Conan the Barbarian

CHAPTER 28

MARIQUE STARTED, NOT because she had not expected her father’s reaction, but because she had underestimated his fury. He banged open the bronze doors to her chamber and marched in as if he were already a god. Anger had flushed his face purple and sharpened his features into a fearsome mask.

“What have you done?”

She folded the light purple tunic and laid it on top of a saddlebag before she turned to face him. She kept her expression serene, hiding her racing heart. “I am doing as you ordered, Father.”

Her answer stopped him. Shock softened his features, but only for a moment. He pointed toward her chamber’s floor. “Akhoun has told me that the Beast That Lurks has returned. Neither Ukafa nor any of those who accompanied him have come back. Their submersible coracles are lost. They failed, you failed! The girl is gone. Your mother is gone.”

“Calm yourself, Father.”

“I cannot be calm, Marique!” His clawed hands rose toward the ceiling, his angry words filling her domed chamber. “Ever have I been patient with you. For your sake. For your mother’s sake. But now . . . now that we are so close, so very close, you have failed me. Again! How am I to feel calm, Marique? Where do I find a wellspring of peace?”

“Here, Father.” She beckoned him to a side table which had been topped in forgotten times with a mosaic map of the Acheronian empire. The coastline had changed. Rivers flowed in different courses, but the mountains remained the same and created suitable landmarks for navigation. A rounded crystalline bell had been fitted over the top of the table. Beneath it had been trapped a single insect.

Khalar Zym’s rage simmered. “An old map of an old world.”

“A world to be made again anew, Father. That’s what you want. And the monk, she is of old blood.” Marique smiled casually. “This is why we had trouble locating her. The monk Fassir changed her, hid her, so that as we looked for an ancient bloodline in a modern world, we could not find it. But when we look for her blood on a world in which it was born, we find it.”

“How?”

“Is it not obvious?” Marique pointed.

“A bug on the ocean, daughter, does not cheer me.”

“A hornet, Father. The ship she is on is the Hornet. Right now it lurks here, off the coast. The scrap of cloth still bears her essence and puts her on the ship, but not forever.” She glanced at the baggage on the bed. “I go with a handpicked squad to ride and to retrieve her.”

Khalar Zym shook his head. “From Khor Kalba to there will take four days, and that would be riding horses to death.”

“Yes, Father, but you forget. I am my mother’s daughter.” Marique laughed. “With the magick at my command, what was once a horse will no longer be, and riding them unto death and beyond will make all the difference.”

Khalar Zym threw his head back and laughed, anger drained from his voice. “Very clever, beloved daughter. Proceed. But mark me. Return without the monk, or fail to bring her here for the ritual on the night of the moon’s death, and all the sorcery in the world will not save you from my wrath.”

TAMARA STOOD ON the wheel deck, dressed as a pirate should be, with her long, dark hair dancing in the dying day’s breeze. She watched Conan below as he bid his fellows farewell. She’d awakened in her bed, naked but wrapped tenderly in a blanket, and knew who had done her that kindness. Her ritual had provided her some peace and more clarity, though the latter only extended so far.

She hoped that by standing there, standing tall and looking every inch as a corsair should, she would give Conan heart. She wanted terribly to beg him not to go—not because she feared for her safety on the Hornet. Not only would her skills with a knife and bow save her from unwanted attention, but Artus had declared her the little sister he’d never had and had suggested, none too subtly, that the rest of the crew should do likewise.

Unspoken was the fact that to fail in that regard would be to face her wrath, or his wrath, or Conan’s wrath, in no particular order.

No, Tamara feared for Conan. Oddly enough it was not because she doubted his skill with arms or courage— she had never seen a man so fearsome in combat. Though she would never have wished them to oppose each other, she would have felt certain that even Master Fassir would fall to the Cimmerian.

It was instead his grim fatalism that caused her anxiety. All of the pirates appeared to go through dark moments, but Conan dwelt most comfortably there. Quick and clever and vital as he was, in those moments of quiet where she found peace, he retreated into melancholy. Tamara worried that there might come a time when he could not find his way back.

But she smiled bravely when he looked up at her. “May the gods speed you, Conan.”

He nodded once, solemnly, then shouldered a supply satchel and headed down the gangway to the abandoned stone pier by which they had dropped anchor. Without looking back, the broad-shouldered barbarian marched to shore and started up the nearest hillside.

Artus looked up at her. “Well, woman?”

“What, Captain Artus?”

“I like the sound of that, ‘Captain Artus.’ You poxed dogs remember that.” Artus plucked a rolled piece of canvas from his belt. “The Cimmerian forgot his map. I’d send a man, but they all need to be filling our water casks. I need someone fleet to catch him.”

Smiling, Tamara leaped to the main deck. “I’ll gladly . . .”

Artus extended the map to her, but did not yet let go. “We sail with the tide. Be back by dawn.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Artus smiled. “And if you have a chance, Tamara, tell him he’d best meet me in Hyrkania, or I will hunt him down.”

EVEN BEFORE HE caught sight of her, Conan knew it was Tamara. She made more noise, deliberate noise, than an advancing company of freebooters. He paused on a sandy switchback, the breeze teasing long blades of sea grass, and smiled as she turned the corner. Beyond her, on the beach, Artus waved.

She held the map out to him. “Artus said you forgot this.”

Conan patted a folded piece of canvas at his belt. “You’ll have to take that back. He’s forgotten I made my own copy.”

Her face fell.

“But not yet, Tamara.”

She closed the distance between them and slipped her hand into his. “You’ll think me silly, but in all my time at the monastery, I never had to say good-bye.”

The Cimmerian resumed his hike up the hillside with her in tow. “People must have died.”

“Yes, but you knew that you would never see them in this life again. There was no wondering as to their fate. No anticipating a return, or hearing bad news.” She shook her head. “I would not have thought it so hard.”

“Hard are the times when you never have the chance to say good-bye.” They crested the hill and turned inland. There, just on the other side of the hill, lay another cove similar to the one where the Hornet anchored. At this one, however, the beach had risen to bury ruins, leaving visible only two massive statues. White sand covered them to the waist. They stared blindly at the ocean, and the fanglike stones that warded the cove and kept all ships at sea.

Tamara stopped. “Who were these people? Did they think they could conquer earth and sea?”

“Perhaps for a time they did conquer earth and sea.”

“And now all they know is ruin.” She squeezed his hand, then looked up into his face. “Do you think our lives are part of some grand plan?”

Conan shook his head. “I do not know. I do not care. I live, I slay, I love, I call no man master. If there is a