Conan the Magnificent Part 11

That cooled their mirth, as he had intended it should. The laugh had been good for easing the disquiet, and perhaps more than disquiet, that had fallen over them all since they entered the mountains, but they must be ever mindful of what they were about and where they were if they were to leave with their lives.

As the others sat or lay or even walked a bit to stretch their legs, Eldran reclined with his reins wrapped loosely about one hand. He had had his own difficulties in keeping his mind cleanly on his purpose in the Kezankians.

Even through the unease that hung about him like a miasma, a tall Zamoran beauty with arrogance enough for a score of kings had a way of intruding on his thoughts when he was not careful. But was she truly Zamoran, he wondered.

Her manner, acting as if she ruled whatever ground she stood on, said yes. But those eyes. Like the mists of morning clinging to the oaks of the forest. No Zamoran ever had such eyes, as gray as his own.

Angrily he reminded himself of his purpose, to avenge his brother and those who went with him into the Kezankians, never to return. And to avenge as well those who had died attempting to defend their farmholds against the beast of fire. To make certain that more deaths did not come from the beast. If he and every man with him died, it would be small price for success. They had all agreed to that before ever they left Brythunia.

A raven circled high above him. Like the bird he and Jondra had shot, he thought. Angrily he leaped to his feet. Could nothing put the woman from his mind? Well, he would not be reminded of her longer by that accursed bird. He pulled his bow from its wolf-hide case behind his saddle.

"Eldran!" From a s.p.a.ce clear of boulders higher on the mountain, a bony man with a pointed nose waved to him frantically. "Come quickly, Eldran!"

"What is it, Fyrdan?" Eldran called back, but he was scrambling up the slope as he spoke. Fyrdan was not one to become excited over nothing. Others of the band followed."There," the bony man said, flinging out an arm to point as Eldran joined him.

Eldran cupped his hands beside his eyes to improve his seeing, but there was little to make out save boiling dust and the tiny figures of struggling men on the hills far below. "Hillmen," he said finally.

"And Zamorans," Fyrdan added. "I saw the banner their general carried go down."

Slowly Eldran's hands dropped to his sides. "Forgive me, Jondra," he said softly.

"Perhaps the soldiers had not fetched her yet," Haral said. "Perhaps these are the other soldiers we saw."

Eldran shook his head. "The others were further west. And I watched their camp until their general left to find her."

"A Zamoran wench," Fyrdan said scornfully. "There are plenty of good Brythunian women eager for a tumble with. ..." His words trailed off under Eldran's glare.

"We will speak no more of the woman," the gray-eyed man said. "We will talk of other things, things that must be said. We have tracked the beast here to its home ground, and its spoor is on the mountains themselves. The very rocks are baneful, and the air reeks of maleficence. Let no man say he has not felt it as I have."

"Next you will be claiming second sight," Haral grumbled, then added with a chuckle, "Unless you've changed greatly since last we swam together, you cannot qualify to become a priestess." No one echoed his jollity; grave eyes watched Eldran, who went on in grim tones.

"I have no need of second sight to scent death. Who follows me from here must resign himself that his bones will go unanointed. I will not think ill of any man who turns back, but let him do it now."

"Do you turn back?" Haral asked gently. Eldran shook his head. "Then,"

the plump man said, "I will not either. I am old enough to choose the place of my dying, an it comes to that."

"My brother rode with yours, Eldran," Fyrdan said. "My blood burns as hot for vengeance as yours." One by one the others made it known that they, too, would go on, and Eldran nodded.

"Very well," he said simply. "What will come, will come. Let us ride."

The raven was gone, he saw as he made his way back down to the trail.

Birds of ill omen, they were, yet he could not find gladness in him for its absence. It had reminded him of Jondra, and whether she lived or no he could not think he would ever see her again. But then, he thought bleakly, there would be ravens beyond counting deeper in the Kezankians, and bones aplenty for them to pick.

Chapter 14.

Basrakan Imalla stalked the floor of his oaken-paneled chamber with head bowed as if his multi-hued turban were too heavy. His blood-red robes swirled with the agitation of his pacing. So many worries weighing on his shoulders, he thought. The path of holiness was not an easy one. There was the matter of another dead raven in the next chamber. Men, it had said before dying. But how many, and where? And to have two of the birds slain in only a few days. Did someone know of the ravens' function? Someone inimical to him? Another had reported men as well. Not soldiers; the birds could distinguish them. But the inability to count meant there could be ten or a hundred. It might even be the same party seen by the dead raven. He would have to increase his patrols and find these interlopers, however many groups of them there were.

At least the bird that accompanied the men he had sent against the soldiers had reported victory. No, not merely victory. Annihilation. But even with that came burdens. The warriors he had sent forth camped now, so said the raven. Squabbling among themselves over the looting of the dead, no doubt. b.u.t.they would return. They had to. He had given them a victory, a sign from the old G.o.ds.

Unbidden the true source of his worries rushed back to mock him, though he tried as he had so often in days past to force it from him. A sign from the old G.o.ds. The sign of the ancient G.o.ds' favor. Seven times, now, he had tried to summon the drake, each attempt carefully hidden from the eyes even of his own acolytes, and seven times he had failed. Unrest grew in the camps for the lack of the showing. And those he had sent after the Eyes of Fire had not returned. Could the old G.o.ds have withdrawn their grace from him?

Wrapping his arms around him, he rocked back and forth on his heels.

"Am I worthy, O G.o.ds of my forefathers?" he moaned. "Am I truly worthy?"

"Our question exactly, Imalla," a voice growled.

Basrakan spun, and blinked to find three hillmen confronting him. He struggled to recover his equilibrium. As he drew himself up, two of the bearded men shrank back. "You dare disturb me?" he rasped. "How did you pa.s.s my guards?"

The man who had stood his ground, his mustaches curled like the horns of a bull, spoke. "Even among your guards there are doubts, Imalla."

"You are called Walid," Basrakan said, and a flicker of fear appeared in the other's black eyes.

There were no sorceries involved, though. This Walid had been reported to him as one of the troublemakers, the questioners. It had taken him a moment to remember the man's description. He had not thought the troublemaking had gone so far as this, however. But he had prepared for every eventuality.

With false calmness he tucked his hands into the long sleeves of his crimson robe. "What doubts do you have, Walid?"

The man's thick mustache twitched at the repet.i.tion of his name, and he half turned his head as if looking for support from his companions. They remained well behind him, meeting neither his eyes nor Basrakan's. Walid drew a deep breath. "We came here, many of us, because we heard the old G.o.ds favored you. Those who came before us speak of a fabulous beast, a sign of that favor, but I have seen no such creature. What I have seen is thousands of hillmen sent to battle Zamoran soldiers, who have ever before slaughtered us when we fought them in numbers. And I have seen none of those warriors return."

"That is all?" Basrakan asked.

His suddenly mild tone seemed to startle Walid. "Is it not enough?" the mustached man demanded.

"More than enough," Basrakan replied. ^Within his sleeves his hands clasped small pouches he had prepared only a day past, when the unrest among the gathered tribes first truly began to worry him. Now he praised his foresight. "Much more than enough, Walid."

Basrakan's hands came out of his sleeves, and in a continuous motion he scattered the powder from one pouch across Walid. As the powder struck, the Imalla's right hand made arcane gestures, and he chanted in a tongue dead a thousand years.

Walid stared down at his chest in horror for a moment as the chilling incantation went on, then, with a shout of rage and fear, he grabbed for his tulwar. Even as his hand touched the hilt, though, fire spurted from his every pore. Flame surrounded him as clothes and hair turned to ash. His roar of anger became a shrill shriek of agony, then the hiss of boiling grease. A plume of oily black smoke rose from the collapsing sack that had been a man.

The other two men had stood, eyes bulging with terror, but now one burst for the door, and the other fell to his knees crying, "Forgiveness, Imalla!

Forgiveness!"

In two quick strides Basrakan was on them, throwing the powder over the fleeing man and the kneeling one alike. His long-fingered hands gestured, and the chant rose once more. The running man made it to the door before fire engulfed him. The other fell on his face, wriggling toward Basrakan, then he, too, was a living pyre. Their screams lasted only moments, blending into ashrill whistle as flame consumed their bones.

At last even the black smoke guttered out. Only small heaps of dark, oily ash were left on the floor, and sooty smudges on the ceiling. The fierce-eyed Imalla viewed the residues of his accusers with satisfaction, but it faded quickly to grim anger. These men would have brothers, cousins, and nephews, scores of male relatives who, while they might fear to confront Basrakan openly, would most certainly now be a source of further dissention.

Some might even go beyond words. The tribesmen lived and died by the blood feud, and nothing could turn them from it save death.

"So be it," he p.r.o.nounced intently.

Dark face as cold and calm as if he had a lifetime for the task, Basrakan gathered a sampling from each pile of ash, sc.r.a.ping them into folded sc.r.a.ps of parchment with a bone knife four times blessed in rites before the ancient G.o.ds of the Kezankians. Ash from each dead man went into a thick-walled mortar of plain, unworked gold. The sorcerer's movements quickened as he added further ingredients, for speed now was essential.

Powdered virgin's eye and ground firefly. Salamanders' hearts and the dried blood of infants. Potions and powders, the ingredients of which he dared not even think of. With the thigh bone of a woman strangled by her own daughter he ground the mixture, twelve times widders.h.i.+ns, intoning the hidden names of the ancient G.o.ds, names that chilled the marrow and made vapors of frost hang in the air. Twelve times the other way. Then it was done, this first step, leaving the golden vessel filled almost to the brim with black powder that seemed to swirl like smoke in its depths.

Gingerly, for the blending was deadly to the touch now, Basrakan carried the mortar to a cleared s.p.a.ce on the pale stone floor. There, dipping a brush tipped with virgins' eyelashes into the moist mixture, he carefully scribed a precise pattern on the smooth stone. It was a cross, its arms of equal length exactly aligned to north and south, east and west. Tipping each arm was a circle, within which he drew the four idiograms of the ancient G.o.ds, the secret signs of earth, air, water, and fire. Next a triangle, its apex at the meeting of the arms of the cross, enclosed the symbol for the spirits of fire, and that same character was placed on each point of the triangle.

Basrakan paused, staring at what he had wrought, and his breath came fast. He would not admit to fear despite a tightening in his bowels, but this was more dangerous than anything he had yet attempted. An error in any phase, one completed or one to come, and the rite would rebound on him. Yet he knew there was no turning back.

Deftly he tipped the last of the powder into a silver censer on the end of a silver chain. Ordinary flint and steel provided the spark and set it smouldering. Aligning his feet carefully on the broad base of the triangle, he swung the censer in an intricate pattern. Wisps of smoke wafted upward from the silver ball, and Basrakan's incantation rose with the odoriferous vapors.

With each swing of the censer one crystalline word rang in the air, words that even the fiery-eyed Imalla could not hear, for they were not meant for human ears, and the human mind could not comprehend them.

Around him the very air seemed to glisten darkly. Smoke from the censer thickened and fell to the stone floor, aligning itself unnaturally with the pattern drawn there. Basrakan's chant came faster, and more loudly. The words pealed hollowly, like funereal tolling from the depths of a cavern. Within the ropes of smoke now covering the configuration came a glow, ever fiercer and hotter, till it seemed as if all the fires of the earth's bowels were bound in those roiling thongs of black. Sweat rolled down Basrakan's thin cheeks from the heat. The glow became blinding, and his words rose higher and higher, the walls s.h.i.+vering under their impact.

Suddenly Basrakan ceased his cry. Silence came, and in that instant, glow and smoke and drawn pattern all vanished. Even the smoke from the censer failed.

Done, Basrakan thought. Weariness filled him. Even his bones felt weak.

But what had had to be done, had been done.A tremor shook him as his eye fell on the remains of his accusers. On each pile of ash, from which all that could be burned had been burned, danced pale flames. Even as he watched they licked into extinction. He drew a deep breath. This was no cause for fear, but rather for exaltation.

Jbeil burst into the chamber, panting, with one hand pressed hard to his side. "The bless ... the bless ... the blessings. ..."

"An Imalla must be dignified," Basrakan snapped. Returning confidence, returning faith, washed away the dregs of his fear. "An Imalla does not run."

"But the camps, Imalla," Jbeil managed past gulps of air. "Fire. Men are burning. Burning, Imalla! Warriors, old men, boys. Even babes unweaned, Imalla! They simply burst into flame, and not water or dirt can extinguish them. Hundreds upon hundreds of them!"

"Not so many, I think," Basrakan replied coolly. "A hundred, perhaps, or even two, but not so many as you say."

"But, Imalla, there is panic."

"I will speak to the people, Jbeil, and calm them. Those who died were of tainted blood. Did the means of their dying tell you nothing?"

"The fire, Imalla?" Jbeil said uncertainly. "They offended the spirits of fire?"

Basrakan smiled as if at a pupil who had learned his lesson well. "More than offended, Jbeil. Much more. And all males of their blood shared their atonement." A thought struck him, a memory of words that seemed to have been spoken days in the past. "My guards, Jbeil. Did you see them as you came in?"

"Yes, Imalla. As I came to you. The two who were at your door accompanied Ruhallah Imalla on some errand." His eyes took on a sly cast.

"They ran, Imalla. Ruhallah knows little of dignity. Only the urgency of my message brought me to such haste."

"Ruhallah had his own urgency," Basrakan said so softly he might have been speaking to himself. He fixed the other man with an eye like a dagger.

"Ruhallah is to blame for the fiery deaths this day. He and those false guards who flee with him. Ruhallah led those men of the blood that perished this day into false beliefs and tainted ways." It could be so, he thought. Il must be so. a.s.suredly, it was so. "Ruhallah and the guards who flee with him must be brought back to face payment for what they have done." Few things amused Basrakan, but the next thought to visit him brought a smile to his thin lips.

"They are to be given to the women of the men who died by fire this day. Let those who lost kith and kin exact their vengeance."

"As you command, Imalla, so will it be." Jbeil froze in a half-bow, and his eyes went wide. "Aaiee! Imalla, it had been driven from my mind by the burnings and. ..." Basrakan glared at him, and he swallowed and went on.

"Sharmal has returned, Imalla. One of those you sent after the Eyes of Fire, Imalla," he added when the tall holy man raised a questioning eyebrow.

"They have returned?" Basrakan said, excitement rising in his voice.

"The Eyes of Fire are mine! All praise to the old G.o.ds!" Abruptly he was coldly calm, only an intensity of tone remaining of the emotion that had filled his speech. "Bring the gems to me. Immediately, fool! Nothing should have kept you from that. Nothing! And bring the men, as well. They will not find their rewards small."

"Imalla," Jbeil said hesitantly, "Sharmal is alone, and empty handed.

He babbles that the rest are dead, and other things, as well. But there is little of sense in any of it. He ... he is mad, Imalla."

Basrakan ground his teeth, and tugged at his forked beard as if he wanted to pull it out by the roots. "Empty handed," he breathed at last, hoa.r.s.e and icy. He could not be cheated of his desires now. He would not be.

"What occurred, Jbeil? Where are the Eyes of Fire? I will know these things.

Put this Sharmal to the question. Strip him of his skin. Sear him to the bone.

I will have answers!"

"But, Imalla," Jbeil whispered, "the man is mad. The protection of the old G.o.ds is on him."

"Do as I command!" Basrakan roared, and his acolyte flinched."As ... as you command, Imalla, so will it be." Jbeil bowed deeply, and moved backwards toward the door.

So much had happened, Basrakan thought, in such a short time. There was something he was forgetting. Something. . . . "Jbeil!" The other man jerked to a halt. "There are strangers in the mountains, Jbeil. They are to be found, and any survivors brought to me for offering to the true G.o.ds. Let it be done!" He gestured, and Jbeil nearly ran from the room.

Chapter 15.

We will make camp now." Jondra announced while the sun still rose. Arvaneus'

voice rose, echoing her command, and obediently her hunters dismounted and began seeing to the pack animals and their own mounts.

Conan caught her eye questioningly, and she favored him with a smile.

"When hunting a rare animal," she said, "care must be taken not to bypa.s.s its feeding grounds. We will spend days in each camp, searching."

"Let us hope this animal is not also searching," Conan replied. The n.o.blewoman frowned, but before she could speak Arvaneus came to stand at her stirrup.

"Do you wish the trackers out now, my lady?" he asked.

Jondra nodded, and a s.h.i.+ver of excitement produced effects to draw male eyes. "It would be wonderful to get a shot at my quarry on the first day. Yes, Arvaneus. Put out your best trackers."

She looked expectantly at Conan, but he pretended not to notice. His tracking skill was the equal of any of the hunters', but he had no interest in finding the creature Jondra sought. He wanted only to see the two women returned to the safety of Shadizar, and he could offer them no protection if he was out tracking.

Jondra's face fell when Conan did not speak, but the dark-eyed huntsman smiled maliciously. "It takes a great special skill to be a tracker," he said to no one in particular. "My lady." He made an elegant bow to Jondra, then backed away, calling as he straightened. "Trackers out! Telades! Zurat! Abu!"

His list ran on, and soon he and nine others were trotting out of the camp in ten different directions. They went afoot, for the slight spoor that a tracker must read as a scribe read words on parchment could be missed entirely from the back of a horse.