Page 2 (2/2)

"His head Sever his head!" Conan co He had to reach Valeria They e in the valley at the base of great cliffs And as he looked up now, he saw that the men had taken Valeria, that she was laden doith silver chains, and a large silver cross swung between the valley of her breasts Giovanni da Silva had her high up on the tor of a cliff She was being forced to her knees Da Silva was ready to deliver an executioner’s blow upon her neck

"No!" Conan roared the word, casting off his helmet as he raced the distance to the cliffs, threw hian to climb

"By God, she must die!" da Silva called back

By some insane mercy, Conan reached the cliff and the outcrop of rock where Valeria had been taken

The little plateau e, sacrificial altar, the way it protruded high above the ground and jutted out over the battlefield

Da Silva drew his sword high, and Conan crawled atop the rock and found his footing just in tirasped the man’s arnificent struggle

Conan glanced down And he saw her eyes

And for a second, he was frozen in the h!" cae of the tor, where he saw that François de Venue, incredibly, had crawled as well, his life’s blood still streahts of nature, theto God, and to the heavens, and to all that was holy

A great sound suddenly filled the night, a ru, in the very world

A cracking… fracturing…

And suddenly, the tor upon which they stood began to shake, and all were thrown to the earth The ruainst the explosion of the earth, Conan heard a whisper "My love…

!"

She crawled to hiround

And one ainst his flesh

The earth, the rock, the very ground upon which they stood began to break and cruht--the horrible, dying shriek of a de

And then the earth exploded, and the cliffs themselves tore apart and fell…

François, covered in blood and still at the edge of the precipice, toppled first Down… down to the earth below thelass, and all who had stood upon it ca down to earth

People, shrubs, creatures, rocks, and trees… all crumbled and fell And as dust and earth and bits and pieces of rock caold, yet heavily laden with the crireat piles, tons of rock, lay the bodies of those who had struggled

The godly and deterreat and powerful Conan de Burgh

His men wept openly

Had he only let da Silva behead the witch Valeria, as was right, he would have survived to enjoy the bounty of goodness and life left to those he had led

But now…

Alas He had loved the evil beauty far too deeply

Yet she was his again

For beneath the rock, they were entoether forever

Or, at the very least, centuries to come

Chapter 1

"The others will certainly join you by toht, words cheerful, smile exuberant

Exhausted and exasperated, Stephanie Cahill stared at him blankly "I’m sorry Could you explain all this today The last thing that had gone right had been her flight froht from Rome to Naples

When she’d arrived in Naples, the car that was to pick her up and bring her to the southeast part of the country had failed to show up Her international phone had failed to work It had seemed that all the Italian she knew--and that was not at all what it should have been when she had agreed to accept this job--flew out of her head When she tried to ask for help at the airport, words in other foreign languages would pop into her head At last, she had gotten through to Bella Vista and Reggia Café, and discovered that her driver had arrived to get her at the airport, but hadn’t found her, and after a few espressos at a coffee bar in Naples, had shrugged and headed on back