In a central chamber floored with exquisite Vendhyan carpets and lit by golden lamps, Vyndra stood awaiting him. “You came, Patil. I am glad.”
Conan clamped his teeth firmly to keep from gaping. Gold and rubies and emeralds still bedecked her, but the robes she had worn earlier were now replaced by layers of purest gossamer. She was covered from ankles to neck, yet her position in front of a lamp cast shadows of tantalizing mystery on rounded surfaces, and the scent of jasmine floating from her seemed the very distillation of wickedness.
“If this were Turan,” he said when he found his tongue, “or Zamora or Nemedia, and there were two women in a room dressed as the two of you, it would be Alyna who was free, and you who were slave. To a man, without doubt, and the delight of his eye.”
Vyndra smiled, touching a finger to her lips. “How foolish of those women to let their slaves outshine them. But if you wish to see Alyna, I will have her dance for you. I have no other dancing girls with me, I fear. Unlike Karim Singh and the other men, I do not find them a necessity.”
“I would much rather see you dance,” he told her, and she laughed low in her throat.
“That is something no man will ever see.” Yet she twined her arms above her head and stretched in a motion so supple it cried dancer, and one that dried Conan’s throat. That fabric was more than merely sheer when drawn tight.
“If I could have some wine?” he asked hoarsely.
“Of course. Wine, Alyna, and dates. But sit, Patil. Rest yourself.”
She pressed him down onto piled cushions of silk and velvet. He was not sure of exactly how she managed this since she had to reach up to put her small han
ds on his shoulders, but he suspected the perfume had something to do with it.
He tried to put his arms around her then, while she bent over him so enticingly, but she slipped away like an eel and reclined on the cushions just an arm’s length away. He settled for accepting a goblet of perfumed wine from Alyna. The cup was as heavy as the one in which the wazam had given him wine, though instead of amethysts, it was studded with coral beads.
“Vendhya seems to be a rich land,” he said after he had drunk, “though I’ve not been there yet to see it.”
“It is,” Vyndra said. “And what else do you know of Vendhya before you have been there?”
“Vendhyans make carpets,” he said, slapping the one beneath the cushions, “and they perfume their wine and their women alike.”
“What else?” she giggled.
“Women from the purdhana are shamed by baring their faces but not by baring anything else.” That brought an outright laugh, though the edges of a blush showed about Alyna’s veil. Conan liked Vyndra’s laughter, but he was already tired of the sport. “Beyond that, Vendhya seems to be famous for spies and assassins.”
Both women gasped as one, and Vyndra’s face paled. “I lost my father to the Katari. As did Alyna.”
“The Katari?”
“The assassins for which Vendhya is so famous. You mean you did not even know the name?” Vyndra shook her head and shuddered. “They kill, sometimes for gold, sometimes for whim it seems, but always the death is dedicated to the vile goddess Katar.”
“That name I have heard,” he said, “somewhere.”
Vyndra sniffed. “No doubt on the lips of a man. It is a favorite oath of Vendhyan men. No woman would be so foolish as to call on one dedicated to endless death and carnage.”
She was clearly shaken, and he could sense her withdrawing into herself. Frantically he sought another topic, one fit for a woman’s ears. One of her poets would no doubt compose a verse on the spot, he thought bitterly, but all the verse he knew was set to music, and most of it would made a trull blush.
“A man of your country did say something out of the ordinary to me today,” he said slowly, and latched on to the one remark out of several that would bear repeating. “He thought my eyes marked me as demon-spawn. A pan-kur, he called it. You obviously do not believe it, else you’d have run screaming rather than inviting me to drink your wine.”
“I might believe it,” she said, “if I had not talked to learned men who told me of far-off lands where the men are all giants with eyes like sapphires. And I rarely run screaming from anything.” A small smile had returned to play on her lips. “Of course, if you actually claim to be a pan-kur, I would never doubt the man who calls himself Patil.”
Conan flushed slightly. Everyone seemed to know the name was not his, but he could not bring himself to say that he had lied about it. “I have fought demons,” he said, “but I am none of their breed.”
“You have fought demons?” Vyndra exclaimed. “Truly? I saw demons once, a score of them, but I cannot imagine anyone actually fighting one, no matter what the legends say.”
“You saw a score of demons?” Despite his own experience seemingly to the contrary, Conan was aware that demons—and wizards, for that matter—were not so thick on the ground as most people imagined. It was just that he had bad luck in the matter, though Hordo insisted it was a curse. “A score in one place?”
Vyndra’s dark eyes flashed. “You do not believe me? Many others were there. Five years ago in the palace of King Bhandarkar, he who was then the court wizard, Zail Bal, was carried off in full view of scores of people. The demons were rajaie, which drink the life from their victims. You see, I know whereof I speak.”
“Did I say I did not believe you?” Conan asked. He would believe in twenty demons in one place—much less anyone escaping alive from that place—when he saw it, but he hoped devoutly that his luck was never quite that bad.
A small crease appeared between Vyndra’s brows, as though she doubted his sincerity. “If you have truly fought demons—and you see I do not question your claim—then you must certainly stay at my palace in Ayodhya. Why, perhaps even Naipal would come to meet a man who has fought demons. What a triumph that would be!”