Conan the Liberator

EMERALD EYES

Quesado was now perspiring freely. His sallow brow and bestubbled cheeks glistened with moisture. Vibius Latro was no man lightly to displease.

“General P-Procas knows me not.” The spy’s voice grew querulous. “My sigil would mean naught to him. Only you, my lord, command all channels for transmission of such intelligence to the military chiefs.”

A small, thin-lipped smile flickered across the other’s enigmatic features. “Quite so,” he said. “You have done adequately. I should have liked it better had Alcina obtained the map ere the rebels marched north from Messantia.”

“Methinks the rebel leaders had not fully chosen their route before the night of my departure,” said Quesado. He did not know this for a fact, but it had a reasonable ring.

Vibius Latro dismissed the spy and summoned his secretary. Studying the map, he dictated a brief message to General Amulius Procas, with a copy for the king. While the secretary copied Alcina’s crude sketch, Latro summoned a page and gave him both copies of each document.

"Take these to the king’s secretary,” the chancellor said, “and ask that His Majesty impress his seal upon one set. Then, if there be no objection, ride with that set to Amulius Procas in Poitain. Here is a pass to the royal stables. Choose the swiftest horse, and change mounts at each post inn.”

The message came not to the king’s secretary. It was, instead, delivered into the thin, dark hands of Thulandra Thuu by his Khitan servant, Hsiao. As the king’s sorcerer read the message and examined the map in the light of a corpse-fat candle, he smiled coldly, nodding approval to the Khitan.

“It fell out as you predicted. Master,” said Hsiao. "I told the page that His Majesty and his scribe were closeted with you, so he handed the scrolls to me.”

"You have done well, good Hsiao,” said Thulandra Thuu. “Fetch me the wax; I will seal the scrolls myself. There is no need to distract His Majesty from his pleasures for a trifle.”

From a locked coffer the sorcerer took a duplicate of the king’s seal ring and, folding together one copy each of map and message, he lit a taper from one of the massive candles. Touching the sealing wax to the flame, he dripped the molten wax along the open edge of the packet. Thulandra then stamped the cooling wax with the duplicate seal ring and handed the package to the Khitan.

"Give this to Latro's courier," he said, “and tell him that His Majesty desires it to go post-haste to General Procas. Then draft me a letter to Count Ascalante of Thune, at present commanding the Fourth Tauranian Regiment at Palaea. I require his presence here.”

Hsiao hesitated. “Dread lord!” he said.

Thulandra Thuu looked at his servant sharply. "Well?”

“It is not unknown to this unworthy person that you and General Procas are not always in accord. Permit me to ask: Is it your wish that he shall triumph over the barbarian rebel?"

Thulandra Thuu smiled thinly. Hsiao knew that the wizard and the general were fierce rivals for the King’s regard, and Hsiao was the only person in the world in whom the sorcerer was willing to confide. Thulandra murmured:

“For the time being. As long as Procas remains in the southern provinces, far from Tarantia, he cannot threaten my position here. And I must risk that he add another victory to his swollen list, since neither he nor I would welcome Conan at the gates of Tarantia.

"Trocas stands betwixt the rebels and their march upon the capital. I intend that he shall crush the insurrection, aye; but in such wise that the credit shall fall to me. Then, perchance, an accident may take our heroic general from us in his moment of victory, ere he can return in triumph to Tarantia. Now be on your way.”

Hsiao bowed low and silently withdrew. Thulandra Thuu unlocked a chest of ebony and placed therein his copies of the documents.

Trocero stared in puzzlement at his commander, who paced the tent like a caged tiger, angry impatience smoldering in his fierce blue eyes.

“What ails you, General Conan?” he demanded. "I thought it was lack of a woman, but since you carried off the dancing girl, that explanation is a punctured wineskin. What troubles you?"

Conan ceased his restless pacing and came over to the field table. Glowering, he poured himself a cup of wine.

"Naught that I can set a name to," he growled. "But of late I grow fretful, starting at shadows.”

He broke off, eyes suddenly alert, as he stared into one corner of the tent. Then he forced a gruff laugh and threw himself back in his leather campaign chair.

”Crom, I’m as restless as a bitch in heat!” he said. "Forsooth, I know not what is gnawing at my vitals. Sometimes, when we confer, I half believe that the very shadows listen to our words.”

“Shadows do betimes have ears,” said Trocero. ”And eyes as well.”

Conan shrugged. “I know there be none here save you and me, with the lass at rest, and my two squires burnishing my armor, and the sentries tramping outside the tent,” he muttered. “Still and all, I sense a listening presence.”

Trocero did not scoff, and foreboding grew upon him. He had learned to trust the Cimmerian’s primitive instincts, knowing them keener by far than those of civilized men like himself.

But Trocero was not without instincts of his own; and one of these bade him distrust the supple dancing girl whom Conan had home off as his willing mistress. Something about her bothered Trocero, although he could not put his finger on the reason. Certainly she was beautiful—if anything, too beautiful to dance for thrown coppers in a Messantian pierside tavern. Also, she was too silent and secretive for his taste. Trocero could usually charm a woman into a babbling stream of confidences; but, when he had tried to draw Alcina out, he had no success at all. She answered his questions politely but concommittally, leaving him no wiser than before.

He shrugged, poured himself another cup, and consigned all such perturbations to the nine hells of Mitra. “The inaction chafes you, Conan,” he said. “Once we are on the march, with the Lion banner floating overhead, you’ll feel yourself again. No more listening shadows then!”

"Aye,” grunted Conan.

What Trocero had said was true enough. Give Conan an enemy of flesh and blood, put cold steel in his hand, and he would dare the deadliest odds with a high heart. But, when he strove against impalpable foes and insubstantial shadows, the primitive superstitions of his tribal ancestors crowded into his mind.

In the rear of the tent, behind a curtain, Alcina smiled a slow, catlike smile, while her slim fingers played with a curious talisman, which hung by a delicate chain about her neck. There was only one match to it in all the world.

Far to the north, beyond the plains and the mountains and the river Alimane, Thulandra Thuu sat upon his wrought-iron throne. On his lap, partly unrolled, he held a scroll inscribed with astrological diagrams and symbols. Before him on a taboret stood an oval mirror of black volcanic glass. From one edge of this mystic mirror, a semicircular chip was missing, and it was this half-disk of obsidian, bound to the main glass by subtle linkages of psychic force, that hung between the rounded breasts of Alcina the dancing girl.

As the sorcerer studied the chart on his knee, he raised his head betimes to glance at the small water clock of gilt and crystal, which stood beside the mirror. From this rare instrument came a steady drip, drip, inaudible to all but the keenest ears.

When the silver bell within the clock chimed the hour, Thulandra Thuu released the scroll. He moved a clawlike hand before the mirror, muttering an exotic charm in an unknown tongue. Gazing into the mirror’s depths, he became one in mind and soul with his servant, the lady Alcina; for when a mystic trance linked the twain, at a moment determined by certain aspects of the heavenly bodies, the sights Alcina saw and the words she uttered were transmitted magically to the sorcerer in Tarantia.

Truly, the mage had little need of the men of Vibius Latro’s corps of spies. And truly Conan’s keen senses served him well: even the shadows in his tent had eyes and ears.