Conan the Liberator

DARKNESS IN THE MOONLIGHT

The sun had set, and overhead a brilliant half-moon hung suspended in a cloudless sky. At the royal palace of Tarantia, the king’s solitary supper, served on gold platters in his private dining-room, had been cleared away. Save for a taster standing behind the royal armchair, two bodyguards stationed at the silver-studded doorway, and the footmen who served the royal meats, none had attended him to join in the repast.

Thousands of lamps and candles blazed in the royal chambers—so bountiful the light that a stranger, entering, would wonder whether a coronation or a neighboring monarch’s visit occasioned this opulent display.

Yet the palace seemed curiously deserted. Instead of the chatter of lovely ladies, chivalrous youths, and high-ranking nobles of the kingdom, echoes from the past reverberated down the marble halls, empty save for a few guards, on whose silvered breastplates the multitude of candles were reflected. The guards were either adolescent boys or graybeard oldsters; for when the household guard marched south to confront the rebels, the king’s officials had hastily replaced the corps of the Black Dragons with lads in training and retired veterans.

The lamps and candles burned all night, as the long—fancying himself a sun god—deemed naught but the light of day at night worthy of his exalted station. Thus, scurrying servants hastened from lamp to lamp to assure sufficient oil in each and carried armfuls of candles from chandelier to chandelier to replace those that flickered out.

As the king’s madness waxed, the courtiers and civil servants, normally in attendance, stole away. Foremost among these was Vibius Latro, who had offices and living quarters in the palace. The chancellor had sent a message to Numedides, begging a short leave of absence. His health, the note continued, was breaking down from long hours of work, and without a brief respite at his country seat, he feared he could no longer further the interests of His Majesty.

Having just flogged one of his concubines to death, Numedides, in rare good humor, granted his request. Latro forthwith loaded his family into a traveling carriage and set out for his estates, north of Tarantia. At the first crossroads, he veered eastward and, lashing his horses, raced for the Nemedian border two hundred leagues away. Other members of the king’s official family likewise found compelling reasons for a leave of absence and speedily departed.

Numedides' throne in the Chamber of Private Audience stood upon a patterned Iranistani carpet, woven of fine wools artfully dyed to the color of rubies, jades, amethysts, and sapphires and shot through with threads of gold. The chair itself, an ornate structure, though less imposing than the Ruby Throne in the Public Throne Room, was tastelessly embellished with dragons, lions, swords, and stars. The heraldic eagle of the Numedidean dynasty soared up from the tall back, its wings and eyes studded with precious stones that sparkled in the generous candlelight.

The king’s silver scepter—the ceremonial symbol of kingship—lay across the purple-pillowed seat, while the Sword of State, a great two-handed weapon, bejeweled of hilt and scabbard, reposed on one of the chair’s broad arms.

Two persons stood in the chamber: King Numedides, wearing the slender golden circlet that was the crown of Aquilonia and a crimson robe bespotted with stains of food, wine, and vomit; and Alcina, clad in a clinging gown of sea-green silk.

From opposite sides of the gilt throne they glared at each other. Alcina hissed:

"You mangy old dog! I will die before I submit to your perversions! You cannot catch me, you old, fat, filthy heap of oflFal! Go find a bitch or a sow to vent your lusts upon! Like to like!”

"I said I would not hurt you, little spitfire!” wheezed Numedides. “But catch you I will! None can escape the desires of a king, let alone a god! Come here!”

Nimiedides suddenly moved sidewise, in a feint at which he showed himself surprisingly nimble. Caught unawares, Alcina leaped back, losing the protection of the ornate chair. Then, with outspread arms and clutching hands, the king herded her into a comer far removed from either pair of double doors, whose pilastered frames adorned the walls to left and right of the ostentatious throne.

Alcina’s fingers flew to her bodice and whipped out a slender dagger, tipped with the same poison that had slain Amulius Procas. “Keep back, I warn you!” she cried. “One prick of this, and you will die!”

Numedides gave back a step. "You little fool, know you not that I am impervious to your envenomed bodkin?”

"We shall soon see whether you are or not, if you approach me closer.”

The king retreated to his throne and caught up his scepter. Then once more he stalked the trembling girl. When Alcina raised her dagger, he struck a blow with his silver club, hitting her hand. The dagger spun away and bounced across the carpet, while Alcina, with a cry of anguish, caught her bruised hand to her breast.

“Now, you little witch,” said Nimiedides, “we shall—”

The pair of doors on the right side of the audience chamber sprang open. Thulandra Thuu, leaning on his carven staff, stood on the threshold.

“How came you here?” thundered Numedides. “The doors were locked!”

The dark-skinned sorcerer's siblant voice was the crack of a whip. “Your Majesty! I warned you not to molest my servants!"

The king scowled. "We were just playing a harmless game. And who are you to warn a god of aught? Who is the ruler here?"

Thulandra Thuu smiled a thin and bitter smile. “You reign here, but you do not rule. I do."

Numedides' jowls enpurpled with his waxing wrath. “You blasphemous old! Out of my sight, ere I blast you with my lightnings!"

“Calm yourself. Majesty. I have news— "

The king’s voice rose to a scream: “I said get out! I show you— "

Numedides’ groping hand brushed the hilt of the Sword of State. He drew the ponderous blade from its jewelled scabbard and advanced upon Thulandra Thuu, swinging the weapon with both hands. The sorcerer calmly awaited his approach.

With an incoherent shriek the king whirled the sword in a decapitating blow. At the last instant Thulandra, whose expression had not changed, brought up his staff to parry. Steel and carven wood met with a ringing crash, as if Thulandra, too, wielded a massive sword. With a dexterous twirl of his staff, the sorcerer whipped the weapon from the king’s hands and sent it flying upwards, turning over and over in the air. As it descended, the blade struck Numedides in the face, laying open a finger-long gash in the king’s cheek. Blood trickled into his rusty beard.

Numedides clapped a hand to his cheek and stared stupidly at the blood dripping from his fingers. “I bleed, just like a mortal!" he mumbled. “How can that be?”

"Thou have a distance yet to go ere you wear the mantle of divinity," said Thulandra Thuu with a narrow smile.

The king bellowed in a sudden rage of fear: “Slaves! Pages! Phaedo! Manius! Where in the nine hells are you? Your divine master is being murdered!"

“It will do him no good," said Alcina, evenly. "He told me that he had ordered all his servants elsewhere in the palace, so I might scream my head off to no avail.” And she tossed back her night-tipped hair with her uninjured hand.

“Where are my loyal subjects?" whimpered Numedides. “Valerius! Procas! Thespius! Gromel! Volmana! Where are my courtiers? Where is Vibius Latro? Has everyone deserted me? Does no one love me any more, despite all I have done for Aquilonia?" The abandoned monarch began to weep.

“As you know in your more lucid moments," the sorcerer said sternly, “Procas is dead; Vibius Latro has fled; and Gromel has deserted to the enemy. Volmana is fighting under Count Ulric, as are the others. Now, pray sit down and listen; I have things of moment to relate."

Waddling to the throne, Numedides sank down, his spotted robe billowing about him. He pulled a dirty kerchief from his sleeve and pressed it to his wounded cheek, where it grew red with blood.

“Unless you can better control yourself,” said Thulandra Thuu, “I shall have to do away with you and rule directly, instead of through you as before."

“You never will be king!" mumbled Numedides. “Not a man in Aquilonia would obey you. You are not of royal blood. You are not an Aquilonian. You are not even a Hyborian. I begin to doubt if you are even a human being.” He paused, glowering. “So even if we hate each other, you need me as much as I need you.

“Well, what is this news at which you hint? Good news, I hope. Speak up, sir sorcerer; do not keep me in suspense!”

“If you will but listen … I cast our horoscopes this afternoon and discovered the imminence of deadly peril.”

“Peril? From what source?”

“That I cannot say; the indications were unclear. It surely cannot be the rebel army. My visions on the astral plane, confirmed by yesterday’s message from Count Ulric, inform me that the rebels are penned beyond Elymia. They will soon retreat in face of hopeless odds, disperse in despair, or suffer annihilation. We have naught to fear from them.”

“Could that devil Conan have slipped past Count Ulric?”

“Alas, my astral visions are hot clear enough to distinguish individuals from afar. But the barbarian is a resourceful rascal; when you drove him into flight, I warned you might not have seen the last of him.”

“I have had reports of bands of traitors within sight of the city walls,” said the king, lip quivering in petulant uncertainty.

“That is gossip and not truth, unless some new leader has arisen among the disaffected of the Central Provinces.”

“Suppose such scum does wash ashore and lap the city walls? What can we do with the Black Dragons far away? It was your idea to have them join Count Ulric.” The king’s voice grew shrill, as fear and rage snapped the thin thread of his composure. He ranted on:

"I left the management of this campaign to you, because you claim a store of arcane wisdom. Now I see that in military matters you are the merest tyro. You have bungled everything! When you sent Procas into Argos, you said that this incursion would snuff out the rebel menace, once and for all; but it did not. You assured me that the rabble would never cross the Alimane, and lo! the Border Legion was broken and dispersed. Quoth you, they had no chance of passing the Imirian Escarpment, and yet the rebels did. Finally, the plague you sent among them, you said, would surely wipe the upstarts out, and yet— "

“Your Majesty!" A young voice severed the king’s recriminations. "Pray, let me in! It is a dire emergency!”

"That is one of my pages; I know his voice,” said Numedides, rising and going to the still-locked door on the left side of the throne. When he had turned the key, a youth in page’s garb burst in, gasping: "My lord! The rebel Conan has seized the palace!”

“Conan!” cried the king. "What has befallen? Speak!”

“A troop of the Black Dragons—or men appareled in their garb—galloped up to the palace gates, crying that they had urgent messages from the front The guards thought nothing of it and passed them through, but I recognized the huge Cimmerian when I saw his scarred face in the lighted anteroom. I knew him in the Westermarck, ere I came to Tarantia to serve Your Majesty. And so I ran to warn you.”

“Mean you he is about to burst upon us, with no guards in the palace save a scrawny pack of striplings and their grandsires?” Eyes ablaze with fury, he turned to Thulandra Thuu. "Well, you sorcerous scoundrel, work a deterrent spell!”

The magician was already making passes with his staff and speaking in a sibilant, unknown tongue. As the sonorous sentences rolled out, a strange phenomenon occurred. The candles dimmed, as if the room were filled with swirling smoke or roiling fogs from evening marshes, dank with decay. Darker and darker grew the atmosphere, until the Chamber of Private Audience became as black as a dungeon rock-sealed for centuries.

The king cried out in terror: "Have you blinded me?"

“Quiet, Majesty! I have cast a spell of darkness over the palace, a magical defense. If we do lock the doors and speak in whispers, the invaders will not discover us."

The page felt his way across the wide expanse of carpet and turned the great key in the left pair of doors, while Alcina, lithe as a jaguar, likewise barred the right-hand portal. The king retreated to his throne and sat in silence, too terrified to speak. Alcina sought the slender body of the sorcerer and huddled at his feet in mute supplication. The page, uncertain of his whereabouts, shrank back from the door whose key he turned and wished himself home in the humble alleys of Tarantia. The silence was complete, save for the beating of four frightened hearts.

Suddenly the page’s door sprang open, and a chant could be heard in the ancient Hyborian tongue. The blackness thinned and rolled away, and the light of many candles once more flooded the utmost comers of the audience chamber.

In the open doorway stood Conan the Cimmerian, bloody sword in hand; and at his side Dexitheus, the priest of Mitra, still crooned the final phrases of his potent incantation.

"Slay them, Thulandra,” shrieked Numedides, eyes starting at the sight of his former general. He held the bloody kerchief to his injured cheek and moaned.

Alcina shrank closer to her mentor and stared with baleful eyes upon the man who had survived her deadly potion.

Thulandra Thuu raised his carven staff, thrust it at Conan, and, in the language of his undiscoverable bourn, spat out a curse or else a ringing invocation to an unknown god. A rippling flash of light, like a blue streak of living fire, sped from the staff tip toward the Cimmerian’s armored breast. With the dread rattling of a thunderclap, the bolt shattered against an unseen barrier, spattering sparks.

Frowning, Thulandra Thuu repeated his cantrip, louder and in a voice of deep authority, shifting his aim to Dexitheus. Again the blue flame zigzagged across the intervening space and spread out, like water tossed against a pane of glass.

As Conan started for the sorcerer, his blue eyes blazing with the lust to kill. Captain Silvanus jostled past him, shouting:

"You who slew my daughter! I seek revenge!”

Silvanus, with madness glinting in his bloodshot eyes, rushed at the sorcerer, sword raised above his head. But before he had gone three paces, the magician pointed his staff and once again cried out. Again the blue lightning illumined the room with its awful radiance; and Silvanus, uttering a scream of horror, pitched forward on his face.

A hole the thickness of a man’s thumb opened on the back plate of his cuirass, and the blackened steel curled into the petals of a rose of death. A red stain slowly spread over the Iranistani carpet and mingled with the jeweled tones of its weaving.

Conan wasted no time lamenting his companion but strode briskly toward the sorcerer, his sword upraised to strike. The page, ashen-pale, scuttled behind the throne; Alcina and the king flattened themselves against opposing walls.

But Thulandra Thuu had not exhausted his resources. He gripped the two ends of his staff in his bony hands and held it at arm’s length in front of him, chanting the while in a tongue that was old when the seas swallowed Lemuria. As Conan took another step, he encountered a strange resistance that brought him to a halt.

Elastic and yielding was this invisible surface; yet it confounded Conan’s most strenuous attack. The cords in his massive neck stood out; his face darkened with his almost superhuman effort; his muscles writhed like pythons. Yet the formless barrier held. As he thrust his sword into that invisible substance, he saw Thulandra's staff bend in the middle, as if impelled by an opposing force, but it did not break. Dexitheus’ mightiest magic had no power against the staff and the protection it afforded to Thulandra Thuu.

At last the sorcerer spoke, and his voice was weary with the weight of many years. "I see yon renegade, priest of Mitra has armored you against my bolts; but I for all his puny magic, he cannot destroy me. Aquilonia is unworthy of my efforts. I shall remove to a land beyond the sunrise, where people will value my experiments and the gift of life eternal. Farewell!"

"Master! Master! Take me with you!” cried Alcina, raising her arms in humble supplication.

“Nay, girl, stay back! I have no further use for you."

Thulandra Thuu edged to the door by which he had entered the audience chamber. As he moved, the elastic barrier he maintained retreated also. Lips bared in a mirthless grin, blue eyes ablaze, Conan followed the lean sorcerer step by step. His magnificent body quivered with the controlled fury of a lion deprived of its prey.

As they reached the doorway whence the sorcerer had entered, Thulandra Thuu began to sway, then to revolve. He spin faster and faster, until his dark figure became a blur. Suddenly he vanished.

As the wizard disappeared, the unseen barrier faded. Conan sprang forward, his sword upraised for a murderous slash. With a blistering curse, he rushed into the corridor. But the hall was empty. He listened, but he could detect no footfall.

Shaking his tousled mane as if to put a dream to flight, Conan turned back to the Chamber of Private Audience. He found Dexitheus guarding the other door, Alcina pressed against the farther wall, and King Nimiedides seated on his throne, dabbing his injured face with his bloody kerchief. Conan strode quickly to the throne to confront the king.

“Stand, mortal bawled Numedides, pointing a pudgy forefinger. “Know that I am a god! I am King of Aquilonia!”

Conan shot out an arm in which the hard muscles writhed like serpents. Seizing the king’s robe, he hauled the madman to his feet. “You mean,” he snarled, “you were king. Have you aught to say before you die?"

Numedides wilted, a pool of molten tallow in a burned-out candle. Tears coursed down his flabby face to mingle with the blood that still oozed from his wound. He sank to his knees, babbling:

“Pray, do not slay me, gallant Conan! Though I have committed errors, I intended only well for Aquilonia! Send me into exile, and I shall not return. You cannot kill an aging, unarmed man!”

With a contemptuous snort, Conan hurled Numedides to the floor. He wiped his sword on the hem of the fallen monarch’s garment and sheathed it. Turning on his heel, he said:

“I do not hunt mice. Tie up this scum until we find a madhouse to confine him.”

A sudden flicker of movement seen beyond the comer of his eye and sharp intake of breath by Dexitheus warned Conan of impending danger. Numedides had found the poisoned dagger dropped by Alcina and now, weapon in hand, he rose to make one last, desperate lunge to stab the Liberator in the back.

Conan wheeled, shot out his left hand, and caught the descending wrist. His right hand seized Numedides’ flaccid throat and, straining the mighty muscles in his arm, Conan forced his attacker down upon the throne. With his free hand the king wrenched in vain at Conans obdurate wrist. His legs thrashed spasmodically.

As Conan s iron fingers dug deeper into the pudgy neck, Numedides’ eyes bulged. His mouth gaped, but no sound issued forth. Deeper and deeper sank Conan’s python grip, until the others in the room, standing with suspended breath, heard the cartilage crack. Blood trickled from the comer of the king’s mouth, to mingle with the sanguine rheimi that had besmeared his face and beard and hair.

Numedides’ face turned blue, and little by little his flailing arms went limp. The poisoned dagger thudded to the floor and spun into a comer. Conan maintained his crushing grip until all life had fled.

At last Conan released the corpse, which tumbled off the throne in a disheveled heap. The Cimmerian drew a long breath, then spun around and whipped his blade from its scabbard, as running feet and rattling armor clattered down the hall. A score of his men, who had been wandering around the palace in search of him, crowded into the doorway to the chamber. All voices stilled, all eyes were turned upon him, as he stood, legs spread and sword in hand, beside the throne of Aquilonia, a look of triumph in his blazing eyes.

What thoughts raced through Conans mind at that moment, none ever knew. But finally he sheathed his sword, bent down, and tore the bloody crown from the bedraggled head of dead Numedides. Holding the slender circlet in one hand, he unbuckled the chin strap of his helmet with the other and tugged the headpiece off. Then he raised the crown in both his hands and placed it on his head.

“Well,” he said, “how does it look?”

Dexitheus spoke up: '‘Hail, King Conan of Aquilonia!”

The others took up the cry; and at last even the page, who stared owl-eyed from his hiding place behind the throne, joined in.

Alcina, moving forward with the seductive dancer’s grace that had so excited Conan in Messantia, glided in front of him and fell prettily to her knees.

"Oh, Conanl” she cried, "it was ever you I loved. But alas, I was ensorceled and forced to do the bidding of that wicked thaumaturge. Forgive me and I will be your faithful servant forevermore!"

Frowning, Conan looked down upon her, and his voice was thunder rumbling in the hills. “When someone has sought to murder me, I'd be a fool to give that one a second chance. Were you a man, I’d slay you here and now. But I do not war on women, so begone.

“If after this night you are found within those parts that have declared for me, you'll lose your pretty head. Elatus, accompany her to the stables, saddle her a horse, and see her to the outskirts of Tarantia."

Alcina went, the black cloud of her silken hair hiding her countenance. At the door she turned back to look once more at Conan, tears glistening on her cheeks. Then she was gone.

Conan kicked the corpse of Numedides. “Stick this carrion s head on a spear and display it in the city, then carry it to Count Ulric in Elymia, to convince him and his army that a new king rules in Aquilonia.”

One of Conan's troopers shouldered his way into the crowded room. “General Conan!”

“Well?"

The man paused to catch his breath. His eyes were big as buttons. “You ordered Cadmus and me to guard the palace gates. Well, just now we heard a horse and chariot coming from the stables, but neither beast nor carriage did we see. Then Cadmus pointed to the ground, and there was a shadow on the moonlit road, like to a horse and cart. It ran along the ground, but naught there was to cast the shadow!”

“What did you?"

"Did, sir? What could we do? The shadow passed through the open gates and vanished down the street So I came arunning to tell you."

"The late king’s sorcerer and his man, I doubt not,” said Conan to his assembled company. “Let them go; the he-witch said he would betake himself to some distant eastern bourn. He'll trouble us no more.” Then turning to Dexitheus, he said: "We must set up a government on the morrow, and you shall be my chancellor.”

The priest cried out in great distress. “Oh, no, Gen—Your Majesty! I must take up a hermit’s life, to atone for my resort to magic despite the regulations of my order.”

“When Publius joins us, you may do so with my blessing. In the interim we need a government, and you are wise in matters politic. Round up the officials and their clerks by noon.”

Dexitheus sighed. “Very well, my lord King.” He looked down on Silvanus’s body and sadly shook his head. “I much regret the death of this young man, but I could not maintain defensive fields around you both.”

“He died a soldier s death; we’ll bury him with honors,” Conan said. “Where can one take a bath in this marble barn?”

Newly shaven and shorn, his mighty frame arrayed in ebon velvet, Conan rested on the purple-pillowed throne in the Chamber of Private Audience. All traces of violence had been erased—the bodies removed, the poisoned dagger buried, the carpet scrubbed free of bloodstains. An expectant smile lit Conan’s craggy countenance.

Then Chancellor Publius bustled in with several scrolls under his velvet-coated arm. “My lord,” he began, “I have here—”

“Crom’s devils!” Conan burst out “Cannot that business wait? Prospero is bringing in a score of beauties who have volimteered to be the king’s companions. I am to choose among them.”

"Sire!” said Publius sternly. “Some of these matters require immediate attention. 'Twill not hurt the young women to wait a while.

“Here, for example, is a petition from the barony of Castria, begging to be forgiven their arrears in taxes. Here are the treasury accounts. And here the advocates' briefs in the lawsuit of Phinteas versus Anus Priscus, which is being appealed before the throne. The suit has continued undecided for sixteen years.

“Here is a letter from one Quesado of Kordava, a former spy of Vibius Latro. Meseems that we had dealings with him before.”

“What does that dog want?” snorted Conan.

“He begs employment in his former capacity, as intelligence agent to His Majesty.”

"Aye, he was good at skulking around and acting like a winesop or an idiot. Give him a post—on trial, but never send him as an envoy to a fellow monarch.”

“Yes, Sire. Here is the petition for pardon for Calenus Selo. And here is another petition, this one from the coppersmiths' guild. They want— “

“Gods and devils!” shouted Conan, slamming a hairy fist into his other hand, “Why did no one tell me that kingship entails this dreary drudgery? I'd almost rather be a pirate on the main!"

Publius smiled. "Even the lightest crown sits heavily betimes. A ruler has to rule, or another will govern in his stead. The late Numedides shirked his proper tasks, and he was— “

Conan sighed. “Yes, yes. I suppose you’re right, Crom curse it. Page! Fetch a table and spread out these documents. Now, Pubius, the treasury statements first…”