Part 7 (1/2)
The four exchanged looks, then elaborate gestures. Conan judged them all to be mutes. At last one of the blacks nodded and pointed to a door in the far wall, plated in mirror-bright silver. It swung open, as if the black had cast a spell on it.
A distaste for sorcery lay deep within all Cimmerians, and Conan was no exception. Moreover, his experience with the breed of magic-wielders had taught him that magic ate at a man's honor and judgment faster than gold. Most of that breed he'd met had ended in seeking to rule all who would obey them and ruin all who would not. Being little inclined to be ruled or ruined at another's whims, Conan could hardly be other than a foe of such wizards.
Reason told him that if Mishrak had magic at his command, he would hardly need the guards. The lord of spies clearly had other resources, beginning with a house built like a fortress.
How like a fortress, Conan began to learn as he and the woman penetrated deeper into it. Their route seemed to have as many turns and windings as the Saddlemakers' Quarter. At every turn was some display of splendor-Aquilonian tapestries, Vendhyan statues of dancing G.o.ds, rich ebony carvings of asps. Conan's danger-sharpened senses picked out spy holes in the tapestries, the sharpened daggers held ready in the hands of the G.o.ds, the live asps nesting among the carved ones.
From time to time they pa.s.sed iron-bound doors set in deep recesses.
Conan pitied any man foolish enough to think they offered a safer way to the heart of Mishrak's kingdom. They would lead any stranger nowhere except to death-and probably not a quick one.
At last the way grew straight. No longer was the floor alone tiled.
Walls and ceiling shone with gilded mosaic work or dripped with tapestries done in cloth of silver and the finest silk. They ended in another guardroom, with an open arch beyond it and the sounds of splas.h.i.+ng water and a flute.
”Who conies?” demanded the chief guard.
This room held six instead of four, one another Shemite and the rest with an Iranistani cast to their features. Neither mutes nor giants, the six all wore silvered mail and helmets and the plainest and most-used swords Conan had seen in Turan.
”Captain Conan of the King's mercenaries and a lady sent to bring him to Mishrak,” Conan said before the woman could speak. She started.
”I am no mute, like our friends at the first gate,” Conan went on. ”I am a Cimmerian and a soldier, and both have a certain quaint custom.
When we have twice fought side by side with someone and they owe us their lives, we enjoy knowing their names. I know not what barbarous land you call home, but-”
The woman's nostrils flared and she had the grace to flush. ”I am Raihna of the Stone Hill in the Marches of Bossonia. I serve the Mistress Illyana.”
Which, Conan reflected, answered his question without telling him much.
He set his wits to devising a new question. Before he found words, a voice like a bull's bellow filled the room.
”Come and let us be about our business. We do not have the whole day!”
Conan took Raihna firmly by the arm and led the way into Mishrak's innermost refuge.
From the splendor of the way in, Conan expected more of the same beyond the arch. Instead everything was bare, whitewashed stone walls and ceiling. Only on the floor did rich Iranistani carpets and dyed Hyrkanian fleeces offer softness to both the eye and the foot. On the floor-and around the pool in the middle of the room.
Five women and a man sat on benches around the pool. Four of the women were a pleasure to any man's eye, the more so as they wore only sandals, gilded loinguards, and silver collars set with topazes. It took nothing from Conan's pleasure in the women to detect small daggers hidden in the sandals and loinguards. He wondered what weapon might lurk in the collars. Like much else in Mishrak's house, the women were both a delight to the senses and a menace to unsuspecting enemies.
The fifth woman had the air of a guest rather than a guard. She wore a white robe, held a wine cup, and seemed older than the others.
Before Conan saw more, the bull's bellow came again. ”Well, Captain Conan? Will you be once more a thief, and of women this time?”
The bellow came from the man on the bench. Conan doubted that he could rise from it unaided; below the knees his legs were shrunken nightmares, seamed and ravaged with scars. Above the waist, he was as thick as the mast of a galley, with arms like tree-roots. The hair of arms and chest was gray shot with white. So were the few strands of beard and hair that escaped the black leather mask covering Mishrak from crown to chin.
Conan grinned. ”Keeping stolen gold is hard enough. Keeping what has legs to run with, if it likes not your company or your manner in bed...
Do I look so great a fool?”
”You've been gaping about you like one, I must say.”
”Call it gaping if you will, Lord Mishrak. I call it admiring fine work. I know now why you have so many enemies, yet live to serve King Yildiz so well.”