There was some danger in following the Lady as he was, even had she not been also hurrying toward the unleashed magic. But that way must lie the Lady's treasure, dwarfing the petty sums from the pay chest. Also, that way lay learning more about the Lady's magic than Muhbaras had, for all the time he'd spent swiving her.
With gold, Ermik could buy his way free of Khoraja. With knowledge, he could buy a higher place in Khorajan service. It would be his tales of the Valley of the Mists that would be believed, not the captain's. Swiftly he would rise, and high enough that he would never again need to obey hirelings like Muhbaras.
Still, he patted the hilt of his dagger as he moved. It held a chaos stone, or one that had been sold to him as such, for a price that would make him seek blood if it did not in truth confuse any spell into whose radius it was thrown.
If he was alive after such a mischance. Ermik had a good spy's self-command, and animal courage. But he could not keep that ugly thought from his mind, or keep from feeling the night wind blow chill on his spine.
The attack that Conan had feared came. It began with a flight of arrows, striking with the power of Tu-ranian bows but mercifully ill aimed. One went through Bethina's hair, another gouged Farad's shoulder. The Afghuli slapped at the wound as if it were an insect bite, and brandished his tulwar.
"Come along, dead men who think they yet live. Come along and meet Farad and Conan and their comrades. We will cure you of your silly notion!"
He added a few singularly foul obscenities in Iranistani. Those who did not understand his words understood his tone, and it seemed that madmen came howling out of the night at Bethina's defenders.
In the heart of the Mist, something that might be called a will began to grow. It was a will to seek paths through the rock, following the traces of old magic that it could touch by itself. It did not need more life essences to strengthen itself, if it could do that.
The Mist ceased to be a creature of the air and became a creature of the depths of the earth. But in the heart of the incandescent blue where the Eye of the Mist had been, a crimson core began to glow.
The attack on Bethina and her defenders began as a collision and continued as a brawl. Too many men were jammed into too small a space to let anyone use art or even craftsmanship in the fighting.
That at once gave the advantage to the defenders. Conan could use the weapons nature gave him as fiercely and effectively as the man-made ones whose ways he had learned. He had never studied the barehanded (and -footed) fighting arts of Khitai, so perhaps one of the great masters of those arts might have been a match for the Cimmerian. But the Khitan would have needed luck as well as skill, and only the greatest of masters would have stood any chance of walking away from a bout with Conan.
Conan slammed his sword-weighted hand into the side of one man's neck. He punched another in the ribs so hard that he felt ribs crack under the blow, even through boiled-leather armor. He butted a third man under the chin, snapping his head back so savagely that the neck snapped like a dry branch.
Meanwhile Farad was doing much the same, with a little assistance from weapons that he had more room to wield. At the outermost fringes of his senses, Conan could hear still other comrades, but they might have been in another world for all that he could tell of what they were doing.
They had to have done well, because suddenly it was too much for the attackers. Darkness and emptiness gaped before Conan, although not silence—the ground was littered with the crippled and dying, some already crying out as the pain-blunting shock of their wounds wore away.
Conan watched the attackers retreating uphill, far scantier in numbers than when they came, and losing more men to the archers before they vanished. Then he looked around for Bethina.
He saw her a moment later, sprawled atop the prostrate form of the prisoner Conan had taken earlier. He sprang toward her, then heard a welcome, healthy oath as he accidentally trod on her outstretched foot.
"Your pardon, lady."
"I should think so. I stabbed one fellow with my dagger, but he had so much muscle, the blade stayed in him. So when the bearded one started waking up, all I could do was jump on top of him."
That seemed to have done well enough; the man's nose was a bloody mess from being slammed into the rocky ground. But he was still breathing, and indeed started to groan as Conan lifted Bethina off him.
"I can take a few of the men up and keep those fellows on the move," Farad said.
Conan shook his head. "We don't divide our strength on unknown ground. Those fellows could rally and cut you to pieces. Besides, we need to protect Bethina. When was the last time you heard from Omyela?"
Bethina looked blank, then slowed her breathing to open her mind to the other woman's message.
Conan stared at the sky. Was it his fancy, or was a crimson tint beginning to mingle with the blue glow in the sky?
The Lady of the Mists had come as close as she dared to the Eye. Any closer and she might find the ground under her feet crumbling as the Mist fed on the traces of the spells of long-dead Acheronian sorcerers, like worms feeding on the bones of long-dead animals.
It was Acheron's magic that had brought the Mist to terrible Me. Now it would be the same magic that drove it back into the nighted gulfs from which she had drawn it, so that the Valley of the Mists might be a sane and safe abode for common men and women.
She was leaving it, and she prayed she would leave it with Muhbaras. But she would not fail to leave it cleaner than she had made it.
She could not bring back the dead. She would not even ask their forgiveness, for what she had done was beyond that. She hoped for happiness in this life, before she faced the anger of her victims in another. Meanwhile, she would do what she could to keep the number of the dead from growing any further.
It would have to be a death-elemental. She had conjured one before, a being from the very darkest heart of Acheron's sinister magic. But that had been a small one, fit only to take a single human life. It had been weak and easy to control.
Now she needed one so powerful that it held enough of the essence of death to slay the Mist. That which had fed on life essences would now consume pure death, and from that consuming, die.
The Lady of the Mists remqved her garments and stood wind-clad as was best for such potent magic. This close to the Mist, it was hard to imagine anyone being able to strike at her even if they saw and recognized her.
The syllables in the Secret Tongue of Acheron ran through her mind, and as she raised her staff over her head, they began to roll off her tongue.
Muhbaras had just rallied the half or less of his men who remained when a wild-eyed figure stumbled into their rear.
It was one of the Maidens, clad only in her sword and rags of garments. She was bleeding from a dozen scratches and three greater wounds, and reeling with exhaustion, pain, loss of blood, and stark terror that made her eyes seem windows into Hell.
"They are mad in there," she gasped. "Mad. The Mist marches, and they have all run mad. They are trying to get out. They say the Lady told them. We do not know where she is."
"Have you no way to reach her?"
"No. I—yes, that is true. We do not." Muhbaras wanted to shake sense or at least coherence into the woman. Instead he lowered his voice.
"If we come up and help, can you keep order?"
"Men within the valley! This cannot be—" 'There have been men not only within the valley but within its Maidens and even the Lady of its Mists!" Muhbaras roared. His voice would have started a landslide had there been any loose rocks about.
The Maiden cringed. Then she nodded. "Good," Muhbaras concluded. "And when we have helped you, you will help us against the raiders who are enemies to both of us."