Conan The Valiant Part 1

CONAN THE VALIANT.

by Roland Green.

Prologue.

SUNSET TINTED GOLD and crimson the snows of the Lord of the Winds, monarch of the Ibars Mountains. Twilight had already swallowed its lower slopes, while night shrouded the valleys.

Bora, son of Rhafi, lay behind a boulder and studied the valleys before him. Three stretched away from the foot of the Lord, like the spokes of a cartwheel. Mist rose from all. Had he been citybred, given to such fancies. Bora might have discerned monstrous shapes already forming out of the mist.

Instead, Bora's family had been shepherds and wolf-hunters in the village of Crimson Springs, when the forebears of King Yildiz of Turan were petty lordlings. These mountains held no strangeness for him.

Or rather, they had not, until two moons before. Then the tales began.

In one valley, the mists turned green each night. Those who ventured into the valley to see why did not return, except for one who returned mad, babbling of demons unleashed.

Then people began to disappear. Children at first-a girl filling water jugs by a lonely stream, a shepherd boy taking food to his father in the pasture, a baby s.n.a.t.c.hed while his mother bathed. Never was there any trace of the reavers, save for a foul stench that made the dogs turn away howling and sometimes a footprint that might have been human, if humans had claws a finger long.

Then grown men and women began to vanish. No village was spared, until people dared not leave their houses after dark and went about even in daylight in stout, armed bands. It was said that caravans struggling over the pa.s.ses and even patrols of Yildiz's soldiers had lost men.

Mughra Khan, Yildiz's military governor, heard the tales but doubted them, at least where the villages were concerned. He saw nothing but rebellion looming and his duty clear: to put it down.

He was not such a fool as to arrest men at random and try to persuade the Seventeen Attendants that they were rebels. The Seventeen were not fools either. Mughra Khan strengthened his outposts, arrested the few men who protested, and waited for the rebels to either strike or skulk back into their lairs.

Neither rebels nor anything else human did either. But entire outposts began to disappear. Sometimes a few bodies remained behind, gutted like sheep, beheaded, dismembered by more than human strength. Once, two men reached safety-one dying, both mad and babbling of demons.

This time, the tales of demons were believed.

Of course Mughra Khan continued to believe in rebels as well. He saw no reason why both could not be menacing the peace and order of Turan.

Messengers rode posthaste to Aghrapur, with requests for advice and aid.

What fate those messengers might meet, Bora did not know, and hardly cared. He was more concerned about the fate of his father, Rahfi. Rahfi accused some soldiers of stealing his sheep. The next day the soldiers'

comrades arrested him as "a suspected rebel."

What fate suspected rebels might meet, Bora knew too well. He also knew that pardons often came to those whose kin had well served Turan. If he learned the secret of the demon reavers, might that not procure his father's release?

It would be good if Rahfi could be home in time to attend his daughter Arima's wedding. Though not as fair as her younger sister Caraya, Arima would bear the carpenter of Last Tree many fine sons, with Mitra's favor.

Bora s.h.i.+fted slightly, without dislodging so much as a pebble. It might be a long wait, studying these nighted valleys.

Master Eremius made a peremptory gesture. The servant scurried forward, holding the ornately-shaped chased silver vials of blood in either hand. Thos hands were filthy, Eremius noted.

Eremius s.n.a.t.c.hed the vials from the servant and plunged them into the silk pouch hanging from his belt of crimson leather. Then he struck the rock at his feet with his staff and threw up his left hand, palm outward. The rock opened. Water gushed, lifting the servant off his feet, then casting him down, gasping and whimpering for mercy. Eremius let the water flow until the servant was as clean in person and garments as was possible without flaying him.

"Let that be a lesson to you," Eremius said.

"It is a lesson, Master," the man gasped, and departed faster than he had come.

The wet rock slowed Eremius not at all as he descended into the valley.

His long-toed feet were bare and hard as leather, seeking and finding safe holds without the least spell bringing light. At the foot of the path two more servants stood holding torches. The torches were of common rushes, but burned with a rubicund light and a hissing like angry serpents.

"All is well, Master."

"So be it."

They followed him as he climbed the other side of the valley to the Altar of Transformation. He wished to arrive in time to correct whatever was not indeed well. The a.s.surances of his servants told him little, except that the Altar had not been carried away by vultures or any of tonight's Transformations escaped.

Ah, would that Illyana was still friend and ally, or that he had s.n.a.t.c.hed the other Jewel of Kurag from her before she fled! Then it would have mattered little whether she escaped or not. Before she found any way to oppose him, the twin Jewels would have given him irresistible power, both in his own right and through human allies.

Eremius nearly thought a curse upon Illyana. He quickly banished the impulse. The magic he used in a Transformation was unforgiving of anything less than total concentration. Once, he had sneezed in the middle of a Transformation and found its subject leaping from the Altar, partly transformed and wholly beyond his control. He had to summon other Transformations to slay it.

The Altar seemed part of the hillside itself, as in truth it was.

Eremius had conjured it into being out of the very rock, a seamless slab as high as a man's waist and twelve paces on a side. Around the edge of the slab ran in high relief the runes of a powerful warding spell.

Like the runes on the great golden ring on Eremius's left forearm, these runes were an ancient Vanir translation of a still more ancient Atlantean text. Even among sorcerers, few knew of these or any of the other spells concerning the Jewels of Kurag. Many doubted the very existence of the spells.

Eremius found this to his advantage. What few believe in, fewer still will seek.

He stepped up to the Altar and contemplated the Transformation. She was a young village woman, fully of marriageable age and exceedingly comely, had Eremius been concerned about such things. The whole of her clothing was a silver ring about her roughly-cropped dark hair and silver chains about her wrists and ankles. The chains held her spread-eagled on the slab, but not so tightly that she could not writhe from side to side in an obscene parody of pa.s.sion. In spite of the night chill, sweat glazed her upthrust b.r.e.a.s.t.s and trickled down her thighs. Her eyes held s.h.i.+fting tints that made them look now ebony dark, now silver gray, then the fiery tint of a cat's eyes seen by firelight.

Indeed, all seemed well. Certainly there was nothing to be gained by waiting. Eight more Transformations awaited him tonight, nine more recruits for his army.

Soon he could bargain from strength, with the ambitious or the discontented at the court of Turan. No court ever lacked for such, and the court of Turan had more than most. Once they were his allies, he could set them in search of the other Jewel. Illyana could not hide forever.

Then the twin Jewels would be his, and bargaining at an end. It would be time for him to command and for the world to obey.

He raised his left hand and began to chant. As he chanted, the Jewel began to glow. Above the Altar the mists took on an emerald hue.

Bora's breath hissed between his teeth. The mist in the westernmost valley was turning green. It was also the nearest valley. In daylight he could have reached it in an hour, for he was as keen-sighted by night as by day. Tonight, speed was not his goal. Stealth was what he needed, for he was a wolf seeking prey-an odd fate for a shepherd, but Mitra would send what Mitra chose.

Bora sat up and unwrapped the sling from around his waist. In the dry mountain air, the cords and leather cup had not stretched. In the mist-shrouded valley, it might have been otherwise; still, he could face anything but heavy rain. He had practiced almost daily with the sling, ever since he was no taller than it was long.

From a goatskin pouch he drew a piece of dry cheese and five stones.

Since he was fourteen, Bora could tell the weight and balance of a stone by tossing it thrice in either hand. He had studied and chosen these five stones as carefully as if he were going to wed them.

His fingers told him that none of the stones were chipped. One by one he eased them back into the pouch, along with the last crumb of cheese.

Then he tied the pouch back at his waist, picked up his staff, and started down the mountain.

It was no marvel that the mist turned the color of emeralds. The light pouring from the great stone in the ring was of such a hue. The stone itself might have been taken for an emerald the size of a baby's fist.

Some men had done so. Two had been thieves; both would have preferred King Yildiz's executioners to what actually befell them.

Whether the Jewels of Kurag were natural or creations of sorcery, no living man knew. That secret lay beneath the waves, among the coral-armored ruins of Atlantis. For Master Eremius, it was enough to know the secrets of the Jewels' powers.

He chanted the first spell in a high-pitched singsong that might have been mistaken for the tongue of Khitai. As he chanted, he felt the vials of blood grow warm against his skin, then cool again. Their preservation spells were set aside. Now to make them his instruments of Transformation.

He set the first vial on the Altar beside the young woman. The herb-steeped cloth forced into her mouth had sapped her will but not destroyed it. Her eyes rolled back, wide with terror, as she saw the blood in the vial begin to glow. A faint moan forced its way through the cloth.

Eremius chanted three guttural monosyllables, and the lid of the vial flew into the air. He struck the Altar, five times with his staff, and chanted the same syllables twice more.

The vial floated into the air and drifted over the girl. Eremius' staff rose like an asp ready to strike. The light from the Jewel became a single beam, bright enough to dazzle any mortal eye uns.h.i.+elded by magic.