The small thief looked from one pair of eyes to another, then sighed. “Oh, very well. I’ll show you.”
Conan gestured him to lead on, then followed quickly on his heels as Malak started down the alley.
It was a snaking path the little man took, along alleys slick with offal and stinking of urine and excrement, and it led away from the palace. At last, behind a stone building many streets away, he ducked into a shadowed doorway. The Cimmerian trod on his heels down rough steps in deeper dark and musty air.
“We need light,” Conan sighed reluctantly. “Akiro?”
Abruptly there was light, a ball of it resting on the wizard’s fingertips. They were in a cellar, filled with sagging crates and splintered barrels. Dust and cobwebs lay thickly on everything. Akiro found a torch among the rubble and transfered the fire from his fingers to that.
“There is a way from this place to a palace?” Zula said disbelievingly.
On hand and knees Malak counted the large, square stones of the floor along one wall. “Here,” he said, pointing to one that seemed no different from any other. “This is the one. If I remember it right.”
“You had better,” Zula said darkly.
Conan knelt by the stone. At one side there was just enough gap for him to get a grip with his fingertips. He pulled the block up, worked his fingers under it, and heaved it over. Below it was a dark hole, slightly smaller than the stone slab. He seized the torch from Akiro and thrust it into the opening. It was walled in stone, and along one side there were holes spaced properly for hands and feet.
“Ah!” said Akiro. “Whoever built that palace was a wise man. However strong a fortress, it is always wisdom to have a bolt-hole or two. I do not doubt there are others.”
Conan swung his legs into the hole. “Then it will take us inside the palace walls.”
“Are you not forgetting tenscore guards?” Malak demanded. “Sigyn’s Bowl, Cimmerian, they will not be one fewer because you are inside.”
“You are right,” Conan said. “This improves our chances but little. You have done your part, my friend. You need not come further.”
Zula spat loudly, and Malak twisted his mouth. “Amphrates’ jewels,” he breathed heavily, “had best be worth more gold than I think they are.”
With a grin Conan began his descent.
xxii
Dusk rolled across Shadizar as Taramis looked down once more upon the courtyard where the Sleeping God lay. The canopy was gone now, and a different circle of golden-robed priests prayed around the god. Her four bodyguards, and six more black-armored warriors hand-picked by Bombatta, stood watch about the courtyard. She did not like that. They knew what they served, but they had never seen any part of the ceremonies, and there should be no outsiders to witness what would happen this night. But Bombatta’s stupidity had made it necessary.
True, it was unlikely in the extreme that the thief still lived. Even did he live, surely one man, and he a thief out of the streets, could do nothing to hinder her plans in the slightest. But the Scrolls of Skelos spoke of the possibility … no, they spoke of the certainty of danger if the thief lived. And that fool Bombatta had the temerity to sulk somewhere in the palace because she had upbraided him. Something would have to be done about Bombatta when this night was over.
With a last look at the darkening sky, she returned to her chambers. There was much yet to be done.
From the chest of ebony inlaid with silver she took a twist of parchment. Wine she poured from a crystal flagon into a goblet of chased gold. The parchment gave up a white powder which dissolved quickly in the wine. A second goblet stood beside the first on the lacquered tray. It was not sorcery, this potion, but it had no taste and would do its work well, and all spells were forbidden this night save those required by the Rite of Awakening.
She clapped her hands, and, when a slave woman in short white tunic appeared, commanded, “Bid the Lady Jehnna attend me.” Soon now, she thought. Soon.
Thrusting the torch ahead of him, Conan ran in a half-crouch down the low-ceilinged tunnel, its stone walls gray with mold.
“Not so fast,” Malak complained. “Mitra’s Bones, could not whoever built this have given it enough height for a man to stand up?”
“You can almost stand as it is,” Zula said, prodding the small thief to greater speed with her staff in his ribs.
Malak glared at her, but only said, “I hope at least they have stairs at the other end. I don’t fancy another climb of fifty paces in the dark.”
Conan cursed as the torchlight showed him a blank wall ahead, then he became aware that the ceiling was higher here. He straightened, and found himself in another shaft like the one they had descended, complete with holes along one wall for hands and for feet. Without hesitation he climbed.
“A plan,” Akiro called after him hoarsely. “You know not what is up there.”
Conan climbed on. It was not easy with the torch in one hand. The method required keeping both feet in place and balancing while the one free hand darted to a higher handhold. A single miss in that quick grab, and the long fall back down the shaft was inevitable. Too, it was a way of climbing that should have been done slowly and carefully, but Conan had no time for being careful. He pushed on as if it were stairsteps he climbed.
At the top of the shaft there was a black iron bracket on one stone wall for the torch, and a foothole on the opposite side of the shaft from those he had climbed, so that a man could straddle it if he did not mind getting close to the torch’s flame. The stone above had a ring in its center, no doubt to aid closing the bolt-hole behind refugees should the palace’s lords and ladies ever find the need to use the route. There had been none on the stone at the other end, as no one had ever been expected to enter from that direction.
The torch seared Conan’s back as he heaved against the stone above him. With a mighty shove he toppled it away from the shaft, and raised his head into a dungeon lit only by the obstructed glow of his torch. The walls were a rough-cut stone, and the floor was covered with pale straw dried to dusty brittleness. A small creature chittered and rustled away as the Cimmerian climbed out.