Conan and The Mists of Doom

If he had owed nothing to comrades, the Cimmerian would have been using the enemy's confusion to show them all a clean pair of heels. When others' lives hung on your continued presence, however—

Farad was the first to greet Conan, and motioned quickly to a low cave whose mouth had been dug free while Conan was garnering the prisoner. It was too shallow to be much of a last refuge, and held no water—not that the battle was likely to exhaust even the single water bag apiece Conan's band was carrying.

"No attacks?" the Cimmerian said.

Farad looked at the sky. "Would we be here if there had been? And who is this aged boy?"

Again the man understood Farad's tone rather than his Afghuli words, and drew a dagger. Conan promptly slapped it out of his hand, then retrieved it and thrust it into his own belt.

"You are lucky to be alive," he said. "I will keep this knife until you have told us what is happening uphill. Why do you fear the Girumgi?"

The man began babbling a hasty explanation, of which Conan understood possibly two words out of three. He found more sense in the man's tale when he remembered that the Girumgi were one of the more powerful of the desert tribes.

Before the man had finished his explanation, Conan heard the shouting atop the hill die away. As it did, he thought he also heard Turanian war horns, but so far away that it was impossible to tell whether it was a trick of the desert wind moaning around the rocks.

Conan signaled with his hand to Farad: Make ready for an attack. Farad nodded and undid his belt, to bind the prisoner's hands. The man's eyes rolled up until only the whites showed.

Conan glared. "He will cut your throat if you do not submit, and I will not stop him."

"No—I fight—I friend you—I fight Girumgi—" he said, with frantic gestures uphill and toward the right.

That told Conan that the Girumgi had been pressing the attack more vigorously, but not enough else to dispel the mystery. He nodded to Farad, who looped the thong around the man's wrists and started to pull it tight.

Then demons seemed to break loose on the hill above. Fifty men at least were screaming, in defiance, terror, or mortal agony. Above the screaming rose unmistakable Turanian war horns, this time not far away at all. Even better, some of the war cries were also Turanian.

Conan looked at the prisoner, who had fainted. Then he looked at Farad, who returned a "Do you take me for an oracle?" expression.

The Cimmerian shifted to the nearest position that might allow him to see what was going on uphill, or tell where he could send an arrow without skewering a friend!

Muhbaras did not expect another life in another world, for he had served too many bad masters for far too long. He also did not expect anyone to speak well of the manner of his death, or compose about it a poem that would be sung in the halls of Khorajan nobles for centuries or even moons to come. He did expect that his death would make amends to Danar's spirit, if it did not end his torment.

What Muhbaras did not know about sorcery and witchcraft would fill several long and closely written scrolls. He did know, however, that the presence of cold iron, such as a sword blade, could hinder many spells.

All this whirled through Muhbaras's thoughts in the heartbeat between his lifting the sword and its entering the fire. Then he staggered backward as the tongue of fire jerked upward, snatching the sword from his hand so violently that the shagreen grip left his palm bloody.

Like a mortally stricken serpent, the tongue of fire writhed wildly in the air. The Lady of the Mists braced her legs and clutched at her end of it like a drowning man clutching at a rope. Muhbaras heard her chanting, then screaming, loud enough to be heard over Danar's agony, but was too surprised at still being alive to look closely at the Lady's face.

Too surprised, and also too fearful that if she took serious notice of him, his death would be next and in a form that made Danar's look mild. He had not fallen dead the moment his sword pierced the fire. He judged this to mean that something far worse awaited him.

Then Danar's cry ended. The fire around him vanished, and only gray ash remained, drifting down into the valley on the evening breeze, past life, past pain, past fear.

The Lady chanted on, and the tongue of fire now lashed about like the tail of an immense cat. Everyone gave it ample room, except the Lady who commanded it and Muhbaras. He stood as if his feet had turned to stone and joined with the balcony. Indeed, he had to look down to be sure that this had not happened.

He was alive, but knew this could not last long. Since he was a dead man who yet stood, he would not fling aside the dignity of this last moment by seeking to run.

Perhaps his death would not pass unnoticed—at least among the Maidens. Some of them had the souls of women rather than witches. Danar had proved that. They might not be such ready tools for their mad mistress with the example of Muhbaras's death in front of them.

Suddenly the tongue of fire shrank from the height of a tree to the height of a man in a single instant. Then it shrank further, into a sphere no larger than an apple, and fell to the stone. As it struck, it vanished—but smoke rose where it struck, and Muhbaras saw stone bubble and fume as it ran liquid.

They stood, sorceress and mercenary, staring at one another across a patch of cooling lava no wider than a footstool but seemingly as wide as the valley itself for all that either could cross it. The silence around them seemed as solid as bronze or stone, encasing their limbs so firmly that the mere thought of movement seemed futile.

Only the rise and fall of the Lady's breasts told Muhbaras that she yet lived. He could not have told why he knew that he lived, yet he did—and as the moments flowed one into another, he began to wonder if he might go on living.

Do not hope. Death that snatches away hope is the harshest.

That was an old lesson, in books any boy born to be a soldier knew almost as soon as he could mount a horse. Muhbaras clung to it, but he also clung to the thought that he had done something the Lady of the Mists could not have expected, and did not know what to make of it.

As long as she doubted, Muhbaras might live.

It did not occur to him to try to escape while the Lady stood bemused and doubting, perhaps for the first time since she bent the valley to her will. Had he been able to form the reason for this completely, it would have been that any movement by him would break this fragile truce, and make the Lady lash out wildly.

His own death was certain, a death he had faced to end Danar's torment. He would not bring death to the Maidens if he could contrive otherwise.

A sound broke the silence—the clang of steel on stone. Muhbaras still did not move. He did not need to. Without so much as moving his eyes, he saw his sword lying on the stone between him and the Lady.

He had expected the sword to be a blackened, twisted relic of itself. Instead it gleamed as if the finest armorer in the world had lavished entire days bringing out the luster in the steel. Jewels winked in the hilt where only a few disks of silver had shone before—but they did not make the weapon useless.

"Take it up," the Lady said. At least that was what Muhbaras thought he heard, although he could not have sworn the words were not coming from the air. He did know, however, that it would be ill done to make the Lady repeat herself.

He squatted, and without taking his eyes from the Lady's face, lifted his sword. It felt lighter than before, yet as well balanced as ever.

One heard about such swords, in old tales of heroes who had died when the waves still rolled over the fresh grave of Atlantis. One did not imagine seeing one's own blade transformed into such a weapon.

"Cut off a lock of your hair with your blade, honored captain," the Lady said. This time Muhbaras knew that it was she who spoke. He also knew that disobeying was impossible. Never mind the possible consequences—disobeying was a thought that did not enter his mind.

He had cut a lock of hair, the edge of his sword shearing through it effortlessly, when he remembered another bit of witch lore.

Give a witch anything of yours, particularly part of your body, and she can conjure potent spells against you, or at least to serve herself.

Muhbaras allowed this thought to linger in his mind. Then he deliberately thought of refusing.

Instead of blasting him to ashes on the spot, the Lady of the Mists smiled. It was the smile of one to whose face such an expression is newly come and not altogether welcome. It seemed as if she was trying to put herself as well as him at ease.

This seemed improbable to the last degree. Had the Lady any vestige of conscience, she would not have done as she had to Danar. If she felt remorse, it was too late for a good soldier.

But her face was shaping itself into a smile, and after a moment, Muhbaras returned it. After another moment he stepped forward, but he did not hold out the lock of hair, nor put from his mind the thought of refusing it.

"You have nothing to fear from the gift of your substance, honored captain," the Lady said. She looked him up and down with those golden cat's eyes. Muhbaras could not escape the thought that here was a woman considering him as a man. There had been—not tenderness—but what might be called warmth in her eyes.

That thought also provoked no death-dealing spells.

Muhbaras took another step forward, and this time the Lady also moved. Cool fingers touched his, reaching as high as his wrist, briefly gripping it, then withdrawing with the lock of hair clasped between thumb and forefinger.

As the Lady of the Mists withdrew her hand, Muhbaras noted that her fingernails were a muted shade of the same gold as her eyes.

Then he noticed nothing more, until he found himself standing amid a rising wind, with light almost gone from the sky and eight Maidens standing around him in a circle.

It did not surprise him that the Maidens now looked like impatient women rather than daughters of a warrior goddess. It did not even surprise him that some of them were shivering noticeably in the onrushing chill of the evening.

His voice came out strongly when he spoke, what he hoped would be the last surprise of the evening.

"All of you need not come, unless our Lady commands it. I only need guides to the mouth of the valley."

"Our Lady commands all," one of the Maidens said, in a voice almost as flat as before.

It seemed they had not unbent enough to follow his suggestions rather than their Lady's command.

Conan had not found a good shooting spot when the primal chaos seemed to descend on the hillside. Dust rose like a young sandstorm, and out of the brown cloud warriors rolled, fell, leaped, and ran.

In spite of the dust, Conan could tell that some were tribal warriors—no doubt the Girumgi, although he did not remember the pattern of their headdress. The rest were Turanian Greencloaks. Clearly Khezal's roving band had scented trouble in time to ride to Conan's rescue.

The arrival of friends did not, however, ensure Conan's victory or even his survival. Desperate tribesmen were swarming downhill, and they outnumbered the Cimmerian's band two or three to one. Also, the tribesmen could shoot both uphill and down with small risk of striking friends. The Turanians both above and below were not so fortunate.

Best hold with steel, Conan thought, then shouted that aloud.

One Afghuli archer protested; Farad made to snatch his bow and looked ready to break it. The archer slung his bow and drew a long knife, which to Conan looked much the best weapon for close-quarters work.

Then the Girumgi came down upon them. Conan spared one glance to the left flank, where nobody seemed to be either shouting or shooting now. Then his world shrank to the rocks on either side and the dust-caked, wild-eyed opponent in front of him.

He swung hard from the right at one tribesman's rib cage and caught the man's left arm as it swung down. The man's forearm and tulwar fell to the ground; he howled and tried to push his spouting stump in the Cimmerian's face. Conan's blade ended that dying effort, shearing deep into the man's torso and reaching his heart.

He fell in a narrow passage between two rocks, partly blocking it. Conan half-turned, snatched up a rock, and flung it left-handed at the next man to appear in the passage. It turned his face to bloody jam as he stumbled forward on the point of Conan's newly drawn dagger and fell atop his comrade.

An arrow whssshed close to the Cimmerian's ear, from the right. He faced that way, snatching up another rock and leaping forward as well. The tribesman who'd shot was too close for a throw, so close he ought not to have been able to miss. But panic or even haste will make the best warrior hardly more than a child—certainly much less than a Conan.

The Cimmerian struck the archer with his stone-weighted left hand, while thrusting over the man's shoulder with his sword. The first man's head snapped back hard enough to break his neck, and he crashed into the man behind at the same moment Conan's steel entered the second one's throat. Again two tribesmen fell, almost atop one another.

But Conan now stood in an open space, with rocks all around that might hide archers and two entrances that might let tribesmen outflank him. He gave ground, drifting to the left. Along that way lay a single narrow passage with both flanks secure and only room for one man to come at him.

Conan had to kill but one tribesman on the way to that narrow passage. From the shouting and screaming to either side of him, not to say the clang of steel, he judged his comrades were having better fortune.

He hoped so. They had to beat down the fleeing tribesmen before their comrades below realized what was going on. If they came up to help, they could still catch Conan's men between two fires.

It was the fleeing tribesmen who were overwhelmed in the next few moments. Each of Conan's men fought like two, and although there were more tribesmen than the Cimmerian had reckoned, in the end that made no difference.

Conan had just found a moment to catch his breath and roughly clean his blades when more shouting broke out below. Mingled with the human cries were the frightened neighs and agonized death-screams of horses.

Again, some of those war cries were Turanian.

Conan had just time to think that this battle was growing mysteries when more fleeing tribesmen came in sight. These appeared to come from the valley below, and they seemed as eager to climb the hill as their comrades had been to descend.

Like their comrades, they outnumbered Conan's band even had it been at full strength. As Conan had seen at least one Afghuli lying dead or gravely hurt, that strength had to be less full than a captain could wish.

"Crom!" the Cimmerian swore. "These tribal lice won't let a man even stop to clean his sword."

Then he strode forward to strike the new foes, but leaped backward as arrows hailed about him, and one tore at his left forearm. The wound would slow him by nightfall, but the battle would not last that long, and he had fought all day with half a dozen such wounds.

The arrow did the Cimmerian no great hurt. What nearly ended his career was a dying Girumgi who had been lying directly behind the Cimmerian. As Conan retreated, he grabbed Conan's ankles and jerked. Most men might as well have tried to shift the Kezankian Mountains, but the tribesman was a large man with the strength of the dying, and he caught Conan off balance.

Conan toppled, lashing out as he did. His fist grazed the man's jaw, but his head did not graze a protruding rock. A skull less thick than the Cimmerian's would have cracked open. Even the Cimmerian saw flame-shot darkness—and then the dying Girumgi rolling on top of him, dagger thrusting for his throat.

It never reached its goal. Suddenly a slight figure stood behind the tribesman, and a gold-hilted sword descended like the wrath of Crom. The tribesman's skull split apart, and his dagger thudded harmlessly on Conan's chest.

By now the Cimmerian could focus his eyes well enough to recognize the swordsman.

"Khezal. By Erlik's helm, you are timely come!"

"You must be seriously hurt, my friend. Such courtly speech from you goes against nature."

"Would you like me to rise up and strangle you to prove otherwise?"

"Hardly. I might ask for some of those jewels—"

"From my share, perhaps. If you take any from the Afghulis' portion, I will drop you headfirst down a dry well and then bury you in camel dung!"

Khezal pretended to cringe, then turned his head to listen to a distant sound beyond the reach of Conan's ears. (They were still ringing, and his stomach was grateful for being nearly empty.)

"That's the sergeant who was besieging your runaway Afghulis," Khezal said.

"What is he doing here?"

"When I learn, you will be the first to know. But he just told me that he and his men have driven off the horses of the tribesmen in the valley, and are pursuing the fugitives on foot."

"Better them than me," Conan said. He tried to sit up, and the ground swayed only moderately.

"Ho, a litter for Captain Conan!" Khezal shouted.

"I've had worse hurts falling out of my cradle," the Cimmerian grumbled.

"That was not so far to fall as it will be now with you full-grown," Khezal said. He pushed the Cimmerian back down. The fact that the Turanian could do it and that Conan did not care to resist proved to Conan that perhaps he should leave the rest of the battle in Khezal's hands.

It was, after all, thoroughly won, even if it would be a while before he knew exactly how, What would take longer to discover, he feared, was whether this was the last battle of the quest into the Kezankian

Mountains—or, as he very much suspected, only the first of many.

That was too sobering a thought for a man with an aching head, so Conan found a comfortable position and waited for the litter.

Captain Muhbaras rode down the path from the gate to the Valley toward his quarters. He normally walked, the path being rather too steep for horses, and a warrior's dignity prohibited an ass.

Tonight, however, he would lose even more dignity by falling on his nose and perhaps rolling down the hill than he would be riding an ass. His legs had not felt so weak since the first time he did a dawn-to-sunset march with a full pack.

The Lady of the Mists had been appraising him as a man. This he now could no longer doubt. She had also been doing it in full view of Maidens who might be neither loyal nor discreet. Thus whatever was in the Lady's thoughts might already be no secret.

Having a sorceress contemplating one in such a manner could hardly end happily, even if one had no thought for one's personal honor. The tales were many and various about the fate of a witch's lover, but none of them held much hope of avoiding a harsh fate.

However, offending the Lady of the Mists held out no hope of safety for Muhbaras's men. He had risked them to save his honor once, and by a miracle or the whims of a sorceress who was yet a woman, he and they alike had escaped. This good fortune would not come a second time.

Muhbaras bore that thought as one might bear a wounded comrade at the end of a long day's battle, as he rode down the trail into shadows little relieved by the lanterns at the door of his quarters.

"So the Girumgi are at least toying with rebellion?" Conan asked.

"So it would seem," Khezal replied.

"One mystery solved," Conan grunted, and poured more wine into his cup.

"Are you sure—?" Khezal began.

"I am sure you did not learn war from Khadjar and your father to serve as my nurse," the Cimmerian growled. "My head barely aches. I see only what is held up in front of me. I have not spewed or fallen asleep."

"Which proves that Cimmerian heads really are harder than stone," Farad put in.

Conan threw up his hands in mock disgust. "Since my head is fit to hold thoughts, shall we think what to do next?"

The prisoner Conan had taken was from the Stone Clan of the Ekinari. The son of the chief of the Ekinari was sworn blood-brother to the chief of the Girumgi. This explained why Ekinari rode with Girumgi, but not altogether why they had not fought side by side.

"Even had you known the tribal speech, you could not have got from that man answers he did not know himself," Khezal went on. "Nor did it help matters that the rest of the Stone Clan or whoever were his comrades ran off as it fifty demons were at their heels."

"Demons, or perhaps all the surviving Girumgi," Farad said.

"Few enough of those, by Mitra's favor," Khezal said.

Being overconfident had brought better captains than Khezal to lonely graves, but Conan thought in this case the Turanian had the right of it. It seemed that Khezal was not the only one to march to the sound of Oman's battle.

The Greencloaks had been industriously besieging the fugitive Afghulis when the battle sounds rose. Convinced that the battle had to involve Conan coming to rescue them, the leader of the Afghulis called for a parley and offered truce terms.

The Afghulis would release all their hostages without ransom and return their weapons. In return, the Greencloaks would swear not to harm the Afghulis until they had fought and won against the common foe who was surely not far away.

The Greencloaks accepted this offer, and the truce was sworn to last until both sides were released from it by their respective captains. It seemed that the Greencloaks were as sure of Khezal's coming as the Afghulis were of Conan's, and also wished to join in battle under their beloved captain.

So Afghuli and Turanian rode out together, and made havoc in the rear of the tribesmen in the valley. They had a good plunder of weapons, horses, and baggage, and the bodies of some fifty tribesmen were feeding the vultures. The new allies had lost no more than seven, and Conan could see the stone cairn where they lay in the light of a dung fire.

Khezal was still a man to ride with, more so than ever now that the wisdom of years and the experience of many battles had joined his native wits. It was as well to have such a comrade on a quest, particularly one that showed every sign of sprouting new mysteries as fast as the old ones were answered.

Conan had sworn to ride north to aid Khezal in the Kezankian Mountains, and he would not break that oath if all the tribes of the desert and all their intriguing chiefs and chiefs' sons stood in his path. But he would not expect to come back alive, either.

Ten

They were four days' ride north of the battle against the Girumgi. The Kezankian Mountains were peering over the northern horizon, with the eternal snowcaps of the higher peaks glinting pink at dawn and sunset. The breeze told of a world beyond the desert, at which Conan and the Afghulis rejoiced.

Khezal was less joyful, and thought he had cause, for all the Cimmerian's rough jests.

"Here we are, not far from the caravan routes," Conan said. "Yet you complain. There are wells for water, trees for shade, and even refuges for any of our men who fall ill or are taken by the sun. What do you want—dragons to fly us to the Kezankians in a trice?"

"I would rather bind them to seek out the mysteries in the mountains and bring us back word of what they learn," Khezal replied.

"Not slay the wizards outright?"

"I'd not wager a dragon's power against wizards fit to do the half of what the tales say has happened," Khezal said, with a shrug. "Besides, I'm of your mind about dealing with spellcasters. Don't play their games, but close and feed them an arm's length of steel."

Conan nodded his approval. "Then what ails you, my friend?"

"Riding into yet another mystery is what ails me, and don't pretend you are any the less uneasy in your mind about that. Also, we have slain two score Girumgi, and if they are not in rebellion against the king, they will surely call themselves at blood-feud with us."

"Hah. There will be few Girumgi left to rebel if they stand to face us. Moreover, as long as we face that battle, your folk and mine will be readier to forget that they ever so much as exchanged harsh looks."

Khezal looked back at the Afghuli riding in a compact knot behind Conan. Certainly some Turanians rode easily beside them, chatting as if they'd been comrades for years. Other Greencloaks, however, kept their distance and wore baleful looks. The Afghulis, in turn, kept a sharp lookout and their sword hands free.

"Speak for your own men, as no doubt you can," Khezal said. "I am sure of most of mine, but there is always one with a heritage of blood-feud or grief for a lost comrade who can ruin the best-planned discipline. I'll guard your back, Conan, but I can hardly promise that will be enough."

"You're a warrior, not a god," Conan said, slapping Khezal on the shoulder nearly hard enough to tumble the slight Turanian from the saddle. Khezal mock-glared, then turned his eyes forward once more.

"We'd best start looking for a campsite near water," he said, after a moment. "In the middle of the camp, would be my choice."

"How so?"

"See that haze on the horizon?" Conan followed the other's pointing finger and nodded. The horizon did indeed seem blurred, as might be after an evening's drinking.

Except that no one among the riders had touched wine for longer than it was pleasant to remember.

"Sandstorm?"

"I see you have not forgotten everything you learned in the Turanian service."

"No, although one of the things I did forget was your tongue. Some day Yezdigerd may have it out by the roots."

"And you'll stand drinks for the executioner, of course?" The brittleness in Khezal's voice told Conan more than he cared to know about the uneasy situation honest men could face under the ruthless young king.

"I'll wring his neck and snatch you to life and freedom," the Cimmerian replied. "But I won't expect thanks for it."

"You know me well," Khezal said. "And now, if you know this desert, let us seek that campsite. At this time of year it's death to ride in a sandstorm and no small risk even to camp in one away from water. They can blow for days at a time."

The wind moaned steadily outside Muhbaras's quarters, occasionally rising to a shriek. He shivered, not so much at the wind's cry but at the man sitting across the room from him.

Through the smoke from the bronze brazier Ermik's face looked even more complacent and self-satisfied than usual. It was hard to believe, but all the man's time in the mountains had not cost him any flesh. Muhbaras wondered how much money he had spent in bribes squeezing banquets from the rocks, or perhaps how many pack animals he had killed bringing supplies from more civilized lands or even from Khoraja itself.

The spy had come to speak of a rumor abroad in the valley. After three cups of Muhbaras's wine, he had yet to put it into plain words.

Muhbaras hardened his voice. "I ask you for the last time. Put a name to the rumor or hold your piece."

"And what will you do if I do neither?" Ermik taunted.

"Do you wish to test me to the point of learning?" Muhbaras said. His voice was low, and to his own ears, that of a man dangerously near the end of his patience.

Ermik shrugged. "I have as many friends as before, and you have as few," he said. "What I speak of concerns how we may both have more friends here."

"We will have few friends and many enemies if you have been roaming where our men are not allowed," Muhbaras said wearily. "That also remains as true as it was before."

Ermik shrugged. "I doubt that your fears are wise counselors—"

"Either do not call me a coward or be prepared to lose your tongue," Muhbaras snapped.

This time Ermik did seem to recognize danger, at least when it took the form of a man within a heartbeat of drawing steel. He bowed his head, in a gesture at once graceful and contemptuous.

"I beg your pardon. I do not call you coward. Do you not call me fool, unless I give more proof of it than I think I have so far."

Ermik drew in breath.

"The Maidens say that the Lady of the Mists desires you, as a woman does a man. They did not say how they knew this, as this no doubt is part of the mysteries of the Valley of the Mist and its Lady. But the Maiden who told me swore such oaths by gods I knew, as well as by those I knew not, that I do not doubt she spoke the truth as far as she apprehended it."

That was unusual care in choosing words for Ermik, but surprise did not make Muhbaras less alert. He folded his hands across one silk-trousered knee. (Actually he folded the hands across the homespun knee patch on the silk. The trousers and several other silk garments were a gift from his sister, who had died in childbirth two years ago. Hard wear on campaign and in the mountains was rapidly reducing them to a state in which Muhbaras would hardly care to be buried in them, for all his affection for his sister's memory.)

"So we face a sorceress who has begun to think with her loins, as do many common women. Many common women also command their loins, or at least do not roam about like starving she-lions in search of a man to serve them."

"Many do, the more fools they when there are any number of willing men," Ermik said. "But I do not think the Lady of the Mists is one of them."

If the truth be known, neither do I. Red-hot pincers and boiling oil could not have drawn from the captain a description of the Lady's face, for Ermik's delectation. Of course, if the Maidens were women enough to recognize desire, the spy might not need such a description, either…

"Why me?" Even to his own ears, Muhbaras's words sounded pathetic.

Ermik laughed outright. "Why not you? I have not a woman's eye for judging a man, but no doubt the Lady sees in you what she needs."

"Yes, but why me, if her need is for a man?"

"Who can know the truth of a woman's will? Of course, you may be right. If she does not care greatly as to which man comes forward, I might—"

"No!"

"Jealous?"

This time Muhbaras actually rose from his stool, although he stopped short of drawing his sword. He sat down, shaking his head, while Ermik had at least had the decency not to laugh again.

"The whole idea of bedding the Lady is near-kin to madness," Muhbaras said, when he knew he could command his voice. "One does not know what will please Her Magicalness, nor what will displease her, nor what she will do to the man who displeases her.

"Also, she is not being wise in regard to her Maidens. You would not know how this seems, to one who has commanded soldiers in battle."

"You see the Lady as a captain over her Maiden soldiers?"

"Yes, and fighting a war to bring her magic to victory."

"That may be so," Ermik said. Without asking Muhbaras's leave, he went over to the wine jug resting in a stone crock half-filled with cold water. The captain noticed that the spy's hands were not entirely steady as he poured himself another cup, still less so when he drank it off in one gulp.

"It is so," Muhbaras said. "And one rule which wise captains obey is never to take pleasures that you forbid your men. Do you think Khoraja will profit from a mutiny among the Maidens that leads to war in the valley and the ruin of all our plans to bedevil Turan?"

"No," Ermik said. "Nor will our native city profit from a scorned woman turning against us and all our plans. How long do you think we would live if the Lady of the Mists hurled her magic against us?"

Muhbaras said that he doubted that a man could measure so short an interval of time. Ermik nodded.

"Then the Lady should not feel scorned, even if this will make the Maidens jealous. Then, we need not fear so greatly. Nor need we fear them at all if the man goes to the Lady discreetly."

"That certainly means the man cannot be you," Muhbaras said. Then he shut his mouth with a snap of teeth as he realized that he had walked into a cleverly baited trap.

He forced laughter. "I see that I have talked myself into doing as the Lady wishes—which, of course, may be only to hear me sing tavern songs and juggle dried goat's ears—"

Ermik joined in the laughter. After the laughing ceased, Muhbaras poured them both more wine. That emptied the jug, but there was enough in his cup to soothe his dry throat, and all the wine in the world would not answer the one question that remained.

How, in the name of every god who takes thought for such matters, does a common man go about scratching a sorceress with an itch?

The sandstorm blew up during the night, and was still blowing the next day. The campsite had no well within its boundaries, as Khezal and Conan had chosen it for ease of defense. However, the well was so close that with a rope strung from the outermost sentry post to the well, water bearers could come and go safely even when the sand cut a man's vision to the length of his outstretched arm.

One Greencloak, a new man not yet desert-wise, still wandered away from the rope. Fortunately he had the wits to stop where night overtook him, and as he had been returning from the well with full water bags, did not suffer from thirst.

In the morning the man came in, scoured raw by the sand but not otherwise harmed, and Khezal ordered the camp broken. Sand was still drifting down from a haze-dimmed sky, and the horizon was barely visible at all, but the captain said that the next campsite had two wells and could be held against an army.

"Even one that does not reckon losses if they can bring down an enemy?" Conan said.

"You understand the tribesmen well, Conan—"

"I am a Cimmerian. Does that answer your question?"

"Not entirely. I was about to say that you do not understand them perfectly. No chief will throw away too many warriors. They might be driven to turn on him. Even if they remained loyal, if they were too few, his tribe or clan might fall to a more numerous enemy, or he himself might fall at the hands of a would-be chief with more followers. It is seldom that the tribesmen will fight to the last man, unless one gives them no choice.

"Of course," Khezal concluded with a wry grin, "this might be one of those times."

"I shall always remember you as a cheerful companion," Conan said.

"May we both live long enough to remember each other," Khezal said.

"We shan't, if you don't keep a better watch for snakes," Conan snapped. He pointed at a desert asp wriggling toward the left forefoot of the captain's mount.

"I keep watch enough," Khezal said. In one moment his dagger was in his hand. In another, it was sunk deep in the sand, severing the asp just behind the hood. The body writhed furiously, but was still by the time the captain mounted.

They rode off, arrayed in the manner the Green-cloaks used when they feared a sandstorm. They rode close together, in double columns, with no man much farther than a spear's length from a comrade. Each man wore upon his clothes the whitest object he possessed, and there was a man with horn or drum for every ten riders.

The boy Conan had known in the Ilbars Mountains had become a man to follow. If Khezal's will could have kept him safe in the Turanian service, the Cimmerian might even have returned to it.

But the gods had willed otherwise, so Conan would ride west once more when this quest into the North was done.

Eleven

That morning they were close to the stretch of desert the Girumgi called their own. (Or at least the one where wandering strangers were more likely to die at the hands of Girumgi than of any other tribe's warriors. That was as far as territorial claims commonly went in the desert, where a tribe that wished to could move almost as freely as a fleet of merchant vessels on the open sea.)

So in spite of their formation, the riders were keeping a better lookout for human enemies than for the weather. It was not a total surprise when the sandstorm blew up again, but it gave what would have been little enough notice even for the most vigilant men.

It did not help that only moments before the storm came upon them, they saw riders at the head of a val-ley not far off to their right. Thanks to some curious twist of the land, the air between them and the riders was as clear as a fine day in Vanaheim. It was possible to count the riders, some three score, and to recognize a Girumgi banner and headdresses among the nearer men.

Conan did not dispute the identification of the banner or the nearer riders, but his keen sight left him in doubt about the rest. He could not have said what tribe they were, but he was prepared to wager that they would turn out to be other than Girumgi.

He was not prepared to wager the lives of his men, however. He took the lead when the sky and air both turned brown and the Turanians had to seek shelter before they could no longer see their hands before their faces. He rode down into the foot of the valley, then spread his Afghulis in a line across it. Still mounted, they watched the Turanians follow them out of the thickening storm and find refuge in a natural bowl on the north side of the valley.

"We'll watch above, you watch below," Khezal said, or rather shouted. The sandstorm now howled like a gale at sea, and hand signals would have been more sensible had anyone been able to see them.

"Fair enough," Conan shouted back. He did not add that he was personally going to slip up the valley and see whom they might be facing. It would be hard to punish him for disobeying an order that he had not received.

Conan waited until Turanians and Afghulis were in their intended places, and until the far end of the valley was as invisible as if it had been in Vendhya. The storm was less thick in the valley than on the open desert above, but Conan judged he could still slip close to these mysterious neighbors without being seen.

This quest had already sprouted too many mysteries. Here perhaps was one that he could solve before nightfall, risking no man's life but his own.

In this assumption he had not reckoned on Farad. When Conan slipped between the horses and gripped a rock to pull himself up and over, he found Farad sitting cross-legged atop the rock.

"You were near having your throat slit," Conan snapped. "Indeed, you may be still."

"Would that not be poor repayment for my loyalty?" the Afghuli said.

"Are you being loyal, or more like a louse in a man's breech-guard?"

"It seemed to us that you should not go scouting alone. Who would bring the truth, if you twisted an ankle or struck your head—"

"My head is not the one most likely to be struck here, my friend."

"—on a rock?" Farad went on, unperturbed and keeping his face totally blank. "So we rolled dice for the honor of going with you."

"Using your dice, of course?" Conan said. He could not help smiling, moved by Farad's evident determination.

"Of course. I am not one to leave too much to chance."

"Then let us be off. I could have subdued you if I needed to go alone. Both of us together cannot subdue Khezal and his Greencloaks if they learn of our plan."

Conan leaped off the far side of the rock, Farad followed him, and side by side they walked into the storm.

The storm above must have been scouring the desert and blinding or choking any traveler unfortunate enough to lack shelter. Before Conan and Farad had covered half the distance to the other band's outposts, they had to veil all of their faces but their eyes to breathe freely.

Conan had heard of tribes in Khitai who had the art of making masks of the bladders of certain fish, transparent yet strong enough to keep out the sandstorms of their deserts. The Cimmerian did not wish himself in Khitai—curiosity was joining his oath to Khezal and his men, to drive him onward along the trail of this quest—but he vowed that if ever he returned to Khitai, he would pay those tribesmen a visit.

Meanwhile, he was desert-wise enough to know how to study the ground about him without ever facing directly into the wind, and how to shield his eyes with his fingers when he had no choice. At least today there need be no fear of sun-dazzle!

The ground grew more rugged toward the end of the valley. Even without a sandstorm, a line of sentries would have needed to be close together to guard one another's flanks. As it was, the Girumgi sentries were a good spear-toss apart, and one at least seemed to have scant notion of a sentry's duties.

He wore a Girumgi headdress, two long daggers thrust into his belt, and a waist pouch. He also wore an expression of total disgust at being out here alone amid the blowing sand.

The man furthermore spent much of his time in the shelter of a rock, which prevented both sand from reaching him and his eyes from reaching much of anything. When he did stand in the open, he looked more toward his rear than his front. It was as if he expected enemies to leap from his own camp, not from the valley before him.

Conan was prepared to snatch another prisoner, but Farad saw the sentry's weaknesses as swiftly as the Cimmerian, and struck faster. Crouching low enough to be hidden behind a waist-high rock, Farad crawled to within arm's length of the sentry without being detected. Then the man heard or saw something amiss, his eyes widened—then they widened further as Farad's flung dagger sank into the man's bare throat.

Conan crouched beside the fallen man, as windblown sand covered the pool of blood. "I wanted to capture him silently."

"I was silent. More so than you were, reproaching me."

Conan forced himself to remember that free speech to a chief was one of the most sacred rights of the free Afghuli warrior. The man to fear was he who would not speak plainly to your face, as he was likely enough planning to thrust something sharper than words into your back.

"We must go forward, then. This time, I strike first."

"Of course, Conan. It is with stupid sentries as it is with willing women—there are usually enough to go around."

Conan and Farad slipped through the hole they'd made in the sentry line almost all the way to the main camp. Unfortunately, by the time they were close enough to recognize tribal colors, the storm was blowing so thickly that their sand-scoured eyes could barely tell rocks from huddled humans.

There were also too many of those huddled humans to make it safe to snatch a prisoner. Even the scrape of dagger on leather sheath might be enough to alert five of the prisoner's comrades and bring on a battle royal at the worst possible moment.

Nothing would come of that except their deaths, leaving the Afghulis without leadership. Conan did not trust even Khezal enough to believe his comrades would then escape harm.

They crept in a wide half-circle around the dead sentry. His rock shelter had almost vanished in the brown murk as the wind shifted and more of the storm blew into the valley. Conan thought he saw human figures moving around the rock, but could not be sure.

He hoped they were at least human if they were there at all. A sandstorm in unknown country was something to make a man believe in beings from the netherworld breaking loose and wandering about, seeking to work ill.

Not long afterwards, Conan knew there had been someone watching from the dead sentry's post—and that the watcher had seen him and Farad.

Someone was following them.

It was hard to be certain at first, and no one with eyes or ears less keen than the Cimmerian's could have learned of the pursuer at all. Even deeper within the valley, the sand and dust were swirling thicker, and the wind howled like the mourning cries of demons.

But Conan's ears picked out the clang of steel on stone, the rattle of dislodged rocks, and once, the sound of breathing. Twice he went to ground and saw something moving, as the one behind failed to do the same in time to escape Conan's sharp eye.

At last Conan motioned to Farad, and whispered in the Afghuli's ear that their luck might be changing. They had snatched no prisoner from the enemy's ranks, but perhaps one might be about to crawl right into their arms.

"Your arms, I suppose," Farad said.

"One of us had best be free to run, if this goes amiss," Conan said.

"You need not whip a willing mule," Farad said sourly. "Good hunting, my chief." He crawled left as Conan slipped off to the right and went to ground.

Shrewdly Farad ceased to make much effort to conceal himself. This brought the pursuit in turn out of hiding—three robed men, none of them wearing any tribal markings Conan could recognize. The smallest of the three seemed to be the leader, although the others seemed ready to argue with their orders. At last all three seemed of one mind, and set off in a stalking pursuit of Farad.

This brought the leftmost man so close to Conan that he could have reached out and touched him. This was precisely what he did, with a fist descending like a club on the back of the man's neck. He jerked forward and his chin slammed into rock hard enough to stun him.

Conan quickly bound the man's hands with strips of his garments, then made sure that he was breathing. Two score paces of crawling brought him to the rear of the second man, the small one who led.

It also brought him into view of the third man on the right, just as a flurry of wind left clear air between them. The man's wordless cry gave the alarm, but he then made a fatal mistake by trying to roll over and unsling his bow.

That gave Conan time to close with the smallest man and seize him. The man struck at Conan with a dagger that seemed to be his sole weapon but was sharp enough to add to the Cimmerian's collection of wounds. He also kicked and screeched in a high-pitched voice that made Conan think he might have captured a eunuch or a youth.

None of this kept Conan from taking a firm grip on his captive. Farad, meanwhile, was disposing of the archer. The Afghuli was so determined on a silent kill that he gave the man enough time to have raised the alarm. Fortunately the sight of Farad looming over him seemed to strike the man mute. He tried to change weapons from bow to tulwar, and in the middle of the change Farad's sandal sank into the pit of his stomach. Both weapons fell to the sand and the man fell on top of them.

Farad looked down at his victim. "Do we need him?"

"No," Conan said, as he finished binding and gagging his own captive. "I doubt you'll even be needing to bind him. It will be evening before he can draw a painless breath again."

Conan's captive was in better fettle. While he could neither speak nor struggle, so thoroughly was he gagged and bound, his large kohl-rimmed eyes glared eloquently.

"Game little cockerel, this one," Farad said, prodding the man in the ribs. "And look at the quality of the robe and the belt. A chief's son, I'd wager."

Conan was looking at the robe and the belt, but he was also looking at what seemed to be under them. He knelt and ran a hand across the captive's shoulders, then down across one shoulder blade to the chest.

"Ha!" the Cimmerian said. "You'd lose that wager."

"Eh?" Farad said, bemused at his chief's behavior.

"It's a chief's daughter."

"Eh," Farad said again, this time with an unmistakable leer.

Conan shook his head. "She's a good hostage as long as she's unharmed and not a moment longer. A hostage is worth ten women, where we are."

"Tell that to men who haven't seen a woman for months," Farad said. "I've little taste for fighting the Greencloaks over this one."

The woman did not seem to understand the Afghuli speech the two men were using, but the tones carried enough meaning. Her eyes were very wide, and her breath came quick.

Conan hoisted her over one massive shoulder and patted her lightly on the rump. "Don't worry, lass," he said, in Turanian. "You were game enough to earn a warrior's treatment besides being a good hostage. Anyone who comes to you will do it over my dead body."

"I stand by my chief with my blood and my steel."

Farad said. Although he spoke in Afghuli, the woman caught his tone and seemed to relax.

Then Conan stepped out, in a long ground-eating hillman's stride, with Farad guarding the rear. By the time they heard someone raising the alarm, they were nearly back to their own camp.

The name of the woman—barely that, for she admitted to no more than nineteen summers and looked younger—was Bethina. She was sister to Doiran, heir to the chieftainship of the Ekinari and blood-brother to the chief of the Girumgi. She was riding with a mixed band of Girumgi and Ekinari to bring safely home those Girumgi who had escaped the battle in the South.

All this she told willingly after they reached the camp—and after Conan and Farad saved her life.

They brought her in, unbound her feet, and removed her gag. Before they could do more, a man sprang from the dust, knife upraised to stab.

Conan replied with a foot upraised in the man's path. He stumbled over the tree-thick leg and went sprawling. Farad's foot came down on his wrist; he squealed and the knife fell from limp fingers.

Farad snatched up the dagger, freed the girl's hands, and gave her the blade. Conan nodded.

"Just be careful who you use it on, girl," he said. "I've not got so much blood that I can afford to lose it to friends."

She actually grinned, then held up the blade in a way that showed experience in fighting with steel.

She was just in time. A semicircle of Greencloaks had gathered around them. Conan and Farad shifted, so that they as well as the girl had their backs to a stout rock. Conan looked upward, saw more Greencloaks climbing atop the rock to attack from above, and decided that he would be leaving Turan with his honor intact but his hide somewhat otherwise.

"Hold!"

Khezal had a surprisingly robust voice for one of his modest stature and lean build. It rose above the cry of the wind and halted the Greencloaks above and below where they stood.

"Now, what is this brawling?" Khezal said, stepping forward.

He listened while both sides told their tale. At least he had not lost authority over his men. Conan had no illusions what would have happened otherwise.

"The Greencloaks do not harm another's prisoner," he said at last. "Milgun, ask Captain Conan's pardon."

"Captain—?" the man practically spat.

"Milgun," Khezal said. He did not need to say more, let alone draw steel. His eyes finished the work of his voice.

Milgun made a clumsy obeisance. "Your pardon, Conan," he said.

"Now, Conan," Khezal said. "Milgun lost a brother to the Girumgi last year. Anyone who rides with them is no friend to him."

"I—not enemy to Greencloaks," Bethina said haltingly.

"Your brother rides with the Girumgi and you (obscenity) your brother!" someone shouted.

The fragile peace nearly dissolved then and there. Bethina bared her teeth, reminding Conan of a Cim-merian wildcat defending her cubs. Conan was sorry if it embarrassed Khezal, but he was resolved to feed steel to the next man who shouted.

All saw that resolve on the Cimmerian's grim countenance and held their peace.

"Bethina," Khezal said, in a tribal dialect that Conan barely understood. "You say you are not an enemy to the Greencloaks. Yet your brother does ride with the Girumgi, who have certainly shed our blood, and not long since.

"Tell us more."

"I—have not—not the right words," Bethina stammered.

"I will put your words into the speech of my people," Khezal said.

"And I will have the first man who brawls," Conan said.

The silence of the camp was broken only by the wind, until Bethina began to speak.

Twelve

Bethina's brother Doiran was deeper in intrigues than had been suspected, or so it seemed from her story. He had at first sworn blood-brotherhood to the chief of the Girumgi to assure his succession among the Ekinari, if his father died prematurely.

Old Irigas did not die prematurely. Indeed, he had not yet died at all. But he was all but bedridden, and seldom spoke of anything save long-dead wives and long-ago battles.

"He will die in peace," Bethina said through Khezal, "but his legacy to his people is a son who will lead them to war."

The Girumgi were always ready to try conclusions with Turan, and listening to their hotheaded younger warriors had done no good work on Doiran's judgment. However, he was too shrewd to trust only to one set of allies.

Khoraja had a long rivalry with Turan, if the fox could be said to have a rivalry with the elephant. Any time in the last century, if Turan had wished to turn Khoraja into a satrapy or even a desert, it could have done so. The price would have been great, in blood and treasure and also in new enemies for Turan, but it could have been done.

The ironhanded young Yezdigerd seemed more likely than his sire to attempt the overthrow of Khoraja, so the Khorajans were looking to their defenses. They were intriguing with the desert tribes, and they had found ready ears (and open palms) among Doiran and his followers in the ranks of the Ekinari.

It was then that Bethina spoke for herself.

"Many Ekinari—friends to Turan. Or not friends— honest men. Think Khoraja—use us like—like toys. I, Bethina—for these I speak."

No one seemed ready to believe than any desert tribesmen could be true friends to anyone, let alone Turan. But it was possible to believe that they did not care to be cat's paws for Khoraja. The shrewdness, if not the honesty, of the tribesmen had been a proverb in Turan for nearly as long as the empire had borne that name.

"The tribesmen aren't fools," Milgun admitted. "The Ekinari least of all. Lady, maybe I did not think."

As Milgun was widely believed incapable of chewing nuts and walking at the same time, this drew laughter. But it was the healthy kind, and presently the men dispersed, to look to their mounts and gear, so as to be ready to ride out when the storm abated.

At last Bethina, Farad, Khezal, and Conan were alone. Khezal kept looking back down the valley, as if expecting a solid wall of furious warriors to sprout from the sand at any moment.

"Best we be ready to fight or flee, if the lady's friends come for her," he said.

"Oh, I do not think that will happen, or at least not soon enough to fear," Bethina said. Suddenly she spoke flawless Turanian, with the tones of a noblewoman.

The three men looked at the woman as if she had just grown a long purple tail. Then they looked at one another.

Bethina laughed. "In truth, the men with me—and I am grateful that they were not slain—were there to help me be taken captive. When they are found, they will show where I fell down into a crevice. I will be thought dead, at least for long enough that we may ride north safely."

Conan nodded. It seemed the politest thing to do. It also occurred to him that Bethina's allegiance was even more of a gift than it had seemed. If he remembered correctly, the Ekinari's lands were well to the north—toward the Kezankian Mountains, if not actually bordering on their foothills.

They might know more than most about the mysteries of those mountains.

Bethina nodded graciously, as the heiress of some great house might have nodded to three upper servants. "I look forward to riding with you gentlemen, for I see in you wisdom and strength."

Then she vanished into the murk, so swiftly and silently that for a moment Conan wondered if she was a spirit. But then he saw footprints, even now filling with windblown sand, and heard laughter like the tinkling of temple bells from behind a rock.

The three men looked at one another again, and all spoke a single word, each in his native tongue.

"Women!"

They rode out as soon as the sandstorm died enough to allow traveling, but before there was too little wind to cover their tracks and too little sand in the air to hide them. They put several hours of desert between them and the Girumgi, then found a patch of rough, scrub-grown ground and went to earth like so many foxes.

As daylight drained from the sky and a spangling of stars took its place, they mounted and were once more on the move.

Riding by night and resting up by day, it took them five days to reach Ekinari lands. Or at least these were lands where one was more likely to encounter riders of the Ekinari than those of any other tribe.

The Ekinari were hardly a peaceful people—in the desert as in Afghulistan, no lover of peace at any price lived long enough to breed sons. But as Bethina pointed out, they had more good wells and safe places for their women and children than many tribes.

"Our warriors do not need to ride across every patch of ground and cleanse it of enemies, that the tribe may live," Bethina said. "We can look beyond today's blood-feuds. That is why Doiran will not prevail in the end."

"That might be so, if he stood or fell by what the Ekinari will do for him," Conan pointed out. "With the warriors and the gold of the Girumgi behind him, he will think that he can do as he pleases. He may even be right."

"That is not the brother I knew," Bethina replied. "You are saying that he is ready to make slaves of his own people, if he can be their master under the Girumgi?"

"Good men have done worse things when ambition fuddles their wits," Conan said sharply. "Besides, it's not hard to find tribesmen to follow you if you say you seek to hurt Turan. Turan has not been just in its dealings with the desert folk, and they have long memories for grievances."

Bethina gave Conan a radiant smile, and Khezal gave him a sour look. Farad carefully looked at the desert, but the Cimmerian could see a smile curving the man's lips under his beard.

Under the stars, they rode toward the Kezankian Mountains.

The Kezankian Mountains did not tower as high as the Ibars range in Turan, let alone the Himelias in northern Vendhya. Those were mountains that seemed fit to hold up the very sky, or pierce it and thrust their snow-clad peaks into the abyss beyond.

However, from the direction Conan and his companions approached them, the Kezankians leaped almost straight from the desert. Eagles nesting halfway up the mountain faces looked as tiny as doves, even to the Cimmerian's keen eyes. Birds flying any higher were as invisible as if they had been mag-icked.

Meanwhile, the desert wind itself grew cooler, and its flutings and pipings around the rocks set more than one man's teeth on edge.

"It's as if the wind itself knows this is a place to avoid," Farad said.

"Ha," Conan said. "I thought you would be feeling more at home than you have since we—"

"Fled Afghulistan?" Farad said. His grin showed all his teeth, but there was no mirth in his black eyes. Then he shook his head.

"I know what my homeland's mountains may hold—"

"Bandits, sheep, and lice," Bethina said. Farad stared at her, then laughed loud enough to raise echoes.

"Not so wrong, lady," Farad said. "But even the lice are—I won't call them friends, but at least no strangers to a man. Everyone is a stranger to these mountains, and they look like the sort who treat any stranger as an enemy."

Looking up at the gray walls before them and listening once more to the wind, Conan could not find it in his heart to disagree.

They found the remains of the camp the next morning, soon after they themselves had made camp for the day. Out hunting with Farad, Conan was the first to see the patch of soot in the middle of the trampled ground.

While Farad kept watch, the Cimmerian squatted by the trampled ground and studied it. He sifted soil between his fingers, sniffed the ashes, and finally rose.

"You look like a hound seeking a scent," Farad said.

"Close enough," the Cimmerian replied. "Now let's be finding their midden-pit. I'd wager this camp held at least forty men, tribesmen and others. Something they left in the pit has to tell us more about who they are."

"If we can find it and dig it up," Farad said.

"Oh, I think we can find it. As for digging it up, I'll do it myself if there's no other way."

"I can spare you that, my chief."

As it happened, Khezal's orders spared both Conan and Farad the dirty chore. A gang of Greencloaks set briskly to work with knives, hands, and the odd spade. (Cavalry were not much for building field-works or carrying digging tools with them.) The rubbish they unearthed told Khezal and Conan much the same.

"Two score bandits—what the tribes call loose-feet," Khezal said. "They're commonly a desperate, vicious lot."

"Then who left this?" Conan said, holding up a blackened square of metal.

"A Khorajan left his cloak pin," Khezal said. "In truth, a Khorajan captain, or at least a man of rank. That's silver with a relief of the king, as far as I can judge under the soot."

"Are you sure serving Mishrak never tempted you?" Conan chaffed the Turanian. "You have a good nose for spy's work."

"Also a tender conscience about it," Khezal said. He lowered his voice. "More so since Yezdigerd's accession, and I'd wager I'm not the only one."

Conan had no doubt of that. There were as many honest folk in Turan as anywhere, and more than in some lands he had traveled (and mostly departed as swiftly as he'd come). But as long as Yezdigerd's promise of empire dazzled their eyes with glory and filled their hands with gold, many Turanians might be less honest than they would be otherwise.

Turan might profit from his quest with Khezal, but the Cimmerian intended to end it far from Turan with the jewels at his belt, bound once again for Koth.

"Best we mount a good guard," Khezal said. "Forty loosefeet with a civilized captain leading them might do some mischief if they surprised us."

Conan nodded. "Perhaps. But we might do them more, if we surprised them."

Khezal frowned. Conan gave a gusty laugh.

"You Turanians still think like the plains horsemen who were your ancestors. You should never go to war without a hillman or few along, to tell you what to do when the land's at a slant."

Khezal threw the Cimmerian a weary look. "Very well, my friend. You speak and I will listen. But by all the gods, for every needless word you say, I will take one jewel from that bag before I return it to you. Talk me deaf, and you will ride empty-pursed for Koth."

"Better empty-pursed than empty-headed," Conan riposted. He drew his dagger and began to trace lines in the sand with the point.

Conan shifted his weight cautiously, lest a dislodged stone roll far enough to make a sound. The desert night was still, the wind for once asleep like everything else.

Or rather, as the bandits would expect everything else to be.

The trap Conan had proposed was simple. The main band would camp in the very shadow of the cliffs, choosing a place where no one could strike from above unless they rode on the back of an eagle. They would be loud and lax in keeping watch, as if they thought themselves safe in their barracks. Anyone watching as the light faded would see easy prey, with hardly a sentry about, and none of those sober.

After dark, the revelry would continue, for all that Khezal swore to geld anyone who actually let a drop of wine touch his lips. Meanwhile, bands of men chosen for their handiness with steel and their keen night-sight would creep unseen out into the sand, at three points covering the three approaches to the main body.

Anyone who yielded to the thought of murdering and looting unsuspecting and incapable victims would face the rudest of surprises. Indeed, a man could die from such a surprise.

A small hand touched the Cimmerian's shoulder. He did not move, but his heart leapt within him. Perhaps the thought about dying of surprise had been ill omened.

He did not strike, however, because in the next moment the hand was laid gently across his mouth. He felt slender but strong fingers across his lips, and smelled healthy woman and the faintest of perfumes.

Conan shifted position again. His eyes were now accustomed to the dark, and he had no difficulty recognizing Bethina. What gave him difficulty was her reason for being out here with the ambush posts, and he could hardly ask her now, not when the slightest whisper might warn lurking foes.

She solved the problem for both of them by sliding into his arms, until her head rested on his shoulder and her lips were against his ear. They were more than agreeable lips to feel, fluttering softly on his skin as she explained.

"The men are taking their part too seriously. They do nothing but sing one lewd song after another."

Conan grunted, and shifted a third time, so that he could reply to Bethina as she had spoken to him. Her ear also felt more than pleasant against his lips.

"You're no garden rose, to wilt at a few rough words. Tell me the truth."

She was silent briefly, then replied:

"I see you know women."

"If I didn't at my age, I'd be a fool or bleaching bones."

"Perhaps. But—under law, I can be chief over the Ekinari, instead of Doiran. Under law, if I do as a man does."

"And how do men among the Ekinari?"

"They must—they must be whole men, not eunuchs. Also, they must have taken a foe in battle."

The promise in the first words made Conan's blood race. The danger in the second silenced it at once.

"This is no game, Bethina."

"The bandits are no friend to Ekinari or any other tribe. The Khorajans still less so. I did not come here for sport, Conan."

The Cimmerian fought back laughter. "There are sports and sports, lady. But I agree, a dark ditch waiting for flea-ridden bandits is no place for most of them." He squeezed an admirably firm and rounded shoulder. "You'll find me as apt as—"

The Cimmerian broke off abruptly. In a lull in the songs from camp, a less convivial sound had reached his ears. It might have been the wind rising again; it might also have been the hiss of sand sliding under an incautious footfall.

The wisest thing was to wait for the intruder's next mistake. Bethina stiffened but made no sound, save the faintest rustle as she drew steel from under her robes.

The sound came again. This time it was unmistakably a footfall. A moment later a pebble rattled, the sound lasting until Conan could judge the direction. The intruder was close to the left. Too close to be left alone.

All very well, but he had no wish to spring the trap for a single man. "We want to draw them in, put an end to most of them, and learn from the rest," he remembered Khezal telling the men.

Again Conan moved, with the caution of a snake approaching a bird. He saw a darker patch against the sky, man-shaped and hardly a spear's length away. The man wore a bandit's ragged robes and was as hairy and bearded as one, but he wore a sword and dagger with silver hilts.

Too vain of his blades to blacken them for night work, the Cimmerian thought. The ranks of warriors would not miss this one.

The man turned at the last moment, so saw his death coming in the shape of a gigantic dark form leaping apparently from the ground. Then a fist like a maul exploded in his stomach and an arm like a giant snake locked around his neck. The man's senses had left him before his assailant had laid him on the ground.

Conan crouched in turn, stripping off the man's robes. A wide-eyed Bethina pulled the senseless man into the ditch and began binding his hands and feet with strips of his own garments, as Conan took his victim's place. He had to stoop a trifle to look the same size, although the man had been well grown. He had also worn under his robes more than enough to say "Khoraja" to anyone who knew the handiwork of that city's artisans.

The Cimmerian reached down and stroked Bethina's forehead, all he could reach without dropping his guard. He thought he heard a light, nearly stifled giggle, and vowed to touch more than her forehead as soon as they found a time and place. The lass had heart and wits to go with her looks!

In the Khorajan's place, Conan had a clear view all around him, to the horizon in three directions and the cliff in the fourth. The fires in the camp were dying down; no need to burn scarce dung to keep up the act. The stars no longer glowed undimmed; a haze was creeping across the sky. Another sandstorm? Conan hoped not, for he had small taste for another blind groping against a far deadlier foe than Bethina's "guards."

The sound this time was many footfalls, men trying so hard to be silent that they would have succeeded against almost any man but the Cimmerian. He counted more than twenty dark-robed and hooded figures with either bows or swords. Then farther off he heard a horse whicker.

The bandits themselves had divided their forces. Some would no doubt rush in to surprise the camp and sow panic. Then their mounted comrades would ride in to finish the work, driving off the Turanians' horses and carrying away loot and prisoners. The surviving Greencloaks would have small chance of pursuing, or even of living through another encounter with the meanest foe.

It did not take a warrior of Conan's experience to doubt that the bandits had devised this scheme by themselves. A shrewder captain than the bandits of any land usually produced was behind tonight's work.

The silence from the camp ran on. Conan cursed in several tongues. Before, he would have given much to send a silent message to the camp for quiet so he could hear the enemy approaching. Now he would have as gladly sent a message to them to sing and dance, so the bandits would not suspect that they had been detected.

Another whicker, closer, and Conan turned only his head in the direction of the horse-sounds. The mounted bandits were approaching through a dry wash that they thought concealed them completely. But a low part of the bank let Conan's eyes pick them out of the darkness.

Before darkness, the Cimmerian had ridden over much of the country for several bowshots around the camp. If his memory served him as to the ground in the enemy's path, there was a narrow end to the dry wash, where a handful might block many. A pity not to be able to do the work himself, but being where you were not expected in a night battle was the easiest way known to gods or men to be killed by your friends.

Conan now turned his head the other way, and this time the curses escaped his lips. Another band of loosefeet had drifted into sight as silently as a moving sand dune. They were marching straight for the mouth of the draw. No barring that to the horsemen now, not even by a Cimmerian's sword.

A very longheaded captain, the one who led the enemy tonight. Conan would gladly enroll him among the chiefs he had slain and sing a death song for him. He would still more gladly ask him what he did in this land, and who else aided him.

With his hands, Conan signaled to the six Afghulis at his post. The plan had been for all three outposts to strike the enemy in the rear. But the men in posts closer to the cliff now could not move that fast without being seen or heard and caught on open ground by bandit archers. In that situation, they were to rally on the camp itself and swell the ranks of its defenders—or face the wrath of both Khezal and Conan together.

The attack from the rear would now rest on broad Cimmerian shoulders—although six Afghulis accustomed to bladework in the dark were no despicable foe either. Together, Conan expected that he and the Afghulis might even be able to keep Bethina alive, although the harder she tried to "take her man," the harder that task would be.

Conan's chivalry toward women never let him keep one out of a fight she entered of her own free will. But the Ekinari would not be grateful if he led Bethina into battle and did not lead her out again safely. Ungrateful Ekinari could be a menace to the quest or the peace of Turan, and either way a menace to Khezal's future.

A man did not need to deal with moneylenders, Conan thought, to learn that he could owe too much to too many different people!

The Afghulis slipped along behind Conan as silently as the Cimmerian, more so than their enemies. Bethina not only kept up, she made hardly more noise than her companions.

So it was not any of those with Conan who alerted the prowling loosefeet to their danger.

"Eeeeenaaaa—ha!"

The war cry split the night. Conan saw shadows swirl and dance as some bandits faced about, to repel attack from their rear. Others dashed forward, hoping to reach the camp in time to find the sleepy or the drunken struggling out of their blankets.

With battle joined, speed was now more important than silence. Conan broke into a run, slowing his pace only enough to not outdistance his companions too much. Being a match for any three warriors was no reason to go into battle alone when there was no need.

So Conan struck the bandits only a few paces ahead of Farad, and Farad only a few paces ahead of the other Afghulis. Bethina brought up the rear, but just before Conan drew his sword he heard her shriek.

"Leave one for me, Conan!"

Conan cursed and laughed in the same breath. He needed no advice, and Bethina had revealed her presence to the enemy. He would be glad to leave her a live foe or two, but he wondered if her enthusiasm for blooding her steel would survive her first battle. Knowing that you held men's lives on the edge of your sword sobered most warriors, and those it did not sober were as mad dogs, and the faster they were killed, the better for honorable men.

The ground dropped from under Conan's feet. He turned a stumble into a somersault and came up with gravel in his hair, sand in his mouth, and his sword still in his hand. He also came up so close to his first opponent that he barely had time to parry the first stroke of the man's tulwar.

Conan's riposte disarmed the man, and as he drew back to make way for better-armed comrades, the Cimmerian let him go. He was fighting against four or five, as far as he could tell. He would not borrow trouble unless his foes knew no more of swordsmanship than children. The children, that is, of other lands than Cimmeria.

Conan cut down two men without ever seeing them clearly, or so he judged from the way his slashes jarred his arm and the men he slashed screamed. A third proved that he was no child by getting in under the Cimmerian's guard with a long dagger. Conan buffeted the man with his fist, and as he reeled, brought his knee up under the man's jaw. Jaw and neck both sundered by the blow, the man fell lifeless.

By now the ground about the Cimmerian was slippery with blood and cluttered with the dead or the dying. Fortunately he could give way, because now the Afghulis were up on either flank, and he could hear their steel meeting the bandits' even as he kept his eyes firmly on his own part of the battle.

So he did not see Bethina running up until she had run past him, into the midst of the enemy. How she escaped being skewered by mistake was a mystery that only the gods of battlefields knew, and Conan doubted that they ever bothered to share their knowledge with honest warriors.

He could not doubt that Bethina was in mortal danger, or would be the moment the enemy realized she was among them.

Cimmerian speed and strength saved Bethina, along with the slow wits of her enemies and her own well-wielded blade. She was admirably free of quaint notions about fair play in a desperate fight; she took her first man by stabbing him in the back. His scream warned comrades, but his life was already fleeing as Bethina snatched her dagger free and faced new foes.

One of these seemed so unmanned by facing a woman that Conan hardly needed steel to end his fighting. A swift kick sent the man down with a shattered knee, and Conan's other foot stamping on his arm sent his tulwar flying.

Bethina's next opponent was made of sterner stuff. He had only a dagger, but was supple and swift as a cat. He locked blades with the Ekinari girl, then gripped her by the hair. She gasped at the pain and tried to bring her knee up. This threw her off balance, and both opponents fell, the bandit on top.

Still Bethina fought without crying out or giving up, if not with great skill. Slowly the bandit's greater strength and weight threatened to prevail, as he forced her knife back against her breast and the point of his own closer to her flesh.

The bandit had at most a heartbeat to savor his coming triumph before death took him. Conan's fingers gripped his hair and yanked him upright, and the Cimmerian's sword slashed in a deadly arc, severing his spine and nearly cutting through his rib cage from the rear.

Bethina sprang to her feet, pale where she was not covered with her late foe's blood. "Your kill," she said, nodding to Conan. Her eyes were unnaturally wide and her lips parted, although her voice was remarkably steady for so newly fledged a warrior. To the Cimmerian, they seemed fuller than before, and even more inviting, not that he had found fault with them earlier—

"Look out!" Bethina screamed.

Conan moved, as it seemed to the man approaching him from behind, in three directions at once. Then his sword came out of nowhere and caught the attacker across the throat. The man's head lolled, nearly severed from his neck, but he remained on his feet long enough to block the passage of a comrade.

That gave Bethina time to prepare herself. As Conan's victim fell and his comrade worked around the Cimmerian's flank, Bethina struck. She sprang forward from a low crouch, driving her knife up under the man's throat. He was wearing a boiled-leather neck-guard, but instead of warding off or catching Bethina's blade, it deflected it upward.

The dagger's point ripped into the man's throat. It did not quite reach his brain, the blade not being long enough nor Bethina's arm strong enough to thrust it that far. But it killed the man quite as effectively as ever Conan's own blade could have done.

"That one is yours," Conan said. "I will stand witness, before gods and men."

For a moment he thought she was going to kiss or even embrace him, either course a sad folly on a battlefield that would have lowered his opinion of her wits. She held herself back, however, and then the swirl of battle was around them again. They had to stand back to back and defend themselves for a good while, a bad position for kissing even if one had no other work at hand.

Between them, Conan, Bethina, and the Afghulis put down or drove off most of the bandits. The few survivors who did not flee kept their distance. One had a bow and no fear of hitting friends; his arrows hissed randomly down about Conan and Bethina.

"Best get down, girl."

"I am no girl, and that archer could not hit a camel that was inside his own tent."

"Maybe, but worse archers have killed good men." The Cimmerian lifted Bethina with his hands under each arm, and dropped her into a ditch.

"Farad?"

"Here, my chief."

"Keep this lady company for a while. Sit on her if you must."

"If you do, Farad, no woman will ever give you pleasure."

"My heart breaks."

"I was not thinking of your heart, Farad."

Bidding the remaining Afghulis to remain where they were, Conan loped off into the darkness. He was going against his own war-wisdom, but something perturbed him. The horsemen had not ridden down on the camp, although he could still hear their mounts not far off.

Nor was the third force of bandits either engaged or in sight. They might have sunk into the earth or grown wings and flown off to the stars, for all the Cimmerian could see of them. He disliked leaving his Afghulis, but knew that no man among the Turanian ranks was more adept at night scouting than he was. If anyone could unearth the answer to yet another mystery, it was the Cimmerian.

The Cimmerian also nearly paid with his life twice over for the answers he found. The first time was when he rounded the shoulder of a low sand dune and came hard upon a band of tribesmen lying in wait. They had been so silent that even his ears did not pick their breathing out of the desert night, he so cat-footed that their ears seeking other sounds gave no warning.

Four arrows flew almost in a single breath, and it was the favor of the gods (not to mention the Cimmerian's own lightning-quick fall and roll) that kept any of them from doing him serious hurt. He rolled to within arm's reach of the nearest tribesman, plucked him from his hiding place like a boy picking a pear from a tree, and drew the man in front of him as a shield.

"Hold," he whispered. "Who do you follow?"

"Bethina," someone said, immediately hushed by several others. Then a voice that was, incredibly, that of an aged woman, said:

"Stand up, that I may see you."

Conan made a rude suggestion about what the old woman could do with that idea. He heard a soft laugh—a laugh, not a cackle, which might have come from a woman hardly older than Bethina.

"No. By Crom, Mitra, and all lawful gods, I will curse any who harm you without my leave."

It struck Conan that if the old woman, whom he had no cause to trust, did give leave, he would be dead before he fell to the ground. Those archers would not miss again.

But these people were not behaving like blood enemies. If they were not, there was small cause to reveal them. Also, he had now seen the headdress of the man he was using as a shield. It was too dark to make out colors, but the pattern of the headdress was the same as Bethina's.

Conan stood up, without releasing his prisoner.

"Let Gorok go." The old woman spoke like someone accustomed to command. Bethina's mother? A tribal sorceress? Whatever she might be, Conan decided it was something to be obeyed—although he drew both sword and dagger before he freed Gorok.

"Yes-s-s-s-s." The old woman's one hissed word reminded Conan unpleasantly of sounds heard in the temples of Set the Great Serpent, when it was time to feed the sacred snakes.

Conan vowed that if the woman turned into a snake now, it would be her last act in this world.

Instead the old woman laughed softly again. "Fools! This is he who saved Bethina! I saw it, and do any of you deny that I have true vision?"

No one did. The old woman indeed sounded like some ancient village crone of Cimmeria, women honored and more than a Uttle feared even when they were in their right senses.

"I am a friend to Bethina," Conan said, choosing his words carefully. "If you are kin or friends to her, then I can hardly be your ene—"

"Hsssst!" someone said. Conan recognized, the universal call for silence and alertness, and went to a crouch. As he did, he understood why the riders had not yet charged in. They were either comrades to these men, and therefore friends, or they had seen these men and were maneuvering against them.

Which was yet another mystery, in a journey that had already produced far more than an honest warrior could contemplate with any peace of mind. Conan knew of no god who could truly and reliably be bribed with sacrifices. If he had, he would gladly have promised such a god almost anything imaginable for no more than that this journey should hold no more mysteries.

Perhaps some god did hear part of the Cimmerian's unvoiced wish. Certainly this particular mystery died almost at the moment of its birth. Perhaps the bandit riders had overheard Conan's meeting with those who waited. Perhaps their own comrades signaled for help. Perhaps some underchief among them simply grew tired of waiting.

Regardless, the rattle of hooves on stones cut off the Cimmerian's words. He leapt for higher ground and saw the others also moving. Only the old woman was not running, and she was walking briskly enough for one of the age her voice revealed.

Unless it was her laugh that told the truth, and in such case, was she a witch?

Likely enough, the voice of experience whispered to Conan. It also told the Cimmerian that few magic-wielders ever served any cause but their own. Finally, it told him that if this woman was truly Bethina's friend, then her cause and Conan's might march together.

That was all the listening to voices Conan had time for, before the loosefoot riders came down upon him and his newfound comrades.

Four or five of them rode a little behind and to one side of their comrades. Conan's path also separated him a trifle from his. So the mounted bandits found themselves riding at a single man on foot, and let out shrill cries of triumph at sighting this easy prey.

They were more mistaken than they could know in their remaining moments of life. They were contending against more than his strength, speed, and war-wisdom. They were contending against a man who had been a seasoned warrior before he ever bestrode a horse. Moreover, he was a son of Cimmeria, a land that had never spawned a mounted army but had devoured more than a few. What Conan did not know about how a man on foot might best those on horseback was hardly knowable by mortal man.

He threw sand in the face of one horse, then darted aside from it and under the slash of its rider's sword to hamstring the next horse from behind. He had to parry another down-cut with his own sword, but that slowed the rider enough to let a Cimmerian hand grip the man's near leg.

The rider came out of the saddle like the bung from an ale barrel, flew in an arc over Conan's head, and smashed down headfirst. No man could survive an impact that made such a sound of crushing skull and cracking spine.

The next rider flourished a lance, and squalled triumph as he saw the Cimmerian appear to stumble. The "stumble" was judged very exactly, to take the Cimmerian a finger's breadth clear of the lance point without taking him out of reach of the lancer.

The lancer discovered this as his horse suddenly staggered. It staggered from the weight of a Cimmerian leaping on its back. Then the rider screamed from the pain of a dagger thrusting into his vitals from behind, and fell with a thud as Conan flung him to the ground like a sack of grain.

In the confusion the last rider did not notice that his opponent had transformed himself from a helpless footman to sudden death and now to a mounted foe. Conan did not give the man time to repent of this error. He saw that the man's horse had its rump toward him, and mischievously bent out of the saddle and jerked its tail.

The horse tried to rear and kick out at the same time. It failed to do either, and instead lost its balance and toppled. The rider found himself sliding inexorably backward out of his saddle, then suddenly suspended in the air by one stout Cimmerian arm.

The man stared into cold blue eyes from which Death itself seemed to look out. Then the harsh dark face that held those eyes split in gusty laughter. The man fainted with sheer relief and never felt himself strike the ground as Conan dropped him.

Then he was looking over the heads of his new comrades as they shot, pulled, or hacked the remaining mounted bandits out of the saddle, to see Bethina running across the sands. He raised his voice to shout, "Down!" and at the same time raised his sword.

It came down on the arm of a loosefoot archer drawing on Bethina, and arm, bow, and arrow all tumbled to the ground. The archer followed them a moment later, with a split skull.

Then Bethina ran lightly through the melee, dagger drawn but giving little heed to other possible dangers, and threw her arms around a small figure standing by an upthrust rock. Conan heard the figure complain, in the old woman's voice:

"Bethina! Spare my ribs, for the gods' love!"

The tone was that of an old nurse to a beloved child now grown to womanhood. Conan slipped out of the saddle and flexed his shoulders to ease tension.

Whoever the old woman's companions might be, they could hardly be enemies to any friend of Bethina, quite apart from the fight that they had made beside Conan against the loosefeet. There were still mysteries aplenty hovering about this quest, like vultures about a poisoned spring, but the answer to this one at least seemed free of danger.

Thirteen

The summons that had to be from the Lady came to Muhbaras some days later.

The summons itself was no surprise. The chamber to which a Maiden led him was a considerable one.

It was hung with moldering tapestries, and the bare rock floor was piled with rank furs and roughly cured hides. A low table was the only furnishing, bearing cheap brass plates and bowls filled with biscuits and fruit and lightly covered with coarse cloth. A jug of wine shared the table, as well as two cups.

Muhbaras had time to cease to be surprised before the door closed behind him. His next thought was that on this cold floor, bedding the Lady, who was fair but a trifle thin-flanked, might not give her much pleasure. His next thought was that he would give three fingers for a drink, but knew not what might be in the wine.

Instead he sat down, rolled up a fur to pad his back, and leaned back against the wall. Again he chose a position where he could see the whole room—so he leapt nearly to the ceiling when he heard a soft sigh behind him.

The sigh, as of a child exhaling, was followed by a low rumble. By now Muhbaras stood in the center of the room, cursing the floor coverings for tangling his feet when he wanted freedom to move swiftly. He had just started kicking a space clear when a section of wall pivoted on a central shaft, leaving blackness on either side.

Cool air with a faint scent of moss trickled out of the blackness. Then the blackness itself seemed to move, turning blue as it did. A luminous mist filled the gaps on either side of the stone panel, and in one of those gaps a white-limbed form took shape.

With fluid grace, as if she herself were a creation of mist, the Lady stepped forth into the chamber.

"How powerful do you think the old woman is?" Khezal asked.

Conan looked askance at the Turanian captain. "Omyela? And you're asking me about her?"

"You're a longheaded man, Conan my friend. Also longsighted. You may see farther than most into this old witch."

"I've learned only enough about sorcerers and their ilk to be able to defeat or avoid them. If you want real knowledge, send to Aghrapur."

"Aghrapur is a long ways off, my friend. You are here. Also, if half the stories about you are true, you've done more than fight free of the clutches of sorcerers. You've walked away leaving a good many of the breed dead behind you."

"I've done that with many who tried to keep a reluctant guest," Conan said.

"Nonetheless, you've doubtless learned more than you think you know."

"Very well. I trust Bethina, and she speaks well of Omyela. She also seems a shrewd old body to me. Whether she's fit to contend with the Lady of the Mists, I don't know. Nor will anyone else, until we all learn a trifle more about the Lady."

Conan finished his cup in a single swallow and belched in the manner of the desert tribesmen complimenting their host's hospitality. "As to how we shall do that—how goes the questioning of our captives?"

"Well enough, and I thank you for your care in providing us with Khorajan prisoners. Unfortunately one of them died before he talked, and the other told us only a little we did not already know."

"Such as what?"

"That only one Khorajan, a captain named Muhbaras, actually enters the Valley of the Mists. It is his company that escorts the captives to the gate. There are tales that the Lady looks upon him with more favor than she does most men."

"Good luck to Muhbaras, then. That's a fate I'd not wish on a priest of Set. Any more?"

Khezal shrugged. "Muhbaras may have twenty men, he may have a hundred. He may have a wizard of his own, he may only have a royal spy. Tales all, and each contradicting the last one."

"Somehow, I cannot cheer at this. But it's no worse than I expected. But we send scouts up to the mouth of the valley. Even if they don't come back, that itself will teach us more than we know. Also, they could ask the villagers who've been providing the victims what they know. A little promise of protection would loosen tongues, I'm sure."

"I'd favor that, but we can't split the men that way. A large enough scouting party, and we'd be helpless here below if the Girumgi appeared." Khezal shook his head. "No, I hate to appear in leading strings, but I think we need to call for reinforcements. Ten score more Greencloaks or even tribal levies, and we can send up to the valley enough men to do real work. Not just scout but fight."

"We'll have to tie Bethina up to keep her from biting people," Conan said, laughing. "She badly wants this mist menace driven away from her tribe's lands."

"Conan, from the way the young lady's been looking at you, I'm sure you can find a dozen other and more pleasurable ways of making her harmless."

The Cimmerian grinned. He did not tell Khezal that an order to spend time in Bethina's company was exactly what he'd been trying to gain.

There were opportunities beckoning that Khezal's plans might let slip. But to take advantage of them, Conan would need the Ekinari woman's help.

As he had not known when to expect his meeting with the Lady of the Mists, Muhbaras also had not known what she might be wearing. Considering how little she wore on many of the occasions he had met her, he would have been surprised by nothing.

The blue light playing about her concealed all but her face and hair until she was several paces into the room. Then the slab pivoted back, leaving only apparently blank wall behind the Lady.

Muhbaras could now see that she wore a long-sleeved gown that covered her from throat to ankles without concealing the grace and suppleness of the body under it. One could not make out details, but one was left in no doubt about the beauty of the woman standing there.

The Lady raised her hands, and her sleeves fell back to the elbows. She wore thin silver bracelets on either wrist, the one on the right wrist set with emeralds or some other like-colored stone, nearly as fine as sand grains.

Muhbaras could not help catching his breath at the gesture. Those raised hands could be the first step in a spell—

"Fair and noble captain, there is nothing to fear."

"Perhaps I have nothing to fear," Muhbaras said. "But what of you? Am I worthy to treat you as you deserve?"

The Lady bit her lip, and Muhbaras was astonished to see that she was holding back laughter. The Khorajan felt a sudden urge to step forward and take her in his arms while she laughed against his shoulder.

He reminded himself that laughter was part of being human, not all. The Lady might laugh like a girl, and still torment those about her like the maddest of despots grown old in vice and corruption. Both were in her. Both would be in his embrace. Muhbaras felt his temples throbbing.

"You are worthy," the Lady said softly. "You are worthy of a better setting for our—" she hesitated and seemed to be flushing '—our meeting."

She carried no staff and wore no amulets or other magical devices that Muhbaras could see. All he saw was three passes of those long-fingered hands, exquisite fingers with nails the color of the desert sky at dawn, fingers that seemed very ready to be kissed—

Golden light flooded the chamber, dazzling Muhbaras for a moment. He felt heat on his face, then on his feet, then all around him. It faded, but did not entirely disappear.

"You may open your eyes," the Lady's voice came.

Muhbaras did. The walls and roof of the chamber were now a vaulting of fine blue tile. The floor was the finest of golden sand. In one corner—where the smelly furs had been piled—rose a pavilion, a crimson and blue silk canopy supported by four rosewood posts, each carved in the form of a different marvelous beast. Muhbaras thought he recognized a leopard, a serpent, an otter, and a dragon.

Under the canopy lay a pile of silk cushions, and beside the cushions a low table, plain ebony on ivory legs. Golden dishes of cakes and sweetmeats covered it, making a circle around a silver jug of wine.

On the cushions lay the Lady of the Mists. She wore nothing except her bracelets, and her hair flowing like silken threads over her bare shoulders and down across her breasts. All the beauties Muhbaras had expected were there for him to see—and now to touch.

He felt his blood race and realized that he, too, wore nothing. The first step toward the pavilion was as hard as if he wore iron boots, but the second was easier, the third easier still.

Before long, he was sitting beside the Lady. Her head was on his shoulder, and he was nibbling a honey cake that she held up to him. The last of the cake vanished, and he found himself licking her fingers.

"The honey tastes real," he said. "You taste real."

"It is. I am," she said. Her voice was unsteady. "All that is here, all that will come to us here, is real."

"It seems too beautiful."

"You doubt my beauty?" she said, sitting up so that he could see everything. He looked—and saw in her eyes what could only be fear.

Desire and tenderness swept through Muhbaras. Here was the Lady of the Mists, sorceress with mighty magic at her command and mistress of life and death over all the valley. Here also was a frightened maiden, tasting desire for the first time, offering herself to a man that she might fulfill that desire— and finding that all her magic was no help whatever. If she had schemed for weeks to make Muhbaras ready to greet her as man to willing woman, she could not have found a better way.

Muhbaras closed the gap between them and lifted her fingers to his lips. He licked off the rest of the honey, then turned her hand over and kissed the palm of the hand. Presently his lips crept up past the brace-let, and it was not long after that before she opened her arms and all the rest of her to Muhbaras.

He thought that he had never heard a sweeter sound in his life, than the first time she cried out in delight.

It was almost enough to make him forget the cries of Danar in his last agony at the Lady's hands.

"Omyela will not be pleased at waiting," Bethina said. She was walking beside Conan, bow in hand and quiver over her back. They were together on pretense of going hunting, close enough to the camp not to be in danger, far enough that no unwanted ears might hear their talk.

"I was not thinking that she would have to," Conan replied. "If she is ready to ride out tonight—"

"You would go against Khezal?" Bethina asked.

Conan grinned. "Quick to see, aren't you?" he asked.

"I am not a green girl, and my father allowed me to sit in the council meetings of the tribe from my fourteenth year," Bethina said, with dignity.

"Pardon," Conan said. "I would go against Khezal if I had to. But I'm not sure that riding north is as much against his orders as he said."

"If it is not, he could be making a puppet of you," the woman said. "If you succeed, he can claim the glory. If you fail, he can say you disobeyed him, and your enemies in Turan will rejoice at your death."

"Khezal will have to change more than most men before he intrigues that way," Conan said. "The most I think is that he's trying to guard his back from his enemies in the Great City.

"But you're right. He may be trusted, but no doubt there are royal spies among the Greencloaks. I need my Afghulis, and they need to be out of Khezal's reach, so we need to find a path for them."

"Let me talk to Omyela," Bethina said. "Giving her a chance to trick a Turanian is better than offering her a sack of gold."

The Lady of the Mists was a clean maiden, but either magick or good fortune made her first union all pleasure and no pain. Or so it seemed to Muhbaras.

Of his own pleasure, he could not speak, for there were no words in any tongue he knew that would do it justice. Indeed, he wondered if there were words in any of the tongues of men.

Presently she conjured a pool of sparkling water into the middle of the chamber, and led Muhbaras to it. They bathed old passion from them, but kindled new, and soon were locked together on the sand at the edge of the pool.

"I am beginning to believe this is all real," Muhbaras said. He rested a hand on a part of the Lady of whose reality he had become wholly certain.

She imprisoned his hand with hers, then kissed his fingers. "It is all real. What I had put in the chamber was the stuff of earth, as is my magic. It is easier to transform what exists into something else, that to create something out of nothing."

It occurred to Muhbaras that the transformation might as easily go the other way. The Lady seemed to read his thoughts.

"No. You will be gone from here before the cham-her is as it was. You need have no fear of waking up alone amid balding furs and reeking hides."

"Do I need to fear walking out of this chamber in the garb I wore at birth?"

"If I do not, why should you? We will not be cold." She proved her warmth all over again, and it was some while before Muhbaras could again think about clothes.

Again, it seemed that his thoughts were written upon his face. Suddenly he was garbed as he had been, although he thought his blades had been polished and sharpened since he last saw them.

"You see? All that I hold in my memory, I can restore as needed. But is soldier's garb needed now? I think not." She snapped her fingers, and Muhbaras was unclothed again.

The Lady grinned. "I am not done with you, nor I think you with me. Come to me, captain. If it was in me to beg, I would. But with you, I will never have to."

As Muhbaras took the Lady of the Mists in his arms again, he could not help wishing that this might be true. The Lady might have come to him with blood on her hands that the gods themselves could not wash off. Yet he would not begrudge her what little happiness he might be able to give her.

Fourteen

Old Omyela might be hardly larger than a ten-year-old Cimmerian girl, with a black-eyed gaze that neither Conan nor anyone else could meet for long. She was also as shrewd as any descendant of so many generations of hard-living desert folk could be, however, and she seemed to know her spells.

One of those spells covered the escape of Conan's new company—all the Afghulis and twenty-five Ekinari besides Bethina and Omyela, with a few spare mounts "acquired" from the Greencloaks. It was the simplest of spells, sending into the middle of the Greencloak camp an image of Bethina dancing. While everyone, including the sentries, had their eyes fixed on the play of supple limbs and veils that revealed more than they hid, the Afghulis slipped out of the camp.

Carrying their gear, they swiftly reached their meeting with the Ekinari, who had mounts for all. Then, mounted and with night enfolding the desert to hide their tracks, Conan's new band rode north.

They had a good notion of where to start looking for the Valley of the Mists, and it was a good three days' ride to the north. Conan set a punishing pace that made even the Afghulis sweat, and feared only that the two women might not be able to endure.

Neither gave trouble. Bethina was young and fit, and decades of desert sun had baked Omyela to the color and toughness of old leather.

"I remember when a woman who could not ride from dawn to dark three days running was not considered fit to bear children," Omyela said, scoffing at Bethina's concern. "Take care of yourself, girl. Wear away your strength, and when that Cimmerian wants you, there'll be nothing of you there!" She gave a bawdy chuckle, and Bethina's bronzed skin turned even darker.

Conan walked silently away, and nearly ran into Farad.

"Maidens should not ride on such death-quests," the Afghuli said softly.

Conan laughed. "Maidens you admire, you mean. I had not heard that the Afghuli lasses huddled around the cookfires."

"I admire that wild desert girl?" Farad said indignantly.

"Yes," Conan said. "Or was it someone else who stood there gaping while she danced, so that Omyela could send the image to the camp? A fly could have crawled into your mouth and made a nest in your back teeth, for all you noticed."

Farad twined the fingers of both hands in his beard and glared at Conan. "My chief, the day I cannot tell when a beautiful woman dances, it will be the day I am dead or at least blind. Last night I was neither."

Conan laughed, and chaffed Farad with a few light words to cool his indignation. He wondered if he should mention Farad's admiration to Bethina, lest the girl hurt him by chance.

Then he decided on silence. He faced enough tasks for three men on this last part of the journey, and he would not add playing matchmaker to them!

Captain Khezal was neither surprised nor alarmed at waking to find Conan gone, and the Afghulis and Ekinari along with him. He had, indeed, rather hoped that the Cimmerian would take swift action, and be long gone before any reinforcements to the Green-cloaks arrived from the South or West.

Such reinforcements were likely to include some captain more senior than Khezal. Not all such captains would be inclined to send Conan's head in a bag of salt back to Aghrapur, but too many were. Even those who wished to be honest might become otherwise, for fear of what spies might say. Fear of Yezdigerd's spies had run through Turan like a plague for years now, and showed no signs of abating.

Khezal might be putting his own head in danger, of course. But he would rather not keep it on his shoulders if he could not do so honorably. Conan was thrusting his head into a land of the most sinister sort of magic, courting damnation even more than death. For the sake of a friend facing such dangers, one's own death was nothing much to fear.

So Khezal sent messengers south and west, and also waited for the messengers returning from the party he had trailing Conan.

They rode close to the mountains, for concealment from the desert and for water from the mountain springs. It was as well that the Greencloaks did not ride with them, for no tribe in these lands was friendly to Turan. Instead, the wind seemed to bear word of their coming to tribesmen in search of adventure, and these riders came in until Conan led a band of more than fifty.

On the afternoon of the fourth day, they camped at the mouth of a ravine known for its endlessly flowing springs. Farad led the first watch up the ravine, and Conan did the same with the second when Farad's men returned. Bethina went with Conan, striding with sturdy litheness over the rugged ground. She was clad from crown to toe, but the breeze pressed certain of her garments against the ripe curves Conan remembered so well from the night she danced.

They led the way up the ravine, and Conan's hill-eating stride soon left everyone but Bethina behind. They found themselves climbing onto a shelf of rock, from which the far end of the ravine rose straight into the sky, a vertical crack taller than a tall tree.

From the crack in the rock, water flowed, to form an iridescent blue pool just beyond the shelf. Below the shelf, water flowed out and down, to form the stream that the men were using to fill their water bags.

Conan saw that the rocks on either side of the pool sparkled with gemlike bright bits, and a soft cushion of blue lichen overgrew one of them. He wanted to sit down, pull off his boots, and bathe his feet in water that looked so much like the pools where he'd swum as a boy in Cimmeria.

Bethina had already given in to the same impulse. She dandled her feet in the water, wincing at its chill, then kicked and splashed like a baby.

Suddenly she stood up and began unlacing her cloak. "I think that pool's deep enough to swim in."

Conan frowned. "Mortally cold, though."

"Is hill blood so weak, then? Or are you so clean that you need no bath?" She wrinkled her nose. "No, it cannot be that. So it must be a weakness in Cimmerians. The world must know of this. I shall— yaaahh!"

She broke off with a happy shout as Conan closed the distance to her, lifted her, and tossed her into the pool. It was deep enough to submerge her completely; when she bobbed to the surface she was spluttering and gasping from the cold.

Then she laughed, dove again, and came up at Conan's feet. Water sluiced over him, and as Bethina thrashed and splashed, more doused him all the way up to his waist.

"Well, Conan?"

Conan glared in mock-fury, sat down, and started pulling off his boots. Then he stopped, for Bethina's tunic was now floating in the pool, and as he watched, her trousers bobbed up to join it. Then her head reappeared, hair sleeked down over bare shoulders, and she stepped out of the water. Silver drops ran down between her breasts and over every other curve, and Conan's arms were rising to meet her even as she came into them.

They used the bed of lichen well, and for how long, Conan never knew. Even the thought of danger could not enter his mind for a while.

Somewhere in Bethina's embrace, he chuckled.

"Do I amuse you, Conan?"

"That, and much else. But I was thinking. You are a whole woman now, true?"

"Well—"

"You're lacking nothing any woman has, and you've more than most. Or isn't that what your folk call 'whole'?"

"For me—it might be best—if I bore a child. Prove that the line of my father is safe with me. To a man of good blood, of course, and a friend to the tribe."

Conan slapped Bethina smartly on her bare rump. "Woman, you won't find me unwilling, and I hope your folk call me friend. But having a babe in your belly is no way to go questing!"

"I will remember that. But surely, Conan, we will not be here in the mountains that long?"

"Maybe, maybe not. But if you hope too much, ten Turanian crowns to a brass bit you'll find yourself trying to have the babe somewhere in a blizzard-buried cave in the mountains next winter!"

She shuddered at the thought, and the Cimmerian held her close. He hoped she could not read in his touch his innermost thought, which was that anyone here by next winter would not be among the living. Perhaps not among the lawfully dead, if the Lady of the Mists had half the powers credited to her by rumor, but surely not among the living.

"More wine, my Lady?" Muhbaras said. He sat on the edge of the magical pool in their meeting chamber, legs dangling, holding out the jug.

The Lady of the Mists nodded, extending one bare white arm. She wore nothing, and Muhbaras no more. Now they did not disrobe by magic when she transformed the chamber, but disrobed each other, touching and caressing as they went.

"You would make a fine servant, Muhbaras," the Lady said, as the golden wine flowed into her cup. "Perhaps I should bind you to me so that you will be here forever."

Muhbaras could not keep his hands from tightening on the jug. It tilted, spilling a few drops of wine into the water. The Lady looked at the widening gold circle and laughed.

"Does that frighten you, Muhbaras?"

"Yes, my Lady. It does. I have lived all my life as my own man, free to decide for myself and for those placed under me. I would not willingly give it up."

He smiled. "Besides, my lady, I think you have found me skilled enough as a free man, not to wish to exchange me for a slave." He slipped into the water and swiftly embraced the Lady.

She struggled, or at least pretended to do so. But Muhbaras's lips were on hers, and even when she poured her wine over his head, he did not take them away. At last she went limp in his arms—then grappled him like a mating she-leopard with a great cry of triumph and delight.

Presently they lay in the pavilion, as a soft scented magical breeze dried their bare skins. The Lady shook her head. "I would never change you, Muh-baras. This I pledge, by—"

Muhbaras did not recognize the names of half the gods (if they were gods) that the Lady invoked. He was glad of this. The Lady had delved far too deep into ancient and forbidden knowledge that he had no wish to share.

"I also call them to witness that if I changed you, I would be sorry for it."

"Sorrow has not seemed part of you."

The Lady of the Mists turned her face away. With her head muffled in a pillow, she said, "I have not allowed sorrow near me in many years. Not since I came to womanhood and my powers at the same time."

Muhbaras did not have to wait long for the story. He heard it gasped out between barely muffled sobs. Long before it was done, he lay spoon-fashion with the Lady, her head against his chest, cradling her as he would have done a hurt child.

Horror seethed within him, at the tale. Revenge would have heated his blood, except that the men re-sponsible were all long dead. The Lady had taken that vengeance into her own hands, and done thorough work.

So how an Aquilonian noble's daughter came to be the Lady of the Mists was answered. What was not answered was another, far more urgent question (at least in Muhbaras's eyes).

How was a common man to endure long enough as consort to a sorceress, to heal her from her wounds and make her whole as both woman and witch?

Conan's band hugged the foot of the mountains for the next two days. Once more they rode by night to hide themselves from any human watchers who might be lurking either among the rocks or among the dunes.

"To be sure, the Lady's magic may have given her a clear sight of us since we fought the loosefeet," Omyela said cheerfully. "And if it has, she has doubtless prepared for us hospitality that we will not be able to refuse. But she may find me a more awkward guest than she anticipated when she sent the invitations."

The thought of being watched through magic was one of the few things in the world that could make the Cimmerian uneasy. However, he had gone on this quest knowing that there was magic at the end of it, and too many followed him to let the uneasiness show.

"I've been the same kind of guest to a good few witches and wizards," Conan said. "Spells against steel do not always go the way the spellcaster wants it, if the steel's in good hands."

"Just as long as you do not think I am one whom you can cut down before I can bespell you," Omyela said. She was smiling, but the smile did not reach her eyes, and Conan heard no warmth in her voice.

"You need not fear me even trying," he said evenly. "Not unless you give me cause."

They rode on in silence.

In the heart of the peak at the far end of the Valley of the Mists, there was discontent.

That is applying a term suited for living creatures, even intelligent ones, to something that was neither living nor dead, neither intelligent nor mindless. It merely was.

But it could feed, and when the essence of living beings was offered to it, it did so in a way that might be called eager. Feeding had become a habit, and it had gained the notion that this would continue if it obeyed certain commands that seemed to come at regular intervals.

Now the commands no longer came as often. Nor did the feedings. The discontent grew.

There also grew what might be called an idea. If the life essences no longer came to the entity, could it not go to them?

The problem was where.

It began to seem that the commands had come from a particular place. It gave cause for the entity to wonder.

If it found the place where the commands had come from, would it then be able to feed?

At least this gave some direction to the search— and the entity below the mountain had begun to be able to distinguish what had direction from what did not.

The Lady of the Mists had labored and sacrificed for years to bring the Mist to this point, but when the Mist finally reached it, she did not know until it was much too late.

Fifteen

The mountains lunged skyward and dawn was tinting the distant snowcaps as Conan reined in. His sense for danger told him that they should ride on, and not make camp here. His other senses told him that the danger was being seen if they rode on in daylight.

He dismounted and studied the ground, seeking a sign of hostile presence to justify his unease. The ground was too hard in most places to show tracks, and during the night the wind had blown hard, with nearly a sandstorm's strength. On the softer ground any tracks left before dawn would have long since been obliterated.

Voices broke into Conan's study of the ground, coming up behind him.

"—old crone's fancies," came in Farad's voice.

"Old crone? Is that what you see when you look at me?" That could only be Omyela.

"With my eyes, yes. We Afghulis are not much for magic."

"Hmmp. We call that 'stone-brained' among my folk. I see a stone-brained young warrior who loves his chief's woman."

Only Farad's trying to choke back an angry retort broke the ensuing silence. That, and Conan's swift feet as he hurried back to the others.

"What Bethina is to me, and I to her, and what Farad may be toward both of us, is not for spreading on the desert wind like camel-stink," Conan said sharply. He did not look at either Omyela or Farad, but saw out of the corner of his eye that both took the chiding to heart.

"Now, Omyela, you had some—what Farad called by a rude name—to speak of to me? True?"

The old woman inclined her head with almost regal grace. "That is so, Cimmerian. My 'fancies' tell me where lies the Valley of the Mists."

That silenced even Farad, and the two men listened with great attention as Omyela explained. Conan had no more love for sorcery than ever, but in his years of adventuring, magic-wielders had sometimes been more help than hindrance. Omyela was looking to be one such.

He hoped she was. The Kezankian Mountains were full of valleys, some known only to the mountain folk who lived in or about them, others hardly visited at all by mortal men. It would take longer than they could afford, climbing among the peaks and peering into each valley—and perhaps learning that they had found the Valley of the Mists when its witch-Lady hurled her magic at them.

"You say you have sensed what is both alive and dead, and can guide us to it?" Conan said, by way of prodding Omyela into brevity.

"Yes, with some help," Omyela said. "One of those who goes to the valley must be a woman. What I will be using is woman's magic."

Farad and Conan looked at each other, then at Omyela. Neither could imagine her climbing up mountains and down into valleys where both armed warriors and potent spells awaited. Neither could doubt that the woman she meant to send against those perils was Bethina.

Fortunately for the peace of the quest, neither of them said a word against it. They knew Bethina—and a moment later she appeared from behind a rock, as if Omyela had conjured her out of the air.

Farad and Conan could only exchange looks again, and then listen as Omyela finished her explanation of how to fight the menace of the Valley of the Mists.

"I will wear one amulet, Bethina the other. All that either of us knows, the other will know too. My power can pass into Bethina, so if she is with you, it will be as if I were."

"You say that you have sensed the Mist, and from that sensing, you know where the Valley lies," Conan said. "What of the Mist sensing you, and where you are?"

"The Mist does not yet have that power by itself," Omyela said—rather complacently, Conan thought. He hoped Omyela would not be numbered among those adepts of sorcery who had trusted old knowledge too much when they faced new foes. That was a bad habit among the breed, he'd discovered, and one reason why they were often no match for a well-taught warrior.

"The Lady of the Mists has that power, if she chooses to wield it," Omyela continued. "But I have not sensed her using it. One wonders if her power weakens, or if she has grown lazy in guarding herself and her valley."

"The more she has, the better for us," Farad said. "A witch is a foe I'll gladly take when her back is turned."

"Ah, that may be your hope," Omyela said. "But it should not be. The less the Lady of the Mists binds her creation, the more it will seek power for itself. The more power it finds, the wider it can spread, feeding as it comes. If it grows enough, the Mist will be the doom of all who face it."

Silence followed, broken only by the piping of the wind among distant peaks, and by a bird cry that to Conan's ears did not sound quite natural.

Conan divided his band before they plunged into the Kezankians on the trail of the Valley of the Mists. This was not much to his liking—dividing your strength just before you closed with the enemy was no way to gain victory. But if one could neither take old Omyela into the high mountains nor safely leave her alone, what else was a man to do?

Nor was it much to the liking of the men left behind. Tales of the valley's warrior women had grown with the retelling, like mushrooms in the dark, and every man dreamed of grappling a Maiden of the Mists.

Conan came down on those dreams with a heavy boot. "If they're coming at you with swords, use yours and not some other weapon, or you'll be vulture-fodder. I won't sing a death-song for you, either. I've no breath to waste on fools.

"If they don't fight, they're lawful prisoners and they'll have lawful treatment from any man who wants to keep his head on his shoulders."

The Cimmerian's demeanor was so ferocious that the men immediately swore potent oaths to do as he wished. He doubted all of them swore without some inward doubts, but that was why his Afghulis were going with him. They sometimes wondered at Cimmerian ways, but they always obeyed the chief to whom they were blood-sworn. They would cheerfully skewer any of Bethina's tribesfolk who went against their chief's command.

Surprisingly, Omyela herself was none too pleased at a division of the band intended to protect her. "I can deal with any foe likely to come upon me quite well without you keeping a dozen good warriors idling," she snapped.

"How?" he asked. "By making yourself invisible?"

"It is within my powers to do that," Omyela said, complacently. "Also, guards cannot protect me if the Lady of the Mists strikes at me with her magic. They can only be fresh prey for her."

"Yes, but if you are hiding from loosefeet, can you also fight the Lady? How many spells can you cast at once, Omyela?"

"Enough."

"I think not, lady."

"Who are you to tell me the extent of my powers?"

"Someone who has come alive out of battles with a good many sorcerers because they thought they could do everything. The one thing they could not do allowed me to escape, sometimes to kill them into the bargain.

"You've spoken of this Mist being the doom of us all. If you can't fight it, another dozen or score or ten score men in the mountains won't help. If you can—"

Omyela held up a hand. "Indeed, I see that Bethina sings the praises of your wisdom with good reason. Also other aspects of you. Have you thought of wedding her?"

A dagger thrust at his ribs could hardly have surprised the Cimmerian more. "I have not."

"Well that you should do so, Cimmerian. If she had a consort of your prowess in battle, those who follow her brother would swiftly leave his banners. Her father would have a son worthy of him, and in time the Ekinari a chief worthy of them."

"I will think on it, Omyela. But first, let all of us come back down the mountains alive."

"There is that, to be sure."

Conan left Omyela hoping that she would not remember this conversation, but fearing otherwise. She had weighty reasons behind her, but the Cimmerian had his own as well.

Plainly, the first was Farad's regard for Bethina and hers for him. Wedding her would be taking another man's woman, and a surer way to make enemies, neither gods nor men had yet devised.

The second was the Turanian price on Conan's head. Yezdigerd would never tolerate seeing a desert tribe so close to his borders under the chieftainship of an enemy of Turan.

The last was Doiran's followers. Not all of them would turn their coats, nor would all of the rest flee. Too many would remain within stabbing distance of the new chief for Conan ever to take easy sleep—or for Bethina and her kin to do so, either.

It would have been less perilous to stay in Afghulistan, and there was an end to the matter!

The first person the Mist fed on of its own will was a half-witted girl—born so, not turned into one of the Lady's creatures by magic. She had the wits to wield a small knife, and to avoid falling from high places, so she was often sent up the sides of the valley to cut brush for the cookfires.

She had done her work so well in days gone by that she had cleared the brush from all the lower slopes in the area given to her. So she climbed higher than ever, holding her knife between her teeth—her single garment had no belt or pockets.

She finally ended her climb on a ledge where several bushes were growing. She cut all the branches that were thin enough for her knife, then looked around for more before she bundled them up to carry back down the hill.

In a crack in the rock she saw what looked like another bush growing, with yellow berries and thin branches that would cut easily. She had to reach very far in to even touch the branches, and she soon realized that she would not in truth be able to cut them easily.

She was trying to decide what to do next, and meanwhile reaching in over and over again, when her fingers touched something cold. It felt as cold as ice or springwater, but it was not solid or liquid. It felt like a wind blowing on her fingers.

Then her fingers began to hurt. The pain grew so fierce that she cried out. She tried to pull her hand out, to see if her fingers were all right. But the crack in the rock seemed to be holding not just her hand now, but her whole arm.

Then the cold covered the arm, and after it came more pain. This time she screamed loud enough to raise echoes, and pulled with all her strength, trying to free herself.

It was useless. No one heard her screams, thinking they were bird cries. She could not pull free, and a moment later the Mist found a blood vessel and darted up through it to the girl's brain. The life went out of her eyes, although she did not fall, but remained sitting while her body slowly shrank in on itself, turning blue, until nothing remained but a trifle of powder to fall to the ground or blow away on the breeze.

The girl was the first. She would not be the last.

Conan and Bethina were once again well ahead of the rest of their band. But there was no water in sight, let alone pools for bathing or beds of lichen for taking their pleasure.

Still, Conan could not help admiring her lithe form, well displayed in snug trousers and short coat, as she clambered up the rocks beside him. Bethina was not for him, and indeed no woman could be, as long as he was a rover—and that might mean he would die unwed, even if he lived long enough that his old playmates in Cimmeria were gray-bearded grandsires.

But there were women with whom he could live in as much peace as man and woman could expect, and Bethina was of that breed.

A sound Conan could not identify made him halt and raise a hand for silence. Bethina was as good a scout as any the Cimmerian had seen in a regular host, ready to obey his signals and growing more skilled each day in hiding herself. It did not hurt that her clothes were a grayish-brown that blended with the rocks so that if she lay still, one could almost tread on her without seeing her.

The sound came again. It was the chink of metal on stone, not a sound natural to these mountains or any other. Conan's band was almost on the border of the land where the Valley of the Mist's Khorajan allies and their bandit mercenaries prowled. A battle now could give warning enough to raise defenses that neither Conan's blade nor Omyela's magic could breach.

Conan crouched, listening intently, trying to put a direction to the sound. It seemed that it might be from behind him, but that was unlikely. Those immediately behind him were his Afghulis, more cat-footed on rocky slopes than even the Cimmerian himself.

He decided to go to ground himself and wait for the noisemaker to reveal himself. If it was an enemy trying to slip up on the Cimmerian through the Afghulis, he had only moments to live. Conan would not have to draw a blade before his followers dealt with the man—and in the deadly silence that helped make the Afghulis such respected foes and their rugged homeland free of foreign enemies in most years.

Silence came to the mountainside. Conan would have sworn that even the birds and the winds were silent. He could hear his own breathing and, just barely, Bethina's. But of he who had made that revealing noise, there was no further sign.

All at once there was more noise, and from high above. Conan shifted his position to look uphill, and saw a pack train ambling across the slope. Conan counted twelve pack mules and six guards on foot, all with bows and short swords of no particular origin— the sort of weapons a mercenary might pick up in the bazaars of fifty different cities.

But their garb was not that of any tribe, and in this part of the mountains that made them enemies.

Their distance and their bows also made them enemies well out of reach. Climbing up against their archery would be slow work and bring quick death to many of those who tried it, besides giving the alarm. Conan braced himself against a rock and slowly rose to his feet, invisible from above but hopefully not so from below.

He was raising his arms in the signal for stillness and silence when a man leapt from the rocks to his right. Conan had one moment to recognize the man whom he'd punished for being slow to swear obedience.

Then the man hurled himself at the Cimmerian, dagger in hand, and Conan was fighting for his life.

The man was slighter and shorter than he, but had surprise on his side and the strength and agility of a leopard, making him no mean foe even for one of the Cimmerian's prowess.

The man's rush drove Conan back against the rock, and his head cracked hard against it. This slowed his drawing his own blade, so that the man slashed at his wrist and made it fall. Conan hammered a fist into the man's face, or at least so aimed it, but the man bobbed aside and the blow only struck his shoulder.

That was still enough to knock him back, but he sprang up again like a child's weighted toy. Now Bethina closed from Conan's left, and he frantically gestured for her to stand clear. It was not in him to shout yet, although he feared that a deaf man in the pack train could already have heard the fight.

The man stamped a foot on Conan's blade, at the same time pivoting on the foot and kicking at the Cimmerian's groin. Conan rode with the kick, taking it on his hip, and picked up his sword, which gave him the edge in reach.

But that also opened the distance between him and his opponent. Before the Cimmerian could strike again, the man leapt at Bethina.

"Doiran is chief!" the man screamed, and the dagger flashed down.

It never reached Bethina, and only partly because she fell and rolled out from under its slash. It still would have torn her open, except that another dagger suddenly blossomed in the back of the man's neck. He stiffened, his own point wavered, blood gushed from his mouth, and he fell almost on top of Bethina.

Farad stepped out of the rocks, a second dagger held by the point in his hand and a grim look on his face. His face grew grimmer still as he saw Bethina, lying still and blood-spattered almost within reach of the would-be assassin.

Then he stopped in midstride, as Bethina leaped to her feet and Conan laughed. A moment later Farad's face was that of a man being strangled and thoroughly enjoying the process, as Bethina wrapped her arms around him and clung to him so tightly that her feet barely touched the ground.

"Did you devise this scheme to dazzle this young lady?" Conan growled, but with a grin.

Farad looked as if he'd been slapped, and Bethina glared at the Cimmerian.

"This is the first I knew of either man's presence, and much good yours did me!" Then she shook her head. "Forgive me, Conan. This—I did not think we might have my brother's spies among us."

"I did," Farad said, regaining his voice. "But I could not be sure. If I simply made the man disappear some night, his tribesfolk would take it ill. So I trusted to my tracking skills, to follow the man until he did some mischief."

"It would not have hurt if you'd followed him a trifle closer," Conan said, holding up his bloody left wrist. "You might have stopped him before he did this, or even made a sound. There was a pack train uphill, and if they're not alert now, I'm a Stygian!"

Farad quickly begged his chief's pardon and went to see what the pack train had done. Not much to Conan's surprise, the Afghuli reported that they had dashed off fast enough for at least two mules to fall.

They were barely in sight to the west, and not slackening their speed.

"As well that they had orders to guard the mules and not fight," Conan said, "or we'd have had arrows about our ears and maybe in other places before this. But the alarm will be up."

"Should I go up and pick over the fallen mules? They may tell us something—"

"And what's to tell you that the guards haven't left an archer behind just to pick off the curious? We can't lose you, Farad. We need you to lead in my place if the next would-be assassin aims his steel better."

Farad and Bethina looked at one another, then Farad cleared his throat. "My chief. Suppose that we pretend this one did aim well? If they have not seen you alive after the fight, how can they know you are not dead?"

"Yes," Bethina added. "We can make a great mourning for you, and pretend to build a cairn."

"I don't mind that," Conan said, "as long as you don't actually put me under it alive. But—do I smell a ruse?"

Farad nodded. "You said yourself that the alarm is now given. But if they think we are defeated, despairing, about to withdraw, they will be less alert. They may even come down to attack us, on our own ground."

"Farad," Conan said. "When we are done with misty Ladies and their valleys, we shall return to Afghulistan. There I will support you for chief of the whole people!"

"If you do, you go alone," Bethina snapped. "I will not perch on a mountain like a rock-ape—"

"You say this of Afghulistan, when your people roam the desert from well to well, not staying under a roof three nights out of the year?"

"Better than have the roofs fall in on us when—"

By then Conan had decided to take himself off out of hearing of the lovers' first quarrel. He hoped they would make peace soon; he did not need them at daggers drawn with each other while carrying out the ruse.

But why in the name of all the gods had Bethina taken him, if she'd had her eye on Farad all along as much as he had on her? It was not in Conan to regret a delightful tumble with a fine young woman, but blood-feuds had begun over less.

Fortunately, the Afghuli was a proven warrior and old enough to be a wiser head to Bethina, as well as in fettle to remind her that she was a woman any time she wished it. She could have chosen worse. She would have chosen worse, had she set herself wholly on the Cimmerian.

And it still made precious little sense, unless one accepted the truth that the ways of women were hardly more predictable than those of the gods. At least women were human, and few priests claimed to understand them, but otherwise the difference sometimes seemed too small for a man's discerning.

Muhbaras was at sword practice when the messenger arrived.

He listened to the man, while turning his gaze from the darkening slopes of the mountain to the gate of the valley. The men posted there had reported that since early morning the Maidens would not talk to them, and seemed pale and drawn, as with a fever. One man said that he had heard inhuman cries from beyond the gate, and maintained this in the face of the scoffing of his comrades.

Muhbaras wished that he had no duties toward his men, or at least none that would keep him from the Lady's side. Then he put the wish away. He was no sorcerer, and however well wielded, few swords availed much against magic gone awry. Also, the Lady had her pride, and would not thank him for seeing her weak.

Moreover, if the messenger spoke the truth, Muhbaras was needed more than ever in the outer world, Muhbaras and all his men.

"If I took you a half-glass's ride down the path, you'd see where they're making the cairn," the messenger concluded. "They've their chief all laid out proper, with his grave goods and sword, and enough stones ready to pile on him to keep out lions let alone wolves. Most likely they'll lay him down at dawn, and build the cairn during the day. That's the way of the tribes, leastways the ones I know."

The messenger was a seasoned veteran, one of the handful remaining, and had likely forgotten more about the people of these mountains than Muhbaras had known when he came to them. He would trust the man for anything he had seen with his own eyes, and they had seen a good deal.

"Very well," Muhbaras said. "You shall have a proper reward for this work, and soon."

"Tonight, Captain, or I might not be living to spend it."

Muhbaras wondered if the soldier had heard the tales of fear within the valley. He did not dare ask.

Then the man grinned. "No, it's just that I reckon you're about taking us down to clean those tribesfolk off our mountain. Chancy work in the dark, even if they've lost their chief. There's a Maiden I've wanted to gift a mite, for her kindness to me, and surely you wouldn't be quarreling with a man's doing that, would you?"

Muhbaras laughed and drew two silver coins from his purse. "I would not, and here's your reward. Save something for the fighting, though."

"Aye, Captain, I'll do that, and you take your own advice too."

Left alone, Muhbaras considered various schemes, but knew time was short. He decided that nothing would serve better than a straightforward night attack with every man he could spare. That would have to be everyone, as he had too few seasoned warriors among the bandits and unfledged recruits to divide his forces.

That also meant putting the pay chests and other valuables in a safe place. The only man who could be spared for that was Ermik, which was rather like trusting a mouse to the care of a serpent. But the serpent might not be hungry. The oncoming raiders surely would be.

Then he wrote three short letters. One was for his superiors in Khoraja. It accepted all blame, if such there was, and absolved his men. Then he wrote one for the Maidens, which he left unsealed. Even Ermik should be able to read his message that the Maidens should be doubly watchful tonight and for some nights to come, with human foes closer to the valley than for some years.

His last letter, he sealed as tightly as he could.

It was not a letter that schoolchildren would be made to recite in future years. It was not a letter that anyone except the woman who read it would long remember. It was merely the letter of a man to the woman he loves, before he goes out to battle, hoping to return in triumph but asking her to remember him if his luck is out.

However, in all the years that such letters had been written, there could not have been many written by a warrior to a sorceress.

In her innermost chamber, where not even her serving Maidens were admitted, the Lady awoke and threw off her blankets. She had come to find it easier to add blankets to her bed, rather than use her magic to keep the chamber warm at all times.

She had not abandoned sleeping unclothed, however, as her mirror showed her. For a moment she wished the mirror were Muhbaras's eyes—the desire she read in them was so beautiful to see, so unlike what she had expected from men for so long, that it aroused her almost as much as his caresses.

Then she drew on a chamber robe, rinsed the sleep from her mouth, and sat down at her scrying table. She had not sat there for some days, although the wards she had placed on it earlier should have been sufficient to warn her of anything amiss. Not that there ever had been, except in the days when she thought ruling the Maidens like a tyrant would help her cause, but still…

Her hands tingled the moment they touched the table, and a dozen shades of blueness swirled in the glass, until it was like peering down into a bottomless well of luminous water. At the very bottom, she sensed the Mist she had brought into being and fed for so long.

Until recent days, that is. She knew what Muh-baras thought of those sacrifices, even when they were of useless mouths and made cleanly, without pain. She could not help but know, after lying in his arms so many times.

She also could not help what had gone before, but she could keep it from happening again. There had to be a way of constraining the Mist, so that it would at least be harmless. Meanwhile, it had not been strong enough to feed by itself the last time she offered life essences to it. A moon or two of fasting would do the Mist no harm.

Now her questing spell touched the Mist—before she had expected, indeed. She strengthened the touch—and it was as if the Mist pushed back, as Muhbaras sometimes did when they mock-wrestled to a love-fall…

But this was not a friendly push. It was like a man swatting at a fly, with great strength. More strength than the Mist should have. As much strength as it would have had, if it had been fed regularly all these past days while she loved Muhbaras.

The Lady withdrew the questing spell and rose from the table. Something was amiss, and she intended to seek answers (at least at first) without casting any more spells.

Sixteen

The Mist did not distinguish between friend and enemy. Those were distinctions too subtle for it.

But it could tell what lived from what did not live. It could also tell what life it could feed on, and what life it could not.

In the time since it first fed of its own will, it had also learned to tell those who helped it to feed from those who would hinder it. It saw the second kind, not as enemies, but as more food.

Waiting for a night attack by a formidable foe, high in thin cold mountain air, after a long day of marching and fighting and with a wounded wrist throbbing none too gently, is no man's idea of pleasure. Not even the most hardened of Cimmerian warriors.

Not even Conan's.

However, he had not expected this quest to bring much pleasure. If he and his Afghulis left Turan with a whole skin and some of their jewels, that would be enough.

Oh, and to be sure, it would be as well if this Lady of the Mists and her magical menaces were also put down. But Conan was beginning to wonder if the Lady was only a tale.

Here they were in her mountains, and according to Omyela (speaking through Bethina), so close to the valley that a child could have walked the distance in half a morning. All they had seen were humans, and not the most formidable sort of humans either. Even Omyela could not say for certain that the Lady's magic was still potent—although Conan knew that some kinds of spells were shields against detection. Dangerous ones, more often than not, commanded by potent sorcerers—and the Lady was one, if she was anything at all, Conan stretched cramped muscles. He lay on his bier, playing the "dead chief by night as he had by day. Just after the light vanished, he'd slipped off the bier to relieve himself and snatch bean-bread and sausage from his pack, while Farad took his place. Then it was back to playing his own corpse, while a string of "mourners" marched around the bier, making the din demanded by custom.

Conan only hoped that they didn't keep the sentries from hearing the noise of the approaching attack.

A lull in the mourning, and then soft footsteps approaching. He had heard them before, and recognized Bethina's pace. Before she had been with Farad, but now she was alone.

The footsteps halted. Conan heard soft breathing, smelled warm woman (not recently bathed, but then who among them had for some days?), then felt tears fall on his face.

"Ha, lass," he whispered. "I'm not dead yet."

"I know. I would weep for you, though, if you were."

"Even though you're going to wed Farad?"

"Even so."

"Well, then, be sure that he tells you about his three wives and seventeen children back in Afghuli-stan. He—"

Conan felt a cold sharp point at his throat. "Conan, you are jesting, are you not?"

It took some effort to command his voice. "Yes. Farad has no wife, and not much in Afghulistan to draw him back. What he says, you can believe."

"I am grateful." Suddenly the point was withdrawn and warm arms fell around his neck. "I am also frightened. When will they come?"

"Easy there, Bethina. I know it's hard, waiting for an enemy you know is out there to spring on you. But we're on our own ground. They're stumbling around in the dark, wondering if they will have any warning or if they're about to fall into a trap.

"Believe me, I've done both, and we have the easier work tonight."

"I can almost believe you. I will believe you, if you hold me."

"Farad—"

"I told him where I was going, when he went out to the sentries. He blessed me."

"Not me?" Conan scoffed. "The ungrateful hound! I bring him from a flea-ridden hut to the embraces of—"

"Hssst!" Bethina said, in a very different manner. Conan put his arm around her but was silent.

Then they both heard it—a high, wailing cry that might have been an abandoned babe. But it was many times too loud and seemed to come from both the rock of the mountains and the stars in the sky at once.

Muhbaras heard the sound, too, and his first thought was that one of the raiders' sentries was blowing a whistle to give the alarm. Then it swelled until it was almost painful to hear, and he ceased to believe that it could be natural.

What he wanted to believe was that the Lady of the Mists was calling on her powers to aid him. What he feared was that magic was on the march tonight, without the Lady's leave.

He did not know to what god he could lawfully pray, for the victory of one who had delved into matters forbidden by those same gods. He also wondered if he could pray for his own victory, seeing that he was bound by the most ancient of human ties to that same delver into the forbidden.

Since Muhbaras did not know how to pray, he did not do so. Instead he devoted all his attention to keeping on his feet as he led his men down across the scree-strewn slope. A stone turning under somebody's feet could do worse than give the alarm. It could tumble a man, so that he took others off their feet until the whole raiding party slid downhill like a living avalanche, to end up helpless amid the rubble while their enemies cut their throats.

Mountains were no place for moving fast at night, and here the bandits had the advantage over their lowlander comrades. They knew ground was supposed to be rubble-strewn and slanting, and their feet found safe paths without demanding direction from their wits or senses.

Muhbaras's eyes had long since accustomed themselves to the darkness, although his night-sight was not of the keenest. He saw that he himself was running almost straight at the dead chief's bier, and that some of the men on his flanks were well ahead of him.

He could almost be grateful to the terrible cry in the night. It had to be drawing all his enemies' attention, and completely drowning out the footfalls of his men. They would strike by surprise, and that alone might give them the edge.

Muhbaras put out of his mind the thought that the magic unloosed in the night might make meaningless the difference between victor and vanquished. It was disloyal to his Lady, it might unman him, and it might even be untrue.

Conan waited until the last moment of the attackers' approach. He had plenty of warning, not only from the sentries (who gave ground before the onrush without engaging) but from the "mourners" around him.

Among them was Bethina, who was keeping her courage and her wits about her for all that she was plainly fearful of what might befall Farad out on the sentry line. She moaned and wailed quite convincingly, and in between the moans gave Conan the numbers of the enemy. When the number reached fifty and grew no higher, Conan heaved a gusty sigh.

That was odds of no more than two to one, and ensured a battle rather than a massacre. But he trusted his men; when the fight was over there should be little between them and the Valley of the Mists.

Little of human contriving, that is.

Conan moved enough to see the sentries pelting past the archers climbing on the piled stones, to give themselves clear shots over the heads of their friends into the ranks of their foes. The clatter of onrushing feet on stones was now louder than the wailing in the sky.

Then the first of the enemy burst out of the night. A lean man in ragged robes, he leapt clean over Conan's bier, to meet Bethina's dagger full in his chest.

His death-cry made all other sounds seem like a hush. Conan rolled off the other side of the bier, drawing both dagger and broadsword in a single motion as he came to his feet. Both blades found living flesh as they were drawn, and two enemies crumpled before Conan had taken three steps from the bier.

A third man stared at the Cimmerian, gibbering like a bee-stung ape.

"Your pardon for coming back from the dead, but I had work to do," Conan said. His broadsword licked out and the man's head lolled on his shoulders. He fell backward into the path of a fourth man, who was agile enough to leap aside but not enough so to escape the downswing of Conan's sword.

It was only a flesh wound to the man's left arm, and he wielded the tulwar in his right hand with no loss of speed or skill. Conan feinted with his dagger to draw the man into a furious slash that put him briefly off balance and in reach of the broadsword. The broadsword ended the fight, opening the man's chest, across half his ribs and down to his heart and lungs.

Conan had now slain four men in hardly more time than it would have taken to draw that many breaths. His rising from the dead had not frightened as many enemies witless as he had hoped, but it had left him well inside their ranks.

A squarely built man with a grizzled beard now came at Conan. The man had nearly the Cimmerian's reach and much of his strength, but not his speed. Conan could not use all his swiftness of foot, eye, and hand on this rough ground with enemies lurking in every direction.

So he and the bearded man went at it for a good long while for such a fight, which is to say all of a minute or two. They also fought unhindered by either friends or foes, which might have been chivalry but was more likely that the two wove about them a web of flying steel such that no prudent man dared draw close.

The bearded man drew Conan's blood twice, and the Cimmerian considered that this quest was giving him more scars than usual. Then his opponent made a downward cut that was just a trifle too predictable, and Conan caught the man's blade with his dagger.

Pushing back hard, the Cimmerian locked the other's blade between them, then brought his broadsword about in a sweeping stroke.

It struck flat-bladed; Conan wanted a prisoner. Too much that they had not expected was abroad tonight, and this man had to know more than Conan did! Besides, the man was too good an opponent to kill without good cause.

The blow knocked the man's helmet awry and staggered him without stunning him. He lurched back, clearing his blade and drawing a short hill knife from his belt. Conan brought a knee up into the man's groin and slammed the hilt of his broadsword into the other's jaw.

Those two blows were almost enough. The man still thrust his knife weakly at Conan, touching the Cimmerian's scarred chest. Then he reeled and fell, his steel falling from limp hands.

Conan stepped back from his fallen opponent and looked around. The archers from the stone pile were now at work, and arrows whistled by close enough to be heard over the cry of the night. The cries when they struck living flesh were even louder; Conan counted half a dozen writhing or still forms within spear-throw.

Now to see to his prisoner, and hope that no one tried to kill him or trample on the man while he was doing that.

Conan had just gripped the man's ankles when the cry in the night doubled, then redoubled, until all the world seemed to be one terrible wailing that seemed to signal the death of gods or even of the universe itself.

In the valley, the Lady of the Mists was running for the first time in some years. She was relieved to discover that her wind and limbs were still sound enough to let her make good speed.

Or perhaps she owed her speed to being sensibly clad, with stout shoes and a tunic and trousers borrowed from one of the servants. They were not the best fit, but she was conscious as never before how keeping the chill wind from her skin and the stones of the paths from her bare feet allowed her to make better time on her journey.

Of course, it would be well to doff all her garments as usual when it came time to wield her magic. Meanwhile, though, no one would take her for the Lady of the Mists or perhaps even for a woman, as the garments were large enough to alter her shape. Even in the uncanny light the Mist was pouring out into the Valley, her staff might also look like a shepherd's crook or a bearer's walking stick.

Besides, it would take sharp and untroubled wits to even think of the Lady's rushing about so meanly clad, let alone be trying to pierce the disguise of everyone who passed. She did not doubt that there were sharp wits among the folk in the valley, not all of whom were foolish either by nature or her creation. But she doubted that they would be untroubled.

She herself was not untroubled, and as she strode along the path toward the Cave of the Mists, she recited old cantrips to soothe herself. The Mist had begun to feed of its own volition, and that terrible blue light spreading out into the valley was frightening both those who knew what it meant and those who did not. The more fearful the valley dwellers, the more they would run about like headless fowl without taking thought for their own safety.

Not that they could easily procure it. Men and women were going to die tonight, and each death would feed a life essence into the Mist, making it stronger to seek out the next victim. (She would not use the word "sacrifice" tonight, and had begun to think that she never should have.)

At least they could run toward the mouth of the valley. The Mist was bound to the magic in the rocks of the valley, the magic going back to the time of Acheron. It could not leave the valley unless it devoured many more life essences than it had found so far.

And unless she was no longer there to contend with it.

What her magic had wrought, it could undo. This might not earn her a kinder judgment from anyone except Muhbaras, who was—as he was, and she would not try to find words for it. She was no poet either. In time, when they had lived together in the outside world, she a soldier's lady, he a soldier of Khoraja, one of them might find such words.

That time would not come tonight.

She needed to be closer to the Eye of the Mist to wield the needful spells with appropriate power, so she hastened her pace. As she moved, she called to the minds of everyone she passed, and hoped that the call reached beyond the range of her eyes.

Flee the valley. Flee the valley. Flee to the valley, and beyond it. The valley is death. Outside lies hope.

She repeated this, and one or two folk on the path turned and stared about them, as if seeking the source of the message that seemed to be touching their minds without touching their ears. She almost laughed. That was another way of remaining disguised—a call to the mind did not mean using one's all-too-recognizable voice.

Conan was now backed against the pile of stones. This left him all the fighting room he needed to front and flanks. Not all of the archers atop the pile still lived, but both living and dead had wrought havoc in the enemy's ranks. They were coming at Conan and the remaining defenders on the ground with barely half their strength remaining fighting-fit.

Bethina crouched behind Farad and Conan, her hand gripping her dagger but her eyes seeing nothing. She had not uttered any of Omyela's messages since battle was joined, but her consciousness was clearly elsewhere.

Conan hoped that no one saw Bethina as the defender's weak point and hurled themselves on her. That would end in red ruin for the attackers, but perhaps also in Bethina's doom.

The Cimmerian had met a good many women he'd mourn less than Bethina, altogether apart from the bond with Omyela. What was loose in the valley looked very apt to doom all in its path, without Omyela's help.

Most of the folk of the Valley of the Mists who yet lived were fleeing even before the Lady bade them do so. One man trotted industriously in the same direction as the Lady.

It was Ermik, and he could not have moved as swiftly as he did had he still carried the gold entrusted to him by Muhbaras. He had left it in a safe place, hidden even from the Maidens, who in any case were likely to soon be fleeing as swiftly as the rest, too swiftly to search odd caves.

There was some danger in following the Lady as he was, even had she not been also hurrying toward the unleashed magic. But that way must lie the Lady's treasure, dwarfing the petty sums from the pay chest. Also, that way lay learning more about the Lady's magic than Muhbaras had, for all the time he'd spent swiving her.

With gold, Ermik could buy his way free of Khoraja. With knowledge, he could buy a higher place in Khorajan service. It would be his tales of the Valley of the Mists that would be believed, not the captain's. Swiftly he would rise, and high enough that he would never again need to obey hirelings like Muhbaras.

Still, he patted the hilt of his dagger as he moved. It held a chaos stone, or one that had been sold to him as such, for a price that would make him seek blood if it did not in truth confuse any spell into whose radius it was thrown.

If he was alive after such a mischance. Ermik had a good spy's self-command, and animal courage. But he could not keep that ugly thought from his mind, or keep from feeling the night wind blow chill on his spine.

The attack that Conan had feared came. It began with a flight of arrows, striking with the power of Tu-ranian bows but mercifully ill aimed. One went through Bethina's hair, another gouged Farad's shoulder. The Afghuli slapped at the wound as if it were an insect bite, and brandished his tulwar.

"Come along, dead men who think they yet live. Come along and meet Farad and Conan and their comrades. We will cure you of your silly notion!"

He added a few singularly foul obscenities in Iranistani. Those who did not understand his words understood his tone, and it seemed that madmen came howling out of the night at Bethina's defenders.

In the heart of the Mist, something that might be called a will began to grow. It was a will to seek paths through the rock, following the traces of old magic that it could touch by itself. It did not need more life essences to strengthen itself, if it could do that.

The Mist ceased to be a creature of the air and became a creature of the depths of the earth. But in the heart of the incandescent blue where the Eye of the Mist had been, a crimson core began to glow.

The attack on Bethina and her defenders began as a collision and continued as a brawl. Too many men were jammed into too small a space to let anyone use art or even craftsmanship in the fighting.

That at once gave the advantage to the defenders. Conan could use the weapons nature gave him as fiercely and effectively as the man-made ones whose ways he had learned. He had never studied the barehanded (and -footed) fighting arts of Khitai, so perhaps one of the great masters of those arts might have been a match for the Cimmerian. But the Khitan would have needed luck as well as skill, and only the greatest of masters would have stood any chance of walking away from a bout with Conan.

Conan slammed his sword-weighted hand into the side of one man's neck. He punched another in the ribs so hard that he felt ribs crack under the blow, even through boiled-leather armor. He butted a third man under the chin, snapping his head back so savagely that the neck snapped like a dry branch.

Meanwhile Farad was doing much the same, with a little assistance from weapons that he had more room to wield. At the outermost fringes of his senses, Conan could hear still other comrades, but they might have been in another world for all that he could tell of what they were doing.

They had to have done well, because suddenly it was too much for the attackers. Darkness and emptiness gaped before Conan, although not silence—the ground was littered with the crippled and dying, some already crying out as the pain-blunting shock of their wounds wore away.

Conan watched the attackers retreating uphill, far scantier in numbers than when they came, and losing more men to the archers before they vanished. Then he looked around for Bethina.

He saw her a moment later, sprawled atop the prostrate form of the prisoner Conan had taken earlier. He sprang toward her, then heard a welcome, healthy oath as he accidentally trod on her outstretched foot.

"Your pardon, lady."

"I should think so. I stabbed one fellow with my dagger, but he had so much muscle, the blade stayed in him. So when the bearded one started waking up, all I could do was jump on top of him."

That seemed to have done well enough; the man's nose was a bloody mess from being slammed into the rocky ground. But he was still breathing, and indeed started to groan as Conan lifted Bethina off him.

"I can take a few of the men up and keep those fellows on the move," Farad said.

Conan shook his head. "We don't divide our strength on unknown ground. Those fellows could rally and cut you to pieces. Besides, we need to protect Bethina. When was the last time you heard from Omyela?"

Bethina looked blank, then slowed her breathing to open her mind to the other woman's message.

Conan stared at the sky. Was it his fancy, or was a crimson tint beginning to mingle with the blue glow in the sky?

The Lady of the Mists had come as close as she dared to the Eye. Any closer and she might find the ground under her feet crumbling as the Mist fed on the traces of the spells of long-dead Acheronian sorcerers, like worms feeding on the bones of long-dead animals.

It was Acheron's magic that had brought the Mist to terrible Me. Now it would be the same magic that drove it back into the nighted gulfs from which she had drawn it, so that the Valley of the Mists might be a sane and safe abode for common men and women.

She was leaving it, and she prayed she would leave it with Muhbaras. But she would not fail to leave it cleaner than she had made it.

She could not bring back the dead. She would not even ask their forgiveness, for what she had done was beyond that. She hoped for happiness in this life, before she faced the anger of her victims in another. Meanwhile, she would do what she could to keep the number of the dead from growing any further.

It would have to be a death-elemental. She had conjured one before, a being from the very darkest heart of Acheron's sinister magic. But that had been a small one, fit only to take a single human life. It had been weak and easy to control.

Now she needed one so powerful that it held enough of the essence of death to slay the Mist. That which had fed on life essences would now consume pure death, and from that consuming, die.

The Lady of the Mists remqved her garments and stood wind-clad as was best for such potent magic. This close to the Mist, it was hard to imagine anyone being able to strike at her even if they saw and recognized her.

The syllables in the Secret Tongue of Acheron ran through her mind, and as she raised her staff over her head, they began to roll off her tongue.

Muhbaras had just rallied the half or less of his men who remained when a wild-eyed figure stumbled into their rear.

It was one of the Maidens, clad only in her sword and rags of garments. She was bleeding from a dozen scratches and three greater wounds, and reeling with exhaustion, pain, loss of blood, and stark terror that made her eyes seem windows into Hell.

"They are mad in there," she gasped. "Mad. The Mist marches, and they have all run mad. They are trying to get out. They say the Lady told them. We do not know where she is."

"Have you no way to reach her?"

"No. I—yes, that is true. We do not." Muhbaras wanted to shake sense or at least coherence into the woman. Instead he lowered his voice.

"If we come up and help, can you keep order?"

"Men within the valley! This cannot be—" 'There have been men not only within the valley but within its Maidens and even the Lady of its Mists!" Muhbaras roared. His voice would have started a landslide had there been any loose rocks about.

The Maiden cringed. Then she nodded. "Good," Muhbaras concluded. "And when we have helped you, you will help us against the raiders who are enemies to both of us."

He hoped he was not overestimating the prowess of the Maidens in a real battle against a plainly formidable foe. He did not want to simply throw their lives away; the Lady would not thank him for that (and how wonderful it was, to think that she would be so concerned).

But he would disdain no help and no allies, as this night Muhbaras needed all of both that the gods would send him!

The rosy crimson hue was brighter and also melting into the blue so that the sky was turning an eye-searing shade of purple.

"It looks like a gigantic bed of violets, diseased and then set aflame," Bethina murmured. Or was it Omyela? The two women were talking again across the hillside, and Conan would have given a chest of silver to learn what they were saying that did not reach bodily ears.

Farad pretended to spew. Bethina grinned. "Men are so delicate of stomach. It is as well that women bear the babes. Men would die of the morning sickness even before the babe reached its term."

Farad stared. "You are not—"

"Plagues take you," Bethina said. "No. You need not fear for the blood of any sons you may see from me."

"I would not quarrel with any son of the Cimmerian's blood," Farad said, musingly. "Of course, I would still have to kill Conan before I could raise the lad with a clear conscience—ekkkhh!" he broke off, as Bethina kicked him smartly in the shin.

Then the young woman stiffened, and when she spoke, her voice had Omyela's gravity and even some of its cracked quality.

"You must go up to the gate to the valley. Follow the men you defeated. They will lead you. They will not be your enemies, for what is unleashed within the valley is the enemy to all."

Farad looked at the Cimmerian. "A child of five could understand that. But he'd be too young to be frightened witless!"

"What, an Afghuli fearful? A warrior of the folk who use sharp stones—"

"Cimmerian, I may kill you after this even if my sons are all of my own getting. Or will you save your breath for climbing?"

Ermik came upon the Lady of the Mists quite suddenly. He had no warning and she showed no sign of hearing or seeing him.

Indeed, it was unlikely that she could sense anything in the normal world. She was clad for casting a spell, her staff was glowing with a light that seemed black, if such a thing could be, and her eyes glowed golden.

Very lovely, she was, too, for all that she was frightening. Ermik no longer wondered at Muhbaras's desire for her, and rather regretted that he would have to put an end to the Lady without amusing himself with that beauty as well.

However, a wise man struck quickly when dealing with a witch. Ermik strode forward, tossed the dagger with the chaos stone in the hilt, caught it by the point, and threw it. He threw it directly at the Lady, so that if the chaos stone did not do its work, it still might do enough physical harm to break the Lady's concentration.

There are moments in the creation of even the most potent spell by the most adept sorcerer, when a child sneezing at the wrong moment can bring everything to ruin. The chaos stone was not worth a tenth of what Ermik had paid for it, but it was more potent than that child's sneeze, and it entered the sphere of the Lady's spell at the worst possible moment.

The point of the dagger also entered the Lady's flesh, and drove through to a lung. The combination of chaos, broken concentration, and pain snapped her control over the death-elemental. It raved and shrieked in her mind, clutching at her with incorporeal tendrils that produced still more very corporeal pain.

The Lady died in agony of both mind and body. As she died, the death-elemental leaped free of all control. In the moments before its leap, its aura had stunned Ermik, and he lay so completely senseless that a death-elemental in haste could have mistaken him for one already dead.

This one was in haste, to flee the area where the Lady's magic lingered and had much the same effect on it as a smoke-filled room on a human being with delicate lungs. As it fled it screamed in triumph, and this scream reached human ears already half-deaf with the terror of the Mist.

Where panic had not reigned in the valley, it reigned now.

Seventeen

It went much against Conan's instinctive suspicion of sorcery for him to climb the slope, let alone urge his men on. But there was no other road to the secret of the Valley of the Mists, and for the moment that road lay undefended.

The Cimmerian still did not lead a wild, scrambling rush up the mountain. Those wounded who were coming along had time to bind their wounds. Every surviving archer also collected as many arrows as he could from the quivers of the fallen, both friend and foe.

Conan himself stepped aside to speak with the prisoner, who gave his name as Bamshir.

"If I leave you unbound, will you come with us as a guide?"

Bamshir looked ready to spit on the ground, or perhaps in Conan's face. Then he shrugged.

"My life is forfeit anyhow."

"Not certainly. Besides, your men may need you to lead them, and we need all the help we can find against what is loose in the valley. If that is not the greatest enemy now, may I be gelded!"

Bamshir frowned. "You may well be right."

"I am right. And you've been living cheek by jowl with the Lady's wizardry long enough to know that without my telling you!"

After that Bamshir acceded, and Conan was even willing to give him back his eating knife. But he kept the prisoner-guide away from Bethina. Indeed, the man showed no easy mind about approaching the young woman, and made a gesture of aversion when he thought Conan was not looking.

Bethina seemed to be in a trance, and it was a miracle that she could put one foot in front of another in the darkness over this ground without falling. But her body seemed to work now without the guidance of a mind altogether bound up with Omyela's.

She would not be stabbing anyone until the battle of spellcasting was over; that was plain to see. Fortunately Farad could see that for himself, and what anyone could do to guard the woman, he would do.

Muhbaras's men reached the gate to the valley gasping and winded, but in fair order. He thought some might have fled, but of those who had remained with him, all still bore their weapons. As well, seeing that their fighting was more likely to be against hu-man foes—or humans so maddened by fear that they could not tell friend from foe.

The gate opened swiftly, cranked by two menservants with the beardless faces of eunuchs and stark terror written all over those faces. A Maiden stood by them, keeping them at their posts as she remained at hers, although her own face told of fear commanded by brute force of will.

Muhbaras did not blame any of the three. He was here for his Lady, his men, and his honor—in that order. Khoraja was but a name that would have had no power to prevent his flight but for the other three bonds that had brought him here in this dire hour.

The men filed in through the gate behind Muhbaras. Some called bawdy greetings to the Maiden, or stared around these once-forbidden precincts.

All lightness of heart vanished, however, as they marched down the path and saw the far end of the cleft in the rock. There the passage from the gate gave on the valley itself, and there purple light blazed like the forge of some mad blacksmith of the gods.

Purple light, and worse. Muhbaras saw (or at least thought he saw, and would ask no other for their opinion) patches of sky where a blackness that was not the night seemed to eat the light.

He could hope that this was the magic by which the Lady sought to subdue her own creation. Hope, perhaps pray, but no more.

"Pair off," he shouted. "Stay together, and don't let anyone get between you and your mate! Any Maidens who come up, if they're armed, have them pair off and fall into line with us. Anyone armed who is not a Maiden, disarm them."

"Then what?" someone called. "Send them out or keep them here?"

"If they won't stay, send them out. When the valley is empty, we'll take its folk down to find water and shelter until the Lady has matters in hand."

Some of the laughter that drew was bawdy, but not much of it unfriendly. So far Muhbaras still commanded his men's loyalty.

Lady, for all our sakes, put things to rights before my men flee like your people.

Even as they moved uphill, Conan kept his men reined in.

"Run on a slope like this, and you're likely to fall on your face. If somebody doesn't skewer you before you get up, you'll roll back down and knock out what brains you have!"

Farad added his mite to the profane cajoling, and the men mounted the slope in a compact formation, with archers well out to the flanks where they had clear shooting. Thus far they had no targets, and Conan would be quite happy if there was no more fighting on sloping ground. His Afghulis were as at home on it as he was, but Bethina's tribesfolk were accustomed to the more level desert.

Nonetheless, they and their young chieftess kept pace with the Cimmerian. Bethina no longer seemed entranced by her magical bond with Omyela, but she strode on in silence, looking neither to right or left.

She spoke first when Conan called for a short halt to realign the formation and let everyone take a few unhurried breaths.

"Omyela and I were talking."

"So I judged," Conan said. "Is it permitted to speak of what she said?"

"Oh, it is permitted, or at least I will take her permission for granted. But you do not want to hear all of it. Omyela can no more utter two words of meaning without ten words of speech than any other old woman or sorcerer."

Conan grimaced in mock-horror. "And she is both. How does she ever speak clearly?"

"Not often," Bethina said. "But I can tell you what she meant. She says there is death and life battling in the valley."

"How does that make the valley different from any other place where life exists? Death comes to every living thing, or it seems to me."

"Yes, but—how to say it?"

"Plainly and shortly. We must move on soon."

"Do you wish to wed me also, so you may command me?"

"Do you wish two husbands?"

"If they were you and Farad—"

"I'm flattered. We're in haste. Speak."

"Death and life each has—being—in the valley. Left alone, they will between them destroy it and go on to seek destruction elsewhere. Brought together, they will destroy each other."

"So all we need is to introduce the death being to the life being and stand well clear?"

"I suppose so. She did not explain."

"Just as long as she does it when it's needed," Conan said. "Otherwise there'll be no one alive here to listen to her explanation."

Bethina heard those words without flinching, which was more than some of the men did.

Muhbaras's men barely had time to order their slender ranks before the fleeing Maidens were on them. No, that did an injustice to some of the Maidens, and indeed some of the other women, Muhbaras decided. They were retreating, not fleeing, trying to stay ahead of the mob of fugitives but keeping themselves in fair order, and those with weapons holding on to them.

The mob behind was another matter. At intervals the sky itself seemed to howl like a living thing gone mad, and in those moments Muhbaras wanted to clap his hands over his ears. He could not have heard the cries of the fugitives if they'd been shouting in his ear—and he kept his distance from them with great care.

They were of all ages from babes to graybeards and of both sexes, as well as more than a few fresh eunuchs. Most seemed to be wearing what they could snatch up when the urge to flee struck them, which was often little or nothing. Few had anything more than their scanty garments, or at most a loaf of flat-bread or a bunch of onions.

Feeding these without the croplands of the valley is going to be no easy task, my Lady. But they are yours, and for your sake I will do what I must.

Hardly any of the fugitives were the misshapen half-men, conjured into deformed existence by the Lady to do the harshest work before their time came to yield up their life essences. Whether the Mist had overtaken them, their true human neighbors slain them, or their own weakness brought them down, they would not live out the night.

Muhbaras could not find it in his heart to regret their passing, and only hoped their deaths would be for the most part merciful.

Less agreeable was the sight of several bands of well-thewed and armed men or eunuchs. These swaggered along, and Muhbaras knew that they would prey like jackals on the fugitives if they were given the slightest chance. He had encountered their breed before, and found no answer to it save sharp orders enforced by sharper steel.

Muhbaras stepped forward to meet the first three.

"Halt and disarm!" he said, not quite shouting but raising his voice loud enough to be heard over the fugitives' gabble. The sky screamed at that moment, so he had to repeat the command.

"Who are you to be giving orders?" the biggest man snapped.

"Captain Muhbaras of the Khorajan service," was the reply.

The man drew his sword. Muhbaras drew his faster. Its point was at the man's throat before the other's blade could rise into fighting position.

The man stared at the point just barely pricking his skin and swallowed. "Ah—can I have my blade back afterward?"

"When we're—" Another howl from the sky, and something vast and black seemed to fly low overhead, like a cloud that was a window into the Abyss and cried with the voice of a mad dragon.

"That's a Maiden's sword!" screamed a voice from behind Muhbaras. He turned, taking his eye off the man, who jerked his blade up and nearly laid Muhbaras's cheek open.

Then Muhbaras was trying to fight at the same time the man and a wild-eyed Maiden determined to avenge her unknown comrade. The fugitives had broken into a run now, all who could move that fast, and both the unarmed and the armed were streaming past, jostling the fighters without regard to the flying steel.

In the confusion the Maiden tried to watch her back, Muhbaras, and the man at the same time. She could not quite contrive this, and the man laid open the side of her neck with a wild slash. The next moment Muhbaras pierced him through the throat, and he fell beside the woman.

Muhbaras looked at the fallen Maiden, cursed everything save the Lady herself, and even allowed himself a few unkind thoughts about her. He would not be able to forget this night of madness, and it would always lie between them even when they lay in each other's arms.

Then the greatest cry of all rose from the valley, as if the mountains themselves were in mortal agony, likewise the stars, the air, the water, and every living thing within reach of the unleashed magic. It was the sound of madness, and Muhbaras saw that on the faces of his men and the Maidens who had stood thus far.

He closed his eyes, to shut out the nightmare vision. When he opened them he still lived, and only the echoes of that cry remained pealing about the valley.

But he was alone, except for the dead and those too spent to run.

Alone, with no further duties to anyone but the Lady. Alone, and free to go to her, to hold her, to carry her out of this antechamber of Hell.

Muhbaras had a dim notion that perhaps there was some madness in him, too, that he thought this. His men still lived, likewise the Maidens and the fugitives. He could do more for them than for the Lady, if she yet lived.

It was the thought of her death that finally turned Muhbaras's steps toward the valley. Nothing remained in his mind but that thought. If she was dead, he must find her body before anyone else.

Sword in hand, Captain Muhbaras stumbled down into the Valley of the Mists, along the path that the Lady herself had followed only a short while before.

The gate to the valley stood open when Conan led his companions toward it. The gateway was also vomiting people, wide-eyed, ragged, some wounded, all staggering with exhaustion and half-witless with fear.

Conan did not even try to stop the outpouring with his handful of men. Nor did he really wish to. If the Lady of the Mists was soon to be a queen without subjects, many of her teeth would be drawn without the Cimmerian's having to labor at it.

Conan was proud of the victories he had wrought with his strength and skill. He was not so proud of them that he would refuse a victory handed to him by fate.

There were armed men and some armed women among the fleeing people. Some of the armed men had the look of those who had picked up fallen weapons with an eye to carving from others' misery what fortune they could. Others, the women included, wore armor and had about them the air of an army in retreat.

"Those women are the Maidens of the Lady," Bamshir said, low-voiced. "The armored men are Muhbaras's. I know some of them."

"Do you see Muhbaras?"

"I have not yet. He would be the last to flee. Even if the men did, he himself would go forward to seek the Lady." Bamshir added, in a still lower voice, "He loved her, it is known. And I think she loved him back."

Conan tried not to gape. The idea of loving a sorceress chilled him to the marrow. The idea of being loved by one—well, he had survived the affections of many sorts of dangerous women, but any man who played love games with a witch loved danger even more than the Cimmerian did.

"Then let us seek your captain, and perhaps when we find him, we shall find the Lady."

Conan led the way, and Farad, Bethina, and Bamshir followed almost shoulder to shoulder through the gateway.

Muhbaras was vaguely aware that the ground under his feet was shaking. He did not slow, or even break stride. He was running like a man who will stop when his heart does, who will keep running in midair if the ground drops away beneath him, fall, and land running still.

He might never have had soldiers, or anything else behind him to think of. All his thoughts roved the valley ahead, seeking his Lady.

Do you yet live? Send me a sign, if you do!

He knew that he was crying out for that sign like a child for a second bowl of porridge. He did not care. Before the Lady, before his love for her, he had no more shame.

Not so vaguely, he became aware that the sky was turning solid and beginning to whirl. He also saw that the solidity took the form of two vast spirals, like whirlwinds of unimaginable proportions. One was purple, the other was a black that seemed to both repel and swallow light at once.

They leaped skyward from different parts of the valley, and leaned toward one another like partners in an obscene dance. Then they drew back, swayed, leaned forward again, and repeated this over and over again.

Either they were silent now, or Muhbaras's ears had ceased to accept new sounds. No, that was not quite so. When the ground before him cracked wide so that he had to leap or be swallowed up, he heard the shrill sundering of rock and the thud of his boots landing on the far side.

Then he heard only his own rasping breath as he ran on.

Conan watched the spirals in the sky, one blazing purple and the other the black of a demon's nightmares, and knew that the unleashed magic was approaching its climax. He knew this without a word from Bethina, who indeed could not have spoken a word to save Conan's life or perhaps her own.

Bowed backward in a way that had to be torturing her spine, she stared wide-eyed into the sky. She shook her head so that her hair flew in clouds about her, and raised her arms, hands clasped together.

Those clasped hands began to glow—with a light that was all colors and no colors. Conan could neither bear to look at it nor turn his head to look away. Farad muttered curses in Afghuli, while Bamshir knelt and cried out what sounded like orthodox prayers to Mitra.

It had to be comforting to believe in the kind of god who answered prayers, or at least told his priests that he would answer them. It was a comfort Conan had always been denied.

Instead of praying, he drew his sword. Steel in hand was the way he had always sworn death would find him, and he would not be forsworn now.

The nimbus around Bethina's hands turned distinctly green. At the same time, Conan felt the ground underfoot begin to shake, and saw the walls of the valley swaying like trees in a high wind.

In another moment the earth itself would be sundered and the valley fall in on itself, obliterating everything and everyone within. Conan knew brief pleasure that at least some of the valley's folk would survive the ruin of their home—although how long they would survive starvation, disease, and the windy mountain slopes was another matter.

Then the green nimbus around Bethina's hands became a spear of green fire, hurtling upward. It struck the black spiral, encompassing it in a fugitive green glow and a shower of green sparks that seemed to rain down from the stars themselves.

It also drove the black spiral violently forward, until it struck the purple one.

Such a sound filled the valley as Conan had never heard before and hoped never to hear again. He thought he would gladly be deaf as an adder for the rest of his days if the other choice was to hear that sound again. He also wondered if he might indeed be deaf, whether he wished it or not.

But the sound did not blind his eyes. Afterward he never talked about what he saw, even when he was telling tales of his most exotic adventures to drinking companions who had to listen to the King of Aquilonia. He did not believe what he saw then, and did not expect anyone else to believe it afterward.

He saw cliffs that had been leaning forward draw back as if pushed by giant hands. He saw chasms large enough to swallow houses suddenly close, or fill with steam and churning water. He saw boulders the size of horses plunge from on high, then float down to land with all the harshness of soap bubbles. He saw patches of ground that had been shaking like beaten carpets suddenly blossom with flowers and long grass.

He saw much else that he carried to his grave with him, and so did those with him—and most of them did the same as the Cimmerian.

Then suddenly no one saw anything, because all light left the valley. All sound did likewise—or perhaps it was only stunned ears being unable to detect more subtle sounds than the fall of mountains or the creation of new life.

In time, Conan heard the plash of new streams, the rattle of the last loose stones finding a resting place, the sigh of breezes now free to blow naturally. He even heard, far off, the bray of a donkey that had somehow survived the upheaval.

He laughed. "Bamshir, I was going to ask you to guide us. But I think we can wait here until daylight. Your captain and his Lady will not be the better for our falling downhill in the dark."

"The gods made you too sensible to be a hero, Cimmerian," Farad chaffed.

"I sometimes wonder what the gods were about when they made me," Conan said. "If they ever tell me the truth, I'll spread the word. Meanwhile, my friend, see to Bethina, and set the sentries. For now, we wait."

Muhbaras reached his Lady just as the ground seemed to turn to jelly under his feet. His final dash to where she lay turned into an undignified sprawl on his face.

He rose bruised and dusty, to see Ermik cowering back against the cliff. The spy was the color of old chalk, and not all of it was the dust on his skin.

"I—I wanted to stop her," Ermik stammered. "I tried to stop her. She was conjuring—she was casting a spell to—I used my dagger. The dagger with the chaos stone. It should have stopped her. I wanted to stop her. I wanted to—"

Muhbaras neither could nor would hear any more of this litany. He walked to the Lady's body. She lay as if in sleep, save for the death-rictus of her lovely mouth and a gaping dagger wound in her back. It must have reached her lung, but there was no sign of blood from her mouth.

The captain knelt and drew out the dagger. It was Ermik's—he recognized the silver mounting and the "chaos stone."

Muhbaras flung the dagger point-first into the ground. It stuck there, quivering even when the ground did not. Then he walked slowly toward the spy. He had not thought he had much strength left after his long run, but now it flowed into him as if from the earth itself—or perhaps the Lady's spirit.

Ermik did not know that he was about to die until Muhbaras seized him by the throat. In the next moment he knew nothing at all, because Muhbaras smashed him back against the rock hard enough to crack his skull.

That was not the end, because Muhbaras kept pounding Ermik's head against the rock and twisting his throat until he heard rocks falling down around him. He heard only three, because the fourth struck him on the shoulder and knocked him down, and the fifth struck him in the stomach as he lay on his back on the ground.

He did not hear the climax of the battle of spells, or anything else for a long time.

Conan and his men kept watch until daylight, except for Farad, who kept watch over Bethina. She was either dead or in a sleep that feigned death, and with her senseless, there was no asking Omyela for the truth.