“Aye,” Conan solemnly said, sheathing his dagger and reminding himself of the desert man’s words concerning cold:
I have heard of it
, Akhimen had said.
“Aye,” the Cimmerian repeated. “Some raise slaves among them, whom they persuade to accept their gods and customs. These slaves then wed among their captors, and their children are as any other.”
Akhimen shook his head and looked as if he wanted to vomit. “Surely such is not the custom in Cimmeria!”
“Oh no,” Conan said.
He had discovered what he wanted to know. For hundreds of years this little band of five hundred people had practiced endogamy, so that all the blood of the Shanki remained the same—whencever it had come— and customs and rites became only more ornate, and strictured with the passage of time.
Zulfi returned bearing two garnets, each large enough to form the pommel of a dagger. Each had been expertly and doubtless laboriously pierced, and threaded with a strip of braided camel hair. Conan accepted the gifts with grace, and was careful not to bow to the daughter of Akhimen, khan of five hundred.
“May Theba bless Conan of Cimmeria with the sight of an eagle and protect him from the glare sickness,” she said, and Akhimen repeated the words after her.
“Might a guest, nervous of offending, ask why the khan and his family wear the star of black cloth, while I saw none on any other among the Shanki? Is it the sign of the family of the khan?”
“Nay,” Akhimen said, and gazed at the mat between his folded knees. “We mourn, man of Cimmeria. My people have only just removed the black stars of Death, after a month. We will wear ours for a full year, and at the end of that time pin the stars to the bodies of two captives, and burn them.”
Conan’s thoughts went to the two naked little slaves, but he was not shocked. These were a warrior people. The Yoggites were their deadly enemies, and customs were customs. Too, Conan had abode in Shadizar, where in temples to many strange gods were performed the most abominable and horrific rites involving both animals and humans, and the blood sacrifice that was as old as his race—the cruelest of all the animals of the world.
“A guest mourns with his host,” Conan said, gazing down at his mat. “The khan of the Shanki had another son, who is lost to him?”
“Nay. A daughter. I sent her, in honor and much friendliness, to the khan of the Zamboulans. She was a maiden in the bloom of her youth, a white rock-rose unplucked. Among those people who abide within walls, that daughter of the desert sickened and died. Word was brought us. The khan of the Zamboulans sent message that she had been with child, doubtless a son, and he sought to honor us by laying her body with those of his ancestors and his women. We forgive him this, for he could not know that she would not wish to be pent thus, in the earth. She should of course have been returned to the desert her home, to be burned and her ashes given up to the wind to become one with the sands.”
“Of course,” Conan said.
“I sadden at these thoughts,” Akhimen said, “and such is not meet in the presence of a warrior guest! ‘Give up to grief that time reserved for grief,’ Theba tells us, ‘and to joy that time for rejoicing, and make always the guest welcome in the tents of the Shanki.’ Zulfi! Fill our cups!” Akhimen turned his eagle’s eyes on Conan and they seemed to burn with fervor. “We will get drunk together, man of Cimmeria!”
And on the morrow I will set off for Zamboula with a swollen head
, Conan thought.
We do not have to get drunk before we eat, I hope
!
They did not, though a meal of spiced vegetables cooked in beer and chunks torn from broad flat disks of greasy, garlic-laden bread of whole wheat was no feast for a born meat eater of the Cimmerian hills, for all the tastiness of Aqbi’s salted cookery. It did raise a thirst.
“You are… you are
beautiful
,” Conan told Isparana on the morrow, nor did he seek to disguise his astonishment. Sprawled on his back, he had opened his eyes to discover her sitting beside him.
Her brows had been shaped by judicious plucking, and greased; while her lips were the weird black of Shanki women, they were shaped by the cosmetic and made to glisten; her eyes were huge within frames of kohl and the lashes fair dripping; and her nails had been lacquered. Shanki scarlet covered her. On a chain of woven camel hair, a large white opal sparkled with pink and green between her breasts, where it pressed weightily so that they were emphasized.
When he sat up in the tent he did not remember entering, he saw that her toenails, too, had been lacquered. Isparana had quite pretty feet, no darker than his.
“You are… hideous,” she told him without passion. “You were half-carried in, mumbling, long after moonrise, drunk and reeking of garlic and their beer —as you still do!”
He grinned, noting how thick his head felt and wondering if it would complain of strenuous activity.
“And you did not slay me.”
“Slay you? Why should I slay you?”
“Why ‘sparana,” he said, putting a very large hand on her hip, “we are rivals and blood-enemies, remember?”
“I remember. I also threw a dagger that saved your life, remember?”
“I do. I am grateful. We are allies, then. And you did not even search me.”
She gave him a look. “You have on you a dagger, two nice garnets on camel-hair thongs—luck, among these lunatics—and a nice ring secreted in your pouch, and that piece of junk around your neck, which stinks of garlic.”
Conan, who had thoughtfully rubbed the glass-set clay “amulet” with the Shanki bread when he knew he would soon lose his senses, grinned. So she had searched him!
“And if I’d had the Eye of Erlik on my handsome person?”
“Why I’d have slit open the back of your tent with your dagger, dear Conan, and then sheathed it under your garlic-stenchy ribs, and been leagues south by now!”
“Ah, ‘sparana, ‘sparana! What a foul evil witch you wish you were! How fortunate for us both that you did not find your precious khan’s precious amulet.” And he drew her down to him.
“Ugh,” she murmured, “Beer and garl—”
His head complained, and Conan bade it go away and be patient.
Torches flickered. They rolled up oily smoke to add to the sinister stain of darkened beams that connected stone walls rising from a floor of hard dark earth. The victim hung from one of those beams and her feet only just touched the floor.
The man in the black hood wrapped several additional convolutions of the terribly slim cord around her wrists and knotted the cord securely with a heartless jerk. Her body lurched and her toes strained to maintain contact with the floor. Very blond and young and naked but for her welts, she gasped and a long groan shuddered from her. Her limbs were so securely bound that no blood could circulate into her hands. The ropes had scraped and abraded, cutting into her wrists and arms while he tightened them. Now she felt only a tingling, and she could not feel her hands at all. She wondered wretchedly, extraneously if they were deep red, or purple, or blackening. Her arms seemed hot, strangely; tugged up this way they should have been cold. Another attempt at struggling assured her that was useless. She was powerlessly bound so as to allow her no movement whatever. Her heels were just off the floor… that only her toes and the balls of her feet touched. The man in the black hood was tall, and his arms were long.
Throaty gurgling sounds emerged high-voiced from lips she could not bring together. They were very dry.
The two robed men watched. One said, “Up.”
She sobbed at the command. She knew what it meant. The ropes from her wrists ran up over the leather wrapping on a beam high above her head.
The man in the black hood pulled her up, until her feet cleared the floor. Her groan was hideous. The two robed men watched in silence and the torches flickered. The man in the black hood began to raise and lower the rope and its burden as though he were ringing a great bell. His big belly tautened with effort.
Bobbing up and down, the dangling victim began to moan steadily and her ribs seemed trying to tear their way through her flesh. She was being whipped up and down at the same time as her strained, limp body rotated and swung in a pendulum motion. Sweat streamed from her. She sobbed with each hard-fought breath.
“Speak!”
She heard the voice; she whimpered and tears slid down her cheeks and she would not speak.
“I see no reason to whip her more. Use the hot irons.”
“No-o…” she murmured, and her head hung.
The man in the black hood secured the end of his rope so that only her toes touched the earthen floor. From his belt he drew a gauntlet. He pulled it on as he paced to the brazier, an evil black thing squatting on three legs, with its hair afire. From it thrust up the wooden handles of two slim stems of black iron. He withdrew one. Its tip glowed white. It yellowed as he paced unhurriedly back to his victim, and her wide eyes watched its approach. She mumbled “no” in that tiny voice again, and he lifted the iron.
The watching robed men watched him hold the iron firmly, remorselessly against her body, which was twitching and quivering in apprehension and horror. A shriek ripped from her throat while she threw her head up and back and new sweat glistened and rolled. The robed men heard the sharp sizzling sound and smelled the odor of burning flesh.
“Stop.”
The hooded man drew away his iron. His victim hung panting, sobbing, while she smelled cooked skin. Sweat poured from her and matted her hair.
“Speak!”
She swallowed repeatedly, and gasped, and sobbed, and she panted.
“Again.”
The man in the black hood moved, and she felt the heat of the iron’s approach.
“Stop! I will tell you.” Her voice was dully pleading.
“Stop,” the robed man said; he who wore the sword. The younger man beside him wore no weapons. A fine pendant of gold and pearls and topazes seemed to blaze on his tunic’s breast. “Speak, then. Just hold the iron ready, Baltaj.”
The black-hooded man remained by her side, the iron in his hand, as if hopeful that she would not say enough. He was a big man, tall and heavy.
“You are a spy for Balad?”
“Yes.”
“You serve the woman Chia, and live here in the palace with her, and you spy on her and on me for the traitor, Balad.”
She hesitated; the hooded man moved his hand. “Yes,” she said, accepting even the words that Balad was traitor.
“You are paid by him?”
“Yes.”
“How does he pay you?”
“My… my parents live well… and do not know why. And… I… I…”
“Speak!”
“I am to have my mistress’s apartment when Balad has seized Zamboula, and… and she is to serve
me
.”
“Idiot! Aquilonian fool! Can you imagine the majestic Argossean Chia whom I call Tigress… can you imagine her consenting to serve
you
? You have made a fool’s bargain, and see what it has cost you?”
“Bal… Balad will… will make her!”
“Oh of course. Of course he will! You would not last a day before she slipped a few of her precious clothing-pins into you, stupid slut of Aquilonia!
How
do you report to Balad the traitor?”
“He—he is not a traitor! He seeks to free Zamboula of—”
“Baltaj!”
The hooded man responded by moving his arm and gauntleted hand. The iron’s tip was faded to red now, but it did its work, and they heard it and smelled it, and she shrieked and dangled limply.
Water and nettles revived her.
She spoke of how she met the palace guard Khoja three afternoons of every ten, and passed him messages. No, she had never herself seen Balad. He had sent her a message, and the gem they had found secreted in her hair. No, there was no message for them to see; she did not read and it had been taken away again. She was sure she recognized his seal and name.
“It might have been a warrant for your death, stupid bitch!”
“No-o-o…”
“That is enough. Baltaj, replace the iron. Come up here.”
A long sigh escaped the captive and she hung limp, trying to get her weight on her toes while she labored for breath. The hooded man thrust the iron back into the brazier, and ascended the five-and-twenty steps from the dungeon pit to the two robed men on the landing.
“Behind me,” his lord said, and Baltaj stepped behind the man with the sword. The other robed man, too, stepped back a pace, so as to leave Akter Khan alone at their forefront.
“Slay her,” Akter said, and the lips of the other man moved as the Khan spoke.
“Uh!” the torturer grunted, and pressed back still farther, for from the sheath at the side of his khan the sword slipped, untouched. It wavered for a moment in the air, and then drove downward into the pit and, making a slight curve as if held by a running—or flying —man who was invisible, it plunged into the bosom of the captive—a fraction left of center.
Akter Khan smiled and turned smiling to his mage.
“A shame to cheat Baltaj of such a lovely subject for the final long torturing,” he said, “but who could resist using your marvelous sword, Zafra!”
Thinly, Zafra smiled in return. “Perhaps my lord will leave this man Khoja to Baltaj, as… recompense,” the young wizard said.
Akter Khan nodded and turned to his torturer. “So it shall be, Baltaj! Khoja will soon be brought to you. Show him… that,” he said, gesturing down into the dungeon pit where hung Mitralia, Aquilonian maid to Chia the Tigress. Mitralia was not breathing. “And see whether he knows others to implicate. Work on him, Baltaj.”
“Oh, my good lord knows that I will!”
“Aye—and I know what you will do the moment we two have left this your domain too, perverse rascal!” Akter smiled. “Come Zafra, royal mage of Zamboula!”
“Shall I fetch my lord’s sword back to him?”
“Baltaj! Drag the sword out of that cow and bring it to me!”
“My… lord…”
“Fear not, Baltaj, loyal hound; like yourself, the sword obeys only your master. It will not harm you. It is only a sword, now.”
Baltaj’s descent of the steps was not hurried, and Akter smiled at his mage. The khan actually dropped a hand onto the man’s shoulder.