Malak chuckled. “It was all I could steal. It’s for Akiro.”
“Is he close? I have no time to seek him very far.”
“Not far. The way you’re traveling, and to the south.”
“Then we must ride,” Conan said. “Time is lacking.”
Malak fell in beside him as he started forward again. The Cimmerian twisted in his high-pommeled saddle to make sure Bombatta and the girl were following. They were, but still at the distance they had maintained all morning. Conan was not sure if Bombatta simply wanted to avoid his dust, or if the other warrior simply did not want to ride with him. He suspected the latter, and did not care save for missing the opportunities to look at Jehnna.
As they rode, Malak continually glanced at him and muttered to himself. After a time he said, “Uh, Conan? What was all that about reasons why I shouldn’t be here, and Taramis telling you everything?”
“I wondered when you would ask,” Conan grinned, and detailed all that Taramis had said to him. At least, all that related to the seeking of the key and the treasure. Some things, said in his arms, the big youth would definitely not relate.
When he was done Malak shook his head dazedly. “And I thought all I had to worry about was this bringing Valeria back to life. Aiiee! Listen to me! All, I say, as if it was done by every street corner fakir in Shadizar. That’s what comes of being too close to too much sorcery, Cimmerian. You’re beginning taking it for granted. That is when it will kill you, or worse. Mark my words.” He mumbled something quickly, and Conan recognized a prayer to Bel, the Shemitish god of thieves.
“It is not so bad as it could be,” the Cimmerian said.
“Not so bad!” Malak all but squealed. “A girl with a map in her head. There is sorcery there, grant me? A magical key guarded by a wizard, and a sorcerous treasure no doubt under the protection of another mage, if not two or three. This is more than a prudent man should expose himself to. Listen. I know three sisters in Arenjun. Triplets, with bodies to make a man weep and a father who’s deaf. I’ll even let you have two of them. We put Shadizar from our minds, as if we have never been there, or even heard of it. Taramis would never find us in Arenjun, even if she thought to look. Nor would Amphrates. What do you think? We ride for Arenjun, right?”
“And Valeria?” Conan said quietly. “Do I put her from my mind also? Go to Arenjun, if you wish, Malak. I have been there, and have no reason to return.”
“You mean to go on, then?” Malak said. “No matter what I do?” Conan nodded grimly. The smaller man closed his eyes and murmured another prayer, this time to Kyala, the Iranistani goddess of luck. “Very well,” he said at last. “I will go with you, Cimmerian. But only because you’re gi
ving me your half of Amphrates’ gems. This is business.”
“Of course it is,” Conan said lightly. “I would never accuse you of doing anything out of friendship.”
“Of course not,” Malak said, then frowned suspiciously at the Cimmerian as if he suspected he had not gotten the straight of the exchange. “At least there is one good thing about all of this.”
“What is that?” Conan asked.
“Why, as we are the best thieves in Shadizar,” Malak laughed, “which is to say the best in the world, this Amon-Rama will not know we have entered his domain until long after we are gone.”
vi
Once the mountain had brought forth molten rock from the bowels of the earth. A millenium ago had come its final eruption, shaking the ground like the sea in storm for a thousand leagues in all directions, toppling cities and thrones and dynasties. It had blackened the skies with its ash, and in a final, deadly joke, the mountain of fire brought snows where the green of spring should have been and ice in place of the heat of summer for three years. The villagers of the Karpash Mountains no longer remembered why, but they knew it for a mountain of death, and knew their souls were forfeit should they set foot on it.
Half of the mountain had gone in that last, titanic explosion, leaving a long oblong crater with a deep lake, nearly half a league across, at its bottom. Two sides of the great pit were sheer walls, towering a hundred times the height of a man. The other two were gentler slopes, and at the foot of one, abutting the lake, sat a palace such as only one pair of human eyes had ever seen.
Like a gigantic, infinitely faceted gem, the palace was, with towers and turrets and domes of adamantine crystal. No join of stonework showed at any place in it. It seemed a monstrous carving from a single montainous diamond, glittering in the sun.
In the center of that jewel palace was a huge domed chamber, its mirrored walls hidden behind long golden draperies. In the center of the room stood a narrow, pellucid plinth supporting a gem redder than red, a stone glowing as if fire and heart’s blood had been compressed and solidified to form it.
Amon-Rama, once a thaumaturge of the Black Ring of Stygia, moved closer to the thin spire, his scarlet hooded robes flowing liquidly about his tall, lean form. His swarthy, narrow face was that of a predator; his nose had the raptor’s hook. Ten thousand soulless sorceries had extinguished the last light in his black eyes. Like claws his hands curled about the gem, but he was careful not to touch it. The Heart of Ahriman. Every time his eyes fell on it he exulted.
It was when his former compatriots discovered his possession of the Heart that they expelled him from the Black Circle. Some things even those dark mages feared to know. Some hidden powers they dared not risk unveiling. His thin lip curled contemptuously. He feared nothing, dared anything. Merely by gaining the gem he had gone beyond the fools. They would have slain him, had they managed to find the courage, but each one of them knew his powers, now that the Heart was his, and feared the counter-stroke should their attempt fail.
On either side of the Heart his long fingers set themselves in a precise fashion, and he began to chant in a language dead for a thousand years. “A’bath taa’bak, udamai mor’aas. A’bath taa’bak, endal cafa’ar. A’bath taa’bak, A’bath mor’aas, A’bath cafa’ar.”
The crystal walls of the palace chimed faintly with the words, and with each word the glow of the Heart of Ahriman deepened, deepened and clarified. Still more crimson than rubies and blood, it yet became clear as water, and within its depths figures moved across stony hills.
Amon-Rama’s eyes narrowed as he studied the shapes. Riders. One girl and three men, with two extra horses. The pattern formed by his fingers changed slightly, and the girl seemed suddenly to fill the gem.
The girl, he thought, and smiled cruelly. She was the One, the One he had sought these many years. She was attuned to the Heart of Ahriman, and the Heart to her. The woman in Shadizar thought to use her. This Taramis had courage, that she dared think of using the Heart for its ultimate purpose, and she possessed no small ability in the use of powers, yet she reckoned without Amon-Rama. There were many powers of the stone, many uses other than that one she intended. Once the girl, the One, was in his grasp, he would have access to all of those powers. And he would know which to use, and which not to. He would let this foolish Taramis live, he thought, as a naked bondmaid cowering at his feet. But that was for later.
“Come to me, girl,” he whispered. “Bring her to me, my brave warriors. Bring the One to me.”
Yet again his fingers formed a new shape about the stone, and he chanted, this time in words never meant to be uttered by a human throat, never meant to be heard by a human ear. They burned in the air like purest pain, and the crystal walls groaned with the agony of them. The Heart of Ahriman glowed redder, brighter, ever brighter. The fierce sanguine light split and coalesced and split again, casting his bloody shadow on every surface of the room till it seemed as if a score of men were there, fifty men, a hundred. And still he chanted, and brighter still grew the piercing light.