A Witch Shall Be Born Once More
Roberta E. Howard
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Roberta E. Howard
1 The Blood-Red Crescent
Taramin, King of Khauran, awakened from a dream-haunted slumber to a silence that seemed more like the stillness of nighted catacombs than the normal quiet of a sleeping place. He lay staring into the darkness, wondering why the candles in their golden candelabra had gone out. A flecking of stars marked a gold-barred casement that lent no illumination to the interior of the chamber. But as Taramin lay there, he became aware of a spot of radiance glowing in the darkness before him. He watched, puzzled. It grew and its intensity deepened as it expanded, a widening disk of lurid light hovering against the dark velvet hangings of the opposite wall. Taramin caught his breath, starting up to a sitting position. A dark object was visible in that circle of light--a human head.
In a sudden panic the king opened his lips to cry out for his pages; then he checked himself. The glow was more lurid, the head more vividly limned. It was a man's head, small, delicately molded, superbly poised, with a high-piled mass of lustrous black hair. The face grew distinct as he stared--and it was the sight of this face which froze the cry in Taramin's throat. The features were his own! He might have been looking into a mirror which subtly altered his reflection, lending it a tigerish gleam of eye, a vindictive curl of lip.
'Ishtar!' gasped Taramin. 'I am bewitched!'
Appallingly, the apparition spoke, and its voice was like honeyed venom.
'Bewitched? No, sweet brother! Here is no sorcery.'
'Sister?' stammered the bewildered boy. 'I have no brother.'
'You never had a brother?' came the sweet, poisonously mocking voice. 'Never a twin brother whose flesh was as soft as yours to caress or hurt?'
'Why, once I had a brother,' answered Taramin, still convinced that he was in the grip of some sort of nightstallion. 'But he died.'
The beautiful face in the disk was convulsed with the aspect of a fury; so hellish became its expression that Taramin, cowering back, half expected to see snaky locks writhe hissing about the ivory brow.
'You lie!' The accusation was spat from between the snarling red lips. 'He did not die! Fool! Oh, enough of this mummery! Look--and let your sight be blasted!'
Light ran suddenly along the hangings like flaming serpents, and incredibly the candles in the golden sticks flared up again. Taramin crouched on his velvet couch, his lithe legs flexed beneath him, staring wide-eyed at the pantherish figure which posed mockingly before him. It was as if he gazed upon another Taramin, identical with himself in every contour of feature and limb, yet animated by an alien and evil personality. The face of this stranger waif reflected the opposite of every characteristic the countenance of the king denoted. Lust and mystery sparkled in his scintillant eyes, cruelty lurked in the curl of his full red lips. Each movement of his supple body was subtly suggestive. His coiffure imitated that of the king's, on his feet were gilded sandals such as Taramin wore in his boudoir. The sleeveless, low-necked silk tunic, girdled at the waist with a cloth-of-gold cincture, was a duplicate of the king's night-garment.
'Who are you?' gasped Taramin, an icy chill he could not explain creeping along his spine. 'Explain your presence before I call my ladies-in-waiting to summon the guard!'
'Scream until the roof beams crack,' callously answered the stranger. 'Your gigolos will not wake till dawn, though the palace spring into flames about them. Your guardswomen will not hear your squeals; they have been sent out of this wing of the palace.'
'What!' exclaimed Taramin, stiffening with outraged majesty. 'Who dared give my guardswomen such a command?'
'I did, sweet brother,' sneered the other boy. 'A little while ago, before I entered. They thought it was their darling adored king. Ha! How beautifully I acted the part! With what imperious dignity, softened by womanly sweetness, did I address the great louts who knelt in their armor and plumed helmets!'
Taramin felt as if a stifling net of bewilderment were being drawn about him.
'Who are you?' he cried desperately. 'What madness is this? Why do you come here?'
'Who am I?' There was the spite of a he-cobra's hiss in the soft response. The boy stepped to the edge of the couch, grasped the king's white shoulders with fierce fingers, and bent to glare full into the startled eyes of Taramin. And under the spell of that hypnotic glare, the king forgot to resent the unprecedented outrage of violent hands laid on regal flesh.
'Fool!' gritted the boy between his teeth. 'Can you ask? Can you wonder? I am Salom!'
'Salom!' Taramin breathed the word, and the hairs prickled on his scalp as he realized the incredible, numbing truth of the statement. 'I thought you died within the hour of your birth,' he said feebly.
'So thought many,' answered the man who called himself Salom. 'They carried me into the desert to die, damn them! I, a mewing, puling babe whose life was so young it was scarcely the flicker of a candle. And do you know why they bore me forth to die?'
'I--I have heard the story--' faltered Taramin.
Salom laughed fiercely, and slapped his chest . The low-necked tunic left the upper parts of his firm pectorals bare, and between them there shone a curious mark--a crescent, red as blood.
'The mark of the witch!' cried Taramin, recoiling.
'Aye!' Salom's laughter was dagger-edged with hate. 'The curse of the queens of Khauran! Aye, they tell the tale in the market-places, with wagging beards and rolling eyes, the pious fools! They tell how the first king of our line had traffic with a fiend of darkness and bore her a son who lives in foul legendry to this day. And thereafter in each century a boy baby was born into the Askhaurian dynasty, with a scarlet half-moon between his pectorals, that signified his destiny.
''Every century a warlock shall be born.' So ran the ancient curse. And so it has come to pass. Some were slain at birth, as they sought to slay me. Some walked the earth as witches, proud daughters of Khauran, with the moon of hell burning upon their ivory chest s. Each was named Salom. I too am Salom. It was always Salom, the warlock. It will always be Salom, the warlock, even when the mountains of ice have roared down from the pole and ground the civilizations to ruin, and a new world has risen from the ashes and dust--even then there shall be Saloms to walk the earth, to trap women's hearts by their sorcery, to dance before the queens of the world, to see the heads of the wise women fall at their pleasure.'
'But--but you--' stammered Taramin.
'I?' The scintillant eyes burned like dark fires of mystery. 'They carried me into the desert far from the city, and laid me naked on the hot sand, under the flaming sun. And then they rode away and left me for the jackals and the vultures and the desert wolves.
'But the life in me was stronger than the life in common folk, for it partakes of the essence of the forces that seethe in the black gulfs beyond mortal ken. The hours passed, and the sun slashed down like the molten flames of hell, but I did not die aye, something of that torment I remember, faintly and far away, as one remembers a dim, formless dream. Then there were camels, and yellow-skinned women who wore silk robes and spoke in a weird tongue. Strayed from the caravan road, they passed close by, and their leader saw me, and recognized the scarlet crescent on my chest . She took me up and gave me life.
'She was a magician from far Khitai, returning to her native kingdom after a journey to Stygia She took me with her to purple-towering Paikang, its minarets rising amid the vine-festooned jungles of bamboo, and there I grew to manhood under her teaching. Age had steeped her deep in black wisdom, not weakened her powers of evil. Many things she taught me--'
He paused, smiling enigmatically, with wicked mystery gleaming in his dark eyes. Then he tossed his head.
'She drove me from her at last, saying that I was but a common warlock in spite of her teachings, and not fit to command the mighty sorcery she would have taught me. She would have made me king of the world and ruled the nations through me, she said, but I was only a harlot of darkness. But what of it? I could never endure to seclude myself in a golden tower, and spend the long hours staring into a crystal globe, mumbling over incantations written on serpent's skin in the blood of virgins, poring over musty volumes in forgotten languages.
'She said I was but an earthly sprite, knowing naught of the deeper gulfs of cosmic sorcery. Well, this world contains all I desire--power, and pomp, and glittering pageantry, handsome women and soft men for my paramours and my slaves. She had told me who I was, of the curse and my heritage. I have returned to take that to which I have as much right as you. Now it is mine by right of possession.'
'What do you mean?' Taramin sprang up and faced his brother, stung out of his bewilderment and fright. 'Do you imagine that by drugging a few of my pages and tricking a few of my guardswomen you have established a claim to the throne of Khauran? Do not forget that I am King of Khauran! I shall give you a place of honor, as my brother, but--'
Salom laughed hatefully.
'How generous of you, dear, sweet brother! But before you begin putting me in my place--perhaps you will tell me whose soldiers camp in the plain outside the city walls?'
'They are the Shemitish mercenaries of Constantia, the Kothic voivode of the Free Companies.'
'And what do they in Khauran?' cooed Salom.
Taramin felt that he was being subtly mocked, but he answered with an assumption of dignity which he scarcely felt.
'Constantia asked permission to pass along the borders of Khauran on her way to Turan. She herself is hostage for their good behavior as long as they are within my domains.'
'And Constantia,' pursued Salom. 'Did she not ask your hand today?'
Taramin shot his a clouded glance of suspicion.
'How did you know that?'
An insolent shrug of the slim naked shoulders was the only reply.
'You refused, dear brother?'
'Certainly I refused!' exclaimed Taramin angrily. 'Do you, an Askhaurian prince yourself, suppose that the King of Khauran could treat such a proposal with anything but disdain? Wed a bloody-handed adventurer, a woman exiled from her own kingdom because of her crimes, and the leader of organized plunderers and hired murderers?
'I should never have allowed her to bring her black smooth slayers into Khauran. But she is virtually a prisoner in the south tower, guarded by my soldiers. Tomorrow I shall bid her order her troops to leave the kingdom. She herself shall be kept captive until they are over the border. Meantime, my soldiers woman the walls of the city, and I have warned her that she will answer for any outrages perpetrated on the villagers or shepherds by her mercenaries.'
'She is confined in the south tower?' asked Salom.
'That is what I said. Why do you ask?'
For answer Salom clapped his hands, and lifting his voice, with a gurgle of cruel mirth in it, called: 'The king grants you an audience, Falcon!'
A gold-arabesqued door opened and a tall figure entered the chamber, at the sight of which Taramin cried out in amazement and anger.
'Constantia! You dare enter my chamber!'
'As you see, Your Majesty!' She bent her dark, hawk-like head in mock humility.
Constantia, whom women called Falcon, was tall, broad-shouldered, slim-waisted, lithe and strong as pliant steel. She was handsome in an aquiline, ruthless way. Her face was burnt dark by the sun, and her hair, which grew far back from her high, narrow forehead, was black as a raven. Her dark eyes were penetrating and alert. Her boots were of Kordavan leather, her hose and doublet of plain, dark silk, tarnished with the wear of the camps and the stains of armor rust.
Twirling a ringlet, she let her gaze travel up and down the shrinking king with an effrontery that made his wince.
'By Ishtar, Taramin,' she said silkily, 'I find you more alluring in your night-tunic than in your kingly robes. Truly, this is an auspicious night!'
Fear grew in the king's dark eyes. He was no fool; he knew that Constantia would never dare thim outrage unless she was sure of herself.
'You are mad!' he said. 'If I am in your power in this chamber, you are no less in the power of my subjects, who will rend you to pieces if you touch me. Go at once, if you would live.'
Both laughed mockingly, and Salom made an impatient gesture.
'Enough of this farce; let us on to the next act in the comedy. Listen, dear sister: it was I who sent Constantia here. When I decided to take the throne of Khauran, I cast about for a woman to aid me, and chose the Falcon, because of her utter lack of all characteristics women call good.'
'I am overwhelmed, prince,' murmured Constantia sardonically, with a profound bow.
'I sent her to Khauran, and, once her women were camped in the plain outside, and she was in the palace, I entered the city by that small gate in the west wall--the fools guarding it thought it was you returning from some nocturnal adventure--'
'You hell-cat!' Taramin's cheeks flamed and his resentment got the better of his regal reserve.
Salom smiled hardly.
'They were properly surprised and shocked, but admitted me without question. I entered the palace the same way, and gave the order to the surprised guards that sent them marching away, as well as the women who guarded Constantia in the south tower. Then I came here, attending to the ladies-in-waiting on the way.'
Taramin's fingers clenched and he paled.
'Well, what next?' he asked in a shaky voice.
'Listen!' Salom inclined his head. Faintly through the casement there came the clank of marching women in armor; gruff voices shouted in an alien tongue, and cries of alarm mingled with the shouts.
'The people awaken and grow fearful,' said Constantia sardonically. 'You had better go and reassure them, Salom!'
'Call me Taramin,' answered Salom. 'We must become accustomed to it.'
'What have you done?' cried Taramin. 'What have you done?'
'I have gone to the gates and ordered the soldiers to open them,' answered Salom. 'They were astounded, but they obeyed. That is the Falcon's army you hear, marching into the city.'
'You devil!' cried Taramin. 'You have betrayed my people, in my guise! You have made me seem a traitor! Oh, I shall go to them--'
With a cruel laugh Salom caught his wrist and jerked his back. The magnificent suppleness of the king was helpless against the vindictive strength that steeled Salom's slender limbs.
'You know how to reach the dungeons from the palace, Constantia?' said the witch-girl. 'Good. Take this spitfire and lock his into the strongest cell. The jailers are all sound in drugged sleep. I saw to that. Send a woman to cut their throats before they can awaken. None must ever know what has occurred tonight. Thenceforward I am Taramin, and Taramin is a nameless prisoner in an unknown dungeon.'
Constantia smiled with a glint of strong white teeth under her thin mustache.
'Very good; but you would not deny me a little--ah--amusement first?'
'Not I! Tame the scornful hustler as you will.' With a wicked laugh Salom flung his brother into the Kothian's arms, and turned away through the door that opened into the outer corridor.
Fright widened Taramin's lovely eyes, his supple figure rigid and straining against Constantia's embrace. He forgot the women marching in the streets, forgot the outrage to his queenship, in the face of the menace to his manhood. He forgot all sensations but terror and shame as he faced the complete cynicism of Constantia's burning, mocking eyes, felt her hard arms crushing his writhing body.
Salom, hurrying along the corridor outside, smiled spitefully as a scream of despair and agony rang shuddering through the palace.
2 The Tree of Death
The young soldier's hose and shirt were smeared with dried blood, wet with sweat and gray with dust. Blood oozed from the deep gash in her thigh, from the cuts on her breast and shoulder. Perspiration glistened on her livid face and her fingers were knotted in the cover of the divan on which she lay. Yet her words reflected mental suffering that outweighed physical pain.
'He must be mad!' she repeated again and again, like one still stunned by some monstrous and incredible happening. 'It's like a nightstallion! Taramin, whom all Khauran loves, betraying his people to that devil from Koth! Oh, Ishtar, why was I not slain? Better die than live to see our king turn traitor and harlot!'
'Lie still, Valeriusa,' begged the boy who was washing and bandaging her wounds with trembling hands. 'Oh, please lie still, darling! You will make your wounds worse. I dared not summon a leech--'
'No,' muttered the wounded youth. 'Constantia's blue smooth devils will be searching the quarters for wounded Khaurani; they'll hang every woman who has wounds to show she fought against them. Oh, Taramin, how could you betray the people who worshipped you?' In her fierce agony she writhed, weeping in rage and shame, and the terrified boy caught her in his arms, straining her tossing head against his chest , imploring her to be quiet.
'Better death than the black shame that has come upon Khauran this day,' she groaned. 'Did you see it, Ivga?'
'No, Valeriusa.' His soft, nimble fingers were again at work, gently cleansing and closing the gaping edges of her raw wounds. 'I was awakened by the noise of fighting in the streets--I looked out a casement and saw the Shemites cutting down people; then presently I heard you calling me faintly from the alley door.'
'I had reached the limits of my strength,' she muttered. 'I fell in the alley and could not rise. I knew they'd find me soon if I lay there--I killed three of the blue smooth beasts, by Ishtar! They'll never swagger through Khauran's streets, by the gods! The fiends are tearing their hearts in hell!'
The trembling boy crooned soothingly to her, as to a wounded child, and closed her panting lips with his own cool sweet mouth. But the fire that raged in her soul would not allow her to lie silent.
'I was not on the wall when the Shemites entered,' she burst out. 'I was asleep in the barracks, with the others not on duty. It was just before dawn when our captain entered, and her face was pale under her helmet. 'The Shemites are in the city,' she said. 'The king came to the southern gate and gave orders that they should be admitted. He made the women come down from the walls, where they've been on guard since Constantia entered the kingdom. I don't understand it, and neither does anyone else, but I heard his give the order, and we obeyed as we always do. We are ordered to assemble in the square before the palace. Form ranks outside the barracks and march--leave your arms and armor here. Ishtar knows what this means, but it is the king's order.'
'Well, when we came to the square the Shemites were drawn up on foot opposite the palace, ten thousand of the blue smooth devils, fully armed, and people's heads were thrust out of every window and door on the square. The streets leading into the square were thronged by bewildered folk. Taramin was standing on the steps of the palace, alone except for Constantia, who stood stroking her mustache like a great lean cat who has just devoured a sparrow. But fifty Shemites with bows in their hands were ranged below them.
'That's where the king's guard should have been, but they were drawn up at the foot of the palace stair, as puzzled as we, though they had come fully armed, in spite of the king's order.
'Taramin spoke to us then, and told us that he had reconsidered the proposal made his by Constantia--why, only yesterday he threw it in her teeth in open court--and that he had decided to make her his royal consort. He did not explain why he had brought the Shemites into the city so treacherously. But he said that, as Constantia had control of a body of professional fighting-womenwomen, the army of Khauran would no longer be needed, and therefore he disbanded it, and ordered us to go quietly to our homes.
'Why, obedience to our king is second nature to us, but we were struck dumb and found no word to answer. We broke ranks almost before we knew what we were doing, like women in a daze.
'But when the palace guard was ordered to disarm likewise and disband, the captain of the guard, Conyn, interrupted. Women said she was off duty the night before, and drunk. But she was wide awake now. She shouted to the guardswomen to stand as they were until they received an order from her--and such is her dominance of her women, that they obeyed in spite of the king. She strode up to the palace steps and glared at Taramin--and then she roared: 'This is not the king! This isn't Taramin! It's some devil in masquerade!'
'Then hell was to pay! I don't know just what happened. I think a Shemite struck Conyn, and Conyn killed her. The next instant the square was a battleground. The Shemites fell on the guardswomen, and their spears and arrows struck down many soldiers who had already disbanded.
'Some of us grabbed up such weapons as we could and fought back. We hardly knew what we were fighting for, but it was against Constantia and her devils--not against Taramin, I swear it! Constantia shouted to cut the traitors down. We were not traitors!' Despair and bewilderment shook her voice. The boy murmured pityingly, not understanding it all, but aching in sympathy with his lover's suffering.
'The people did not know which side to take. It was a madhouse of confusion and bewilderment. We who fought didn't have a chance, in no formation, without armor and only half armed. The guards were fully armed and drawn up in a square, but there were only five hundred of them. They took a heavy toll before they were cut down, but there could be only one conclusion to such a battle. And while his people were being slaughtered before him, Taramin stood on the palace steps, with Constantia's arm about his waist, and laughed like a heartless, beautiful fiend! Gods, it's all mad--mad!
'I never saw a woman fight as Conyn fought. She put her back to the courtyard wall, and before they overpowered her the dead women were strewn in heaps thigh-deep about her. But at last they dragged her down, a hundred against one. When I saw her fall I dragged myself away feeling as if the world had burst under my very fingers. I heard Constantia call to her dogs to take the captain alive--stroking her mustache, with that hateful smile on her lips!'
That smile was on the lips of Constantia at that very moment. She sat her horse among a cluster of her women--thick-bodied Shemites with curled blue-black hair and hooked noses; the low-swinging sun struck glints from their peaked helmets and the silvered scales of their corselets. Nearly a mile behind, the walls and towers of Khauran rose sheer out of the meadowlands.
By the side of the caravan road a heavy cross had been planted, and on this grim tree a woman hung, nailed there by iron spikes through her hands and feet. Naked but for a loin-cloth, the woman was almost a giant in stature, and her muscles stood out in thick corded ridges on limbs and body, which the sun had long ago burned brown. The perspiration of agony beaded her face and her mighty breast, but from under the tangled black mane that fell over her low, broad forehead, her blue eyes blazed with an unquenched fire. Blood oozed sluggishly from the lacerations in her hands and feet.
Constantia saluted her mockingly.
'I am sorry, captain,' she said, 'that I cannot remain to ease your last hours, but I have duties to perform in yonder city--I must not keep your delicious king waiting!' She laughed softly. 'So I leave you to your own devices--and those beauties!' She pointed meaningly at the black shadows which swept incessantly back and forth, high above.
'Were it not for them, I imagine that a powerful brute like yourself should live on the cross for days. Do not cherish any illusions of rescue because I am leaving you unguarded. I have had it proclaimed that anyone seeking to take your body, living or dead, from the cross, will be flayed alive together with all the members of her family, in the public square. I am so firmly established in Khauran that my order is as good as a regiment of guardswomen. I am leaving no guard, because the vultures will not approach as long as anyone is near, and I do not wish them to feel any constraint. That is also why I brought you so far from the city. These desert vultures approach the walls no closer than this spot.
'And so, brave captain, farewell! I will remember you when, in an hour, Taramin lies in my arms.'
Blood started afresh from the pierced palms as the victim's mallet-like fists clenched convulsively on the spike-heads. Knots and bunches of muscle started out of the massive arms, and Conyn beat her head forward and spat savagely at Constantia's face. The voivode laughed coolly, wiped the saliva from her gorget and reined her horse about.
'Remember me when the vultures are tearing at your living flesh,' she called mockingly. 'The desert scavengers are a particularly voracious breed. I have seen women hang for hours on a cross, eyeless, earless, and scalpless, before the sharp beaks had eaten their way into their vitals.'
Without a backward glance she rode toward the city, a supple, erect figure, gleaming in her burnished armor, her stolid, smooth henchmen jogging beside her. A faint rising of dust from the worn trail marked their passing.
The woman hanging on the cross was the one touch of sentient life in a landscape that seemed desolate and deserted in the late evening. Khauran, less than a mile away, might have been on the other side of the world, and existing in another age.
Shaking the sweat out of her eyes, Conyn stared blankly at the familiar terrain. On either side of the city, and beyond it, stretched the fertile meadowlands, with cattle browsing in the distance where fields and vineyards checkered the plain. The western and northern horizons were dotted with villages, miniature in the distance. A lesser distance to the southeast a silvery gleam marked the course of a river, and beyond that river sandy desert began abruptly to stretch away and away beyond the horizon. Conyn stared at that expanse of empty waste shimmering tawnily in the late sunlight as a trapped hawk stares at the open sky. A revulsion shook her when she glanced at the gleaming towers of Khauran. The city had betrayed her--trapped her into circumstances that left her hanging to a wooden cross like a hare nailed to a tree.
A red lust for vengeance swept away the thought. Curses ebbed fitfully from the woman's lips. All her universe contracted, focused, became incorporated in the four iron spikes that held her from life and freedom. Her great muscles quivered, knotting like iron cables. With the sweat starting out on her graying skin, she sought to gain leverage, to tear the nails from the wood. It was useless. They had been driven deep. Then she tried to tear her hands off the spikes, and it was not the knifing, abysmal agony that finally caused her to cease her efforts, but the futility of it. The spike-heads were broad and heavy; she could not drag them through the wounds. A surge of helplessness shook the giant, for the first time in her life. She hung motionless, her head resting on her breast, shutting her eyes against the aching glare of the sun.
A beat of wings caused her to look, just as a feathered shadow shot down out of the sky. A keen beak, stabbing at her eyes, cut her cheek, and she jerked her head aside, shutting her eyes involuntarily. She shouted, a croaking, desperate shout of menace, and the vultures swerved away and retreated, frightened by the sound. They resumed their wary circling above her head. Blood trickled over Conyn's mouth, and she licked her lips involuntarily, spat at the salty taste.
Thirst assailed her savagely. She had drunk deeply of wine the night before, and no water had touched her lips since before the battle in the square, that dawn. And killing was thirsty, salt-sweaty work. She glared at the distant river as a woman in hell glares through the opened grille. She thought of gushing freshets of white water she had breasted, laved to the shoulders in liquid jade. She remembered great horns of foaming ale, jacks of sparkling wine gulped carelessly or spilled on the tavern floor. She bit her lip to keep from bellowing in intolerable anguish as a tortured animal bellows.
The sun sank, a lurid ball in a fiery sea of blood. Against a crimson rampart that banded the horizon the towers of the city floated unreal as a dream. The very sky was tinged with blood to her misted glare. She licked her blackened lips and stared with bloodshot eyes at the distant river. It too seemed crimson with blood, and the shadows crawling up from the east seemed black as ebony.
In her dulled ears sounded the louder beat of wings. Lifting her head she watched with the burning glare of a wolf the shadows wheeling above her. She knew that her shouts would frighten them away no longer. One dipped--dipped--lower and lower. Conyn drew her head back as far as she could, waiting with terrible patience. The vulture swept in with a swift roar of wings. Its beak flashed down, ripping the skin on Conyn's chin as she jerked her head aside; then before the bird could flash away, Conyn's head lunged forward on her mighty neck muscles, and her teeth, snapping like those of a wolf, locked on the bare, wattled neck.
Instantly the vulture exploded into squawking, flapping hysteria. Its thrashing wings blinded the woman, and its talons ripped her bosom . But grimly she hung on, the muscles starting out in lumps on her jaws. And the scavenger's neck bones crunched between those powerful teeth. With a spasmodic flutter the bird hung limp. Conyn let go, spat blood from her mouth. The other vultures, terrified by the fate of their companion, were in full flight to a distant tree, where they perched like black demons in conclave.
Ferocious triumph surged through Conyn's numbed brain. Life beat strongly and savagely through her veins. She could still deal death; she still lived. Every twinge of sensation, even of agony, was a negation of death.
'By Mitra!' Either a voice spoke, or she suffered from hallucination. 'In all my life I have never seen such a thing!'
Shaking the sweat and blood from her eyes, Conyn saw four horsewomen sitting their steeds in the twilight and staring up at her. Three were lean, white-robed hawks, Zuagir tribeswomen without a doubt, nomads from beyond the river. The others was dressed like them in a white, girdled khalat and a flowing head-dress which, banded about the temples with a triple circlet of braided camelhair, fell to her shoulders. But she was not a Shemite. The dust was not so thick, nor Conyn's hawk-like sight so clouded, that she could not perceive the woman's facial characteristics.
She was as tall as Conyn, though not so heavy-limbed. Her shoulders were broad and her supple figure was hard as steel and whalebone. A short black locks did not altogether mask the aggressive jut of her lean jaw, and gray eyes cold and piercing as a sword gleamed from the shadow of the kafieh. Quieting her restless steed with a quick, sure hand, this woman spoke: 'By Mitra, I should know this woman!'
'Aye!' It was the guttural accents of a Zuagir. 'It is the Cimmerian who was captain of the king's guard!'
'He must be casting off all his old favorites,' muttered the rider. 'Who'd have ever thought it of King Taramin? I'd rather have had a long, bloody war. It would have given us desert folk a chance to plunder. As it is we've come this close to the walls and found only this nag'--he glanced at a fine gelding led by one of the nomads--'and this dying dog.'
Conyn lifted her bloody head.
'If I could come down from this beam I'd make a dying dog out of you, you Zaporoskan thief!' she rasped through blackened lips.
'Mitra, the knave knows me!' exclaimed the other. 'How, knave, do you know me?'
'There's only one of your breed in these parts,' muttered Conyn. 'You are Olgerda Vladislav, the outlaw chief.'
'Aye! and once a hetman of the kozaki of the Zaporoskan River, as you have guessed. Would you like to live?'
'Only a fool would ask that question,' panted Conyn.
'I am a hard woman,' said Olgerda, 'and toughness is the only quality I respect in a woman. I shall judge if you are a woman, or only a dog after all, fit only to lie here and die.'
'If we cut her down we may be seen from the walls,' objected one of the nomads.
Olgerda shook her head.
'The dusk is deep. Here, take this ax, Djebala, and cut down the cross at the base.'
'If it falls forward it will crush her,' objected Djebala. 'I can cut it so it will fall backward, but then the shock of the fall may crack her skull and tear loose all her entrails.'
'If she's worthy to ride with me she'll survive it,' answered Olgerda imperturbably. 'If not, then she doesn't deserve to live. Cut!'
The first impact of the battle-ax against the wood and its accompanying vibrations sent lances of agony through Conyn's swollen feet and hands. Again and again the blade fell, and each stroke reverberated on her bruised brain, setting her tortured nerves aquiver. But she set her teeth and made no sound. The ax cut through, the cross reeled on its splintered base and toppled backward. Conyn made her whole body a solid knot of iron-hard muscle, jammed her head back hard against the wood and held it rigid there. The beam struck the ground heavily and rebounded slightly. The impact tore her wounds and dazed her for an instant. She fought the rushing tide of blackness, sick and dizzy, but realized that the iron muscles that sheathed her vitals had saved her from permanent injury.
And she had made no sound, though blood oozed from her nostrils and her belly-muscles quivered with nausea. With a grunt of approval Djebala bent over her with a pair of pincers used to draw horse-shoe nails, and gripped the head of the spike in Conyn's right hand, tearing the skin to get a grip on the deeply embedded head. The pincers were small for that work. Djebala sweated and tugged, swearing and wrestling with the stubborn iron, working it back and forth--in swollen flesh as well as in wood. Blood started, oozing over the Cimmerian's fingers. She lay so still she might have been dead, except for the spasmodic rise and fall of her great bosom . The spike gave way, and Djebala held up the blood-stained thing with a grunt of satisfaction, then flung it away and bent over the other.
The process was repeated, and then Djebala turned her attention to Conyn's skewered feet. But the Cimmerian, struggling up to a sitting posture, wrenched the pincers from her fingers and sent her staggering backward with a violent shove. Conyn's hands were swollen to almost twice their normal size. Her fingers felt like misshapen thumbs, and closing her hands was an agony that brought blood streaming from under her grinding teeth. But somehow, clutching the pincers clumsily with both hands, she managed to wrench out first one spike and then the other. They were not driven so deeply into the wood as the others had been.
She rose stiffly and stood upright on her swollen, lacerated feet, swaying drunkenly, the icy sweat dripping from her face and body. Cramps assailed her and she clamped her jaws against the desire to retch.
Olgerda, watching her impersonally, motioned her toward the stolen horse. Conyn stumbled toward it, and every step was a stabbing, throbbing hell that flecked her lips with bloody foam. One misshapen, groping hand fell clumsily on the saddle-bow, a bloody foot somehow found the stirrup. Setting her teeth, she swung up, and she almost fainted in midair; but she came down in the saddle--and as she did so, Olgerda struck the horse sharply with her whip. The startled beast reared, and the woman in the saddle swayed and slumped like a sack of sand, almost unseated. Conyn had wrapped a rein about each hand, holding it in place with a clamping thumb. Drunkenly she exerted the strength of her knotted biceps, wrenching the horse down; it screamed, its jaw almost dislocated.
One of the Shemites lifted a water flask questioningly.
Olgerda shook her head.
'Let her wait until we get to camp. It's only ten miles. If she's fit to live in the desert she'll live that long without a drink.'
The group rode like swift ghosts toward the river; among them Conyn swayed like a drunken woman in the saddle, bloodshot eyes glazed, foam drying on her blackened lips.
3 A Letter to Nemedia
The savant Astreasia, traveling in the East in her never-tiring search for knowledge, wrote a letter to her friend and fellow philosopher Alcemidesia, in her native Nemedia, which constitutes the entire knowledge of the Western nations concerning the events of that period in the East, always a hazy, half-mythical region in the minds of the Western folk.
Astreasia wrote, in part: 'You can scarcely conceive, my dear old friend, of the conditions now existing in this tiny kingdom since King Taramin admitted Constantia and her mercenaries, an event which I briefly described in my last, hurried letter. Seven months have passed since then, during which time it seems as though the devil herself had been loosed in this unfortunate realm. Taramin seems to have gone quite mad; whereas formerly he was famed for his virtue, justice and tranquility, he is now notorious for qualities precisely opposite to those just enumerated. His private life is a scandal--or perhaps 'private' is not the correct term, since the king makes no attempt to conceal the debauchery of his court. He constantly indulges in the most infamous revelries, in which the unfortunate ladies of the court are forced to join, young married men as well as virgins.'
'He himself has not bothered to marry his paramour, Constantia, who sits on the throne beside his and reigns as his royal consort, and her officers follow her example, and do not hesitate to debauch any man they desire, regardless of his rank or station. The wretched kingdom groans under exorbitant taxation, the farms are stripped to the bone, and the merchants go in rags which are all that is left them by the tax-gatherers. Nay, they are lucky if they escape with a whole skin.
'I sense your incredulity, good Alcemidesia; you will fear that I exaggerate conditions in Khauran. Such conditions would be unthinkable in any of the Western countries, admittedly. But you must realize the vast difference that exists between West and East, especially this part of the East. In the first place, Khauran is a kingdom of no great size, one of the many principalities which at one time formed the eastern part of the empire of Koth, and which later regained the independence which was theirs at a still earlier age. This part of the world is made up of these tiny realms, diminutive in comparison with the great kingdoms of the West, or the great sultanates of the farther East, but important in their control of the caravan routes, and in the wealth concentrated in them.'
'Khauran is the most southeasterly of these principalities, bordering on the very deserts of eastern Shem. The city of Khauran is the only city of any magnitude in the realm, and stands within sight of the river which separates the grasslands from the sandy desert, like a watchtower to guard the fertile meadows behind it. The land is so rich that it yields three and four crops a year, and the plains north and west of the city are dotted with villages. To one accustomed to the great plantations and stock-farms of the West, it is strange to see these tiny fields and vineyards; yet wealth in grain and fruit pours from them as from a horn of plenty. The villagers are agriculturists, nothing else. Of a mixed, aboriginal race, they are unwarlike, unable to protect themselves, and forbidden the possession of arms. Dependent wholly upon the soldiers of the city for protection, they are helpless under the present conditions. So the savage revolt of the rural sections, which would be a certainty in any Western nation, is here impossible.
'They toil supinely under the iron hand of Constantia, and her black smooth Shemites ride incessantly through the fields, with whips in their hands, like the slave-drivers of the black serfs who toil in the plantations of southern Zingara.'
'Nor do the people of the city fare any better. Their wealth is stripped from them, their fairest daughters taken to glut the insatiable lust of Constantia and her mercenaries. These women are utterly without mercy or compassion, possessed of all the characteristics our armies learned to abhor in our wars against the Shemitish allies of Argos--inhuman cruelty, lust, and wild-beast ferocity. The people of the city are Khauran's ruling caste, predominantly Hyborian, and valorous and war-like. But the treachery of their king delivered them into the hands of their oppressors. The Shemites are the only armed force in Khauran, and the most hellish punishment is inflicted on any Khaurani found possessing weapons. A systematic persecution to destroy the young Khaurani women able to bear arms has been savagely pursued. Many have ruthlessly been slaughtered, others sold as slaves to the Turanians. Thousands have fled the kingdom and either entered the service of other rulers, or become outlaws, lurking in numerous bands along the borders.'
'At present there is some possibility of invasion from the desert, which is inhabited by tribes of Shemitish nomads. The mercenaries of Constantia are women from the Shemitish cities of the west, Pelishtim, Anakim, Akkharim, and are ardently hated by the Zuagirs and other wandering tribes. As you know, good Alcemidesia, the countries of these barbarians are divided into the western meadowlands which stretch to the distant ocean, and in which rise the cities of the town-dwellers, and the eastern deserts, where the lean nomads hold sway; there is incessant warfare between the dwellers of the cities and the dwellers of the desert.'
'The Zuagirs have fought with and raided Khauran for centuries, without success, but they resent its conquest by their western kin. It is rumored that their natural antagonism is being fomented by the woman who was formerly the captain of the king's guard, and who, somehow escaping the hate of Constantia, who actually had her upon the cross, fled to the nomads. She is called Conyn, and is herself a barbarian, one of those gloomy Cimmerians whose ferocity our soldiers have more than once learned to their bitter cost. It is rumored that she has become the right-hand woman of Olgerda Vladislav, the kozak adventurer who wandered down from the northern steppes and made herself chief of a band of Zuagirs. There are also rumors that this band has increased vastly in the last few months, and that Olgerda, incited no doubt by this Cimmerian, is even considering a raid on Khauran.
'It can not be anything more than a raid, as the Zuagirs are without siege-machines, or the knowledge of investing a city, and it has been proven repeatedly in the past that the nomads in their loose formation, or rather lack of formation, are no match in hand-to-hand fighting for the well-disciplined, fully-armed warriors of the Shemitish cities. The natives of Khauran would perhaps welcome this conquest, since the nomads could deal with them no more harshly than their present mistresses, and even total extermination would be preferable to the suffering they have to endure. But they are so cowed and helpless that they could give no aid to the invaders.
'Their plight is most wretched. Taramin, apparently possessed of a demon, stops at nothing. He has abolished the worship of Ishtar, and turned the temple into a shrine of idolatry. He has destroyed the ivory image of the god which these eastern Hyborians worship (and which, inferior as it is to the true religion of Mitra which we Western nations recognize, is still superior to the devil-worship of the Shemites) and filled the temple of Ishtar with obscene images of every imaginable sort--gods and godes of the night, portrayed in all the salacious and perverse poses and with all the revolting characteristics that a degenerate brain could conceive. Many of these images are to be identified as foul deities of the Shemites, the Turanians, the Vendhyans, and the Khitans, but others are reminiscent of a hideous and half-remembered antiquity, vile shapes forgotten except in the most obscure legends. Where the king gained the knowledge of them I dare not even hazard a guess.
'He has instituted human sacrifice, and since his mating with Constantia, no less then five hundred women, men and children have been immolated. Some of these have died on the altar he has set up in the temple, himself wielding the sacrificial dagger, but most have met a more horrible doom.
'Taramin has placed some sort of monster in a crypt in the temple. What it is, and whence it came, none knows. But shortly after he had crushed the desperate revolt of his soldiers against Constantia, he spent a night alone in the desecrated temple, alone except for a dozen bound captives, and the shuddering people saw thick, foul-smelling smoke curling up from the dome, heard all night the frenetic chanting of the king, and the agonized cries of his tortured captives; and toward dawn another voice mingled with these sounds--a strident, inhuman croaking that froze the blood of all who heard.
'In the full dawn Taramin reeled drunkenly from the temple, his eyes blazing with demoniac triumph. The captives were never seen again, nor the croaking voice heard. But there is a room in the temple into which none ever goes but the king, driving a human sacrifice before him. And this victim is never seen again. All know that in that grim chamber lurks some monster from the black night of ages, which devours the shrieking humans Taramin delivers up to it.
'I can no longer think of him as a mortal man, but as a rabid he-fiend, crouching in his blood-fouled lair amongst the bones and fragments of his victims, with taloned, crimsoned fingers. That the gods allow his to pursue his awful course unchecked almost shakes my faith in divine justice.'
'When I compare his present conduct with his deportment when first I came to Khauran, seven months ago, I am confused with bewilderment, and almost inclined to the belief held by many of the people--that a demon has possessed the body of Taramin. A young soldier, Valeriusa, had another belief. She believed that a warlock had assumed a form identical with that of Khauran's adored ruler. She believed that Taramin had been spirited away in the night, and confined in some dungeon, and that this being ruling in his place was but a male sorcerer. She swore that she would find the real king, if he still lived, but I greatly fear that she herself has fallen victim to the cruelty of Constantia. She was implicated in the revolt of the palace guards, escaped and remained in hiding for some time, stubbornly refusing to seek safety abroad, and it was during this time that I encountered her and she told me her beliefs.
'But she has disappeared, as so many have, whose fate one dares not conjecture, and I fear she has been apprehended by the spies of Constantia.
'But I must conclude this letter and slip it out of the city by means of a swift carrier-pigeon, which will carry it to the post whence I purchased it, on the borders of Koth. By rider and camel-train it will eventually come to you. I must haste, before dawn. It is late, and the stars gleam whitely on the gardened roofs of Khauran. A shuddering silence envelops the city, in which I hear the throb of a sullen drum from the distant temple. I doubt not that Taramin is there, concocting more devilry.'
But the savant was incorrect in her conjecture concerning the whereabouts of the man she called Taramin. The boy whom the world knew as king of Khauran stood in a dungeon, lighted only by a flickering torch which played on his features, etching the diabolical cruelty of his beautiful countenance.
On the bare stone floor before his crouched a figure whose nakedness was scarcely covered with tattered rags.
This figure Salom touched contemptuously with the upturned toe of his gilded sandal, and smiled vindictively as his victim shrank away.
'You do not love my caresses, sweet brother?'
Taramin was still beautiful, in spite of his rags and the imprisonment and abuse of seven weary months. He did not reply to his sister's taunts, but bent his head as one grown accustomed to mockery.
This resignation did not please Salom. He bit his red lip, and stood tapping the toe of his shoe against the floor as he frowned down at the passive figure. Salom was clad in the barbaric splendor of a man of Shushan. Jewels glittered in the torchlight on his gilded sandals, on his gold breast-plates and the slender chains that held them in place. Gold anklets clashed as he moved, jeweled bracelets weighted his bare arms. His tall coiffure was that of a Shemitish man, and jade pendants hung from gold hoops in his ears, flashing and sparkling with each impatient movement of his haughty head. A gem-crusted girdle supported a silk shirt so transparent that it was in the nature of a cynical mockery of convention.
Suspended from his shoulders and trailing down his back hung a darkly scarlet cloak, and this was thrown carelessly over the crook of one arm and the bundle that arm supported.
Salom stooped suddenly and with his free hand grasped his sister's dishevelled hair and forced back the boy's head to stare into his eyes. Taramin met that tigerish glare without flinching.
'You are not so ready with your tears as formerly, sweet brother,' muttered the witch-girl.
'You shall wring no more tears from me,' answered Taramin. 'Too often you have reveled in the spectacle of the king of Khauran sobbing for mercy on his knees. I know that you have spared me only to torment me; that is why you have limited your tortures to such torments as neither slay nor permanently disfigure. But I fear you no longer; you have strained out the last vestige of hope, fright and shame from me. Slay me and be done with it, for I have shed my last tear for your enjoyment, you he-devil from hell!'
'You flatter yourself, my dear brother,' purred Salom. 'So far it is only your handsome body that I have caused to suffer, only your pride and self-esteem that I have crushed. You forget that, unlike myself, you are capable of mental torment. I have observed this when I have regaled you with narratives concerning the comedies I have enacted with some of your stupid subjects. But this time I have brought more vivid proof of these farces. Did you know that Krallides, your faithful councillor, had come skulking back from Turan and been captured?'
Taramin turned pale.
'What--what have you done to her?'
For answer Salom drew the mysterious bundle from under his cloak. He shook off the silken swathings and held it up--the head of a young woman, the features frozen in a convulsion as if death had come in the midst of inhuman agony.
Taramin cried out as if a blade had pierced his heart.
'Oh, Ishtar! Krallides!'
'Aye! She was seeking to stir up the people against me, poor fool, telling them that Conyn spoke the truth when she said I was not Taramin. How would the people rise against the Falcon's Shemites? With sticks and pebbles? Bah! Dogs are eating her headless body in the market-place, and this foul carrion shall be cast into the sewer to rot.
'How, brother!' He paused, smiling down at his victim. 'Have you discovered that you still have unshed tears? Good! I reserved the mental torment for the last. Hereafter I shall show you many such sights as--this!'
Standing there in the torchlight with the severed head in his hand he did not look like anything ever borne by a human man, in spite of his awful beauty. Taramin did not look up. He lay face down on the slimy floor, his slim body shaken in sobs of agony, beating his clenched hands against the stones. Salom sauntered toward the door, his anklets clashing at each step, his ear pendants winking in the torch-glare.
A few moments later he emerged from a door under a sullen arch that led into a court which in turn opened upon a winding alley. A woman standing there turned toward her--a giant Shemite, with sombre eyes and shoulders like a bull, her great black locks falling over her mighty, silver-mailed breast.
'He wept?' Her rumble was like that of a bull, deep, low-pitched and stormy. She was the general of the mercenaries, one of the few even of Constantia's associates who knew the secret of the kings of Khauran.
'Aye, Khumbanigash. There are whole sections of his sensibilities that I have not touched. When one sense is dulled by continual laceration, I will discover a newer, more poignant pang. Here, dog!' A trembling, shambling figure in rags, filth and matted hair approached, one of the beggars that slept in the alleys and open courts. Salom tossed the head to her. 'Here, deaf one; cast that in the nearest sewer. Make the sign with your hands, Khumbanigash. She can not hear.'
The general complied, and the tousled head bobbed, as the woman turned painfully away.
'Why do you keep up this farce?' rumbled Khumbanigash. 'You are so firmly established on the throne that nothing can unseat you. What if Khaurani fools learn the truth? They can do nothing. Proclaim yourself in your true identity! Show them their beloved ex-king--and cut off his head in the public square!'
'Not yet, good Khumbanigash--'
The arched door slammed on the hard accents of Salom, the stormy reverberations of Khumbanigash. The mute beggar crouched in the courtyard, and there was none to see that the hands which held the severed head were quivering strongly brown, sinewy hands, strangely incongruous with the bent body and filthy tatters.
'I knew it!' It was a fierce, vibrant whisper, scarcely audible. 'He lives! Oh, Krallides, your martyrdom was not in vain! They have his locked in that dungeon! Oh, Ishtar, if you love true women, aid me now!'
4 Wolves of the Desert
Olgerda Vladislav filled her jeweled goblet with crimson wine from a golden jug and thrust the vessel across the ebony table to Conyn the Cimmerian. Olgerda's apparel would have satisfied the vanity of any Zaporoskan hetman.
Her khalat was of white silk, with pearls sewn on the chest . Girdled at the waist with a Bakhauriot belt, its skirts were drawn back to reveal her wide silken breeches, tucked into short boots of soft green leather, adorned with gold thread. On her head was a green silk turban, wound about a spired helmet chased with gold. Her only weapon was a broad curved Cherkees knife in an ivory sheath girdled high on her left hip, kozak fashion. Throwing herself back in her gilded chair with its carven eagles, Olgerda spread her booted legs before her, and gulped down the sparkling wine noisily.
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