He prepared his weapons for war with the same sincere devotion Tamara had showed in her prayers. Not because Conan worshipped war, but because he had been born to it. It occurred to him, with a degree of grim satisfaction, that as long as wars raged, and men like Khalar Zym sought to elevate themselves over others, he would never truly be alone. War might be a fell companion, but it was one he knew well.
And as long as I know it better than my enemies do, I shall not fall.
CHAPTER 28
MARIQUE STARTED, NOT
because she had not expected her father’s reaction, but because she had underestimated his fury. He banged open the bronze doors to her chamber and marched in as if he were already a god. Anger had flushed his face purple and sharpened his features into a fearsome mask.
“What have you done?”
She folded the light purple tunic and laid it on top of a saddlebag before she turned to face him. She kept her expression serene, hiding her racing heart. “I am doing as you ordered, Father.”
Her answer stopped him. Shock softened his features, but only for a moment. He pointed toward her chamber’s floor. “Akhoun has told me that the Beast That Lurks has returned. Neither Ukafa nor any of those who accompanied him have come back. Their submersible coracles are lost. They failed, you failed! The girl is gone. Your mother is gone.”
“Calm yourself, Father.”
“I cannot be calm, Marique!” His clawed hands rose toward the ceiling, his angry words filling her domed chamber. “Ever have I been patient with you. For your sake. For your mother’s sake. But now . . . now that we are so close, so very close, you have failed me.
Again!
How am I to feel calm, Marique? Where do I find a wellspring of peace?”
“Here, Father.” She beckoned him to a side table which had been topped in forgotten times with a mosaic map of the Acheronian empire. The coastline had changed. Rivers flowed in different courses, but the mountains remained the same and created suitable landmarks for navigation. A rounded crystalline bell had been fitted over the top of the table. Beneath it had been trapped a single insect.
Khalar Zym’s rage simmered. “An old map of an old world.”
“A world to be made again anew, Father. That’s what you want. And the monk, she is of old blood.” Marique smiled casually. “This is why we had trouble locating her. The monk Fassir changed her, hid her, so that as we looked for an ancient bloodline in a modern world, we could not find it. But when we look for her blood on a world in which it was born, we find it.”
“How?”
“Is it not obvious?” Marique pointed.
“A bug on the ocean, daughter, does not cheer me.”
“A
hornet
, Father. The ship she is on is the
Hornet
. Right now it lurks here, off the coast. The scrap of cloth still bears her essence and puts her on the ship, but not forever.” She glanced at the baggage on the bed. “I go with a handpicked squad to ride and to retrieve her.”
Khalar Zym shook his head. “From Khor Kalba to there will take four days, and that would be riding horses to death.”
“Yes, Father, but you forget. I am my mother’s daughter.” Marique laughed. “With the magick at my command, what was once a horse will no longer be, and riding them unto death and
beyond
will make all the difference.”
Khalar Zym threw his head back and laughed, anger drained from his voice. “Very clever, beloved daughter. Proceed. But mark me. Return without the monk, or fail to bring her here for the ritual on the night of the moon’s death, and all the sorcery in the world will not save you from my wrath.”
TAMARA STOOD ON
the wheel deck, dressed as a pirate should be, with her long, dark hair dancing in the dying day’s breeze. She watched Conan below as he bid his fellows farewell. She’d awakened in her bed, naked but wrapped tenderly in a blanket, and knew who had done her that kindness. Her ritual had provided her some peace and more clarity, though the latter only extended so far.
She hoped that by standing there, standing tall and looking every inch as a corsair should, she would give Conan heart. She wanted terribly to beg him not to go—not because she feared for her safety on the
Hornet
. Not only would her skills with a knife and bow save her from unwanted attention, but Artus had declared her the little sister he’d never had and had suggested, none too subtly, that the rest of the crew should do likewise.
Unspoken was the fact that to fail in that regard would be to face her wrath, or his wrath, or Conan’s wrath, in no particular order.
No, Tamara feared for Conan. Oddly enough it was not because she doubted his skill with arms or courage—she had never seen a man so fearsome in combat. Though she would never have wished them to oppose each other, she would have felt certain that even Master Fassir would fall to the Cimmerian.
It was instead his grim fatalism that caused her anxiety. All of the pirates appeared to go through dark moments, but Conan dwelt most comfortably there. Quick and clever and vital as he was, in those moments of quiet where she found peace, he retreated into melancholy. Tamara worried that there might come a time when he could not find his way back.
But she smiled bravely when he looked up at her. “May the gods speed you, Conan.”
He nodded once, solemnly, then shouldered a supply satchel and headed down the gangway to the abandoned stone pier by which they had dropped anchor. Without looking back, the broad-shouldered barbarian marched to shore and started up the nearest hillside.
Artus looked up at her. “Well, woman?”
“What, Captain Artus?”
“I like the sound of that, ‘
Captain
Artus.’ You poxed dogs remember that.” Artus plucked a rolled piece of canvas from his belt. “The Cimmerian forgot his map. I’d send a man, but they all need to be filling our water casks. I need someone fleet to catch him.”
Smiling, Tamara leaped to the main deck. “I’ll gladly . . .”
Artus extended the map to her, but did not yet let go. “We sail with the tide. Be back by dawn.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Artus smiled. “And if you have a chance, Tamara, tell him he’d best meet me in Hyrkania, or I will hunt him down.”
EVEN BEFORE HE
caught sight of her, Conan knew it was Tamara. She made more noise, deliberate noise, than an advancing company of freebooters. He paused on a sandy switchback, the breeze teasing long blades of sea grass, and smiled as she turned the corner. Beyond her, on the beach, Artus waved.
She held the map out to him. “Artus said you forgot this.”
Conan patted a folded piece of canvas at his belt. “You’ll have to take that back. He’s forgotten I made my own copy.”
Her face fell.
“But not yet, Tamara.”
She closed the distance between them and slipped her hand into his. “You’ll think me silly, but in all my time at the monastery, I never had to say good-bye.”
The Cimmerian resumed his hike up the hillside with her in tow. “People must have died.”
“Yes, but you knew that you would never see them in this life again. There was no wondering as to their fate. No anticipating a return, or hearing bad news.” She shook her head. “I would not have thought it so hard.”
“Hard are the times when you never have the chance to say good-bye.” They crested the hill and turned inland. There, just on the other side of the hill, lay another cove similar to the one where the
Hornet
anchored. At this one, however, the beach had risen to bury ruins, leaving visible only two massive statues. White sand covered them to the waist. They stared blindly at the ocean, and the fanglike stones that warded the cove and kept all ships at sea.
Tamara stopped. “Who were these people? Did they think they could conquer earth and sea?”
“Perhaps for a time they
did
conquer earth and sea.”
“And now all they know is ruin.” She squeezed his hand, then looked up into his face. “Do you think our lives are part of some grand plan?”
Conan shook his head. “I do not know. I do not care. I live, I slay, I love, I call no man master. If there is a purpose to life beyond that, it means nothing to me.”
Tamara’s gaze met his openly, with no guile or hidden intent. She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it. “I want nothing of you, Conan, save that, for this night, you do not have to pass it alone.”
Two dozen yards along the path and back up a bit, they found shelter in the ruins of what had once been a watchtower. A cleared floor and a small stack of firewood revealed that other travelers had used it before them. The Cimmerian kindled a fire and Tamara spread out a blanket. She shed her clothes, then freed him of his.
It was not the first time he had seen her naked, but that morning, aboard the
Hornet
, it had been entirely different. Now her long hair fell forward of her shoulders, but did not conceal her full breasts with their dark nipples. Her body tapered at the waist, then flared gently through her hips down into long, slender legs. Her face, though half shadowed, had a regal beauty that insisted she must be of nobility, and her slender hands, which caressed his chest, testified to her femininity.
Conan took her in his arms and kissed her, deeply and passionately, but she broke the kiss and forced him to lie down on the blanket. She knelt at his feet, then worked her way up his body, kissing each of his scars, solemnly and slowly, the intimacy of her caresses all the greater for their simple innocence.
She was not the first woman he had bedded since his days on the Black Coast. He could not remember all of them. He had sought their company to hold ghosts at bay. He’d thought to bury Bêlit’s memory and the pain in the anonymity of hot couplings. That effort had failed, for the hollowness of the acts resonated within the void in his heart, mocking with their shallowness the depth of what he had once had.
But Tamara . . . she saw him differently than the legions of whores and concubines. She continued kissing him, but when her lips met a scar on his left hip, he flinched.
She looked up. “Did I . . . ?”
Conan shook his head. That wound he’d taken aboard the
Argus
, as Bêlit and the
Tigress
’s crew had overwhelmed the smaller ship. She’d made him her consort and king. She had danced for him and then, later, kissed that same scar.
Tamara’s eyes glistened. “She must have been very special.”
Conan nodded.
Hot tears anointed the scar. “And so fortunate to have won your heart.”
The Cimmerian reached down and drew her up. His fingers slipped into her dark hair and he brought her mouth to his. He kissed her fiercely, as if it were the last kiss he might ever give, then crushed her to him.
Theirs was not the sloppy, clumsy lovemaking of children, nor the passionless joining of bodies performing for pay or duty. At first it was frenzied and urgent, because of the primal hunger that united them. Khalar Zym’s machinations may have thrown them together, but this union was of their choice, for them and them alone. And through it, and as it settled into a more sustained course, they confirmed their existences. It gave each of them a piece of the other, a slice of time shared, that guaranteed they would never be alone. Without regret, and yet with great joy, they came together again and again and, eventually, with hungers sated, lay entwined in the dying firelight.
He held her so she could not escape, but she made no attempt to do so. Instead she traced fingers over his myriad scars like a palm reader tracing the lines of his hands. She kissed the scars, though this time more quickly and playfully, wistfully, then snuggled in with her cheek pressed to his chest.
“I shall be thinking of you always on your journey, Conan.”
“Three days to Asgalun, and another to Khor Kalba.”
“Artus said that if you did not meet him in Hyrkania, he would hunt you down. Will you meet him?”
He pulled back, and looked her full in the face. “I will find him. I shall need to know that he brought you to safety. If, for some reason, he failed, then I shall have to know who to kill.”
She kissed his lower lip. “He will not fail, Conan. On the tide he shall bear me safely away.”
With another woman, these words would have been an invitation to ask her to come with him, but he did not take them as such. Tamara did not look at him quizzically, wondering why he refrained. She smiled and nestled deeper into his arms.
He kissed the top of her head. “There are hours before the tide, Tamara. I shall return you to the ship soon, and see you off. Then I am bound for Khor Kalba, to see you free forever.”
CHAPTER 29
TAMARA DISENTANGLED HERSELF
from the safe warmth of Conan’s arms and silently pulled on her clothes. She sat there for a bit, watching him, listening to him murmur in a dialect she did not understand. She chose to assume it was Cimmerian. It gave her great pleasure to imagine that their passion had left him untroubled enough that he could revisit a peaceful time.
Mitra, thank you for granting him peace.
She smiled and resisted the temptation to softly kiss his brow. She did not wish to waken him. She would have welcomed his pulling her back to him, and to sharing intimacy with him, but for both their sakes she had to be away and to the
Hornet
.
Though she was taking her leave of him, she did not feel she was abandoning him. What they had shared, this consummation of their relationship, made positive a thing fashioned by the desires of evil. Prior to the previous night, they were simply people Khalar Zym had drawn together by dint of his avarice. They had been running in parallel courses, but now they were a team. Though their paths would split apart—and part of her believed she would never see the Cimmerian again—their purpose and effort were united. Until Khalar Zym had her blood, his plan could not be fulfilled, which gave Conan ample time to put an end to Zym’s planning for all time.