The flesh about Demetrio’s mouth was tight and pale. The strange thought came to Conan that the slender man was afraid of the sword, but he dismissed the notion as foolish. He tossed the sword onto a nearby table. His hand felt dirty from holding it. And that was foolish too.
Demetrio swallowed, seeming to breathe more easily as he looked at the blade where it lay. “This sword,” he said, not looking at the Cimmerian. “Has it any … properties? Any magicks?”
Conan shook his head. “None that I know.” Such might add to the price he could demand, but any such claims would be easily disproved. “What will you give?”
“Three gold marks,” Demetrio said promptly.
The big Cimmerian blinked. He had been thinking in terms of silver pieces. But if the sword had some value to this young man, it was time to bargain. “For a blade so ancient,” he said, “many collectors would pay twenty.”
The slender man gave him a searching look. “I have not so much with me,” he muttered.
Shocked, Conan wondered if the blade was that of some long-dead king; Demetrio had made not even a pretense of haggling. His practised thief’s eye priced the amethyst-studded gold bracelet on Demetrio’s wrist at fifty gold marks, and a small ruby pin on his tunic at twice that. The man would be good for twenty marks, he thought.
“I would be willing to wait,” Conan began, when Demetrio pulled the bracelet from his wrist and thrust it at him.
“Will you take that?” the fellow asked. “I would not risk another buying while I am gone to get coin. It is worth more than the twenty marks, I assure you. But add in that cloak, for I would not carry a bare blade in the streets.”
“Cloak and blade are yours,” the Cimmerian said, and quickly exchanged the fur-trimmed garment for the bracelet.
He felt a surge of joy as his fist closed over the amethyst-studded gold. No need to make do now with the few men ten gold pieces would hire. His Free-Company was literally in his grasp.
“I would ask you,” he added, “why this blade has such worth. Is it perhaps the sword of an ancient king, or hero?”
Demetrio paused in the act of carefully wrapping the cloak about the sword. Carefully, Conan thought, and as gingerly as if it were a dangerous animal.
“How are you called?” the slender man asked.
“I am called Conan.”
“You are right, Conan. This is the sword of an ancient king. In fact, you might say this is the sword of Bragoras.” And he laughed as if he had said the funniest thing he had ever heard. Still laughing, he gathered up the sword and cloak and hurried into the street.
VII
Albanus paused at the door, the crude, fur-trimmed bundle beneath his arm out of place in the tapestry-hung room with its carpet-strewn marble floor. Sularia sat before a tall mirror, a golden silk robe about her creamy shoulders, a kneeling slave woman brushing the honey silk of her hair. Seeing his reflection Sularia let the robe drop, giving him a view of her generous breasts in the mirror.
The hawk-faced lord snapped his fingers. The slave looked around; at his gesture she bowed and fled on bare feet.
“You have brought me a gift?” Sularia said. “It is wrapped most strangely, an you have.” She examined her face in the mirror, and lightly stroked rouge onto her cheeks with a brush of fur.
“This is not for you,” he laughed. “’Tis the sword of Melius.”
With a key that hung on a golden chain about his neck, he unlocked a large lacquered chest standing against the wall, turning the key first one way then the other in a precise pattern. Were that pattern not followed exactly, he had told Sularia, a cunningly contrived system of tubes and air-chambers would hurl poison darts into the face of the opener.
Albanus swung back the lid and, tossing aside the tattered cloak, carefully laid the sword in the place he had prepared for it. The tomes of ancient Acheron, bound in virgins’ skin, were there, well layered in silk, and those most vital thaumaturgical implements from the cache. His fingers rested briefly on a bundle of scrolls and rolled canvases. Not yet of any magical significance, they still deserved their place in the chest, those sketches and paintings of Garian. In a place of honor, resting on a silken cushion atop a golden stand, was a crystal sphere of deepest blue within which silver flecks danced and glittered.
Letting her robe drift to the floor, Sularia came to stand naked beside him. Her tongue touched her lips in small flickers as she stared down at the sword. “It was that blade which slew so many? Is it not dangerous? Ought you not to destroy it?”
“It is too useful,” he said. “Had I but known what I know now, never would I have put it in the hands of that fool Melius. ‘Twas those runes on the blade led me at last to its secret, buried in the grimoires.”
“But why did Melius slay as he did?”
“In the forging of this weapon, the essences of six masters of the sword were trapped within the steel.” He let his fingers brush lightly along the blade, sensing the power that had been required for its making. Such power would be his, power beyond the ken of mortal minds, power far beyond that of earthly kings. “And in that entrapment did madness come.” He reached down as if to lift the sword, but stopped with his hand clawed above the hilt. “Let the same hand grasp this hilt but three times to use this blade, and the mind that controls that hand will be ripped away, merging with the madness of those ancient masters of the sword. Escape. Slay, and escape. Slay. Slay!”
Ending on a shout, he looked at Sularia. Her mouth hung open, and she stared at his hand above the sword with open fear in her blue eyes.
“How often have you used the sword?” she whispered.
He laughed and took his hand away. Instead of the sword he picked up the crystal sphere, holding it delicately in his fingers, almost reverently, though he knew no power under heaven could so much as chip its seemingly fragile surface.