Conan The Hero (2 page)

Conan cast swiftly about the temple porch. The farther gallery and ascending rampways looked long-deserted and weed-choked; likely there was no benefit to be gained exploring there. It was from below that scented smoke issued; as his companions arrived on the terrace, he plunged into the downward corridor.

Conan took four or five of the tiny stairsteps with each stride. Mentally he cursed the tightness of the corridor, which was miserly in comparison with the vast outer, dimensions of the monument. Its narrowness would permit only the first man in line to face the enemy, and even then it afforded no room to swing a sword. Worse, as he descended, his own bulky shadow and those of the men scuffing behind him quickly cut off the daylight. He was forced to slow his headlong rush and prod the scented darkness before him with his swordblade.

Squinting to pierce the dimness, he found himself at the base of the stair in a T-branching corridor; there, suddenly, he was attacked. An unseen club-wielder at one side beat down his extended sword, while the lurker in the other arm of the T stabbed up at his chest with a short, bronze-tipped spear. Catching sight of the razored spearpoint’s glint, Conan jerked back, retaining a desperate grip on his yataghan; an instant later his blade lashed out and struck off the menacing speartip—cleanly, like severing the head of a striking serpent. Then, with his fellow-warriors pressing forward at his back, Conan leaped into the level passage to engaged the club-swinger.

Sparks flew from the stone walls as Conan drove at his half-seen enemy. Metal chimed shrilly as his blade tried to stab past the man’s desperate parries. In a trice the club’s deep-notched edge caught the steel blade of the yataghan, twisting it down and aside out of action. The tribesman bore down savagely on the swordblade, trying desperately to snap it… even as Conan’s knife, plied in his free hand, buried itself to the hilt in the man’s side.

The Hwong collapsed with a moan, and Conan finished him with a quick, chopping swordstroke. No more enemies stood before him in the dimness. From the rush of feet behind him, he guessed that his fellow attackers had broken through in the other direction. He stepped over the corpse and pressed forward. A yellowish, indirect light outlined the curving passage ahead.

With a couple of Turanians panting at his back, Conan came to the end of the corridor. It opened into a shadowy room, broad and low-ceilinged, with a fire burning on the floor at its center. About the chamber dim shapes of ancient idols, stone pillars, and human figures reflected its glow.

At the room’s far end cries and weapon-blows sounded, where a pair of spearmen held the other wing of the attacking party at bay in the cramped entry; but this door was unguarded. Conan and his companions were well into the room before a youthful Hwong came pelting around the fire to face them. The young brave was attacked at once by the Turanians, giving Conan time to take in the dim scene.

Outlined by firelight was a bent figure in a stiff, flaring gown. From the cloak’s bristling feathers and winking ornaments, Conan judged it to be that of a shaman or magic-maker. In the crook of his arm the wizard supported a tall wooden staff crowned by a glittering, jewel-encrusted skull, whether real or cast of shiny metal Conan could not tell, so dense was the ornamentation. Its stooped owner, busy mumbling and tossing powders into the fire, glanced briefly up, and the dim backlight showed Conan a wizened, shriveled face of unguessable age. Calmly, then, the sage turned back to continue his chant unbroken, as if unconcerned by the intrusion of armed men.

Pinioned upright beyond the fire stood another remarkable figure, a slender female much harder to ignore. Naked but for some small adornment about her neck, she displayed strikingly the almond-eyed, saffron-skinned beauty which Conan found so alluring in the women of this southern clime. Shimmering full-lit before the fire, her body wavered above it like a shapely yellow flame. At her sides, two Hwong braves held her arms, forcing her so near the embers that her skin gleamed with perspiration. Her face, dark-eyed and tight-lipped in the gloom, gazed down into the flames in desperate resignation.

Whether the fire itself was the object of her fear, Conan could not guess; yet there was certainly something odd about it. The blaze was knee-high and arm-wide, a brisk conflagration, yet no supply of fuel was visible nearby. Where stubs of burned logs should have protruded, lazy fumes and smoky tendrils wove about the base of the flames. The whole fire came, perhaps, from the glistening dust the old priest sprinkled, grains of acrid incense whose pungency filled the room. The colors of the fire were strangely bright and varied; at times its glow almost seemed to take organic shape, like the swell and clutch of a carnivorous sea-flower bathed in restless ocean tides.

In the few racing heartbeats required to take in the scene, Conan’s companions struck at the lone tribesman from two directions at once. While they chopped him down with a flurry of merciless blows, Conan veered toward the captive woman. Meanwhile Juma, bellowing fierce Kushite curses, broke through the archway at the far side of the chamber. The two guards who opposed him were scattered like tossed knucklebones before his roaring charge.

The pair of warriors holding the yellow-skinned woman flinched back at these threats, the nearer one releasing her to draw a long, barb-bladed knife from his belt. Once, twice, it clashed against Conan’s flailing yataghan, until a powerful backhanded slash laid open the man’s neck and cast him sprawling into the fire. The other guard, meanwhile, had begun to drag his captive toward the shadowy rear of the chamber; now, at Conan’s instant pursuit, he hurled her to the floor and turned to dash away into the shadows himself. The northerner bent over the woman, seized her arm, and hauled to her feet. Swiftly he ascertained that her lithe, straight limbs and supple body bore no wound and no weapon. With her sweat-damp hands clutching at his arm for protection, Conan turned to face the cacophony of shouts echoing around him.

The magician had finally retreated from the fire, having disabled the two troopers who had accompanied Conan into the room. One danced weaponless, howling and slapping at several small gouts of colored flame which blazed from his tunic and even from his bare flesh; the other Turanian rolled screaming on the floor, beating at his garments, from which billows of thick smoke curled. The maker of these uncanny fires was scuttling nimbly away, dragging his skull-topped stave along with him, aided by one of the surviving guards from the far door. His trail was marked by flaming sparks of fire-dust, which still dripped from his withered hand.

“After him, Imperials! It is Mojurna! Come, you Turanian dogs, slay him!” Yell as Juma would to summon his troops in pursuit, they were slow to follow; some hung back to subdue wounded but still-fighting Hwong; others bent to help their agonized fellow warriors extinguish the gnawing flames, pinning the men down while scraping at their smoldering scars with keen knifeblades.

Conan’s impulse to dash after the fleeing wizard was hampered by the grip of his liberated captive at his arm. Rather than drag an unclothed, unarmed female back into danger, he stopped to pry himself loose from her.

“By Astoreth’s sacred dugs, woman,” he roared at last, “let me go slay your tormentors!”

As he shook her off, he was unable to tell from her blank stare whether she clung to him out of fear for herself, or for him, or to protect the wizard. Regardless, he broke free and lunged after Juma and a pair of less eager Turanian troopers, who dogged the Mojurna’s flame-speckled track.

Their pursuit was short. As they closed with the ancient shaman, he scuttled between a grimy altar and a hulking statue of a lion-headed warrior, into a deep crevice at the back of the gallery. Juma bent nearly double to follow him into the cranny, then darted suddenly backward as a heavy, dusty scraping sounded overhead. An instant later a massive slab thudded down in the entryway, striking sulfurous sparks from the lintel where it came to rest.

A few moments’ inspection showed that the trick door, whether mechanical or magical in its workings, had effectively sealed off the escape passage.

“By Otumbe and Ijo!” Juma swore fiercely, kicking the patterned face of the slab with his sandaled heel and probing at it with his sword. “The old one has escaped! ‘Twas Mojurna, the rebel chieftain we sought, Conan, I am sure of it!” Squinting at the impenetrable stone in the dim, fading firelight, he shrugged and turned back to the watching soldiers. “Come on, perhaps we can pick up his trail in the forest.”

“Aye.” Conan turned away with him. “In any case, we should not tarry here. If the wizard can make stones fall, he may try to seal us up in this chamber.”

He detoured back to his female prize, who stood watching where he had left her. Taking her by the wrist, he led her toward the entry. Still unclothed, she walked without apparent shame before the Turanian troopers. The men left off kindling torches, binding the Hwong captives, and aiding the burned troopers, turning to stare and mutter covetous remarks. Even the moaning wounded fell silent at her approach. But to the looks and gruff comments she gave no apparent heed.

Passing near the dying fire, Conan. halted with his ward to gaze at the remains of the man he had knocked into it. Considering the small size of the blaze and the short time which had elapsed, the body had been consumed with uncanny totality. Only a few tarnished metal trappings and stubs of bone remained, outlining the man’s shape in a sooty, sprawling X superimposed across the still-winking ashes.

“Dangerous sorcery, by Crom!” Conan muttered as he passed the incinerated remains.

“No, not by Crom, but by our ancient goddess Sigtona,” the woman declared at his side in smooth, liltingly accented Turanian. “Such is the Shining One’s power.” She shook her stately head, averting her eyes from the smoking remains. “I am glad it was not I who fed the goddess.”

“Make way! I go on the emperor’s business!”

Hiking his caftan up around his knees to keep it from flapping unbecomingly, Azhar the acolyte hurried along the tiled corridor. He shoved through a company of shaven-headed, bare-chested eunuchs and silk-wrapped female slaves bearing linens and water-jugs. These yielded scant way to him, forcing him to brush against their sleek, oiled bodies as he scurried past. Behind his back they flashed ribald, ironic grins at this self-important young man, not truly of a high caste. He was, after all, the slave of mere wizards, not of a mighty king.

Azhar, meanwhile, rounded the corner at the end of the passage. He emerged onto a long, roofed balcony patterned by bright daylight beaming through the filigreed stone railings. He maintained his brisk pace, sandals slapping the intricate mosaic tile. On his left, framed by the slender, graceful pillars supporting the balcony’s vaulted canopy, spread Aghrapur, capital city of Turan. Golden under noon sun, the jumble of tiled roofs and glittering domes stretched away out of sight, the view fading swiftly into a smoky, coppery haze born of ten thousand kilns, cookfires, and forges.

If not for the smothering haze, Azhar knew, the balcony would have commanded an even more breathless view of distant plains and mountains. Yet piously he reminded himself that the lord of the palace, the resplendent Emperor Yildiz of Turan, held sway over more of the earth than could possibly be glimpsed from the tallest mountaintop, even on the clearest day.

At length the porch rejoined the domed mass of the central palace. Azhar reentered cool, scented shadow, turning down a curving corridor in the direction of the emperor’s apartments. Finally, before a pair of gold-inlaid doors he halted, panting. Two red-cloaked Imperial Guards barred his way, their double-bladed axes meeting at the level of his chest.

“Let me pass!” he gasped to them. “I bring word to His Resplendency from the Court of Seers. I am to tell Emperor Yildiz—”

“Enough!” The ranking guard’s craggy, battle-scarred face was too stern to betray even contempt. “Go below to the common chamber and petition the eunuch, Dashibt Bey. If your business is of any merit, he can arrange an audience.”

“But sir… I mean, Guardian! Ibn Uluthan, the chief mage, told me…”

Breathless and confused, the acolyte faltered. Struck then by a sudden recollection, he reached to the neck of his caftan and fished anxiously inside it. The guard waited motionless before him, showing no fear of any weapon the scrawny lad might produce.

What he brought forth from his richly embroidered garment was a heavy signet ring, a glinting golden lump on a loop of silken cord. He pinched it waveringly in the air for the guard to inspect.

“The horned conch… symbol of the Khitan Seers.” The guard-commander looked coolly from Azhar to his younger comrade, who nodded understandingly. The Guild had entry where others were denied, even into the imperial presence.

Without further words, the officer retracted his ax. Hooking its weighty head on a catch at his belt, he turned to unlatch the ornate door. When one of the portals swung slightly ajar, he passed through, with Azhar treading cautiously at his heels. The second guard secured the door behind them.

Azhar, following the heavy footsteps of the armored warrior, scarcely dared crane his neck to marvel at the sumptuousness of the royal apartments about him. A dazzling rainbow of rugs and cushions littered the black and white tiled floor, their lush softness strewn between massive columns of varicolored marble and heavy tables of gold and onyx. Here and there amidst the lavish appointments, immaculately groomed servants waited still and silent as human furniture, with none of the insolence of the lesser palace slaves. And this, Azhar told himself with a thrill of awe, was only the Great One’s vestibule.

His escort halted to exchange muttered words with a bearded slave whose splendid turban betold high rank. Then he led the way through one of several nobly arched doorways into a high-ceilinged room. It resembled a ballroom, except for its floor; this fell away toward the center in broad, shallow stairsteps resembling those of an arena.

Around the upper edge of the depression, adorned in lavish silks, lounged eunuchs and courtiers of the highest rank. At the far side of the room, the Resplendent One himself sat on a padded couch, fanned by two kneeling servants. And yet at first, Azhar found himself unable to lavish his eyes on the divine sight, so peculiar was the nature of the entertainment underway in the shallow pit.