Conan the Destroyer (Robert Jordan's Conan Novels 6)

“Akiro,” Conan said. Malak squatted to listen, an interested expression on his face.

“I will visit them with a plague of boils to the tenth generation. I will make their herds fail, and their manhoods whither, and their teeth fall out!”

“Akiro,” Conan said.

The saffron-skinned mage shook a fist in the direction of the fleeing men. “They claimed I maligned their gods. Gods!” He grimaced and spat. “Fool shamans do not know a fire elemental when they see one. I told them if they sacrificed one more child I would bring lightning down on their heads, and by the Nine-Fold Path of Power, I will do it!”

“Maybe you can’t,” Malak said. “I mean, they managed to tie you up and half cook you. Maybe you had better leave them alone.”

Akiro’s faced smoothed to an utter lack of expression. “Do not fear, Malak,” he said mildly. “I will not make your stones fall off.” Malak toppled over backwards, staring with bulging eyes at the wizard. “Is that proper respect that I see on your face?” Akiro asked gently. “Then I shall recount what happened. The three shamans, who call themselves priests, managed to put a spell on me while I slept. A minor spell, but it enabled their followers to fall on me and bind me.” His tone hardened as he spoke, and his voice rose higher word by word. “They tied my hands, so I could make no gesture of significance. They stuffed rags into my mouth,” he paused to spit, “so I could utter no words of power. Then they proposed to sacrifice me to their gods. Gods! I will show them gods! I shall be a demon in their pantheon, at least, before I am done! I—. That girl.”

Conan blinked. He had decided to let Akiro run out of wind—it was the only thing to do when the old mage got the bit firmly between his teeth like this—but the sudden softening of voice and change of subject caught him by surprise. Bombatta, he realized, was finally bringing Jehnna down from the hill. The pair of them were barely visible shapes in the dusk, and Conan, for all his mountainbred vision, would not have wagered that either was a woman had he not known it already.

“She is an innocent,” Akiro said, and Malak laughed shrilly.

“You mean that you can tell from here that she’s never—”

“Hold your tongue, Malak!” the old man snapped. “This has naught to do with the flesh. It is of the spirit, and it is a terrible thing.”

“Terrible!” Conan exclaimed. “It is not what I would chose for myself, but terrible?”

Akiro nodded. “Such must be protected like children till they gain some knowledge of the world, else they are fated to be prey. It is rare that an innocent occurs naturally. Most have been raised so for some sorcerous purpose.”

“Raised so,” Conan murmured, frowning. Well away from the hut, and the bodies before it, Bombatta was helping Jehnna down from her mount. The black-armored warrior stood between her and the charnel scene, not allowing her to look.

“Valeria,” Akiro said, and the Cimmerian started.

“She is part of why I came to you, Akiro.”

“Wait.” Akiro bustled into the rude hut. Oaths and the clatter of rummaging drifted out. When he returned he handed Conan a small, polished stone vial sealed with beeswax. “This is for Valeria,” he said.

“I do not understand,” Conan said.

Akiro pursed his lips and tugged at his mustaches, one with either hand. “Long did I study this question, Cimmerian. I tossed the Bones of Fate, read the stars, told the K’far cards, all to find an answer for what troubles you.”

“I am troubled no longer, Akiro. At least—”

“Do not dissemble with me,” the wizard cut him off. “How can I help if you do not speak truth to me? Valeria’s life and yours were most strongly intertwined. She was at once lover and companion warrior. She died in your place, and so strong was the bond between you that even death could not stop her returning to save you. Cimmerian, that great a bond between life and death is dangerous. Valeria would sever it herself if she knew, but some knowledge is hidden to those beyond the dark.”

“Akiro, I do not want the bond severed, and it is not necessary.”

“Listen to me, you stubborn northlander. You cannot cut your way out of this with a sword. I know your fate if you will not listen. The cards, the bones, the stars, all agree. Eventually the bond will pull you into a living death. You will find yourself trapped halfway between the world of the living and the world of the dead, but in neither, able to touch neither, for the rest of time. Only forgetfulness can save you. I went to great pains to concoct the potion in that vial. It will wipe from your mind all memory of Valeria. Naught connected to her will remain. Believe me, Cimmerian, could she know the choice you face, Valeria would tell you to drink from that vial without delay. She was not one to shirk a hard decision.”

“And if Valeria could return once more?” Conan asked quietly. “Not for moments, as she did before, but to live the rest of the life she should have had. What then, Akiro?”

The rotund mage was silent for a long moment. His eyes traveled to Jehnna, and he licked his lips slowly. “I think we must clear away these bodies so we can eat,” he said finally. “I shall need food in me to hear this.”

viii

The old wizard would not take back his vial, and finally Conan stuffed it into his belt pouch. In the end it was he and Malak who dragged the corpses away. Akiro muttered vaguely about his back and his aged bones, though there was considerable muscle under those layers of fat. Bombatta again refused to leave Jehnna, or to let her come close enough to see what the big Cimmerian and his diminutive friend carried to the far side of the hill.

Akiro had said he required food before listening, and now he insisted on it. Rabbits taken that morning by the wizard—by the normal means of a sling and stone—were spitted and roasted, and a halffilled basket of small Corinthian oranges was produced from the hut. Finally the last bones were gnawed, and orange peels were tossed into the fire that cast a golden pool before the small hut. Bombatta took a wetstone from his pouch and bent himself to tending his tulwar’s edge. Malak began juggling three of the oranges to the delight of Jehnna, though he dropped one at every second pass.

“’Tis a part of the trick,” the wiry thief said as he picked an orange from the ground for the fourth time. “To make the later things I do seem even greater by comparison.”

Akiro touched Conan on the arm and motioned with his head to the darkness. The two men withdrew from the fire; none of the others seemed to notice their going.

When they had gone far enough that their voices would not carry back to the hut, Akiro said, “Now tell me how Valeria is to be brought back to life.”