Conan the Barbarian

Outrage raced through Marique. She forced herself to look out at the ocean. Pirates were already pulling the Cimmerian’s unconscious body into a longboat. What an amazing constitution he had, for the poison, even with so tiny a scratch, should have felled him in two steps or three. Even wounded and wavering, he had fended her father off—proving himself to be the better man.

The moment that particular thought entered her head, Marique’s vision of the future shifted. She had always believed that they would succeed in activating the Mask of Acheron. It would allow her father to draw Maliva back from the dead, but that did not mean that the mask was good for nothing else. Marique knew far more of the ways of the mask than her mother ever had. With it activated, on his face, and he in full command of its magicks, Khalar Zym would become invincible in battle. No force could stand against him. He would be able to summon the wisdom of Acheron’s finest generals, direct the magicks of its greatest necromancers. Compared to that, the things her mother might offer would be but the snarls of a puppy in a company of wolves.

But my father is not the only one who could wear that mask. She allowed herself to imagine Conan wearing it, with her at his side—or rather, with him as her consort. With her magicks and his skill, not only would Acheron rise again, but it would expand far beyond the borders it had once known. Her father’s dreams of power and glory would fade in comparison to the reality Conan and she could create.

Khalar Zym turned cold eyes on her, a fingertip probing his busted lip. “So silent, Marique. I would take this as a sign of your being appalled at your weakness, but you are not at my knees, begging my forgiveness.”

“Do you wish to know the depth of my weakness, Father?” Marique turned, and with a crooked finger summoned the acolyte who bore the standard upon which hung the Mask of Acheron. The man came forward, stumbling, the mask swinging. Two of Ukafa’s burly spearmen moved to stop him, but sandliches sprang up and hamstringed them with quick cuts. The acolyte flew up the stairs even more swiftly than the barbarian had done, and slammed into the wall.

The Mask of Acheron hung past the battlements, dangling above sea and stone.

“This is how weak I am, Father. Watch my sorcery shatter the mask and scatter the pieces into the sea.” She looked at the soldiers who had filtered into the outpost. “Watch me burn the eyes from your warriors, snap their spines, and boil brains within skulls. And ask yourself, Father, once I have done all that, will you dare to call me weak?”

Marique watched him. Show me one sign of your own weakness, Father, just one sign . . . She looked for a lip to quiver, for a bead of sweat to rise on his brow. She wanted a muscle to twitch, his pupils to contract, his mouth to hang open, just a bit. Anything to show that he knew that she had grown past him, past her mother.

Give me that sign, and I shall destroy you.

Instead his head canted to the side, only a degree or two, in a sign of curiosity. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Oh, Marique, so much of your mother’s fire, so much of my spirit . . . they have melded in you in ways unexpected. You make me so proud.”

Her grim expression eased.

“You must forgive me for scolding you, beloved daughter. We are so close to everything we have sought. Being able to rebuild our family, to recover our heritage.” Khalar Zym turned his back to the sea and the sight of the monk as she was taken aboard the pirate ship. “And you will forgive me for testing you.”

“Testing me?”

“Oh yes, Marique.” He focused distantly. “My longing to have my wife returned to my side has not blinded me to the difficulties of the future. The task we set ourselves of restoring Acheron is not one which two alone can accomplish. I have driven you hard, Marique, and today the hardest of all. Never have I questioned your love for me, but being as close as we are, now, I had to assure myself that you were committed to realizing our entire goal. Resurrecting your mother is but one part of it—a minor part—and you shall be a major player in all the rest.”

The girl frowned and gestured toward the outpost. “This was a test?”

“Yes, and you proved yourself, Marique.” Khalar Zym smiled. “When I allowed the barbarian to strike me, when I allowed it to seem as if I was in danger, you reacted. You attacked him, unbidden. You worked with me to defeat him . . . and so shall you work with me to defeat all of our enemies.”

He reached out and caressed her cheek. She raised a finger to his broken lip, repairing the torn flesh with a whisper, ignoring the fact that Ukafa had pulled the standard back from the battlement. “I love you, Father.”

“I know.” He slid his arm around her shoulder to guide her out of the burning outpost. “Come, we return to Khor Kalba to continue our preparations.”

“But, Father, we don’t have her.”

“This shall not be a problem for long, I trust, Marique, will it?” Her father gave her a squeeze. “I want you to use your unique and valuable gifts . . . your very strong gifts . . . to find the woman for me again.”

“Yes, Father, I shall.” Marique nodded solemnly. “And at Khor Kalba, we have just the creature we need to bring her to us.”

CONAN SHIVERED AS consciousness teased him with its return. The world moved around him, but resolved itself into a steady, rhythmic motion. Combined with faint creaks and tang of salt air, he concluded that he was aboard a ship. He tried to move an arm and wasn’t certain he’d been able to do so. Still, he felt no band around his wrist, nor heard the clank of chains, so he assumed he was not in the hands of his enemies.

As more of his senses returned, with them came an awareness of aches and pains, and general stiffness. The cut on his neck burned still, but not with poison. The unguent’s scent reminded him vaguely of the poultice Connacht had used to preserve his hands so many years before. Other nicks and cuts he found through the tightness of stitches. The wounds hadn’t been deep that he remembered, and had they been, cautery would have been used to close them instead of needlework.

A gentle hand laid a cool compress on his forehead. Another cloth dabbed at the wound on his neck. Soft words in distant whispers reached his ears, and his mind reconstructed his world. On a ship, a woman attending him, her hand so gentle, her voice warm for him. My beloved ...

When he opened his eyes, even the feeble candlelight burned them. He began to tear up, but not quickly enough. He could not recognize the woman perched on the edge of the bunk, but he knew who she was not. She is gone, Conan, long gone. A tremor shook him, then all strength fled his limbs.

Tamara pressed a hand to his chest. “Don’t speak, Conan. Don’t try to move. The poison gave you a fever. It’s only just broken.”

He blinked away tears. “How long?”

The monk smiled. “You don’t listen very well.”

“How long?” He tried to make his words forceful, but he could barely muster a whisper.

“Two days. There has been no sign of them.” Tamara nodded sincerely. “Artus has set course for the east, to Hyrkania.”

Conan shook his head and tried to sit up. “No.”

She restrained him with a light hand. “Once I am safe, there is nothing more to fear.”

Conan sighed. He wanted to explain to her that as long as Khalar Zym lived and had the mask, she would never be safe. She would argue that her master had directed her to Hyrkania, and he would explain that her journey and his mission were not intertwined. He had to go after Khalar Zym and destroy the mask.

But weakness betrayed him. He surrendered to her ministrations and exhaustion. First defeat the poison, then the one who uses it.

IT TOOK ONE more day for Conan to crawl from the bunk, and that over Tamara’s protestations that he would faint and his stitches would burst. He just growled at her, and the woman proved she had some sense by not trying to stop him. She showed she had more by not laughing when he bumped his head on the companionway ceiling as he stumbled his way to the main deck.