The auburn-haired woman moved nothing but a single hand, which darted to close over the hand that held the dagger. Sularia’s blue eyes widened in disbelief as her lunge was stopped by a grip made steel by long hours with a sword. Karela knotted her other hand in those blonde tresses, tight enough to force the women to meet her hard emerald gaze. Slowly she twisted, forcing the dagger and the hand that held it alike to turn.
“Despite it all,” she whispered to the blonde, “you might have lived had not you put your sluttish hands on him.” With all her strength she drove the dagger home in Sularia’s heart.
Letting the dead woman fall, Karela retrieved her sword and wiped the blade contemptuously on a wall hanging. There was still the Cimmerian.
Her mind whirling with a thousand thoughts of what she would do to him when she found him, she stalked from the room. Almost she had been ready to let him live, but Sularia had brought it all flooding back, all the thousand humiliations she had suffered because of him. That he had lain with such as Sularia was the worst humiliation of all, though when she questioned that strange thought her mind skittered away from answering.
Then, from a colonnaded gallery, she saw him in a courtyard below, lost in thought. No doubt he still wondered how to find this precious Ariane of his. Her beautiful face twisted in a savage snarl. From the corner of her eye she caught a movement below, and her breath suddenly would not come. Vegentius had entered the courtyard, and Conan had not moved. Slowly, like a murderer in the night, the big soldier, as big as Conan, crept forward, ensanguined sword upraised. His red-crested helmet and chain mail looked untouched, though that bloody blade was proof he had seen fighting. At any moment he would strike, and she would see Conan die. Tears ran down her face. Tears of joy, she told herself. It would give her much joy to see the Cimmerian meet his death. Much joy.
“Conan!” she screamed. “Behind you!”
Conan listened to the approaching footsteps, footsteps that grew less wary by the second. The Cimmerian’s hand already rested on his sword hilt. He did not know who it was that crept toward him, save that by his actions he was an enemy. Whoever he was, a few steps more and the surpriser would be the one surprised. Just one step more.
“Conan!” a scream rang out. “Behind you!”
Cursing his lost advantage the Cimmerian threw himself forward, tucking his shoulder under as he hit the flagstones, drawing his scimitar as he rolled to his feet. He found himself facing a very surprised Vegentius.
A quick glance upward showed him the source of the shout, Karela, half hanging over the stone rail of a gallery two stories above the courtyard. He knew it had to be his imagination, yet in that brief look he could have sworn that she was crying. It did not matter, in any case. He must concern himself with the man he faced.
Vegentius wore a grin as
if what was to come were the greatest wish of his life. “Long have I wanted to face you with steel, barbar,” he said. His face yet bore the yellowing bruises of their last encounter.
“That is why you try to sneak up behind me?” Conan sneered.
“Die, barbar!” the big soldier thundered, launching a towering overhead blow with his sword.
Conan’s blade rose to meet it with a clang, and immediately he moved from defense to offense. Almost without moving their feet the two men faced each other, blades ringing like hammer and anvil. But it was always Conan’s blade that was the hammer, always he attacking, always Vegentius parrying, ever more desperately. It was time to end, the Cimmerian thought. With a mighty swing, he struck. Blood fountained from the headless trunk of the Commander of the Golden Leopards. As the body toppled, Conan was already turning to look for Karela. The gallery was empty.
Still, he could not suppress a complacent smile at the thought that she did not hate him as much as she pretended. Else why had she cried out?
He looked around as Hordo hurried into the courtyard.
“Vegentius?” the one-eyed man asked, looking at the headless body. “I saw Albanus,” he went on when Conan nodded. “And Ariane and the imposter. But when I got to where I saw them, they were gone. I think they were headed for the old part of the Palace.” He hesitated. “Have you seen Karela, Cimmerian? I can’t find her, and I do not want to lose her again.”
Conan pointed out the gallery where Karela had stood. “Find her if you can, Hordo. I’ve another woman to seek.”
Hordo nodded, and the two men parted in opposite directions.
Conan wished the bearded man luck, though he suspected Karela had disappeared once more. But his own concern was still Ariane. He could not imagine why Albanus would go into the ancient portion of the Palace, unless it was to escape by way of one of the secret passages. If Jelanna knew some of them, it seemed reasonable that the hawk-faced lord might also. Yet the Cimmerian did not think he could find even the one he had escaped through, lost as it was in that maze of pitch-dark corridors. There was only the wolf pit to hope for. And hoping against hope Conan ran.
He thanked every god he could think of that he encountered no Golden Leopards as he sped through the Palace, into the rough stone corridor he remembered so well. He could afford not the slightest delay if he was to reach the wolf pit before Albanus departed. If Albanus had gone to the wolf pit. If Ariane was still alive. He refused to admit any of those ifs. They would be there. They had to be.
Almost to the pit, he heard Albanus’ voice reverberating from that domed ceiling. The Cimmerian allowed himself one brief sigh of relief before entering the chamber, his eyes like blue steel.
“With this I will destroy them,” Albanus was saying, caressing a blue crystal sphere in his hands as he spoke. The imposter stood beside him, and Ariane, staring unnaturally ahead, but the hawk-faced man appeared to speak only to himself. “With this I will unleash such power—”
Sorcery, Conan thought, yet it was too late to stop his advance. Albanus’ dark eyes were on him already, and annoyingly seemed to see him as an irritation rather than a danger.
“Kill him, Garian,” the nobleman said, and turned his attention back to the blue sphere. Ariane did not move or change expression.
Did the man truly think he was Garian, Conan wondered as the duplicate advanced. He noticed the sword the other carried, then, the same serpentine blade that he had sold to Demetrio what seemed like so long ago. That it was a sorceled weapon he no longer had any doubt, and his belief was confirmed when the blade was raised. A hungry, metallic whine sounded, the same he had thought he imagined when facing Melius.
Still he set himself. Death came when it would. No man could flee his appointed time.
The false Garian’s blade blazed into motion, and Conan swung to block it. The shock of that meeting of blades nearly tore the Cimmerian’s sword from his grip. There had been no such strength in Melius’ blows. That force came not from any sorcery, but from the man wielding the blade, yet Conan refused to believe that anything human could have so much strength. The hair on the back of his neck rose. Nothing human. Warily he backed away, wondering what it was he faced.
Cupping the blue crystal, ignoring the two who faced each other not twenty paces from him, Albanus began to chant. “Af-far mearoth, Omini deas kaan … .”