“I do not believe you,” she said. “Or those smelly Hyrkanians.” But she did not raise her voice again.
“There is evil in the man,” he said quietly. “I’ve seen the foulest necromancy from him, and I doubt not this is more of his black art.”
“It cannot be. The cult—”
“Hsst!”
The thump of many feet sounded down the street. Pulling Yasbet deeper into the shadows, Conan waited with blade at the ready. Dim figures appeared, moving slowly from the way he had come. The smell of old grease drifted to him.
“Tamur?” he called softly.
There were mutters of startlement, and the flash of bare blades in the dark. Then one figure came closer. “Conan?”
“Yes,” the Cimmerian replied. “How many escaped?”
“Thirteen,” Tamur sighed. “The rest were torn to pieces. You must come with us, now. Those were Baalsham’s spirit creatures. He will find you eventually, and when he does … .”
Conan felt Yasbet shiver. “He cannot find me,” he said. “He does not even know who to look for.”
Suddenly another Kyrkanian spoke. “A fire,” he said. “To the north. A big fire.”
Conan glanced in that direction, a deathly chill in his bones. It was a big fire, and unless he had lost his way entirely the Blue Bull was in the center of it. Without another word he ran, pulling Yasbet behind him. He heard the nomads following, but he cared not if they came or stayed.
The street of the Lotus Dreamers was packed with people staring at the conflagration. Flames from four structures whipped at the night, and reflected crimson glints from watching faces. One, the furthest gone, was the Blue Bull. Someone had formed a chain of buckets to the nearest cistern, Ferian among them, but it
was clear that some goodly part of the district would be destroyed before the blaze was contained, most likely by pulling down buildings to surround the fire and letting it burn itself out.
As Conan pushed through the crowd of onlookers, a voice drifted to him.
“I hit it with the staff, and it disappeared in a cloud of black smoke. I told you the staff had magical powers.”
Smiling for what seemed the first time in days, Conan made his way toward that voice. He found Akeba and Sharak, faces smudged with smoke, sitting with their backs against the front of a potter’s shop.
“You are returned,” Sharak said when he saw the big Cimmerian. “And with the wench. To think we believed it was you who would be in danger this night. I killed one of the demons.”
“Demons?” Conan asked sharply.
Akeba nodded. “So they seemed to be. They burst through the walls and even the floors, tearing apart anyone who got in their way.” He hesitated. “They seemed to be hunting for someone who was not there.”
“Me,” Conan said grimly.
Yasbet gasped. “It cannot be.” The men paid her no mind.
“I said that he would find you,” Tamur said, appearing at Conan’s side. “Now you have no choice but to go to Hyrkania.”
“Hyrkania!” Sharak exclaimed.
Regretfully, Conan nodded agreement. He was committed, now. He must destroy Jhandar or die.
XIII
In the gray early morning Conan made his way down the stone quay, already busy with lascars and cargo, to the vessel that had been described to him. Foam Dancer seemed out of place among the heavy-hulled roundships and large dromonds. Fewer than twenty paces in length, she was rigged with a single lateen sail and pierced for fifteen oars a side in single banks. Her sternpost curved up and forward to assume the same angle as her narrow stem, giving her the very image of agility. He had seen her like before, in Sultanapur, small ships designed to beach where the King’s Custom was unlikely to be found. They claimed to be fishing vessels, to the last one, these smugglers, and over this one, as over every smuggler he had seen, hung a foul odor of old fish and stale ship’s cooking.
He walked up the gangplank with a wary eye, for the crews of such vessels invariably had a strong dislike for strangers. Two sun-blackened and queued seamen, stripped to the waist, watched him with dark unblinking eyes as he stepped down onto the deck.
“Where is your captain?” he began, when a surreptitious step behind made him whirl.
His hand darted out to catch a dagger-wielding arm, and he found himself staring into a sharp-nosed face beneath a dirty red-striped head scarf. It was the Iranistani whose companions he had been forced to kill his first day in Aghrapur. And if he was a crew member, then as like as not the other two had been as well. The Iranistani opened his mouth, but Conan did not wait to hear what he had to say. Grabbing the man’s belt with his free hand, Conan took a running step and threw him screaming over the rail into the harbor. Sharp-nose hit the garbage-strewn water with a thunderous splash and, beating the water furiously, set out away from the ship without a backward glance.