Conan the Outcast Page 16

  "Save your bluster, little man,” Conan drawled, sitting easy with one leg cocked over the hump of his camel. "If I wanted to be inside that gate now, I would be; and your head would be a split ripe calabash for crows to sup from.” He rested his palm on the grimy hilt of the Ilbarsi knife at his waist. "But such a deed would be unseemly for a high emissary of Anaximander, Priest-King of Sark, and an envoy of the Sacred Temple of Votantha! Therefore I politely ask your permission to enter.”

  "What,” a voice rattled down from the wall, "you are saying you represent our king’s ally? You claim to come here on church business?”

  "If you do not believe me, then ask the guardians of yon idol.” Half-turning in his saddle, Conan gestured back toward a draped, wheeled conveyance that was being dragged by shuffling bearers from the patchy side of a date orchard across the river. The party came not by the main caravan road, but down a desolate valley that angled toward the trackless western wastes.

  “By the Goddess,” the voice atop the wall exclaimed, “'tis the holy procession bound here from the South. Notify the temple! And muster a cavalry squadron to guide them to the palace!”

  After some minutes of trumpet blasts, drum rolls and warrant officers' shouts, a troop of horsemen trotted forth from the caravan gate; Conan turned his camel to accompany them. By that time the idol-bearers had almost reached the river, so that riding forth to meet them was a matter of mere protocol. Dismounted, however, the soldiers were able to furnish some help manhandling the heavily burdened caissons through the wet sand of the river ford.

  Even so, grave Khumanos vetoed any suggestion that horses be roped to the juggernaut to haul it into the city, or that the Qjaran soldiers take over the labour. The pilgrims finished their journey as they had long endured it, matted and filthy, ragged and unshod. Their sore, chafed limbs strained against the massive wheels and worn, creaking levers to inch their burden forward.

  Soon the idol, followed closely by the cavalry, trundled through the caravan gate. Leading the way alongside Khumanos, Conan walked his camel past the chastened guards who had formerly barred his entry. As they came inside, priests and civil officers of middle rank were just beginning to arrive to greet them.

  At Khumanos’s insistence, the idol was not dragged further into town. It remained in the caravan yard, still shrouded, to be protected from defilement by squads of Qjaran and Sarkad guards. Its bearers, by the priest's decree, were to remain with it, lodged in the caravan quarter until certain essential details of the consecration ritual were complete.

  This decision was not disputed by the Qjaran officials—perhaps because of the weak, stricken, and even repulsive appearance of the pilgrims. In spite of Conan's efforts to ease their way, their state had not improved over the last few days of the trip. Rather the opposite; it almost seemed they might be carrying some plague into the town, with their sun-reddened, ulcerated skins, their patchily bald heads and bleeding, gap-toothed mouths.

  However, no public mention was made of such fears. Instead, in the welcoming speeches made before the crowd gathered at the gate, the guests’ sorry physical shape was hailed as a pious mortification of the flesh, a proof of the sufferers’ steadfast endurance and religious faith.

  Conan, as the party’s scout, was hardly praised as a hero or saint; yet at least he was acknowledged as alive. The petty officials obviously remembered his recent expulsion from their city; now they seemed obliged to accept him as one of the holy missionaries from Sark. Their tolerance was in large part shared by the citizens; in any case, in view of the northerner’s size and obvious fighting-fitness, it would have been hard for ordinary townsfolk to mutter curses or spit at his passing. In only one instance did a temple guard clutch his sword and seem ready to have at him; that young hothead was dutifully restrained by his fellows. So Conan was received back into Qjaran society— most particularly into the company of his former associates at the caravansary.

  For his part, Conan felt content to tread the streets of the town that had exiled him—to stare down passers-by, and enjoy comforts he formerly had denied himself, of food, lodging, and camel-tending within the city walls. In the long view, he had greater plans to call himself to the attention of the city elders; but for the moment he did not press them. He resolved to keep silent about the discoveries he had made in the desert, at least until his work under the Sarkad mission was complete and his pay from the priest Khumanos was safely in hand.

  Upon news of the delegation’s arrival, a reception was decreed by King Semiarchos for the following day. In keeping with Khumanos’s strictures, and because of the weakness of the wayfarers, it was ordained to be held in the caravan quarter rather than the palace. During the night, a lavish pavilion was set up in the broad, sandy yard—to accommodate the throngs, and doubtless to spare the royal family the necessity of entering the rustic caravan inns.

  By dawn’s light provisions were brought in by donkey carts; cookfires were lit and lambs ritually slaughtered for the feast. Sometime later, as the fragrance of roasting meat spread over the town, celebrants began arriving, along with priests and servants, musicians and temple dancers.

  Then, at mid-morning, King Semiarchos lashed his clattering golden chariot into the yard, flanked proudly on its broad platform by his queen and high priestess Regula and their sultry daughter Afriandra. The dappled four-horse team scuffed to a halt before the pavilion, and the riders alighted to greet Khumanos, with Conan watching over the heads of the throng.

  "Exalted Priest, your king told me to await your coming!” Semiarchos advanced on Khumanos as if to gather him up in an embrace— but on viewing the black priest’s slender, wasted form, and his air of solemn, watchful reserve, the husky ruler thought better of it; he merely clamped the southerner’s bony shoulder briefly in one hand. "As the days and weeks rolled by, we feared we would not be seeing you at all! We sent envoys, but we knew not what route you would be taking. They reported no sign of your party.”

  Khumanos bowed gravely. "Our way was a slow and difficult one,” he affirmed, disdaining to use any respectful form of address. "By temple law our holy fetish could pass through no city or abode of men, except the one where it is to be consecrated. Hence our route led through the remotest wastes.”

  "Ah—that explains it, I suppose.” Semiarchos gazed past Khumanos to his band, who sat or reclined around the central fire-circle. "Your followers have paid a dear price in hardship, by the look of them. I can see it by their toil-worn limbs and raw, sun-blistered skin—” "Yes, 'tis so,” Khumanos agreed again. "Many were the days they spent wandering in the desert, scorched and half-blind. Sandstorms scourged them by day and thirst near-strangled them at night. Shartoumi peasants and Sarkad warriors, these were at the start, and not all godly folk. But on this march they learned to toil together without thought of self, and along the way every one of them, every survivor, has pledged eternal service to great Votantha—”

  "It is a miracle,” Queen Regula exclaimed. "What courage, what sacrifice... and what a test of faith! Qjarans, we can learn much from this splendid example: the power of devotion, and how frail mortals can triumph over well-nigh impossible odds!” The matriarch seized Khumanos's hand; clasping it warmly in hers, she pressed a fervent kiss against its parched knuckles. "The holy union that is to commence, the wedding of our two cities’ gods and temples, will infuse great strength into our spirits, I can see that. Welcome, Khumanos, and welcome to your followers and your noble god!”

  The queen’s gesture encompassed the still-horizontal idol, whose grubby canvas windings had lately been hidden under a comelier shroud of tasselled linen. "I, Regula, as Queen of Qjara and High Priestess of the One True Goddess, proclaim our hearts, our temple, and our city at your command!”

  While these preliminaries were under way, Conan moved through the throng to catch a glimpse of Afriandra. Amid the festive disarray he pressed close and was rewarded; there waited the princess, just behind her royal parents.

  She was clad in a dec
idedly daring saffron gown that left bare one brown shoulder and one entire thigh. Sandals with thickly-sculptured soles and a high-piled hairdo made heir even harder to ignore. Her features and general bearing looked healthy, if a bit wan and nervous. She seemed to be regarding the priest Khumanos closely—though he, while exchanging pieties with the king and queen, did not visibly acknowledge her presence. Suddenly bored, she scanned the crowd; at last her eyes found the Cimmerian where he towered over the watching citizens.

  In a trice she had abandoned her family. Wending her way through the unready temple warriors and startled onlookers, she passed into the shade of the pavilion. "Why, Conan!” she cried, affecting a courtesan's languid, breathy voice. "The rumours are true, then—this strange, lumpy foreign god has brought you back to us! He cannot be all bad, I suppose."

  Coming before him she paused, striking an insolent posture that surely made more hearts than his thump out of control. Then wantonly she threw her arms about his neck, straining her lithe body upward to plant a full, lingering kiss on his lips.

  Conan, with arms suddenly burdened and brain reeling with the scent of jasmine perfume, nevertheless remained dimly aware of his surroundings. The nearby crowd, doubtless awed by Afriandra’s aristocratic beauty—as against his own rustic, shirtless splendour—had drawn back sharply from the spectacle of their embrace. Meanwhile, the temple guards posted near the king were visibly restless, showing signs of marching after their royal ward.

  Accordingly, with a few hard kisses, Conan fought the girl’s painted mouth into momentary submission. He swung sharply away, drawing her with him into the crowd under a protecting arm. “Afriandra, child,” he grunted, slowly regaining his breath. “'Tis good to be back to visit you, if not this camel-trough you call a town! Come, let us go and see the festival.”

  He led her off into new reaches of crowd that had not yet had time to be scandalized, and the threat of pursuit diminished. To divert attention from themselves, they found an attraction that already held scores of Qjarans ’ rapt—a temple dance involving a half-dozen priestesses, conducted informally and in a folkish style.

  Conan was amused to see that the lead dancer was Sharia; but of the steps that held the watchers so enthralled he saw little, because of the way Afriandra clung to him, whispering questions and jests into his ear and demanding frequent kisses.

  In time she begged that he buy her a salted dough-ring, from a stick of them a hawker was vending. The irony of this was something he decided not to comment on, even as he dispensed two of the few remaining coins from his dwindling stock. Thirst from the salted breads led them into the familiar inn, where they took seats at the same table where they had first met. This time, however, they shared a single narrow bench in the corner. Afriandra crowded Conan, caressing him both above and beneath the table.

  “Strange to recall,” he told her, "that when I met you I knew not who you were, or even how pretty you really look.”

  "Yes, it was so long ago!” She shook her head, leaning it against his shoulder at risk of disarranging her hair. "Zaius was alive then. He sought me here.”

  "Yes,” Conan reminisced. "He almost ran afoul of my blade that first night. Do you miss him?"

  "That is hard to say—Zaius cared for me deeply, in his way.” She clung to Conan's burly bicep. "With him, there was so little for me— but without him there seems to be nothing at all.”

  "Your parents haven't yet found you another husband and heir to the throne, then?”

  "No,” she sighed. "They are so wrapped up in this mission from King Anaximander... for a time I feared they would try to wed me to him, with his horrible oily beard! But there has been no more talk of it, thank the Goddess! They ignore me... almost as if they wanted to punish me. I think my mother secretly blames me for Zaius’s death. Although she put a good face on it, it pained her." Afriandra shook her head, disconsolate. “And perhaps she is right.” “There now, child,” Conan said, comforting her with a brotherly hug, “it would not do to shed overmany tears for a suicide. Doubtless when one near to you dies, especially by his own hand, there is some feeling of guilt, but... ho there, tap-keeper!” Conan’s shout was directed at Anax, who had finally emerged from the cellar. "Bring us a flagon of good ale! But if you have not sent to far-off Belverus for it—why, then the tepid camel piss you call arrak hereabouts will do!” 1

  “And a tot of narcinthe for me, Anax,” the princess added. Her familiar tone made the innkeeper pause and squint at her in surprise before he turned to comply.

  “And what of the holy mission... this joining of the churches of Qjara and Sark?” Conan asked. “Are you reconciled to it now?”

  “No. To be sure, I like it even less—not that my parents will heed my views.” She exhaled impatiently, her fragrant breath wafting against his shoulder. “In truth, Conan, after what you told me of the autocratic ways of our neighbouring priest-kings, I am surprised that you make yourself a party to this expedition.”

  Conan waited until Anax had deposited their drinks before them. “And tell me, girl, would any less have served to get me back into this city? Or to your side?” He sipped deeply from his beaker of arrak.

  "True—on that account I am happy.” She stroked his arm. “But even so, I like not the look of it... these wretched toilers, cruelly burdened and driven here by armed guards, hailed by my mother as harbingers of our city’s future—it is a disgrace.”

  “In sooth it is,” Conan agreed. "I would have helped them win freedom and slay their taskmaster, if they showed any desire of it.” He shook his head grimly. "I half-suspect that Khumanos brought them here by such remote, desolate ways only to keep them from deserting him at the first chance. But they would never do it now; they are meek as kittens."

  “The poor wretches... from what I saw of them, they are weak and ill, expended in an unworthy task.”

  " 'Tis true.” Conan nodded agreement over his arrak. “After galloping all ways across the desert to draw water and steal fruit for them, I can attest to it. What ails them is rooted deep in their miserable bodies and souls... if souls they yet have! Certainly they lack the will to fight.”

  Afriandra tilted her cup and drank in commiseration. “And the proposed wedding, set between the goddess Saditha and this Sarkad deity, whatever he is... it has taken the place in my mother’s heart of my own nuptials. But to me it smacks of heresy to Saditha’s faith. I like it little, and there are others in Qjara who feel the same.”

  “Aye, well enough—” Conan lowered his voice. “But be careful about spreading mutiny among your citizens, in case you are found out.” He regarded her evenly as she sipped her demitasse. “You as a cherished princess might not suffer, but your followers could lose their heads if they make their move at the wrong time.”

  “Ah, well, there is little chance of opposing it,” Afriandra said. "To back out now would be an affront that might lead to war with Anaximander. I would not want that, for he seems a ruthless sort of adversary." Conan watched her finish her narcinthe. “Come,” she said, “my parents will be worrying about me—I hope they are, anyway, for there is ample cause! Let us return to the royal party.”

  Less prone to cling to him now, she nevertheless followed obediently in his encircling arm. The inn had filled with people as the morning grew hotter; yet the caravan yard outside seemed more crowded too, and more festive, full of musicians, dancers and mountebanks entertaining those who could not fit at the centre of things.

  “You seemed dazed,” Conan said to the princess as they waited for a troupe of acrobats to finish using the main path. “Are you feeling the effects of the narcinthe yet, seeing the future of these revellers?”

  “Not exactly... it is different this time. The people and things are mere shadows, uncertain, hazy—sometimes I feel as if I were walking out in the open desert.”

  “And I am not in some scandalous state of undress to your eyes...?” She shook her head. “A pity,” he said, though he felt relieved. His own modesty aside, i
f Afriandra was seeing fewer visions, there was less chance of some stray phantom upsetting her.

  At length, the princess led Conan up to a cordon of temple warriors. There she took leave of him, not wishing to provoke her royal parents. Conan watched her safely into their presence and then proceeded on business of his own.

  On his return sometime later, Conan sought out his priestly employer in the crowd and addressed him. “What of my pay, Khumanos? The way things are going here, I had better have it in hand as soon as possible.” To the priest's blank stare he added, “You told me that once the idol was carried to Qjara, the jewels would be mine. Well, that time is here.” Conan glanced over his shoulder to where Khumanos’s followers rested in the sun outside the pavilion. "I saw your paymaster Astrak yonder some minutes ago—though he does not look well of late, with the pox on his face and arms—”

  “It is not time for your payment yet.” Coolly, Khumanos returned Conan’s indignant stare. "For, did you not know... the holy idol of Votantha is to be assembled from three equal parts, of which only the first is here in Qjara. The labour is not fulfilled.”

  "What, you mean I have to go back and fetch two more?” Angrily, yet inconspicuously, Conan knotted a fist in the fabric of the priestly robe. "Why, priest, that is robbery!”

  "The other sections of the idol are already in transit here.” Khumanos sounded unperturbed, merely fingering the talisman on his breast. “They should arrive within days. But it is best that we go forth to meet them and escort them to the city gate. Otherwise they may never find their way here, and the terms of our bargain will never be met.”