picked up the lance and followed the two. 'What business have you with Volvolicus?' he asked. 'How did you find us?'
'It is nothing with which you need concern yourself,' the Khitain told him. 'You are the barbarian from the north, are you not?'
'I am the only such for some distance around,' Conan acknowledged.
'You are a man of destiny. If I had the leisure, I should like to speak with you at some length concerning matters of historical import. But time presses and I must confer with my colleague, the esteemed Volvolicus, instead.'
'What is so urgent?' Conan asked, thoroughly mystified.
'Matters of such weight that should we not be successful in our endeavours, there may be no further history, and therefore no reason for me to speak with you.'
To the Cimmerian, this made no sense at all. 'All I wanted to do was to commit a great robbery and get my revenge,' he said. 'How did matters get so complicated?'
'Estimable goal
s,' Feng-Yoon said approvingly. 'I myself have accomplished some splendid robberies in my career, although I suspect that the things I stole would not strike you as valuable, and I have been known to take such vengeance as has excited broad admiration even in Khitai, where vengeance is esteemed as an art form. Ah, here we are.'
With a long, pointed and jewelled fingernail, the wizard pointed at the ground, not inclining his head as if he were looking with his eyes. Layla stooped and began to pull up the herb he indicated, carefully, so as to keep the roots intact.
'This is perfect!' she said. 'It died and began to dry just after the last full moon, at the height of its potency. I might not have found such a specimen by searching all day. I thank you, Master Feng-Yoon.'
'After three or four centuries, my child,' he said, 'one acquires a knack for these things. And now, must go and speak with your honoured parent.'
'I will accompany you,' she said.
'I'll keep hunting,' said Conan. He had been hoping for a bit of dalliance with the woman while they were away from the others, but the advent of this bizarre foreigner drove all lustful thoughts from his mind.
The two walked back toward the camp and Conan resumed his hunt. His senses stayed attuned to his surroundings, but his mind roamed elsewhere. Things had taken a supernatural turn he did not like. He was half-minded to keep on roaming and not return to the camp at all. It was not as if he needed the others. With his sword, he could make his way anywhere in the world. He could live off the land and wander aimlessly until he came to a place far away from these repellent doings.
But he knew that he would carry the venture through. It was not as if he needed the treasure. In truth, it meant little to him. And his vengeance was as good as accomplished, for the king of Turan would soon punish Torgut Khan and Sagobal for failing him. The wizard he had only needed to move the treasure, and the woman... well, the world was full of women.
No, he thought, he would see it to the finish, foolish though the undertaking might be, because it was not his nature to desert comrades and leave a job half done. True, the bandits were as worthless a lot as he had ever thrown in with, but when Conan of Cimmeria sided with a man, he remained true... unless he was betrayed.
Thinking of betrayal caused him to think of Osman. What was the vicious little thief up to now? Since he first spoke to Conan through the wall between their cells, he had performed nothing but treacheries so complex that the Cimmerian grew dizzy in their contemplation. What would he try next? He could have ridden straight for the treasure, but if so, he could hope to carry away only a tiny portion of the hoard before he was caught. Even if he believed that the outlaws were all slain in the house of Volvolicus, he knew that Conan was still at large and would soon return to the painted cave.
Would he seek to enlist the aid of others? He would need a sizeable caravan to bear it all off, and that would mean a sharing-out. He would get no more than his rightful share had he remained faithful to his companions, assuming that his new confederates did not cut his throat and keep it all for themselves. As Conan knew to his sore cost, few men can be trusted around great wealth.
He was jarred from his musings when he came upon a lone gazelle. At his approach, the creature started from behind a bush and ran away in swift bounds. Conan was even quicker. His right arm, balancing the slim spear, shot back behind his shoulder and came forward in the same motion. The gleaming spear flew out in a graceful arc, aimed at a spot far in front of the leaping gazelle. The animal took one more bound. In mid-flight, the paths of gazelle and spear intersected. The spear caught the animal behind the shoulder and the beast went over on its side, kicking spasmodically for a few moments. Then it was still.
The Cimmerian smiled. At least a few things were still simple and satisfying.
He carried the small carcass back to the camp, where he found Volvolicus and the Khitain in deep conversation, employing a language he had never heard. Layla tended a small fire, and the rest were asleep. He walked over to Ubo and nudged him with a toe. The one-eyed Turanian rolled over and looked up at him, blinking blearily.
'Ah! Dinner!' Ubo said.
Conan dropped the carcass upon Ubo's capacious belly. 'You can clean it.'
Ubo sat up, grumbling. 'The things a man has to do to keep his chieftain happy.' He got up and began to draw his knife.
'Take it away from the camp to do that,' Layla said. 'The offal will have every fly in the district plaguing us.'
'As you command, my mistress,' Ubo muttered. With the gazelle over his shoulder, he trudged off into the desert.
Conan found a spot that seemed no stonier than any place else nearby and lay down, covering himself from the sun with his burnous. Within minutes, he was asleep.
With no flicker of emotion showing in his snakelike eyes, Tragthan heard the report rendered by Shosq. Together with Nikas, they stood in the crypt beneath the temple. From the walls around them came groaning sounds, and the uncanny, unstable walls themselves seemed to move, rippling and contracting like the inside of a huge stomach. The sight, coupled with the unnatural geometry of the place, would have driven an ordinary mortal insane. But the priests of Ahriman took no notice, except to register any truly perceptible changes.
'This is disturbing,' Tragthan said at last. 'But are you certain that you read the hieroglyphs aright?'
'There can be no doubt of it,' Shosq reiterated. 'The wizard called Volvolicus is a master of the Stygian art of Khelkhet-Pteth. It is the most ancient and the most powerful of all the Stygian arts, even though the Stygians of this age have forgotten the fact. For many centuries it has been employed mainly to move great stones in their endless, vain building projects. They think of it as little more than a magical refinement of the stonemason's craft!'
'The fools!' Nikas said. 'Do they not understand that this most ancient of magical arts involves the manipulation of crystal, the very substance of which most of the solid matter of this plane is formed?'
'No, and fortunate for us they do not,' said Tragthan. 'A master of Khelkhet-Pteth, were he powerful enough and had the inclination, could rend this world asunder by disrupting its crystalline structure. I suspect the ancient Stygians never understood this. Instead, they chased after the disciplines of bending demons to their will and seeking the favour of the lesser gods.'
'Does this mean a change in our plans?' Shosq asked. 'Nay, it does not,' Tragthan said. 'In the first place, things have moved beyond our powers to halt them.' He gestured with a spidery hand, indicating the repulsive crypt in which they conferred. The groaning coming from the walls sounded like a gigantic monster feeling the pangs of hunger. The three winced, even their immobile faces registering alarm. 'You see? You hear? We cannot stop it from happening. But I think we have little to fear from this Volvolicus. Surely he understands no more of his art than do the Stygians, for they trained him, and he has been content to dwell in obscurity in this remote corner of the degenerate nation of Turan. Surely, if he understood the power that is his to command, he could reign as do the priest-kings of Stygia.'
'Let us hope you are right,' Nikas affirmed. 'In the meantime, what is to be our course?'
'We must aid our dread lord in his rebirth into this world in the best way we can. It cannot be the perfect advent we had anticipated for so long, but I think now, with the heroic spell-making we have performed in recent days, despite the thinning of our numbers, that it need not be as catastrophic as we had feared.'
'How do you mean?' Shosq asked. 'This undue hastening of his return almost assures that not only will our lord be unwantedly weak, but he will be almost mindless, not even knowing himself.'
'Aye, but not for long,' Tragthan assured them. 'With our labours on his behalf, and with the aid of the powers we shall invoke, he will quickly assume his full capabilities. The destruction will be terrible, of. course, but that is ever the way of Lord Ahriman. What matters the annihilation of millions of mortals, the rearranging of terrain and atmosphere? What counts is that we, his loyal slaves
, shall live to serve him in his new reign, and he will make us lords over his new creation.'
'Praise the dread Lord Ahriman,' the other two intoned.
'Excellent,' Chamik pronounced, tearing strips of broiled gazelle from the bone with his gapped teeth. 'Our chief is a mighty hunter, and the Lady Layla is a splendid cook.'
'Spare me your praise,' Layla said. 'Auda, can you eat?'
'A little,' he said. The desert man was feverish, his thigh swollen to almost double its normal girth. Layla had pronounced these things normal and warranted that the wound would heal well now that it was poulticed with her herbs. She sliced some thin strips of meat from a joint and took them to Auda.
Conan brooded as he ate. The bandits, even Auda, ate as if they had not a care. They took the steaming joints in their teeth and slashed off oversized mouthfuls with their daggers, nearly slicing their noses away in the process. They chewed with abandon, smacking their lips mightily, grease and blood running over their chins and onto their tunics and vests.
At another time, the barbarian could as easily have lost himself in the moment, with no thought for the future. But now he had to think for all of them. As he ripped at the tough but savoury meat with strong white teeth, he watched the two wizards. They had not paused in their conversation and neither of them showed the slightest interest in the meal.
Ubo tossed a stripped bone into the brush and a moment later, a lurking jackal ran away with it clutched tightly in its jaws. Three of its fellows raced along after it, trying to seize
the prize for themselves. Ubo laughed. 'These are creatures after my own heart! Have at it, brothers!'
'I noticed the resemblance,' Layla said.
'Chief,' Mamos said, taking his attention from his food for a moment, 'this seems to me a good place. It is far from Sagobal and the man-hunters. There is no one to observe us. If we can find water nearby, why not abide here a while and give the king a few more days to flay and burn Torgut Khan and his dog?'
Conan and the Manhunters Page 21
