The Venom of Luxur Read online

  Anok’s eyes narrowed.

  He’s vulnerable!

  Anok fought on, but with less fervor than he might have, waiting to see if fate would effect the priest’s downfall.

  Slowly, at a pace that would have made a tortoise impatient, they moved toward the center of the room, a constant clatter of blades and armor, and occasionally the cry of a wounded or dying man.

  The guardians were tiring. He could see the fear in their eyes. When they stopped believing in their own survival, they were as good as dead.

  He hacked away at a knight’s arm, his first blow glancing off armor, the second slicing the hand off at the wrist, even as it was falling toward him.

  The blade spun past him, the point slashing across the face of the guardian next to him, hot blood spraying across Anok’s left arm. He felt the Mark of Set surge with energy on contact with the blood, heard its cry of joy in his head.

  The wounded man shrieked in pain, half-blinded by his own flying blood, caught totally unaware as another sword found his gut.

  Anok watched him fall, trying to focus on the Band of Neska around his right wrist, to use its unyielding strength to push the Mark of Set’s evil back into hiding.

  Then another man fell beyond him, and another.

  Suddenly their lines crumbled.

  Many torches fell or went out, plunging them into gloom.

  An undead knight slipped past Anok, headed for Ramsa Aál.

  The priest looked up just in time to see his impending doom, eyes wide, not with fear, but with rage.

  This is it!

  A blade plunged into the phantom knight’s armpit, twisting it half-around, delaying it long enough that a nearby guardian could chop the thing’s legs off at the knees.

  It took Anok a moment to realize that the sword which had saved Ramsa Aál’s life had been his own.

  He yanked his blade free of the thing with a wet, sucking sound, then chopped its head off with one smooth motion.

  Why did I do that?

  He glanced at Ramsa Aál. If he had expected gratitude from the priest, he was to be disappointed. The priest’s attention was on the cask, which was being dragged across the floor by one of the guardians assigned to carry it. The other lay on the floor a few paces behind, his lifeblood spurting out through his open neck.

  An axe flashed out of the gloom splitting the other guardian’s head.

  Anok stared at the cask for a moment.

  Ramsa Aál continued to read, men crowded in around him trying to fight off the undead. But the priest kept glancing nervously at the cask.

  Anok took a deep breath.

  The cask!

  Without it the spell would fail, as would Ramsa Aál’s plan.

  It was suicide, of course, unless Ramsa Aál had some secret plan to escape and took Anok with him. But when Ramsa Aál saw what was about to happen, Anok doubted he would have the priest’s favor any longer.

  He gritted his teeth, then stepped toward the cask. Two knights stepped into his way. He spun, slicing the arm off one, kicking the other in the stomach, shoving it backward out of the way.

  Spun again, plunged his right sword into another knight. Kicked again, hitting the cask, high up on the neck, sending it falling to its side.

  Clay shattered.

  Anok smelled the metallic stench of old blood, the exotic tang of magic herbs, and something like ocean air, which might have been the salts in the Elixir of Orkideh.

  The blood gushed out across the dark floor in a wide fan. Ramsa Aál’s voice instantly became louder, the words clear.

  “—by this river of blood, wash away this ancient curse, so these spirits may fly free!”

  There was a whoosh, the blood flashed into reddish vapor, a knee-high fog that spread across the floor of the room, boiling and churning.

  A knight charged toward Anok, sword held high. Then it hesitated, its glowing green eyes seeming to grow wider.

  The moaning grew louder, all around them, until Anok’s ears twinged in pain, and he felt his skull might crack open.

  The attacking knight’s armor suddenly slumped and started to fall, but the glowing phantom inside did not fall with it. Instead, he seemed to elongate as he was drawn upward, features distorting until he was drawn up through the stone ceiling and vanished.

  Anok looked around in wonder, as one after another, the phantoms were drawn up and away, leaving their armor and weapons to clatter to the floor.

  The cloud of red vapor was sucked into the center of the room, where it twisted for a moment like a dust devil, then swirled up into the ceiling and vanished with a clap of thunder.

  Anok held his swords high, looking for something to fight, but the temple’s protectors were gone. They were alone, the living, the dying, the dead, and mounds of empty armor, glowing gold in the remaining torchlight.

  Ramsa Aál pointed at an uninjured guardian. “Run! Get help to move the injured and wounded! Tell them there is no danger here now!”

  Ramsa Aál turned and stared at Anok, who waiting for the reprimand and punishment that must now come.

  “Acolyte,” his voice was low and serious. “Excellent work. Your mystic instincts must have told you exactly the right moment to spill the blood and complete the spell. When those guardians carrying the cask fell, I feared the spell was doomed to fail.”

  The right moment! He had not averted the spell. He had completed it!

  Ramsa Aál chuckled. “You should know, you have also done a great service to the usurpers of the Lost King. That was the spell we just broke. As they died, their spirits were drawn here, into this enchanted armor, to spend eternity guarding the empty tomb of the man they had killed. We set their spirits free to pass on.”

  Anok looked around at the fallen armor that lay all around them. The spirits of the undead seemed to have held it together, given it form. Now the disassociated plates, helmets, boots, and gauntlets lay everywhere.

  Anok knelt to examine the inscriptions of the back of a gauntlet lying at his feet. As he reached for it, he started as the glove twitched, nearly tumbling over on his backside.

  Ramsa Aál laughed. “That, talented acolyte, is the real reason we are here. The ectoplasm of the undead held this armor together, gave it direction, and allowed it to reassemble when cut asunder, but those spirits had little enough power of motion. They could not have, without aid, taken a single step, much less lifted a sword. It is the armor itself, or more specifically, the mystic alloy from which it is constructed, that has the true power of motion. Our spell did not change that.”

  Anok looked up. “You’re here for the armor?”

  “For the metal, and its power of motion.”

  “But why?”

  Ramsa Aál chuckled knowingly. “In time, that will be revealed.” He looked toward the front of the chamber, the side farthest from where they’d entered. “Our business here is almost done. Now that the temple’s protectors are gone, there is no need for us to leave by the torturous path through which we entered. You see that arched outline in the wall? It is a door, long sealed. Make yourself useful, acolyte. Open it!”

  Anok stood. The Mark of Set on his left arm still tingled and burned from the touch of fresh blood. Blood, he knew, was among the most powerful ingredients of dark magic and one to which the Mark of Set seemed most responsive.

  He rubbed his wrist as he considered the bricked-over opening. It was twice as tall as a man and five paces wide. Certainly a small hole would have done, large enough for a man to walk through. But he had power that ached to be used.

  “So be it,” he said.

  He focused on the doorway, then drew back his left arm as though about to throw an invisible stone.

  “Shatter!”

  He felt the power move up his hand, though his fingers, as he threw his invisible stone at the center of the sealed door.

  Bricks shattered, forming a hole the size of a man through which the orange light of sunset flooded. From outside, he heard countless gasps an
d cries of alarm.

  It did not end there.

  It was as though a crack had opened in a dam, and the waters had begun to rip through. Bricks peeled away from the edge of the opening, flying out into the glare of daylight, rapidly expanding the hole, until the entire doorway was opened.

  Through the door, he could see throngs of pilgrims, priests, and acolytes, staring up at wonder at the hundreds of bricks that hovered, spinning silently in the air a dozen feet above their heads. He had not expected them to be waiting there, and if he dropped the bricks now, dozens would be injured.

  His left hand still held high to levitate the bricks, he drew it back, then slammed his open hand forward.

  “Dust!”

  With a deafening crack like thunder, the bricks blew apart into fine yellow sand that rained down upon the startled crowd.

  There was a moment of fear that turned to cheers, and even laughter as they collectively realized that they were in no danger.

  Seizing the opportunity, Ramsa Aál stepped through the door, urging Anok along with him.

  They stepped through the doorway, onto a raised landing at the top of a broad marble stair, sheltered by an overhanging roof and framed by colorfully painted columns. Ramsa Aál raised his arms dramatically.

  The crowd responded with a cheer at the sight of the priest. He yelled to them, “Witness the power of Set! The spirit of the Lost King is risen this day, his treasures gone with him to paradise!”

  The pilgrims seemed to go mad with joy. They began to chant, “Set! Set! Set! Glory to Set! Set! Set!” Over and over.

  Ramsa continued to play to the audience, his arms still held high. He leaned toward Anok, and said just loud enough that only Anok could hear, “Well played, acolyte. Word of this day will spread throughout Stygia, and the pilgrims will flock here with endless tribute in order to tour this empty tomb!”

  The priest seemed to consider something for a moment, then leaned toward Anok again. “There is only one way this day could be improved, acolyte. Tonight in celebration, we shall hold a ceremony. It is time for you to begin your initiation as a full priest of Set!”

  3

  TEFERI CRAWLED THROUGH the darkness, guided more by his ears than his eyes. In the tomb site just over the rise, it sounded like a party was going on, though of a subdued and well-behaved variety. He could hear temple music, played on harps, horns, pipes, flutes, and drums, and the sound of many excited voices.

  As he reached the edge and peered over, he could see many torches burning in front of the now-opened tomb, warming fires burning in assorted stone caldrons, and scores of people, standing or seated in front of the temple steps, seemingly awaiting some event.

  Many guardian soldiers stood at attention around the edge of the tomb’s forecourt. Many more mingled with the assembled crowd, forming easily the loudest and most boisterous part of the assembly, as though celebrating some event to which the others were not privy.

  What happened in that tomb today?

  That was a puzzle. Teferi had seen Anok, the priest Ramsa Aál, many soldiers, and others, enter a small building far behind the temple. Most of the others had later emerged. Some carried out wounded or dead, but Anok and Ramsa Aál had somehow emerged through the front of the temple, and in a most spectacular fashion.

  None of it quite made sense, and a great deal about it Teferi found bothersome. Much dark sorcery had been done here this day. He could feel it in his bones. And it did not bode well for Anok.

  He rolled back into the darkness, crawling for a bit before trotting the rest of the way back to their camp. He found Fallon huddled under a blanket, her face a pale oval barely visible in the starlight. “What news?” she asked, keeping her voice low.

  “I can’t guess. They seem to be waiting for something, a speech, or a ceremony of some sort. I don’t see Anok or that cursed priest anywhere.”

  She looked up at him, and he paused to wonder if she could really see his much darker skin in the gloom. He had heard that Cimmerians were gifted with particularly keen senses.

  “Since this afternoon, you seem especially worried about our absent friend, yet you haven’t told me why.”

  “You didn’t see what happened when they emerged from the temple.”

  “I heard it.”

  “They probably heard it in Khemi. It was powerful magic, done for little more than show so far as I could see.”

  “Yes, and you said the priest emerged from the opened doorway, with Anok behind him.”

  “The priest acted as though it were his doing, yes, but that is the nature of priests: to take credit wherever it is worth taking. I fear that may have been Anok’s doing.”

  He heard her blanket rustle and suspected she had shrugged. “What of it if he did? He told me that he now masters the sorcery, that it no longer masters him.”

  “So he says,” Teferi answered skeptically.

  “Then did we all risk our lives for nothing, to help Anok obtain that bracelet thing?”

  “The Band of Neska.”

  “Yes, that. We did risk our lives for a reason, did we not? For if it was without cause, then I should have spent more time helping myself to Neska’s treasures and less helping Anok and Dejal plunder his corpse for trinkets!”

  Teferi frowned at the mention of Dejal, his traitorous and now-dead childhood companion. He was a victim of his own lust for power. Let him stay dead and never be spoken of again.

  “For nothing? No, it brought Anok back from the edge of magical corruption and madness, but he now acts as though it gives him mastery over the evil Mark of Set. I fear it is not so. If anything, it has increased his thirst for magical power, with all the danger that comes with it.”

  She snorted derisively. “If you hate magic so, why do you study those dusty tablets and scrolls with Sabé?”

  “For many reasons. To honor my dead friend Sheriti, who studied to be a scribe, to aid Anok in his quest to bring down the Cult of Set, but mostly—” He sighed. “Mostly because you cannot fight what you do not know. If sorcery is my enemy, I will know it well.”

  “And be corrupted by it yourself? Better to know nothing. Better to fight by skill and instinct, like the true warrior I know you to be! You were not made for libraries or dusty tomes, any more than I.

  “We are different, you and I, but we are also alike. Barbarians by blood, raised in exile from the lands that are our birthright. How then did we come to this place, far from our homelands, freezing in the dark because we dare not light a fire?”

  She growled, slammed her fist into her own leg. “Fine Cimmerian I am, too long away from the northern lands of my birth, to shiver in such little cold as this! I wager Conan would not shiver under blankets on a night like this!”

  Teferi chuckled. “The great Conan is a king, now. Doubtless he sleeps this night in front of a great fire in his castle, with a dozen Aquilonian concubines to keep him warm. You need not slight yourself on his account.”

  Suddenly from over the rise, cheering could be heard, and large drums sounded a steady rhythm.

  Teferi listened for a moment, then jumped to his feet. “Something is happening!” He started for his hidden vantage point.

  Fallon hesitated but a moment before throwing off her blanket. “Wait for me!”

  ANOK HAD ONLY been gone from the Tomb of the Lost King a few hours before he returned, once again by the secret tunnel in the back. To his surprise, the chamber at the bottom of the stairs had been transformed in his absence. It was well illuminated with oil lamps, furnishings had been brought in, and curtained screens had been set up to create a series of makeshift rooms and dressing areas.

  As he entered, he had seen bearers removing the last of the Armor of Mocioun, as he now knew it to be called, out through the tunnel entrance, still twitching and moving, even tied in bundles for transport. Most of it had already been lashed to camels when he had reentered the tomb, and by now the caravan might already be taking it back to Kheshatta.

  The Armor of
Mocioun. The irony of it struck him. The Lost King’s name was long forgotten, but Mocioun, the wizard who had created the armor, his name was still known. There was a kind of immortality in sorcery, Anok supposed. A king’s power died with him, but a sorcerer’s power could live on thousands of years after his flesh had turned to dust.

  Servants, priests, and acolytes swarmed about, preparing for what was obviously going to be quite an elaborate ceremony.

  Anok looked around skeptically.

  This can’t all be for me.

  No, likely it was for the benefit of the pilgrims massed outside the tomb. Ramsa Aál and the local priests saw an opportunity to increase the power and influence of the cult over the wealthy classes, and they were taking full advantage of it.

  Uncertain where he was expected to go, he looked around for someone, anyone, familiar. So intent was he that he neglected to watch where he was walking and stumbled into a large, round basket tended by a leathery little Stygian man dressed in only a loincloth.

  Anok heard an angry hissing from inside the basket and quickly stepped back. The little man glared at him. Eyes half-mad, thin as though starved, the man’s skin was wrinkled and nearly black. “Take care,” he growled, “you do not anger my babies.”

  Anok quickly turned away and found himself looking at a tall, bald male servant of, judging by his rank and silver temple yoke, high rank. “You are to be prepared for the ceremony. Follow me.”

  Anok was led into one of the dressing rooms, where several servants waited. A curtain was drawn, and they quickly went to work, washing the dust from his feet, face, and hands, and removing his regular robes. They also, despite his protests, unbuckled his swords and hung them on a chair with his discarded clothing.

  As he was dressed by servants in an elaborate black, gold, and scarlet ceremonial robe, Anok tried to sort out the day’s events. Once again, he had come to the unwitting aid of his sworn enemies. He had saved Ramsa Aál’s life and completed the spell that had obtained for the priest the enchanted metal he needed for his mysterious plan. Finally, Anok had provided a show of magic that would doubtless greatly benefit the cult.