“The Heart of Ahriman,” she said softly, smiling at the blood-red jewel in her hand. “This is the key, Conan.”
“That?” Conan began, then cut off as a tremor shook the floor. The walls shivered, and ominous crackings sounded.
“I should have known,” Akiro mused. “It was Amon-Rama’s will that held it, and with him dead—” Abruptly he stopped to glare at the others. “Well? Did you not hear me? Run, or we are all as dead as the Stygian!” As if for punctuation another quaver ran through the palace.
“The well!” Conan commanded, though the thought of that swim with the possibility that the palace might collapse atop them all was not one he enjoyed.
Akiro shook his head. “Allow me to show what I can do without the interference of Amon-Rama.” He gave Malak a significant look. “Watch.” Chanting silently, he moved his arms in strange patterns—it looked to Conan much like what he had seen at the wizard’s camp, yet in some fashion different—clapped his hands, and a fiery sphere shot from between his palms to strike a mirrored wall. There was no eruption, this time. Rather the ball of the fire spread and hollowed, like the flames of a hot coal touched to parchment. In only a moment it extinguished, leaving behind a roughly circular doorway melted in the crystal wall. “There,” Akiro said. “Now, Malak, have you seen anything to surpass—”
This time the palace danced and swayed, and a portion of another crystalline wall fell with a shattering crash.
“We’ll talk of our triumphs later,” Conan said, grabbing Jehnna’s arm. The others hesitated not a moment in following him through the way Akiro had provided.
Down glittering corridors of ethereal beauty they ran, and when the corridor bent away from the direction they wished to go Akiro melted yet another hole in the sparkling crystal walls. Faster and faster the shocks came, until they blended into one continuous gyration of the entire palace. Ornaments of unearthly exquisiteness burst apart, walls toppled in bounding chunks of pellucid stone, and twice entire stretches of the ceiling fell in solid blocks behind them.
Then Akiro’s magic burned its way through yet again, and they rushed out onto the landing. The lake was in turmoil, choppy waves radiating out from the palace. Conan heaved the hide boat, heavier for Bombatta’s armor already lashed in its bottom, to the water, handed Jehnna into it, then had to hold the craft against the scar-faced warrior’s attempt to push off before the others could scramble aboard.
When all were in, Conan leaped into the boat and snatched up a paddle. “Now,” he growled at Bombatta. The other man dug his paddle in without speaking.
Behind them the crystal palace scintillated with all the hues of the rainbow gone mad. Lightnings leaped from tall spires, up into cloudless skies.
“Faster,” Akiro urged, staring anxiously over his shoulder. “Faster!” He glared at Conan and Bombatta, wielding their paddles with all their might, and grunted. Trailing his hands in the water, the wizard began to chant, and slowly the water mounded beneath the boat. Swelling, the wave rushed forward, carrying the frail vessel faster than all their stroking could have. Malak loudly tried to pray his way through all known pantheons.
“Too much magic,” Conan grumbled.
“Perhaps,” Akiro replied, “you would rather wait until that palace—”
With a roar like the rending of the earth the crystal palace burst asunder. A hammering wind smote their backs, and then the wave they rode was caught and overwhelmed by a greater wave. Bow down at a precipitous angle, the hide craft hurtled across the lake. All Conan could do was dig in his paddle and hope to hold them straight. Did they turn sideways to that wall of water, all was lost.
The beach of black sand approached at incredible velocity, then disappeared beneath the wave. Abruptly the bow of the boat struck against the crater’s slope, and the vessel cartwheeled, catapulting them all into frothing water.
Conan struggled to his feet, fighting the water’s attempt to pull his legs from under him. Jehnna, floudering, swept by him, and he seized a handful of her robes and pulled her to him. She flung one arm around his neck and clung to him, panting, as the water rushed away, leaving them standing a quarter of the way up the slope of the crater.
“Are you all right?” he asked her.
She nodded, then held up the hand not clutching him. “And I did not lose the key.” A crimson glow seeped between her fingers.
The Cimmerian shivered, and did not try to stop her when she moved away from him. From beneath her dripping robes she produced a black velvet bag into which she slipped the gem.
Conan shook his head. The longer this journey went on, the less he wanted to do with it. And yet—his hand closed around the golden amulet at his neck, the amulet Valeria had given him—and yet there were reasons.
He was surprised to realize that all of the party were not only alive but on their feet, if soaked and bedraggled, and staring at one another in di
sbelief that they still lived. Fear had apparently driven the horses despite their hobbles, for they stood, whickering nervously, higher still on the slope. The boat lay below them, and from there to the water were scattered the remains of their camp, such as was left. The cooking pot was gone, and half the waterbags, and a single blanket remained tangled in the rushes.
On the far side of the lake the only sign that the palace had ever been was a vast hole which the waters of the lake were quickly filling. Akiro stared toward it with something approaching sadness on his face. “All a creation of his will,” he said quietly. “It was magnificent.”
“Magnificent?” Zula’s voice squeaked with incredulity. “Magnificent?”
“I would as soon be far away from it,” Jehnna said. “And I can sense the treasure, now that I hold the key.” At that Bombatta hurried to her, hovering protectively and glaring at Zula and Conan as if the greatest danger came from them.
Malak rubbed his hands together, and lowered his voice for the Cimmerian’s ear alone. “Treasure. I like the sound of that better than wizards. We will help ourselves to whatever the girl does not want, eh? Soon we’ll be in Shadizar, living like kings.”
“Soon,” Conan agreed. His eyes on Jehnna were troubled, and his hand tightened on the amulet until the golden dragon dug into his palm. “Soon.”
xiv
It was possible, Conan reflected as he rode southward, that Akiro’s cures were worse than the wounds they were meant to heal. Gray-flanked mountains reared about him, cut with a hundred narrow valleys that could serve as roads for attack and an endless string of pinched passes where ambush could blossom in blood, but he found it hard to keep his mind on anything but the bandages, smeared with foul-smelling ointment, that covered the gashes the ape-creature had opened. Worse than the stench, they itched with a fury. Surreptitiously he scratched at the linen folds wrapped around his chest.