Thrusting a loaf and a small jug through the bars, the jailer went away, his cackling laughter resounding hollowly in the corridor. The famished Cimmerian flung himself on the food and drink. He munched great hunks of the stale loaf and washed them down with gulps of water.
At least he did not now have to fear poison, for if the king had wanted to kill him out of hand it would have been easy to do so while he lay unconscious.
He pondered his predicament. He was in the hands of his most implacable enemy. In the olden days King Yezdigerd had offered fabulous rewards for Conan’s head. Many had been the attempts on Conan. Several would-be assassins had been killed by Conan himself. But the tenacious hatred in Yezdigerd’s heart had not slackened even when his foe had won power as king of far Aquilonia. Now, by a woman’s devious schemes, Conan was at last at the mercy of his merciless antagonist. Any ordinary man would have been daunted by the terrible prospect.
Not so Conan! Accepting things as they were with barbarian stolidity, his fertile mind was already trying and discarding plans of winning to freedom and turning the tables of his vengeful captor. His eyes narrowed as the clank of footsteps sounded in the corridor.
At a harsh word of command the steps halted. Through the grille Conan could discern a half-score of guardsmen, gilt-worked mail a-shimmer in the torchlight, curved swords in their hands. Two bore heavy bows at the ready. A tall, massive officer stood forward. Conan recognized Ardashir, who spoke in a sharp, cutting voice.
“Shapur and Vardan! Truss the barbarian securely and sling a noose about his neck! Archers! Stand by to prevent any trick!”
The two soldiers stepped forward to carry out the order. One bore a log of wood six feet long and several inches thick, while the other carried a stout rope. Ardashir addressed himself to the Cimmerian. His eyes glowed with malevolence and his fingers twitched with eagerness to attack Conan, but he held himself in check with the iron self-control of a well-trained officer. He hissed: “One false move, barbarian dog, and your heart shall know the marksmanship of my archers! I should dearly love to slay you myself, but you are the king’s own meat.”
Conan’s chill blue eyes regarded the maddened officer without emotion as the soldiers placed the log across his shoulders and bound his arms to it. Without apparent effort, Conan tensed his huge arm muscles, so that the rope was stretched to its greatest tautness at the moment of tying.
The jailer than unlocked Conan’s fetters. Conan rumbled:
“You Turanian dogs will get what you deserve sooner or later. You will see.”
Ardashir’s face twitched in fury as he spat back: “And you will get yours, you red-handed rogue! No torture devised by human brains will be too cruel when the royal executioners set to work upon you.” He laughed a shrill uncontrolled laugh that betrayed his hysteric mood. “But enough of this gabble. Follow me, Your Majesty of maggoty Aquilonia!”
At a gesture to the guardsmen, the little company marched along the dank corridors. The bound barbarian walked in their midst, bearing the log across his shoulders. Conan was quite unruffled. He had been in many tight places before and won his way to freedom. He was like a trapped wolf, alert and constantly looking for a chance to reverse the situation. He did not waste thought on the terrible odds against him, or on futile recriminations against his foes, or on self-reproach for the moment’s lapse in vigilance that resulted in his capture. His whole mind and nervous system were concentrated on what to do next.
Winding stone staircases led upward. As nobody had blindfolded Conan, his keen eyes took in every detail. The dungeons of the royal palace were far below ground level. There were several floors to pass, at each of which an armed guard stood ready with sword or pike.
Twice Conan glimpsed the outside world as they passed window slits. The darkling sky showed that the time was either dawn or dusk. Now he understood the mystifying murmur of surf which had reached his ears.
The palace was built on the outskirts of Aghrapur, on a crag overlooking the Sea of Vilayet. The dungeons were carved out of the heart of the rock whose sheer face ended in the lapping waves below.
That was why Conan could see the sky through the window slits, though they had not yet reached the lower floors of the palace itself. Conan stored the knowledge in his mind.
The size of the palace was amazing. The party passed through endless rooms with fountains and jeweled vases.
Exotic blooms exuded heavy perfume. Now their steps echoed from arching walls; now they were muffled by rich rugs and hangings. Corseleted soldiers stood like statues everywhere with inscrutable faces and eyes alert. Here the splendor of the East bloomed in its full glory.
The party halted before two gigantic, goldworked doors. Fully fifty feet high they towered, their upper parts disappearing in the gloom.
Mysterious arabesques curled their snaky course across the surfaces of the doors, on which the dragons, heroes, and wizards of Hyrkanian legend were depicted. Ardashir stepped forward and struck the golden plates a ringing blow with the hilt of his scimitar.
In response, the immense doors opened slowly. The low murmur of a great assembly of people reached Conan’s ears.
The throne room was vaster than anything Conan had ever seen, from the sumptuous state chambers of Ophir and Nemedia to the smoky, timber-roofed halls of Asgard and Vanaheim. Giant pillars of marble reared lofty columns toward a roof that seemed as distant as the sky.
The profusion of cressets, lamps, and candelabra illuminated costly drapes, paintings, and hangings. Behind the throne rose windows of stained glass, closed against the fall of night.
A glittering host filled the hall. Fully a thousand must have assembled there. There were Nemedians in jupons, trunk hose, and leathern boots; Ophireans in billowing cloaks; stocky, black-bearded Shemites in silken robes; renegade Zuagirs from the desert; Vendhyans in bulging turbans and gauzy robes; barbarically-clad emissaries from the black kingdoms to the far southwest. Even a lone yellow-haired warrior from the Far North, clad in a somber black tunic, stared sullenly before him, his powerful hands gripping the hilt of a heavy longsword that rested before him with the chape of its scabbard on the floor.
Some had come here to escape the wrath of their own rulers, some as informers and traitors against the lands of their birth, and some as envoys. The gluttonous mind of King Yezdigerd was never satisfied with the size of his growing empire. Many and devious were the ways in which he sought to enlarge it.
The blare of golden trumpets rang across the huge hall. An avenue opened through the milling mass, and Conan’s little group set itself again in motion. The distance to the dais was still too great to make out the individuals clustered there, but their brisk approach would soon bring them into range.
Conan was afire with curiosity. Though he had fought this eastern despot many years ago on several occasions… as war-chief of the Zuagirs, as admiral of the Vilayet pirates, as leader of the Himelian hillmen, and as hetman of the kozaki …he had never yet seen his implacable foe in person. He kept his eyes full on the figure on the golden throne as he approached it.
So it came about that he did not notice the widening of the blond giant’s gray eyes in sudden recognition. The powerful knuckles whitened as the enigmatic gaze intently followed the towering figure of the Cimmerian on his way toward the dais.
King Yezdigerd was a swarthy giant of a man with a short black beard and a thin, cruel mouth. Although the debauchery of the Turanian court had wrought pouches under his glittering eyes, and lines crisscrossed his stern and gloomy features ten years too early, his hard-muscled, powerful body bore witness that self-indulgence had not sapped his immense vitality.