“Strumpet? What are you talking about?”
“Davinia.” She growled the name. “Isn’t that what she’s called? That old man—Sharak?—came up to try to quiet me. He told me you’d gone to see this … woman. And you have the same smug look on your face that my father wears when he’s just visited his zenana.”
Mentally Conan called down several afflictions, all of them painful, on Sharak’s head. Aloud he said, “Why should you care if I visit twenty women? Twice now I’ve saved your fool life, but there’s naught between us.”
“I did not say there was,” she said stoutly, but her shoulders sagged. Cautiously he released her wrists, and she sat down dejectedly on the roughly built bed, no more than straw ticking covered with a coarse blanket, with her hands folded in her lap. “You saved my life once,” she muttered. “Perhaps. But this other was naught but kidnap.”
“You did not see what I saw in that place, Yasbet. There was sorcery there, and evil.”
“Sorcery!” She frowned at him, then shook her head. “No, you lie to try to stop me from returning.”
He muttered under his breath, then asked, “How did you end up with them? When you ran away from me I thought you were going home.” He grinned in spite of himself. “You were going to climb over the garden wall.”
“I did,” she muttered, not meeting his eye.
“Fatima caught me atop the wall and locked me in my room.” She shifted her seat uncomfortably, and the remnants of an unpleasant memory flitted across her face.
Conan was suddenly willing to wager that locking her in her room was not all that the amah had done. Barely suppressing his chuckle, he said, “But that’s no reason to run away to something like this cult.”
“What do you know of it?” she demanded.
“Women labor on an equal footing with men there, and can rise equally, as well. There are no rich or poor in the cult, either.”
“But the cult itself is rich enough,” he said drily. “I’ve seen some of its treasures.”
“Because you went there to steal!”
“And I saw a man ensorceled to his death.”
“Lies!” she cried, covering her ears with her palms. “You’ll not stop me returning.”
“I’ll leave that to your father. You’re going back to him if I have to leave you at his door bound hand and foot.”
“You don’t even know who he is,” she said, and he had the impression that she just stopped herself from sticking her tongue out at him.
“I’ll find out,” he said with an air of finality.
As he got to his feet she caught his wrist in both of her hands. Her eyes were large with pleading. “Please, Conan, don’t send me back to my father. He … he has said I am to be married. I know the man. I will be a wife, yes, honored and respected. And locked in his zenana with fifty other women.”
He shook his head sympathetically, but said only, “Better that than the cult, girl.”
He expected her to make a break for the door as he left, but she remained sitting on the bed. Retying the latch cord, he returned to the common room. Akeba and Sharak barely looked up when he took a stool at their table.
“ …And so I tell you,” Sharak said, tapping the table with a bony finger for emphasis, “that any attempt at direct confrontation will be disaster.”
“What are you two carrying on about?” Conan asked.
“How we are to attack the Cult of Doom,” Akeba replied shortly. His eyes bore the grim memory of the night before. “There must be a way to bring this Jhandar down.” His face twisted with distaste. “I am told they call him Great Lord, as if he were a king.”
“And the Khitan, of course,” Sharak added.
“But Jhandar—he is leader of the cult—must have given the man orders. His sort do not kill for pleasure, as a rule.”
Conan was more than a little bewildered. “Khitan? His sort? You seem to have learned a great deal in the short time I’ve been gone.”
“’Twas not such a short time,” Sharak leered.
“How was she?” At the look on Conan’s face he hastily cleared his throat. “Yes. The Khitan. From Akeba’s description of the man who … well, I’m sure he was from Khitai, and a member of what is called the Brotherhood of the Way. These men are assassins of great skill.” A frown added new creases to his face. “But I still cannot understand what part the Hyrkanians played.”
“I’ve never heard of any such Brotherhood,” Conan said. “In truth, I no more than half believe Khitai exists.”
“They were strange to me, also,” Akeba said, “but the old man insists they are real. Whatever he is, though, I will kill him.”
“Oh, they’re real, all right,” Sharak said. “By the time your years number twice what they do now, you’ll begin to learn that more exists beneath the sky than you conceive in your wildest flights of fancy or darkest nightmares. The two of you must be careful with this Khitan. They of the Brotherhood of the Way are well versed in the most subtle poisons, and can slay with no more than a touch.”
“That I believe,” Akeba said hoarsely, “for I saw it.” He tilted up his mug and did not lower it till it was dry.
“You, especially, must take care, Conan,” the astrologer went on. “I know well how hot your head can be, and that fever can kill you. This assassin—”
Conan shook his head. “This matter of revenge is Akeba’s, not mine.”
Sharak squawked a protest. “But, Conan! Khitan assassins, revenge, Hyrkanians, and the gods alone know what else! How can we turn our backs on such an adventure?”
“You speak of learning,” Conan told him.
“You’ve still to learn that adventure means an empty belly, a cold place to sleep, and men wanting to put a dagger in your ribs. I find enough of that simply trying to live, without seeking for it.”
“He is right,” Akeba said, laying a hand on the old man’s arm. “I lost a daughter to the Grave-digger’s Guild this morn. I have reason to seek vengeance, but he has none.”
“I still think it a poor reason to stand aside,” Sharak grumbled.
Conan shared a smile with Akeba over the old man’s head. In many ways Sharak qualified as a sage, but in some he was far younger than the Cimmerian.
“For now,” Conan said, “I think what we must do is drink.” Nothing would ever make Akeba forget, but at least the memory could be dulled until protecting scars had time to form. “Ferian!” he bellowed. “A pitcher of wine! No, a bucket!”
The innkeeper served them himself, a pitcher of deep red Solvanian in each hand and a mug for Conan under his arm. “I have no buckets,” he said drily.
“This will do,” Conan said, filling the mugs all around. “And take something up to my room for the girl to eat.”
“Her food is extra,” Ferian reminded him.
Conan thought of the gold weighting his belt, and smiled. “You’ll be paid.” The tapster left, muttering to himself, and Conan turned his attention to the astrologer. “You, Sharak,” he said sharply.
Sharak spluttered into his wine. “Me? What? I said nothing.”
“You said too much,” the Cimmerian said. “Why did you tell Yasbet I was going to see Davinia? And what did you tell her, anyway?”
“Nothing,” the old man protested. “I was trying to quiet her yelling—you said not to gag her—and
I thought if she knew you were with another woman she wouldn’t be afraid you were going to ravish her. That’s what women are always afraid of. Erlik take it, Cimmerian, what was wrong with that?”
“Just that she’s jealous,” Conan replied. “I’ve talked to her but twice and never laid a hand on her, but she’s jealous.”
“Never laid a hand on her? You tied her like a sack of linen,” Akeba said.
“It must be his charm,” Sharak added, his face impossibly straight.
“’Tis funny enough for you two,” Conan said darkly, “but I was near brained with my own washbasin. She … .”
As rude laugh
ter drowned Conan’s next words, Ferian ran panting up to the table.
“She’s gone, Cimmerian!” the tavernkeeper gasped. “I swear by Mitra and Dagon I don’t believe she could squeeze through that window, but she did.”
Conan sprang to his feet. “She cannot have been gone long. Akeba, Sharak, will you help me look?”
Akeba nodded and rose, but Sharak grimaced. “An you don’t want her, Cimmerian, why not leave her for someone who does?”
Without bothering to reply Conan turned to go, Akeba with him. Sharak followed hastily, hobbling with his staff.
Once in the street, the three men separated, and for near a turn of the glass Conan found nothing but frustration. Hawkers of cheap perfumes and peddlers of brass hairpins, fruit vendors, potters, street urchins,—none had seen a girl, so tall, large-breasted and beautiful, wearing saffron robes and possibly running. All he found were blank looks and shaken heads. No few of the strumpets suggested that he could find what he was looking for with them, and some men cackled that they might keep the girl themselves, did they find her, but their laughter faded to nervous sweating under his icy blue gaze.
As he returned to the stone-fronted tavern, he met Akeba and Sharak. At the Turanian’s questioning glance he shook his head.
“Then she’s done with,” the astrologer said. “My throat needs cool wine to soothe it after all the people I’ve questioned. I’ll wager Ferian has given our Solvanian to someone else.”
The pitchers remained on the table where they had left them, but Conan did not join in the drinking. Yasbet was not done with, not to his mind. He found it strange that that should be so, but it was. Davinia was a woman to make a man’s blood boil; Yasbet had heated his no more than any other pretty wench he saw in passing. But he had saved her life, twice, for all her denials. In his belief that made him responsible for her. Then too, she needed him to protect her. He was not blind to the attractions she had for a man.
He became aware of a Hyrkanian approaching the table, stooped and bowed of leg, his rancid smell preceding him. His coarse woolen trousers and sheepskin coat were even filthier than was usual for the nomads, if such was possible. Two paces short of them he stopped, his long skinny nose twitching as if prehensile and his black eyes on the Cimmerian. “We have your woman,” he said gutturally, then straightened in alarm at the blaze of rage that lit Conan’s face.
Conan was on his feet with broadsword half-drawn before he himself realized that he had moved.
Akeba grasped his arm. Not the sword arm; he was too old a campaigner for that. “Hear him out before you kill him,” he urged.
“Talk!” Conan’s voice grated like steel on bone.
“Tamur wants to talk with you,” the Hyrkanian began slowly, but his words came faster as he went. “You fought with some of us, though, and Tamur does not think you will talk with us, so we take your woman until you talk. You will talk?”
“I’ll talk,” Conan growled. “And if she’s been harmed, I’ll kill, too. Now take me to her.”
“Tonight,” was the thick reply.
“Now!”
“One turn of the glass after the sun sets, someone will come for you.” The Hyrkanian eyed Akeba and Sharak. “For you alone.”
The last length of Conan’s blade rasped from its worn shagreen sheath.
“No, Conan,” Sharak urged. “Kill him, and you may never find her again.”
“They would send another,” Conan said, but after a moment he tossed his sword on the table. “Leave me before I change my mind,” he told the nomad, and, scooping up one of the wine pitchers, tilted back his head in an effort to drain it. The Hyrkanian eyed him doubtfully, then trotted from the tavern.
XI
Davinia stretched luxuriously as gray-haired Renda’s fingers worked perfumed oils into the smooth muscles of her back. There was magic in the plump woman’s hands, and the blonde woman needed it. The big barbarian had been more than she bargained for. And he had intimated that he would return. He had not named a time but that he would return was certain. Her knowledge of men told her so. Though it was but a few turns of the glass since Conan had left her, a tingling frisson of anticipation rippled through her at the thought of long hours more in his massive arms. To which gods, she wondered, should she offer sacrifices to keep Mundara Khan from the city longer?
A tap at the door of Davinia’s tapestry-hung dressing chamber drew Renda’s hands from her shoulders. With a petulant sigh, the sleek blonde waited impatiently until her tiring woman returned.
“Mistress,” Renda said quietly, “there is a man to see you.”
Careless of her nakedness, Davinia sat up. “The barbarian?” She confided everything in her tiring woman. Almost everything. Surely Conan would not dare enter through the gates and have himself announced, yet simply imagining the risk of it excited her more than she would have believed possible.
“No, mistress. It is Jhandar, Great Lord of the Cult of Doom.”
Davinia blinked in surprise. She was dimly aware of the existence of the cult, though she did not concern herself unduly with matters of religion. Why would a cult leader come to her? Perhaps he would be amusing.
“A robe, Renda,” she commanded, rising.
“Mistress, may I be so bold—”
“You may not. A robe.”
She held out her arms as Renda fastened about her a red silken garment. Opaque, she noted. Renda always had more thought for her public reputation—and thus her safety—than did she.
Davinia made a grand entrance into the chamber where Jhandar waited. Slaves drew open the tall, ornately carved doors for her to sweep through. As the doors were closed she posed, one foot behind the other, one knee slightly bent, shoulders back. The man half-reclined on a couch among the columns. For just an instant her pose lasted, then she continued her advance, seeming to ignore the man while in fact she studied him. He no longer reclined, but rather sat on the edge of the couch.
“You are … different than I expected,” he said hoarsely.
She permitted herself a brief smile, still not looking directly at him. Exactly the effect she had tried for.
He was not an unhandsome man, this Jhandar, she thought. The shaven head, however, rather spoiled his looks. And those ears gave him an unpleasantly animalistic countenance.
For the first time she faced him fully, lips carefully dampened with her tongue, eyes on his in an adoring caress. She wanted to giggle as she watched his breath quicken. Men were so easily manipulated. Except, perhaps, the barbarian. She hastily pushed aside the intruding thought. Carefully, she made sure of a breathy tone.
“You wish to see me … Jhandar, is it not?”
“Yes,” he said slowly. Visibly he caught hold of himself. His breath still came rapidly, but there was a degree of control in his eyes. A degree. “Have you enjoyed the necklace, Davinia?”
“Necklace?”
“The ruby necklace. The one stolen from me only last night.”
His voice was calm, so conversational that it took a moment for the meaning of his words to enter her. Shock raced through her. She wondered if her eyes were bulging. The necklace. How could she have been so stupid as not to make the connection the moment Jhandar was announced? It was that accursed barbarian. She seemed able to concentrate on little other than him.
“I have no idea of what you speak,” she said, and was amazed at the steadiness of her voice. Inside she had turned to jelly.
“I wonder what Mundara Khan will say when he knows you have a stolen necklace. Perhaps he will inquire, forcefully, into who gave such a thing to his mistress.”
“I bought—” She bit her tongue. He had flustered her. It was not supposed to happen that way. It was she who disconcerted men.
“I know that Emilio was your lover,” he said quietly. “Has Conan taken his place there, too?”
“What do you want?” she whispered. Desperately she wished for a miracle to save her, to take him away.
“One piece of information
,” he replied. “Where may I find the barbarian called Conan?”
“I don’t know,” she lied automatically. The admission already made was one too many.
“A pity.” He bit off the words, sending a shiver through her. “A very great pity.”
Davinia searched for a way to deflect him from his purpose. All that passed through her mind, echoing and re-echoing, was ‘a very great pity.’
“You may keep the necklace,” he said suddenly. She stared at him in surprise. He did not have complete control of himself still, she saw. He had continually to lick dry lips, and his eyes drank her in as a man in the desert drank water. “Thank you. I—”
“Wear it for me.”
“Of course,” she said. There was still a chance. She left the room as regally as she had entered, but once outside, before the slaves had even closed the doors, she ran—despite the fact that to be languid at all times was one mark of a properly cared-for mistress.
Renda, arranging the pillows on Davinia’s bed, leaped as her mistress dashed into the chamber. “Mistress, you startled me!”
“Tell me what you know of this Jhandar,” Davinia panted, as she dropped to her knees and began rooting in her jewel chest. “Quickly. Hurry!”
“Little is known, mistress,” the plump tire-woman said hesitantly. “The cult professes—”
“Not that, Renda!” Tossing bits of jewelry left and right, she came up with the stolen necklace clutched in her fist. Despite herself, she breathed a sigh of relief. “Mitra be thanked. Tell me what the servants and slaves know, what their masters will not know for half a year more. Tell me!”
“Mistress, what has he … .” She broke off at Davinia’s glare. “Jhandar is a powerful man in Turan, mistress. So it is whispered among the servants. And ’tis said he grows more powerful by the day. Some say the increase in the army was begun by him, by his telling certain men, who in turn convinced the king, that it should be so. Of course, it is well known that King Yildiz has long dreamed of empire. He would not have taken a great deal of telling.”
“Still,” Davinia murmured, “it is a display of power.” Mundara Khan had never swayed the king for all his blood connections to the throne. “How does he accomplish it?”