Free Conan the Barbarian by Michael A. Stackpole

living. Conan could not give the secret up, and with a nod he let his father know he would happily die beside him to protect it.
    The tattooed man sank on bended knee before Khalar Zym. “The bone shard is not here.”
    “Can you do nothing right?” Khalar Zym inspected his ear again. The bleeding had stopped and he nodded. He turned to Corin. “Your son has courage and talent. He is so like my daughter.”
    The bandit looked toward the smithy’s corner. “Marique, I have need of you.”
    A small slender girl in a long, shimmering purple cloak of fine fabric emerged from the shadowed corner where she had waited, silent and unseen. Because her father had likened them one to the other, Conan stared at her. A shiver ran down his spine. Though she appeared to be only a year or two older than he, her eyes stared off into the distance as if she were remembering, or seeing, an entirely different scene than the one that was happening around her. Her hair had been gathered into a mass of dark braids, save for bangs that barely hid her forehead. Her flesh had a corpselike pallor. It surprised Conan that she did not stink of the grave.
    “Yes, Father?”
    Khalar Zym smiled. “These fools tell me the shard is not here.”
    “They just don’t know how to look.”
    Her father smiled. “Will you find it for me, Marique?”
    The girl bowed her head obediently. “As you desire.”
    One hand emerged from beneath her scaly purple cloak. Silver talons sheathed her fingers. She waved them through the air as if plucking the strings of an invisible lyre. Something thrummed through Conan’s chest. The Kushite’s weight shifted, not enough to free him, but enough to let the boy know that the black giant had felt it as well.
    The others drew back as the girl began to circle the smithy. Her path spiraled outward, her dark cloak swirling about her. Although she did not move swiftly, her movements were quite deliberate. She cocked her head as if she were listening for something. She must have heard it because the pattern of her movements shifted, narrowing, leading her to a shadowed corner.
    “There, Father, I have it.”
    She gestured casually and a wooden plank peeled back as if a leather flap. She reached down into the dark recess and removed a golden box. Bearing it in both hands, she approached her father. On bended knee, with her head bowed, she raised the box to him.
    Khalar Zym set his great sword down and reached for the box with trembling hands. He removed the lid and stared. His eyes glistened. His mouth hung open for a heartbeat. He grasped the thing in the box and raised it up with the gentle reverence of a father holding his child for the first time.
    “You have served me well, daughter. Your mother would be proud.”
    The girl’s head remained bowed, but she smiled most contentedly.
    Khalar Zym rubbed a thumb over the fragment of bone lovingly, then his eyes narrowed and his visage became cruel. “Oh, Cimmerian, you could have saved me much trouble. As I would have given you glory, so shall I now give you pain. But how? Oh, yes, yes . . .”
    He gazed at his daughter. “Marique, would you like a brother? We can take this Cimmerian, bend him to our will.”
    The girl shot Conan a venomous glance, then smiled up at her father. “As you wish.”
    “My lord, you cannot.” Lucius shook his head, a bloody cloth held to his face.
    “ ‘Cannot,’ Lucius? Did you say I cannot do something?”
    The large man blanched. “No, my lord, I meant . . .” The Aquilonian drew his short sword. “I meant that I hoped you would give me the honor of dispatching this barbarian.”
    “While that might give you satisfaction, Lucius, it will do nothing to give my Cimmerian friend pain.” Khalar Zym tapped the bit of mask against his chin. “No, I know what we shall do. Remo, Akhoun, more chains. The rest of you, gather the men, fire the rest of the village.”
    At Khalar Zym’s instruction, his henchmen attached another chain to the