The gaunt old man froze with his spoon half-raised to his face. He peered at the coin, blinking, then at Conan. “Why?”
“I would know what this city holds for me,” the young Cimmerian said gruffly. “I hold you better than any Guildsman of Aghrapur, and so worth at least the footing they demand. Besides,” he lied, “my purse is heavy with coin.”
Sharak hesitated, then nodded. Without touching the coin, he fumbled through his scrolls with his left hand, all the while absently licking traces of stew from the fingers of his right. When those scrolls he wanted were spread out atop the table, he produced a wax tablet from beneath his patched tunic. The side of a stylus scraped the wax smooth. Nose almost touching the parchments, he began to copy arcane symbols with deft strokes.
“Do you not need to know when I was born, and such?” Conan asked.
“I remember the details of your natal chart,” the other replied with his eyes on the parchment, “as if it were drawn on the insides of my eyelids. A magnificent chart. Unbelievable. Hmm. Mitra’s Chariot is in retrograde.”
“Magnificent? You have never told me of any magnificence before.”
Sighing, Sharak swiveled his head to gaze at the big youth. “Unbelievable, I called it as well, and you would not believe did I tell you. Then you would not believe anything else I told you, either, and I could do you no good. Therefore I do not tell you. Now, will you allow me to do what you have paid me for?” He did not wait for a reply before turning his eyes back to the scrolls. “Aha. The Bloodstar enters the House of the Scorpion this very night. Significant.”
Conan shook his head and quaffed deeply on his dark ale. Was Sharak attempting to inflate his payment? Perhaps the habit of trying to do so was too deeply ingrained to lose.
He busied himself with drinking. The common room was beginning to fill, with queued sailors and half-naked trulls for the most part. The wenches were the most interesting, by far. One, short, round-breasted and large-eyed in her girdle of coins and gilded wristlets and torque, made him think of Yasbet. He wished he could be certain she was safe at home. No, in truth he wished her in his bed upstairs, but, failing that, it was best if she were at home, whatever her greeting from Fatima. Could he find her again, it would of a certainty brighten his days in Aghrapur. Let Emilio talk of his blonde—what was her name? Davinia?—as if she were the exotic these Turanians thought her. In his own opinion it was women with large eyes who had the fires smouldering within, even when they did not know it themselves. Why—
“I am done,” Sharak said.
Conan blinked, pulled from his reverie. “What?” He looked at the wax tablet, now covered with scribbled symbols. “What does it say?”
“It is unclear,” the old astrologer replied, tugging at one of his thin mustaches with bony fingers. “There are aspects of great opportunity and great danger. See, the Horse and the Lion are in conjunction in the House of Dramath, while the Three Virgins are—”
“Sharak, I would not know the House of Dramath from the house of a rugmaker. What does it mean?”
“What does it mean?” Sharak mimicked. “Always ‘what does it mean?’ No one wants to know the truly interesting part, the details of how … . Oh, very well. First of all: there is a need to go back in order to go forward. To become what you will become, you must become again what you once were.”
“That’s little help,” Conan muttered. “I have been many things.”
“But this is most important. This branching, here, indicates that if you fail to do so, you will never leave Aghrapur alive. You have already set events in motion.”
The air in the tavern seemed suddenly chill. Conan wished the old man had not been right so often before. “How can I have set events in motion? I’ve been here barely a day.”
“And spoken to no one? Done nothing?”
Conan breathed heavily. “Does it speak of gold?”
“Gold will come into your hands, but it does not seem to be important, and there is danger attached.”
“Gold is always important, and there is always danger attached. What of women?”
“Ah, youth,” Sharak murmured caustically.
“You will soon be entangled with women—two, it seems here—but there is danger there as well.”
“Woman are always at least as dangerous as gold,” Conan replied, laughing.
“One is dark of hair, and one pale-haired.”
The Cimmerian’s laughter faded abruptly. Pale-haired ? Emilio’s Davinia? No! That would almost certainly mean aiding Emilio in his theft, and that had been left behind. But he was to ‘become what he had been.’ He forced the thought away. He was done with thieving. The astrologer’s reading must mean something else.
“What more?” he asked harshly.
“’Tis not my fault if you like it not, Conan. I merely read what is writ in the stars.”
“What more, I said!”
Sharak sighed heavily. “You cannot blame me if … . There is danger here connected in some fashion to a journey. This configuration,” he pointed to a row of strangely bent symbols scribed in the wax, “indicate a journey over water, but these over here indicate land. It is unclear.”