“Slow down!” Conan commanded sharply. “Yasbet is unharmed?”
Bayan swallowed hard. “I … I know not. Before Mitra and Dagon I swear that I raised no hand against her. She was alive when I left. Muktar gave a signal, you see, and Tewfik and Marantes and I went at the stranger with our daggers, but he killed them before a man could blink. He just touched them, and they were dead. And then, then he demanded Muktar slit my throat.” He made a sound, half laughter, half weeping. “Evidence of future good faith, he called it. And that fat spawn of a diseased goat was going to do it! I saw it on his face, and I ran. I hope he’s drowned in this accursed storm. I pray he and Foam Dancer are both at the bottom of the sea.”
“An ill-chosen prayer,” Conan said between clenched teeth. “Yasbet is on that vessel.” With a despairing wail Bayan sank groveling to his knees. “Put him back where he was,” Conan spat. Tamur jerked the wiry seaman to his feet; the Cimmerian watched them go. “Is this galley too damaged to sail?” he demanded of the captain.
The hook-nosed man had lain with his mouth open, listening while Bayan talked. Now he snorted. “Only a dirt-eater would think so. Once this storm is gone, give me half a day for repairs and I’ll sail her anywhere on the Vilayet, in any weather.”
“The repairs you need, you’ll make at sea,” Conan said levelly. “And we sail as soon as the storm abates enough for us to get off this beach without being smashed to splinters.” The captain opened his mouth, and Conan laid his blade against the seaman’s throat. “Or mayhap one of these other three would like to be captain.”
The captain’s eyes bulged, and his mouth worked. Finally he said, “I’ll do it. ’is likely we’ll all of us drown, but I’ll do it.”
Conan nodded. He had expected no other decision. Yasbet was being carried closer to Jhandar by the moment. The storm drumming against the hull seemed to echo the sorcerer’s name. Jhandar. This time they would meet face to face, he and Jhandar, and one of them would die. One or both. Jhandar.
XXIII
Jhandar, lounging on cushions of multicolored silk spread beside a fountain within a walled garden, watched Davinia exclaiming over his latest gifts to her, yet his thoughts were elsewhere. Three days more and, as matters stood, all his plans would come to naught. Could the wench not sense the worry in him?
“They are beautiful,” Davinia said, stretching arms encircled by emerald bracelets above her head. Another time he would have felt sweat popping out on his forehead. Her brief, golden silks left the inner slopes of her rounded breasts bare, and her girdle, two fingerwidths of sapphires and garnets hung with the bright feathers of rare tropic birds, sat low on the swelling of her hips. Sulty eyes caressed him. “I will have to think of a way to show my gratitude,” she purred.
He acknowledged her only with a casual wave of his hand. In three days Yildiz, that fat fool, would meet with his advisors to decide where to use the army he had built. Of the Seventeen Attendants, eight would speak for empire, for war with Zamora. Only eight, and Jhandar knew that Yildiz merely counted the number of those who supported or opposed, rather than actually weighing the advice given. Jhandar needed one more to speak for war. One of the nine other. Who could have believed the nine lived lives which, if not completely blameless, still gave him no lever to use against them? One more he needed, yet all the nine would speak for peace, for reducing the numbers of the army. Short of gaining Yildiz’s own ear, he had done all that could be done, yet three days would see a year’s work undone.
It would take even longer to repair matters. He must first arrange the assassination of an Attendant, perhaps more than one if his efforts to guide the selection of the new Attendant failed. Then it would take time to build the army again. If things were otherwise, three days could see the beginnings of an empire that would be his in all but name. Kings would journey to him, kneel at his feet to hear his commands. Instead, he would have to begin again, wait even longer for that he had awaited so long.
And that wait added another risk. What had the man Conan sought in Hyrkania? What had he found that might be used against the Power? Why did Che Fan not return with the barbarian’s head in a basket?
“You will let me have them, Jhandar?”
“Of course,” he said absently, then pulled himself from his grim ruminations. “Have what?”
“The slaves.” There was petulance in Davinia’s voice, a thing he had noticed more often of late. “Haven’t you been listening?”
“Certainly I’ve been listening. But tell me about these slaves again.”
“Four of them,” she said, moving to stand straddle-legged beside him. Now he could feel sweat on his face. Sunlight surrounded her with a nimbus, a woman of golden silk, glowing hot. “Well-muscled young men, of course,” she went on. “Two of blackest hue, and two as pale as snow. The one pair I will dress in pearls and rubies, the other in onyx and emeralds. They will be as a frame for me. To make me more beautiful for you,” she added hastily.
“What need have you for slave boys?” he growled. “You have slaves in plenty to do your bidding. And that old hag, Renda, to whom you spend so much time whispering.”
“Why, to bear my palanquin,” she laughed, tinkling musical notes. Fluidly she sank to her knees, bending till her breasts pressed against his chest. Her lips brushed the line of his jaw. “Surely my Great Lord would not deny my bearers. My Great Lord, who it is my greatest pleasure to serve. In every way.”
“I can deny you nothing,” he said thickly. “You may have the slaves.”
In her eyes he caught a fleeting glimpse of greed satisfied, and the moment soured for him. She would leave him did she ever find one who could give her more. He meant to be sure there could never be such a one, but still … . He could bind her to him with the golden bowl and her heart’s blood. None who saw or talked with her would ever know she did not in truth live. But he would know.
Someone cleared his throat diffidently. Scowling, Jhandar sat up. Zephran stood on the marble path, bowing deeply over folded hands, eyes carefully averted from Davinia.
“What is it?” Jhandar demanded angrily.
“Suitai is returned, Great Lord,” his shaven-headed myrmidion replied.
Instantly Jhandar’s anger was gone, along with his thoughts of Davinia. Careless of his dignity, he scrambled to his feet. “Lead,” he commanded. Dimly he noted that Davinia followed as well, but matters not of the flesh dominated his mind once more.
Suitai waited in Jhandar’s private audience chamber, its bronze lion lamps unlit at this hour. A large sack lay on the mosaicked floor at the Khitan’s feet.
“Where is Che Fan?” Jhandar demanded as he entered.
“Perished, Great Lord,” Suitai replied, and Jhandar hesitated in his stride.
Despite his knowledge to the contrary, Jhandar had begun to think in some corners of his mind that the two assassins were indestructible. It was difficult to imagine what could slay one of them.
“How?” he said shortly.
“The barbarian enlisted the aid of a Hyrkanian witch-woman, Great Lord. She, also, died.”
That smile meant that Suitai had been her killer, Jhandar thought briefly, without interest. “And the barbarian?”
“Conan is dead as well, Great Lord.”
Jhandar nodded slowly, feeling a strange relief. This Conan had been but a straw in the wind after all, catching the eye as it flashed by, yet unimportant. Suitai’s smile had faded at the mention of the barbarian, no doubt because Che Fan had actually slain the fellow. At times he thought that Suitai’s thirst for blood would eventually prove a liability. Now he had no time for such petty worries.
“The crew of the galley was disposed of as I commanded, Suitai? I wish no links between myself and Hyrkania.” Not until he was able to control that region the shamans had blasted, thus containing whatever might be of danger to him within. Not until his power was secure in Turan.
The tall Khitan hesitated. “The galley was damaged, Great Lord, and could not pu
t to sea. I left its crew waiting for me. Without doubt the coastal tribes have attended to them by now. Instead I hired the vessel the barbarian used, and came ashore well north of the city.”
“And the crew of this ship?”
“Dead, Great Lord. I slew them, and guided the ship to the beach myself.” An unreadable expression flickered across the assassin’s normally impassive face, and Jhandar eyed him sharply. Suitai shifted uneasily beneath that gaze, then went on slowly. “The captain, Great Lord, a fat man called Muktar, leaped into the sea, surely to drown. I have no doubt of it.”
“You have no doubt of a great many things, Suitai.” Jhandar’s voice was silky, yet dripped venom like a scorpion’s tail.
Sweat appeared on Suitai’s brow. The mage had a deadly lack of patience with those who did not perform exactly as he commanded. Hurriedly the Khitan bent to the large sack at his feet.
“I brought you this gift, Great Lord.” The lashings of the sack came loose, and he spilled a girl out onto the mosaicked floor, wrists bound to elbows behind her back, legs doubled tightly against her breasts, the thin cords that held her cutting deeply into her naked flesh. She grunted angrily into her gag as she tumbled onto the floor, and attempted to fight her bonds, but only her toes and fingers wriggled. “The girl the barbarian stole from the compound, Great Lord,” Suitai announced with satisfaction.
Jhandar snorted. “Don’t think to make up for your shortcomings. What is one girl more or less to—”
“Why, it’s Esmira,” Davinia broke in.
The necromancer scowled irritably. He had forgotten that she had followed him. “That’s not her name. She is called … .” It took a moment, though he did remember marking the wench for his bed, long ago it seemed. “ …Yasbet. That’s it. Now return to the garden, Davinia. I have matters to discuss here that do not concern you.”
Instead the lithe blonde squatted on her heels by the bound girl, using both hands to twist the struggling wench’s gagged face around for a better look. “I tell you this is the Princess Esmira, Prince Roshmanli’s daughter.”
Jhandar’s mouth was suddenly dry. “Are you certain? The rumors say the princess if cloistered.”
She gave him a withering look that would have elicited instant and painful punishment for anyone else. From her, at this moment, he ignored it. The prince was Yildiz’s closest advisor among the Attendants, of the nine, a man who seduced no woman with a husband and gambled only with his own gold. Yet it was said his daughter was his weakness, that he would do anything to shelter her from the world. For the safety of his Esmira, would Roshmanli send Turan to war? He had had men slain for casting their eyes upon her. If handled carefully, it could be done.
Then his eyes fell on Davinia, smiling smugly as he examined the bound girl, and a new thought came to him.
He pulled the blonde to her feet. “You say you want only to serve me. Do you speak the truth?”
“To you,” she replied slowly, “I speak only truth.”
“Then this night there will be a ceremony. In that ceremony you will plunge a dagger into the heart of this girl.” He gazed deeply into her eyes, searching for hesitation, for vacillation. There was none.
“As my Great Lord commands me,” Davinia said smoothly.
Jhandar felt the urge to throw back his head and laugh wildly. She had taken the first step. Once she had wielded the knife, she would be bound to him more firmly than with iron chains. And by the same stroke he would gain the ninth voice among the King’s Attendants. All of his dreams were taking shape. Empire and the woman. He would have it all.
XXIV
Dark seas rolled beneath the galley’s ram, phosphorescence dancing on her bow wave, as the measured sweep of three score oars drew it on. Ahead in the night the darker mass of the Turanian coast was marked by white-breaking waves glinting beneath the pale, cloud-chased moon.
Echoes of those crashing breakers rolled across the waters to Conan. He stood in the stern of the galley, where he could keep close watch on both captain and steersman. Already they had attempted to take the ship other than as he directed—perhaps into the harbor at Aghrapur, so that he and the rest could be seized as pirates—and only the scanty knowledge he had gained with the smugglers had thus far thwarted them. The rest of the vessel’s crew, sullen and disarmed, worked under the watchful eyes of Akeba, Tamur, and the nomads. Sharak clung to the lines that supported the foremast, and gazed on the heavens, seeking the configurations that would tell their fates that night.
Conan cared not what the stars foretold. Their destinies would be as they would be, for he would not alter what he intended by so much as a hair. “There,” he said, pointing ahead. “Beach there.”
“There’s nothing there,” the captain protested.
“There,” Conan repeated. “’Tis close enough to where we’re going. I’d think you would be glad to see our backs, wherever we wanted to be put ashore.”
Grumbling, the slab-cheeked captain spoke to his steersman, and the galley shifted a point to larboard, toward the stretch of land at which the big Cimmerian had pointed.
With scanty information had Conan made his choice. The distant glow of lamps from Aghrapur to the south. A glimpse at the stars. Instinct. Perhaps, he thought, that last had played the most important part. He knew that on that shore stood the compound of the Cult of Doom, Yasbet’s place of imprisonment, and Jhandar, the man he must kill even if he died himself.
Sand grated beneath the galley’s keel. The vessel lurched, heeled, was driven further forward by the motion of long sweeps. Finally motion ceased; the deck tilted only slightly.
“It’s done,” the hook-nosed captain announced, anger warring with satisfaction on his face. “You can leave my vessel, now, and I’ll give burnt offerings to Dagon when you’re gone.”
“Akeba!” Conan called. On receiving an answering hail he turned back to the captain. “I advise you to go south along the coast, you and your crew. I do not know what will happen here this night, but I fear powers will be unbound. One place I have seen where such bonds were cut; there nightmares walked, and some would count death a blessing.”
“Sorcery?” The word was a hiss of indrawn breath in the captain’s mouth, changing to shaky, blustering laughter. “An sorceries are to be loosed, I have no fears of being caught in them. I will be clear of the beach before you, and I will go south as fast as whips can drive my oar-sl—” Hatch covers crashing open amidships cut him off, and the clatter of men scrambling on deck, whip-scarred, half-naked men falling over themselves in their eagerness to dash to the rail and drop to the surf below. The hook-nosed man’s eyes bulged as he stared at them. “You’ve loosed the oar slaves! You fool! What—” He spun back to Conan, and found himself facing the Cimmerian’s blade.
“Three score oars,” Conan said quietly, “and two men chained to each. I have no love for chains on men, for I’ve worn them around my own neck. Normally I do not concern myself with freeing slaves. I cannot strike off all the chains in the world, or in Turan, or even in a single city, and if I could, men would find ways to put them back again before they had a chance to grow dusty. Still, the world may end this night, and the men who have brought me to my fate deserve their freedom, as they and all the rest of us may be dead before dawn. You had best get over the side, captain. Your own life may depend on how fast you can leave this place.”
The hook-nosed captain glared at him, face growing purple. “Steal my slaves, then order me off my own vessel? Rambis!” He bit it off as he stared at the vacant spot by the steering oar. Conan had seen the man slip quietly over the railing as he spoke.
Discovery of the defection took what was left of the captain’s backbone. With a strangled yelp he leaped into the sea.
Sheathing his sword, Conan turned to join his companions, and found himself facing some two dozen filthy galley slaves, gathered in a different knot amidships. Akeba and the Hyrkanians watched them warily.
A tall man with a long, tangled black beard and
the scars of many floggings stepped forward, ducking his head. “Your pardon, lord. I am called Akman. It is you who has freed us? We would follow you.”
“I’m no lord,” Conan said. “Be off with you while you have time, and be grateful you do not follow me. I draw my sword against a powerful sorcerer, and there is dying to be done this night.” A handful of the former slaves melted into the darkness, splashes sounding their departure.
“Still there are those of us who would follow you, lord,” Akman said. “For one who has lived as a dead man, to die as a free man is a greater boon than could be expected from the gods.”
“Stop calling me lord,” Conan growled. Akman bowed again, and the other rowers behind him. Shaking his head, Conan sighed. “Find weapons, then, and make peace with your gods. Akeba! Tamur! Sharak!”
Without waiting to see what the freed slaves would do, the big Cimmerian put a hand to the railing and vaulted into waist-deep seas that broke against his broad back and sent foam over his shoulders. The named men followed as he waded to shore, a stretch of driftwood-covered sand where moon-shadows stirred.
“They’ll be more hindrance than help, those slaves,” Sharak grumbled, attempting to wring seawater from his robes without dropping his staff. “This is a matter for fighting men.”
“And you are the stoutest of them all,” Akeba laughed, clapping the old astrologer on the shoulder and almost knocking him down. His laughter sounded wild and grim, the laughter of a man who would laugh in the face of the dark gods and was doing so now. “And you, Cimmerian. Why so somber? Even if we die we will drag Jhandar before Erlik’s Black Throne behind us.”