In response, the immense doors opened slowly. The low murmur of a great assembly of people reached Conan's ears.
The throne room was vaster than anything Conan had ever seen, from the sumptuous state chambers of Ophir and Nemedia to the smoky, timber-roofed halls of Asgard and Vanaheim. Giant pillars of marble reared lofty columns towards a roof that seemed as distant as the sky. The profusion of cressets, lamps, and candelabra illuminated costly drapes, paintings, and hangings. Behind the throne rose windows of stained glass, closed against the fall of night.
A glittering host filled the hall. Fully a thousand must have assembled there. There were Nemedians in jupons, trunk hose, and leathern boots; Ophireans in billowing cloaks; stocky, black-bearded Shemites in silken robes; renegade Zuagirs from the desert; Vendhyans in bulging turbans and gauzy robes; barbarically-clad emissaries from the black kingdoms to the far southwest. Even a lone yellow-haired warrior from the Far North, clad in a somber black tunic, stared sullenly before him, his powerful hands gripping the hilt of a heavy longsword that rested before him with the chape of its scabbard on the floor.
Some had come here to escape the wrath of their own rulers, some as informers and traitors against the lands of their birth, and some as envoys.
The blare of golden trumpets rang across the huge hall. An avenue opened through the milling mass, and Conan's little group set itself again in motion.
Conan was afire with curiosity. Though he had fought this Eastern despot many years ago on several occasions—as war-chief of the Zuagirs, as admiral of the Vilayet pirates, as leader of the Himelian hillmen, and as hetman of the kozaki—he had never yet seen his implacable foe in person. He kept his eyes full on the figure on the golden throne as he approached it.
So it came about that he did not notice the widening of the blond giant's gray eyes in sudden recognition. The powerful knuckles whitened as the enigmatic gaze intently followed the towering figure of the Cimmerian on his way towards the dais.
King Yezdigerd was a swarthy giant of a man with a short black beard and a thin, cruel mouth. Although the debauchery of the Turanian court had wrought pouches under his glittering eyes, and lines crisscrossed his stern and gloomy features ten years too early, his hard-muscled, powerful body bore witness that self-indulgence had not sapped his immense vitality.
A brilliant strategist and an insatiable plunderer, Yezdigerd had more than doubled the size of the kingdom inherited from his weak predecessor Yildiz. He had wrung tribute from the city-states of Brythunia and eastern Shem. His gleaming horsemen had beaten the armies of such distant nations as Stygia and Hyperborea. The crafty king of Zamora, Mithridates, had been shorn of border provinces and had kept his throne only at the price of groveling before his conqueror.
Arrayed in a splendor of silk and cloth-of-gold, the king lolled on the shining throne with the deceptive ease of a resting panther.
At his right sat a woman. Conan felt his blood run hot with recognition. Thanara! A diamond-studded diadem glittered in her lustrous black hair. Her eyes fastened triumphantly on the trussed and weaponless figure of her captive. She joined in the laughter of the courtiers round the throne at some grim jest uttered by the king.
The detail halted before the throne. Yezdigerd's eyes blazed with triumphant glee. At last he held in his power the man who had slaughtered his soldiers, burnt his cities, and scuttled his ships. The lust for vengeance churned up within him, but he held himself in check while the guardsmen knelt and touched their foreheads to the marble floor.
Conan made no obeisance. His blue eyes aflame with icy fire, he stood still and upright, clashing with the Turanian king in a battle of looks. Unclad as he was, he still commanded the attention of all by the aura of power that radiated from him. The rumor of his fabulous exploits was whispered back and forth among the members of the glittering throng.
Sensing the strain upon the rope he held, Ardashir looked up from his kneeling posture. Black rage seethed in his face as he saw the disdain of the Cimmerian for court etiquette. He tugged viciously at the rope, tightening the noose about Conan's neck. Conan stood steady as a rock. The massive muscles of his bull-neck swelled in ridges against the pressure of the rope. Then he suddenly bent forward and straightened up again, pulling the rope backwards. Ardashir was jerked off his knees and sprawled with a clatter of gear on the marble.
"I pay homage to no Hyrkanian dog!" Conan's roar was like a peal of thunder. "You wage your wars with the help of women. Can you handle a sword yourself? I'll show you how a real man fights!"
During his short speech, Conan relaxed the taut muscles of his arms, so that the rope binding them went slack. By stretching, he got the tips of his left fingers around one end of the log on his back. With a quick jerk he slipped his right arm out of the loose coils of rope and brought the log around in front of him. Then he swiftly freed his left arm.
Ardashir scrambled up and lunged towards him, drawing his scimitar. Conan whipped the end of the log around with a thud against the Turanian's helmet. The officer was hurled across the floor, his body spinning like that of a thrown doll.
For a split second, everybody stood unmoving, struck still by this seemingly magical feat. With the fighting instinct of the barbarian, Conan took instant advantage of this pause. One end of the log shot out and caught a guardsman in the face. The man flew over backwards, his face a mere smear of blood and broken bones. Then Conan whirled and threw the log into the nearest group of guards on the other side of him, even as they started to rise and drew their weapons. The men were bowled over in a clattering heap.
Lithe and quick as a leopard, Conan bounded forward, snatching up the scimitar that Ardashir had dropped when knocked unconscious. A couple of courtiers tried to bar the Cimmerian's way at the foot of King Yezdigerd's dais, but he easily cut his path through them, slashing and thrusting. He bounded up the steps of the dais.
As he came, the king rose to meet him, sweeping out his own scimitar. The jewels in its hilt flashed as Yezdigerd brought the blade up to parry a terrific downright cut that Conan aimed at his head. Such was the force of the blow that the king's sword snapped. Conan's blade cut through the many folds of the snow-white turban, cleaving the spray of bird-of-paradise feathers that rose from the front of it and denting the steel cap that Yezdigerd wore beneath.
Though the blow failed to split the king's skull as Conan intended, it threw the Turanian backwards, stunned. Yezdigerd fell back over the arm of his throne and overset the gleaming chair. King and throne rolled off the dais, down the steps on the other side, and into a knot of onrushing guardsmen, spoiling their charge.
Conan, beside himself with battle lust, would have bounded after the king to finish him off. But loyal arms dragged Yezdigerd out of the press, and from all sides sword blades and spear points pressed in upon the unprotected Cimmerian.
Conan's scimitar wove a lethal net of steel around him. He surpassed himself in brilliant swordsmanship. Despite his stay in the dungeon and the aftereffects of the drug he had inhaled, he was fired with vitality.
A quick slash sent an antagonist tumbling backwards with his entrails spilling out; a lightning thrust burst through mail links into a Turanian heart. For an instant, raging like a mad elephant about the dais, he cleared it of soldiers and courtiers except for those who lay in a tangle about his feet.