"Excellent, Azhar!" The chief mage adjusted the hawk effigy on the low table, making its spreadeagled shadow play full against the curtain. "Be sure to follow the sunray with the mirror as it moves; I will stand here and follow with the sacred emblem. Now there remains only… the unveiling!"
As he spoke, he reached beside him to a knotted cord and pulled it, causing the black curtains to jerk apart and reveal the silvery crystal of the far-seeing window.
The skull was there, maintaining its unceasing vigil on the far side of the pane. The light cast by the mirror picked out its hideous visage in livid detail, kindling sparks in the many-colored gems of its brows and cheekbones and making them blaze in their polished settings. The shadow of the Hawk of Tarim was somehow difficult to trace, lost in the many-faceted and disturbingly massive physiognomy of the evil talisman.
For a moment, it almost seemed to Azhar that the jeweled visage was the source of the light, beaming its blinding intensity back through his mirror and up into heaven.
Then, as he watched, the skull grew larger―or nearer, he realized an instant later when his accustomed sense of isolation from things beyond the window was suddenly and horribly violated. For the skullface pushed in through the glass with a rending crash, scattering silver shards and splintering the tile casement as its jewel-crusted jaws gaped wide. The giant face, radiant in sun-pierced gloom, drove onto Ibn Uluthan like the prow of a vast, grounding ship, smashing his golden idol and seizing him by one hip in its grinning, diamond-toothed bite.
Amid the sorcerer's screams, with the light from Azhar's unsteady mirror veering and darting wildly over the scene, the greedy skull retreated, dragging its struggling victim back through the window and beyond the rightful confines of the Court of Seers. Clouds of dust, debris, and arcane papers flurried after them, lashed by unnatural winds. Inward through the anomalous breech in the wall flapped likewise the black, desolate billows of the ragged curtains. Ibn Uluthan's shrieks dwindled rapidly across an echoless abyss of distance, then were cut off, leaving the dust to settle lazily before the bare stone wall where the window had stood.
Azhar the acolyte, staggering under the weight of his toppling mirror, was flung backward as it finally fell and splintered. He struck his head against the base of a pillar, there to lie motionless and senseless.
Chapter 8
City of Iniquity
"Come, you parched desert dogs! This is no time to collapse in a stinking hostel." Conan halted on the worn threshold of the inn where the cart had deposited its passengers and their meager traps. Clamping hamlike hands on the shoulders of his two friends, he drew them back out
into the teeming street. "The city of Venjipur awaits us in all its wicked glory!"
"What say you!" Juma turned to Conan, straightening up from the crouch he had assumed in order to pass beneath the low lintel. "You were fool enough to risk the cart ride here from Sikander with your injured leg; now you want to rove the alleys of Venjipur by night?" Scanning the twilit street, he stood above die dusky currents of its dwellers like a black snag in a swirling yellow river.
On all sides the city crowded close, its ancient stone buildings crumbling behind their gaudy, ramshackle facades. Awnings, lean-tos, cupolas, and false minarets, all had been added to seduce free-spending troops and catch the inflow of foreign coinage. Now, in the fading light, the street's odd angles and gaudy trappings lured the eye. In spite of Juma's denials, his ebony features barely concealed his yearning. "Nay, Conan, 'tis out of the question. You are still too lame."
"Aye. Hence the need for exercise." Conan yoked his friend's burly, leather-vested shoulders under a heavy forearm. "I must stretch the scar-flesh and keep the limb from growing stiff." He gathered in the half-willing Babrak on his other side. "And our devout friend here… surely he must experience at least one night of carousing, so that his repentances before Tarim will have weight later on!"
"Nay, truly, Conan, I would be poor company on such an excursion!"
Babrak braced himself upright under the burden of the Cimmerian's arm.
"Anyway, the kvass they serve in the street taverns is no less sour than what is poured in this hostelry."
"He is right, Conan." Glumly Juma watched the jostling, shoulder-high streams of walkers passing in the street. "Remember, this is Venjipur! You know the countless snares and dangers that lurk here."
Conan, leaning on the tall black man so as to pry him further from the inn door, spoke intensely in his ear. "Surely I do, Juma, and I crave them.
As would you, if you had just spent an eternity on your back watching lizards gulp flies on the ceiling! Weeks of that recreation, then a full day of lying prone in a jolting elephant cart―and now you expect me to go flop into some moldy hostel bed?"
Conan's argument had its desired effect, forcing Juma several steps
further along the stone paves. Babrak had little choice but to move along with his larger, grappling companions against the hurrying tide of pedestrians.
"As for danger―why, man, we came to this country to tweak danger! I am in a foul mood, as you may have noticed. I will be in a worse one if I do not crack some heads together or otherwise disport myself by tomorrow sunrise."
Cleaving to the others more for compulsion than support, Conan moved with them down the grimy street. Peddlers, handcarts, furtive citizens, and feral-eyed urchins flowed around them in a torrent seldom topping the larger men's shoulders. The only other things tall enough to stand out above it were slave-drawn chair-coaches and the pointy, helmeted heads of other northern troopers. These were conspicuous as well by their disheveled uniforms decked with souvenir beads, garters, and silk scarves, and their noisy, drunken aimlessness.
In all the bustle, the three companions traveled only a dozen steps before ducking through the odiferous, brightly lamplit doorway of a crowded kvass-house.
"Jugboy! A pitcher of mule-milk and three noggins here! Hey, jambee!
Run up three totees kumish quick-quick!" Conan's gruff rendering of the local pidgin was adequate, within moments, to quench their thirst. But when Juma slapped down a silver ounce on the narrow table, the aproned serving-boy pocketed it and turned away, nodding and grinning idiotically. The Kushite had to grab and shake him like a weasel's prey to get him to render up change.
The establishment was crowded with knee-high tables and ankle-high stools. Around them stood or squatted patrons of widely varying races.
The dim, red-lit air bore scents of sandalwood incense and headier perfumes, doubtless intended to cover the reek of the near-rancid kumiss, among other smells.
Not savored locally, the fermented mare's milk was imported or counterfeited to please the occupying horse-troops, and the beverage did not thrive well in the tropic heat. Nevertheless, it served its purpose; after a few beakers, the heads and stomachs of the three friends were awash in its queasy tide. One of its effects was frankness.
"You are lucky, Conan," Babrak observed, "to be on your feet so soon."
He pursed his lips to belch discreetly. "Of the stragglers from the jungle fight, fully half those with lesser wounds have perished of the blood-rot.
And many of your troop's survivors will be missing limbs and other valued parts."
"Aye, my friend." Conan nodded solemnly, gazing into his tankard.
"Crom bless the both of you dogs for taking me out of that stinking infirmary and into Sariya's care, back at our hut. That bone-chopping Imperial surgeon should be turned loose against the enemy, curse his foul breath! But Sariya…" He shook his head profoundly. "The woman has a way about her… I was weak unto death, but she nursed me to life."
"Weak is not the word I would have used, Conan." Juma looked ruefully to Babrak. "We know, because it took all our strength as well as Sariya's to hold you down during your raging fevers."
"Indeed," the smaller man nodded. "You refought all your battles then, with foes both earthly and unearthly!"
"She is an angel. I would doubt our wisdom in leaving
her at Sikander."
Ignoring them, Conan frowned over his foamy cup. "But she wished a rest.
The village folk all befriend her now, and the guards I assigned are able men."
"Aye, righteous pillars of Tarim, every one! Do not worry, Conan."
Babiak nodded with a smile of utter confidence. "Lucky we are, indeed, to be given so many privileges lately. Rumor around camp has it that your exploits gain you lofty favor, perhaps among the officer staff in Aghrapur!"
He laughed easily, scanning the crowded room. "That is what made it possible for us to nursemaid you, you know; we now get extra rations, abbreviated duties, even furloughs like this one!" A spangled Venji girl-trollop minced past them to a nearby table, and the youth averted his eyes chastely. "Not that it means much to a strict follower of Tarim's law,"
he added resolutely.
"Indeed, Conan," Juma said with a sterner look. "You should be careful of this curious favor that has descended on you. We must not leave Sariya alone more than a day or so. Having known the pains and perils of the hero's game, you now enjoy its rewards… but beware." The Kushite glanced narrow-eyed around the room, then leaned closer to his friend.
"Know you, these very enjoyments mark you and set you apart. They goad
jealousy in dangerous quarters, and are seldom as benign and freely given as one thinks." He pursed leathery black lips in a frown. "Heed me in this, Conan: I have known more dead heroes than live ones."
Before the Cimmerian could dispute his friend's dismal outlook, all three troopers were distracted. A youthful Venji, pockmarked and crooked-toothed, bowed before their table in his tight uniform and began extolling the virtues of his alleged sister. She posed at his side: a red-lipped, sloe-eyed, smoldering girl-child, sheathed in a green silk gown slit almost to her armpits. At their trio of stares she settled back against one of the tiny tables, spreading her knees and seeming almost ready to offer them an immediate sampling of her talents.
"I think not," Juma announced to his friends with a broad grin. "The fruit looks a bit underripe to me. Babrak, now, he needs a more motherly type to initiate him into the conjugal mysteries. And Conan… but of course, you have Sariya as your consort."
The Cimmerian shifted his thick shoulders restlessly. "Now, now, Juma, I am not wed to the wench! I am still my own man. Nevertheless, I do not relish this stripling, whose vital places probably have hair pasted on! Nor do I care for her grinning tout―be off, you two!"
Feigning anger at the insult, the Venji youth jabbered threats in pidgin, demanding payment for damages. Finally he had to be propelled away by an armlock and a boot in his scrawny buttocks. The tart spat copiously at her tormentors' feet before flouncing off after him.
"They will be at us again if we get drunk enough in this place, rely on it!" Conan refilled his companions' battered cups. "And beware, fellows―even that raw fillet of monkey-meat may begin to look tempting after a few more pitchers of this swill! That is why it is always wise to move on."
The entertainment in the house had so far been limited to a bored, bead-draped girl twitching on a dais at the end of the room, accompanied by the incessant chiming and tweeting that passed thereabouts as music.
Now a more elaborate show commenced, with an older, buxom actress directing and assisting in vulgar tricks performed by trained, silk-costumed jungle apes. The time was ripe for departure, so the troopers passed out into the street, which was dimmer now and less thronged. The ancient pavement and stone doorposts were also less
obviously filthy, with paper lanterns and glowing, bead-curtained windows and doors giving the shopfronts a festive look.
Conan, striding with a limp he could almost conceal, led the way down a narrow side-passage. After some turns and branchings, it took them to a tavern whose low-arched entry spilled an inviting puddle of light on the pavement and the wall opposite. Just outside its healthy glow, a pair of Venji civilians stood muttering. As the three troopers approached, one of the loiterers leaned forward, revealing a long knife-scar on one pockmarked cheek.
"Lotusss!" he whispered sibilantly. "Banghee Palace have many good kind of lotus. Good girls too!" He rolled his yellow eyes suggestively. "We send you and girls to happy jade paradise."
"Ignore him, Conan," muttered Juma into his friend's other ear. "His palace is doubtless some riverside tent, and his girls really crones or ill-shaven boys. To a real lotus-lover, such details matter not at all. Duck in here, and we will be rid of them… but wait!"
Upon his failure to detain Conan and Juma, the scarred man accosted Babrak more insistently, seizing his arm and tugging at it. Meanwhile, the second loiterer could be seen edging around behind the Turanian―for a grab at his belt-purse, possibly, or at his weapons, or for worse mischief.
The two troopers turned swiftly to their friend's aid.
Conan arrived in time to see the brass butt of Babrak's dagger sweep upward, to glance from the scarred man's chin; a low blow from his own balled fist sent the second loiterer rebounding, grunting, from the stone wall. Juma moved in with a kick to the staggering lotus-seller's ribs; a moment later the two toughs were scuttling away down the silent alley.
"Huzzah! The night has begun at last!" Juma grinned broadly, spreading his pale palms wide to clap his companions' backs. "We will raise your glum spirits yet, Conan! Good roughhousing!"
"Our friend Babrak here is not tardy with his knife," Conan observed, turned back toward the lit doorway. "He had no real need of us, except as his audience! Tavern brawling must not be one of the vices barred by Tarim's holy law."
The interior of this second tavern was broader and lower, with bamboo
tables and wickerwork seats that a northerner could almost fit into. Food, as well as drink, was in evidence here; after conferring with an elderly male taverner, the three called for portions of a safe-sounding stew of fish, vegetables, and swamp-rice.
"Those alley toughs are a good reason to watch our backs tonight,"
Juma said, making his wicker stool strain and creak under his rangy weight. "If they were Phang Loon's bullies, they can always summon more of their kind."
"What―those gutter-snipes?" Conan's laugh faltered slightly as he felt the arm of his chair break loose from the seat due to a careless twist of his hips.
"'Tis true, Conan." Juma's shift in his own seat was accompanied by a symphony of bending, straining wicker. "The lotus trade hereabouts is controlled by Phang Loon―except, naturally, that sold by the rebels. The warlord is more powerful than any northern monarch, though he lacks the blessing of church or dynasty. That is one true cause of the strife in Venjipur―and if you ask me, we Turanians have made it worse, by uniforming his private army as the Venji Imperial Guard!"
"Not the best ones to have at your back in a fight, I am told." Babrak frowned over his stew bowl. "Juma is right, though; Phang Loon is not a man to cross." His speech trailed off with an air of distraction, his brown eyes flitting across the room toward the right-angled counter where drink was dispensed.
The focus of his gaze, the others soon determined, was a woman: a trim Venji matron clad in expensive imitation of northern female garb. Her sheath of dark blue silk, unbroken from ankle to neck, showed her off less immodestly in the smoky lamplight than did the shreds and bangles worn by the tavern-girls who flitted between tables. Iridescent silk was gathered loosely about her shoulders and bosom, revealing only the smallest sliver of bodice, while a high, stiff collar enfolded her black tresses and all but concealed her face from either side. Her slim hands languished in loose sleeves, their red-lacquered fingertips toying with a dainty, steaming teacup as she sat surveying the room.
"A man of lofty taste, our Babrak," Juma declared after a moment's appreciation. "He has chosen a noblewoman as the object of his desire."
Reaching across the table to the limit of his chair's protesting tolerance,
he jostled Conan to redirect his attention.
The Cimmerian, busy raking stew from his platter to
his lips with the thin sticks provided for this purpose, put down the mess at his friend's behest. "Hmmm. From her modest garb, there is no guessing her age or nimbleness. Yet from the cost of her finery and her regal bearing, I would judge her owner of this place, and its madam as well!"
Babrak's olive face darkened in a blush as he lowered his gaze to the woven tabletop. "You need not chide me," he protested faintly. "I merely find it refreshing to see a Venji woman showing public decorum for once―"
"Yes." Juma chortled wisely. "And now, no doubt, you would like to learn what her private decorum consists of!" His grin flashed brightly in the dimness. "But Babrak, old friend, we do not mean to scold you! On the contrary, we support your enterprise, and we swear to do all we can to advance it! Do we not, Conan?" he asked, to the Cimmerian's answering grin.
"Nay, nonsense." The Turanian youth shook his head in embarrassed irresolution. Yet he was unable to resist a further glance at the stately woman, who may or may not have been returning their looks. "I have no enterprise in mind; my interest was purely aesthetic. As I have told you, I abide by Tarim's strictures for warriors of the True Faith."
"Now, now, Babrak," Conan said in the flustered youth's other ear, "if you follow those rules too strictly, there will be no more knights to carry on the faith."
"Aye, lad," Juma chimed in gaily. "If Tarim wanted his followers to remain totally pure, he would have preached only to eunuchs!"
"Kushite, curb your reckless tongue!" At Babrak's indignant straightening and quick-flashing gaze, the blue-clad woman across the room could be seen to stir on her high-backed stool and glance their way with what might have been interest.
"Now, now, Babrak, he spoke in jest." Conan leaned coolly in from his side of the table, keeping the Turanian off balance. "Yet there may be substance in all this… for I ask you, is it not true that those same fleshly pleasures that True Believers swear to forgo in this life are promised as
rewards to the Faithful in the next?"
The Conan Compendium Page 272
