“Juma, I am here! Do not call out!” He knew that his friend may have been stalking foes in the dark, a tactic for which his black skin suited him well. But his own outcry brought such a rush of attackers that he vowed not to repeat it. A blade came slashing down at neck-level, too sudden to duck and almost too swift to parry; then a muffled shape struck him, bearing his weapon aside and down. Finally something whipped over his head from behind, scraping his nose and chin painfully—a wire loop. Luckily it encircled one wrist as well as his neck; even so it drew cruelly tight at once.
By Crom, at least these phantoms were known enemies! Stabbing and hacking one assailant back out of his way, he turned the point of his yataghan up to saw at the garrote, risking cuts to his own face and his imprisoned arm. His sword failed to sever the wire; however, a desperate backward thrust pierced its owner’s hand or face, eliciting a yelping cry. The noose slipped free, but at once more bodies struck Conan’s, driving him back against a hard stone wall and bearing down on his limbs with their ruthless weight.
He felt a ragged groan escaping his throat as his unsteady leg twisted beneath him and gave way. He toppled, feeling a shock to his head that turned blackness into blossomings of vivid color.
And yet paralytic, pain-burdened consciousness clung to him, sharpened by the prick of a cold, razor-edged knife at his throat. Someone had unmasked a lamp; now its yellow beams wavered demonically on a constellation of gloating faces that hovered close before his eyes. Most were twisted in spiteful, cynical leers, the scarred, leathern visages of jungle and gutter killers—garroters and street toughs.
He felt the steel bite his neck more deeply and lovingly. Then he saw one impassive face, the largest of them all, rolling ponderously in denial like a vast planet. It was—dimly, impossibly—a countenance he recognized: that of Sool, the hulking torturer oft seen at Fort Sikander. From beneath the vast face, a round, massive hand drifted forward to ease the pressure of the blade against Conan’s neck.
As he watched helpless, the thick, frowning lips parted to form sounds—two deep, resonant words only: “Phang Loon.”
Reality was a single throbbing note, pulsing faintly at first, then expanding rapidly to a vast, unimaginable volume. Abruptly it burst and flew apart into flocks of scattering echoes. Some of the shards tangibly grazed Conan’s head, flurrying past him and fluttering around his ears like soft-bristled bats.
Groaning, enmired in silky, yielding cushions, Conan raised his arms to ward off the disturbance. Groggily he blinked open his sleep-encrusted eyes. Before him in an arching, lacquered frame hung a brazen gong, man-high and still shimmering with concentric waves of diminishing sound. Before it stood the stocky torturer Sool, just setting down a pair of velvet-covered hammers. He turned. Acknowledging Conan’s stare with a tight, contemptuous smile, he folded his arms and waited in silent attendance beside the reverberating gong.
Around them arched windowless walls of polished stone adorned with silken hangings and fragile, lacy carvings of ivory and teak. Lacquered tables about the room bore oil lamps, their flames mercifully screened to cast a shadowy light.
“Where… and what… is this place?” Straining to sit upright, Conan succeeded only in rolling onto his side amid the spongy cushions. His head felt as woozy as his body did feeble. “Curse you, where am I? And where is Juma?”
A steady tug of pain warned of dangerous weakness in his leg; yet the feeling was faint somehow, unnaturally mild. Leaning against a silken bolster, he raised tingling fingertips to his neck. Dry encrustations surrounded a long slit in the skin, yet there was no sensation. “You have drugged me,” he said thickly, restraining his voice lest the cut burst open to gush forth his lifeblood.
“Do not worry; the lotus is wearing off.” The firm, Venji-accented voice came from one who had entered the room unseen—a swaggering officer, commandingly large and robust for a yellow-skinned southerner. He affected a Turanian-style military tunic and turban, both cut of an unlikely bright blue fabric made more costly with gold thread and ornament. His smile flashed thin and white between his sleek mustache and goatee.
“You will forgive my lackey Sool for not announcing me by name, Sergeant.” He waved a hand at the torturer, whose thick middle was doubled over in a deep bow to his master. “I am Phang Loon, Lord of Venjipur.”
Conan hauled himself up straighter where he sat, aware of the indignity and vulnerability of wallowing among cushions. “You are no Venji,” he grated, eyeing the warlord guardedly.
“By ancestry no, thank the gods—any more than you are a Turanian.” Phang Loon’s smile was tighter even than his servant’s, betraying a dangerous dislike for the remark and its maker. “By birth, however, I am of Venjipur.” Smoothly he seated himself on a lacquered stool at the edge of Conan’s sea of cushions. “My race sailed west from Khitai when the overblown Venji empire was collapsing of its own weight. We have prospered here ever since—by conquest, by commerce and deft diplomacy, or by whatever means necessary. Now our dominance enters a new phase.” Crossing his ankles beneath his seat, the warlord smiled complacently. “Your leader Yildiz is wise to recognize my fitness to rule Venjipur. Others, like your General Abolhassan, have placed even higher faith in me.”
Conan shifted his cramped position, trying to move his sound leg beneath him inconspicuously. “If my employer declares you his satrap because of your skill at piracy and drug-pandering, I have no objection.” Unable to avoid stretching his wounded thigh, he stifled a grunt at the steadily returning pain. “I do not know this Abolhassan; but if he is Yildiz’s general, I am subject to his command. What I want to know is, where am I? Why am I here, and where is my friend?”
With an air of taxed patience, Phang Loon arose from his seat to stride a few paces across the polished flagstone floor. “Simple questions, Sergeant, simply answered—since you obviously mean to test the limits of my charity. We now enjoy the comfort of my palace on the Gulf of Tarqheba, well outside the city’s squalor. Of this friend of yours I have temporarily lost track; but be assured, I have instructed my agents to scour the taverns and brothels for him so that he too can relish my hospitality.” Phang Loon pivoted back to Conan, smiling less graciously than before. “As for you, Sergeant: You were brought here by secret order of your highest staff officers. They feel that your usefulness to the Turanian army has ended—perhaps because of your wound, your miserable lack of breeding, or some past indiscretion… or perhaps through no fault of your own.” The warlord shook his head tolerantly. “Because, you know, the loftiest commanders must daily weigh considerations their petty subordinates could never understand.”
Clasping his hands behind his back, Phang Loon turned and strutted a few more steps, his northern-style cavalry boots tapping a precise cadence on the polished flags. He stopped again and turned, making a garish silhouette against the brazen face of the gong. “Normally, such an order would result in death—the sad waste of a minion who might, but for his damning knowledge or offense, have served some further use.” He shook his head in disapproval.
“Luckily, we here in the East are not so wasteful as in your northern lands. Ancestral knowledge brought from my family’s Khitan home, combined with the availability here in Venjipur of rare mystic substances, provides us with a means of scouring the human soul and removing any taint of resentment or disloyalty. Why do you think I have tolerated your insolence so far? Because I have an infallible way of reorienting your deepest needs and desires to my loyal service.” The warlord pivoted back to Conan with easy confidence. “Infallible in that, for those few who are not cured by my methods, death remains a cure.”
Conan’s sudden effort to heave himself up onto his feet served only to betray his weakness; a spasm of pain and unresponsiveness in his leg left him teetering on his knees before his captor, spitting curses.
“Devils gnaw you, Satrap! Go on, unleash your torturous servant on me if you dare! Crom knows, I have seen him pinch and scorch enough hapless victims. But I warn you—”
“No, Sergeant, torture is not an issue here.” Phang Loon loitered just outside the range of his captive’s most desperate possible lunge, wearing a look of wry amusement. “Do not call down your heathen gods on me, nor your own futile rage.” The sleek rooster of a man turned to depart, with Sool hulking close behind him. “I offer you only… the freedom of my house. Enjoy it at your leisure, and know that I am ever watchful, ever in control of what may befall you. But as for pain, fear it not.”
The warlord, in apparent afterthought, turned back to wave an arm at a low table at the center of the room, arrayed with small enameled boxes, unguent jars, and a smoking censer. “As a good host, I offer you respite from pain, the renewal of that ease you have already enjoyed for some hours. Or else—grapple with your wounds and your past sins unaided. The choice is yours.”
With those words, Phang Loon and his servant disappeared through a heavy, jade-inlaid door. The portal boomed shut after them, its closure followed immediately by the thud of a bolt. Conan knelt alone in scented silence.
Muttering profanities, he braced himself to rise to his feet. But his curses became a grunt of agony as his scarred leg again collapsed beneath him, sending him sprawling among the cushions. Fiercely he nerved himself to ignore the pain, which thrummed increasingly now, even when he did not use the limb. He dragged himself forward on his hands and one bruised knee toward the nearest goal the room offered, the cluttered table.
Reaching it, cursing breathlessly in resentment and shame, he drew himself up onto its edge. There he rested, his useless limb extended stiffly before him. Recovering his breath, he scanned his surroundings from this new vantage.
Of windows there were none; in spite of its luxuriance, the room surely lay in the depths of a sizeable castle. For ventilation, he could see only narrow vertical slits between the fitted, polished stones high up under the vaulted ceiling; these might also allow for observation of the room from without. The lush appointments included rugs, padded stools, a silk-draped sleeping-couch, and a glazed chamber-pot, the latter looking too delicate to provide a usable edge if shattered. Conan’s eye found nothing which could be swung as a weapon; even the short, round-headed gong hammers had been taken away by Phang Loon’s servant. The only thing he saw of interest was another door in the room’s far wall.
Conan, in his weakened state, had no wish to try the strength of the stone portal used by the warlord; it had looked and sounded massive enough to daunt him even in his full strength and health. But this smaller panel, made of brassbound wood, might be easy to pry or batter open.
The problem at the moment was how to make his way through it and beyond. Although the deep scars of his wound had not reopened, tearing pains in his thigh told of inner damage; any attempt to put weight on the limb brought sweat to his forehead and a fevered curse to his lips. Meanwhile, all his other pangs seemed to be growing worse; the gash at his throat burned uncomfortably now, oozing slippery fluid, while his whole body felt leaden with bruises and other miseries of his fights and nocturnal transport. Even the damp tropic heat, which he thought he had grown used to, oppressed him; as he sagged against the table, the sluggish air seemed close and cloying. The only hint of relief lay in the thin thread of smoke that curled up from the incense burner at his side.
Lotus fumes they were. He bethought himself of what Phang Loon had said: Here, in the jars and coffers arrayed on the tabletop, lay an end to pain, yes, and a invitation to bliss. Feeling the unfamiliar craving take shape in his innards, he was surprised at its intensity.
The drug could not have been in his system more than a few hours. But then, no telling how swiftly the various essences and quintessences refined by skillful Venji chemists could take hold. Whatever dose the warlord’s men had given him, it must have been powerful. He knew that if the tides of misery continued to surge and suck in his veins, he might come to learn that he was already a cringing slave to the lotus.
In any event, his course now was clear. Taking up a beaded glass jar and unsealing its cap, Conan sniffed at the waxy-looking pink salve inside. Its subtle perfume made bright-hued pinpricks of exhilaration flash inside his skull. He blinked, feeling his nostrils flare wide open with reaction. Experimentally, he gathered a dollop of the soft ointment on a fingertip and applied it to his neck. Tracing the length of his dagger-slash, he felt warmth and well-being spread rapidly upward and downward from the wound. Next he raised the skirt of his Imperial tunic and dabbed the unguent on the still-tender scars of his thigh. He smeared it too along the swollen thews at the front of his leg, where the pain had tugged worst as he crawled.
Within a few breaths he had to force himself to stop and recap the jar, hands atremble with pleasure. He placed the container carefully, fumblingly, in the belly pouch of his tunic. By that time, his vision swam in pale, floral-colored afterimages, his breath welling in his chest like warm mulled wine. He scarcely wished to move, discovering worlds of fascination in the artful shapes and soft-lit hues of the room around him. Along with this new, boundless well-being came strength; and some part of his mind still signaled faint urgency, which the drug transformed into sprightly, reckless energy. He pushed himself up from the table, aware that his leg remained numb and unresponsive. Yet standing on it no longer brought pain; reminding himself to brace the limb straight and stiff beneath him, Conan was able to stilt across the room in nearly unbroken strides to the smaller door. When he reached it and palmed the latch, he found that it was not locked; the panel yielded silently to his touch.
The freedom of my house, Phang Loon had said. Well, whatever trial lay beyond the door, he would never be more ready to face it than now. Shoving the portal wide and clutching the jamb for support, the Cimmerian stepped through.