Heng Shih nodded, then began wrapping the silken shirt around his head.

Chapter Thirty-Three.

The moon's last light was quenched before rolling clouds. The wind raged past the climbers, bearing a scourge of sand that tore at their clothing and abraded their exposed skin. Despite the absent moon, an ethereal yellow half-light, vaporous and sickly, illuminated the storm-wracked sky. Heng Shih could just make out the form of Conan silhouetted against it as the Cimmerian drew himself up the irregular stone wall.

Heng Shih stood upon a narrow ledge, embracing the cliff face beneath the climbing barbarian. He scarcely dared move in the ceaseless wind.

Twenty feet below lay a scattered carpet of sharp boulders. The Khitan pressed his forehead against the hard stone, still warm from the sun's rays, waiting for Conan to reach safety and lower the rope.

They had proceeded in this fashion for hours. Heng Shih had entertained hopes that the tops of the canyons would be fairly level, at least allowing for occasional expanses of easy travel. It was not so. The upper portions of the canyon walls broke into a wildly uneven collection of jagged rock formations. They hadn't traveled forward as far as they climbed up and down over the canyon walls.

Conan had chosen an initial approach that took them across the canyon rim at its lowest point, and then dropped them into a gorge packed with huge boulders. Finding a path out of that jumble seemed to have taken half the night. From there they had made their way over a series of steep ridges. Nowhere did the stone afford much in the way of hand or footholds. The two men had developed a pattern: Conan climbed ahead, often disappearing entirely into the swirling sand; then the rope would come trailing down out of the yellow-tinged darkness, and Heng Shih would clamber up its length.

The far side of each ridge was generally shorter and less steep than its leading edge, as the canyons they flanked grew deeper and drew farther back into the highlands. Inevitably, the men would find themselves at the base of another almost sheer wall and be forced to climb once again. Heng Shih's pride goaded him to keep pace with Conan, but he soon discovered that his skill in scaling stone was no match for a Cimmerian hillman's.

Now the Khitan stood panting on his little ledge and waited for the rope. He blinked through the slender gap in sand-crusted silk. His lungs fought for air and his legs throbbed from exertion. The muscles around each knee were defined in every fiber by pain. Steeling himself, he thought of Zelandra and looked up for the rope. Conan had long since vanished into the whirling sandstorm above.

Heng Shih was all but blinded, but when he shifted position against the rock face to ease his cramping knees, his hand brushed against something. It was the rope. Visibility had grown so poor that it had fallen beside him without even being noticed. The Khitan seized the rope, set his teeth, and began to climb.

As he approached the summit, the huge form of the Cimmerian, loomed above him, etched against the tawny darkness of the sky. Heng Shih dragged himself over the rim, grateful that the stone was moderately level. Conan bent over him and yelled above the storm.

"Are you all right?"

The Khitan nodded and stood, resisting an impulse to check the bandages wrapped around his midsection beneath his clothing. The wound throbbed dully from strain, but he did not think he had reopened it.

The pair stood between two natural pillars of crooked and weathered stone that thrust skyward like the broken, skeletal fingers of some buried giant. Heng Shih leaned his weight against the nearest and stared doggedly ahead, trying to get some idea of the nature of the next section of terrain. He felt confident the canyon they had followed to the Palace of Cetriss was located somewhere to their right, and that the palace itself lay more or less in front of them. He couldn't hazard a guess as to how much farther they had to travel.

"Look!" shouted Conan, his voice half smothered by the roar of the wind. "The palace!" The barbarian extended a hand, pointing above and ahead of them. Heng Shih tried to stare through the blowing dust.

A dark ma.s.s, huge and angular, faded in and out of view in the weird yellow half-light. It seemed less than a league away, yet the s.p.a.ce between the looming phantom and the two men was a sand-lashed void that made estimations of distance impossible.

"We'll go down here, along that ledge, and then up atop the palace.

We're almost there." Conan wrapped the rope in coils around his brawny arm while Heng Shih peered skeptically ahead, trying to identify the features that the Cimmerian had described. He abandoned his efforts when Conan moved forward, off the level top of the ridge, and down its uneven rear slope. The Khitan followed, keeping his comrade's broad back in view while stepping carefully on the treacherous stone.

The slope bottomed out into a narrow creva.s.se packed with broken slabs of fallen rock. Conan descended, leaping nimbly from one boulder to the next, avoiding the gaps and irregularities that could trap and break an ankle or even a leg. He made his way .along the creva.s.se floor to their right, with Heng Shih keeping close through sheer force of will.

The narrow pa.s.sage was abruptly sheared off. The creva.s.se opened out from a smoothly vertical stone wall into a vast, open expanse seething with windblown sand. Conan crouched on a boulder at the opening's rim, looking down. Heng Shih caught up and stood gasping at his side.

"Below is the courtyard we saw when scouting the canyon!" bellowed Conan. "With luck, that thin ledge running along the courtyard wall will take us to a point where we can scale the palace roof."

The open s.p.a.ce of the courtyard was a raging maelstrom of shrieking wind. Airborne sand and dust made it impossible to see more than a few paces ahead. One look down inspired a strange vertigo. The courtyard's floor might have been thirty feet down or three hundred. Heng Shih could just make out the slender ledge that Conan had indicated. It began six feet from, and six feet below, the opening in which they stood. The natural pathway stretched along the courtyard wall, leading up into the storm. Its width varied, but seemed to afford s.p.a.ce enough to walk upon. The Khitan's stomach lurched as he realized that he and his companion would have to jump from the creva.s.se mouth along the courtyard wall to reach the stone path. The ledge abruptly appeared much narrower to his eyes.

The barbarian set his feet, bent his knees, and then leapt out into open air. He landed cat-like upon the ledge. The Cimmerian put his back to the rock face and walked along the shelf with seeming ease, quickly disappearing from sight.

Heng Shih followed with intense deliberation, perching carefully on the boulder at the edge. He did not look down. It wasn't really much of a leap, he reasoned. A one-legged man could do it if the ground were level. Heng Shih took a deep breath and jumped. He lit on a ledge, but overestimated his leap and struck the canyon wall with force enough to rebound slightly. His hands scrabbled desperately on the stone, miraculously finding a handhold; and seizing it, pulling himself back in tight against the wall.

His heartbeat thundered in his ears, for a moment drowning out the sound of the wind. He allowed himself no time to recover, or to think on how he stood unsteadily upon a crumbling bit of stone suspended above a howling abyss. He proceeded along the precarious shelf, following Conan.

The ledge proved easy enough to negotiate for the first twenty or thirty paces; then it narrowed and became a rising series of sharp and irregular steps. Heng Shih half stumbled on the first, stopped to slap the dust from his improvised mask, and then began to climb. At the fifth step the path narrowed to nothing, disappearing into the cliff face. Heng Shih clung to the rock and looked in all directions. The courtyard's natural wall continued ahead, but without the benefit of the slightest foothold. The stone shone smooth as polished crystal.

Where was Conan? The thought battered the Khitan with the force of a blow. He peered frantically into the roiling storm below. Had the Cimmerian fallen? What could he do now?

Something struck him atop the head. He recoiled involuntarily, jerking backwards so that he almost fell from the ledge. His right hand clawed at the air and caught the rope.

Conan was above him. Heng Shih gripped the line and stared up along the cliff face to where it vanished into lashing clouds of grit. The rock was almost featurelessly smooth, devoid of all but the tiniest irregularities. These had apparently sufficed. Conan had scaled the wall to its summit.

Heng Shih gave the rope a yank. It held fast. With repeated grunting and effort, the Khitan went hand-over-hand up the rope. He braced his feet and knees upon the slippery rock face when he could, but depended on the strength of his upper body to draw him to safety. The muscles of his shoulders quivered with effort, and he found himself slowing. Dust and sweat stung his eyes. His boots slid over stone, striving for purchase and finding none. Then the rope began to rise of its own accord, reeling him in like an ungainly fish until he was drawn over the edge of the cliff. Heng Shih scrambled onto level ground, released the rope, and stood with his hands on his knees, breathing deeply.

Conan of Cimmeria unwound the rope from his fists, clapped the Khitan on the back, and unleashed a guffaw audible even above the wind.

"Thought you'd lost me, eh? It takes more than a bit of climbing to stop a Cimmerian. Come, we're almost there."

The canyon wall continued only another dozen paces before it reached the courtyard's corner and angled sharply inward to form the back wall of the natural cul-de-sac. They had climbed to the far corner of the courtyard and now stood a mere spear's cast from the Palace of Cetriss.

The Khitan found that he could discern the ma.s.sive pillars of the palace's facade, flickering in and out of visibility between veils of windblown sand. Its outlines shifted, giving it the appearance of a sinister mirage created by the ferocious storm.

The footing was blessedly even. Conan and Heng Shih climbed a low ridge of weathered stone, and pa.s.sed beyond the courtyard. The dark and shadowy ma.s.s that they had seen through the storm now rose directly before them. Their harrowing climb had brought them up beside the palace roof. The uppermost portion of the Palace of Cetriss was fashioned from a section of canyon that rose in a promontory, towering above all around it. The palace's flank lifted from the stone at their feet as sharply as a man-made wall sprang from a city's cobbled sidewalk. Gazing up its face almost twenty feet to the tortured sky, Heng Shih found himself wishing that he could see so much as a single star. Conan walked beside the wall, trailing the fingers of one hand along it. He turned to the Khitan, slapping his palm on the wall and shouting above the gusts.

"It's been worked. Leveled and sanded. Long ago."

Heng Shih nodded that he understood, wondering if this meant the Cimmerian would be unable to scale it. They walked for a few more moments, pa.s.sing over almost-level stone, with Conan staring ceaselessly up at the wall. At length he stopped, pointing high to a single fissure marring the smooth surface. As Heng Shih looked on, the Cimmerian took several steps back, then ran forward and leapt up at the slender split in the stone wall. His body seemed to fly into place and stick, like a dagger hurled into soft wood. Steely fingers dug into the narrow gap, supporting the full weight of his powerful frame. He writhed, clawing his way up the wall with his fingertips alone. After an instant of breathless struggle, his hands found purchase atop the wall. Then his legs swung up and he was over the top, out of sight.

Heng Shih stood with his hands on his hips and shook his head. He reflected upon how reluctant he had been to allow the barbarian to accompany Lady Zelandra's expedition. He grimaced, tugged the wrapped silk away from his lips, and spat downwind. The rope came tumbling down the wall to him. He flexed his shoulders, cracked his knuckles, and climbed.

The roof of the Palace of Cetriss was as large as the courtyard, rectangular, and bounded by a low wall that reached to a man's hip. It was as level as a floor beneath their feet and patterned with whirling eddies of sand. In its center lay a wooden board as thick and heavy as a tavern's tabletop. Conan knelt beside this anomaly and, as Heng Shih watched nervously, pressed an ear to the rough wood. He rose quickly and padded to the Khitan's side.

"An entrance," he explained. "Probably guarded. Look here." The barbarian went to one knee again, pointing out a collection of odd items in the blowing sand of the rooftop. Five black candles were set in congealed pools of their own melted wax. Each was positioned at one of the five points of a large star inscribed upon the roof's surface.

Strange symbols and traceries stained the stone on all sides of the great pentagram.

"I'll wager this is where the Stygian cast forth his image to pester your mistress," said Conan.

The mention of Zelandra drove a surge of fresh energy through Heng Shih's tired body. He jogged to the front of the palace, motioning for Conan to follow. Gripping the carved rim of the low wall, the Khitan leaned over the courtyard and peered below. The flattened-facade above the great pillars stretched down about ten feet. Below that he could make out the protruding cornice of one of the pillars. Conan moved toward the facade's center, where another slim fissure split the low wall, and began unspooling the rope.

"We'll go down here. We want to swing in between the pillars."

Heng Shih watched as the Cimmerian tied a heavy knot in the rope's tail. Conan stood on the cord and wrenched upon it to tighten the knot.

Then he fit the rope into the fissure, Wedging the knot flat against the inside of the wall and carelessly tossing the remainder over into the courtyard to dangle in s.p.a.ce.

"It should hold, unless our weight tears the knot loose or the stone cuts the rope." Conan stretched like a lazy tiger, seemingly confident and unconcerned. Heng Shih swallowed heavily.

"I'll go first," said the barbarian as he straddled the wall and grasped the line. With a lithe twist, Conan rolled over the edge and began to lower himself down the rope. Sandy gusts tore at him, trying to pluck him loose from the wall and swing his body like a pendulum.

The Cimmerian fought the wind, staying in close to the carved stone face. When Conan reached the base of the facade, he planted the soles of his boots against the wall, kicked back, and slid down the rope.

Then he swung out of sight beneath the facade and between the pillars.

The skin between the Khitan's shoulder blades tingled as the rope stayed taut and Conan failed to reappear. After a long moment the rope went slack and trailed back into view, flailing loosely in the relentless wind. Heng Shih briefly considered that Conan might have fallen, or worse, swung right into a room full of waiting soldiers.

Then he seized the rope and drew himself over the wall.