`So you had better tell me where the Devi is,’ suggested Kerim Shah. `We outnumber you-‘
`Let one of your dogs nock a shaft and I’ll throw you over the cliff,’ Conan promised. `It wouldn’t do you any good to kill me, anyhow. Five hundred Afghulis are on my trail, and if they find you’ve cheated them, they’ll flay you alive. Anyway, I haven’t got the Devi. She’s in the hands of the Black Seers of Yimsha.’
`Tarim!’ swore Kerim Shah softly, shaken out of his poise for the first time. ‘Khemsa-‘
‘Khemsa’s dead,’ grunted Conan. `His masters sent him to hell on a landslide. And now get out of my way. I’d be glad to kill you if I had the time, but I’m on my way to Yimsha.’
`I’ll go with you,’ said the Turanian abruptly.
Conan laughed at him. `Do you think I’d trust you, you Hyrkanian dog?’
`I don’t ask you to,’ returned Kerim Shah. `We both want the Devi. You know my reason; King Yezdigerd desires to add her kingdom to his empire, and herself in his seraglio. And I knew you, in the days when you were a hetman of the kozak steppes; so I know your ambition is wholesale plunder. You want to loot Vendhya, and to twist out a huge ransom for Yasmina. Well, let us for the time being, without any illusion about each other, unite our forces, and try to rescue the Devi from the Seers. If we succeed, and live, we can fight it out to see who keeps her.’
Conan narrowly scrutinized the other for a moment, and then nodded, releasing the Turanian’s arm. `Agreed; what about your men?’
Kerim Shah turned to the silent Irakzai and spoke briefly: `This chief and I are going to Yimsha to fight the wizards. Will you go with us, or stay here to be flayed by the Afghulis who are following this man?’
They looked at him with eyes grimly fatalistic. They were doomed and they knew it – had known it ever since the singing arrows of the ambushed Dagozai had driven them back from the pass of Shalizah. The men of the lower Zhaibar had too many reeking bloodfeuds among the crag-dwellers. They were too small a band to fight their way back through the hills to the villages of the border, without the guidance of the crafty Turanian. They counted themselves as dead already, so they made the reply that only dead men would make: `We will go with thee and die on Yimsha.’
`Then in Crom’s name let us be gone,’ grunted Conan, fidgeting with impatience as he started into the blue gulfs of the deepening twilight. `My wolves were hours behind me, but we’ve lost a devilish lot of time.’
Kerim Shah backed his steed from between the black stallion and the cliff, sheathed his sword and cautiously turned the horse. Presently the band was filing up the path as swiftly as they dared. They came out upon the crest nearly a mile east of the spot where Khemsa had halted the Cimmerian and the Devi. The path they had traversed was a perilous one, even for hillmen, and for that reason Conan had avoided it that day when carrying Yasmina, though Kerim Shah, following him, had taken it supposing the Cimmerian had done likewise. Even Conan sighed with relief when the horses scrambled up over the last rim. They moved like phantom riders through an enchanted realm of shadows. The soft creak of leather, the clink of steel marked their passing, then again the dark mountain slopes lay naked and silent in the starlight.
CHAPTER 8 Yasmina Knows Stark Terror
Yasmina had time but for one scream when she felt herself enveloped in that crimson whirl and torn from her protector with appalling force. She screamed once, and then she had no breath to scream. She was blinded, deafened, rendered mute and eventually senseless by the terrific rushing of the air about her. There was a dazed consciousness of dizzy height and numbing speed, a confused impression of natural sensations gone mad, and then vertigo and oblivion.
A vestige of these sensations clung to her as she recovered consciousness; so she cried out and clutched wildly as though to stay a headlong and involuntary flight. Her fingers closed on soft fabric, and a relieving sense of stability pervaded her. She took cognizance of her surroundings.
She was lying on a dais covered with black velvet. This dais stood in a great, dim room whose walls were hung with dusky tapestries across which crawled dragons reproduced with repellent realism. Floating shadows merely hinted at the lofty ceiling, and gloom that lent itself to illusion lurked in the corners. There seemed to be neither windows nor doors in the walls, or else they were concealed by the nighted tapestries. Where the dim light came from, Yasmina could not determine. The great room was a realm of mysteries, or shadows, and shadowy shapes in which she could not have sworn to observe movement, yet which invaded her mind with a dim and formless terror.
But her gaze fixed itself on a tangible object. On another, smaller dais of jet, a few feet away, a man sat cross-legged, gazing contemplatively at her. His long black velvet robe, embroidered with gold thread, fell loosely about him, masking his figure. His hands were folded in his sleeves. There was a velvet cap upon his head. His face was calm, placid, not unhandsome, his eyes lambent and slightly oblique. He did not move a muscle as he sat regarding her, nor did his expression alter when he saw she was conscious.
Yasmina felt fear crawl like a trickle of ice-water down her supple spine. She lifted herself on her elbows and stared apprehensively at the stranger.
`Who are you?’ she demanded. Her voice sounded brittle and inadequate.
`I am the Master of Yimsha.’ The tone was rich and resonant, like the mellow tones of a temple bell.
`Why did you bring me here?’ she demanded.
`Were you not seeking me?’
`If you are one of the Black Seers – yes!’ she answered recklessly, believing that he could read her thoughts anyway.
He laughed softly, and chills crawled up and down her spine again.
`You would turn the wild children of the hills against the Seers of Yimsha!’ He smiled. `I have read it in your mind, princess. Your weak, human mind, filled with petty dreams of hate and revenge.’
`You slew my brother!’ A rising tide of anger was vying with her fear; her hands were clenched, her lithe body rigid. `Why did you persecute him? He never harmed you. The priests say the Seers are above meddling in human affairs. Why did you destroy the king of Vendhya?’
`How can an ordinary human understand the motives of a Seer?’ returned the Master calmly. `My acolytes in the temples of Turan, who are the priests behind the priests of Tarim, urged me to bestir myself in behalf of Yezdigerd. For reasons of my own, I complied. How can I explain my mystic reasons to your puny intellect? You could not understand.’
`I understand this: that my brother died!’ Tears of grief and rage shook in her voice. She rose upon her knees and stared at him with wide blazing eyes, as supple and dangerous in that moment as a she-panther.
`As Yezdigerd desired,’ agreed the Master calmly. `For a while it was my whim to further his ambitions.’
`Is Yezdigerd your vassal?’ Yasmina tried to keep the timbre of her voice unaltered. She had felt her knee pressing something hard and symmetrical under a fold of velvet. Subtly she shifted her position, moving her hand under the fold.
`Is the dog that licks up the offal in the temple yard the vassal of the god?’ returned the Master.
He did not seem to notice the actions she sought to dissemble. Concealed by the velvet, her fingers closed on what she knew was the golden hilt of a dagger. She bent her head to hide the light of triumph in her eyes.
`I am weary of Yezdigerd,’ said the Master. `I have turned to other amusements – ha!’
With a fierce cry Yasmina sprang like a jungle cat, stabbing murderously. Then she stumbled and slid to the floor, where she cowered, staring up at the man on the dais. He had not moved; his cryptic smile was unchanged. Tremblingly she lifted her hand and stared at it with dilated eyes. There was no dagger in her fingers; they grasped a stalk of golden lotus, the crushed blossoms drooping on the bruised stem.
She dropped it as if it had been a viper, and scrambled away from the proximity of her tormenter. She returned to her own dais, because that was at least more dignified for a queen than groveling on the floor at the feet of a sorcerer, and eyed him apprehensively, expecting reprisals.