"I've no wish to end up in the belly of one of those beasts, or to be trampled by one, either. And they may not be all that roam down here."
"Now you have made it certain that I will not sleep for the waking nightmares you just gave me!" Her pouting, though, was largely pretense.
Conan gripped Valeria's hand and gently thrust it away. "Lose no sleep over me, at least. I've had worse hurts as a boy, falling off a roof my father and I were thatching."
"As you wish, Conan," Valeria said. She turned and settled down from where she could watch in all directions. Conan allowed himself a moment to admire the fine, straight back that plunged down from the long neck to the well-rounded hips. Then he placed his steel ready to hand, kicked off his boots, and lay down to seek as much slumber as a man might win from a cold stone floor with magic all about him.
The hut where Dobanpu Spirit-Speaker slept when he visited the largest Ichiribu village was a place of shadows and subtle odors. It almost seemed to Seyganko that a tame spirit lurked in the grass of the roof, driving out the light.
The odors mingled grass, cooking smoke, the smoke of fires made with herbs, and the oil that Emwaya rubbed into her skin. Seyganko remembered the first time she had allowed him the honor of rubbing it in. His body tautened with remembered and anticipated desire.
In her corner of the hut, Emwaya sat like a carved image. She wore the plainest of waistcloths and only a single bone ornament in her hair, and her face was somber as she shifted her gaze from her father to her betrothed.
"You asked what we must do, Father?" she asked.
"In plain words," Dobanpu replied. His voice was the strongest part of him remaining, although he had not wholly lost the stout thews and broad shoulders of his youth. He had seen nearly sixty turns of the seasons and outlived all the children of his first wives, and all but Emwaya from his second family.
Some said he had suffered these losses as the price of all the time he had spent in the spirit world. Even those who said this whispered it. When they spoke aloud, they praised the courage with which he had borne his losses. They did doubt aloud the wisdom of his teaching his daughter the art of Spirit-Speaking, but only when Emwaya was not in hearing. Some called her tongue the deadliest weapon among the Ichiribu.
Dobanpu rose, stretching limbs cramped by long sitting. "Very surely, I want to know your thoughts as to what we must do," he said. "I did not go against all custom in teaching you my arts to have you sit as mute as the frog-queen in the tale of Myosta!"
"You asked, I answer," Emwaya said. "We must watch Aondo. Or better yet, find a way to take his weapons."
"Aondo is needed among the warriors," Seyganko said.
"Even at your back?"
"Properly watched, even at my back," the warrior asserted. "We can do nothing against him without dishonor and insult."
"If he feels insult, he can challenge you. That will be the end of him."
Dobanpu laughed softly. "Daughter, you have more faith in your betrothed's prowess than is wise. Aondo is so strong that it might not matter if he is as slow as a mired hippopotamus. Remember that when the great-jawed one reaches its victim, it is certain death."
"Indeed," Seyganko said. "Also, any man's foot may slip if his luck is out and the spirits not with him. They might well desert me if I dishonored a proven warrior like Aondo by trapping him into a death-duel."
"You speak of what the spirits might do?" Emwaya snapped.
"Yes, and if it is not to your liking, you may ask your father to end his teaching of me!"
Warrior and woman glared at each other for a moment, while Dobanpu raised his eyes to the shadowed ceiling and seemed to be asking the spirits for a brief moment of deafness, that he might not hear two whom he loved making fools of themselves. At last it was Emwaya who lowered her eyes.
That, Seyganko knew, was as much of an apology as he was likely to receive. But Emwaya was now of a mind to listen, and he could speak more freely.
"Also, I do not think that Aondo is the first of our enemies among the warriors. The loudest, I grant you. But first? No, I think more danger comes from one whose name I do not know, but whose presence I can guess."
"A spy for Chabano?" Emwaya asked.
"For him, for the God-Men, or perhaps for both."
"A bold one, if he thinks to serve both," Dobanpu said almost meditatively. "One hears tales, and more than a few of them, that the friendship of Paramount Chief and God-Men is a frail thing."
"All the more reason, then, to keep the spy alive," Seyganko said. "A man who tells tales can be made to bear false ones, to set his masters at each other's throats."
"You play stickball with lives," Emwaya said, her voice brittle.
"How not, daughter?" Dobanpu asked. "Learn a little more of my art and you will understand why this must sometimes be so. Or else give over learning Spirit-Speaking, wed Seyganko, bear his sons, govern his house and lesser wives—"
"And die when the Kwanyi and the God-Men strike, plowing our ashes into the fields before they sail south to carry all before them!" Emwaya shouted. Seyganko thought her about to weep.
Her storms were violent but swift, like those of the Lake of Death. She blinked hard, then contrived a smile. "Father, Seyganko. I know the price of any choice other than the one I have made. It may be the price even if I walk the way you bade me. But I do not have to rejoice in what the gods have sent to the Ichiribu."
"No one but a fool would ask you to," Seyganko said gently. He wished to take her in his arms, but thought the moment unfit. "Do you see any fools here about you?"
Emwaya laughed aloud. "Not yet."
"Then we go on as we have begun," Dobanpu said. "Indeed, I think this spy gives us yet more cause to leave Aondo alive. He can hardly be the spy, but I would wager a hutful of mealies and a new canoe that he knows who that man is. Following the leopard's cub has been known to lead a hunter to the leopard's lair."
Valeria had lost all notion of how long they had been tramping these endless underground passages. It was not merely an underground city they had entered, it was near to an underground kingdom. Already they had traversed thrice the distance from one side of Xuchotl to the other.
At least they had done so had they traveled in anything like a straight line. Valeria had barely more notion of their direction than she had of the passage of time. For all she could say, they might be wandering in circles.
No, that could not be altogether true. Except where they found blind tunnels or stairs leading up to impassable barriers, they had yet to retrace their steps. They were moving onward, but toward what destination, only the gods knew.
This place of cunningly wrought rock, and both beasts and spells of incredible antiquity, seemed as remote from the sight of the gods as it was from the sight of the sun. If any answers were to be found, she and Conan would have to find them unaided.
As always when Valeria found her thoughts thrashing about thus, like a cat in a sack, she eased herself by taking the lead. The need to be keenly alert to hidden dangers cudgeled her wits into some sort of order. The Cimmerian doubtless knew her reasons, but courtesy to a battle-comrade had so far curbed his tongue.
Another cave opened before them. Or chamber, rather. It might have been a cave once, carved from the rock over the eons by oozing, then dripping, then gushing water. Now the underground stream that had done the work flowed through a channel carved in a floor of pale, rose-hued stone, polished until it was silken-smooth to the touch and lightly shining even in the pale magic-light.