'I'm for Tarantia.'
She shook her head.
'You thrust your head into the dragon's jaws. Best seek refuge abroad. The heart is gone from your kingdom.'
'What do you mean?' he demanded. 'Battles have been lost before, yet wars won. A kingdom is not lost by a single defeat.'
'And you will go to Tarantia?'
'Aye. Prospero will be holding it against Amalric.'
'Are you sure?'
'Hell's devils, woman!' he exclaimed wrathfully. 'What else?'
She shook her head. 'I feel that it is otherwise. Let us see. Not lightly is the veil rent; yet I will rend it a little, and show you your capital city.'
Conan did not see what she cast upon the fire, but the wolf whimpered in his dreams, and a green smoke gathered and billowed up into the hut. And as he watched, the walls and ceiling of the hut seemed to widen, to grow remote and vanish, merging with infinite immensities; the smoke rolled about him, blotting out everything. And in it forms moved and faded, and stood out in startling clarity.