“I have been looking for you for hours,” the one-eyed man said. “Kandar attacked Vyndra’s palace with a hundred lancers and took Vyndra and the Khitan’s niece, Chin Kou. Prytanis was with him.”
With a snarl Conan smashed his wooden tankard to the dirt floor. Momentary silence rolled through the room, and every eye swiveled to him. Then, hastily, talk began again. It was not a night to become involved in a stranger’s anger.
“The men?” Conan asked.
“Nicks and cuts. No more. We managed to get to the horses and Kuie Hsi found us a place to hide, an abandoned temple on something called the Street of Dreams, though miserable dreams they must
be. A day or two of rest and healing and we’ll see what can be done about the wenches.”
Conan shook his head, as much to clear it as in negation. “I do not have a day or two. Best you return to this temple. They will need you if they are to make it back to Turan.”
“What are you about?” Hordo demanded, but the Cimmerian only clapped his friend on the shoulder and hurried from the tavern. As Conan trotted down the darkened street, he heard the one-eyed man calling behind him, but he did not look back.
The Bhalkhana stallion was stabled near the city gate by which he had entered Gwandiakan, and a coin retrieved the big black from a wizened liveryman. The city gates themselves were massive, ten times the height of a man, and made of black iron plates worked in fanciful designs. They would not be easily moved, and from the dirt that had accumulated along their bases, it had been years since they were closed. The city’s ill ease hung on the turban-helmed gate guards as well, and they only watched him nervously, fingering their spears, as he galloped through.
The one bit of definite information he had learned in his night of listening, the one story that did not change—and the one he had thought least useful even at that—was the location of Kandar’s palace. Rage filled him, but it was an icy rage. To die with sword in hand would be much preferable to succumbing to the poison in his veins, but the women must be freed first. Only when they were safe could he allow himself to think of his own concerns.
Short of the palace he rode into a copse of trees and tied the stallion’s reins to a branch. Stealth and cunning, bred in his days as a thief, would better serve him now than steel.
Prince Kandar’s palace, larger even than Vyndra’s, shone in the night with the light of a thousand lamps, a gleaming alabaster intricacy of terraces, domes and spires. Reflection pools stretched on all sides and between them gardens of flowering shrubs reached the very walls of the palace, their myriad blossoms filling the darkness with a hundred perfumes.
Perfumes and blossoms did not interest Conan, but the shrubs served well to cover his silent approach. He was but one shadow among many. Fingers trained by climbing the cliffs of his native Cimmerian mountains found crevices in the seemingly smooth joining of great marble blocks, and he scaled the palace wall as another man might climb a ladder.
Lying flat atop the broad wall, Conan surveyed what he could of the palace—small courtyards with splashing fountains, intricately friezed towers thrusting toward the sky, colonnaded walks lit by lamps of cunningly wrought gold. Breath caught in his throat, and his hand went unbidden to his sword. Past the fluted columns of one of those colonnades walked a man in robes of gold and crimson with another in what seemed black silk. Karim Singh. And, if the gods were with him, Naipal. With a regretful sigh he released the sword-hilt and watched the two men walk on beyond his sight. The women, he told himself. The women first. Scrambling to his feet, he ran along the wall.
Height was the key, as experience in the cities of Nemedia and Zamora had taught him. A man glimpsed in the upper reaches of a structure, even one who obviously did not belong there, was often ignored. After all, without a right to be there, how could he have traveled so far? Too, entering on the upper levels meant that every step took a man closer to the ground and his route to escape. Escape was especially important this night, for the two women if not for him.
Cornices, friezes and a hundred elaborate workings of alabaster stone made a swift path for the big Cimmerian. Slipping through a narrow window just below the roof, he found himself in a pitch-dark stuffy room. By touch he quickly ascertained that it was a storeroom for carpets and bedding. The narrow door opened onto a corridor dimly lit by brass lamps. No gold hangings or fine tapestries here, for these upper floors were servants’ quarters. Snores drifted from some of the rooms. As silent and grim as a hunting cat, Conan padded into the hall. Stairs led him down.
Sounds floated from other parts of the palace—an indistinguishable murmur of voices, the thrum of a cithern. Once the single deep toll of a gong echoed mournfully. The Cimmerian let them pass all but unnoticed, his eyes and ears straining instead for the flicker of shadow or hint of a soft footfall that might betray any who could give an alarm.
It was a bedchamber he sought, he was sure of that. From what he knew of Kandar, such would have been his first stop with the women, and it would no doubt suit his fancy to have them awaiting his return were he not still with them. Conan hoped that he was. Karim Singh and Naipal would certainly escape him this night but it would be good to deal with Kandar at least.
The first three bedchambers he found were empty, though golden lamps cast soft light in wait for their eventual occupants. As he stepped into the fourth, only a sense below the levels of understanding threw him into a forward roll an instant before razor steel slashed through the place where his head had been.
Conan came to his feet with broadsword in hand, and a vigorous cut made his attacker leap back. The Cimmerian stared at his opponent, for he had not seen the man’s like before, not even in this strange land. A nasaled helm with a thick spike topped his dark expressionless face, and his armor was of leather studded with brass. A long straight sword was in his gauntleted right hand, a shorter curved blade in his left, and he moved as though he knew well the use of each.
“I am here for the women,” Conan said in a taunting voice. If he could make the man exchange words with him, the other might not think to give an alarm even while they strove to slay each other. “Tell me where they are, and I’ll not kill you.” The man’s silent rush forced him to throw up his blade in defense.
And it was defense, the Cimmerian realized in shock. His broadsword flashed and darted as swiftly as ever it had, but it was all in a desperate effort to keep the other’s steel from striking him. For the first time in his life he faced a man faster than himself. Slashes with the speed of a striking viper forced him back. Snarling, he gambled, continuing the motion of a block with a smash of his fisted hilt to his opponent’s face.
The strangely armored man was thrown back, an inlaid table crushed to splinters by his fall, but before Conan could take more than a single step to follow up his attack, the other sprang to his feet. Conan met him in the center of the room, and sparks were struck as steel wove a deadly lace between them. The Cimmerian poured all of his rage—at Kandar, at Naipal, at Karim Singh—into his attack, refusing this time to yield a step. Abruptly a slicing blow of his broadsword sheared through flesh and bone, but even as it did, he was forced to jump back to avoid a decapitating stroke.
Landing on guard and ready to continue, Conan felt the hair on the back of his neck stir. His last blow had stopped his opponent—and indeed it should have, as the short curved sword now lay on the carpet along with the hand that gripped it—but it was obviously only a temporary halt. That expressionless face had not changed in the least, and the dark flat eyes did not so much as glance at the severed wrist, a wound that gave not a single drop of blood. Sorcery, the Cimmerian thought. Suddenly the silence in which the other had fought took on eerie quality. And then the murderous assault began anew.
If the sorcerous warrior was accustomed to fighting with two swords, he seemed little less able with only one. Conan met each lightning stroke but his own were met as well. He could match the other now, the Cimmerian knew, one blade against one blade, but could mortal flesh outlast the endurance of sorcery?
Abruptly the severed stump struck the side of Conan’s head with a force greater than he would have believed possible, flinging him back as though he were a child. It was his turn to find himself on his back amidst the ruins of a table, but before he could rise, his attacker was on him. Desperately Conan blocked a downward blow that would have split his skull. Among the wreckage of the table his hand closed on a hilt, and he thrust. The other man twisted like a serpent, and the blade cut through his leather armor, slicing across his ribs. As though his bones had melted, the dark warrior collapsed atop Conan.
Quickly the Cimmerian heaved the body from him and sprang
to his feet with sword ready, fearing some trick. The leather-armored figure did not move; the flat black eyes were glazed.
In wonder Conan looked at the weapon he had taken up and almost dropped it as he cursed. It seemed a short-sword but the hilt was long enough for two hands, and blade and hilt alike were wrought of some strange silvery metal that glowed with unearthly light.
A smell made his nose twitch and he cursed again. It was the stink of putrefaction. Within the leather armor the corpse of his opponent was already half-decayed, white bone showing through rotted flesh. An ensorcelled warrior slain by an obviously ensorcelled blade. Part of his mind urged Conan to leave the foul thing but another part whispered that such might be useful against a sorcerer like Naipal. Mages were not always so easily slain as other men.
Sheathing his broadsword, he hastily tore silk from the coverlets on the bed and wrapped the silvery weapon, thrusting it behind his sword-belt. As he did so, he heard pounding boots approaching, many of them. The splintered tables, with scattered chests and broken crystal and shattered mirrors, were mute evidence that the battle had not been silent after all. Muttering imprecations, he ran for the windows, climbing through just as a score of Vendhyan soldiers poured into the room.