Michael Stackpole - Conan the Barbarian

“There is no doubting, Conan, that you are a great warrior; but Khalar Zym is—”

“Khalar Zym is a man.” Conan rested a hand on his sword’s pommel. “I shall remind him of that fact.”

Tamara stared at him, then shook her head. “You do not understand.”

“Fear not, Tamara. Get some sleep.” Conan smiled happily. “I have a plan.”

CHAPTER 22

MARIQUE KNELT ALONEin her cabin, her lamps unlit and the portholes shuttered as firmly as possible. She wanted no light, for she desired to avoid all chances of seeing her reflection in the mirror. She could have covered the looking glass with a shroud, but somehow that seemed to anger the voices. She could not have endured their sibilant whisperings, especially when she knew their comments would ooze ridicule.

She’d stripped wall hangings to stuff even the tiniest light leak, and took it as an omen that the only ray which pierced the darkness pinned the Cimmerian sword to the wall. The dark hilt and pale blade reminded her of her mother, bound to the giant wheel before it had been set ablaze. She stared at it through half-lidded eyes, not daring to catch a full reflection of her face in the metal.

Marique hated herself for thinking it, but she was coming to pity her father. Not that he had become old and infirm, not that he was any less glorious than he had been on the day he completed the mask, but in that his obsession nibbled away at his reason. It blinded him to other possibilities, other realities, and to the potential for destruction that lurked in the world.

She could not imagine how he missed that truth. Her mother had been just as certain of the validity of her path, and look where it had led her. In retrospect, he had fashioned her death into a necessary trial he’d had to endure. He’d reshaped their life together into some sort of mythic journey that forced Maliva to endure time in the grave. It was a challenge that she alone had embraced because it was the only means by which she could grant Khalar Zym the power for which he had been born. He would resurrect Acheron as he would resurrect her.

But he had completely forgotten that this was not the way it had begun. Was he of Acheronian blood? Perhaps. Her mother’s records had been vague on that point. True, he was a princeling—a minor one, and a renegade at that—of Nemedia, and some Acheronian blood did run in his veins. But only so much as a single scratch with one of my talons would drain it. Still, from her mother’s perspective, that had been enough to make him worthy of elevation. The Acheronian heritage truly ran through her, as she sprang from the loins of those who had long inhabited a distant Acheronian outpost. Maliva’s parents had been cast out for doing something so foul that even the Acheronians could not sanction it, and the child they had borne had found in Khalar Zym an ambitious man with a taste for tales dark and arcane.

Though Marique had not been there when the quest began, more than once her mother had confided in her their plans. She and Khalar Zym would piece together the Mask of Acheron. They would use blood to further invigorate it. Through the mask, Maliva would lay claim to the full panoply of eldritch Acheronian sorceries—and her mother imagined that even things long forgotten would be revealed to her in full once she wore the mask. She would have the power. She would be the goddess-empress, and Khalar Zym would rule as her mortal consort.

Yet, when death claimed her, her father had reimagined their plan. Or remembered it as it had been told to him, his beloved wife having never confided the truth to him.

Marique decided that this latter circumstance was the case, lest she be forced to imagine her father a complete fool. While his obsession did delude him, it had not rendered him wholly without genius. He had destroyed the monastery in the Red Wastes, a feat unimaginable to those who knew of its existence. Its sister in Hyrkania would fall to him, too—before or after he found the girl and brought his beloved back to life.

She started down the dark road of imagining her mother’s return—an arduous journey she had often taken and never enjoyed—but a sudden crash from above saved her from such dark thoughts. Something had slammed into the land ship. She bolted from her cabin and up a companionway, slipping past Ukafa’s bulk and into her father’s cabin.

Full sunlight poured through the gaping hole in the deck above. Her father sat on a barbaric-looking throne, clad only in breeches and boots, staring at the stone that had snapped oak planking, but failed to pierce the cabin’s deck. A rope had been wrapped around it, then tied to a man’s ankles, much as a corpse might have been bound before being tossed into the sea. The man’s broken body lay twisted on the deck.

Remo!

Marique knelt by his head. Death had not made him any more handsome; nor could it have made him any more repellent.

Khalar Zym lifted a finger. “Do not bother, Marique. I know who it is.”

She teased a slender strip of cloth from between Remo’s lips and drew it out slowly, like a fakir producing a silk for wide-eyed children. It matched the color of the female monks’ robes, save where blood had been used to write upon it. Even before she recognized the first word, Marique could feel the power. She wanted to taste the writing, just to be able to savor it, even though that act would tell her nothing new.

“It’s her, Father, the one you seek.”

It took a moment for him to tear his gaze away from the mask and focus upon Marique. He showed no enthusiasm, no haste; more a languid sense of ennui than anything else. “Of course.”

The girl stood, stretching the cloth out between her hands. “There is a message, in her blood.”

His eyes closed and his head tilted back, his face a serene mask. “Yes.”

“ ‘I have the woman. The Shaipur outpost. You have two days. Come alone.’ ”

Nothing in her recitation had mattered until those last two words. Khalar Zym’s eyes snapped open. “ ‘Come alone’ ?”

“Yes, Father.” She held the strip of cloth in the sunlight so he could read it.

Khalar Zym sat forward, elbows on knees, hands on chin, and for the first time in too long, his eyes sharpened as if he had awakened from a dream. “ ‘Come alone.’ She has a protector. Not one of the monks, but a new player. Remo must have told him how I valued her, yet he demands no ransom. Who, Marique, would dare? One of the Hyrkanian monks would have whisked her away and left Remo tacked to a tree as a warning. And if it were those who slew your mother, they would have killed her, then fallen upon us to destroy the mask.”

Khalar Zym looked up past her to Ukafa. “Stop our advance. I wish to see the place from which this stone was hurled.”

The Kushite bowed his head in a salute. “As you desire, Master.”

Khalar Zym smiled. “Prepare yourself, daughter. What we shall find will be unique.”

“Yes, Father?”

“Yes. A very foolish man has injected himself into a game fit for gods.” Khalar Zym’s eyes narrowed. “A bold move, but his last, and one certain to end in pain.”

TAMARA LOOKED ATher companion and decided, one last time, to risk his tying her to the saddle as he had promised before. “Conan, I have told you I think your plan is brilliant. You send Khalar Zym to the Shaipur outpost and we ride to Hyrkania. We have a string of fine ponies. We will make it ‘ere the next full moon rises. The monks in Hyrkania will not have much, but they will give it all to you.”

The Cimmerian shook his head. “I am not simple, Tamara. Had I wanted gold, I could have sold you to Khalar Zym and saved myself a long ride with a chittering companion.”