Sword in hand, Captain Muhbaras stumbled down into the Valley of the Mists, along the path that the Lady herself had followed only a short while before.
The gate to the valley stood open when Conan led his companions toward it. The gateway was also vomiting people, wide-eyed, ragged, some wounded, all staggering with exhaustion and half-witless with fear.
Conan did not even try to stop the outpouring with his handful of men. Nor did he really wish to. If the Lady of the Mists was soon to be a queen without subjects, many of her teeth would be drawn without the Cimmerian's having to labor at it.
Conan was proud of the victories he had wrought with his strength and skill. He was not so proud of them that he would refuse a victory handed to him by fate.
There were armed men and some armed women among the fleeing people. Some of the armed men had the look of those who had picked up fallen weapons with an eye to carving from others' misery what fortune they could. Others, the women included, wore armor and had about them the air of an army in retreat.
"Those women are the Maidens of the Lady," Bamshir said, low-voiced. "The armored men are Muhbaras's. I know some of them."
"Do you see Muhbaras?"
"I have not yet. He would be the last to flee. Even if the men did, he himself would go forward to seek the Lady." Bamshir added, in a still lower voice, "He loved her, it is known. And I think she loved him back."
Conan tried not to gape. The idea of loving a sorceress chilled him to the marrow. The idea of being loved by one—well, he had survived the affections of many sorts of dangerous women, but any man who played love games with a witch loved danger even more than the Cimmerian did.
"Then let us seek your captain, and perhaps when we find him, we shall find the Lady."
Conan led the way, and Farad, Bethina, and Bamshir followed almost shoulder to shoulder through the gateway.
Muhbaras was vaguely aware that the ground under his feet was shaking. He did not slow, or even break stride. He was running like a man who will stop when his heart does, who will keep running in midair if the ground drops away beneath him, fall, and land running still.
He might never have had soldiers, or anything else behind him to think of. All his thoughts roved the valley ahead, seeking his Lady.
Do you yet live? Send me a sign, if you do!
He knew that he was crying out for that sign like a child for a second bowl of porridge. He did not care. Before the Lady, before his love for her, he had no more shame.
Not so vaguely, he became aware that the sky was turning solid and beginning to whirl. He also saw that the solidity took the form of two vast spirals, like whirlwinds of unimaginable proportions. One was purple, the other was a black that seemed to both repel and swallow light at once.
They leaped skyward from different parts of the valley, and leaned toward one another like partners in an obscene dance. Then they drew back, swayed, leaned forward again, and repeated this over and over again.
Either they were silent now, or Muhbaras's ears had ceased to accept new sounds. No, that was not quite so. When the ground before him cracked wide so that he had to leap or be swallowed up, he heard the shrill sundering of rock and the thud of his boots landing on the far side.
Then he heard only his own rasping breath as he ran on.
Conan watched the spirals in the sky, one blazing purple and the other the black of a demon's nightmares, and knew that the unleashed magic was approaching its climax. He knew this without a word from Bethina, who indeed could not have spoken a word to save Conan's life or perhaps her own.
Bowed backward in a way that had to be torturing her spine, she stared wide-eyed into the sky. She shook her head so that her hair flew in clouds about her, and raised her arms, hands clasped together.
Those clasped hands began to glow—with a light that was all colors and no colors. Conan could neither bear to look at it nor turn his head to look away. Farad muttered curses in Afghuli, while Bamshir knelt and cried out what sounded like orthodox prayers to Mitra.
It had to be comforting to believe in the kind of god who answered prayers, or at least told his priests that he would answer them. It was a comfort Conan had always been denied.
Instead of praying, he drew his sword. Steel in hand was the way he had always sworn death would find him, and he would not be forsworn now.
The nimbus around Bethina's hands turned distinctly green. At the same time, Conan felt the ground underfoot begin to shake, and saw the walls of the valley swaying like trees in a high wind.
In another moment the earth itself would be sundered and the valley fall in on itself, obliterating everything and everyone within. Conan knew brief pleasure that at least some of the valley's folk would survive the ruin of their home—although how long they would survive starvation, disease, and the windy mountain slopes was another matter.
Then the green nimbus around Bethina's hands became a spear of green fire, hurtling upward. It struck the black spiral, encompassing it in a fugitive green glow and a shower of green sparks that seemed to rain down from the stars themselves.
It also drove the black spiral violently forward, until it struck the purple one.
Such a sound filled the valley as Conan had never heard before and hoped never to hear again. He thought he would gladly be deaf as an adder for the rest of his days if the other choice was to hear that sound again. He also wondered if he might indeed be deaf, whether he wished it or not.
But the sound did not blind his eyes. Afterward he never talked about what he saw, even when he was telling tales of his most exotic adventures to drinking companions who had to listen to the King of Aquilonia. He did not believe what he saw then, and did not expect anyone else to believe it afterward.
He saw cliffs that had been leaning forward draw back as if pushed by giant hands. He saw chasms large enough to swallow houses suddenly close, or fill with steam and churning water. He saw boulders the size of horses plunge from on high, then float down to land with all the harshness of soap bubbles. He saw patches of ground that had been shaking like beaten carpets suddenly blossom with flowers and long grass.
He saw much else that he carried to his grave with him, and so did those with him—and most of them did the same as the Cimmerian.
Then suddenly no one saw anything, because all light left the valley. All sound did likewise—or perhaps it was only stunned ears being unable to detect more subtle sounds than the fall of mountains or the creation of new life.
In time, Conan heard the plash of new streams, the rattle of the last loose stones finding a resting place, the sigh of breezes now free to blow naturally. He even heard, far off, the bray of a donkey that had somehow survived the upheaval.
He laughed. "Bamshir, I was going to ask you to guide us. But I think we can wait here until daylight. Your captain and his Lady will not be the better for our falling downhill in the dark."
"The gods made you too sensible to be a hero, Cimmerian," Farad chaffed.
"I sometimes wonder what the gods were about when they made me," Conan said. "If they ever tell me the truth, I'll spread the word. Meanwhile, my friend, see to Bethina, and set the sentries. For now, we wait."
Muhbaras reached his Lady just as the ground seemed to turn to jelly under his feet. His final dash to where she lay turned into an undignified sprawl on his face.
He rose bruised and dusty, to see Ermik cowering back against the cliff. The spy was the color of old chalk, and not all of it was the dust on his skin.
"I—I wanted to stop her," Ermik stammered. "I tried to stop her. She was conjuring—she was casting a spell to—I used my dagger. The dagger with the chaos stone. It should have stopped her. I wanted to stop her. I wanted to—"