Before he reached the first turning, a shout rose behind him. 'There he goes!'
A glance over his shoulder confirmed that the Guardsmen were pouring into the alley. The gods must have tainted his luck, he thought, to send him the only Guardsmen in Belverus with a mind for duty.
Perhaps they did not like women. Shouting and slipping in the filth, the black-cloaked squad rushed after him.
Conan set out at a run, keeping his balance as best he could, half falling against the walls at every twisting of the alley, his massive shoulders knocking more stucco from the flaking, mildewed buildings. Another alley serpentined across the one he followed; he dodged down it. Still another passage appeared, winding cramped between dark walls, and he turned into that. Behind the curses of his pursuit followed.
As he ran he realised that he was in a warren, a maze of ancient passages in an area surrounded by more normal roadways. The buildings seemed ready to topple and fill those passages with rubble, for though they had begun long years past with but single stories, as years and needs demanded more room that could not be got by building outward, extra rooms had been constructed atop the roofs, and more atop those, till they resembled nothing; so much as haphazard stacks of stuccoed and grey-tiled boxes.
In such a region, running like a fox before hounds, it would be a matter of luck if he found his way to the outside before his pursuers seized him. And it seemed his luck was sour that day. But there was another option, for one who had been among the icy crags and cliffs of Cimmeria.
With a mighty leap he caught the edge of a roof, and swung himself up to lie flat on the slate tiles. The curses and shouts of the Guardsmen came closer, were below him, were moving off.
'He's up there!' a man shouted below. 'I see his foot!'
'Erlik's Bowels and Bladder!' Conan muttered. His luck was not sour. Verily it had rotted.
As the Guardsmen struggled to climb, the Cimmerian darted across the slates, hoisted himself onto a higher level, scrambled over it and leaped to a lower roof. With a great crack the tiles gave way beneath his feet, and he plummeted into the room below.
Dazed, Conan struggled to his feet in a welter of broken slate. He was not alone, he realised. In the shadows against the far wall, face obscured, a large man in an expensive cloak of plain blue uttered a startled oath in the accents of the gutter. Another man, short beard circling a face pocked with the marks of some disease, stared in disbelief at Conan.
It was the third man, though, a grey cloak pulled over his scarlet tunic, who drew the eye. Hawk-faced and obsidian-eyed, his dark hair slashed at the temples with white, he looked born to command. And now he issued one. 'Kill him,' he said.
Crom, Conan thought, reaching for his sword. Did everyone in Belverus want him dead? The pock-faced man put hand to sword hilt.
'Down there!' came a shout from above. No muscle moved in the room save a twitching of the pock-faced man's cheek. 'That hole in the roof! A silver piece to the man who first draws blood!'
Visage dark as death, the hawk-faced man raised a clawed hand, as if he could strike Conan across the breadth of the room. There were thuds above as men dropped to the roof. 'No time,' the hawk-faced one snarled.
Turning, he stalked from the room. The other two vanished behind him.
Conan had no mind either to greet the Guardsmen or to follow on the heels of those three. His eye lit on a tattered cloth, hung against the wall like a tapestry. As if it hid something. He jerked it aside to reveal a door. That let onto another room, full of dust and empty of else, but from there another door opened into a hall. As Conan closed that one softly behind him, he heard the thumps of men dropping through the hole in the roof.
For a wonder, after the maze of the alleys, the corridor ran straight to a street, and for its length the Cimmerian saw no one save one ageing blowze who cracked a door and gave him a gap-toothed smile of invitation. Shuddering at the thought, he hurried on.
When he got back to the Thestis, the first person he saw was Hordo, scowling into a mug of wine. He dropped onto a stool across from him.
'Hordo, did you send a message telling me to meet you at the Sign of the Full Moon?'
'What? No.' Hordo shook his head, without looking up from his mug. 'Answer me this, Cimmerian. Do you understand any part of women? I walked in, told Kerin she had the prettiest eyes in Belverus, and she slapped my face and said she supposed I thought her breasts weren't big enough.' He sighed mournfully. 'And she won't say another word to me.'
'Mayhap I can illumine your problem,' Conan said, and in a low voice he told of the message purporting to come from the one-eyed man, and what had occurred at the Full Moon.
Hordo caught the import at once. 'Then 'tis you they're after. Whoever 'they' are. Did the knifemen not take you, the Guardsmen were meant to.'
'Aye,' Conan said. 'When the Guardsmen followed so doggedly, I knew their palms had been crossed with gold. But I still know not who did the crossing.'
Hordo drew a line through a puddle of spilled wine with a spatulate finger. 'Have you thought of leaving Belverus, Conan? We could ride south. Trouble brews in Ophir, too, and there's no dearth of hiring for Free-Companies. I tell you, this business of someone you know not seeking your death sits ill with me. I knew you should have heeded that blind soothsayer.'
'You knew....' Conan shook his head. 'An I ride south, Hordo, I lose the company. Some would not leave the gold to be had here, and I have not the gold to pay the rest until we find service in Ophir.
Besides, there are things I must attend to here first.'
'Things? Conan, tell me you're not involving us in this... this hopeless children's revolt.'
'Not exactly.'
'Not exactly,' Hordo said hollowly. 'Tell me what it is you are doing. Exactly'
'Earn a little gold,' Conan replied. 'Discover who means to have me dead, and deal with them. Oh, and save Ariane from the headman's axe. You don't want Kerin's pretty head to fall, do you?'
'Perhaps not,' the one-eyed man said grudgingly.
Looking around the room until he spotted Kerin, Conan waved for her to come to the table. She hesitated, then came over stiffly.
'Is Ariane here?' he asked her. The first part of saving her head was to let her know about Leucas, so she could stop him.
'She went out,' Kerin said. She looked straight at the big Cimmerian as if Hordo did not exist. 'She said she had to arrange a meeting for you.'
'About that message this forenoon,' Hordo said suddenly.
Casually Kerin leaned over and tipped his winemug into his lap. He leaped to his feet, cursing, as she left.
'Beheading's too good for her,' he growled. 'Since we've both been abandoned, as it seems, let us go to the Street of Regrets. I know a den of vice so iniquitous that whores blush to hear it mentioned.'
'Not the Sign of the Full Moon, I trust,' Conan laughed.
'Never a bit, Cimmerian.' Hordo broke into song in a voice like a jackass in pain. 'Oh, I knew a wench from Alcibies, her nipples were like rubies. Her hair was gold, but her rump was cold, and her....' A sudden, shocked silence had descended on the common room. 'You're not singing, Conan.'
Laughing, Conan got to his feet, and roaring the truly obscene second verse they marched out to horrified gasps.
X
'Are you certain?' Albanus demanded. Golden lamps suspended on chains from the arched ceiling of the marble-columned hall cast shadows on the planes of his face, making him look the wolf he was fiercer cousin to.
Demetrio bristled sulkily, half at the doubting tone and half for having been made to wait on Albanus in the entry hall. 'You wanted Sephana watched,' he muttered. 'I had her watched. And I'm certain. Would I have come in the night were I not?'
'Follow me,' Albanus commanded, speaking as to a servant.
And he no more noticed the young catamite's pale lips and clenched fists than he would have those of a servant. Demetrio followed as commanded; that was all that was important. Albanus had slipped already int
o his persona of king. After all, it was now but a matter of days. His last essential acquisition had been made that very day.
The dark-eyed lord went directly to the chamber where he so often sported himself with Sularia, but the woman was not there now. He tugged the brocaded bell-pull on the wall in a particular fashion, then went straight to his writing desk.
'When?' he demanded, uncapping the silver inkpot. Taking quill and parchment before him, he scribbled furiously. 'How long have I before she acts?'
'I was not privy to her planning,' Demetrio answered with asperity. 'Is it not enough that she gathers her myrmidons about her this night?'
'Fool!' Albanus grated.
With quick movements the hawk-faced lord sprinkled sand across the wet-inked parchment from a silver cellar, then lit the flames beneath a small bronze wax-pot. A slave entered, his short white tunic embroidered at the hem with Albanus' house-mark. Albanus ignored him, pouring off the sand and folding the parchment, sealing it with a drop of wax and his signet.
'Had all Sephana's conspirators come, Demetrios, when your watcher brought word to you?'
'When the third arrived, he came to me immediately. She would not have three of them together if she did not mean to strike tonight.'
Cursing, Albanus handed the parchment to the slave. 'Put this in the hands of Commander Vegentius within a quarter of a glass. On pain of your life. Go.'
The slave bowed and all but ran from the room.
'If all have not yet come,' Albanus said as soon as the slave had gone, 'there may yet be time to stop her before she reaches the Palace.' He hurried to the lacquered chest, unlocking it with the key that hung about his neck. 'And stop her I will.'
Demetrio eyed the chest and its contents uneasily. 'How? Kill her?'
'You have not the stuff of kings in you,' Albanus laughed. 'There is a subtle art in shaping punishment to fit the crime and the criminal. Now stand aside and be silent.'
The slender young noble needed no second warning. He buried his nose in his pomander-was it not said that all sorceries had great stenches associated with them?-and wished most fervently that he were elsewhere at that moment.
Carelessly sweeping a priceless bowl of Ghirgiz crystal from a table to shatter on the floor, Albanus laid in its place a round silver tray graven with an intricate pattern that pained the eye which tried to follow it.
With hurried movements he pushed back the flowing sleeves of his deep blue tunic, opened a vial and traced a portion of that pattern in scarlet liquid, muttering incantations beneath his breath as he did. The liquid followed the precise lines worked in the silver, a closed rubiate intricacy that did not spread or alter.
A packet containing powdered hair from Sephana's head-her serving maids had been easily bribed to provide the gleanings of her brush-was emptied into a mortar wrought from the skull of a virgin. Certain other ingredients were minutely measured on burnished golden scales and added to the skull, the mixture then ground by a pestle made of an infant's thigh bone.
With this concoction he traced other lines of that scribing on the tray. Powder and liquid each formed a closed figure, yet though no part of one touched the other, some portions of each shape seemed to be within the other. But those portions were not always the same, and the eye that looked on them too long spun with nausea and dizziness.
For a bare moment Albanus paused, anticipating, savoring. There had been the matter of the droughts, but this was the first time that he had struck so at a human being. The power of it seemed to course through his veins, building like the pleasure of taking a woman. Every instant of prolonging made the pleasure greater. But he knew there was no time.
Spreading his arms he began to chant in a long-dead tongue, his voice invoking, commanding. Powder and liquid began to glow, and his words became more insistent.
Demetrio moved back as the arcane syllables pierced his brain, not stopping until he stood against the wall. He understood no single one of them, yet all had meaning in the depths of his soul, and the evil that he cherished there knew itself for a lighted spill beside a dark burning mountain. He would have screamed, but terror had him by the throat; his screams echoed in the sunless caverns of his mind.
Albanus' voice grew no louder, yet his words seemed to shake the walls. Tapestries stirred as if at an unseen, unfelt wind. The glow from the silver tray grew, brighter, ever brighter, till it sliced through closed eyelids like razors of fire. Then powder and liquid alike were no more, replaced by burning mist that still held the shape of that pattern and seemed more solid that those first substances had been.
A clap sounded in the room, as thunder, and the mist was gone, the graven silver surface clear. The glow lingered a moment longer, behind the eyes, then it, too, faded.
Albanus sighed heavily, and lowered his arms. 'Done,' he muttered. ''Tis done.' His gaze rose to meet that of Demetrio; the slender young man shivered.
'My Lord Albanus,' Demetrio said, long unattempted humility cloying in his throat, yet driven by his fear,
'I would say again that I serve you to the best of my abilities, and that I wish no more than to see you take your rightful place on the Dragon Throne.'
'You are a good servant?' Albanus said, his mouth curling with cruel amusement.
The young noble's face flushed with anger, but he stammered, 'I am.'
Albanus' voice was as smooth and as cutting as the surgeon's knife. 'Then be silent until I have need for you to serve me again.'
Demetrio's face went pale; Albanus noted it, but said nothing. The youth was beginning to learn his proper place in the scheme of things. He had his uses in gathering information. Perhaps, an he learned his place well enough, he could be allowed to live.
Carefully the cruel-eyed lord relocked the lacquered chest. 'Come,' he said, turning from the chest. 'We have little time to meet the others.'
He saw the question-what others?-trembling on Demetrio's lips. When it did not come, he allowed himself a smile. Such was the proper attitude toward a king, to accept what was given. How sweet it would be to have all of Nemedia so. And perhaps beyond Nemedia. Why should borders decided by others deter him?
In short order they had donned heavy cloaks against the night and left the palace. Four slaves carried torches, two before and two behind. Ten armed and armoured guards, mail and leather creaking, surrounded Albanus as he made his way through the dark streets. That they surrounded Demetrio as well was incidental.
They saw no one, although scurrying feet could often be heard as footpads and others who lurked in the night hurried to be out of the way, and from time to time some glimmer of sound from the Street of Regrets came to them as the wind shifted. Elsewhere, those who could not afford to hire bodyguards slept ill at ease, praying that theirs would not be among the houses ravaged that night.
Then, as they approached Sephana's palace, where fluted marble columns rose behind the alabaster wall enclosing her garden, a procession of torches appeared down the street. Albanus stopped some distance from the palace gate, waiting in silence for a proper greeting.
'Is that you, Albanus?' came Vegentius' growl. 'A foul night, and a foul thing to have to slit the throat of one of my own captains.'
Albanus' mouth twisted. This one would not live, not an he were a hundred times as useful. He waited to speak until Vegentius and his followers, a score of Golden Leopards, their cloaks thrown back to give sword arms free play, half bearing torches, were close enough to be seen clearly.
'At least you managed to dispose of Baetis. Have you yet found the barbarian?'
'Taras has sent no word,' the big soldier said. ''Tis likely, pursued as he was, that he's no more than a common thief or murderer. Naught to concern us.'
Albanus favoured him with a scornful glance. 'Whatever disrupts a meeting like that concerns me. Why did the Guard pursue him so? Long time has passed ere they were known for such enthusiasm.'
'This matter differs from that of Melius. I have no pretext to ask questions of the Guard.
'
'Make one,' Albanus commanded. 'And now force me this gate.'
Vegentius spoke quietly to his men. Six of them moved quickly to the wall, dividing into two groups. In each trio two men linked hands to lift the third, who laid his cloak across the jagged shards of pottery set in the top of the wall and scrambled over to drop on the far side. From thence a startled cry was heard, then cut significantly short. With a rattle of stout bars being lifted, the gates swung open.
Albanus marched in, sparing not a glance for the guard who lay in the light spilling from the small gatehouse, surrounded by a spreading pool of blood.
Vegentius told off two more men to remain at the gate. The rest followed the hawk-faced lord through the landscape gardens to the palace itself, with its pale columns and intricately worked cornices, and up broad marble stairs to a spacious portico. Some ran to throw back the tall bronze-hung doors with a crash.
In the columned entry hall, half a dozen men started, and stared as soldiers rushed in to surround them with bared blades.
'Dispose of them,' Albanus ordered without slowing. He went straight to the alabaster stairs, Demetrio trailing after.
Behind him men began shouting for mercy as they were herded away.
'No!' a skinny, big-nosed man screamed. 'I would not have done it. I-' Vegentius' boot propelled him beyond hearing.
Albanus made his way to Sephana's bedchamber along halls he once had traversed for more carnal purposes. But not, he thought as he opened the door, for more pleasurable ones.
Demetrio followed him diffidently into the room, peering fearfully for the destruction the magick had wrought. There seemed to be none. Sephana lay on her bed, though to be sure she did not move or acknowledge their presence. She was naked, a robe of blue silk clutched in her hand as if she had been on the point of donning it when she decided instead to lie down. Albanus chuckled, a dry sound like the rattle of a poisonous serpent.
The slender youth crept forward. Her eyes were open; they seemed to have life, to see. He touched her arm, and gasped. It was as hard as stone.
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