Conan the Invincible Part 31

"As you wish," Amanar said smoothly. He returned to the throne and struck the crystal bell once more.

This time Sitha appeared from the small door through which Aberius had left. Four more S'tarra followed, bearing a litter. Roughly they lifted Conan onto the bare wood and fastened him with broad leather straps across his ma.s.sive chest and thighs. As they were carrying him out Conan heard Amanar speak.

"There is much we must speak of, my dear Karela. Come closer."

The door swung shut.

Chapter XXV.

As the litter was carried through the donjon, one mailed S'tarra at each corner and Sitha leading, Conan lay seemingly quiescent. For the moment struggle was futile, but he constantly attempted to clench his right hand. If he could make even that beginning .... The hand twitched of its own volition, but no more. He fought to keep breathing.

The litter was carried from a resplendent corridor through an archway and down rough stone stairs. The walls, at first worked smooth, became raw stone, a pa.s.sage hacked from the living rock beneath the dark fortress. Those who went thither no longer had a care for mosaics or tapestries.

The crude corridor leveled. Sitha pounded a huge fist against an iron-strapped door of rough wood. The door opened, and to Conan's surprise, a human appeared, the first he had seen in the keep who did not keep his eyes on the ground.

The man was even shorter than Conan, but even more ma.s.sive, heavy sloping muscles covered with thick layers of fat. Piggish eyes set deep in a round, bald head regarded Conan. "So, Sitha," he said in a surprisingly high-pitched voice, "you've brought Ort another guest."

"Stand aside, Ort," Sitha hissed. "You know what is to be done here.

You waste time."

Shockingly, the fat man giggled. "You'd like to cut Ort's head off, wouldn't you Sitha, with that ax of yours? But Amanar needs Ort for his torturing. You S'tarra get carried away and leave dead meat when there'd questions yet to be asked."

"This one is already meat," Sitha said contemptuously. Casually the S'tarra turned to smash a backhand blow to Conan's face. Ort giggled again.

Blood welled in Conan's mouth. Chest heaving, he fought to get painful words out. "Kill-you-Sitha," he gasped.

Ort blinked his tiny eyes in surprise. "He speaks? After the vapor?

This one is strong."

"Strong," Sitha snarled. "Not as strong as I!" Its fist crashed into Conan's face, splitting his cheek. For a moment the S'tarra stood with fist upraised, fangs bared, then lowered its claw-tipped hand with an obvious effort. "Put him in his cell, Ort, before I forget the master's commands."

Giggling, Ort led the procession into the dungeons. Grim ironbound doors lined the rough stone walls. Before one Ort stopped, undoing a heavy iron lock with a key from his broad leather belt. "In here," he said. "There's another in there already, but I'm filling up."

Quickly, under Sitha's direction, the other S'tarra unstrapped Conan from the litter and carried him into the cell, a cubicle cut in the rock as crudely as the rest of the dungeon. As chains were being fastened to the Cimmerian's wrists and ankles he saw his fellow prisoner, chained in the same fas.h.i.+on to the far wall, and knew a second of shock. It was the Zamoran captain he had tricked into combat with the hillmen.

As the other S'tarra left, Sitha came to stand over Conan. "Were it left to me," it hissed angrily, "you would die now. But the master has use of you yet." From a pouch at its belt it took a vial and forced it between the Cimmerian's teeth. Bitter liquid flowed across his tongue.

"Perhaps, Cimmerian, when the master has your soul, this time he will let me have what remains." With a sibilant laugh Sitha shoved the empty vial back into his pouch and strode from the cell. The thick door banged shut.

Conan could feel strength flowing slowly back into his limbs. Weakly he pushed himself to a sitting position and leaned against the cool stone of the cell wall.

The hook-nosed Zamoran captain watched him thoughtfully with dark eyes.

There were long blisters on his arms, and others were visible on his chest where his tunic was ripped. "I am Haranides," he said finally.

"Whom do I share these... accommodations with?"

"I am called Conan," the Cimmerian replied. He tested the chains that fastened his manacles to the wall. Three feet and more in length, the links of them were too thick for him to have burst even had he his full strength, and he was far from that as yet.

"Conan," Haranides murmured. "I've heard that name in Shadizar, thief.

Would I had known you when we met last."

Conan s.h.i.+fted his full attention to the Zamoran. "You remember me, then, do you?"

"I'm not likely to forget a man with shoulders like a bull, especially when he brought me near ten score hillmen for a present."

"Did you indeed follow us, then? I would not have done it save for that."

"I followed you," Haranides replied bitterly. "Rather, I followed the Red Hawk and the trinkets she took from Tiridates. Or was it you, thief, who entered the palace and slew like a demon?"

"Not I," Conan said, "nor the Red Hawk. 'Twas S'tarra, the scaled ones, who did it, and we followed them as you followed us. But how came you to this pa.s.s, chained to the wall in Amanar's dungeon?"

"From continuing my pursuit of the red-haired wench when a wiser man would have returned to Shadizar and surrendered his head," the captain said. "Half a mountain of rock poured into the gorge by those things-S'tarra, you call them? No more than twenty of my men escaped.

We had a hillman for a guide, but whether he led us into a trap, or perished beneath the stone, or even got away entirely, I know not."

"You got not those burns from falling rock."

Haranides examined his blisters ruefully. "Our jailor, a fellow named Ort, likes to entertain himself with a hot iron. He's surprisingly agile for one of his bulk. He'd strike and leap away, and in these," he rattled his chains, "neither could I attack nor escape him."

"If he comes again with his irons," Conan said eagerly, "perhaps in dodging from the one he will come close enough for the other to seize."

He pulled one of his chains to its fullest extent and measured with his eye. With a disgusted grunt he again slumped against the stone wall.

There was room enough and more between him and the other man for Ort to leap and dodge as he would. The fat torturer could stand within a finger's breadth of either man with impunity. He realized the other man was frowning at him.

"It comes to me," Haranides said slowly, "that already I have told you more than I told Ort. How came you to be chained like an ox, Conan?"

"I misjudged the wiliness of a sorcerer," Conan replied curtly.

It rankled still, the ease with which he had been taken. He seemed to remember once calling himself a bane of wizards, yet Amanar had snared him like a three-years child. While Karela watched, too.

"Then you were in his service?" Haranides said.

Conan shook his head irritably. "No!"

"Perhaps you are in his service still, put in here to extract information more easily than good Ort."

"Are your brains moon-struck?" Conan bellowed, lunging to his feet. His chains left him paces short of the other man. At least, though, he had regained enough strength to stand. With a short laugh he sank back. "A cell is no place for a duel, and we can't reach each other besides.

I'll ask you to watch your speaking, though. I serve no sorcerer."

"Perhaps," Haranides said, and he would say no more.

Conan made himself as comfortable as the bare stone floor and rough wall would permit. He had slept in worse conditions in the mountains as a boy, and of his own free will. This time he did not sleep, though, but rather set his mind to escape, and to the killing of Amanar, for that last he would do if his own life were extinguished in the same moment. But how to kill a man who could take a yard of steel through his chest and not even bleed? That was a weighty question, indeed.

Some men, he knew, had amulets which were atuned to them by magicks, so that the amulet could be used for good or ill against that man. The Eye of Erlik came to mind, which bauble had at last brought down the Khan of Zamboula, though not by its sorceries. That the pendant which Velita had worn nestled between her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s was a watch for Amanar's evil eyes was to the Cimmerian proof that it too was such an amulet. It could be used to kill Amanar, he was sure, if he but knew the way.

But first must come escape. He reviewed what he had seen since being carried to the dungeon, what Ort had said, what Haranides had told him, and a plan slowly formed. He settled to wait. The patience of the hunting leopard was in him. He was a mountain warrior of Cimmeria. At fifteen he had been one of the fierce Cimmerian horde that stormed the walls of Venarium and sacked that border city of Aquilonia. Even before that had he been allowed his place at the warriors' council fires, and since then he had traveled far, seen kingdoms and thrones totter, helped to steady some and topple others. He knew that nine parts of fighting was knowing when to wait, the tenth knowing when to strike. He would wait. For now. The hours pa.s.sed.

At the rattle of a key in the ma.s.sive iron lock Conan's muscles tensed.

He forced them to relax. His full strength was returned, but care must be taken.