“But why not? By all the gods, I want you, and I need you.”
“I live by my wits and my sword. Would you have me become a lapdog? ’Tis all I could be, here. I am not made for palaces and silks.”
“Then I will go with you,” she said, and stiffened when he laughed.
“The Turanians have a saying, Jehnna. The eagle does not run in the hills, the leopard does not fly in the sky. You would take to my life as ill as I would take to yours. Never a day but I must fight for my life or ride for it. That is the road I travel, and you cannot come with me.”
“But, Conan—”
“Fare you well, Jehnna, and all the gods grant you happiness.”
He turned his back on her then, and walked from the room. He thought he heard her call after him, but he would not look back or listen. As he had commanded, his horse waited, saddled, before the palace.
The sun was almost to its zenith by the time he reached the rough stone altar on the plains. The wind had swept dirt and sand against it, and he thought Malak might have some difficulty finding exactly where Amphrates’ jewels were buried, but otherwise nothing had changed.
Slipping the dragon amulet from about his neck, he laid it on the altar. From his pouch he took the vial Akiro had given him. So long ago, it seemed. Some debts could not be repaid to the one to whom they were owed.
“Fare you well, Valeria,” he said softly. And, scraping the seal from the vial, he drank.
Heat rushed along his limbs, and he squeezed his eyes shut, his horse dancing from an involuntary jerk on the reins. When he opened them again, the heat was gone. He found shards of a vial crushed in his fist, and wondered how they had come there. A glint of gold in the sun caught his eye. A pendant, he saw, in the shape of a dragon, resting atop a strange pile of stones. He bent from the saddle, but before his fingers touched the gold, he stopped. There was something, something he did not understand, that told him he should not take it. Sorcery, he decided.
Well, there was gold aplenty in Shadizar that was not sorcerous, and willing wenches to sit on his knee and help spend all he stole. With a laugh, he kicked his horse into a gallop for the city. Never once was he tempted to look back.