Conan: Road of Kings (20 page)

Another night’s paddling took them past burned-out clearings where the stench of smoke still hung on the night air. “We won’t have to worry about Mordermi’s patrols any farther upstream,” Conan laughed harshly. “The Picts have raided this far south, and these Zingarans won’t risk running into any raiding parties that might have been slow to return without a fresh belt of scalps.”

Conan dug his paddle into the river with renewed energy. “From here on in,” he said, “we’re going to have to be ten times more careful.”

The next evening, just before they started northward again, Conan emerged from the forest with a short bow of dark wood and a quiver of flint-tipped arrows. He placed these carefully at hand in the canoe, then passed Santiddio a leather pouch of dried meat and some coarse cake made of acorn meal.

“I took pains to sink it, but Picts are devils when it comes to finding their dead. Let’s hope he didn’t have any friends close by,” Conan told him in a near whisper. “We need to make some distance now.”

There was a trading post situated along the Black River at the vague point where Zingara’s frontier was presumed to end and the edges of the Pictish Wilderness to begin. Since the Picts had never been known to recognize the boundaries that learned men drew on maps, the border was a tenuous point. The trading post was run by a half-breed named Inizio, and whether because of his Pictish blood or his usefulness as a trader, the Picts generally left him alone. Letters, when they had come, from Destandasi had reached them by stages that led back to here, and letters they had sent to their elusive sister had been directed toward Inizio’s post, whence presumably they eventually reached Destandasi.

Conan thought that Inizio’s trading post had not been burned during this most recent series of raids. They would take up the trail from there.

Inizio had taken on the peculiar dwarfish physique that seemed to result when Pictish blood mixed with the Hyborian races. Unlike most proprietors of such frontier waystations, his manner was taciturn, his attitude almost hostile. Santiddio wondered if the trader preferred to have dealings with the Picts, or whether he resented all intrusions upon his solitude here.

When Santiddio explained his mission, Inizio had only glared at them. Conan glowered back, and after a moment beneath that, Inizio shrugged his thick shoulders and admitted: “The letters came out of the forest, I sent them downstream; the letters came upriver, I sent them into the forest.”

“And who carried them in and out of the forest?” Santiddio asked patiently.

Inizio’s scowl darkened. “An owl.”

“An owl?”

“That’s right. A big damn owl.”

“You mean like a carrier pigeon?” Santiddio pressed him.

“Like that. Flies at night, beats the door with its wings. Letter tied to its leg.”

“And comes to carry letters back to its mistress. How does it know when to come?”

“I don’t want trouble. I don’t want trouble with nothing.”

“Then answer when you’re asked something,” Conan advised.

“Cimmerian Pict-Slayer,” Inizio grunted, “I don’t scare of you. I don’t scare of soldiers. I don’t scare of Picts. I don’t want no trouble.”

“Write a letter to your sister, Santiddio,” Conan suggested. “Tell her you’re here and why. Ask her to meet us here or send a guide. Inizio will make certain it gets to her, since we’ll wait here with him until we get her reply.”

At midnight there came the beat of wings upon the door of the trading post. Inizio unbarred the door, and a huge owl flew into the room. Conan, who could name almost any bird or animal that was to be found here, had never seen an owl such as this one. The black-feathered bird regarded them with a scowl not unlike Inizio’s, while the trader tied the message to its leg. Then, with an almost silent thrust of its great wings, the owl was out of the doorway and vanished into the night.

They never were able to learn how Inizio had summoned the owl.

Conan was thoughtfully honing the edge of his sword the following evening, when a wolf appeared in the dusk and loped purposefully toward Santiddio. Conan’s first thought was that the animal was a pet of Inizio, so calm was its self-assurance. The wolf turned its yellow eyes upon the Cimmerian, and Conan knew this beast had never been tamed. Behind them, he heard the trader slam and bar his door.

There was a thong tied about the wolf’s massive neck, and a letter was fastened to the thong.

Santiddio read it once to himself, then aloud for Conan’s sake: “My brother: I have taken a vow never to leave this sacred grove. If you must see me, this messenger will lead you to me. I must warn you that you will be trespassing upon a region where the old gods are more than memory. I advise you to return to the world where you belong. Destandasi.”

“What do we do?” Santiddio wondered, still puzzling over the message. “Do we follow my sister’s pet?”

“We follow,” Conan agreed. “And that wolf is no pet.”

They left the clearing, and in a moment the trading post and all evidences of man’s work had vanished behind a darkening wall of tall trees.

Another mile, and the darkness had so deepened that neither man could see the trail they followed—if indeed a trail existed beneath the black columns of the trees. Santiddio rested his hand lightly on the wolf’s hackles, trusting the beast to lead them to whatever awaited them. Conan gripped his swordhilt and listened uneasily to the sounds that followed them through the darkened forest. He knew that they need not fear Picts on this night journey, but that knowledge held no reassurance for him.

They were alone in the midst of a forest that had been ancient when Conan’s ancestors had squatted in caves and brooded upon the mystery of fire. The Pictish Wilderness was a trackless ocean of forest and mountains; no man of the white races had ever traversed it, even the savage Picts had never penetrated vast sections of the forestland. Time and distance became meaningless concepts—human and therefore meaningless—as they walked on and on between boles whose girth ten men could not encompass, upon a carpet of forest mold that swallowed the sound of their footsteps. But for the presence of their feral guide, they might have been two damned souls adrift in limbo.

“A region where the old gods are more than memory,” Destandasi had warned them. Truly as they walked through this primeval forest, Conan realized that these trees shared the antiquity of the very rocks beneath their roots. It was an awful sensation when a living presence exuded the frightful antiquity of the earth itself.

There was suddenly a distant glimmer of light through the forest ahead of them, and Conan had never greeted a dawn with deeper joy.

It was a small clearing, although after the claustrophobic passage between the gigantic columns of trees, the clearing seemed a living island of space and of light. A woman stood within the clearing, awaiting their coming. It was a moment before Conan looked beyond her.

Conan had pondered in the course of their journey as to what the remaining sibling of the Esanti triplets would look like. Aloof, Mordermi had described her, and sharing the features of sister and brother. Conan had envisioned a sort of skinny Sandokazi with the cold sneer of a maiden queen. He had not expected the Destandasi who greeted them here in this lost grove.

Strangely enough, she did make him think of both Sandokazi and Santiddio. Destandasi was tall and straight, neither thin nor buxom. Her face called to mind Sandokazi, with its dark complexion and glowing eyes whose dark pupils seemed larger than the normal. Again the angular chin and high-bridged nose, but her lips smiled bitterly where Sandokazi’s were roguish. Her shoulders were straight and almost mannish, her breasts small and high, her lips slender—as opposed to her sister’s generous display of curves. She might have been a sister of some years younger to compare their figures, but her face made her seem an equal span of years older then Sandokazi. Her hair was of lustrous black highlights, and she wore it gathered into one long fall that trailed down over one breast to her waist. Her gown was of some dark green material—a simple affair that was tied at her shoulders and fell straight to her bare calves, gathered at the waist by scarlet cord. She was barefoot despite the chill of an autumn night.

Conan thought of her as a dryad or a virginal wood sprite, and when he looked elsewhere in the clearing, he decided his first impression was a true one. There was a colossal elm—ancient beyond calculation—squatting upon one edge of the clearing. The bole could not have been encircled by ten tall men with arms outstretched and joined, and, as sometimes occurred with trees of this age, its trunk was hollow. A gap between two huge root buttresses made a doorway; crevices where the heartwood had rotted out of the scars of lost branches made windows. Like a dryad, Destandasi lived within a tree. There was a small spring near the center of the clearing. A small fire burned upon slabs of stone not far from the base of the hollow elm, and lamplight peered through the crevices and doorway.

Conan thought brother and sister embraced one another with more restraint than the circumstances allowed for. “Welcome to my home, brother,” Destandasi greeted him with equal formality.

“Destandasi, this is Conan. He’s been a tremendous friend to both Sandokazi and me—as you’ll soon learn.”

“Welcome, Conan,” she said, giving him her hand. “I hope you will neither of you regret your coming here.”

Under the circumstances, Conan wasn’t certain whether to kiss her hand or clasp it. He chose the latter, was glad he did, for she returned his grasp with a strength that belied the aloofness of her smile.

“Will you enter my home? I have set out food and drink.”

As formal as a hostess. Or a priestess.

And who but a priestess could endure the awful loneliness of this grove—no, not endure, rather cherish it.

Conan wondered where the worshippers might be on this night.

Eighteen

A Sending From Kordava

Santiddio talked while they ate. Talked to such length and feeling that Conan wondered how he remembered to take a mouthful of food.

The food was simple fare of breads and cakes of coarse-ground grains and nuts, baked upon her stone oven outside the tree, accompanied by a soup of different vegetables, along with fruits and roasted nuts. Conan recognized most of the ingredients as coming from various wild plants. It was all well prepared and quite filling, although Conan guessed that the absence of meat was deliberate. Recalling what little he knew of the mysteries of Jhebbal Sag, this came as no surprise.

The interior of the hollow elm was extremely cozy, and with its vertical dimensions, afforded far more interior space than Conan had expected. Destandasi’s possessions were few and simple, most of them evidently of her own making. A small loom took up some space, as did a table and cabinets of utensils and materials she used to make the things she needed. A few books made almost a discordant note. Shelves and niches were everywhere around the interior of the hollow bole. Steps cut into the trunk gave access to a bed laid out on a narrow shelf framed into the interior of the bole overhead from where they sat. Lamps of pine oil made a mellow light, and there was a stone slab by one knothole where small fires might be laid. Heavy curtains could shut off the doorway and windows.

Conan did not like to think about a woman living alone in the Pictish Wilderness with no more than a curtain to shut out an intruder. As he thought more about it, the Cimmerian decided that the priestess of Jhebbal Sag would not be in danger from any attacker—man or beast—here in the sacred grove. Conan was an experienced woodsman, yet the Cimmerian sensed that had the wolf not guided them to this grove he and Santiddio might have wandered forever beneath the inimical shadow of the forest.

Santiddio brought his narrative to a close with the account of their reaching Inizio’s trading post. Destandasi had listened almost without interruption throughout the tale, only her glowing eyes evincing any interest.

“What do you expect of me?” she asked bluntly, when it was evident that her brother was awaiting some response.

Santiddio waved his hand about the room in a vague gesture. He pointed toward her books.

“You’ve delved into the occult,” he accused her. “Before you chose to lose yourself in the deepest wilderness the gods ever created, you studied other paths than the one you at last followed.”

“This is not a place for flippancy,” Destandasi said quickly—and it was a warning, not a scolding.

“But you did study such matters,” Santiddio pursued. “You must have some inkling as to how we can defeat Callidios, how we can fight against the Final Guard.”

“I turned my back on all such matters when I became a priestess of Jhebbal Sag.” Destandasi reiterated.

“Well, you can’t just turn your back on your brother and sister also,” Santiddio protested. “We still live out there in the world of man and man’s cities.”

“I took a vow never to leave this grove.”

“Then stay here in your tree,” Santiddio said hotly. “I came to you because I need your advice.”

“My advice is for both of you to leave Kordava. There’s nothing there to hold you. Kordava holds only doom for the Esanti blood.”

“Kordava is the home of the Esantis. I, too, have certain vows and ties that bind me to Kordava. I’ve got to return to complete the work Mordermi has betrayed. All I’m asking for is some means to counter Callidios’ sorcery so that we can meet Mordermi on equal terms.”

Destandasi pressed her lips together in thought. “From what you’ve told me. I have no idea how Callidios can command the Final Guard. The wizards who created them might have the power to usurp control over them, but this Callidios can’t have powers of that degree. If he did, be certain that he’d never have needed to play along with Mordermi and the White Rose. I suspect that what he has told you is the truth—that he has no formal apprenticeship in the black arts such as any archimage must endure, but that on his own growing up in the temple of Set he succeeded in developing some specialized power or talent to a high degree. A sort of dabbler in all sorceries and an adept in one.”