The spy waited till the sounds had died. Then, looking right and left, he slunk out of hiding. Garbed in the dress of a retainer of the court, he crossed the courtyard without being challenged. He disappeared into the servants’
quarters and soon emerged, donning a heavy woolen cloak against the chill of night. He gave the password to the guard and was let out. He set out for the western part of the city.
Nobody followed him. The smaller streets and lanes were black as the inside of a chimney. Few rays of the clouded moon pierced their murk.
Watchmen, bill on shoulder and peaked helmet on head, paced the streets in pairs, talking in low voices. Harlots leaned out of their windows and called to the wanderer. Some were beautiful, showing off the splendor of their white necks by low-cut gowns or sheer silken wraps.
Others had haggard and sleazy faces coated with powder and Hyrkanian rouge. But the man hurried on without swerving from his path.
At last he came to a large house in a parklike garden. A high wall surrounded it on all sides, but into a niche was recessed a small door.
He knocked four times. The door was opened by a giant, dusky Stygian clad in white. The two men whispered a few words. Then the palace servant hastened, toward the house, where all windows were dark but one.
Evidently this was not the house of a native Aquilonian. Heavy tapestries and rich paintings, adorned the walls, but the motifs depicted were not western. Domed marble temples, white zigurats, and people with turbaned heads and flowing robes dominated the rich pageantry of gold and silver thread, of silk and satin and curved swords.
Arabesqued oval tables, divans with spreads of red and green silks, golden vases with exotic flowers combined to lend an air of the opulent and exotic East.
Resting on a divan, a big, florid man sipped wine from a jeweled goblet. He returned the salaam of the palace servant with a careless nod.
“What brings you, Marinus? ” There was asperity in the languid voice.
“Have you not enough work to do for me at the king’s ball? It does not end until early morning, unless Conan has called it off in one of his barbaric moods. What has happened? ” Taking another sip, he regarded Marinus with a piercing stare.
“Ghandar Chen, my lord, the queen of Aquilonia has been abducted by an unearthly monster, which flew away with her into the sky! The king rides alone tonight to search for her. First, however, to get some clue to the whereabouts of the reaver, he will visit the Kothian sorcerer Pelias in Khanyria.”
“By Erlik, this is news indeed! ” Ghandar Chen sprang up, eyes blazing.
“Five of my poisoners hang on the hill of execution, so much kite’s meat. Those damned martinets of the Black Dragons are incorruptible. But now Conan will be alone, in foreign lands!”
He clapped his hands. The Stygian entered silently and stood at attention, his dark visage somber and inscrutable. Ghandar Chen spoke:
“Conan of Aquilonia embarks tonight on a long journey. He rides alone, as a common mercenary. His first goal will be the city of Khanyria in Khoraja, where he will seek the assistance of the sorcerer Pelias. Ride swiftly to Baraccus, who camps on the Yivga River. Order him to take as many trustworthy men as he needs and slay Conan in Khanyria. The Cimmerian must not reach Pelias. If that cursed necromancer chooses to help him, he might blast all our men from the earth with a wave of his hand! ”
The Stygian’s somber eyes flashed, and his usually immobile features were split by a dreadful smile.
“Will do. I know Conan, ” he rumbled, “since he crushed the host of Prince Kutamun outside Khoraja. I was one of the few survivors, later to be captured by Kothic slavers and sold! I, born a noble and bred to war and the hunt!
Long have I waited for my revenge! If the gods permit, I will slay the Cimmerian myself.” His hand sought the hilt of his long dagger. “I go at once, master.” He salaamed deeply and left.
Ghandar Chen seated himself at a richly-inlaid rosewood table. From the drawer he took a golden pen and parchment. He wrote:
To King Yezdigerd, lord of Turan and the Eastern Empire. From your faithful servant Ghandar Chen, greetings.
Conan the Cimmerian, the kozak and pirate, rides alone for Khanyria. I have sent word to slay him there. When it is done, I will send you his head. Should he by some magical feat escape, his road will probably run through Turanian territory. Written in the Year of the Horse, on the third day of the Golden Month.
He signed and sanded it. The Turanian then rose and gave the parchment to Marinus, who had been lolling in the background. He snapped:
“Ride swiftly eastward. Start at once. My servants will furnish you with arms and a horse. You shall take this to King Yezdigerd himself in Aghrapur. He will reward us both handsomely.”
A satisfied smile was upon Ghandar Chen’s face as he sank back upon the divan, his hand reaching for the goblet again.
CHAPTER 2: The Ring of Rakhamon
The scorching afternoon sun cast searing rays across the desert like whiplashes of white fire. Distant groves of palm trees shimmered; flocks of vultures hung like clumps of ripe, black grapes in the foliage. Endless expanses of yellow sand stretched as far as the eye could see in undulating dunes and flats of ultimate aridity.
A solitary rider halted his horse in the shade of the palm fronds that fringed an oasis. Though he wore the snowy khalat of the desert-dwellers, his features belied any thought of Eastern origin. The hand that shaded his questing eyes was broad and powerful and ridged with scars. His skin was browned, not with the native duskiness of the Zuagir, but with the ruddy bronze of the sunbaked Westerner. The eyes were a volcanic blue, like twin pockets of unprovable depth. A glint at his sleeve betrayed the fact that the traveler wore a coat of mail under his flowing dress. At his side hung a long, straight sword in a plain leather scabbard.
Conan had ridden far and fast. Plunging across country with reckless speed, he had broken four horses on his way to Koth. Having reached the expanses of desert that formed the eastern end of the Kothian kingdom, he had paused to buy a khalat and some bread and meat at a dingy, dirty-white border village. Nobody had barred his way, though many an unkempt head was thrust through a door in wonder at the speed of this lonely rider, and many an armored guardsman stroked his beard, pondering on this mercenary’s haste.
There were, indeed, few in the Kothic realm who would have recognized king Conan of Aquilonia, for between the mutually hostile Aquilonians and Kothians there was little intercourse.
Conan’s sharp eyes swept the horizon. In the shimmering distance he detected the faint outlines of domed buildings and towering walls.
This, then, would be the town of Khanyria in the kingdom of Khoraja.
Here he would seek the help of Pelias the sorcerer in recovering his stolen queen. Five years before, he had met and befriended Pelias when the Kothian wizard lay imprisoned in the vaults of the scarlet citadel of his foe Tsotha-lanti.
Conan spurred the black stallion toward the distant towers. “Crom!” he muttered. “I hope Pelias is in his full senses. Like as not he’s lying drunk on his golden divan, dead to the world. But, by Badb, I’ll waken him!”
In the narrow streets and cobbled marketplace of Khanyria, a motley throng swirled and eddied. Zuagirs from the desert villages to the northeast, swaggering mercenaries with roving eyes and hands on hilts, hawkers crying their wares, harlots in red kirtles and painted faces milled together in a flamboyant tableau. Now and then the crowd was riven by the armored retainers of a wealthy noble, his perfumed sedan chair bobbing on the shoulders of ebony-skinned, ox-muscled Kushite slaves. Or a troop of guardsmen clattered out from the barracks, accoutrements clanking and horsehair plumes flowing.