"Wait, Valeria."

The Cimmerian used more Black Kingdoms' speech, as well as hand language. The girl looked at Valeria and shook her head. Conan nodded.

Then girl and Cimmerian both erupted in laughter.

Valeria flushed and covered her anger by holding out a hand for the salted fish. She probably would burst if she ate more, certainly if she drank any more of the Ichiribu beer to wash down the fish. She would still be cursed if she would seem loutish.

The girl served Valeria, kneeling gracefully. She wore a waistcloth that revealed nearly all of a long-legged, firm-breasted figure, with the supple waist and firm arms of a girl only just turned woman.

Valeria noticed that Conan's eyes roved over the girl with unmistakable admiration.

She prodded him in the ribs, nearly spraining a finger against his layered muscles. "I thought you didn't care for black wenches," she whispered.

"Remember the ones about the fort? They file their teeth to points.

These folk-their wenches look more like women and less like sharks."

"If you are so wise about woman, Conan, tell me what the wench was doing. I thought I said 'no more' plainly enough."

"Oh, you did. Then you used the gestures that said you were with child.

The wench thought you needed more, for yourself and the babe."

"With child?" Valeria's jaw dropped so that she was not sure the words came out in sensible speech. Conan's grin told her that, unfortunately, they had. "I've not had a chance in years!"

"Small wonder, then, you're out of temper with men. None have shown they can tell a fine woman when they see one, so of course-"

"You clatterjawed Cimmerian oaf!" Or at least Valeria started to say that, with the intent of following it with a slap. Instead, she doubled up with laughter, upsetting her bowl. Conan patted her on the shoulder.

"Easy, woman. I was jesting."

Valeria almost wished he were not. She did wish that his hand would linger, so she reached up and held it with both of her own. She knew that Conan could break her grip as if she were a child, but she hoped he would do no such thing.

He did not. He left his hand on her bare shoulder long enough for the serving wench to raise her eyebrows, then wink at the boy. A moment later, Valeria and Conan were alone.

"They'll be listening," he whispered. "If you come closer, they'll hear nothing of what we say."

Valeria was ready to come as close as the Cimmerian could wish, but she sensed that this was not the time. She also heard a warning in his voice, and wanted to curse aloud in frustration. Had they, after all, not found safety among the Ichiribu?

Now the air in the cave whirled and moaned, as if it sought to flee the Living Wind and cried out in fear of its pursuer. Ryku clung to his perch with arms and legs alike, and could have wished for a tail like a monkey. All thought of concealment had long since left him.

It did not matter, for the Speakers had no care or thought to give to anything save the globe in the center of their circle. The globe... and the Living Wind they were bringing into it.

The light of the Living Wind now seemed an eye-searing flood, pouring from the tunnel like a stream in the rainy season. But no stream ever leaped like a fountain to pour downward and vanish into a globe that somehow remained as clear as a mountain pool for all the light that it swallowed.

Then Ryku saw the globe quiver, once, twice, three times. He looked at the eight-footed bronze bowl that held it, each foot of the bowl wrought in the form of a gilded fish, and saw that the bowl was also quivering. Then he blinked and spared a hand to rub his eyes, for he thought he saw pale green smoke rising from the vessel.

A moment later, the wind seemed to redouble, something that Ryku would not have believed possible. He came within a hair of losing his perch.

He resumed a two-handed grip, closed his eyes... and opened them again when he smelled smoke.

Shadowy shapes now danced furiously within the clear globe, which was turning an angry crimson, with hardly a tint of sapphire. Some of the shapes might have been called human, others were serpents, still others things for which there was no name outside of nightmares... where Ryku most earnestly hoped they would remain.

But even if they came forth from the globe as living flesh, he must face them open-eyed and unflinching. How otherwise could he hope for the power of a Speaker, that would gain him what he most craved?

The smoke was rising from the bowl, and from the eight legs. The legs seemed to glow as if they had been heated over a forge, and Ryku thought he saw one of them bending. Had the weight of the globe suddenly increased out of all measure, because of the Living Wind entering it?

The eight Speakers certainly saw the smoke, and from their looks, it was obvious they knew that it meant something fearful. Or perhaps it was only the smell; when a whiff blew past Ryku, he nearly spewed.

He had barely commanded his stomach when all eight legs of the bowl seemed to melt at once. Smoke disgorged from the dissolving supports, from the bowl, and, as it seemed, from the globe itself.

Courage worthy of front-rank warriors and a lifetime of dedication held the Speakers to their task about the globe. Neither availed them against the Living Wind run wild.

The smoke vanished as if a giant mouth had sucked it all in at one gulp. The bowl and the eight legs became a bubbling pool of molten bronze, searing the eyes as would the mouth of a volcano. The globe wavered, impossibly enough held in midair by powers Ryku dared not imagine.

Then the Speakers or their powers, or both, failed, and the globe fell.

It splashed into the molten metal, and gobs of liquid bronze flew about. The Speakers' discipline could not hold against such pain. They screamed and leaped like monkeys beset by bees, or like warthogs attacked by driver ants.

The globe wavered again. The shadow shapes within took a more solid form-two humans, a man and a woman-and then vanished. By this time, the substance of the globe was melting down into the searing metal and feeding a great tongue of liquid fire that reached out toward the circle of Speakers.

The Speakers' silence had broken; now their courage faltered. Yet still they did not run. They opened their circle wider and held their staves with both hands at waist level. Their chanting grew louder, for all that it came from throats raw with pain and fear.

The tongue of fire gathered itself and leaped. Crimson flames as thin as the air wrapped themselves about one of the Speakers' staves. The Speaker dropped it with a cry, but it did not fall.

Instead, the flames whirled the stave up to the ceiling of the cave and held it there while they consumed it. Not even an ash drifted to the floor-but when the flames fell back, they seemed sated, like a well-fed animal.

Far worse was the feeding of the liquid metal. It, too, leaped, to land in a spreading pool about the feet of another Speaker. In a moment, the man had no feet; in another moment, no legs.

In the moment after that, knowledge of what was happening reached the Speaker's brain, as did the agony of being burned alive. Burned? Ryku wished that so innocent a word could describe what was happening to the Speaker.

The Living Wind had this much mercy: the Speaker did not take long to die. Before he began to scream, the fire had already eaten him almost to the waist. Then it swept up past his belly and to his chest, and when it ate his lungs, he fell silent.

His head bobbed briefly on the surface of the liquid fire, now shot with streaks of black as well as crimson. Then it vanished, too, and smoke in a dozen colors swirled over the metal, hiding any bubbles.

Like the flames, the liquid fire made Ryku think of a sated animal as it withdrew toward the tunnel. The crimson flames followed, and as both elements vanished from the cave, the wind died.

The seven living Speakers stumbled out the way they had come. Some seemed blinded; they gripped the shoulders of those ahead to guide their stumbling feet. Others coughed as if mortally sick in the lungs.

Half-blinded, stifled, his own eyes and lungs a.s.saulted by inconceivable stenches and smoke, Ryku clung to his perch until the last Speaker was gone. It would have been much simpler to let go, fall to the floor of the cave, and die a clean and natural death by breaking his head.

Simpler, and very foolish. Now there was something he had not dared to hope for: a vacant place among the Speakers. Add to this the loss of the scrying globe, with little knowledge gained from its use, and even the First Speaker would know that peril unseen in years faced the G.o.d-Men of Thunder Mountain.

If Ryku came forward to show how he might prevent Chabano from using this peril against the Speakers, he might receive a hearing. He might even receive initiation as a Speaker. Then it would be his right to wield the power of the Living Wind.

He barred his mind to the thought that in spite of all the forbidden lore he had studied, he might do no better than the Speaker who had died so brutally. If he let himself dwell on that, he would fall from his perch and die!

Valeria was as fine a woman as the Cimmerian had ever held this close.

But he did not hold her out of pa.s.sion, and what he whispered in her ear was most likely not going to make her warm for him.

"We've been guested with food and shelter," he said. "That means we're not likely to be slain by treachery."

"You leave much unsaid," Valeria replied.