Conan the Savage (18 page)

Most of these zealots were satisfied for the moment with looting and defiling the Temple of Amalias—pulling down ornate tapestries, toppling idols, and hounding forth the last few acolytes and vestal maidens who cowered within. Soon there would be holy torments, public burnings and quarterings, to occupy the mob. Yet in spite of the temporary peace, there remained the prospect that a battle with King Typhas’s forces would be unleashed. The Urbander cavalry waited ready, its steeds champing and pawing a scant dozen paces from the iron-masked muzzles of the enemy horse troops.

One worrisome prospect, a cause for vigilance, was that the priestess Tamsin and her small retinue, even travelling under the goddess Ninga’s powerful protection, might be slain or taken prisoner by wily King Typhas. Or worse, they might unwittingly sell themselves and their loyal followers into some unwise bargain with the reigning tyrant. Yet surely, the worshippers told themselves, great Ninga would not permit such an injustice...?

Goddess, priestess, step-priest, and knights were led into the palace. They passed through an elaborate defensive maze of cullised gates, narrow courtyards, and barred vestibules, into the main audience chamber. King Typhas had retired for this meeting to his seat of honour, the legendary Gryphon Throne of Brythunia. At the head of the long, intricately vaulted hall it stood, beneath the multicoloured arabesques of a wondrous octagonal window, formed of ten thousand transparent gems set in delicate' metal web-work high overhead. By its light the monarch slouched on the vast ebony chair, a single chunk of black stone carved in the shape of a crouching mythical beast.

The king sat on a cushion in the lap of the animal, whose fore-claws rested on its bent knees, with lion and bird talons picked out alike in keen points of purest emerald. Above the king—aggrandizing, yet somewhat diminishing, his mortal form—hung the gold-beaked, vulpine head with eyes carved of gloating rubies. Arching up behind were the half-open wings, resplendent in plumage carved of platinum and mother-of-pearl.

Typhas himself, lounging in a simple doublet of gold-trimmed purple, with gold sword-chain about his waist and a fine, narrow gold circlet crowning his balding brow, was less whelming in appearance than his massive throne. His warriorly muscles had long since collapsed to the paunchy slack of middle age, his campaigner’s bronze skin had washed out tallow-pale, and his conqueror’s erect bearing now stooped to the more clerkly posture suitable for signing numberless writs and sitting through obscure, interminable counsel. Yet there was about him a remnant of restless energy, signalled by his darting gaze and his continual shifting in the high seat. These things suggested an active, penetrating mind.

The legation approached the raised end of the throne room, where it was cordoned off by a velvet cable. As they did so, a plumed herald’s voice rang forth. “Your Majesty, the First Chancellor begs to approach the throne. In his company: the rebel knight Isembard, pretended Baron of Urbander; the proscribed seeress Tamsin; the warlock Arl; and three proscribed gentlemen-at-arms.”

“Approach.” At a gesture from the king, Tamsin, Isembard, and the chancellor were conducted forward toward the throne. Arl and the three rebel knights, meanwhile, were kept back behind the cable with the small throng of courtiers and military officers who waited on the king. Coming to the fringed end of the plush carpet before the dais, the chancellor knelt on one knee, then bowed so deeply as to touch his forehead to his other, half-bent knee—an obeisance pointedly omitted by the rebels.

“We should reprimand our court herald,” the king amiably began “—have him burned in oil, as seems so much the fashion these days—for failing to proclaim the presence of a goddess among us, alongside these stiff-necked mortal rebels! Therefore let us correct the omission: hail Ninga, soul and spirit of an uprising so strident that it merits even our Imperial attention.”

Whether King Typhas spoke satirically, or whether he might be embarking in a roundabout manner on one of his famous stratagems, it was difficult to say. The herald, from his sudden, sweatily pale and grim-faced look, obviously gave weight to his monarch’s words; Sir Isembard, ever alert for an offence., looked uncertain whether to take umbrage.

But Tamsin, innocent-seeming as ever, appeared to accept the king’s homage as genuine. “Thank you, Typhas,” she boldly began, meanwhile propping up her doll to face the ebon throne, “for being the first in your royal peerage to acknowledge what your subjects have long understood.”

The king blinked, impressed, then leaned forward on one elbow to answer. “Often we mighty, secure in our high castles, are slow to attend to stirrings and upheavals in the farm fields and city gutters. ’Tis hard to know how broad and portentous they may become.”

“Even so,” Baron Isembard declared, obviously wanting to press the king and have his voice heard, “when miracles are sung and celebrated throughout the land, when ancient prophecies unfold, and when the old kings and gods are cast out of their thrones, it hardly serves as a fit excuse for a king to vouchsafe ignorance.”

“Sir Knight, some respect, I must insist—’’.the black-browed first steward set out to rebuke Isembard. But the king waved him quiet; Typhas betrayed neither outrage nor fear at the rebel knight’s harsh impetuousness. He answered patiently.

“Where miracles and prophecies are proclaimed by the rabble, anyone with a viewpoint as elevated as our own is bound to have considerable scepticism. After all, we have gulled the commoners often enough ourselves to know how easily it can be done.” He smiled. “As to topplings from thrones, be assured, my ersatz baron, that you will never unseat our reign. This interview does not concern our Imperial survival, but our convenience and enhanced power... possibly yours as well, Isembard, if you go carefully.” “The king recognizes the new goddess Ninga,” Tamsin spoke up, “yet doubts the miracles she has performed. Know, Typhas,” she said with a cautionary glance at the doll nestled in the crook of her elbow, “that our sacred mistress does not smile upon doubters.”

“Come, now, young priestess,” the king cozened good-naturedly. “Do not try to persuade us that supernatural dooms, demonic conjurings, and summary damnations play so large a part in your religion as the popular myth would have it! If we believed so, we would scarcely be talking so cosily with you, and you would hardly need to be here.

But know that we, in our kingly tenure, have dealt over so many years with priests and prophets of the formerly dreaded Amalias that we have gained, after all, a fairly clear notion of how this god-business plays out. Knowing this, I—we—would guess that there is room here for an understanding.”

“If you mean to say,” Isembard broke in again, “that our sacred Ninga is the same sort of lax, feckless god as weak old Amalias, it would be a slander to our faith.”

“Nay, nay, of course not,” the king soothed the impetuous knight. He switched his position on the taloned arms of his throne, yet kept the force of his looks and arguments directed at the female. “Nay indeed, young Tamsin, the mob that surges from the temple steps clear up to the postern wall outside—” he gestured to die ornate, vaulted end of the chamber “—is enough to apprise us that your Ninga is no weak, common slackard of a goddess! That, indeed, is what we find most likeable about her.

“Yet on the other hand,” Typhas continued, “you must confess that your goddess acted with admirable circumspection during the recent dispute with High Priest Epiminophas. She did not unleash her apocalyptic talents on him when she had a chance; she did not engulf the citadel, or even the temple, in burning slag, nor did she upheave the earth and rend apart our much-despised palace, stone from stone. Instead, she relied on no miracle greater than a crack Nemedian crossbowman to achieve her purpose. Admirable economy, we must say!

“That is why, faced with the incontrovertible evidence, we are ready to see reason and acknowledge a change in the tides of our empire.” Typhas spoke magnanimously from his place on the throne. “We propose, therefore, to bring the full force of our kingship to bear in your behalf; to repudiate once and for all the old god Amalias, and to embrace your Ninga as the new state divinity, performing public devotions to her in our own royal personage—while maintaining our Imperial dignity, of course—and assisting you to apprehend and punish any dissenters with the full weight of government power.”

All those present in the throne room heard the king’s words with muted reactions: the guards frozen-faced, the courtiers watchful, some officers barely able to conceal their surprise, the herald and first steward wide-eyed with astonishment. Isembard’s response seemed to veer in a moment’s time from outrage to equally repressed but gloating anticipation. Only Tamsin showed no inner flurry, her pretty young face looking almost as demure and unsurprised as that of the effigy clasped at her side.

“So you propose, King Typhas,” she questioned, “that instead of a new and pious rulership—instead of relief from a thousand grievances, and holy vengeance against their Imperial oppressors—Ninga’s followers should be content with their goddess’s installation in the same place foul Amalias formerly held, in the same corrupt order, under your odious rule?”

The courtiers’ collective gasp at Tamsin’s insult was mirrored only slightly in their king, by a faint darkening of his waxy-pale countenance. “Your words are strong ones, Priestess... no less than I would expect from one who uses them, along with myth and priestly sleight-of-hand, to inflame a mighty rabble to rebellion.” He shook his head, frowning. “Even so, I will ignore them and continue to essay reason, for a while longer at least. For I remind you that one of your small age and experience cannot possibly know what is involved in the governance of a vast empire— the trials and responsibilities, with complications enough to madden a general or confound even a middling king.” By this time, King Typhas, the consummate negotiator, had managed a return to his former amiable smile. “You may crave power, my child... and in truth have shown yourself entitled to it. More power, indeed, than a woman ever had in Brythunia. But believe me, you would not want my throne.” He thumped the black stone arm beside him with the heel of one hand. “It is a hard seat, weighted o’er with cares and tribulations of office—” he gestured to the looming gargoyle face above his head “—hounded and haunted by a thousand dilemmas and crises, of which you and your conquering goddess are not the least, nor either the greatest. Nay, my girl, it is not for such a fresh, pretty young lass as you to take on such a burden—”

“No, you are right,” Tamsin agreed suddenly with the king. “Your throne is ugly, too dark and garish for this bright chamber—do you not think so, Ninga?” she queried the goddess at her side. “Ill-favoured too, with such a menacing look about it. Do you not agree?”

As the seeress spoke, others in the room could not but turn their eyes to the throne, so eerie was her manner. And surely enough, a change was occurring. Before their gaze, the bright ruby eyes of the carved gryphon flickered to sinister life, animated by a dark, shadowy interior flame. Stiffly, ponderously, the throne’s ebony limbs began to move, flexing and straining to enfold the one seated in its gargantuan lap.

“Nay, it is a monstrosity,” Tamsin declared. “I wish it were gone from here—and you with it, Typhas!”

The king, with a sudden, quavering cry of astonishment, tensed to spring up from his place—but too late, for the ebon arms were already closing across his chest. As the bird talons clutched tighter to arrest his writhing struggles, their emerald tips pierced his flesh, and a scream of agony lanced from his convulsing throat.

On either side of the dais, guards sprang forward and attacked the gryphon, but to no avail; their halberds and swords bent and shattered on its hard stone flanks-. Meanwhile, the beast reared up, its feline hinder-claws gouging into the ornamental tiles underfoot. The long lion tail swung like a mace, knocking over one guard, then another, with grunts and clanking of armour.

“No, Tamsin,” the king screamed, “have mercy, please! Great Goddess, I meant you no disrespect! Release me, please, Ninga! All praise to Ninga—ah, ah, aieee!”

With King Typhas struggling and shrieking in its grip, the monster spread its vast gem-laden wings and gave them a preliminary shake. Then ponderously, impossibly, the stone gryphon rose upward from the dais, its pennons gusting and flashing in the multicoloured glare of the overhead window. It spiralled high above the watchers, carrying the trapped king in its embrace even as the maid Tamsin carried her beloved doll. With a buffet of wind and a great noise that drowned out the screaming chorus below, it drove straight out through the many-coloured octagonal window, smashing it to a million shards as it vanished from view.

Outside the palace, the rebels thronging the temple square were visited with a truly apocalyptic sight: from the main keep that loomed over the palace wall, out through the ornate window overlooking the square, a giant black demon came with a crash, showering those nearby with jewels of precious beauty and gem-bright droplets of blood. The flying monster Wore the shape of Brythunia’s Imperial symbol; it bore in its talons the flailing, purple-robed figure of King Typhas himself. As the crowd watched in mingled fear and exultation, the gryphon clawed at its prey like a wild eagle. It tore their monarch’s flesh with its talons and plucked at his eyes with its golden beak, even as it bore him off screaming under thudding dark wings, far, far away into the cloud-darkened east.

Meanwhile, inside the throne room, guards and courtiers quailed back in horror at the monstrous event, fearful that Tamsin’s sanguine power might be further displayed. For there was no doubt that the miracle was of her making—or rather, that of the dire goddess Ninga couched at her side.

Of the three standing nearest the now-vacant dais, the first steward blinked after his disappearing king, then fell to one knee in immediate obeisance. Baron Isembard, with an expression of mingled triumph and uncertainty, eyed King Typhas’s golden circlet where it had fallen from the monarch’s head during his struggles; but then, turning to Tamsin, the knight knelt to her in imitation of the steward.