Conan the Buccaneer

Chapter Three: DEATH OF THE SEA QUEEN

The caravel Sea Queen, which served as the Zingaran royal yacht, had passed between the Zingaran coast and the Barachan Isles. This archipelago was a notorious nest of pirates —most of them Argosseans— but on this occasion none of their corsairs was scouring that part of the Western Ocean. Then the ship passed the boundary between Zingara and Argos.

The Argossean coast fell off to eastward. Following Chabela's commands, Captain Kapellez bore to port, but not so sharply as the coast curved. Hence the Argossean coast fell away until it was barely visible from the masthead.

There were two reasons for this course. One was to reach the coast of Shem near Asgalun as quickly as possible. The other was to lessen the chance that some mainland-based Argossean pirate or privateer might put out after them.

Now, however, a massive black carack had been visible aft since mid-moming. By early afternoon it had drawn close enough for the keenest-eyed sailor of the crew to make out its insignia.

" 'Tis naught to fear, my lady," said Captain Kapellez. "Yonder ship is but one of the privateers in the service of your royal sire. I make it out to be the Petrel, under Captain Zarono."

Chabela was still not satisfied. There was something ominous about the steady approach of that bulky black hull. Of course, it might be happenstance that the other ship was following the same course as their own.

Neither was the name of Zarono reassuring. She hardly knew the man beyond a formal acquaintance at court functions, but sinister rumors wafted about concerning the buccaneer. One of her friends, the lady Estrellada, had passed on to Chabela the tale that Zarono was smitten with her, Chabela's, charms. But the princess had paid little heed to this, for unattached men around the court were always smitten with the charms of a princess as a matter of course. There was always a chance that one or another would become a royal consort…

Now her suspicions were fully aroused. It was the third day after the Sea Queen had left Kordava, and by now her disappearance would have become general knowledge. In fact, the palace would be in an uproar.

The absence of the royal yacht from its usual mooring would have betrayed Chabela's method of flight. Since it was incredible that she would have headed north to the wild shores of Pictland, or west into the trackless wastes of the unexplored ocean, it was plain that she must have set her course southeast, along the coast of the main continent. There lay Argos, the city-states of Shem, and the sinister kingdom of Stygia 'ere one came to the black countries.

The disturbance over her disappearance might well, she thought, have been loud enough even to rouse King Ferdrugo from the lethargy that gripped him. He might have dispatched Zarono with a commission to hale his fugitive daughter back home.

Chabela murmured gracious but distracted words to the captain and turned away.

After pacing the deck restlessly, she leaned her elbows on the rail, which was carved with leaping dolphins and trident-brandishing mermen. She watched the pursuing craft as if under a hypnotic spell.

The Petrel drew steadily nearer, its blunt bow smashing through the waves. At this rate, she thought, in another half-hour it would forge up to windward, blanketing the sails of the Sea Queen and bringing the smaller vessel to a halt.

Chabela was by no means ignorant of naval and nautical lore. Unlike her father, who detested the sea and never went near the Sea Queen, she had been a sailor girl ever since she was a small child. Only in the last few years, since she had grown into womanhood, had her father's strict commands stopped her practice of donning sailor garb and swarming into the rigging with the seamen.

The princess shivered, then forced herself to relax. The other carack had so far displayed no hostile or alarming intentions. A Zingaran privateer would hardly be so insane as to attack the private yacht of the king of Zingara.

Then a shadow fell across the sun-bright deck. This shadow was, strangely, a dark green: an uncanny emerald shroud of mystic gloom.

Raising her head, the princess could see nothing to explain the weird nebulosity that now enshrouded the Sea Queen. No cloud lay athwart the sun; no flying monster hovered on flapping wings. Yet a shroud of emerald gloom had enveloped the Sea Queen like a dense though impalpable fog. The faces of the crew were pale and wide-eyed with fear.

Then terror struck. Tentacles of green gloom swirled about the nearest sailor, who shrieked with fear. Like the coiling limbs of some kraken of the deep, the shadowy tentacles enmeshed him. The girl caught one wild look at his white, despairing face and thrashing limbs. Then the green coils seemed to sink into his body and disappear. The burly seaman stiffened to statuesque immobility, while a green hue suffused his flesh and even his garments. He looked like a statue of jade.

Chabela cried out to Mitra. The entire ship was a mass of yelling, struggling men, battling with mad futility against the slithering coils of emerald mist that swept about them and sank into their flesh, transforming them into motionless green effigies.

Then ropy green tendrils curled about the princess herself. Her flesh crept with fear as she felt the touch of the impalpable stuff. At the touch, a chilling paralysis ran through her body. As the coils sank into her, a cold darkness closed down on her mind and she knew nothing more.

On the quarterdeck of Zarono's Petrel, the privateer watched with ill-concealed awe as the Stygian sorcerer worked his spell. Motionless as a dusty mummy, the Stygian squatted before an apparatus he had constructed as the carack approached the Sea Queen. This consisted of a small cone of dim, gray crystal, atop a low altar of black wood. The altar had the appearance of great age. It had once been elaborately carved, but the carvings were now largely worn away. Those that survived showed minute naked human beings fleeing from a colossal serpent. The eyes of the serpent had originally been a pair of opals, but one had fallen out of its socket and been lost.

In response to Menkara's whispered incantation, the crystal cone had flashed into an eerie radiance. A nimbus of pulsing emerald light had woven about It, illuminating the swart features of the mage and making his visage look more skull-like than ever.

When the nimbus of green light was actively pulsating, the Stygian had held before his face a mirror of black metal, framed by an iron wreath of intertwined monsters. As Zarono watched with mounting awe, the emerald radiance seemed to be drawn to the surface of the mirror and reflected thence to the distant deck of the Sea Queen. Faint in the sunlight, the green beam was nevertheless plainly visible, stretching straight across the heaving gap between the ships. Something was happening on the caravel, although Zarono could not quite see what because of the distance.

With the loss of control of her tiller, the Sea Queen lost seaway and lay wallowing with sails flapping. Zarono brought his carack alongside. The Stygian emerged from his trance and sagged wearily against the rail. His dark features were the color of dirty linen, and cold sweat be-dewed his impassive countenance.

"I am done," sighed Menkara. "That conjuration taxes one's strength to the limit. And yet, it is no great spell, being easily warded off by one who knows how… But those silly beings yonder are ignorant of magical matters. Go; you will find them harmless to you for an hour."

"Are they dead, then?"

"Nay; merely in a suspension of animation. Help me to my cabin."

Zarono assisted the enfeebled sorcerer to his feet and led him, stumbling, to his quarters, while the boatswain carried the altar with its cone.

When he had closed the door upon the exhausted Stygian, Zarono wiped the sweat from his forehead with a lace kerchief. Wizardry was all very well, but it was a fearsome weapon. Far more would he, Black Zarono, prefer the clash of cutlasses, the whine of arrows and bolts, the smash of catapult balls, and the crash of a bronzen ram into the side of a hostile ship. He had committed not a few villainies in his career, but at least they had been sins of the normal human kind, not this dabbling with dark and perhaps uncontrollable powers from unearthly planes and dimensions.

"Ernando!" he roared at the cook. "A double flagon of wine, and the strongest we have in the butts!"

Thus the Sea Queen was taken and, very shortly, died. Boarders from the Petrel swung aboard, picked up the frozen figure of the girl, and carried her to Zarono's quarterdeck. Others piled combustibles around the bases of the masts and doused the piles with oil. Then all returned to the Petrel and shoved off with poles and boathooks.

When there was a safe gap between the two ships, a squad of archers lit fire arrows and discharged them at the Sea Queen. In a few minutes, the piles caught fire. One by one, the sails blazed up with a roar, spreading black, charred fragments far and wide. Flames spread over the ship, engulfing the living but motionless crewmen.

The Petrel spread her sails again and plodded onward toward the coast of Shem, leaving the blazing wreck behind.

From the main top of his own carack, Conan gazed toward the mushroom of smoke that marked the end of the Sea Queen and muttered an oath to his grim Cimmerian god, Crom. The Wastrel lay off the horizon to the northwest, invisible from the deck of the Petrel … although, had any of Zarono's folk thought to scan the sea in that direction from the mastheads, they might have glimpsed the tops of Conan's rigging as the Wastrel rose on the swells.

From his Eyre, Conan had watched the doom of the Zingaran royal yacht. Why Zarono should stop to destroy a ship of his own nation, Conan could not imagine.

There must, he thought, be more to the plot than a simple rape of a treasure chart and a dash to seize the fabled hoard. But the mighty Cimmerian had long ago learned to set aside unanswerable questions until further information should cast light upon them, rather than futilely to brood and fret over them.

Whoever the unknown victims on the caravel were, he thought, he would avenge them at the same time that he settled his own score with Zarono. Perhaps he would soon have an opportunity.