The Conan Chronology

by J. R. Karlsson

  The last length of Conan's blade rasped from its worn shagreen sheath.

  'No, Conan,' Sharak urged. 'Kill him, and you may never find her again.'

  'They would send another,' Conan said, but after a moment he tossed his sword on the table. 'Leave me before I change my mind,' he told the nomad, and, scooping up one of the wine pitchers, tilted back his head in an effort to drain it. The Hyrkanian eyed him doubtfully, then trotted from the tavern.

  XI

  Davinia stretched luxuriously as grey-haired Renda's fingers worked perfumed oils into the smooth muscles of her back. There was magic in the plump woman's hands, and the blonde woman needed it.

  The big barbarian had been more than she bargained for. And he had intimated that he would return. He had not named time but that he would return was certain. Her knowledge of men told her so. Though it was but a few turns of the glass since Conan had left her, a tingling frisson of anticipation rippled through her at the thought of long hours more in his massive arms. To which gods, she wondered, should she offer sacrifices to keep Mundara Khan from the city longer?

  A tap at the door of Davinia's tapestry-hung dressing chamber drew Renda's hands from her shoulders.

  With a petulant sigh, the sleek blonde waited impatiently until her tiring woman returned.

  'Mistress,' Renda said quietly, 'there is a man to see you.'

  Careless of her nakedness, Davinia sat up. 'The barbarian?' She confided everything in her tiring woman.

  Almost everything. Surely Conan would not dare enter through the gates and have himself announced, yet simply imagining the risk of it excited her more than she would have believed possible.

  'No, mistress. It is Jhandar, Great Lord of the Cult of Doom.'

  Davinia blinked in surprise. She was dimly aware of the existence of the cult, though she did not concern herself unduly with matters of religion. Why would a cult leader come to her? Perhaps he would be amusing.

  'A robe, Renda,' she commanded, rising.

  'Mistress, may I be so bold-'

  'You may not. A robe.'

  She held out her arms as Renda fastened about her a red silken garment. Opaque, she noted. Renda always had more thought for her public reputationand thus her safety-than did she.

  Davinia made a grand entrance into the chamber where Jhandar waited. Slaves drew open the tall, ornately carved doors for her to sweep through. As the doors were closed she posed, one foot behind the other, one knee slightly bent, shoulders back. The man half-reclined on a couch among the columns.

  For just an instant her pose lasted, then she continued her advance, seeming to ignore the man while in fact she studied him. He no longer reclined, but rather sat on the edge of the couch.

  'You are... different than I expected,' he said hoarsely.

  She permitted herself a brief smile, still not looking directly at him. Exactly the effect she had tried for.

  He was not an unhandsome man, this Jhandar, she thought. The shaven head, however, rather spoiled his looks. And those ears gave him an unpleasantly animalistic countenance.

  For the first time she faced him fully, lips carefully dampened with her tongue, eyes on his in an adoring caress. She wanted to giggle as she watched his breath quicken. Men were so easily manipulated.

  Except, perhaps, the barbarian. She hastily pushed aside the intruding thought, Carefully, she made sure of a breathy tone.

  'You wish to see me... Jhandar, is it not?'

  'Yes,' he said slowly. Visibly he caught hold of himself. His breath still came rapidly, but there was a degree of control in his eyes. A degree. 'Have you enjoyed the necklace, Davinia?'

  'Necklace?'

  'The ruby necklace. The one stolen from me only last night.'

  His voice was calm, so conversational that it took a moment for the meaning of his words to enter her.

  Shock raced through her. She wondered if her eyes were bulging. The necklace. How could she have been so stupid as not to make the connection the moment Jhandar was announced? It was that accursed barbarian. She seemed able to concentrate on little other than him.

  'I have no idea of what you speak,' she said, and was amazed at the steadiness of her voice. Inside she had turned to jelly.

  'I wonder what Mundara Khan will say when he knows you have a stolen necklace. Perhaps he will inquire, forcefully, into who gave such a thing to his mistress.'

  'I bought-' She bit her tongue. He had flustered her. It was not supposed to happen that way. It was she who disconcerted men.

  'I know that Emilio was your lover,' he said quietly. 'Has Conan taken his place there, too?'

  'What do you want?' she whispered. Desperately she wished for a miracle to save her, to take him away.

  'One piece of information,' he replied. 'Where may I find the barbarian called Conan?'

  'I don't know,' she lied automatically. The admission already made was one too many.

  'A pity.' He bit off the words, sending a shiver through her. 'A very great pity.'

  Davinia searched for a way to deflect him from his purpose. All that passed through her mind, echoing and re-echoing, was 'a very great pity.'

  'You may keep the necklace,' he said suddenly.

  She stared at him in surprise. He did not have complete control of himself still, she saw. He had continually to lick dry lips, and his eyes drank her in as a man in the desert drank water. 'Thank you. I-'

  'Wear it for me.'

  'Of course,' she said. There was still a chance.

  She left the room as regally as she had entered, but once outside, before the slaves had even closed the doors, she ran-despite the fact that to be languid at all times was one mark of a properly cared-for mistress.

  Renda, arranging the pillows on Davinia's bed, leaped, as her mistress dashed into the chamber.

  'Mistress, you startled me!'

  'Tell me what you know of this Jhandar,' Davinia panted, as she dropped to her knees and began rooting in her jewel chest. 'Quickly. Hurry!'

  'Little is known, mistress,' the plump tirewoman said hesitantly. 'The cult professes-'

  'Not that, Renda!' Tossing bits of jewellery left and right, she came up with the stolen necklace clutched in her fist. Despite herself, she breathed a sigh of relief. 'Mitra be thanked. Tell me what the servants and slaves know, what their masters will not know for half a year more. Tell me!'

  'Mistress, what has he....' She broke off at Davinia's glare. 'Jhandar is a powerful man in Turan, mistress. So it is whispered among the servants. And 'tis said he grows more powerful by the day. Some say the increase in the army was begun by him, by his telling certain men, who in turn convinced the king, that it should be so. Of course, it is well known that King Yildiz has long dreamed of empire. He would not have taken a great deal of telling.'

  'Still,' Davinia murmured, 'it is a display of power.' Mundara Khan had never swayed the king for all his blood connections to the throne. 'How does he accomplish it?'

  'All men have secrets, mistress. Jhandar makes it his business to learn their secrets. To keep their secrets, most men will agree to any suggestion Jhandar makes.' She paused. 'Many believe he is a sorcerer. And the cult does have immense wealth.'

  'How immense?'

  'It may rival that of King Yildiz.'

  A look of intense practicality firmed Davinia's face. This situation, which had seemed so frightening, might yet be turned to her advantage. 'Fetch me a cloak,' she commanded. 'Quickly.'

  When she returned to Jhandar, surprise was plain on his countenance. A cloak of the fine scarlet wool swathed her from her neck to the ground.

  'I do not understand,' he said, anger mounting in his voice. 'Where is the necklace?'

  'I wear it for you.' She opened the cloak, revealing the rubies caressing the upper slopes of her breasts.

  And save for the necklace, her sleek body was nude.

  Only for an instant she held the cloak so. Even as he gasped, she pulled it closed. But then, rising on her toes, she spun so
that her hips flashed whitely beneath flaring crimson. Around the room she danced, offering him brief tantalizing glimpses, but never so revealing as the first.

  She finished on her knees before him, the scarlet cloth lowered to bare pale shoulders and the rubies nestled in her sweat-slick cleavage. Masking her triumph with care, she met his gaze. His face was flushed with desire. And now for the extra stroke.

  'The man Conan,' she said, 'told me that he stays at the Blue Bull on the Street of the Lotus Dreamers, near the harbour.'

  For a moment he stared at her, uncomprehending; then he lurched to his feet. 'I have him,' he muttered excitedly. 'An the Hyrkanians are found ....' All expression fled from his face as he regarded her. 'Men have no use for lemans who lie,' he said.

  She replied with a smile. 'A mistress owes absolute truth and obedience to her master.' Or at least, she thought, a mistress should make him believe he had those things. 'But you are not my master. Yet.'

  'I will take you with me,' he said thickly, but she shook her head.

  'The guards would never let me go. There is an old gate at the rear of the palace, however, unused and unguarded. I will be there with my serving woman one turn of the glass past dark tonight.'

  'Tonight. I will have men there to meet you.' Abruptly he pulled her to her feet, kissing her brutally.

  But not so well as Conan, she thought as he left. It was a pity the barbarian was to die. She had no doubt that was what Jhandar intended. But Jhandar was a step into her future; Conan was of the past. As she did with all things past, she put him out of her mind as if he had never existed.

  XII

  The common room of the Blue Bull grew crowded as the appointed hour drew near, raucous with the laughter of doxies and drunken men. Conan neither laughed nor drank, but rather sat watching the door with his two friends.

  'When will the man come?' Sharak demanded of the air. 'Surely the hour has passed.'

  Neither Conan nor Akeba answered, keeping their eyes fastened to the doorway. The Cimmerian's hand on his sword hilt tightened moment by long moment till, startlingly, his knuckles cracked.

  The old astrologer flinched at the sound. 'What adventure is this, sitting and waiting for Mitra knows how long while-'

  'He is here,' Akeba said quietly, but Conan was already getting to his feet.

  The long-nosed Hyrkanian stood in the doorway beckoning to Conan, casting worried glances out into the night.

  'Good luck be with you, Cimmerian,' Akeba said quietly.

  'And with you,' Conan replied.

  As he strode across the common room, he could hear the astrologer's querulous voice. 'Why this talk of luck? They but wish to talk.'

  He did not listen for Akeba's answer, if answer there was. More than one man taken to a meeting in the night had never left it alive.

  'Lead on,' he told the Hyrkanian, and with one more suspicious look up and down the street the nomad did so.

  Twilight had gone, and full night was upon the city. A pale moon hung like a silver coin placed low above the horizon. Music and laughter drifted from a score of taverns as they passed through yellow pools of light spilling from their doors, and occasionally they heard shouts of a fight over women or dice.

  'Where are you taking me?' Conan asked.

  The Hyrkanian did not answer. He chose turnings seemingly at random, and always he cast a wary eye behind.

  'My friends will not follow,' Conan told him. 'I agreed to come alone.'

  'It is not your friends I fear,' the Hyrkanian muttered, then tightened his jaws and looked sharply at the muscular youth. Thereafter he would not speak again.

  Conan wondered briefly who or what it was the man did fear, but his own attention was split between watching for the ambush he might be entering and unraveling the twists and turns through which he was taken. When the fur-capped man motioned him through a darkened doorway and up a flight of wooden stairs, he was confident-and surprised-that for all the roundabout way they had gone the Blue Bull was almost due north, no more than two streets away. It was well to be orientated in case the meeting came to a fight after all.

  'You go first,' Conan said. Expressionless, the nomad complied. Loose steps creaked alarmingly beneath his tread. Conan eased his sword in its scabbard, and mounted after him.

  At the top of the stairs a door let into a room lit by two guttering tallow lamps set on a rickety table. The rancid smell of grease filled the room. Including his guide, half a score sheepskin-coated Hyrkanians watched him warily, though none put hand to weapon. One Conan recognised, the man with the scar across his cheek, he over whose head Emilio had broken the wine jar.

  'I am called Tamur,' Scarface said. 'You are Conan?' With his guttural accent he mangled the name badly.

  'I am Conan,' the young Cimmerian agreed shortly. 'Where is the woman?'

  Tamur gestured, and two of the others opened a large chest sitting against a wall. They lifted out Yasbet, bound in a neat package and gagged with a twisted rag. Her saffron robes were mud-stained and torn, and dried tracks of tears traced through the dust on her cheeks.

  'I warned this one,' Conan grated. 'If she is hurt, I'll-'

  'No, no,' Tamur cut in. 'Her garments were so when we took her, behind the inn where you sleep. Had we ravaged your woman, would we show her to you so and yet expect you to talk with us?'

  It was possible. Conan remembered the narrowness of the window through which she had had to wriggle. 'Loose her feet.'

  Producing a short, curved dagger, one of the nomads cut the ropes at Yasbet's ankles. She tried to stand and, with a gag-mufed moan, sat on the lid of the chest in which she had been confined. The Hyrkanian looked questioningly at Conan, and motioned with the knife to her still-bound wrists, and her gag, but the muscular youth shook his head. Based on past experience he would not risk what she might say or do if freed. She gave him an odd look, but, surprisingly, remained still.

  'You were recognised in the enclosure of Baalsham,' Tamur said.

  'Baalsham?' Conan said. 'Who is Baalsham?'

  'You know him as Jhandar. What his true name is, who can say?' Tamur sighed. 'It will be easier if I begin at the beginning.'

  He gave quick orders, and a flagon of cheap wine and two rough clay mugs were produced. Tamur sat on one side of the table, Conan on the other. The Cimmerian noted that the other nomads were careful not to move behind him and ostentatiously kept their hands far from swords. It was a puzzlement.

  Hyrkanians were an arrogant and touchy people, by all accounts little given to avoiding trouble in the best of circumstances.

  He accepted a mug of wine from Tamur, then forgot to drink as he listened.

  'Five years gone,' the scar-faced nomad began, 'the man we call Baalsham appeared among us, he and the two strange men with yellow skins. He performed some small magicks, enough to be accepted among the tribal shamans, and began to preach much as he does here, of chaos and inevitable doom.

  Among the young men his teachings caught hold, for he called the western nations evil and said it was the destiny of the Hyrkanian people once more to ride west of the Vilayet Sea. And this time we were to sweep the land clean.'

  'A man of ambitions,' Conan muttered. 'But failed ambitions, it seems.'

  'By the thickness of a fingernail. Not only did Baalsham gather about him young warriors numbering in the thousands, but he began to have strange influence in the Councils of the Elders. Then creatures were seen in the night like demons, or the twisted forms of men-and we learned from them that they were spirits of murdered men, men of our blood and friendship, conjured by Baalsham and bound to obey him.

  Their spying was the source of his powers in the Councils.'

  Yasbet made a loud sound of denial through her gag, and shook her head violently, but the men ignored her.

  'I've seen his sorcery' Conan said, 'black and foul. How was he driven out? I assume he did not leave of his own accord.'

  'In a single night,' Tamur replied, 'ten tribes rose against him. Th
e very spirits that had warned us, shackled by his will, fought us, as did the young warriors who followed him.' He touched the scar on his cheek 'This I had from my own brother. The young warriors-our brothers, our sons, our cousins-died to the last man, and even the maidens fought to the death. In the end our greater numbers carried the victory. Baalsham fled, and with his fleeing the spirits disappeared before our eyes. To avoid bloodshed among the tribes, the Councils decreed that no man could claim blood right for the death of one who had followed Baalsham. Their names were not to be spoken. They had never existed. But some of us could not forget that we had been forced to spill the same blood that flows in our own veins. When traders brought rumours of the man called Jhandar and the Cult of Doom, we knew him for Baalsham. Two score and ten crossed the sea to seek our forbidden vengeance. Last night we failed, and now we number but nineteen.' He fell silent.

  Conan frowned. 'An interesting tale, but why have you told it to me?'

  The nomad's face twisted with reluctance. 'Because we need your help,' he said slowly.

  'My help?' Conan exclaimed.

  Tamar hurried on. 'When the palace Baalsham was building was overrun, powers beyond the mind were loosed. The very ground melted and flowed like water. That place is now called the Blasted Lands. For three days and three nights the shamans laboured to contain that evil. When they had constructed barriers of magic, the boundaries of the Blasted Lands were marked, and a taboo laid. No one of the blood may pass those markers and live. There must be devices of sorcery within, devices that could be turned against Baalsham. He could not have taken all when he fled. But no Hyrkanian may go to bring them out.

  No Hyrkanian.' He looked at the big Cimmerian with intensity.

  'I am done with Jhandar,' Conan said.

  'But is he done with you, Conan? Baalsham's enmity does not wither with time.'

  Conan snorted. 'What care I for his enmity? He does not know who I am or where I am to be found.