The one-eyed bandit blinked at her in bewilderment. “Do what?”
“Steal from Amanar. Try to free this other fool.” She jerked her head at Conan without looking at him again.
“I stole nothing,” Hordo protested. “And I knew not that Conan was imprisoned until I was chained beside him.”
“Then you were brought here for no reason?” she said derisively. Hordo was silent.
“He,” Conan began, but Hordo cut him off with a shout.
“No, Cimmerian!” He added, “Please?” and the word sounded as if it were carved from his vitals.
Karela looked at the two men in consternation. Their eyes met, and Conan nodded. “Well?” she demanded. Neither man spoke. Hordo would not meet her gaze. “Derketo take you, Hordo. I should have you flogged. Can I talk Amanar into releasing you, I may yet.”
“Release us now,” Hordo said quickly. “Ort has the keys. You can—”
“You!” she said sharply. “It’s you I’ll try to free. I have no interest in these others.” She felt Conan’s eyes on her, and could not look at him. “Besides, it may do you good to sit here and worry as whether or not I can talk Amanar into releasing you to me.” She gestured to the fat jailer with her sword. “You! Close the door.” She stepped back to keep him under her eye and blade as he moved to do so.
“Karela,” Hordo shouted, “leave this place! Leave me! Take horse and—” The door banged shut to cut him off.
As the fat man turned from locking the massive door, she laid her curved blade against his fat neck. Her eyes were glittering emerald ice. “If I find you have not taken good care of him,” she said coldly, “I’ll carve that bulk away to see if there’s a man inside.” Contemptuously she turned her back and stalked from the dungeon.
By the time she reached the top of the rude stone stairs her brain was burning. Amanar had no right. Conan was one thing, Hordo quite another. She would maintain the discipline of her hounds, and she had no intention of letting the mage usurp her authority in this fashion. She strode through the ornate halls of the black donjon, still clutching her sword in her anger.
One of the S’tarra appeared before her, blinking in surprise at the weapon in her hand. “Where is Amanar?” she demanded.
It did not speak, but its red eyes twitched toward a plain arch. She remembered Amanar saying that the passage beyond led to his thaumaturgical chambers. In her present mood, bearding the sorcerer there was just what she sought. She turned for the arch.
With a hissed shout, the mailed S’tarra leaped for her, and jumped back just in time, so that her blade drew sparks across the chest of its hauberk.
“Follow,” she growled, “and you’ll never follow anything again.”
Its rubiate eyes remained on her face, but it stood still as she backed down the sloping passage, lined with flickering torches set in plain iron sconces. The corridor was longer than she had suspected. The archway, and the S’tarra still standing there, had dwindled to mere specks by the time her back came up against a pair of tall wooden doors.
The doors were carved with a profusion of serpents in endless arabesques, as were the stone walls of the corridor, though this had not been so high up. She thought she might be under the very heart of the mountain. Pushing open one of the doors, she went in.
The room was a great circle, surrounded by shadowed columns. The floor was a mosaic of a strange golden serpent. On the far side of the room, Amanar whirled at her entrance. Sitha, crouching near the mage, half rose.
“You dare to enter here!” Amanar thundered.
“I dare anything,” she snapped, “while you have Hordo chained …” What was beyond the black-robed sorcerer finally impressed itself on her. The red-streaked black marble altar. The slim blonde girl bound naked to it, rigid with terror. “By the black heart of Ahriman,” Karela swore, “what is it you do here, mage?”
Instead of answering, the cold-eyed man traced a figure in the air, and the figure seemed to stand glowing as he traced, stirring some buried memory deep inside her. Behind her eyes she felt something break, like a twig snapping. She would teach him to play his magical tricks with her. She started for the dark man … and stared down in amazement at feet that would not move. They did not feel held, they had full sensation, but they would not move.
“What wizardry is this?” she demanded hoarsely. “Release me, Amanar, or—”
“Throw the sword aside,” he commanded.
She stifled a scream as her arm obeyed, sending the jewel-hilted tulwar skittering across the mosaicked floor to ring against a column.
Amanar nodded in satisfactio. “Remove your garments, Karela.”
“Fool,” she began, and her green eyes started with horror as her slim fingers rose to the golden pin that held her scarlet cloak and undid it. The cloak slid from her shoulders to the floor. “I am the Red Hawk,” she said. It was little more than a whisper, but her voice rose to a scream. “I am the Red Hawk!”
She could not stop watching with bulging eyes as her hands removed the golden breastplates from her heavy round breasts and casually dropped them, unfastened the emerald girdle that rode low on her flaring hips.
“Enough,” Amanar said. “Leave the boots. I like the picture they present.” She wanted to weep as her hands returned quiescent to her sides. “Beyond these walls,” the black-robed man went on, “you are the Red Hawk. Inside them, you are … whatever I want you to be. I think from now on I will keep you thus when you are with me, aware of what is happening. Your fear is like the rarest of wines.”
“Think you I’ll return once I am free?” she spat. “Let me get a sword in my hand and my hounds about me, and I will tear this keep down about your head.”