The blue light playing about her concealed all but her face and hair until she was several paces into the room. Then the slab pivoted back, leaving only apparently blank wall behind the Lady.
Muhbaras could now see that she wore a long-sleeved gown that covered her from throat to ankles without concealing the grace and suppleness of the body under it. One could not make out details, but one was left in no doubt about the beauty of the woman standing there.
The Lady raised her hands, and her sleeves fell back to the elbows. She wore thin silver bracelets on either wrist, the one on the right wrist set with emeralds or some other like-colored stone, nearly as fine as sand grains.
Muhbaras could not help catching his breath at the gesture. Those raised hands could be the first step in a spell- "Fair and n.o.ble captain, there is nothing to fear."
"Perhaps I have nothing to fear," Muhbaras said. "But what of you? Am I worthy to treat you as you deserve?"
The Lady bit her lip, and Muhbaras was astonished to see that she was holding back laughter. The Khorajan felt a sudden urge to step forward and take her in his arms while she laughed against his shoulder.
He reminded himself that laughter was part of being human, not all. The Lady might laugh like a girl, and still torment those about her like the maddest of despots grown old in vice and corruption. Both were in her. Both would be in his embrace. Muhbaras felt his temples throbbing.
"You are worthy," the Lady said softly. "You are worthy of a better setting for our-" she hesitated and seemed to be flushing "-our meeting."
She carried no staff and wore no amulets or other magical devices that Muhbaras could see. All he saw was three pa.s.ses of those long-fingered hands, exquisite fingers with nails the color of the desert sky at dawn, fingers that seemed very ready to be kissed- Golden light flooded the chamber, dazzling Muhbaras for a moment. He felt heat on his face, then on his feet, then all around him. It faded, but did not entirely disappear.
"You may open your eyes," the Lady"s voice came.
Muhbaras did. The walls and roof of the chamber were now a vaulting of fine blue tile. The floor was the finest of golden sand. In one corner-where the smelly furs had been piled-rose a pavilion, a crimson and blue silk canopy supported by four rosewood posts, each carved in the form of a different marvelous beast.
Muhbaras thought he recognized a leopard, a serpent, an otter, and a dragon. Under the canopy lay a pile of silk cushions, and beside the cushions a low table, plain ebony on ivory legs. Golden dishes of cakes and sweetmeats covered it, making a circle around a silver jug of wine.
On the cushions lay the Lady of the Mists. She wore nothing except her bracelets, and her hair flowing like silken threads over her bare shoulders and down across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. All the beauties Muhbaras had expected were there for him to see-and now to touch.
He felt his blood race and realized that he, too, wore nothing. The first step toward the pavilion was as hard as if he wore iron boots, but the second was easier, the third easier still.
Before long, he was sitting beside the Lady. Her head was on his shoulder, and he was nibbling a honey cake that she held up to him. The last of the cake vanished, and he found himself licking her fingers.
"The honey tastes real," he said. "You taste real."
"It is. I am," she said. Her voice was unsteady. "All that is here, all that will come to us here, is real."
"It seems too beautiful."
"You doubt my beauty?" she said, sitting up so that he could see everything. He looked-and saw in her eyes what could only be fear.
Desire and tenderness swept through Muhbaras. Here was the Lady of the Mists, sorceress with mighty magic at her command and mistress of life and death over all the valley. Here also was a frightened maiden, tasting desire for the first time, offering herself to a man that she might fulfill that desire- and finding that all her magic was no help whatever. If she had schemed for weeks to make Muhbaras ready to greet her as man to willing woman, she could not have found a better way. Muhbaras closed the gap between them and lifted her fingers to his lips. He licked off the rest of the honey, then turned her hand over and kissed the palm of the hand. Presently his lips crept up past the brace-let, and it was not long after that before she opened her arms and all the rest of her to Muhbaras.
He thought that he had never heard a sweeter sound in his life, than the first time she cried out in delight.
It was almost enough to make him forget the cries of Danar in his last agony at the Lady"s hands.
"Omyela will not be pleased at waiting," Bethina said. She was walking beside Conan, bow in hand and quiver over her back. They were together on pretense of going hunting, close enough to the camp not to be in danger, far enough that no unwanted ears might hear their talk.
"I was not thinking that she would have to," Conan replied. "If she is ready to ride out tonight-"
"You would go against Khezal?" Bethina asked.
Conan grinned. "Quick to see, aren"t you?" he asked.
"I am not a green girl, and my father allowed me to sit in the council meetings of the tribe from my fourteenth year," Bethina said, with dignity.
"Pardon," Conan said. "I would go against Khezal if I had to. But I"m not sure that riding north is as much against his orders as he said."
"If it is not, he could be making a puppet of you," the woman said. "If you succeed, he can claim the glory. If you fail, he can say you disobeyed him, and your enemies in Turan will rejoice at your death."
"Khezal will have to change more than most men before he intrigues that way," Conan said. "The most I think is that he"s trying to guard his back from his enemies in the Great City.
"But you"re right. He may be trusted, but no doubt there are royal spies among the Greencloaks. I need my Afghulis, and they need to be out of Khezal"s reach, so we need to find a path for them."
"Let me talk to Omyela," Bethina said. "Giving her a chance to trick a Turanian is better than offering her a sack of gold."
The Lady of the Mists was a clean maiden, but either magick or good fortune made her first union all pleasure and no pain. Or so it seemed to Muhbaras.
Of his own pleasure, he could not speak, for there were no words in any tongue he knew that would do it justice. Indeed, he wondered if there were words in any of the tongues of men.
Presently she conjured a pool of sparkling water into the middle of the chamber, and led Muhbaras to it. They bathed old pa.s.sion from them, but kindled new, and soon were locked together on the sand at the edge of the pool.
"I am beginning to believe this is all real," Muhbaras said. He rested a hand on a part of the Lady of whose reality he had become wholly certain.
She imprisoned his hand with hers, then kissed his fingers. "It is all real.
What I had put in the chamber was the stuff of earth, as is my magic. It is easier to transform what exists into something else, that to create something out of nothing."
It occurred to Muhbaras that the transformation might as easily go the other way. The Lady seemed to read his thoughts.
"No. You will be gone from here before the cham-her is as it was. You need have no fear of waking up alone amid balding furs and reeking hides." "Do I need to fear walking out of this chamber in the garb I wore at birth?"
"If I do not, why should you? We will not be cold." She proved her warmth all over again, and it was some while before Muhbaras could again think about clothes.
Again, it seemed that his thoughts were written upon his face. Suddenly he was garbed as he had been, although he thought his blades had been polished and sharpened since he last saw them.
"You see? All that I hold in my memory, I can restore as needed. But is soldier"s garb needed now? I think not." She snapped her fingers, and Muhbaras was unclothed again.
The Lady grinned. "I am not done with you, nor I think you with me. Come to me, captain. If it was in me to beg, I would. But with you, I will never have to."
As Muhbaras took the Lady of the Mists in his arms again, he could not help wishing that this might be true. The Lady might have come to him with blood on her hands that the G.o.ds themselves could not wash off. Yet he would not begrudge her what little happiness he might be able to give her.
Fourteen.
Old Omyela might be hardly larger than a ten-year-old Cimmerian girl, with a black-eyed gaze that neither Conan nor anyone else could meet for long. She was also as shrewd as any descendant of so many generations of hard-living desert folk could be, however, and she seemed to know her spells.
One of those spells covered the escape of Conan"s new company-all the Afghulis and twenty-five Ekinari besides Bethina and Omyela, with a few spare mounts "acquired" from the Greencloaks. It was the simplest of spells, sending into the middle of the Greencloak camp an image of Bethina dancing. While everyone, including the sentries, had their eyes fixed on the play of supple limbs and veils that revealed more than they hid, the Afghulis slipped out of the camp.
Carrying their gear, they swiftly reached their meeting with the Ekinari, who had mounts for all. Then, mounted and with night enfolding the desert to hide their tracks, Conan"s new band rode north.
They had a good notion of where to start looking for the Valley of the Mists, and it was a good three days" ride to the north. Conan set a punishing pace that made even the Afghulis sweat, and feared only that the two women might not be able to endure.
Neither gave trouble. Bethina was young and fit, and decades of desert sun had baked Omyela to the color and toughness of old leather.
"I remember when a woman who could not ride from dawn to dark three days running was not considered fit to bear children," Omyela said, scoffing at Bethina"s concern. "Take care of yourself, girl. Wear away your strength, and when that Cimmerian wants you, there"ll be nothing of you there!" She gave a bawdy chuckle, and Bethina"s bronzed skin turned even darker.
Conan walked silently away, and nearly ran into Farad.
"Maidens should not ride on such death-quests," the Afghuli said softly.
Conan laughed. "Maidens you admire, you mean. I had not heard that the Afghuli la.s.ses huddled around the cookfires."
"I admire that wild desert girl?" Farad said indignantly.
"Yes," Conan said. "Or was it someone else who stood there gaping while she danced, so that Omyela could send the image to the camp? A fly could have crawled into your mouth and made a nest in your back teeth, for all you noticed."
Farad twined the fingers of both hands in his beard and glared at Conan. "My chief, the day I cannot tell when a beautiful woman dances, it will be the day I am dead or at least blind. Last night I was neither."
Conan laughed, and chaffed Farad with a few light words to cool his indignation.
He wondered if he should mention Farad"s admiration to Bethina, lest the girl hurt him by chance.
Then he decided on silence. He faced enough tasks for three men on this last part of the journey, and he would not add playing matchmaker to them!
Captain Khezal was neither surprised nor alarmed at waking to find Conan gone, and the Afghulis and Ekinari along with him. He had, indeed, rather hoped that the Cimmerian would take swift action, and be long gone before any reinforcements to the Green-cloaks arrived from the South or West.
Such reinforcements were likely to include some captain more senior than Khezal.
Not all such captains would be inclined to send Conan"s head in a bag of salt back to Aghrapur, but too many were. Even those who wished to be honest might become otherwise, for fear of what spies might say. Fear of Yezdigerd"s spies had run through Turan like a plague for years now, and showed no signs of abating.
Khezal might be putting his own head in danger, of course. But he would rather not keep it on his shoulders if he could not do so honorably. Conan was thrusting his head into a land of the most sinister sort of magic, courting d.a.m.nation even more than death. For the sake of a friend facing such dangers, one"s own death was nothing much to fear.
So Khezal sent messengers south and west, and also waited for the messengers returning from the party he had trailing Conan.
They rode close to the mountains, for concealment from the desert and for water from the mountain springs. It was as well that the Greencloaks did not ride with them, for no tribe in these lands was friendly to Turan. Instead, the wind seemed to bear word of their coming to tribesmen in search of adventure, and these riders came in until Conan led a band of more than fifty.
On the afternoon of the fourth day, they camped at the mouth of a ravine known for its endlessly flowing springs. Farad led the first watch up the ravine, and Conan did the same with the second when Farad"s men returned. Bethina went with Conan, striding with st.u.r.dy litheness over the rugged ground. She was clad from crown to toe, but the breeze pressed certain of her garments against the ripe curves Conan remembered so well from the night she danced.
They led the way up the ravine, and Conan"s hill-eating stride soon left everyone but Bethina behind. They found themselves climbing onto a shelf of rock, from which the far end of the ravine rose straight into the sky, a vertical crack taller than a tall tree.
From the crack in the rock, water flowed, to form an iridescent blue pool just beyond the shelf. Below the shelf, water flowed out and down, to form the stream that the men were using to fill their water bags.
Conan saw that the rocks on either side of the pool sparkled with gemlike bright bits, and a soft cushion of blue lichen overgrew one of them. He wanted to sit down, pull off his boots, and bathe his feet in water that looked so much like the pools where he"d swum as a boy in Cimmeria. Bethina had already given in to the same impulse. She dandled her feet in the water, wincing at its chill, then kicked and splashed like a baby.
Suddenly she stood up and began unlacing her cloak. "I think that pool"s deep enough to swim in."
Conan frowned. "Mortally cold, though."
"Is hill blood so weak, then? Or are you so clean that you need no bath?" She wrinkled her nose. "No, it cannot be that. So it must be a weakness in Cimmerians. The world must know of this. I shall- yaaahh!"
She broke off with a happy shout as Conan closed the distance to her, lifted her, and tossed her into the pool. It was deep enough to submerge her completely; when she bobbed to the surface she was spluttering and gasping from the cold.
Then she laughed, dove again, and came up at Conan"s feet. Water sluiced over him, and as Bethina thrashed and splashed, more doused him all the way up to his waist.
"Well, Conan?"
Conan glared in mock-fury, sat down, and started pulling off his boots. Then he stopped, for Bethina"s tunic was now floating in the pool, and as he watched, her trousers bobbed up to join it. Then her head reappeared, hair sleeked down over bare shoulders, and she stepped out of the water. Silver drops ran down between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and over every other curve, and Conan"s arms were rising to meet her even as she came into them.
They used the bed of lichen well, and for how long, Conan never knew. Even the thought of danger could not enter his mind for a while.
Somewhere in Bethina"s embrace, he chuckled. "Do I amuse you, Conan?"
"That, and much else. But I was thinking. You are a whole woman now, true?"
"Well-"
"You"re lacking nothing any woman has, and you"ve more than most. Or isn"t that what your folk call "whole"?"
"For me-it might be best-if I bore a child. Prove that the line of my father is safe with me. To a man of good blood, of course, and a friend to the tribe."
Conan slapped Bethina smartly on her bare rump. "Woman, you won"t find me unwilling, and I hope your folk call me friend. But having a babe in your belly is no way to go questing!"
"I will remember that. But surely, Conan, we will not be here in the mountains that long?"
"Maybe, maybe not. But if you hope too much, ten Turanian crowns to a bra.s.s bit you"ll find yourself trying to have the babe somewhere in a blizzard-buried cave in the mountains next winter!"
She shuddered at the thought, and the Cimmerian held her close. He hoped she could not read in his touch his innermost thought, which was that anyone here by next winter would not be among the living. Perhaps not among the lawfully dead, if the Lady of the Mists had half the powers credited to her by rumor, but surely not among the living.
"More wine, my Lady?" Muhbaras said. He sat on the edge of the magical pool in their meeting chamber, legs dangling, holding out the jug.
The Lady of the Mists nodded, extending one bare white arm. She wore nothing, and Muhbaras no more. Now they did not disrobe by magic when she transformed the chamber, but disrobed each other, touching and caressing as they went. "You would make a fine servant, Muhbaras," the Lady said, as the golden wine flowed into her cup. "Perhaps I should bind you to me so that you will be here forever."
Muhbaras could not keep his hands from tightening on the jug. It tilted, spilling a few drops of wine into the water. The Lady looked at the widening gold circle and laughed.
"Does that frighten you, Muhbaras?"