"Careful," cautioned his mate. "Our swords are his as long as Mazdak orders. But if revolt breaks out again, the Anakim are more likely to fight against the Kus.h.i.tes than with them. Men say Akhirom has taken Othbaal"s concubine Rufia into his harem. That angers the Anakim the more, for they suspect that Othbaal was slain by the king"s orders, or at least with his consent. But their anger is naught beside that of Zeriti, whom the king has put aside. The rage of the witch, they say, makes the sandstorm of the desert seem like a spring breeze."
Conan"s moody blue eyes blazed as he digested this news. The memory of the red-haired wench had stuck in his mind during the last few days.
The thought of stealing her out from under the nose of the mad king, and keeping her out of sight of her former owner Mazdak, gave spice to life. And, if he had to leave Asgalun, she would make a pleasant companion on the long road to Koth. In Asgalun there was one person who could best help him in this enterprise: Zeriti the Stygian, and if he could guess human motives she would be glad to do so.
He left the shop and headed towards the wall of the inner city.
Zeriti"s house, he knew, was in this part of Asgalun. To get to it he would have to pa.s.s the great wall, and the only way he knew of doing this without discovery was through the tunnel that Mazdak had shown him.
Accordingly, he approached the ca.n.a.l and made his way to the grove of palms near the sh.o.r.e. Groping in the darkness among the marble ruins, he found and lifted the slab. Again he advanced through blackness and dripping water, stumbled on the other stair, and mounted it. He found the catch and emerged into the corridor, now dark. The house was silent, but the reflection of lights elsewhere showed that it was still occupied, doubtless by the slain general"s servants and women.
Uncertain as to which way led to the outer stair, he set off at random, pa.s.sed through a curtained archway-and confronted six black slaves who sprang up glaring. Before he could retreat, he heard a shout and a rush of feet behind him. Cursing his luck, he ran straight at the blacks. A whirl of steel and he was through, leaving a writhing form on the floor behind him, and dashed through a doorway on the other side of the room.
Curved blades sought his back as he slammed the door behind him. Steel rang on the wood and guttering points showed through the panels. He shot the bolt and whirled, glaring about for an exit. His gaze found a gold-barred window.
With a headlong rush, he launched himself full at the window. The soft bars tore out with a crash, taking half the cas.e.m.e.nt with them, before the impact of his hurtling body. He shot through s.p.a.ce as the door crashed inward and howling figures flooded into the room.
In the Great East Palace, where slave-girls and eunuchs glided on bare feet, no echo reverberated of the h.e.l.l that seethed outside the walls.
In a chamber whose dome was of gold-filagreed ivory, King Akhirom, clad in a white silken robe that made him look even more ghostly, sat cross-legged on a couch of gemmed ivory and stared at Rufia kneeling before him.
Rufia wore a robe of crimson silk and a girdle of satin sewn with pearls. But amidst all this splendor, the Ophirean"s eyes were shadowed. She had inspired Akhirom"s latest madness, but she had not mastered him. Now he seemed withdrawn, with an expression in his cold eyes that made her shudder. Abruptly he spoke:
"It is not meet for a G.o.d to mate with mortals."
Rufia started, opened her mouth, then feared to speak.
"Love is a human weakness," he continued. "I will cast it from me. G.o.ds are beyond love. Weakness a.s.sails me when I lie in your arms."
"What do you mean, my lord?" she ventured.
"Even the G.o.ds must sacrifice, and therefore I give you up, lest my divinity weaken." He clapped his hands, and a eunuch entered on all fours. "Send in the general Imbalayo," ordered Akhirom, and the eunuch banged his head against the floor and crawled out backwards. These were the most recently inst.i.tuted customs of the court.
"No!" Rufia sprang up. "You cannot give me to that beast-" She fell to her knees, catching at his robe, which he drew back from her.
"Woman!" he thundered. "Are you mad? Would you a.s.sail a G.o.d?"
Imbalayo entered uncertainly. A warrior of barbaric Darfar, he had risen to his present high estate by wild fighting and crafty intrigue.
But shrewd, brawny, and fearless though the Negro was, he could not be sure of the mad Akhirom"s intentions from moment to moment.
The king pointed to the woman cowering at his feet. "Take her!"
Imbalayo grinned and caught up Rufia, who writhed and screamed in his grasp. She stretched her arms towards Akhirom as Imbalayo bore her from the chamber. But Akhirom answered not, sitting with hands folded and gaze detached.
Another heard. Crouching in an alcove, a slim brown-skinned girl watched the grinning Kus.h.i.te carry his captive up the hall. Scarcely had he vanished when she fled in another direction.
Imbalayo, the favored of the king, alone of the generals dwelt in the Great Palace. This was really an aggregation of buildings united into one great structure and housing the three thousand servants of Akhirom.
Following winding corridors, crossing an occasional court paved with mosaics, he came to his own dwelling in the southern wing. But even as he came in sight of the door of teak, banded with arabesques of copper, a supple form barred his way.
"Zeriti!" Imbalayo recoiled in awe. The hands of the handsome, brown-skinned woman clenched and unclenched in controlled pa.s.sion.
"A servant brought me word that Akhirom has discarded the red-haired s.l.u.t," said the Stygian. "Sell her to me! I owe her a debt that I would pay."
"Why should I?" said the Kus.h.i.te, fidgeting impatiently. "The king has given her to me. Stand aside, lest I hurt you."
"Have you heard what the Anakim shout in the streets?""
"What is that to me?"
"They howl for the head of Imbalayo, because of the murder of Othbaal.
What if I told them their suspicions were true?"
"I had naught to do with it!" he shouted.
"I can produce men to swear they saw you help Keluka cut him down."
"I"ll kill you, witch!"
She laughed. "You dare not! Now will you sell me the red-haired jade, or will you fight the Anakim?"
Imbalayo let Rufia slip to the floor. "Take her and begone!" he snarled.
"Take your pay!" she retorted and hurled a handful of coins into his face. Imbalayo"s eyes burned red and his hands opened and closed with suppressed blood-l.u.s.t.
Ignoring him, Zeriti bent over Rufia, who crouched, dazed with the hopeless realization that against this new possessor the wiles she played against men were useless. Zeriti gathered the Ophirean"s red locks in her fingers and forced her head back, to stare fiercely into her eyes. Then she clapped her hands. Four eunuchs entered.
"Take her to my house," Zeriti ordered, and they bore the shrinking Rufia away. Zeriti followed, breathing softly between her teeth.
When Conan plunged through the window, he had no idea of what lay in the darkness ahead of him. Shrubs broke his crashing fall. Springing up, he saw his pursuers crowding through the window he had just shattered. He was in a garden, a great shadowy place of trees and ghostly blossoms. His hunters blundered among the trees while he reached the wall unopposed. He sprang high, caught the coping with one hand, and heaved himself up and over.
He halted to locate himself. Though he had never been in the inner city, he had heard it described often enough so that he carried a mental map of it. He was in the Quarter of the Officials. Ahead of him, over the flat roofs, loomed a structure that must be the Lesser West Palace, a great pleasure house giving into the famous Garden of Abibaal. Sure of his ground, he hurried along the street into which he had dropped and soon emerged on the broad thoroughfare that traversed the inner city from north to south.
Late as it was, there was much stirring abroad. Armed Hyrkanians strode past. In the great square between the two palaces, Conan heard the jingle of reins on restive horses and saw a squadron of Kus.h.i.te troopers sitting their steeds under the torchlight. There was reason for their alertness. Far away he heard tom-toms drumming sullenly among the quarters. The wind brought s.n.a.t.c.hes of wild song and distant yells.
With his soldierly swagger, Conan pa.s.sed unnoticed among the mailed figures. When he plucked the sleeve of a Hyrkanian to ask the way to Zeriti"s house, the man readily gave him the information. Conan, like everyone else in Asgalun, knew that however much the Stygian regarded Akhirom as her personal property, she by no means considered herself his exclusive possession in return. There were mercenary captains as familiar with her chambers as was the king of Pelishtia.
Zeriti"s house adjoined a court of the East Palace, to whose gardens it was connected so that Zeriti, in the days of her favor, could pa.s.s from her house to the palace without violating the king"s order for the seclusion of women. Zeriti, the daughter of a free chieftain, had been Akhirom"s mistress but not his slave.
Conan did not expect difficulty in gaining entrance to her house. She pulled hidden strings of intrigue and politics, and men of all races and conditions were admitted to her audience chamber, where dancing girls and the fumes of the black lotus offered entertainment That night there were no dancing girls or guests, but a villainous-looking Zuagir opened the arched door under a burning cresset and admitted Conan without question. He showed Conan across a small court, up an outer stair, down a corridor, and into a broad chamber bordered by fretted arches hung with curtains of crimson velvet.
The softly lit room was empty, but somewhere sounded the scream of a woman in pain. Then came a peal of musical laughter, also feminine, indescribably vindictive and malicious.
Conan jerked his head to catch the direction of the sounds. Then he began examining the drapes behind the arches to see which of them concealed doors.
Zeriti straightened up from her task and dropped the heavy whip. The naked figure bound to the divan was crossed by red weals from neck to ankles. This, however, was but a prelude to a more ghastly fate.
The witch took from a cabinet a piece of charcoal, with which she drew a complex figure on the floor, adding words in the mysterious glyphs of the serpent-folk who ruled Stygia before the Cataclysm. She set a small golden lamp at each of the five corners of the figure and tossed into the flame of each a pinch of the pollen of the purple lotus, which grows in the swamps of southern Stygia, A strange smell, sickeningly sweet, pervaded the chamber. Then she began to incant in a language that was old before purple-towered Python rose in the lost empire of Acheron, over three thousand years before.
Slowly a dark something took form. To Rufia, half dead with pain and fright, it seemed like a pillar of cloud. High up in the amorphous ma.s.s appeared a pair of glowing points that might have been eyes. Rufia felt an all-pervading cold, as if the thing were drawing all the heat out of her body by its mere presence. The cloud gave the impression of being black without much density. Rufia could see the wall behind it through the shapeless ma.s.s, which slowly thickened.
Zeriti bent and snuffed out the lamps-one, two, three, four. The room, lit by the remaining lamp, was now dim. The pillar of smoke was hardly discernible except for the glowing eyes.
A sound made Zeriti turn: a distant, m.u.f.fled roar, faint and far-off but of vast volume. It was the b.e.s.t.i.a.l howling of many men.