“Wiccana will give you her luck, and guide your words,” Eldran said.
Conan turned from the leavetaking among the Brythunians to resume his study of the stone building. “I will get you out,” he vowed under his breath. “Both of you.”
Pain had long since come and gone in Tamira’s shoulders, wracked by her suspension. Even the numbness that replaced pain had faded into the background, leaving only fear. She did not have to look at Jondra to know the noblewoman’s eyes were directed, as were hers, at Basrakan, the man who held their fate on the tip of his tongue. She could as soon have grown wings as taken her eyes from his dark presence.
The Imalla sat, now, on a low stool. Idly he stroked his forked beard and watched the two bound women with eyes as black as bottomless pits. For the first turn of the glass he had stalked the room, muttering dire threats and imprecations at those who moved slowly to obey him, to obey the will of the true gods, muttering about the Eyes of Fire. Twice so long he had sat quietly, and Tamira wished he would pace again, rant, anything but look at her. His eyes no longer glittered; they seemed devoid of life or even the barest shreds of humanity. In their depths she read tortures that did not even have names. That which called itself Tamira cowered in the furthest recesses of her mind in a vain attempt to escape that diabolic ebon gaze, but she could not look away.
At the doors came a scratching. It was like the slash of a knife in the dead silence. Tamira shuddered; Jondra whimpered and began to sob softly.
Basrakan’s scarlet robes rippled as he rose fluidly. His voice was filled with preternatural calmness. “Bring the Eyes to me.”
One door opened a crack, and Jbeil entered diffidently. “I have not your knowledge, Basrakan Imalla,” the gaunt man said as if he dared not breathe, “but these fit the description my poor ears heard.” The gems he extended in his hands gleamed in the lamp light.
Tamira’s eyes widened. The black-robed man held Jondra’s necklace and tiara.
Basrakan put out a hand; the jewelry was laid in his palm. From beneath his blood-red robes he produced a dagger. Almost delicately he picked at the settings around the two great rubies. Gold, sapphires and black opals he threw aside like trash. Slowly his hands rose before his face, each cupping one sanguine gem.
“They are mine at last,” he said as if to himself. “All power is mine.” His head swiveled—no other muscle moved—to regard the two naked women suspended in chains. “Before this sun sets the doubters will have their proof. Confine these women, Jbeil. This day they will be given to the old gods.”
Tamira shivered, and for an instant she teetered on the brink of unconsciousness. Given to the old gods. Sacrificed—it could mean no other. She wanted to cry out, to plead, but her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. Wildly she stared at the swarthy, turbanned men who appeared to take her from her bonds. Her limbs would not work; she could not stand unaided. As she was carried from the room, her eyes sought desperately for Basrakan, the man who had the power of life and death here, the man who could, who must change his edict. The stern-faced Imalla stood before a table on which rested the rubies, his long fingers busy among vials and flasks.
The door closed, shutting off Tamira’s view, and a wordless wail of despair rose in her throat. She tried to find moisture in her mouth so that she might beg the cold-eyed men who bore her unheeding of her nudity. To them she might as well not be a woman. Sacrificial meat, she shrieked in her mind.
Inexorably, she was carried on, down winding stone steps into musty corridors. A thick iron-bound door opened, and she was thrown to land heavily on hard-packed earth. With a hollow boom the door slammed.
Escape, she thought. She was a thief, a skilled thief, used to getting into places designed to keep her out. Surely she cou
ld get out of one meant to keep her in. Awkwardly, for the stiffness of her arms and legs, she pushed up to her knees and surveyed her prison. The dirt floor, rough stone walls, the obdurate door. There was nothing else. Dim light filtered down from two narrow slits near the ceiling, twice the height of a tall man above her head. Her momentary burst of hope faded away.
A whimper reminded her that she was not alone. Jondra lay huddled on the dirt, her head in her arms. “He will never find me,” the noblewoman wept bitterly.
“He will find us,” Tamira said stoutly, “and save us.” To her shock she realized that, though all her other hopes were gone, one still remained. She had never asked favor or aid from any man, but she knew with unshakeable certainty that Conan would find her. She clung to an image of him breaking down the heavy, iron-bound door and bearing her away, clutched at it the way a drowning man would clutch a raft.
Jondra did not stop her slow, inconsolable sobbing. “He does not know where I am. I hit him with a rock, and … . I do not want to die.”
Tamira crawled to the taller woman and shook her by a shoulder. “If you give up, then you are dead already. Do you think I did not know terror to my soul in that chamber above?” She made a disgusted sound deep in her throat. “I’ve seen virgin girls on the slave block with more courage than you. All of that vaunted pride was camouflage for a sniveling worm ready to crawl on her belly.”
Jondra glared up at her with some spark of her old spirit, but there was still a plaintive note in her voice. “I do not want to die.”
“Nor do I,” Tamira replied, and abruptly the two women were clinging to each other, trembling with their fear yet drawing strength each from the other. “You must say it,” Tamira whispered fiercely. “Say it, and believe it. He will save us.”
“He will save us,” Jondra said hoarsely.
“He will save us.”
“He will save us.”
Basrakan intoned the last word, and his eyes opened wide with awe at the rush of strength through his veins. He felt as if a single bound would take him the length of the room. He drew a deep breath and thought he could detect each separate odor in the room, sharp and distinct. So this was what it was to be bonded with the drake.
On the table the glow faded from the rubies, from the lines of power drawn there in virgins’ blood and powdered bone and substances too dreadful for mortal men to speak their names. But the glow that permeated Basrakan’s very marrow did not fade. Triumph painted his face.
“We are one,” he announced to the chamber, to the dangling chains where the women had hung. “Our fates are one. It will obey my summons now.”
Tamira started as the door opened, crashing back against the stone wall. She felt Jondra tense as Basrakan appeared in the opening.
“It is time,” the Imalla said.
“He will save us,” Tamira whispered, and Jondra echoed, “He will save us.”