With a startled yelp Bombatta came awake. A heartbeat later he was snarling to his feet, hand darting to his tulwar. “I will kill you, thief! I—”
“Jehnna is gone,” Conan said with grim coldness. “You all but tie her to you, then let her disappear. She could be dead!”
Bombatta’s fury vanished with the first words. He stared at her blankets as if struck in the head.
“The horses are all here,” Malak called.
The ebon-armored man shook himself. “Of course they are!” he roared. “Jehnna would not ride away from her destiny.”
“Destiny!” Zula sneered. “You call it her destiny. Why can she not choose her own destiny?”
“If you have done something with her,” Bombatta grated, and the black woman bristled back.
“I? I would never harm her! It is you who think she is a plaything, to be used as you see fit!”
The scars stood out as white lines across the big warrior’s face. “You diseased she-jackal! I will carve you—”
“Fight later!” Conan snapped. “Now we must find Jehnna!”
Tension between the two lessened, but did not disappear. Bombatta sheathed his half-bared tulwar with a growl deep in his throat, and Zula’s lip curled angrily as she lowered the staff she held in both hands.
Akiro had knelt by Jehnna’s blankets and begun running his hands over them. Now his lips moved silently, and his eyes closed. When he opened them again only dead-white spheres showed. Malak gagged loudly and turned away.
“The girl was taken by a bird,” the old man announced.
“Old fool,” Bombatta muttered, but Akiro continued as if he had not spoken.
“A great bird, a bird of smoke that moved without sound. It carried her in its talons.” His eyelids dropped, and opened on normal black eyes.
“A fool?” Conan said to Bombatta. “You are the fool. And me. We should have expected the Stygian to do something.”
“Where did this bird take her?” Zula asked.
Akiro pointed across the lake to the crystal palace. “There, o
f course.”
“Then we must follow,” she said.
Conan nodded wordless agreement. As one he and Bombatta ran to the hide boat, wrestled it to the water.
“But it may be ensorceled,” Malak protested. “Akiro said so.”
“We must take the chance,” Conan replied. He stood knee deep in the water beside the narrow vessel. “In! Quickly!”
In a quick scramble they filled the boat, Zula in the middle between Akiro and Malak, Conan and Bombatta on the ends. Paddles in the big men’s hands dug furiously at the water, and the slim boat knifed away from the shore.
“Sigyn’s Bowl!!” Malak howled abruptly. “I forgot! I am leaving this morning! Turn back!”
Conan did not slow the steady work of his powerful arms and shoulders. “Swim,” he said curtly.
The small thief looked at the liquid beneath them and shuddered. “Water is for drinking,” he muttered, “when there is no wine.”
With neither wind nor wave to hinder and two strong men working the paddles, the hide boat all but flew over the lake. Ripples from its passage spread incredibly far, for no other thing disturbed that glassy surface. The crystal palace loomed before them. Along its border with the water there was a landing, perfectly ordinary except that it, too, seemed carved from a single huge gem. The sun topped the crater’s rim as they reached the palace, and the vast structure became a riot of scintillation.
Conan held the boat close to the strange landing while the others clambered out. When he was on the glittering stone as well, he lifted the hide boat from the water. A thief did not last long in Shadizar who failed to plan for his exits and escapes. For now the lake was still, but he would not risk something sweeping the craft away, not until he knew of some other means of leaving that unnatural palace.
The boat secured, he turned his attention to the palace. Smooth, sparkling walls met his eyes. Far to the right and left were the ends of crystal colonnades with tall, fluted columns of pellucid stone. Above rose featureless, vitreous expanses of sheer wall topped by faceted domes and glittering spires stretching toward the sky.