“A sorcerer.” He could not believe otherwise, after all else he had heard.
“Aye, a sorcerer. You see, I tell you everything that I know. I wish success for this journey as much or more than you. Are you frightened, or can you face what comes? Remember your Valeria.”
His face hardened at her words. “I have said I will do it, and I will.”
“Very well,” Taramis said. “Now, one final thing, as important as all the rest, at least to you. On the seventh night from now will there be a configuration of the stars that occurs but once in a thousand years. It is during that configuration that I can bring Valeria back to you. If you have returned to me with the treasure and the Lady Jehnna.” Her raised hand forestalled the protest he was forming. “My astrologers can locate neither the key nor the treasure, but they assure me both can be found and returned here within the time.”
“They assure you,” he laughed grimly.
He peered into his goblet, and drained the rest of the wine in one gulp. An hour before, he thought, he had waded to his knees in sorcery, and cautiously. Now he knew he waded to his neck, and in the fog.
Suddenly a scream ripped through the palace, a girl’s scream. Again it came, and again. Conan leaped to his feet, a hand going to his sword. He saw the guards tense, and realized it was in response to him. The screams had brought no stir from them.
“It is my niece,” Taramis said hastily. “Jehnna suffers nightmares. Sit, Conan. Sit. I will return when I have seen to her comfort.” And to the Cimmerian’s surprise the Princess Royal of Zamora ran from the room.
Taramis did not not have far to run, and anger lent her speed. She had thought the nightmares dealt with, gone to plague their nights no more. Her niece was curled into a ball in the middle of her bed, sobbing convulsively in the dim light of the moon shining through arched windows. Taramis was not surprised to find no servant in attendance. They knew only she could deal with the dark visions that tormented Jehnna’s night. The noblewoman knelt beside the bed and put her hands on Jehnna’s shoulders.
The girl started, then saw Taramis and clutched at her. “It was a dream!” she wept. “A horrible dream!” Not yet eighteen, Jehnna was slender and pretty, but now her large, dark eyes swam with tears and her full lips trembled beyond control.
“Only a dream,” Taramis soothed, stroking the girl’s long, black hair. “No more than a dream.”
“But I saw—I saw—”
“Ssssh. Rest, Jehnna. Tomorrow you begin your grand adventure. You cannot let dreams frighten you now.”
“But it frightened me so,” Jehnna faltered.
“Hush, child.”
Lightly Taramis rested her fingertips on Jehnna’s temples, and chanted beneath her breath. Slowly the girl’s sobs quieted, her tremblings stilled. When her breathing took on the slow, deep rhythm of sleep, Taramis straightened. A hundred times she had thought the dream and the memories of the dream were banished, but each time the accursed dream returned to haunt her. She rubbed at her own temples. The same power that gave the girl her destiny made it harder each time to push away the nightmare. But without that power and destiny there would have been no nightmares. Jehnna was the One spoken of in the scrolls, and that was what was important. This time the banishment would last long enough. It had to.
All of her life had Taramis been on this path, truly since infancy. As soon as she was old enough to be aware of herself, her own aunt, the Princess Elfaine, began to teach her of the only two ways a woman could truly have power, seduction and sorcery. When Elfaine died, the child Taramis, but ten years of age, did not attend the funereal rites. Older heads thought her absence was an indication of her grief. In actuality she had been ransacking her aunt’s private chambers, stealing the sorcerous tomes and magical artifacts that Elfaine had spent a lifetime collecting. And there she found the Scrolls of Skelos. Within a phasing of the moon she began the twenty years of labor that now approached culmination.
She became aware of Bombatta standing in the doorway, staring at the girl on the bed. Swiftly she crossed the room and took him by the arms. For a moment he resisted; then he allowed himself to be drawn into the darkened corridor.
“You no longer even hide it, do you?” she said with deceptive quiet. “You desire my niece. Do not attempt to deny it.”
He towered over her, but he shifted from foot to foot like a boy awaiting chastisement. “I cannot help myself,” he muttered finally. “You are fire and passion. She is innocence and purity. I cannot help myself.”
“And she must remain innocent. It is written in the Scrolls of Skelos.”
In truth, the scrolls did not require Jehnna to be virgin, merely innocent of the slightest seed of evil, a pure soul incapable of thinking wrong or harm toward anyone or of believing that anyone might mean such toward her. Her carefully cloistered life had assured that. But Taramis had seen what was happening in Bombatta long before he had become aware of it himself, and nurtured his belief.
“Even were it not,” she told him, “you are mine, and I will not share what is mine.”
“I like it not that you are alone with the thief,” he growled.
“Alone?” Taramis laughed. “The four best of your guards stand ready to seize him or cut him down should he threaten me.” The huge warrior spoke under his breath, and she frowned. “Speak loudly enough for me to hear, Bombatta. I do not like things hidden from me.”
For a long moment he stared at her, black eyes burning, then said, “I cannot bear the thought of the thief looking at you, wanting you, touching you … .”
“You forget yourself.” Each word slashed like an icy razor. Bombatta took a step back, then slowly sank to his knees, head bent.
“Forgive me,” he muttered. “But this Conan cannot be trusted. He is an outlander, a thief.”
“Fool! The scrolls say that Jehnna must be accompanied by a thief with eyes the color of the sky. There is not another such in Shadizar, perhaps not in all of Zamora. You will do as I have commanded you. You will follow the instruction of the scrolls exactly. Exactly, Bombatta.”
“As you command,” he murmured, “so do I obey.”
Taramis touched his head, much as she might fondle the head of one of her wolfhounds. “Of course, Bombatta.” She felt flushed with victory, for it certainly would come now. The Horn of Dagoth would be hers. Immortality and power would be hers. The knowledge sent sparks through her, and flashes of heat that coiled in her belly. Her hand trembled on Bombatta’s black hair. She took a deep breath. “Rest assured that all will occur as I have planned, Bombatta. Now return to your chambers and sleep. Sleep, and dream of our triumph.”
Unmoving on his knees, Bombatta watched her go, his obsidian eyes glittering in the dark.
Conan got to his feet as Taramis entered the bedchamber. “Your niece?” he asked.
“She is better. She sleeps.” The voluptuous noblewoman raised a hand, and the ebon-clad guards marched from the room without a word. “Do you sleep, thief, or are you awake? It is late, and you would talk of my niece.” Folds of diaphanous silk moved as she walked, showing flashes of bare skin beneath.
The Cimmerian eyed her doubtfully. With a serving girl or even a rich merchant’s daughter, he would have been certain what she meant. With a princess he was unsure.
“Are you still a man?” she laughed. “Has mourning for your beloved Valeria unmanned you?”
Conan growled. He knew he could not explain to Taramis what had stood and did stand between Valeria and himself. He was not sure he had it entirely clear in his own mind. But of one thing he was sure. “I am a man,” he said.
Taramis’ hands went to her neck. Black silk cascaded to pool about her feet. There was challenge in her dark eyes, and her rounded nudity. “Prove it,” she taunted.
Disdaining the bed, Conan bore her to the floor and gave the proofs she asked.
v
Conan stared into the fire of dried dung—small, so as to attract no unwanted attention from others who might
be spending the night on the Zamoran plain—and thought briefly of other, sorcerous flames on a crude stone altar. A full day’s ride from Shadizar, and still Malak had not appeared. The Cimmerian did not like admitting to a need for anyone’s aid, but he was more certain than ever that he would need Akiro before this journey was done. And after, if Taramis delivered what she promised. Where in Zandru’s Nine Hells was Malak?
Scowling, he pulled himself from the useless reverie and found himself studying his companions. Or rather, one of them.
Bombatta solicitously filled a silver cup from one of their goatskin waterbags and offered it to Jehnna. With a thankful smile she reached one hand from under her cloak of the palest white wool, pulled tight about her against the chill of the night. The girl was not at all what Conan expected, and he still had not accustomed himself to the difference. Taramis had spoken of her niece as a child, and he had formed an image of a girl of nine or ten years, not one of his own age, with a slender body that moved beneath her concealing robes with the unconscious grace of a gazelle.
“Our direction,” the Cimmerian said abruptly. “Do we continue the same way on the morn, Jehnna?”
“The Lady Jehnna, thief,” Bombatta corrected in a growl.
Jehnna blinked, as if startled at being addressed. Her brown eyes, as large and tremulous as those of a newborn fawn, stared at him for a moment, then turned to Bombatta. She addressed her answer to the black-armored warrior. “I will know more later, but for now, I know only that we must ride to the west.”
Toward the Karpash Mountains, Conan thought. They were a rugged, towering range where a man could easily become lost if he had neither a familiarity with the region nor a guide with the same. Maps showed only the major passes, used as trade routes. And the people, if not so fierce as Kezankian hillmen, were yet far from friendly toward strangers. They had a way of smiling in welcome until they put the knife into your ribs.
The Cimmerian was not surprised that she had not answered him directly. Since leaving Taramis’ palace before dawn she had spoken no word to him, only to Bombatta. But he was skilled in his chosen profession, and knowledge was as life’s blood to a thief. “How do you know the way?” he asked. “Does the key draw you to it?”
“She is not to be questioned, thief,” Bombatta growled.
A wolf howled in the night, the long, mournful sound seeming to blend with the crescent-mooned darkness.
“What was that, Bombatta?” Jehnna asked curiously.
The scar-faced man gave a last glare to Conan before replying. “Only an animal, child. Like a dog.”
Her brown eyes turned eager. “Will we see one?”
“Perhaps, child.”
Conan shook his head. The girl seemed to delight in everything, and to know of nothing. The empty streets of Shadizar as they rode from the city, the tents and sleeping camels of a caravan outside the city gates, the pack of hyenas that had followed them at a distance for half the day without ever quite gathering the nerve to attack, all fascinated her equally, bringing bright-eyed stares and questions to Bombatta.
“What I do not know can kill us,” Conan said.
“Do not frighten her, thief!” Bombatta snapped.
Jehnna laid a hand on the tall warrior’s chainmailed arm. “I am not frightened, Bombatta. My good Bombatta.”
“Then tell me how you know where to find the key,” Conan insisted. “Or tell Bombatta, if you still will not speak to me.”
Her eyes flickered to Conan, then settled on a space halfway between the Cimmerian and the black-armored warrior. “I do not know exactly how I know the way, only that I do. It is as if I remember having been this way before.” She shook her head and gave a small laugh. “Of course, it cannot be that. I do not in truth remember ever having left the palace of my aunt until this day.”
“If you can tell me where we are to go,” Conan said, “even if only vaguely, I may be able to take us by a shorter route than the one you know.” Thinking of the configuration of stars Taramis had said was necessary for restoring Valeria to life, he touched the golden amulet hanging at his neck and added, “Time is short.”
Once more Jehnna gave a slight shake of her head. “If what I see before me is the proper way to go, then I … remember it. But I must see it first.” Abruptly she laughed and let herself fall back to stare up at the sky. “Besides, I do not want this journey to end quickly. I wish it could last forever and ever.”
“It cannot, child,” Bombatta said. “We must be back in Shadizar in six more nights.”
It was all Conan could do to keep his face expressionless. The configuration would occur in six nights, but Bombatta had no care for Valeria’s return. What else was to occur on that night?
“Now it is time for you to sleep, girl,” the scarred man went on. “We must travel onward early.” He began preparing her bed, clearing rocks away from a space of ground, then digging at the earth with his dagger.
“Please, Bombatta,” Jehnna said, “can. I not remain awake a little longer? The stars look so different here than from the palace gardens. It seems I could almost touch them.” Bombatta wordlessly spread blankets over the softened ground. “Oh, very well,” she sighed, then covered a yawn with her hand. “It’s just that I want to experience everything, and there is so much.”
As she lay down, Bombatta put another blanket over her with surprising gentleness. “I will let you experience as much as I can,” he said softly. “As much as I can, child, but we must be back in Shadizar in six nights more.”
Pillowing her head on her arms, Jehnna mumbled sleepily.
A lover, Conan thought, watching the way Bombatta remained bent over the girl. Were Jehnna not so obviously a virgin he would have been sure the other man was her lover.
Rising to his feet, Bombatta walked to the fire and began to kick dirt over it. “I will take the first watch, thief,” he said. Without another word he returned to Jehnna’s side, drew his sword, and sat crosslegged with the naked blade across his knees.
Conan’s mouth tightened. The man had placed himself between Jehnna and the Cimmerian, as if it were he who must be guarded against. Not taking his eyes from Bombatta, Conan stretched out on the ground, one hand gripping his own swordhilt. He drew no blanket over himself. He was inured to more cold than the Zamoran plain had to offer, and a blanket would slow him an instant should he need to bring his sword into play. Such could be fatal against a man with steel already in his fist. Yet even through his distrust of Bombatta, he wondered about the new mystery that had been added to the rest. What was to occur in Shadizar in six nights? His mind was still on that when he allowed sleep to overtake him.
The rufescent sun beat down fiercely on the mounted trio making their way westward across the Zamoran plains, and Jehnna tugged the hood of her snowy cloak lower in a vain attempt to find coolness in its shadow on her face. She knew Bombatta was right when he said the cloak protected her from the sun—she had held a hand out from under the cloak long enough to feel the strength of the sun’s direct rays, and been convinced—but that did not lessen the heat. This was one experience she felt she could do without. Ahead loomed the gray bulk of snow-capped mountains, the Karpash Mountains, promising both cool and wetness. She licked her lips, but they were dry almost as she was done.
“The mountains, Bombatta,” she said. “We shall reach them soon?”
He turned toward her, and a thrill of fear shot through her at his scarred, sweaty visage in the ebon helmet. Foolishness, she told herself. To be afraid of Bombatta, whom she had known all of her life? Foolishness indeed.
“Not soon, child,” he replied. “Tomorrow. In the morning, perhaps.”
“But they seem so near,” she protested.
“It is the air of the plains, child. Distances seem nothing to the eye. The mountains are many leagues distant yet.”
Jehnna thought of asking for another drink of water, but she had seen Bombatta eyeing the waterskins after her last drink, weighing what remained. He had take
n only two drinks since waking. Her eyes went to Conan, leading them, with the packhorse’s rope tied to his saddle. The northlander had taken one swallow of water on waking and had not looked at the waterbags since. Now he rode easily, one hand resting lightly on his sword hilt, eyes always searching ahead, apparently not even noticing that the sun had broiled them since dawn and was still not halfway to its zenith.
What a strange young man he was, she thought, though she had little with which to make comparison. He was no older than her, she was sure, but his eyes—such a peculiar color for eyes, blue—seemed unimaginably older. Thirst did not bother him, nor the heat. Could anything slow him? Rain, or wind, or snow? She had heard stories about snow in the mountains, piled as high as a palace. No, she was certain he would go on, deterred by nothing. Perhaps that was why her aunt had sent him. Perhaps he was a hero, a prince in disguise, as in the stories some of the serving girls told her when her aunt was not there.
She shot a glance at Bombatta from the corner of her eye. “Is he handsome, Bombatta?”
“Is who handsome?” he asked gruffly.
“Conan.”
His head swiveled toward her; for an instant she was afraid again. “You should not think of such things.” His voice was hard, with no trace of the gentleness he usually had with her. “Especially not about him.”
“Do not be mad at me, Bombatta,” she pleaded. “I love you, and I do not want you to ever be angry with me.”
A pained look flashed across his face. “I … love you, too, Jehnna. I am not angry with you. It is just that … . Do not think about the thief. Put him from your mind entirely. That is best.”
“I do not see how I can do that, when he rides with us. Besides, Bombatta, I think perhaps he is handsome, as in the stories about princes.”
“He is no prince,” Bombatta snorted.
Jehnna felt a flash of disappointment, but went on. “Even so, I think he is. Handsome, I mean. But I have no one to compare him with, save you and the male slaves and servants in Taramis’ palace, and I cannot see any of them as handsome. They are always kneeling and bowing and groveling.” Bombatta’s face had been growing harder as she spoke; she hunted among her words for something that might have offended him. “Oh, of course you are handsome, Bombatta. I did not mean to imply that you are not.”