Annoyance flashed across Kandar"s face, but he seemed otherwise unaware of the other man. "Prepare her," he commanded. "Prepare both of them. I will not refuse an extra trifle when it is put before me."
"No!" Vyndra screamed.
She whirled to run, but before she had crossed half the chamber, three of the veiled women were on her, pushing her to the floor. With a corner of her mind she was aware of the other three holding Chin Kou, but panting desperation flooded every part of her. Frantically, futilely, she fought, but the women rolled her this way and that, stripping away her so-recently donned robes with humiliating ease. When she was naked, they would not allow her to regain her feet but dragged her writhing across the floor with kicking legs trailing behind her. At Kandar"s feet they forced her to her knees and his gaze chilled her to the bone, turning her muscles to water, stilling her struggles. Chin Kou was knelt beside her, as naked as she and sobbing with terror, but Vyndra could not take her eyes from Kandar"s.
"You cannot hope to get away with this," she whispered. "I am not some nameless-"
"You are nameless," he snapped. "I told you, the Lady Vyndra is gone"-slowly he fastened the veil across her face by its tiny silver chain-"and in her place is a new addition to my purdhana. I think I will name you Maryna."
"Your sister," Vyndra panted. She had had no trouble with the veil while dancing; now it seemed to restrict her breathing. "I will free Alyna. I will-" His slap jerked her head sideways.
"I have no sister," he growled.
"What of my gold?" Prytanis demanded suddenly. "The wench is yours, and I want my payment."
"Of course." Kandar took a purse from his belt, tossing it to the slitnosed man. "It is satisfactory,"
Prytanis eagerly untied the purse strings and spilled some of the golden coins into his palm. "It is satisfactory," he said. "If only Conan could see-" His words ended in a grunt as Kandar"s sword thrust into his middle. Gold rang on the floor tiles as he grabbed the blade with both hands.
Kandar met the Nemedian"s unbelieving gaze levelly. "You gazed on the unveiled faces of two women of my purdhana," he explained. The razor steel slid easily from the dying man"s grasp, and Prytanis fell atop his gold.
Face smarting, Vyndra gathered the last shreds of her courage. "To kill your own hirelings and take back the gold is like you, Kandar. You were always a fool and a worm." His dark gaze made her realize it had been the last of her courage. She clenched her teeth with the effort of facing him.
"He saw your face unveiled," the prince said, "and that of the Khitan woman, so he had to die, for my honor. But he earned the gold and I am no thief. You will be beaten once for that and again for each of the other insults."
"I am of the Kshatriya blood." Vyndra spoke the words for her own benefit, as though to deny what had happened, and no one else seemed to notice them.
"This was the last of your strange companions," Kandar continued. "The others are already dead. All of them."
A whimper rose in Vyndra"s throat. The vanishing of a small hope she had not known was there until it was gone, the hope that the huge barbarian would rescue her, left her now truly with nothing. "You will never break me," she whispered and knew the emptiness of the words even as they left her lips.
"Break you?" Kandar said mockingly. "Of course not. But there must be some small training in obedience. Some small humbling of your pride."
Vyndra wanted to shake her head in denial, but his eyes held hers like a serpent mesmerizing a bird. "On the morrow you will be placed on a horse, garbed as now, and paraded through the streets of Gwandiakan so that all may see the beauty of my new possession. Bring them!" he snapped at the women.
With all of her heart Vyndra wanted to muster a shout of defiance, but she knew, as she was dragged to the horses, that it was a wail of despair that echoed in the halls of her palace.
Chapter XX.
At a crude plank table by himself in the corner of a dirt-floored tavern, Conan was reminded of Sultanapur as he tugged the hood of his dark cloak, borrowed from a groom at Vyndra"s palace, deeper over his face. Wondering when he would next be in a city without the need to hide his features, he emptied half the cheap wine in his wooden tank in one long swallow.
The others in the tavern were Vendhyans all, though far from the n.o.bles or wealthy of Gwandiakan. Carters who smelled of their oxen rubbed elbows with masons" apprentices in tunics stained with gray splashes of dried mortar. Nondescript turbaned men hunkered over their wine or talked in hushed tones with black eyes darting to see who might overhear. The smell of sour wine warred with incense, and the muted babble of voices did not quite mask the tinkle of bells at the wrists and ankles of sloe-eyed doxies parading through the tavern. Unlike their sisters in the West, their robes covered them from ankle to neck, but those robes were of the sheerest gossamer, concealing nothing. The jades found few customers, though, and the usual frivolity of taverns was absent. The air was filled with a tension darker than the night outside the walls. The Cimmerian was not the only man to keep his face hidden.
Conan signaled for more wine. A serving wench, her garb but a trifle more opaque than that of the trulls, brought a rough clay pitcher, took his coin and hurried away without a word, obviously eager to return to her cubbyhole and hide.
That tightly wound nervousness had been evident in the entire city from his arrival, and it had grown tighter as the night went on. Soldiers were still arresting homeless waifs and beggar children, such few as had not gone to ground like pursued foxes, carrying them off to the fortress prison that stood in the center of Gwandiakan. But even the soldiers could sense the mood of the sullen throngs. Patrols now often numbered a hundred men, and they moved as though expecting attack at any moment.
The streets had been full of talk earlier, full of rumor, and the Cimmerian had no trouble in hearing of the men he sought. Quickly he learned the location of Prince Kandar"s palace, one of the few east of the city, and of that where Karim Singh was said to be staying. Before he had gone a hundred paces, however, he heard of another palace said to house the wazam, and fifty paces beyond that a third, both widely separated from each other and from the first. Each corner brought a new rumor. Half the palaces of Gwandiakan were said to contain Karim Singh.
Tongues could be found to name every palace as housing Naipal, and many spoke of an invisible palace constructed in a night by the mage, while still others claimed the wizard watched the city from above, from the clouds. In the end it was frustration that had sent Conan into the tavern.
A wave of dizziness that had nothing to do with the wine swept over him, not for the first time that night, clouding his vision. Grimly he fought it off, and when his eyes cleared, Hordo was sliding onto a bench across the table from him.
"I have been looking for you for hours," the one-eyed man said. "Kandar attacked Vyndra"s palace with a hundred lancers and took Vyndra and the Khitan"s niece, Chin Kou. Prytanis was with him."
With a snarl Conan smashed his wooden tankard to the dirt floor.
Momentary silence rolled through the room, and every eye swiveled to him. Then, hastily, talk began again. It was not a night to become involved in a stranger"s anger.
"The men?" Conan asked.
"Nicks and cuts. No more. We managed to get to the horses and Kuie Hsi found us a place to hide, an abandoned temple on something called the Street of Dreams, though miserable dreams they must be. A day or two of rest and healing and we"ll see what can be done about the wenches."
Conan shook his head, as much to clear it as in negation. "I do not have a day or two. Best you return to this temple. They will need you if they are to make it back to Turan."
"What are you about?" Hordo demanded, but the Cimmerian only clapped his friend on the shoulder and hurried from the tavern. As Conan trotted down the darkened street, he heard the one-eyed man calling behind him, but he did not look back.
The Bhalkhana stallion was stabled near the city gate by which he had entered Gwandiakan, and a coin retrieved the big black from a wizened liveryman. The city gates themselves were ma.s.sive, ten times the height of a man, and made of black iron plates worked in fanciful designs.
They would not be easily moved, and from the dirt that had acc.u.mulated along their bases, it had been years since they were closed. The city"s ill ease hung on the turban-helmed gate guards as well, and they only watched him nervously, fingering their spears, as he galloped through.
The one bit of definite information he had learned in his night of listening, the one story that did not change-and the one he had thought least useful even at that-was the location of Kandar"s palace. Rage filled him, but it was an icy rage. To die with sword in hand would be much preferable to succ.u.mbing to the poison in his veins, but the women must be freed first. Only when they were safe could he allow himself to think of his own concerns.
Short of the palace he rode into a copse of trees and tied the stallion"s reins to a branch. Stealth and cunning, bred in his days as a thief, would better serve him now than steel.
Prince Kandar"s palace, larger even than Vyndra"s, shone in the night with the light of a thousand lamps, a gleaming alabaster intricacy of terraces, domes and spires. Reflection pools stretched on all sides and between them gardens of flowering shrubs reached the very walls of the palace, their myriad blossoms filling the darkness with a hundred perfumes.
Perfumes and blossoms did not interest Conan, but the shrubs served well to cover his silent approach. He was but one shadow among many.
Fingers trained by climbing the cliffs of his native Cimmerian mountains found crevices in the seemingly smooth joining of great marble blocks, and he scaled the palace wall as another man might climb a ladder.
Lying flat atop the broad wall, Conan surveyed what he could of the palace-small courtyards with splashing fountains, intricately friezed towers thrusting toward the sky, colonnaded walks lit by lamps of cunningly wrought gold. Breath caught in his throat, and his hand went unbidden to his sword. Past the fluted columns of one of those colonnades walked a man in robes of gold and crimson with another in what seemed black silk. Karim Singh. And, if the G.o.ds were with him, Naipal. With a regretful sigh he released the sword-hilt and watched the two men walk on beyond his sight. The women, he told himself. The women first. Scrambling to his feet, he ran along the wall.
Height was the key, as experience in the cities of Nemedia and Zamora had taught him. A man glimpsed in the upper reaches of a structure, even one who obviously did not belong there, was often ignored. After all, without a right to be there, how could he have traveled so far?
Too, entering on the upper levels meant that every step took a man closer to the ground and his route to escape. Escape was especially important this night, for the two women if not for him.
Cornices, friezes and a hundred elaborate workings of alabaster stone made a swift path for the big Cimmerian. Slipping through a narrow window just below the roof, he found himself in a pitch-dark stuffy room. By touch he quickly ascertained that it was a storeroom for carpets and bedding. The narrow door opened onto a corridor dimly lit by bra.s.s lamps. No gold hangings or fine tapestries here, for these upper floors were servants" quarters. Snores drifted from some of the rooms. As silent and grim as a hunting cat, Conan padded into the hall.
Stairs led him down.
Sounds floated from other parts of the palace-an indistinguishable murmur of voices, the thrum of a cithern. Once the single deep toll of a gong echoed mournfully. The Cimmerian let them pa.s.s all but unnoticed, his eyes and ears straining instead for the flicker of shadow or hint of a soft footfall that might betray any who could give an alarm.
It was a bedchamber he sought, he was sure of that. From what he knew of Kandar, such would have been his first stop with the women, and it would no doubt suit his fancy to have them awaiting his return were he not still with them. Conan hoped that he was. Karim Singh and Naipal would certainly escape him this night but it would be good to deal with Kandar at least.
The first three bedchambers he found were empty, though golden lamps cast soft light in wait for their eventual occupants. As he stepped into the fourth, only a sense below the levels of understanding threw him into a forward roll an instant before razor steel slashed through the place where his head had been.
Conan came to his feet with broadsword in hand, and a vigorous cut made his attacker leap back. The Cimmerian stared at his opponent, for he had not seen the man"s like before, not even in this strange land. A nasaled helm with a thick spike topped his dark expressionless face, and his armor was of leather studded with bra.s.s. A long straight sword was in his gauntleted right hand, a shorter curved blade in his left, and he moved as though he knew well the use of each.
"I am here for the women," Conan said in a taunting voice. If he could make the man exchange words with him, the other might not think to give an alarm even while they strove to slay each other. "Tell me where they are, and I"ll not kill you." The man"s silent rush forced him to throw up his blade in defense.
And it was defense, the Cimmerian realized in shock. His broadsword flashed and darted as swiftly as ever it had, but it was all in a desperate effort to keep the other"s steel from striking him. For the first time in his life he faced a man faster than himself. Slashes with the speed of a striking viper forced him back. Snarling, he gambled, continuing the motion of a block with a smash of his fisted hilt to his opponent"s face.
The strangely armored man was thrown back, an inlaid table crushed to splinters by his fall, but before Conan could take more than a single step to follow up his attack, the other sprang to his feet. Conan met him in the center of the room, and sparks were struck as steel wove a deadly lace between them. The Cimmerian poured all of his rage-at Kandar, at Naipal, at Karim Singh-into his attack, refusing this time to yield a step. Abruptly a slicing blow of his broadsword sheared through flesh and bone, but even as it did, he was forced to jump back to avoid a decapitating stroke.