Again Akter Khan looked from Hamer to Conan. “Your weapons? You do understand that I cannot have you here alone with me, and armed.”
“I understand. No foreigner should approach a king in his chamber under arms.”
“
Co
-nan—” Isparana tried again.
Conan paid no more heed to her remonstrations than Akter did to Hamer’s. Like two great lords, the enthroned satrap of Turan’s empire and the seventeen-year-old hillman youth from Cimmeria kept their gazes locked—while Conan, stooping, laid both his long blades on the floor. He hesitated, staring, and then laid down both daggers as well. A khan and twelve Zamboulans watched, scarcely breathing, and the sprawling chamber’s air seemed to thicken.
“Isparana,” Conan said.
“Conan… we are just—”
He stripped his gaze from Akter’s face long enough to let her see the blaze of volcanic blue eyes in his stern face. She stared back, and tried to fill her eyes with sensible pleading.
“I am disarmed, Khan of Zamboula,” he said, without looking from Isparana. “As this Zamboulan refuses, let her leave with Hamer and his thorny squad.”
Now her stare was of blackest menace—and slowly and with reluctance, Isparana duplicated the Cimmerian’s act. Four swords and four daggers lay on the smooth tiled floor. Conan remained half-squatting, ready to snatch up long blade and short.
Again Hamer looked to his khan—hopefully. His men remained poised. A word, a sign, and they would draw and pounce, to splash the blood of this ex-thief of their city and the big sullenly snarly, arrogant foreigner from whom their khan accepted deliberate disrespect. Realizing that he was holding his breath, Conan expelled it, sucked in another, expelled it; these had become will-directed acts.
“Captain Hamer,” Akter Khan said, and Conan’s muscles tensed—as did those of the guardsmen who glared at him—“leave.” ‘
Conan forced himself to relax, only a little.
“You last, Captain,” Akter Khan said. “Take those blades of theirs.”
In a set of movements so full of hateful eye contact and tension it seemed to last hours, ten men filed past Isparana and Conan. His and Hamer’s eyes met.
“Will you step away, Conan?” the khan called.
“I will not. Her blades first, Captain.”
Isparana objected. Without taking his eyes off the Shemite guardsman, Conan insisted, He stood erect now; were the captain to start to pull sword from sheath, a sudden charge and smashing knee and forearm would stretch him on the floor. And then it would begin, as his men came boiling back in…
“Isparana!” Conan snapped. “Move!”
Face working, Isparana did. Moving two paces, the captain set a foot on her daggers and separated them. One by one, his foot sent them skittering out into the corridor. Her sword followed. Her other sword. Waiting, staring, armed men took them up, two sheathing their own blades.
Hamer looked at Conan and their eyes met. Conan took one pace aside.
“My daggers,” he said, and watched the Shemite take a wary step, then with a thrust of his foot send a knife after the other blades. The second dagger followed; it had been Baltaj’s.
A full minute was required before both Conan’s swords were gone. Now he was sure that Isparana and Hamer felt a heightening of tension. That was his edge; his own had lessened. Only he knew that if Akter spoke treachery and Hamer started to tug out his sword, he’d have agony in his groin and a smashed face. Conan waited. Setting hand to hilt and backing two paces, the captain of the khan-guard turned to look questioningly at his ruler. With a little jingle of armor and the merest whisper of shod feet, Conan advanced two paces, on Hamer.
“Captain Hamer…
get… out
.”
Even before the khan’s last word was completed Conan was sprinting ten paces to his own right, and then forward. He halted. He was as close to the khan as was Hamer, and far from the uniformed Shemite.
His face full of misgivings mingled with a glitter of eye that bespoke his desire to slay, the captain followed his Khilayim out of the hall.
“Close the doors,” Akter Khan commanded.
“My
Lord Khan
…”
Akter Khan pounced to his feet and pointed. “CLOSE THE DOORS!”
The khan seemed at last to have gone insane.
Perhaps it was his well-known drinking. He had given orders, and thirteen people were witness. He had gone suicidal—after sorely embarrassing and demeaning Hamer, before his own men and enemies. Mentally Hamer shrugged. If the damned drunk, his Gored Ox of a khan, wished to commit suicide… let him. He gestured.
Captain Hamer himself took a hand in closing the doors.
It was done.
Two thieves were alone in the throneroom with the Khan of Zamboula.
They were unarmed, and both were profoundly aware of it, and of the men bunched behind them, just on the other side of those doors, which opened inward. Conan concentrated on his breathing and kept his glance from straying to the handsomely jewel-hilted sword on the wall of the throne’s left; Oh yes, he knew it was there. Perhaps Akter Khan thought he had forgotten, or not noticed it. Perhaps he thought Conan would note its position, and not be wary. Conan was not that sort; Akter Khan, he remembered, was left-handed.
Tension rode silence in the sprawling hall like a deadly eagle hovering above wary prey.
The khan had let Conan know that the plan had come to action. It had begun.
Outside the city, the Shanki were carrying out their part of the plan. The force from the garrison chased them; men from the palace were at the gate, far from here. Somewhere, Balad and his force were moving toward the palace. And within it—Conan and Isparana stood before Akter Khan, alone with Akter Khan, and Conan was aware of the sword he did not look at. Nor did the Satrap of Zamboula.
He will never make it
, Conan thought. He would be there before Akter had the blade half out of its ornamented sheath.
Best, come to think, that the Cimmerian draw closer to the weapon himself. Perhaps Akter had a sword concealed in his high-backed chair of state. That full-skirted robe of Shahpur purple could conceal all manner of daggers…
No
, Conan thought. He did not need to fear the sword on the wall; if anyone wielded it, it would be he.
The guards, of course, still waited just outside the high doors…
“Ispa,” Conan called, without looking from the Khan, “bar the doors.”
Akter Khan only smiled and leaned back while Isparana let the enormous, counterbalanced beam drop into the brackets that were doubly braced on the doors. Now Conan smiled, only a little, trying to imagine the captain’s face and the contents of his mind as he heard himself cut off utterly from his khan.
Aye, the good Shemitish captain would be most troubled, just now!
The point was, why was Akter Khan smiling?
Did he know the swirling contents of Conan’s mind?
“So, Cimmerian. You have seen Zafra’s sword.”
“I have seen it. I have eluded it and beaten it. I have used it. Your ex-slut’s brother just kicked it out into the corridor.”
The khan’s fingers tightened on his chair’s arm. Conan’s eyes did not miss the reflex. “That sword,” Akter breathed. “You had—”
Conan nodded.
“So,” Akter said. “And Zafra—”
“—directed it against me. I evaded it and leapt out of the room, and shut the door behind me,” Conan said, noting without concern that he had to hand nothing such as the tall brazier he had used to ward off the sorcery-directed glaive. “While I held the door shut, Zafra’s sword continued its business. It carried out his command. He told it to do murder. It did… while he was alone in the room with it.”
Akter squeezed shut his eyes and ground his teeth, hearing of the death of his ward, his adviser, his valued young mage whom he had made Wizard of Zamboula. At last he opened his eyes, opened his mouth as he regained control of himself. His voice came very soft.
“Very—clever of you. Zafra had no means to protect himself against his own spell?”
“I know nothing of that,” Conan said with a shrug. “Once I was out of the room there was but one man there, with the sword and its command, and Zafra had said it would not rest until it had slain. He bade it ‘Slay him.’ Zafra, not I, became the him.”
Akter Khan sighed. “I will miss him, though he was a man I could never have trusted. Never totally. Isparana—whom I should not have trusted—I will not miss at all.”
“Try walking through me to get to her, Khan of Zamboula.”
“I am that,” Akter intoned meaningfully. “I am Khan of Zamboula. One called Balad opposes me, with a few other traitorous malcontents, and they will never succeed. You made friends with those Shanki barbarians out on the desert, and now they come against Zamboula. I am Khan of Zamboula.”
Carefully Conan kept his face impassive.
So you are, this hour, this minute, Akter. He has not yet connected Balad, and me, and the Shanki “attack”; only me with the Shanki. Continue preoccupied with me
, Khan of Zamboula—
continue stupid
!
Akter Khan smiled. “Aye; I am Khan of Zamboula. And you… poor barbarian. How little you know. It is just brawn, isn’t it, and sword-skill!”
“I have little genius, it’s true. Only a few weeks ago I was weary and angry at being called ‘barbarian’ by all you city-bred jackals who think walls around houses in collection make something you call ‘civilization.” Now I am not angry at all; I am proud. Call me barbarian. I slay, but I do not murder. You, Khan of Zamboula, murder. I am learning, you see.”
“You are learning, lad from the hills of… where-ever it is. But Conan… you have not learned enough, and not rapidly enough. You I will not miss at all.”
Conan only glared. He willed himself to be loose, in readiness for anything. He did not look at the sword. He did not look at Isparana. No matter which way Akter moved, Conan would leap directly for the sword on the wall. He had naught to fear of it; the khan did, whether he felt so or not.
“Did Zafra tell you that the sword knows no gender, Conan, no pronoun, and does not cease until it has slain—at which point it has only to be told again? To it, Isparana is a ‘him’ the same as you.”
The Cimmerian shrugged boldly. “Whatever the meaning of that—what boots it? That sword isn’t going to come through these doors, even if Zafra were alive to command it. He isn’t.”
Conan saw no reason to tell Akter that the sword apparently obeyed—had obeyed, without care for its victim’s identity—only the late sorcerer. Meanwhile… why was Akter so confident, seemingly gloating?
What is he planning? What does he know that I don’t?
Conan glanced at the wall to his right. He knew that door opened into Zafra’s chamber. Perhaps the captain was going to—no. Conan was convinced that no signal had passed between khan and Khan-Khilayim; nor had they reason to believe that he and Isparana would come charging up from that dungeon pit and make for this hall rather than for the nearest exit. Nevertheless, the Cimmerian paced one step closer. Toward Akter Khan. Toward the sword on the wall.
He sought to thrust his mind out from him, seeking. He could not scan the room, for he durst not take his eyes off the treacherous murdering piece of slime in the chair of state he desecrated. What made the man so confident? For what reason did he smile? Why was he able to? He had not wanted Conan and Isparana alone here with him to ask about the Shanki attack, as he had said; he did not fear it and did not suspect that it was a diversion, result of the three-way plan laid by Conan and Balad and Hajimen. He wanted them here for another reason. What was it? Why did he smile? It was a gloating smile. Why, and how?
Conan did not know. Akter was right, the Cimmerian thought; he was young, and did not know enough. His mind was not sufficiently devious, though he had thought himself brilliantly so, in devising the plan to topple this drunken, treacherous ruler. Akter was right. Conan’s weapons were swiftness and strength and the sword, not his brain.
Tensely instructing his body not to be tense, he could but wait to learn what trick Akter Khan held ready. A trick up his sleeve… perhaps literally? A dagger? No matter. This man could not throw faster than the Cimmerian could move. Nor could he possibly possess Isparana’s skill at throwing a dagger; nor was he man enough to attempt to close with the big youth he so glibly called “barbarian.” Conan’s patience was far from infinite, far from what it would be in his later years—if he survived this day.
He began, slowly, to pace toward the dais, and on it the throne of silver-gleaming fruitwood, and on it the man in the violet robe.
“Ah, Conan, Conan! You see, barbarian… you see, Zafra laid the spell of Skelos on
two
swords.” And the khan smiled, almost beamed.
“Conan!”—Isparana’s alarmed cry.
Instantly Conan’s eyes had swerved to stare at the sheathed sword on the wall. In that same instant he knew that he was lost, that he was dead, and in the next he thought that he might at least save Isparana. The sword did not differentiate between sexes and pronouns, eh? It would kill them both, then, one after the other, on two commands… unless she opened the doors and Captain Hamer’s guards boiled in all over her. Would the sword then, having slain Conan, drive at them as a reaper in a sprawling field of tempting corn?
” ‘sparana! Unbar the door!”
“Conan! The sword—”
“Slay him.”
Sweat popped forth to run down the Cimmerian’s flanks, and down his forehead. His eyes stared at the wall-mounted sword, the spell-wrapped sword that would be his ultimate doom, beyond the man who had enchanted it and had met his own doom. Conan stared. It was as if the Cimmerian’s blue eyes were attached to the jewel-set hilt by heavy chains.
The burning moment of tension lengthened. Conan’s entire body quivered as he waited. He stared at the sword.
It did not move.
It was a sword, sheathed, hanging in golden brackets on a throneroom wall. Throughout the world, so hung thousands of others.
“Slay him!” This time the khan spoke a little more loudly. Demand approached beseeching.
At the great barred doors, Isparana was frozen, hands on the counterbalance lever, neck twisted, her gaze fixed on the sword.