The small group of men stood in grim silence for a brief time. The light-globe shed its gently wavering illumination over the sprawled body, lending it the ghastly illusion of movement, while the shadows seemed to press inward and hold the living in place.

"Why didn't he cry out?" asked Phandoros in a small voice.

"Look at his throat," said Ethram-Fal. "His windpipe has been crushed shut."

"You mean he was seized, silenced, and dragged in here to be slain?"

Ath's voice rose in repugnance and horror.

"Yes," said Ethram-Fal in softer tones. "And where is his heart?"

The two soldiers started and looked about themselves as if they might find the organ that had given Dakent life lying at their feet.

But it was gone.

Chapter Twenty-Six.

An ancient lean-to of dry sticks and faded camel-skin tatters waved in the hot desert breeze. It sat forlorn and fallen in upon itself at the base of one of several palms that stood about the oasis like sentries swaying with weariness in the heat. The trees threw inviting splotches of dark shadow upon the sun-bright sand, but the eyes of the weary travelers were fixed on the pool.

Sunken into a sandy depression and half surrounded by grateful shrubs, the water gleamed a vivid blue, reflecting the cloudless sky above.

"Now that, by Crom, is a most welcome sight." Conan slid easily from his camel's back and led the others toward the pool's nearest sh.o.r.e.

His three comrades followed, stretching legs aching from hours in the saddle.

"Is the oasis where the map showed it to be?" Neesa pulled back her hood and shook out her tangled cloud of black hair. The scribe wondered if she could be patient enough to wait until everyone drank their fill before throwing herself headlong into the waterhole.

"More or less," said Conan. "I steered us by the map until I could smell water, then followed the scent."

Zelandra jogged to Conan's side, her silver-threaded hair bouncing with her movements. As they neared the pool's rim, her hand closed on his thick shoulder.

"Hold," she said urgently. "Something here is not right..."

Conan's eyes caught a trace of movement in the pool's clear shallows. A thin stream of bubbles rippled from a spot in the sand beneath the water. The stream widened as he watched, sending tiny concentric swells rolling across the still surface of the pool. Heng Shih and Neesa shouldered up to where Zelandra and Conan stood staring. The barbarian's skin crawled with a dread so strong and insistent that it was almost a premonition.

"Get back!" he bellowed as an explosive concussion ripped the surface of the pool, hurling white spray far up into the empty sky. Where the stream of bubbles had emerged from the pool's floor, a thick shaft of shining green, like the trunk of a tree, now thrust itself into view.

It shook, jerked, and stretched itself taller than a man, lashing the water to froth. A cl.u.s.ter of pale, bloated, petal-like growths covered the thing's crown. Its body was a densely wrinkled green cylinder, crisscrossed with pulsing veins. A pair of ridged tentacles burst from each side of its midsection, lashing the air. A thick ma.s.s of roiling roots formed its base, heaving at the pool's floor, lifting the grotesque thing up out of the water, moving it toward the sh.o.r.e and the stunned human intruders.

A whiplike tentacle whistled toward Conan, snapping itself around his right calf. It pulled forward with incredible strength, jerking his leg up, upending the barbarian's body, so that for a moment he was suspended head down. The Cimmerian's sword leapt into his hands, making a flashing arc that slashed through the hard, ridged arm and dropped him to the sand.

Heng Shih's hands caught Zelandra's waist and tossed her forcefully back. She stumbled out of range even as a tentacle curled around her bodyguard's torso. The emerald arm constricted, sinking sharply into Heng Shih's abdomen, drawing him in toward the hideous thing.

Conan sprang cat-like up off the ground, ducking beneath one flailing tentacle as another struck him across neck and chest like a slavemaster's whip. He twisted away, stumbling in the sand, a line of dripping crimson bright on his bronzed throat.

The unnatural plant proceeded to pull itself out of the pool on its tangled carpet of roots while bone-white thorns began sprouting from the net of wrinkles on its swaying trunk. Wicked, needle-sharp spikes pushed into view, jutting the length of a man's hand. The unladen tentacles lengthened, whipping wildly about as the one gripping Heng Shih pulled steadily, tirelessly at him.

The Cimmerian lunged to his friend's aid. A questing tentacle writhed about the barbarian's left arm, biting into muscle and spoiling a stroke meant to free Heng Shih. The tentacle he had severed snaked clumsily between Conan's legs, seeking an ankle.

The Khitan's boots plowed twin furrows in the sandy soil as he was drawn irresistibly toward the thing. The tentacle sawed through his kimono and into his midsection, sending trickles of brilliant scarlet across golden silk. Clinging to the imprisoning appendage with one hand, Heng Shih managed to draw out his scimitar with the other.

The plant-thing, now well up onto the sh.o.r.e, gave a sudden heave on the tentacle grasping the Khitan. Heng Shih lost his footing and stumbled helplessly forward, toward the thing's body, which now bristled with dagger-like thorns. He made a desperate thrust with his scimitar, and the point of his blade pierced the trunk's thick skin with a moist crunch. The Khitan's body jolted to a stop as he braced the pommel of the sword against his belly. To draw him closer, the monstrosity would be forced to drive his blade deeper into its own body. The length of his scimitar was all that kept Heng Shih from being pulled onto the murderous thorns.

Conan stomped the wounded tentacle into the sand while pulling against the horror gripping his arm. It jerked to and fro in a frenzy, confounding his efforts to hack himself free.

The ghastly thing kept inching forward, thick petals bobbing in the sunlight. Then it leaned back and gave another tremendous heave, nearly unbalancing Conan and driving half the length of Heng Shih's scimitar into its fibrous body. In the instant that it righted itself, the tension on its tentacles went slack and Conan moved. He staggered up to the abomination and, with a swift whirl of steel, struck off at the base the tentacle that gripped his arm. The appendage released him and dropped, writhing in the sand like a maddened serpent. The wounded tentacle, freed from beneath Conan's boot, finally found the Cimmerian's ankle just as the last free tentacle snapped around Heng Shih's chest and added its relentless pressure to that already drawing the Khitan onto the spiked trunk. The ridged arm around Conan's ankle constricted with savage force and wrenched the Cimmerian away from the creature he had wounded. Conan fell heavily on his side and was pulled away, cursing and struggling.

Heng Shih's face was fixed in a grimace of agony as he bore up under the monstrous pressure exerted by the remorseless tentacles. His hands were white on the hilt of his sword, clinging doggedly to the only thing that kept him from embracing the nightmare plant's spined trunk.

The pommel of his scimitar thrust painfully against his belly even as his blade slid an inch deeper into the monster's dense, wooden flesh.

Then a knife hurtled from nowhere, thudding into the horror's emerald trunk a handbreadth from Heng Shih's face. Neesa's aim was as. true as ever; but if the sorcerous abomination perceived her marksmanship, it gave no sign.

The tentacle dragging Conan away from the fray suddenly released him and flew back to whip with vicious force around Heng Shih's shoulders.

The breath was driven from the Khitan's lungs. The plant-thing was willfully impaling itself upon his blade in order to draw him to it.

Heng Shih's scimitar was slowly being driven hilt-deep into its trunk, and now he held himself mere inches above the hungry thorns.

The Cimmerian leapt up and sprang back into the fray. Skidding to a halt in the damp sand, he braced his feet and delivered a terrific roundhouse cut to the plant-thing's body, hewing almost a third of the way through the trunk like a woodsman chopping a tree.

Colorless fluid gushed from the yawning wound, spraying Conan's arms and face. Its blood was cool and, where it touched the barbarian's lips, tasteless. It was water. Realization translated into instantaneous action. Conan hurled himself away from the thing even as the wounded tentacle released its grip on Heng Shih and darted toward the Cimmerian's legs with terrible speed. It dodged over his low slash with unnatural agility and wrapped itself around his throat. The tentacle drew taut and clenched furiously, instantly cutting off Conan's breath, wrenching him from his feet, and dragging him, struggling, across the ground. A choked cry of pain and fury tore from the Cimmerian's throat as his body slid across the sand toward the waiting, wicked thorns. His free hand clutched at the tentacle encircling his throat, prying the cruelly ridged thing from his windpipe, while his sword hand whipped up and down in a convulsive surge of raw strength. The blade hewed through the oppressive arm, freeing him. Rolling, tearing the severed length of tentacle from his neck, Conan scrambled over the ground with the desperate speed of a wounded panther. The barbarian slid to a stop behind the obscene thing as four new tentacles erupted from its body.

From among the writhing nest of roots that formed the abomination's base came a thick cable as black and shiny as oiled leather. It was as big around as a man's thigh and led back across the sunbaked sand into the pool.

As the four new tentacles shot toward him, Conan rose on his knees, lifted his scimitar above his head, and slashed downward with all the remaining power in his body. The blade tore through the black cable and buried itself in the dry earth. Water burst from the sundered taproot like blood from a riven heart.

The plant-thing shuddered, the veins webbing its spiked trunk ceased throbbing, and its tentacles fell limply to the sand. It settled down heavily upon its bed of roots and then toppled sideways with slow grace, like a hewn tree. Its green skin was suddenly thick with dew, water running from its fallen trunk. It shriveled, giving up to the thirsting sand the water that had lent it life.

Heng Shih stood gla.s.sy-eyed where it had released him, bands of blood running freely down his torso. He staggered two unsteady steps away from the dead thing and collapsed onto the sand. The breath came loudly from his gaping mouth, and his shaven skull glistened with sweat.

Conan clambered over the corpse of the plant-thing, avoiding the sagging thorns, and fetched it a kick in its flowered crown. The drooping petals burst under his boot's impact, spattering water and vegetable pulp. He looked to Zelandra, who knelt beside Heng Shih, ministering to his wounds.

"I trust that was one of Ethram-Fal's guards," he said, tugging at his torn and bloodied shirt.

"Of course," said Zelandra absently, her attention on her bodyguard, who stared ahead stoically as she daubed at the wound that encircled his midriff. "That was a piece of work befitting a sorcerer dedicated to the magic of plants." She nodded at the toppled abomination, where it lay slowly dissolving into the sand. "A h.e.l.l of an achievement, actually. The Emerald Lotus must have improved his abilities by no small amount."

"Crom," grunted the barbarian, peeling off his shirt and standing in his tarnished mail. "So we can expect to meet more of his creations?"

"Little doubt of it. I'm fairly certain that he can only send forth his projected self to places that he has already been in the flesh. Even so, I imagine he has paid at least one more visit to my house, found me gone, and drawn his own conclusions. It shouldn't take a great deal of wit to figure that I'm coming for him and his lotus."

The Cimmerian wondered if she felt equal to the task of battling such an accomplished sorcerer. He wondered how she felt about closing in on a powerful enemy who was probably aware of her approach. He wondered, but said nothing.

Neesa dabbed at the gash across his neck and collarbone with a cloth she had dampened in the pool. He let her swab at it and the deeper incision about his left biceps, then pulled away.

"Ymir, woman, I've been hurt worse by a hangover. Help Zelandra tend to Heng Shih before his yellow hide is bled white. I'll gather tinder for a fire and pitch the tents."

By the time that the sun had fallen below the western horizon, a tidy camp of three tents had been set up and a frugal meal of dried beef, hard bread, and oasis water had been served.

The campfire crackled, radiating a pleasant warmth onto sands now chill with the coming of night. Beyond the flaring glow of the fire and the dark ring of undergrowth, the desert receded in waves of sand, black and silver by moonlight, like a frozen sea. The slender scimitar of a quarter moon rode high in the heavens, skirting the icy torrent of the Milky Way.

"I'll take the first watch," said Conan, squatting beside the dying fire. Heng Shih nodded in grat.i.tude as he rose with care from his seat and moved slowly toward his tent. Zelandra pulled her kettle from the red-orange coals and poured herself some tea. The gentle aroma of jasmine rose with the steam from her cup. Neesa's head lay comfortably upon the Cimmerian's shoulder, his arm about her trim waist.