Conan the Destroyer by Robert Jordan

Author:Robert Jordan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

XII

Eerily pearlescent darkness still filled the crater when Conan woke, but he did not need a paling of the sky to the east to tell him that dawn approached. To cross the lake at dawn they must be awake before dawn, therefore he had awakened in good time. It was a useful trick he had, though he would admit that too much wine could befuddle it.

Tossing aside his blankets, he sheathed the bared broadsword that had lain by him through the night and rose, stretching. He frowned as his eye fell on Jehnna’s empty blankets. Swiftly he scanned the slope of the crater above their camp. The horses stood with heads down, sleeping. Nothing moved.

He bent to prod Akiro and Malak. “Wake,” he said quietly. “Jehnna is gone. Up with you.”

Leaving then—Malak spluttering and cursing, Akiro muttering direly about his age and need for sleep—Conan strode to where Bombatta and Zula slept, one to either side of the empty blankets where Jehnna had been. He glared at the scar-faced warrior, snoring in a low buzz, and planted his booted foot in the man’s ribs.

With a startled yelp Bombatta came awake. A heartbeat later he was snarling to his feet, hand darting to his tulwar. “I will kill you, thief! I—”

“Jehnna is gone,” Conan said with grim coldness. “You all but tie her to you, then let her disappear. She could be dead!”

Bombatta’s fury vanished with the first words. He stared at her blankets as if struck in the head.

“The horses are all here,” Malak called.

The ebon-armoured man shook himself. “Of course they are!” he roared. “Jehnna would not ride away from her destiny.”

“Destiny!” Zula sneered. “You call it her destiny. Why can she not choose her own destiny?”

“If you have done something with her,” Bombatta grated, and the black woman bristled back.

“I? I would never harm her! It is you who think she is a plaything, to be used as you see fit!”

The scars stood out as white lines across the big warrior’s face. “You diseased she-jackal! I will carve you—”

“Fight later!” Conan snapped. “Now we must find Jehnna!”

Tension between the two lessened, but did not disappear. Bombatta sheathed his half-bared tulwar with a growl deep in his throat, and Zula’s lip curled angrily as she lowered the staff she held in both hands.

Akiro had knelt by Jehnna’s blankets and begun running his hands over them. Now his lips moved silently, and his eyes closed. When he opened them again only dead-white spheres showed. Malak gagged loudly and turned away.

“The girl was taken by a bird,” the old man announced.

“Old fool,” Bombatta muttered, but Akiro continued as if he had not spoken.

“A great bird, a bird of smoke that moved without sound. It carried her in its talons.” His eyelids dropped, and opened on normal black eyes.

“A fool?” Conan said to Bombatta. “You are the fool. And me. We should have expected the Stygian to do something.”

“Where did this bird take her?” Zula asked.

Akiro pointed across the lake to the crystal palace.

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