Conan had no intention of entering by a guarded gate, though. Finding a tall, spreading tree near the garden wall, well out of the guards" sight, he pulled himself up into its thick branches. One, as thick as his leg, ran straight toward the garden, but it was cut cleanly, a bit higher than the wall but well short of it. The top of this wall was indeed set with razor shards of obsidian. Within the garden, slate walks and paths of red brick wound through the landscaping, and in the garden's center was a small round outbuilding of citron marble, cupolaed and columned, gossamer hangings stirring in the breeze at its windows and archways.

Arms held out to either side for balance, he ran along the limb, leaped, and dropped lightly inside the garden.

Moving carefully, eyes watchful for guards or servants, he hurried tothe yellow structure. It was of two stories, the ground level walled about entirely with gauze-hung archways. Within those arches, the glazed white tiles of the floor were covered with silken pillows and rare Azerjani rugs. Face down on a couch in the center of the room lay a woman, her pale, generous curves completely bare save for the long golden hair that spilled across her shoulders. Above her a wheel of white ostrich plumes revolved near the ceiling, a strap of leather disappearing through a hole above.

Conan swore to himself. A servant must be occupying the floor above, to turn the crank that in turn rotated the plumes. Still, he would not turn back.

His calloused hand moved aside delicate hangings, and he entered.

For a time he stood enjoying his view of her, a woman of satiny rounded places. "Be not alarmed, Davinia," he said at last.

With a yelp of surprise the blonde rolled from the couch, long legs flashing, and s.n.a.t.c.hed up a length of pale blue silk that she clutched across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The nearly transparent silk covered her ineffectually to the ankles.

"Who are you?" she demanded furiously. High cheekbones gave her face a vulpine cast.

"I am called Conan. I come in the place of Emilio the Corinthian."

Fury fading into consternation, she wet her full lips hesitantly. "I know no one of that name. If you come from Mundara Khan, tell him his suspicions are -"

"Then you do not know this, either," Conan said, fishing the ruby necklace from his pouch and dangling its gold-mounted length from his fingertips. He chuckled to watch her face change again, deep blue eyes widening in shock, mouth working wordlessly.

"How ..." she fumbled. "Where..." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Where is Emilio?"

"Dead," he said harshly.

She seemed neither surprised nor dismayed. "Did you kill him?"

"No," he replied with only partial untruth. Emilio's true death had come before their meeting in the tower. "But he is dead, and I have brought you the necklace you want."

"And what do you wish in return?" Her voice was suddenly warm honey, and her arm holding the strip of blue had lowered until pink nipples peered at him, seeming nestled in the silk. He did not think it an accident.

Smiling inside, Conan replied, "Emilio spoke of one hundred pieces of gold."

"Gold." Her tinkling laughter dismissed gold as trivial. Rounded hips swaying, she moved closer. Then, suddenly, she was pressed tightly against his chest. In some fashion the silk had disappeared. "There are many things of more interest to a man like you than gold," she breathed, snaking an arm around his neck. "Of much more interest."

"What of he who turns the fan?" he asked.

"He has no tongue to tell what he hears," she murmured. "And no one will enter without being commanded, except Renda, my tirewoman, who is faithful to me."

"Mundara Khan?"

"Is far from the city for two nights. Can you only ask questions, barbarian?"

She tried to pull his head down for a kiss, but he lifted her, kissing her instead of being kissed. When she moaned softly deep in her throat, he let her drop.

"What," she began as her heels thudded to the floor, but he spun her about, and his hard palm flattened her b.u.t.tocks. With a shrill squeal she tumbled head over heels among the cushions, long, bare legs windmilling in the air, "The gold first, Davinia," he laughed.

Struggling to her knees, she threw a cushion at his head. "Gold?" she spat. "I'll summon the guards and -""- And never see the necklace again," he finished for her. She frowned fretfully. "Either I will escape, taking it with me, or the guards will take me, and the necklace, to Mundara Khan. He will be interested to find his leman is receiving jewelry from such as me. You did say he was suspicious, did you not?"

"Erlik blast your eyes!" Her eyes were blue fire, but he met them coolly.

"The gold, Davinia."

She glared at him a time longer, then, muttering to herself, crawled over the cushions. Carefully keeping her back to him she lifted a tile set in the floor and rummaged beneath.

She need not have bothered, he thought. With the view he had as she knelt there, he would not have looked away to survey the treasure rooms of King Yildiz.

Finally she replaced the tile and turned to toss a bulging purse before him. It clanked heavily when it hit the floor. "There," she snarled. "Leave the necklace and go."

That was an end to it. Or almost, he thought. He had the gold - the amount did not matter - the tellings of Sharak's star-charts had been fulfilled. But the woman had thought to use him, as she had tried to use Emilio. She had threatened him. The pride that only a young man knows drove him now.

"Count it," he demanded. She stared at him in disbelief, but he thrust a finger at the purse. "Count it. It would pain me, and you, to discover you'd given me short weight."

"May the worms consume your manhood," she cried, but she made her way to the purse and emptied it, rondels of gold ringing and spinning on the white tiles. "One. Two. Three..." As she counted each coin she thrust it back into the small sack, as viciously as though each coin was a dagger that she was driving into his heart. Her acid eyes remained on his face."... One hundred,"

she said at last. Tying the cords at the mouth of the purse, she hurled it at him.

He caught the gold-filled bag easily in one hand, and tossed the necklace to her. She clutched it to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and backed away, still on her knees, eying him warily.

He saw no shimmers of magic when she touched the necklace, but by all the G.o.ds she was a bit of flesh to dry a man's mouth and thicken his throat.

He weighed the purse in his hand. "To feel this," he said, "no one would suspect that you counted five coins twice."

"It is ... possible I made an error," she said, still moving away. "An it is so, I'll give you the five gold pieces more."

Conan dropped the purse on the floor, unbuckled his sword belt and let it fall atop the gold.

"What are you doing?" she asked doubtfully.

"'Tis a heavy price to pay for a wench," he replied, "but as you do not want to pay what you agreed, I'll take the rest in your stock in trade."

A strangled squawk rose from her throat, and she tried to scramble away.

He caught her easily, scooping her up in his muscular arms. She attempted to fend him off, but he pulled her to him as easily as if she had not tried at all. Her hands were caught inside the circle of his arms, her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s flattened against his broad chest.

"Think you," she gasped, "that I'll lie with you after what has pa.s.sed here? After you've struck me, called me strumpet, manhandled me..." Her angry words gave way to protesting splutters.

"Mundara Khan is old," Conan said softly. He trailed one finger down her spine to the swell that began her b.u.t.tocks. "And fat." He brought the finger up to toy with a strand of golden hair that lay on her cheek. "And he often leaves you alone, as now." She sighed, and softened against him. Blue eyes peered into blue eyes, and he said quietly, "Speak, I will go. Do you want me to go?"Wordlessly she shook her head.

Smiling, Conan laid her on the couch.

X.

Conan was still smiling when he strolled into the Blue Bull much later in the day. Davinia had been very lonely indeed. He knew it was madness to dally with the mistress of a general, but he knew his own weakness where women were concerned, too. He was beginning to hope the army took Mundara Khan from Aghrapur often.

The common room was half-filled with the usual crowd of sailors, laborers and cutpurses. Sharak and Akeba shared a table in one corner, conversing with their heads close together, but instead of joining them, Conan went to the bar.

Ferian greeted him with a scowl, and began scrubbing the bar top even faster than before. "I've nothing for you yet, Cimmerian. And I want you to get that wench out of here."

"Is she still secured in my room?" Conan demanded. Yasbet had become no more reasonable about being rescued for finding herself in a water-front tavern.

"She's there," the innkeeper said sourly, "but I'd sacrifice in every temple in the city if she disappeared. She near screamed the roof off not a gla.s.s gone. Thank all the G.o.ds she's been quiet since. That's no trull or doxie, Cimmerian. Men are impaled for holding her sort against their will."

"I'll see to her," Conan replied in a soothing tone. "You keep your eyes and ears open."

He hurried upstairs, listening to what suddenly seemed an ominous silence from his room. The latch-cord on his door was still tied tightly to a stout stick. A man might break the cord and lift the latch inside, but for Yasbet it should have been as good as an iron lock. Unless she had managed to wriggle through the window. Surely that small opening was too narrow even for her, but... Muttering oaths beneath his breath, Conan unfastened the cord and rushed in.

A clay mug, hurled by Yasbet's hand, shattered against the door beside his head. He ducked beneath the pewter basin that followed and caught her around the waist. It was difficult to ignore what a pleasant armful she made, even while her small fists pounded at his head and shoulders. He caught her wrists, forcing them behind her back and holding them there with one hand.

"What's gotten into you, girl? Did that cult addle your wits?"

"Addle my...!" She quivered with suppressed anger. "They thought I had worth. And they treated me well. You brought me here bound across a horse and imprisoned me without so much as word. Then you went off to see that strumpet."

"Strumpet? What are you talking about?"

"Davinia." She growled the name. "Isn't that what she's called? That old man - Sharak? - came up to try to quiet me. He told me you'd gone to see this... woman. And you have the same smug look on your face that my father wears when he's just visited his zenana."

Mentally Conan called down several afflictions, all of them painful, on Sharak's head. Aloud he said, "Why should you care if I visit twenty women?

Twice now I've saved your fool life, but there's naught between us."

"I did not say there was," she said stoutly, but her shoulders sagged.

Cautiously he released her wrists, and she sat down dejectedly on the roughly built bed, no more than straw ticking covered with a coa.r.s.e blanket, with her hands folded in her lap. "You saved my life once," she muttered. "Perhaps. But this other was naught but kidnap."

"You did not see what I saw in that place, Yasbet. There was sorcery there, and evil.""Sorcery!" She frowned at him, then shook her head. "No, you lie to try to stop me from returning."

He muttered under his breath, then asked, "How did you end up with them?

When you ran away from me I thought you were going home." He grinned in spite of himself. "You were going to climb over the garden wall."

"I did," she muttered, not meeting his eye. "Fatima caught me atop the wall and locked me in my room." She shifted her seat uncomfortably, and the remnants of an unpleasant memory flitted across her face.

Conan was suddenly willing to wager that locking her in her room was not all that the amah had done. Barely suppressing his chuckle, he said, "But that's no reason to run away to something like this cult."

"What do you know of it?" she demanded. "Women labor on an equal footing with men there, and can rise equally, as well. There are no rich or poor in the cult, either."

"But the cult itself is rich enough," he said dryly. "I've seen some of its treasures."

"Because you went there to steal!"

"And I saw a man ensorceled to his death."

"Lies!" she cried, covering her ears with her palms. "You'll not stop me returning."

"I'll leave that to your father. You're going back to him if I have to leave you at his door bound hand and foot."

"You don't even know who he is," she said, and he had the impression that she just stopped herself from sticking her tongue out at him.

"I'll find out," he said with an air of finality.

As he got to his feet she caught his wrist in both of her hands. Her eyes were large with pleading. "Please, Conan, don't send me back to my father. He ... he has said I am to be married. I know the man. I will be a wife, yes, honored and respected. And locked in his zenana with fifty other women."

He shook his head sympathetically, but said only, "Better that than the cult, girl."

He expected her to make a break for the door as he left, but she remained sitting on the bed. Relying the latch cord, he returned to the common room. Akeba and Sharak barely looked up when he took a stool at their table.

"... And so I tell you," Sharak said, tapping the table with a bony finger for emphasis, "that any attempt at direct confrontation will be disaster."

"What are you two carrying on about?" Conan asked.

"How we are to attack the Cult of Doom," Akeba replied shortly. His eyes bore the grim memory of the night before. "There must be a way to bring this Jhandar down." His face twisted with distaste. "I am told they call him Great Lord, as if he were a king."

"And the Khitan, of course," Sharak added. "But Jhandar - he is leader of the cult - must have given the man orders. His sort do not kill for pleasure, as a rule."

Conan was more than a little bewildered. "Khitan? His sort? You seem to have learned a great deal in the short time I've been gone."

"'Twas not such a short time," Sharak leered. "How was she?" At the look on Conan's face he hastily cleared his throat. "Yes. The Khitan. From Akeba's description of the man who... well, I'm sure he was from Khitai, and a member of what is called the Brotherhood of the Way. These men are a.s.sa.s.sins of great skill." A frown added new creases to his face. "But I still cannot understand what part the Hyrkanians played."

"I've never heard of any such Brotherhood," Conan said. "In truth, I no more than half believe Khitai exists."

"They were strange to me, also," Akeba said, "but the old man insists they are real. Whatever he is, though, I will kill him."

"Oh, they're real, all right," Sharak said. "By the time your years number twice what they do now, you'll begin to learn that more exists beneaththe sky than you conceive in your wildest flights of fancy or darkest nightmares. The two of you must be careful with this Khitan. They of the Brotherhood of the Way are well versed in the most subtle poisons, and can slay with no more than a touch."

"That I believe," Akeba said hoa.r.s.ely, "for I saw it." He tilted up his mug and did not lower it till it was dry.

"You, especially, must take care, Conan," the astrologer went on. "I know well how hot your head can be, and that fever can kill you. This a.s.sa.s.sin -".

Conan shook his head. "This matter of revenge is Akeba's, not mine."

Sharak squawked a protest. "But, Conan! Khitan a.s.sa.s.sins, revenge, Hyrkanians, and the G.o.ds alone know what else! How can we turn our backs on such an adventure?"

"You speak of learning," Conan told him. "You've still to learn that adventure means an empty belly, a cold place to sleep, and men wanting to put a dagger in your ribs. I find enough of that simply trying to live, without seeking for it."

"He is right," Akeba said, laying a hand on the old man's arm. "I lost a daughter to the Grave-digger's Guild this morn. I have reason to seek vengeance, but he has none."

"I still think it a poor reason to stand aside," Sharak grumbled.

Conan shared a smile with Akeba over the old man's head. In many ways Sharak qualified as a sage, but in some he was far younger than the Cimmerian.

"For now," Conan said, "I think what we must do is drink." Nothing would ever make Akeba forget, but at least the memory could be dulled until protecting scars had time to form. "Ferian!" he bellowed. "A pitcher of wine!

No, a bucket!"