Conan The Buccaneer
L. Sprague De Camp & Lin Carter
Prologue: DREAM OF BLOOD
Two hours before midnight, the princess Chabela awoke. Drawing the filmy coverlet about her naked body, the buxom daughter of King Ferdrugo of Zingara lay tense and trembling. She stared into the darkness, while cold horror sent thrills of premonition through her quickening nerves. Outside, rain drummed on the palace roofs.
What had it been about, that dark and dreadful dream from whose shadowy clutches her soul had so barely escaped?
Now that the ghastly dream was over, she could hardly recall its details. There had been darkness, and evil eyes glaring through the murk; the glitter of knives … and blood. Blood everywhere: on the sheets, on the tiled floor, crawling beneath the door … red, sticky, sluggishly flowing blood!
Shuddering, Chabela tore her thoughts from this morbid introspection. The glimmer of a night light caught her glance; it came from a waxen taper in a sconce on the low, ornate prie-dieu across the chamber. On the prie-dieu also stood a small painted icon of Mitra, Lord of Light and chief divinity of the Kordavan pantheon. An impulse to seek supernatural guidance brought her to stand shivering on the tiles. Wrapping the lacy coverlet about her voluptuous, olive-hued body, she crossed the bedchamber to kneel before the idol. Her night-black torrent of hair poured down her back like a cataract of a liquid midnight.
Atop the prie-dieu stood a small silver canister of incense. She uncapped it and tossed a few grains of the gummy powder into the flickering flame. The rich odor of nard and myrrh filled the air.
Chabela clasped her hands and bowed as if to pray, but no words came. Her mind was a jumble. Strive as she would, she could not attain the serene inner control required for effective divine supplication.
It came to her that, for many days, shadowy terrors had lurked in the palace.
The old king had seemed distant, distraught, preoccupied with unknown problems.
He had aged astoundingly, as if his vitality were being sucked away by some phantasmal leech. Some of his decrees had been unlike him, at variance with the tenor of his previous reign. There were times when another person's spirit seemed to peer through his faded old eyes, to speak with his slow, harsh voice, or to scrawl a wavering signature on documents that he had dictated. The thought was absurd, but it was there.
And then, these terrible dreams of knives and blood and staring eyes; of thickening, watchful shadows that peered and whispered! Abruptly, her mind cleared as if a fresh wind from the sea had blown a mist away from her consciousness. She found she could name the feeling of haunting dread that oppressed her. It was as if some dark force had striven to seize control of her very mind.
Horror filled her; a sob of loathing shook her rounded body. Her full young breasts, proud globes of pale tan under the lacy veils, rose and fell. She threw herself prone before the little altar, her black hair sliding in gleaming coils over the tiles. She prayed:
"Lord Mitra, defender of the House of Ramiro, champion of mercy and justice, chastiser of depravity and cruelty, help me, I beg thee, in my hour of need! Tell me what to do, I beseech thee, mighty Lord of Light!"
Rising, she opened the golden box beside the canister on the prie-dieu and drew forth a dozen slim rods of carven sandalwood. Some of these divining straws were short, some long; some were branched or crooked, others straight and plain.
She threw them down at random on the floor before the altar. The clatter of the slender sticks was loud in the silence.
She peered down at the jumble of fallen rods, the black bell of her hair framing her young face. Her eyes rounded with awe.
The sticks spelled T-O-V-A-R-R-O.
The girl repeated the name. "Tovarro," she said slowly. "Go to Tovarro…"
Determination flashed in her dark eyes. "I will!" she vowed. Tonight! I'll rout out Captain Kapellez…"
As she moved about the chamber, flashes of lightning from the storm outside intermittently lighted the scene. She snatched garments from a chest. She gathered up a baldric with a scabbarded rapier and collected a warm cloak. She glided about the boudoir with a swift economy of motion.
From the prie-dieu, Mitra watched with glassy eyes. Was there a faint glitter of ghostly intelligence in the painted gaze? And a slight expression of stern pity on those sculptured lips? Was the rumble of distant thunder his voice? None could say.
Within the hour, however, Ferdrugo's daughter was gone from the palace. Thus was set in motion a sequence of fantastic events, which would bring a mighty warrior, a dreaded sorcerer, a proud princess, and ancient gods into a weird confrontation on the edge of the known world.
Chapter One: AN OLD ZINGARAN CUSTOM
The wind had been rising, whipping gusts of rain before it. Now, after midnight, the damp sea wind howled through the cobbled alleys that led away from the harbor. It swung the painted wooden signs above the doors of inns and taverns.
Starved mongrels cowered, shivering, in doorways against the wind and rain.
At this late hour, the revelers were done. Few lights burned in the houses of Kordava, capital of Zingara on the Western Ocean. Heavy clouds obscured the moon, and tattered rags of vapor scudded across the gloomy sky like ghosts. It was a dark, secretive hour … the time of night when hard-eyed men whisper of treason and robbery; when masked assassins slink through nighted chambers, envenomed daggers bright in their black-gloved hands. A night for conspiracy; a night for murder.
A tramp of feet and the occasional clink of a sword in its scabbard made itself heard above the sounds of wind and rain. A detachment of the night watch —six men, booted and cloaked, with hat brims pulled low against the weather and with pikes and halberds on shoulder— strode through the nighted streets. They made little noise, save an occasional low-voiced remark in the liquid Zingaran tongue. They glanced right and left sharply for signs of doors or windows feloniously forced; they listened for sounds of disturbance; they tramped on, thinking of the flagons of wine they would down, once their dank patrol was over.
After the watch had passed an abandoned stable with its roof half fallen in, two shadowy figures, who had been standing motionless inside, came to life. From beneath his cloak, one produced a small dark lantern and uncovered its bull's eye. The beam of the candle inside the lantern picked out a spot on the stable floor.
Stooping, the man with the lantern brushed dirt away and uncovered a stone trap door, to which was stapled a short length of chain ending in a bronze ring. Both men seized the ring and heaved. The trapdoor rose with a squeak of unoiled hinges. The two dark figures disappeared into the aperture, and the trap door returned with a thump to its former position.
A narrow stone stair spiraled down into darkness, feebly broken by the wavering beam of the dark lantern. Old and worn were the stones of this stair; mold and fungus beslimed the rounded steps. The must of centuries of decay wafted up the shaft.
The two black-cloaked men descended the stair with cautious, silent steps.
Silken masks concealed their features. Like shadowy specters, they felt their way downward, while a wet sea breeze from the passageways below —secret tunnels connected with the open sea— stirred their cloaks and raised them like the wings of giant bats.
High above the sleeping town, the towers of the castle of Villagro, duke of Kordava, soared against the somber sky. Few lights burned in the tall, slitted windows, for few of the dwellers were awake.