A thin blue flame burned from her fingernail, and she set the blossom afire.
It burned very slowly, filling the air with dark, acrid smoke. Placing the bowl on the floor in front of her, she took the smoke into her lungs. Within seconds, she was deep in the dreams of the black lotus.
Far below her, Skauraul stood at the base of the long stair. He had donned breeks, and a sleeveless black vest with side-laces woven of black human hair. The tight breeks and vest had been fashioned from the thick skin of a giant lizard. He wore no boots or sandals, nor any other gear save a black stone ring, which he had slipped over the smallest finger of his left hand.
Mechanically, he began climbing the long stair. He ascended quietly, with only the occasional sound of his thick, black toenails clicking against the stone steps. Everything was as he remembered it. In the centuries he had lain dormant in the sand, no pilferers or defilers had disturbed his great fortress. It had nested safely in its sandy tomb, awaiting his return.
Hundreds of years ago, even before his rise to power, Skauraul had foreseen the day of his defeat. The premonition of his own death had preyed upon him, driving him to madness. In his recurring dream, a white-haired old man skewered him upon a silver spike. He had used his power to seek and slay those who resembled the man in this vision.
Eventually all humans had looked to him like the man in his premonition. Thousands had died on spikes outside his palace; the sand had turned red from their blood. Still, the vision would not go away.
The G.o.ds themselves had seemed determined to vanquish him. They feared that his powers would eclipse theirs, and they lashed out at him in jealousy.
They would fail. He would survive, and his powers would grow.
While continuing his systematic murders, he had studied the esoteric Thurian Codex, eventually learning of a way to conquer death. He would need help; the spell that would bring him back from the dead could be cast only by another Mutare, steeped in the arts of necromancy.
Further, the caster must not know of Skauraul"s designs.
To achieve this goal, Skauraul struck a bargain with the venerable serpent-G.o.d, Set. To the evil Stygian G.o.d, ten thousand victims were sacrificed horribly on the spikes outside his fortress. In return, Set granted Skauraul"s request.
Centuries later, in the Purple Lotus swamps of southern Stygia, by the southernmost banks of the Bakhr River, Set had come to one of his priests in a dream, telling him that a special girl-child would be born in a nearby village. He had told the priest other secrets, dark whisperings of rituals that had turned the stomach of even the jaded Stygian priest.
Obediently, the priest had kidnapped the girl-child from the village and raised her in his swampy habitat. She was unlike human females, not just physically, but in her att.i.tudes and interests. He had grown afraid of her, but greater had been his fear of Set. Fourteen years later, on the eve of the day of her birth-in the Year of the Spider and the Month of the Scorpion-he had performed the ritual that Set had commanded. Later, he had deliberately imbibed a lethal dosage of juice squeezed from the blossoms of the purple lotus.
Skauraul knew not what she had done or where she had gone in the years prior to her arrival at his fortress. Further, he cared not. Set had kept his part of the bargain, and the priestess had unknowingly invoked the spell that Skauraul had inscribed in his book hundreds of years ago.
If the casting of it had not destroyed her, Skauraul had further uses for her. He controlled her completely, though she knew it not. She would bear him many Mutare children. He commanded magic that would speed the growth of their sp.a.w.n within her; a new child would be born every time the moon waxed full. When the babes had grown sufficiently, he would send them out to all lands, like harbingers of chaos and calamity to groveling, mewling human wretches everywhere. He cared not that her powers would diminish while she was with child. Her weakened condition would keep her from attempting to destroy him.
Skauraul"s eyes glinted blackly with antic.i.p.ation as he marched up the steps to claim his bride.
Nineteen.
Marathon --------.
The sun burned balefully in the cloudless azure sky above the eastern desert of Shem. Conan shaded his eyes with a sun-bronzed hand and carefully scanned the southern horizon. He blinked several times to be certain that what he saw was not a desert phantasm, nor an image conjured up by his sunbaked head. Nay, he saw it still, the gray speck weaving at the outer edge of his vision.
"I see him, just half a league away," he rasped hoa.r.s.ely to Kailash.
"He must have stopped to rest last night," the Kezankian mumbled. He felt and sounded like he was speaking through a mouthful of sand.
"Today we catch him, by Crom!" Conan said wearily. "The seventh day of our chase, and the wretch still leads us!"
"Eighth day," Kailash corrected. He had been counting the days since they had left Innasfaln. The first few days had been uneventful, but on the fifth day, a small band of Zuagir bandits had attacked them. The two warriors had made camp in the southeastern foothills of the Kezankian Mountains, south of the Road of Kings. Conan had awakened in time to see several shadowy, knife-wielding forms approaching the camp under the cover of darkness. The Cimmerian had charged the Zuagirs and shouted to Kailash, rousing him.
In a pitched battle, they had slain a few of the nomads, but others escaped, taking Conan"s and Kailash"s horses with them. Conan"s provisions had still been packed onto his mount, but Kailash"s had fortunately been lying on the ground beside him. Though discouraged, they were unwilling to give up the chase, and had continued afoot to dog Lamici"s southward trail.
Their diligence had not been in vain. The next day they had found the carca.s.s of a horse that Kailash recognized as one of the steeds from Eldran"s stable. The eunuch had pushed it too hard; he was now forced to continue on foot. With renewed hope, the two warriors had followed his sandal-tracks along the southernmost foothills of the Kezankian Mountains. The trail was colder. Lamici had gained much distance on them.
They had tracked him to the northeast edges of the Mountains of Fire.
Eventually even the far-off sight of those mountains had vanished from the horizon as they had forged deeper into the arid wastes of the Shemitish desert. Lamici"s foot-track had proven easier to follow than his horse-track. They had been certain of their nearness to him, but the eunuch had stayed maddeningly ahead of them.
Only now, days later, had Conan actually sighted him. Both men moved their aching legs along, redoubling their efforts to apprehend their quarry.
"The wretch has the endurance of a desert scorpion," Conan grumbled, "and better luck than we have had."
"His luck is about to change," Kailash mumbled grimly, fingering the hilt of his sword suggestively.
"If he reaches the fortress before we catch him, our luck may worsen,"
Conan observed grimly.
Kailash lapsed into a surly silence, conserving his energy. Neither he nor Conan had yet brought up an issue of growing concern: their dwindling provisions. They had conserved their supply of water, but the grueling pace they maintained was taking its toll. Further, they had not rested in the hottest hours of the day, as originally planned. To gain distance, they had opted to trudge on even while the sun was at its zenith.
Kailash believed that a few days without water would not trouble the Cimmerian. He wished that he had the same iron const.i.tution as Conan, for he feared he would slow them up. His legs were cramping badly, his lungs ached from the searing air of the desert, and the exposed areas of his flesh were red and peeling. After they caught the eunuch, he was unsure if he could survive the journey back.
He allowed his mind to retreat from these unhappy thoughts, letting it linger instead on visions of cool tankards of ale and the soft caresses of beautiful tavern wenches. In a dreamlike state, he kept moving on, mindlessly following the Cimmerian.
As the merciless sun finally retreated from the sky, Conan once again surveyed the southern horizon. He smiled through cracked, chapped lips at what he saw. They were closing on Lamici, whose trail was weaving like the crooked gait of a tavern drunk. They had pa.s.sed his empty, discarded water skin hours before; surely the crazed eunuch was on his last legs.
Conan turned at the sound of a soft thump behind him. Kailash had pitched forward into the sand. The Cimmerian moved toward him immediately, but Kailash stirred and got to his feet.
"Fell asleep," Kailash muttered, brushing sand from his face. He promptly fell back down.
Conan threw him a worried glance. He propped the hill-man"s head up and put the water skin to his blistered lips.
Kailash sipped at it, then raised himself on his elbows.
"Need to rest," he told Conan through half-closed eyes. "You go on."
Conan looked back toward the far-off figure of Lamici, which he could barely see in the fading light of dusk. He wished for even a few hours of sleep. He could not drag the big Kezankian along with him, nor could he simply abandon him here in the desert. They had only one skin of water between them. He made another attempt to prod Kailash into consciousness, but the groggy hillman lay motionless on the ground.
Disconcerted and out of ideas, the Cimmerian flung himself to the sand, a few paces away from Kailash. After pulling his hood over his face and resting a hand on the hilt of his drawn sword, he fell into an uneasy slumber.
Conan woke up feeling strangely refreshed. All about him were drab yellow dunes of fine sand, blown smooth by a wind that swept across them. The wind had sculpted sinuous patterns into the dunes, like waves in a sea of sand. His skin was dry and his lips were badly sunburned, but he did not feel the nagging tickle of thirst in his throat. Then an awful realization struck him. The morning sun was rising! He had overslept!
He raised up a hand to shield his eyes from the fiery gaze of the desert sun"s blazing eye. He lurched to his feet and moved over to awaken Kailash. With a jarring shock, he noticed that the hillman was nowhere in sight. There were no tracks in the sand to show where he might have gone. Desperately, Conan scanned the horizon for any sign of his friend. The sun burned especially bright today, so bright that he put one hand against his brow to shield his eyes.
In fact, the sun loomed closely over him, filling the sky with an unbearable radiance. He raised his arms protectively, peering out through slits in his squinting eyelids. As suddenly as the orb had swelled to fill the sky, it began to shrink and recede. He noticed that it had changed from yellow in color to bluish-white.
Now it was no longer in the sky above him, but at the end of a silver chain. An elderly, white-haired man held the chain in one hand; in the other, he gripped a silver spike. His only garb was a tattered, dusty brown wrap; the well-worn sandals upon his feet flapped loosely. He shuffled across the sand toward the bewildered Cimmerian.
"Slay him as I did!" he crowed in a shrill voice, waving the spike around.
Conan quickly a.s.sumed a fighting stance, his weapon ready. Old as he was, this crazy geezer might be dangerous.
"When he looks upon it, he must face thee! Do not let him flee!" The man continued to rave, holding up the amulet. Conan recognized the trinket; it looked identical to the one Madesus had carried!