The Conan Compendium

by Robert E. Howard

  Near the strange latticework a table of polished rosewood held the implements and ingredients he would need this night, all arranged on black velvet as a gem merchant might display his wares. A large flat box of ornately carved ivory stood atop faceted crystal legs at one end of the velvet. The place of honor on that table, though, was held by a small, finely crafted ebony chest.

  Setting the golden coffer beside a silken cushion before which stood another golden tripod, Naipal went to the table. His hand stretched toward the small black chest, but on sudden impulse he raised the ivory lid instead. Carefully he brushed aside layers of blue silk, as soft as the finest down, revealing a silvered mirror, its polished surface showing no image at all, not even a reflection of the chamber.

  The mage nodded. He had expected no different, but knew he must not allow his certainties to stop him from proper precautions. This mirror was not so very unlike a scrying glass, but instead of being used to communicate or spy, it had very special properties. That silver surface would show no images save those that threatened his designs.

  Once, soon after he became wizard in the court of King Bhandarkar, Mount Yimsha, abode of the dreaded Black Seers, had appeared in the mirror. It had been only curiosity at his ascension, he knew. They saw no threat in him, more fools they. In a day the image was gone, and never since had anything been reflected there. Not so much as a flicker. Such was the efficacy of his planning.

  With a feeling of satisfaction, Naipal covered the mirror once more and opened the ebony chest. Within was that which made his satisfaction grow. In carven hollows in the sable wood lay ten stones, smooth ovals of so inky a hue that the ebony seemed less black beside them. Nine were the size of the last joint of a man's thumb, the last twice so large. These were the khorassani. For centuries men had died seeking them in vain, until their very existence became first part of legends, then the stuff of stories for children. Ten years it had taken Naipal to acquire them, a search filled with adventures and trials to make it fit for epics had it been known.

  Reverently he placed the nine smaller khorassani, one atop each of the golden tripods that bordered the arcane figure within the floor. The tenth, the largest, he set on the tripod before the cushion. All was in readiness.

  Naipal settled cross-legged onto the cushion and began to speak the words of power, commanding forces unseen. "E'las eloyhim! Maraath savinday! Khora mar! Khora mar!"

  Again the words repeated, again and again unending, and the stone before him began to glow as though with fires imprisoned in its core.

  No illumination did it give, yet it seemed to burn with all light.

  Abruptly, with a hiss as of white-hot metal thrust into water, narrow streaks of fire leaped from the glowing stone, one to each of the nine khorassani surrounding the silver pattern. As suddenly as they were born, the blazing bars died, yet now all ten stones blazed with the same fury. Once more the slashing hiss sounded, and the encircling stones were linked by burning lines, while from each tripod another bar of terrible incandescence stretched both upward and downward. Within the confines of that fiery cage neither floor nor dome could any longer be seen, but only darkness stretching to infinity.

  Naipal fell silent, studying his handiwork, then shouted, "Masrok, I summon you!"

  A rushing came, as though all the winds of the world poured through vast caverns.

  A thunderclap smote the chamber, and within the flamebarred cage there floated a huge eight-armed shape, twice as tall as any man and more, with skin like polished obsidian. Its only garb was a silver necklace from which depended three human skulls, and its body was smooth and sexless. Two of its hands held silver swords that shone with an unearthly light. Two more held spears with human skulls hanging below the points for decoration, and another grasped a needle-pointed dagger.

  Each weapon shared the glaucous, other-worldly glow. Large leathery ears twitched on the hairless head, and sharply slanted ruby eyes swiveled to Naipal.

  Carefully the creature stretched to touch one silvery spear to the fiery bounds. A million hornets buzzed in rage, and lightnings flashed along the candent boundary, ceasing only when the spear point was withdrawn.

  "Why do you still seek escape, Masrok?" Naipal demanded. "You cannot break our bargain so easily. Only lifeless matter can cross through that boundary from the outside, and nothing, not even you, can pass it from the inside. As you well know."

  "If you make foolish errors, O man, there is no need for bargains." The booming words were pronounced stiffly around teeth that seemed designed for rending flesh, but a touch of arrogance came through. "Still, I will keep our pact."

  "Most assuredly you will, and should from gratitude if for no other reason. Did I not free you from a prison that had held you for centuries?"

  "Freedom, O man? I leave that prison only when summoned to this place by you, and here I am constrained to remain until commanded by you to return once more to that same prison. For this and promises, I aid you?

  I sent the demons to bear away your former master so that you could rise to what you consider power as the court wizard. I shield the eyes of the Black Seers of Yimsha while you attempt that which would draw their wrath upon your head. I do these things at your command, O man, and you dare speak to me of freedom?"

  "Continue to obey me," Naipal said coldly, "and you will have your freedom entire. Refuse . . ." He flung open the golden coffer. From it he snatched a silvery dagger like the one the demon carried, even to the glow, and thrust it toward the demon. "When we made our pact, I demanded a token of you, and you gave me this with warnings as to the danger of its merest touch to human flesh. Did you think with a demon-weapon in my grasp I would not seek the secret of its powers? You hold human knowledge in contempt, Masrok, though it was mortal men who chained you in your adamantine prison. And in the knowledge of mere humans, in the ancient writings of human wizards, I found mention of weapons borne by demons, weapons of glowing silver, weapons that cannot miss what they strike at and slay whatever they strike. Even demons, Masrok. Even you!"

  "Strike at me then," the demon snarled. "I marched to war beside gods, and against gods, when the highest achievement of man was to turn over a rock to eat the grubs beneath. Strike!"

  Smiling thinly, Naipal returned the dagger to the coffer. "You are of no use to me dead, Masrok. I simply want you aware that there is worse I can do to you than leave you in your prison. Even for a demon, imprisonment is to be preferred to death."

  The demon's rubescent eyes fixed malevolently on the mage. "What do you wish of me this time, O man? There are limits to what I can do unless you remove the constraints on my journeying."

  "There is no need for that." Naipal drew a deep breath; the moment of danger was at hand. "You were imprisoned to guard the tomb of King Orissa beneath the lost city of Maharashtra."

  "You have asked before, O man, and I will not tell you the location of tomb or city. I will not betray that if I am bound for all of time."

  "I know well the limits of your aid to me. Listen to my command. You will return to that tomb, Masrok, and bring to me one of the warriors buried with King Orissa. Bring me one man of the army that formed his bodyguard in death."

  For a moment Naipal thought the demon would accept the command without demur, but abruptly Masrok screamed, and as it screamed, it spun.

  Faster and faster it whirled until it was an ebon blur streaked with silver. No part of that blur touched the boundaries of its cage, but the hornets screamed and lightnings slashed walls of fiery lace. The chamber vibrated with the penetrating shriek and a blue-white glare filled the air.

  Calm did not desert Naipal's face, yet sweat beaded his brow. He knew well the forces contained in that barrier and the power necessary to make it cry out and flare as it did. It was almost to the point of shattering; almost to the point of unleashing Masrok. Through the thousand deaths he would die when that happened, the greatest pain would be the failure of all his grand designs.

  As abruptly as the tempes
t had begun, it ended. Masrok stood as truly carved from obsidian, crimson eyes glaring at the wizard. "You ask betrayal!"

  "A small betrayal," Naipal said blandly, though it took all his reserves to manage it. "Not the location of the tomb. Merely a single warrior out of thousands."

  "To escape two millennia of bondage is one thing, to betray what I was set to guard is another!"

  "I offer freedom, Masrok."

  "Freedom," was all the demon said. Naipal nodded. "Freedom, after two thousand years."

  "Two thousand years, O man? The span of a human life is but a moment's dreaming to me. What are years to one such as I?"

  "Two thousand years," the mage repeated. For a long moment there was silence.

  "Three others guard as I do," Masrok said slowly. "My other selves, all of us created from the same swirl of chaos in the very instant time itself was born. Three to my one. It will take time, O man."

  By the barest margin was Naipal able to mask his exhaltation. "Do it as quickly as possible. And remember that when your service to me is done, you will have your freedom. I await your sign that the task is done.

  Now go, Masrok! I command it!"

  Once more thunder smote the chamber, and the fiery cage stood empty.

  With an unsteady hand, Naipal wiped the sweat from his brow, then hastily scrubbed it on his dark robes as though denying its existence.

  It was done. Another thread had been placed in a tapestry of great complexity. There were a thousand such threads, many being placed by men-and women-who had no idea of what they truly did or why, but when the pattern had finally been woven ... A small smile touched his face.

  When it was woven, the world would bow to Vendhya, and Vendhya, unknowing, would bow to Naipal.

  Chapter I

  From a distance the city seemed Jeweled, ivory and gold beside a sea of sapphire, justifying the name of Golden Queen of the Vilayet Sea. A closer view showed why others gave Sultanapur's byname as "the Gilded Bitch of the Vilayet."

  The broad mole-protected harbor was crowded with the ships that gave Sultanapur cause to call itself Queen to Aghrapur's King, but for every roundship filled to the gunwales with silks from Khitai, for even galley that carried the scent of cinnamon and cloves from Vendhya, another vessel, out of Khoraf or Khawarism, reeked of stale sweat and despair, the odiferous brand of the slaver.

  Gold-leafed domes proliferated on palaces of pale marble, it was true, and alabaster spires stretched toward the azure sky, but the streets were cramped and crooked in the best of quarters, for Sultanapur had grown haphazardly over centuries beyond counting. Half a score of times in those numberless years had the city died, its gilded palaces and temples to now-nameless gods gone to ruin. At each death, however, new palaces and new temples to new gods had grown like mushrooms on the rubble of the old, and like mushrooms, they crowded together where they would, leaving only rambling ways between for streets.

  The city was dusty in a land that might know rain once in a year, and it, too, had as distinct a smell as the harbor. Without rain to wash the streets, the stenches of years hung in the hot air, a blend of spices and sweat, perfume and offal, a thousand aromas melded together till the parts could no longer be told one from the other. The whole was an ever-present miasma, as much a part of the city as any building.

  Baths proliferated in Sultanapur: ornate marble structures with mosaicked pools, served by nubile wenches in naught but their sleek skins; wooden tubs behind taverns, where a serving girl might scrub a back for the price of a drink. It was the constant heat, however, and not the smell that made them a tradition. The wrinkled nose and the perfumed pomander were signs of the newcomer to Sultanapur, for those who dwelt there for any time no longer noticed the smell.

  Newcomers there always were, for the Gilded Bitch of the Vilayet drew certain sorts of men from all corners of the known world. In a cool, fig-tree-shaded court or a shadowy tavern, an ebon-faced merchant from Punt might discuss with an almond-eyed Khitan the disposition of wines from Zingara, or a pale-cheeked Corinthian might speak with a turbaned Vendhyan of the ivory routes to Iranistan. The streets were a polyglot kaleidoscope of multi-hued grab in a hundred cuts from a score of lands, and the languages and accents to be heard among the babble of the marketplaces were too numerous for counting. In some instances the goods were honestly purchased. In others the purchase had been from the pirates who plagued the sea lanes, or coin had been passed to raiders of caravans or to smugglers on a dark coast. However obtained, on no more than half of what passed through Sultanapur was the King's custom paid. Sultanapur was a queen that took pride in her infidelity to her king.

  For all that he was head and shoulders taller than most of those he passed, the muscular young man drew no special notice for his size as he made his way through streets filled with high-wheeled, ox-drawn wains squeaking on ungreased axles toward the docks. His tunic of white linen was tight across the breadth of his shoulders, and a broadsword swung at his side in a worn leather scabbard, but neither sword nor breadth of shoulders was enough to pick him out in Sultanapur. Big men, men who carried swords, were always sure of hire in a city where there was never a lack of goods or lives to guard.

  Beneath a thick mane of black hair, held back from his face by a leather cord, were eyes as blue as the Vilayet and as hard as agates.

  Those eyes did cause stares from the few who noticed them. Some made a sign to ward off the evil eye as he passed, but those who did so did it surreptitiously. It was all very well to avoid the curse of those strange eyes, but to anger their possessor was another matter entirely when the leather wrappings of his sword-hilt were worn smooth with use and his bearing and face showed him little loath to add to that wear.

  Aware of those who stared and made the sign of the horns, the youth ignored them. Two months in Sultanapur had made him used to such.

  Sometimes he wondered how those men would take it if they found themselves in his native mountains of Cimmeria, where eyes of any shade but blue or gray were as rare as his own were in this southern land of Turan. As often since coming to this place where the blue Vilayet mocked with its wetness the dry air, he thought longingly of the windswept, snowy crags of his homeland. Longingly, but briefly. Before coming to Turan he had been a thief, but he found that the gold that came from thievery had a way of trickling through his fingers as fast as he got it. He meant to return to Cimmeria-someday-but with gold enough to scatter like drops of water. And in Sultanapur he had found an old friend and a new trade.

  At a stone-walled tavern with a crescent moon roughly daubed in yellow on its front, the Cimmerian went in, cutting off much of the noise of the street as he pulled the heavy door shut behind him. The Golden Crescent was cool inside, for its thick walls kept out the heat of the sun as well as the clatter. Tables were scattered across the stone floor so that talk at one could not easily be heard at another, and the interior was lighted poorly apurpose, for here whom a man talked to or what he said was considered no one's business but his own. The patrons were mainly Turanians, though they seemed a mixed lot. Their garments ranged from threadbare once-White cotton to costly velvets and silks in gaudy shades of scarlet and yellow. Not even the most ragged of them lacked coin, though, as evidenced by the number of doxies seated on men's knees or displaying their wares among the tables in narrow strips of brightly colored silk.

  Some of the men nodded to the Cimmerian, or spoke. He knew them by name-Junio and Valash and Emilius-for they followed the same trade as he, but he did no more than acknowledge their greeting for he had no interest in them this day. He peered into the dimness, searching for one woman in particular. He saw her at the same moment she saw him.

  "Conan!" she squealed, and he found his arms full of satiny olive flesh. A length of red silk two fingers in width encircled her rounded breasts, and another twice as wide was tucked through a narrow girdle of gilded brass set low on sweetly curving hips. Black hair cascaded down her back to all but bare buttocks, and her eyes shone darkly.
"I hoped you would come to see me. I have missed you sorely."

  "Missed me?" he laughed. "It has been but four days, Tasha. But to mend your loneliness . . ." He freed a hand to delve into the leather purse at his belt and held up a blue topaz on a fine golden chain. For the next few minutes he was busy being kissed, fastening the chain about her neck, then being kissed again. And being kissed by Tasha, he thought, was more definite than a night in some women's arms. Lifting the clear azure stone from its nest between her breasts, she admired it again, then gazed up at him through long lashes. "You must have had good luck with your fishing," she smiled.

  Conan grinned. "We fishermen must work very hard for our coin, casting nets out, hauling them in. Luckily, the price of fish is very high right now." To gales of laughter from men close enough to hear, he led Tasha to an empty table.

  All of the men who frequented the Golden Crescent called themselves fishermen, and it was even possible that some few actually were, upon occasion. For the vast majority, however, their "catches" were landed at night on deserted stretches of the coast where none of King Yildiz's excisemen were about to see whether it was fish or bales of silk and casks of wine that were off-loaded. It was said that if all of the so-called fishermen in Sultanapur actually brought fish to market, the city would be buried to the tops of the tallest tower, and the Vilayet would be stripped of its finny denizens.

  At a table near the back of the room, Conan dropped to a bench and pulled Tasha on to his lap. A sloe-eyed serving girl appeared at his elbow, wearing little more than the doxies, though in cotton rather than silk. She was as available as the other women, for those who could not or would not pay the trulls' prices, and the smile she beamed at the broad-shouldered Cimmerian said she would take Tasha's place in an instant.

  "Wine," he said and watched the rhythmic sway of her almost-covered hips as she left.

  "You did come to see me, did you not?" Tasha asked acidly. "Or is that why you did not come yesterday? You said you would return yesterday.