“O, mighty Al’Kiir,” she breathed, “lord of pain and lust, thy slave brings thee a bride in offering. Her body is thine. Her soul is thine. Accept her submission and use her as thou wilt.”
In ages past, before the first hut was built on the site of Acheron, now eons gone in dust, Al’Kiir had been worshipped in the land that would become Ophir. The proudest and most beautiful of women the god demanded as offerings, and they were brought to him in steady streams. Rites were performed that stained the souls of those who performed them and haunted the minds of those who witnessed them.
At last a band of mages vowed to free the world of the monstrous god, and had the blessings of Mitra and Azura and gods long forgotten placed on their foreheads. Alone of that company had the sorcerer Avanrakash survived, yet with a staff of power had he sealed Al’Kiir away from the world of men. That which stood in the cavern beneath Tor Al’Kiir was no statue of the god, but his very body, entombed for long ages.
Two of the guards had removed their helmets and produced flutes. High, haunting music filled the cavern. Two more stationed themselves behind the woman kneeling between the posts. The rest unfastened their scabbarded broadswords from their belts and began to pound the stone floor in rhythm to the flutes.
With boneless sinuosity Synelle rose and began to dance, her feet striking the floor in time with the pounding of the scabbards. In a precise pattern she moved, cat-like, each step coming in an ancient order, and as she danced she chanted in a tongue lost to time. She spun, and weighted black silk stood straight out from her body, baring her from waist to ankles. Sensuously she dipped and swayed from the looming shape of the god to the kneeling woman.
Sweat beaded Telima’s countenance, and her eyes were glazed. She seemed to have lost awareness of her surroundings and she writhed uncontrollably in her bonds. Lust bloomed on her face, and horror at the realization of it.
Like pale birds Synelle’s hands fluttered to Telima, brushed damp dark hair from her face, trailed across her shoulders, ripped away one single layer of her bridal garb.
Telima screamed as the men behind her struck with broad leather straps, again and again, crisscrossing from shoulders to buttocks, yet her jerking motions came as much from the potion as from the lashing. Pain had been added to lust, as required by the god.
Still Synelle danced and chanted. Another layer of diaphanous silk was torn from Telima, and as her shrieks mounted the chant wove into them, so that the cries of pain became part of the incantation.
The figure of Al’Kiir began to vibrate.
Where neither time, nor place, nor space existed, there was a stirring, a hal awakening from long slumber. Tendrils of pleasurable feeling caressed, feeble threads of worship that called. But to where? Once appetites had been fed to satiation. Women had been offered in multitudes. Their essences had been kept alive for countless centuries, kept clothed in flesh forever young to be toys for the boundless lusts of a god. Memories, half dreams, flickered. In the midst of eternal nothingness was suddenly a vast floor. A thousand women born ten thousand years before danced nude. But they were merely shells, without interest. Even a god could not keep frail human essence alive forever. Petulance, and dancers and floor alike were gone. From whence did these feelings come, so frequently of late after seemingly endless ages of absence, bringing with them irritating remembrance of what was lost? There was no direction. A shield was formed and blessed peace descended. Slumber returned.
Synelle slumped to the stone floor, panting from her exertions. There was no sound in the cavern except for the sobs of the midnight-haired beauty kneeling in welted nudity.
Painfully the priestess struggled to her feet. Failure again. So many failures. She staggered as she made her way to the chest, but her hand was steady as she removed a dagger that was a normal sized version of the blade at the god’s belt.
“The bowl, Taramenon,” Synelle said. The rite had failed, yet it must continue to its conclusion.
Telima moaned as Synelle tangled a hand in her black hair and drew her head back. “Please,” the kneeling woman wept.
Her sobs were cut off by the blade slashing across her throat. The armored man who had borne the chest thrust a bronze bowl forward to catch the sanguinary flow.
Synelle watched with disinterest as final terror blazed in Telima’s eyes and faded to the glaze of death. The priestess’s thoughts were on the future. Another failure, as there had been so many in the past, but she would continue if a thousand women must die in that chamber. She would bring Al’Kiir back to the world of men. Without another glance at the dead woman, she turned to the completion of the ceremony.
1
The long pack train approaching the high crenellated granite walls of Ianthe did not appear to be moving through a country officially at peace. Twoscore horsemen in spiked helms, dust turning their dark blue wool cloaks gray, rode in columns to either side of the long line of sumpter mules. Their eyes constantly searched even here in the very shadow of the capital. Half carried their short horse-bows at the ready. Sweaty-palmed muledrivers hurried their animals along, panting with eagerness to be done now that their goal was in sight.
Only the leader of the guards, his shoulders broad almost to the point of busting his metal jazeraint hauberk, seemed unconcerned. His icy blue eyes showed no hint of the worry that made the others’ eyes dart, yet he was as aware of his surroundings as they. Perhaps more so. Three times since leaving the gem and gold mines on the Nemedian border, the train had been attacked. Twice his barbarian senses had detected the ambush before it had time to develop, the third time his fiercely wielded broadsword smashed the attack even as it began. In the rugged mountains of his native Cimmeria, men who fell easily into ambush did not long survive. He had known batt
le there, and had a place at the warriors’ fires, at an age when most boys were still learning at their father’s knees.
Before the northeast gate of Ianthe, the Gate of Gold, the train halted. “Open the gates!” the leader shouted. Drawing off his helm, he revealed a square-cut black mane and a face that showed more experience than his youth would warrant. “Do we look like bandits? Mitra rot you, open the gates!”
A head in a steel casque, a broken-nosed face with a short beard, appeared atop the wall. “Is that you, Conan?” He turned aside to call down, “Swing back the gate!”
Slowly the right side of the iron-bound gate creaked inward. Conan galloped through, pulling his big Aquilonian black from the road just inside to let the rest of the train pass. A dozen mail-clad soldiers threw their shoulders behind the gate as soon as the last pack-laden mule ran by. The huge wooden slab closed with a hollow boom, and a great bar, thicker than a man’s body, crashed down to fasten it.
The soldier who had called down from the wall appeared with his casque beneath his arm. “I should have recognized those accursed eastern helmets, Cimmerian,” he laughed. “Your Free-Company makes a name for itself.”
“Why are the gates shut, Junius?” Conan demanded. “Tis at least three hours till dark.”
“Orders, Cimmerian. With the gates closed, perhaps we can keep the troubles out of the city.” Junius looked around, then dropped his voice. “It would be better if Valdric died quickly. Then Count Tiberio could put an end to all this fighting.”
“I thought General Iskandrian was keeping the army clear,” Conan replied coolly. “Or have you just chosen your own side?”
The broken-nosed soldier drew back, licking his thin lips nervously. “Just talking,” he muttered. Abruptly he straightened, and his voice took on a blustering tone. “You had better move on, Cimmerian. There’s no loitering about the gates allowed now. Especially by mercenary companies.” He fumbled his casque back onto his head as if to give himself more authority, or perhaps simply more protection from the Cimmerian’s piercing gaze.
With a disgusted grunt Conan touched boot to his stallion’s ribs and galloped after his company. Thus far Iskandrian—the White Eagle of Ophir, he was called; some said he was the greatest general of the age—had managed to keep Ophir from open civil war by holding the army loyal to Valdric, though the King seemed not to know it, or even to know that his country was on the verge of destruction. But if the old general’s grip on the army was falling … .