“Lodgings!” Ferian gaped like a fish in surprise and relief. “Is that all? Of course. You can have a room for … for ten days.”
“A fair man,” Conan murmured sardonically. “Your best room. Not the sty I slept in last night.”
The fat man snickered greasily. “Unless I misread me the look on Zasha’s face, you did little sleeping.” He cleared his throat heavily at the look on Conan’s face. “Very well. The best room.”
“And not for ten days. For a month.”
“A month!”
“And some small information.”
“This is in place of the information!” Ferian howled.
“Information,” Conan said firmly. “I’ll not ask to be the only one to get it, as we first spoke of, but for that month you must keep me informed, and betimes.”
“I have not even agreed to the month!”
“Oh, yes. Food and drink must be included. I have hearty appetites,” he laughed. Tipping up his mug, he emptied it down his throat. “I’ll have more of that Khorajan.”
Ferian clutched at his shiny scalp as if wishing he had hair to pull out by the roots. “Do you want anything else? This tavern? My mistress? I have a daughter somewhere—in Zamora, I think. Do you want me to find her and bring her to your bed?”
“Is she pretty?” Conan asked. He paused as if considering, then shook his head. “No, the lodgings and the rest will be enough.” Ferian spluttered, his beady eyes bulging in his fat face. “Of course,” the Cimmerian continued, “you could continue in my debt. You do understand I’d want just the right piece of information, do you not? ’Twas good value I gave, and I’ll expect the same in return. It would be well if you found it quickly.” A growl had entered his voice, and his face had slowly darkened. “You know we barbars are not so understanding as you civilized men. Why, if a tenday or two passed with you silent, I might think you wished to take advantage of me. Such would make me angry. I might even—” His big hands abruptly clutched the bar as if he intended to vault it.
Ferian’s mouth worked for a moment before he managed to shout “No!” and seized Conan’s hand in his. “Done,” he cried. “It’s done. The month and the rest. Done!”
“Done,” Conan said.
The fat innkeeper stared at him. “A month,” he moaned. “My serving wenches will spend the whole time in your bed. You keep your hands off them, Cimmerian, or I’ll get not a lick of work from the lot of them. You’ve taken advantage of me. Of my good nature.”
“I knew not that you had one, Ferian. Mayhap if you take a physic it will go away.”
“Mitra be thanked that most of you Cimmerians like your god-forsaken frozen wastes. Did any more of you accursed blue-eyed devils come south, you would own the world.”
“Be not so sour,” Conan said chidingly. “I’ll wager you got twenty times so much for what I told you as what my staying here will cost.”
Ferian grunted. “Just keep your hands off my serving wenches, Cimmerian. Go away. Am I to make up what you cost me, I cannot stand here all day talking to you. Go talk to Sharak.”
The young Cimmerian laughed, scooping up his mug of dark ale. “At least he can tell me what the stars say.” When he left the bar, Ferian was still spluttering over that.
The astrologer peered at Conan dimly as he approached the table where the old man sat; then a smile creased his thin features. The skin of his visage was stretched taut over his skull. “I thought I saw you, Conan, but these eyes … . I am no longer the man I was twenty years ago, or even ten. Sit. I wish that I could offer you a goblet of wine, but my purse is as flat as was my wife’s chest. May the gods guard her bones,” he added in the careless way of a man who has said a thing so many times that he no longer hears the words.
“No matter, Sharak. I will buy the wine.”
But as Conan turned to signal, one of the wenches bustled to the table and set a steaming bowl of lentil stew, a chunk of coarse bread and a pannikin of wine before the astrologer. The food set out, she turned questioningly toward the muscular youth. Abruptly her dark, tilted eyes went wide with shock, and she leaped into the air, emitting a strangled squawk. Sharak began to cackle. The wench glared at the aged man then, rubbing one buttock fitfully, darted away.
Sharak’s crowing melded into a fit of coughing, which he controlled with difficulty. “It never does,” he said when he could speak, “to let them start thinking you’re too old to be dangerous.”
Conan threw back his black-maned head and roared with laughter. “You’ll never get old,” he managed finally.
“I’m a dotard,” Sharak said, digging a horn spoon into the stew. “Ferian says so, and I begin to think he is right. He gives me a bowl of stew twice a day, else I would eat only what I scavenge in the garbage, as many must in age. He is almost my only patron, as well. In return for the stew I read his stars. Every day I read them, and a more boring tale they could not tell.”
“But why no patrons? You read the stars as a scribe reads marks on parchment. Never once did you tell me wrong, though your telling was at divers times none too clear to me.”
“’Tis these Turanians,” the old man snorted. “Ill was the day I journeyed here. Half the stars they name wrongly, and they make other errors. Important errors. Those fools in this city who call themselves astrologers had the gall to charge me with unorthodoxy before the Guild. ’Twas no more than luck I did not end at the stake. The end result is the same, though. Without the Guild’s imprimatur, I would be arrested if I opened a shop. The few who deal with me are outlanders, and they come merely because I will tell their stars for a mug of wine or a loaf of bread instead of the silver piece the others charge. Did I have a silver piece, I would return to Zamora on the instant.” With a rueful grunt he returned to s
pooning the stew into his mouth.
Conan was silent a moment. Slowly he dug into his pouch and drew out a silver piece, sliding it across the rough boards. “Tell my horoscope, Sharak.”