Leaving Sharak beneath a tree to mind the horses, Conan and Akeba set out through the night in a crouching run for the alabaster-walled compound of the Cult of Doom. Within those walls ivory towers thrust into the night, and golden-finialed purple domes were one with the dark amethystine sky. Scudding clouds cast shifting moon-lit shadows, and the two men were but two shades in the night. A thousand paces distant, the Vilayet Sea beat itself to white froth against the rocky shore.
At the base of the wall they quickly unlimbered the coiled ropes they carried across their shoulders. Twin grapnels, well padded with cloth, hurtled into the air, caught atop the wall with muffled clatters.
Massive arms and shoulders drew Conan upward with the agility of a great ape. At the top of the wall he paused, feeling along that hard, smooth surface. Akeba scrambled up beside him and, without pausing to check the top of the wall, clambered over. Conan’s dismay that the other had done so—it was the error of a greenling thief—was tempered by the fact that there were no shards of pottery and broken stone set in the wall to rip the flesh of the unwary.
Conan pulled himself over the wall and, holding his grapnel well out to
one side, let himself fall. He took the shock of the drop by tucking a shoulder under and rolling, coming to his feet smoothly. He was in a landscaped garden, exotic shrubs and trees seemingly given life by the moving shadows. Akeba was hastily coiling his rope.
“Remember,” Conan said, “we meet at the base of the tallest tower in the compound.”
“I remember,” Akeba muttered.
There had been more than a little discussion over which man’s task was to be carried out first. Akeba feared that, in stealing the necklace, Conan might rouse guards, while Conan was sure the sergeant’s daughter could not be rescued without raising an alarm. The women’s quarters were certain to be guarded, while Emilio had intimated that the necklace was unguarded. It had been Sharak who effected a compromise: Conan would go after the necklace while Akeba located the women’s quarters. Then they would meet and together solve the problem of getting Zorelle out. Agreement had been more reluctant on Akeba’s part than on Conan’s. The Cimmerian was not certain he needed a companion on this venture, for all Sharak’s urging.
With a last doubtful glance at the Turanian, Conan hurried away, his pantherine stride carrying him swiftly through the night. He remembered well Emilio’s description of the necklace’s location. The topmost chamber of the lone tower in a garden on the east side of the compound. They had entered over the east wall, and looming out of the night ahead was a tower, square and tall. He slowed to a walk, approaching it with silent care. A short distance away he stopped. There was enough light from the moon, barely, with which to see.
Of smooth greenstone, surrounded by a walk of dark tiles some seven or eight paces in width, the tower had no openings save an open arch at ground level and a balcony around its top. The onion-dome roof glittered beneath the moon as if set with gems.
It was the lack of guards that worried the Cimmerian. True, the avowed purpose of the tower room was to teach the Cult’s disciples the worthlessness of wealth, but nothing in Conan’s near twenty years led him to believe than any sane man would leave wealth unwatched and unprotected by iron bars and locks.
The tower walls were polished, offering no crevices for fingers or toes, not even those of one familiar with the sheer cliffs of Cimmeria. He looked down. The tiles of the walk were scribed in an unusual pattern of tiny crosshatches. Any one of them could be the trigger to a trap, letting onto pits filled with Kothian vipers or the deadly spiders of the Turanian steppes.
He had seen such before. Yet the place for that sort of device was before the archway. There a marble-laid path led toward the tower, stopping at the edge of the tiles. Kneeling, he examined the joining and smiled. The marble slab stood two fingerwidths higher than the tiles, and its lip was shiny, as if something were often rubbed against it. And from that low angle he could see two lines of wear, spaced at the width of the marble, stretching toward the tower arch. Here was located the trap—it did not matter what it was—and something was laid atop these tiles to make a way for the members of the cult to enter the tower. So much, he thought, for the worthlessness of wealth.
Cocking an ear for sounds elsewhere in the compound, he strode down the marble walk away from the tower, counting his steps. Silence. At least Akeba had raised no alarm as yet. At forty paces he turned around. The tower he could see dimly, but the arch that would be his target was no more than a smudge at its base. Hastily he refastened his sword belt around his chest and over one shoulder, so the nubby leather sheath hung down his back. It would not do to have the blade tangle in his feet at the wrong time.
With a deep breath he began to run, legs driving, broad chest heaving like a bellows in the effort for speed and more speed. The width of tiles was clear, then the archway. Almost on the instant he felt the edge of the marble beneath his boot and sprang, flying through the night air. With a thump his toes landed just inside the arch. He tottered on the edge of toppling back, fingers scrabbling for the rim of the archway. For an infinite moment he hung poised to drop into the trap. Then, slowly, he drew himself into the tower.
Laughing softly, he drew his sword and moved deeper inside. Try to keep a Cimmerian out, he thought.
On the ground level of the tower were several rooms, but the doors to all of them were locked. Still, what he wanted was above, and a spiraling stone stair led up from a central antechamber. Sword questing ahead, he climbed careful step by careful step. The first trap did not mean there were not others. Without incident, though, he came to the top of the stair, and to the chamber atop the tower.
Hammered silver on the domed roof reflected and magnified the moonlight, turning it into palely useful illumination that filtered into the chamber. Half-a-dozen archways, worked in delicate filigree, let onto the narrow-railed balcony. Open cabinets, lacquered over gilded scrollwork, stood scattered about the mosaicked floor, displaying priceless jewels on velvet cushions. A crown of rubies and pearls, fit for any king. A single emerald as big as a man’s fist. A score of finger-long matched sapphires, carved in erotic figures. More and more till the eyes of a mendicant priest oath-sworn to poverty would have lit with greed.
And there was the necklace, with its thirteen flawless rubies glowing darkly in the silvery light. Conan appraised it with a practiced eye before slipping it into his pouch. Perhaps it would make the woman who wore it irresistible to men, but then, most women seemed to believe gems of great-enough cost would do that, magic or no. This Davinia would get a bargain for her hundred gold pieces, in any case. His gaze ran around the room once more. Here was treasure worth ten thousand gold pieces. Ten times ten thousand. Ferian had been right; he could carry enough from this place to make him a rich man.
With difficulty but no regret, he put the thought firmly aside. He had turned from thieving, and what he did this night made no difference in that. But if he looted this chamber of all he could carry, he knew it would not be so easy to leave that life again. And he did not doubt that whatever gold he got for these things would last no longer than the gold he had received for other thefts. Such coin never stayed long.
“I hoped you would not come.”
Conan spun, sword raised, then lowered it with a grin. “Emilio! I thought you were dead, man. You can have this Mitra-accursed necklace, and be welcome to it.”
The tall Corinthian came the rest of the way up the stairs into the tower-top chamber. He had sword and dagger in hand. “’Tis a fit punishment, do you not think, guarding forever that which I intended to steal?”
Hair stirred on the back of Conan’s neck. “You are ensorceled?”
“I am dead,” Emilio replied, and lunged. Conan dodged aside, and the other’s blade passed him to shatter the treasure-laden shelves of a cabinet. Snake-like, Emilio whirled after him, but he circled to keep cabinets between them.
“What foolishness is this you speak?” he demanded. “I see a man before me, not a shade.”
Emilio’s laugh was hollow. “I was commanded to kill all who came to this tower in the night, but naught was said against speaking.” He continued to move in slow deadliness; Conan moved the other way, keeping a lacquered cabinet between them. “I was taken in this very chamber, with the necklace in my hand. So near did I come. For my pains a hollow ponaird was thrust into my chest. I watched my heart’s blood pump into a bowl, Cimmerian.”
“Crom,” Conan muttered, tightening his grip on his sword. To kill a friend was ill, even one spell-caught and commanded to slay, yet to kill was better than to die at that friend’s hands.
“Jhandar, whom they call Great Lord, took life from me,” Emilio continued, neither speeding nor slowing his advance. “Having taken it, he forced some part of it back into this body that once was mine.” His face twisted quizzically. “And this creature that once was Emilio the Corinthian must obey. It must … obey.”
Abruptly Emilio’s foot lashed out against the lacquered cabinet. In a crash of snapping wood it toppled toward the young Cimmerian. Conan leaped back, and Emilio charged, boots splintering delicate workmanship, carelessly scattering priceless gems.