Amanar smiled. His hand thrust into the slit, caught the pulsing heart, and ripped it free. It beat one last time as he held it before the Ophirian’s eyes.
“Die,” the mage said. The god-demon released. its hold, and the husk on the altar slumped at last in death.
Sitha appeared beside the mage with a golden plate, on which Amanar placed the heart. That, too, had its uses in his magicks. He took the linen cloth the reptilian offered, and wiped his bloodstained hands. Sitha turned away.
“Amanar.” The god-demon’s susurration rolled against the walls. “Thou useth my sacrifice, soulless one, for thine own pleasure.”
Amanar glanced hurriedly about him before answering. The woman writhed in her bonds on the edge of insanity. She heard nothing beyond the shrieks her gag choked back. Sitha continued out of the sacrificial chamber as if he had not heard. The S’tarra had little capacity to think for themselves, but they could obey orders. Sitha would place the heart in a golden bowl prepared beforehand with spells to keep its contents fresh. Only then would he be able to consider anything else, if his soulless mind were ever capable of considering anything.
The mage dropped his head on his chest and bowed in his most humble fashion. “O, great Morath-Aminee, I am but thy humble servant. Thy servant who freed thee from the bonds set upon thee by the Dark One.” Gods and demons could not forget, not as men forget, but oft did they prefer not to remember debts in their dealings with men. The reminder could not be amiss.
A golden-scaled tentacle reached toward Amanar —it was all he could do not to flinch away—then jerked back as if from a great heat. “Thou wearest the amulet still.” “O Most High among the Powers and Dominions, this one is so insignificant beside thee that thou mightest destroy him without noticing such a speck in thy path. I wear this merely that thou mayst be aware of me, and spare me to thy service and greater glory.” “Serve me well, and in that day when Set is bound where I was bound, in that day when I rule the Outer Dark, I will give thee dominion over my herds, over those who call themselves men, and thou shalt bring the multitudes to my feeding.” “As thy word is, so shall it be, great Morath-Aminee.” Amanar became aware that Sitha had returned with two other S’tarra. The necromancer flicked his hand in a summoning gesture, and the two scurried toward the bloodstained altar, dropping to all fours as they came near the black marble slab. Their eyes did not rise to the god-demon towering over them as, half-groveling, they unfastened the sacrifice and bore it away.
A different tap jerked Amanar around to stare at the tall cavern doors. No one dared disturb these ceremonies. The tap came again. He twitched as the voice of the god-demon hissed in his mind.
“Go, Amanar. This concerneth thee most vitally.”
He glanced back at the great golden serpent-shape, rearing motionless above the black altar. The flame-filled eyes watched him with—what?—amusement? “Prepare the next sacrifice, Sitha.”
The bound woman spasmed in ever greater frenzy as scaly hands lifted her from the tiled floor. Amanar hurried from the chamber.
A Turanian with a pointed beard stood eying the S’tarra nervously, his slight plumpness and loose yellow robes contrasting sharply with the empty red eyes and ring mail of the guards. The man craned to look beyond the mage into the sacrifical chamber, and Amanar closed the door firmly. He had few human servants who could be trusted beyond the Keep; it was not yet time for them to learn what they served.
“Why have you left Aghrapur, Tewfik?” he snapped.
The plump man put on a fawning smile and washed his hands in front of his chest. “It was not my fault, master. I beg you to understand that.”
“What do you babble about, man?”
“That which you set me to watch, master. It is no longer in the strongrooms of King Yildiz.”
Amanar blanched. Tewfik, taking it for rage, cringed, and the S’tarra guardsmen stirred uneasily, but the thaumaturge was quaking inside. He gripped the Turanian’s robes with iron fingers, pulling the man erect. “Where is it now? Speak, man, for your life!”
“Shadizar, master! I swear!”
Amanar glared at him and through him. Morath-Aminee had known the import of this message. The god-demon must know of what was now in Shadizar. A new hiding place must be found, but first he must secure within his power that which was gone. That which must be kept from Morath-Aminee at all costs. And to do that, he must risk bringing it within the very grasp of the god-demon. The risk! The risk!
He was not aware that he still carried the sacrificial knife until he slid it into the Turanian’s ribs. He looked into the face that now stared open hate at him, and felt regret. Human servants were useful in so many ways that S’tarra could not be. Too useful to be thrown away casually.
The mage felt something thump against his chest and looked down. Jutting from his black robe was a knife hilt from which Tewfik’s hand fell away. Contemptuously Amanar hurled the dying man from him. He plucked the knife free, held up its bloodless blade before the man on the stone floor, whose mouth was filling with his own blood.
“Fool,” Amanar said. “You must kill my soul before mortal weapon can harm me.”
He turned away. The guards’ desire for fresh meat would dispose of what remained of Tewfik. If Amanar were to have the time he needed, Morath-Aminee must be kept satiated. More prisoners must be brought. More sacrifices for the Eater of Souls. He reentered the sacrificial chamber to attend to the first of these.
II
The purple-domed and many-spired city of Shadizar. was known as ‘the Wicked,’ but the debauches of its high-chinned nobles, of their cruel-eyed wives and pearl-draped daughters, paled beside the everyday life of that part of the city known as the Desert. In those narrow, twisting streets and garbage-strewn alleys, haven of thief, kidnapper, murderer and worse, the price of a body was silver, the price of a life copper, the price of a soul not worth speaking of.
The big youth lounging on the bed upstairs in the tavern of Abuletes, in the heart of the Desert, had no thought of those who might be coughing out their lives in the fetid squalor outside. His eyes, sapphire blue beneath a square-cut black mane, were on the olive-skinned woman across the small room, who was adjusting the gilded brass breastplates that displayed rather than concealed her swelling bilobate chest. The rest of her attire consisted of transparent pantaloons, slashed from waist to ankle, and a gilded girdle of no more than two fingers’ breadth, slung low on her rounded hips. She wore four rings, green peridot and red almandine on her left hand, pale blue topaz and red-green alexandrite on her right.
“Do not say it, Conan,” she said without looking at him.
“Say what?” he growled. If his unlined face proclaimed that he had seen fewer than twenty winters, his eyes at that moment said they had been winters of iron and blood. He tossed aside his fur covering with one massive hand and rose to dress, as always first seeing that his weapons were close to hand, the ancient broadsword in its worn shagreen sheath, the black-bladed Karpashian dagger that he strapped to his left forearm.
“I give to you freely what I sell to others. Can you not be satisfied with that?”
“There is no need for you to follow your profession, Semiramis. I am the best thief in Shadizar, in all Zamora.” At her laugh, his knuckles whitened on his leather-wrapped sword hilt. He had more reason for his pride than she knew. Had he not slain wizards, destroyed liches, saved one throne and toppled another? What other of his years could say half so much? But he had never spoken of these things even to Semiramis, for fame was the beginning of the end for a thief.