Conan looked about for the astrologer he had known in Shadizar. The bent old man, wearing what seemed to be the same frayed and patched brown tunic he had worn in Shadizar, was lowering himself creakily to a stool near the door. His white hair was thinner than ever, and as always he leaned on a long blackwood staff, which he claimed was a staff of power, though no one had ever seen any magicks performed with it. Wispy mustaches hung below his thin mouth and narrow chin, and he clutched a rat’s-nest of scrolls in his bony fingers.
Ferian gave the bar one more scrub and eyed it suspiciously. “I like not this owing, Cimmerian,” he muttered.
“I like not being owed.” Conan’s icy blue eyes peered into the fulvous ale. “After a time I begin to think I will not be repaid, and I like that even less.”
“I pay my debts,” the other protested. “I’m a fair man. ’Tis known from Shahpur to Shadizar. From Kuthchemes to—”
“Then pay me.”
“Black Erlik’s Throne, man! What you told me may be worth no more than the wind blowing in the streets!”
Conan spoke as quietly as a knife leaving its scabbard. “Do you call me liar, Ferian?”
Ferian blinked and swallowed hard. Of a sudden, the Cimmerian seemed to fill his vision. And he remembered with a sickly sinking of his stomach that among the muscular youth’s more uncivilized traits was a deadly touchiness about his word.
“No, Conan,” he laughed shakily. “Of a certainty not. You misunderstand. I meant just that I do not know its value. Nothing more than that.”
“An you got no gold for that information last night,” Conan laughed scornfully, “I’ll become a priest of Azura.”
Ferian scowled, muttered under his breath, and finally said, “Mayhap I have some slight idea of its worth.”
A smile showed the big Cimmerian’s strong white teeth. The tavernkeeper shifted uncomfortably.
“An you know its worth, Ferian, we can set some other payment than what was first agreed.”
“Other payment?” Despite his plump cheeks, the innkeeper suddenly wore a look of rat-like suspicion. “What other payment?” Conan took a long pull of ale to let him steep. “What other payment, Cimmerian?”
“Lodgings, to begin.”
“Lodgings!” Ferian gaped like a fish in surprise and relief. “Is that all? Of course. You can have a room for … for ten days.”
“A fair man,” Conan murmured sardonically. “Your best room. Not the sty I slept in last night.”
The fat man snickered greasily. “Unless I misread me the look on Zasha’s face, you did little sleeping.” He cleared his throat heavily at the look on Conan’s face. “Very well. The best room.”
“And not for ten days. For a month.”
“A month!”
“And some small information.”
“This is in place of the information!” Ferian howled.
“Information,” Conan said firmly. “I’ll not ask to be the only one to get it, as we first spoke of, but for that month you must keep me informed, and betimes.”
“I have not even agreed to the month!”
“Oh, yes. Food and drink must be included. I have hearty appetites,” he laughed. Tipping up his mug, he emptied it down his throat. “I’ll have more of that Khorajan.”
Ferian clutched at his shiny scalp as if wishing he had hair to pull out by the roots. “Do you want anything else? This tavern? My mistress? I have a daughter somewhere—in Zamora, I think. Do you want me to find her and bring her to your bed?”
“Is she pretty?” Conan asked. He paused as if considering, then shook his head. “No, the lodgings and the rest will be enough.” Ferian spluttered, his beady eyes bulging in his fat face. “Of course,” the Cimmerian continued, “you could continue in my debt. You do understand I’d want just the right piece of information, do you not? ’Twas good value I gave, and I’ll expect the same in return. It would be well if you found it quickly.” A growl had entered his voice, and his face had slowly darkened. “You know we barbars are not so understanding as you civilized men. Why, if a tenday or two passed with you silent, I might think you wished to take advantage of me. Such would make me angry. I might even—” His big hands abruptly clutched the bar as if he intended to vault it.
Ferian’s mouth worked for a moment before he managed to shout “No!” and seized Conan’s hand in his. “Done,” he cried. “It’s done. The month and the rest. Done!”
“Done,” Conan said.
The fat innkeeper stared at him. “A month,” he moaned. “My serving wenches will spend the whole time in your bed. You keep your hands off them, Cimmerian, or I’ll get not a lick of work from the lot of them. You’ve taken advantage of me. Of my good nature.”
“I knew not that you had one, Ferian. Mayhap if you take a physic it will go away.”
“Mitra be thanked that most of you Cimmerians like your god-forsaken frozen wastes. Did any more of you accursed blue-eyed devils come south, you would own the world.”
“Be not so sour,” Conan said chidingly. “I’ll wager you got twenty times so much for what I told you as what my staying here will cost.”
Ferian grunted. “Just keep your hands off my serving wenches, Cimmerian. Go away. Am I to make up what you cost me, I cannot stand here all day talking to you. Go talk to Sharak.”
The young Cimmerian laughed, scooping up his mug of dark ale. “At least he can tell me what the stars say.” When he left the bar, Ferian was still spluttering over that.
The astrologer peered at Conan dimly as he approached the table where the old man sat; then a smile creased his thin features. The skin of his visage was stretched taut over his skull. “I thought I saw you, Conan, but these eyes … . I am no longer the man I was twenty years ago, or even ten. Sit. I wish that I could offer you a goblet of wine, but my purse is as flat as was my wife’s chest. May the gods guard her bones,” he added in the careless way of a man who has said a thing so many times that he no longer hears the words.
“No matter, Sharak. I will buy the wine.”
But as Conan turned to signal, one of the wenches bustled to the table and set a steaming bowl of lentil stew, a chunk of coarse bread and a pannikin of wine before the astrologer. The food set out, she turned questioningly toward the muscular youth. Abruptly her dark, tilted eyes went wide with shock, and she leaped into the air, emitting a strangled squawk. Sharak began to cackle. The wench glared at the aged man then, rubbing one buttock fitfully, darted away.
Sharak’s crowing melded into a fit of coughing, which he controlled with difficulty. “It never does,” he said when he could speak, “to let them start thinking you’re too old to be dangerous.”
Conan threw back his black-maned head and roared with laughter. “You’ll never get old,” he managed finally.
“I’m a dotard,” Sharak said, digging a horn spoon into the stew. “Ferian says so, and I begin to think he is right. He gives me a bowl of stew twice a day, else I would eat only what I scavenge in the garbage, as many must in age. He is almost my only patron, as well. In return for the stew I read his stars. Every day I read them, and a more boring tale they could not tell.”
“But why no patrons? You read the stars as a scribe reads marks on parchment. Never once did you tell me wrong, though your telling was at divers times none too clear to me.”
“’Tis these Turanians,” the old man snorted. “Ill was the day I journeyed here. Half the stars they name wrongly, and they make other errors. Important errors. Those fools in this city who call themselves astrologers had the gall to charge me with unorthodoxy before the Guild. ’Twas no more than luck I did not end at the stake. The end result is the same, though. Without the Guild’s imprimatur, I would be arrested if I opened a shop. The few who deal with me are outlanders, and they come merely because I will tell their stars for a mug of wine or a loaf of bread instead of the silver piece the others charge. Did I have a silver piece, I would return to Zamora on the instant.” With a rueful grunt he returned to s
pooning the stew into his mouth.
Conan was silent a moment. Slowly he dug into his pouch and drew out a silver piece, sliding it across the rough boards. “Tell my horoscope, Sharak.”
The gaunt old man froze with his spoon half-raised to his face. He peered at the coin, blinking, then at Conan. “Why?”
“I would know what this city holds for me,” the young Cimmerian said gruffly. “I hold you better than any Guildsman of Aghrapur, and so worth at least the footing they demand. Besides,” he lied, “my purse is heavy with coin.”
Sharak hesitated, then nodded. Without touching the coin, he fumbled through his scrolls with his left hand, all the while absently licking traces of stew from the fingers of his right. When those scrolls he wanted were spread out atop the table, he produced a wax tablet from beneath his patched tunic. The side of a stylus scraped the wax smooth. Nose almost touching the parchments, he began to copy arcane symbols with deft strokes.
“Do you not need to know when I was born, and such?” Conan asked.
“I remember the details of your natal chart,” the other replied with his eyes on the parchment, “as if it were drawn on the insides of my eyelids. A magnificent chart. Unbelievable. Hmm. Mitra’s Chariot is in retrograde.”
“Magnificent? You have never told me of any magnificence before.”
Sighing, Sharak swiveled his head to gaze at the big youth. “Unbelievable, I called it as well, and you would not believe did I tell you. Then you would not believe anything else I told you, either, and I could do you no good. Therefore I do not tell you. Now, will you allow me to do what you have paid me for?” He did not wait for a reply before turning his eyes back to the scrolls. “Aha. The Bloodstar enters the House of the Scorpion this very night. Significant.”
Conan shook his head and quaffed deeply on his dark ale. Was Sharak attempting to inflate his payment? Perhaps the habit of trying to do so was too deeply ingrained to lose.
He busied himself with drinking. The common room was beginning to fill, with queued sailors and half-naked trulls for the most part. The wenches were the most interesting, by far. One, short, round-breasted and large-eyed in her girdle of coins and gilded wristlets and torque, made him think of Yasbet. He wished he could be certain she was safe at home. No, in truth he wished her in his bed upstairs, but, failing that, it was best if she were at home, whatever her greeting from Fatima. Could he find her again, it would of a certainty brighten his days in Aghrapur. Let Emilio talk of his blonde—what was her name? Davinia?—as if she were the exotic these Turanians thought her. In his own opinion it was women with large eyes who had the fires smouldering within, even when they did not know it themselves. Why—
“I am done,” Sharak said.
Conan blinked, pulled from his reverie. “What?” He looked at the wax tablet, now covered with scribbled symbols. “What does it say?”
“It is unclear,” the old astrologer replied, tugging at one of his thin mustaches with bony fingers. “There are aspects of great opportunity and great danger. See, the Horse and the Lion are in conjunction in the House of Dramath, while the Three Virgins are—”
“Sharak, I would not know the House of Dramath from the house of a rugmaker. What does it mean?”
“What does it mean?” Sharak mimicked. “Always ‘what does it mean?’ No one wants to know the truly interesting part, the details of how … . Oh, very well. First of all: there is a need to go back in order to go forward. To become what you will become, you must become again what you once were.”
“That’s little help,” Conan muttered. “I have been many things.”
“But this is most important. This branching, here, indicates that if you fail to do so, you will never leave Aghrapur alive. You have already set events in motion.”
The air in the tavern seemed suddenly chill. Conan wished the old man had not been right so often before. “How can I have set events in motion? I’ve been here barely a day.”
“And spoken to no one? Done nothing?”
Conan breathed heavily. “Does it speak of gold?”
“Gold will come into your hands, but it does not seem to be important, and there is danger attached.”
“Gold is always important, and there is always danger attached. What of women?”
“Ah, youth,” Sharak murmured caustically.
“You will soon be entangled with women—two, it seems here—but there is danger there as well.”
“Woman are always at least as dangerous as gold,” Conan replied, laughing.
“One is dark of hair, and one pale-haired.”
The Cimmerian’s laughter faded abruptly. Pale-haired ? Emilio’s Davinia? No! That would almost certainly mean aiding Emilio in his theft, and that had been left behind. But he was to ‘become what he had been.’ He forced the thought away. He was done with thieving. The astrologer’s reading must mean something else.
“What more?” he asked harshly.
“’Tis not my fault if you like it not, Conan. I merely read what is writ in the stars.”
“What more, I said!”
Sharak sighed heavily. “You cannot blame me if … . There is danger here connected in some fashion to a journey. This configuration,” he pointed to a row of strangely bent symbols scribed in the wax, “indicate a journey over water, but these over here indicate land. It is unclear.”
“’Tis all unclear, an you ask me of it.” Conan muttered.
“It becomes less clear. For instance, here the color yellow is indicated as of great importance.”
“The gold—”
“—is of small import, no matter your feeling on it. And there is more danger tied to this than to the gold.”
The big Cimmerian ground his teeth audibly. “There is danger to breathing, to hear you tell it.”
“I can well believe it so, to look at this chart. As to the rest, the number thirteen and the color red are of some significance, and are linked. Additionally, this alignment of the Monkey and the Viper indicates the need of acting quickly and decisively. Hesitate, and the moment will be lost to you. And that will mean your death.”
“What will come, will come, old man,” Conan snapped. “I’ll not be affrighted by stars, gods, or demons.”
Sharak scowled, then pushed the silver piece back across the table. “If my reading is so distasteful to you, I cannot take payment.”
The muscular youth’s anger dropped to a simmer instantly. “’Tis no blame of yours whether I like the reading you give or no. You take the money, and I’ll take your advice.”
“I am four score and two years of age,” the astrologer said, suddenly diffident, “and never in all that time have I had an adventure.” He gripped his knobbly staff, leaning against the table. “There is power in this, Cimmerian. I could be of aid.”
Conan hid a smile. “I’ve no doubt of it, Sharak. An I need such help, I will call on you, have no fear. There is one thing you might do for me now. Know you where I might find Emilio at this hour?”
“That cankerous boaster?” Sharak said disdainfully. “He frequents many places of ill repute, each worse than the last.” He reeled off the names of a dozen taverns and as many brothels and gaming halls. “I could help you look for him, if you really think he’s needed, though what use he could be I do not know.”
“When you finish supping, you can search the hells.”
“I would rather search the brothels,” the old man leered.
“The hells,” Conan laughed, getting to his feet. Sharak returned grumbling to his stew.
As he turned toward the door, the Cimmerian’s eyes met those of a man just entering, hard black eyes in a hard black face beneath the turban-wrapped spiral helmet of the Turanian army. Of middling height, he moved with the confidence of a larger man. The striping on his tunic marked him as a sergeant. Ferian hurried, frowning, to meet the dark man. Soldiers were not usually habitués of the Blue Bull.
“I am seeking a man called Emilio the Corinthian,” the sergeant s
aid to Ferian.
Conan walked out without waiting for the innkeeper’s reply. It had nothing to do with him. He hoped.
IV
Conan entered the seventh tavern with never sc much as a wobble of his step, despite the quantity of wine and ale he had ingested. The large number of wenches lolling about the dim, dank common room, rouged and be-ringed, their silks casually disarrayed, told him that a brothel occupied the upper floors of the squat stone building. Among the long tables and narrow trestle-boards crowding the slate floor, sailors rubbed shoulders with journeymen of the guilds. Scattered through the room were others whose languid countenances and oiled mustaches named them high-born no less than their silk tunics embroidered in gold and silver. Their smooth fingers played as free with the strumpets as did the sailors’ calloused hands.
The Cimmerian elbowed a place at the bar and tossed two coppers on the boards. “Wine,” he commanded.
The barkeeper gave him a rough clay mug, filled to the brim with sour-smelling liquid, and scooped up the coins. The man was wiry and snake-faced, with heavy-lidded, suspicious eyes and a tight, narrow mouth. He would not be one to answer questions freely. Another drinker called, and the tapster moved off, wiping his hands on a filthy apron that dangled about his spindly shanks.
Conan took a swallow from his mug and grimaced. The wine was thin, and tasted as sour as it smelled.
As he eyed the common room, a strangely garbed doxy caught his gaze. Sleek and sinuous, she had climbed upon a trestle-board to dance for half a dozen sailors who pawed her with raucous shouts, running their hands up her long legs. Her oiled breasts were bare, and for garb she wore but a single strip of silk, no wider than a man’s hand, run through a narrow gilded girdle worn low on the roundness of her hips, to fall to her ankles before and behind. The strangeness was that an opaque veil covered her from just below her hot, dark eyes to her chin. The sisterhood of the streets might paint their faces heavily, but then never covered them, for few men would take well to the discovery that their purchase was less fair of visage than they had believed. But not only was this woman veiled, he now saw no less than three others so equipped.