Conan The Indomitable (10 page)

“I wish we could build a fire,” Elashi said. “It is so damp
in here.”

Conan glanced at the woman, but said nothing.

“I know, I know,” she said.
“Might as well
wish for a kingdom.
It was only a thought.”

“How far do you reckon we come?” Tull asked.

Conan shrugged. “Miles.
Hard to say on the
water.”

“Aye.
Reckon we lost any followers.
Kinda hard to track in water.”

Conan chewed on a mouthful of the lichen. It had a sour taste but was a
change from the fish. Earlier in the day the fish had been the best food he had
eaten in a long time; after consuming the pale, bloodless flesh several times
since, it had lost much of its appeal.

Likely Tull was right about pursuers, but he would sleep with one hand on
his sword. This place was run by a wizard and a witch, and although his
experience with magic was slim, he wanted no more part of it. Such things were
dangerous and unclean. Give him a fanged beast to face, or berserker swordsmen,
and he could hold his own as well as any man. Some spell-spewing necromancer
was another thing altogether. Honest men stayed away from such things, and
Conan wanted no truck with wizards or witches or any of their
ilk
.

“I’ll stand the first watch,” Tull said.

Conan nodded. He looked at Elashi. “We have no fire, but we can share
our own warmth.”

“Aye,” she said, smiling.

The pair of them found a particularly dark recess on the ledge, leaving Tull
sitting near the edge, watching the ice-smooth
Sunless
Sea
.

The Webspinner Plants could not move from their rooted position, but they
were none the less dangerous for that. The plants, each twice the height of a
tall cyclops, with thorny branches surrounding a central maw, produced
a spiderlike
silk webbing with which they snared their prey.
Unlike spiders, most of whom built nets upon which they might catch a hapless
passerby, the Webspinner Plants could throw sticky, ropelike lines for some
distance. These lines would adhere to anything save the plants’ own webbing. The
victim thus caught would then be hauled inexorably to the plant, where it would
be impaled upon the sharp spikes until it ceased struggling, then drawn into
the waiting maw. Around the plants was an artificed floor of shimmery
silk-overlay that kept the prey lines from sticking to the cavern’s rocky
surface. The undigested and regurgitated bones of a thousand meals past lay
upon the silken floor, and one desiring to speak to the plants stayed outside
the range of the prey lines or took his chances on becoming dinner.

Wikkell and Deek kept well outside the perimeter of the largest of the silk
floorings, talking to the queen of this particular nest of Webspinners. Logic
dictated that the Webspinners should have been long extinct since they were
immobile, and despite their ability to heave lines; any prey species with half
a brain should certainly have learned over the years to stay well away from the
plants.

However, the Webspinners had another talent, and while both Wikkell and Deek
had spoken to them a number of times, that talent was once again in full
evidence: the voices of the plants were
most
compelling. What Wikkell
heard when the queen spoke was the voice of a female cyclops, honey-smooth and
filled with promise of all manner of conjugal delights, almost irresistibly
offered.
Almost.
Deek’s hearing
apparatus, upon receipt of the same voice, construed the sound as that of a
female of his species, gravid with a thousand eggs and desiring a big, strong
worm such as himself to fertilize them at his earliest pleasure. Guaranteed
pleasure, vermis-mine…

Both cyclops and worm knew that the voice was specific to whatever kind of
creature that heard it: males heard females and females heard males, generally,
and only those with strong minds or experience with the plants could resist the
siren song they sang.

“Come closer,” the queen of the plants urged, “that we might
discuss this without having to strain ourselves by yelling.” Surely no
cyclopian female had ever sounded so sweet and so willing to do anything Wikkell
might desire. Anything at all, would he simply come a bit closer
…

“Nay, sister,” Wikkell said. His voice held no rancor; he
understood the mechanisms the plants used and begrudged them not, for everybody
wanted to survive. “What we wish to discuss involves a long-term
arrangement rather than a quick meal upon Deek here or
myself
.”

“Long term?”
Deek heard the gravid
female’s soothing tones in the high pitch that his kind used, sounds quite
inaudible to human or cyclopian ears but hot music to his own. Even knowing
what she was, the call tempted him.

“Aye,” Wikkell continued. “A large supply of
food,
spaced over a long period.”

“How much?
Over how
long?”
The sweet tones vanished abruptly and the queen’s suddenly
alien rasp held no promise of anything either Wikkell or Deek or anything
interested in staying alive would find intriguing. The big plant was now all
business.

Wikkell spared a quick grin and whisper for Deek. “That got her
attention.”

Softly, Deek scraped back, “I-i-indeed.”

Louder, Wikkell said, “We need water transportation. You can spin a
boat of your webbing, can you not?”

“Certainly,” came her reply. The tone was full of arrogance and
disdain. “There is little we cannot create of the Magic Cord.”

“In return for supplying my friend Deek and me with such a conveyance,
we would be willing to offer you, oh, say half a dozen each of Whites and bats
to be placed within range of your… ah… supply lines.”

“Twenty each,” the queen said. “And your boat shall be a
thing crafted with the utmost loving care.

Wikkell grinned down at Deek. He whispered, “I think we can bargain her
down to half that.”

“W-whatever.
B-be q-q-quick t-though.”

Wikkell addressed the queen again. “The boat need merely float, my
leafy queen, not win a contest of beauty.
Eight each.”

“Even so, such labor requires much skill, mobile one. Sixteen.”

In the end they settled on a dozen bats and ten Whites as the price for the
craft. To be delivered as soon as Wikkell and Deek finished a small errand they
had to accomplish. The queen would rather have eaten something immediately of
course, but she knew a good bargain when she had one, and she and her sisters
could survive for a long while without eating did they need to.

“Would this errand have anything to do with three small mobile ones who
float upon the waters?”

Wikkell blinked his great eye. “You know of them, Majesty?”

“I can speak to all of my sisters via the deep roots we share. The
three move away from here, toward the
Great
Ambit
Cave
.”

“Ah. Well, yes, as it happens, those are the ones we seek.”

“If my sisters and I should help you snare these, might not there be an
additional price tendered for such a service? We are not all planted here, you
know.”

Wikkell and Deek regarded each other. They had been given great leeway by their
master and mistress, respectively, and they had used more time than originally
intended. To fail was to die. “Indeed,
Your
Majesty. Something could certainly be arranged in that direction.”

“Another two dozen each, white walkers and dark fliers,” the queen
said.

Wikkell grinned. He loved to bargain, and had little chance to do so.
“Two dozen?
For a mere three?
I had thought to offer, oh, say five each.”

Even as the smiling cyclops and giant webspinning queen continued their
deal, the other plants began spinning an oval, watertight bowl large enough to
hold a dozen men.

The night passed quietly for Conan and his friends. He relieved Tull after a
few hours, and Elashi chose to sit with him as the older man fell into slumber.
She and Conan did not spend all of their time watching the water; indeed, a
portion of that evening found them far more intent on each other, and the
pleasure thereby derived was both refreshing and tiring at the same time.

In the morning—for lack of a better term—the three remounted the dead fish
and paddled away.

Perhaps two hours later, the walls of the cave narrowed considerably, so
that the overhanging ledges on both sides could very nearly be touched with one
of the paddles. They continued onward with such surroundings for another ten
minutes; then the cavern expanded again to thrice larger proportions. Just
ahead, however, the waters split in twain as a bifurcation appeared in the
rock. One river ran to the left, another of equal size went to the right.

“Which way?”
Tull called as he paddled.

“One is as good as the other,” Conan replied.
“To
the right.”

Elashi looked agitated at this. Conan refrained from smiling. He had a
sudden revelation. “You would rather we went the other way?”

“Did I say that?” she asked.

“No.
To the right, then.”

“It looks darker that way.”

“To the left, then,” Conan said, playing his hunch.

“It looks narrower that way,” she said.

Conan grinned to himself. He was, he realized, finally beginning to
understand how her mind worked. She did not want to make a decision, but she
would almost always oppose any that he made. Therefore, to go to the left, he
must be adamant about going the other way.

“The right fork is definitely the better way to go,” he said. He
waited for a heartbeat, and was not disappointed.

“I think it would be better to travel the other fork,” Elashi
said.

Ah, ha! He was right. But the trick lay in not agreeing too readily. He had
to agree without seeming to agree. Complex creatures, women; they would rather
argue than do almost anything else.

Conan shrugged.
“Very well.
I think the right
branch would be better, but perhaps you are correct.”

“Of course I am.”

He turned his head away so she would not see him smile. It worked, this
time. Of course one snowflake did not a blizzard make, but at least it was a
beginning. Perhaps he might come to understand the ways of women after all.

They paddled the fish into the left branch of the split.

The Harskeel was more than a little tired and much more than a little
irritated. What should have taken but a short while had turned into a major
imbroglio.
All these sundry beasts darting and flittering
about to obscure what should be a simple quest.
It did not ask for much,
the Harskeel—merely to be less than the sum of its parts once again. Was that
too much? One brave man and his sword was small compensation for the reversal
of its unnatural joining; why could not the fates and the gods tender such a
miniscule request?
But no.
Nothing, nothing,
nothing
was ever easy. Instead of a clean capture and subsequent sundering back into
its natural and rightful selves, the Harskeel was forced to grub around under
the ground like some ilysüdaen snake! It was all too much.

Well, when it finally captured this Conan fellow, the man would be made to
know some of the Harskeel’s own torment. After the sword was blooded, perhaps
some slow torture would repay the barbarian for the effort expended to retrieve
him.

It seemed only fair.

The Harskeel’s tracker returned. “We found a tunnel that goes around
that bat cave and gets us back on the trail again, m’lord.”

“Good. Let us move foward. Mind you keep your pikes at the ready.”
This last command was hardly needed as the four remaining men had yet to to
lower their weapons since the slaughter in the bat cave; still, a leader had to
remind its followers who did what every now and again.

The Harskeel smoothed an eyebrow and patted its hair,—somewhat to its own
disgust, as well as a sense of lightness—and followed the tracker along the new
trail.

Rey now rode in the sedan chair, rocking comfortably with the walking rhythm
of its two bearers. The wizard looked around. It had been too long since he had
ventured out to observe his domain, far too long. What was the point in ruling
if one could not go out and lord it over the realm now and then? He resolved
that once this man was dispatched to the
Gray
Lands
and That Bitch dealt her just
reward, he would get out more often.

The drone of the marching Cyclopes, keeping step together, lulled the wizard
into a comfortable somnambulance. He leaned back against the chair, his head
lolling to one side as he dozed and daydreamed of future glories.

The undulations of the worm clasped within her spread thighs gently shifted
Chuntha back and forth like a waving frond in an alternating breeze. The rasp
of belly plates over the damp rock was almost melodic:
scrape, scr-a-a-p-e
—a
short beat followed by a longer one as the coils slid the creature forward.
A pleasant way to travel, although she could easily think of
several ways that would increase the pleasure.
But another time; the
stalemate between
herself
and the wizard needed to be
put to rest; that concerned her now more than her immediate pleasure. Settle
with him once and for all. After that she could perhaps expand her activities
to take in a portion of the world above the caves. A more ready supply of men
existed there, of course, and one could never have too many of them around.
They went so fast.

Rocking with pleasure, Chuntha dreamed of future glories.