A thin cry echoed through the desert night, diminished by distance and quickly fading. Neesa's body tensed against Conan's.

"What was that?" she whispered uneasily.

"A jackal," grunted the barbarian.

"Perhaps the Yizil," said Zelandra, blowing across the top of her teacup. Firelight turned her eyes to flame.

"Yizil?" asked Neesa, now sitting up stiffly.

"Desert ghouls," said Conan. "Haunters of ruins and gnawers of bones.

They shun the open desert."

"Do they?" Neesa's eyes probed the darkness beyond the campfire's glow.

Conan laughed gustily.

"They do. Go to bed. I promise that if any Yizil come by, I shall feed them to their brethren."

Neesa got to her feet and sidled reluctantly toward the Cimmerian's tent. "Now I shan't sleep until you join me."

Conan watched her disappear through the flap and frowned across the fire at Zelandra. "Did you have to tell her that? You knew that the Yizil are no danger here."

Zelandra grinned at him. She lifted her hands in an innocent shrug and nodded toward his tent.

"You should thank me," she said, and Conan smiled back at her.

"Seriously, my friend." Her voice grew softer as she continued. "I am concerned that we encountered a creature of Ethram-Fal's at such a distance from his lair."

"It is not such a distance. When we were atop the great sand dune beside this oasis, I could see the Dragon's Spine."

"Ishtar," she breathed. "So swiftly? You are truly a fine guide, Conan."

"Well," said the Cimmerian gruffly, "we aren't there yet. We must travel southeast into the foothills surrounding the Dragon's Spine in order to approach it from the angle we saw in Ethram-Fal's sorcerous projection. Tomorrow we should get close enough to tell whether I am a good guide or not."

Zelandra nodded and Conan rose, dusted himself off, and went to walk the perimeter.

In a short time he alone was awake, moving restlessly about the camp as silent as a shadow, disappearing in one direction to reappear in a few moments from another, memorizing the contours of the waste around them.

Conan stood watch, while overhead the moon rose, the stars wheeled, and a flight of meteors slashed the sky with fire.

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

The desert floor rose gradually, lifting into the rough uplands of rugged rock that held, somewhere in their labyrinthine vastness, the sculpted ridge that was the Dragon's Spine. The seemingly endless ocean of ochre dunes gave way to low hillocks of crumbling soil that gave way in turn to a new wilderness of stone outcrops and towers. Here the surface of the earth had buckled up, as though from unthinkable pressures within, shedding its skin of soil and baring raw and naked bones of mineral.

The party moved With excruciating slowness through this tortuous landscape. High up on the ragged rim of a ridge, Conan pointed off to the east, where the distinct and regular shape of the Dragon's Spine lay shimmering in the distance. From the lofty ridge they descended into even worse terrain-a literal maze of canyons and ravines that split the earth like cracks in the sunbaked bottom of a dry riverbed.

The weary quartet advanced and then retreated down narrow defiles that wound promisingly in the right direction, only to end abruptly in a vertical wall. Canyons that began as broad and as easy to traverse as the Caravan Road shrank along their length until the body of an unmounted man could not squeeze through. Any pa.s.sage they took initially seemed to lead in the direction that they sought, only to bend or double back until the travelers were riding away from their goal. Time and again the Cimmerian dismounted and climbed to a high vantage point in order to get his bearings. Agile as an ape, he would clamber up a rock wall or scale a stony spire to get a fix on the Dragon's Spine. The party would wait in dogged silence for him to return and order that they turn around, return to a fork, retry a pa.s.sage that led in the wrong direction, or simply continue along the path that they were on.

It was well into the afternoon when they emerged from the mouth of a narrow gorge into a wide clearing that lay open to the sky. Pa.s.sing from the cool shadows cast by rock walls into the golden glare of the sun, the party squinted, shaded their eyes and looked about. The clearing formed an irregular hub into which three small canyons opened.

Off to the left a slender cleft ran away to the northeast, its walls rising swiftly and sharply from the floor of the clearing into a high series of jagged pinnacles. To the right a larger defile dropped rapidly away to the southwest, its flattened path strewn with gravel and bracketed by low walls of broken stone. Directly in front of them the ground rose up into a worn hill of eroded rock, obscuring the opposite side of the clearing from view.

To the surprise of all, Conan nudged his camel to a trot and rode straight up the low hill before them. They followed in silence, having long since accepted the barbarian's guidance through this desert maze.

Heng Shih was as expressionless as ever, seemingly unperturbed by the bandaged wound that girdled his broad belly. Neesa rose nervously erect in her saddle, her eyes rarely leaving her mistress. The Lady Zelandra stared forward sightlessly, speaking only when spoken to and clutching the leather-wrapped box in her lap with both hands. She had made herself a turban and tucked her long, silver-shot hair inside it. Her face, sunburned and haggard, looked years older than it had only a few days before.

Once atop the hill, the party drew to a halt, their camels snuffling in grat.i.tude. The far side of the hill descended steeply in a broad swath of loose stones and gravel. It fell away for many yards before ending abruptly at the edge of a precipitous cliff, where it apparently dropped away into an even lower canyon.

"There," said Conan, lifting a bare, bronzed arm. "The Dragon's Spine."

The party stared off to the northeast and saw that he was right. The saw-toothed formation was just visible over the walls of the canyon that opened on their left, and, for the first time, its alignment seemed correct. Its appearance closely matched their first view of it in the background of Ethram-Fal's sorcerous projection.

"At last," whispered the Lady Zelandra in a small, dry voice.

"We make camp here," said the Cimmerian. "I believe that narrow ravine will lead us to Ethram-Fal's lair, but I cannot be certain how distant it is."

"So there is something that you cannot do, barbarian?" said Zelandra.

Her right hand crept up her ribs and pressed there as if stanching a wound. "I am astonished to hear you admit it. This is my expedition and I insist that we proceed down that canyon immediately. We have no time to make camp. We will close with Ethram-Fal and destroy him before this day is done."

"Zelandra," said Conan evenly, "the day is already nearly done.

Darkness falls much swifter at the bottom of a canyon than it does in the open air. There are clouds on the western horizon that may bring a storm, and we have no way of knowing how much farther there is to travel. Moreover, you are tired, milady."

"Tired? You insolent fool, even weary, I have strength enough to do what I must do. I say we go forward!" She wheeled upon her servants.

"Would you follow this insubordinate savage instead of your mistress?

I-I..." Her voice trailed off as her gaze pa.s.sed over the concerned faces of Neesa and Heng Shih. Both of her hands clutched her torso as if they could unwind the bands of pain that tightened there. Tears glimmered in her dark eyes.

"Ah, sweet Ishtar's mercy," she said, voice low and choked with shame.

"I'm sorry, my friends. Our comrade Conan is right, we must camp here for I am tired. So very tired."

Heng Shih seemed to appear at her camel's side. No one saw him dismount. His great hands gripped Zelandra gently about the waist and plucked her from the saddle as lightly as if she were a mannequin of silk. He set her on her feet, swept the dirt from the top of a flattened stone, and motioned for her to sit. She did, pressing her face into her hands as though she could not bear to look upon her fellow travelers. Conan spoke again.

"Zelandra, after we set up camp, Heng Shih and I will scout down the narrow canyon. We will go as far as we can before nightfall. We may well find Ethram-Fal's hiding place. If all goes well, we will be planning our method of attack tonight and carrying it out tomorrow morning. Rest, be strong, and you shall have your revenge."

Zelandra nodded, taking her hands from her face but keeping her eyes lowered. The remainder of the party went about setting up camp.

Shortly, the three small tents were up, situated back and away from the hill's leading edge so that they would not be visible from any point in the clearing below. Conan forbade a fire, saying that they could have a cold supper whenever they hungered and that he wouldn't eat until he and Heng Shih returned from their scouting expedition. He balanced this unhappy news by breaking out one of the party's few bottles of wine and pa.s.sing it around. Looking drawn and shaken, Zelandra took a token sip before retiring to her tent. As soon as she was out of earshot, the Cimmerian turned to Neesa.

"Has she used the last of her lotus?"

"No. I know that she has more, though I'm not certain how much. She does not want to use it. Not even the tiny bit that would ease her pain. She fears that if she does, her resolve will weaken and she will take too much or all of it. She grows desperate. I'm sorry, Conan. You know that she meant you no insult, do you not?"

"Her words do not concern me; her actions do. Will she be strong enough to face the Stygian sorcerer when we finally find him?"

Neesa raised her pale hands in a helpless shrug. "How can I say? I think that she plans to use the last of the lotus to strengthen herself just before engaging Ethram-Fal. It really does seem to empower her sorcery. She took some just before sending the flame-wall against those bandits."

"She goes to battle with a wizard who claims to have an unlimited supply of the cursed drug. I wonder what manner of sorcery he will send against us."

To this Neesa made no reply. At her side, Heng Shih leaned forward and his hands made a series of deliberate motions in the air before him.

Conan looked to Neesa questioningly.