Conan and the Mists of Doom Part 6

"Here. Even a fool deserves a trifle of poppy syrup to soothe his hurts."

"Perhaps I should hold on to those jewels after all. We may need them to silence the angry and heal the hurt, if we have many more of these exchanges."

"At your pleasure, my friend. But I will talk to Farad and Sorbim, if you will talk to your people."

"I will, and pray to Mitra that all listen!"

"Halt! Who seeks to pa.s.s?"

Captain Muhbaras's mind had lurched up out of sleep before his body was ready to follow. That sentry had to be one of the new recruits, a "settled" nomad. How settled any of the tribesmen could become was a matter of some debate. It was evident that he had not learned sentry drill as thoroughly as could be wished.

The reply came in a woman's voice, which finished the work of awakening the captain's body. He could make out no words, but there was no need for that. The only women out and about here by night were the Maidens of the Mist, and the most likely reason they would be here was something either dire, urgent, or both.

Across the single room in the hut, blankets roiled and heaved like water in a millrace. A round face with a crinkly black chin beard rose above the blankets, like an otter surfacing from a dive. "A woman?" the face said. The mouth was a thin gash, unwholesomely out of proportion to the rest of the face. It always seemed a marvel to the captain that Ermik's tongue was not forked, like that of a serpent.

"A Maiden."

"Ah. No doubt seeking to end that-"

In a moment the captain was out of his blankets and off his pallet. In another moment he had taken two strides and was standing over the other. His hand was on the hilt of his sword. His gaze was fixed on the wall of the hut.

If he allowed his gaze to drift downward, he knew he might draw the sword and thrust it into the thick neck below the round face. That would silence the greasy voice, but raise a howling and a shrieking back in Khoraja that would not end until he himself was dead, and likely many of his men dead with him. Men he had sworn to lead out of these h.e.l.l-cursed mountains, as he had sworn to lead them in.

"You may think that, if you wish, and risk both body and soul if the Lady of the Mist hears your thoughts. Do not ever let them pa.s.s your lips. Not where a Maiden can hear them. Not where I can hear them. Not where a hawk, a mouse, or a beetle can hear them!

"Do you understand?"

The small dark eyes above the blankets resembled a pig's eyes, but they were as unblinking as a serpent's.

"Do you?" the captain repeated.

"I do."

"Then hold your tongue and go back to sleep."

"I must visit the-" "After I am done with the Maiden."

The other's mouth opened again, and the captain's hand tightened on the age-darkened leather of the sword's grip. Even one bawdy word from the other might send him over the brink-and perhaps he could buy his life and his men's by saying that the Maidens would have slain Ermik, the Grand Council's spy, had the captain not done so.

The Maidens-or their mistress. It would sound dreadful enough to persuade the Council.

Indeed, it might even be the truth.

"Do not be long."

The other could foul his blankets for all that the captain cared, save that the hut reeked enough as it was.

"I shall be no longer than the Maiden detains me. How long that will be depends on her errand, and I offer you another piece of wisdom."

"Will you have any wisdom left if you keep offering me pieces of it?"

The captain ignored the pert reply as he would have the yelping of a cur in the streets. "The shorter the time I am gone, the worse the news the Maiden bears."

That opened Ermik's eyes agreeably wide. They stared after the captain as he strode out into the night.

Conan was seated cross-legged on a carpet in the Afghulis' tent, watching the surgeon's Vendhyan slave tend Farad's wounds. Before him on the rug stood a jug of wine. A small bribe had procured it from the surgeon's stores, and after a cup of it, Conan felt a trifle more reconciled to the world as it was.

The slave jerked a dressing from Farad's ribs, taking a scab with it. Blood trickled, Farad glared, the slave cringed and muttered something under his breath. It was probably not a curse, although, like most Vendhyans, the slave could hardly be overly fond of Afghulis. Centuries of border raids, burned villages, and looted caravans had seen to that.

However, Conan understood several of the Ven-dhyan dialects, and the first time the slave ill-wished the Afghulis, he said as much. He added that if the slave could not keep his tongue between his teeth by the power of his will, either his tongue or his teeth might be removed, or perhaps his lips sewn shut. Mutes were not always the best slaves, but if muting them improved their manners- The slave could hardly have abased himself more, or more swiftly promised good behavior in the future.

The Vendhyan was quickly but deftly putting a fresh dressing on Farad's battered ribs when tramping feet thudded outside the tent. Before anyone could give warning, Captain Khezal pushed his way into the tent.

Neither his sudden coming nor the look on his face made Khezal seem the bearer of good news. When with one look he sent the slave fleeing as if scorpions were nesting in his breeches, he made Conan certain of this.

He did not even venture to guess what the bad news might be; Khezal's scheme was one likely to go awry at half a dozen points before they even sighted the peaks of the Kezankians. Nor was the Cimmerian's knowledge of Turan's intrigues or the nomads' feuds what it had been. The bad news might be something altogether unconnected with the quest for the Valley of the Mists.

At least Conan thought he could trust Khezal to tell him all of the truth that any man not of Turan could be trusted to know. That was more than could be said of more than a few leaders Conan had followed.

"We have found the remaining Afghulis," Khezal said. "Rejoice," Farad replied. Conan trusted that Khezal did not hear the ironic note in the Afghuli's voice.

"Or rather, they have found those who sought them," Khezal went on. "They laid an ambush even more cunning than I had expected from such skilled warriors."

"Flattery may raise hearts," Conan said. "It also uses time, of which I suspect we have but little, unless there is no more to your tale."

"Forgive me, Conan. I forgot that you were never a courtier."

"Improve your memory, then, my friend. Nor will I become a courtier soon enough to let you babble to no purpose."

Khezal took a deep breath. "It is to some purpose to know that the Afghulis who fled are unharmed. They unhorsed a half-score Greencloaks and took three as hostages to a cave. They have threatened the hostages with gelding and other harsh fates if Conan and any living Afghulis in Turanian hands are not freed at once."

Farad saved Conan the trouble of a swift reply by bursting into laughter that could doubtless be heard all over the camp. Khezal's face colored, and he looked at the ceiling of the tent, as if he wished the sky would fall on the Afghulis or him or both, to end this shameful moment.

At last both Farad and Khezal gained command of themselves, and into the silence Conan thrust a few words. "Then we must ride out at once, to prove that we are alive and free before they begin working on your men."

"What if I refuse to let you go?" Khezal asked. His eyes searched Conan's face, rather as if he were judging the temper of a horse he wished to buy. "This could be a scheme to escape. The nomads would doubtless pay you much for your knowledge of our camp."

"The nomads would pay us in slit throats after torturing the knowledge out of us, unless we contrived to die fighting them," Conan snapped. "Do not waste time or breath by testing me, Khezal. Not if you wish to keep your men whole."

"One must admit that there are fewer posts for eunuchs than there once were,"

Khezal said. He might almost have been meditating. Conan had to respect the inward courage that let the captain command himself in matters like this.

"So I will trust you and your Afghuli comrades to make no attempt to escape,"

the captain continued. "And I will also trust you to contrive the return of my men, whole and fit to fight. Otherwise we have no agreement, and I will look under every rock and grain of sand in this desert to find you."

Conan knew when a man accustomed to commanding his temper was about to lose it.

He made no protest at Khezal's terms, but began gathering his weapons and harness.

Captain Muhbaras's notion that he would hear bad news swiftly did not last long.

He began to wish he had used some more prudent words to silence the spy. As it was, the man would either suspect a lie or fret himself into folly well before the captain returned.

There was, however, not one thing under the G.o.ds' sky that the captain could do about this problem, without paying the mortal price of offending the Lady of the Mists.

Nor would giving such offense please the spy. He had made it plainer than a fruit-seller in the bazaar crying his wares; his purpose here was to speed the work of the alliance with the Lady of the Mists to the peril of Turan and the profit of Khoraja.

It was therefore just barely possible that the spy needed the captain more than the captain needed him. The captain resolved to remember that as he followed his escort of Maidens into the valley.

Escort or guard? One walked ahead, and one on either side save where the path was too narrow for more than one pair of feet. Then the flankers stepped forward to join the leader.

No less than four Maidens walked behind the captain. He turned twice to stare at them, and each time their leader gave him a look that would have frozen the manhood of a G.o.d. The others lightly brushed their hands to the hilts of their swords.

After that the captain was entirely certain that he was going either to his own death or to something that he would doubtless protest almost as violently. It was some small consolation to know that the Lady thought she might need steel as well as spells to ward him off. Entering the Valley of the Mists, the captain did not feel nearly that formidable.

He felt still less so as they pa.s.sed within the cleft, through the two great gates, and on to a trail that climbed the cliff to the left of the entrance. The trail was wide enough for two abreast, but it climbed so steeply that in places the rock was shaped into steps. In the twilight, and taking care not to stumble, the captain could not be sure what shapes were carved into those steps. He doubted that the knowledge was either necessary or wholesome.

In the twilight, the valley itself did nothing to ease a man's mind. Two walls of mountain stretched away into shadows whose blue and purple hues seemed against nature. Overhead the stars were coming out with a savage brightness, even as the last light drained from the western sky. Mist gathered here, there, and everywhere, according to no pattern the captain recognized, gray tendrils rising to dance and swirl with the sinuosity of living beings. The captain had the sense of entering a vast temple, so long ruined that it was roofless and naked to the stars, but whose walls and altars of sacrifice were yet intact. Intact, and bound by great and dreadful magic to remain that way until some nameless purpose was fulfilled.

He shivered from more than the chill of the night air, and was glad when the trail turned into a cave and the cave into a tunnel carved from the wall of the valley. Torches lit the party's way, and twice they surprised the misshapen half-human slaves of the valley tending to the lights.

Again the captain rejoiced that the light was too dim to let him see every unwholesome detail of the half-men. Or women-he was sure that one of them was a woman, barely past girlhood, and he fought back the urge to spew or perform rites of aversion.

Neither was acceptable to the Lady.

Muhbaras's modest pleasure lasted only until his guards led him into a small, almost intimate chamber. Its rock walls hid behind tapestries woven with archaic figures of dragons and giant birds, and a brazier glowing in the middle of it further warmed the air beyond what the captain had expected.

There was, however, no warmth in the Lady's face as she sat in her habitual cross-legged position on a silk cushion, the cushion in turn elevated on a stool carved from a single piece of Vendhyan teak. To show that he was not afraid, the captain sought to make out the figures carved in the stool, but ended being more unsettled than before as he failed to make sense of the carvings.

They were animals, birds, and things that had the shape of men but also subtle differences. They were nothing as simple as the Serpent Men of Valusia, who would have been almost a relief. Muhbaras knew that custom required him to wait for the Lady to speak, as if she were a queen or near-kin to one. He also knew that this custom allowed the Lady to sit and study those who came before her for as long as it pleased her, rather like a serpent studying a particularly succulent bird.

By sheer force of will, Muhbaras had not grown uneasy and was standing as still as the seven Maidens when the Lady at last spoke.

"One of your warriors has looked upon a Maiden with the desire of a man for a woman."

The captain inclined his head, as graciously as he could contrive. Unless the Lady was altogether a raving madwoman, there had to be more to the matter. And as he was not a raving madman, he would let her reveal that "more" before he opened his own mouth.

It seemed that half the night crawled by, in a silence rivaling that of the graveyard. The captain began to suspect that the Lady was testing his courage, and vowed to pa.s.s any test she might set him.

At last the Lady sighed. She was garbed in a robe made of a single thickness of silk, so thin that Muhbaras could see her b.r.e.a.s.t.s lift under it with the sigh.

He cast his eyes and thoughts elsewhere, and inclined his head again.

"Do you not wish to know more, Khorajan?" the Lady asked. Her voice had the quality of a fine steel blade slicing equally fine silk. In another it might have seemed intended to arouse desire. In the Lady it seemed only intended to arouse slavish obedience.

"I wish to know all that my Lady of the Mists sees fit to tell me. I do venture to add that the more she tells me, the more likely we are to resolve this matter peaceably."

"Peace requires the death of the soldier who offended. Anything less will mean no peace."

The captain waited, until he realized that he was expected to reply to those bald words, as naked of mercy as the rocks of the mountains or the vultures circling above them. Common sense told him that negotiation was futile. Honor bound him to try.

"A lesser penalty will still suffice to keep the man-"

"No lesser penalty will suffice in any way, in the eyes of the G.o.ds."

Which G.o.ds? the captain wondered, not quite reverently. Although the Lady might be unwilling or unable to answer, having confused her own will with that of the G.o.ds-a vice not unknown among less powerful mortals, or the captain would not have been here in honorable if perilous exile from his native city.

"Honor to the G.o.ds and to you, my Lady," the captain said. "But if no deed of desire has been done-"

"The eyes give pa.s.sage to the soul. Your soldier's soul has touched the Maiden."

Muhbaras had not heard that from any priest, but had long since ceased to expect the Lady to be bound by any common notions of priestcraft. He would have liked to know what did bind her, and still hoped to learn something of that, but did not expect that this night would be the time.

The Lady's wrath in the face of disobedience would doubtless be tempered by her need for himself and his men. Yet even her tempered wrath could leave him unfit for duty for some time, which Ermik could put to use to usurp the captain's authority.

Moreover, the Lady (who was seldom ill informed) might know of the spy's coming and his favor in Khoraja. She might think that he could be put into the captain's place as a more pliant tool. That would be folly in the Lady. But the captain had never heard that witches were less foolish than common folk.

"Give me the name of the man, then, and I will have him straitly confined, questioned, and brought before you."

"His name is Danar son of Araubas, and he has already been confined by my Maidens and their servants. His guilt is proven beyond need for further questioning. I summoned you here out of courtesy, that you might not wonder what had become of him. I only ask you: Do you wish to witness his pa.s.sing or not?"

The moment the captain heard the name of the condemned man, he knew at least some truth without needing to ask questions the Lady would not answer. Danar was youthful, courteous, and by all reports, most pleasing to a woman's eye. If he had looked with desire on any woman, Maiden, crone, or a very G.o.ddess, it was because she had so looked upon him first!

That truth would not save Danar, however. It would most likely condemn the Maiden as well as Danar-and whatever hope the Maidens' womanliness might give to the captain would be flung off the cliff along with Danar.

That would be the method of execution-that or some other pa.s.sing fit for a soldier. No more blackened and reeking tongues dealing a death that even the most hardened Stygian torturer would call harsh. The captain would save his man's soul, if he could not save his body.

"Very well. I will consent to all that you have asked, on one condition. I will speak alone with Danar son of Araubas, and bear any last wishes to his kin.

Otherwise I will make no promises whatever in this matter."

Muhbaras ventured to look the Lady squarely in the eyes. He saw for the first time flecks of brown in their blazing gold, and faint shadows on the eyelids below the finely plucked eyebrows. In another woman, he would have said those eyes would look very well widening on a pillow as she gave and took pleasure. With the Lady of the Mists, that was a thought to drive from one's mind as one drove a mad dog from the nursery.

"By my honor and my bond with the Mists, I pledge to grant you that, if the man be living when you come to him."

That left an opening for treachery through which one could have driven the elephants of the royal menagerie, but Muhbaras judged it wise to make no further argument. He bowed his head and made the ritual Khorajan gestures of binding himself with blood and steel to fulfill a vow.

Then he straightened. "The man is more likely to be living if I go straight to him. Is that permitted?"

The Lady nodded. Silently she raised a hand, and the Maidens gathered about the captain to lead him out of the chamber.