Conan the Outcast Page 11
"Your Supremacy,” he acknowledged with a scant bow and the merest downward flicker of his eyes.
"Well, well, young priest,” the king hailed him in almost jeering solicitude, "time and harsh duty have changed you... for the better, I think! Certainly they have aged you. But come, ride with me in the security of my royal litter. The slaves will be able to manage your added weight, I have no doubt. ’Tis great fun swooping across these desert dunes—come and sit!”
Moving forward on stiff, unsteady legs, Khumanos paused before the vehicle. He let the king's personal attendants pull his soiled, sand-dusted garment off over his head, to be replaced with a dressing gown of soft, luxuriant silk from a cedar chest attached to the royal conveyance. The dusty-brown, breech-clouted body they briefly exposed to the light was sparse and skeletal, it seemed to Anaximander—a dark, bony map of hardship and self-denial. Aside from the coarse clout, the only adornment Khumanos wore was the stub of a broken, rusted knife on a thong about his neck—an emblem of religious faith that the king vaguely recognized. Once gowned, Khumanos ducked beneath the gauze curtain and climbed into the sedan, which the bearers had set down onto the sand.
The priest sat opposite the king, facing rearward under the high, capacious awning. When at Anaximander’s signal the slaves hoisted the litter to their shoulders, the priest wobbled and almost rolled out; he was stopped from falling only by the king's swift, firm grip on his slender wrist. By then they were under way, sweeping up the slope of the next sand dune with a motion that was both giddy and smooth.
“So, Exalted Priest,” Anaximander began, “you have been able to carry out our great lord Votantha’s commands without fault? What of the idol? Has it been made according to the ancient formulae?
“Yes, Your Supremacy.” Khumanos regarded the king emotionlessly as he spoke, his voice husky with long exertion and desert dust. “The sacred metal was obtained in the ancient site above Shartoum, from the three consecrated mines, according to our prescription of old. The seals on the shafts were unbroken, and the ore was true according to the standards the elder Solon gave me. It was carried to the Chasm of Fire to be smelted—the caretakers of the place discharged their duties adequately, as before.”
“And that wily devil, the sheikh, did he cooperate?”
"Yes, sire. Slaves were furnished to me for the prescribed payment, and we were not troubled by raiders in Shartoum. We were able to complete the manufacture and set forth with the segments of the idol in a reasonable time.” “Good, then! The old Shartoumi must fear me enough not to try any tricks. I am glad your work has been completed so effortlessly.” Anaximander solemnly considered a moment, combing a finger through the curls of his beard. “What of the other parties? Do you have any word of their progress?”
“According to the last dispatches I received, both processions were passing near Sark. The three parts of the idol are of identical weight and bulk, but the easternmost party has the longest route. The central one faces steep terrain, because it must cross the hills to skirt our city and lands.
“Indeed," the king concurred. "It would never do to have the idol pass through Sark. That would be a most ill omen!”
"Naturally, Sire. In consequence, the other parties may lag behind. I recently sent runners to determine their current whereabouts.” "They are in the charge of your senior acolytes, are they not? Dependable young men, I should hope.”
"Yes, Your Supremacy. I have taken special pains to ensure that they regard their mission in a solemn, uncompromising way.” As he spoke, Khumanos fingered the rusted sword-hilt that hung around his neck. "However, Sire, my own work crew has been depleted by hardship and accident encountered during our journey. I have had to convert nearly all my military guards to labourers. I would think the same is true of the other parties. If you could spare additional troops or bearers for our cause—”
“To be sure, priest. My full kingly will goes with your mission. You may take with you a dozen of the troopers from my personal guard if you wish. Upon my return to Sark, I will put forth a royal summons—not for conscripts, I think, but for volunteers. With conditions as they have been in our city, scores of peasants should be eager to bind themselves into slavery for the promise of as much food and water as they can carry. I will dispatch them to overtake the other two parties. That should meet your needs, I think.”
At Khumanos’s wordless nod, Anaximander resumed. “Good. Here, priest, take food and drink, for I am tired of your dry, croaking voice.” He gestured to a hamper that sat open to one side, nested with fruit, cheese, biscuits, and stoppered flasks of wine. “Meanwhile, I shall tell you that which should make your heart rejoice and give thanks to your gracious lord.
“I am fresh from Qjara. Know you, I have prepared the way for your ministry. ’Tis a certainty, the sacred tree of Votantha’s power will swiftly take root and flourish there.” Khumanos, eating and drinking without apparent zest, said nothing in reply to his king. He merely watched with alert dark eyes.
“In all,” Anaximander continued, "my visit can be regarded as highly successful in both a religious and a diplomatic sense. Know you, I was welcomed into the very halls and palaces of mine enemies.” Showing unprecedented frankness toward one of inferior station, the king laughed aloud. “I saw first-hand their pathetic weaknesses, those same traits that make them odious to our lord Votantha. The open-handedness, the moral laxity and ease... and their hateful arrogance, assuming that others' vices are identical to theirs!” The ruler smirked in genuine distaste. "Fortunately, such faults as those invite their own extinction. Be assured, priest, in every religious, political, and spiritual sense I have paved the way for the coming of our great god.”
"I take it, Sire, you find them fitting sacrifices to our holy master?” Setting aside gnawed fruit rinds and a drained flask of date wine, Khumanos finished his repast.
"Yes, in every way! Their wealth and ease, the richness of their lands and adornments, and above all their pathetic innocence make them perfect victims to be sent heavenward in a fiery offering! Every detail is as I first understood it to be, from the rare vision our gracious lord sent me.” Anaximander sat nodding, seized by a kind of holy rapture in the gently swaying litter.
"I taunted them, you know! But in their complacency they heard nothing of it." The king shook his head in patient, infinite contempt. "It may be that my words will be remembered later, and bitterly—if only for a mere agonized instant as our sacrifice comes to fruition. Do you think, Khumanos, that you can arrange that, in the way you speak the final words? I cannot command it, I know—for the sacrifice you yourself will make places you beyond even my reach. But will you grant me this one small satisfaction, this brief moment of revenge?” Anaximander sighed. “I hope so, priest—for our lord Votantha, in his way, is a bountiful god.” The priest blinked non-committally. “It is not my place to seek personal vindication, Sire. My concern is that the steps and rituals be carried out to open the way successfully.”
Shaking off his reverie, the king looked at his guest with new interest. “Truly, Khumanos, you are changed. Aforetimes you struck me as squeamish and infatuated with the weak, pallid image, of our god the temple has promoted as a sop to peasants. Now I find you firm and unswerving in your purpose, a true administrator at last! You are not baulked by mere physical discomfort, be it yours or lesser men's. You owe much, I think, to Votantha’s harsh mastery, and to my own leadership in his service.”
"Yes, Sire. I also credit my present enlightened state to the late prophet Solon. He played a crucial part, by... showing me the folly of mortal hopes and passions, and the transience of life itself. This amulet is a keepsake of his guidance.” As Khumanos spoke he unlooped the broken, corroded dagger-hilt from around his neck and held it poised before him.
“Old Solon, yes,” the king mused. "Older than the hills themselves. And then abruptly his life ended—just at the time of your devout pilgrimage, as I recall. It is well that his arcane knowledge passed into able hands.”
"In truth, Sire, I was there when he died... of a tragic misstep in his treacherous cave. His exit from this world was his most valuable lesson to me, a proof how frail and cheap even the most honoured mortal life can be.”
"And with his wisdom he passed on to you the phantom sword of Onothimantos.” Anaximander shifted in his cushioned place against the litter's backrest. "I caution you, priest, do not think to try its edge against either my ethereal soul or my physical body.” As he spoke, he raised one hand to the neck of his robe, exposing the collar of a shirt of silver link mail worn beneath his fine silk. "If you do, you may learn a lesson regarding the cheapness of an even more exalted life... your own.”
"Nay, Sire. Of course not.” Khumanos’s tone was amazingly devoid of fear or apology at his ruler’s threat. "I would use this charm only against one whose spirit or passions stood to impede our lord Votantha’s will. Thus far Your Supremacy’s harsh, vengeful spirit is the motive force of this mission for our god’s greater glory—indeed, its source. As long as it remains so, Sire, yours is the last soul I would excise.”
“Then you are wise, priest—and fitted to go on serving me and our godly master.” Anaximander clapped his palms sharply to gain the attention of the horsemen outside the chariot. “Go now, and drive your caravans north to their target. I shall await the news of your success, and of your own glorious sacrifice.”
X
Before the Goddess
To Conan it seemed that all of Qjara must have shouldered into the Agora this bright morning to witness the temple duel between himself and Zaius. He knew there were exceptions—the guards atop the city’s outer walls, and the farmers who toiled at their shadoofs and screw pumps to flood the fields, lest their crops be scorched by the day’s harsh sun. Yet likely their thoughts roved here before the colonnades of Saditha's temple, to the fight between their city’s champion and his foreign challenger.
Most likely some of their money was here, too, nestled in the pouches of shifty odds-takers who hovered in conspicuous places in the crowd. Blandly, these bearded Shemites muttered and transacted as the sun climbed toward its zenith. Their complacent air suggested to Conan that the stakes were firmly fixed, and that no serious danger to the reigning champion was foreseen.
Here among the spectators presided both Qjara’s king and queen, seated beneath a brightly woven canopy stretched on poles before the palace gate. Between them, silent amid the officious crowd of their retainers, sat Princess Afriandra. Though lovelier than ever, fetchingly gowned and coiffed, to Conan she looked pale and hollow-eyed, as from lack of sleep.
Around the sides of the Agora, a little back from the staked-off site of the duel, scaffold-benches had been erected to afford a clearer view to the great mass of Qjarans who could not crowd up to the central area. These stair-stepped racks were precarious at best; since those in front would not sit or kneel, those behind were forced to stand upright on the narrow planks and poles, leaning on the shoulders of their fellow citizens to steady themselves. The best vantage of all appeared to be the top of the narrow, ivied wall of the Temple Quarter; perched there, amidst a ragged fringe of youths who had dared the climb, Conan spied Ezrel and the other three urchins who frequented his camp outside the wall, though less so since the nomad attack.
In spite of his recent notoriety, there were few watchers whom Conan could truly call his friends. He stood now at the core of these, forming a small, alert group at the edge of the staked arena: the tap keeper Anax, Babeth and some of her sister tavern-girls, and a handful of servants and entertainers from the caravan quarter.
Their numbers did not include the dancer Sharia. She, instead, occupied a featured place among the filmy-robed priestesses who now began to turn and circle in ritual steps before the high, noble façade of Saditha’s temple. As their dance quickened and elaborated, the murmur of the crowd faded in pious expectation. The hush allowed the faint throb of flute, drum, and cithern from the temple steps to be heard.
When it ended, the Agora lay hushed under the noon sun—ready for a ringing summons by Queen Regula in the full-bodied voice that served her well as high priestess of the One True Goddess.
"A challenge has been issued and a duelling assembly decreed! In Saditha's name, let the ritual begin!”
The stir that followed her words was not excitement or acclaim, as might have preceded a Kothian or Zingaran arena game. It was a clearing of throats, a readying for solemn business. In another moment Regula was speaking again.
“The recipient of this day’s challenge is great Saditha's champion, a ritual fighter of the Eighth Degree, Chief Temple Warrior and Defender of the Goddess! It is none other than the brave and well-beloved Zaius, native to our own sacred city of Qjara. Zaius, step forward!” Zaius, tall and rigid as ever, strode forth from among the royal favourites. under the canopy. The murmur that issued from the watchers at his appearance was hardly that of applause, which would have been out of place in such a holy ceremony. Rather it was a sigh of relief and welcome, a pure exhalation of love held by this gathering for their city’s vaunted saviour. Queen Regula embraced him first, as a mother would; she then presented him to the adoring onlookers, keeping one serene arm across his shoulders as she spoke again.
“Zaius, do you wish to make a special dedication of this day’s fight, and of the valiant blood that will be rendered up as an offering to Saditha in her immortal realm?”
Zaius scanned the crowd with evident calm; to the watching king and princess, he shot only a swift glance and a curt, unbending nod. The rest of the citizenry he regarded loftily, with no special glance at Conan where he stood along the rim of spectators directly opposite. In a voice hardened by preaching and command, he spoke.
"Indeed, I have a special dedication. This temple duel, among all those in our city’s history, will long be remembered among you. I mean to honour you, citizens and faithful, with the highest display of swordsmanly skill that is possible to attain.” The pause which followed this news was punctuated by excited glances and whispers. “To this end, I have practised diligently. I fasted and meditated under the strictest regimen, and spent many hours in deep and sincere prayer to the One True Goddess.” He gazed around the crowd with an air of calm virtue. “The sacrifice which I offer this day to Saditha, I dispatch to her in a noble name: that of Afriandra, princess and future queen of Qjara!”
Again, the murmur which greeted his words was not applause but worship—an irrepressible gust of admiration and excitement. Conan, listening for the faintest buzz of scandal in it all, failed to detect any. Certainly he himself had breathed no word of his personal accommodation with the princess; neither, presumably, had the other two parties involved in the triangle. So the spectators, Conan guessed, would miss the undercurrent of spite and jealousy in their temple champion’s boasts. They would hear only his pious, self-righteous pronouncements.
Conan's own reaction to Zaius’s speech was a more urgent and impatient craving for battle. For days, ever since Afriandra's plea to him, he had turned over in his mind the more bizarre possible outcomes of the duel—such as how much of a wound he might himself bear to acquit him honourably of the battle for the princess’s sake—or, on the other hand, how severely he could maim Zaius without killing him or permanently incapacitating him as this city’s stuffed hero.
Consulting the youth Ezrel, he had learned that the One True Goddess was not so bloodthirsty as to demand the death of one or both duellists. A severe wound, by tradition, was enough to terminate one of these ritual combats. For Afriandra’s sake and that of her dynasty, he knew he should leave certain vital parts of Zaius intact; this annoyingly limited his options. Most recently, his thoughts had turned toward the notion of a double wounding—the stab to Zaius more serious than his own, of course, yet neither wound overly humiliating. The two together should be sufficiently bloody to satisfy all the interested parties, mortal and immortal alike.
But in this line of thought, he was perhaps being the pretentious
one. Having seen Zaius fight, he knew it could swiftly come down to a choice of slaying or being slain. He, personally, inclined toward the former option—did he really, after all, have the courage to die for Afriandra’s royal whims? A part of him hoped not.
“How inspiring, how selfless!” Queen Regula was royally declaiming. "In Zaius we see the purity and nobility that come from a life of service to our Goddess. Citizens, offer up a prayer—a silent meditation for our temple champion and his lofty aspirations!”
When a moment of buzzing silence had passed, the queen resumed, "The challenge to Zaius was issued, for personal grievance, by one named..she glanced down to a small wax tablet she held in one hand "... named Conan, a commoner, not sworn to our Goddess and not of Qjara. Conan, step forward.”
Moving from the scatter of his acquaintances, passing between the brightly painted wooden stakes that marked the field of honour, he strode forward onto the open pavement of the Agora. A murmur came from the crowd, fainter and more dubious than Zaius had received— whether it was awe at his impressive physique, or disapproval of his scanty, shabby clothing, he could not tell. He knew not whether he would be asked to make a pious speech for the crowd—in any event, as the queen gestured for him to halt several paces from herself and Zaius, the temple champion raised a protest.
“His sword—” Zaius waved at the tarnished Ilbarsi knife dangling from the belt of Conan’s kirtle "—such a wretched object is unsuitable for this sacred duel! It is no sword, but a mere knife—and a foul, unclean thing into the bargain!” He turned back to one of the temple fighters ranked behind him. “By the grace of Saditha, make him a gift of an honourable weapon."
Handing over his knife, Conan took the gold-hilted piece the warrior offered him in return and tried its weight. “Be warned, Zaius, I swung more of a broadsword than this when I was still a babe.” He stripped off the scabbard and tossed it after the retreating donor. "Do not think for a moment it is any less likely to find your gizzard than my accustomed blade.”