Djavul cursed with the power of Hell in his words. On the witch’s bed the dark form of the unanimated simulacrum tossed from the force of those curses. Then the wounded demon said, “My hand!”
Djuvula seemed to relax somewhat. “Brother mine, why fret over such a thing? Another will grow to replace it-“
“Fool woman! It is not the hand, but the way in which it was lost! I am bound to Sovartus, a Mage of the Black Square-“
Djuvula sucked in a quick breath, startled.
“So, you know of this one,” Djavul said, staring at his sister.
“Aye. A man of no small power, he.”
“As I am in his thrall, I am well aware of that, flesh of my damned father. And I have failed in my attempt to do his bidding. That which I sought was guarded by a man of supernatural abilities. Instead of my taking his charge, he took my hand!”
“What would you have me do, brother-mine?”
“I must return to report my … difficulty to Sovartus. He will not be pleased. It would behoove me to be able to indicate I have some assistance forthcoming, perhaps even another plan for obtaining that which he seeks.”
“We are blood-tied,” Djuvula said, “and naturally I will aid you as I can.”
“Good. Sovartus wishes to collect a girl-child known as Eldia-she is one of the Four, as you will know when you behold her. He already has the other Three. This one travels in the company of one of the White Magicians, possibly of the White Square, though I could not be certain. And there is a large man of origin unknown to me with them. ‘Twas he who cost me this.” Djavul waved the handless stump. Already the wound had sealed itself into a smooth black glasslike stub.
Djuvula nodded, but the implications of what her demon brother had just spoken were not lost upon her. If Sovartus managed to hold sway over all of the Four children imbued with the power of the Four Ways, he would be the paramount force in magic upon Earth. If she could somehow strike a bargain with Sovartus for delivery of the remaining portion of his magical spell-this girl, Eldia-she could bask in some of his thus-earned power. And the man who separated Djavul from his hand, well, he sounded very much like a candidate for a spell of her own. She looked at the somnambulant form of her simulacrum, her Prince of the Lance.
She considered these things in a few heartbeats and then smiled at Djavul. “I will help you capture this child,” she said. “Tell me, where did you leave her?”
Loganaro crouched under the cover of a fallen awning and watched the muscular barbarian run down the nearly empty street. The agent had arrived in the vicinity just in time to see the finish of Vitarius’s performance. More than ever, Loganaro was convinced that Conan was the man for animating Djuvula’s dream-lover. Certainly, this barbarian from far Cimmeria would be worth admittance to the witch’s bed, if Senator Lemparius held him. Capturing him might be less than easily accomplished, however. It could be an expensive undertaking, Loganaro thought, and some of the coin needed would certainly find its way to his pouch.
The barbarian was too fast for him to follow, especially without cover to shield him from a casual backward glance, so Loganaro decided to append himself to the old magician instead. He felt certain that Conan would return to the white-haired one before long.
The sound of Conan’s boots was loud upon the rough cobblestones of the street. It was growing darker as evening stole upon the scene, casting her nightly net. Conan’s sharp blue eyes sent his penetrating gaze down each alley he passed, covering such passages from top to bottom with a single glance. Eldia was not to be seen.
As he ran past yet another of the building-bounded paths filled with the detritus of city life, Conan blinked and skidded to a halt. He raked the alley with a second look. Nothing moved in that dark rectangle; of that he was certain. Here stood a mound of trash-rags, scraps of animal skins, broken pottery-there, a stack of firewood. He beheld an alley like a dozen others he had passed in his run, and yet something within struck him as different. Some small thing intruded upon his senses, untouchable and yet somehow wrong.
There! A tiny flash of whiteness against the dark backdrop of the woodpile! Instantly, Conan knew it for the eye of a man, reflecting the now-risen moon’s soft glow. He drew his sword and moved into the alley, the point of the heavy blade held aimed at the darkness-hidden bearer of the eyes he had seen.
As the barbarian’s own sharp vision adjusted to the greater darkness of the alley, he made out a form squatting next to a pile of split kindling. The form arose and there shone the glint of moonlight upon steel as a short blade came up to point at Conan.
“Wait!” came a girlish voice. Eldia. “It is Conan, a friend. “
The form grew yet clearer in Conan’s sight: a woman, her body nearly covering that of Eldia, standing behind her. The woman held her knife-a wavy-bladed dagger-aimed at the approaching man.
“Eldia, come forth into the light,” Conan called.
“No,” a woman’s voice replied. This voice had the sound of honey upon steel, smooth and yet backed by hardness.
Conan stood motionless for a moment, then decided there was no danger here for him. He sheathed his blade and held his hands out to show their emptiness.
The woman took a step forward and the pale moonlight caressed her gently. She was perhaps eighteen, Conan judged, with jet-black hair that hung unbound to her waist. Her form was covered by a silken shirt and thin leather breeches, and upon her feet she wore thonged sandals of a fine cut. The body covered by these items was of a cut much finer than the sandals. The woman was lush of hip and leg, and beneath the thin blue silk of her shirt her breasts were full and heavy. There was something about her face, which was in itself flawlessly detailed, that seemed familiar to Conan. He knew he would hardly forget such a lovely woman had he seen her before, yet he was certain he knew that face … .
Eldia moved into view, and Conan knew where he had seen the raven-haired beauty before: she was Eldia grown up into full womanhood. The woman was too young to be Eldia’s mother, so she must be-
“You are her sister,” Conan said, voicing his thought as it came to him.
“Aye,” the woman said. “And come to reclaim her from the villains who took her from our home.”
Conan shrugged, his massive shoulders rising easily as he found it within himself to grin at the woman. “I took no one anywhere,” he said. “And it seems to me Eldia travels with Vitarius of her own accord.”
The woman glanced toward the mouth of the alley, then back at Conan. She raised the dagger a bit higher, clutching it tightly. Conan could see her knuckles whiten upon the haft of the weapon. “She was dragged screaming into the night,” the woman said. “My father was slain, as was my mother. Before my mother died, she told me that Eldia was special, that she had brothers and a sister-my half-brothers and sister-of whom she had never told us. That whatever I did, I must find Eldia and hide her from those evil ones who desire her for their own wicked purposes.”
Conan glanced at Eldia, who seemed content to allow her sister to speak. “And is Vitarius one of those evil ones?”
Eldia shook her head. “N-no, but-“
“It is all right, Eldia,” her sister said. “You do not have to explain anything to this-this-barbarian.”
“Someone is going to have to explain it,” Conan said evenly. “I am tired of being made the fool in whatever games Vitarius and you two have mounted. We shall go back to this ‘conjurer’ and hear this tale outlined in its fullness.”
“No,” the woman said. “We are going home!”
“After I am satisfied with explanations of why I was attacked by a demon in a public square,” Conan said, the anger rising in his voice.
“Now,” Eldia’s sister said, pushing the knife toward Conan. “Now, or I’ll spit you and leave your carcass for the rats.”
Without another sound Conan leaped at the woman. He caught her wrist as she tried to impale his throat upon her blade; he twisted the woman’s arm hard, and she exclaimed and dropped the dagger.
Suddenly, the alley seemed to come to life. Small bodies slithered over the trash and woodpile; the scratchings of hundreds of tiny feet could be heard along with the gentle rasp of small forms moving everywhere. Conan saw that the very walls and ground seemed to undulate in small waves.
“Crom!” He released the woman and moved back a pace, drawing his sword in a fluid and well-practiced move. But there was no single enemy to be faced here. Something touched Conan’s boot, and he turned his fiery blue eyes downward to stare at the thing.
It was a salamander. The creature was no longer than Conan’s middle finger, but it mounted his footgear with a kind of determination Conan found hard to credit. Such lizardlike things usually ran at the sight of men, but to judge from the sound, there must be hundreds of the things here in this alley. How had they gotten here? Why were they advancing upon him’?
“Hold!” Eldia said. The rustle of tiny feet stopped instantly. The single salamander upon Conan’s boot froze as if transmuted into stone.
Eldia looked at her sister. “He saved my life on two occasions,” she said. “And Vitarius means only to help me. We must allow him to have his explanation.” She nodded toward Conan. “And you must hear what Vitarius has to say, sister, before we can go home. I was frightened by the demon earlier, otherwise I would have had you stay then.”
Eldia looked at the salamander on Conan’s boot. “Away,” she said.
Obediently, the creature turned and wiggled away. Around them the sounds of other scurryings touched the night air; in a moment all was quiet again.
Conan stared at Eldia.
“Shall we go?” she said.
Conan and Eldia’s sister looked at each other, and nodded. But Conan was not pleased with any of this. Not at all.
“Fool!” Sovartus screamed. “To be thwarted by an ordinary man!”
Djavul stood within the bounds of the black magician’s pentagram, drawn up to his fullest height. “Nay, human mage, this was no ordinary man. In a thousand years I have faced hundreds of men in mortal combat. Their bones lie moldering in graves the world over. Never have I lost a death fight to any man. This man was more than most; more, he had magical help, else I would have triumphed over him despite his strength and skill. You face one of the White. Sovartus. “
“Vitarius!” Sovartus’s voice was filled with anger.
“I know not his name, but he focused the power of Fire upon me, and the heat was not that which I could withstand.”
“Damn you!”
“You are too late, magician. But all is not lost. I am brother to a human witch who has no small influence in the city that hides your quarry. You will have your child; I will have the man who did this.” Djavul raised his right arm and stared at the stump where his hand had been.
In the far depths of Castle Slott something screamed in hideous anticipation.
The patrons in the Milk of Wolves Inn gave the four people seated at the table nearest the fireplace a wide berth. Conan suspected that some, if not all, of the people pretending to look everywhere else save at him and his companions had been present at the conjuring exhibition earlier. The Cimmerian did not blame them for being nervous; he himself felt no joy in the presence of those steeped in magic. The lethal flame in Conan’s eyes burned low, but burn it did, as he listened to Vitarius’s tale.
“… Eldia was one of four children. Her mother, your mother, as well”-Vitarius pointed with his nose at the young woman seated across from Conan-“was ensorcelled by a powerful magician during her conception by him.”
“You are saying I have a father other than the one I have known all my life?” Eldia’s gaze was sharp and much harder than that usually seen in a child of her age.
“Aye. At your birth your mother was allowed to retain only one of her brood. Your father was Hogistum of the Gray Square, and he took the others and had them scattered across the world.”
“Why?” Conan. Eldia, and the woman-Kinna, she called herself-all spoke at the same instant.
Vitarius sighed and shook his head. “It cannot be understood so easily. Hogistum uncovered some ancient sorcery, weathered runes that came from a more primal time. He managed to decipher these writings and so learned how to link each of the Four Elements to a living soul. He was not an evil man, Hogistum, but he was curious. Of the Gray, he could work magic for black purposes or white, and usually, he tended toward the White. The Spell of Linkage was, in itself, neither good nor evil; it depended upon how it was used, once invoked. Hogistum had no intention of using it; he wished only to see if he could accomplish it. At least this was what he claimed.”
“How do you know this?” Kinna’s voice was no less silken than Conan had noted before.
The old man hesitated for a moment, pausing to wet his lips with the wine cup in front of him on the rough table. “Hogistum had two students,” he began. “One was his natural son, the other a pupil who had demonstrated magical aptitude but was of a low caste.” Vitarius looked at each of the three faces in turn. “I was the low-caste pupil.”
Conan nodded. No surprise there. Vitarius’s attack upon the demon was explained, then.
Vitarius continued. “Since his own wife had died, Hogistum chose a young woman of his household, daughter of an old retainer, for his new bride. Upon this girl Hogistum worked his spell even as they lay together on the nuptial bed.”
“How … vile!” Kinna said.
“I can see how you would think it so,” Vitarius said. “In time, the birthing of four children occurred. Each of these babes was filled with power.”
“I find this all hard to believe,” Kinna said.
The old magician blinked like some ancient owl at the young woman. “Do you? In your life with your sister, have you not noticed certain … abilities in her? Can anyone be cold in her presence? Is not her bed always warm, even on the coldest winter nights? And, of course, there are the salamanders.”
The fire in Conan’s eyes leaped a bit at this last statement. Aye, the girl had some truck with such creatures. Conan looked at Kinna, and saw that she nodded in spite of her obvious reluctance to believe what she was hearing.