Conan the Wanderer Part 4

So died Vardanes the traitor. Even Conan could hot tell whether he struck from l.u.s.t for revenge, or whether a merciful impulse to end the torment of a helpless creature had prompted the blow.

Conan turned to the G.o.ddess. Without meaning to, he instinctively raised his eyes to hers.

9. The Third Eye.

Her face was a mask of inhuman loveliness; her soft, moist lips were as full and crimson as ripe fruit Glossy, ebon hair tumbled across shoulders of glowing pearl, to fall in tides of silken night through which thrust the round moons of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She was beauty incarnate- save for the great dark orb between her brows.

The third eye met Conan's gaze and riveted him fast. This oval orb was larger than any organ of human vision. It was not divided into pupil, iris, and white as are human eyes; it was all black. His gaze seemed to sink into it and become lost in endless seas of darkness. He stared rapt, the sword forgotten in his hand. The eye was as black as the lightless seas of s.p.a.ce between the stars.

Now he seemed to stand at the brink of a black, bottomless well, into which he toppled and fell. Down, down through ebon fogs he fell, through a vast, cold abyss of utter darkness. He knew that, if he did not soon turn his eyes away, he would be forever lost to the world.

He made a terrible effort of will. Sweat stood out on his brow; his muscles writhed like serpents beneath his bronzed skin. His deep chest heaved.

The Gorgon laughed-a low, melodious sound with cold, cruel mockery in it. Conan flushed, and rage rose within him.

With a surge of will, he tore his eyes from that black orb and found himself staring at the floor. Weak and dizzy, he swayed on his feet. As he fought for the strength to stand erect, he glanced at those feet.

Thank Crom, they were still of warm flesh, not cold, ashen stone! The long moment he had stood ensorcelled by the Gorgon's gaze had been only a brief instant, too short for the stony tide to have crept up his flesh.

The Gorgon laughed again. With his s.h.a.ggy head bowed, Conan felt tie tug of her will. The muscles of his corded neck swelled in his effort to keep his head bent away.

He was still looking down. Before him, on the marble pave, lay the thin golden mask with the huge sapphirine gem set in it to represent the third eye. And suddenly, Conan knew.

This time, as his glance rose, his sword swung with it. The flas.h.i.+ng blade clove the dusty air and caught the mocking face of the G.o.ddess-slas.h.i.+ng the third eye in twain.

She did not move. With her two normal eyes of surpa.s.sing beauty, she stared silently at the grim warrior, her face blank and white. A change swept over her.

From the ruin of the Gorgon's third eye, dark fluid ran down the face of inhuman perfection. Like black tears, the slow dew fell from the shattered organ.

Then she began to age. As the dark fluid ran from the riven orb, so the stolen life force of aeons drained from her body. Her skin darkened and roughened into a thousand wrinkles. Withered dewlaps formed beneath her chin. Glowing eyes became l.u.s.terless and milky.

The superb bosom sagged and shrank. Sleek limbs became scrawny. For a long moment, the dwarfed, withered form of a tiny woman, incredibly senile, tottered on the throne. Then flesh rotted to papery sc.r.a.ps and mouldering bones. The body collapsed, spilling across the pavement in a litter of leathery fragments, which crumbled as Conan watched to a colorless, ashy powder.

A long sigh went through the hall. It darkened briefly as if the pa.s.sage of half-transparent wings dimmed the obscure light. Then it was gone, and with it the brooding air of age-old menace. The chamber became just a dusty, neglected old room, devoid of supernatural terrors.

The statues slept forever now in graves of eternal stone. As the Gorgon pa.s.sed from this dimension, so her spells snapped, including those that had held the living dead in a grisly semblance of life. Conan turned away, leaving the empty throne with its litter of dust and the broken, headless statue of what had once been a bold, high-spirited Zamorian fighting man.

"Stay with us, Conan!" Zillah pleaded in her low, soft voice. "There will be posts of high honor for a man such as you in Akhlat, now that we are freed of the curse."

He grinned hardly, sensing something more personal in her voice than the desire of a good citizen to enlist a worthy immigrant in the cause of civic reconstruction. At the probing gaze of his hot, male eyes, she flushed in confusion.

Lord Enosh added his gentle voice to the pleadings of his daughter.

Conan's victory had lent new youth and vigor to the elderly man. He stood straight and tall, with a new firmness in his step and a new command in his voice. He offered the Cimmerian wealth, honors, position, and a place of power in the newborn city. Enosh had even hinted that he would look with favor upon Conan as a son-in-law.

But Conan, knowing himself ill-suited to the life of placid, humdrum respectability they held out to him, refused all offers. Courtly phrases did not spring readily to the lips of one whose years had been spent on the field of battle and in the wine shops and joy houses of the world's cities. But, with such tact as his blunt, barbaric nature could muster, he turned aside his hosts' pleas.

"Nay, friends," he said. "Not for Conan of Cimmeria the tasks of peace.

I should too soon become bored, and when boredom strikes, I know of but few cures: to get drunk, to pick a fight, or to steal a girl. A fine sort of citizen I should make for a city that now seeks peace and quiet to recover its strength!"

"Then whither will you go, O Conan, now that the magical barriers are dissolved?" asked Enosh.

Conan shrugged, ran a hand through his black mane, and laughed. "Crom, my good sir, I know not! Luckily for me, the G.o.ddess's servants fed and watered Vardanes' horse. Akhlat, I see, has no horses-only donkeys-and a great lout like me would look like a fool, jogging along on a sleepy little a.s.s with my toes dragging in the dust!

"I think I'll bend my path to the southeast. Somewhere yonder lies the city of Zamboula, which I have never been. Men say it is a rich city of fleshpots and revelry, where the wine all but flows free in the gutters. I've a mind to taste the joys of Zamboula, to see what excitement it has to offer."

"But you need not leave us a beggar!" Enosh protested. "We owe you much. Let us give you what little gold and silver we have for your labors."

Conan shook his head. "Keep your treasure, shaykh. Akhlat is no rich metropolis, and you will need your money when the merchants' caravans begin to arrive again from across the Red Waste. And now that my water bags are full and I've provisions aplenty, I must be off. This time, I shall make the journey through the Shan-e-Sorkh in comfort."

With a last, brisk farewell, he swung into the saddle and cantered up out of the valley. They stood looking after him, Enosh proudly, but Zillah with tears on her cheeks. Soon he was out of sight.

As he reached the top of the dunes, Conan halted the black mare for a last look at Akhlat. Then he rode off into the Waste. Perhaps he had been a fool not to accept their small store of treasure. But there was plenty in Vardanes' saddle bags, which he reached behind him to thump.

He grinned. Why squabble over a few shekels like a greasy tradesman? It does a man good, once in a while, to be virtuous. Even a Cimmerian!

Conan duly arrives in Zamboula, where he swiftly dissipates the small fortune he brings with him in a colossal debauch. A week of guzzling, gorging, roistering, whoring, and gambling reduce him once more to dest.i.tution.

Shadows in Zamboula -------------------.

1. A Drum Begins

"Peril hides in the house of Aram Baks.h.!.+"

The speaker's voice quivered with earnestness and his lean, black-nailed fingers clawed at Conan's mightily-muscled arm as he croaked his warning. He was a wiry, sunburnt man with a straggling black beard, and his ragged garments proclaimed him a nomad. He looked smaller and meaner than ever in contrast to the giant Cimmerian with his black brows, broad chest, and powerful limbs. They stood in a corner of the Sword Makers' Bazaar, and on either side of them flowed past the many-tongued, many-colored stream of the Zamboulan streets, which are exotic, hybrid, flamboyant, and clamorous.

Conan pulled his eyes back from following a bold-eyed, red-lipped Ghanara whose short slit skirt bared her brown thigh at each insolent step, and frowned down at his importunate companion.

"What do you mean by peril?" he demanded.

The desert man glanced furtively over his shoulder before replying, and lowered his voice.

"Who can say? But desert men and travelers have slept in the house of Aram Baksh and never been seen or heard of again. What became of them?

He swore they rose and went their way-and it is true that no citizen of the city has ever disappeared from his house. But no one saw the travelers again, and men say that goods and equipment recognized as theirs have been seen in the bazaars. If Aram did not sell them, after doing away with their owners, how came they there?"

"I have no goods," growled the Cimmerian, touching the s.h.a.green-bound hilt of the broadsword that hung at his hip. "I have even sold my horse."

"But it is not always rich strangers who vanish by night from the house of Aram Baks.h.!.+" chattered the Zuagir. "Nay, poor desert men have slept there-because his score is less than that of the other taverns-and have been seen no more. Once a chief of the Zuagirs whose son had thus vanished complained to the satrap, Jungir Khan, who ordered the house searched by soldiers."

"And they found a cellar full of corpses?" asked Conan in good-humored derision.

"Nay! They found naught! And drove the chief from the city with threats and curses! But"-he drew closer to Conan and s.h.i.+vered-"something else was found! At the edge of the desert, beyond the houses, there is a clump of palm trees, and within that grove there is a pit. And within that pit have been found human bones, charred and blackened! Not once, but many times!"

"Which proves what?" grunted the Cimmerian.

"Aram Baksh is a demon! Nay, in this accursed city which Stygians built and which Hyrkanians rule-where white, brown, and black folk mingle together to produce hybrids of all unholy hues and breeds-who can tell who is a man, and who a demon in disguise? Aram Baksh is a demon in the form of a man! At night he a.s.sumes his true guise and carries his guests off into the desert, where his fellow demons from the waste meet in conclave."

"Why does he always carry off strangers?" asked Conan skeptically.

"The people of the city would not suffer him to slay their people, but they care naught for the strangers who fall into his hands. Conan, you are of the West, and know not the secrets of this ancient land. But, since the beginning of happenings, the demons of the desert have wors.h.i.+pped Yog, the Lord of the Empty Abodes, with fire-fire that devours human victims.