Conan the Victorious Read online

  The steel-tipped circle opened once more, and Conan rode toward the water. Cursing camel drivers used long switches to drive their laden charges from a raft held tightly against the bank by the slaves on the tow rope. All three of the rafts were in service now. One, loaded with Vendhyan nobles, was in mid-river, and the last, crammed with camels and merchants, was close behind. Two milling masses, merchants in one, nobles and their odd companions in the other, showed the crossings had begun soon after he had reached this side. The far bank was crowded with those waiting.

  The Cimmerian did not see Kang Hou or any of the others. If he crossed back, however, it was just as possible as not that they would pass each other on the river. He drew rein where he could watch all three landing places.

  As the black stood flicking its tail at flies, stamping its feet with impatience to run, a Vendhyan cavalryman rode up beside him. The silk and velvet of the Vendhyan’s garb marked him as an officer, the gem-studded scabbard of his sword and the gilding of his turbaned helmet as an officer of rank. An arrogant sneer was on his face and his eyes were tinged with cruelty. He did not speak, only stared at the big Cimmerian in fierce silence.

  He had sought to avoid a fight once this morning, Conan told himself. He could easily do so again. After all, the man but looked at him. Only that. Just looked. Lowering, Conan kept his own gaze on the approaching rafts. The Vendhyan was alone, therefore it had nothing to do with the incident of the purse. In his experience, men like the wazam did not reply to perceived insults in such small ways. But then again, this was beginning not to seem so small. Conan’s jaw tightened.

  “You are the man Patil,” the Vendhyan barked suddenly. “You are not Vendhyan.”

  “I know who and what I am,” Conan growled. “Who and what are you?”

  “I am Prince Kandar, commanding the bodyguard of the wazam of Vendhya. And you will guard your tongue or lose it!”

  “I have heard a warning much like that once already today,” Conan replied flatly, “but my tongue is still mine, and I will not let go of it easily.”

  “Bold words,” Kandar sneered, “for an outlander with the eyes of a pan-kur.”

  “The eyes of a what?”

  “A pan-kur. The spawn of a human woman’s mating with a demon. The more ignorant among my men believe such bring misfortune with their presence, and evil with their touch. They would have slain you already had I permitted it.”

  There was a shifting in the Vendhyan’s eyes as he spoke. The more ignorant of his men? Conan smiled and leaned toward him. “As I said, I know who and what I am.”

  Kandar gave a start, and his horse danced a step sideways, but he mastered his face and his mount quickly. “Vendhya is a dangerous land for a foreigner, whoever, or whatever, he is. A foreigner who wished to have no fear of what lay around the next turning or what might come in the night would do well to seek a shielding hand, to cultivate a patron in high places.”

  “And what would this seeking and cultivating require?” Conan asked dryly.

  The Vendhyan moved his horse closer and dropped his voice conspiratorially. “That certain information, the contents of certain conversations, be passed on to the patron.”

  “I told Karim Singh,” Conan replied, biting off each word, “and now I tell you, I will not spy on Kang Hou.”

  “The Khitan? What are you saying? The wazam has an interest in him? Bah! I care nothing for merchants!”

  The Cimmerian felt as though the other’s confusion were contagious. “If not Kang Hou, then who in Zandru’s Nine Hells…” He paused at a wild thought. “Karim Singh?”

  “Aaah,” said Kandar, suddenly all urbanity. “That might be pleasing.”

  “I begin to believe it all,” Conan muttered in tones far from belief. “I begin to believe you Vendhyans actually could sign a treaty with Yildiz on one day and kill the High Admiral of Turan the next.”

  The smoothness that had come to the Vendhyan was as suddenly swept away. He clutched Conan’s arm with a swordsman’s iron grip, and his teeth were bared in a snarl. “Who says this? Who speaks this lie?”

  “Everyone in Sultanapur,” Conan said quietly. “I suspect, everyone in Turan. Now take your hand from my arm before I cut it off.”

  Behind Kandar the raft loaded with nobles had reached the bank, and men were streaming off. Two Vendhyan women riding sidesaddle walked their horses toward Conan and the prince. One was plainly garbed and veiled so that only her eyes showed. The other, riding in advance, had a scarf of sheer red silk over her raven hair, with pearls worked into her tresses, but she wore no veil. Necklaces and bracelets of gold and emeralds adorned her and there were rubies and sapphires on her fingers.

  As Kandar, glaring at Conan, opened his mouth, the unveiled woman spoke in a low musical tone. “How pleasant to see you, Kandar. I had thought you avoided me of late.”

  The Vendhyan prince went rigid. For an instant his eyes stared through Conan, then he rasped, “We will speak again, you and I.” Without ever once looking around or acknowledging the women’s presence, Kandar kicked his horse to a gallop, spurring toward the wazam’s pavilion, which was already being taken down.

  Conan was not sorry to see him go, especially not when he was replaced by so lovely a creature as the jewel-bedecked woman. Her skin was dusky satin, and her sloe eyes were large pools in which a man might willingly lose himself. And those dark, liquid eyes were studying him with as much interest as he studied their owner. He returned her smile.

  “It seems Kandar does not like you,” he said. “I think I like anyone he does not.”

  The woman’s laugh was as musical as her voice. “On the contrary, Kandar likes me much too much.” She saw his confusion and laughed again. “He wants me for his purdhana. Once he went so far as to try to have me kidnapped.”

  “When I want a woman, I do not ride away without so much as looking at her.” He kept his eyes on her face so she would know it was not of Kandar he spoke at all.

  “He has cause. My tirewoman, Alyna,” she waved a negligent hand toward the heavily veiled woman, “is his sister.”

  “His sister!” Conan exclaimed, and once more she laughed. The veiled woman stirred silently on her saddle.

  “Ah, I see you are bewildered that the sister of a prince could be my slave. Alas, Alyna dabbled with spies and was to face the headsman’s sword until I purchased her life. I then held a masque to which Kandar came, intending to press his suit yet again. For some reason, when he discovered Alyna among the dancing girls, he all but ran from my palace. Such a simple way to rid myself of the bother of him.”

  Conan stared at that beautiful, sweetly smiling face, appearing so open and even innocent, and only what he had already seen and heard that morning allowed him to credit her words. “You Vendhyans seem to have a liking for striking at your enemies through others. Do none of you ever confront an opponent?”

  Her laughter was tinkling bells. “You Westerners are so direct, Patil. Those Turanians! They think themselves devious. They are childlike.”

  He blinked at that. Childlike? The Turanians? Then something else she had said struck him. “You know my name.”

  “I know that you call yourself Patil. One must needs be deaf not to hear of a man such as yourself, calling himself by a name of Vendhya. You interest me.”

  Her gaze was like a caress running over his broad shoulders and chest, even down to his lean hips and thick-muscled thighs. Many other women had looked at him in like fashion and betimes he enjoyed it. This time he felt like a stallion in the auction barns. “And do you want me to spy on someone, too?” he asked gruffly.

  “As I said,” she smiled. “Direct. And childlike.”

  “I am no child, woman,” he growled. “And I want no more of Vendhyan deviousness.”

  “Do you know why so many of King Bhandarkar’s court accompanied the wazam to Turan? Not as his retinue, as the Turanians seemed to think. For us it was a new land to be looted, in a manner of speaking. I found jugglers and ac
robats who will seem new and fresh when they perform at my palace in Ayodhya. I bring a dancing bear with me and several scholars. Though I must say the philosophers of Turan do not compare with those of Khitai.”

  “Do none of you speak straight out? What has this to do with me?”

  “In Vendhya,” she said, “the enjoyment of life is a way of life. Men of the court give hunts and revels, though the last are often no more than drunken debauches. In any case, neither is proper for a woman of breeding. Yet for every decision made by men on horseback while lancing wild boars, two are made in the palace of a noblewoman. You may ask how mere women compete with the lords and princes. We gather about us scholars and men of ideas, the finest musicians, the most talented poets, the best artists, whether in stone or metal or paint. The newest plays are performed in our palaces and there may be found strange visitors from far-off, mysterious lands. Nor does it hurt that our serving wenches are chosen for their beauty, though unlike the men, we require discretion in their use.”

  Conan’s face had become more and more grim as he listened. Now he exploded. “That is your ‘interest’ in me? I am to be a dancing bear or a montebank?”

  “I do not believe the women of the court will find you a dancing bear,” she said, “although you are nearly as large as one.” Suddenly she was looking at him through long kohled lashes, and the tip of her tongue touched a full lip. “Nor can I see you as a montebank,” she added throatily.

  “Co—Patil!” came a cry, and Conan saw Hordo leading his horse up from the river.

  “I must go,” the Cimmerian told her roughly, and she nodded as though in some manner she was satisfied.

  “Seek my tent tonight, O giant who calls himself Patil. My ‘interest’ in you is not done with.” A smile swept away the seductress to be replaced by the innocent again. “You have not asked my name. I am the Lady Vyndra.” And a flick of her gold-mounted riding whip sent her horse leaping away, the veiled woman at her heels.

  Behind Hordo, Kang Hou’s servants were driving the merchant’s camels ashore, aided by the smugglers. One of the humped beasts knelt on the bank while Hasan and Shamil solicitously helped Chin Kou and Kuie Hsi into tented kajawahs, conveyances that hung like panniers on the animal’s sides.

  “Pretty wench,” Hordo commented, staring after the galloping Vyndra. “Rides well, too.” He looked around to see if anyone was close by, then dropped his voice. “Did you find the chests?”

  Conan shook his head. “But they are here. Someone tried to kill me.”

  “Always a good way to begin a day,” Hordo said dryly. “Did you discover anything at all?”

  “Three men tried to hire me as a spy and that ‘pretty wench’ wants to add me to her menagerie.”

  “Your humor is beyond me, Cimmerian.”

  “I also found out that my eyes are demon-spawned, and beyond that I learned that Vendhya is a madhouse.”

  The one-eyed man grunted as he swung into the saddle. “The first I’ve told you before myself. And the second is known to all. It looks as if we were finally moving.”

  The wazam’s party—Conan remembered Torio saying it had to be first in the line of march—was beginning to stretch out in a line somewhat east of due south, with Vendhyan lancers in two columns to either side. Karim Singh himself was in an ornate litter of ebony and gold, borne between four horses. An arched canopy of gleaming white silk stretched above the palanquin and hangings of golden gossamer draped the sides. Kandar rode beside the litter, bending low out of his saddle to speak urgently to the man within.

  “If they tried to kill you,” Hordo went on, “at least you have stirred them up.”

  “Perhaps I have,” Conan said. He pulled his gaze away from the wazam’s litter. “Let us join Kang Hou and the others, Hordo. There are hours of light left for traveling yet today.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  Night and the depths of the earth were necessary for some things. Some doings could not bear the light of day or exposure to witness of the open sky. As it did so often of late, night found Naipal in the gray-domed chamber far below his palace. The air had the very smell of necromancy, a faint, sickly-sweet taint of decay blended with the indefinable yet unmistakable hellish odor of evil. The smell hung about Naipal, a thing it had not done before his last deeds in that chamber, but he did not notice nor would he have cared had he.

  He swung from contemplation of the resurrected warrior, standing as still as stone against the canescent wall in the same spot to which Naipal had at last commanded him on the previous night. The wizard’s eyes went to his worktable, skipping quickly over the chest of carved ivory. There, in crystal-stoppered flasks, were the five ingredients necessary for the transfer of life, the total quantity of them that he possessed. In King Orissa’s tomb beneath the lost city of Maharashtra stood twenty thousand deathless warriors. An undying, ever-conquering army. And he could give life to perhaps twenty.

  With a wordless snarl, he began to pace. The ancient mages who prepared Orissa’s tomb had complied with the King’s commands to set him an ever-lasting bodyguard. But those thaumaturges feared the uses to which that bodyguard could be put if ever it were wakened, and they planned well. Only one of the five ingredients could be obtained in Vendhya. The others, chosen partly because they were little-used in sorceries, could be found only in lands little more than legend in Vendhya even two thousand years later. He had made arrangements, of course, but of what use were they when disaster loomed over his head?

  Forcing his eyes to the ornate ivory chest, he clenched his fists and glared as though he wished to smash it, and he was not sure that he did not. When finally he had dragged himself from the chamber on the night before, it had been as one fleeing. Creeping through the corridors of his own palace like a thief, he told himself that this was not the paralysis returning, not the fear. He had conquered that. Merely he needed to rest, to refresh himself. Musicians were summoned, and food and wine, but all tasted like sawdust, and the flutes and citherns clawed at his nerves. He ordered cooks and musicians both to be flogged. By twos and threes the women of his purdhana were brought to him and returned, weeping and welted for their failures to please. Five times in the course of the day he had commanded that ten thousand pice be distributed to the poor in his name, but even that produced no uplifting of his spirits. Now he was back in his sorcery-carved chambers in the earth’s bowels. Here he would deal at last with the source of his danger, whatever or wherever it was.

  His hands reached toward the flat ivory box…and stopped at the chime of a bell. Quizzically his head swiveled toward the sound. On one corner of the rosewood table, crowded amidst crystal beakers filled with noxious substances and oddly glowing vials sealed with lead, was another flat chest, this of polished satinwood with a silver bell, scribed about with arcane symbols, mounted atop it. Even as he looked, the bell sounded once more.

  “So the fool finally found the courage to use it,” Naipal muttered. He hesitated, wanting to see to his own problems, but the bell rang again. Breathing heavily, he moved around the table to the satinwood chest.

  Its lid came off, and he set it aside to stare down at a mirror that showed his image and that of the chamber in quite ordinary fashion. The mirror slid within the box on rails and props so that it could be set at any angle. He raised it almost upright. Eight tiny bone trays came next, atop silver pegs that fitted into holes on the edge of the box, one at each corner, one in the precise middle of each side.

  Again the bell chimed, and he cursed. Powders prepared long in advance and stored with the mirror were carefully ladled onto the tiny trays with a bone spatula. Last to come from the box was a small silver mallet, graven with miniscule renderings of the symbols on the bell.

  “Sa’ar-el!” Naipal intoned. A blue spark leaped from mallet to bell, and the bell rang. As it did, the powders at the four cardinal points flared in blue flame. Before those tiny berylline fires died in wisps of smoke, he spoke again. “Ka’ar-el!” Once more the bell sounded untouc
hed, and blue flame leaped at the minor points. “Ma’ar-el! Diendar!” For the third time the chime came and in the mirror Naipal’s reflection swirled and dissolved into a maelstrom of color.

  Slowly the polychrome whirling coalesced into the image of a narrow-faced man in turban of cloth-of-gold wrapped about with golden chains set with rubies. “Naipal?” the man said. “Asura be praised that it is you.”

  “Excellency,” Naipal said, suppressing his irritation, “how may I serve the Adviser to the Elephant, soon to be the Elephant?”

  Karim Singh started and stared about him as though fearing who might be behind him. The man could not be fool enough, Naipal thought, to have someone with him while he used the scrying mirror. Could he?

  “You should not say such things,” the wazam said. “Asura alone knows who might overhear. Another wizard perhaps, listening. And now, of all times.”

  “Excellency, I have explained that only those in the actual presence of these two mirrors…” Naipal stopped and drew a deep breath. Explaining to the fool for the hundredth time was useless. “I am Naipal, court wizard to King Bhandarkar of Vendhya. I plot the death of Bhandarkar and spit on his memory. I plot to place His Excellency Karim Singh on the throne of Vendhya. Your Excellency sees. I would not say these things if anyone could overhear.”

  Karim Singh nodded, though his face was pasty. “I suppose I must…trust you, Naipal. After all, you serve me faithfully. I also trust that you know it would be well to give more faithfulness to me than you have given Bhandarkar.”

  “I am Your Excellency’s servant.” Naipal wondered if the man had any inkling of how much of his rise to power was the wizard’s doing. “And how may I serve Your Excellency now?”

  “I…do not know exactly,” the wazam said. “It could be disaster. The treaty is destroyed, without doubt. Our heads may roll. I warn you, Naipal, I will not go to the block alone.”