The mage nodded. “I offer you both … haven. When the City Watch searches too diligently for Conan the thief, when the Army of Zamora presses too hard against the Red Hawk, let them come here, where the hillmen keep the army away, and my fortress grants safety from the hillmen.”
“From the kindness of your heart,” Conan grunted.
Karela gave him a pointed look. “What would you require in return, Amanar? We have neither knowledge nor skills to be of use to a sorcerer.”
“On the contrary,” the mage replied. “The Red Hawk’s fame is known from the Vilayet Sea to the Karpashian Mountains, and beyond. It is said that she would march her band into Gehanna, if she gave her word to do so, and that her rogues would follow. Conan is a thief of great skill, I am sure. From time to time I would ask you to perform certain … commissions for me.” He smiled expansively. “There would, of course, be payment in gold, and I would in no way interfere with your, ah, professions.”
Karela grinned wolfishly. “The caravan route to Sultanapur lies less than half a day to the south, does it not?”
“It does,” Amanar laughed quietly. “And I’ll not object if you should do business there. I may even have some for you myself. But make not your decision now. Rest, eat and drink. Tomorrow will be time enough, or the next day.” He got to his feet, gesturing like a gracious host. “Come. Let me s
how you my keep.”
Karela rose with alacrity. “Yes. I’d like very much to see it.” Conan remained where he was.
“You may keep your sword,” the mage said derisively, “if you yet feel the need of protection.”
Conan sprang angrily to his feet. “Lead on, sorcerer.”
Amanar looked at him searchingly, and the Cimmerian suddenly thought that he and Karela had been placed on the two ends of a merchant’s balance scale. Finally the necromancer nodded and, using his golden rod as a walking staff, led them from the room. The musicians played on.
First the red-robed mage took them to the heights of the outer curtain wall, its sheer scarp dropping fifty feet to the mountain slope. Pikebearing S‘tarra sentries in chain-mail hauberks fell to their knees at Amanar’s approach, but he did not deign to acknowledge the obeisance. From thence they went to the ebon parapet of the inner rampart, where S’tarra crossbowmen in bartizans could cut down any who managed to gain the outer wall. From the banquette catapults could hurl great stones. Atop the towers of the inner wall were ballistae, the arrows of which, as long as a man, could pierce through horse and rider together on the valley floor. Massive blocks of pitch-black stone had been piled to build barracks where dwelt S’tarra in their hundreds. The scaled ones knelt for the mage, and followed Conan and Karela with hungering rubiate eyes.
In the donjon itself, Amanar led them through floor after floor of many-columned rooms hung with cloth-of-gold and costly tapestries. Rare carpets covered mosaicked floors, and bore furnishings inlaid with nacreous mother-of-pearl and deep blue lapis-lazuli. Carven bowls of jasper and amber from far Khitai, great golden vases from Vendhya, set with glittering rubies and sapphires, silver ornaments adorned with golden chrysoberyl and crimson carnelian, all were scattered in profusion as if they were the merest of trinkets.
Human servants were few, and none that the Cimmerian saw ever raised his or her eyes from the floor as they sped by on their tasks. Amanar paid them less heed even than he did the S’tarra.
On the ground level of the donjon, as Amanar began to lead them to the door, Conan noticed an archway, its plain stonework at odds with the ornateness of all else they had seen within. The passage beyond seemed to slope down, leading back toward the mountain.
Conan nodded toward it. “That leads to your dungeons?”
“No!” Amanar said sharply. The black-eyed mage recovered his smile with an obvious effort. “That leads to the chambers where I carry out my … researches. None but myself may enter there.” The smile remained, but the eyes with the strange red flecks became flat and dangerous. “There are wards set which would be most deadly to one who made the attempt.”
Karela laughed awkwardly. “I, for one, have no interest in seeing a magician’s chambers.”
Amanar shifted his dark gaze to the red-haired woman. “Perhaps, someday, I will take you down that passage. But not for a time yet, I think. Sitha will show you out.”
Conan had to control a desire to reach for his sword as a S’tarra fully as large as he suddenly stepped from a side passage. He wondered if the mage had some means of communicating with his servants without words. Such a thing could be dangerous to a thief.
The big S’tarra gestured with a long, claw-tipped hand. “This way,” it hissed. There was no subservience in its manner toward them, but rather a touch of arrogance in those red eyes.
Conan could feel the eyes of the sorcerer on his back as he followed the dark-eyed man’s minion. At the portcullis Sitha gestured without speaking for the heavy iron grate to be raised. From within the barbican came the creak of the windlass. Clanking chains pulled the grate to chest height on Karela. Sitha gestured abruptly, and the creak of the windlass ceased. The S’tarra’s fanged mouth cracked in a mocking smile as it gestured for them to go.
“Do you not realize we are your master’s guests?” Karela demanded hotly. “I’ll—”
Conan grabbed her arm in his huge hand and pulled her protesting under the grate after him. It began to clank down at the very instant they were clear.
“Let’s just be thankful to be out,” Conan said, starting down the ramp. He saw Hordo waiting at the foot of it.
Karela strode angrily beside him, rubbing her arm. “You muscle-bound oaf! I’ll not take much more of this from you. I intend to see that Amanar punishes that big lizard. These S’tarra must learn proper respect for us, else my hounds will constantly be goaded into fighting them. I might even carve that Sitha myself.”
Conan looked at her in surprise. “You intend to accept this offer? The Red Hawk will wear this sorcerer’s jesses and stoop at his command?”
“Have you no eyes, Conan? Five hundred of the scaled ones he commands, perhaps more. My hounds could not take this keep were they ten times their number, and I will not waste them against its walls in vain. On the other hand, if all the gold that you and I and all my pack have ever seen in our lives were heaped in one pile it would not equal the hundredth part of what I saw within.”
“I’ve seen a lot of gold,” Conan snorted. “How much of it stuck to my fingers, and how much of this would, is another matter. This Amanar prates of a better way for mankind, but I’ve never met a sorcerer who did not tread a black path. Think you what he will ask you to do for his payment.”
“A safe heaven,” she snapped back, “close to the caravan route. No longer will I need to send my men off to hide as caravan guards when the army hunts us too closely. No longer must I play the fortuneteller while I wait to rejoin them. These things are worth much to me.”