Conan the Outcast Read online

  Since boyhood, the moon’s glow had been as sunlight to Tulbar; it was no accident that Ulla the Moon was patron goddess to his native clan of thieves and adventurers. Whether Tulbar foraged among country farmsteads or raided the castle keep, the moon blazoned and blessed all his undertakings. It had lit his way half around the world—and now, when things seemed at their darkest, it would signal his greatest triumph.

  His friend Hekla too would heed its call. Possibly the little sneak-thief was now awake like himself and waiting, in his place near the back of the tent. No chains bound them here, no bars or even walls; and they were not like the miserable Shartoumi slaves, to be cowed by the threats of a few strutting guards. Once there was light enough to move by, they would be gone.

  Tulbar could scarcely believe his good luck, his and Hekla’s, in having been taken captive by the Sheikh of Shartoum. Caravan raiding, to be sure, was no great crime in the southern desert; Tulbar’s offence had been to place himself in competition with Sheikh Fouaz by raiding a camel-train bound through territory the Shartoumi considered his own private hunting ground. Magnanimously, Tulbar and his confederate were spared, and merely taken captive with an eye to future use by the sheikh.

  Such a use wasn’t long in presenting itself, once a troop of soldiers from somewhere called Sark, escorting the eerie, dark priest Khumanos and a pair of acolytes, arrived at the sheik’s outpost on its salty inland sea. To Fouaz, the prospect of selling his own people into slavery came even more naturally than thievery—and so, while the sheikh set his many wives to stitching themselves new harem-clothes from the silks, beads, and golden cloth Khumanos unloaded in great brass-bound chests, a dozen score of his subjects were rounded up from onion and date orchards. Herded like cattle, they were marched off by their Sarkad guards to the hazy eastern hills.

  Tulbar and Hekla were thrown in as part of the bargain. At first the Hyrkanians cursed their ruthless captors and rebelled at carrying the supplies, digging tools, and tent panels the Sarkads burdened them with. Once they were in a position to steal horses or camels, they planned to escape into the open desert. But gradually, along the arduous route of the march, a rumour spread: the slaves were to be set to work digging precious metal and gems from mines high in the hills—presumably to enrich the coffers of Anaximander, king of the distant city-state of Sark.

  That news made the Hyrkanian pair heft their bundles and water jars with zest. What adventurers were ever better suited to exploit such an opportunity? They would find out the location of this treasure, load themselves down with it, and vanish—perhaps to return someday with their own crew of diggers or fighters and unearth the main hoard. The trek was difficult, with some of their companions—women, mainly, and old men—falling and dying along the way. But Tulbar and Hekla stuck zealously with it.

  In time as they marched they saw a change come over the land. The hills rose high and were no longer barren, but strangely fruitful. Yellow-silted streams, rich with water-weed and pond scum, carried moisture to long, lush valleys meandering among barren desert ridges. Grasses grew there, as well as swamp-thorn, shrubs, and stunted trees. No fish or birds inhabited the district, or at least none the travellers could see, but the meadows seemed alive with scuttling rodents, toads and tortoises, and large, noisy insects. Oft-times the slaves dined on things the soldiers killed with their bows; though the creatures were hard to name precisely as rabbit, marmot, or water rat, their meat was chewy and flavourful.

  As they marched, the aspect of the desert grew increasingly strange. Some of the vegetative forms seemed unusually lush and swollen—weeds whose leaves waxed pulpy and enormous, and shrubs with twigs thick and pliant as clutching fingers. There were fantastic varieties of cactus, and occasional full-sized trees with limbs knotted and twisted into burls as large and bulbous as human heads. Before some of these, Tulbar saw the priest Khumanos kneel low in obeisance.

  In all, with the plentiful water, the thick, tasteless vegetable marrows and fruits, and the peculiar wild game, travel was far easier in these valleys than in the open desert. The gorges gradually narrowed and the crags rose wilder, but still the converging streams watered the land.

  Hot mineral springs were the source of the bounty, it appeared. The ancient trail that was their route crossed the wellspring of one: a low, shallow cavern festooned with sulphur deposits, gaping open like a yellow-fanged mouth in the hillside. Its green-rimed lips enclosed a steaming pool that bubbled thick with brownish foam and with clumped, floating moss. From it, down a bed of yellow-crusted pebbles, drooled a hot stream sending off wispy, curling tendrils of steam. A rotten, sulphurous smell was thick in the air, and Tulbar noticed that the bloated vegetation seemed to wave and shimmer all around the pond, even without the faintest breath of wind.

  Yet the water proved drinkable, and kept them trudging toward the heights.

  In a steeper, more desolate region just under the looming grey crags, they came at last upon the mine workings. Vast tailing piles extending down the hill betold a long history of excavation—though the broken ores underfoot resembled no precious metal Tulbar had experience of. The shafts themselves were sealed by great oval stones, and further protected by priestly seals of beeswax and intricately-knotted string. After being ritually unsealed by the priests, these barriers required the efforts of every slave, toiling against long, knotted ropes, to displace.

  One of the great stones trundled out of control; it crushed two of the men stationed near it before grinding to a stop. The arch-priest Khumanos showed no more concern over this than he had over wayside casualties along the march, although one of the acolytes performed an all-too-familiar rite to speed the departing souls.

  The mine-shafts were three in number, spaced several hundred paces apart through the hill canyons. The tunnel mouths did not require much repair or clearing out, other than the removal of cobwebs by the bushel. The webs were populated by swarms of fat, pulpy-pale spiders that fought back with a painful sting. The mine props, though of untold age, were sound, and in the less brittle bedrock of the deeper shafts none had been deemed necessary; so there was no need to send workers to fell the last few twisted trees of the valley.

  Tulbar, when first entering one of the shafts, made a peculiar discovery. As he shuffled deeper into the mountain, the fading glare of daylight was slowly and gradually replaced in his eyes by a greenish glow native to the mine. It came from the rock itself—from the moss, someone said, although he soon found that the light shone brightest of all from the newly dug deposits of ore. It was an eerie sight—the greenly effulgent stones, almost shimmering and faintly warm to the touch in the depths of the cave, faded to nondescript dusty-pale rubble when hauled in baskets up to the outer air.

  This natural source of light spared the miners the stink and hazard of oil lamps. That first day the slaves were set promptly to work in the greenish glare, the men chipping and raking stone, the women hauling it in baskets to the surface. The ore seemed to lie in narrow, continuous veins, so that little digging of the surrounding rock was necessary to reach it. The luminous stuff broke apart readily; there were natural cracks and fissures in its mass, and even hollow pockets. These spaces sometimes harboured, to the diggers’ wonder, clusters of many-faceted, pyramid-pointed crystals; when the pockets were cut into, they sent beams of warm emerald radiance lancing across the dusty air of the mine-shaft.

  Presumably, given the trouble and expense this foreign King Anaximander was undertaking to obtain it, the metal to be refined from the ore would be of rare value. That, and the relative ease of the digging, raised the question in Tulbar's mind of why these mines had not been stripped centuries ago—why, for instance, the men of Shartoum did not march here and dig out their fill of the ore. As a partial answer to this, the Hyrkanian gathered that the metal would require some elaborate method of refining, such as a desert brigand like Fouaz would scarcely be capable of.

  Furthermore, the mines seemed to be some kind of royal monopoly of the kings and priests of Sark
, protected by intricate curses and threats of military reprisal—a store of wealth left in the ground, no doubt, for the dynasty's heirs. Religious ritual played a hazy part in it, too; at various times, for instance, Tulbar’s crew was sent to work in the three separate mine tunnels. Although the ores obtained from each were obviously identical, the priest Khumanos took pains—or rather dealt out pains— to ensure that they were never commingled. The rocks were heaped into pack-baskets stitched carefully shut with withes of different colours: black, red, or yellow. The least negligence in the packing process or any discovery of theft was sure to draw down swift and severe lashings from the Sarkad guards.

  The arch-priest Khumanos impressed Tulbar as a cold, remote leader. He commanded the two junior priests he brought with him curtly, in the terse, guttural Sarkad tongue. These acolytes, though somewhat aloof, displayed ordinary human traits and weaknesses—zeal and officiousness in the performance of their priestly duties, anger and even occasional sympathy toward the Shartoumi slaves. Khumanos, on the other hand, performed his blessings and invocations dispassionately, clearly intent on getting each prescribed detail of the ritual correct. Though he was the only one of the Sarkads who spoke the Shartoumi Bedouin dialect, he seldom spoke to the slaves, and never made a public address offering them reward, remonstrance or hope. His motives in leading this mining expedition were to Tulbar a matter of dark, uncertain speculation.

  Khumanos became the focus of more attention as illnesses began to plague the workers. They were vexed at first by sores, itching rashes, and small, troublesome wounds that refused to heal—unaccountable problems, since their work was survivable, their diet near-adequate, and water was plentiful enough for washing. Tulbar and Hekla were spared most of these ills, but on several occasions the Shartoumi slaves named reluctant representatives to beg the arch-priest for help.

  No aid was forthcoming, since there was little to offer. The explanation Khumanos gave was the same one he clung to later, when the more serious ills such as dropsy, palsy, and creeping ague began to disable the elder labourers and the women. Saying their afflictions were due to the venomous bite of cave spiders, he rebuked the slaves to clean their mine workings more fastidiously.

  Yet all their past hardships mattered little, Tulbar told himself; very soon this murky business would be behind them. A rakish triangle of moon glow now lit the eastern panel of the tent overhead; the light it cast was certainly sufficient to move quickly and silently between the slumbering bodies in the tent. Hekla, too, would be ready with the swag the two had accumulated by their skill at sneak-thievery. Gathering his still-supple limbs beneath him, Tulbar crept silently to his feet.

  He found the way clear across a dozen sleeping bodies to Hekla’s. There were no sounds in the tent except the rough, stertorous breathing of the sick and the dream-hounded. He saw little to fear; the guards had grown slack in their duties, and most of these toilers were so drugged with fatigue that not even a deliberate shaking would rouse them. Tulbar stepped high over recumbent forms and came to the space near Hekla’s mat.

  The little thief did not appear to have heard him; his mangy camel hide was pulled all the way up over his head. That was unlike Hekla— perhaps he was ill. Careful not to alarm his friend, Tulbar laid a hand on the sleeping form to rouse him. He did not like what he felt, so he picked up a corner of the blanket and peeked under it.

  The light...! Suddenly afraid, the Hyrkanian jerked away the blanket and let it fall aside.

  The gems, the crystals he had filched from the mine and given Hekla to conceal—they now cast their green rays in a blazing webwork across the sleeping mat. In the course of the night they must have burned through the sacks and pouches that held them—and, he saw, burned through more than that. There, at the centre of the blinding green constellation, Hekla’s small, slight body had been reduced to charred bone with blackened bits of ash adhering to it. The smell was charnel, the heat of the gems' rays palpable to Tulbar’s upraised, sweating palms.

  His gasps and the harsh emerald glare aroused others; they crept forward to gaze at the scorched skeleton, some moaning or crying out in terror. Moments later the guards arrived. They flogged the watching slaves into a cowering mass in the corner of the tent; then carefully they began to gather up the remains and the stolen, deadly gems.

  Tulbar was singled out as the thief’s friend and accomplice. He was taken before the arch-priest Khumanos, who confronted him without wrath.

  “You are restless among us,” the priest told the sullen thief. "You were never of the Shartoumi, and now you are without friends. The burden of duty our god Votantha lays on your shoulders is difficult to bear. I understand." From around his neck he took an amulet or relic of some kind—an ancient, corroded knife-hilt tied on a thong. "There is a service I can render, a charm that will ease the sorrow of what has befallen you.” Pointing the decrepit stub of a blade toward Tulbar, he moved closer.

  V

  Challenge by Moonlight

  Temple dancers pranced and leaped to chiming chords around a turquoise basin set before the alabaster statue of Saditha, the One True Goddess. Barefoot on blue-veined marble, the agile priestesses moved in a stately circle, chastely clad in flowing skirts and ribboned headdresses. Each one stepped, spun in place, kicked high and strode on as new measures unreeled from skirling flute and strummed cithern.

  The day’s heat was softened by the deep shadows of the temple’s pillared portico. At one end presided the statue, erect and graceful: a gowned warrior-woman with the butt of a spear grounded beside her shapely, sculptured foot, her face as austere as a war-helm. In the middle of the court, the dancers circled the basin before the intricately-carved wooden door that barred the inner temple chamber. At the other end of the portico stood a heavy table laid with fruit, cheese, and hard biscuits, free for those who had come to view the dance and do homage to the Goddess.

  It was near the table that Conan lingered, close against a velvet curtain stretched along the eastern row of pillars and somewhat behind the rest of the visitors. He stood within easy reach of a bowl of spiced citron, fresh fruit hard to find in the caravan quarter. Though Saditha's holy temple professed to welcome all, he was unsure how he might be greeted here, and reluctant to begin another brawl. Temple warriors were in attendance, as were high city officials and cultured Qjarans of a class he seldom glimpsed. They were intent on the dance—and so Conan was the only one who noticed when a hand was laid on his arm. Not a firm, authoritative touch, but a soft, insinuating one.

  "I see you have left behind your hero’s armour. today and worn decent clothing,” a female voice purred.

  “Yes, girl.” Conan turned discreetly. "And you have been keeping off the narcinthe... well, now, Crom!” Though he easily recognized the voice, he blinked in surprise at the unfamiliar aspect of the woman close behind him, standing screened between the edge of the curtain and a broad pillar. "So it is true, then! You are not Inara, but the princess Af... Afri—”

  "Afriandra,” the young woman graciously supplied. "And what brings you here, Conan the outlander? Have you decided to swear holy fealty to the One True Goddess?”

  The northerner was in no hurry to answer as he absorbed the vision of young womanhood so close to him. The face she turned up was healthily aglow, all but innocent now of make-up; far from her former veiled, black-clad style, she wore a loose cotton dress belted with dainty gold links and hemmed with gold trim at the shoulders and knees. Her hair was soft pale brown, pinned up with beaded clasps and further adorned with sprigs of blue flowerets. Her calves and forearms, shapely and slim, were circled halfway along their length with gold bracelets and the gold-threaded bindings of her sandals. Her bearing was easy, relaxed enough for princess or queen, and bold, as she rested her hand inside Conan’s arm through the curtain and waited for him to speak.

  "I am come to watch the first temple dance of one of the wenches from the inn,” he murmured at last, nodding with deft casualness toward the circling dancers. “
It is Sharia—known to you as well, I think.” He glanced around, but no one else in the audience seemed to see the princess where she stood screened by curtain and pillar, so taken were they by the light, graceful steps of the ritual dance.

  “I doubt I am as well-acquainted with her as you are.” Viewing the dancers from behind Conan’s shoulder, Afriandra smiled demurely. “Do not worry, she will be accepted as a novice... a lay priestess, I think the usual term is. Not of the highest rank, but secure in the bounty of Saditha.” The princess looked up at him. “In past visions I saw her dressed in priestly robes, and told her so.”

  “Ahem, good.” Conan decided to dare the question. “Priestesses of Saditha, then, are not celibate?”

  "No. Purity is not a requirement of the priesthood—rather, open fraternization is encouraged for the sake of gaining and holding male worshippers." Afriandra cocked her head to view the celebrants. "Sharia dances the ritual well enough, if only she will learn to stop grinding her hips. My mother will make sure of that with her swatting-stick, when she drills the dancers.”

  "Your mother, the queen?” Conan asked, looking back to her.

  "My mother is High Priestess of Saditha as well—she is just over there.” Afriandra nodded toward a pink-gowned, matronly cleric who stood with the musicians at one side of the dance. "It is a tradition in Qjara for the king to marry the highest officer of the church, who is always a woman.”

  Conan frowned, regarding the full-bodied, statuesque female warily. "You have a way of placing honest foreigners in deep jeopardy, girl—by conspiring with you, I’ve crossed not only a king but a head priestess too. Your adventurous farm girl Inara was a perilous disguise—”