Conan The Freelance

Ten million years before the birth of the first man, the tallest peak in what would be called in dimly future times the Karpash Mountains stood in ice-capped majesty near what was to become the border between Corinthia and Zamora. It had no name then, there being no creatures with language to make names; later, it would be called Mount Turio. On a cold winter’s day and without warning, an explosion shook the earth to its roots, and the top half of the mountain blew off. Pulverized rock formed ebon and stormy clouds that hid the face of the sun; glowing lava spewed and flowed down, feeding upon and consuming giant trees flattened for two days’ march in any direction from the wounded mountain. The sweeping hand of destruction wiped away a hundred thousand animals, scouring the land with a stone wind that spared no living thing exposed to its abrasive touch.

Halfway to the edge of the world, beasts paused in their paths at the sound of the mountain vomiting itself up and darkening the skies.

It was a noise to rival the scream of a god.

After a million years, the crater left by the titantic explosion became a lake as large as a small sea.

After ten million years, the scars of the cataclysm had mostly been erased by time and weather, smoothed by winds and rain and snow and sun. The great crater lake remained, however, icy and clear and deep.

In the center of that vast lake, nameless and mostly unknown to the eyes and thoughts of men, the floating mat of a unique plant thrived upon the surface of the azure water. The growth was called Sargasso weed by those with a need for such names. Dense the weed was, and buoyant and thick enough to support the weight of a low, rambling structure large enough to house a thousand men. A careful man could walk from the center of the Palace of the Sargasso for most of a day and not reach the closest edge of the living island, though finding water was seldom a problem. In places the mat was carefully thinned by predators who lived below and sought .to trap prey; a misstep would send the unwary to a watery death in the jaws of some hungry denizen spawned in the lake’s cold, dark depths. Even should a man avoid the quicksandlike traps in the Sargasso, he was ever at risk, for things also lived in the tangled growth above the chilly water, things that had over centuries developed a taste for human flesh.

In the center of this construction of nature and man, in the bowels of the sprawling and low castle, dwelled the one known as the Abet Blasa, Dimma of the Fogs, called by some the Mist Mage.

Although the roof of the chamber bore several large openings covered with sheets of clearest quartz to allow a goodly measure of the sun’s light to flow into the room, a perpetual fog enshrouded Dimma where he sat upon a throne of carved woods and ivory. Indeed, Dimma’s form itself seemed to blend with the swirling mist. He had no hard edges, appearing as insubstantial as the grayness he wore about himself as a billowing cloak.

Into the shifting grayness came a thing that upon land could pass for a man. Once the ancestors of this creature had dwelled Below, but through the arcane arts of the Mist Mage, these beasts had been elevated, both in form and in intelligence. Dimma called them selkies, and through his crafting, had made them into most useful servants. No longer were they simple beasts, and although they could pretend to be human upon the land, in the water they reverted magically into something from a man’s nightmare.

The selkie’s name was Kleg, and it spoke in a singsong tone, more as if using some stringed instrument than a true voice. “My lord, I am here.”

The wavering image of the Mist Mage turned toward the selkie. Dimma focused his attention upon the creature to whom he was literally a god. “Speak to me of your mission, Kleg.”

“My lord. Six days’ ride from here upon the back of the packbeast you created stands the Tree Folk’s forest. We have determined that the … ingredients you seek can be found therein.”

The Mist Mage leaned forward. His face shimmered as a wisp of fog passed over-and through-it, becoming for a moment more sharply etched. Kleg felt a spasm of fear clutch at his bowels, turning them cold.

“And have you brought these ingredients to me?”

“No, my lord. The Tree Folk are powerful and vigilant. In the attempt to secure that which you seek, four of your servants were destroyed. Only two of us remained, and our escape was a near thing.”

Dimma leaned back in his throne, the wood and ivory visible to the selkie through his master’s body. “You are as powerful as three men, Kleg.”

“Even so, my lord. The Tree Folk themselves are agile and strong, and they control their grove so that even such as we could not overcome them.”

The Abet Blasa sat silently for a moment. “You are certain that which I require can be obtained from the Tree Folk?”

“Certain, my lord.”

“Then it does not matter how agile or strong they are. I will have what I must have. You must do whatever is necessary to accomplish this task. Go and gather your brothers. A dozen, a hundred, as many as you think needed. All the beasts of the Sargasso are at your disposal.”

“Your word is my life,” Kleg said as he bowed and backed from the chamber.

Indeed, Dimma thought as he watched the selkie leave. Your life and the lives of ten times ten thousand are nothing compared to what I must have.

Dimma rose and floated across the huge room. Where he moved, the fog thickened about him, centering upon his person as if flowing from his body outward, and indeed that was the case.

Five hundred years past, Dimma had been a young and foolish student of the arts. In his travels, he had grown arrogant in his power. One fateful day, he sought to test the mettle of the Wizard of Koth, a shriveled and toothless old man whose reputation Dimma had carelessly deemed larger than his true power.

Dimma had been wrong. Toothless he might be, but the Wizard of Koth was not without a fierce and sorcerous bite. In the ensuing battle, the old man had died, but not without first laying his curse upon the cocky Dimma.

As he lay breathing his last, the old man had managed a smile. “You are a hard one,” he’d said. “Flint and fired iron, and giving away nothing. But from this day forth, it shall not be so. You shall give away all; your body will become that of a man of mist, and ever shall you dwell in fog. So shall it be said, so shall it be done.”

The old man had died then, and Dimma had been unworried. A dying curse was to be expected; he had weathered more than a few as he had slain various adepts. They meant nothing. He, Dimma, had stalked wizards of the Ring and of the Square. He had bested the yellow Seers of Turan, crushed the darkskinned spell singers of Zembabwei. One more mage meant little to him.

At first.

A month after his duel with the Wizard of Koth, Dimma sought his pleasure with a woman. He reached for her, and—

His hand passed through her body!

Dimma fled from the encounter and convinced himself he had fallen prey to an illusion, a trick resulting from much wine and too little light, and at first, it seemed to be so. But during the ensuing months, the old Kothian’s curse had flowered into a bitter, airy blossom. Dimma became more and more insubstantial, and there seemed no cure for it. It came and it went without reason.

He was not without skill, and he utilized all of it to rid himself of the geas, but it was to little avail. More and more of his time was spent as a creature less of flesh than of vapor. Days, sometimes weeks would pass before he regained the flesh. He could still perform most of his own conjurations, using one of his servants as a standin for those things needing a physical hand, but the other pleasures of the body were lost to him. He could not eat or drink or enjoy erotic pleasures with women, nor could he feel the sensations of heat or cold or texture. He became a kind of ghost, living in perpetual fog, a thing more brother to mist than to man.

Five hundred years is a long time, however, and the constant searching eventually turned up clues to a cure for the affliction. From a sacred cave in Stygia came a tattered scroll with part of the cure; from a ruined temple on Siptah’s Isle came another part. Dimma’s agents roamed to the Black Kingdoms-Kush, Darfar, Keshan, and Punt-as well as to the northern cold lands of Vanaheim and Asgard. No place was too distant to reach if some hope might be offered for a cure, no cost too great. Some of the spells collected stretched from before the time Atlantis had been swallowed by the sea.

At last, Dimma had the pieces of the puzzle he needed, all save one. And the final item lay practically in his own realm! He would have it at any cost. It had been twenty years since last he managed a few moments of solidity; he never knew for what reason or when he might be given a brief respite from his curse. Now he saw the end of his torment looming only days or weeks away, and he would use every bit of his not inconsiderable power to achieve that end, no matter if it required destruction of a kingdom!

Dimma felt a stray breeze lift and shift him sideways. Someone had left a door ajar or a window open, and that someone would die for the error. Soon he would not have to suffer such indignities, and woe to any man or anything that stood in Dimma’s way.

Woe, indeed.

The narrow mountain path lay upon a steep grade, patches of loose gravel strewn over it, but the young man walking the route did so with both agility and grace. He was, after all, a Cimmerian, and those from the mountains of his birth learned to climb as soon as they could walk. The man was called Conan, and the slanting rays of the setting sun reflected from smoldering blue eyes framed by a thick, black square-cut mane that touched wide, heavy shoulders. Conan wore the hastily tanned hide of a wolf over his brawny back, short leathern breeches, and sandals with thongs that laced up around his muscular calves. The chilly mountain air nipped at the places where his skin lay bare, but he ignored the cold stoically. After the confinement of the vast underground system of the Black Cave in which he and his then companions almost died a dozen times, the open air was welcome, no matter what its temperature.

He was bound for Zamora, for the wicked city of Shadizar, wherein he intended to ply what he hoped would be the lucrative trade of thief. It was said that a quick wit, a strong arm, and a sharp blade were all a man needed to survive in Shadizar. Add to that a light touch and quick feet, and genuine prosperity could supposedly be had. Conan meant to find out if this was true. He was young, but his short life had given him a wealth of experience and he stood ready to add material wealth to his experience.

The trip thus far had taken much longer than he had thought it would; the gods kept putting obstacles in his path, albeit that some of them were attractive women, and his adventures had been more than a little perilous. Necromancers and wizards and monsters had bedeviled Conan-like most honest men, he had no use for magic-and between the beautiful desert woman Elashi, the long-dead zombie woman Tuanne, and the evil witch mistress of the caves, Chuntha, his desire for women of late had been more than slaked. He was alone again, and happy for it.

The path took a sharp turning to the right a few steps below where Conan walked, and from around that turn came a noise.

It was small, the sound barely enough for the Cimmerian’s sharp ears to discern, but he stopped his progress immediately and drew the ancient blued-iron sword ensheathed at his side. The blade was solid and heavy, the hilt unadorned leather wrapping over the metal tang, and it had cost Conan a bout with a long-dead warrior who had been reduced to a living skeleton. The blade was of razor sharpness, kept so by Conan’s application of whetstones after even the smallest usage.

Gripping the sword in two hands, after the manner of the warrior priests he had met in a mountain temple, Conan moved along the path, taking great care to avoid dislodging any of the small stones littering the hard ground. The sound could mean nothing, a rock contracting in the cold or a small animal scurrying about chasing an insect, but Conan had not survived this long in a dangerous world by taking foolish chances. Crom was his god, and Crom gave a man a measure of strength and wit at birth, then left the rest up to him. Any of Crom’s children who failed to use both gifts properly need not waste breath trying to call for the god’s help.

Keeping close to the wall of rock that bounded the path on the right, Conan reached the edge of the turn. Raising the sword so that it would not betray his presence, he quickly stepped around the corner and brought the blade down again, pointed at throat level.

Just ahead the path widened considerably where the mountain had been worn away by time and weather, and in the deep cleft of rock stood a half-naked woman with a long spear, her back to the stone, half-encircled by five man-sized dragons. A sixth dragon lay on its back nearby in a large pool of what Conan supposed was its own ichor. Clutched in its claws was a scrap of cloth that seemed to match the breechclout that was now the spearwoman’s sole garment.

The cloth had been a costly trophy for the giant lizard, so it would seem.

Conan’s recent adventures were much in his mind, so much so that his first thought upon viewing the scene in front of him was: Oh, no. Another woman.