Suddenly it impinged on the Cimmerian’s mind that it was not Jehnna’s voice he heard. His hand went to the worn hilt of his broadsword. That the caller knew his name could mean much or little. Th
en, from where a fold of land had momentarily hidden it, a horse appeared, with a Corinthian military saddle and a wiry, dark-eyed rider.
A broad grin split Conan’s face. “Malak!” he shouted “I feared you were dead.”
“Not I!” the small thief roared back. “I am too handsome to die!”
On Malak’s heels the others came, Bombatta and Zula, Akiro easing his seat in his saddle and complaining about his old bones. The black woman rode straight to Jehnna, and the two of them put their heads together for talk pitched not to travel to any ears but their own.
“What happened with the Corinthians?” Conan demanded. “And how did you find us?”
Akiro opened his mouth, but Malak rushed in. “When they saw you two topping the pass, about half the fools rode off shouting about being first to ride the girl. Don’t you all glare at me! Mitra, they said it, not me! In any case, cutting the numbers down gave Akiro a chance to work. Tell them what you did, Akiro.”
Akiro opened his mouth again.
“He made a tiger appear,” Malak laughed. “It was as big as an elephant! Fidesa witness my words! The horses went mad.” He caught the old wizard’s gaze on him, and subsided with a weak, “You tell the rest, Akiro.”
“It was a small illusion,” Akiro said. He did not take his eyes off Malak as he spoke, as if afraid that did he look away the wiry man would cut him off again. “Even with fewer of the Corinthians, I had no time for more. It was of sight and smell only, and could not even move, but the horses, to our great luck, did not know that. They did indeed go mad. Ours as well. But it enabled us to escape. Without the packhorse, as you see, but with our skins in one piece.”
There was a deal too much of sorcery on this journey to suit Conan, but he could not complain when it saves his friends’ lives. Instead he said, “It was fortuitous you found us. We entered these accursed mountains together, and it is well that we leave together.”
Malak started to speak, then snapped his mouth firmly shut at Akiro’s glare.
“Fortune had naught to do with it,” the yellow-skinned mage said. “It was this.” He held a leather cord with a small, carved stone dangling at its end. With a deft motion he set the stone to spinning in a circle, yet almost immediately the circle lengthened and narrowed until the stone swung back and forth in a line that pointed directly at Conan.
The Cimmerian drew a deep breath. Yet more sorcery! “I do not like such things asociated with me,” he said, and was pleased that he had not yelled it.
“Not with you,” Akiro assured him. “With the amulet. Such a thing is much less complex than a living person, and thus easier to fix on. Had I had some of your hair, or some garments you had worn, I could have found you much more quickly.”
“Crom!” Conan breathed. His hair! He would never allow a sorcerer to have such, no matter how much a friend he seemed at the moment.
Akiro went on as if the Cimmerian had not spoken. “With only an inanimate object as a focus, the circle barely changed at first. It was very difficult to read a direction. Much like finding your way through a building in the dark, by feel.”
“And Bombatta did not want to follow it,” Malak burst out. “He said he didn’t trust Akiro.” His last words trailed off to a murmur, and he gave a worried look at Akiro.
“It is all right,” Akiro said. “I was finished.”
All the while they talked Bombatta had sat his horse, glaring from Conan to Jehnna and back again. Now he growled, “Did he harm you, child?”
Jehnna looked up, startled, from her conversation with Zula. “What? Why, what do you mean, Bombatta? Conan protects me, even as you do.”
Her answer did not seem to satsify the black-armored man. His face darkened, and the scars on it became livid. He looked at Akiro, hesitated visibly, then spoke. “I must know, wizard. Is she still an innocent?”
“Bombatta!” Jehnna protested, and Zula spoke close behind her.
“That is no question to be asked, or answered,” the black woman growled.
“Tell me true, wizard,” Bombatta said insistently, “for our lives and more, much more than you can know, depend on it.”
Akiro pursed his lips, then nodded slowly. “She is an innocent. I sense it so strongly, I wonder that the rest of you cannot.” As Bombatta sagged with a relieved sigh, the round-bellied mage moved his horse closer to Conan’s and lowered his voice. “It is a thing of the spirit and not of the flesh, as I said once before,” he murmured.
Conan colored, and colored more when he realized that he had. “You pry,” he muttered. “Do not use your wizardry on me.”
“Use the vial I gave you,” Akiro said. “Use it, and ride away from here. Take the girl, if you wish. I do not doubt you could persuade her to go with you. In another night or two.” A faint leer touched his lips, and was gone. “There can be nothing in this for you, Cimmerian, save more wounds of the kind that neither show nor heal.”
Conan scowled silently, denying the temptation to put his hand to his belt-pouch to see if the small stone vial was still there. Valeria, and a debt still unpaid. He became aware of Jehnna’s voice.
“He says he will not take me, but I know it is there. I know!”