The innkeeper served them himself, a pitcher of deep red Solvanian in each hand and a mug for Conan under his arm. "I have no buckets," he said dryly.

"This will do," Conan said, filling the mugs all around. "And take something up to my room for the girl to eat."

"Her food is extra," Ferian reminded him.

Conan thought of the gold weighting his belt, and smiled. "You'll be paid." The tapster left, muttering to himself, and Conan turned his attention to the astrologer. "You, Sharak," he said sharply.

Sharak spluttered into his wine. "Me? What? I said nothing."

"You said too much," the Cimmerian said. "Why did you tell Yasbet I was going to see Davinia? And what did you tell her, anyway?"

"Nothing," the old man protested. "I was trying to quiet her yelling - you said not to gag her - and I thought if she knew you were with another woman she wouldn't be afraid you were going to ravish her. That's what women are always afraid of. Erlik take it, Cimmerian, what was wrong with that?"

"Just that she's jealous," Conan replied. "I've talked to her but twice and never laid a hand on her, but she's jealous."

"Never laid a hand on her? You tied her like a sack of linen," Akeba said.

"It must be his charm," Sharak added, his face impossibly straight.

"'Tis funny enough for you two," Conan said darkly, "but I was near brained with my own washbasin. She ..."

As rude laughter drowned Conan's next words, Ferian ran panting up to the table.

"She's gone, Cimmerian!" the tavern-keeper gasped. "I swear by Mitra and Dagon I don't believe she could squeeze through that window, but she did."

Conan sprang to his feet. "She cannot have been gone long. Akeba, Sharak, will you help me look?"

Akeba nodded and rose, but Sharak grimaced. "An you don't want her, Cimmerian, why not leave her for someone who does?"

Without bothering to reply Conan turned to go, Akeba with him. Sharak followed hastily, hobbling with his staff.Once in the street, the three men separated, and for near a turn of the gla.s.s Conan found nothing but frustration. Hawkers of cheap perfumes and peddlers of bra.s.s hairpins, fruit vendors, potters, street urchins, - none had seen a girl, so tall, large-breasted and beautiful, wearing saffron robes and possibly running. All he found were blank looks and shaken heads. No few of the strumpets suggested that he could find what he was looking for with them, and some men cackled that they might keep the girl themselves, did they find her, but their laughter faded to nervous sweating under his icy blue gaze.

As he returned to the stone-fronted tavern, he met Akeba and Sharak. At the Turanian's questioning glance he shook his head.

"Then she's done with," the astrologer said. "My throat needs cool wine to soothe it after all the people I've questioned. I'll wager Ferian has given our Solvanian to someone else."

The pitchers remained on the table where they had left them, but Conan did not join in the drinking. Yasbet was not done with, not to his mind. He found it strange that that should be so, but it was. Davinia was a woman to make a man's blood boil; Yasbet had heated his no more than any other pretty wench he saw in pa.s.sing. But he had saved her life, twice, for all her denials. In his belief that made him responsible for her. Then too, she needed him to protect her. He was not blind to the attractions she had for a man.

He became aware of a Hyrkanian approaching the table, stooped and bowed of leg, his rancid smell preceding him. His coa.r.s.e woolen trousers and sheepskin coat were even filthier than was usual for the nomads, if such was possible. Two paces short of them he stopped, his long skinny nose twitching as if prehensile and his black eyes on the Cimmerian. "We have your woman," he said gutturally, then straightened in alarm at the blaze of rage that lit Conan's face.

Conan was on his feet with broadsword half-drawn before he himself realized that he had moved.

Akeba grasped his arm. Not the sword arm; he was too old a campaigner for that. "Hear him out before you kill him," he urged.

"Talk!" Conan's voice grated like steel on bone.

"Tamur wants to talk with you," the Hyrkanian began slowly, but his words came faster as he went. "You fought with some of us, though, and Tamur does not think you will talk with us, so we take your woman until you talk.

You will talk?"

"I'll talk," Conan growled. "And if she's been harmed, I'll kill, too.

Now take me to her."

"Tonight," was the thick reply.

"Now!"

"One turn of the gla.s.s after the sun sets, someone will come for you."

The Hyrkanian eyed Akeba and Sharak. "For you alone."

The last length of Conan's blade rasped from its worn s.h.a.green sheath.

"No, Conan," Sharak urged. "Kill him, and you may never find her again."

"They would send another," Conan said, but after a moment he tossed his sword on the table. "Leave me before I change my mind," he told the nomad, and, scooping up one of the wine pitchers, tilted back his head in an effort to drain it. The Hyrkanian eyed him doubtfully, then trotted from the tavern.

XI.

Davinia stretched luxuriously as gray-haired Renda's fingers worked perfumed oils into the smooth muscles of her back. There was magic in the plump woman's hands, and the blonde woman needed it. The big barbarian had been more than she bargained for. And he had intimated that he would return. He had not named a time but that he would return was certain. Her knowledge of men told her so.

Though it was but a few turns of the gla.s.s since Conan had left her, atingling frisson of antic.i.p.ation rippled through her at the thought of long hours more in his ma.s.sive arms. To which G.o.ds, she wondered, should she offer sacrifices to keep Mundara Khan from the city longer?

A tap at the door of Davinia's tapestry-hung dressing chamber drew Renda's hands from her shoulders. With a petulant sigh, the sleek blonde waited impatiently until her tiring woman returned.

"Mistress," Renda said quietly, "there is a man to see you."

Careless of her nakedness, Davinia sat up. "The barbarian?" She confided everything in her tiring woman. Almost everything. Surely Conan would not dare enter through the gates and have himself announced, yet simply imagining the risk of it excited her more than she would have believed possible.

"No, mistress. It is Jhandar, Great Lord of the Cult of Doom."

Davinia blinked in surprise. She was dimly aware of the existence of the cult, though she did not concern herself unduly with matters of religion. Why would a cult leader come to her? Perhaps he would be amusing.

"A robe, Renda," she commanded, rising.

"Mistress, may I be so bold-"

"You may not. A robe."

She held out her arms as Renda fastened about her a red silken garment.

Opaque, she noted. Renda always had more thought for her public reputation - and thus her safety - than did she.

Davinia made a grand entrance into the chamber where Jhandar waited.

Slaves drew open the tall, ornately carved doors for her to sweep through. As the doors were closed she posed, one foot behind the other, one knee slightly bent, shoulders back. The man half-reclined on a couch among the columns. For just an instant her pose lasted, then she continued her advance, seeming to ignore the man while in fact she studied him. He no longer reclined, but rather sat on the edge of the couch.

"You are... different than I expected," he said hoa.r.s.ely.

She permitted herself a brief smile, still not looking directly at him.

Exactly the effect she had tried for.

He was not an unhandsome man, this Jhandar, she thought. The shaven head, however, rather spoiled his looks. And those ears gave him an unpleasantly animalistic countenance.

For the first time she faced him fully, lips carefully dampened with her tongue, eyes on his in an adoring caress. She wanted to giggle as she watched his breath quicken. Men were so easily manipulated. Except, perhaps, the barbarian. She hastily pushed aside the intruding thought. Carefully, she made sure of a breathy tone.

"You wish to see me... Jhandar, is it not?"

"Yes," he said slowly. Visibly he caught hold of himself. His breath still came rapidly, but there was a degree of control in his eyes. A degree.

"Have you enjoyed the necklace, Davinia?"

"Necklace?"

"The ruby necklace. The one stolen from me only last night."

His voice was calm, so conversational that it took a moment for the meaning of his words to enter her. Shock raced through her. She wondered if her eyes were bulging. The necklace. How could she have been so stupid as not to make the connection the moment Jhandar was announced? It was that accursed barbarian. She seemed able to concentrate on little other than him.

"I have no idea of what you speak," she said, and was amazed at the steadiness of her voice. Inside she had turned to jelly.

"I wonder what Mundara Khan will say when he knows you have a stolen necklace. Perhaps he will inquire, forcefully, into who gave such a thing to his mistress."

"I bought -" She bit her tongue. He had fl.u.s.tered her. It was not supposed to happen that way. It was she who disconcerted men.

"I know that Emilio was your lover," he said quietly. "Has Conan taken his place there, too?"

"What do you want?" she whispered. Desperately she wished for a miracleto save her, to take him away.

"One piece of information," he replied. "Where may I find the barbarian called Conan?"

"I don't know," she lied automatically. The admission already made was one too many.

"A pity." He bit off the words, sending a shiver through her. "A very great pity."

Davinia searched for a way to deflect him from his purpose. All that pa.s.sed through her mind, echoing and re-echoing, was "a very great pity".

"You may keep the necklace," he said suddenly.

She stared at him in surprise. He did not have complete control of himself still, she saw. He had continually to lick dry lips, and his eyes drank her in as a man in the desert drank water. "Thank you. I-"

"Wear it for me."

"Of course," she said. There was still a chance.

She left the room as regally as she had entered, but once outside, before the slaves had even closed the doors, she ran - despite the fact that to be languid at all times was one mark of a properly cared for mistress.

Renda, arranging the pillows on Davinia's bed, leaped as her mistress dashed into the chamber. "Mistress, you startled me!"

"Tell me what you know of this Jhandar," Davinia panted, as she dropped to her knees and began rooting in her jewel chest. "Quickly. Hurry!"

"Little is known, mistress," the plump tirewoman said hesitantly. "The cult professes -"

"Not that, Renda!" Tossing bits of jewelry left and right, she came up with the stolen necklace clutched in her fist. Despite herself, she breathed a sigh of relief. "Mitra be thanked. Tell me what the servants and slaves know, what their masters will not know for half a year more. Tell me!"

"Mistress, what has he..." She broke off at Davinia's glare. "Jhandar is a powerful man in Turan, mistress. So it is whispered among the servants. And 'tis said he grows more powerful by the day. Some say the increase in the army was begun by him, by his telling certain men, who in turn convinced the king, that it should be so. Of course, it is well known that King Yildiz has long dreamed of empire. He would not have taken a great deal of telling."

"Still," Davinia murmured, "it is a display of power." Mundara Khan had never swayed the king for all his blood connections to the throne. "How does he accomplish it?"

"All men have secrets, mistress. Jhandar makes it his business to learn their secrets. To keep their secrets, most men will agree to any suggestion Jhandar makes." She paused. "Many believe he is a sorcerer. And the cult does have immense wealth."

"How immense?"

"It may rival that of King Yildiz."

A look of intense practicality firmed Davinia's face. This situation, which had seemed so frightening, might yet be turned to her advantage. "Fetch me a cloak," she commanded. "Quickly."

When she returned to Jhandar, surprise was plain on his countenance. A cloak of fine scarlet wool swathed her from her neck to the ground.

"I do not understand," he said, anger mounting in his voice. "Where is the necklace?"

"I wear it for you." She opened the cloak, revealing the rubies caressing the upper slopes of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. And save for the necklace, her sleek body was nude.

Only for an instant she held the cloak so. Even as he gasped, she pulled it closed. But then, rising on her toes, she spun so that her hips flashed whitely beneath flaring crimson. Around the room she danced, offering him brief tantalizing glimpses, but never so revealing as the first.

She finished on her knees before him, the scarlet cloth lowered to bare pale shoulders and the rubies nestled in her sweat-slick cleavage. Masking her triumph with care, she met his gaze. His face was flushed with desire. And nowfor the extra stroke.

"The man Conan," she said, "told me that he stays at the Blue Bull on the Street of the Lotus Dreamers, near the harbor."

For a moment he stared at her, uncomprehending; then he lurched to his feet. "I have him," he muttered excitedly. "An the Hyrkanians are found..."

All expression fled from his face as he regarded her. "Men have no use for lemans who lie," he said.

She replied with a smile. "A mistress owes absolute truth and obedience to her master." Or at least, she thought, a mistress should make him believe he had those things. "But you are not my master. Yet."

"I will take you with me," he said thickly, but she shook her head.

"The guards would never let me go. There is an old gate at the rear of the palace, however, unused and unguarded. I will be there with my serving woman one turn of the gla.s.s past dark tonight."

"Tonight. I will have men there to meet you." Abruptly he pulled her to her feet, kissing her brutally.

But not so well as Conan, she thought as he left. It was a pity the barbarian was to die. She had no doubt that was what Jhandar intended. But Jhandar was a step into her future; Conan was of the past. As she did with all things past, she put him out of her mind as if he had never existed.