Chapter Fifteen
Though Shakar the Keshanian was exhausted after slaying his bodyguard and performing necromancy upon the corpse, the sorcerer could not take his rest. Time seemed to slow in its course, evening moving into night with glacial deliberation. All through the following day he meditated in his chambers, striving to stabilize his drugged metabolism and fill himself with strength. At first he was successful. Shakar was proud of the power that he had exhibited in the ensorcellment of Gulbanda.
Without the unnatural augmentation of the Emerald Lotus, he doubted that he would have been able to accomplish it. Pride in his achievement gave him faith and courage.
But into the second day his body weakened and his consciousness fell into a tighter and tighter orbit around the small silver box which lay upon the mahogany desk in his study. Now he sat at his window, staring out through his garden without seeing it and sipping nervously from the crystal decanter of Brythunian wine he had used to lull Gulbanda.
Ignoring a growing tightness in his breast, the Keshanian turned his mind once again to the skilled wizardry he had worked upon his bodyguard, trying to draw comfort from the abomination that he had created and set in motion to accomplish his ends.
"He'll get it," said Shakar to the empty room. "He won't fail. He'll bring it to me or I'll leave his soul sealed within his animated corpse forever. He won't fail because only I can release him into true death."
He paused, then repeated: "He will not fail." His voice trailed off as he began to fear that which he had not even allowed himself to imagine until this moment.
What if Gulbanda did not return in time?
The most impressive feat of sorcery that he had ever performed had been brought about by a great sacrifice. The silver-chased box on his desk was empty. The two spoonfuls that he had taken before slaying Gulbanda with the bamboo spike had been the last, save for a few speckles of green residue.
The tightness in his breast grew more insistent, more difficult to ignore. Shakar turned his eyes away from the west, where the sun set in a bloody welter of tattered clouds, and looked upon the silver box where it gleamed dully in the study's serene twilight. The Keshanian rose from his chair in a halting manner, as though his body were not set on doing that which his mind desired. He walked slowly to the desk and stared down upon the burnished silver casket.
Pain blossomed in Shakar's chest, sending strident bands of tense agony around his torso. The sorcerer cried out and stumbled against the desk, seizing the silver box with hands that shook uncontrollably, hands that pried open the casket to reveal that which he already knew to be true.
"Empty," wept Shakar. "I know that it's empty." Slumping against the desk, he held the cold metal box to his breast and tried to draw a deep breath. The belt of pain that wrapped his ribs loosened a notch.
Through the door the Keshanian saw a flicker of yellow light play along the wall of the hallway outside his study. He blinked in the deepening dusk. A sudden surge of hope drove new vitality through the sorcerer's veins. He pushed himself away from the desk with one hand and stumbled toward the door, still clutching his box. The sinking sun's last rays stained the floor scarlet before him as he half walked, half staggered down the hall. Ahead, flares of multicolored light shone through the open door of his bedchamber.
"Eldred?" The name was a harsh croak. "Eldred, I must speak with you!"
Shakar came into his chamber just as the vaporous haze of colored light finished weaving itself together and faded to white. He stood unsteadily before the supernatural projection as the ebony figure coalesced within its wall of witchfire and regarded him in inscrutable silence. Shakar's teeth ground together in the stillness.
"Speak, Jullah rend your soul! You are Eldred the Trader, are you not?"
The veils of light masking the dark form drew back, exposing a short, bearded Shemite in a merchant's silken garb. The image blurred almost immediately, wavering like a desert mirage.
"Fool," said a voice that was not a voice, "do you imagine that a trader would visit you thus?"
The Shemite merchant faded from view, becoming a hunched Stygian with a bald, misshapen skull. Bulging eyes afire with contempt seemed to sear into Shakar's body.
"Who are you?" cried the Keshanian. "Why do you torment me?"
"I am called Ethram-Fal and I do not torment you. I study you. From your aspect I would hazard that your supply of lotus is gone."
Shakar's mind reeled in a rush of dizzy nausea. A hysterical laugh came through lips drawn back from teeth clenched in a death-like rictus.
"Study?" shouted the Keshanian. "Are you mad? Where is the lotus? I'll give you all I have for more of it!"
"Yes," said Ethram-Fal, "of course you would. Tell me, when did you use the last of it?"
Shakar forcibly calmed himself, drawing in a long, shuddering breath.
The hand that gripped the silver box clung to its burden so tightly that pain rippled through the knuckles.
"Yesterday morning I used it in a feat of great sorcery. I need more to
"Yesterday morning? You are stronger than I had thought. Has the pain begun yet?" The voice of Ethram-Fal was clinical and expressionless.
Shakar could scarcely contain his rage and need.
"Yes!" he cried. "My chest is gripped in a vise of fire. Now give me the lotus!"
"Silence!" Ethram-Fal's command rang in the Keshanian's brain like a struck gong, driving him to his knees with its force.
A roiling cloud of inky blackness poured over the Stygian's scornful features, transforming him once again into an anonymous black figure suspended in a curtain of misty light.
"Who are you to command me, dog? You are too weak and witless to even make a good slave. Take solace in the fact that you have provided a lesson to Ethram-Fal of Stygia and thus aided him in his grand design."
With an inarticulate howl of hate, Shakar opened the silver box and brought it to his face. Thrusting out his tongue, he licked the polished inner surface clean. He hurled the box aside and staggered drunkenly to his feet.
"I'll kill you!" he railed, moving both hands in a swift, arcane series of motions that ceased with both fists extended toward the dark form of Ethram-Fal. A crystalline sphere of azure light shimmered into being before them. It hovered a brief moment, then fell in upon itself, extinguished like a torch in a downpour as Shakar cried out in anguish.
"Your powers fade," said the voice that was not a voice. "You might want to cut your own throat. That would" be both quicker and easier than the death which now awaits you. Goodbye, Shakar."
The Keshanian lunged at the apparition with flailing fists, passed into it without resistance and rebounded from the marble wall. He sprawled on the floor, stunned, with Ethram-Fal's frigid, metallic laughter sounding in his skull. Prone and helpless, Shakar watched the eldritch projection flow into itself and fade until all that remained was an afterimage etched upon his retina.
The Keshanian tried to get up, but his legs felt paralyzed. The tortured nerves of his body jerked spasmodically as pain screwed tightly back around his chest. The effect was spreading, flickering up the sides of his neck to drive nails of agony into his temples. A desperate sanity surfaced in the black warlock's brimming eyes.
Crawling from the room, Shakar dragged himself down the hallway to his study. The labored rasp of his breathing was the only sound in the dim and silent house. His legs were useless and the bands around his chest constricted until he grew dizzy and held to conscious action only through sheer force of will.
In the study he used his arms to draw himself up the front of his desk and jerk open a drawer. It fell from the desk, spilling its contents upon the floor. The black-crystal vial broke with a liquid crunch, spattering the marble with translucent syrup. Shakar let himself fall down beside it, his hands seeking and finding the bamboo spike. He held the bloodstained weapon before rheumy eyes that strained to focus on its razor edge. Both hands gripped the spike firmly by the hilt as he placed its keen length against the flesh of his
throat.
Then Shakar the Keshanian took Ethram-Fal's advice.
Chapter Sixteen
Evening slumbered over the darkened mansion of Lady Zelandra. The single iron gate set in the encircling wall was chained and locked against the oncoming night. The two guards lounged in the kitchen, eating little and drinking much, swearing that they would take at least one more turn around the grounds before abandoning themselves to their cups. In time they did this, shuffling off along the garden's paths, passing their wineskin back and forth and speaking in hushed voices.
The stillness of dusky twilight filled the emptied mansion. The halls were dark, the windows curtained and the tapers all unlit. The manse seemed to lie tranquilly in wait for the return of its mistress. Yet amid the darkness and silence came a visitor unsuspected by the besotted guards.
The wall of Lady Zelandra's bedchamber was alight with blazing color.
Wild shadows leapt and capered over the book-lined walls and the opulent, unmade bed. Then a white glare shone from the wall, driving the shadows from every corner of the room.
Ethram-Fal's ebon outline floated in its fog of illumination and regarded an empty chamber. The black, featureless head turned this way and that, as though reluctant to believe that no one was there.
Frustrated, the Stygian sent an emphatic, wordless call through the still mansion.
"Zelandra! I have come for you!"
The sorcerer sensed no response, no activity at all. The dark form hesitated, standing motionless for a time, then moved tenebrous fingers in quick, precise patterns and lifted both arms above its head. Rays of brilliant green light bloomed around Ethram-Fal's image in a dazzling corona. Then with the slow, unnatural movements of a man walking underwater, the black figure stepped down from the wall and stood within the room. It walked across the floor to the doorway and into the hall beyond.
Ethram-Fal passed through the deserted chambers of Lady Zelandra's mansion like a restless ghost, leaving behind him footprints of palely flickering witchfire. After a time he returned to the lady's bedchamber, ascended into his haze of sorcerous light and vanished.
Zelandra's house was empty; its mistress had departed.
Ethram-Fal wondered if he might soon have visitors of his own.
Chapter Seventeen
The travelers crested the summit of a red clay ridge and viewed the broad expanse of the Styx River valley spread out before them. The trail zigzagged down a rolling slope through a thickening welter of vegetation. The land had grown more arid as they moved south and drew closer to Stygia, but the shores of the mighty Styx were anything but desert. Green brush crowded the path as they wended their way through clusters of swaying palms and plush meadows rippling in the slow breeze. Ahead, the land lowered further into irrigated fields that reached to the edge of the river itself. Yellow-brown along its shore and a rich, opalescent blue at its rolling median, the mother of all rivers stretched from horizon to horizon like a jeweled and sorcerous girdle bestowing a luxuriant fertility upon the grateful earth.
Though cultivated along much of its vast length, the shores of the Styx were but sparsely populated this far to the east. Scattered clusters of huts, raised upon stilts, were visible in the distance off to the west.
Directly before them, the party beheld a small, unwalled city squatting upon a low, artificial plateau that lifted gently from the canal-crossed fields. A similarly raised road ran amongst the glittering irrigation ditches and broad, cultivated expanses like a sand-colored snake writhing across a bed of lush emerald moss. The road connected the raised city with the drier uplands, where it merged with the Caravan Road that stretched uninterrupted along the length of the River Styx.
As the four descended the trail into the river valley, they began to encounter the natives of this long-inhabited land. They waited at a crossroads while a herd of lowing cattle was ushered past by herdsmen brandishing stout sticks that they applied vigorously to the flanks of their charges. Farmers toiled in the irrigated fields of emmer wheat and barley that sprang in abundance from the land's black and silty breast.
The trail became an elevated road that soon afforded them a closer view of the white mud buildings of the city. Neesa waved a slender hand in the humid air, fanning herself. At the moment they rode single file, with the Lady Zelandra leading the way. Neesa knit her dark brows in thought, then edged her mount forward until she rode beside the Cimmerian.
"What city is this?" she asked of Conan. The barbarian grinned at her in open admiration, clearly pleased that she had overcome her unwillingness to speak with him. She continued to study the city ahead of them intently, apparently unnoticing of his attention, though her complexion began to grow rosy.
"It is called Aswana. It has a sister city just across the Styx called Bel-Phar. Aswana is a quiet village and should give us a fine place to cross the river without drawing too much attention."
"The Stygians are said to be unfond of visitors."
"Aye, the snake worshippers would deny every foreigner the right to enter their cursed country if they could. Their border patrols are few, but authorized by King Ctesphon to collar any intruder they wish and judge on the spot if he is worthy to stand on Stygian soil."
"And if he is judged unworthy?"
"Well, any merchant whose trade would fatten the land or a fawning scholar come to pay homage to Father Set would be left to his own ends.
The best that most anyone else could hope for would be robbery and a quick kick back across the border. At worst, they'd be crucified at the roadside."
Neesa shivered despite the bright sun, then spat into the ditch.
"And here we come as uninvited visitors," she said. Conan laughed, shaking back his black mane.
"Don't fret, woman. The patrols are few and the land is large. And besides, I'm going with you!"
Laughing, Neesa leaned from her saddle and pressed a swift kiss upon the barbarian's cheek. Then she put her heels to her mount, sending the beast trotting forward and away to Lady Zelandra's side, leaving Conan rubbing his cheek and grinning in bemused fascination. Neither the Cimmerian nor Neesa took notice of Heng Shih, who rode a short distance behind them. His incredulous expression attested that he had missed nothing of their exchange. The Khitan passed a wide hand over his smooth pate and shook his head in wonder.
Lady Zelandra led her band of travelers along the river's flank.
Sweating workers clad only in breechclouts hoisted water from the darkly flowing body of the Styx with the aid of simple mechanisms made of lashed lengths of rough wood. A crude tripod supported an irregular pole with a heavy counterweight on one end, and a large bucket dangled from a rope on the other. The bucket was lowered until it was submerged, then the workers would add their bodies to the counterweight, lifting the full bucket from the river. Finally, the pole would be turned atop the tripod, swinging the bucket over the shore and dumping it into a waiting irrigation canal. To Conan it seemed a tedious way of making one's living.
Once among the white buildings of Aswana, the travelers became objects of much interest. Although the cobbled streets of the city were bustling with activity, Conan's band was conspicuous and exotic enough to draw the attention of the townsfolk. Naked children ran in the dust beside their horses' hooves, crying out to one another in shrill voices. A woman clad only in a diaphanous veil leaned from a second-story window and winked a kohl-darkened eye at the Cimmerian, who raised a hand in salutation, smiling until he felt the sharp and indignant eyes of Neesa upon him. When he turned his smile upon her she looked away, flushing.
Conan slowed in front of a low, windowless building with a crude sign proclaiming it to be a tavern. As he reined in his mount, a lean man in a faded, sweat-stained tunic emerged from the curtained doorway and stood blinking in the afternoon sun.
"Ho, friend," called the barbarian. "Where can I find an honest ferryman in this town?" The man he addressed took on a sour expression as he fingered the dirty headband that confined his tousled, graying hair
.
"Well, you won't find one now because Pesouris, may Set gnaw his cod, just took a load of acolytes across this morning. If I know that lazy cur, he shan't be back before nightfall."
"Isn't there another ferryman?"
"No, by the gods. I was a ferryman until the damned Stygians decided that one ferry was enough for Aswana and gave a royal seal to that pig Pesouris. Now he waxes rich, and I am left to test my luck fishing from a ferryboat."
Conan leaned toward the man conspiratorially, fixing him with a knowing gaze.
"What's your name, my friend?"
The fellow peered back at him with faded eyes touched with the bleariness of drink.
"I am Temoten. If you wish to speak further with me, ye'd best buy me a drink."
"Temoten, if you still have your ferryboat, why not take us across the Styx? You'll be plucking enough money from the purse of Pesouris to buy yourself a week's worth of wine."
Temoten drew back at the suggestion, his weathered face creased further by a skeptical frown. He shook his shaggy head.
"Nay. Pesouris would report me to the authorities of Bel-Phar, or even to the border patrol if he could. And if any Stygian soldiers were about when we made landfall, they'd want to see my ferryman's seal. As I have none, they'd behead me there on the docks. No thank you, stranger."
Temoten turned to walk off and almost collided with the Lady Zelandra, who had dismounted and now stood before him dangling a leather pouch from one delicate hand.
"My people and I need to cross the Styx without delay, Temoten," she said, "and I'm willing to pay well for the trip. Would you want this pouch to pass into the hands of Pesouris?"
The ferryman reached for the proffered pouch and poured a glittering stream of golden coins into a grimy palm. At once his eyes grew wider and more sober.
"Sweet Ishtar!" Temoten licked lips that had gone suddenly dry and wished mightily for a drink.
"Besides," continued Zelandra, "what fool in his right mind would contest the passage of my friends Heng Shih and Conan?"
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